Ric chuckles.
“Oh, of course, he told you I am La Strega. Well, you will find the Siciliani are not offended by their sobriquets. To most, I am known as La Strega, the witch, and Marcello is known as Il Velaccino, the sailmaker.” She gathers her basket and he follows her inside.
“I’m afraid the Mara is going to be out of the water for a few days,” he says, “and I won’t be able to stay on board while he does the work.”
“It is not a matter, you can stay here.”
“Marcello, Il Velaccino, has offered me a place in town and I don’t want to put you out: fish and house guests and all that.”
Valeria turns to look at him, clearly none the wiser for his expression.
“Sorry, it’s an old saying: the similarity, fish and house guests, they both start to go off, to smell, after three days.”
But, Valeria is still studying him, dreaming or perhaps trying to find a deeper meaning in what he is saying.
“Something my mother used to say,” Ric offers. He wonders for a moment whether he has offended her by rejecting her hospitality and appearing to throw his lot in with the man to whom she has just introduced him.
Then she comes out of her stupor: “As I said, it is not a matter. You can come and collect your washing tomorrow, but first a little coffee and biscuits.”
They sit out on her patio and watch the sailing boats beat the breeze down towards Vulcano. The air is clear and from where they sit the coast of Sicily is a faint blur on the horizon. Yet another Aliscafo hastens noisily around the citadel.
The nacatuli biscuits are small and round and decorated with flowers and leaf shapes; they taste of almonds and cinnamon and rose water.
“Cavazza,” Valeria says, pointing at a herring gull circling the cliffs away to their right. The gull’s cry is jarring and scornful, as though it objects to carrying the ills of the world on its broad, black-tipped wings.
Beyond the cliffs, the tall, grey-white, bald cone of Vulcano dominates the horizon. “Is the volcano still active?” Ric asks.
“No, no longer. The white smoke comes from sulphur fumaroles at the rim of the crater. There are four volcanoes, all dormant now. A Scottish man, Stevenson, bought the island in the nineteenth century. He mined sulphur for making explosives, for treating skin conditions, making paper, that kind of thing. Stevenson also mined alum for purifying drinking water and for cosmetics, but he built houses, and planted vineyards and orchards. Then in 1888 the volcano erupted for two whole years; Stevenson left and nobody went back until after the Second War. Before Stevenson, the Bourbons sentenced their condemned to work in the mines. People say Vulcano is the closest place to hell on earth, which is probably why the Romans thought it was the entrance to the underworld.”
“Seems a pretty uninviting spot,” Ric says.
“Oh,” Valeria drags on her cigarette and exhales a long stream of white smoke not unlike those issuing from the crater, “there are some hotels on the coast, just across the straight. And, sometimes I go to Acqua di Bagno for the hot mud. It is good for the skin. But you cannot get away from the smell of the sulphur; it can be overwhelming. Some days, when the Scirocco blows, you can smell it from here.”
“I suppose one can get used to most things,” Ric adds, “but living with the many volcanoes must be like living in the shadow of several time bombs.”
“Yes, it is. The volcanoes can be destructive, and yet they can be benevolent too; over the years they have provided the islanders with the means to make a living. First they provided obsidian; the black glass which you find on the beaches. Pliny, the Roman naturalist, named it this way; it was first used as a cutting tool in the Stone Ages. It is said that Pliny died trying to rescue a friend from the eruption of Vesuvius: ironic, eh, don’t you think?
“Many people died mining the sulphur and alum, and later they began to mine the pumice. As recently as the seventies Lipari exported 150 million lira of pumice. It was one of the few regions of Italy which were not in debt. However, that has stopped now; there are cheaper sources of pumice and the idea of child labour no longer sits so easily alongside the idyll that is Lipari. Stromboli is now the only time bomb, as you put it.”
“I stumbled across Stromboli on my way here,” Ric says, recalling the colourful aberrations which had interrupted his night, “didn’t seem to be sleeping too soundly to me.”
