Ontreto

Peter Crawley

Description

Arriving on the unspoiled island of Lipari, off the coast of Sicily, Ric Ross carries with him a letter of introduction to Valeria Vaccariello, an aging star of Italian cinema who lives alone in the House of Strangers; a woman known locally as la strega - the witch. Ric is also befriended by Il Velaccino, a sailmaker who seems to know everyone and everything that goes on in the island. But when a politician is shot dead, Ric's search for his family's history soon grows into a quest to prove his innocence... Ontreto is a contemporary crime thriller, told through the eyes of a young man who comes to the island of Lipari in search of his forebears. It is the standalone follow-up to Peter Crawley's first novel, Mazzeri.

Sujets

• Thriller

Informations

• Publié par: Troubador Publishing Ltd
• Date de parution: 12 septembre 2017
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781784629298
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Ontreto
Peter Crawley

Copyright © 2015 Peter Crawley
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study,
or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents
Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in
any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the
publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with
the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries
concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.
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ISBN 978 1784629 298
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For Daisy

Antoine de Saint-Exupery,
the aviator poet,
proclaimed there is but one freedom
and that is the freedom of the mind.
Yet there are many who enjoy no such freedom.
To set them free requires not only great understanding,
but also courage, patience and compassion.
Of these, the most elemental is compassion.
Contents

