after a while there were no supplies at all to fetch in Palermo. But I never knew about that, either. I never heard about rations or bombardments or how many Italian boys were being killed or taken prisoner on the Russian front, or about those who froze to death in their Mediterranean-weight uniforms or died of hunger even before the Russian winter could take them. Save the wilderness of sugar, there was no truth to taint the punctual discharging of the events of palace life for we three girls. Even the closer-to-home truth was never spoken. The truth that, in the
borghetto,
six hundred meters from the sparkling gilt gates of the palace, children had gone and would still sometimes go to bed without supper. Or that the stores in the peasants’
magazzini
had been sorely thinned if not depleted, and that until the spring wheat could be harvested there would be no bread on their scrubbed oilclothed tables. What I did begin to understand was that Leo was somehow distracted, sad. Even more silent than usual. During that last period of the war, he and Cosimo and some small company of household men would often be gone for days. Disappear. If not without telling Simona, certainly without telling anyone else. When they’d return it would be in some strange truck or farmer’s wagon loaded with oil and tins of vegetables and meat, sacks of rice, food for whatever animals were left. All of it covered with tarps and rags so that the shapes underneath looked eerily like bodies. Sleeping. Dead. They’d gone to bargain with the black-marketeers in Palermo or wherever it might have been where there were goods to be had. I would learn that Leo had unfolded astounding sums of beautiful ten- and twenty- and fifty-lira notes so that his peasants might eat. And when, in the final, most hungry weeks before the gardens and fields would begin to yield and black-market goods were nowhere to be found, Leo opened the palace storerooms to the peasants. When the peasants would hesitate over the last barrel of oil, the prince would assure them that there was more. There wasn’t more. Cosimo still tells the story of Leo’s cleverness in urging the palace cooks to use lard when there was no oil.
“ ‘But the lard is rancid, sir. Green as grass.’
“ ‘That’s when it tastes best. Go ahead now and fix a good lard pudding. Are there any prunes left? Add some prunes.’
“How Cosimo loves to tell that exchange! Poor Simona not only had no sweets but was served prunes and lard for lunch while the peasants were blessing whatever they had with her finest virgin oil and her confessor was stifling laughs, shifting pieces of the hellish pudding about his plate. In his dedication to the welfare of his peasants during the war, Leo was triumphant.
“In 1943 the Americans debarked on the island. The Germans had already been here for more than a year, protectorates of the homeland of their Italian allies, basing their command at Enna. But when the enormous numbers of Americans with their cannons and heavy armature plunged through the waves of the Tyrrhenian Sea and onto the Sicilian shores on that day in May, the far fewer and less potently supplied troops of
Tedeschi
chose retreat. Days after the American arrival, King Vittorio Emanuele nullified the governing power of Mussolini and placed a general called Badoglio in charge of the government. Whatever government there was. Early in September 1943, Italy officially asked armistice of the Americans and hence, for us, the war was over. As I’ve said, I never knew it had begun.
“The only casualty that invaded the palace walls came in the form of three Americans. I don’t know how many hundreds or thousands of American soldiers were billeted at Enna, first as liberators, or was it conquerors?—there are still those who dispute this point—and then as keepers of the peace after the armistice. Hotels, private homes and villas, convents, and military barracks were requisitioned to lodge them. Leo went to
borghetto,
six hundred meters from the sparkling gilt gates of the palace, children had gone and would still sometimes go to bed without supper. Or that the stores in the peasants’
magazzini
had been sorely thinned if not depleted, and that until the spring wheat could be harvested there would be no bread on their scrubbed oilclothed tables. What I did begin to understand was that Leo was somehow distracted, sad. Even more silent than usual. During that last period of the war, he and Cosimo and some small company of household men would often be gone for days. Disappear. If not without telling Simona, certainly without telling anyone else. When they’d return it would be in some strange truck or farmer’s wagon loaded with oil and tins of vegetables and meat, sacks of rice, food for whatever animals were left. All of it covered with tarps and rags so that the shapes underneath looked eerily like bodies. Sleeping. Dead. They’d gone to bargain with the black-marketeers in Palermo or wherever it might have been where there were goods to be had. I would learn that Leo had unfolded astounding sums of beautiful ten- and twenty- and fifty-lira notes so that his peasants might eat. And when, in the final, most hungry weeks before the gardens and fields would begin to yield and black-market goods were nowhere to be found, Leo opened the palace storerooms to the peasants. When the peasants would hesitate over the last barrel of oil, the prince would assure them that there was more. There wasn’t more. Cosimo still tells the story of Leo’s cleverness in urging the palace cooks to use lard when there was no oil.
“ ‘But the lard is rancid, sir. Green as grass.’
“ ‘That’s when it tastes best. Go ahead now and fix a good lard pudding. Are there any prunes left? Add some prunes.’
“How Cosimo loves to tell that exchange! Poor Simona not only had no sweets but was served prunes and lard for lunch while the peasants were blessing whatever they had with her finest virgin oil and her confessor was stifling laughs, shifting pieces of the hellish pudding about his plate. In his dedication to the welfare of his peasants during the war, Leo was triumphant.
“In 1943 the Americans debarked on the island. The Germans had already been here for more than a year, protectorates of the homeland of their Italian allies, basing their command at Enna. But when the enormous numbers of Americans with their cannons and heavy armature plunged through the waves of the Tyrrhenian Sea and onto the Sicilian shores on that day in May, the far fewer and less potently supplied troops of
Tedeschi
chose retreat. Days after the American arrival, King Vittorio Emanuele nullified the governing power of Mussolini and placed a general called Badoglio in charge of the government. Whatever government there was. Early in September 1943, Italy officially asked armistice of the Americans and hence, for us, the war was over. As I’ve said, I never knew it had begun.
“The only casualty that invaded the palace walls came in the form of three Americans. I don’t know how many hundreds or thousands of American soldiers were billeted at Enna, first as liberators, or was it conquerors?—there are still those who dispute this point—and then as keepers of the peace after the armistice. Hotels, private homes and villas, convents, and military barracks were requisitioned to lodge them. Leo went to
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