Favignana, Italy May 22

It was nearing the end of May, in the middle of la Mattanza-the tuna killing. During these few weeks, the tuna follow the currents from the Atlantic Ocean into the warmer Mediterranean to deposit and fertilize their eggs. For centuries, the fishermen have known this secret, and in mid-April they begin to set up a series of net barriers in the water. The tuna become trapped, forced to follow the direction of the barriers, and are obliged to swim straight toward those who patiently wait to slaughter them.

The boats were coming in now. They were driving the tuna, thousands of them, toward shore. Soon the water's rolling waves would be red; the islanders would be cheering; and all the nontourists who made their living on this speck of land just off the coast of Sicily, a short ferry ride due west from the city of Trapani, would be secure again. The restaurants would have no empty tables, the stores would sell their trinkets and T-shirts, and the poor box in the church in the Gothic square would be filled to the brim.

One of the most beautiful islands in the world, Favignana is speckled with coves, into which creeps the clearest water in the sea. Thin slices of white sand and finely pebbled beaches glisten and gleam in the summer sun. The island's main attribute is tufa-an almost-translucent-looking rock, formed over centuries as water gradually evaporated from the abundant amounts of lime that form the cliffs and caves. Remnants of ancient excavations are everywhere, the sites abandoned seemingly in middig. Thick blocks of the stone are discarded and left to turn even more yellow and red from rust. Four and five-hundred-year-old villas built out of that tufa are still standing, though, and dominate the coastline, giving the ancient stone a productive as well as ornamental life in the modern world.

Narrow strips of road cut into the hills and the rock, winding east and west, north and south, forging an impossible maze.