The next day, Ric meets Valeria at La Precchia, the café halfway down the Corso Vittorio. He watches her stroll down the cobbled street towards him, greeting and exchanging pleasantries with the shopkeepers and pausing now and again to pore over the fruit stall and the night’s catch of fish displayed on Alfredo’s three-wheeled Ape.
“Salve, Ric. You have not ordered?”
They dip slices of sweet, ring-shaped Ciambella Della Nonna breakfast cake in cappuccino and talk about the weather.
Valeria says, “Cielo a pecorelle, acqua a catanelle: when we have clouds that look like lambs, then we will have rain.” She smokes her long, thin Vogue cigarettes and tells the waiter it is high time they visited the Sorgente Termale – the mud baths – in Vulcano. Though she must be three times his age, he responds to her enthusiasm as though they share many intimate delights.
Just before ten, they walk the last fifty metres down to the bus station at the Marina Lunga and wait for the small bus.
White-haired old ladies scowl, talk to themselves and examine their shopping as though they are certain they have forgotten some vital ingredient for i Purpetta. Short, dark, round-headed men of Sikelian extraction and taller, more slender, fair-haired and fair-skinned descendants of Normans, seek out the shade and roll their own cigarettes.
When, finally, the minibus has fought its way through the melee of vehicles filing up to the petrol station in the centre of the little roundabout, the old women grumble as a callow youth forces his way on board before them.
“It is the way of things,” Valeria says in a voice just loud enough that the youth will hear her. “Coatti – the young ruffians – they no longer respect age. Even those as young as twenty-five now think the Coatti are too disrespectful.”
The seats in the Ursobus are hard, the windows fixed and opaque with age, and it rattles and clonks over the many drain holes.
Valeria busies herself massaging cream into her hands. She chuckles when she notices him appraising the minibus: “We could have taken one of the more modern buses, but they travel too fast and a pulmino like this is slower and gives one time to admire the scenery.”
The road winds up out of town and over the saddle between the hills to Quattrocchi on the western side of the island. Occasional white lambs of cloud graze in a cerulean pasture, casting dark shadows on a flat sea. They pause in the settlement of Pianoconte to exchange passengers, skirt the flanks of Monte Sant’Angelo through Castellaro, and then, twenty minutes later arrive above Quattropani. Valeria asks the driver to let them out at a bend just before the descent into the village.
“Four Eyes and Four Breads,” Ric says as they alight, “all a little quaint.”
Valeria chuckles, “Yes. They say Four Eyes because you need an extra pair of eyes to appreciate the view, and Four Breads because that is how much food you will need if you walk here over Monte Sant’Angelo. But I suspect nobody really knows.” She shoulders her leather tote bag. “Come, we have to walk up; Nino lives in a small house near the Chiesa Vecchia.”
The track is grassy, crowned and steep for the first fifty metres. Valeria strides up it as though the slope is merely an obstacle to overcome and therefore worth little in the way of consideration.
At the top, the track curves to the left and opens out to run north-east along a broad, bald ridge that ends in a high promontory. “Salina,” she says, pausing and pointing away across the purple sea at a dark green cone resting in the shadow of one of her fluffy lambs, “it is where the Caravaglio comes from. Also they film some of Il Postino there. You have seen this movie?”
“Can’t say I have.”
“You must, Ric.” Valeria stops and waits until he has noticed she is no longer beside him so that he, too, stops. “If you want to understand this place, the people, us; you must see this movie.”
They stroll along the windswept ridge towards a low, square white church with a miniscule dome. Aside from the olive grove on the eastern flank of the church and a handful of small white houses dotted on either side of the track, the land around them is a mishmash of grey and green scrub broken by yellow Tyrrhenian broom, purple gillyflower, pink rock rose, and wild carrot and strawberry bushes.
Nino’s house, like the Chiesa Vecchia just beyond it, is white-washed and square, but it is topped by a terracotta tile roof and graced by a pergola which overlooks the two mile stretch of sea separating Lipari from Salina. As they approach down the slope, Ric is minded to point out, “Hell of a view for a blind man!”
“Yes,” Valeria replies, lifting her face towards the breeze, “it is strange how our perceptions are governed by physical limitations? I have always understood that Nino is able to sit in his bagghiu – his pergola – and feel the view: to feel the cool Tramontana from the north-east, to taste the moist seeds of cloud which rest over Salina, to hear the conversations of the people dining in Da Alfredo’s in Santa Marina across the water, to smell the basil in the Pane Cunzato they are eating, and to feel the movement of the small boats that come and go between the islands. Just because one is blind, Ric, it does not mean one cannot see.”
