Elizabeth Street (2 page)

Giovanna Costa gripped her father’s arm as he escorted her down the aisle. Nearly everyone from the tiny southern fishing village was in the church of the
pescatori,
Santa Maria di Porto Salvo. People smiled at her, some whispered. Giovanna wondered what they were whispering and guessed it was nothing she hadn’t heard before. Comments like, “
Finalmente
, it’s about time!” and “What took them so long?”

Nunzio glowed at the base of the altar. He was tall, taller than Giovanna even, and with the sun blazing through the windows making his deep red hair a bright gold, he resembled a lit taper. Even from this distance she could feel his warmth and see beyond his eyes. His gaze lifted her up and sent them both spinning into their own little world, which was where they existed most of the time.

The village of Scilla was their
pezzo di cielo caduto in terra
—piece of heaven fallen to earth. They lived in the Chianalea, the oldest part of town, which housed the fishermen. Cobblestone alleys led to their stone houses, perched on the water. The crystal-clear azure sea lapped at their front doors, and their boats were docked at their doorsteps. Their backdoors and terraces led onto the narrow streets and alleys that wound up the mountain.

Scilla was situated on three levels, divided into three parts. The town jutted into the sea. At its point was the ruin of a castle that had been conquered and inhabited by countless invaders and clergy since it was built in A.D. 500. On one side of the castle was the Chianalea. On the other, the half-moon-shaped Marina Grande. There the houses were set in from the sea, and the sandy beach served to dry the fishermen’s nets. Above the Chianalea was San Giorgio, the newer part of the city, where the town square and city hall overlooked the splendor of the Calabrian coast and Sicily’s Aeolian Islands. And beyond San Giorgio were terraced lemon groves and farms that reached to the top of the mountains.

It was here that Giovanna and Nunzio grew like the vines on the village Indian fig trees, intertwined in such a way that it was impossible to know where one branch started and where the other ended. Giovanna did not know life without Nunzio. Her father and his mother were brother and sister. Their houses were two doors apart, and they were born two months apart. Although her earliest memories all had Nunzio at her side, it wasn’t until she was six years old that she realized that life did not exist without him. Nunzio was hoisting baskets of smelts onto the dock from her uncle’s fishing boat. As Nunzio turned to say hello, he slipped, sending the fish flying. Giovanna laughed. Giovanna had a throaty, hearty laugh even at that age. Instead of getting angry, Nunzio did it over and over again until Giovanna laughed so hard she had to gulp for air.

When Giovanna and Nunzio weren’t doing chores, they were in the water. They would swim out to one of the many rocks that dotted Scilla’s coastline and use it as home base to explore the sea around them. The clear water showcased a kaleidoscope of color, created by hundreds of species of fish and coral. Over the years they had developed the ability to hold their breath for long stretches and dive underwater to explore the reefs and wrecks.

Early on, Giovanna’s father and aunt had assured each other it was a childhood crush. There was a road to Scilla now; the people of Scilla were not obliged to marry cousins. With each day, though, it became more apparent that Giovanna and Nunzio were a matter of destiny, not circumstance. If someone commented, Giovanna’s father and aunt stoically repeated what their father said on the subject of marriages within the family: “It makes the blood stronger.”

When Giovanna reached puberty at fourteen, they were no longer allowed to spend hours alone together. Because they were cousins and neighbors, they saw each other many times a day, but their unchaperoned adventures came to an end.

As Giovanna made her way down the aisle, she glimpsed the faces witnessing her journey to the altar. Each face held a story about her life with Nunzio. There was Paolo Caruso, who had saved her leg. Early one spring, she and Nunzio had climbed the narrow steps out of the Chianalea, raced through the plateau of San Giorgio, and picked their way through the lemon groves and then headed to the farms to trade fish for goat cheese and milk. Giovanna fell over a stone wall, cutting her long, thin leg to the bone. Paolo was the first to hear Nunzio’s cries and carried Giovanna home on his back. Nunzio trotted alongside, bravely singing Giovanna’s favorite songs while holding his shirt around her leg to stop the bleeding.

