Le Chrysalis
Although this story occurs among and upon the thresholds of some of Europe’s most sophisticated people - especially women - it is not an inquiry after these or a compendium of refined persons, but rather a brief, however specific sojourn with and among a small circle of particularly distinguished friends, circa 1959 through ‘62, including a year 2000 Epilogue; with an updated Addendum.

This story unfolds in dozens of Mediterranean ports, hundreds of miles apart, its three geographical focal points are Naples, Italy, and the French southern - northern Italian - Riviera. Among numerous other ancient family sanctuaries is included a particular triangle of modestly described ‘family cottages’ - very large houses, actually. Each different, yet having the same elegant white masonry and stone exteriors, having been built and inhabited by the same family for centuries.

Mother Mediterranean:
There is an undated legend that the isle of Corsica is the Right Hand of God, the finger of which points to the coastal intersection of the borders of the southern French and northern Italian Riviera; approximately at the location of Spezia, Italy. But then the Italians of Portofino and Genoa insist that the deified Corsican finger points at them. The only certainty is, if Corsica is indeed a finger of God, or just another island peninsula, it does point in the direction of the source of the argument, across 100 kilometers of the north-central Mediterranean’s Ligurian sea.

The subjected popular story with its followers is divided, even within its own ranks. Theirs’ is the question of what God’s reason might be, for pointing the area out - the French-Italian Riviera confluence. It may be a praiseworthy location, or, perhaps God is annoyed with the place. So goes a colorful and persistent Mother Med legend. Its cited indecision here is referenced to a metaphorical bottle of ancient yet unbruised wine stored on one of the seven hills of Italy's capital city of Rome. This record is the first opening and sharing of that figurative vessel and its yarn spinning, 'novel-journal' formatted contents.
Whether or not the blessed geographical if not deified digit is pointing in accusation or praise, is a panoramically stimulating question, at least as old as Thracian cartography. A fisherman’s Tarot. The crucible of an approximately equal number of culturally accusatory and complimentary legends. Long before Christ was a God or Jehovah a pup. Preceding Homer's Odyssey and the history of Herodotus.

South of these Rivieras is Napoli. Where this story can be said to have begun, in early 1959. The record begins with a viewing of some of its protagonists a year before any of them are even vaguely aware of their future bonds, with the mixed praiseworthy and accusatory consequences thereof.

Literary authorities maintain that the function of a novel is to entertain, and the function of a journal or text book is to edify. This novel-journal format respectfully defers to the dual purpose of conjunctive entertainment and edification.

The Pact
That: ‘When life loses its value, and is taken for naught, this is to be avenged.'
- Kara, the Defender.
Excerpt from HEAVY METAL (the movie, and the mission)

Athena, the Greek Goddess of Wisdom & War




LE CONTES AND THE FISHERMAN
Southern Italy, March 1958
This afternoon, the Cardinal from Rome will conduct the annual, Vatican sponsored Good Luck blessing of Port Messina’s fisher people and their boats. The conglomerate, festivity decorated fishing vessels began to arrive here days ago, from dozens of local and remote, Sicilian and southern Italian ports; with more arrived today than yesterday, and so on, for the past week.

About 30,000 cheerfully reverent land based fishing industried families and friends have gathered in the course of this morning and incumbently early afternoon. Loosely assembled and camped out on picnic tables and improvised blankets upon this grassy shore, surrounding a series of U-shaped docking and mooring locations.

Most of the presiding fishing vessels will soon sail into the Tyrrehenian Sea, NNW of Sicily; from the toe of Italy’s geographical boot - right where the mainland is legendarily said to be cartographically kicking Sicily out of the Italian Family - at the Sicilian port of Messina, on the same Straits.

Some of the larger boats here will soon depart and venture through the Gibraltar Straits into the open North Atlantic. Traveling as far as south Newfoundland and Nova Scotia to take on, eviscerate, salt and/or refrigerate mackerel and ‘the beef of the sea’ - codfish from the cold black, world famous reward of ‘New England’s Grand Banks.’

A Swell Fishing Place
More than distance made such expeditions prohibitive to most European based cottage industried fisherman inside the Pillars of Hercules; more recently called Gibraltar Straits. Due west from there the North Atlantic deep carries on, way past the Azores, across the Great Piddle Dee Dee, to the Grand Banks proper. North by northeast of the North American continental shelf, where the Atlantic becomes a relatively shallow pasture in the upper left hand corner of the cartographically represented Gulf Stream reinforced Sargasso Sea. Due north of which lies the characteristically fog-bound Grand Banks shallows, surrounded by deep sub oceanic valleys; birthing great culminating briny mountains, the equivalent of permanently gale driven, politely round-topped swells even when there is little wind. With a one pennant Gale Force wind of only 20 knots these seas are hazardous to all small craft. With a two pennant Gale Force of forty knots, they are deadly, curling and breaking, white-capped fishing boat killers, accountable to the continental North American shelf and the deep trans-oceanic rollers rising up when they encounter the subjected shallows.

The ever culminating Gulf Stream Current’s northbound choppy-lump stacks up, coming home on the surface from the deep, as formerly gentle round topped swells roll into and are thrown as snowy bearded, curling white-caps, up and over the relatively shallow Grand Banks area of North Atlantic Fishing Heaven: the intrinsically dynamic oceanic prices paid for enjoying the best harvests of as many fish as there may be in any of the other six major seas.
La Mar Norte is notoriously temperamental and capricious here; the very tempestuous North Atlantic at large, is named after the legendary ‘Lost Island of Atlantis’ it’s voraciously obscure self. Strongly rumored - of two possible locations - to be on or near this very continental sub oceanic shelf. The other considered location of Atlantis is tentatively speculated to be deep inside the Mediterranean Sea, across the Aegean reserved Grecian Isle Chain, where Mother Med hunkers up to the Middle East - west of Turkey and east Of Greece. The Lost City Of Atlantis may be between those two land masses just south of the Bosporus Straits separating southernmost Europe from the Middle Eastern Orient. Or, somewhere near or within the North Atlantic’s Grand Banks. There are responsible schools of thought that say there was an Atlantis in both - otherwise disputed - locations.
No one - not even Herodotus or Plato - has ever been sure, since the place disappeared, exactly where Ms. La Mar may have drop-zoned the contentiously elusive setting. She is said to have been fairly annoyed - stirred up, at the time. The cataclysmic event, recorded as having occurred in 1628 B.C. (Gezundheit?).

Some say Atlantis was inside the Mediterranean Gibraltar Straits, near or part of what is now Cyprus and/or the Grecian Isles. Manifesting a naturally shaped concentric land mass, oceanically harboring a rare, relatively warless, highly evolved civilization - Minoa - inhabited by Minoans. Able to defend themselves from any opposition, without being geographically or politically ‘expansive’. This civilization went extinct in the place of its origin, for reasons known to have been initiated by a large volcanic explosion.

Major geological and other authorities say that it may have been the largest explosion ever known to happen on a geologically 'cooled' earth, creating a crater one mile deep and eight miles wide, near Thera, Greece. Generating a tidal wave height of eight hundred feet, flooding every coastal port on the Mediterranean to an inland distance of thirty miles; perishing an incalculable number of coastally sequestered human inhabitants. There are indications that the ensuing smoke clouds reached North America and blotted out the sun - this is confirmed by latently petrified tree rings. Atlantis is also associated with the Greek Minoan culture, centered in Crete. A uniquely peaceful civilization at its peak of development; it may have been what Plato - and Herodotus - called Atlantis.

"In a single day and a night of misfortune, the island of Atlantis disappeared into the depths of the sea". - Plato, 360 B.C. The Story Of Atlantis.
The surviving denizens - those who were not in the homeland site of the disaster when it occurred - are said to have migrated to and infused all over Europe, the Middle East and Asia. That, the entire Eurasian continent was traveled to and settled down in, by individually surviving Minoan families, having in many locations a Renaissance-like impact on whatever society they adopted after their great migrations from the vocanically annihilated mother country.

Others say Atlantis was located in what was later namesaked after it, as the North Atlantic. Good fishing. If you can get it. And the Grand Banks based fishermen get it when they try. Along with the fish goes literally, what is considered the most dangerous occupation in the world. Deep water fishing by deep water fisher people. Including those who travel - round trip - all the way across half the Mediterranean and almost all of the North Atlantic.

"It's no fish ye're buying, it's men's lives."- Sir Walter Scott, The Antiquary, Chapter 11

Meanwhile. Back At Messina Straits:
All of today’s shoreline plazas and mezzanines are a singular continuous esplanade. A promenade of ad hoc commerce, sprinkled with variegated food and fun vendors; all of which merry and money makers are theoretically awaiting anxiously the appointed arrival moment of the celebrated crimson vicar. Representing the venerated man from the internationally looked up to hillside in the ‘Eternal City of Rome’. Home of the papal residency; otherwise known as the Vatican. Militarily guarded by the notably, internationally neutral country of Switzerland. In political parity, the Pope occupies a benevolent dictatorial seat. The European Counterpart for Washington, DC. A political location that transcends statehood and constitutes sovereignty, looming high above the seven hills of Rome and most laws of any and all lands, including the very - ex officio - soil their socio-political roots are extra judicially sunk into.

“Rome was a dogma before London was a puppyism”. - A framed, calligraphy typograph on a *LesBeaus’ concourse wall.
(More about that *place, later.)

