The Bottom of Your Heart Read Free

sweat.
    â€œNo. I want to stay at home. The people who are leaving are weak, they’re the ones who can’t make it here. But
I
can. I want to make it.”
    He was silent. He spat out the straw and picked up a rock.
    â€œThen why do you come down here, when the ships set sail? If you don’t want to leave, why do you come?”
    â€œBecause you come. Because I know you like it.”
    â€œThat’s the only reason?”
    A man and a woman were embracing at the foot of the gangway. They weren’t crying, they spoke no words of reassurance or tenderness. They clung tight to each other, in despair.
    She whispered: “No. That’s not the only reason. It’s also to remind myself that I’m not going to be forced to leave here so I can find something to eat. That I’m going to live well here, at home, where I belong. Because I’m not weak. I’m going to make it.”
    She was just a girl, and she’d spoken so quietly that it was almost impossible to understand the individual words; but he turned to look at her as if she’d shouted in his ears.
    â€œIf people are happy together, if they love each other, if they have a family, then any place can be their home. There’s no reason to fight, is there? You just go wherever you’re happiest, that’s all.”
    She said nothing; she just went on staring expressionlessly at the couple embracing in silence and the black hull of the ship looming behind them.
    â€œI’m going to be happy,” she murmured. And she started to nod, slowly and forcefully, as if she were listening to a voice from within telling her just how to do that. “I’m going to be happy. I know I will. I have it written in the depths of my heart.”

III
    I’ m going to be happy, thought Enrica. I’m going to be happy.
    The air in the closed interior of the steamer was unbreathable, so she’d stepped out onto the deck. But the hot wind brought no relief, and the smell of diesel fuel coupled with the rolling of the deck made her seasick; for the thousandth time she wondered whether she’d made the right choice.
    I’m going to be happy, she repeated to herself firmly. She even whispered it, without realizing it, and a fat woman looking green around the gills stared at her curiously.
    The last few months hadn’t been easy. Shy by nature, she’d had to force herself to build, painstakingly and patiently, a friendship with Rosa, the childhood governess of the man she’d fallen in love with.
    Had she fallen in love? Yes, no question. She was more than certain. Because love, Enrica thought to herself, is a physical thing more than a state of mind. You can measure it by the beat that your heart skips every time he lays his eyes on you, and by the extra little surge in the next beat, when you realize that there’s a tenderness welling up in those eyes. Love is the heat that you feel on your face at the idea of placing your lips against his. Love is the sinking feeling in your belly when you spot his silhouette at the window, on a dark winter evening, glimpsed from across the street, through the rain.
    Love is something physical. And she was in love.
    The absurd thing was that the whole time she’d always sensed, in her heart, on her skin, in her gut, that he loved her too. And during the long months in which he had watched her from the window and she had awaited a single gesture, a word, she’d wondered why he hadn’t declared himself. Was there another woman?
    The only way to find out was to talk to those who knew him, and there was only one person who fit that description, namely his elderly governess, his old
tata
, a modest woman, only apparently bad-tempered, who’d welcomed Enrica’s desperate appeal with pragmatism, telling her how much she hoped Enrica’s wish would come true, and sooner rather than later, too, because Rosa was tired and afraid that her young master would be