The Beach (5 page)

"We are all fools at that age," I said.

"I believed everything they told me. I didn't dare poke my face between the bars of the gate for fear that someone passing might put my eyes out. Still, from the gate you could even see the water; I had no other distractions because they always kept me shut up. I used to stand on the garden bench and listen to the passers-by, listen to the noises. Whenever a siren sounded in the harbor, I was happy."

"Why are you telling us these things?" Doro said. "To bear someone else's childhood memories, one must be in love with her."

"But he does love me," Clelia said.

We talked a long time that night and then went to see the ocean under the stars. The night was so clear that one could make out a thin foam breaking along the promenade. I said that I really didn't believe in all that water and that the sea made me feel as if I were living under a glass bell. I described my olive tree as some kind of lunar vegetation, even when there wasn't a moon. Clelia, turning between me and Doro, exclaimed: "It sounds lovely! Let's go see it."

But crossing the square, we met some acquaintances to whom we had to tell the story of Mara. It wasn't long before Clelia had forgotten the olive tree, and we all went back to the villa to play cards. Slightly annoyed, I left them, saying I was tired.

At the other side of the square I met Berti, who wasn't quick enough to get back into the shadow out of sight. I walked on. Berti spoke first.

"What's all this spying?" I said finally.

An hour before, I'd noticed him below the villa. He had been hanging around on the promenade a short distance away. His white jacket showed up too well against the sports shirt. He told me—bold in the darkness—that he'd heard there had been an accident in the pine woods and wanted to find out if it were true.

6

 "As you see, I'm alive," I said. "Did you really need to shadow me all evening?"

He asked if I were going to bed. We stopped under the olive tree, a black stain in the darkness. "They said that a woman was killed," Berti said.

"Are you interested in women, too?"

Berti looked up at my window. He spun around quickly and said that an accident could make a vacationer decide to leave. He had thought that I and my friends would be leaving.

"And that relative of theirs?" he asked.

I realized that evening that when he mentioned my friends he was thinking of Clelia and Doro. He asked once more if Mara were a relative of theirs. Just the suspicion of his interesting himself in the thirty-year-old Mara made me smile. I asked him if he knew her.

"No," he said. "So what?"

I arranged to meet him next day on the beach, teasing him about his discovery of the pleasures of reading in company. "If you imagine I'm going to introduce you to girls, you're mistaken. You seem able to make out pretty well on your own."

That night I sat by the window smoking, thinking over Clelia's confessions, bothered by the thought that Ginetta would never have made similar ones to me. A familiar depression took hold. The memory of my talk with Guido, added to that, sank me completely. Luckily I was by the sea where the days don't count. "I'm here to have a good time," I told myself.

The next day we were sitting on the highest seaside rock, Doro and I, and beneath us Clelia was spread out flat, covering her eyes. The beach umbrella was deserted. We discussed Mara again and decided that a beach is composed of women, or at any rate of children. A man may be missing and nobody notices,- if a Mara is missing, a whole circle disbands. "Look," Doro said, "these umbrellas are so many houses; they knit, eat, change their clothes, pay visits: those few husbands just stand there in the sun where their wives have put them. It's a republic of women."

"One might deduce that they had invented society themselves."

At that moment a swimmer came up below the rocks. He lifted his head from the water, getting a handhold. It was Berti.

I watched him without saying a word. Perhaps he hadn't noticed me up there—I can't see two yards ahead myself when I first leave the water. He swayed back and forth in the surf, hanging on. On a level with his forehead, a few inches away, Clelia was basking, motionless on her back. Berti's hair kept falling over his eyes; to keep it in place he made those tentacular gestures of the arms that suggest the instabilities of swimming. Then he suddenly broke away and paddled on his back, circling a submerged reef at the point where the sand gave way to rock. He called something to me from out there. I waved at him and went on talking to Doro.

Later, when Clelia had shaken herself out of her blissful state and the other girls and acquaintances showed up, I scanned the beach and saw Berti standing among the bathhouses reading a newspaper. It wasn't the first time, but that morning he was obviously waiting for something. I signaled him to come up. I insisted.

