Longing for a summer like the ones before. A letter from an absurd fear

14 July. In the hills of Gallura, the car’s thermometer reads 41 degrees. From Olbia towards Luogosanto, the landscape is almost entirely covered by forest, still lush from the spring rains. Not a single house for kilometres. Not a soul in sight. Untouched woodland, a forest of wild boars.

On the horizon, the undulating brown or red earth, scorched by a sun beating down like a blacksmith’s hammer.

37, 38, 40 degrees. Gallura lies below, docile and unchanging, with its rocky massifs shaped like dinosaurs. (You wonder how these rocks got here, hurled by what primordial catastrophe).

But the moment you step out of the car in the very first town you come across, you’re hit by a wave of stifling heat that takes your breath away. The air is still, though – not a breath of wind. Motionless: a bubble of Africa in Sardinia.

14 July – I’ve never experienced heat like this before. Never, neither in Milan nor in the stifling, sweltering Po Valley. Down south, by the sea, I used to find a breeze. Heat like this in Italy – never. I look up at the sun, high in the sky, faded by the haze, at the highest point of its arc. A merciless sun. The scrawny cows in the pastures lie sprawled on the ground, dazed. Poor beasts – where will they drink? And what of the thirsty animals of the woods, and the strays searching for water in the dried-up streams?

The parched earth creaks and groans beneath our footsteps. On the horizon, towards the sea, a thin column of smoke. The fire: ravenous, it descends upon the parched pastures. It will leave behind skeletal trees and ash. Then a thought crosses my mind like the breath of a ghost: what if this sun never set, if it just kept burning ever more fiercely? What if the end were fire? And for the first time since I was born, I am afraid of this tyrannical sun.

Oh, what a silly nightmare. Sitting on a bench in the gentle shade of the holm oaks, amongst the village houses – silent yet full of life – behind their closed shutters.

Simply longing for a summer like the ones of old: thunderstorms and driving rain, followed by a clear sky, and the mistral blowing strong – sweeping away every unspeakable fear like dry leaves.