Another Summer Day

It was another summer day in August. Max Fantino lay on a starched double bed, in a dark room with blinds shut to keep out the sweltering heat. A fan hanging from the ceiling circled incessantly as Max listened to the lazy drone of its engine and the odd irregular click it made randomly on one of its lazy turns. He was lying only in his underpants, his belly protruding from the ample lunch he had just consumed. This is siesta, the time to sleep off the heat in a cool shady environment; the time to digest one's meal and a time to make love - given that one had a partner to love, of course.

And he didn’t have a partner not any more. 

Max breathed in deeply. He still could not understand why Margherita had left him, so abruptly. Had it been the drink? Had it been the wrong word at the wrong time? Had it been his insensitivity, he wondered, eyes gazing at the fan rotating. Because she had told him she had found someone else and she wanted to make a clean break, and he couldn't understand her words, that night in the middle of the night, with the light rain outside and the warm fire burning in the hearth. She had said words like I know this may hurt you, but it's best to be honest with ourselves. She said she was feeling an emptiness, that she had been feeling this void for too long now and that he had done nothing to recognise it and had just let it go like a fish you release after unhooking the hook and casting it back into the swells of the sea. He remembered the feeling of hopelessness and disbelief although he had never turned a blind eye, he had always been aware of her innate sadness, loneliness and, ultimately, apathy. They had talked well into the night and the bottle of wine slowly but surely diminished and vanished and they had slept in different beds that night. And he had laid on the bed in the guest room and she had laid on the pull out sofa bed in the sitting room, but neither had slept in their bedroom, where they had made love so many times. And the rain gently fell outside, and he heard the drops dripping off the eaves of the roof and he had tried to count them, one by one, until he lost count and drifted into a restless sleep.

And when he awoke in the morning, she was nowhere to be seen. The flat was empty, and he knew then she was true to her word, she had left him.

The fan on the ceiling continued its unbroken whirl. The sun outside had begun to shake off its intense light as the afternoon languidly turned into the evening.

He rose from the bed and stretched. He showered, allowing the warm water to soothe his body and to waken his consciousness and to admit the reality he had to summon up the courage to face. He dressed his nakedness in a pair of white cotton jeans, a black belt and a blue linen shirt. He slicked his brown hair back, but did not think to shave away the stubble that had grown on his cheeks over the past two days. The mirror over the sink, reflected his dull blue expressionless eyes, and he peered into those eyes now and recalled the untidiness of his revenge. Because he had followed Margherita day after day, like a pervert or like a stalker and he had seen her with the man who had replaced him in her heart. The surge of jealousy was rampant throughout his body and played havoc in his consciousness. She had become an obsession and he could not bring himself to accept rejection, and so he continued to follow her until the night of the murder. 

He closed his eyes, and sat down on the toilet. The memory was a video that played itself over and over again. He had been sitting in the corner of the bar where they were sitting, face to face, sipping wine. At a distance, he could see but not hear their intimate conversations. Every now and again, Margherita would laugh loudly, and the man, he did not know the name of the man, echoed her laughter, pleased to see she was evidently amused at his sense of humour. He observed how their foreheads touched, close to a flickering yellow candle light and how their eyes met, the simultaneous smile and the conspiracy that seemed to emanate from their bodies; a conspiracy that gnawed his insides, and fermented his silent rage.

Too Tough Within

 

Fisherman

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Fisherman

        

      Early came the dawn, slowly saturating the last hour of darkness, and the sky was a luminous pale hue with solitary clouds like pink lost roses stationary in the sky. And from out of the evanescent mist appeared a simple chugging fishing boat, splitting the smooth sea, its diesel engine loud and rude in the silence of the morning.

