the same old man with a full white pomade comes here every morning, reading his paper and smoking his cigarette. there’s a gaggle of old ladies in the same corner every morning, laughing and having their coffee. only the old are up this early in a coastal town in summer. the kids sleep the deep sleep that comes with a feeling of immortality, before they wake at noon to zip around on their scooters, kissing and swimming and laughing through the endless summer of their youth. but the old are up early, knowing every moment is precious. and what good is sleep anymore to them? it’s not assuring, it’s not deep, and it’s not even restful anymore. sleep to them is probably just a burden now, a mere necessity. one old lady always stops by here and has the same drink before heading into the church across the road where chandeliers, incense, frescoes, columns, domes, and the stages of the Passion surround her and immerse her in a portal that signals the first stage of her own journey to a blissful afterlife where sleep is again good and permanent and assured, like the sleep of youth once was… the arthritic pains she bears pale in significance to those borne by the bleeding tortured Christ, and he takes on her burden as well, on top of all his other burdens, on top of the entire pile of every burden of every person that’s ever lived, he still takes on her back pains and her wonky foot and her arthritis, even all her fears, her fear of dying, her fears for the future of her grandchildren, the fear of whether she can stretch her pension out for the rest of the month… Christ takes all that on too, on his eternal, never resumed journey up that hill to Golgotha, frozen in that moment so that he can take her pains and her fears from her and free her from the vicissitudes of this life and release her soul up to the blissful empyrean realm of her lord god, who’s no doubt sitting up there waiting quietly for her. the woman who tends to the café smokes non stop. every time she clears a table outside she lights another one up… a family come, one child, two adults, a dog, like a poster for families everywhere, and they have their coffees and the child has her sweet pastries and the dog is just tied to the foot of a chair and told in a stern voice to sit, before they all get in their car, buckle their seat belts, man driving, woman in passenger seat, girl in the back with the dog. the car signals it is leaving which they predictably do on their way to predictable places to do predictable things. a fat man sits opposite the café, smoking a cigar, and stays seated just staring out for an hour. a woman comes by with her teenage children, trying in turns to make them do something and then not do something, the exasperation of motherhood carved permanently into the worry-furrowed lines of her face, which she stares at every morning in the mirror of her bathroom after she wakes, after her husband has left for work, noticing with a sense of dread and inevitability the youth fading from a life that has for years now been lived for others, but she’ll still buy underwear and clothes and make up that make her look good, out of habit or maybe out of stubbornness. she’ll find a beautiful dress and she’ll try it on, and she’ll ask if it looks good on her, and she’ll mention how she likes the stripes, and she’ll wonder if she should buy it, and who knows, maybe she will. and all the time there will be that sad sinking realization that it’s all leaving her, her beauty, her youth, her looks, her skin, her figure… she’ll try another dress on, and then the kids will call for her and life will swallow her up again. A chic rich young nubile thing walks in with her little dog, arrogant in her beauty, indifferent to all around her, knowing she owns the world. her friends join her. they are beautiful and aloof, they are perfect, and they know they are perfect. the world is their world, it wants their beauty, it wants their youth, it craves for their hair and their legs and their breasts and their perfect feet and hands, and when they laugh and throw back their hair and go back to looking at their phones, you feel the whole world around them is in awe, jealous, hungry, avaricious, desperate. they are nature, they are the world, they are magnificent, and all we can do is try and steal fleeting glances and pretend we’re looking somewhere else, somewhere past them, but it’s all so we can capture just a quick glimpse of them in between and feel we’ve seen something blindingly, sinfully spectacular, without being caught looking, without ever daring to stare and stare and stare and catch every ray of light sparkle in their hair and ever muscle flex slightly in their legs whenever they move, and watch their lips as they speak and laugh and live. German tourists walk in, study the menu, share their thoughts on what they would like to drink, discuss briefly the prices, compare, contrast, and then turn to the woman tending to the café and with an official air of ceremonious solicitation, proceed to place their order with immaculate specificity. An
