by John Harris
Patch reached for the glass of vermouth in front of him.
‘Where are they then?’ he asked cheerfully.
‘Signor Tom, I don’t know. We look for many hours but we find no snakes at all. And no lizards. Nothing. The mountainside is empty, signore. Empty. There’s no living thing up there.’
Three
Cristoforo’s words seemed to hang on the still air like the rumble from beneath the ground and the vibrations that had come up through the layers of the earth’s crust.
Patch swung round in his chair, the boy’s anxiety insinuating itself into his mind. Cristoforo was standing alongside him patiently, one hand behind his back, the other holding the dwindling cigarette pinched between forefinger and thumb.
Patch stared at him. ‘No snakes, eh?’ he said lightly.
‘No, Signor Tom. No snakes. Not a bloody one.’
‘Not a what?’ Hannay sat up abruptly, looking as though he couldn’t believe his ears.
‘Not a bloody one,’ Patch said placidly. ‘My influence, I’m afraid. I try to teach him English but it’s surprising what he picks up in addition.’ He drew on his cigarette for a second then addressed the boy again, still inclined to regard the matter as a joke. ‘Snakes’ day off today,’ he suggested cheerfully. ‘Snakes have got to have a day off like everyone else.’
Cristoforo paused before replying. He knew from Patch’s mood that he’d been drinking.
‘Signor Tom,’ he said earnestly. ‘I think it is the mountain. I didn’t want to stay. I came down at once.’
‘The mountain?’ Hannay leaned forward, his square, peeled red face curious.
‘Did something happen on the mountain?’
Cristoforo thought for a moment, trying to remember exactly what had happened. He had been sitting on a rock among the folds of dead lava, high up where the sea seemed no more than a rippling blue sheet and the clouds that hung about the crater seemed almost within reach. He had been gnawing at a piece of bread and sausage, and farther down he could hear the shouting of his friends.
It was only the sighing of a non-existent wind and a sudden vibrating of the earth that sent a little stream of dusty gravel dropping gently from where he sat on to the leaves of a myrtle bush just below him that gave him any indication that anything unusual had occurred. He had watched the leaves bend slowly under the weight of the gravel then, as it slid to the earth and the leaves jumped up again, he had turned and stared at the mountain top. Then he had noticed that Masaniello, his dog, was standing up, its face to the crater, its manner suspicious and, without knowing why, Cristoforo had been oppressed by a feeling of fearful inscrutability about him, a strange dread as everything stood still in a queer drawing back of time.
He had remembered then that in addition to the inexplicable absence of lizards and little grey vipers, the noisy thrumming of insects was missing also on the scrubby slopes. The silence around him seemed monstrous and curiously violent.
He had glanced upwards, conscious for the first time of the stuffiness of the atmosphere and the smell of sulphur that drowned the scent of wild thyme and mimosa and cypress, aware for the first time of the brooding bulk of the mountain above him, and he had crammed the rest of the bread and sausage into his mouth, obsessed by a sudden fear that he would be left behind when darkness fell. Jumping from the rock, he had shouted after his friends, his cries muffled by the fullness of his mouth, and gone leaping after them like a young goat, jumping from fold to fold of the ringing grey lava.
He drew a deep breath to try to explain.
‘Signor Tom,’ he said. ‘There was a big noise like the one a few moments ago, and a wind without anything stirring.’
Hannay gave the mountain an uneasy glance and drew quickly on his cigarette. Patch was sitting up now.
‘That’s nothing,’ he said. ‘There’ve been rumbles before. You’re used to rumbles. We all are.’
‘Yes, Signor Tom.’ Cristoforo was looking as uneasy as Hannay by this time. ‘There’ve been many before, but none like this one.’
‘What was special about this one?’
‘It had a feeling, Signor Tom. It was only small – smaller than the last one a few minutes ago – but I felt it all around me. It was there with me. It was alive. I was afraid, signore. I’m still afraid. It’s even down here in the Porto.’
‘What do you mean?’ Patch was staring at him now. ‘Down here in the Porto?’
