Sicilian Odyssey (continued)
By Andrew Bonfiglio
< Days 1-5 | Day 6 | Day 7 | Day 8 | Day 9 | Day 10 | Epilogue
SICILIAN ODYSSEY: DAY 6
“Where are you going with those flowers? You looking for someone to marry?” Marisa shouted as we passed, en route to the Garrone house for lunch. Marisa’s face appeared from the recesses of her tiny old house and rested in her hands as she leaned on her elbows, which were firmly planted on the windowsill. She stared at us intensely and openly, assessing our clothes, our shoes, the tray of pastries in Joey’s hands, the bottle of wine Lenny held, the camera around my shoulder and the flowers I held in my hand. Marisa had been a neighbor of my grandparents and she remembered me from the time I had come to spend the summer when I was a teenager. She was just one of the many busy bodies we had to contend with in town. She stopped us each and every time we passed, always asking personal questions about our business. That morning I had already run into two cousins I hadn’t seen yet on this visit and my Aunt Maria’s godchild. I was in no mood for more small talk. We waved and walked a little faster.
As soon as we stepped inside the Garrone house I could smell Francesca’s cooking. “Nothing special,” she had said when I suggested it was too much trouble when she invited the three of us over for il pranzo earlier that morning when we happened to run into one another on the street. “Nothing special” turned out to be a hand rolled, short cut of fresh pasta served in a very light cream sauce with peas and mushrooms followed by breaded chicken breasts, Caprese salad with buffalo mozzarella and anchovies plus a mixed green salad and for dessert, a homemade gelato cake that she “just put together this morning for the first time.”
When the meal was finished, Francesca brought up the olive trees. Three years ago she had called to tell me that two of our parcels of olive trees had just been re-zoned from farmland to residential property, increasing its value considerably. The family had been talking about this possibility for the past fifteen years. I still remember the call.
“It’s important to sell the olive trees “presto” (ASAP), Francesca had said. It was 7:15 in the morning and I was hobbling around on crutches (I had just had hip surgery), trying to get out the door to get to my first patient of the day at 7:30. I had just taken my morning dose of pain medicine and my wife was in the car waiting to drive me to work. It was hard to get my thoughts together in Italian and speaking on the phone was always more difficult. As best as I could, I explained that we weren’t yet ready to sell any of the family property, since we were still working on la successione and that I was just out of the hospital from hip surgery and, at the moment, couldn’t attend to any of these matters. It was like I hadn’t explained a thing.
“Call Nino tomorrow, he can explain it better to you than I can.” She said.
I was perplexed by the call. It was the second call from the Garrone family in as many months. Maurizio had called first and was shocked to hear that la sucessione hadn’t been finished yet. “Tell your lawyer to hurry up. Tell him to attend to things!!” He had said in Sicilian.
Why all the hurry? My Italian teacher, La Signora Angese Pignatelli Schiller, had confirmed during one of my lessons that real estate was the same the world over. It only increases in value over time. She encouraged me to “move with feet of lead.”
It is difficult enough to keep up with the demands of life in one’s own back yard. Dealing with my life in America plus the demands of life 5,000 miles away in another culture, with a six-hour time difference, was at times overwhelming. I never did call back, and at that moment, over coffee after that wonderful meal, Francesca wanted to know why. She explained that it was Nino, her son, who had wanted to buy our olive groves. I was stunned. I had no recall of that detail from our conversation, but I did remember having difficulty understanding her at the time, because she was speaking so fast. I felt horrible, but Francesca and Maurizio played it down and told me not to worry about it. Nino had purchased someone else’s olive trees, they explained. It was all good. No problem, they insisted. But later, when Nino came by with his youngest son Francesco, he was cooler toward me than he had been before.
I didn’t have time to think more about it. It was time to leave. I compratori (the buyers) were coming to meet us at 6 o’clock.
“Tre fratelli e tre fratelli!” (“Three brothers and three brothers!”) Chiccudeddu, the real estate agent, laughed uncomfortably. He was trying to ease the mood, but the tension in our small living room was thick enough to slice with a stiletto. The Pecorini brothers sat uncomfortably among us, looking everywhere around the house with the same open stare that Marisa had given us, appraising the furniture, the pictures on the wall, and the marble staircase that ascended to the bedrooms upstairs. Never once did any of them make eye contact with any of us.
“So, did you know our father?” I asked the oldest brother, sitting next to me on the sofa.
“Yeah, we knew him.” He replied curtly. I didn’t like his unfriendly tone, but before I could think about it further he nodded to the youngest brother sitting across from him. “Let’s get moving here!” his expression said.
“Tell them why we’re here,” the youngest brother ordered Chiccudeddu in Sicilian dialect.
Mr. Chiccudeddu held his hands out in front of him as though he was holding something large and heavy in his small soft looking hands.
“They want you to sign a compromesso, he said, still smiling but obviously nervous.
The youngest brother held out a large brown envelope with what must have been the compromesso inside. He scowled and kept his head down, hunched down on the sofa, he stared into his lap. The two other brothers were leaning forward on the edge of their seats, staring at the envelope.
A compromesso was a promise to sell only to these buyers. Crocetta and her father Renato had in fact scolded us for not having one. Without it, they said, shaking their heads and sighing in exasperation at the way Joe and Lenny had handled matters up to now, at the last minute the buyers could decide the property is worthless and you’ll be here with nothing. Va bene, but why did they want us to suddenly sign one now? Why not before? And why here, in our home, without a notaio present to oversee the process so no one would be taken advantage of?
“Perche?” (“Why?”) I asked, leaning far forward, trying to make eye contact with any one of the Pecorini brothers.
“The bank wants to know why we’re withdrawing so much money.” The oldest brother answered quickly.
“The bank wants to know?” Joey said. “Why is it the bank’s business what you do with your money. You can do whatever you want with it -- if it’s your money.”
“Ah, si, si, in America! Chiccudeddu said, shrugging his shoulders, the nervous smile still plastered on his face. “But in Sicily it is a different culture and this is a lot of money.”
“Are you telling me that you can’t get your own money out of your own bank without a promissory note from us?” I asked. None of this smelled right.
“Look, we have the money. Here look.” The oldest took a check from inside his heavy camel hair jacket and handed it to me for my inspection. It was a certified check made out to my brother Joe, who had the power of attorney to represent all of us. It was substantial, but it was just a down payment.
“No, no! I’m not signing anything!” Joey said loudly. “NO COMPROMESSO!”
The brothers Pecorini each made a face.
