Erri De Luca - Me, You

Daniele wanted me to share his surprise and I was sorry not to, sorry to remain aloof when he had come to me as a friend and confided in me. But I couldn’t say anything about what had happened to Caia and me, or what was percolating in my head. Not wanting to appear cold and wanting to reciprocate with a confidence, I told him I had fallen in love with her.

“I guessed as much but it seemed to me absurd for you to have any expectations. However, later on I did see you talking together. Not even to you did she say anything about her family, so you can’t have been very close. In any case, I won’t say anything to the others. I told you because I think you have a right to know. She came here among us this summer and turned everybody’s head, including a few adults. She could at least have confided in you. You ran the risk of getting your head bashed in last night. Instead she kept everything to herself.”

There was something reproachful about his remarks and I took it badly that Daniele should criticize her for my sake.

“Caia spared us. She suffered things that can never be told adequately. She didn’t want to tell us, boys on a summer holiday on an island, who know nothing about Jews or Germans. We’re too young. She was also too young, but they took everything from her. All of us, not just me, even the adults, are too young for her. She learned that she should say nothing. She talked with you tonight because you defended her better than anyone else, giving her courage and justification. She thanked you by telling you what kind of abyss lay below her anger. It’s not fair for us to reproach her.”

Daniele did not agree. Over the course of one summer he had observed a lovely girl, a bit capricious, who had danced and had been kissed by many and who, contrary to appearances, carried within herself a deep ache and a dark secret, and by sheer chance, because of a brawl, opened up to one person. “Better if she had told me nothing.”

Really, Daniele? Is it really better that even at the very end we should not get to know someone we have had the chance to meet? We can identify the fish in the sea and the stars in the skies, but we should know nothing about the people on earth?

“No, that’s not what I think; as a matter of fact, I’m grateful to her.”

Even in this Daniele was generous. He was capable of correcting himself and yielding to someone else’s opinion.

“She made me feel more grown up, she honored me with her trust. But what a girl! Too complicated for me. I’m used to this beautiful island, to fishing boats, guitars, vacations. And out of nowhere, someone’s devastated life erupts in this blissful sleepy place, someone who seems to be like us.”

“Yes, Daniele, she seems to be like us, yet she can’t even tell us about her life.”

The rock under our feet ended and gave way to the beach. We boarded the boat and Daniele, exhausted, stretched out under the morning sun, falling soundly asleep on the wooden planks as though on a bed. Uncle started to grumble, “What’s the point of coming here if you need to sleep? What the devil do you do at night?” His plural “you” included me, even though I was wide awake and preparing bait. What annoyed him was to be unable to speak to his son, whose sleep he found disrespectful. He associated me with him in his reproach and he may have been right. I explained that it had been a farewell party, many were leaving today, but that did not placate him.

“In that case, stay home in bed. In the boat we fish.”

There were many lines to pull up and a need for arms and hands so that Daniele was awakened. Uncle noticed Daniele’s skinned knuckles.

“You got into a fight last night?”

“With some drunk Germans, but it was over very fast and nobody got hurt,” Daniele answered to end the discussion.

Uncle was not in an indulgent mood. “Surely you know, you who are so mature and grown up, that brawling is a criminal offense, that you can tarnish your record for a scuffle in the street.” He was angry. He reprimanded us for the way we lived on the island, for turning into savages; the vacation was too long, we were destroying ourselves with all that freedom. “If the police had come by, you would have been in deep trouble.” He vented his ill humor on both Daniele and me. In the meantime Nicola had started to retrieve the first float and handed the line to Uncle, knowing that would calm him down.

He stopped grumbling and began pulling up the cable and soon felt the weight at the bottom, a resistance, and the fight to capture the grouper began. Once the fish came on board, all other concerns faded and all thought was focused on the sea, on the hooks, on the laborious retrieval of the rig’s cable over a difficult shoal. Daniele’s hands were bleeding slightly, the salt doubtless making his scraped knuckles burn in the sun, but he paid no attention to them; his palms, no longer used to handling the cable, surely burned even more.

I was a good day; Nicola took home a fine grouper for his family, good humor was restored. Uncle asked Daniele for a few details about the fight and was relieved to hear that we hadn’t been clobbered. Daniele didn’t say a word about Caia.

While Uncle was grousing about the consequences of a brawl, I was elsehere. My thoughts went back to that pensione, to the need to find a way to attack without delay. What could I do? Throw rocks at the car, puncture the tires, break a window? The stupid pranks of delinquents. I was writhing in my impotence while my hands were busily occupied with fishing, aware that there was little time, for the Germans could suddenly take off. I had to decide on something that very day. Nothing came to mind, for which I reproached myself, but I told myself that I had never before thought of doing harm to anyone, and then I started all over again. There was a calm on the sea and inside of me as well, a calm that rippled up from below. On the way back Nicola said the wind was blowing up from the south.

As we left the fishing area, rockets celebrating a saint’s day were exploding in the sky. The island was announcing the day of its protector with blasts as well as bells. Shots were fired into the air, exploding high up with a single powerful burst. To thank the saints on their name days we aim our antiaircraft battery at them. It may be a salute, but it’s still a barrage against the sky.

A fantasy more than an idea came to me: a bunch of rockets going off in front of the pensione. I imagined the shock, the flight, the arrival of firemen. The thought of firemen sent a jolt through me. As we reached the shore, I jumped off the boat. I had found a way to strike. Fire, Feuer . That word had remained in Nicola’s head: Feuer , fire, easy and violent. I had found it. The urge to act accelerated my thoughts and arranged them into a plan. I knew at once that I had to obtain a rubber tube. I cut it from the garden hose. I went to the pensione and saw that the foreign car was not there, but that was normal at that hour, noon. I brazenly asked if they had any rooms available. They had none. There would be some in three days. I had time.

From the moment I decided on fire, all objections were banished from my thoughts. The only thing that mattered was to succeed. I didn’t care about being caught. I had become a guard, watching the enemy. I was no longer a boy. I got hold of a demijohn. I would fill it at night with gasoline siphoned from the tank of my father’s car; at that time he was vacationing with us. I had seen Nicola do this on the boat. I succeeded on my first try without even getting any gas into my mouth. I was carrying out the actions of a plan, they came to me easily, effortlessly. I knew that a single match might not be enough to ignite the gasoline, so I put aside a whole box and a newspaper. Now I could strike at my choosing. I would do it after Caia and Daniele left so as not to implicate them, even marginally. I needed to be alone in my room the night I went out with a fire in my pocket. They were not to know. This was my thing, mine alone, sprung from the body of a boy during one brutal summer of love and rage.