Lost Among the Stars

by Paul Di Filippo

  A scrabbling noise caused him to turn.

  A woman was emerging from the burial chambers. Impossible, undeniable, beautiful, and somewhat distraught.

  She came fully into the open, unfolding from her crouch like a flower, and stood, looking about in confusion and allowing Rupert time to assess her.

  She wore a plain, sleeveless linen gown in a ferny hue to mid-calf. Simple leather sandals, laced upward to meet the hem of the shift, perfectly graced her strong, bronzed bare feet and legs. Long, thick, black, wavy hair cascaded below her shoulders, and framed a dark-skinned Caucasian face, more elongated than round, with a pert chin and full mouth. Her aquamarine eyes squinted and blinked at the sunlight. Around her strong neck was a simple hammered torque of brassy gold. Otherwise she sported no makeup or accessory.

  Gaze still unfocused—or focused on the invisible—she uttered some puzzled words to no one manifestly present, in a language Rupert failed to recognize, then seemed at last to acknowledge Rupert’s presence. This time when she spoke, she employed graceful Italian.

  “You, stranger, are traveling to Matera?”

  “Yes, I am. But how—?”

  “I can ride with you?”

  “Yes, of course. But where did you—?”

  The woman smiled broadly, revealing good teeth white as certain seashells. “I am here, this is now, that is all.”

  Rupert found that such an irrefutable statement brooked little argument or exegesis. He offered the woman some help surmounting the jumbled topography. The touch of her hand radiated a pleasant coolness with a paradoxical foundation of living heat. Certainly nothing associated with the taint of the grave from which she had emerged, but rather the sensation of passing from a hot day, still ambient against one’s skin, into the deep shade of a lush tree.

  In the passenger seat of Rupert’s car, the woman had to be reminded to buckle her seatbelt. She fumbled with it and Rupert took the opportunity to help. In the tiny car, bending closer to her, he received the impact of her scent, something almost like the fragrance one of the local olive trees or perhaps a eucalyptus would disseminate. He grew slightly dizzy as he straightened up.

  Somehow he put the car into gear and motored off. The woman said nothing until they reached the main highway, turning left on Route SS7, which overlaid the immemorial path of the classical Appian Way.

  The woman looked around her in the manner of someone cataloguing new impressions. As far as compatible with safe driving, Rupert studied her intently.

  At last she averted her face from the scenery and bestowed a dazzling smile on him.

  “My name is Daeira Bruno, and you will see me again, I am sure.”

  * * *

  The leisurely pleasant drive from Rome, much of it along the modern manifestations of the Appian Way, had been perfectly fitted to Rupert’s needs. Not long after arriving in Italy and purchasing the Fiat (if he intended to drive for months across Europe, a rental would certainly be uneconomical), he had felt for the first time that perhaps there could be some kind of enjoyable existence for him after Jessica’s death. This warm-hearted and generous country supplied incentive to live again. The kindly people, the gorgeous sights, the deep history, the alluring food and drink—everything conspired to reeducate him in the purpose of being alive. With no destination firmer than that inspired by the idle wish to see Matera, and no timetable, he was able to travel expansively, and recreate his soul.

  By the time he began his close approach to Matera, down in the arch of Italy’s boot, not half an hour from the seacoast, he was already contemplating continuing beyond that city, however fascinating it might prove, and venturing into Calabria, and thence to Sicily. Italy was famously comprised of eight thousand small comuni, and he suddenly wished to know them all.

  Just before the first exit for Matera, he passed over a negligible bridge, maybe ten or fifteen meters long, which spanned what amounted to no more than a modest shallow rugged gully with a stream down its middle. It was almost possible to miss the feature entirely.

  Shifting gears as he ascended the slope of the exit ramp, Rupert rehearsed what he knew about Matera, which was very little. There was a new portion of town, whose precincts he was already slowly entering, which had been constructed starting in 1927 or thereabouts. First impressions gauged it as blandly efficient and livable in the modern manner. Then there existed the ancient district, the Sassi, or “Stones.” Habitation in that realm extended back to the Classical Era and beyond. A nearby cave, the Pipistrella, had disclosed Paleolithic remains. Presumably the Sassi constituted the fantastical architectural conglomeration he had seen from afar years ago.

