An Accidental Life (11 page)

When she yawned, the hostess brought a soft pillow. Fluffing it, she placed it under her head, turning to the side away from Peter’s reading light. She pulled the blanket up to her shoulders and stared at the darkness through the small window, wondering what was just below right now. The Atlantic Ocean, she decided. Drifting off to sleep, she let herself remember the beautiful coastline along the way from Sorrento to Positano, where it’s said Odysseus’s sirens still sing.

And then the gentle vibration of the plane put her to sleep.

In a private car sent from the hotel, Le Sirenuse, Rebecca and Peter were whipped away from the airport in Naples toward Positano. Dazed from the trip, they were quiet. But the driver kept up a stream of conversation in Italian without ever seeming to expect a response. Sometimes he interspersed the Italian with an English word or two, which he seemed to think made him bilingual.

The car first raced through the streets of Naples, a dense teeming city, and then up onto a busy highway. And then for reasons known only to the driver, the car swooped back down into the city, racing along narrow, winding streets under clotheslines strung with colorful laundry, veering around small Vespas and farm trucks, bicycles, lumbering buses, livestock of all specie, market women, barefoot children darting in and out of the traffic, past stalls of heaping fish and fruit, past tourists decorated like Christmas trees with their wide-brimmed straw hats and fanny purses and cameras.

“There’s no anarchy like Naples traffic,” Peter observed.

The taxi driver chuckled. Surprised, Peter gave him a quick look.

Half-hour later, once again the taxi burst onto the highway toward Sorrento, the beginning of the Amalfi Coast. The road curled around the Bay of Naples with Vesuvius looming on the left and the bay on their right. They watched the ferries and catamarans, and the small fishing boats trailing in their wakes, all heading for the docks in Naples or the marina at Sorrento. Sailboats and great white yachts drifted lazily in the deep blue water.

At last the car entered the town of Sorrento, and they saw the signs announcing their arrival in the
Campania
, the mountainous region bordered by the Tyrrhenian Sea. The driver negotiated their way through the Sorrento traffic until, at last, they were released onto Via Guglielmo Marconi, the coast road leading to Positano, after which it would continue twisting and winding on down through Salerno and Amalifi to the tip of the Italian boot.

Here, with the Lattari Mountains rising on the left, and on their right a sheer drop from the towering cliffs to the sea below, the winding road narrowed and human instinct for survival at last forced the traffic to slow. The drive from Naples airport to Sorrento had taken just about an hour, but it had electrified both Peter and Rebecca, and they were now shot full of adrenaline and fully awake.

Rebecca had the scenic side of the vehicle, and now, she peered over the sparkling water at one of the most beautiful vistas in the world. Below, waves crashed against the rocky coast. She watched a ferry leaving the Sorrento marina—bound for the island of Capri, she guessed, or Ischia. Here again, the sea was alive with fishers, hydrofoils, sailboats, yachts, and small boats bouncing in the waves near the shore.

Twenty minutes later, Rebecca spotted a small green island, the first of
Li Galli
, an archipelago which legend claims as the home of the mythical sirens. The island was just off the coast of Positano and it marked their arrival. She pointed and Peter leaned over to see, peering through the window. They’d gone swimming out there, not far from the island, when they’d last visited, but had never ventured all the way around. The place was private, the home of Rudolf Nureyev, the famed ballet dancer who’d defected from Russia in 1961, foiling the KGB. From the road atop the cliff, the dancer’s island was now almost hidden under decades of lush green foliage.

Just before reaching Positano, the car passed a familiar fruit stand built on a perilous point at the edge of the cliff. Rebecca squeezed Peter’s hand; the stand had been there the last time they’d come. Then the car hooked a right, leaving the coast road and dipping down toward the village, to Via Cristoforo Colombo, past a parking area at the top of the cliff, and then swinging around and up again to their hotel.

Hotel Le Sirenuse clung to the cliffs, as did every other building in Positano. The hotel car stopped at the entrance. The driver turned off the engine and came around to open the car door on the passenger side, and Peter slid out behind Rebecca. While the driver retrieved their luggage from the trunk and handed it off to a porter, Rebecca and Peter stretched and yawned in the warm May sunshine and looked about. The air was fragrant with the scent of lemons.

Shops across the street were bustling. At the rise of the road just ahead where it curved left on past the hotel, Rebecca saw the usual gathering of young mothers and their strollers and toddlers, all enjoying the sunshine, talking and laughing. One dark-haired woman balanced a baby on her hips, bouncing it gently as she leaned against an old stone wall between the road and the edge of the cliff. Rebecca’s eyes lingered on that one, wondering how old the baby was, wondering how she’d learned to hold the child like that. The other women leaned on the parapet, gossiping while they peered down at the beach far below, and the marina, and down the coast toward Sorrento.

Nothing had changed since their last visit, and that made her happy. Peter touched her arm and they strolled into the hotel. Their luggage had already disappeared, having been whisked off to their rooms by the porter. The tiled lobby they entered was open and airy and bright. While Peter checked them in, Rebecca wandered over to the long windows. To her left was an open archway leading to a terrace with white iron chairs and tables, still set up for lunch. Beyond that area she could see the swimming pool and white portico with tables, and past that, the emerald sea and the eternal blue sky.

