Infinite Summer
Page 1
ALSO BY EDOARDO NESI
Story of My People
Copyright © 2015 Bompiani/RCS Libri S.p.A., Milan
First published in Italian as L’estate infinita in 2015 by Bompiani
English translation copyright © 2016 Other Press
Billy Joel “Scenes from an Italian Restaurant” lyrics on this page from the Columbia album The Stranger (1977).
Bob Dylan “Like a Rolling Stone” lyrics on this page from a 1965 Columbia single.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from Other Press LLC, except in the case of brief quotations in reviews for inclusion in a magazine, newspaper, or broadcast. For information write to Other Press LLC, 267 Fifth Avenue, 6th Floor, New York, NY 10016. Or visit our Web site: www.otherpress.com
The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:
Names: Nesi, Edoardo, 1964- author. | Kilgarriff, Alice, translator.
Title: Infinite summer / Edoardo Nesi ; translated by Alice Kilgarriff.
Other titles: Estate infinita. English
Description: New York : Other Press, 2017. | “First published in Italian as L’estate infinita in 2015 by Bompiani” [Milano] — Verso title page.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016047145 (print) | LCCN 2017009327 (ebook) | ISBN 9781590518229 (hardback) | ISBN 9781590518236 (e-book)
Subjects: LCSH: Young men—Italy—Fiction. | Entrepreneurship—Fiction. | Textile factories—Fiction. | Businesspeople—Family relationships—Fiction. | Tuscany (Italy)—Fiction. | Domestic fiction. | BISAC: FICTION / Coming of Age. | FICTION / Family Life. | FICTION / Literary.
Classification: LCC PQ4874.E728 E7513 2017 (print) | LCC PQ4874.E728 (ebook) | DDC 853/.914—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016047145
Ebook ISBN 9781590518236
Publisher’s Note:
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
v4.1
a
To my family
How can we live without our lives?
How will we know it’s us without our past?
—JOHN STEINBECK, The Grapes of Wrath
After the miracle of the early 1960s, the Italian economy continued to grow: between 1970 and 1979, the GDP grew at 40%. In the following decade the rapid growth slowed, but still managed to reach 25%.
—ISTAT, Italia in Cifre, 2011
Contents
Cover
Also by Edoardo Nesi
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
THE SKY IS PERFECT
A NEW BUSINESS
THE BEAST
LET THE OTHERS CRY
THE GUY FOR THE GOOD DAYS
AN INEVITABLE MIRACLE
AN OLYMPIC SWIMMING POOL
MY LODEN
A GREAT SATISFACTION
THE EXTRA MAN
AN IRON SUPPOSITORY
THE SMELL OF THE NEW
HE LOSES HIS HEAD
NEW YORK CITY
HE COMPLETELY LOSES HIS HEAD
THE ARMY OF DREAMERS
A CRUMB OF LOVE
JUST LIKE THAT
SKIPPING SCHOOL TO READ
IN A LIFETIME
A COOL MORNING
SHE WOULD NEVER FORGET
THE INFINITE ABSURDITIES LOVE CAN DRIVE A MAN TO COMMIT
AT THE BANK
THE SUMMER OF ’79
DESTINY DOES NOT EXIST
PIRANHAS IN THE AQUARIUM
BEAUTIFUL
ASHURBANIPAL
WHOSOEVER UNCEASINGLY STRIVES UPWARD
MONTE CARLO
CINZIA’S PARTY
THE BEAST IS BACK
MADDALENA OR MILENA
MOTEL AGIP
A GREAT, INEXPLICABLE SHOW
HIS FIRST THING
BLUE
Saturday, 7 August 1982
PERIWINKLE
A FUTURE THAT WOULD NEVER END
NO PROTECTION
THE NUMBER OF THE BEAST
E LA CHIAMANO ESTATE
THE CONCERT
THE REAL BEAST
About the Author
THE SKY IS PERFECT
IT IS THE SUMMER OF 1972, and an August day shines on Italy.
The sky is perfect, so miraculously clear as to seem painted. Not so much as a cloud swells innocently on the horizon, or stretches out, elongated by the high-altitude winds until it dissolves into the absolute blue. And the sea — lightly rippled by a breeze coming from Corsica, its blue only slightly more intense than that of the sky, as if trying to mimic its perfection — kisses a long stretch of fine white sand which extends as far as the eye can see, in an apparent attempt to protect the sea from the mountains, which are covered in impenetrable forest and split by deep veins of pure marble, so implausibly high that they appear to have only recently burst forth from the earth out of some mysterious movement of tectonic plates.
It is a mountain range, the smallest in the world, and its violent slope toward the shore is populated with ancient and mighty holm oaks which, upon meeting the ground, leave the way clear for the thousands of trunks of an immense pine grove, contorted by storms and chance. There is a village at the center of the pine grove, and the roofs of its houses are protected by the same terra-cotta tiles used by the Etruscans. The three or four hotels — ghost white, awkward, adorned with proudly modernist names — are only just visible among the tips of the pines lit up by the vivid green of the new needles. The soft curve of the bleached asphalt road accompanies the shoreline, almost touching a large beachside house that, on closer inspection, is actually a nightclub.
