Sicilian Odyssey
Story and photos by Andrew Bonfiglio
This is the story of when my brothers and I traveled to Sicily to sell the last of the family olive trees. To protect the privacy of friends and family, my family’s ancestral home (a small, working class village in the province of Palermo on Sicily’s northern coast) will remain anonymous. Likewise, I have changed the actual names of the people who participated in this adventure, my Sicilian Odyssey, but the actions and events that I recount are true.
Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3 | Day 4 | Day 5 | Days 6-Epilogue
SICILIAN ODYSSEY: DAY 1
The two carabinieri, machine guns slung over their shoulders, waved me through customs without checking my passport. Joe, my brother, was right, la bella figura (a good impression) helps in Italy. To test his hypothesis, I had worn my best suit and from the moment I entered the Alitalia airbus until now, I had never received better service. Looking back, this was by far the smoothest part of my trip. After 13 hours of traveling, I had finally arrived in Sicily.
I felt a thrill of excitement as we approached the now familiar landscape of the land from which our family had originated. Sicily, the setting of Homer’s Odyssey, is full of history and adventure. As I looked out the window of the twin engine aircraft while we descended toward the craggy mountains that lined the northern coastline, I imagined the Cyclops standing tall atop one of those peaks, casting boulders down at Odysseus and his crew as they scrambled to their ship anchored off the coast in the deep blue Tyrrhenian Sea.
It wasn’t Cyclops that greeted me though, it was my brother Joey waving from the waiting area, looking very Sicilian in his new wool cap and square-toed European shoes. He and my brother Lenny had been there a month already, cleaning the family home, hiring workmen to make repairs and negotiating with potential buyers for our olive trees.
It was an hour and fifteen-minute drive to our town from Falcone-Borsellino airport, just east of Palermo, and Joey drove like a bat out of hell at every opportunity.
“Watch out, Joey!” I shouted in terror as a red Fiat suddenly moved into our lane without signaling. I looked at the speedometer. 130 kilometers per hour. That’s over 80 miles per hour in our small Fiat Punto -- we were flying!
Joey swerved out of the way into the left lane at the very last second. He didn’t miss a beat of his story, driving with one hand while gesticulating with the other for emphasis, as he told me what had been happening since he and our brother Lenny had arrived. Joey had clearly gone native. He didn’t just look like a Sicilian; he was driving like one as well. Since 2001, my brothers and I had been coming to Sicily -- as our father and uncles had done before us -- to maintain the family home and hire workers to tend to the olive trees.
Twenty-five years earlier, our grandmother had dispersed the family property to my father and his brothers. Throughout those years they made many trips back to their beloved terra natia to work the property irrigating, pruning and fertilizing the trees and then, in the fall, harvesting the olives. Over time, as the olive oil business declined and the ages of my father and uncles advanced, the family olive trees were sold one by one. That is, except for two small olive groves in the mountains above our village and a house in town that belonged originally to our father’s grandfather.
Eight years ago a stroke had left our father paralyzed and unable to speak until his death in 2006. I knew the second I saw him in the hospital that from that moment on, my brothers and I were on our own in dealing with the family property in Sicily. I began taking Italian lessons immediately in preparation for the time that had finally arrived. But this was Sicily, a fertile agricultural island that was once the breadbasket for the entire Roman Empire and home of some of the freshest and best food that I have ever tasted. Before attending to our work, it was time for lunch.
Joey and Lenny had prepared il pranzo and while Joey had gone out to fetch me, Lenny had been keeping things warm in the kitchen. After a heartfelt hug and kisses on both cheeks from Lenny, I sat down with my brothers in the house that had been our father’s and before that our great aunt Gaetana’s and before that our great grandfather’s. Our father had spent a year remodeling and modernizing the four-bedroom home with walls four feet thick. I looked at my brothers and felt a profound sense of history and family. Then I turned my attention to the food on the table.
We ate freshly cured olives and provolone cheese with hot bread (the best I have ever tasted!) from the bakery just next door. Then il primo piatto (first course) of pasta with tomato sauce and peas, followed by il secundo (the second course) of chicken spedini. I was famished and ate with gusto. We finished the meal with pastries from a cousin’s bakery, which we washed down with steaming hot espresso.
As I savored this first meal with my brothers, I thought of the first time I had come to Sicily to spend three months with my grandparents when I was a boy. I was flooded with recollections of that memorable summer, but before I could share any of them with my brothers, there came a loud knocking on the front door.
