Four Hundred and Forty Steps to the Sea

by Sara Alexander

  “Oh come on, Santina—it’s a little joke between friends.”

  I had no memory of friendship.

  “Well, you’d better get used to it. Men around here don’t just sit around and let beauty slip between their fingers like water, no? You’ve been around the British too long.”

  I returned a forced smile, thankful Rosalia’s family’s laughter drowned my silence.

  “You’ve changed,” he continued, mistaking my silence as an invitation for conversation. “You left a polio-struck orphan with a tatty dress and a half-hearted smile. Now you look—”

  His hands waved in the air, as if they might pluck the word out from it somehow. I worried about the gesture that might follow.

  “Eat your food and save us all from this drivel!” Rosalia’s grandmother piped up from the opposite end of the table, her wrinkled skin creasing into even more tiny folds.

  “Salud to that!” the men cried as the rest of the lunch simmered through the afternoon.

  * * *

  After the men left to sip limoncello outside on the small concrete terrace, and Rosalia, myself, and the rest of the women had cleared the kitchen, it was time for me to return. Rosalia walked me to the gate, running a proud hand over her lemon trees overhead as she did so.

  “I know a joke from the truth, Santi’.”

  I turned to her, feeling Elizabeth’s weight pull on my back.

  “Don’t look at me like that,” she replied off my look, “you know perfectly well what I’m on about.”

  “I don’t.”

  “It’s that mountain air in your lungs. Too near the sky to see what’s on the ground in front of you.”

  Rosalia talked in riddles.

  “Paolino, Santina. You think it’s all singsong. I can tell it’s more than that.”

  “Aren’t you tired of weaving stories where there aren’t any?”

  Her eyebrows did a little dance, and her dimples deepened.

  “See you next week, Rosali’. Thank you.”

  “Don’t ever say thank you. You’re family now. You say thank you, it’s like I’m just a neighbor.”

  She flicked a playful slap on my arm. I went on my way.

  * * *

  I jogged home to prepare a light late lunch for the major, Elizabeth bobbing up and down, delighted with the insane pace of her guardian. I would have liked to remember keeping a calm hand upon the plates while setting the table after I returned home. I would have liked to forget the way I dropped not one, but two plates upon the unforgiving tiles, blaming myself on rushing, knowing it had more to do with the memory of Paolino’s claustrophobia-inducing grin across Rosalia’s loud lunch, the way his eyes managed to connect with mine every time I looked toward his end of the table. Now my fingers quarreled with one another while my mind chased silence. The major strode through the kitchen just as I placed a few leaves of romaine into a bowl with the last of the tomatoes.

  “Whatever have these plates done to you, Santina?” he asked, looking down at the heap of shards swept out of the way in haste.

  “I’m so sorry.” I was starting to gabble. The appearance of Adeline in the doorway plunged us both into silence.

  “I smell Kedgeree,” she said, flat.

  I looked at the major. His eyes were alight.

  “Yes. I made it this morning,” I said, filling the silence, hoping that if I spoke close to normalcy it might uphold her spell of sanity. Throughout the spring and summer, we had seen a marked improvement in Adeline. On occasion she even held Elizabeth for snatched moments.

  “So you did,” she replied, “it got me out of bed. I fell in love with Henry after I ate the first forkful he ever gave me.”

  She looked at him. There was a simmer of a smile beyond her exhaustion. The spark was still there, the snap of a match as it ignites against sandpaper even if the flame fails into smoke. He took her hand and walked her out onto the terrace. They sat in silence for a moment. He cradled her fingers in his.

  They shared an apple after their food, then Adeline returned upstairs. The major did not retire to the library as usual. He sat looking out toward the sea while I cleared around him. Elizabeth refused to stay in her wooden chair I’d set in the kitchen. She fretted until I released her, so I delayed my tidying till she took her nap. I walked with her down the steps that led into the garden and sat her down on the last one, beside me. She crawled a little way down the hill, paused, squatted, then heaved herself up to standing. I’d seen her do this many times, but she’d never held herself upright for so long. The breeze lifted her curls. Her nose scrunched. Then one foot lifted. She wavered but didn’t fall. A step. Then another. Then another. Several more determined paces followed, before she collapsed again onto the grass. I ran to her, wrapped my arms around her, and swung her around.

