(Burnt Orange)

[madscenes]

Title: Burnt Orange
Comment: Another summer project.
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One should think the mountains around Naples were smouldering, because Vesuvius has lain down to rest against the back of this city, but even so it isn't the mountains that are smouldering the most, it's the sea. The distances between us probably eat off of the watery element's majesty, but you might hear some of it still, in spite of everything, if you listen closely. Are you listening? Closer, closer. It boils and it bubbles underneath the roar within the surfaces' transparencies, the white foam carries an unappetizing stench of salt.

Do you remember how we wanted to be mermaids when we were young? The Mediterranean was located half a map away and fish tails seemed so exotic back then. Not here and not now do the Neapolitans see much of the mermaids either, but rumour has it and it spreads like ripples in the more stagnant waters, in the rivers and the lakes; sometimes the girls of the harbour disappear without a word, without a single glimpse of skirts and everyone knows with the greatest uncertainty that it is the ruler of the sea who has led them away, he dresses them in netherworld dresses and makes them dance forth storms on floors of sand and stone and swaying seaweed. What to call such creatures, besides lost, I can't tell you, but mermaids they are only related to very far out, where sea meets sea, where the ocean loves its next of kin. It was more innocent beings we imagined as children, Chiara, not capsized body parts in colourful gowns.

I trust that you recall.





The water is thrown in synthetic shades of blue, the smell of chlorine fills every corner of the public swimming pool, it hangs below the ceiling, fogging all the windows on its way up there. Back and forth along the edge of the pool, Carmela is wandering with mirroring blue plastic covers pulled over her conservatively cut shoes, the heel is but a promise of height. Chiarina is doing breast strokes stripped of water wings in the second lane, she’s only been equipped with a swim belt and still, she is doing her fourth lap. She takes to water like a duck, does Carmela’s daughter, she is a leggy mermaid, a water nymph, a naiad by nature.

If the choice was hers, she’d swim in the bay all year round – winter and spring and summer and now, she would let herself be moved by the waves, she would let the salt stiffen her hair, in that aspect she’s like her father who catches the wiggling silver with his bare hands. Only fish that are the size of sharks can outmatch his firm hold, and so Carmela allowed herself to be caught once. The evidence is right in front of her. Here.

The bay frames in the forbidden zone in another shade of blue, both lighter and more alive than the transparent waters that envelop her daughter’s body in the swimming pools, but Carmela refuses to let Chiarina get used to the sea, because the sea is not an entity you familiarize yourself with, it’s home to gods and titans. Its face changes like the weather, one expression captures sunshine, the next is lit up by lightning bolts. You never know where you have the ocean, even the coastlines opposite can move along with the body of water.

The Neapolitans worship their southwestern neighbour, eat of its fruits as if it were the original knowledge, but she doesn’t surrender and Chiarina has long since outgrown the crawling stage.

No, the little one doesn’t crawl any longer, she carves her way through and the waters part for her progress. Beneath chlorine-heavy clouds.





It's always carnation season.

In the store, we push quite the amounts of them across the counter, they're in sale from January through December, all year long, people call them funeral flowers and in Naples, death is a daily affair. A special kind of marketing must be said to exist with carnations, see, we stock up in bucketfuls, in all colours, I prefer the orange ones, something you might have guessed beforehand and most afternoons, it's also those that are left, orange carnations fit only a few coffins, decorate only a rare grave. People want blood-red petals that burst with heartbeat, they want bouquets in the purest of whites and the deepest of purples, they don't want flowers that give off sunshine and late summer sensations, that glow while the families mourn their loss which I understand, but I willingly take all the sunshine and the faded emotions with me home anyway. I put orange carnations in vases as black as grief for the sake of contrast and I put them on display on my windowsill, so the sunset and the glowing autumn leaves will recognize my house; here lives someone who has lost once.

I recall the carnations that we picked in your grandmother's garden, Chiara, she had a whole bed full and we each chose our favourites, mine changed colours in time with your blouses, first they were white, then pink, then red as if coordinated in accordance with a painter's scale, yours were always the same shade of orange, why do you think it's the orange carnations I put aside now? Those I treasure, treasure.

We exchanged bouquets, ceremonially and as such, you became my significant other.





