The summer holidays, travel for some across the sea, always makes me think of Sciascia’s ‘The Long Voyage’. Irony delivered without sentimentality. The money to be made out of other people’s dreams, the power of those dreams to drive thousands of people from their home to strange lands, in this case post-war America, the land of Cockaigne. Bristling with tall and wild tales of of the riches to be found there. A loss of love for home, affection for it starved out of you. The tragedy of this. The success stories that filter back from overseas to fuel those dreams, and more besides. If only we could here the voices of today’s migrants with such clarity, such simple storytelling, the universal and timeless motivation, what it is to be human, to want better, no matter what, to survive, but all of this wrapped up as human comedy. Which it is, until it isn’t. 

In an Italian mountain village I once met an old woman who has never seen the sea despite living less than 30 kilometres from it. Nothing ever good comes from it she told me. I know what it look like, I’ve seen the Titanic, she said. Which probably explains her opinion. Also the fact that both her sons disappeared into America, letters home drying up in the years before they both died there.

Dreams bind us, yet we grope around in the dark pursuing them. Others prey on us for money. Desperate people both. 

‘The Long Journey’ is a small tragedy, but sits alongside, is sibling to much bigger ones, and the summer reminds me of this story which gives me pause, as I pack my bags for my holidays.

First published as ‘Il lungo viaggio’ in L’Unità, October 1962. First published in English translation in The Penguin Book of Italian Short Stories, edited by Jhumpa Lahiri, Penguin, 2019) – picked by Wayne Holloway. Wayne is a writer/director living in London. He has published two novels, Bindlestiff and Our Struggle, both with Influx Press. You can read his individual Personal Anthology here.