Yesterday I learnt with surprise, when coming to shave the groom, that the wedding had been cancelled. The bride had just thrown a fit in front of the groom’s mother, ending with giving back the engagement ring and calling everything off. So my task as a best man was now to comfort my friend, now forsaken at the altar, and I did it to my best, in a tavern in Canareggio where nobody knew us..

We drank, we cried or laughed, and we reminisced about bygone times. Which made me to offer him to join me aboard ”Colomba” for the upcoming trip to France, for the old times’ sake. Of course, this means to confront my godmother with this so that she couldn’t say anything, and to highlight that until his return, the scandal would be over. But I don’t think she can refuse me with this, when we had been together aboard the ship when we were younger. And she has to know that her godson now is way more responsible than thirteen, fourteen years ago.

I am looking forward to building some new memories together, and, at the same time, reminiscing about my father and the old ”Colomba”. And, for this feeling, I am glad that Fantin and Rino are with us.

Attending a masquerade party with Liao had been the most wonderful thing after a failed wedding. It feels good being together in society as a couple. Maybe I shouldn't say this, because I might be seen as wanting a trophy lady, an exotic princess on my arm, but I was happy. It was something special. I had asked Rino to lend me his traditional costume and I added to it a simple blue and black mask matching it, covering half of the face. I was under a mask, and still myself. Liao was also herself, with a dress inspired from her country and a dark red mask.

We have danced, we had fun, but after a while each of us mingled in different circles. I got introduced to some of her acquaintances, but not all, and so did she. At least I succeeded to introduce her to Lothario, my best friend. (I was a bit scared that he might have been with her before, given his reputation, but fortunately it was not the case. I can't compete with him on any plan - and I wouldn't have wanted to know. No women should stand between us two, childhood friends and relatives).

I met Alessandro. He was with a very interesting lady who is Liao's friend. I can't understand everything in the world, but I can accept what I don't understand yet, with the hope to understand it later. I am glad to see them happily in love. Their words made me understand that most likely I love Liao too and I should tell her something. I don't know yet what and how, but I will ask until I find an answer. My most important question is: how can I be sure it is love, and not a fleeting attraction, since I wasn't in love before, because I wouldn't want to lead her on, neither to break her heart. When I am saying something, I am not going back. Alessandro and Vittoria told me that as long as I carry with me my heart, I am carrying my love with me, and that even a seafarer can find love. Most likely before I know it, and when I least of all expect it.

I had been thinking of Liao, no matter that a sea or two was roaring between us at a certain moment. I had been drawing her sometimes, or remembering her place in my cabin, with the fragrance of the tea and spices. Only that no drawing from memory succeeded to capture her properly, so all the doodles got scraped. So... is this a chance that I really love her? Which is the border between love and attraction? How can I tell them apart? It was a sudden revelation... and Vittoria said that if I love Liao, I should talk to her and find out what she thinks. She encouraged me that she knows Liao is very fond of me, and maybe having a friend's support would matter.

So I have now subjects to consider until I'll be sure what to do and how exactly. I will talk to her when I'll be sure what to say. Lothario told me he had never been in love either, and that his (failed) nuptials had been organized by the parents of the couple, who negotiated all the details, and he had only to bring her the ring. Again, not a story matching my case. We are the only ones to decide our fate.

I also met a writer at the masquerade, an English lady dressed as a dark blue queen, who recognized immediately the Kefallonian costume I was wearing and she asked me questions about the island. I invited her too to the cruise I am planning for springtime. Where Liao and Michela go, my room is spacious enough to get a second hammock hung there and they can have a third companion. She said I could become a character for her stories, and this amuses me. But she'd find enough characters and story subjects aboard the ship, in Ragusa and in Kefallonia, especially that I want to bring them there to catch the May Day festival.

Being good at writing doesn't mean she is good at dancing too, as we were almost falling one on top of the other when Lothario intervened and saved us. It took, as a joke, a couple of figures with him till the end of the dance, and I am sure people had fun in seeing the Kefallonian Greek merchant and the purple prince dancing together, but so be it. A little shock didn't harm anyone, before having me returning to Liao for another dance, or a few.

I have befriended more and more the Zanottas. Fantin and Rino have reasons to be so close to them. They have given us a home far away from home… (in case some of us have a home, because others, including me, are like sea turtles, travelling with their floating house, with no place on land to call theirs.) Papa Ludovico and Mama Lucia are the sweetest innkeepers I have ever met. Tribiano, Cesare and Francesco are nice men too. I can’t say anything about the ladies, except that they are cooking well and making jokes (that one with the jokes, not always the best thought or the kindest, despite her great heart, is Anzola).

