Constant Tides

by Peter Crawley

  Caterina sits back down and tries to breathe; something, in all the excitement, she has neglected to do.

  Pasquale steers in the direction of the dinghy, now some hundred metres away.

  They wait, watching the water.

  “There, dead ahead,” Giuseppe shouts. “Between us and the dinghy.”

  “Yes, yes,” Pasquale screams. “I will bring you to him.”

  The engines growl and moan. The feluca runs forward. Antonio waits studying the surface in front of his precarious perch; he turns to glance up at his capobarca as if to ask where, how far, which side?

  “Now, twenty, to port. Soon. Very soon.” With each word, the pitch of Pasquale’s voice rises in urgency. “Now, now, in front. You must see him. In front.”

  But the funcitta doesn’t. As the bow comes around, the sun is now behind Antonio and the water before him cast into his shadow.

  Pasquale swings the helm to port; the shadow is removed and there beneath him, plain for Antonio to see, lies the swordfish.

  He lifts the lance high; he thrusts it down and lets go.

  The lance is gone, the loops of line are snatched from the base of the passerelle and Enzo feeds more line from the basket.

  Antonio turns, clambers over the rail and sets off back down the walkway, all the time nodding his head.

  Once back at the bow, both father and son pay out line. They wait patiently, chatting, smiling. Antonio waves the dinghy back and Karl stands up and begins rowing in their direction.

  Enzo, his foot braced against the gunwale, keeps hold of the line; his father, standing immediately behind, has hold of the line too, but seems casually unconcerned that with one sudden jerk the swordfish might haul both of them overboard. And if they were, what should she do? Climb the mast and inform Pasquale and Giuseppe? Grab the line and save them, the catch, the day? Or sit and look spare and hope that someone else will rush to her rescue?

  Caterina cranes her head and looks up at the base of the small platform that makes the crow’s nest. Both mornings, she has watched first Pasquale, then Giuseppe, climb onto the cabin roof, cross themselves and then start the long ascent, hand over hand, foot over foot, neither looking up nor down, scaling steadily, smoothly, up and up and up, as though they are embarked on little more than their customary passeggio. Even from below, the mere prospect of climbing the twenty metres is dizzying.

  She looks back at father and son and decides, in keeping with that of the capobarca and his spotter, their studied nonchalance is born out of years of experience rather than any desire to flaunt their machismo.

  Antonio turns, sees her looking at them and calls. “Caterina?”

  The bow swings round into the sun: she shades her eyes. “Yes, Antonio.”

  “Come help Enzo, eh?”

  She does not need to reply; to be asked is enough, and she leaps up and strides purposefully to his side. “What can I do?”

  He smiles, perhaps more to himself than her. “You can hold the line. You can help Enzo pull up the fish.”

  “Absolutely. Yes. Of course. Anything. Hold the line.” Caterina sets her feet and pulls a little too hard.

  Enzo stumbles backwards into her and Antonio ends up holding them both upright. “Whoa,” he says, laughing, reining her in, “we are catching fish not horses. Be strong, be gentle and–”

  “Sorry, I–”

  He touches his lips to quieten her. “And don’t be sorry. Now… Pull when he pulls.”

  Caterina looks down to where the line wears a crease in the lip of the deck; there are many such corrugations, all spread at irregular intervals, each one a testament to a swordfish brought up from the depths.

  As his father steps back, Enzo pulls on the line and, like the measured pace with which the other men climb the tower, he hauls hand over hand, relying on Caterina to take up the slack and keep the line taut.

  “There is a basket near your feet,” he says, over his shoulder, “try to let the line drop into it; try not to let it fall on the deck, that way no one can trip over it.”

  “Sure. Okay. I’ll do my best.”

  “Your best is all we ask for, Signora.”

  And together they haul the line and Caterina lets it fall, mostly if not exactly roundly, into the basket. At first, there is little resistance on the line except for the occasional tug, but as the swordfish nears the surface and realises that soon it will be lifted from the water, it begins to struggle frantically.

