Sicilian Odyssey by Francine Prose Read Free Book Online Page A

Sicilian folk tunes, and the brass bands fall silent.
    A hush falls over the crowd as twenty or so dancers appear. Their skin ranges in color from ebony to coffee to white, and they’re showing a lot of it. In fact, most are nearly naked, wearing only sequined bras, G-strings, and feathered headdresses.
    The troupe from Rio includes a few men, but the majority of the dancers are female—or are they? Some look like women, others appear to be transsexuals in various stages of the sex change process, some further along than the rest. Anyway, they’re all convincing enough so that it takes me a while to sort out their gender identities, or—more accurately—to admit that I’ll never be able to sort them out. And I can’t help wondering how much (or any) of this the Sicilian grandmas are getting.
    Certainly the question occurs to the people who have chosen to watch the parade, broadcast live, on a large-screen television in a pizzeria a block or so off the corso. They watch in silence, forgetting their steaming slices of fresh porcini pizza, as the camera zooms in on the faces of the dancers and splices live performance footage from the piazza with recorded studio interviews that the Brazilians gave earlier, “conversations” that mostly involve the dancers advancing menacingly on the cameras and shouting out their names.
    What all the Brazilians appear to share in common is an unusually high level of sexual confidence and (despite, or because of, their gender ambiguity) a hearty dose of aggression about their sexuality. In that way, they remind me of the bands of eunuchs I’ve seen in India: Begging, dancing, singing in the streets, the eunuchs are absolutely and unabashedly in your face with their sexual outlaw status. And in Acireale’s Piazza del Duomo, the Brazilians make you realize, by contrast, how traditional and old-fashioned gender roles still remain, for the most part, in provincial Sicily. Except for one female trumpet player in a sequined bowler hat, all the Sicilian musicians are male, while the pom-pom girls and majorettes are working overtime to seem coquettish and demonstrably nubile.
    As the drums get louder, the Brazilians dance up a storm. Though they smile and playfully interact with their audience, no one runs around this little group with noisemaking chamber pots and animated toilet bowls. There’s nothing relaxed, ironic, or self-mocking here, their brand of sex is serious business.
    Unlike the other musical groups, the Brazilians are surrounded by uniformed representatives of the city’s Carnival committee, hustling alongside the performers, running interference between them and the crowd, and barking into their walkie-talkies; on their faces are the grimaces of tension, concentration, and responsibility you see on Secret Service agents protecting government officials. And in fact the guards’ presence seems necessary. The Brazilians are putting out a strange vibe, it’s as if they’re tempting, taunting the crowd to rush them, to come and touch their bare skins, to see if they are real. The force field surrounding them could hardly be more unlike that which emanates from the goofy, good-humored brass bands.

    At the Carnival, Acireale
    I’m so enthralled by the Brazilians that I’m startled when I turn and notice that the gigantic illuminated floats for which the Carnival in Acireale is famous have been lit up and have begun to drift down the street. Rainbow-colored, grotesque, tall enough (and ingeniously designed) so that the figures on them can bend to fit under the telephone and electrical wires, most of the floats are, essentially, enormous political cartoons. One portrays Prime Minister Berlusconi riding on “the rooster that laid a golden egg.” Another features the Italian cultural heroes whose faces used to appear on lire notes and who have now been rendered “homeless” by the adoption of the euro. Yet another, “Homage to the 20th Century,” is covered by cartoon