Because of its isolation, its wild interior, its independent-minded, sometimes violent native people, Corsica became a haven for corsairs, contrabandists, and anyone else who preferred to live outside the law. In the late eighteenth century, after the publication of James Boswell’s popular 1768 book An Account of Corsica, the island became a holiday stop for English gentry on the grand tour. Because of its uncultivated exoticism it was said to be the nearest of the distant lands. Trade and shipping of a milder sort continued into our time, and by the late 1950s, some of its more accessible ports, such as Ile Rousse, Calvi, and Ajaccio, became popular stopovers for yachtsmen from Italy and France. Nevertheless, even into the late twentieth century, the island still had a reputation as a harbor for underworld types and also a certain amount of maritime trade—some of it, as in earlier times, of questionable legality.
A minor incident during my first week at work gave me my first hint of all this. We were all sitting on the terrace late one evening after the dinners and the coffees had been served, when the local man they called Faccia di Luna—Moonface—appeared on the terrace, pale and sweating. He walked directly to the table of cardplayers and said something. Chairs were pushed back abruptly, Jean-Pierre went into the bar—moving quickly, I thought, for Jean-Pierre—and came back with a glass of brandy, which he placed before Moonface. They quit the game and made a circle of chairs around him, leaning toward him, asking questions, and then Jean-Pierre headed back for the bar. Micheline stopped him en route.
“What is it?” she asked.
“We don’t know exactly, he is so shaken. Ambush or something. He and Lucas and the others were coming back from Calvi. At the turning near Lumio, two cars cut them off. Santini, he thinks. They leaned in the windows, waved pistols around, slashed the tires, and drove off. Just a warning, they said. Next time not so polite.”
What was it all about, I wanted to know.
Micheline explained: Moonface was an innocent, slightly paunchy member of a large, perhaps shady family on that part of the island. He happened to have been with two more active members of his family clan coming home from a night in Calvi. A rival family, the Santini brothers, had—presumably—suffered some offense from the family of Moonface and the ambush was a little warning.
Historically, Corsica was famous for vendettas and powerful outlaw patriarchs who, though sought by various authorities from the continent—first the Genoese, and later the French—managed to lead successful lives outside the law and died peacefully in bed, confessing their murders to the local priest. In some sections of the island, the vendetta was the only governing principle until the early part of the twentieth century, and in fact worked well enough to maintain a functioning local agrarian economy, independent of the coastal communities, which were under the control of various continental nations over the centuries. Ruling authorities, such as the Genoese courts, would commonly favor the rich or landed gentry in their decisions, with the result that the local peasantry developed its own system of justice. La vendetta corsa became the stuff of legend and was often the driving conceit of Corsican literature (written by French authors, it should be noted). Prosper Mérimée’s short novel, Colomba, had revenge killing at its heart. And Guy de Maupassant, Honoré de Balzac, and Alexandre Dumas also used the vendetta in their Corsican stories.
There was, unfortunately, a great deal of historical truth behind the legend. In one short thirty-year period in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, more than thirty thousand people were killed for revenge. The cycle of murder often began with an insignificant, minor event such as the theft of a pig or a hen, and then escalated over the generations as one male after another was knifed or shot in the back in payment for an earlier murder. The great eighteenth-century Corsican liberator Pasquale Paoli had managed to slow and almost halt the killings through the establishment of an effective and just local court system. But after the French government got back into power, the courts no longer seemed to be able to legislate what the islanders considered sufficient punishment, and the vendetta returned.
By the mid-twentieth century the practice of revenge killing had almost died out, and the last vendetta (or at least the last reported vendetta) occurred the year after I was there. There was still violence in the mountain villages, however—café brawls over women, underworld conflicts such as the little event that had just taken place on the Calvi road, and political differences. Two newly elected mayors had been shot at in the month before I arrived, for example.
Slowly, the excitement over Moonface began to wind down, eased by brandy and a bowl of fish soup. Moonface relaxed and became voluble. I could see him relating the story expansively again and again to anyone who stopped by the table who had not yet heard the adventures of the night. Eventually, he was persuaded to join the card game.
The next morning I saw a strange little freighter lying at anchor in the harbor. It was a known type, a single-stacked Mediterranean tramp steamer with a low, rusted, somewhat battered hull, a once-white superstructure, and a pilot house just forward of midships. It had arrived in the night like some otherworldly sea creature, and it lay grazing there at anchor, peaceful, unpeopled, and unexpected. From my vantage point, I squinted out into the sun, and was able to read the name: Bagheera.
As I was watching, I heard the spluttering pop of a motorbike engine, and Pierrot, the local bread deliveryman, arrived. Every morning Pierrot puttered out from the town on his motorbike with the bread for the restaurant. He had fashioned an oblong, insulated box on the back of his machine where he kept the hot baguettes for delivery, and as soon as I would hear his engine I would make some coffee and carry it out to the terrace. He and I would sit on the terrace every morning eating his fresh-baked bread with butter and confiture, watching the life of the harbor unfold below us.