‘Signor Tom’ – there was a hint of bewilderment in Cristoforo’s voice – ‘there are no snakes on the mountain, because they have all come into the town.’ He paused while Patch absorbed the information, then he went on excitedly: ‘They killed three this week behind the garage. My uncle killed one near the mole. They’ve been killing them all week in the vineyards. Matteo Lipparini lives in San Giorgio. His father’s a foreman. He brought one home which he killed himself. He said it was the fifth in three days. He threw it on a fire in the garden. You could see the skeleton.’
The humour had gone out of Patch’s face now.
‘Antonio Gori’s uncle was bitten when he was working on the sulphur,’ Cristoforo went on. ‘He was very ill. And the gardens on the slopes have been full of quail. It’s as I said, signore, there’s nothing left on the mountain. No lizards, no snakes, no quail, no pigeon. Nothing. They’ve deserted it.’
Patch lit a cigarette and studied Cristoforo through half-closed eyes. He wasn’t a nervous child or one given to wild imagination. He spent a great deal of his life among the slaggy streams of cold lava and he knew the mountain as well as he knew his own hand. He was an expert on the sea-shells found in the harbour at low tide and could identify a bird while it was still only a speck in the sky. And Patch was already aware of his uncanny reading of weather signs. He had predicted that morning’s violent storm the previous day and long before there had been any sign of it, as though his skin were sensitive to pressures in the air that didn’t affect other people. He knew when rain was coming and when it was going to be warm, and when the winds were building up in the islands to the south.
Patch studied the troubled young face a little longer, his eyes on the narrow features and the alert intelligent black eyes, then he shrugged off his serious mood.
‘You imagine things, Cristoforo,’ he said.
Cristoforo shook his head, his face still grave. ‘Signor Tom, there was also a great deal of smoke.’
‘There always is.’
‘No, signore. Steam. But today there was smoke.’
Patch drew on his cigarette and breathed out slowly, glancing at the mountain and the little plume that drifted to the east on the wind.
‘It looks the same to me,’ he said.
‘When you get closer, signore, you can see it is different. It is thick and dark. As when they burn oil and tyres behind the garage in the winter when the visitors have left. But the smell wasn’t that smell. It was like Forla’s sulphur.’
Patch and Hannay were silent, and after a while Cristoforo took his leave, trailing an olive twig along the cobbles. At the other side of the piazza, he was met by some of his friends, who had been washing a couple of withered apples at the pump, and they began a game that consisted of throwing rubber shoe-heels into chalk-numbered flagstones against the peeling colour-wash of the houses. Hannay was disturbed to see coins change hands among them.
He watched them for a while, his eyes on Cristoforo.
‘Nice kid that,’ he said over his shoulder. ‘Wish we’d got one like ‘im, me and Mabel. We always wanted a family and never managed it. Thought we might adopt one but we kept putting it off because you never know what you might get.’
Patch had started to draw on the table cloth, an absorbed expression on his face. ‘You could have Cristoforo for a few thousand lire,’ he said, looking up. ‘Uncle Angelo would agree–’
Hannay turned quickly, and there was an eagerness in his heavy face that surprised Patch. ‘Honest?’ he asked.
‘–providing,’ Patch concluded, �
��that you adopted Uncle Angelo and probably all the other relations as well. About a million, I should say, at a rough estimate. They’d like the chance of going to England, too.’
Hannay scowled. ‘Come off it, Mister. I’m not joking.’
Patch looked up and smiled. ‘Neither am I. A quarter of the population of Italy wanted to emigrate after the war. On Anapoli, where they were forgotten by the relief organisations it was as high as a half. Angelo Devoto was among them. He thinks you can live without working in England.’
Hannay was silent for a while, obviously still thinking of Cristoforo. ‘He was a bit put out then,’ he said. ‘About the mountain, I mean.’
Patch considered. ‘Yes. Cristoforo’s no fool. But he thinks too much.’
‘All the same he’d been scared.’
‘He’s only a kid, and a rumble would scare him. The mountain’s dead.’
‘It didn’t feel dead to Fred ‘Annay. It felt very much alive-o. ‘Aven’t they got an observatory or something here to keep a check on it?’
