As an afterthought, he brings out involtini, veal rolled around a layer of herbs and cheese, but even Ed has stopped by now. He's thanking the waiter. “The best fish in Palermo,” he tells him.
“How do you know?” I ask him on the way out. The waiter bares his teeth in a big grin. No, he looks more like a wolf than Jesus.
“It had to be. That was a down-home place.”
We're out early. In the Vucciria quarter, the market is stupendous. I've been to markets in France, Spain, Peru, San Francisco, all over Italy. This is the market. For the senses, ecstasy and assault. Because Palm Sunday is this weekend, perhaps it is more of an assault than usual. Lines of lambs, gutted and dripping, eyeballs bulging, hang by their feet. Their little hooves and tails look so sad. Their little guts look so horrifying. The rainbows of shining fish on ice, the mounds of shrimp still wiggling their antennae, painted carts of lemons, jewel-colored candied fruits, bins of olives, nuts, seeds—everything is presided over by dealers who shout, sing, cajole, joke, curse, barter, badger. They're loud and raucous. Could it be true, as I've read, that the Mafia runs the heroin trade out of here? A vendor holds out a basket of eels that look like live sterling silver. He gyrates his hips to emphasize their movement. This feels more like a carnival than the decorous Tuscan markets we're used to. I wish for a kitchen so I could gather some of the lustrous eggplants and clumps of field greens. My stomach is growling so loud it sounds like a tiny horse neighing. Cooks here are in paradise. I'll never eat lamb again.
Ed refuses to go to the Catacombe dei Cappuccini, where 8,000 desiccated corpses are on exhibit. I have already bought a postcard of a red-haired girl under glass for decades, her delicate nostrils still stuffed with cotton, a ribbon in her hair. We have visited the same sort of place in Guanajuato, Mexico. I was fascinated; he was revolted. We decide on the Museo Archeologico, and we don't come out until it closes. I find this one of the best museums I've ever visited—so much of what interests me is gathered in this old convent. Phoenician anchors and amphoras dredged from the sea lie around the courtyard. Mysterious stelae painted with portraits were found on ancient grave sites in Marsala. Etruscan treasures, some with traces of paint, from the tombs at Chiusi, near us in Tuscany, somehow have ended up in Sicily. Here we get to see the sixth- and fifth-century B.C. metopes (panels of the temple frieze) removed from the Greek site at Selinunte, one of the most important ruins on the island. We find Demeter, the Cretan bull; Perseus, Hercules, and Athena star in various triumphs. Hera marries Zeus, and Actaeon becomes a stag. Seeing the familiar mythic players as they actually were on temples brings the legends closer to my imagination. These images come from the time when they were real to people, not just characters from the pages of a history of myth—an astounding telescoping of distance. The enormous scale, too, prepares us for the dimensions of the ruins we'll see.
We can't look at all 12,000 of the votive figures also excavated at Selinunte but we look until we can't look anymore. That only leaves rooms and rooms of Roman sculpture, Greek vases, and more and more. We meander through, stopped by painted fragments from Pompei, a fantastic third-century B.C. bronze ram, and a blur of mosaic pavements. Then, out. Onto the plain sidewalk, dazed and dazzled by what we've seen.
All of Palermo is a grand feast. Not an easy city but a challenging one. You keep your wits about you; you're not lulled or allowed to be passive. It's a place to encounter, which makes it memorable. We spend three days among the Palermitani, engrossed in their street life, saturated by their Sicilian Baroque, which out-Baroques Baroque, stiff-necked from looking up into domes. Does the baby in the womb experience light, the way I can see through my hand held to a strong light? If so, to the emerging infant, perhaps the last blurred look back from the birth canal resembles the inside of the bricked Moorish dome at San Cataldo, a concentric expansion of pale light.
The surprise of Palermo was Sicily's fling with Art Nouveau, called “Liberty” in Italy. The metal kiosks around the Quattro Canti, the main intersection at the town center, had all the charm of the famous metro signs in Paris. Our hotel was decorated with extensive paintings by Ernesto Basile, who also finished the decoration of the Teatro Massimo, designed by his father, which recently reopened after over twenty years in restoration. What a father and son duo. Spotting their sources in the Byzantine, Moorish, and Greek motifs around town was an added pleasure. A frustration was how many places were closed. No sign, just closed.
