Frozen Harbor (3)
By mid-June, the cruise ship Queen Anne docked as scheduled at Palermo, the capital of Sicily, Italy.
Sicily. The three syllables slipped lightly across the lips, as though they alone could summon a string of beautiful legends. This place was vast and fertile, with a warm climate and beautiful scenery, rich in citrus fruits, lemons, and olives. Historically, it had been known as the “Golden Basin.” It was the birthplace of puppetry, a paradise for wine, and the cradle of the Renaissance, filled with the Mediterranean’s rich colors and brilliant sunlight.
Goethe once said that not going to Sicily was like never having been to Italy. Because only there could you find the source of Italy’s beauty.
When she disembarked, the entire city had just been washed by a heavy rain. Palermo, gradually awakening in the early morning, carried with it the misty poetry and hazy obscurity of water vapor.
Tan Guhong walked alone through the city streets, quite astonished. She had never imagined that this southern European city would be so full of Middle Eastern character. Arab-style buildings could be seen everywhere.
In fact, the city of Palermo possessed a mottled and complicated history. It had once been ruled by more than a dozen dynasties and powers, including the Phoenicians, the ancient Romans, the Byzantine Empire, the Arab Empire, the Normans, the Holy Roman Empire, the Kingdom of Spain, the Kingdom of Naples, the Kingdom of Sicily, and the Kingdom of Italy. The cultural memories it carried were equally varied and brilliant. The most direct manifestation of this was the architecture lining its streets.
Norman, Byzantine, Arab, Baroque. Ancient buildings and sculptures could be seen everywhere, their various styles colliding and blending into one another. The entire city seemed like a three-dimensional history of European architecture, dazzling the eye and leaving no end to see.
Tan Guhong was no different. She would stop from time to time, carefully taking in the sights, and every time she paused, the corner of her eye could catch sight of the figure following unhurriedly behind her, neither coming closer nor moving farther away.
That person was, of course, Luo Jingming.
Obviously, the two of them had gotten into a disagreement.
The fuse was naturally what had happened on the Seaview Promenade earlier. But it had nothing to do with the actual incident itself. Tan Guhong had never really taken it to heart. It was just that afterward, someone had taken to teasing her every now and then by calling her “Miss Bites-a-Lot.” It was practically turning the truth upside down. It was simply too much!
So after docking this time, Tan Guhong decisively left Luo Jingming behind and toured the city by herself.
Of course, his legs belonged to him, so there was no way she could leave him behind completely. Fortunately, he had enough sense not to come forward and make himself unwelcome.
The two of them passed through the streets and alleys like this, one ahead and one behind, neither too close nor too far, pretending not to see each other while actually knowing perfectly well where the other was. It could even be considered a kind of tacit understanding.
Passing Palermo City Hall, crossing Piazza Pretoria, going by a folk band performing in the street, and walking along Via Maqueda, they somehow arrived at the center of the old city without realizing it, the Quattro Canti.
Via Vittorio Emanuele and Via Maqueda intersected here, dividing Palermo’s old city into four sections. The buildings at the four corners of the central intersection were all symmetrically curved, forming a small circular plaza. Each building had three stories, and in the center of the facade on every floor stood a Baroque sculpture, each with a different form, seemingly representing some kind of meaning.
Tan Guhong stood by the roadside, observing and thinking. Just as she was about to take out her phone to search for information, someone beside her suddenly spoke.
“The sculptures, from bottom to top, represent fountains symbolizing the four seasons, the four Spanish kings of Sicily, and the four patron saints of Palermo.”
She turned her head and looked expressionlessly at the person beside her.
“Mr. ‘Doesn’t Bite,’ I’m not familiar with you.”
He shook his head helplessly and laughed quietly for a long while. His gaze toward her was deep and shadowed as he slowly said,
“Then, aren’t we rather well matched?”
Miss Bites-a-Lot and Mr. Doesn’t Bite.
Tan Guhong was completely speechless. She rolled her eyes, turned around, and walked away.
Heading west from Quattro Canti was the famous Palermo Cathedral. In the Christian world of the West, churches were everywhere, and Tan Guhong had already seen far too many churches along the way, but the one before her was still the most distinctive.
Construction on this building began in 1184, and it underwent a long building history lasting more than six hundred years. Norman-style carvings, Gothic double-tiered pointed windows and arches, Catalan-style porticos and columns, Arab-style arcades, and geometric patterns in the Muslim style at the apse were perfectly blended together, making it the culmination of Palermo’s intricate and complex architecture.
Tan Guhong did not believe in gods, but she maintained respect for the vastness of history and for sincere faith. She walked quietly through the cathedral, carefully studying every ceiling painting and every sculpture, appreciating this extremely eclectic cathedral from the pure perspective of art.
In front of the sarcophagus of Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor, she finished reading the brief account of his life. Almost instinctively, she turned her head to look back, but the person she had expected to see was nowhere in sight.
She paused for a few seconds, then turned back and continued her tour.
After seeing all the chapels, the royal burial area, and the jewelry displayed in the underground exhibition, she left and continued wandering aimlessly through the city.
Heading west along Via Vittorio Emanuele, she soon came to the Porta Nuova, or New Gate, built by Charles V. The New Gate stood directly beside the Norman Palace.
All of Palermo’s old buildings bore the yellowish hue left by the passage of time. The churches were like this, and so was the royal palace. The mottled exterior walls bore witness to the changes of the years, while the gilded and splendid chapels within spoke of the prosperity of dynasties past. Only beneath the domes, those coming and going were no longer aristocrats and members of royal families, but unfamiliar tourists with different faces and different skin colors. A thousand years, a hundred years, the past was like smoke.
Before the vast river of history, human beings were no more than a grain of sand in the sea, so powerless, so insignificant.
