The girl the sea swallowed

Paulina was a girl from the capital, but I met her on a trip I took with my family to the city of Cartagena de Indias, many years ago. A trip my parents took to celebrate my eleventh birthday, back in 2009.

Of the walled city, the one that the mutilated and half-blind pirate Blas de Lezo defended countless times against the British, the only thing I remember is the SEA. But my memory of the sea is distorted, due to its intimate connection with Paulina, and because of the undeniable passage of time. What a distance there is between eleven and twenty-eight! And yet, will you believe me if I tell you that I remember the events with photographic precision?

Paulina was a year older than me; she turned thirteen on June 15th. The first time I saw her, she seemed to have wings, and I thought she could easily be mistaken for one of the birds soaring through the sky—or rather, that she could be one of them.

I've been a good swimmer since I was little, and although I don't swim anymore, the body is too wise and doesn't forget what it learns. Indeed, during that trip, my parents let me explore the sea as I pleased and get lost on the beach if I wanted. I don't love the mountains where I was born, but I can't say I hate them either. However, if I could have spoken to God before He placed me in this body and gave me life, I would have begged Him to let me be born in the Colombian Caribbean and not in the Andes.

That February morning, my younger brother was with me. He didn't know how to swim, so I had to look after him. My dad had bought us two floats shaped like a whale and a dolphin, and we were having a blast riding them—it was crazy! The waves were getting rough out at sea. My brother usually didn't go more than three meters out, and he'd cry if he couldn't see the shore; for him, it was essential to touch the bottom.

I, on the other hand, loved to go far out, as far as I could. I'd fight the sea monsters my imagination conjured up, making myself a castaway, because I'd abandon the float, hand it over to chance, and then set out to rescue it. I'd start swimming toward it to ride it again. Luckily, I never drowned in those adventures. However, I won't deny that many times I was terrified of swallowing salt water and feeling weakness in my arms and legs. Many times I thought I'd never reach the shore, because the pounding water only seemed to pull me deeper into its depths. However, it always emerged victorious from the depths.

I perfectly remember a rather peculiar sensation: the one produced on the soles of my feet when seaweed tangled around my toes. The first few times the tickling was disgusting, but over time I got used to it, to the point that I needed water shoes more. Besides, they only added more weight to my body.

The scene was this: my brother and I playing on the seashore, its foamy lapping constantly licking our toenails, building very crude sandcastles, and getting ready to climb onto the dolphin and whale floats. When, suddenly, without warning, and considering that the beach was deserted at that time of the morning, Paulina appeared. The only thing missing from her appearance to be considered mythological was for her to emerge from the ocean like Sandro Botticelli's Venus, floating on a scallop shell.

I'm not lying, I'm not exaggerating, am I? What does it matter! Right now, I remember her like that, like a Venus emerging from the ocean's womb. She was accompanied by her two younger siblings, who were hopping around like fleas and, as soon as they saw our floats, they detached themselves from their sister's hands and came running towards us. They were the same age as my brother, six or seven at most. They were amazed by our floats and bombarded us with questions. Paulina walked unhurriedly towards us, with deliberate slowness, as if she had set out to leave the imprint of her fingers, whiter than vanilla ice cream, in the sand.

What a pity we met at the wrong time on life's path! A pity, because from the moment I saw her walking toward us, I fell prey to a childlike passion, the kind whose clearest visual effect is fever. She reached us with the force and untamed movement of a tsunami, that is to say, with a smile on her face bigger than the two seas, the Caribbean and the Pacific, that embrace Colombian territory.

She arrived, her smooth, chestnut hair dancing in the breeze, laughing as if she'd just heard the most absurd and silly joke in the world. She arrived, perfectly preserving the characteristic joy of childhood, illuminating everything, bringing good fortune, like the golden baby of that folk legend who only appears to people with humble hearts.

And you know what? She addressed us with the kindest words anyone had ever spoken to us. She greeted us as if she'd known us for thousands of years, perhaps from one or many past lives.

"Hello, I'm Paulina."

And in that way—don't think I'm boasting about this—she forged a spiritual bond with me from the very first moment. Perhaps it was because I was almost her age, while my brother was still a somewhat indifferent infant. Or perhaps it was because I knew how to swim, and that's what she'd come for: to swim.

Her brothers were going crazy. Without asking, they grabbed our floaties and started playing with them right there on the sand, pretending to be the Power Rangers

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and casting their 100% invisible spells left and right. My brother joined in and became a Blue Ranger too. Then Paulina dragged me toward the sea, and only when we were submerged up to our navels did she say:

"Come on, let's have a race, shall we?"

