Early evening, once the sun has lowered and the heat has drained from the air, Ric checks the stern tube; it is no longer leaking. He takes the dinghy ashore and tethers it to the retaining wall. The tall Valeria is not at the cottage, so he strolls into town through the narrow Maddalena.
Sandro, the escurzionista, is absent from the Marina Corta and that makes way for others similarly keen to promote their cause. Doe-eyed daughters and sharp-eyed sons of café owners are dusting down, adjusting parasols and laying up tables. Old men congregate beneath the statue of San Bartolo; they lean on their walking sticks, gesticulate and chatter in urgent and sincere tones. Rock music filters from cafés and the waitress who had taken a shine to him the day before, smiles and waves.
The town rises back a hundred feet or so from the old harbour and the Via Garibaldi winds up out of the Marina Corta between restaurants and pavement cafés, rising over a shallow saddle which separates the main part of the town from the walled citadel above. The narrow streets are cobbled and crowned, with high pavements and grated drains.
Ric turns into the Via Maurolico in search of the supermarket, which he has learned is to be found some way towards the bottom of the Corso Vittorio Emanuele.
Caught up in the sights and sounds of the busy street, Ric strolls past the supermarket and lingers at a stall to admire the colourful array of fruit. A short, round-faced, gravel-voiced old woman calls her boy to the front. She weighs Ric up, wondering whether he is nothing more than just another tourist out to waste her time with banal queries concerning the pale complexion of her apricots or the extraordinary lustre of her tomatoes.
He picks up a lemon the size and shape of a hand grenade, and examines it. The skin is lumpy, rumpled and pockmarked like the face of an old soak. Ric has not seen its like before.
“Cedro,” says a woman behind him.
He turns: it is Valeria.
“Cedro?” Ric repeats, trying his best to mimic her pronunciation.
“No, Cedro,” she repeats, “with a C like cheese, a D like dame and an R that rolls. Cedro,” she says again slowly. “It is like a lemon and a little like a grapefruit, but not so tart, you would say. The pith is very thick. Some people make a conserve with them, some candy the peel and others flavour drinks and make a salad with them. But most simply slice them very thin and eat the fruit of the centre.”
“I’ve not seen one before,” Ric says and asks the old lady, “Quanto costa?”
The old woman nods in Ric’s direction, scoffs and barks a scathing remark at her boy.
He ambles over and says, “One,” and then, “Euro.”
“They are from the island,” Valeria says.
Ric’s attention is drawn by a young woman wearing a broad straw hat and oversize sunglasses walking by. She smiles back at him; a slightly deprecating smile, but not so deprecating that it suggests she disapproves of his attention.
“You’ve been in your own company too long,” Valeria observes. “And you look like you could do with a decent meal.”
But before Ric can reply to her vague offer, she adds, “And, I think, perhaps a shower?”
Ric steps back.
She recognises the distress in his reaction, “No,” she says, shaking her head, “that wasn’t what I meant.” She tut-tuts mischievously. “It is what Camille always wanted when he arrived: a cold beer and a shower, amongst other things, but always those two before he turned his mind to food. Come, this evening. You are not allergic to fish?”
“No,” he replies, “thank you, a shower and a meal would be very welcome.”
“Some time around eight-thirty then,” Valeria says, glancing at his wrist, and adds, “around sundown,” in case the clock on the Mara is not working.
“Thank you, Valeria. I look forward to it,” he replies, and then realises the right course would be for him to contribute towards the meal. “Would you like me to bring wine?”
She smiles and says, “Yes, that would be good of you.”
Ric raises an eyebrow in question.
“The Caravaglio, a white wine, is good,” Valeria replies, “it is from Salina. You will find Caravaglio in the supermarket.”
She turns and strolls gracefully up the Corso Vittorio. Valeria walks slightly head down, as though carefully studying the cobbles before her, but now and again she acknowledges the greetings of the café owners with a smile and a slight inclination of her head.
Ric watches until she disappears round the corner into the Maurolico, then turns and continues his stroll down to the municipal port.
The Corso empties its gaggle of lazy strollers into the Marina Lunga; a colourful crowd amidst a warmth of gentle chaos. Eager escurzionisti petition tourists freshly arrived off the Aliscafo. Enormous, pin-clean coaches, seemingly too sophisticated for such a plain island with so many narrow roads, lurk menacingly on the corner. And older, smaller minibuses stand idle as stooped pensioners file out for their day’s shopping. Antique Fiats and Lancias appear from the colosseum of winding lanes, bearing all the hallmarks of combat. A tinker, hunched over the back of his three-wheeled Ape, sharpens knives and works metal on request. The garbage ship is leaving and the loud speakers atop the small ticket gazebo proclaim the onward destinations of the Aliscafo: “Salina, Panarea, e Stromboli.” In the middle of all the organised confusion, a policeman stands chatting to a pretty girl.
But it is the walled cemetery, stretching up the hill behind the Marina Lunga, which catches Ric’s eye. It reminds him of his first time in the citadel of Bonifacio on the southern tip of Corsica.
Even though he’d located the arched entrance into the long-deserted Foreign Legion garrison – the location of the black and white photograph of his great-grandfather – it was the Cimetière Marins in the Bosco that drew him. It was as though the rows of mausolea exerted some gravitational influence over him, beckoning him to the narrow walkways between the whitewashed tombs as though the dead knew he would be fascinated to hear their histories. Curiously, although he doesn’t understand why, it is the same now.
Tall, grey iron gates are flanked by four even taller columns, the outer two topped by white pillars supporting stone urns which throw out petrified eternal flames; the inner, shorter pair support two conical vessels draped with sculpted cloaks. And in between the columns stand ornate gates crowned by a delicate iron cross, the centre of which is ringed with a crown of thorns, the words Omnia Traham inscribed beneath.
Ric strolls up the long avenue of cypress trees between the modest headstones and the simple graves. In crowded beds the young sleep beside the old. A marble headstone adorned with an anchor notes the year of passing, but there is often no note of the year of birth.
Geckos skitter in and out of the shade, and ants trail to and fro like supply vehicles on a busy mountain road.
The further he strolls, so the modest headstones are replaced by elaborate, raised sarcophagi, presided over by Jesus on his cross, miniature angels with mournful faces and the bust of a noble patriarch. And, nearer the back where the hill rises more steeply, substantial neoclassical mausolea, some art deco, others plain, some black granite, others white, grace the terrace and bear witness to the comings and goings in the port below. The deceased wait patiently for the return of their children, children who long ago left in search of greater opportunity.
One of the grander mausolea belongs to the La Cava family and Ric recalls the name written in large-but-faded letters on the façade of the run-down warehouse by the tangled steel pontoon to which he’d moored. That, in turn, reminds him of the argument he heard through the fog and he wonders whether he managed to get away from the place without being seen.
As Ric walks out of the cemetery, he hesitates. Though it is still warm and sultry, he shivers and turns, for some reason expecting to see the ghosts of the departed following him. But there is no one behind him except for an old man, who leans against his witches broom and watches him, waiting to see which way he will turn out of the gate.
He wanders through the milling crowd to the Corso Vittorio, stops off at the supermarket to pick up a couple of bottles of wine and climbs the narrow, winding steps between the houses of the Salina Meligunis up to the cool of the Piazza Mazzini in the citadel. Ric pauses to read the commemorative plaques on the walls of the municipal offices.
He checks his stride as he walks down out of the cool piazza, turning, expecting to see a line of Soldati and Militari stalking him. But again, there is no one.