02 _ Maltese Goddess, The (5 page)

“I’m here,” I said. “It’s quite the place. How are things there?”

“I’m having a special day,” she replied. “You know how it was freezing rain when you left? Well, this morning it’s even colder. I had my car washed yesterday, and this morning the car doors were frozen shut, not just the locks, the door frames as well. Luckily I caught Alex at home, and he came in early and opened the shop. Please don’t tell me it’s eighty degrees in the shade where you are!”

“It’s closer to sixty-five degrees, and it’s raining and foggy, and I can’t see twenty feet outside the window. The place is empty and there is hardly any light. Feel better?”

“Much.” She laughed. “Misery loves company. Will you be okay there by yourself?”

“Oh, sure. It’s just a little creepy, that’s all. Any word from Dave?”

“He’s having a tough time figuring out how to get the stuff there. Yesterday there was a strike in Italy. He says that’s pretty normal. Now one of the public service unions in France is calling for a one-day strike that will virtually shut the country down for twenty-four hours. But he says not to worry, not yet anyway.”

“That’s encouraging. Be sure and tell me when to start worrying then.”

“Oh, we will.” She laughed. “Alex says to tell you he checked your house this morning because it’s so cold. Everything is fine. No burst pipes or anything.”

“Tell him thanks for me. We’ll stay in touch until we get this job done.”

I felt better talking to her, and realized I was hungry. I warmed up the stew as instructed by Marissa. It was close enough to dinnertime here. It was really very good.
Fenek,
I decided, meant rabbit. Rabbit stew. The bread was exceptional. It had a very crusty exterior, but the interior would almost melt in your mouth. I had to stop myself from eating the whole loaf, it was that good. There was a pleasant enough bottle of wine, local at that, to wash it all down. Soon I was feeling very mellow.

Dinner took up all of thirty minutes of the evening. It’s amazing how slowly time goes by when you really just want to go to sleep but won’t let yourself. I’m a firm believer that the way to get over jet lag is to adjust your activities to local time right away even if you have missed a whole night’s sleep on the way over. I told myself I couldn’t go to bed before ten, or maybe nine-thirty. And it was now only six-thirty.

I went upstairs and unpacked my suitcase. There were hangers in the closet, and the bathroom was fully equipped. There was even a nice, new, white terry bathrobe. Just like a fancy hotel. I had a shower in the white-tiled walk-in shower, and then with a towel around my wet hair and the bathrobe on, I eyed the bed. It looked very good—soft, down duvet, lots of pillows. I succumbed to the temptation.

A noise woke me sometime later. It was very dark, and it took me a few seconds to remember where I was. I could not identify the noise that had wakened me, but I could tell the wind had come up in the night. My eyes adjusted to the light a little, and I got up and made my way to the window. I did not turn on the bedside light. The house had a goldfish bowl feel to me, with no curtains or shutters, and I would have felt exposed by the light.

I stood at the window. I found the door to the upstairs deck was unlocked. That didn’t make me feel good, but I stepped out onto the deck. It was a little chilly, but the fog was lifting, the wind whipping it in drifts across the yard.

As I peered into the darkness, I suddenly saw, or thought I did, at the far end of the yard, the figure of a man, standing very still. He was dressed in dark clothes, his head appeared to be hooded. I shrank back from the railing, my heart pounding. As quietly as possible, I backed into the house and closed and locked the door behind me. Then I went from room to room checking the doors to the balcony. All except mine had been locked. In the dark I made my way down the staircase and checked all the doors on the main floor. They too were locked. From the windows at the back of the house, I peered out into the yard again. I could see no one. The mist lifted, and the moon came out. There was no one there.

“It’s your imagination, Lara, jet lag,” I said out loud, my voice echoing in the empty room. “Go back to bed.”

I didn’t think I’d go back to sleep, but I did. I dreamed about a man in dark robes, beckoning me toward the edge of the abyss at the back of the yard.

THREE

Temples of stone, huge and round. Megaliths, tons of rock carved with the most primitive of tools, moved without the wheel. What fervor, what piety drives you, the temple builders? It is I. Life, death, rebirth. Built in My image, below ground first, then above, stretched above the sea. Offerings, animal sacrifice, the acrid smell of burning herbs. Then suddenly, silence once again. Where have you gone, you worshipped Me best?