The expected chariot arrives at exactly one o’clock in the afternoon. The unopened vehicle door is stopped directly over a richly bright, deep magenta wool carpet; several spliced sections of which make nearly three hundred meters length. Leading evenly and keenly all the way down to the main gangway on the gnarly salted, ever groaning ancient pile-driven mahogany wood and metal eye-beamed uprights - aligned as the pipes of Pan, stylizing the accompanying steel pier framed and concrete afforded bulwarks.

Seaward surfaces and edges of the fishing boat berthing sanctuary are covered with well worn automobile tire semi-circles, unbleached hemp and yellow orange buffed, burlap-shrouded chafing gear. Sighing and buffeting in roughly syncopated rhythm, musically back grounding the docking areas; orchestrated by ever ingressing and egressing tidal surges.

The olfactory foreground aromatically carries breezy salt seasoned seaweed and variously schooled, beached and bleached fresh ocean birthed flora and fauna. Among the ensemble of reasons the ocean is deemed female, and the mother of us all. Certainly including the incumbent dockside, landlocked deep fried calamari cooks and spaghetti benders, mixing their wares with the scented sea blend.

The thin red line of finely loomed woolen welcome carpet from shore to dock is intersected near its center by a narrower tributary of itself, leading to the base of a triple scale enlarged bronzed and marble statue of St. Rosalia, guardian angel of all fisher people and boats, stationed halfway between the arriving holy man’s designated embarcadero and the ever boiling, shore lined widow maker. Perhaps, St. Rosalia is too busy protecting fisherman, to get married. St. Christopher may be a terrestrially bound bachelor for the same resolutely protective, eternally duty-bound reason.

The one legged gulls have been perched on the tops of that row of pilings right there above the wharf, to seaward vanishing point - have been scolding and panhandling passers-by and pooping in the water; white washing the upper piling and pier at this location for at least fifteen pictorial centuries. More recently well represented by the past sixty human generations in several local art and photography museums, including world class schools of international Science & Arts reputation. The latter institutions prove to anyone who cares to know, that there are at least fifty varieties of gulls getting this raucously important job done, all over the seven wondered, seabird circumnavigated, oceanically dominated earthly sphere.

Prior to the expected holy man’s Big Arrival, the presiding, complimentary crimson clad, perhaps fifty piece standing and seated orchestral band - in an architectural half-shell near the beach - had been belting out BLUE SKIES (‘shining on me’) in instrumental English. Upon sighting the arriving coach, the presiding orchestra strikes up a reverent Handel’s MESSIAH; having an impromptu musical detour planned for the scheduled St. Rosalia coordinated portion of the arrived Cardinal’s pre-programmed tour.

A livery clad driver sets the long, brass handled brake assembly on the coach wheels, while a matching liveried aide stationed beside him, steps down to open the Chinese red, gold and black gilted coach door, upon which is carved and ornately high lighted, the uniquely venerable signatorial emblem of the sovereign Vatican state. Throne of Christianity’s beginnings; including St. Peter’s - The First Missionary’s - Basilica and the Michelangelo embellished Sistine Chapel.

The District of Columbia in WA., DC, may be the sovereign Vatican State’s only, equally politically immune, Corporate State equivalent. Certain liaison’s out of either place are said to have ‘diplomatic immunity’, and they do. Said to be above the law. And at least some times in particular, they are. More about that supra legal, fickle fiat later, but now this.
The crimson robed disembarkee is contrasted in standing and waving profile against the outside of his arrived Victorian carriage. Winter is unabated and the holy man’s ethereal breath appears starch white in whirling translucency’s cast against the opaquely shining, black antique enamel framed phaeton carriage, contrasted with a bright, slate colored sky.
Preceding the quietly parked spoke wheeled apparition are the stout legged, hoof stamping bodies of six huge, white gray dappled, snorting equestrian engines. Three matching pairs of team harnessed Sicilian mares and geldings side by side. The entire and especially forward quarters of which massive dapple gray tandem bodies, continuously emit enormous, semi-sweet hay scented wafts of vertically curl spinning, upright sweltering vapor. Quiescently gentle, velvet cushion nostriled beasts at ease; generating steam into the chill winter afternoon, from a half dozen equine furnaces - projecting rising columns of horizontally wind swept, opaquely sun-lighted and white capped aerial engravings sailing over a background of cobble stones, awash in near and distant ripe grass and clover.

The warm confluence of six horses rides a corridor of convectional air current, to finally snap its own gossamer whip; thereupon the featured will o’wisp is thermospherically absorbed, so as to completely and abruptly disappear altogether. Looking and behaving as, what - at higher altitudes - meteorologists call ‘mare’s tails’. High and nimbus gossamer tendrils originating from and leading back to their own alternately snorting, head and mane shaking, hoof stomping equine charges.

The old Catholic fisherman has landed his limit today. His dear old friend - le Contes - is here in the present. Well over a decade after the martyred passing of the Count; with all three of his partisan sons. Leaving only le Contes - ‘Solamente’ - and her three splendid daughters all that remains of the beloved ‘Count Of Angels’, to carry on with today’s gathered, exuberantly celebrating constituents. These were more specifically the Count’s self expressed provincials; assembled here from both sides of the Messina straits; dividing southern Italy’s mainland boot toe - the south-most province of Calabria, city of Reggio - from northern Sicily’s city of Messina.
A mixed retinue of ubiquitous sea and shore birds, including a score of gull variations dominating several dozen numerically lesser terns and frigate birds - soar, perch and quarrel. Clustering and screeching most energetically around floating morsels of food, thoughtfully or inadvertently tossed from boats and the shore, by the attending throng of friendly, floating and land-locked, paisani. All here to celebrate a carefully thrown party with a traditionally good excuse.

The Sparkling Narrative Confluentially Continues
Until today, these dearly beloved’s gathered here had not seen their Contes for the past fifteen years. Not since ‘43. The Count on the other hand, until his untimely passing in the war, had not failed to yearly preside over this event with his family, for the past five hundred years or so. The traditional bonds were that antiquated and correspondingly strong; or so they had been.

The Old World Spanish Armada and then The French Revolution, immediately followed by France’s Army under Napoleon Bonaparte the Ist, had taken epochal turns requiring the D’Angelico aristocracy to go dormant right along with all other vestiges of unhindered social democracy. But these threatened, historically suspended systems had never been made extinct; presently enjoying regained - post W.W. II - social celebration. There remained of the Count in this province, only his widow, Le Contes Solamente Marie D’Angelico, who, from the commencement of her widowhood, had not indeed ever considered being married to anyone else.

The blamelessly abysmal sea hadn’t taken her husband. No indeed, that had been the meticulously vollified work of the Nazi 3rd Reich, boiling humanity in its pyrotechnically streamlined kitchen; with its usual order of bugle blowing chefs by any other sanitized handle. ‘Living room (lebensraum)’, the Nazis called it. What the SS was looking for in Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Poland, France, Holland, Norway, and England, for example - that and all the rest of Europe and Russia was pre designated 'lebensraum'. Jah vuhl. Gothic elbow room.
The provincially industried fishing people long ago learned of the Contes having ‘adopted a new family’; which, from the outset of her widowhood and ‘new philosophy’ the departed Count’s people had promptly if remotely recognized and accepted - their Contessa’s rumored - may the record say, newly acquired - delicate unconventionality.
Le Contes was not sure that her involuntary responsibilities of widowhood - indeed her extant title as contes - were even recognized in the hearts and minds of the people her husband was the very popular benefactor of.

Not a particularly secretive person, Sola simply wasn’t in contact with who had been her husband’s provincials. Primarily because they reminded her of him - that he was gone; his absence among them. She never attended any cocktail parties for example, however thinly or thickly disguised as a social event, when in fact such failed arrangements had been politically and/or religiously motivated. In this way le Contes was not much like the late Count, who could usually be visited within his private home by anyone who cared to knock on his door. (‘Laissez & Savoir Faire’. - Fr.)

He was known for fulfilling any reasonable request from any deserving provincial resident or their worthy friends; of whatever denomination, if and when it was within his power to do so. Count Enrique Suliman D’Angelico’s power in these ‘unimportant social circles’ was politically living legend; as the high rolling lobbyists say in Washington, D.C., and in the well polished, moving and shaking halls of countless international embassies and unnamed diplomatic alcoves, anterooms AND/OR OUT TO LUNCH breaks.

Reasonably well balanced democracy; whereas, these people politely but steadfastly insist it's socialism. ‘Neither democracy nor communism, thank you. We are socialists. Neither Communist nor Capitalist. We uniformly distribute the public wealth and keep the peace under the democratically established law. The Magna Carta is the formal beginning of all liberations for all persons, including U.S. citizens protected by the national constitution of laws. We socialistically hold these quasi-democratic truths to be self evident’, etc.

This was among the many reasons the extant Contes effortlessly rung a popular chord with the proletariat majority in these parts. Unlike most provincial demagogues, her husband had made a tradition of sharing province revenue wealth with the poor people. As generously and uniformly as the publicly watch-guarded and published budget would allow. A difficult political platform for anyone to disagree with. It had been the socio-economic status quo for centuries in this area, before Democracy and Communism sprang up to give it a name. The American political body often calls such subjects ‘constituents’. A Count, Baron, Graf, Viceroy or Duke may call them ‘subjects’ or ‘provincials’ - residents of established, no longer altogether post Roman Empirical feudal provinces.

