Giovanna's Navel

by Ernest Van der Kwast

  Seven hundred years.

  ‘Kiss me,’ Giovanna whispered. ‘Kiss me all over.’

  He drew closer, kissing her navel and lower belly, and with each touch that followed, his mind grew quieter and his desire greater. When his mouth reached the bottom of her bathing costume, his desire was greater than ever. Greater than himself. The lust gnawed through the bathing costume.

  ‘Use your fingers,’ she whispered hurriedly.

  He used his fingers, his trembling fingers. Everything was new, and everything was soft — so soft it made him dizzy. It was the same feeling you get when you light a cigarette after a long time. Giovanna smiled in a way he’d never seen her smile before: vulnerably. That first time, Ezio had kissed her navel unintentionally, but this time his actions matched up to his will. He used his mouth and tasted of the forbidden fruit.

  Giovanna’s lower body jerked. She moaned and groaned and floated.

  Before Ezio knew it, he was lying on his back and felt Giovanna’s mouth on his navel, the navel that hadn’t completely healed yet. She kissed him gently and caressed him with her tongue.

  Giovanna’s desire, too, broke through the fibres separating him from her.

  Ezio felt her hand, which, unlike his, was strong and firm. He shuddered at her touch, and then it all happened very fast. The first time it always happens very fast.

  Afterwards, while watching the big sky above the sea with Giovanna’s head on his chest, Ezio felt that warm glow surging through his body again. But this time, he kept the words in their prison and stopped them from breaking free.

  They breathed as one and savoured the day that passed and would only return in their dreams.

  Ezio didn’t want the day to end, though. He didn’t want to dream. He wanted to do it all over again: knock on the front door, inhale the scent of freshly laundered dresses, walk to San Cataldo, float in the sand pit. In a word, everything! And so he reappeared on Giovanna’s doorstep the following day. There was no washing on the line, but that was a mere detail.

  Giovanna opened the door. She kissed and hugged Ezio, and was happy to be whisked away. They retraced the steps taken twenty-four hours earlier, left the same footprints on the beach and, in the lee of the small sand dune, relived the previous day.

  Again, some things were different: lips explored a neck, a hand touched a breast. Plus: it lasted longer. Not much, just a little.

  And so the summer passed: the days grew shorter, the pleasure lasted longer. Each time, Ezio managed to delay the climax further. But the more he managed to contain this passion, the harder it became to contain that other glow inside.

  In October, when even the Southern Italian summer had come to an end, Ezio asked Giovanna to marry him for the second time.

  They’d spent the entire afternoon in the sand pit. The sun sank into the immeasurable sea, shells closed, a container ship disappeared beyond the horizon. Ezio and Giovanna watched the breaking waves and let the murmur wash over them.

  They’d walked to the water’s edge, Giovanna’s left hand in Ezio’s right. It felt clammy and trembled a little. He tried to suppress the shaking by clenching his teeth, but it only seemed to make his hand twitchier. His fingers felt like live wires. The hot surge of energy that had erupted from his belly and had tried to find a way out through his chest had ricocheted to his shoulder and was now trying to exit via his right hand.

  The energy shook Ezio’s hand out of Giovanna’s and pulled him down, down to the beach. The soft, wet sand welcomed his trembling index finger. Without fully realising what he was doing, Ezio wrote out a question. The letters were all over the place, but there was no mistaking the message: Will you marry me?

  As Giovanna looked at the spidery letters, she seemed to sense a danger. First she took a step back, her eyes still on the question. Then she looked up, but instead of meeting Ezio’s gaze, she walked into the water.

  It was late October and the sea was really too cold for swimming, but that didn’t stop Giovanna Berlucchi from diving in and disappearing under the water. Ezio remained behind with his message, which was erased by three waves.

  Following his departure from Lecce, she’d returned many more times to the shelter of the small sand dune. But never alone. Giovanna wanted to be free, without obligations, without commitments. Somewhere inside, she sensed an emptiness after Ezio’s departure — a void that wouldn’t be filled, that would never be filled. But that realisation came only later, after dozens of years. The first time Giovanna returned to the sand dune, she felt liberated.