‘They were going to have. They even put the foundations down. Then they ran out of money and decided the mountain was dead anyway. Forla keeps his cars in it now.’
Hannay thought for a moment. ‘Suppose it isn’t dead? What would you do?’
Patch drew in a sweeping line that broke his crayon and looked up. ‘Take a boat to the mainland,’ he said.
‘Wouldn’t you stay?’
‘I couldn’t care less about the bloody island.’
‘Fine attitude for a man who’s made his home here,’ Hannay reproached.
Patch looked up again and met the cold glance from the bright blue eyes across the table. He grinned, putting Hannay down as a psalm-singing, Bible-thumping, praise-the-Lord-and-pass-the-ammunition sort of sea lawyer who probably made life miserable for his crew with Sunday prayers and lectures on morality whenever they made port.
‘That’s the worst of being one of these decadent artist types,’ he said, enjoying the irritation in Hannay’s expression. ‘Maybe I’m just contrary. Let’s have another drink. Emiliano’s waiting for me to drink myself to death so he can put up a marble plaque outside, “Here sat Thomas Patch, the English painter,” just as they’ve done with Gorki in Capri and Sorrento. He’s a great one for celebrities, is Emiliano. It helps with the tourists. Looks so important on a postcard home. And I think he feels it would be so much better with “Died of drink” at the end of it to add a touch of poignancy.’
He slumped in his chair, still drawing, an unashamed grin on his face.
‘God knows,’ he said, ‘I’m game enough to help him so long as he calls half-time occasionally and stops for spaghetti and a smoke.’
Hannay stared at him, unsmiling and clearly disapproving. ‘That’s a smashing future you’ve got mapped out for yourself,’ he commented severely.
Four
When Patch eventually left Emiliano’s, Hannay stared after his lean figure with its paint-daubed shirt, the faded pale-blue trousers, and the jaunty straw hat.
Then he turned slowly in his chair and looked thoughtfully up at Amarea, stretching away behind the town, bare and ugly, the grey, scorched-looking summit changing to purple as it sloped down to the villages of San Giorgio and Colonna del Greco that stood out on the skyline like a couple of broken teeth; then to green, and finally into sunbursts of colour where the early azaleas and the oleanders burst into flame along the side of the road that led round the island to Corti Marina and Fumarola in the north.
In spite of what Patch had said about the mountain, he wasn’t entirely satisfied. The mountain had rumbled. Therefore, it was anything but dead. The animals were leaving the slopes. That clearly indicated that with their surer instinct they were afraid. Fat lot of good it was, saying it had done it before, he thought. Hannay was quite unconvinced. It was his duty as master to protect the interests of his ship and he felt that here he had a case that required further investigation.
He turned round as he became aware of Cristoforo standing alongside him again, his face grave, his dog sitting behind him.
‘Are you a sailor, Sir Captain?’ the boy asked.
‘Yes, lad, I am,’ Hannay said, his voice warm with friendliness.
Cristoforo smiled, dazzling Hannay. ‘I would like to be a sailor, too,’ he said.
‘Would you? Why?’
‘My father was a sailor. He was lost at sea. I don’t suppose you need a man on your ship, do you, Sir Captain?’
‘Why? Do you want to leave Anapoli?’
‘Si, signore.’
‘Wouldn’t you miss it?’
‘Not bloody likely, Sir Captain.’
Hannay frowned. ‘Sailors don’t use words like that,’ he pointed out, hoping God and all seafaring men would forgive him for the monstrousness of the lie.
Cristoforo accepted the rebuke humbly. ‘Very well, Sir Captain. I’ll not use such words any more. Signor Tom taught me them. He laughs at them.’ He paused, thinking. ‘Sir Captain, I would work hard on your ship.’
‘I’m sure you would. But you’re just not old enough, son.’
‘I’m thirteen,’ Cristoforo said proudly.
‘You’d have to be fifteen to work on my ship.’
‘I could tell them I was fifteen. No one would know.’
‘I would. I’d have to put your age down on the ship’s papers.’
