It is September and I am sitting on the cement steps of the local marina contemplating two things: whether I will have another swim and what I will cook for dinner. A heavy humidity has blown in, which Mario and other locals refer to as scirocco. In this scirocco, I find myself desiring a salty, chewy spaghetti and nothing else. I leap into the water, The Man follows close behind me, and I compile a list of ingredients in my head. Drying off on the water’s edge, The Man leaps up and embraces two people who have stopped walking. It is strange that in all this time we have failed to run into someone, I said last week. He commits us to drinks and dinner, and I go along with it, letting go of my spaghetti, and make small talk. The couple say they could never do what we are doing, which is to say resisting doing anything at all. He tells me about all the places he has visited in his life as if he visited them for the sole purpose of reciting them aloud to me right now. In each place, I notice he references an achievement like climbing a high mountain, attending an extravagant wedding, diving in dangerous water or through thin air. I quickly discern he is a man who needs activities, purpose, something to conquer and tick off. Like if I were in your position, I would pick a spot along this coast and I would work my way up to swimming there, he says. I tell him Albania is just over there, apparently. Though I am yet to see it. He shakes his head and says, seriously, that’s probably a little far.
We remain in bed this morning to dunk Buongrano biscotti in milky tea. Usually, we have one each, two at most, though today The Man has bought the packet to bed. I wonder if this is because he has chosen to bring up the impending finale. He mentions the places he desires to visit one last time. The same names come up as those in my head: Porto Badisco, Tricase Porto, Spongano. I wonder if we can buy Buongrano biscotti in Australia, I say. As I move around the day, I notice I still desire the salty, chewy pasta. I turn over the evening that was in isolation: over the couple we met yesterday evening who live in Northcote, five kilometres up the road from where I used to live. It is the first sense I’ve had of the outside world creeping in, and it dawns on me that all of this will soon come to an end. We have both acknowledged at different times this is not sustainable, that this is not real life, but now I have been reminded of the real life we removed ourselves from, I do not possess much desire to return. I recall the couple from Northcote telling me about their new dog, a Kelpie, which they have trained spectacularly. Though they are both so busy they must outsource the dog walking. It’s quite popular, they assured me. This is something I feel increasingly at odds with. Perhaps because it is the very antithesis of the life, albeit temporary, we have annexed for ourselves here. The couple seem to represent the very thing I have been trying to undo, which is to say the belief that every minute must count for something, that one must not slow down.
I fall onto one of the spare single beds to pass the afternoon with a big book by a dead Russian man about a dead Russian woman. I even slide under the peach and white patterned sheets I used to find so ugly, but now do not mind. This past week, on my walks around town, I find myself contemplating aspects – certain doors, balconies, and benches- I have, until now, failed to notice. Everything changes quality when you know it will soon be taken away from you. This is evident in the big book as character after character is crippled with jealousy. These characters undergo an explicit shift in attitude and feeling towards themselves, their lover, and the world when they feel their lover is pursuing or being pursued by some other. I am reassured every time I read Anna Karenina that the same grievances that plagued Russian Society then plague society still. On the single bed, in the empty room, I feel as though I am on an island surrounded by acres of white and brown geometrical tiles, far away from everything. This is the way I have felt for the entire duration of my time in this small beachside town. It’s only when the smog clears, and I see Albania over the Ionian, I remember we are not alone. At 4.30pm, my alarm goes off and we both stop what we are doing. I assemble a tray of antipasto while The Man removes two glasses from the freezer, and we both move up to the roof to watch the sun set pinkly over Gallipoli. The sun sets an hour earlier now, it has done so since the 27th of October, though I still haven’t adjusted to the 4.45pm darkness. In this warmth, under these colours, it is only the date and time suspended on my wrist that tells me it is Autumn and not Summer. I observe the change of season in garages and driveways, where people have begun reserving wood in preparation for the long winter ahead. It is novel, kind of wonderful, I say to my parents on the phone about the premature darkness. Though I recognise that were we not leaving in eight days, it would be as sobering and melancholy as it is for the rest of this beachside town.
