In Sicily

by Norman Lewis

  As regards Bagheria, I remembered a previous visit to this town and that I had left it with a sensation almost of relief. People, in particular foreign tourists, went there to visit the Villa Palagonia, a strange, eerie building described by the Sicilian lady who had shown me round on a previous visit as giving her the shivers. It had been created two and a half centuries earlier, and the original villa was regarded as an outstanding example of Sicilian baroque architecture. But as the years passed and the third generation of the Gravina family began to exhibit the symptoms - evident in all their undertakings - of mental collapse, a high, encircling wall was built, cutting off most of the view of the villa. This wall was surmounted by a nightmarish collection of grotesque human and animal figures carved in the golden sandstone. The creator of this fantasy appears positively to have admired a brand of ugliness which must have produced nightmares in many a child forced to accompany its parents on a visit to this revolting scene.

  What is curious is that an exceptional number of mafiosi were known to have settled comfortably in this environment. Eight years after that visit to Bagheria, Bernardo Provenzano, who broke all records as a fugitive from justice, was reported to have spent a high proportion of his thirty years on the run in these surroundings which suited him so well, living in security and great style in a villa within easy view of the Gravina monstrosity.

  The local event to which Marcello had referred, and of which through the newspaper he had received information in advance, was concerned with a persistent feud between two capi-mafia: Toto Riina - then regarded as the head of Cosa Nostra - and the ferocious Luciano Leggio who had thrust his way to the front years before with his much publicized murder in Corleone of the trade union leader Placido Rizzotto.

  It turned out that the war for the possession of Bagheria had already broken out by the time we arrived; all shops were closed, all cars parked, and what Lorca described as a ‘stinking silence’ had settled over the town. Not a pedestrian was in sight. Gioacchino managed to shove the car away out of view, and as he did so a single carabiniere materialized in a doorway, ready with news. He was unusually communicative and seemed happy to be released from his boring routine. We would be interested, he thought, to hear that Leggio was marshalling his forces somewhere in the neighbourhood, despite the fact that officially he was at that moment incarcerated in the maximum-security prison at Termini Imerese. He was conducting the battle by telephone.

  Toto Riina’s people had engaged their opponents in a brief machine-gun battle earlier that morning. It was clear that such incidents were almost a matter of routine.

  ‘A lot of machine-gun fire in the morning,’ the carabiniere said, ‘to start off the day. After that usually nothing to speak of. It always quietens down in the afternoon. My advice is to go to Alcamo. You’ll find plenty of activity down there.’

  Whatever his personal inclinations, Gioacchino thought he had to follow the man’s advice. The carabiniere took us to the station where Gioacchino phoned the maresciallo of the carabineri at Alcamo. ‘It’s fairly exciting,’ he said. ‘By all means come along.’ Somewhat to our surprise he arranged to meet us not at carabinieri headquarters, but at a spot on the outskirts of the town.

  Alcamo, a fine white town overflowing with magnificent churches, is heaped over the top of a hill with the most elegant parts of it, as is usual in such cases, on display at the summit. The rendezvous was to be at the end of a path down to the main road, and a dark-haired girl of about twenty was awaiting us, her dramatic facial expression I suspected, whatever the circumstances, of being unvarying. This was the maresciallo’s daughter and her news was that he and his five carabinieri were under siege by Toto Riina’s men, and at that moment no one could enter or leave the town. There was nothing for it but to turn back. It was an incident that for me showed the Mafia mentality in a new light. Women were always employed as messengers at such moments of tension, Gioacchino explained, both by the Mafia and the police, and their neutrality respected. ‘Working for the newspaper, you see these things happen all the time,’ he said. ‘Mafioso wives and lovers do most of the negotiating that goes on with the police, or maybe the maresciallo’s daughter is invited to sit down for a comfortable chat with the superboss, and is charmed by the old-fashioned courtesy she is shown.

  ‘Pity you won’t be here for the Festa della Morte,’ he went on.

  ‘Anything like Mexico?’ I asked.

