The Savage Shore

by David Hewson

  ‘There are better sights than this,’ she said then led him out by the church, past the cypresses in the cemetery. The night was alive to the sound of insects, perfumed by herbs and trees and mountain flowers. They wandered through a tangle of trees, onto a track just wide enough for a mule with evidence that Silvio or Benito or both had been here recently. Five minutes later the path ended at a flat stone platform that served as a solitary panoramic gallery over the coast. As day turned to velvet night, the sky a painterly chiaroscuro somewhere between dark blue and black, they sat together on the hard rock, staring at the sea. They were, Lucia said, above the point where the Ionian ran into the Tyrrhenian, where east met west in front of them.

  ‘That way,’ she said, aiming a long finger back to the coming darkness, ‘five hundred kilometres for the birds, lies Patras. Greece. Where most of us came from in the beginning. South—’ the straight and certain finger moved – ‘six hundred kilometres and you’re in Tripoli. Africa.’ Another turn and he couldn’t stop watching the way her raven hair shifted in the scented breeze. ‘West. Beyond Etna. Then … I don’t know … a thousand kilometres or more and you’re in Spain. When I was a kid I used to sit here on my own, listening to Rocco shooting birds and anything that moved, imagining all those places. Imagining I’d visit them one day. And never come back. Then Mamma died. Everything changed.’

  He didn’t know what to say.

  ‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t harp on about that.’

  ‘Say what you want,’ he told her. ‘I’m happy listening.’

  She shuffled closer to him. ‘You are, aren’t you?’

  ‘You’re a good talker. Who wouldn’t be? Why Capri?’

  ‘Because it’s little. Because it’s an island. They can keep an eye on me there. Not that I need it any more. My wild days are over. I am old. I am tamed.’

  He didn’t speak.

  ‘You’re supposed to tell me I’m not old at all.’

  ‘I didn’t want to argue.’

  ‘You’re very different. I don’t meet different men. Funny.’

  ‘But why Capri?’

  Lucia wrinkled her nose. The scar on her cheek had a new texture, a different aspect in the moonlight. It didn’t bother him in the least. The mark was like the tattoos, a sign of age, of experience and pain borne in earnest.

  ‘To try to find who I am. That’s what hermits do, isn’t it?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  A laugh then: ‘You’re the worst liar I’ve ever seen. That’s different too. Don’t try it round my brother.’

  She opened her bag and looked inside. There was something in her face he couldn’t read. Doubt. Regret perhaps.

  ‘You killed a fish.’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘You pretended you’d killed your friends.’

  There seemed to be nothing she didn’t know and he wondered again: who was the second-in-command here? Rocco or her sister? ‘Your brother said I should. I didn’t have much choice. Neither I suspect did they.’

  ‘No. We don’t offer people choices. Only certainties. Do this. Do that. Obey. Or else. This man you know …’

  ‘What man?’

  ‘Nic Costa.’

  Still the tricks … ‘Never heard—’

  ‘Sshh …’

  She shuffled right up to him, placed her fingers over his mouth.

  ‘I told you already. We’re alone. No need for lies. Not … here.’

  He’d been remembering Rome at that moment, the time his wife died. Scarcely a day passed without that intruding into his thoughts. The santina had seen that so easily. Perhaps Lucia had the same gift. He knew why she had brought back that memory too. It was a recollection of how it felt to be near someone. The joy, the possible pain of closeness.

  ‘I don’t think anyone’s ever safe,’ he said.

  ‘This little place is mine. Here, the two of us. We are. There’s no need to play that game. You understand? Nic? Nic?’

  He picked up a pebble and threw it over the edge of the rocky platform. Like a kid he guessed.

  ‘You’re not very good with women, are you?’

  ‘Ah. You noticed.’

  ‘Maybe you just picked wrong.’

  ‘No.’ He shook his head. ‘Not that. Never that. Well … rarely.’

  Lucia hunched up her knees, wound her hands round them. The tattoos weren’t so garish in the gentle twilight. ‘Go on.’

  ‘Things didn’t work. I tried to make them. I couldn’t. I dreamt I could. But it didn’t happen.’

  Her eyes were closed then, a smile on her face, and he thought he could look at that for a long time. Just look.

