Memories of Malta

I first went to the Maltese archipelago during the summer of 1985. One hot July day I took the ferry from Naples. It departed as the sun set over Pozzuoli, and when I woke up next morning we were in the Strait of Messina, cutting a swathe of foam through a glittering sea in which dolphins leapt and played. We stopped at Messina and Catania, and I stood on deck and watched the bustle of port activities. At the end of the Strait, the historical centre of Siracusa, approached from the water side, looked indeed like "a rose-red city, half as old as time". Then we headed straight for Malta, which appeared on the horizon, long and low, hours later. The ship glided majestically into Grand Harbour and thus I arrived in Valletta.
Malta in the mid-1980s was a jewel of a place. The towns, with their sonorous names--Vittoriosa, Senglea, Attard--glowed in the sunlight, especially when the setting sun was reflected off the honey-coloured limestone which was the only building material. The cupolas of the churches rose up majestically above the huddle of buildings, and all around were the varying blues of the Mediterranean Sea, which sent its breezes to caress the parched land.
I lodged in Sliema, the most elegant of the suburbs of Valletta, and bathed each morning in the fishing harbour at the end of the street. It was there in the water that I met Ornella Perotti. She swam around me laughing, with her long black hair streaming out behind her, her agile limbs cleaving a path through the placid waters. She was the perfect Maltese: dark hair and eyes, fair skin, well-modelled features, singsong accent--in short, the classic amalgam of Sicilian and Arab, the genetic meeting of the ways.
Virtually the entire island of Malta could be reached by bus, and the service included some of the finest public transport vehicles ever made in the 1930s. These well-kept but ancient relics were graced by elaborate and colourful painting much as are the lorries of India. Around the driver's compartment would be photographs of the past three popes, several saints sporting yellow halos and a few 1950s pin-up girls in swimsuits, maybe also a postcard of London or Cardiff (the Welsh capital has a large expatriate Maltese community). The ride would be robust but mercifully short, perhaps to Mdina, the silent city and former capital of Malta, with its wealth of architectural detail and views across the plains at the centre of the island. The ancient green vehicle would wheeze along the tiny roads, bouncing rhythmically on its springs, with its engine coughing and spluttering and the passengers chattering in Maltese, a mongrel language that contains many received words of English, Italian and Arab.
Malta has perpetually been plagued by problems of saline groundwater. In 1985 there was talk of a desalinisation plant, but it had not been built. Tea had to be made with bottled mineral water or otherwise it tasted heavily of salt. In fact, my father told me that when he was in Malta in 1944 the beer was salty as well. Decidedly salty as well were Dzibeni, the little forms of acerbic cheese that could be bought for a few pence from inside the cavernous and crowded grocers' shops. The one in Neolithic Street, the road that leads to the prehistoric archaeological site in San Pawl, was called the "Neolithic Stores", which struck me as being hopelessly funny, as it had no pretence to modernity.
Attard was buzzing with scandal, as there had been an 'incident' at the saint's day fiesta. The Maltese men are fond of shotguns and have a disgraceful reputation for shooting at migrating birds. When the gilded statue of the saint was brought out of the parish church the men raised their twelve-bores and let off a double-barrelled salute by pressing the trigger. Several pigeons fell, stone dead, onto the assembled population, and half the festive lights on the façade of the church were blown to pieces. The next day the Bishop of Valletta and Mdina delivered a stern rebuke, but it gave the Attardini something to talk about in the town piazza for weeks afterwards.
The Maltese are a welcoming people, and like true islanders are interested in foreigners for the sense of novelty that they bring to a small community with restricted horizons. After a few days it felt if I had got to know half the population, and with an easy familiarity. At a party held at the University of Malta I discovered that Ornella Pirotti was a good dancer and she moved with grace ever closer. So I followed her home and the welcome continued.
But it was time to go back to the mainland. I kept in touch with Ornella and six months later, in January 1986, I went back to stay with her.
Malta is very different in mid-winter. The wind blows strongly from the west and for a few weeks it is cold, doubly so as the houses have no heating: there is no wood or coal to burn and oil is too expensive, nor is there any need for heating for the rest of the year. So the streets are deserted and the west coast, where the cliffs stand high, is raked by howling gales.
Ornella Pirotti had changed in the meantime. One important fact that I had not known was that she had a six-year-old son, fruit of a one-night stand when she was working as a barmaid in London. The father had disappeared and she was thus struggling to bring up young Rohan on her own (his name, by the way, was that of one of the seventeenth-century Grand Master of the Knights of Malta). He was a demanding and hyperactive child. I therefore did a two-week stint as a surrogate father. It was not a happy experience, for it was clear that there was no point in giving it any commitment as they were both preparing to emigrate to Australia. Mentally, Ornella was already there. I struggled because it is difficult to be thrown into parenthood rather than following it through from birth to maturity.
But we travelled around Malta and Gozo together and made a reasonably happy threesome. Puffy clouds hung in the lapis lazuli sky over the golden winter landscapes of Gozo, with their plateaux and creeks winding down to the sea. At Xaghra, the silver light of January etched the stone balustrades into bulbous shadows on the cobbled streets. Many of the Gozitan balconies were ornamented with stone kangaroos, indicating families that had emigrated to Australia and come back, enriched, to start a small business in the island's villages.
And so I left Malta for the last time and lost contact with Ornella Pirotti, the girl with long, curly black hair and a small, hyperactive son. I still remember her musical, lilting accent, her prosperous curves and the appraising glance of her dark, luminous eyes. She was a Calypso of the Mediterranean.