And beyond the pine grove hundreds of multicolored beach umbrellas, loungers, flagpoles, cabanas of every color — white, yellow, blue, orange, turquoise, and bottle green — punctuate the long beach and transform it into a carnival.
Listen to the concert of a thousand sounds: the flutter of air caught in bicycle spokes, the metallic fart of the Vespas, the never-ending hum of scooters, the growl of the few cars that vainly charge along the empty coast road as if it were a racetrack, the distant rumble of the diesel engines of sporadic buses, the clattering of the slow trains running along the single track that follows the coast.
Listen to the omnipresent melodies of the songs: the elementary chord sequences, rhythms fast and slow; the wise, stupid, sweet lyrics that emanate from the omnipresent battery radios in brightly colored plastic and shake the passion-filled hearts of the men, women, and teenagers who silently listen and dance and at times sing in chorus without imagining or caring that once the tepid air had melted them away, those songs would rise into the sky and reach outer space, where they would continue to travel forever, and forever they would recount to the aliens the eternal glory of being a-a-abbronzatissima.
Good God, listen to that deafening beating of hearts, recognize the ardor of their hope and the incessant activity of their dreams, treasure their vain and highly important words and the cries and shrieks of children and all the lies and boasts and prayers and promises and whispers and sighs and declarations of love that provide the soundtrack to these intrepid Italian days.
And just as it seems nothing could interrupt the slow, empty decline of the morning, a faraway spot appears in the sky and slowly grows bigger, losing its roundness and taking on the bird-like form of a small propeller airplane that
flies low and slow and heavy, ever closer to the sea, right in front of the beach, and suddenly emits dozens of tiny red and white parachutes that splatter the perfect sky, levitate for a while in the still air, and then begin to fall slowly, oscillating, shiny like toys.
From the beach, an army runs toward the water: men, women, teenagers, and children rise from their director’s chairs and their sun loungers and the sand, and start running. The teen-age boys are first. They look like a phalanx of equatorial natives pursuing an enormous fleeing beast, entirely naked except for their minuscule bathing trunks. They set off at speed, kicking up the sand with their feet, their backs taut from the contractions of the miraculous muscles of youth. Behind them, men with large backs slicked with sun cream and sweat are limping and laughing and snorting with embarrassment, risking the health of their ankles in the soft burning sand, egged on by their wives and children, who had started to run but, quickly overtaken, had decided to go back to the umbrellas and cheer them on instead.
A crowd is now invading the sea. With water up to their knees, even the fastest among them are forced to slow down or change their step: some march energetically as if trying to plow the seabed with their feet, some jump awkwardly, some are convinced they can run over the water like basilisks, but only the smartest decide to throw themselves in and start swimming in the shallow sea, sending water flying with their strokes and filling the sea with foam.
The swimmers arrive first; breathless and dripping they turn to the beach and hold up the colored plastic cards that had been attached to the parachutes. They scream with joy. If and when they visit a drugstore, they will win an inflatable rubber cow, a large blue-and-white-striped beach ball from Nivea, a one-liter bottle of Coca-Cola, or a jar of Nutella.
For a few minutes, the air fills with shouts of jubilation until even the slowest manage to grab their own little parachute with its gift card. Then everything becomes quiet, and in a big peaceful invasion of the naked, dozens of men and children in swimsuits slowly return to the beach, clutching their parachutes, panting and smiling, and do not even cast a glance at those who didn’t move from their sun loungers — those who stayed put, incredulous and disdainful, watching that caravansary.
As they return to the shore, satisfied and dripping, they feel no shame at having suddenly thrown themselves into the sea: they know it is not an inflatable rubber cow that is being given them, but the raw and immensely human idea that life can be the stuff of dreams, and that dreams have nothing to do with ideals (ah, ideals!), but with things: the incessant shower of new, shiny products that the radio and newspapers and television shows constantly advertise and that these same people imagine, build, package, transport, sell, and, of course, consume. Why should they doubt these things were made for them, and are therefore already theirs, if they fall like manna from heaven?
An eight-year-old boy is lying on the fine sand next to a beach umbrella. His name is Vittorio Vezzosi. He is frowning with his arms crossed, ostentatiously turning his back on his mother, who, as always, wouldn’t let him run into the water with the other kids, even though this time he had fallen on his knees to beg her, on the verge of tears, his hands clasped.
— There have been accidents, and children have been trampled by the crowd and drowned. His mother had said this as she watched the sea, protected by the screen of her tortoiseshell sunglasses.
— No, Mom, if you are trampled you die on the beach, not in the water, Vittorio had answered in vain, and upon hearing those words his mother turned to face him: he was quivering, almost trembling with anticipation of the run, like a young deer or an antelope.
— Mom! Come on, let me go! Please!
— No, Vittorio! No! That’s enough! And Arianna had lain back on her lounger.
It had been a difficult morning. First her husband had called at the house they were renting from June to September (a newly renovated lemonary) to tell her that he would not be able to join her that evening, because he had to go with his friend to watch Juventus play in a prechampionship friendly, in a nearby seaside town.
