"I knew I had seen, I saw this girl who finally
my nights hold"
William Butler Yeats
I was young, I was stupid. No, I was just naive, I was deluded. And I sat alone at a table in the sandwich "taste right" to eat a horrible loaf stuffed with ham, herbs and cucumbers in Denmark. It did not fit well with either Coca-Cola. It would have been better if I had taken a beer. I watched the evening slide into the square, beyond the hedge of pittosporum miserable: a fountain pouring down under the lights that color the water yellow, scorched by the swimmers sun of the day strolling along the shops, crowded with tables of ice cream parlors, small families huddled before the game across the street.
I made an appointment with a girl I liked and she had not come. Instead of going the same way I sat, I was consulted on the paper and I chose that sandwich, "Tivoli" was called, probably due to an association with Denmark of gherkins. It tasted awful. It was a horrible night. And the youth I was in weight, was an inextinguishable fire that caused me a thirst inside, a sadness that perhaps it was only disappointed because she had not arrived. I left half the sandwich and went to chase fermenting the moon in the waves. I reached the wharf, where a salty wind pushed to the side and blew the curtains of the kiosk. Boys drinking their colorful cocktails at tables, some wandered aimlessly on the catwalk with a beer bottle in hand, others chatted at the bar with the barman.
The water was black, I could see myself mirrored, I read my blue and white striped shirt, my face cracked boy was left alone once again. The foam of the waves pounding on the pylons, saliva to lick the boards worn by millions of footsteps. Every drop was tinged silver moon. It hurt so much beauty, especially when compared with the desolation that I felt in the heart. The waves erased my reflection, then recreated the rhythm of the tide. I closed my eyes for a moment to savor the sound of the waves, the voice of the sea. When I opened them, I saw another figure next to my mirrored in the dark. I almost turned around to snap a girl I had seen some time for the city. "Serataccia?" he asked. It took me forever to answer - or at least I thought, surely it was only a matter of seconds. I had actually considered whether it was appropriate to say that I had been deceived, disappointed, cans, and I decided that was not the case look even more clumsy than it was. "Solitude" and I said I understood that he drew the wild card when she told me she was there with a group of friends but you were bored to death. This time I dared, I threw myself without thinking of the consequences: "Want to take a walk on the beach?" Probably not expecting much, indeed certainly was so because he had the bag with him. He smiled - a smile that I went in, I opened the windows of the soul, there is scattered with the force of a spring wind and perfumes all - then by air to the conspirators whispered "Yes, but let's not see: turn around kiosk and go down the other side. "
Alessandra - his name was the first thing I discovered during that long night of words and sand - was not surprised when I told her I liked the evening walk along the sea, which I did often and sometimes I was there even in winter: "The darkness, the silence broken only by the song of the waves, rarefied light, everything seems to be shrouded in a halo unreal" . We found that someone had lit a bonfire with some pieces of wood and sheets of paper. He was now off, I threw myself on top of other branches and riattizzai fire with a copy of the Gazzettino that someone had left on a deck chair. The sparks were flying in the sky, and she began singing with a voice that could only be described as angelic "Summertime and the livin 'is easy, fish are dumping' and the cotton is high ..."
seemed the Fifties, we had learned from the episodes of Happy Days , Alessandra could be one of those girls with flowing skirt that will go to drive-in. The sea continued to murmur, seemed to make the counterpoint. The wind continued to blow light, made more vivid lights of the coast. Alessandra's voice came into my warm heart, a balm that was cured scars, could have been years since I was sitting at the table of the "Taste right" and instead had not spent that two hours.
The fire was now off, muted over the last embers throwing handfuls of sand. Alex stood in tiptoe and kissed me gently, a quick friendly kiss. He had shoes in hand and grazed his back as I felt round his neck. She took my hand and we went so slowly eastward. We walked for a long time, we stopped at the swings and there swinging like children and then die laughing. We lay down to watch the stars. Then the beach was over. And she had come: he lived just across the bridge over the canal. He put her shoes and greeted me with another kiss. The drive over the bridge and then saw the light of a door swallowed.
I was young, I was stupid. Our love lasted only one night, the night I waited in vain for a girl at the "Taste right "and another had instead found myself on a pedestal. On that long walk we had concentrated all the happiness we could give.
Photo © Elinor Gaddy