As the freesias begin to wilt in our room, we decide to start our tour of the island tomorrow morning. We have a glass of blood orange juice on our balcony. All we can hear is the rattle of palms below us in the breeze and the jingle of rigging on the sailboats in the bay. “Do you want to come back?” I ask.
“Yes. We haven't seen whole areas of Palermo.”
“It's hard to get a sense of the place. So layered, so crude, so complex—a daunting city.”
“My core impression is of a chaos everyone here has learned how to survive.”
“I don't think I could live here. Besides the horror of the Mafia, I'd never be able to drive anywhere.” I don't even like to drive the East Bay freeways.
“Yes, you would. You'd get a used mini-car and if you got a few dents a day you wouldn't care.”
“What about dents in my head?” Chaos, I think. Yes, it's here. But I suddenly remember a story a woman I met in Milwaukee told me about someone she knew. “This Midwestern soldier in World War II was on a ship which was bombed by retreating Germans in the harbor of Palermo,” I tell Ed. “He survived even though almost everyone else was killed. He swam to shore and was stranded here. I think the Germans were retreating by then. One night he went to the opera—he'd never been before. At the end, he was so moved by the music he began to cry. All the horrors caught up with him. He just stood there during the applause and afterwards, openly crying. The audience started to file out. A man looked at him, paused, and touched him on the head, as though he were bestowing a benediction. As all the people passed him, each one stopped and touched him on the head.”
“That's one of the best things I've ever heard. So that's Palermo.”
Each succeeding conqueror of Sicily—Greeks, Carthaginians, Romans, Arabs, Normans, and all the rest—must have brought pocketfuls of wildflower seeds. The countryside in primavera is solidly in flower, rivers of yellow, purple cascading around rocks, roadsides lined with tiny blue-eyed blooms, and almond orchards whose long grasses are overtaken by white daisies. We made an easy exit, considering. We were only lost half an hour. Even though Ed was intimidated by traffic in Palermo, once we were out on the open road, I noticed his new skills, learned from the back seat of the taxis. He's relaxing into the concept that lanes do not exist much; the road is an open field for getting where you're going. The white line is the center of an imaginary lane to be used as needed.
Driving along the coast and meandering inland, the Mar Tirreno seven shades of blue out one window, and rampantly flowering hills out the other, it is easy to see why all those conquering hordes wanted this island. The landscape is everywhere various or dramatic. Anytime the perfume of orange and lemon groves wafts in the window, the human body has to feel suffused with a languorous well-being.
Soon we come to the turnoff for Segesta, first of the many Greek temples we hope to see in Sicily—the number rivals Greece itself. The Doric temple rises, just off the highway, where it has loomed on the hillside since the fifth century B.C., which is close to forever. Along the climbing path, we see gigantic fennel growing, ten feet, even more. I always wondered how Prometheus took fire back to the Greeks in a fennel stalk. In these you could stash quite a few coals. In the process, maybe he invented grilled fennel.
The guidebook says of Segesta: “It is peripteral and hexastyle with 36 unfluted columns (9 m high, 2 m wide at base) on a stylobate 58 m by 23 m. The high entablature and the pediments are intact. The bosses used for maneuvering the blocks of the stylobate into position remain. Refinements include the curvature of th
e entablature and the abaci.” Well, yes, but it's beautiful.
So is the equally ancient theater a short hike away. Greece was the first country I ever wanted to see. My longing was produced by a total immersion in Lord Byron when I was a senior in high school. In college, my friend Rena and I took a course in Greek drama. We wrote for brochures from Greek freighters and decided to drop out and see the world. We wanted to book passage on the Hellenic Destiny, until our parents said absolutely not. I've never yet been to Greece. A few years ago I saw the magnificent temples at Paestum in the south of Italy and the longing was reawakened. “The mountains look on Marathon / and Marathon looks on the sea / and musing there an hour alone, / I dreamed that Greece might still be free.” Something like that—it seems to scan into iambic tetrameter.
