Ontreto

by Peter Crawley

  Marcello grins. “So, now La Strega is doing your laundry. Mm, well, be careful or she will have the shirt off your back, as you English say.” He chews his cigar and raises his eyebrows. “A little old for you, don’t you think?”

  Then Ric remembers the other reason he has come to see Marcello and his expression darkens. “But, apart from the clothes I can’t find, I wanted to see you. What the hell do you mean by leaving me out in the middle of the ocean last night?”

  Marcello grimaces, examines his cigar, deems it not worth relighting and tosses it aside. The dog races over to consume it as though it is prime steak.

  “Yes, of course. This was bad mannered of me. For this I must apologise.”

  But if Ric thinks he is worthy of any better treatment than the cigar, he is mistaken. “Just that?” he asks, incredulous. “I could have drowned out there. How did you know I wasn’t knocked unconscious by the boat that ran us down?” He points at the wound above his eye, carful not to touch it.

  The barrel-chested man scoffs dismissively, “How did you know it was not the same for me?” He takes a step back. “Come, let me show you something.” He waves Ric over.

  The dog makes to run at Ric, but Marcello snaps at it and it retreats, tail between its legs.

  Over to the left of the yard lies the small skiff they had been fishing in the night before. But unlike the larger sail boats it is not up on blocks; rather it is lying on its side and halfway between the keel and the slender Plimsoll line the hull sports a gash large enough to put a boot through.

  “You see this!” he says more than asks. “This is why I had to leave you.” He waits for Ric to take in the extent of the damage. “How long do you think I would be floating with a hole like this? And what was the point of two of us swimming. The water was coming in faster than the motor can drive her through the water. I make it back just in time.”

  Ric remembers Sandro saying he had seen Marcello in the Corta some time before he arrived.

  The breach in the hull of the little boat is overlaid with blue paint and Ric recalls the hull of the boat bearing down on him. He fingers the plaster above his right eye.

  “Okay, Marcello, I’m sorry about your barca. I had no idea you’d been holed. I thought you’d run off and left me.”

  Marcello chuckles, “Oh, I did, my friend. I did. But I remember you telling me you were in the Marina Militare – the Marines – so naturally I think it will not be a problem for you to swim this little distance to the shore.” He looks Ric up and down, lingering on the jellyfish welts on his forearms. “And I see, apart from caressing the medusa, you made it back in one piece. They hurt, eh?”

  “They do.”

  “You must piss on the pain. I know it sounds unpleasant, but this is the best cure.”

  “Thanks, Marcello,” Ric groans, “but I can do without the old wives’ tales.” He hesitates. “I guess I owe you an apology for thinking you’d run out on me.”

  The man bobs his head from side to side as he appreciates Ric’s rather begrudging acknowledgement. “Okay, okay, now I have apologised and you have apologised, so let’s go have a beer. It’s too hot to stand out here playing buone maniere.”

  At a café down the front in Canneto, a waiter, wearing yesterday’s clothes and a thousand-yard-stare, serves them a couple of beers and a bowl of green olives. Marcello pops an olive in his mouth, chews thoughtfully for a moment and then flicks the stone at a skinny dog which has sidled in to sit at his feet.

  “How goes it with the Mara?” asks Ric.

  Marcello shrugs, “Slowly. There is much that is a problem.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning, my friend, you will be here for a while unless you want to go somewhere else and return when I have finished.” Marcello flicks another olive stone. The dog snaps and catches it in its mouth before dropping it at its feet.

  “The seals are worn and as a result the propeller shaft is out of balance. This means that it is possible the main bearings in the engine are worn. If we put everything back together, there is no guarantee the engine will not have more problems.” He holds up his stubby fingers in surrender. “I am at your command. You tell me what you want me to do.”

  Ric sighs, “Given the circumstances, what would you do?”

  Marcello grins and looks up to the heavens and replies, “Oh, you have two choices: I take out the engine and replace the bearings or you pray that you do not meet a big storm and need to rely on the motor to get you out of trouble. It is simple.”

