There are men working on the heavy cables that tie the radio mast to the earth; bound high up in the air they call from one to the other to check their progress, sharp bird-like cries high in the rarefied air. I wonder whether they can see me as I creep snail-like along the path at their feet. And then the descent, rapid, steep, lowering myself from rock to rock, afraid to twist my ankle, afraid to fall.
Monday 29 October
I am in my classroom when I see the ferry arrive. It is a windy grey day, the sea dark green and opaque with white spray rushing across the surface where the wind catches the tips of the waves. I sit correcting homework in between lessons, struggling to keep my mind focused on the simple thoughts of the children expressed in their even simpler words. Trying to pass time, which weighs heavily on me. I watch the little boats pull on their anchors, the old men sitting on the bench on the jetty, talking, shouting garrulously at each other; even though I can’t hear their voices I know they are talking about politics or sport or women. There is nothing else.
The ferry arrives in a mixture of engine fumes, the smell of diesel oil and salt spray. I watch it manoeuvre and turn, its rudder churning the green water white, as it backs into its moorings. I watch the crew tie huge ropes to the bollards and see the gangplank winched down, lowered from the stern. I watch the passengers disembark, a handful of islanders; at this time of the year there are no visitors. I see Ugo’s uncle, holding a little hand-pushed trolley, standing to one side waiting for the fresh produce from the market to be unloaded. The seagulls mewl and circle in the hope of scraps. I see a figure emerge, a man dressed in a camel-hair coat with a hat low across his face. A porter carries his suitcase to a waiting mini-taxi. He climbs in next to the driver and the vehicle sets off up the hill.
For a few minutes my attention has been caught. I glance at my watch. Twenty to two. I have lost ten minutes in all. I return to the homework books. Fill the preposition into the sentence. The exercises have been set especially to trap the children, to make them think that the correct answer is the one that is closest to the Italian form. None of them has noticed this – they have all fallen into every trap. I shift my weight from one side to the other, uncomfortable here on this hard wooden chair.
After school I go to the local grocer’s to buy some eggs. I stand and wait my turn. It takes about ten minutes before I am served, and I know there will be a price to pay when I do at last find myself face to face with the grocer. In exchange for what I want to buy I will have to volunteer some small information about myself, which will be passed on to the next customer after I leave. But over the years I have grown quite adept at avoiding questions that are too probing, that will give away more than I am prepared to tell. And in any case the questions asked will reflect the limits of the grocer’s imagination so I am not greatly at risk.
He greets me elaborately as if he hasn’t seen me for months.
– Buongiorno, e come sta la nostra signorina inglese?
He is patronising as usual and exaggerates the pronunciation of the words. I return his greeting and tell him I want six eggs. He barely registers my order. That is going much too fast. First he wants to explore.
– Ha visto che brutto tempo? Come a Londra, no? Si sentirà a casa sua. Piove sempre a Londra, non è vero?
– Yes, I nod, it rains all the time in London. As if I knew.
Everyone shakes their heads in wonder at the madness of foreigners who live in such inhospitable places.
I decide to try a question of my own.
– Speaking of London, I saw a stranger arrive on the ferry this morning. Perhaps he is also from London?
At this everyone seems to have a comment but no one seems to know very much. It is true, there is a man and he is not from here. He is un forestiero, which could mean foreigner but could also just mean stranger; for the islanders the two concepts are indistinguishable. The taxi driver said that he had taken him to Villa Circe on the headland, which he has rented until the end of November. It appears that the man has come here to work. But to their intense frustration, he has managed to avoid further investigation. The taxi driver was paid at the door and no more information was forthcoming.
I admit that I also feel curious. Who could he be and what was he doing here, disturbing our simple retreat? Could he be German or English perhaps? The only other foreigner like me on the island. My eggs are at last wrapped, each individually in newspaper, and then placed carefully into a paper bag. I pay, greet everyone in the shop and leave.
I go home and make myself an omelette with two eggs and some cheese, then set out for a walk. Without even thinking about it I find myself walking up toward the headland. The wind is sharp and cold from the west and I feel my eyes and skin stinging as I struggle to hold to the path that runs along the top of the white shale cliffs. I see the turn-off to the house in the distance and I can see smoke rising from the chimney, but the house itself is hidden by vegetation and I can make out no other sign of life. I am not sure what I had been hoping for but I feel disappointed.
The clouds begin to clear as I make my way back home, and I walk along on to the jetty to watch the sunset. The water is clear and still in the chill autumn air, and I can see little fish, mullet probably, swimming back and forth under the wooden pilings. Their bodies flash and sparkle as they catch the sunlight filtered through the water, silver and blue as they turn in unison. I bend to look closer. Startled by my movement they seek refuge in the shadow of a beam, and then dance back into the light when they see there is no danger. Tenuous shivering of light in water.
