The Son of the Waves

 

   The damp chill of the night muffled the daze brought on by the contractions; they grew more intense and painful with every passing moment. She wanted to scream, but the biting air sealed her lips, paralyzing her, leaving her to tremble wretchedly and incessantly. She wanted to stretch her legs to ease the pain, but whenever she tried, her limbs struck the huddled bodies of her fellow travelers—men and women, crowded in the fetal position, packed as tightly as possible between the rotting planks of the inflatable boat.

 

   She could take no more. It felt as if something inside her were breaking, as if her hip bones had lost all flexibility, as if the child were pushing without mercy, regardless of where its mother was. The full moon revealed the bodies of those on board; they trembled unceasingly, pressing desperate prayers from their cracked lips, weathered by the frost. A wave of icy water splashed over the boat, catching their breath, while another contraction—sharper, more predatory—pierced her like a spear. Minutes later, as the pain subsided, she felt warm liquid running down her dark, taut thighs and believed the end had come: her child would not be born alive; even if it had managed to emerge from the prison of her womb, it would die from the cold shock. She felt a powerful kick within her, a plea demanding exit.

 

   Suddenly, a breeze broke the nightly silence; it picked up, soon turning into a strengthening wind that made the fragile craft roar. Someone broke the silence. The distant sound of waves suggested the shore was near. Everyone stirred without changing their fetal position; standing up would have inevitably hurled them into the sea. She smiled desperately. A new contraction bored into her. She clung to the wood, and her tear-filled eyes begged her God for a little patience, for the chance to reach land and help her child be born. But her pleas were crushed by the waves, which at that moment leapt over the boat and swept three of the passengers away. The howling wind made it impossible to distinguish the cries for help in the dark night, stained by horror. Screams that the frost silenced within seconds.

 

   The child stabbed like a dagger into her entrails. She howled, groaned, and lost consciousness. With effort, she opened her eyes. It was bright, but she could not see her surroundings clearly. She did not know where she was; only that there was light, that there was warmth, and that her throat burned dry. With an effort, she finally discovered a clock hanging on a white wall: a red dial, capturing blurred numbers and two hands she could not yet see distinctly. Voices reached her ears: a man and a woman spoke in a language that was not her own. Slowly she turned her head and recognized her arm. An IV drip was attached to it. She felt heavy and weak. With effort, she lifted her head and looked at her belly, which lay flat on the gurney. The child was not there. She tried to speak, but no sound came out. Again, her gaze fell upon the clock. Now she could see it clearly. It showed 4:25.

 

The silence was at times oppressive, deathly still. The orderlies alternated between reading the newspaper and making short rounds to the gurneys—to all but hers. Where could the child be? For a moment, she imagined a miracle: that everything had gone well, that her son lay in an incubator and, with his mere presence, brought color to the sterile white of this hospital. But with every passing minute, she understood more and more that it was impossible. Miracles did not exist. She fell asleep.

 

 

   She awoke with a jolt on the gurney, being pushed through two long corridors by a grim orderly with a mustache. He wheeled her into an elevator, took her to a room, and pushed her behind a gray curtain that separated her from a fellow patient. Voices again. The family next door was celebrating the birth of a healthy child—rosy, plump, named Darío. Oh, if only such joyful news had been prepared for her. A nurse entered. She pressed her lips together and took her hand. Her eyes broke the news. She shook her head, turned her gaze away, powerless. She closed her eyes and sighed deeply. Her child was stillborn. A pain began to burn anew in her lower abdomen. Instinctively, she placed her hand on her belly and counted twenty-five staples under the bandage. The nurse changed the IV and left the room. She swallowed, and with that swallow, she buried her hopes. No tears came to her lids; her eyes refused to waste any more strength.

 

   In the evening, one of her traveling companions came to visit—one of the few who had survived the storm. Most had been swept into the sea, including the child's father. The rest were to be returned to their country. The government would handle the transport, this time under better conditions: with food, seats, blankets. He had nothing more to tell her. He kissed her forehead. She remained motionless, staring blankly at an unknown point, her lips sealed, her head tilted slightly to the side. He gave her a word of comfort, a proverb from the land they had fled and to which they must now return, and left. She remained lying on the gurney, her gaze lost, her tongue dead—as dead as her child. She did not even know if it would have been a boy or a girl. It no longer mattered; she could not see it, it was not here, it had in truth never been there. The flight had cost her three lives: the child's, her husband's, and her own. For at home, nothing awaited her but punishment: the tormented memory of what could have been and was not; the struggle for survival; shattered hopes; death in life.

 

   She decided never to speak again, to bury the words deep in her soul—those traitors that had brought her to that point in the course of life. She did not want to live on, but her religion left her no choice. She was a stitched-up widow, a used, aged woman, a scrap of society. Yes, she would return, but mute. Silent in the face of the cruelty of men; submissive until the end of her days. The beautiful words, the tenderness, and the tears she would steal, locking them within herself for years. And so, in silence, she would await the moment when she could give them to her child and her husband—when she found herself with them again, in a world where, it is said, there is neither hunger nor thirst, no wars and no hatred; where everyone is equal.