She wakes him with a sigh. He begins to stir from a quick sleep and he opens his eyes to the scenery. If he trusted where he were, he could look out and enjoy the ocean, as well as the sand that comes off the dune, and twists down the beach. But he feels uneasiness. He feels it in the tightness of his joints. And he doesn't feel rested even after sleeping for an hour, as if some enzyme has not been released that would give the easy sensation of having gained sleep.
"I still feel filthy from that ferry ride. I don't know what I was expecting from an Italian ferry," he says.
"I can't tell. Or you don't smell it. Or you smell like you belong to me." "You look like someone who belongs," he rolls unto his stomach and rests his chin on her naked belly. "You have brown eyes, and you're brown all over. Everything agrees."
She scratches her breast and turns her head toward the ocean and looks out across the dune, at the stark white saline of the sand that flows down into the ocean and at an ugly, half dead tree. She doesn't want to think about his expression for very long. "Maybe he had an ugly dream," she thinks, "maybe with this ugly tree in it and maybe a funeral." She sighs again, finding her view of ocean, among other things, to be beautiful. And then she turns back towards him and almost stares at him.
Although the sun still has hours in the sky, it is not hot. Against the cold wind from the sea, it gives a deep warm on their faces. He also feels a different warmth: the warmth of being looked at, of knowing that someone else is searching for an expression and wondering what caused it. He feels the need for talk, and at that instant she says, "I like it here."
"It was that old professor in Palermo that told me to visit this place."
"I feel good, and I don't want to move for a long time."
"Yes, this place is nice. That professor, Paolo, he told me so many stories, about traveling. It seemed like he just made things up. Like he was bored or I was bored." He considered that she might not want to hear about his professor. She turns to him, surprising him with a look of interest.
"Yes, a feeling of being lied to?"
"Not so much lied to. His whole talk just still bothers me. It didn't seem real. He told me to come here, while talking about going to the Black Madonna churches on these islands."
"That cult."
"Yes. I remember his words so clearly, 'imagine an ancient Mediterranean peasant woman on a donkey cart, on a rocky, desolate path next to the ocean, with her child on her lap. The cart hits a bump, and the child is dropped, and falls toward the ocean. But before it hits the water, a column of earth rises out of the ocean, cradling and returning the child to the mother.' And then Paolo tries to shock you, he almost tries to scare you, and so he says that the mother is terrorized by the experience and loses her wits to the secret cause of her child's life. She abandons it at the nearest church, and the statues of Mary shed a black tear. It's only a story, I guess. He just tries to get at you."
"Still. It bothers you, yet you don't want to forget?"
"I don't know."
"You do to know. You listened to him. You came here, right?" Now it is he who gazes out at the sea and sighs, not realizing he mimicked the sigh that she woke him with a few moments earlier.
"Yes, I'm here, and the water looks pretty good from here."
"We need a swim."