Yet here they are in the house they have just built on the edge of town: the ground floor is a garage for farm supplies, their tractor, and Turiddu’s car, while for lack of space the secondhand cars belonging to the two sons are parked in the street outside. The second floor is their apartment: three bedrooms, a dining room with a very fancy stereo, a living room with suite in imitation leather, the phone that was installed when the eldest son went north to do his military service, a modern kitchen with the “all’americana” cabinets in lacquered wood and a large color TV. Above us there are two more floors, unfinished apartments so that each one of the three children will have one, and a roof terrace complete with rabbits and chickens. And as far as I know, it is all paid for.
This is a collective conquest, of course: the boys have both worked since they finished eighth grade, and on weekends and vacations before that; Teresa has done hand embroidery on commission and the daughter embroiders by machine. But it is Teresa’s intelligence and character that have acted as a counterweight to Turiddu’s erratic personality. She is unfailingly calm and good-natured, measuring out indulgence and sympathy in doses sufficient to cushion but not to undermine her husband’s heavy-handed authority, guiding the family investments with good sense and practicality. She actually cooks in her fancy kitchen, unlike many peasant households where the shiny stove and matching cabinets are considered too good for everyday, and the cabinet doors are kept open to display carefully arranged wedding presents, while the cooking is done on the old two-ring burner hidden in a closet under the stairs. Thanks to Teresa the children are cheerful, intelligent, and hardworking, despite the paternal turbulence that does come through in the slight stutter that afflicts both boys.
The younger son is an expert hand with plow and tractor and did a lot of work for us before he finally refused to work any longer at his father’s side. The elder, an electrician, is much shyer, has a more severe stutter, and at first gave the impression of taking after his father. Then one evening when the whole family was staying at Bosco for the grape harvest, he asked me if he could look at some of my books while he was waiting for supper to be served. I expected him to put back immediately the book on Sicilian baroque architecture that I presumed he had picked up by mistake and was very startled when he began to point things out to his mother and make comparisons between the churches in the photographs and the ones in Alcamo. He apparently reads everything he can get his hands on and loves the educational programs on television, much to the disgust of his father, who thinks that too much reading is harmful and who hurries home at the end of the day to watch “Fury, the Fastest Horse in the West” on the children’s hour.
But if my mind boggles in an attempt to encompass the jump that they have made, Turiddu seems unperturbed by it. Teresa is flustered by the extent of the celebrations that children and relatives have talked her into, but Turiddu is wreathed in smiles.
“Eh, purtroppo, signora, twenty-five years!”
We stop off at Bosco on our way home to pick up some wine. The very first of my beloved daffodils are out, their deep yellow petticoats tossing in the wind that blows hard and cold from the south, whipping the dark clouds across the sky and shredding the earlier promises of spring, the almond blossoms, into a shower of white petals, confetti for Carnival and for weddings, a symbolic sowing that links field and family in a prayer for fertility, for new crops and new generations. The link persists even in the etymology: we have borrowed the word “confetti” from the Italians, who use it to denote the sugared Jordan almonds that are distributed at weddings, like the ones Turiddu and Teresa have given us, while the small disks of paper the children throw at Carnival are called coriandoli, “coriander seeds.” At Greek weddings the bride entered her husband’s home “to the cheers of the inmates, who by way of a lucky omen rained upon them a shower of all kinds of fruits and sweetmeats.” They must have been a bit sticky—today’s brides are probably better off with rice.
The next Saturday we have again to come to grips with Gamelione, this time as guests at a very elegant wedding in the city. Palermo brides must have a very difficult time deciding where to get married: civil ceremonies are performed amidst the Bourbon frivolity and chinoiserie décor of Queen Maria Carolina’s pleasure pavilion in the Favorita Park, while the choice of religious setting runs from the stark stone beauty of the Norman church of the Magione to the glittering gold mosaics of the Palatine Chapel, the almost overpowering splendor of the baroque marble inlays at Casa Professa, or the mysterious Byzantine intimacy and the Greek rite at the Martorana. The bride in question gets high marks for good taste: she has chosen to be married at the Oratory of the Rosary at Santa Zita, a setting as appropriate as it is beautiful, for the frothy white stuccowork of this chapel bears a close resemblance to the frosting on a wedding cake.