“Why is he sitting like that?” I asked.

“Who?” Sophia replied.

“The bus driver. Why is he sitting way over to the left, on the edge of the seat, and reaching back over to the steering wheel?”

“Because Jesus is driving the bus, not him,” she said.

Alex had told me that Malta is a devoutly Catholic country, but I had no idea of the extent of it. Part of me, the cynical part, wanted to laugh out loud. Another side of me ached for the simple faith the statement and the act implied.

I was wedged in a seat designed for two between Anthony and Sophia, his utterly charming and sweet girlfriend, on a bus headed for Valletta, the capital city.

Despite my disturbed sleep, I had awakened very early, and after a moment’s hesitation, walked out on the balcony. The scene which had seemed so menacing in the night now looked quite different. As I stood there, the sun rose to my left, turning the rocks that had seemed so lifeless the day before to the color of honey. The sea—for the property, perched on the edge of a cliff, had a magnificent view over the Mediterranean— turned from black to yellow to finally the most beautiful blue, almost cobalt, over the space of several minutes. My vision of the night, a dream perhaps, now seemed preposterous.

I had a few hours to fill before Anthony was due to arrive, and divided them between the view and the work I had to do to get ready for Galea’s arrival. I found the breakfast supplies Marissa had left for me—coffee, bacon, and eggs. The bread which I had enjoyed so much the day before was hard as a rock in the morning. I had learned something about Maltese bread, and the power of the food additives we put in ours. Maltese bread is made to be eaten the day it’s baked.

After about an hour of resisting the temptation to check the back of the yard, I went out and nervously eyed the edge. There was, as Joseph had warned me, a sharp drop down many feet to the water below. Just in case, I looked for footprints, but the ground was very rocky. If someone had been there in the night, he had left no trace.

Back at the house, I took the drop sheets off the pile of furniture in the corner of the living room and checked it against the list Galea had given me. Everything appeared to be in order, and I found the place for each piece on the very precise plans he had given me. I unrolled a couple of the carpets and checked them as well. I also had made notes on the dimensions of the furniture still to come from Galea’s house and from the shop. With all this information, I began to develop a plan to get the place ready for Galea’s arrival.

The ceiling fixtures still needed to be installed in the living room, the stucco required repair in several places, and there was a fair amount of painting still to be done. A large tapestry was to go over the sofa, so it would have to be hung once the walls were ready, and before the furniture was in place. After a couple of hours work, I had determined how to proceed. It would be touch and go, but I thought we could see it all got done, as long as the shipment from home arrived sometime in the next three days.

Just after one, a very old orange and yellow bus came along the road and slowed down enough for Anthony, accompanied by a rather plump but pretty young woman, to get off.

He waved when he saw me. “This is Sophia Zammit, my girlfriend,” he said, panting slightly after they had run arm in arm up the driveway. “She’s going to come with us, if it’s okay with you.”

“Of course it is,” I said. “Nice to meet you, Sophia.” I handed the car keys to Anthony. “Perhaps you’d like to drive?”

“You don’t mind?” he said, his eyes lighting up.

“Not at all.”

But the car wouldn’t start. After several tries, with his sunny disposition still intact, Anthony leapt out of the car and raced down the driveway waving his arms frantically. Another bus, even older than the first, pulled up, and the three of us ran to catch it.

Not for the Maltese the anonymity of a public bus service. I could only assume from the interesting decor that the bus was owned by its driver. I had noticed as the bus had approached us that the front of it was gaily painted with red flowers and several ornaments, the flags of various countries on metal decals attached to the radiator grille. The bus had a name too. Elaborately painted letters across the back declared it to be “Old but Sexy.” It occurred to me that as I slipped inexorably into middle age, such a tide might be the best I myself could hope for.

The personalized decor carried inside. Here there was a neon sign behind the driver, which from time to time flashed out the words “Ave Maria.” Above the front window a plastic statue of the Virgin and Child surrounded by dried flowers and encased in a clear plastic bell swayed with the motion of the bus. Over to one side, however, closer to the driver, was a photo of a rather healthy-looking young woman who was definitely not the Virgin Mary. Malta and its people were beginning to develop a distinct personality to me.

