will move on to another war. Nerve gas and mustard gas. The colonel’s arsenal, wooden cases of machine guns, mines, rockets, all with the same surreal label: Ministry of Agriculture .
Fields sown with mines. This is the harvest.
Every night a new boat, human fertilizer, escapees from hunger, from war.
It’s a late summer day of blooming caper plants and enchantment. A truce after three stormy days. The beach is a rubbish dump for pieces of wood, the remains of boats that never arrived. A war museum on the crushed stone beach. Vito picks through it, combing for bits to save.
He goes back and forth along the beach, drags crooked boards and scraps of rugs.
He stops to pick up a little leather pouch that looks like a jewellery bag. He has a hard time opening it because of the knots in the tightly wound cord. He sticks in a finger. Nothing except something that feels like wet wool and a few beads. He throws it into his bag with the rest.
On the island, there is a cemetery for the unknown dead. Some good man rubbed wild mint under his nose so as not to be overcome by the smell and gathered the bodies the sea had delivered. He planted crosses. Someone else removed them, but it doesn’t matter. The poor have only one God. Every day he drowns with them and then causes wild garlic and beach poppies to grow up amongst the mounds. Vito has walked there. It’s a bare place, wind-beaten and without sorrow. The sea scours everything. No mothers come here to cry. No one brings flowers. Just little thoughts from strangers, tourists who leave a note, a toy. Vito sits down, imagines the bones below the field like the skeleton of a ship turned upside down.
He thinks about the turtles that come up onto the beach to lay their eggs. The island is a refuge for marine life. In a while, the eggs will hatch. Vito has seen it before, the little turtles going after the tide, running towards the sea to save themselves from death.
At home later on, he nails his gatherings to a board. The page of a diary in Arabic. A shirtsleeve. A doll’s arm.
It’s a job with no tangible meaning, dictated by the uncredited desperation that afflicts him.
This is how he will spend the last days of their summer here on the island. In the shed.
He has to decide what to do with his life, whether to waste it or to make it somehow bear fruit.
His mother said, You have to find a place inside you and around you, a place that is right for you, at least in part.
Vito can’t stand it when she does that. When she looks at the sea and doesn’t talk, her fists deep in the pockets of her cardigan.
He is simply unable to make a decision. He’s thought about it but hasn’t made up his mind. Maybe he will remain a dunce. Maybe he’s not that smart. In any case, he’s slow. He needs time.
Vito drags things, glues things. Pieces of those aborted escapes.
He doesn’t know why he’s doing this. He’s looking for a place. He’d like to capture something. Lives that never reached their destination.
He thinks of his mother’s eyes resting on the sea, following the lost course of the ball of wool wound round her throat. Since their trip to Tripoli she’s looked only for joy. She took up cooking – fig pies, pasta casseroles. She arranged sprigs of broom in vases. She wants there to be things for him to remember. The feeling of a house to come back to with his eyes closed, just to take a breath.
Angelina comes in, asks why he didn’t come for lunch. She looks at the immense panel of sea remains, bits of wood nailed on, scraps of denim stuck on with glue.
She looks at the motionless explosion.
‘Have you taken up art?’
Vito shrugs. His hands are black. There’s glue in his hair. He leans against the wall near the case of old bottles, rubs his eyes with his wrists, kicks the dust.
He won’t let his mother near. He keeps her at a distance, in the shadows. He speaks to himself.
‘I stopped a shipwreck.’
Vito has gathered memory. Of a
Fields sown with mines. This is the harvest.
Every night a new boat, human fertilizer, escapees from hunger, from war.
It’s a late summer day of blooming caper plants and enchantment. A truce after three stormy days. The beach is a rubbish dump for pieces of wood, the remains of boats that never arrived. A war museum on the crushed stone beach. Vito picks through it, combing for bits to save.
He goes back and forth along the beach, drags crooked boards and scraps of rugs.
He stops to pick up a little leather pouch that looks like a jewellery bag. He has a hard time opening it because of the knots in the tightly wound cord. He sticks in a finger. Nothing except something that feels like wet wool and a few beads. He throws it into his bag with the rest.
On the island, there is a cemetery for the unknown dead. Some good man rubbed wild mint under his nose so as not to be overcome by the smell and gathered the bodies the sea had delivered. He planted crosses. Someone else removed them, but it doesn’t matter. The poor have only one God. Every day he drowns with them and then causes wild garlic and beach poppies to grow up amongst the mounds. Vito has walked there. It’s a bare place, wind-beaten and without sorrow. The sea scours everything. No mothers come here to cry. No one brings flowers. Just little thoughts from strangers, tourists who leave a note, a toy. Vito sits down, imagines the bones below the field like the skeleton of a ship turned upside down.
He thinks about the turtles that come up onto the beach to lay their eggs. The island is a refuge for marine life. In a while, the eggs will hatch. Vito has seen it before, the little turtles going after the tide, running towards the sea to save themselves from death.
At home later on, he nails his gatherings to a board. The page of a diary in Arabic. A shirtsleeve. A doll’s arm.
It’s a job with no tangible meaning, dictated by the uncredited desperation that afflicts him.
This is how he will spend the last days of their summer here on the island. In the shed.
He has to decide what to do with his life, whether to waste it or to make it somehow bear fruit.
His mother said, You have to find a place inside you and around you, a place that is right for you, at least in part.
Vito can’t stand it when she does that. When she looks at the sea and doesn’t talk, her fists deep in the pockets of her cardigan.
He is simply unable to make a decision. He’s thought about it but hasn’t made up his mind. Maybe he will remain a dunce. Maybe he’s not that smart. In any case, he’s slow. He needs time.
Vito drags things, glues things. Pieces of those aborted escapes.
He doesn’t know why he’s doing this. He’s looking for a place. He’d like to capture something. Lives that never reached their destination.
He thinks of his mother’s eyes resting on the sea, following the lost course of the ball of wool wound round her throat. Since their trip to Tripoli she’s looked only for joy. She took up cooking – fig pies, pasta casseroles. She arranged sprigs of broom in vases. She wants there to be things for him to remember. The feeling of a house to come back to with his eyes closed, just to take a breath.
Angelina comes in, asks why he didn’t come for lunch. She looks at the immense panel of sea remains, bits of wood nailed on, scraps of denim stuck on with glue.
She looks at the motionless explosion.
‘Have you taken up art?’
Vito shrugs. His hands are black. There’s glue in his hair. He leans against the wall near the case of old bottles, rubs his eyes with his wrists, kicks the dust.
He won’t let his mother near. He keeps her at a distance, in the shadows. He speaks to himself.
‘I stopped a shipwreck.’
Vito has gathered memory. Of a
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