He guides me over officiously; but when I’ve heeded his call, he figures me out, and he’s no longer interested. His money-grubbing belittles me.
After shedding my garments, I find I’ve brought along the money I should have left in the hotel. It’s an absurd sum for a day at the beach: ten thousand lire and three hundred new francs. Why francs? I remember: I paid, I got money back during my layover at Orly; I changed it out, changed it back, made a stack with the brand new bills, folded them twice, once in the middle and once over Voltaire’s nose.
I slide the money into one pocket of the pants I’ve just removed, which I will leave behind in the canvas tent. I try to be trusting: nothing will happen here.
I reach the water’s edge, where the limitless mechanics of the sea caress and withdraw, lurch again, recede playfully…The sand, lit with glimmers, is the color of hazelnut, smooth, scoured, and passive.
There are no swimmers, save for far out. Observing this, I recognize that I prefer company and that my plan to take a solitary rest was absolutely insincere.
I see that there are hills (I don’t see temples), that there are arid spaces, stands of trees, slopes covered in red and yellow poppies.
I walk to where I saw people before. I stop before I get there. I refuse to be a hanger-on.
I look back at the sea: it’s still choppy. I feel a bit of fatigue and lie on my back. The sun in my eyes bothers me, and I roll onto my side. My perspective is different from down there, at the level of the beach. I notice a girl’s body, so natural, so trusting…Between the two of us, rising in the foreground, her sandals…Far off (I see now), where two hills meet, with third rising behind it, the pagan columns sit serenely…
I have slept, and I am starting to wake up, where? The confusion is agreeable, because it brings no worrying symptoms with it. The sun shines down on me lustily and abets my recollection. Only in this landscape can I feel I’ve arrived to where I wished to go. It is satisfying.
Something begins noiselessly (or the sea drowns it out). When I note this, it is already in motion.
Two girls are there, standing, in their minimal bikinis, there as though they’d just come to a stop. Four boys are in front of them, as if they too had just come to a stop in that moment.
They could be, but profuse with life, in human form, the columns of the temple on the hill, responding to the waters’ ancient summons.
This idealization pleases me, but it’s fleeting. Then I suppose that the girls are foreign and the four boys, in swimsuits, are Sicilian.
Briefly I consider the girls’ contours, but what seduces my senses most is the mystery of the sudden immobility of boys and girls alike.
It lasts only briefly, but long enough to imagine the boys are captivated, staring at them, and the girls bewildered by the admiration they’ve provoked, and feel themselves possessed, though from a distance, however scant, by the four adolescents’ devotion.
In the stillness, it is as if they are touching, but none makes a single gesture: it is the pure veneration of bodies.
I reach the sea. We struggle, I to swim and not sink, the sea to refuse my wishes. As I advance, I grow disoriented, and I don’t see the shore, or the boats, or the bathers. Suddenly I am struck by a vision of debris washing up on the beach, those things the sea has destroyed and expelled. Intermingled is the memory of other waters, another time, another fringe of sand, where one by one, the bodies of those slender Nordic women were brought up from the cruel sea, their long, fair hair dripping water…
A wave crashes over me; as I fall, I glimpse the shore and paddle toward it.
Upset, emerging from danger onto the dry, hot sand of the beach beyond the shoreline, with the taste of sand bitter in my mouth, I am overcome by impressions of that sea in Valencia. I hear the helical rumbling of the rescue helicopter making pass upon pass, and relive my envy of the pilot and his privileged view of the three women in the sunlight, beautiful and dead…
Which is my tent, and where is the guard? It’s not this one, because mine had two ears.
He comes over and I wait for him. He says, by way of introduction: “My coworker went to have lunch.”
He waves me past. So this one was mine.
I find my things, and something tells me to dig quickly through my pockets and to count the money again. The lire are there, all the ones I had. But two hundred of my new francs are gone. I calculate their value in dollars. It’s a stupid way to distract myself and put off what I have to do: complain, declare the theft. I walk out into the sun with the urge to shout, I’ve been robbed! The man with the missing ear is a mere step away, as though waiting for me, and I do tell him, “I’ve been robbed,” but without shouting.
Instead, it is he who raises his voice:
“Me…?” His voice trembles with wounded pride. “You come here to me to tell me you’ve been robbed? You think I’m a crook?”
“No,” I defend myself, in defiance of my thoughts, because in fact, he’s the one I suspect.
His chest puffs up, he poses on his short, solid legs, stretches out an arm, and says, in this grave, Olympic posture:
“The police station’s over there. Go if you want.”
A moment ago, there was no one around the tents. Now we have a crowd.
A man in street clothes has stepped forward without uttering a word. Perhaps it is not, as it is for the others, the simple hope of witnessing a fight that has drawn him. He doesn’t intervene, he lingers. The one-eared attendant notices something as well, perhaps that the witness is dangerous, because, still blustering, though now a bit calmer, he says:
“You are ruining me.”
“What am I ruining?”
“My reputation, with the spectacle you’ve staged here…”
“But I’ve been robbed!”
“Sir, I didn’t rob you.”
“Who did, then…?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t, Sir. If my friend took something, I’m sure he was just borrowing it.”
