Nocturne (English version)

by Viola Victor

19 - Ropes and bridges

  Martina and I had a whole floor of the lighthouse for us. Moving from a solid square tower to a circular lighthouse sprayed by the sea, perched on a strip of land that I could not praise for its stability – or at least the impression of stability it could give – was somehow, how to say it?, you had to get used to it. Train your eye. And all that water...

  If I could swim? Certainly. The tamer taught me when I was travelling with the circus. He didn’t seem upset for the nightly visits I received, which he ignored or pretended to ignore. I never felt that he cared particularly for his wife. Maybe he thought it was part of the job: go into the cage and marry the girl of the wild beasts. She lived near them. She spent all her time at the cage or even inside of them. Nothing ever happened to her. The idea that she had whispered something into the ear of the tiger before it tore her first husband to pieces is not so weird. I hope that her second husband is still alive: he was a good person. And now his teachings (not about how to hold stool and whip, but about how to overcome the natural force that pulls you at the bottom by opposing her some movements) would come in handy.

  I swam pretty well. I mean, well enough to survive.

  Martina swam very well. I mean, well enough to wish for a long swim in a sunny day. In spite of this, she had an unjustified terror of deep water. As soon as she reached a point where she couldn’t touch the floor, she got HORRIBLY scared and wanted to go back. Of course I was very grateful. In addition to detesting deep water, she did not want me to mention the wife of the trainer. She hated it more than she hated not seeing the bottom of the sea, although on the top of the list of what she hated there was the trapeze artist, whom I had to be very careful never to mention. As for me, there was no one I should be jealous of: the only boy who ever tried to approach her had led her to run away from home. With me.

  Sometimes I suspected that her idea of ​​moving to the sea had not been too bright, because of our lacking attitudes about water. But all in all, that fragrant and liquid environment allowed many pleasures that couldn’t be found anywhere else, like the warm sand or the feet of Martina, always bare, lapped by the waves. The irregular shore, the weather, a bit wet but definitely mild, the balsamic scent of the trees behind the beach. Even the fog that surrounds the lighthouse on certain winter nights, when the sea is rough.

  Her uncle got a little used to me, but not completely. He stared grimly at me, and shook his head too. "Buttons," he used to say. He talked about my eyes, I suppose. They were so dull that you could not see anything in them.

  "That’s not true," Martina protested. "Transparent glass, bottle bottoms, if anything."

  But her gruff uncle would understandably like to see her niece settled with a handsome young man in a trendy place, rather than with a shabby guardian (Lighthouse? Tower?).

  Sometimes he saddened and sat on the rocking chair on the circular terrace, surrounded by his thick beard and white hair and even by the smoke of his pipe, watching the horizon. Malera often sat next to him, and then the thick cloud of smoke was doubled. All people leaving in such places develop the habit of observing the distances of the sea. They watch the horizon as if there really were something to look for. And if there were, who would care? How useless it is to look at the sea! However, the old uncle sat on the rocking chair and stared, smoke rising from his pipe. When he saw me, he sighed and pitied Martina. So when the two of them worked on the terrace, taking care of the white flowers her uncle loved so much, I never disturbed them. Furthermore, I didn’t even like those flowers.

  A terrace full of sunflowers, that wouldn’t have been bad. But those anaemic little flowers inspired me no sympathy.

  As usual, I hadn’t been able to make any friend. Once a friend of her uncle insisted that we go to the pub with them. Then I was not invited again. Better so: I was bored all the time and felt uncomfortable. Probably I made them feel uncomfortable too. People has this effect on me: I cannot follow their speeches and I get bored. Then, when I say something, it’s out of place or not clear. Our desires go in opposite directions and we never understand one another. Talking about weather, moreover, throws me into total despair, I don’t know why. Maybe because it's tiresome: it is just to say something, and instead of hiding the abyss – this is why it is done, isn’t it? To bridge the unbridgeable gap between people – it magnifies it.

  You see? Every person, at least that's how it seems to me, stands in their own shelter. The others are all very far: it is absolutely impossible to reach them or even make themselves understood, from that distance. This embarrasses some, so they invented these fictitious bridges, as solid as mirages, and pretended to connect one island to another. The coarser bridge is that of brisk conversation.

  "What a beautiful sunny day" or "it's cold, winter just arrived," and so on. There is an amazing monotone range of those.

  Of course, you can try to build more and more refined bridges, without affecting their unreal transparency.

  I'm not made for the landing. When someone tries to build his bridge, admiring its building and believing in its apparent solidity, I am only able to see the inconsistency of the mirage and nothing more. It makes me smile, even. That is why I am out of place: I never get up from the shore to try and cross. It would be useless. How to, when all we have are imaginary ropes?

  This is why I can stay with Martina: she never tried to fool me with bridges and ropes. She sat on the shore, looking at me, throwing rocks into the deep sea, and only asking for a little attention. This I can understand. Some stone hurt me a bit at times, depending on where it hit me. But this is proof that something can go from one island to another. Stones, nothing more. But you cannot doubt of a well-thrown stone.

  Not even Martina loves to have many people around. She can be friendly, if she wants to, but she doesn’t really enjoy it. Her friendliness is a big misunderstanding, a laborious bluff.

  The only person she has been getting by with since we are at the lighthouse is Malera (my best man, remember?), a woman in her forties and perhaps even more – no parties, teenage companies, friends, my strange Martina – that good people tend to avoid. They say she did a not-so-esteemed job when she was younger. And it is suspected that she still retains some very affectionate friend. Martina’s uncle?

  Martina, her uncle and her new friend sit together in the small garden next to the lighthouse and sometimes play cards. Malera has flaming red hair, very smooth, with a thick fringe, and a bright red mouth. I don’t know about her eyes, I watch them and then forget them right away. She smokes long, thin cigarettes that, they say in town, increase her already strong vulgarity.

  I don’t mind: she’s a good friend to Martina and sometimes she tells me funny stories when I wander around to steal some sweets from the tea tray.

  It seems she even gained a certain amount of money by writing a book. Or rather, by dictating it to someone who knew how to write and was interested in her story. She quotes it all the time but I have never seen a copy. Apparently the title is Hours of Malera and it contains many of the funny anecdotes she also told us. I suspect she doesn’t want to give it to Martina because of its content, which must be occasionally distinctly obscene, and that she censors it for the benefit of the ingenuous credulity of her friend.

  Malera’s visits and uncle’s muttering are the only things we share with the rest of mankind, that almost can’t seem to believe it. Malera says I'm a nice guy. Then she corrects herself. Maybe not a nice guy. But certainly the right one for Martina.

  Neither Malera likes the white flowers that grow on the terrace and that Martina’s uncle left us when, one morning, he continued undeterred to sleep in his bed despite our repeated calls. To be sure to spite me even after passing away, he drew up a will specifying that the sole and exclusive owner of all his property is Martina only. I cannot even dream about it.

  The lawyer read the will in the old study. On the dark desk, some documents and an odd, dusty, battered, thick-paged manuscript. Martina and I sit in front of
him. Malera too, of course. She has been left some object of some value. We look at the manuscript, the handwriting is exactly that of Martina’s uncle, although it is all torn and missing half of it. It has a title that seems incomprehensible to me: Study on sleep .

  "That's funny," Martina said.

  "I didn’t know that my uncle was writing a book. And how strange it is missing a part."

  We immediately forgot the book and the missing part. Until Martina had to resort to the secret of the white flowers, seemingly innocuous, revealed in the first pages of that torn manuscript.