“Alright, let’s get out of here!” The youngest said, looking completely disgusted.
“Wait a moment.” I said, “What are you concerned about?”
“They are concerned that you might sell the property to someone else.” Chiccudeddu answered for him, in English.
“I don’t care. You have our word, that’s all. When we get all of our paperwork in order we’ll sell it to you for the price we’ve all agreed to. Don’t worry.” Joe said.
“Non preoccuparti!” “Don’t worry!” I said, “If you have the funds we will sell to you, as we’ve already agreed.”
Our dear late father advised us not to sign a compromesso. If we do, we’re stuck and the sale can be dragged on and on while the buyer tries to come up with the money. Our father had once waited seven months before he could finalize a sale and come back home.” In my anxiety that the deal was already irretrievably scuttled, I spoke in half Italian and half Sicilian dialect. It was a strange mixture, but in my current emotional state I couldn’t help it. I wondered if I was making myself clear. I wondered if I was recalling my father’s advice correctly. We had been given so much advice since setting foot in Sicily that I couldn’t recall who said what. At that moment, I felt sure of nothing.
“You can put whatever date you want on this thing for the sale!” the youngest Pecorini brother shouted, finally looking up from his own lap. He glared at me with an angry scowl.
“I’m not signing nothing!” Joey insisted, standing up and pacing the floor. Joe was clearly going native.
The Pecorini brothers shrugged, then got up and walked out the door. “We’ll see.” The youngest said on his way out the front door before I could even get up from my chair.
“Don’t worry, I’ll call you tomorrow.” Chiccudeddu said, still smiling, trying to look as if everything was all right. He raced out the door to catch up with the Pecorini brothers.
We all looked at one another. No one spoke. We all needed time to digest what had just happened. Joe went out to smoke a cigarette. Len picked up a book. I looked up words in my Italian / English dictionary. We still had a lot to do before we could sell anything. We would meet with the notaio’s secretary again on Monday. Hopefully we would be ready to file our documents by Wednesday. Then we would see what would happen next.
Repairing fishing nets in Lipari (Messina, Sicily)
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SICILIAN ODYSSEY: DAY 7
Thank God it was Sunday. One day until D-Day, when we would return to the notaio’s office in Bagheria to finalize a revised successione -- at least that was what we hoped and prayed. But that was tomorrow and after meeting i compratori last night we were all in need of a break.
Months ago, when still planning this trip, we had decided to look up a cousin that we had never met before who lived in a town high in the interior of the Madonie mountain range. This cousin, who was from on our mother’s side of the family, lived in the town where our maternal grandmother was born. My grandmother had met my grandfather while he was there selling produce. Back in that day, the men of our father’s village loaded up their Sicilian carts and traveled to some of the more isolated towns in the interior of Sicily to sell their crops and other wares. For us, this town was an hour and 20 minutes away when taking the Autostrada (the super highway). But for our grandfather, who traveled via horse and wagon along the old road that wove through the mountains, it took 12 hours.
“I haven’t seen her in many, many years. Say hello for me. Calogera is her name and she lives on Via Guccione,” Giovanna said, carefully wrapping a fancy yellow ribbon around a big box of pastaccioti that we were taking to our mother’s long-lost cousin. Joe had met her many years earlier, on a trip with my parents, but Lenny and I had never made the trip.
Maria San Marco came with us, but only after reminding us that this time, lunch was on her. It was a gorgeous sunny day in the high sixties and the Tyrrhenian was a deep shade of turquoise. We drove along the coast for ten kilometers before turning inland, into the interior of Sicily. As he always did on these trips, Lenny had brought his International Back Seat Drivers License, but Joey was good-natured about it, even slowing down a little. We had no problem getting there -- once you leave the main highway there is no way to go but up.
The town was built directly on the side of a mountain, its streets steep and narrow. We stopped at the church by the main piazza in the center of town and asked directions to Via Guccione from a woman who was looking at a statue of Jesus in Mary’s arms after he had just been taken down from the cross. The woman, dressed in her Sunday best, looked us over carefully.
“They’re looking for their cousin and they don’t have an address,” Maria walked up and explained.
The woman smiled, more comfortable now talking with another woman rather than three male strangers. I could see she already had us pegged as Americans, despite my best effort at Italian that morning.
“Oh, it’s simple. Out the door go right. At the next street, go right. At the next street, go left. Then right again at the next street. Keep going straight for a short while and you’ll see Via Guccione. Go all the way down. They live at the end. On the left.” The woman spoke rapidly pointing left and right with her hands as she gave us the directions.
“Grazie, grazie,” we all said, smiling and nodding our heads.
“Buona Dominica” (Good Sunday), the lady said, and just then was joined by her young daughter who began talking excitedly about something.
I was totally lost but thankfully Maria had been able to follow the woman’s directions. It turned out to be a short walk along the steep cobblestone streets to the end of Via Guccione. Joe walked up and rang the bell.
“This is it. I remember it now. We brought Dad here and there’s a step to get inside that made it really hard to maneuver his wheelchair,” he said, ringing the bell again.
Just then, a tall man came walking around the corner, apparently en route to the same house. He stopped and looked at us questioningly. Before he could say anything, the door opened and a very short woman, perhaps ten years younger than our mother, stood in the doorway. She stared at the four of us with a confused expression on her face.
“Buon Giorno!” I said, walking toward her. “We’re cousins from America and we’ve come to see you. Please excuse us for not calling. We tried three times this week to call you but each time got a wrong number. Sorry to barge in on you like this, but we just wanted to stop by and say hello.” I hoped I had said it all correctly (I had rehearsed all this in the car, silently, on our way here). I hoped especially that I had conveyed that we wouldn’t be staying long. I didn’t like walking in on someone unannounced, even if it was a relative, but despite our best efforts no one seemed to have a current phone number for our cousin.
The woman stared at us as if she hadn’t understood a word, but the tall man who had come around the corner had understood me. “Go in. Go in,” he said in a friendly voice, a big smile on his face. Then to the woman, in Sicilian dialect, “They’re your cousins from America! They’ve come all this way to see you. Let them in.”
“Oh, are you the husband?” I asked lamely, watching Joe step across the threshold and give our cousin a hug.
“Do I look like the husband?” The big man said with a grin. “She’s 70 years old. Do I look 70 years old?”
“Oh sorry,” I said immediately. I had learned long ago to be thick skinned about saying dumb things in Sicily. Sometimes it was just hard to think straight on these trips, but actually, with two teeth missing, he did look kind of old.
