You can hear them in the trees, the windows and even under the tablecloths of that trattoria where they serve a plate of pasta with frutti di mare. The cicadas keep the pulse of a hot August and the meriggiare race begins, or the Italian art of seeking shade and coolness in the hottest moments of summer. Under a bougainvillea, a French traveler holds an ice cream while I take notes and the picture is reproduced around me, as if a ship was sinking and all the passengers were looking for a lifeboat at the same time. In the distance, the colors of Manarola, one of the towns that make up the iconic Cinque Terre on the Ligurian coast, seem to melt. It is the sweat of their hanging houses, so leaning out to the sea that they also seek to get wet.
On the beach of the small bay, a child gazes into space from the top of a steep rock, head down, while all the bathers gathered around watch attentively waiting for the final leap. Children-crab, new gladiators, summer rituals. Meanwhile, people seek shade and water: a Chinese tourist and her daughter take shelter under the edge of a boat stranded at the viewpoint, a couple toasts with Aperol in hand and travelers take a panoramic view of the chromatic palette of Manarola sheltered under the pine trees, without touching the border with the sun.
The ice cream begins to melt, like so many pinks, yellows, and reds on the facades that pour an invisible thread into the sea. The boy takes two steps back as a long line of eager people waits behind. He does not dare, the fund imposes but the reward will be everything. It’s now or never. A visitor has hung a towel from a straw basket and rides a chambao with sarongs among its greens, another has found a cave in the cliffs and a few are lost through narrow alleys looking for eternal shade.
Suddenly, when the heat is already unbearable, a soft breeze rises with the aroma of saltpeter, fig trees and detergent, the perfume of this riviera and so many towns that boil in the summer months. The air sneaks under my shirt and slightly rocks the colored boats that here look like kites in a sea playing at being the sky, so confused. The clothes hanging on the streets finally move and one sheet tells another how beautiful the bride’s dress is. The young woman greets the townspeople, not yet knowing that the day she reopens her wedding album, her forehead will be soaked in all her photos.
The cicadas can’t take it anymore and the French traveler eats the gelatto before it completely melts. I leave the bougainvillea, I close my eyes, I let the light surround me while I look for a shore; this climber is not enough. On the rock, someone whispers something in the boy’s ear who, after a few seconds, finally launches himself and plummets. The splash is great, the sea expands, moves the boats and its wave reaches us. They all applaud him. Ligurian blue overflows within each of us.
