The House at the Edge of Night

by Catherine Banner

  “And that’s all you remember?”

  Santa Maria nodded, and allowed the force of memory to overcome her at last. “Poor Papà,” she wept. “Poor Papà. He never spoke; he never went out in his boat again, after that day.”

  Maria-Grazia forced down her cassata in great chunks, stifled by the melancholy of the room. As soon as she could, she made her retreat.

  When she got home, the bar was astir with excitement. The ghost of Pierino had been seen again, wandering the cliffs of the sea. Arcangelo had shut his shop in a fit of rage and was threatening to take the Esposito family to court for slander, and all was disorder and fighting. “Be careful,” Amedeo advised his daughter. “You’ve your mother’s determination, and it didn’t always go well for her, Mariuzza.”

  But a fierce hunger for the truth had possessed Maria-Grazia, and she couldn’t have stopped even if she wanted to.

  —

  BEFORE DAWN THE NEXT MORNING, Andrea d’Isantu came uninvited once more to the House at the Edge of Night.

  He drove up to the bar in his father’s motorcar, so that Maria-Grazia found him already waiting outside when she came to open the door at half past seven. There he stood, like an apparition, in his faded English suit. “Salve, Signor d’Isantu,” she said.

  Without rising from the car, Andrea d’Isantu said, “I’ve kept away, haven’t I?”

  “Sì, Signor d’Isantu.”

  “While you considered—while you made your decision. Six months you said. It’s been eight.”

  “Sì, Signor d’Isantu.”

  “When am I to get my answer? I can’t sleep, Maria-Grazia—I can’t eat.”

  In the fierce thirst for justice that was now possessing her, how could she think of such a thing? How could she think of marrying anybody? “When the truth about the beating of Pierino has come to light,” she said, “that’s when I’ll think about marriage. Not before.”

  Andrea, she saw when she looked at him properly, was stringier, worn thinner, like a man of forty-five. It plucked at her heart a little to see him like that, but not enough to break her resolution. “When the truth about Pierino has come to light,” she said, a little guilty that the months had elapsed so quickly, without her noticing.

  But Andrea seemed satisfied. With a small nod he swung the car around, away from her, and left the square.

  —

  THAT NIGHT, SHORTLY AFTER half past seven, il conte’s son confessed to the murder of Pierino.

  The elderly scopa players arrived early at the bar, in a lather of excitement, for the widows of the Committee of Sant’Agata had told them everything. That afternoon, il conte’s motorcar had drawn up before the church, with Andrea d’Isantu alone at the wheel. By all accounts an inveterate heathen, he had nevertheless taken off his hat, entered the church, seated himself in the confessional, and summoned Father Ignazio to attend him. The members of the Committee of Sant’Agata, at the time, had been engaged in the polishing of the saint’s statue and the replenishing of the offertory candles. Thus they had heard, quite distinctly, Andrea’s mutter as Father Ignazio seated himself behind the little purple curtain: “I confess to Almighty God and to you, padre, that I have sinned. It’s been fourteen years since my last confession. Since then, I have committed one mortal sin and several venial. But it’s the mortal sin I want to talk to you about.”

  The widows of the Committee of Sant’Agata, only a little ashamed of themselves, stopped polishing and wholeheartedly listened. By the time the bell chimed for the noon angelus, everyone on the island knew that it was Andrea d’Isantu who had beaten the fisherman.

  The gossip in the bar that evening threatened to cause a civil war. “I won’t believe it!” cried the widow Valeria. “He’s trying to cover for his friend, that’s all—he and Flavio Esposito, who have been so thick together since the war.”

  “Nonsense!” cried Bepe. “Why can’t you believe it was d’Isantu? Look at how the fascisti on this island treated him as a boy—as though he were a hero! Destined for an important career overseas. They knew, believe me. Everything makes sense to me now.”

  “And I suppose,” said Valeria, “that Flavio Esposito really is innocent?”

  “I knew,” breathed Agata-the-fisherwoman. “I knew it was never young Flavio.”

  Maria-Grazia, meanwhile, was furious at what Andrea had done.

  Confiding in the girl Concetta—for there was no one else—she raged in the storeroom of the bar: “Andrea’s only done this to force an answer out of me—and if he thinks I’ll marry him now he’s utterly mistaken, the stronzo, the fool!”

