02 _ Maltese Goddess, The (16 page)

“Can I describe that day to you? Anthony, Joseph, and I, all in our Sunday best, drove over to the house to meet the owner and see if we passed muster as potential caretakers. Sometimes I wonder what we must have looked like, the four of us standing in a little circle outside the house, only Anthony oblivious to the little drama that was unfolding. How the Fates must have laughed at the three of us, each coming almost simultaneously upon a sudden realization that would change our lives forever. Marcus knew right away, I’m sure of it, about Anthony. I could tell from the look he gave me, the way he looked back and forth between the two of us. And Joseph knew too, somehow.

“Marcus offered us the work. Joseph said we’d think about it. We had the most terrible row that night. Joseph said there was no way we’d accept the job. I said we had to, that I wanted a decent life for my son. In the end, he agreed. What choice did we have? God knows, we need the money. And Marcus has never touched me, not once. He never even shook my hand.

“No, what he did was much, much worse than that. It was not me he wanted, it was Anthony. He wanted a son.

“Anthony has not been an easy child to raise. He has his father’s restlessness, an almost frightening need for affection and approval, ambition way above his station in life, and at times a lack of sensitivity to those about him. But I think he is, at the heart, a good boy, and Joseph could not have loved his own son more.

“Marcus started spending time with the boy whenever he was in Malta. He took him around the island explaining all about the buildings, taking him to fine restaurants and buying him fancy clothes—all the things Joseph and I could not do. And gradually he began to drive a wedge between Anthony and his father… Joseph, I mean.

“I don’t blame Anthony. How could I? I was just as dazzled by Marcus Galea when I was his age. Anthony talked incessantly about Marcus, and finally announced he wanted to be an architect. I don’t think I ever noticed how good Anthony is at drawing. I was as proud as any mother at the pictures he drew for me, and I thought some of the chalk drawings he did of the streets around our town were quite lovely, but I didn’t see the talent there. Marcus did.

“The idea of sending Anthony to study architecture was so far beyond our means that it was ludicrous. But then Marcus came to the house and offered to pay for Anthony’s education. He said he would speak to the dean of a school of architecture in Rome where he’d lectured, and try to get Anthony accepted there. But then he suggested that a preferable alternative would be the University of Toronto where he had graduated and where he was on the Board of Governors. He said that Anthony could live with him and his wife while he was at school to save money. Anthony was thrilled by the idea of going to America. I could see it in his eyes. But I watched the light go out in Joseph’s.

“I looked at Marcus standing there with his smug little smile and his expensive clothes—my God, his sunglasses probably cost more than Joseph could make in a month!—and I hated him. Really, truly hated him. He knew we wouldn’t say no, that we would not jeopardize our son’s future!”

She sat looking down at her hands for a moment or two, unable to say more.

“But you could have said no,” I said quietly.

“And what good would that have done?” she burst out. “Anthony is a lot like Marcus. He would have gone anyway, wouldn’t he? Marcus would have paid his way, and we would have lost Anthony forever.”

“Does Anthony know Martin Galea is his father? Have you told him?”

“No!” she said vehemently. “I never will!” Then turning and grasping my arm very tightly, she said to me, “Please promise me you won’t tell him. Promise me!”

“I promise, Marissa,” I said slowly. “But you will have to tell him eventually, you know.”

She just looked at me.

“We know Joseph was in Rome on Thursday, Marissa. He may have some explaining to do should we find Galea was killed there.”

“Joseph didn’t kill him. He didn’t even know he was there.”

“Then why was Joseph there, Marissa?” I asked.

“I have no more to say,” she replied bitterly. “Nothing. I have promised. But Joseph would not—could not—kill Marcus Galea.”

There was no changing her mind. Not then. I left her silting there, silent and morose. I would have liked to sit there with her, try to persuade her that to talk about Joseph was better than saying nothing, but I had other responsibilities to consider, a young friend I couldn’t disappoint.

