It’s the weight of years that weighs most heavily.
—SICILIAN PROVERB
Fueled by the Palermo aristocracy and developed through a dense network of secret societies, hatred toward the Bourbons grows, as they are “blamed” for obliterating all Sicilian ambition for independence by uniting the Kingdom of Naples with that of Sicily and revoking the 1812 constitution. On June 15, 1820, a revolt breaks out, forcing Prince Francesco to take refuge in Naples and triggering the creation of the Sicilian Parliament, which restores the constitution. However, revolutionary winds are also blowing on the mainland. On July 7, an insurrection led by General Guglielmo Pepe forces Ferdinand I to accept the same constitution that Ferdinand VII of Spain had promulgated in March.
The independence-seeking spirit of the Sicilian government—aimed at restoring the Kingdom of Sicily—naturally clashes with the Bourbons, who take advantage of the discord among Sicilian cities (especially among Palermo, Messina, and Catania) and easily suppress the revolt through bloodshed. In November, the monarchy is restored and Sicily is back under the control of the Neapolitan government. And, in March 1821, the powers of the Holy Alliance—Prussia, Russia, and Austria—whose help Ferdinand I had requested, inflict defeat on the insurgents once and for all: on March 24, the Austrians march into Naples and place the king back on the throne. They remain there until 1827, when Francesco I of the Two Sicilies, who succeeds his father, Ferdinand, in 1825, finally manages to push them away.
AN INJURED LION drinking at a stream. The roots of a nearby tree reach out into the water, releasing their healing properties.
It is the image that represents the Florio business: from the sign over the aromateria to the statue of Benedetto De Lisi standing outside their family tomb in the cemetery of Santa Maria del Gesù in Palermo.
The tree that plunges its roots into the stream is the cinchona, and its bark has probably saved millions of lives. Its powerful febrifuge properties were discovered, first and foremost, by the Indios in Peru and Bolivia, and do not escape the notice of Jesuits who, in the seventeenth century, take this bark back to Spain. Desiccated and stored in sacks, it is then sold in Europe’s most important ports.
They call it “bark.”
However, when Europeans become aware of its use in pure form, they also see that it’s a drug for the select few. Because it is expensive and comes from a long way away, and because the bark needs to be ground by hand. Moreover, even though it takes away the fever, the powder drains the strength from patients, which is something poor people find even more serious than the actual fever.
In the nineteenth century, there is a development: thanks to mechanical grindstones, it becomes possible to obtain vast quantities of refined bark. The price drops. In 1817, Pierre Joseph Pelletier and Joseph Bienaimé Caventou extract quinine from this bark. But it is only at the end of the century that an irrefutable link is proved between malaria and parasites, and only at the beginning of the twentieth century, when fifteen thousand people a year are still dying from malaria, will the Italian government agree to sell quinine in salt and tobacco retail stores.
* * *
“Run, run! They say Spanish ships are approaching the harbor!”
“Not at all! They’re Neapolitan ships, they’re bringing King Ferdinand here because all hell has broken loose in Naples!”
“The king? If he comes here, we’ll drown him!”
“It’s the soldiers! The soldiers in Naples demanded the constitution, and the king gave it to them!”
“He gave it to them and not to us! One rule for some, another for us?”
“Ferdinand has to give us the constitution back, the one he took away from us in 1816. It’s our right. Long live the Kingdom of Sicily!”
“It’s the revolution! The revolution has broken out!”
Men, wagons, horses. Palermo has been in revolt since yesterday, on the occasion of the Feast of Saint Rosalia. Streets and squares are teeming with voices.
Ignazio picks up fragments of shouts from the crowds swarming in Piano San Giacomo.
“Watch out!” He shoves Vincenzo out of the way seconds before a carriage traveling at full speed nearly runs him over.
Those who can abandon Palermo. Others, on the other hand, look for an opportunity to prove themselves and fuel the rage of the populace. No one knows what will happen because of the revolt in progress.
