Nine Summers Page 15
Suddenly a horn blasted, almost catapulting me into the water. A challenge was on. ‘This must be a mating ritual. The old piazzas may be too cramped for motorcycles, and there aren’t any parents here.’
‘The tooting must be a signal. Look at the change in the girls!’
As the air filled with the sound of horns, the girls abandoned their interest in the sky and replaced it with an unashamed interest in the offerings below. A swift nod, a gesture, a glance exchanged in silence secured an agreement. The girl then stepped quickly down the stairs, swung onto the machine, wound her arms around the young man, and off they roared to join the parade of the paired. They continued up and down the mole.
Some time later, a slow-moving trail of cars appeared.
‘What’s this? Parents? Bet it’s the girls’ parents.’
In each of the vehicles sat a concerned middle-aged couple. While the father negotiated the car along the quay, the mother craned her neck out the window in a frantic search for her daughter. As soon as she spotted her, she waved and called, ‘Angelina!…Angelina!…Ciao!…Ciao!…Angelina!…Ciao!’
‘Ciao…Mamma. Ciao!’ came the response.
The mother relaxed and sat back in her seat and smiled. No further warning needed. She turned to her husband and pointed out this pair and that.
‘She’s making a quick assessment of where her daughter’s partner ranks in the eligibility stakes,’ I suggested. ‘This is more than just a passeggiata, it’s courtship. Modern Agropoli’s variation on a Jane Austen ball. A mother’s concern for her daughter’s reputation and a good match. Famiglia ed Onore!’
‘You’d need to be an acrobat to do it on a bike, I’d prefer a clapped out car.’
‘Oh, you’ll never understand the importance of machismo, or the importance of fare la bella figura.’
The noise and action continued for much of the night. Gradually the cars thinned, and the motorbikes took off.
We were far from brimming with energy the following morning when we made our way into town to ask about buses to Paestum, an archaeological site we’d been told not to miss.
‘Mi dispiace, non lo so…Sorry, I don’t know,’ was everyone’s reply. If locals don’t know about a bus to Paestum, who does, we wondered.
Mating rituals had kept us awake most of the night and we were tired, ready to give up, when an old lady lugging two shopping bags heard us ask about buses to Paestum and said, ‘I’ll show you where to get the bus to Paestum. It’s not here.’
We followed that gentle, big-bosomed woman as she trundled on heavy legs up the steep hill. We waited at the traffic lights to cross the road. When they turned green, I stepped off the curb, heard a sudden ‘swoosh’, saw something black flash past, and felt someone grab my arm and jerk me back onto the footpath. The old woman had saved me from a messy encounter with a super-charged motorbike.
‘Signora,’ she said, looking shocked, ‘in Italia semaferi sono soltanto un consiglio. In Italy, traffic lights are only an advice, a suggestion.’
That dear woman took us to the Paestum bus stop, wished us a good day and then went on her way.
After a long wait at the bus stop, we finally got to Paestum. It is one of the most important archaeological sites in Italy, a settlement that had been founded by Greek colonists around 600 BC, and discovered accidentally in 1750. We walked around the impressive excavations. The museum contains many artefacts and remarkable examples of Greek funerary art. The most famous, known as the Diver’s Tomb, is box-shaped, with Greek frescoes dating from around 480 BC. We were too weary to see as much as we would have liked, and we were also anxious to get back to Galatea.
‘I’m beat. All I want is to sleep for 24 hours.’
‘OK, let’s move out to somewhere quiet,’ Felix said.
We untied the lines, motored to the middle of the bay and put down an anchor. But the tooting and hooting of the mating rituals continued relentlessly much of the night. In the morning we were eager to move on.
The only information in the Italian Waters Pilot about Scario in the Gulf of Policastro was: ‘…a small fishing harbour is being built here. Depths and the final form are unknown to date’.
It looked attractive. Pastel houses and date palms lined the harbour front, and scattered on the slopes of a steep mountain were villas, hidden behind tall trees and other vegetation. As we entered the small port, the bells of the pink church at the entrance chimed, an onshore breeze stirred the palms and ragged clouds hung over the hills.
