The track is grassy, crowned and steep for the first fifty metres. Valeria strides up it as though the slope is merely an obstacle to overcome and therefore worth little in the way of consideration.
At the top, the track curves to the left and opens out to run north-east along a broad, bald ridge that ends in a high promontory. “Salina,” she says, pausing and pointing away across the purple sea at a dark green cone resting in the shadow of one of her fluffy lambs, “it is where the Caravaglio comes from. Also they film some of Il Postino there. You have seen this movie?”
“Can’t say I have.”
“You must, Ric.” Valeria stops and waits until he has noticed she is no longer beside him so that he, too, stops. “If you want to understand this place, the people, us; you must see this movie.”
They stroll along the windswept ridge towards a low, square white church with a miniscule dome. Aside from the olive grove on the eastern flank of the church and a handful of small white houses dotted on either side of the track, the land around them is a mishmash of grey and green scrub broken by yellow Tyrrhenian broom, purple gillyflower, pink rock rose, and wild carrot and strawberry bushes.
Nino’s house, like the Chiesa Vecchia just beyond it, is white-washed and square, but it is topped by a terracotta tile roof and graced by a pergola which overlooks the two mile stretch of sea separating Lipari from Salina. As they approach down the slope, Ric is minded to point out, “Hell of a view for a blind man!”
“Yes,” Valeria replies, lifting her face towards the breeze, “it is strange how our perceptions are governed by physical limitations? I have always understood that Nino is able to sit in his bagghiu – his pergola – and feel the view: to feel the cool Tramontana from the north-east, to taste the moist seeds of cloud which rest over Salina, to hear the conversations of the people dining in Da Alfredo’s in Santa Marina across the water, to smell the basil in the Pane Cunzato they are eating, and to feel the movement of the small boats that come and go between the islands. Just because one is blind, Ric, it does not mean one cannot see.”
Nino is indeed sitting on a stone seat, staring out through his round, dark glasses across the strait as though timing the Aliscafo in its haste towards Salina.
“Salve, Valeria,” he says, clearly not startled by their arrival. “Come and join me on my bisuolo; there is room for both of us.”
“Vossia benedica, Nino,” she replies.
The old man makes the sign of the cross and replies, “Ortigia?”
“Correct, Nino: Ortigia Lime di Sicilia.”
“It is unmistakeable,” the old man says, “citrus and lime-wood and vanilla. Only you would grace the air so.”
Ric had picked up on Valeria’s scent whilst sitting next to her on the bus, but had not thought it so obvious.
Nino turns his head as if formally acknowledging their presence. His arms protrude like fragile sticks from his short-sleeved shirt and his black trousers are baggy and sack-like and tied at his waist with what looks like a scarf. The ridges of his veins stand proud on his hands and forearms as though it is they, rather than his cartilage and tendons, which are holding his emaciated limbs together.
“You have brought a friend, Valeria.”
“Yes, Nino, I have brought a friend.” She stoops and kisses his forehead.
Nino’s smile reveals his teeth, which are small and carry the ochre’d tones of weathered ivory and which fix his high, round cheeks, long polished smooth by the wind. “So what is it that encourages you to provide this old man with such pleasure? Why should I be blessed with such good fortune?”
Valeria sits down beside him on the stonewall seat of his terrace. “My visit is long overdue, Nino; for that I have no excuse.” She holds his hand and lifts it to her face. “And this man wanted to meet you: he is a friend of Camille Giovananngeli, from Corsica.”
“A friend of Camille, you say. Well, how is the old fox? Is his humour still sharp like a blade?”
“He was well when I saw him last autumn,” Ric replies. “I am sure he would want me to pass on his best to you.”
“Any friend of the old fox is welcome in my house.” His voice is cool like the breeze and clear like the view. “So how can an old man be of service? Come forward. Come, give me your hand.”
Valeria offers Ric the old man’s right hand; it is frail and brittle, like petrified root. He settles his left hand on Ric’s wrist and holds it for a moment, as if searching for a pulse.
