The sea was a long way below them. Waves hit against walls of rock and pieces of things got caught against the cliffs. Whole trees, parts of ships, and plastic drums collected there, wearing themselves to roundedness in water churned the color of milk.
“Where is the place where the bodies wash up?” Magdalena asked Father Malloy. He didn’t know exactly, so after everyone had had their picture taken they picked up their packs again and followed the path down toward the town of Finisterre, past the statue of the Virgin that was said to grow real fingernails and, occasionally, perspire. Signs pointed them to the harbor and then along an old pilgrim path until they came to a place where the land seemed to have forgotten its fight against the ocean. It bowed to it instead, creating a stretch of sandy beach.
When they got to the water they all waded right in, not even bothering to take off their shoes and socks. And when their hot swollen feet had been cooled and felt somehow lighter than they had in days, in spite of being waterlogged, they headed toward the snack bar where the Norwegians had promised to buy everyone paella.
Magdalena stayed in the water, waving to say that she’d be along soon. Her feet had calluses like silver coins and nothing had ever felt as good as the ocean on her skin. She held the shoebox over her head to keep it out of the spray, then realized that was stupid—what did it matter now if it got a little wet? She opened the box and tried to untie the plastic bag inside, but the knot was too tight. She tore it open with her fingernails and took out a handful of ashes. The dust stuck to her wet hands and she accidentally tossed the first bit into the wind. Finally she waded in until the water was up to her chest and dumped out the whole bag, including at least one cigarette butt that must have gotten swept up off the floor of the station in Paris. The ashes eddied around her, the heavier pieces sinking while the rest made a skim on the water and stuck to her arms.
A wave came and took the ashes with it. Magdalena held on to her glasses as the water lifted her up, drenching her hair. She had a sudden memory of Lina in the rain, spinning with open arms in the middle of an empty street. Lina with Magdalena’s mother’s mascara running down her face, shouting for Magdalena to come, then spinning again with her eyes closed, her hands open to the rain. The empty shoebox was soaked through. Magdalena crushed it flat and waded back to shore. She wrung the water out of her shirt and moved the bag with her clothes higher up on the sand, because the tide was coming in.
There was a place where the beach was sandy, and farther along there were rocks. The sea hit against them, spraying up then washing over and down, crashing and receding. Like breathing, Magdalena thought. She looked to see if the ashes had washed up with the waves, but they were gone.
The beach stretched on, a pale line of sand tracing the shore as it curved to the east. Pebbles gathered around Magdalena’s feet each time the waves rolled out. In among them was a shell, not a scallop but just an ordinary shell whose edges had been worn away. She tossed it out and it washed back again, settling like a pale toenail on her foot.
Another wave rolled in and Magdalena saw the body. Then the wave went out and it was gone; Magdalena wasn’t even sure she’d really seen it. Another wave and it appeared again. A rabbit, made supple like a sack by the pounding of the sea.
With the next wave it was gone, then another and the rabbit washed up again, farther down the beach. Gone and back again, a little farther on. Magdalena followed. The next wave came and lifted the body, fanning its fur. It was so much a part of the movement of the water that it didn’t seem dead. It was just a body, after life.
The rabbit rested on the sand for a moment, but as Magdalena came to it another wave washed it away. Gone and back, then gone again, farther down the beach each time until the snack bar was just a tiny dot behind her. The body settled for a moment between some rocks, but before Magdalena could get to it the waves pulled it under again.
A moment later it reappeared at the place where the beach narrowed. Far in the distance now, someone had come out of the snack bar and was calling her name. Probably Brit, telling her not to leave her bag lying on the beach like that. Magdalena pretended not to hear, and watched as the water folded and unfolded the body, tumbling the rabbit until it was sleek and boneless, its fur washed new by the sea.
“Magdute!” her mother had called from the kitchen when they first moved into the new apartment after Magdalena’s father died. “Magdute, look!” her mother had said, and with an “Ouf!” she lifted Magdalena up to see the stain on the ceiling in the shape of a rabbit: a sign of springtime, of new life and ordinary things.
“Magdalena!” the person on the beach shouted—it wasn’t Brit. It was a man’s voice, but the sun was in her eyes, it was hard to see. He wasn’t tall enough to be Olaf or round enough to be Father Malloy. A wave crashed, and the rabbit went under again. “Magdalena!” The person was coming toward her.
Another wave came, and another, but the rabbit was gone. Farther down along the beach a crumpled bit of brown washed up, but it was too far away for Magdalena to tell if it was the rabbit again or an old paper bag. The waves were higher now, water and foam and dark pebbles that rolled back into the sea, erasing her footprints and leaving the sand empty and smooth.
Every year on her birthday Magdalena’s mother told her the story of the night she was born, how her father had left the hospital and stumbled with a bottle of cognac and a box full of matches into the old church on Saint Mikalojaus Street, where he spent the long night lighting candles by the hundreds until someone called the fire department, seeing the church ablaze. In the morning he came back, looking, Magdalena’s mother said, like he’d had an even longer night than she’d had. The nurses put baby Magdalena in his arms, frowning at the smell of him and then trying to take the baby back as he started to unwrap her with clumsy hands, unwinding her blankets and pulling off her diaper, swatting at the nurses who tried to stop him, stinking of alcohol and incense. His hands shook, her mother said, his fingers were burned by hot wax, and by the time he’d gotten the newborn Magdalena entirely undressed and had examined every bit of her she was screaming and the one single doctor assigned for a floor full of mothers had come running. The nurses called her father a drunken pig and said he’d be sorry when his baby daughter caught her death of cold, but he’d held Magdalena to him, hours old, red and howling, and laughed and laughed—so happy, her mother had said, to see all her fingers and toes, her round belly and skinny legs and the wrinkles on her feet.
She thought of the man in Paris with her mother’s words on his skin. If the eyes don’t see, the heart doesn’t hurt. It was what her mother would say when Magdalena asked to look at the picture that had been taken of the three of them that day at the hospital, tiny Magdalena in her mother’s arms, her father flushed and smiling. “Akys nemato . . .” her mother would say then, because looking at the picture made her sad. But now Magdalena thought of that old phrase and her own unmarked skin and felt the beginnings of an understanding.
She thought of her father steeling himself to look at words written all across a tiny body—and then laughing with relief to see that actually his baby was covered with nothing at all, just a newborn rash and a faint down of hair. When he danced her around the nurses, singing a nonsense song so that even the oldest and maddest of them had to smile, it was out of joy at the blankness of his daughter’s skin. Because for her, at least, nothing was already planned.
Another wave came. Magdalena let the sand wash over her feet and bury them. She looked back toward the snack bar, squinting against the sun. The person on the beach was running now, calling to her and waving his arms. He was close enough for her to see that his hair was orange in the light and he was wearing a sweatshirt she recognized from the train station in Paris. Out of habit she started to take her glasses off. Then she changed her mind, and left them on.
A NOTE ON THE AUTHOR
Adelia Saunders has a master’s degree from Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service and a bachelor’s degree from Ne
w York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. She grew up in Durango, Colorado, and currently lives with her family in New York City. This is her first novel.
Bloomsbury USA
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First published 2017
This electronic edition published in January 2017
© Adelia Saunders 2017
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ISBN: HB: 978-1-63286-394-2
ePub: 978-1-63286-396-6
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA Names: Saunders, Adelia, author.
Title: Indelible : a novel / Adelia Saunders.
Description: New York : Bloomsbury, 2017.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016001367 | ISBN 978-1-63286-394-2 (hardcover)
Classification: LCC PS3619.A82337 I53 2017 | DDC 813/.6—dc23
LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2016001367.
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