Ocean E-Book

Francesco Vidotto

• Herausgeber: Minerva Edizioni
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Beschreibung

Ocean is a woodcutter, a husband, a father, and a book. The book you are now reading. The book that saves his life from oblivion, because his memory is fading fast. The older he gets, the less he remembers, and these pages will outlive him. They tell a story that has the force of a bolt of lightning splitting a fir tree.
Oceano Giovanni Maria Del Favero is born pre- maturely on a cart pulled by mules who are not too happy to be doing their job, just after his family left their mountain village to go and seek their fortune in America. Abandoned at birth, he is adopted by a couple from a tiny village in the Dolomites, with the ironic result that he is soon on his way back to the mountains, this time by train, with his new family. His life is an uphill struggle, every step up the rocky path of his exist- ence followed inevitably by ten steps backwards. Walking alongside him on this path, as he works into his old age, chopping and sculpting wood, and scything grass in the high pastures until he can no longer feel his fingers, are Italia, Sandri- no e Basta, Nonno Giusto, and Giovannino. He finds true love where he least expects it. He even stumbles across his own grave in the village cem- etery up in Nebbiù, on returning from a war he had no intention of fighting.
He walks and walks, trips, regains his balance, but never stops smiling, even after he has lost most of his teeth. He follows the path of his life all the way to the end, when, just shy of 100, he finally discovers the most evident of truths and smiles for the last time, filled with happiness.

Leseprobe

Narrativa Minerva

Collana diretta da Giacomo Battara

Ocean

Editor-in-chief: Roberto Mugavero

Graphic project: Ufficio grafico Minerva Edizioni

First published in the English language

translation by Clarissa Botsford in 2016

by Minerva Edizioni

© Minerva Edizioni 2016

First published as Oceano, by Francesco Vidotto,

Minerva Edizioni (Bologna), in 2014

Finished printing in the month of January 2016

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form without the prior written permission of the publisher.

This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or places, is entirely coincidental.

ISBN: 978-88-7381-834-2

Minerva EDIZIONI

Via Due Ponti, 2 - 40050 Argelato (BO)

Tel. [phone] - Fax [phone]

[email protected]

www.minervaedizioni.com

To A.B.

because great people

can always be reached

and he was the one to teach me

to my god-daughter Sofia

who isn’t speaking yet

but is already smiling

to Alberto

Mama

And Papa

because I couldn’t do without them

Francesco Vidotto

Ocean

Minerva

Sommario

Preface

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty One

Chapter Twenty Two

Chapter Twenty Three

Chapter Twenty Four

Chapter Twenty Five

Final Chapter

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

“I’m not leaving you money...

or a house... or a car.

I’m leaving you your brother,

and I’m leaving your brother you.

This is your inheritance from me”.

A mother.

“There are some moments that never actually take place”

Francesco Vidotto

Preface

25 May, 2013

Here I am again. Up here in the mountains it’s spring but you wouldn’t know it. It should be nearly summer but the snow hasn’t melted yet. This evening is mild though, and I’m sitting in my study with the window open, the curtains dancing in the crisp air. In front of me there’s an empty notebook, just blank pages. My Parker pen – the nib bent with use – is poised. I’ve been using it ever since I won it at my high school graduation. In the living room my pendulum clocks tick away the time. Otherwise, there is silence.

I’ve been quiet for more than a year. Since my last book, in fact. I needed to live my life. I live intensely, and then I have to pour my experience into the pages of a novel before I can start living again. That is what I do.

A new novel usually comes on like a wave. The sea looks flat, but you suddenly see something moving on the horizon. Then the water swells and surges, coming closer and closer, foaming. At that point, if you are quick, and have a good surf board, you climb up onto the wave and let the emotion sweep you along. If you miss it, the wave crashes into the riptide.

This time, my novel arrived limping. It rang my doorbell yesterday morning at 10:35. As chance would have it, its name was Ocean.

Chapter One

If you have plenty of imagination and time, writing is a great occupation. I lived in the city for many years. First I studied Economics at university, then I went to work in an accounting firm, and later started my own company. They were office jobs, all of them, requiring a good head for numbers and great time management. Anyone who knows me at all will have realized that my organizational skills are terrible and that I can’t keep numbers in my head. They disappear. I look at them, ponder over them, try hard to memorize them, but as soon as I lift my eyes off the page they’re gone. It’s usually not a big deal. It only becomes a big deal when the guy who can’t remember the numbers is an accountant.

I’ve been writing since high school. As fast as numbers vanish for me, stories come to life. A story takes over, and I feel I have to tell it. Once a few of my novels met with a certain success, I realized it was time to stop tilting at windmills with finances and figures, and start dedicating more time to the mystery of narration. In order to put this plan into action, I retired to a small town in the shadow of the Dolomites called Tai di Cadore, where my grandparents had left me a house. With its fireplace and pipe collection, this was the place my heart had always inhabited.