Without her husband, La Sola dared not say anymore, who these provincial persons - these fisher families - might be to her, or who she might be to them. Le Contes lacked confidence that her rumored many admirers would approve of her new, as it were, lifestyle. Certainly she had not wished to offend anyone by appearing at any formal occasion, with or without her acquired friends. At least, not until today. Having long ago learned to live a relatively reclusive and socially guarded life. There were other reasons for this, as will be explained in the advancing narrative.

Her lately transformed libido was common knowledge and a delicate subject of polite and even reverential controversy. Contes continued to be a highly reputed, tough little independent cookie - and mustard - cutter. No one who was anyone in Upper Crust would leave home to attend a social gathering; to drop a name - or pie someone’s face - without her.
Even upper U.S. and North Atlantic / International Alliance Treaty Organization, CRYPTO, and Naples based Mediterranean Navy Fleet Command channels were known to pale and creak under the potentially awesome, entirely untested post war political weight of her otherwise personally fragile, peacetime physical stature. She was wholesomely modest, and tentatively shy. Staying off the socio-politically traveled paths and by ways.
Le Contes knew her provincials were aware of her newly adopted family, but she hadn't yet realized 'the Count's people' had also heartily approved of and adopted said company along with Le Contes herself. Her ‘new family’ was one of the more fastidious terms for it.

The Written Formal Request:
An impressive card and invitational letter had specifically encouraged her to bring as many of her new family and friends as she cared to; for that reason alone an extraordinary document. It was the note’s diplomatic way of proving the semi-controversied coast to be clear. Best word on this note was that the qualified, Mirage coded name, ‘Giraf’, was specifically included in this after all, rare invitation. That was diplomacy’s candid way of getting personal, while remaining polite and friendly - perhaps even caring.

How did the Cardinal know my best friend’s Mirage ( ' Mee-rahj'j name?
She really didn’t know. Oh my.

The Impressive Card & Letter:
Segue to six week old flashback at le Contes’ Roman retreat; where Buona Matrimo, also known as 'Giraf' - a tower of spun sheathed lame' gold, delivers a registered envelope. Buona is Sola’s nearest confidante and there are some guesses, also her personal body guard, though no such adjectives are used in these inner circles.
“Madame, ah let’air for yew-uh”.
“Thank you mon ami. Just put it on the sideboard there, please”.
“Madame. I mawst-uh tell yew-uh frawm the retorn ah-dress, eet loogs lig-guh let’air frawm-uh thee Vahticahn.”
“Buona, mi carina, please tell me in French. Sometimes your accent is elusively thick when you speak English.”
Buona Giraf repeats herself in French; translation follows:
“Madam. A letter for you. I must tell you from the return address, it looks like a letter from the Vatican.”
“From Vatican City? Here in Rome?”
“Oui Madam.”
The matriarch's framed doily needle work pauses in thoughtful reflection.
“All I can think of that would politically explain this is, the Cardinal still wishes my conversion to the Catholic church - to favor the Count’s fabled Catholic majority following. I dare not think that bond is extended to myself, however, Catholic or not.”
“Aye theenk madam-uh und’air esteemates hare-self-uh”.

“Monsignor Cardinale knows that neither the Count nor myself were ever fond of what has happened to religious institutions. The Catholic people are dear to everything we believe in, but the Church hierarchy itself is a crudely veiled corporate dictatorship. Any large church at its upper echelons, really. Corporate states -jurisprudence denotes them, not responsible for what they do. An absurd, potentially destructive notion made into correspondingly insensitive man-made law. Those are my late husband's thoughts on it and mine also.”
“Oui, Madam”.

Buona was of the same philosphical school, though less outspoken of it. Madam was disarmingly candid. Knowing the diplomatic value of compromise while at times impartially forsaking it. There was no political or social ambiton here, or at least there hadn't been. On the other hand, le Contes carried an unguarded, incorruptible curiosity. She’d been known to openly defend the moral superiority of peasant society in general. Peasant Catholics were not the only church elements who had taken gracious note of it. Giraf also, was a known defender of politically powerless, lowly gypsies, for example - what was left of them since the 3rd Reich purged them with the Jews, Poles and Czechs.

Birds Of A Plumage
Persuading Sola to attend and preside at the occasion had been a considerable chore - an untitled Church errand for which Le Cardinale had made thirteen annually failed efforts in that many years. Even with the Vatican’s letterhead it had not been easy diplomacy. Le Contes was almost tiny of physical stature, but no one who knew her doubted her strength or wisdom, or for that matter her enormous capacity for what passed to be just plain stubbornness. Madam didn't underestimated herself; but rather perhaps, people’s estimations of her - those who in fact knew her. On the other hand, the outer-circle critics - extant, die-hard Nazis, Fascist brown and black shirts and/or their residual confederates and sympathizers - said her popularity was but a part of her ‘contrived charms’.

The worst her most outstanding critics could summon was that her undeniable charm must ‘therefore’ be ‘contrived’. That being exactly what such self revealing criticisms were. Contrived. Clearly. Solamente contrived World War II. The perishment of her husband and three sons doing ardently fierce battle with the Nazis. Her undeniably venerable, heroic, retaliatory part in it. Her critics and enemies (who we will learn more about) still boldly proffered to call this a 'contrivance'; on her part...
Getting her there required a petition; which her Nibs had summarily and diplomatically persuaded from Monsignor Cardinale. A petition signed by nearly every fisherman, wife and family member on both sides of the Messina straits.

The inner circle was told by a little forthwith bird that le Contes was indeed moved, upon beholding the petition with so many signatures. Often with ex tempor, long hand written well wishes, encouragement and short, endearing messages. Many, accompanied by affectionately inspired pencil and/or pen sketches, watercolor and crayon rendered drawings and unabashed free wheeling doodles. A little bird said that le Contes had happily wept, to learn that so many people she hadn’t seen for so long, still remembered and cared that much.

Since the passing of her beloved husband, Contes had remained ‘uncertain’ of public feeling toward herself, widow of ‘the poor fisherman’s benefactor’, Count Enrique Suliman D’Angelico himself.
A high Churchman had specifically invited her to bring her friends. Mentioning her best friend by name; that Solamente’s paramour - ‘Giraf’ - should in turn, furthermore, invite her friends, to the issued, annual occasion.

Traditionally, that amounted to tens of thousands of presiding souls. Perhaps three times ten thousand. Le Contes had yet to realize her own influence - that her’s had come full circle, as it were. The reluctant house mother was being circumspectly awakened as gently as possible.

A Handsome Dash Of Plot Thickener
A small table at the front of a middle distanced outside restaurant verandah is blandly occupied by three variously ranking American military men in non-descriptly inconspicuous civilian clothing. Their ongoing untranslated conversation follows:
“This is the Cardinal who did not have to perish when another Pope’s Advocate - Vincente - was taken by the Gestapo. This one was a Bishop then, a loyal friend to an ‘anonymous’ young brunette woman - a Roman-Neapolitan GIAPPI ( 'GAP' 'Group Action Partisans' - the English translated acronym. The Italian acronym is 'GIAPPI'). One of some 30,000 Italian underground resistors - who, it is said, went out into Mussolini’s Black shirt Fascist and Nazi occupied post-curfew darkness, gun in hand, to shoot down Nazi and Fascist soldiers in the streets of Rome and Naples”.

“Yes. One of the very few officials who knew that among these was this very same Contes, and that she was really blond, was also Vincenti’s heir on the Catholic totem pole.”
“He had a choice between protecting this woman, or his immediate superior, Cardinal Vincenti”.
“Affirmative. He chose to save this non-Catholic woman rather than his own holy predecessor”.
Pause
The Lieutenant Colonel enters the conversation.
“A difficult choice, I’m sure.”

The Sergeant fields a patient smile from the Major. The former replies amiably to the ranking officer:
“I think not, sir. The Pope was fraternizing with - under acknowledged extreme duress from - the Blackshirts and Nazis. Whereas, Count D’Angelico and all his sons and adult family were among the GIAPPI partisans who insisted on satchel bombing and shooting them.” Brief, spectral laughter.

The Major picks up where the Sergeant left off:
“The very same partisans are also subjects of an immortalized GIAPPI minstrel song: ‘In the dead of urban nights; mountain moon and city lights, Nazis and Fascists die here and now; where found’. Triumphantly unsurrendered words that rhyme and reason much better when sung in Italian. You may still hear it in the streets, right along with the popular songs of Caruso, and Mario Lanza’s AVE MARIA, along with earlier and even better known continental and local bard-spun classics. Naples is internationally known as the home of opera, after all. Italian opera, like ancient Greek literature is characteristically tragic. The street authored lyric never tells the names of its protagonists, but since the war, everyone knows who they are.”

“That is affirmative. Word is that few partisans hit more keystone Nazis more sleekly and frequently than the Count and - after his passing with his three partisan underground sons - his wife. Oh yes. Si.” Pause.

