“The trouble is,” she whispers, “I feel like the one who’s learning to take her first steps.”
Antonio turns her hand over so that her palm is against his; his touch is gentle, reassuring and wonderfully intimate. “You took your first steps when you climbed the tower today, Caterina. You will find your feet; I am certain of it.”
“Certain of it? Yes, certain; that’s what I said about you last night, isn’t it? You are always certain, always so confident. Without having to think, you always know exactly what to do.” And as last night, the colour rises in her cheeks, though this time the blood coursing through her form is driven by an entirely different pressure. “Well, now for once I know what you need to do, Antonio, and that is kiss me. For your sake and for mine, for our sake, please kiss me.”
*
They lie in his bed, both looking up beyond the ceiling and the stars, and both drifting alone and yet together in their sea of shared intimacy.
They had heard Enzo come in, his whispers to Aida, his footsteps on the stair, the closing of his bedroom door. If he was aware of her presence, he had not reacted other than to show his respect by keeping silent.
“Antonio?” she whispers.
“Yes, my love.”
“What if I decided to stay?”
He leans up on his elbow and kisses her, at first long and deeply, then slowly and gradually as though he is withdrawing from her, breaking the bond that had not a few minutes before tied them together.
“And what if you did stay? What is there for you here?” He pauses in thought. “Caterina, I am a fisherman and I have only that which a fisherman can offer. Your life, the life you have been used to living, is not one that you can easily walk away from. Your family is your home and you cannot simply ignore the person you were and become someone new; that would be too much to expect. I have no money to speak of and I am not sophisticated. In the summer, all we have is heat and not enough water; in winter all we have is cold and too much rain. I have often thought that if we did not have the compassion of our Madonna, then…”
She looks up into his eyes, searching for what she isn’t sure. Then she smiles. “If you’re trying to sell me life in Ganzirri, you’re not making a very good job of it.”
“No, that’s not what I’m trying to do. What I mean is, Vanaria was used to nothing and she wanted more: you have more, so how could you, why would you, want less? And then there is your daughter: she is your family and you are hers. Lucy has no father to guide her: she has only you.”
“Me? Guide Lucy?” she replies, casually amused. “I only have her to guide me, you mean.”
Antonio does not answer her though. He reaches out and caresses her breasts, her hips and the intimate contentment between her legs, as if he is tracing the contours of her body so that in the future, on cold nights or perhaps warm mornings, he will be able to recall the texture of her skin, the shape of her, the feel of her. He kisses her shoulder, breathes in her perfume and again withdraws.
“She has booked your flight?”
“Yes,” Caterina whispers, her voice fracturing with emotion. “She has my future all mapped out for me: what I am going to do when I get home, sell the house, buy a flat, find a job, rebuild my life, everything.”
“Home,” he repeats. “You see, you said it, home.” He sighs and smiles the resigned smile of a man who knows what’s best, even if it is not what is best for him. “So, what time are you leaving for home?”
“Early afternoon flight, via Rome. Angelica has offered to drive us to the bus in Messina. I owe her so much; I don’t know how I’ll ever repay her for all her kindness.” Her eyes fill with tears. “And I don’t know how I’ll ever be able to repay you, Antonio, I–”
“You know the real meaning of our word ciao, Caterina?”
“Yes, it means goodbye.”
“No, Caterina,” he frowns, for he knows she speaks Italian well enough. “Arrivederci means goodbye: we say ciao for both goodbye and hello, but we also use ciao when we tell someone we will see them again.”
“Antonio, are you fishing tomorrow?”
He grins, playfully. “Of course, did I not just say I am a fisherman?”
“What time though? I mean what time is the Salvazione leaving in the morning?”
He raises an eyebrow. “You need to ask? If my memory serves me well, there was this English woman, a strange and unusual woman and one curiously attractive to sailors. She would call to the sailors as their feluca passed by Capo Peloro; it seems she liked to go fishing with them…”
“Very funny,” she replies, though her response is in no way meant as a reproof. “Antonio, seriously, what time are you leaving in the morning?”
