The House at the Edge of Night

by Catherine Banner

  In spite of this, his own life remained narrow and shallow-rooted, as though he had never really begun it. A large and hawkish man with one straight bristle of eyebrow across his forehead, he was tall without being apologetic for his tallness, unlike most men of high stature. His height and the obscurity of his background made him out of place, a foreigner everywhere. When he witnessed the young taking photographic portraits in the Piazza del Duomo of Florence, or drinking chocolate at little bandy-legged tables outside the bars, he felt that he had never belonged to their species. His youth had passed and he felt himself to be at the beginning of middle age. He was a solitary man, grave of dress, reserved of habit, who spent his evenings in study of medical periodicals and his Sundays in his elderly foster father’s parlor, discussing the newspaper, examining the newest specimen in the old man’s collection, playing cards. As his hands moved, he remembered the tarocco tales of his childhood: the Hanged Man, the Lovers, the Tower.

  The old doctor had retired now. He still visited the foundling hospital, which had modernized in recent years and whose children now slept in specially aired dormitories, and played on great terraces full of drying linen, built particularly for the purpose.

  Amedeo continued to apply for a permanent position. He sent letters everywhere, to villages in the south whose names he had never heard before, to comunes in the height of the Alps, to insignificant islands whose inhabitants sent their replies by boat via neighboring villages because no postal service had yet reached them.

  Finally, in 1914, one mayor sent back a letter by such roundabout means. His name, he wrote, was Arcangelo, his town Castellamare. If Amedeo was willing to travel to the south, there was an island utterly without medical assistance that might have a post for him.

  The island was a crumb between the pages of his foster father’s atlas; south and east of Sicily, it was the farthest Amedeo could possibly have ventured from Florence without reaching Africa. He wrote back the same afternoon and accepted.

  At last, a permanent position. His foster father saw him off at the station, wept in spite of his intentions, and promised that in the summer they would drink a glass of limoncello on a terrace laden with bougainvillea (the doctor’s views of the south were vague and romantic). “Perhaps I’ll even move there in my old age,” said the doctor. He had come to look on Amedeo not as a foster son but as a son outright, although he could not find within himself the phrases to say so. Meanwhile, Amedeo sought about for thanks, but could only shake the doctor’s hand. Thus they parted. They were never again to see each other alive.

  III

  Amedeo traveled steerage on a steamer from Naples. It was the first time he had been upon the sea, and he was dizzy with its hydraulic hiss, its vastness. He carried with him a trunk full of his medical instruments wrapped in bundles of straw, and a small leather case in which he had packed his few clothes, his shaving kit and pipe, and his book of stories. Also, a new Kodak folding camera, an unexpected gift from his foster father. Amedeo had resolved in Castellamare to be a different man, a man who had experiences of which photographs could be taken, a man who sipped chocolate on the terraces of elegant bars. Not a foundling, not a penniless jobbing physician. For he still inhabited the world as bare as he had come into it, with no wife, no friend except his foster father, no descendants. Couldn’t life alter? Hadn’t his life begun to alter already in making the journey here? He was almost forty. It was time to embark on the real existence he had always believed to be waiting for him.

  Since boyhood he had felt himself to be set against the tide, and so it was now: Looking back, he observed that all the steamers leaving the port of Naples seemed to swing to the north as though drawn by some invisible compass, while his own ship cut against the waves and plowed south, churning white moonlight under its prow. The steamer took in Salerno and Catania, then docked in Siracusa. From here, Amedeo saw Castellamare for the first time. The island was a low and brooding thing on the horizon, no more than a rock on the water. To carry him there, he could find no ferry or steamer, only one fishing boat, which bore the ominous name God Have Mercy. Yes, said the fisherman, he could take Amedeo to the island, but for no less than twenty-five lire because with this wind it would take all evening.

  An old man working at a pile of nets was drawn in by their conversation. He mumbled something about the island being a place of ill luck, plagued by a curse of weeping, and began a complicated story about a cave full of white skulls—but he was quickly hushed and sent away by the first fisherman, who believed himself on the brink of closing a deal.

