A Week in Positano: Myth, Memory and the Islands of the Sirens

I was hot and dusty from the long walk through Naples with the Tourist Officer, and I was tired. The hard driving journey along the cliffs, had given me a stiff neck, and the only thing on my mind was getting to the hotel as quickly as possible, and checking into my room. I didn’t know what to expect, and from my last twenty four hours experience with Italian hospitality, I was quite prepared to be booked into a dump with cockroaches working the nightshift. I was very wrong. Le Sirenuse was a good hotel back then, and one that I could readily afford. It wasn’t the best, but it was up there. The best hotel was the San Pietro, which was over on the cliffside, on the outskirts of the town, on the road to Paestum where Tiberius grew the rose bushes that are still there -  the world’s oldest rose bushes.

Nowadays, this would be a different story. Positano has been well and truly discovered by Australian people who have houses in the salubrious suburbs of Woollahra and Double Bay and Palm Beach. The smart set have driven the prices up, and it’s way out of my range, then again, most things are. I’m not sure I would want to go there now anyway. Back then, it was still a bit unknown. I shudder to think of the people who walk up and down the little, steep and winding pathways that lead to the hotels up the top, or the ones down near the beach. I bet they pay a lot for their rooms. It’s a different world now that Vogue Living has done its stories on the brightly coloured tiles, and the fashion spreads have splashed the fashion over glossy pages, for the people that matter.

On my last visit to the place, back in the mid to late 1980’s, it was beginning to wane. The shrill yank voices were easily overheard above the quiet mutterings of an Italian businessman whispering to his mistress in the corner of a café. It was a shame, when I saw a condom, floating in the sea in front of the pebbly beach, and the lined up deck chairs. That’s progress, and to be fair, it was the end of August and a packed summer. Progress can be good. By the way, have you heard? We are all going to live till we are well over a hundred. Isn’t that good news? Is it? I’ll tell you when I’m 102. Anyway, it wasn’t the mid eighties, and Positano hadn’t yet become the favoured watering hole of rich Americans from Potomac. It was strictly for Italians on domestic holidays, or the molto elegante international set. Yes – I am going to include myself in that description. At twenty two, how can you be anything else but molto elegante?

The hotel was something else, as they used to say in  the US a few years back. I knew I was going to be happy as soon as I walked into the lobby, which was large and white and very clean, supported by narrow columns of a vaguely Islamic influence. The furniture was very simple: couches covered in plain green or blue coloured cloth; some little glass topped tables with lamps on them and ashtrays (one could still smoke in public then); plants everywhere, including a long vine that had crept its way across the ceiling, and the most marvellous tiles I had ever seen.

The owners of the hotel Le Sirenuse, are noble. The Marchese di Sersale and his sister, the Marchesa. I spot them in the ristorante on my first evening there. I have chosen to eat in house, which proves to be a mistake. The food is wonderful, but I stand out like the testicles of a Great Dane. I am the only one eating alone. I don’t even have a lonely man’s friend. A book. I must sit there and between sips of wine, try to look happy with my own company. I am happy with my own company, but I am also self conscious.

The Marchese and his sister are rich and noble, but also short and dark skinned too. He is holding court across several tables, ostentatiously talking loudly in Italian, French, German and perfect English. He looks at me a number of times, but fleetingly, not wanting me to think that he is putting on his performance. I look at the floor. Beautiful green tiles. I wonder how they got that colour? Positano is famous for its pottery.

By the time my first course arrives, the restaurant is filled with people. They are rich. Mostly foreigners. I hear a few Americans: a blonde family in the corner. Most of the people are tanned. This is June remember. Holiday season. It’s a place for tans. They still use baby oil here. At the table next to me there is a couple. A middle aged man and his wife. They are fat and suntanned. His eyes are heavy lidded. He could be Persian. Xerxes bringing his lady wife to dinner to celebrate his latest conquest. They both wear jewellery. They have on colourful Italian designer clothes. I wonder where they are from. I have nothing much else to do but scan faces. Make up stories about these people.

When you go down to Positano, and the towns around the Amalfi coast, there is wonderful pottery everywhere. A lot of it is quite like the pottery Picasso was doing towards the end of his life. It is very colourful and big. The plates are huge. Designed to hold pasta for a whole family lunch. But, it is the colour more than anything else that attracts. It’s the same for the floors. They were covered by these gorgeously coloured tiles in odd shapes. It lent an air of looseness to the hotel. It relaxed me, but at the same time, gave me the distinct feeling that I was in the realm of the artist, or is that an aerie? I’m not sure. The man behind the reception counter, and I can still remember his name: it was Andrea, was most charming and accommodating. He was also discreet. For many years I received Christmas cards from Andrea. He was like a friend to me. But this was my first visit to the place. Andrea booked me into my room and a young porter helped me to carry my bags. I felt safe, secure, and out of harms way, and the satellite tracking systems of the rip-off artists who waited for the loose, the stupid and the vulnerable. I knew that they waited nearby, but not in this hotel. I opened the balcony doors of the room, and was immediately presented with the magnificent view.

Offshore lay the tiny islands of Li Galli, once called Le Sirenuse, where Homer placed the Sirens whose song almost lured Ulysses to destruction. The famous Hotel Le Sirenuse, overlooking the bay, borrowed its name from those same legendary islands. 

According to Greek mythology, the Sirens were beautiful creatures who lured sailors to their deaths by singing in voices so irresistible that no man could withstand them. Their victims would steer their ships towards the music, only to be wrecked on the rocks.

These were the same Sirens who tempted Ulysses. Knowing that no one could resist their song, he ordered his crew to plug their ears with beeswax and tie him securely to the mast. As they sailed past, he begged to be released, but his men ignored his frantic pleas until the danger had passed. 

The writer, sailor and navigator, Ernle Bradford, in his book Ulysses Found recounts the time during the Second World War, when he served in the Royal Navy, much of it in the Mediterranean, while on watch near the greek isles, he believed that he heard an eerie haunting singing kind of sound. For a moment, he wondered whether it was the sirens calling him. They were rather like mermaids—though certainly not the Little Mermaid. These creatures would kill you without a moment's hesitation. I'd met one or two of them myself, usually in bars, disguised in long dresses. I didn't need to hear their voices to know they possessed the same dangerous gift. Their beauty alone was enough.

Somebody told me that a man once lived over there on Li Galli, the Islands of the Sirens. For years, they said, he would row across to Positano, haul his boat up onto the pebble beach, and wander into town for supplies, a drink, or simply the company of other people.

He had been famous once. A celebrated dancer with the Ballets Russes who later became one of the great choreographers of the twentieth century. His name was Leonid Massine, and he came from Russia. He bought the islands in the 1920's. Later another famous Russian dancer, Rudolph Nureyev bought them and lived there.

At the time, I wasn't sure whether the story was true or simply another of Positano's wonderful legends. There seemed to be an endless supply of extraordinary people in the town back then, and after a while it became difficult to separate history from myth.