THE LAST MISSION OF THE USS INDIANAPOLIS

Hunter Scott

In childhood, something magical happens with books and films. Because children possess that special thing that is then lost with the passing of the years: the ability to be surprised. Surprise is a helium balloon in the shape of a star. The seller, who has been standing for four hours at the entrance to the fairground, knows this well. She has an enormous clutch of moored balloons in her right hand. She is quite sure, were she not so large and corpulent, any moment now she would go flying after them to some wonderful place, driven by the inertia of the wind and expectation.

The woman blew them up and tied them one by one, with all the carefulness of her fifteen years of experience. Her mother was a balloon seller, and her grandmother before her. She has lots of forms: a whale, a bird, E.T., a dragon… It’s strange that, with this vast bouquet of showy colours she is holding in the air, she should be invisible to the grown-ups. They pass alongside, brush against her, even bump into her. They know she’s there, standing next to the stall where a Gypsy woman prepares candy floss while breastfeeding a child. They know this, but don’t see her, don’t take her into consideration. She is part of the furniture. With the children, it’s not the same. They see her. Each and every one of them. And as soon as they set eyes on that cluster of balloons, they start tugging at their father or mother’s arm with all their might, begging them to buy one. They put all their heart and soul into this. They wish for it with such intensity that, at that moment in time, nothing else exists on the earth.

At the age of eleven, Hunter Scott thinks he’s too old to hold hands with an adult, but not to wish for one of those helium balloons with all his heart. He’s taken a fancy to one in the shape of a hammerhead, its enormous mouth in the shape of a ‘T’. But with that natural tendency some adults have for saying ‘no’, Hunter’s father explains that eleven is very old to be holding hands, but also to be wanting a helium balloon. So, no hammerhead sharks. The boy, perceiving that his years of childhood are being left behind, adopts a wintry expression and makes for the shooting galleries.

That same evening, Hunter switches on the television. His parents are chatting away in the kitchen to some friends they’ve invited to dinner about things that don’t interest him at all. Having run through the public channels, the boy stops at the only one that is showing a film. It’s Jaws by Steven Spielberg. He is impressed by the film as much as any other boy who sees that film at his age. Lots of blood, the shark devouring human flesh, waters stained red, high tension when a body falls into the sea… There’s one part, however, that not only impresses him, it bores a hole into his chest: the monologue by Captain Quint, a survivor of the World War II USS Indianapolis disaster, relating the sinking of the ship that carried the uranium and parts of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima to the Mariana Islands. Three minutes and forty-seven seconds during which Hunter remains on the alert, his fists clenched, his senses fixed on the television screen in a kind of paranormal connection with Captain Quint. The monologue is impressive and alarming, both because of the way it is told and because of the gravity of the content. That night, Hunter dreams of Quint. He wakes up early, startled by the image of the huge shark’s set of teeth. The story of the USS Indianapolis seems so real, so true, he decides to visit the library in search of information. At that moment, he can’t even imagine to what extent reality is going to surprise him. Because Hunter, at eleven years of age, has still not lost his ability to be amazed by the world.

Charles B. McVay

Seamen carry that magnetic inertia, that swaying motion caused by waves on boats, inside them. That letting go inside, always inside. A journey to the heart of the ocean is a journey without return. Because once you take this direction, you sign a kind of eternal commitment. The sea is above everything. And then that indefinable thing that travels in the blood and is handed down from generation to generation gets inside you.

Waves have always coursed through Charles’ veins. Before that, they coursed through those of his father and grandfather. Ever since he was a child, he has felt this connection with the sea’s ferocity. The first time he was photographed in his father’s admiral’s hat, he knew that this, and no other, was his destiny. And destiny, like the ocean, once you’ve signed up to it, cannot be dodged. That was why nobody was surprised when Charles entered the naval academy in Maryland. They all knew he’d end up occupying a high rank in the United Stated Navy. He didn’t disappoint anyone, except for that girl with wheat-coloured hair and green eyes he’d promised never to abandon. Her name was Mary Jane, and she and Charles had shared those afternoons of childhood and adolescence that never return, but are never forgotten. Bike races on paths across golden fields of rye, afternoons of fishing with bright scales and worms, sunsets in the shade of orange trees weighed down with blossom… Until one good day Charles announced he was leaving for Maryland to become a ship’s captain and so forgot the promise he’d made to Mary Jane. She hated him and wept until her tear-glands burst. The sea was above everything, and there was nothing the girl could do. Nothing, except forget him for ever.

In 1944, Charles was put in command of the USS Indianapolis, having devoted more than two decades of his life to the United States Navy. This was a reward for all those years of hard graft. A reward that came with a heavy load of responsibility. At the height of the war, the waters of the Pacific were not exactly a safe place. One year after being named captain, the Indianapolis was handed a mission on Iwo Jima, the strangest island nature has ever dared to conceive. On those twenty square kilometres of volcanic earth lost in the middle of the Pacific was where one of the bloodiest battles in World War II took place. The prelude to Okinawa.

Charles knew what he was up against. But he’d learned not to show the slightest sign of fear or doubt. The order was to invade the island of Iwo Jima, and that was exactly what they were going to do. The Japanese, who’d guessed that sooner or later the American fleet would turn up in search of conquest, had turned the island into a veritable fortress that was impossible to sink. They’d worked in secret with various machines, silent as ants. Using the natural caves and huge cavities that already existed in that porous land, they’d perforated the volcanic subsoil, endowing it with all kinds of artillery pieces and creating a vast, intricate labyrinth of interconnected galleries. Some with an exit to the surface, others without. They’d drawn up plans of the labyrinth and committed them to memory. This was their territory, and nobody was going to take them by surprise.

When the Americans glimpsed Iwo Jima, they thought it was an inhospitable piece of the moon’s surface that had fallen from the universe by accident and got stuck, suspended on the sea in a kind of balancing act. Topped by Suribachi, the large 160-metre volcano that dominates the whole island, Iwo Jima had a strange, undulating surface in the shape of a pear. It was all covered in lava, ash, sulphur powder and fine black sand with an unusual texture. The ground opened up in cracks emitting foul vapour that spread all over the island. The vegetation that had managed to take root in that hostile territory was all small: dwarf-like trees with twisted, impossible shapes, scrawny plants with fierce, prickly leaves… No sound, except for that of the sea and wind, ran over that piece of land, a silence that gave it an inhospitable, abandoned appearance. It was a ghost island in every sense of the word.