Vincenzo brushes a lock of hair from his face. “We must reinforce the doors of the warehouses. If anybody decides to plunder them—”
“If they want to sack the city they won’t be stopped by two extra beams of timber. Let’s go!”
They walk up Via dei Materassai, going against the flow. Ignazio goes into the aromateria. The shutters are closed and only one door is left open, watched by a clerk.
Ignazio looks around and his mind drifts elsewhere, to a faraway place and time. He was still living in Bagnara when riots broke out against the Bourbons, which led to the birth of the Neapolitan Republic. Then, too, there were riots and deaths throughout the kingdom. But that was, above all, an opportunity to settle personal accounts and family feuds. Murder and plunder often had little to do with political motivations: rather, it was a desire to make your enemy pay, whether he be an unpopular relative, a pilfering farmer, a cunning breeder, or a priest who had levied too much of a tithe.
But no, he thinks, this time it’s different.
In Naples, some army units rebelled. This led to the discovery that many officers had joined the Carbonari and, following their commanders, a large number of soldiers had gone over to the rebels. Soon enough, King Ferdinand was in trouble. A few days earlier, he had been forced to grant a constitutional charter acknowledging the rights of the aristocracy and the people, and went as far as establishing a parliament.
The Sicilians did not stand by and watch, quite the contrary. The insult suffered in 1816, when the king had abolished the Kingdom of Sicily and repealed the 1812 constitution, was impossible to forget. On July 14, 1820, as the city was heaving on the occasion of the Feast of Saint Rosalia, the revolt broke out. Nobody wanted to continue living as a prisoner in their own home, so the nobility, intellectuals, and other people took advantage of the crisis in Naples to declare Sicilian independence.
The real spark, however, came from the aristocrats. In 1799, the fleeing Bourbons had been welcomed and protected, and yet what thanks had they given in return? They had stripped the nobility of its power, its privileges, and the positions they had always occupied, because that was how it had always been and had to continue. Sicilians ruled over Sicilians. The nobility commanded the peasants.
Sicily was a strange country: the king had no allies among the nobility—on the contrary. Rather, Sicilian aristocrats were competing with the Crown because the king was a foreigner who had imposed himself on their home. Whereas they had lived in Sicily for generations, some even since the times of the Arabs and Normans. It was they who had created this island with their power, rituals, blood, and marriages, mixing it with salt, soil, and seawater. They were highly skilled at manipulating the peasants and the poor as they pleased. They would light the fire but then get wretched people to handle it and, inevitably, get burned by it.
“Jamuninni,” Ignazio says to Vincenzo.
“Where?”
“They want to requisition the goods from customs, no one knows why. It’s impossible to make any sense of anything anymore. Bastards!”
“So our shipment is—”
“Everything’s at a standstill. They’ve blocked all outgoing ships, damn it!” Ignazio is furious. “They’re saying a provisional government is being formed and in the meantime customs is all at sixes and sevens. Ben Ingham’s just informed me. Hurry up, he’s waiting for us there.”
Ignazio walks decisively. Crowds throng the alleys up to the square courtyard of the Customs House, which is invaded by merchants and seamen.
The entrance is manned by soldiers who look like they wish they were anywhere but there
, and certainly not now. They keep the crowd at a distance, brandishing rifles and shouting that they will shoot, but nobody seems to be listening to them.
“I insist. You will let us through because it is our right.”
Vincenzo would know Benjamin Ingham’s voice anywhere.
Ignazio joins him. “Signor Ingham’s right. We have a ship about to sail. Our documents are in there.” He points at a white building behind the soldier. “If our goods don’t leave, you’ll be causing us thousands of oncie’s worth of damage.”
“We can’t, signore,” a soldier replies. “Besides, it wouldn’t do you any good. A military dispatch has forbidden all departures.”
Voices are raised.
“What do you mean? And who sent this dispatch?”
“We want to talk to an official!”
“We want to see the documents!”
“Whose decision was it, then?”
The soldiers exchange a terrified glance.
