Rocca clapped me on the shoulder. ‘I’ll see the women don’t neglect you. One or the other of them can take turns baking a bit extra.’
I mumbled my thanks.
‘I’ve heard talk that you will be bringing extra labour into the area. Is that true?’
I explained that I hoped to locate a good site. When I did I would apply for Algerian diggers since no one in Taita seemed interested in manual labour.
‘A pity,’ Rocca said. ‘We’re a law-abiding community. Such crime as may occasionally occur — usually a matter of passions running wild — are dealt with by the villagers. We take full responsibility. That’s something you didn’t understand,’ he went on. ‘I’m sorry you were knifed, but that’s all been taken care of. You can feel perfectly safe here. We’re a law-abiding community.’
His expression was one of extreme kindliness. He might have been discussing Social Security pensions.
Law-abiding if you discount attempted rape, assault and near murder, I thought sourly. I decided not to bite the hand of the man who was about to feed me. No doubt I’d be shamelessly overcharged.
Xavier tried to persuade me to view the funeral from his window seat, but I wanted a closer look. I left shortly afterward.
Maria was waiting at the front door, smiling with her hand over her mouth, her eyes fixed on some point above my head as she handed me a basket of fruit. I knew better than to offer to pay for it.
I was glad to get outside. The meeting with Xavier Rocca had disturbed me. I felt dazzled by the man’s magnetism. I could not help liking him, in spite of his lecture on justice and safety, which had been a bit hard to swallow. I grinned and rubbed my jaw reflectively. It was still sore.
By now the funeral procession had reached the square. There was a large open coffin devoid of flowers. Seven men in shiny black suits were shouldering the coffin, their rifles slung over their shoulders: Bonnelli, Padovani, Pinelli, Leca, Castelli, Pascal, plus Jules. That surprised me. A dozen or more villagers trailed behind the coffin, their rifle butts rhythmically smashing the cobbles. There were no mourners, nor the traditional voceri.
I felt disappointed. This was my first funeral in Taita. The men passed solemnly into the cemetery, and I lingered by the gate. A few minutes later I heard footsteps behind me. I spun around, noting that my reflexes were improving, but it was only Hiller.
‘You’re lucky,’ Hiller said. ‘You’re still alive.’
‘I guess so,’ I said with a laugh. ‘So what?' Hiller seemed a bit comic, like a character out of light opera. The local buffoon.
‘Ambrosini claimed that you were making advances to Sybilia and that he warned you off with a black eye and a knife wound. That was why the villagers backed his false alibi. Later they decided you were telling the truth — mainly because of your splendid outburst at the cate. Splendid in Corsican terms, that is.’
‘So what are you doing about it?’
‘Not much I can do. Nearly all the village males were away on this hunting party they’d organized. Now they all tell the same story.’
‘Which is?’
‘That Ambrosini got in the line of fire. Stood where he shouldn’t have been standing, in front of the stag, which, incidentally, got away. Ambrosini got three shots clean through the middle of his back.’
‘And that’s…? I’ll be darned.’ I felt a cold shiver of fear run down my spine.
Hiller sniffed unpleasantly. ‘Write it in your notebook, Dr Walters. Publish it for all I care. I’ve seven sworn statements from witnesses who saw the accident.’
It was not necessary to peer in the coffin, but I did anyway.
That’s why he wanted me here at four exactly. So that I could see the funeral. Yet this was arranged on Monday, and Ambrosini thought he was still alive. So much so, he even went on a hunting trip. My God, he was so dead, they even had the time of the funeral arranged.
I wandered down to the cate feeling chilled to the marrow. I stayed there for a long time, but neither three stiff brandies nor the roaring fire was able to warm me.
Chapter 64
The following Monday I collected my suitcase from Father Andrews’s storeroom and went to the address Xavier Rocca had given me. I wasn’t impressed with the exterior view. It was a five-storey building presenting the usual Corsican facade of dirt, peeling plaster, rotting wood, and several centuries of neglect. Nevertheless the building was constructed to last forever with granite walls two feet thick. Probably fifteenth century, I thought, wrinkling my nose at the smell of garbage coming from the back.