He shrugs. “Six–thirty, as normal. We will fish up in the bay of Gioia Tauro and then return to the Strait in the afternoon, why?”
“Because if you are leaving at six–thirty, we still have four hours before we have to say ciao.”
Chapter 17
Caterina had strolled back through the village alone, greeting the witch on the wall and the cats on their steps, and lingering on the bench by the lagoon to watch the early morning mist disperse.
Closing the front door behind her, she hears Alberto in the bathroom upstairs and it is not long before he appears in the kitchen, resplendent if not dazzling in his whites.
“You are going? Today?” he asks.
She nods and looks away. “Alberto,” she says, “thank you. Thank you for allowing me to be a part of your family, for allowing me into your home. I feel I may have stayed too long and I am truly grateful for your kindness.”
He puts his hand on her shoulder and squeezes, affectionately. “It is not kindness, Caterina; it is our pleasure. Be strong.” And with that he is gone, off to the port to shepherd the hundreds of folk and kilos of commerce coming and going across the busy Strait.
Angelica comes down just as Caterina is making her first cup of coffee. “Yes, I will have one, too,” she says, and then, “You have been crying?”
“Yes, I guess I’m still a little sensitive when it comes to goodbyes.”
“Antonio?”
“And Alberto. He has been so patient. You know, some of my friends find it hard enough to have their adult children home for a few days, never mind a crazy fifty–year–old woman.”
“Crazy,” Angelica repeats, as though she cannot decide whether the word describes someone wild or lunatic, or perhaps both.
They close their eyes and revel in the aromas of the coffee.
Angelica nods her approval and then chuckles. “If it was not Antonio who had told me you climbed the ’ntinna, I would not believe it. To the top! Right to the top! Surely, Caterina, you are crazy.” She hunches her shoulders and cups her hands to her chest. “Eh, I should have known this when we met that morning on the beach. Or perhaps I did? Perhaps I saw the madness living in you. Perhaps I could see it was trying to get out.”
“Yes, I think madness might be about right and for that I believe I owe you an explanation. Remember a week ago, you said I should tell you about Lucy’s father when I felt I was ready. Well, now I am.” She finishes her coffee and sits up straighter, as if preparing to deliver a eulogy.
“Charlie, Lucy’s father… my late husband, died four years ago. We’d been married for nearly twenty–five years and for most of that time our life together had been… well, pretty wonderful really. That was, until Charlie was diagnosed with Motor Neurone Disease. I’ll never forget the term the neurologist used, Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis; there, you see, it’s burned in my brain like a brand on a cow’s hide and, like a brand, it has owned me for the last six years. I won’t bore you with the ghastly symptoms, except to say that he began to trip over a lot and he became extremely clumsy. He took to drinking a lot too, which was unusual for him, and he ignored his exercise, which he had always been fanatical about. Ho
wever, I really only began to realise something was wrong when I noticed he was finding it increasingly difficult to pay attention. His mind began to wander, which was not what we were used to from a man who was always so clear of thought.” Caterina pauses to draw breath, realising that on the rare occasions she has spoken of Charlie, breathing is something she forgets to do.
“I know of this disease: it is terrible.” Angelica scowls. “It shows no respect; no mercy.”
“No, you’re quite right, it doesn’t: not for the patient and not for his family or friends either. And, if you know about it, then you will know he became increasingly paralysed: first his hands, then his legs, then… well, pretty much everywhere. That paralysis, that gradual removal of his being, was hard enough to bear in itself; but you know how it is these days, the doctor diagnoses, you hit Google and by the end of the day, you’re totally confused and you’ve frightened the hell out of yourself.”
