The Florios of Sicily

by Stefania Auci

  She immediately saw his ravaged face. The droopy eye, the twisted mouth.

  She understood.

  She ran to call the housekeeper. The physician came and administered medicines. The grimace froze, and his voice remained hoarse.

  From that moment on, however, something in her husband changed.

  He handed the entire business to Ignazio. He would never admit it, but his body was no longer in tandem with him. Not even seventy years old, it had betrayed him, and he couldn’t trust a traitor.

  Moreover, a few days later, Vincenzo called Quattrocchi, the notary, and drew up a will.

  “Why?” Giulia asked with a hint of anxiety after the notary had left. Sitting in the study armchair, he gave her an odd look. Annoyed. Gentle. “The Lord helped me this time, but I don’t know about next time. I don’t want to leave anything untidy.”

  She bent and kissed his forehead. “You won’t leave anything because you’ll get well. You just need rest. You’ve grown old, Vincenzo, just like me, and we must slow down now.”

  “Yes . . .” He puckered his lips. “Slow down.” Then he added softly, bitterly, “I never thought this time would come for me.”

  They hugged.

  Giulia sensed his fear. It struck her right in the middle of her chest and sapped away her strength because it showed her clearly what the future would be like: something too dreadful to imagine, let alone bear.

  Vincenzo was never afraid. Vincenzo was strong. If only he wanted to, he could defeat death.

  And yet he’s gotten worse over the last few days. Perhaps another blow has struck the parts of him that have already been attacked before. He barely speaks and hardly eats. Not even the prospect of the imminent grandchild can shake him out of it. He simply can’t take it anymore. Years of exhaustion, getting up early and working till late, of tension and anger, are now taking their toll.

  And she, who loves him like no other woman would have loved him, knows he has stopped fighting. That he’s tired, that this is no life for him. That he has decided to go. Vincenzo, always so active, like a stormy sea, can’t live confined to a bed.

  * * *

  But Vincenzo is not unconscious. On the contrary. He remembers.

  Two years earlier, when his son brought him to see this house, surrounded by this enormous park full of palm trees, dracaena, and roses, he felt a shudder go through him. He asked the coachman to take a path along the main road, semi-concealed by the olive trees.

  And there he found a dilapidated house with the branches of a lemon tree grown wild stretching toward a window without frames.

  He got out and took a few steps toward the detached door. “Yes, this is it,” he said, his voice quivering and a lump in his throat.

  Behind him, Ignazio had been watching him, perplexed and even fearful. “What is it, Papà? What is it?”

  He swallowed air and turned. For a second, through the trees, he thought he saw the form of his uncle Ignazio giving his hand to a little boy.

  “Here. This is where my father, Paolo, died.”

  Ignazio looked at the ruins with dismay. It must have been a modest house, but was now a hovel, a skeleton.

  Vincenzo felt a shudder rise from the earth to his skin, an omen more than a tremor.

  He knew there and then that everything would end where it had begun. That everything in life revolved in a circle. And that this circle would come to him, too.

  The laughter he emits is a gurgle of saliva and anger. He slams his healthy hand on the sheet. This is what he’s reduced to: a piece of flesh that’s washed and cleaned, looking at Giulia’s expression of distress, since she’s never been able to conceal anything. To see compassion in the eyes of his daughter-in-law, who seemed terrified of him at first.

  Everybody was terrified of him. And now he is half a man.

  He turns his eye to the ceiling, searching for the ivory crucifix. The other eye is blind, and doesn’t respond. It’s no use. “Christ, let’s get it over with,” he hisses, but his voice is incomprehensible, little more than a drowsy lament.

  Giulia is immediately at his side. Her work basket rolls on the floor, needles and threads strewn over the rug. “Are you unwell?” she asks. “Vincenzo . . .”

  He turns with difficulty.

  How much has he loved her?

  Only then does he realize with total clarity that she’s the only woman who could have been at his side. That Giulia was not a punishment or a fallback, but a gift. Without her patience and her love, he would never have succeeded in doing anything.

  Nothing, if he hadn’t seen the same fire as his in her.

  With a huge effort, he drags his hand next to hers. He takes her small, wrinkled fingers. “Did I give you enough?” he asks with difficulty. He struggles to speak clearly but his tongue feels like dead flesh. “Did I give you what you wanted? Did you have everything?”

  Giulia understands. She understands the slurred words no one else can make out, and realizes what they mean.

  Her eyes mist over with tears because she, too, knows that he will never tell her words of love. It’s up to her to do it for both of them.

  She sits opposite Vincenzo, the way he did when Ignazio was born. She utters the words she has never dared say to him, while her flesh is being torn apart and her heart is breaking. “Yes, my darling. You have loved me enough.”

  * * *

  Just a few hours later, a servant boy arrives from Via dei Materassai and shouts that, yes, another boy is born. They’ll call him Ignazio junior. The lineage and future of Casa Florio is assured.

