IN THE early days of summer, Agostino and his mother used to go out to sea every morning on a small rowboat typical of Mediterranean beaches known as a pattino. At first she brought a boatman along with them, but Agostino gave such clear signs of annoyance at the man’s presence that the oars were then turned over to him. He rowed with deep pleasure on the smooth, diaphanous, early-morning sea, and his mother, sitting in front of him, would speak to him softly, as joyful and serene as the sea and sky, as if he were a man rather than a thirteen-year-old boy. Agostino’s mother was a big and beautiful woman still in her prime, and Agostino was filled with pride every time he got in the boat with her for one of their morning rides. All the bathers on the beach seemed to be watching, admiring his mother and envying him. Convinced that all eyes were on him, he felt as if he were speaking louder than usual, behaving in a special way, enveloped in a theatrical, exemplary air as if, rather than on a beach, his mother and he were onstage before an audience of hundreds of watchful eyes. Sometimes she would appear in a new bathing suit, and he could not help but make a loud remark, secretly hoping that others would overhear him. Or she would send him to fetch something from their cabin, while she stood waiting on the shore by the boat. He would obey with a hidden joy, happy to prolong the spectacle of their departure, if only for a few moments. Finally they would climb on board the boat, and Agostino would take hold of the oars and push off. But the intensity of his filial vanity and the turmoil of his infatuation would linger for many years to come.
When they were a good distance from the shore, the mother would tell her son to stop, and she would put on a rubber bathing cap, remove her sandals, and slip into the water. Agostino would follow. They would swim around the pattino, whose oars had been left unsecured, conversing in merry voices that echoed loudly over the silent sea, calm and filled with light. Sometimes the mother would point to a piece of cork floating in the distance and challenge her son to a race. She would give him a short lead and then, with powerful strokes, take off toward the cork. Or they would have diving competitions, breaching the clear smooth water with their bodies. Agostino would see the mother’s body plunge into a circle of green bubbles, and he would jump in right after her, ready to follow her anywhere, even to the bottom of the sea. He would dive into the mother’s wake and feel as if even the cold compact water conserved traces of the passage of that beloved body. After the swim, they would climb back on board, and the mother, looking around herself at the calm and luminous sea, would say, “Isn’t it lovely today?” Agostino didn’t reply because his pleasure in the beauty of the sea and sky was related, he felt, mainly to the profound intimacy of his relations with his mother. Without that intimacy, he sometimes found himself thinking, would it still be so beautiful? The two of them would dry themselves languorously in the sun, which became more ardent with the approach of midday. Then the mother would stretch out on the plank connecting the twin hulls of the boat. Lying on her back with her hair in the water, face to the sky, and eyes closed, she appeared to doze off. All the while Agostino, in his seat, would look around, look at the mother, and hold his breath lest he disturb her sleep. Occasionally she would open her eyes and say how good it felt to lie on her back with her eyes closed and feel the water rippling and flowing underneath her. Or she would ask Agostino to pass her the cigarette case, or better yet to light a cigarette and pass it to her, which Agostino would do with tremulous, painstaking care. Then the mother would smoke in silence, and Agostino would remain hunched over, his back to her but his head twisted to the side, so as to catch the little puffs of blue smoke that indicated where her head was resting, her hair radiating out in the water. Then the mother, who never seemed to tire of the sun, would ask Agostino to row and not turn around: in the meantime she would remove the top of her bathing suit and lower the bottoms so as to expose her whole body to the sunlight. Agostino rowed and felt proud of his assignment, as if it were a ritual in which he was allowed to participate. Not only did he never think of turning around but he felt as if her body, lying there behind him, naked in the sun, was shrouded in a mystery to which he owed the greatest veneration.
One morning the mother was under the beach umbrella, and Agostino, sitting on the sand next to her, was awaiting the hour when they usually went for their row. All at once a shadow obstructed the sunlight shining down on him: Looking up, he saw a tanned, dark-haired young man extending a hand to the mother. He paid him no mind, thinking it was the usual chance encounter, and moving away a bit, he waited for the conversation to end. But the young man did not accept an offer to sit down. Pointing toward the shore at the white pattino he’d arrived on, he invited the mother to accompany him on a boat ride out to sea. Agostino was sure she would turn down the invitation, like the many others that had preceded it. Much to his surprise, he saw her readily accept, gathering her things—sandals, bathing cap, and bag—and jumping to her feet. She had welcomed the young man’s proposal with the same friendly and spontaneous ease that characterized her relations with her son. And with the same ease and spontaneity, she turned to Agostino, who had remained seated with his head bowed, intent on the sand sifting through his clenched fist, and told him to go ahead and have a swim by himself; she was going for a short ride and would be back in a little while. The young man, in the meantime, with a self-assured air, was already on his way to the boat. The woman was walking behind him, meekly, with her usual languid and majestic serenity. Looking at them, the son could not help but admit that the pride, vanity, and emotion he had felt during their outings on the sea must now be in the young man’s heart. He saw the mother climb aboard the boat and the young man, his body leaning back and his feet planted firmly, pull the boat away from the shallow waters of the shore with a few vigorous strokes. The young man rowed, the mother sat in front of him, holding on to the seat with both hands, and they seemed to be chatting. Then the boat grew smaller and smaller, entered into the blinding light that the sun spread over the surface of the sea, and slowly dissolved into it.
Left alone, Agostino stretched out on his mother’s lounge chair and, with one arm tucked behind his neck and his eyes fixed on the sky, adopted a pensive and indifferent attitude. Since every bather on the beach must have noticed his trips with his mother in the past few days, they would have remarked that today she had left him behind to go off with the young boatman. This was why he must not betray the annoyance and disappointment that he was feeling. But try as he might to feign an air of composure and serenity, he still felt that everyone could read in his face how forced and petty his attitude was. What offended him most wasn’t so much the mother’s preference for the young man as the quick almost premeditated joy with which she accepted his invitation. It was as if she had decided not to let the opportunity slip away and to seize it without hesitation as soon as it presented itself. It was as if all those days on the sea with him she had been bored and had only come along for lack of better company. One memory confirmed his ill humor. He had gone to a ball at a friend’s house with his mother. During the first dance, a female cousin who was upset at being ignored by the men consented to dance a couple of rounds with him, the boy in short pants. But she had danced gracelessly, with a long sullen face. And although he was absorbed in minding his dance steps, Agostino quickly picked up on her unkind and contemptuous attitude. All the same he invited her for a third round and was surprised to see her smile and stand up quickly, smoothing out the wrinkles in her skirt with both hands. But rather than run into his arms, she walked past him toward a young man who, looming behind Agostino, had beckoned to her to dance. The scene lasted no longer than five seconds, and no one noticed except Agostino. But he was mortified beyond measure and had the impression that everyone had witnessed his humiliation.
