Multiplying Report 3

The fourth day The day promised the best of its possibilities; the sun was by now high, a light breeze let one savour its regal majesty better. In the village I searched the gaze of the local people for a possible complicity, without realising that this could never have been possible, because our gazes would never have met; between us there was the same difference as between one who has already reached the mountain and one who is still in the valley. The energy that springs from these opposites lets me reflect on myself. The force of the sea but above all of the wind has carved the rocks of this place; you can imagine all the different figures that fantasy suggests to you. Over there the Indian, further on the elephant, down here in the bay the dolphins give themselves over to childish games.

The scent of the shrubs, by now dried by the sun, intoxicates you with a delicious mixture ranging from liquorice to thyme, to oregano, but it is only possible to catch the memory of it. A narrow strip of sand, on which the mainlander has built an asphalt road, joins the headland to the island. The holidaymakers begin to swarm over the beaches, but they no longer marvel at all this; they prefer the taste of beer to that of the salt air. Useless music marks out the rhythm of the day, and in the evening, by then drunk, they vanish home to wash themselves of all this useless sensation. Today my friend Giovanni would speak of syntopy; I at the time was instead seized by these ghosts; those past events acted within me in those places of my emotion that almost paralysed my thought and my action.

At the campsite bar a pretty young girl sat at the table opposite; that afternoon she was more bored than usual, so she was granting herself a bit of well-deserved rest; a couple of words unite us in the whirl of our different dream; she too, one day some years ago, had loved that music of Mahler; we were actor-spectators of a great love, the same one. The thought of that encounter accompanied us for a few more hours, but by evening we had forgotten that lost love; when we met we struggled to recognise each other. The appointment with my German friends was for dinner; I would give them a little of the delight of Italian cooking, "the carbonara"; I do not remember in what language we conversed, but for them I was by then old and tired; at most I could represent a schoolteacher of a not very important and indeed rather boring subject.

The night I spent it stirring the hope that even to a teacher one may grant a night of love.