The Americans disembarked on Iwo Jima and started advancing over the volcanic terrain. What at first sight seemed to be an easily conquerable piece of land turned out, mostly because of the island’s abandoned appearance, to be a real problem. The ground was in fact a thick, dense mass into which the soldiers’ boots sank at every step. It was like walking on snow; making any progress on that terrain was exhausting. The chains of the amphibious tanks couldn’t latch on to anything solid, they slid around and sank. But that wasn’t the worst part. The worst part was the fact that, hidden in caverns and galleries, watching the enemy’s movements and ready to launch a surprise attack, hundreds of Japanese – or ‘yellow monkeys’, as the Americans used to call them – lay in wait. In the folds of the earth and numerous cavities that existed in that undulating soil, the Japanese had hidden weapons and hand grenades. They were molehills that had been armed to the teeth. When the bullets and firing commenced, there was no going back.

From the sea, the Indianapolis saw various Japanese ships moving about on the radar. Bombs and missiles started flying, lighting up the island in an impromptu rain of bellicose fireworks. The Americans suffered in the conquest of that island. It took them weeks. Japanese resistance was stronger than anyone had ever imagined. But there is no rest in war. Barely had the American soldiers recovered from the battle when they were sent to fight on Okinawa. The Indianapolis formed part of the amphibian fleet that brought Okinawa to its knees. At no time did Charles McVay regret being in charge of the ship. Not even when that kamikaze pilot crashed into the hull, taking the lives of thirteen men. The crew observed a five-minute silence, buried their tears in the marine expanse and abandoned the battlefield. This fact would change the destiny of the USS Indianapolis, which was obliged to head to the port of San Francisco for repairs.

Hunter Scott

‘Dad, did the USS Indianapolis really exist?’

On Saturdays, the three of them would have breakfast together: father, mother and child. They made toast and various citric juices, and engaged in conversation. It was Hunter’s favourite day. Especially if a splendid sun was shining, as was the case. That morning, he’d woken up in a wonderful mood.

‘The Indianapolis? Of course it did,’ answered Jack before stuffing a slice of toast with strawberry jam into his mouth. ‘What happened to that ship was a real tragedy,’ he continued with his mouth full. ‘Those blasted yellow monkeys were to blame. Ask your mother, she knows all about that story. Don’t you, Nora?’

A strange mixture of nostalgia and despondency darkened the woman’s face.

‘Jack, I can’t bear it when you talk like that,’ she protested. ‘They’re Japanese, not yellow monkeys. I don’t like it when you give Hunter such messages.’

‘Your mother thinks I’m a racist.’

‘I never said that. Don’t take things out of context.’

‘You don’t need to say it. But don’t think I mind. The Japanese are a bunch of lunatics with no fear of death. They showed that during the Second World War. They sank the Indianapolis because of their hatred for Americans.’

Nora, who was about to pour some milk into her cup, stopped what she was doing, put the jug back on the table and looked into Jack’s eyes.

‘That’s right, the Indianapolis was sunk by the Japanese. But that ship had just delivered the atomic bomb that would be dropped on Hiroshima!’

‘Have you forgotten about the attack on Pearl Harbor? You just can’t talk about this with your mother, Hunter.’

The boy was sorry he’d asked. Because of this, his parents had started arguing. If there was something they could never agree about, it was the war. Suddenly, a cloud obscured the sun. The rays that had been pouring through the window a few minutes earlier, filling the kitchen with yellow light, disappeared. Hunter took his cup and retired to his bedroom.

The Kamikazes

The word kamikaze means ‘divine wind’. In fact, the Japanese pilots that rammed their targets without any fear of death resembled a lightning bolt more than a gust of wind. Because of their speed and destructive power. The power of fanaticism is needed to comprehend how young men of seventeen or eighteen, with all their lives in front of them, could be recruited to carry out a divine order. The only way to attain glory, to obtain a prominent place in the paradise of the gods and the future veneration of their peers, was to give themselves up to the army of suicidal volunteers. Like meek lambs, they would tie the Rising Sun flag – the ensign of the Imperial Japanese Navy – to their foreheads, drink a glass of sake and take off for the jaws of death.

Admiral Takijirō Ōnishi, the founder of the kamikaze corps, understood it was an obligation to sacrifice oneself for emperor and country. Death had a meaning. It was their duty to go in search of a glorious end. Like poison, his way of thinking infiltrated the minds of hundreds of young men, who enlisted in the Japanese Air Force. Up in the sky, having located their target, they would make straight for it, shouting, ‘Long live the emperor!’ The radios would transmit the whistle prior to impact, and nothing else. Only the thick silence of death.

A generation of Japanese was lost in those mass suicide attacks. The West was not equipped to comprehend the meaning of such a sacrifice. And while the Americans invaded Japanese islands, the kamikazes played at being human bombs.

Charles B. McVay

It wasn’t until the month of July that repairs on the ship were finished. The crew made the most of the weeks on dry land to take a breather. They got drunk in bars, embraced the earth, and Charles went back home. His wife and son deserved this. They had been waiting for months. They knew the life of sailors’ families was like this, but still hadn’t got used to it. The one who suffered most was Eva, his wife. Ever since the outbreak of war, the absences had got too much. She was afraid, any day now, of receiving the fateful call, the fateful unexpected visit or the fateful telegram informing her of Charles’ death. Living with such permanent anxiety crushing your head is not fair.

When Charles was there, everything was different. The house filled with his scent of sea, his saltpetre breath. But this time he was changed. War alters people, and it had turned him into a silent, introspective being. He’d always been a serious kind of man, but this was something different.

‘I lost thirteen men.’ It was the first time he’d complained about these deaths out loud. ‘Kamikazes are like human bombs. They appear out of nowhere. Searching for death. They die while killing. That’s what makes them so dangerous. We had no time to react. By the time I realized, they were on top of us. Blasted Japs!’

Eva looked at him with a mixture of compassion and tenderness.

‘You’re brave guys, Charles. I’m sorry for the dead men’s families. How I sympathize with all those wives weeping for the death of their husbands! I’m always afraid it might be you. If something happened to you, I…’

‘I’m made out of special stuff, you know that,’ her husband interrupted her. ‘Don’t forget I’m immortal, Eva. Don’t be afraid for me.’

She had heard this comment dozens and dozens of time. ‘I’m immortal, Eva. Don’t be afraid for me.’ He always said this to her. So much so that, during the absences, when anxiety crushed her lungs and didn’t let her breathe, she would say it out loud in an effort to convince herself that it was true.

