Morning Sea Read Online Free PDF

homework, nasty stuff, because there’s nothing worse than books and notebooks in the summer. And he always gets bad grades, an eternal debt of credits to make up.
    One time when Angelina was trying to get him out of the water, she stepped on a sea urchin and lost her sunglasses. That time, she slapped him silly. Pulled him out of the water by his hair, banged him around like an octopus. That was the time he’d most hated her, the time he’d felt she loved him more than anything. That night, she let him sleep in her bed, in the crumpled white sheets, with her, her smell, her movements. His mother had separated from his father. At night, she’d stand in front of the door, beneath the palm tree, and smoke, an arm across her belly, the cigarette packet clutched in her hand. She’d talk to herself, moving her lips in silence. Her hair plastered to her forehead, making funny faces. She looked like a monkey ready to leap.
     
    Now Vito is grown. They live outside Catania and come to the island only in the summer and sometimes at Easter. These are the last days of the holidays. His mother has to get back for the start of the school year. Vito has finished school. He’s done with the hassle of lies and copying off other kids, waking up at seven in the morning with bad breath. He passed the school-leaving exam. It took tutors, it took prodding, but he passed. He did a good job. The examiners liked him . He presented a history paper on the Tripolini, the Italians that Gaddafi banished from Tripoli in 1970. Vito’s research started with General Graziani, the butcher who led Mussolini’s troops in Libya, and ended with his own mother.
    He talked about mal d’afrique , the nostalgia that turns sticky, like tar, and about the trip they took together, back in time. To Libya.
    It was a total liberation. The next day, he took the biggest dump ever. He went out to celebrate in a club and kissed a girl. Too bad that afterwards she told him she’d made a mistake. Vito managed all the same to explore her mouth, and swelled up and trembled like when he was a kid in the waves.
    Now Vito looks at the sea. He’s barefoot. He has prehensile feet, calloused like a sailor’s. It always happens at the end of the summer. His feet are ready to stay, to live bare on the cliffs and rocks.
    It’s been a mindless summer, truly vacant. He slept late, swam infrequently. He’d go down to the sea in a daze. He read a few books in the cave as crabs climbed and retreated.
    Today, he’s wearing a T-shirt and trousers. It’s windy.
    Vito looks at the debris, pieces of boats and other remnants vomited up onto the beach that looks like a maritime rubbish dump.
    There’s a war across the sea.
    It’s been a tragic summer for the island. The same old tragedy, more this year.
    Vito hasn’t gone into town very often. He’s seen the immigrant detention centre. It’s bursting at the seams and stinks like a zoo. He’s seen queues of the poor souls lined up outside the camp kitchen and the plastic toilet booths. He’s seen the fields at night, sown with silver blankets. He saw Tindara, their neighbour, scream and almost die of fright when a Tunisian slipped into her house to steal. He saw kids he knew when he was little, kids he doesn’t say hello to any more, making cauldrons of couscous for the Arab lunch of the wretches.
     
    Vito doesn’t know what he wants to do with his life. He’d like to study art, something he thought of this summer and hasn’t told anyone yet. He draws well. It’s the only thing he’s always managed to do easily, naturally. Maybe because reason doesn’t come into it – all he has to do is follow his hand. Maybe because he spent so much time doodling in notebooks and on school desks instead of studying.
    He looks at the remains of a boat, a flank with blue and green stripes, a star, and an Arab moon.
    He hasn’t eaten a single slice of tuna this summer, not one sea bream. Just eggs and spaghetti. He doesn’t like to think