One of the more evocative passages of Tomasi di Lampedusa’s The Leopard describes the trek, in horse-drawn carriages, from Palermo to Donnafugata. Strongly autobiographical, it is based on the author’s memories of his family’s annual villeggiatura in Santa Margherita di Belice.
The town is not quite 40 miles from Palermo, yet a hundred years ago it was a 12-hour journey away by train and landau. Caked in dust and their throats burning, the Lampedusas would be greeted at the family house in Santa Margherita with glasses of iced lemonade that was “bad, but blissful to drink”.
In both his novel and autobiographical sketches, Lampedusa paints a decidedly bleak picture of the Sicilian countryside in summer. He describes the parched, bare hillsides that “flame yellow under the sun” and offer not a jot of respite: “Never a tree, never a drop of water, just sun and dust”.
Lampedusa was not the only Sicilian author to write of the countryside, and especially the countryside in summer, as an unforgiving and hostile place. The antidotes in his case were houses and gardens.
The villeggiatura house at Santa Margherita, for example, had a large garden described as a “brimful of surprises”. What’s left of it is now a parco letterario (literary park) that commemorates the author’s life and work.
Beautiful though his one novel and one or two short stories may be, there are two reasons why Lampedusa is not necessarily the best dispenser of advice about the countryside in summer and how to beat its singeing excesses.
First, the antidotes are not widely available. At Santa Margherita, 12 people had the run of 300 roomfuls of princely comforts as well as a verdant plotful of fountains, temples and such garden follies. The iced lemonades, sorbet and various other cooling devices were seen to by an army of servants. I take it as a safe assumption that I’m not the only person in Malta to have to go without these basic necessities.
Early summer is possibly the time when the Maltese countryside is at its most striking
The second reason is that Lampedusa may have been too harsh in his appraisal of the Sicilian landscape in summer. It may be that the windows of the train from Palermo to Castelvetrano were too thickly frosted with dust, or that the fine qualities of the villeggiatura house encouraged a barnacled life. Or maybe Lampedusa was simply rehearsing the timeless tendency of Mediterranean urbanites to turn their backs on the countryside.
Whatever the reason, the point is that Lampedusa seems not to have looked hard enough. Had he bothered, he might have noticed that the brimful of surprises did not stop at the garden walls. Nor for that matter is it reluctant to travel south.
I used to be among the very many Maltese Lampedusas who dismiss the countryside in summer as so much desolate dryness – an anticlimax to spring, if you will. Summer was a time to head to the sea, or to stay at home. (Fans and airconditioners are not an unreasonable substitute for lemon sorbet and garden temples.)
That was until I learnt that early summer is possibly the time when the Maltese countryside is at its most striking. What is called ‘nixfa’ (a barren dryness) turns out to be a palette of browns. Lampedusa described the colour as that of a lion’s mane – but then there is nothing the matter with a lion’s mane. By August, two months of bleaching sun and the clusters of snails that climb up high to escape the heat turn the landscape into a dirty white.
Nor is green entirely absent. Fennel (bużbież), for example, comes into its own even as everything else around it dries up. By mid-June, and often at roadsides, the dense emerald leaves put out umbrella-like yellow flowers on tall stalks. The road from Burmarrad to Naxxar, for example, was a natural avenue until a bunch of men employed by some criminally-stupid local council decided that fennel was a weed that had to be destroyed.
Fennel is not the only plant to flower in summer. Thyme (sagħtar) does so in June, and some kinds of sedum and ragwort (kromb) venture well into July. And, just when beaches like Golden Bay are at their maddest, the fragrance of sun cream sometimes turns out to be that of sea daffodils (pankrazju).
Lampedusa describes Sicilian gardens as “existing for the pleasures of the smell”. Santa Margherita itself was a “paradise of scorched, dry fragrances, of wild marjoram and calamint”.
I will not try to better Lampedusa’s descriptions, nor am I botanically competent to write about the relation between the scorching sun and plant aromas. Still, very few smells can compete with that of dried fennel stalks crushed underfoot, or browned thyme rubbed in the palm of the hand. In summer, too, pine trees ooze a scented resin that I somehow associate with The Odyssey.
In a few weeks’ time, the first sea squills (għansar) will put up the tall white flowers that, by mid-August, carpet hillsides and sea slopes. Until then, I’m in no hurry to leave the walled garden.
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