They stay on display until they wither, until the final embers of the sunset are the one thing that can call forth the remnants of colour in the transparent petals, then Carmela takes the carnations with her to the cemetery. The columns in front of the main building throw long shadows into the morning, turning the polished marble tombstones pinstriped in a chilly black and white. There are two graves that she visits every time, despite only knowing the women buried there by name. Both of them were called Chiara, whose resting places she covers in withered, once-orange carnations.

In the unkept lawn up ahead, wild poppies have sprung up, they are blood-red and wave in the wind. Carmela ignores their sharp salutes and relieves her shoulders of their burden one flower stem at a time, drops each carnation as if it were a sacrifice, but she has yet to stare up into the face of any saint who was willing to acknowledge her. Instead, her name references the hollow lonelinesses of a nunnery. But she says her prayers at nighttime with the little one. Regularly, regularly and habitually.

The way to work isn’t long, measured in kilometres, but she still leaves something behind at the cemetery that is worth more than her income, cracked amber and frozen fire in the shape of flowers, dead memories about a dead existence at a God-forsaken place.





I miss Asolo's one hundred horizons, I miss playing forest nymph with you, climbing trees and ascending mountains, herding sheep down the slopes and observing my hometown's rooftops from above, from heavenly heights, look, the brown tiles laid out between greyish-white summits - between the evergreen oaks and common myrtle, growing wild like the paths of the heart. Those were the ones we followed. Then.

Around Naples mountains grow too, but these mountains are on fire, they emit large clouds and leak lava, when they finally arise, we live eternally in the shadows of an approaching eruption and everyone knows with a collective wisdom, Pompeii is located only twenty-eight minutes away from here, when all comes down to it. History has taught us so much, hasn't it, question mark. Listen, Chiara, Campi Flegrei is rumbling, us from Naples feel it in the soles of our feet, a promise of Purgatory and hellish flames, I remember you burning against my torso, you lay pressed against my mountain-peaking breasts, as such you put your ear to my heart, underneath your skin your blood was pounding and the long, prickling and licking flames of your soul devoured us both.

The mountains are passionate terrain, history itself has taught me, my lack of repetition aside.





Along the waterfront, Luigi and his gang reign supreme, the fishermen catch the fruit of the sea, and on land they also catch fish aplenty. Carmela, too, was such a fish once, but time has passed her by, these days she can walk undisturbed along the shore, with a gaze burdened by eyelids and relics of the past she follows the ships as they head out. Naples has made itself comfortable on top of the waters, the two elements, earth and sea, rest in one another’s embraces. The bay is made up of two tongues for arms, reaching out for, after, after.

After fifteen years she is still a newcomer in Naples, a far-outsider, she is consistently the one they talk about in the alleys, her daughter is a child of an immigrant, Chiarina’s mind seems almost drowned in the waters beyond. Maybe her mother continues to be a stranger, because she hates the sea, they love their lapping waves, their beaches and their fishermen, they love as well, the true Neapolitans. She has only added to their populace, but she has never belonged, has she, Carmela.

The waves lick the harbour. He catches sight of her as an afterthought, oh, that’s right, the mother of my child, and for a while they simply watch each other across the distance. Distance is a familiar entity, distance she knows the density of, the numbers are like Pi, committed to memory, goodbye, goodbye, goodbye. Luigi smiles, tips his cap at her and is suddenly more preoccupied with work than with women. Carmela doesn’t bemoan his lack of interest, like this the kilometres between their shared past and their parted present feel like a turned back and child support that always lands in too late, and even so the little one has inherited her father’s love for the wet element. How Carmela wishes she could tell her about all the other wonderful, wet things in the world, but the girl is only seven years old, she wouldn’t understand. Don’t let such information ignite her childish spirit, let her keep on simply sensing the answer up ahead.

The question is why her mother looks towards the tips of the volcanic mountains and longs for a home, long since buried. The question is why she on the weekly covers these graves in the ghosts of orange carnations.





You don't know Doriano, he's from after you left, Chiara, let me therefore describe him to you; he's no tall man, but he's finely built, delicate all the way out into his outermost features, the corners of his mouth and the tip of his nose, the tips of his fingers, his voice is calm, but slightly grating and somewhat hoarse, he sounds like a washboard musician, Chiarina once declared, from children and drunks, people like to assure each other, do we get the whole truth. He loves me and my daughter loves him and he plays his old jazz records to us long into the evening, when the sun hangs on a thinly vibrating string above the horizon and the chill of the night creeps out from its mice-size holes beneath the rest.

