Tourmaline (16 page)

After finding shotgun shells on his land, he posted NO HUNTING signs. He decided to build a fence. He hired two men from Porto-ferraio to work for him and paid them the equivalent of fifty dollars each for a week’s worth of doing nothing, since the wire fencing was never delivered. The next week he put them to work building a stone wall around the property. They worked slowly. Their siesta lasted three hours.

Murray ran his Lambretta off the road on his way home from the bank in Portoferraio one day. He was able to get the motorcycle started again, and he arrived spattered with mud but absorbed by anticipation of the next day’s work. He was glad to find that Claire had waited for him instead of eating dinner with the rest of us. After changing his clothes, he opened a bottle of sparkling wine. Lidia had left them a plate of anchovies and a round of bread. A sip of the wine filled him with warmth, the white flesh of the anchovies melted like butter on his tongue, and when he blinked he found Claire looking at him from across the table without the sharp query of suspicion in her eyes.

A spring night on Elba. Claire and Murray, tousled, half dressed, bleary from the wine, made love on the sofa and fell asleep in each other’s arms. Nat woke up late, went to the bathroom to pee, and then trudged sleepily into our parents’ room, climbed onto the bed, and fell asleep between pillows that he mis-took for our parents. Meena, inadvertently locked outside, yowled in the night, but no one heard her. When the rain began she took refuge beneath a board leaning against the garden shed. When the wind blew the board away, she scampered back to the villa and shivered in the doorway. And when the man emerged from the darkness, walking up the gravel path with the stiffness of a stilt-walker, and pounded weakly on the door, Meena didn’t bother to move, for she knew what would happen in a minute or two if the man just kept knocking.

The door opened, and Meena scampered inside between Claire’s feet. Claire suppressed an exclamation. Without a word she led Francis Cape into the front hall, where he stood dripping, trembling, his lips moving in soundless words.

Murray appeared, wearing only his trousers and undershirt. “Francis?” he asked. Could it really be Francis? Old Francis Cape gone out of his mind?

“It’s me, all right. I’m here as a friend, you know.”

Claire and Murray exchanged the familiar glance that people share when they believe themselves in the presence of insanity.

“I’m here to warn you.”

“Come into the kitchen, Francis. Have a cup of tea. You need to calm down, collect your wits.”

“It’s you’s the one in trouble.” Startled by his own slurring speech, he shook his head, clenched his hands together to steady himself, and said, “I mean to say, I’ve just come from Uccello’s, you remember it, the enoteca, we’ve been there, all of us, back when.” He stopped abruptly, leaving Claire and Murray to fill in the rest of the sentence: back when Adriana was with us.

“Sit down, Francis. Sit and catch your breath, at least.”

“I’m fine.”

“You’re soaked.”

“The rain came in at the last minute. And there I was without my car.”

“You didn’t drive?”

“My car wouldn’t start. I walked.”

“You walked!”

“From Portoferraio? All the way from Portoferraio? My God, Francis!”

“I don’t mind a good walk. I never mind a good walk. It’s something I do quite well, you know. I walk. I can walk five miles at a stretch. And I know the roads. The moon was out only ten minutes ago. Then the downpour, all of a sudden. The rain this season. I’ve never seen anything like it. We’ve had wet springs, dry springs, but never such weather as this.” He paused, looked first at Claire and then at Murray with an expression that both of them read as directly accusing.

“I was at Uccello’s,” he continued, “and the little woman there — you remember, the one called Ninanina. Ninanina, who is said to have the power of foresight. Did I ever tell you that? Ninanina pulled me aside, and she said to me, she said, Tell your American friend to take his family and get off the island. Tell him he must go home. She said it in Italian, of course, but I am giving you an accurate translation. Tell your American friend to pack up and go home. In my neighborhood, you, Murray Murdoch, are my American friend. And according to Ninanina, you and your whole family should leave the island as soon as possible. There is trouble brewing.”

He was panting from the effort of speaking. Murray and Claire stood in silence. Ninanina — Murray tried to recollect — was the kind old woman who once had given him a second bottle of wine for free. Claire remembered her as the woman who offered her cheek to Francis when they’d walked into her enoteca.

