chapter Six

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EPISODE 11

The sweetest seed

to a love so luminous

The sunrise son

The resounding silence

of a blessed birth

The sunrise son

(should you like to listen to my inspiration, the goddess Alice Coltrane)

 I came into this world at sunrise.

I was born prematurely at the Coconut Palms Medical Facility on the island of Punaouilo, in the Pacific Ocean.

'After I "freed" myself from you...' -- that's how Catherine referred to giving birth -- 'that very morning I could take my first breakfast without the hassle of a swollen belly in which you kept kicking... Although supposedly a continental breakfast, ha!, it was no more than a disappointing tropical semblance to it .'-- Catherine enjoyed recounting the details of my birth ironically -- 'It was a  beautiful morning. Sunny. As usual, on that island.'

But it was sunsets which, all summed up and overlapping with memories, became more significant in my life.

After I had met Angelo for the first time at school, we had often set to meet at sunset -- after we had done our homework -- on the shores of the small lake which was about one mile from my house, hidden behind a hill, and even closer to his. It was my refuge, and I had never met anyone there before. And suddenly, that lovely boy, thick black hair and shiny blue eyes, was there everyday with me.

It was love at first sight -- on my part.

And we started dating a few months later after we had met, when one day we first kissed, shortly after the sun had set.

We were fifteen years old, Angelo a few months older than me.

Since then, I enjoyed being with Angelo especially at the sunset hour, as if it were a kind of commemoration to our relationship that we could celebrate daily. I write it in plural, but in fact this celebration has always happened in the singular.

'It's so melancholic... Makes me think of death, goodbyes ... I don't like it!' -- Angelo had clarified about the sunset -- 'Except for the fact that next comes the night!' -- for him, the best part of each day.

Sunsets in Vice City could be truly spectacular, and I still remember the first sunset we saw together, when we had just moved into town, at the age of 19.

 My mother had sent some extra money so we could furnish our room, but Angelo convinced me to use just enough to buy our double bed, and to spend the rest going out in the city at night -- and so we went to the Vantage Lounge, the most upscale and expensive place to Vice City then, with a privileged view of the entire city -- and of the sunset too, Angelo had assured me, to convince me to go.

And sunset there was stunning indeed -- but it was the social scenery that was the main attraction to the Vantage Lounge, I would later find out. To mingle with Vice City's high society, to see and to be seen by it, Angelo had informed me. There was no other place in town like it, according to him.

I remember he had sat with his back to the sea and the sunset, facing the elevator through which people arrived into the Lounge, that posh crowd he had so much curiosity and interest in meeting.

I had insisted that we arrive early, precisely because of the setting sun, and Angelo was frustrated to find the place almost completely empty. Bored, he had spent the whole time criticizing me, saying that I needed to improve my tastes and preferences, which were simplistic, and my timing, that he sensed was still that of the French countryside.

He was probably right. It took me a long time to adapt to the frenetic pace of the metropolis, and my introspective temperament did not help me making friends, even among the students of our college. While Angelo -- he seemed perfectly integrated, and his top model looks, along with his conversational talents, had already earned him numerous friends. He had even been to the residences and had met the families of some of them, also linking up well with their parents.

Now it was my father to give his back to sunset, on the same side of that same city where Angelo had once snobbed that scenery. It had been the silence of my father, who was immersed in his loving memories, which had pushed me towards my own past. My relationship with Angelo had ended abruptly and painfully ten years ago, and since then I fled all memories related to it -- because who truly wants to keep recalling a painful chronic disease that plagued us for so long? It felt like having had a high fever with delirium tremens for an eternity of eight years -- that's how it now felt, to have been in love with Angelo.

'I imagine those were happy days when you had the island only to yourself, Carlo...'  -- I tried to resume to the thread of the narrative, seeking to bring my father back to the present and to our conversation, though actually I was only using his memories to get rid of mine.

'That's not what memory tells me, Laurent.' -- Carlo gave a sad laugh -- 'But it is precisely at this point that memories and circumstances leave me confused. Without Armand's presence and our conversations, every day was the same. I don't even have any idea of how many days I spent alone on that island, because I was soon to lose track of time.'

The first day is still a bit clearer. That same afternoon after Armand's departure I started working in the garden. It would become my main occupation for a while, at least until the delivery of the painting material for the house, promised to arrive at the island in a few weeks.

There were many dead plants and weeds to be removed before planting new ones, according to my friend's plans and drawings.