Now, after his mother’s departure with the young man in the pattino, he compared the two events and found them identical. Like his cousin, his mother had been waiting for the right opportunity to abandon him. Like his cousin, and with the same breathless ease, she had accepted the first partner to come along. And in both cases, it had been his fate to fall from the summit of an illusion and crash to the ground, aching and bruised.
The mother stayed out on the water for a couple of hours that day. From under the beach umbrella he saw her step back onto the shore, hold out her hand to the young man, and with her head lowered under the noonday sun, make her leisurely way to the changing cabin. The beach was empty at that hour, a consolation for Agostino, who was still convinced that everyone was staring at them. “How did your morning go?” his mother asked indifferently. “I had a lot of fun,” Agostino began, and he pretended that he, too, had gone out on the water with the boys from the next cabin. But she had already stopped listening and was running toward the cabin to get dressed. Agostino decided that the next day, as soon as he saw the young man’s white pattino appear on the horizon, he would find some excuse to wander off and avoid having to suffer the insult of being left behind for a second time. But the next day, the minute he started to leave, he heard his mother calling him back. “Come,” she said, standing up and gathering their things, “we’re going for a boat ride.” Agostino followed her, thinking that she intended to send the young man on his way and spend the morning alone with him. The young man was standing on the pattino waiting for them. The mother said hello and added simply, “I am bringing my son, too.” And so a very unhappy Agostino found himself sitting next to the mother, facing the young man as he rowed.
Agostino had always seen the mother in one way: dignified, serene, and discreet. So he was bewildered, during the ride, to see the change that had taken place not only in her manner and speech but also apparently in her person, as if she were no longer the same woman. They had barely entered the open sea when the mother—in a sharp, allusive, and, to Agostino, obscure remark—began a strange private conversation. As far as he could tell, it concerned a girlfriend of the young man who had another more fortunate and acceptable suitor. But this was only a pretext and the conversation continued, insinuating, insistent, spiteful, malicious. The mother seemed the more aggressive of the two yet also the more defenseless. The young man took care to answer her with a calm, almost ironic self-assurance. Sometimes the mother seemed unhappy and even irritated with the young man, to Agostino’s delight. But a few seconds later, she would disappoint him with a flirtatious remark that destroyed this first impression. Or she would address the young man in a resentful tone of voice with a series of obscure criticisms. But rather than take offense, the young man, Agostino observed, wore an expression of fatuous vanity, and Agostino concluded that the reproach was only on the surface, a cover for an affection he could not grasp. Both the mother and the youth seemed to ignore his existence, as if he wasn’t there. She went so far with this display of neglect as to remind the young man that going out with him alone the day before had been a mistake on her part that would never be repeated. From now on the son would always be present—an argument Agostino considered offensive, as if rather than a person endowed with an independent will he were an object that could be moved about arbitrarily.
Only once did the mother seem to notice his presence, when the young man, suddenly letting go of the oars, leaned forward with an intensely malicious expression and whispered a short sentence to her that Agostino couldn’t make out. This sentence had the power to make the mother jump up with exaggerated outrage and feigned horror. “At least show some consideration for this innocent boy,” she answered, pointing to Agostino sitting by her side. Hearing himself called innocent, Agostino shook with repulsion, as if he had been struck by a dirty rag he couldn’t dodge.
When they were a good distance from the shore, the young man proposed that the mother take a swim. Here Agostino, who had so often admired the discretion and ease with which she usually slipped into the water, could not help but be bewildered and pained by the new gestures with which she embellished her former behavior. The young man had plunged into the sea and already reemerged while the mother was still hesitantly testing the water with her toes, feigning either fear or reluctance—it was hard to tell. She covered herself, protested, laughing and holding on to the boat. Finally she lowered a leg and a hip into the water in an almost indecent pose, and let herself fall awkwardly into the arms of her companion. The two of them went under together, and together they floated back to the surface. Agostino, huddled in a corner, saw the smiling face of the mother next to the tanned and serious face of the youth, and it looked to him as if their cheeks were touching. In the clear water you could see the two bodies rubbing against each other, as if they wanted to intertwine, bumping their legs and their hips. Agostino glanced at them, then at the distant beach, and felt embarrassed and in the way. At the sight of his frowning face, the mother, treading water, uttered a sentence that humiliated and mortified him for the second time that morning: “Why the long face? . . . Can’t you see how lovely the water is? Goodness, what a grumpy son I have.” Agostino did not reply, limiting himself to casting his eyes elsewhere. The swim lasted for a long time. The mother and her companion played in the water like two dolphins and appeared to forget him entirely. Finally they climbed back on board. The youth leapt up in a single bound and then leaned over to pull up the mother, who was imploring his assistance from the water. Agostino watched. He observed how the youth’s hands, in order to lift the woman, dug their fingers into her tanned skin where the arm is softest and widest, between the shoulder and the armpit. Then she sat down by Agostino, gasping for air, and with her pointed nails she pulled at her wet bathing suit so it wouldn’t adhere too closely to the tips of her nipples and the roundness of her breasts. But Agostino remembered that when they were alone, the mother, a strong woman, had no need of any assistance in climbing back on the boat, and he attributed her begging for help and the wriggling of her body—apparently indulging in a feminine clumsiness—to the new spirit that had already caused so many and such unpleasant changes in her. He could not help but think that the mother, a large and dignified woman, was feeling her size as an impediment she would gladly be rid of, and her dignity, a boring habit that she now needed to replace with some awkward playfulness.
