In the northern quarter of old Palermo, Sicily’s capital, similar businesses are found in clusters—bicycles, ironmongery, leatherwork. The Via dei Giudici is given over to babywear—clothes, prams, strollers. All these shops use the same signage—Tutto per l’Infanzia—Everything for Babyhood. Jammed between them is another business. It has large plate glass windows, behind which, well to the front of the shop, sit eight coffins.You’d never see such a juxtaposition in Australia. I kept being confronted by left-field disjunctions, and unexpected unities. I went to the Palazzo della Posta one Saturday afternoon at 4pm to buy some stamps. Only two windows were in operation, but that was sensible because there was only one other customer and she was being served at the first window. So I went straight towards the second, rounded the barrier and came face to face with a child of about eight, sitting up behind the counter. She had her schoolwork spread out in front of her. She was very obliging and got down off the stool and went and called a woman who I presumed was her nonna, and who then sold me my stamps. I felt this was workplace practice at its most family-friendly, but it was not what I’d been used to in Australian public institutions.
The island is amusing, sometimes. At least as frequently it’s depressing and infuriating. In other words the island is full of voices, and it’s not easy to respond. I’m an open-minded liberal traveller, I thought. I want to find a new note, a new expression added to my range. I want to feel lifted onto some new plane of vision. Sicily doesn’t make that easy.
The post office scene was charming, but what if the sense of public responsibility is not just laid-back, but actually diminished, even corrupted? Even when allowances are made for the annoying effects of tourists and people who refuse to try, or make a hash of, the language, public officials in Sicily seem abnormally brusque, rude, unhelpful and contemptuous. And outright dishonest. ‘How much to the airport?’ I ask, in my best Italian, the ticket clerk in the Palermo railway station. ‘Seven seventy,’ he tells me. I hand him a ten-euro note. He gives me the ticket and thirty cents change. I look at it. ‘How much?’ I repeat. ‘Seven seventy,’ he says. I stare at him. He waits, watching me. I don’t move away. He plucks a