Berti moved a bit, folding his paper without looking at us. He stopped below the rocks. I said to Doro: "Here is that enterprising type I was telling you about." Doro looked and smiled, then turned in the direction of the bathhouse. So I felt I had to go down and say something to Berti.

To introduce a boy in black trunks to girls coming and going in swimsuits, or to men in beach robes, is no great affair,- in other words, no apology was required. But Berti's solemn, bored face irritated me,-1 felt silly. "We all know each other here," I brought out curtly, and coming up to Ginetta as she was about to go in the water, I said: "Wait for me."

When I got back to the shore—Ginetta stayed in for more than an hour—I caught sight of Berti again sitting on the beach between our umbrella and the next, hugging his knees.

I left him alone. I wanted to talk a while with Clelia. She had just emerged from her bathhouse, putting on a white bolero over her suit. I went up to her and we gave each other a mock bow. We walked slowly away, talking, and when Berti had disappeared behind the umbrella, I felt better. We made our usual tour of the beach, between the foam and the noisy, sprawling groups of people.

"I've just been swimming with Ginetta," I said. "You're not going in?"

From the first day I had hinted at my readiness to swim with her out of politeness, but Clelia had stopped to look at me with an ambiguous smile. "No, no," she had said. I looked at her, surprised. "No, no, I go swimming alone." And that was that. She explained that she did everything in public, but in the sea she had to be alone. "That's peculiar," I said. "Peculiar it may be, but that's how it is." She was a good swimmer, so there was no embarrassment for her there. She had just made up her mind. "The company of the sea is enough. I don't want anybody. I have nothing of my own in life. At least leave me the sea..." She swam away, hardly moving the water, and I was waiting for her on the sand when she came back. I started the conversation again; Clelia just smiled at my protests.

"Not even with Doro?" I asked.

"Not even with Doro."

Next morning we joked about her mysterious swim as we picked our way among the bodies, laughing at fat bellies and criticizing the women. "That red umbrella," said Clelia. "Do you know who's underneath?" One could make out a bony nakedness clad in a two-piece suit of the bikini variety. It was tanned in streaks; the bare stomach showed the mark of an earlier, normal bathing suit. Toes and fingernails were blood red. Over the back of the deck chair hung a luxurious pink towel. "It's Guido's friend," Clelia whispered, laughing. "He keeps her on the string and lets nobody see her, and when he meets her he kisses her hand and pays her all the compliments." Then she took my arm and leaned forward.

"Why are you men so vulgar?"

"It seems to me that Guido has all sorts of tastes," I said. "As for vulgarity, he's got plenty of that."

"But no," Clelia said, "it's that woman who's vulgar. The poor fellow is very fond of me."

I started explaining to her that nothing is vulgar in itself but that talking and thinking make it so, but Clelia had already lost interest and was laughing at a child's little red beret.

We strolled to the end of the beach and stopped for a smoke on the rocks. Then, dazed by the sun, we went back. Looking blankly around, I noticed Berti walking away from our umbrella—burned back and shorts—talking nervously to a strange little woman in a flowered dress, high sandals, and bright, powdered cheeks. Just then Clelia shouted something to Doro, waving, and the two turned around, Berti hurriedly escaping as soon as he saw us, the little woman sauntering along behind, calling his name none too respectfully.

"That geisha who was following you," I said when he came to meet me at the trattoria. "Was she by any chance the woman you took to your room that day?"

Berti smiled vaguely around his cigarette.

"I see you have good company," I continued. "Why are you looking for more? Lucky thing I didn't introduce you to those girls."

Berti looked at me hard, the way one does when one is pretending to think about something. "It's not my fault," he burst out, "if I met her. Excuse me to your friends."

Then I changed the subject and asked him if his parents knew about these undertakings. With his usual vague smile he said slowly that that woman was worth more than many well-brought- up girls, as, for that matter, was true of all her sort, who at least had one advantage in their hard lives over the proper ones.

"And that might be?"

