Ontreto

by Peter Crawley

  “This is why I need the coffee,” Nino says, very suddenly. “The mind is tempted to sleep and I would rather it stayed awake. That way I know I am still alive. Now, where were we?”

  “The empty grave?”

  “Ah, yes. Una tomba senza cadavere,” he repeats. “An unusual occurrence, a grave without a corpse. Of course, one finds many graves without names, but a grave with a name and yet without a corpse is most unusual.”

  Old Nino sips his coffee and nods, “Mm, that is better. So how do we come to have an empty grave in our cemetery, eh? Firstly, I am too old to remember all the funerals I have attended. When you get to my age, you have seen so many they all blend into one unhappy procession; few of them are remarkable. But my father told me this man, Sciacchitano, learned from a conversation he had overheard in a café in Canneto that the three deportati – Drago, Farinelli and Tamboia – were betrayed to the Carabinieri. At that time, one of the principles involved in the arrangement of the escape was Vincenzo Maggiore, Marcello Maggiore’s grandfather. I believe you know Marcello.”

  “I do. He’s fixing my boat.”

  “My father told me that when Vincenzo heard these men had been betrayed, he sent Antonio Sciacchitano to Punta San Giuseppe to warn them. Alas, he arrived too late and the men were killed in the ambush the Carabinieri had set for them. On his way back through the town, Tonio was stopped by a patrol and questioned as to what he was doing out so late. With no excuse and soaking wet after his futile attempt to warn the unfortunate deportati, he was arrested. However, Sant’Agata was watching over him: a bribe was paid and he was permitted to escape. And this was when he came to my father and begged him to spirit him and his companion away to the mountains, to Sicilia.”

  “That still doesn’t tell me why he’s not in his casket in the cemetery.”

  “Patience, my friend, patience! When the Commendatore found out Tonio had escaped, he went completely pazzo. The Carabinieri searched the island as if they had been told the treasure of San Bartolo would be theirs to keep if only they could find it.

  “Tonio hid in the pomice warehouse at Pietra Liscia until the noise had died down, at which time my father took him to Baarìa. However, the Commendatore did not allow the Carabinieri to let the matter drop. He proclaimed that Tonio would wish he were dead rather than suffer the tortures they would inflict upon him when they found him. This gave Vincenzo Maggiore the idea of making the Commendatore think Tonio was actually dead. He persuaded the… the… pubblico ufficiale che indaga i casa di morte sospetta, I don’t know this word…”

  “The coroner?”

  “Si, the coroner. He persuaded the coroner to provide a death certificate and so a funeral was held. The whole town turned out; the procession was as long as the Corso Vittorio and the coffin without a body was buried in the cemetery. In fact, there were so many people that the Commendatore, who was also by chance a highly superstitious man, feared a riot like the one in 1926 when the people of Lipari protested against the criminals who were sent here. This he could not afford for fear of being disgraced, so he allowed the funeral to take place without interference.”

  Ric chuckles, “He wasn’t much of a one for the job, was he?”

  “No,” Old Nino replies. “Many of the Fascists were more concerned with keeping their positions than they were with doing their work correctly. For us, this was a blessing.”

  “So my great-grandfather – if he is my great-grandfather and not a figment of someone’s fertile imagination – left Lipari for Baarìa and never came back?”

  “How could he? He was dead! Oh, there are others here with the name Sciacchitano, but they are not of the same family and you will find families of this name throughout the south of Italy and, no doubt, some in America too.”

  “And after the war? He didn’t return after the war?”

  Old Nino turns to face Ric as if reading his expression, “The war was not finished until fifteen years later and by that time there was even less reason to come back. Pomice and zolfo were being mined more economically in the Americas, there was no tourist trade to speak of and there was so much poverty that anyone with a gram of ability departed for greener fields. And besides, Tonio was not a fool; he would have understood he would not have been safe in Baarìa. It would have been better for him to leave Sicilia for good. Probably, he went to Tunis or perhaps on a boat to France.”