Waiting for Peter, Rebecca wandered out onto the terrace looming high above the town. Turning her head to the right, she looked out over pastel roofs and the tops of flowering trees, and past the green and yellow dome of Santa Maria Assunta, the village Catholic church gleaming in the sun. The majolica tile on the dome of the church seemed sometimes to change colors in the light. Right now, it was a coppery-green, almost blending into the sea. Toward Sorrento she saw the white foaming waves crashing against the high cliffs. One rocky cliff jutted far into the sea.

Peter had reserved the suite for four nights. A porter took them up in the small elevator and unlocked the door. Looking around, Rebecca felt as though she’d never left and wondered if this might be the same set of rooms they’d had before. This hotel kept records of their clientele, she knew, so that was possible.

While Peter checked the luggage and tipped the porter, Rebecca strolled through the living room, looking ahead through the broad archway to the bedroom where French doors opened to the terrace. The blue and white tiled floors and the stark white of the walls pulled the sea and sky right into the room. Dark mahogany furniture and ceiling fans provided a nice contrast, giving an old-world feeling, cooling the light.

She walked on through the soaring archway into the bedroom, where delicate white flowers in small sparkling glass vases had been placed around the room. Again, the light. The room seemed lit with sunshine—a bright, white light. On a table in the far corner there was a silver ice bucket in which stood a cold bottle of
Limoncello
, the local aperitif. There was a breeze, and freshly pressed white linen curtains billowed from their ties at each side of the open terrace doors.

She heard the porter leave, closing the door behind him, and then she walked out onto the terrace and into the sunshine and dazzling colors of southern Italy. The terrace, high on the cliff overlooking the town, seemed to jut out over a massive forest of trees below—the tops of the trees just touching the terrace. Overhead white clouds streaked the clear blue sky. Scarlet and purple fuchsia bloomed everywhere, even cascading over the white parapet balcony of the terrace, and purple and yellow and red bougainvillea grew wild in the trees.

There were citrus trees, with fruit hanging from the limbs, and bottle brush and cypress, and smaller flowers springing up, winding everywhere—orange and red and pink and yellow—seeming to explode from thick vines and bushes, peeking out through the larger, darker, greener leaves. And beyond all this were the coastline and the sea and the dancer’s green island, and then nothing further on but the horizon.

Peter came out onto the terrace and stood beside her, taking in the view.

“Beautiful,” she said.

“Like no place else.”

Suddenly fatigued, she rested her hand on Peter’s shoulder. Although it was already late afternoon, a few fishing boats, small enough to be local, still bobbed offshore. She pointed and Peter followed the direction. “Look how the sun catches the nets, that flashing silver way out there?”

“All as advertised.”

“And the water, green close in, then blue.” She turned to look at him. “Can you hear the waves?”

“All I can hear right now is that bed calling. I worked most of the way over. Need a quick nap.” He slipped his arm around her shoulders and she leaned against him. This was the land of dreamy dreams, the land of the lotus. They’d come here to relax. She could forget everything here for a while.

“You coming?”

She smiled. “Yes. I’ll be right in.”

Peter kissed the top of her head and released her, going back inside. Holding onto the top of the parapet, she swung back, stretching her arms, arching her back, and looking up at the sky. She took a long deep breath of the fragrant salt sea air. After a few minutes she turned around and went into the bedroom. Peter was already fast asleep. So she took off her shoes and lay down beside him and fell immediately asleep with her hand unconsciously resting over the little bulge.

The nap helped. But with the time change from the trip and still somewhat fatigued from the long flight and drive from the airport, they decided on an early dinner at the hotel. Since he’d woken up, Peter seemed somewhat distracted, Rebecca thought. She watched him in the mirror as she brushed her hair and he dressed for dinner. Something was bothering him. It was that case he was working with Mac, she knew.

When he stood in the doorway, hands in his pockets jingling change and looking out over the terrace, she put down the brush. “I’m ready,” she said.

He turned and she felt his eyes on her as she walked to the table where she’d left the small purse. She wore an apricot-colored silky slip of a dress that she’d always liked with her long red hair, although still she worried that he would notice the new thickening of her waist. But he merely walked toward her, taking her hand in his and saying that she looked beautiful tonight.

Le Sirenuse was once, not too long ago, the summer home of an aristocratic Italian family. The new owners had managed to retain that intimate feeling of old-world elegance, blending it with an open, airy look. They wound their way down the stairs and through the spacious rooms, every room having long windows open to the sea, the terraced pool, and on to La Sponda, the hotel’s dining room. The restaurant, like all of the rooms in the hotel, swept the outside in with high ceilings and graceful archways. Vines wound through the room from the jungled forest below, winding up the inner walls and doorways and creeping above the tables, across the ceiling.

The maître d’ led them to a table near a window and pulled out a chair for Rebecca. The windows were all open now for the evening breeze. They had decided to dine early tonight and get a good night’s sleep. But even now, at dusk, with the sun still a glowing ball of fire on the horizon, the room was already lit with hundreds of flickering candles.

“Would you like water?” the waiter asked.

“Yes,” Peter said. “Still, please; not sparkling.”

The waiter nodded and soon returned with the bottle, and two menus.

“What is that?” Rebecca asked the waiter, pointing to a bulky stone structure she’d just noticed atop the parapet, the jutting cliff she’d seen earlier from the pool terrace. The waiter bent and looked in that direction.