02 _ Maltese Goddess, The (4 page)

I could see only the side of the priest’s head, and thought rather uncharitable thoughts, considering his kindness, about his hairdresser. There was no part in his hair. Instead it hugged his skull, emanating in all directions from a tiny bald spot on the top of his head, perched like a polar ice cap on some small planet. At the front it looked from this angle as if his hair stopped just above his eyebrows, giving very much the impression of a man with a bowl on his head.

I was very tired from the overnight flight, and after reading the Paris papers for a few minutes and realizing that I had made the right decision to press on to Malta—there were reports of labor unrest and the chance of wildcat strikes possibly affecting the airport, and there had been bomb threats in the Metro—I fell asleep and did not waken until the “tables and chair backs in the upright position” announcement as we began our descent into Malta.

I peered past my seatmate by the window, straining to get a view of the island. Alex had told me that Malta is shaped like a fish—Alex knows the most amazing things—and that where I was going, Galea’s house, was, if one assumed the top of the fish was to the north, just below the gill area. Not a particularly inviting location description and certainly not one I would expect to hear from the Maltese National Tourism Organization, but definitely descriptive. All I saw from the plane was a rocky and rather desolate island. It was raining, as Alex had predicted.

I did not see GWH and the priest exiting the aircraft, but they soon joined the rest of us at the baggage carousel. The priest had a duffel bag only, but the GWH had three large suitcases and a golf bag filled with clubs. There was the usual routine to get out of the airport, a red zone and a green zone, depending on whether or not you had anything to declare, and I headed for the green zone several steps behind the priest and GWH.

GWH was looking a little the worse for wear. He had had too much champagne, I suppose, and his khaki pants had slipped down below his paunch, so that he was now walking on the back hem of his trousers. He stumbled slightly, and the priest, who by this time surely deserved multitudes of credits in the hereafter, went to assist him. Both were stopped in the spot check in the green zone, but after sharing a joke with the priest, probably at the expense of GWH, the customs officers waved the priest through. GWH did not fare as well, and as I went through the outer door, I wondered if they would notice the metal detector amongst his golf clubs. It was the last I thought I would see of either of them.

It took me a few seconds to realize that Missus Mcleentak meant me, since I really hadn’t expected to be met at the airport. I approached the young man and introduced myself.

“I’m Lara McClintoch,” I said. “Are you looking for me?”

“Yes, ma’am,” the nice young man said. “I’m Anthony Farrugia. My mother and father look after Mr. Galea’s house for him. Mother thought it would be nice if I were to come and meet you.”

“That is very thoughtful of you and your mother,” I said. “Where to?”

He took my bag and led me out to a parking area and a very old car. An acid-yellow car, a British Ford of some kind, I think, conservatively twenty years old, and maybe closer to thirty. It looked well cared for, however, and Anthony’s pride in it was evident.

“Nice car,” I said and he beamed.

He loaded my luggage in the trunk and we got into the car. Alex’s notes had warned me they drive on the left in Malta, so I was prepared for mat. Not for what came next, however. Anthony put the car in gear and pulled away from the curb, then accelerated until the gears were screaming. Just when the smell of burning rubber or oil permeated the car, he pushed in the clutch, pulled it into neutral, put in the clutch again, and whipped it into third. He noticed me watching him.

“No second gear.” He grinned. “Have to go like a bomb in first, then ease it into third.”

“I see,” I said.

At the exit of the airport, we roared around a corner in third gear, and I could hear my suitcase flying about in the trunk.

“Not good to slow down,” he said. “It stalls.”

“I see,” I said again. Just then we went around another corner at breakneck speed, and with a thud the window beside me slid down into the door frame.

“Rats,” he said. “It does that sometimes.”

I tried to roll the window back up, but the handle spun uselessly in my hand.

“You have to pull the window up by hand,” he offered. “I’ll pull over and we’ll do mat.”

“That’s okay,” I said. “I like the fresh air.”

“Me too.” He smiled.

“Mr. Galea gave me money to go out and buy a car for the house. I got a really good deal on this one,” he said conversationally.