That’s when some employees try to escape from the accounts office. They are received with shouts and somebody even hurls dung at them. The customs officers try, in vain, to hide in the crannies along the seventeenth-century walls. The crowd demands answers.
In the end, an employee smelling of sweat and fear steps forward. “There’s no point in your staying here!” he cries. “Everything’s blocked, nothing can leave. They’ll sink your ships with cannonballs!”
“But why?”
Vincenzo looks at Ingham with genuine amazement. It’s incredible how he manages to get himself heard in this racket without raising his voice. “That’s what they’ve told us!” a customs officer yells back. “Go home, all of you!” Then he walks away.
“You heard?” a guard says in support, raising his rifle. “Go away!”
A few merchants step back.
Vincenzo does not give up, however. He follows the man and grabs him by the arm. “I’m not taking this bullshit from you,” he says. “There was no dispatch.” He pulls the man to him. They’re inches away from each other and can smell each other’s odor of tiredness and anger. “You may trick the others but not me. Nobody can decide anything whatsoever.”
The customs officer tries to wriggle free. “Let go of me or I’ll call the guards.”
“How much?”
The man’s pupils dilate. “What? What do you mean?”
Vincenzo’s other hand travels to the man’s collar and grips it hard. “How much to let the ship sail?”
Ingham has followed him, with Ignazio. He stands by the young man, his eyes fixed to the ground. “I’m joining in with young Florio,” he mutters. “How much?”
The man hesitates. “I—”
“For God’s sake, hurry up!” Ignazio exclaims in a single breath, as the captain of one of the ships approaches.
The customs officer lifts his chin toward the warehouses. There’s panic and greed in his eyes. “Go there in a little while. To the back door, there.” He looks at Vincenzo, then Ingham. “Just the three of you.”
* * *
In the alley at the back of the Customs House, the shade is down to a strip. Minutes turn into hours. The Doganella door is shut, guarded by a handful of soldiers.
The July sun is a ferocious animal. Ingham’s face is a fiery red, covered in freckles. Ignazio wipes his forehead with a handkerchief.
One of the doors suddenly opens. The customs officer’s face is a white dot in the darkness. “Come in.”
The three men exchange glances, slip inside, and take a couple of steps. The shade washes over them like cool water, and they are enveloped by the smell of dampness.
“How much?” the customs officer asks.
Vincenzo suddenly feels pity. The man is nothing more than a terrified wretch.
His thought is immediately confirmed. “I have three small children to feed,” he whispers, “and I’m putting my job on the line for you.”
Vincenzo goes to the door to make sure nobody is coming. Ingham sets the price. The man haggles. A pouch goes from Ignazio’s hands to those of the employee, who checks the coins.
Immediately afterward come the authorizations.
“The documents are dated three days back so there won’t be any problems. The ship must sail on the night tide, with its lights out and its sails down to a minimum. The harbor will remain closed, at least for now. I’ll make sure there’s no soldier in that part of the dock . . . That’s provided all hell doesn’t break loose.”
Ingham’s smile is like a knife. “I have no doubt you’ll make sure of it.”
Ignazio calls Vincenzo to him. “We have the authorizations for us and Ingham. Run to the ship, hand them to the captain, and explain everything to him. Make sure you talk only to him.”
Vincenzo slips away, followed by the customs officer. Ingham and Ignazio walk down the corridors and into the deserted courtyard where the doors of the warehouses rented out to the public lead. They are locked and barred.
Everything seems safe. They draw a sigh of relief.
Outside, Palermo lies in heavy torpor. The heat and excitement have left it exhausted, messy, asleep in the late afternoon closeness. The two men follow the wall to Porta Felice, the only gate that is still open.
Ingham walks lazily, his hands in his pockets. “I was very impressed with Vincenzo today. He showed remarkable presence of mind for someone his age. He was very pragmatic but there was no time for subtleties.”
“That’s right.”
The Englishman watches Florio from the corner of his eye. “Aren’t you pleased with him?”
“Yes, of course. I’m proud of him, he had the guts to do it. It’s just that there are times . . .” He stops. He doesn’t know what to say. Vincenzo has an aloofness he cannot entirely understand.
