The Maltese Goddess Read online

  Common sense and good taste had won a moral victory then, but it was by a narrow margin and it still caused me some embarrassment to think of the way I’d behaved. Above all, I hated to think that this down-to-earth woman, in whose kitchen I was sitting, knew anything about it. It was yet another reason why Martin Galea usually got what he wanted where I was concerned, with the one exception, of course. I really wanted him to keep his mouth shut about those unhappy days of my past, and Galea, from what I’d heard, was not above using what he knew about people to advance his career. Nothing so sordid as blackmail, to be sure, just a sense that there was a little tally of past sins to accompany the list of owe-me’s.

  While we were still chatting, my cellphone rang. It was Alex. “How do you feel about flying out tonight?” he asked. I muttered something. “I’m having real difficulty getting you connecting flights. Essentially from here you can get to Malta through London, Paris, or Rome. London is fully booked. In Rome they’re having one of those regular strikes of theirs. There’s a seat on an Air Canada flight that will get you into Paris in time to make an Air Malta connection to Luqa.”

  “Where?”

  “Luqa—Malta’s airport. I’d better get you some reading material on the country, I can tell. Will you go tonight?”

  “Sure. No problem. I’ll head home now and pack. Got a weather report for me too?”

  “Of course. Winter. Rain gear a good idea, a jacket for evenings. But lots warmer than here. We’re supposed to have an arctic blast in the next few days—minus fifteen or so at night.”

  “In that case, I’m on my way,” I said, laughing, not realizing that even while I was thousands of miles away the Canadian deep freeze would cause me no end of trouble.

  I said good-bye to Marilyn Galea and thanked her for the coffee and her help with the furniture. I told her that Thomson Shipping would be picking it up in the next day or so, and that Alex or Sarah would call her to let her know when. She gave me the names and telephone number of the couple who were the caretakers for the property in Malta, checked to see that her husband had given me the right set of plans, and made careful note of Dave Thomson’s address and phone number, as well as that of Sarah and Alex.

  Then I left her. I still have a vision of her standing in the doorway as I pulled out of the driveway. A tall, plain woman painfully shy but rather nice, married to a little boy—a disarming, talented little boy, perhaps, but a little boy nonetheless.

  TWO

  First the animals, creatures of the Pleistocene. Driven before a great wall of ice that almost imperceptibly encroaches on their grazing lands, they move further and further south, onto a narrow band of land, a bridge, that stretches across the sea. But then the thunder of a great earthquake, the waters rush in. The land bridge becomes a chain of little islands, and then a very few. In this tiny archipelago, there is no going forward and no turning back. Trapped on this rocky shore, struggling for survival, they become, as the ages go by, smaller and smaller. Stunted hippopotami, elephants the size of dogs. Then silence, the Cave of Darkness, extinction.

  But what is this? Digging in, cowering in the dark of caves. Troglodyte! Will you move into the light?

  *

  I was in such a dazed state when I arrived in Malta, the previous day a blur of activity that got me to the Paris flight just in the nick of time, then to the Air Malta flight by the same narrow margin, that I almost missed the hand-lettered sign with the interesting phonetic treatment of my name.

  MISSUS MCLEENTAK, it read, held by a rather nice-looking young man in jeans and a Hard Rock Cafe T-shirt. Presumably the age of mass media and production has brought us more than the comfort of seeing T-shirts advertising the same establishment anywhere in the world, but at that very moment I could not think what.

  Actually the reason I almost missed it was that I was absolutely mesmerized by the appearance and antics of one of my fellow passengers on the Air Malta flight from Paris. He was dressed safari-style, whether because he thought Malta was the kind of place that required that sort of attire or as a matter of affectation, I couldn’t know. In any event, he was wearing cowboy boots, khaki pants, one of those matching khaki short-sleeved shirts with an excess of pockets, and a wide-brimmed hat of the bush ranger variety, one side snapped up, that one associates with the Australian outback or the Serengeti. This one sported a leopard print band, and dipped over a pockmarked face, a bulbous nose, and florid complexion that indicated its owner should probably swear off the booze from time to time.

