Tourmaline (2 page)
Two hundred years ago, the young British painter John Robert Cozens, son of the painter Alexander Cozens, looked out through a window of the chiesetta di Madonna di Monserrato and tried to mix colors on his pallet to match the color of the hills above Porto Azzurro. He decided the best he could hope for was honorable failure.
Follow the road to the right of the Fortezza pisana for about a hundred meters. Turn left onto the mule track that continues into the woods. Continue past the bronze statue of the angel to the paved road that is flanked by the fourteen Stations of the Cross. Follow this through the woods and up the rocky slope to the shrine of Madonna del Monte.
According to the legend, shepherds discovered an image of the Virgin painted on a chunk of granite. They carried the rock to their valley, but the next morning when they woke the rock had been returned to the exact place where they’d first found it on Monte Giove. The shepherds took this as a sign that they should erect a church at the site.
It was here that Napoleon stayed for two weeks during his exile in 1814.
The sun. The wind. Fragrance of rosemary and rock roses, lavender and beer. Sound of pebbles sloshing in the lazy waves. American soldiers breaking from a huddle. Run, jump, twist, crash, fall, get up again, and hike. Yessirree, we could get used to this place! Touchdown!
After the short reign of Napoleon, the island reverted to the Grand Duchy of Tuscany and, in 1860, to the Kingdom of Italy. During the Risorgimento, the mines of Elba were expanded to meet Italy’s growing demand for iron. During the First World War, more than two hundred young Elban men were killed fighting on the mainland. After the war, labor unrest escalated on the island. In 1920, miners occupied the administrative offices of the Alti Forni of Portoferraio, demanding an improvement in working conditions and a reduction in prices for food and dry goods. An agreement was reached after a two-month standoff.
The Cinema Moderno opened in Portoferraio in 1924. The Festa dell’Uva was initiated. Mussolini visited the island on several occasions between 1928 and 1936.
The Second World War arrived on Elba in September 1943. On the sixteenth of the month, beginning at 11:30 A.M., seven German bombers buzzed across the sky above Portoferraio. By 4:00 in the afternoon, more than one hundred civilians were dead, and the people of Elba had surrendered.
Nine months later, the Allies attacked in an invasion called “Operation Brassard,” planned by General De Lattre de Tassigny. A group of “commandos d’Afrique” led the way early in the morning on the seventeenth of June, followed by French marines. During the night between the seventeenth and eighteenth, Portoferraio was bombed sixteen times. The fighting was swift and severe. The Ninth French Colonial Division lost hundreds of men but managed to take twelve hundred German soldiers prisoner.
What had begun as an apparently minor Allied operation reawakened and reinforced German fears of Allied landings behind the Germans’ western flank. The Germans retreated into the Appenines. The Allies instated a military government on Elba. And in July an obscure American Division arrived to oversee the distribution of supplies.
The Americans, with their chocolate and cigarettes, Spam and rice. The American boys turning war into a holiday. The Americans wanting to do nothing but strip down to their shorts and play football on the beach at Le Ghiaie. Bare toes curling over hot gravel. Shining faces and salt-bleached hair.
The men are arguing about the war. I know because I started the argument. I’d fallen into conversation with one of the men, stopping to ask for directions and then going on to ask more probing questions in hopes of learning something about the history of the island. I asked him if he remembered the American soldiers who came to Elba in the summer of 1944. He said he’d been serving in the Italian navy in Puglia at the time, but he’d heard about the Americans and their games. We were joined by his friend. The two men got to talking about the occupation of the Germans and the invasion of the Allies. The men disagreed about the value of the Liberation. Other men joined us. They talked rapidly, but I could make out the gist of the argument. Some believed the Allies had saved the island; others thought they’d come close to destroying it. One man ripped up a receipt he’d carried from the grocer and threw the pieces on the ground.
Eccola.
That is what the man would have his friends do with the past.
They seemed to forget me, and I withdrew without a word. I walked from the archway into the piazza and saw the old woman sitting on the bench. I was about to go up and ask her for directions when I noticed that her eyes were closed and her lips moving in silent prayer.
