The Great Sicilian Cat Rescue (2 page)

I
can see clearly where my love affair with Sicily began: I spent my teenage years reading about life while my peers were out experiencing it. Illness constrained me to live vicariously through the novels of E.M. Forster, Henry James, Flaubert and Tolstoy.

There was Daisy Miller who flirts with the unsuitable moustachioed Italian and, defying the warnings of her sensible relatives, succumbs to malaria after staying up all night with him in the Forum. Then there was Emma Bovary and Anna Karenina. The lesson I learned from these stories was that, even if experience proved fatal in one sense or another, it must be submitted to.

I wrote – and published – women's magazine short stories. In all of them providence stepped in, disappointments were overcome and a solution offered, though often that solution
was to move on after a transient love affair. All this was hardly the best preparation for success in the eyes of the world but such tales of women who defied common sense and pursued their lust for life persuaded me it was necessary to sacrifice all for romance. Worse, I also believed there was some destiny or fate that would take over and guide me; I just had to get myself out there and see what happened.

At twenty-two, I was completely recovered and ready to dive in, in short, to live! But where? And how? I was young, already a successful journalist, and life in Brighton was buzzing. What should I do with the part of myself that longed for ‘something to happen'?

I arrived in Florence almost by accident. Travelling with a friend, we caught the midnight Strasbourg–Firenze Pellegrino. I think there was some kind of romantic involvement in Alsace; I didn't want to leave and Gillian had to push me onto that train.

In a parallel universe, Italy had always been there, waiting for me. When we stood on the Piazza Michelangelo and gazed down onto that city of ochre and terracotta, illuminated by the setting sun, it appeared like one huge palazzo. Magic! I knew there was no turning back, all would now be revealed. With hindsight I realise this was either wishful thinking or the contrived ending of a romantic writer; real life is not like that.

All the same, now I had launched myself onto Italy I could not stop; it became a drug. I was really only happy when on the move. Life in England was an interlude, a time of getting a bit more money together, planning my next journey. Nothing could compare with the excitement of
boarding a train in Paris and rushing through the night. The couchette attendant would arrive to pull down the beds and I would lie, sniffing the scent of clean linen, dozing fitfully to be wakened by echoing Kafkaesque voices announcing the mysterious names of stations, or by the random shunting of our train from one track to another.

In the early hours I'd tumble out of bed and go to queue for my turn in the now smelly toilet. My face in the mirror looked ugly and puffy from hours in the confined space of the compartment. It is certainly not the most comfortable way of travelling but I loved it, love it still: that sense of anticipation as the hours pass and you go to stand in the corridor to watch for the long-awaited station to slide into view.

Those trains took me not only further and further south but on a voyage of self-discovery. In retrospect I see such journeying as having a life of its own, springing from a deep need within myself to escape from the bookish young girl, to discover my sensuous self.

‘The sun is God,' as the artist J.M.W. Turner is reputed to have said on his deathbed. At that time the sun was
my
god. I pined for it, basked in it; under its benign flame I explored beautiful cities, entered cool museums and galleries; crossed the Lagoon to the island of Murano in a
vaporetto
, climbed towers and gazed over arcaded Bologna. But all the time a part of me remained detached, as if I were watching myself, the heroine of one of those novels I had devoured, to whom something might happen to alter my destiny. However energetically I courted this ‘life', in an obscure way I remained in one piece.

Of course there were encounters. I flirted, laughed a lot,
drank wine; met men with mysterious double lives for lunch, never dinner. I woke to the sound of goats and chickens, the Tuscan sun slanting across the bedroom floor with a man named Dante beside me; and in spite of that cautionary tale of Henry James',
Daisy Miller
, I stayed up all night to watch the sun rise in the Forum.

All this until, one late-spring evening, I stood in Rome's Borghese gardens, admiring the famous sunset view from the Pincio Terrace. I watched the sky blaze with light, swallows darting across it like ink drawings in a Japanese picture. Spires and domes seemed to float in the air. My heart lifted as I realised this delightful relationship I'd entered into with Italy could continue indefinitely. Like the swallows etched against the sunset glow, I was free to come and go, to enjoy a bit of
la dolce vita
with no danger of breaking my heart.