Still, the flat itself, a walk-up on the fifth floor, was in direct contrast with the damp, dark staircase. It was light, freshly painted, and clean. Madame Barnard, a sorrowful-looking woman with spaniel eyes, had moved out of her four-poster double bed into her son’s single room, leaving me her magnificent, homemade goose-down mattress. I was too embarrassed to tell her that I was allergic to feathers, and consequently I sneezed throughout the winter.
On my first evening Germaine Barnard invited me to join her for a small sherry in her sitting room. Overstuffed, ornate pieces of furniture were so crowded together that it was hard to cross the room. The walls were cluttered with pictures of dead relatives, whom she addressed as if they were still alive and here in the room with us.
I discovered that she wished to ‘give me a reading’. I wasn’t sure what that meant, but I was left in no doubt at all that I was expected to pay one dollar first, which I promptly did.
She lit an old lamp on the mantel, fetched a dish from the kitchen, and poured some oil on the water. After that she seemed to be listening to voices.
She was, I discovered later, what they call in Corsica a signadori. She performed precisely the same function as a witch doctor in Africa, that of herbalist, soothsayer, spiritualist, and amateur psychiatrist. She was the expert in combating the pitiless eye — evil or otherwise. She also foretold the future and cured illnesses, especially mental ones. And she had a large and faithful practice in Taita. For a few days I thought I’d found the famous mazzeri of Taita, but I soon discovered my mistake.
‘Corsica will take life, and Corsica will give life,’ she told me in a singsong voice. ‘I see danger, and I see death. I see you going over the seas and returning.’ Suddenly she pushed the dish across the table. ‘You should leave Corsica,’ she said. ‘Go home. You are going to cause too much trouble here.’ She put the dish away quickly, saying that she would pray for me.
Later, when we got to know each other better, she offered me breakfast at a more reasonable, all-in-one rate, but I wanted to be out of the house before dawn each morning, so we carried on as before.
Sometimes I slept in my camp, but in foul weather it was good to know that Germaine’s deep feather mattress was there. Not that I slept particularly well anywhere. Frustrated lust was a new dimension in my life. When my frustration became almost unendurable, I took a fortnight’s holiday in Ajaccio. But a short-term liaison with an air hostess did nothing to dispel my longing for Sybilia.
Occasionally we spoke to each other. The first time was one frosty morning in November. She’d been gathering wood for the fire in the forest and emerged onto the higher pasture just as I was moving camp. The meeting was contrived, I knew. Her hair was brushed and gleaming, her eyes shimmered with promises her lips would never make. She was wearing a thin black dress that clung to her waist and was far too smart for gathering mushrooms. Her face was pale, but her skin shone lustrously, and I longed to reach out and stroke the smooth slope of her cheek.
There was something so candid about her face. Perhaps because of the smooth wide forehead, the straight dark brows, the eyes set wide apart that stared into your soul. Yet when she was being devious I’d noticed she was unable to look at me. Instead she frowned, looked only at her hands and her feet, and her long, thick eyelashes would flutter down like the layered veils of a Moroccan woman.
That morning she was being devious. ‘What a surprise,' she lied. Her lips we
re quivering as she tried to conceal a smile of triumph.
My invitation to coffee was accepted with icy disdain. She did not offer to help as I put up my tent and lit the fire.
‘Is it worth it?’ she asked. ‘What possible reward could be worth this discomfort? Do they pay you a great deal of money for your research?'
‘Almost nothing,’ I admitted. ‘Particularly at the moment. I’m on a grant, but until I find my Stone Age site, I can’t draw much of it. It’s driving me crazy. Someone found those hand-axes the priest gave me. They’ve been dated… proves my theory…’
I was panting as I dug in the tent poles.
‘Man was here during the last Ice Age. Makes you think, doesn’t it?’
‘What are you talking about?’ she asked sharply.
‘If you’re interested in archaeology, I’ll give you a copy of my book,’ I said. ‘It explains the basics.’
‘I’m interested in books,’ she replied cautiously.