We were to begin our setup for the performance at Mnajdra, meeting first at the University, and then traveling together by chartered bus to the site. I’d promised Dr. Stanhope, and more importantly Sophia, that I’d be there. When I arrived at the auditorium—Rob having dropped me off there on his way to Tabone’s office in Floriana—there appeared to be an altercation of some sort taking place outside the door to the building. A group of people was shouting and gesticulating at someone, and that someone turned out to be Anna Stanhope. It took me a while to ascertain what all the shouting was about, but it soon became clear that it was a group of parents objecting in the strongest terms to some of the redoubtable Dr. Stanhope’s more feminist teachings. Clearly, they did not want their daughters taking part in the performance. Dr. Stanhope was seriously outnumbered, with only Victor Deva beside her, wringing his hands and making a gesture as if to shoo people away. Mario Camilleri, the PR type from the Prime Minister’s office, tried valiantly to calm the crowd, but being singularly unsuccessful, opted instead to pull Anna and Victor back into the building for safety.

I could see Sophia in the crowd with a man, her father presumably, although I’d only seen him in profile in the window the night we drove her home. He had a firm grip on her arm and was trying to pull her away. Sophia’s mouth was set in a stubborn line, but I could see she was wavering. A couple of her fellow actors were starting to move away with their angry parents.

It was beginning to look as if the sound and light show was not to be. Then the crowd suddenly began to clap and drew back to allow a silver-grey limo to pull up to the steps in front of the University building. Someone I could hear, but could not see very well from my position near the back of the crowd, began to speak rapidly and energetically in Maltese. No matter that I couldn’t understand a word, I found the voice compelling, the plummy tones of an orator, and I could feel the mood in the group begin to shift. Sophia’s father let go of her arm and she edged her way to my side.

“Who is that and what’s he saying?” I whispered to her.

“It’s Giovanni Galizia, the Minister for External Relations. He’s telling them that he, unlike some others, has a vision for Malta in which we play a prominent role in the Mediterranean, that he believes we must take our place on the world stage. He says others may be content for Malta to be a mere pawn in European politics, but he believes that after this performance all the world will know of Malta, that the leaders of Europe, many of whom do not appreciate Malta’s glorious history, will be here to learn of it, and that they, as parents, and their daughters will help bring prosperity to all Maltese.” Sophia looked at me and made a face.

I laughed. Just the kind of speech you’d expect from a politician, I thought, but I had to give him credit. This was not the kind of crowd I’d have liked to have taken on. Galizia apparently moved into the crowd to press the proverbial flesh, although I still couldn’t see him. Soon, the limo pulled smoothly away, and even though you could not say the parents were all smiles exactly, the crowd began to disperse. Mario Camilleri, for some reason, glared at the back of the retreating car.

“Who are these others Galizia referred to, by the way, the ones with no vision? Or was it just political rhetoric?” I asked Sophia.

“He means the Prime Minister, Charles Abela,” she replied. “I think maybe the two of them don’t get along. Abela is sick, recovering from surgery. The deputy Prime Minister has been filling in for him, but Galizia is acting as if he has the job,” she added. “He probably hopes Abela will have to retire, but it looks as if he’ll recover completely and be back at work soon.”

“That would explain why Mario Camilleri wasn’t looking too keen. I assume he’s on the side of the PM in this feud.” Sophia nodded. “How do you think this episode happened in the first place?” I asked. “What set the parents off like this? Surely not just the girls talking about the play at home.”

“Well, there’s no question they aren’t very keen on Dr. Stanhope’s teachings. But we think it’s Alonso, Marija’s brother. We think he’s spying on us and telling our parents,” Sophia replied. “But we need his help, so there’s not much we can do.” I personally doubted that he was spying. Alonso was just a nice big teddy bear of a boy, I thought. I put it down to schoolgirl paranoia, perfectly understandable in light of events.

Just then Anna Stanhope, who’d beaten a hasty retreat when the crowd got ugly, returned rather pale and flustered. I assumed she had been frightened by the experience, but it soon became apparent that she was unfazed by the parents, but quite unbalanced by the presence of Victor Deva, who was being his usual overly charming self. Her appearance had changed too. Instead of her usual dull shirtmaker dress and sensible shoes, she was wearing a skirt, a pink blouse with a ruffled collar which displayed a fair amount of her more than ample bosom, and rather more stylish sandals. Her hair seemed wispier than usual, and she had taken the time to apply makeup with what seemed to my eye to be a somewhat unpracticed hand.