  ‘Dreams,’ she whispered. ‘When I was little I used to sleep out here sometimes. To see the sun rise. My father always said the wolves would come for me. They never did. I heard them though. I heard their lonely cries. They didn’t scare me. Then I’d come again in the evening and watch it vanish into the sea. Like the sky was on fire and that big blazing ball was dousing itself at the end of another day the way it had to. I used to read the old stories in Grandfather’s book. There was one about Helios, the sun god, who drove his chariot across the earth to bring us light, day in day out. I’d dream that one morning he’d come down from the heavens and take me. Let me ride with him back up into the stars, beyond the moon, beyond everything. Live forever in a place where there was no pain. No hate, no fear, no death. The things kids dream.’

  ‘Soon this will be over. You can be back in Capri.’

  ‘Where I will return to being a hermit. What about Nic Costa? Tell me about him.’

  What to say? He never thought much about himself. There was always the job, the cares and worries of others to occupy his days.

  ‘He gets up. He goes to work. He comes home.’

  ‘On his own.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘No.’ She shook her head very firmly. ‘Not maybe. The lonely recognize each other. It’s one of the few gifts we have.’

  She was taking something out of her bag. He couldn’t see what. ‘What’s he thinking now? This absent Roman?’

  There was a pen and a notepad in her bag. He took them and scribbled out his private number on the page then put them back.

  ‘That one day he’ll go back to Capri. Maybe see a little villa near where a cruel emperor once killed men for no good reason. Perhaps find someone there he’d like to meet again. In different circumstances.’

  ‘That’s a nice dream,’ she whispered, pulling back. ‘Do you like chocolate?’

  ‘Not much.’

  ‘Romans are so strange.’ A bar of something came out of her bag. ‘This is from Modica in Sicily. It’s like the Aztecs used to make. No one else sells chocolate like this. With cinnamon.’ She broke off a piece and placed it in his mouth. ‘If you hate that we have nothing more to say to one another—’

  ‘It’s delicious,’ he mumbled. And it was: grainy, hard, dry and full of spice.

  ‘Something nice before something not so good.’

  Now she was holding a short knife, its sharp point sparkling gold in the dying sun. And a piece of card.

  ‘There’s one last thing that has to happen. If you’re to be a man of honour they all can trust. I’m sorry. You must bear a mark. It’s going to hurt a little. I wish … My father should be doing this but he had to go away. He said it was for me.’ She lifted up the card. ‘Read this. You don’t need to understand the words. They’re …’

  He took a quick breath, unable to take his eyes off the glinting blade.

  ‘The words, Nic. The words …’

  ‘“In this holy night, beneath the sky, the starlight and the shining moon I bless the holy chain—”’

  ‘Hold out your right hand. Keep talking …’

  ‘“I deny all previous affiliations … up to the seventh generation” … Ow … Ow!’

  She’d cut him, a small crescent in the fleshy part beneath the thumb.

  ‘I apologize. It was necessary. Be grateful. If
it was my father he’d have gone much deeper. Keep talking. Say the words …’

  He did. Not that they made any sense. The wound was short and not too deep, no worse than he’d had when working clumsily on his father’s old Vespa back home. But it would be visible.

  She peered at it and said, ‘If this were real I doubt that’d do. A man’s supposed to be marked for life but that’ll be around for a week or two, no more. Still, enough.’

  He sucked at the wound as she watched.

  ‘Stop that,’ she ordered. ‘It’s childish and highly unsanitary.’ Then she pulled out a bandage and plaster too, took hold of his hand, staunched the blood with some muslin and began to treat the cut.

  ‘There. And now your torturer kisses it better.’ Her lips closed briefly on his hand. ‘I’m sorry. We’re primitives. We live by rituals. They’re broken ones now. You’ve been initiated by a woman. That’ll never do. If the likes of Santo Vottari knew they’d never believe it. You tell everyone it was my father. When they see the wound. You’ll be one of us.’

  Over the ocean to the west the golden ball of fire was almost gone. He’d never known a sunset like it.

  ‘Trust no one but me,’ she begged. ‘Not Rocco. Not my father even. No one but me.’ She took his hands. ‘Promise.’