Giovanna smiled at her older cousin Pasquale. Many times, this still formidable man had served as their protector. As children on the beach, Giovanna and Nunzio would search among the water-polished stones and fragments of terra-cotta for the ancient Greek and Roman coins that frequently washed ashore, particularly after a storm. They would use these thousand-year-old coins, with bits and pieces of heroic images still visible, for a pitching game played in the narrow alleys of the Chianalea. Once, older boys had cheated them out of their prize coins during a game. All burly Pasquale had done was knock on the culprits’ doors, and the treasure was quickly returned to its rightful owners.

Zia Antoinette’s cracked face brightened when Giovanna passed. Zia Antoinette had been the first of many to catch Nunzio and Giovanna kissing. She’d whacked Nunzio so hard with her broom that Nunzio would later joke that kissing Giovanna made his head spin and
culo
hurt.

Giovanna passed the row holding Nunzio’s sister, Fortunata, her pregnant belly, and six children. The older boys, Orazio and Raffaele, were already fishermen. They stood tall next to their lean, muscular father, Giuseppe Arena. Fortunata’s youngest boy, Antonio, waved to Giovanna from the pew.

Giovanna was also conscious of who was missing. In her mind she placed her brother, Lorenzo, who lived in America, and Nunzio’s father, who had succumbed to cholera a decade ago, at the end of the aisle with her mother, Concetta, and Nunzio’s mother, Zia Marianna.

Tears streamed down Concetta’s and Marianna’s faces and over their delicate features. Giovanna always thought the sisters-in-law looked like matching porcelain dolls: one with dark chestnut hair like her own, the other with red hair like Nunzio’s. They were close, and even now they did not separate to sit on opposite sides of the aisle, as was customary for in-laws, but stood together holding hands.

Nunzio and Giovanna had grown up listening to their mothers talk and gossip while they wove linens and embroidered late into the night. They marveled at how quickly their mothers turned the simple string into strong and beautiful cloths. When Giovanna and Nunzio were twelve, they heard Concetta and Marianna planning to sew together two tablecloths they had made to create one large enough to cover the Christmas dinner table. On the night before their mothers were to stitch the two cloths together, Giovanna and Nunzio each took the string from their mothers’ sewing baskets, and out of sight in the moonlight reflected by the sea, they pulled the string slowly through their mouths. When Concetta and Marianna knotted the stitches that wove the two halves together, they did not know they were accomplices in Nunzio and Giovanna’s first act of commitment. And only the week before the wedding, Concetta still did not know why Giovanna was so insistent that the stained and tattered Christmas tablecloth be part of her trousseau.

Nunzio took Giovanna’s hand after she had kissed her father and he’d shuffled into the pew beside his wife and sister. The couple’s eyes locked. Nunzio said he saw the sea in Giovanna’s eyes. He often told her that when he was out fishing he imagined himself sailing on her gaze, and that like the sea, the color of her eyes changed before a storm. Nunzio could tell from the color of the water what the day’s catch would be, and he could tell from the color of Giovanna’s eyes whether she was tranquil or had dark undertows. For her part, Giovanna felt that Nunzio’s eyes were windows. When life held her captive, she could escape through those windows. She could see farther and more clearly through Nunzio’s eyes.

Unlocking their gaze, they turned toward the priest and faced the altar of Santa Maria di Porto Salvo. The church was humble on the outside, simple stone and stucco. But inside, the frescoes that covered every wall turned the village church into a cathedral of dramatic proportions for the fishermen. Scilla’s history surrounded the parishioners and was interrupted only by windows onto its subject; and if the light was right, the view outside became one with the paintings. The tale of the creation of the frescoes had become part of village lore. It was a story built on stories:

One hundred years ago, an itinerant painter wandered into Scilla looking for work. The church had just been built, and the whitewashed walls mocked the parishioners with their poverty. The fishermen invited the painter to a town meeting in the church, where young and old regaled the painter with tales of Scilla. As they spoke, he sketched their faces and gestures in charcoal on paper they normally used to wrap the fish.

