The Dark Side of the Sun

by IAIN WODEHOUSE-EASTON

  So it was a shock to discover its body on a maquis path when I walked later in the evening air. It had been hit clearly at short range with shotgun pellets that had savagely destroyed its head. It was a pitiful sight and there was little I could do on my own, as its weight was such that I could not lift it and only managed to push the corpse into bracken at the side of the narrow path.

  My immediate reaction was to protect Nicole from this discovery close to the house, so I went down to the cove in search of Antoine or Giuseppe to help me. Antoine was not around. Giuseppe was folding his nets on the shore, but immediately agreed to come with me and deal with the situation even though it was getting dark. He brought a small tarpaulin so that we could drag the body down the hillside path until we could find a flat area behind the beach where it would be possible to bury the animal. Even with this aid to dragging the corpse, it was a great effort for both of us, with the loose gravel making us slip and slide,

  threatening to tumble us down with it. With difficulty we managed to slide the dog’s body across the sandy beach towards his grotte, and finding a level scrap of land behind the rocks, started to dig a hole as darkness settled over us. In the gloom we finally dug deep enough to bury and cover the body. Night closed in on us and the grave. Giuseppe produced a bottle of brandy – as rough as his voice – and we swigged at it in turn to put some fire back into our weary bodies.

  “No one will miss him,” he said,

  “Antoine and Angelique will.”

  “Not enough. He wasn’t a good guard dog.”

  “I’ll tell them in the morning,” I offered.

  “It came by chance and left by chance. It never had a master it could become faithful to.”

  Giuseppe paused, rolled a cigarette from his tobacco pouch, and looked out to the blank space of the sea. I said: “We all need a companion. Human or animal.”

  He smoked his hand-rolled cigarette for a few minutes, inhaling deeply until the nicotine steadied his mind. He turned to me, as if in a trance.

  “I could not replace Marianne. Ever.”

  I wanted him to open up about this girl, whom he had so evidently loved above all, but he resisted questions, standing now, gazing out into the darkness, as if hoping she might return. He had lost her, and his thoughts sank into despondency whenever her name came up.

  “Here, take this oil lamp, you’ll need it to get back up to the house.”

  “I am not surprised,” Nicole said on my return.” Accidents are always possible with these hunters. They shoot at anything that moves. It’s sad, but Antoine will have to accept

  its fate. It was an abandoned waif. Angelique fed it; it stayed ever grateful, and they had come to love it.”

  “What shall I do?”

  “Tell them that you helped Giuseppe dig a hole to bury it, before it got picked on by scavenging birds. They can put a small cairn on the grave, if they want.”

  It was only when I had slept on it that I realised it could not have been an accident. It had not been near sheep. The bell on its collar would have given a clear indication. Someone had chosen to kill it. But why?

  It was the dog’s death – killing – and events following that made me really unsure of the situation. Everything was a jumble in my mind, not least because the next incident was on a day that ended with me rather drunk. I had failed to face up to seeing Antoine and telling him about the dog. Giuseppe could, I reasoned. I was sure he would, unless he was out fishing all day.

  I pretended to work at my literary critiques, but I could not concentrate and ended the day with barely three new pages of usable material. The constant glasses of wine had not helped. I was a little drunk. Nicole seemed busy with her work and I kept out of her way. She let me know that I should make my own supper – some of Angelique’s chestnut bread and fromage de brebis was the suggestion, and left me to it as she tried to complete whatever she was doing. I did notice however, that she was acting nervously. The last thing I recall was of Nicole declining - politely – my inappropriate suggestion of spending that night in her bed. Her refusal was firm.

  xxii

  I remembered that rejection in the cold light of dawn, through the haze of my hangover, and that Nicole seemed to have a lot on her mind, and all of it nothing to do with me. I didn’t know whether I had offended her or some more pressing worry was occupying her. It seemed best to back off, so I spent the morning working hard and as my brain cleared, felt pleased with making some significant progress, and opened a bottle of spring water to go with my salad. I had not seen Nicole as she had been out on the landscape all morning and clearly was skipping any lunch, so I presumed she was focused on gathering plants. Rather than have a nap on the terrace, I put on my swimming trunks and took myself off down to the beach, where as usual all was quiet in the afternoon haze, and after a brief swim, lay down under the shade of a tree and dozed off immediately. It all felt so perfect again.