A few days after arriving in Florida, Charles visited his mother’s house. His father had died several years earlier. Ever since then, the house had been a kind of mausoleum dedicated to his memory. Charles tried not to go there. He knew his mother needed him like the air she breathed, but the memory of his father hurt too much. All those photographs in acts of service hanging on the walls caused a wrinkle to appear in his soul.

That afternoon, when his mother opened the front door and found her son there, she burst into tears. She embraced him, told him she loved him and begged him not to go back to sea. She knew this was a wish that Charles could never fulfil, but even so she asked him again and again.

‘You’re just like him,’ she said nostalgically, pointing to a photograph in which Charles senior held a sailing boat inside a bottle in his hands. ‘Both prepared to die for your country.’

‘The sea is my country, Ma.’

The woman, with the weight of eighty-five years on her back, knew this.

‘I just hope my grandson doesn’t follow in your footsteps,’ she remarked. ‘There’s nothing worse for a woman than suffering on account of a child.’

His visit to his mother made him sad. They barely spent time together; it was obvious she’d grown tired of living. Eva took care of everything, made sure she had everything she needed. But Charles knew this wasn’t enough and couldn’t bear the weight of it on his conscience.

The captain of the Indianapolis left the house where he’d grown up in a fit of depression. He made his way slowly towards the gate and lifted his eyes. It was then he felt something that had been asleep for many years stirring in his insides.

‘Charles? Charles McVay?’

A tall, slim woman with wheat-coloured hair and green eyes gazed at him with an expression of incredulity.

‘Mary Jane!’

His shout of joy was authentic. He walked towards her and gave her two kisses and a big hug. She smelled of vanilla. He stood back and took her in. The passing of the years had turned that lively, pretty girl into an attractive woman. Life had been kind to her.

‘How many years is it since we last saw each other?’ he asked. ‘Ten? Twelve?’

‘Actually, fifteen,’ she answered with a smile that was both seductive and sweet.

Charles also let out a smile. He liked the fact she’d kept a tally of the years. They started talking while the sun slid behind the line of the horizon in no particular hurry. Without even realizing, they became engrossed in a delicious conversation. They had been recalling old times for about half an hour when she decided that fifteen years were well worth a cup of coffee. She invited him into her parents’ house, which was now her own. Charles couldn’t say ‘no’. He wondered if there was any man on earth capable of saying ‘no’ to this woman.

In the lounge, they took up the conversation they’d interrupted in the street. They talked of so many things from before… Many of which Charles didn’t even think he could remember. The sea had consumed his insides. It had eaten up his past in the way that scurvy swallows up the energy of sailors. But that child he had once been had not completely vanished. Part of him was still there and had just emerged by the hand of Mary Jane.

‘You remember when we used to go fishing to the lake?’ he asked her. ‘You used to get so angry when they didn’t bite, I’d always end up handing you my rod when I felt a fish tugging at the line.’

‘I still get angry when I don’t catch something. Some things never change,’ she replied, giving him an intense look that made him reel.

They talked and talked until the sun was out of sight. Of the past, the present and the future. She told him she’d got married and had two daughters, she still went for bike rides across fields of rye, and for many years had cursed him from a distance. She’d found it very hard to forgive him for enlisting in the Navy. He wanted to say he’d thought about her every day, on journeys out at sea he hadn’t been able to get her out of his mind. But this wasn’t true, and Charles couldn’t stand lies. Even if they were white ones.

‘I should get going, Mary Jane. Eva will be wondering where I am. And your husband and daughters will be back soon. I wouldn’t want to abuse your hospitality.’

‘Don’t worry. The girls are away tonight. And Peter plays ninepins on a Friday. He won’t be back for a while. I understand you need to go. Being married to a ship’s captain can’t be easy.’

The woman uttered these words with no particular intention. She wasn’t trying to send Charles a message by letting him know the house was free and they could dispose of it as they saw fit. She simply said this without thinking.

‘Thanks for the coffee and company. It was a real pleasure seeing you again.’

He was serious. For a moment, he wondered how he could have let Mary Jane escape.

‘I hope another fifteen years don’t have to go by before we meet again,’ she said, standing up to accompany him to the front door.

With that slight movement on her part, a waft of vanilla blinded Charles. He stopped to contemplate her green eyes boring into his and grabbed her by the waist.

‘The sea around the Falklands is the exact same colour,’ he whispered into her ear, pressing his body hard against hers.

He felt the gorgeous, ample roundness of her breasts and didn’t want to think about anything else. He sank into her golden hair and breathed deeply in an attempt to retain the scent inside him. When it became too much for him, he kissed her. Sweetly at first, savouring the taste of those moist, narcotic lips, then more purposefully. He desired her so much he could hardly breathe. She was burning. She’d been waiting far too long for this to happen, dreaming of this meeting obsessively. They went up to the bedroom, took off their clothes and fell on to the bed. Here, they encountered one another. Their naked bodies crackled on the sheets. Charles ran over her with animal passion; no corner of her body remained untouched by his hands, tongue and yearning. Mary Jane reached out in pleasure, discovering that the instinct cradled by the tide of years was still very much alive. She unleashed herself, let her desire go until it burst into flames and comets. Her tongue drew spirals on Charles’ skin, hot circles that roused the temperature of the thermometers until they overflowed. At this point, they loved each other so much that the clocks stopped ticking. When they’d reached a climax, she slid on to Charles’ chest and thought that love’s urgency is like a shot at close range.

They parted without saying goodbye. They both knew this could be the last time. At least, thought Mary Jane, they had settled unfinished business. Charles wandered down the street with the scent of vanilla tickling him and smiled for the first time since setting foot on dry land.

Hunter Scott

‘One thousand two hundred and sixty-nine crewmen in time of war,’ muttered Hunter.

He was amazed. He never knew that warships had that kind of capacity. He thought so many men would end up getting in each other’s way. He found it difficult to imagine sailing with so many soldiers could be effective. The library exhaled the thick scent of worm-eaten wood and ancient history. It had taken him a while to locate the enormous, hard-backed book on famous ships he held in front of him. He had had to seek help from the librarian, a mousy man who wore his glasses on the edge of his nose and always talked in a low voice. He guided Hunter along several corridors before they reached a shelf on which various technical and historical works on planes, trains and other means of transport had been classified in alphabetical order. The book Ships That Made History was just what Hunter had been looking for. Apart from describing in detail the features of luxury liners from the early twentieth century, like the Titanic, the Olympic and other prominent names belonging to the British shipping company White Star, it had a whole appendix devoted to warships. There was an entire chapter on the USS Indianapolis, with a full-page plan, several colour illustrations and a complete description of its armament, equipment and measures. Everything the boy needed to know was in those pages.

