“
So!” he says, much later. We’re sitting on the floor now. The windowsill is narrow and uncomfortable. We don’t care that we may be getting splinters in our bums from the floorboards.
We’re curled up, me sitting between Luca’s legs, his arms wrapped around my waist, mine around his. His head is leaning on mine, and he’s kissing my hair.
“You remember that song by Jovanotti I say to you, in the river?” he asks.
“Yes!” I swivel a little to look at him. “I looked it up, but I couldn’t find it.”
“‘La Valigia,’” he says. “The suitcase. The boy is a suitcase, he travels all around, but only one person, the girl, knows how to open the lucchetto.”
“The lock,” I translate, suffused with happiness at this.
“‘Ma chi l’avrebbe detto che la vita/ ci travolgeva come hai fatto tu. Tu m’hai aperto come una ferita-sto sanguinando ma non ti lascio più,’” he quotes.
“‘Who would have said that life--’” I start, but that’s as far as I get.
“‘That life turns us upside down,’” Luca says, “‘like you did to me. You open me like a wound. I am bleeding, but I don’t leave you anymore.’”
“Luca!” I exclaim in horror, and his body starts to shake with laughter.
“You remember? I say Jovanotti’s songs, they are not always pretty,” he tells me. “But they are true.”
“Still, a wound…”
“You are half Italian, Violetta,” he points out. “You must understand us. We are more…” He looks for the right word. “Dramatic,” he concludes. “Esagerati.
”
”