My Palermo

“We are safest among the dead.”

Eyes flicker in the corner, so there must be the creature who spoke. I cannot see the figure; I can’t see much of anything, really, in the dim light of a lantern placed well away from that corner. I wish to see what that is, and for a different reason, I wish to see what’s behind me prodding at my kidneys with a pointed object.

A very sharp, painful object.

These beings, these many grunting beings, stopped me moments ago, stabbing my ribcage with their sticks and spears. One of those implements too could be on my back.

This tunnel I ventured into amplified my pleas—that I meant no harm to anybody—and my justification for being here. I sounded as loud and as swift as an underground train. If I was a rapid talker before today, I am now the speediest ever.

Fear does that to you.

“Who are you…? What are you doing here?” the voice in the corner asks.

I’m baffled, that’s the question I asked earlier, drawing that enigmatic response. I thought I’d sorted this out; I mean, there’s no way they did not hear me, anywhere… Anyway, I answer, and my mind does a curious thing: it bisects itself. I’m thinking about my answer on one side of my brain, and on the other side, I’m interrogating his question at the same time. 

“I’m Nico, a journalist from Canada…” As I reply, I’m also surprised at the creature’s fluent English, accented but eloquent. Whilst I proceed with my reply, “I’m here on a personal assignment,” I realize his tone was an antagonistic one.

Not harsh or violent, but woven into his words and cadence was a firmness that said, “Pack up and leave… Now.”

I would love to leave if I have the answers I want. I would love to leave if someone tells me why I’m being poked in the back.   

I swivel my hips around and flail my hands in the air in a karate simulation. Amidst a thud! and klunk! and shuffling feet, the flickering eyes have disappeared, but I know they are there, somewhere in the dark.

New breath lingers in the smell of old death.

I compose myself in the sheer silence. “I need some help… anyone?” My parched throat crackles my speech; a dripping sound nearby dries my throat and mouth even more. Funny how that happens.

Funny how I’m wet everywhere else except my throat and mouth.

It’s fear alright. But not of the place I’m in. A catacomb of mummified skeletons would terrify any ordinary person, I know. But I guess since the bones are deceased, there is nothing to be frightened of. There’s always a chance the mummies may arise from their slumber; I know that, so I’m not afraid of that.

It’s more the fear of the unknown… of these unknown beings who accosted me.

“I’m from here… I’m one of you.” My change of tack doesn’t yield immediate results, so I try again. “I come here every year… to my Palermo.”

I hear grinding teeth, and I breathe fresh blood. Incredible anger, it is said, squirts a little blood through the pores; that’s the blood I smell, and it’s all around me. At least I know the unknowns are still here. And they’re local.

I know I said it, but is this my Palermo?

She is mosaicked in my mind; the images of her, and reflections of my experiences. Deep within me, an innate connection from my imagination tingles my tummy. But she birthed me, yet I feel the pain. I am her child; I am from here.

Then why do I despise her?

I didn’t always. Once, as her child roaming the streets, nose dripping…

My hands didn’t score as I lay them on the century’s old bricks; as the paint flakes crumbled in my palms. My fingers didn’t smudge as I swiped at the pigmented walls; as I spread the hues in the webbing of my fingers.

Now, she grazes my skin and stains my hands.

Her touch was delicate, so I cannot figure out the genesis of that contempt.

Even her character had evolved as I became older.

I view with disdain, the townsfolk dangling over balconies on either side of the street, like a row of mismatched earrings; her unpainted facade, as if the tones and touches of make-up had smeared; her wide-open doorways letting out secret elements, calling in uninvited strangers.

She is an unbearable enigma. Rooted in the past, everyone says, wanting to shed her status as merely an old city, yet loved more if she remained so. I cannot understand that; you either have it or you don’t, there aren’t both ways.

I do not see myself as seeking her treasured secrets—I am not that diver prizing open an oyster—yet she lures me time and time again. Like today…

Earlier, as I straightened up from a fatigued slouch at the summit of the stairs, a backing breeze whistled past me. I swung around, and from the crimped blue in the distance, a gust spiralled up the steps and crashed into me, leaving behind freshness, and a trace of saltiness on my tongue.