Caterina pauses to make another coffee and, possibly, to give herself time to think of what she needs to say. “Sorry, Angelica, it’s just that by talking to you about it, I can now see how and why I got into such a state. I really didn’t have much of a chance in the first place, did I? You see, before Charlie became completely incapacitated, before he couldn’t speak or move his arms, he made me promise I would never allow him to become the person we both knew he was going to become. He said that when the time came, and he said I’d know that it was time by the look in his eyes, he wanted me to put a pillow over his face and suffocate him.”
Although she does not cry as she is speaking, she has to wipe her eyes and blow her nose continually, and her voice, though definitely hers because she can feel her lips move and her throat vibrate, sounds as though it belongs to a distant news reader. “Sorry.”
“Enough with the apologies, Caterina. Please, go on.”
“I asked him if he wanted to go to Switzerland, to that euthanasia clinic, but he said he didn’t, absolutely didn’t. He said he wanted to be at home and he wanted my face to be… well, to be the last thing he saw.” She glances at the ceiling and then at Angelica, searching and hoping, if not pleading, for some absolution. “I think, right at that moment, I felt every imaginable emotion: surprise, joy, anger, fear, disgust, sadness, love, loathing, hate, abandonment, resignation and in the strangest way trust. You see, Charlie put his life in my hands. His life! In my hands! And all because his life would no longer be in his own hands.” She glances down at her palms; just as every morning when she washes her face, she glances down at them, wishing it was their fault and not hers.
“And I agreed, didn’t I? Looking back, I’ve no idea why I did, but I suppose I was numb; all those emotions at once, it was like one enormous psychological concussion that anaesthetized my thinking.”
Angelica passes her another tissue and says, “Then it is true what Antonio told me: your husband really did ask you to kill him?”
“Yes. And when the time came, when he could no longer move even the smallest muscle, he gave me that sad, pathetic look, that hollow stare from his hollow face; that expression which said, “Now, you promised. Don’t wait. Don’t let me down.” And I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I couldn’t; it was just never going to happen. Well, after that, and for the last four months, I couldn’t bring myself to look at him again; I just avoided his eyes, because every time I looked at him his eyes told me I had not done the one thing he’d asked; the one thing only I could do to prevent his suffering.”
And now she cries; blowing her nose, wiping her wet cheeks and thumping the table in frustration. And she cries for a full five minutes before Angelica whispers, “Life is not ours to destroy, my dear Caterina. Life may be ours to give, but we do not have the right to take it away. Only God can decide.”
“Yes, you are so right, so very, very right.” She fixes Angelica with an uncompromising stare, adding, “And because you are so right, I will never, ever forgive him.”
*
The avenue, like the lagoon beside it, is deserted. “You didn’t want your Lucy to come with you?” Angelica asks.
“Are you kidding? I didn’t even want you to come but, as you so sensibly pointed out, I’d never make it in time if I had to walk.” Caterina turns to look at her driver. “And I know what you’re thinking: I could have gone down to the beach and seen them off, it would have saved you the trouble of having to run me up to Capo Peloro. But I’d never have been able to hold it all together and I’d prefer them to remember me as the crazy ‘ngrisa who climbed the mast rather than that blubbering wreck they left on the beach.”
They pull up in the shade of an olive tree that stands, like a weary sentry, beside the stone walls of the old Roman fort.
“My mother told me that during the war this fort was occupied by Italian troops; an artillery battery. Think of it: a war in the middle of all this beauty.” Angelica locks the car and they start walking up the sandy lane towards the beach. “Not long before she died, my mother confessed to me that during the war she killed a soldier.”
“Your mother?”
“Yes, my mother, Mira, and in this very lane. She killed a fascist corporal, a man who could not keep his mouth shut. I don’t know if I believe her; it is possible, I suppose: they were very desperate times. I asked Beppe and he said something bad happened, but he will never talk about it.” Angelica chuckles to herself. “I’ll say this for my mother, she was a tough one; whatever she asked me to do, I never waited for her to ask a second time.
