The following piece appears in our Summer 2025 issue. Order it here.

The most recent one had arrived a couple of weeks earlier. Sitting at the kitchen table in her housecoat, Elena Cavalieri was having breakfast. Her legs were propped on a chair, feet in gray felt slippers, ankles crossed; the raised edge of her pajamas exposed a bony ankle, scored by a large blue vein. With nothing to do, she was lingering as usual in front of her coffee, scrolling through the day’s news and social media posts on her phone, when she looked up and saw him through the French window that led to the terrace. White and gray and sleek as a cat, a delinquent flicker in his unblinking, red-ringed eyes, neck tucked into his broad chest, a bright yellow beak curved at the tip, and a ruby ​​smudge on his jaw. He was perched on the railing, across from the door, motionless and menacing, and from that elevated position he seemed to be contemplating a new and desirable fiefdom. Elena felt a twinge of terror, but then curiosity prevailed. After taking a last sip of coffee from the large red cup with the white polka dots, she stood up to get a closer look at him. In an attempt to attract his attention, or perhaps to scare him, she tapped on the glass with her fingernails. He continued to show her that malevolent profile, and did not turn his head so much as a fraction of an inch: he was more interested in her possessions than in her. Elena tapped harder, and on impulse, not thinking, turned the handle to go out and chase him away. But then she thought better of it and closed the door, even turning the key in the lock. She refilled the coffee maker, set it on the stove, and sat back down, all the while keeping an eye on her visitor. She searched the web for information about his habits. Seagulls were taking over the city, according to the first of the articles the search engine brought up. Seagull Crisis! read another headline. Following that, in the sensationalist tones reserved for local disasters, came a small list of horrific events involving the “flying rats,” as one of the articles referred to them. For years, seagulls had contributed to the city’s ruin, defacing its monuments with their feces, picking among the garbage left to pile up in the streets, nesting on the roofs and terraces of the houses, devouring mice and smaller birds and leaving the carcasses, not completely stripped clean, to rot in the alleyways. But now those birds, up till now scavengers, were becoming more aggressive.

More demanding in their tastes, they now attacked apartment dwellers who ventured out onto terraces transformed into gardens and nurseries, and like contemporary harpies, even nosedived on tables in the outdoor areas of restaurants. Each week dozens of complaints reported injuries to citizens who were eating something in the street, when a swooping seagull stole their sandwich or ice cream. Often those thefts were preceded by a violent scuffle; a man had ended up in the emergency room after being pecked on the head, and a mother had had to fend off a bird that had landed on the hood of her baby’s stroller. The fear was widespread. The measures taken sporadically by individuals were of no avail, ranging from the adoption of acoustic deterrents, to the destruction of nests and eggs, to the use, by the more bellicose spirits, of laser rifles. Seagulls were perhaps superior to rats in resilience and persistence, and far more efficient, as aerial warfare is to ground combat. At that point Elena looked up to gauge her visitor’s intentions. He had meanwhile turned three-quarters toward the outside of the building, and she detected an infinitesimal tremor in his fixed stance, perhaps of anticipation. Then, slightly ruffling his tail feathers, the bird dropped a liquid excrement beneath him that splatted onto the tiles, before he finally spread his wings and took flight.

That amorphous, whitish splotch solidifying like limestone on the terrace floor and the disgust it provoked in her brought Elena Cavalieri back to an episode from over twenty years ago. It was January, and for work reasons she found herself spending a week abroad, in a city on the Atlantic. It wasn’t as cold as she had expected, and the weather was constantly changing, with blinding bursts of sun and sudden squalls of sharp, stinging rain that slammed into her face and upper body, making her umbrella useless. After the first attempts to shield herself, she closed it up, and pulled a woolen hat over her head, offering her forehead, cheeks and mouth to those liquid needles. And then there were the seagulls. Large creatures, sleek and plump like cats, that strutted upright along the sidewalks, stopping every now and then to survey their asphalt domain. Of course, their presence was not surprising with the sea so close that from the center of the city, though it could not be seen, it was a ghostly presence lingering at the end of certain streets, where the sky lit up with an effervescent gray. Their cries woke her in the morning, with the first wintry light, querulous and tragic like the appeals of a neglected lover. As soon as she went out she found herself confronting those overbearing birds, who instead of moving aside or flying away as she passed, came towards her menacingly, surrounding her as if to collect something they were owed.