“Don’t worry, I’m just joking with you,” He said before I could feel too dumb about it. “I’m the son-in-law. That’s the husband, over there.” He pointed to an elderly man who had just pulled up in a small blue Citroegen. He was stopped in front of the house and was studying us with a wrinkled brow. “Cugini dall’America!” the son-in-law called out to the husband, then escorted us all inside. “Now we’ll call everyone and you can meet the whole family, but I don’t think the son is here today. He’s away on business and won’t be back until much later.”
We all went into the tiny, sparkling clean dining room. Joey handed her the pastry.
“THEY’RE FROM YOUR COUSIN, GIOVANNA!” Lenny said loudly in English.
Though several years younger than me, like our father, Lenny had also had a stroke, four years earlier and though he had learned to speak again, the Italian language was still beyond his grasp. However that didn’t stop Lenny from trying to communicate with everyone he met. Though Len spoke no Italian, he had developed the interesting habit of speaking loudly in English, as though the volume of his voice alone would somehow make up for the difference in language. Just the simple fact that he so obviously desired to communicate -- language issues notwithstanding -- seemed to endear him to all he spoke to.
“FROM YOUR COUSIN. FROM OUR TOWN. THE ONE WHO OWNS THE BAKERY!”
Lenny was beaming, happy to finally meet a relative from our mother’s terra natia. He was clearly caught up in the moment.
Calogera looked dumbfounded. “From your cousin Giovanna. The one who owns the bakery in our town,” I translated.
“Oh, that’s so sweet. Thank her for me will you?” Calogera said, finally understanding.
She put the big box of pastaccioti on the dining room table. Just then, her husband Antonino came in followed by their daughter Angela, and her daughter Mari Angela. The son-in-law’s name was Pietro, “You can’t forget it. Just think of St. Peter,” He grinned.
Calogera insisted on making coffee, which we agreed to, though we emphatically declined any of the pastry, saying it was for them. For after il pranzo. She and her husband were very sweet and seemed honored that we had come to visit them. When Joey admired a kitchen towel that she held in her hand, saying that he had been looking all over Sicily for one like that since he had arrived, Calogera promptly brought out three freshly laundered and ironed towels, each hand stitched in bright colors like the one she had held in her hand, and put them in a big sheet of wrapping paper that she had saved from some other occasion. She tied the bundle with the yellow ribbon from the pastry box. “One for each of you.” She said, pointing at each of us then handing the package to Joey.
As we sat and talked, explaining who was who to one another, Calogera eventually recalled our parents’ visit six years earlier, and eventually recognized Joe from that visit. We exchanged names, ages, addresses, phone numbers, and took a few pictures. Maria asked them to recommend a restaurant and the daughter, who worked at the best restaurant in town, accompanied us in the car to show us the way. Her father, Pietro, followed in his car so he could drive her back.
“Next time you come, call the day before and let us know and come and have dinner with us,” Pietro said after Mari Angela waved goodbye and got into his Lancia hatchback.
“That would be great.” I waved back, wondering when that time might be.
We walked into the restaurant where we were met by the owner, a friend of Pietro’s. Since it was Sunday there was no menu, but he would serve us a fixed price meal of fresh fish brought in that day from Porticello.
The restaurant was named after Charlie Chaplan, the American silent screen legend. One of the endearing things about Sicily was how frequently I encountered some homage to a famous person from the United States, like the name of this restaurant. It reinforced the bond of affection between Sicily and America and was always a surprise and a pleasure. The first time I encountered this was on a trip to Enna, the highest provincial capital in the world, located in the navel of Sicily. My wife and I were touring a Norman castle (circa 1140 AD) on the far end of town and just below it, on a mountain ledge, was the executioner’s rock of Dion (pictured left), the Tyrant of Siracusa (circa 380 B.C.). To our amazement, as we rounded a corner we came across a statue of a freed American slave, the heavy chains that once fettered his outstretched arms broken, portraying an inspiring moment of freedom. The inscription on the enormous bronze read “To Abraham Lincoln, 16th president of the United States of America, for freeing the slaves and restoring dignity to all men.”
Since we were relatives of Pietro, the waiter/owner hovered over us, giving us exquisite attention. We were served plates of squid, giant octopus, baby octopus, mussels, shrimp, white anchovies and sardines stuffed with breadcrumbs. Next came four different plates of seafood pasta, followed by whole sea bass prepared in an olive oil caper sauce with plenty of lemon. After that, lemon ice to cleanse the palate followed by cannoli, house made limoncello, and coffee.
As we sat there, so stuffed we were unable to move from the table, my brothers and I agreed -- Sicily was full of surprises.
Enna, Sicily
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SICILIAN ODYSSEY: DAY 8
We walked into the social security office at 8:30 a.m. A bald man sat behind a semi-circular counter, slowly stamping his way through a thick stack of papers. Behind him, in a grey cubicle, a middle-aged blonde sat at a metal desk looking bored. Though there was a numbering system for service, no one waited their turn, and in a little while the counter was surrounded by people. I held my ground and told the man behind the counter we were there for social security numbers.
“Here,” he slammed a form on the counter. “You have to make an application.” When I returned a short time later with the form completed he looked up at me with a scowl.
“You have to make copies of your passport,” he said, looking annoyed.
“No problem. We have them,” I said, handing him my passport and waving to Joe and Len for theirs.
“We don’t make copies. Go to a tobacco shop,” he said, returning to the pile of papers in front of him.
We walked as fast as we could until we found the closest tobacco shop. By the time we had returned with copies of our passports, the crowd had gotten larger. Most were standing around the counter, their eyes glazed over with resignation. Suddenly, a man in the crowd who had been waiting almost as long as we were, started shouting.
“This is a shame!” The man said loudly. He was wearing a denim work coat, brown farmer pants and a grey wool cap. He looked at the rest of us for support. “You’re supposed to be helping us,” he said as loudly as before. “You are here to help us, not make our lives a misery!”
The man behind the counter stopped stamping and looked up. “Who’s a shame? ME?”
The shouting man repeated himself and an official ran up from somewhere in the back and gingerly escorted him toward the door. “You are here to help us! You should be helping us! The way you are treating us is a shame!” No one else spoke up, but everyone in the waiting room nodded their heads in agreement.
“WHO’S A SHAME? ME?” The bureaucrat stood up and waved his fist. With surprising speed he ran around the counter after the shouting man. Now several public officials stepped in to hold him back.