  This fellow, whom I’d named for my own amusement GWH for Great White Hunter, had begun his performance even before the plane got off the ground in Paris. While everyone else was attempting to get seated, he was up and waving bills in assorted currencies in the direction of the cabin attendants. It seemed he wanted them to put the bottle of champagne—Dom, he called it—he’d brought on board in the refrigerator and to serve it to him at his seat. He was sitting with a lovely lady, he said in a stage whisper that could be heard halfway to Nairobi, and wanted to impress her.

  The well-trained cabin crew, who had the good taste to regard the proferred money and the champagne as they would a basket of scorpions, explained to him that one was not supposed to bring one’s own liquor for consumption on the aircraft. GWH apparently felt the rules did not apply to him. Finally the head cabin steward, realizing that GWH would be very disruptive to the comfort of the other passengers if they did not comply, agreed to take care of the champagne.

  The “lovely lady” in question was an attractive middleaged woman who appeared never to have met GWH, and was, I suspect, no more thrilled than I would be by this intimacy forced upon her by Fate in the form of the Air Malta computer.

  In fact, she looked as if this fight was to be the longest three hours of her life. The aircraft was small, and had been overbooked, so it was absolutely full, even after some passengers volunteered, lured by the offer of cash and accommodation, to wait for a later plane. I myself had been tempted by the thought of a few hours in Paris and a nice afternoon nap after an all-night flight, but had decided to forge on.

  In any event, I was seated across the aisle and back one row from the lovely lady and the GWH, and could tell that about thirty minutes into the flight, she was becoming desperate. At this point, in what I took to be a splendid gesture of Christian charity, a gentleman seated behind me, a priest in black robes and a cross on a long chain around his neck, told the cabin attendants that he would be pleased to change seats with her. The message was discreetly delivered and accepted with genuine gratitude, I’m sure, and the priest took his seat beside GWH.

  I could see only the side of the priest’s head, and thought rather uncharitable thoughts, considering his kindness, about his hairdresser. There was no part in his hair. Instead it hugged his skull, emanating in all directions from a tiny bald spot on the top of his head, perched like a polar ice cap on some small planet. At the front it looked from this angle as if his hair stopped just above his eyebrows, giving very much the impression of a man with a bowl on his head.

  I was very tired from the overnight flight, and after reading the Paris papers for a few minutes and realizing that I had made the right decision to press on to Malta—there were reports of labor unrest and the chance of wildcat strikes possibly affecting the airport, and there had been bomb threats in the Metro—I fell asleep and did not waken until the “tables and chair backs in the upright position” announcement as we began our descent into Malta.

  I peered past my seatmate by the window, straining to get a view of the island. Alex had told me that Malta is shaped like a fish—Alex knows the most amazing things—and that where I was going, Galea’s house, was, if one assumed the top of the fish was to the north, just below the gill area. Not a particularly inviting location description and certainly not one I would expect to hear from the Maltese National Tourism Organization, but definitely descriptive. All I saw from the plane was a rocky and rather desolate island. It was raining, as Alex pred
icted.

  I did not see GWH and the priest exiting the aircraft, but they soon joined the rest of us at the baggage carousel. The priest had a duffel bag only, but the GWH had three large suitcases and a golf bag filled with clubs. There was the usual routine to get out of the airport, a red zone and a green zone, depending on whether or not you had anything to declare, and I headed for the green zone several steps behind the priest and GHW.

  GWH was looking a little the worse for wear. He had had too much champagne, I suppose, and his khaki pants had slipped down below his paunch, so that he was now walking on the back hem of his trousers. He stumbled slightly, and the priest, who by this time surely deserved multitudes of credits in the hereafter, went to assist him. Both were stopped in the spot check in the green zone, but after sharing a joke with the priest, probably at the expense of GWH, the customs officers waved the priest through. GWH did not fare as well, and as I went through the outer door, I wondered if they would notice the metal detector amongst his golf clubs. It was the last I thought I would see of either of them.

