I looked over into the square. Mothers and grandmothers were sitting chatting, while the men stood in groups. The children were playing some complicated version of hide and seek, using the church door as a touchline.
An Australian in shorts and boots, and a sweat-stained shirt, walked into the square and pulled a Frisbee out of his backpack. He was slightly overweight, his girlfriend was tanned and rangy. They started surfing the Frisbee to one another, carefully, quietly, she darting about, he standing still, always catching it as though he called it to him.
One by one the Italian children joined in, and then some of the parents, until the whole square was ringed with about twenty people playing Frisbee. The Australians couldn’t speak Italian and the Italians didn’t bother to speak English. The rules, the form, the technique, were all conducted in sign language and body language, with laughter as the interpreter.
Imagine the square.
On one long side is the Pizza Materita. On the short side is the church. On the other long side is a smaller restaurant and a few houses. The fourth side of the square opens onto the street.
The church of Santa Sophia has a great door and niched on the right and left of the door, high up, are two symmetrical statues. One is San Antonio, the patron saint of Anacapri, and the other is the Madonna.
Imagine the square.
Excitement, laughter, the whizz-curve of the Frisbee, new people pushing in, tired ones dropping out, then suddenly a boy throws the Frisbee too high and too fast, and the purple plastic orb neatly hats the Madonna.
Allora! Mamma mia!
Nobody knows what to do.
Suddenly a matron in black comes forward. She takes the Australian by the hand and stands him below the statue. She crosses herself and gestures to him to do the same. Clumsily, he does it.
Then she shouts to her two sons—big heavy men in short-sleeved shirts. They too cross themselves before the Madonna and stand patiently on either side of the Australian.
The matron fetches her teenage grandchildren, stringy as beans. They cross themselves and are gestured upwards onto the shoulders of the three men, now arms round each other’s waists, their feet braced apart.
The matron whistles, and a little kid, about three feet tall, comes running, and climbs, monkey-footed, up the human scaffolding. The base sweats. The teenagers complain, as hair, eyes, mouth and ears, are tugged and pulled until the kid is upright. He leans forward to flip the Frisbee off the Madonna. There is an imprecation from the ground. He looks down to see the matron shaking her fist at him. Guiltily he nods, crosses himself and tries again.
He has it at a grab and with a cry of pleasure turns round, his feet gripping into the shoulders of his cousins. Their hands clutch his thin ankles. He says something, they let him go and he jumps into space, both hands in the air, holding the Frisbee like a parachute. He jumps into the air as if he were a thing of air, weightless, limitless, untroubled by gravity’s insistence.
In the second’s difference between flying and falling his mother has run forward. She catches him at a swing, taking both of them to the floor.
There she is, scolding and praising at the same time, while everybody gathers round, and wine is fetched from the restaurant, and ice cream in a bowl as big as a font.
Everybody salutes the Madonna. Madonna of the Plastic. Madonna of the Mistake. Madonna who sees all and forgives all. Madonna who can take a joke.
Tonight maybe, when the blinds are drawn and the square is star lit and silent, the Madonna and San Antonio will laugh at the games, and talk over the events of the day, as they always do—watchers and guardians of the invisible life.
There are so many lives packed into one. The one life we think we know is only the window that is open on the screen. The big window full of detail, where the meaning is often lost among the facts. If we can close that window, on purpose or by chance, what we find behind is another view.
This window is emptier. The cross-references are cryptic. As we scroll down it, looking for something familiar, we seem to be scrolling into another self—one we recognise but cannot place. The co-ordinates are missing, or the co-ordinates pinpoint us outside the limits of our existence.
If we move further back, through a smaller window that is really a gateway, there is less and less to measure ourselves by. We are coming into a dark region. A single word might appear. An icon. This icon is a private Madonna, a guide, an understanding. Very often we remember it from our dreams. ‘Yes,’ we say. ‘Yes, this is a world. I have been here.’ It comes back to us like a scent from childhood.
These lives of ours that press in on us must be heard.
We are our own oral history. A living memoir of time.
Time is downloaded into our bodies. We contain it. Not only time past and time future, but time without end. We think of ourselves as close and finite, when we are multiple and infinite.
This life, the one we know, stands in the sun. It is our daytime and the stars and planets that surround it cannot be seen. The sense of other lives, still our own, is clearer to us in the darkness of night or in our dreams. Sometimes a total eclipse shows us in the day what we cannot usually see for ourselves. As our sun darkens, other brilliancies appear. And there is the strange illusion of looking over our shoulder and seeing the sun racing towards us at two thousand miles an hour.
What is it that follows me wherever I go?
She touched my hand and said, ‘Will you always follow me?’
‘Is life a straight line?’
‘Isn’t there a straight answer?’
‘Not in my universe.’
‘Which one is that?’
‘The one curved by yours.’
‘I love the curve of your back when you sleep,’ she said.
‘Then why did you get up and disappear that night in Paris?’
