“What?”
“My life isn’t so great. Being a reporter wasn’t as interesting as you might think,” he explained. “One dirty, ramshackle hotel after another—if I was lucky—never too long in the same place, almost always surrounded by poverty and suffering. I’ve seen enough death and destruction for several lifetimes, and I thought I’d left it behind ... until I got here and everything went sideways.”
“So that’s why you gave up being a correspondent,” Antía said. “That’s why you decided to become a writer. To leave that life behind.”
“More or less.” His chest felt tight. His dark secret smiled at him, mockingly, inside his head. “There’s something else.”
“What?”
Roberto opened his mouth, but not a sound came out. There were things he had only ever told his therapist and Carmen Gavín. No one else. He couldn’t.
But suddenly he realized that he wanted Antía to know. That this was the right time, the right place, and the right person. And if he couldn’t say it now, right now, he might never be able to say it. He needed to share his story with her.
“I’m going to tell you something that almost nobody else knows,” he began hesitantly.
“Don’t worry, I’m good at keeping secrets.”
There was a second of silence, a final moment of doubt that was overcome by a sigh.
“Do you know where the Gulf of Sidra is?” he finally asked, his voice tight.
“Somewhere in North Africa, off the coast of Libya, right?” she hazarded.
“Four years ago, I was there, covering the Libyan civil war,” he began. “One of those long-running conflicts that the world hasforgotten but where people are still dying on a daily basis. I was in a town called Ras Lanuf when I met a group of people who’d hired a boat to cross to southern Italy.”
“Fleeing from the war?”
“Some of them. But most of them had reached Libya by traveling halfway across Africa on foot. They were desperate, exhausted, and hungry. God knows what they’d done to reach Ras Lanuf and get a passage on that boat. I decided to go with them.”
“On a boat operated by people smugglers?” Antía’s eyes opened wide.
“That’s right. I thought it would be a great story, and if we came across an Italian patrol ship, my presence on board would make everything easier. I’d help them.”
She listened, rapt.
“We set off on a cloudy, moonless night so we wouldn’t be seen.” Roberto’s voice had fallen to a whisper as his secret emerged. “We were on this wooden boat that was falling to pieces, with a couple of wheezy outboard motors and a bunch of fuel drums to get us to Lampedusa. There was room for fifteen people, at most. The traffickers had squeezed fifty of us on board.”
“Jesus Christ . . . !”
“More than half of them were young women who’d been through the most horrific experiences. All of them had been raped at least twice along the way. But out of everyone on the boat, I was the most scared ... maybe because the other passengers didn’t know how dangerous the crossing was.”
“And what happened?”
“Three hours after we set off, one of the motors broke down.” Roberto swallowed. “Two hours later, the other one failed, too, and so we were adrift, in a sea that was getting rougher by the minute. With power, we could have gotten out of there, but with our motors gone, the waves ended up capsizing the boat.”
“Oh, Roberto ...” Antía took his hand, but he didn’t even notice. His mind was far away.
“Fifty people in the water, out in the Mediterranean, in the middle of the night.” His voice faltered. “Can you imagine the noise that fifty people make when they’re drowning in pitch darkness? The cries of panic, of terror? I won’t forget it for the rest of my life. I have bad dreams almost every night.”
Roberto shuddered. “I spent the next few hours clinging to an empty fuel drum, buffeted by the waves, floating in the darkness.” His voice had fallen to a whisper. “And that wasn’t the worst bit.”
He paused, feeling for the words, not knowing quite how to express the last part. “I had to ... I had to fight two migrants for possession of that drum. It was too small and it could only keep one person afloat. I hit them, kicked them ... I don’t know. I don’t remember it properly.” He stopped for a moment, his eyes full of tears. “The following morning, I was alive and they weren’t. They drowned. It was my doing. I killed them.”
“That’s not true,” Antía protested. “You didn’t have any choice. Your life was at stake.”
“Maybe.” He gave a weary shrug. “But it’s been with me ever since. I don’t know how long I spent adrift. Dawn was breaking when I was picked up by a patrol boat that brought me ashore. Since then, I’ve been terrified of the sea. As soon as I got out of the hospital, I knew my days as a reporter were over. And that never again, for any reason whatsoever, would I hurt anyone.”
“Shh, Roberto, it’s okay.” Antía leaned toward him and wrapped him in her arms as he began to sob.