“Good for you,” I said. “It’s lovely.”

“It belongs to the house, so you get to drive it while you’re here,” he said.

“I can hardly wait,” I said. What I meant, of course, was that I’d rather ride a donkey than drive this car. We sat in companionable silence for a while, the damp air blowing in our faces.

“How old are you, Anthony, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“Almost seventeen,” he replied. Then after a pause, “But I’ve been driving since I was twelve.” He looked sideways at me to try to ascertain why I was asking.

“Do you help your mother and father look after the Galea place?” I asked him.

“Sure. But only after school. I’m trying to do well at school so I can go to university. I want to be an architect like Mr. Galea. The Cassars are born architects.”

“I thought your name was Farrugia. Who are the Cassars?”

“You haven’t heard of Gerolamo Cassar?” he asked incredulously. “He was our greatest architect. He designed Valletta, the capital city, and the most beautiful buildings on Malta. My mother is a Cassar.”

“Anthony,” I said, “this is my first visit to your country, and my knowledge of it is woefully inadequate, but I’m looking forward to learning a lot about it while I’m here.”

He digested that for a moment or two. “I think maybe I’ll have to show you around, then,” he said. “After school.”

“I’d really like that,” I said. “We sure can’t see much now.”

“Yes. You got here just in time. The fog is coming in.”

He was right. As we traveled away from the airport, the mist got thicker until you could only see a few feet in front of the car and I had absolutely no sense of where we were going, nor how I would ever retrace my route. I had the impression, despite the rain, of a rather arid land, very rocky, with little vegetation. Everything seemed grey at worst, or at best, a kind of sere yellow.

After about twenty minutes or so, we made a sharp right turn and went up what appeared to be a driveway, lined with bushes and a low stone wall in what at closer distance was a rather pretty buttery yellow. Halfway up the hill, we reversed the pattern on the gears, coming perilously close to stalling, then rolled to a stop in front of a garage. An even older car was parked there.

The sound of the car brought a tiny woman with very fine features and a beautiful smile to the front door and out to the driveway. “My mom,” Anthony said, although she needed no introduction. Their smiles, the kind that light up whole rooms, were identical.

“I’m Marissa, missus,” she said. “Take the missus’s suitcase upstairs, Anthony,” she said. “And don’t forget to give the missus the car keys.”

I was about to offer to let Anthony keep the car, but I could tell—something in her eyes—that this would not be considered a good idea by his mother, so I kept quiet.

We entered the house. I’d had a chance to look at the plans and was beginning to recognize the Galea design trademark, so I was not surprised when the rather unpretentious facade opened into a spectacular space. The floors were all tiled in terra-cotta, and the walls, the pale yellow stone I’d seen in the driveway, had been stuccoed over in a pale ochre color. I knew the moment I entered the place that the furniture from the shop would be perfect here. It was a good feeling.

The design was open concept, only the stairway to the second floor segregating the kitchen from the rest of the space. There was a huge fireplace, and beside it a man directing a couple of workmen, who were putting finishing touches to the stucco, in a language that was totally incomprehensible to me. I knew from Alex’s brief geography lesson that virtually all Maltese, young and old, are fluent in English, the result of almost two centuries of British rule and influence that ended only very recently. He had assured me that English was one of two official languages for business in Malta, so I’d have no problems. The native language of the island, however, is Malti, one of those minority languages that have survived over the ages despite invasion, repression, and active attempts to stamp them out, and it was this, I assumed, that the man was speaking.

As I approached, the older man tipped his cap and said, “Hello, missus.” I took this to be Joseph, Anthony’s father and custodian of the house. He had a pleasant, open face, the large hands of a laborer, and appeared to be considerably older than his wife, although perhaps years of backbreaking labor had added lines to his face.

Over in one corner of the large room there was what on closer examination I found to be a large amount of furniture protected by drop cloths. Beside it, rolled in plastic were several carpets. Galea had told me he wanted to use carpets to delineate the various living areas, and he had given me a carefully annotated list of all the carpets and where they were to be placed. I sincerely hoped I remembered how to distinguish a Tabriz from a Bakhtiari, or this would be trouble.