I decided she was totally besotted with Deva, who in turn fluttered about her paying her extravagant compliments and rushing to help her every time she tried to do something. I rather unkindly decided he was an aging Lothario out to get Anna Stanhope’s money, but the flaw in this was that I wasn’t at all sure she had any money for him to get, and secondly he had bought a lot of lighting equipment which couldn’t be cheap. I concluded there was just no accounting for tastes.

Deva and Alonso, the gofer and suspected spy, lifted three heavy crates of lighting equipment and my two wardrobe containers onto the bus, and then we all got on and headed for Mnajdra, the girls chattering happily as we went. Anna Stanhope and I sat together, with Victor Deva and Alonso across from us. Anna and Victor exchanged meaningful glances from time to time.

“That was quite the scene with the parents,” I said.

“Nasty lot, aren’t they?” she said. “Dinosaurs, mindless slaves to religion, if you ask me. Should be ashamed of themselves, stunting their daughters’ development like that. Got me sacked from my part-time job, you know. Now they’re trying to stop the play. They’re very much against my teachings about the Great Goddess. They think it gives their daughters ideas—makes them uppity. But the point is, it’s true: Malta really was a major center of Goddess worship for many centuries. Oh, I know there are archaeologists who dispute that, most of them men, of course. But why, I ask you, when you find dozens, hundreds even, of female figures and symbols like the triangle, and only a handful of phallic symbols, why on earth would you conclude their god was a man?

“The temples here are extraordinary, and they have found as many as thirty Goddess figures, some of them ten feet high. You can’t argue that some more advanced civilization passed through here and built the temples, because there are no temples that date to the time these were built that are even remotely like them. They are absolutely unique. You’d think the Maltese would be proud of that. And whether they like it or not, there is a very long tradition of worship of a Great Mother Goddess throughout the Mediterranean that extended long after the temple builders of Malta, to the era of recorded history—to Roman times essentially.

“She was worshipped under many different names, and the rituals may have varied, but the pattern of Her worship is strikingly similar.”

“Which is?” I asked. This was all new to me, as it obviously was for the parents of Malta.

“The Great Goddess, representing the power of nature, is usually associated with a child, usually Her own, divine but of lesser status. This child never attains real adulthood. He remains forever a youth. But he often becomes the consort of the Goddess as well as Her child. The young god dies, disappears from earth. The Goddess, in extreme mourning, searches for him all over the earth, and often as far as the underworld. While She searches, life on earth goes awry. Because She is the power of earth, crops don’t grow, animals and men cease to procreate. Finally a divine deal is struck. The youth, the so-called dying god, is reunited with his mother/consort for a part of the year, and must spend the rest of the year in the realm of the dead.

“And so we have these divine pairings, Great Goddess and dying god, through much of ancient history. Inanna of Sumer, Queen of Heaven and Earth, and her Dumuzi, Ishtar or Astarte with Tammuz, the warlike Anath with Ba’al in Mesopotamia, Isis and Osiris in Egypt, Aphrodite and Adonis in Greece, Cybele and Attis in Rome. Their sacred marriage and the god’s death and return represent the cycles of Nature, and provided the basis for earthly kingship for many centuries. Earthly kings took their right to rule through the institution of the sacred marriage to the Goddess: They became, in effect, the earthly embodiment of the dying god. The power of the Goddess diminished over time, of course, and gradually the patriarchal gods took over, but this does not take away from the tremendous power the Great Goddess exerted over life for millennia.

“If people here think learning about this tradition gives their daughters ‘ideas,” then so be it. I think it’s a good antidote to all the Adam and Evil kind of stuff they get in church schools. Neanderthals!“

“You’re not teaching anymore, but you’re going on with the play, I take it.”

“The show must go on, don’t they say? I don’t much mind about the teaching job. I’m on sabbatical and I can survive without the income. But I think the play’s important, and so, obviously, do the girls. They’ve rebelled, as you can see, and `turned up despite their parents. Warms my heart, I’ll tell you.”