The House at the Edge of Night (16 page)

But now, across the sea, something was intruding, and Concetta felt a light chill of fear pass over her. She hunched down in the entrance to the cave, small like a stone, and waited.

The thing had begun as a space between waves, a blackness. Something so tiny it could have been a dying fish or an empty glass bottle. Now it was larger, more like a hunk of wood. No one but Concetta watched it approach. Slowly the dark thing crested each wave, vanished, reappeared. Sometimes, blurrily, it broke apart and became two; at other times the heat haze made it rise up, like it was performing a feat of levitation. Once it put out a tentacle, or a leg, or an arm perhaps, as though reaching for something. That was when the girl realized, with a shock, that it was alive, or half so. How else could it make those strange motions in the water, flailing like a dying
medusa
?

Now it came a little closer, and she saw that it had two arms that moved with purpose, drawing it on across the water. When it was a few meters off the shore, among the rocks the fishermen called Morte delle Barche
,
it stopped and rode the waves: up and down, up and down. Then it raised an arm and heaved itself out of the water with a sudden surge of purpose, making alarming, watery yells.

Concetta, without realizing it, had come forward out of the cave in her fascination. The creature in the ocean, she now understood, had seen her on the shore and was signaling. Concetta's arms felt heavy as wood. In the back of her throat she could taste the strange tang, like the castor oil her father rubbed into the shop counter, which always came before a seizure. It was only now that she knew for sure that she was frightened. The sea creature forged on through the breaking waves. It drew near to the submerged rocks, and the harder waves here dragged it in and then out again, in and then out, until it was thrown up against the triangular rock that they called Canetto. This rock it seized in desperation. Making a tent of her folded hands on her forehead, Concetta squinted and saw that the sea creature resembled a man with skinny shoulders, a barrel chest, long arms like a monkey, and a face white as
ricotta.

Concetta's toes curled with wanting to run. The creature, gathering up a last surge of strength, shoved itself off the rocks and plunged again into the water. It went under a couple of times before its feet could gain a purchase on the fine sand just off the shore. Slowly, it began to emerge, by faltering steps, plunging and rearing in the waves, making a sound like drowning.

“Hé!”
it called.
“Hé!”
And then an explosion of nonsense. The creature wore green. In its hand it grasped a gun. It waved feverishly, still pouring its nonsense language.

“Salve, signore,”
said Concetta, for by now she was almost certain the thing was human and not animal.

The man heaved up out of the shallows, water streaming off him. Then with a great thump he landed in the sand, stretched out at the edge of the water, and moved no longer.

Standing in the shelter of the edge of the cave, Concetta felt the fit loosen its grip and pass over her, leaving the blue sky less oppressive and the heat less thunderous—and all at once her fear lifted, too.

By tiny steps, like those she used to capture lizards in the scrubland, Concetta approached the man. She knelt beside him. The man's hair was yellow, like the hair of a dog or a cat. His skin was so fine that in places you could see a little blue and gray coming through from underneath. Or perhaps he was just very cold. Blood dripped from somewhere under him and made a perfectly round hole in the sand. A crab edged out of the shade and began working at this hole rhythmically, with both pincers, an old woman knitting. When she had taken a good look, Concetta said, “Who are you?”

“Wiliu helpmee,”
said the man. “
Wiliu helpmee gogetelp plenwentdown.”

“Speak properly,” said Concetta, a little sternly. “Speak dialect, or Italian. Let me look at your shoulder. I've seen Dottor Esposito work and I know how he does it.”

But the man gave a yell and swatted Concetta away, babbling more of his foreign words at her.

“I can't help you if you won't speak properly,” said Concetta.

The man was going to sleep. When she was sure that he didn't have anything else to say, Concetta got up and started along the shore to the town.

CONCETTA CLIMBED THROUGH
the prickly pears and scrub grass, following paths of her own, and emerged on the edge of the piazza a little after two
.
The houses were all shuttered at this hour for the siesta. Not even the priest, Father Ignazio, was about. Concetta climbed the steps of the House at the Edge of Night and heaved open the swing door. In one corner, the ancient Gesuina dozed over the wireless radio. The doctor's daughter sat behind the counter with a fat book propped against the coffee machine, under a ceiling fan that spun and spun without cooling.

