The Sleeping Mountain

by John Harris

  His hand swept across the harbour to where the Canzone del Mare was anchored just off the shore.

  ‘The old boy aboard yet?’ Anderson asked.

  ‘I don’t think so. I’ve not seen anything. Maybe they’re trying to get him into a boat somewhere else – perhaps at Corti Marina – so they can row him out. If he tried to get along that mole now, they’d tear him to pieces after that business at the Town Hall yesterday. They’ve heard he’s been emptying his house of valuables.’

  There was another muffled explosion from inside the mountain and immediately half a hundred strained anxious faces swung round to stare at it. The crowd in the Piazza del Mare had increased by now, those in front trying to hold back from the edge of the sea wall, those behind trying to get nearer to the shore. There must have been two thousand people standing in the square, some of them holding infants, while all the dogs that slithered and wormed their way among the legs of the human beings barked madly, caught by the obsessive sense of panic.

  Hannay turned round and spoke to the Haywards.

  ‘Why don’t you go down to the saloon and get a cup of tea?’ he said. ‘The cook’s been brewing up.’

  Mrs Hayward stared at him in silence and Hayward shook his head without speaking. They appeared to have lost the use of their voices and seemed loath to leave Hannay as though they wanted to be certain that he wouldn’t abandon them. Then Hayward suddenly recovered his power of speech. ‘When are we leaving?’ he asked.

  ‘I dunno,’ Hannay said. ‘Can’t say.’ He had been once more to see Devoto – as soon as he’d returned from Pelli’s office – and he still hoped the increased bribe he’d offered would produce Cristoforo. It was a slender chance but Hannay had no other option within the law. The thought of Cristoforo still among the quivering old houses scared him in a way the noise and the smoke never could, but there seemed little he could do to remove him.

  ‘Isn’t it dangerous to stay?’ Mrs Hayward persisted.

  ‘Mebbe,’ Hannay said.

  ‘Why can’t we go now?’ Mrs Hayward burst out. ‘Why can’t we? You’ve no right to stay!’

  ‘Lady,’ Hannay said stiffly, his mind still on Cristoforo. ‘I like to think I’m a humanitarian. If them people think they’re in danger, then I’m ready and willing to take ’em off. ‘Annay stays ’ere till the Navy arrives.’

  Mrs Hayward stared at him, frustrated to the point of loathing for people like Hannay and Patch who ignored her appeals for help and seemed blind to the fact that she was a woman and attractive. She glanced at her husband, hating his sagging, unintelligent face suddenly, then she went into the chart room and sat down and burst into tears.

  From Emiliano’s, Patch watched the crowds streaming through the town to the mole. Emiliano was more concerned with getting his bottles into the cellar and locking up.

  ‘Signor Tom,’ he shouted, waving his fingers in Patch’s face. ‘I’d be glad if you’d drink your whisky. I’m anxious to leave.’

  Patch nodded. He was still weary and a little stupefied. There had seemed little else for anyone to do after they had made sure that everyone from San Giorgio was safe, except to go back down the hill to the Porto and, in the anti-climax after the horror, little else to do until the ships came but stand around and talk.

  Emiliano waited impatiently, jigging from one foot to the other and beating his forehead with his fist in despair while Patch slowly finished his whisky. Then, driven into the street, Patch tried the mole in the hope of finding Hannay. But there were as many people about as on festa days and there was as much noise, and moving about was difficult. The only things that were missing were the balloon sellers and the laughter and the fireworks, and the clear blue of the hot Italian sky.

  On the way from the harbour in the oven-like atmosphere, he bumped into Piero Tornielli standing behind a group of women kneeling by a crude shrine set in the wall where a stub of candle guttered, trying to gain some comfort from their prayers.

  Piero had been badly scared all day and had been drinking to help him fight off the confusion of fear and jealousy that atrophied his brain. As Patch passed him, he turned away, the fact that he had been seen paralysed with terror in Pelli’s office adding to his humiliation and hatred. Then abruptly he sensed that Patch was too weary and too shocked to respond to anger, and he began to follow him. Catching him up in the Piazza Martiri, he grabbed his arm and swung him round, and saw immediately that he had been right.

  He made a wild gesture at the crowds, aware of a freedom to say almost anything he liked without retaliation. ‘This is all your fault,’ he shouted. ‘All this panic! It’s your doing!’

