The side of her face, sheen with perspiration, slips against the red pillow. The pillow. It is part of why she is here. It is but one part of the reason she is running. Running to get away. Getting away to escape. Escaping in vain.
She sits up: the beach is still busy, though the sun is now low towards the mountains.
A swim to freshen her mind; to escape thought.
The water is cooler than expected, though not so cold that it catches her breath, and it swirls around her feet. She steps out further, unknowing that beneath her the seabed slips away sharply. Caught out and falling forward, she grasps the inflated pillow from under her arm and, like the young girl who once trained as a lifeguard, she swings it in one fluid movement under her shoulders to use as a float. Yes, a lifeguard. Catherine knows how to swim and she swims well: people used to tell her so, so the water holds no fear for her.
She paddles, splashing water on her face and, dipping her head back to wet her hair, she closes her eyes to the warmth of the sun.
A stream of cooler water tickles at her feet and then turns her round with all the ease of a cork spun in a bucket. A second surge of water pushes at the base of her hips, pushing her up and over her pillow.
She opens her eyes.
The beach is further away than it has a right to be. A man is standing, waving and shouting at her, but the water in her ears prevents her from hearing him. Perhaps he knows her.
She laughs. How could he know her? She knows no one here and no one knows her?
Small white–capped nymphs of waves dance about her and she finds herself swung round again: one moment she is facing the red and white pylon standing tall on the green slope of Aspromonte, the next she is facing the red and white pylon standing tall against the blue sky above Capo Peloro.
She stops laughing. How can that happen? She isn’t kicking with her legs, so why is she turning circles.
The beach is further away now and the man has been joined by others. They are talking, waving and pointing her way. The woman is with them, the woman who knew more about almost everything, and they are all now waving frantically.
She kicks with her legs, but try as hard as she might, she is still floating away across the Strait. She drops one arm off her pillow and strikes out for the beach and yet her effort makes no difference.
The green water suddenly draws at her legs: a giant fish is trying to suck her into its mouth. The force of the sucking alarms her; it is as though the water is alive, part of a greater body whose muscle is determined to pull her in through a valve.
A glance at the beach: a gathering crowd, fear in their faces, the frenzy of waved arms.
Why do they wave? Waving won’t help.
The woman: the woman who saved her from sunburn. Why did the woman not warn her about the water? Or did she? She talked about Scylla, the monster on the rock. She talked about Charybdis, the monster from the deep.
No one dares to enter the water. Why not? Is there really a monster lurking beneath the surface?
At least, she has the inflated pillow. At least she has that to hang onto. At least with that, she will be safe.
She rests her cheek against the pillow until a shocking, repellent, hideous memory reminds her why she should dislike the pillow. No, not dislike, more detest. How could she have bought it? Why didn’t she think the red pillow would remind her of… “How stupid you are,” she mutters. “How absolutely brain–dead, bloody stupid.”
Staring at the pillow as if it has delivered her some disgusting insult, she lets it go and watches it slide swiftly away.
At first it floats, simply, quietly, then caught by the breeze it pirouettes and tumbles far beyond her reach. However, the recollection the pillow has goaded from the locker of her darker memories does not go with it: it does not leave her like the inflatable pillow is now leaving her. The image, now seared across the screen of her thought and which no amount of water will wash away, will never leave her.
He had asked her. He had asked. If only he hadn’t. If only he hadn’t asked her that.
Kicking, flailing her arms, she urges herself up out of the water. The beach. The people. The waving. The woman, Angelica, looks to be talking on her cellphone. Oh, why hadn’t she warned her?
The monster has her firmly by her feet now. There is no hope, no chance she will escape the tow, the swell, the sucking of the monster’s great mouth.
Her limbs grow heavy. She grows weary. She wants it all to stop. She wants it all to go away. If she stops fighting, if she gives in, surely that yawning chasm inside her, the chasm that has grown wider and deeper, and both noisier and yet more silent and which aches so hard there can surely be no greater pain of longing; surely, if she gives in, that yawning chasm will be filled.
