Ontreto

by Peter Crawley

  He pulls back the throttle, jams the motor into reverse and throws the helm to port to avoid ramming the pilings head on.

  At first he doesn’t know what to make of the assembly of iron props. He stands in the cockpit, the Mara idling, drifting, and studies them, mystified as to what the bent and twisted construction might be.

  Slowly, he realises they are more substantial than merely a disordered collection of broken metal beams and angled stanchions. They are, or rather were, the makings of a pier; the framework of a dock or wharf, which has at one time been filled out and clothed in concrete and wood, but which is now decayed and decrepit, rusted and gnawed back to its bare chassis by the chemical corrosion of the salt water and the relentless onslaught of the waves. In places the girders have buckled and warped as though the frame has been stamped on by a giant.

  Ric edges the Mara up close to the nearest of the vertical iron posts. He pulls hard against it; it remains unmoving. And as he looks down, he sees that not only does the ocean floor reflect the white of the mist, but, somehow, it also holds a richer, deeper, more textured alabaster tone to it, as though the seabed is overlaid with crêpe batter.

  The rectangular structure is solid; it rises up to just higher than the Mara’s mast and the stanchions are spaced a good twenty metres apart. They stretch away into the mist, promising no end.

  Clearly, it is a mole or jetty or landing stage of some kind, and just as clearly, if it is such, then it is attached to the land and it has prevented him from running aground. But, and perhaps more importantly, he can tie up to it and get his head down for a few hours, secure in the knowledge that the Mara won’t go anywhere.

  Sleep, Ric decides, is higher up his menu of needs than the square meal his stomach so noisily demands.

  He ties up fore and aft to the iron skeleton, paying out just enough line so that, if the wind does get up, the Mara will simply swing between the stanchions. Ric turns off the motor and sits down. He listens for the gentle swell lapping at the shore and guesses that the beach or cliff, or whatever shape the land takes, is not much more than a few yards out of sight behind the white curtain. He lies back and stretches out his weary limbs, savouring the moment before he goes below to lie in the arms of Hypnos and surrender to Manou’s sky-blue eyes. Wherever he is, and he supposes it must be the island of Lipari as his chart suggests, he is glad he and the Mara have arrived in one piece.

  He stands up very slowly and rubs his fingers through his hair. His eyes are tired; they sting from the salt and the hours of concentration. His ears buzz with the silence, and his arms ache and his back is sore from standing too long at the helm.

  Ric decides to lie down and sleep for a few hours, hoping that when he wakes, the fog will be gone and he will find out exactly where he is.

  He shakes his head. He can hear someone shouting.

  4

  At first he wonders if, after his recently extended solitude, his mind is beginning to play tricks on him. He shakes his head again and rubs his eyes, and when the pounding of blood through his brain has reduced, he looks up and listens.

  The voices are indistinct and muffled by the heavy blanket of fog. One moment he can hear people talking and the next, their conversation is swallowed up.

  Ric strains to listen harder. There are two men, both Italian. One voice is low and guttural, harsh and unforgiving, like that of an officer chewing out a junior rank; the other distinctive, higher pitched, not that of a young man or boy necessarily, more that of a man pleading or apologising.

  Their conversation grows ever more heated, the volume increases and some of the individual words become clearer. The pauses, too, grow longer and carry more weight, as though each argument is carefully considered before being contradicted. And every now and then, one softens and addresses the other in sentimental tones, as if they are friends or, perhaps, relations.

  After a prolonged pause, the conversation develops an angry, threatening edge; the higher-pitched of the two voices pleads more desperately, whilst the other continues to accuse with greater authority.

  Ric hears the words “bastardo” and “cagna”.

  The two men are at loggerheads and their rhetoric is being ratcheted the way a wind-filled sail is tightened. The pleading grows more hysterical as the rebukes increase in certainty. Whatever wrong the one man has done, it becomes apparent the other is not inclined to forgive him.

  The mist closes in and muffles the voices.

  Ric walks up to the prow and stands, holding on to the forestay, waiting and listening.