  “Wait,” Enzo says, his back straightening, his hips flexing as they compensate for the direction in which the fish is trying to drag him.

  The line loses some of its argument, the weight at the end of it seeming dead.

  “Pull again,” he says, so they do, rhythmically, evenly, hand over hand over hand.

  The line jerks and plays again.

  “No, wait a moment,” and then, when the line falls slack, “Now, up. Up, as quick as we can.”

  Antonio, meantime, has filled a bucket and brought a yellow towel from the cabin. He dunks the towel in the bucket and sloshes some water over the lip of the gunwale to cool the line furrow. Putting down the now empty bucket, he picks up a curiously medieval–looking instrument of torture; a stick about as wide as his wrist and as long as his leg. From the end of the stick a metal rod protrudes, curving in a u–bend and ending in a barbed spear.

  He kneels down and leans over the side. “He is coming. Four perhaps three metres.”

  Caterina hauls, the continuous effort causing her to huff and puff a little. Her hands sting and blister as the salt–watered nylon line draws the skin of her fingers over and away from the flesh beneath. Beads of sweat break out on her forehead and drip into her eyes: if only she had a spare hand, she would wipe them away. If only, but… she cannot let go for fear of leaving Enzo to be dragged overboard.

  He takes a step nearer the rail and glances over. “When he is on the water, my father will hook him with the gaff and we will bring him up onto the deck. It is best, Signora, if you stand away.”

  With one last heave, Enzo leans back and his father leans over the side and hooks the swordfish.

  Antonio grunts as he lifts, rising first from one knee, then the other, and finally standing ready to pull the gaff upward.

  The long rod of the harpoon appears, poking skyward towards Enzo. He takes a step to the side, out of its way.

  Two more hands of line and Caterina is pulling for all she is worth, the nylon cutting hard into her palms.

  Antonio grunts. Enzo groans. They lean back. The arcing dorsal and caudal fins of the fish are now visible just above the edge of the gunwale and… over, they stagger, half–falling backwards, dragging their catch with them.

  The swordfish slithers up over the lip and slaps down onto the deck, its torso twisting and tightening, its tail flapping out, its head turning, its long, rapier of a bill slashing impotently this way and that.

  Antonio immediately drops the gaff out of the way, picks up the soaking towel and spreads it across the head of the swordfish.

  Caterina, standing behind the winch box, stares at a fish whose body, grey–blue to almost bronze on top and silver underside, is near as tall as her shoulder, but whose sword extends longer than her arm outstretched. The harpoon, the three prongs of which are buried deep in the flesh of the fish’s back, sticks out from just behind the dorsal fin.

  Enzo straddles the fish, holding it down and still, while his father unscrews the shaft from the head of the harpoon. Then, with the swordfish lying on his left side, flexing and twisting, its lower jaw opening and closing, desperate for the life–giving passage of water through its gills, he moves the wet towel forward, exposing its large gill cover, and he runs the nails of his right hand first laterally along and then vertically down the cover, leaving a lattice of diamond–shaped marks in the skin.

  Caterina watches.r />
  “A cardata ra cruci,” Enzo says. “Our mark of respect to a noble fish that has given his life so that others will not starve. The funcitta must not do this or it is bad luck. And only on the right cheek. Call it a ritual, a tradition, a superstition; call it what you like, but it is important for us to respect the food our Strait supplies, don’t you think?”

  “Yes, Enzo, I do. Strange as it may sound to some, it makes perfect sense to me.”

  The dinghy bangs against the hull and Enzo is up on his feet, taking the line from Karl. Ninolino stands in the stern, wobbling as he keeps his balance in the swell, a half–filled basket of coils lying at his feet, the line to the fish in his hands. While Karl holds the dinghy steady, Ninolino steps nimbly to the bow and hands the line up to Enzo.

  The boys leap aboard and stow the dinghy behind the cabin.

  Now they are back, Caterina’s help is not required for the second fish and even Enzo stands away and allows them to haul up together. She notices there is no tugging or opposition to their steady rhythm.

