Note:
To avoid ambiguity or misunderstanding, I warn the reader that, just as the protagonist of these Conversations is not the author, so the Sicily in which his story takes place is Sicily only by chance, only because I like the sound of the word "Sicily" better than "Persia" or "Venezuela." As for the rest, I imagine all manuscripts are found in a bottle.
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That winter I was in the grip of abstract furies. I won't be more specific, that's not what I've set out to tell. But I have to say that they were abstract, not heroic, not living; they were furies, in some way, for all doomed humanity. This went on for a long time, and I went around with my head hung low. I saw posters for the newspapers blaring their ads and I hung my head; I saw friends for an hour or two without saying a word, and I hung my head; and I had a girlfriend or wife waiting for me, but even with her I didn't say a word, even with her I hung my head. Meanwhile it rained, and days passed, months passed; I had holes in my shoes and water seeped in, and there was no longer anything else but this: rain, massacres in the ad posters for the newspapers, water seeping through the holes in my shoes, mute friends, life in me like a muffled dream, and a frozen hopelessness.
That was the terrible thing: the frozenness of being without hope. Believing humanity to be doomed and not burning with a fever to do anything about it; wanting to doom myself as an example of it instead. I was agitated by abstract furies, but they didn't stir my blood, and I was frozen, I desired nothing. It didn't matter to me that my girlfriend was waiting for me; joining her or not joining her, or flipping through a dictionary, it was all the same to me; and going out to see friends, or others, or staying home, it was all the same to me. I was frozen. It was as if I had never had a day of life, never known what it meant to be happy; as if I had nothing to say, to affirm or deny, nothing of myself to put into play, and nothing to listen to; nothing to give and no inclination to receive; as if I had never in all my years of existence eaten bread, drunk wine or coffee, never gone to bed with a woman, never had children, never hit someone, never believed any of this possible; as if I had never had a childhood in Sicily among the prickly pears and sulphur, in the mountains; but inside, I was agitated by abstract furies, and I thought humanity was doomed, I hung my head, and it rained, I didn't say a word to my friends, and water seeped through the holes in my shoes.
II
Then came a letter from my father.
I recognized the handwriting on the envelope and didn't open it right away, I hesitated in that recognition which was also to recognize that I had once been a child, that in some way, I had actually had a childhood. I opened the letter and the letter said:
My dear boy,
you know and all of you know that I've always been a good father, and a good husband to your mother, all in all a good man, but now something's happened to me, and I have left, but you mustn't judge me badly, I'm still the same good man that I was, and the same good father to all of you, a good friend to your mother and furthermore, I will be a good husband to this—let's put it this way, my new wife with whom I've left. My sons, I am speaking to you without shame, from a man to men, and I'm not asking for your pardon. I know that I haven't done any harm to anyone.
Not to you who all left before me and not to your mother who really loses only the annoyance of my company. To be with me or without me is all the same to her; she'll go on whistling and singing in her house. So I'm heading off on my new path without regrets. Don't worry about money or anything else. Your mother won't need anything; every month she'll receive, in full, the railway pension due to me. I'll get by on private lessons—this way I'll also fulfill an old dream of mine which your mother always kept me from fulfilling. But I pray you, now that your mother is alone, go visit her once in a while. Silvestro, you were fifteen when you left us and since then, bye-bye, you haven't shown your face again. Instead of sending her the usual greeting card for her name day on December 8, why don't you take the train down there and pay her a visit?
I embrace you together with your dear wife and children, believe me, your most affectionate father,
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The letter came from Venice, and I realized that he had written to all five of us, his sons spread around the world, in the exact same words, as if distributing a circular. It was extraordinary: and I released my grip on the letter, remembering my father, his face, his voice, his blue eyes and his way of doing things, and for a moment I found myself a boy again, applauding him while he recited Macbeth for the railway workers of the whole line from San Cataldo to Racalmuto in the waiting room of a little station.