  So he was, for Amedeo was not superstitious—and since he was unaccustomed to the south, neither was he inclined to barter. He paid the twenty-five lire, and with the fisherman’s help lodged his trunk of medical instruments under the thwart of the boat.

  The fisherman rowed and talked, rowed and talked. The people of Castellamare, he told Amedeo, scraped a living by herding goats and picking olives. Also they fished for tuna, which they bludgeoned to death with sticks. And other fish, all types of fish, ones you could bludgeon and ones you could hook and ones you could gaff with a spear under the gills. Amedeo, who had been seasick since Naples, kept his mouth firmly shut while the fisherman expounded upon these themes. At last, they approached the stone quay of Castellamare.

  The fisherman deposited him shortly after nine. As Amedeo watched the mast light of the God Have Mercy dip among the waves, a vast emptiness and silence settled around him, as though the island were uninhabited. Certainly, the few houses visible along its coast were unlit. The stone quay, which still held traces of heat, was scattered with petals of bougainvillea and oleander; a faint scent of incense hung in the air. Leaving his trunk, Amedeo went in search of some farm laborer or fisherman who might possess a handcart. But all he found was an old Arab tonnara with stone arches in which a few playing cards and cigarette butts lay scattered, and a white chapel, which also proved to be deserted. The altar bore the staring image of a saint Amedeo did not recognize; on either side of it were vases of lilies whose stems sagged in the heat.

  Amedeo’s letter from the mayor Arcangelo directed him to climb the hill, where he would find the town “past a stand of prickly pears and through a stone archway, on top of the rock.” He was becoming used to the dark, and now he distinguished the outlines of a settlement hanging on the edge of the cliff: thin shuttered houses, the peeling baroque façade of a church, a square tower with a dome in blue enamel that reflected the light of the stars.

  Amedeo could not carry his trunk up the hill. The only thing to be done was to make the ascent without it. He heaved it into the shelter of the chapel, which gave him some reassurance that it would be left undisturbed, and set out with only his suitcase. The road was stony and unleveled; on either side, lizards shifted in the undergrowth. The sound of the surf rose clearly through the dark, and looking down he saw that it pooled and foamed around the entrances of a hundred small caves. Farther up, the road twisted away from the coast and another part of the island came into view, flatter and more ordered, cut up into small strips of field and surrounded by the stone box houses of peasants. He passed under the shadow of an olive grove, between the somber forms of cacti. Sure enough, there was a stone archway here, faded and peeling. Now that he was at the summit of the island, in the full force of the wind, he saw that Castellamare was no different once you were upon it than it had appeared from a distance, still just a rock in a vast black ocean. To the north, the lights of Italy and Sicily shimmered hazily. To the south, the dark was uninterrupted.

  The town itself had the blind stillness of a place unused to visitors. The main street was lit at intervals with blackened filament lamps, the side streets by assorted gas lanterns suspended from the balconies. A profusion of thyme and basil gave off a strong odor in the dark. He was obliged to go all over the town looking for signs of life. He passed a street of shops whose names were painted in black capitals on the plaster, a green-smelling fountain, and a belvedere with a vista of
the ocean. No people. Just when he was beginning to despair, the sound of singing drew him. After some turns through unlit alleys, a wrestle with a low-hanging washing line, and an unfortunate encounter with a stray dog, he came up a long flight of steps to the edge of a piazza, and there he finally found the inhabitants of Castellamare.

  The whole square was in a state of noisy chaos. Women bore fish overhead on great platters; wine slopped into glasses; the circus strains of guitars and organetti rose in the dark. A boy and a girl without shoes plied a barrow dangerously through the legs of the crowd. In one corner a donkey auction was in progress; around the creature, men, women, and children jostled and shoved, waving pink tickets. On a pedestal hovered a great plaster effigy of a saint, a woman with a coil of black hair and an alarming stare, fanned by a hundred red flames. Amedeo was soon to learn that he had arrived in the middle of the yearly festival of Sant’Agata. For now, it seemed only a wondrous, magical disorder unlike anything he had witnessed.

