Lost Among the Stars Read online

  She straightened up without warning, apparently sated with the view.

  “You live in Matera, you say?”

  “Yes.”

  “Show me your home.”

  The Via Muro began its descent at the far corner of the piazza, next to the posh Hotel Gattini housed in its transformed royal palazzo. For some meters the way remained lighted and active. Then it transformed into the antique zigzagging nighted shaft burrowing through the heart of the city that had enchanted Rupert from the first, an adit to some gnomish realm.

  “Watch your step,” he said.

  “I know every stone of this way,” Daeira replied.

  Almost to the level of the Via Bruno Buozzi they came to the smaller of the two entrances to Rupert’s dwelling. He unlocked the door, flicked a light switch, and with justifiable pride at what his vision and costly renovations—with the undeniable and essential help of the Monaciello Brothers—had wrought, swung an arm to indicate the expansive front room.

  But Daeira had no eyes for architecture or interior design. She was busy greeting Taormina.

  The cat exhibited behavior Rupert had never seen before. It flattened itself bonelessly to the floor, with eyes rolled back to show only whites, and tongue lolling out.

  Daeira picked up the comatose cat. “Poor, poor dear. Yes, life offers too much excitement sometimes.” She set the cat down gently on a couch, spun back to Rupert and threw herself into his embrace.

  He kissed her deeply, and found the taste of her mouth to resemble almost the tart brine of oysters, though she had eaten no such dish, and in fact consumed many countervailing flavors. She responded to his passion with almost more force than he had shown.

  For the first time, Rupert cursed mentally that his beautiful bedroom was up one whole flight of stairs. He wanted to have her instantly, on the couch, the carpet, the kitchen table. But he mastered himself just sufficiently to get her up the steps.

  In the windowless space hewn from the heart of the hillside, Daeira’s cries of lovemaking echoed like those of a seabird trapped in some marine grotto.

  Rupert awoke after never even knowing he had fallen asleep. By the soft glow of a nightlight, he saw that Daeira rested on one elbow and was studying him, her splendid breasts pendulous.

  “You have been touched,” she said.

  “I agree.”

  “No, this is no joke. Larger forces have reached out and drawn a finger across the path of your life, diverting its flow.”

  “Like how?”

  “It relates to the death of your wife.”

  * * *

  That first night in Matera, Rupert found lodgings almost randomly in the Locanda di San Martino on the Via Fiorentini. He slept exhaustedly in a rupestrian room rendered ultra-comfortable with the sufficient accoutrements of any fine hotel. In the morning, he realized that his door opened independently onto a terrace, something he had been too tired to be fully cognizant of last night, and that the terrace connected with a public staircase, offering all the privacy for coming and going that he could want. A fine breakfast, part of his rental, added to his estimation of the place. When he discovered that beneath the hotel, three giant cisterns had been converted to a pool and spa for guests, he knew he would look no further for a place to stay. He negotiated a lower monthly rent, with the promise of several months’ patronage.

  “I want to buy a house here in the Sassi and fix it up.”

  The affable woman behind the desk looked skeptical. “This will not be as easy as you imagine.”

  Her words proved true. The unrestored cave houses of the World Heritage site remained under government control. The bureaucracy imposed many challenges to ownership. Rupert had to prove that the Sassi would be his primary residence. He had to submit evidence of fiscal solvency, and architectural plans. Then there was the matter of continuing his professional sculpting work legally as a non-EU citizen. Progress was slow or nonexistent, and Rupert, while not precisely hurting for funds, began to feel miserly toward any unnecessary expenditures.

  At that juncture, a sympathetic Antonio at Le Botteghe introduced him to Michele Capobianco.

  “He is an expert fixer, a smoother of ways,” said the restaurant owner. “Put yourself in his hands.”

  Reluctant at first, Rupert soon did so, after an initial interview over cappuccino and dolce during which he found the sober and dapper Michele to be totally ethical and simpatico, yet utterly pragmatic.

  Placing a brotherly hand on Rupert’s shoulder, Michele said, “You have run across one of the rare bad apples in the government. A cautious, self-centered type who will do nothing that could possibly endanger his position. So we simply must convince this stubborn fellow that your mission is identical with his own best interests.”