‘I had to.’
‘To save your skin?’
‘To save my sense of self. You make me wonder who I am.’
‘Who are you?’
‘Someone who wants the best of both worlds.’
‘So you do believe in more than one reality?’
‘No. There’s only one reality. The rest is a way of escape.’
‘Is that what I am? An escape?’
‘You said you wouldn’t pin me to the facts.’
‘The fact of your marriage?’
‘Why do you keep thinking about it?’
‘Because you do.’
She said something about life for her parents’ generation. How it had been enough to raise a family, make a home, keep a job. Why isn’t it enough anymore? Why does everyone want to win the lottery or be a film star?
Or have an affair.
I took her hand. I was happy. I couldn’t help it. She was here. I was happy.
‘Come with me to the showjumping.’
‘The what!’
‘Concorso Ippico. Eleven o’clock tonight. Now.’
‘You’re mad.’
‘No I’m not. I like horses. Come on.’
Looking at me very suspiciously, as intellectuals do when you mention animals, she took my hand and we walked together down the Via Boffe towards the Damacuta. Already we could hear the canned microphone voice of the commentator and see the floodlights of the stadium.
The air was hung with the scent of bougainvillaea, and as we walked past the muddle of houses crushed above the street, broken bars of music dropped through the open windows. A dog barked. Somebody turned up the television. There was the sound of a hosepipe and a trickle of water ran under our feet.
As we turned into the Damacuta, the route to the stadium was lit with flares. Kerosene had been poured into shallow terracotta saucers, each with a wick, and these flares, placed on the ground, lit up the feet of the crowds. We looked like gods with feet of fire. We looked like lovers blazing for each other.
Fire-paced, we found our way to the terraces and squatted right at the front with a load of children shouting excitedly about the horses. T
he loudspeakers were playing Swan Lake.
Then the riders came out, white jodhpurs, jackets off, to pace the distance between the jumps. This was to be a timed event; fastest time and fewest faults wins.
You said how great it would be if we all got a chance to walk the course before we had to compete.
I said we were walking the course all the time, but when the moment came to jump we still refused.
You glared at me.
Swan Lake was abruptly switched off. The judges assembled in the box, the commentator told us that the first rider was Swiss.
The bell rang. Out came horse and rider and, after a doff at the box, they were off, in a curved canter that sent the sand flying in flurries.
You were sitting right by the first jump, five feet high, and I heard your intake of astonishment at the effort of beauty and the beauty of effort, as the horse cleared the jump.
There’s no such thing as effortless beauty—you should know that.
There’s no effort which is not beautiful—lifting a heavy stone or loving you.
Loving you is like lifting a heavy stone. It would be easier not to do it and I’m not quite sure why I am doing it. It takes all my strength and all my determination, and I said I wouldn’t love someone again like this. Is there any sense in loving someone you can only wake up to by chance?
Mister Archie, the Swiss horse, had a clear round, if a slow one. I was going to speak to you, but you were totally engrossed in the jumping.
The risks are interesting: do you aim for speed and a correspondingly greater risk of knocking off the poles, or do you take it steady and try for no faults?
The best riders manage both, but all riders are subject to the same rule: if a horse refuses to jump, he must be made to take it again. The rider must coax him round and convince him to do it. Horses have sudden fears.
So do I, but in this life you have to take your fences.
Later, walking home through the alleys as thin and black as the cats on every corner, you put your arm around me and asked again.
‘Will you always follow me?’
‘Who’s following whom?’
‘That’s what I’m beginning to wonder.’
‘There are two marks on a circle. Which is ahead? Which is behind?’
‘Neither.’
‘Then we’re tailing each other.’
‘Do you believe in fate?’ she said, in that nervous way that people say it.
‘Ye-es.’
‘You don’t sound so sure.’
‘Fate isn’t an excuse to let go of the reins.’
‘OK, but what if you find you’re riding a completely different horse?’
We were soon back at the place I had rented and I asked her if she was staying the night.
‘So this time I don’t have to beg?’
‘I was the one who was the beggar tonight.’
She took me in her arms. ‘I wish I could explain.’
‘Explain what?’
‘Oh, I know what you think of me.’
‘What I think of you and what I feel for you are different things.’
‘Do you usually sleep with people you despise?’
‘That’s not what I meant.’
‘I want you to be my lover not my judge.’
She’s right. I’m the one who’s muddling things up. How she lives is her decision. If I don’t like it I should stay out of the way. If I don’t like it I should say so and close the door.
Her arms were warm and tight.
‘What is it you want?’ she said.
I want to be able to call you. I want to be able to knock on your door. I want to be able to keep your key and to give you mine. I want to be seen with you in public. I want there to be no gossip. I want to make supper with you. I want to go shopping with you. I want to know that nothing can come between us except each other.
We were lying together in the dark. The candle had burned out. Outside, the wind was whipping the canvas on the deckchairs. I could hear a plastic tumbler blowing round and round.