In the past, when I’d felt a tug at my back, I’d assumed it was from someone behind me. Today there was no one there.

My ears strained for the squish of an orange and a shhh! as juice squirted into an eye; for the crunch of an apple and an owh! as cold drilled into a tooth; for the toll of church bells and a hell! and a clink! as tea splashed from a cup. My nostrils flared, awaiting the crisp snap of a cannoli and a tongue swimming in saliva. And I pictured sweet white cream on lips…

But none of them was carried in the fresh but salty breeze. 

My fatigue diminished quickly, so I shifted away from the wind. I’d been here many times before; I didn’t quite know why. But I was still hopeful I’d find out.

Before me on the cobbled streets, the pacific wind sprinkled its salt, glittering like diamonds in the dusty heaps; the brooms that swept these old paths were nowhere to be seen. A smocked man raising dust outside his shop stopped and leaned on his fabricated brush. For a moment I looked down at the ground, away from his glare; soon the man and brush were nowhere to be seen. 

On the surrounding buildings, new grime, still soggy from the dew, had coated the ancient surfaces and windows; the pales that splashed these archaic textures were out of sight. An aproned lady, bucket in one hand, sponge in the other, stopped and freed her hands. In the instant that I turned away from her stare, she and her crafted bucket had slipped out of sight.

And the ragged sidewalk trod on by thousands through the ages lay deserted and muted under my feet. Silent were the thudding boots, squealing slippers, and squelching takkies. And silent too, the only footsteps—mine—as I pondered where I was, and what I was doing there.

The pilot had fled. I was alone; it seemed.

But why?

This place looked very much like Palermo.

From the air, some would claim she was picture perfect, but I couldn’t see a postcard picture, or a still for a tourist advertisement. As last year, and every year before that—she was merely a routine. And Mondello Bay, from up there the promenade looked like a smile on a puckered face, and frosted hair tumbling in waves on a vast sand forehead. Water sparkling with a brilliant blue… I could get that anywhere, and white sands… fine powder the winds swirled to distant lands.

Somehow for me, Palermo welcomed with an annoying smirk.

I waded to the shore from the aquaplane. The sharp sea smell cut into my nose, throwing my head back, but I adapted to it. It was as if the smell had once existed somewhere deep inside me. A visceral smell I couldn’t discern in the past in the eddies, oozes, and dollops of perfumes, sweat, and lotions.

Today, that smell was obvious. And a smell I hadn’t forgotten, it seemed.

I remembered my mother telling me my father was a fisherman, although I recall very little else of him. Except for his thundering voice and swaying movements.

It was the times my nose tingled and itched, and I sneezed, that I can’t forget. He’d stagger in and hurl a bucket of wriggly fish on the floor. Then my parents would retreat into the room, and there’d be yelling and crying. The furniture in the sole bedroom was always rearranged. When I was young, I thought we were fortunate not to have many possessions, as it was difficult to locate anything in there.

After the noise, and long after my father had slammed the door on his way out, my mother would tiptoe out of the bedroom, holding her face. I remembered how I learnt the various colours, red, maroon, purple, blue, black, on her face and torso. 

That was a long time ago.

Now, on the beach, a man hid behind a wooden boat. His intentions were unclear because he saw me watching him yawn, and staring into his red eyes, and he hid still.

On the sand near him, squiggly fish yawned their last gasps in the cloying stench of guts and bait. Fishing nets with gaping holes were thrown half in the boat and half out. He couldn’t have been a remarkable fisherman as fish would’ve slipped through the holes in the nets.

Although his behaviour was bizarre, he wasn’t alone. The pilot had also behaved peculiarly.

The pilot wasn’t keen on transporting me here—a fat wad of foreign currency had swayed him. He was eager to leave as soon as we landed, frantically waving me on from his plane and then taking off once I’d disembarked.