“If you were coming from Sardegna, what you saw was probably the Sciarra del Fuoco, the Path of Fire, on the north-western side. But you are correct, Faro del Mediterraneo never sleeps. For thousands of years the sailors of the Mare Siculum have relied on her light to guide them home.”
“She?”
“Yes, she: Mount St Helens, the Three Virgins and the Saints Ana, Clara and Isabel. They are all women.” Valeria turns to face Ric, smiling and yet calculating. “Is there a man who can match a woman for her emotion, her ferocity? And who can look at a volcano without seeing a woman’s breast rising out of mother earth? Yet, I have heard it said that when a volcano is active, she is a woman and when the volcano sleeps, he is a man. Strange, no?”
Away to the north Stromboli sits quietly electing a new Pope. Ric smiles back. “But I thought Stromboli was a character from Pinocchio, the Disney film?”
Valeria nods, “Yes, you are correct. In Collodi’s novel Mangiafuoco is the fire eater, but in the film he is a puppeteer. But,” she adds, “as much as Faro del Mediterraneo can be a blessing, she can also be a curse.”
“A curse? Why?”
Valeria frowns and pauses. “Yes, a curse. Her flames attract people in the same way a light attracts insects; people, like insects, become transfixed by her brilliance. But, when one gets too close to her flame…”
“Your house, La Casa dei Sconosciuti?” Ric asks “The House of Strangers?”
“Yes.” She stubs out her cigarette and sips her coffee. “You remember I told you about the island being a prison during the time of Il Duce. Well this house was used as a meeting place for the political deportees. La Casa dei Sconosciuti brought many strangers together.”
Valeria lights another cigarette and gazes out at the sea. “I was drawn to the house when I came here. It was appropriate. I needed to find peace – a certain anonymity – and it is often to be found in the company of strangers. They may be silent strangers, long dead, but their souls still walk the shoreline at night. I find their presence comforting.”
Though the sun is by now close to its zenith and the heat haze has reduced the view of the mainland to a faint smear, Ric shivers. Valeria is the first person since Manou in Corsica who has referred to the dead as though they still walk in the land of the living.
15
Ric knows from his time in Sardinia that to meet at passeggio means meeting at some time between the end of the working day and dusk. He takes a seat at the back of a café and waits.
Couples walk to stimulate their appetite, while others walk to ease the course of their digestion. Old men sit beneath the statue and lean on their walking canes, ruminating about political stagnation. Boys play hide-and-seek and kick plastic bottles between them. And older boys, sporting pork-pie hats, lounge on the low harbour wall, laughing and applauding their friends as they show off their latest bicycling tricks. Young girls, dressed to the nines, push prams and cluck over imaginary infants, and new mothers parade their babies in multi-coloured underwear. Other girls, too old for pretend and too young to engage, stroll slowly, though not so slowly that their aged chaperones might think they risk indecency. The sun has dipped below San Bartolo al Monte, throwing the Marina Corta into shadow. The air is still and vaguely humid. But, to walk is to be sociable…
“Salve, Ric,” the pretty waitress, Giuliana, greets him and with a sweep of her hand she suggests he take a table of his choosing.
Giuliana lingers when he has chosen. She is, he thinks, in her early twenties, not perhaps as young as some of the waitresses working tables in adjacent cafés and she dresses differently too; her straw-blo
nde hair is short-styled, her blue skirt not quite to her knees and though she is slender, her Dolce and Gabbana t-shirt is a size too small.
Marcello pitches up just as the lanterns around the piazza begin to shine. He acknowledges Ric with a wave of his cigar, but has business to discuss with others before he has time to share. Now and again Marcello’s acquaintances glance over at Ric as though Il Velaccino is advising them of his status.
“Excuse me,” he says, when eventually he pulls a chair up, “but this is the only time of day I can speak to others. How was your day with La Strega?”
“Interesting,” Ric replies, “she would appear to be the font of all knowledge.”
Marcello raises his eyebrows and says, “I think I know what you mean when you say this, but surely the font is what you have in the church for keeping holy water?”
“Font, fount, fountain of knowledge: same thing only different, I guess.”