During the melee, our friend Maria San Marco leaned way over the counter and quietly got the attention of the blonde woman in the cubicle. “Signora, per favore! Could you help us? Please?” We have an appointment in half an hour with a notaio and these men need social security numbers. They are leaving for America soon and they are really in a rush. Would you help them?”
“Lets see the forms,” the woman sighed, holding her hand out as she looked over at her hot headed colleague who was now back in his chair. The other three staff members retreated into the back and the angry bureaucrat resumed his stamping, twice as hard as before. As he mumbled angrily about all the complainers he stamped each document with venom, as though each document represented one of the ungrateful. We stood off to the side and waited for the woman in the cubicle to call us. When she did, 25 minutes later, we grabbed the papers from her hand, thanked her profusely, and raced out of the office. It was 10:00. The notaio was waiting.
We were five minutes late and the notaio had taken someone else into her office. We waited another 90 minutes in the cold, drab waiting room. After awhile it struck me that every single employee that I saw going to and fro from office to office, stacks of documents in hand, looked depressed. I asked Maria about it and she agreed without hesitation. They were all depressed. When I asked why, she replied simply, “Because they are at work.”
La successione could be completed, the notaio said when the four of us were finally settled in her office, but there were still a few problems. The notaio had scrutinized the thick stack of documents we had left with her last week and discovered that our mother’s name was spelled two different ways on four different documents and this must be corrected. Her power of attorney to my brother Joe was signed DeGregorio, the same spelling on her marriage license and the way we had always spelled her name, but on her birth certificate her last name was spelled DiGregorio. In Italy, the vowels are everything. For any document to be legal in Italy, she must spell her name the way it is spelled on her birth certificate. Therefore, she also needed a new power of attorney. And a fax would not do. It must be the original. This would take another week, at the earliest -- even with next-day air delivery, which takes one week to get to Palermo.
There was no way we could complete our business without extending the trip. We had already agreed, since Joey was between jobs at the moment, he would stay as long as it would take. The meeting was over, but that day, our complications were just beginning.
“Animali,” Maurizio Garrone said when I told him the identity of the buyers. Animals.
“Who are they?” His wife Francesca asked, walking in from the kitchen as she dried her hands on a dishtowel. There had been a lot of speculation in town as to who the buyers might be and everyone was curious. I was glad to finally discuss things with people that I trusted, my father’s favorite cousins.
“The brothers Pecorini,” Maurizio said quietly, as though he didn’t want to say the name out loud.
“No!” Francesca gasped.
“What is it? Who are they?” I asked, wondering who could have upset my cousins so much.
“I’m sorry to tell you this, Andrew, because you are here to sell your property, but these people are terrorists.” Francesca said.
“Animali, animals. They are not human,” Maurizio said, pursing his lips and waving his finger in the air. He shook his head in grim disbelief. “They’re the ones who stole from your father.” Maurizio went on, casting a somber look at Francesca.
“The pipes for watering the olives?” I said. I remembered the incident well. Our father had stored three 20-foot galvanized pipes in one of the olive groves. He used them to irrigate the trees. Five years ago, I had taken him there. He had insisted on inspecting every one of the 55 trees in the grove. The ground had just been cultivated and it was a strain to pull him through the plowed field in his wheel chair. Whenever he saw something that he didn’t like he would indicate for me to bring him closer and stop so he could inspect a particular tree up close. Sometimes it was a broken limb from weather damage, a lightning strike or high wind. At other times it was clear that a limb or two had been sawed off by neighbors looking for firewood in the winter. He took all this in with as much patience as he could muster, but when he noted his watering pipes missing he let out a wail of rage.
“Are you sure?” I asked Maurizio.
“Without a doubt. Your father and I discussed the matter many times.”
“Oh, I’m sorry.” Francesca interjected. “You should sell your property to whoever has the money, but these people... well, Andrew, I tell you, they are truly terrorists.”
They told me the story of their neighbors, the Pecorini brothers. Like everyone else in our village, they had purchased bits and pieces of property whenever they could so that many of their particelli (parcels of land) were intermingled with everyone else’s. Some of their holdings were next door to our father’s, which was obviously why they wanted to purchase it. Two of our parcels were next to theirs, and though not very large in their own right, acquiring them would expand their olive grove considerably.
“They don’t speak to anyone,” Francesca began.
They never say hello. They are more comfortable outside with the animals than they are with people. They are animals,” Maurizio said, still shaking his head and staring at the floor.
Then Francesca told me of how the youngest, thinking that their son Mario had thrown a rock at him from above when he was working in his field, threatened to “cut his throat and let the blood run into the sea.” Mario was 12 at the time and eventually the Garrones became so concerned that they filed a complaint with the carabinieri.
“They shot one of our dogs once!” Maurizio interrupted.
“And clubbed another with a stick. Just for chasing their sheep,” Francesca said. Then after another moment she added, “They once signed a contract with us in erasable ink. Then, after all the parties had signed, they tried to alter the contract.”
“AN-I-MAL-I,” Maurizio said, his voice seething. “Go ask Sabastiano Somma. Just mention their names and see what he says. Pretend you don’t know who they are and see what he tells you.”
I went to the Somma Mini-Mart, where we did almost all of our shopping, to talk with another cousin, Sabastiano. Both Maurizio and Sabastiano had once been interested in our property and each one had asked us to tell him when we were ready to sell. We were hoping that one of them would take it, as we preferred to keep the property in the family. I knew both would give a low-ball offer, but I was surprised at how easily each had withdrawn their interest, once we told them our price. They had both seemed quite interested before, but each had already told Joey and Lenny that they didn’t have the cash available at this time.
Sabastiano was just returning from checking on his own olive grove when I arrived at the Mini-Mart. His family had owned the little grocery store for as long as I could remember and no stay in our town was complete without a trip to their store for supplies. I told Sabastiano that we had finally discovered the identities of the buyers and wondered, feigning ignorance as Maurizio had suggested, if he knew anything about them.
Sabastiano had lived in America for seven years and when I visited Sicily he liked to refresh his English.
“#@%#@#!,” he said immediately, his eyes bulging with rage. “That’s who wants your property? Andrew, these people aren’t human. They are ANIMALS! ANIMALS! Keep-a you eyes open. That’s all I’m-a gonna tell you. Open your eyes!”
That evening my brothers and I discussed the situation. Joey and Lenny had been negotiating with these people, anonymously through the real estate agent, for two months. They had turned away all other interested parties and the thought of going back to square one now was disheartening to say the least. But how could we sell to the Pecorini brothers? Surely it would be a vergonia (dishonor) and a shame on the family.
