《美食祈禱和戀愛》Chapter 36 (76):再看一眼西西里

I have only a week left here. I'm planning to go back to America for Christmas before flying to India, not only because I can't stand the thought of spending Christmas without my family but also because the next eight months of my journey—India and Indonesia—require a complete repacking of gear. Very little of the stuff you need when you are living in Rome is the same stuff you need when you are wandering around India. 我在這裏的日子只剩下一個星期。我打算回美國過聖誕，之後再飛去印度，不僅因爲我沒法容忍不和家人過聖誕，也因爲接下來爲期八個月的旅行——印度和印尼——需要重新打包行裝。住在羅馬需要的東西，和你周遊印度需要的東西是兩回事。

And maybe it's in preparation for my trip to India that I decide to spend this last week traveling through Sicily—the most third-world section of Italy, and therefore not a bad place to go if you need to prepare yourself to experience extreme poverty. Or maybe I only want to go to Sicily because of what Goethe said: "Without seeing Sicily one cannot get a clear idea of what Italy is." 或許是爲了印度之旅預作準備，我決定最後一個禮拜去西西里旅行——意大利境內最第三世界的地區，因此如須讓自己做好體驗赤貧的準備，這是不錯的地方。也或許我去西西里，只是因爲歌德說過：“沒去過西西里，便無從清楚瞭解意大利。”

But it's not easy getting to or around Sicily. I have to use all my finding-out skills to find a train that runs on Sunday all the way down the coast and then to find the correct ferryboat to Messina (a scary and suspicious Sicilian port town that seems to howl from behind barricaded doors, "It's not my fault I'm ugly! I've been earthquaked and carpet-bombed and raped by the Mafia, too!") Once I've arrived in Messina, I have to find a bus station (grimy as a smoker's lung) and find the man whose job it is to sit there in the ticket booth, mourning his life, and see if he will please sell me a ticket to the coastal town of Taormina. Then I rattle along the cliffs and beaches of Sicily's stupendous and hard-edged east coast until I get to Taormina, and then I have to find a taxi and then I have to find a hotel. Then I have to find the right person of whom to ask my favorite question in Italian: "Where is the best food in this town?" In Taormina, that person turns out to be a sleepy policeman. He gives me one of the greatest things anyone can ever give me in life—a tiny piece of paper with the name of an obscure restaurant written on it, a hand-drawn map of how to find the place. 然而去西西里旅行並不容易。我得用盡所有的探知能力找到週日一路南下抵達海岸的火車，然後找到正確的渡輪前往墨西拿（Messina；一個恐怖可疑的海港城市，似乎從堵住的門後咆哮：“醜並不是我的錯！我經歷過地震，遭受過地毯式轟炸，還慘遭黑手黨蹂躪！”）。一抵達墨西拿後，得找到公車站（和吸菸者的肺一樣骯髒），找到坐在賣票亭裏自怨自艾的男人，問他能否賣我一張開往濱海小鎮陶爾米納（Taormina）的車票。公車在西西里鋒芒畢露的東海岸沿着峭壁和海灘顛簸行駛，直到抵達陶爾米納後，我得找到一輛計程車，然後找一家旅社。而後得找對人，用意大利語問我最愛的問題：“鎮上 哪個地方東西最好吃？”結果在陶爾米納找到的人是個睡眼惺忪的警察。他給了我最好的東西——一張紙條，上面寫了一家地處偏僻的餐廳名字，並有指出餐廳方位的手寫地圖。

