By Marcelo Medone
Roberto wakes up in the middle of the night, upset and sweaty. It is the same nightmare as always, although the images are fading quickly: on a starry summer night, he is naked in the water, in the middle of the calm lake in which a slight breeze produces small waves that gently rock the surface. Suddenly, he hears desperate screams coming from everywhere. The screams echo above and below the surface of the water, calling out to him. He recognizes the familiar voice of Isabella, which gradually diminishes until it blends with the gentle sound of the waves. She is drowning, again.
Roberto swims feverishly in the warm water, stroke after stroke, lifting his head from time to time to locate where he thinks she is. With less than ten meters to go, he watches her sink. The last thing he sees is her long blonde hair disappearing like the water down a drain.
Anguished, he takes a deep breath and dives, but the water is pitch black. He stretches his hands in every direction looking for his beloved, but all he achieves is that for just a second her long hair slips between his fingers to continue traveling towards the deep abyss. This is where he wakes up.
He remembers last summer together, a year ago. The diagnosis of lung cancer had been devastating. Despite chemotherapy, Isabella’s condition was deteriorating rapidly. She began to feel short of breath, first to make some effort, then to the simplest and everyday tasks.
The call for help when she was drowning in the lake was equal to the drowning that Isabella suffered every day and every night. The difference was that she had lost all her hair for months and was wearing a surgical cap with multicolored flowers.
Before being so bad, at the beginning of therapy, they would go for a walk on the beach. They went out every night, hand in hand, to gaze at the stars. Clear, moonless nights were the best. Isabella knew all the constellations, pointed out and named the most notable stars. Roberto had never been too interested in astronomical questions, but he listened and nodded, madly in love.
Isabella proclaimed that she had a cosmic connection to Deneb, the brightest star in the constellation Lyra, that each of us has a destiny beyond earthly finitude and that the stars teach us to be humble.
“I have little time left in this world,” Isabella said, looking at Deneb.
“Don’t talk nonsense! You are going to come out of this as you have come out of so many other difficulties before. And I will accompany you all the way.”
“The doctor …”
“Doctors are always pessimistic. It is part of their protocol.”
The oncologist had been crude with his diagnosis: “It is the worst type of carcinoma. The deterioration is going to be fast. We will do our best, of course, but the statistics are tough.”
This time, the statistics did not fail. Within three months, Isabella started needing oxygen with a nasal cannula. Therefore, she went out with a small oxygen tube in her backpack. Roberto encouraged her to walk a little but not to exhaust herself, because she was getting more and more tired.
Nevertheless, she was stubborn.
“I want to climb these dunes and get to the water’s edge as much as possible. I don’t want to surrender so fast.”
After the first few weeks, Roberto began carrying the oxygen tube himself. Then they had to give up walks on the beach.
Inexorably, her need for oxygen increased. From the cannula, she went to a special mask. Roberto had to move the bedroom from upstairs to the living room. Instead of a double bed, he placed two single beds next to each other facing the beach through the large picture window. On both sides of the bed, Roberto carefully arranged bouquets of fresh lavender to lift her spirits.
Isabella could no longer get out of bed. However, she could watch the stars from her bed and repeat her star recognition ritual. Invariably, she would find Deneb and keep looking at it.
“There I am, brilliant, eternal, immortal,” she would tell Roberto.
Moreover, when Isabella was not so tired, they kissed tenderly and made love, with the slow times of those who have no hurry because they have already achieved eternity.
Roberto still has not put the upstairs bedroom back together. He keeps the two single beds facing the picture window, her bed neatly tended with its lavender-scented sheets.
Every night, Roberto lies in front of the large window, holds the surgical cap close to his heart, and gazes at the stars. He looks for the constellation Lyra and then the star Deneb. He stares at it for an eternity, spellbound, until he falls asleep.
He knows that he will surely have an unpleasant nightmare, in which he will confront uselessly with the ghost of Isabella. He is ready to pay that price for her living memory.
* * *
Marcelo Medone (1961, Buenos Aires, Argentina) is a fiction writer, poet, essayist, playwright and screenwriter. His works have received numerous awards and have been published more than 500 times in multiple languages in more than 50 countries, including over 200 publications in the US. His first book, Nada Menos Que Juan (Nothing Less than John), an illustrated story of the fantastic genre, won an international award and was published in 2010 in Spanish and Portuguese. He was awarded the First Prize in the 2021 international contest by the American Academy of the Spanish Language with his short story La súbita impuntualidad del hombre del saco a rayas llamado Waldemar (The Sudden Unpunctuality of the Man in the Striped Jacket Named Waldemar). His flash fiction story Last Train to Nowhere Town was nominated for the 2021 Pushcart Prize. He is the author of Los que están en el aire (Those Who Are in the Air), an anthology of flash fiction and short stories (Editorial Rosalba, Asunción, Paraguay, 2023).
He has dual citizenship, Argentine and Uruguayan. He currently lives in Montevideo, Uruguay.
Facebook: Marcelo Medone / Instagram: @marcelomedone