    A man sat stone-like in the rear of the fishing boat, with a hand firmly clasped around the long wooden tiller. His face held a fixed expression, as if sculptured in thought, but he was not thinking about anything. All his actions were mechanical and carried out passively with no interest. The man seemed engulfed in the sound of the monotonous diesel engine and the movement of his boat that rose and fell on the swell of the sea, as it turned into the Catalan port of Alghero and passed below the bronze statue of the Virgin Mary, the venerated protector of all fishermen. Whenever you passed beneath Her you made the sign of the cross, and it was not just a pious act of faith but also the acknowledgement of something spiritual; the mother of God blessed the meek and mild, blessed the simplicity of the lives of men who fished the seas.

    The boat, heavy with an abundant catch of fish, came into the port, cutting the smooth waters as it chugged past lines of luxury yachts neatly moored up one next to the other. The man reduced speed and pulled hard on the tiller and the boat turned and eased up alongside a jetty. He switched off the ignition key and the engine abruptly stopped. A peaceful silence ensued. After deftly securing the boat, the man stood up straight, stretched his back and with squinted eyes, scanned the deserted port and the distant bastions that surrounded the medieval town with its maze of cobbled alleyways.

He thought about his wife and imagined her sleeping serenely.

Before going home, he had to disentangle the fish from the coiled nets and that would take at least a couple of hours. He looked down at the deck of his boat gently bobbing up and down and the keel sounded like smacking lips, opening and closing on the in coming waves. The silver bodies of live fish twitched and flicked in the speckled sunlight. He had made a good catch and it would sell well in the fish market held in the port every morning. But he was reluctant to get back into the boat and start the long monotonous task of disentangling fish from the nets. He wanted to drop everything and go home to his wife, to lie alongside her, to feel her closeness, to love her and be with her.

Droplets of sweat formed around his forehead beneath his sun cap. The sun was gaining height rapidly in a faint turquoise sky, and he was feeling the fatigue of a long night’s fishing on his own in a boat on the open sea.

Yes, he was feeling oddly lethargic, and he wondered if he wasn’t coming down with something.
With a sigh he climbed back into the boat and sat in front of the mound of fishing nets. He picked up the first fish, a good-sized cod, shaded grey with elongated streaks of silver. The fish was alive and slippery in his grasp; he peeled away the netting, extracted the fish and tossed it nonchalantly into a polystyrene box.
One fish after another and the box filled up until the task was done.

Day after day he did the same thing: with this fishing boat his father had bequeathed him, he led a solitary life on the sea, earning an income based on the amount of fish he caught. Some days were better than others and on the open sea everything was unpredictable. There were days when the sea was rough, the waves whipped up by the north westerly winds and when the weather was bad like this, he would sit at home watching television after a heavy lunch, and then spend the night in one of the dimly lit local bars sipping Cannanau and talking to locals about nothing of any interest.

Just this disinterestedness.

What did really interest him? Not this life that constrained him to live so much alone, hours without speaking to a soul; hours of thoughtless thoughts as his fishing boat clocked the nautical miles, cut the waves, a speck on the shimmering horizon so distant from the coastline.

A speck like a soul without contact.

He wondered what would happen if his boat ever capsized out there in the open sea? If he were swallowed into the deep dark blue depths, would he be missed?

Initially, yes. His wife would initially be concerned. On the realisation he was late returning home, she would alert the Carabinieri and the Coast Guard. A search party would be hastily organised, a police boat would leave the port, speeding past the statue of the Virgin Mary to comb the coastline, but his body would be far out at sea, somewhere below the surface, turning round and round in the formidable expanse of water, drifting a dilatory course along the sea bed.

What was he thinking about? Surely he had so much to be thankful for – a loving wife, a home, a boat, an income, and a healthy out door life. He was young, twenty-six years old, and the future seemed to beckon him, entice him, and cajole him into heeding his intuition to change. To change his destiny.
Men are sometimes masters of their own fate.

 
He was not sure where he had heard this saying, but it made him think about something. And the feeling of unfulfillment conditioned his mood: a speck, a soul, so insignificant, barely discernible against the immense backdrop of life.

AIRPORT

AIRPORT

Neil Morrison checked his wristwatch for the second time. The plane was due to arrive in ten minutes. He walked through one of the automatic opening and closing doors of Leonardo da Vinci airport, and felt immediately the cool touch of air conditioning on his perspiring skin.