Doriano knows nothing of the fire in the mountains or the dangers of the deep, but he knows into infinity about drums and his starting point is located lengths within the music. Rarely do I say much when he talks for hours on end, I would rather be the listening party and he assumes my silence is an expression of fascination, which I don't see any reason to correct him about. He is a true friendliness and friendlinesses you always come across by accident, they are little treasures, they are amber bits and gold nuggets and diamond dust, yes. The gemstone that Doriano looks like blackens at the edge of my vision, you have to understand, his hair is the same colour as soot, as my sorrow-filled vases. His hair is worth being fascinated by.

Don't worry, Chiara, I don't love Doriano, but I take him to bed, because my bed is cold and because it resonates like nunnery bells when you are gone. Certain distances can't be crossed, not even in dreams and that kind of distance has grown forth between you and me, we can't blame Naples alone, although Naples does lie far from my native soil, it is instead because of the silence that exists in this previously mentioned vacuum. Between the place where you are and the point where I'm standing. Now. I have a view of a brick wall with clothes lines hanging in horizontals from the bottom edges of the windows, it's Giulietta's and Camilla's and Teresina's laundry hanging there in the shape of flapping curtains and I ask myself, what is waiting on the other side? More ocean and more volcanos where have the summits gone that won't explode beneath my feet?

The love I don't feel is explosive enough in itself.





Billie Holiday is playing on the turntable that Doriano from the very beginning installed in her living room, as if putting up an altar in his own name, as if trying to make sure she would remember him anytime. Even on nights when he is out, his trio often performs for the tourists at the harbour, she sometimes lets the needle find its groove, the record running in circles, so that the notes get lost in her loneliness which is also spinning. Chiarina has been tucked in, it’s half past eight, Carmela has no one else, the washing hanging to dry outside is a shadow of human companionship.

In the same way that she certainly likes Doriano and even unconditionally, but still doesn’t love him, she likes jazz without any kind of fanatism. The sound of jazz is a tormented soul howling, begging for expression, she’s always thought and she sympathises with the format, helps Chiarina bless both Mom and Dad in her evening prayers. That’s why she listens closely when Lady Day, as she has come to know her through her jazz musician man, sings about the heartache of tomorrow. At this point the sun has buried itself in the sea, it might even have sunk as far as where Napoli’s girls dance up the waves, up, up. Up. The light of evening and autumn is the colour of fire, Carmela basks in it, it must count for safer territory than the water of the bay, although there’s a saying about being once burned, twice. But the light in her daughter’s room has been turned off, the curtains have been drawn, any fire that wants to enter must squeeze beneath the door, if it absolutely must and then as nothing but a thin ray. She isn’t nervous, water is the dominant element in Chiarina, no fire will get very far with her.

It's another matter with Carmela and Carmela’s orange carnations that are allowed to flourish until they die. Tonight, they have been arranged in the open window and wave at the world from there, like a bouquet of lit candles, the shirts outside and the flower heads get tossed one way, then the other, falling into step. They are dancing, counting down.





Did we know anyone else in Asolo who was named Chiara, weren't it an uncommon name amongst the people there, like gold and diamonds and friendlinesses are everywhere, at all times? In Naples, I've found two others who are called by your name, but they have adopted other attributes of yours as well, they are also long gone, I visit them sometimes at the cemetery, I pretend that their names on the tombstones are actually yours, my hometown is after all located half a map up north, you would have to be a bird to flee there so freely, so easily. The carnations I toss at them are yours in the same way, pale and see-through and already as good as gone.

This liberty I've claimed, to plant a seed in your memory, she has grown strong throughout the years and although she looks like her mother with her autumn-coloured hair and her skyline look, though most importantly her eyes aren't the same blue as the sea, she also looks like her mother's past lover and therefore, it's your spirit which lives on in diminutive.

In her, the little one. Chiarina.

These days, she is my last remaining love. What remains of us, Chiara, doesn't even have a postal address. We, my beloved, loved each other, yes, but we are homeless now.





