Paolo’s laughter turns into a coughing fit. Ignazio runs to hand him a bowl and his brother spits blood clots and phlegm.
Ignazio hugs him. Paolo is thin. The illness has eaten away at him, leaving just skin and bones, the container of an indomitable spirit that won’t give in. Not yet.
* * *
When Vincenzo opens the door a few days later he finds a man in a black cassock and a purple stole standing before him. It’s Don Sorce, the Olivuzza priest. His face is weary from the heat. “Your mother sent for me,” he says. “Where is he?”
The maid arrives. “Quickly, this way.”
The little boy sees them disappear around the corner. A scent of summer and heat wafts in from the garden outside the door.
Vincenzo runs out. He doesn’t want to know, he doesn’t want to hear.
* * *
By the time Ignazio arrives, it’s all over.
He finds Giuseppina sitting at the foot of the bed. She does not speak or cry. She’s biting her knuckles. She looks far away. Maybe she is.
She stares at the body. “We need his good clothes,” she mutters, clutching her rosary beads.
He mechanically replies yes. “I’ll go to Via dei Materassai and organize the funeral. I must tell Maurizio Reggio to close the store for two days.” He pauses. “I have to write to Mattia and our relatives in Bagnara. I’ll take Vincenzo with me.”
Giuseppina clears her throat but all that comes out is a whisper. “Masses. They have to say many Masses to cleanse his soul because in the end he repented for everything he did to his sister. He told me while I was changing his nightshirt, after he’d confessed. Also donations to the orphans, we need those. Tell Vittoria to take care of it.”
Ignazio nods. He holds air in his chest. He breathes. He still can.
He approaches Paolo’s body. It’s still warm: the skin on his face is transparent; his hands, once strong and callused, are bony. His hair and beard have turned white.
Ignazio reaches out with his hand and caresses him. Then he suddenly leans down, kisses his forehead, and stays like this, his lips pressed against the skin and grief constricting his throat.
He will carry this moment inside him for the rest of his life. The kiss is the seal of a promise, an oath that comes out of his mouth and that only he and Paolo can hear.
He straightens up and leaves the room. He goes to the lemon tree, where the little boy is waiting.
“Did you say goodbye to your father?”
Vincenzo doesn’t look at him. He’s playing with a piece of wood, splintering it into many pieces. “Yes.”
“Would you like to see him again?”
“No.”
Ignazio proffers his hand and Vincenzo grabs it. They walk to the buggy that’s waiting in the alley.
* * *
There is a small crowd—mainly Calabrians—outside the store. Maurizio Reggio is on the threshold. He hugs Ignazio and receives his instructions. A few minutes later, the wooden doors are shut and marked with the black bow of mourning.
Ignazio cannot escape people’s eyes. Some cross themselves, others offer words of comfort. He just walks straight ahead, holding his nephew’s hand tight. On the doorstep, Vittoria is quietly crying. She pulls her cousin to her, kisses him, and holds him close. “Now you, too, are without protection,” she says, “like me.”
Vincenzo remains still. Speechless.
At home, they find Giuseppe Barbaro, one of Emiddio’s relatives, offering his help to organize the funeral. “May God rest his soul,” he says.
“Amen,” Ignazio replies.
Everything is silent in the apartment. Orsola takes Vincenzo into the bedroom to dress him in mourning clothes. You can hear the chest in his parents’ bedroom being turned inside out.
The rustling of fabrics is accompanied by snippets of conversation. Vittoria, Ignazio, Emiddio.
“The consumption was too advanced.”
“Good God . . .”
“We’ll have to sort out the coffin,” the girl suddenly says.
“It will have to be decorated by a painter. Mass will have to be sung by the friars. He wasn’t . . . He was no ordinary man. My brother was Don Paolo Florio. Our aromateria has prestige here in Palermo, and it was his work that made it so prominent.”
All of a sudden, Vincenzo really understands.
The texture of his father’s hand on his shoulder. Its grip. His beard scratching his face. His stern look. His hands weighing bark on the scales. The smell of spices he always had.
