life Archives - The Smell of Memories

My Depleted Island.

“This land resembles no other place. Sardinia is something else. Enchanting spaces and distances to travel-nothing finished, nothing definitive. It is like freedom itself. Sardinia is out of time and history.” (David Herbert Lawrence, Sea and Sardinia, 1921).

I was born in a place where solitude is a feeling that does not scare people. We are used to be alone in this big, wind-battered island. We are not talkative, and we are proud of our freedom. We speak an archaic Romance language that is closest to Latin that any other in Europe and talks of wars and battles for independence, of a land invaded and exploited but never conquered. They tried to tell us that our language was only a dialect and that it was the dialect of ignorant herdsmen and shepherds but we never believed them. We know we descend from proud warriors that have always been in charge of their destinies, even when they lost their battles. We are proud of the shepherds who descended from those warriors and we are proud to still carry on with those shepherding and farming traditions. Our depleted island bears the remains of one the most ancient European civilisations and at those magnificent buildings made of Sardinian rocks we still look with pride.

My sense of nationhood grew in me together with the awareness of the importance of not letting anyone rob me of the possibility of speaking my own language. I love my family for letting me learn Italian at school and my own language at home, for giving me the gift of being perfectly bilingual, as any child who walks on this ancient soil should be. I read and re-read Lawrence’s account of his travelling in Sardinia and I made his words mine, because I truly believe Sardinia is still out of time and history. I am ridiculously proud of the way he never became a huge, sad modern touristic resort, even though the pureness of our sea is something that amazes inhabitants and visitors. It makes her more fascinating the way you still have to discover her hidden, wild places in the same way Lawrence had to.

‘Alone’.

The full final piece of ‘Alone’, my last short story.

Alone

I felt panic starting to rise through all my body, pumping blood into my veins and making his way to my brain. I stopped dead, paralysed by that inexplicable fear that it’s impossible to explain. I can do this; I tried to tell myself from the little corner of my brain that was still responding. I tried to breathe but the noise of my heart beating a lot faster that it should have distracted me and made the sensation of anxiety grow bigger. I felt impotent and helpless, and tears started to stream down my face, smearing my makeup and staining my clothes. “Mary, why wouldn’t you talk to me? You know you can trust me.” God, we have been together for ten months and still he does not understand that the more he asks me to talk, the more thoughts stay stuck in my head and no word comes out. It is hard to believe I can speak valuable words when I have been told for years that my thoughts were worth nothing and my words were nothing more than silly sounds. “It is nothing darling; you do not need to worry. I am fine. It was only a nightmare.” I wish I could tell him what is going on in my mind, but the more I think that I want to reveal him my inner fears, the more all the ideas made a messy bundle inside my head and I can find no sounds to translate it.

He looked at her with the corner of his dark eyes and she knew straight away he was angry. She had told him off in front of his friends without thinking. There was going to trouble, and a lot of it. He did not speak a word for what seemed like ages. He kept his eyes on the road while driving, and she tried to find a conversation topic but she was too nervous and could not think of anything. “You think you are very smart, don’t you?” he asked her suddenly, startling her. She was reading and she had almost forgotten what happened and thought that maybe he hadn’t found it that annoying. He had, and now she was going to have to deal with it. She did not say anything, for she was scared that anything she could say was going to make him madder than he already was. “I asked you a question. Why the hell did you think it was ok to pretend you were cleverer than me and to try and show it in front of my mates?” he went on, his voice growing louder and showing his anger. “You know perfectly well that I don’t pretend to be smarter than you. I was just stating my opinion on the matter.” He started laughing, and his laughter was scarier than his silence. “Your opinion?” he shouted, trying to speak in-between bursts of nervous laughter. “Since when people like you are entitled to opinions”? He grabbed her by her arm and dragged her to the kitchen sink. She didn’t try any sort of resistance. He took the washing up liquid from the cupboard, put some in his hand and started washing her mouth. He kept going until it was satisfied, dragged her back to the living room and then went out without saying a word.

I close my eyes and try to keep the memory away. I’m not sure anymore if it has happened or if is something that I saw in my nightmares. Mark keeps talking about our weekend away but I haven’t listened to half of his words. I’m in my own world again and he realises it; he comes closer and tells me that I don’t have to worry about anything because he will protect me. Men and their huge egos, he has no idea what it is going on with me and he wants to protect me. I wait for him to go out to work, I put on one of my hard rock compilations and turn the volume up. I can almost hear Dr. Locke’s voice telling me that most of my fears grow in my mind because I don’t want to deal with them. I hated him for being such a smartass, especially in the beginning when he had no idea of who he was talking to. He saw me as a neglected child because of what he read in his records, but he had no idea of what life had done to me. I hated compassion and I hated false understanding because I thought empathy is a rare thing to find and there can’t be understanding without empathy. It took time and I came to the point of realising he truly understood me, but I still hate being pitied, and I always feel on the edge of a nervous outburst when people tell me they can understand or, as Mark does, that I don’t have to worry about anything.

