One Last Time

A last time 

“Su pequeña huella no vuelve más. Un sendero solo de pena y silencio llegó, hasta el agua profunda. Un sendero solo de penas mudas llegó, hasta la espuma”. from Alfonsina y el mar.

They had been happy for a few short years. He, a poet, walked around all day with his notebook, his glasses and his pens, which were the only things he had. That, without counting the house and the little rowboat tied to the dock a few meters from the beach, which they had bought between the two of them. She, on the other hand, had quite a few things. She liked to paint, but she was a professional piano player. She had liked his bony hands stained with ink and his greenish eyes like moss. He liked her adventurous spirit and her devotion to life: She didn't eat animals, sang songs, drank orange juice in the morning and exercised frequently.

They used to go boating every afternoon. She almost always rowed and he took the opportunity to write something. It didn't bother him, there was no rush and rowing was good for his arms. She also liked to see him concentrating. He always seemed to be distracted until he found something to write about, grabbed a pencil or something else and started scribbling, crossing out, mumbling words in silence. Silently, but if you paid attention to his forehead, you could read him like an open book: He hated synonyms, mornings and the sun, but he loved water. He washed his hands often because he said it killed germs, but what he really wanted was to get the ink stains out, and as much as it didn't work he didn't try to find another way, because really what he really wanted was for her to notice his hands, which he knew she liked.

They married young, at the age of 23, and soon after they saved some money and left the city they were both tired of, no matter how much it suited them for work. They were convinced and knew they had each other to overcome any inconvenience. 

But the sea took her early. Too early. For her, who still saw the starry sky and dreamed, and for him, who stayed to live her absence on the same beach where everything reminded him of her. 

Today it was his turn. He felt it coming, death would not wait for him one more day, and at 87 years old he could not complain about what he had lived. He had only one resentment.

So he got into his wooden boat and went out to sea, to die with his beloved, poetically to meet her.

And there, rowing on the boat, his body began to stiffen. His eyes dried up, his arms gave out and he began to fear death. He cried, kicked, hit the walls of the boat and cursed life and the death that was now his lot.

He had only one regret

"Haahhhh... If only I could see her one last time..."

As if responding to that sigh, the boat lurched gently. 

Suddenly, the water that hid the rope took on a purplish color, and the reflection of the light on the surface of the sea became so intense that the young man in the boat had to look away. And when he turned around, he found an incredible landscape. 

The clouds that had threatened to unleash a storm had cleared to give way to an immense moon, which seemed to have come a few million miles away, because it overwhelmed the night sky with a glamorous bearing, shining in pale colors, and over that picture, a shower of shooting stars fell beautifully.

The swell that remained calm stirred as if the stars descending gently through the firmament were drops of purple ink continuing their way down a single bluish canvas, formed halfway between the sky and the sea, and plunging into the deepest part of the water, stirring the tide.

But he could not see it for long, for his eyes could no longer see anything but lights in the distance. Nevertheless, he caught a glimpse of a smile. 

Suddenly, all the memories of his life flashed in front of him, and he entered a dream as the ship turned over and sank to the bottom of the ocean.

"Let me take you one last time."

His wife paddles the boat and caresses his hands. 

"I'm scared, I didn't want to live. It was so unfair, you left too soon. I came to drown in this sea without believing in heaven or cabals, and now, I don't want to die anymore."

"That's how we people are. We always try to procrastinate, but it will come to everyone in the end. No matter how many excuses we have. We exist first by being born, then by living, then by living being someone, seeking to be full, growing old and sharing guilt with someone, perpetuating our image, our flesh in others, but it is in vain. I was with you, I lived in your memory, but no more. There are no more memories. No more dreams, no more kisses. For us, there is no more time: there is no more nothing. 

Everything happens in an instant, in the blink of an eye we live and die, and the sea never changes. 

In a matter of seconds, our sight freezes, we exhale our last breath and lose our psyche, which weighs twenty-one grams, and as we leave, it lifts the corners of our lips a little.

It seems then that we smile,

That we went in peace,

But we just went."

And he breathed his last breath and it seemed, for a moment, that he smiled.



The first theme, "codo a codo" is for when he encounters his wife again. He is supposed to hear a voice from outside the house in his last memories and there she is, singing row row from inside the boat.

The second theme "por una última vez" is translated as "for a last time" and is their last encounter, and the final dialogues of the game. When they both talk and he dies.