Once the two of them were back on the boat, the return trip began. This time the oars were assigned to Agostino, while the mother and the boatman sat on the plank between the hulls. He started rowing very slowly, in the scorching sun, sometimes wondering at the meaning of the voices, laughter, and movements behind his back. Every so often the mother, as if remembering he was there, would reach out an arm and give him an awkward pat on the back, or tickle him under the arms, asking him whether he was tired. “No, I’m not tired,” Agostino would reply. When he heard the young man say, with a laugh, “It’s good for him to row,” he gave the oars a hard, angry tug. The mother leaned her head against Agostino’s seat and kept her long legs outstretched, this much he could tell, but he had the impression this position was not always maintained. At one point, he heard a scrambling and what seemed to be a brief struggle. The mother sounded like she was choking. She stood up, stammering something, and the boat tipped to one side. For a moment the mother’s belly rubbed against Agostino’s cheek. It felt as vast as the sky and was beating strangely, as if it had a life that didn’t belong to her or had slipped past her control. “I’ll sit back down,” she said, standing with her legs wide and her hands gripping her son’s shoulders, “if you promise to behave.” “I promise,” came the young man’s reply, with a false and playful solemnity. She lowered herself awkwardly onto the plank, brushing her belly against her son’s cheek. A trace of moisture from the wet bathing suit was left on Agostino’s skin and a deeper warmth seemed to evaporate the moisture into steam. Although he felt a sharp stab of murky repulsion, he obstinately refused to dry himself off.
As soon as they were close to shore, the young man leapt agilely onto the seat and, grabbing hold of the oars, pushed Agostino away, forcing him to sit next to the mother. She immediately put her arm around his waist, an unusual and, at the moment, unjustified gesture, asking him “How are you doing? Are you happy?” in a tone that did not seem to require an answer. She looked exceedingly happy and burst into song, another unusual occurrence, in a melodious voice with pathetic trills that made Agostino’s skin crawl. While she was singing, she continued to hug him to her side, drenching him with the water seeping from her bathing suit, which her acrid, violent animal warmth seemed to heat and turn to sweat. And so, with the woman singing, the annoyed son surrendering to her embrace, and the young man rowing—a picture Agostino found contrived and false—they came ashore.
The next day, the young man reappeared. The mother brought Agostino along, and the same acts as the day before were repeated. Then, after a two-day interruption, there was another boat ride. Finally, having apparently achieved a certain intimacy with the mother, the young man began coming every morning to pick her up, and every morning Agostino was forced to accompany them and witness their conversations and frolicking in the water. These outings so repelled him that he sought any number of excuses to avoid them. Sometimes he would disappear and not come back until the mother, after calling him and looking for him for what seemed like hours, forced him to show his face not so much through her scolding as through the feelings of pity her annoyance and disappointment provoked in him. At other times he would start sulking on the boat, hoping the two of them would understand and leave him alone. But in the end he was always weaker and more sympathetic than his mother or the young man. For them, it was enough that he be there. His own feelings, he quickly came to see, were of little concern to them. So despite his best efforts, the outings continued.
One day Agostino was sitting on the sand behind the mother’s lounge chair, waiting for the white boat to appear on the horizon and the mother to wave a greeting and call to the young man by his name. But the usual hour of his appearance had come and gone, and the mother’s disappointed and annoyed expression revealed that she had given up hoping for his arrival. Agostino had often wondered how he would feel in such an event, and he had always thought his joy would have been at least as great as his mother’s dejection. He was surprised to discover, instead, that all he felt was empty disappointment, and he realized that the humiliation and repulsion of the daily outings had almost become his reason for living. So more than once, out of a murky, unconscious desire to make his mother suffer, he asked her whether they were going out to sea that day for their usual ride. And every time she gave the same answer: that she didn’t know, but in all likelihood they would not be going today. She was sitting in her lounge chair, a book open on her knees, but she wasn’t reading. With the gaze of a person searching for something in vain, her eyes often migrated to the sea, which meanwhile had filled with bathers and boats. After spending a long time behind her chair, Agostino crawled through the sand to face her and repeat in what even he knew was a nagging and almost sarcastic voice, “I can’t believe it! We’re not going out to sea today?” Maybe the mother detected the sarcasm and his desire to hurt her. Or maybe these rash words were enough to cause a pent-up irritation to erupt. She raised a hand and gave his cheek a sudden backhand slap, a blow that felt soft, almost accidental and regretful. Agostino didn’t say a word. He did a somersault on the sand and walked off, making his way down the beach, head lowered, in the direction of the cabins. “Agostino . . . Agostino,” he heard her calling over and over again. Then the calls stopped, and turning around he thought he could discern, amid the many boats crowding the sea, the young man’s white pattino. But by then he had stopped caring. With the same sharp sense of discovery as a man who has found a treasure and sneaks away to hide it and gaze upon it at his leisure, he ran to be alone with her slap, so new to him as to seem unbelievable.
His cheek was burning, and his eyes welled up with tears that he struggled to hold back. Fearing they would overflow before he had found a refuge, he ran hunched over. The bitterness that had been building during the long days when he was forced to accompany the young man and the mother was now being murkily disgorged. He felt as if, by unburdening himself with a good cry, he would finally understand something about these obscure events. When he reached the cabin, he hesitated for a moment, looking for a place to hide. He figured the easiest thing would be to take refuge inside. The mother would be out at sea, and no one would disturb him. Agostino raced up the steps, opened the door, and without closing it entirely went to sit on a stool in a corner.
He huddled with his knees to his chest and his head against the wall. Taking his face between his hands, he began to cry in earnest. Between his tears he could feel the sting of that slap. He wondered why such a harsh blow had felt so irresolute and soft. The burning sense of humiliation it provoked rekindled and even amplified a thousand unpleasant sensations that he had felt over the past few days. The one that returned to him most insistently was the memory of his mother’s belly clothed in the wet fabric, pressed against his cheek, trembling and agitated by a lustful vitality. In the same way that beating old clothes raises big clouds of dust, that unjust blow, unleashed by the mother’s impatience, reawakened in him the distinct sensation of her belly pressed against his cheek. At times that sensation seemed to replace the stinging left by the blow. At other times the two blended together, throbbing and burning as one. But while he understood the persistence of the slap, rekindling on his cheek every so often like a dying fire, the reasons for the tenacious survival of that distant sensation remained obscure. Of the many, why had this one remained so indelible and so vivid? He had no answer. But he felt that as long as he lived, he would only need to recall the moment to feel against his cheek once more the throbbing of her belly and the moist coarseness of her wet bathing suit.
He cried softly so as not to disturb the painful workings of memory. As the tears slowly but steadily trickled from his eyes, he rubbed them with his fingertips against his moist skin. A sparse and sultry darkness filled the cabin. He suddenly had the feeling the door was opening, and he almost hoped his mother, repentant and affectionate, would place one hand on his shoulder and, with the other, take him by the chin and turn him around to face her. He was already preparing his lips to whisper “Mamma,” when he heard footsteps enter the cabin and the door close behind them, but no hand came to rest on his shoulders or pat him on the head.