In my pack I carried an advance copy of Learning from the Past.
When I handed it to her, she gasped. ‘But this is your name,' she said, pointing to the cover. ‘You wrote it? I misunderstood you when you said “your book.” ’
‘It’s okay. Happens all the time.’
She turned the book over and burst out laughing as she looked at the photograph inside the dust cover. ‘But you don’t look like this,’ she said. ‘Or perhaps you did before you came here.'
When she looked at me, there was a completely new expression on her face. What was it? Admiration, I decided happily. Of course that was exactly why I’d given her the book. I was tired of being treated like the local loon.
‘That book is paying for most of this…’I gestured toward the equipment. ‘Now I’m writing a book about Taita, and Taita’s past. About the people who lived here in prehistoric times and how some of their customs have lasted until today.’
Suddenly she was interested. I spent most of that morning telling her exactly what I had told her before, but what she had obviously forgotten. Or maybe she’d never listened. This time she did, perhaps because the book was my banner of respectability.
Things seemed to be going my way at last. ‘I was thinking of packing up early and driving down to the coast to pick up the post and eat somewhere. Care to come along?’ I asked as casually as I dared.
She shook her head.
‘Sybilia, why are you content with such a God-awful life? Don’t you ever hanker for something a bit better? You’ve let the locals brainwash you into believing that you don’t deserve any fun in your life. You’ve paid your debt to society — whatever it was.’
‘You have no right to say that,’ she said angrily.
She stood up. For a moment she hesitated, absently kicking the turf with her thick boots. Then she scowled at me and grabbed her basket. ‘Thank you for coffee,’ she flung over her shoulder.
Well, I blew that one.
I thought she’d never come back, but she did from time to time as I continued my frenetic search through the maquis. She seemed to have developed an interest in my work, and she was obviously learning English again, for her vocabulary now included words such as ‘snack’, ‘buddy’, ‘chuckle’, and ‘nauseating’. No doubt she was reading American books from Father Andrews’s library.
In February the maquis turned white overnight with heath blossoms and wild almond trees. ‘We call it “the white spring”,’ Sybilia told me one morning when she arrived with some pastries to And me wandering through the waist-deep flowers and smiling happily.
She, too, relaxed a little as we walked over the hillside, yet she was never completely open with me. There was always that lurking sense of secretiveness. She held back. Still, she was tantalizing. I could sense the sexuality behind her calm exterior: the passion, the voluptuous appetite, the craving to be loved. It was all there, waiting to transcend the barriers of village morality. She was like the early flowers: petal soft, dainty, waiting in fluttering awareness. Yet there was something detached and untouched about her as well.
Among the flowers I stumbled across the ruins of an old Roman camp. I became wildly excited and showed it to Sybilia. She responded with stories of local Corsican heroes who had fought the Romans and won through cunning or bravery. The Romans, I discovered, were still very real to the Corsicans. It was as if they had arrived a generation ago.
Later that month mimosa trees made vivid splashes of yellow on the mountainside, and from then on the maquis changed colour almost weekly. There were successive bloomings of spring flowers, reaching a peak in May with the glorious white, lilac, and yellow blossoms of the cistus bushes. By then my enthusiasm for this site had waned. I had dug and pickaxed my way through levels of Roman and pre-Roman occupation right down to Iron Age artifacts, and that was that. The site had been occupied on and off for plus-minus four thousand years. Not nearly long enough for my purposes, and I’d wasted months on the dig.
By June, I was ready to quite Taita.
I said as much to Bonelli at Rocca’s bistro, in a voice loud enough for Sybilia to hear. I could see her shadowy outline crouched over her accounts in the back room. I felt angry with her. Lately she’d been avoiding me — just when we were getting along so well, too.
Til be packing up one of these days. Don’t worry, I’ll give you a couple of weeks’ notice of my intention to quit,’ I said as I paid for the day’s food. ‘I’ll be moving on in a southerly direction. Probably cross behind Mount Cinto and cut through the mountains toward the southeast.’
Bonelli showed no sign of interest, and Sybilia remained crouched over her books.