At that time Elena Cavalieri was experiencing a last flare of carnal beauty. After turning fifty, she found herself more pursued than at thirty. The years had etched her facial lines without being too cruel, giving a slight determination to features so delicate that they had made her almost uninteresting at thirty. More than tarnishing her, age had defined her, like a custom-made coat. At one point in the week she had participated in a two-day conference that also included a talk by her on the afternoon of the second day. During the time set aside for questions from the public, a man stood up and caught her off guard with his question. It wasn’t exactly a confrontational question, but beneath the neutral formulation entirely in keeping with the occasion, she sensed a provocative, almost aggressive intent, as if for reasons independent of the discussion that had arisen, he wanted to test her ability to stand up to him. At the end of the session, he approached her at the refreshments table to apologize and assure her of his esteem for her work. He must have been about Elena’s age. The conversation almost immediately took on a less professional tone and became lighter. Between a glass of Beaujolais and a canapé he asked her out to dinner the following evening, and she accepted.

The following day she dressed with care, looking forward to an evening that would perhaps have an erotic outcome, as sometimes happened on those occasions. He came to pick her up in the hotel lobby and took her to an elegant restaurant. They enjoyed cocktails, which they finished with the appetizers—enormous plates of minimalistic design with tiny portions of seafood in the center, topped with slices of mango and watermelon and long strands of an herb that Elena could not identify—then he ordered an expensive French wine. He was a rather attractive man, properly dressed and clearly accustomed to frequenting places like this. His conversation was skillful, controlled, with flashes of mild gallantry though always at a safe distance from any hint of vulgarity. Yet there was a lack of grace in him, something guarded and tense, as if his casual elegance, his relaxed manner, were somehow false. There was an unseen boundary line between them, which he continually tended to push, as if to gain ground, only to retreat once he had crossed it, leaving her with the pathetic, laughable defense of her territory. Halfway through dinner she began to feel a confused but irrepressible desire to return to her hotel room. The dessert menu arrived and Elena glanced at it, intrigued by the bold pairings of ingredients—chocolate and Guérande salt, rose ice cream, strawberries with balsamic vinegar cream, caramelized pears with parmesan Chantilly. Then she placed it on the table and said she would go straight to the coffee.

He raised his eyebrows as if he were disappointed. “A pity,” he said. “A woman should know how good it feels to eat something forbidden.”

She laughed uncertainly. But he still seemed displeased.

When the waiter returned to take their orders, he asked for two desserts, the rose ice cream for himself and the chocolate cake for Elena, as well as two glasses of Sauternes, so peremptorily that she did not manage to object. When she stared at him incredulously, as if he were joking, he turned up his palms to show that she had left him no choice.

“Do you always decide for others?” she asked, trying to restrain her rising irritation.

“Only if they force me to,” he smiled, finally satisfied.

The waiter brought a small tray of elaborate, tiny pastries—gourmandises, he called them—and, after displaying the bottle and receiving a nod of assent, he poured the Sauternes. The desserts arrived immediately afterwards. Under Elena Cavalieri’s eyes, the block of chocolate, black and firm, coated in a thin, shiny glaze and set in a small pool of greenish sauce with spear-shaped, ruby ​​red streaks, shimmered in the dim light, unavoidable and geometric. Anger tightened her throat. He sank his spoon into the dark mass, and brought it affectionately to her lips, pressing a little. Elena, sensing the stares from the other tables, played the part he was forcing on her and opened her mouth to let in the spoon; then she bit down on that pungent softness, felt the tingle of salt on her tongue and the cold metal against her palate. For a moment she kept the spoon inside her mouth, and he had to pull it towards him to free it. Then, relentless, he sank it into the dark chocolaty mass again.

“You’re very cute when you eat,” he said after the third spoonful, and while Elena’s eyes filled with tears he went on feeding her, lastly spooning up the greenish, red-streaked sauce, methodically, until only some dark brown smears of chocolate remained on the plate. Then, looking at her fixedly, he indicated the glass, and she could not avoid it, as though hypnotized by his affable tyranny. Finally, he took a pastry with two fingers and brought it to her mouth, then, when she had accepted it obediently, he placed a finger on her closed lips.