Why then did I go to the Press Club? What bad fairy directed me to little Via Mercedes at the hour when foreign correspondents, having filed their day's stories, would be in the bar? I could have strolled through the cooling evening streets, crossed the river to Trastevere, sat at a pavement table in one of the
trattorie
and enjoyed a pizza and some wine. Or I might have joined the evening crowds, had my portrait done by an artist on the Spanish Steps. Like so many life-changing events, it was launched by a random decision. Had I known where it would lead me, I should have turned in the opposite direction, stepped into a phone booth and called my friends, Mario or Antonello. Hindsight, as they say, is a wonderful thing.

I can see myself clearly: I'm sitting at a table in the Press Club bar, my hair cut in a shiny bob, and I'm wearing the
pink trouser suit my mother made for me. On the table is a glass of white wine and I'm smoking one of the Italian workmen's cigarettes my boyfriend Dante introduced me to, during my time in Florence. I hear my name called. Glancing towards the bar, I see Leslie. He doesn't have much time, is snatching a beer before he goes out to dinner. I've met him before – I've met the majority of Rome ‘stringers'.

Leslie asks me about England but in the vague manner of someone who has cut all ties and become an expat. Naively, I gush about how much I'd like to stay on in Rome; can he put any freelance work my way? In reply, he points to my glass.

‘Another?'

Suddenly he seems anxious to get away but, before he leaves, he suggests it: ‘Why don't you go down to Sicily? Have a look at Taormina, it's a corner of paradise.'

And that was that.

Two days later, I went to Roma Termini station and bought my ticket. I returned to the hotel, packed my case and carried it down the several flights of stairs. There was no porter; this was a very cheap hotel.

‘
Al mare
?' the elderly woman at the reception desk asked me. ‘Are you going to the sea?'

I shrugged, the Italian shrug.

What I couldn't tell her because I didn't know myself was the significance of this journey I was about to undertake. It seemed to me just more interminable hours on a train rewarded by the light and joie de vivre of yet another part of Italy.

Not so.

Sicily was my epiphany. It altered me profoundly and I
wonder about that change. I had longed to escape England, to travel south, to ‘live' like those heroines in the books I read. What I did not bargain for was the conflict of cultures, the infidelity of the Sicilian male who ‘does not want to eat spaghetti every day', but who can equally justify it all by adding, ‘the wife is the wife, the foreigner is the foreigner.' I was not prepared for Sicily's ‘terrifying insularity', as described in Di Lampedusa's
The Leopard
.

I had yearned for romance but I did not reckon on how much innocence one needs to lose in its pursuit, how far the interior journey.

This was the ultimate love affair because it was not so much with a man but a deep and abiding passion for a place. Dangerous when that place is Sicily, mythical island of the monsters Scylla and Charybdis, home of Circe the enchantress; composed of so many elements, blue seas and sky, sun, but also shadows and suffering.

There is not a mountain or a valley that has not run with the blood of invaders. Sicily, gateway to the Mediterranean, North Africa and the Adriatic, has always been a coveted location for trade and colonisation. Here, the Mafia began as a way of life, a means of protecting the family and loved ones from the unjust authority of whatever dominant conqueror was in power. Sicily's oppressive history of many corrupt and judicially inept rulers fostered a mood of self-reliance and respect for family and friends. This history provided the establishment and necessity of the Mafia, an atmosphere where, if you were crafty, you could work the system to your advantage and win wealth, power and status.

When Rome took control of Sicily in 241 BC, the
Romans introduced their feudal system called
latifundia
, large landed estates, which produced grain, olive oil or wine for the benefit of the owner. It was rather like an early form of intensive farming and depended on slave labour. There was also a new justice system where decisions of one area versus another were often very different. The Sicilians, who were used to sustenance farming, growing just enough food to feed themselves and their families, challenged this but Rome upheld the landlords' authority. This social structure of a pecking order paved the way for the Mafia to emerge.

In AD 826, Sicily's next rulers were the Arabs. Although non-Muslims were permitted to practise their own religions, the island came under the influence of Islam. On the positive side, the spread of literature and the arts was encouraged, but, more negatively, it promoted the maltreatment and subordination of women. Later, the Mafia was to adopt this idea and to keep women out of its affairs. Another aspect of Arab law adopted by Sicilians was the idea of internal justice: instead of having a solid system to deal with crime and delinquency, they used personal justice to avenge misdeeds.