  “You’re walking, ciccia! You’re doing it! Brava!”

  She giggled into my ear as I squeezed her. I saw the major over her shoulder. He was laughing. I’d never seen his expression so relaxed.

  That afternoon Elizabeth took the longest nap of her life. I returned to the kitchen to finish clearing up and found a large bowl of oranges and lemons upon the table.

  “There you are, Santina. I’ve been waiting.”

  The major’s buoyant mood caught me off guard. Adeline must be sleeping too.

  “I took a short stroll to the end of the garden this morning as the sun rose,” he said. “I gathered another load of oranges and lemons. Glorious.”

  “Are you ready for tea, sir?”

  “Not just now. I thought as the women in my life are finally sleeping, and it’s a little cooler, we would prepare a British breakfast staple.”

  “Sorry, sir?”

  “This afternoon, your English lesson is marmalade.”

  We never had lessons on a Sunday.

  “This is not to be rushed,” he began. “You may relinquish your dinner duties; Adeline and I can fix something for ourselves tonight. Once we start we have to keep a close eye on the proceedings.”

  I gave a feeble nod, imagining how good my bed would feel at this very moment.

  “Where is your notebook, Santina?”

  I lifted it out of my pocket, where I kept it.

  “Excellent. Now, while the marmalade is cooking, we will write up the method. No time will be left idle. There is much to do.”

  I had made some jams in the past but this process was a different beast. He stood over me, marshaling the way I dropped the scrubbed ten oranges and four lemons into a large stockpot, covering them with water, and describing in more detail than was necessary how we would let it reach a boil, and then simmer for the next three hours, clamping the lid down to stop valuable vapors escaping. “A perfect poach is required, not an exacerbated boil, you understand?” Though his words were clipped and could be mistaken for a military pace, there was a boyish lilt to his speech when he and I worked in the kitchen. He was in his late thirties, but when he spoke of food or poetry, the years fell away, lifting veils through which I could spy the major as a much younger man.

  While the room filled with the uplifting citrus smell, we set to work on my handwriting. It wasn’t the scrawl of last autumn, but there was still hesitation. He wrote a sentence and I copied. Any mistakes were noted and required me to repeat the word in question. The afternoon should have felt interminable, but I loved the intimate focus of these moments: the sound of the dish of the day brewing behind us, the soft scratch of my pencil upon the paper. The quiet way he would speak, directing my hand with gentle instructions, wooing my pencil to do the right thing.

  Finally we removed the pot from the heat and set it aside to cool.

  “I shall take tea now. Please call Adeline to join me.”

  He left.

  I stood in the empty kitchen, steamy with the fresh, hopeful scent.

  I could hear Elizabeth beginning to stir but decided to leave her a while longer while I fetched her mother. I ran up two stairs at a time. Adeline’s door was shut. I tapp
ed softly, then a little louder. Still no answer. I eased the door open and peeked inside. Adeline was at the far side, crouched down. She had a pencil in her hand and was tracing intricate patterns across the length of the wall where the floor tiles met the plaster. I’d noticed the major had set a sketchbook upon the table. I didn’t think he had scrawling on the antique walls in mind when he had done so.

  “Madam?”

  No answer. The artist was lost in her work.

  I coughed. She stopped, then froze me with an icy glare. My mouth opened a little, but no sound came out. She returned to her creation.

  “Madam, the major has asked you to join him for tea.”

  The speed of her pencil accelerated. Elizabeth’s cries reached us from the kitchen two floors down. These stone walls were unforgiving; thick but live, amplifying every sound.

  Adeline began to weep. I went toward her.

  “Stay where you are!” she yelled without looking at me. “Stop that God-awful screeching.” She whipped round to me; I could see her eyes were bloodshot, spidered with anguish. “Now!”