  “Quite so,” said Concetta, unperturbed by this display of fury, sucking an arancino. “You’re waiting to marry Signor Robert anyway. Signor il figlio del conte hasn’t a hope.”

  But either way, the deed was done, and as day became evening the inhabitants of Castellamare became convinced of Andrea d’Isantu’s guilt.

  Then, in indignation, Bepe and the fishermen, the widows of Sant’Agata, and all the other arbiters of justice in the town stormed the gates of il conte’s villa and demanded that the murderer show himself.

  But Andrea d’Isantu had nothing more to say. His father would accept no visitors to the villa at the end of the avenue of palms, and refused to answer their knocking. The islanders, enraged, demanded that Andrea d’Isantu be brought to trial instead—that he kneel before the grave of the fisherman and beg mercy of his green ghost—that he leave the island like Odisseo, never to return. Their demands became more and more outlandish as the night wore on. Perhaps he should be made to go about the island on his knees, following the statue of the saint, suggested the Committee of Sant’Agata. Perhaps, growled Bepe, he should be shot. “Now, now,” counseled Father Ignazio, who had never been good at moralizing but attempted a little now, “all this is getting out of hand. We must leave this war behind and come out into the light, practice a little charity.”

  But Andrea d’Isantu, the islanders had decreed, must, at the very least, leave the place.

  —

  LATE THE FOLLOWING NIGHT, Maria-Grazia was woken by the thud of wet sand on her window. Opening it, she looked down into the moonlit piazza and beheld Andrea again, leaning on his stick, his face raised like a moon in the dark. In one hand he held his walking cane, in the other the cardboard suitcase with which he had returned from war. “Where are you going?” she whispered.

  “To the mainland. A friend of my father’s is taking me. Come down, Maria-Grazia. You promised me an answer. I won’t see you again, after tonight.”

  Maria-Grazia, indignation and regret troubling her in equal measure, threw on a shawl and went down to him.

  The bougainvillea made great cloud shadows in the moonlight. Beneath its shelter, Andrea d’Isantu brooded, kneading the pommel of his walking cane. “You owe me an answer,” he said at last. “You promised me one.”

  “No,” said Maria-Grazia. “I don’t owe you an answer, for I don’t believe this is truth at all, what’s come to light. It’s some game you’re playing, covering up for Flavio in the hope it’ll make me love you. Well, it won’t. I don’t believe you did it.”

  Then, in the shade of the terrace, Andrea d’Isantu told her the true story of what had happened on the night of the beating of Pierino.

  —

  THERE HAD BEEN THREE BOYS that night at the Balilla meeting: Flavio Esposito, Filippo Arcangelo, and Andrea d’Isantu. Also the two Ballilla leaders: Dottor Vitale with his great bass drum, and the schoolteacher Calleja. In the dusty schoolroom, underneath the portrait of il duce that Professor Calleja had snipped out of the newspaper after his March on Rome, they rehearsed their marching songs. There was some disagreement: Flavio Esposito was racked with coughing, producing only ridiculous honks from his brass trumpet, spoiling the dignity of the thing. At twenty minutes to ten, Professor Calleja lost his temper and dismissed the boy.

  (“And that was the last Flavio had to do with it?” asked Maria-Grazia.

  “That,”
said Andrea d’Isantu, “was the very last.”)

  Now that the Esposito boy had been dealt with (for his father was known to be a northern Bolshevik and could not be trusted), the drums and trumpets were abandoned. Professor Calleja put on his black shirt. They were going out on their special night exercise, he told the others. A local communist needed to be taught a lesson. They were to make their way to the Mazzus’ olive grove, and lie in wait there for the communist to come up from the sea.

  The two boys sniggered, knowing who was meant, and picturing the ignominious dosing with castor oil.

  “One of us,” said Professor Calleja, eyeing each one of them in turn, “needs to make damn sure that he’s taught a lesson. That’s what il conte and Signor Arcangelo, your Papàs, told me.”

  Professor Calleja brought out his shotgun from among the chalk and lead pencils in the school cupboard. He gave each boy a flashlight. “You’re to go one at a time,” he said. “Reconvene in the olive grove in thirty minutes.”

