Giovanna's Navel

by Ernest Van der Kwast

  He knew there was a daily train to Lecce. The Intercity covered the 1,082 kilometres in thirteen hours and four minutes, stopping at thirty-seven stations along the way. Ezio had often seen the train depart from Platform 6. But he never got around to boarding. That’s the way back, he used to think to himself. That’s the way back to Giovanna: more than a thousand kilometres southbound, setting off in daylight and arriving after nightfall.

  ‘I’ll be waiting for you,’ Giovanna said, sounding as if she’d always been waiting for him, as if he’d made frequent appearances in her dreams and she’d whispered his name.

  Neither of them spoke. The murmur of the sea could be heard down the line. They briefly saw the same vision, as both of them drew from the well of their past, and they were sitting there again, in the surf, under the San Cataldo summer sun.

  Then Ezio said, ‘See you tomorrow,’ and carefully returned the receiver to its cradle.

  The following morning, he left his house with a small suitcase in his right hand. It was early; there was still time for an espresso in his local café.

  The barista looked at his suitcase. ‘Is everything all right, sir?’ he asked when he put the cup down in front of Ezio.

  Ezio remembered drinking the father’s espresso. The son used the same beans. In all those years, the flavour hadn’t changed, the aroma was still equally strong. It’s possible that something intangible remains unchanged over decades, while everything else changes.

  Ezio nodded to the barista and took a sip.

  Soon after, he walked over to the station. Although he wasn’t as slow as a snail, as Giovanna had suggested, he did take a little longer over things these days. That said, there was no rush; there was no harvest to be brought in.

  His train was listed on the departure board in the concourse. Ezio went to the ticket desk. There the lady serving him repeated his destination. ‘Lecce,’ she said. ‘Are you sure?’

  Had he lost his mind? Is that what was happening? It wasn’t too late. He could stay, he could go back home and unpack his suitcase.

  Ezio had never seen his mother again. She’d died, and so had his father, and perhaps his brother, too. He’d written his family only once. It had been a short letter. In it he apologised, asking them to forgive him his flight. He didn’t ask for their understanding. He’d also written something about apple trees dropping some of their fruit in June so they don’t collapse under their own weight.

  The woman at the desk looked at him.

  Ezio nodded. He was sure. ‘Second class, please,’ he said. ‘A window seat.’

  The Intercity was ready on Platform 6. Through the loudspeakers came a monotonous rundown of the stations along the way: ‘Ora, Mezzocorona, Trento, Rovereto, Verona Porta Nuova, Mantova, Carpi …’ Ezio looked over to the green mountains. He’d never thought the region would come to feel familiar to him. Farms high up in the mountains, cable cars, snow in winter — shortly after his arrival in Bolzano he’d regarded it all with astonishment. Was this Italy? The differences between the South Tyroleans and the Italians remained, but nowadays they couldn’t exist without one another. Young people were bilingual.

  Ezio boarded the carriage indicated on his ticket. The train was made up of old-fashioned cars with a continuous passage and individual compartments. He lifted his suitcase into the luggage rack above his seat and sat down. He looked out of the window, at the people on the platform, at the farewell rituals. Then the whistle sounded and the train jolted into motion. No other passengers had joined him in his compartment.

  At first Ezio saw vast apple orchards. The trees were younger and smaller than they used to be, and planted closer together. Special tractors had been developed that could be driven up and down the narrow paths. Next up were the vineyards. Since spring was warm this year, the harvest would be early, yielding glorious, heavenly bunches. Then the train began its descent, leaving the mountains behind. Ezio regarded the landscape he’d travelled through all those years ago by steam train, on foot, in a farmer’s cart. Finally, he was taking a proper look back.

  In Rovereto, an older lady entered his compartment. Not once, not even when the train went through the tunnels outside Verona, did she take off her sunglasses. Ezio couldn’t tell whether she was looking at him or not. Every now and then, he allowed his eyes to rest on her body. She was wearing black — a loose-fitting skirt suit. Her hair had been dyed, and the pale roots showed. Ezio wondered if she might be a warning. He hadn’t been this close, for this long, to a woman in years. The nylon material of her tights revealed twisted veins. His memories had better prepare for the worst.