Suddenly I remembered the dreams that I had about my father, two nights before my departure for Sicily. Both nights the dream was the same. My father was shouting at me, his face contorted in anger. He was trying to tell me something important, but I couldn’t understand a thing he was saying. Was he trying to warn me about this? As soon as I thought it, I knew that, like my brother Joe, I was going native. I told my brothers about my dream. We all agreed, we wished our father were with us now to help us figure out what to do.
A garden in Lipari
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SICILIAN ODYSSEY: DAY 9
A sunny day. Today is the feast of San Stefano, the first of many holidays celebrated during the Christmas season. Nothing would get accomplished toward the completion of la successione on this day as all government offices were closed, but we did have two appointments for the day and my brothers and I were hopeful that we could figure out an alternative to selling to the Pecorini brothers.
Carlo, cousin Federica’s younger brother, wanted to talk to us “about something,” and had invited Joey and me to la prima collazione (breakfast). Later, we were going to talk to Gianfranco Cavallo, the butcher. Maria San Marco had told us he was interested in buying olive trees and after he closed his shop for the day we would drive him up the mountain to see the groves.
We were intrigued by the fact that cousin Carlo didn’t disclose his reason for talking with us and both Joe and I thought that he may have heard we were selling to the Pecorini brothers. Perhaps he was interested in buying our olive trees. His partner, Fabrizio Gabrielli, had contacted me by email a year ago and we guessed that Carlo was following up.
Two of the family’s parcels of olive trees resided in an area that had recently been re-zoned for residential construction. Our family had talked about this eventuality for the last 20 years and the re-zoning had finally occurred. Fabrizio, whom I had never met before, had written that because of our “close family friendship” (his mother was our next door neighbor), and since our parcels were next door to his, he would be glad to perform the necessary construction to transform our property from farmland to residential property too. This involved the construction of roads and putting in electricity for each parcel of land. All that he requested was $10,000 and the deed to the properties.
Now I don’t know about you, but to us this seemed tantamount to trading a handful of trinkets for the island of Manhattan. The idea of sending the deeds to our family property, plus $10,000 to a total stranger claiming family loyalties seemed ludicrous.
This wasn’t the first time someone had requested $10,000 from us. Once, during our last trip with our father, we had gone to these very same olive groves and the next-door neighbor demanded $10,000 from us. He claimed it was our share for the recent re-paving of a small road that gave access to his home and our olive groves next door. Ridiculous as his claim was, this kind of tactic demonstrated the Sicilian mythology that all Americans are both stupid and rich, and consequently don’t know the real value of things.
I wrote back to Fabrizio and, after conveying my greetings and best wishes to his mother, explained that we were in no position to collaborate on construction projects in Sicily and that in fact we were interested in selling our parcels of olive trees. I asked him if he knew of anyone, including himself, who might be interested in purchasing our property. I never heard from him again.
Cousin Carlo picked us up in a late model BMW, which he showed off on the way to Casteldaccia by driving 140 kilometers an hour (roughly 90 mph) all the way. We went to a coffee bar next to the town square in Casteldaccia where we had some of the tastiest pastry and the smoothest coffee that I had yet tasted in Sicily, but all we were interested in was what Carlo wanted to speak to us about. We waited awhile as he talked with friends and acquaintances that we ran into at the bar. Then, looking just as casual as Joe had looked on the way back from the airport, he drove us back to our village driving just as fast as he had on the way to breakfast, and went straight to his offices at the far end of town.
Joe and I both thought, “At last, he is going to bring up the olive groves,” but we were wrong. Cousin Carlo was indeed interested in a sales venture, but it wasn’t at all what Joey and I had imagined.
“You know the psychologist Antonino Robinsone?” Cousin Carlo asked when we were eventually seated around his desk. He was grinning from ear to ear. “He is on TV all the time and he is very inspirational.”
“You mean Anthony Robbins, the life coach?” It was a wild guess and unbelievably, I had guessed right.
“Yes! Yes! Tony Robbins.” Carlo looked serenely happy that I knew his infamous mentor. “You know him, eh? I am a follower of his.”
He then told us about his conversion to positive thinking. Joe and I listened politely. Carlo explained that since I was a psychologist and Joe a chef, we might be interested in joining him on a business deal. Then he gave us his sales pitch.
One of his companies was a pyramid type business dealing in nutritional supplements. He presented an eight-minute promotional video, demonstrating his products -- everything from energy drinks to food supplements, all natural and all in powder form. This company, which began in Germany and was now all over Europe, had yet to have a franchise in America. If I signed up to buy product, I could be the first one. And when I signed other people up, Carlo stated excitedly, I would begin to receive royalties from other people’s sales. Puffed with pride, Carlo showed us his personal webpage, in four languages including English, where he attested that he earned 50,000 euro in one year, just from his share of royalties. I tried to tell him about the research on similar products that I knew of in America, which cast considerable doubt on their value, but none of it got through to cousin Carlo. Either my Italian was insufficient or he just couldn’t get his mind around the idea that his product might be little more than placebo effect.
Cousin Carlo had hardly spoken ten words to me during my other trips, but this time he went out of his way to be friendly. He even invited me to dinner with him and his wife and offered to drive me to the airport when it was time for me to leave. I declined all his invitations, with the explanation that I had too much to do before my departure, but I told him that when I returned to the States I would give his proposal some consideration.
My response to Carlo wasn’t simply an excuse. I really had no time to waste. The day after tomorrow I would leave Sicily. La successione would be completed, but the property would still be unsold. A week after that Lenny would also depart, returning to his wife after a two-month stay in Sicily. Joey, the youngest, would stay and complete the sale with our power of attorney. But for now we were still together, shouldering a task that seemed larger than the labors of Hercules.
Tomorrow we would go back to the notaio, sign and pay for la successione, go to the nearby bank to pay the taxes and penalties, then go on to Termini Immerese, with the fabulous Roman hot springs, and register everything with the province. Once that was done, Joe and Len could sell the olives the next day if a buyer was ready…but which buyer? We were totally conflicted about selling to the Pecorini brothers.
“Three brothers and three brothers,” Chiccudeddu had said that night in our living room. We were totally conflicted. We had told the Pecorini brothers not to worry, but that was before we knew that they had stolen from our father and before we had talked with cousins Maurizio and Sabastiano. Now I understood why the Pecorini brothers wanted us to sign a compromesso. They knew we would hear things about them from our cousins and they were obviously worried that we would do exactly what we were thinking of doing at that very moment -- sell the property to someone else.
