‘You won’t recognise it,’ he said. ‘Nobody could.’
We drove up to the end of the Maqueda for a view of the new Palermo, rolling through the low hills in a great red tide of bricks into and over the grey city. ‘Fifty construction companies are working out there,’ Boris said, ‘with a man of respect on every board. They have the planning department in their pockets.’
‘So they’re taking over the city?’
‘Yes, but if they didn’t the Roman banks would, and the money would be siphoned off to Rome. This is a very complicated situation. The Mafia puts down petty crime and it makes work. It’s found jobs for 30,000 so far. Kids who used to live on bread and olive oil now eat meat. The inescapable fact is it has its uses.’
‘This used to be a beautiful town,’ I commented.
‘It still is where the developers have been kept out,’ he said.
We turned back and parked in an alleyway behind the Quattro Canti, still the noblest of road intersections, and set out into the back streets winding eventually down to the sea. For the moment, the men changing Palermo were too absorbed in the new city to spare time and energy for the transformation that would sooner or later follow here. A cupola left by the Arabs lay cracked like an eggshell in a forgotten garden, where water running in a marble conduit showed through a filigree of leaves. Lizards darted in and out of the cracks in a Norman wall, and someone strummed on a mandolin against the fading rumpus of traffic. We found a bar down by the fish market into which legless ex-soldiers, face downwards on boards, dragged themselves by their hands to be fed by fishermen with the contents of sea-urchins. Nowhere could the heartlessness and the compassion of the Mediterranean have been more bitingly presented. Our presence went unnoticed: no one would listen in.
‘All the books tell you the same thing,’ Boris said. ‘We’re in the unique position of an island that’s been invaded and conquered by foreigners six times in succession. Every fresh batch of foreigners changed the laws, which meant laws ceased to exist. We’ve been slaves to six masters. They left us with nothing. The Mafia had to exist. It defended us, fought for us, then conquered us. Now we’ve been conquered a seventh time. We got rid of the others, but we’ll never get rid of this lot, because they speak the language. They’re not foreigners. They’re us.’
Sicilians are lonely. The sense of isolation from which so many of them suffer sets them apart from the other races of Europe. It is a trait manifesting itself in a number of ways. There are no country houses, and no small villages on the island. People live in towns, where, much as they may be inclined to keep their own company, they are comforted by the sound of voices, the sight of traffic, of people in the streets. Nevertheless they are lovers of the countryside from which they feel themselves debarred, and enjoy nothing more than to celebrate festa by driving out into the grandeur of their empty landscape for a picnic and the collection of wild flowers, to which they are addicted. The problem then arises where to pull off the road. Drivers cruise along on the lookout for a pleasant spot, but also for company. Within minutes of a driver parking his car, he may expect to be joined by another. Each party, pretending not to be aware of the other, will get on with the business of lighting a barbecue fire and fetching water from a nearby stream. No greeting passes. Sometimes, when no second car arrives, those who have chosen the picnicking site will pack up and move on elsewhere.
Boris Giuliano was yet another lonely Sicilian ruined in the matter of his capacity to resist loneliness and isolation by the conviviality of the years spent in London, then returned to a society where reticence and secrecy were the norm.
He loved the excuse to speak English, which, I suspect, may have induced him more than once to put aside his work, and
We drove up to the end of the Maqueda for a view of the new Palermo, rolling through the low hills in a great red tide of bricks into and over the grey city. ‘Fifty construction companies are working out there,’ Boris said, ‘with a man of respect on every board. They have the planning department in their pockets.’
‘So they’re taking over the city?’
‘Yes, but if they didn’t the Roman banks would, and the money would be siphoned off to Rome. This is a very complicated situation. The Mafia puts down petty crime and it makes work. It’s found jobs for 30,000 so far. Kids who used to live on bread and olive oil now eat meat. The inescapable fact is it has its uses.’
‘This used to be a beautiful town,’ I commented.
‘It still is where the developers have been kept out,’ he said.
We turned back and parked in an alleyway behind the Quattro Canti, still the noblest of road intersections, and set out into the back streets winding eventually down to the sea. For the moment, the men changing Palermo were too absorbed in the new city to spare time and energy for the transformation that would sooner or later follow here. A cupola left by the Arabs lay cracked like an eggshell in a forgotten garden, where water running in a marble conduit showed through a filigree of leaves. Lizards darted in and out of the cracks in a Norman wall, and someone strummed on a mandolin against the fading rumpus of traffic. We found a bar down by the fish market into which legless ex-soldiers, face downwards on boards, dragged themselves by their hands to be fed by fishermen with the contents of sea-urchins. Nowhere could the heartlessness and the compassion of the Mediterranean have been more bitingly presented. Our presence went unnoticed: no one would listen in.
‘All the books tell you the same thing,’ Boris said. ‘We’re in the unique position of an island that’s been invaded and conquered by foreigners six times in succession. Every fresh batch of foreigners changed the laws, which meant laws ceased to exist. We’ve been slaves to six masters. They left us with nothing. The Mafia had to exist. It defended us, fought for us, then conquered us. Now we’ve been conquered a seventh time. We got rid of the others, but we’ll never get rid of this lot, because they speak the language. They’re not foreigners. They’re us.’
Sicilians are lonely. The sense of isolation from which so many of them suffer sets them apart from the other races of Europe. It is a trait manifesting itself in a number of ways. There are no country houses, and no small villages on the island. People live in towns, where, much as they may be inclined to keep their own company, they are comforted by the sound of voices, the sight of traffic, of people in the streets. Nevertheless they are lovers of the countryside from which they feel themselves debarred, and enjoy nothing more than to celebrate festa by driving out into the grandeur of their empty landscape for a picnic and the collection of wild flowers, to which they are addicted. The problem then arises where to pull off the road. Drivers cruise along on the lookout for a pleasant spot, but also for company. Within minutes of a driver parking his car, he may expect to be joined by another. Each party, pretending not to be aware of the other, will get on with the business of lighting a barbecue fire and fetching water from a nearby stream. No greeting passes. Sometimes, when no second car arrives, those who have chosen the picnicking site will pack up and move on elsewhere.
Boris Giuliano was yet another lonely Sicilian ruined in the matter of his capacity to resist loneliness and isolation by the conviviality of the years spent in London, then returned to a society where reticence and secrecy were the norm.
He loved the excuse to speak English, which, I suspect, may have induced him more than once to put aside his work, and
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