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216 pages

English

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'He had heard the spirits calling his name from the maquis and he had heard their footfalls as they passed by his window in the night. The spirits had summoned him. He could not deny them.' It is the last summer of the twentieth century in Calvi, northern Corsica, and an old man sits watching the kites fly. The festival of the wind is a lively and colourful celebration, but the old man's heart is heavy, he has heard the Mazzeri whisper his name. He accepts that people prefer to believe the dream hunters belong to the past and yet he knows only too well that at night they still roam the maquis in search of the faces of those whose time has come.Ten years later in the high citadel of Bonifacio, in the southern tip of the island, Richard Ross, armed with only the faded photograph of a Legionnaire standing beneath a stone gateway, finds the locals curiously unwilling to help him uncover his family's roots. He rents a villa on the coast and meets the singularly beautiful Manou Pietri, who enchants him with tales of the megalithic isle, its folklore and the Mazzeri - the dream hunters.For a while Ric's life beneath the Corsican sun is as close to perfect as he could wish. Then a chance encounter with a feral boy turns Ric's world upside down, and he is drawn deep into a tangled web of lies and deceit, where truth and legend meet, and from which the Mazzeri offer him little hope of escape.Set in Corsica, Mazzeri is a contemporary novel about this complex mediterranean island, its people and its traditions, which has been influenced by the author's own experiences.

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Publié par	Troubador Publishing Ltd
Date de parution	01 juin 2013
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781780885841
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0200€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

MAZZERI
Love and Death in Light and Shadow
Peter Crawley

Copyright © 2013 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 9781780885841

