The Savage Shore

by David Hewson

  The first community was founded here in the sixth century BC by colonists from the distant Greek city of Chalcis. The surrounding orchards and pasture brought the place wealth. The Romans later extended the village, building a small castle and defensive walls to protect the nearby seasonal river used as a traffic route into the mountain. In the twelfth century those wandering barbarians the Normans – Vikings in all but name – invaded southern Italy and placed the area under the control of a baronial family named the Abenavoli. In the way of the Calabrian nobility, much interbreeding and internecine strife followed. In 1686 the entire Abenavoli clan was massacred in an argument over the hand of a beautiful woman. Some say you can still see the bloody fingerprints of the slaughtered appear on the walls of the ruined palace at night and in the church of Saint Dionysius (who was named after a Greek cleric, pope for a while and born in Magna Graecia) where they sought sanctuary in vain.

  The hamlet in the hills was never to recover. From that murderous point on the place seemed cursed, damned. In 1738 the village was badly damaged by earthquake. Half the inhabitants decamped to nearby Melito Porto Salvo. Those who remained formed a bickering, divided community rent with vendettas and violence. By the 1930s the population had fallen to a few hundred or so. I was living in Reggio at the time. No one visited Manodiavolo willingly. The place lived in the shadows. Few of the inhabitants made their way to the coast except to sell goat meat, fruit and vegetables and honey in the markets. Nor did we speak to these strange and surly people, whose dialect seemed impenetrable even to those used to the Griko of the mountain folk.

  And one day they were gone. The story is this. On an August morning in 1938 the priest of Saint Dionysius was found dead in the church. A terrible sight. The man lay on his back in front of the altar, mouth agape, eyes wide open as if frozen by a sudden terror. The father was found by the baker, a man more superstitious than most. He swore that as he stood over the dead man’s body the entire building shook and groaned as if about to collapse. The eyes of the statue of the Virgin above the altar ran with blood. A ghostly wail struck up crying one word in Greek: leave.

  The baker was notorious for being a drunkard I should add, usually out of his senses from an hour after his loaves left the oven.

  Terrified, he ran out into what passed as Manodiavolo’s main street shrieking about what he’d heard. It was, as the village schoolteacher soon pointed out, two hundred years precisely since the last earthquake had struck the area and the day of the present alarm, July the thirteenth, was the anniversary of the slaughter of the Abenavoli, a Friday too. Only the week before the unfortunate priest, an eccentric man from Florence, had preached from his pulpit like a latter-day Savonarola, threatening all manner of retributions from heaven because of the ungodly behaviour of the locals.

  Being a young man at the time, and one who was not averse to searching out ungodly behaviour wherever it might be found, I was unaware that Manodiavolo, a place where the average age seemed to be around fifty-eight, was such a veritable nest of sin. Nevertheless the locals, confronted with the frightful corpse of the man who had warned them of their coming fate, were in no doubt. The Hour of Judgement was upon them. A terrible destiny awaited any who ignored the ghastly cry howled through the church of Saint Dionysius by the shade of the dead god Pan, fellow to his namesake, for it could be no other.

  So they fled. Every man, woman and the handful of children who made up the population of Manodiavolo. In a matter of hours they packed everything they owned into whatever manner of transport they could lay their hands on, from donkeys and carts to an old tractor that plied up and down the hill ferrying those tremulous folk down to the coast.

  By the time they reached the shore the tale had multiplied tenfold. Now the little village beneath the devil’s fist ran wild with shrieking demons bringing pestilence and death to any who stayed. In the space of a day a spot that had been home to mankind for almost two and a half millennia was deserted, a crumbling ghost given over to rats and stray dogs to wander its alleys and hovels, its palaces and halls. Nor would any who departed that day dare to return.

  This was Manodiavolo’s fate that August day in 1938. Now it stands as a sad collection of ruined houses, the church spire toppled by age and neglect, the buildings marked by the black eyes of shattered windows. Home to vagabonds alone, though that is another story.

  They were bickering, in an amicable, combative fashion, from the moment they told him to get in the car.

  Rocco wanted him blindfolded.