        Throngs of people were moving in different directions. They stood with infinite patience in long snake-queues at check-in desks, sat around on hard cushioned seats, reading, conversing, or looking absent-mindedly into space.

It was an all too familiar scene to Morrison who was used to airports all over the world. He was a correspondent for the Associated Press in Rome, and he was often out of Italy covering international stories. He was one of a small branch of journalists working in a cramped four-roomed apartment in the centre of the city, just off Piazza Venezia.

        It was midday in July and Morrison had driven to the airport when all of Italy was enduring a three-week heat wave and drought. His car had no air conditioning, and so he drove along the straight dual carriageway to the airport with the car windows wide open. He drove fast, exceeding the speed limit, but quite conscious he was not the only transgressive driver. And as the wind streamed into his car, blowing his hair in disarray, his mind was not on his driving but on his wife, Michelle, who he was going to pick up.

        A smile played on his face when he thought of holding her again in his arms. After six months in the United States, helping their only 18-year-old daughter settle down to University life, his wife was returning to him. They had been in constant contact with each other, but nothing could now replace the physical comfort, the touchable, all-embracing flesh and blood of his wife in his arms.

        He checked his watch again and scanned one of the monitors aligned on a suspended steel rod in the arrivals foyer of the airport. The plane from New York was perfectly on time and a flashing symbol next to the flight number indicated it had landed. It would take Michelle at least thirty minutes to get through customs and passport control, and so Morrison sauntered across to the bar and ordered a coffee.

        He was almost oblivious to all the hustle and bustle of people around him. He caught snippets of conversation in different languages, but his mind was on meeting Michelle. How would she look? What would she be wearing? He had already planned the afternoon.  The table was booked at Bruno’s – their favourite Trattoria in Trastevere –, and then home where they would rest, lying in each other’s arms, gazing up at the overhead fan, spinning monotonously, talking in soft voices about all those delightful, nonsensical things a man and a woman say to each other after they have made love and communication is exquisitely spontaneous and facile.

Morrison drank his short black coffee in one mouthful, placed the little brown Lavazza cup on its thick-rimmed saucer and left the bar.

Still with time to spare, he stopped off at the men’s toilets. A strong smell of disinfectant immediately assaulted his nostrils, as he ran his eye around the spacious, singular room with its set of linear cubicles and line of washbasins. He peered at his reflected image in one of the tarnished mirrors. Morrison was 38 years old, and his healthy, tanned complexion exalted the light blue of his eyes. He had short thick black hair with a long fringe that covered his forehead in such a way that he had to brush it back continuously with the palm of his hand. His stature was tall, and his broad shoulders were strong and masculine in the short-sleeved T-shirt he was wearing.

 While washing his hands, Morrison saw in the reflection of the mirror a young man enter, agitated and in a hasty manner. He was dressed in black jeans and a coarse, stained, bomber jacket, zipped up to the neck – something Morrison immediately noticed as being odd.

Placing a dark green canvas bag on the floor next to one of the washbasins, the man began to wash vigorously his face, making deep, guttural noises, gargling and spitting out the water he cupped into his hands.

Morrison moved across the room to the automatic hand-drier. He pushed in the protruding red starter button that noisily set the fan in motion. Rubbing his hands together in the stream of warm air, he was conscious the man had stopped washing his hands and face and was now looking intently into the mirror that reflected a face with no expression. Morrison had a sudden sense of foreboding as he watched the stranger pick up his bag and leave the toilets. For a brief moment, their eyes met fleetingly like wafted feathers in the neon light.

 Now Morrison was at the arrival gate. He knew Michelle would appear very soon. There was a large gathering of people, conversation was boisterous and good humored, as everyone fixed their stare on passengers who were already coming out, in dribs and drabs, many pushing trolleys loaded with suitcases.