He was a small, shy man of about thirty with one walleye, and he dressed always in faded blue coveralls and espadrilles with no socks. He had been brought up in the maquis in one of those isolated stone villages where people raised sheep or goats, cut bruyère roots for briarwood pipes from time to time, slaughtered a pig or two in winter, and never asked very much of life. In fact, however, Micheline told me that Pierrot came from an old, landed Corsican family that had slowly declined over the last century, leaving behind only a proud name, a sizable tract of remote land in the hills, and a few feeble-minded shepherds. The last of the line, Micheline said, was the half-mad father of Pierrot, who lived alone with a herd of donkeys and imagined himself to be a squire.
I asked him about the new vessel in the harbor.
“Just le Bagheera,” he said. “It comes. It goes out again.”
“What does it carry?” I asked.
“Who knows?” he said.
All this was in April, and the heat was rising. There were days in that season that were preludes to summer, days that laid the dogs out flat in the town square and set the hens panting in the little gardens behind the houses on the back side of town. The mints and the rock roses, the wild carnations, a curry-scented plant called l’immortelle, and a flower whose French name translates as “claws of the mother-in-law” were blooming along the little path to my cottage. The heat waves shimmered on the causeway to the town, and Nikita and Figaro stretched out in the shade of the verandah, paws in the air.
There were always two quiet periods at the Rose Café, mid-morning, when the visitors would disappear and there were no lunch guests, and midafternoon, before the real work of preparing the dinner began. Whenever I was free, I would take advantage of the time and hike out to the little islet beyond the café to swim, or alternatively, walk into town to take a drink at a shaded café. It was there, in the town one day, shortly after I arrived, that I first saw the man they called le Baron.
Every day the older men of the village would gather in the square for their requisite game of boules. They wore newsboy caps and frayed suits in spite of the heat and stood in small groups, with their hands clasped behind their backs, chatting
and arguing and rocking on their heels. The square was dusty and shaded by old plane trees with pale leaves that shuddered in the slightest breeze. On the north side, there was a marble statue of General Paoli, and north of the square, between a few ancient, sand-colored buildings with red-tiled roofs, you could see the dazzling jade of the harbor and an occasional gull slipping by, white against a deep cerulean sky.
As was my custom, I had selected a table and was sitting with a glass of beer, watching the action in the square—such as it was. A dog, a brown, nondescript mongrel with bitten ears and a crooked tail, sauntered out across the plaza through the sun, nosed a fencepost, lifted his leg, passed on. At the west end, three mothers with baby carriages collected in the shade near an ice cream stand and a carousel. Down the alley where the pillared, temple-like market stalls were located, workers were clearing up the last of their goods, shouting and throwing cartons onto handcarts and stopping periodically to argue or gossip.
As I watched the scene, I saw a tall man with silvery hair dressed in a light-colored suit emerge from the promenade at the eastern end of the plaza. Like a stately white yacht he sailed through the crowd of short, darkly dressed men, greeting people as he tacked through, stopping occasionally to chat, often resting a slender hand on the shoulder of his cohort. He carried with him an oblong leather wallet and entered a bank at the westernmost end of the square, pausing briefly to check the contents of the wallet before he went in.
At the boule pitch, the old men collected in a line. Someone they called Henri, a short, balding fellow with a cigarette in the center of his mouth, prepared to throw toward the cochonnet (the little pig), the target. Henri squinted through the cigarette smoke, crouched, leaned forward, swung back his arm, and tossed. The ball arced across the sky with a backward spin and landed a foot away from the cochonnet—a bad throw.
“Ai yo,” the old men called.
Shortly after the game started, a little hunchbacked man came out of a barbershop on the north side of the square, locked the door, and crossed the open plaza, greeting people as he moved through the throng. He selected a table near me and ordered a pastis. The waiters knew him, and the old men called over to him as they played. House sparrows flew in and began pecking around his feet. He watched them, then fed them some crumbs.
“Everyone likes to eat,” he called over to me.
“Evidently,” I said.
“You are the American from the Rose Café, no?”
“I am,” I said.
“I am Claude, a friend of Jean-Pierre and his people. Sometimes I go out there to play brisca with that regular crowd. You will see me sometimes, but not often. Those blokes there, they have the time. But I work over there all day.” He lifted his head toward the barbershop. “I am tired at night.”
“I saw you come out of the shop,” I said.
“I work. As to the others …” He tilted his head and rolled his eyes.
We talked on for a while from table to table while he sipped his pastis, all the while keeping an eye on the game of boules. At one point, one of the old men retired from the game and joined the barber, and they chatted for a while in French and then switched to the Corsican dialect.
One of the reasons I liked living in Europe was that I was interested in languages. I was in the habit of eavesdropping on whatever conversations were going on in whatever language, even those I didn’t understand. Corsican (which shares a lot with the old Genoese dialect) was difficult, but I had at least learned that it was a lot like Italian, save that all the o’s were u’s. When I was there, nearly eighty percent of the people still spoke Corsican, although almost everybody also spoke French, the official language of the island. Nevertheless, most would identify Corsican as their first language, even though they used French every day. Early on, I learned that if I wanted to ingratiate myself with the older local people, I could switch to my broken Italian, whereupon they would often answer in dialect and soon lose me.
