My love affair with our neighbour island started many mango seasons ago. Memories date far back and so much has happened since then. I was suddenly thinking of our summers spent drinking latte di mandorla and strong newly brewed coffee; gelati of every colour of the rainbow, swimming in nearby Mondello and the amiable chaos which Italians often create.
This state of nostalgia came about because a friend of the family in Sicily has passed away. We knew he was ill but somehow death always takes us by surprise. The person we have known in our twenties, fifties and later is no more. Every time a man dies, a child dies too and an adolescent and a young man as well; everyone weeps for the one he knew.
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My first trip to Sicily was with the ill-fated Star of Malta when, in our teens, we travelled with a school group with two grown ups very much in charge. This was our first trip abroad and naturally exciting to girls who lived with nuns most of the year and with strict parents for the rest of it.
We only stayed in Sicily for a couple of days and then took the train to Rome, a new experience, sitting next to peasants carrying, in large baskets, fruit and vegetables and even a hen or two cackling all the way to the Stazione Termini.
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But Sicily was to play a much bigger role after that trip.
The nuns here arranged for one of my sisters to spend a scholastic year at the Sacred Heart Convent in Palermo to practice Italian which she was very keen to learn. She was sixteen and father would not allow her to travel alone and paid for a trusted colleague to take her there and leave her in the hands of the nuns.
There she made friends with several girls but in particular with Lianna who lived just outside Palermo, in a country villa in Pallavicino. Her family was delighted with my sister and she would spend every weekend at their home. Soon Lianna came to stay with us and from then on we were going and coming to and fro as we still do, but now far less frequently.
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Lianna had one brother Piero and it is his sad passing away recently which has brought me to write these reminiscences.
Staying with a Sicilian family was an experience and a revelation. I remember us sitting in our nighties talking away in the front garden on a fine summer's night and then going to their cinema which was next door, to watch a spaghetti western.
Going out for pizza at eleven o'clock at night with Lianna's father was not unheard of. To us everything was an adventure.
My father would not even allow me to sit in a friend's car, just outside our front door. He wouldn't say anything but sit on the hall chair and watch us through the glass door which was disconcerting, until I felt so uncomfortable that I was constrained to leave talk alone and get to my bed. For us girls it was Teflon protection all the way.
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The villa is massive, on two floors with an extensive garden full of almond, orange and lemon trees.The doors were mostly of coloured glass created by Bevilaqua and the main bathroom was a huge marble hall with a sunken bath where water had to be squeezed out of the taps.
I don't remember ever venturing to the back of the garden.
The villa used to be the villeggiatura of Zia Giuseppina, Lianna's mother, whose origins were in the north of Italy.
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In the morning one of the three zie, Maria, Lilli and Giovanna, would bring us freshly brewed coffee on a silver tray. When they were not cooking something delicious, or peeling the almonds to make pastini they were embroidering Lianna's trousseau. She already had a cupboard full of beautiful linen, some of it her mother's dowry. La roba was very important to Sicilians and this was part of it.
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On weekends we sometimes went to one of their country houses, either in Roccamena or Termini Imerese. We rarely spent the weekend there but it was mostly for lunch only and we returned home in the evening. We would be driven, at great speed, by Piero, then studying law but who was very happy to drive these inglesine. He was our unofficial driver. I shall never forget the hair-raising drives to Taormina and back and to the airport breaking every rule in the highway code, to catch the plane back home, turning our innerds to water.
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We set out for our journey to the country house with silver tableware and a damask table cloth and napkins, newly starched. They kept little in these homes except basic furniture. But first of all we stopped at the busy and bustling markets to buy fish or meat, fruit and vegetables. Shopping was a long winded affair as Lianna, like all Sicilians and Italians, is fussy about her food.
Once that was finally over, we would arrive at one of the country houses only to discover that no one had brought the keys. So one of the farmers would get a ladder, break one of the windows and go and open the door for us.
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Mass was a must. No question of skipping Sunday mass then. Santa Rosalia would have disapproved strongly. So it was a race for the 'phone and calling various churches in the area to see which mass we could attend preferably before lundh. So it was Mass, and then back to cook, lay the table, gather some fresh fruit, often figs from the garden, talk to the farmer and his wife and so for a long and chatty lunch.
This was Mafia territory that very Mafia that shaped the social and political forces of Sicily. Palermo was the base of the Sicilian Mafia and the family knew that there were Mafiosi hiding on their land but there was no question of reporting them. It was omertà wherever you went. The dangers were very real. So were the awful stories. The son of one of their friends was kidnapped and put in a well until his parents paid the ransom fee.
This was Salvatore Giuliano territory and bandit or not we were all in love with him even if he was dead. He was handsome, daring, a legend and our hero.
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In winter the family had a box at the Teatro Massimo so we dressed up to go and watch an opera.
On one occasion Lianna said that her hairdresser had invited us to eat rabbit with his family. We set off to some little town, in the middle of nowhere which to me seemed very far out. We had a delicious lunch and then had our hair done there in his home. We returned to Pallavicino, a ride which instantly shred my nerve endings. We changed and off to the theatre. Once Lianna parked where she shouldn't have, I made a phew sound and we just about made the first act of La Traviata.
Zia Giuseppina had some lovely jewellery but she explained to us that she had some pieces replicated in 'paste' just in case someone with a gun came into the box and she had to hand them over.
Criminality was rife in those days. It was not rare for the police to stop and search cars. It happened to us on several occasions. Lianna's father was not a man to be stopped and the police were invariably on the receiving end of a bit of verbal flagellation.
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One year in London, I had attended a talk given by Danilo Dolci the famous reformer. He was living in Partinico and I wanted to interview him for The Sunday Times of Malta. The town was 30 kilometres from Palermo. Quite far by Maltese standards but I voiced my wish to Zia Giuseppina. She was horrified. 'Ma e communista!'. I begged to be taken there as I had found his talk inspirational. His work in Sicily concentrated on the building of new attitudes among the people - to show that co-operatives of the free and the unfrightened can be as effective as an association like the Mafia, which is founded on fear. He was considered to be the Gandhi of Sicily.
Lianna was certainly not allowed to drive me there. Two women on their own through dangerous territory? Unthinkable. Piero had exams but arranged for a friend to take me to Partinico.
How can I forget the many kindnesses of this family and their friends? Nothing was too much trouble. If we asked for it we got it. Of course it was reciprocated.
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The road to Partinico was deserted, desolate and seemed like the ends of the world. When we finally got there (where Frank Zappa was born incidentally) almost every door had a piece of black cloth round the door knob, a sign of mourning. My 'driver' told me that most of the men had been killed in Mafia-related crimes. The odd woman, dressed in black, with a veil and black gloves, even in the blistering August heat, crossed our path.
We met and I interviewed Dolci for The Sunday Times of Malta and then we drove back to Pallavicino. Later on I got to know that Gilllian and Evarist Bartolo at more or less the same time, were doing social work with Dolci.
Our ideals go back a long way.
We bid you Farewell, Piero, on behalf of my family too. Each one of us remembers you with affection. Perhaps we shall meet again, sometime, somewhere and reminisce with our loved ones and look upon those days when, truly, we were spensierati. Who knows?
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