Ever since she was a girl Zia fancied the brother of one of her friends: Mauro De Cortes. But he was already engaged to a girl that he later married. To console her Mamma would say, ‘How could he be interested in you when he already has a girlfriend?’ Then Mauro got married, had some children, got separated, was sad, went out with Zia a few times and I know they even made love. Mamma would say to her, ‘He’d commit to something serious with you except that he’s so sad!’
But then Mauro got re-engaged, remarried, had more children and got separated again but he still never really seriously considered Zia.
History tells us that we Sardinians are no sailors, that we withdrew inland for fear of the Saracens when actually we could have built a fleet and confronted them instead of escaping into the mountains.
Just look at my mother. Even though my grandfather was a true man of the sea, she’ll only go in as far as she can while still touching the bottom and she flaps around pathetically without getting anywhere. Papà refuses to come to the beach with us. Not even when we were little, when all other fathers do.
He says, ‘You get too carried away with this business about the Sardinian sea. It’s because you haven’t been anywhere else in the world. I’ll tell you how you go to the beach!’
‘And how’s that then?’ He teases us because we go to Poetto beach with the full complement of towels and cream or when it’s crowded. And quoting the Bible he sermonises that he won’t go to Sodom and Gomorrah, with all that human flesh on display in the bars. Then when he’s sure we’re not around, when there’s absolutely nobody around, for instance if the mistral’s blowing at 180 an hour, or it’s raining, or it’s a Monday, then we’ll see him returning with his shoes full of sand and his clothes dripping seawater.
‘Were you at the beach?’
‘Of course!’ And he looks you up and down with snobbish detachment.
Mamma says, ‘Maybe he’s right. Maybe today was better than any other day!’
But nobody will ever know, because nobody was there.
I don’t go to the beach with him either, but if we decide it’s summer I wait for him stretched out on the bed in my swimsuit, and it doesn’t matter that the role of the sun is played by the heater and the sea is outside the window.
‘You have to be the contemplative type,’ he tells me. ‘One of those that just look at the sea and that’s all, and if the water’s not warm they won’t go in.’
Then I think about how my grandfather, when he was a prisoner, had to go under icy showers, in winter, in Germany, and I say if he could endure it, I can endure it too. So in my swimsuit I run along the corridor in bare feet, jump under the cold water and call out to him, so he can see how tough and strong I am.
Mauro De Cortes on the other hand is one of those people that are really serious about the sea. He has a sailing boat he shares with his girlfriend, moored at the little port of Su Siccu. One day I ran into them when I was on my way to see Nonna, who lives nearby, and I said I’d like to watch them set sail. All the sea-going types were greeting each other and adding some comment about the wind, or about a problem with the boats, and even though they were all right there, it seemed to me like they were already far off, away into infinity. Mauro’s girlfriend jumped across that ‘dread, immense abyss’, so similar to death, that separates the pier from a boat’s gangplank, she removed the fenders, released the mooring ropes, and stood smiling and serene at the helm, while Mauro said goodbye and said I should try it too some time. Then they sailed further and further away and disappeared. Zia decided to do a sailing course herself, just in case she ever started going out with De Cortes. But the poor thing throws her guts up whenever she’s anywhere near the sea.