I recognized him and that I once was a child, and I thought of Sicily, the mountains there. But memory opened in me only for this: remembering him and finding myself a boy again applauding him, him and his red costume in Macbeth his voice, his blue eyes; as if now once again he stood reciting on a stage called Venice and once again it were a matter of applauding him. So memory opened in me only for this, and then it snapped shut again, and I was as frozen in my hopelessness as if I had never had fifteen years of childhood, and of Sicily, prickly pears, sulphur, Macbeth, in the mountains. Another fifteen years had passed, a thousand kilometers from there, from Sicily and from childhood, and I was almost thirty, and it was as if I had never had any of it, not the first fifteen years, nor the second, as if I'd never eaten bread, hadn't enriched myself with various other things, tastes or feelings, in such a long time that it was as if I'd never been alive; as if I were empty, and so I was; as if I were empty, thinking humanity doomed, and frozen in my hopelessness.
I no longer wanted to look my girlfriend in the eye. I flipped through the pages of the dictionary, which was the only book I was still able to read, and inside I began to feel a moan as if a doleful fife were playing. I went to work every morning—I worked as a linotype-typographer—I put in seven hours of linotype a day, in the greasy heat of hot lead, under a visor to protect my eyes, and a fife played in me and stirred mice in me, mice that were not memories, exactly.
They were only mice, dark, formless, three hundred and sixty-five and three hundred and sixty-five dark mice of my years, but only of my years in Sicily, in the mountains, and I felt them stir in me, mice and more mice until they were fifteen times three hundred and sixty-five, and the fife played inside me, and in this way a dark homesickness came over me as if I wanted to have my childhood back again. I picked up and put down my father's letter and looked at the calendar; it was the sixth of December, I should have written the usual card to my mother in time for the eighth, it was unconscionable for me to forget now that my mother was alone in the house.
And so I wrote the card and put it in my pocket; it was Saturday at the end of the biweekly pay period and I picked up my pay. I went to the train station to mail the card, passing in front of the entrance, which was full of light, and outside it was raining, water was seeping into my shoes. I went up the stairs of the entrance, in the light; it was all the same to me whether I continued in the rain towards home or went up those stairs, so I went on up, in the light, and saw two posters. One was an ad for a newspaper, blaring new massacres, the other was for the tourism board: Visit Sicily, 15% off from December to June, 250 lire for Siracusa Round-Trip, Third Class.
I found myself then facing two paths for a moment—one turning back home, into the abstraction of those massacred crowds, into the same frozenness, the same hopelessness; the other turning back to Sicily, to the mountains, into the lament of the fife that was playing inside me; into something that might not be as dark a frozenness and as muffled a hopelessness. To me it was still all the same whether I took one path or the other, humanity was doomed either way, and I found out there was a train leaving for the South in ten minutes, at seven o'clock.
The fife played shrilly in me and it was all the same to me whether I left or not. I asked for a ticket, 250 lire, and had 100 lire of my biweekly pay left in my pocket. I went into the station, among the lights and the tall engines and the shouting porters, and began a long nocturnal journey that for me was the same as being at home, at my table flipping through the pages of the dictionary, or in bed with my wife-girlfriend.
III
In Florence, around midnight, I changed trains, around six the next morning I changed again, and around midday I reached Naples, where it was not raining and where I wired 50-lire to my wife.
My message said: Back Thursday.
Then I was on the train for Calabria. Again it began to rain, to be night, and I remembered the route and myself as a child running away from home and from Sicily, journeying back and forth through that countryside of smoke and tunnels, and the wordless whistles of a train stopped, at night, at the mouth of a tunnel through a mountain, alongside the ocean, in towns with the names of ancient dreams: Amante'a, Marate'a, Gioia Tauro. And so, all of a sudden, a mouse was no longer a mouse in me but a smell, a taste, a sky, and for a second the fife played melodiously, no longer doleful. I fell asleep, woke again and fell back to sleep, woke again, and at last I was aboard the ferryboat for Sicily.
The sea was black and wintry, and standing on the high deck, that plateau, again I remembered being a boy, feeling the wind, devouring the sea towards one or the other of the two coasts with their ruins, the towns and villages heaped at the foot of each coast in the rainy morning. It was cold and I remembered being a boy, cold yet staying stubbornly out in the wind on the high deck, jutting out over the current and the sea.