I do not remember if I painted that very afternoon, but I would paint all afternoons from then on, with true dedication and self-discipline -- I knew they were important if I wanted to keep my sanity in that deserted island -- always near the time of sunset, when the light was magical.

I was able to properly focus my mind, but my heart wandered and sought the company of Armand, wondering at what port he could be. If I let it, my mind went on, guessing how long he would stay in France, and when he would come back to the island, ending that period of solitude that had just started.

That evening, for the first time I swam naked in the sea. 

I recalled the Apennines where, not as often as I'd wish, I could swim naked in the lake down the valley that you know well and have visited yourself, Laurent. But the vastness of my freedom at the Île du Blanchomme was incomparable -- the closest human beings were on the ships of which I only guessed contours or saw the lights across the horizon.

The silence and the solitude inspired me to sit down to meditate more often, and with each passing week I could follow my breath during longer periods of the day, making my daily routine one long meditation session. I lived at peace, lucid, contented, connected to all things.

Meditating was also a way of recalling Armand, my one and only master, and if sometimes I still felt like grieving his absence,  I only had to look around to see him in each and every detail of the island. I would not be there, healthy and safe, without him -- or without the love that had motivated him to invite me to join him.

If I sustained this in depth look on all things around me, I could see all people from my life present in every moment -- I was alive because of each and all of them, from my deceased parents to my grandfather who had raised me, now living isolated in another part of the planet, along with the many causes and circumstances that had brought me to the island -- my teachers, and their teachers, and all the farmers who worked to provide my daily food -- and their families --, enabling me to live day after day. I felt grateful to all of them.

I felt grateful and connected with all beings, contrary to what would have been expected in that deserted island -- even towards the illustrious stranger, Herr Weissmann, in whose house I had found shelter, and that allowed me deliciously long baths -- and in one of them I shaved, a last request by Armand.

'You're far too sexy with this beard, it is so hard to resist...' -- Armand had laughed when I blushed -- 'thinking how it rubs when you kiss...' -- after his coming out, he seemed comfortable with flirting, insinuating and amusing himself with me. He finally felt free to talk his heart out. Hadn't he even called me "Mon amour", just seconds before he boarded the boat, leaving those as his last words to me?

Now I suspect it must have been the opposite, that he had wanted to kiss me without that beard, which gave me the looks of a beggar.

Actually, he just wanted bad to kiss me, regardless of whatever beard, I now knew it.

I couldn't guess the hour I would go to bed. In Europe my best friend had been Orion, the Hunter, but the night skies, turned into the unknown over the Indian Ocean, confused me. I had wanted to talk about it with Armand, for I was sure he would have already get acquainted with the local mythology for the stars, but our scarce time together on the island had been devoted to much more intense matters.

I slept little -- no matter how heavily I worked in the garden, I did it as a meditation too, and I was constantly energized, never feeling tired.

I would wake up in time to see the moon diving into the sea and, facing the opposite direction, sit still to meditate even before sunrise began.

With Armand's departure, the luminous boy reappeared. 

 The gap he opened from the future and through which he came up to meet me -- I finally and clearly understood --, was destined to me only...

'Enough of this, Carlo!' -- I never thought I would one day yell at my father -- 'Stop fooling me! You were going to tell me about Armand and Catherine, remember? And now he's gone away from the island, and she hasn't appeared yet, and you bring back that damned little ghost! Soon, vampires and werewolves will show up and we already know what kind of stupid story this is going to be!!'

But that outburst of anger and resentment had little to do with the story that was being told, and much more with twenty years of Carlo's absence -- who seemed to know and understand it perfectly, and did not let himself be affected by my strong emotions.

'We'll get to them, Laurent.' -- he replied, serenely -- 'Didn't you say we had all night?' -- he looked at me with a bit of irony in the corner of a tired smile -- 'Honestly, I have no hurry to get to this point you are craving for... And this little ghost that annoys you so much, Laurent... He is you!'

'How so?' -- I gasped, taken aback, feeling the surprise immediately reducing my anger.

'I recall having told you this story before, when you first wanted to listen to it, at the occasion when the song "Sunrise Son" had just been launched...' -- Carlo replied, calmly -- 'But you were still a child, and I don't know how much you understood of it... You know you came into this world with the sunrise at Punaouilo, don't you?'