Cristoforo seemed to regard this as a minor difficulty. ‘You could tell lies, Sir Captain.’
‘No, I couldn’t.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because it’s wrong to tell lies,’ Hannay said firmly. ‘And if the captain told lies, the crew would tell lies.’
Cristoforo thought this over for a moment, seeing the sense in it. ‘I think we shall have to think carefully about this,’ he said gravely.
Hannay stood up, placing a hand on the boy’s shoulder with an instinctive gesture of friendship. ‘I think we shall,’ he said. ‘This uncle of yours – have you ever talked to him about being a sailor?’
‘Yes, Sir Captain.’
‘Would he let you go? If you were old enough, of course.’
Cristoforo was downcast immediately. ‘No, signore. I don’t think he would. He says I beg cigarettes better than he does. He says I can get money for odd jobs that he can’t get.’
Hannay patted his shoulder. ‘Well, perhaps we’ll have to try to change his mind for you. A boy needs a future.’ He gave the boy a smile, so that his face was transformed from the stiff, self-righteous mask that Patch had seen into something friendly and human. ‘Now perhaps you can tell me where I can find out something about that mountain? Where’s the library, for instance? Or the museum? I’ve got some business to attend to.’
Cristoforo looked up eagerly, anxious to help. ‘By the Town Hall, signore. I’ll show you. Is it important business?’
‘I think so.’
‘Then why not see the Mayor himself? He’s there now. I saw him go with Tornielli, his assistant. There’s been some trouble. The Communists hung a red flag outside the door and there was a fight. Why not see him?’
Hannay considered. ‘Aye,’ he said finally. ‘Why not?’
The Town Hall, originally the palace of the Duke of Anapoli, was a shabby brick building faced with stone to give it dignity. Across its pretentious front, let into the façade in new stone, was the carved legend, ‘L’antica qualità della città emerge dalle devastazioni e disastri dei secoli,’ the twentieth-century sentiment of some ambitious official who had tried for party promotion with an attempt to encourage the belief that a fascist revolution was no more than the ancient spirit of Italy reasserting itself.
Ignoring the crowds who were filling the square and the policemen who were trying to persuade them to leave peaceably, Hannay translated the legend in the same solemn way that he waded through all notices and signs in every port he visited in an effort to improve his command of languages, then he tramped up the steps and through the gloomy corridors where the d
uke had once held court, casting a disapproving shipmaster’s eye along the shabby walls and the chipped plaster.
He was fortunate in finding the Mayor in his office – he always believed in going to the fountainhead instead of worrying over minor officials – and he thrust aside all the protesting clerks who claimed he should have had an appointment.
‘How can I have an appointment,’ he said in that wonderful Italian of his that sounded as though it had been born in Bradford, ‘when I only arrived on the island the other day?’
There seemed no answer to the question and he was shown into the waiting-room by a tall slim young man with the sculptured head of a Medici portrait.
‘My name’s Tornielli,’ he said. ‘Can I help you?’
‘Maybe,’ Hannay replied. ‘It depends who you are.’
The young man seemed startled by his bluntness. ‘I’m the Mayor’s assistant,’ he explained. ‘In his law office in the Via Venti Settembre, of course. Not here. What can I do?’
‘Nothing,’ Hannay said. ‘I haven’t come to consult him about law. I’ve come to consult him about my ship in the harbour.’
The young man smiled nervously and tried to argue but, in spite of his accent, Hannay could speak Italian well enough to give him as good as he got and the dispute was growing noisy when Vicente Pelli, the Mayor, came to the door himself.
He was a short fat man with pendulous cheeks, dark spaniel eyes flanking a long nose and plump white hands that were constantly on the move. He signed to Tornielli and, showing Hannay into his room, personally held out the chair by the desk for him to sit down. The young man placed glasses of pale vermouth before them.
‘You’re fortunate to find me here,’ Pelli said in English. ‘But the Communists have been causing trouble. You can see the crowds. It’s over now.’ His heavy eyebrows rose as he stared at Hannay. ‘You’re from the ship in the harbour, of course, Captain. There’s something you want?’