  As soon as Andrea was dismissed he ran, flashlight bobbing over the stones, toward his father’s house. He had no plan except to arm himself, in his excitement, like Professor Calleja with the marvelous shotgun. But the outbuildings were dark, the bailiffs’ guns locked away for the night. The lone donkey, the watchman Rizzu’s, stamped and brayed eerily in the farthest stall. Andrea, hauling away great garlands of cobwebs from the wall of the stables, came upon antique mattocks, a rust-barnacled pitchfork, and, at last, an ancient horsewhip. Seizing this, he extinguished his flashlight and ran for the Mazzus’ olive grove.

  The olive grove at night was a place of oceanic shadows. Andrea took up position behind the great abandoned stone of an olive press that had stood at the entrance to the grove for three hundred years. Farther off, he made out the moonlike face of Filippo, sequestered in a thicket of hazelnut branches, and the black shape of Professor Calleja, his shotgun a ruler-drawn line pointing upward in the dark. Dottor Vitale, comically wedged up an olive tree, attempted a boy-scout owl call and made both boys convulse with silent laughter. In the dark, they waited. Then, on the road above them, they heard the unmistakable burr of il conte’s motorcar.

  Through the scrub, someone was moving. He was drunk: Andrea could tell by the rolling of his walk, the grunting of his breath as he came closer. “Papà?” Andrea murmured, thinking his father must be coming down from the car to join them, a little intoxicated as he often was on such summer nights. The figure released a deep sigh, and Andrea watched it, all dark legs and arms, unbutton itself and aim a stream of piss into the depths of the hazelnut thicket. Not his father after all. Papà must be farther off. Only Andrea was within striking distance of the man.

  Andrea raised his head from behind the stone and, with tiny steps, approached the figure through the hot dark. In that moment, he did not intend to strike, only to get a closer look. Sure enough, it was the fisherman Pierino, swaying a little, leaning on his tuna gaff. Andrea thrilled with terror and elation.

  But now Pierino seemed to prickle. He turned his great hangdog eyes this way and that. “Who’s there?” he said.

  Andrea was caught in the fury of his glance. The wily Pierino spun, raising his tuna gaff. “Is it you fascisti again?” he roared in drunken bravado. “I’ll fight you all—I’ll spear you with this tuna gaff!” He made one lunging grab in Andrea’s direction, and Andrea stumbled backward. Scrabbling in the thorns of the undergrowth, he felt the fisherman grasp at his ankles. Pierino in the dark seemed a great thing, terrible, as big as the demon Silver Nose. Andrea swung blindly with the horsewhip, yelling, whipping and whipping at the great chest of the fisherman to keep him at bay. Losing his balance, Pierino flailed and went down, too. A deep crack. His limbs opened like a sea star. He lay still.

  “Signor Pierino,” called Andrea d’Isantu, into the dark, in his high schoolboy’s voice.

  No answer came.

  Now, with their flashlights, the others converged on him—Professor Calleja, Dottor Vitale, his father, il conte. With shame, Andrea found his Balilla knickerbockers clinging to him wetly. The horsewhip had fallen somewhere in the dark. “I’m sorry!” he cried. “I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to do it—”

  Il conte raised one hand and lifted the flashlight. Now, the cause of Pierino’s silence was apparent. The fisherman had hit his head, going down, on the great olive stone. He lay spread out as though melted, his left eyebrow disgorging a stream of blood. “Bravo, Andrea,” said il conte. “Good boy. This is nothing to be ashamed about.”

  Filippo Arcangelo could be heard gaining the safety of the road with low whimpers of terror. Now Dottor Vitale fled, too, up through the scrub grass, sending his flashlight rolling and bouncing through the dark until it lay, extinguished, at the foot of the hazelnut tree.

  “Neither of you is to go anywhere!” ordered Professor Calleja. “You’re to help me.” Professor Calleja hauled Pierino up under the armpits. “Take his feet—Andrea, signor il conte. We’ve got to carry him back home.”

  Il conte seemed to consider for a moment, then nodded. “We’ll put him in the motorcar,” he said. Before bending to take the fisherman by the ankles, il conte turned off his flashlight with a snap and stowed the horsewhip inside the jacket of his English linen suit. “Come on. One—two—three—heave.”

  They bundled Pierino into il conte’s motorcar. Andrea, in the backseat, kept his face turned away from the unconscious fisherman beside him.

  They left the motorcar under the archway at the entrance to the town. Through the hot dark they manhandled Pierino, by the alleyways and vaneddi. None of them spoke, but occasionally the two fascisti gave Andrea a thoughtful, approving glance. That walk under the stars, carrying the bleeding fisherman, was the longest journey of Andrea’s life.