  She rose to her feet and lunged toward me, sending me flying out of the room toward the stairwell. The major was at the table now, oblivious to the protests of his daughter.

  I prepared a bottle, lifted Elizabeth, and before I returned to the dining room to feed her, I told the major about Adeline’s current mood.

  He gave a stiff nod. I felt like a student who had displeased her teacher.

  He stood up from the table, walked through the kitchen, and placed a hand on the lower side of the cooling pot. “Forty-five minutes more and we will continue,” he announced, then left. I heard the library door close behind him.

  * * *

  I returned to a major tetchy with impatience. “You’re three minutes late.”

  “I’m sorry, sir.”

  “This is alchemy, Santina. It requires precision. I expect deeper understanding from you.”

  Together, we lifted the oranges out of the cooled liquid, sliced them open, and scooped out the pulp and pits into a smaller pan, reserving the peel. To the pulp we added a jug of water and set it on a medium heat for about ten minutes. I held a colander while the major lined it with cheesecloth, placing the cooked pulp into it.

  While it cooled in the cloth, dripping into a bowl underneath, we sat at the table and cut the orange peel into thin strips, his eyes darting over my work to make sure each piece was the same length and width. I followed his instructions to gather the corners of the cheesecloth, squeezing the pulpy contents into a tight ball. My hands were sticky with the juice. He handed me a towel to blot them dry and then a large wooden spoon so I could stir these juices back into the original poaching liquid. He tipped in the peel and placed the lid back on top. As soon as I became aware of the comforting quiet in which we worked, it hardened into an awkward silence, like a tray of boiled sugar crisping into brittle.

  “This, we leave overnight,” he said.

  My eyebrows raised before I could stop them.

  “You had no idea about the importance of time in this process, did you?”

  I couldn’t tell whether he was about to castigate or educate. The lines between the two were random, dirty twists of floured dough upon a tired wooden counter. He took a breath, his eyes softened. “‘O Time! who know’st a lenient hand to lay, Softest on sorrow’s wound, and slowly thence, Lulling to sad repose the weary sense, The faint pang stealest unperceived away.’”

  This time I was tired enough to let my confusion float around me and hover, lost and soothed in the tone of incomprehensible words.

  “William Lisle Bowles wrote that, Santina. Why do you think we started the process of marmalade?”

  We returned to exhausting questions: short, sharp arrows whizzing by my ear.

  “I will tell you why. Because the process is long but finite. It requires attention, stamina, and precision. And so does educating oneself in another language. I do not tire easily, and I expect you to be collaborative with your attention. When you returned from your luncheon elsewhere, you were skittish, forgetful, and a little frantic, dare I say it. In this vein, you will learn absolutely nothing. Now, I could have chosen a different dish, something we may have eaten right away, like the Kedgeree, but I didn’t. Language, education, must be savored and labored. But it is a joyful thing. Smell this room, Santina”—his hand swept through the air—“smell the optimistic spray of citrus grown in this very garden beyond the terrace. How can it fail to touch you?”

  His words caressed and taunted me. I could tell that he was full of something more than facts alone, but my mind prodded with uncertainty. I offered a tentative smile.

  “Look outside, Santina.” He placed stiff hands upon my shoulders and twisted me round toward the open wooden doors. The last hands I had upon me were my father’s. The memory prickled down my spine to a sting. I felt the weight of his hands upon me, noticing the tips of his thumbs pressing into my shoulder blades. The garden rolled down a steep incline and the trees stretched out their branches in greedy gnarls toward the early autumn rays. Beyond, the sea had begun its descent into dusky purple, Capri’s tip golden in the dipping sun. I wanted to move but daren’t, hating myself for it.

  His voice fell toward a whisper, I could feel the breath skim the top of my ear. “‘Educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all.’”

  My body softened out of trained fear to the lull of his voice.

  “That is what Aristotle said, and I’m inclined to agree.”