“What do you mean, took…? Borrowing…? I’m not putting up with this farce any longer! Where is the police station?”
“Just a moment, Sir,” he says, raising a dignified arm to placate my fit.
I’ll give him time, but I don’t want to get wrapped up in this mess, let alone in front of the crowd, which keeps growing and gawks at our dispute.
The inexpressive onlooker is still there, not far away.
“We’re poor, Sir. He’s my friend. We grew up together, in poverty, always. Filthy poverty! This is the first shot we’ve had at a stable job. Maybe he did do it, but don’t destroy things for us, Sir.”
He’s gone from aggression to begging.
“All right then, where is your friend?”
“Eating lunch, I’m sure of it. It’s that time.”
Then he changes his demeanor, he’s self-assured and overbearing, and he advises those gathered:
“I think all of us should do the same, and bury the hatchet here once and for all, no? Let’s eat, that’s for the best!”
He addresses me in particular:
“Go to that trattoria,” and he points. “You’ll find good pasta, fritti, sardines, drinks, and when you’ve calmed down, we’ll talk again. I’ll go have my meal as well.”
I challenge him:
“Are you trying to swindle me? You thought you were smart, accusing your friend.”
I gesture toward the spectators and warn him, with bold self-assurance:
“They’ll be my witnesses.”
As proof, I grab the mute man by the shoulder, and he nods.
My impression has a deep effect on the attendant. He exclaims softly, with a fist placed theatrically over his heart:
“I do not snitch, Sir!” and adds, in a more tenuous voice: “Doing so is deadly.”
(I think of the Mafia.)
He sees he is trapped, but he looks up, with beguiling vivacity:
“You, Sir,” he orders me, “are not to move from this spot. Wait for
me. I will go and find my friend.”
He departs, but then turns back brusquely:
“I swear to you, Sir,” and he makes a complicated sign with two fingers over his forehead and chest: “When we were boys, my friend ate one of my ears. If he is guilty, I’ll eat both of his.”
I am persuaded.
The people say oh, and they start to pull back: the festivities are over.
I conclude that here, an oath is sacred, and the tent guard has sworn so effusively that all have figured, His word is sufficient, that justice will be done.
I’m unconvinced, and I realize I’m losing my witnesses, now even the silent man is gone.
In the opposite direction from those departing, a boy comes pushing a bike by the handlebars, opening a path in the crowd, and the first thing I notice is his lack of immaturity, of callowness. He approaches the attendant and whispers, and the attendant leans down to hear better. A message from his accomplice, I imagine. Or a sentence from the mafia, since he’s committed treason, ratting out a comrade.
Once the secret’s been told, the attendant stands up straight, and brazenly pretends, as though they hadn’t been talking, that he’s only just now aware of the boy’s presence.
“Finally, Giuglielmino, you’re here. Give me the bike, I need to eat lunch too.”
“What do you mean, eat lunch?” I interrupt.
He tells me in a near-whisper: “I said lunch so he’d lend me the bike.”
I don’t believe him, but I accept, I let him go.
He starts to pull away and still, taking his leave blithely, he gives me an order and a promise:
“Just go eat. We can see each other after.”
“Ah, no,” I shout with vigor. “We’ll both go.”
He observes me disconsolately; lets go of the bicycle, which falls in the sand; opens his arms, and says:
“But Sir…what bad luck I have with you. You don’t get it. You going there won’t turn out well.”
“I don’t care! You aren’t leaving me on this beach. I don’t trust you one bit.”
“Sir…!” He tries to imply I’ve offended him.
But then he turns lenient and friendly, extends his right hand, and introduces himself.”
“My name’s Turì.” And he invites me: “Come on, let’s go, it’s up there.”
Up there indeed, in the opposite direction from the beach, we climb the hill on a ragged slope that leads to the densely packed houses on the village outskirts. They are charming, made of whitewashed stone.
My buttocks hurt from sitting on the bicycle tube and I am bathed in sweat from the sun that I myself chose to relax under, not knowing circumstances would arise that would place me beneath it with my head uncovered.
The air and the countryside have changed, the tensions have slackened. I snigger at my posture on the frame of the old bike that the one-eared kid – a tame, chastened bull – pedals arduously, trying to haul his weight and mine, jerking and swaying. To keep from rolling off and getting covered in bruises, I stretch out my legs and lift them up, trying to help him keep balance.
He’s strong enough to chat as if we were just out for a ride and were well on our way to becoming friends. He doesn’t notice my surly expression, which it’s not easy for me to keep up. I try not to let him win me over. To win me over or to beat me.
This is surely not lost on him, because he repeats his arguments to convince me of his sincerity, and plaintively intones:
“Oh, God! What a terrible mess you’ve gotten me into, Fungo.”
With my back to him, I can’t see the indignation that must be spreading across his face, and if I shift on the crossbar, we’ll fall to the ground.
“So who’s Fungo?” I ask, though it’s not hard to figure out.
“Fungo…? My friend!” He corrects himself: “The guy who says he’s my friend. I hate him. He ate my ear!”
