The Long Shadow Of A Dream. Roberta Mezzabarba
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course I love you ... Yes, Ernesto, I love you.»
This time she brought her face closer to that of the boy: she looked at him for a moment straight in the eyes, then kissed him gently wetting his face with her salty tears.
They hugged.
They remained in each other's arms for an indefinable length of time: Greta felt Ernesto's arms squeezing her deeply against his chest. She heard the distant noise caused by the breaking of the barriers that had kept her so long in that state of proud and stubborn solitude, without doctrines, with nothing to believe in or trust. She felt pain and joy together, she felt a feeling of lightness and at the same time she felt her heart heavy, like a thousand pounds of lead.
* * *
They got back.
After crossing a short field dotted with thistles almost everywhere and sparse olive trees, they reached the top of the mountain that dominated the island, where the second set of walls was located. They found on a large boulder, squared by arms and chisels God knows how long before, what remained of the tower, the fortress, the monastery and the church of S. Stefano. Everything seemed so desolate among those stones covered by those weeds that tried to hide even the last remains of those settlements, but at the same time everything was marvellous: the grey rubble stood out against the dark and gorgeous blue colour of the lake. Some of those pieces leaned over the precipice seventy meters high on the surface of the water, so much so that it seemed that they would slip down that bristling and frightening cliff to disappear in a splash under the deep water.
«You know, Ernesto» Greta broke that silence only broken by the sound of the waters below «I would like to die, now, at this precise moment, falling into the blue waters of the lake, as one of these boulders could do: I am so happy, and I am afraid that everything will change. All the beautiful things in life go by so quickly. I wish everything would remain like this. Forever. Forever .»
Ernesto looked at her: she had such a tiny figure, almost hard to see in the sunlight.
«I don't want you to say these things, not even as a joke. Maybe it's the island that inspires it to you. But don't listen to it. Do you know the story of Amalasunta, queen of the Goths?»
As soon as Ernesto had finished pronouncing those words, a cloud like those ones that were in the sky when they went ashore, covered the sun and blocked it out, as they did with a large stretch of water. In a flash, the island looked like that tragic place because of what happened, which Greta still did not know. A story of legends, tortures, struggles, killings.
«In 526, Theodoric, king of the Goths, who ruled over Italy for thirty-three years, died without leaving a direct heir. He had three daughters from his wedding. The eldest girl Amalasunta was married to a Visigoth. She had a child, Atalarico, who was supposed to take charge of the kingdom because, according to the Gothic law, a kingdom could not be inherited by a woman. In the year when Theodoric died, Atalarico was still a child, and Amalasunta took over the kingdom in place of the boy for almost eight years; then one day Atalarico, who was still not ready to rule a kingdom, died. Amalasunta, then in order not to lose the kingdom she loved so much, offered herself as a bride to the son of one of her father’s sisters: Teodato.
He would have come to the throne anyway, but he accepted Amalasunta as a bride anyway, to calm the hearts of the many people who sided with the woman. Teodato was a ruthless man, who cared for nothing else but to make sure he had a peaceful life by surrounding himself with wealth and ease, without worrying about the well-being of his people. Teodato always pretended: he probably would have liked to get rid of Amalasunta as soon as he got married to her, but he thought that it was safer to commit the crime far from the places where she was loved and cared for. So he deceived her and brought her to Tuscany, with the excuse of seeing their possessions, and then went to Rome where she could have expressed the faith that she had always believed in. But Amalasunta never got to Rome: in fact, on a stretch of the road that was going around Lake Bolsena, she was taken out from the cart that was carrying her, and pushed into a boat that took her to the Martana island, where it is said that she was exiled and then eventually died. Teodato let her live for a short time. It was too dangerous to postpone her killing, not so much because she could ask for help from the Romans, but as for the many Goths who despised Teodato and would think of her with pity being left in a lost island . The way Amalasunta was killed is not very clear, but the legend tells that she was thrown from the top of the cliff on which we are standing now.»
Ernesto finished his story, and Greta was lost in God knows what thoughts: she was thinking about Ernesto, about what he had said to her, she thought about Amalasunta, queen of the Goths, about the stories that were intertwined with those boulders scattered on the ground.
She was wondering how much history those stones could witness.
Surely they knew Amalasunta, and today they had seen Greta surrender for the second time in her life to the sweet and painful delights of her feelings.
6.
The day was coming to an end: the sun now low on the horizon was lighting up the clouds still high in the sky with colorful lights and the emotions going over the two of them like calm, unpredictable and devastating tides. Going down from the top of the mountain, through the stairs carved into the rock, Greta saw some specimens of prickly pear and told Ernesto how gigantic those plants were in Sicily, and what a beautiful scenery they create: in Greta's words there was nostalgia and affection for a land, her own, which she had not seen for nearly six years.
They quickly reached the small boat they had left on the shore, gently lapped by the lake's waters. Ernesto broke away from the shore of the island pushing with an oar to the ground: the lake was slightly rippled by a cool wind that crept annoyingly under their light clothes touching their skin, causing slight chills.
Although it was already late, they decided to go around the island by boat, before returning to the land. The dark cliffs, almost gloomy from which Ernesto kept a distance of fifty meters,
they were going down towards the water, one on top of the other, as if to give the feeling that in a few moments they could slip into the depths of the lake, disappearing as if they had never existed. They got to an easterly tip of the island, they found themselves in front of a block of stone that had slipped and remained out of the water in an almost vertical position.
It looked like a funeral stele.
The inlets carved, with dark shadows, the cliff that rose high in the sky, and with its semicircular shape reminded Greta of a gigantic ruined amphitheater, the only witness to a burnt crater of a volcano. The stones of the tower, and of the several settlements, scattered rubble, which seemed so huge and majestic before from a short distance, they were indeed so far away, on top of that jagged wall, which seemed frightening by the shadow of the night that advanced rapidly. Even Ernesto seemed so distant, from those moments, dripping with night dew. The thought of him was so unreal ... his words were only a faint echo brought by the dark wind of dusk.
Finally they came out of the fearful shadow that the island projected on the lake's waters making them gloomy, to find the sun, the last glimmer of a large orange, which had already coloured the whole sky with a red halo that reflected with vermilion waves on the surface of the lake, as far as the boat and the depth of their hearts.
The late hour and the strange light of the setting sun caused a sense of dismay in their hearts, as if the end was now near, as if the end of that journey could only represent a sad and painful farewell.
* * *
It was now almost dark when Greta, standing on the pier again, waited for Ernesto to finish mooring the boat. The lights came on one at a time, reflecting their glow on the slightly rippled surface of the lake.
She felt embarrassed like the first time she agreed to date Alberto, eight years earlier.
"Alberto".
The thought of him struck her like a slap in the face, reawakening her from her dreams: in a way that day betrayed, even without realizing it, the memory of that love that she had sworn would remain the only one. She had betrayed