Roberta Mezzabarba - The Long Shadow Of A Dream

Notary De Fusco was a plump man, in his sixties, with little hair and a blank look, he would take his job very seriously, but certainly he was not a cheerful person. “He was a good man,” thought Greta “but he was afraid of his own shadow and that was maybe his bigger flaw”.

Greta remembered when a few years back, browsing through a local newspaper looking for a job, in the ads section, she was amazed to see how short his message was “ Reliability and willingness to work. That’s what I am looking for ”.

He was just like this.

«Now Greta, that’s the plan. Tomorrow morning you will meet up with Principe del Drago. I have already made arrangements with that fisherman and you will go in his boat. You will read the sales deed page by page to him, you will get him to sign them, you will give him a copy, and you will bring one copy back. Please be kind, but not obsequious, excessive mannerism is not good in such situations.»

He had been telling Greta this three or four times already, what to do and how to deal with these matters that she knew so well. He was visibly nervous because he wanted this deal to be successful: to him the fact that a big landowner as Principe del Drago had chosen him among all the notary public in the area to settle his real estate business, surely was a reason for pride , especially as regards to those colleagues who, as he used to say when he was in a friendly mood, would consider work only as a way to earn a living.

Greta got out of the front door of the big building where her office was, with a considerable pile of documents inside a black leather briefcase that the notary public had lent her for the occasion. The fresh air accompanied her to the bus stop, like a loyal friend would have done, ready to listen to what happened to her during the day which was just gone.

* * *

When she eventually got out of the bus, the sun had just gone down and was replaced by a light reddish colour that reflected shadows the colour of blood on the lake. It looked as if it was wounded by the wake left by some isolated boat of fishermen back from putting the nets down: the two islands stood out against the horizon so dark as the night.

The Strongholds of Capodimonte, which overlooked the lake from the small peninsula where there was the oldest part of the town, stood out with its magnificent polygonal shape. The wood all around the strongholds, with its fresh and shiny magnolias, palm trees and pink oleanders, was surely designed to virtually shorten the height of the big spurts that were supporting it, however it made the whole view of the strongholds far more beautiful, even from a distance. Greta set off home thinking about the first time she visited that big building: she remembered the courtyard with its doors, his windows, with the triple loggia designed by Sangallo, she remembered the upper apartments where you could get access to from a cordonata 4which was probably used in the old times by horses too, she remembered long, straight and dark sets of stairs. There was not a soul in the old strongholds, and even if the bright colours of the lake were overflowing from every window and from every crevice, you could only feel sadness coming from the walls that once saw the prestige and the splendor of noble lineage which were now just experiencing years of solitude.

Despite her melancholic memories, Greta could only think about the day after, when she could go to the Bisentina Island at last; a tiny piece of land, yet so charming.

She kept looking at the lake, while going up the steep hill paved with grey sampietrini , leading to the upper part of the town, where she lived. Greta knew so well the steep and windy little lanes with stairs everywhere, little walls, arch buttresses with houses built with the local dark stone, with dark entrance halls or brightened up by the redness given by plain patchings with bricks. She knew the smell of thousands of vases and cooking pots stacked with herbs and flowers on the small windows, or left to beautify some small tabernacle at the corners of the houses. All of a sudden, resurfacing from that hydillic view, she felt someone approching her whose shadow was getting longer beside hers.

«Good evening Greta, you are back really late tonight. You work too much.»

An open smile, surrounded by countless tiny wrinkles on a face burnt by the sun: this was Greta’s neighbour, Giacomo, the old fisherman.

«Holy smoke, Giacomo, you gave me a start! I was wondering who that was at this time of the evening… My head is up in the clouds tonight, I can picture myself already sailing the lake.»

They walked ahead for some time, side by side, without saying a word, deep in their thoughts, Greta was holding tight in her right hand, her briefcase packed with papers, Giacomo had a basket full of early produce coming from his vegetable garden: tapered carrots, red and juicy tomatoes, yellow potatoes, pink and velvety peaches and eggs, still warm. On top of the vegetables, Giacomo had placed a bunch of flowers, artistically held together by a twisted twig: colourful zinnias, delicate asters and just blossomed gladiola. They got to the little square; Giacomo wanted to give Greta that basket with the vegetables, but the girl never wanted to take anything from him because she felt already very grateful to him to let a stranger rent his lovely little place for an extra nothing.

«I’d be glad if you accepted this… this basket, Greta. It is about time you try the vegetables I grow. I beg you, I live on my own and I am always left with too much of them. It is no bother to me, it would be a pleasure indeed.»

«Alright Giacomo, I accept your gift with great pleasure provided that you will come for dinner at my place tonight. I am sure that with all this bonanza, even a disaster in the kitchen like me will manage to make a mouthwatering meal.»

Greta was feeling a little sad over the last few days and sharing the dinner with that cheerful old man would do her good.

Greta got down to work in the kitchen, and in just over one hour the food was ready and the table was set for two: it felt strange to share the table with somebody else, after almost six years of loneliness. She came out of the door to call her neighbour.

She felt happy.

Giacomo was the grandfather she never had the chance to meet. He dressed up for the occasion, with a waistcoat underneath his blazer and he had even greased his hair.

They sat at the table and they both felt a little uneasy: Greta made a potato omelette, a tomato and carrot salad, and a peach salad. She also made sure she had a jug full of water with flowers in the middle of the table. Giacomo ate everything up: he hadn’t shared the table with somebody in a very long time. He told Greta with tears in his eyes that his wife had died twenty years before of tuberculosis. “He must have been really close to his wife” thought Greta, while Giacomo was talking about her describing her good heart, staring somewhere in front of him.

For a moment the girl’s thoughts went beyond time and space, taking her back to her beloved Sicily, rekindling in her the longing to go back there. Even though it was just a flash which sparkled in her black eyes, Giacomo did not miss it.

«You are not really happy, are you? I have seen you smiling so rarely… when you do, you look so beautiful.»

Greta looked down, she blushed and her chickbones turned red. It was true, she was not happy at all.

She could not get any peace within herself, not even in those quiet days: surely it would be easier not to think about what had happened, the best thing to do was to let time go by and hope to forget, to forget about everything and go back to the way she was, the girl who was going to University in Catania, the girl who did not even know who Alberto was.