Splash! A mermaid in Salento
Tricase. They call it the Island, but it is just a rock on the Adriatic coast of lower Lecce, where no tourists come. It is a place frequented only by locals, who bathe without ever going near it. They know that whoever touches its rocks is transformed into a sea creature
6' min read
6' min read
They call it the Island, but it is just a rock. And yet, that spot on the coast road, halfway between Tricase and Andrano, in the wildest part of Salento, exerts a strange force of gravity. On the road around the mouth of the path to reach it, cars and scooters pile up, which the traffic overtakes good-naturedly despite the narrowness of the roadway. The entrance is a small flight of stone steps on red earth, where locals have carved a path over flat rocks and small niches for lying down. Everyone here has their own customary niche, a kind of family usucaption, respected by the community. The island is a garrison of the locals: the Salento rock people are the absolute masters of their land, they want to share the beauty, but not divide it. Tourists have a hard time getting here, the descent to the sea is too difficult, there are few hotels and no one to build them. These indomitable people are welcoming in the Mediterranean, but they have a shaggy, taciturn, clear-cut trait, like fishermen.
The island, hirsute and black in its embroidery of wind and sea, is also like this.
I am one of the few outsiders venturing into this territory: I get there on foot, walking on the dark grey asphalt between the yellow reeds. I am almost invisible in the eyes of the locals, at most they grant me a look of benevolent sarcasm for my diving goggles and sporty dash towards the water. The sea for them is an element in which to float, fit for storytelling in the coolness, in a buoyancy that is a sophistry, a chattering with fingers paddling in the water while summing up the winters. Everyone gravitates around the island, but keeping their distance, not touching its back. This plays into my desire for isolation: I get there in a few strokes and hide on the side facing the open sea, where no one can see my sea games. The salt water provokes a childlike euphoria in me: I love to whirl myself around in the blue, capsizing and cartwheeling, watching my off-white legs become phosphorescent in the cobalt and emerald green of the seabed.
In one of these evolutions, however, I lose my sense of direction and bump into the island, causing slight grazes on the sole of my foot that are so itchy that I look for a handhold to take a look. I lean against a hook-shaped rock, which I like so much because it looks like Punchinello's nose, with its hooked profile looking down. But as soon as I brush against it I feel a dizzying sting as if I had touched the most purple jellyfish. I immediately withdraw my hand and stick it in the water, looking for a cold current to soothe the itching. There the prodigy begins. A vortex made of a thousand fish covers my torso and an incoercible force forces me to bring my feet together, as if to stand at attention. It is then that my fingers merge and green and silver scales begin to dress my body, slowly ascending my legs and hips, finishing by transforming my skin down to my breasts into scales. The fingers of my hands also partially merge through thin membranes, becoming covered with sea moss, while my arms and hair are filled with translucent seaweed. I have become a mermaid.
An inexplicable joy invades me, like a thousand runs on the grass against the wind. Nothing can stop me any longer. Inside I am salt and fire, power of a turbine. My tail orders me to sink and touch the sandy bottom. Shoals of bream and sardines accompany me and show me the way.
