The Harbour Walk – Part 1: Bora Wind

"Signora! Your hat!"

Marianne turned, too late, as the wind whipped her blue wool hat off her head and sent it bowling along the harbour wall. A tall man in a navy coat sprinted after it, caught it against a bollard and returned, breathless and smiling.

"The bora," he said. "She likes to steal things."

"I've noticed. Thank you."

It was January in Trieste, a bright cold day with the Adriatic glittering silver and white-capped. Marianne, fifty-nine, a retired translator from Edinburgh, had rented a small flat above the harbour for the winter. She had come to learn Italian properly after a lifetime translating it, and to find out what it was to live alone after thirty years of marriage and five of widowhood.

The man was sixty-four, silver-haired, with a face like a weathered map and kind dark eyes. "Giorgio Bianchi," he said, bowing slightly. "Retired ferry captain. I walk here every morning. Forty years on the water, and I still cannot stay away."

"Marianne. Retired translator. I walk here every morning too."

"Then we will meet again. The harbour is not so large."

They did. Most mornings, at the same bench, with a coffee from the same kiosk. Giorgio taught her the names of the boats and the winds. She taught him Scottish words for fog. He told her about his wife, who had died eight years before. She told him about her husband's terrible singing.

One bitter morning, with the bora blowing at forty knots, he said, "Come to my house for lunch. It is a short walk. And the window has a very good view."

"Giorgio, I would like that."

"Marianne." He hesitated. "I should tell you I'd also like to ask you to dinner. And more. But slowly."

Continue the story: Part 2 – A Table with a View.

Continue the story: Part 2 – A Table with a View.