“Who would ever think that the middle aged center of all this paisani multitude in attendance here, had such a past?”
“Somehow, even knowing all of this, she still doesn’t look the part. Looks more like somebody’s unusually attractive, sedentary mother.”
The Sergeant appends: “The mother of six, actually. Three boys and three girls. During the war the boys were old enough to participate with their father. A truly sad story. All of them perished together, fighting Germans in southern Italy. Only the daughters and their mother remain.” Pause.
“Reliable sources say she started her part in the GIAPPI underground after her husband and son’s were lost. That she did most of her best work - an impressive lot of personal kills - in Rome and Naples...”
"Personal kills? Doesn't that mean 'body count'?"
"Si, signor."
"Jah vuhl, Herr Chancellor. Killed a mess of 'em, dead as Mussolini and his mistress."

In affectation, the Lt. Colonel glances up from cursory perusement of a table menu, slightly lowers his head to look over his steel rimmed reading spectacles; individually scans his attentive company, then effects a rurally caricatured:
“Who’da ever thunk it?”. Pause
Darkly restrained laughter from all three points of the chaired, conversational triangle, inconspicuously seated at a small wooden table in the middle distance from the described, panoramically celebrating foreground.

By and by, the pressed yellow ribbon and hyacinth flower bouquet cluster that had arrived with the elegantly bound petition book, became the presiding guest of honor’s thoughtful corsage. Over a raw silk, Med-blue, semi Victorian styled full length silk gown, not entirely covering a flourish of ethereal petticoats. All of that, pinioned on a fine pair of tall and small, old fashioned shiny black leather, one and a half inch heeled granny boots with the out of sight laces that go all the way up to there (Oh My).

Reconsidered Petticoats At The Fishing Boat Junction:
With the presiding Cardinal’s gratitude, Sola Marie was for all to see, somehow persuaded to be comfortably seated at the bronze sculptured, sandaled feet of La Santa Maria’s very Saint Rosalia; accompanied by her youngest daughter, ‘Mara’. Mother and child are semi-circled by an elegantly attired, vari-tailored entourage of nine unnamed but patently lovely young and middle aged women, at and about La Madre’s incomparably secured quasi Victorian flanks.

Including her unintroduced, breath takingly unignorable golden eyed sentinel, Buona Giraf. Surveying all from above the immediate back of Madam’s improvised, filigreed oak, powder blue velvet upholstered double love seat. In its turn, resting comfortably if inanimately on six pantheistically symbolic totems of jet black, cast iron dragon, tiger and lions’ paws. Thank you very much. (Merci beau coups. - Fr.)

The liaison Cardinal would soon tell the Pope of this and the Holy Father would lean forward from the Pulpit to listen attentively. Then to query:
‘She is Sicilian, but not Catholic?’
‘Half Sicilian, your eminence. And half Russian."
‘When will her Sicilian half be Catholic? You could be her only confessor. She knows you. That there are no important secrets between you’.
‘I’m doing the best I can, your Holiness. If you will Sir, Rome was not built in a day’.
‘You’ve accomplished wonders for the Holy Mother already, mon ami. Perhaps I should not ask for more than one gentle miracle at a time’.

The traditional crowd here for as many years as it’s been since the last ‘greatest of all wars’ ended, always number about the same - approximately thirty thousand. The same estimated number of GIAPPI - unsurrendered Fascist fighters and their families - during W.W. II. That many fisherman with their families schooling and recessing here today. A gathering of Group Action Partisans - G.A.P., by other renown.

NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) Upper: knew all too well that this reluctantly political woman was not naive. Merely out of practice. It was silently wished in the interests of U.S. military elements that she would remain so. FLEET MED COMM (Fleet Mediterranean Command), stationed in Naples, had many names for this allied war orphan. One such coinage was ‘The Uncirculated Gold Mint’. That particularly rich title referred to Count Enrique Suliman D’Angelico, who was somehow connected to what was extant from what had been known centuries earlier as the Venetian Merchant’s Guild. Not only in the Messina Straits of Sicily-Reggio, but also Naples, Genoa, and certainly Rome. Especially the Vatican, or so it was popularly said .

Her reclusive habits were well known and understood, by friend and foe equally. The war has never really ended for the GIAPPI partisans who helped the Allies drive the Germans back to the Rhine, and the ensuing fall of Berlin. More about that battleground and post war intrigue, later.
The more code names a subject had in NATO, the more important that person was, and the less most people knew about them. There were about a half dozen code names for Sola, including, ‘The one hundred pounder’. She was that imponderously heavy; in permanent if involuntary residence at the metaphorical, military codified, diplomatic inn of multiple nombres des plumes and many other quaint but consistently reverential monikers.

The arriving and waving mini-pontiff is not quite walking an inch off the ground and humming VOLARE (‘To fly’ - Italian) aloud - ‘You make my happy heart sing!’, with explicit satisfaction. Her diplomatically paraphrased counterpart for love, has apparently given him socio-politically recognizable wings (paraphrased).

The Cardinal’s attending flock knows he brought their grapevine decorated Contes (‘Our one and only child’. ‘Le Bebe’, 'Mon Chere', ‘‘Mother Mediterranean’; ‘The Eternal Smile’) with their petition, of course. A man of the Cloth returned a lost child to her people, and The Boss had chosen a grand if nippy spring day for the celebrated reunion.

The exuberant paisani (Italians of the same regions) perfunctorily part for the approaching Fisherman, while crowding about the spotless red carpet near its mid-appendage - where it jogs from its seaward vector, toward the bronze sandals of the immortally statuesque St. Rosalia, presently shading and hosting le Contes.

With its back to the sea, the band shelled orchestra melts smoothly out of MESSIAH into the advent of THE BUTTERFLY BALLET. The throng hushes momentarily at the musical transition, as the course changing Cardinal turns ninety degrees to his left; facing the concrete, bronze and marble sculptured female guardian aegis of all fisher families. Casting a welcome shadow of relief against the sun over the seated guest’s pale blue eyes under a matching veil. The Cardinal’s rueful eyes meet those of his guest of honor for the first time since the German occupation. The GIAPPI never recognized Mussolini as their leader, never submitted to or compromised with the so called ‘Iron Axis’ of Germany, Italy and Japan; referring only to Germany as 'the enemy: furor Germanicus, the Teutonic Terror', and only as invasionary occupationist troops - not ‘allies’.

A gentle baritone male voice calls out in Italian from the crowd, ‘La Solamente Una (‘The only one’)!’ The gathering immediately refines and echoes the soulful queue - softly at first; then building to a boldly synchronized mantra:
‘La Contessa! La Contessa! La Contessa!’
Projected in this way, it seems an awfully expansive title for just one very small person like me.

From the provided dais, the considered subject of affection slowly rises to the occasion; thence calmly stood up at her appointment and receiving station. Limpidly making all possible eye contact with the entire merrily chanting multitude. That’s all she does. Yet, the crowd applause and cheering is tumultuous. Showing no signs of abatement, after the better part of a full minute. The erstwhile becalmed Contes occasionally executes unhurried genuflectures.

Sensing an auspicious encore; having begun to hear certain portions of the gallery calling out in a half dozen languages for a ‘Speech!’ the introverted but discreetly tactful hostess turns momentarily from the crowd to take her seated, eighteen year old daughter’s elbow length, close fitting gloved left hand - that Mara may likewise rise to the occasion, at her mother’s right arm.

Brought her youngest daughter, the door opener, with her today. Hardly by accident. Mara Icebreaker is even smaller, but somehow less fragile looking than her lighter hued, porcelinesque mother. A family rumor is, Mara may be the only person in the world who can make her mother blush, and laugh, at the same time.

Recently, her eldest daughter, Beatrice Aneja, had cautiously asked mother of her decision to employ Mara - ad lib - at this occasion. Whether or not it ‘might be a little chancy’, was the way Beatrice had worded the question; not without a feline grin.
Mother had smiled back at her eldest and replied: “I don’t think so. She’ll be fine”.

“Well. Fine is one thing and ‘appropriate’ is another. Particularly with regard to Mara. Without any preparation and no rehearsal, there’s no telling what you’ll get from that one, you know.”
“I understand your point. Mine is that we will certainly get spontaneity and candor - one of the few sure ways I know to properly impress most Italians”.
“We shall certainly see in a week, won’t we?’, replied the wistful eldest daughter.

Youngest daughter emulates her mother’s earlier non-verbal gestures and eye contact. Occasionally interrupting that discipline with the ad hoc blowing of tenderly delivered and enthusiastically received kisses from her primly unmade up, full lipped mouth and olive shaped and shaded countenance, to the responsively ecstatic gathering. Her celebrating audience in turn, blowing kisses back in generously equivalent decantations, to and from the improvised dais at the feet of St. Rosalia.

Modestly wild hand-arm gestures with stifled giggles accompany the lately introduced, short sleeve gown wearing element. The gathered enthusiasm and excitement having inspired in its turn all the more fruitful zest from little Mara, who projects the upwardly spiraling, spiritually giddy nectar back upon the faithfully nourishing source. Of course, le Contes' people equably reciprocate this rising socialization with even more gleeful, perhaps slightly fermented abandon. Adding the throwing of Good Luck rice in high, gentle arcs, to rain down upon and around Sola and her entourage; enough to accent highlights between the toes of the sainted Patroness’s ancient, triple scale enlarged, size 21 or so bronze sandals.

Enjoined with his flock, the presiding Churchman is stopped about ten feet in front of Solamente’s improvised throne. In honorific expression, he turns again to the congenial convention, raising his hands in a politely unspoken gesture of subduing the various and thundering vocalizations. Even the author of this last non verbal communication is implicitly surprised, as the crowd explicitly hushes almost instantly, to a very low din - then a softening murmur; to fade-out . He is rightfully sure it’s not himself they wish to hear from.