  I must have slept for some considerable time because the sun was lowering in the sky and slipping behind the headland when I awoke. I gathered my things and wandered over to the taverne, where I found Antoine attending to the needs of the mules in the stables. I asked for a glass of whisky and a jug of water, but at first he was reluctant to provide one. Under my prolonged demand, he eventually relented but immediately said that they would not be serving anything else and supper was not being offered. There were no craft in the cove at anchor at that time, so I could understand the practicalities of their position, though I had not as yet even asked him to offer anything.

  “The dog has vanished,” he said.

  I realised at once that Giuseppe had left reporting the accident to me. There was no alternative to be open with Antoine. I was unprepared.

  “The dog was killed,” I said too quickly, without forming the better words that would have softened the blow. He looked askance at me. “It was shot. I thought it an accident, but

  am not so sure. Its bell? Whoever did it, did so at short range. That seems odd, given that it was on a path, not in the scrub hidden in the undergrowth. I am sorry. I should have told you before.”

  Antoine paused, but then seemed to accept the dog’s fate. Perhaps too readily? I expected his comment, but he said nothing, and continued attending to the mules, as if they were more important at that moment. They were, of course, but his nonchalance disturbed me and felt out of character. He had something else on his mind.

  “Giuseppe helped me bury him last night,” I said. “In the ground behind his grotte. It seemed the best thing to do, as we couldn’t find you.”

  “I understand.” But did he? The action of the chasseurs was an intrusion on our territory and peaceful isolation. I was ready for his anger, but it did not come.

  “I’m busy.”

  He then went on fiddling with the harnesses of the two mules, as if getting them ready for some carrying duties. I wasn’t thinking too clearly, but it did strike me as a bit unusual, for there were no plans for deliveries that I knew of, and neither Nicole or I had expectations of any goods arriving by boat and needing carrying up to the house. Anyway it would be too late that day to consider this.

  I did not clear the fuzziness of my thoughts and the whisky only added to the mist anyway. I asked the odd question, but Antoine did not seem interested in chatting, and hinted that I should leave. I assumed that he felt I had already had enough to drink. He carried on attending to the shoes of the mules and the soft leather padding he normally used when they were due to climb the rocky track to the house.

  As the sun dipped out of sight and a slight chill came upon me, I took the hint and wended my weary way up the steep mountainside back to the house, which took me more than half an hour. I found Nicole back, sorting her plants out, and like Antoine not interested in what I had been up to.

  “Make your own supper, I am knackered,” was all she said.

  “O.K.” There didn’t appear to be any purpose in extending the conversation, whilst she wa
s in a black mood, and later I prepared a simple salad dish. She busied herself in her room and I kept my distance.

  It was something of a surprise then that she came up to me and presented me with a large glass of cassis liqueur and a goodnight kiss. Feeling a touch better for that but heavy-headed from yet another powerful drink I slunk off to bed in my room at the back of the house and soon fell soundly asleep. In the night I had dreams of wild horses moving across a dark landscape, of their riders whispering hushed orders, of a lamp swinging from their guide, of the soft clip-clop of padded feet, as these moonlit ghosts went off into the mountains, and disappeared from my thoughts.

