Ontreto

by Peter Crawley

  “You place a good deal of trust in them.”

  This captures Valeria’s attention and she stares at him as though he has just suggested her cooking is not up to scratch. “Of course, Ric, why would I not trust them?”

  “I don’t know,” he replies, defensively. “It’s just that I’m missing something from the boat.”

  When she begins to object to his inference, he holds up his hands to mollify her. “I know, I know. It sounds ridiculous, but I know I haven’t mislaid it and only Marcello and Salvo have been on the boat without me being around.”

  But Valeria is visibly appalled at his suggestion, “Ric, they would not touch a man’s possessions. Not even if they were of considerable value. This is not in their nature.” She hesitates again, searching the table for a clue as to how to convince him of their virtue. “What is it you are missing, Ric? Tell me,” she demands. “I will speak to Salvo, though I am not sure how to. It would be easier to ask him if his mother was a mule.”

  Ric colours with embarrassment. “You can see my problem, Valeria: if this is your reaction to my implying they’ve had something off the boat, I can only imagine theirs.”

  She exhales a long stream of grey smoke up towards the darkening sky. “This thing that you are missing, is it important; valuable?”

  “In some ways. Or, rather, yes. It will be difficult to explain away if it gets into the wrong hands.”

  Valeria thinks for a moment longer and then fixes him with a challenging expression, “Tell me, Ric, what is this important thing you have lost, is it your passport?”

  Avoiding her stare, Ric is reminded that Talaia has it.

  “No, my passport is only too safe for the moment. What I am missing relates to another problem I encountered in Corsica.”

  37

  Valeria grins knowingly, “A problem to do with Camille?”

  “Long story,” he cuts her off, watching her and trying to fathom why she should take the information in such a curiously casual manner.

  “As you know, Ric, I have plenty of time for long stories. Try me? But, kindly fetch another bottle of wine from the fridge before you start; listening can be thirsty work.”

  While he fetches the wine, Valeria lights a small lantern and places it in the middle of the table.

  Ric pours and sits down. “I spent last summer in Corsica, which is where I met Camille–”

  “And Manou,” she interrupts, delivering him yet another knowing smile.

  “Yes, and Manou. And…”

  “And…?” Valeria asks.

  “And after that, I met with some trouble. Or rather Manou and Camille met with some trouble and I ended up getting caught in the middle of it.”

  “Trouble!” she says, shaking her head. “It follows some people around like bad perfume. Go on.”

  “Well, afterwards it seemed best I leave. Camille, as you know, sold me the Mara. Or, more accurately, he gave it to me.” Ric pauses. “I guess I never looked at it this way, but I suppose you could say it was a way of paying me for a service I’d rendered. The old fox might like to think of it in those terms, but I still can’t get used to looking at it that way.” He pauses again.

  “Go on, Ric.”

  “When I left with the Mara, Camille presented me with a couple of passports the campers had left behind. He said that being the south of the island, the trouble would most likely go away in good time. They seem to have a way of burying the more uncomfortable aspects of the past over there.”

  Ric knows he has to keep the unpleasant details out of his explanation and right on cue his thigh twinges. “But, Camille suggested I use one of the passports over the winter in case the police in Corsica decided to take an interest in what had happened; in case they started looking for me. In the event, I didn’t use them; it didn’t feel right, pretending to be some other guy.

  “The good news is I’ve still got the passports; the bad news is Camille gave me something else. And it’s that something else which is now missing from the Mara.”

  Valeria lights another cigarette, mulls over what he has just told her and looks up, observing him the way a teacher might observe a child responsible for disturbing her classroom. “Why did you not throw these passports away when you had the chance?”

  “Christ only knows,” he replies.

  She is quiet again for a moment before nodding her head, as though she has grasped some fine detail about his actions or rather his lack of them. “You did not throw them away because you are still running away from something and thought there might come a time when you needed them.”

  “Sure. From the police.”

