Orbetello
A childhood on the seashore never gets forgotten

In the residence complex there was a soccer field—well, it wasn’t a real soccer field, not actually being big enough, but it was a nice field on the land. Childhood memories can sometimes be a little bit skewed, but I’d still say today that it was a then-rare type of “calciotto” (8v8 soccer) field, even perhaps a 7-person soccer field. One year, there were no goals, or more accurately, they were just so damaged that they had to be replaced. The second memory is of my father: with other vacationers, he built new wooden ones. The poles’ section was square, as is shown only in the archival photographs, those that depict soccer of another era, as it once was. Once the goals were built, they transported them to the field, to drill them in place unencumbered by the removal of the old ones. I’m not sure if I ever actually played on that field—it was too big for me. I would play ball in front of the house, on the driveway, using the low doorjambs of the gate of the garden in front of ours as the goals. The wooden planks of the doors served as nets and the game was just passing the ball back and forth between my brother, father and me, eventually landing it in the goal.  

Between the residence complex and the beach, there was a highly trafficked street we couldn’t cross—we were also probably a little bit afraid of it. But on the other side, the territory around the complex reached all the way out to the lagoon. Before you got to the water, there were eucalypti—I remember the soothing, spiced scent. That part was abandoned, an unused extremity of the area; the plants were overgrown; no one took much care of that area. There were blackberry brambles. One afternoon I went with a large vase, intending to fill it up. Others had passed by before I had; the blackberries within a child’s reach were not so numerous and nor were they easy to pick, but the bramble seemed infinite and in a period so lengthy, in the way that only childhood summer afternoons can be, I managed to fill up the container with blackberries. I left it on the kitchen table. At that point I went away, and into the small gambling house-arcade where there were some videogames. I stayed there a few hours, already almost tasting the fruits that I’d eat upon my return. But once I got home the blackberries were no longer there—my sister had eaten them all.