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My father always used to say to me: “Don’t be scared, the waves are there, that’s all there is to it. All you have to do is count them properly. The seventh wave is the dangerous one, don’t forget that. That’s the one with which the sea can cover you and drag you away. Lots of people have died because of that, because they didn’t count them properly.”
My father was a harvester of goose barnacles, a man whose only education was what life had taught him. And he had lived through many things. He had fought in the Civil War, although still just a young boy, then he had emigrated, as had many others from the village, including uncle Carlos, who had left for Cuba one day before the war, and who from time to time would send a little letter, always accompanied by a photo. Sometimes it would be of a house surrounded by palm trees, sometimes of a meal, in which case my parents would do their best to recognize the guests. They were relatives of whose existence I was only aware of thanks to these photos and the discussions to which they gave rise among my family, since my parents could never agree who was who. My father, though, did not go to Cuba to work, but to Germany. As for us, we stayed at home, always on the lookout for his letters and the money he would send. But he never got used to city life, nor to that unpronounceable language, and so, after four years, he boarded a merchant ship and returned to Galicia. Fortune had not yet smiled on him. It was then that he began to climb down the cliffs to gather goose barnacles, which he would then sell at a good price to the transporters who delivered fresh seafood to the best restaurants in Madrid.
On the day he took me with him to the cliffs to teach me his trade, he said to me for the first time: “The waves are not your enemies, quite the opposite, they bring life to these coastlines.” He stopped for a moment to prepare the rope he had attached to one of the pine trees growing at the top of the cliff, and added with a knowing wink, “the thing is, sometimes life can be a bitch.” Then we went down carefully as far as the reef, each with a bag attached to our belt. While we gathered the goose barnacles, with the crash of the swell breaking at our feet against the rocks then retreating with the hiss of a snake, my father kept repeating, “How many is that now?” I would reply that it was the second or the fourth, and he would ask me again, “And now?” And I would reply “the third” or “the fifth”. When the sixth one came, he would tell me: “Quick, let’s get up there, now.”
We would climb up three or four meters to get out of reach of the seventh wave, which would roar at our backs like an angry, howling dog, splashing us with its salty shower. Then we would go straight back down to carry on with our work, and things would continue this way, hour after hour, day after day. This ritual lasted for years: it was a ceremony we conducted again and again, like actors in the theatre, ever surer of our roles. My father would keep the rhythm with his questions, and I would answer him, hurrying to gather the goose barnacles and keeping an eye on the next wave.
It wasn’t the sea that killed my father, even if he came close to it on several occasions, for the swell has a temperamental character, and its mood can change without warning. No, he was killed by one of the lorries that delivered the goose barnacles to Madrid, when its brakes failed at the crossroads in the port. But I still count waves today; it has become a habit. I do it without even realizing it, all the time, whenever I’m by the sea. It relaxes me. That’s what I was doing three years ago: I was counting waves in front of the monitoring station, while on duty with the Guardia Civil, and I was gazing in admiration, once again, at the gigantic silhouette of the Teide volcano, while listening to the crystal clear sea of Tenerife as it purred a few meters from me, so different to the dark and furious sea of my native Galicia.
The reconnaissance helicopter had spotted a small boat adrift in the middle of a swell more violent than usually seen at this time of year. The pilot’s voice interrupted my calculations to inform me that it appeared to be another dinghy, but he would only be able to confirm this when the patrol boat had arrived. Once again, I was struck by the superiority of the world of technology in films. From a satellite in space it was possible to read the number plate of a car in the heart of London. These satellites were in orbit above our heads, they were having fun communicating with each other or fighting amongst themselves, spying or visiting outer space.
But we had to content ourselves with plain old helicopters, involved in uneven battles against ferocious sea winds, without even having the use of a plane. In any case, I was sure the pilot was right and it was one of these dinghies in which illegal immigrants leave the coast of Senegal, dicing with death, chasing a dream that, if they’re lucky, ends in the main room of this monitoring station. Here, they can use showers and toilets, they get something to eat, then they’re told that they’ve suffered for nothing because they’ll be sent back home. It’s a thankless task and I’ve never managed to get used to it. All that week, not a morning had passed without dinghies arriving on the island. It was always the same: they came in waves, as if desperation had put extra wind in their sails. The passengers’ faces were always confused and disoriented, as if they had come not from the neighbouring continent, but from distant planets, like astronauts lost in outer space.
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About José Manuel Fajardo
José Manuel Fajardo was born in Granada, Spain, but was “raised in an ugly and boring section of Madrid”. He studied through his third year at the Facultad de Derecho de la Universidad de Madrid, participating actively in the student movement against Franco. His first position as a journalist was in the cultural pages of Mundo Obrero, the official newspaper of the Spanish Communist Party, of which he would later leave, without abandoning his leftist principles. He has also written for a number of other publications such as the Spanish newspapers El País, Cambio 16, El Mundo and El Periódico de Catalunya, the French publications Temps Modernes, Le Mode Diplomatique, Il Sole-24 Ore and the Latin American publications El Gatopardo in Colombia, Página 12 in Argentina and Público in Mexico.
He published his first book of historical non-fiction in 1990, La epopeya de los locos, which he would revise in 2002. In 1996 he published his first novel Carta del fin del mundo, following up in 1998 with El Converso, his most widely known work that has been published in several editions. After living in the Basque country for many years he published Una belleza convulsa, set in the contemporary Basque region and narrated by a “zulo” who recounts his troubled life and the ETA’s terrorism. He published a children’s book in Mexico La estrella fugaz and a novel A pedir de boca, a love story set in a Paris immigrant community. He collaborated on a novel with the writers Antonio Sarabia and José Overjero titled Vidas exageradas in 2008 and in 2010 published Mi nombre es Jamaica, a complex novel exploring historical narratives such as the plight of the Spanish Jews and the conquest of the Americas.
The winner of several international journalism and writing prizes and awards, José Manuel Fajardo is the programmer for Festival de la Palabra and lives in Lisbon, Portugal.