There are three such oratories in Palermo, each one the work of Giacomo Serpotta, one of the most famous of Sicilian sculptors, who lived and worked in Palermo at the turn of the seventeenth century. Each is the private chapel of a confraternity, presumably of nobles but whether clerical or lay I have yet to discover. In any case, the confraternities had both the taste and the means to commission what are justifiably the most famous monuments of Baroque Palermo.
One enters the oratory at Santa Zita from a narrow street running to the left of the church. An unassuming door gives onto a broad marble staircase open on one side to a small courtyard; at the head of the stairs is an antechamber hung with portraits of the various leaders of the confraternity, starting with quite recent paintings and going back through a succession of fashions and beards to the epoch of the oratory’s construction and beyond, the ruffs and the pointed beards of the Spanish domination dark with age, the paint of the twentieth-century spectacles and smooth-shaven cheeks still glistening.
The oratory itself is a triumph of white and gold, the simplicity of its rectangular floor plan and unadorned vaulted ceiling a perfect frame for the riot of white plaster putti who cling and tumble about the windows that occupy much of the side walls. Life-size allegorical figures of the Virtues perch on the window-sills, guarding small plaques of tiny freestanding figures that represent the mysteries of the Rosary. On the rear wall five more such plaques surround a larger central scene showing the defeat of the Turks at the Battle of Lepanto in 1571, with the aid of the Madonna of the Rosary. On high the Madonna, supported by clouds and angels, hovers ready to interyene in the battle waged below between rows of galleys, each miniature ship completely rigged with spars and oars no bigger than toothpicks. These plaques are set in a tumultuous sea of scrolls and swags, of putti and birds, shells and flowers, all done in white stucco of the most amazing intricacy and detail.
For the occasion the chapel is filled with large bunches of white and pink carnations and gladiolas, and the white frills and flounces of the bride’s dress, the gold and white brocade of the prie-dieu where she and the groom are kneeling, blend into the perfect harmony of the setting. Never have I been so glad of the length of an Italian wedding, but as I feast my eyes on the joyful surroundings, it is difficult not to wonder at how my own marriage has so conditioned me, it seems, that I cannot come to this oratory without experiencing acute discomfort. When I look at the accumulation of gray on the curls of the putti, I am both appalled and compelled by the thought of dusting it all.
Carnival supposedly brought the tempus terribile to an end, but suddenly the gates of Hell yawn before us. A man in Alcamo with whom Tonino has worked closely as an agricultural consultant receives an anonymous phone call asking for 100 million lire. This request is, among other things, totally unrealistic: the man’s consultancy business is only moderately profitable, and he is loaded with debts from building a new house.
Tonino seems to think it perfectly possible that similar miscalculations might be made about us. We try to find reassurance in the fact that we live in Palermo and have a very low profile in Alcamo, since we dress shabbily by Sicilian standards and drive inexpensive cars that age prem
aturely on the dirt roads around Bosco.
A week later the farmhouse that our friend’s father has just finished rebuilding is blown up. It is done with canisters of bottled gas, to make it look like an accident: the roof lands some hundred yards away, and the damage amounts to about 50 million lire, a very neat and professional piece of work.
The phone calls continue: if you don’t want to end up like your house, pay up. The man talks unofficially to a friend of his in the carabinieri, who advises him to “settle it outside.” When he asks if the police could tap his phone, he is told that it is very complicated. But the calls come every day.
Tonino is very nervous. Sunday afternoon while we are at Bosco a car comes up the hill on the lower road and stops suddenly when it is near enough for the occupants to realize that we are there. They make a show of getting out to look at something across the valley, then leave. Tonino keeps finding excuses to go to Bosco during the week: he says nothing but I am sure that he holds his breath each time he drives up the hill, until he is close enough to see that the house is still intact.