He quickly made progress with his reading, in the yellow light of a desk lamp. Equipped with nineteen cannons and eight anti-aircraft guns, with a length of more than 180 metres, the Indianapolis fitted the category of heavy cruisers that made up the United States Fifth Fleet. The photographs left no room for doubt: this had been an imposing ship. But there was something that caught his attention. The American military authorities had chosen the Indianapolis for a mission of momentous importance in world history: the transport of the uranium and delicate parts needed to arm the atomic bombs that would be dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki three weeks later. Even though it was a large ship, the Indy wasn’t the fastest or most heavily armed. To make matters worse, it had an important technical defect: its centre of gravity was too high, and its crew lacked sufficient experience. So why had the Indianapolis been chosen for such a crucial mission? Hunter started thinking it had all been a product of chance: the boat had simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Charles B. McVay

Halfway through July, the American authorities gave the crew of the Indianapolis a top-secret mission. They should leave straight away for the air base at Tinian, in the Mariana Islands. Charles quickly said goodbye to his family and travelled to California, hoping to receive more information in the port of San Francisco. But nothing was as he expected. On the morning of the 16th, several agents and members of the military police appeared out of nowhere and surrounded the ship. They ordered a series of vast lead containers, marked ‘Dangerous Goods’, to be carried on board. Nobody had said anything to Charles about this.

‘What kind of cargo is that?’ Charles asked the soldier who seemed to be in command.

‘That information is confidential. Your order is to transport the cargo to the air base at Tinian, at top speed and without an escort.’

‘Without an escort? I’m in charge of this ship. There’s no way I’m taking an unknown cargo on board, marked “Dangerous Goods”, let alone sailing without an escort across the Pacific – which, as you well know, is crawling with Japanese.’

The soldier stared at Charles.

‘Come with me,’ he said and started walking.

He led him on board, where a general was coordinating the positioning of the lead containers. Charles felt awkward about the situation. These men were parading about his ship without even asking permission or providing authorization. It amounted to a lack of respect.

‘General Groves,’ said the soldier, ‘Captain McVay would like to talk to you.’

Leslie Groves was tall, stocky, and had white hairs in his moustache.

‘Captain McVay, this ship must cast off this afternoon,’ the general informed him with a touch of arrogance, keeping his eyes on the containers that his men had almost finished loading on to the ship. ‘Inform your crew so that they are ready.’

Charles started to lose his patience.

‘Who are you?’ he asked a little tetchily.

‘Leslie Richard Groves, the general in charge of a secret mission called the Manhattan Project. I’m sorry I can’t give you any more information,’ he added, looking into Charles’ eyes for the first time. ‘Everything that concerns this cargo, its origin, is strictly confidential.’

‘I am responsible for everything on board this ship,’ replied Charles. ‘The crew and the contents. If I have to transport a cargo, pushing the boilers of this ship to the limit, I understand I should know what kind of cargo it is.’

‘I believe you haven’t understood,’ remarked the general, stroking his moustache. ‘This is the final phase in the Manhattan Project. These containers are above your crew, yourself and me. It is not allowed to ask about their contents or to go near them. If any of the crew disobeys this last order, my men will execute them on the spot. Should the ship sink in safe waters, the cargo comes first; it is above the life of the sailors. Should it sink in enemy waters, the soldiers will immediately throw the cargo overboard, even before saving themselves. Do you understand now, Captain McVay?’

‘I presume these orders come from the top,’ muttered the captain with obvious discomfort.

‘That’s right. Straight from Henry L. Stimson, Secretary of War, and Harry S. Truman.’

Charles had to swallow his pride. He explained the conditions to his crew. No questions about the cargo, no going near the containers, no escort. They would travel as fast as the boilers allowed to the Mariana Islands, without asking any questions.

That afternoon, the USS Indianapolis cast off and steamed out of the port, surrounded by a halo of mystery and silence. None of those travelling on board knew that they were transporting the parts needed to arm the deadliest bomb ever conceived. And just as Hunter Scott suspected, the only reason for choosing that ship was its availability. It was simply the closest free ship to hand.

Hunter Scott

The librarian approached Hunter to warn him that it was almost time to close. In the street, the light had been gradually fading, with great calm. The summer had lengthened its days so that it got dark later and later. But the inside of the library was a bubble of yellow light infused with the aroma of parchment and letters. In that space, time had ground to a halt, clinging to the only season that made any sense: the season of books. Hunter was completely immersed in the story of the ship and its involvement in the transport of the atomic bomb to the Mariana Islands. What an emotional story! He felt as if he too were travelling on board the Indianapolis, its engines working flat out, soldiers milling about.

When he sensed the presence of the librarian next to him, he jumped.

‘How late is it?’

‘It’s almost eight, son.’

Hunter had become lost in the world of information that was this book. The story of Captain McVay had trapped him in such a way that he’d lost all notion of time.

‘You can take the book home with you if you like.’ Hunter was gathering his things. ‘We don’t normally let these volumes out of the library, but since I see you have great interest, I can make an exception. I’m also fascinated by stories about ships,’ he added confidentially, speaking even more quietly than usual.

Hunter put the book in his rucksack with his other things, promised he would look after it as if it were his own and, having said ‘thank you’, left for home. Along the way, he didn’t stop thinking about what had happened before the sinking of the Indianapolis. It set sail for the island of Tinian on July 16, 1945, its only objective to leave the mysterious, terrible cargo that was the atomic bomb at its destination. The American authorities had given the captain the order to sail at top speed. Charles McVay was obliged to work the eight boilers flat out. The hull devoured the waters. That grey, iron giant pushed itself to the limit, breaking all records for ships of similar characteristics. It only stopped to take on fuel in Pearl Harbor and then continued its swift crossing until ten days’ travelling had passed. Finally, on July 26, it reached its destination. When the soldiers unloaded the lead containers on to dry land, the captain breathed a sigh of relief. This strange mission had been completed. But then something happened that Hunter could not understand. The Indianapolis was given another mission in the Philippines. They had to get ready for the invasion of Japan and so were required to complete a series of training exercises. The American authorities knew there were several Japanese submarines in the waters on the way to the Philippines, they knew it was a hostile area, they knew the submarines were armed with torpedoes. They knew this, but didn’t inform the captain. They decided to omit this fact. Charles wasn’t happy about sailing in that area and asked for an escort to cross the Pacific. The secret mission had been fulfilled, there was no reason to continue putting the ship and crew at risk. His request was refused. He was sent straight to hell. As if the lives of the 1,196 crewmen who occupied that ship weren’t worth anything. They didn’t even let him steer a zigzag course to avoid possible attacks from submarines. The authorities claimed this kind of course would lengthen the journey and the Indianapolis should reach the Philippines as quickly as possible.