"How far?" I replied, my heart pounding with excitement because of the wonderful feeling that woman stirred in me, having her so close, hearing her rapid breathing, being intoxicated by her breath—minty! I swear, I felt like I was dreaming, I couldn't believe it.

"All the way there," she continued, raising her hand and pointing to the horizon.

"To the water's edge?" I opened my eyes as wide as I could, as if I'd just glimpsed a sea monster in the distance.

"Yes, let's go!"

And with a dive, she plunged into the waves that spewed fiery foam at us. Stunned, I did the same, though with an unusual clumsiness, quite unlike the swimming skills I'd always boasted about. She was what you'd call a fish in water. Not even the most experienced fisherman could catch her. Indeed, no matter how much I kicked and struggled to reach her, Paulina gained a three-meter lead, and from then on, trying to follow her seemed like madness. In fact, for the first time in a long time, I was afraid to continue.

I felt helpless. I realized I wasn't such a good swimmer. I was agitated, trying to stay afloat. For a second, I was disoriented… and lost sight of Paulina. I was crazy to even think about crossing the water's edge! Crazy, utterly delusional, I thought. And my mind was reeling from the furious impact of those thoughts when, suddenly, Paulina emerged from the depths, leaping like a shark, which nearly made me wet myself with fright.

I have no idea how, but, noticing that my throat was filling with water, she approached me laughing and held me in her arms:

"You're going to drown," she said, "don't worry, I'm your lifeguard."

Her body heat penetrated me like a torrent of lava, the sea salt spraying from her abdomen clung to me and seeped into my pores, her wet hair tangled around my neck, like the tentacles of a jellyfish.

It was a slow-motion experience I can't forget, one I can't shake. Oh, miracle! Calm washed over me, and I slowly regained my strength. My lungs filled with air, and then I looked straight at that woman, my pupils locking onto hers. I'm certain, you can't imagine how certain, that I looked at an angel. She responded in a way that you, rational readers, can't possibly comprehend. Silence enveloped us. It was one of those silences that caresses the soul with such skill that one simply melts into orgasms.

She told me so much with that look… she gifted me all the paradises of religions… I'm not lying when I say I saw the Promised Land, the very one Moses beheld at a very young age. And not only that, I entered the Promised Land. The very one the prophet couldn't enter, by divine decree. We gazed at each other for an eternity… and we remained like that, stunned, staring at one another.

Until Paulina's laughter cast a new spell and broke the old one.

"Another race?" she said. "But this time back to the beach."

She broke away from me, and this time I didn't see her swim, I saw her fly! I chased after her as best I could, but once again, the lead was insurmountable. After a couple of strokes, I felt like my body was made of cement, like it was made of the same material as a submarine.

There were still twenty or more meters to go to reach the shore, and I was exhausted, my mouth open, gasping for air, when I felt a tug on my feet, as if hands were grabbing my ankles, and in the blink of an eye, I found myself ten meters underwater. You can't imagine how much water rushed down my throat when I hit the bottom and screamed when I saw her.

Yes, Paulina. Her cheeks were yellowish and swollen, as were her eyelids, her tongue lolling out as if it had been stretched, her eyes bloodshot and pupil-less. Purely by instinct, I propelled myself toward the surface. I managed to emerge alive, but my eyes were so wild that I could barely see clearly enough to know which way to swim. Damn it! I couldn't see the shore anymore. I was at the mercy of the waves, like a bottle with a message for help thrown by a shipwrecked sailor on some island. But then I spotted the gray fin of my brother's dolphin some distance away, and drawing strength from who knows where, I swam in that direction.

My arms were limp, as if I had cotton under my skin instead of bones. I didn't see Paulina anywhere. Or her siblings.

"They're gone," my brother mumbled, "it was getting late."

And she added other words in her childish way that I could barely translate as, "They'll be back tomorrow at the same time."

The emptiness crept down my chest like an orangutan along a tree trunk. The feeling of unease had intensified to such a point that a whistling sound began to drill into my ears. Unease that twisted into disappointment, and disappointment into a horrible, dreadful feeling. How could she leave without even saying goodbye? Just like that? Huh? I'm not lying when I say I felt like crying. Crying until I filled five abysses with tears. The emotion I felt upon meeting her was so great that in just a few minutes my imagination had idealized that woman.

It only remains to add to my sad story that Paulina was nowhere to be found the next day. What did happen was that the police closed the beach for several days because a family had reported the disappearance of their thirteen-year-old daughter right there.

The sea, like me, also fell in love with that girl. And it snatched her away from me, swallowing her forever!