  When I did wake at noon the next day the sun had returned and all seemed normal. Nicole was again out somewhere in the maquis. There was a simple note to say that she hoped I had slept soundly. I had, but there was however a slight niggle in my mind. Why had Antoine – and Nicole – seemed so keen to have me out of the way, non compis mentis?

  xxiii

  We soon settled back into our routines, and the dog’s unfortunate death, despite my private reservations, was put down as an accident or at worse the response of a shepherd protecting his flock from marauding dogs. The stray had paid the price, and though I had not seen sheep nearby at that time on the hillside, they could often be well-hidden within the undergrowth of the maquis, as could the goats that roamed free most of the year. It might have been a ‘precautionary’ action, as much a warning as anything. Certainly I seemed to be the only one to have doubts. I kept them to myself, as I did not want to spoil the atmosphere I had come to enjoy.

  My forsaking of this incident allowed both Nicole and I to resume our studies, and the days took on a pleasant passage, with work concentrated in the mornings, a light lunch with a glass of wine, followed by a sieste, and another hour of work before supper on the terrace or a meal down at the taverne when we saw boats in – and knew Antoine and Angelique would be serving. Their meals were so cheap it was tempting to take advantage, though the climb back up the hill could take the edge off the pleasure.

  The next evening at the house, a bowl of figs, Ficus carica, was to be my next enticement. The prolific trees were flourishing all around the house, seemingly independent of weather. Some had been planted, some were wild. The cultivated ones had no male flowers and the fruits ripened parthenogenetically, but those in contact with the wild ones were subject to pollination by an insect, Blastophaga Grossorum, which flies between the two and enters the female cultivated fruits to lay its eggs, bringing about pollination and a more rapid maturation of the fruit. Such information I brought out of Nicole’s notebook, which she had left (deliberately?) around and quoted back to her over the dinner table.

  “Clever boy.” But it was the languorous way she ate the fruit that stirred my attention. The image of labia exposed by her eating, the seductive way she sucked on the fruit to extract its seeds, not for the first time aroused me. She was deliberately provoking my passion. We were reunited again.

  Towards the end of this exhibition I walked round the table and took her mouth to mine and we swapped seeds of desire. There was no resistance to leading her to bed, the wine mellowing in our heads, the world forgotten, and the chance to renew the lust she had previously woken. She let me slip off her shift and dropped to her knees to remove my shorts before greedily suckling on the fruits of my loins. Slowly, but with increasing vigour she satisfied me, before falling back on the bed laughing, and waving at me to come to her and take her as quickly as possible.

  “Forbidden fruit?”

  “No,” I said, “thank the fig, for its giving of life and pleasure”.

  “J’accepte,” Nicole’s reply as she rolled over and immediately fell fast asleep.

  xxiv

  Encouraged that our blissful life was back on track, I returned to my literary critiques, and soon made enough progress to be confident of meeting the agreed deadlines. I expected to be here for another two months, time enough to examine my trio of authors in more detail, and only faced the problem of having to go to Calvi for monthly reporting and later to post the drafts off to England, as they were intended to precede my own departure from the island.

  The height of summer was now attracting more yachts to anchor in the bay. Antoine and Angelique were pleased to have a flow of customers, even if most only stayed the one or two days. These professional crews found the idyllic setting amongst the most attractive of the whole of Corsica, and its isolation from the landside meant tourists had never come to spoil its natural wonders.

  I too made the most of the taverne being in full operation and as Nicole was busier than ever criss-crossing the landscape every day in search of herbs and medicinal plants, I took, after a morning’s work, to eating more often at Angelique’s table, having brought my swimming trunks and a towel down from the house. It was easy to pass the rest of the day in idle dalliance, loafing around and supping wine chilled in the mountain stream that ran past the shack into the bay.

  Sometimes I would go along and talk to Giuseppe, as he tended his nets, or if he waved at me, to help him bring buckets laden with fish for the taverne. His sea-going rituals were daily occupations as Angelique had only one old gas bottle-powered refrigerator, and so was very limited in the stocks she could keep cold.

