The House at the Edge of Night (19 page)

T
here
was once an old woman who took it into her head to put a curse on a king's daughter. “You shall never marry,” she declared, “until you have found the Dead Man, and watched over him for a year, three months, a week, and a day.”

The
girl grew up, and the curse remained. Though she had many suitors, and was very beautiful, never did she meet one whom she liked well enough to make her husband. “Father,” said the princess at last, “it's no good. It's plain to me that I cannot marry until I find the man whom I was cursed to marry, for no one else will do. Therefore I intend to go out into the world, and seek the Dead Man.”

The
king, her father, wept, but the girl would not be dissuaded, and the next day she saddled her horse and packed her bags and went out into the world in search of the Dead Man.

After
journeying for many years, she came to a great white palace. The door was open, and the lamps were lit. A fire burned in the fireplace. The girl entered, and went from room to room until, at last, she found a dead man lying before the hearth in an upstairs chamber. “Now here is my bridegroom,” said the princess. “And I must watch over him a year, three months, a week, and a day, until he awakes.”

So
saying, the princess flung herself down on the tiles before the hearth, and waited for the Dead Man to awake.

A TALE BELONGING TO
Venice, also told in the Decameron and by Signor Calvino in his book of tales, which somehow found its way to Castellamare during the second war. It is my belief that it must have come from one of the northern prisoners. First recorded when Signor Rizzu retold it to me in 1942.

The war burned itself out that summer when Maria-Grazia and Robert became lovers. The following spring, when Sicily had been occupied for eight months and the fishermen had begun, tentatively, to venture further out upon the ocean again, an unfamiliar boat appeared at the horizon. Running to the top of the house, Concetta and Maria-Grazia inspected the sea through Flavio's binoculars and found the boat, the fisherman rowing, and two American soldiers in tin helmets.

The late arrival of the Americans on Castellamare was an oversight. The island should really have been occupied months ago. But in the chaos that engulfed Siracusa, the Sicilians had simply forgotten to mention to the occupiers that the small island on their horizon was inhabited at all. It was only a long time later that a colonel, bent over his aerial photographs with a magnifying glass, made out a grainy smudge to the southeast of Sicily. Blowing the picture up, the colonel found the gray blocks of a quay and a red bloom that might represent houses. He made inquiries at the market below his office window.
Sì, sì,
said the Siracusans,
sì,
Castellamare was inhabited, there had even been a prison camp there, many clever men from the north, four or five guards.

The next morning the colonel dispatched a boat across the water to investigate.

The Americans—a sergeant and a lieutenant—had offered the elderly owner of the
God Have Mercy
a single dollar bill to transport them to Castellamare. They landed shortly after four, in a bestial spring heat. The fisherman docked at the empty quay and pointed the way between the olive groves and cacti to the summit of the island. Then he sat down in the bottom of the boat and began laying out a hand of solitaire on the thwart, announcing very firmly his intention to stay behind.

“It'll be a damn hot climb,” said the sergeant.

“We'll find someone with a motorcar on the way up,” said the lieutenant.

The fisherman pursed his lips. “No motorcar here,” he said, with the disdain of the city dweller for the village. “No refrigerator, no television, no wireless radio. Nothing here. You understand,
americani
?”

Slogging up the hill, the
americani
understood. In the fields the tendrils of the vines were just pushing out, reminding the sergeant of home and the fields of California. In the distance, close to the sea, a line of laborers moved as one, the chopping of their mattocks against the dry earth audible even from this height. Beside them, on the dust track, was the tiny form of an unexpected motorcar. “Shall we double back down there?” said the sergeant. “Ask those people?”

“We'll try the town first,” said the lieutenant, who couldn't face another climb in this heat.

But they found no other sign of human life until at last they passed under the peeling archway into the town. The arch had become a kind of blackboard for slogans of all political persuasions. “Viva Il Duce!” and “Viva Mussolini!” were almost obliterated now, replaced with the names of the heroes of half-liberated Italy: “Viva Badoglio! Viva Garibaldi! Viva il Re!”

The lieutenant nodded approvingly. “No Fascists here,” he said.

“Leastwise not anymore,” said the sergeant.

The fisherman from Siracusa had been wrong about another thing: There was a wireless radio. After some searching, they located it outside the bar. Here they found a strange assortment of people: widows, elderly card players, two or three fishermen, and a British soldier, drinking coffee and arguing over the BBC news report.

“Where is the rest of your regiment?” the lieutenant asked the British soldier. “We weren't told this island had been captured already by British forces.”