It is late when I get home. Somehow, I’m not sure how, time has passed and it is 8.30. I will have to rush to get to Modugno’s where I usually have supper. I still haven’t corrected the homework books and I know that means that tomorrow I will have double the quantity to mark and won’t have time for a walk. I feel dull and irritable. I pull on my jacket and walk quickly down the alley to the trattoria. From the street I recognise the slightly musty smell of the table linen, which has not been properly dried before being stored, the heavy bread that is only baked twice a week and which by Sunday is dry and crumbles easily when you break it.
Ugo’s uncle is standing at the bar in the front room of the restaurant, red-faced, talking loudly and making lewd comments about the presenters on TV, strings of spittle forming between his thin lips. His eyes are bloodshot. As I walk through to the back room he orders another shot of grappa and tosses it back in one go, then slams the glass down on the counter with an exaggerated gesture. I wonder if it could be his voice that I hear sometimes at night, shouts echoing up the alley, a man’s voice raised in anger, the sound of blows and then screaming, when I crouch at my window in the dark praying for it to stop. I pass through as quickly as I can to the dining room behind.
The stranger is here before me; he has taken my table.
I feel annoyed but find a place on the far side of the room. He gives no sign that he has noticed my resentment. Modugno waits on him attentively, hoping, I can see, that he will return as a regular during the dead season when trade is as thin as a stray dog. I strain to hear the man’s accent when he places his order but he talks softly and I find it difficult to make out the words or distinguish the sounds. There is something slightly guttural about his voice although it sounds as if he is speaking English. Like me, he has brought a book to read.
I gaze with little interest at the hand-typed menu, noting yet again that the accent on the è is slightly off-centre. I suppose it is because it is used more than most of the other keys. I order soup and then cheese and salad. Modugno brings my meal, exchanges a few words with me, but his eyes are on the man, his words intended to create an impression on him rather than communicate with me, it is clear, and indeed it does not really bother me too much.
The lights are on along the harbour wall, the lungomare, when I come out of the restaurant, the coastguard vessel with Finanza printed in large white letters on the navy hull moored to one side. Seagulls, maddened by
the bright spotlight on the end of the jetty, scream at the confusion of day with night. I walk down to the edge of the quay, feeling the sticky warm breeze from the desert lift my hair and skirt – it will rain in a few days, I know, but for now there is some respite from the cold of the winter that is closing in.
Old Cappi, the school secretary, is out and greets me. I nod in return and try to pass on. He touches my arm gently.
– Come sta, Signorina? Che fa qui così tardi? Ha mangiato?
Trying to relate. Trying to be kind. But I want none of it.
He is a widower and lives by himself in a tiny flat at the far end of the harbour. Every day he makes himself a plate of pasta for lunch with a glass of wine, and a fettina or ham and salad for supper. I know because he discusses it at the grocer’s. I know what most people eat each day. I know most of what they do. There is no privacy here except in one’s thoughts. All my movements, my habits, even my underwear is scrutinised as it hangs on the line stretched across the narrow alley from just below my window to the opposite building on a little pulley so that I can move the washing all the way across to catch the little sunlight that penetrates this far.
Tuesday 30 October
I have gone on reading Pontormo’s Diario today. Strange how very plain and flat it is. I would have expected him to write about his visions and paintings. Yet all he talks about is the difficulty and daily discomfort of his life. I suppose that is what I keep doing too. The daily grind of survival that is so exhausting in its relentless monotony.
Friday I got up an hour before dawn and I did that torso from the arm down.
Saturday I did the thigh, and in the evening I cooked a piece of lamb.
Today was Palm Sunday and I had lunch with Bronzino.
Monday I did the head of that angel.
Tuesday I stayed at home and I don’t know what I did.
Today was 1st April and I did the other thigh with the whole leg and foot.
Holy Thursday.
Friday I got up early and did the body of that child.
He eventually became a recluse, Pontormo that is, sealing himself, walling himself into the church of San Lorenzo in Florence, refusing to let anyone enter for over eleven years, and putting out a basket from the window for his supplies and communications with the outside world. Was he trying to keep out any form of change, trying to keep his existence totally under control? Here he painted scenes of the Creation and the Last Judgement, the Great Flood, scenes of heaven and hell.
Enough. My head is aching from all this reading and writing. The weather is warm today, unseasonably warm, the last breath of summer, so warm in fact that after school I pull on some shorts and a T-shirt. My legs and arms feel strange and white, exposed to the air after more than two months wrapped up in jackets and long pants. I pack a picnic lunch, some boiled eggs and a salad and bread, perhaps taking my cue from Pontormo, and some fruit and almonds and walnuts, and put them into my rucksack. It is still early when I set off up the hill. A slight warm breeze ripples the surface of the sea, and the sunlight sparkles and fragments off it. The shadows are longer and cooler than they would be in summer, but for the rest it feels like a June day, and within a short time I am sweating. I had planned to go to Chiaia di Luna to have a swim, but it is so hot that I begin to long for shade rather than the glare of the beach, so I head inland to the only natural source of water on the island, a small spring that is dry for most of the year but that is flowing after all the rain of the last month and has formed a deep pool in a grove of cork trees.