You were sleeping.
Why does nothing matter as much as this?
How do you seem to write me to myself?
I am a message. You change the meaning.
I am a map that you redraw.
Follow it. The buried treasure is really there. What exists and what might exist are windowed together at the core of reality. All the separations and divisions and blind alleys and impossibilities that seem so central to life are happening at its outer edges. If I could follow the map further and if I could refuse the false endings (the false starts don’t matter), I could find the place where time stops. Where death stops. Where love is.
Beyond time, beyond death, love is. Time and death cannot wear it away.
I love you.
In the morning, thunder was rumbling round the island, the waves were white-topped and the birds were quiet.
I like islands because the weather is so changeable.
I like the way the morning can be stormy and the afternoon as clear and sparkling as a jewel in the water. Put your hand in the water to reach for a sea urchin or a seashell, and the thing desired never quite lies where you had lined it up to be. The same is true of love. In prospect or in contemplation, love is where it seems to be. Reach in to lift it out and your hand misses. The water is deeper than you had gauged. You reach further, your whole body straining, and then there is nothing for it but to slide in—deeper, much deeper than you had gauged—and still the thing eludes you.
I put the macchinetta on the stove and fed the cats the mince. At least I hope that’s what I did. The little lizards were scuttling under the trailing vine and there was the usual earnest column of ants transporting a sliver of parmesan down to their hoard.
In the holm-oak, a blackbird had finished his morning bath in a pan of water I put out for him. In return he sings. He sings of the morning of the world, which happens every day for him, untainted by memory. The island is new. The tree has grown under his feet. His hollow bones are sung through with happiness. He flies light as a note.
The hiss and bubble of the coffee-pot reminded me of my business. I clattered out the little white cups onto the marble counter and poured the black, boiling coffee. Carefully I carried the two cups into the bedroom. The smell drifted into your dreams and you followed it back through sleep into day.
‘What time is it?’ you mumbled.
‘Seven o’clock.’
‘Horrible.’
You slumped back. I propped you up with pillows.
‘You said you wanted to be woken early.’
‘I didn’t say the middle of the night.’
‘It’s been light for hours.’
‘Not in my world it hasn’t.’
‘Drink this.’
You sipped noisily from the edge of the cup.
‘Too strong.’
‘I thought you like it strong.’
‘A liquid should not be a solid.’
‘It will get you going.’
‘Going where?’
‘Your hotel. Like you said.’
‘Maybe I’ll just stay here.’
‘You can’t.’
‘Why not?’
‘How many good reasons do you want?’
‘Why don’t you just go down there and get my clothes?’
‘You want me to go and ask your husband for your clothes?’
‘Yes.’
‘I’m not Bugs Bunny.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean that when he pulls off my head it won’t flip back on again.’
‘He won’t pull your head off.’
‘So what am I supposed to say?’
‘Say I’m ill.’
‘OK, you’re ill, so you need all your little black dresses …’
‘Of course I do.’
‘Try again.’
‘Say you’re my cousin from Illinois.’
‘I am not your cousin from Illinois.’
‘For a writer you stick pretty close to the facts.’
‘The fact is that your husband is down at the Quisisana.’
‘The fact is that my lover is here …’
She put down her coffee.
‘In bed …’
She leaned over and pulled me down on her.
‘With me.’
It was ten o’clock before we got up again, which proves the pointlessness of early starts. I’m not a morning person, but some virtue still clings to it. People who stay up late (me) are debauched. People who get up early are clean living. Well, this morning, for once, I had got up early and look where it had led me.
A second pot of coffee was bubbling on the stove. You must have caught a whiff of conscience because you suddenly said—
‘I ought to call him.’
‘There’s no phone here.’
‘Where’s your mobile?’
‘In London.’
‘What’s it doing there?’
‘Absolutely nothing.’
‘So where can I find a phone?’
‘I don’t know. In the square maybe.’
‘I’ll walk up.’
‘I’ll come with you.’
‘Look, maybe I should go.’
‘That’s not what you said three hours ago.’
‘Don’t bully me.’
‘I’m not bullying you.’
‘It isn’t my fault that you don’t have a phone.’
‘It isn’t my fault that you’re married.’
‘Not this again.’
‘What—does it weary you, my love?’
‘Yes it does as it happens.’
‘Well just fuck off.’
‘What?’
‘I said fuck off.’
‘Fine. That’s fine.’
She was out of the place, taking the steep steps two at a time and disappearing up the vertical alleys before I could fumble with the Calor gas of the stove, grab the keys and go after her.
‘You should let her go,’ I’m saying to myself, my legs taking no notice. ‘For God’s sake, let her go,’ and my heart was pounding and I was angry, so angry, with myself or her, I don’t know. Just blood pushing against thought. Angry at me or her, and my fist clenched round the keys as I bounded up the track, hearing the church bell like a pulse.