Hunter couldn’t understand how it was possible to take so few precautions with this ship. It was as if, deep down, the Americans wanted the Japanese to blow it to smithereens. They abandoned it to its fate. They pushed it straight into the arms of death.

When Hunter got home, his body ached. He wanted to think there are some things children aren’t ready to understand. But the truth was, even if he were a hundred years old, he would never find sense in any of this. He yanked open the front door. The tears were gathering in his throat. He swallowed saliva in an attempt to dissolve the lump that was lodged there, but couldn’t do it.

Charles B. McVay

When a man’s body falls into the sea, there is a terrible silence of sharp edges that dig right down into the man’s insides. An invisible fist punches the organism of this person who is plummeting to the depths of the ocean. For a moment, his heart stops beating, his lungs are completely shut off from oxygen. Everything stops. When eight hundred and eighty men fall into the sea, the effect is devastating. It results in an immense, unbearable void.

In the early morning of July 30, shortly after midnight, the radar of the Japanese submarine I-58 detected the USS Indianapolis. Its commander, Mochitsura Hashimoto, put his eye to the periscope, scanned the surface of the Pacific and smiled, not without certain anxiety. The American ship was within firing range. He gave an immediate order to torpedo the ship. Hashimoto knew they weren’t going to miss; the kaitens were infallible. Inspired by the figure of the kamikazes, the Japanese invented another horrific means of sacrifice. On top of each torpedo, they mounted a soldier who would guide the missile to its target. The soldiers died on impact, purifying their warrior souls and obtaining a privileged place in the beyond. The commander ordered a line of soldiers to form and asked for volunteers who would assume the responsibility of being kaitens. A pair of sailors no more than twenty years old took a step forwards. They would have the honour of guiding the torpedoes. They were giving themselves over to death, but their faces were without expression. They were like wax statues.

Of the six missiles fired from the I-58, the two that hit the hull of the Indianapolis head on, inflicting serious damage, were precisely the two carrying kaitens. The water poured through the holes with irrepressible force. The ship began to take on water, but there was so much it couldn’t fit. No sooner had the sailors felt the force of the impact than they ran instinctively to their battle stations. By this stage, however, the Indianapolis had already started to list, overwhelmed by the weight of the Pacific. Charles gave the order to abandon ship.

‘Put on your life jackets!’ he shouted amid all the confusion. ‘I don’t want anyone jumping into the sea without a life jacket!’

Many, however, were so dazed that they didn’t hear him. They had only one idea in their heads: to jump off the Indianapolis and swim as far away as possible to avoid being sucked down by the sinking ship. The speed with which the boat was devoured by the Philippine Sea and the collective hysteria prevented many from following the captain’s orders. It took twelve minutes for the ship to go down. Twelve minutes of panic in which more than three hundred men lost their lives. Some died upon impact; others ran all over the deck, suffering from disorientation, wounded or brutally mutilated. Many ended up collapsing on the ground in a matter of minutes. In an attempt to find the best place to jump into the water, survivors bumped into one another and passed over their shipmates’ bodies, trampling on them in the madness of the scramble. In the background, the thunderous roar of the sirens made their heads burst.

From the I-58, Hashimoto watched as a vast cloud of black smoke rose straight into the sky from the ship. Flames illuminated the scene. Hundreds of men jumped off the Indianapolis in a desperate bid to stay alive. Meanwhile, the crew of the I-58 remained in position by their machine guns, awaiting the commander’s final order and contemplating the picture of death and desolation. The procedure to follow in such situations was clear: having hit your target, you had to gun down the survivors, exterminate the whole crew. But, for some reason, Hashimoto decided to spare those men’s lives. He gave the order to change direction, and the I-58 quickly and silently moved away beneath the ocean, merging with the sea floor like another fish. Had he known that the Indianapolis had just delivered the atomic bombs destined for Hiroshima and Nagasaki to the Mariana Islands, perhaps Hashimoto’s behaviour would have been different.

In the water, there is a lot of fear. You are suddenly alone at the mercy of the elements, confronted by a brute force. You are nothing more than a rag doll that happens to be breathing. The crew of the Indianapolis, floating on the ocean, presented an outlandish appearance. Clinging to their life jackets, they were like hundreds and hundreds of gleaming jellyfish being swung by the tide. They were exhausted, having swum with all their strength to distance themselves from the ship. Some hadn’t made it and had been consumed by the same force that had pulled the ship down into the abyss. An abyss without oxygen or light.

‘Captain!’ shouted one of the sailors, trying to swim towards him. ‘Did you send an SOS?’

Charles, in the middle of a group of men with one who was seriously wounded, was incapable of lying.

‘The radio was damaged by the blast,’ he explained. ‘We were unable to raise the alarm. We’ll have to wait until they notice our absence.’

‘Blasted yellow monkeys!’ shouted the sailor, slapping the surface of the water.

‘This is not a good time to lose control,’ Charles warned him. ‘It won’t take long for them to come and rescue us. Most of us are wearing life jackets, so we can wait for hours and hours without wasting energy. Those who don’t have life jackets should stay with the group. We have to stay afloat any way we can.’

But the truth was even he didn’t believe what he was saying. The authorities had treated that strange mission so secretively he was convinced that hardly anyone knew the position of their ship. Occupied as they were in the invasion of Japan, it would take them another couple of days to realize their absence. The wait would be eternal.

‘How many wounded are there?’ asked Charles with all the strength his lungs permitted him.

There were quite a few. One had lost several fingers on his hand, another had serious wounds on his leg, a third complained about his arm… These were the ones that worried the captain the most. There was no way he wanted to watch them bleed to death in the Pacific, their lives ebbing away while he was powerless to prevent it. If they didn’t get help soon, their chances of survival were nil.

The ocean in the middle of the night is a black sheet. An unreal blanket that sways beneath the stars with a mysterious, unsettling rhythm. It’s like being lost in the middle of nothing. Darkness is a perverse animal. It arouses fears that are lodged in the deepest part of us. Fears we are not even aware of. But more perverse than the darkness is that which moves inside the waters, in that place where nature chose to summarize the concept of ferocity. A few hours after the torpedoes hit, just after daybreak, something happened that altered the direction of events once and for all. Something none of these men was prepared for. The hours that followed were a kind of horror movie. The shipwrecked sailors were still coming to terms with events and gathering the mental strength for the wait that lay ahead when, all of a sudden, a pitiless bevy of tiger sharks emerged from the stomach of the ocean. Several dorsal fins broke the surface of the water and started moving in circles, one behind the other. First, with absolute calm, as if studying the terrain, then more quickly, as in a kind of ritual.