  “No,” she says, searching his face for a clue, “there is something more. Perhaps you are still running away, but not from something; perhaps you are still running from someone. Not from Manou, from your wife. It is as Nino said: a weight which is too heavy to set down.” Valeria stares at him, but not in the unyielding manner of an interrogator or with the inquisitive eyes of a gossip; more she gazes at him with the gentility and compassion of a priest.

  When he does not reply, she reaches over and lays her hand on his forearm and squeezes it softly.

  “I told you, Ric, I ran away from life when I understood I no longer possessed the energy to act. The camera would look at me and I would look back, but I felt the camera was looking right through me, as if I was made of glass. When this dreadful thing happens to an actor, the cinema makes an orphan of her; no one wants her.”

  Valeria bridles at a thought that has occurred to her and she hesitates, before saying, “This was the second time the world made an orphan of me, so I decided I would not risk being cast out a third time.” She grins self-consciously and chews her lip. “I told you, Ric, this is why I came to Lipari, to La Casa dei Sconosciuti; to live among strangers who speak to me, but who can do me no harm.”

  He is very genuinely touched by her openness and feels minded to repay her generosity, but…

  “But what, Ric?” Valeria urges. “But what?”

  “But…” he replies, grimacing, wondering. “It all seems so simple and yet it isn’t. You were there when I told Nino about how I was in Afghanistan, on my second tour of duty, and that it was while I was out there that my wife was killed in a car accident. If that wasn’t bad enough, she had begged me not to go; she said she felt something awful was going to happen.”

  He glances at her in search of some encouragement.

  Valeria’s countenance is serious and questioning; the frown lines around her eyes indicating she is intent on hearing him out. “It is only natural that a woman should worry in this way. Please, Ric, go on.”

  “One morning, one of our patrols got into contact with the Taleban and I was sent out with my men to help extract them. However, the initial contact turned out to be a feint to drag us into a larger fight and three of my men were killed. I sustained some injuries and was medevac’d out. While I was on the way back to the hospital, I had this incredible dream in which my wife was killed. It may have been the morphine – God knows they pumped me full of the stuff – or it may have been the shock of the injuries or some kind of post-traumatic stress from the engagement; nobody knows. All I do know is that exactly what I had seen in my dream turned out to be true; she had died.”

  Valeria pours more wine into his glass, as if to fuel his recollecting. “And after?”

  “And afterwards… although I’m not sure there is such a thing as afterwards.” He glances again at her in much the same way as she glanced at him only a few moments before. “Afterwards? Well, I’d lost my bearings, couldn’t make any sense of any of it; I just wandered around in some sort of permanent blue funk. The shrinks said it was all perfectly natural; and it probably was. But eventually I realised I needed to find some kind of anchor; something solid I could relate to in order to get my bearings.

  “During all of this, my father passed away and while I was sorting out his personal affects, I came across this old photograph of my great-grandfather in
Foreign Legion uniform, standing beneath the gate to a garrison. Here.” He shows her the photograph he has kept with him since the day he left home.

  Valeria studies it in the dim light cast by the lantern. “And this is the man you think is Antonio Sciacchitano, your ancestor?”

  “Yes. It’s naturally a little faded. The man’s features are indistinct because his face is in shadow, so it’s not possible to see any facial resemblance. But it came to me one day that if I found out a little more about my own personal history, where I’d come from if you like, it might help me work out where I was and, with any luck, how to go forward.”

  “And this was when you met Camille?”

  “In a roundabout way. I located the garrison in Bonifacio, on the southern tip of Corsica, but it’s no longer in service. Camille, I met after that and Manou a little later.”

  “And there you met this trouble you speak of?”

  “Yes.” Ric sits back and folds his arms.

  Valeria reads his body language and remains silent for a minute, pondering what he has told her.

  There is no breeze and the Sicilian Sea before them reflects the polished obsidian of night. The cliffs to their right have surrendered the airy thermals which hold the cavazza aloft and the last hydrofoil of the day scurries away towards the mainland. Fishing boats, their navigation lights shining like fireflies, whine and dart to and fro in the darkness.

