Chapter: Doves and Olive Trees

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From my window I see the ocean. It hits the rock cliff like a battering ram and I can hear its roar, as subtle as the quiet before the earth moves, even inside the walls of my little house. The grass is green and it looks like newborn leaves on a dying tree.

I promised myself that I would own a house like this, like an oasis.

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I walk three miles to a town called Colomba, the word in Italian for "dove". Olive trees dot the hillside like inkblots on an ancient piece of parchment. This place is old.

Doves and olive trees, I think. Peace, I think.

The market here is calm and it reminds me of the nights at sea when the water is smooth and bright as glass. The people move to make way when I ask them to, I am the bow of a ship moving through the ocean.

Grapes like tiny birds' eggs and the yolk is juicy like nothing we ever had at that other place, the place I used to be. Bread and cheese, creamy and smooth as these people's voices when they speak a language that I am only beginning to learn. Red, red wine in translucent green bottles that break when you drop them.

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There is a man painting in the square of this town that is like antiquity, old and made of worn beige stones. He uses oil paints and I stop to look at his canvas.

Colors swoop and coil to make something that is beautiful like an ocean swell. Natural and flawless curved lines. He paints a yellow-green hill, dry because there has been no rain, with a white cathedral beneath. I look at the real-life portrait, the nature, and find that his version is better.

An Italian oil painting that is not the one I have pictured every day since you left. A perfection that does not include you.

Bello, I say. The new word feels like wood on my tongue.

Grazie, he says, and doesn't look up from his work.

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I never found you. You hide still in the orange shadows of this place, this Italy that you love so much.

But I don't need you anymore. I don't need your memory to keep the nightmares of this world at bay.

Remember. Remember, my love, when you were lost. Remember when I let you go. Remember, now, that I am forgetting.

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The silver-green and walnut-brown of olive trees against a kimono-blue sky. The sunrise here is iridescent, purple and red and yellow and orange like my old heaven-ceiling. The only white is in the clouds.

I've lived here for months but there is no time in this place, only land and life and color.

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He comes again, I see him as a dark blotch against the yellow of the path. After all this time he comes. I turn my back and go into my little house. He opens the door without knocking.

I remember what the hours and days were like on his ship. Freedom. He gave me freedom and now he wants something in return.

Why are you here? I say.

His brackish-swamp eyes are tired and sad. He is never sad.

You're living here all alone, love, he says. Why? I told you to stay on the ship. I told you it would be better than this.

What could be better than this, Jack?

He doesn't like it when I say his name. He is quiet for a while now and looks at my little house, my little stove and my little bed in the corner.

There is another reason, he says. There is another reason why you should come with me.

I am not talking but I know what he is trying to say with his eyes.

You are the strangest woman I've yet met, love.

That's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen.

Tell be about your Italian oil painting.

Would you leave this place?

You shouldn't waste your time with silly affection, Jack. Love is not an emotion that I want to know again, not this time, I say.

He leaves without saying goodbye and I can see the grief he lets stay behind.

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When I get away from here I want to be a cruel woman. The kind of woman who wears paint on her lips and tight dresses on her body because she wants to. A woman who belongs to no one. I want break the rules.

A woman so beautiful that men beg at her feet but she just pushes them away.

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A/N: And thus the end of Italian Oil Painting has arrived. Short and sweet. Thanks to everyone who reviewed. I hope all of your questions about plot, etc. were answered within the story.