Chapter 11 Fon
Fon
The fishing boats slowly circled the buoys, taking up their positions.
The deep nets had been lowered several days before, funnelling tuna in from the open sea to a series of tunnels from which escape was impossible.
Edo Carosa, the most experienced and strongest of the fishermen, had been appointed raís of the expedition, and he had been vigilant in keeping a close watch on the numbers of fish coming in.
It was late in the season for tuna fishing, but not too late, and he had finally called today as the day for the mattanza.
It wasn’t an annual event here, not like in Sicily, where the tuna shoaled with set-your-watch predictability.
On the Adriatic coast they only came every few years, when the winds blew from a certain direction and the currents were favourable.
In early spring of this year, Carosa had seen the first signs and begun preparing the port for this moment.
Today, even the gates to Villa Agosto had opened and the Franchettis had emerged from their self-imposed confinement, Fede and Cosimo joining the other men.
The duke, as a cabinet minister, couldn’t be seen to take part in the spectacle but his sons had joined in at every opportunity since boyhood, always going out with the harbourmaster, El Greco, on his boat.
Rafaella had been standing there too with her mother and Gina, and for a moment, as the men made their final checks, her eyes had met Fon’s.
His stomach had lurched at the sudden reconnection; it was like standing in a sunspot on the surface of the moon.
Three days had passed since he had seen her on the street with Fede and boldly, on an impulse, sent her his note, but she had given no reply; as her silence drew out, his brief flicker of courage had failed him, all the apologies he had formulated in his mind falling away.
He really had lost her for good, and the thought frightened him in ways he couldn’t quite understand.
The fishing boats – sixteen in total – travelled in single file from the marina, following Carosa’s lead as he headed for the deep-water nets.
Father Tommaso was in the second boat, offering up prayers as they cut over the water in solemn anticipation of what was to come.
Francesco and Pablo, the Parisi estate workers Fon had seen meeting with Dante, were helping out on the Giannelli boat today.
All usual duties in the port were suspended; every man in the area – barber, cobbler, grocer, chandler, bar owner, farmer – was out on the water.
Once in position at the buoys, which had been arranged in a loose square, they waited as Carosa inspected the middle area known as the ‘chamber of death’.
It was the centre point of the underwater tunnels, a giant submerged holding pen surrounded around and below by the nets.
The fish had to have moved into it for the mattanza to begin.
As they waited, Fon watched the Franchettis on their boat on the other side of the chamber. To his dismay, he realized Rafaella’s father and elder brother were also guests of El Greco. They were all sharing drinks, Fede and Dado chatting as if it was a cocktail party.
He watched Fede intently, feeling a spark of jealousy that the courtesy and friendliness which had made him feel so special were in fact available to everyone.
Fede was just like his father: a born politician, able to butter people up with that smooth smile and easy manner.
For a moment, Fon hated him. He hated how easy life was for this handsome son and heir, his many personal gifts heaped upon already ludicrous privilege.
But then Fede looked up, as if sensing the scrutiny, and, catching sight of Fon, he smiled and waved across the water as if they really were friends.
It felt genuine, and Fon instinctively smiled and waved back.
He just couldn’t stop himself from basking in the radiance that shone from that gilded family.
Cosimo, standing apart from his brother, looked out of sorts and moody, shoulders hunched as he stared down into the depths as if the sea was passing secrets to him.
Fon wondered if it had anything to do with how Rafaella had turned away from him, too, as he passed by on the marina earlier – although why she should be angry with Cosimo, he didn’t know.
‘Fon, move that chain there,’ his father commanded, pulling him from his ruminations and pointing towards the anchor chain, which had slipped from its stowage under the bench.
‘Si, Papa.’ But before he could move, Francesco reached round and did it for him. As with the chickens, Fon felt out of place and in the way here. He’d never been a natural fisherman. Neither was Dante, but at least Dante had obvious skills in other areas.
Fon glanced up and down the boat as their father ran last checks, even though he had already run through them twice.