Gianfranco Cavallo was a tall, friendly man. When he saw us come into his butcher shop he wiped his big hands immediately and came around the counter to greet Maria. “This is the one selling his olive trees,” She said to him, reverting to Sicilian dialect. “The family I told you about.”
He offered his sleeve for me to shake, as he was unsatisfied with the cleanliness of his hands after a day of handling meat in his butcher shop. He was a genuine old-world type. He and Maria spoke Sicilian for the next two and a half hours and I was amazed at all that I had forgotten as I listened to them. This was the language I had heard spoken throughout my childhood, the first language that I had learned to speak and then forgotten after my grandparents went back to Sicily when I was five years old. I was flooded with memories as I listened to them discuss the current political controversies of the day in Italy while we drove up the narrow winding roads up the mountain above our village to our family olive groves.
We walked the perimeter of each parcel of land then returned to our house. Gianfranco wanted to see the deeds of sale, so he could check the exact size of each grove and locate each parcel of land on a map of the area. He scratched his head at our kitchen table for a long time before he finally left. He needed more time to think things through. He was also considering other parcels of olive trees.
So that was that. One day to go and no buyers but the Pecorini brothers. The thought of it made me recall our father’s two trips to Sicily to deal with family property when I was in high school. Each time his return home had been delayed by confusing and difficult-to-understand circumstances. Now it was clear why our father had stayed so long during these trips when we were young. Nothing moves quickly in Sicily and nothing is as it seems.
Cathedral in Palermo
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SICILIAN ODYSSEY: DAY 10
My last full day in Sicily. We had gone to see the notaio first thing that morning.
“Now it is their house and property and they can sell any or all of it whenever they want?” Maria San Marco asked as the notaio stamped the last of the papers for la successione. After three years, two attorneys and two trips to Sicily, our father’s line of succession was finally completed!
“It is theirs, yes. They can sell, no,” the notaio said without looking up.
“WHAT?” We all shouted simultaneously.
In Sicily, every parcel of land has a history of ownership and this history must be documented with the deeds of sale from every seller to every buyer accounted for before property can be sold. Otherwise, in the future, someone might appear and contest ownership. It was a way to cut down on blood feuds over land between one family and another. These deeds of sale have been passed from seller to buyer since records have been kept on such things years ago. Our two olive groves consisted of four parcels of land and one l’atto (deed) for one of the four parcels was missing.
“When you go to Termini Immerese to file la successione, ask them for a copy of the record on this parcel. Number 754 Grotta Carini,” said the notaio.
Number 754 Grotta Carini was named after the enormous grotto up on the high mountain. When I had come to Sicily in 1965 I had heard stories about people going in to this cave and never coming out again.
“They may find it somewhere,” the notaio continued.
She charged us 400 euro for her services and we thanked her profusely for her help. We had always heard that a notaio charges around 200 to 400 euro for preparing la successione and assumed that we were paying the top figure because of all the complications and asking her to hurry. However, we were surprised when we asked her for a receipt and she said she couldn’t give us one.
“The usual and customary fee for such services would be 1,200 to 1,500 euro, she said, looking uncomfortable.
“She is doing this as a favor to me,” Maria explained as the notaio put the euros in a drawer behind her desk. “If you want a receipt she would have to charge you the full price. She’s giving you a deep discount.”
At the bank, things went just a badly. For starters, the entrance had a short-circuit in the automatic doors and it took the three of us over five minutes just to make it inside. Luckily, one of the tellers was a friend of Maria’s.
“You can’t pay taxes with a credit card. Check or cash,” he said to Joe, who was handling everything for our mother, including any financial transactions. Joe looked excruciatingly annoyed.
“This is a check cashing card and it is authorized to withdraw $5,000 at a time,” Joey explained.
“Check or cash only,” the teller said, exhaling loudly.
“What about the money transfer from the States?” I asked Joe, recalling a conversation we had a week ago. I wanted to shrink into the walls in frustration and embarrassment, but I was determined to keep plugging away until the last second before I left our village if need be. “Shouldn’t it have arrived in our account in this very bank? The Bank of Sicily?”
“It’s been delayed. The guy at the bank didn’t know their own wire transfer code,” Joe explained with a shrug, throwing up his hands. Both of us started pacing. Lenny just stood there, still as a statue, his mouth agape over encountering yet again another obstacle.
“I’ll write a check,” Maria San Marco said. “You can pay me back when the wire transfer comes through.”
“No way!” we said to her in unison.
“Don’t worry about it. When your money comes in you can pay it back. It’s no problem.
“With interest,” I spoke for all of us, knowing we had no choice.
It wasn’t the first time Maria San Marco saved us and it wouldn’t be the last. In Termini Immerese she bypassed long lines to find the right woman that we needed to see in order to register la successione. The woman was another bored looking blonde and she made us wait until after she finished her cigarette, blowing smoke out a back door around the corner to her office. When she finally came back to her office she sat down at a World War II era metal desk and held out her hand for our papers.
Maria immediately explained our predicament about the missing deed for one of the parcels of land in la successione and asked politely if she might possibly be able to help us find it. The woman gave us all a dirty look. “Those records are not in this building,” she said curtly, moving papers around seemingly at random on her cluttered desk.
Maria asked again, “Signora, there must be someway to initiate a records search.”
“Well,” the official said getting up, “let’s hope those records are still here. Just a moment.” She walked out of the office while we just stood there, dumbfounded but hopeful. The woman returned five minutes later with a scrap of paper in her hand.
“Here,” she said, handing the scrap to Maria. “Call this number on Tuesday. He won’t have time to look until then.”
“Call first to see if he found it,” Maria said to Joey, handing him the scrap of paper with the name and number on it.
The official sat down behind her desk again and began to review la successione. She went right to the bank receipt and began to add up the long list of fees, taxes, interest and penalties for late filing that we had paid to get this far.
“I can’t file this,” she said once she got to the end of the list.
“WHAT?”
“You haven’t paid the interest on the penalty. You’ve paid the penalty for filing late, but you must pay the interest on the penalty too.” She looked at Maria with an expression like it was so obvious.
“Where did you have la successione prepared?” It was another civil servant who shared the room. He couldn’t help hearing the entire conversation.
“Dr. X in Bagheria,” we said.
“Ahh, Baa-gher-i-a,” he said, nodding his head and grinning from ear to ear as though this explained everything. “You should have come here to prepare la successione in the first place. We would do it properly for you. In Bagheria they don’t make you pay the interest on the penalty all the time. But here, we do everything strictly according to law.” He turned back to his work, stamping papers with a little more pride in his bearing.