Then he looked up and stared. He saw a boy who appeared to be about his age standing by the door, in the attitude of a lookout. He was wearing shorts with rolled-up cuffs and a worn-out sleeveless T-shirt with a big hole in the back. A thin blade of sunlight shone through the cracks between the boards of the cabin and burnished a head of tight copper-colored curls above the nape of the neck. Barefoot, his hands on the doorjamb, the boy scoured the beach and didn’t seem aware of Agostino’s presence.
Agostino dried his eyes with the back of his hand and started to say, “Hey you, over there. What are you looking for?” But the other boy turned and gestured to him to keep quiet. Turning around he revealed an ugly freckled face whose most remarkable feature was his glowering blue eyes. Agostino thought he recognized him. He was a son of a lifeguard or boatman. He must have seen the boy pushing off the boats or doing something like that near the beach, he thought.
“We’re playing cops and robbers,” the boy said a few seconds later, facing Agostino. “I don’t want them to see me.”
“Which one are you?” asked Agostino, quickly drying his tears.
“A robber, of course,” the boy replied without looking at him.
Agostino took a good look at the boy. He didn’t know whether he liked him, but he spoke in a rough dialect that was new to Agostino and sparked his curiosity. Besides which, he sensed instinctively that the boy hiding in the cabin represented an opportunity—what kind of opportunity he couldn’t say—and he shouldn’t let it slip away.
“Can I play, too?” he asked boldly.
The other boy turned and gave him an insolent look. “Who do you think you are?” he said quickly. “We only let our friends play.”
“So,” Agostino said with a shameful insistence, “let me play, too.”
The boy shrugged his shoulders saying, “It’s too late now, the game’s almost over.”
“So let me play the next time.”
“There isn’t going to be a next time,” the boy said, skeptical and almost amazed at such insistence. “After this we’re going to the pine grove.”
“If you’ll take me I can come, too.”
The boy started laughing, both amused and contemptuous. “Get a load of you. Forget about it, we don’t want you.”
Agostino had never found himself in such a situation, but the same instinct that prompted him to ask the boy if he could play was now making him beg for acceptance. “Listen,” he said hesitatingly, “if . . . if you let me join your group, I’ll give you something.”
The other boy turned around immediately, his eyes alive with greed.
“Whatcha got?”
“Anything you want.”
“Tell me everything you’re gonna give me.”
Agostino pointed to a big toy sailboat, with all its sails still attached, lying at the other end of the cabin surrounded by odds and ends.
“I’ll give you that boat.”
“What am I supposed to do with it?” said the boy, shrugging his shoulders.
“You can sell it,” Agostino proposed.
“They won’t take it from me,” the boy said with an experienced air. “They’d say it was stolen.”
Despairing, Agostino took a look around. His mother’s clothes were hanging from a wall hook. Her shoes were on the floor, and on a side table a kerchief and a few other objects. There seemed to be nothing in the cabin he could offer.
“Hey,” said the boy, noticing his bewilderment. “You got any cigarettes?”
Agostino remembered how that morning his mother had put two packs of very fine cigarettes in the large bag hanging from a wall hook. Triumphant, he was quick to answer. “Of course, yes, cigarettes I do have. Do you want them?”
“You have to ask?” said the boy with an ironic sneer. “You’re such a dope. Give ’em here, quick.”
Agostino unhooked the bag from the coatrack, rummaged around inside it, and pulled out the two packs. He showed them to the boy as if he couldn’t tell how many cigarettes he wanted.
“Gimme both,” the boy said offhandedly, snatching both packs from him. He checked the brand name, clucked his tongue in appreciation, and added, “Say, you must be rich.”
Agostino didn’t know what to answer. The boy continued. “I’m Berto. Who are you?”
Agostino said his name, but the boy had already stopped listening. Breaking the paper seal and opening one of the packs with impatient fingers, he took out a cigarette and brought it to his lips. Then he took a kitchen match from his pocket, scratched it against the cabin wall to light it, and, after a first puff of smoke, took another cautious peek out the door.
“Come on, we’re going,” he said after a moment, gesturing to Agostino to follow him. One after the other, they stepped out of the cabin.
On the beach, Berto immediately headed for the road behind the row of cabins.
Walking across the scorching sand, through a thicket of juniper and thistle bushes, he said, “Now we’re going to the den. The other guys have left by now and are looking for me up that way.”
“Where’s the den?” Agostino asked.
“By the Vespucci beach stand.” He held the cigarette vainly, as if to flaunt it, and with a rugged sensuality took a long drag. “You don’t smoke?” he asked Agostino.
“I don’t much care for it,” Agostino answered. He was too ashamed to admit that the idea had never occurred to him.
But Berto laughed. “Fess up, you don’t smoke because your mom won’t let you.” He said these words in an unkind, even disdainful manner. He held out the cigarette to Agostino and said, “Come on, give it a try.”
They had reached the promenade and were walking barefoot on the sharp gravel between the dried-up flower beds. Agostino brought the cigarette to his lips and took a tiny puff, immediately coughing it out.
Berto laughed scornfully. “You call that smoking?” he exclaimed. “That’s not how you do it. Here, let me show you.” He took the cigarette and inhaled deeply, rolling his surly, listless blue eyes, then he opened his mouth wide and brought it close to Agostino’s face. His mouth was empty, with the tongue curling at the back of his palate.
“Get a good look,” Berto said, closing his mouth. He blew a cloud of smoke right into Agostino’s face. Agostino coughed and giggled in panic. “Now you try,” Berto added.
A streetcar passed by, whistling, shaking its curtains in the wind. Agostino took another big puff and with a painful effort inhaled the smoke. But it went down the wrong way and he started coughing quite pathetically. Berto took the cigarette and giving him a pat on the back said, “Good boy . . . I can see you’re a big smoker.”
After this experiment they walked along in silence. One bathing establishment followed the other, with their rows of cabins painted in pastel colors, tilted beach umbrellas, and idiotic triumphal arches. In between the cabins you could see the crowded beach and hear the festive buzzing. The sparkling sea was filled with bathers.
“Where is Vespucci beach?” Agostino asked, quickening his pace to keep up with his new friend.
“It’s the last one.”