Then he caught sight of Michelle. He instantly recognized that self-composed gait that made her stand out from everyone else. She was wearing a light yellow dress that fell down to the knees and outlined delicately and sensuously her figure. Her blond hair was tied back, emphasizing the soft pale structure of her face. She had an expectant smile on her lips as her eyes scanned the awaiting crowd.

        Morrison stepped forward to meet her.

“Michelle”, he called out, and he waved his hand to get his wife’s attention. Michelle glimpsed her husband in the crowd and she waved back smiling happily.

Suddenly there was a deafening blast that resonated throughout the airport. Windows shattered into smithereens. Women screamed and male voices yelled. A succession of gunshots and the rattle of machine guns rang out, as men, women and children frantically ran in different directions, seeking what little cover could be found.

And then a ripple of bullets splattered the marble floor where Morrison was still standing, and he heard his wife cry out “God, what’s happening?”

In transfixed horror, Morrison saw Michelle fall to the ground, red blotches of blood already beginning to seep through the light fabric of her dress. He threw himself down onto the floor next to her as a second spray of bullets hit the check-in desks and conveyor belts, the deadly ricochet spitting out in all directions.

 Within seconds it was all over: the shooting stopped as abruptly as it had started. Stunned and unbelieving, Morrison took in the scene around him and saw people sobbing in pain, blood splattered on the floor, and a mingled disorder of injured and dead bodies.

“Neil, I can’t breathe…” he heard his wife’s voice tremble, amidst the chaos.

“Michelle…” he said cradling his wife’s head in his lap. He looked into her blanched face, and his fingers ran over her dried lips and up to her closed eyes.  

 “Michelle…” he repeated stunned, and his voice was subdued and his body was shivering.

 “ What the fuck’s happening?” he heard himself yell, but his voice was lost in the cacophony and commotion of death around him.

“Michelle…” now he said her name barely as a whisper. He gently rocked her limp body, dying quietly in his arms.

 “Help me…someone help me for God’s sake,” and his words rose into the air like a lost prayer dissolving into the discordant orchestration of anguished implorations from the voices of the survivors, the injured, and the dying, all indiscernible, all equally irrational.

 Then Morrison saw his wife open her eyes. Momentarily their soft blueness irradiated his face with love until the glow faded with the slow closing of her eyelids. He saw her lips quiver, and he leaned close to her mouth to hear her whisper “I love you.”

And when the words had been spoken, so softly, softly, too, ran the first tears haphazardly over his cheeks, tracing an irregular downward pattern along the length of his neck.

No words came from his mouth.

In this embrace with death, words lose their meaningfulness, but the tears that sting the skin are the tears that leave an indelible stain of sorrow on the face forever.

Morrison gazed at his hands covered in his wife’s drying blood.

Two-armed policemen spoke rapidly to him in Italian. The words sounded strange and incoherent, weighed down with fear. Assistance had arrived. Paramedics were rushing to and fro with stretches, giving out orders, gesticulating.

Everyone was yelling at the same time, each a fraught character playing a role in a horrific tragedy with its bloodstained backdrop of utter pandemonium, and slowly, as if biding time, Death strolled across the floor collecting one by one the first handful of souls.

Spiral Down

SPIRAL DOWN

Spiral down, my love,

Spiral down,

Spiral down, my love,

And rest your head awhile.

Sunlight through the window pane,

Dirt in your nails.

Slogging your guts out all day,

To earn your family a meal.

Spiral down, my love,

Spiral down,

Spiral down, my love,

And rest your head awhile.

On the dole for too long,

Days gone into years.

Your husband can't think what went wrong

Seein' his wife in a pool of tears.

Spiral down, my love,

Spiral down,

Spiral down, my love,

And rest your head awhile.

Gone the midnight hour,

The kids are asleep.

Your husband lies at your side,

He's too drunk to stand on his feet.

Spiral down, my love,

Spiral down,

Spiral down, my love,

And rest your head awhile.

Breathe your breath into the cold,

The dawn is severe.

You walk a suburban road,

With your collar pulled around your ears.

Spiral down, my love,

Spiral down,

Spiral down, my love,

And rest your head awhile.