Palermo is papered with posters announcing a march against the Mafia and against drugs, to be held on the last Saturday of the month. It is being organized by the coordinating committee of high school students for Palermo and Bagheria, with the participation of the People’s Committee of Casteldaccia.
Bagheria and Casteldaccia, together with Villabate, are small towns on the eastern outskirts of Palermo, the three corners of the area baptized last summer by the press as the triangolo della morte, the “triangle of death,” after a particularly bloody Mafia feud produced a corpse a day for several weeks running, despite heavy police surveillance. The succession of murders was apparently intended as a challenge to dalla Chiesa, and in fact the prefecture received an anonymous telephone call, just a few days before the general himself was murdered, announcing that “the Operation Carlo Alberto is almost finished.”
The high school students in Palermo have been very active in organizing marches and conferences about the Mafia this winter, a commitment that goes beyond mere youthful enthusiasm to an acute sense that their generation is both target and victim of the Mafia-controlled drug traffic, but this is the first time the marchers will desert the center of Palermo to invade the very heart of Mafia territory, the Vallone, the wide valley of rich lemon groves that lies between Bagheria and Casteldaccia.
The students have chosen for their poster a poem that they attribute to Brecht:
The great oak,
the glory of the emperor,
is falling:
and who would ever have said so?
It was not the river, not the storm
that split the great trunk to the roots, but the ants, thousands of ants,
working every day together,
organized, for years and years.
Soon you will listen to its fall
and the tremendous crash, and an immense
cloud of dust
will rise after the fall.
And the little plants of the world
will finally see the sun.
I worry that the ants will not be counted by the thousands but by the tens or the hundreds, and right now it seems especially important to me that this peaceful invasion of the battlefield be multitudinous, so I decide to go together with some other unaffiliated adults to swell the ranks.
Unable to be at Bagheria for the 9:30 departure, a group of us drive ahead to Casteldaccia and walk out to meet the marchers. The day is unexpectedly warm despite the misty clouds that hide the sun. The march is following a small country road that weaves up and down through terraced valleys of lemon trees laden with fruit, a bumper crop, most of which will not even be picked because prices are so low. The branches bend down to the ground under the weight of their golden burden, the bright yellow of the lemons merging with that of the wood sorrel growing underneath. There is no traffic on the road; an occasional motorcycle cop putts purposefully by, but otherwise the silence is broken only by the birds and the barking of a dog. We pass a stand of nasturtiums run riot, the leaves as big as plates, that slither down the bank to the road in a splash of orange, the only exception to a limited palette, lemon yellow, emerald green, both muted by sky gray.
We walk on for almost two miles before the quiet is invaded by a distant hubbub of voices that soon resolves itself into a rhythmic chant: “Pace sì, Mafia no! Pace sì, Mafia no! Pace sì, Mafia no!” In a burst of color the march rounds a curve and comes into sight. Behind the police on motorcycles come the official banners of Palermo and Bagheria, the red banners of the trade unions, the delegations from the political parties. Then a tractor and cart belonging to a farmers’ cooperative, filled with gray-haired peasants, their faces baked to a rich brown crust by years of Sicilian sun and wind, their red flags streaming behind them. And then the flood of students, some behind the flags of the youth federations of the various political parties, others behind banners bearing the names of their schools, still others carrying the rainbow flags of the peace movement. The students themselves are a multicolored tide of down jackets and patterned sweaters, laughing, joking, taking up a slogan or a song and letting it wash down the line, then resuming their conversations.
Here and there are other small groups of adults like ourselves, but we are very few in this sea of youth. We fall in behind one banner, are overtaken by another, uncertain where our place in all this is. Toward the end, a group of white banners with a cross on them, the flag of the ACLI, the Catholic Workers’ Association, seem strangely tattered. Looking back as we go over the crest of a hill, I can see that we have left a wake of lemon peels behind us.
