Valeria is at her stove when he arrives; the fragrance of capers and basil fill the air.
“Swordfish,” she tells him as he hands her a bottle of Caravaglio. “Ah, my favourite wine! You learn fast, Ric. Thank you.” She pulls an opener from a drawer and hands it to him.
There is much he needs to ask her, but he knows a frontal assault is only likely to make her suspicious.
“I see the injury to your face is healing well.”
“It’s getting there, thank you. The girl at the café did a good job.”
Valeria is mixing pumpkin flowers with rocket, basil and mint. She chuckles, “This girl, Giuliana, she has eyes for you.”
Ric reddens and busies himself opening the wine.
“It is better to be careful with this one,” she says. “She is like the oleander the Berber call oualilt; a beautiful white, red and pink flower which looks good enough to eat, except that it is very poisonous. The smallest taste can provoke an irregular heartbeat and in some cases heart failure. It can make life very complicated when a girl like this has eyes for a man.”
“So it would seem,” he replies, flexing his shoulders and stretching his back.
Valeria frowns. “Oh, I see you have already got too close to this flower. Try to keep your distance; pretty though she is, Giuliana will be bad for your health.”
“I hate to think.” He pours the wine and hands her a glass.
“She comes from Rome, so she is not so shy of boys. And she is staying with her uncle, which means he will not permit any harm to come to her while she is in his care. Take my advice, stay away from her.”
“Maybe someone should tell her that,” he replies, remembering how Giuliana turned up outside his digs two nights before.
“There would be little point in saying this to her,” Valeria suggests. “When a woman decides she wants a man, telling her she cannot have him only makes her want him more.”
“You’ll excuse me for saying, but that sounded like it came from one who knows.” Ric sips his wine, watching her at the stove.
Valeria pauses as she cuts swordfish into small chunks. “Yes, perhaps.”
“But, if you’ll forgive me bringing age into the equation, she’s a little young for me.”
Valeria glances at him the way he imagines her glancing at a dancing partner who has trodden on her toes: “And what has age to do with passion?”
Though her tone is argumentative, Ric feels as though he has opened a door. “I guess you must have had quite a hard time avoiding the amorous attentions of all those movie stars?”
She glows briefly, but only briefly.
“How did you get into the movie business, Valeria?”
“Oh, as most in those days.” She is peeling and de-seeding small tomatoes. “After the end of the war, during what people call the Italian Spring,” she bridles, a shade theatrically, “like the Arabs and their Spring, eh? My friend, Rosaria entered a beauty pageant in our village. But she suffered from a blood disorder, Thalassemia which, because good food was hard to come by, was common in those days. The day before the pageant Rosaria was not well, so I took her place. I was too young really, but I won and the Borgomastro – the mayor – he sent me to Palermo for a much grander pageant, which I won also; in this, there was much prestige for our village.”
Valeria splashes white wine into the pan of frying swordfish; it sizzles and steams. “But in Palermo I was introduced to a talent scout from Rome; a very charismatic and powerful man. He knew Visconti, Gallone, De Sica, Rossellini, all the studio heads. He paid for me to go to the Accademia Nazionale, the acting school in Rome.”
Ric is listening, casually, but he is also poring over a bookcase by the kitchen table: Benacqista, Varesi and Camilleri.
“You like Camilleri?” she asks when she looks up to check her conversation is holding his attention.
“Detective novels?”
Valeria beams, “Yes, Camilleri studied at the Nazionale too.”
“Must have been a wild time,” Ric says to encourage her to keep talking.
She pauses and leans against the wooden island of the kitchen, dreaming, “Yes, it was. But I was young and very naïve and I looked upon my benefactor as the father I never knew, until…”
“Until?” he asks.
The wine is boiling in the pan and she moves it to the side of the stove, dropping cherry tomatoes into it one by one.
“Until this man began to ask me to accompany other men to parties: political men, men of influence and importance, ambitious men with unusual and often unpleasant appetites. This type of man, I had not expected to meet. You know, it was not always easy to be a young hopeful in the world of cinema in Italy.” She stirs the sauce in her pan, tasting and seasoning.
“Guess that’s the movie business all over.”
“Oh, don’t think I was that naïve, Ric. I soon found out my favours were a currency which returned great dividends. But, too late I found out that this man who I had come to love – a man who I thought believed in my ability – also enjoyed the affection of many other women. Stupidly, I thought for him I was exclusive. One night I discovered I wasn’t.”
“That must have been a tough lesson?”
“Yes, it was.” She forks macaroni into the pan with the sauce and the fish, stirring the contents and covering the pan with a lid. “One can break a bone and it will mend stronger than before; but a broken heart never mends.”
