2006 - Sicily
Sicily
We have met and been befriended by a young man from the village who becomes positively tearful at learning that we are Australian. I am surprised how often the fact of our Australian-ness shocks the Sicilians. I begin to suspect that Sicily is not quite as connected with Italy as one might suppose (in fact we'll come to suspect that its only just connected with the rest of the planet.... It takes us days to find the only internet cafe within a days drive, but it is closed) We are, admittedly, in a tiny fishing village on the poorer, south-western bit of the island, but there is very little of Italy here, 
except in the churches and piazzas. The small amount of Italian I can speak is no help at all here (and I can't make out the dialectic differences) and, worse, there are none of the massive towers and castles we saw all through Umbria and Cortona, and I am just the tiniest bit disappointed - until we find the fallen acropolis, the ruins of ancient Greece and Carthage. And then I'm in heaven.
Our Roman darlings, Giancarlo and Roberta, whom we met in 2004, who took us walking through Rome all night and told the stories of battles and triumphs til four in the morning, are coming to stay in the place we have rented. They have never been to Sicily and are very excited; but Paul decides we should wait to explore the ancient sites till they get here, so Carlo won't miss out on anything. And just as well, because our young friend has made it his life's task to find us a good lunch in an excellent Sicilian restaurant. We are Australian and he lived in Australia all the childhood he could remember and who knows we may know some of his friends back there, too, and perhaps could contact his old school for him and send us word of the teachers he loved, and perhaps even a photo...? We arrange to meet up the next day.
Next Day
The young man (he is in his mid-twenties with English that is improving by the hour) takes us - to his enormous chagrin - from one closed restaurant to another all the while enchanting us with the story of his life. He begins again and again, "and now I will tell you as though you were my brother, honestly" and the story gets deeper and wilder and more chaotic and more tragic with every incarnation; the childhood in Australia which brings tears of love to his eyes, the death of his father from cancer ("and he was a good man, he was not the man to deserve this you understand?") and then back a little to explain that he had left Australia abruptly, and that $100,000 put by for his education was spent instead on his father's treatments, so he didn't finish school, didn't go to university ("But I was always happy, if I can do this for my father - he was a good man, and I loved him always"). Later still, walking together the three of us along the piazza, he mentions accidentally that this father whom he loved "as a god" woke up violent from his drugs time and again and threatened to kill his mother, so - terrified, sixteen years old and with no-one to help him for reasons he hasn't disclosed yet - he made his sister and mother pack their bags one night and booked them tickets to Sicily. And then, later, "because you can help me" he tells Paul what happened at Sydney Airport when he arrived with the women to be coldly informed that he and his sister were the children of illegal immigrants, were illegal themselves, that he must leave with them now and could never return to the place he had lived in before he had learned to walk.
Paul and I are keen to reassure him; surely if the right approaches are made, the story explained... a child can't be held responsible for his parents actions, and after all this time - And then, finally, because he has told us this much, he goes back to the beginning again, and the story comes tumbling out - the full story, begun generations before he was born, before his father was born, in a small town on this island, a story that he almost escaped, almost got away from and only learned by degrees once his father came back to die at last of cancer. "I swear to God", his father told him on his death-bed "I never shot a man, I never caused a death", but he had been born to an old old family, had seen things, had heard things had passed on messages and threats and had finally received warnings himself, and so illegally, through channels, through family connections, he took his young family out to Australia to start life all over again. Himself with a fifth grade education and his wife with less, they worked six days a week to educate the children in Catholic schools, give them music lessons and swimming lessons and all the things an Australian child should have. The boy's proudest day was making the side for the state schoolboy sports team and his greatest sadness ("the only sadness I knew and I didn't understand") was begging his dad to take Saturday off and come and watch him play. "Don't ask for what you can't have," his father would tell him.
Having given his story to us for nothing, the young man disappears again. He doesn't show up the next day as we'd planned and although we look for him, we don't find him again.
