Boring, it’s all boring, the hotel lobby, the dining room, the beach where her parents lie in the sun, fall asleep open-mouthed, wake up, yawn, go in the water, fifteen minutes in the morning, fifteen minutes in the afternoon, always together. Seen from behind: Father’s legs are too thin, Mother’s too fat, with varicose veins; then in the water the two of them perk up and splash about childishly. Rosie never goes bathing with her parents, instead she has to mind her sisters, still young but no longer sweet, those silly geese, pouring sand in your book or laying a jellyfish on your bare back. Having a family is dreadful, other people suffer from their families too, Rosie sees this quite clearly, for instance the tanned man with the fine gold chain, she calls him the Shah, instead of staying under the parasol with his own people he’s perched at the bar or driving a motorboat, wild, giddy turns, and always alone. A family is such a bother, why can’t people come into the world fully grown then immediately go their own way. I’m going my own way, says Rosie one day after luncheon, adding, as a precautionary measure, into town to buy postcards, picture postcards for my school friends, as if she would dream of writing silly little cards to the foolish dolts in her class, Greetings from the deep blue Mediterranean Sea, how are you, I am fine. We’re coming with you, shout her little sisters, but praise be, no, they’re not allowed to, they have to go to bed for their afternoon nap. Well, just up the road to the market square and straight back again, says her father, and do not speak to anyone, then he follows her mother and little sisters, he has a poor, buckled office-worker-back, today he took a boat on the water, but he’ll never make a sailor. Just up the road, at the top the town clings to the mountain with its walls and towers, but her parents have never been there, the way is too long for them, too hot, which it is, no shade far or wide. Rosie doesn’t need shade, whatever for, she’s at ease everywhere, at ease in her own sun-oil-gleaming skin, provided, of course, that no-one’s finding fault with her and no-one’s asking her any questions. Being alone makes everything big and strange and gives a sense of sole ownership: my street, my mangy black cat, my dead bird, disgusting, eaten away at by ants, but that simply must be picked up, mine. My long legs in faded linen trousers, my white sandals, my feet one in front of the other, no-one’s on the street, the sun’s blazing. There, where the street meets the hill, it begins to snake up, blue snake in golden vineyards, and in the fields the crickets are chirping like mad. Rosie takes a shortcut through the allotments, an old woman comes towards her, a mummy, for God’s sake, still roaming about here, she belongs in the grave. A young man overtakes Rosie then stops, and Rosie puts on a stern expression. The young men here are importunate ne’er-do-wells, you don’t need parents to know that, actually, why do you need parents, the devil they paint on the wall changed its face long ago. No, thank you, says Rosie politely, I do not need an escort, and she imitates the local girls as she walks past the young man: spine straight, vertebra on vertebra, jaw stiff, eyes cast down fiercely; he just murmurs a few last ingratiations that ring utterly ridiculous in Rosie’s ears. Vineyards, cascades of pink geranium blossom, walnut trees, acacias, vegetable patches, white houses, pink houses, sweaty palms, sweaty brows. Finally, she reaches the top of the hill, the town as well, the good ship Rosie catches the wind in her sails and flies happily through shady side streets, past fruit stalls and tin trays full of colourful, glittering, round-eyed fish. My market, my town, my shop full of toy animals and a firmament of straw hats, also racks of picture postcards from which Rosie, for form’s sake, chooses three sea views in a screaming blue. Further down the square, no oohs and ahs at the castle and the church façade, but curious glances at the modest shop-window displays, also at the ground-floor bedrooms where mawkish pictures of the Madonna hang over ornate cast-iron marital bedsteads. At this early afternoon hour, hardly anyone is on the street; a scruffy little dog of indeterminate breed is yapping up at a window where a boy stands pulling faces at it. Rosie finds half a bread roll from her second breakfast in her trouser pocket. Take it, you mutt, she says, holding it out, and the dog dances gaily around her like a performing monkey. Rosie tosses the bread to the dog then wrests it back again; the ugly creature, hopping on two legs, makes her laugh, and she ends up perched on the curb scratching its dirty white belly.
