I looked squarely at that new girl and she broke into an open laugh, ringing like coins falling out of a piggy bank when it breaks. Her teeth, one slightly nicked in the middle of her mouth, shimmered white between her full lips, and her hair cascaded over half her face. My heart lurched. Then the demonstration of the wound ended and I heard Daniele speak the name of the new girl. Her name was Caia.
A strange name, the feminine of Caio,* and even her voice was strange, a bit nasal but clear, with a foreign accent layered on soft Italian — a pleasing lightness in the midst of the heavy cadence of the south. She had just arrived, a guest of one of the girls in the group, with whom she roomed in a Swiss boarding school. She was Rumanian. She had no family. Daniele told me about her then and there but he didn’t know much. She answered the boys’ queries with an absent smile, dismissing them with a shrug of her shoulders that was a fraction of a dive, like a body that pushes off from the rocks and swims way out. It wasn’t necessary to know more about her. For the boys, her orphan’s freedom was enough of an attraction. None of them knew what it was to be alone in the world.
No one understood what caught her fancy: it wasn’t the luxurious things owned by rich people — not even the extravagance of a motorboat that one of them had at his disposal.
Because of Daniele I was admitted to the group, but as an outsider. The girls didn’t come near me, not even for helpful services, those minimal opportunities for chivalry. I liked to be with them nevertheless, but even more when Caia was there.
“Your name is Katia?” I asked, thinking her name might be Slavic.
“No, Caia,” she replied brusquely, turning away. I had taken the chance of approaching her and was rejected, things that happened in a small group all enmeshed in miniature hierarchies. I took it badly, not imagining that she could behave like the other girls. And why not? I defensively convinced myself that she was just like the others. A beautiful, well-bred girl allows herself to be approached only by those she likes. It was a logical explanation, but it didn’t satisfy me. Had I been mistaken? What on earth could have made me think her name was Katia? Hadn’t I heard her called Caia more than once? What was I seeking: to divine, to unearth something the others had overlooked? I think so. That was the motive behind my question, her name. I started from there, from the accident that stays with the life of a person more closely than a shadow, because at least in the dark a shadow lets go, but not a name. And it wants to be so much a part of that person that it presumes to explain that person, to announce the person: “I am,” then the name follows, as though one can be a name rather than have a name. I realized later that she hadn’t said, “I am Caia,” but, “My name is Caia.”
She was not Caia, a name, she was a person who had that name. Maybe she wanted to keep that little bit of identity to herself, or maybe she didn’t like it. There, I was already investigating her, in search of something she held private. That’s how you fall in love, looking for the one thing in the person you love that hasn’t been revealed to anyone else, that is given as a gift only to the one who searches and listens with love. You fall in love when you’re nearby, but not too near. You fall in love from a corner of a room, off to the side, near a table full of people, on a terrace where the others are dancing to the heavy beat of some silly pop song that plasters a face to your heart like a poster. From the first moment, I fell hopelessly in love with Caia, an older girl, with a chipped tooth in a blinding smile, who had touched my hand without revulsion for the wound and who had become close to me because of it. I fell in love out of an impulse that ran counter to the facts: that I was much more mature, that it was my duty to protect her from the perils of the island, to guard her secret which I didn’t yet know but which had to exist and which I would learn, I alone.
When she impulsively ran from the beach umbrella to the sea without alerting anyone, I didn’t follow her, which would have made me look ridiculous, but I followed her every stroke as intently as a chained watchdog. If there were high waves my breath became audible, a gargle, a snarl, and if I could no longer restrain myself I walked toward the water with feigned nonchalance in order not to lose sight of her behind a wave. If she dived in with the others, I was at ease. It didn’t matter to me if she turned someone’s head in the morning and someone else’s in the evening. My concern was to protect her. Not one of those boys could get near her secret. Perhaps I couldn’t either, but I had gotten it into my head that there was one, that within Caia was a revelation that could be reached with love. I was making no progress with her; I no longer had the nerve to speak to her.
Daniele was the obvious choice for Caia’s love. I imagined him singing along with the guitar of an evening. His voice was a touch strained, a little husky, but he could lower it to a whisper without losing the music. His singing surged out of him and when you heard him you began breathing deeply, holding your breath at times. Caia was bound to fall for Daniele, lean, well built; he hooked you with his smile. That was not my business, since I wasn’t a candidate for her affection and I certainly wasn’t jealous. I never knew whether there was anything between them. If so, it didn’t last long. Every one of those boys thought he would be chosen by Caia for at least the evening, and would receive from her arms a sign of preference. She would look at a boy from under her chestnut tresses, eyes wide open, lips slightly parted, hesitating a moment before a word fell out: that was as far as the invitation went. For her those boys were still puppies, great bodies, but clumsy with words. Then again, it was summer; you can’t be too demanding of casual encounters.
Daniele soon lost interest in Caia. His pride did not allow for falling in love a little bit, just for one evening. He nevertheless remained affectionate toward her and attentive to her voice amid the babble of the group. He wasn’t thinking about secrets, like me, yet he did understand that there was an impenetrable ache in that girl which left for love only the occasional eruption of a smile. Granted, she was an orphan, growing up in a boarding school, and there the knot inside her must have tightened. The girl whose guest she was liked her a lot. They had become acquainted the year she was sent abroad to study languages. Caia, a veteran of the school, took her under her wing, making it easier for her to get used to a new place and to strangers. They became friends, but not even she knew anything worth mentioning about Caia. She wasn’t exactly sad, just moody at times, but basically cheerful.
A crystal glass broke and the gleaming shards scattered all over the floor, breaking into fragments. Caia laughed at the troubled face of the boy who was trying to clean up the mess and her laughter was a perfect echo of those fragments. Because I was studying chemistry, I happened to say, not to her directly but as an aside about her laughter: “Caia has silicon in her vocal chords.” And she, turning toward me, said suddenly but quietly, “My father was a chemist.” I was so astounded that I didn’t make a move in her direction. I stayed put, swallowing hard. No one around us had heard. No one seemed to have taken notice of this surprising event, everybody was otherwise occupied. Her father was a chemist. She had wanted to say it, and spontaneously, more than in response to me. It had slipped out, perhaps unwillingly, but in this one thing something of her pain and her secret came to light, and I had brought it about. I was moved, and felt even more compelled to protect her. Something had happened between us, a secret exchange, an understanding. I was no longer the kid who went fishing, wore the mark of the trade on his hand, and was always mute. What I was besides that I didn’t know, couldn’t know, but my distance from her had been bridged. Caia had done it with a piece of news communicated to no one else.