Living here is fascinating and slow. You go shopping on foot, there are two bars where you can hang out and share a drink and small talk, a pretty little church with a bell tower and a bell puller who is never there when someone passes away. The town is friendly and manageable. If you’re right for it, it’s right for you. On the other hand, it can drive you crazy when the only thing you see all day long is a guy in a Subaru TDI cruising down the provincial road at eight in the morning, on his way down to Longarone to work, and the same guy in the same car making his way back in the evening for dinner. In between…no activity whatsoever.

I fit in perfectly. I’m as happy as a fish in a small pond. I spend the mornings writing, and in the afternoon I go climbing or walking, breathing in the beauty of the rose-tinted vertical mountain faces.

Yesterday, like every other day, I woke up, drank a cup of coffee, baked some bread, wound up the clocks and sat in my armchair thinking about a story and staring at the peak of the Picco di Roda. Suddenly my thoughts were interrupted by a ring at the door.

It was a little after 10:30. I remember the time perfectly because I was looking at the clock hands as I sat there wondering who it could be at the door. I got up, my hands still smelling of yeast and flour, went downstairs, turned the key in the lock and opened the door.

An old man was standing there. He only came up to my shoulders in height, and his face was runneled with deep wrinkles on both sides of his nose. His mouth, with missing teeth, moved rhythmically. An old hat, too big for his balding, shrunken head, was pulled right down over his downturned ears. From under the brim, his sky-blue eyes, as deep as a glacier crevice, were staring up at me. His hands, knotted with age, gripped a home-cut acacia walking stick, and he was wearing a black and red checked flannel shirt, buttoned right up to his collar.

I looked at him uncertainly, and then cast my gaze towards the piles of un-melted snow left in the garden. I looked back at him again, in his shirtsleeves with no coat on.

“Good morning,” I said.

“Good morning,” said the man, the rocking of his oversized hat accentuating his nods.

“Do we know each other?”

“No,” he answered, stretching his lips over his gums in a clumsy smile. I waited for some sort of explanation, but the man just stared, saying nothing.

“So… how can I help you?”

“You are Francesco Vidotto, right? The writer.”

“That’s me,” I said.

“I thought that, since you are a writer, you must know something about writing,” he went on.

“Yes, I think I do,” I said, smiling.

“Good,” he said, a puff of white breath curling out of his mouth.

“Do you want to come in, it’s cold here. Summer is late this year.”

“Oh no, thank you. I only want to take a moment of your time.”

“You don’t need to take it. I’ll give it to you,” I jested.

“Good,” he answered laconically, without acknowledging my joke.

He stared at me in silence, expectantly, then his lips opened wide in a toothless child’s smile.

“I read your book, you know. The one that won a prize.”

“Great! I’m thrilled. Er…Did you like it?

“E-nor-mous-ly”, he spelled out, his thoughts already turning in another direction.

“Thank you, that is really good to know. But… tell me,” I insisted, “How can I help you?”

“I live down in Nebbiù, near the graveyard. You know the house with the brown balconies?”

“Sure.”

“It’s useful.”

“Useful?”

“Yes, it’s useful at my age living near the graveyard,” he said smiling again.

I started laughing myself, a full-bellied laugh this time.

“You’re funny, you know.”

“I’ve come all the way up here to ask you if you can help me write a book.”

“You want me to help you write a book?”

“That’s correct.”

“What kind of book?”

“A book about things that have happened, so that they aren’t forgotten,” he added, rapping the ground with his stick.

“Things that have happened in the mountains?”

“Things that have happened to me. In these ninety-eight years.”

“You’re ninety-eight?”

“Not a year less; I wear my years well,” he said grinning.

“You certainly do. My grandfather just died, he was ninety-six and he was in pretty good shape too.”

“I knew your grandfather well.”

“You knew him?

“Of course. I was at the graveyard that Thursday.”

“You were there?”

I was amazed I hadn’t recognized a face as distinctive as his, but then I remembered an old man who had laid a rifle bullet on the pile of dark earth that covered Granddad after most of the mourners had left.

I stood there, gaping. Nestled in these mountains, our world is so small.

“So, are you going to help me?”

I couldn’t speak, I was buried deep in my memories.

“I’m sorry, but why don’t you write the book yourself?”

“Because I don’t know how,” he said, pausing for thought. “I only know the words that life has taught me, and they are not enough to talk about what I hold in my heart.”

“When do you want to start?” I asked him.

“As soon as possible. Tomorrow even. If you can, of course.”

“Actually…” I hesitated a moment, thinking about the novel I had in my head.

“Please help me,” the old man insisted, placing his hand over mine. His skin was like sandpaper, and his bones were heavy, but his grip, despite his age, was as strong as a wrench. I looked at his eyes under his funny hat. They were clear and transparent, and they were glistening. I put my other hand over his.

