Episode 33 | Conflicting memories

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"I think Catherine instilled that fear in me..." I confessed. Carlo was putting me in a nostalgic mood, which was always dangerous and prejudicial for me, and I could not help -- the memories he stimulated brought intense, troubling emotions along.

My mother had never liked the sea. She 'hated' it -- that was the verb she used, and I assume that being a writer she weighed exactly what she said and how she said it. Treacherous, dirty, dangerous -- those were the adjectives she used for the sea. Catherine attended the public library every day, but she never went to the beach, and hated getting dirty from the sand and the salty water. And she easily got burned from the Sun, too. Having spent part of her life on an island in the Pacific Ocean had not changed that -- it only made ​​her thoroughly unhappy.

But not me. For those had been the best years of my life, my childhood in Punaouilo.

And after we left it, I adopted the pools in France only because I missed the sea so much. And if I came to win several major championships, and was being touted as a likely Olympian, it was because one day I had trusted Carlo, and learned from him how to swim... though not much better than a crab, which was all that he could teach me.

But I don't want to be unfair -- he could swim no better than a crab, but most important is that in the water he made me feel safe, and was able to share his joy and sense of freedom with me.

It was on Passage Beach, next to my father, and through his arms, that all my joys and aquatic glories began... and also... That... which would make me forever retreat from the swimming pools.

"I remember the night we went up on the boat..." I shared with Carlo. Once I had decided to let my father guide me in his maze of ghosts and reciprocally exchanging islands through the story of my own genesis -- like he had put it --, and resentment and anger had subsided, I was filled just with sweet memories.

"When... we went up on the boat?" Carlo looked at me puzzled. "You mean... when we climbed up on that boat?" Carlo shook his head. "We never did that, Laurent! You often requested that we'd do it, but I never allowed it. Your mother had  accused me often enough of being inconsequential, for having wanted to raise you in freedom... But I was never irresponsible. We never went up on that boat." He shook his head again, more vehemently, as if wiling to convince himself. "The wood had become hard like stone, and was extremely sharp. And our weight would probably have made the boat collapse..."

"But I remember that night so well, Carlo!" I whined, almost like the boy of my recollections. I was disappointed that my father had forgotten about one of my most cherished memories from my tropical childhood. "I even wanted to climb the mast, which, in fact, you did strictly forbid..."

"Of course I forbid it. And not only that!" Carlo retorted, firmly. "You are mistaken, Laurent. We never really approached the boat, not that close... There was always the danger of the mast breaching and falling upon us. The weight of a single bird could have cracked it, and they seemed to know that, because they never built their nests on that mast. Even the winds and the storms could have broken it, any time..." Carlo shifted uncomfortably in his chair. "No, Laurent, we never got any closer than ten meters of distance from that boat."

"Carlo..." I insisted, taken aghast. "Don't you remember it? It was the night of the shark..." 

"Daddy, a shark..." -- I shrieked, and my voice had sounded raggedy and more acute than normally, just like a little girl's.

"I've seen him already, Laurent..." Carlo had answered quietly, almost in a whisper, as if neutralizing my cry. "It's only a baby shark. He will not do anything to us. But even so, we'll get out of here, because he might be accompanied by his family..."

"You swim ahead, Laurent. I'll be following you. Calmly, my son." he had recommended, when he saw me swimming away with desperate, noisy strokes. "I'll keep an eye on the shark. Now go."

"Don't you recall that night, Carlo?" I said softly, feeling fond of my father and fond of my memory. "You said it yourself... that we had invaded the shark's habitat space as we approached the boat... I got really scared but you tranquilized me... and brought us safely to the beach... You were my hero!" I reached across the table for my father's hand, but changing my mind I withdraw, before even touching him.

"That actually happened, Laurent. We did encounter a blacktip reef shark near the shipwreck once. And probably because we had invaded his space, he had to come check on us... But we had not climbed on the boat... That has never happened." Carlo smiled condescendingly. "And it was daylight, when we found that shark... It was no baby, I can now tell you..." He winked at me. "I lied because I wanted to calm you... With more than a meter, it was already an adult shark, and I think we were in real danger there... It was our best kept secret, especially from Catherine, wasn't it?"

I was in dismay, feeling deeply uncomfortable. And hurt, with Carlo's insistence in dismissing my version of that encounter. My main childhood adventure, my most exciting memory... 