Agostino wondered whether he shouldn’t turn back: If his mother hadn’t gone out on the boat, she would surely be looking for him. But the memory of that slap stifled this last scruple. He felt as if, by going off with Berto, he were pursuing an obscure and justified form of revenge. “What about smoke in your nose?” Berto suddenly asked him. “Do you know how to exhale through your nostrils?”
Agostino shook his head. With the cigarette butt stuck between his lips, Berto inhaled the smoke and blew it out through his nostrils. “Watch me,” he added, “I’m going to make the smoke come out of my eyes. Now put your hand on my chest and look me in the eyes.” Unsuspecting, Agostino approached him, placed his palm over the boy’s chest, and stared at his pupils, waiting to see if smoke really would come out. But the boy tricked him by suddenly stubbing out the lit cigarette on the back of Agostino’s hand and jumped for joy as he tossed away the butt, shouting, “You fell for it. What a dope . . . what a dope!”
The pain was blinding, and Agostino’s first impulse was to throw himself at Berto and start punching him. But the other boy, seeing him run toward him, stood still, placed his fists against Agostino’s chest, and with two hard blows to his stomach, almost knocked him out and left him gasping for air. “You want to make something of it?” he said maliciously. “There’s more where that came from.” Furious, Agostino charged him again, but he felt weak and destined to lose. This time Berto grabbed him, stuck his head under his arm, and started to choke Agostino, who had stopped struggling and was begging Berto in a strangled voice to let him go. Berto released him and, with a backward jump, landed on both feet in combat position. But Agostino had heard the vertebrae of his neck crackle. He was not so much frightened as bewildered by the boy’s extraordinary brutality. It seemed incredible that he, Agostino, whom everyone had always liked, could now be hurt so deliberately and ruthlessly. Most of all he was bewildered and troubled by this ruthlessness, a new behavior so monstrous it was almost attractive.
“What did I ever do to you?” he said, gasping for air. “I gave you the cigarettes . . . and you . . .” His eyes welled up with tears before he could finish the sentence.
“Crybaby,” Berto barked sarcastically. “You want your cigarettes back? I don’t need your cigarettes. Take ’em and go back to your mamma.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Agostino said disconsolately, shaking his head. “ I was just talking . . . you can keep them.”
“Let’s forget about it,” Berto said. “We’re here.”
Agostino, bringing his burned hand to his mouth, looked up and stared. On this stretch of the shore there was only a handful of cabins, five or six at most, situated far apart from each other. They were shabby, built from rough wood, and between them you could see the beach and sea, both equally deserted. A small group of working-class women were in the shade of a boat pulled ashore, some standing, others lying on the sand, all of them wearing outmoded black bathing suits with long white-trimmed trunks, busy drying themselves and exposing their milky-white limbs to the sun. An arch with a blue sign carried the words, BAGNO AMERIGO VESPUCCI. A low green shack sunken in the sand indicated the lifeguard’s place. Past the Vespucci beach, the coast extended as far as the eye could see, devoid of cabins on the beach or houses along the road, an isolated patch of windbeaten sand between the sparkling blue sea and the dusty green pine grove.
From the road, one side of the shack was concealed by the dunes, which were higher here than elsewhere along the shore. Once the two boys had reached the top of the dunes, they came across a faded, rust-red tarp full of patches and apparently cut from the sail of an old fishing trawler. Two corners of the tarp were tied to poles stuck in the sand while the other two were attached to the shack.
“That’s the den,” Berto said.
Under the tarp a man was sitting at a wobbly table, lighting a cigar. He was surrounded by two or three boys stretched out on the sand. Berto broke into a run and dropped to the man’s feet, shouting, “Den!” Feeling somewhat embarrassed, Agostino approached the group. “And this is Pisa,” Berto said, pointing to Agostino, who was amazed at the nickname given to him so quickly. It had only been five minutes since he told Berto he was born in Pisa.
Agostino lay down on the ground, too. The sand under the tarp was not as clean as on the beach. Watermelon rinds, wood splinters, green pottery shards, and all kinds of debris were strewn together. In places the sand was hard and crusty from buckets of dirty water tossed out of the shack.
Agostino noticed that the boys, four in all, were dressed in clothes that were ragged and torn. Like Berto, they must have been the children of boatmen and lifeguards. “He was at Speranza beach,” Berto said in one breath, still speaking about Agostino. “He says he wants to play cops and robbers with us . . . but the game is over, isn’t it? I told you the game was over.”
Suddenly there were shouts of “It doesn’t count! It doesn’t count!” Agostino looked and saw running toward them from the sea a group of boys, probably the cops. The first was a boy of about sixteen, short and stocky, in a bathing suit. Then, to Agostino’s great surprise, came a black boy. The third was a blond, and from his bearing and the beauty of his body, Agostino thought he must be of more noble origin than the others. But when he drew near, his torn and threadbare bathing suit and a certain simplicity in his handsome face with its big blue eyes showed plainly that he, too, was poor. The first three boys were followed by four more, all about the same age, between thirteen and fourteen. The stocky one was by far the oldest, and at first impression it was surprising that he would be hanging around with such a young crowd. But his pasty face with its dull, inexpressive features provided, in its brutal stupidity, the reason for this unusual association. He had almost no neck, and his smooth, hairless torso was as wide at the waist and hips as it was at the shoulders. “You hid in a cabin,” he shouted violently at Berto. “Try to deny it. The rules said no cabins.”
“I did not,” Berto replied just as violently. “Tell him, Pisa,” he added, turning to Agostino. “It’s not true that I hid in a cabin. Me and him were behind the corner of the Speranza stand. We saw you going by, didn’t we, Pisa?”
“Actually,” said Agostino, who was incapable of lying, “you were hiding in my cabin.”
“See, I knew it!” the older boy shouted, shaking his fist under Berto’s nose. “I’ll smash your head in, you big liar.”
“Squealer,” Berto shouted in Agostino’s face. “I told you to stay where you were. Go back to your mamma.” He was filled with an uncontainable, animal violence that amazed Agostino in some obscure way. But while he was shouting, one of the cigarette packs fell out of his pocket. He went to pick it up, but the older boy was quicker. Diving to the ground, he grabbed it and shook it in the air triumphantly. “Cigarettes, eh,” he shouted, “cigarettes.”