  ‘I promise, Lucia Bergamotti. Which probably isn’t your real name, is it?’

  ‘Not true!’ She pretended to be hurt. ‘Entirely. Lucia is.’

  ‘And Bergamotti?’

  ‘A mask we hide behind when there are dangerous strangers about. We’re still Greeks at heart. We like our disguises.’

  ‘Am I a dangerous stranger?’

  ‘Oh, very.’ Her fingernails stroked his hand around the wound and he thought of the skipper of the felucca making his mark on the flank of the swordfish that morning. ‘You Romans are such sweet talkers.’ Abruptly she folded her arms. ‘My real name is Lucia Ursi. So we’re bears, in truth. Sometimes cuddly. Sometimes not. It’s best …’ She seemed to be wondering as if this was a mistake. As if she’d uttered some secret that might be damaging. ‘Best you don’t let anyone know I told you.’

  Night had fallen so quickly it felt as if the world had turned upon its axis in a matter of minutes. The moon was out and made her smile so bright.

  ‘Come,’ she said, standing up, holding out her hand. ‘My man of honour.’

  By the light of her torch they wound their way back to Manodiavolo. There were fewer candles inside and no sound except Vanni listening to old music on his radio, something he did most nights.

  ‘My uncle loves no one’s company but his own,’ she said and led him upstairs.

  In the room she threw open the windows and stayed there in the moonlight.

  The evening was full of the sounds of the wild. The screeching of hunting owls. Distant dogs or perhaps even wolves. Vanni’s mules braying as if they were uneasy and someone was stalking their stables. The whirring of unseen insects and once, he thought, the rattle of something like quiet footsteps on the cobbles outside.

  Suddenly she turned, came close and said, ‘So do I say goodnight?’

  ‘I …’ He thought perhaps he was blushing. ‘Lucia …’

  ‘Lucia, Lucia, Lucia … I know my name. Even if you’re not sure about yours.’

  ‘Your uncle …’

  ‘The only keeper I have is myself.’ She laughed. ‘God you are quite terrible at this.’ Her fingers closed on his shirt and popped the topmost button. ‘Does this awkwardness extend to … everything?’

  ‘I … don’t …’

  ‘How would Maso Leoni behave? A wannabe Canadian hood. How—’

  He kissed her then. She giggled as his fingers wound their way through her soft hair.

  ‘He’s not here. I am. And …’

  Entranced he watched her throw off her shirt, arms over the head the way women did. Something he always marvelled at and he didn’t know why.

  ‘You talk too much,’ Lucia told him. ‘Kindly undress me. Then I’ll do the same for you. After which …’

  He didn’t need asking twice. The fire was on them, a state of being without words, without real thought, occupied by nothing but physical pleasure and the sweaty heat of closeness in the thin and fragrant air of Aspromonte, beneath the filmy skein of the mosquito nets that tangled with their bodies as they moved.

  Soon the only sounds left were their own: the rhythmic squeal of ancient bed springs, the damp, insistent joining of two bodies wound tight to one another upon the soft and sagging mattress. Finally two cries close to one another, wordless, desperate, full of an agonized joy like animals in the night.

  Outside the window, hidden in the crumbling portico of the church, Santo Vottari listened to the sighs and moans from the window, wanting to light a cigarette, never daring. He wasn’t supposed to be there. Rocco had told him to take his scooter down the hill to the little apartment the ’ndrina paid for on the edge of the city. But then Rocco had vanished himself, like the Bergamotti woman whose interest in the newcomer was obvious.

  So he’d wandered off into the hills, lupara over his shoulder, wondering if he might come across a rabbit, a hare, a wild boar even, and maybe manage to bring it down with a clean enough shot that he could sell it on. But there was no game around, not until he saw the two of them winding their way to the stone platform at the edge of the eastern slope.