*
At our local gelateria on Via Giovanni Caboto, somebody's mother whips up a batch of cassatedda just for Paul - raviolina in Italian, but this, we are reminded is Sicily - and serves them hot; small pastries filled with sweet fresh ricotta, splashed with lemon juice, fried and then sprinkled with sugar. There is no extra charge for this treat, just pleasure and pride in the giving.
*
And finally, we are joined again by our darlings, Giancarlo and Roberta, and we go to see the acropolis and the fallen temples and ruins of the ancient Greeks who lived here so long ago; and Giancarlo tells us about the early Romans whom he abhors who were lawyers and soldiers and engineers, and the Etruscans whom we know only from their tombs who were despised and destroyed by the Romans who hated art; and then the Greeks whom he loves, whom the Romans conquered but who in turn destroyed the essence of Rome by giving them ideas "their hearts weren't able to live with" - ideas of philosophy, of arts and of love. "Even love'" Giancarlo tells us "It was nothing to do with the Romans. You must remember the pater familias and where can you find love in that?"
Giancarlo describes the Pax Romanus for us "Accept our laws, they said or we will destroy you utterly." "There are no Romans any more," he tells us. "And good. They were small," he says "smaller even than you" (He nods at me - I am short, but Giancarlo himself is tall and larger than life) "but swarthy, and - like you - determined." He gives the last word all four syllables, then considers for a moment and says "1.6 metres is all for average, the men. 1.6 metres e completamente risoluto."
He loves the ruins at Selinunte, just as we knew he would - but better still he likes the view from the cliffs on our drive through along the western coast; and best of all he loves buying the fish from the boats that come in to our village every morning, and bringing them home, and gutting them, and washing them, and stuffing them with herbs and then battering and frying them for us to eat straight-away from the fry-pan. I am roused on for not eating enough, and he turns to Paul in outrage. "She is a bird!" he says and he is not approving. Beside him, Roberta pushes her plate away, sighs with satisfaction and says "I am a condor." and he smiles and pats her face with deep, deep love.
We plan to meet them in Rome the day after tomorrow.
We have met and been befriended by a young man from the village who becomes positively tearful at learning that we are Australian. I am surprised how often the fact of our Australian-ness shocks the Sicilians. I begin to suspect that Sicily is not quite as connected with Italy as one might suppose (in fact we'll come to suspect that its only just connected with the rest of the planet.... It takes us days to find the only internet cafe within a days drive, but it is closed) We are, admittedly, in a tiny fishing village on the poorer, south-western bit of the island, but there is very little of Italy here, 
except in the churches and piazzas. The small amount of Italian I can speak is no help at all here (and I can't make out the dialectic differences) and, worse, there are none of the massive towers and castles we saw all through Umbria and Cortona, and I am just the tiniest bit disappointed - until we find the fallen acropolis, the ruins of ancient Greece and Carthage. And then I'm in heaven.
Our Roman darlings, Giancarlo and Roberta, whom we met in 2004, who took us walking through Rome all night and told the stories of battles and triumphs til four in the morning, are coming to stay in the place we have rented. They have never been to Sicily and are very excited; but Paul decides we should wait to explore the ancient sites till they get here, so Carlo won't miss out on anything. And just as well, because our young friend has made it his life's task to find us a good lunch in an excellent Sicilian restaurant. We are Australian and he lived in Australia all the childhood he could remember and who knows we may know some of his friends back there, too, and perhaps could contact his old school for him and send us word of the teachers he loved, and perhaps even a photo...? We arrange to meet up the next day.
