Four Hundred and Forty Steps to the Sea

by Sara Alexander

  “Why so cagey? Shouldn’t you be waltzing around with flowers in your head?” he asked, as I walked back to the table. “Isn’t that what all girls want? A rich grocer on their arm. I mean, this palace is all well and good but living in luxury as a servant isn’t all it seems, no?”

  “I’m not a servant.” I rearranged the cutlery upon the table, fretful lining up of inane objects to regain futile control of my frustration. “I don’t know why you spoke to him that way.”

  “Because I don’t think he’s good enough for you.”

  “You don’t know anything about him!” I replied a little too loudly, stacking the plates, yearning for this space to be returned to the stillness with which it usually hummed. I returned with a bowl of peaches. Marco grabbed one. I watched him peel it with a deft knife. His movements were precise, methodical, surgical almost. I was observing an autopsy.

  I confided in the coroner. “He’s a good man.”

  “Says who?”

  I rolled my eyes. “And he has asked me to marry him, yes.” I reached for a peach, feeling glad Marco wasn’t hurrying for a retort.

  “But you don’t want to,” he said at last.

  “We’ve known each other for so little.”

  “And you don’t want to.”

  I found his gaze. The peach drizzled its sweet juice down my finger toward my thumb. The major loved this fruit. He blew into my mind like ribbons of smoke. The sensation of his fingers tracing my body seduced my thoughts.

  “You see, Santina,” Marco began, his sermon yanking me out of my waking dream, “you either love someone or you don’t. People talk about time. Rubbish. They’ve never loved. Love is an instant. A flicker you can’t ignore. Time fans the flames, or extinguishes them. But love? Powerful and brief. It’s an instant—our first and last heartbeat. Don’t tell me you don’t know this.”

  “I don’t,” I lied, easing myself beneath the crumpled sheets of lovemaking, back to the major’s face rising from my hips to meet mine, the scent of me on his mouth.

  “You’re a shitty liar.”

  “And you’re only happy when you’re fighting,” I replied, happier to argue than relive the thorny memory. “Wonder where you got that from? Besides, what makes you such an expert, baby brother? Where’d you learn all this wisdom on love?”

  A flock of memories flitted across his expression, fitful shadows, till he returned to what I now understood was a studied, not innate, calm.

  “I’ve felt it power through me like lightning. I know the destruction it leaves after the fire. Why do you think I love the solitude of tombs?”

  “I think you like to paint your life differently from what it is.”

  He didn’t rush for a reply.

  “And I think I have a hard time remembering you’re not just my little brother,” I added.

  His eyebrows raised into a smirk. “Amen. Back to work then,” he said, straightening. “Your food was delicious. Your lover was clumsy. Your brother was rude.”

  I waited for him to remedy his actions.

  “And he apologizes.”

  A reluctant acceptance furled the corner of my lips.

  “I feel protective over you, Santina. Allow me that. Someone’s got to make sure you do the right thing, no?”

  “You seem to think so, yes.”

  He held my gaze, searching. And for the first time, I allowed myself to agree with what he had said. Every piercing syllable of it.

  * * *

  Elizabeth and I reached the shop just past the final scorch of the afternoon. I hadn’t been down here for a while, and at first the blaze of color draped on the tourists, the giddy frolic of their passing conversations, overwhelmed me. There was a bubble of summer to their gait; their feet skimmed the cobbles with buoyant steps, lilting to the seaside rhythms of our bay. They walked around unhurried, drinking in every stone, every storefront, gazing wide-eyed at the mountains that encircled us, looming reminders of antiquity. They cooed at the quaint flowerboxes, the men in starched white overalls, too ready to serve, accommodate, inviting a sprinkling of glamour to their quotidian lives.

