Sicily 7/1/24
It’s so hot and sticky in Sicily today that clothing feels like punishment. Cold water offers a brief rebirth before one is cast back into the stinking world of the body.
Bella, bella Sicilia. I’ve begun to mourn leaving Sicily already. But I do have a tale to tell of today. Let’s see if I can tell it well, as the afternoon wanes, and the sleepless night begins to creep up on me.
God’s ways are mysterious, aren’t they? I would have tortured myself all summer walking up and down the mountain, if the road weren’t blocked by those dogs in the lower village. Blocked by my worst fear, rational or not.
But where there is Scylla, there is Charybdis.* To avoid the devouring monster, one risks getting sucked into the whirlpool. The whirlpool in this case being the loss of my independence, perhaps having to turn tail and fly back to America, if I can’t figure out a way to get home from town on my own. Catching a ride with Giro and his family in the morning is never a problem, but they only stay at the beach for an hour because of the baby, so I say goodbye when we park and disappear.
I was so consumed by the fear that I would fail to secure a vehicle and have to pass the dogs, and that I would ultimately have to leave Sicily, that I couldn’t sleep. Giro came knocking at 8:00 a.m., as promised.
In town, I took pleasure in neither figs, nor grapes, nor sun, nor water. I planned to take the 11:22 train to the next town, the cape with its hotels and beach clubs and tourists. Not to enjoy myself, but in the hopes of being able to get a taxi, just to prove that I could.
When I arrived, a mere eight minute journey, there were no taxis at the train station. Over and over again, I refreshed the taxi apps, to no avail. Given what was at stake, I had no qualms about entering into the mysterious, masculine realm of the station tabaccheria to buy a pack of Lucky Strikes. What could I do but pick up a few groceries, and walk around in the heat while my bowels churned, while I bled through my underwear and sweat like a pig, smoking to calm my nerves?
Giro texted, asking if I was enjoying the beach.
Ultimately, I ended up in a pew below the Jesus mosaic. All the shops were closing for the afternoon. Utterly defeated, I went to the ocean to rinse off. The pebbly shoreline tends to form a ridge, unlike the sandy, tapered shores of the Atlantic. A few steps out and you can let yourself fall in, to float in the warm, velvet water. In the sea, all is right with the world.
My phone was almost dead.
I recalled a younger, more intrepid version of myself, arriving one morning in Jutland with a flip phone, who pretended to be a hotel guest to gain access to a lobby computer, where she could log in to couchsurfing.com to find somewhere to stay that night.
I’m a little old to be pretending, so when I walked into the hotel, I told the truth. A quarter of an hour later, a taxi driver walked in, nodded at me and said, Her?, and off we went.
The drive along the coast from the cape back to my town was spectacularly beautiful, as the sun cuts through the ocean to its depths, dredging up all the shades of blue. I sat in the front seat, and by the end of the drive we were on good terms and quite jocular. He told me to call him directly whenever I need a ride from town, and he’ll give me a discount since there’s no middle man.
Like the first time I made it up the mountain on foot, I walked to my door with an irrepressible smile on my face. I can stay, and set my mourning aside for a little while longer.
*Not far from here at all, in the Straight of Messina.