During the first few weeks of appointments Dr. Locke allowed her listen to all the music she wanted to. He understood that the music had to be louder than the sound of her fears when she was in that mood. She knew that if she gave way to the flow of memories they were going to torment her for the rest of the day. It’s hard to stop your brain from moving when you’re an over thinker. It’s hard to stop painful memories from knocking on your soul if those memories are in your blood and they’re part of who you are. How can you explain to someone who doesn’t know anything about you how a simple word can be enough to take you back in years and make the scars hurt like hell? She thought there was no way to explain it; she had to keep it to herself. Like an awful lot of other things she kept buried deep down her battered heart.

I unburied many things to Dr. Locke, and to some of the friends I made in the past few years. But I still think some things have no explanation and I still have not found a way of translating them into words. I still think some things can have a place only in my heart, and I will keep them there, even if they hurt. Mark rings after work to ask me what time do I want him to pick me up tomorrow. I listen to his voice pronouncing words that make no sense to me and deep down I know I’m not going away for the weekend with him. I’m not going anywhere with him; he was an encore when I needed one, nothing more. We have nothing in common and I know I don’t need encores anymore. I’m not a neglected child who needs protection; I know where I’m going now. I may still be slow, and I stop sometimes because of the burden I carry on my shoulders but I will get there in the end, alone.

‘Alone’ (final paragraph).

Home

His steps echoed on the cobbled street, and he knew he was going in the right direction; he clearly remembered that there were cobbles only in the oldest streets of town, leading to St Mary’s Church. He forced himself to stop running, for he knew he was safe now, concealed by the dark in the part of town where he was less expected to be found. He thought that there was only one person who could have guessed where he was going to hide. But he already provided to eliminate the problem earlier on. Know your enemies, was his first rule. There is no place like home, he thought as he slowed down and thought how thrilling it had always felt to be back home. It felt even better than last time, for it had been a long time and for he was both thrilled by the feeling of being where he belonged and by the excitement of having successfully eliminated the problem.

There is no place like home, he thought, while he watched Ettore groaning in the last painful minutes of his life. He had been easy, far too easy. God, he preferred a bit of challenge but he knew Ettore well, far too well. Ettore knew him well too, he had to be sacrificed. He would have spared him if he was not for that. Because he had never betrayed him, after all, and he knew him well enough to know how heavy the weight of the secret must have been on his conscience. And because he would have liked to spare himself the look in Ettore’s eyes when he understood what it was going to happen. The old man had always told him that some people have a dirty conscience which means they have one. Was his conscience dirty or he did not have one? He laughed at the thought of Father Paolo and his psychological remarks. He had what he deserved, and at least he gave him a Christian burial.

He climbed the narrow staircase in the dark. He did not need a torch, as he knew that place better than he knew himself. He was the only place he had ever called home, despite everything. He was angry at the fact that nobody realized how hard it had been for him to leave. They all thought he had no feelings, but he loved that place, and he loved Ettore, and he even loved the whore who gave birth to him and then abandoned him in St Mary’s Monastery when he was six. He shook those thoughts away, for he had to finish his job before allowing himself to give up to his feelings. Father Paolo had never understood that he might not have a conscience but he had feelings. He had no idea of the desperate passion of his hate. He had always knew he was going to have his revenge, and he was proud of the awful tortures he inflicted the old man before strangling him to death. It was still nothing in comparison of what he had to endure because of him. He climbed the last two steps and dumped Ettore’s body on the ground. He was not sure if it was fair on him to rest in that sordid place. He buried the old man there for obvious reasons, but he felt guilty at the thought of leaving Ettore too close to him once again. No, he had to find another place. He looked down the little window. He always loved how you could see the entire village from the belfry; he made him feel in control. He was too dark to see anything, but he knew every little corner of the place. He heard Father Paolo reading Cesare Pavese to the classroom. “You need a hometown, if only for the pleasure of leaving it. A hometown means that you are not alone, it means knowing that in the people, in the plants and in the land there is something yours that, even when you are not there, it waits to welcome you back.” He gave him culture, together with all the things he did not want from him.

He began climbing down the bell tower carrying Ettore with him. He was slowly starting to realize that he had killed the only friend he ever had. There is no place like home, he said to Ettore’s corpse, and began to sob hysterically.