The High Priest drops his raised hands to form a ten digit steeple at his solar plexus; his arms return to his sides as he pivots back to face the ever smiling Contes’ pale blue veil. Modestly gesturing to her, that she might step forward to the microphone stand one of his aides has just now placed and set up, about three feet in front of the standing guest of honor.
Invited to say something aloud to everyone, by way of the presently activated, twelve speaker P.A. system, covering several sunny and shady acres of seaside, beach and earthen park, on the landward side of the embarcadero.

May be quiet enough on the enormously staged, sounded and 12 pica cinemascoped setting for an errant scoop of free falling, tri-colored Neapolitan ice cream to be overheard striking the Italian word for sidewalk (‘pavement’ - ‘pah-veh-ment-eh’); or the rustling cortege of raw silk skirts on the dais, from anywhere on the subjected seascape; meadowland shrubs and grasses. Panoramically awash in pointed images of tiny sunstruck, dewy sprigs of shimmer-glinting bluegrass and sparkling clover, carpeting the brightly celebrated crystal afternoon’s patchy slate and sky blue rendezvous.

Sola deftly raises both arms and hands about her rakishly sleek, flat and wide brimmed sombrero, handling it just enough to unveil azure-gray eyes; smartly pinning the wispy blue obscuration in elegant suspension; at the side of her wheat colored, hand woven Euphrates River reed hat. Turning to direct upon Mara, the same gesture le Cardinale Rouge had directed upon herself. Anyone else may have felt on the spot, but Mara fielded the unrehearsed invitational program like a seasoned trouper.

Mara Smartly, pirouettes out of her semi-circled formation at the locus of the Mirage Entourage and marches straight to the microphone stand. Promptly reaches up with snugly kid glove sheathed, thin fingers to adjust the speaker, to an even slightly lower level than the the Cardinal had arranged for her mother.

A hastily installed technology network rudely squawks alternately high and low pitched, electrically amplified and recycled screeches of feedback with intermittent electronic snaps, pops and crackles. A Cardinal employed aide de camp anxiously works with the technical problem at a side staged control panel.

The unscheduled, high volume audio-electric show accents the event rather than detracting from it. Drawing mixed amusement and surprise from the vast concourse populus; while at the same time alarming and putting to flight several scattered bevies of mildly startled larks, sparrows and little yellow winged canaries. Buzzing and caroming over and through the crowd from several sanctuaries scattered throughout the manicured hedgerows and other landscaped, botanically cultivated, indigenous parkway parameters.

The near and far gathered fishing tribe is visually and audibly discernible even in the more distantly employed picnic grounds, characteristically marked with thematically sympathetic festive decorations and brightly colored, highly flown and wind blown, silk, satin and cotten buntings.

The undauntedly staged signorina - the only M.C. on this set - serenely turns her eyes from the ongoing sound system repairs to her well wishers; then to her mother, as she nimbly resolves her mechanical adjustments on the now properly stationed microphone. The formerly intrusive electro-mechanical feedback rebellion abruptly subsides from the near and remote network of pastorally placed speakers. A merciful golden silence prevails. Leaving for a few moments only a few extantly howling family dogs, who had been sympathetically singing with the high pitched feedback sounds, as they seem compelled to enjoin. With no more electronically stimulating accompaniment, the canine chorus is quickly bored with it self and likewise goes silent. Sigh.

Front & Center places her recently unemployed, relaxed and clasping hands at the front of her opaque, silver white gown. Patiently renewing eye contact with large, near and far portions of her entirely captive audience; finally addressing all in a richly mellifluous voice, considerably huskier than her tre-petit, cherubic 4’ 9”, 41 kilo appearance might suggest. (Italian to English translation follows):

“Solamente Marie D'Angelico has three daughters; of whom I am the youngest. I am also the only one of the three of us who is even smaller than our mother. My name is Mara Benevida, and I am much honored to be here with all of you”.
Applause
“Does anyone here know of Cardinal Giovanni?”

Scattered chuckling follows. Then, a more jocularly exuberant laughter, finally capped with more generous applause. Mara Straightface gestures toward the Cardinal standing beside her reseated mother.
ChiChi Mirage - of the surrounding entourage - has already privately observed the Cardinal to be ‘The only gentleman wearing a red uniform here today, who isn’t playing in the band’. That line drew a lot of happy, semi-circular Mirage chuckles.

The background subjected Cardinal standing in Mara’s vacant station at Sola’s right hand, executes a shallow bow to his audience, then sweeps his hand and forearm back toward Mara - mildly balking her offer to surrender her place at the microphone. Mara makes the same easy gesture of surrendering the podium toward her seated mother, at the standing Cardinal’s immediate left hand.

“Allow me then, to introduce Madam Contessa Solamente Marie D’Angelico.”
Her hand enjoined in the accompanying Cardinal’s, mother lightly and briefly stands to deliver a brisk curtsey; then regally reseats herself. Resuming her previously unimpeachable reticence and postural aura; all apparent confidence tempered with modesty bordering on timidity. Fifteen seconds of robust applause. Respectful pause.

Mara gently comments, “Apparently the taciturn object of your affections is unaccustomed to such adulation. Sits back down before you’re through welcoming her. We will consider forgiving her, or course. Since she obviously doesn’t know any better”.
Five seconds of awkward silence intermingled with audience murmur and conservative laughter.
“I do hope that you will forgive and care about this woman. Because, well. She’s my mother”. Tentative pause

“Word came to us that we had an appointment to keep, here? This afternoon?”
A light wave of subdued, mildly bewildered complimentary sprinkled laughter. The crowd is - slowly but surely - zeroing in on the presiding waif’s levity, and equally the style of alternately subtle yet emboldened communication.

Comments circulate among the elders in the audience - how the Contes hasn't seemed to have aged much since they last saw her, and how fetchingly attractive she and her youngest daughter are. The younger people are in hearty agreement, with compliments to the elegance of Solamente and her daughter, and the beauty and smart Victorian attire of all the small group of women who accompany them.

Particular notice is taken of the tallest of the consort of women near the issued statue of St. Rosalia. Some audience memberships are offering their knowledge that the taller woman and another consort member hand tailored all of the clothing worn on and about the featured dais... For all this, Mara Benevida still irresistably draws the most approval...
“As you may know, the wonderful Cardinal - What’s his name? - Brought my mother here. He assured her that it was all, uhm, your idea?”
Abrupt, widespread laughter. Not excluding chortles and surprised guffaws; then re-dissolving in scattered applause.

“The Cardinal has insisted that he couldn’t have done it without those of you who invited her here. It only took a decade and some odd years of annual invitation to persuade her, after all." Then, in contrived thespian undertone:
“Better late than never. We may only suppose.”
More ripples of laughter.

“I myself, have most recently asked mother to be here where I am, at this, uhm, electric amplifier. But, I do not think that she is going to do it. Looks like she refuses to join us. So. Uhh. Well. Here I remain. Doing this.”
Pause
“Not even le Cardinale will help me here. To think that both of these overdressed loiterers used to be among my favorite people. This communion on their part has all the trappings of a conspiracy to abandon me here with all of you. Out there, it’s true, I’m with plenty of good company. On the other hand, these pikers up here have marooned me .”

Snow white, Big Toothy Grin patiently waits for the latest ridiculous shock wave to take effect Did she really say that?
Unleash unrestrained if delayed cheers, applause, wild whistles and other wide spectrum universal signals of approval.
A woman cries out: ‘Benissimo!’ (‘Very good!’. - It.) The exclamation quickly evolves into a fairly well organized, brief and shallow chant of ‘Benissimo!’, to unhurried fade-out.
Mara Benissimo continues:
“My goodness (‘Dios Mio. Mon Dieu' - Sp./ It. / Fr.). The last time we were here, I was with both of my parents, and believe it or not, I distinctly recall that ‘Mother Mediterranean’ wouldn't say anything then, either.”

Audible agreements go up from and come down in various locations throughout the personable, apparently multi-lineaged crowd; the mixed trans cultural, multi-lingual potpourri blending nicely, with the wide spectrum picnic's soup de jour.

Mara AdLib casts a short, sharp look askance; puts a miniature gloved hand on a strong hip, while her remarkable petit fog horn voice further intones mock reprimand:
“She and the Cardinal - would be icons; no help at all for little old me. They’re just a pair of snobs, up here showing off their dimples for you.”
Pause
Mara’s dusky eyes and postural attention abandon their scathing focus on the objects of her hyperbole disaffection, to softly and confidentially address and rejoin the more outgoing attendance, with an even sharper if well humored barb:
“If they’re not going to talk to you, why are they here at all? Why can’t this be my show?”
Brief, incredulous pause, spiraling to howling pandemonium, reluctantly culminating to chuckling fade-out.
“No one has cuter dimples than I, anyway. Everyone must surely know. I got them all by myself, as you can plainly see. My mother had nothing to do with it. I am in fact told that mother was in Rome knitting a sweater when I acquired my peerless dimples in Napoli..” Cheshire grin.

Mirthful bursts and rich applause from all aquatically parked, lawn-chaired, picnic blanketed, seated and tabled quarters.