  Vincenzo barely grasps the news. The blood in his brain encounters obstacles, returns with little oxygen, and stagnates between his lungs and his heart.

  He’s immersed in a dream.

  He’s at Arenella, at the foot of Villa dei Quattro Pizzi. He’s young, has the strong body of a thirty-year-old and sharp vision. It looks like nighttime but the darkness is suddenly illuminated, as though he can see his surroundings in the dark.

  Maybe this is a memory, the recollection of that nighttime swim when he felt the whole of life flow through him.

  He takes his clothes off, dives, and swims into the open sea. Now the sun glares off the water with an intensity that hurts his eyes. He feels light and strong. Pure, as though after a christening.

  The lapping of the sea is the only sound he hears. He sees Giulia’s bedroom window and knows she is waiting for him. But behind him, in the open sea, there’s a small flat-bottomed boat with a lateen flapping against the wind.

  It’s a skiff.

  It gives him a start. His father, Paolo, is at the helm. And at the side of the boat, ready to pick him up, is Uncle Ignazio, gesturing at him to approach. He’s laughing, calling him.

  Vincenzo turns. Giulia is waiting for him at home. He can’t hurt her like this. He can feel that she is suffering.

  And yet the outstretched hand is stronger, draws him more than anything else in the world.

  “Come, Vincenzo,” his uncle calls. He laughs, he’s young, like that time they went to Malta together. “Come.”

  And so he makes his choice.

  With large strokes, he swims toward the boat. Giulia knows it. She will understand.

  Soon she will join him.

  Acknowledgments

  I have always considered novels as one’s children. Difficult, at times naughty children who demand absolute dedication. This has certainly been my most demanding child.

  Like all children, this novel has godparents. First and foremost, I must thank three people: Francesca Maccani, a wonderful woman who read and reread this story with extraordinary passion and dedication, pointing out errors and inconsistencies; Antonio Vena, the invaluable friend all authors should have because of his ability to see beyond the text; Chiara Messina, who kept my spirits up during dark times and never said no to me. She never stopped “turning on the light.”

  Huge, infinite thanks to Silvia Donzelli, my fantastic agent, who doesn’t miss a trick
and whose patience with my anxiety attacks is epic. I don’t know what I would have done without you.

  Thanks to Corrado Melluso, a friend and adviser for whom I have infinite esteem, who said to me one day in Castellammare, “You can. Of course you can.” Thanks for that and for everything else.

  Thanks to Gloria, who has always listened.

  Thanks to Sara, who knows these books from the inside.

  Thank you to Alessandro Accursio Tagano, Angelica and Maria Carmela Sciacca, Antonello Saiz, Arturo Balostro, Teresa Stefanetti, and Stefania Cima, and especially to my dear, my dearest Fabrizio Piazza: booksellers who never stopped encouraging me, as well as being wonderful friends.

  Thank you, in no particular order, to those who have helped me in drafting this book. Claudia Casano, for her essential advice on the toponymy of old Palermo; Rosario Lentini, who introduced me to the Florios in all their complexity and gave me an objective perspective on the history of this extraordinary family; Vito Corte, for his suggestions on architecture; and Ninni Ravazza for the invaluable work he carries out on the world of tonnaras.

  Thanks to my family, especially my husband and my children, who never lost faith in what I was doing and came with me on my reckless explorations around Palermo and not only there. Thanks to my mother and my sisters, who never asked for updates. Thanks to Teresina, she knows what for.

  Thanks to S.C., who, I know, is smiling.

  Thanks to Nord, who believed in the project right away and accepted me in an extraordinary way. Thanks to Viviana Vuscovich: I couldn’t have wished for a better pair of hands than yours to take this book for a stroll around the world. I will always remember our chat under a half-sunny, half-rainy sky.

  Thanks to Giorgia, who has Job’s patience and unusual diplomacy with an author who always forgets everything. And thanks to Barbara and Giacomo, who put up with me, support me, and are always there for me, and know how to soothe my anxiety attacks. It is you who make Nord into a home.

  And, finally, thanks to my diamond cutter, my magistra, Cristina Prasso. Thanks to the woman who has made this book into what you’re now holding in your hands: thank you for the passion, commitment, beauty, and love you put into it, thank you for the words and the calm you are able to give me. Thank you for your patience. Thank you for having heard my voice. I hold you in infinite esteem.

  One more thing, the most important. The story you have read is the story of the Florios as well as the city of Palermo, a place I love very much, just like I love Favignana. The historical facts that concern the Florios are fully knowable and described in dozens of books, and it is on these facts that my plot hinges. Where knowledge was lacking, inventiveness and workable imagination came in: in other words, the novel came in. The desire to do justice to a family of extraordinary people who, for better or worse, marked an era.

