An Accidental Life by Pamela Binnings Ewen Page B

once, not too long ago, the summer home of an aristocratic Italian family. The new owners had managed to retain that intimate feeling of old-world elegance, blending it with an open, airy look. They wound their way down the stairs and through the spacious rooms, every room having long windows open to the sea, the terraced pool, and on to La Sponda, the hotel’s dining room. The restaurant, like all of the rooms in the hotel, swept the outside in with high ceilings and graceful archways. Vines wound through the room from the jungled forest below, winding up the inner walls and doorways and creeping above the tables, across the ceiling.
    The maître d’ led them to a table near a window and pulled out a chair for Rebecca. The windows were all open now for the evening breeze. They had decided to dine early tonight and get a good night’s sleep. But even now, at dusk, with the sun still a glowing ball of fire on the horizon, the room was already lit with hundreds of flickering candles.
    “Would you like water?” the waiter asked.
    “Yes,” Peter said. “Still, please; not sparkling.”
    The waiter nodded and soon returned with the bottle, and two menus.
    “What is that?” Rebecca asked the waiter, pointing to a bulky stone structure she’d just noticed atop the parapet, the jutting cliff she’d seen earlier from the pool terrace. The waiter bent and looked in that direction.
    “Oh, that was a watch tower in the old days, Signora,” he said, straightening. Wrapping the water bottle in a napkin, he opened it and bent to pour water into their glasses. “It was built to warn villagers when barbarians or the saracens —the pirates—came calling.” He set the bottle down on the table and stood beside her, draping the napkin he’d used to hold the water bottle over his arm.
    “Up there,” he waved his hand in the direction of the watch tower, “when the watchmen spotted the ships, they would light a fire to warn everyone in our village, and others along the coastline too. Each village watch would see the fire and light their own, all the way along the coast from Sorrento to Positano to Praiano to Amalfi to Molare . . .” He rolled his hand as the musical names rolled from his tongue.
    “My grandfather told me the stories. And when our people saw the fires, they would run up into the mountains, carrying their valuables with them.”
    “That’s a good early-warning system,” Rebecca said, thinking of the steep stone steps climbing the mountain that substituted for roads in the village. The steps would be difficult climbing for those not used to them. Still today, Positano was a warren of alleys and passageways and steps. The road at the top of the cliff past their hotel was the only one for automobiles around.
    The man handed her a menu, and gave one to Peter, and then straightened, smiling.
    “Si, certo!” His face crinkled with amusement. “The saracen’s sea legs couldn’t handle our steep mountains. They could climb the masts of their ships, but our mountains defeated them.”
    After he left Peter leaned close, pointing out to sea. “Look at that.”
    She gazed at the hundreds of dancing lights in the darkness all the way to the horizon, where they became almost indistinguishable from the stars. Those were the lampara . The small boats with lanterns swinging from the bow were fishing for anchovies and cuttlefish as they’d done for hundreds, maybe thousands, of years.
    Peter rested his hand on her shoulder as they looked at the beautiful sight. “Already I’m letting go. I’m glad we came.”
    “I don’t know,” she said, shaking her head. “I kind of miss the old purple K&B signs and Whitney clocks.”
    Just then the waiter arrived with a dish of sweet local olives, and warm bread, and a hunk of Parmesan cheese. They ordered a large plate of escargot to share. Neither were very hungry since their body clocks still warred with the local time.

    Despite the nap and the surroundings, Peter was