Sicily, it's not quite Tuscany

278 Pages·2012·1.38 MB·English

by  Sillar

Sicily
It’s Not Quite
Tuscany
Sicily
It’s Not Quite
Tuscany
SHAMUS SILLAR
First published in 2012
Copyright © Shamus Sillar 2012
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Map by Guy Holt
Set in 11/15 pt Adobe Garamond Pro by Post Pre-press Group, Australia
Printed in Australia by McPherson’s Printing Group
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Quotes from THE LEOPARD by Giuseppe di Lampedusa, translated by Archibald Colquhoun, translation
copyright © 1960, copyright renewed 1988 by William Collins PLC and Random House, Inc. Used by
permission of Pantheon Books, a division of Random House, Inc.
To Gill
Contents
1 Arriving
2 Adjusting
3 A trip to Taormina
4 Erupting
5 A trip to Syracuse
6 Renting
7 A trip to the interior
8 Moving
9 A trip at Christmas
10 A trip to the Aeolian Islands
11 Praying
12 Stealing
13 A trip to Vizzini
14 A trip to Roman Sicily
15 Healing
16 A trip to the southeast
17 Fishing
18 A trip to Palermo
19 A trip to the west
20 Leaving
Acknowledgements
About the author

1. Arriving
Si cacci lu sceccu, tardu arrivi; si camina tardu, prestu arrivi.
If you urge the donkey on, you’ll arrive late; if you let the donkey amble, you’ll arrive early.
– Sicilian proverb
I’m sipping arancia rossa (blood orange juice) and gazing down on the
Mediterranean, its surface puckered in a westerly wind. Gill has given me the
window seat; she always does – it’s why I married her.
An hour out of Rome, seven tiny islands appear, like the backs of swimming
turtles. These are the famous Aeolians. In my best Italian accent, I recite their
vowelly, singsong names from my map: ‘Alicudi, Filicudi, Lipari, Vulcano,
Panarea, Stromboli, Salina!’ (My best Italian accent, it turns out, is part Joe
Dolce’s ‘Shaddup You Face’ and part Gary Oldman in Dracula.) Then our plane
is over the Sicilian mainland. I see parched rivers and russet hills; a landscape
sucked dry by the sun.
Finally, Mount Etna. She’s dark and indistinct, swathed in cloud, keeping her
cards up her sleeve. At the bottom of the volcano’s slope, sprawling blackly
against the stained sea, a city: Catania.
‘Big and grim’: that’s how Paul Theroux described Catania (in The Pillars of
Hercules). Awash with drugs and pollution. A place only a mafioso could love.
It’s a place Gill and I will call ‘home’ for the coming year. I haven’t told Gill
about Theroux’s sketch. I feel a twinge of guilt about this. Then again, she
knows about the Mafia in general, of course, and about the risk of Etna’s
eruptions. Neither of those things has dampened her enthusiasm.
The pilot mustn’t like the place either. He seems almost reluctant to land. We
pass directly over the city and its port full of oxidised ships and swing out to sea
again. Minutes tick by. We’re heading in the direction of Libya. Hijacked?
Finally the plane circles back towards land. Gill grabs my hand for the
descent. Outside I see a yellow smear of beach on Catania’s southern edge.
That’s where we head now, dropping steadily. A circle of choppy sea fills my
window. I can make out individual waves, a man on a bobbing boat. The beach
flits by within jumping distance. Then, the thud of asphalt.