It was Giuseppe and Tomasso Incandela, two brothers who were repairing the walls in our house, most of which had been damaged when the drain in the third floor terrace had been plugged up by pigeon dung. They had returned to finish the work on the second floor. They had been there for two days and would be there another three before all the repairs would be completed.
At last, we had found workmen who knew what they were doing. We had been using workers recommended by a different cousin in years past, and nothing they did corrected the problems we were having, but these guys were clearly different. They knew exactly why we didn’t have enough hot water on the third floor in visits past, as well as solutions to a half-dozen other little problems that had plagued us for the past five years.
Next, Franco Chiccudeddu, the real estate agent, came by to meet me. He had approached my brothers shortly after they had arrived on behalf of some anonymous buyers interested in both pieces of property amid the olive groves in the mountains. He was young, spoke very little English, and worked for the agent who had already shown himself to be dishonest by pretending, several weeks earlier, to be a buyer, not an agent, in his talks with my brothers. Since then, we only dealt with Chiccudeddu, who was much more personable and charming but who we nevertheless still regarded with suspicion.
After that, our good friend Maria San Marco came by to say hello and together we reviewed the documents that I had brought with me in our continuing attempt to document that we were indeed the owners of the property in Sicily. The documents that Joey and Lenny had brought with them failed to demonstrate ownership and we were frustrated, angry and more than a little depressed over our continual frustration to understand just what our attorneys had done three years earlier when preparing “La Successione” of our father.
Thankfully, an old document that I had brought with me that had belonged to my grandmother solved the problem, demonstrating that a certain parcel of olives was indeed in our family. Now all we had to do was integrate it into a revised document of succession and pay the appropriate taxes and penalties on the property. After that, we could sell it, along with the other parcel of olive trees for which we already had documentation.
It was 10 p.m. when Chiccudeddu and Maria left. My brothers and I were too keyed up to sleep so we went for a walk around town. We walked through the dark narrow streets until we arrived at the belvedere overlooking the sea. W e moved down to the church in the main square then back up the length of the town, almost to the base of the mountain at the south end of town.
There were many changes in the village since we had been there three years earlier, our first trip together without our father.
Some statuary had been moved to different locations and giant palm trees had been planted along the boardwalk overlooking the Tyrrhenian. To our delight and relief, the town had never been cleaner as the streets and sidewalks were free of litter for the first time since our first trip in 2001. We credited our cousin, Angelo Randazzo, who became Vice Mayor the previous year, for the improvements. The town had certainly changed. A trip to Sicily is always full of surprises and as we walked back to the house that first night, I wondered what other surprises might be in store for my brothers and me.
The Garibaldi Theatre in Palermo, Sicily
(Back to top of page)
SICILIAN ODYSSEY: DAY 2
One of the problems with la successione, the line of succession from our father to our mother and us, was that the papers which we held in our hands -- sent from our Sicilian attorney with assurances that we now possessed everything required to demonstrate ownership and sell any and all assets -- were three pages of cover sheets demonstrating only one piece of property. There was no documentation for the house or for the most valuable pieces of property up on the high mountain above the village. Upon discovering this predicament, the sense of despair that enveloped my brothers and me was palpable. We stared at one another, speechless.
I called Luigi Menzasarde, our attorney in Sicily. He had come highly recommended by our international lawyer in Chicago, Giorgio Destacruda, who had assured me that Menzasarde was a good lawyer and there must be some explanation of events. Menzasarde didn’t answer the phone. I left a message asking him to call me, but I never heard from him again. Instead, he called Chiccudeddu the real estate agent and assured him that he would send all the papers on our case to the real estate agency. They were to be delivered by normal post the next day. There was nothing more to be done but wait.
For the rest of the day we turned our attention to the house, ordering a roof for the third floor terrace. We measured glass for a coffee table to be made with the legs of our great aunt’s bed,which was over 100 years old and had a two-inch-thick horsehair mattress. She had moved in with our grandmother late in life, two widows keeping each other company.
That evening we visited our cousins, Maurizio and Francesca Garrone. Many years ago, just as Maurizio was knocking on the front door of the very house we were living in now, a loose brick had fallen from the roof and hit him squarely on the top of the head. He had come to pay a visit to our Great Aunt Gaetana, who lived in the house at the time. At that time, the house was little more than a shack consisting of one large room with a sleeping loft connected by a ladder to the rest of the living space. As a result of that accident, Maurizio lost the use of one arm and walked with a painful limp. The brick put a dent in the top of his skull the size of a man’s wallet.
