Sicily 6/18/24
Just when I thought the adventure had petered out, fate stepped in.
For the second day in a row, I was at the intersection at 6:30 in the morning, reading ‘Leaves of Grass’ on the bench and waiting for the bus. It didn’t come yesterday, and by 7:30 this morning, it still hadn’t come.
Giro came down, as usual in a polo shirt, shorts and flip flops, and opened his garage. It’s hard to tell if anyone works in Sicily, if they do, they certainly don’t seem to have any stress in their lives. Giro is retired from what I can tell. Non é passato, I complain. Aspetta, he says and points to the curb outside of his house. I look up what that means and then complain further, Aspetto un’ora…but he insists, and I gather that he’s going to try and flag someone down to give me a lift.
To my great delight, he snags a 1980’s red Fiat Panda, driven by a bookish young man with glasses and braces. He waves me into the passenger seat and I get in. His English is as good as my Italian, so we don’t say much, and next thing you know, he’s dropping me in the città. The interior of the car is indescribably beautiful to me, so mechanical, so well-maintained, it even has a panel of padded seersucker on the dashboard, and manual window rollers. This is what I came here for, I think. My dreams are coming true.
The store with the giant figs is open and I go there first. I’ve learned not to touch the produce here, someone will get it for you, so when I spot those five enormous figs I declare Tutti i fichi, all of the figs, per favore. It doesn’t matter what I buy here, I can’t seem to spend my money, and I know these figs are going to cost me next to nothing. I tarry on, get some juicy white grapes, and then go to my favorite beach, the one by the mulberry tree that has chunks of granite in the sand.
It’s still early when I arrive, only 8:30 in the morning, and I have the beach to myself. I lay in the sun, wade out into the water which is demonstrably warmer than it was only two weeks ago, dip once, dip twice, lay in the sun and eat figs and grapes, go back in the water, and by 11:45 I have to drag myself away from this little paradise to do more shopping before everything closes at 1:00 for the afternoon. By then, a good wind has picked up and made the clear, calm blue sea a little choppy.
By the time I get to the bus stop, I’m carrying pounds of produce, pounds of dried Scicli beans, an enormous steak, a kilo of ground beef (because I still don’t know how to say half-kilo), several pieces of beach granite, a bottle of olive oil (my third in two weeks), a jar of honey, paper towels and toilet paper…but the park is awfully quiet, and there isn’t a single bus here yet. I wait a little, and then I notice a sign posted to the otherwise unmarked bus stop: DAL 17 GIUGNO AL 7 SETTEMBRE LE LINEE — oh yes there’s my bus route! — SARANNO SOSPESO. I look it up: will be suspended. Suspended? There’s no bus into town until September?
I text Giro, who says his son-in-law can be there in a few minutes. He’s on his way home from work driving through town, and I recognize him as the man who stopped by Giro’s apartment this morning while I was waiting for the bus. What luck!
New York is great! he says, when I tell him where I’m from. I disagree. But why Sicily, why have you come here? Oh, to get away from New York, io è mio ragazzo, basta. Ah, but the Sicilian men! he says. And we do agree that Sicily itself is absolutely beautiful. The sun is shining and all of these nice people are driving me around. I feel so happy, and then we’re pulling up in front of my little stone house. Grazie, grazie, grazie! I say, and he responds Prego, prego, prego! I set my bags down upstairs and break out into laughter, at life.
And that’s what I mean about fate stepping in. What I really want is to have to hike up and down the mountain to get to the beach. What I really want is absolute independence, to come and go from my rifugio as I please. These villages were built long, long before cars, and I’m certainly not the first person to look at the deep blue sea and feel a great determination to walk towards it. I can’t tell you, the levity I feel tonight due to what, at the bus stop this afternoon, seemed like my undoing.
Evening. I want nothing more than to take a shower, but I have no water left. I have to go to the spring. My skull is being crushed by another migraine tonight as I taper off caffeine. The old lady with the eggs is standing in the street with another, younger woman, watching me come down the steep hill backwards, below the cart. They want to chat and, like everyone else in Sicily, they want to know if I’m sposata, married. You don’t do this in New York! they say, laughing, pointing at the cart.
Yesterday, when the bus didn’t come, I dejectedly went back to my house, got the bar of Marseilles soap and washboard, sat on the stone floor, and washed my towels. Rinsed them, wrung them out, hung them to dry. Picked up the handsaw and went to work on the wood stacked against the wall. To my surprise, the handsaw made quick work of it; much more efficient than scrounging for deadwood on the forest floor that is small enough to break. I let run a few tears for my lost love, who is much on my mind lately. Like a bramble thorn, the puncture wound left behind is more painful than the thorn itself.
But that was yesterday, at the end of my weekend, when I had no wind in my sails and no adventure in my heart. Today is different. Perhaps the adventure is just starting today.