“Valeria, ask Ariana for a glass of legbi. It is early and she will resist, but she will get it for you.”
Valeria stands and leaves them still holding hands.
“You are young and strong, that is good.” Nino grins once more. “And you are too young to be Valeria’s lover, which is good also; this way I have no cause to be jealous of you, even though I could do precious little about such a thing if it were so. We will be friends. But, you hesitate; there is much you are not sure of which, I suppose, is why you are here.”
“Your English is good, Nino; much better than my Italian.”
The old man takes a handkerchief from his pocket and wipes a thin trickle of saliva from the corner of his mouth. “I learn it from the men of Lyle Bernard in the second war. I was a guide for them at the landing of Sant’Agata di Militello. It was there that I lost my sight: a big explosion, a great light and then light no more.” Nino shrugs and raises an eyebrow as though the event was of little consequence.
“Flash-blinded?” Ric asks. “Working for the Americans at the amphibious landing?”
“Yes, every man from the islands must know the coast of the mountains from Milazzo to Cefalù like he knows his own thoughts. When the Tramontana blows hard, Aeolus will take you there no matter where you want to go. It is important to know where to seek shelter. But you must be a military man, if you know about such things?”
Ric quiets for a moment as he tries to estimate how old the young Nino would have been in the summer of ‘43.
“I was a young man to lose my sight.” Nino reaches out for Ric’s hand and wrist a second time. After a few second’s squeezing and manipulating, he declares, “Ah, yes, a military man. I thought so. One can tell these things: there is iron in the bone and courage in the muscle.”
“A while ago,” Ric replies.
Valeria reappears, followed by a short, gentle-faced young woman, bearing a tray with three glasses of cloudy palm wine and a plate of freshly-baked, small brown biscuits. She sets the tray down on a low wooden table fashioned out of driftwood, and she and Valeria lift it over in front of Nino.
He breathes in deeply, “Ah, grazie, Ariana: Spicchitedda! Cinnamon and almonds: music for the palate. Did she give you much trouble?”
The young woman smiles, blushes and scuttles back inside the house.
“None at all,” Valeria says. “She simply shook her head and said if you wanted to be embalmed before you were dead, perhaps you could save her from having to pay the undertaker.”
Nino chuckles, “But does she mean the wine in the biscuits or the wine in the glass? And tell me, why should the giovintù deny the patri anticu the few pleasures he has left?”
They sip the sweet wine in silence and watch the white caps skip across the sea away below them.
“So, what is your name?” Nino asks.
“Richard, Richard Ross. Most people call me Ric.”
“Riccardo, mmm, you are given this name so that you will be powerful; a ruler of people. And it is so: you have been an officer in the army?”
“The Marines.”
“You are not married?”
Ric is not prepared for Nino’s interrogation. But, seeing as he has come to ask the old man a raft of questions, he does not think it fair to shy away from answering a few first: “No.”
“Ah, you were. I am sorry; it leaves a mark when one loses the woman one loves.”
Nino’s response makes Valeria sit up and look questioningly at Ric, but as she does so, she asks, “How do you know t
his, Nino?”
“It is in this young man’s voice. People can conceal many things when they talk. Some people speak in half truths and others can lie as if their life depends on what they say. But an immeasurable sadness such as this, one is powerless to conceal.”
And, without thinking, Ric hears himself say, “My wife died the year before last, in a car accident. It was while I was away, serving in Afghanistan.”
“So, forgive me for being… open, but you blame yourself for not being with her to stop this dreadful thing from happening, and now you are searching for somewhere to lay this guilt to rest. It is both understandable and forgivable. My wife,” Nino pauses, “my wife was lost to me many years ago… The heavier the weight, the more difficult it can be to set down gently. You have my sympathy.”
“And you mine, Nino,” Ric replies, wondering if his sense of loss will ever leave him in the same way it has never left the old man.
Nino nods, slowly. “Now, enough talk of emotion. We know we have much in common: that is both good and bad. What is it you have come to ask of an old man?”
