- The Project Gutenberg EBook of Sea and Sardinia, by D. H. Lawrence
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- Title: Sea and Sardinia
- Author: D. H. Lawrence
- Illustrator: Jan Juta
- Release Date: August 26, 2011 [EBook #37206]
- Language: English
- *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SEA AND SARDINIA ***
- Produced by Charlene Taylor, Mary Meehan and the Online
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- SEA AND SARDINIA
- BY D. H. LAWRENCE
- WITH EIGHT PICTURES
- IN COLOR BY
- Jan Juta
- [Illustration]
- NEW YORK
- THOMAS SELTZER
- 1921
- COPYRIGHT, 1921, BY
- THOMAS SELTZER, INC.
- _All rights reserved_
- _Printed in the United States of America_
- [Illustration: OROSEI]
- CONTENTS
- I. AS FAR AS PALERMO 11
- II. THE SEA 44
- III. CAGLIARI 99
- IV. MANDAS 127
- V. TO SORGONO 154
- VI. TO NUORO 212
- VII. TO TERRANOVA AND THE STEAMER 260
- VIII. BACK 312
- LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
- OROSEI _Frontispiece_
- MAP--BY D. H. LAWRENCE 44
- ISILI 100
- TONARA 148
- SORGONO 180
- FONNI 204
- GAVOI 236
- NUORO 268
- TERRANOVA 300
- SEA AND SARDINIA
- I.
- AS FAR AS PALERMO.
- Comes over one an absolute necessity to move. And what is more, to move
- in some particular direction. A double necessity then: to get on the
- move, and to know whither.
- Why can't one sit still? Here in Sicily it is so pleasant: the sunny
- Ionian sea, the changing jewel of Calabria, like a fire-opal moved in
- the light; Italy and the panorama of Christmas clouds, night with the
- dog-star laying a long, luminous gleam across the sea, as if baying at
- us, Orion marching above; how the dog-star Sirius looks at one, looks at
- one! he is the hound of heaven, green, glamorous and fierce!--and then
- oh regal evening star, hung westward flaring over the jagged dark
- precipices of tall Sicily: then Etna, that wicked witch, resting her
- thick white snow under heaven, and slowly, slowly rolling her
- orange-coloured smoke. They called her the Pillar of Heaven, the
- Greeks. It seems wrong at first, for she trails up in a long, magical,
- flexible line from the sea's edge to her blunt cone, and does not seem
- tall. She seems rather low, under heaven. But as one knows her better,
- oh awe and wizardy! Remote under heaven, aloof, so near, yet never with
- us. The painters try to paint her, and the photographers to photograph
- her, in vain. Because why? Because the near ridges, with their olives
- and white houses, these are with us. Because the river-bed, and Naxos
- under the lemon groves, Greek Naxos deep under dark-leaved, many-fruited
- lemon groves, Etna's skirts and skirt-bottoms, these still are our
- world, our own world. Even the high villages among the oaks, on Etna.
- But Etna herself, Etna of the snow and secret changing winds, she is
- beyond a crystal wall. When I look at her, low, white, witch-like under
- heaven, slowly rolling her orange smoke and giving sometimes a breath of
- rose-red flame, then I must look away from earth, into the ether, into
- the low empyrean. And there, in that remote region, Etna is alone. If
- you would see her, you must slowly take off your eyes from the world and
- go a naked seer to the strange chamber of the empyrean. Pedestal of
- heaven! The Greeks had a sense of the magic truth of things. Thank
- goodness one still knows enough about them to find one's kinship at
- last. There are so many photographs, there are so infinitely many
- water-colour drawings and oil paintings which purport to render Etna.
- But pedestal of heaven! You must cross the invisible border. Between the
- foreground, which is our own, and Etna, pivot of winds in lower heaven,
- there is a dividing line. You must change your state of mind. A
- metempsychosis. It is no use thinking you can see and behold Etna and
- the foreground both at once. Never. One or the other. Foreground and a
- transcribed Etna. Or Etna, pedestal of heaven.
- Why, then, must one go? Why not stay? Ah, what a mistress, this Etna!
- with her strange winds prowling round her like Circe's panthers, some
- black, some white. With her strange, remote communications and her
- terrible dynamic exhalations. She makes men mad. Such terrible
- vibrations of wicked and beautiful electricity she throws about her,
- like a deadly net! Nay, sometimes, verily, one can feel a new current of
- her demon magnetism seize one's living tissue and change the peaceful
- life of one's active cells. She makes a storm in the living plasm and a
- new adjustment. And sometimes it is like a madness.
