Chapter 11 Fon #2
‘Hook it!’ Dante shouted as the fish wrestled madly from side to side, trying to tear itself free.
With no time to think, Fon felt his arm swing, and his spear plunged through the firm flesh too, pinning the tuna on its other side.
Beside them, Pablo and Francesco reached around and got the rods underneath it, levering it up.
Between the four of them, with their hooks and poles and grunts and cries, they were just able to hoist the fish out of the water and haul it behind them onto the deck.
The boat rocked from the movement and Fon looked back, seeing the massive body still thrashing until his father reached back and killed it with a well-positioned blow of his club. It was a quicker, more humane death than suffocation.
The fish was huge, 180 kilos at least, but there was no time to revel in glory.
The sea was a twitching, convulsing frenzy, the water already running red; Carosa’s two assistants were in the water now, standing on the nets as they struck blows upon the surface to stun the fish and make it easier for the fishermen to hook them and drag them out. It was dangerous work.
‘Again!’ Dante cried, hooking another. And another.
Fon lost track of time. It was impossible to gauge the minutes, or even hours, in this gladiatorial combat, his body beginning to move into autopilot – swing, hook, pin, haul …
Every time he thought the sea square was coming off the roil, more black bodies would surface and the frantic writhing would be stirred up again.
At last Luchino and Piero hauled themselves out of the water and back onto the boat in the centre of the melee.
Both were bleeding. They had sustained vicious cuts from the shoal’s desperate death throes and they sank onto the benches as the raís threw fresh water on their wounds.
Almost all the fish had been clubbed into submission, but Dante’s eyes were following one that remained: a big one, clearly still with some fight in it.
‘He’s a monster,’ Dante said, pointing as the massive tuna edged and writhed towards their boat. ‘… He’s ours!’ He ran to the end of the deck, warning off Gino Pampanini and the Crespis, none of whom were professional fishermen. ‘Leave him to us!’
The other men backed off, even though they were closer and the angle was better.
Dante leaned out, plunging his harpoon into the mighty flank and beginning to drag it in.
Fon knew his brother wanted the glory of this prize kill – it was one of the biggest catches of the day, and now everyone was watching.
He ran over to help alongside their father, Francesco and Pablo, all leaning over the side with their weapons, trying to get an angle to assist.
But Dante had over-reached himself, and as the mighty fish resisted death it twisted violently, flinging him into the scarlet water.
No longer pinioned, it tried to swim away, but the depth was too shallow and it found itself half beached on the net floor instead.
It used its tail to try to propel itself but Dante, still recovering from his somersault into the water, couldn’t right himself in time, and every swipe drew a fresh cut along his bare skin.
The pain smarted and he cried out, unable to find his feet on the net.
He was swallowing water; Fon saw the whites of his eyes bulge as panic took over.
The men were shouting furiously, urging Dante to move away, but as the tuna writhed, wriggled and thrashed it landed on top of him, crushing and pinning him below the surface.
Without thought, Fon leapt in, tasting the ferrous tang in the salt water as he half swam, half waded to the centre of the chamber of death.
It would not be his brother dying here today, he resolved as he grabbed the injured beast by its tail and dorsal fin.
With a strength he hadn’t known he possessed, he hauled it off his submerged brother.
Dante exploded upwards, gasping for breath as Fon drew his arm back and plunged his spear into the fish, once, twice, twenty, thirty times.
He didn’t know. He didn’t count. All he knew, when he finally stopped, was that the fish was lying motionless in a scarlet sea and everyone was cheering his name.
He turned around to find Luchino and Piero holding Dante under the arms as he coughed and spluttered and gagged.
He was covered in blood – Fon supposed he must be, too – but it only made his brother’s teeth gleam all the more brightly as he gradually got his breath back and smiled with relief.
He beckoned Fon over towards him and the two brothers embraced.
‘I underestimated you,’ Dante panted, leaning heavily on Fon as the men chanted his name in unison. ‘I thought you were weak. But you’re like me – a natural-born killer.’
The boats arrived back as they had left, in single file, but laden now with their bounty.
As they passed the sea wall, the captain of each vessel hooking the sharp left turn into the marina, the crews dived jubilantly into the turquoise water to swim straight ahead to the beach.
The men’s victorious roars ricocheted around the port.
There was still work to be done. The tuna needed to be offloaded and hoisted by their tails onto the weighing scales before they were quartered up and sold off to the wholesalers who had come in from Gallipoli and Brindisi as word of the mattanza had spread.
Afterwards there would be a feast on the beach for the whole village; the women had been preparing all day.
But for the next few minutes, as boats were moored and ice-laden carts brought down to the harbour’s edge, they could play – and they made the most of it.
The surface of the sea was shattered again as they all splashed and threw one another about in a final testosterone-fuelled frenzy, showing off in front of the girls sunbathing on the promenade.