I recalled clearly having gone up on the shipwreck. Or, at least, swimming among its remains... and more than once! How could this never have happened? Surely, I had never gone there on my own -- I had always been accompanied by Carlo. So how could his recollections be so different from mine? And worse, his memories... were destroying mine. 

My childhood in Punaouilo seemed so far away in time and distance, so pure and naive and happy that it was almost improbable I had lived it... and now Carlo was pushing it even farther away. Should I trust him?

"We've been so many times to that wreck," he continued, "but we never got to swim there during the night. Even though that was perhaps your most frequent request, as you grew older... But I never gave in. Sorry, Laurent..." Carlo sighed. And then, after he had gotten lost in a maze of contradictory memories, we arrived to the point why he had mentioned Passage Beach in the first place. "Such was your fascination for that shipwreck that I started wondering if it did not hold a message for me..." Carlo smiled from deep inside his sadness, softly. "Actually, everything and whatever came from you, with intensity... I tended to interpret it like a message. Do you understand? You were yourself a long, slow message, lovingly unfolding into my life. And while your mother was reading her books..." Carlo's voice was filled with melancholy, "I was trying to read you."

"Your usual silence at Passage Beach" he continued, "so unusually deep and consistent coming from a child, intrigued me. And got me wondering often. I myself had had this fascination for decadence and decrepitude, for the theme of my Parisian paintings, but that shipwreck... I began to ponder if it had anything to do with my own life... And it was as if the wreck... had been endlessly happening, unfolding before my eyes... It hadn't just happened in the past. It was still happening."

"For my own life was a wreck in slow motion..." I had never seen Carlo so sad, but he did not seem to fear his darker feelings, and he dug deeper. "My paintings that no one wanted... how much they were irrelevant to the world, and how gradually it became irrelevant to me as well, as I took on the role of the wall painter... which I had so insistently tried to avoid during my time in Paris, rather starving than submitting... But with a family to support, there was no choice... My inner life became dull and poor, although I won a few bucks every now and then. Although I had you, my son... It still felt meaningless."

''But then Drew came into my life, and soon the money followed. My motivation to paint revived as I grew accustomed to being seen and recognized, my work appreciated and desired... And having watched over the years that boat decaying before my eyes, I realized that the wreck in slow motion... which I could observe in all the sordid and sad details... was my relationship with Catherine, itself another wreck... and our little family, which never came to be..."

"That never came to be, Carlo?" I asked, and gulped. It seemed too cruel. "What do you mean by that?"

"Your mother and I have never been in accordance with the education that we wanted to give you, Laurent. She felt I was giddy and overly benevolent, and I thought she was carelessly inattentive, and too rigid towards you. Nor had we ever shared the same values ​​and goals in life... In fact, Catherine and I could not have been more different from each other... How often did we do things as a family? I mean, the three of us together?" Carlo stared at me. "Do you remember any important occasions, Laurent?'

"A birthday party in Punaouilo, perhaps?" It had been the last time I had seen my mother in Punaouilo. "The last one before Catherine left to France, I think..." I replied wryly. I felt bad, because Carlo had just contradicted my memories, and was again daring me.

"That's it! And that's all..." Carlo smiled miserably. "That's what I'm talking about." And next, he fell into a heavy silence. He looked so tired and wasted. Much, much older than Catherine, though they were both just fifty eight years old.

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Episode 32 | Shipwreck 'monter'

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"You remember the shipwreck in Punaouilo, don't you, Laurent?" Since Carlo had just introduced my mother in his narrative, the question came as a shock. How often would we shift between the Île du Blanchomme and Punaouilo? There seemed to be no subjective boundaries between the two islands for my father -- though, in fact, there was no practical division between the Indian and the Pacific Oceans. 

Yet, I was surprised at that new diversion from Carlo. After twenty years, I had forgotten his digressive way of talking and even thinking, somewhat oriental, full of subtleties, continually surprising, often leaving me dazzled and breathless.

And a bit annoyed, too, in my teens... or maybe pretty much. But then, after he had left, and at my father's painful absence, a long time gone by, I would arrive at considering it an unimportant detail, as it actually had become part of the longing I felt for him.

"Of course!" I answered expectantly, and waited, patiently.