Nino is indeed sitting on a stone seat, staring out through his round, dark glasses across the strait as though timing the Aliscafo in its haste towards Salina.
“Salve, Valeria,” he says, clearly not startled by their arrival. “Come and join me on my bisuolo; there is room for both of us.”
“Vossia benedica, Nino,” she replies.
The old man makes the sign of the cross and replies, “Ortigia?”
“Correct, Nino: Ortigia Lime di Sicilia.”
“It is unmistakeable,” the old man says, “citrus and lime-wood and vanilla. Only you would grace the air so.”
Ric had picked up on Valeria’s scent whilst sitting next to her on the bus, but had not thought it so obvious.
Nino turns his head as if formally acknowledging their presence. His arms protrude like fragile sticks from his short-sleeved shirt and his black trousers are baggy and sack-like and tied at his waist with what looks like a scarf. The ridges of his veins stand proud on his hands and forearms as though it is they, rather than his cartilage and tendons, which are holding his emaciated limbs together.
“You have brought a friend, Valeria.”
“Yes, Nino, I have brought a friend.” She stoops and kisses his forehead.
Nino’s smile reveals his teeth, which are small and carry the ochre’d tones of weathered ivory and which fix his high, round cheeks, long polished smooth by the wind. “So what is it that encourages you to provide this old man with such pleasure? Why should I be blessed with such good fortune?”
Valeria sits down beside him on the stonewall seat of his terrace. “My visit is long overdue, Nino; for that I have no excuse.” She holds his hand and lifts it to her face. “And this man wanted to meet you: he is a friend of Camille Giovananngeli, from Corsica.”
“A friend of Camille, you say. Well, how is the old fox? Is his humour still sharp like a blade?”
“He was well when I saw him last autumn,” Ric replies. “I am sure he would want me to pass on his best to you.”
“Any friend of the old fox is welcome in my house.” His voice is cool like the breeze and clear like the view. “So how can an old man be of service? Come forward. Come, give me your hand.”
Valeria offers Ric the old man’s right hand; it is frail and brittle, like petrified root. He settles his left hand on Ric’s wrist and holds it for a moment, as if searching for a pulse.
“Valeria, ask Ariana for a glass of legbi. It is early and she will resist, but she will get it for you.”
Valeria stands and leaves them still holding hands.
“You are young and strong, that is good.” Nino grins once more. “And you are too young to be Valeria’s lover, which is good also; this way I have no cause to be jealous of you, even though I could do precious little about such a thing if it were so. We will be friends. But, you hesitate; there is much you are not sure of which, I suppose, is why you are here.”
“Your English is good, Nino; much better than my Italian.”
The old man takes a handkerchief from his pocket and wipes a thin trickle of saliva from the corner of his mouth. “I learn it from the men of Lyle Bernard in the second war. I was a guide for them at the landing of Sant’Agata di Militello. It was there that I lost my sight: a big explosion, a great light and then light no more.” Nino shrugs and raises an eyebrow as though the event was of little consequence.
“Flash-blinded?” Ric asks. “Working for the Americans at the amphibious landing?”
“Yes, every man from the islands must know the coast of the mountains from Milazzo to Cefalù like he knows his own thoughts. When the Tramontana blows hard, Aeolus will take you there no matter where you want to go. It is important to know where to seek shelter. But you must be a military man, if you know about such things?”
Ric quiets for a moment as he tries to estimate how old the young Nino would have been in the summer of ‘43.
“I was a young man to lose my sight.” Nino reaches out for Ric’s hand and wrist a second time. After a few second’s squeezing and manipulating, he declares, “Ah, yes, a military man. I thought so. One can tell these things: there is iron in the bone and courage in the muscle.”
“A while ago,” Ric replies.
Valeria reappears, followed by a short, gentle-faced young woman, bearing a tray with three glasses of cloudy palm wine and a plate of freshly-baked, small brown biscuits. She sets the tray down on a low wooden table fashioned out of driftwood, and she and Valeria lift it over in front of Nino.
He breathes in deeply, “Ah, grazie, Ariana: Spicchitedda! Cinnamon and almonds: music for the palate. Did she give you much trouble?”
The young woman smiles, blushes and scuttles back inside the house.
“None at all,” Valeria says. “She simply shook her head and said if you wanted to be embalmed before you were dead, perhaps you could save her from having to pay the undertaker.”