TIME IN TIME OUT

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HSPLtITUjWc

Time In Time Out

I can look at you,

For hours on end,

Say the same old things

Again and again,

The things you know.

And I guess I like the way you walk,

I like all your movements

And the way you walk,

Across the room.

Time in, Time out,

Time out, Time in,

In and out,

Your destiny.        

Shafts of sunlight

Through the blind,

Summer heat and lazy minds,

In this room.

I fail to see your point of view,

I cannot predict

The things you do,

Or will not do.

Time in, Time out,

Time out, Time in,

In and out,

Your destiny.

Moments lost

In deepest thought,

Sometimes I know you,

Sometimes not...lost in thought.

And all the world

Is in me and you,

Love is a danger,

When dreams fall through...don't you know?

Don't you know?

Time in, Time out,

Time out, Time in,

In and out,

Your destiny.

THE VISITOR

                                                                THE VISITOR

In the late afternoon, golden sunbeams flickered hither and thither across the Roman Castelli hills, between cracks in a low grey belt of sluggish cloud. The sunbeams sneaked across lush fields and verdant vineyards, and rose to drench the city of Rome in a celestial glow. Domes and rooftops radiated magnificently in the setting sun, and windows in high-rise suburban apartments reflected the golden light like so many twinkling mirrors.

And the sunbeams found their way into the kitchen window of one small apartment in the centre of the city, and illuminated the face of Rebecca Martini gazing down on the street below. The lambent light made a halo around her inclined head of long, heavy brown hair, and it outlined the contours of her body.

Rebecca could not remember how long she had been standing at the window. Immersed in thought, she had lost track of time. She hardly noticed the rumbling traffic and the pedestrians walking the narrow pavements; she hardly noticed the sun setting in the distance until the dusk had surreptitiously slipped into the panorama of her thoughts, and she heard the voice of Cecilia, her fourteen-year old-daughter.

“Mama, I bought this for Papa.”

Rebecca turned around, now a silhouette against the bright windowpane. She looked carefully at her daughter in the semi darkness of the kitchen. Cecilia was tall for her age, and she had her same color hair. Her wide brown eyes contrasted with the paleness of her complexion; she was very pretty, Rebecca thought, dressed in jeans and a light blue pull-over, she was now a young lady.

“What have you bought for Papa?” she asked in a voice that she knew feigned interest.

“A tie!” said Cecilia. “Look, it’s a genuine silk tie! Do you think he’ll like it?”

“Do I think he’ll like it?” she echoed. Taking the striped tie in her hands, she felt the silky texture as she stretched it out to its full length. “It’s beautiful, Cecilia. Your papa’s going to love this!”

“I thought he would like the red stripes, and he looks so handsome when he wears a tie and a suit.”

Cecilia’s words resonated in her head. He was handsome when they first met. She back tracked in time and remembered when he was dating her; she remembered the summer evening walks to the light-house that commanded a sweeping view of the sea. She could still hear his seductive voice and the warm embrace and the excitement of first kissing. Everything seemed so enchanted at the time: the starry night sky, the blanched moon, the balmy sea breeze. She had given herself up entirely to this man who she believed would be her life-long companion.

“When’s he arriving?”

Cecilia’s question brought her back to reality.

“What’s that?” she said, fumbling to regain a sense of what was about to happen. “He’ll be here soon. I heard he would be here by eight o’clock.”

“I can’t wait!” Cecilia sang out happily. “Ten years and it’s Papa’s first time with us on Christmas Eve!”

Rebecca felt she needed to remind Cecilia that her father could only stay for one day. She wanted to explain that he was under house arrest.

He had been released from prison on condition he remained at home.

But she refrained from speaking her thoughts; she could not bring herself to spoil her daughter’s excitement. It would not be fair. She had suffered enough, never seeing her father for over ten years except for sporadic visits to the prison.

“Have you set the table, darling?” she asked.

Cecilia switched on the overhead dining room light. The table was set impeccably: three knives and forks, three plates and glasses.

