The Cave by the Sea

This is not the first time I have taken a boat trip to Cala Fighera, a small cove at the foot of the Sella del Diavolo (Devil’s Seat), the imposing promontory overlooking the Gulf of the Angels. In Cagliari, the capital of Sardinia, there is a legend that even the Devil fell in love with this coastline and decided to take possession of it. It is said that Lucifer lost control of his horse during a battle with the Archangel Michael and fell onto the promontory, creating the strange saddle-shaped depression that still exists today. This wild cliff, with its wooded paths and the remains of the 16th century watchtower overlooking the small harbour of Marina Piccola, is almost a frontier, where land and sea have met since time immemorial, hiding the mysteries and legends that are now part of our history.

A few steps away, the Poetto beach stretches for eight miles from the heart of the city towards the east coast. Cagliari is a city of sea and wind, of stone and damp alleys, as D.H. Lawrence said in his travel book Sea and Sardinia at the beginning of the 20th century.

As the boat steered by our captain, Antonio, pulls away from the pier, I take a few photographs, thinking of the English writer and how calm and peaceful this landscape must seem, illuminated by a sun that shines almost all year round. For me, who was born here, who lives here, who works here, who comes here every day from May to September, and often even in winter when, strangely enough, the temperature reaches 30 degrees, the wonder never ends. Because sometimes everything looks the same, even though it is always different.

I look at this beach and see myself as a child, building sandcastles with my father or walking along the shore with my mother. And I see myself as a teenager, lying on towels with my high school friends, laughing and joking without worrying about the future. And I think of my grandfather, an experienced sailor and lieutenant colonel in the Italian Navy, who often swam or canoed around the bay.

Now that I am an adult, I seek out our island’s mysteries to write photo essays for the Italian magazine La Soglia Oscura (The Dark Threshold) and everything familiar has taken on a less reassuring aspect.

When the boat reaches the Grotta dei Colombi (Cave of the Doves), which is only accessible from the sea and which for centuries has housed the nests of the birds from which it takes its name, it looks to me like a large black mouth opening in the rocky wall of the cove. My grandfather often told me of the legend of the blood that surrounds this hidden hollow, where in its damp bowels lies the secret of an ancient crime. But I was too young to understand. The sea frightened me. He tried to teach me to swim, but I felt so helpless before the greatness he wanted me to plunge into. I preferred to stay on the shore with my parents and grandmother and watch it disappear in the distance towards the Sella, silhouetted against the sky like a mysterious giant with an impassive face.

I don’t know if the tourists I sail with have ever heard of this tale. I don’t even know if our captain will talk about it. All I know is that for years hunters in the area stayed away from it, fearing they might see the ghost of a man called Dais, the barber and notorious rebel who, in 1795, was tied with a rope to the rock face just outside the cave entrance and left to drown with the rising tide. Found guilty of murdering a marquis and a city governor, Dais never seems to have found peace.

It is not difficult to imagine the excruciating torment of the punishment inflicted upon him, the fear and the sense of helplessness in the face of the inexorable rise of the water, the taste of salt entering his throat and lungs in a terrible agony.

And so, as the roar of the engine breaks the almost ancestral silence of the cave, I wonder if I will ever hear the inhuman screams of the poor ghost that wanders about, perhaps seeking revenge. All I can hear is the chatter of my fellow travellers, entranced by the unspoilt landscape around us.

I grab my camera and as I search for the best shot, I feel a shiver run down my spine in the darkness we are slowly descending into. The wind has picked up, the boat is rocking, and although it is a beautiful spring day, I feel cold. Could it be the cold of death?

When I was researching one of my historical novels, I discovered that during the plague in Sardinia in the 17th century, the dead were also buried in this cave.

But I don’t want to think about it. I try to shake off the gloom and enjoy the trip. We walk down to the beach and climb the steps to the cocktail bar overlooking the sea. Three hours pass in a flash and as the boat returns to the marina, I feel as if the voice of the increasing wind is carrying an incomprehensible scream. The people on the boat seem to have noticed nothing.

It could be Dais trying to call me, I speculate. Or perhaps it is simply my grandfather greeting me once more, to remind me of those days when he tried to reveal to me the secrets of the sea and our land.