October 30, 2011
Here comes the fisherman.
L’America! he crows at me.
Enzo has intermittent teeth and eyes to warm your heart. He’s taking his holiday here in Ragusa Ibla, 16 kilometers inland from his home.
He is staying in a convent, a retreat for anziani, old people. “Because I’m sixty,” he says.
“Sixty is not old!”
“In Sicily, sixty is old.”
I tell him to go to America, where he’d be middle-aged.
“I have relatives in New Jersey. They tell me, ‘Enzo, you should come to America!’ But I’m scared of flying. I like to be on the sea. I spend the whole day alone, fishing in my 7-meter boat. There aren’t many fish, though, because the fishermen in big boats throw their nets further out than mine, and they catch most of them.”
“Yes, but in Sicily, that’s how it works. No one controls the lawless. But I love my job. I eat lunch on my boat. Raw fish. Just like the Japanese. It’s good.”
He pats his stomach and smiles his quirky smile.
***
