Annamaria Zammit is participating in the International Literary Creation Competition, 7th Edition, from Żebbuġ, Malta and is 16 years old. We thank her for her participation and wish her success.

The Dove

It sat perched on the windowsill, its small bright eyes peering inquisitively into the ward at Bighi Naval Hospital, Malta. It sat cooing softly, like a mother’s gentle lullaby.

Nobody noticed the dove. The hospital ward was full of wounded and dying soldiers; a priest chanted the rites of the dying. No one in 1915, at the height of the First World War, was in the mood to take notice of a small dove. But Agostino did.

Thirty-eight-year-old Agostino lay severely wounded, battling for a few more minutes of life, staring out at the Grand Harbour and the vast expanse of sea and sky. He was still trying to process what had just happened. The sea. The Dockyard. The tents where they worked. The hundred and twenty grenades. The silence, like silence before a storm. The explosion.

The air trembled and shook. Birds raced screaming into the sky, chased by curly tails of thick smoke. Balconies of nearby houses flew open, and windows were shattered. French and British sailors desperately tried to rescue some of the fifty Maltese soldiers in H.M. Dockyard. Agostino could just remember rushing into the danger to help his comrades. Soldiers around him shouted their last cries of fear before being silenced by two smaller explosions. And then darkness.

The cooing of the collared dove brought him back to the present. Why is it, he thought, that at every turning point in my life, there’s a dove near me?

Suddenly, a series of images started forming in his mind; memories from the past formed scenes as vivid as slides on a magic lantern. It was almost as if he was living every second of his life again.

First he saw a young man, dressed in the simple, dirty clothes of a peasant farmer, but his face scrunched up in a scowl, making it wrinkled like an old man’s. He crouched over his scythe, his calloused fingers angrily gripping the handle. With his teeth clenched, he frowned so cruelly that it sent shivers running down Agostino’s spine. The young man’s voice barked like a dog, and his cold glare scared everyone. Yet in his eyes was a deep sorrow that people seldom saw. Agostino shuddered. It was an image of himself – Sergeant Agostino Pace.

He hadn’t always been like that. It had been the death of his little son that had filled his heart with grief and chilled it with despair. The frosty winds of life’s storms had frozen him; a shadow had trapped him and convinced him that there was no light of day.

This picture vanished nearly as quickly as it had come, and next Agostino saw a merry, light-hearted gathering of Imnarja, where people gathered in the woods to picnic together, as they waited for the rising of the sun and Mass of St. Peter and St. Paul. They were all together by the bonfire – Agostino, his wife Marianna, neighbours, cousins, siblings, their children, and some friends of his and Marianna’s: a family that had emigrated to the Ionian Islands long before and had returned for a short stay. In between bites of stewed rabbit and wine, they gossiped about each other, laughed, sang, and shared stories.

“Our legends are nice enough,” said Filippu, a lively young man and one of those who had emigrated. “But in Corfu, where we live, we heard many marvellous tales. Do you see that collared dove over there?” he began, pointing to it and making his guitar rumble mysteriously. “In Greek it’s called dekaocto – eighteen. It’s said that when Christ was making his way to Calvary, a Roman soldier had pity on his miserable state, and asked an old woman to sell him a cup of milk. She told him it cost eighteen coins; however, the soldier only had seventeen. No matter how much he begged her, she kept shouting ‘Eighteen!’. Then, when Christ was crucified, she was turned into a collared dove, and cursed to repeat ‘Dekaocto, dekaocto – eighteen, eighteen!’ forever.”

They all gasped at him in wonder. “If she ever agrees to say dekaepta, seventeen,” he continued, “she will turn back into a woman.”

“And if she says nineteen?” Agostino asked.

“The world will end,” replied Filippu ominously.

Now the scenes of the past rolled rapidly one after the other. Leaving the fields to enlist in the Malta Royal Artillery. Becoming Sergeant Pace. Reading the newspapers in the summer of 1914, only to find out that war had broken out in Europe. Agostino could once again feel the hustle and bustle of the regiment, as it took its war positions.