  Elizabeth and I wove between the onslaught of linen beach dresses, the bronzed beauty of the outsiders, basking in their snippet of vacation in the molten light, slipping us toward evening. Outside Paolino’s shop, some tables were laid out, edging toward the triangular convergence of several boutique-lined alleyways. Paolino leaned against the doorway, chatting with a man I didn’t recognize. I watched him for a moment, letting the stream of people brush past me. I looked up at his well-maintained shop, the care with which he nurtured the blaze of geraniums and hibiscus in huge pots beside the entry, spraying the welcome with their coral, fuchsia, violet, and lustrous amber blooms. In the window hung legs of prosciutto and huge wheels of cheese, garlands of shallots and garlic woven around them, and beneath, wooden crates tipped at jaunty angles, laden with eggplant, zucchini, and lush green-purple heads of lollo rosso lettuce. He was an artist. He had flair for such things. He knew how to attract people to him, and I was torn between feeling like I was just another who had been lulled into the buoyant haze of him, unable to decipher what it was I felt for him in all honesty, beyond the apparent joy of basking in his luminous energy.

  I watched the young women stroll by. Several took time to send looks his way. He was handsome after all, without an aggressive swagger. His face was open, an invitation, a spring song; uplifting, well rehearsed, yet intangible, fleeting—the precursor of greater heat. My heart ached. I ought to love a man like this.

  He saw Elizabeth and me. His brief smile rippled toward awkward.

  We crossed over to him, weaving through the sun-toasted beachgoers.

  “You, Signorina, look like you need some chocolate, no?” he asked, beaming at Elizabeth. He took her hand and led her inside to his treasure trove of delicacies. She breathed in the salty sweetness of the shop, her eyes dancing over every shiny wrapper of candied fruits, sugared almonds, jars of pickled vegetables, olives, oversized barrels of olive oil, and a large glass urn of fresh lemonade.

  My mouth watered.

  He handed her a small basket of gianduia, soft praline wrapped in red foil, then led us back outside.

  “And for the love of my life?” he asked.

  The words smarted.

  “I’m fine, Paolino.”

  “Please, I insist. Lemonade perhaps? Some stuzzichini?”

  My resolve wilted. He returned with a plate of delicate strips of prosciutto, a few hunks of bread, a large ball of buffalo mozzarella drizzled with dark green olive oil. He poured each of us a glass of lemonade. Elizabeth and gluttony made messy acquaintance beside me in the shadow of his culinary seduction.

  “I’m sorry about lunch,” he said at last, crisping through the pause.

  “So am I,” I replied. My chewing sounded clumsy in my head. “My brother is, well, he doesn’t spend a lot of time with people. Well, he does, but they’re mostly dead or grieving. It affects a person, you know?”

  Paolino nodded, but it didn’t underline agreement.

  We slipped back into silence; the destruction of the softening mozzarella distracted our thoughts. It melted in my mouth. My guilt swelled. I longed to intuit how to steer them. I wished for one moment I could be Rosalia. She would breeze through these stilted thoughts. I longed to navigate them like a mountainside, judging rock by rock at lightning speed, deft, poised, trusting my balance and confidence to adjust with implicit skill. It would be better to stop considering his feelings and offer brutal honesty about my own—the very thing that had attracted him to me in the first place. I didn’t play games like the others. Now I watched myself swaying around my mind, an affected dancer, not so much the ballerina as the failed tightrope act. I could see Paolino would be the husband most girls would want, but the truth ached; I needed to forgive myself for not loving this man the way I longed to feel for a lover.

  “Paolino,” I began. He met my eyes. I hung in the hiatus, almost able to resi
st the warm chocolate of his gaze. Almost able to convince myself that I would never be happy creating a life with him. Almost able to acknowledge that to live and work amongst this stream of strangers, this incessant reminder of other lands, creating tempting displays to progress his empire would leave me unfulfilled in immeasurable ways. I longed for the solicitude of a life the major had unfurled. I longed for a partner to pore over words and thoughts with, who would gain as much pleasure from this as eating the finest dish I could create, or eating the first matured peach fresh off the tree.

  I remembered the feel of Paolino’s lips on mine. The way he looked at me with a tender sparkle, as if he intuited more about me than he let on. A twinge of pleasure, followed by a swell of guilt; my night with the major still pulsed through me like a heartbeat, incessant, unstoppable, thudding for life. The entire escapade wrenched like a torrid dream I might never wake from while sending the caramel shivers of a treasured memory to the tips of my limbs.

