Her sofa provides a better night’s sleep than his bed on board the Mara. But it is narrower than he might have hoped and several times in the night he dreams he is balanced on the edge of a cliff, staring at rocks and shallow water.
Over a breakfast of fresh apricots, sweet cake and coffee strong enough to tar a road, Ric again asks Valeria if there is a boatyard where he can get the Mara fixed.
“Il Velaccino, Marcello,” she replies. “He will take Mara out of the water at Canneto. He knows all there is to know about making her better. He lives at Capistello, the village up there.” She points over her shoulder at a hamlet on the hillside. “I will give you directions. You must tell him you are a friend of mine, that way he will be fair with you.”
The air is cool and clear, and, as they sit out on the patio, Ric watches the Aliscafo charge towards the Marina Lunga.
“Camille says in his letter that your family name was Sciacchitano.”
“Or so he thinks,” Ric replies.
“It is more than possible,” she says, considering. “It is a Sicilian name and there are families with this name in Lipari. That will both help and make it difficult for you to find out anything. Sadly, many people of the islands emigrated in the last century.” Valeria looks for all the world as though she’s just come out of make-up and her carefully constructed repose suggests she is expecting a photographer.
“Even now, after scuola media most of the children go to Milazzo or Messina for further schooling. They don’t always return. Once they have seen what the world has to offer, it is hard for them to find enough reason to come home.”
Valeria lights one of her thin, white cigarettes and ponders for a minute. “Your grandfather or great-grandfather, he left Lipari for Britain, when?”
“We think, in the thirties,” Ric offers.
Valeria frowns, turning figures over in her mind. “In the last years of the nineteenth century, to emigrate made much sense. Of course, the island exported pumice for the building of skyscrapers in New York and many of the men went to help build them. But the only work for men was fishing or working the pumice quarry, so in the first ten years of the last century nearly 10,000 left for America, a quarter of that number for Argentina and many to Australia. Now we have only 10,000 people on this island, although in the summer the Aliscafo brings as many people again. But… but in the thirties, life was hard; the only way to get off the island was to volunteer to go to Quarta Sponda, to Libya or Tunisia.”
Ric is listening. But it comes to him that if the population of Lipari is so small, then it is likely that most people know each other and, therefore, it is likely that any one of the people he has met since his arrival knows either the victim or the murderer from the charade he heard played out in the mist.
“As part of the forced colonisation, you mean?” he asks.
“Yes, as a part of Balbo’s dream of Grande Italia. You could not leave the islands unless you had a permit. Many of those who could not get work sold their souls to the Fascist State. Before the war, the police force in Italy was greater than that of the police forces of France, Germany and Britain combined. It is unlikely that your ancestor would have emigrated from Lipari; it is more probable that he would have escaped.”
Valeria chews her lip for a moment before adding, “I will commit some thought to this. A diversion would be most welcome. But first, you must see to the Mara. Here,” she scribbles a map of directions, “this shows you where Marcello’s house lies. He knows all there is to know about boats; even his name means he is of sea. Tell him I sent you.”