Last Summer in the City Read online

  I had some difficulty tying the second case to the other wrist, but managed it by using my teeth to help me. I managed to lift the cases. They were heavy, but it was fine for them to be heavy, because otherwise they wouldn’t serve their purpose or would make things more difficult.

  I went in. The water was cool around my heels. I looked at the bay, the two great arms of the bay blurry in the sun. I was at the end of my tether, truth be told.

  That’s all.

  Like I said, I don’t blame anyone. I was dealt my cards and I played them. Nobody forced me. I have no regrets. Sometimes I think about how my life would have been if that morning when it all started it hadn’t been raining or I’d had money and all the rest in my pocket, but I can’t imagine anything in particular. What I do think about is my city, our city. I think about the trees along the river and the summits of the churches against the sky. I think about Graziano’s movie and the notes that Arianna stuck to the door in the hope of giving her days some structure, I think about my youth, now ended, and the old age I won’t have. I think about all the things unrealized, the children stillborn, the angels, the loves only imagined, the dreams crushed by the dawn, and I think about the things that are dead forever, the genocides, the trees felled, the whales exterminated, all the species that are extinct. I think about the first fish that survived being abandoned by the waters, that struggled and gave birth to us. I think that everything leads to the sea. The sea that welcomes everything, all the things that have never succeeded in being born and those that have died forever. I think about the day when the sky will open and, for the first time or once again, they will regain their legitimacy.

  A Note About the Author

  Gianfranco Calligarich was born in Asmara, Eritrea, and grew up in Milan, then moved to Rome, where he worked as a journalist and screenwriter. He wrote many successful TV shows for Rai, the national public broadcasting company of Italy, and founded the Teatro XX Secolo in 1994. He is the author of many novels, including La malinconia dei Crusich, which won the Viareggio-Rèpaci Prize. Last Summer in the City is the first of his novels to be translated into English. You can sign up for email updates here.

  A Note About the Translator

  Howard Curtis lives in Norwich, England, and has translated more than a hundred books from the French, Italian, and Spanish. You can sign up for email updates here.

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  Epigraphs

  Foreword

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  A Note About the Author and Translator

  Copyright

  Farrar, Straus and Giroux

  120 Broadway, New York 10271

  Copyright © 2016 by Bompiani / Rizzoli Libri S.p.A., Milano

  Translation copyright © 2021 by Howard Curtis

  Foreword copyright © 2021 by André Aciman

  All rights reserved

  Originally published in Italian in 2016 by Bompiani / Rizzoli Libri S.p.A., Italy, as L’ultima Estate in Città

  English translation published in the United States by Farrar, Straus and Giroux

  First American edition, 2021

  Frontispiece photograph by Catarina Belova / Shutterstock.com.

  Ebook ISBN: 978-0-374-60016-7

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