They come to La Cala. The wind from the sea rustles amid the trees and ships. Not far from the entrance to the Doganella there are still traces of the morning’s scuffle.
The Englishman pushes a capsized wagon out of the way. “Vincenzo is very . . . very hard, you’re right. He’s incredibly determined.”
Ignazio sees the ship they have chartered. On land, his nephew is speaking to a few sailors. “You think so?”
“Yes.” Ingham stares at Vincenzo. “You know, I have many nephews in England, my sister’s children, strong, serious young men. But none of them possesses your nephew’s rage. Don’t get me wrong: it’s a healthy rage, the kind that gets you very far.”
Ignazio senses admiration in his voice, perhaps even a hint of envy. And yet it does not make him happy.
* * *
Vincenzo has been to England again. He has been away all summer and has recently returned, bringing back with him a large wooden chest and a English blacksmith with whom only he can speak. They have shut themselves away in the Piano San Giacomo warehouse for a few days. It is at the end of one of these days, after night has fallen, that Vincenzo goes to Isabella Pillitteri’s house. He tells himself it is by chance that he has ended up there against his will. But he knows that’s not the case.
The house is empty, the windows shut. He’s heard that the two women had to move slightly out of Palermo: the relative who had allowed them to live in that house decided he could not keep them for life and forced them to leave, their few belongings packed in sparse luggage and loaded onto a cart. As for the brother, rumor has it that he enlisted in the Neapolitan army so he could bring home a little money and keep away from brothels.
His eyes fixed on the balconies, the plaster flaking with age and negligence, Vincenzo thinks that there is some kind of slow, twisted divine justice. An unwritten law of fate: if you hurt somebody, sooner or later you will feel the same pain.
It is a thought that provokes a bitter realization: he is so different from the brokenhearted boy who went to England for the first time. Then he was a fool, a babe who’d allowed an old shrew to insult him in public. Now he is a man. And yet he still feels a twinge of anger and regret. Anger because Isabella would not listen to hi
m, because she had run away, because blood had been more important to her; regret because the possibility of having a family with her was stillborn.
Water under the bridge, he thinks. He’s twenty-five years old, and sooner or later he will find a girl with whom he’ll have a few children. But not now, because he doesn’t want any complications with women or family. But he will be rich, oh, yes, rich enough to wipe that self-sufficient, annoyed expression from the faces of people like the Baroness Pillitteri. He will be so rich that he will have no trouble finding a girl from a family with as many titles as mortgages.
A noblewoman who would stoop to a bourgeois like him.
Money doesn’t lie, he tells himself. Possessions don’t say one thing and mean another. It’s people who are two-faced. And what brings him most pleasure, more than a woman’s body—he got familiar with them in England—or a bottle of wine, or food, is his work. Its earnings. As for social recognition, he doesn’t care how long he’ll have to wait: he will get it.
* * *
The following evening, Vincenzo came home sweaty, with oil stains, but contented. He asked his uncle to go with him tomorrow morning, and to bring along Reggio as well as another worker with a sack of bark.
When asked for an explanation, he replied, “You’ll see.”
And now Ignazio cannot believe his eyes.
The machine is an iron carapace that emits a hiss. Inside, two large iron forms make up the grinder, closed with a hermetic lid.
Ignazio reaches his hand out over the lid, then looks at Vincenzo, who is waiting, arms crossed, to see his reaction. Nearby, Maurizio Reggio is stunned and fascinated. Vincenzo motions at the English worker to halt the machine. Ignazio and Maurizio approach. The lid is lifted gently. Both are immediately surrounded by a dark flickering, as the smell of bark spreads across the room. Powder of the same consistency as ash has accumulated under the metal plate.
“You did write to me about this,” Ignazio murmurs, astounded, “but I never thought it was this fast. It grinds more bark in half an hour than five workers in an hour.” He looks at his nephew. “Is this how they work in England?”
The Florios of Sicily Page 16