- This timeless Grecian Etna, in her lower-heaven loveliness, so lovely,
- so lovely, what a torturer! Not many men can really stand her, without
- losing their souls. She is like Circe. Unless a man is very strong, she
- takes his soul away from him and leaves him not a beast, but an
- elemental creature, intelligent and soulless. Intelligent, almost
- inspired, and soulless, like the Etna Sicilians. Intelligent daimons,
- and humanly, according to us, the most stupid people on earth. Ach,
- horror! How many men, how many races, has Etna put to flight? It was she
- who broke the quick of the Greek soul. And after the Greeks, she gave
- the Romans, the Normans, the Arabs, the Spaniards, the French, the
- Italians, even the English, she gave them all their inspired hour and
- broke their souls.
- Perhaps it is she one must flee from. At any rate, one must go: and at
- once. After having come back only at the end of October, already one
- must dash away. And it is only the third of January. And one cannot
- afford to move. Yet there you are: at the Etna bidding one goes.
- * * * * *
- Where does one go? There is Girgenti by the south. There is Tunis at
- hand. Girgenti, and the sulphur spirit and the Greek guarding temples,
- to make one madder? Never. Neither Syracuse and the madness of its great
- quarries. Tunis? Africa? Not yet, not yet. Not the Arabs, not yet.
- Naples, Rome, Florence? No good at all. Where then?
- Where then? Spain or Sardinia. Spain or Sardinia. Sardinia, which is
- like nowhere. Sardinia, which has no history, no date, no race, no
- offering. Let it be Sardinia. They say neither Romans nor Phoenicians,
- Greeks nor Arabs ever subdued Sardinia. It lies outside; outside the
- circuit of civilisation. Like the Basque lands. Sure enough, it is
- Italian now, with its railways and its motor-omnibuses. But there is an
- uncaptured Sardinia still. It lies within the net of this European
- civilisation, but it isn't landed yet. And the net is getting old and
- tattered. A good many fish are slipping through the net of the old
- European civilisation. Like that great whale of Russia. And probably
- even Sardinia. Sardinia then. Let it be Sardinia.
- * * * * *
- There is a fortnightly boat sailing from Palermo--next Wednesday, three
- days ahead. Let us go, then. Away from abhorred Etna, and the Ionian
- sea, and these great stars in the water, and the almond trees in bud,
- and the orange trees heavy with red fruit, and these maddening,
- exasperating, impossible Sicilians, who never knew what truth was and
- have long lost all notion of what a human being is. A sort of
- sulphureous demons. _Andiamo!_
- But let me confess, in parenthesis, that I am not at all sure whether I
- don't really prefer these demons to our sanctified humanity.
- Why does one create such discomfort for oneself! To have to get up in
- the middle of the night--half past one--to go and look at the clock. Of
- course this fraud of an American watch has stopped, with its impudent
- phosphorescent face. Half past one! Half past one, and a dark January
- night. Ah, well! Half past one! And an uneasy sleep till at last it is
- five o'clock. Then light a candle and get up.
- The dreary black morning, the candle-light, the house looking
- night-dismal. Ah, well, one does all these things for one's pleasure. So
- light the charcoal fire and put the kettle on. The queen bee shivering
- round half dressed, fluttering her unhappy candle.
- "It's fun," she says, shuddering.
- "Great," say I, grim as death.
- First fill the thermos with hot tea. Then fry bacon--good English bacon
- from Malta, a god-send, indeed--and make bacon sandwiches. Make also
- sandwiches of scrambled eggs. Make also bread and butter. Also a little
- toast for breakfast--and more tea. But ugh, who wants to eat at this
- unearthly hour, especially when one is escaping from bewitched Sicily.
- Fill the little bag we call the kitchenino. Methylated spirit, a small
- aluminium saucepan, a spirit-lamp, two spoons, two forks, a knife, two
- aluminium plates, salt, sugar, tea--what else? The thermos flask, the
- various sandwiches, four apples, and a little tin of butter. So much for
- the kitchenino, for myself and the queen bee. Then my knapsack and the
- q-b's handbag.
- Under the lid of the half-cloudy night sky, far away at the rim of the
- Ionian sea, the first light, like metal fusing. So swallow the cup of
- tea and the bit of toast. Hastily wash up, so that we can find the house
- decent when we come back. Shut the door-windows of the upper terrace and
- go down. Lock the door: the upper half of the house made fast.
