A Summer Unending

The summers have grown long here in Manarola. I am unable to remember a time where I was not sitting on my balcony eating bread I had just baked, drinking wine I had bought the week before or devouring tins upon tins of sardines in olive oil — it makes the bread less bland. This is alright with me. I’m able to walk down to the beach, with my wine of course, have a quick swim followed by a brief drunken afternoon nap. I suppose the others are not as pleased as I am with this perpetual summer. They have taken to the churches, praying that the heat and constant blue sky disappears. They begged any Saint that seemed to listen, for a change of season. Now I have no clue which of the specific Saints were not listening and which chose not to, but the prayers and unanimous desperation changed nothing. It’s always been the same really. The sun shines till 21:00 and rises again at 5:00. Jobs have been abandoned, children are not in school, basic duties remain unfulfilled. So, you tell me… how am I supposed to buy my wine, bread and sardines when Mrs Lombardi is at the church on the hill and Mr. Ambrosio is at the church by the sea.

Nevertheless, I go about my days as usual: bread, wine, sardines, beach, a nap on the beach. It’s habitual at this point. But the town is extra quiet recently. I assumed they were all in church now, but I hadn’t heard a single bell in a while. Not even a little chime. At first it was pleasant, yet unsettling, but I’ve noticed a ringing in my ear. That was easily fixed though. Just some cotton balls in my ear and it was nearly unnoticeable.

 I thought nothing of it until I noticed the stalls, from which I would typically buy food, standing alone, rows of them, just there with groceries left in the open and no one to sell them, all fresh might I add. The smell of tomatoes, fish, garlic and the salty sea air still overpowering the smell of anything else. I did not think much of it, I just let it float in the back of my mind, but when this happened day after day, I grew irritated. The groceries are always fresh, yet no one had been stocking them. Of course, when I saw these groceries, I took them. Who was going to stop me? That didn’t even matter really, even if there were vendors, they knew where I lived and worked, they knew the very spot on the beach where I would sleep. They knew me, they knew my family, where I was born.It’s the same place where everyone had been born for decades now, so it isn’t the biggest deal, but still… They knew that I would always pay them back, that I was always good for it, it wasn’t a big village after all. However, it did feel wrong. Each time I took something it felt like being winded, wanting to breathe, gasping, but the air felt stiff.

This happened for about a month, and while I love the silence, the sun and the wind and the salt in the air and the bread and the wine and the beach and the naps and the books, don’t get me started on the books. The entire routine feels monotonous, you know? However, after a while one can get used to anything. I have started looking through the windows of the houses where, as a child, I was looked after and where I played with my friends in their living rooms whilst my parents were off at work. People shouting over each other and dancing as the bread baked and the octopus grilled in olive oil and garlic — I’d often end up eating dinner with their families. I particularly remember the times my parents would arrive to take me home and the family was about to sit down to eat. As is almost always the case, we were invited to sit and eat with them. After politely declining we were met with, “No, you’ve been working all day, sit down, eat,” or “We already set you a place, sit down.”

I miss the music that floated through the air as one strolled down the cobblestone streets. Old men who had known each other forever — one playing the mandolin, another the saxophone, another his guitar and another his concertina- gelato in-hand, looking at the colourful houses and arriving at the small pebble-beach, watching the water and seeing all the fishermen on their boats pulling their nets filled with oysters and mussels up from out of the water. Young boys in their little sailor clothes and the young girls with their salt-damaged frizzy hair tied up with little pink bows, wearing yellow and pink sundresses running up and down the streets. And the groups of old women sitting outside cafés shouting at everyone and everything they could. It’s hard to believe that they’re all gone. Oh, I miss it all, I really do. I’ve been alone too long, and the heat is killing me… It’s Tuesday today, I think, and I saw a few people on the beach. I shouted and flailed my arms in the air, trying to draw their attention, but they walked off into the sea and disappeared. I think they were holding hands. It was probably a mirage.

