Sauro never gets angry

Literary Review, Fall, 2005 by Elena Stancanelli

Elena Stancanelli

I've been living in Rome for two years. In summer, when people leave for vacation, I go to Sardinia or Rimini. But before that, as early as May, I spend my weekends in Capocotta, where the dunes are. It's not far, and I can come back to Rome at night.

The beach at Capocotta gets really crowded on the weekends in May. There may be even more people then than in July or August. They drive slowly up and down Via Pontina, block the road, look for parking spaces near the cafes and bars of the beachfront clubs. The lungomare stinks of gas. They end up leaving their cars on one side of the lungomare, next to the pine forest, and their motorini on the other side of the street, close to the beach, locked to the fence, one after the other, all the way to Ostia.

It's madness. You can't even get to the beach at Capocotta on weekends. Crowds, voices, paddles, windsurfers, techno music, suntan lotion, kicked up sand, police helicopters, cell phones with their customized ring-tones, tattooed biceps, pierced eyebrows, pierced chins. The beach at Capocotta is filthy on Saturdays and Sundays. That's what they say when they're lying there. Then they get up and go for a swim. When they come back they say the water is so disgusting you can't even swim any more. They hug their towels to their chests and shake their wet hair onto the backs of their sleeping friends.

I walk. It doesn't bother me. 1 have to be careful not to trip over all those naked asses that make up one long mattress of flesh. I have to be careful not to look at the men's business when they stand up, hanging there, or flopping over their thighs when they lie down. As for the rest, it doesn't matter. No better, no worse.

I never take my clothes off on the beach. I wear sneakers, a pair of long pants and a T-shirt. A red Ferrari cap turned around backwards, and a leather bag across my chest. I sell music, CDs. When someone calls me I hand them the stack I carry around with me. They look through it and if they don't find what they like I hand them another pile that I keep in my bag. The Nomads, Queen, The Cure, David Bowie, Blink 182--I keep those in my bag; Laura Pausini, Saranno Famosi, Tiziano Ferro, Buddha Bar, Moby--I hold those in my hand. Some women cover themselves up. They put one arm over their breasts, or wrap themselves in their sarongs. Other women just talk to me--completely naked. They laugh and joke around. If they ask me to, I sit down with them. There are some regulars, too. One woman, Rossella, gave me a Dolce & Gabbana T-shirt.

Some of the naked men, usually the ones who are on their own and who walk up and down a lot before diving into the water, ask me for different kind of stuff: Patty Pravo, Mina, the soundtrack of Moulin Rouge, Madonna. It's a kind of a secret password, always followed by a smile. But I never go behind the dunes.

I thought about it a lot before I actually decided. I couldn't sleep because I thought about it so much, especially on the nights I slept on the ground. Some nights I sleep on the ground and some nights I sleep on the bed. I take turns with another guy. I thought about how much money I could make, and those men actually seem nice. But I always end up thinking the same thing: men have to be men and women have to be women. That's just what I think. I come from Senegal and I am a Catholic. Others can do as they please.

Sauro sleeps behind the dunes, in a kind of tin shack covered with branches. At night, after the sun goes down, he swims in the sea. Like me, he waits until the beach is empty. We swim alongside each other, his wetsuit shining in the last streaks of sunlight. I swim faster than he does, but choose to wait for him, because his breaststroke makes me laugh. He told me he doesn't want to put his head under the water because he doesn't want to hear that noise, the noise of the sand scraping over the rocks below. When we get close to the shore I pretend to drown him. Sauro never gets angry, even if he is only fourteen and has to sleep in a shack, even though he is Italian.

"What about your parents?"

His wetsuit has short sleeves. It's much too big for him, and he does this thing with the sleeves, putting his right hand up the left sleeve and his left hand up the right sleeve, sliding them all the way in until they come out the neck. He looks like he is doing that joke where you pretend to choke yourself. You talk to him, you tell him things, and he fools around with his arms. He never answers.

I have never seen anyone like him before. There isn't anyone else like him. He has blond hair but he never combs it and so it's long and knotted. He's skinny, and always wears his wetsuit. You can only see his feet, and they're small. When it rains, he stays inside his shack and paints his nails with a bottle of red polish he found on the beach. He's good at finding stuff. For food, he scavenges through the garbage at the bars and in the cans on the beach.

Once he found a ladies hand mirror. When he wants to act stupid, he calls me Sauro, like him. I turn around and he starts to laugh, with that mouth of his, like a little girl's.