Cover


Also by the author


Foreword & Acknowledgements


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Epilogue


About the Author


Mazzeri


Boarding House Reach
Also by the author

Mazzeri
Boarding House Reach
Foreword & Acknowledgements
It doesn’t matter which Aeolus one believes in, that he was the father of the Aeolian Islands is not in doubt. Was he, though, the son of Poseidon, the God of the Sea, or was he the son of Hippotes, a mere mortal but a king nevertheless? What we believe from the writings of Homer in his epic The Odyssey , is that Aeolus presented Odysseus with a bag of winds to speed him on his journey back to Ithaca. Unfortunately, mistaking the bag to contain gold and silver, Odysseus’ crew opened it and in so doing released the winds. Because of their greed, Odysseus’ ship was blown further from its destination.
However, all I am certain of is that one doesn’t find the Aeolian Islands; one is drawn to them.
Some years ago my friend Jo Salamone, who hails from the pretty village of Suteria in the province of Caltanissetta, Sicily, suggested I visit Lipari in the Aeolian Islands. Jo proposed I stay in the hotel of a friend of his. His friend would arrange the taxi from Catania to Milazzo; he would arrange the connection to the islands on the hydrofoil; he would meet us at the harbour. In short, Jo’s friend would arrange everything. He did. Adriano was true to his word.
This small, volcanic archipelago of seven main islands lies just to the north of the Sicilian coast near the Straits of Messina. They are known to some as the Seven Sisters and together they comprise one of the best kept secrets of the Mediterranean. The islands are a string of radiant pearls, a necklace of iridescent gems, a handful of jewels so elegant and beguiling that one is inclined, on hearing of their beauty, to disbelieve they exist.
Adriano Longo is the proprietor of the very beautiful Hotel Rocce Azzurre, which overlooks the bay at Portinente. Adriano and his daughter, Ariana, introduced me to the many delights of the islands: the white pumice beaches of the Spiaggia della Papesca, the clear waters of the Mare Siculum, the wine of Salina, the imposing citadel of Lipari and, perhaps best of all, the people. It was only later and by chance that I found out the island possesses a darker history.
Wandering through the città bassa , the low city which is comprised of a warren of narrow vicolos running below the citadel, I heard someone whisper that the island had, during the Second World War, been home to a number of political deportees, most of them men of conscience and principle who spoke out against the tyrant Benito Mussolini. Further to this rumour, I heard that three of these political deportees had, with the help of certain islanders, planned and executed a daring escape.
Late one night, as I sat with Adriano fishing for totani in his little barca , I began to learn more about the island and its remarkable people, and charged myself with the task of researching the island in greater depth.
A few months later, sitting at my desk, I stumbled across a newspaper article from 1929, which reported George Palmer Putnam, the titular head of the New York and London publishing house, as receiving a number of death threats if he published Francesco Fausto Nitti’s Escape . The forthcoming publication of such a personal narrative by a political prisoner who had escaped from Lipari, the Fascist’s Devil’s Island, so angered Il Duce that he set his spies and secret agents, The Black Hand, to see that Escape never made it to the shelves. Fortunately for us, Putnam was no shrinking violet. He ignored the danger, was damned by Mussolini and went ahead and published.
Some weeks later I procured a fourth impression copy of Nitti’s book from South Africa; there are few left in existence. It is, by any stretch of the imagination, a crucial and fundamental work exposing the brutality and ugliness which lies at the heart of Fascism. But further than this, Nitti’s book is also proof that truth is often stranger than fiction.
There are, though, more than a few works I have drawn inspiration from. The Archduke Ludwig Salvator’s volumes on Die Liparischen Inseln , provided by the Bavarian State Library, contain much useful information, though I am not aware of any translations from the original German language version. Philip Ward’s The Aeolian Islands , Oleander Press, has proved invaluable and I would not advise the traveller to visit the islands without first having read this beautifully written and very informative book. Alberto Denti di Pirajno’s A Cure for Serpents , Eland, sheds much light on the attitudes of Italians working in the North African colonies of Balbo’s Grande Italia. John Julius Norwich’s illuminating tome The Middle Sea , Vintage, explains the history and politics of the region from the Roman Empire right up to the Risorgimento. M. Emma Alaimo’s Proverbi Siciliani , Giunti, and Mariolina Venezia’s novel Been Here a Thousand Years , Picador, have been most useful companions when attempting to understand how first Sicilians and second Italians view their part in the great scheme of things. Finally, if you think fairy tales began with the Brothers Grimm, read Giambattista Basile’s Lo Cunto de li Cunti – The Tale of Tales – first published in the seventeenth century, and think again.
As always, the most fruitful research is conducted out engaging with local people. Many have given freely of their time in this respect, none more so than Ariana Longo and her father Adriano. Without their time and enthusiasm, Ontreto would never have made it past the first few pages. As a caveat, though, I must add that I have played fast and loose with a couple of details, if only to complement the narrative. Homer’s coffin, for instance, sits just below the surface a few metres off the pontoon of the Hotel Rocce Azzurre and not near the Punta San Giuseppe, and La Casa dei Sconosciuti is a work of my own imagination, as is the character Massimo Farinelli.
There are, of course, other fictionalised happenings and characters. Yet, Francesco Nitti, Edda Ciano, Leonardo Bongiorno and Benito Mussolini all take their seat in our history class; they have left their mark upon our world. However, apart from historical reference, none of the characters who take an active part in this book bear any relation to any persons either living or gone before.
I sent a final draft manuscript of Ontreto to Ariana Longo in Lipari, asking if she would mind checking my use of local dialect. She responded immediately and very enthusiastically, and within a couple of days I was returned the manuscript with her suggested alterations for which, naturally, I am very grateful. What I had not expected, though, was her mention of a character from my novel who, it turns out, actually exists. This character, a man for whom I had created a profession, a nickname and a home village, is not only flesh and blood, but also flesh and blood in exactly the manner in which I had conjured him. I was, to say the least, surprised. After much thought and taking into account the risks of litigation, I decided it would be better to rewrite the character. Yet, having grown rather attached to him, I was sorry to let him go. Spooky, uncanny, weird, creepy, chilling, or perhaps even auspicious: call it what you will, but it proves yet again that truth is stranger than fiction.
To Ariana, I say a considerable “thank you”. If I have made mistakes, they are mine and not hers.
As ever, I am also indebted to Sally Duhig, Ba Collinson, Peter Matthews and Christine Ellerbeck for their time, their assistance and insightful critique. Anlouise Snedden introduced me to Opera and in doing so she has brought light to my previously blinkered view of this wonderful art form. For her generosity and enthusiasm, I am grateful. My thanks go, of course, to all the team at Troubador Publishing.
As with the launch of Mazzeri ,