It was a cold night so we huddled around the fireplace at the Garrones’, drinking espresso and eating the pastries (which we always brought from Lila Bar whenever we paid a visit to a cousin) as we caught one another up on each other’s families. Francesca showed us the latest renovations of the fabulous back patio and garden. They had also installed a completely new kitchen and an outdoor wood-burning pizza oven. Their youngest son, Mario, had just come home. He was serving in the Italian army and stationed in Palermo. Because his father is disabled, he is allowed to sleep at home most nights.
On each of our past trips to Sicily people often approached us about our father’s property. On each trip a stranger would stop us on the street and introduce himself as a close personal friend of our grandfather or grandmother. I had no way of knowing if the claim was true or not. Invariably, the next sentence would be, “Are you selling the olives” or “Are you selling the house?” In those days, our father was still alive and our answer was always the same: “A questo momento non vendiamo niente.” (“At this time we’re not selling anything.”)
Upon overhearing this, our neighbors would smile. “Bravo! Come to Sicily for your vacations.” I knew there was a deep resentment toward those who had left Sicily to make their fortune. It had become a matter of pride for my brothers and I not to abandon our heritage. However, our uncles and other Sicilians had warned us that because we were children of those who had left the island, we would be tested.
Aside from the strangers on the street, two cousins had approached me about selling our olive trees during my last visit three years ago. One was cousin Sabastiano Somma and the other was Maurizio Garrone, our father’s favorite cousin. Each one had asked me to speak with them first whenever we were ready to sell our property. Maurizio had even called me in America twice and voiced his impatience that we hadn’t yet completed la successione. I assured them both that when we were ready they would be the among the first to know. When Joey and Lenny arrived they spoke first to Maurizio and next to Sabastiano. To our surprise both acted completely uninterested, both explained that at the current time their funds were tied up in other matters. Both cousins wished us the best of luck.
Cousin Maurizio’s change of heart was confusing, to say the least, since he had appeared so interested, but cousin Sebastiano’s total lack of interest was a surprise as well. Was this all part of some sort of negotiating ploy, part of the way business was conducted in Sicily, or had we simply missed the opportunity because of the long delay in completing la successione? Well, at least we had one interested party, though it was unsettling that the person remained anonymous. I went to bed that night thinking about our Uncle Fabrizio’s warning before I left for Sicily.
“Watch out, Andrew,” our uncle had cautioned, “first, everyone will try and cheat you, but don’t worry, when they find out that you’re not stupid, they’ll settle down and treat you fair.” So far, given that we were still trying to complete our father’s successione after three years and two lawyers, the issue of our combined intelligence was still an open question.
A view of Capo Zafferano in Santa Flavia (Palermo, Sicily)
(Back to top of page)
SICILIAN ODYSSEY: DAY 3
Since the mail wouldn’t come until after the daily siesta (each day between 1:30 p.m. and 4:30 p.m. when everything closes except restaurants), we couldn’t review the papers from Menzasarde until after il pranzo, the big meal of the day. Consequently, we had the morning to engage in one of our favorite activities, shopping in nearby Bagheria.
We parked in our usual spot, next to the main church midway along the central shopping boulevard. It was a “watched” parking lot and when we departed a man would approach with his arm extended, palm out, and we would give him the 1-euro parking fee that was expected for the privilege of parking there.
It was a cold day but sunny. The main shopping area had been renovated with new bricks and cars were now prohibited on the boulevard. We strolled down the center of the main drag of Bagheria. Giuseppe Tornatore, the director of Cinema Paradiso, released a film in 2009 called Baaria (which is Sicilian slang for Bagheria). The film, a comedy, narrates life in Bagheria through the eyes of a Sicilian family across three generations. It was a kick to be strolling down the very street that Tornatore used in his movie.
The windows were decorated for Christmas and sale signs were everywhere. I bought a wool cap with a centaur trademark on the back while Joey tried on slacks, but mostly we just window-shopped. At $1.50 per euro, there wasn’t much we wanted to buy.
Union protesters also marched that day; their colorful banners waved in the breeze as they walked past us with their leader shouting from a loud speaker about unfair practices. They were followed closely by a half dozen carabinieri, their eyes scanning the crowd carefully.
At 12:30 we returned home to pick up Lenny. I wanted to take my brothers to a restaurant that my wife and I had gone to years earlier in Cefalu, a medieval city and one of the two major resort towns in Sicily.
