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Letter to Matteo Mazza in Naples, Italy

Monday, April 9, 1821

Signor Mazza:

We have not formerly made each other’s acquaintance, yet I pray you will take very seriously what I have to say.

You are the owner of Naples’s most preeminent shipping company, and your business is at the mercy of the sea. Yet as of late, I’ve become convinced the sea is at the mercy of something else: a small group of women living in Positano.

Many have marveled, in years past, over the tiny fishing village’s good fortune and its consistently favorable seaside conditions. The tides, for one, are suspiciously calm. Mariners often remark on the village’s lack of erosion, yet it is hardly protected by a natural reef, and it is not nestled inside a cove. Why do the battered cliffs of Amalfi and Minori suffer collapses and dangerous cascades of rock, yet Positano does not?

The glut of redfish and pezzogne , too. How is it that on days when the fishermen from other places return with bycatch or empty nets, the men of Positano have—yet again—a superb haul? Even at a quarter moon. It is as though the lunar rhythms have no effect on this village.

Ah, but tides and fish are one thing. Pirates, well, they are quite another. Now, I don’t mean to make assumptions about those with whom you associate, Signor Mazza, but surely you are aware of this incongruity: there is no record of pirates having ever landed in Positano.

These buccaneers sack ships in Sicily. They ransack from Salerno to Capri. If I were to prick a pin in a map marking everywhere pirates have landed along our coast, it would appear a perfect band, skirting the whole edge of the Amalfi coastline—every village but one. One!

Dare I say, Positano seems insulated. Protected. Favored.

Elsewhere on the peninsula, men lament their filthy seawater, the looters, bad catch . Yes, Positano has been prosperous , they tell me, but we will never move our families there, for their luck will run out. Any day now. Mark my words.

Even some of Positano’s own are bewildered by their good fortune. The men keep well-armed, sure they are due for a pirate attack. Others salt and dry and bottle their fish, certain their waters will soon dry up. Still others refuse to build too close to the shore: the cliffs will crumble eventually, they say, sending those hilltop residents to their rocky deaths.

There is something going on in Positano—a secret, very closely guarded.

And I believe I know precisely what this secret is.

Might we strike a deal, Signor Mazza? For a price, I am willing to reveal what I know—to tell you what I have learned, what I have seen. Who I have seen.

I can only imagine the fortune such information would bring you.

Please respond at your soonest convenience.

Signed,

Your devoted friend, associate &c.