(Mistress of Sunshine)

[madscenes]

Title: Mistress of Sunshine
Comment: A new summer project.
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Love makes time pass, and time makes love pass.

YOU must be Adelina.

So delicate you are and blond and rare. Pure and simple, they say about you, such echo the whispers around the neighbourhood, yes, pure they like to call you, but virginal you’re not; the sunshine has caressed your skin, the light has crept into the fabric of your skirts. Your skirt, too, has touched you, the way it touches me now, it tickles my imagination. You are beautiful and slender, you’re beautiful and smiling, you are beautiful. How unbelievably beautiful you are. My home is a display of antiques because I love unica, and you are a unicum, real, are you not, maybe I could love you. If I don’t love you already, just a tiny bit, the size of salt and sand grains, that’s the question, you’re welcome to ask me. Ask away.

The reason I ask is curiosity; I present the others around the block with inquiries like, where does she come from, Adelina, is she a stranger to this place or does the place know her already? That’s how I learned your family moved here from Venice, because we prefer to talk about foreigners in this neighbourhood, and I immediately imagined you wearing a carnival mask and a ballgown, oh, so enlightened and stylish you looked, yet quite scandalously seduced by Casanova, you’d hang off his arm around every street corner, lie across his front in a narrow gondola and listen to the beat of his heart conquering the space between your bodies, steady but never calm.

Likewise, I know the art of seduction, its nature, its soul, I know it intimately, therefore let me borrow my older brother’s boat and be your Casanova, Venetian girl.

WHERE are we going from here?

Are we going down on the corner to Peppo to have our daily bread and wine in carafes, in glasses full? We don’t count them, no, their numbers remain a secret, a riddle, like our age in years gone by.

Are we going to the square, where we are asked to dance by the men there in the most natural way, every single one of them too manly for our tastes, or do we go to the harbour? Instead. To my brother, who is not in the best of shapes, but he makes more man of himself than even the sea dares wrestle with, he is a conqueror of waves. Will he serve us seafood in time with the water’s murmur, fish on the bone, and will we call it the offspring of naiads in schools, as we laugh, mermaids in reverse, will we imagine fairy tales belonging to little girls?

Where are we going from here, Francesca, you ask me. Are we going forward? Are we going home?

Is this where it ends?

YOU cannot take me to the cathedral, I love you, maybe, but the same can’t be said for the temple of piety, the dispassionate prayers, candles lit that only manage to keep the darkness at bay, where it constantly prepares for its counterattack, it waits its turn, it hisses at us from the shadows, can’t you hear it? Hiss, hiss, the darkness says like a stray cat.

My little Sunday rituals are hated by me with a generous heart. Mass, the food on my parents’ table that attaches itself to your ribs and doesn’t let go. We’re family, they say like an excuse.

I am no Virgin Mary, neither do you carry a divine child in your womb. The saints and all things sacred are made of stone in there, they weren’t made for arguing or for being swayed, they don’t feel a thing in response. In contrast, I feel everything; I have felt the gentleness of your skin beneath my lips, sunshine kisses have I been given by your freckles.

Don’t take me to church, Adelina, it isn’t nuns or newlywed brides I’ve developed a taste for.

None of your sisters, however pretty they may appear, look, my older brother often turns his eyes on the oldest one, have inherited even a half of the beauty with which you have been blessed, the aesthetical talents you’ve kept to yourself, I suppose that’s the sort of hoarding that is practiced among siblings. It’s nothing with which I have any experience, my brother is away more often than he is here, we’ve had too little time and too much space, too great a sea has grown between us in the meantime that we can be bothered to make rivals of each other. You’re not his type anyway, he wants his women with hair of soot and eyes of amber, he wants to be able to use them as figureheads, I simply want you.

Simply, simply, and more simply than in any dressed state I want you.

Do you ever dance in the nude, Adelina? Do you free yourself from your clothes, do you unbind your hair?

Let it fall, Adelina, let your hair wave around your shoulders, down your exposed back, I come without knives. Here on the beach, under the shimmering weight of the sun, the disc of it headed for the horizon, while it emerges itself in the sea and travels underwater, away from the city, from this country, from this side of the Earth, it’s only me who can see you. The rest is bonfire and shadows, and even the shadows dance, Adelina, dance away, dance! Dance naked and freely and draw circles around yourself, with your toes you’re kicking up sand, the light reflects in it, in us, in you. We are mirror images of each other.

