Constant Tides

by Peter Crawley

  Then, as swiftly as the thrill of the hunt had infected the crew… it evaporated.

  Pasquale had throttled back the engines, the feluca had bucked, the bow had dipped and the far end of the passerelle had dropped straight down into the sea, submerging Antonio up to his waist.

  For a moment, all he had been able to do was hold on to the rail around him. But when the bow had risen again, he’d turned and delivered Pasquale such a mouthful that even the three men standing next to Caterina had turned away in shame.

  “Enzo? Why have we stopped?” she’d asked.

  “Look,” he’d replied, just as a dolphin had leapt from the surface, twirled like a ballet dancer and slapped back down.

  “Oh no, I’m so sorry. I thought…”

  “Don’t be sorry, signorina. If you are with us for long, you will soon learn the difference between dolphins playing and swordfish feeding. Anyway, it is better that my father shouts at Pasquale than he shouts at you.” And they all, including Caterina, had gone back to whatever it was they were or weren’t doing.

  Now, drenched in sun cream, glowing with perspiration and yet out of drinking water, she needs the bathroom.

  “Enzo?”

  “Yes.”

  “I… Er, well, I…”

  “Yes. Inside, please.” He picks up one of the few empty buckets, points into the open door of the cabin and makes a gesture that she thinks means after you.

  “Thank you, I think I can manage from here.”

  She waits until the feluca has turned down one of its longer legs and steps inside. When she comes out, Enzo’s back is turned and not wanting him to think her naïve, or notice her embarrassment at having to ask him permission not only to use the crew’s only shade for her toilet, but also then to ask him to empty the bucket for her, Caterina launches the contents over the side. The wind, much to her relief, is in her favour.

  As she throws, Caterina looks up and sees again, some two hundred metres off the stern, a silver flash and a spray of water, followed by a larger splash.

  Hearing her behind him, Enzo turns and takes the bucket from her. He, too, launches what he thinks will be the contents over the side and is baffled when he realises there are none. He then ties the bucket to a line, drops it over the side, hauls it back and empties it. He smiles, a rather cute, marginally coy appreciation that she had already emptied the bucket.

  “Enzo?” Caterina raises her hand to point in the direction of where she had just seen the fish rise from the surface but, on looking back, she can see no trace of it. Nothing, just acres of shiny silvered water.

  “Yes, signorina?”

  “Thank you.”

  *

  For the rest of the day, Pasquale steers the feluca up and down the peaceful waters of the Golfo di Gioia Tauro. So unbearably hot is it up in the crow’s nest that Giuseppe climbs down the narrow tower to take a break. Even with his sweat–stained shirt buttoned to the cuffs, his legionnaire’s cap with its long side–flaps shielding his neck and his oversize sunglasses dominating what little Caterina can see of his face, he looks fried to a crisp.

  Antonio, having finished weighting his little wooden fishes, brings a litre bottle of water out from the cabin. He twists off the top, holds the plastic bottle up horizontally just above his open mouth and, without spilling a drop or permitting his lips to touch the rim, he pours the water.

  Again, his dexterity, his agility, his poise, his composure and his grace, are, to Caterina, remarkable.

  He offers her the bottle: she takes it, stands and in trying to emulate him, she manages to gag and pour water all down her front.

  Antonio chuckles and takes the bottle.

  “How do you do that?” she asks as she coughs.

  “Oh, practice.” Of all the multi–coloured caps sported by the crew, Antonio’s has the longest bill, almost like that of a platypus, and he has taped small flaps of cardboard along each side to shut out the blinding reflection of the sun on the water.

  “What are the little wooden fish for?” she asks, indicating the bucket.

  “They are lures, although some might call them dead–bait.” Antonio walks over, picks one out and hands it to her. The fish is painted in a luminescent green and even the head, eyes and the mouth are carefully defined. “It looks real, eh?”

  “Yes,” she examines it. “It’s so light, too. How do you use them, on a line?”