  Her eyes glint in the light of the lantern and her cigarette glows red. “And now you think that whatever it is that you find here will provide you with the strength and the direction to continue?”

  Ric assumes a melancholic expression. “Who knows? Maybe?” But then he remembers Commissario Talaia taking his real passport, “Maybe not?”

  She stubs out her cigarette, drawing the evening to a close. “Let us hope Old Nino finds enough in his memory to help you, Ric.”

  “Which reminds me,” he says, rising from his chair and collecting the dishes. “I spent yesterday afternoon looking around the cemetery and found a grave near the chapel house. The headstone suggests the occupant’s name is Antonio Sciacchitano.”

  “That is interesting,” Valeria replies, and after a moment’s consideration, she begins to chuckle.

  “Yes, isn’t it?” But he realises from her amusement that there is something about his discovery he has missed. “What’s so funny?”

  Valeria laughs, loudly; a gay, melodious and unconstrained laugh.

  “What?” he asks again, clearly mystified by her reaction to his news. And the greater his puzzlement, the louder she laughs.

  Finally, when her laughter has subsided, she says, “Think about it, Ric,” she tries to say as she surrenders to yet another fit of childish giggles. “How can this man be your great-grandfather from Britain if he is lying in a grave in Lipari?”

  Even though, but for the gentle light thrown by the lantern, they are sitting in the dark, Ric reddens with embarrassment. He slaps his head as if to knock some sense into it. “Oh god, I didn’t think of that.”

  “No, you didn’t. But did the headstone say when this Antonio Sciacchitano was born; perhaps he was your great-great-grandfather?”

  Ric recalls the image of the headstone, “Thought of that! But no, it didn’t give his date of birth, only his date of passing, July 1930.”

  Valeria stops chuckling, “1930, you say?”

  “That’s how it read. I spoke to Old Nino last night; he seemed to think the date should mean something to him too, but his memory was a bit dull. Does it ring any bells with you?”

  But instead of committing any more thought to it, Valeria gets to her feet and begins clearing their dishes. As she walks away, she says, “Only that 1930 is the year I was born.”

  38

  Ric walks back around the small bay at Portinente, his arms above his head, trying to stretch the ache from his shoulder and his ribs. He is amazed how good Valeria looks for her eighty-plus years and understands why the little Salvo is so taken with her.

  And then there is the fact that the headstone for the grave he has found suggests that his forebear, Antonio Sciacchitano, passed away in 1930. Without a birth date, he has no way of knowing how old the man was when he died or whether, perhaps, the man buried in the cemetery really is his relation. He finds the notion that he is trying to trace his own identity whilst at the same time hanging on to false passports, faintly amusing.

  And with all these thoughts running around unchecked in his mind, he turns right at the town end of the bay and shortens his stride as he begins the short climb up beside the white-washed walls of the Hotel Rocce Azzurre, through the Maddalena.

  The storms he and Valeria watched gathering over the coast of Sicily have not yet ventured out to the islands and the moon hangs like a lantern in the eastern sky, casting impenetrable shadows across the alleyway.

  Towards the top of the rise he rounds the bend by the little maritime chapel and rests for a few seconds, realising he is not wise in walking by the piazza in which Candela was murdered two evenings before. But he is weary and his body counsels against the effort involved in turning back only to weave his way through the maze of little vicos that lead to his rooms.

  Halfway up the Maddalena, the alley narrows and crowns once more before it begins its descent to the Corta. A television blares from behind a shuttered window and a cat slinks across his path before settling to observe his progress.

  Debating whether it would be equally wise to venture in to the Corta after his welcome home committee of the evening before, he pauses by the entrance to the tiny Piazza San Bartolo.

  The air in the piazza is cool and refreshing, and though it appears deserted, Ric is suddenly aware that he is standing at the entrance to a dead end and that if the two heavies from the evening before turn up, he has nowhere to run.

  “Good evening, Mr Ross.”

  Ric spins round and plants his feet, readying.

