Scrivener, cobbler, roper, bell-ringer, groundskeeper, chairbler, blacksmith, stonecutter, locksmith, bladesmith, potter, mercer, soaper . . .
—professions of members registered in the Roll of the Comiso Municipal Militia, Sicily, March 20, 1799
A civilization’s richness is in its professions, each trade a single cell that invents its own routines, imitations, language, conduct, teachings, lore of disasters and pranks, and moral codes. The various street shops of the past were this way: self-sufficient cultures, kingdoms where the ruler was called “mastro” in Sicilian dialect, and thus maestro of the hammer, of the axe, of clicking knives, of lathes. No Encyclopédie will ever include these historic and sanctified sites, not their methods fallen into disuse, nor their utopic phalanstery scent.
Vagabond ventures were even more ephemeral, done in the open air in collaboration with the sun, rain, and wind: the picaresque jobs which were, for a certain child, the envied ideal of happiness.
‘U LAMPIUNARU. Il lampionaio. The lamplighter.
He was clearly copying the movements of some bearded sorcerer or God Almighty when at nightfall, his ladder resting against a street-lantern, he readied his arms to let burst, by sulfur wick, the great miracle of light.
The sight of him was grimmer at dawn: when the flames in the hanging glass houses began to grow pale, the lamplighter showed up in secret and smothered them to death one by one, like an assassin, with the soft touch of his snuffing rod.
‘U LUPPINARU. Il venditore di lupini. The lupine bean seller.
On frigid winter nights when the family circled around the burning brazier, with everyone’s knees clamped and bodies pressed against those closest, one heard the cry of dialect from the street mixed up with the wind: “Luppineddi arruci! Tastatili, su’ comu ‘a miennula”—“Sweet lupines! Taste them. They’re just like almonds.” If the youngest children could convince their father, then the lupine bean seller would appear at the door wrapped in an old cloak, a lantern tied to his left wrist and a tub full of beans on his right, ready to pour a cascade of yellow lupines onto the white plate pushed forward, in exchange for a few cents.
‘U STAGNATARU. Lo stagnino. The tinker.
There wasn’t a day when this peddler’s refrain could not be heard rising up to the balconies: “Cu ha’ stagnari pateddi?”—“Whose pans need tinplating?”
The tools he bore were a small coal forger, a fireplace bellow, and a tin rod. First, heating the pan by the fire, he poured on a bit of molten tin, spreading it intently across the whole surface. A few minutes’ work and the pot was returned shining to the kitchen corner, with the freshness and pomp of a bride.
‘U PARACQUARU CONZAPIATTI. Il racconciatore di ombrelli e piatti. Umbrella and plate repairman.
If a gust of the Tramontane wind had ruined an umbrella’s crown or disconnected a few of its ribs, or if a plate was broken or cracked, no fear. One waited to hear the voice of Minicu, the repairman outside the door: “Cu ha’ cunzari paracqua e piatti?”—“Who has umbrellas and plates that need repairing?” And here, in an instant, after some keen tinkering with pincers and iron wire, umbrellas went back to protecting against rain, and dishes could fill again with delectable soups.
For the housewife this was a festive, theatrical event, one for sitting in a circle with her next-door neighbors commenting on the drill’s progress into the wound, and watching it, minute by minute, heal. If only ‘gna Maddalena’s daughter herself could be repaired, she who ran away from home the other night, that shameful wretch!
‘U CIRNITURI. Il vagliatore. The sifter.
For me, three virtuosi embody the sublime way music flows through a person’s motions: Donna Carmela Brafa’s wave-like gait walking down the steps of the Annunziata after Mass, Lele Cipolla’s raised arms conducting the square dance, and the sifter’s grace. I picture them filling their sieves up with grain and then shaking them with soft jolts in time with a divine, inaudible solfège. Those listening felt a placid enchantment come over them like drowsiness and, outside, the barnyard added a pattering of equine hooves at work, while rounds of caciocavallo hung silently from ceiling rings overhead, as white as Parthenon statues.
‘U FERRASCECCHI. Il maniscalco. The farrier.
On the farm wagons’ regular route, at our land’s edge, the smell of burnt horn announced the nearby Nibelungen caves housing the farrier. Those who passed on the road could glimpse him at work through a cloud of smoke, bent over behind the animal’s rear, always ready to leap away when a small shift or twitch warned of a coming kick. Alas, the winds that arrived from the patient were completely unpredictable, and thus almost always fatal. If they hit the man, they inspired sensational curses and doubled the job’s asking price on the spot.