“What trouble?” Murray finally asked.

“There are rumors. That’s all I know. That’s all I could gather.” “I don’t understand,” said Claire.

“Neither do I,” said Murray.

“There are rumors,” said Francis slowly, “concerning the disappearance of Adriana Nardi. And the involvement of the investor from the United States.”

“That’s ridiculous!” Murray spat with a fury that would seem courageous to Claire when she later recalled it.

“I am only the messenger.” Francis’s voice had become measured, even velvety. And his obvious consciousness of his effect was taken in by Claire, who in an instant decided once and for all that she abhorred the man. But at the same time she knew that the news he was bringing made them dependent on him.

Murray was only enraged. He circled the front hall sputtering, mumbling, protesting, pulling at his ears, kicking the wall. He’d replaced Francis in the role of the madman. Inadvertently, Claire met Francis’s eyes and shared with him the same sympathetic glance she’d shared with Murray only minutes earlier.

There was no more talk of tea, and when Francis reached for the door, neither Claire nor Murray tried to stop him. Claire was already heading for the closet where we kept the luggage we’d purchased in Genoa. Murray was still walking in circles.

They argued in quiet, fierce voices. Claire wanted to leave the island the next day. Murray insisted on staying. He said he would not be driven away by rumors. He would not be the scapegoat of people who had no better way to entertain themselves than to turn on a foreigner. The islanders were provincial, uneducated, bigoted. They doubled their prices as soon as Murray walked into the room. Their children were bullies. Their police were abusive. And don’t forget — they shared a recent bloody history of collaboration with their mainland brothers. How easily guilt transforms into hate. They needed a stranger to hold responsible for their own negligence, and they found him in Murray, who, even if not entirely blameless, had done no one any real harm.

Claire and Murray didn’t go to sleep until long after midnight. Their argument deteriorated into a cold standoff. Claire said she’d take the children and go to Paris and from there book a flight home. Murray said he’d leave when he was good and ready to leave.

But by the next morning Claire’s resolve to return to America had weakened. The sky was clear, the morning clouds tinged with pink, the sea shimmering, the breeze fresh, the oranges sweet and bloody. The barking of dogs set the roosters crowing — or vice versa. The bells of San Lorenzo were ringing. Lidia was knocking on their bedroom door.

FROM ANCIENT ROMAN TIMES
up through the 1920s, Italy derived most of its iron from the mines on Elba. But when we lived there, most of the mines had closed or were in the process of closing. Older men were unemployed, the deep wrinkles on their faces permanently stained a rusty yellow, and the young men who had survived the war and returned to the island were commuting to mainland jobs. New hotels were relatively small-scale. While there were tourists on the island, they usually arrived in yachts and didn’t wander far outside the harbors of Portoferraio and Porto Azzurro.

To our young eyes, however, Elba was an abundant haven. We had no more awareness of the poverty on the island than we did of the battles being fought around the globe. What we saw were plates heaped with polpo lesso and scampi, grapevines sprouting new leaves, barley stalks trembling as they grew taller before our eyes. Harry remembers in particular the cap of cream on every cup of fresh milk. Patrick likes to describe the bowl in the kitchen that was stacked high with plums in summer, persimmons in winter. Every meal lasted for hours, and one meal followed so quickly after the last that we forgot what it was like to feel hungry. My older brothers didn’t have to go to school or help with chores. I didn’t have to take a bath every day. None of us had to be in bed by any particular time.

We didn’t care that Claire and Murray were inattentive to us. Back in America we would have considered ourselves neglected and wondered what could be more important to our parents than seeing to the care and well-being of their children. But on Elba it seemed right and good that we were given the freedom to wander on our own.

In the morning Francesca would make us promise to stay within calling distance of the house, and then she’d go back to her room and fall asleep. She never knew how far we’d climb up the east side of Monte Giove. We played our game of Giant Ants, perfecting the rules as we went along. We decided that our ants would collect rubies and sapphires and tourmalines, along with gold; only green twigs could be used as antennae; when we were within sight of the ants’ horde of gold we could approach it only by hopping on our right foot; if we were touched by an ant’s antennae we had to spin three times and then fall to the ground; if we were dead, we had to stay dead until that round of the game was over. We called ourselves Jako One, Two, Three, and Four.

