by Norman Lewis
Photographs in the press show Don Calo’s successor, Giuseppe Genco Russo, who had been his second-in-command, standing beside Don Calo’s body under the flowers heaped up on his bier. They are separate, but in other photographs Russo is seen to be connected to his former chief by a cord. It is down this cord, according to a Mafia article of faith, that the vital fluid from the corpse flows into the living body which from that moment on will inherit in its entirety the power and genius of the dead man. Russo’s participation in the ritual strengthened the theory that the origins of the Mafia were pre-Christian rather than dating from the Norman conquest of Sicily.
14
THOSE WHO HAVE had the opportunity to see the Roman mosaics of Piazza Armerina may conclude, as I have done, that there is nothing of the kind to compare with them elsewhere on earth. Throughout the summer months the Villa del Casale is under siege by tourists from all over Europe, two thousand a day being deposited by buses in the main square of the town. After a brief exposure to local hucksters, they are snatched away by the waiting guides to be force-fed into a narrow gangway suspended from the villa’s roof. From then on, shuffling forward a foot at a time, their peregrination ten feet above floor level takes them round 12,000 square feet of the mosaics’ revelation of the life of the Roman aristocracy in the third century AD.
An immensely rich man - possibly the Emperor Maximianus himself - built the villa in this area, chosen in all probability by reason of the splendour and variety of the game it provided the hunter at a time when many of the animals shown in the mosaics had already become extinct on the Italian mainland.
On the walls of the villa are recorded the pleasures and excitements of the day. These Roman patricians banquet, hunt, fish, celebrate religious feasts, race in their chariots, kill their enemies and make love. Their children imitate them so far as they can - hunting small animals, and even driving in miniature chariots drawn, according to these pictures, by large birds. Bejewelled princesses consult their mirrors while officiating at religious ceremonies. Ten tall, slender ladies appear in bikinis. Once described as enjoying themselves at the nearest lido, they are now stated to have been athletes, one of whom is shown as about to be crowned for her performance.
What is extraordinary is the realism of these tableaux. At third-century Piazza Armerina we are close to the threshold of the ice age of the Byzantine ikon and its mass-production of roughly identical, dehumanized faces. These men, women and children of Piazza Armerina share our emotions and react as we would have done in the situations recorded on these walls. Encountering a wild boar - or even a lion - the hunter’s concentrated wariness is drawn from the life. In the face of danger the struggle is also with fear. Children’s eyes bulge with terror when attacked by fighting cocks. Suffering has never been more convincingly depicted than in the face of a giant struck by an arrow, or the alarm of a plebeian, his yoke of oxen out of control, under the stony gaze of his superiors. Ulysses, offering drink to the Cyclops Polyphemus, wears a servile smirk, and the anger of a child being whipped by a bully is fiercer than that of a grown man in battle. Only one erotic image was on show: the rear view of a woman in the arms of her love. Her ample buttocks protrude from voluminous garments. Her head is turned sideways and their lips meet in a kiss. Neither seems more than mildly surprised. Never in this portrayal of the ancient Romans in Sicily is a smile to be seen. Could it be that - as in patrician Sicily even now - laughter was considered ill-bred?
In May 1998 the Villa del Casale at Piazza Armerina was defaced by mysterious intruders who poured a quantity of black varnish over one of the pavement mosaics. This outrage, occurring a week before our visit, sent a shock wave of horror throughout the island, and was stated to be the second such act of sabotage to have taken place. There were two more to come. The damage had been done late at night when what sounds like a primitive security system had broken down, although a camera had managed to record the presence of two presumed culprits. Most Sicilians were perplexed as to the purpose of the operation, for nothing had been stolen, and even regarded as a piece of vandalism it appeared pointless, for it was unlikely that permanent damage had been caused. Poised on the gangway above a black splash covering most of the body of a running man, it seemed reasonable to suppose that special skills would be required for the varnish to be cleaned away -but no more than that.
But who had been responsible for the attack, and why had they gone to the trouble of breaking into the villa to do no more than this? Several viewpoints were put forward and defended with some emphasis. Inevitably for the benefit of the headlines the vandalism was attributed by the newspapers to the malevolence of Cosa Nostra, by which name the Mafia is inevitably known when spectacular misdoings are involved. Even General Conforti of the Palermo carabinieri said, ‘I believe the Mafia has its paws in this.’ But in what way, others asked, was the world’s most powerful and effective criminal association likely to benefit from inflicting trivial damage on a work of art? However, Gian Filippo Villari, superintendent of the villa, seemed inclined towards the general’s viewpoint. He reported threats made by mysterious telephone callers, and a dog with its throat cut left at his door. Mafia or not, Villari went on to say, this was a situation which could be improved upon by providing more money to deal with the staffing problem and to install an up-to-date security system.