  “I received your letter,” I said. The words flopped onto the table in a clumsy heap.

  A ray streaked across us. He squinted. It made it hard to read his expression.

  “The major read it to me.”

  Sun glow, near kisses, his hands, his weight.

  Paolino swallowed. “And I meant every word, Santina. Your neighbor was so kind to help me. She told me I had talent for poetry. See what you do to me? I was a boy till you came back. I chased after pictures. A pretty face, a nice dress—I was gone. A child. But you’re the person I want to be old with. You’re the one I want to hold my children.”

  Time skidded around us. Smudged pictures of a certain future cluttered my mind. The words closed in on me like static. And beyond, the steady underscore of bodies strolling to and from our bay, their feet scuffing the cobbles, bubbling sea-soaked conversations of delight.

  “Are you going to make me the happiest man in Positano, Santina?”

  He led me to the precipice. Perhaps we could teeter at the edge a little longer. There was no hurry after all. In a few days’ time, my mind would be clear once again, the dreamless sleep with the major would be a past, no longer trailing my periphery like a sun-bronzed haze. Soon I would be able to give the answer I knew both he and I longed for.

  “You sit around like that all day, boy?! You should make a mother proud!”

  I’d never been happier to be bludgeoned by Signora Cavaldi’s sarcasm. We twisted around to see her charging toward us. In a few words I was back in their corridor, huddled in that cot. A familiar panic rippled through me.

  “Mamma! You should follow my lead! Let your son spoil you for once!” He signaled for her to sit with us. I balked at the idea of this conversation becoming a group discussion.

  Elizabeth burst into sudden tears. I looked down. Hazelnut gianduia streaked her dress and slid in muddy tracks toward the floor where it disappeared into mucky destruction.

  Paolino ran in for more napkins.

  “He fusses over you and that English child like you were his already.”

  Elizabeth’s face contorted. I envied her lament.

  Signora Cavaldi’s face looked older, but her gait was as stiff and bombastic as ever. Paolino returned, fussing over the stain by Elizabeth’s hem. I urged his hand away.

  “Leave the child to the girl who’s paid to do that—and serve the americana who just walked in,” his mother piped, flinging her hand into the air.

  Paolino caught the final tip-taps of the beaded curtain as the young woman swayed inside. “Don’t go anywhere, Santi’, I’ll be right back.”

  Elizabeth took her time to return to peace, all the while attracting bemused and disgusted looks from the passersby. I felt the hot glare of the woman Paolino would make my mother-in-law. My throat scraped dry. The fishmonger on the opposite side of the viccolo called out to Signora. She stood and marched over to him and they began an animated discussion on the catch that morning.

  Rosalia’s face emerged from the crowd, a buoy bobbing amongst strangers. Her dimples deepened into a warm smile. She reached me and gave me a squeeze.

  “I’m meeting Pasquale for a passeggiata along the sea, lungo mare,” she said, her face gleaming in the burnished rays. “Mamma said it was okay. My sisters weren’t impressed. Today they can go to hell.”

  “You don’t mean that.”

  “Don’t I? They make a prison up there. I can’t breathe.”

  I admired her defiance, her resilience, her courage, qualities which shone even as her heart broke, streaking light through the cracks. Meanwhile I stood, feeling like a paper decoration fraying in the wind, repetitive cutout patterns in faded pastels.

  “You’re especially beautiful today, Rosalia,” I said, watching her capture the attention of several passing tourists.

  “I feel completely lost. You make me feel that the world has order.”

  “You make me feel like your accountant.”

  She cackled then. I hadn’t heard her laugh in too long.

  “So, how is your husband-to-be? Beside himself with excitement? I knew you had no chance once he decided it would be you.”

  Decision: a final word, a brick wall, a declaration of camps. I’d never struggled with it before. Now the idea penned around me, a stable door slamming shut.

  “He’s inside. And he’s not my husband-to-be.” A young child squeezed into a smart shirt and pressed shorts darted around us, followed by another screaming out in chase.

  “Stop dancing around your words, Santina—he told my brother that he was going to speak to the priest at the Chiesa Nuova.”