I spent the morning wandering the island. Walking back through the piazza later, I saw the same old woman on the bench and the men still arguing in the archway. I saw an English couple coming out of a bar, balancing cones topped with towers of gelati. I read the graffiti on the wall above the stairs leading to Liceo Raffaello: “Michela è un sogno.”
I returned to my hotel room and opened the window. The hotel is adjacent to the vineyard of La Chiusa, and I can smell the ripe grapes. I hear doves cooing in the palms, a rooster crowing up in the hills, motorcycles buzzing and trucks rattling along the main road.
On the table in front of me I’ve set out the faded deed I found among my father’s papers last month when I was helping my mother get ready for a yard sale. The deed names my father as owner of five hectares of Elban land. I flatten the worn creases with my thumb. Though there are many signatures and a stamp on the last page, the claim is worthless, local officials have already informed me. Why, then, don’t I just turn around and go home?
The woman I lived with for seven years called two weeks ago to tell me that she is getting married. When I invited her to come to Elba with me, she laughed, her tone one of easy fellowship, as if she’d just chucked me on the shoulder.
This is my first visit back to the island since the mid-1950s, and though I’ve only been here for three days I’m already looking forward to returning again soon. I consider myself lucky to have the liberty and resources to travel. My brothers agree among themselves that I’m indulging in nostalgia and remind me that there are better ways to spend my money.
Our father had been to Elba himself during the war and stayed long enough to play football on the beach and swim in the tepid sea. Based on his firsthand experience, he could assure us that the sun always shines on Elba, wildflowers bloom year round, Elbans will give away the jackets off their backs, and pirates know it is a good place to bury stolen treasure.
Where on earth is Elba? we wanted to know. It is an island not far from the coast of Italy, our father said. Napoleon once reigned in exile there.
Where is Italy? we asked while we watched our parents pack for the journey. Who is Napoleon? What is exile?
Forty-three years later, I am like a blind man feeling my way through a house that has appeared repeatedly in my dreams. I recognize everything, though nothing is familiar. Much has changed, of course. When I came here with my family, Elba was still dependent on its mining industry. Now it is an active tourist resort. It is just after the high season, and the island seems tranquil to me, but it is overrun in summer, people say. I have been warned to stay away from the main centers of Portoferraio and Porto Azzurro during July and August. Hotel reservations should be made far in advance, expect traffic jams, don’t bother with the crowded beaches at Bagnaia and Procchio and Marciana Marina, forget about getting into the Villa Demidoff or hiking to the top of Volterraio or riding the Monte Capanne cable car. Better yet, avoid Elba altogether and go to Corsica.
The soft breeze of the scirocco. The rustle of palm fronds. Piping of a nightingale. Two girls riding bareback on the same brown horse. The granite cap of Monte Capanne shining like snow in the distance. Dust rising behind a jeep as it climbs a cart road to Buraccio and disappears beneath the holm oaks. Mouflons grazing on the grassy slope of Monte Calamita.
The war might be continuing elsewhere, but it is over on Elba, and the American soldiers are leaving. Mementos are traded. The Americans give the Elbans matchbooks and dollar bills. The Elbans give the Americans quartz crystals and polished hematite. My father comes away with a small chunk of a dusky mineral tinged at the center with blue, identified for him later as tourmaline, which he will carry back to New York and sell to a jeweler for twenty-five dollars, telling himself as he walks away from the shop that he’d just made the best deal of his life.
A
BOUQUET OF RED BALLOONS BROKE FREE FROM A VENDOR
on the pier and fell upward through the haze as the ship’s whistle blew its deafening farewell. Our cat yowled in her cage. From the deck below someone threw a cap into the water. We noticed one old woman dressed in black linen blotting tears with the remnants of a tissue, but the other passengers cheered and waved at the dispersing crowd.
It was all so splendid that we never stopped to miss what we were leaving behind. We were heading out to sea on a ship so huge it dwarfed the tankers in the harbor. We watched the city’s skyline shrink to nothing. Our father looked more pleased with himself than ever, and we shared with him the sense that we were at the start of an adventure far grander than anything we would have allowed ourselves to imagine.