  Into this disorder, as into a warm sea, stepped Amedeo. He passed through the scents of jasmine and anchovies and liquor, through snatches of dialect and accented Italian and high lamenting songs whose language he did not recognize, through the light of fires and torches and the hundred red candles that illuminated the ghostly saint. At last, emerging from the crowd with his suitcase clutched to his chest, he found himself before an extraordinary house.

  A square building in faded amber, it seemed balanced on the very side of the hill, between the light of the piazza and the dark of the hillside and the sea. Its terrace was draped in great profusions of bougainvillea. At little tables, among the flowers, the islanders drank limoncello and arancello, fought and swore over card games, swayed to the whirling songs of an organetto. A sign in fanciful script proclaimed the words “Casa al Bordo della Notte”: House at the Edge of Night.

  A tiny old man approached Amedeo. Reeling slightly, this man looked up at him and said: “Who are you?”

  “Amedeo Esposito,” said Amedeo, startled into introducing himself. “I’m the new doctor.”

  The old man puffed himself up with delight. “The new doctor!” he said. “The new doctor!”

  Amedeo was alarmed as the islanders surged around him, clapping their hands, thumping his shoulders, vigorously seizing his arms. It took him some moments to recognize this for what it was: a welcome. The tiny old man was crowing in delight. “Rizzu is my name,” he said. “This bar is my brother’s. The Rizzus are an important family on the island, as you’ll see, signor il dottore. I’ll fetch you a drink. I’ll fetch you grilled anchovies and a rice ball and a plate of mozzarella.”

  The doctor had eaten nothing since Siracusa, and all at once began to be hungry. He sat. Liquors were poured for him, a table cleared. The mayor Arcangelo appeared soon after, a stout grocer who moved through the crowd with well-oiled charm, all smiles. He shook Amedeo’s hand, clapped his shoulder, and welcomed him to the island. He then introduced the priest, who was narrow and went by the name of Father Ignazio and was also, Arcangelo said, a member of the town council.

  After this hasty welcome, the mayor vanished, but the priest, with a grave cough, sat down near Amedeo. “You haven’t yet been introduced to il conte, I daresay. The deputy mayor. This is the first time anyone but he has been mayor on the island, so you find us at a time of great modernization.”

  Amedeo, who had thought that there was no such thing as a count in any part of Italy in the twentieth century, was at a loss for a reply. “You’ll encounter the count soon enough,” said the priest. “Don’t worry. Best to get it over with.”

  Rizzu returned, bearing plates, with an equally tiny old man whom he introduced as his younger brother and the owner of the bar. Rizzu heaved himself up into the chair on the other side of Amedeo, poured him more liquor, and began to explain the history of the island, and of the saint whose festival was now taking place in the square.

  “I keep telling Father Ignazio he must speak to the pope about officializing Sant’Agata,” he told Amedeo. “She’s cured all kinds of illnesses. A curse of weeping one time, and another time an epidemic of typhoid. She saved the island from the invaders by bringing a storm of flying fish down on the enemy ships, and on a fourth occasion she showed her grace by mending the legs of a young girl who had fallen into a well, praise be to the saint. Why, there’s the girl herself—there—Signora Gesuina—”

  Amedeo looked—“No, signore, there!”—and at last understood that Rizzu was pointing to an ancient woman, swaying blindly to the wails of the organetto. “When did the miracle happen?” asked the doctor.

  “Oh, a few years ago now,” said Rizzu. “But we expect Sant’Agata to bestow another miracle any year now. At her festival we carry her statue all around the coast. Then, to reward us, she blesses the fishing boats, the planting of new ground, and all the babies born on the island. Seven this year—you’ll be busy, dottore, I daresay!”

