My dear papà,
what a magnificent place this island is! How green, how blue, and what wonderful smiles I receive from everyone when they see me in the road, leading my line of little girls!
If it weren’t for how much I miss you all, and you especially, my sweet papà, I’d certainly say that as the days pass and I become more accustomed to the courtesy of the inhabitants, I’m beginning to think that this really is heaven on earth.
People like us, dear papà, are far better suited to life in a place like this than in the big city. Here people talk in low voices and when there’s a lull in conversation, they listen to nature, which never stops singing its song; in the city, people never stop running around, morning, noon, and night, and whether they shout or sit silent, they never find a good middle ground. You’d really like it here, believe me. It would be worth considering a vacation: perhaps even mamma might calm down in a place like this.
Life flows like always, here in the summer colony, punctuated by the day’s schedules and by whatever might come up. We’ve started a new project for the celebration of the Festival of St. Anne: the girls, under my supervision, will embroider a panel depicting the saint in conversation with her daughter, Mary. The boys, with their teacher, Maestra Carla, will build the wooden frame to hold the embroidered panel. We will donate the resulting creation, if we finish it all in time, to the little church of the bay of Cartaromana. If you could only see how hard the little scamps work, dear papà! And the girls, even the naughtiest ones, are doing their best. At night, after they go to sleep, I work on it a little myself, helping the embroidery along, but without overdoing it: I don’t want them to realize it, that would undermine the satisfaction of doing it themselves.
I try to stay as busy as I can to keep from thinking about you know what. I want the sacrifice of this distance to be justified by the remastering of my heart. The girls help me a great deal, and Maestra Carla, with whom I’ve established a genuine friendship, keeps me good company.
The one source of disagreement with her is our differing opinions concerning an officer in the German army, a certain Manfred, who is here for the mud baths. He comes every morning to the beach where we take the children, because he paints landscapes (though I’ve never been able to see them, since he always keeps the canvas turned toward himself). We met him under strange circumstances: he dove in and pulled one of the little girls out of the water, not because she was in any danger, but simply because she refused to come out. Since that day, for one reason or another, this gentleman insists on greeting us and speaking to us. I think Carla flirts with him a little, and he is always courteous and never more than that, but I find him somewhat annoying and, according to Carla, I show my irritation with unnecessary harshness.
I have to admit that he is one of those men that girls tend to like: blond hair, tall, with a nice smile and all the rest. But I don’t know how to further my friend Carla’s hopes, except by keeping to myself as much as possible.
This morning he came to offer us some chocolate that he had brought with him as a snack. I said no, but the little girls, dear papà, you should have seen them! They swarmed like bees attacking the leftovers from a picnic lunch, and, laughing, he broke the chocolate bar into little pieces and made sure that every girl got some. It happened just when Carla was away, because she had taken the boys for an outing. I thought it decent, just good manners, to ask after his health, and dear papà, what a story he told me!
He’s a cavalry officer, and he was in the war, but the treatments he’s taking here on Ischia with the mud baths are not the result of any battle wounds, but an ordinary fall from a horse while training. You might not believe it, but he actually blushed when he said it: as if he were mortified at some confession.
He has a special love for this island because a great-aunt of his, who owned a house here, was killed during the earthquake of 1883. He says that when a member of your family is buried somewhere, you have a duty to go back there from time to time.
He’s thirty-eight years old, and he lives in a small Bavarian town called Prien, if I understood him correctly, on the shore of a lake. Since he’s an amateur painter, he described it to me as if it were a picture: slate roofs, balconies full of flowers, artisans in their workshops, bicycles, women in their traditional garb. I admit that it was fun to hear him talking about his people in that strange accent.
He hinted that this stay in Italy was turning out far better than he’d expected: he likes the excitement he senses, the yearning for a better future that the people display by working hard. He made me proud of my own country, for once.
Then Carla returned, and it seemed to me that she was unhappy to find me conversing with Signor Manfred; but after he left, I explained to her that I certainly hadn’t encouraged that meeting. Quite the contrary. I told her everything that had happened and fortunately, in the end, we were better friends than ever. The last thing I want is to fight with Carla, especially over a man who doesn’t interest me in the slightest.
From here, my bedroom seems so small, and the window across the street so distant. At night, though, before I fall asleep, my mind always flies to him and to those sad green eyes that look at me from the darkness as if crying out for help, and a kind of weakness presses hard in my chest. Enchantment and desire.
I still don’t see a future for myself, at least not an emotional one. But here at least I can live each day to the fullest without the anxiety of time passing while I build nothing.
I love you dearly, my beloved papà, and the idea of being able to hug you again helps me to think of my return without fear.
Yours,
Enrica