And stranger still, the mainland vanished from my vision quicker than usual, as if separation from the island had to be more than just physical. As if this place had to disappear from the mainland altogether, concealed in the waves. Or simply, it could’ve been that I hadn’t taken the ferry as I normally would have. 

Whatever it was, Palermo today appeared darkly mysterious.

And it was deathly dark. The emptiness of spaces and the chilly hush on the streets were curious, so I became vigilant. I was expecting someone or something to jump out of somewhere and shout, “Boo! What do you want here?”

I inched forward, wary of sounds and movement, and not long after, something bright appeared before me. It happened to me in the past. The sun’s glint on the stony inlays had, for a second, blinded me, turning everything into a starry pale, until I’d rubbed my eyes and blinked a few times. Then my perspective had returned.

Hoping it was a similar occurrence, I squinted, my eyes mere slits, but even with the rubbing, the white was still there in front of me. And through the shimmer, a scraggy, barefooted girl appeared on the paving. On her ashen skin, black dirt patches gave her the look of a zombie. But she was human alright. Her quiet eyes, sunk deep inside caves, peeped from behind her stringy hair. 

By her height, she looked five or six, but she was skin and bones, so she could’ve been older.

I was not much older than her when the screaming and fighting had stopped. The house we lived in, too small for the three of us, became too big for two as my mother was always at work. Later I’d learn my father had gone back to his one true love, the one I couldn’t stop hating. 

I scanned around for the girl’s family, my ears sensible to a slamming door, from where she might have stepped, or a swinging window, through which she might have leapt.

But the air had kept its eerie silence.

As I turned again towards the child, she tore away from me, her feet slapping on the ground in front of her, black soles flapping in the air behind her. She sprinted a hundred dainty paces, then suddenly veered to the right and vanished behind a building.

Scurrying along, I followed her slapping feet through the Piazza, and past the graveyard. The graveyard was much fuller than last year, and at a glance, untidy, and without fresh bouquets. I had the sense that recently the living hadn’t intermingled with the dead.

On the far end of the graveyard, a tunnel sprang into view, its ajar grating suggested the girl may have entered there. I went into the darkness, a bouncing dapple on the wall leading me further and further into the labyrinthine crypts.

Until the beings attacked me.

Now, in the pitch-black underground, there’s a stir around me, and in the lit corner a lamp lights up the face of a boy, the lamp in his hand quivering as much as the flame flickers.

I am mindful to make my voice as polite as I can. “What do you mean you are safest among the dead?”

“It is you… you people bring the air from across the seas,” he says. “The air that kills our mothers and fathers up there.” He is holding the lamp close to his face, but even the lamp’s dirty glass doesn’t obscure his wet eyes and silvery trail down his cheeks.

I know what he is talking about. But it’s something else that causes the surge to my eyes and warm streaks down my face.

The body wastes away, and they connect it to cancer. Any form of wasting away—cancer. Even by the best of doctors, that’s just apathetic diagnoses. I knew my mother; I knew what it was. Two jobs a day, eighteen hours a day, seven days a week… that’s not cancer.

Throw in guilt, and you’ve got wasting away on steroids.

She apologized to me. In between fading breaths, as I moved my ear ever closer to her lips, my mother asked for my forgiveness. She said that she could never compete with her, that she never should’ve taken him away from her. And that he was bound to go back.

I was no older than this boy in the corner holding the lamp.

I try to lift my hand to wipe my face, but warm, delicate fingertips sweeping the outside of my hand have gripped my fingers. The girl I’d been pursuing is beside me, her other hand has curled around my leg.

“Papà… Papà,” she says, peering up at me.

In her glassy eyes, lakes in those caves, I see myself… My misplaced hatred has withered away. I can’t see him, but he is with this beauty called Palermo. I walk among the renewed glisten on old surfaces, lustre on stony boulevards, and shine on peoples’ faces.

His voice rings on the streets and beaches, “son… son”.

And I say, “It’s okay, pops, she’s my Palermo too.”