In Sicily

by Norman Lewis

  Under pressure by local families the papers reported that the nuisance factor was very great. Householders complained of parading prostitutes accompanied by young bloods laughing loudly and pounding their car-horns in a way that made it impossible to sleep. The police were charged with not doing their duty, and some residents were said to be asking whether the Mafia might not perhaps be called in to help. The suggestion throws a revealing light on the Sicilian culture of these days in which the Mafia is seen as not necessarily ‘all bad’, and can sometimes be persuaded to come to the community’s assistance when, as in a case like this, the law appears as ineffective.

  The problem in the ‘historical centres’ of cities like Syracuse and Palermo is poverty and overcrowding. Peasant families who have never forgotten the hard times of the feudal estates, abolished only when it was almost too late, crowd into the towns and will tolerate any living conditions rather than abandon the urban life to which they are now addicted. Poor families manage to squeeze themselves into the gaps in these gaunt and cracked, although once palatial, buildings. They put up shacks made from packing cases among the courtyards and one may find five girls sleeping in a shack fifteen feet square. Unfortunately these places stink like stables. Chief of Police Antonio Manganelli, calling again for tolerance and compassion, says that prostitution on a scale which hardly exists elsewhere in Europe is not curable. Nor, he adds, is it a crime according to Italian law. ‘If prostitution were a crime I could organize drives and clear the streets of them. But it is not. On the other hand it is a social phenomenon that has taken control because of the strength of the demand.’

  Roberta Torre’s film is still considered a potential winner and pictures of her are frequently published. She appears as bespectacled, plumpish and petite with a caring and involved expression, directed particularly at Joey, whom she is determined to put on the road to success. It is unfortunate for her that the film project should have coincided with the luccioli invasion. However all is not lost with the Sicilian South Side Story, as there have been meetings with the Social Affairs Minister, Livia Turco, who has raised hopes about the possibility of something being done to help both Joey and other potential artists who might find themselves trapped in her situation. From a discussion in September 1998 with the Hon. Turco, the news was that Article 16 of the Law 40/98 might be applied. In Joey’s case this could mean the concession of a year’s residence in Sicily ‘for motives of social protection’. If this were to go through she would also receive the support of the Social Services Office during the period.

  17

  SFERRACAVALLO IS FIVE miles out of Palermo on the coast road to the west. It is the site of an ancient fishing settlement, and its present population, whatever their wealth or standing, is descended from the fisherfolk of the past, and, like them, psychologically influenced by the presence of the sea. On the whole they are tall people of notably bolder personality than the cultivators who live a few miles inland. Most of their fishing is done with lights at night, so they have developed the custom of having intercourse with their wives only during the afternoons. Unlike the neighbouring peasants they rarely save money but spend the cash as fast as they earn it, and customarily celebrate a good catch by lashing out on trinkets for the female members of their family. The fishermen are notorious gamblers and cases have been known of a man staking his house or even his wife on a bet. The basis of their relatively good fortune lies in the fact that while the rich have come into possession of almost every acre of land worth having, they have so far been unable to buy any part of the sea, which continues to be available to all and sundry. Apart from a house, and their boats and tackle, most fisherfolk are devoid of the burden of prosperity and thus wonderfully free.

  Sicilian cultivators of the soil, on the other hand, have almost by tradition led hard lives in servitude to feudal estates. They have been exploited by the landowners, controlled by the Mafia, preyed upon until recently by bandits, and compelled to vote for the party of the Church. The best fortune that could befall any family was to have produced a son bright enough to have been trained as a priest. It is a solution avoided by the fisherfolk, who here, as in other coastal areas of Europe, are inclined to the practice of a discreet agnosticism. Having said that, I should at once point out that Sferracavallo is the site of a prodigious procession every autumn and whether it is based upon religious fervour or on a desire to celebrate the fruits of the harvest, there is nothing of the like to be experienced elsewhere in Sicily.

