Ontreto

by Peter Crawley

  The passenger in the barca is watching Ric as though reading his thoughts. He bows his head, politely.

  Ric drags himself out of his reverie, smiles and raises his hand in both apology and appreciation.

  The man waves back and grins. He knows how good he looks; his teeth dazzle white against his tan.

  A way further on Ric comes upon a secluded, half-crescent bay, the waters of which play host to a handful of sloops and ketches similar in size to the Mara.

  A slim, shingle beach accommodates a slipway, just large enough to provide for the launching of a dinghy, and a narrow track from the slipway curls and twists up at a steep angle out of the bay. Overlooking the bay, and set back up on a protective wall, stands a stone cottage so small it could easily be mistaken for a garden shed were it not for the satellite dish on its roof. A green hatchback is parked outside and a table and chairs are arranged out front on a patio.

  Ric drops sail, starts the motor and potters into the small bay. With the sea out of the north-east behind him, the sailing boats lie bow onto him; a squadron of naval corvettes zealously guarding their station.

  As he motors to the right of them, he notices a change in the colour of the water ten metres or so on the nose. He spins the helm over to port. The Mara swerves and yaws, and Ric watches as a bright turquoise rock threatens the surface a couple of yards off his starboard quarter.

  There are enough spare buoys to go round, so he heads up to the furthest on the line, hoping he isn’t about to take someone else’s favoured mooring. His body protests a little as he lies over the bow and ties up, but that done, he squares away the sheets, checks the bilge and, noticing it is a little full, runs the pump for a few minutes. He goes below to set the main cabin straight and replace the Beretta in the locker beneath his bed. If there is a drawback to the Mara, it is that she lacks a dinghy with which to get ashore.

  The breeze, which has helped him make such good time down from his overnight stay, has settled in the midday heat and there is little in the way of swell that will hinder his swim to the beach. He locks the main cabin hatch, hides the key in the recess beneath the cockpit seat and stows his shoes and clothes in a plastic bag, which he makes watertight with a length of line.

  Ric pitches the bag over the stern, climbs over the rail and dives into the sea. The sea is colder than he thinks, but, he is glad to notice, not so cold that it takes his breath away. He swims ashore towing the bag behind him.

  The small beach is deserted and no one comes from the cottage to tell him he is not allowed to moor in the bay without paying a surcharge. He towels himself down and changes into his shorts, shirt and shoes, tucking his trunks and towel back in the plastic bag and hiding it behind a thriving oleander at the back of the beach.

  The track up out of the bay is steep and he is forced to take a breather halfway up. Though he has stretched and run through a limited routine of callisthenic exercises most mornings of late, his muscles feel tight and take too easily to filling with lactic acid whenever he slows.

  The walk along the narrow road, which undulates and curls as it follows the contours of the slope up from the sea, takes him a good half hour. He keeps to the water’s edge whenever possible and arrives at a bay a little broader than the one in which he has just left the Mara. A whitewashed hotel looms tall above an alley that rises steeply up, over and into the town. At the top, he has to stand back in a doorway as a three-wheeled Ape van approaches.

  The battered Ape is a cross between a moped and a flatbed van; it has no doors and only a bench seat. The driver, a stringy individual with short, light-brown hair, thick glasses and a wide toothy grin, leans out of the cab and salutes his thanks.

  The alley is shaded and cool, and the humble terraced dwellings lean in, squeezing the heavens into a thin strip of blue. Washing hangs down from the balustrades and if it was not for the white plaster façades reflecting the sunlight down into the cobbled passage, the alley would lie in darkness. Old ladies swathed in black, chew their gums and watch.

  A small maritime chapel on the corner, its doors swung open, is vacant but for the Virgin Mary waiting patiently for her congregation. Hollow debate echoes from a wireless behind the shuttered windows of a single room dwelling. Dishes clatter, children cry, mothers comfort and husbands doze; the atmosphere is calm. And, as he strolls through the Via Maddalena, Ric can feel the tensions of his journey fall away and his heart settle to beat a little slower.

