Dream of the Flood by Tobias

As the water come rushing in, rushing in
At the head of the river
At the source of the sea
And her hallway...
Like...
Flood...
“Flood 1” Sisters of Mercy
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The bar rests on top of a cliff close to the sea, in a South American country; Chile for instance. The bar caters to the few derelicts in the old harbor district. The harbor isn’t there anymore, it moved to the new part of town. Now there is just the sea and the bar. During the flood the sea threatens to swallow the bar. There are always people nonetheless. There used to be more. In days gone by, the bar hosted live music nearly every day. Its biggest attraction was the weekly performance of a large blond lady who sung Portuguese fado music. She left the bar long ago and is a famous singer now. Her pictures adorn the walls.

The bar doubles as a cheap hotel for foreigners, passengers who are waiting for a boat to take them upstream. The bar sits at the cliff on the edge of the sea and the river. Once a week a ship comes, at least it usually does. The rain is pouring down from the sky in steady streams. There might not be a boat coming today. When the see is turgid and violent, the boats will not come.

The bar’s interior is dark, the ceiling is made from sturdy beams and there are parts of ships scattered about as decoration. The most notable is an old cracked fair maiden ship's head. She has a rather lascivious expression on her creaky wooden face. Pictures of football teams and calendars of scantily dressed women hang next to the pictures of Mikhaela, the now famous large blond singer. The waitresses are plain looking and daughters of the owner. The owner is never there because he spends his money drinking with girls who could be his daughter.

There is a writer sitting at one of the tables. He scribbles things on a small notepad. He looks outside of the window, at the water of the sea and at the coming flood. There is a woman behind the bar cleaning dishes. She is dark and her bosom heaves when she rubs the glass. Sometimes the writer stares at the woman when he is sure that she doesn’t notice. In fact she does, but it doesn’t bother her. All the men that enter the bar stare at her.

The writer is not particularly attractive, in fact he is nothing particular. Not a particularly good writer either, at least not yet. He writes love stories. The people that read them do not think that they are anything great. They read them out of politeness. They are his friends. The writer knows this. In a couple of years’ time the reviews in the newspapers could be writing about his wonderful debut novel, which will have a modern beatnik feel. That day is far away. The writer does have some talent. His main weakness is his lack of courage. This trip is the most daring thing he ever did. It is truly daring actually. The writer might not make it back. He is clearly an outlander. The people here are in general not fond of outlanders, but they remain polite.

There are men at the bar who scowl at the writer. He is a foreigner. They are too, but he is clearly not one of them. They look like men who work with ropes, knots and tar. There is another group of friends sitting at the bar. They are a boisterous lot. From the Spanish that the writer can make out, he understands that they are having fun at the expense of one of them. The one they make fun of doesn’t know how to treat women.

The writer himself doesn’t know if he treats women well. He is skeptical about his talents, as he is skeptical about everything. He feels he is not particularly attractive. So far, women have showed little interest in him. This is not because he is unattractive though, but because he lacks humor. Women value humor, but the writer things this is just a lie that women tell men all the time. The writer is waiting for a girl to show him whether he knows how to treat women. The writer assumes that he is only waiting for a ship to carry him upriver. He does not realize yet what he is really waiting for. There will not be a ship today, even though it is scheduled. The writer begins to doubt that the ship will come. It makes him uneasy and causes the quality of his work to drop. The quality is not very high yet anyway, so no harm is being done.

The group of men drinking have girls on their laps. They pay much for their drinks and for the drinks of the girls. They will not pay too much for the girls. The girls are cheap and they will manage to get a discount at the end. Or they fall asleep, then they will pay much more. Tonight they won’t fall asleep, but they won’t embrace the girls either. When the first waves reach the door tonight, the girls and the men will pack up and leave.

The writer looks out of the window, at the water.

A woman is looking at the writer. She needs to earn money, but she also likes this man. She observes the writer. He has a serious expression on his face. The expression of someone who wants to know the truth and who is interested to learn about women and about whether or not the boat will come. He is travelling, but he cares about how he looks. He hopes he looks like a writer. He does. He looks like a young writer of love stories that aren’t particularly good.

The woman is older than he is. She is rather plump and she is closer to forty than thirty. She has a cheerful expression on her face, but tired eyes. She has dark skin and seems to be of native American descent. A small Jesus on a cross dangles between her breasts. Jesus on his little cross gave in to temptation long ago but he can’t release himself. Further punishment for his sins. The girl cares about Jesus. Before she falls asleep, she whispers to him as she holds the hanger in front of her eyes. She tells him about her fears. She has many fears, the worst one is her fear of dying alone one day, old and discarded. She doesn’t care about the truth, because she already knows and she doesn’t care whether the boats come or not. She knows they will not. She has slept with a dozen writers already.

