On the one hand, the cove attracts me with an exaggerated and even cruel sensuality. On the other, when the good weather arrives, the country scares me away. Perhaps more villas have been built in the protected area, or perhaps the city authorities have further restricted street parking, reserving winter and summer for the wealthy who own a house and garage and only come for a fortnight.
There's a territorial instinct that's most aroused in the wild. Dogs mark their territory with their urine, birds chirp, and wolves patrol. Last year, while swimming around the islets of the Secainos, I encountered a lone angler in a boat. This had never happened to me before. He must have scared the fish, because the man angrily reprimanded me for swimming so far from shore. I colonized him for a while with politeness and refinement, as I learned from my grandfather. When the man noticed, he uttered a very nasty insult about my mother, started the engine, and left. He hasn't returned.
But the tourist industry hates a vacuum, and this year I found the cove packed with canoes. Every day they organize more organized trips, crowding the corners with difficult access via the shallow water. About twenty tourists, dressed in wetsuits—they find the water cold—screaming and laughing. Like real estate agents do with houses, we could put up another sign here: sold.
All that's left is to be patient and swim to a corner and dive into the sunken garden, towards the seaweed, the salps, and the sea urchins. The boats are still to arrive to drop their anchors in the posidonia. For a while, it remains a glass refuge from the hell of the wars outside. And there's always something new. This time, I find a rusty, vertical chain hanging from a drifting white buoy. How did the buoy get free? Did it untie itself? After a few days, the buoy has reached the bottom of the cove, among the boulders. I swim over, lift it, and pull it inland among the reeds. I also discover there, among the dirt and plastic bottles, an old sign, one of those fishermen place in the water to mark where their handles are, with the cork, the long stick, and the faded red cloth. I look at the canoeists. You'll never see them, but there's a brigade of beautiful mermaids dedicated to emptying the sea of instruments of torture.