Robert put down his coffee and got to his feet. “It hasn't,” he said. “I'm the only one. I was washed up on the night of the ninth of July. I got separated from my regiment when the tugs ditched us into the sea, and I've never seen any of them since.”

The sergeant had heard about the landings from his brother-in-law, a tug pilot: how the wind and the rain had confounded the tugs, forcing them to ditch the gliders too early; how the British paratroopers had been scattered among mountains, plunged into rough water, discarded in vineyards a hundred miles behind enemy lines. In the days that followed, those who could still fight had fought where they found themselves; those who were still floating about on bits of wreckage had been picked out of the sea and shipped back to Tunisia. Some of the Tommies had been so incensed at the Yankee tug pilots that they had to be confined to camp. “Goddamn mess,” murmured the sergeant. “We heard about all that.”

Now, the British soldier said: “Number Six Guards Parachute Platoon, Third Battalion, First Airborne Division. Do you know if any others got out of their planes? That's what I keep thinking. I dream about it at nights. Did any of the others get out?”

“We only got to Sicily six months ago,” said the lieutenant. “I don't know anything about that.” He glanced from the British soldier to the old men at their card table, the widows murmuring in the corner, and the two fishermen who had set aside their newspapers and were now regarding the two soldiers with benevolent interest. “I thought there was a prison camp,” he said at last.

Pina was summoned. She led the soldiers along the main street, to the collection of ruined cottages where the prisoners had once been housed. Too shy to speak in English before these foreigners, Pina explained instead in formal Italian that the prison camp was gone. “She says this was where the prisoners were kept,” translated Robert. “There wasn't any proper camp except this. Then, she says, when the fighting started, the Fascist guards all left. It was just at the time I landed on the island.”

“What about the prisoners?”

“There's a university lecturer. One or two socialist deputies. The rest have gone, too.” Even Mario Vazzo had gone—returning to the mainland in search of his wife and child.

“What about the local government? Are there any of them we need to deal with? The mayor?”

Robert shook his head.

By now, half the islanders had got wind of the American soldiers' arrival. They crowded around the American liberators, clapping them on the shoulders. Someone began a cheer of “Viva l'America!” Concetta wriggled free of Maria-Grazia and emerged at the front of the crowd to peer up at the foreigners. “It's all damned strange,” said the lieutenant, who had hoped to take the island in grander style. “We were told there was a prison camp, four or five guards.”

“Yes, yes,” said Robert. “She says there was a prison camp, but it's all gone now.”

“Bring the
americani
back to the bar for a coffee,” said Rizzu. “Offer them something to eat and drink.”

The American soldiers were led back through the streets as guests of honor, which mollified the lieutenant a little. At the House at the Edge of Night, they refused Maria-Grazia's
caffè di guerra,
but did consent to sit down at the bar, under the ceiling fan, where they asked that the island's former
podestà
be summoned at once.

Rizzu, riding proudly in the front of the motorcar for the first time in his life, brought
il conte
from the fields.
Il conte
made a stiff bow to the liberators. “Can you understand English?” asked the lieutenant.

Il conte
, who had never been much of a scholar, was obliged to shake his head. Robert and Pina were called upon to translate. While
il conte
turned red and looked at his knees, the American soldiers declared the island captured and
il conte
relieved of his duties as mayor.
Il conte
shuffled forward and, after a tense moment when rage seemed to swell in him, he subsided, and consented to shake the soldiers' hands.

Then the Americans turned to the problem of what should be done with Robert. “We'll take you back to Siracusa,” said the lieutenant. “Get you a good meal and a transfer back to your regiment.”

“I can't go,” said Robert. “I tried to leave, to get back to my regiment, already. It won't work. The wound in my shoulder began to bleed again when I left the island.”

“Sì, sì,”
added one of the villagers, an elderly woman with blind eyes that showed only a white film.
“Un miracolo di Sant'Agata.”

“What'd she say?”

“She says it's a miracle of Sant'Agata.”

“Come on now,” said the lieutenant. “Enough of this. We'll get you off of here and into a proper hospital, if you're wounded. We'll get you evacuated to Tunisia. Or sent home to England if that's what you want.”

But Robert shook his head.

Amedeo was ushered forward by the crowd of islanders to give a medical report. Yes, yes, he agreed. There was nothing to be done about Robert's shoulder but wait for it to heal. A period of rest; it was advisable not to move the patient from the island at this delicate stage.