At first Arianna thought it was a joke, so she didn’t say anything, holding the receiver and watching Vittorio performing tricks on his bicycle and muttering the implausible names of famous cyclists, dangerously close to the vases of agave and the leaf-filled branches of the large magnolia from the villa next door that reached well into their tiny garden.
It was impossible that Cesare had forgotten that it was her birthday — her badly timed midsummer birthday that she had never been able to celebrate as she would have liked, not even when she was a child — and it wasn’t just any birthday, but that terrible, fateful thirtieth birthday, and so she responded simply with a “yes,” two sharp “okays,” and a “bye” before hanging up.
It was a joke — one of his usual stupid jokes — and he was already dialing the number to welcome her with that raspy, vulgar laugh and tell her she had been had, because he actually held in his hands a wonderful present for her and he would come to the seaside to take her out for dinner and eat spaghetti with clams, no soccer and no Juventus. So she had waited by the phone for five minutes, and then another five, but Cesare never called back, and after five more interminable minutes Arianna got on her bike and went to the beach without saying a word, followed by the boy, who kept standing up on the pedals, muttering wildly about legendary Alpine climbs.
As soon as they had reached the beach, she had slipped into her cabana without greeting a single person, changed into her swimsuit and sarong — she who hated sarongs — and stepped down onto the beach in a slalom between the tight rows of beach umbrellas, barely acknowledging those families who occupied every square centimeter of the beach in military fashion the entire month of August. She carefully spread Nivea all over Vittorio’s shoulders and left him to run toward the sea, then lay down on her lounger and realized she was alone. Abandoned. Forgotten.
Her summer was over. She didn’t want it anymore. She didn’t want the sun and the sky and the sea and the green mountains streaked with marble. She felt imprisoned by the thought that she would have to stay there until mid-September in that tiny town where she had arrived at the end of June with Vittorio because her husband wanted to tell his friends that he had sent his family to the seaside for the entire summer, and only went to visit them on weekends. Now she understood why.
Arianna bit her lower lip and gave in to one of her invisible crying fits behind the black lenses of her tortoiseshell sunglasses. She used a technique she had learned as a child: if she stayed perfectly still, if she didn’t move, if she pretended she was just tanning, she would soon disappear from the attentions of those greasy matrons who surrounded her, pretending to do the crossword when in fact all they were doing was giving her hate-filled stares because their husbands had accidently paid her a compliment. Although she was turning thirty that day, she didn’t look a day over twenty-five and didn’t seem to take the slightest interest in her beauty, which was so simple and obvious as to be indisputable and, therefore, unforgivable.
She stayed there lying on her lounger for a long while, her face buried in the cushion, locked inside her sobbing, lost in a fog of thoughts that kept going at her while her mood swung wildly between repeating to herself that she was exaggerating — there certainly had to be an explanation for it all and her husband loved her and he really was going to see Juventus and not out to dinner in Portovenere with a younger thing — and feeling totally empty, deprived of a future, washed up, old, certainly betrayed, consigned to the life of a separated wife, blameless and, as such, comforted in public but derided in private, nothing more than prey, soon to be on the receiving end of unctuous phone calls from her husband’s friends.
Luckily, the miraculous arrival of the airplane broke that unbearable train of thought, and when she sat up to look for Vittorio, she was consoled to find him kneeling next to her, begging her to let him go and claim his first miniparachute — that skinny son of hers with his broad shoulders, long legs, bright wh
ite teeth, and jet-black hair which was inexplicably turning curly.
She had smiled and turned her mind back to when he was a kid and would always run away as soon as he realized no one was paying attention. Naked, silent, and unsteady, he would go off to patrol the beach, as proud as a king surveying his kingdom, and nothing would remain of him under the parasol but his bucket and spade. When Arianna noticed her child was no longer there, she would feel her throat closing, and would be assailed by fear, and would stand up and start running around madly, calling out to him and becoming increasingly desperate, her voice broken.
Search patrols would immediately be launched, with fathers and other children offering unconditional help and splitting up into two groups to go in opposite directions and comb the beach in search of the naked fugitive, while her husband, who never offered to help nor rose from his lounger, would sit there smiling, telling everyone proudly that they needed to tether their adventurous son to the parasol to keep him nearby, and growling at her under his breath that it was all her fault the child had run off, for God’s sake, and she would agree—“Yes, it’s true, it’s my fault, I’m an idiot” — and she stayed there, pinned to the spot, shaking and crying in the middle of the beach, her thoughts filled with maniacs and kidnappers and child-snatchers, her glasses unable to hide the tears of fear and rage that streaked her face and fell onto the sand creating tiny round craters of a darker-colored beige: a twenty-five-year-old Madonna, wounded and suffering and, as such, irresistible to both the fathers of other children and the boys themselves, in whose dreams she often appeared.
When they eventually found him, Vittorio was often very, very far from her parents’ umbrella, and always surrounded by women stroking his jet-black hair and cooing over him, complimenting his eternally good nature. It really was impossible to be angry with him: he was always smiling and in no way scared by finding himself alone. He never asked after his mother: he knew someone would come to collect him, and that it would all be fine in the end. For him, it was like traveling.