Ontreto Read online

  Ontreto

  Peter Crawley

  Copyright © 2015 Peter Crawley

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study,

  or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents

  Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in

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  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.

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  For Daisy

  Antoine de Saint-Exupery,

  the aviator poet,

  proclaimed there is but one freedom

  and that is the freedom of the mind.

  Yet there are many who enjoy no such freedom.

  To set them free requires not only great understanding,

  but also courage, patience and compassion.

  Of these, the most elemental is compassion.

  Contents

  Cover

  Also by the author

  Foreword & Acknowledgements

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  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Mazzeri

  Boarding House Reach

  Also by the author

  Mazzeri

  Boarding House Reach

  Foreword & Acknowledgements

  It doesn’t matter which Aeolus one believes in, that he was the father of the Aeolian Islands is not in doubt. Was he, though, the son of Poseidon, the God of the Sea, or was he the son of Hippotes, a mere mortal but a king nevertheless? What we believe from the writings of Homer in his epic The Odyssey, is that Aeolus presented Odysseus with a bag of winds to speed him on his journey back to Ithaca. Unfortunately, mistaking the bag to contain gold and silver, Odysseus’ crew opened it and in so doing released the winds. Because of their greed, Odysseus’ ship was blown further from its destination.

  However, all I am certain of is that one doesn’t find the Aeolian Islands; one is drawn to them.

  Some years ago my friend Jo Salamone, who hails from the pretty village of Suteria in the province of Caltanissetta, Sicily, suggested I visit Lipari in the Aeolian Islands. Jo proposed I stay in the hotel of a friend of his. His friend would arrange the taxi from Catania to Milazzo; he would arrange the connection to the islands on the hydrofoil; he would meet us at the harbour. In short, Jo’s friend would arrange everything. He did. Adriano was true to his word.

  This small, volcanic archipelago of seven main islands lies just to the north of the Sicilian coast near the Straits of Messina. They are known to some as the Seven Sisters and together they comprise one of the best kept secrets of the Mediterranean. The islands are a string of radiant pearls, a necklace of iridescent gems, a handful of jewels so elegant and beguiling that one is inclined, on hearing of their beauty, to disbelieve they exist.

  Adriano Longo is the proprietor of the very beautiful Hotel Rocce Azzurre, which overlooks the bay at Portinente. Adriano and his daughter, Ariana, introduced me to the many delights of the islands: the white pumice beaches of the Spiaggia della Papesca, the clear waters of the Mare Siculum, the wine of Salina, the imposing citadel of Lipari and, perhaps best of all, the people. It was only later and by chance that I found out the island possesses a darker history.

  Wandering through the città bassa, the low city which is comprised of a warren of narrow vicolos running below the citadel, I heard someone whisper that the island had, during the Second World War, been home to a number of political deportees, most of them men of conscience and principle who spoke out against the tyrant Benito Mussolini. Further to this rumour, I heard that three of these political deportees had, with the help of certain islanders, planned and executed a daring escape.

  Late one night, as I sat with Adriano fishing for totani in his little barca, I began to learn more about the island and its remarkable people, and charged myself with the task of researching the island in greater depth.

  A few months later, sitting at my desk, I stumbled across a newspaper article from 1929, which reported George Palmer Putnam, the titular head of the New York and London publishing house, as receiving a number of death threats if he published Francesco Fausto Nitti’s Escape. The forthcoming publication of such a personal narrative by a political prisoner who had escaped from Lipari, the Fascist’s Devil’s Island, so angered Il Duce that he set his spies and secret agents, The Black Hand, to see that Escape never made it to the shelves. Fortunately for us, Putnam was no shrinking violet. He ignored the danger, was damned by Mussolini and went ahead and published.

  Some weeks later I procured a fourth impression copy of Nitti’s book from South Africa; there are few left in existence. It is, by any stretch of the imagination, a crucial and fundamental work exposing the brutality and ugliness which lies at the heart of Fascism. But further than this, Nitti’s book is also proof that truth is often stranger than fiction.