  “I leave it to you.”

  Things began to happen fast, once Michele took charge. Permits and variances and gaily-stamped documents of all sorts began to flow more copiously than the Gravina in spring.

  Soon, Rupert found himself holding the title to three contiguous dwellings—two on the same level, one above—situated on the lower end of the Via Muro.

  His plan was to devote half the amalgamated space to a workshop, reachable behind a big double barn-sized door, and half to his living quarters, accessible by a separate smaller entrance.

  Now he just needed a contractor.

  Michele considered the matter seriously, then said, “I will contact the Monaciello Brothers. They are, ah, somewhat eccentric. But they do good work, and fast. Their speed will save you money.”

  The next morning Rupert met the fratelli at the site. The brothers were three—or four, or six, or more?—identical small men, hard to pin down numerically due to their invariant small stocky muscular bodies concealed under vintage brown work smocks, and their heavily bearded faces and their constant activity. One at least spoke English tolerably well. Rupert presented him with the blueprints. This unchristened Monaciello studied the plans for all of ten seconds, then crumpled them into a compact ball, which he hurled impossibly high over the rooftops intervening between the Via Muro and the ravine.

  “We build you something beautiful. You see.”

  Rupert accepted the decision, for he had little choice.

  At first he spent every day at the work site, a useless overseer once he had accepted the ultra-competence of the fraternal work force. But two incidents, one merely weird, one frightening, led him to abandon even that kibitzing.

  The first occurred on the day the Monaciello Brothers uncovered the large ancient cistern that had been part of the cave’s domestic infrastructure. They grew voluble and excited. En masse, they dropped down into the subterranean apparatus. Curious and forgotten, Rupert followed, with greater difficulty.

  The back wall of the cistern had been breached by time or intention, and gave way into a tunnel. Rupert bent low and entered. He duckwalked for what seemed ages, before he emerged into a larger network of underground passages where he could stand upright. Spotting a shaft of sunlight, he managed to poke his head through a grass-edged opening in the tunnel roof and look around.

  Hands yanked him back belowground. The Monaciello Brothers were noisily agitated.

  “You don’t belong here, Signor Rupert. Come, we take you back to Matera.”

  “But, but, I just saw—”

  “Only a dream, Signor Rupert. Maybe you hit your head on a rock.” The Monaciello Brother hefted a loose stone from the floor significantly, as if ready to make his diagnosis come true.

  All the way back to Matera, a journey that seemed faster with the Monaciellos half-carrying him, Rupert contemplated how he could possibly have seen what to him was a quite familiar place, visited only a few weeks ago: the ruins of Hadrian’s Villa, nearly five hundred kilometers distant from Matera.

  The second incident proved less whimsical.

  Standing in the Via Muro one day, contemplating the progress of the construction, Rupert heard a shout of “Attento!” He received the sidewise impact
of a hurtling human body that propelled him laterally. A large and deadly boulder smashed to the pavement where he had been standing.

  The Monaciello Brothers clustered excitedly around the rock. After dusting himself off, Rupert went to look, assuming a natural occurrence, some ancient fragment of the Sassi unhinged by the persistent elements.

  But the Brothers were fingering a fresh matrix of long grooves cut into the formerly attached hidden and unweathered face of the stone.

  The English-speaking fratello said to Rupert, “Marks from the needle of cucibocca. You keep busy some other place, okay.”

  So Rupert obeyed.

  Matera did not lack attractions.

  One primary draw wore the name Flavia De Luca.

  Flavia hosted his breakfast each morning, one of the graceful cappuccino-bearing demiurges employed by the hotel. Rupert thought she resembled Claudia Cardinale, and told her so. She accepted this tourist’s flattery stoically. But after a few weeks, they had progressed to first names and flirting. Eventually she consented to see him after work for a movie, with strict stipulations against conducting any kind of public affair during her hotel hours. (This sensible injunction apparently did not rule out the giggling he encountered from Flavia’s co-workers once their relationship had developed beyond a certain degree.) Flavia lived in the new part of town, in a tidy high-rise flat. She possessed a jolly, squabbling family, seemingly infinite aunts, uncles, cousins, siblings endlessly reduplicated, who foregathered at the slightest whim for magnificent feasts. Adopted, Rupert had already gained several pounds.