The somewhat farcical attack on the mosaics drew public attention to a far more pressing problem in the Piazza Armerina area. This was the widespread and virtually unchecked activities of numerous tomb robbers. Excavations at the ancient Greek city of Morgantina, ten miles from Piazza, have uncovered a large agora, a theatre, a sanctuary of Demeter and many more mosaics, and such treasures as the Aphrodite of Morgantina, now in the Getty Museum in California. This site appears as an earlier and smaller version of Piazza Armerina itself, but owing to its relative isolation is virtually at the mercy of thieves. Narrow roads radiate from it in all directions into the woodlands and hills. The mayor of a small town in the vicinity spoke of the dealers who dig up antiques to order, and apologize for having to keep a customer waiting for a month or two for an acceptable statue, ‘although we can probably do a nice necklace from stock’.
For our expedition to Piazza Armerina our original intention had been to hire a self-drive car in Palermo, explore the area described in these discouraging reports, put up for the night in a local hotel, and return next day. But since then Lesley had damaged her hand, obliging us to take a taxi instead. It was this complication, plus a report that a party driving after dark in the vicinity of Morgantina had actually seen persons digging by lamplight at the roadside, that made us decide to scrap our original plan and return by taxi to Palermo on the same day.
I was later to read the views of an art historian called Ignazio Nigrelli on the plunder of Morgantina. ‘With every year that passes,’ he wrote, ‘the incomparable Sicilian heritage continues to waste away.’ He recalled his disillusionment when the moment arrived to publish his collection of photographs assembled over the years under the title ‘Works of art from Piazza Armerina, lost, dispersed or at risk’. Whatever had survived, he said, was to provide the nucleus of the town’s future museum but in fact by the time his work on the volume was complete all the objects in it had disappeared. ‘They vanished. This was the end of my hopes.’ Nigrelli’s anguished protest was seized upon by the Sicilian press, which also published the views of the American archaeologist Malcolm Bell, who affirmed, ‘without a shadow of doubt’, that a collection of fifteen pieces of ‘priceless treasure’ dating from the third century BC, now in the Metropolitan Museum of New York, had been illegally dug up between Morgantina and Enna. With Bell’s help, the authorities hoped to bring these ‘monuments of antiquity’ back to a Sicilian museum.
According to Gian Filippo Villari such illegally obtained objects were normally smuggled into the United States via Switzerland, and up to fifty times the price paid to the grave-robbers would be received, no questions asked, on delivery to a foreign mus
eum. General Conforti added masterpieces by Caravaggio and Rubens stolen from Sicilian churches to the list of missing works of art. He was sceptical whether any of them would be returned in the near future.
The relentless worldwide hunt for the buried treasure of antiquity was delayed to some extent in Italy until Mussolini’s downfall, which not only freed the Mafia from pressure but contributed to the expansion of their operations. Morgantina, practically unheard of until 1960, was to be invaded by collectors when the news that squatters in an old house had found forty-four gold pieces dating from the fourth century BC under the floor. ‘That’s when all the digging started,’ our driver had told us. ‘It wasn’t much of a place until then. No money about. They used to keep the goat in the kitchen at night.’
15
ONE OF THE radical changes we noticed in Palermo, compared to our previous visits, was the large number of African immigrants in the city. Indeed their numbers, and the authenticity of those claiming refugee status, had become a major talking point. Subject to investigation, genuine immigrants arriving in Sicily were allowed a period of thirty days while it was decided whether they should be allowed to stay on or returned to their country of origin. If the applicant’s appeal was turned down he or she would be served with a foglio di via, providing a further fifteen days’ grace for additional enquiries, before, if necessary, a final expulsion order was issued. This delay may have been intended to deal with endless muddles in a humanitarian fashion; for whatever may be one’s opinion of law and order in Sicily, it is a country where remarkable generosity -even when unexpected or undeserved - is frequently encountered. It is not unusual to meet foreigners of a half-dozen different nationalities doing their best to turn themselves into Sicilian citizens, and on the whole such applicants are treated with sympathy. The problems are complex and the regulations change virtually from week to week. Nevertheless many of the hopefuls are in the end lucky in their endeavours.
Complex legal discussions were taking place once again all over Sicily as the ‘immigrant season’ approached. A bewildering number of forms had to be filed in the offices of the carabinieri and the Guardia di Finanza, which dealt with these unsolicited invasions. Was an applicant desiring to stay in Sicily the innocent victim of religious persecution, or a member of a generally banned political sect? Having put through a claim for residence by 22 Moroccan dissidents, how, in this homeland of muddle, is the chief of police expected to react to the news that the number of applicants should have been not 22, but 122?
Across the water in Tunisia the winter rain had been once again less than hoped for. The general view was that in the absence of a prolonged, last-minute downpour people were in for a hard summer, with the income of the poorest Tunisians dropping as low as one-eighth of that of their counterparts in Sicily. These were the worst times south of the Mediterranean in many memories, with the earth seeming almost to be drying out. Rain or no rain, Sicily, as possessor of some of the richest soil in Europe, always came off best. By early spring, along the African coast they were already doing their best to patch up the old vessels kept for such emergencies, ready to fill them with half-starved peasants and ferry them at night across to little sheltered bays on the south-eastern coast of Sicily where the sympathetic Sicilians would put up with having to fill a few extra mouths for a while, and do their best to find the refugees some work to keep them going.