  “I’m not big on relying on the weather.”

  “It is wise not to be so,” Marcello replies, nodding. “The weather can be a fine friend, but a cruel enemy.”

  Ric considers the shipwright’s advice. “I noticed the hull could do with some attention.”

  Marcello nods again, “Yes, but it is not as bad as it looks. This you could do later.”

  “Talking of hulls,” Ric says, sipping his beer, “the boat that ran us down last night?”

  “Yes. What about this?”

  “I noticed the paint on the hull of your skiff is dark blue. Any idea who has a boat that colour? You seem to know everyone hereabouts; I imagine you’d know who that boat belonged to.”

  Marcello glances at Ric; a brief, hard, penetrating glance. “Yes. I have given this much thought.”

  “And?”

  But the Liparotan does not answer, he simply gazes out at the horizon; a flat line broken only by the low outline of Panarea and, behind it, the larger cone of Stromboli and the small cloud permanently suspended above it.

  “No, this was not a boat from Lipari; it was both too big and not big enough. It was not a peschereccio, a tourist barca, a taxi mare or a playboy’s motoscafo. And it was not one of those boats like the floating hotel in Porto Salvo. This boat was both big and fast; it was from Milazzo.”

  Ric thinks for a moment and remembers the hull bearing down on him. “If I remember rightly it had a blue hull with numbers painted in white just below the rail.”

  Marcello is watching him, expectantly, “Go on, my friend.”

  “So it was an official launch of some kind?” And as he pictures the prow rearing up out of the night and the rail above him and the glancing blow, he realises, “It was the Carabinieri launch, wasn’t it?”

  Marcello is deep in thought, chewing an olive. When he has finished stripping the flesh off it, he picks it from between his lips and flicks it at the dog. “No it was not, my friend. It was La Polizia. It was they who caused you to swim back to the beach.”

  Ric frowns. “Can you make a claim against them?”

  “Yes, I could if I thought it would be of benefit.”

  “So have you?”

  “You see this dog, Ric,” he nods at the scrawny hound sat at his feet. “You know why it sits so far from my feet and waits for me to throw it food it cannot eat?” He pauses, though not long enough to suggest he is expecting a reply. “It sits in the hope that one day I will throw it a piece of food it can eat. But, it will not sit so close to me that I find its smell unpleasant, because then it knows there is every chance I will kick it and no chance that I will give it anything to eat. It is the same with La Polizia and Lipari.”

  “But the boat wasn’t showing any navigation lights.”

  “This is true and this is interesting.”

  “Because…?”

  “Because it means they were expecting trouble at the opera and they did not want anyone to know they were waiting near the stage.”

  “Candela?”

  “Yes, Ric: Candela.” Marcello sips his beer and fidgets in his seat. “It means they knew something was going to happen. But if they knew something was going to happen; why did they not do something about it before it happened? This is also what is interesting.”

  His conclusion is punctuated by the nasal rasp from a scooter tearing past the café.

  The beer suddenly seems flat and Ric feels curiously vulnerable; the matter of the missing Beretta i
s preying heavily on his mind.

  “I was talking to one of the escurzionisti a couple of days ago,” he says. “He told me word about town was that there was going to be trouble with Candela.”

  Marcello’s ears prick up, “He did? Which one was this?”

  “Don’t know his name,” Ric replies, hoping he has adequately sold his untruth.

  “People here have nothing better to do than talk. It is the one commodity you do not have to buy, eh?”

  Across the dusty road, the promenade is deserted. Like most sensible people, the beachcombers and strollers have settled for siesta. Even the dog resigns itself to finding a shady spot. It nurses its arthritic frame upright and turns a skinny tail.

  “Talking of talking,” Ric says, “Valeria and I went to see that old guy you pointed out to me the other night.”

  “Old Nino?”

  Ric chuckles at the thought of the extraordinary, elderly blind man who could tell so much about him simply by shaking hands. “Yes. Valeria thought he might shed some light on my ancestor. Interesting guy! It’s as you said the other evening; he has a remarkable memory.”