We found the restaurant without difficulty. La Botte is a small, three-star restaurant on Via Veterani. The same son and daughter that waited on me and my wife three years ago were there to greet us that day. Their father is the chef.
We had pasta con sarde (spaghetti with sardines), a family favorite of ours, sprinkled with plenty of toasted breadcrumbs on top; followed by veal involtini (veal stuffed with fontina cheese and prosciutto). We washed it down with a good bottle of Nero d’Avola / Syrah blend, from Sicily of course.
After our small feast, we were ready to face the documents. They arrived, as promised, in the afternoon mail in a stack of papers about four inches thick. Apparently the lawyer had done some work. Along with Maria, our dear family friend, and the real estate agent Chiccudeddu, we spent the following three hours reviewing documents, identifying the content and purpose of each. As we all sat at the kitchen table scrutinizing each page of the thick sheaf in front of us for the proper lot number (particela) and last known owner, I realized how out of my depth I had been -- even after eight years of lessons with a good teacher. But when we were finished we had finally found the deed to the house and deciphered what had happened with the property. We were now ready to return to Bagheria for our 7:00 p.m. appointment with il notaio (the notary), who in Sicily does much more than notarize signatures.
Maria had made the appointment with her friend, a secretary who worked for a good notaio in Bagheria, but due a quick stop to the hospital to look in on a suddenly ill mother, the secretary was running late. As we waited in a cold sterile waiting room while she dealt with an earlier appointment that she had also kept waiting, I received a call on my iPhone from the States. It was an effort to focus on matters in America in that waiting room; my mind was completely caught up in our task. The call lasted only 15 minutes, but it was an hour and fifteen minutes longer before Maria’s friend finally opened the double doors to her office and invited us inside.
After another document review, still more problems were discovered. A new, updated Certificate of Urban Planning was needed, ASAP, without which we could neither complete the line of succession nor sell any property. Also, our mother’s identity card needed to be faxed and we needed another copy of our father’s birth certificate and a copy of our mother’s marriage license. Beyond that, my and Joey’s original Italian social security numbers -- which we had so proudly obtained from the village hall on our last trip three years ago -- were invalid. The problem? They were listed under our Italian names (Andrea and Giuseppe) and must be listed according to the names on our American passports (Andrew and Joseph).
It was 10:30 at night when we left, exhausted and stunned. Gina, the notaio’s secretary, asked for a ride home since it was so late and we gladly gave it to her. I even offered to take her to dinner as I was so relieved and grateful to have someone putting us back on the right track, but she declined. Instead, the five of us crammed into our rented Fiat Punto and drove across town. We dropped Gina off at the front door of a graffiti-covered building, which was almost hidden behind some tall, overgrown grass. A Dumpster filled to the brim with garbage was visible along the side of the building, which faced a dark blacktop road that we used to get back to the highway. No one spoke a word as we drove home. When we arrived, we realized we were starving. We hadn’t eaten since our lunch at La Botte. We snacked on some cacciocavallo, mortadella and olives from a cousin’s food shop, but still not a word spoken among us. We were hungry, but still too stunned to speak. After we put the food back in the fridge we walked off to our separate rooms and went to bed.
The main drag in Bagheria (Palermo, Sicily)
(Back to top of page)
SICILIAN ODYSSEY: DAY 4
There was a lot to do. We had until Monday to get everything ready for Gina at the notaio’s office and, though I probably don’t need to say it again, things move slowly in Sicily, so I wanted to get an early start. It was 6:30 a.m. and for once I was up before Joey. I decided to visit my cousin Giovanna at her pasticceria (confectionary shop). She was a cousin on my mother’s side and she recognized me the moment I walked in. As was her usual custom, after a hug and a kiss on each cheek, she offered me a coffee on the house.
The coffee in Sicily is unlike anything else in Italy. The further south one goes , the smaller the pour and the stronger the brew. In Sicily, the coffee is the smallest and the strongest in all Italy. A pure shot of adrenalin with dark crema, the scummy espresso froth, on top. Every cup brings notes of coco, leather and spice alongside the intense dark coffee flavor.
Giovanna’s second daughter, Maria Angela, came out from the kitchen and greeted me warmly, asking if I wanted something to eat. She had just brought out a large tray of special cream puffs made only during the Christmas season and started decorating them with small slices of orange rind that had been cooked overnight in sugar and water to make them tender. She offered me one to taste. It was super sweet and delicious! Another worker came out from the kitchen with a tray of six Sicilian cassata cakes, blanketed in a hard, sugary glaze frosting.