  Saints Cosima and Damiano belonged while on earth to the medical profession and in the afterlife are seen locally as patron saints of the faith-healing practised here in its most successful form. From the moment that these two medieval effigies jog into view seated side by side on their float over the heads of the ecstatic crowd, spontaneous cures take place, and many cases have been recorded of the chronically sick, in biblical style, picking up their beds to walk. The saints’ origins are obscure. There is said to have been a Saracenic school of medicine in the area a thousand or so years ago but it would be questionable to suggest that the two pink-cheeked Nordics carried in the procession could have had any connection with Islam. Apart from their fame as physicians, the saints protected their followers from a whole list of the normal hazards of their day. When sea-rovers raided Sferracavallo the images were carried out and a mere glimpse of the wrath on the saints’ faces was enough to put them to flight. Damiano, a strong swimmer, set out on several occasions - in one instance assisted by a dolphin - to bring back survivors of boats wrecked in storms. Above all the two saints combined forces to defeat the great plague of 1624; while others were dying like flies, not a single inhabitant of Sferracavallo was lost.

  Traditionally the great procession at Sferracavallo took place in the afternoon of the festival’s first day, but now despite the protests of the old faithful of the town the saints are brought out only for show and the procession is staged after dark. To be in the select company of those who carry the vara – the platform upon which the saints are enthroned - it is required that the applicant shall be of unquestioned morality and ‘take the oath’. In the old days, the procession set out to visit and convey hope to every person sick in bed throughout the town. Those who could be moved would be carried to a doorway or even placed at a window where they could see the saints’ faces and listen to the prayers said for their cure. Whatever the state of these side-streets the carriers of the heavy float went barefoot, often leaving traces of blood. It was said that one in ten of the bedridden visited in this way found the strength to hoist themselves to their feet in order to bow their heads to the saints, and once in a while someone was cured on the spot and walked again from that time on.

  Modern times put an end to these extraordinary scenes. Many people were ashamed at the idea of displaying the sick in this way as they did a hundred years ago. The general opinion was that the celebrations were out of touch with the times, so the traditional afternoon procession was cancelled and one took place only at night, and stuck to the shopping streets, thus depriving the sick of their comfort and hope. Pietro Assurrino, who had helped carry a float ‘out of devotion for our protectors for over twenty-one years’, was sad to confirm that nowadays the majority of the carriers were very young people. ‘They decided to brighten things up,’ he said, ‘and they march as fast as they can. We still go barefoot, and a few of us still pray. The trouble is you can’t hear the prayers for the noise of the band.’

  I was told that a number of natives of Sferracavallo who had left for the United States during the last forty years did all they could to return to their home town for the procession, where they were welcomed by their friends from the old days. Their hosts listened entranced to the fluency of their English and were relieved to find that the visitors had no trouble expressing themselves in equally fluent Italian, sometimes even throwing in a few words of Sicilian dialect. The visitors described, to general astonishment, the marvels of such cities as Buffalo and Detroit, and were relieved to be
assured that things back in Sicily were at least no worse than they had been. Among the novelties in Sferracavallo brought to the notice of the friends and relatives back from the States was the new craze for painting gigantic pictures of the ‘Sainted Physicians’ on the façades of some of the town’s largest houses. The saints were shown wearing larger than usual crowns, their purple robes as before, but by way of a novelty, high laced-up boots like those worn by competitors in sporting events. When the saints actually joined the procession they held between them a tray covered with gold-leaf supporting examples of the beakers, flasks, long-handled mirrors and intestinal pumps once commonly in use in the medical profession.

  Many of the new arrivals had planned short tours to use up the now largely vacant first day of the festival, choosing the picturesque road by the sea leading to Castellammare, and intending to call in on any relative with whom they had remained in touch. All had hired the largest possible cars to be found in Palermo for the outing.

