"Gaia" copyright by Christopher Clements
La Sirena
In the minutes before the storm begins, time slows to a humid crawl. The darkening sky shrouds heated air against the shore, and along the beach the palms cease their sway and stand like watchful sentinels. Confused by the early darkness and the still air, great blue crabs sidle from their dens in the palmetto thicket to scan the horizon with cautious eyes.
Prospero pushes his ancient boat across the sand and down into the waves. He is grateful that the tourists have fled the storm. He hates being seen with La Sirena, a scabrous wooden launch with a wide bow that is better suited for trolling muddy lake waters than this sometimes turbulent sea. He had insisted on transporting the old boat when he moved his family to the coast after the momentous vision.
He'd awakened them one chilly, ordinary dawn, shook them free of their flannel blankets and insisted that they start packing.
"Basta," he said winding his nets in a ball. "Enough of this miserable life fishing for minnows in this god-forsaken lake. I have dreamt a blue mermaid . . . a green sea. Our fate is on the coast, a bounty of red snapper, nets tearing with shrimp. A treasure awaits us."
Before the day was out they'd emptied the little fisherman's hut on the lake. He paid an obliging driver to lash the boat to the top of a bus, with the family's few possessions nested underneath. The conductor was a better driver than knotsman, and the bus rattled down through the mountains leaving colorful offerings on each curve. They arrived in Zihuatanejo with the clothes on their backs and the instrument of their good fortune, which Prospero painted a seaworthy turquoise and renamed La Sirena, the mermaid.
La Sirena proved awkward in the great waves of the Pacific. She foundered so often that Prospero kept one wrist tied to the bow so they could wash ashore together each afternoon, the upturned hull of the boat like a great blue fish and Prospero paddling along beside it, gulping air and salt water, the nets trailing behind, entangled with the detritus the sea fed them.
In time they adapted to life on the coast. Prospero learned to fish the shallows with his butterfly nets. The children grew limber climbing the coconut palms and hunting for oysters in salt pools along the shore. If there was not bounty, there was always enough. His sons took a modest living from the sea, but Prospero remained restless, growing old mending the nets, absorbing each glorious sunset and waiting for the fortune promised in his dream.
But today he is fishing, taking advantage of these calm minutes to venture into deeper water. He starts the sputtering engine and heads Sirena out toward the edge of the fog bank. He will have a half hour, maybe more, to cast his net into shimmering schools of fish. Emboldened by the cloudy darkness, they waver on the surface of the water and he gathers them into the boat, plying the butterfly net in graceful scoops. The fish flutter around his legs, then his thighs, as the boat fills.
When the first hot drops of rain begin to fall, Prospero is waist deep in shivering fish. Surprised, he looks up from his labor to find himself alone in a world of gray-green water and sky. The shoreline has disappeared into the mist.
Sirena rocks on the building waves. They seem to come from every direction. When the sky truly opens, the sound of the rainfall is the sound of the sea. Water rises in the boat and the harvest of fish boils over the side into the froth. He clings to the sodden craft, but it sinks away from him, drifting down. Alone in the waves, Prospero begins to thrash violently. He prays. He shouts. He gulps so many burning lungfuls of air and water, that the transition to drowning is a relief, a hiss of escaping air and a welcome silence as he goes under the waves into the quiet.
The water hums against his open eyes. The bodies of fish roil in whirlpools of glittering sand and foam. The beach under the waves is as beautiful as the one above. He imagines that he will sink down to rest on this white sand. The seaweed will cocoon him in ribbons of green and he will sleep in a nest of barnacles.
Prospero yields to the sea.
The mermaid comes to him in this moment of release. She is the storm, swaying in front of him, so close, he can count the tiny snails that bejewel her hair. His arms float out to embrace her cool flesh, to press his lips against hers and offer her the gift of these last silvery bubbles from the world of sky.
Then he is tumbling, rolling, coughing, vomiting sand and water in a hot broth . . . His body is too heavy to crawl onto the shore. He lies sprawled where she has left him, gasping air that is thick and warm as the sea. Long minutes pass before Prospero feels something hard under his cheek.
In time he will be strong enough to lift his head and begin life anew by unearthing the huge pearl. He will roll it in his palm and study the arc of bright sky reflected in its luminous surface, but now he rests. Sunlight breaks through the clouds to warm his back. The waves caress his legs. Who can blame him if he sleeps awhile, lulled by the whisper of the palms and the sweet taste of a mermaid's kiss?
Copyright by Mary Estrada