My notebook is not here, so I opt for a blunt grey lead and a receipt floating at the top of my bag. The items on the receipt reference a dinner I made eleven days ago, an artichoke risotto, which I vaguely remember the look of, though I cannot recall the evening or the day this meal was situated. This non-memory unnerves me. It is our last time in Tricase Porto, I write on the receipt, and the images are enormous, slippery, and difficult to hold. The sun is plummeting, giving way to a series of jet streams, which lend an air of festivity to the Porto, like streamers in the sky. Could this display be for us, I write. Today it feels like everything is for us in the same way it did on our last day in Australia. There is something about the abundance of colourful headscarves; the messy piles of Scopa cards; the bronze languid bodies; the couples bent over crosswords; the plastic cups of coffee alongside trays of apricots, nuts and rustic focaccias; the warmth in the Autumn sun; the engaging sentences; the calm water after a week of wind; the public holiday atmosphere of people spritzing and taking a long lunch; the idle hands searching for nuts or gesturing for another; the dog pacing alongside its lap-swimming owner and the schools of fish visible through the water. But then I see a baby next to me flapping her arms at the jet streams and the dog and I realise that it’s all for her too.
We walk around the town one last time. The Man takes photos of doors and pipes coming out of the ground as well as the litter of stray cats we have come to know and differentiate. I walk slowly in front of him, my hands tucked firmly in my pockets, while I simply stare at various parts of the town. I am trying, I think, to ingest what it looks, smells, and sounds like. I am willing myself to remember. We sit at opposite ends of the dining table; The Man has his sketchbook out, and I have my journal open. It seems we both wish to stamp this moment though when I look up at him, he is staring back at me blankly, the pages below him are white because there are no words. What I do not understand is the way people travel or relocate overseas for far longer periods than this. We have both spent longer time away from home before this trip, so why, I reason, does this feel like such an impossible transition?
I consider the video, the one I watched so often while stretching my hamstrings on the brown and white tiles. It is a studio performance by Cate Le Bon in which she speaks to a period of isolation, which was a form of self-imposed coventry: a means of annexing space away from her normal life, the city, and the automation of the rate race. For Cate, this coventry took place in countryside England. When the interviewer asks her about the quality of this time, Cate stiffens and explains that spending lots of time alone is wonderful because it allows you time to catch up with things, but it also allows time for things to catch up with you. In this way, it can be very ‘spooky’. Throughout this trip, I have come to know and feel the spookiness Cate is referring to. It is a spookiness that day-to-day routine, hobbies, responsibilities, work, and social life pardons one from having to address. In his memoir, Alone, Daniel Schreiber speaks to this spookiness too, referencing it has deep ties in both pride and, conversely, shame. There are negative varieties of pride, he writes, which consist of keeping your inner life under wraps, not showing other people how you feel, ignoring difficulties, keeping your chin up and pushing through, and always, always, maintaining composure. But at some point, this composure morphs into a second skin as you put things away again and again. And these things you somehow know but don’t want to know – they begin to accumulate, so much so the pressure of this knowledge becomes painful. He identified the difficulty of his solitude being in the confrontation of his own shame, which, he says, ‘thrives in the shadows’. It wasn’t until I read this that I considered our time away as solitary. It is true to say that in the small beach town, the outside world ceased to exist, and the shortage of the English language fundamentally changed what was required of each other. The Man was no longer just that -no longer just my lover- but now my friend, family, teacher, colleague, and confidant all in one. In the long summer, there really was so much shade, so much shadow, in which we were forced to encounter ourselves all over. In this way, maybe it is not the length of time that dictates the difficulty of the transition, but rather, the quality of this time, which, in our case, was empty and full; luxurious and lonely; blissful and difficult.