  “And they’ll all be named Agata,” added the grave priest. “For I’m certain there’s nowhere in the world with more Agatas than this island. There has been an epidemic of Agatas in recent years. It has now become necessary to refer to them by attribute: Agata-with-the-green-eyes, Agata-from-the-house-with-the-bougainvillea, Agata-daughter-of-the-baker’s-sister—”

  “ ‘Agata’ is the very best of names!” protested Rizzu, in drunken high spirits. He clambered down from his seat and went off in search of wine for the doctor, who didn’t seem to like the island’s liquors—for really he was drinking very slowly, thought Rizzu, and with unnecessary coughs and splutters.

  Meanwhile, Amedeo delighted the crowd by taking out his book of stories and making a record of Rizzu’s account of Sant’Agata, which had thoroughly charmed him. Like everything this night, it seemed enchanted and not quite real, and he was anxious not to forget it.

  When the others had dispersed a little, Father Ignazio leaned toward Amedeo. “You’ll have no peace, I’m afraid,” he said. “We haven’t had a doctor on the island since the first Greek sailors landed here two millennia ago. The islanders will be bringing you their bunions and piles, their sick cats and hysterical daughters, their whole backlog of medical complaints. And their stories. Many more stories. Be warned.”

  “You have never had any doctor on the island before?”

  “None.”

  “What’s the normal practice when someone is sick?”

  Father Ignazio spread his hands. “For all serious matters, we send the islanders in a fishing boat to the mainland.”

  “And what about when it’s stormy, or when no boat is available? I had some trouble getting here; there was only one man willing to take me.”

  “I have a few medicines which I can distribute,” said the priest. “That good widow, Gesuina, attends the expectant mothers. We manage as we can between us. But no—it’s a sad state of things. We’ll be glad to have you here. It breaks my heart to bury the young when we’ve no medical man to tell us whether it might have been prevented.”

  “But why has a doctor only now been sought?”

  In answer, Father Ignazio gave a melancholy, sonorous sniff. “It’s a question of politics. The previous mayor was unwilling. He didn’t see the need for a doctor on the island. Now the town council has changed—I’m on it, and the schoolmaster Vella—and Arcangelo is mayor now, and we get things done.”

  “Who was the previous mayor?”

  “Il Conte d’Isantu,” said the priest.

  “This count everyone is waiting for.”

  “Yes, dottore. Of course, officially, he’s no count any longer. But since the Unification the islanders—damned fools—have voted one d’Isantu or another in as mayor at every election. Except this time—God and Sant’Agata know why!”

  “This conte has been mayor for years, and he did not see the need for a doctor? How many are the inhabitants?”

  Father Ignazio said that he supposed about a thousand, though as far as he knew no census had ever been made. But here, the pri
est turned abruptly to the matter of Amedeo’s lodgings. “You are to stay in the house of the schoolmaster Professor Vella and his wife, Pina,” he said. “They must be somewhere about here—let me fetch them.”

  The priest got up from the table and returned some minutes later with the schoolmaster and his wife. Il professore was a man approaching middle age, who wore his hair greased sideways. He clapped Amedeo on the shoulder and said, “Ah, good, good, an educated man at last,” which made the priest sniff. Il professore took possession of Amedeo, and began to recount to him choice facts from the island’s history: “invaded by eight separate powers, imagine!” “and no church until 1500.” At about three o’clock, drunk beyond talking, he toppled sideways from his chair.

  The schoolmaster was escorted home. Pina, his wife, now came out of the shadows. Il professore had told Amedeo, confusedly, that the islanders were part-Norman part-Arab part-Byzantine part-Greek part-Phoenician part-Spanish part-Roman, and this was evident in Pina, who had black hair like ropes and eyes of a surprising opal color. She was drawn into the circle and exhorted to tell what the islanders called “the real story of Castellamare.” This she did, in a voice hesitant but strong: a story of invaders and exiles, eruptions of liquid fire and ghostly weeping, mourning voices and caves full of the click of white bones—a story so dazzling that Amedeo would struggle to remember it properly when he woke the next day, and forever afterward believed that he had forgotten the most important part of it, that no telling could be quite as good as Pina Vella’s.

  Her story done, Pina excused herself: She must check her husband had got home safely; perhaps she would be back for the end of the festival, and certainly for the scattering of the flowers.