'This is my personal legend, isn't it?' -- I said, laughing and already feeling better -- 'I just don't really know much about that song... It became mythical, something like the core of a religion to many people around the world... I know that it was the reason why Catherine filed an injunction that prevented reporters, journalists, writers and photographers from approaching me until I was twent years old... She hated this story.'

'Haha, Catherine hated all my stories!' -- Carlo smiled sadly -- 'Especially this one, for it happened when she was away from Punaouilo, that time she had returned to France to be with her family... It was the decisive episode that changed my career prospects, too.'

'What happened then, Carlo?' -- I now asked responsively, with genuine curiosity. My father had so kindly reminded me of my willingness to hear it through the night, and in fact I had the biggest interest in listening to anything he was willing to tell me about himself, about the early relationship with Catherine, and from my own childhood -- 'How old was I, then?'

'It was the year of 1981, when Catherine went to France. One of the few dates I am sure of, I am afraid.' -- Carlo smiled -- "You were... Six years old, right? I had been hired to paint a house and redo its garden... My professional situation was rather... challenging. In all those years on the island of Punaouilo, I had sold only three paintings in the one art gallery that there was. The money that supported our little family was sent from France by your grandmother, Celeste... We lived as a favor in that small cottage deep in the back of the garden, in a colonial mansion owned by friends of hers, and even our expenses being modest, I could not meet our needs, not even accepting almost any type of job that was offered me.'

The house I was working at was a modern mansion, and that season it had been rented by a musician who had been very famous in the 1970s, a rock star named Davez Drew, dubbed "Cosmic Scorcher" for his caustic, incendiary way of playing the guitar. However, I knew nothing about him at the time, much the less that he was at an impasse in his career, trying to fuse rock and jazz, but without the same success that Miles Davis had achieved, and taking the opposite route.

And because he and his girlfriend had decided to come a couple of weeks earlier, when they arrived in Punaouilo they had found me still working in the house. Painting the studio was the only thing left. No one had warned me he was a musician, and so I had left the doomed building behind.

Despite not knowing English, I understood perfectly well what he said when he first had seen me -- he was shooing me out the house, unceremoniously. I tried to play dumb 'non capisco, non capisco niente', talking to him in Italian, and I continued to work.

Davez wanted total privacy in order to compose -- as much as he also wanted to be left alone with his new girlfriend, a stunning blonde rich girl who decided to intervene in our argument only to reinforce Davez' message in the languages ​​she knew - "Raus!", which I misunderstood as a permission to continue working on the house, then followed by the unmistakable "Sortez d'ici" and "Vattene!", expressed with a vehement anger and disdain that left no doubts.

I then tried to explain in French to blonde Barbara that I had to finish the job to get the money. I needed only a few days more and I would be discreet. 

"No way! Pay him and send him away!", I understood the musician's response even before the translation came, and I then amended that to me it was as much about the money as to finishing the job, in order to get more recommendations around the island. 

And while they were discussing how to get rid of me, I mouthed that they would need me at least to get rid of the ghost that haunted that studio, as told by local legends ...

Was it a sudden inspiration, out of desperation? 

The rock star seemed to understand the word "fantôme", and changed his behavior with me. He started demanding Barbara to translate every word I said, staring at me hungrily as I told what I knew about the spirit which was supposed to haunt the house, especially the studio. Davez was thrilled, to my surprise and Barbara's, who until then had maintained an attitude of disgust and estrangement towards me. Suddenly, she started regarding me with interest and suspicion.

The conversation followed to the edge of the pool where Barbara, our official translator, had settled to sun bathe on a lounger I had repainted. Davez wanted me to recount all cases of ghosts, spirits and demons that I had learned about in that part of the world. As you can imagine, Laurent, I recalled my conversations with Armand about the Portal Islands, and I recounted every tale and detail, lengthening the stories.

Barbara was bored doing the translation, but I realized that she was also surprised, as much as I was, to the musician's enthusiastic interest on that subject, and equally happy to observe, for the first time since the beginning of their relationship, something that truly stimulated Davez.

When I mentioned I needed to resume working, Davez replied something like "You're fine, man", and said that I could work the following day, after we'd finished the repertoire of local legends. I was so happy at his promise that I could work again on the house, and felt somewhat like Scheherazade!

The problem is that my repertoire had already finished, and I had to rely on some ghostly cases from the mountains that Tarso, my grandfather, had told in my childhood to distract me, as the three of us moved on to the hot tub.

