• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 393 0

empty, blank disorder; no clothes, no shoes, no toilet articles, nothing but open, or half-open, empty drawers, gaping wardrobes with bare, dangling coat-hangers, vacant chairs. I had often thought recently that Emilia might leave me and I had thought of it as one thinks of some dreaded calamity; and now, here I was in the midst of such a calamity. I had a dull feeling of pain which seemed to start from the very depths of my being; just as an uprooted tree, if it felt pain, would feel it in the roots that held it upright in the ground. I had, in truth, been suddenly uprooted, and my roots, like those of the tree, were up in the air, and the sweet earth, Emilia, who had nourished them with her love, was far away from my roots, and those roots would never again be able to sink themselves in that love and feed upon it but would gradually dry up, and I felt that they were already drying up and it made me suffer unspeakably.

Finally I rose and went back into my room. I felt stunned and distracted, like one who has had a bad fall from a height and who feels a dull pain and knows that this pain will soon burst forth into an acute spasm, and fears this moment but does not know when it will come about. Carefully watching this hidden pain as one watches a wild beast which one fears may leap upon one at any moment and tear one to pieces, I automatically took my bathing costume, went out of the house, walked along the path that runs round the island and reached the village piazza. There I bought a newspaper, sat down in one of the cafés, and, almost to my own surprise, since it seemed to me that in my situation I would not have been able to think of anything except the situation itself, I read the whole newspaper through, from the first to the last line. In the same sort of way, I reflected, a fly whose head has been torn off by some cruel child seems, for a time, to feel no effect from the mutilation but walks about or cleans its feet until suddenly it collapses and dies. At last midday struck, and the clock in the campanile filled the square with the din of its chimes. A bus was on the point of leaving for the Piccola Marina, and I got into it.

Shortly afterwards I was in the open, sun-filled space where, amid a sharp smell of urine, stood the little carriages with their horses, while their drivers sat together in a group, quietly chatting. I went off with a light step down the stairs leading to the beach-houses, and looked down from above upon the short stretch of white shingly beach and the sea lying blue beneath the tranquil sky. Utterly calm was the sea, smooth and glossy as satin right to the horizon, with great, diaphanous current-tracks winding idly over its surface in the dazzling sunlight. I thought it would be good to go out in a boat that afternoon; rowing would be a distraction, and then I should be completely alone, which, on the already frequented beach, would be impossible. When I reached the beach-houses, I called the attendant and asked him to get a boat ready for me. Then I went into one of the houses to undress.

When I came out, I walked barefoot along the little terrace in front of the houses, looking down and taking care not to hurt myself on the roughness of the warped, salt-worn planks. The June sun blazed overhead, enveloping me in its strong light, burning my back. It gave me a sensation of well-being which was in bitter contrast with my mental state of stunned suspense. My eyes still lowered, I went down the steep steps and walked towards the edge of the beach over the scorching stones. It was only when I was a short distance from the edge that I raised my eyes; and then I saw Emilia.

The attendant, a thin, vigorous old man, brown as leather, with a big straw hat pulled down over his eyes, was standing beside the boat which he had already pushed half into the water; Emilia was sitting in the stern, wearing a two-piece costume that I knew well, of a rather faded green. She was sitting with her legs pressed closely together, her arms stretched backwards to support herself, her bare, slender waist slightly