  Several big houses along this road had put up notices offering hospitality to visitors from overseas, and by the time of our arrival a number of lunch parties were on the way. Being urged by Sicilian friends travelling with us to join one of them, we did so, finding ourselves at a table with a middle-aged man who had arrived on the previous day from Denver. I asked him about the great emigration after the war, and he said, ‘Nothing pushed me into emigrating. I worked on the boats, but everyone was pulling out and I guess I just caught the mood.’

  ‘Did you go back to the sea in the States?’

  ‘There was no sea around to go back to. Folks of ours were living in Spokane and they fixed it for us to come on over. I went to work for an outfit in the building materials trade nearby, and round about twenty years later I took it over. It’s really great to be back here. I come every year. Trouble is I have four grandchildren to think about these days, otherwise I’d like to stick around for a bit. You have to remember there’s not the education here we’re looking for. We’re hoping to send all the kids to Galileo High.’

  This was a very Sicilian scene. The people whose hospitality we were enjoying had handed round plates piled with spaghetti and they kept filling our glasses with wine that was quite black until you held it up to the light. A child had been given a hen to play with, and was dragging it about by a string tied round its leg. Sea-birds were mewing like kittens in the garden, which was half beach, and two tables away a priest with pink cheeks had nodded off to sleep and let out a single snore. About half the occupants of the room were Sicilians who had never left the island, and the rest had spent thirty or more years in the States and were an inch or two taller than those who had stayed at home. Those who had returned to pay their respects to the Sainted Physicians were also distinguishable by their flamboyant gestures, and listening to their constant outbursts of laughter one realized once again how very rare laughter was in the country of their birth.

  Back in Sferracavallo numerous preparations for the night procession were under way. The faces, hands and feet of the saints were wiped with napkins of silk before being lifted tenderly into position on their pedestals to await the gilded tray with its medical paraphernalia. Among the fifty-five carriers chosen to make up the vara was Filippo Parco from Boston, aged twenty-four, a sufferer from depression who was here for the fifth year in succession, and who had been kept in the closest possible proximity with the images since their emergence from the chapel earlier in the day. When the procession was ready to move off, Filippo Parco would take his place in the centre of the front row of carriers directly under the beneficial gaze of both saints. It was a treatment found to be so successful that it only called for occasional topping-up by private visits to the chapel where the effigies spent the rest of the year.

  Whether for religious or other reasons the procession was a most exciting affair for the majority of the town’s population who took part. A twenty-eight-instrument brass band belted out an almost overpowering sound as it squeezed its way through crowds surging in the main street, and although many lips moved in prayer few of the words were audible. To me what was extraordinary was the number of visitors from overseas who left restaurant tables and burrowed into the crowd, holding up mobile phones to capture this moment for listeners in the States. ‘For our friends and families back home,’ said one of them, ‘this is very important. We want them to share our joy. This is the great moment of our year.’

  18

  TO AN OLD Sicilian hand, as I believe myself to be, this is a Mediterranean island where the majority of public happenings are seen in one way or another to be bizarre. What, one wonders, can be amiss with a legal system in which Andreotti - prime minister seven times and suspected of connections with the murder of an antagonistic journalist - can be acquitted after a trial lasting four years during which he was seen to enjoy complete freedom of movement? How can it be that the murderous bandit Giuliano, although nominally in gaol, was taken on shopping expeditions by his gaolers, and to parties at the Archbishop’s palace in Monreale? Or that Sicily’s most notorious murderer, Toto Riina, has collected a record for the Italian State of twenty-three life sentences - none of which has been served? Even these episodes may seem less extraordinary than the news, published in the Sicilian press in autumn 1998, that a number of capi-mafia attending a conference in Palermo had taken advantage of the security provided by the Ucciardone prison to hold their ‘constructive discussions’ behind its protective walls. After a night’s hospitality, said the report, they were released in the early hours next day. It was at this top-level conference that Giovanni Brusca, found guilty of ordering the murder by strangulation of the Di Matteo child, spoke with a kind of passion of the necessity of maintaining human values, and was assured by those present that this was the common aim.