  ‘Nothing,’ Gioacchino said. ‘It’s part of a child’s upbringing. They’re brought up here not to fear death. The kids are pushed out into the street and fed cake. The very young ones get sugar dolls.’

  ‘Not so very different from a child’s treat anywhere else,’ I suggested.

  ‘It is,’ Gioacchino said. ‘The Devil brings the presents. If it’s a really poor family it could be the only present he or she ever gets. Anyway it’s something to remember. The parents and the Devil go through a series of gestures to indicate that they’re passing on the fear of death to the rich.’

  There was an autostrada to be crossed when we left police headquarters. Gioacchino warned us that there was no underpass so we would have to wait or take our chances. ‘A few days ago they found the body of a man who’d been hit by a car with the sugar doll from his childhood still in his pocket,’ Gioacchino told me.

  I was making notes. ‘Any more?’ I asked.

  Gioacchino said, ‘Yes. There is no word for pleasure in the local dialect.’

  There was a restaurant just down the road of the kind that opens only at weekends, and we went in to sit for a while over a bottle of wine and decide what to do next. The owner served us with the local pasta full of small sea shells. ‘Notice anything unusual?’ Gioacchino asked, and I shook my head.

  ‘He has two thumbs on his right hand, which is good for business. People will pay a bit more here just to see the thumbs. They’re very fond of unusual things - well, in a way. They took a great dislike to the telephone kiosks and used to stone them when they were first put in. The police had Ti Amo (I love you) painted on all the boxes, and after that they let them alone. All prostitutes are small. Now why should that be? The best-looking ones ask to be paid in cocaine. The beggars pay the Mafia for their positions outside the churches. They have to wear a kind of uniform with patches sewn into it, but for beggars they’re rich. If they finally let us in the town we must go to the office of the tourist agency. The lady who runs it half opens the door and then stands sideways while she’s talking to you so as to show only half her figure,’ Gioacchino said. ‘These people try to convince themselves they’re townsfolk, but actually they’re living the life of villagers - maybe of a few hundred years ago.’

  Gioacchino’s stories of the surrounding Mafia strongholds had filled half my notebook, each one in some way different from the rest, but all with a reputation for toughness and crime. ‘Why don’t we take a look at Corleone after all?’ Gioacchino said. ‘I have an idea you’ll find it changed since you last went there.’

  We were already in the outskirts of this celebrated town and he nodded in the direction of a splendid façade in pale sandstone soaring above a rank of parked cars. ‘La Chiesa Madre. Magnificent, isn’t it?’

  ‘And well looked-after,’ I said.

  ‘They can afford to,’ Gioacchino said. ‘Plenty of money about, and the Church gets its share.’

  ‘Someone told me this place is pretty run down these days?’

  ‘Maybe it was, but no longer. They’re into cocaine now, and business for everybody is good. Those aren’t just pigeons you see up there,’ he said. ‘They’re turtle doves of some special kind from the Holy Land. A present from the cardinal. Drugs are the best money-spinner these days.’

  Our road back to Palermo was as straight as we could make it, through villages such as Marineo and Bolognetta where ‘respected’ families forbade their daughters to show themselves on balconies even when the usual sheeting had been stretched behind the rails to conceal the lower parts of their bodies. The very o
ld in such towns were laid outside the house daily in a drying process which they believed diminished the pangs of death.

  At the entrance to Palermo there’d been a crash. There were tiny brilliant puddles of blood under the cars. A calm discussion was going on between the survivors, and passers-by brought sweets for the children.

  The news of Marcello was worse. He had been obliged to take to his bed, but despite his realization that the end must be near there was no change in his humour or spirit - even a wry little touch of self-congratulation again in the matter of the grape harvest. Marcello died a week later, and for me, it was like the loss of a family member.

  Changing plans, I decided to do no more than fulfil my contract with the Sunday Times and to postpone major literary effort involving the island to some future time, which as it transpired meant a delay of eight years.