I ordered another coffee and a small tray of assorted pastries to bring to cousin Bernardetta when we visited her later that evening. Each tray of confections is hand wrapped in baker’s waxed paper, usually printed with the name of the pasticceria in gold, bright red or sunburst orange, then wrapped with ribbon and tied off in a bow. Each tray of cookies is a little gift.
When I got home Joey was up and had just returned from il municipio, the main city hall, where he got a copy of our father’s birth certificate which, along with several other papers, we needed to fax to the notaio that day.
We went to the tobacco shop to send the fax. This is where one buys stamps and certain legal forms, sends faxes, adds minutes to one’s cell phone, and buys cigarettes. I purchased a “Dream Card” for 5 euro and got 5 hours of talk time to call anywhere, including America. You had to punch in 14 other numbers before even dialing the phone number, but at that price it was worth it.
Next we went to il commune (the smaller village hall), where we hoped to get our Certificate of Urban Planning. Joey had submitted his request a week earlier and we were hoping (foolishly) they might actually have it ready. There was some confusion at first. Joey had brought a blank form as an example to show the clerk what we were there for, but the clerk thought we wanted to initiate a new plan. He told us it would be impossible to finish in less than two weeks time.
Luckily, there were three men talking in the far corner of the small room in which we were all standing. They were dressed in the classic attire of Sicilian contidini (or farmers): work pants, boots and flannel work shirts. Two of the men were also wearing wool caps. They were speaking Sicilian. Joey spoke a variety of what I call “Pigeon Sicilian,” made up of mostly close approximations of Sicilian (the language we had listened to all our lives at every family gathering) tinged with a dose of Spanish and a dash of Italian. He can usually make himself understood and the men in the corner, who had obviously overheard everything, understood immediately. One of them interrupted their conversation just long enough to explain things to the clerk, who then quickly disappeared into the back to search for our papers.
“Come back Monday or Tuesday,” he said when he resumed his position behind the old metal desk. “Maybe it will be finished by then.”
We needed it by tomorrow, Friday, at the latest. Our appointment with the notaio was Monday. We went downstairs to see another cousin, Bernardetta’s youngest daughter Federica, who is the social worker for our village. As long as we were here, we might as well say hello. She had lived in the States during several years of elementary school and spoke fair English.
It was great to see Federica. Of all my relationships with our cousins in Sicily, my relationship with Federica and her husband, Angelo Randazzo, is the closest. Angelo and I keep in touch through email a couple of times a year. Both of us have had hip surgery in the last few years, and we each encouraged one another (long distance) along the way. Angelo had recently become the director of the high school, as well as vice mayor.
We were interrupted when a tall brunette entered. She had long black hair and large dark eyes and spoke to Federica’s colleague, a short blonde sitting at the reception desk. In a flash they were shouting at one another. Federica tried to intervene and they both turned and began shouting in Federica’s face. They were speaking so fast I couldn’t understand a word.
Federica remained calm and counseled patience, but to no avail. Finally, exasperated, she shouted back at them,
“Listen, this is my cousin from America. He’s a psychologist! It’s a good thing he’s here. You both need his services badly.”
I nodded in agreement and began to lecture them about the health benefits of staying calm under pressure. Everyone started laughing.
Federica knew why we were in Sicily and she surmised that we weren’t at the Village Hall just to say hello. We told her our story.
“Just a minute,” she said, after listening silently with a serious expression on her heart-shaped face.
She was gone about ten minutes and when she returned she said, “Come back after 4 o’clock this afternoon. Your cousin Paolo will have it ready for you then.”
We were learning the hard way that in Italy it is impossible to get things done quickly without knowing someone, and we were glad we knew Federica.
When we returned to the house, the workers were there. I was already fond of these two, both of whom reminded me of my father when he was a younger man. They were called i muraturi, men who fixed walls, but they were also painters, plumbers and did other small building repairs. The brothers, Giuseppe and Tomasso, were some of the neatest construction workers I had ever seen. They cleaned up after themselves meticulously each day as they worked their way down from my room on the third floor four days earlier to the main floor where they were that day. They were nothing like the other workers whom we had hired on previous trips. These guys were from our cousin Crocetta’s own group.