“Please, God,” she murmurs. “Please let me go. Please let it all stop.”
A shadow passes over her: the glare of the sun is extinguished.
Catherine breathes deep. She holds her breath. She lies back and looks up: an eye looks down at her, watching her. It resembles the eye of a pharaoh; perhaps it is God, perhaps he has been expecting her. And then it is gone and there is only water, soft and welcoming and salty water, and Catherine knows she no longer has the strength to fight the whirlpool of her emotions. She gives up her fight; she gives in to the monster and it sucks her down and down and down…
Chapter 2
A dorsal fin breaks the surface.
“Fish!” comes a shout from the crow’s nest. “To port. Four hundred metres.”
The four men on deck turn and, shading their eyes from the glare of the sun, they look hard, out across the silver mirror of sea.
The feluca’s two engines burst from their slumber and the deck vibrates. From his perch high up on the metal tower Pasquale the skipper, the capobarca, wheels the helm to bring the bow round.
“Did you see it?” young Enzo asks.
“No,” his father replies, “but get ready. See to the lines.” As the boat heaves in its turn, Antonio steps round the winch–box and sets off up the long passarelle which extends from the prow. The planked walkway, though secured by the many cables supporting it from the central tower, is no wider than his broad shoulders and he hangs on, hand over hand, to the slender wire–roped rail as he makes his way.
When he gets to the end, he turns and looks back up at the top of the tower.
Giuseppe, the spotter, is still pointing and directing the capobarca. He glances down and nods in confirmation.
Antonio squares his hips and steadies himself against the iron rail that runs around his platform. He picks up his long lance, checks the sharp tips, flicking each hinged barb to ensure none of the five is stuck down, and lays it down horizontally on the rail at his hips. Keeping his left hand on the lance, with his right he slips off his cap, careful not to dislodge his sunglasses, and wipes the sweat from his brow with his forearm. He sets the cap back and, returning his concentration to the surface of the sea, scours it in long even sweeps, searching for any sign of disturbance.
Nothing. The Tyrrhenian rolls away west to the foot of the Italian mainland and east to the Aeolian islands, one of which, the cone–shaped volcano of Stromboli, just crowns the horizon. To the south the mountains of Sicily bake in the midday sun and in the distance, to the north, a hydrofoil speeds towards the neck of the Strait.
Away aft, on the deck of the feluca, the lads are inspecting the baskets of thin nylon rope; rope they have coiled neatly to ensure that when Antonio, the funcitta, strikes with his lance, and the fish runs and sounds, the line will pay out without obstruction.
Pasquale throttles back and the boat pitches forward into the trough of a large wave. The boat very suddenly slows and at the end of the passarelle Antonio holds onto the rail of his small platform as it dips down into the sea. No sooner has it dipped, it rises up, then falls again and rises and falls, before eventually settlin
g to its original height.
Antonio’s legs are now soaked. And whilst the cooling of his feet is a welcome relief, he cannot conceal his dismay at the capobarca’s clumsiness.
He turns, looks up, shouts, “Mi–i–i–i–i,” extending the i, so leaving his oath unfinished, and raising his hand to his mouth and touching his thumb with his fingers as if to pinch a kiss from his lips.
Up above, Pasquale shrugs his shoulders, as if to say, “I command the feluca, but the sea…”
The engines burble. The sun beats down. The men are hunting. They are watching and waiting and no one talks. Somewhere, either beneath the shallow bottom of the boat or deep about its flanks, a swordfish, glides elegantly, effortlessly, in search of smaller fish.
The crew of the feluca had risen before the sun, said their goodbyes to those sleeping and made their way down to the beach. Giuseppe’s wife, Giulia, had made sandwiches and packed fruit, and Pasquale had dropped by the bakery to collect a bag of pizetta, the palm–sized pizzas. Enzo had brought a six–pack of two–litre bottles of water and Karl had ensured he would not run out of cigarettes: the day would be long, the provisions would all be needed.