Ric takes a sip of his palm wine and says, “Camille told me he thinks one of my ancestors came from Lipari and Valeria suggested you might be able to shed some light on his family, my family.”
“Oh,” Nino sighs, “Valeria is always bringing people to my door to ask such questions; Australians, Americans and some from South America; not many British. But, I warn you: I am not an oracle, like Pythia, and I am not a recorder of history, like Tacitus. My memory often deceives me and sometimes I cannot remember what Ariana has given me for breakfast.” Nino pauses and wipes his mouth again. He stares out at the far island as if he observes it in all the verdant splendour of its graded slopes and the starch-white cloud obscuring its summit.
“Although,” he says, smiling once more, “of late I have found that my memories come back to me at the strangest moments. One minute I am back in the Marina Corta watching a film lit by magic lanterns; the next I am… What was your ancestor’s name?”
“Sciacchitano or so Camille thinks.”
“Sciacchitano,” Nino says, pronouncing the name slowly. He scratches at a red mark on his face and Valeria reaches up to pull his hand away; she strokes the mark, softly.
“Sciacchitano,” he repeats. “I remember this name, Sciacchitano. But what do I remember? What?” Nino drinks his palm wine, rests his elbow on the table and his chin on his fisted hand, his repose that of Rodin’s Thinker.
Ric says, “Camille suggested he returned to the island after a spell in the Foreign Legion. It is thought he served with the Legion in Gallipoli, although we don’t know when or why he would have joined.”
Nino nods, slowly, “This is not so surprising. Even the Legion was to be preferred to fighting with the Bersaglieri in Gorizia. If you were not killed by the Austrians, you lived in fear of being hanged by your own officers. They practiced decimazione – decimation – a barbaric ritual from Roman times. The word means, literally, one in ten. They would select every tenth soldier and either shoot or hang him from a tree by the side of the road as an encouragement to the other soldiers not to retreat in battle. So, if you wanted to fight, to serve with another army was a far more attractive alternative. Perhaps that is why he left. But, do you know when he returned to Lipari?”
“’25, maybe ’26, perhaps a little later.”
Nino returns to his thoughts for a few minutes and then says, “I was only a small boy in these years. Perhaps you can give me time to remember. It is possible and if I can find the right lantern to help me see through the darkness of my memory, then perhaps I will remember some detail which will be of use to you. The late ‘20s, you say?”
His chin lifts and his lips purse in thought before he says, “I recall a family, not one of significance, but a family by this name; of this I am certain. And, there must be a reason why I would remember this name so quickly. Have you looked for the name Sciacchitano on a grave in the cemetery or perhaps on the memorials in the Mazzini?”
21
In the afternoon, after Ric and Valeria have parted, he walks up the steep cobbled road and through the Greek Tower to the citadel. On the memorial plaques either side of the entrance to the municipal building in the Piazza Mazzini, he reads through the names of the fallen; the Gloriosi Caduti of the island, not so much enlisted as conscripted and forced to fight in the great wars of the last century; wars of which the combatants understood little and cared for less.
The disparity between the numbers of officers’ names and those of the local conscripts is marked. In the Grande Guerra 1915-1918, for every officer, ninety other ranks lost their lives. But what throws Ric is how many sons and fathers the local families lost: the Taranto family six, the Cincotta, the Rando and the Ricone families three each. And in the second Guerra 1940-1945, one Ufficiale was lost for over a hundred other Militari: the Biviano family five, the Rastuccia and Mandicio three, and the Saltalamacchia two. Recalling what Valeria has told him regarding the thousands who left for foreign shores at the beginning of the twentieth century, he is surprised there are any men left on the island.
The name Sciacchitano is not among them.
Ric turns at the sound of hammering and sawing. Behind him, in the gardens of the Piazza Mazzini, a wooden platform is being hastily constructed. The banners proclaim the name Girolamo Candela and Partito Politica Riconquista and beneath that the words l’Energia Geotermico. The flags above the stage bear images of a fifty-something-year-old man; hair greying just enough to hint at wisdom, eyes sufficiently lively to imply youthful exuberance.