  When he wasn’t seeing Flavia, he made a circuit of Matera’s several museums.

  In one devoted to archaeological treasures, the Domenico Ridola National Museum, Rupert experienced his second freakish incident in the city.

  Dr. Ridola had been a physician of the nineteenth century who had developed a passion for archaeology. His amateur sleuthing, aided by a taskforce of well-intentioned but ofttimes clumsy peasants, had resulted in numerous incredible finds, albeit sometimes inexpertly catalogued or stratigraphically misascribed.

  Wandering through the halls of the former convent, where several rooms served as a shrine to every aspect of the small bearded physician’s life, Rupert was awed at the wealth of the region’s deep past.

  In one display case of Neolithic items, a seemingly misplaced artifact caught his eye. A circular pendant of metal, its inscribed lines had been worn down by the millennia. What did they signify? Rupert bent and squinted into the shadowy display, where a flickering light bulb failed to help.

  Jolting back up, Rupert clutched at the medallion beneath his shirt, finding it still present.

  The item in the case was its time-battered twin.

  Rupert raced back to the front desk. He had lost most of his Italian in his consternation, and had an awful time explaining what he meant to the official, a rather sour-faced female functionary. Eventually, a more helpful and eager young woman curator was dispatched with Rupert back to the exhibit.

  The Neolithic anomaly no longer resided on its former shelf. The curator could not plainly recall it.

  Over subsequent time, Rupert convinced himself he had not seen what he had seen.

  People-watching was one of the sports Rupert indulged in. Like a coral reef with an overstocked ecosystem, the Piazza Vittorio Veneto provided endless amusement.

  Matera seemed to have few beggars or indigents. A few long-suffering African immigrants eked out a borderline existence. But only one street character proved a perennial, encountered everywhere.

  Manchester fitted the role of vintage hippie as if ordered from central casting. Deriving his only public name from his ostensible origins in that English city, Manchester had been resident in Matera for an indefinite time. Some self-appointed civic expert claimed he had been present as a pioneer squatter in the seventies, when the Sassi stood otherwise vacant. Of course, many hippies of that era had flooded the Mediterranean, from San Sebastian in Spain, down the Costa del Sol, into Ibiza, Nice, and the rest of the southern coast, and onward to Greece. For one to have washed up on the Ionian shores was not so strange. But whatever Manchester’s origins or era, he looked no older than a grizzled forty-five years. With long filthy hair and beard, clad in jeans and US military surplus jacket, Manchester sported a tall walking stick and a small faithful and long-suffering piebald dog. Rupert always gave him a few coins, feeling sorry for the good-natured homeless beggar, especially when he contemplated a long gash in Manchester’s leg visible through ripped jeans.

  Another object of Rupert’s sympathies came to live with him, first at the Locanda San Martino, against all rules, and then in his new home.

  The small tan cat encountered in the Piazza del Sedile refused to beg or run. Incredibly tattered and sickly looking, it stood its shaky ground with hapless resignation when Rupert approached. He hardly dared touch its mangy fur. Instead, he went to a nearby grocery and brought back some milk and tuna fish. The cat accepted the offering without much enthusiasm. After several such feedings over a week, the animal allowed itself to be picked up in a blanket and brought to the veterinarian. Once healed and named Taormina, the cat seemed to finally feel free to express itself. Although seldom given to purring, the animal never left Rupert’s side whenever they were together.

  One night Rupert had had a little too much to drink. He had begun thinking of Jessica, of their lost life together, her inexplicable death, and he had grown maudlin, cancelling a date with Flavia and instead hitting several bars solo. After some restrained and concealed tears, he passed into a kind of fresh acceptance of their interlinked fates. Jessica was gone, and could not return. Life moved on.