  Marcello scoffs; something Ric is beginning to understand he does whenever Ric brings other people into their conversation, “That old fool! You would hear more sense in the cemetery.”

  And, as Marcello mentions the cemetery, Ric remembers Old Nino suggesting he spend a bit of time there.

  He stands and stretches. “I must be going, Marcello. Thank you for the beer.”

  “Don’t worry, my friend,” Marcello winks, “I will add it to your bill. What do you want me to do with the motor in your boat?”

  “Damned if I know,” Ric replies, wondering how he is going to be able to pay for the repairs with the small amount of cash he has left stowed in the Mara. “I’ll see you later.”

  “Yes, Ric, later. Of course, we will see each other.”

  28

  On his way back into town, Ric takes the easier option of the tunnel. The racket shouted by the cars, minibuses and scooters in the narrow passageway provides a deafening prelude to the activity beyond it. Whereas Canneto is an oasis of calm, the languorous atmosphere pierced only by a water taxi plodding offshore, the Lunga and Marina di Porto Salvo are all activity. A bright orange tanker lies up at the fuel pier, feeding the island like a gaudy wet nurse. The garbage boat is departing its berth below the citadel and even though it is siesta, the afternoon Aliscafo eases up, its hydrofoils sinking into the green waters of the port as it waits for its sister to vacate the dock.

  The Carabinieri are still checking the papers of those leaving through the port, but outside of flagging down a helicopter or thumbing a lift on a yacht, the Lunga is the only gateway off the island.

  At least the cemetery will be quiet, he thinks: even the dead must rest.

  Ric pauses and looks up at the eternal stone flame, the cross of thorns perched on the high columns and the inscription Omnia Traham beneath. And from some dark corner of his school days he recalls the scripture: Et ego, si exaltatus fuero a terra, omnia traham ad me ipsum.

  But, unlike the first day when his curiosity had gotten the better of him and he had walked straight in to wander amongst the mausolea, now he feels unable to enter until he has remembered the translation. He rubs his brow and searches his mind.

  “And… and if I…”

  A rumpled, wrinkled old man sits inside the gate, an expectant yet bemused expression on the stretched parchment of his face. He has long since lost his teeth and he is so thin, his flat cap and baggy trousers appear to be wearing him.

  “Got it,” he mumbles to himself, “And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all things unto me: Book of John.”

  The old man cackles at the sight of a much younger man bartering his way into the afterlife.

  “Afternoon, Pop,” Ric offers.

  The man raises his hand in salute and rasps, “Salve, mio amico.”

  The air beneath the cypress trees is cool, the mood of the cemetery appropriately calm. There are so many graves Ric is not sure where to begin.

  Common sense tells him the cemetery would have begun its life either right by the entrance at the bottom or perhaps a little way up, a respectful distance from the harbour. The newer residents would have found themselves billeted further back up the slope as the cemetery expanded in the only direction available.

  Ric imagines a grid and starts out inspecting the head stones and coffin-like mausolea. Some are ornate and intricate, some art deco in design and others plain and simple. But here and there a measure of wealth, standing or affection, or perhaps all three, is displayed in glossy black or shimmering white granite: the older the occupant, the more frugal and austere the style; the younger the occupant, the more polished and pretentious the aspect.

  An old crone swathed in black, doubtless the better half of the fellow by the gate, is laying fresh flowers at the grave of the Conti sisters; twins born in 1890. She places a plastic bottle upside down in an earthenware vase and punctures the top so that the water will drip very slowly to feed her bouquet of clematis, cornflowers and blue violets.

  More than a few of the headstones record the deaths of those interred as early as 1888; the year, as Valeria has told him, the island of Vulcano last erupted. And he comes upon the tomb of the Bongiorno family, a stone cross standing on top of a sarcophagus-shaped vault; stark and restrained and almost soviet in architecture, the word CREDO – Believe – is chased in the centre.