“Let me see your shoulder,” said the lieutenant. Robert unbuttoned his shirt and exposed the scar, now silvering over.

“That's healed pretty good,” said the lieutenant. “There's nothing wrong with that.”

“But not when he leaves the island.” Maria-Grazia came forward, twisting her rope of black hair, speaking clear English. “Then it bleeds again.”

The islanders, murmuringly, agreed. The lieutenant remembered the field guide to Sicily they had been handed before disembarking at Messina.
The bulk of the inhabitants are Roman Catholic and much addicted to Saints' Days.
The British man seemed to have some kind of a hold on them. “The fighting must have turned him a little nutty,” he muttered in the sergeant's ear.

But the sergeant was clearly spooked and inclined to disagree. “I ain't so sure about that,” he said. “I heard about other miracles in this war, from my brother-in-law Harvey who flies planes.”

“Come on.” The lieutenant tried again, addressing only Robert. “Wouldn't you like to come with us back to Sicily and have a proper meal and see a doctor and find out what's happened to your buddies?”

But Robert shook his head. He could not go with them to the mainland and would not submit to medical treatment in an army hospital. “I can't leave,” he said. “This is the only place where my shoulder can heal. This is the only doctor who can cure me.”

Here, for the first time, the sergeant was moved to speak up. “His shoulder's busted anyway,” he said. “Seems to me it don't make no difference if we leave him or if we bring him.”

“A deserter's a deserter,” said the lieutenant. “We can't just leave him here.”

THE LIEUTENANT HAD EXPECTED
more resistance on the Englishman's part, but in the end Robert went with them. What he had not expected was the procession of islanders who followed them down the dust road to the quay, lamenting, protesting in dialect, and in some cases even weeping openly, clinging to the Englishman's hands. The lieutenant, sweating, leading the pale and sullen Robert by the elbow, wished he'd never been sent to this island. It made matters worse that his sergeant, a superstitious young man who had been raised in a shack in California, obviously sided with the Englishman.

On the quay, the islanders waited in silence for the
americani
to take Robert away. The lieutenant felt some kind of announcement should be made. Clambering up on the thwart of the
God Have Mercy,
he addressed the islanders. “We'll take good care of your friend,” he said. “We'll see he gets treated right.”

The islanders continued to stare in silence while Robert and Maria-Grazia exchanged one single, brief embrace. Then the fisherman cast off, with the
americani
and the Englishman on board. The islanders, a sad crowd, remained on the quay for a long time, watching the boat depart.

“Hell of a place,” said the lieutenant.

“Bad omen, if you ask me,” said the sergeant.

As the fisherman plied the choppy waves of the open sea between Castellamare and Siracusa, the Englishman gave a low murmur. Black blood was blossoming from the wound in his shoulder. The lieutenant fumbled in his first-aid kit and brought forth a Carlisle dressing from its plastic wrapper. “Here,” he said. “Put that on your shoulder. We'll see you get medical attention when you're back onshore.”

Meanwhile, a memory came to the sergeant unbidden: how, as a boy of fifteen or sixteen pulling in the harvest on a ranch near Soledad, he had seen a man fall from a wagon onto a pitchfork, how the man had bled until there was no blood left in him.

He was glad, when they deposited the soldier at the English field hospital, to have nothing more to do with him.

FROM SIXTY-SIX GENERAL HOSPITAL,
Catania, Robert, still bleeding, was evacuated to Tunisia and from there put on a hospital ship bound for Southampton. On the journey he was confined to his bunk, and could drink only a little beef tea. His wound would sometimes begin to heal, but every few days it began to bleed once more. Robert's temperature rose and fell; he was troubled by persistent headaches. This was an infection no ammoniated mercury or sulfanilamide tablets seemed to cure; it seemed to run deeper, to have taken root in him.

His regiment—what was left of it—was training farther north, but Robert could no longer be deployed anywhere. While his comrades of the Number Six Guards Parachute Platoon floated down over Arnhem, Robert lay in a bed with gray curtains, sometimes recovering, sometimes declining, and dreamed of Maria-Grazia. Of her embraces on hot afternoons when the rest of the town lay drowsing behind shutters, when they had held their breath so as not to disturb the great silence of the island. Of the thick rope of her black hair. Of the calm of waking beside her in that room with the palms at the window, the blue line of the sea. Whether these things had happened or had only been imagined, he could not now tell for sure. The whole world seemed a submerged place in which great chunks of time were swallowed up and yet days themselves dragged listlessly. But still he clung to the belief that he had been her lover once, and would love her again.