in all directions, seem un-European. Central Asia must be like this, one imagines. There are no boundaries, hedges, walls, trees, windmills, buildings of any kind. The landscape, green for the weeks of spring and thereafter whitish under the sun, heaves gently like a carpet with the wind under it. Distantly to the north the mountains of Cammarata are traced on the sky, with a faint scar-tissue of forest. Miccichè is soundless , apart from the dry chatter of bells echoed off some bony hillside and the high-pitched, creaking squeal of falcons. It is a place, too, of unbroken distances, and the peasants who pass down into these empty, vitreous immensities to their work seem to vanish as soon as they leavethe town. This feudal estate is dedicated to the cultivation of the lentil.
Danilo Dolci, in his book Waste, which is a closely documented study of the social conditions of western Sicily, gives some idea of what it was like to live in such a town five or six years ago. He found that the day labourers composing the majority of the working population were employed on average for ninety days a year. The average pay was 600 lire (seven shillings) per day. Day labourers offered themselves for hire at a kind of human labour auction held each day before dawn, when, as work might be available for only one man out of three, the peasants were encouraged to bid against each other to bring down their terms. Children as young as eight years of age were taken on as labourers for as little as 150 lire a day, and their competition in the labour market further undercut prices. Men who went home without work had to face scolding wives and weeping children. Enormous families were the order. Elsewhere, one reads of visits paid by priests to women who fail to produce a child a year to ask them ‘why they are denying souls to God’.
Probing into the threadbare medieval fabric, Dolci describes the uses of the leech, when the cost of calling in a doctor – even if one were to be had – would be unthinkable. After employment the leeches are thriftily ‘milked’ of the human blood they have gorged, and kept for use again, only being discarded in cases of typhus. The typical small town or village community includes individuals driven by necessity to practise strange livelihoods: gatherers of seasonal foodstuffs such as frogs, snails and wild asparagus. An inevitable ingredient is the big-town usurer’s agent, who is of necessity an ex-gaolbird, chosen for his known capacity for violence to intimidate defaulters who fall behind in their one hundred per cent per annum interest payments. Above all, indispensable to this small rustic community, is the strega , or witch, who arranges marriages, concocts potions, dabbles a little in black magic, clears up skin conditions, and casts out devils. These witches, since the Inquisition has ceased its drownings and defenestrations, flourish mightily. Since Danilo Dolci carried out his study, a sharp decline in population due to emigration has modified this picture, but the basic misery is little changed.
In 1944, when Don Calogero Vizzini had held the office of mayor foreighteen months, the situation in Villalba was desperate indeed. There were many urgent tasks to distract the Mayor from interesting himself in the welfare of his community. Surrounded by his cohort of tried ‘anti-Fascists’, all of them armed by special licence of the Allied Military Government, Don Calò dedicated himself to a flourishing black market in olive oil. The old interfering police chief of Villalba, Maresciallo Purpi, had been killed off, and his successor knowing what was good for his health, Don Calò’s operations could be conducted without concealment. Moreover , the Allies had facilitated his work almost as though the creation of an impregnable black market had been their first consideration after completing their occupation of Sicily.
One of AMGOT’s first measures was the freezing of all prices at the level existing
Danilo Dolci, in his book Waste, which is a closely documented study of the social conditions of western Sicily, gives some idea of what it was like to live in such a town five or six years ago. He found that the day labourers composing the majority of the working population were employed on average for ninety days a year. The average pay was 600 lire (seven shillings) per day. Day labourers offered themselves for hire at a kind of human labour auction held each day before dawn, when, as work might be available for only one man out of three, the peasants were encouraged to bid against each other to bring down their terms. Children as young as eight years of age were taken on as labourers for as little as 150 lire a day, and their competition in the labour market further undercut prices. Men who went home without work had to face scolding wives and weeping children. Enormous families were the order. Elsewhere, one reads of visits paid by priests to women who fail to produce a child a year to ask them ‘why they are denying souls to God’.
Probing into the threadbare medieval fabric, Dolci describes the uses of the leech, when the cost of calling in a doctor – even if one were to be had – would be unthinkable. After employment the leeches are thriftily ‘milked’ of the human blood they have gorged, and kept for use again, only being discarded in cases of typhus. The typical small town or village community includes individuals driven by necessity to practise strange livelihoods: gatherers of seasonal foodstuffs such as frogs, snails and wild asparagus. An inevitable ingredient is the big-town usurer’s agent, who is of necessity an ex-gaolbird, chosen for his known capacity for violence to intimidate defaulters who fall behind in their one hundred per cent per annum interest payments. Above all, indispensable to this small rustic community, is the strega , or witch, who arranges marriages, concocts potions, dabbles a little in black magic, clears up skin conditions, and casts out devils. These witches, since the Inquisition has ceased its drownings and defenestrations, flourish mightily. Since Danilo Dolci carried out his study, a sharp decline in population due to emigration has modified this picture, but the basic misery is little changed.
In 1944, when Don Calogero Vizzini had held the office of mayor foreighteen months, the situation in Villalba was desperate indeed. There were many urgent tasks to distract the Mayor from interesting himself in the welfare of his community. Surrounded by his cohort of tried ‘anti-Fascists’, all of them armed by special licence of the Allied Military Government, Don Calò dedicated himself to a flourishing black market in olive oil. The old interfering police chief of Villalba, Maresciallo Purpi, had been killed off, and his successor knowing what was good for his health, Don Calò’s operations could be conducted without concealment. Moreover , the Allies had facilitated his work almost as though the creation of an impregnable black market had been their first consideration after completing their occupation of Sicily.
One of AMGOT’s first measures was the freezing of all prices at the level existing
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