A New York Times Book Review Notable Book of the Year A New York Public Library Best Book of the Year From the author of M and A Death in Brazil comes Midnight in Sicily . South of mainland Italy lies the island of Sicily, home to an ancient culture that--with its stark landscapes, glorious coastlines, and extraordinary treasure troves of art and archeology--has seduced travelers for centuries. But at the heart of the island's rare beauty is a network of violence and corruption that reaches into every corner of Sicilian life: Cosa Nostra, the Mafia. Peter Robb lived in southern Italy for over fourteen years and recounts its sensuous pleasures, its literature, politics, art, and crimes. “A wonderful book, enthrallingly told.” ― The Boston Globe “Quite simply the best book in English about Italy.” ― The Economist “Peter Robb presents a labyrinthine tale that brilliantly juxtaposes essays on food and art with historical accounts.” ― Sandra Mardenfeld, The New York Times Book Review “Extraordinary . . . As an introduction to post-war Italy . . . it can have few equals.” ― The Times Literary Suplement (London) “Robb has written the finest recent book on Sicily. . . . Midnight in Sicily is as exquisitely prodigal as its subject.” ― Stephen Metcalf, Slate.com Peter Robb has divided his time among Brazil, southern Italy, and Australia for the last quarter century. He is the author of A Death in Brazil, Midnight in Sicily  and M: The Man Who became Caravaggio, which was a New York Times Book Review Notable Book of the Year. Midnight in Sicily By Peter Robb Picador Copyright © 2007 Peter Robb All rights reserved. ISBN: 978-0-312-42684-2 Contents Title Page, Copyright Notice, Dedication, Acknowledgments, Epigraphs, Introduction, I. A Market, II. A Secret Kiss, III. A Case of Knives, IV. A Thin Man and a Fat Man, V. A Prisoner, VI. A Bad Habit, VII. A Realist in Rome, VIII. A Woman's Life, IX. Friends, X. A Lover Denied, XI. A Maze Maker, XII. Midnight in Sicily, Postscript, Some Players, Sources, Excerpt from A Death in Brazil, Also by Peter Robb, About the Author, Copyright, CHAPTER 1 A MARKET I WOKE with a start about an hour after midnight. The boat was still throbbing doggedly through the dark but I couldn't breathe. The roof of the cabin was a few inches above my face and there was no oxygen in the damp salty fug that was gathered there. The passengers on the other three bunks made no sound in the darkness. Maybe they were dead. I sweated, pressed and paralyzed, buried alive. Deep regular breathing brought no calm. I scrambled down without the ladder, putting a foot on an unseen face. The dim corridor was hardly better. The fug was thick with ship's smell of engine oil and paint and stale brine. I found a companionway up to a deck where I waited till dawn among the lifeboats, still oppressed by the visible and palpable marine haze but breathing. All the oxygen seemed leached from the air on this fine and starless night. Summer hadn't yet broken. The voyage south brought back other unbearable summer nights in the Mezzogiorno. The canopy of that heavy, airless dead stillness was over us like a fallen tent. In the morning, back in the cabin, I saw someone had screwed shut the cabin's ventilation duct. Everybody seemed to have had a bad crossing. As we eased up to the dock in Palermo smartly dressed passengers were pressing like desperate refugees or immigrants at the place the gangplank would reach. I tried to imagine the place the arriving Greeks and Phoenicians called Panormus, all port, three thousand years ago. A wheelchair with a slavering lolling-headed idiot was shoved into this edgy ill-tempered crowd, ready to be first off. A cluster of nuns was poised for flight. The yellow taxis lined up on the dock were all gone when I disembarked. After a coffee, several coffees, near the waterfront, I trudged up toward the centre of Palermo, past a showroom with half a dozen new red Ferraris on display. A little further on the carabinieri had set up a road block. There were carabinieri and soldiers, a lot of them, and fretful. The little hotel on via Maqueda, the hotel opposite the art nouveau kiosk, was abandoned. The windows on the first floor were shuttered or glassless, and the peeling wooden door on the street swung open on ruins. Retracing my steps, I found another place, in a third floor warren back toward the harbour, reached in a rattling metal cage. The room was above a coffee wholesaler's, and full of the smell of roasting coffee. Down the road soldiers in camouflage were standing guard with legs wide apart at the entrance to a building of no evident interest. One of them caught my oblique glance as I passed and slipped the safety catch on his machine gun. Seven thousand troops had arrived in Sicily from the continent in the summer of 1992. Three years later the troops were still there. In a certain view, Operation Sici