She orders herself a drink, a slight deviation of protocol, because usually she waits for the man she likes to order it for her. She sits across the writer. “Quieres saber la verdad?” The first time that Martita had uttered this sentence was as a little girl in Mexico on the night of the dead. She presented flowers to tourists then.

She laughs. “The truth is right here” and her hand dips into her cleavage. The startled writer first follows her fingers with his gaze, but then quickly averts his eyes. The woman cheerfully picks out her little crucifix, “Look, you know he is the only man that never hurt me”. Inwardly she smiles at the awkward reaction of the little man before her.

The writer looks at the little silver crucifix and at the place it just came from. Her deep décolleté reveals soft, dark flesh which invites him to keep looking. The flesh of her breasts swells very lightly, but noticeably whenever she breathes. One of the men at the bar shoots him a glance and smiles, but he doesn’t notice. The woman tells the writer that he is young and handsome and asks whether he is a writer. He affirms her question. He tells her that he writes love stories which get published sometimes. She devours love stories, the kind about doctors and nurses and people with money and young, pretty girls.

She assures him he must be talented because he is too young to be a writer, he doesn’t even have a beard. She thinks writers all have beards. He does wear glasses though and is very self-conscious about them. She confides in him that she was talented too once, long ago, when she was still an 'actress'. Her English has a definite Spanish inflection and she pronounces the word like ‘actriz’. Her voice sounds like the flowing water and her breasts remind the writer of waves, spilling over her little dress.

She places her hands on top of his and lightly touches his leg with hers. The writer tells her that he is waiting for the ship to carry him up river. The girl informs him that there will be a flood today; a big flood that will sweep us away to the end of the world. She laughs cheerfully and slightly tipsy as if enthralled with the prospect. The writer looks in her brown eyes and slips a peak into her cleavage where Jesus tries to free himself from the tiny silver cross.

He tells her he tours South America, he tells her he has a girlfriend in Europe. He feels like telling her about the city he grew up in, the school he went to and that he was in love with a girl once who looks like her. She doesn’t in in fact, that girl was much more beautiful. For the writer that doesn’t matter anymore. He is drunk on her slightly plump body, he swims in her eyes and tastes her voice.

Martita orders another whiskey, local product. She helps travelers and she is a guide in this small town. She can show him every nook of it. She grew up here and she knows that there are ghosts in town because of the tremendous floods which often engulfed the town in the past century. Ghosts, goblins, writers, she giggles, the town is flooded with them.

The writer knows that she can tell him all he wants to know about how t treat women. He imagines that she would show him in her warm eyes, in her smile and in her slightly inebriated voice. He tells her about his past which is decidedly uneventful, but to him seems it could be the subject of countless stories He recounts his love affairs, the story of his father who is a famous writer and his sister who escaped to Europe. He tells about the events that got him here in the first place, the endless fights within his family. The rain is still pouring from the sky, saturating the delta.

She talks about the famous American actor that would remember her if he would see her. Yes, she is sure of that. He took her virginity, she whispers, at age seventeen. She informs the writer that he is like a child and that he shouldn’t wear glasses. The noise of the water is now almost drowning out the sounds of the men at the bar and the chesty woman drying the plates.

The guys at the bar now look at the couple with clear curiosity and the woman stops rinsing the plates. She tells the men at the bar that the flood is coming, but they don’t seem to listen. They still talk about the one that couldn’t treat his woman right. The man in question is getting angry. He is vicious when he is angry. He tore open the cheek of another man once with a broken beer bottle.

Martita takes one look at the bar and gets up from her chair. She laughs and she doesn’t look very stable anymore. The writer gets up too. She looks at him. She climbs up the stairs and he follows, a little uncertain, but determined. The bar shakes like a rocking chair because the water is now pushes against its foundations. The girls on the laps of the men quickly get up on their feet.

In a spartan looking room with only the barest necessities, she grabs the writer by the shoulders and pushes him to the wall. You are mine, you are mine, you are mine, whispering, growling. She grabs his hand and puts it under her blouse. He feels the tip of her nipple harden and press against the palm of his hand. He squeezes. He kisses her neck and her lips, she bites, tears, sucks at his.

She unties her hair which had been held together by a silver hairpin. The pin falls to the ground. The writer thinks of picking it up, but she kicks it under the bed with a callous motion of her foot. Feel me and she guides his hands towards the flood. As the bar caves in, the wood is splintered, he hears and deafening crack and he is swept from his feet by the rushing water, holding on to Martita for dear life. He loses his glasses in the maelstrom. To the end of the world little man, she giggles, you will know the truth.