‘Sharks!’ shouted the first men to realize.

Seeing the fins appearing above the water and the sailors’ anguished faces, Charles felt that the dawn sky had come down on top of him. How was he going to be able to resist such a weight? Several men were bleeding, their open wounds oozing into the sea, and these waters were the sharks’ natural territory. The tiger sharks’ hunting zone. They didn’t stand a chance.

The sharks swam comfortably around a group of thirteen men, among them a wounded sailor bleeding profusely. It was as if they were just taking their measurements. There was a moment when the sailors convinced themselves the sharks would leave just as they had come, but they were wrong. Everybody knew perfectly well how ferocious these animals could be, how implacable when it came to blood. The chaotic dimension of their feeding frenzy. The animals started attacking simultaneously and in the same way: they would lift their heads and half their bodies out of the water and launch themselves on their prey. These specimens were between four and five metres, coloured white and grey. The image of their impressive open mouths, with all those steel-tipped teeth, produced a sentiment that was far more complex than fear. They devoured four men with terrifying ease. They drove their teeth into the sailors’ flesh, ripping apart members and organs beneath the horrified gaze of the others. The waters turned red, as if by magic. And then silence, broken only by the lamentations of those who dared to cry. That day was eternal. Every now and then, several dorsal fins would suddenly emerge from the ocean. The sharks were so silent nobody could hear them. They would select a group of men and start circling them. By the time the sailors realized, the sharks were on top of them, eating them alive. Some were killed in the act, their lives cut down as soon as the teeth sank in, but others suffered a worse fate. Some sharks would attack in stages. The first attack was fierce, but not decisive. They would shear off a leg or an arm and then leave. While the victim screamed out in agony, the shark would move away, but not for good. Soon it would come back to carry on mutilating its prey until finally finishing it off, swallowing up all that suffering.

Most of the men were not eaten whole. A few chunks of flesh would be left floating on the sea, rolling in the current. It was a horrifying image. Some of the sailors who were still alive would begin to vomit when they realized the remains of their old shipmates were floating all around them. They knew they would be the next to die. They had nothing to hold on to, no place where they could seek shelter. Not even inside themselves. Their inner landscapes were desolate and withered. Charles thought about Eva, their son, that delicious afternoon with Mary Jane, when he had dared to free himself for the first time. He also thought about the ease with which life can turn towards disaster. His mind was a carousel of images from the past. At this point, a shark passed by him, brushing him with macabre softness. The viscous, cold contact sent a shiver through his marrow. ‘It’s over,’ he thought. ‘The end has come.’ And yet the captain had plenty more to suffer. The animal made straight for Paul, his second in command. Charles’ trustworthy companion, the one he’d spent half his life with. The only person he could fully open up to. The shark landed on top of him and swallowed his stomach whole. Charles had to close his eyes at the sight of Paul’s intestines spilling out of his body. The water was again stained red, while the shouts of sailors being feasted upon rose one above the other. For the first time since the Japanese attack on their ship, Charles let himself go and wrenched his vocal cords by cussing and cursing until he could no more. Everything ceased to make sense to the captain. The years in the Navy, that war, the distance from his family. The ocean reeked of fresh blood. It was carnage, that was all. Charles put his hands together, closed his eyes and prayed.

The castaways’ fate was truly cruel. They spent four days and nights resisting the sharks’ onslaughts. Every day that passed, dozens of men were eaten alive. First, they tried to smack the water and jostle about in an attempt to frighten them off. But this tactic didn’t work; all it did was egg the sharks on and drain the sailors of the little energy they had left. In the end, they opted to remain motionless and completely silent. When they sensed a shark in the vicinity, they would hug themselves and pray that it would pass. Spare their lives. But there was always one man who ended up falling victim to the animals’ voraciousness. The sharks weren’t the only ones to take it out on the sailors. Hunger and sunstroke also did their bit. By the third day, all the survivors had burnt heads, blistered lips, flaking skin on their arms and faces. The salt and saltpetre drew the sun like a magnet, acting as fuel. The pitiless sun beat down on top of them and didn’t yield.

‘Don’t drink any seawater,’ Charles kept saying. ‘I know the thirst is unbearable, but you have to be strong. A rescue plane will be here any moment.’

The captain knew the consequences of ingesting huge quantities of salt water. It wasn’t the first time he’d seen a sailor go completely mad after subjecting his body to quantities of salt it wasn’t prepared for. In the beginning, they all followed his advice. When the sharks weren’t around, they tried any way they could to think about nice things. They endeavoured to ignore the thirst scorching their throats and mouths. But there were those who couldn’t take any more. ‘Just a little,’ they said to themselves. And they drank greedily. After a few hours, the hallucinations began and the sailors started behaving strangely, taking off their life jackets, swimming further and further away while shouting unintelligible things… Some had a violent outburst and started beating their closest neighbour. Several sailors were killed by those they’d shared a cabin with. The situation was unbearable. A Dantesque scene took place in each group of sailors: a man pummelling another’s face; a shark determined to eat a cabin boy’s head; the broken voices of those calling to their mothers and wives in amongst the tears… On the morning of the fourth day, there were only four hundred men left alive.

On land, the Americans intercepted a transmission by the I-58 in which Commander Hashimoto let it be known he’d succeeded in sinking the Indianapolis, having hit the target with two manned torpedoes. Even so, it didn’t occur to anybody to mount a rescue mission, to send a plane to fly over the area in case there were any survivors. Nothing at all. They preferred to deduce that the message was false. In this simple way, they handed them over to the sharks of the Pacific on a plate. Absolute carnage.

On the morning of the fifth day, a PV-1 Ventura bomber was flying over the zone where the ship had sunk on routine patrol when it noticed a suspicious shadow on the sea. At first, the pilots thought it was an oil slick, but then they realized this stain was in fact made up of men. They radioed for a flying boat to be sent out on reconnaissance. It took the flying boat two hours to arrive. Two hours in which the sharks continued doing their work. Pulling off legs, hands, lungs. Ripping out the intestines of those men of war until they were empty.

The commander of the flying boat, Lieutenant Marks, flew low over the area to see if it was really men the PV-1 Ventura had spotted in the sea. The shipwrecked sailors desperately waved their arms about, begging to be taken out of that inferno. Marks grabbed the radio and radioed back to base.