  ‘Go away,’ Patch said heavily.

  Piero grabbed at his arm again. ‘But for you there’d have been no panic,’ he stormed, trying to wipe from his mind the staining memory of his own fear. ‘You and your clever words!’

  ‘Go away,’ Patch said once more, brushing Piero’s hand from his sleeve.

  Piero thrust forward, carried away by his new courage to the point of rashness.

  ‘Liar! Cheat! Trouble-maker! Why don’t you leave?’ he yelled. ‘And take all your countrymen with you! We don’t need you here! None of you! Leave Anapoli! Now!’

  ‘Go away,’ Patch roared furiously and Tornielli stepped back, shocked into silence by the expression on his face.

  He watched Patch push his way through the crowds, his hatred burning into his vitals. With it grew an equally inflamed desire to keep Cecilia away from Patch, a desire that became physical as it gripped him. Glaring after Patch, he turned and set off hurriedly for the Via Pescatori.

  In the confusion of noise and movement, Patch couldn’t remember where he went after he left Piero. He simply pushed through the people, indifferent to the shouting and the hands that grabbed at him.

  Old Leonardi was almost gleeful when they met in the Piazza Martiri, and just a little drunk. He was still carrying the camera, tied to his back now with a piece of frayed string, and was wearing motoring goggles, gauntlets, and a cap jammed back to front over his white hair. He had managed to borrow Piero Tornielli’s Lambretta.

  He laughed up at Patch from the saddle and hitched up the camera which was proving a little difficult to manage.

  ‘They’re abandoning the Villa Forla,’ he said. ‘They’re leaving it to be ruined.’ He cackled cheerfully. ‘I wonder what Forla thinks of my prophecies now? At the first sign of an outbreak from the crater, I’m going up the mountain. I don’t need a taxi now. Piero says he doesn’t need his machine because you can’t get through the crowds to the mole on it. But I’m going the other way. I’m going to get pictures. Magazines all over the world will buy them. I shall make a great deal of money.’

  He looked suddenly depressed. ‘There is only one thing, though,’ he said. ‘Nothing happens. Nothing but darkness, and you can’t photograph darkness.’

  In the Church of Sant’ Agata the lights were blazing as Don Alessandro conducted masses for the dead, the sick and the bereaved, and for the homeless of San Giorgio.

  ‘Requiem aeternam dona eis Domine–’ His high chant insinuated itself through the clamour in a knife-like note above the roaring; and the high echoing alto of boys’ singing could be heard through the glowing doorway that brought the gilt and biscuit-coloured stone and the glittering candelabra into the gloomy street where Don Gustavo was bending over an old woman who had collapsed, exhausted by the noise and the panic, on the steps.

  As he turned into the gloomy hall of Mamma Meucci’s, Patch heard shouting on the stairs, and Mamma Meucci’s screaming. Then he heard Cecilia’s voice raised in fear and he went pounding up the dark stone steps two at a time.

  The door of the Leonardis’ apartment was open, a shaft of light astride the landing, where Piero Tornielli’s overcoat was sprawled on the top of the staircase like a dead body. Old Tornielli stood in the darkness on the landing below with Mamma Meucci, who was yelling stridently, her hands pressed into her fat cheeks, as though that were the
only thing she could think of to do, and the harshness of the sound echoed round the upper storeys.

  His passion for Cecilia roused by his hatred for Patch, Piero had arrived home, dazed and bewildered by the drinks he’d had, suddenly obsessed by the need to prove his manhood by rescuing her.

  ‘There’s no time to lose,’ he’d shouted, bursting in on her and gesturing wildly at the door. ‘If you don’t come now it’ll be too late. We can get a place on Forla’s yacht if we hurry. Pelli promised me.’

  Cecilia had risen to her feet and was staring back at him, her eyes blazing. Piero seemed stupid and adolescent in his panic.

  ‘I’m not coming,’ she said above the din. ‘I’m staying here.’

  The blank refusal was like a lash across Piero’s face.

  ‘You’re waiting for the Englishman,’ he said, his voice breaking with disappointment at her reply, and he noticed she didn’t deny it.

