The Day of the Octopus

"But Presley," she had murmured, "that is not literature."
"No," he had cried between his teeth, "no, thank God, it is not."

Several weeks ago, when I was planning the trip, an outstanding question was, "How to get back to Rome from Sicily?" This was necessary, because I needed to fly from Rome to London to catch the return flight home. From Catania, Rome, is about eleven hours away by car or train, essentially a full day. There's an overnight, but then you have to get a room to agree to let you in around 6am, which they often dislike. You can fly, but by this point, I was half sick of airports, and I would have another day of them approaching. 

That said, the Rome airport and its transportation opportunities to the city... might be one of the very best. I also wasn't sure, during the planning stage where I was going to be when it was time to make the call. As it played out, I was in Catania, and I chose to take the early train and read a long book. 

In this case, it was The Octopus by Frank Norris, "The Moby Dick of Wheat!", a hard-hitting social novel about the effect of the nascent train industry on wheat farmers in California. I had previously read McTeague by Norris and loved it, and I have a friend who is a Norris evangelist, and, crucially, I would be on a train. To read The Octopus on a train?! Supreme! It would be like reading The Count of Monte Cristo in prison! 

650 pages and eleven hours awaited me as I left the Pupi Room and headed to the station. 

I had a bone in my throat from the previous night's frightening fried fish fest. It wouldn't cough out and I could not see it. It was far back, and attempts to blindly fish it out with a toothbrush felt like bulimia practice. Just before I left I used the wifi to see what the internet suggested, and they said "drink olive oil." Cracked me up.

The Pupi Room came with nothing. No toilet paper, no soap. No kitchen in which one could cook. It was bare (fish) bones, but there was, hilariously, a small bottle of olive oil. I remember seeing it and remember wondering why, with no stove, it was there. Now I knew! Ripped off the cap and took a deep draught. Felt it coat my throat and snag the bone at once, but it didn't quite dislodge it.

Headed out to let it work its magic. Tossed some apple cores in the public trash on the way (The Pupi Room didn't have a waste basket).

While I tried to work at it with my tongue, I also felt I had a bone in my mind. I was wondering why I responded so quickly to the "natural" line in the Lawrence thing. Had I fallen victim to one of the classic blunders? It was sort of equivalent to calling them "primitive."

Like, sigh, our High Western sense of culture has taken us too far above our "natural state. Oh, well, there's no turning back for us, we've seen too many paintings, but these charming rascals must be like the First Men. Can always dip down here to see what life would be like if I'd never read the Bronte sisters."

One of those double-sided complements like, "oh, these hip hop lyrics really boil down our essence, you know, into the simple things: The need for shelter, finding a mate, and a good source of food. Oh, and the violence one must employ in order to gather these things. This is how we were once, a fine reminder of what we've moved past."

How do we use the tools of culture to "other" people? How do we use the symbols of "civilization" to elevate ourselves? And why? For power? It's like the sick and cowardly way people correct other people's grammar or "tone police" their "vulgarity" on the internet when they can't fight the argument. The big news story that morning was about a group of young men in the US taunting a Native American at a political rally. The smirk of the leader seemed to embody this.

These thoughts and questions were too much to tackle in the cool air on the walk to the stazione (or here), but it is a faithful record of where my mind was at this stage of the trip and how I was processing my physical and mental responses to this incredible place. I loved Sicily and the way it challenged me and made me feel and think.

Every day a festival! Every night a feast!

Long walk, but my pack was light. Reading the books had really worked! Got a bottled water and boarded with no trouble. The seat I was in was where I would be for a very long time. Pull that cord, conductor! Pull it!

Turned back the cover of The Octopus, and we were off. 

 

Small crowd, and I had a lot of room to stretch my legs. I wondered how many of the faces I was seeing I would see again in Rome and how many would get off along the way. An old man with one eye blue from cataracts, a woman wearing a gomesi, an intense football fan with a well-oiled beard. It looked like it could peel a lemon, this beard. He was as gorgeous as a gangster, as handsome as a hooligan.

The train moved north, past Taormina, toward Messina on the northeast coast.