‘There are about three hundred survivors,’ he informed them. ‘I request the immediate launch of a rescue mission.’

From base, he was given the order to return. They would send several ships to pull the sailors out of the water; he had done his bit. Marks started dropping all the rubber rafts, food and water he had on board into the sea. The men quickly gathered the supplies. Marks was just about to return to base when he spotted another, vast shadow in the water, underneath the shipwrecked sailors. His heart started beating fast, threatening to pound its way out of his chest.

‘Sharks.’

That was all he could say in a burst of panic. The sailors were being devoured before his very eyes. Never in his life had he witnessed such a scene. Disobeying standing orders and risking the stability of his plane, he landed and started pulling as many men as he could out of the water. Fifty-six sailors scrambled on to the flying boat, shaking like defenceless animals. There was no room for any more. In a desperate attempt to escape the sharks, some men tied themselves to the wings of the plane with parachute cord, following the instructions of the captain, who guided them from the water. Beneath them, in the Philippine Sea, the sharks didn’t relent. They carried on attacking men until the rescue ships arrived and the last survivor, Captain McVay, was pulled out of the water.

Hunter Scott

Hunter’s mother was fed up of calling him down to dinner. Having tried several times, she decided to go up to his bedroom. She found him sitting at his desk, leaning on his elbows, immersed in his reading.

‘Hunter,’ she said with a tenderness only mothers have, ‘dinner’s on the table.’

The boy lifted his head and glanced at her. He had tears in his eyes. He looked away and tried to hide them by wiping them with the back of his hand.

‘What is it, son?’

‘The Indianapolis,’ he answered in a desperate attempt not to start sobbing uncontrollably.

His mother understood it all without the need for further explanations. She went over to try to give him a reply that would help soothe all that sadness.

‘Terrible things like this happen in war, Hunter.’

The boy shook his head.

‘There aren’t any sharks in war.’

‘Oh yes, there are. Those in charge of armies are always sharks.’

She hugged him and gave him a peck on the forehead. Then she took a chair and sat down beside him.

‘Hunter, where have you got to in the story?’

The boy explained that the rescue ships had just reached the survivors. His mother took the book and glanced at it. She turned a couple of pages and went to the end of the story. Then she took Hunter’s hand and spoke with a tone of gravity in her voice.

‘I’m going to ask you a favour. I don’t want you to carry on reading. If you promise you’ll wait until tomorrow, I’ll take you to see someone who knows this story very well.’

Hunter’s eyes opened wide.

‘Who? Where are you going to take me?’ he asked excitedly.

His mother performed an exercise in introspection for several moments. She searched inside herself and discovered vague childhood memories she had been unable to place for years. Hunter gazed at his mother, waiting for an answer. Finally, she took a breath and said:

‘To the house of Grandma Mary Jane.’

Mary Jane

Hunter adored his grandmother Mary Jane. She was the only person he knew over seventy who didn’t stink of being old. Normally, he would hold his breath whenever he had to stand less than a metre away from an old lady because he had the sensation the stench would filter inside him and stay there for hours. But that wasn’t the case with his grandmother. She always smelled of lilacs or strawberry pie. She also knew how to behave with an eleven-year-old boy, something that was far from common.

Nora and Hunter left home early that morning. From time to time, they would spend the whole day with Grandma. They would pick a sunny day and organize an outing where there were always cakes, tea and fresh fruit. Hunter loved going on these visits. They would tell old stories, play ludo, listen to songs in the open air, hunt crickets in the garden… Sometimes, Jack, Hunter’s father, would go along with them. But not today. What they needed today was intimacy. Jack wasn’t ready to learn of Mary Jane’s great secret.

Nora had surprised her the day before when she’d called unexpectedly. She had said that Hunter needed to talk about Charles B. McVay. Mary Jane wasn’t sure what to reply. She didn’t know how Hunter had got to Charles. He was just a child. She doubted very much that Nora had said anything; if there was one thing her daughter knew how to do very well, it was how to keep a secret. To while away the time, she spent the morning making strawberry pie. As she mixed the sugar with the eggs and strawberry juice, she didn’t stop thinking about Charles for a moment. So many years had gone by it was all like a distant dream. An old film whose leading characters had long, sharp, bloodstained teeth.

Mary Jane missed him a lot. No man had ever loved her in the same way as Charles, with that intensity that belongs to men of the sea. Not even Nora’s father had got close to the concept of passion that was the captain’s domain. The woman sighed over a past she would have liked to redesign. That’s how treacherous melancholy can be. It makes you think any time in the past was happier than this one. The truth was all she’d done was suffer on Charles’ account ever since she was fourteen. So why couldn’t she help her whole body shuddering with happiness every time she thought about him?

Hunter rang the doorbell insistently.

‘All right, don’t make your grandmother hurry so much,’ said Nora.

But he couldn’t help himself. There was something inside him that wouldn’t stop bustling around, and he couldn’t keep it down.

‘Well, look who we have here,’ said his grandmother when she opened the front door. ‘A little man!’

She opened her arms, and Hunter gave her a hug and smothered her with kisses.

‘You smell of strawberry pie.’

‘I’ve just taken it out of the oven. As soon as it cools down, we’ll tuck in. Go on then, off to the kitchen! Go and see how nice it looks.’

The boy complied, and Mary Jane made the most of these few minutes of intimacy with her daughter. She kissed her gently, gave her a big hug and asked what was going on. She was delighted to see them, but unclear as to the real motive behind their visit.

‘Hunter came across the story of the Indianapolis by chance and is very impressed. He doesn’t know the ending yet, and I thought you were the best person to tell him what happened. Don’t worry, mother. I didn’t let on about you and Charles.’ Nora calmed her down when she saw a flicker of doubt in her mother’s eyes. ‘All you have to do is say you were childhood friends. That’ll be enough.’

‘OK then, daughter. Let’s go and join Hunter. I suppose we’d better sit in the garden.’

Mary Jane prepared some cups of tea, cut a few slices of pie and put everything on plates, on a white, wooden table on wheels she pushed into the garden. It was a wonderful setting. There were fruit trees, various plants and bushes, and flowers to suit every taste. A swarm of bees buzzed around the miniature roses and the lilacs. A warm breeze combined the different aromas in a delicious summer mélange.

Around the table, as they sat on chairs that Mary Jane had upholstered herself, the words started flying like beetles with iridescent wings.

‘Charles loved the sea. He ended up becoming its slave. He devoted his whole life to it.’

