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Journal of Italian Translation
A Long Black Snake
By Giuseppe Rizzo
Translated by: Giuseppe Saverio Bruno-Chomin
Train stations always make me think more about the people
who are returning than those who are departing. Certainly, that’s
true of Palermo’s. A few kilometers prior to arriving and being
swallowed up within the bowels of the city, one is sucked through
a rotting row of teeth. This is the area called Brancaccio. There, on
Azzolino Hazon street, the people are still convinced that garbage
is biodegradable and that the cement is capable of absorbing it. And
so, it remains piled up to the second floor of the rundown buildings
where they live.
At any rate.
When the train slows down at Brancaccio, you begin to get a
whiff of the first smells of Palermo. If you look out the window, and
stick out your tongue, you can taste the oxidized paint and black
cherry ice cream. Inside the station, much like the inside of an old
man’s mouth, there are all sorts of things that have been nibbled
on yet never properly digested: the continual complaints of people
threatening to board the first train that comes along because they
are fed up, the caps under which lies some bicentennial filth, the
skirts of some night beauties, the whistles of two or three guards
who endure the pain of being the only ones working there and
cigarette butts that hand from the mouths of unemployed youths.
In the back of this mire you can just make out the green uvula of
Palermo, the monument to King Victor Emanuel II, in the center of
Giulio Cesare square. It is green and in bad shape on account of the
pigeon crap and the poisons inhaled in that square kilometer of the
city. The old king extends his gaze down via Roma, the ulcerated
esophagus of the city. A stretch of big barracks-like buildings choking
the sky, “Ballarò” to the left and “Vucciria” to the right, offset
like two crossed-eyed kidneys; and further down everything else,
the belly, which contains the Gardens, the asshole, and Mondello:
a close relative of the asshole.
I never quite understood what Monte Pellegrino is doing in the
middle of all of this, like an animal that has fallen asleep at the feet
of Palermo, tired and indifferent to the city. It is completely oblivious
to the devoted citizens of Palermo, who in September dedicate
l’Acchianata to it, the foot climb to the sanctuary of Santa Rosalia.
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