At the cloakroom he took her coat from the waiter’s hands and put it on her, then taking hold of the lapels and closing them, he fastened the first button and lastly turned up her collar. In the street he gently took her elbow, leading her to the curb to try to hail a taxi. At that point she wrenched free.

“Look, I’m not your daughter!” she spat at him angrily.

He assumed his earlier look of disappointment. “The problem with certain women like you,” he said, almost wearily, “is that they still don’t know what they need.”

“I don’t need anything!” she shot back, raising her voice.

“Really? How old are you, Elena? You should make the most of the time you have left.”

“I can’t believe it. You’re asking me to go back to the hotel with you. And you’re actually asking me like that.”

He looked surprised. “But I didn’t ask you anything, my dear. I thought we were playing a little game between adults. But now you no longer know what you want. Forgive me, but your behavior is… inappropriate. Did you think I would”—and here he actually burst into an amiable laugh—“pursue you?”

“I never thought… how dare you?!” She was outraged. That pretentious dinner, the overly elegant restaurant, his forceful ways, his presumption, the brutality lurking just beneath the surface. She again felt the spoon brimful of dessert pressing against her closed lips, the cold metal in her mouth.

“I am happily in a relationship,” he was now saying. “With a young woman who could become the mother of my children. But I remain, let’s say, curious about life.”

“You can save your curiosity for other occasions!” Elena practically shouted.

“You should be more accustomed to the ways of the world. That lack is pathetic at your age,” he said, with a flash of pure spite in his eyes.

It was too much. Elena felt the dinner rising in her throat, the wine was clouding her thinking, loosening all restraints.

“And you… you’re a… a bastard… I know your kind… a repulsive scumbag!” she yelled just as a taxi pulled up to the curb.

He then made a sarcastic little bow and opened the door for her. “I’ll leave the lady in your hands,” he told the taxi driver. “Take good care of her.”

Elena jumped into the car, yanking on the door, but he held on tightly and then closed it gently when she had to let go.

At the hotel she went straight to the bathroom and stuck two fingers down her throat, eager to purge herself of the remains of the evening. Then, covered in a cold sweat, her limbs limp, she sat on the edge of the bathtub to recover from the induced bout of vomiting; as soon as she felt a little better she removed her makeup and washed vigorously, as if it could help erase that sorry episode from her life. The next day was Sunday, so she decided then and there that she would go to the seaside, to a tourist resort reachable by train. She would walk, breathe in the salt air, she would purify herself.

She slept interrupted by constant awakenings, and finally opened her eyes at dawn, at the seagulls’ first cries. She took advantage of it to leave early, and after a forty-minute ride she got off at the station in the resort town, which had a row of pretty pastel-colored houses facing the ocean and a narrow jetty of dark stone that jutted out into gunmetal grey water. She had breakfast and then, feeling restored, she set off in the biting cold along the pier, where there was a succession of fish markets, pubs, restaurants, chip shops, cafes, shops selling strongly scented soaps, magnets, and T-shirts. In the windows of the fish markets, lying on a bed of ice, was a vast array of glistening fillets of salmon, oily slices of cod, whole mackerel with tapered bodies and downturned mouths, octopuses with large gelatinous heads and curled up arms, gray shrimp still teeming with residual life, clams, oysters, and scallops. The dark stone on the ground was soaked, covered here and there with sparse patches of moss, and dampness rose from the sea, gripping her feet, her ankles. At the end of the pier, despite the inclement weather, a small agency advertised boat trips along the coast, promising romantic views of ancient ruins, guillemots, puffins and seals, as well as a captain who during the voyage would entertain passengers with the history and folklore of that stretch of land and sea, accompanied by a background of traditional music. The small motorboat docked in front of the agency would depart in a quarter of an hour, they told her when she went in to inquire, if there were enough passengers. She bought a ticket and headed for the gangway, where a man helped her onto the wooden vessel. Sitting on one of the benches along the side, a couple of young tourists, chilled to the bone, were flirting. Elena took a seat on the other side, pulling her windbreaker tighter around her and tugging her wool hat more snugly over her ears. The man who had helped her onto the boat was looking around for other passengers; though he wore heavy gloves, he clapped his hands together to keep warm, while clouds of vapor streamed out of his mouth. Finally, a twenty-year-old tourist with severe acne, dressed too lightly for the harsh climate, and two girls with pink plush earmuffs joined in. Before long the man also climbed on board and started the engine. While waiting for it to warm up, he described the trip’s route with a heavy local accent. They would skirt the mainland for a while, reaching the famous cliffs, admire the remains of an ancient abbey from the sea, then they would head for the rocky islet further on, a spot cloaked in dark legends of shipwreck survivors, mermaids and nymphs. Finally, the boat stopped rumbling and rocking and left the dock, to the notes of bagpipes, concertina and flute. The sea was leaden and calm and the boat’s speed moderate, but a few splashes occasionally sprayed onto Elena’s lap, her cheeks.

