The Winter Sea

by Morrissey, Di

  After his father had examined the anchor, Giuseppe looked at it. He could see how the release bar would stop the anchor from being lost on the sea floor or on the reefs. Giuseppe was proud of the way his father was always thinking of ideas to improve his equipment to make it more efficient and reliable.

  ‘This is a great invention. You must come out on our boat to see it working,’ suggested Giuseppe’s father.

  ‘We are not sea people,’ said the shepherd.

  Giuseppe glanced around the barren karsts rising from the steep hills and thought how desolate the windswept landscape looked; he guessed that Angelica and her father would feel as uncomfortable at sea as he did here.

  Giuseppe and his father walked back home, leading the goat. When they came to the ridge that stood above the village Giuseppe looked down at the familiar sights of the little port below. He could see the narrow alleyways and steep steps where houses, festooned with poles of washing, stood cheek by jowl, so close that one could almost reach across to rap on the window of the house opposite. He could see his own small house where his family lived in two rooms and where the ceiling was always hung with fishing nets. A broader cobbled street circled the village. It ran along the harbour front, where crab pots were piled high and men squatted to gossip as they mended their nets. Small fishing boats were tied to the iron bollards along the stone sea wall. At one end of the wall on the steps worn down by centuries of seamen’s feet, young boys sat and fished. It was from these steps that each year the priest would bless the fishing fleet. Past the sea wall lay a pebbled beach, where upturned dinghies and small wooden boats were tied above the high-water mark. Near them a deep-water channel ran into the open sea beyond the arms of the cove. This small village was his home and as he walked with his father towards his family’s house, he felt happy with his little world.

  *

  The wedding of Giuseppe’s sister was an occasion for much festivity. The young girl was marrying a village boy, whom she had known all her life. Families on the island always intermarried. It was expected; the island was their world, where else was there to go? Giuseppe’s father was pleased with the alliance, for his daughter’s future husband came from another prominent fishing family. Everyone on the island believed that the only defence against poverty was family, so he had ensured that his daughter married into a hardworking and respected one.

  The couple walked to the church in their best clothes. The priest stood among the incense and statues and blessed their marriage. Afterwards was the great feast. The goat had been slaughtered and was roasting on a spit over the coals, basted frequently with olive oil and rosemary. All the guests were waiting eagerly for it to be ready.

  Giuseppe’s mother, Emilia, and her daughters had spent days preparing food, which was amazingly inventive considering the small variety of ingredients available on the island. There was sardine pasta with raisins and pine nuts; pasta with eggplant; couscous and pasta with swordfish, which was especially appreciated, for although the fishermen might catch swordfish, the fish was far too valuable for the families on the island to eat and were always sold. The feast would end with cannoli, fried pastry stuffed with ricotta cheese and honeyed figs. Giuseppe’s father had imported wine in a hog’s head for the event since the island could not produce grapes in any quantity. Although the wedding was extravagant by the standards of the village, it was always the custom for the father of the bride to put on such a feast for it showed not just the standing of the family in the little port, but also the importance of its patriarch, and Giuseppe’s father was determined to show that he was a noteworthy man.

  *

  One Sunday, several months after the wedding, Giuseppe’s mother asked him to take some salted fish to Alfonso in the hills to exchange for some wool and some goats’ cheese.

  Giuseppe felt shy approaching the farm where Alfonso lived with his daughter. But when Alfonso saw him trudging up the hill he greeted Giuseppe cheerfully and led him into the kitchen, calling to his daughter to bring him some water.

  The stone cottage was small, but dark and cool. A large fuel stove that provided heat in winter sat in one corner. Giuseppe had noticed a mud-brick oven outside the cottage where Alfonso cooked in summer. A wooden table and chairs sat in the middle of the room and a spinning wheel stood in a corner. But what really caught Giuseppe’s attention was a shelf on one of the walls, stacked high with books. There looked to be about twenty and he stared at them in astonishment.