Vincenzo staggers to his parents’ bedroom.
His father is never coming back. And, just as this reality takes hold of him, he meets Ignazio’s eyes and sees in them the same painful void as his.
Suddenly, the absence spreads to the point of knocking him over.
Vincenzo runs away, his eyes full of tears, his feet slipping on the flagstones. He runs away from that house, deluding himself that he can leave that crushing suffering behind him.
* * *
“Vincenzo!”
Ignazio calls him, as the child seems to fly over the cobbles. He suddenly loses sight of him in Via San Sebastiano.
He stops, his hands on his knees. “That’s all we need, Vincenzo . . .” he mutters. He catches his breath and starts looking for the child in the midst of the crowded harbor. He avoids acquaintances who stop to convey their condolences, wading through goods ready for shipping.
He reaches the center of La Cala and sweeps it with his eyes, from the church of Piedigrotta to the lazaretto. The Castello a Mare casts its shadow over the harbor. Tens of masts and sails blur his eyesight.
At last, he finds him.
He’s sitting at the very edge of the pier, his legs dangling.
He’s crying.
He approaches carefully and calls out. The child doesn’t turn around but straightens his shoulders.
Ignazio wants to chide him, and that would be entirely fair: after all that’s happened, his escape was nothing but bravado. Besides, he’s a boy and boys don’t cry. But he doesn’t tell him off.
Vincenzo sits next to him. They stay silent for a while, next to each other. He wants to comfort the boy, tell him how he felt when his own mother died, after the earthquake. He was about the same age, and he remembers only too well the feeling of abandonment, of a void.
The desolation.
But losing a father?
He can’t picture it: his own father, Mastro Vincenzo Florio, Bagnara blacksmith, is just a faint memory. He’d been together with Paolo, on the other hand, ever since they began working at sea.
He is now afraid of what awaits him, terribly afraid, but he can’t tell anyone, let alone a child.
Vincenzo speaks first. “What will I do without him?”
“That was your father’s lot. It’s God’s will.” In these words, Ignazio seeks an explanation that would suit him, too. “We all have our destinies written in our bones the moment we come into this world. There’s nothing we can do about it.”
The silence fills with the lapping of the sea against the pier.
“No,” Vincenzo says, holding back his tears. “If this is God’s will then I don’t want it.”
“What on earth are you saying, Vincenzo?”
It’s a violent sentence, blasphemous, too strong for an eight-year-old child.
“I don’t want to have children if I then have to die like this. Mamma is crying, and you’re also upset, I can see that.” His tone is fierce. He lifts his head. “Now I have to live without him and I don’t know what to do.”
Ignazio stares into the black water. Above them, seagulls are circling in the afternoon air.
“I don’t know what to do either. The rug’s been pulled from under my feet, Vincenzo. He’s always been there and now . . .” He takes a deep breath. “Now I’m alone.”
“We are alone.” He leans against his uncle’s shoulder and hugs him.
Everything’s changed now, Ignazio thinks. He can no longer afford the l
uxury of being a son and a brother. He’s the head now. Their work is his now. Everything is his responsibility.
That is his only certainty.
Part Two
Silk
Summer 1810 to January 1820
U’ putiàru soccu ave abbanìa.
The seller praises whatever he sells.
—SICILIAN PROVERB
After Joseph Bonaparte becomes king of Spain, Napoleon replaces him with his own brother-in-law, Joachim Murat, who is crowned king of the Two Sicilies on August 1, 1808.
In 1812, a revolt breaks out in Sicily because of income tax imposed by Ferdinand IV. The Sicilian government promulgates a constitution—drafted according to the Westminster system—that practically divests the Bourbon king of power and stipulates the abolition of fiefdoms and the reform of government apparatuses. The aim is to modernize the island’s society as well as to establish an even closer link with the British, who have an interest in keeping Sicily independent.