I liked the interchange, though, and up in the little towns in the hills, I could often raise an amused appreciation among the old men lounging in the cafés by throwing in a few words in the local dialect.
When the two men at the table next to me switched to Corsican I listened all the more carefully, trying to pick out phrases. Then I realized that they were talking about me.
The older man broke off at one point and looked over.
“Eh! Americane,” he winked, “bourn boum.” He made the sign of dropping bombs, fluttering his hands downward. “But never mind,” he said, switching to French. “That’s all over now.”
He rose and went back to the game, patting my shoulder as he passed.
“He’s from Bastia,” the barber said. “During the war the city was occupied by the Germans. In the autumn of 1943, they pulled out. After the Germans left, everybody comes out on the streets and starts to dance and drink. Big celebration. Everybody happy—finally, eh? Then, while they’re all out there dancing, the American bombers come in from Italy and let fly. Boum! They thought the Germans were still there, you see. It was a disaster.”
He rose, said he must be going, and shook my hand.
Just as he was about to walk off, the tall man in the white suit rounded the corner and passed close by our table.
“Eh, Barbiere,” he said in dialect as he passed. “How are you, old man?”
“Very well, sir,” the barber said in French, “thank you very much. And you are well, I trust. And things go well at the villa?”
“Yes, yes, yes, all’s well,” said the tall man airily.
He had smooth, tanned skin and very blue eyes that seemed to have an internal light of their own, and when he spoke, he looked down kindly at the dark-haired, hunched figure he was addressing. “You’ll let me know, will you?” he said, mysteriously.
“But of course, monsieur,” said the barber.
We watched the tall man stride away across the square.
I couldn’t help wondering, as we watched him leave, if he was one of the powerful local capu I had heard about, the notorious underworld figures, either French or Corsican, who control networks of smugglers and shady financiers, and maintain secluded havens in certain remote Corsican villages. This man seemed far too classy for such a role, as if the trifling concerns associated with money were below him. But for whatever reason, it was clear that he was accorded a great deal of respect from the locals.
“He’s a good man,” the barber said reflectively, as we watched him walk off. “He’s from the north. A big family. Big château up there somewhere. Here, he has lived out beyond the town since the end of the war.”
“What’s his name?” I asked.
“Von Metz, I think, something like that. Van Zandt, maybe. But here he is known as le Baron. He’s from one of those old noble families. Rich. Very rich, they say.”
He touched my shoulder as he left.
“Take care of yourself out there at Jean-Pierre’s,” he said. “They’re not the most upstanding group, those types.”
I wasn’t sure what he meant, but I let it go.
Out in the square, the old boules players had shifted in their ragged line. They watched intently as each took his turn. “Ai yo!” they shouted whenever there was a good throw or a wide miss. These were the old resistance fighters of Corsica’s past. You could see the names of their friends and relatives inscribed on plaques here and in Calvi, and find little monuments posted around the island, announcing that here so-and-so had died, fighting the foreign invaders of this high-walled isle.
Everyone had assaulted Corsica at some point in its history, starting with the unknown race of Neolithic seafarers who set up the still-indecipherable stone menhirs and cromlechs more than 6,000 years ago in certain sections of the interior of the island. Everyone wanted a piece of the place the ancient Greeks called Kallisté: “The Isle of Beauty.”
The best documented of these prehistoric invaders were the Torréens, who showed up around Porto Vecchio in the south around 1100 BC, oust
ed their predecessors, and began constructing unique towers, or torri, which archeologists believe may have served as crematoria in rituals involving human sacrifice. Then the Greeks set up a trading post at Aléria on the eastern plain, and by the end of the sixth century BC, the Romans moved in.
With the fall of Rome there followed a whole series of invasions, beginning with the Goths and the Vandals, who merely came ashore, destroyed cities, killed whomever they could catch, and carried on. After them, the Saracens began making slave raids on the coasts and even established a few coastal villages. Finally, in the tenth century, the Pisans settled on the island, established estates and fiefdoms, and began a rule of strict allegiance and tribute to the city-state of Pisa.
This evoked the usual reaction from the locals—a flight into the hills and a determined resistance. The repressive Pisan rule also had the effect of creating a system of independent Corsican familial clans and local feudal lords, or signori, that endured well into the twentieth century.
By the middle of the thirteenth century, the Genoese gained control of the island. Once again, locals were evicted from their lands, stiff taxes were imposed, and the great Genoese commercial trading machine began to subsume the island. The same old xenophobic resentments began to smolder; the strict controls only increased the struggle to be free, and by 1729, after a minor tax resistance in the mountain village of Corte, there arose a forty-year war of independence. The last years of this continued struggle saw the rise of Corsica’s most forward-thinking rebel, Pasquale Paoli. He was able to actually unify the independent-minded factions of the resistance, and he and his troops did manage to put the Genoese on the defensive. But in 1769, having spotted the Corsican-induced weakness of the Genoese, France moved in and eventually established itself as ruler of the island. Paoli’s dream ended, and he died in exile in London in 1807.
The Rose Café Page 3