The Salvazione, the blue–painted feluca, measures fourteen metres from bow to stern and a tall square tower of tubed steel, no wider than a man’s forearm and held in place by stays running down fore and aft, reaches up over twenty metres from the middle of the boat. On top of the tower sits a square platform, a crow’s nest, accessed by a trapdoor and large enough to accommodate two, or at the outside three, people: Pasquale, the capobarca and driver, and Giuseppe, the avvistatore, the spotter. They will stay up on the platform from the moment they leave their mooring to the moment they return, not descending even for calls of nature. So high up and with no escape from the glare of the sun and its reflection from the sea, they wear shirts buttoned down to their wrists, long trousers and desert hats. At the foot of the tower stands a cabin and though the only available shade lies within, the noise from the engines beneath the floor deters the crew from lingering too long.
At first light, they had rowed out, boarded and motored north through the neck of the Strait, their conversations loud, confident and humorous. And when level with the vast container port at Gioia Tauro, they had turned and patrolled a boxed grid; first up along down and back; then further up, further along and further down and back.
A juvenile swordfish, leaping out of the water, dancing with a shoal of mackerel, is all they had seen to keep them occupied and so bored, tired and over–heated, Antonio had shouted up to Pasquale, pointed west and they had tried their luck over towards the Aeolian islands.
Young Enzo whistles from the deck.
Antonio turns and nods: the fish is gone and Pasquale, seeing his funcitta walk back down the passarelle, wheels the helm. He needs no instruction; it is time to head back to the Strait.
An hour later, as they round the low headland of Capo Peloro, Antonio’s old Motorola cellphone chirps. He flips it open. “Pronto,” he says.
Enzo and the other two lads watch him.
Antonio listens, his brow furrowed, his expression filling with concern. He looks up and over at the beach. A crowd has gathered; they are waving their arms, trying to attract his attention.
“Yes. Yes,” he says. “Where? How far?”
The lads track his gaze and stare.
And just as he has passed the day scouring the water for any sign of swordfish, Antonio now returns his attention to the surface of the sea some hundred metres or so off the beach. Whatever he is searching for lies there, directly in the line of the sun.
The sea shimmers and sparkles white and silver, as if sprinkled with flecks of magnesium and specks of phosphorus. The brilliance dazzles, blinding him.
Enzo steps beside him. “Someone in the water?”
“Yes,” Antonio replies, his tone dull and flat. “Tell Pasquale and Giuseppe. At this time, the tide flows fast out towards Calabria. Whoever the poor unfortunate is, they will not last long.”
“No one survives Charybdis,” Enzo mutters. He looks up and whistles again.
Giuseppe, the spotter, leans over, looks down and nods vigorously: they have seen the crowd and there can only be one reason for such an animated gathering.
“A float!” The high pitch of Pasquale’s scream, alerts them.
Giuseppe is pointing.
They follow the direction of his outstretched arm.
“There. A hundred metres just to starboard of the bow. A red float,” Enzo says.
“Go,” Antonio shouts. “Go fast.”
The engines roar, the deck shakes and the Salvazione pitches forward as it picks up speed.
“A head. In the water, beyond the float,” Enzo says.
Although it is not so far, it seems to take the boat an age to cover the distance and they watch, helpless, as the person raises their arms in distress, in appeal, in vain hope. Whoever it is, he or she is sinking and sinking fast, losing the battle with the monster’s unquenchable thirst.
“Get me the rope,” Antonio orders. “The one we use for lifting.”
Enzo scurries and returns with a long length of rope the thickness of a man’s wrist. He helps wind it, quickly but deftly, twice around Antonio’s chest and then ties it securely.
“Pay the line out as I jump,” Antonio tells him. “If I go under, I will pull twice when I am ready to surface. Pull hard: don’t worry about hurting me. Count to thirty, quickly, and if I have not come back up by then, bring me in anyway. Understand?”
