What the fishermen did was take long poles with spikes on the end and stab them into the tuna and then with a quick, almost mechanical movement, hoist them flopping and struggling out of the water. It was hard to believe that single men could be strong enough to lift such giant fish. The tuna were covered with blood, and the water began to fill with blood until it turned dark red, the color of wine. I thought how strange it must look from an airplane: the water red and boiling in that square between boats, but the sea around a normal color. As they pulled out more and more fish, the fishermen kept on singing, and their voices sounded sad and monotonous. The air smelled of fish and seawater and something raw and wild that must have been blood. People in the crowd were quiet, and a lady in black glasses from the German TV crew told Ginevra and me in English that they were filming this for people back in Germany so they would understand how cruel it was. The Japanese man stood with his back very straight and his arms crossed, his eyes following every movement of the fishermen. Mom gripped my shoulder, and I looked back and saw that her cheeks looked shiny with tears and that Federico had put his arm around her.
They caught three hundred sixty-seven tuna. The number passed in whispers through the crowd. When the last fish was pulled out of the water, the rais made a signal and the fishermen began to sing a song that sounded like a prayer. It was a prayer, Federico told me: They were thanking God, or Allah, for a good catch. That was the way they had done it for a thousand years. The big silver heaps of fish didn’t move anymore except for a few flips of the tail, and the blood slowly dissolved into the water. The party feeling had dissolved, too, and as they towed our boats back to the dock of the tonnara, people sat and thought their own thoughts. Though it felt as if a whole day had passed, it was only ten o’clock in the morning. Ginevra leaned against her father and slept with her mouth open. I didn’t feel sad, just dead tired and hollow inside; I put my head in Mom’s lap, and she stroked my hair and we sat in silence. The only thing Mom said during the boat ride was “I want to go home.”
Next day we said good-bye to Ginevra and everyone else, left Favignana on the ferry, and drove for five hours until we got to Palermo. Palermo was darker and more confusing than even the oldest darkest parts of Rome, and felt dangerous: a maze of little streets like tunnels, crowded with cars and trash and people strolling in and out of shadows. Old buildings were covered with stone carvings—shells, nymphs—all crusted with ancient grime that turned them into monsters. Mom and I started teasing Federico about having a secret life as a Mafia don, and instead of doing his Godfather imitation, he said in quite a serious voice that people here lived with the Mafia as a fact of life, like the weather. Mom said that it couldn’t be that drastic, that this wasn’t the Middle Ages, but Fede just clucked his tongue, the way he does when he disagrees. From Palermo we had to catch a plane for home that night, but first we went to visit a prince and princess who were friends of Fede’s, and lived above the harbor in a palace made of blackened stone. Fede told us that the building was partly a tonnara, like one of those on Favignana. He said that the prince’s family had for centuries owned fleets of ships, and that these old noble families had the habit of living above the store. Nowadays they had no more ships, but the prince had smart sons who had made a restaurant and discotheque in the part where they used to butcher the tuna.
So we went through a tall carved doorway and up slippery steps into a garden with palm trees and a stone railing at one end, where you could see the city, and ships on the water below. The garden was dry and wild and full of stacks of boards and huge dusty vases and cats walking among old tools and iron pipes, and one corner was crowded with strange-looking cactus plants that the princess collected. The princess was not very tall and had bright blue eyes, a pointed nose, and gray hair in a braid down her back. She looked stern but friendly as she walked toward us with a cigarette in her hand, and then she grabbed Federico and hugged him and called him an old vagabond, and asked him why it had taken him so long to bring his bride to see her. She had a rough voice almost like a man, and she gave Mom and me big smacking kisses on our cheeks and said we were beautiful girls.
I had a Coke and the grown-ups drank