  He moves between Caterina and the sun, casting her into shadow. “No. When we know there is a swordfish close by, I take them to the end of the passerelle and throw them as far forward as I can. Thinking there is a small fish at his mercy, the swordfish race to the surface at which point I harpoon them.”

  She looks up, grateful that she doesn’t have to squint into the sun. “And if that doesn’t work, you lose the lures?”

  “No. You see that long pole with the net on the end?” He points. “Well, that is one of Ninolino’s tasks: as it floats past, he takes the lure from the sea with the net.”

  “But you’ve just added weights to them?”

  “Because they were too light; I could not throw them far and we were on them too fast. Now I can throw them further forward and they will have more time on the water before Ninolino nets them.”

  “Ah,” Caterina says, “okay, I get it. That’s why you needed to be so specific with the weights you added: too much and they would go straight to the bottom, not enough and you wouldn’t get any distance on them.”

  “Exactly.”

  Lesson over, they stand and look at each other until their silence grows awkward.

  “I’m sorry, Antonio,” she says, “it seems I may be a bit of a Jonah.”

  He frowns, “A Jonah?” He scratches his stubbly chin. “This is a person who brings bad luck to a boat, eh?”

  “Or to anywhere or anyone. I don’t think Jonah’s are exclusive to boats.”

  He chuckles. “No, you’re right, I don’t believe they are. But you know, Caterina, not everything that goes wrong needs to be someone’s fault; not everything is within our control or ours to influence. And if I thought someone was to blame for every day we didn’t catch fish, then I would have run out of people to blame long ago.”

  “You’re not superstitious, then?”

  He scoffs, though not so dismissively that she might take offence. “Mm, I believe it is better to be a lucky fisherman than a good one. And believe me when I tell you, I have met some terrible fishermen who are often very lucky.”

  “Enzo is very charming,” she says.

  “Now,” Antonio turns, “it is decision time,” and he walks off back to the bow, leaving her in the dazzling sun.

  Chapter 9

  Her self–confidence revived by Antonio’s insistence that she join them for a second day on the Salvazione, Caterina had woken to a sense of belonging. Now though, holding onto a wire stay in each hand and leaning over the side of the feluca, she is reminded of her stupidity that first day at Capo Peloro.

  “It looks as though it is alive,” she murmurs, gazing down at the swirling, churning eddies.

  “Charybdis, the whirlpool, yes,” Enzo says. “You have seen La Fontana del Nettuno in Messina?”

  “Yes, Neptune, he’s quite the God, isn’t he? And with all those perfectly defined, larger than life muscles. Some presence.”

  “It is true. On one side of him sits Scylla and on the other Charybdis, the monsters he keeps in chains. You know, at one time he faced the city and now he faces the Strait.”

  “Why is that, Enzo?”

  “Oh,” he chuckles, “because he wanted to poke his buttocks at the Calabrese.”

  “Seriously?”

  “No, not seriously. I don’t know the reason: perhaps it is that he used to bless the people of the city and now he blesses the bounties of the Strait. I think it is strange, eh, how man can choo
se to make a god face whichever way suits him, don’t you?”

  “Yes, Enzo, I think I know what you mean: it’s as though we mould our deities in whatever shape suits our purpose.”

  He glances at her, his expression that of a child who is trying to reconcile himself to learning that not all adults think alike. “Except for our Madonna,” he says.

  “Yes, of course, Enzo: except for our Madonna.” Caterina, though, is still mesmerised by the whirling tide. “Well, she certainly kept me safe, didn’t she?”

  “No, signorina, it was not the Madonna who kept you safe, it was my father.”

  Caterina staggers back so suddenly she trips and falls. “Your father? I… You mean, he…”

  Enzo helps her up. “Yes, you were fortunate we were close by. My father jumped into the sea and dived beneath the surface to find you. You didn’t know?”