Dante stood restlessly at the other end, his muscles twitching as he struggled to remain inert.
He never had been any good at waiting. He was shirtless, as many of the men were; it was mid-morning now and the relentless sun was beginning to beat down hard as they waited on Carosa’s word.
The raís wouldn’t act before the auspicious moment and all eyes were upon him, everyone watching his body language as he walked round and round on his boat in the centre of the floating square.
He was supported in his role today by Luchino, his son, and Piero Vitti, the barber.
Suddenly there was a murmuring. Carosa, staring down into the depths, seemed to approve of what he saw at last, for he began slowly motioning with his arms for the fishermen to begin pulling their boats together.
They were all loosely connected at bow and stern by slack ropes and as they heaved, the square became ever tighter, so that eventually the boats formed a solid, rigid shape on the surface.
Buoys had been attached to the nearsides of the boats and each man began to attach the nets floating in the water to their boats.
It was slow going, the sodden nets heavy on their arms, but they knew they had to conserve their energy; the real work was yet to come.
The minutes ticked past and some of the men began to sing a chant called the cialoma – it kept their nerves steady now they were in the shadow of battle.
Once the nets were secured to the fastened boats, Carosa patrolled the square chamber area looking for potential breaches. The fishermen awaited his approval like soldiers on inspection parade; every man knew his task and took the responsibility seriously.
Finally, Carosa’s boat puttered back to the middle of the chamber and a silence fell.
Then Carosa lifted his arms and began flicking his hands rapidly upwards.
No one needed telling twice as immediately the men – as young as seven and as old as seventy – began to haul in the nets.
They were immensely heavy, dragging as they did to depths of thirty metres, and it took the four or five men in every boat to begin to raise the floor.
At first, all that could be heard was the chanting of the cialoma and the grunts of the men as they pulled hand over hand, the nets beginning to spool at their feet.
But then the water within the square began to froth and roll, the perfect blue glass surface breaking up and turning white.
Sharp fins pierced the surface like arrowheads as the tuna were forced ever upwards by the tightening nets, towards an airy sky and suffocation.
Fon felt himself sweating as the tension of the net floor increased.
It was growing flat, and the men groaned from the effort of hauling it up with the weight of tonnes of tuna lying upon it.
There were dozens upon dozens of them and the water looked like it had come to a boil, a tuna stew in a square pot, the massive black bodies violently agitating the surface.
The mattanza had begun in earnest now, the raís moving quickly around on his boat in the middle of it all as he directed the fishermen on all four sides towards their quarry.
Now that the nets had been largely raised to within a few feet of the surface, the men picked up their weapons – rods and harpoons – and readied themselves.
Getting the tuna into the boats was the most perilous and exhausting part of the endeavour.
Each fish could be easily double the weight of a grown man, and they would all be flailing in desperate death throes against the oxygen and spears that assailed them.
Fon went to reach for the rod he had used since he was a little boy, but Dante took it from his hands and replaced it with the harpoon Francesco had been holding instead.
‘It’s time for him to graduate to the real action, wouldn’t you say, Papa?’ his brother said, looking at their father. ‘He’s a man now, not a boy.’
Francesco looked displeased – he was several years older than Fon – but hierarchies didn’t just apply to El Greco’s boat, and on their own craft, the Giannellis were the bosses. Carlo hesitated, then nodded. Fon took the harpoon without a word as Dante handed Francesco the rod instead.
He handled the weapon, feeling both excited and apprehensive at the task ahead of him.
He had grown up working with his father on the sea, but they caught sardines, the nets bulging with thousands of tiny, slippery silver fishes.
Plunging a spear into the solid flesh of a 250-kilo beast was a very different proposition, surely almost like stabbing a man.
As a boy, he had longed for the moment when he would join the ranks of his father and the other men and do battle, but now that it was here …
He was out of time. A tuna had landed itself near their boat; Carosa was screaming at them to act and Dante, without hesitation, plunged a hook into the thrashing creature and dragged it in towards the side. Bright red blood gushed into the dark water.