Qui, Jako Three!

Dove?

Guarda!

Io guarda la treasure.

Stai ferma!

You— io getta you!

We took over from our father the belief that we could find our fortune in the solid, integral stuff of the earth. Patrick showed us how to look for glassy beveled cubes with faces that sparkled when you tipped them to catch the sunlight, alloys speckled with yellow, black metallic rocks streaked with silver. He identified the pieces of pyrite, quartz, fluorite, and argentite in our collection and convinced us to discard chunks of marl and limestone. We didn’t find another geode, but Harry found a smooth, hard puddle of tuff. We chipped away at it until we each had a handful of shards. We found frothy, shiny gray rocks that were probably obsidian. And once we found a trace of what must have been indicolite, the valuable blue form of tourmaline, tucked between points of white feldspar on a piece of granite too big to lift.

We used a flat-topped boulder for cleaving crystals and pounding smaller rocks into chalk. We argued about what to do with the chalk. Harry wanted to collect it in jars. Nat wanted to use it to paint our faces. Patrick wanted to scatter the chalk in the wind.

Jako Four,you’re supposed to stai dead.

Shut up.

You shut up, you’re dead. Jako Four is dead and la treasure’s mio mio mio!

Mio!

Mio!

You lose, you bigga fat loser!

We came to know the terrain from different perspectives. The vista from the stone terraces midway up Monte Giove was always strange to us, Elba always in disguise. Which way was Portoferraio? Was that Corsica or the mainland we were seeing? We weren’t sure. Patrick and Harry disagreed about the island to the north. Harry said it was Capraia, Patrick said it was Gorgona.

But when we were scrambling up and down and across the slopes, the land seemed as familiar as the four of us were to each other. We knew everything that could be known about the earth. We knew the weight of a rock before we picked it up. We knew its hardness and cleavage. We knew what was valuable.

Lascia me!

Guarda, it’s, it’s…

Jako Three.

What did you find?

Io found la treasure. Follow me.

Who among us first noticed? And what did he notice, exactly? None of us can explain. I wonder if together we noted some change in the air, perhaps an odd shape in the clouds or a glory’s rainbow diffraction when the sun shone through the misting rain. How quiet it was. So quiet we could hear a snake wriggling in the grass.
Jako One, come in. Are you scaredia? If you’re scaredia, close your eyes and sing. What are the songs you know by heart? Ascolta
—four boys singing without making a sound.
Can you hear me, Harry? Io can hear you. Nat? Sì? Oliver? Sì? Patrick? Donta mova there, donta speak. Now talk con me. You’re talking ma not talking. Think con me. We hear thinking!

None of us is sure what happened on Elba, but my brothers and I all remember the sensation of finding ourselves suddenly capable of miraculous power — the power to speak to each other without talking aloud. Nat’s explanation was that the mountain itself was magic. Patrick reminded us of the crystal he kept under his bed. Harry wanted to know whether what we were experiencing was good magic or bad magic.

Whatever had happened, Patrick insisted that we must keep it secret. The rest of us agreed. The need for secrecy was so clear that we didn’t even bother to seal our pact with blood and spit.

We cut our game short and went home early that day. As soon as we reached the place where the path intersected with the dirt road heading toward Poggio, we turned back into four ordinary young boys babbling together so loudly that we scared a whole flock of starlings from a telephone wire. They rose in a smoky mass. We shouted and threw rocks that fell far short of their mark. We picked up more rocks and threw them into the air.

The disappointment we felt at not bringing down a single bird grew out of proportion. None of us had ever hit a bird with a rock, but now we thought ourselves ridiculous for having failed. Even stronger than our disappointment was our sense of shame. Four boys against a flock of starlings, and we didn’t have a single trophy to show for it. Forgetting what had happened to us on Monte Giove, we talked of nothing but the birds — how close they were to us, how poorly we’d aimed — as we trudged up the stairs into our house. We didn’t speak to Lidia when we passed her in the kitchen, and we didn’t bother to wake Francesca to tell her we were home.