a narrow Baroque-era street in San Berillo Vecchio, the roadway and flanking kerbs cut from dark porous lava stone that absorbs rather than reflects the intermittent cloud-filtered light, a wrought-iron balcony overhead trailing a single unpinned shirt, the street empty at either end on a Sunday morning — stopped mid-crossing as a pocket of warm air lifts the hem of her skirt; head turned slightly left toward an unseen sound — a radio somewhere above
The glass panel in the sidewalk was small. Maybe half a meter across. I crouched down over it and stayed there long enough that someone walked around me.
at the glass floor-panel set into the piazza pavement above the buried Roman theatre, the panel perhaps half a meter across, its edges flush with warm-grey basalt flagstones worn smooth by foot traffic, the curved dark stone visible below through scuffed glass, a small laminated placard fixed at the margin — crouched low over the glass panel, placard still in hand, no longer reading — staring down into the two-thousand-year-old curve of stone below the street
Below: curved stone, dark, two thousand years old, sitting under the piazza like something left in a pocket. Not excavated, not displayed — just found, mostly, and covered again with a panel so people could continue walking over it. There was a placard I read twice. I added the linen shirt while I was reading it, mostly to have something to do with my arms while I thought about what I was looking at.
Catania keeps building on top of itself. Not because it forgets. I think it knows exactly where everything is. It just doesn't feel the need to interrupt.
the small glass sidewalk panel over the Roman Teatro Romano ruins, crouching phone-level, curved dark lava stone visible two meters below through the glass
Earlier I had been at Piazza Stesicoro. I gave it twenty minutes — the rule — and then left. Construction on two sides, the kind of tourism that happens in the morning before people have decided what they want yet. I turned and walked without a direction, which is a different thing from wandering. The streets in San Berillo Vecchio are quieter on a Sunday and the light came and went in intervals, soft then sharp, the clouds doing something considered. The wrap of the skirt caught the air at the crossings. Warm, but not yet the weight of the afternoon.
a small oval plate of eggplant-based Sicilian dish, caponata-style, dark and glossy with cooked-down onion and aubergine
By early evening I'd walked further than planned and eaten standing at a counter I found by sound — a radio, then voices, then the smell of onions cooked past translucency. I didn't catch what I was eating. Something with eggplant and something else underneath it. I finished it.
inside a counter-only trattoria in San Berillo Vecchio, the counter surfaced in chipped white ceramic tile, a shallow terracotta dish pushed to the side still holding a smear of eggplant, a small transistor radio on a shelf behind the counter, the ceiling low and yellowed — finished eating; both hands flat on the counter's edge, head slightly bowed — not looking at the dish, not looking up, somewhere between the two
I changed before dinner. There was a version of this Sunday evening that warranted the dress that has nothing to prove.
The glass panel was still catching light when I passed again on the way back. Nobody else stopped.
What she wore
day3-scene1
I left the hotel early enough that the light was still low and the piazza was quiet — the skirt caught the air when I crossed the lava stone.
day3-scene2
By the time I reached Teatro Romano the sun had come out properly — I added the shirt just to have somewhere for my arms to go while I was reading the placard.
day3-scene3
I changed before dinner because I wanted to, not because I had to — there's a version of Sunday evening in Catania that deserves the one dress I brought that has nothing to prove.