“Amen to that,” Ric whispers.
“Bring the plates and the cutlery, please,” Valeria says, as she unties her apron.
They sit outside the little house and eat; the sharp flavour of the olives a contrast to the sweet tomatoes; the sauce and the soft chunks of swordfish a complement to the al dente macaroni. Away around the cliffs to their right, herring gulls wheel and glide and lament the passing of the day. An Aliscafo hurries across the bay.
Though the sun has slipped below the hills behind them, they are warm and the atmosphere is balmy. Tall anvils of thunderclouds are gathering above an early evening haze, which veils the Sicilian coast like the hijabs of the Muslim women in the Garibaldi.
“Yes,” she says, “there will be a storm soon.”
“You said you never knew your father. Was he killed in the war?”
“No,” she replies, very casually. When she has finished her food, she pushes her plate away and sits back. “I never knew him because I never met him.” Valeria glances at Ric to see if he reacts to her confession and when he doesn’t, she carries on, “My mother would never speak about my father. By the time I was old enough to understand that the man my mother was married to was not my father, she had erased my true father from her memory.”
“How did you find out, if that isn’t a rude question?”
“Why, Ric? Does it matter?” she asks, permitting herself a wry amusement at his impertinence.
“I apologise.”
“No, I am kidding.” She smiles. “You know, the Pope, Alexander VI, fathered not only Lucrezia and Cesare Borgia, but also many other illegitimate children. The only shame in illegitimacy is the hypocrisy that defines it.” Valeria shakes her head, dismissively, and as she does so her hair falls across her face. Ric is taken with thinking how beautiful she must have been in her youth.
“My mother,” she continues as he lights one of her long, slim white cigarettes for her, “married a man in a town near Palermo. She ran away from home not only because of the humiliation of her pregnancy, but also because her priority would have been to find a husband who would support her and her child to be, me. My mother had three more children by him; they were all short and dark-skinned and ugly, so I soon realised he could not be my true father. He was not a bad man, though; a little narrow in his outlook perhaps, occasionally short-tempered, but in essence not an unkind man. It was better to have his name, Vaccariello, than no name at all.”
“Valeria Vaccariello,” Ric repeats, “seems a pretty catchy stage name to me.”
“Yes, it worked well for me. But, as I told you, when I lost the part in Luchino’s film to that young girl with the fierce eyes, I also lost the nerve to act; I could no longer find the self-assurance I needed to produce such good performances. Fortunately, my second husband had more money than I could burn and, after he died, I came here and found La Casa dei Sconosciuti. The first time I set eyes on this house, I knew I belonged here.”
“And this is where you met Marcello and Salvo?”
“Yes, I have known Marcello since he was a boy. Salvo is some years older than him; he used to work for Marcello’s father, Onofrio. Now he works for Marcello.” Valeria chuckles, “But Salvo has had eyes for me ever since he saw me in an old movie they showed up in the amphitheatre in the citadel. He labours under the false impression I am some sort of screen goddess. If I ever need anything, Salvo supplies it: restorations for the house, a lift into town, he goes to the bank for me and comes to check on me during the winter storms.”
“You place a good deal of trust in them.”
This captures Valeria’s attention and she stares at him as though he has just suggested her cooking is not up to scratch. “Of course, Ric, why would I not trust them?”
“I don’t know,” he replies, defensively. “It’s just that I’m missing something from the boat.”
When she begins to object to his inference, he holds up his hands to mollify her. “I know, I know. It sounds ridiculous, but I know I haven’t mislaid it and only Marcello and Salvo have been on the boat without me being around.”
But Valeria is visibly appalled at his suggestion, “Ric, they would not touch a man’s possessions. Not even if they were of considerable value. This is not in their nature.” She hesitates again, searching the table for a clue as to how to convince him of their virtue. “What is it you are missing, Ric? Tell me,” she demands. “I will speak to Salvo, though I am not sure how to. It would be easier to ask him if his mother was a mule.”
Ric colours with embarrassment. “You can see my problem, Valeria: if this is your reaction to my implying they’ve had something off the boat, I can only imagine theirs.”
She exhales a long stream of grey smoke up towards the darkening sky. “This thing that you are missing, is it important; valuable?”
“In some ways. Or, rather, yes. It will be difficult to explain away if it gets into the wrong hands.”
Valeria thinks for a moment longer and then fixes him with a challenging expression, “Tell me, Ric, what is this important thing you have lost, is it your passport?”
Avoiding her stare, Ric is reminded that Talaia has it.
“No, my passport is only too safe for the moment. What I am missing relates to another problem I encountered in Corsica.”