1999: Jumping Off the Big Boot
by Carl Russo
38.
My last day in Palermo, and I'd saved the best for the last: a confrontation with 8,000 rotted corpses in the catacombs of the Cappuccini monks.
Picture long hallways of suspended skeletons with leather skin stretched tight, their rictus grins and dried eyeball gunk daring you to come closer. And stacks of coffins cracked open with age to reveal collapsed bones and moth-eaten burial suits.
It was a costume party from the most terrifying horror film ever. Globe-headed babies in dusty velvet suits, Ma and Pa in their Sunday best facing each other to share a chuckle from beyond the grave. And as if to mock the Vatican, the particularly ghastly-looking corpse of an old pope lay in a finely ruffled gown, his triangular hat drooping with age.
The deceased are sorted into rooms by profession. The whores outnumber the virgins by about ten to one. One chamber holds the mummification apparatus used on several of the stiffs. Stone tables with blood gutters and vats for marinating.
The star attraction is La Bambina, a little puffy-cheeked girl who, according to the brochure from the bizarre gift shop, was injected with a secret preservative by a doctor who took the formula to his grave. She looks like she might have died a few minutes ago but, in fact, she’s been on display in her glass coffin since World War I.
I spent about an hour communing with the dead, examining closely the way skin peels up on a skull over time. Many of the bodies had to be wired back together, an unenviable job to be sure. But I wasn’t just quenching a morbid curiosity. Why, these were my people! Which ones were my closest kin? Are there any Russos in the house?
As I picked through the souvenir postcards, the old monk behind the counter greeted me. Out of the dozens of Italians I'd met on this trip, he was the only one to call my American accent (the rest all guessed Australian or French). He was delighted to hear that I came from San Francisco and told me his brother lives in San Diego. Mondo piccolo!
The catacombs were a fitting finale of my visit to Italy, a land where both life and death are celebrated to absurd extremes.
I slept through most of the ride back to Rome. Two more nights at the Hotel Kennedy and I was able to see more of the city. I picked up some jazzy Italian trip-hop records, as well as a collection of communist agit-prop posters spanning the 20th century.
My last mishap occurred in the Metro station when I mistakenly walked down the arrival staircase. An angry cop chased me down, certain I was jumping fare. He ushered me back up as I tried to explain myself, only I couldn’t remember a single Italian word at that point. He inspected my ticket and saw that, indeed, I had made a simple mistake.
Upon returning to the Bay Area, I dropped by my parents house to relate my adventures. That’s when Pop told me about a chat he had with his older brother while I was away. Seems the family is not from Palermo at all, but from Salerno on the mainland, a town that whizzed by on my train down the Amalfi coast.
After waiting all these years to see Sicily, and I’m not even Sicilian! Now I’m just as determined to go back and kiss the Salernian ground.
So if you ever see a disheveled hitchhiker standing by the roadside extending a thumb, with both feet amputated, a crazed look in his eye, and a sign that says "Salerno," pull over, damn it!
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Italy: Sicily 1
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Spain, Portugal, Morocco
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Greece
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Italy: Rome
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Italy: Sicily 2
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Italy: Mezzogiorno
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Italy: Sicily 3
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