“Yes. But why don’t you let me; I am lighter.”
“Do as I say, Enzo.”
“If you are sure, papà?”
“I am sure.”
They lift their heads: the figure in the water is sliding down beneath the choppy water as they close. Forty metres, thirty, twenty.
In the crow’s nest, Pasquale eases the throttle back, disengages the gear, waits for a second, then jams the leaver backwards. Cogs grind and shafts clank, groan and whine in objection at being asked to reverse their rotation so suddenly.
The boat tips forwards and Enzo steadies his father from falling over.
They move to the side and without being asked, the other two lads take up the slack rope.
“A woman,” Enzo says, as if, for some reason no one can fathom, he expected a man. “She is going under. Now, papà. Now!”
The funcitta breathes deep, filling his lungs with the warm afternoon air, and spreading his arms wide, he launches himself feet first over the side.
He lands in the sea with an almighty splash, disappears, surfaces, shakes the water from his head and looks around.
The woman is gone.
“There,” Enzo shouts, pointing. “There, to your left. Down there.”
Antonio breathes deep again, hunches his shoulders and dives under the surface, his arms dividing the water, his legs kicking out as they propel him down and down and down…
Chapter 3
The room is small and the walls white and bright, but for the gloomy corners of the high ceiling; gloomy, as though spun with misted spiderwebs.
The mask itches against the side of Caterina’s nose, as does the cannula in the back of her hand. She turns her head: a young nurse, her face round and angelic, her hands in her lap, sits watching her.
The nurse goes out and returns accompanied by a doctor, his hair dark, neat and tidy, his trademark white coat hanging open.
He looms over her. “I am Dottore Roselli,” he says in English, as he moves the mask up onto her forehead and peers into her eyes. “I understand you speak Italian if not Sicilian, or so the nurse informs me. How do you feel?”
“Not bad. A little thick, sort of tired, a bit heavy.”
When he is satisfied with what he sees, the doctor replaces her mask and says, “Yes,” a long, drawn out sigh that sug
gests he is not in the least surprised she feels so. He takes a clipboard from the rail at the end of her bed and studies it for a few seconds, “You will feel like this, heavy and weak, and it will be tiring to breathe for a while. This is, though, a small price to pay for one who came so close to drowning.”
Her mask is connected by a tube to a machine on the table beside her, a machine which beeps rhythmically and which is in turn connected to a cylinder fixed to the wall.
“Can I take the mask off for a minute?” she asks, her voice both husky and muffled.
“Yes, but not for long. You are suffering from hypoxemia: this means you have a very low level of oxygen in your blood. You have been in the Intensive Care Unit overnight and though your oxygen level is gradually improving; I would like to see it return to normal. So please, replace the mask when you have said what you need to say.” Gently, he lifts her mask and rests it back on her forehead.
“My throat is sore,” she says, coughing.
The nurse wipes her lips with a tissue, then helps her sip water through a straw.
“This is also not a surprise,” the doctor says. “We had to intubate you before we could remove fluid and prevent your lungs from collapsing. That danger has now passed and if you stay on the oxygen for the moment, I believe you will soon recover. Do you know where you are?”
“Yes, doctor; at least I think so.”
“Where are you? Please, tell me.” He frowns in concentration.
“I’m in a hospital.” She coughs again; that dry hacking cough of someone who has swallowed a drink the wrong way.
He smiles at her answer. “Yes, of course: ICUs are more often than not situated in hospitals and you are in Papardo Hospital. Do you know what day it is?”
She thinks. “Saturday.”
“No.” He smiles, ruefully. “Today is Sunday. That you do not know is also not a surprise taking into account your condition when you were brought in.” He flips back a page of the clipboard. “Now, I have to ask you a list of questions. They may appear a little ordinary, but we have to be sure you are not suffering from any altered state; mentally, that is. Please, what is your full name and your date of birth?”
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