Ric knows from his time in Sardinia that to meet at passeggio means meeting at some time between the end of the working day and dusk. He takes a seat at the back of a café and waits.
Couples walk to stimulate their appetite, while others walk to ease the course of their digestion. Old men sit beneath the statue and lean on their walking canes, ruminating about political stagnation. Boys play hide-and-seek and kick plastic bottles between them. And older boys, sporting pork-pie hats, lounge on the low harbour wall, laughing and applauding their friends as they show off their latest bicycling tricks. Young girls, dressed to the nines, push prams and cluck over imaginary infants, and new mothers parade their babies in multi-coloured underwear. Other girls, too old for pretend and too young to engage, stroll slowly, though not so slowly that their aged chaperones might think they risk indecency. The sun has dipped below San Bartolo al Monte, throwing the Marina Corta into shadow. The air is still and vaguely humid. But, to walk is to be sociable…
“Salve, Ric,” the pretty waitress, Giuliana, greets him and with a sweep of her hand she suggests he take a table of his choosing.
Giuliana lingers when he has chosen. She is, he thinks, in her early twenties, not perhaps as young as some of the waitresses working tables in adjacent cafés and she dresses differently too; her straw-blonde hair is short-styled, her blue skirt not quite to her knees and though she is slender, her Dolce and Gabbana t-shirt is a size too small.
Marcello pitches up just as the lanterns around the piazza begin to shine. He acknowledges Ric with a wave of his cigar, but has business to discuss with others before he has time to share. Now and again Marcello’s acquaintances glance over at Ric as though Il Velaccino is advising them of his status.
“Excuse me,” he says, when eventually he pulls a chair up, “but this is the only time of day I can speak to others. How was your day with La Strega?”
“Interesting,” Ric replies, “she would appear to be the font of all knowledge.”
Marcello raises his eyebrows and says, “I think I know what you mean when you say this, but surely the font is what you have in the church for keeping holy water?”
“Font, fount, fountain of knowledge: same thing only different, I guess.”
“You have been spending too much time with that old witch. She speaks in riddles too, eh?”
“Is that why you call her La Strega, because she speaks in foreign tongues?”
A thin individual of pensionable age with a pinched face, hard eyes and thin lips approaches the table. When he realises Marcello is in conversation, he nods politely, almost deferentially, and takes a chair far enough away that he cannot be accused of eavesdropping. Marcello nods at the man, who in turn speaks aside to the waitress. A bottle of Birra Messina and glass appear in an instant.
“No, we call her the witch because she believes she can communicate with the spirits who live out in the water near La Casa dei Sconosciuti. People have seen her walking out by the cliffs at Punta San Giuseppe at night, dancing and calling out. There are some old stories of this house.” He scoffs gently, as though he is not inclined to condemn her for her beliefs. “Perhaps the house is haunted? Who knows?” He waves his hands in the air and laughs, “She is old. Old people are allowed to think what they like. And if talking to imaginary friends is what they are happy doing, then…”
A scrawny-looking youth with long, straggly hair and low-slung jeans sidles into the café and flops down at an adjacent table. He glances around nervously.
In an instant the patron of the café is standing beside him. He growls at the kid, who jumps up and leaves as though he has sat on a scorpion.
Marcello shakes his head in pity, but, as if to distract Ric, says, “You see this old man who sits beneath the statue of San Bartolo; the man who sits up straight; the man with the black glasses and the nose like a Roman?”
There is more than one old man sitting at the foot of the statue wearing dark glasses. Ric cranes his neck, “The one with the collarless shirt and braces?”
“Si, him. Old Nino. He is so old that no one knows how old he is. He is older than La Strega and has outlived his wife, two sons and six grandsons. If you talk to him, he will tell you how, as a boy, he used to slide down the Cave di Pomice, the hill of pumice at Porticello, all the way from the top right down into the sea. And, even though he is blind, he can describe this to you in such detail that you would believe he did this yesterday. I think he sees everything more clearly than we do. Every evening, one of his neighbours brings him to the Corta and takes him home after. The next day he can tell you exactly what was said the evening before. His memory is like a great computer. Figlio di Troia! And I can’t remember what I said to my wife this morning!
“But, old Nino Cafarella believes that Il Cavaliere – Silvio Berlusconi – is Il Duce’s illegitimate son and that the Fascists still govern through him. But, if that is so, it would mean that Il Cavaliere is Edda Ciano’s half-brother, and that, my friend, is ridiculous.” Marcello glances up at the heavens. “But, if Old Nino wants to believe this, what is the benefit to convince him it is not true, eh?”
“Ciano?” Ric asks, “Wasn’t her husband fingered for Mussolini’s shooting?”
Marcello scoffs, this time more dismissively, “Hey, everyone from Garibaldi’s ghost to the Pope was in on that one. And if they weren’t, they would all like you to believe they were.” He drinks his beer and surveys the scene.
“I remember now,” Ric says, “didn’t Mussolini have his daughter’s husband shot?”
“Yes,” Marcello sighs, “but as we say, where there is smoke, there is fire. Nobody gets shot without a reason, eh? Maybe he was not complicit? Who would know this? The dead? And does it matter so much. He was Il Duce’s son-in-law; perhaps that was enough reason.
“You know, Edda Ciano was a prisoner here, in a house in the little Piazza San Bartolo behind the Chiesa di San Giuseppe, over there.” He points across the Corta to the church at the top of the steps by the entrance to the Maddalena. “She was sent here after she returned from Switzerland at the end of the war. It is said she had an affair with Leonida Bongiorno; I told you about him; my English teacher. They made a film about it. Just the other day they show it here.”
“Can I get you another beer, Marcello?”
He thinks for a moment before replying, then turns and glances at the slender man sitting alone a few tables away. “No,” he decides, “it is late and I must show you where you can stay; then I have more business.”
“I’ll settle my bill,” Ric says and signals to Giuliana, who swans up to their table: “Il conto, per favore?”
She looks at Marcello, questioningly, and, when she receives no recognition, she turns to the man sitting across the way.
He smiles, but without any real warmth, and inclines his head: their drinks are his pleasure.
Ric nods his thanks, the man nods back and the waitress smiles.
“Come,” Marcello says as though Ric is nothing more than one of his vassals, “I have been too long talking. It is a problem; too much talking.”