  Street signs directed traffic toward the Sassi. He came eventually to what appeared to be the edge of the old town, and parked on the Via San Biagio. Just a few yards from his car a sweetly inviting yet sizable piazza, the Vittorio Veneto, hosted midday pedestrian crowds. Rupert ambled around the plaza’s perimeter, admiring the elderly but not strictly ancient structures. So far, so underwhelming. He enjoyed an espresso, and inquired directions to the heart of the Sassi from the barista. Interpreting the man’s partial English as best he could, he left the plaza behind.

  Rupert really never could reconstruct the rest of that afternoon and early evening, his aimless but increasingly entranced peregrinations through the Sassi. Descending a shadowy flight of stairs at the corner of the piazza, he had tumbled like Alice into an other-dimensional rabbit hole.

  The Sassi proved to be a warren, a labyrinth, a termite mound, a Gormenghast pile: the objective correlative to some numinous dream of an urban lifestyle lived hip to hip and shoulder to shoulder with one’s neighbors. A few major narrow streets allowed some minor motor traffic of subcompact cars. But the entire Sassi catered in its enigmatic way only to true walkers. Alleys and slopes and stairways and channels—all paved with the same chunky, slippery stones, mottled like pinto beans and worn smooth by the passage of innumerable feet—formed an intricate and initially unfathomable switchback network linking all the buildings. The buildings themselves were stacked and enjambed higgledy-piggledy, atop, across, around and against each other, intimate as seals on a beach or children in a tussling dog pile, up and down three-hundred-and-sixty degrees of the faces of the human-usurped hill, sharing walls and horizontal surfaces, courtyards and verandas. Moreover, astonishingly, they had apparently all sunk themselves into the hillside, some entirely, leaving only an architectural façade flush with the vertical earth, others only partially. Rupert witnessed beautifully restored residences sometimes adjacent to roofless hovels. And of course, many freestanding structures, including a plethora of churches, added to the mix.

  What Rupert eventually learned was this. The geology of the district had loaned itself to natural caves and artificial ones. The earliest historical inhabitants had taken advantage of the secure and weatherproof caves to construct their living quarters. Gradually, out of the amenable calcareous tufa they had hewn mangers and troughs, cubbies and niches, altars and halls, wine cellars and granaries, spaces for dining, sleeping, and making love. Incredibly sophisticated cisterns and rain-capture systems had been installed. “Rupestrian” was the lovely arcane term for this mode of living.

  The town had exfoliated itself with greater and greater complexity as civilization had improved. Waves of immigrants and conquerors had washed across the region. The seafaring Greeks had made it part of Magna Graecia before the Romans ever ruled. Byzantines, Normans, Slavs, Longobards, Arabs, Spaniards, all had coursed across the land and left behind their impress and fragmentary customs, bits of language and dress and belief. Through Empire, Dark Ages, Renaissance, Enlightenment, Unification, Matera had flourished.

  But then, in the inexplicable manner of all cultures and nations, especially under the lash of technological progress, stagnation and desuetude had set in. By the 1950’s, Matera was a pitiful shadow of its old glory. Peasant farmers lived in the most primitive of the cave houses: animals and lice-ridden humans cheek by jowl. The
place acquired a reputation as the shame of the nation, an Italian Appalachia, and the government forcibly emptied the Sassi, relocating its reluctant citizens by eminent domain.

  Incredibly, the whole Sassi had remained empty and forbidden for the next three decades, save for an occasional hippie squatter. Then, the latent value of the government-owned buildings and land began to become apparent to everyone. “Settlers” were encouraged to return. In 1993 UNESCO helped by distinguishing the Sassi as a World Heritage site.