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Contents

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Prologue

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Prologue

The commonly held view is that man fashions the land to meet his needs and in so doing leaves his mark upon it. Only in the harshest of environments, in the great heat of the deserts and the extreme cold of the polar regions, is the reverse true and man is fashioned by the land. And yet, here and there, isolated chunks of rock protrude from the ocean floor providing little more than a bare platform on which life finds purchase.
Corsica, cradled in the corner of the Mediterranean between France and Italy, is one such granite isle; an isle where it is said ‘bread is of wood and wine is of stone’.
The people, like their environment, are hardy and uncompromising, but they can also be gentle and hospitable. Over the centuries, their Menhirs, their megalithic stone warriors, have stood witness to the great nations of Europe, Africa and Asia battle for the right to number the island amongst their jewels. More recently, under the banner of the Fronte di Liberazione Naziunale Corsu, the Corsicans have waged their own separatist wars against their imperial masters, the French.
These days, their stone warriors watch silently as tourists of all nationalities flock to the birthplace of Napoleon to swim in the emerald waters, sunbathe on the flaxen sands, or trek through the crystal air of the interior. From the olive groves of the Balagne in the north to the high citadel of Bunifaziu in the south, Corsica is an island as beguiling as it is beautiful.
Outside of my own knowledge of Corsica, I have leant on the various staffs provided me by Dorothy Carrington, Stephen Wilson, Rolli Lucarotti, Prosper Mérimée, Pliny and Homer. I trust they will not resent the weight of my frame.
Mazzeri is written from my experience of the island and many of the incidents cited are based on actual events, some of which I have had both the fortune and misfortune to witness at first hand.
At the end of one summer near Porto Vecchio, the matriarch of our village entrusted me with a notebook in which she had recorded local proverbs and aphorisms; many of those truisms and the atmosphere they engender are employed in the tone and resonance of Mazzeri .
1
Calvi
La Balagne
Haute Corse
1999
The old man sat forward and leaned against his long, dark-wood staff. Children skipping by stopped when they saw him, giggled, and then raced away to find their parents down on the beach. Tourists too broke the rhythm of their promenade when they noticed him. They smiled and remarked, rather too openly to be polite, that they considered him quaint, topped off as he was by his black, broad-brimmed hat. They envied him his peace; his tranquility. After all, was it not right that when one reached a certain age one should be allowed to devote as much time as one liked to the simple pleasures; pleasures such as watching Les Amis du Vent fly their kites at the Festiventu, the May festival?
Beyond the marina the windows of the citadel stared down at the many kites as they danced in the strengthening breeze. Red and white box kites, silver diamonds and stars, purple sleds, yellow and green deltas, and other intricate and extraordinary designs and devices decorated the blue sky. Along the beach at regular intervals, gaily coloured windmills whirled and tall flags fluttered. It was a jolly affair; a scene that would gladden the hardest of hearts.
Well perhaps most of them , he thought.
Occasionally a fanfare announced the arrival of a team of daring acrobats or lithe dancers, and the lilting harmonies of acapella and polyphonic melodies floated on the breeze, like Cistus petals on a gentle stream. The atmosphere was so clear he felt he could reach out across the Golfe and touch the Punta di Spano.
Days like this, he reminded himself, were rare. At least they were rare for him. He had only visited Calvi once many years before and he had never given much time to the idea of returning. This side of the mountains, di qua dai monti, as he knew it, was very different to where he had lived all of his life; for he was from the other side, dila dai monti , and the two halves of the island shared little in common. Through the years, up here in the north of the island, they had courted the Genoese, the Pisans, the English and finally the French. Down there, on the other side of the mountains, where he was from, they had never bent their knees to any imperial master. Dila dai , beyond the mountains, the spirits held sway, and, like the people, the spirits endured. They did not come and go like the seasons.
The old man sucked on his teeth.
No, here , he thought, it is different . And though the broad flanks of the citadel suggested the people of the Balagne had withstood many a siege, he knew they lacked that cold, bone hard inflexibility of people like him from the south; the south, where bread was of wood and wine was of stone.
He tugged at his beard and made to stand. But before he could get properly upright he slumped back down. Getting old was not easy; that he had come to realise, and his arthritis was born of his hard life just as much as his great inner strength-and that was what kept him going. He leant more of his weight against the staff and stood up into the breeze.
The Maestrale was growing in confidence. Soon there would be too much wind for the kites; maybe even too much for the ferry.
The last time he had come to Calvi was… fifty-five, no fifty-six years ago. Ah, what did it matter; it had been a very long time ago.
For the first half of the war they had smuggled refugees from mainland France into Corsica: spies, Jews, émigrés, escapees; all manner of people on the run; some wealthy, some not. For the second half of the war they had smuggled arms back the other way.
He had come to Calvi just the once during those turbulent days. He did not like the town. As a matter of fact, he did not like any town. He went to town only when going to town could not be avoided, for towns he had long believed meant trouble.
Calvi, he decided, was still the same only different. Perhaps there would be an old face he would recognise around the garrison in the citadel. Though, as he had seen earlier in the morning, the parachutists of the 2 nd Regiment looked far too young to remember the old days. And anyway, it had been Mosca who had joined the Legion after the war, not him.
The marina was busy with early season tourists, so it took him a while to find a chair at the back of the café. He preferred to sit at the back; that way the string that tied his black trousers tight at his waist, and the collarless white shirt beneath his waistcoat, drew less attention.
He ordered ice cream, a glass of Chataigne and a pichet of tap water. The waitress easily picked him for a southerner. Even if she had been blind, she would have caught the hint of Gallurese in his pronunciation. But she was a little surprised when instead of drinking the Chataigne she saw him pour the rich, dark chestnut liqueur over his ice cream.
There was another reason he liked to sit at the back; it afforded him the facility of watching for any faces that might be turned his way. Since those hotheads had murdered the Préfet Érignac in Ajacciu, nobody was safe. Why hadn’t they recognised a soft touch for a Préfet when they saw one? Mind you , he thought, Érignac’s successor Bonnet, whilst full of muscular rhetoric, had turned out to be something of a clown; the Affaire de la Paillote had shown everybody that. I mean really, he chuckled : those ridiculous GPS men scuttling about in the night pretending to be paramilitaries and setting fire to beach huts and, as it turned out, themselves . He laughed so loud that a couple at a neighbouring table turned to see what it was that amused him so.
But assassinating Érignac had been foolhardy. Whoever had thrown that particular rock into the water ought to be ashamed. The ripples from that ill-advised stunt would be tripping ashore for the next ten years. That was why he had to be more vigilant. That was another reason why it was better for him to sit at the back of the café.
When he had cleared his plate he sat and stared into the distance. He toyed with the gold signet ring on the little finger of his left hand. Only the spirits knew why it should be his daughter who would lead him back to this place and then further on to the mainland. He could have flown of course; Paris was less than