We were the only foreign boat in the harbour. Four fishing boats were tied up along the sea wall, and a number of fishermen sat mending nets. As the afternoon progressed, people dressed for the passeggiata strolled along the quay, looked us over and greeted us with ‘Buona sera’.
Meanwhile the fishermen had started to move off to lay their tunny nets. They waved as they passed, and we waved back. When the last boat had left the harbour, we had soup and slumped into bed. In the morning we woke just as the fishing fleet motored in with the night’s catch, clouds of seagulls in tow.
While we were breakfasting in the cockpit, a young fisherman stopped to introduce himself. ‘I’m Eddo, I work on my father’s fishing boat…Can I come on board?’
‘Sure, come on, would you like a coffee?’
Eddo looked bright, curious, energetic and, like most of the young generation of fishermen, more gregarious, as well as less inhibited with foreigners than the older generation. ‘I hope you don’t leave today. We’re going to have a sirocco, it lasts three days. Good to stay in port.’
We listened to the weather report and decided to stay. Later that day, Eddo brought his father Pasquale to meet us. They started by calling Felix ‘Signor Felice’. A day later, this evolved to a simple ‘Felice’. They never tried to call me anything. In fact, as far as they were concerned, I hardly existed.
Eddo loved to come and talk. Sometimes he’d stand on the pier next to the boat and call, ‘Felice, Felice!’ If I popped my head out to tell him that Felice wasn’t on board, he’d leave a message to ask Felice to come and talk to the men under the big tree near the water tap. That was the meeting place where all the elderly and retired returnees from abroad sat for hours chatting. The fishermen joined them when they finished work. It was strictly men only.
On the second morning I asked a wizened, black-clad woman, ‘Dov’è il panificio? Where’s the bakery?’
‘Ah,’ she said, ‘è già chiuso, it’s already closed. Ma venga, venga, come, come with me, I’ll take you to the baker’s wife, she’ll give you some bread. I’m her mother’s cousin.’
We climbed countless stairs and walked past whitewashed houses and pots of geraniums, daisies and bougainvillea to the end of the street.
She stopped in front of a blue door, gave it a few hard bangs and shouted: ‘Angelica, Angelica!’
A young woman in high heels and long black hair opened the door. ‘Ah, Maria, come stai? How are you?’
‘Bene, bene, this signora would like some bread.’ My good samaritan went on to explain that I was from the English boat that came in the day before. Angelica said she didn’t have any bread left. She only had her own loaf. But that didn’t deter Maria, her first cousin once removed. ‘Allora, well then,’ she said, ‘give her yours.’
Angelica looked embarrassed, then grudgingly went to the sideboard, pulled out her loaf and offered it to me. I held out money, but she said, ‘No, no, this is my bread so there’s nothing to pay.’
No matter how much I protested, she continued to say, ‘No, no, I can’t take it.’ And both Maria and Angelica insisted that I must have the bread. In the end I thought I’d offend them if I didn’t take it, so I said, ‘Grazie, grazie tanto.’
The forms of hospitality are varied and have many agendas. As we walked back down the stairs, Maria told me that she had a restaurant up on the hill. ‘You know, my husband is a very good cook. Especially fish…’ With the bread episode, Maria and I had established a bond. We now ‘owed’ each other.
The following night we did. Maria’s husband served us the freshest of everything and made us feel special.
It was almost 1 o’clock when I saw Felix ambling along the quay one day. He seemed to have acquired the gait of the old men. The general assembly must have disbanded for lunch. He’d been gone since 11, chatting with the men at their regular meeting spot — under the big tree near the water tap. Between 1 and
5 o’clock everyone was home; not even a dog was allowed to bark.
‘What do you all talk about?’ I asked.
‘It’s interesting. A couple of them speak English. They’ve spent years working in America, but have come back home to retire. Another one used to work in North Africa laying pipelines for an Italian oil company. He speaks French. The fellow from South America speaks Spanish. There are quite a few returnees. They sit there for hours discussing the world, and how it used to be when they worked abroad. With the savings they bring back, they enjoy life here. The fishermen join in when they’re not busy.
