Gloria's Diary, Albert Russo [reading in the dark .TXT] 📗

could be really chilly and where it was adventurous if not impossible to even dip your toes into the ocean's icy shores.  The early months of the year were the best to take advantage of the Cape's climate, whereas the Indian Ocean was humid and terribly muggy; no matter how often you got into the sea, as soon as you walked away you began to swelter again and felt like taking a shower.
We had booked two rooms - the larger one for Maya and me and the single one for Sasha - in a quaint little hotel on Marine Parade, which was parallel to the boardwalk, on South Beach.  This was the nicest stretch of sand on the resort, a place where we could bathe in relative security, thanks to the huge nets that separated us from the sharks, with which the Indian ocean was infested.  Yet, a few days before our arrival one of these monsters had succeeded in ripping several knots into the net and tore off the arm of a poor woman who was swimming near its edge.  She was saved just in time by a coastguard, for otherwise she would have bled to death.
Those proved to be among the best two weeks of my life.  In the morning we would all go to the sea, jumping and diving in the midst of the frothy waves and then lying down on our beach towels to soak up the sun - we were not always very wise, for we seldom used any lotion at all; then, we didn't know that ultra violet rays could cause skin cancer, and sometimes, when we overdid it, we came out at the end of the day as red as a lobster, thinking that a good layer of after sun cream would cure us during the night.  Wasn't it worth suffering a little in order to get a nice tan?
Towards one p.m. we would saunter back to our hotel, slip into light clothes then go out on a terraced café to have a bite, which usually consisted in either a bowl of fresh salad or some fillet of grilled or fried fish with a side of greens and mashed potatoes.  Before I had met Sandro in the Belgian Congo, and had gotten acquainted with the sophistication of continental cuisine, all I knew concerning food was English cooking, which people around the world find either very bland or at worst inedible, especially when they mention our meat dishes served with mint sauce! Although they do appreciate our hearty breakfasts, with our wonderful eggs cooked in a variety of ways, our kippers and our delicious baby sausages, and of course our roast beef which is unique in the world - don't the French call us les rosbif , whilst we call them "froggies"? - and some of our fancy deserts, like the inimitable trifle pudding and our buttered scones.  Let's face it, all is not bad in good old Albion!  Anyway, I thought the food we ate in Durban was healthy and quite wholesome. 
On the fourth day of our sojourn I got a vicious sun stroke, and for the next two days and two nights, whatever the position I would put myself in, I felt as if I had been roasted alive, and couldn't - of course - bat an eye.  I had learned a hard lesson, for during the rest of our vacation, I avoided any further exposure and rested exclusively under a parasol, not even envying the bathers who were stretched around me on the sparkling white sand like so many Christs pierced by the scorching rays of Ra.
At dinnertime, we would be a little more adventurous and taste some southern Asian delicacies, with chappati bread, tandoori chicken and curried rice, for the capital of Natal had the largest Indian population in the country. But there were also a few other exotic places to choose from, including Malay, Chinese, Italian and Portuguese restaurants.  Maya had us try one of each, and more than once I had suffered heartburn, on account of the strong spices those specialties were cooked with.  But we all took this in good spirit ... until the following indigestion.
We would take advantage of the evening breeze to ride on a riksha, those high- perched two-wheeled carts, led by valiant Zulu men dressed in their magnificently colorful warrior attire.  Their sinews and muscles shone as if they had just come out of a bath of olive oil.  Everything in their garments smacked of the most authentic African craftsmanship, from the leather bands coiled around their forearms, the baby ostrich feathers adorning their ankles, the breastplate laced with metal (or even silver) chain stitches and the varicolored beads that studded their leggings.  But most impressive of all was their headgear, the volume of which was at least three times the size of their heads; and on top of it, it was spiked by two long horns which gave them the look of a terrifying lion, ready to maul you, especially when, running at full speed, they suddenly thrust their whole body upwards, with both feet in mid-air, and all the while they uttered ferocious ululations.  They gave us the frights of our lives, ten times more than a roller-coaster.  But what exhilaration, what fun we experienced, through screams of fear and of laughter.  If they wanted they could have killed us in a jiffy, but we felt so confident and so safe in their strong and powerful hands. 
We would often have dinner at the Escombe Terrace, which overlooked the fringed edge of ocean allotted to the water skiers - that sport fascinated me inasmuch as it was rare then and was mainly practiced by the privileged white youth.  
Then, just after dessert, as we would sip some fresh grenadine juice, Maya would get up, and leave me in the company of her brother, with the excuse that she had had too much sun exposure and consequently needed to lie down and rest, not without casting me a complicit wink.
