The air was warm over hills and dunes. We were near the sea. The walls were giving back the day’s heat. There were bats and bougainvillea and June bugs and crickets. Smells, too, of plants and grasses I did not know.
‘The railways, you said?’
They wanted to know why I had come to Modica, and above all, why having come I planned to be here so briefly. Giuseppe had told them I was leaving the next morning, shortly after eight. By train! From Modica station! Two of the six other people present weren’t aware that there was a functioning station in Modica. Where was it?
‘It’s not a book about Italy seen from train windows,’ I corrected. ‘Not a travel book. And it’s not a book about trains as such.’
‘What, then?’
I realised it might have been easier to explain my vegetarianism. ‘Well, I’m of the opinion that a culture, a system of’ – I hesitated – ’communication, if you like’ – they were looking at me with the wry scepticism with which one does look at foreign professors – ’manifests itself entirely in anything the people of that culture do. Right?’
They smiled indulgently. I was their guest, after all.
‘Like this routine Sunday dinner of yours, every week, the same friends on the warm terrace, the things you prepare, the way it’s served, the things you talk about, even the way you invite and tolerate a foreign professore like me. All Italy could be teased out from this if we examined it carefully, the clothes you are wearing, the way you’ve laid the table, the pleasure taken cooking, the wine glasses.’
Now one of the men, who held a half-smoked but extinguished cigar between his lips, raised a quizzical eyebrow. A car roared down the narrow lane beyond the small garden, accelerating and decelerating fiercely as it approached the bend.
‘The way people drive.’
Giuseppe laughed. ‘So?’
‘So if you’re stupid enough to want to write about a country, a people, the problem is where to start. You could start anywhere, because everything they do manifests that spirit. I don’t know,’ I cast about, ‘le strisce, for example.’
The strisce are zebra crossings.
‘What about le strisce?’
‘In England when you want to cross at the strisce you approach and stand on the pavement beside them and the cars will stop. Guaranteed. By law they have to stop, and they will. If you just stand by the strisce in Milan, and I don’t suppose it’s too different here, the cars will just keep driving by. Here you have to step onto the strisce and start to walk, and only then will the car stop, right?, maybe braking hard and cursing you. You need to be courageous.’
Heads were nodding now. They agreed on this one. Concetta complained what a disgrace it was. The strisce might as well not be there at all, since she always waited until there was a big space in the traffic before taking the risk.
‘And in a way that says everything about laws and rights in Italy. They exist, you have your rights, but you have to fight to have them; otherwise, people just ignore you. It’s the same when you want an appointment for a medical test. If you don’t shout and scream, they’ll make you wait until it’s far too late.’
‘You don’t want to write a whole book about le strisce!’
‘No. But you don’t want to write generally about a whole country either, because there’s so much, and the secret is always in the details, and the way one detail calls to another in a kind of tangle, I mean, the way a woman moves on the beach might connect with the way she genuflects in church. That sort of thing.’
There were sighs around the table. Somebody started to fill the wine glasses. But it was their fault; they had asked me why I was there.
‘OK, let’s just say I’m writing about the way trains sort of happen in Italy. You know?’
It wasn’t clear they did.
‘Or don’t happen,’ I added, laughing a little nervously.
They smiled generously, forgivingly, eating prosciutto and melon. I had slices of mozzarella. The wine was a strong local red poured from a label-less bottle.
There was a moment’s silence. Eventually one of the ladies present announced gravely, ‘I never travel by train.’
‘Nor do I,’ said another.
They were telling me I had chosen a bad subject, I was writing about something that Sicilians couldn’t connect with. Giuseppe said he frequently collected hotel guests from the bus stop where he’d come for me, or alternatively he advised them where to hire a car on arrival at the airport. They never arrived by train.
‘Never,’ he repeated. ‘Not once.’
A woman said she went to Rome and Milan regularly for business. She used cheap flights on Wind Jet. Was I aware that Sicily was the home of Italy’s first low-cost airline? That was an interesting subject.
Her companion remarked that Wind Jet was run by Antonino Pulvirenti, who also owned the Catania football club and the whole Forté empire. The ferry companies and some of the bus companies also were owned by powerful figures who had every interest in the slow death of Sicilian railways.
‘So perhaps the interesting thing is that they bother keeping the railways open at all,’ I suggested, ‘if hardly anyone uses them.’
Giuseppe agreed: ‘The state likes to pretend it’s present when it isn’t.