  It took me a few seconds to realize that Missus Mcleentak meant me, since I really hadn’t expected to be met at the airport. I approached the young man and introduced myself.

  “I’m Lara McClintoch,” I said. “Are you looking for me?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” the nice young man said. “I’m Anthony Farrugia. My mother and father look after Mr. Galea’s house for him. Mother thought it would be nice if I were to come and meet you.”

  “That is very thoughtful of you and your mother,” I said. “Where to?”

  He took my bag and led me out to a parking area and a very old car. An acid-yellow car, a British Ford of some kind, I think, conservatively twenty years old, and maybe closer to thirty. It looked well cared for, however, and Anthony’s pride in it was evident.

  “Nice car,” I said and he beamed.

  He loaded my luggage in the trunk and we got into the car. Alex’s notes had warned me they drive on the left in Malta, so I was prepared for that. Not for what came next, however. Anthony put the car in gear and pulled away from the curb, then accelerated until the gears were screaming. Just when the smell of burning rubber or oil permeated the car, he pushed in the clutch, pulled it into neutral, put in the clutch again, and whipped it into third. He noticed me watching him.

  “No second gear.” He grinned. “Have to go like a bomb in first, then ease it into third.”

  “I see,” I said.

  At the exit of the airport, we roared around a corner in third gear, and I could hear my suitcase flying about in the trunk.

  “Not good to slow down,” he said. “It stalls.”

  “I see,” I said again. Just then we went around another corner at breakneck speed, and with a thud the window beside me slid down into the door frame.

  “Rats,” he said. “It does that sometimes.”

  I tried to roll the window back up, but the handle spun uselessly in my hand.

  “You have to pull the window up by hand,” he offered. “I’ll pull over and we’ll do that.”

  “That’s okay,” I said, “I like the fresh air.”

  “Me too.” He smiled.

  “Mr. Galea gave me money to go out and buy a car for the house. I got a really good deal on this one,” he said conversationally.

  “Good for you,” I said. “It’s lovely.”

  “It belongs to the house, so you get to drive it while you’re here,” he said.

  “I can hardly wait,” I said. What I meant, of course, was that I’d rather ride a donkey than drive this car. We sat in companionable silence for a while, the damp air blowing in our faces.

  “How old are you, Anthony, if you don’t mind my asking?”

  “Almost seventeen,” he replied. Then after a pause, “But I’ve been driving since I was twelve.” He looked sideways at me to try to ascertain why I was asking.

  “Do you help your mother and father look after the Galea place?” I asked him.

  “Sure. But only after school. I’m trying to do well at school so I can go to university. I want to be an architect like Mr. Galea. The Cassars are born architects.”

  “I thought your name was Farrugia. Who are the Cassars?”

  “You haven’t heard of Gerolamo Cassar?” he asked incredulously. “He was our greatest architect. He designed Valletta, the capital city, and the most beautiful buildings on Malta. My mother is a Cassar.”

  “Anthony,” I said, “this is my first visit to your country, and my knowledge of it is woefully inadequate, but I’m looking forward to learning a lot about it while I’m here.”

  He digested that for a moment or two. “I think maybe I’ll have to show you around, then,” he said. “After school.”

  “I’d really like that,” I said. “We sure can’t see much now.”

  “Yes. You got here just in time. The fog is coming in.”

  He was right. As we traveled away from the airport, the mist got thicker until you could only see a few feet in front of the car and I had absolutely no sense of where we were going, nor how I would ever retrace my route. I had the impression, despite the rain, of a rather arid land, very rocky, with little vegetation. Everything seemed grey at worst, or at best, a kind of sere yellow.