Rafaella was there with Gina and Antonia, Donatella and Clara, and Fon felt a thrill that she was witness to these celebrations of his bravery as the other men threw him skywards, catching him by the ankles in the water, dunking and dive-bombing him before throwing him up again.
A crowd of mothers and anziani gathered on the beach, aware that something momentous had passed on the hunt.
Fon felt as if he was bursting out of his own body.
He had never had any of his brother’s charisma, none of his swagger or confidence, but today, for the first time in his life, he felt seen. He was not a nobody.
The girls, relenting to the boys’ constant pleas, jumped in too and shrieked and screamed as they were picked up and tossed about. Fon, sensing the moment was upon him, reached for Rafaella and spun her round to face him. Her smile died away as she saw it was him, but for once he was undeterred.
‘Rafa, I’m sorry,’ he said urgently. ‘You have to forgive me.’
‘I don’t have to do anything,’ she said, jerking her chin in the air, droplets of water dripping from her lashes and jaw and hair. ‘You did what you did. You made your choice.’
‘But it wasn’t a choice,’ he said boldly, his grip firm on her waist. ‘It was a madness that came over me. I was trying to prove something … to throw the monkey off my back.’
‘I don’t know what that means!’ she cried. ‘What did you have to prove? To whom?’
He hesitated – he could apologize but not explain – and she turned away in disgust, but he caught her and held her there.
‘I messed up – badly,’ he admitted. ‘And then I made it worse by staying away from you. I’d convinced myself I’d blown it, that I was no good for you, but I know now that’s not true.
I’m capable of being more, of being a better man.
I’m going to show you how sorry I am for what I did.
And I’m not going to stop until you believe me. ’
She stared back as if surprised by this new, forthright version of him, and he stepped in closer, his body almost touching hers. He lowered his voice. ‘I won’t lose you, Rafa. Not for her—’
He felt hands on his legs, someone – two people, under water – knocking at his thighs as he stood there, before he was suddenly lifted up and Dante and Francesco hoisted him onto their shoulders.
Still he looked down at Rafaella, his arms wheeling for balance, not sure if he was about to be thrown again.
‘Meet me tonight!’ he insisted, wobbling precariously. ‘Let me make it up to you!’
Gina swam over and came to stand by her friend. ‘What’s going on here?’ she demanded, butting in as ever. ‘She doesn’t want to talk to you!’
‘You have to make her let me apologize.’
Gina looked surprised by his boldness too. ‘… And why should she do that? After what you did?’
‘Because we all fuck up! And I deserve a second chance.’
‘Pah! You’ve shown her what you are!’
‘He’s the man of the hour, is what he is,’ Dante said, butting in too and slicking his hair back with one hand as he held Fon on his right shoulder.
His body was stippled red with deep lacerations and lashes, but they were irrelevant compared to almost drowning.
‘My brother saved my life today. He didn’t hesitate when everyone else did.
He acted on instinct, and sometimes that’s the right thing to do, sometimes it’s wrong.
But isn’t it better to have a man who acts with purpose? And passion?’
Gina’s face changed on the last word. Fon didn’t need to be able to see his brother to know Dante had pinned her with one of his scrutinizing looks, as if suddenly noticing her properly for the first time.
Perhaps he was. Gina was wearing a tiny black-and-white-striped bikini, her luscious curves buoyant in the water.
She couldn’t possibly know how good she looked to the male gaze.
‘We’ll pick you both up tonight at ten, after the barbecue,’ Dante said, a self-assured smile curling the words and needing no confirmation from the girls as he and Francesco began wading ashore, carrying Fon home to a hero’s welcome.
Their mother rushed forward into the shallows, her arms outstretched.
‘My boy!’ Monica cried, clutching Dante close, not caring that she was getting soaked.
‘It’s OK, Mamma,’ he reassured her. ‘Fon saved me.’
‘He’s being dramatic, Mamma! As if he would have allowed himself to be killed by a fish!’ Fon quipped, just as Dante and Francesco tipped him backwards off their shoulders into the shallows.
Fon emerged laughing, whipping his hair off his face the way Dante always did it.
He glanced back. Rafaella was still staring, Gina talking by her side, and he felt himself grow in stature even more.
Had his brother’s words struck home? In the space of a week, Fon had been recast as a man of action. Of passion and purpose.
Unlike Cosimo Franchetti.
Fon could see him and Fede swimming across the bay, towards the steps where the nonnas bathed near the gates of the grand Villa Agosto.
For once, neither of them was the main event.
The Franchettis might have power, position and money, but they belonged to the past. It was the Giannellis, enterprising and dynamic, who were the future.
Under his brother’s stewardship they were coming into their prime at last, and nothing was out of reach, not even the Franchettis’ own women.
Not that it was Romola he cared for. But Fon was learning fast that fortune favoured the brave, and he could have whatever – and whomever – he wanted, if he was just bold enough to claim it.