  6

  IN 1998, CORRESPONDING with my Sicilian friends in preparation for a renewed visit, I was assured by them that I should find everything much changed. I assumed at first that this would be for the better, but alighting from the taxi at a modest hotel some yards from the Quattro Canti, Palermo, at about eleven at night I was not wholly sure that this was the case.

  Palermo’s historic centre has always been patrician and austere, but now it was also silent. My wife, Lesley, and I asked at the hotel reception desk whether we could get something to eat, but our request was met by shaken heads.

  All the staff had gone home. Eventually we were despatched in search of a nearby trattoria thought possibly to be open. There were neither pedestrians nor vehicles of any kind in sight. Pale lamps illuminated the street and the ranks of tall, stark buildings, their summits sunk in the blue-black sky. Most of the windows were shuttered and all the doors closed. The only movement was the flinch in the shadows of a cat mobilized by night. The owner of the trattoria stood at the back of twenty empty tables to welcome us with a tight half-smile. He was grateful for our unexpected presence in this place where the glitter of barren place-settings deepened the solitude. He made us an omelette and, as we were leaving, came to the door to squeeze my hand and turn out all but one of the lights. ‘If you are approached,5 he said to me in an undertone, ‘allow your hands to fall to your sides.’

  We went out into the street which, in its emptiness, glistened strangely as if the surface had been oiled. We were making our way quickly back to the hotel when we heard a low growling sound in the distance. This increased, for a moment to a point when the earth seemed to vibrate, and I suspected a tremor of the kind I had had some experience of in the south of mainland Italy. Then a machine turned a bend in the road ahead. At first it looked like a gigantic earth-mover supporting a tower with a small platform at its top. Several men dressed in protective clothing were busy with machinery, and when the thing came to a standstill just ahead of us it shot out a kind of gangway. It became clear that work was to begin on the repair of a palazzo which had recently showered the street below with a small landslide of decorative masonry.

  The drama of the coming of dawn in Palermo was exaggerated by the long night’s prelude of silence and torpor. Daylight filled the streets with a tempest of sound and clamorous action. The city’s huge daily problem within an hour or two of the rising of the sun is the painstaking separation of the mosaic of cars inserted with such patience and skill into hundreds of streets; thereafter the steady if frenetic flow of the traffic recommences. With the approach of nightfall the procedure goes into reverse. Sicilian human society, for all one’s presuppositions, displays cooperation, tolerance and good nature. Piece by piece - each fitting exactly in place - the mosaic is reassembled. The blast of car-horns fades away, the roaring exhausts are silenced, the elaborate patterns of parked cars are restored, and what on first acquaintance is the deep calm of the Palermo night returns again.

  Spiritually and physically this city is imbued with the classic life of the Mediterranean deep south, and as such is companionable and exuberant, as well as vociferous. To see the best of this, there is no better way than to make for the old part of the town. In our case, with a base at the Quattro Canti, this meant following the main Corso Vittorio Emanuele eastwards for some two hundred yards before turning into any side-street leading to the sea. It was here that a succession of invaders came ashore down the centuries, then settled to build their churches, palaces and forts. It is an experience to broaden the mind, bringing the visitor into immediate contact with human beings who appear to be saturated with the pleasures of Palermo as it once was, rather than the unfortunates who have graduated to the lifelessness and colourlessness of the new suburbs to be reached along the ring roads.

  The most interesting street leads through the Vucciria market down to the San Domenico church, and the stalls sloping down to the centre take up two-thirds of the street’s width. There can be no more splendid market in the world than this, for the vendors of foodstuffs of every kind are infatuated with extremes of size and artistic presentation. Zucchini are a yard long, but fifty snails can be held in a cupped hand. The tastefully arranged collops of meat are brilliantly and continuously smeared with fresh vermilion blood and the chicken’s feet neatly trimmed of their claws. Sideshows attract tiny Sicilian puppets which dance to taped music over traysful of giblets. Bright-eyed cockerels stroll at liberty up and down the street until the moment of execution comes, which may be within seconds of their first appearance.

