We went through to the platforms where five or six old Regionali were lined up among palm trees in giant pots, as if in some episode of Thomas the Tank Engine where the locomotives get to take an exotic holiday. Finally we tracked down two FS employees smoking outside the Left Luggage Office. They shook their heads. ‘Trapani, by train? At the weekend?’ It was amusing that someone had thought of such a thing. ‘Go by bus,’ they advised. ‘There are plenty of buses. Much quicker.’ They began to give directions to the bus station. I began to understand why Trenitalia had opted for the high-speed Rome–Milan rather than doubling lines in Sicily. Even if they were doubled they might not get used.
We bought tickets for Isola delle Femmine. The severe and severely perplexed Latvian, who was named Zane (pronounced zah-ney), had asked if I would mind her coming along. She worked in Oslo, she said. On a complete whim she had booked herself on a flight to Sicily, thinking she would enjoy seeing the sights for two weeks. Instead she understood nothing. The heat was killing her. She constantly feared she was being cheated. The shops and public services, she said, reminded her of Eastern Europe before the wall came down. It was disquieting. She was shocked.
Sympathising, I slipped into the role of ‘he who knows the ropes’ and suggested an orange juice before our train left. Freshly squeezed orange juice is one of the summer pleasures in Italian bars, and all the more so, I imagined, in Sicily, where the oranges actually grow.
‘Ice?’ the bartender asked.
I avoid ice, I explained to Zane, because it gives the juice a watered-down taste. There was a huge pile of oranges looking very thirst-quenching on the corner of the counter. The man slammed a knife through four or five and began squeezing.
When he handed us our two glasses, the juice wasn’t just room temperature, it wasn’t just warm, it was positively hot. Like tea. Now it was my turn to be shocked. The Latvian asked if people always drank their juice at this temperature. Her accent got strangely mixed up with cadences of wild incredulity. I stared at the pile of oranges but couldn’t understand how they had got to be so hot. Had someone just pulled them in from the sun? Or left them in an oven? And I couldn’t understand why the barman hadn’t explained this. Not that a couple of cubes of ice would have made much difference. Anyway, Mr Expert was so no more.
Never mind. Orange juice is orange juice. Drink it down. Coming out of the station bar I noticed that right beside it there was a McDonald’s, which was doing slightly better business. A McDonald’s in Palermo railway station. No doubt they catered to people who wanted their food and drink to be exactly as they expected it. The general atmosphere, meanwhile, was one of a few people taking time out in a lethargic backwater, fully aware that the real action lay elsewhere.
HOWEVER, AND MUCH TO my surprise, the train to Isola delle Femmine was brand new, a two-carriage model I’ve since discovered they call the Minuetto. Who thinks of these names? Its bright blue seats were so clean and the floor so spotless it really felt as if the Latvian lady and the English gentleman were the first two passengers it had ever accommodated. Certainly we were the only ones travelling that Saturday morning. The inspector arrived smiling cheerfully, as a man should when he realises he’s being paid for doing nothing. Young, fleshy and friendly, he was remarkable for the mass of dense black hair exploding from the top of his regulation FS shirt. He hadn’t bothered with the regulation red FS tie. Perhaps the rules are waived when the temperature gets into the mid-thirties.
‘Tickets, please,’ he said at once, in English. He turned them over in his hands and noticed with appreciation that we had had them stamped regolarmente. He completed the ritual by punching in two square holes. Then, since he didn’t seem to have much else to do, I asked if by chance he knew whether one might proceed from Isola delle Femmine to Trapani, since the two stations seemed to be on the same line westwards. At once he pulled a little machine from his pocket, the very kind the capotreno from Verona to Milan had told me regionale ticket inspectors were not issued. Was it possible that Sicily was ahead here, even if there were no tickets to check? Alternately tapping the screen and scratching his red neck with the little pointing device, then shaking his head, grunting and beginning again, growing steadily more perplexed, he finally worked out that we could indeed reach Trapani today.
‘At 8.55 p.m.,’ he announced to us at 10.30 in the morning. He seemed pleased that Trenitalia had this service to offer. I didn’t trouble him to check whether, assuming we took this opportunity, we would be able to get back to Palermo the same day.
The coast to the north and west of the city would be stunningly beautiful were it not for a suburban wasteland of declining and abandoned industries. Isola delle Femmine, just ten miles away, turned out to be a quaint little fishing village whose transformation into a satellite town had apparently been arrested some years ago. It was languishing. I asked a young man where we might go swimming and was directed beyond the little harbour with its fishing smacks and luxury yachts along a busy road with no pavement and no coastal path. Just tarmac, rocks, sea. An endless stream of vehicles, all with Palermo number plates, filed by; presumably