  He trips down a flight of stone steps winding round a corner and is confronted by the portal of a church, which faces the old harbour. The murmur of those at prayer swells and shrinks, and church bells chime the hour. Ric realises by the strangely thin metallic peal of the bells that the sound emanates from a loudspeaker in the belfry of the campanile adjacent to the portal.

  Walking down past the scuba-diving school and the clothes shops, he is accosted by a young, curly-haired individual; young in as much as he is probably as close to twenty as Ric is the other side of thirty.

  “Panarea, Salina, Stromboli?” offers the young man. He brandishes a selection of brightly coloured flyers in Ric’s face, as though if he doesn’t hurry up and choose one right here and now, they will disappear in an instant.

  Ric recognises the escurzionista for what he is, neither threatening nor an inconvenience, and certainly not a magician. He met a few of them in Cagliari; they are not a bother, leastways not to him. All they are set upon is earning their crust by selling boat trips out to yet another blue grotto or secluded beach or, in this fellow’s case, the adjacent islands.

  “No thanks,” Ric replies, smiling.

  “You are English?” replies the escurzionista, his eyes lighting up.

  “Sort of,” Ric states. He makes to move around the man, but the fellow steps into his path.

  A cloud passes over the young man’s face. “You have been to Salina? You have had lunch at Da Alfredo? It is what one must do before one…” he lets his voice tail away, implying the restaurant holds some extraordinary mystery.

  “Dies?” Ric finishes the sentence for him. “Death and food! Nice angle!”

  The escurzionista is wearing a two-day stubble, which enhances his poor-man-of-the-town look. His olive skin is heavily tanned for so early in the year and he stands a shade shorter than Ric. His shoulders slope down from his neck, giving him the aspect of a slim pyramid.

  “You think it is funny?” he asks.

  “No,” Ric replies, studying the curly black hair which falls either side of the man’s face. “Keep your wig on. I’ve just come past Panarea and Stromboli, and I’m sure I’ll get around to Salina in good time. But, right now, I need food sooner than I can get by taking a trip out to Salina.”

  The escurzionista allows his frown to linger for a couple of seconds before his face breaks into a wide beaming smile. He steps back out of the way and at the same time gives Ric the once over. “Okay, English, maybe some other time.” His smile is practiced; it is both easy and endearing.

  “Not that it matters, but I’m not English,” Ric replies, turning to walk away, “I’m Welsh. Ciao.”

  Ric walks down into the square and realises the escurzionista is keeping step with him.

  “So, you are Gallese. If you do not want me to know your name, this is how I will address you. I am Alessandro; everyone call me Sandro,” he pauses waiting to see if his information has been absorbed. When he is confident it has and they have reached the bottom of the steps down into the square, he wipes his right hand on his shirt and holds it out. He wears an off-white cotton shirt, shorts and flip-flops. A small gold medallion swings from a chain around his neck as he leans towards Ric. “Sandro,” he says and makes to bow.

  Ric shakes his hand, “Pleased to meet you, Sandro.”

  “Yes, Gallese, it is good to meet you, also. This café, over there,” he points. “Tell them Sandro sent you.” Then the young man is gone, off after virgin prey: a greying couple, sandals, socks and shorts, stealing nervously into the piazza.
There are others of Sandro’s type mooching about the place, but lunchtime is not a favoured period in which to flog boat trips out to the other islands; most of the tourists, like Ric, are more interested in food and shade.

  He takes a seat at a café and orders a beer and a plate of salami, tomatoes and lastly mozzarella which, the pretty waitress informs him, is sent over from Naples.

  Ric has only been sitting for a couple of minutes, watching the small boats come and go from the harbour, when the escurzionista, Sandro, reappears at his table.

  Without asking, he sits down opposite Ric and lights up a cigarette. His dark eyes gleam and a mischievous smile plays across his lips, “You sail here?”

  “Uh-huh,” Ric replies, chewing.

  “How many days?”

  Ric hesitates and then holds up three fingers.

  “Where from? Napoli, Capri?”

  Again Ric makes him wait.

  Sandro studies him, calculating and for some reason squinting briefly up at the sky. He drags heavily on his cigarette and speaks as he exhales the smoke, “Libecciu has been for the last week blowing.” He grins cheekily. “I think perhaps Cagliari. Yes, I believe you have come from Sardegna.”