Next Day
The young man (he is in his mid-twenties with English that is improving by the hour) takes us - to his enormous chagrin - from one closed restaurant to another all the while enchanting us with the story of his life. He begins again and again, "and now I will tell you as though you were my brother, honestly" and the story gets deeper and wilder and more chaotic and more tragic with every incarnation; the childhood in Australia which brings tears of love to his eyes, the death of his father from cancer ("and he was a good man, he was not the man to deserve this you understand?") and then back a little to explain that he had left Australia abruptly, and that $100,000 put by for his education was spent instead on his father's treatments, so he didn't finish school, didn't go to university ("But I was always happy, if I can do this for my father - he was a good man, and I loved him always"). Later still, walking together the three of us along the piazza, he mentions accidentally that this father whom he loved "as a god" woke up violent from his drugs time and again and threatened to kill his mother, so - terrified, sixteen years old and with no-one to help him for reasons he hasn't disclosed yet - he made his sister and mother pack their bags one night and booked them tickets to Sicily. And then, later, "because you can help me" he tells Paul what happened at Sydney Airport when he arrived with the women to be coldly informed that he and his sister were the children of illegal immigrants, were illegal themselves, that he must leave with them now and could never return to the place he had lived in before he had learned to walk.
Paul and I are keen to reassure him; surely if the right approaches are made, the story explained... a child can't be held responsible for his parents actions, and after all this time - And then, finally, because he has told us this much, he goes back to the beginning again, and the story comes tumbling out - the full story, begun generations before he was born, before his father was born, in a small town on this island, a story that he almost escaped, almost got away from and only learned by degrees once his father came back to die at last of cancer. "I swear to God", his father told him on his death-bed "I never shot a man, I never caused a death", but he had been born to an old old family, had seen things, had heard things had passed on messages and threats and had finally received warnings himself, and so illegally, through channels, through family connections, he took his young family out to Australia to start life all over again. Himself with a fifth grade education and his wife with less, they worked six days a week to educate the children in Catholic schools, give them music lessons and swimming lessons and all the things an Australian child should have. The boy's proudest day was making the side for the state schoolboy sports team and his greatest sadness ("the only sadness I knew and I didn't understand") was begging his dad to take Saturday off and come and watch him play. "Don't ask for what you can't have," his father would tell him.
Having given his story to us for nothing, the young man disappears again. He doesn't show up the next day as we'd planned and although we look for him, we don't find him again.
*
At our local gelateria on Via Giovanni Caboto, somebody's mother whips up a batch of cassatedda just for Paul - raviolina in Italian, but this, we are reminded is Sicily - and serves them hot; small pastries filled with sweet fresh ricotta, splashed with lemon juice, fried and then sprinkled with sugar. There is no extra charge for this treat, just pleasure and pride in the giving.
*
And finally, we are joined again by our darlings, Giancarlo and Roberta, and we go to see the acropolis and the fallen temples and ruins of the ancient Greeks who lived here so long ago; and Giancarlo tells us about the early Romans whom he abhors who were lawyers and soldiers and engineers, and the Etruscans whom we know only from their tombs who were despised and destroyed by the Romans who hated art; and then the Greeks whom he loves, whom the Romans conquered but who in turn destroyed the essence of Rome by giving them ideas "their hearts weren't able to live with" - ideas of philosophy, of arts and of love. "Even love'" Giancarlo tells us "It was nothing to do with the Romans. You must remember the pater familias and where can you find love in that?"
Giancarlo describes the Pax Romanus for us "Accept our laws, they said or we will destroy you utterly." "There are no Romans any more," he tells us. "And good. They were small," he says "smaller even than you" (He nods at me - I am short, but Giancarlo himself is tall and larger than life) "but swarthy, and - like you - determined." He gives the last word all four syllables, then considers for a moment and says "1.6 metres is all for average, the men. 1.6 metres e completamente risoluto."
He loves the ruins at Selinunte, just as we knew he would - but better still he likes the view from the cliffs on our drive through along the western coast; and best of all he loves buying the fish from the boats that come in to our village every morning, and bringing them home, and gutting them, and washing them, and stuffing them with herbs and then battering and frying them for us to eat straight-away from the fry-pan. I am roused on for not eating enough, and he turns to Paul in outrage. "She is a bird!" he says and he is not approving. Beside him, Roberta pushes her plate away, sighs with satisfaction and says "I am a condor." and he smiles and pats her face with deep, deep love.
We plan to meet them in Rome the day after tomorrow.
posted by mccardey at 8:57 PM
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