Hunter inserted an enormous piece of pie into his mouth and waited for his grandmother to carry on talking.

‘Until the day he decided to enlist in the Navy, we were inseparable. All the memories I have of my childhood are linked to him. We were so young, so innocent… I believed we owed each other eternal fidelity. As if sharing one’s childhood was reason enough for the destiny of two people to be linked. But life quickly puts you in your place. Makes you realize childhood dreams are like a breeze.’ There was a note of deep sadness in Mary Jane’s voice. She wasn’t really talking, she was thinking out loud. ‘Charles felt obliged to follow in his father’s footsteps. So he enlisted in the United States Navy. I hated him for years. To start with, he wrote me lots of letters. I kept them all in a tin box in the attic. There is only one person who has read all those letters except for me, and that is your mother. She came across them one day by chance. As time went by, Charles’ letters became less frequent, until one day they stopped altogether. And that was when I realized our friendship had died, as all seasons do. Slowly, but inexorably.’

Hunter’s grandmother took her cup of tea, poured in a little milk and drank a sip.

‘When World War II broke out, I was afraid for his life. Although I’d already married your grandfather, Charles’ image was always present in my mind. I heard about him from his mother, who lived her whole life in the house next door. I used to ask about his whereabouts. How that poor woman suffered!’

‘The blue house was where Charles lived?’ asked Hunter.

‘That’s right. We spent lots of afternoons in the garden, hunting crickets, just as you and I do now. When the Indianapolis sank and I heard he’d managed to survive, I thought it was a miracle. Then I thought Charles had been very brave and deserved some kind of medal like the great soldier he undoubtedly was. But, in fact, the opposite happened.’

‘What do you mean, the opposite?’

Mary Jane fixed her gaze on a distant point in the garden and carried on addressing her grandson like an automaton. Confronting the past once again wasn’t so simple. After all, she was talking about the life of the only man she’d really loved.

‘Charles was accused of negligence and recklessness. The military authorities wanted to make him responsible for the sinking of the Indianapolis and for all the deaths that came about as a consequence of the Japanese submarine’s torpedoes and the shark attacks. He was found guilty before a military court and retired from the Navy.’

Hunter couldn’t believe it. The only thing this captain had done was follow orders. How could they have made him responsible?

‘Charles never went back on board a ship. He wandered the world for years, like a soul in torment. He tried starting a new life with his family, but couldn’t. Not even the love of his son and his wife could help him get over this. The redness of the waters filling his nightmares was too intense. Charles’ mother used to say that Charles couldn’t bear that madness. People pointed at him in the street, the families of sailors devoured by sharks would call him up and send him letters so he wouldn’t forget he was the guilty party. No man on earth could have resisted the weight of all those deaths.’

Mary Jane had to interrupt her account. Her eyes brimmed with tears, and her voice broke. The saddest part was yet to come.

‘What happened to him, Grandma? What did Charles do?’

She gave him a tender look. She knew that what came next would have a significant impact on the child.

‘He committed suicide in 1968, leaving two letters on the kitchen table, one for his family and one for me. That was the most cowardly thing he did in all his life.’

Hunter could never have imagined an ending like this. It sounded far too cruel. He didn’t understand. He couldn’t even ask his grandmother any more questions. He preferred to remain silent and to assimilate those facts that sounded so terrible to him. The afternoon passed slowly and silently. They tried having fun, hunting crickets and eating cakes under the apple tree, but Mary Jane’s story floated in the air, and its shadow was far too long. Far too heavy.

Hunter said goodbye to his grandmother with a deep sense of frustration and sadness. She didn’t have the strength to tell him that things like that happen and life isn’t always fair. She just wanted to lie down, to close her eyes and forget.

That night, Hunter went to bed with a knot of discomfort rolled up in his stomach. The following morning, however, he woke up with renewed energy and with a single idea in his head: the pursuit of justice. There had to be something he could do to improve the situation. The months that followed were a real odyssey. Especially bearing in mind he was an eleven-year-old boy who just days before had been dying for his father to buy him a helium balloon. He grew up suddenly, without even noticing.

The first thing he did was ask the librarian to help him. He told him the story of the ship in all its detail and begged him to lend him a hand. Between the two of them, after lots of phone calls, they managed to contact one of the Indianapolis survivors. This man led them to another member of the crew, and so on. One hundred and fifty-four crewmen were still alive. Hunter managed to convince them to move heaven and earth if necessary to shake up the American authorities’ conscience. They couldn’t let things stand as they were! All the survivors agreed that Charles had been used as a scapegoat and decided to join Hunter in his cause. They needed several more years of struggling, during which the shipwrecked sailors gave their terrible statements, describing from their own point of view the five days in the water, alone with the sharks. Little by little, numerous details that had been silenced in the military court came to light. The struggle was worth it: between them all, they got Congress to write a document in which Captain Charles Butler McVay was exonerated of all responsibility. When Bill Clinton signed it, it was too late. Hundreds of men had been shark fodder in the Pacific, and that couldn’t be changed. But somehow justice had been done. It was decades too late, but it was justice all the same.

Charles B. McVay

September 3, 1968

My dearest Mary Jane,

I come back to you before taking the final step in my life. Don’t think this is the only time I’ve come back to your memory. For years on the open sea, you were present on many nights I spent on board. I wish someone could have written another ending, I wish there was some way to go back to that childhood of bikes and fishing we spent together, to do things differently. I don’t regret the years I served in the Navy, I regret the years I spent far away from you. And even though it may sound like the same thing, it isn’t. I suppose I must sound absurd and contradictory. A man like me, with an iron formation, trained to endure suffering. With a brain designed for warfare. But if there’s something I’ve learned in all these years, it’s that there is no more complex confrontation than the confrontation one has with oneself. That’s where I end up losing. I always end up losing.

Finding you on that afternoon and being able to open my heart to you was amazing. So much so, since then, I haven’t been able to stop reliving the experience over and over again. You’ll think I’ve gone crazy, completely lost my mind. And perhaps you’re right. I have to ask your forgiveness for not daring to do things differently, for letting you escape, for not realizing I was always in love with you. I hope you can forgive me. I wish you all the happiness a heart can take. You’re made of the kind of stuff dreams are made of, Mary Jane. Any man would die for you.

This is a letter of farewell. I hope, despite everything, you’ll be able to keep a piece of your thoughts for me. A piece of you, my love.

Ever yours,

Charles

Text © Ledicia Costas

Translation © Jonathan Dunne

This title is available to read in English – see the page “Stories”.