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“You are good?” He was speaking in English for my benefit, and she quickly switched too.
“For today,” she replied.
I looked around, trying to figure out where to sit. Books covered most of the floor space, stacked as high as possible without teetering over. Next to them were manila folders bulging with papers. The top of one pile was littered with amber bottles of pills. On the floor Berber-style cushions called to mind a harem or a wealthy hipster’s apartment. There was a bed in one corner and a kitchenette in the other.
“You are the American?”
“That’s what everyone here keeps calling me.”
Her tinkling laughter in response relaxed me.
“What do you teach?” I asked her.
“My course right now is Greek and Roman history, but my primary research is on female activists throughout Sicilian history.”
“Agata recently got promoted to main lecturer, which is like tenure in America,” Luca bragged like a proud father.
“Which means they cannot fire me no matter how bizarre my research becomes.”
My interest was piqued. “How bizarre is it?”
“It gets more interesting every day. Would you like a drink?”
I spied a hot plate and a basic moka pot in the kitchenette. “I’d love an espresso.”
“Me too.” She busied herself with the coffee while Luca pawed through some of her papers. He pulled a black-and-white etching from one and examined it. “Are you still searching for more on Maria Testadilana?”
I walked over to look at the drawing. In it a ragged group of men were laying siege to a city or town. Many of them were dressed like peasants in ripped trousers and shirts. A few wore long robes and traditional Muslim headdresses. A well-dressed male figure, royalty maybe, was impaled on a stake atop a pile of burning crates. The buildings behind the scene were engulfed in flames. One individual stood out from the others. Initially I mistook them for another Arab man in a long flowing robe, but this person’s head was bare and their hair—long, thick, curly locks—flowed freely. It was a woman brandishing a machete in one hand and a severed head in the other that she hoisted into the sky like a well-earned trophy. I pointed to her. “Maria?”
Agata approached with tiny saucers of caffeine.
“Oh, Maria,” she said with no small amount of affection. “I will always chase tales of Maria, but I think I have found everything there is.”
“Who is she?” I asked.
“She was many people and also no one. She was a poor shepherdess and a seller of prickly pears and an enthusiastic murderess who could slice a man’s head off in a single stroke. Some scholars are convinced she never existed at all, that she was constructed by storytellers to give the women at least some agency in a revolution that ignored them and their families in favor of a male cock-measuring competition for land and power, but I know that she was real and that there were more like her. Back in the revolution against the Bourbons more women fought for Sicily than most will ever acknowledge. Alas it has never been the women writing the history of this island, so many of their names will be forever lost. But not Maria’s. I will not allow it.”
Agata was in full professor mode, and despite my exhaustion and the strangeness of the day, I found her knowledge, however horrific, comforting to listen to.
“Maria led a group of forty-eight men who lit Palermo on fire and murdered the Bourbon nobles and their families. In one assault she killed thirty royal guards. But the insurgents who followed her feared her power. When it was over, they planted a letter in her home, framing her for kidnapping and looting. She went to prison and disappeared. No body, no pardon. Her name was mostly lost to history for a very long time.”
“When was this?”
“Eighteen forty-eight. Not so long ago, right before Sicily’s so-called independence from the crown and the unification. One of the last battles in the hundreds of battles and takeovers of this island where one wealthy man from a wealthy family replaces another wealthy man from a wealthy family and then rapes this island of everything good. First the Greeks, then the Romans, the Byzantines, the Abbasids, the Normans, the Berbers, the Habsburgs, the Castiles, the pope. They were all mostly the same. This island is a potential paradise squandered by greed. It is hard to be a historian without becoming a nihilist because you see the worst of history repeat itself over and over again. It may be why I lose my mind on a regular basis.”
I really liked this little woman, but it was hard to keep up. She hadn’t stopped moving the entire time she talked, flittering about the room like an excited hummingbird.
Luca’s phone dinged with a text. Both Agata and I whipped our heads around and gazed at him with a proprietary look. Luca frowned and typed furiously. Another ding. A sigh.
“I have to go.”
I quickly downed the rest of my coffee and prepared to leave as Luca shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot. “Sara, I can take you to a hotel.”
“Luca, you do not need to run to them the second they call for you. Stay,” Agata almost shouted.
He responded in dialect, speaking quickly and sharply, and I couldn’t make out any of it. Agata cursed and then gave up.
“Leave Sara here. It is very late. She can stay in the apartment across the street.” She pulled out a key. “Dottoressa Grado is traveling and I have a key to her place so I can water her plants. It is yours.”