In retrospect, I don’t know what I expected Malta to be, if indeed Martin Galea’s breakneck schedule had given me enough time to develop any expectations at all. Alex had given me the basic details—a group of small islands in the middle of the Mediterranean about sixty miles from Sicily and a little over 200 miles from Libya. Population about 350,000. Malta, the largest island, is only about seventeen miles long and nine miles wide. Gozo, the other inhabited island, is about a third the size. Comino, the third island, boasts a resort, but only a handful of permanent residents.

Alex had also told me that one of Malta’s largest industries was tourism, so I think I expected the Mediterranean equivalent of a Caribbean isle—lots of sun, sand, and sea.

In any event, I was totally unprepared for what I saw. The countryside, naturally yellow from the rock that is its foundation, gives the impression of a painting in pastels. The landscape is punctuated by low walls that evidently trap enough soil and moisture so that there are large patches of green and some very pretty flowers. I did not see any rivers or waterways, and few trees of any height. Nonetheless, the place had a kind of rugged beauty I found quite enchanting.

We passed towns built entirely of the yellow stone, the skyline punctuated at regular intervals by the dome of a church. Horse-drawn carriages shared the road with buses such as ours and cars of all ages and descriptions. The island, like the bus in which we were riding, gave the impression of a society both ancient and modern.

After a while, the bus pulled into a terminal and I caught my first glimpse of Valletta. It is a completely walled city built almost entirely of the local yellow stone, but on a promontory of land higher than its surroundings. We walked across a bridge spanning a very large ditch—in a climate with more water I would have assumed it had been a moat. We passed through a gate and found ourselves in a square surrounded by shops, billboards, and the inevitable hamburger chain outlet.

It was here mat Anthony commenced his grand tour of the works of his ancestor, Gerolamo Cassar.

“Gerolamo Cassar was our greatest Maltese architect, architect to the famous Knights of Malta,” he began. He looked at me carefully for some sign that I knew who he was talking about. I did, but barely. The Knights of Malta were, if memory served me, the Knights of St. John, the Knights Hospitaller, who had been driven from the Holy Land in the fifteenth century and had eventually settled in Malta. This was the extent of my knowledge, but I, fearing there might be a test later, nodded and attempted to look knowledgeable. Anthony, apparently satisfied, continued. “It was Cassar who built this city. He was originally assistant to Francesco Laparelli, an Italian who had worked with Michelangelo and who was the architect of die Pope and the de Medici family in Italy.

“The Pope sent Laparelli here in 1566 to help the Knights build a new capital city after the terrible destruction of the island during the great siege of Malta by the Turks. Laparelli is said to have done a master plan for the city in only three days. After two years Laparelli left, and the work of building the city, and of designing its greatest buildings, was left to Cassar. Cassar first leveled the ridge on which we are standing to make a place for a great city, and men supervised the building of the fortification walls,” Anmony said, gesturing to the city walls behind us. “He built the church across from us, the Church of St. Catherine of Italy.”

With that introduction, we turned to die right and walked along to a large building with a green door flanked by two cannons and a uniformed guard at the entrance. The exterior was very ornately carved, and it had rows of large uniformly spaced windows and large cornerstones.

“This building houses the offices of the Prime Minister. It is one of the buildings Cassar designed, but it was remodeled later by another Maltese architect, Andrea Belli. Cassar believed that as this was a fortified city, the buildings in it should reflect that—dignified, with no embellishments like columns and carvings. Belli added the more ornate, baroque details-Mr. Galea said that Belli ‘tarted it up’—but the design of the building is still Cassar’s.”

As informative as this all was, I found myself working hard to suppress a smile. Anthony sounded as if he was making a well-rehearsed speech, a school presentation perhaps, every word chosen carefully for its effect, and memorized. His mother had said that Martin Galea had been a major influence on Anthony, and I could almost hear Galea’s inflection, slightly tinged with pomposity, in Anthony’s speech. Galea had shown Anthony around Valletta, I was quite sure, and I could almost imagine the two of them, Anthony hanging on every word, Galea basking in the young man’s admiration. I hoped, for Sophia’s sake, that a love of architecture and an affectation of speech were the only things about Galea that Anthony, immature in many ways it seemed to me, chose to emulate.