  “Give the man a cigar,” Ric mutters.

  But Sandro, his confidence high now that he has placed his quarry and, even more importantly, not yet been dismissed, carries on, “But where is your boat? One man in a boat; it cannot be very big. You are in Porto Turistico?” He appraises Ric, lingering to look at the small strawberry birthmark above his right eye, and then corrects himself, “No, I do not think you are a man for the tourist marina, you have your boat somewheres else.”

  “You like to ask questions, Sandro,” Ric observes dryly.

  Sandro frowns as though his new friend has insulted him, although not insulted him so much that he feels the need to dispute the veracity of the insult. He grins again. “There is not much to do here when business is quiet. It is a little game I like to play; to guess where all the peoples are coming from.” He pauses. “So, where do you stay? You want a hotel for a few nights?”

  Ric chuckles. He has to admire Sandro; he has nerve and no little charm. “No, I don’t need a hotel. I’m moored in a bay just up from Portinente, if I’ve pronounced that right. But thanks for the thought, anyway. Rest assured, Sandro, if I need a place to stay, you’ll be the first person I ask to recommend it.”

  “Okay,” he hesitates, “Gallese. When you want something, you come see me, Sandro, okay?”

  “Be happy to Sandro,” he replies and returns his attention to his plate.

  Fortunately, Sandro understands he’s exhausted his share of his new friend’s patience, so he gets up and wanders off.

  Ric watches him lope across the square; his gait is relaxed and rolling, a slight swagger to it, but the kind of swagger that comes from enthusiasm or perhaps bravura, not from any kind of physical intimidation. Sandro strikes up a conversation with an old man sitting in the shade of a statue.

  As Ric’s taste buds grow more accustomed to the lively profusion of flavours, the comforting sustenance and the unmoving ground combine to accelerate the lethargy seeping through his system. Soon he drops off to sleep.

  Ric is not aware of how long he has been out for, but he is woken by a gentle hand on his shoulder.

  It is Sandro, again.

  “No good to sleep in the sun, my friend.” Sandro changes the angle of the umbrella, returning the table to shade.

  Ric sits up and rubs his eyes: “Sure, you’re absolutely right, Sandro. Thank you for thinking of it. I must have been out for the count.”

  “Out for the count?” Sandro sits down, again without asking permission.

  Ric feels his own face and wishes he’d remembered to wear his cap. “Yes,” he replies, “out for the count.” But when Sandro is clearly none the wiser, he continues, “Out for the count. You know, when a boxer gets knocked down. The referee counts to ten, if the man doesn’t get back up, the fight’s over.”

  “Ah! Si! Boxing! I have seen this. It is a saying, yes, out for the count?”

  “You want a beer, Sandro?”

  Whether it is the beer he wants or the acceptance lent him by the offer, Ric doesn’t know and doesn’t really care. Sandro has saved him from waking up burnt to a crisp, so he reckons the young man deserves a reward. Ric hopes too that the bilge pump of the Mara has kicked in. He turns to look for the pretty waitress, but as he does so, she appears as if by magic and sets a Birra Messina in front of Sandro.

  “Grazie, Giuliana,” Sandro says. But the girl is making eyes at Ric.

  “Ciao, Giuliana,” Sandro encourages, more than a little irked.

  She walks away, swaying her hips.

  “I have this for you,” Sandro leans over and drops a map of the island on the table. “It has streets for the town, and roads and information. It is useful, eh?”

  Ric sits up and reaches into his pocket for some coins.

  “No,” says Sandro firmly, “you buy me beer, I give you map. It is fair, no?”

  Ric lowers his head and frowns theatrically.

  Sandro winks, a curiously lop-sided, grimacing movement which requires him to tilt his head. Again his eyes linger on the red mark above Ric’s eye.

  They talk a while and Ric asks Sandro about the monastery looking down over the square, the boats in the harbour and the hydrofoil which drones in and out of the municipal port on the far side of the citadel.

  “Aliscafo,” corrects Sandro, “The hydrofoil; we call it Aliscafo.”

