The Bottom of Your Heart Read Free Page B

away? Yes. She was running away. From him. From herself. From what she wished had happened and hadn’t. From the stagnant life she hadn’t been able to escape.
    She’d thought it over long and hard, and decided that this was the best solution. They called them “temporary climatic colonies”; they were designed to ward off tuberculosis, one of the diseases that threatened children’s health. Give a sick child to the sea, and the sea will give back a healthy child, ran the slogan; who could say if that were true. In any case, it was a way to offer fresh air to those who couldn’t afford it, and an opportunity for the Opera Nazionale Balilla, the Fascist youth organization, to do some summertime proselytizing. The director of the college, who remembered Enrica as the best student she’d ever had, had given her a hug and promised that she’d make sure she was first in line if any openings presented themselves. Sure enough, a few days later the director had sent for her.
    Enrica’s father had objected; he’d rather have kept his daughter close. But her mother had supported her, in the hope that a new setting might offer a chance to meet new people.
    So now Enrica found herself aboard a ship steaming toward the island of Ischia, twenty miles across the Bay of Naples, where a summer colony was currently missing one of its teachers; the last one had been discovered to be scandalously pregnant, though unmarried. Apparently fate wanted to second her decision to put as much distance as she could between herself and those sorrowful green eyes that appeared to her every night in her dreams—when, that is, she finally managed to get to sleep after tossing and turning for hours.
    She squinted into the sunshine, gulped, and tried to distract herself by admiring the view. She recognized Pizzofalcone, the Charterhouse of San Martino, Castel Sant’Elmo standing atop its brilliant green hill; along the coast, the handsome façades of the palaces of Santa Lucia and Castel dell’Ovo, which stretched alongside the water like a long stone finger. Further back, Posillipo tumbled downhill toward the bright blue waters of the bay, with its court of a hundred fishing boats returning after a night out on the water. The city, teeming and treacherous, assumed a stirring beauty from that vantage point, and she felt a twinge of homesickness. Enrica wondered what people who are forced to emigrate must feel when they sail away and turn to look back at that spectacular view, knowing they may never set eyes on it again.
    A knot of despair swelled in her throat. The green-gilled woman, who’d been struggling against an overwhelming urge to vomit, found the strength to ask her if she felt well. Enrica nodded with a tight smile, then turned back toward sea to conceal the ocean of tears that had filled her eyes.
    I’m going to be happy, she said over and over again to herself. I’m going to be happy.
    And she silently wept.

IV
    O nce a year, in this city, the heat comes. The real heat.
    Of course, one might say that there are plenty of times when the temperature is too high, that, generally speaking, it’s never really cold here. But that’s not entirely true. One might also say that, even in other seasons, there are days when the south wind—the sirocco—brings hot air out of Africa, driving people mad, making them do things, say things, think things they would never have otherwise even imagined. And true, that does sometimes happen. But heat, the genuine article, only comes once a year.
    It’s never a surprise. People begin bracing for it in springtime, when the sweet scent of flowers spreads through the city and men loosen their ties in the sunshine, when it becomes more pleasant to stop and chat on the street or out an open window, conversing across the narrow streets and the
vicoli
of the center of town. The heat’ll come any day now, say the housewives, cheerfully