  Lucia said not to be ridiculous. He’d no idea where they were, least of all where they were going. There was no reason for his colleagues to try to follow. If they were that stupid then the whole idea was doomed in any case. Besides, she added with a glance behind and a quick smile, they would take their guest for a long ride first. A random tour of Italy’s toe, his new home, Calabria, just to make sure.

  He didn’t argue with his sister. So Nic Costa kept quiet and in his head repeated his new name, over and over. Tomasso Leoni. Maso for short. From Guelph, somewhere in Canada, a country he couldn’t imagine.

  Maso. Maso.

  Then he sat back in the soft leather seats and watched and listened. Brother and sister, he thought. Not twins as he first wondered. Rocco, the older one, looked the part of the Calabrian hood, moneyed, powerful, confident. Stubble on a tanned and knowing face, easy to smile, easy to fall into a scowl too. His clothes seemed fashionable. A polo shirt with a logo. Light blue trousers. A fat, expensive-looking digital watch that he looked at, tapped periodically and once spoke to, briefly, in a rapid dialect that was impossible to understand. There was a strong and pungent smell of cigars about him, smoked and raw. He kept them in a shiny brown leather case attached to his belt with a fastener that looked as if it could as easily bear the weight of a holster. A criminal of rank. He’d seen men like this in Rome, southerners usually, from Naples or Sicily. Never the ’Ndrangheta of Calabria. They seemed to shun the city. Or if they were around, remained invisible.

  Lucia told her brother he couldn’t smoke when he tried to reach for a cigar. Then she pulled her hair back and clamped it in a tortoiseshell grip. That way he could see better the similarity in their features. Rocco looked like a man who’d lived his life outdoors, in the mountains, by the beach, even on the sea. She had a more urbane, worldly appearance. There was the scar, faint, something another woman might hide with make-up. The darting green eyes. A round face, olive skin, dark eyes always alert as if something unexpected might lurk behind the corner. An interesting woman. Damaged somehow along the way.

  The difference was there in their voices: his sharp, quick, unthinking; hers slow, calm, quiet, reflective. There were the personal tics too. His constant fidgeting, the way he patted the cigar case from time to time even though he would not be allowed to smoke. While she would toy constantly with a plain silver bracelet on her left wrist, old it seemed, perhaps a family heirloom. A beautiful item which clashed awkwardly with the lurid tattoos, wild patterns of dragons and unidentifiable monsters that ran down her arm. The santina, her aunt, had glanced at them with distaste as well, as if they were relics of a past they all wished to forget. Brother and sister. They made an interesting pair, with the faintest hint of irritation and perhaps rivalry between them.

  The moment the car found the road proper Rocco turned up the air conditioning so that icy air seemed to blow at them from every vent. She muttered something, pulled a plum-coloured pashmina out of a bag on the floor and dragged it round her bare, tanned shoulders. Another tattoo, a small, delicate one, was etched upon her left shoulder blade: an image of the Virgin Mary in blue.

  ‘Are you warm enough in those cheap clothes of yours, Maso?’ she asked with a quick glance in the back. ‘My brother believes he’s a polar bear.’

  ‘Yes. Thank you.’

  The car was an Alfa Stelvio SUV, the Quadrifoglio, Rocco said, which meant nothing to him but supposedly it could outrun anything the police or the Carabinieri owned ex
cept for the couple of motorway Ferraris they gave to their favourite officers. All wheel drive, all weather machine. Perfect for the mountains.

  Maso. Tomasso Leoni.

  An hour away from the santina’s shack Rocco stopped the car on a solitary lane. There was a parking spot where someone had fly-tipped trash: blue plastic bags, household rubbish, sawn-off conifers. Beyond that a spectacular view to the coast, the outlines of hamlets running along the edge, between them wild bays set by the calm blue sea. He took out a handgun from the glove compartment, waved it idly behind him and said, ‘Just so we are clear … if you try to run I shoot you. If you annoy me I shoot you. If I ask you to do something and you don’t—’

  ‘You shoot me.’

  ‘He learns quick,’ Lucia said with a smile.

  ‘It’s important he understands.’

  ‘Brother. He’s given himself into our hands. I think he understands. Don’t you, Nic?’

  The first test.

  ‘Nic? Who’s Nic?’