The latest days there had been a lot happening at the inn. First, a rainy day brought inside lots of people, many of the seafaring kind. I had the opportunity to see also a few seafaring women, to my surprise, including one from India. They were more of the sailing kind than the galley and sail making kind, how the ones I have known in the islands happened to be. Ultimately, we seafarers are an interesting bunch, so we ended teaching her how to play cards and she got to win a couple of rounds from my crewmates. Birds of a flock fly together, and we, the seafarers, have to stick to each other too, as nobody knows which of us would happen once to be in need of help in the middle of the sea…

The next evening, a peaceful, but rather crowded athmosphere ended with a rowdy fight. Now, if it started from a chair, a plate of food or a man picking on the Indian seafaring lady I had seen the day before for the first time, it was difficult to say. Surely it started from a drunken sod, who got what he had deserved in order to sober up, from a Frenchman, then an English red-coat intervened against the Frenchman, some of his compatriots from my crew came to help the victim, and soon nobody knew anymore who was fighting whom. We tried to set them apart and to calm the fight down. Papa Ludovico Zanotta and his sons tried too, but until the corrazzieri detained them, they didn’t stop fighting.

I had to pay a fine and claim my men – even those who hadn’t been in the fight, as Fantin got a black eye just by mistake. I think that angered me the most. But ultimately we showed the Zanottas our support and the fact that even the ones of us who had eventually fought, did it after the fight had started, as self-defense (or in help of compatriots). We helped them clean up the place, and we got as reward an invitation to dinner for that night and the upcoming ones.

I also offered them the help of Barthemy and Fernand, ”Colomba’s” carpenters, to mend the furniture distructed during the fight.

Not only summers - the spring of our lives too, as today is the First of March and we have weighed anchor two days ago. It feels so heartwarming that I am sharing a cabin with Lothario, just like in our youth. Of course he is helping only when he wants to, I am not here to work him out like our father used to do to both of us about twenty years ago. And we can see on the deck Fantin and Rino (a bit overgrown to our memories) when we get our hearts full of nostalgia.

Indeed, sometimes I wish there was a way back to the old times of our youth, to our fathers still alive and we worriless...

We have seen swallows crossing the sea and we have remembered the swallow carols Kefallonian children used to sing on the first of March, coming to the Governor's house for treats for announcing the spring arrived with the first swallow from the Black Sea and wishing a good, fruitful year to the hosts.

Today Lothario noticed that the Holy Family icon from my cabin had a red and white thread as decoration. We couldn't decide if Fantin or Rino were the ones to put it there - like the icons on the ships we grew up on had in March - but we went to see if, in their great enthusiasm of welcoming spring, and decorating the ladies of the house, ie the ship itself and Virgin Mary in the icon, there wasn't any such thread tied somewhere else on the ship - and we found it right on the helm. I wonder who had made o Martis for them...

Back on the island, most people tie the thread to a tree branch when the month of March is over, but on other islands people wear the March bracelet until Easter day, and burn it with the lamb that is roasted, so that with the ressurection of Christ, all our sins burn away and disappear. I think now, in a trade connected to the treeless road of water, this latest solution is better. Later, at lunch, I heard Fantin explaining to the French crewmates about the thread suddenly tied on the helm. We have just done it two days ago, however both of us know it's just temporary. In three weeks, we'll be found again in Venice, returning to face the problems we have left. We can't run away from ourselves, and no desert islands are written in our destiny. We can only strengthen our bond by this time spent together in close quarters, and be sure we will remain one for the other like we have always been.

So much had happened in the two days since we returned to Venice! Yes, I am one year wiser, and one year happier, but not everyone around me is.

Fernand brought his lover aboard "Colomba", with my permission. Actually, my permission had been a little strained, but it matters less. I gave it wholeheartedly when I understood that he was really in love and serious about fighting for her life. If I didn't agree, he would have found another ship... or got strained in Venice, desperately searching for one.

And why would I be against it, once I understood that her siblings agreed to it, and that she wasn't safe anymore in her parents' inn? I gave her, for now, my cabin to lay in, while I went to the Arsenale to call the carpenter and make them a cabin in the hold. Their new home. If she lives (it is still uncertain if and how she'd recover) she will be a good crewmate, exactly like my mother, Fantin's or Rino's... And if, may God forbid it, she doesn't, I don't know what I'm going to do with a despaired Fernand, I fear the worst.

There were two things I learnt from this love story: that if, again may God forbid it, anything happened with Liao that she wasn't safe aboard the ship anymore, I would have taken her with me too, and nobody could persuade me of the contrary. And also that life is short, and no tomorrow is granted. It might happen for us or not anymore. So, we have to tell today what we want not to remain untold. We have to live today as if tomorrow never comes. I learnt as well, from Fernand's confession, that what I feel for Liao is surely love too, and I had to confess it. So Colomba is harbouring two love stories - at least these are the ones I know about. Who knows who else has left his heart in a corner of Venice and hasn't accepted yet that it has happened?

To my dismay, Liao doesn't want to get married, she doesn't want children and she doesn't want to quit her profession. For me, it is a little difficult to accept, but not impossible - our relationship has never been the most traditional one. If I want to be a part of her future - and I do - we can navigate our own route towards this future, no matter that some people would look badly at us for this, assuming the worst from several angles. Ultimately, it might be also difficult for her to accept that her beloved is not wealthy enough to be able to offer her the lifestyle she is accustomed to and that he is away from her for more than half of the month, and that he can't be by her side exactly when she needs more his support. So there is a delicate balance of our relationship.