‘They laugh about how everyone is related to everyone else, and that everyone knows everything about everyone else, or at least makes it their business to find out. Most live down near the water. Only the “gentry” live up on the hill. It seems that the higher up the hill you live, the more “up-market” you are. They all love living here, but worry about the proposed building of a road from Naples to Scario. They certainly hope it never gets built. They don’t want the “riff raff from Naples” or, for that matter, tourists to come here. No one mentions the Mafia.
‘They ask a lot about Australia, and how we like Italy…the food, the wine…
‘The fishermen reckon we’re in for bad weather, and said we shouldn’t leave until it’s over. First, they said we’ll get a sirocco and then a ponente, westerly. They can tell by the clouds over the mountain.’
Eddo and his father Pasquale took Felix under their wing. They came at least twice a day to see if we needed anything. Eduardo, whom we’d met soon after we’d arrived, came down after every weather forecast to keep us up with the latest. He and his wife lived in Milan, but they had a holiday home up on the hill — where the gentry lived. He had held a senior position in the public service before his retirement, but was now a frustrated sailor who’d had to sell his boat to appease his wife. He used any excuse to visit us. After several days of strong winds, which kept us in harbour, he came to tell us that the forecast was for abating winds. We didn’t tell him we’d already heard the same report.
‘You’re going to have a terrific crossing,’ he said, almost in tears. He would have loved to have come with us to Lipari, but his wife put her foot down in no uncertain manner.
We fell in love with Scario and its people, but after a week it was time to move on.
The clouds that had hovered over the mountain peak behind Scario during the previous days had lifted, and the fishermen also prepared to leave later that afternoon. It was a perfect day. At 3 o’clock the old men, Eduardo, Eddo, his father and the fishermen watched as we cast off and waved farewell. We expected to reach Lipari the following morning.
For us the start of a passage had a special quality, which was different from sailing along a coast. With an overnight crossing there was a kind of settling into a routine. Even if we didn’t expect it to be rough, we were always prepared. The evening before, we checked through our long list in case it did get rough. Before leaving we made everything fast, we filled a thermos with boiling water for tea, prepared bland sandwiches, entered the log, checked the satnav and the radar, coiled the ropes, collected the fenders, stowed everything away and, finally, put on our safety harnesses.
As we motored out of Scario, light clouds dotted the sky, and the diffuse Mediterranean haze permeated the atmosphere. We hoisted sail as soon as we had cleared the bay. The breeze carried us along as we watched Scario with its pink church fade into the distance. I was always apprehensive at the start of a crossing, and relieved when we approached our destination.
My favourite watch was from 2 to 6 in the morning, when the breeze and the sea were gentle, splashes of stars brightened the sky, the moon threw a wide beam onto the water and silver ripples pirouetted in its light. That was when an extraordinary sense of wellbeing and good fortune overwhelmed me. Then, as the night progressed and the strip of dark grey on the eastern horizon began to turn into the palest of pink, I loved to watch the night’s gradual change to day.
If we were on deck together, there was little need to speak. We read each other’s moods and thoughts. We loved the many different kinds of silence. The silence of a steady wind singing in the shrouds, the constant hiss of Galatea’s bow moving through the water, the silence and solitude of a rising dawn, the changing colours of the sea and sky, the scent of the early morning. No matter how familiar, the experience was always different and miraculous. That was when we, a speck adrift on the ocean, became part of all that was around us.
We watched the hills behind Scario fade. A long way ahead, and out of sight, was our destination, the Aeolian islands.
Sailors have always feared the crossing to these islands. The islands’ name derived from Aeoleus, the god of winds. Wishing Odysseus a good passage, Aeoleus presented him with a leather bag in which he had tied up all the contrary winds. Odysseus’s snooping crew, however, convinced that it was full of treasure, couldn’t wait to see what was in the bag. So, when they assumed they were near Ithaca, they opened it. Instead of treasure, out flew all the winds, which then blew them away from their destination. But at the start of our crossing on Galatea, it seemed that Aeoleus still had all the winds tied securely in his bag.