What about my mother in this, I thought? Because the shipwreck was a program for just the two of us, my father and I -- never had we been there with Catherine. Carlo had just started talking about her, her arrival on the Île du Blanchomme, a story that had always been hidden from me, and suddenly he threw in a memory that excluded her in all... Was it a tactic to make me empathize with him? All those recollections about the lovely moments we had spent together, when Catherine had gone to France...

"I thought so..." Carlo continued, smiling. "You had a fascination for that sea ruin. The first time you saw it... you were three... or four years old? We were returning from somewhere, in the evening..." I could have smiled at his inaccuracy, but I was too intrigued and almost apprehensive at the course of our conversation. How inexact would it be? "And driving along Passage Beach you suddenly shouted from the back seat of my bike... "Daddy, a 'monter'!" And we stopped so that you could take a good look at the monster..."

It took you a while to understand what a shipwreck should be. And when you finally did, you seemed to be so heartbroken! You asked why didn't anyone like the boat, and why it had been abandoned. You wondered who lived there, in the middle of the sea... When I said no one, you replied "Not even the fish nor the birds like this boat?" And that seemed to make you immensely sad. "When I'm rich," you said, in one of our visits to Passage Beach, "I'll fix this boat to live on it..."

I told you what I knew about that boat of Asian origin, and its sinking that had had such tragic consequences for Punaouilo in the past. It seems that the entire crew had been ill for many weeks, and they may have been even a little demented... What this grave, terminal disease was, no one ever found it out. It is said that Passage Beach, in the past, with riptides, effectively disappeared and gave passage to the boats. And so they had tried it that night, rather unskillfully, and ran aground.

The crew members that had not yet died from the disease, jumped into the water and swam to the shore. While they were aided by the people of Punaouilo, other natives on canoes headed for the boat to rescue the rest of the crew. Apparently, there had been no one else alive aboard, and I think that, even when faced with the dead bodies on the ship, the natives did not understand that they were threatened by a serious and highly contagious disease. The natives had no knowledge of foreign diseases, and how deadly they were. They even brought to land the groceries and useful objects that they could rescue, not aware that they were contaminated... And thus the population of the island was also infected, the disease spreading more rapidly and being more fatal among the natives...

Maybe, Laurent, I was not very skillful in telling you such a gruesome story of disaster and death in the night time, and on the site of the tragedy. You were only a young boy, not even going to school, yet... What impact did it have on you? I felt goose bumps myself, thinking about the desolating consequences of that accident. The few natives to survive were those who had left the island without taking anything that was not their canoes... no food, no objects, not even clothes. Everything was contaminated, and Punaouilo ended up deserted, a cemetery in the open for many decades, having become taboo. Until the European settlers arrived and occupied it, promoting the return of the natives, at least one generation later.

The day following your discovery, you wanted to return to the site. And upon seeing clearly that it was a boat broken in two, you said it was silly to have called it a 'monter'. And you asked me to take you there so many times since, during the day, night, afternoon, was it early or late... We were there in all seasons and all years in a row, from that first time. I could not so well grasp your fascination, and how it aroused your imagination, but we'd always go there, whenever you asked me.

Do you remember that many times we would just stand there, in silence, watching the wreck? You trembled with excitement, at each wave that pounded against the old hull, making ​​the whole ship creak, or every time a bird landed on the old and still upright mast, seeming that it would be tore apart at last... By then, the wood of the boat had already become like rock, virtually indestructible, and yet you seemed to fear for its fate.

"I don't remember that..." I was intrigued. My father seemed to have more impressions of those visits than I myself, perhaps because he was an adult then, and able to watch me and still observe the landscape. While I had been concentrated solely on the wreck, or my impressions of it, and probably lost in my own imagination. "...But I think it was on that beach that you taught me how to swim..."

"Exactly! That's the beach." Carlo beamed at my remark.

And suddenly, I understood my father's present situation. He should also have had his expectations regarding our reunion. The gap of silence and lack of communication had been the same for him and for me -- twenty years. And like me, his heart should be swollen and aching with painful hopes, fearing how much I had forgotten about him, or how much I liked him... loved him?... yet. It was like a dance of re-mating, and each shared memory was a victory... for him, for me, for us! 

And that emotional choreography seemed to be what Carlo was really interested in, and not exactly the story he was telling me. Nor the fancy, upscale Lounge were we were, nor the spectacle of the city bellow us, where arrays of light were being turned on.