  “I… No. No, I didn’t.” Standing on the deck in the middle of the Strait, the whirlpool all about them, the shore close yet too far away, there is nowhere for Caterina to hide. She could take shelter from her embarrassment in the cabin, but that would only provide her with some temporary haven; and she couldn’t exactly shout up and ask Pasquale to take her to the shore or leap overboard and try to swim back, for the feluca had already rescued her once and twice would be–

  “My aunt did not tell you?”

  “No.”

  “Nor my father?”

  “No. Although I’m not completely stupid, Enzo; I did suspect it. It’s just that it seemed a strange question to have to ask.”

  “You don’t remember anything?”

  “Not much,” she replies, frustration and irritation slinking past the guard of her tone. “All I remember is getting into difficulty and the water closing over my head. The next thing I knew, I was lying in the bloody hospital. Anyway, Enzo, what is this, twenty questions?”

  “No, Signorina Caterina. I–”

  “And stop calling me Signorina, will you? I am Signora Caterina, can’t you see.” She holds up her hand to his face, her palm towards him so that he cannot avoid noticing the gold band of her wedding ring.

  *

  The engines rumble and the deck shudders and heaves as she comes around through the glare of the sun to head west towards the mountains of the Sicilian shore.

  They had been idling back and forth across the Strait; to the east, Calabria and the cloud–covered peaks of Aspromonte, to the south the widening Strait and to the north the twin pylons each side of the narrow channel that leads into the Tyrrhenian Sea.

  Enzo, eventually deciding that Caterina had bitten a good enough chunk out of him that she was no longer likely to be hungry, had taken to explaining to her how before they had boats with motors, the men of Scylla would climb to the top of the cliffs on the Calabrian coast and spend the day keeping look out for swordfish; how when they spotted one, they would wave flags, directing the boat below to the right part of the sea; and how the four oarsmen would stand facing forward as they rowed so they could see the direction in which their spotter, the banniaturi, wanted them to row. The funcitta, who some called lanzaturi because of his lance, would stand in the bow and from there he would harpoon the fish.”

  Antonio, on the other hand, has passed much of the day, untying and retying rolling and clove–hitches to both the forked head and the shaft of his harpoons, ensuring that should they part company, neither would be lost.

  “All the boats seem to fish the same stretch of water over and over again,” Caterina mentions. “Is there some kind of patch for each boat?” She’d been watching the other feluche as they, like the Salvazione, patrolled back and forth and up and down what appeared to be a clearly defined, but unmarked box of water.

  “Yes,” he replies, chewing. “At the beginning of each year we are assigned our own section of the Strait and we must not fish in someone else’s or there is big trouble. This season, we fish between the large buoy over there,” he points up the coast to a round concrete block of cement on which sits a metal frame and light, “and down there, to that old Saracen tower.”

  “But you don’t fish here every day,” Caterina states. “I mean, yesterday we were north of the Strait out in the open water.”

  “Exactly. Yesterday the water was not good here: today it is better; we will catch fish before too long.”

  “You said season, Antonio, don’t you fish all year round?”

  “No. The swordfish migrate through the Strait in the months of May to August: we only have the four months to fish, so we work hard all through the summer.”

  “And the rest of the year?”

  He shrugs. “We fish with other boats, other fish, find work, all different work. That is the way it is for us fishermen. In times before, in the winter when the weather was too bad to fish, the people of Messina would provide food for the fishermen. Not now though.”

  The engines surge and Antonio is very suddenly no longer standing beside her chair, munching his way through her brioche, he is leading Enzo along the long passerelle, the bucket of small wooden fish in his hands.

  Ninolino looks around the deck, ensuring it is cleared of whatever might foul the coils of rope he will feed out from the baskets, and Karl picks up the long–handled net and stands ready.

  Caterina slides her chair back to the base of the tower, hoping she is so far out of the way she cannot possibly get in theirs.

  The feluca picks up speed once more, a gentle surge, a smooth acceleration, nothing urgent that might spook or alarm.