“And how much is the interest on the penalty?” I sighed, not bothering to hide my look of annoyance. I felt like my head was about to explode at any moment.
The woman pursed her lips and sighed then turned and stared at the numbers on our bank receipt for what seemed like a long time. She then took a scrap of paper from her desk and wrote down a figure. She slid it across her desk for me to read. Apparently she didn’t wish to say it out loud.
I looked at the figure and stared at the woman without saying a word, and then I started pacing in front of her desk, back and forth like a caged animal. After I regained my composure I asked her a series of questions.
“If we pay this amount, la successione will be filed? Once and for all and without a doubt? And your colleague will look for our deed by Tuesday? And we can pick up the deed and pay everything then? On Tuesday, when my brother will come to get it?”
“Oh yes!” she replied, her demeanor suddenly friendly. She was smiling for the first time since we had laid eyes on her. She stood up and shook hands with each of us then took our documents and put them in a cabinet.
“Those are our only papers,” I said, wanting to jump across her desk and retrieve our documents immediately. “I’m not handing them over and leaving without copies.”
“Oh, no. There is no need for that now that they are here. This is the safest place. Don’t worry. I’ll have them for you on Tuesday,” the woman said, laughing at the thought that I would be worried about the safety of the documents now that they were at the Provincial Registry.
Despite her reassurances I remained unconvinced and didn’t budge from my spot. My brothers and Maria had to usher me out the front door, telling me to relax as they pushed me outside the door and into the afternoon sunlight.
“I hate this place and I never want to come back,” I said to Lenny almost as soon as we arrived home. We were sitting in the living room, just the three of us. Maria San Marco had gone home to rest. I felt totally defeated and demoralized. Tomorrow I would leave Sicily, but I couldn’t imagine how I was going to go back to work on Monday with all these loose ends.
“They don’t make it easy, do they?” Len finally said, shaking his head in wonder at all we’d been through. He looked tired, but I had to admit that he never seemed stronger nor sounded more coherent since his stroke four years earlier. The Sicilian air had been very good for him, I thought. It was unbelievably clean and healthy. I myself felt better every time I came here and the longer we stayed, the better I felt.
Nonetheless, the three of us just sat there, not looking at or speaking to one another.
Finally I said again, “I hate this place and I’m never coming back.” I didn’t know what I was saying. I was just letting off steam, looking for some catharsis after such a long day of frustration and work. Actually, I couldn’t imagine leaving.
“That’s what you always say about your mountain climbing trips too,” Lenny said, starting to chuckle. He seemed to be getting a real kick out of my half-hearted outburst. “Every time you come back from a mountain you always say you’re never going to do another, but then you always do.” His chuckle became a belly laugh.
At first his laughing made me angry, but even in my current state of despair, I had to admit, Lenny was right. Every year, for the past ten years, some friends and I hike up one of the fifty-four 14,000-foot peaks in Colorado. The feelings I was having at that moment were similar to the feelings I have had on many of those mountaineering trips.
On every mountain, at some point, there is always a place that feels so hard, so exhausting, and so impossible, that you say to yourself, “What the hell am I doing here? I am never ever going to do this again.” Then you catch your breath, drink a little water, eat a little food, and put one foot in front of the other. Eventually, you turn a corner, both physically and psychologically, and you encounter a vista so breathtaking that you feel inspired and then you forget how tired you are and forget how angry you are that the trip was so difficult. A feeling of exhilaration comes over you followed by a sense of peace. By the time you get home, you can’t wait to do the next one.
This is exactly how I felt about Sicily. I was suddenly amazed at the irony of it. Sicily was the place where Lenny and I saw mountains for the first time. From the first moment we saw them, neither of us could wait to scramble as high as we dared to explore the craggy peaks that were easy enough for us to ascend at that age, much to the dismay of our uncle who had brought us here for the summer. From that moment on, Lenny and I have always felt a profound affinity for mountains. Until that moment, I hadn’t really thought about the connection between my love of mountains and Sicily.
How could I hate Sicily? Hardships yes. Hot Sirocco winds from the coast of North Africa in the summer. Impossible civil servants, untrustworthy real estate agents, rude bank tellers, corrupt construction workers… We had encountered all of these and more in our travels to Sicily in the last ten years. But hate Sicily? One might as well hate a mountain because it is high. Sicily was in my blood and there was no denying it. The Four Corners and La Vucceria market in Palermo, Cefalu and the Temple of Diana, Taormina (pictured left) and the Bay of Naxos, Mount Etna, Siracusa and the Greek amphitheater, the Temple of Apollo, the Greek temples in Agrigento and the salt flats in Marsala, Norman castles on every point overlooking the sea… these were all a part of me now.
Someone said that once you visit Sicily your heart will be in two places forever. Like our father, this place was now in our hearts. It was in our blood. I might as well hate myself as hate Sicily. We were inseparable.
No matter how many frustrations we encountered, no matter the disappointments and hardships of owning property and trying to tend it and of owning a home and trying to maintain it, even with the great distance of this place on the other side of the globe, both medieval and mystical, a place full of hardship but also a place with great joy from simple things, tremendous hospitality, and kind hearted warmth, by the time I get home, it’s always the same. I can’t wait to come back.
Wooden statues of the dead portray the plaque that had befallen Oedipus's City
in a production of Oedipus Rex at the Teatro Greco in Siracusa, Sicily
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SICILIAN ODYSSEY: EPILOGUE
“I know those boys. They’re not that bad. They never look anybody in the eye. Their father was that way. It’s just the way they are. They’re shepherds. People of the land. They’re rough and they’re not comfortable with people, but they’re not bad boys.”
That was Cousin Bernadetta’s reaction when Joe told her we were having a problem selling to the Pecorini brothers.
Cousin Crocetta was slightly more emphatic. “What the heck is the matter with you guys? Are you here to sell the property or not?”
“But wouldn’t it be a dishonor to sell to these people? A shame on the family? From all accounts they are the worst family in town,” I said to her long distance from America. I had been back a couple of days but was keeping in touch with everyone via telephone. I was starting to really feel sick.
“They’re not that bad.” Crocetta said, her tone softening a bit. She sighed heavily then tried to explain her view. “Look, Andrew, It’s not like you are bringing them into your family. You’re not marrying anyone. That would be a dishonor perhaps, but you’re just selling some olives. It’s business, that’s all. You came here to sell the olives. They want to buy your groves. And it’s a good price. You should take the money and go home. Don’t worry about what did or didn’t happen 15 years ago with the Garrones.”