  The mist thins momentarily and he hears the words “traditore” and “vergogna” and the phrase, “Tesoro mio, sei una cagna. Vai con Dio,” and finally, silence.

  One of the men begins to scream and plead, “No, per favore, no, Ci–” followed by a second muffled, choking sound and the scuffling of feet.

  And silence. A silence both profound and chilling, and pressed beneath the enormous weight of the fog.

  Ric listens hard, but… nothing. The seconds slow as somewhere out in the mist a life slips its mooring and fades away.

  The deep, lasting quiet is suddenly punctured by the word “Puddaciaru!” not so much spoken as snarled by the man who has just murdered another.

  5

  That he cannot tell how far off in the mist the action is happening, concerns him. The blanket of fog shows no sign of lifting and Ric knows that if it does, he will be alarmingly exposed, moored as he is to the rusty old dock. For the moment, there is not much he can do. The wind, or rather the lack of it, lends him no means of escape. And though he can start up the Mara’s motor and disappear swiftly into the clinging white vapour, the noise of the motor will no doubt give his presence away. The Mara is genteel; she does not take kindly to being hurried to the door.

  He creeps aft and slips down into the main cabin; the sleep he craves now forgotten. The hairs on the back of his neck are standing at attention and his previously aching limbs are feathered by cool tendrils of adrenalin.

  A square of the planked floor beneath his bed lifts by means of a small finger-hole and beneath it lie two plastic bags: one contains two passports and money; the other, a semi-automatic pistol.

  Ric removes the pistol, tucks it in his belt and stands up to examine his chart. Sicily is thirty or so miles due south, but there is another island, Vulcano, he would have to sail round before he could get into open water. His best bet is to sit tight and hope the fog conceals him until he can gain a better look at the terrain.

  He slips back up into the cockpit of the Mara and wonders what kind of dock he is tied up to. Clearly it is no longer in use, but he wonders for what purpose it was built. In the course of his journey, he’s seen no oil derricks and there are none marked on his chart; neither is there an Italian naval station in the area. And he can’t imagine what industry would exist on such a small island that it requires such an imposing structure.

  He thinks about the word puddaciaru. It is not an Italian word he recognises. But it was spoken with such venom that, even though he hasn’t the first clue what it means, Ric is in no doubt it must be some kind of insult. Some of the conversation he understood: bastardo, figlio di una cagna, meaning bastard and son-of-a-bitch; traditore, he thinks, suggests one man thought of the other as a traitor, and vergogna he recognises from the Corsu for shame. So the killer called his victim names that suggest the poor unfortunate did something to bring shame on the man who murdered him.

  For a moment, Ric wonders whether he has stumbled into some ghastly Sicilian opera, but knows however much he would prefer to believe it, it is unlikely. All winter he has cruised down the eastern coast of Sardinia without so much as a crossed word. Now, wherever it is he finds himself, he has drifted into someone else’s domestic disagreement.

  Eventually, the adrenalin marching through his limbs disperses and tiredness overcomes him. Ric realises his head has dipped onto his chest and his eyes are no longer open. He knows that if he doesn’t get below soon, he’ll
fall asleep sitting awkwardly in the cockpit of the Mara and, later, when his neck and muscles object, he will hate himself for not going below.

  Ric folds his weary frame through the narrow hatch, puts the Beretta down on the small chart table and collapses on his bed.

  6

  When he wakes, the air is clean and cool to taste, and the Mara is rising and falling rhythmically on the wash from another vessel. Ric is aware of a dull, drumming, droning noise fading into the distance.

  Up on deck, he is met with a bright, new world. The heavy, filmic moisture and the cloaking pale of the night fog have been replaced by a shimmering, sparkling spectacle of blue and white. A dazzling path of reflections stretches out across the Mare Siculum towards a burnished sun; Poseidon’s temple handmaidens have gilded the sea with a thousand leaves of silver.