  When the lady got ready to leave the compartment just before Bologna, Ezio heaved a quiet sigh of relief. He’d scrutinised every centimetre of her appearance, down to the age spots on her neck.

  The train waited at Bologna station for nearly half an hour. When the whistle finally sounded, the other seats in his compartment remained empty. Ezio was looking forward to the rest of his journey. He’d bought two newspapers at a kiosk, and then of course there was the landscape flashing by like a film being rewound.

  That’s when the door slid open. The first thing he saw was a plume of dark-brown hair. A girl’s voice spoke to him, curtly: ‘Buongiorno.’

  Ezio was too stunned to return the greeting.

  She sat down beside the window and took a look at the old man opposite her.

  Ezio glanced away, at the station sliding past. An optical illusion. The train had got going again — he was the one moving, making the long journey back.

  When the train was at full speed, he plucked up the courage to turn his head and look at the girl opposite him. She’d closed her eyes. Her face was red, her skin flushed. Her chest was moving up and down. She must have dashed across the station concourse, up the stairs, and down the platform, to catch the departing train.

  Ezio ran his eyes over her body, over the t-shirt that revealed a hint of her bare stomach, over the skirt that ended halfway down her thighs, the skin red from running. This, too, was an optical illusion: her body billowing towards him. He could feel the warmth emanating from her skin; it enveloped him. Ezio was aware of her breathing, the billowing of her body. He seemed to be swaying, swooning, and then he let the waves wash over him.

  Her warm belly was right in front of his mouth, so close his nose touched her skin. He kissed her navel and said in surprise, ‘I smell blossoms.’

  ‘My turn,’ Giovanna exclaimed, and pushed Ezio onto his back. She was taller and stronger than he was.

  After their first kiss, Ezio had wanted to carry Giovanna out of the sea, but she kept slipping from his arms. His clumsiness made her laugh.

  Now, several warm nights and long days later, they were back on the beach, frolicking in the languorous sunshine.

  Ezio had gone over to her house. He’d stood in front of the Berlucchi family home for a full five minutes before he summoned the courage to knock on the front door. A girl with honey-toned skin answered. Ezio introduced himself and asked for her sister. The girl stared at him and then yelled as loudly as her small body allowed, ‘Mama! Mama!’

  Giovanna’s mother appeared in the doorway. Her body was large and her forehead wide but smooth. She wasn’t all that old yet. Her bushy eyebrows were dark blonde.

  Ezio introduced himself again and explained that he’d come for her daughter.

  ‘Which one?’ the mother asked. ‘I’ve got five.’

  He wanted to say that he’d come for the daughter with the breathtaking bathing costume, the daughter he’d kissed and wanted to marry, but he only managed a very soft ‘Giovanna’.

  The little girl had her mother’s voice, he realised, when she shouted Giovanna’s name. Three protracted syllables, then the last culminating in a crescendo. Ezio could see all of her teeth.

  When her sister didn’t appear straight away, the little girl asked her mother, ‘Why does h
e want to see Giovanna?’

  ‘Why don’t you ask him?’

  Ezio could feel himself blushing. He tried to find words to distract her — words that might placate a little girl. But again, he had no idea what to say. Too many men in his family.

  Giovanna came out, taken aback by the sight of Ezio. Taken aback, but amused, too.

  Instead of leaving them in peace, Giovanna’s mother and little sister hung around and were joined by the other three Berlucchi women. The only one who kept a low profile was the father. He was praying for the young man’s life.

  Ezio’s breath caught in his throat.

  Then the little sister asked, ‘What do you want?’

  Ezio looked at Giovanna, but she didn’t come to the rescue.

  Her mother and sisters burst out laughing. The whole situation was beginning to feel like a scene from an opera.

  Eventually, Ezio asked if Giovanna wanted to go to the beach.

  Against a backdrop of hysterical laughter from the chorus, the eldest sister said ‘yes’. Finally and unexpectedly: the first yes.

  An hour and fifteen minutes later, they arrived in San Cataldo. They’d covered the eight kilometres in record time by chasing each other, and when they caught sight of the sea they removed their sandals and ran barefoot onto the beach.