  Alfonso caught his expression and reached for a book that had an illustration of a pirate glued onto its cover. ‘Can you read, boy?’

  Giuseppe nodded. ‘I know my letters and I can read numbers.’

  ‘That’s not reading. Have you read a book?’

  ‘No,’ Giuseppe said quietly.

  ‘Would you like to?’ asked Alfonso.

  Giuseppe wasn’t sure. His parents respected those few people on the island who were fully literate, but the d’Aquinos thought that there was little need for their family to acquire the same skills. What use would they be for fishermen?

  Slowly Giuseppe nodded.

  Angelica, who had returned with the water, gave him an encouraging smile. ‘My father thinks that everyone should read books,’ she said.

  ‘Can you read those books?’ asked Giuseppe with a faint challenge in his voice.

  ‘Of course. I have read all of them,’ said Angelica.

  Giuseppe was taken aback but Alfonso laughed.

  ‘That is not quite true, Angelica, but if you like, Giuseppe, you may come here and read any of my books. I could help you.’

  So once a week, on Sundays after church, Giuseppe made the journey into the hills to read with Alfonso.

  ‘What do you want to read books for? We own no books, you will never be able to afford to buy books,’ said one of his brothers.

  Giuseppe shrugged. ‘It might be useful one day.’

  ‘You just want to hang around his daughter,’ said another brother.

  Giuseppe glared and stomped away. But the remark was partly true.

  Angelica intrigued him. Giuseppe knew that she roamed with the sheep and goats and seemed as much a creature of the hills as they. Occasionally he came across her perched on an ancient stone wall watching the animals. He was self-conscious, afraid to speak to her for any length of time, aware that he might displease her father while she, who had seemed so shy the first time he met her at the dock, appeared at ease and chatted to him freely about his life on the fishing boats and in the village. Giuseppe realised that, although they were about the same age, her knowledge about most things, except fishing, made her seem much older than he was. He knew that his mother would never speak to his father with the same confidence and composure as she did with him.

  Eventually one day he asked her, ‘Why are you able to talk like this? You seem to know so much about everything.’

  She gave a short laugh. ‘I might live a quiet life away from the town, but I read books and I speak with my father. He is a clever man and tells me many stories.’

  Giuseppe couldn’t imagine having long conversations with his own father. His father made pronouncements and all the family agreed with him. Giuseppe said defensively, ‘My father teaches me to fish. It takes many years to learn. You don’t need books to learn how to read the wind and clouds, to understand what the colours of the sea mean, to watch the birds to see the movement of the schools of fish, or to notice the clues that show where the big fish are feeding.’

  Angelica jumped down from the wall. ‘That may be true, but my father can teach you many other things. I will come and listen to you read some time.’

  And so, occasionally, Angelica would appear at her father’s door and listen to Giuseppe as he read, trying not to stumble over the words.

  Within a year Giuseppe’s reading skills had vastly improved and Alfonso decided that it was time for him to borrow books rather than continuing to read aloud. Giuseppe’s visits to the farm became less frequent, but he still foun
d time to climb into the hills to talk to Alfonso. Alfonso had lived away from the island. He had travelled, and was better educated than almost anyone else in the village. Giuseppe had no idea why Alfonso had left the island but he knew that he had returned when Angelica’s mother had died. Giuseppe loved to hear the stories of the time that the shepherd had spent in the north of Italy. Alfonso talked about Italy’s history and politics, and the country’s future, and Giuseppe concentrated as he listened to the shepherd.

  Giuseppe tried to imagine the scenes of cities with streets crowded with people, shops filled with clothes and exotic food and furniture that was shining and new. Alfonso loved to speak of the theatres, music halls, opera houses and cinema houses showing silent films. He even tried to explain to Giuseppe about the motor cars he had seen, but Giuseppe found it hard to grasp such a concept. It was a world that Giuseppe could hardly believe, it was so far removed from the simple village where he’d been born and had always lived. Now Giuseppe even started to wonder about the authority of the elderly priest, who was considered to be the wisest and best educated man on the island, but whose horizons and experiences seemed severely limited when compared to those of Alfonso. Not that Giuseppe voiced these thoughts aloud. Nevertheless, talking with Alfonso, Giuseppe found himself increasingly curious about life beyond the confines of his village. If he couldn’t visit the places Alfonso had been to, he could at least read about them, and dream.