  The idea of me standing at the steps of the biggest church in town waving to crowds of his family clawed at my stomach. I lifted Elizabeth off her chair.

  “We’d better get going, Rosali’, Marco will be home for dinner soon.”

  “Thank you, Santina.”

  “Stop thanking me. It’s like you’re chalking up a debt.”

  “And that’s why I love you!” She twisted away, straightened her shirt and swayed her hips downhill toward the man she loved, swallowed back into the throng of well-dressed visitors waltzing downhill to their evening entertainment.

  We stepped into the cool of the shop. It took a moment for our eyes to adjust. When we did, the figures sharpened into focus. The woman was tall, slim, with hair that lulled down her back in gentle waves. Paolino’s face colored through his well-practiced spectrum of charm. Her head was cocked to one side. I don’t think I’d ever seen an exchange of prosciutto look so romantic. Something ugly sludged my stomach.

  They said their final goodbyes. She walked by me, leaving a fragrant mist of rose, a flowery memory hovering between he and I. I felt a sense of her being someone familiar, a face sparkling in a crowd, but the picture wavered, a watery reflection in a puddle underfoot. I turned back to him, disorientated by the infantile whisper of envy snaking through me.

  Would I make him the happiest man in Positano after all?

  Chapter 19

  Paolino’s eyes found mine. He came out from behind the counter, wiping his hands on a dishcloth, flopping it over his shoulder as he reached us.

  “I didn’t plan to have this conversation surrounded by legs of ham, Santina.”

  I smiled at his surprising self-awareness. A frank discussion in the middle of his shop seemed at once the most sensible idea. I longed for the courage to do so. He looked at me, expectant. I felt like he needed me to step into the outline of a wife he had drawn in his imagination, to add color and depth to his half-finished sketch.

  I didn’t long for romance after all, the dreamed-up version of a lover or what love should look like, feel like. I ached for intimacy. A quiet complicity. Standing there surrounded by the paper garlands advertising the latest confectionary, the wooden boxes of coffee beans, the stacks of labeled tea boxes shipped in for the foreigners, I could imagine Paolino and I hovering in that spark of silence between two lovers who know one another’s completeness. Then the intimacy of my night with the major co
njured into view. Around me were the abundance and displays of romantic love. Yet I yearned for a lover who would unwrap himself and shine light on the hidden parts of me. I wasn’t sure I would ever allow Paolino to do that.

  I felt his hands around my face. His lips kissed mine. Guilty tears pricked my eyes. I didn’t let them fall. He mistook them for the kind of love he sought, which made them smart even more. He looked deep into me. Perhaps he too could sense there would always be a part of me I could not share with him? His love was a beautiful panorama, serene, a mountain lake sheltered by trees. What I felt for the major was an unknown sea, stretching beyond what my eyes could fathom, unknown, powerful, profound. Impossible. How could I stay in that house living under the pretense of normality? How long would I hover in this limbo?

  “Paolino, everything feels so very fast,” I said at last.

  “Life is the blink of an eye.”

  I felt the knot around my middle tighten.

  “Santina, when I heard about Rosalia’s brother, it just made me think that we shouldn’t waste time. Over anything. And I know how I feel about you. And I want to share everything with you.”

  “And I feel like we don’t even know each other yet.”

  “That’s like saying you need to know the ending of a story before you read it.”

  Embarrassment flitted across his face for a breath. I watched him make a conscious decision to retract his impulse. “What I mean is, I don’t know all there is to know, I don’t know all of you, I don’t know all of me, for heaven’s sake! But I don’t care. I trust my gut. Always have. In the end that’s all we have. Look around us—none of this was built from logic alone!”

  He swung around at his precious displays, the embodiment of his courage, his ambition, a self-professed disciple to apparent beauty. I might have felt attuned to him more if we’d been standing upon my mountains, if he’d been gazing or paying worship to the dense forests, the damp air thick with earth and dew and the hum of wordless wisdom deep in my rocks, my craggy paths tangled with roots and moss and memories. I stood before him knowing that if I carved a lifetime beside him, the shadow of the major would trawl me forever. The realization was a sharp white ray of sun, a shaft of light cutting through storm-filled clouds like a blade.