Out of Sheer Rage. Geoff Dyer

their sixties, they do it sitting down, with hardly a word being spoken. Take this guy in a fat yellow T-shirt, waddling past on his bike. At thirteen he had been the fat boy who everyone teased; now, at thirty, he was a grown-up fat boy. His friends teased him and he cycled off, sulking, but then, in the forgiving way of fat boys who cannot bear to be on their own, he came back, ready for more.

      On the corner of a street, in the shade, a woman was selling fish, calling out to passing motorists; an old man cycled past, selling oregano; a man shaving in a second-floor window conducted a prolonged conversation with a friend in the street: vivid instances of why – quite apart from the inherent musicality of the language – so many of the great opera singers have been Italian. Opera begins in the market where, over and above the simple demands of competition, of being able to attract customers’ attention, stall holders have to convey the colour and taste of fruit in their voices. The man selling oregano, for example: he called out and the air was fragrant with oregano. His job was not to sell oregano but to fill the air with the sound of its scent. And while Italians are happy to be in close proximity to each other as we were on the train, they enjoy conversing from a great distance, or calling down the street to each other. The popularity of cellular phones is simply the technological manifestation of this inherited cultural trait.

      As soon as we arrived in Taormina we began asking for Lawrence’s house, the Villa Fontana Vecchia. No one knew of a Villa Fontana Vecchia but several people knew of a Via Fontana Vecchia. We headed that way while Laura, now that we were no longer bound by the code of silence, stopped almost everyone to ask directions. It was as though we were not seeking guidance so much as canvassing local opinion as to the whereabouts of the Villa Fontana Vecchia. The results of such a survey confirmed our initial impression of Sicilians, for the typical response was to claim that there was no such place and then, once we looked suitably crestfallen, to direct us towards it. We wound our way there and began looking for the exact house. We saw a man reading La Sicilia in the distinctive way that Italians have of reading newspapers, especially the sports pages: he was absorbed in his reading, giving himself totally to the experience but with an expression of furrowed doubt etched into his face. Watching him, it seemed certain that reading the papers each morning had become a substitute for prayer. Reluctant to disturb him in his devotions we spoke to a woman with a limp who thought it might be the first house on the corner. A lovely old place, it turned out, which happened to be for rent. I decided then and there that I would rent it for six months in order to write my book because it was such a clear example of serendipity that the house Lawrence had lived in should be available to rent. The problem was that there was no way of confirming whether or not it was the right house. We asked another woman with an even more pronounced limp (they are great limpers, the Sicilians) who shook her head and said it was definitely not the house of Lawrence, it was her son-in-law’s house.

      We walked on and the Via Fontana Vecchia turned into Via David Herbert Lawrence. Ah! We were on the right track. It seemed a shame, though, that it wasn’t called Via Lorenzo which would have fitted in better with the other street names. Laura took my photo – with a newly bought disposable camera: having lugged the Nikon to Sicily, she had left it back in vile Furci – beneath the sign because that was the only way we could think of commemorating this discovery. We asked a man with a walking stick if he knew the house. He replied eagerly, as expected: men with walking sticks are always pleased to give directions: the act of raising the stick and pointing imparts to them something of the character of a prophet. Lawrence’s house was the big place, quite a way off, on the right, the place with mustard-coloured walls. We plodded along the road that clung to the hillside. The sun lurched in and out of clouds, bougainvillaea dulled and burst into purple flame. The road had curled in such a way that we were now behind the houses pointed out by the prophet, and it was impossible to tell which one he had singled out.

      ‘A common part of literary pilgrimage,’ I said as we walked on, ‘is that you often don’t know which house you’re meant to be visiting. In a sense it doesn’t make any difference but it’s very difficult to return home unless you have absolute proof that you’ve been to the right place. Hence the need, I conclude, for a plaque on the wall: to free us from doubt.’

      We walked on. A man was opening his garage and Laura began to ask him about la casa dello scrittore inglese . . .

      ‘Si, si,’ he interrupted. ‘È quella là.’ The pink one. On the other side of the road, approached from a gate at our level but actually perched up on the next contour line – everything in Taormina is perched on everything else. The top floor was painted pink. There were three green shutters, all drawn, and a long, very narrow terrace with black iron railings. The floor below was pale cream, also with a long terrace and three arched Norman windows of a kind often seen in Sicily (I’d never seen them before). To the left, painted yellow, was what looked like an annex or extension. A steep line of steps led down from the house to the locked gate at our level. Laura walked off to see if there was another entrance while I contemplated the house. Laura came back a few minutes later and I followed her up the road which took us behind the house. There were some roadworks going on and the whole area had a Moscow smell of petrol about it. It was obvious now that there were two apartments: the yellow annex and the main house, on the wall of which was a plaque:

      D. H. Lawrence

      English Author

      11.9.1885 – 2.3.1930

      Lived Here

      1920 – 1923

      We had found it. We stood silently. I knew this moment well from previous literary pilgrimages: you look and look and try to summon up feelings which don’t exist. You try saying a mantra to yourself, ‘D. H. Lawrence lived here.’ You say, ‘I am standing in the place he stood, seeing the things he saw . . .’, but nothing changes, everything remains exactly the same: a road, a house with sky above it and the sea glinting in the distance.

      We walked by the side of the house, peered over the fence. It was three in the afternoon, and if there was anyone in the house they were asleep. The only thing to do was to come back later. As we left we saw an old shoe lying on the low wall surrounding the house.

      ‘Do you think this was Lorenzo’s shoe?’ said Laura. We were true pilgrims now, desperate for relics.