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the oceanfront, pension Almayer, "resting on the ledge of the world's ultimate" cross seven characters in strange and romantic destiny, seven castaways life trying to pick up the pieces of their lives. But their stay is upset by the memory of an amazing wreck of a bloody century and derives from a raft. And always, lamer, capricious and compelling ... With a breathtaking mastery Alessandro Baricco gives us both a suspense novel, a book of adventure, a philosophical meditation and a poem in prose.
Here is an extract made from the incipit of the novel:
"Sand in the eye, between the foothills and the sea - the sea - in the cold air of an afternoon near completion and blessed by the wind always blows from the north.
beach. And sea
This might be perfection - divine image for one eye - the world is there and ready, silent existence of land and water, accurate and complete work, truth - truth - but once again it's the little grain of saving the man who just stop the mechanism of this paradise, which is foolish enough in itself to suspend the general apparatus inexorable truth, nothing, but standing there in the sand, imperceptible tear in the surface of the holy icon exception raised on the tiny perfection of unlimited range. To see him from afar, this is hardly a dark point in the middle of nothingness, the nothingness of a man and an easel.
The bridge is anchored by thin strings to four stones set in sand. It oscillates almost imperceptibly in the wind that always blows from the north. The man wearing waders and a large fisherman's jacket. He is standing, facing the sea, running between his fingers a fine brush. On the easel, a canvas.
It is like a sentinel - this is that we must understand - drawn there to defend this portion of the world against the silent invasion of perfection, that tiny crack apart the spectacular staging of being. Because there is always the case, the glimmer of a man enough to hurt the rest of what was to become a finger truth, and becomes immediately pending question and, for the simple and infinite power This man is window, skylight, through which slot rush back torrents of stories, vast repertoire of what could be endless tear, injury wonderful path trodden by thousands of steps where nothing can be true but everything will - as are precisely not the woman who, wrapped in a purple coat, his head covered, as slowly the beach, along the waves of the sea, and to strike from right to left now fled the perfection of the great table, nibbling the distance that separates man and his easel up being only a few paces from him, then next door, where nothing is stopping - and without saying a word, look.
The man did not even turn around. It continues to set the sea Silence. From time to time he dips the brush in a cup of copper traces on the canvas a few light strokes. The bristles of the brush left behind the shadow of a shade paler than the very dry wind immediately by reducing the whiteness before. Water. In the cup of copper, it does have that water. And on the web, nothing. Nothing that could see .
Breath as always the north wind, and the woman tightens her purple coat.
- Plasson, that's for days and days you work here. Why
so take it with you all these colors if you do not have the courage to use it?
The question seems to wake him. She came up to him. He turns to look at the face of the woman. And when he speaks not to respond.
- Please, do not move, "he said.
Then he approaches the brush of the woman's face, hesitates a moment, put him on the lips and slowly slid from one corner to another in the mouth. The bristles are tinged with crimson. He watches them, just soak them in water, and looked up toward the sea on the lips of women remains a shadow of a flavor that requires him to "think of seawater, this man painted with sea water - and it is a thought that makes one shudder.
long time now it has returned, and again measure the huge range of mathematical rosary of his steps, when the wind passes over the canvas to dry a burst of light pink, nude sailing in white. One could spend hours watching the sea and the sky, and everything is there, but we do not find anything that color. Nothing that can see .
tide in these regions, arrived before darkness falls. Just before. Water surrounds the man and his easel, she takes them, gently but accurately, they remain there, and the other one, impassive, like a miniature island, or a wreck with two heads, Plasson, the painter .
Each evening a small boat picks him up, shortly before bedtime the sun, when the water already it reaches the heart. It was he who wants it that way. He climbs into the small boat, load up his easel there and the rest, and let reduce.
The Sentinel goes. His duty and done. Danger rejected. In setting off the icon, once again, failed to become sacred. All because of this man and his brushes. And now he's gone, there is no enough time. Darkness suspends all. There is nothing that can, in the darkness, become true .
Alessandro Baricco, Ocean Sea, Gallimard, collection Folio, pages 13-16.
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