Sasha and I would then broach our discussion onto the plans of the following day.  We would drive to the outskirts of Durban, through the sugar cane plantations and then have tea at the marvelous site of Umhlanga Rocks.  Another interesting spot we would visit was the Marian hill Monastery where Trappist monks exhibited the work of African craftsmen.  But the hight point of our escapades was the Valley of the Thousand Hills, inhabited by an authentic Zulu tribe, and this was not just a tourist attraction, in that the people who lived there worked for their subsistence, using traditional tools and customs, and they were totally cut off from the country's dominant white-led economy.       "Why don't we go and see what is happening in the Asian quarter?  It's still quite early in the evening." I suggested.  "I love all those spices that they mix to make curry, the saffron, the cumin, the cloves, the cardamom, the sesame, the ginseng and the countless other ingredients the Orientals use in their cooking.  I want to touch and smell them individually, see what they look like in their original state.  And then too," I added, with a mischievous pout, "I can't resist the incredible array of fabrics, calicoes and taffetas the Indian and Malay shopkeepers have on display, even in the tiniest shack. I know, most of my school pals, find that all very kitschy and even vulgar, still I think they miss something.  It will remind me, on a much larger scale, of course, of the stalls full of exotic bric-á-brac, of gawdy trinkets, of strange and heady perfumes, I would pay visits to along Manica road, back in Salisbury, when I was in my teens.  It was Debbie Levinson, a Jewish girl, who was then my best friend, who introduced me to that part of town where hardly any Europeans would venture, for her grandfather had a small tailoring shop there, with just two sewing machines, the old Singers, you know, which were pedal-activated.
As I said previously, Durban has the country's largest Indian population - the British had them emigrate to South Africa by the tens of thousands in the middle of the nineteenth century in order to work on the sugar cane plantations, and once their contracts were terminated, most of them preferred to stay on and make a new life for themselves, rather than go back to their birthplace.
Because of the tacit segregation "laws" - apartheid was only institutionalized in 1948, after the Afrikaner National Party won the elections - we made ourselves very discreet, for the white authorities always suspected people of their race who went to visit areas inhabited by the so-called Coloureds.  So, to appear like the locals, I knotted a long scarf around my head, whereas Sasha stuffed a large-brimmed cotton hat on his. 
Unlike most European stores, some shops here were still open.  These were usually cramped and often no larger than a passageway, but to me they all seemed like caves of Ali Baba.  We were welcomed, first with a glimpse of surprise, then, with that legendary but true oriental kindness that strangers are always graced with.
We were immediately offered a glass of mint tea and honey biscuits.
I stopped in front of one of these stalls to admire a few pieces of cloth in cotton and embroidered silk, hanging from a cord that stretched the whole length of the window.  So, I figured, this was where the local women of a certain standing came to buy the fabrics that would be made into saris, a garment I always thought was one of the most feminine a woman could wear.  Years later, when traveling to India with Sandro, we had both been struck by what still remains in my memory as a vision, almost an apparition: while we were having a cold drink at one of the lounges of the Ashoka hotel in New Delhi - which, if I'm not mistaken, was once the palace of a maharajah - walked in the most beautiful, most elegant woman I had ever seen.  She glided past us, absently, regally, as if nothing existed around her, in a magnificent beige, gauze-like sari, that was as plain as it flattered her tall silhouette, and her long gleaming hair swept her shoulders in waves that seemed to have been sculpted in the purest, veinless, black onyx.  Sandro and I sat there, wordless and mesmerized.
Noticing my enthusiasm, Sasha said, in a single breath:
"Just choose the one you prefer, it will be my gift."
As I stared, quite bewildered, first at my companion, then at the shopkeeper, a little mustachioed man, who wore a tan-colored djellabah, the latter raised both his hands in a sign of approval, and all smiles, opened his gap-toothed mouth:
"How gallant this young man is!" he cooed, "And he is so discerning, for such a lovely fiancée only deserves the very best." The shopkeeper had no doubt that we were a couple, or soon to be married.  At least he seemed to convince himself that this was the case.  "Wait, wait, please!" he went on, "I shall be back in a jiffy."
He disappeared into the back shop, only to re-emerge a minute later, holding five pieces of cloth, which he then unrolled in front of us, one next to the other.  They were even more precious looking than the one which had first caught my eye.
"It is among these that the young lady will have to choose, for they are the most beautiful I possess." The shopkeeper announced, with a certain pomposity, as if he were speaking in front of an assembly that could have only agreed.
"If it is for the wedding ceremony, I would opt for the white satin, with the gold threads, but if you two turtledoves have already made your