  ‘Go if you wish to,’ Cecilia snapped. ‘Coward! Craven! Go with Forla if you wish. Go with all the other toadies. I’m staying here.’

  ‘You can’t refuse to come with me. You love me.’

  ‘I don’t. I never did. Get out.’

  ‘I’ve waited months while you ogled Tom Patch. You’re the whole of life to me. You’ve got to come.’

  Making a dive for her, Piero staggered back as one of her swinging hands hit him across the nose, then he grabbed her wrists and bore her backwards.

  All the frustration of months, when he had watched her watching Patch, all the time aware of the thing Patch was not aware of, all the thwarted longing, all the shuttered passion, blinded him. He forced her back on the settee, her screams harsh in his ears, and fell across her, his mouth seeking hers as she wrenched her head sideways away from him with an expression of revulsion on her face that drove him all the harder.

  Then Patch burst through the doorway and grabbed him by the shoulders, and he felt himself swung bodily into the air and flung across the room. Falling against a chair, he sent it crashing into a corner, a leg flying off it to scar the lacquer of a mock Renaissance sideboard by the door.

  Patch was standing in the centre of the room, his eyes blazing, his hair over his eyes, his face still grimy with the dirt of San Giorgio. Cecilia had dragged herself up on to the settee, pushing her clothing straight and the hair out of her face, and even then, in his shame, Piero saw a glowing look in her eyes he had never seen directed towards himself.

  ‘Seducer! Adulterer! Fornicator! Cheat!’ he shrieked, scrambling to his knees, his handsome face distorted by fury. ‘We don’t want you now. She’s suffered enough at your hands.’

  Patch took a giant stride across the room and, grabbing him by his arm, yanked him to his feet so that the battered chair fell to pieces from his shoulders.

  ‘I know she stayed in the same hotel when you went to the mainland,’ Piero yelled, his arms flailing as he fought to free himself. ‘I know. I made her tell me. I forced her. I know everything that happened. She told me it all. Every bit of it.’

  ‘Get out,’ Patch said, swinging him off his feet again with a brutal, almost insane, violence, so that his legs dragged round behind him like the limp limbs of a rag doll.

  Half-throttled and gasping for breath, Piero’s inflamed jealousy still managed to drive him to defiance. ‘She doesn’t want you,’ he screamed. ‘She doesn’t want you! She wants one of her own people!’

  Patch picked him up again and, holding him in front of him, his toes barely touching the floor, smashed him through the doorway, knocking the wind out of him on the door-post as he went, and flung him sprawling across the landing where his cries echoed round the high roof and came back at them again. Then he grabbed him by the collar and dragged him backwards to the top of the stairs and flung him down them, so that he slid on his back upside down across several steps, tangled up in his own overcoat.

  Humiliated, bruised and defeated, Piero stumbled to his feet, reaching for the wall, his fingers spread into a star on the scarred plaster, while Patch stood above him, his chest heaving with the deep breaths he took and the violence of the dislike inside him. The sight of Cecilia’s terrified eyes, and her screaming mouth and her hands fighting against the clawing fingers that tore at her clothes seemed to have burst some safety valve.

  He made a swift move towards Piero, ready to murder him, but Piero slithered backwards down several more steps, his mouth still babbling defiance.

  ‘You’ll regret it,’ he shouted, half-crazed with his hatred. ‘I’ll remember this.’

  ‘Get out!’ Patch snapped. ‘Get out! I’ll tear your dirty little heart out if you come near Cecilia again!’

  Piero grabbed for his overcoat and hurried down the stairs, trailing it after him, disappearing without looking back at Patch. His father turned and stared upwards.

  ‘Cecilia,’ he began apologetically. ‘Signor Tom–’

  He stopped, at a loss for words, then he too turned and ran down the stairs after his son. Mamma Meucci was still standing with her hands to her cheeks, still screaming, her eyes rolling first after Tornielli and then up to Patch.

  Patch turned into the Leonardis’ apartment and slammed the door against the noise outside. Then he went to Cecilia and gently pulled her to her feet, his hands under her elbows, and held her close to him while she shook with her sobbing. The fire had gone out of her and she clung to Patch, hiccuping with great dry paroxysms.

  ‘Tom, he’ll not hesitate to harm you!’

  Patch snorted, indifferent to the threats of Piero, and, sitting her on the settee, knelt in front of her.