Like Paestum, Segesta is stripped down to pure silence, its skeletal purity etched against the sky. No one is here. We're alone with history and swallows swooping from their nests.
We check into a country inn with a damp bed where we huddle during siesta. The young spring sun has not yet penetrated these walls. A charming courtyard with luxuriant sage and rosemary, and the room with colorful handmade rugs and iron bed do not compensate. Nor does the view of the sea. It's freezing. A weak square of sunlight reaches halfway across the floor. Bedside lamps with the wattage of Christmas tree bulbs preclude reading. At four, we're back in the car heading for Erice, a craggy medieval town, whose early name was Eryx. Where is everyone? We're alone, as we were at Segesta. Even the well-known pastry shop is empty, except for a languid clerk who seems intent on his cigarette. The almond cake and thick lemon pie topped with roasted almonds sustain Sicily's reputation for sublime pastries. I wish I could take the rest of that lemon pie with me; with the local almonds on top, it's better than my grandmother's Deep South recipe. Even though Erice is small, the village feels disorienting. We look in the few shops, and walk the perimeter. All the churches are closed. We know better than to judge the life of an Italian town by one visit. At a different time on a different day, Erice may be lively. Places have their odd closing days, their individual rhythms.
Finally the restaurants open. This early, we're alone. Ah, chickpea fritters again. We order cuscus alla Trapanese, couscous cooked with fish broth in the North African–influenced style of nearby Trapani. The waiter recommends spigola al sale, sea bass in a salt crust, a dish I sometimes make at home. Under his arm, he brings a bottle of Còthon, a red wine of Marsala, and holds out the platter with the encased fish on a bed of fennel leaves.
After dinner we emerge and find that we have no idea where we left the car. We cross, recross the town, enter a dark park, go down- and uphill. The streets shine like polished pewter in the moonlight. No one is out. Where is the restaurant? Eerie Erice.
Back at our room, the sheets are cold again. I open my notebook and write: Erice—radio towers, unusual stone streets. Then I fall asleep.
We're out of that damp tomba; this will be an all-Greek day. Selinunte, more ruined than Segesta, spreads from a broad hilltop down to the sea. The name Selinunte, Ed reads, comes from the Greek word for wild celery. Hundreds of colossal broken columns fill one area. Fallen, lying in pieces, they look even more massive. We take a walk downhill toward the ruins on the edge of the sea. This approach shows us the outline of the sixth-century B.C. golden columns against blue water. In soft air, we sit on a rock and stare at surely one of the great classical scenes in the universe. The names “Temples C, G, E” seem ludicrous. Again, we are alone at the site. Having seen the metopes in Palermo, it's easy to imagine them positioned around the top but not easy to imagine how the Greeks managed to get them up there.
Fancy thoughts of paradisiacal spring don't last long. Soon the scene out the car window changes to fields totally encased in hideous plastic. Growing vegetables under plastic-covered hoops surely extends the growing season and improves farm economy, but it blights the landscape. The growers have been thorough—as far as you can see, the sheen of plastic. No vegetable is as tortured and managed as the tomato. Those grown under plastic look better than they taste. Only direct sun infuses tomatoes with flavor, awakens the full taste. Good Sicilian cooks must wait for summer to make their tomato sauce.
Many of the towns we dip into are hideous. A fifty-year ban on cement should be imposed. Historic centers are often smothered by postwar concrete, mainly in the form of apartment towers, which form instant slums. The oil and chemical plants don't add to the bellezza either. Much of the coast we pass is ruined—everywhere, the phenomenon of buildings started then abandoned halfway along. Plenty of money must be paid for start-up and somehow the project dissolves. Too many payoffs?
Fear in the air probably stops most people from having normal initiative; better to lie low. Having only been here a few days, I feel waves of rage about the Mafia. I can't imagine what it must be like actually to live under the pall of their serious evil. I never hear the word “Mafia” from anyone; as a tourist, I wouldn't. Even leading questions are routed around so that answers don't have to involve speculations. Small rocks on Mars can be inspected. Babies can be made in glass dishes. I don't understand why the Mafia can't be stopped.