Signorina Broadside hesitates once more to briefly exchange glances with her smiling, unreadably subjected mother; warmly dwelling there with her in the moment. Then resolving with a slightly reprimanding shake of a shining blue-black, white orchid adorned mane; re-directing her bright ebony eyes from Contes to Cardinal, then back to the notably attentive kindred spirits.

“You can see, none of this - neither honey nor vinegar - helps. Neither one of them is going to be persuaded - or coerced - to take my place at this uh, infernal apparatus”.
Mara Mockly dons a coy pout, while intently surveying the audience - one arm still akimbo; evoking wide spectrum response - from adorationally muted ‘Ohh’s’ to overt wolf whistles and waves of high spirited hoots.

The versatile M.C.’s knit browed expression only - however comically - hardens.
“I must respectfully confess before God and all of you munificent people gathered to greet her here today, that sometimes, I wish my shamelessly reputed mother was, well, I wish she was this shy, at home...”

The enchanted gathering effervesces at the ongoing cherub’s unrehearsed and unanticipated provision of educational and personal insight. Proving worthy of yet another sincerely rendered round of applause, moderated with newly restrained whoops and howls.
Mother’s expression remains generally indecipherable - with the possible exception of what may be learned from peacefully laughing eyes, finding solace from and within explicitly friendly faces in and encouraging words from the more frontally located and gathered audience. The presiding Cardinal frequently nods, in shallow bows, salubrious approval and agreement; laughs and applauds with the crowd.

As the frivolity subsides, Mara Curtseymore More Somberly continues:
“Most of you here know even better than I, my mother has the courage of a lioness. But in some affairs she can also be as reclusive. Her deeds as an individual partisan for her country and people - my father’s country and people; the country and people also of my mother’s three lost sons - are already legend in this and other lands...”
Somber pause. There is no sadness in the MC's voice. Perhaps a hint of pride.

“For that, she is most deeply cherished by all of her many families and children, certainly including myself.” Generous applause

An interesting way of issuing that subject, thought the Cardinal. If there was any potential issue of contention here, the partisan business was it. M’lady chooses frugality, and the modesty of second and third personal representatives; now including myself and her youngest surviving child. She may have been an excellent politician - or a priestess; perhaps a Vestal Daughter of the gods. Who would anticipate that such a tiny daughter could possess such a sweetly powerful and sonorous voice?

“Recently, another of her daughters, one of my two elder sisters, Yevonne Violet, heartfully described your most gratefully loved contes, as ‘the most eloquent of matriarchs’. I simply cannot improve on this sentiment, and am confident this is the approximate feeling of everyone here...”
Cheers and applause blossom and subside.

“On behalf of my mother - your Contessa Solamente; all of her friends and family, certainly including myself, we extend our sincere gratitude for this most warm and soulful welcome. Thank you a million times, one and all, for making this day happen for le Contes, and certainly for all of us”.
Spontaneous applause wanes to studious, expectant silence.

Mara looks to the Cardinal and queries:
“Monsignor Cardinale, are you going to lead us in the traditional prayer, or, do I get to do that also?”

Cardinal Giovanni cannot be heard through the microphone, but is seen to be encouraging the presiding M.C. to go ahead and indeed, oversee and lead the traditional prayer, associated with the holy blessing of the boats and fisherman. Mara nods in non-contention of the license granted by the presiding Catholic dignitary.
Moreover, in a more audible answer to her question, the near and far audience is calling out for Mara to lead the prayer.

Due Cause For St. Erasmus’ Arrival
Due to the Seven Seas global appetite for sailors, fisherman and fools, not all of these soon to be departed boats will return to their very often remotely located home berths. For this reason and at this time, Mara leads the amassed fishing tribe in a prayer for all who travel over and upon ‘the great waters’, as this ancient Italian prayer describes it. The prayer to St. Elmo of Erasmus - Renaissance Bringer Of Lights And Omens. It always started and ended with a mass recitation of the 23rd Psalm. But the ceremony had many other; certainly including pre Christian, and extra Christian facets. It was information gathered - more or less - from the very pantheistic multitude who long ago traditionalized it.
She had heard her father recite the opening and closing ('...and I will dwell in the house of the lord forever. Amen.') prayer with very much these same comrades, during the era of World War Two.

Her father had read from brief passages in the Bible, but even moreso referred to non-Biblical information resources and references. Certainly the Torah and the Talmud. The Koran (QU'RAN). Buddhist doctrines. Less familiar religions, including pre Christian Druid traditions. Similes other than those so elegantly and abundantly presented in the more popular European ‘Good Book’.

Everyone in attendance had repeated in turn at the Count’s - and the presiding Cardinal's - request, select stanzas of harlequin prose. Mara Benevida remembered in the present, the very intonations of her father’s voice, in her ongoing replications of what she knew of this ceremony. Accumulating since, in greater detail - what she had learned of this ceremony from her mother and elder sisters, long after the war ended; all the way through childhood and adolescence, and now in her young adulthood.

Melancholy was here; kept at a distance. The power of the ritual she was conducting easily prevailed over any potential serious depression. Three brothers and her father use to preside over and participate in this ceremony; annually. Long before her birth or the war. This ceremony and its import was a part of her history she would always assiduously study. What she never ceased learning of it continued to be its own reward.

Much of the literary derived recitations were ancient and without known dates of origin. Many of its word usages were Arabic and Greek, but most of it was Latin. Countermanding whatever pagan Caesar it was who finally and officially killed the long since famously dead language, before Emperor Constantine resurrected it, along with the Byzantine Empire and the previously anathematized Christian religion. A ritual older than Islam and the New Testament. Much older than Christianity‘s Erasmus, originating much earlier. Portions of the ceremony were pre Old Testament. Pre Judaistic, sometimes. Some of it was Celt and Cimmerian. Gaelic. Sanskrit. Norse Rune. Semite.

Erasmus is important, because he is the patron Saint of the Mediterranean Sea. Erasmus is perceived to sometimes keep the company of Saint Elmo, of the very same stormy oceanic fires. Not to be confused with the phosphorescent glows of breaking surf in night’s dark ocean, or where an ocean going vessel's bow cleaves the water into two - port & starboard - waves. When a ship is under heavy sail with a fair wind, such ocean cutting and white mustache of bisected bow wave is visible from miles away, in daytime as well as night. Such a ship is said to ‘have a bone in her teeth’. Especially when she is charging straight at the observer.

At night and in some waters more than others, the glow of such generated phosphorescent activity is accompanied by many mythical explanations. These glowing ocean considerations are presently those of the narrative and not included per se, in the ceremony being recited and acted out by the protagonist in this (now, back to our) story:
Erasmus and St. Elmo are subjected.

St. Elmo’s fire is explained objectively, as the result of two or more meteorologically considered atmospheric foul weather fronts; in 'mutual collision’. Modern science attributes St. Elmo’s fiery name-saked phenomenon as ‘ionization of positive and negative electrical particles’.
Then again, the ancient, pre Christian Roman and Greek sailors said the lights were magic; representing the manifestation of the twin deities, Castor and Pollux, of the constellation Gemini; who were optimistically believed to have supernatural powers over sky, wind and ocean waves.

Ancient and Medieval mariners prayed to the mysterious; often animatedly moving and/or pulsating blue-green & sometimes yellow hued, characteristically rising or falling, dancing lights... Considered a good omen, as long as they traveled upwardly upon whatever - usually iron or metallic - object they may be seen to encompass or traverse. Downward-moving vertical traversement was said to be more like bad news than good. Sighting two or more glowing undulations at the same time proved the presence of more than one Saint.

Or so the ancient allegiance to Erasmus and St. Elmo was said to have inspirationally illuminated. Castor and Pollux. Gemini. Oh my. Rome is not their home. That place belonging to its founders - another pair of brothers. Romulus and Remus. Who are comparable to yet another pair of brothers named Caine and Abel. The latter two pairs of brothers also share the infamy of fratricide; that is, brother slaying brother. A caveat to civilized people, as well as barbarians, everywhere (Including Genghis Khan, who slew his brother, Bektor, in a quarrel over possession of a fish). Amen then.

Long studious pause, amounting to a collectively shared sigh.
“Thank you all once again. I shall never forget this wonderful afternoon and the new, even brighter light you've all placed in the eyes of my honorifically titled mother, ‘Le Contes’, ‘Le Bebe’, ‘The Eternal Smile’, ‘Mediterranean Madre Of Messina’s People’. You blessed my mother with these descript alternative titles and sentiments. I can’t say how touching and uplifting you have been, and continue to be..."

Mara curtseys deftly. "Gratzie mille. Ciao..”
('A thousand thanks. Hello and/or goodbye.' - It.)

The crowd’s hush surveys a happy, smiling mother, hugged by the retiring tadpole on the dais: the surrounding, all female entourage of which now encircles the embracing mother and child. Each of whom are approached; individually and likewise embraced and kissed on the cheek or hand by an elated if somewhat somber Cardinal; perhaps with a dash of mist in his sun reflecting eyes.

Recovering from their vicarious collective experience, the spellbound gathering senses a heartfelt compulsion to offer the however superfluous support of applause, linked with other, less formal signals of enthusiasm. Not excluding unabashed whistles, a dozen different types of noisemakers and of course, outlaw fireworks.
The lauded Count’s Angels offer unprecedented applause, accompanied by the now reengaged orchestral band’s BUTTERFLY BALLET...
‘La Contessa! La Contessa! La Contessa!’