In the late afternoon, when I was finished even with the ghosts from the Apennines, the rockstar still not being satiated, I promised him to talk to the natives to learn a few more legends. I knew there plenty of them around the islands, but I had never really payed attention to them. And when I thought I would be dismissed, Davez invited me into the tub.

'You're a fine man. Come relax with us...' -- and I tried to decline telling them I had not brought a bathing suit, not to mention that I was naked underneath my pants, to which Davez replied -- 'No problem... I'm taking my trunks off, too...'

I had never been in a bubbling tub like that before, but I decided to accept the invitation out of my fascination towards the enigmatic Davez, who had gone from his initial terminal rage into a tireless, ardent interview with me, and now had retreated to a concentrated, enigmatic silence, as if influenced by the night softly falling on the island of Punaouilo. At each step during that afternoon, he had been exuberant and exultant in his vast emotional scope, no matter how contradictory they had been. I had never met anyone like him before.

And there was Barbara, the most beautiful woman I had ever met in my humble, rather limited life, whom had remained blasé throughout the course of her translation, without uttering a single word of personal nature. 

I guess I must have fallen asleep, the water so warm and perfumed, and when I woke up Barbara was beside me, with her hoarse voice asking me a question I did not know if coming from her own, or still a translation for Davez.

'Do you believe in ghosts?' -- she inquired.

I immediately realized that this was a crucial question, the tipping point between the errand boy of local legends that I had been so far, into the narrator of my own beliefs and experiences that I could be.

And I decided to tell Davez about you, Laurent. 

How that luminous boy, the boy with hair so white like an old man, had appeared to me several times in front of the rising sun, serious and silent, and how I had rediscovered and recognized him a year later, in my own son. It was a rather emotional testimony for me, and I guess the feeling that emanated from my sharing captivated Drew.

When I finished talking, Davez stood still, silent for maybe two or three minutes, and then he suddenly jumped to the middle of the tub, startling Barbara and me. He had not taken off his trunks, after all... though, well, I had! He then proceeded to a thorough, careful investigation. What had been my feelings towards the apparition... Had I sweated? Had I been fearful? How was it on the Île du Blanchomme... the temperature on the beach, sounds, the light... the colour of the sand and the sea... he wanted details about the place... How many times I had seen the boy in a pool of light in front of the sun... And the legends about the Portal Islands... He was intoxicated, demanding Barbara to simultaneously translate my tangle of words.

And maybe to be sure about everything he had heard, he questioned me again, going over each point I had reported to him, and finally he wanted to know in detail about you, Laurent... Your appearance, and at what age it had come to be the same of the apparition, and when I'd been totally sure that you were the same luminous boy of those bright sunrises... 

And when I told him that your birth had taken place at sunrise in Punaouilo, he groaned and swirled in the center of the tub, and then ran towards the music studio.

'It was the evening that the mythical song about you was composed, Laurent. "Sunrise Son". It is always among the top 100 songs of the 20th century. As you said, it became the core to something of a religion to people around the world, that LP being like an entire bible to them, but your song the main mantra and teaching... It was also Davez' musical revival...' -- Carlo sighed, and smiled, appeased.

'Are you sure it was me, Carlo?' -- I asked, when his silence grew too long, and I knew my father wouldn't continue speaking without stimulation -- 'The apparition, I mean? Haven't you said it before that it represented your own future?'

'At first I had thought so. But when your mother told me she was pregnant... It was then that I understood. That boy coming up to me from the future... was to be my son! The moment I realized it was precisely when the apparition stopped visiting me, confirming that I had finally got the message.' -- Carlo smiled, comforted -- 'And when you were born, with a hair so blond it was almost white, such as the luminous boy of the bright sunrises, I recognized him in you. An elderly baby, a baby with an antique soul...' -- my father looked at me, basking in tenderness -- 'When you were six years old you were the living portrait of the apparition that had visited me on so many mornings at the Île du Blanchomme!' -- Carlo suddenly fell silent, then he raised his eyebrows, looking astounded and pointed to something on the other side of the restaurant -- 'Look over there, Laurent... It is just... magnificent!'

I turned my gaze in the same direction of Carlo's, to find a bright full moon framed by the windows of the restaurant, floating over a table as if set to a superb visual feast -- so infinetely beautiful that it was to indelibly mark my memory of the reunion with my father.

But less and less I understood why he had left home twenty years ago, to never return, never even try to meet nor contact me -- his "Sunrise Son".

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