As they headed out to sea, she stopped paying attention to the local tales as her mind drifted back, despite herself, to the events of the previous evening. Her anger and humiliation over the incident, which when she was younger would have stayed with her for a long time, had given way to a keen sadness at the recurrence of an all-too-familiar scenario. She had witnessed that male aggression in her life forever, that blind, indiscriminate pushing aimed at annihilation, erosion, and surrender, followed by a capricious retreat that left her uncertain, disconcerted: a trophy no longer of value. In the meantime they had reached the rocky islet, a barren, jagged outcrop of brown stone, which offered no possibility of docking, impregnable as a fortress. The man at the helm began to circumnavigate it, to give the passengers a chance to spot the promised fauna. There were only the seagulls: some circling around the island, wings outstretched, others perched like malevolent sentinels on the rocky projections. Now Elena only felt cold. The sea’s dampness penetrated her heavy clothes, permeated the fabrics with salt, and plastered her hair, numbing her body and her thoughts. By the time the boat finally docked at the pier she was shivering. She headed for a café to warm up and ordered some hot tea. When she went to the bathroom she saw her face in the mirror, livid with cold, her eyelids red, her eyes watery, smudged with mascara, her lips chapped, lipstick caked in the furrows. She wondered if this was how he, the night before, had seen her.

After warming up a bit, she went out onto the pier. To pass the time until lunch, she went in and out of the few souvenir shops open at that season, before setting off at a good pace along the path that went up to the lighthouse. When she returned to the seafront, an enticing smell of fried food reached her and she suddenly realized she was famished. So she headed towards a fried food shop and came out with a bag of fish and chips. She walked along the nearly deserted promenade and, in the grey winter afternoon, voraciously ate the greasy, heavy food. Suddenly the sky darkened and she heard a noise that sounded like canvas flapping in the wind; she felt something sleek and forceful graze her hair, her ear, stirring the air around her. Instinctively, she hunched her head into her shoulders, closing her eyes, as if to duck a bombardment. When she reopened them, she found herself face to face with a flutter of white and gray feathers, along with a confusion of a bright yellow beak and talons, and a jet black, red-ringed eye. The seagull’s muscular body swooped down on the bag of chips like lightning, the wings beating furiously. She let go of the bag and covered her face with her hands to protect herself from the assault, and a moment later the bird rose triumphantly with a large piece of fish in his beak. Dismayed, terrified, Elena stared at the mess at her feet. The remains of the vandalized food littered the sidewalk. She wanted to scream, or curse, but her voice stuck in her throat. Oh my God, dear God, she kept saying to herself, incredulous. Her heart was pounding so hard that she had to sit down on a bench. Only then, lowering her head to her hands gripped in her lap, did she see the smear of blood on her skin.

It was summer now. And yet it rained every day. The light that came through the windows had the gray softness of a city spring, with something watery in the background. A beautiful light, Elena Cavalieri decided, not at all sad, but rather vital. She had done the wash the night before, and since the weather forecast guaranteed several dry hours before the usual evening storm, she decided to make the most of it and hang the laundry outside to dry. She went out to the terrace with a damp cloth to wipe the clotheslines. The gigantic magnolia in the courtyard, nourished by the recent rains, displayed large, corpulent leaves, shiny and dark, that already hinted at its impending moment of splendor, perhaps in a few days, when overnight, white, delicate flowers would appear in the midst of that blackish green foliage, ready to close and reopen with the changing light. She went back in, leaving the French window open, and went to the bathroom to unload the washing machine. When she returned with the basket of laundry in her arms, he was in the doorway, with that sharp, menacing expression.