While Giuseppe and Tomasso mixed then spread the heavy grey plaster on the walls, they told stories about when they had remodeled the house with my father ten years earlier. After about eight months of work, the house was completed and my father had taken his entire crew to Porticello, a nearby seaport village, for dinner at my favorite restaurant, Francu U Piscaturi. (That’s “Franco the Fisherman” in Sicilian.)
I made two more family visits that day. One to Cousin Crocetta and her aging father Renato. Her late husband, Giuseppe, had built our house and had taken care of us whenever we visited Sicily until he died of a heart attack several years ago. Since then, we’ve been on our own maintaining the house in Sicily. I was glad to reconnect with Crocetta.
She and her father were eager to hear about how things were going. We talked about these matters for two hours. Cousin Renato, wearing his wool cap and bundled up in sweater, shawl, and scarf around his neck, spoke mostly in Sicilian, as did Crocetta. It was a little difficult at first, but the old language was starting to come back to me. They were both eager to give me their opinions about what had been going on before I arrived. They thought Joey should have taken some early offers, which were low, but 100% solid, they insisted. We could take the money and run, and since the exchange rate was what it was between the euro and the dollar, we wouldn’t end up badly.
Each and every cousin that we encountered -- and there were many -- gave us different, often totally contradictory, advice. All spoke with absolute certainty that their advice was the right advice. It made my head spin.
Joey had declined each of these low-ball offers and now we had a buyer paying top dollar for both pieces of land, so it wasn’t looking so bad, provided we could get our papers ready. So far, as is customary when working with a real estate agent, the buyer was anonymous and though we were curious, we had no idea to whom we were selling.
When I returned home it was 1:30. The workers were gone for the day and Joey had made a hearty chicken soup that we ate with hot bread from the bakery around the corner. That night we visited Cousin Bernardetta, who had just celebrated her 87th birthday.
Cousin Bernardetta’s granddaughter Linda joined us. She was a slim, dark Sicilian beauty and she charmed us all. She was completing her college studies in a year and wanted to work as a social worker helping disadvantaged children. She was engaged to an American of Sicilian descent, now in the Italian military and stationed in Milan. When he is finished with his service he plans to live in our village and when they have their careers in order, they will marry. We told family stories and drank espresso until 10:30, then Joey and I said goodnight.
It was much colder outside and on the way home it began to rain. One section of town had lost it s street lights and it was very dark as we wound our way through the side streets toward our house at the other end of town. Hardly anyone was out. Joe and I talked about all the changes in the village since our last visit and we wondered who the anonymous buyer might be. After some discussion of the possibilities, we decided that it was probably someone who had feuded with our father and was worried we wouldn’t sell to him because of it. Whoever it was, we agreed it was a weird mystery. Things are certainly different in Sicily.
A terrace view of Lipari (Messina, Sicily)
(Back to top of page)
SICILIAN ODYSSEY: DAY 5
There wasn’t anything that had to be done this day for la successione but it was 4:30 a.m. and I was wide awake. I eventually got up and found Joey already puttering around in the kitchen. He didn’t want any coffee at that hour, so I went out alone in search of a bar that would be open that early.
None of the coffee bars we frequented opened until 6:30, but not too far away I found one open for business. Two customers were already inside, standing at the enormous marble counter, sipping espresso. Two garbage collectors walked in after me, dressed in big green pants and coats with bands of shiny glow-in-the-dark reflector tape around their cuffs. Off to one side were a couple of gentlemen who looked like they’d been up all night. In a gravelly voice the shorter man asked for wine but was sternly refused by the barista, a big hirsute man dressed in a white chef’s coat and a jaunty hat.
“No wine at this hour,” He said, waving a finger. “Coffee.”
“Va bene, Va bene. OK. If you’re not going to give me a glass of wine give me a coffee. I have to drink something,” the man said, shrugging his shoulders and looking at his friend.
“Bravo,” his friend said. “In the morning, coffee. Wine only in the evening.”
Everyone nodded and murmured their agreement. This was a wise plan indeed. After serving the man his small cup of espresso, the big barista looked at me. “Dimi!” he said. Which meant, “Tell me.”
That morning I had a cappuccino instead of my usual espresso and I was glad I did, just for the show. The barista turned briskly and went to work, moving his hands with the grace of an orchestra conductor. He whipped the steamed milk into a heavy froth with flair then, raising the milk pitcher up high, he poured it over the scalding espresso that he had just before poured into the big white cup he held in his meaty hand. “Cocoa?” he asked, one eyebrow raised, stopping suddenly in mid air just before setting the frothy cup on the bar in front of me. I nodded and he dipped his free hand quickly under the counter and came up with a big tin shaker. He sprinkled chocolate powder over the frothy white milk with panache.
