Elsa Morante
L'Isola di Arturo

It all started by chance, a few chats among friends.

I just read "La Storia" by Morante, I say. In high school, they had me read "L'Isola di Arturo" (1957), a book I absolutely loved where nothing really happens, my friend Rock retorts (I could also call him Jazz, maybe Reggae might give a better idea, but for some reason, Rock fits him perfectly). There's this kid who roams alone on an island, he tells me. I get curious. It's not so much the plot that seems not particularly exciting or stimulating, but more so the idea that my friend Rock might have liked a book by Morante.

I retrieve it, devour it, and, once finished, I find myself, a few days later, on a small island in the middle of the Sicilian Channel. I wake up early in the morning, the rest of the family happily asleep, slip into my swimming trunks, exit the B&B room, and start walking aimlessly just like Arturo Gerace, the protagonist of the book, used to do in his Procida during the late 1930s. I end up in his shoes and his lonely story, diving into his fantasies and myths. Orphaned by his mother, raised by a father always traveling and by the valet Silvestro in the House of Boys (strictly forbidden to women!), he wanders ceaselessly and aimlessly on the island with his dog, amidst nature. The island becomes the warm maternal womb, the sweet embrace of the mother who never cuddled or kissed him, a small closed and protected universe that begins to creak when father Wilhem (half German) brings home from the mainland his new young bride Nunziatella, the first woman to enter Arturo's life. Nunziatella gives birth to a son, Arturo grows up, discovers jealousy, envy, love, and all the bitter disappointments that life gradually presents along the way.

A slow read like the life of any teenager, a book masterfully written, lively, and colorful like very few where themes of solitude, the difficult father-son relationship, and the passage from adolescence to infancy intertwine within Arturo's subjectivity. A so-called "bildungsroman" where Arturo transitions from the magic of childhood to the harsh reality of life. It's a pity not to have read this book twenty years ago, a real shame not to have had a teacher enlightened enough to offer me a different key to understand such an important snapshot of my life.

I continue to walk along the black and dusty paths, venturing into the mouth of the volcano, I see lizards crossing my path and the sea around me, I climb over a wall of lava rocks, traverse giant patches of capers, and sit in the shade of two large fig trees. I pick the fruits for breakfast. I try to savor the wild life of Arturo as much as possible and slow down the course of my existence which, like a train departing from a station, gains more and more speed as the years go by.

Who knows where Arturo's train will have taken him, who knows if he will be happy with his past choices, who knows what kind of man he will have become. The magic of Arturo will always remain by my side. Make him your friend...