The guitar is resting across my lap, saving all my want for later, I’m focusing on the Argentinian tango rhythms, drumming out those tunes of the strings that I was taught by aggressive heels and provocative legs. Your legs aren’t that forward, they aren’t vulgar, you dance without restraint but sweetly and without ulterior motives is the way you dance, too.

NOTHING about you is not lovable.

Down across your stomach I draw lines with my fingers, I am restringing you, adjusting your pitch, taking you a notch up; I play old tunes on you with just my fingertips, tickling and calling forth familiar melodies in sound waves and resonating laughter, you add the words in a light voice. The way you sing wouldn’t count for good neither in the minor nor in the major key, but to me it sounds no less pleasing. Sunflowers grow out of your vocal chords, sunshine falls from your mouth, as it does from the blue shade of summer sky above us, the grass is new like you’re new and it’s dewy like you are dewy. I kiss you, making an exhibit of the park, even the most reproaching eyes go unseen by us. No, let’s roll through the multitude of colours, the yellows, the greens, the blues, infatuation sweeps off the dust of all the world’s shelves, our light summer dresses are cutting right above knees and brushing thighs.

And in happiness we shall grow wilder than any species of grass, but must tend to our love in the same way as we would a lawn.

LATE summer eats every colour, transforms everything into a picture of dust and heat, washed-out we stand in the middle of the marketplace and try on hats, the little mirrors show us in bits and pieces and a little broken; we stand cheek to cheek to fit ourselves into a single circle, a single rectangle, then a square. You prefer the types that are weighed down by drama, don’t you, every hat of your choosing grows a big brim and a broad band. What does it say about my person, am I that dramatic? That you’d pick me.

Likewise, it is all-embracing and all-encompassing, plastic violets attached at the crown, the hat you bring with you when we leave, while I haven’t bought anything, because I want to be kissed by the sun every single moment, I’m not kissed by you, and you laugh, you turn on your heel, you spin on your tip-toes like a ballerina. A hat like this one and a girl like you, you say as we find ourselves face to face again, nothing feeling unreal anymore, this very point in time as much of a blessing as you are, Adelina. A hat like this and a girl like you would fit into the water world of Venice nicely, you tell me. You’re hoping.

So, I pick the hat off your head with both hands, place it on my own, both things I do blindly, to capture my thoughts before they fly off, you don’t need their flittering nature, it does you no favours. You know we already live in a watery world, the blue shades of the grotto are ours, as well as the harbour and my brother’s boat; we don’t have to go further than home and there’s water. Enough.

BUT Venice is somewhere else.

ASIDE from the washing hanging out to dry, the back alley is empty. The clothes flutter in the wind and in the same way, our figures flutter, too, we shiver, it feels like a cold day. Napoli is not a place to be a newcomer, either you carry the city in your blood or you remain a stranger among the blocks; your parents are uncertain of the neighbourhood, they’re uncertain of their lives here, they’ve become uncertain of you after your arrival, so they call us uncivilized, the Neapolitans, simple they call us, as if it were a curse, but how would they know better, that love itself is exactly so, uncivilized and simple. When it all comes down to it, it is a Neapolitan wisdom I have passed on to you, Adelina. I have given it to you gratis, as a gift.

Go home, I tell you; you’re crying. Go home to your streets of water, the masks of lace and to the carnivals, to the dresses from once upon a time, go home to another, a true Casanova that only exists among Venice’s ghosts nowadays. You keep crying, you cannot stop, like feathers you shed your tears, but the nudity of your skin belongs to another scenario, mistress of sunshine, mistress of my heart. Feel how I don’t cry in turn as I lean down to kiss you, and I kiss you again, I kiss you still.

One last time.

I have old treasures on display in my home, a fine collection it is and furthermore, quite private, because I love unica and none of the pieces I own could be considered anything less. Each their own unicum in my consciousness, they are pearls from the gobs of oysters and gold dust from beneath mountainous titans; I do not count my riches, I own them uncritically.

On the top shelf, a dramatic hat is lying, its violets never wither, but the brim is wide and throws itself far into the room. It reminds me of a late summer day in these parts that have grown dusty over time, I measure in half and whole years, thinking back, I once loved an Adelina, until Venice recalled its girl, so we had to tell each other and our summer together, ciao, farewell. Summer is over, it is past. It is autumn now.

In this world, nothing stands still, and I too move on easily.

Naturally.

YOU must be Adelina, you must be Imelda, you must be Luisa, and you must be Doriano, Doriano…

Love makes time pass, and time makes love pass.