The back of the house was all glass, and there were no curtains in evidence. While I couldn’t see more than twenty or thirty feet beyond the windows because of the fog, I assumed the bare windows meant there were no neighbors nearby. The windows would be protected from the summer heat of the Mediterranean by a terrace with a weathered brick floor and Greek columns. Large terra-cotta pots were already filled with flowers.

“I’ll show you around upstairs,” Marissa said, and I followed her up the staircase. There were three bedrooms on the second floor, all of them with large windows and a doorway onto a deck over the terrace below. Only one of the bedrooms, the largest, was furnished, and Marissa had seen to it that it was made up for me. There was a king-size bed, and an en suite bathroom with all the amenities. I wondered exactly where Galea was planning for me to sleep once he got there.

“You’ll be tired from your long journey,” Marissa said.

“I’ve left you something to eat,
fenek
and some bread and wine, and there is food in the refrigerator for your breakfast. I hope everything is satisfactory.”

“It’s wonderful, thank you, Marissa. And please call me Lara. We’re going to be working together a lot over the next few days, and I hope we can be friends.” She looked horrified at the thought of calling me by my first name. “I work for him just as you do,” I said.

She seemed pleased.

“Tomorrow… It’s the Sabbath, and Joseph and I normally do not work that day. We go to Mass… but I know there is a lot of work to be done before Mr. Galea comes.”

“That’s fine. You take the day off. I’ll need some time to figure out where everything is here, and I’ll do a plan so we can move the furniture in the easiest possible way. I’ll see you on Monday.”

“Thank you, Missus Lara,” she said.

“Your son has offered to show me around Malta, after school. Is that all right with you?”

“Of course it is, but don’t let him be a pest. He is so excited when someone from far away comes here, he can be a little, I don’t know, clingy?” she replied.

“He’s a really nice young man,” I said. “You must be very proud of him.”

“I am. We are,” she replied. “In a way we have Mar— Mr. Galea to thank for that. Anthony was not doing well at school, always in trouble. Joseph and I, we didn’t know what to do. Then Mr. Galea came to build this house. He has convinced Anthony he can be an architect. Now he has settled down, he works hard at school, he has a nice girlfriend.”

“That’s wonderful,” I said, thinking there might be a side to Martin Galea I hadn’t known. We headed downstairs, where Marissa showed me the dinner she had prepared for me. It looked good—a stew of some kind of meat with onions and tomatoes, and a large very crusty-looking loaf of bread.

She showed me where the telephone was, and put their phone number beside it. “It sometimes works, it sometimes doesn’t,” Anthony said from behind us. “Can I take Missus Mcleentak out to look around Valletta after Mass tomorrow, Mum?”

“If she’d like to go?” she said, looking at me.

“That would be just great, Anthony,” I said. “What time should I expect you? In fact, what time is it now? I’m still on Toronto time, I think.”

“It’s four-thirty,” Anthony said. “I’ll come and get you about one tomorrow?”

“Done,” I said.

Joseph joined us in the kitchen. “Now, missus,” he said, “you lock up the place after we leave. And don’t you go walking around in the fog. There’s a very big drop at the back of the yard here. We wouldn’t want to lose you before my boy here can even show you around.” He gave his son an affectionate pat and smiled at me. They were really nice people.

I walked them to their car, the three Farrugias and the two workmen, and waved as they left. They disappeared into the fog very quickly, then I heard the engine reverse and they came back up the driveway. Anthony leapt out and handed me the car keys with a grin and a wave. Then they were off a second time. I regarded the keys with unease.

The house did not seem all that welcoming now that they were gone. With so little furniture and none of the carpets placed, my footsteps made an unpleasant hollow sound as I walked about. There were also not many lights. The kitchen lights worked, but the ceiling lights in the main room were still wires hanging from the ceiling. There was one lamp, a desk lamp that had been plugged in and left on the floor, there being no desk to put it on. I had a feeling it was going to be a long evening.

It would still be late morning Toronto time, and I’d promised to check in when I arrived. I put through the call, and was glad to hear Sarah’s crisp voice.