  When Rupert encountered the place, some eighty percent of it had been rehabbed and retenanted, with over two thousand citizens and a flourishing economy. Not precisely the product of gentrification, certainly not a “living museum” like Colonial Williamsburg, the Sassi seemed instead to fill the role of a gorgeous seashell that had lain empty, waiting sadly, until a young new hermit crab had moved in. Or perhaps, considered as a whole, it resembled one of those noble castles or manor houses where a lineage had died out, with the establishment saved from destruction by a loving patron. Nor had the whole district been privatized, as might have happened in America. The government supported numerous museums and cultural sites open to all.

  But even without knowing all this on that fateful day, Rupert sensed the uniqueness of the place.

  He walked now along the edge of one of the Sassi’s most majestic features, the deep stony ravine, spottily spiked with vegetation, through which the Torrente Gravina surged. That innocuous ditch just outside the city, over which he had passed in his car, had widened and deepened almost instantly thereafter until it assumed majestic proportions, an impressive chasm and natural moat looking carved by some god’s hot jagged sword, with the Via Madonna delle Virtù snaking along its upper lip.

  Rupert paused at an overlook. Church bells tolled sweetly, as they had for every fifteen minutes of the past many hours. The ravine exuded a cool riverine odor. As night fell, across the rocky gap on the far slopes more ancient caves sprang into focus, illuminated by tasteful spotlights.

  This place is like some pre-industrial prototype for a Soleri arcology, thought Rupert. It has a homogenous integrity, but within that, maximum diversity. If I could make art with those qualities—

  I think I need to stay here a while.

  * * *

  Two weeks passed after Rupert dropped off Daeira Bruno outside the Castello Tramontano until he encountered her again. But the undesired separation did not arise from lack of effort or eagerness on Rupert’s part.

  He sat behind the wheel of his Fiat, motor idling, while the striking and self-possessed woman stood on the sidewalk encircling the big ruined never-finished castle that perched in its park setting atop a hill at the edge of the Sassi. She looked about the prospect with interest, as if she had never seen it before, then turned back to Rupert with a sincere and wordless happiness.

  “But tell me,” he said, “where will you be staying? How will I reach you again?”

  “Oh,” Daeira said, “I know people here.”

  For a moment, Rupert had the impression that “here” meant “inside the Castle.” But that certainly could not be accurate. “At least give me your mobile number, please.”

  “I don’t own one.”

  “Argh! You say we’ll meet again, then won’t tell me how or when! You’ll be the death of me!”

  Daeira’s expression grew grim. “I hope not. But maybe. Yes, it could happen. So you must go now.”

  Very reluctantly, Rupert drove off, keeping Daeira in his rearview mirror as long as he could, until she suddenly seemed to vanish.

  Back home on the Via Muro—not a street for cars, but one of the quintessential tipsy staircases-cum-mews-cum-byways that threaded the Sassi—Rupert tried to work, but found himself too distracted. He fed a noisy Taormina her supper, then went out to eat at his favorite restaurant, Le Botteghe, where the owner, Antonio, cultivated a superb but simple menu. Yet Rupert tasted none of the fine dishes set before him. His phone bleeped during dinner. He saw that the call originated with Flavia, but felt too uneasy and somehow guilty to respond. He wandered the shopping street of Via del Corso, but the chattering gleeful crowds only made him lonelier. Returning home, he turned on the television just to practice his Italian. He fell asleep after three shots of grappa, and dreamed of crawling on his stomach through subterranean passages, icy water dripping from needle-like stalactites onto his neck, a will-o-the-wisp light source ever receding from him …

  This unsatisfying lifestyle persisted for the next fortnight. Even the arrival of a promising new block of pale stone from one of the ancient local quarries failed to elevate or clarify his mood. As always, Rupert tipped the deliverymen outrageously for having to deal with the canted treachery of the Via Muro. Thank goodness he lived relatively close to the truck-accessible street of the Via Bruno Buozzi, and not deeper into the Rione Pianelle district.

  Of course Rupert made inquiries among his friends and acquaintances regarding Daeira Bruno. But folks either confessed ignorance or, in one or two instances, seemed averse to speaking about her. Perhaps that latter phenomenon derived only from his overactive imagination, as his slight contact with the mysterious woman assumed a kind of overblown, obsessive magnitude in his mind.