  The area possesses a popular saint of its own, Padre Meli of the parish of Santa Chiara all’Albergheria, esteemed by all for his care of the unfortunate and sick and for his lively tolerance of all religions. ‘Let them worship who they will, so long as they worship,’ he is supposed to have said, and when the poor Tunisians of the neighbourhood complained that they had no mosque he replied, ‘Don’t worry, I’ll fix one up for you.’ And this he did in the cellars under his church.

  Humanity is presented here surely in its most concentrated form. In Naples, where I spent the year 1944-45, I noted that the Vicaria district was officially credited with the highest population density in Europe, with three persons occupying every two square metres of floorspace. I am sure that the Vucciria of Palermo could have competed with this with its tightly packed and animated multitudes. There are faces at every window and a bustling, gesticulating crowd at work in every cellar. Apart from the market itself, the area might be seen as a slum, but it is not, for all these people are clean, well dressed, affable and courteous. By night, if possible, there is even greater crowding among the acres of decaying palaces in the city centre. Cars are crammed with extreme skill among the courtyards’ chipped and abraded Corinthian columns, while above, girls who for the best part work in offices sleep twenty or thirty to a room into which they are packed like tiny inanimate parcels. There is nothing of the slum about these conditions because morale remains unshaken. From eight in the morning onwards the young typists and computer operators come, fresh, smart and lively as can be, streaming out into the streets.

  It was estimated in a newspaper report that three hundred of Palermo’s splendid palaces - among them superb examples of baroque architecture - were in desperate need of repair. Even to the inexpert eye of the casual passer-by, many of them appeared to have reached the point of no return and shortly, with or without warning, the end would be signalled in the thunder of falling masonry. Such doomed buildings dominate their environment in many parts of the city. Abandoned eventually by the nobility, subsequent occupants, drawn largely from the mercantile class, have been unable to afford the vast expenditure needed to keep them in repair, and thus, slowly over the centuries, the processes of decay have taken their toll. One of the grandest is the Villa of the Dukes of Pietra Tagliata, residence of Ferdinand IV after his expulsion from Naples in 1799, which has just been officially ‘sealed’, i.e. placed out of boundsa to visitors. ‘Of the once majestic façade on three levels,’ says the report, ‘little remains. The decorative window and door surrounds and the tessellated pavements have vanished.’ No city coul
d easily afford the full repair of so many vestiges of a grandiose past, nor even the cost of rendering them all safe, which would be high. There they stand, towering over mean streets, reduced often to façades and outer walls, the roofs having fallen in. While we were there ten such palaces were threatened with demolition orders. It is hoped that most will survive for another century or two, for in them Palermo demonstrates the beauty of noble ruin, incomparable even as a purely decorative presence among the mediocrity of the modern equivalents with which they will eventually be replaced.

  In theory such palaces have usually been empty for a number of years, with no signs of life visible through the grimy windows of the lower floors, but just as often, almost, curtained windows on the top floors suggest that with or without sanction they are occupied by poorer families, who accept the risk of staying in possession until removed by the police.

  During our stay in Palermo, the historic buildings in the last stages of delapidation included the Palace of the Dukes of Acquaviva, a once magnificent, but now abandoned building rumoured to have been converted for use as a pig farm. Government inspectors, visiting it, found that this was indeed a fact. Pigs’ excrement covered the floor and that of the palace’s adjacent chapel to a considerable depth. Marble floor tiles, and a valuable old wrought-iron balcony railing, had been stolen by thieves who did no more than walk in and carry them off. The legal owner of the edifice was a man of eighty-three, who, despite his legitimate ownership, faced a charge of disfiguring a national monument. He was not impressed, demanding in reply, ‘Who was going to look after the dump, if I didn’t?’

  It was clear that, even with squatters in partial occupation, such buildings were at risk from depredations other than the weather. A case in point was the Palazzo Galletti, a late-baroque palace occupying one side of the Piazza Marina down by the port. In this instance a lady passing by spotted robbers working in full view of the street to remove a marble pillar from one of the decorative windows. Disturbed by the arrival of the police, they made their escape, returning after an hour or two when the coast was quiet to finish their work and carry the pillar away.