"I had never seen you afraid of anything, like you were upon learning how to swim, Laurent." At that, Carlo smiled softly, and I think he had also had in mind how, overcoming my fear, I'd later become a juvenile swimming champion, in France. He had still been present for my first victories. "At first, I thought you were more afraid of entering the ocean near the ghostly boat than of the sea itself. You asked me several times if dead people were still dwelling there... But it was not fear, it was curiosity that inspired you. And then, it was with the promise that we would visit the boat that I could make you get past the shallow water..."

"Come, my son. Trust me. I will not let go of your hand..."

"Come, my dear. Come with your father, Laurent."

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Note from the author: the story of the shipwreck in Punaouilo was loosely based on the masterpiece  "Shipwrecks" by Akira Yoshimura, a book I adore, one of the best I have ever read, and it is mentioned here as my inspiration for that interlude in this chapter, as well as a reading suggestion. 

Episode 12 | Starving, cooking, dining out

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Somehow, I was not convinced.

Since we had arrived on the Île, Armand was no longer looking me straight in the eyes when we talked. In fact, he was avoiding my stare. Instead, since the moment I had undressed, his glance fell continually on my lap, directed at my worn and stained underwear. Though his expression remained neutral, and I never saw him frown, there was a silent censure implied. I decided to accept his offer and put on the new trunks on the first opportunity, to stop that clumsy comedy of trying to cover my pubic hair to then uncover my buttocks. It had already lasted over twenty four hours, embarrassing me – and worse, annoying my friend and host.

Yet, something else was wrong. Armand trembled and I could sense his tension, as we hugged on the beach, at the end of our conversation. Something had changed – something was missing – in our friendship.


Having sweated profusely, I was willing to go for a long swim. I wanted Armand to come along, so that he could show me the spots for the hazardous currents. He was hungry and declined, retreating to the house to fix a meal for us.

Used to eating not much, after my long meager diet at the factory, I had learned to dominate hunger. Whatever urge I had felt earlier that morning, it was gone. But there was an element of pride in my self-possession, and I felt somewhat superior when my friend was honest about being hungry, and when I again let him go upstairs and prepare the food on his own. That was also new – Armand working for me, ultimately serving me.

He was a prince, born to be served. He would have preferred to dine out every meal during the École. On Saint-German-des-Prés, a constellation of cafés and bistrots was less than a hundred steps away from our door. But to keep me company, since I was too poor to dine out even once a month, he would eat at home with me. He wasn't inviting me to the restaurants just because we had actually been using the money his father sent him for other things we loved better -- like going to the movies, to theater plays, and buying books. Armand had never cooked well, nor enjoyed it. Only because he did not stand my scanty meals, had he started cooking for the two of us. Even if it was something simple like sausages – they were the cheapest kind of meat I could find --, his would have been the best German sausages money could buy.


*****

"That is so like Catherine, I must say... Ha-ha!" My loud laugh thundered across the empty Lounge. Noticing Gabriel had raised his glance in alarm, I blushed.

I had not wanted to interrupt Carlo's story, but I could not help the wicked comment. It was a family joke.

Like he had done that one morning before dawn on the Île du Blanchomme, at the interruption, my father showed no other response but to blink, and blink, repeatedly. Behind the thick lenses of his fancy new glasses, I watched his eyes slowly adjusting to again focus on me. Like someone waking in an unfamiliar room, he looked around, trying to recognize the place. He seemed surprise to find me on his Île. Or to find himself in the Lounge? Or simply to find me before him -- the son he had abandoned for twenty years.

"So you know it, already!" Carlo stared at me, confused. He blinked again, but so slowly that it seemed like he was deliberately closing his eyes. "I thought Catherine had always hidden it from you!" He took the right fist to his lips, to bite on a finger, his eyes wide with bewilderment, fully fixed on me.

"Know what?” It was my turn to blink. I had expected Carlo to join in a joke about Catherine’s ineptitude in the kitchen. “It's no secret that Catherine hates cooking, and that she would rather dine out every meal..." By my father's puzzled look, I realized his comment had aimed something else entirely different. "Know what, Carlo?"

"I thought you knew about Armand..." he murmured.

"What about him?" I insisted.