  After about twenty minutes or so, we made a sharp right turn and went up what appeared to be a driveway, lined with bushes and a low stone wall in what at closer distance was a rather pretty buttery yellow. Halfway up the hill, we reversed the pattern on the gears, coming perilously close to stalling, then rolled to a stop in front of a garage. An even older car was parked there. .

  The sound of the car brought a tiny woman with very fine features and a beautiful smile to the front door and out to the driveway. “My mom,” Anthony said, although she needed no introduction. Their smiles, the kind that light up whole rooms, were identical.

  “I’m Marissa, missus,” she said. “Take the missus’s suitcase upstairs, Anthony,” she said. “And don’t forget to give the missus the car keys.”

  I was about to offer to let Anthony keep the car, but I could tell—something in her eyes—that this would not be considered a good idea by his mother, so I kept quiet.

  We entered the house. I’d had a chance to look at the plans and was beginning to recognize the Galea design trademark, so I was not surprised when the rather unpretentious facade opened into a spectacular space. The floors were all tiled in terra-cotta, and the walls, the pale yellow stone I’d seen in the driveway, had been stuccoed over in a pale ochre color. I knew the moment I entered the place that the furniture from the shop would be perfect here. It was a good feeling.

  The design was open concept, only the stairway to the second floor segregating the kitchen from the rest of the space. There was a huge fireplace, and beside it a man directing a couple of workmen, who were putting finishing touches to the stucco, in a language that was totally incomprehensible to me. I knew from Alex’s brief geography lesson that virtually all Maltese, young and old, are fluent in English, the result of almost two centuries of British rule and influence that ended only very recently. He had assured me that English was one of two official languages for business in Malta, so I’d have no problems. The native language of the island, however, is Malti, one of those minority languages that have survived over the ages despite invasion, repression, and active attempts to stamp them out, and it was this, I assumed, that the man was speaking.

  As I approached, the older man tipped his cap and said, “Hello, missus.” I took this to be Joseph, Anthony’s father and custodian of the house. He had a pleasant, open face, the large hands of a laborer, and appeared to be considerably older than his wife, although perhaps years of backbreaking labor had added lines to his face.

  Over in one corner of the large room there was what on closer examination I found to be a large amount of furniture protected by drop cloths. Beside it, rolled in plastic were several carpets. Galea had told me he wanted to use carpets to delineate the variou
s living areas, and he had given me a carefully annotated list of all the carpets and where they were to be placed. I sincerely hoped I remembered how to distinguish a Tabriz from a Bakhtiari, or this would be trouble.

  The back of the house was all glass, and there were no curtains in evidence. While I couldn’t see more than twenty or thirty feet beyond the windows because of the fog, I assumed the bare windows meant there were no neighbors nearby. The windows would be protected from the summer heat of the Mediterranean by a terrace with a weathered brick floor and Greek columns. Large terra-cotta pots were already filled with flowers.

  “I’ll show you around upstairs,” Marissa said, and I followed her up the staircase. There were three bedrooms on the second floor, all of them with large windows and a doorway onto a deck over the terrace below. Only one of the bedrooms, the largest, was furnished, and Marissa had seen to it that it was made up for me. There was a king-size bed and an ensuite bathroom with all the amenities. I wondered exactly where Galea was planning for me to sleep once he got there.

  “You’ll be tired from your long journey,” Marissa said. “I’ve left you something to eat, fenek and some bread and wine, and there is food in the refrigerator for your breakfast. I hope everything is satisfactory.”

  “It’s wonderful, thank you, Marissa. And please call me Lara. We’re going to be working together a lot over the next few days, and I hope we can be friends.” She looked horrified at the thought of calling me by my first name. “I work for him just as you do,” I said.

  She seemed pleased.

  “Tomorrow… It’s the Sabbath, and Joseph and I normally do not work that day. We go to Mass… but I know there is a lot of work to be done before Mr. Galea comes.”