While the Shark is Sleeping (12 page)

‘
Buenas noches,
María Asunción!’

‘
Buenas noches
!’

‘
Buenas noches
!’

Nonna says only after that will María Asunción go to sleep. And in the morning it’s the same ceremony again to let her know that we’ve woken up safe and sound.

‘
Buenos días,
María Asunción!’

‘
Buenos días
!’

‘
Buenos días
!’

Then one day my brother comes back from the conservatorium and happily informs us that he’s won a scholarship and he’ll be going to Paris to finish his studies.

Who’s going to tell María Asunción tonight?

Nonna says she doesn’t need much to be happy: if Mamma and Nonno hadn’t died, if Papà hadn’t left, if Zia got a boyfriend, if my brother phoned from Paris more often and told us about things, if I were cured . . . If God were willing.

Mauro De Cortes has ended it with the latest girlfriend. He often runs into Zia here at the hospital. One day she was carrying some heavy bags with everything I needed and he ran up to take them from her. After he’d left, Zia couldn’t stop repeating, ‘Did you see how he took the bags?’

When my father arrived, she just couldn’t stop herself telling him too and Papà replied, ‘And you said he wasn’t in love with you. Fuck that! This business with the bags is clear evidence.’

Zia went quiet and you could tell she felt silly, but I could also tell that Papà is jealous.

And yet Mauro De Cortes isn’t a bad person. Or an unfaithful cheat who deserves a kick up the arse, as Zia puts it. Of course nor is he as delightful as Nonna maintains. But I consider it a privilege to have known him.

When he comes to visit me he tells me about the sea and about sailing. I think Mauro didn’t want Zia because she doesn’t know how to sail and sailing means that you have to study the situation carefully: wind, currents, distances, depths, lighthouses. And then you have to act accordingly. Mauro says that for a sailor to have a bit of fun you need at least five knots and at five knots Zia’s vomiting is something special. I know because she and Mamma used to stuff themselves with Dramamine even just to get the ferry from Calasetta to Carloforte and Nonno would say, ‘And you’re supposed to be the daughters of a sailor?’

But then why did Mauro dump all those ladies who didn’t vomit? One time I asked him and he replied that I really am a character. Who said it was him that dumped them?

They dumped him, you bet. Sick of his silences, the long interminable days without seeing anything but sea, his inability to give compliments, his obsessions. But for him, the pleasure of the sea remained unsullied. The concreteness of the actions you take. You study the winds and put up the right sail. You catch fish and eat them.

Because the joy of sailing is sailing!

If it hadn’t been for Mauro and the hospital, I wouldn’t have learnt all sorts of things about Mamma, about when she was a girl. He’s known Mamma and Zia forever because he lived in the building opposite, in the Basilica di Bonaria neighbourhood. Mamma never went to parties except when she was dragged along by friends or else practically forced by Nonna. She’d sit there frightened as a rabbit, and if anyone asked her she’d say she didn’t know how to dance. She’d hide in the bathroom for almost the whole party. She had beautiful straight blonde hair tied back in a plait and eyes as sweet as chocolate but she never hit it off with boys. Even walking a short way with her was a huge undertaking because you could tell she felt anxious and didn’t know what to say. The atmosphere got heavier and heavier and it became more and more embarrassing. As a boy he thought she must be a bit sick. I mustn’t be offended – it was because of the way she walked, all curved over, zigzagging, inside those floral bags and those shabby old-fashioned shoes.

My father always invited her everywhere and she’d wait until he’d finished dancing with the other girls. Then he’d go up to her so they could go home together and he’d take her plait and shake it like a tail, saying, ‘Woof! Woof! Arf!’ Any other girl would have called him a dickhead but not her. She’d laugh like she never laughed with anybody else. Because Papà was her exact opposite: swarms of girls after him. He was a guitarist, a brilliant self-taught musician, he had it all. He’d do anything to get people to laugh, even getting himself into trouble. He talked to the stones and the stones talked to him. He wanted to save the world – as a revolutionary, as a priest, who knew – and it was as though he was starting with that strange creature that was my mother. And in the end he succeeded, because for almost a quarter of a century he was able to save her from the storm.

But when the storm arrives it can be unexpected. Mauro knows because he’s experienced it.

To begin with you enjoy the wind, because it’s precisely what a sailor wants. But then it blows harder and harder. Sixty, seventy knots. You reef the sail. Every movement becomes difficult, risky. You have to tie yourself down, but once he didn’t manage to do it in time. It was too late and he couldn’t let go of the rudder even for a moment. Seven hours at the rudder in the driving rain. So violent it ripped out a table bolted down at the bow. He had no point of reference in a world of watery fury. He might lose the sail, the mast might snap. The only thing to do was to keep the boat going at least a little bit and endure it. At that point Mauro had understood that he might die, he resigned himself to it and began to admire the scenery, even though he was frozen and numb. He enjoyed the height of the waves and that space without land, or sky, just water vaporised by the wind. And then it passed. Mauro had made it.

The story of the storm frightened me so much that the other day, when it started raining, I sent my father a text message: ‘I forbid you to come to the hospital, there’s a storm.’

Straight afterwards my mobile rang. ‘What storm, my girl, a storm in a
teacup
?’

Standing up outside the church. Dark glasses to cover the tears that are falling in big drops. The people coming out of the previous mass look sympathetic and then keep on going. Someone comes up.

‘Is there a funeral next?’

‘No,’ Nonna bursts into sobs. ‘Nobody’s died. We’re crying with happiness. Today my daughter is marrying my son-in-law. It’s the only way for María Asunción to stay with us, God willing.’

And God is willing! I say.

Published 2014 by Telegram

1

Copyright © Milena Agus, 2005 and 2014
Translation copyright © Brigid Maher 2014

Published 2006 in Italian as
Mentre dorme il pescecane
by Nottetempo

ISBN 978 1 84659 186 0
eISBN 978 1 84659 187 7

Milena Agus has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

Every effort has been made to obtain necessary permission with reference to copyright material. The publishers apologise if inadvertently any sources remain unacknowledged and will be happy to correct this in any future editions.

A full CIP record for this book is available from the British Library.

Printed and bound by CPI Mackays, Chatham, ME5 8TD

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