Back in Roma, Pascoe, an acquaintance from the language course at the start of the trip, sends us her address. This is followed by a second message telling us her house, which belongs to the Swedish consulate, is situated opposite the Australian consulate. We travel from our apartment across town to Pascoe’s part of the city. When she greets us at the gate, other diplomats are coming in and out of large homes and consulate buildings. It is jarring to see the familiar bright blue Australian flag hanging limply over the Roman sidewalks. Pascoe greets people in a mixture of Italian, Swedish, French, and English. These fellow diplomats are her friends, she tells us. Pascoe, her husband and four children have been put up in a 240 square metre high ceiling house by the Swedish Government, which employs her husband. Pascoe insists on cooking us lunch, something from her country of origin, which involves fried chicken, rice, and African beans. When I ask her what number home this is, she shrugs and says she has lost count. They will be here for five years, she hopes, but they cannot know for sure. It is hard for me to comprehend this degree of staccato living. I wonder how it feels when it all ends and is on the way to the airport for the final time. I imagine it to be a compounded feeling of what I am already experiencing, which is to say a little death.
The Man has set me up a writing desk in our apartment, which I am sitting at while he is at the supermarket collecting ingredients I will later turn into Polpette al Sugo. Below me, on the street, Pignetto is waking up from a long and lazy siesta. It is miserable out: I can feel the cold through the terrazzo floors – all the way through my thick socks. I am sitting and considering what it means to be sitting in this room once again, at the other end of summer. He keeps declaring how unsettling he finds it because the last time we left Pigneto, he says, we travelled to Napoli to see Sicilian Nic and spoke of the end of his trip, which was only just the beginning of ours. I too find this unsettling, just like the items on the receipt. Only this time, I remember the moment he is referring to well. I remember walking away from Nic’s birthday lunch towards a digestive drink. There was a man fishing and using an old buffalo mozzarella box for bait. I remember the feeling of my arm threaded through Nics; the way our legs moved in time; the sound of our puffer jackets against one another and the sight of Vesuvius, massive, on our right.
On the day of the flight, we both wake scattered, though perhaps for different reasons. My discontent references the fact we will very soon leap through time-zones while The Man’s is more practical and concerns us being on time and progressing through the airport without issues. We buy sanitiser, masks, and mints from the pharmacy and reluctantly call a car service. I look around Pigneto, where it is raining for the third day in a row, and it occurs to me we will be returned to yet another summer in three days. In the Fiumicino airport food court, I observe an airport staff member sitting down for his break. He looks tired and hungry but also elated while looking at the contents of his staff meal. They pay them quite well to incentivise people to make the commute to this place of work, The Man says when he sees me staring. He is sitting across from me looking at photos he has taken during our time away. On the table between us, there are two beer bottles as well as a gourmet packet of chips I told him I paid for, but I didn’t: I simply walked away from the counter and nobody cared to stop me. It wouldn’t be an issue if they realised now: the layout of the food court and the multiple counters make feigning confusion an acceptable explanation. I understand my walking away is a symptom of not working for a year and watching my bank account reduced to just three figures. I stare at the departures board and propose a game in which we each must choose a destination. Seoul, he says. Barcelona, I reply. I continue making a list of the places I’d like to go. Every now and then, he turns his laptop around to show me a photo and I feel unwell. No matter how long I stare at the departures board, I am cognizant there is only one option and that is our 8.15 pm flight to Australia via Shanghai. We are out of space and time, or to be more specific, we are out of money. The Man stands up, declaring he is disposing of the chips before he eats them all. Behind him, the airport worker has finished eating and is leaning back, one hand on his belly, the other on his phone screen, which he strokes in an upward motion using his thumb. No longer hungry, he will soon stand up and resume his shift in the same way time demands we will soon move through passport control and through our gate. All I can do is befriend this reality, I think, and move through it with as much grace as possible.
Yellow Days 