While he was cruelly killing jellyfish on the beach, Angela and I ran in under the shower, sure that no one could see us. We let the water run over us and sang the theme song from a television music program: “Brancamen-ta! Ta-ra-ta-ta …,” we crooned, writhing like snakes in a bowl.

You and my aunts arrived at about five o’clock. From a distance, washed out by the sultry air, you looked like characters from a Sergio Leone film. The heat, the silence all around, you armed with your fighting gear: sunglasses, cushions for your backs, hair bands, eye masks, sarongs, transistor radios, Tupperware containers full of biscuits, fruit, and panini made with oil, tomato, and salt—my favorites, the ones that burned my chapped lips.

We looked at one another from a distance and felt like thoughtless beasts, instinctively assessing an opponent’s weak points. After a few minutes you started running and shouting at us, “You scoundrels, you’ve been swimming, haven’t you!”

“Eight wasted years! You’re eight years old and you’ve wasted them all!”

“I’ll have your soul, you wicked child!”

“Mum, how are you going to take my soul?”

It seemed a lovely image, you making a hole in my stomach and pulling out my soul with your hands, as though it were a rope.

We felt an exponential joy: the joy of our aquatic play and the joy of transgressing your stupid rules. Why … if you didn’t want us to go swimming after eating, why on earth did you bring food to the beach?

At seven o’clock, when the sun started shrinking and the sea turned gray, down came Grandma, the Boss.

The Boss was no taller than us children, she had short fair hair, big green eyes, her skin was smooth as silk, and her breasts were worn out from having six children in as many years, her belly swollen and hard. And her thighs … the most beautiful thighs I have ever seen. Slender and sleek, without a hint of cellulite, toned and soft.

The Boss came down to the beach even more heavily armed than you, with jars of water, trays full of food, boxes of ice creams, and big bunches of bananas. The Boss filled us with awe, and we were forced to eat the bananas beneath her gaze.

“Eat it up for your Nonna, it’ll do you good.”

At the eighth banana, if one of us said, “That’s enough, Grandma, I’m full,” she cast you a glance so grim that you wet yourself, and it was a good thing our swimsuits were wet already.

Our stomachs became endless storehouses of food—we could have kept going for months. It was her way of expressing her affection.