A heavy grey cloud passes before the sun, erasing the shadows, and as Ric walks down the broad steps of the Concordato it starts to drizzle. He takes a seat beneath an awning at a pavement café on the Garibaldi; the Birra Messina is cool and refreshing in spite of the rain.
The sailmaker, Marcello, emerges from the back of the café.
“Ah, Ric. Providence is kind to my legs. I was about to come and look for you at your, or rather my place.” He sits down and a young waitress appears and sets an espresso and a glass of water beside him. “So how is the monolocale, comfortable?”
Ric thinks of the dripping tap at the kitchen basin: “It’s perfect. Thank you.”
“You have no need to thank me. For friends, this is a small service. You have had a good day? I see you in the Corso this morning; you were with La Strega. She makes herself escurzionista for you? Takes you on the bus around the island?” Marcello raises his eyebrows and yawns as though Valeria’s personal tour of Lipari is famously boring.
“No, it wasn’t dull at all,” Ric replies. “She took me up to the north side of the island to see the old guy, Nino; the blind man you pointed out to me in the Corta. Valeria thought he might be able to shed some light on one of my ancestors who came from–”
“Lipari?”
“So I’m told.”
Marcello stifles his surprise and chuckles, “Heh! Imagine this. A man comes to Lipari to search for the old life of a man who left Lipari in search of a new life. This is what we call irony, is it not? How many years ago, was this?”
“Some time around 1930,” Ric replies.
The short, squat figure beside him sips his coffee, deep in thought for a moment. “And what was this man’s name?”
“Sciacchitano, I believe. I don’t have a first name.
If Marcello has heard the name, it does not register in his expression. “Many left the islands in these days,” he scoffs slightly, as though only a weak man would do such a thing. “There is nothing unusual in this.”
He finishes his coffee, washes it down with a mouthful of water and glances, first at the shiny cobbles and then at the heavens, “Ah, this rain will not last. This evening, we can go fishing. You would like to come, eh?”
“Sure. I have a rod, but it’s on the Mara.”
“No, for fishing totani – you would call them flying squid because they have bigger fins than calamari – we
don’t need this; only the boat, a little line and ontreto.”
Ric repeats the word slowly.
“Yes, it sounds a little French, ontre-to, but it is our word. I don’t know this in English. But this evening, I will show you. You know the Chiesa delle Anime del Purgatorio, on the harbour in the Marina Corta?”
Ric nods.
“Bene! This evening, when the cross is in shadow, come to Portinente.”
22
The air is cool but not cold, as Ric slips his front door key beneath the flower pot beside the door mat. He winds his way through the narrow vicos which lead down to the Marina Corta.
Small clusters of the townsfolk are gathering; the men, smartly dressed in their newly-pressed best; the women, their hair coiffed and their make-up applied, as if ready for Mass. They greet each other and chatter earnestly, the tide of their conversation sweeping them up the short rise of the Garibaldi towards the Concordato, the broad steps of which lead up to the citadel and the Piazza Mazzini.
The evening sun still lights the campanile of the Purgatorio, so Ric takes a chair in the usual café.
Giuliana glides up beside him, beaming: “What would you like to drink, Ric?”
“You choose,” he replies.
She grins as though he has just asked her out on a date. Moments later she returns with a tray bearing an Aperol Spritz and a plate of canapés.
“Dinner on the house?” he asks.
“Stuzzicchini,” Giuliana replies, “for your pleasure.”
Sandro appears, scowls at Giuliana and pulls up a chair, “A good day, today, Ric?”
“I’ve had worse.”
The escurzionista leans across and helps himself to a small pizza, a cherry tomato and a slice of egg wrapped in salami. As he fills his mouth, he remembers his manners and grins, “Scusi! It’s okay?”
Ric nods, turns to Giuliana and asks her for a Birra Messina for Sandro.
“You see these people?” Sandro asks when he has finished chewing. “They go like sheep to a new field. They think the grass will be green for them because of this idiot, Candela.”
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