  “The female fish will not fight,” he says. “She is too tired from dragging the dinghy and once they tire, they die.”

  “You knew the male fish would be nearby? Is that how it works?” she asks.

  “Not always, but we take the female first. She is the larger of the two and once we have her, the male will not desert her and he is then not so difficult to catch.”

  “Do you think he gives up? Do you think he surrenders because he can no longer be with his mate?”

  He pouts his lips, considering. “Many people like to think so.”

  “Do you?” she asks.

  “It is the way of things. If it wasn’t, why would we catch so many males after we catch the female?”

  With the help of Antonio, Karl and Ninolino land the female. She is larger than the male, but only by a couple of hand’s widths and she lies on her side as Enzo marks her right gill cover.

  The swordfish is so perfectly formed that Caterina is moved to tears. Even lying prostrate, forlorn and defenceless on the deck, she is all at once majestic, angelic and statuesque: the composition and fusion of her contours and curves, her strong back, her sail–like dorsal fin, the half–moon of her caudal fin, the long spike of her tapered sword. She is beautiful, she is more than that, she is perhaps the most perfect creature Caterina has ever seen. She kneels and looks into the misty blue–black eye of the swordfish.

  It is a mistake, as the moment she looks she knows plainly and absolutely that she shouldn’t have done so. For what she sees is a soul dying; a soul once so very beautiful in life and now in death so very ugly. It is as though she is watching the very light of life fade slowly into the darkness of oblivion,

  “Caterina?” Antonio says, standing beside her.

  Her senses, though, are bewildered. She is deaf to all but her thoughts and all she can see is the light diminishing, dissolving, disappearing, and its withdrawal leaves her feeling so wretchedly, so utterly alone.

  “Caterina,” he says again, and this time he bends and very gently, so as not to startle her, lays his great paw of a hand on her shoulder.

  She turns her head. “Yes, Antonio.”

  “Caterina, are you all right? Are you okay?”

  “Oh, yes, I’m…” She tries to swallow, but not only is her mouth dry, the solution of her thought has dried too, and she says. “No, Antonio, no, I’m not.” She looks up at him, tears streaming down her cheeks. “And I so thought I was.”

  Chapter 10

  Angelica drives down the coast road. “Alberto says I am a fool to myself.”

  If Caterina had not seen on the previous Wednesday evening the way Angelica had looked so adoringly at her husband while he’d waxed lyrically about the troubadours and puppet story–tellers, she believes she might mistake her hostess for a committed misandrist. She isn’t, though; Caterina is sure of that; it’s just the way she has of implying that all people are fools, excepting of course that men happen to be bigger fools than women.

  “He says I would get to Messina in half the time if I used the Strada.” She takes her right hand off the steering wheel, raises it in appeal first to the road in front, then to herself and then to the road in front again, before finally, and much to Caterina’s relief, replacing it on the steering wheel.

  “But I like the Via Consolare: it is easy and there is more to see driving through the little villages than there is on that racetrack of a Strada. Hey,” she lifts her hand, “Sant Agata, Pace, Paradiso. Beautiful, no?”

  Even though the going is easy, Caterina has her own hands buried deep in her lap, her knuckles white with dreadful anticipation, the skin at her blisters stinging.

  The evening before as they’d headed back to the breakwater, Enzo had asked Caterina to show him her hands. She had been reluctant, embarrassed that her soft skin should cut up so easily. But Enzo had insisted, then grabbed her hands and turned them over and inspected her palms: blisters, a couple of them broken open. He’d looked at her, a hint of sympathy in his expression, hauled her over to the side and pushed her hands down into a newly filled bucket. The salt water had stung and she had tried really, really hard not to flinch or wince. Enzo had not apologised.

  “So,” Angelica says, frowning: her hands are off, on and off the wheel again, “one has to deal with cars that jump out at you from side roads, young ruffians who believe their driving abilities exceed their looks and pedestrians who fail to so much as glance before they walk out into the road.” Angelica leans on the horn. “Hey,” she yells, leaning her head out the window, “watch where you’re going. What am I? Invisible?”