‘U CALIARU. Il venditore di ceci e semi. The chickpea and seed seller.
Even today, the boy who who can’t sleep in the heat-spell months and walks at night to calm the vipers in his mind will see, as he passes the churchyard, the chickpea and seed seller laying kilos and kilos of pumpkin seeds across the stones to dry, to be sold later at market. He distributes them ceremonially, just as he used to for baptisms and weddings, when it was customary to hand out peanuts, roasted chestnuts, toasted chickpeas, and fava beans; except that these days the seller arrives in blue jeans, driving a delivery van full of plastic bags. He sprinkles seeds here and there while he sits in the shade managing the sun’s free labor, one hand armed with a beanpole, and the other fumbling on the nearby transistor to search for Celentano’s latest crooning hit.
‘A FIMMINA RE’ SANGUETTI. La donna delle sanguisughe. The lady with the bloodsuckers.
Slightly hellish beasts, leeches were only called to rescue patients from the direst of maladies that made purging an excess of blackened blood urgent. They were set on the body to almost visibly attack the enemy plague barricaded within. A woman busied herself, by profession, with applying them behind the ears of the sick and later extracting them once they’d detached themselves, sated. Caught in the streams near Modica, they were sold by peddlers in cork-stoppered earthenware. Some people displayed their bloodsuckers on marble-topped furniture, like a peaceful yet horrid council of domestic monsters, imprisoned by an upside-down glass.
‘U PITTURI DECORATURI. Il pittore decoratore. The decorative painter.
His hands reeking of linseed and swim-bladder glue, he painted the plaster of aristocratic houses all day with scenes of gallant festivals and temples, lakes full of naiads, and cloud wisps in the sky. What a marvel if at night, when stretching sleepily toward his wife (Tresa, Turidda, Milina . . .), in confusion he hears, from under the covers at his side, the contented exhale of a goddess.
‘A PILUCCHERA. La parrucchiera. The hairdresser.
She went from house to house to dress hair, to reconstruct curls and coiffures, to tie up and unfurl tuppi—chignons, toupees—tangled and wild as horse-manes. In summer, she worked out in the open, in front of the client’s doorway on the sidewalk. These were the perfect moments for the adolescent in the house across the street to position himself behind half-closed shutters and secretly observe the thick tresses that were dear to him, blonde or crow-black, in the hairdresser’s fingers’ brisk and knowing caress.
‘U FUMIRARU. Il venditore di letame. The manure seller.
As a jackal follows a caravan, as a dolphin follows a ship, the manure seller stalks quadrupeds along the route of their daily walk to collect the pastries they unburden themselves of at regular intervals, like steaming milestones. Happy was the one who, returning home in the evening exhausted by the sun, shook himself clean and flaunted to his wide-eyed family the overflowing cart, full to the brim with the finest yield.
L’ACQUALUORU. L’acquaiolo. The water seller.
His wagons divided into cells like a beehive and crammed with large flagons, the water seller sold water from the main piazza’s fountain to the town’s most far-off quarters, wearing out the almost-never-recalcitrant donkey on the endless journey. Save for when, at high noons in May, the donkey sometimes went wild, hot with the sudden urgency of love, because he had smelled the body of his donkey darling among a surge of rivals.
The resulting chaos made thousands of eager, scandalized spinsters’ eyes flood to the windowsills, made the water seller’s packsaddles, canisters, and mugs roll in the dust, until, the brawl calmed, the knot of wagon and bodies untangled, one heard—like a war cornet solo resonating through the air, one long, happy bray.
L’AMMOLA FUOFFICI E CUTEDDA. L’arrotino di forbici e coltelli. The knife and scissor grinder.
Awaited impatiently by the industrious tailor and the plotting assassin, the knife and scissor grinder appeared in the alleyways, pushing his ramshackle cart with the grindstone affixed on top. Working the pedal, he activated the contraption with just the right motion, resting the blade forcefully on the whetstone, engrossed and somber until he could see it glint sharply in the sun.
He then tried the blade on a strand of hair, asked for and received the agreed upon sum, and went, like Judas, slowly away without looking back.
‘U MUSICANTI. Il suonatore di serenate. The serenade player.