At five in the morning, only the fishermen are awake, and they’re too busy for her, she strides right past them without disturbing, she lets Luigi live his life, demanding nothing beyond a percentage of his harvest. That’s all they know of each other. Some day soon, she is painfully aware, he will ask to take the little one with him out to sea in his boat, he is going to let her feel the kiss of the element she has chosen for herself, and how is Carmela supposed to deny Chiarina a glimpse of her reflection? The dancing waves, the frothing sea. She is no true mermaid, her daughter, but there are so many other kinds of sea creatures, nymphs and naiads and sirens and other monsters of nautical origin. Carmela can see how Chiarina has heard the call of the drowned; once she turns eighteen, she will be the next Neapolitan girl whom the ruler of the ocean claims as his own. So long her mother has carried the burden, the heavy weight it is to rest assured of little else but your losses. Loss she knows the texture of.

The horizons are too few in Naples, she thinks, the roads she has to choose between all run in parallels up ahead, they end in the same repetitive destination, for Chiarina, for her, the swan has already sung for Chiara, every one of Carmela’s letters is yet another swansong, goodbye, goodbye. Distance is a strange thing to grow accustomed to. Distance is the only thing she has that she might return to the sea which will, on a hot summer’s day, abduct her daughter. Maybe not next summer, or the summer that follows, but the future waits ahead. On the one horizon that Naples actually knows.

The water is clear and blue, and the heavenly ceiling stretches above the expanses of it, they reflect each other, the sea and the sky do, they colour each other’s facades, they are mirrored in Chiarina’s open eyes in which the sky is only the sea in reverse, Carmela realises too late…

With all her distances she plays skip, as if they were stones, she throws them far, she throws them hard. Afterwards, she turns around and leaves, walking back to the only housewarming present the city gave her. The baby’s room remains a quiet corner until the clock strikes half past eleven.





The little one reminds me of us when we were children, Chiara, we were as untiring and innocent and just as carefree were we, we knew nothing of the dangers of the sea, because Asolo lay surrounded by mountains and the coastline was a day's journey away, longer even than we could travel in our imaginations. We dreamed of fish tails, but we barely knew what water was back then, we only knew of what we drank and of bathing water from taps, happily we turned our faces upwards toward the drops that might fall from heaven, but water wasn't an element in our understanding, it was no necessity, it was pure fun. Asolo wasn't familiar with the ocean as a condition, our mountains didn't smoulder either, they were made of stone and slept far longer than any Vesuvius' thousand year slumber.

They slept without waking, they slept like the dead do.





The way to the cathedral goes through the cemetery, and on her way there Carmela leaves carnations on the two Chiaras’ graves, only one flower for each this time, because the decan reserved the rest when he came by Friday, ordering decorations for the altar, for the aisle. The weekend has emptied her shop for orange, the remaining colours stacked in buckets of pinks and whites and blues. ‘Goodbye,’ she tells the headstones and Chiarina stays by her side, well-behaved, without asking any of the resultant questions, patiently she waits for her mother to part with these people whom neither of them knew.





I never put your address on the envelope, where you live now remains uncertain, the distance between Heaven and Earth is just one more unknown factor, a loss made up by numbers I don't understand. The words, on the other hand, are set in letters. They are written in an alphabet I've had since past times to learn.

Therefore, I've made up my mind. My daughter won't grow up in a city where the whole western region exists only to take her away from me. I've lost enough already, don't you think so, Chiara? I write letters to the air, I write letters to the memories of horizons I once knew, horizons I remember from my childhood town and I hope that Chiarina will fall in love with just one of them when she sees them, when we drive into Asolo and the mountain peaks frame in the rooftops and the top floors of the rearmost houses, like a sort of carpentry in stoneware. The horizons are many, they are hundreds in that area, I pray that just one of them will appeal to her, so that she stays, so that she no longer seeks the ocean by call of her nature.

Yes, I'm leaving Naples, not now but in the morning, early, before the sun burns the volcanoes to ashes behind us and believe me, I will bring my daughter with me. We will go north, we will go back, so Chiarina can have the chance to learn the origins of her own name, so she can look around amongst the mountains and understand that from the hundreds of horizons there, the basic, the fundamental, the most important one of them all is missing. Still.

Yours, Chiara, yours.