FIRST LOVE

I've come back for him.

These are the words I wrote down in my notebook when I finally spotted San Giustiniano from the deck of the ferryboat. Just for him. Not for our house, or the island, or my father, or for the view of the mainland when I used to sit alone in the abandoned Norman chapel in the last weeks of our last summer here, wondering why I was the unhappiest person on earth.

I was traveling alone that summer and had started my monthlong trip on the coast by going back to a place where I'd spent all my childhood summers. The trip had been a long-standing wish of mine, and now that I had just graduated, there was no better time to pay a short visit to the island. Our house had burned down years earlier, and after we'd moved to the north, no one in the family was ever keen on revisiting the place, or selling the property, or finding out what had really happened. We simply abandoned it, especially on hearing that, after the fire, the locals had pillaged what they could and laid waste to the rest. Some even held that the fire was no accident. But these were mere speculations, my father said, and there was no way of knowing anything but by going there. So the first thing I promised I'd do on stepping off the ferryboat was to make a right turn, walk down the familiar esplanade, past the imposing Grand Hotel and the guesthouses lining the waterfront, and head straight to our house to see the damage myself. This is what I'd promised my father. He himself had no wish to set foot on the island again. I was a man now, and it was up to me to see what needed to be done.

But perhaps I wasn't coming back just for Nanni. I was coming back for the boy of twelve I'd been ten years earlier — though I knew I'd find neither one. The boy now was tall and sported a bushy reddish beard, and as for Nanni, he'd disappeared altogether and was never heard from again.

I still remembered the island. I remembered how it looked the last time I'd seen it on our last day, scarcely a week before school started, when my father had taken us to the ferry station and then stood on the dock waving at us as the anchor chain clamored and the boat screeched its way backward while he stayed there motionless, growing smaller and smaller until we were no longer able to see him. As had been his habit each fall, he would stay behind for a week to ten days to make sure the house was locked down properly, the electricity, water, and gas turned off, the furniture protected, and all the local help on the island paid. I am sure he was not displeased to see his mother-in-law and her sister leave on the ferryboat that would take them back to the mainland.

But what I did as soon as I set foot on the ground after the old traghetto clanged and pulled out of the same exact spot a decade later was to turn left instead of right and head straight up the stone-paved path that led to the ancient hilltop town of San Giustiniano Alta. I loved its narrow alleys, sunken gutters, and old lanes, loved the cooling scent of coffee from the roasting mill that seemed to welcome me no differently now than when I ran errands with my mother, or when, after seeing my Greek and Latin tutor that last summer, I would take the long way home every afternoon. Unlike the more modern San Giustiniano Bassa, San Giustiniano Alta always rested in the shade even when it grew unbearably sunny along the marina. In the evenings oftentimes, when the heat and humidity on the seafront became intolerable, I'd go back up with my father for an ice cream at the Caffè dell'Ulivo, where he sat facing me with a glass of wine and chatted with the townspeople. Everyone knew and liked my father and deemed him un uomo molto colto, a very learned man. His hobbling Italian was laced with Spanish words that sought to sound Italian. But everyone understood, and when they couldn't help but correct and laugh at some of his strangely macaronic words, he was happy to join in the laughter himself. They called him Dottore, and though everyone knew he was not a medical doctor, it was not uncommon for someone to ask him for medical advice, especially since everyone trusted his opinion on health matters more than they did the local pharmacist, who liked to pass for the town physician. Signor Arnaldo, the owner of the caffè, had a chronic cough, the barber suffered from eczema, Professore Sermoneta, my tutor, who frequently ended up in the caffè at night, always feared they'd have to remove his gallbladder one day — everyone confided in my father, including the baker, who liked to show my father the bruises on his arms and shoulders caused by his ill-tempered wife, who, some said, started cheating on him on their very wedding night. Sometimes, my father would even step outside the caffè with someone to dispense an opinion in private, then push aside the beaded curtain and come back in, and return to his seat with both his elbows spread on the table, his emptied glass of wine in the middle, and stare at me, always telling me there was no need to rush with my ice cream, we might still find time to walk up to the abandoned castle if I wished. The castle by night overlooking the faraway lights on the mainland was our favorite spot, and there both of us would sit silent along the ruined ramparts to watch the stars. He called this making memories, for the day when, he'd say. What day? I'd ask, to tease him. For the day you know when. Mother said we were made from the same mold. My thoughts were his thoughts, and his thought my thoughts. Sometimes I feared he might read my mind if he so much as touched me on the shoulder. We were the same person, she said. Gog and Magog, our two Dobermans, loved only my father and me, not my mother or my elder brother, who had stopped spending his summers with us a few years earlier. The dogs turned away from everyone else and growled if you got too close. The townsfolk knew to keep their distance, but the dogs were trained not to bother anyone. We could tie them to the leg of a table outside the Caffè dell'Ulivo, and so long as they could see us, they lay down as meekly as ewes.

On special occasions, rather than head down to the marina after stopping at the castle, my father and I would go back into town, and because we thought alike, we'd stop for another ice cream. "She'll say I'm spoiling you." "Another ice cream, another glass of wine," I'd say. He'd nod, knowing there was no point denying it.

Our nightwalks, as we called them, were our only times alone together. Entire days would go by without him. He was in the habit of going for a swim very early in the morning, then heading for the mainland after breakfast, and coming back in the evening, sometimes late at night on the very last ferry. Even when I was asleep, I loved hearing his footsteps crunching the gravel leading to our house. It meant he was back, and the world was whole again.

My poor final grade in Latin and Greek that spring had put a cruel wedge between my mother and me. My report card had arrived in late May just days before we boarded the ferry to San Giustiniano. The whole boat ride was...