And if she accepts this, why wouldn't I accept her conditions, when I have always said that I love her for who she is, and I wouldn't attempt to change her? I wouldn't leave her for another woman who could give me children, neither would I hold it against her in any way. There are other possibilities to have children in my life when God considers appropriate to give them to me, possibilities which don't include me siring them, but raising and teaching them. As for the other points, wouldn't it be worse NOT to know that she didn't want to quit her profession, and to return home to a wife just to find her with another man, willing to help her pay her bills in my absence?

Yes, I am jealous - and more than jealous, but these are things not to confess to her. I definitely am not the kind to throw fits of jealousy like others do, men and women alike, neither to reproach something I have known from the beginning. It would be pointless. She is the one I have known, and I can't change her if she isn't the one to want to change. If I twist my heart in jealousy over her customers, after she had reassured me that I am the only man she loves and the only one who matters for her, I think it is my own problem I have to deal with, not hers.

And I hope both love stories have happy endings. (I wish the same to any other potential ones as well).

I am one year older today, one year wiser and one year happier, for having known Liao's love.

The most precious gift for me is her love, and the new bond between us. It is funny that I wouldn't have accepted from anybody to be put to cook, but with her it is a pleasure to work in the same team and to learn. I hope for more cooking lessons from her!

I invited her yesterday to the "Drunken Duck" to celebrate San Giuseppe and also our... engagement of sorts, because how else than betrothal can be called our pledge of love, sealed with two halves of the same coin, as we share two halves of the same love? (I know that her fear of commitment, greater than mine, as I can't say I took lightly the decision to propose to her either, might make her be too afraid by this word even if it implies only that the next step would be none other than marriage, not that marriage should necessary happen within an established time frame.)

We drank champagne, we toasted to each other, and the lovely hosts have also wished me happy feast day and offered us dessert on the house. We have talked extensively, mapping our way towards happiness on our own original route. I am more and more in peace with getting to know and to accept each other as we are, building an original, but lasting relationship. One which doesn't need to be secret anymore, and to which the two halves of the same silver coin are the best symbol. In some countries, these replace an engagement token, or, in certain cases, even the wedding ring.

Waking up in her arms for two mornings in a row is also one of the most wonderful presents. I'll start considering myself spoiled for this. It feels like... home. Being wanted, being loved and cherished. What can a man wish for more?

Anyway, today I am happy that, as a birthday present, I received the confirmation that the reclamation from Margareta's brute of a husband had been dismissed, but the accusation against him for attempted murder is maintained. I wish good luck to the Court to make sure he spends enough years behind the bars - if not executed. (I know, not too Christian thoughts from my part, but his attitude was far less Christian than mine).

This is a memorable trip to Marseilles, despite the wind and sea being welcoming to our endeavours.

First and foremost, we've got passengers again, a Crimean merchant and his lady. Poor woman keeps being very seasick, despite the fact that most people get accustomed after a few hours, or one day of the trip on calm seas, like now. Most of the crew pities her for this. The only thing she can hold down and feel a little better is our reserve of sambucca. The anis had always helped against seasickness, and this is one of the reasons we always have reserves of an anis flavoured liquor or another. She is kept in a state of half-drunkedness but if this helps and she is not a violent drunk, then... what does it matter anymore? Here isn't Riva degli Schiavoni, to have all the eyes upon her. We understand, we have seen worse about certain people at sea.

Her man got quickly his sea legs and he spends a part of the day asking the sailors various things. I like him, he seems open minded and willing to know about things in the most varied fields. His accent in French or Venetian is amusing, but once you get accustomed to how the words sound in his mouth versus how they were supposed to sound, this knowledge applies further, making his accent understandable.

Margareta is slowly getting better. She is still not allowed to move much, so she must remain in her cot. When he isn't on watch, Fernand spends all his time by her side. When he isn't available, Jean-Pierre, Rino or Fantin take her place, whoever of them is free in that moment, so that she can't get bored. Her French got better due to Jean-Pierre's help, to the strange stories he is telling her and to the lots of questions he is asking.

To my surprise, Fernand had learnt quickly from Anzola how to take care of Margareta and he is doing a good job with it. The big man whose hands would crush something so easily proves to be gentle and with skilled gestures. But if I thought how gentle he is with wood too when processing it into various things, then I wouldn't have been surprised as much. Ultimately, Barthemy's hands and allure aren't much more miniature than Fernand's either. Just a little smaller, and his woodworking is amazing (for a man with no crafting talents like me).

Stephane and Jean-Pierre had learnt how a thick broth meant for someone sick has to look, as in quantities of ingredients, mashing and final aspect. We have brought a few live chicken with us, a thing we usually weren't doing, but we can't keep a sick woman only on vegetable soup. She needs thick chicken broth in order to regain her strength, more than the regular sailors' stew. Of course, when the men get fresh fish, fish broth or stew would be also welcome.