Summer dreaming in Menorca

By Nicola Gatti

An aging person reminisces about the events of many years earlier, when he spent his summer holidays with his family and friends at the sea-side. The reminiscence is bittersweet: on the one hand it brings back the carefree and straightforward feelings of adolescence, but on the other it rekindles an ancient pain, never completely extinguished, for the premature death of a teenage friend. The novel alternates unfiltered youthful descriptions with more mature considerations, processed through the twin lenses of time and wisdom. The reminiscence, however, ends with a smile and with a message of hope.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Nicola Gatti
• Release date: Dec 29, 2016
• ISBN: 9788822882400

Book preview

thereafter.

Preface

It all starts here, day-dreaming in this dimly lit study-room, on a summer afternoon with the slanting rays of sun filtering through the blinds and lighting up some dust motes on their way, and the motes dance slowly, lazily before my eyes and my thoughts…

All of a sudden, those bright dancing specks are no longer here and now, but in a faraway place of my memory, a special, never forgotten place which still has the power to squeeze out a yearningly sweet remembrance from my wizened old heart.

That place is called Menorca.

Chapter 1

Right: Menorca with and e, and not Minorca with an i as in English or Italian.

Firstly because, even though I was born in Italy, I grew up in Spain as a child, and in practice Spanish was my mother tongue for many years. It would never have crossed my mind to call that beautiful island by any other name, especially when from an abstract place in geography it turned into a very concrete reality as our favorite summer holiday destination.

Secondly, because since those long-ago holidays I have never gone back to visit the island, and it has remained intact in my memory, sunny and wild: just like those three kids who used to roam land and sea in search of trouble.

Who were those three kids? Sorry, it’s true, I must introduce the main characters of this story.

One, you may have guessed, is myself, or rather was a much younger version of myself, with still so many years and dreams ahead of me.

The second was my brother Andrea, one year my senior, and at the time we were as inseparable as twins, no matter how much we fought and quarreled.

The third was our best friend, an Italian kid who also came to Menorca for summer vacations, with his family.

His name was… sorry, but even today after all these years I cannot say his name without a pang in my heart, so if you don’t mind, I’ll call him Giacomo.

He was the most cheerful and full-of-energy kid I had ever met, a real force of nature… at least until he was struck by a ruthless disease, which took him away when he was only sixteen.

Life can also be like this, though at that age (Giacomo’s same age) I could really not accept it: it was a real shock for me, my first big sorrow, followed by a deep inner crisis.

But I don’t want to remember only the sad things here, I want to remember those happy and carefree summer days and the strength of that great friendship that bound us together. 

It may seem impossible, but despite the many decades that have passed rolling one upon the other, and which separate those days from my present (and old!) age, I can still feel every sensation, every smell and every taste I felt back then.

Like river pebbles, I can gather those souvenirs in my hand, close my fist and shuffle them inside it, then lift it to my nose and inhale the metallic smell, and finally open my hand and throw the pebbles down onto these blank pages I am starting to fill.

Here we go.

Those were our happy days in Spain, when we lived in Madrid and roamed all over the country with our parents. We had already spent one summer in Ibiza, which we liked a lot: beautiful beaches, wonderful sea, many hippies around, even some nudists in Formentera (a big scandal in those times, still under Francisco Franco’s dictatorship!). 

However, the year after Ibiza we decided to change and visit its less glamorous sister island: Menorca.

It was love at first sight for the whole family! So much that we went back several times, for three or maybe four consecutive summers (I can’t remember: ah, my old age, as I said before…), until that happy recurrence was cut short by the fact that our family moved, lock stock and barrel, from Spain back to Italy.

At any rate, all those holidays are now fused inside my memory into one single, long, happy and warm summer dream… 

Chapter 2

I open one eye. The room is no longer in the dark. The sun is coming in through the blinds, it lights up some dust motes on its way and it lands on the bed in front of me, where Andrea is, of course, still sleeping like a log.

Andrea is my older brother… well older, just 364 days, so he