  However, when Ric turns round he is confronted by a surreal landscape. The Mara is moored to the bare frame of a pier, only the delicate metal spines of which remain sticking up above the water. The cladding of the pier, which was once supported by the now rusting girders and pillars, has long since fallen away. The structure runs a hundred metres or so to a broad dock; it is bent and warped in places as though it has been deformed by the weight of many cumbersome ships. A concrete apron fronts a handful of grey stone, derelict warehouses standing four stories tall. Ric assumes they are derelict, because none of the rows of apertures possess glassed windows and most of the wooden doors hang haphazardly on their hinges. They aren’t completely rundown and overgrown, and yet they are devoid of both human presence and industrial purpose. The vacant enclave reminds Ric of a city deserted and swept clean by a fire storm; a fire which penetrates and kills, rather than an explosion from a shell which detonates and destroys.

  The buildings, once the domain of the LA CAVA family, according to the name painted in faded letters across the façade, crowd round a small track that winds its way up a hundred and fifty metres or so to the crown of the slope at the back. And away behind the sombre ghost town stands a huge grey mountain of screed, evidently the source of whatever stone it is that the labourers once mined and shipped from the jetty. Ric assumes the aggregate is also responsible for the curious chalky-whiteness to the sea floor. At odd intervals and varying depths, strange white sponges, like bowls of mistletoe, cling to the stanchions and wallow and sway with the swell.

  Ric recalls the shouting and the hopeless pleading and decides that rather than sit and brew a cup of tea, it is probably best if he moves on. He glances through the hatchway and is relieved to see the gun right where he left it.

  He makes a mental note to put it away, fires the Mara’s motor, slips the fore and aft lines and backs her out from beneath and between the mooring. Ric shivers in the breeze; a reaction caused as much by the haunting of the previous night as by the cool zephyrs gliding in off the sea.

  A minute or two out, Ric spins the Mara round and is treated to a view of a coastline which runs pretty much north to south, and he understands he has landed at a substantial island. The large slope of grey screed behind the rise of the seashore turns out to belong to a considerable hill of similar coloured rock; a volcanic grey of some form, lacerated here and there by huge striations as straight as roads. Mines and quarries have been cut and carved in the face of the hill which rises up five hundred metres. But the slope lies quiet and lacks even the smallest suggestion of any current or, for that matter, recent activity.

  A few miles to the south and beyond a village clustered at the water’s edge, the shoreline curves round towards the east, where a point is backed by a pair of small hills. At the back of the village the ground rises steeply to yet more rich-green hills, the highest of them standing about as high as the grey peak away to the north. To the north-east, over his left shoulder, Ric can see a small island, some fifteen or so miles distant, and further behind it, perhaps the same distance again, a larger, taller, cone shaped island which is topped by a singular, cotton-wool puff of cloud. He supposes it is this island that was responsible for the peculiar, unnerving, fiery images he came upon late the night before.

  He goes below and retrieves a letter Camille has left for him. The penmanship is remarkably precise for one who he remembers as having stubby fingers and poor eyesight. Ric rests his leg against the helm and leans back to read the letter once more:

  Ric,

  When you have been recovering, I have been to the old Legion garrison at Bunifaziu; the same place in the photograph of your great-grandfather you have shown me. It is as you found out, the garrison is no longer in use, but I was able to meet with an old friend who remembered a rumour he had heard about your great-grandfather, the Legionnaire known by the surname of Rossi.

  Yes, you are correct in thinking he served at Gallipoli with Amade’s regulars, but you are incorrect in thinking he returned from Gallipoli to Britain. After Gallipoli, he returned to Bunifaziu with the Legion. He served for many years, but after a dispute with his superiors he deserted. I am told the story was that in order to make his escape, he swam across the Bucchi di Bunifaziu to Sardegna. As you will by now know, the Bucchi is 11kilometres wide and it is thought he must have drowned, so the Legion did not bother to search for him. He was not seen again in Corsica. This old friend of mine remembers your great-grandfather as an exceptional swimmer and he is convinced he would have made the journey to Sardegna. Perhaps it is he who has given you your love of the sea. My friend also remembers that his real name was Antonio Sciacchitano and that he came from the island of Lipari, near Sicily.

