POSITANO STANDS on the side of a steep hill, a disarray of huddled white houses, their tiled roofs washed pale by the suns of a hundred years; but unlike many of these Italian towns perched out of harm’s way on a rocky eminence it does not offer you at one delightful glance all it has to give.
It has quaint streets that zigzag up the hill, and battered, painted houses in the baroque style, but very late, in which Neapolitan noblemen led for a season lives of penurious grandeur.
It is indeed almost excessively picturesque and in winter its two or three modest hotels are crowded with painters, male and female, who in their different ways acknowledge by their daily labours the emotion it has excited in them.
Some take infinite pains to place on canvas every window and every tile their peering eyes can discover and doubtless achieve the satisfaction that rewards honest industry.
“At all events it’s sincere,” they say modestly when they show you their work.
Some, rugged and dashing, in a fine frenzy attack their canvas with a pallet knife charged with a wad of paint, and they say:
“You see, what I was trying to bring out was my personality.”
They slightly close their eyes and tentatively murmur:
“I think it’s rather me, don’t you?”
And there are some who give you highly entertaining arrangements of spheres and cubes and utter sombrely:
“That’s how I see it!”
These for the most part are strong silent men who waste no words.
But Positano looks full south and the chances are that in summer you will have it to yourself.
The hotel is clean and cool and there is a terrace, overhung with vines, where you can sit at night and look at the sea bespangled with dim stars.
Down at the Marine, on the quay, is a little tavern where you can dine under an archway off anchovies and ham, macaroni and fresh-caught mullet, and drink cold wine.
Once a day the steamer from Naples comes in, bringing the mail, and for a quarter of an hour gives the beach (there is no port and the passengers are landed in small boats) an air of animation.
One August, tiring of Capri where I had been staying, I made up my mind to spend a few days at Positano, so I hired a fishing-boat and rowed over. I stopped on the way in a shady cove to bathe and lunch and sleep, and did not arrive till evening.
I strolled up the hill, my two bags following me on the heads of two sturdy women, to the hotel, and was surprised to learn that I was not its only guest.
The waiter, whose name was Giuseppe, was an old friend of mine, and at that season he was boots, porter, chambermaid, and cook as well.
He told me that an American signore had been staying there for three months.
“Is he a painter or writer or something?” I asked.
“No, Signore, he’s a gentleman.”
Odd, I thought.
No foreigners came to Positano at that time of year but German Wandervogel, looking hot and dusty, with satchels on their backs, and they only stayed overnight.
I could not imagine anyone wishing to spend three months there; unless of course he were hiding.
And since all London had been excited by the flight earlier in the year of an eminent, but dishonest, financier, the amusing thought occurred to me that this mysterious stranger was perhaps he.
I knew him slightly and trusted that my sudden arrival would not disconcert him.
“You’ll see the Signore at the Marina,” said Giuseppe, as I was setting out to go down again.
“He always dines there.”
He was certainly not there when I arrived.
I asked what there was for dinner and drank an americano, which is by no means a bad substitute for a cocktail.
In a few minutes, however, a man walked in who could be no other than my fellow-guest at the hotel and I had a moment’s disappointment when I saw that it was not the absconding financier.
A tall, elderly man, bronzed after his summer on the Mediterranean, with a handsome, thin face.
He wore a very neat, even smart, suit of cream-coloured silk and no hat.
His grey hair was cut very short, but was still thick.
There was ease in his bearing, and elegance.
He looked round the half-dozen tables under the archway at which the natives of the place were playing cards or dominoes and his eyes rested on me.
They smiled pleasantly.
He came up.
“I hear you have just arrived at the hotel.
Giuseppe suggested that as he couldn’t come down here to effect an introduction you wouldn’t mind if I introduced myself.
Would it bore you to dine with a total stranger?”
“Of course not.
Sit down.”
He turned to the maid who was laying a cover for me and in beautiful Italian told her that I would eat with him.
He looked at my americano.
“I have got them to stock a little gin and French vermouth for me.
Would you allow me to mix you a very dry Martini?”
“Without hesitation.”
“It gives an exotic note to the surroundings which brings out the local colour.”