  Ric thinks, “Perhaps even to Britain?”

  “Yes, perhaps even to Britain. After the war, many went to work as agricultural labourers.” Old Nino turns his face back towards the strait between the islands. “Many went and have never returned; I, of course, could not.”

  In an attempt to lift the old man from his maudlin, Ric offers, “Your father was a brave man, Nino, in much the same way as you were; you both answered the call when it came.”

  He nods his wizened head very slowly. A slender line of tears trickles from beneath his dark glasses. He wipes his nose with a handkerchief. “It is true. Even though I have no sight, I can see my father in front of me as if it were yesterday.” He pauses. “Now it must be time for you to find your excitement elsewhere. An old man has only so much energy for this kind of recollection and now that I have brought my memories back into my mind, I would like to be left alone with them.”

  “Sure, Nino, I understand. It goes without saying how much I appreciate all the time and effort you’ve committed to remembering what happened. Is there anything I can do for you before I go?”

  The old man smiles a little mischievously. “If you would be kind enough to replace the legbi where you found it and wash these glasses, it will make Ariana’s return all the more agreeable, thank you.”

  Ric does as he is asked, wondering, while he is washing and drying, how he will ever find out whether or not he is related to the courageous Antonio Sciacchitano.

  Outside, Old Nino has regained his upright posture, suggesting he may have gone to sleep.

  The wind is strengthening, white caps litter the purple sea below the point and Ric wonders if he should cover the old man with a rug. He watches and realises that if he ever makes it to such a venerable age, he would like to be left sitting on a stonewall seat, in the shade of a pergola, fanned by the sea breeze and before such a fair view; especially if that view was exactly the same as the last time he’d seen it, nearly sixty years before.

  As he leaves, he recalls the old man saying that Tonio Sciacchitano had brought a young woman with him to his father’s house that night, and he wonders about the woman and whether she, too, made the journey in the fishing boat to Baarìa.

  42

  Ric walks back over the ridge into Quattropani. While he sits at the side of the road, waiting for the bus, he chews over the information Nino has supplied him. It is comforting to learn that his supposed forebear was a solid citizen, if that is an adequate description of a man who gives up his existence for the good of others. However, it also leaves him feeling a shade flat. There is no doubt, with the odd shove from Camille and Valeria and Old Nino, that he has climbed several ladders in order to learn about Antonio Sciacchitano. But, the idea of treading the streets of Baarìa – wherever on the Sicilian coast Baarìa might be – to press the locals to remember some fugitive from eighty-odd years before, seems to slide him right back down the snake to square one. He might as well be back in the marine cemetery of the Bosco, in the walled citadel of Bonifacio in Corsica, asking the gravediggers if they know of a grave marked Ross.

  He laughs out loud at the thought that when he’d plucked up the courage to ask the gravediggers that very question, they had directed him down the steep hill to the municipal office in the town below. And when, eventually, he’d enquired at the counter in the municipal office, they’d told him he would find the answers to his questions up in the cemetery.

  The irony is that it isn’t the marine cemetery in Bonifacio that has provided him with answers; it is the cemetery in Lipari.

  The bus, when it eventually pitches up, is huge
, roomy and air-conditioned, and looks completely out of place against the backdrop of rustic houses.

  Back in town, the Carabinieri are still checking the identity papers of those hoping to leave Lipari on the early evening Aliscafo, but they appear more concerned with making polite conversation and flirting with the girls than executing their duties.

  Ric stops off at the alimentari for provisions and strolls up the Corso Vittorio. The flamboyant waiter at La Precchia – where he’d breakfasted before going out to see Old Nino with Valeria – is laughing with Giuliana. She stops and frowns when she sees Ric, and then whispers to the waiter, who straightens and watches as Ric walks on up the street.

  After dropping off the provisions and changing out of his boots, he walks through the cool vicos down to the Corta. The square around the small harbour is quiet, the cafés almost deserted. Sandro is absent, there is no sign of Marcello and even the Purgatorio lacks its usual, venerable congregation. So he strolls over to the Casa dei Sconosciuti to tell Valeria what Old Nino has remembered.