“Only God can decide,” Caterina states.
“Yes,” Angelica replies. “Only God and my mother, eh?”
They walk through the cool, clean air and come to a raised path of duckboards, which lead down to the beach. The sand, too, is cool beneath their feet and the dew of morning sparkles before them.
“I’ll wait here,” Angelica says. “You go down to the water’s edge. They will be along soon.”
Here and there, a handful of men are casting their lines out into the Strait, and across the way, below the soaring flanks of Aspromonte, the curiously alien red and white pylon looks ready to leap from its perch to join its brother soaring behind her.
The sun is clear above the ridge now and Caterina raises her hand to shade her eyes, gazing south in search of the feluca.
“Where are you, Antonio?” she murmurs.
And sure enough, on a flat shimmering sea the Salvazione is making her way up towards the neck of the Strait; the feluca’s impossibly tall metal mast, her ‘ntinna, rising up to pierce the sky, her passarelle extending forward from her bow like a long arrow. Antonio stands out front on the platform, his hands holding the rail to keep himself steady, and Pasquale and Giuseppe sit up top in the crow’s nest, gesturing, gesticulating, probably arguing. On the deck, she can see the boys, Enzo, Ninolino and Karl talking and joking and slapping each other on the back: the day will be good, the sea will be clear, the catch will pay their wages.
Caterina waits, patiently. And when the feluca clears the turbulent, tidal waters of the approach to the neck of the Strait, it is the avvistatore who spots her standing on the beach.
Giuseppe points, he waves, he leans over and shouts to those below.
The boys turn and Antonio pauses and looks towards her.
Caterina raises her arms and waves. And no longer does she feel like the sailor’s wife waving in farewell; for now, she is no longer sad; now, her happiness outweighs her sadness and she wishes them well and hopes the sea and sky will look kindly on the hunters in the same way the sea and the sky has looked kindly on her.
The crew of the Salvazione wave back: the two up high from the crow’s nest, the three below from their deck and the funcitta from his passarelle.
She can see their smiles; she can hear their voices and she can feel them just as if they had their arms around her.
The blue feluca motors steadily away in the direction of the great
rock, Scylla, and the capobarca and avvistatore return their attention to the sea. The cabin masks the crew from her view and the funcitta is still waving as the Salvazione passes beyond her sight.
“Good luck, Antonio,” she murmurs. “Be safe.”
*
“The café,” Angelica says, taking her hand off the steering wheel and pointing as they enter the square. “We will stop and take a coffee. They are open now and I thought you would like a mezza con panna e brioche.”
“Mezza con panna?”
“Yes, half coffee and half cream. It is a good flavour, a strong taste for you to remember.”
They take a table beneath the awning and gaze out across the Strait to the terracotta roofs of Villa San Giovanni. A long and low vessel glides up through the Strait.
“The Chiesa Madonna della Lettera.” Angelica nods at the church to their right and as she does so, bells chime and clang in glorious union. “You see where the statues should be? The niches are empty. You see where the beautiful stained–glass windows should be? They are no more. Damaged during the war and never replaced. This square: this is where my mother had her café.”
Beside the piazza, a white framed plaque commemorates Largo, Giovanni Cavallaro, Lieutenant of the Carabinieri, fallen at Nassiriya (Irak) 12th November 2003.
Reading it quietly to herself, Angelica murmurs, “The wars, they never cease, eh?” She looks for the waiter. “Yes, my mother was the proprietor.”
“I remember, Antonio told me about her. How old was she at the time?”
“Oh, twenty–seven or twenty–eight; something like that.”
The waiter asks: Angelica orders.
“Wasn’t that unusual for a single woman to run a café in those days?” Caterina asks.
“Yes, but my grandfather, Enzo, in some ways like Antonio, was a very big man back then. A king among fishermen they called him and my mother was safe as long as he was there to watch over her.”
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