Now I believe him, and conclude that a longstanding anger is consuming him, but I refuse any attempt of his to soften me through compassion. I just show naked curiosity:
“How’d it happen?”
“In a fight. I said what his sister was, someone told him what I said, he swore he was going to eat both my ears.”
I neglect caution and turn to look at him, in case I saw him wrong before, but no, he’s just missing one, the other ear is in its place.
He clarifies:
“Right, but he couldn’t. The weakling couldn’t do it.”
“So what was the sister…?”
He stalls a moment before answering, and then, in his very cavalier manner, says to me:
“Think about it,” and starts to whistle, as though waving the matter aside.
I want to keep our talk going, to find out why the other didn’t manage cut off his second ear or eat it, but I’ll have to wait until he decides his whistling is finished, and now, we’re entering the village.
A boy greets him, happy to see him.
“Ciao, Turì,” and he waves his hand.
“Ciao, caro,” he responds affectionately and raises his hand, letting go of the handlebars, so the machine veers under my weight; but he saves us from tipping over, he’s very fast.
And then:
“Hey, Turì. You want to try?” It’s a boy wolfing down some sort of dough wrapped in paper.
“If I didn’t have things to do…!” he exclaims with jocose resignation, presumably winking and pointing at me as the one to blame for his forbearance.
I’m starting to like him, this Turì. In half an hour, he’s drawn me toward him. Half an hour, by my reckoning, and a glance at my diver’s watch confirms it.
My taste for my vacation, my tourist’s nonchalance, has returned. I tell myself the 200 francs are worth less than being with these people and feeling included in this adventure, which can end whenever I wish, and I come to terms with forgetting the money.
Two or three boys are following us now, it’s nothing for them to jog along, because the bicycle, with its double load, is traveling slowly.
They court us without a word, until one of them inquires:
“Hey, Turì, he’s a foreigner, isn’t he?”
“Obviously, Flaminio. Don’t you see him…?”
“American?”
“No.”
He keeps on:
“He’s not a Yankee? No dollars?”
“No, come on, look at him!”
I could answer myself, but I don’t. I prefer to spectate (I paid a hefty admission fee, two hundred new francs).
Then the boy, now properly informed, attacks: “Sir, a hundred lire…”
And the other two: “Hey, Mister, how about a hundred lire for us.”
Other naked feet dash out of a door, the poor boy is frail, and convinced, perhaps, that I’ve been handing out money the whole way, he begs and laments:
“For me, too, Sir, a hundred lire. Why not for me, too?”
If I’ve paid a wad of bills already, without meaning to, what’s the harm in adding a few coins? Smiling, with an implicit promise that they will receive what they’ve asked for, I feel in my pocket and realize I’m still in my bathing suit, that the money remained in my pants, and my pants inside the tent, wrinkled and exposed on the sandy ground.
I swallow, and the diversion I’d enjoyed since deciding to put aside the thought of my robbery goes sour. I feel like an utter victim, though this time of my own negligence.
I’ve not been left empty-handed, I reflect, I have more than enough at the hotel, and yet, that doesn’t mitigate my displeasure.
But the geraniums and the shirts and colored blouses hanging from the balconies and windows where the neighbor ladies yell back and forth win me over:
“There he is, the foreigner!”
“The foreigner, Maria!”
“Look at him, look what he’s like!”
Maria, Paola, Fina, Rosanna, Lucia…I feel as though feted, in the frank voices of those women who spread the word that I’ve come all the way up to their vil
lage.
A pleasant illusion, ephemeral: deep down, it’s not lost on me how they say the foreigner and not a foreigner, and they must know I’m here not for festivities, but for punishment, a payback arranged by this Turì, who has acted as an informer.
But if that’s how it is, why is Turì still luxuriating in the greetings he receives as he passes by? Why don’t they condemn him, with their eyes, if nothing else, for taking me to the thief’s redoubt?
The number of boys has grown, and they keep following us, though they’re not begging. It’s a bad sign. I sketch out an interpretation favorable to me: they’ve stopped clamoring for their allotment of a hundred lire per head after seeing my face when I stuck my hand in the pocket of my bathing suit. They know I have no money on me. They’re smart, and only curiosity makes them persevere. They want to see where my daring or Turì will take me; after all, he’s one of them, and there’s a reason they admire him and he’s so popular. They must be thinking he’ll play a trick on me and cleverly thwart my operation.
As we continue upward, a young woman comes down, running next to the walls. I think I know who she is because suddenly, Turì starts humming, as though nervous, without harmony. What I’ve discovered is not her, I think, but her fire.
“Greetings, Giannina. Are you going?”
“It’s for the best, don’t you think?”
They exchange a good luck. Both wished for the same thing, and now they are taking opposite paths. I notice they’ve spoken courteously.
“Who is…Giannina, you called her?”
Turì, concentrating, without any show of hostility toward her:
“Fungo’s sister. It’s because of her that I lost my ear.”
I didn’t look closely enough at her, I think. She was worth it.
“Why did she say it would be best if she left?”
“We’re there…!” he interrupts me vivaciously, perhaps to elude explanation.
Turì lets the pedals go. We step off, and I stretch to bring life back to my sleeping legs.
Nest in the Bones Page 16