It was so she wouldn’t have to see me going out to play soccer with my friends, which she never really liked. She said she didn’t understand what we got out of kicking a ball and running around without stopping, which was fine for kids, but older people never understood it.
I think what she didn’t like in reality was that I came home with muddy clothes. On top of that, if she ever told me to do something after a match, I would always answer that I was very tired.
Italian turned out to be very easy for me to learn. I have to say in all honesty that I have always had an affinity for languages.
We had spoken Galician in our house ever since we were little, especially with my grandmother, who said that Castilian Spanish was for school. She never understood how Franco, in his Galician homeland, had allowed the speaking of Galician in the streets to be prohibited, why did he want us to speak something else? Having always only spoken Galician in her own town and having done so very well, she was always understood by all her neighbors and hadn’t ever needed to speak anything else.
One day, while I was still just a boy, I was going to the home of a school friend and when I passed by the door of the Cathedral, some men who spoke strangely were going inside. I was very surprised because I only half understood them, and I asked my friend:
“What are they saying?”
“It’s Portuguese, couldn’t you tell?” he answered.
And I became curious about that language that was so similar to ours. My interest led me to study it, and over time I managed to master it so well that, as I can verify from my trips to Portugal, not even the Portuguese notice any accent in my voice when I talk to them.
I started studying Italian at the same academy where I learned English and I was fortunate enough to have a beautiful teacher from Florence, who in addition to teaching us how to speak, also made us fall in love with “Mia cara Italia,” or “My beloved Italy,” as she called it.
She taught us with so much warmth, that when she told us bits of its history, it seemed that we were experiencing it for ourselves, we were going through those streets.
I remember the day she told us about Venice, her words immediately transported me into a gondola, and I could feel it moving through the calm waters of its canals, to the point that I could almost hear the gondolier singing a barcarolle.
We were exploring those narrow nameless streets, as she told us:
“I don’t know how they can know their way around.”
Then we reached St. Mark’s Square, the water level almost reaching the wooden walkway where we all walked in single file, careful not to fall, so as not to get wet. They are spread out across the square so people can cross on the day of the “Acua Alta,” as they call it, and walk around without getting their feet wet when the high tide floods the entire square.
She taught us these things, as she told us about them, with pictures that she had and that way we could learn words that she made us repeat until we were pronouncing them correctly.
When she told us about the Tower of Pisa, and she told us that it was leaning, my image of it was so real that I asked the teacher:
“And when it falls, then what?”
“No, it’s been like that for many, many years, and it seems to be safe, it won’t topple,” she said, laughing at my idea.
Then she showed us the picture, I was even more surprised and I thought, “I have to go see this one someday, it’s not enough to only see her image, I didn’t believe her when she said it wasn’t going to topple.”
And that’s how she told us things about each of the important cities of Italy, and this made us talk in a natural way about each of the places, because the whole class was in Italian.
She wouldn’t let us say a single word that wasn’t in Italian, and she made us ask her about everything she was saying, to see if we were learning properly and we loosened up with the language and understood everything. She encouraged us to go to her country, she said it was the most beautiful place in the world.
She showed us many images, especially of her beloved Florence. She told us where she used to play when she was a little girl, the place where she was born, the squares that were close to where she lived. It made us fall in love with those places that seemed so dream-like to us.
She told us about events that occurred in the Middle Ages when the city was very important, and those buildings that had those two-colored bricks caught our attention.
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Now, here in this station, when the guard asked me if he could help me in his peculiar small-town Italian, I could understand his words and answer him in a way that he would understand me too.
“I don’t know where I am,” I said a little embarrassed.
“That happens to many folk, don’t worry. People get a surprise having gotten on in Rome and turning up here, almost getting their feet wet,” he replied with a smile. This train has always been used by the people of Rome to get to the sea.
I couldn’t help but smile, knowing that the same thing had happened to others calmed me down.
He was the one who told me that the inhabitants of Rome had always come here to these beaches since ancient times, and that these days they also used this train to come and sunbathe and cool off if the weather permitted it.