  ‘Cecilia,’ he said gently. ‘Are you hurt?’

  She shook her head and pulled her torn blouse together.

  ‘No. Nothing. You came too quickly.’

  ‘By Christ–’ Patch’s face darkened with fury again and he seemed to choke over his words, ‘–Cecilia, you’re never really going to marry that bloody little worm?’

  She shook her head again, desperate that he should understand. ‘No, Tom. I never told him I would. I swear I didn’t. He took it all for granted, like everyone else.’

  Patch took her hand and looked at her tenderly. ‘Cecilia, I’d like to think of you happy. That fool would make your life miserable. He acts like something out of a bad film all the time. Find somebody decent.’

  She nodded weakly, her fingers tight on his. ‘Tom, please be careful. I’m afraid. And it seems so wrong to be afraid just now.’

  He listened to the racket outside for a second then he rose to his feet. ‘I don’t know about that,’ he said, and a faint lopsided grin took the tension out of his face. ‘I’m afraid too.’

  There was a crash at the door and Mamma Meucci put her head in, her face grey with terror.

  ‘Signor Patch,’ she babbled. ‘Mother of Mercy protect us! Old Tornielli says we may go down into his cellar until the ships come. Piero’s gone out now. The Holy Mother of God have pity on us!’

  She slammed the door behind her and they heard her on the stairs shooing her flock towards the ground floor.

  Cecilia had moved to the open window where Patch stood staring out at the angry sky. He was calm again now.

  ‘Let’s stay here, Tom,’ she said. ‘Don’t let’s go down.’

  He turned and looked at her, the little grin persisting so that she knew he had control of himself again.

  ‘OK.’ He stood beside her and as he took her hand, she stopped trembling. ‘Hannay was right all the time, Cecilia,’ he said. ‘How right he was! It must be an odd feeling to be proved right when nobody expects you to be – a bit like being God.’

  ‘When will the ships get here, Tom?’

  ‘Soon. They’ll take away anyone who wants to go.’

  ‘Will you go, Tom?’

  He turned again and smiled crookedly at her, as though he were jeering at himself. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Oddly enough I don’t think I will.’

  ‘You always said you would.’

  ‘I know. I never ex
pected to be behaving like a hero but Cecilia,’ he said gently. ‘I’m glad you’re here too. It makes it a bit easier.’

  Outside everything was darkened by the grey-green twilight. The street lights had not been turned on and there was only a few glimmers in the windows of the Porto. It was as though the little town were dying.

  Thirty-three

  They were all a little startled to discover the following morning that they were still alive. The crowd that had spent the night on the mole and in the Piazza del Mare stirred with the first light to realise that Anapoli was still above water and that they were all still drawing breath.

  The first ship to arrive, the Italian gunboat Procida, dropped anchor just outside the harbour in the early evening. There was an immediate burst of cheering from the crowd in the Piazza del Mare, a surge of relief and joy at the promised safety that the grey steel shape beyond the gloom brought to them. There was a concerted instinctive move along the mole and out of the piazza towards the beach, but the ship made no attempt to get closer.

  Almost immediately afterwards, the Ladybird, a British frigate from the direction of Malta, began to signal from beyond Capo Amarea and the Italian ship began to flash back at her. Over the roaring of the mountain, another cheer went up from the people on the mole. The flickering white lights seemed to bring hope to them.

  The British ship drew nearer and came to anchor alongside the Italian, then suddenly the bay seemed to be full of boats. The water that had seemed so abysmally empty during the whole of the day was now crowded with whalers, gigs and tenders, scuttling to and from the bigger ships like a lot of noisy beetles on the smooth surface of a millpond. Lights began to appear everywhere round the little harbour to break the funereal darkness of the town and the abandoned houses.

  Half an hour after the British ship, the Francis X. Adnauer, an American destroyer from the fleet in Naples, let her anchor splash into the water and the rattle of her cable rang across the bay, sending up another cheer from the crowd. Boats began to arrive alongside the Great Watling Street, and the wharfside and the darkness echoed to the sound of voices from the Bronx and Minnesota and Nebraska and Carolina. Before midnight, the Amsterdamster, a Dutch freighter, was also asking in halting Italian if assistance was required and dropping her anchor too.