To accompany the steaming cappuccino, I had a cornetta, a sweet, light croissant filled with chocolate. (They can also be filled with either mixed berries or yellow cream.) I washed it down with a second cup, this time espresso. It was just the right combination of coffee and sweet. I left just as the sun started to come up. Several construction workers had just walked in and, as was the case everywhere I went in Sicily, I was spotted immediately as an American.
As I started to walk out one of the men approached me.
“Sooo loonga! Have-a nice-a day!” The guy grinned, showing three missing teeth. Then, pivoting around, his arms held out at his sides, he looked at his friends then back at me. “I speak-a pretty good, no? I stuudied in school-e.”
“Bravo! Bravo! Parla inglese molto bene,” I said, then added with a wave and a nod to everyone. “Buon giorno,” then in English, “Take it easy, buddies!” The man’s eyes lit up. He was elated to have another American expression. “Take eet isee, buddeez.” I heard him say as I went out the door.
The rain that had been coming down nonstop all night had finally ended. The clouds were lifting and the sun was shining. It was much warmer than the day before. The Tyrrhenian Sea was a sheet of blue glass as far as the eye could see.
“Let’s go to Bagheria and put your name on the family account,” Joey said when I returned home. This was a great idea. Each of us needed to be able to work independently, if and when we came to Sicily alone. Besides, it was another step in establishing an identity in Sicily. I think it made all of us feel closer to our father and we also imagined that he and our grandparents would be pleased with us.
We drove the short distance and braved the four-way stop intersection where no one actually stops. It was the only way we knew to get to Bagheria from the main highway and it took calm nerves, an aggressive disposition, and a quick foot on the gas to negotiate the always-congested intersection that we had to pass before we could get into downtown Bagheria. After that, it was a short winding route through narrow streets to the Bank of Sicily. There was a branch in our village too, but we didn’t want everyone in town knowing our business so, as our father had done and my uncles and grandparents before us, we banked out of town.
As an adult, I have been to Sicily six times and on three of those occasions I have gone into a bank. Never once was I acknowledged by a bank employee during any of those three visits. Never once was I waited on. Each time, after 20 or 30 minutes, I gave up and walked out, opting for an ATM instead. I hoped this time would be easier, but as I looked at the bullet-proof glass cylinder that served as the front door to La Banca Di Sicilia I wasn’t optimistic. It looked like a prop from Star Trek. “Beam me up, Scottie,” I said to Joe as I stepped inside the tube.
To keep bank robberies down only one person could enter the bank at a time. To get inside the back, you had to push a button and wait for the red light to turn green. Once it did, your side of the cylinder opened. Once inside, you pushed another button, which closed the door behind you. The outer door had to close before the door allowing access to the bank would open. A few times, the door jammed and a harried looking man came out from behind the counter to reset the switch with a turn of a big key he secured around his neck with a wide blue strap. It took a couple of minutes before we got in, but once inside, to my surprise, we received service right away.
Nicola Scaramuzza, a tall, dark, tired-looking man sat behind a short counter looking into an old outdated computer screen. He was dressed in a dark wool suit with an argyle sweater for warmth under his jacket. Joe introduced him as one who had known everyone in our family. Despite this, or perhaps because of it, Mr. Scaramuzza barely looked at us as he sat on the other side of the grey counter that separated us, punching numbers into the keyboard. He had the same look of boredom that I saw on the faces of most public officials whenever I sought any kind of service. He perked up somewhat when a colleague spoke to him, but it was brief. The friend hunched down and held his face close to Scaramuzza’s as he spoke sotto voce. Scaramuzza’s eyes lit up and as he smiled he looked more handsome, but as soon as the friend left, his dour expression returned. For reasons I will never understand, it took over 35 minutes to add my name to the family account. Then with little more than a nod, Mr. Scaramuzza dismissed us.
It was time for lunch and since our friend Maria had been so helpful, we wanted to take her out that day. As usual, she argued about who would pay, but I joked with her that I was a wealthy American and she shouldn’t worry about the check. Besides, I said, we are three and you are only one and don’t eat very much. She laughed and agreed to accompany us, but only on the condition that the next meal was on her. No problem, I assured her. She could get the next tab.