  ‘Giuseppe,’ said Alfonso one day as the two sat at the shepherd’s table, ‘you know that Italy is quite a new country, only about fifty years old?’ Alfonso often liked to raise subjects that he suspected Giuseppe knew little about and Giuseppe liked to listen and learn.

  ‘But that can’t be true,’ replied Giuseppe. ‘I know that it must be old because there are lots of ruins on our island. Some of them must be older than fifty years.’

  Alfonso smiled. ‘Of course they are. For centuries many different people have lived on this island – Greeks, Romans, Moors and Christians – and they all left a legacy of their time here through the buildings they made. No, what I am saying is that before 1861 Italy was made up of a lot of independent states – Sicily, Piedmont, Naples, Calabria and so on – but they became united as one country under Victor Emmanuel II.’

  ‘But Father, you have told me that the country is not united,’ said Angelica as she joined them at the table. ‘You said that the people don’t feel like Italians at all.’

  ‘You are right. I have travelled throughout this land and I have found that it is full of divisions. People are loyal first to their village, then to their region and finally, if they think of it at all, they are loyal to Italy.’

  ‘My father says that when he travelled to the north of Italy, the people there could barely understand him.’

  ‘Why was that?’ asked Giuseppe, who thought that it would be impossible not to understand the clear-speaking Alfonso. ‘I never have any trouble understanding what you say.’

  ‘Thank you, Giuseppe. No, what Angelica means is that our dialect here in the south is so different from the way they speak in the north that we are virtually speaking a different language.’

  ‘So the north is really different from here?’

  ‘Places like Turin have very modern ideas. There is even a factory there that makes Fiat motor cars. Some in the north look down on people from the south and think that they are ill-educated peasants.’

  Giuseppe looked embarrassed because he knew that this was true of his family.

  ‘Cheer up, Giuseppe, not all the people of the north are as advanced as the people of Turin. I worked for a while in Venice. It is a mighty sea port, but it struggles with modernity, just as we do in the south. Ten-year-old children work such long hours in the glass factories that they fall asleep beside the ovens. Venice is a very unhealthy city and many people there die from tuberculosis and malaria.’

  ‘But the people in the north don’t suffer the hardships that we do here. Tell us again about the earthquake in Messina,’ said Angelica.

  ‘I’ve told you that story many times over, though I suppose I can tell it once more – but only quickly. We have work to do and Giuseppe must get home before it is dark,’ said Alfonso as he settled back into his chair.

  ‘I was not in Messina when the earthquake occurred, Giuseppe, but I went there only a few weeks later and I saw the terrible destruction. Before the earthquake, Messina was a thriving port city, then disaster struck one morning in December 1908. In thirty seconds, one hundred thousand people perished and all the buildings in the city were destroyed. At first the government did not believe what had happened and they did very little to help, although the king visited the site. Now the government is supposed to be rebuilding the city, but everyone knows that such reconstruction just presents an opportunity for some people to make a lot of money through graft, fraud and embezzlement.’

  ‘That is terrible,’ said Giuseppe. ‘Why don’t the people do something?’

  ‘When Sicily first became part of a united Italy, Sicilians were very excited. They thought that the government would help them rise out of poverty, but instead they were burdened with heavy taxes and conscripted into the army. Because of the mountainous terrain in Sicily and lack of government interest, policing was poor and violent gangs developed.’

  ‘Mafiosi,’ said Giuseppe, for everyone knew of these gang members’ stranglehold on power in Sicily and on the nearby islands.

