by Erri De Luca
“I’m leaving everything here, I have no further use for summer clothes. I don’t believe there will be another summer at the seashore. After this one it’s not possible to wish for another.” She spoke softly, making it hard to determine whether she was relieved or regretful. Because of the wind, she had tied a silk scarf around her hair and put on sunglasses. We walked past the beaches. The umbrellas were closed, few chairs were open, hardly any people.
The sea was beginning to swell. “It won’t be an easy crossing,” I said.
“Better that way. I’ll think more about the sea and less about the land behind me. I came wanting to play at freedom. Now that I’ve finished secondary school, I’ll go on to the university. I had a wonderful time here in this cordial, carefree south where a kiss lasts no time at all, less than diving into water. But it couldn’t go on that smoothly. That’s how you came along—gesturing like my father, discovering my background, my suffering as a child. You, a boy with your first trace of beard, covered with salt and the smell of fish, what the devil do you have to do with my father? And yet he chose you in order to be close to me, lovingly, steadily. And during his visit I became a child again. You gave me this. Last night at the festival I was happy to be your daughter. It made up for all the missing years. In that holiday crowd I relived half of the life I lost without him. I don’t know what I did to you, kid, and I don’t want to know. You came to me as a gift and I called you mine because my father was there, in you and on you. I don’t know what we did to you. We took hold of you as the only hand that could bring our hands together. We besieged you with our need to find each other one last time. I can’t even offer to apologize because for me this was a blessing.”
“Even if all this is true and I was no more than an unlikely means of encounter, I felt love, Chaie, vast love, a reaching out over time. I experienced the ages that await me before I attain the affection and tenderness of an adult for a little daughter. You and your father gave me a purpose in this world, me, a bewildered kid, muted by awkwardness. You called me Tateh, Tatehle, the name you loved most in this world. So what if I missed out on your kisses which lasted no longer than a dive? I was there to kiss your forehead, give you my arm, buy you cotton candy, carry your suitcase. Now I want you to leave, to forget, to settle safely in some part of the world. I won’t ask for an address in order to write to you, I won’t leave you mine. We end here. We will not see each other again. I have to finish my summer, the one that changed my features. Soon I will go back to my home, to the city, I will give up my studies and find some kind of job. During this summer you liberated me. I can see my life from a height now, precisely on this day when I am losing you and the sirocco is blocking out even the island right in front. I can see myself out there alone, in a crowd that won’t be festive. I see myself there all alone. Words of revolt, more blinding than this wind, are taking shape.
“On this island I learned freedom from the closed life of the city, pitiful freedoms of a body finally out in the open. The two of you have implanted love in my flesh, and are tossing me into the world like a rolling ball. Within love there is also anger, the sudden movement of getting up from a chair, as you showed me yourself. You called me outside, Chaie. Only you could have done that, only you whose name is life.”
The wind carried off my words. I don’t know if she heard them, if she wanted to hear them. She took my free arm and held it close to her side. We walked slowly with the wind that came from the sea. My skinny body was not enough to shelter her.
“You really put nothing in this suitcase.”
She, stopped for a moment, then, with a metallic ring, a silver wire in her throat, she finally said, “I think we’re very brave not to cry.”
You had already used up every drop. I was awaiting a fire in the depth of the night of your departure. Not even the sirocco, which makes eyes tear, could squeeze a drop out of us.
We went unhurried toward the departure, our hips pressing close, our legs touching. She set the pace, my barefoot stride adjusting to her closed city shoes. I could have walked on and on, the island would not have been big enough for me, nor the day; time itself would not have been long enough. My blood pulsed to the cadence of her steps, my breath came with their beats. I brushed my head against her scarf.
“Are we in step like this?” she asked.
“Very much so, as though our hearts were directing our feet. We form a single unit all the way to the port.”
The U of the port appeared behind a curve and I told her that it was a volcanic lake dug by the Bourbons to the sea, that the island bubbled underneath with magma, that it healed sicknesses, leaving the body grateful. Sighting the boat, the words of a tour guide began tumbling out of my mouth, along with recommendations for preventing seasickness. I stopped babbling only when Daniele startled us from behind.
“From the back you look like a soldier with four legs, side by side in parade formation.”
Taken by surprise, we stopped, smiling as we faced him, and he jokingly added, “At ease.” Then we moved apart, breaking the minimal rank of two.
I went to buy the tickets. When I came back, Caia took off her glasses and untied her scarf. Her eyes were red but dry like mine. She took my hands and placed them at her temples.
“When I left my father the last time, at a train, I was afraid. I’m afraid now too, but for you.”
I placed a kiss on her forehead, my hands burning with energy.
“Ciao, Tateh.”
“Addio, Chaiele.”
“Ciao, kid.”
“Ciao, life. Don’t worry about me, I’ll be following the path you set me on.”
Her eyes fell on my bony feet, sticking out of my jeans, and the trace of a smile appeared in her breath. She put the glasses and the scarf back on and turned toward the boat.
