Alberto Moravia
SUNNY HONEYMOON
They had chosen Anacapri for their honeymoon because
Giacomo had been there a few months before and wanted to go
back, taking his bride with him. His previous visit had been
in the spring, and he remembered the clear, crisp air and the
flowers .alive with the hum of thousands of insects in the golden
glow of the sun. But this time, immediately upon their arrival,
everything seemed very different. The sultry dog days of mid-August
were upon them and steaming humidity overclouded the sky. Even
on the heights of Anacapri, there was no trace of the crisp air, or
flowers or violet sea whose praises Giacomo had sung. The paths
winding through the fields were covered with a layer of yellow dust,
accumulated
in
the course of four months without rain, in which even
gliding lizards left traces of their passage. Long before autumn was
due, the leaves had begun to turn red and brown, and occasional
whole trees had withered away for lack of water. Dust particles filled
the motionless air and made the nostrils quiver, and the odors of
meadows and sea had given way to those of scorched stones and
dried dung. The water, which in the spring had taken its color
from what seemed to be banks of violets floating just below the
surface, now was a gray mass reflecting the melancholy, dazzling
light brought by the
scirocco
wind which infested the sky.
"I don't think it's the least bit beautiful," Simona said,
on the day after their arrival, as they started along the path to
the lighthouse. "I don't like it, no not .at all."
Giacomo, following several steps behind, did not answer.
She had spoken in this plaintive and discontented tone of voice
ever since they had emerged from their city-hall marriage in Rome,