  They deposited Pierino in the alley beside his house. Perhaps his father, il conte, or il professore had intended to knock at the door. But the fisherman came alive a little at that moment, turned over, and grasped at the dirt. Then their courage failed them and they fled, through the alleys and passageways in their separate directions, feeling already the grip of the great silence they must keep, their awful complicity in what Andrea had done.

  Driving home beside his father, Andrea hunched over and wept. “It was an accident,” he said.

  His father put a hand on his shoulder. “It wasn’t an accident,” he exhorted Andrea. “It was the correct thing to do. Sit up straight. You mustn’t be ashamed.”

  Running the motor before the House at the Edge of Night, il conte reached inside his jacket and took out the bloodstained horsewhip. He threw it, and it arced high over the palm tree and the piazza and came to rest a long way off, in a loop of the bougainvillea, outside the bar’s front door.

  “What if it’s found?” said Andrea.

  “Let the Espositos worry about that.”

  —

  GREAT SOBS RACKED ANDREA D’ISANTU after he had recounted this tale to her. He stood for a long time looking over the wall at the cacti, which were gaining their solid shapes at last in the dawn, and continued to weep at what he had done. “I loved this place,” he told her. “I wanted to belong. I wouldn’t have beaten him at all except out of fear. But the fascisti all believed I’d done it on purpose. They all believed I was a kind of hero. My father was proud!” He brought forth the word with disgust, as though coughing it up. “They never let me speak the truth. They made me believe I’d really meant to do it. I didn’t, Maria-Grazia. I’m not like my father. I’m not like him, believe me. Now you know what I am, and you won’t love me, but there it is if you’ll believe it, at last, the truth about Pierino.”

  Now, in the cold light, in the dripping quiet of the piazza, Maria-Grazia believed.

  “I’ll give you my answer,” she said.

  Andrea raised one hand. “No—no—don’t tell me. I already know, Mariuzza.”

  Muffling his overcoat about him, he touched her arm once and was gone. She watched him cross the piazza, with his stiff old-man’s walk,
his narrow shape like a ghost’s, and it seemed to recede and recede before her, to undergo a narrowing without end as his mother Carmela had done a quarter of a century before when Pina had driven her from the bar. So Andrea d’Isantu went on walking, out of Castellamare, and vanished across the ocean. He left his mother defeated, shrunken, never to recover the stature she had possessed in the years before the war. He left his friend Flavio more brokenhearted than he would allow himself to admit. And as for Maria-Grazia, it would be another fifty years before the two of them spoke again.

  —

  FLAVIO DISAPPEARED SHORTLY AFTER his friend, one morning in September. On that day, Pina went up to his room with his usual coffee and pastry, hauling herself by the bannister, to find the bed unslept in, his nightshirt neatly folded at its foot like the cloths of Gesù in the tomb. Then Pina wailed and dropped the coffee, for she knew at once that her son was gone.

  Searching the island, the fishermen and the farm laborers spread out and beat the undergrowth, plunged into the ditches in case Flavio had tried to drown himself, crawled beneath the vines. They searched the quay, the dark depths of the old tonnara, and the outbuildings of the Mazzus’ farm. Reaching the caves by the sea, they came upon a trace of Flavio: His shoes, the dirty English brogues he had worn since his return from the war, stood on the cliff side by side with the toes pointing out to sea. His war medal with the face of il duce was hidden in the toe of the right one, its earth-stained ribbon neatly folded.

  Pina lit a candle for her son in the church and knelt before it, under the crucifix that still bore the gloss of his polishing. She and Carmela acknowledged each other occasionally from opposite sides of the church, kneeling before their separate candles, occupied by their separate griefs—for Carmela also prayed daily for the return of Andrea, who was said to have traveled as far as West Germany now, and to be steadfastly refusing to come home.

  Then the miracle. On the tenth day, a letter arrived in Flavio’s handwriting. He was alive and well, he wrote, in England. From Castellamare, he had swum out to a mainland fishing boat, and from Sicily had hitchhiked north. “I have a good job a steady job as a night guard at a factory,” Flavio wrote, in his usual unpunctuated style. “I needed to start again but God and Sant’Agata willing I’ll be back for Christmas or the festival and give my regards to Fr Ignatsio please. So you see I am fine.”