Next came the Normans, who annexed Sicily in the eleventh century. Their system reverted back to that of the Romans, of estate managers whose only allegiance was the king. Together with their landlord bosses, they lived by their own rules, creating an even greater inconsistency of justice throughout the island. The Sicilian man in the street took to creating his own small groups and dealing with matters himself rather than going to the authorities.
La Famiglia
was now most important, the unit you could rely on and it has continued so to this day.

When the Spanish Aragonese took over power of Sicily in AD 1300, the rulers set a strict limit on information arriving from the outside world; this was almost the reverse of the Arab culture. Sicilians were deprived of the artistic, scientific and agricultural developments arriving with the Italian Renaissance, something that surely made them draw more closely in on themselves. Differences in justice between estates were exacerbated when the Spanish embarked on the Inquisition. By 1487, it was using this to further control the Sicilians. Taxes were lifted for some influential Christians, while others were financially blighted. Signs of unrest were quelled by executions and, as with the Mafia, the Spanish government did a cover-up job. The reaction among the islanders was to turn to internal justice within their group: an early form of Mafia.

Moving on to the nineteenth century, not so very long after the unification of Italy in 1860, power control in a number of the island's small towns concentrated on four elements: the Church, of course; the local aristocrat, who could also be an important landowner, enabled to collect rents but perhaps not taxes; the town hall; and a respected ‘gentleman'.

In reality, this gentleman was Mafioso whose army of bully boys would intimidate, extort and even kill. The Mafia, as we know it, was born.

Nevertheless, the question has to be asked of how it is this organisation has survived into the twenty-first century. It is a question of the more things change, the more they remain the same. There continues to exist a lack of confidence in the competence of law enforcement and distrust of the state. Probably the main reason why organised crime continues to
be so powerful in the south of Italy is the overall furtiveness of the people, bred out of those centuries of domination. They assume that their politicians are greedy thieves. Businessmen are convinced their associates are poised, ready to steal. Unions expect employees will be exploited; couples take it almost for granted that infidelity is just to be expected. The reaction is not to give anything away, to be crafty and beat the others at their own game.

Looking at Sicily from the outside, many people view the Mafia as the cause of some social problems. In truth, it is the effect, a result of centuries of entrenched customs. There is the
raccomandazioni
, the favouring of one contender over another for personal or expedient reasons, certainly not for those of merit. This colours many facets of Sicilian
modus vivendi
, making it a ripe breeding ground for all forms of corruption, dishonesty and criminality. Then there is nepotism, a 2008 article in the
Economist
reported: ‘this week news emerged of a university rector who, the day before he retired on 31 October, signed a decree to make his son a lecturer. At Palermo University, as many as 230 teachers are reported to be related to other teachers'. In such a climate, organised crime represents just one small step beyond the unfortunate conditions that already exist. Sicilian politicians literally buy votes with promises of employment or other gifts.

I
knew nothing of this background that first morning, that first arrival after the journey travelling the length of Calabria, its interminable bays, sitting upright for hours, my companion a tiny Sicilian woman offering
panini
stuffed with salami and pungent cheese, black bitter coffee from a flask.

As we crossed the straits of Messina and I stood on the ferry deck, the light changed from grey to purple, then purple to rose and the tip of the sun flamed over the sea. I looked out at deserted beaches where gold-tipped waves broke over the shore. The air was warm at five in the morning. We must have stopped at a dozen stations, each seemed identical with curly thirties’ lettering and potted oleanders.

Suddenly, Taormina – the station locked in an exquisite time warp, a ceiling of carved panels and Victorian ironwork on the ticket booths.

In a bar filled with the scent of coffee and strong tobacco I ordered a
cappuccino
. This was a world where things ‘
happened
’, I told myself: ‘
Now I begin to live
.’

And then that drive up to Taormina, the serpentine roads and villas crouched behind blowsy shrubs, palm trees. And always that glimpse of blue sky and Etna’s plume of smoke on the still air. I did not see any shadows, not until much later.

When something so profound happens, what do you do? Avoid. Stay home or travel to other places; but all the same, and especially if you venture once more into Italy, it is inevitable you will hear the siren call. Which, if you are sensible, you will ignore. Until that moment when, like the bird whose nest is plundered but returns and returns, you experience a desire to create a meaning out of loss.

And that is what I did.

When the offer of a ‘small apartment looking over the sea’ came up, I decided to take it for six weeks and embark on the ‘Sicilian’ book I had long planned.

I did not reckon on the advent of Lizzie.