"Yes. Men all agree that by going to prostitutes and letting off steam they are protecting the others. So prostitutes should be respected."

"Very well," I told him. "But you, then, why do you run away and act ashamed of her?"

"I?" Berti stammered. That was another story, he explained. He was repelled by women; it made him furious that all men lived just for that. Women were stupid and affected; the infatuation of men made them necessary. One should agree to leave them alone, to take them all down a few pegs.

"Berti, Berti," I said, "you're a hypocrite, too."

He looked surprised. "Making use of a person and then cutting her the next minute; no, that is out." I noticed that he was smiling and ostentatiously crushing his cigarette. He said in his mildest tone that he had not made use of that woman, but—he smiled —she had been making use of him. She was alone, she was bored by the sea; they found themselves together on the beach—she herself had begun by joking and swapping stories. "You see," he told me, "I couldn't say no because I felt sorry for her. She has a little pocketbook with the mirror all broken. I understand her. She's only looking for company and doesn't want a penny. She says that by the sea one doesn't work. But she's malicious. She's like all women and wants to embarrass men by making them look foolish."

We went home through the deserted streets at two in the afternoon. I had made up my mind to give no more advice to that boy: he was the kind one must give a long rein, to see where they end up. I asked if that woman, that
lady
, he had not by chance brought from Turin himself. "You're crazy," he replied snappishly. But the snap left him when I asked who had taught him to apologize for things that nobody cared about one way or the other. "When?" he stammered. "Didn't you ask me a short while ago to excuse you to my friends?" I said.

He told me that, considering I was with the others, he was sorry we had seen him with that woman. "There are people," he said, "in front of whom one is ashamed to be ridiculous."

"Who, for instance?"

He was silent a moment. "Your friends," he said carelessly.

He left me at the foot of the stairs and walked off under the sun. Because Doro liked to rest during the hottest hours and I am unable to sleep during the day, I went inside merely to rid myself of Berti. Now the daily tedium of the hot and empty hours began. I wandered through the village, as always, but by now I knew every corner by heart. Then I took the road to the villa in the hope of talking to Clelia. But it was still very early and I stayed for a while ruminating on a low wall behind some trees that were silhouetted against the sea. Among other things I thought for the first time that somebody not knowing Clelia well and seeing the two of us strolling and laughing together would have said there was something between us a little stronger than friendly acquaintance.

I found Clelia in the garden, lying back in the shade on a wicker chair. She seemed glad to see me and started talking. She told me that Doro was sick of always painting the sea and wanted to stop. I couldn't hold back a smile. "Your friend Guido will be happy," I said. "Why?" Then I tried to explain that, according to Guido, Doro was thinking more of his painting than of her and that this was the reason for their quarrels.

"Quarrels?" Clelia said, frowning.

I was irritated. "Come now, Clelia, don't try to make me believe that you haven't been fighting a little. Remember the evening when you asked me to keep him company and distract him..."

Clelia listened, slightly offended, and kept shaking her head. "I never said a thing," she muttered. "I don't remember." She smiled. "I don't want to remember. And don't you play the home- wrecker."

"Ye gods," I said. "The first day I was here. We had just got back from that trip where we were shot at..."

"Wonderful!" Clelia exclaimed. "That little white man and his monkey shines ?"

I had to smile, and Clelia said: "Everyone takes me literally. You all remember what I say. And you grill me, you want to know." She clouded over again. "It's like being back in school."

"For my part..." I grumbled.

"People should never remember the things I say. I talk and talk because I have a tongue in my head, because I don't know how to be alone. Don't you take me seriously too,- it's not worth the trouble."

"Oh, Clelia," I said, "are we tired of life?"

"Of course not. It's so beautiful," she said, laughing.

Then I said that I no longer understood poor Doro. Why should he want to stop painting? He had become so good at it.

Clelia grew pensive and said that if she weren't what she was— a bad child who didn't know how to make anything—she would have painted the sea herself, she liked it so much. It was something of her own; not only the sea but the houses, the people, the steep stairs, all of Genoa. "I like it all so much," she said.