Gorka and the Seagulls

Gorka has gone back to Camerone. Before leaving, he called his local branch of Alcoholics Anonymous to check that they did indeed have one in Camerone and that he would be able to attend the meetings as often as usual. Reassured on this point, he packed his rucksack: swimming trunks, a few T-shirts, a book of Chinese poetry, a primer on Ancient philosophy and an Agatha Christie. He went back to the B&B he used to go to with his parents as a child. It was under new ownership, thankfully: he’d have hated having to justify his return, or even sum up the situation – to say where he was in his life, which paths he’d strayed down.

Gorka has had a bit of a difficult year. He’s stopped drinking, and he divorced the same woman for the second time – which might have given him hope that she’d come back to him once more, but in fact it’s quite clear that there’s no longer much to hope for on that front. For both these reasons at once, he is convalescing.

As soon as he arrives at the B&B, he goes to the seafront to telephone his ex-wife (he is sure not to call from the B&B: he wouldn’t like the manager or anyone else in there to find out how things are with him). Teresa answers, speaks to him very gently. She approves of his decision to have gone to Camerone, tells him the air will do him good. (He can’t quite see the ‘good’ she’s talking about: Camerone is a town which is tropically hot at Christmas.) She speaks to him about their son, offers to put him on the phone; Gorka declines in a voice just as gentle as Teresa’s. It’s as though they’re both taking pains to show that they aren’t angry with each other. If the phone call lasted long enough, they’d be reduced to whispers, and there would be no more sound on the line but the wind of Camerone and the crackle of a thousand voices in the dark of the telephone network. Teresa tells Gorka to take care of himself. He doesn’t much like that the phrase, as it gives him the impression that she’s asking him to take care of himself because she no longer has the strength to do it. He waves his right hand around in the booth – which he’s left open so he doesn’t suffocate, and to hear the seagulls and the surf – trying to signal to her with this gesture that all is well and that he’s going to have a great New Year’s on the beach at Camerone.

And so Gorka settles into a soothing routine. He gets up in the morning at about nine o’clock, has a coffee in the B&B, goes out to the beach. The beach at Camerone is a town beach, lined with palm trees planted at regular intervals. They’re old palms, though – they were already there when Gorka was a child – and look more like weary old elephants looking for a place to die than palm trees. The buildings on the seafront are suitably shabby; whole sections of paint have disappeared with each equinox. Gorka sits in the sun for an hour or two before going for a paddle. He doesn’t swim – not yet. It’s still too early. He goes back to his spot. It’s his spot: the place where he leaves his beach towel, his book with its sand-blown cover, and his little towers of pebbles. He always sits in the same place. And the other beach-goers at Camerone do the same. There is a woman in a bikini who never takes off her violet shirt, so Gorka thinks that she’s had breast cancer – he watches her read. She always sits in the shadow of a rock; next to her is a child who digs holes, and a bit further away a man who notes down on the cover of the book he’s reading the words he doesn’t know: scale, chalice, mesmerism. Once, Gorka caught the book as it started to blow away in the wind.

Then at 5 o’clock, he goes to his AA meeting. He comes out again at about 7 o’clock, goes to the seafront where he eats some tapas and drinks tonic water, then goes back up to his room where he turns on the TV and doesn’t watch it. It’s as if he doesn’t see what’s happening on the screen; he’s elsewhere, taking stock of his year, of his life. It’s not looking too bad: there’s nothing to despair of, and Gorka isn’t a man for despairing. He’s even capable of taking crucial decisions at times, and has the vital ability to rally his troops when he senses that they’re dispersing. It’s a feeling he’s had many times in his life: of setting off down a path, or rather down several paths at once, of being disorderly and chaotic – because of the drugs and alcohol, of course – and finally of being able to regain his perspective, no longer see people who shouldn’t be seen, stop the ride and get carefully back on his feet. He thinks of his son, of a present he’d like to send him; Gorka doesn’t have inconsequential thoughts. He feels deliciously melancholy.

On January 1st there’s no AA meeting. Gorka has been in Camerone for a month now, settled in a fortifying routine. He has spent all his money on salmon caviar, ordering it by post. He received the package yesterday, after staying at the B&B to wait for the postman. He opened his parcel and took out the jar of small orange balls. He didn’t know if he should put them in the fridge; he didn’t know what it meant that they were pasteurised. He was afraid that the Camerone heat would make them boil up inside the jar, that they’d start to ooze out as though the hatching process was starting again. So he put them in the fridge at the B&B but had to say that they were a present for his mother. On January 1st, Gorka takes the salmon caviar out of the fridge, makes a little sign to the manager as if to say “Right, I’m off to give them to her now”, and goes and eats them with a teaspoon on the beach. It’s a very pleasant moment: it isn’t as hot as usual, there aren’t many people around – in any case none of the ones Gorka usually sees – and the sun shines through a hazy veil of cloud, so when he’s finished eating he lies down and falls asleep, and dreams of a tidal wave that wipes out Camerone. It’s been a long time since Gorka has had a dream. He sees the gigantic wave coming from far off, full of little pieces of paper; when it reaches Camerone Gorka sees that these are coloured bank notes, like Monopoly money. Instead of taking cover, the people come out to gather up as much of it as they can, and are swept away. It all happens in the deep silence of a dream. Gorka is woken by the sound of seagulls (their squawks and rustling feathers) as they fight to peck up the last salmon eggs from the jar. They look furious. Gorka smiles, gets up to move his towel a little way off and then stretches out again, propping his torso up with his elbows, his eyes fixed on the ocean but squinting cautiously, leaving the seagulls to squabble in peace.