"It's getting cold," I say.
Waves crashing.
The wind whistles through the blades of grass.
"Don't you want to go back?"
She doesn't listen to me, sitting among the low heather bushes. Her feet dangle in the void as she surveys the precipice, defying its height. Below her, there's a leap, then the hill slopes down: crumbs of pale rock protrude amidst the greenery, the white island reemerges among small cultivated fields, dry stone walls, low huts, and suddenly, emptiness.
Meters below, the sea. Dark and rippling, you can hear it cawing. But in the distance, it sparkles: where the stratocumulus clouds part, the sky projects silver streaks onto the water. It is torment in patches, where light and darkness battle for space. A terrifying infernal dance.
Between me and all of this, there she is, perched on the edge of the cliff, and for some reason I fear losing her. I am afraid the storm will carry her away, and I can't bear it. When she turns to me, she smiles, fragile and pale in her natural surroundings. She signals me to come closer.
"You were right, it's beautiful here," she says. "Was it like this the first time?"
"No. There was sunshine. So much sunshine. And the sea was much bluer."
"Blue like what?"
"Okay, don't laugh, but I have a comparison in mind: you know those watercolors from elementary school? There's that blue tube that I always thought was too dark for anything. But it was the only one in the box, so I had to use it for the sky, the sea... I had never seen a sea so blue before coming here."
"Great example."
"Now you can laugh."
We laugh together, but the wind carries our voices away. It's not me who's the artist; it's her. She holds the sketchbook in her hand, closed.
"Did you sketch anything?"
"Not yet..." She looks back at the horizon, but it's gone. A bright tent has covered it, and the approaching rain gives us just a few more minutes.
"What are my drawings for?" she says, and I try to interrupt her, but: "Wait, let me finish."
But she doesn't finish. Not for now, at least. She's lost again in admiring the precipice, the rocky tongue to our left stretching toward the storm. The sheer cliff plunging into the foam. The tide crashing against the wall.
"Do you feel dizzy too?"
"I thought you liked heights."
"Yes, it's part of the experience," she says. "The Romantics used to say that what terrifies you is beautiful. Is it too cliché to quote the Romantics?"
"I mean..."
"I like them because, even though they were aware of the insurmountable distance between them and the world, they still painted. They still wrote, composed. They knew they couldn't confine views like these in their works, yet they tried. They defied the immensity and survived. They did that... and me? What can I do?"
I take the black sketchbook from her arms and open it in front of us. She had only sketched for a few minutes before I interrupted her. She had gotten out of the car without waiting for me, sat on the edge of the spur, and became captivated. On the rough paper, she drew a cliff, not white but black. High, steep ridges of graphite on a sea of roaring light. At the top of the page, big white clouds. I lift my gaze, and I see the storm; those clouds no longer exist. The black cliff doesn't exist, nor does the white sea. She captured a negative and imprinted it forever.
"You see, it's not the same," she sighs while shifting the notebook onto her lap.
"You're not a photographer. I'm interested in what you see."
She smiles and squeezes my hand. I hate to break the magic, but I have to: "Now we really have to go."
In just a few seconds, the drops multiply on us. I rush toward the car, but she's not following me; she's heading toward a small chapel nestled among the bushes, aiming for a porch, and she gestures for me to follow her. When we're barely dry, she continues, "Imagine this is the end of the world. In a few seconds, lightning will strike, and the rock will crumble. No more trees, no more walls. The cliff will collapse into the water. But we'll stay here, hermits, on this one surviving chapel. Nothing but the sea. All that beauty will no longer exist, and the only memory we'll have will be my ugly dark drawing. Does that seem fair to you?"
She often does this "imagine that" thing. For her, it's easy: she has her own world in her head, plastic and ever-changing, which she rules at will. I discover it when she pours it onto paper: monotonous but alive with nuances, stark contrasts of whites and grays when she holds a pencil; explosive but subdued, tumultuous but still when she uses watercolor. She doesn't know darkness.
I try closing my eyes to imitate her; even with my best effort, I can't follow her; she's somewhere else. So I suggest she follow me: "Close your eyes. Imagine everything is black. You're in a box, sealed. You can't get out. I don't see beauty; I'm not capable. I barely hear the waves crashing, the wind whistling through the blades of grass. The rain drumming on the stone porch. It could be the end of the world, and I can't even see it."
I open my eyes without telling her. She's still in the dark, and I watch as she concentrates in silence. I continue, "I could print a photo, a big one, and hang it on the walls around me. I could have this cliff in front of my eyes forever, immovable and lifeless. Or I could take your little drawing and hang it amid the darkness and look at the pencil smudges, the imperfections of the paper, the stains left by the rain. And I would think of the waves, the grass, the rock. Of you. And I wouldn't know where my box ends."
She catches me with my eyes open in front of her. "You cheated!" she exclaims.
"The darkness bored me, what can I say..."
"I'll have to produce more drawings then."
"Please do."
The rain shows no signs of stopping, and the wind intensifies.
"We'll come back here again, right? I want my second time too."
Written in Italian (original version here) and translated to English by the author.