2004: We're All Russo's on This Bus
by Carl Russo
3
The vast plains of Sicily's lonely interior rise like waves to become hills if not mountains, each capped with a town visible for miles before you reach it. Enna is one of the largest, practically smack in the center of the island, and an essential travel base for bus riders like me thanks to its enormous hotel. It's the only sure bet for a bed.
The city is still arranged defensively after millennia of foreign invasions, seemingly accessible only to the swallows that swoop up the walls of the towering
buildings bunched closely. In the cemetery, rows of tall vaults holding the remains of expired Ennesi stand in architectural parody. Its expensive crypts are miniature kitsch palaces where even a cripple plucked in infancy warrants a custom mosaic.
The highest point in Enna is reached by climbing the Torre Pisana (a Pisan tower that doesn't lean) in the thirteenth-century castle, but even this heart-stopping view ends where Mount Etna would be on a clearer day.
Wandering at the time of day when the cathedral and museums are shut tight, I stuck my head in the Museo Multimediale. An eager 13-year-old girl pulled me inside, introduced her mother and aunt and brother, then escorted me through a photographic exhibit of Enna's holy week. I was taken aback by the glossy depictions of church confraternity members on parade. I told the friendly girl that the sheets and pointed hoods of this tradition (with roots in Catalan Spain) have been adopted by American racists to terrorize minorities.
The older women weren't catching my drift.
"We speak Sicilian at home," explained the girl. "We only speak Italian because we have to." Soon we were listening to a CD of Sicilian choral music so old it was incomprehensible even to my hosts. The ancient chants echoed Arabic not only in the guttural speech patterns but in the mysterious minor scales.
Quick Sicilian lesson containing the basic rules of letter substitution:
il cavallo ("the horse" in Italian) = u cavaddu.
More mysterious than the tune was the local bus system. Descending with luggage from the old town perched so high to the modern city below would be insane in the late summer heat. But with three separate bus companies operating, a station full of employees, and schedules posted on every surface, I couldn't get a correct answer to "When does the next bus leave?" I stood outside hoping to flag the next bus or cab headed downhill. After twenty minutes or so an old man in an old Fiat pulled up and asked me where I was going.
"To the bus stop in Enna Bassa," I said. A younger man who was his passenger hopped out and threw my bag in the back seat, motioning me in. Several minutes later we slowed to a stop at the bus shelter. I'd planned to give the old guy a generous five euros knowing he would refuse, but before I could pull a bill from my pocket he held out his hand and demanded ten.
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