Sicilian Carousel by Lawrence Durrell

Author:Lawrence Durrell
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media LLC

THE TEMPLES OF JUNO LUCINA AND CONCORD AT AGRIGENTO

“They are Zolfataioi,” said Roberto with a smile. “We have been shielding you from the uglier side of Sicily, but we have our own black country here like you have; only it’s not black, it’s yellow. The sulphur workers live a sort of grim separate life except for their occasional excursions like this—though it’s usually to Caltanissetta that they go. It’s the headquarters of the trade.” The men looked as if they were waiting anxiously for transport and those at the two tables playing cards were doing so abstractedly, as if marking time. They were as impressively different from the other Italians as would have been, say, a little group of Bushmen, or Japanese. But they drank with precision. One of the elder ones with a leather face and expressionless eyes had the knack of tilting and emptying his glass in a single gesture, without swallowing. He looked like Father Time himself, drinking a whole hourglass of time at each quaff. I watched them curiously.

At that moment there came a diversion in the form of a large grey sports car which drew up outside the cafe. From it descended a couple of extremely well dressed and sophisticated youths of a vaguely Roman allure—I put them down as big-city pederasts having a holiday here. But their manner was offensively superior and they acted as if they owned the place. They were fashionably clad in smart colored summer wear and open collars, while their hair was handsomely styled and curled. They wanted to leave a message for some local boy and they engaged the flustered eunuch in conversation. Meanwhile, and the touch had a somewhat special insolence, they had left the car’s engine running so that the exhaust was belching noisome fumes on to the terrace and into the cafe itself. One felt resentful; it was as if they were deliberately flaunting not only their classical proclivities but their superiority as well. Their tones were shrill and their Italian of the cultivated sort.

Their arrival produced a little ripple of interest in the circle of sulphur miners, though the general tone was apathetic and not resentful. They eyed these two butterflies in their expressionless way and then looked at one another with a kindly irony. It was not malicious at all. Then the old man set down his tiny Strega glass and, wiping his moustache, said in a firm audible tone, “Ah! pederastici!” It was not offensive, simply an observation which classified the two, who must have overheard for they shrugged their shoulders and turned back to the eunuch with more questions about their friend Giovanni. Moreover, the word fell upon the silence with a fine classical limpidity—five lapidary syllables. It was perfectly summed up and forgotten—the whole incident. The one eloquent word was enough. No further comment was needed, and the miners turned back to their inner preoccupations and sank ever deeper into their corporate reserve while the two turkeys gobbled on.

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