The boat is small. Maybe ten seats, half of them empty. The driver has a cigarette behind his ear and doesn't speak. Fine by me. We pull out of Positano and the town folds back into the rock like it was never really there at all, just a trick of color against the cliff.
Salt on my lips before we've even cleared the jetty. The spray comes over the bow in uneven bursts, not rhythmic, not romantic, just the sea doing what it does. I've got the Leica wrapped inside my linen shirt on my lap, held down with both hands. Every wave makes me grip tighter. I can feel the metal body through the fabric, cool and hard against my thighs. There is no protecting anything out here, not really. You just try.
The cliffs are the color of bread crust in this light. Nine in the morning and the sun is already behind them, pushing gold across the top while the lower rock stays cool and blue. Lemon groves up there somewhere, I can't see them but I know. My father took me along this stretch when I was eleven, on a bigger boat, and pointed up at those terraces and told me his nonna used to say the lemons here grow sweet because the trees can hear the sea. I believed him then. I still sort of do.
A fishing boat passes going the other way, close enough to wave. Nobody waves. The wake crosses ours and the whole hull drops and lifts and for a second I feel my stomach somewhere near my throat. My hair is soaked. My shirt is soaked. The camera is, I think, okay. Amalfi is coming into view now, the cathedral dome first, then the stacked white and yellow houses filling in around it like a photograph developing in a tray. I don't unwrap the camera. Some mornings you just let your eyes do the work and trust that you'll remember.