I am no longer happy here, but I’m not unhappy so I don’t see any point in leaving.

Sweat was now an accessory. A constant splatter painted across my forehead, much like one of those paintings (you know, the ones everyone pretends to like). I had thrown every mirror in my house onto the streets from my balcony. How many years of bad luck was it again? The salty air isn’t much help either, as one might expect, it makes things much worse (so much worse). My joints feel stiff, and my clothes have lost their colour, much like my hair. The stalls are still constantly stocked so I am constantly eating. I have also noticed that I’m drinking a lot more wine than I usually do. Once Muskat, now anything I can find that may have grapes in it. I will say this however, I have found that sitting and staring out on the horizon, alternating between sipping and downing wine — I sipped when I lectured myself about my alcohol intake, and downed when I realised no one was around to care, except that guy in my head, he talks much less now, or maybe I’m just ignoring what he has to say- is the most amazing, although terribly boring, thing, but ‘It’s the little things that count’ I guess.

The sun has become hotter, much hotter than before everyone left, and it seemed as though wherever I looked some stray beam would reflect off of something, anything, everything, and into my eyes, which really pissed me off… But the sun, and the beams, and the salty air, and the excessive amounts of wine and food, and the loneliness, and the hatred, and the anger, and the dust on the books I must have read three times each, and my aching joints, and my sun-cracked lips, which feel like dry leaves and sandpaper, and look like I’ve been kissing an exhaust pipe, at this point I wish I had been. And my dry and hardened skin, and my brittle hair, all of it. It just became too much. So I decided, tomorrow… TOMORROW I’m leaving. I packed a suitcase of whatever clothes I could find that hadn’t been too damaged, a few good shoes, some books, only the ones I didn’t mind reading again, and some wine, just a few bottles for the road. That was it. Tomorrow I would be gone.

Tomorrow has become today, and I’m packing the car, saying goodbye to this place forever. I tried to contact my parents, although I had not spoken to them since they moved to Piemonte, long before everyone else, but I had not received an answer of any kind. I figured, since I’m their only son, or child for that matter, they wouldn’t mind having me for however long it may be. I got in my car and started driving. I passed through the street where the stalls were set up along either sidewalk, thinking about all the people who had once sold me food, especially in my drunken, or more importantly, hungover state of seemingly unending hunger. And how my friends and I would steal from these hard-working people, all of whom knew us, but more importantly knew our parents.

Driving up the hill, passing the railroad, I thought of all the times when my mother had grabbed me by the shirt or the ear, the ear was her favourite, and dragged me to these peoples’ homes and made me apologise for me and my friends’ antics. I thought of all the times they had just forgiven us and, as expected, asked if we were hungry, inviting us in to eat with them- often eating a dish containing the stolen item. I’m not sure if this was intentional, maybe it was one of those ‘putting salt on the wound’ kind of situations, but damn was it good. Every single time.

As I crossed over the line dividing Manarola and the neighbouring province I thought of the days at the beach with my mother and father, the trips to Roma and Firenze to visit some distant family I’d never heard of, my mother controlling the music, my father getting upset with every song, and my mother looking at me from the passenger seat mimicking my father’s outrage while I giggled softly, trying not to be too loud so my father didn’t ask, “What’s so damn funny?” I miss those trips. I hadn’t smiled with so much intent and passion since.

The only issue was that I had been so focused on all the good, and bad, times in Manarola that I began to tear up. Thinking of a time before the village was empty, before I was alone. A time when everything and everyone did something, playing their role in a system much bigger than themselves. And I had been selfish choosing to live isolated from the rest. The road I needed to travel was long, but I had been crying and I was unable to see. As I wiped away the tears that blinded me, one hand on the steering wheel, I saw a fawn crossing the street following its mother. I braked and swerved. The fawn and its mother had run off, I suppose that makes sense. I think it’s time to start being me again.