We went to Porticello, a nearby seaport town where my favorite restaurant, Francu U Piscaturi, was located. On every trip to Sicily, I make one visit (at least) to this restaurant, where the fish is fresh and always expertly prepared. Francu started out with a fishing boat, taking tourists out fishing on the Tyrrhenian Sea. For lunch, on the boat, he would prepare that day’s catch. After many years of at-sea lunches, he opened this restaurant, a trattoria specializing in Sicilian seafood specialties.
We agreed to the appetizer tray before seeing a menu and the plates started coming. The waiters brought mahi mahi seviche, shrimp seviche, calamari and baby octopus, pinelli (chick pea fritters) and caponata (chilled eggplant appetizer), white anchovies and stuffed sardines. After that, Nina and I had sea bass and eggplant pasta (pictured) while Joe had pasta with clams and Lenny pasta with mussels. Then, not really understanding how much they were ordering, Joe and Lenny each had a mixed seafood saute for their secondo piatto. For dessert we ate prickly pears, pinapple, cannoli, and of course espresso.
It was a memorable feast to begin with, but to make it even more memorable, Francu himself came out at the end of our meal and struck up a conversation. He had introduced himself to me six years earlier and had recognized me on my two subsequent visits, each visit a year apart, but this time it had been three years since I had seen him. At first he didn’t remember me, but his memory returned as soon as he heard the name of the city where I was from. Immediately, Francu recounted the same story to Maria and Lenny that he had recounted several times already to my wife and I. He had been on his way to a chef’s convention in San Francisco and while en route had stopped in Milwaukee to visit his extended family, who had settled there years ago. On his way out, thunderstorms had detoured his plane and eventually he was forced to stop overnight in my city. The point to his story was that he was amazed at how many Italian restaurants he encountered there.
We took a photo together and he invited us to come and see him in Milwaukee during the third weekend in July for a big Italian heritage festival. He would be there to teach Sicilian cooking.
On the way home we stopped at a luxury hotel and spa, Torre Normana, which was next door to Altavilla Milicia, a picturesque working class town known for the miracles of The Madonna della Milicia. The hotel was closed for the winter, but the view of Capo Zefferano and the northern coastline was still breathtaking.
We finished the evening with Renato and Crocetta. Crocetta was our grandmother’s favorite godchild. Only a few years older than me she shared our special affinity for our grandmother. In our honor she had made American coffee in a Corningware percolator that was over 20 years old. We were more honored, however, that she had made buccellati or, in Sicilian dialect, cuccidadi. These are delectable Christmas cookies consisting of a flavorful pastry stuffed with a mixture of figs, chocolate, candied fruit and sometimes chopped nuts. In some regions they are shaped like large ravioli and sprinkled with powdered sugar on top while in other regions they’re rolled into medium size logs with candied sprinkles on top.
To us, cuccidadi represented the best of family times when the extended family would get together for enormous meals that took all day to eat. Each aunt would bring a tray of cookies baked from her own special recipe and an informal competition would take place as to whose cuccidadi were the best. Each aunt had her own secret ingredient; one aunt used allspice while another mixed a shot of whiskey in with the figs and yet another aunt used pistachios. There was a lot of laughter at those holiday tables and it was the same that night at Renato and Crocetta’s house.
Renato told stories about our grandmother and grandfather and about our father and each of our uncles, many of which were totally new to us. Renato, ill for some months now, was still covered in a heavy wool shawl over his broad shoulders and a wool scarf around his neck, but he laughed gayly and was full of pep and energy as he recounted stories about our father as a boy. They were exactly the same age, Renato said with glee, and as his classmate throughout grade school, he knew our father’s entire elementary school history. For me, Renato’s meandering stories were buried treasure.
We called it a night around 10 p.m. A storm was brewing again and the wind whipped our coats around us as we walked home through the dark narrow streets in that section of town.
“Tomorrow the buyers want to meet us,” Joey said, stuffing his hands into his coat pockets. The wind was picking up.
“They want to meet us?” It was the first I’d heard of it.
“The real estate agent came by when you were taking a shower.” Lenny explained. “We must have forgot to tell you.
“So, we’re finally going to meet the buyers?” I said as we arrived at our front door.
We stepped inside and triple locked the door.
“This should be real interesting.” Lenny said. We all nodded and went directly to our separate rooms.
Church in Bagheria (Palermo, Sicily)
(Back to top of page)
Next >