“Give ’em back,” Berto shouted, throwing himself at him furiously. “They’re mine, Pisa gave them to me, give ’em back or I’ll—”
The other boy took a step back and waited till Berto was within range. Then he stuck the cigarette pack between his teeth and started methodically pounding Berto’s stomach with his fists. Then, tripping him, he sent him sprawling to the ground. “Give ’em back,” Berto shouted again as he squirmed in the sand. But the other boy shouted with a dumb laugh, “He’s got more. Get busy, guys . . .” and with a unity that shocked Agostino, the boys piled on top of Berto. For a moment there was a tangle of bodies in a cloud of sand at the feet of the man, who continued to smoke while leaning against the table. Finally the blond, who appeared to be the most agile, disentangled himself from the pile, stood up, and waved the second cigarette pack in the air triumphantly. One by one the rest of them stood up. Berto was last. His ugly freckled face was twisted with rage. “You dogs . . . you thieves,” he shouted, shaking his fist and sobbing. He was crying angry tears, and it had a strange effect on Agostino to see the tables turned on his tormentor and Berto treated just as ruthlessly as Berto had treated him. “You dogs . . . you dogs,” Berto cried again. The older boy approached and delivered a hard slap to Berto’s face, which made the other boys jump for joy. “Are you ready to cut it out?” Enraged, Berto ran to the corner of the shack and stooped down to grab with both hands a huge rock that he threw at his enemy. The other boy dodged it easily with a derisive whistle. “Pigs!” Berto cried, sobbing, but keeping a cautious distance from behind the corner of the shack. His body was wracked with sobs. The fury was even in his tears, which seemed to release a pent-up bitterness, vulgar and repellent. But his companions had already forgotten him and lain back down on the sand. The older boy opened one pack of cigarettes and the blond opened the other. All of a sudden the man sitting at the table, who had observed the fight without making a move, said, “Hand ’em over.”
Agostino looked at the man. He was big and fat, probably a few years shy of fifty. He had a sly and coldly benevolent face. Bald, with an odd saddle-shaped forehead, small squinting eyes, a red aquiline nose, and flared nostrils covered with purple veins that were disgusting to see. He had a drooping mustache over a slightly crooked mouth that was chomping on a cigar. He was wearing a faded over-shirt and a pair of turquoise cotton trousers, one leg down to his ankle, and the other rolled up to his knee. A black sash was wrapped around his belly. A final detail added to Agostino’s initial disgust. He realized that Saro, as the lifeguard was called, did not have five fingers on each enormous hand but rather six, making them look more like stumpy tentacles than fingers. Agostino studied his hands at length but could not tell whether Saro had two index fingers, two middle fingers, or two ring fingers. They all seemed to be the same length, except the little finger, which protruded from his hand like a thin branch at the base of a knotty tree trunk. Saro took the cigar butt from his mouth and repeated simply, “The cigarettes.”
The blond stood up and went to set the pack on the table. “Good boy, Sandro,” said Saro.
“What if I don’t want to?” the older boy shouted defiantly.
“Come on, Tortima. You’d better hand them over,” shouted voices from all sides. Tortima looked around and then at Saro who, with the six fingers of his right hand wrapped around the cigarette pack, was staring at him through narrowed eyes. Sighing, “All right, but it’s not fair,” Tortima stood up and put the other pack on the table as well.
“Now I’ll divvy them up,” said Saro in a soft and friendly voice. Without removing the cigar from his mouth, squinting his eyes, he opened one of the packs, took out a cigarette with stubby multiple fingers that seemed unable to clench it, and tossed it to the black boy, “Here, Homs.” He took another cigarette and tossed it to another boy. A third flew into the cupped hands of Sandro. A fourth hit Tortima straight in his stolid face. And so it went. “Want one?” he asked Berto, who having swallowed his tears had come back, as quiet as a mouse, to lie down among his buddies. Chastened, he nodded yes, and a cigarette was launched in his direction. Once each of the boys had received a cigarette, he started to close the still half-full pack, but he stopped and asked Agostino, “Hey you, Pisa. Want one?” Agostino would have said no, but Berto gave him a punch in the ribs whispering, “Ask for it, you dummy. Then we can smoke it together.” Agostino said yes and got his cigarette too. Then Saro closed the pack.
“What about the other ones . . . the other ones?” the boys all shouted.
“The other ones you’ll get in the next few days,” Saro answered calmly. “Pisa, take these cigarettes and put them back in the shack.”
No one breathed a word. Agostino clumsily took the two packs and, stepping over the reclining boys, made his way to the shack and entered. There appeared to be only one room, and he liked its smallness, like a house in a fairy tale. The ceiling was low, with white beams and unpainted walls of rough planks. A dim subdued light entered the room through two tiny windows, complete with window-sills, small square windowpanes, shutters, curtains, and even a few flowerpots. One corner was occupied by the bed, neatly made, with a bleached white pillow and a red blanket. In another corner there was a round table and three chairs. On the marble top of a chest of drawers were two bottles containing miniature sailboats or steamships. The walls were covered with sails hung from nails, oars, and other boating equipment. Agostino thought anyone who owned a shack like this, so small and cozy, must be truly enviable. He approached the table, on which there was a large chipped porcelain bowl filled with cigar butts, set down the two cigarette packs, and then came back out into the sunlight.
All of the boys, lying prone on the sand near Saro, were smoking with big demonstrative gestures of delight. They were talking about something he couldn’t quite grasp. “I tell you it was him,” Sandro was saying.
“His mother is pretty,” an admiring voice said, “the best-looking woman on the beach. Homs and me, we snuck under her cabin to see her getting undressed, but she lowered her dress right on top of where we were looking and you couldn’t see a thing . . . she’s got nice legs . . . and those tits . . .”
“Her husband’s never around,” a third voice remarked.
“Don’t worry. She knows how to console herself. You know who she’s doing it with? That guy from Villa Sorriso . . . the dark-haired one. He comes to pick her up every day with his boat.”
“You think he’s the only one? She does it with anyone that asks,” another boy said maliciously.
“Maybe, but I still say it’s someone else,” another one insisted.
“Hey, Pisa,” Sandro asked Agostino authoritatively, “isn’t your mother the lady at the Speranza beach? Tall, dark-haired, wears a two-piece striped bathing suit? With a beauty mark on the left, near her mouth?”
“Yes, why?” Agostino answered uneasily.