  There are, though, more than a few works I have drawn inspiration from. The Archduke Ludwig Salvator’s volumes on Die Liparischen Inseln, provided by the Bavarian State Library, contain much useful information, though I am not aware of any translations from the original German language version. Philip Ward’s The Aeolian Islands, Oleander Press, has proved invaluable and I would not advise the traveller to visit the islands without first having read this beautifully written and very informative book. Alberto Denti di Pirajno’s A Cure for Serpents, Eland, sheds much light on the attitudes of Italians working in the North African colonies of Balbo’s Grande Italia. John Julius Norwich’s illuminating tome The Middle Sea, Vintage, explains the history and politics of the region from the Roman Empire right up to the Risorgiment
o. M. Emma Alaimo’s Proverbi Siciliani, Giunti, and Mariolina Venezia’s novel Been Here a Thousand Years, Picador, have been most useful companions when attempting to understand how first Sicilians and second Italians view their part in the great scheme of things. Finally, if you think fairy tales began with the Brothers Grimm, read Giambattista Basile’s Lo Cunto de li Cunti – The Tale of Tales – first published in the seventeenth century, and think again.

  As always, the most fruitful research is conducted out engaging with local people. Many have given freely of their time in this respect, none more so than Ariana Longo and her father Adriano. Without their time and enthusiasm, Ontreto would never have made it past the first few pages. As a caveat, though, I must add that I have played fast and loose with a couple of details, if only to complement the narrative. Homer’s coffin, for instance, sits just below the surface a few metres off the pontoon of the Hotel Rocce Azzurre and not near the Punta San Giuseppe, and La Casa dei Sconosciuti is a work of my own imagination, as is the character Massimo Farinelli.

  There are, of course, other fictionalised happenings and characters. Yet, Francesco Nitti, Edda Ciano, Leonardo Bongiorno and Benito Mussolini all take their seat in our history class; they have left their mark upon our world. However, apart from historical reference, none of the characters who take an active part in this book bear any relation to any persons either living or gone before.

  I sent a final draft manuscript of Ontreto to Ariana Longo in Lipari, asking if she would mind checking my use of local dialect. She responded immediately and very enthusiastically, and within a couple of days I was returned the manuscript with her suggested alterations for which, naturally, I am very grateful. What I had not expected, though, was her mention of a character from my novel who, it turns out, actually exists. This character, a man for whom I had created a profession, a nickname and a home village, is not only flesh and blood, but also flesh and blood in exactly the manner in which I had conjured him. I was, to say the least, surprised. After much thought and taking into account the risks of litigation, I decided it would be better to rewrite the character. Yet, having grown rather attached to him, I was sorry to let him go. Spooky, uncanny, weird, creepy, chilling, or perhaps even auspicious: call it what you will, but it proves yet again that truth is stranger than fiction.

  To Ariana, I say a considerable “thank you”. If I have made mistakes, they are mine and not hers.

  As ever, I am also indebted to Sally Duhig, Ba Collinson, Peter Matthews and Christine Ellerbeck for their time, their assistance and insightful critique. Anlouise Snedden introduced me to Opera and in doing so she has brought light to my previously blinkered view of this wonderful art form. For her generosity and enthusiasm, I am grateful. My thanks go, of course, to all the team at Troubador Publishing.

  As with the launch of Mazzeri, I handed over the organisation and presentation of the launch of Boarding House Reach, my second novel, to Peter Matthews. And Sue Woods of Mintsource-uk.com and Jack Newman at boodesign.co.uk produced the artwork and banners. I will be more than happy to hand Peter the responsibility of organising and presenting the launch of Ontreto.

  Finally, and as always, I have to thank Carol, my wife, who pores over every draft, provides copious quantities of tea with dashes of sympathy, and who puts up with the author’s occasionally capricious vein.

  Be drawn to the Aeolian Islands, I urge you. Though their past may have been dark, their future is so very bright. Or, as Giambattista Basile might have written it: each dawn the shepherd of the moon calls the stars to pastures new, so that we, the windblown seeds of the islands, may wake to flourish in the warmth of the sun’s smile.

