"... Then in moments of solitude, when regret becomes habit, a way of living together, the absent lips of all the beautiful passers-by we could not hold back are mourned." He accompanied himself with the guitar sitting on one of the two cleats mooring, keeping the left leg crossed over the other. He lifted it and put it on his right thigh, leaning comfortably on it. The quarterdeck, traditionally reserved for officers, was occupied only by stern lookouts. Soon the sun would go down. The light, of a pale red, in the unusually calm waters of the Gulf of Lion, refracted itself on the clear paiolato, decreeing to it the destiny of a changing and indefinable color, in the seafaring marriage with the grains of salt and the drops of foam still vivid.
The officer on the platoon made sure the marker was ready for the flag-bearer. The cadet on duty, reviewed the sailor's prayer. He would have paid with too much discipline a mistake too marked and, considering the legends of the crew on the benevolence of the girls of the next port, would have preferred to be hung by the feet of the tree rather than remain delivered on board once arrived at their destination .
At the order he stood at attention. "... Bless o Lord our distant houses, dear people. Bless the rest of the people in the falling night. Bless us that, for it, we watch over the sea in arms. ”The navigation flag slipped slowly, to the whistle of the sailor and returned proudly, no longer visible but present, like our distant affections. Giuseppe remained to enjoy the passing of the sun on the horizon, the brackish breeze in the nostrils and the joy of the explosion of a wonderful starry universe.
The calm wave across the starboard cradled the ship that, almost against nature, proceeded to motor in spite of its square kilometers of sails. Everything, in short, conspired for melancholy.
Only a few days before the departure of the ship for the summer cruise had met with old classmates in high school and the thought went to the first day of school and the years when the idea of dressing the double-breasted blue did not even touch him. He remembered the bus, in blue livery, which approached the wide open space along the Via Aurelia, interrupting a horrible Palazzinara reconstruction of the year 60.
Lessons began at half past eight, but the bus took about forty minutes to travel the 15 kilometers. The early risers at half past seven already animated the pitch. Giuseppe ... Beppe (because only his mother called him by his first name) had spent the sleepless night, as always happened to him on the eve of important things, although he did not have much to worry about, for a normal first day of school. On the contrary, the two older brothers were already attending the same high school, so that it can be said that, even if they had never entered, that institution did not represent a novelty for him.
Here, the brothers ... While Beppe at the antelope sound of the alarm clock had done the morning practices in a flash, the two, more scafati, had certainly diluted the time, reserving for the return to the labors of classical studies a more moderate approach.
On the other hand, they were high school students, and they could afford some smudging. Paola, then, in the penultimate year, was already a decidedly gracious creature who did not fail to exalt with the right coquetry the beauty of her red-skinned years, in spite of the pulp, still unripe. Result, the "race bis", as it came called the bus reserved for students, it was already well past when the two finished breakfast and realized that only a divine intervention or, alternatively, the car of dad, could have allowed the arrival at school in an acceptable time. Dad, who put the study above everything else, didn't back out. Fortunately it was a warm autumn morning. He smoked like a Turk and used to open a small window in the window. Thanks to the climate we all had the authorization to drop the windows to zero. Which saved, more than ours, the nostrils of classmates, still unknown to Beppe.
There was not much traffic, the first of October of the 77 and the journey was fast enough to recover some of the lost time, but not enough to choose a good bench to keep all year. The problem, in truth, concerned only Beppe. The brothers, in fact, could have claimed seniority acquired or had previously agreed on an adequate arrangement. Angelo, who in the two-year period had had the same professor who was now inheriting Beppe, showed him the door to the class and greeted him.
There were only two places left: one at the back of the classroom and one in the front row, immediately following the door. Beppe, agitated by the anxiety of fixing things that always devoured him, put down the floppy bag, full of the only diary, brand new, on the bench in the front row. Immediately taking a look at his future companion, he made the gesture of taking away the bag ... but it seemed ugly and, in any case, he was anticipated by the hand of the young man who occupied the bench next to him.
"Hi, my name is Chicco," he said as he spoke, in a rather nasal and, so to speak, shattering voice. Beppe held out his hand. He noticed that in addition to a kind of bust, which supported his neck, as if to correct an invincible gravity, and that had given him the initial impulse to go to the bottom, Chicco had a kind of bowl that came out of his nose.
"Now I'm settled! - thought Beppe - I'll even have to take him to piss ... ". It was, in reality, simply a temporary bust, a useful precaution to remedy a slight crushing due to the last dip in the season and, as far as the nostril is concerned, an octopus, annoying more for him than for the others e, fortunately, annoying as it is harmless. The worst damage, probably, was due to the assets spent in tissue, which in Liguria always deserves a minimum of attention ...
To recall the attention elsewhere, however, the professor thought, a hairless with the improbable sideburns reported by the hair, as required by fashion in the 70 years.
"Aicardi ... present", Bandini ... present ...
"The morning call resounded in his ear and he saw the faces of his companions, left many years ago, until the ship's speaker called him back to the present.
"Rising guard prepare to detect".