“Alright, I will help you. I will write this story. Okay? You will tell me about your life and I will write it down.

“Good,” he said softly, without taking his eyes off me. He smiled. “I don’t have much to give, but I will give you what I have.”

“No, no, listen,” I interrupted. “I don’t want anything. I like the idea of giving you a gift, okay? Anyway, you knew my grandfather, and that is enough for me.”

“Thank you,” the man said, freeing his hand and placing it back on his stick. I must go. My Signora is waiting for me. She’ll worry if I don’t get back. She’s always worrying.”

Without another word, he turned around and set off towards the gate.

I watched him slowly move away, limping. He looked carefully where he put his feet, for fear of tripping. He was wearing old black moccasins and a pair of worn-out grey trousers held up with braces the same color as the shirt. The hems of his pants were about six inches too short, showing his ankles. He was wearing one burgundy sock and one blue.

“Sorry, sorry…” I called out after him.

The old man turned around on his three legs, swaying a little as he did so.

“I forgot to ask you your name. You already know mine.”

“Oh, of course. Forgive me. My name is Ocean,” he answered, turning on his heels back towards the gate.

He stooped suddenly and turned back towards me.

Staring straight at me, he said, “My name is Ocean, but I’ve never seen the sea.”

Chapter Two

This morning, just before seven, I was leaning on the windowsill waiting. The sun had risen not long before. In late spring it rises behind Mount Cridola and bathes the Central Cadore Valley, and my room that faces East, in its warm light. If I don’t close the shutters, the sun wakes me up quite rudely.

The night had been perfectly dark, but something had been stopping me from dropping off. I had got out of bed, put the coffee pot on the fire, and opened the windows wide.

A fresh morning breeze filled the house with its perfume. The bright blue sky, dotted with floating clouds, pierced by the occasional shy twitter of a bird, heralded the arrival of summer. On the horizon, not too far off, the craggy mountain peaks pinned the thin blue ribbon of sky in place.

Up here, nature feels sluggish, immobilized by the ice and snow. The grass is brown and boggy, and the dried up larches stand tall and exposed in the woods. Then, from one day to the next, there is an explosion of life. The fur trees burst with emerald buds, their branches reaching out to the sky, and violets push their way up through the undergrowth. In the space of a day, the fields are alive, and suddenly the rumbling streams are back on course. The scene is the same every year, but you never get used to it. Every year you are in awe, you feel restored, and you almost want to skip outside and dance.

As the mouthfuls of fresh air filled me with these thoughts, the bubbling coffee pot woke me a second time. I turned the gas off, filled my coffee cup, added a spoon of sugar, and stirred slowly as I went back to my perch to gaze out of the window while I enjoyed my breakfast. I smiled. That first sip of coffee is the intimate essence of being at home.

The idea of writing about Ocean was fixed in my brain like a nail that had been hammered into it. I was curious to hear the story he had to tell.

It’s perfectly easy to leave home, but you always end up being reeled back in again. Your roots bind you, and curiosity does the rest. It is a reverse journey. Rather than leading you afar, it brings you right back to the start.

It was for this reason that as well as being curious about Ocean, I was also impatient to find out more about my own past, to seek out my origins. It’s strange how many questions arise when, one fine day, you find yourself with nobody to ask.

I couldn’t understand how I had never heard of the name. There were people coming in and out of our house all the time. Friends of my grandparents, relations of all kinds, distant and close, acquaintances, but I had no memory of this man. If he had come to Granddad’s funeral, there must have been some kind of bond between them.

With these thoughts in mind, and no others, I waited. The clock struck ten. There was still no sign of him. Just as I was filling the jug with hot water for my bread-making, there was a ring on my cell phone. It was Lucio. Lucio is a dear friend who says what he thinks and does what he says. This makes him rare indeed. This may sound like a trite observation, but as life goes on and you meet more and more people, you realize Lucio’s approach is a surprising exception.

“Hey, Lucio. How are things?”

“Good. It looks like a nice day, right?”

“Yep. It looks like the clouds are going away.”

“About time! Winter just doesn’t want to leave.”

“Aren’t you working today?”

“No, I’m free. What are you doing?”

“I was waiting for somebody, but I’m not sure he’s coming.”

“Shall we go climbing?”

“We could. Where were you thinking of going?”

“I’m not sure. Cavallera? Or we could go down to Lozzi again.”

“The water’s ready for the bread making. Give me an hour and I’ll be there.”

“Great! I’ll come and pick you up. We’ll have a quick cup of coffee and then we’ll head off.”

“Good. See you later then.”

“Later, ciao!”

As soon as I had kneaded the bread, I checked my ropes and harness, as well as my extenders and climbing shoes, making sure everything was shipshape. Lucio rang on the doorbell.

“Coming! I called, running down the stairs.

“Hey!”