  Antonio steps over the rail onto the small stage at the head of the passerelle and picks up his long lance. His cap is pulled forward and his dark, round, side–shielded sunglasses lend him a robotic aspect. Meticulously, he examines his three–pointed lance, squeezing and twisting each one of the barbs to satisfy himself they will not detach, and he checks the small threads attaching his lance to the line looped along the passerelle to the baskets at the bow. Antonio squares his shoulders and hips, his right hand at the raised end of his lance, his left nearer the tip pointing it down towards the surface.

  “To starboard,” Pasquale shouts, from above, his tone commanding, imperative.

  Antonio searches.

  The nose of the feluca swings round, the engines moan louder.

  “Now, ten metres,” Pasquale screams, the pitch of his voice rising.

  Antonio tenses, raises the end of his lance higher and the tip lower.

  “Five,” Pasquale screams, “There are two. The larger one, she is there, before you. Straight ahead.”

  The feluca surges forward. It is as if the engines, the deck, the mast, the cabin, the stays and the crew are all part of one greater whole whose aim is to propel and support the funcitta to a position where he has clear sight of his prey.

  “Now!” Pasquale shouts. “Now! You are on top of her.”

  Antonio tenses, his muscles seem to expand, his hips wriggle, his hands twitch. He raises himself up to his full height, drags his harpoon back and with all his might throws it down into the water.

  The loops of line running along the starboard base of the passerelle are ripped from their ties. Antonio nods, turns and clambers out from his post; he knows he has found his mark.

  Enzo knows, too; he is already halfway back down the passerelle. And Pasquale, high up in his crow’s nest, has noticed them both retreating back to the bow and needs no more confirmation; he reverses the engines to stop the line dragging under the hull and then pulls them back to idle.

  Ninolino and Karl are paying line out of the foremost basket. The swordfish is wounded, running, diving, sounding, flashing its tail, straining every fibre and sinew, swimming as fast, as desperately and as swiftly as it knows how to get away from the feluca.

  Caterina watches and sits bolt upright, as shivers of excitement ripple up her spine, goosebumps rise along her forearms and the fine ha
irs at the nape of her neck quiver.

  Enzo strides past her and climbs around the cabin onto the small aft deck. His father follows him and between them they wrestle the wooden dinghy over the raised lip of the deck into the water and pull it by its lead rope round to the side.

  The boys need no second bidding and while Ninolino holds the line, Karl climbs down into the dinghy and Enzo picking up the basket, hands it to him. As soon as he has placed the basket securely, Ninolino passes him the line on the other end of which the swordfish is twisting and turning. Karl ties the line to a cleat at the stern, steadies the dinghy and Ninolino joins him. When they are set, Enzo throws them the lead rope, casting them off away from the feluca.

  The routine is smooth and ordered and has taken no more than a few seconds.

  Enzo hesitates and turns to Caterina. “There is another, the male.”

  Antonio picks a second lance from the deck and hurries back to his post, his progress slowed because he has only one free hand with which to steady himself. He ties the new lance to a second line which is, like the first, looped down the base of the passerelle.

  The dinghy glides away across the ocean; no oars, no sail and no engine; just Ninolino standing in the rear, patiently holding onto a line connected to a wounded swordfish.

  The engines groan, the deck reverberates, the feluca heaves away to starboard.

  A shout from above: “Coming across the bow.” This time it is Giuseppe who has seen the male.

  Pasquale steers them back to port. “He will come by you,” he shouts.

  Antonio lifts his lance and waits. Enzo, too, waits by the bow, ready with the basket of line. Caterina stands and peers over the starboard rail into the green water.

  A flash of silvery–grey, no more than a split–second streak of a ghostly shadow careening beneath the surface.

  Antonio turns. He looks down. He raises his lance.

  “Now!” Pasquale shouts again. “Now! He is there.”

  The funcitta searches the water, hesitates, looks again and then sets down his lance. He shakes his head, points towards the dinghy and shrugs his shoulders.