Alberto shook his head. ‘No. No, you didn’t. And you didn’t kill him. A man o’ war jellyfish did. Or La Presencia did. And, yes, La Presencia is in you as it is in me and Marta, but it acted through you to save the island. You helped save Es Vedrà, and you saved the future of Ibiza too. He was a killer, Grace. And if he had stayed around, he would have probably killed us too.’ Alberto put his arm around Marta. ‘It was a good speech today,’ he told her.
‘Thanks, Papá.’
Alberto smiled his big, bushy smile. ‘What a family, eh?’
I smiled too, watching the lights fade in the ocean. ‘Yes, you are.’
Alberto shook his head. ‘Grace, for a mind-reader you really are bad at picking up things. I meant us. We are all family now. Me, you, Marta, the ocean. Even Nostradamus.’ He looked over to the dusty red beach path, where the goat was waiting for his oats. ‘We’re a team.’
And for the first time in a long while I had the feeling, the very clear and hopeful feeling, that everything was precisely how it was meant to be. It was, however, short-lived. Because this was also the moment Alberto’s mood shifted. He turned to Marta, and he was smiling but he was also frowning, and he scooped up some sand and looked at it as it slid through his fingers.
‘Papá, what is it?’ Marta asked. But she saw it all before he had even said a word. Just like I had seen it all. The gift of La Presencia was also its curse. Her first emotion was the easiest one to find in the face of pain. Anger.
‘Papá, you didn’t tell me. How could you not tell me? You can’t be dying. You can’t be…’
I understood her disbelief. People you love deeply become elemental. To hear they won’t be there any more is like hearing the air or ocean won’t be. It feels like a fatal disruption to the universe.
Alberto grimaced, as if taking glass out of a wound. ‘Lo siento mucho, cielo. I didn’t want you to look at me with pity. While I am here, I want to be alive in front of you. But you deserved to know.’
‘I love you, Papá.’
‘Whatever is awaiting me is awaiting me. For now, let’s live.’
And Marta sobbed for a while. And he sobbed too. And I went away and sat on a wall and looked out at the sea, and for some reason I thought of a very young Daniel on a walk in the woods so many years ago, blowing the seeds off a dandelion and laughing in the sun.
This Is Life
We were on the Neptuno, out at sea. It was early in the morning. Ibiza looked like a dream of green and white in the distance. Alberto was in his full diving gear, but didn’t have his goggles pulled down or the regulator’s mouthpiece in yet because he was staring into his daughter’s phone as she recorded him. He still had some days of life in him, but this felt like the last moment he would be strong enough to dive. This was, in short, his last chance.
‘Is it on?’
She nodded. Marta was sat on an icebox, pointing the camera up at him.
‘Right now?’
‘Yes.’
He did his best to conjure a smile. He spoke his message first in Spanish, then in English, to make sure as many people as possible understood.
‘My name is Alberto Ribas,’ he said. I could feel his sadness as I sat on the deck. But it wasn’t really there in his voice. He was sounding quite official, in fact, almost like he was giving a lecture. But there was a weakness, a tiredness, to him. Which may not have been entirely attributable to his illness. ‘I am a marine biologist and author of La vida imposible. It is my strong belief that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe. I also contend that first-hand proof of such occurrences on the island of Ibiza has been overlooked. I believe this strongly, and it is a belief that cost me my job and my academic reputation.’ He paused. Took a breath. His voice cracked a little now. ‘Currently, I am dying. But below me, in the Mediterranean, is an extra-terrestrial entity which arrived into the ocean in the nineteenth century. We call it La Presencia.’ He waited a moment as a plane flew overhead. ‘La Presencia is a benevolent and life-preserving force sent from a planet we have termed Salacia, after the Roman goddess of the sea. It came to the sea because that is where life is. Ninety-nine per cent of the living area on this planet, in terms of cubic metres, is found in the ocean. That is why we must look after it. And that is why La Presencia is here. To help us protect life. Just as the seagrass beneath, it protects life. All life. Although humans tend to imagine the existence of alien life as a predatory threat, that has more to do with our own predatory nature reflecting back at us than the reality of unrecognised life we have encountered.’
He paused and looked across the ocean towards Ibiza and the golden sand of Cala d’Hort and the tree-lined slopes beyond.
‘I am recording this because I want there to be no mystery about my disappearance. It is my belief that, as well as being here to help us protect our world, La Presencia’s photonic forces also act as a portal. Crossing through that portal to Salacia is the only way I can be healed and have a chance of staying alive in some form, and so I have decided to…’
He paused again. A more substantial one this time.
‘Papá?’ Marta peered at him from behind her phone.
She could already sense it. I could too. The change.
‘Actually, no,’ he said, shaking his head, arguing with himself. ‘No. No. I’m not saying this. I’m not doing this. It’s bullshit.’
‘Papá? What is going on?’
He took a breath. He closed his eyes to appreciate the air. Then, when he opened them again, he just stared at the large vertiginous rock behind us. He was no longer interested in the camera.
‘Look at it. Look at Es Vedrà. It is precisely as it should be. We did that. We kept it. How it should be. Look at its shape. That outline. It is so complete. It is not too big and not too small. That is what my life has been. Complete. That is what you have helped it be, Marta. And so did your mother. You too, Grace. You have been a part of it too. I have no desire to have more than I was given, because I have been given so much. My life has been a strange shape, but I am pleased with it. It is the shape it needed to be. I know Salacia could be beautiful. But I am not a Salacian. I belong here. On Earth. And I am lucky to have roamed around this beautiful planet. I am a human. I don’t want to be the snake egg in the olive tree that goes to a different ecosystem that wasn’t made for him.’
Marta didn’t know what to say.
‘But maybe if you go to Salacia there will be a chance we could see you again,’ I said. ‘When our time comes. You can leave possibility open. Where there is life, there is possibility.’
He laughed a little at me then. ‘Now who sounds like a magnet on a refrigerator, Grace?’
‘Well, I have come round to fridge magnets. Just as you are proud to be a sentimental man, I am now happy to be a sentimental woman.’ And then I remembered something I should tell him. ‘Christina says she is well looked after. She says she is as healthy as she can possibly be. You could have that too.’
He smiled at me like I was missing the point. ‘This is where we belong. Not out there in another galaxy. Christina was right to leave for Salacia. She had no idea of who or what was after her. Her natural life was about to be cut short by many years. She had more inside her. That is not me. I don’t need to exile myself. Everything is done. I have danced and dived and loved more than most ever do. I have been true to myself. The next few weeks will be hard. But I need to stay here. I need to stay and be with you both. And enjoy whatever I have left. I would rather a single day on Earth than a lifetime elsewhere. This has been my paradise.’
And there was a finality to how he said that. Something solid. That couldn’t be argued with. Like limestone rising out of the ocean.
He sat down. Tired. He looked over at Marta’s icebox. ‘Now. Por favor, cielo. I really fancy a lemonade.’
Vive Por Mí
Ten days later we were in the hospital. Marta held his hand as he died. He was in pain on that last day but at the very end he smiled his familiar gap-toothed smile. And he meant it. Every part of him was smiling, and the gratitude he felt filled the room.
They said they loved one another.