  On occasions I found him at ‘play’. I had seen his old pistol and ammunition (there were boxes of it tucked away in a hidden crag behind the grotte) and knew he liked to practise his aim. “Just in case,” he would repeat time and again. He walked a short distance along the shore to the end of the bay’s curve and set up pieces of driftwood on a rocky ledge. Standing at varying distances he would aim and fire a number of bullets. His technique was controlled and each aim was undertaken seriously at first to confirm his skill, as he compensated for the inaccuracy of the worn barrel. Once assured he had not lost his touch he would laugh and fire a series of rounds at wild random. I imagine this was to test his reflexes. He let me watch him a couple of times, always ending with those same words, “Just in case.”

  Giuseppe had one other curio. A stileto, the knife, which Antoine had mentioned, associated with vendetta and the settling of inter-family disputes in mountain towns and villages. The blade was sinister in its narrowness and looked as if it would break easily. But I knew enough from Antoine’s explanation of the way to use these daggers, that by thrusting upwards into a man’s gut its thinness was sufficient to do terrible deeds. I tried to ask Giuseppe where he had got it and why, but he would say nothing. I assumed he kept it as a second line of defence in an emergency. It was a hateful object from Corsica’s violent past.

  Other times he would let me go out with him in the shaky boat he used. Clinker built, it had no motor and had to be rowed out to sea, where his lobster and crab pots lay. Also to cast a net or tow a baited line. Tasks he could only manage in a calm sea.

  Giuseppe continued to be reluctant to tell me much about his life with the girl he had met in Bastia at the end of the war, though little details trickled out over time. The very mention of the name Marianne brought him to the verge of tears, but he shifted his words always towards himself, as if it remained too painful to talk of her death. I understood in some accident, but did not want to pry further and awaited the time when he knew me better and might find it in himself to reveal what had happened.

  His stories skipped over this sensitive matter and the moment he had ‘gone on the run’. This odd turn of phrase seemed out-of-place, given that he had been allowed to stay and work on Corsica, having rejected a return to his native Italy. In establishing he was from Genoa, he would relate the history of Corsica under Genoese rule for nearly five hundred years, and one day showed me round the ruins of the Genoese fort on the headland nearby. This was one of sixty such forts still ringing Corsica which had once provided a warning system and defence against other nations seeking to own the island. I knew the Genoese rule had been brutal, but he was proud of their ownership and the security improvements they ha
d made in their time. All over the island the ever-evident Italian place names reminded us of their sovereignty – Ajaccio, Calvi and Bastia the leading examples. So he claimed his right to be here.

  “But how did you come to choose this isolated spot?”

  “I had to leave the north in a hurry,” was all he would say. “I had an old motorbike but sold it to get some money, then travelled around on foot, and by cutting across country I could avoid trouble.” This didn’t explain much, but he refused to go into detail. No mention of Marianne.

  “I found this place by chance. Got some fishing work at Calvi, and the boat put in to the cove from time to time. Antoine and Angelique were at the house – Nicole’s house now – as they did some shepherding until they could no longer manage the work. There was another family at the taverne providing simple meals to boats and fishermen. There were more fish in those days. It was peaceful and remote - that suited me. When we anchored I looked around the place. That’s when I found the grotte. No one was using it. It had been a store for fishing gear. No one owned it and I saw I could move in without trouble. I managed to get a cheap old boat, just big enough to fish from, and offered to supply the family myself. That suited them, and Antoine when he took over.

  “So, all these years you’ve stayed here? Never gone away?”

  “No need to. Not wanted to.”

  “Marianne’s family?”

  “Pas possible. No-go area.”

  xxv

  It was Inspector Girard who broached a new line of investigation about the dead man on the buoy. I happened to be swimming by the jetty, when he landed from the patrol-boat a week later.

  “We took it to be another gang killing, as you know. But the fact the murdered man proved to be Italian gives a new emphasis on Giuseppe.”

  I felt incredulous, and the look of surprise on my face said as much. “I can’t believe he could …”