  A man steps out from the shadow of a balcony. If at first Ric doesn’t recognise the man’s voice, his height and the profile of his hat immediately give his identity away.

  “Christ, Commissario! You’ll give someone a heart attack.”

  “Oh, please forgive me for being so melodramatic.”

  Ric fights to control the surge of adrenalin fizzing through his limbs. “Well, excuse me for reacting so, but creeping about in the dark like that… what the hell are you doing?”

  The policeman removes his hat and steps over, “Waiting and watching: patience and observation. Sadly, they are old habits which are now reduced in worth by modern technology.” Talaia speaks softly as though he is wary of breaching the sepulchral tranquility of the piazza and in so doing disturbing the slumber of many ghosts.

  He sighs, “Ah, these days, the new policeman is taught to rely on the efficiencies afforded him by forensic science and the conclusions of his computer. I prefer the old ways: intuition, presentiment, deduction. Ah, I fear I may be considered by my contemporaries to be something of a relic, perhaps even a dinosaur.”

  Ric chuckles, nervously. “You’d do well to hide a dinosaur in this piazza.”

  “You know, Mr Ross, I have told you before about this house,” he turns and gazes at the doorway of the house behind him; the moonlight lends the façade a cold and unforgiving aura. “This the house in which Edda Ciano lived after the war. It is difficult to imagine what it must have been like for Il Duce’s daughter, Edda, to live in such humble surroundings, especially after the opulence afforded her by her father’s exalted status. I wonder how she must have felt, being so despised for her privilege when, ultimately, she must have despised it herself for the sorrow it brought to her.”

  “And then some,” Ric offers. “But don’t tell me you’re waiting patiently for her spirit to reappear, Commissario. I don’t make you for a ghost hunter.”

  “No, Mr Ross, I am not interested in ghosts. Except…” he hesitates and turns back to face Ric. “Except, if it was possible, imagine how useful it would be if
the dead were able to exchange information with us. Imagine what lasting peace we could offer them in return for such information.”

  “Isn’t that what their Lord and Master is supposed to offer them when they finally get to meet him?”

  Talaia allows Ric’s suggestion to float in the cool air for a moment before replying, “So, you are not a man of God, Mr Ross. I have been suffering under the impression that all soldiers are simply the tools of God’s labours. Are you the exception to this rule?”

  Clearly, the Commissario has checked Ric’s passport and his history. “First off, Commissario Talaia, I was a Royal Marine, not a soldier–”

  “Oh, forgive my poor manners,” he interrupts, with a heavy dose of sarcasm.

  “And second,” Ric allows his frustration to creep into his tone, “I’ve seen enough evidence of God’s labours, as you put it, to last me a lifetime. I’m surprised you haven’t.” And again he realises that he is tarring the police detective with the same brush with which he tarred Bosquet in Corsica and cautions himself to adopt a more conciliatory attitude.

  Judging by the silence that ensues, the Commissario is considering his response. The moonlight shines in his eyes, lending him a vaguely mischievous air.

  “Oh, but I have, Signor Ross. I have seen more than my share of unpleasantness. But as a former soldier – forgive me again, I mean to say marine – you appear to me to be possessed of a moral conscience. This, I hope, sets you apart from those amongst our society who believe they can commit murder in the afternoon and go to Mass the next morning in the hope of obtaining absolution.”

  “Commissario, you’ll excuse me for pointing out that your new Pope has outlawed membership of the Mafia; assuming that’s who you are referring to.”

  The shorter man chuckles to himself. “Yes,” he replies, “this presents an interesting… indovinello, a riddle, for the church to solve.

  “Imagine a priest hears a confession in which a Mafioso admits to murder. What can he do? He cannot violate the Sacramental Seal of the confessional; the Holy Decree of 1862 dictates that he cannot abuse the confidence of the penitent in case it harms him. Of course, if the priest requests it, this penitent may give him permission to discuss the contents of his confession with a third party, but for obvious reasons this is unlikely.