“But they stole from our father!” I said, still unconvinced and not ready to concede the point, but Crocetta only laughed at me.
“Ha! Who cares who took a couple of rusty water pipes from your father’s property? It had been sitting there forever. Nobody ever came for it for years. It’s ancient history. Look, Andrew, neighbors always fight over something. Your other cousins shouldn’t have said a thing to you about their problems. In my opinion, and it’s only my opinion of course, you shouldn’t base anything you do on what Maurizio Garrone or Sabastiano Somma tell you.”
“What do you mean?” I asked, feeling an uneasiness begin in the pit of my stomach.
“Who were the first people who wanted to buy your property?” Crocetta asked.
“Maurizio Garrone and Sabastiano Somma.” Suddenly I realized where she was going.
Each of them had approached me, years earlier, and each had asked me to let them know first when we were ready to sell. I had made sure to tell Joe to give them each the right of first refusal -- Maurizio first, then Sabastiano, in the order that I had received their requests. Each had told Joe that he didn’t have the money at the moment and both wished us all the best of luck.
“They’ll both be glad that you don’t have a buyer,” Crocetta said then interrupted to get another shawl for her father Renato. The weather had turned a little colder since I had left Sicily, she told me when she returned to the phone. “The time will come for you to return home. You’ll have no buyer. Then, you might sell to them. At a lower price. You don’t know when you’ll be back and you don’t want to go home with nothing. They will act like they’re doing you a favor.”
“No!” I didn’t want to believe it, but in truth the idea really didn’t shock me. I thought of Maria San Marco's often repeated caution, “Be careful, Andrea, tutti sono furbi a questa paese.” (Everyone is cunning in this town.)
“Boh!!” Croccetta sighed, bringing my attention back to our conversation. “Go ask your Uncle. I’m certain, without a doubt. He will give you the same advice I’m telling you. Don’t concern yourselves with who the buyers are, concern yourselves only with do they have the money.”
She was referring to Zio Agostino, our father’s only surviving brother and my favorite uncle. He was also my godfather. He had his own family burdens and I hadn’t wanted to bother him with our father’s estate, but now I explained the entire situation.
“ANDREW!” He always shouted over the phone, as though to help carry his words over such a long distance over the lines. “THOSE BOYS ARE YOUR NEIGHBORS UP THERE IN THE MOUNTAINS. THEY OWN THE PROPERTY NEXT TO YOUR FATHER’S. IT’S THE LAW. THEY HAVE THE RIGHT OF FIRST REFUSAL. IF YOU DON’T SELL TO THEM THEY COULD CAUSE LOTS OF PROBLEMS LATER...THEY COULD TIE YOU UP IN COURT FOR A LONG TIME AND THEY WOULD PROBABLY WIN. YOU HAVE TO SELL TO THEM.”
“Who are they? Chi sono?” I heard Zia Maria ask in the background.
“The Pecorini boys,” Zio Agostino said to her. “The worst delinquents in town.”
“ANDREW, SELL IT ALL.” My aunt shouted in Sicilian, then back in English, “DON’T WORRY ABOUT NOTHING EXCEPT-A IF THEY HAV-A THE MONEY.”
In the end, that’s what we did. We sold the property to the Pecorini brothers on the last day of 2009. Or rather, our brother Joe did. Reluctantly, I left Sicily leaving it all up to Joey.
“In bocca al lupo,” (In the mouth of the wolf, the Italian for wishing someone “good luck.”) I said to Joey as he left me at the airport.
Here’s Joey’s story:
“First we were supposed to meet at 10:30 in the morning. Then they changed the time to 11:30. Then Chiccuddedu called again and said 1:30. By the time we actually signed the papers it was 4:30.”
“So, you actually sold the property?” I still couldn’t believe it. I had to hear the words.
“Well, it was quite an opera,” Joe said, not quite answering my question. “When I’m in the waiting room the youngest brother comes in waving his arms. ‘I’m not giving you your price. I’ll give you this price instead.’” Joe said over the phone. He was laughing at the audacity of it all as he told me the story. “I looked at him and told him, ’I won’t stand for that kind of tactic.’”
“What did he say to that?” I interrupted, unable to stop pacing, the phone glued to my ear.
“Nothing. He just walked out,” Joey said, still laughing.
“He just walked out?!” I stopped pacing.
“They all walked out. All three of them. They just got up and left.” Joey was howling with laughter now. He didn’t sound quite like himself.
“They just walked out? Just like that?” I could see them in my mind’s eye. I still remembered their scowling faces in our living room.
Joe had indeed looked into the mouth of the wolf. And he had held his ground. He told the real estate agent, Chiccudeddu, who was as surprised as anyone by what had just happened, to forget about it. We had two other interested parties, Joe lied. The deal was off.
Chiccudeddu ran out after the Pecorini brothers and brought them back. They dickered, and in the end Chiccudeddu lowered his commission on both sides to make up the difference between us. The last of the family olive groves were finally sold. It changed hands from three brothers to three brothers.
Strangely, the Pecorini’s notaio was the mayor of a nearby town that was one of our favorite places to go at night to get a coffee and gelato and look out at the sea. Even more strangely, his office was in our village up at the edge of town, close to the foot of the mountain. But the strangest coincidence of all was that his office was built upon two parcels of land that had once belonged to our grandparents; one parcel from my grandmother, the other from my grandfather. We knew this for a certainty because the history of ownership was documented in the deed to his building, which the notaio proudly showed to Joey.
As I listened to Joe, I remembered my grandfather’s words not long after he had taken me on a tour of most of the family property over forty years ago.
“The olive business isn’t what it used to be for honest men and it’s the same with the lemons. One day I’ll be gone and your father and uncles will probably sell everything.”
We were sitting in kitchen chairs placed on the sidewalk in front of the house, like everyone else in town, to catch the evening breeze. My grandfather spoke only English to me. He was proud of being able to speak it and joked that this way the neighbors couldn’t listen in.
“Some day this will all be gone. People won’t farm it anymore. People won’t care about the things we care about now. The old ways will become history, just like the old people.”
A few days after the sale, the youngest Pecorini brother came by to ask for the key to the gate for one of the olive groves. A few years ago we had let the town garbage collector harvest our olives for himself in exchange for a few liters of olive oil whenever we were in town but this time, upon hearing that we were going to sell the grove and he would lose his yearly fall harvest, he stubbornly refused to relinquish the key to the gate.
Pecorini knew where this man lived, and together he and my brother Joe went to his house and retrieved the key.
Cloister at Monreale
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