Nino chuckles, “But does she mean the wine in the biscuits or the wine in the glass? And tell me, why should the giovintù deny the patri anticu the few pleasures he has left?”
They sip the sweet wine in silence and watch the white caps skip across the sea away below them.
“So, what is your name?” Nino asks.
“Richard, Richard Ross. Most people call me Ric.”
“Riccardo, mmm, you are given this name so that you will be powerful; a ruler of people. And it is so: you have been an officer in the army?”
“The Marines.”
“You are not married?”
Ric is not prepared for Nino’s interrogation. But, seeing as he has come to ask the old man a raft of questions, he does not think it fair to shy away from answering a few first: “No.”
“Ah, you were. I am sorry; it leaves a mark when one loses the woman one loves.”
Nino’s response makes Valeria sit up and look questioningly at Ric, but as she does so, she asks, “How do you know this, Nino?”
“It is in this young man’s voice. People can conceal many things when they talk. Some people speak in half truths and others can lie as if their life depends on what they say. But an immeasurable sadness such as this, one is powerless to conceal.”
And, without thinking, Ric hears himself say, “My wife died the year before last, in a car accident. It was while I was away, serving in Afghanistan.”
“So, forgive me for being… open, but you blame yourself for not being with her to stop this dreadful thing from happening, and now you are searching for somewhere to lay this guilt to rest. It is both understandable and forgivable. My wife,” Nino pauses, “my wife was lost to me many years ago… The heavier the weight, the more difficult it can be to set down gently. You have my sympathy.”
“And you mine, Nino,” Ric replies, wondering if his sense of loss will ever leave him in the same way it has never left the old man.
Nino nods, slowly. “Now, enough talk of emotion. We know we have much in common: that is both good and bad. What is it you have come to ask of an old man?”
Ric takes a sip of his palm wine and says, “Camille told me he thinks one of my ancestors came from Lipari and Valeria suggested you might be able to shed some light on his family, my family.”
“Oh,” Nino sighs, “Valeria is always bringing people to my door to ask such questions; Australians, Americans and some from South America; not many British. But, I warn you: I am not an oracle, like Pythia, and I am not a recorder of history, like Tacitus. My memory often deceives me and sometimes I cannot remember what Ariana has given me for breakfast.” Nino pauses and wipes his mouth again. He stares out at the far island as if he observes it in all the verdant splendour of its graded slopes and the starch-white cloud obscuring its summit.
“Although,” he says, smiling once more, “of late I have found that my memories come back to me at the strangest moments. One minute I am back in the Marina Corta watching a film lit by magic lanterns; the next I am… What was your ancestor’s name?”
“Sciacchitano or so Camille thinks.”
“Sciacchitano,” Nino says, pronouncing the name slowly. He scratches at a red mark on his face and Valeria reaches up to pull his hand away; she strokes the mark, softly.
“Sciacchitano,” he repeats. “I remember this name, Sciacchitano. But what do I remember? What?” Nino drinks his palm wine, rests his elbow on the table and his chin on his fisted hand, his repose that of Rodin’s Thinker.
Ric says, “Camille suggested he returned to the island after a spell in the Foreign Legion. It is thought he served with the Legion in Gallipoli, although we don’t know when or why he would have joined.”
Nino nods, slowly, “This is not so surprising. Even the Legion was to be preferred to fighting with the Bersaglieri in Gorizia. If you were not killed by the Austrians, you lived in fear of being hanged by your own officers. They practiced decimazione – decimation – a barbaric ritual from Roman times. The word means, literally, one in ten. They would select every tenth soldier and either shoot or hang him from a tree by the side of the road as an encouragement to the other soldiers not to retreat in battle. So, if you wanted to fight, to serve with another army was a far more attractive alternative. Perhaps that is why he left. But, do you know when he returned to Lipari?”
“’25, maybe ’26, perhaps a little later.”
Nino returns to his thoughts for a few minutes and then says, “I was only a small boy in these years. Perhaps you can give me time to remember. It is possible and if I can find the right lantern to help me see through the darkness of my memory, then perhaps I will remember some detail which will be of use to you. The late ‘20s, you say?”
His chin lifts and his lips purse in thought before he says, “I recall a family, not one of significance, but a family by this name; of this I am certain. And, there must be a reason why I would remember this name so quickly. Have you looked for the name Sciacchitano on a grave in the cemetery or perhaps on the memorials in the Mazzini?”