“It’s him! I knew it was him!” Berto said triumphantly. And in a fit of malicious envy, “You’re the third wheel, eh? Out on the boat it’s you, her, and lover boy. That makes you the third wheel.” His words were followed by gales of laughter. Even Saro was smiling beneath his mustache.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Agostino replied, blushing, uncomfortable and uncomprehending. He felt as if he should object, but these uncouth jokes aroused in him an unexpected, almost cruel feeling of pleasure, as if the boys had unknowingly avenged through their words all the humiliations that his mother had inflicted on him lately. At the same time he was horrified at how much they knew about his affairs.
“Don’t play stupid with us,” said the usual malicious voice.
“Who knows what they do. They always go so far out to sea. Tell me,” Tortima grilled him with mock seriousness, “tell us what they do. He kisses her, right?” He placed the back of his hand against his lips and planted a big kiss on it.
“Actually,” said Agostino, his face red with shame, “we go out to sea to go swimming.”
“Oh, to go swimming,” several voices said sarcastically.
“My mother goes swimming and so does Renzo.”
“Ah, so his name is Renzo,” one of the boys said confidently, as if he had discovered a lost thread in his memory. “Renzo . . . he’s tall, tanned, right?”
“What do Renzo and your mamma do?” Berto suddenly asked, emboldened. “They”—and he made an expressive gesture with his hands—”and you sit there watching them, right?”
“Me?” Agostino repeated fearfully, looking all around. Everyone roared, smothering their laughter in the sand. Saro was the only one to observe him attentively, without moving a muscle or saying a word. Agostino gave him a look of despair, as if imploring him for help.
Saro seemed to understand his look. He took the cigar from his mouth and said, “Can’t you see he knows nothing?”
A sudden silence followed the clamor. “How can he know nothing?” asked Tortima, who hadn’t realized it.
“He knows nothing,” Saro replied plainly. Then he turned to Agostino, lowering his voice. “Say, Pisa . . . a man and a woman . . . what do they do together? Do you know?”
Everyone seemed to be holding their breath. Agostino looked at Saro, who was smoking and studying him through half-closed eyes. He looked at the boys, who all seemed about to burst into laughter, then he repeated mechanically, as his eyes clouded over, “A man and a woman?”
“Yes, your mother and Renzo,” Berto explained brutally.
Agostino wanted to say, “Don’t talk about my mother.” But he was so confused by the swarm of sensations and dark memories aroused in him by the question that he was left speechless.
“He doesn’t know,” Saro interrupted, switching his cigar from the right to the left corner of his mouth. “Come on, who wants to tell him?” Agostino looked around, dismayed. It was like being at school, but with what teacher and what pupils? “Me, me, me,” all the boys shouted at once. For a moment Saro’s uncertain gaze scanned all those faces inflamed in emulation. He said, “You guys don’t really know either. You’ve only heard about it. Let someone who really knows about it do the talking.” Agostino saw the boys go silent and look at one another. “Tortima,” someone said. The boy’s face lit up in a vain expression. He started to stand, but a rancorous Berto called out, “He made the whole thing up. It’s a pack of lies.” “What do you mean it’s a pack of lies?” shouted Tortima, pouncing on Berto. “You’re the liar, you little bastard.” But this time Berto was too quick for him. He fled, poking his head out from behind a corner of the shack, making faces and sticking out his tongue at Tortima, who shook his fist at him threateningly and shouted, “Don’t you dare come back.” But Tortima’s candidacy had been somewhat diminished by Berto’s outburst. “Let Sandro tell him,” all the boys cried in unison.
Handsome and elegant, his arms folded over a broad dark chest on which scattered blond hairs glittered like gold, Sandro stepped forward into the circle of boys reclining in the sand. Agostino noticed his strong tanned legs, which seemed enveloped in a cloud of gold dust. More blond hairs escaped from his groin, poking through the holes in his red swimming trunks. “It’s very simple,” he said in a strong clear voice. And speaking slowly and illustrating his points with gestures that were effective but not what might be considered vulgar, he explained to Agostino something he seemed to have always known and, as if in a deep sleep, forgotten. His explanation was followed by other less sober descriptions. Some of the boys made coarse hand gestures. Others repeated in loud voices words that were new and abhorrent to Agostino’s ears. Two of them said, “Let’s show him how to do it,” and fell to the burning sand in each other’s arms, shuddering and rubbing against each other. Sandro, pleased with his success, had withdrawn to the side and was finishing his cigarette in silence. “Now do you understand?” asked Saro, as soon as the hubbub had died down.
Agostino nodded. In reality he hadn’t so much understood as absorbed the notion, the way you absorb a medicine or a poison and don’t feel the effect immediately but know that the pain or the benefit will not be kept waiting much longer. The notion wasn’t in his vacant, aching, befuddled mind but in another part of himself, in his heart swelling with bitterness, deep inside his chest, which was surprised to welcome it. It was not unlike a bright shiny object whose splendor makes it hard to look at directly and whose shape can thus barely be detected. It was as if he had always known but never felt it in his bones the way he did now.
“Renzo and Pisa’s mother,” he heard someone saying behind him. “I’ll be Renzo and you be the mother. OK?” He pivoted around to see Berto who, with a coarse gesture and even more coarse formality, was bowing and asking another boy, “My lady, would it please you to go for a boat ride . . . to go for a little dip in the sea . . . Pisa will accompany us.” Blinded by a burst of rage, he pounced on Berto, shouting, “Don’t talk about my mother!” But even before he knew what had happened, he was flat on the ground, held in place by Berto’s knee while fists showered down on his face. He wanted to cry, but knowing that tears would only lead to more teasing, he made a supreme effort to restrain them. He covered his face with one arm and lay there motionless, as if he were dead. After a little while Berto let him go, and Agostino, battered and bruised, went to sit at Saro’s feet. The voluble boys had already moved on to another topic. One of them asked Agostino, point-blank, “Are you rich?”
By now Agostino was so intimidated he didn’t know what to say, but he answered anyway. “I think so.”
“How much? One million? Two million? Three million?”
“I don’t know,” said Agostino, at a loss for words. “Do you have a big house?”
“Yes,” said Agostino. Reassured by the more polite tone the dialogue was assuming, he couldn’t resist boasting, “We have twenty rooms.”
“Twenty rooms,” an admiring voice repeated.
“Wow,” said another voice, incredulously.
“We have two living rooms,” said Agostino, “and then there’s my father’s study—”
“Get a load of him,” one voice said.
“I mean, it used to be my father’s,” Agostino hastened to add, almost hoping that this detail would attract the boys’ sympathy. “My father passed away.”