  Wanting to make the most of the last bit of warmth of the year, she made almost daily trips to San Cataldo beach, which was now bathed in soft, reddish-yellow light. This is where she seduced young men, caressed their navels, and broke their hearts. But whichever boy Giovanna kissed, the following day she’d have forgotten all about him.

  A year later, by the time Ezio was picking green apples with red flushes in Bolzano, she’d caused more heartache than her four sisters combined ever would. But it wasn’t the same pain that Ezio had felt. It wasn’t a harpoon that couldn’t be yanked free. The boys Giovanna forgot, they forgot her, too. The odd one burst into tears and stamped his feet, but eventually he gave up as well. Other men got over it after a year and the loss of five kilos in body weight. They ended up marrying the daughter of a net-maker or an olive farmer — caring women who gave them children with thick, dark hair.

  None of them fled.

  By then, the bikini had been modelled by a nude dancer in a glitzy swimming pool in Paris. The Vatican deemed the garment immoral and banned women from wearing it on beaches. But Southern Italy lives by different rules than the rest of the country. And so it happened that Giovanna could wear her two-piece bathing costume during the long summers and enchant countless men, who’d stare at her as if they were seeing a mirage. She didn’t fall in love. Never. It could be seen as a form of protest — against a bourgeois mentality or against the natural course of things — but the truth was that Giovanna was incapable of giving her heart to anyone else. However fast she walked the road to San Cataldo, however high she floated, her heart was hers and hers alone. The only thing she always longed for was the sea, in which she’d remain submerged for as long as possible.

  By the time Giovanna reached her mid-twenties, she still hadn’t opted for a different life. She didn’t want a husband and children. Would she ever? Her mother was worried and tried to talk sense into her. ‘Marriage isn’t a prison,’ she told her daughter. ‘Children aren’t chains.’

  Giovanna said she was happy and didn’t need anyone. ‘I don’t believe in marriage.’

  Her mother’s eyes filled with tears. ‘Later,’ she said. ‘Later, you’ll see what I mean. When you’re old and the people around you start dropping away one by one.’

  Giovanna said she had no interest in later. ‘I live in the present!’ she exclaimed. Her voice was louder than she intended. Her father, who was in another room, heard her and knew what was coming.

  Giovanna’s mother raised her voice, too, accusing her daughter of being stubborn and selfish.

  Halfway through the blazing row that followed — once again, doors were slammed, dust whirled up, and the woman next door crossed herself — Giovanna ran away from home. For three years she lived with a man she didn’t love, and only left him when he raised the prospect of children, of a daughter with the same honey-toned skin as her, the same glorious navel, and the same bare feet. With a suitcase in her hand, Giovanna ran to the station in Lecce. She made her way down the same platform as Ezio had years earlier, and the train she boarded was headed in the same direction, too. But Giovanna travelled no more than two hours. She got off in Ostuni, the white city by the sea. This is where she found a job as a chamber maid and slept in the only room without a view of the Adriatic Sea. This is where, for the first time, she cried about her life and the pain she was inflicting on others.


  For three months, she didn’t smile at a single soul.

  For six months — the time between the harvesting of the apples and the flowering of the trees — she didn’t touch a single man.

  But by the time the bees in Northern Italy were covering dozens of kilometres with pollen on their backs, and the air smelled sweet, like soft red fruit, Giovanna was walking along the beach, warming herself in the sun and letting the sea breeze caress her navel. An older man with grey eyes and dark brows fell for her charms. He invited Giovanna to dinner in the old town. Drunk on Negroamaro, she ended up in his hotel room. Drunk, she touched him everywhere. Drunk, her lips moved all over his body. But she was sober when the man burst into tears and told her about his wife and three children in Brindisi. Giovanna grew quiet and looked at the man’s damp cheeks. She’d seen plenty of tears in her life, but never those of a man with a wife and three children.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ the man muttered. ‘I’m sorry I want it and that I’m lusting after someone other than my wife.’ He pressed his head into Giovanna’s lap. She let him and stroked his hair, listening to the muffled snivelling and the occasional, inarticulate lament. Then the man began to lick her, like a young animal, a playful dog.

