Steiner's Digest

I met Sally Nicholls in the sand dunes behind a deserted beach near Cabo de Gata. In those days I was what some people might call a lost soul. I tried to have as little contact with humanity as possible and was therefore attracted to lonely and desolate places. That’s why I had come to the desert of Cabo de Gata, like a prophet or hermit waiting for a sign or a revelation. But I wasn’t looking for anything or anybody, not even myself. I knew that something like a “self” probably didn’t exist anyway. At best it was a useful fiction, a way of coming to terms with the confusion produced by what is described in equally vast and dubious abstractions like „life“, „society“ or „the world“.

My pursuits in those days at Cabo de Gata were trivial, meaningless, perhaps experimental, like those we sometimes occupy ourselves with when we’re young and feel that we have all the time in the world.

On this particular day, I invented (or thought I had) the art of “schnitzelling”. I had looked for and found a gloriously empty spot, about one or two miles away from the small town, near a long deserted and crumbling lighthouse. The sea broke in impressive waves onto the shallow beach. Above it stretched vast cloud ranges which somehow never managed to block the sunlight glittering on the water, erasing its colour and biting the eyes like burning magnesium. Behind the wide beach began the dunes, not particularly high or beautiful, of a rather dirty colour and sprinkled with spots of scrub and hard grass that cracked and crinkled when you trod on it.

I arrived there past noon, and the place was as empty as it could be. The season was over and whoever was left in or around Cabo de Gata was having lunch or preparing for their siesta which, at the time, was still taken quite seriously, since Franco had died only some twenty years before, and the mania of end-of-history capitalism and business in its literal sense had not penetrated deeply enough into the Spanish mindset yet.

Anyway, after I made sure I was alone, I stripped and took a short, surprisingly refreshing bath in the sea. Dripping wet, I grabbed my clothes and ran, fast but not too fast, as I didn’t want the water on my body to dry, into the dunes. There, I flung myself into the warm and welcoming embrace of the soft, fine sand, rolling around several times, grunting contentedly like a pig taking a mud bath. I even dipped my face and hair into the breading to make sure that I was covered completely like a Vienna Schnitzel, ready to be deep fried in clarified butter. I tell you, it was glorious, and I didn’t even feel the urge or desire to record my probably quite strange appearance for posterity, as I would now, since I’d left my camera behind and didn’t have an inkling that such things as smartphones would exist at some point in the future. I just felt exhausted and happy, closed my eyes and hugged the earth which received me like a good mother – unconditionally, soft, warm and welcoming.

“Looks fun”, a voice said.

I startled, sat up quickly and opened my eyes which hurt, as some of the sand immediately found its way into them.

She was quite tall and thin, her hair unkempt, salty and almost exactly the same colour as the sand I was covered with, the slender face tanned but with clearly visible freckles covering the rather long nose and strong cheekbones. Her eyes were of a clear, watery blue with unusually long lashes and cheerful wrinkles. She wore an ankle-length, wavy dress with floral print, like an old-fashioned nightgown and carried a bag and a pair of flip-flops in her hands.

She didn’t say anything else for the time being. Just stood there, smiling good-humouredly, watching me, as I hastily reached out for my clothes bundle. She was at least ten years older than me. At the time, that seemed ancient to me and was perhaps the reason why I felt like a masturbating teenager caught by his mother.

“Not on my account,” she said, not even pretending to look away, as I put on my shorts.

When I had managed to do so, she didn’t apologise or go on her way, as probably most people would have. Instead, she sat down next to me, as if we were old friends, unburied a pack of cigarettes from her bag, took a cigarette and a lighter out and lit the cigarette.

“Do you smoke?” She offered me the pack.

“Not at the moment, thanks.” Her accent sounded American but slightly milder. Perhaps she was Canadian.

“Been here long?” she enquired.

“Not long, no. I don’t know,” I stammered.

“Apparently long enough to lose track of time. Enviable.”

“That’s what I came here for, I suppose”, I said, only realising the truth of the statement while making it.

“I’m Sally”, she said and added: “Sally Nicholls”, as if there were quite a few other Sallys around and she wanted to make sure I didn’t confuse her with any of them.

I didn’t reply, just mumbled something that could perhaps have been interpreted as “Nice to meet you.”

She glanced at me sideways but didn’t appear offended by my failure to introduce myself in return.

I forced myself to look straight in the direction of the sea, a pocket of which could just be seen between the two dunes in front of us. The dunes reminded me of breasts, an association I deeply resented the second I had it. I could still feel her looking at me.

“You don’t trust women, do you?”

“Nor men,” I said, again truthfully.

She turned her head and blew a long cloud of smoke in the direction I was looking. “That’s a fair position to take, I suppose.”

“I don’t know if it is. Nor do I care.”

“Right.” She took another drag.

This time I turned my head and looked openly at her. She flicked the glowing ash from the cigarette with her fingernail and put the cigarette end neatly beside her in the sand. She seemed to consider getting up and leaving me to my strange antics and juvenile misanthropy. But something held her back. Curiosity? Boredom? Laziness? A motherly instinct? I don’t know, perhaps a bit of everything.

Instead of rising she stretched out in the sand and watched the clouds, as if I were not even there. I froze again, despite the heat. She just lay there without saying anything. Her level of comfort seemed to increase proportionately to my level of embarrassment.

When I finally found the courage to turn my head again, her eyes were closed. I watched her for quite some time. Suddenly she said, without opening her eyes:

“Where do you stay?”

“At the campsite”, I replied. “It’s about half an hour away from here. Do you know it?”

She smiled at my sudden chattiness, which arose from my relief that she had not fallen asleep next to me.

She nodded. “I know it.”

Then, after another pause which seemed to last forever:

“Ever go into town?”

“Just occasionally. To get supplies. I don’t like it particularly. It’s not very pretty.”

Suddenly she rose, which gave me quite a start. She grabbed her bag, put the cigarette butt into one of the side pockets and shook her head like a model in a shampoo advertisement. The hair didn’t really do what it was supposed to do though, because there was too much sea salt in it.

“Well, I might see you around”, she said casually and took a few lazy steps up the slope.

At the top she turned around.

“Although I’m not sure I’d recognise you.”

“You would”, I said with sudden confidence.

“I guess you’re right.” She smiled again. “It was nice almost meeting you.”

I nodded but didn’t say anything.

“And really nice watching you doing, well, whatever it was that you were doing.”

“Schnitzelling”, I said.

“Right.” She laughed heartily, turned round and left.

I was relieved. But shortly after, I was sorry and remembered all the things I could have said. Then I hated myself for falling into the same trap as every other human being with testicles and knew it would take quite a while to get her out of my system.

But it didn’t matter.

Nothing mattered, because I had all the time in the world.