That same year, Napoleon undertakes his disastrous campaign against Russia. After the Leipzig defeat (October 19, 1813), Murat becomes allied with Austria in the hope of keeping the throne. He returns to Napoleon in 1815 but the Austrians defeat him once and for all at the Battle of Tolentino (May 2, 1815). The Treaty of Casalanza (May 20, 1815) therefore sanctions the return to Naples of Ferdinand IV, who installs his son Francesco in Palermo as lieutenant-general of the realm.
On December 8, 1816, the king stages a coup to unite the kingdoms of Naples and Sicily under the same banner and takes on the name Ferdinand I, King of the Two Sicilies. The 1812 constitution is annulled. The island is treated like a colony and subjected to a harsh tax regime.
SILK DOESN’T BELONG TO PALERMO.
It belongs to Messina.
Or rather, it did.
From the strait to the Plain of Catania, farming families would breed silkworms in the shade of century-old mulberry trees, whose leaves were used to feed the larvae. They were taken care of mainly by women, who were paid for this smelly, thankless task. They enjoyed more freedom and independence than peasant women or servant girls in aristocratic households. They could keep their earnings. Valuable, hard-earned money they would spend on their trousseau or on furniture for their future homes.
Then came the discovery that more silk was being produced in the Far East and at much cheaper prices.
The British consequently start to ship their fabrics, buying yarns from their colonies, then processing them back home, or else importing textiles with exotic patterns. It’s the end of European-printed stripes and dull colors. After the long years of wars against Napoleon, people want imagination and brightness.
Sicily’s exports to Italy begin to decrease, then practically grind to a halt. The mulberry trees fall into neglect.
The obsession with chinoiserie starts: furniture, porcelain, carved ivory.
And, naturally, fabrics.
Even the Bourbons pick up on the trend, so much so that King Ferdinand decides that his hunting lodge—and garçonnière—should be “a little Chinese building.”
All wealthy people have at least one room covered in silk.
All wealthy people wear silk.
* * *
The door opens. The glass doors no longer rattle, the well-oiled hinges slide without a sound.
His hand runs over the counter. A marble surface on mahogany feather, smooth as velvet. His eyes linger on the floor tiles, then look up at the walnut chest of drawers with the names of the spices carved in them. There’s a smell of fresh timber and paint in the air.
Ignazio stands in the middle of the room. He’s alone but wouldn’t have it any other way.
He’s been picturing this moment for two years, ever since Vincenzo Romano, the former owner, agreed to give him the store. When the grief of Paolo’s death was still a scar that wouldn’t heal.
It was summer then, too.
* * *
“What are you saying?” The face of Vincenzo Romano, the owner of the building in Via dei Materassai, had become a full moon.
Sitting at his desk, Ignazio looked him up and down.
After calling him into his office—because he was the one to call people in now—he hadn’t asked him to sit down. He’d left him standing like a supplicant in order to confuse him and make him feel uncomfortable. He’d made him wait while he was signing papers. Because the Florios had a lot of business now.
Then he had made his request.
“Are you crazy?” Romano gripped the edge of the desk. “Over my dead body! I’m not selling.”
Ignazio was aware of Romano’s fondness for money and had expected to come up against a wall but was ready to pull it down. He led his attack not aggressively but firmly. As ever, his weapons of choice were patience and politeness. “Try to see it from my point of view. These rooms and the mezzanine need to be refurbished, heavily refurbished. Vuautri u’ sapiti—you must understand: Casa Florio can’t stay in a place with mold stains and creaking doors.”
“So? Just give it a coat of paint and a drop of oil—”
“That’s not the issue. It’s the water that comes in spurts, it’s the damaged floor . . . There’s much work to be done, and urgently. I doubt you’d find tenants as good as us and, besides, if we leave, you’d have to fix the place up anyway.”
Vincenzo Romano had meant to refuse. But only for a moment. He knew Florio was right.
There it was, the doubt. A crack in the wall of refusal. It was written in his bemused eyes and half-open mouth.