All praises to Turi Murruzzu, guitarist of the finest talent! He would be hired for a night by the most hot-blooded and artful youths—who were also usually the shyest ones—to help seduce stubbornly sleeping beauties with music. How many romances and folk songs rose from his hand as it played its fast, seductive chords; how many melodies penetrated the bedroom shadows and bothered the virgin as much as the bride, the wise as much as the mad! Countless heartbeats and vigils and frenzies were punctuated by his tender, untrained voice, which led to weddings and kidnaps and guilty allegiances of the flesh and heart.
And if a shower of water or worse poured villainously down upon him, then, after a minute, his song could be heard even louder and more mocking and sure, rising into the night, a singular sound ceaselessly abusing the too-old husbands and jealous guardians.
‘A TINCITURA. La tintora. The dyer.
Back then, one had to wear the black of mourning by law: heart black, cloth black. Even handkerchiefs and undershirts. I was therefore assigned, after each grandparent’s death, to carry the large rainbow-colored bundles around the corner, so that Donna Stella the dyer could blacken them in an instant. I’d find her in the kitchen, stooped, with her fine, bare arms over a cauldron full of aniline dye, which steamed and seemed alive. I knew that I shouldn’t look at this pot full of devils, where all the earth’s ugliness boiled and squeezed together . . . But, when I averted my eyes, no less fearful were the tongues of shadows shaking on the ceiling, and the muttering flames trying to persuade me at all costs of one sole thing—but what thing, exactly, I did not know. A kind and frowning witch, Donna Stella would console me, calling me over to eat, like a goat, the dark seeds of a pomegranate from her hot palm, as if I were Esperis or Eve.
‘U PATRIARCA. Il Patriarca. The Patriarch.
Never missing a door, the patriarch went asking for alms with a blue priest’s hat on his head, a foot-length habit of the same color, and a flowered staff in his fist. He was chosen by the Parish of San Giuseppe from among the old woodworkers, and his term lasted until death. In the eyes of the children, he seemed like a character from a book, with his white beard, mysterious robes, and slow, grave steps: an astrologer, a wizard, a necromancer. A few could remember touching the hem of his garment and kissing his hand, just to make sure that under that colorful and melancholic mask there wasn’t, Lord help us, a ghost.
‘U GNURI. Il cocchiere. The coachman.
Although he was used to being hired by gentlemen in the days when they still owned carriages and servants, the coachman was eventually freed from subservience and for many years scorned the jealous hordes of pedestrians from up high in his driving seat, letting his whip whistle in the air like a king’s banner. Protector of gamblers and lovers, he was seen many nights keeping guard under a balcony, waiting for the sign of a whistle, or for a lamp to turn off. He survived for a little while in the changed times, patiently letting himself be overtaken and covered in the dust of black Fiat Balillas and blue Isotta Fraschinis. In the end, one evening in winter, at the station after the emptied train had departed, the last coachman fell asleep in the rain and never woke up.
‘U SCUCCIARINU. Lo scorticatore. The skinner.
He went around the land, eyeing ownerless dogs and mules aged by their burdens and bridles. From Petraio, from Profino Valley, having consummated by knife his sinister rites, he returned hauling on his shoulder a bag full of bloody pelts, destined for the tanner.
High above his head on July afternoons waited a cloud of crows, spiraling slowly.
L’ARGINTIERI. L’argentiere. The silversmith.
“Argentu e oru vecchiu m’accattu”—“I’ll buy silver, I’ll buy old gold,” and a profusion of brooches, studs, rosaries, rings, and necklaces popped up from the houses’ crannies, or from knotted kerchiefs, to be bartered for a few onza or tarì coins. Dolefully, the bride, who had no choice but to sell the silver hairpin that had held up her hair just yesterday, watched it disappear into the bottom of the basket.
‘U PIRRIATURI. Lo spaccapietre. The stone breaker.
From the pure-white Piedmontese caves, which were famous across Sicily, he extracted mounds of rock with the help of wooden wedges soaked by water, which dilated the cracks from the pickaxe and allowed the slabs to slide from the layer of earth underneath.
Only then did he remove the sweaty cloth around his head, tie up the carriage, and sit to smoke under a tree amidst the chirping of cicadas. His day of glory came in the form of an order from Palermo for two huge blocks to sculpt the lions outside the Teatro Massimo: leading a train of many horses attached to a pharaonic gadget of ropes and reels, he passed through the streets of the land, from one wing of the community to the other, like a saint on a parade float. And everyone threw flowers down from the balconies . . .