Daniele turned around, shook my hand like a good friend, took Caia’s suitcase, and went up to her. She started moving toward the gangplank without looking back. I stayed there until the stern disappeared beyond the lighthouse, behind the pines. My hands were hot with power and I felt a violent impulse to move, to act. The sirocco was gaining force. Generally, it wrapped me in indolence; this time, it unleashed a tarantella in my blood. I turned my back to the port and the wind grabbed me by the shoulders, pushing me forward, and in its hot breath I began to run. Caia was no longer on one arm and her suitcase on the other. I was light, restraining the soles of my feet so as not to lengthen my stride too much. I was running uphill. I hadn’t run for some time and I was astounded by how agile, how fast I was.
I stopped at home to make sure my things were ready. Then I joined Nicola at the beach. He had not gone out to sea.
“It lasts three days, this wind. All we can do is put out some traps in the bay and hope for octopus.”
I picked up one of the traps and looked at it without saying much. In every trap for fish there is a way our, but the fish don’t find it. Looking at that simple device, I felt like a fish, incapable of figuring it out.
I looked at the heaving sea. I saw Caia’s ferry, which had not attempted to enter the Procida channel because it was too rough and had made a detour farther out, passing in front of the fishermen’s beach. I saw the prow pitching and rolling. Caia was surely remembering to hold on tight and keep her eyes focused straight ahead so as not to vomit, as I had suggested. Daniele was there to help her.
“Daniele is on that ferry returning to the city,” I pointed out to Nicola.
“Better today, tomorrow will be worse,” he replied.
The boat was beached. I touched it with my palm. The wood was smooth from the salt and the yearly painting, and the oars had carved a groove near the stem of the oarlock at the point of friction. The tiller of the rudder was dark where the hand held it. Every piece showed wear, handling, softening, rounding from use. I slid my hand along the rim of the bow.
“Do you polish the boat?” I asked with a feeling of tenderness.
“As you can see, the wood has its grain. When
we cut it to make planks we always respect that. If it’s cut against the grain, the wood warps, it rebels, and so much so that in the end it splits. Even seasoned wood is like that, it’s worked with the grain. A boat is polished along the direction of the wood’s grain. It’s rubbed from bow to stern, the way the sea does it.”
“I’m stroking it because the season is over. I won’t be coming fishing anymore.”
The wind rose from the sea, coming from Capri and hitting our shore of the island with force.
“How do you feel about the sirocco?” I asked.
“It’s the worst wind. It changes the face of the island. It blows away a beach on one side and carries it over to the other. The sirocco is not a wind, it’s a fury. The sky disappears, hot air hits the head, preventing it from reasoning. One should not conceive children when the sirocco blows, or make decisions. It ignites fires. It makes the bell ring, do you hear it?”
A dour peal rose on the current of the wind and weakly reached the beach. “It’s a furious wind.”
Caia’s ferry had turned the island’s cape and could no longer be seen.
I said good-bye to Nicola and went to Uncle’s house. I saw him at the gate, speaking with a woman in his little garden.
“Just wanted to thank you for all the times you let me go fishing this summer.”
He acknowledged my thanks with a nod and gave me a smile I had never before received from him. It was brief, intimate, then, the smile gone, he nodded again. It was his “yes” to me, a rare masculine “yes” that took note of me for the first time. I was not so dim-witted as to let this go to my head. For the first time he was accepting this nephew who carried his name. In that moment we coincided in a name, but that night I would have another, which I could not share.
At home, my father was at the dinner table. Already then there was talk about things to be done for our return to the city. The sirocco determined the end of the summer. He looked at me attentively and well disposed.
“I’m not sorry that the return to the city will scrape off some of that wild crust, but I am sorry to see you get back into a pair of shoes. Your bare feet put me in a good mood.”
In reply to his good humor I joked, “I put on shoes every year the way a convict attaches the chain to his feet. The first days I can barely walk. At least once I’d like to try and wear sandals right through the winter, like Franciscans.”
“It seems to me that for the past year it’s not just the sandals of monks that interest you. Are you perhaps becoming a believer?”
“No, all I became this summer is more of a fisherman,” I said, trying to keep our conversation in check, because we had moved from shoes to faith in too much of a hurry.
“I knew that you were seeing Daniele’s older friends, and that you had a crush on one of the girls.”
I was grateful to him for not pronouncing her name, and responded in a subdued voice, “I didn’t get anywhere. Uncle was right to tell me to find a more suitable girl.”
It was strange for us to be talking about such things. I tried to find the most ordinary words.
“Were you very disappointed?” he asked.
“Only a little.”
He looked at me searchingly. “Something is happening to you. You’ve acquired a terseness, a precision. You no longer accompany your words with your hands. You also stand straighter. It has done you good to be with older boys. Except that I’m a little worried about this sudden change. A father is prepared for his son to grow taller, catch up with him, surpass him, but he finds it hard to follow the transformations of his character. Yours I don’t yet know how to define, you don’t resemble anyone in our family. Can you help me out?”