Ehi, the boy calls down from the window, and Rosie calls back up,
Ehi, their voices echo, and for a moment it is as if they are the only ones awake in this hot, sleepy town. That the dog follows her as she continues on her way pleases the girl: no questions, just company, to be able to speak, here my doggy, we’re going through this gate now. It is not the same gate that Rosie used to enter the town, and the street most certainly does not lead down to the beach but rather uphill, through a wood of holm oaks, then along the fertile cliffside with its unbounded view of the sea. Her parents had planned a stroll together up here and on to the lighthouse; that they are now behind the mountain ledge, in a darkened room, lying on their beds, is comforting, Rosie is in another country, my olive grove, my orange tree, my sea, my doggy, bring me the stone. The dog fetches then barks on the melting, dark blue strip of tarmac, now trots towards the town, someone is coming around the cliff edge, a boy, the boy who stood at the window pulling faces, a sturdy, sunburnt-brown child. Your dog? asks Rosie, and the boy nods, comes closer and begins to explain the surroundings to her. Rosie, who thanks to a stay in the Ticino understands some Italian, is initially pleased, then disappointed, since she can well imagine that the sea is the sea, the mountain the mountain, and the islands the islands. She walks faster, but the burly boy stays on her heels, keeps on talking at her, everything he points at with his stubby brown fingers loses its magic, leaving only a picture postcard of the type Rosie purchased, deafening blue and poison green. He should go home, she thinks, and take his dog with him, all of a sudden she has lost her pleasure in the dog, too. When a short distance away she sees a path branching to the left, leading steeply down between rocks and macchia shrubs, she stops, takes the few coins remaining from her purchases out of her bag, thanks the boy and sends him back, forgetting him instantly, relishing the adventure, the cliff path that quickly loses itself in the undergrowth. Parents and sisters completely forgotten, along with her own sense of self, a person with a name and an age, the schoolgirl Rosie Walter, year twelve, could try harder; nothing of that remains, instead, a free-roaming spirit defiantly in love with the sun, the salty air, the doing or not-doing as you please, an adult just like the Shah, who unfortunately never goes for walks, otherwise you could happen upon him here and, together, without any birdbrained chatter, look out for steamships passing by in the distance. The path turns into a staircase winding around the cliff, Rosie sits on a step, feels the cracked stone with all ten fingers, sniffs the mint that she rubs between her palms. The sun is blazing, the sea flashing and blinding. Pan is sitting on a mound of gorse; Rosie’s education, however, is patchy, she knows nothing of him. Pan creeps after the nymph, but Rosie sees only the boy, the twelve-year-old, here he is again for God’s sake, she’s extremely annoyed. He leaps down the cliff steps silently, on dust-grey feet, now without his little dog.
What do you want? says Rosie, go home, she wants to continue on her way, which now stretches along the cliff face without any sort of railing, below lies the abyss, and the sea. The boy doesn’t even bother with his
Ecco il mare, ecco l’isola, but he also doesn’t allow her to send him home, he follows her, and now a peculiar, almost beseeching sound escapes him, there is something slightly inhuman about it, it startles Rosie. What’s the matter with him, she thinks, what does he want? she wasn’t born yesterday but it surely can’t be that, he’s at most twelve years old, a child. Although, actually, it can be that, the boy has heard too much from older friends, big brothers, from that conversation in town, that eternally whispered conversation of foreign girls, so lovelorn and submissive, wandering unescorted through the vineyards and olive groves, no husband, no brother pulling a revolver, and the magic words
amore amore calling forth their tears, their kisses. Autumn conversations, these, and winter conversations in the cold, forlorn café or on the wet, grey, utterly deserted beach, conversations that rekindle the embers of summer. Just wait, my boy, in two years, or three years, a girl will come for you too, walking across the market square, you’re at the window and she smiles up at you. Then go after her, boy, don’t be shy, grab her, what’s that you say, she doesn’t want to, well she’s only pretending, she does want to.