By the first week in summer it was clear that one of the familiar tragedies of the past was about to be repeated. Quite apart from seaborne invasions from Tunisia, increasing numbers of Algerians, Moroccans and even Pakistanis began to appear in Palermo, Agrigento, Syracuse and other coastal towns where they gave no trouble and were grateful to be employed in any occupation that could be found for them at substantially less than the going rate of pay.
The peak period for such illicit landings is early August when, after a few unpredictable storms, an almost glacial calm falls upon the water, and the small and vulnerable boats are launched from the African beaches. When they fall into Sicilian hands, such vessels are routinely described in the Maritime Police registers as ‘in precarious condition’, and this accurately describes the facts. They are also very old, one in 1998 being identified as having featured in a regatta at Palermo some forty-five years before. Complicated repairs are frequently carried out upon such vessels while still at sea. The worst possible nightmare that can befall immigrants - or occasionally tourists on such voyages - is that a fever will strike out of the blue, malaria being the most frequent. This is also the preoccupation of the Sicilian port authorities who await arrivals with a certain degree of pessimism.
When a flat summer calm is expected to hold up for two months, Lampedusa is the favourite destination. For the natives of this island it is a hard-working place, dry in summer, treeless and scourged by winds. It has excellent beaches, expensive hotels open for a short summer season, and the reputation of being the kind of place to go to get away from it all. Middle-level politicians favour it and the fishing is said to be the best in the Mediterranean. When the tourist season ends naturalists descend upon the place to study an exceedingly rare turtle that can be attracted by a species of supersonic whistle, breeds only once in its lifetime and lays its many eggs in the immaculate sand.
The news of the African invasion was soon worse. A second boat had arrived carrying refugees, not only from Tunisia but from Egypt and - astonishingly -Sierra Leone. Two cases of malaria had been established already and a further 160 illegal immigrants were suspected of carrying the disease and had been under observation for two weeks. With that, the hotels closed down.
As always, the reports were full of wild inaccuracies. In Trapani the notorious expulsion orders intended to clear the town of disorderly immigrants were employed. Something went badly wrong, however, for although the immigration authorities claimed to have located two thousand clandestines, the order was only used in five cases. Murky operations in matters of food and trade were to be suspected behind the scenes. That powerful figure the Official Assessor of Agriculture for the Sicilian region furiously demanded to be told if honourable Sicilians had suggested a deal involving the exchange of penniless immigrant labourers for Sicilian olive oil. He rejected such a possibility with scorn, although it appeared that many did not. There was a view that some African authorities would have been happy to ship out as many of what were regarded as unemployables as they could. Islamic fundamentalists, too, were beginning to make a nuisance of themselves in some Muslim countries and might have been got rid of by their authorities as indentured labourers. A few rich Sicilian holidaymakers in Lampedusa caused offence among the local people by criticizing poverty-stricken refugees for being improperly dressed.
The last phase of the invasion broke all records with the arrival via Lampedusa of three hundred desperate clandestines. There were several more malaria cases and medical services at Lampedusa reported back to Agrigento: ‘We have a single ambulance and two doctors only.’ Alarm was signalled in other Mediterranean areas, and nine Egyptians suffering from an undiagnosed sickness were refused entry to Malta.
At Syracuse an avalanche of desperate refugees managed to get ashore. In the ensuing manhurt seven policemen were hospitalized, along with a similar number of refugees. Some of the detainees complained of feeling ill, convincingly describing symptoms of malaria, but on investigation this proved to be a better than average hoax. However, a number of refugees were genuinely ill and the leader of the Moroccan fugitives at Agrigento, having been taken to prison, died in his cell.
Now, with the waning of summer, the outlook down in the port was more hopeful. The surrounding waters came to life. Strong gusts of wind swept the birch-broom branches of the few trees and water gurgled and was swallowed in the deep basins in the rocks. The boats which had lain motionless until now began to bounce about on the waves in a lopsided way and the boatmen shouted advice in high-pitched voices to those who manoeuvred around and through those already tied up. The summer scent of sea-ro
tted wood was blown away by the breeze.
Soon Sicily was gripped by something close to panic. The papers reported that 250 cases of infection had been reported at Agrigento and large boats were bringing in yet more from Tunisia, Libya, Syria, Morocco and Iraq. In Lampedusa an ancient democratic procedure was utilized to settle the question of whether or not persons arriving from African ports should be permitted to land. It was put to the vote, and 40 per cent of the islanders agreed that they should stay. Of the remaining 60 per cent almost all had not bothered to register an opinion.
At this moment when Sicily was overrun by refugees from the impoverished South a newspaper thought fit to employ a well-known journalist to describe what it was like to be one of thousands of displaced black men who had come to the island in search of work and food. Giovanni - whom I had met briefly at a journalists’ rendezvous on the harbour - had written a slim book on the colour problem which had made very little impact. He had, moreover, reached the conclusion that as a white man he was debarred from a real understanding of the troubles undergone by the immigrants. Now, in response to his editor’s suggestion, he decided to turn himself (as far as this could be done) into a replica of a black man put ashore at night somewhere along the coast, with no more than a few possessions, and confronted immediately with life in a great city where it could be hard indeed to earn enough to survive.