  ‘I want it,’ Giovanna heard him say. ‘I want it again.’

  It made her laugh, laugh uncontrollably, and she fell backwards onto the bed, shaking her head. But the man wouldn’t be put off by Giovanna’s glee. He kissed, caressed, and licked her. And that’s when it happened: Giovanna grew quieter until her laughter died down altogether. She was floating over the sand dunes and the sea.

  Back in the dark hotel room, in the clammy bed, Giovanna stared at the man. He was afraid to return her gaze.

  ‘Now what?’ Giovanna asked. She smiled. And because the man didn’t reply, she said: ‘We can carry on seeing each other, but you mustn’t fall in love with me.’ She wanted to remain in control. She’d make sure nothing went wrong this time around.

  The man looked at Giovanna. Seeing her beauty, he felt a warm glow inside. But he also saw her bold smile. Feeling apprehensive, he was briefly tempted to get up and go back to his wife and three children. But beauty conquers all.

  Giovanna jotted down the phone number of the guesthouse where she worked. ‘Say you’re my brother,’ she instructed him.

  The man nodded and learned the number off by heart on his way back to Brindisi.

  Nine days later, the woman running the guesthouse called Giovanna over: a phone call from her brother.

  And so she became a mistress — not a wife, not a mother, but a woman who meets a married man in secret places at odd hours: in a car park in the middle of the night, out in the open in a field while the farmers are away for lunch.

  But the man with the grey eyes and the dark brows fell in love, too. It happened very gradually — bit by bit, day by day. Once the love made itself known, there was no denying it. Over dinner, the man told her that he wanted to leave his wife and children, and marry her.

  Giovanna didn’t touch her food. ‘It’s over,’ she said, put down her napkin, and walked out of the restaurant.

  There were many more phone calls from the brother, but each time the guesthouse owner could only tell him the same thing: his sister was gone and would probably not be back. Giovanna had disappeared overnight.

  Then there was a Hungarian man Giovanna lived with in Budapest in the late 1950s. She’d followed him — not out of love, but because she wanted to get out of the heel of Italy, where most days were warm and dull. Maybe she wanted to feel the cold, the real cold that never reached Apulia. The Hungarian was happy enough for her to tag along. Like Giovanna, he was independent and non-conformist. He travelled around Europe with two suitcases filled with horse leather, deer skin, and wolf pelts. His hands were as rough as fig leaves. And this man, of all men, was the one who got her pregnant. She was scared, unbelievably scared, but pleased as well. She’d always thought she’d feel alienated from her body if she ever got pregnant, that she’d grow to hate the embryo in her womb, but instead she caught herself touching her belly and gently caressing the skin with her fingertips. Even though she’d never wanted children, with each day that passed Giovanna felt happier and more complete.

  When she was eight weeks late, she told the man who smelled of wolves that she was pregnant. He flew into a rage, yelled, and smashed up a table. Giovanna was scared he’d hit her with his rough hands — he had a look in his eyes. She fled the house and sought refuge in a coffee house, where she warmed herself on the small cups. When she came home late that night and tried to sneak in, the front door wouldn’t open. She shouted the name of the father of her unborn child through the letterbox, but he refused to open the door for her.

  He didn’t want her, just as she’d never wanted a man, a man who’d cling to her, who’d claim an ever greater piece of her life.

  And so she went back, back to Lecce. Throughout the train journey — three nights and two days — she kept her hands on her belly, holding the unborn child so as not to lose herself. If Giovanna had disembarked in Bolzano, she could have breathed out the same little clouds as Ezio in the apple orchard. But she had no way of knowing where he was, and her thoughts hadn’t drifted back to him yet.

  Giovanna knocked on the door of her parents’ house, and when her mother opened up Giovanna’s eyes filled with tears. Another door that remained shut would have been unbearable.