When she grew tired of walking, Tan Guhong simply sat down to rest on the long steps outside the Teatro Massimo. A classic scene from a film that had gone down in cinematic history had once been shot here, so the place was bustling with people coming and going.
She rested her chin in one hand, motionless as she watched the tourists passing by around her and the endless stream of cars on the street. Her thoughts drifted freely, her mind empty.
The afternoon Mediterranean sunlight lazily fell upon her, leisurely and comfortable. Her stomach was growling with hunger, yet she did not want to move at all.
She did not know how long she had been sitting there. It seemed like a few minutes, like an entire afternoon, and also like several thousand years.
War and chaos, flames and smoke. Cities turned to ruins amid turmoil, then slowly rebuilt themselves from those very ruins. Dust faded into oblivion, years passed amid the smoke of time.
Until a slender, fair hand with distinct knuckles appeared in her field of vision, she sat there in a daze for a moment before slowly raising her head.
Backlit, his face could not be seen clearly. All she could hear was that familiar voice, warm with laughter:
“Miss ‘Not Familiar With Me,’ would you mind going to have some pasta with a stranger?”
She squinted against the glaring sunlight, struggling to see. After looking for a long while, she slowly lowered her head. Her eyes dropped, the corners of her lips lifting slightly, and she reached out and placed her hand in his palm, saying lightly:
“Fine.”
……
Italian culinary culture had a long and rich history. Strictly speaking, both French cuisine and American cuisine could be considered branches of it. It could truly be called the “mother of Western cuisine.”
An unassuming little restaurant on the street served spaghetti carbonara, pea meatballs, Italian cabbage rolls, and cream of mushroom soup, along with a refreshing salad. It made for a delicious and remarkably affordable meal.
After the main course came dessert. Luo Jingming leisurely sipped his espresso while Tan Guhong dug into the scoop of vanilla ice cream in her cup. The two of them chatted on and off about the sights they had each seen earlier and Sicily’s complicated history.
Suddenly, a little boy of seven or eight ran up to their table. Looking at Luo Jingming, he asked very seriously, “Are you Mr. Lone?”
He was speaking Italian. Italian sounded very similar to Spanish, and many people who studied Spanish also took Italian as a minor. Tan Guhong was no exception. Although she had not used it in a long time and had forgotten most of it, she could still understand what he meant.
Luo Jingming nodded. The boy handed him a letter, then ran away without looking back.
Tan Guhong smiled and teased him. “You even speak Italian English?”
But Luo Jingming did not answer. He opened the letter and stared intently at the one in his hand.
From Tan Guhong’s angle, she could only see several lines of Italian written on the paper when it caught the light. She could not understand what they meant.
“What’s wrong?”
Luo Jingming was silent for a moment, then smiled.
“An old friend wants to see me.”
“Your expression looks so complicated. Is this an old friend, or an old lover?”
He laughed despite himself and shook his head. Then he picked up the envelope from the table and gestured for her to look.
It was a completely blank envelope, nothing particularly special about it. But the seal was distinctly old-fashioned, stamped shut with red sealing wax bearing an emblem composed of a letter intertwined with thorny vines.
“This symbol represents the Catarro family. Ten years ago, Mr. Lone was only the boss of Chinatown. But Dante Catarro was the godfather of all San Francisco.”
Sicily was the pearl of southern Italy, the birthplace of puppetry, a paradise for wine, the Golden Basin. But at the same time, it was also the birthplace of the Mafia.
Mafia, a criminal organization that inspired fear throughout the world.
Tan Guhong’s expression changed slightly.
In the 20th century, when the tide of immigration swept from Europe toward America, the Mafia families of Sicily followed the current and headed for the New World, putting down roots in New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and other places. They continued their old trades, controlling America’s underground black markets.
“Were they your enemies?”
She remembered him saying that, back then, Chinatown and the Italians had once had conflicts over their interests.
“They were at first. Later, not exactly.”
Luo Jingming slowly said, “When my father was alive, he and the Catarro family were completely at odds. They tried to get their hands on Chinatown, and that was something my father could never tolerate. After my father died, they crossed the line for a time, taking away quite a few businesses and driving Chinese people out on a large scale within their territory. But later, to deal with the increasingly powerful Vietnamese gang, we had a brief period of cooperation.”
In those days, San Francisco had been a place where powerful forces converged and contended, with one rising as another fell, tangled in life, death, grudges, and debts. By then, it was no longer something that could be summed up in a sentence or two.
“At the time, Dante was the head of the Catarro family. He was in his prime and at the height of his power. Under his leadership, the Catarro family became the foremost of San Francisco’s three Mafia families, and also the police’s primary target. Not long after I left San Francisco, he was caught in an operation meticulously arranged by the police. But he had prepared in advance, so the major charges brought against him could not be proven. In the end, he was sentenced to five years in prison only for tax evasion. If you count the years, he should have gotten out by now.”
“Looks like he went back home. I wonder whether he really turned over a new leaf, or whether he’s making a comeback?”
“Perhaps the former…” Luo Jingming smiled, his meaning profound. “After all, things are different now.”
The glory of the Chinese community in Chinatown had already faded, and the Mafia’s former prominence was gone as well. Heroes emerged in troubled times, but that dark and chaotic era had ultimately passed.
“So is this person your enemy or your friend?”
“Both enemy and friend.”
Tan Guhong was silent for a moment before asking softly,
“Is he dangerous?”
“I don’t know.”
Tan Guhong froze. She had imagined him answering yes. She had also imagined him answering no. But she had never expected him to say he did not know.
She lowered her head, finished the last bite of ice cream, and drank the melted cream and syrup from the cup as well. Setting down her silver spoon, she said with a half-smile,
“Anyone who can make even you unsure, I’m going to have to see for myself.”
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