I was made alert by the shaky tone of his voice. Bending towards him, my eyes flashing, I must have resembled a predator, because Carlo sank further into the leather couch, and nervously changed the subject.

"Which reminds me... Do you remember Joanna?" He asked.

I blinked again. After Paris and the Indian Ocean, he was catapulting us to Punaouilo, the island of my childhood.

"I sure do!" Hadn't I just thought of her, mentioning the candle episode, when I burned myself? Hearing my cry, Joanna had rescued me and comforted me till I'd stop crying... and I had kept it a secret with her. "I might have forgotten other people from my childhood, but how could I ever forget her? We used to call her Queen of the Kitchen." I replied, a bit indignant.

"Oh no, that's how you called her, Laurent!" My father smiled at my remark. "And of course you should... She was the one feeding you all the time, not your mother. I did not worry about you when I was out working just because I knew Joanna would be taking care of you. While your mother just read, or wrote her novels..." Carlo shrugged, dismissing that subject. "The rest of us used to call her The Pearl, remember?”

Of course I did. Joanna had gotten that nickname because she was beautiful and black like the precious pearls sold in the jewelries across the island. Rare like them, too, a native from Saint Louis in the US, brought to Punaouilo to work on the mansion where we lived, as far as we knew, she was the only black woman on the whole island. Tall, and elegant in her signature very colorful dresses of floral patterns, in our kitchen she stood out, against the pale green tiles and the whitewashed cabinets. But to be honest, as a child I thought 'The Pearl' referred to her teeth, shining impossibly white whenever she smiled -- and she did it hundreds of times a day, especially if it were at me. I was convinced her teeth were actual pearls, what turned her into the richest woman on--

“She was the guardian angel of our small family." Carlo added, with a sigh, interrupting my own recollections.

"Why bring Joanna into this conversation, Carlo?" I was intrigued. Was he introducing the pieces of our common past that bonded us, to again win a way into my heart? I doubted my father was aware of how I cherished the memories of my tropical childhood, though he knew of the love I had devoted for Joanna.

"Just because, like you said, your mother never cooked, even when she had to feed you...” Carlo hesitated, seemingly confused with his own logic. “Well, I guess Joanna has been there from the very beginning, the day your mother and I arrived at the mansion in Punaouilo. And from the day you were born... I'm sorry to tell you this, Laurent," Carlo paused, looking out through the windows for a moment. I followed his glance, and noticed the sun was on its descent. Carlo took a deep breath and then said, looking me in the eye, "Joanna died a few months ago."

"No!" I whined, feeling the tears welling up in my eyes. "It can't be!"

I used to reply the Birthday cards she sent me at Catherine's. Each time, I repeated the promise of one day going back to the island to visit her. Just to cheer her, since I had no intention of actually returning to Punaouilo. In fact, that year I still hadn't received her greetings. But I had guessed it might be sitting inside Catherine's postal box in France, now that she was in Russia, and I did not give it a second thought. With Carlo's news, a door to the past had slammed close. And I was feeling left out.

"No! No..." Tears began to stream down my cheeks. "I didn't know she was ill..." My mother had never told me anything. But then, Catherine had never been close to our maid. In Punaouilo, my mother would only speak to Joanna when strictly necessary. Instead, though Joanna's letters were directed at me, she always asked about my mother and sent greetings to her.

"She wasn't. Joanna had a sudden death. A stroke. Quite unpredictable for such a strong woman. I'm sorry to tell you this now...” Carlo bent in my direction, perhaps thinking of tapping my knees. But just like with Armand, he did not touch me. True, the Nirvana Lounge was luxuriously spacious, and the distance between our chairs was such that he would have to stand up to try to touch me in any comforting way. But what Carlo did not transpose was the abyss remaining between us. He simply added, “I could not help recalling her, when you said Catherine behaved just like Armand..."

"What about them, Carlo?" I inquired again, drying my tears and veering from the subject. Later, I would cry more, and say a prayer for Joanna. I knew it would be more heartfelt than those I had said for Tarso, my great-grandfather, who had raised Carlo, and to Celeste, my grandmother, from Catherine's side.


"We will come to that, in the appropriate time..." Carlo took a sip of his wine. Instead of answering my question, he continued with his story.