  An enormous metal ship resembling a car ferry lumbers out of the port beyond the citadel. It appears to be full of rubbish trucks.

  “Yes,” Sandro sighs when he sees Ric watching it, “it is a garbage ship that comes from Milazzo. We are UNESCO World Heritage Site, so there is no place for rubbish here. The ship comes here empty and leaves with all our garbage. The water ship comes here full of water and leaves empty. Everything that comes here brings something we need or takes away something we don’t need; just like the tourist boats. They bring the Romanacci, the Catanesi and the Calabresi. We need them; they are a source of income. But we need them to go home too.” He raises his right hand and touches his thumb with his forefinger. “It is a delicate balance,” he states in crisp, educated English, as though repeating a phrase he once heard spoken by a visiting university professor.

  Ric finds Sandro’s caricatures amusing and they help pass the time until the sun drops behind the church without bells.

  “You want I give you lift back to your boat?” Sandro asks, anticipating Ric’s mood. “I have Vesper–scooter?”

  Ric thinks about the offer for a while; he finds the fellow likeable in a fresh sort of way. “No thanks, Sandro. The walk will do me good. But I appreciate your company. Perhaps we’ll have another beer some other time.”

  Sandro moves to object to Ric’s refusal to his offer, but then suddenly thinks better of it. “Okay, Gallese, perhaps another time. You are staying long?”

  “A while,” he replies, “not sure how long. I guess that depends on the breeze.”

  “Okay, Ric. We will wait for the breeze.”

  Ric settles the bill and is unsurprised that no offer of contribution comes from the escurzionista. The waitress lingers a minute by the table, watching and waiting.

  “Okay, okay,” Sandro sighs. “Giuliana, this is my friend the Gallese. Gallese, this is Giuliana.”

  “Hi!” She raises her hand in recognition.

  “Pleased to meet you, Giuliana.”

  She nods and supplies him with her widest smile.

  Sandro, very obviously needled that Ric has leapfrogged him up the ladder of her affection, waves her away: “Okay, adesso basta! Ciao, Giuliana. Grazie.”

  “Eh, Gallese?” He nods towards Giuliana who, though she has retreated to the back of the café, is still watching them, smiling. “This one; she is from Rome; a cousin or something of the owner. She looks at men the way city girls do, eh!
It is like she knows what we are thinking and she doesn’t care. The other girls here are not like this.” He hesitates. “Or maybe they are; I don’t know. Maybe it is the fathers who care more than the girls.”

  Ric shakes Sandro’s limp hand, gets up from the table and strolls across the piazza beneath the citadel.

  A cobbled street, wide enough for one car but not two, curves up a shallow incline out of the harbour. World-weary women adjust the displays outside their shops and make gossip with their competitors. Pensioners take time out of the late afternoon sun to stare at passers-by.

  Rather than follow the rise of the street, Ric consults the map Sandro has given him and takes a left turn. The Via Maurolico leads him down to the Corso Vittorio Emanuele, the town’s high street. The Corso is wider, and the tables and chairs of the cafés spill off the pavements onto the road.

  He stops at the café La Precchia, takes a chair by the entrance and orders a coffee.

  A mix of townsfolk and tourists stroll up and down the Corso, and Ric is content simply to sit and watch, comfortable in the company of strangers.

  After a few minutes, the waiters begin to usher away those seated at the tables in the street and, once the customers have left, they drag the tables and chairs back, and stack them away.

  Ric starts to rise, but a waiter motions to him to stay seated; it is only those in the street who need to be disturbed.

  Shops up and down the Corso draw their shutters and close up. Owners and staff alike emerge from inside and loiter, evidently waiting. They chat amongst themselves, though they resist the chance to wave when they see a friend or the shopkeeper opposite; the mood is sombre, respectful.

  Softly and very gradually music drifts from the top of the Corso: a trumpet, trombone and tuba, flutes and a drum herald the approach of a funeral procession. The dozen musicians in the vanguard are, with a few exceptions, young. They wear gold-buttoned light-blue uniforms, epaulets and plumed caps, and file slowly, but not to any step or keeping time, down the street.