At the sound of the chorus, Mara steps back a few paces from her mother and the Fisherman stationed at the center of an enfolding bouquet of Mirages. Turning to front and center, le cherub takes the sides of her full lengthed gown in each hand, to deeply curtsey yet once again toward the sprawling meadow of standing, lawn chaired, blanket retired and sun bleacher seated paisani; turning then to face, bow and curtsey toward her mother, who is presently returning the kiss the Cardinal just planted on her left cheek, back to the right side of his face. The fireworks are joined by bursting vessels of champagne. The already actively incumbent picnic, getting more sumptuously underway.
............................
Beatrice had been too busy to attend. Yevonne was overly timid. So, Le Contes brought her youngest daughter and ‘her friends’. It was Le Bebe’s way of introducing those of whom everyone else had already heard. Solamente knew her youngest would somehow; single-handedly capture the hearts of the entire gathering, and mother was usually right. She also brought her Giraffe - and some other friends too. Everyone here had already long since heard and spoken favorably of the described cast (some called them ‘forest fairies’).

No one seemed to mind. ‘Le Bebe Espirita’ was back among them and happy to be there, was all that seemed to matter.

The attendance deeply felt the widow’s demise and her loving if remotely projected dedication to them, before and since her husband’s passing. Local government ascending to Parliament was often moved to do things as the Count may have persuaded; as though he had never perished; apparently out of deference to le Contes.

Indeed. The mother of his remaining children was discovering how cherished she still undeniably was, by so many of her spouse’s former charge. All of whom were there after all, to publicly demonstrate their affection for her. On this account there would no longer be any apprehended rain on M’lady’s however differently orchestrated parade. These were indeed her self expressed people; as much now, it seemed - however much to her surprise - as they certainly had been for their Provincial Count.

Mother Mediterranean’s youngest, choreographically improvises with the ongoing musical chanting and her self appointed chore of semi-mischievously throwing rice and flowers back upon the crowd - converting incoming rice and flora to outgoing compliments. Likewise reduplicating and rounding off their high, gentle trajectories with their ancient and well wishing symbolism’s.

Multi colored short stemmed roses and fluttering flower petals, with bunches of rogue and ribbon tethered wild flowers are included in this coming and going barrage of white ivory rainbow trajectories great and small, arcing in rounded parabolas, to and from the dais and its occupants. Mother’s memorable hibiscus corsage has duly found its undetectably nostalgic, matter of fact way into the described cycle of launched and precipitating well wishes. The chant of ‘La Contessa’ still seems the most favored salute to the guest of honor. Clearly the affinitive throng is consummately fond of her formal title.

The festive accolade may have continued indefinitely, but for Le Cardinale’s repeated, polite signals for an at least momentary end to the chanting praise of his best friend and uncelebrated GIAPPI partisan comrade. Eventually, the chant - and the missile exchange - light heartedly dissolves.

Mara returns to sit at her mother’s side, just as the courtly Monsignor has turned to seat the ever smiling Contes. Gently kissing the tops of her mutely extended, also ivory gloved left and right hands; whilst for a moment and an eternity, each dwells in the other’s eyes. It is only ‘Hello again. Very nice to see you in good health’. They had long ago mutually agreed that very understanding and all the amenities resembling it, to be Western Civilization’s answer to the Eastern Tea Ceremony. The Cardinal was every bit as Zen as Solamente - who, no one in these orbits was known to be more Zen than. They were Soren Kierkagaard’s existential children. Tempered in the largest war by far that the inhabited planet has ever seen, before or since. The only man who knew le Contes better than this Cardinal was the Count himself - only because the latter was her (only) lover, as well as her comrade at arms.

Not even the Pope knew this Vicar Of Christ was GIAPPI, or, that he had taken human life; under The Cloth. Padre had known an opportunity to stop the murder of several dozen people; God was characteristically preoccupied with sweeping the universe, so he was vicariously obliged; with the only power that worked in that fatefully temporal space and time. That existential continuum was thenceforth his only theism - the only God. The God who knows well, the - worlds of - difference between killing and murder.
('God does not misunderstand anything'. - Mara Curtseymore)

The Pact Of Antifascism:
A warrior philosophy; with theistic additions or atheistic subtraction’s of choice. In war, one omnisciently develops along the lines of existential philosophies; of Buber and Kierkegaard, without ever having heard of either one of them. Or, one intellectually and spiritually perishes with the average, inadequately plumbed, falsely reigning and fair weather god. The one that offers comfort in false cliché’s such as ‘life isn’t fair’. Sola quickly reminded such agnostics that, ‘life’ is not unfair, either. Life does not deliberately victimize any of its recipients. Neither does it misrepresent Nature. That is to say, biological life does not of itself indulge in corrupt politics or sado-masochism, for example. Only people have the power to enjoy, or to abstain from and discourage - or encourage, reward and/or profit from - such indulgences and misunderstandings.

People do assiduously create false gods of expedience and hasty rationalization. Empty values of user convenience; forsaking the future as foreordained. Making up elaborate excuses for the inexcusable. Philosophy calls this mode of thinking, ‘a teleological suspension of the ethical’. A fancy phrase for refusing to take - often altogether denying - responsibility for what one is responsible for. Frequently blaming bad behavior as being instructions - or expectations - from God.

On the other hand, there is also the hazard of being persuaded to take responsibility for what one is not responsible for. T’was ever such. The unending war of perception. Sola and Le Cardinale knew it well. Were educated in and graduated from the same globally engulfing school.

Who else could ever have known or guessed that this man who was now a Cardinal, was the fifth man - the only one - who survived to escape the very same event that consumed Solamente’s husband and three sons? The man who was still even then, a man of God.

The exemplary Dwight David Eisenhower hated war. The only thing he hated more than war - he said - was Fascism. Unveiled in your back yard, you often must make compromises with it. Beginning with an inadvertent or voluntary failure or refusal to identify or recognize the doctrine of brute force and/or intimidation. However friendly or skillfully disguised; by whatever euphemistically beguiled name.

You surrender to such elements indefinitely until you are overwhelmed, consumed: absorbed. Or, you counterattack it. Always very sticky business by the time any other name or facade for fascism has become the hitherto ‘unrecognized’ status quo; in your literal or figurative back yard.

It was mutual recognition of and opposition to Nazism and Fascism - brute force and intimidation as supreme arbiter, ‘God’s will’, ‘Manifest destiny’, that bonded and delivered the subjected Contes, Fisherman and Provincials.
One other living GIAPPI (outside of NATO CRYPTO) knew the High Priest’s secret. Only Sola knew him to be the soldier that he undeniably had proven himself to be so many times - and for so many years. Even before the Count’s death.

The presiding Magician affectionately turns his gaze upon Le cherub, who was not even yet baptized at their last meeting in this same place, when she was but an infant. He wonders if Mara ever has been baptized, or for that matter, if ever she will be. Cardinal Giovanni momentarily recalls that the Count and his nearest flock had a strong belief in God; though perhaps somewhat eschewed of institutionalized religion. Enrique Suliman D’Angelico did on the other hand, speak often and highly of the Eastern Culture and its religions and philosophies. Seemed to value the Eastern ways more than most Europeans.

A Prayer For The Pope.
Considered Butterside-Up Landings On The Sunnyside:
Mother Sunbonnet gently picks up her seated, wide eyed daughter’s arm at the wrist, offering up that left hand to the Cardinal, who promptly turns and bends, taking Mara’s gloved hands in both of his and tenderly kissing the tops of same while finding her eyes - exactly as he did her mother’s. Mara Sweetbreath beams up at him in high Italian:
‘Gratzie mille, Monsignor”.
“The honor is mine, signorina little lamb”, replies the Red Robed soldier. Then adding the considered complimentary recapitulation:
“You, little one, are a prayer for the Pope. And now I see your father’s ebon eyes.”
Mara Of The Five Languages giggles aloud with abandon; wondering:
Gosh. What language was that?

A Rhyme And Rendezvous No Longer Overdue: Ave Maria Rosalia
The meeting is thereby resolved beneath the beneficently ominous fifteen foot figure of the presiding Saint - her hands holding to her homespun blouse covered bosom, a weather-beaten, green oxidized, aquamarine residued bronze cross. Its vehicular devotee, eternally in the act of making her own hatlessly long haired, full skirted music and lights. Walking head high, directly into - and perhaps upon - the legend inundated, tidally concerted deep blue, dockside Mediterranean Sea. aka, La Mar.

Le Cardinale Rouge departs the honored dais to resume his glide toward the panoramically backgrounded, roundly swelling white capless, blue-green brine. Reembarked upon the last segment of his red carpeted arrival. Enroute the dense fleet of freshly painted and scrubbed fishing boats. Trawlers of every floating, pitching, rolling and yawing size, color and maritime description.
Well salted tradition has the eldest and youngest captains in Messina’s fleet accompany the priest on either side, as he descends the pinewood railed gangway to proceed upon the upright mahogany and teak, pile driven pier’s horizontally planked complex of floating docks. There and then to execute the traditional blessing of fisher people and boats.

The orchestral bandstand has just rounded off the BUTTERFLY BALLET; now churning swimmingly into the beginning strokes of a rousing VICTORY AT SEA (Who wrote this?) ((If this is a melodramatic novel, when will it mellow into the extra-narratively dramatic?)) That will do.