  This is “my” story, in the sense that I have written it the way I’ve pictured it, without an easy hagiography, by slipping between the folds of time, trying to reconstitute not only the life of a family but also the spirit of a city and of an era.

  A Note from the Translator

  In addition to the usual challenges involved in translating literature, working on a historical novel presents the extra complication of vocabulary. There is frequent delving into dictionaries and the Internet to look up words for objects, architectural details, and fashion quirks that you may never come across again. There is also the dialogue. Should you echo the period, or make it as accessible to a modern readership as possible? It is not always advisable to translate late 18th-century Italian into 18th-century English, which has undergone more dramatic changes over the centuries than Italian. It takes less concentration for a modern Italian reader to grasp the language of Alessandro Manzoni than a modern Anglophone to focus on Hawthorne or the Brontës.

  Then there’s the challenge I enjoy the most: translating regional dialects. We must remember that Italy became a united country only in 1871. Prior to that, it was formed of principalities, dukedoms, a republic, and many states, each with its own language or dialect, traditions, laws, and characteristics. In the case of The Florios, we are introduced to a family on an island marked by Greeks, Normans, French, Spanish, and Arabs. The vast majority of Italian writers, even nowadays, use a certain amount of regional dialect in their writing. Although the official language throughout the peninsula is Italian, regional variations creep in with the odd phrase, idiom, or even word. Sometimes, the difference is so marked that it is not understood in another part of the country. Translating dialects is an interesting point. Do we translate it into a British dialect or a North American way of speaking? I choose not to. Venetians do not have the same sensitivity, history, or humor as Mancunians, Londoners, or the residents of New Orleans. They don’t have the same history, the same body language, the same food, or the same temperament. When I asked the lovely and extremely helpful Stefania Auci to explain a few Sicilian expressions I could not find in any dictionary, it transpired that some expressions simply didn’t have an equivalent in English—because English simply didn’t have an equivalent mindset.

  Personally, I choose to omit rather than disguise. And so, somewhat sadly, much of the regional relief in the dialect has to be sanded into a more standard English. In the case of The Florios of Sicily, some Sicilian expressions were too colorful, too onomatopoeic, or had too beautiful a sound to cast aside. So, I decided to keep them in the text, and slipped in an explanation somewhere in the vicinity, hoping this way the reader will enjoy its rich flavor, even if he or she is unable to break it down into specific ingredients. After all, where’s the fun in having everything handed on a plate, without the need to be intrigued? Wouldn’t we then be deprived of mystery and its child, inquisitiveness?

  —Katherine Gregor

  Here ends Stefania Auci’s

  The Florios of Sicily.

  The first edition of this book was printed and bound at LSC Communications in Harrisonburg, VA, March 2020.

  A NOTE ON THE TYPE

  The text of this novel was set in Adobe Garamond Pro, a typeface designed in 1989 by Robert Slimbach. It’s based on two distinctive examples of the French Renaissance style, a Roman type by Claude Garamond (1499–1561) and an italic type by Robert Granjon (1513–1590), and was developed after Slimbach studied the fifteenth-century equipment at the Plantin-Moretus Museum in Antwerp, Belgium. Adobe Garamond Pro is considered to faithfully capture the original Garamond’s grace and clarity, and is used extensively in books for its elegance and readability.

  An imprint dedicated to publishing international voices, offering readers a chance to encounter other lives and other points of view via the language of the imagination.

  Copyright

  This book is a work of fiction. References to real people, events, establishments, organizations, or locales are intended only to provide a sense of authenticity, and are used fictitiously. All other characters, and all incidents and dialogue, are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real.

  THE FLORIOS OF SICILY. Copyright © 2020 by Stefania Auci. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

  Originally published as I leoni di Sicilia in Italy in 2019 by Nord.

  Translated from the Italian by Katherine Gregor.

  FIRST EDITION

  * * *

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Auci, Stefania, author. | Gregor, Katherine, translator.

  Title: The Florios of Sicily : a novel / Stefania Auci ; translated
by Katherine Gregor.

  Other titles: Leoni di Sicilia. English

  Description: First edition. | New York, NY : HarperVia, [2019] | “Originally published as I leoni di Sicilia in Italy in 2019 by Nord”—Title page verso.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2019030861 (print) | LCCN 2019030862 (ebook) | ISBN 9780062931672 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780062931696 (ebook)

  Subjects: LCSH: Sicily (Italy)—Fiction.

  Classification: LCC PQ4901.U28 L4613 2019 (print) | LCC PQ4901.U28 (ebook) | DDC 853/.92—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019030861

  LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019030862

  * * *

  Digital Edition FEBRUARY 2020 ISBN: 978-0-06-293169-6

  Version 02222020

  Print ISBN: 978-0-06-293167-2

  ISBN 978-0-06-303013-8 (Int’l)

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