‘U VASTASI. Il facchino. The porter.
Brawny, mop-headed Ercole-from-the-countryside would only charge a few coins to transport the young aristocrats’ many and heavy bags from their houses to the station when they left to go study in the city. He observed them—pale, in gaiters, high collars, and caps—without envy as they waved their batiste handkerchiefs from the window, and then vanished, traitorously swallowed up in a jet of egalitarian and democratic smoke.
‘U PRUFETA RO TIEMPU E MALUTTIEMPU. L’indovino del buono e cattivo tempo. The prophet of good and bad weather.
He didn’t even own an awning to sleep under, the old tramp Nuofriu, who passed his nights under bridges with two paper corks in his nostrils to defend himself from the cold. For a coin or two, he never refused early-risers news from his all-seeing foot callus, an infallible Nostradamus of impending bad weather. Then he stood up, picked up the bundle of rags (his makeshift pillow and only possession) and, tucking it under his arm, started off again toward life, keeping vigil with his eyes to fill them with every motion and miracle, and feed one more day his intact and uncouth wonder at existence.
‘U CARRITTIERI. Il carrettiere. The wagoner.
I know one, the last or at least second-to-last: in his eighties, short, gaunt, face bleached by his far-off business by moon, geriatrically avid for chewing gum and watching “Domenica In” on Sundays.
On June afternoons, he likes to sit at the café, obliging the curious people who brashly ask him to show his hip, where a long red scar left in ’23 by Lici Mammana’s knife commemorates an orange delivery that went awry.
Once sweet-talked, he puts on a show: from my table I listen to him hoarsely intone a song from his people, who sang of solitude and weariness, accompanying himself with rhythmic smacks of the tongue. The youths yell that it’s better than a blues song; one of them (who will have to retake Italian literature next September) rather unexpectedly cites the ditty that Baron Meyendorff learned from wandering shepherds in the year of our Lord 1820.
Cola Ciaceri lets them talk; if he’s haunted by the ten thousand nights sleeping outdoors with his head on a sack, or unjust landowners, or violent comrades, or the days filled with unexplainable hardships that were his life, he doesn’t say anything, but for one regret: “’A fimmina mi mancava,” he whispers without smiling—“I never had a woman.” Then he abandons himself to tenderly recalling the loftily named horses he’d driven to death down the herding paths, one after another, and of the flies and summer sun.
Eventually, he shakes out his hair and wrinkles, asks for a piece of chewing gum in compensation, and then in all seriousness asks where one can buy a cheap used Honda.
‘U PITTURI RI CARRETTA. Il pittore di carri. The cart painter.
The French rulers, who could forget them? Mastro Peppino Samperi presided over their fate on the stiles of the carts in the open, working with powder and paintbrush under our dazzled eyes.
We molded our own swords of Roland by putting two boards in a cross; in our sleep, we struck thousands of ogres, thousands of dragons in the heart, we freed Angelicas with long hair, we fell for the swindles of Ganelons, we died surrounded at Roncevaux.
When we woke up, behind the door, the Hippogriff was no longer there.
‘U LIBBRARU AMBULANTI. Il libraio ambulante. The traveling bookseller.
Books by Salani, Bietti, and Nerbini were for years the gifts of my Three Magi. Paradise’s address was Via Pasquirolo 14.
But not only for that did I wait impatiently on market days for the apparition of Don Ciaciò Pirricchito, who ran the book-and-newspaper stall where one could trace in the ten available sections a life’s career, from birth to death. Don Ciaciò wore olive-green glasses on the undergrowth of his eyebrows; he had the Macerata hump, which gave him a poetic air: a nose scrambled awry by an impatient midwife (so he said), or really (others said) by the fists of a husband who came home too early. Year after year, housed by Donna Pippa’s stall, he displayed all nuggets of the alphabet from a suitcase tied together by crossed twine. My two holiday liras weren’t enough to buy more than just one book so, involuntarily, I swallowed the covers with my eyes: The Fornaretto of Venice, Guerrin the Wretched, The Bread Peddler. Yet ultimately it was the cavalier of Seingalt in a pearl-gray satin jerkin, seated between two small monks—Casanova—that finally won me.