  Now, alone, he shambled slowly and with what he deemed proper caution down the Via San Biagio toward Via San Rocco and the staircase to his hotel.

  Under his feet, the paving stones seemed to ripple and thrust upward, while the rest of the scene remained stable. Earthquake in a few square feet? Unlikely, he thought, as he toppled. Whacking the back of his head, he passed out.

  He regained consciousness to the sensation of a rough tongue licking his face. Opened eyes took in the sight of Manchester’s dog. Rupert tried to move, but felt impossibly pinned to the magnetic pavement.

  Kneeling, the hippie himself leaned solicitously over Rupert, wafting an aroma of sweat, bad teeth, stale dope and garlic his way. For a moment a nearby light appeared to cast an aureole around the beggar’s head.

  “Jesus, man, what the hell did you do to get the cucibocca on your case?”

  This was the second time Rupert had heard the word, without explanation. “Huh? What?”

  Manchester fumbled in his pockets and withdrew a tiny, clay, bird-shaped whistle, one of the omnipresent colorful cuccu tokens, ranging from cheap souvenirs to museum-quality art, that served as Matera’s talismanic animal.

  “Cucibocca hates the cuccu, man! Cuccu is earth, water and fire, and man adds the air! Take this and blow!”

  “I don’t understand …”

  “Blow! Like this!”

  Manchester’s whisker-shrouded lips evoked a piercing note from the whistle. He stuck the saliva-wet hollow tail of the bird in Rupert’s mouth.

  “Do it!”

  Weakly, Rupert evoked a small noise.

  “Pisser! Okay, now you keep this with you, and you might stay safe. Use as needed.” Manchester tucked the whistle into Rupert’s shirt pocket. “Now, let me see that bump.”

  With rough fingertips Manchester massaged the contusion on Rupert’s scalp, and suddenly all soreness disappeared. The old hippie stood up, and helped Rupert to his feet.

  “Gotta amble, bro. Time and tide wait for no man. Stay centered.”

  Rupert failed to find words of sufficient thanks.

  Since that incident, he had carried the whistle continuously, and whatever a cucibocca might be, it had left him alone.

  The day arrived when Rupert was finally allowed by the Monaciellos to take possession of his new h
ome. The large atelier received sunlight from big high windows openable onto the Via Muro. Rupert could imagine doing good work here. The four spacious rooms of his living quarters, arrayed on two levels, offered comfort and retreat. Jessica would have loved it …

  Rupert paid the contractor’s reasonable bill with a check from his new bank account, and added a generous tip.

  “Thank you so much. Please let me know if there is anything else I can do to show my appreciation for your labors.”

  “You hear things in the cistern some time, just stay out.”

  * * *

  Sleep was a fugitive after Daeira’s dawnbreak invocation of dead Jessica. Rupert might have been able to doze off again if only his new impossible bedmate had revealed the source of her knowledge, her interest in his affairs, and clarified her meaning. But quite to the contrary, Daeira remained obstinately uninformative.

  “Your wife died in unnatural circumstances, this you know.”

  “Yes, yes, of course. But what else?”

  “There was a cause for her death, and an agent. I cannot say more now. When you truly need to know this information, it will be revealed, and the revelation will help you tremendously. To hear it now would be like someone placing an axe in your hand in a treeless realm. Worse than useless, a burden.”

  Suddenly a thick fog of mean paranoia descended on Rupert. (Oddly, an image of the cuccu whistle flashed across his mind. But the bird talisman had been left in the studio, and was not on hand.) Here he was, a semi-rich American in a strange land, obvious target for scam artists and con men galore. Who was this strange, secretive woman? Had their meeting at the tomb been as accidental as it seemed? Had her absence the past two weeks been precisely calculated to stoke his desire and obscure his reasoning with lust? Who were those men seen earlier with her tonight? What was her background? Who was Daeira Bruno?

  Daeira plainly intuited every strand of Rupert’s knotted thoughts. She snapped on a bigger light and climbed nimbly from bed. For a stunning moment, Rupert’s doubts dissipated in the majestic glare of her naked beauty and poise. But as she began to dress, his rancor and suspicion returned in force.