  It was an episode belonging to the period of hopeful renewal when the nation’s optimists brought themselves to believe that even the Mafia could be changed for the better. November was here and with the first, fresh breezes of approaching winter the national mood firmed, and Sicilians put the muddle, the delays, and the petty strategies of summer behind them to prepare themselves for the coming year.

  The end of the road had come for the ‘sealed-off old palaces awaiting demolition. Illicit tenants were flushed from their hiding places and the modern equivalent of battering rams knocked down the walls. It was the month when tax offices sent out final demands, petty offenders were released from prisons, shops got rid of old stock at any price and sacks of misaddressed correspondence were either burnt or emptied into the sea. Pigeons, now at their fattest, were netted or even caught by rod and line on the city roofs to be converted into pate di fin d’anno, much in demand in the Christmas season.

  With this, as is so often the case, a massive police drive against criminality of all kinds was planned and the two police forces reluctantly agreed to collaborate again, with the heads of the carabinieri and Pubblica Sicurezza exchanging kisses after a banquet arranged for them at the State’s expense in the most famous of Palermo’s Mafia-owned seafood restaurants.

  This happy settlement of old scores was to provide the stage-setting for the biggest, the most carefully prepared, and certainly the most expensive police offensive in Sicilian history. It was to be known as Grande Oriente (Great Eastern), and was to be launched on four fronts in the east of the island where the Mafia now held sway in its latest, deadliest and most effective form. The Mafia commander-in-chief against whom the attack was to be launched was relatively unknown in Palermo but proved to be possibly one of the most remarkable Sicilians of his day.

  Bernardo Provenzano lived under the protection of almost total anonymity. Only one picture had ever appeared of him in a newspaper. Taken at the time of his first arrest, it showed him as a boy of about eighteen who had perhaps been subjected to plastic surgery after a severe accident. Retouching had emptied this face of all expression. Now in his sixties, Provenzano was described as gaunt in appearance with deep furrows in his cheeks and tufts of whit
e hair over his ears. He was an admirer of Saddam Hussein and was said to spend his spare time writing an account of the campaigns of Julius Caesar.

  Back in the late eighties Marcello Cimino had taken me to an antique bookshop in the Via Roma and drawn my attention to a middle-aged man hunched over a book in the reading room. He whispered to me that this was Bernardo Provenzano - the most powerful private citizen, he said, in Sicily.

  Provenzano, he later explained, had remained a fugitive from justice since his first boyhood arrest and had subsequently, over thirty years, broken all records for hyperactive criminality, having taken control of innumerable enterprises in the country. He remained invisible in the background of an organization run by a corps of carefully selected villains known as his ‘colonels’, forty-seven of whom were arrested in the course of the Grande Oriente operation. This, although carrying out a useful clean-up of such towns as Catania, fell short of expectations in that it failed to remove Provenzano himself from circulation.

  One theory was that Sicily in effect needed this man because of the incomparable efficiency displayed in all his undertakings. All businesses coming under his control showed an immediate improvement in their performance, and there were many who hoped that some way might be found of putting his talents to good use in the service of the State. Shortly before the great police drive he had won the contract for a new system of roads for Piazza Armerina, where the loss of his services would probably have been seen as disappointing. He was known to keep a close eye on every aspect of his numerous commercial affairs, and to bombard his colonels with innumerable letters, hammered out on an old-fashioned typewriter, with which he kept them up to scratch. All these reflected his religious background in their literary style and began ‘Dearest, in the hope that this finds you in the best of health’, and ended ‘May the Lord bless and protect you’. Important letters were composed by his wife and, among orders couched in military style, contained some reference to the goodness of the Almighty. In the opinion of the police Provenzano’s ability to avoid capture over the years had depended upon the fact that all his letters were sent not by post, but delivered through a series of couriers. In this way a letter might travel in a zigzag fashion from one end of the island to the other before arriving at its destination.