  For a change of pace one night, he decided to eat at another favorite place, La Gatta Buia, The Dark Cat.

  Opening the door at street level revealed a long narrow windowless space on two levels, with barrel ceilings carved into the living rock and the whole establishment decorated with loving modern touches. A few steps took Rupert down to the level of the bar and some small seating, while another flight brought him to the main dining area, where a jazz trio was playing with elegant restraint.

  Heartsickness did not seem to have impaired Rupert’s appetite. He was just polishing off the last of a basket of pane di Matera with a fine glass of Primitivo wine when Daeira Bruno entered.

  She wore a light summer dress, ocean blue with images of colorful fishes scattered across it. The fabric molded her superb figure with painterly precision. Simple flats had replaced her sandals. Again, no makeup or jewelry, not even the big gold gorget of two weeks ago.

  Two men accompanied Daeira. Rupert’s jealousy spiked. The three of them were speaking Italian too rapidly and fervently for Rupert to follow. He gained a vague impression of pride at having accomplished something, with more duties yet ahead.

  On the upper level the trio halted, and the men, to Rupert’s surprise, made an exceedingly formal farewell. Each man bowed, and kissed Daeira’s outheld hand.

  Rupert thought he heard them murmur her name. Or did they say, “Madonna Bruna?”

  The men left and Daeira descended further and strode confidently to Rupert’s table.

  “I am starving! And you have not eaten yet. Good! More bread here, please!”

  With Daeira Bruno seated so closely, as she had been in the car that day, her faint leafy herbal scent reached Rupert once more, across all the cooking odors, and his anxiety and irritation vanished. To kvetch and accuse and complain would have been the height of bad manners, ungrateful and ungracious. What did she owe him? Precisely nothing. Not to mention that a harsh tone would be an impediment to the kind of closeness he hardly dared imagine.

  “You look beautiful.”

  “You are too kind. I am as I am. A poor hybrid thing, neither fish nor fowl. I am only half-Italian, you know. My mother was Greek.”

  “I have always believed in the virtues of bringing different worlds together.”

  The waiter arrived with another basket of bread and a second wine glass. Rupert poured, and Daeira sipped with pantherine delicacy.

  “You are an American. They always favor mixing things together.”

  “Why not? That is how new wonders are born.”

  “I think it is also sometimes a recipe for explosions.”

  Daeira ordered enough food for a platoon that had marched all day. Rupert laughed to see her enjoy eating so much. Their sparse but utterly natural, not strained o
r labored conversation mostly concerned Matera, Rupert’s impressions of it. Daeira regarded him intently during his speech, nursing her wine.

  “I love the smell of wood smoke. I love the crazy crows that call out ‘Cherk cherk cherk!’ They do not sound like that in my country. I love the church bells that never grow fatigued. I love the palm trees and the cactus with their ridiculous fruits. I love even the maddening winds, the Mistral and the Sirocco and the Ponente. The people are wonderful, the buildings are a world treasure, and the land around us is rich in life and history. Life means something more here.”

  “What you say makes me very happy. So many visitors do not penetrate very deeply, or even see this place as worthy of their affections.”

  “Ah, but I am not a visitor. I live here. I am part of Matera now.”

  “Is that so?” Suddenly setting down her glass, Daeira stood. “Let us have a walk.”

  After paying and exiting La Gatta Buia they turned right and began the dark cloistered ascent of the Via Duomo, a building-defined channel where four walkers comfortably abreast would be capacity. Daeira offered her hand, and Rupert took it. Her flesh still blended that odd sensation of impossibly coexistent coolness atop heat.

  “Your hand is strong, with many calluses,” she said. “You know the stones.”

  The passage debouched in the Piazza Duomo. The city’s shuttered and scaffolded cathedral bulked large and dark, a muted presence undergoing long restoration. An overlook with a broad wall just high enough for pleasant leaning proffered a panorama of tiled rooftops and chimneys, with little jumbled slices of streets and potted greenery and people. Rupert and Daeira imbibed the scene in mutual silence. After a respectful, tentative minute or so, Rupert slipped an arm around Daeira’s waist, and she leaned agreeably closer.