  Ezio waded into the water in his underpants. Giovanna put on the ripped bathing costume right there on the sand, plunged into the sea, and vanished.

  What followed was the same old game: when Giovanna didn’t resurface, Ezio went looking for her, found her, and brought her back up.

  ‘Kiss me,’ Giovanna said. ‘Go on then, kiss me!’

  Ezio closed his eyes and leaned in, but Giovanna had already slipped from his arms and disappeared under the water. He dived in after her and tried to bring her back to the surface, but she refused to be recaptured. Again and again, she managed to escape from his arms. She was like a dolphin, and relished the game.

  Back on the beach, they panted with exertion. They plonked down on the white sand, lying side by side in the sunshine. Ezio wasn’t sure if Giovanna wanted him to kiss her. And so minutes passed; minutes that felt like days, which in turn felt like weeks, months, years. Silence lasts an eternity when there’s a girl lying beside you.

  After seven hundred years, Giovanna said, ‘You can rest your head on my stomach, if you like.’

  Indeed, it felt as if an eternity had passed when, after seven hundred years, Ezio finally got to touch Giovanna’s stomach again. He kissed her navel.

  ‘I smell blossoms,’ he said in wonder.

  ‘My turn,’ Giovanna exclaimed, and less than two seconds later she was lying on top of Ezio and pressed her mouth to his navel.

  Giovanna smelled something other than blossoms. She smelled something she couldn’t immediately place. Maybe the closest thing was the opposite of blossoms: an odour reminiscent of death and decay.

  ‘There’s something inside your navel,’ she said. ‘And it needs to come out.’

  ‘What is it?’ Ezio asked.

  ‘It stinks.’

  Giovanna got up and ran away. Ezio was too stunned for words. He stayed where he was, closed his eyes, and prayed for a deluge to sweep his body away. He was afraid she wouldn’t come back, that the stench was unbearable. Would he ever be able to hang out with girls, be easygoing around them, without always fearing the worst?

  ‘I found something!’ Giovanna yelled.

  Ezio opened his eyes to see her towering over his stomach with a smile.

  ‘What are you going to do?’ Ezio asked.

  ‘I’m going to remove that thing from your navel.’

  ‘What thing?’

  ‘That dark thing,’ Giovanna said, ‘that’s really smelly.’

  He felt something enter his navel — the tip of a small twig or a stick.

  ‘It’s stuck,’ Giovanna said. ‘But not for much longer.’

  ‘It hurts.’

  ‘Shh.’

  Ezio tried to put a brave face on it, but when he felt as if she was rummaging around in his navel with the tip of a knife, he squealed.

  ‘Relax,’ Giovanna said. ‘It’s out.’

  She dangled a twig in front of his eyes. On the end was a moist and murky little pellet.

  ‘What is it?’ Ezio asked.

  Giovanna shrugged her shoulders. ‘A mussel, maybe?’

  What he saw when he looked at the dark thing was the abyss of love. Ezio was terrified she’d get up and abandon him there on the beach once and for all.

  ‘Do you still like me?’ he asked.

  Giovanna was absolutely fascinated by the mussel. ‘Shall we put him back in the sea?’ she suggested.

  Ezio nodded, afraid to repeat his question.

  Giovanna rose to her feet and hurled the branch with the grubby little pellet into the water. Then she leaned back over Ezio — her face over his stomach, her mouth close to his navel, smiling, kissing, and teasing him.

  Ezio felt Giovanna’s lips touch first his navel, then his lower belly, the edge of his underpants, and for a split second the fabric that rose millimetre by millimetre.

  Giovanna’s eyes were ablaze. ‘Your turn now,’ she said. ‘Kiss me.’

  Ezio looked around. A couple lay sunbathing less than a hundred metres away. The woman’s eyes were closed, the man had a newspaper in his hands.

  ‘Are you scared?’ Giovanna asked, laughing just as her sisters and mother had done.

  It was one of those moments that would later rise like a luminous vision from the mists of his memory. The image of her face, her mischievous laugh, even the ambient sounds — everything would come back. And then Ezio would want to kiss her again. Again and again and again.

