Papà hadn’t really been clear and he wasn’t around to ask. As usual. We wondered what this new genesis really was and what it actually meant to start over from where Mamma died, what it meant to look around for the power of God to be revealed to us.
The shark was gnashing its teeth and was never going to leave an opening between one tooth and another for us to get out. I dreamt that we would escape one starry night, all four of us, and that we would swim into the calm, warm womb of the sea. We would stick together and even Nonna would make it through. We would reach the beach in Mamma’s postcard and perhaps we’d start over from there. Something would spring to mind. But none of them wanted to come along.
So one hazy spring afternoon, similar to the one when Mamma had died, I took my Vespa and decided to go there on my own. I was a bit scared of the cliffs along the road to Villasimius, but the sea was so calm and beautiful and light that it blended in with the clouds.
That’s how God was with us people: tranquil and serene and infinitely distant. We always had to get out of the shit by ourselves. Whereas I would have liked some instructions. Papà said that to escape from the shark’s belly you have to wait until it’s sleeping, but how can you tell if it’s sleeping? And how can you tell what the real shit is?
Then it occurred to me that nothing in my life was or ever had been shit. Damn it, actually, everything was beautiful. In Mamma’s life too, except that she had never understood that. And neither had Zia. Or Nonna. Nor even my brother, or my father.
It had been a beautiful holiday at the zoo with the vet and it certainly hadn’t been a mistake to sit at his table and gorge myself with no class, since I was so hungry. It had been beautiful to let myself be carried off into another world by him and to get to hear the bad guys’ side of things. It had been beautiful for Zia to play the wife and mother and to learn to swim and to grow geraniums and carnations on the balcony. It was beautiful for my brother to have Beethoven and the other greats and all those girls that hadn’t arrived yet but would come. It had been beautiful for Mamma to have those tangos and for Papà to have Mamma and for her to have him and for Nonna to have us all. It’s just that we didn’t understand it. Everything was beautiful because I loved them. I wouldn’t want to meet anyone but them in my life. And I finally realised that God’s not stupid at all and he knows perfectly well what he’s doing. And nor is it true that there’s no way of getting to beautiful places and that we’re unable to enjoy them. Instead of taking the road with the cliffs I went the other way, towards Chia, where there are long dunes of soft sand. I parked the Vespa next to a hut and walked along one of the perfumed paths. Myrtle. Juniper. Rosemary. Even the poor thistle flowers showed off the colour of the lilac, as they found an opening under the stones.
So, an insignificant dot in the universe, I prepared to enjoy that gift from God in the true sense of the word. When I reached the dunes I sat down, took off my shoes, and looked at the descent of white sand that, like a slide, would carry me sweetly into the water, the blue, clear, infinite water. Not only was God not stupid, he was brilliant.
And I realised that was the moment to escape, because I was happy not about what was happening, but about the simple fact that I existed, and I could tell that this was the right idea and that the shark was now sleeping. That was when I saw an opening between its teeth, I slipped through and let myself slide down on the sand and be carried away by the delicate current of the sea and I knew that I would make it and that I would become wise and full of years like Job.