  Lipari is a place I know well: I have visited it often in winter. If you have the opportunity to do the same, perhaps you should call on a woman I have stayed with there. Her name is Valeria Vaccariello and she lives in La Casa dei Sconosciuti on the Punta San Giuseppe. She is, as you will no doubt find out, very beautiful; though I am not sure anyone knows exactly how old she is – such a question I have always been too polite to ask. And Vaccariello was perhaps the name she used for her acting; although this I do not know for certain either. But, she has lived on the island of Lipari for many years and so knows many people; she may be able to help you find out more about your ancestor.

  For your travels, I have given you many ‘lettres de recommandation’; they will help with your passage through Sardegna and on to Lipari. One of these letters is for Valeria. Please pass to her my letter with affection.

  As you are now the master of the Mara, I doubt that I will see Valeria again, but as she will tell you, we have enjoyed many good times together. I hope, when history has been provided with sufficient time to forget what has passed this last autumn, I will see you return to your friends here in Corsica.

  Votre ami dévoué,

  Camille

  Ric puts down the letter and picks up a chart. Before him lies Lipari, the largest of the Aeolian Islands; behind him, Panarea and the island volcano of Stromboli. The village before the southern point is Canneto and beyond the point he should find the main town of Lipari.

  Ric unfurls the Genoa and hauls up the mainsail. The breeze through the islands is even and holds enough weight for three or perhaps four knots. He grabs a bottle of water from the cabin and swings the helm over to port: the promise of a square meal in Lipari appeals.

  7

  The Mara makes good time across the bay at Canneto, a village squeezed between a slender white strip of volcanic sand and the steep slopes of Monte Sant’Angelo towering behind it.

  Ric has no detailed local charts and so gives the point below the barren and breast-shaped hummocks of Monte Rosa a wide berth. The sea around the point cuts up a little and he bounces and lurches in the wake from a hydrofoil scurrying northward.

  As he rounds the point the town of Lipari comes into view. To starboard, a cluster of masts emerge from the low seawall of a modest and modern marina, and directly before him, spread either side of its citadel, sits the town. To the right lies the municipal port: a sizeable fuel dock beside a ferry terminal, a cemetery arrayed up the slope
behind it. To the left lies the old town: a press of whitewashed, sun-bleached houses, most of them two storey dwellings watched over by a cathedral and a monastery, which grace the citadel like ageing chaperones.

  In the cradle below the citadel, lies a small harbour from which small boats come and go, and beyond the town the coast runs down in a succession of shallow bays and rocky points towards another island, Vulcano, a mile or so further south.

  Ric isn’t minded to tie up in the marina away to starboard and, though the wind has tailed away in the lea of Monte Rosa, he is making easy passage. As he gets closer to the town, he sees small water taxis plodding this way and that, and notices a few, broader-beamed, day-trip launches lined up along the seawall.

  As the Mara slips quietly beneath the hotels perched on the cliffs to the south of the town, he observes a small barca cruising twenty or so metres off and slightly behind his starboard quarter. A man sits in the back while the helmsman stands in the wheelhouse. Their course is taking them too close to the Mara, but thinking that the motor boat will, according to the laws of sail over motor, give way to him, Ric ignores them.

  The barca does not though: the helmsman is for some reason ignorant of the Mara’s presence.

  The passenger calls to the helmsman to make him aware of their proximity to the sailboat.

  The helmsman nods in reply, slows his motor and bears away, making to pass behind the Mara.

  Ric acknowledges the helmsman’s reaction with a brief wave, but the helmsman, a short, stubby man with grey curly hair, simply scratches his cheek and ignores him.

  But for the stubby helmsman, the scene reminds Ric of an aftershave advertisement: a gentleman of Latin descent sits upright on the aft deck of a motor cruiser as it sweeps swiftly across a bay in the evening sun. He sports wrap-around sunglasses, is suntanned, chisel-chinned and is blessed with a full head of wavy black hair. His open-neck, white cotton shirt flutters over a frame that is the answer to a woman’s dream, which is both appropriate and fortunate because just such a woman waits expectantly on the far shore.