Old words in Corsica: What survives is not always kept.
Episode 1
“You’re late.”
“I know.”
“Four and a half weeks late.” Her focus on the computer screen doesn’t change. “You just disappeared.”
“I do that.”
“Last seen in Denmark on the 15th of March.” She looks him over once, carelessly. “And now here you are in Corsica, appearing like a ghost.”
He glances around the cramped room stacked with documents.
“You didn’t answer my emails or pick up your messages.”
“No.”
“We reassigned your work.” She stands and walks around the side of the desk to face him.
“That’s fine.”
“It’s not up to you to agree or disagree.”
“No,” he says. “It never was.”
Episode 2
Matteo flicks the pen against the page, the words barely legible as usual. A shadow falls over the table as soft hair brushes his shoulder.
“Interesting,” Sophie says as she picks up his notebook. “Mind if I read it?”
He shrugs.
“That is, if I can.” She squints, tilts her head left then right. “All right.” Her eyes pause mid-line. “This is worth reading aloud.”
Her voice drops a shade deeper, as if weight alone might lend authority. There’s a seriousness to it that’s almost convincing. Except he knows her too well.
“The Weight of Memory – The voice of Corsica through the ages
I carved the standing stones at Filitosa and traced the stars with my fingertips,
guarding the graves of my kin.
They came from the sea with bronze blades and fire;
I fell before I understood their words.
2000 BCE – The Megalith Builder.”
The chair scrapes softly against the hard floor as Sophie sits down. She doesn’t give the notebook back.
“What’s this? Your autobiography?”
He reaches for the book, tugs it out of her hand and places it in his jacket pocket.
“Still generous with your spoken words, I see.” She waves a waiter over and orders a coffee. “Perhaps that’s why it didn’t work out between us. You talked too much.”
Sophie glances around the café, smiles and nods to several people. “You’ve been gone a long time.”
“Yes.”
“Now that you’re off the project, are you going back to Denmark?”
“Haven’t decided.” He sips his coffee.
“You’re doing great, I see. The latest research paper landed well.”
“Depends on who you ask.” He presses his thumb along the edge of the table, almost as if he’s checking where it begins and ends. “How’s the husband? The kids?”
“Good. Annoying. Loveable. Exhausting.” She fiddles with the jar of sugar. “I had no choice, you know.”
He isn’t sure if she means the project or the past. Either way, both are done with.
“How’s the work going?”
She doesn’t answer straight away. Her mouth tightens slightly with the memory of his absence.
“We’ve started with the oldest first, for obvious reasons.”
“They’re willing?”
“Mostly. Some don’t think it matters anymore. That the Corsican language has just folded into something else; still present, but no longer whole.” She pauses. “And they’re OK with that.”
“But you’re not?”
“Of course not. If it isn’t recorded now, a way of understanding the island—and the silences it carries—will disappear.”
A young guy bursts through the door and trots over to their table, moving too fast for the small café. A waiter has to jump out of his way. He glances at Matteo before standing in front of Sophie, breath slightly off, shoulders tight, face already flushing under pressure.
“It’s gone,” he gasps.
“What?” asks Sophie.
“The recordings from a village.” He half turns and nods towards Matteo. “His.”
Episode 3
“I never know when you’ll appear.” Sophie glances at the handful of sun-bleached stone houses clinging
to the steep mountainside. “Or where.”
“It keeps things interesting.” Matteo grins. “No?”
“No.” The thin strap of the leather bag slips off her shoulder. She tugs it back impatiently. “It must be a long time since you’ve been back to your village. I didn’t take you for a sentimental man.”
“Is that suspicion?” He steps close.
“You made the connection.” She doesn’t pull away. “You never moved past your family’s reputation?”
“Apparently not.” One shoulder rises slowly towards his ear, then drops. “At school, missing things usually found their way to me.”
“If I remember correctly, you were always the obvious one.”
His laugh bounces off the cobblestones, breaking the silence of the empty street.
“Have you written any more?” She points to the notebook jutting from his jacket pocket.
He hesitates. He knows she’s checking up on him. Sophie holds out her hand. He pulls out the journal, rubs his thumb along the spine, and passes it over.
The air shifts between them, slight but unmistakable.
She clears her throat and reads aloud.
“I sailed westward from Sardinia and brought tin and amber to the sheltered coves of Corsica.
I was cut down by Etruscan raiders near Aleria, my cargo taken and my body left in the surf.
500 BCE – The Nuragic Trader”
“Interesting way to portray history,” she says. “With the death of one person.”
Their fingers brush as she gives the notebook back. She doesn’t look at him. He doesn’t turn to leave.
“You were seen,” she adds.
“So I’m not a ghost?”
“At the office. Before the recordings disappeared.”
“It was open.” He watches her. “Locks don’t stop things going missing.”
Episode 4
The cloud coming in from the east dulls Matteo’s shadow. He leans against the stone wall where potted geraniums shift in the wind.
His cousin is late. He pulls out his notebook and re-reads today’s entry:
I swore fealty to Pisa but traded secrets to Genoa for the promise of peace.
They found my body in the well the morning after the fall of Bonifacio.
1284 – The Genoese Oathbreaker
Satisfied, he closes the worn leather journal, the weight familiar in his palm. He nods to those passing in and out of the shops. Someone watches him from across the street, half buried in the shade of an awning.