  Police tape still cordons off the Piazza San Bartolo and the Maddalena is narrowed by a stream of people, both locals and tourists, walking back towards the Corta. They are laughing and joking as though they have recently enjoyed the company of a stand-up comedian. There is, perhaps, a festival taking place in the small bay of Portinente.

  When he turns the corner by the fisherman’s chapel above the bay, he realises the attraction: a police launch is moored off the beach and there are frogmen in the water.

  Ric has to ease his path through the throng of spectators gathered at the foot of the slope. The residents of the Rocce Azzure are leaning from their balconies and the terrace is crowded with onlookers. The paraphernalia of sub-acqua gear litters the pebble beach and policemen shoo children away and strut this way and that with the earnest intention of stewards at a football match.

  The solitary and diminutive figure of Commissario Talaia stands, as far from the crowd as he can without actually getting his feet wet, observing the action. Two teams of divers wallow like confused porpoises in the shallows.

  “Attenzione! Medusa!” A voice calls out.

  A diver looks up, distracted, and laughter ripples through the crowd.

  “Attention! Jellyfeesh!” someone responds from the terrace of the hotel.

  The crowd cheer with undisguised contempt.

  The police ignore the taunting.

  Valeria is watching from the stone wall of a cottage garden and Marcello is deep in conversation with a covey of locals.

  Ric makes his way over to them and, as he does so, he briefly makes eye contact with Talaia. The policeman does not acknowledge him.

  “What’s all the fuss about, Marcello?”

  On seeing Ric, several of those around Marcello turn their attentions to the floor and move away as if Ric has gained the status of a social pariah.

  Il Velaccino turns, smiles and then returns his gaze to the frogmen. “If I was one of those contestants from a game show, I would say they are looking for the keys to the Schiavettoni. Oh, sorry, of course, I mean a kind of heavy iron handcuffs the Fascisti used to use. But, if you ask me for an educated guess, I would say this is the kind of thing they do when they are searching for evidence. Already today, they have searched the houses and the sewers in the Maddalena. It is very possible they are looking for the weapon which was responsible for Girolamo Candela’s murder?

  “But what kind of fool,” he adds, aside, “would shoot a man and then throw the gun into the sea not three hundred metres from the scene of his crime?”

  “Beats me, Marcello. How’s the Mara coming along?”

  “You should know, Ric. You were there this morning.”

  The facetious tone he employs, unsettles Ric. “Sure, I needed a couple of things off the boat. I didn’t think you’d mind.”

  Marcello grunts, “She’s your boat,” and adds below his breath, “and for the time being she is not going anywhere.”

  They watch in silence, although the speculation as to what the police frogmen are searching for provokes a constant hubbub of conversation.

  Marcello glances at Ric again. “Did you get what you wanted from the Mara this morning, or are you like the police, still looking for what it is that you have lost?” he asks. His tone suggests he would like Ric to have asked permission before he let himself into the boatyard.

  But Ric is not taken with Marcello’s pique and feels inclined to harden his response, “Thank you, yes: my boots. If it’s all the same to you, I needed them for the hike over to Old Nino’s. Turns out he’s remembered a good deal about the guy I think might be my great-grandfather.”

  “Oh, yes?” But still Marcello’s concentration is focused on the action off the beach.

  “Yes. It seems he might have known your grandfather, Vincenzo.”

  At this, Marcello tears his gaze from the water and turns to look at Ric. His expression, though, is one of discomfort, as though Ric has just nudged him in his ribs. “And precisely what nonsense did the old fool come up with this time? He is quite mad, you know?”

  Not wanting to land Nino fairly and squarely in Marcello’s bad books for digging up a Maggiore family skeleton… Ric chuckles.

  “What is so funny?”

  “Nothing,” he replies, thinking of skeletons not being where others believe they should be.