Everyone watched videos on their phone at full volume, a wild intrusive cacophony of sound. No one seemed to mind, and in any case they were watching their own loud videos. It's just how they do here. 

Despite this, the pages of the Octopus flew by. It occurred to me how easily he made it seem to establish and identify individual characters, something so difficult for the author of the last book I'd read, and I was very quickly angry at the capitalist villains pretending it was "market forces" that drove them and not personal greed or malice. Some, it seems, are better able to see and ride these "natural forces" of profitable energy and some are not. 

If it felt a lot like the natural vs. unnatural argument, it's because it was. The theme of the trip! 

The song of the trip, alas, is "Crying" by Aerosmith. I heard it everywhere for some reason. Taxis, train stations, restaurants. It's having an Italian (and Maltese) Renaissance. Why? A deeper question than the others! I was crying when I met you, now I'm dying to forget you. 

And then, oh, and then and then and then, I was una sposa sposata con stupore. The train had reached Messina and was being BOARDED ONTO A FERRY! The entire train was taking a boat ride! I don't mean the people getting off the train and getting onto a ferry, I mean THE CARS OF THE TRAIN DROVE ONTO THE FERRY.

It swallowed us up like something from a 70s Bond film. I had thought maybe there was a bridge between Sicily and mainland Italy, but there is not a bridge. 

You could get out of the train and walk around on the ferry, so I did. A man was selling arancini on the deck, so I bought some. Though I spoke only Italian to the merchant it was easy to tell I was not a native speaker, and a man in line asked me where I was from. When I told him Seattle, he said, "Ah, North of New York." 

I wondered if he had thought I'd said Syracuse, but I sort of drew a map of the US in the air, and showed him where it was. "Ah!" he said, "Near California. I was once in Miami!" I smiled and held my arancini in the air to toast his health. He smiled back. A very friendly encounter and a good parallel to when the guy in Bari had told me he was from Hungary. I was like, "Ah, Budapest!" and he was like, "Nowhere near Budapest, but you have a great time here in Bari, ok?" 

Ate on the deck and watched Messina disappear. The cold, cold sea air was much appreciated. Farewell, Sicily! For real this time. Got back on the train, train was dragged off the ferry and reassembled itself, and we were off. 

And we never stopped again for more than a few moments. Naples took a few minutes because of the bigger crowd getting on. A family of three sat with me for about two hours. Parents with a son in his early 20s. They ate homemade sandwiches, drank beer, and ate chocolate. Whenever the mother would speak to the son, he would roll his eyes, and she would smile. Then.... and then and then and then, he said it... he actually said: "Mamma Mia!" 

My Italian bingo card was complete!  

They were pleasant enough. At one point the father massaged his son's hands. I didn't speak to them, though. Better to be thought an American than to speak and remove all doubt.  

I stayed true and disciplined to my task, rarely looking up from the book. It was like the invisible hand of the marketplace was turning the pages! How they melted! There was a funny line about a woman with low stamina. It said "she easily obliterated herself." There were many relevant speeches about worker's rights and capitalism. I used to think of books from the 30s as being the authority on this theme, but this is from 1901. He, Norris, died at 32 from a goddamn burst appendix. A great loss. I wonder what battles he and Sinclair Lewis may have had on the bestseller lists, he and Dos Passos. 

We were stuck briefly in Somewhere. A guy with a cigarette in his mouth came over and kicked the side of the train a few times while another guy with a cigarette in his mouth watched him. They worked for the railroad. There must have been some magic in that old leather shoe they found, because the train sprang back to life. 

And then Rome! The man with the cataracts was still with me. With delays, the trip had taken almost twelve hours. I had read 600 pages and had fifty to go. I was starving. The first place I saw was called The Guiliani Cafe, so I kept moving to my apartment. My host checked me in, and I ran to the closest pizza place. Ripped off thirty more pages and stuffed myself. 

At home I finished the last twenty. I had done it! I had read The Octopus in a day! The Day of the Octopus! One of my greatest accomplishments! 

I obliterated myself all over the sheets and slept like a righteous man. Sometime in the night, the bone in my throat must have dislodged. I no longer feel it.