Ivan reads them through to the end, then rereads them again, then turns the cards over and looks at the beach, the sea, the bridge. He places them on his bed alongside the envelope with his name on it and stares up at the ceiling.
And, well, he can’t remember this business about a message in a balloon. Sure, it’s plausible; they made you do stupid things like that all the time in elementary school. Paintings with macaroni glued on for Mother’s Day, letters to other kids from Reggio Emilia’s sister city in Calabria—that kind of junk. But he doesn’t remember the balloon. Or maybe he does. Nine years have gone by, he was a kid, who knows?
No one. But Ivan thinks about it anyways, and while he thinks about it he stands up and pulls out a flyer for a pizza place he’d been handed outside school. He turns it over. The reverse side is blank. He sets it on the blanket, takes a blue marker, rests it on top, and starts moving it up and down.
With his other hand he reaches for the phone in his pants pocket, checks to see if someone has sent him any messages or anything at all. Nothing. So, out of curiosity, he looks up Forte dei Marmi and the road to get there and he thinks about how far that balloon had flown, from the Villa Cadè Kennedy Elementary School way up to the top of the mountains, passing over them and descending to the coast, to the pine grove on the shore. Then Ivan looks at the normal road, the one people have to take to get there, snaking through the Apennines, and after that it’s all downhill until you hit the plains on the other side. Going on foot would be impossible, as would going by bike, and who knows how cold it would be to ride a scooter through the mountains. But the Ape could do it. If you ask Ivan, you could easily get there in the Ape, as long as you left enough time and didn’t rush.
And as he follows the road and all its twists and turns, with his marker he traces the same twists and turns on the slip of paper. At first glance, they look like random lines, made up on the spur of the moment, aimless as a balloon in the sky.
But if you pull away from the sheet of paper and take a step back to get a better look, suddenly there it is in front of you, your rhinoceros.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book took four years to write, and wonderful people during those years who kept me on my feet, more or less.
They are: Giulia Ichino, Marilena Rossi, Antonio Franchini, Riccardo Cavallero, Antonio Riccardi, Mario de Laurentiis, Marta Dosi, Giacomo Callo, Beppe Del Greco, Camilla Sica, Elisa Martini, Emanuela Canali, Nadia Focile, Francesca Gariazzo. They did amazing work and also put a ton of heart into it, which has nothing to do with work.
Isabella Macchiarulo, precious guide through the world of albinos.
Teresa Martini, Roberto Mancinelli, Francesca Giannelli, Carlotta and Edoardo Nesi, Michele Pellegrini, Giada Giannecchini, Matteo Raffaelli, Michael Moore, Debora Di Nero, Gipi, Sandro Veronesi, Teresa Ciabatti, Chiara Valerio, Antonio Troiano, Aldo Grasso, Mariarosa Mancuso, Federica Bosco, Simone Lenzi, Michele Boroni, Daniele Bresciani, Marta Caramelli, Mauro Corona, Fabio Guarnaccia, Michele Dalai.
My “pier” pals, for telling me often, “Lucky you, you don’t do shit for a living.”
And everyone who over the years has understood me, even if there was nothing to understand.
See you around.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Fabio Genovesi was born in Forte dei Marmi in Versilia in 1974. He is the author of Live Bait (Other Press, 2014), which has been translated into over ten languages, an earlier novel, Versilia Rock City, the memoir Morte Dei Marmi (Laterza, 2012), and The Breaking of a Wave, winner of the Young Reader’s Strega Prize.
The Breaking of a Wave Page 44