Imagine Sicily without the Mafia, imagine the spirits of the people lifting. . . .
I'm glad I don't have to take a test on Agrigento. For an American used to a comparatively straightforward history, all the Italian past seems hopelessly convoluted. The saga of the Greek ruins multiplies this complexity. Agrigento, since its Greek founding in the sixth century B.C., has been tossed among Carthaginians, Romans, Swabians, Arabians, Bourbons, and Spaniards. Subjected to a name change during Mussolini's zeal to Italianize all things, the old name Akragas became Agrigento. I've seen the same zeal on the plaque outside where John Keats lived in Rome, cut off from his love and dying from tuberculosis. He's called Giovanni Keats, which somehow makes him seem more vulnerable than ever.
Akragas/Agrigento was Luigi Pirandello's birthplace. Travelling in Sicily casts his plays and stories, with their quirky sense of reality, in quite a natural light. The coexistence of the Greek ruins, the contemporary ruins, the tentacles of the Mafia, and the mundane day-to-day would skew my sense of character and place, too. The sun, Pirandello wrote, can break stones. Even in March, we feel the driving force on our heads as we walk in the Valley of the Temples.
All over a valley of almond trees and wildflowers stands a mind-boggling array of remains from an ancient town, from temples to sewer pipes. You could stay for days and not see everything. Unlike other sites, this one is quite populated with visitors. The Temple of Concordia is the best-preserved temple we've seen. Patch up the roof and the populace could commune with Castor and Pollux, to whom it probably was dedicated.
Five days ago I knew almost nothing about these ruins. Now the ancient dust covers my feet through my sandals; I have seen the unlikely survival of these buildings through rolls and rolls of time. The temples, men selling woven palm fronds for Palm Sunday, schoolchildren hiding among the columns, awed travellers like us with dripping gelato—all under the intense Sicilian sky. I'm thrilled. Just as I think that, Ed says, “This is the thrill of a lifetime.”
Still, at dinner, we find that one temple is beginning to fade into another. Maybe we've seen enough of Agrigento this time.
By the time we're back at the hotel, I've begun to descend into what I've come to call traveller's melancholy, a profound displacement that occasionally seizes me for a few hours when I am in a foreign country. The pleasure of being the observer suddenly flips over into a disembodied anxiety. During its grip, I go silent. I dwell on the fact that most of those I love have no idea where I am and my absence among them is unremarkable; they continue their days indifferent to the lack of my presence. Then an immense longing for home comes over me. I imagine my bed with a stack of books—probably travel books—on the table, the combed afternoon sunlight coming through the curved windows, my cat Sister leaping up with her claws catching the yellow blanket. Why am I here
where I don't belong? What is this alien place? I feel I'm in a strange afterlife, a haint blowing with the winds. I suspect the subtext to this displacement is the dread of death. Who and where are you when you are no one?
Downstairs in the hotel courtyard, a wedding dinner is in progress. The shouts, bawdy toasts, and slightly disheveled bride intensify my state. Usually I would savor the position of the almost invisible observer at the window, but tonight I am nothing to them. They belong. I'm a free radical. As the band starts up after a break, two small girls in frilly, silly dresses began to dance together. I could be anywhere on the planet, or not on the planet, and they would dance and dance. With or without. The groom would turn over his chair. The grandparents in their stiff country clothes would look as startled. With or without. The moon would shed its ancient light on the singular columns scattered over the valley, as it has and will.
Ed already is sleeping. I walk downstairs and watch the party break up. Kisses and embraces. I go in the bar and order a glass of limoncello, concentrate hard on the lively citrus taste, conjure to my mind the lovely face of my daughter seven thousand miles from here.
We drive on in the morning, passing some dire ugliness along the way. Petrochemical—what a hideous word. Poor Gela—I see that it has interesting remains somewhere in this labyrinth but it is so intensely ugly that we speed through. Ed remembers that Aeschylus died here when an eagle flying above him dropped a tortoise on his head. Fate, as in a foretold prediction. A mythic way to go. I'm sure Pirandello as a child was influenced by this story.
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