On August 16, the day after Ferragosto (Italy's August 15 holiday), the soundscape along Sicily's coast between Noto and Pachino changes before the light does.
The beach umbrellas, which until yesterday packed the sand into tight geometric rows, thin out one by one, as if keeping to a silent countdown. Cars with foreign plates, or plates from northern Italy, climb the SS115 toward the airports of Catania and Comiso. In the morning, the shutters of seasonal bed and breakfasts stay closed an hour longer. The sea stays the same. What changes, radically, is the number of eyes watching it, and how they watch.
In the height of August, the music from beachfront bars drowns out the cicadas late into the night; by the last week of the month, a single gust of sirocco is enough to give the cicadas their voice back. After ten at night, the occasional passing scooter is the only trace of mechanical noise left. A visual shift accompanies this acoustic one: the sun, now lower on the horizon than in July, lengthens the shadows of the coastal houses more quickly, while the heat loses the almost physical density that made it oppressive all summer.
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Marzamemi, without the wait for a table
In Marzamemi, a fishing village within the municipality of Pachino, Piazza Regina Margherita (where restaurant tables stayed besieged until midnight for the whole of August) empties out within a matter of days. The tables stay set, but the language changes: the Siracusano dialect reclaims the square, the English and German inflections receding, and waiters finally stop translating the names of dishes on the menu.