  ‘Most Sicilians are very accepting of the natural disasters that occur in this region. They think that there is nothing that can be done about them. But they are very disillusioned by the government in Rome and don’t like the unrestrained violence at home, so many of them emigrate.’

  ‘They go to America, don’t they, Father?’

  ‘Yes, thousands of Sicilians leave every year, knowing that they will make a better life for themselves there.’

  ‘A cousin of my brother-in-law’s went and wrote back to say that he owns two suits,’ said Giuseppe, looking down at his ill-fitting trousers that had already been worn by two of his brothers. ‘I think he is lying as I don’t see how that is possible.’

  ‘It might be,’ said Angelica. ‘I would like to go and find out.’ She looked at Giuseppe. ‘What about you?’

  ‘Me?’ He shook his head. ‘I will never have the chance.’

  ‘Don’t be so sure, Giuseppe,’ said Alfonso. ‘Life can be unpredictable.’

  The Italian Front, 1917

  The small army tents were barely discernible as they clung to the rocks that gave little protection against the sleeting rain. Inside their miserably cold dugouts and dripping canvas caves, the men hunched over damp cigarettes, dissecting the rumours and speculating about what could be happening on the front.

  Italy had entered the Great War in May 1915, joining the Allies. Austria, to Italy’s north-east, was convinced that if it attacked Italy along the Alps that divided the two countries, it would overthrow the Italian army. The Italians knew that if the Austrians were allowed to move down from their high vantage point in the mountains and spill out onto the plains below, the Italian army would not be able to contain them. So far eleven battles had been fought between the two armies, but although the Italians had contained the Austrians the enemy remained in the high mountains, an ever-present threat.

  The weather closed in over the Julian Alps where the Isonzo River cut through the steep, rocky valley and swept southwards. Giuseppe d’Aquino huddled into his worn army great coat as the shower turned to a downpour. From the chill in the wind he knew snow was falling on the upper peaks. Although he was only twenty-one years old, after months of fighting he felt like a seasoned veteran. Around him were soldiers of many ages, drawn from the countryside, their faces and hands weathered from farming. Initially they were united in their efforts to attack the Austrians, but now they were increasingly discontented. The men felt abandoned in their alpine hellhole near the small town of Caporetto, pawns in a game that, for many, had sapped the
ir respect and will to fight for their country.

  He listened quietly, for perhaps the hundredth time, to the endless complaints of his fellow soldiers.

  ‘General Cadorna, what does he know?’ asked a corporal. ‘He is forever getting rid of officers.’

  ‘Everyone knows that if they do not immediately succeed in battle, then he fires them. We’ve had five battalion commanders in the last few months, not that the last three were any good,’ responded his friend.

  ‘Hah,’ said the corporal. ‘Would you want to lead men into battle if you knew that failure meant dismissal? Better to be cautious than sorry.’

  ‘Well, if you don’t fight properly, you don’t win.’

  Giuseppe had heard this argument before. The first time he was shocked. He had assumed that the educated officers would know what they were doing, but now as the fighting wore on it was clear that this was not the case. I’ve changed, he thought to himself. Once I would never have questioned a man so clearly superior to myself, but now I cannot accept that such people know everything.

  ‘Of course, General Capello is different,’ continued the corporal. Everyone nodded, for they all had great confidence in their area commander who always favoured offensive action. ‘But I heard a rumour that he is ill and has been sent to Padua to recover.’

  The other soldiers looked horrified by this information. They were to go into battle the next day.

  ‘It might not be true,’ said the corporal. ‘Anyway, even if he is well, how can he fight properly with this equipment? It’s rubbish.’

  No one argued with this. Italy simply did not have the industrial capability to switch quickly to war-time production and so what weapons the soldiers had were inadequate.

  ‘It’s the fault of those socialists in Turin. I heard from my brother that they are deliberately sabotaging the factories because they don’t want to be in this war. Well, what about us? We’re in the thick of it and there’s never enough ammunition,’ said another soldier, whose speech clearly identified him as a northerner.