He was being sincere. He found himself faced with a hardened son and was trying to understand him. I didn’t want to betray myself, say something that might be remembered the day after the fire. Nor did I want to repulse that rare intimacy.
“For the past year I see only wrongs. I acknowledge the debts that have come down to me. Last year you and Mama had to sign a document renouncing Grandpa’s estate because of debts. I discovered this year that I can’t do what you did. I see our city held in the grip of people who have sold it to the American army. I see foreign soldiers drunkenly pissing in our streets, I see women clinging to their trousers. These things have been around for some time, but I’m just discovering them now. I see that they don’t matter to anybody, nobody is offended, nobody is ashamed. I see that the war has humiliated us. Elsewhere it was over a long time ago, for us it goes on. I don’t know how to answer your question, I don’t know how to answer anything. However, the spring to answer is winding up inside of me.”
He listened to me, frowning. My remarks prompted him to defend himself, to take the other side. From there it was easy to go back to the recent past, to the war. For once he did not try to get out of it. He started to talk again in order to understand, not because he had already understood.
“You’re right to learn about the recent past; it is your right and also something that doesn’t interest most of your contemporaries. But I have the impression that you’re not going about it in a reasonable way. This may sound strange, but it seems to me that you want to enter into the past in order to correct it. You criticize it with an eye to changing it, but that can’t be done. Not even God can do anything about that. It’s already quite a lot to protect the present from mistakes, from causing harm that has to be repaired. That’s a lot even if it’s not enough, for to have done no harm does not save one from guilt. In difficult times which you didn’t know—and it’s not said that you need to experience them—in difficult times, to have done no harm is to become an accomplice of harm.”
He was looking beyond me and stopped, displeased by what he had said. “Accomplice is an inaccurate term and is also unfair,” he started up again, talking directly to me, holding me responsible for the word that he was refuting. “I didn’t know how to stand up to harm. I knew later, but even now I can’t be sure I would have acted appropriately. I lived in Rome. I knew that in Via Tasso they were torturing partisans. I never came near that street. I was one of the many, not one of the few, but an accomplice, no. If you wish to become one of the few, direct your attention to the present. Leave the past alone. You weren’t there, it is not your responsibility.”
He knew nothing about Caia, but I felt I had been exposed by him. And then what? Even if he had read my face and it was not just a flash of intuition, I would not have changed my mind. I didn’t want to deny or ever admit, and so I remained imprisoned in silence, awkwardly staring at my feet. Then he ended his speech.
“It’s wrong of me to talk to you this way. You’re still a boy with a wide margin for growth and I’m already attributing definitive things to you. In the meantime, your answer will be study, school, and respect. Can I count on that?”
He was once again the father of a young boy and he received the reply of a mechanical yes in conclusion. The thrust of his intuition had retreated and I shrugged off the intrusion of his intelligence.
I wandered through the streets. Pine needles and pinecones lay scattered by the wind. Now, my footsteps made a rustling sound and the needles tickled my feet. I had to remember that for the night. Should I remain barefoot or put on shoes? I decided barefoot was better. I walked past the pensione; the car was not there.
I carefully examined the little gate operated by a latch. There were no dogs; on the island no one had guard dogs. There were no trees that could catch fire. The wind would have spread a fire. My thoughts raced ahead and set up hypotheses. I weighed them and rejected them. I was focused on only one thing, aimed at a target.
I ambled around the island to relieve a pressure of readiness that did not want to wait. I had nothing else to do, no fishing, no beach. I walked over to the meeting place of the younger crowd. Eliana was there with a girlfriend. She greeted me warmly, then left her friend and came over to me.
“I’m glad you’re still here. When are you leaving?”
She too had her hair under a scarf. She had not come in search of me. She looked at me trustingly, opening herself up to the risk of being hurt. Was I still unresponsive? In order not to embarrass her I lowered my eyes.
“When this wind stops I’ll come to see you. I’ll have shoes on my feet and hair washed in fresh water. I’ll come to see you in the city. Nicola told me no one should make plans when the sirocco blows.”
I told her this in order to believe in a future, beyond that night, even if I couldn’t see myself beyond the fire. That was where the boundary was drawn. What do animals think, unaware of a future, focused on the brief renewal of the day? Is that how prisoners think? The wind forced us to cling to a wall.
“No plans. But is this a promise? If it is, then I want to wait for the end of the sirocco.”
I smiled and looked at her at last. The search for happiness was written all over her face. I gave a quick nod of agreement, then I said it, a firm, serious yes. And she leaned forward for a kiss. I turned my cheek slightly but she came squarely at my mouth, rapid, direct, like her words. The thought came to me that a person as frank as she also gave real kisses, kisses that would not settle for a cheek.
“Thanks,” I said.
“What for?” she asked, already heading back to her girlfriend.
“For the lip balm.”
She turned back to smile, holding on to the scarf on her head with one hand.