  The terraces layer up into the hillside. Stone steps sweep around the Lombardo family: Luigi – dolphins, sails and tridents carved in the base and an anchor standing proudly on the plinth, Giovanna Arena – a simple eternal flame sculpted in stone, and Francesco – pictured in bas relief on an obelisk, a man of some standing at the turn of the century before.

  An hour later, he finds a pedestal graced by a weather-worn angel of mercy standing alone in the lea of the chapel-house wall. The name of the family buried beneath the slab of stone is barely legible, but the Christian name seems to begin with the letter A and the surname S.

  Ric bends to the gravestone and rubs the contours of the inscription. It is difficult to make out at first, but when he stands back the letters catch the sun and the name becomes clear.

  It is ANTONIO SCIACCHITANO, the surname Camille has suggested his great-grandfather went by. There is no date of birth, but the details of his passing are inscribed simply as MORTO LUGLIO 1930. The headstone is heavily pitted and aside from the roughly hewn image of flowers and an incense bowl, he can make out only a couple of other words: INTEGERRIMO CITTADINO, which he roughly translates to a something citizen.

  He kneels down on the corner of the gravestone and tries to read more of the inscription. But the words are illegible and after a few minutes he gives up. Ric can see no reference to a spouse and neither of the graves either side bear any relation.

  Outsize black ants trail to and fro across the path and a gecko eyes him warily from the shadow of an adjacent pedestal. Down on the terrace below him, workmen toil, cleaning the stone edifices, restoring the mausolea which have succumbed to the ravages of the Aeolian winds and the Sicilian sun.

  Ric recalls what Camille told him about the guardiano of the marine cemetery high up in the Bosco of Bonifacio; namely that if he wanted to find out any details of those buried in the cemetery, he should ask the men who attend the graves. But the labourers he is watching work diligently and silently, there is no radio to distract them and they do not whistle or sing. They seem, to him, to approach their tasks with all the appropriate reverence of men who know they are plugging away amongst the departed.

  So the possibility is that this supposed relation of his passed away in 1930. Carmelo Corbino, across the way, made it to a hundred. How old, he wonders, was Antonio? But, if he is to take any comfort from his discovery it is that Antonio was thought of as an integerrimo citizen, which he believes must be positive. Surely, the loved ones of the departed were not in the habi
t of inscribing a headstone with anything other than terms of endearment. Right up at the back towards the final tier of the cemetery stand imposing and impressive mausolea; some twice a man’s height and colonnetted and domed, like elegant pantheons.

  As Ric turns, he notices a substantial, simple tomb set apart from the more recent, flashier copies.

  The tomb is vaguely Roman in style, the roof squares to a pitch and the doorway is high and wide. The lintel is set in a recessed arch transcended by a semi-circular lunette, the columns in each corner carved from single pieces and their capitals convex and plain. The name inscribed on the lintel reads MAGGIORE.

  Ric peers in through the wrought iron gate. A dozen or more plaques denote who is interred in the vault: the line of Maggiore runs far back into the nineteenth century. The women, Grazia, Isabella, Katarina and Maria are many; the men few. And Ric reasons this is because so many of the fathers, sons and brothers would have been buried where they fell in the mountains around Caporetto or the deserts of Abyssinia. He studies the names and dates for a while, looking to see if any of the plaques bear relation to his forebear’s time.

  There is one: a plaque bearing the name Katarina, her date of birth 25 Gennaio 1910 and her passing 18 Luglio 1930. Katarina Maggiore died at the tender age of twenty. Clearly, Marcello would not have known her, but Ric wonders whether Antonio Sciacchitano might have?

  Above Katarina’s plaque is that of Vincenzo, who passed away on 13 Aprile 1951. And alongside her, in his newly placed casket, lies Onofrio, born 1928 and died as recently as 10 Giugno 2013, and Ric realises that this is the man whose funeral cortège he watched pass down the Corso a few days before. He also toys with the idea that Vincenzo may be Marcello’s grandfather, and Onofrio Marcello’s father; Marcello is at the outside no more than fifty.

  He completes his inspection and strolls back down the avenue of cypress trees, nodding politely at the old fellow waiting patiently for his wife to finish paying her respects.