When we left port, our immediate concern was the tuna nets that fishermen set and scatter along this coastline. These were a major hazard. To sail into one and then try to untangle the net from the propeller would have been a nightmare. Kerosene flares are supposed to mark each net at regular intervals, but if the sea is rough, they are difficult to see. So we sat sipping tea, on the lookout for nets. The breeze felt cool on our faces, and we listened to the silence. It was strange how, when we were at sea, Galatea assumed a life of her own, revelling in the waves and the challenge, responding to the faintest touch on the wheel. While her features changed with the mood of the wind and the sea, the saloon below retained a constancy, the familiar stability of warmth and home.
As the afternoon progressed, Felix looked at the sky. ‘I don’t like the look of those clouds. Let’s reef the main, and if necessary, shorten the headsail,’ he said. I glanced up at the feathery cirrus clouds, then looked into the cabin. The barometer had registered a significant drop. Signs of an oncoming gale. I turned Galatea into the wind to ease the main. Felix clipped his harness onto the jackline, crawled forward towards the mast, inserted the handle into the furling socket and started to reef the main. By the time he was back in the cockpit, gusts hit from ahead. Felix pulled in the main and I set the autopilot to keep us on course.
The moderate beam sea became increasingly confused as the waves from ahead built up. We felt Galatea toss unsteadily as the southerly wind and sea interrupted her passage. From the saloon came the clanking noises of the gimballed stove, the brass lamps, the plastic fruit bowl as it crashed against the steps, and instruments slid off the navigation table onto the floor.
By 7 pm, we had a howling gale, a dark sky and lumpy seas. Felix reefed the main further, shortened the headsail, but left the mizzen up to lessen the pitching and tossing. He put two washboards into the companionway to prevent waves flooding the cabin and left a small opening at the top. We still had a very long way to go. At best we’d reach Lipari in the early morning. Long before that, however, we would pass Stromboli.
I don’t recall exactly at which point a spasm, an uncontrollable tremor, gripped my chin. I’d never experienced anything like it before. Then, an extraordinary sensation over
whelmed me and I relived the terror of being in the life raft during our ‘Survival at Sea’ test before we left Sydney. As the wind strength reached 35 to 40 knots, Galatea pitched and tossed, waves surfed across her deck. Aeoleus had opened the bag of winds with a godly vengeance. Felix put his arm around me and I clung to him. In spite of our lifelines, we tossed from side to side in the cockpit. Periodically, Felix went down to check our position on the radar.
‘We’d better give the autohelm a rest,’ he said.
‘OK, I’ll hand steer for a while.’
‘Stromboli is on the radar. Twelve miles to go. There’s also a ship 21 miles ahead, moving north-west, otherwise nothing.’ We continued on in silence.
Then, out of the pre-dawn darkness, Stromboli, the volcano that has served as the oldest lighthouse in the world, appeared in all its majesty. Silhouetted against the sky and a full moon, it towered from the sea, and as we approached, it loomed immense. From its crown, bursts of fire erupted into the night sky at regular intervals, and rivers of glowing lava flowed down to the sea.
‘Imagine how terrifying this must have been to ancient sailors, tossed in a gale, with this mountain of fire in the middle of the sea!’
‘You don’t have to be so ancient,’ I mumbled, my jaw still in spasm.
As we crossed the moon’s beam, I saw the dazzling whiteness of our deck, the waves’ froth slipping back into the raging sea, the gleam of our shortened main and mizzen, and Felix’s pale, strong face. From the saloon came the familiar clanking of the stove and brass lamps, and at one particular angle, a moon-beam shone through the narrow opening of the companionway into the saloon below — warm, dry and comforting.
And so Galatea battled on. ‘Perhaps we should heave to,’ Felix said, but then added, ‘I think she’s coping all right…’ Instead of alternating watches, we stayed together on deck throughout the night, checking our position at regular intervals and monitoring the radar for vessels crossing our path.
After a night as long as eternity, imperceptible changes on the grey eastern horizon gave way to the pinks, reds and orange of the dawn. I watched the sun rise over the turbulent sea.