  Giovanna shifted onto her side, one elbow in the sand, resting her head on her hand. Her body was a wave.

  He kissed her navel, he kissed her lower belly, and he kissed the knot of the bathing costume that used to be a one-piece. He brushed his lips across the tightly stretched, narrowing fabric, and when he didn’t know what to do next, Giovanna moved her hips. She was kissing him with her body.

  When they were lying side by side again, they didn’t speak. They watched the sky and felt as if they were floating.

  At dusk, when the horizon turned crimson and the water black, Ezio escorted Giovanna home. He held her hand for eight kilometres.

  The spluttering from the loudspeakers sounded like applause at the opera. Those who weren’t tourists and had a good pair of ears knew the next stop was Pescara. The sea was visible behind the windows along the aisle: rippled and ultra-marine.

  The young lady opposite Ezio had gotten to her feet. She’d failed to notice that her skirt had ridden up. Ezio wanted to look away, but something inside him was stronger. His gaze was drawn to her thighs: the young skin, its warm tint, its sheen. He looked at them the way he’d looked at the images in his mind for all those years. Yet now it felt like a farewell to this beauty. The skirt wasn’t pulled back in place; it simply slipped down again — slowly, irrevocably, like a curtain falling.

  ‘Ciao,’ the young lady said.

  Their eyes met briefly. Then she slid open the door and walked into the aisle. Ezio caught one final glimpse of her, with the sea in the background. Then she was gone.

  The operation, the removal of the mussel from Ezio’s navel, hadn’t gone without a hitch. There were complications. It began with a bit of irritation, but soon after Ezio started feeling nauseous. And in the days that followed he suffered terrible stomach-aches. He drank a cup of olive oil and went to the toilet every hour. Ezio blamed the pain on his bowels, on some dodgy food perhaps. It never occurred to him that it could be something else. Finally, the doctor told him he had an infection in his navel.

  ‘Strange,’ the doctor said, removing pus with a cotton bud. ‘A strange place for an
infection.’

  Ezio didn’t tell him that someone had been poking around in it with a twig and extracted a grubby little pellet. It wouldn’t have made it any less strange.

  He left the doctor’s house with a tube of ointment, bent double, because he was in too much pain to walk straight. And so Ezio learned that the person you love can also hurt you. But the longing wouldn’t actually admit this thought. He yearned for Giovanna, for her smooth belly illuminated by the sun.

  After the navel inspection, he saw her three times. And each time they strayed further from the sea, enjoyed longer kisses, and floated a little higher. But then the pain became unbearable. Ezio wondered if he might be afflicted by desire, by the lust that wanted to gnaw through the elastic material of Giovanna’s bathing costume. Perhaps he was.

  After his visit to the doctor, Ezio spent three days in bed. Then he could walk upright again. And it was upright he made his way to Giovanna’s house and knocked on the front door.

  The washing was drying in the sun. On the line, among the dresses flapping about, were underpants. The biggest were white, the smallest pink. Ezio inhaled the scent of lavender so deeply that some of the atoms lingered in the conduits of his memory.

  Giovanna opened the door. She smiled, but never once during the entire walk to San Cataldo did she say she’d missed Ezio.

  He’d missed her terribly. During each bite, each step, each heartbeat, and each breath, he’d whispered her name, while his belly felt close to bursting. The combination, the mix of navel pain and longing, was too much for one person to bear.

  Giovanna was happy to be outside and darted down the road to San Cataldo like a sparrow. Ezio’s hands were trembling, including the one holding Giovanna’s. He held her tight, worried she might fly off, float away without him.

  Within hearing distance of the sea, in the lee of a small sand dune, his fears were stilled. Mind you, not immediately. First, there was silence: one hundred, two hundred, three hundred years. Again, Ezio didn’t have the courage to kiss her. Why, oh why was he so scared? What should he be scared of? Ezio heard the voice of reason addressing him, but what does reason know of trembling hands and a heart pounding like that of a hunted animal? Nothing. Sure, later, with hindsight, it can make sense of it all, muttering and musing like an old man.