“Here's Concetta,” said Maria-Grazia in the way she always did, a way that made you feel important.

Concetta drew herself up to her full four feet and said: “There's a man. He's sleeping by the ocean. You'd better come, Signora Maria-Grazia, right away.”

Maria-Grazia let her book fall to the counter. “O, Dio,” she said. “You've found a dead body.”

“No, he came out of the ocean. Swimming out of the ocean. Dressed all in green. He's got hair like the Mazzus' dog, funny yellow hair, and his face is white as
ricotta
.”

The doctor's daughter got to her feet. “Where did you leave him, Concetta?”

“By Morte delle Barche, outside the caves.” Concetta considered for a moment whether there was anything she'd forgotten to tell Maria-Grazia. “He's got blood coming out of him. And a gun.”

Gesuina woke with a snort and said, “What's that? A man with a gun?
Ai-ee
, it's the invasion!” With alarming speed, she rose and shuffled out of the bar, in search of reinforcements.

“
Come with me,” said Maria-Grazia, and she took Concetta by the hand and turned the cardboard “Chiuso” sign around in the bar's door. “You'd better tell my father everything you've just said, and quickly, before Gesuina starts gossiping.”

AMEDEO OFTEN SLEPT IN
the afternoons, on the bald velvet sofa at the top of the house, and recently he had found himself plunging deeper, and staying down longer and longer, so that it became difficult to surface. Often, by the time he woke, the sun had arced over the island and fallen, and the world outside was a twilit one. But today he had barely closed his eyes when he was dragged up with a start. Here was his daughter shaking him, and the girl Concetta, Arcangelo's girl, barefoot and filthy in a white dress translucent in the sunlight, her legs coated in sand. “What is it?” he said, more irritably than he intended.

The girl Concetta began at once to tell a confused story about a ghostly pale man appearing from the ocean, dressed in green, with hair like straw—

“He's injured,” said Maria-Grazia. “He may need your help, Papà.”

“And he was talking a funny language,” said Concetta, who had just recalled this fact. “A nonsense language. Like this:
Wilu helpee wilu helpee.”

Amedeo, properly awake now, sat up and met his daughter's eyes. “Does anyone else know about this?”

“Just me,” said Concetta, puffing up a little with importance.

“And Gesuina, who overheard,” said Maria-Grazia.

Amedeo reached for his medical bag, which was always ready now. He packed extra swabs, extra bandages, and a precious shot of morphine, which was a little out-of-date but would be infinitely better than nothing if the man were in a bad state. “We'll need a few people to come with us,” he said. “Ignazio, and a couple of strong fishermen—Bepe, and Totò's sister Agata. Fetch three clean sheets in case we need to carry him, Maria-Grazia.”

Maria-Grazia ran and stripped the sheets from the beds in her brothers' empty rooms.

Together, the three of them crossed the town and knocked at the priest's door. The streets were quiet under the oppression of cicadas and heat. Father Ignazio came right away, and together they woke Rizzu's nephew Bepe. He emerged at once, too, sticking his head out of the upstairs window of his house behind the church. “There's an injured man who needs help,” called Amedeo. “We need people to carry him. Will you come with us?”

Bepe retreated; they heard him running down the stairs. When he opened the door, Father Ignazio caught him by the shoulder. “It's a foreign soldier,” said the priest quietly. “We don't know what the position is with
il conte
and the town council if we help him, but we're going to anyway. If you would prefer not to be in on it, then go back inside.”

Bepe nodded, and disappeared into the house. He re-emerged with his hunting rifle over his shoulder. As they left the town they called for Agata-the-fisherwoman. Agata had not been sleeping; she was under the trumpet vine in her yard, knotting a new net, while her dog, Chiappi, lay prone on top of her feet. Agata listened for only a moment before bounding from her chair, dragging the dog by the collar.

Concetta was usually frightened of Chiappi, but not today. Today she ignored his bad-tempered, sleepy growls and said, “Everyone, listen—I know the quickest way.”