“You have been spending too much time with that old witch. She speaks in riddles too, eh?”
“Is that why you call her La Strega, because she speaks in foreign tongues?”
A thin individual of pensionable age with a pinched face, hard eyes and thin lips approaches the table. When he realises Marcello is in conversation, he nods politely, almost deferentially, and takes a chair far enough away that he cannot be accused of eavesdropping. Marcello nods at the man, who in turn speaks aside to the waitress. A bottle of Birra Messina and glass appear in an instant.
“No, we call her the witch because she believes she can communicate with the spirits who live out in the water near La Casa dei Sconosciuti. People have seen her walking out by the cliffs at Punta San Giuseppe at night, dancing and calling out. There are some old stories of this house.” He scoffs gently, as though he is not inclined to condemn her for her beliefs. “Perhaps the house is haunted? Who knows?” He waves his hands in the air and laughs, “She is old. Old people are allowed to think what they like. And if talking to imaginary friends is what they are happy doing, then…”
A scrawny-looking youth with long, straggly hair and low-slung jeans sidles into the café and flops down at an adjacent table. He glances around nervously.
In an instant the patron of the café is standing beside him. He growls at the kid, who jumps up and leaves as though he has sat on a scorpion.
Marcello shakes his head in pity, but, as if to distract Ric, says, “You see this old man who sits beneath the statue of San Bartolo; the man who sits up straight; the man with the black glasses and the nose like a Roman?”
There is more than one old man sitting at the foot of the statue wearing dark glasses. Ric cranes his neck, “The one with the collarless shirt and braces?”
“Si, him. Old Nino. He is so old that no one knows how old he is. He is older than La Strega and has outlived his wife, two sons and six grandsons. If you talk to him, he will tell you how, as a boy, he used to slide down the Cave di Pomice, the hill of pumice at Porticello, all the way from the top right down into the sea. And, even though he is blind, he can describe this to you in such detail that you would believe he did this yesterday. I think he sees everything more clearly than we do. Every evening, one of his neighbours brings him to the Corta and takes him home after. The next day he can tell you exactly what was said the evening before. His memory is like a great computer. Figlio di Troia! And I can’t remember what I said to my wife this morning!
“But, old Nino Cafarella believes that Il Cavaliere – Silvio Berlusconi – is Il Duce’s illegitimate son and that the Fascists still govern through him. But, if that is so, it would mean that Il Cavaliere is Edda Ciano’s half-brother, and that, my friend, is ridiculous.” Marcello glances up at the heavens. “But, if Old Nino wants to believe this, what is the benefit to convince him it is not true, eh?”
“Ciano?” Ric asks, “Wasn’t her husband fingered for Mussolini’s shooting?”
Marcello scoffs, this time more dismissively, “Hey, everyone from Garibaldi’s ghost to the Pope was in on that one. And if they weren’t, they would all like you to believe they were.” He drinks his beer and surveys the scene.
“I remember now,” Ric says, “didn’t Mussolini have his daughter’s husband shot?”
“Yes,” Marcello sighs, “but as we say, where there is smoke, there is fire. Nobody gets shot without a reason, eh? Maybe he was not complicit? Who would know this? The dead? And does it matter so much. He was Il Duce’s son-in-law; perhaps that was enough reason.
“You know, Edda Ciano was a prisoner here, in a house in the little Piazza San Bartolo behind the Chiesa di San Giuseppe, over there.” He points across the Corta to the church at the top of the steps by the entrance to the Maddalena. “She was sent here after she returned from Switzerland at the end of the war. It is said she had an affair with Leonida Bongiorno; I told you about him; my English teacher. They made a film about it. Just the other day they show it here.”
“Can I get you another beer, Marcello?”
He thinks for a moment before replying, then turns and glances at the slender man sitting alone a few tables away. “No,” he decides, “it is late and I must show you where you can stay; then I have more business.”
“I’ll settle my bill,” Ric says and signals to Giuliana, who swans up to their table: “Il conto, per favore?”
She looks at Marcello, questioningly, and, when she receives no recognition, she turns to the man sitting across the way.