(((The reader will kindly tolerate Molly Keyboard MacColly, who always appears in (singular) parentheses and who sometimes has a narrative mind of her own.)))

The Fisherman arrives at water’s edge and commences his marathon blessing of all the boats; with their crews of fishermen standing-to, on deck in their cleanest sunbleached working garb. Those in the immediate presence of the approaching Holy Arbiter becoming only slightly more somber - letting their nervously restrained frolic, pipes and sometimes uninhibited polylingual profanity, abate. At least until he passes.
Banners, pennants and ensigns of Southern Italy, nearby Corsica, Sardinia, Elba (‘Napoleon’s Last Isle’) and of course Sicily, abound and flutter-snap ´neath topmost flown, two-blocked Italian and French tri-colors, flying in the occasional and brief, mildly moody wafts of chill, late winter wind; from the poet Hood’s, ‘Wavy Waste’. Realm of the Hindu myth of Varuna, and the Greco-Roman mythologized Triton, Thetis, Neptune, Poseidon, Oceanus and Nereid.

‘Sea that breakest forever, that breakest and never art broken’. - W. Watson.

What is only written of such fisher families in English and a dozen other languages is being done - and happening - daily, by and to these predominantly European Italians, in every language on the Mediterranean. A life of accentuated fair and foul weather, contrasting 'twixt heaven and hell for all those on land and sea who make their family kitchen and pasture near and upon the great and vastly controversied piddle dee dee. Of course the fisher families of France, Portugal, Spain, England and Scandinavia - all the fisher families of the world - are bonded in the same nobly hazardous mission. Not to exclude the expeditionary incentive of the multitude of European papists, who are obliged to eat fish on Fridays, at pain of compulsory banishment to purgatory, if not perdition; or, so says the dogmatic papist doggerel.

Out To Lunch For Irreproachably Fresh Fish:
As earlier observed, all of the esplanade and shoreline plazas here today are a single, continuous zig-zag mezzanine of fast food, balloon and souvenir vendors. Outlining a traditionally non-tourist event with a lot of untraditional tourists; doing silly parodies of them.
“How do you say ‘sardines’ in Italian?”
“Little fishes.” Laughter
“And where do they come from?”
“A small, flat, elliptically shaped Norwegian can. Where else?”

The internationally itinerant, dockside 35 mm shutterbugs are photographically netting the festive levity. Italian ham. Natives in various states of intoxication are enjoying the consumption of living sardines - always head first and whole. With a white Sauvignon, Rhine, Chardonney or Chablis chaser. Within which large half-hemisphere gleaming glasses, the snack sized silvery fry - most often the hapless junior offspring of mackerel, tuna and cod - are theatrically allowed to swim for their last encoring curtain call, before going down the epicurean hatch, en flagrante (Burp. Dispenseme. - Sp.).

Refined etiquette recommends swallowing the frisky little swimmers before they themselves become intoxicated - at which time they will gyrate, turn and quickly float belly-up on the surface of any reluctant diner’s vessel. In distasteful opposition to the better recommendations of the gentry’s Amy Vanderbuilt, for example - mayhaps not in visually inspired proper alignment with established culinary protocol. Bon apetit voyage promptly therefore, say the more dedicated, minnow dipping dilettantes.

Skeptical and apprehensive of the described fishy situation, certain inquiring bystanders are assured that no license is required for any of these self casted, dare devilishly angling; questionably epicurean appetites. The European counterpart for America’s SPCA laughs in the faces of any complainants. Salud. All the world is a staged wine glass therefore, playfully converted to a gastronomically inspired, bottomed up fish bowl, and so on, paraphraseologically speaking. .
................
The three civilian clothed US Military men at the aforedescribed middle distanced table are working on their second round of dark ale.
“This is also the Cardinal who at that time Bishop’d a flock of almost three hundred thousand; all the way through the Stalin era; in the shadow of what this Contessa’s father had earlier helped to name ‘Leningrad.' "

“That’s her Russian side. She was born in Rome - first generation out of Sicily. Alternately lives there and in Naples. Knowing her other side is Sicilian, keeps it in our family - under the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.”

“The Count himself is a closed military book. Other than that, he must - at least that I know of - have controlled most of the boats and no small number of ships on and around this island. Many of them were GIAPPI."

“Aren’t those the old world Italians that went militantly underground and opposed Mussolini and his Black Shirts? Did not join with, or surrender to the so called ‘Iron Axis Alliance?”

"The GIAPPI. Yes. It’s an Italian acronym for ‘freedom fighters’ - a formidable nemesis for IL Duce Mussolini and the krauts. Moreover, the subjected ‘Count Of Angels’ fellow had a lot to do with NATO allies and especially the US, in helping take back from Jerry (the Germans), the entire interior of Gibraltar Straits, in the closing years of the last big war.” Pause

“And that’s a lot of fish story.” Laughter.
“It’s a true story.”
“Yes Unfortunately for some of the surviving GIAPPI, the Second World War is not yet entirely over.” / “So I hear.”
..................

Were it not for the Churchman performing the Blessing Of The Boats, the most affectionately greeted Contes would not have overseen the occasion at all. May never have discovered her enduring place in the hearts and minds of her consummately cohered people. She had procrastinated the resumption of her attendance, simply because this location and ceremony also brought back to her a rush of painfully insatiable, irretrievably happy, past experiences with her husband. A European legend before he and all three of his partisan sons were perished by the German SS, in occupied; at that time ‘allied’, mid-southern peninsular Italy.

If melancholy is a problem for the Contes, it certainly doesn’t show, as the Crimson Cardinal on the dock immerses, swings and shakes his Holy Water throwing pistil from near and far quarters, at the assumed overduly resanctified, harbored fleet.

God knows, even St. Christopher cannot help a dying boat. In another thirty days, all of these will begin to depart; then return; all spring and summer long. With fewer returning from each departure, until the winter storm season sends them to home and hearth once more. To net and tackle mending and making, boat building and repairing, story telling. In preparation for the oncoming season, and so on.

Mara is unchaired and seated at her mother’s feet. Her youngest guarded from the cold with a waist length, prime ermine fur coat over her gown. The Pope’s prayer is comfortably snuggled and back-rested against mother’s petticoats and crinoline. Left arm on the thick red wool carpet, encircling mother’s well turned, black cotton granny stocking contoured ankles.
The standing golden citadel rests one hand at the back of Madam’s shoulder, while the left hand’s ungloved palm and supple, asparagus tapered fingers provide tactile stimulation comfort at the black sable stole surrounded neck and left shoulder of the seated matriarch. The overhead view finds St. Rosalia at the nucleus of a crescent moon shape of anonymous young consorts, encompassing the described central loveseat’s ensemble. The semi circle of escorts includes a middle aged, white haired, Mirage coded ‘Silver Fox’, almost as tall as the Golden Sentinel - Buona Giraffe.

Little Lamb’s very dark eyes are unshaded and reflecting brightly in the sun. Her cameo neck sometimes craning nearly straight up - as the posture of a heron camouflaging its profile in a vertical cluster of pond reeds - at mother’s countenance and beyond, looking upon the lovely sculptured face of the Sainted young Rosalia. Aligned just so, above the sweet frosty engravings exuded from her mother’s sunny complexion. Mara, beholding the now eight hundred year old patroness of fishermen. Assigned to such duty since the early 11th Century AD. Rosalia, so smiled upon, may have something more to smile about this afternoon.

Le Contes is just inside the shade cast by the statue, which is in turn beheld by the quasi prayerful little Show Off.

Mother is intermittently beholding Mara’s radiantly upturned, tawny complexion, then thoughtfully looking beyond; toward the dock foregrounded horizon. Further beholding her water walking, faithful comrade at arms; who is just now chanting the so called - presently resurrected - dead language aloud, in the blessed name of every slightly oscillating near and far mast, stick and spar in the tidal surge syncopating harbor. Sanctimonious droplets of fresh Holy water on their way from his pistil swinging well wishes to vainly sweeten the salty, triple blue infinity. Realm of Neptune’s Erasmus - patron Saint of all the Mediterranean, which all too often and famously becomes the final resting place of ill fated fishermen and sailors.

Adjacent families, crews and captains are simultaneously transformed, as the mojo water flies upward and outward in straight lines, transformed furthermore in their four dimensionally curved trajectories to primarily impacting, crown shaped bursts. Then become tiny, glisten-precipitating parabolas, raining to land, splash, bead-up upon and summarily cling to the burnished decks and bulkheads of the now unarguably blessed boats and on-board fisher people.

The presiding band is corroborately heaved to, wrapping up a sensitive LORD’S PRAYER. All present have sung the 23rd Psalm’s words aloud together in many thousands of voices and a variety of languages - mostly multi-dialect Italian and French. Every presiding soul seems uniformly transformed.

Mystic Seaport Never Had It So Spooky
On the other hand, the boats themselves appear only a few minutes older than they were before they were approached and consecretionally anointed. There is little reasonable doubt that any one of them presently under the Magician’s spell could still nonetheless, quite easily glide from the christened harbor with infinite grace and dignity; never to be seen or heard from again... C'est la vie.

Continued Dashing Plot Thickener From The Middle Distanced Table:
“Is it true, what I’ve heard about this, uh, widowed contes woman’s con