Which turns out to be a little trattoria where the friendly elderly proprietress is getting ready for her evening's customers by standing on a table in her stocking feet, trying not to knock over the Christmas crèche as she polishes the restaurant windows. I tell her that I don't need to see the menu but could she just bring me the best food possible because this is my first night in Sicily. She rubs her hands together in pleasure and yells something in Sicilian dialect to her even-more-elderly mother in the kitchen, and within the space of twenty minutes I am busily eating the hands-down most amazing meal I've eaten yet in all of Italy. It's pasta, but a shape of pasta I've never before seen—big, fresh, sheets of pasta folded ravioli-like into the shape (if not exactly the size) of the pope's hat, stuffed with a hot, aromatic puree of crustaceans and octopus and squid, served tossed like a hot salad with fresh cockles and strips of julienned vegetables, all swimming in an olivey, oceany broth. Followed by the rabbit, stewed in thyme. 結果是一家小酒館。友善年長的女掌櫃正在爲當晚的生意做準備，她穿着長襪的腳站在桌上，一邊擦拭餐廳窗戶，試着不碰倒聖誕耶穌像。我跟她說我無須看菜單，請她爲我拿來最好的食物，因爲這是我在西西里的第一個夜晚。她欣喜地摩拳擦掌，用西西里方言朝她在廚房的老邁母親叫喊；然後在二十分鐘內，我忙着享用在整個意大利吃過最讓人驚奇的一餐。是麪食，卻是我從未見過的形狀——又大又新鮮，一片片像意大利餃子（雖然尺寸不盡相同）般摺疊成教皇帽子的形狀，內餡是甲殼動物、章魚和烏賊熬煮而成的又滾燙又香濃的泥末，和切絲蔬菜拌在一起，浸泡在橄欖風味、海洋般的湯汁裏。下一道菜則是百里香燉兔肉。

But Syracuse, the next day, is even better. The bus coughs me up on a street corner here in the cold rain, late in the day. I love this town immediately. There are three thousand years of history under my feet in Syracuse. It's a place of such ancient civilization that it makes Rome look like Dallas. Myth says that Daedalus flew here from Crete and that Hercules once slept here. Syracuse was a Greek colony that Thucydides called "a city not in the least inferior to Athens itself." Syracuse is the link between ancient Greece and ancient Rome. Many great playwrights and scientists of antiquity lived here. Plato thought it would be the ideal location for a utopian experiment where perhaps "by some divine fate" rulers might become philosophers, and philosophers might become rulers. Historians say that rhetoric was invented in Syracuse, and also (and this is just a minor thing) plot. 可是隔天的錫拉庫薩（Syracuse）更是精采。公車在傍晚的冷雨中讓我在某個街角下車。我立即愛上這個城市。錫拉庫薩的三千年歷史就在腳下。這兒的古老文明使羅馬看起來就像美國的達拉斯。傳說狄德勒斯（Daedalus）從克里特島飛到此地，赫丘力士（Hercules）曾睡過這裏。錫拉庫薩曾是希臘殖民地，修昔底德（Thucydides）說它是“絲毫不遜於雅典的城市”。錫拉庫薩是聯繫古希臘和古羅馬的紐帶。許多古代劇作家和科學家曾住在此地。柏拉圖認爲它是實現烏托邦的理想地點，或許“藉由某種天命”，讓統治者成爲哲學家，哲學家成爲統治者。歷史學家說，修辭學的發明是在錫拉庫薩，而劇本的“情節”亦然（這只是一樁小事）。

I walk through the markets of this crumbly town and my heart tumbles with a love I can't answer or explain as I watch an old guy in a black wool hat gut a fish for a customer (he has stuck his cigarette in his lips for safekeeping the way a seamstress keeps her pins in her mouth as she sews; his knife works with devotional perfection on the fillets). Shyly, I ask this fisherman where I should eat tonight, and I leave our conversation clutching yet another little piece of paper, directing me to a little restaurant with no name, where—as soon as I sit down that night—the waiter brings me airy clouds of ricotta sprinkled with pistachio, bread chunks floating in aromatic oils, tiny plates of sliced meats and olives, a salad of chilled oranges tossed in a dressing of raw onion and parsley. This is before I even hear about the calamari house specialty. 我從這座脆弱城市的市場走過去，看着一位戴黑色羊毛帽的老人爲顧客剖開魚肚（他叼着煙，就像裁縫師縫製衣服時叼着針；他持刀把魚片切得完美無缺），令我心中洋溢着某種無法回答或解釋的愛意。我羞怯地問這位魚販今晚該去哪兒吃飯，我們談過話之後，我取了張紙條，指引我去一家無名小餐館。我一坐下，服務生便拿來一團團鬆軟、撒有開心果的瑞科達（Ricotta）乳酪，麪包塊漂浮在芬芳的油中，一碟碟肉片和橄欖，佐以生洋蔥與歐芹的冰橘沙拉。之後，我才聽說魷魚招牌菜。