Although I hadn’t found my Stone Age site, my anthropological studies of Taitan village life were more or less complete. It was a pity that I’d failed to find the mazzeri or witness a vendetta, if you discounted Ambrosini. I’m not a quitter, but I knew that my frantic search here was unbalanced. I should’ve been able to accept defeat gracefully and move on. The same applied to my longing for Sybilia, which had become dangerously close to neurotic.
Perhaps I needed a spell in Boston, back where I belonged. So I told everyone of my impending departure, but I did nothing constructive about going. It was hard to sever the bonds with this strange village or to accept defeat. Instead I stored my gear with Father Andrews and took off for a month's underwater fishing.
I returned at the beginning of August bronzed and fit and somewhat saner, I thought. The following day I was once again excavating likely sites around the mountainside. Nearby, not so long ago, someone had stumbled across those Mesolithic hand-axes and carried them down to Father Andrews. It was tantalizing, maddening, and perhaps crazy to leave when I was so close to success. And then, of course, there was Sybilia.
Chapter 65
The setting sun was reaching out to the mountains, lighting the rocks with crimson glows. Partridges called and whirled away in thick scrub, and from deep shadows half-wild goats and donkeys peered sombrely at me. There were many birds, rising and falling in flight across the sun-drowsy maquis.
A perfect evening, but I was moping at my Roman camp, thinking, How can I ever leave this place? I gazed at the half-ruined walls, some exquisite mosaics, a few pots and pans, and the remnants of my own fires. This was the scene of my biggest hope and eventual disappointment. I was feeling depressed, because I didn’t want to leave Taita.
I feel at home here. That's the strange part of it. That's something new. I guess it's only because I'm identifying with the Corsicans. They have a sense of belonging that's instinctive. A Corsican is always intimately involved with his physical environment. But why am I thinking like this? To hell with the Corsicans.
All the same, I was in no hurry to pack up as I gathered some sticks to make a fire and boiled some water for coffee. I had purchased my last supplies from the cate that morning and made a big effort to be civil to Bonnelli, knowing that Sybilia was listening from the back room.
‘So you won’t want any more food, I suppose?�
��
A voice from behind me! It brought a glow of well-being with it. I’d been so busy getting the fire to draw, I hadn’t even heard her footsteps.
‘I was just thinking about you,’ I said.
‘Oh, yes?’ She began to pace up and down the narrow path between the trenches. She seemed ill at ease.
‘Hey, what’s the matter? Come and have some coffee.’
She glanced shyly at me. ‘Where will you go next.’
I shrugged. ‘Haven’t made up my mind. Have a last shot at finding a suitable site further south, I guess.’
‘You haven’t looked properly here.’
‘Haven’t I? D’you know something I don’t know?’
Now she looked guilty.
‘I have to move on. You and I… well, we’re getting nowhere, and you know how I feel about you. Besides, my work has come to a full stop. I can’t find my site, although my instinct’s never been wrong yet. It’s here somewhere. I’ll swear to that.’
How restless she was, pacing up and down, rubbing her hands over her forehead. ‘Of course, if you found your ruins, you’d stay.’
‘But since I’m leaving tomorrow, that’s not very likely,’ I retorted.
‘Come with me,‘ she said. ‘Just come. Remember to say that you found the place by yourself. Of course, you never would. You’re on the wrong side of the lake. It’s kilometres away. Come.’
She hurried off in the direction of Taita. Did she really know what I was looking for, or would she lead me to another Roman camp? I stood up and watched her doubtfully, but she was charging ahead as if scared she might change her mind. Probably all for nothing, but I had to see… had to make sure. I stamped out the fire, grabbed a torch and a trowel, and hurried after her.
Amazing stamina. We went north through the maquis, using old goat tracks, along hairpin ledges and rocky slopes. We crossed a stone bridge at least five hundred years old, moving toward the village. At the outskirts of the cemetery she made a detour and picked up the river north of her family’s garden. After that we followed its route up steep slopes and slippery rocks where the river fell in a series of waterfalls.
The Corsican Woman Page 33