“It’s very comfortable, so they don’t have to drive or worry about finding a place to park, and that way it’s cheaper, they just have to pay for this ticket and then to get onto the beach.”
“Onto the beach?” I asked somewhat taken aback, thinking that I had misunderstood.
“Yes, don’t you know? You have to pay to get onto the beach here,” he told me emphatically.
“Paying to bathe?” I said in surprise, but deep down I thought it was a joke.
“No, you pay to get onto the beach. If you don’t want to bathe in the sea, that’s up to you. You can also just lie down to sunbathe, or sit down to eat a sandwich. Each person can decide what they want to do,” the man said very seriously.
I was a little hesitant. It hadn’t been a joke on his part. Paying to get onto the beach, I’d never heard of such a thing.
Well, the important thing is that now I knew where I was. Then I asked him at what time I could return.
He informed me that the subway trains ran at all hours of the day and that it was very punctual, because as it was the first station on the line, punctuality was the most important thing for them. If they lost even a few seconds, little by little, as there were so many stations, they would arrive in Rome very late.
The phone rang inside that office and the guard said goodbye and off he went with a brisk step to answer it.
When I was alone again looking in that direction, I saw the station bathrooms, where I decided to go. I went in and the first thing I did was freshen up my face, I needed to wake up.
I knew I was not asleep, but the cool water was good for me. Having calmed down, I left and headed confidently into town. I had to find somewhere to eat, and I had to drink something because my stomach had started to grumble very loudly, since, alongside some other things, I had neglected it.
I crossed several streets and found nothing. I couldn’t seem to find anywhere where I could buy some bread at the very least.
Suddenly I saw the water, the sea, there in the distance. I had forgotten it was there and I lost my hunger, at least momentarily, and I went toward it to get a better look. How could the sea be there? I still didn’t get it. I just kept remembering that I’d taken the subway in Rome.
Since I couldn’t ask anyone because the whole place was empty, I opted to sit there for a while on the beach. It was full of dark pebbles, and almost entirely covered with everything that the sea brings in after a stormy day, logs, the occasional rag, heaps of seaweed, all dragged in by the sea.
Looking absent-mindedly over all of this, I got to thinking once more about what I was doing, about how my life had taken me, or rather, my curiosity had taken me, into such a strange situation, sitting there in that lonely place, in an unknown corner of Italy, hungry and not knowing what I should do next, or what my next step should be.
Hitting me in the face, the sea breeze was agreeing with me, erasing all my worries as if by magic. I noticed that coolness in the air caressing me, and it calmed me. I suddenly felt that I had nothing to fear, that everything was fine, that there was only that moment and that I should enjoy it, no matter what had happened, or what was still to come.
I don’t know how long I was sitting there like that, looking all around me, gazing at the stones on the ground, when I asked myself, “Is it really true that you have to pay to get onto the beach here in Italy? I’ve never heard of such a thing in all my days.” I still thought it had been a joke, by that man who had told me, even though he didn’t have the face of a joker. “Who would pay to enter such a place? If the sea belonged to everyone, in my opinion, who would have come up with such a strange notion.”
Turning that issue over in my mind, so odd, yet so unimportant to me, I was forgetting all the commotion that’d had to happen that day to reach this point.
Relaxed, sitting there facing the sea, the Mediterranean was so calm. It seemed, as they say, “As still as a millpond,” so different from the Atlantic to which I was so accustomed to seeing.
There was no chance of ever finding the sea calm along the coasts of Galicia, it always seemed to be wild, like it was angry, as if it wanted to smash the rocks that prevented it from penetrating the land. It was nothing like here, where it gently approached and receded again, almost in silence, as if it didn’t want to cause a fuss.
Today at least, the water moved silently. The waves were barely noticeable, although looking around and seeing the debris that was scattered over the stones, it was clear that it wasn’t always so peaceful, that it also knew how to get angry. That being said, the important thing was that I was enjoying it now as it rocked gently back and forth in front of me as if it wanted to reassure me, saying, “Relax, all the danger has passed.”