"Those days we spent together on the Île du Blanchomme, Armand used to cook every day. I was so surprised! And he had been doing so for quite some time already, since he could not dine out being on a tiny island lost in the middle of the Indian Ocean. Though I am sure he could have hired a chef to cook for him, ha-ha!"


Seeing how Carlo's recollections, along with the ruby red wine, seemed to put him in a good, light mood, I decided to lower my guard. Instead of throwing my questions burning with resentment at him, I'd just enjoy the recounting of a part of his life that was completely unknown to me.

*****

We almost bumped into one another, when Armand was coming out of the kitchen. My eyes fell on the tray of food he was carrying towards the tables on the veranda’s corner.

“That looks delicious!” I exclaimed.

“It does, doesn’t it?” He responded, his eyes falling on the fancy Cardin trunks I had put on. One size smaller than mine, they were a bit too tight, but still, the nicest -- if the smallest -- piece of clothe I had ever worn.

In the trail of steam that smelled so good, I followed Armand to the table, still dazzled with how much his cooking skills had improved in the year he spent travelling around the globe.

"Nothing against French cuisine. Not at all!" He winked, to imply he actually missed it. "But I guess my soul is Asian… or at least my stomach is!” He said, and laughed. “I hope you'll like it, mon cher Carlo... Especially for you, the best dish on this island! " Serving me a generous portion of a thick stew, Armand seemed to be in such good spirits, and enthusiastic about his delicacy – which was more colorful than any of my paintings, with different pieces of vegetables in a yellow sauce that, I learned, was named curry. He went on to explain how and where he had taken classes in many places in Asia, mostly in India.


But he silenced, realizing I had tears in my eyes, and asked worriedly, "What is it, mon ami?" He reached for my hand, almost knocking the small Perrier bottle filled with sand that doubled as a candle-holder. Embarrassed, he retreated his hand, after having slightly squeezed mine. My friend had never been clumsy -- but that, too, seemed to have changed.

Armand had neatly laid the table. His care with the plates and cutlery, even if they were cheap, brought back the bistrots atmosphere of our Parisian neighborhood to that deserted island. It was a flair of sophistication, in the rather rustic house. Another bottle of Perrier displayed a bouquet of palms and other colorful leaves beautifully arranged -- refinements I had never known, until I met Armand in Paris. And there was so much joy in how my ex-roommate had prepared that meal for me, while I had been swimming, that I finally told him how I had almost starved in that abandoned factory, and grown seriously ill.

Not because I wanted him to pity me, but because I felt my life had dramatically changed for the better with his invitation. Wanting him to have the appropriate dimension of how grateful I was, though I did not want to use the word 'miracle' with him, I also shared an insight I had had during the morning meditation -- on the Birth Island, just like I said I had been reborn after my first swim in the ocean, I was sure to begin my life anew!

Armand observed me closely during my sharing, and made almost a minute of silence before saying, "Thank you for sharing this with me, mon cher Carlo." He seemed sincerely touched. "I should have insisted more, from the beginning, that you came to Asia with me... I could picture us backpacking together... But you said you wanted to try life on your own, 'without the De Montbelle's sponsorship', as you put it..." Armand closed his eyes for a second, and breathed out heavily. His lips were trembling when he confessed, "Those words hurt me, somehow. But after all, the money we had been using came from my father, not from myself. Ultimately, I wasn't being generous with you, you were right. My father was." He sighed. "And when you didn't answer my letter, I was convinced you did not want to see me anymore. I'm glad I was wrong." Armand gave a shy smile. "I'm glad I have misinterpreted your silence, as much as I'm sad to learn about your hardship and your illness, all on your own in Paris." He paused. "An abandoned factory, ha? That looks pretty cool, though.” His smile broadened. “I can't be any happier now that we are together again, mon cher Carlo. I'm leaving the pantry full for you--"

"Yes, I'm back to your sponsorship..." I joked. To immediately realize I was again being inconvenient. Armand was no longer smiling. "I'm sorry. I'm very sad if I hurt you by expressing it in those terms, Armand. And yes, I know... This now is not a sponsorship. I'm here to work for you..." Armand raised an eyebrow, looking offended upon hearing I was to be his worker. "No, okay, I'm here to help you..." But Armand seemed still disappointed at my words. I shrugged, feeling that, sometimes, my French would never suffice. "Whatever you are offering me, mon cher Armand, my dearest friend, this time I accept it. Humbly and wholeheartedly."