“Then lead us to the patient, Concetta,” Amedeo said.

Concetta led them by her own path, through the cacti, under the fence of the Mazzus' vineyard, and down the rough slope to the caves. The doctor, the priest, Maria-Grazia, Rizzu's nephew Bepe, and Agata-the-fisherwoman ran in grim single file behind her.

It was the most exciting thing that had happened to Concetta in her life.

THE FOREIGNER WAS LYING
under the full force of the sun, turned on his side a little. One hand had left a great scratch mark across the sand. His torn shirt flapped open, exposing a great wound on his shoulder which expelled blood with a steady rhythm. Maria-Grazia hung back as her father checked the man's breathing and pulse, and gripped his arms and legs for signs of injury. Then he ordered the others to move the soldier into the shadow of the caves. Maria-Grazia, without knowing why, stood aside and did not assist them. Her father knelt beside the man and began to rip off his battledress. “
Padre,
get me swabs and iodine,” he told Father Ignazio. “We'll keep the morphine unless he needs it urgently. It's almost my last. Is anyone's English good enough to speak to him? Maria-Grazia, yours?”

“No!” she cried in alarm. “I can't speak to him, Papà.”

The man woke a little and made a half turn on his back in the sand, groaning. “Mariuzza,” called her father. “Come here and support his head, will you? See he doesn't move while I apply these bandages.”

Maria-Grazia did not want to approach, but she did. Kneeling, she took the foreigner's head in her hands. His hair felt like her brothers', tousled with salt and warm like Aurelio's after swimming. She looked down into his face and found that it was not distasteful, as she had expected it to be, but open and a little upturned, appealing, like a boy's. When she moved the remains of his shirt aside, a heavy disc of metal fell from the pocket and landed in the sand. Concetta seized it with delight. “What's this? Is it mine? Can I keep it? Is it from America?”

“I don't know,
cara.
Give it back to the man. Maybe his country gave it to him for bravery, like my brother Flavio's medal from
il duce,
and if so it's probably precious to him.”

The man reached out with one hand, grasping a little with sandy fingers. “See,” said Maria-Grazia. “He wants it back. Let him hold it—maybe that will make him feel better.”

Concetta dropped the medal into the foreigner's palm, but the foreigner let the medal fall and continued to grasp for something until—at last—he found Maria-Grazia's arm. Maria-Grazia recoiled a little, but the foreigner did not let go. He worked his way along the arm until he found her wrist, and held it. He continued to hold it all the time her father was swabbing and disinfecting.

Meanwhile, Concetta disappeared into the cave and returned with one of the lucky white stones. She dropped it into the man's pocket and put the medal around her neck. “There,” she said. “A fair exchange. He can have that lucky stone instead and I'll keep this.”

“Is he going to live?” said Maria-Grazia, when the man was bandaged and a little water fetched from the Mazzus' spring had been tipped into his mouth from the priest's cupped hands.

Her father, who never said one way or another until a patient was firmly out of danger, merely rubbed his forehead with his handkerchief and said, “We need to get him up to the house and out of this heat, anyway.”

“He's from the north, where they have snow,” said Agata-the-fisherwoman. “This heat is probably enough to kill him.”

“Get the sheets ready,” said the doctor. “You two at the head, Agata and Bepe—you're both stronger—and Ignazio and I at the feet.”

“Look over there,” said the priest, under his breath, as they hoisted the man in the stretched sheets. “Here comes the town nuisance brigade in their black shirts—watch out,
dottore.
”

Sure enough, along the beach came an officious little party:
il conte
, the grocer Arcangelo, and
il conte
's two land agents.

“Lord have mercy on us all,” said Agata-the-fisherwoman. “Excuse me,
padre—
but if Arcangelo gets talking, we'll be here until the war ends. Let's get going.”

This they attempted, but still the little party came blustering across the sand.
Il conte
stopped with his boots touching Amedeo's shoes. Sweat dripped from his nose. “What's this?” he said. “An enemy soldier! Seize him, men. The other members of the town council are on their way, Signor Esposito, and you'll be compelled to surrender him to us.”