Not that the boy, the master of the silly little dog, would have recalled such advice right then, the great love-and-summer serenade of winter, and the two, three years have most definitely not yet passed. He is still Peppino, the snotty-nosed brat whose mother boxes his ears when she catches him with his hand in the jam jar. He cannot assume the same lordly act as the big boys who wave drolly and clamour,
ah, bella; now that he is with the girl, the first who smiled at him and lured his dog to her, he wants to try his luck. His luck, he doesn’t know what that is, the murmurings and mumblings of the big boys, or does he suddenly know as Rosie draws back from him, slaps his hand away and, ashen-faced, presses herself against the cliff. He does know, and because he cannot demand he begins to beg, to beseech, in that strange, universal language consisting only of infinitives: to me come, please, me hold, please, kiss please, love please, spluttered out with trembling voice and spittle on his lips. When at first Rosie, slightly shaken though she is, laughs and says: nonsense, what are you thinking of, how old are you anyway? he retreats, but before her very eyes, sheds, as it were, his child-skin, his brows furrowing in anger, his gaze wild, voracious. He shan’t touch me, he shan’t harm me, thinks Rosie, looking, in vain, for help, the road lies high above, behind the cliffs, there’s not a soul to be seen on the zigzag path at her feet, and down by the sea the crashing of the waves would surely smother any scream. Down by the sea her parents will be taking their second dip, where could Rosie be? she only wanted to buy picture postcards for her school friends. Oh, her classroom, so cosily dark in November, you’ve painted that beautifully, Rosie, we’ll put it on the wall in pride of place. Rosie Walter, followed by a cross: your dear classmate died at the deep blue Mediterranean Sea, we had better not say how. Nonsense, thinks Rosie, trying once more, with inarticulate phrases, to calm the boy down, though in this instant even articulate phrases could not have helped. Little Pan, entreating, stammering, burning, wants his nymph, he tears off his shirt, then his trousers, he is suddenly standing naked in the scorching hot stone hollow in front of the yellow shrub, in shocked silence, and all at once it is perfectly still, and from below come the sounds of the garrulous, unfeeling sea.
Rosie stares at the naked boy and forgets her fear, he suddenly seems so beautiful to her with his brown limbs, his bathing-shorts-beltline of white skin, a garland on his sweat-damp black hair. But now he steps out of his golden halo, towards her, baring his long white teeth, there he is, the wolf from the fairy tale, a wild animal. You can defend yourself against animals, Rosie’s own narrow-chested father did once, but Rosie was still young then, she has forgotten, but now it comes back to her. No, child, not a stone, you must look dogs straight in the eye, like this, let him approach, squarely in the eye, you see, he’s trembling, he’s cowering, he’s running away. The boy is a stray dog, he stinks, he’s eaten carrion, perhaps he’s rabid, perfectly calm now, Father, I can do it too. Rosie, a picture of misfortune crumpled against the cliff, straightens up, grows, grows out of her child-shoulders and looks the boy fiercely, squarely in the eye, many seconds pass, she doesn’t blink even once and she doesn’t move a muscle. It is still terribly quiet and now a stupefying scent arises from the millions of inconspicuous, honey-sweet, herb-bitter macchia shrubs, and in the stillness and the scent, the boy does in fact collapse in on himself, like a doll leaking sawdust. It is beyond comprehension, is barely conceivable exactly how dreadful Rosie’s look must have been, it must have contained some primal force, a primal force of defence, just as the primal force of desire lay in the pleading and the stammering and the last wild gestures of the youth. Everything is new, everything freshly awakened on this hot, sunny afternoon, so many new experiences, love of life, desire and shame, these children, a spring awakening, but without love, only yearning and fear. Ashamed, the boy retreats under Rosie’s basilisk stare, step by step, whimpering like an ailing infant, and Rosie feels shame too, that power in her gaze, which, later, she will never find the courage to replicate in front of a mirror. In the end the boy sits, he has turned swiftly away, clothes in hand, and runs silently up the cliff steps, the little dog has suddenly reappeared though, barking impertinently, carefree, the boy sits on a low wall buttoning up his shirt and muttering to himself, furious and blinded by tears. Rosie walks down the zigzag path and wants to be relieved, to have escaped again, but really, these fathers, the things you can learn from fathers, and yet she feels only sorrow, stumbles between clumps of euphorbia and white thornbushes, blinded by tears. Your classmate Rosie, I hear you even went to Italy, yes, thank you, it was quite beautiful. Beautiful and dreadful, and having reached the shore Rosie washes her face and neck with sea water, thinks, not a word to anyone, not under any circumstances, and then she strolls on, while, on the road up above, the boy trudges home slowly, she strolls along the edge of the waves to the bathing beach, to her parents. And through all this so much time has passed that the rays of the sun slant across the mountain, and both Rosie and the boy cast long shadows as they walk, long, distant-from-one-another shadows onto the crowns of the young pine trees on the slope, onto the now paler sea.