  The mother took her child in her arms and rocked her back and forth. At the kitchen table, Giovanna was served a big plate of pasta. ‘Eat, my child,’ her mother said, which is what all mothers in Italy say to prodigal sons and daughters.

  Giovanna’s mother didn’t ask any questions. Food is more important than words. Besides, she knew. She could tell from her daughter’s face, from her mouth. Not only did Giovanna eat the pasta, but she also devoured the leftover pieces of torta pasticciotto her mother had made that afternoon.

  Giovanna found a job in a pizzeria. She worked six days a week, from noon till night, carrying carafes and glasses, plates and cutlery. And the embryo in her belly bobbed around with every step. After closing time, she often spent another hour at the bar with the pizzeria owner and his children, who helped wait tables. Giovanna was the only one who didn’t drink. She held her belly instead.

  During a busy lunchtime session, she suddenly got cramps. She ran to the toilet, where she took off her apron and pulled down her skirt and underwear in one fluid motion. Drops slid down her legs; big, viscous drops, like tears made of jelly. At the sight of blood, she clapped her hand over her mouth. The next moment she had to hold on to the wall.

  Giovanna went home at once. She opened the door and walked straight past her mother. In bed, she lost even more blood. She screamed and cried, and for the first time in her life she felt abandoned.

  But the massive wheels of time didn’t stand still. They moved on, steadily and invisibly, ticking off the seconds, grinding up the days, weeks, and months as though they were grain.

  And then, suddenly, fifteen years had passed — fifteen summers since Ezio’s departure from Lecce.

  Giovanna still worked in the same pizzeria, but had started sneaking away at mealtimes. She’d walk the road to San Cataldo and then she’d sit on the beach. The wind went in search of her navel, but it was buried under two layers of fabric. She rummaged in the sand, hiding her hands from herself, afraid to touch her belly.

  Every day, she’d stare a little longer at the water that merged with the sky in the distance.

  In South Tyrol, meanwhile, the highest peaks were covered in snow; the mornings were cold, the apple trees still in bud. There was no horizon to be seen.

  One day Giovanna walked into the sea, fully clothed. She didn’t dive. The waves washed over her face, her head disappeared. She stayed under for a minute, two minutes. If her father had been standing at the water’s edge, he’d have dived in after her
. But there was nobody at the water’s edge: neither her father, nor Ezio. Giovanna gasped for breath in the sea, and for a moment or two it looked as if she’d finally lost the game. But then she came up spluttering and somehow managed to reach the shore. Back on the beach, she vomited water.

  She walked the eight kilometres back to Lecce, looking bedraggled. People who saw her go by stared. But the men who’d once kissed her lips averted their gaze. Her clothes were dripping wet, her ankles caked with sand. She was oblivious to the sun casting its glow over her.

  At home, in bed, Giovanna tried to still her cold, shaking hands. She swallowed and pressed her hands to her stomach, crying all the while. And so she sat for an hour. Her belly grew warmer and gradually got used to her hands. But there was one place she hadn’t touched yet. She shivered, afraid to look. Gently, Giovanna felt her navel. Her fingertips tingled at the touch. The next moment she felt a tremor, a shiver running through her entire body. It came from very far, that shiver, and so did his name.

  Memory may be unreliable and selective, but it’s not incoherent. It makes connections: between scents and fields, between sounds and an old square in the centre of town, between caresses and people. The tender, transparent antennae of Giovanna’s memory remembered a kiss, a mouth, a man.

  For the first time in a long, long while, she thought back to the summer of 1945; to the four months that had passed in the romantic blur of youth; to the young man with the bright eyes. To Ezio Ortolani.

  The following day, Giovanna didn’t go to work. Instead, she headed straight to San Cataldo. She found the hollow in which they’d lain and where desire had gnawed through the fabric of their clothes. She strolled to the spot on the beach where she thought Ezio had traced words in the sand with his index finger, and pictured the spidery letters, merely a step and fifteen years away. She wondered what her life might have been like had she said yes. She couldn’t help it — it was her imagination: standing beside her on the beach was a young girl with honey-toned skin and the same bare feet as herself.