There was a moment of silence. “So your mother’s a widow?” Tortima asked.
“Well, yeah,” a few voices said jokingly.
“What difference does it make? She might have remarried,” was Tortima’s defense.
“No . . . she didn’t remarry,” said Agostino.
“Do you have a car, too?” another voice asked.
“Yes.”
“And a driver?”
“Yes.”
“Tell your mother I’m ready to be her driver,” one boy shouted.
“What do you do with all those rooms?” asked Tortima, who seemed more impressed by Agostino’s stories than anyone else. “Do you have balls?”
“Yes, my mother holds receptions,” Agostino replied.
“There must be a lot of beautiful ladies,” said Tortima, as if talking to himself. “How many people come?”
“I don’t know.”
“How many?”
“Twenty or thirty,” replied Agostino, who was now feeling reassured and a little bit cocky about this success.
“Twenty or thirty . . . and what do they do?”
“What do you think they do,” said Berto ironically. “They probably dance, have fun. They’re rich, not poor slobs like us. They probably make love—”
“No, they don’t make love,” said Agostino earnestly, also to show that at this point he knew perfectly what the expression meant.
Tortima seemed to be struggling with an obscure idea he couldn’t quite formulate. He finally said, “But if out of the blue, I were to show up at one of those receptions and say, ’Here I am,’ what would you do?”
As he said this he got to his feet and went through the motions of someone introducing himself with a swagger, chest swelling, hands on his hips. The boys all burst out laughing.
“I would ask you to leave,” said Agostino plainly, encouraged by the boys’ laughter.
“And if I refused to leave?”
“I would have the waiters show you the door.”
“You have waiters?” someone asked.
“No, but when we have receptions my mother hires them.”
“Huh, just like your father.” One of the boys must have been a waiter’s son.
“And if I were to resist the waiters, punch them in the face and make my way to the middle of the room and shout, ’You’re a bunch of crooks and bitches,’ what would you say then?” Tortima insisted menacingly, walking up to Agostino and poking his fist under his nose, as if to make him smell it. But now everyone turned against Tortima, not to take Agostino’s side so much as to hear more details about his fabulous wealth.
“Leave him alone. They’d kick you out and they’d be right,” were the protests all around. With disdain Berto said, “Keep out of it. Your father’s a sailor, and you’re going to end up a sailor, too. And if you show up at Pisa’s house you wouldn’t be shouting a thing. I can almost see you,” he added, jumping to his feet and mimicking Tortima’s imagined deference at Agostino’s house: “ ’Begging your pardon, is this the home of Master Pisa? Begging your pardon . . . I’ve come . . . it doesn’t matter, my apologies . . . my apologies for the disturbance, I’ll come back later.’ I can almost see you. You’d be bowing all the way down the stairs.”
All the boys laughed. Tortima, as stupid as he was brutal, didn’t dare attack them for laughing, but still itching for retaliation he asked Agostino, “Do you know how to arm wrestle?”
“Arm wrestle?” Agostino repeated.
“He doesn’t know what arm wrestling is,” several derisive voices called out. Sandro took Agostino’s arm, and bent it back, forcing his hand in the air and his elbow into the sand. Meanwhile Tortima had reclined on the sand, belly-down, and positioned his arm in the same manner. “You have to push in one direction,” Sandro said, “while Tortima pushes in the other.”
Agostino took Tortima’s hand. With a single shove, Tortima had his arm flat on the ground and stood up triumphantly.
“My turn,” said Berto, and with the same ease as Tortima he nailed Agostino’s arm to the ground. “Me, me,” shouted his pals. One after the other they each had a try and each one of them beat Agostino. The last to come forward was the black boy, and a voice said, “If you let Homs beat you, well, then your arms must be made out of rubber.” Agostino decided that at least the black boy wouldn’t beat him.
Homs had skinny arms the color of roast coffee. Agostino thought his own looked stronger. “Let’s do it, Pisa,” the boy said, boasting stupidly, laying down in front of him. He had a listless, almost feminine voice, and as soon as his face was only a foot away, Agostino could see that his nose wasn’t flat, as he had imagined, but aquiline, small and turning in on itself like an oily black urchin, with a kind of clear, yellowish mole on one of his nostrils. His lips weren’t as big as other black people’s, but thin and purple. His eyes were round and white, oppressed by a swollen forehead from which a sooty mop of hair rose. “Let’s do it, Pisa. I won’t hurt you,” he added, slipping into Agostino’s palm a delicate hand with thin black fingers and pink fingernails. Agostino realized that if he pulled his upper arm a little closer, without appearing to do anything, he could put his whole weight behind his hand. At first this simple realization allowed him to resist and check Homs’s exertions. For a long while they were in a standoff, surrounded by the attentive boys. Agostino’s face was tense but firm. His whole body was straining while the black boy was grimacing, gritting his white teeth and squinting. “Pisa’s winning,” a voice said suddenly, amazed. But at that moment a terrible pain shot through Agostino from his shoulder and down his entire arm. Exhausted, he loosened his grip saying, “No, he’s stronger than me.” “The next time you’ll beat me,” said the black boy as he stood up, with his unpleasant, smarmy courtesy. “Even Homs beat you. You’re really worthless,” said Tortima scornfully. But now the boys seemed to have grown tired of teasing Agostino. “Let’s jump in the water,” one of them proposed. “Yes, yes, to the water,” they all shouted. Skipping and tumbling, they ran across the beach, over the burning sand, toward the sea. Watching them from a distance, Agostino saw them jumping into the shallow water one after the other, headfirst like fish, with big splashes and shouts of joy. When he reached the shore, Tortima emerged from the water like an animal, first with his back and then with his head, shouting, “Jump in, Pisa. What are you doing over there?”
“I have my clothes on,” Agostino said.
“Now I’m going to tear them off of you,” replied Tortima mischievously. Agostino tried to run away but wasn’t fast enough. Tortima grabbed hold of him, dragged him despite his efforts, and pulling him into the sea, held his head underwater, almost drowning him. Then he shouted, “See you later, Pisa,” and swam off at a sprint. Not much farther away he saw Sandro standing on a pattino, maneuvering elegantly between the boys who clamored around him, trying to climb into the boat. Soaking wet and breathing heavily, Agostino returned to shore and for a moment looked back at the pattino crammed with boys on their way out to the deserted sea under a blinding sun. Then, walking quickly over the glassy sand lining the shore, he headed back to Speranza beach.