  Spying on people was one of his pastimes. He liked to see what they got up to when they thought they were on their own. So he positioned himself in a stand of white fir and watched, getting hard, getting bitter just thinking about her. The way she touched him. Looked at him. This strange foreigner seemed to get such special treatment, and nothing Santo Vottari saw in the man could possibly merit it. Even with a fish to his credit and the murder of two men in the back alleys of Reggio. Not that Santo Vottari had witnessed him do it, or seen the guys himself. Yet here he was, a foreigner, right at the heart of the ’ndrina. So close to them that even the capo Gabriele had come out of the shadows and now appeared more interested in the newcomer than one of his own, a man who’d spilled blood over the years and risked his life for the clan.

  The moment he saw Lucia cut Maso Leoni the way the capo was supposed to, he understood something here was very wrong. Though he’d keep that to himself for a while. It was hard to know with whom he might share that particular secret. Except, perhaps, the Sicilian Gaetano Sciarra who’d seemed more friendly than most of the Mancuso bunch and had left him a phone number to call if he should ever be around. Though that would have to wait. If Rocco heard he’d been talking to them directly there’d be hell to pay.

  So, feeling coldly impotent, he’d tailed the couple back to Manodiavolo and hid in the shadows when they went upstairs. Then listened as they made love slowly, eagerly, taking their time.

  Anywhere else and he’d have walked in when they were finished and laughed as he blasted them both with his lupara. He’d done his best to impress the Bergamotti bitch over the years. All to no purpose. They all knew she’d gone off the rails when her mother died in the local war. Got into drink and dope and banged any man who took her fancy on the coast until the family stepped in. In truth she was just one more Calabrian slut, the capo’s daughter or not. A loyal soldier ought to be good enough, ought to merit a step up after all the years of service that began when he was thirteen acting lookout, selling dope at school.

  All the same there was nothing he could do. Harm her and they’d chase him to the ends of the earth and cut him apart piece by bloody piece.

  Somewhere above in the bedroom of the old palace that was supposed to be used for guests, hostages left to the company of the old fool Vanni, nothing else, Lucia laughed. Happy with the stranger who seemed to be leading the kind of privileged life a man like him, a peasant from the hills, good with a knife and a gun, not much else, could never expect.

  One day, Santo Vottari thought, should the opportunity arise, I will make them look at me. I will lock that bedroom door and make h
er scream and yell the way a woman should.

  They’d finished. Then it sounded like they were about to start again. This was more than he could bear. Quietly as he could he wheeled his black Aprilia out of the piazza, sat on it and freewheeled down the bumpy track. A hundred metres down the road he turned the key so the little scooter coughed into life, its headlight cutting through the darkness as he trundled slowly, bitter and indignant, down to the coast.

  PART FIVE

  The Sicilians

  Calabrian Tales

  Chapter XVI: The Land Across the Water

  The Strait of Messina is a narrow stretch of water, treacherous on occasion as we’ve discussed. Yet the world on the other side is so different to ours it may as well be an ocean. Sicily and Calabria are neighbours thanks to geography, nothing more. In temperament and in breeding we are races apart.

  Calabrians cherish their Greek heritage; Sicilians are proud of their polyglot origins. True you will still find traces of Ancient Greece in places, but so many foreign invaders have crossed that soil since: Carthaginians, German Vandals, Ostrogoths, Byzantines, Arabs, Normans, yet more Germans the Swabians, the Spanish … And not long before I write the invasion of a very large number of Americans. All have left their mark in Sicilian faces, pale and swarthy, in blue eyes and green, in hair that may be black as the Africans or a Scandinavian blonde.

  Relatives some may be from the arrival of those Catalan brothers three centuries ago, but even in the dark arts of criminality they differ too. We have the ’Ndrangheta, a quiet, self-effacing and purposeful fraternity that, in many ways, acts as a quasi-government in the shadows. The Sicilians are louder, more interested in money and power and women than the tedious task of keeping people fed. Their organisation is best called the Cosa Nostra – ‘our thing’ – though it is commonly referred to as the Mafia as well. Where Cosa Nostra comes from no one knows for sure. Mafia probably stems from the Sicilian adjective mafiusu which may mean ‘swaggering’ or ‘fearless’. Or perhaps both.

  Modesty has never been a Sicilian virtue. As evidence I must quote the historian Giuseppe Pitrè who wrote: ‘Mafia is the consciousness of one’s own worth, the exaggerated concept of individual force as the sole arbiter of every conflict, of every clash of interests or ideas.’