  The day had begun pretty much in the same vein as Caterina’s evening had finished: with her wanting to hide and her hosts wanting responses and reactions from her. The couple had invited her to go into Messina with them.”

  “No, thank you. You have both been so good to me, I think it’s about time you spent the evening together. Besides, I may have had a little too much sun and not enough water.”

  Angelica and Alberto had come in late, and Caterina had slept fitfully and was woken by their conversation in the kitchen.

  In the morning, the two knocks at her bedroom door had suggested confident intention rather than impatience, but they had also suggested to her that sleep was not an acceptable excuse for her disregard.

  “Yes,” she had answered, disinterested, dispirited.

  The door had opened wide enough to permit the words their entrance: “Caterina, Enzo is downstairs. He says you are to come immediately or not at all.”

  “Oh, Angelica,” she’d moaned.

  “Well?”

  “Well, that will be not at all then.”

  The door had closed, softly. “She is not coming,” Angelica had called down the stairs.

  And Caterina had waited, resenting the rough–plastered walls, the paintings of fishing boats, the folk congregating by the shoreline and the Madonna with her child.

  A half–hour later, Angelica had knocked again.

  That second time, though, she had opened the door wide and walked right in. “Get up. It is time. I am going into the city and you are going to come with me.”

  At the Annunziata, the Via Consolare opens into three lanes, albeit three reduced to two by the random double and occasional triple–parking. “The Viale della Liberta,” she says. “Before the earthquake, there used to be a tram that ran all the way from the port of Messina,” she points forward, “to Villafranca,” she points over her shoulder. “Fifty kilometres. Imagine. Over 100 years ago. There. Look. On the other side of the road: the great hospital of Queen Margherita. Empty for all these years. Criminal, eh?”

  “Yes, I saw it the other day… when I came to the museum. It’s quite lovely, isn’t it? Such a grand building. More like a palace than a hospital.”

  “All of Messina was like this bef
ore the earthquake,” Angelica says, a melancholy softening to her voice. “And this quarter, the Borgo del Ringo, was where the fishermen would have lived in the time of your nonna.”

  At the fountain of Neptune, Angelica turns into the Via Garibaldi and points: “Villa Mazzini: a place your nonna told you to visit.”

  “Yes,” Caterina replies, dreamily. “A quiet place: that fig tree, the Australian tree. Never expected to see a Moreton Bay fig tree in Messina.”

  “Why not?” Angelica asks. “Once the Suez Canal was built, many ships came here directly from Australia. Someone brought a seed; a tree was planted, it’s natural, eh? Look, here is the Teatro, where you saw Guttuso’s painting.”

  “Yes.”

  “And here is where we will find a place to park. There are two places I want to show you, then we will have granita and brioche, okay?”

  From the outside, the old red Fiat is tidy enough, but from inside Caterina is sure she can see the surface of the road through a hole in the floor.

  Angelica pulls up. The drivers behind her honk their horns as if to shout, “Don’t you know it is Sunday! Why are you making me late when there are plenty of places available around the corner?” She parks.

  “This church,” she says, leading Caterina across the pavement and pointing, “is the Chiesa della Santissima Annunziata dei Catalani. It is nearly 1,000 years old, perhaps older; nobody really knows. The legend says that first it was a temple of Neptune, then a church, then a mosque and now a church once more; it has seen many changes, but it is still a banquet for one’s eyes, eh?”

  “Yes, Angelica. It is very lovely. The colours of the stone, the star shapes, the arches, the columns, the curve of the apse, the galleried portals and the cupola: it is very Moorish and yet both Roman and Norman for a Catalan church.”

  “Ah, yes, at one time Peter of Aragon worshipped here and later the church became a hospital. But do you know why I wanted to show you this particular church?”

  “Because it is so beautiful?”

  “No, Caterina, because I want you to see that the floor of the church stands at least two metres below what is now the level of the streets.”