CHAPTER 



TROPICAL BAPTISM 



IT was night in Massawa. I had been there just two hours. 

 Two days before I had been in Rome. Going down the 

 steps of the Ciaao Hotel, which looked for all the world like 

 a great bungalow, I kept repeating to myself that this was 

 indeed Africa. At last. And as, in the dusk, I walked among 

 the palms, I realized that all the hard anxious planning of 

 the past year was now at last behind me. 



The town of Massawa was three-quarters of a mile away; 

 to get to it I had to cover the narrow causeway that joins the 

 old coral island to the mainland. The road was deserted; 

 faint lights gleamed at the end of it. The atmosphere was 

 stifling, palpably wet. There was no point in breathing 

 deeply for the air was almost water, hot water. 



I walked on in the Massawan night, sweating. I was soon 

 gently soaked. It was 26th January; in Milan there'd be 

 snow and fog . . . neon lighting, crowded streets, all the 

 hubbub of the great metropolis that was my home. And here 

 I was looking for tropical fish, sharks, morays, mantas. . . . 



Suddenly the smell of the sea was there on my right ... a 

 black, silent, waveless sea — the Red Sea ! I was really there. 

 I had reached my goal. I could dip my hands in the Red 

 Sea ! I crossed the road at a bound and went down on to the 

 shore to find there was no water, but only a stretch of thick 