  He straightened. “Tomorrow,” he began, removing his hands, his voice once again crisp, “we will heat sugar in the oven upon a tray for ten minutes. Then we will reheat the preserving liquid and add the warmed sugar. When it has all dissolved in the liquid, and not before, we will turn up the heat. We will allow it to reach a rolling boil. We will remove the pan from the burner, allow to cool for thirty minutes, and finally pour into sterilized jars. Then what?”

  Another prickle of a question, which required no remedy.

  “Then, Santina, you, Adeline, and I may taste the glorious marmalade throughout the winter. And when the fog rolls in once again, and the tiresome visitors have abandoned the streets at last, we will sit and savor the memory of my trees once plump with bounty. Is that clear?”

  Of course it wasn’t. He turned on his heels and closed the door behind him.

  I breathed in the aroma, the citrus deepening toward a warm caramel now. The setting sun streaked in from behind me, burnishing the tiny kitchen with russet rays. Only a month remained before I left for America. I couldn’t shake the sense that the lessons that remained, like the marmalade of this afternoon, would be nothing besides bittersweet.

  * * *

  The midmorning sun cast hopeful arcs of light upon the curve of the cobbles as I walked Elizabeth up the hill on her newfound legs. We’d stop every now and again, for me to catch my breath if nothing else, while I held her facing out toward the sea which spread out in a turquoise sheen toward the gray cliffs. Onward we climbed, as the path narrowed. To my right, beyond a squat wall, was a jagged drop to the water below. I walked without any particular aim, the smell of citrus and caramelized sugar still clinging to my hair from the previous afternoon, floating into focus every now and then on the breeze.

  The path ended by the entrance to the cemetery. The dead had the best view in town. There was a small bench just outside. We sat for a moment to rest before returning home. I longed to lay flowers for my mother. I envied those little tombs, perched upon the uneven hill, goat-like, defying gravity with stubborn marble. At least all these people could find rest. Their loved ones could sit by them, remember them while the wide expanse of the sea and mountains comforted them with awe and tranquillity, the landscape assuring them that their grief was all part of the natural fabric of the world, no more, no less. But I had none of these. There was a gaping hole where my mother should be and another wherever my brother roamed; love without the freedom to be expr
essed.

  The sound of footsteps drew me round. A figure stood by the gated entrance, fiddling with a heavy chain. I rose to my feet. It must be getting close to lunchtime if the gates were already being shut. I turned to begin my descent but something about the man playing with his lethargic lock spiked a memory. I turned back to take a closer look. I didn’t know this man, but there was something about the shape of his round face, the gentle slant of his almond eyes that stirred me. His hair looked like it hadn’t been washed in a while, and it clung to his scalp in sweaty strands. He looked up at me for a brief glance. My heart twisted with sorrow and joy.

  It was my little brother.

  Chapter 7

  “Marco?” I called out, my mouth so dry the word almost stuck to it.

  He turned, nonchalant. “Sì?”

  We looked at one another. I fought seeping doubt. Perhaps my memory was playing a cruel trick on me? But there was no mistaking the pointed arch of his eyebrows, just like Mother’s, or the tiny mole on his left temple.

  “The cemetery opens again at five o’clock,” he said, as if I was just another visitor muted by grief, which of course, I was.

  “It’s me. Santina.”

  His face marbled into stillness. I noticed my breath change. I watched his expression shift through a painful spectrum, much like the sea behind me rippling with light and shade beneath the moving clouds. I ran, wrapped my one free arm around him, grasping Elizabeth in the other. After a moment, I felt his around us. I looked up at him. I wiped his cheek and kissed the tear streaks twice each, knowing that a lifetime of them could never make up for the way I abandoned him.

  “I’m so, so sorry, my Marco,” I stuttered through snatched breaths.

  He shook his head and took my hand in his, then kissed it. That’s when I noticed how very thin he was. That’s when I took in his uncertain pallor, a gray day that hovers, expectant of a forgotten sun. His nails were chewed and his cuticles an aching pink with nervous strands of skin pulling away from them.