old Italian man walks by with a sonorous Ciao that is returned by an even more musical Ciao from a table behind me. More tourists, Americans, without joie de vivre but with a boundless and banal excess of enthusiasms and energies, looking here and looking there and checking sights off lists, photos of the café will show up among the hundreds from this trip of theirs, and they continue on their way, they have little time in which to see many things, pretty towns, restaurants and gelaterias they’ve read about in Tripadvisor, hotels to check out of and check in to, buses and trains and tour groups to join and rejoin, people to strike polite conversations with, hotel rooms to feel lonely in at sleepless five ams. a woman is pushed over in a wheelchair. I give them my seat, because I’m sitting at a table at the end and it’s easy to get in and out with a wheelchair without having to push and weave past the other tables, and they protest, but I insist. the batteries on my lap top are running low anyway and I should get going, it’s almost nine am. a couple sit next to me, Italians, in their late forties, with their dog. they’re silent at first and then they start talking, low, and I don’t understand what they’re saying but it seems they’re fighting. he does a move with his hand, as if she were miniaturized and happened to land on his head and he was shooing her away… she looks at him stiffly, sternly and sips her coffee. and she talks, talks, talks, in a low, constant and no doubt vicious stream. it’s still early, other things will happen in their day, other things will crowd their world, habits will come to the rescue, and this moment will be forgotten in an hour to come up again another time maybe, but moods change fast, and they’re in this together anyway, and what’s the alternative? we just have to bear through it. we’ve given our hearts to others, others who are not perfect, others who have all sorts of problems, not to mention all our own problems. but we’ve decided the trade-off is worth it. he’ll have fantasies of leaving her, and she’ll have fantasies of leaving him, and they’ll daydream now and then, or when things are very bad, like they might be with this fight, and they’ll wonder what it would be like to leave each other and start anew, and do something different, and meet someone else, maybe move to a new country, start a new career, do that thing they wanted to do back twenty years ago when the future seemed boundless… but most people just grit their teeth and continue, because there are also those wonderful moments when you look to your side and you see her or him or whoever it is there beside you, and they won’t even know you’re looking, they’ll be completely and beautifully unselfconscious, and they’ll be doing that thing with their lips or reading something on their iPad and stroking their arm in that way they do, and it’ll be completely mundane, but you’ll fall in love with that person all over again every time and you’ll be happy they are there and you’ll feel lucky and fortunate to have them and you’ll realize all your fights are insignificant compared to that feeling that person arouses in you, and you will feel strength and courage to continue with them, thankful that anyone could put up with you and your problems and love you like they have. the couple leave, still angry it seems, but they leave together without any words and they walk together, out of habit, disappearing around the corner. a pigeon picks through their crumbs on the ground, diligently and comprehensively. an old woman sits, shaking and looking at a guide book with a magnifying glass, talking to herself the entire time. I sat at a different table, but now the early people have left, the traffic has picked up, the day is started, the morning mystery of the world has given way to a blind hectic world of immediate and inconsequential obligations, duties, tasks and hassles. car horns, hammering, drilling, supply trucks. it’s no time to write and observe the world anymore. it all just drowns thoughts out, wisely no doubt. I close my computer, pay for a couple of cups of coffee, and head back to our flat where my wife and son are probably just waking. maybe we’ll go to the beach today. I buy some fresh marmalade-filled croissants from the bakery nearby, and as I enter our building, the old retired policeman hands me a bouquet fresh flowers that he’s just cut from his garden, hydrangeas, violet and yellow. his garden is full of them. we exchange pleasantries, and say our goodbyes. I look back quickly after my goodbye, I like to see what happens after the goodbyes, as if seeing what happens after the end of a movie. I like to see the thing I‘m not supposed to see, the thing the movie always skips, the thing the other person doesn‘t expect you to see. I see the old man just stand there staring at his flowers. then he looks up and around him, sad, and he walks back in through his door and that’s the last I see of him.
Today we pack our bags, get on a train, and leave Santa Margherita.