So Ignazio pressed him. “I have a suggestion, if you care to hear it. A compromise that would suit us both.”
“What is it?”
Only then did he motion at Romano to sit down.
“An emphyteusis.”
“Wonderful. I’ll still be the owner but you’ll have all the rights. I’ll be proprietor only in name, but without public recognition to do anything at all.” Romano swore under his breath. “It’s not a dog, just the muzzle of a dog—big difference.”
“Think about it. The emphyteusis would keep you, at least in the eyes of others, as the owner of the store. I, and my company, would take care of the refurbishment. But of course if you don’t want to sell . . .” He opened his hand with an eloquent gesture. “It’s entirely up to you. Just as we’re free to move somewhere else.”
Ignazio spoke with absolute determination. He’d concealed his fears because in actual fact he was taking a big risk. If Romano refused, he would have to find a new building for the store and warehouses in a different area.
It would mean leaving the place where it had all begun with Paolo.
However, they could no longer stay in a store with mold in the back room and chipped doors. It did not befit what Casa Florio had become.
Romano had come to collect the rent and been presented with an unexpected offer. He paced up and down the room before asking, astonished rather than sarcastic, “Are you jealous of the Canzoneris and the Gulìs for having their own store, their putìa?”
“Not at all. It’s just that I’d like to have some certainties. To know that u’ maruni unni jecca sangu è suo: if you sweat blood and tears then it has to be yours, without someone else coming to lay down the law. I’m not about to spend money on a store you might one day decide to sell to somebody else. Do you understand?”
Yes, he understood.
Romano left, saying, “I’ll think about it.”
And he did not think about it for as long as Ignazio had feared. He accepted the offer.
First came the emphyteusis, then the work: the well-sinker, the carpenter, the tiles, and the new windows. After just a few months, Ignazio redeemed the rent. He became the absolute owner of the spice store.
* * *
Remembering these six months of work makes his heart leap with joy.
The shelves are crammed with new majolica jars and pots with Florio painted on the bottom. In the Via dei Materassai warehouses, in Piano San Giacomo and at customs, sac
ks of Peruvian cinchona bark are waiting, ready to be ground in order for quinine powder to be extracted.
Aromateria Florio has become what he had always pictured. A real apothecary store.
There’s only one thing Ignazio has kept from the old store: the weighing scales his brother had used ever since he’d started to work.
He needs them to remind him who he is and where he comes from.
Outside the door, there’s a hubbub of onlookers and aristocrats’ servants peering inside, waiting for the store to reopen. It’s just to see what’s happening in that scruffy little store, they say, the putiedda managed by that Bagnara fellow, but their faces betray them, and Ignazio enjoys seeing them so torn between curiosity and suspicion. Never would they admit that they’re being stung by envy and wonder, driven by them to stand there waiting.
As for him, he’s lying in wait for the one who, until now, has tried to stand in his way. A new game is under way, not only against Canzoneri and Saguto, but against all Palermo’s aromatari, who are already whispering, wondering, afraid.
Because the Florios are no longer ordinary storekeepers. They are merchants now and can say it with their heads high.
The door opens. Someone comes in.
Ignazio turns.
It’s Giuseppina.
“But—but it’s beautiful!” Her mouth is half-open in awe. The line between her eyebrows relaxes. She smooths her dark dress with her gloved hand. “I really didn’t think it could change so much.”
She, too, has changed.
Prosperity has brought maids, outfits made by a dressmaker and no longer darned by candlelight, new shoes and coats. There’s more food on the table for her, Vincenzo, and Vittoria, who still lives with them even though she often expresses the wish for a family of her own. However, it’s not just a matter of more elegant clothes or hands that are no longer cracked.
There’s a new light in Giuseppina’s eyes. She seems tranquil.
Ignazio watches her walking around the store, touching the drawers, opening one and inhaling the spices.
She lifts her head and smiles at him.
He can’t take his eyes off her.
“Excellent work, truly,” she murmurs to herself.
The Florios of Sicily Page 10