Me, You by Erri DeLuca

Author:Erri DeLuca [Luca, Erri De]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 978-1-59051-480-1
Publisher: Other Press
Published: 2011-10-31T22:00:00+00:00

One night I was allowed to go with Nicola to set the lines. A whole night on the sea. Daniele had gone once and did not recommend it. It was nothing but work, pitch-darkness, and silence. “You don’t feel like saying a word, and it’s not like night fishing when you go out for squid with lanterns. It’s just a lengthy preparation for the next day’s fishing.” It was preparative work and I wanted to participate in it. In addition, I thought I might gather a bunch of impressions to bring back to Caia. Nicola generally left at ten o’clock and returned just before dawn to pick up Uncle and go back out with him at first light. In those intervening hours the fish were supposed to have hooked themselves on the long lines dropped to the bottom.

We left on the absolute calm of a summer evening. The bow of the boat did not move out of the sight line of the Forio shoal on the other side of the island. I held the rudder along the coastline while Nicola cleaned the bait, then he took over the tiller. In the dark he looked for the landmarks that indicate the shoal by their alignment. A lighthouse, the light of a church, the twin-peaked outline of Mount Epomeo: these were the landmarks that were supposed to come together in an angle three miles off the island. Fishermen see the sea under a grid of lines; they follow routes without a compass.

The darkness did not encourage an exchange of words. Nicola remained silent as he groped around in the dark. The moon had not risen, the sea was empty, the sky aglow. Far offshore we came upon two fishermen who were rowing back. Nicola pulled up to them. Their motor had conked out. They lit a kerosene lamp and Nicola went on board to lend a hand. He was the most gifted mechanic in the fishing village. I put the oars in the water and stayed close by. I heard their quiet talk mixed with the wash of the oars, mere fragments of words because at sea they understood one another from just the main syllable, the accented one, a kind of stenography taught by the wind which carried off the rest of the word.

I thought about that evening on land with Daniele and Caia not wishing to turn around and look at the island. On the sea I did not feel distance. A third of a moon rose, losing its red rind on the pavement of still water. A powerful smell of bait filled the air now that we were stopped. With my fist I splashed the baskets with water. The wood of the oars fit snugly into the palm of the hand, legs placed one in front, one behind, to support the body’s push on the oars: and so there I was conforming to custom, to the métier, to the hour of the night; there was a place for me in that vastness of the sea, a place to put feet and hands and do what was needed.

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