“All done, Mama,” she replied laughing. She moved to the table, “you sit here, I’m next to you, and Papa will sit at the head of the table!”

Rebecca moved over to the gas stove where a large saucepan of water was already boiling. From the shelf, she took a packet of salt and poured two teaspoonfuls into the bubbling water. He would be here soon, she thought to herself, a man found guilty for numerous connections with the mafia; his life long prison sentence was on the murder of a magistrate who he killed for financial recompense. He had nothing against the magistrate he shot in the chest three times. He did not know him; he did not know why he was paid to kill him. It was simply a contract - an order he obeyed; an order that came to him in the dead of night – always in the dead of night – and he was a killer, a professional one.

He was well paid for his work, but the assassination of the magistrate ended abruptly when his Alfa Romeo, speeding away from the murder scene, careened out of control and crashed into one of the many cypress trees aligning the narrow Via Appia Antica. The mist was thick, and the damp of the night had already set in while he was driving, headlights piercing the darkness, wheels squealing on the asphalt, until the trunk of the tree reared up like a towering phantom in the blackness, and it was too late to avoid collision. The next thing he knew, he was in hospital, with multiple injuries, alive, but in handcuffs.

And all of this was ten years ago and today her husband, a silver-haired, fifty year old man, short in stature, with a corpulent body that told a story of time wasted in over-eating and lack of exercise, was coming home.

*        *        *        *

Roberto Martino arrived at the block of flats where his wife and daughter lived and scanned the names on the dimly lit panel of bell buttons. He had forgotten so many families lived in this condominium. With his forefinger he pressed the button marked Martino, tarnished and barely decipherable, and waited for an answer. With a heavy, discordant noise, the metallic lock on the front gate was automatically released. He pushed open the gate and walked down the narrow corridor that led to the elevator and staircase. He chose to walk up the two flights of stairs to the second floor instead of risking the claustrophobia he invariably suffered when he took an elevator. Wearily he climbed the stairs, one by one, stopping from time to time to catch his breath, realising that he smoked far too much.

In his own mind, he was not sure how this was going to work out. He could never find the right words to say either to his wife or daughter. He loved them dearly and he was repentant, truly and profoundly repentant for his infamous past.

Now he was serving a life sentence and these visits home filled him with a mixture of joy and anguish.

Now he was standing outside the door. He waited, aware of his heartbeat fluttering with a strained, emotional uneasiness, and he found himself unable to push the stained yellow button that would ring the bell. Behind the door he could hear movement: the clatter of plates from the kitchen, the muted television, and the sound of his daughter’s voice, although he was unable to discern what she was saying.

And then tears came to his eyes. Soft, slow tears of a dead man. He hastily brushed them aside with the palms of his hand, and his body began to shake in quick convulsions, and his breathing grew faster and faster. What was this hidden emotion welling up from the bottom of his unconsciousness? He understood, then, this was love; the love he felt for his wife and the love for his daughter. He also understood this was regret: life had led him along tortuous paths of aberration, straight into a cell.

The tears ceased; his body had become calm. He was suddenly self-composed and in control of his feelings.

Behind the door the television had been turned up. The voice of a young pop star sang a melody, beautiful and heart wrenching. He listened to the crescendo of emotion as the song unfolded a story of sorrowful, unrequited love.

Driven by an impulse that defied all rational thought, he turned around quickly and descended the staircase. Within a few minutes he was out of the block of flats and walking at a quick pace down the street aligned with parked cars.

He stopped momentarily and looked up at the softly illuminated apartment window. He saw the silhouette of his wife pass by slowly and gracefully, and realised he too had become nothing more that an outline in their lives. There was nothing substantial in him; he was an emptiness, a ghost, a memory that warranted no remembering. Like an epiphany in the stark nakedness of the urban night, he would not see them again, and there would be no returning home.

He started walking. With numb hands dug deep in his pockets, and his shoulders slightly arched against the chilly breeze blowing lightly, he was nothing more than a silhouette himself, a retreating figure, fast-fading into a perfect kind of anonymity.