  Her smile grew wider. ‘An old friend of yours. Maybe you’ll meet him again one day.’

  ‘Maso. Tomasso Leoni. I’m from Guelph, Canada. You know it?’

  ‘No.’ It was Rocco. ‘No one in the ’ndrina knows it. Why do you think we chose that place?’

  She placed her arm over the car seat and said, ‘We had relatives go there a hundred years or so ago. After the earthquake in Reggio when people here were starving in the streets and no one outside Calabria gave a damn. They took a boat. Some of them stayed in touch. Not now. They became …’

  Both men waited.

  ‘They became … ordinary. Normal. In their terms. Not ours. May we go now?’

  He didn’t argue.

  The Alfa had the biggest engine money could buy, Rocco said, and did his best to prove it on the many stomach-churning chicanes, up and down hill, around the coast. Lucia rolled her eyes when she was able.

  After three hours on circuitous roads they stopped at a half-deserted palace beyond a sign for a hill town, Gerace. From what he saw it was a place that, had it been in the north, would have been on the tourist map, gentrified and turned into a bustling complex of hotels, apartment rentals and restaurants. The mansions and squares were elegant, mostly baroque, a few older, and spoke of former riches and grandeur. But many were shabby and a good few boarded-up as if abandoned. Christ stopped at Eboli the santina had said. In other words, civilized Italy never came this far south. Never thought about these places.

  Greek, Lucia told him as they sat down for dinner on the terrace, this whole area was once Greek. The name Gerace came from hierax which meant sparrow hawk. Then she spoke a little of the local dialect he’d heard her use earlier, a kind of Greek too, impenetrable, closer to the language of the ancients than the version heard in Athens or so she said. He listened and couldn’t make out a single word. The sound was strange, exotic, enticing. Like her and he guessed she knew it.

  Rocco grimaced at his sister, pointed at a place by a ribbon of pale beach along the Ionian and made a caustic comment about the futility of history. It was a town called Locri, he said. A well-liked politician was murdered there some years before, an event the man trying to think of himself as Maso Leoni vaguely remembered. Though there were so many violent deaths in the south over the years it was hard to pick any out in particular.

  ‘We didn’t shoot him,’ Rocco added. ‘Never would. That was a mistake. Some of the families are run by fools. They piss off people for no good reason. They think the world never changes.’ He stared at the one untouched plate on the table. Mountain lamb, caponata, potatoes and greens. ‘You got no appetite?’

  ‘Not meat. I don’t eat meat.’

  ‘Fish?’ Lucia asked.

  He shook his head.

  Rocco groaned then took hold of his plate, scooped off the succulent lamb and handed the rest back. ‘Oh God. Who chose you?’

  ‘He’s Canadian,’ Lucia told him. ‘He’s allowed to be a little strange.’

  Just after ten the next morning they told him to get back in the car. This time she drove, not as fast or as rashly as her brother. As far as he could work out they took a series of narrow mountain passes that led from the Ionian west to the Tyrrhenian, through dense, uninhabited forests, across bare high plains. Finally they emerged close to Tropea on the coast, stopping for lunch at a tavern somewhere outside town. Rocco vanished to make calls he said and meet someone. The two of them ate mostly in silence: spicy ’Nduja sausage for her with the local red onion salad, and for him a local dish lagane e cicciari, pasta with chick peas and garlic at her suggestion.

  ‘It’s not so bad eating just vegetables,’ she said, sipping at a small glass of white. ‘Years ago that’s all people could afford. Cucina povera isn’t a fashion here. It’s a necessity. People won’t think you’re weird, Nic.’

  The pasta, broad and soft, was delicious. ‘Who’s Nic? I’m Maso. Tomasso Leoni.’

  She frowned, a sign of approval. ‘I apologize. This game can get tedious. You must try to appreciate our concern.’

  ‘I came here to meet your father. How long—’

  ‘That’s not a question I can answer. Or Rocco. It’s not our decision. We do as we’re told. There are reasons the Bergamotti ’ndrina has survived and ruled here for nearly a century. That’s one of them.’

  She raised her glass and tapped it against his. The wine was strong and coarse. ‘Another is we don’t answer questions unless we need to. And we’re invisible. Here’s to a successful conclusion for all of us. Though our lives will change forever, while yours just for this little time.’