He saw himself talking with his friend Filippu, who had not only come back to Malta, but had also become Corporal Grech. “Look,” Agostino observed, “a dove. Isn’t that supposed to be a sign of peace? There is no peace here.”

“Ironic of you to say that,” remarked Filippu. “Why are you talking of peace when you’re the first to start wars?”

Agostino took a step back, surprised. Never had anyone spoken to him in that way. For indeed, he was renowned to be very bad-tempered – he brought storms of hatred wherever he walked, and the words that escaped from his sharp tongue were as deadly as daggers. No one had ever dared to contradict him. Yet Filippu had. And this was not to be tolerated.

This scene at the Malta Garrison blurred and disappeared, giving way to a dark, gloomy hospital room. The dove was there, perched on the windowsill. Agostino was there, sitting down on an old chair, his head bowed, his face buried in his hands. Filippu was there, lying in bed, his face as pale and cold as marble – for he was dead.

No matter how much he tried to silence it, one word wailed in Agostino’s mind: dekaocto…dekaocto…

It’s my fault, Agostino reflected bitterly. I knew he was ill. I knew he had caught it – that horrible scarlet fever. I noticed. And I pretended I hadn’t. Revenge, I told myself. Teach him not to talk to you that way. When they admitted him into hospital, it was too late. Too late…

“It’s not too late.”

Agostino, ashamed, didn’t raise his head to see who had spoken. It was probably a doctor or some other soldier. “Although it’s too late to save your friend,” the voice continued, “it’s not too late for you.

“I knew an old woman who refused to help a poor convict. Her own greed cursed her, just as your selfishness has cursed you. Agostino! Why is your tongue so quick to condemn, why are your eyes so ready to look away, why is your heart so slow to understand? Sorrow is not wrong, but despair is. You let it control you. Tonight, Agostino, you must choose: you will either go back to your old ways, grumbling and grieving – or you will change for the better. You will either crawl back into your darkness – or you will walk into the dawn.”

He looked up. And to his great amazement, he saw a Roman soldier, decked in his finest armour, tall and almost imposing. His eyes were kind and bright and full of hope. Just like the Roman soldier in Filippu’s tale.

Agostino didn’t change overnight. Rather, the change came in small gestures – a shy word of kindness, a pat on the shoulder, a listening ear. It was like a small seed that pushes out of the ground to meet the light, growing steadily stronger each day. Soon the neighbours wondered at Agostino’s attitude. He smiled like never before. He laughed like a child. He helped every beggar that happened to pass by. “One must keep his spirits high in times like these,” he would say. Like a great olive tree that provides food and shade, all his soldiers and people in his village started coming to him for help and advice. Marianna, beaming, would often say, “Now here’s the man I married!”

The collared dove at the hospital cooed. The memories faded away, as pain and doubts assailed Agostino. He croaked for the priest. “I am a terrible man,” he whispered feebly. “I tried to save them from the explosion…I ran with all my might…but I didn’t manage…I didn’t give enough…”

“Peace, good man,” the priest consoled him. “You gave your life. You gave everything. And that itself is more than enough.”

They buried him in the ossuary at Casal Zebbug, the church of his hometown. The funeral bell sobbed sorrowfully as Marianna stared blankly at the gravestone. She could hardly believe that her Agostino was dead. “He just went to work and never came back,” she sighed sorrowfully. “I will never see him again…”

“Don’t say that.” An old woman, dressed in white like a dove, took Marianna’s hand and led her out into the October sunshine. “Think of all the people your husband helped. He lives on in them. He will not be forgotten.”

The old woman shuffled away, almost fluttering, crooning to herself, “Seventeen…seventeen…”

Then Marianna understood. Her eyes glowed, and a smile crept up her tear-stained face, as glorious as a Mediterranean sunrise.