“Go away!” she shouted. “Go, shoo!”

The gull didn’t budge.

She dropped the basket to the floor with a thud, to scare him. In response, he crossed the threshold with a little hop and was in the house. Elena clapped her hands loudly, repeating “Shoo, shoo, shoo!” in a booming voice. His small head tilted slightly to the side, and she had the impression that he was mocking her. So she went to look for a broom. When she returned, he had gained more ground and was standing practically in the middle of the kitchen. She pointed the broom at him like a rifle, then banged the broom hard on the floor, two, three, four times, continuing to shout. When the bristles came close to brushing him, the seagull stood up, fluttered his wings and scooted aside to avoid it. Elena considered hitting it, but the thought of ​​that dead bird in the kitchen, or worse, an injured, or even unharmed and therefore enraged one, made her desist. Just then a shrill squawking came from outside, and at that call the seagull headed straight for the French window and went out. Elena dropped the broom and went to the open windows. On the ground, an inch or so from the doorway, a whitish splash streaked with black was already solidifying, as if before leaving that hateful bird had wanted to leave her a sign of his contempt.

Elena hastily shut the door, and after cleaning the guano splotch with a damp paper towel, went to get an umbrella. Then she went out to the terrace to check that the encroacher wasn’t lurking somewhere, opening the umbrella to shield herself from the seagulls’ strafing runs. After ensuring that the field was temporarily clear, she quickly hung the laundry and went back inside. Safely back in the kitchen with the door locked, she told herself that this time she would not capitulate.

They moved in on her more and more. In the morning, as soon as it got a little light, she could hear their mournful shrieks, each day closer and closer. She bought deterrents. Long rows of steel spikes that, once installed on the railings and windowsills, shone like spears arrayed in the sun. An ultrasonic repellent device. A set of scarecrow owls with fearsome phosphorescent eyes, which emitted the screeches of various birds of prey, continuously from dawn until dusk. A hawk mounted on a telescopic pole that stirred at the slightest breath of wind. All of no use. Announced by the desolate cries of his peers, the seagull returned unfailingly on the dot, mocking, ruthless. One day, hearing what sounded like desperate squeaking coming from outside, she looked out the French window and saw him swoop down from above with a mouse in its beak, still alive, which he dropped like a scrap of waste, leaving it to die among the oleanders and hydrangeas before soaring triumphantly to the sky again.

There was a storm during the night. The rain beat down violently for what seemed like hours to Elena. Lying awake in bed, waiting for the funereal chorus that proclaimed the morning’s arrival, she imagined huge projectiles of rain fired from the sky exploding on the terrace’s tiles, the liquid fragments radiating like scattershot, destroying the seagull’s coveted kingdom. She imagined the morning devastation of sodden, wilted flowers, overturned pots, broken terracotta, clods of dark earth flung everywhere, torn up roots, a rotting carpet of leaves and petals, battered magnolia blossoms among the leaves. She imagined the stark blue sky, the cruel sun that would expose everything. Then she would open the French window to let in the air cleansed by the rain and she would sit in the kitchen, drinking coffee, reading about the world’s catastrophes, waiting. He would come, sooner or later, ruffled and drenched dark with rain, one wing broken by the storm, his feathers tattered and filthy, his tail black with tar, a castaway crippled by the sea’s fury, a deposed, greedy sovereign: he would return to rule over that shattered realm. And she would wait for him. She was ready. She had all the time in the world now. Elena Cavalieri was seventy-seven years old.

Monica Pareschi is the author of È di vetro quest’aria (Italic Pequod, 2014), and translates fiction for major Italian publishing houses. She has translated and edited, among others, Thomas Hardy, Charlotte and Emily Brontë, Shirley Jackson, Doris Lessing, Bernard Malamud, and Paul Auster. Her translations have won numerous awards. She teaches literary translation at the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore.

Anne Milano Appel, Ph.D., has translated works by a number of leading Italian authors for numerous US and UK publishers. Her awards include the Italian Prose in Translation Award, the John Florio Prize for Italian Translation, and the Northern California Book Award for Translation. A former library administrator, she has a doctorate in Romance Languages and Literature.

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