Yesterday, as I sorted these sketches, memories came back.
And here at the château, I must see to it that the pale, long-legged, crooked-nosed Frog finishes my brass compass. He has kept me waiting for more than a month—these dilatory French! Can the artist live forever—like a Pope!
At Piombino, a fisherman helped me locate fossils on the beach. A small lizard, a multi-veined leaf. What was the fisherman’s name? Giorgio? Paolo? Doesn’t matter. We became friends. Bearded rogue. Fat. In his rowboat, we sailed the harbor, weathering calms and wild gusts, in and out of bays, eating cheese and bread, sipping port, catching fish, his oars a pair of misshapen flippers. With his tools, at his home, above the bay, I designed oars, shaped them, edged them with thin copper. When he tested them he found that he rowed with ease.
“Fine...Maestro, fine!”
Blue rowboat, blue bay.
We rigged a sail, a drab hunk but it worked. His name? Not Paolo, but Rimini. Obese fishmonger Rimini. Excellent bread was baked by his young, mute wife. Bread, cheese, wine. Rimini often sang, with his Piombino slurring, sang as we drifted, sang and rowed. We sailed far away from the odious wars, from weaponry, forts, and death.
Rimini’s gulls, black-tipped gulls, followed his boat, ate out of his hands—perched on my shoulders. Ah, those wings! Those flights!
Occasionally, I slept at Rimini’s thatch, where ducks always woke me. It was pleasant to wake to the quackings of Rimini’s pets. His drake had been his pet for years, I won’t guess how many. But I remember his glossy plumage and proud head, and how gluttonous he was.
When Rimini’s pretty wife (woman) became bedridden I prescribed omitting meat. She agreed, through our sign language. Within a week she was out of bed. Rimini had a festa, to honor her recovery. Poor man, he thought me something of a wizard, an ogre, because I could explain to him what the interior of the stomach was like.