  She pulled at her hair. It was raven black, very straight, very sleek, cared for in a practical way. Everything about her seemed like that. He could imagine her as an athlete or something strong, determined, forceful. Someone in charge.

  ‘The santina … Who is she really? Your mother?’

  Lucia laughed. ‘No. My aunt. My mother’s dead.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘It was … some time ago.’

  ‘Your aunt. Her eyes … the cataracts.’ She waited until he said, ‘They were lenses, weren’t they? It was an act.’

  She raised her glass in a toast. ‘Very good, Maso.’

  ‘How much of this is like that? A piece of theatre?’

  A shrug, then: ‘A good actor isn’t acting, is he? A good actor’s the part. So who knows? You keep on asking questions …’

  He raised his glass then downed a draft. ‘Just … trying to be friendly.’

  ‘So I see. Clothes. Do you like Paul and Shark?’

  ‘Not the kind of thing you buy on a police salary,’ he said without thinking.

  She stared at him, hard, unamused.

  He groaned. ‘Oh dear. Got that wrong.’

  ‘One more night on the road, I think. Blurt out something like that around the people you’re going to face and we’re all dead. I’ll call Rocco and he can meet us later.’

  She threw a hundred on the table and didn’t wait for change. Then she cast a glance at him, after the sea, thinking.

  ‘What is it?’ he asked.

  ‘You keep looking at me.’ She tapped her arm. ‘At these.’ Then her cheek with the scar. ‘At this.’ He said nothing. ‘Like they shouldn’t be there.’

  ‘I didn’t mean to.’

  She folded her arms and stared straight at him. ‘OK. Let’s get this out of the way now. I went a little crazy when I was younger—’

  ‘I don’t need to hear this.’

  ‘But you do.’

  ‘Lucia—’

  ‘Shut up and listen. Maybe it’ll help you understand a little about us. When Mamma died I was nineteen. There was a local war. Just a little one. All the same some bastards from the north shot her. They thought my father was in the car. So …’ She closed her eyes and he thought: the memory was still raw. ‘I kind of lost it. Didn’t see the point in anything. Hung around bars. Got stupid. Got … careless. They were bad times all round. None of us
knew what might happen. I kind of … had a lot of men. You can drown yourself in people sometimes. Make them blank out everything. You know what I mean?’

  ‘I think so,’ he replied.

  ‘No you don’t. So there I am hanging out in some beach bar at three in the morning, waiting for Rocco to come and pick me up. Out of my head. Stupid. Some kid comes up and waves a knife in my face. Wanting me. If he’d asked nicely back then …’ She stopped and brushed away a stray strand of hair. ‘I’d probably have said yes. But he didn’t. So he cut me and got what he was after anyway. Then Rocco turned up with some of the guys and took him away to the hills.’

  She finished the last of the wine. ‘They never told me but I heard. They cut his cock off, stuffed it in his mouth, let him choke on it. Dumped him in a ravine somewhere. Never told his parents how to find him and they didn’t ask too hard. You don’t disrespect the capo’s daughter. You don’t make her mad. Even when she was a little slut like me.’

  ‘You don’t do that to any woman.’

  ‘Not hard to tell you’re from somewhere else.’

  There was an awkward moment between them. An intimacy broached.

  ‘You didn’t need to tell me that.’

  ‘Wrong, Maso. I did. That kid with his knife, dead in the hills. That liberated me. That made me look at myself and realize what a mess I’d become. There’s a bunch of bones up there I’d thank if that were possible.’ She leaned forward. ‘That’s how things are here. Raw. Real. Dangerous. Remember that.’ She jabbed a finger on the back of his hand. ‘Now we go.’

  In Gioia Tauro they stopped at an out of town clothes store where she said he needed enough clothes for a week or more. She chose the shirts, the trousers, the canvas shoes of summer. The rest she left to him. Almost a thousand euros, paid again in cash.

  As dusk fell they arrived at a deserted agriturismo, a farm with lodgings somewhere in the hills not far, he felt, from Cariddi. A man and, he assumed, his wife busied around carrying cases and fetching food and drink. They never once looked anyone in the face. Rocco was there already. She told him about the clothes.