  The Aeolian Islands in the Mediterranean

  The Seven Sisters of the Aeolian Islands

  The Island of Lipari

  The town of Lipari showing the Castello and the Città bassa

  1

  Midsummer 1930

  Tonio scrambles up the path, reaching out to grab hold of anything that will stop him from slipping back down. As far as Tonio is concerned, he is going nowhere fast.

  He mutters constantly, urging himself to greater effort and at the same time scolding himself for making so much noise. There is a checkpoint manned by the Carabinieri on the road not a stone’s throw below him and the last thing he needs is to stumble across some dark-skinned oaf from Perugia relieving himself in the scrub.

  They are lazy good-for-nothings, the Carabinieri; thugs and bullies, men who would sell their own mother for a weekend with a whore in Naples. “I bet your sons wear Balillas and sing the Giovinezza,” he whispers, of the black shirts the school children wear and the Fascist hymn they are forced to sing. But, at least their low scruples mean they can be bribed; that is perhaps the only good thing about the filthy bastards. A couple of salpe or a handful of seppie can buy one much valuable information.

  Although it is nearly midnight, the moon and the stars reveal the winding path up over the saddle which connects the twin peaks of Monte Rosa to the island.

  “One day,” he mutters, “they will dig a tunnel to connect the two bays and when they do, I will not have to make this climb every time I need to get into town.” But then it dawns on him that even if there was a tunnel, the Carabinieri would be guarding that too.

  The conversation he has overheard in the café in Canneto has chilled him to the bone, and if he does not make it over to San Giuseppe in time, there will be three less deportati for the islanders to feed.

  There is no breeze and Tonio pauses to breathe in the sweet fragrance of honeysuckle and rock carnation. He knows he shouldn’t talk to himself so much, but the sound of his own voice heartens him. And creeping about in the scrub at night is strictly for fools; he knows that too. He is as likely to be shot out of boredom as he is for breaching the curfew.

  He slips and reaches out to the branch of a carrub tree, but by mistake grasps the thick fleshy leaf of an agave and as his hand slips down the spiny edge, he cuts his palm.

  If the long, hot day grading pumice in the warehouse up at Porticello hasn’t tired him enough, hurrying to find Vincenzo has. And then, when he found him and related the conversation, Vincenzo told him he would have to go at once to the house at the Punta San Giuseppe to warn the others. And San Giuseppe is beyond the città bassa of Lipari. Even if it was daylight and he could run by the most direct route, it would still take him an hour. In the dark, and trying to avoid the patrols, he knows it will take him twice that long. He can’t risk going by the road. He will have to scuttle round the back of the Timpone Croci, steal through the lanes at Diana and pick his way through the narrow alleys that lead round the back of the town through to San Nicola. He shakes his head, knowing it is asking too much not to get stopped at least once.

  Again, Tonio scolds himself for his grumbling. The luminosity of the moon makes him easier to spot, but the pitch black shadows created by it make it easier for him to hide. That is how it is; some bad, some not so bad.

  He picks his way between the headstones and mausolea in the cemetery, pausing occasionally to apologise for his haste: his sister-in-law, Grazia, a victim of starvation, or so Innocenzio the comunista maintained; Gaetano, his cousin, drowned by the police spies; and Peppino, who Tonio was never certain was a relation, poisoned by the authorities for taking part in the riot. But, Tonio knows full well that Grazia was consumed by her tumour and that Gaetano fell overboard in a storm. And Peppino? Well, he’d mistakenly drunk from a bottle of detergent thinking it was Malvasia; there was nothing sinister about that. But then, Innocenzio likes to blame everything on the Duce, including his facial warts and his terrible breath. After all, he is a disciple of Bongiorno.

  “Oh, why did I not go with my brother to that place he called Argentina? I bet the people there don’t have bad breath.”

  As he leaves the back of the cemetery he glances over at the forbidding mass of the Castello. The fortified gate beneath the Greek Tower is well-lit and he can see the Carabinieri loitering beneath i
t. And he knows the other entrance, at the bottom of the broad steps of the Via del Concordato down on the Garibaldi, will be watched too.