Strange brownish-green pebbles in running water, strange shapes, softly rounded, distorted by the lens of water. I dip my hand through the surface, seeing my skin turn greenish white, and the lines change strangely as my fingers reach down and touch the round stones on the bottom. I watch the fingers go from one to another as if they do not belong to my arm. They finally stop and choose one and lift it out. It is heavier than I expected as my hand comes into the air and reconnects to my body. The pebble is slippery with green slime. It smells slightly fishy. I feel a sense of sudden disgust. The play of light through the leaves and water on to the pebbles has been lost and all that is left is this smelly slimy stone. I dip my hand in again.
A bird call rouses me from my thoughts. I breathe deeply and look up at the branches, wondering where the song came from. I open my bag and bring out the picnic I had prepared in my apartment hours ago, the hard-boiled eggs, the cheese, the salad, the buttered bread – a little feast. I have never got used to the local habit of eating unbuttered bread. I lay it out on a little tablecloth I had folded into a corner of the bag, then look at it listlessly. I don’t feel hungry. I return to the little stream. It barely deserves the name, just a trickle of water really, but it feeds this pool that is full of frogs and tadpoles and salamanders. The frogs, now that they are used to my presence and are no longer afraid of the shadow I cast across the water where before there had only been dancing light, croak noisily to each other from the shallows. I watch for some time, mesmerised by the flitting light and shadow on the water, and then eventually grow bored. I turn back to the picnic laid out on the bank, but it still looks uninteresting. I lie back on the soft loamy earth and close my eyes.
A picture forms in my mind of the park where we used to play as children, the scent of summer and growth, full of big trees and secret places and a pond covered with lotus flowers. But swirling beneath the surface the pond was treacherous, deep with unknown currents.
My mother used to warn me: ‘Don’t go near the water, you might slip and the current will pull you down!’
I remember wondering what a current was. And suddenly I knew. It was a giant octopus with long tentacles that would grab me and pull me down, down, into the deep darkness. No air, no breath, no life, just a cold watery grave, with my hair and eyes and mouth and throat and stomach all awash.
I picture myself lying there on the grass some distance from the pond, a small child in shorts and a T-shirt. When I go there with my brothers, I no longer play with them. I just lie there and watch it. I am sure that if I watch carefully enough, sooner or later I will see the current, catch a flash of a tentacle. From time to time the water ripples as if something were moving in the depths. But then it passes and the pond settles and the sun shines on the undisturbed surface again.
It is late afternoon when I awake. The shadows are long and my body is stiff and cold. I pull myself awkwardly to my feet, brush the leaves off my clothes and pack away my lunch untouched. I know I have been dreaming deeply but can’t quite remember the images that hang tantalisingly just out of consciousness, just out of sight. I put my rucksack over one shoulder and begin the long walk back to the village, anxious to get home before it is completely dark.
Wednesday 31 October
Today I am caught up in midterm tests and marking and teachers’ meetings, which I resent but can do nothing about. I am forced to attend. I sit as far back as possible and try to avoid the gossip and idle conversations with the other members of staff. It is not too hard. They don’t consider me one of themselves, both because I am a temporary teacher and because I am not Italian. One of the teachers is trying to persuade me to approach the unions about my precarious position here. She says that it is illegal for them to employ me on a temporary basis for so long and then possibly even send me away, that after a certain amount of time by law my status should become permanent. I do not feel like challenging the Italian government on a matter about which I feel so little enthusiasm or entitlement, but I don’t even have enough energy to explain this to her so I am forced to hear her out. My attention flickers backwards and forwards between the voices in the room and my memory of the pool, the sparkling light on the little fish.
I found my umbrella today, behind the classroom door where I must have left it last year, or perhaps the year before. It was covered in dust and the joints were stiff and slightly rusty, the fabric hardened and brittle, but it opened up after a few attempts. I will not need to buy a new
one after all. It is beginning to look like rain again so I feel quite pleased to have it.
As I am leaving the school at lunchtime Signor Cappi calls me into the office to tell me that I am wanted on the phone. I lift the receiver.
– Pronto?
– Perchè non è venuta venerdì? He doesn’t give his name but I recognise the hollow dry voice at once. It is Ispettore Lupo again.
I hesitate.
– Deve ritornare. L’aspetto questo venerdì. I will expect you on Friday. Don’t forget. Make sure you come this time.
He puts down the phone. I haven’t said a word.
I hurry out under my umbrella feeling upset. I notice that Ugo is hovering outside the school gate. It crosses my mind that he is waiting for me. Perhaps he wants me to protect him against the other boys, now that I have saved him once. I pass through, ignoring him. I walk home quickly and close and lock the door behind me. I feel agitated. I suspect that he is following me but I know I have to keep him out. I have no place for him in my life.
Thursday 1 November
The Story of Anna P, as Told by Herself Page 3