He smiles, but without any real warmth, and inclines his head: their drinks are his pleasure.
Ric nods his thanks, the man nods back and the waitress smiles.
“Come,” Marcello says as though Ric is nothing more than one of his vassals, “I have been too long talking. It is a problem; too much talking.”
16
The shops along the cobbled Garibaldi are closing. The women, bored, accepting, reluctant and relieved, are hooking down their carefully arranged displays of garments, packing away driftwood carvings, metal sculptures and fridge magnets, and exchanging weary moans with their neighbours.
Halfway up the rise dark-skinned, hijab-wearing women sit outside their shop. They bounce giggling children on their knees, cooing and poring over them as one might a favoured pet.
Marcello turns off the street and walks between the family, pausing and stooping to pinch a cheek. “Buonasera,” he says and the women smile and nod in appreciation.
Ric follows him into and down a narrow alley.
“Melanzane!” he mutters: “Arabs, Berbers, Tebos, even Jews,” he says over his shoulder. “We inherit them all from Tripolitania: you would know it as Libya. Oh, and Somalis too. These days Africa begins at Rome, but then again,” he chuckles, “ignorance begins at Perugia!”
The alley is narrow, only just wide enough to accommodate Marcello’s broad shoulders, and bounded by a continuous terrace of houses whose iron balustrades protrude from low balconies. The passage is a meeting of shadows, and only the dim glow from corner lanterns and the occasional soft chevron of light projected through slatted shutters interrupts the dark. Murmurs and whispers, rhythmic and gentle on the ear, are broken only by a harsh exchange or the barking of a dog.
At the end of the alley, Marcello turns right into a second, slightly broader alley, but one that is little different from the first. Ric is trying to keep his bearings and searches for a sign on the walls to tell him the name of the alley.
“Not far,” says Marcello, hesitating as though he has momentarily lost his way in the maze. He turns left, stops abruptly and fishes in his pocket for a set of keys.
The wooden door opens towards them. They enter and Marcello flicks a light switch.
Immediately in front of Ric is a staircase and to his left a modest room, which is both kitchen and living room. The tap at the basin, he notices, drips.
“There is a bedroom upstairs and a bathroom. There,” he points to a door at the back of the room, “you will find a wash room with a toilet. It’s not much, but it will be better t
han La Strega’s sofa; a little more private too.”
“What do I owe you?” Ric asks. The thought of sleeping in a real bed that is firmly tethered to the ground is all consuming.
“There are clean sheets in the bedroom and a towel in the bathroom. I have someone do this for you,” Marcello replies, ignoring his question. “If there is something missing, you tell me, eh? I will ask her to get the right things? You didn’t bring your clothes?”
“No, I’ll get them in the morning. Valeria is washing them; I guess she’ll tell me when they’re ready.”
Marcello stops and turns to look at Ric, studying him again as though he is trying to make up his mind about some doubt he harbours. “Yes, of course, I am sure La Strega will come here. È una ficcanaso: she is always curious, eh?” He touches the end of his nose briefly. “Now you must sleep and tomorrow morning we will take Mara out of the sea and try to find out her problem. You have all you need from the boat? Once it is out of the water it will not be good to climb up? You think it is the seal around the shaft for the elica, the propeller.”
Ric is trying to remember if he’s left anything on the Mara which he might need. “I reckon so. The morning I arrived at San Giuseppe, this guy turned up out of the blue, patched up the stern tube with something that looked remarkably like pasta; didn’t charge me for the pleasure. Nobody seems to want to let me pay for anything, not even for the beers this evening. I hate to think what’s going to happen if you all call your markers in on the same day.”
Marcello is watching him as though reading his face: “Tell me: this man, what did he look like?”
“Wiry build, light-brown hair, thick glasses, constant smile.”
“Oh,” Marcello nods slowly, his expression strangely deadpan, “Salvo, yes, I know him. He works for me, sometimes. Curious, he did not tell me. Ciao, Ric. We will come to collect the Mara in the morning and together we will sail her to Canneto, eh?”
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