As the march passes through the outskirts of Casteldaccia and into the main square, small knots of men watch us, their black caps low on their impassive faces: it is impossible to catch any inkling of reaction. The mayors of Casteldaccia and Bagheria are waiting for us on a wooden grandstand, together with dalla Chiesa’s daughter, the parish priest from Villabate, and a couple of students from the organizing committee. The crowd cheers when a telegram of solidarity from President Pertini is read aloud and again when Rita dalla Chiesa steps up to the microphone with a brief message of greeting, but the other speakers receive at best a very perfunctory attention. We ourselves decide to skip the speeches and head for home.
When Francesco comes home in the evening I ask him what the beginning of the march was like.
“Pretty good. At Bagheria even some little kids from the elementary school came out and sang a song for us. But Palermo is really disgusting—if the Catholics organize something, then the Communists and the extreme left won’t participate; if the left starts something, then the Catholics don’t want any part of it. It’s a miracle anything ever gets going! As soon as we got out in the country some guys started throwing lemons—did you see the state that the ACLI banners were in? They got the worst of it.… But, actually, it was kind of fun. We got a real battle going, just like those ones with oranges at Carnival that you were talking about the other day.”
Chapter Five
There are no lions or lambs in Sicilian iconography: March is quite simply considered mad. Dark clouds scud back and forth across the sky, caught in a cosmic tennis match played out between the scirocco, the hot wind blowing up from the Sahara, and the tramontana, whose gusts have been chilled by Alpine glaciers. The temperature changes abruptly at every swing, and the pace is furious, allowing the clouds no pause to unload their precious burden of water. Despite the many gray days this winter, little rain has actually fallen into the reservoirs, already depleted by two years of drought, and the prospects for the summer are very grim. Water in Palermo has been rationed for more than a year now, in theory at least, but the supply system is such a tangled maze of modern tie-ins to Bourbon conduits that the aqueduct office is hard put to know how the water gets from one point to another, much less to insure an equitable distribution. At least a third of the input leaks out through the rotting pipes before it reaches it
s destination.
The situation is much worse in the towns in the interior, where water often arrives only every five or ten days. Here too it is man who is at fault, not nature, for Sicily is rich in water that flows to the sea unexploited. The government’s neglect is part ingrained, part instigated: the Mafia controls the major wells and springs that tap the subterranean water layers, and it sells its water at high prices. One must admire, however, the Mafia’s adaptability; when a popular movement led by Danilo Dolci forced the government to approve the construction of a huge dam on the Belice River, local mafiosi bought, for next to nothing, some of the wheat fields that were to be flooded and applied for government subsidies to transform them into first-class vineyards (the government foots 60 percent of the bill for this kind of land improvement). When the land was expropriated for the dam, the government reimbursed these new owners at vineyard prices, which were much much higher than what it would have paid for the original wheat fields.
On the few days that rain does fall, the clouds, exhausted by so much activity, drop everything at once. The water descends in a solid wall, choking Palermo’s inadequate sewers and bringing traffic to a standstill. The countryside is overcome, unable to drink in such an exuberant serving, the water drains off to the sea, carving deep furrows in the plowed fields and carrying away the seeds and seedlings of the farmers who had hoped to get an early start on their novara.
Beneath the gray skies the fava beans are in bloom. These flowers alarmed the Greeks, who read in the black markings on the petals a theta, the first letter of thanatos, of death. In fact, the Greeks used fava beans for funerary rites rather than as food; the Pythagoreans even considered eating a fava bean to be cannibalism, since the stalk, one of the few in nature to be absolutely hollow, was the passageway for the exchange of souls between the living and the dead. Fortunately for us, the Romans recuperated the fava bean to the table of the living: picked while they are still small, very green and tender, and cooked with bacon, or in fritedda, sautéed in olive oil and a little broth together with new peas and finely sliced artichokes, fava beans deserve their place in spring’s cornucopia.
On Persephone's Island Page 14