  Marcello glances at him and raises an eyebrow, “Let us talk after the Circus Maximus has completed the production. I think this promises to become more amusing, eh?”

  One of the divers suddenly stands up. He cuts a faintly farcical figure in his red dry-suit and breathing apparatus, the sea water only just clearing his knees.

  He removes his regulator and calls to the beach.

  A second diver, who looks curiously naked without his bottle, mask and flippers, trudges noisily about the shingle, searching for something. One of the uniformed poliziotti approaches a child at the front of the crowd and asks to borrow his long-handled net. The child is reluctant at first and clutches it tight to his chest. But after some very theatrical pleading from the poliziotto and well supported by the gentle encouragement of the boy’s parents, he very begrudgingly hands over his net.

  The poliziotto, aware of his now crucial contribution to the investigation, struts proudly down to the water’s edge. He holds the net out towards the diver, but he is a couple of metres short of reaching him and does not want to get his feet wet. They stand, staring at each other for a few seconds.

  “Continua,” someone shouts and the crowd roar.

  “Vai! Vai!” the crowd begin to chant in unison.

  The diver stands his ground; the poliziotto, the same. And the longer the stalemate continues, the louder the chanting grows.

  “Vai! Vai!”

  But they stand and wait each other out. And as though egged on by a conductor, the volume of encouragement swells until it deafens.

  “Vai! Vai!”

  But the diver and the poliziotto are anchored in despair; neither will surrender his position for fear of very publicly surrendering his ego along with it. They stare, helplessly at each other, each one waiting for the other to concede.

  “Vai! Vai!”

  Commissario Talaia shouts, although his words are lost in the racket from the multitude. The poliziotto looks briefly down at his polished shoes. He hesitates, shrugs his shoulders and resigns himself to wading into the water. But as he gets to within a couple of metres of the diver, he stumbles and falls flat on his face.

  The diver, reaching out to try to grab the net, falls too, and the pair of them flounder and thrash in the sea like two children engaged in a water fight.

  The multitudes are beside themselves, guffawing, slapping their thighs and creasing up double in amusement.

  Commissario Talaia raises his hands to his face and turns away, not wanting to witness the farce a moment longer.

  Eventually, the saturated poliziotto leaps up and staggers like a drunk back to the beach
. The diver, though, takes a while to regain his balance and composure, and when he has replaced his regulator, he sinks slowly back down, child’s net in hand, his embarrassment concealed behind his face mask.

  “Vanno a pesca!” a wag calls from the perfect anonymity of the crowd.

  The onlookers laugh hysterically.

  “They go feeshing,” the man on the terrace responds.

  However, this final appreciation of the circus clowns is tinged with a degree of nervous anticipation as the diver is evidently trying to find his original mark.

  “Opera buffa, eh?” Marcello growls, sucking his teeth.

  The diver’s shoulders roll and his arms and elbows pump as he tries to shovel into his net whatever it is that he has found on the seabed.

  After a minute, the crowd grows restless for more entertainment. “Vai! Vai! Vai!” they begin to chant again, quietly at first and then louder and louder until they are very suddenly interrupted by the diver, who stands up and holds his net aloft.

  At first, all they notice is the white bikini bra hanging from the end of his net.

  The crowd begins to laugh hysterically until as one, they realise there is something else weighing down the little boy’s fishing net.

  The laughter dies away gradually and they quiet, unable to laugh as they crane their necks to get a better view of his catch.

  It is a gun: a pistol. And from where Ric is standing, he can see it is the Beretta.

  43

  Nobody moves and nobody breathes. They stand and stare, open-mouthed at the diver, as he examines the gun dangling in the mesh of the child’s net.

  Ric tries to remember if he wiped the gun clean the last time he touched it. He knows he dare not move. The very last thing he can do is to look over at Talaia. It is precisely how he feels driven to react and he can feel the Commissario’s eyes boring a hole in the side of his face, but he knows he would give himself away as surely as if he put his hand up and shouted, “That’s mine, thank you.”