On the rest of the boat, one couldn't walk around, it was so full of little Sicilians traveling third class, hungry and gentle in their being cold, without overcoats, their hands in their pants pockets, the collars of their jackets turned up. In Villa San Giovanni I had bought something to eat, bread and cheese, and I was eating it on the deck (bread, raw air, cheese) with gusto and appetite because in that cheese I recognized the ancient flavors of my mountains, and even their smells, their herds of goats and their wormwood smoke. The little Sicilians, their shoulders bent into the wind and hands in their pockets, looked at me as I ate, their faces dark, but gentle, with four days' growth of beard. They were workers, day laborers in the orange orchards, and railway men wearing the red-striped grey hats of the work teams. I smiled at them as I ate, and they looked at me without smiling.
"There's no cheese like ours," I said.
No one responded, but everyone looked at me, the women of voluminous femininity seated on large sacks of goods, the small men standing as if scorched by the wind, hands in their pockets. And I said again:
"There's no cheese like ours."
I was suddenly enthusiastic about something, this cheese, tasting it in my mouth along with the bread and the strong sea air, the taste bland but sour, and ancient, with grains of pepper like sudden grains of fire in the mouth.
"There's no cheese like ours," I said for the third time.
Then one of the Sicilians, the smallest and most gentle, the most windburned, the one with the darkest face, asked me, "Are you Sicilian?"
"Sure, why wouldn't I be?" I answered.
The man shrugged his shoulders and didn't say more. He had a sort of child seated on a sack at his feet, and he bent over her, and out of his pocket came a great red hand which touched her as if caressing her and at the same time adjusted her shawl to keep her warm.
From something in that gesture I saw that the child was not his daughter but his wife. Meanwhile Messina grew closer, no longer a heap of ruins on the rim of the sea but houses and crowds and white trams and rows of blackened cars in the railway yards. It was a rainy morning but the rain had stopped. Everything was wet on the high deck, the wind blew wetly and the boats whistled wetly, and on land the locomotives whistled as if echoing the whistles from the water, but it wasn't raining, and on the other side of the smokestack suddenly one saw in the middle of the winter sea the very tall tower of the lighthouse, pointing to Villa San Giovanni.
"There's no cheese like ours," I said.
All the Sicilians who were standing had turned towards the railing of the bridge to look at the city, and even the women sitting on the sacks had turned their heads to look. But no one moved toward the lower deck to prepare to disembark; there was still time! I remembered very well that from the lighthouse to the landing would take at least fifteen more minutes.
"There's no cheese like ours," I said.
Meanwhile I finished eating, and the man with the child-wife once again bent over her, or rather kneeled. He had a basket at his feet, and as she watched, he began to do something with the basket. The basket was covered with a piece of oilcloth sewn at the edges with twine, and slowly, slowly he undid a bit of the twine, hid his hand under the cloth, and brought forth an orange.
It was not very large, nor did it look very good, its color was weak, but it was an orange, and silently, without getting up from his knees, he offered it to his child-wife. The child looked at me, I could see her eyes inside the hood of her shawl, and then I saw her shake her head.
The little Sicilian looked desperate, and he remained kneeling, one hand in his pocket, the orange in the other. He stood up and stayed that way, with the wind batting the soft visor of his cap against his nose, the orange in his hand, a little person without an overcoat, scorched by the cold, and desperate; while at the prow, in the rainy morning, the sea and the city passed below us.
"Messina," a woman said dolefully, and it was a word said without reason, only as a kind of complaint, and I watched the little Sicilian with the child-wife desperately peel the orange, and eat it desperately, angrily, in a frenzy, without even wanting it and without chewing, swallowing as if cursing, his fingers wet with the juice of the orange in the cold, his body a little bent into the wind, the soft visor of his cap batting against his nose.
"A Sicilian never eats in the morning," he said suddenly.
He added, "Are you American?"
He spoke with desperation yet with gentleness, as he had remained gentle even in his desperate peeling of the orange and desperate eating of it. The last three words he said excitedly, in a tone of strident tension as if it were somehow essential to him, for his peace of mind, to know that I was American.
"Yes," I said. "I'm American. I've been an American for the last fifteen years."
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