He recognises Sophie and lets out a short laugh, lifts a hand. She doesn’t return the greeting.
An old Toyota Hilux pulls up beside him. Tools and crates rattle in the tray. Matteo steps forward. They shake hands through the open window.
“You’re well?”
They speak at the same time.
Baptiste picks up a thick envelope from the seat and passes it into Matteo’s hands. A quick nod. Matteo steps back.
Sophie watches him walk up the street towards his rented villa; her gaze fixed on the logo on the package.
Episode 5
Matteo stands at the edge of the small gathering, just beyond the cluster of dark coats and lowered heads. The wind moves lightly across the hillside, catching the flaps of coats, lifting loose strands of hair. No one raises their voice above what is necessary.
He dips his chin as people pass. Some recognise him immediately. Others pause for a second or two.
The coffin of his great-uncle is already in place in the waiting earth.
The priest murmurs the Rite of Committal. Matteo doesn’t follow the words. He watches the gestures, feels the shifting of weight from life to death.
People step forward, sprinkle dirt and lay flowers.
Someone near him says it’s a shame the village recordings are missing. Another answers, low and indistinct.
A third says, “He was one of the last. Now the old tongue is almost gone.”
Matteo slips a folded sheet of paper from his journal, smooths the creases with his fingers. Midway down the page the underlined sentence is easy to find amongst the typed text of the transcript.
The words were changed so we could live with them.
Satisfied they remain the same as on his earlier reading he looks toward the mountains, at the rugged peaks and dense forests of his childhood home.
There is movement to his left. He knows who it is before he turns.
Sophie stands a short distance away.
He folds the paper, smaller this time.
For a moment, he thinks that something should be said. He isn’t sure what or by who. Perhaps it is only the distant bells of unseen goats, or the stone crosses and iron fences, summoning an awareness of absence.
Matteo steps forward. Sophie stirs, falters, pauses.
He throws the tightly folded page into the grave, where it flutters down to land amongst the other offerings. He picks up a shovel. The dark, loamy soil carries a faint scent of chestnuts and old leaves as it lands with a thud on the coffin.
No one stops him.
Episode 6
I carried messages through the marquis, hidden in loaves of bread and hollowed books.
The Gestapo took me on the steps of Ajaccio’s cathedral. I did not speak before the bullet.
1943 – The Resistance Courier
A knock raps softly on the wooden door as Matteo finishes writing. Each tap lands with a defined certainty, making it clear that the person will persist until they gain entry.
He isn’t surprised to see Sophie and her staffer standing on the doorstep.
She offers a greeting without words.
“I believe you have something that doesn’t belong to you.”
He doesn’t answer immediately. The space between them reduces to a fine line. Slowly, he leans against the cold wall.
Sophie crosses her arms tightly over her chest. “Well?”
The staffer shuffles uncomfortably.
“You’re right.” Matteo turns.
When they start to follow him inside, he holds up one hand. “Please wait.”
Within a minute he’s back, wearing a jacket and holding car keys. “You drove here, I presume?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Follow me, then.”
Matteo walks to his car parked under the arbour where the vines are beginning to bud.
Sophie asks, “Where…”
“It won’t take long. Twenty or thirty minutes.” His car door opens with a soft click. “I’ll see you there.”
The road clings to the mountain, narrow and unyielding. He handles the twists and turns with ease. Whenever Sophie’s car disappears in the rearview mirror he slows.
In his village he stops under the incomplete canopy of a chestnut tree just coming into leaf. The dappled light plays with his shadow as he rests against the bonnet. When Sophie arrives, he walks over to three men sitting in the sun drinking coffee.
Sophie sees the package in his hand and recognises the institute’s logo. She breaks into a trot.
“That…”
“Belongs here.”
Matteo stands in front of the oldest man. He hands him the heavy envelope of transcripts. “It’s up to you what happens now.”
The man nods once and accepts the documents.
Matteo turns slowly, like a door closing. His gaze seeks the horizon and settles there.
“Who gave you the right to decide what’s preserved and what isn’t?” Sophie’s voice trembles. “Language carries memory. You know that.”
He stops. “They have the right to choose. Not us.” He lifts one hand slightly in the direction of the men.
“Not everything needs to be said. That’s how they have lived with the past.”
“Where’s the USB?”
Matteo smiles and pats his pocket.
Anger shows only in the tightening of her jaw and the stillness she forces on herself.
“You will regret this,” she says.
Her voice is so tight that Matteo has to strain to hear.
Episode 7
Announcements drift across the terminal in clipped bursts, folding into the tread of footsteps and the roll of suitcases. Beyond the glass, a plane rolls into a bay, guided by slow, deliberate signals. Staff move with practised efficiency, every action measured, already known.
Matteo sits in the small café, at ease with the familiar mix of movement and pause.
The phone settles in his hand, the cool weight steady, as if nothing has shifted. He doesn’t re-read the email from the ethics committee or note the date for the disciplinary hearing. It’s exactly what he expected Sophie would do.
He drinks the last of his coffee.
At a nearby seat, a young man reads a book. Headphones cover his ears, the white band set across black hair. Matteo understands just enough Japanese to catch the title.
More or Less
His lips shift, almost forming a smile.