While our parents lingered at the rail, we explored the maze of upper decks and corridors. Everywhere we went, there were doors we weren’t supposed to open and pranks easy to devise. We snuck into the kennel and fed a puffed, nervous poodle a handful of the saltines our mother had given us to forestall seasickness. Through straws we’d found in a deserted saloon we blew paper peas at passengers dozing in deck chairs. We let Meena the cat roam free in our cabin, though after Nat pushed her from the upper berth, she took refuge in the shower, where she deposited four neat little turds for the steward to discover when he came to deliver fresh towels.
We were traveling first class, an extravagance paid for with borrowed money. To our father, luxury was a deserved reward. To our mother, luxury was an awkwardness, and the wealth of her fellow passengers seemed an amusing secret which she could only fail to guess, while surely they would see right through her to the truth of our prohibitive debts. We were living a sham life onboard the
Casparia,
and Claire told herself that she’d participate in the ruse only because it was temporary.
From the bow we watched the hull split through colliding waves. From the leeward deck we saw sun pillars shining on the horizon. From the promenade at the stern we watched seagulls soar, dip toward the wake, and then wheel around in what we presumed was defeat and head back toward land. We felt sorry for them. We wished we could have collared the birds and pulled them along on leashes.
I picture my parents that first evening sitting in oversized chairs in the ship’s grand dining room, Murray veiled by the smoke of his cigarette, Claire holding herself stiffly, elbows pressed against her sides, fingers clutching the edge of the table as the passengers traded introductions. Beside her was a man named Walter Fugle, a retired banker with a round belly curving neatly inside his three-piece suit, a round, bald head, and a round face tipped with a shaggy white goatee. Teresa Fugle, a seventy-year-old woman with hair tinted an odd, rusty red, sat opposite, with Murray on her right. At the end was the fifth passenger at the table, a young engineer from Ohio, whose name Claire would go on to forget.
My brothers and I had been fed earlier. Thanks to the indulgent Italian stewards, we were free to roam around the dining room in search of fun. Or my brothers roamed while I toddled after, losing them, finding them, and losing them again.
Claire says she doesn’t remember how the conversation began. Probably with idle chat about the menu followed by an exchange of information concerning work and home. At some point Murray wanted to talk about the glorious island of Elba. “Able was I…” Walter Fugle joked. Murray shot back defensively, “Go ahead and laugh, but I tell you, life there will cost you next to nothing.” Mrs. Fugle asked if Elba was close to Capri. The Fugles had been to Capri. They’d thought it lovely, though inconvenient. But Mrs. Fugle was wondering about the weather for tomorrow. Her husband wanted to talk about storms. Claire recalls that it was the engineer who turned the conversation to the subject of great ships lost at sea.
Walter Fugle said he’d had a gardener long ago who had been a crew member on the
Carpathia,
the ship that had made the forced draft run to rescue the
Titanic
’s survivors. The engineer explained that if the
Titanic
had hit the iceberg head-on, the bulkheads would have saved it. Mr. Fugle and the engineer moved into a more heated discussion about the disaster, while the others at the table listened. The engineer mentioned the
Normandie,
which had caught fire and capsized in the Hudson in 1942. Mr. Fugle spoke of seeing the burned-out hull of the
Morro Castle
off the Jersey coast. Murray, to prove his own knowledge, reminded them that the
Lusitania
was sunk with just one torpedo.
The engineer asked if anyone at the table had ever heard of the
Eastland.
Walter Fugle had a vague memory of it. No one else knew anything about the ship. The engineer offered to tell the story — a story my mother can still recount almost word for word.
The
Eastland
was an excursion steamer taking two thousand passengers from Chicago across Lake Michigan — this was in the summer of 1915 — and she was being loaded at her pier on the Chicago River between LaSalle and Clark Streets when a deckhand noticed she had a list. The passengers were told to move to the other side. The ship resumed an almost even keel, and more passengers were allowed to board. Then a woman screamed and slipped on the tilting deck. That’s when people on land noticed that the ship was listing again, and they watched in horror as the great ship slowly rolled and capsized. Hundreds of people, mostly women and children, lost their lives, the engineer said, adding that a salvage diver went insane after investigating the submerged parts of the steamer.