The oldest person in the village, Nunzio’s great-great-grandfather Giacomo, told the oldest tale. “Scilla,” he began with great flourish, “was the town Scyllae from Greek myth.” He made it known to the painter that they were all good Christians, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t something to the legend—otherwise, there was no explanation for why the waters between Scilla and Sicily were so treacherous.

The painter apologized. “Signore, I am an illiterate man who only knows the stories of the Bible.”

Giacomo smiled. He had hoped the artist did not know of Scylla. He relished the opportunity to recount the chilling legend and to watch his friends’ and family’s faces as they reacted to different parts of the story.

Giacomo eased back into his chair and moved a candle closer to his face. When he described in detail the beautiful nymph Scylla, who was loved by the god Glaucus, he studied the men’s expressions. Giacomo knew they would miss the next part about Glaucus asking Circe for a love potion because their minds had not yet finished caressing Scylla’s lithe and silken body. When he told of Circe’s jealous rage, as she herself was in love with Glaucus, Giacomo saw the disapproval of the women. They sucked in their cheeks and shook their heads at such selfish emotion. The children’s eyes widened when he told of how Circe had turned Scylla into a hideous creature with twelve feet and six heads. “Scylla was cursed to remain on a solitary rock and devour sailors as they attempted to navigate the Straits of Messina,” Giacomo recounted dramatically. The children hugged their legs and drew them into their chests.

“Ever since,” Giacomo directed his closing comments to the painter, “should a sailor survive Scylla’s wrath, he would soon encounter the deadly whirlpool Cariddi, which lay in wait across the strait on the Sicilian side. This is why we say, ‘Tra una pietra ed un posto duro’—‘Between a rock and a hard place.’” Giacomo punctuated the ending by lifting his wine glass to Scylla and Cariddi. The artist captured the gesture perfectly, immortalizing Nunzio’s great-great-grandfather Giacomo as Saint Paul.

Another villager had been waiting for her moment. She had listened attentively to her father’s stories of ancient Scyllae, and when he died at sea she had become the unofficial town historian. Rocking her sleeping child in her lap, she began with great drama: “The blood of one hundred nations courses through our veins.” She pointed into the night as if the painter could see the view beyond her hand. “There,” she announced, “Sicilia. You can practically touch it. Every king and warrior believed they had to control Scyllae to control Sicilia. Scyllae was conquered so many times that the villagers lost track of who ruled the town—and were often reminded by the tip of a sword.”

After many more stories, most of which were true, the oldest fisherman, Agostino Bellantoni, cleared his throat to gain the floor. His feet shuffled beneath him, and he hung his head humbly. “Signore Artista”—his voice was at first tentative but gained conviction as he continued—“we enjoy these old stories. But Scilla is what it has always been, a village of simple fishermen and goat herders. This may not be exciting to an artist, but Scilla is for us the sea, Scilla is the cliffs, the trees of lemons, and now, our church.”

The most beautiful painting was behind the altar. Giovanna had studied it a thousand times, but today she felt herself standing in the boat with the disciples hauling in nets full of fish. The disciples looked at her with the familiar faces of the Costa, Pontillo, and Arena families of Scilla. Saint Paul, holding high a crucifix, gave her a warm smile from underneath his intense expression. Gazing from the boat, she saw Scilla’s mythical cliffs, and beyond the cliffs was heaven.

Giovanna was a devout Catholic. Nunzio occasionally accompanied her to church, but she knew Nunzio treated his faith merely like an important tradition. She had decided his scientific mind wouldn’t allow him devotion, but she forgave him because she loved the way his mind worked. She marveled at how he would use numbers to solve problems and how he could look at a building, a boat, or anything in three dimensions and know intuitively how it was built.

Nunzio was fixing fishing boats by the time he was eight. When he was twelve he was improving on them. From May through August, the fishermen of Scilla caught the best
pescespada
—swordfish—in the entire world. They had built a special boat and developed a unique system for spearing the elusive giants. A pole jutted fifteen feet into the air from the center of the boat. A man acting as lookout balanced at the top of this pole, his feet perched on two small blocks. Beneath him, four standing men rowed the boat, and a sixth man stood at the prow, spear and rope at the ready to launch into the speeding pescespada.