As the afternoon progressed, I became increasingly aware of the beautiful golden light that illuminated that very special island. How weird it was that Armand and I would meet again in a remote corner of the planet, which existence I had never dreamed of before -- and that Armand, who had been princely brought up, always wearing the best clothes and savoring delicacies, in his tropical version was contentedly spending the days in a swimsuit only, barefoot, eating exotic dishes he had cooked himself.


The prince, turned into a bum -- a hippie and transcendental bum--, hanging around almost naked the whole day… That would have been unthinkable in Paris, just a year ago! And there was a new tension and a new ease about him that I could not quite well understand yet.

*****

"Is Monsieur de Montbelle still mad at me because of India?" I dared to ask, as we moved on to our sunset session at the beach. Facing the horizon, I was lying on my belly, feeling the comforting sensation of having a full stomach, and the warm sand against my chest. Next to me, Armand was reclining on his right elbow like a figure from a Greek cup. Right on the edge of the water, he played with the tiny, gentle waves that tapped his toes.  

Searching for inspiration for my painting classes during the École, I had began to read a fascinating book on spirituality -- 'Philosophies of India', by Heinrich Zimmer. In the Age of Aquarius, in the trail of Woodstock and the Flower Power, books like that one seemed to swarm everywhere. I had been drawn mainly by the beautiful illustrations, but in its pages I was to discover another way of life -- and not only to myself. For, when Armand was most depressed, and lost within his sorrowful, desolate family situation, in a sudden inspiration I handed him that book. Reading its first chapter still, he had already decided to go to travel on his next vacations to check the philosophies of India in loco.

India was the most liberating experience to my friend. It changed his life. Mostly his relationship with his parents -- emotionally, he had been dependent from his mother, and financially, from his father. That's also when he started growing his hair to the actual ponytail he wore on the Île du Blanchomme, and when he had finally left home -- and his was the impressive, majestic Château de Montbelle -- for good.

"Ha-ha, I think he hates you, Carlo!" Armand laughed joyfully, unearthing a perfectly shaped shell that bore the most stunning gradient from deep purple to beige. Then, looking at me, his tone less casual, he said, "As much as I... I appreciate you."

His father would never forgive me for having thus influenced his son, on what he thought had been an irresponsible journey to a wicked, dangerous country. What Monsieur did not know was that Armand came back from India willing to quit the École. He had always wanted to study Architecture elsewhere -- he dreamed of Berlin and the developments of the Bauhaus. Contemporary, and not classical Architecture, was his aim. But his father had imposed the traditional École des Beaux-Arts on him. Having wanted to live in Paris, Armand had agreed on it. And it was me to dissuade Armand from abandoning the École -- but Monsieur had heard none of this, and held firmly to his opinion that I was the worst influence for his son.

Thus I had turned into 'persona non grata' and never been invited to the Château de Montbelle. Though a vain wish, I dreamed of visiting it -- if just for a weekend, profit from its marvelous art collection. My ancestors, I thought, all peasants like me, might have entered a castle only as servants. But I, despite my noble friend -- I was never to enter the Châteu de Montbelle.

But all that seemed so far away -- the École des Beaux-Arts and the apartment we had shared in Paris, the abandoned factory that had become my improvised retreat and atelier, the grand and unreachable Château de Montbelle, Armand's family, my grandfather Tarso and our ancestral lands in the Apennines...

And when alone – Armand had stayed on the beach -- I dived into the sea, I was seeking to set myself farther apart from that world.

A bit over twenty four hours before, I had entered the sea for the first time in my life. Already, I could not conceive living my days without falling into its generous embrace at least once every day. How I loved to swim towards the horizon, almost blinded, my face burning, following the liquid, golden thread towards the sun!

Oh

my 

God...

Dio, grazie.

Thank You

for your

Merciful Kindness.



Knowing Armand would call me for the moon rise, I did not distance myself, that time. I counted, already, on the days I would be left on my own on the Île du Blanchomme to swim as much and as far as I wanted – while, at that moment, being with Armand was the most important thing. Feeling our bonds strengthening again, I felt my path was linked, more than to the sun beckoning me to get lost in illumination, to that young man on the beach. Who was already beckoning me, with an urgency I was about to understand.






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