Erri De Luca - Me, You

“I love you very much Chaiele.”

“I know,” she said, stepping away. Then, changing her tone, she was Caia again. “Let’s see you around, and get yourself cleaned up.”

At the house I told Daniele about the waves on the beach, about Nicola’s bravery and the way the men helped each other. He said nothing about the speedboat ride in the ship’s wake. Perhaps he wasn’t with them. He was dressed for tennis, having just returned from a game. We were both dirty from our island vacation, but our sweat was different. That evening I washed with fresh water and soap, emerging from the bathroom without a trace of salt on me. I told Daniele that now I needed a dip in the sea.

“Good idea,” he replied. “I’ll try to convince the others to go for a night swim.”

I was happy to join them to get rid of my soapy smell. Mama intervened, asking Daniele if it wasn’t unusual for a boy not to stay with boys of his own age. What was he doing in a group of older boys? Daniele replied that I was ahead of my age and that I was more comfortable with them.

“You really consider him one of your group?”

“You know him, Aunt, he starts talking to someone or stands around watching, and when he’s had enough he goes off without even saying good-bye,” he replied, pretending to be reproachful. It was a joke between us. It was summer, even if we were growing up in hard times, the postwar years. Those months on the island were a free port. Unimaginable liberties were allowed and each individual character could emerge and develop. Those of us who became adults after that time were more the products of an island than of the mainland.

That evening I went out with a towel that my mother forced on me along with a sweater. The beach was dark. Light came from the lanterns of the fishing boats offshore, a stripe across the water. Daniele was already there with his crowd and he asked me to go back to the house to get the guitar. Those were the kinds of services asked of the newest member of a group, and it was natural for me to perform them, but Daniele asked with courtesy. Something was happening that summer. I was becoming another person in the eyes of others but I didn’t know who. By the time I returned, they were already singing and there was wine. I didn’t like wine but a glass was put into my hand in recompense for the guitar. I sat down outside their circle and wet my lips with little sips. The night was still. The water at the shoreline didn’t seem to move at all. When it’s like that it’s no longer sea, it’s like sky. On the dome above our heads the stars were clustered as thickly as granules, and in the pine forest the air stood still.

Daniele was singing one of his own songs which the others already knew, and in that very good passage of the refrain they sang along with him. Caia was next to a boy I had never seen before. When I finished my wine, I undressed and got into the smooth water. I moved carefully so as not to disturb the surface and with every frog kick I glided swiftly, meeting no resistance. I wound up swimming far out. Opening my eyes under the water, I saw a luminosity. By the time I understood what it was I was in its midst — a swarm of jellyfish. Feeling my hands on fire, I wheeled around and broke into the fastest stroke I possessed. I got away but I was covered with stings. Seeing the others in the water, I warned Daniele about the jellyfish which were moving toward the beach. Once on shore I checked my skin: like having fallen into a bed of stinging nettles, red welts everywhere except on the face. I dried myself in order to get dressed; my clothes weighed heavily on me.

In the meantime the luminosity had come closer to the shore and everybody got out of the water. Caia came out holding a boy’s hand. Seeing me, she came up to me and quietly said, bending over me, “Don’t judge me. I’m a girl and this is a summer holiday.”

Of course I don’t judge you, Chaiele, I’m on your side. I’m your serf, I’m the stage set behind you, I’m your worst dance partner, your guardian. All of this went through my head in response to her remark, but the only thing that came out as I offered her my towel was, “Don’t catch cold, Chaiele,” which only she could hear.

In reply, she whispered tenderly, “You, mine.”

Turning back to the boy, she wrapped the towel around her shoulders. Mine were a hairshirt of needles, and above, the stars were a cluster of jellyfish. I must have had a fever to see them like that.

I went home and dropped on my bed stark naked. I heard Daniele come back in the middle of the night. He was astonished to find me still awake. He turned on the light and saw the grotesque red mottling.

“I wound up in the middle of them,” I said.

“Jellyfish? Why didn’t you say so right away, damn it, what did you put on?”

“Nothing.”

He went to the bathroom, found a salve, and tried it out on one area. It felt better. I was grateful for his attentions. I fell asleep as he was saying, “One more day of this and you’d go back to the city in an ambulance.”

The next day he told me I had talked in my sleep. I was unable to pretend indifference. I was alarmed. I asked him what I had said. He didn’t want to tell me and began teasing me. Then in a burst of laughter he admitted he hadn’t understood one damn thing. I had been speaking in some invented language.

“You’re a Ukrainian,” was the first crazy thing that came to his mind. “You even had another voice, deep. I thought you might have caught cold.”

In the morning it was raining. Low clouds dropped showers, got caught on the pines, then moved on. The streets on the island gleamed, the plants gave off a perfume of earth revived. The resin of the pines clung to the air, arousing a desire to make plans for the day — go up to the hills, go across the chestnut grove, or to the hot springs. The island was full of hot springs, even in the sea, near the shore. The rain announced that summer was waning. “Aùsto capo ’e vierno,” Nicola used to say, August is the beginning of winter.

I went to the fishermen’s beach. Few of them had gone out, most stood in front of their houses amid the beached boats. They had pulled them up on the sand. I ran into Uncle, who had come to discuss the price of a new motor. It was a rare treat to spend time with him. After the negotiations, we said good-bye to Nicola and I accompanied Uncle all the way home. I had inherited the same name as his, a burdensome bequest. I had to calculate the distance between his accomplished manhood and my raw youth, exacerbated by my frequent silences. He must have thought that his nephew was no great tribute to his name. The old timidity I always felt in his presence, for once, that day, was on vacation. We talked about the next fishing trip, trolling for tuna and garfish which would close the season. The day was slow to end. I felt he was in a mood to chat and tried to get him to tell me something about the war.

First of all he said that trying to find answers from others is like wearing somebody else’s shoes. Answers you have to find for yourself, made to your measure. Those of others are uncomfortable. He found my obsession with those years unhealthy.

“I would gladly have ceded them to you, I would have swapped with you, and in your place I wouldn’t want to know a thing. For me, those years were torture.”

He had hated to say “sir,” had been ashamed of wearing a uniform, and often took it off at the risk of a court-martial. The eighth of September, the day of the armistice, was the day of deliverance. For him, fascism had been a scarecrow tarred black so as to be the opposite of leftist red. Until the disaster of the war he had regarded it as a tattered travesty of Roman history. Then fascism made the fatal error of taking itself seriously and mistaking itself for a warrior.