Page 66 of The Sicilian Inheritance

“Please. I’ve got you. Do not be afraid.” Her words, I’ve got you, were more of a comfort than I expected. My hands shook as I made my way up a rickety two stories onto a small window seat.

“Sometimes I sneak up here and watch the tourists take their Instagram photos in the church. They pose with their duck faces in front of the mother of Christ and I wonder if she would have been very amused.” Agata giggled. “Other times I nap here. Look out the window. You are above the chaos.”

Despite the late hour the city wasn’t even close to being asleep. When I leaned out the window I spied an opera singer serenading a bride and groom as they danced cheek to cheek in the midst of the crowds. Vespas carrying too many passengers zipped past horses wearing jaunty straw hats as they clattered their carriages over the stone streets. Diners and drinkers spilled out of restaurants, cafés, bars, and gelaterie. An older man with a machete scraped his blade across a block of ice to deliver fresh granita to passersby. I inhaled the crisp night air and tried to feel gratitude for being here.

“We are a nocturnal city,” Agata whispered, and she eased her way back down the ladder. “Let me show you.”

Outside the church she paused at a colorful cart and bought me an Aperol spritz for three euro before beckoning me forward. We turned left, then right, then left again into a passageway, dodging late-night revelers—teenagers, tourists, and local families—as we hustled through narrow streets with names like via delle Sedie Volanti, Street of the Flying Chairs, and via Terra delle Mosche, Street of the Land of the Flies. I lost Agata in the crowds and then found her in a market selling street food. I was starving again.

Agata paused at a stall with a long line, jabbing her way to the front with her sharp little elbows. She returned to me with a carton of deep-fried potato croquettes and round little balls of marinated eggplant, each skewered with a toothpick.

“Open wide,” she exclaimed, and then popped a potato in my mouth, as eager to feed me as her estranged husband had been.

“We call these cazzilli. Little penises, because of their stubby little shape,” she said with a laugh. “And the eggplants, these round slices are felle, or butt cheeks. Everything is sexual here.”

I laughed too, energized by the salty, lemony food, hoping this was what she wanted to show me but knowing there would be more.

“You came here because your family left you land, yes?” Agata asked.

“Luca told you.”

“He did. He texted me things about you. Marsala is your last name?”

“Yes.”

“Serafina Forte was your relative?”

“She was,” I said, scooping the remaining morsels into my mouth.

“What do you want to do with that land?”

I hadn’t been expecting an interrogation, but Luca did say that Agata might be able to help, and I was already grasping at straws. The possibility of returning home with any extra money in my bank account felt slimmer and slimmer. “Honestly I am just hoping to sell it for a fair price and go back to Philly. I have a lot of debt and shit to work out. The money would help. It’s not like I could manage a plot of land across the ocean. Giusy from the hotel has been helping me. Once I get my passport, I can open a local bank account, and then see what happens from there.”

“But you know there are people who do not want you to have any claim to that land at all?”

This little woman knew much more than she should about my circumstances. Suddenly I wanted to turn back. I felt exposed.

“That is what Giusy told me too.”

“Oh, Giu, Giu. I know her well. Do not trust everything Giusy says. Do not trust anyone here. But for serious Giusy will always be looking out for Giusy. We have a word in western Sicilian dialect, furbezza, it means ‘a devious intelligence.’ I think about it whenever I think about Giusy.” She brushed debris from one of the stone walls around the corner from the street food market. “Here we are.” I noticed a rusted keyhole beneath the vines and dirt covering the wall. Agata pulled a small brass key on a long golden chain from beneath her shirt.

A steep stairway on the other side of the door led the way down beneath the street.

“Are we supposed to be in here?” Agata was already leaping down the stairs.

“Of course not.”

“Why do you have a key?”

“I have many keys to many things.”

I kept thinking about how she said it was no wonder she was constantly losing her mind.

Agata used her phone to light the way. The stench of rot wafted into my nose as the door slammed behind us.

“Are we going into the sewer?”

“Yes. But just for a moment. Plug your nose. You’re a butcher. You’re used to terrible smells.” She really did know everything about me.

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