- The sky and sea are parting like an oyster shell, with a low red gape.
- Looking across from the veranda at it, one shivers. Not that it is cold.
- The morning is not at all cold. But the ominousness of it: that long red
- slit between a dark sky and a dark Ionian sea, terrible old bivalve
- which has held life between its lips so long. And here, at this house,
- we are ledged so awfully above the dawn, naked to it.
- Fasten the door-windows of the lower veranda. One won't fasten at all.
- The summer heat warped it one way, the masses of autumn rain warped it
- another. Put a chair against it. Lock the last door and hide the key.
- Sling the knapsack on one's back, take the kitchenino in one's hand and
- look round. The dawn-red widening, between the purpling sea and the
- troubled sky. A light in the capucin convent across there. Cocks crowing
- and the long, howling, hiccuping, melancholy bray of an ass. "All
- females are dead, all females--och! och! och!--hoooo! Ahaa!--there's one
- left." So he ends on a moaning grunt of consolation. This is what the
- Arabs tell us an ass is howling when he brays.
- * * * * *
- Very dark under the great carob tree as we go down the steps. Dark still
- the garden. Scent of mimosa, and then of jasmine. The lovely mimosa tree
- invisible. Dark the stony path. The goat whinnies out of her shed. The
- broken Roman tomb which lolls right over the garden track does not fall
- on me as I slip under its massive tilt. Ah, dark garden, dark garden,
- with your olives and your wine, your medlars and mulberries and many
- almond trees, your steep terraces ledged high up above the sea, I am
- leaving you, slinking out. Out between the rosemary hedges, out of the
- tall gate, on to the cruel steep stony road. So under the dark, big
- eucalyptus trees, over the stream, and up towards the village. There, I
- have got so far.
- * * * * *
- It is full dawn--dawn, not morning, the sun will not have risen. The
- village is nearly all dark in the red light, and asleep still. No one
- at the fountain by the capucin gate: too dark still. One man leading a
- horse round the corner of the Palazzo Corvaia. One or two dark men along
- the Corso. And so over the brow, down the steep cobble-stone street
- between the houses, and out to the naked hill front. This is the
- dawn-coast of Sicily. Nay, the dawn-coast of Europe. Steep, like a vast
- cliff, dawn-forward. A red dawn, with mingled curdling dark clouds, and
- some gold. It must be seven o'clock. The station down below, by the sea.
- And noise of a train. Yes, a train. And we still high on the steep
- track, winding downwards. But it is the train from Messina to Catania,
- half an hour before ours, which is from Catania to Messina.
- * * * * *
- So jolt, and drop, and jolt down the old road that winds on the cliff
- face. Etna across there is smothered quite low, quite low in a dense
- puther of ink-black clouds. Playing some devilry in private, no doubt.
- The dawn is angry red, and yellow above, the sea takes strange colors. I
- hate the station, pigmy, drawn out there beside the sea. On this steep
- face, especially in the windless nooks, the almond blossom is already
- out. In little puffs and specks and stars, it looks very like bits of
- snow scattered by winter. Bits of snow, bits of blossom, fourth day of
- the year 1921. Only blossom. And Etna indescribably cloaked and
- secretive in her dense black clouds. She has wrapped them quite round
- her, quite low round her skirts.
- * * * * *
- At last we are down. We pass the pits where men are burning
- lime--red-hot, round pits--and are out on the high-way. Nothing can be
- more depressing than an Italian high-road. From Syracuse to Airolo it is
- the same: horrible, dreary, slummy high-roads the moment you approach a
- village or any human habitation. Here there is an acrid smell of lemon
- juice. There is a factory for making citrate. The houses flush on the
- road, under the great lime-stone face of the hill, open their slummy
- doors, and throw out dirty water and coffee dregs. We walk over the
- dirty water and coffee dregs. Mules rattle past with carts. Other people
- are going to the station. We pass the Dazio and are there.
- * * * * *
- Humanity is, externally, too much alike. Internally there are
- insuperable differences. So one sits and thinks, watching the people on
- the station: like a line of caricatures between oneself and the naked
- sea and the uneasy, clouding dawn.
- You would look in vain this morning for the swarthy feline southerner of
- romance. It might, as far as features are concerned, be an early morning
- crowd waiting for the train on a north London suburb station. As far as
- features go. For some are fair and some colorless and none racially
- typical. The only one that is absolutely like a race caricature is a
- tall stout elderly fellow with spectacles and a short nose and a
- bristling moustache, and he is the German of the comic papers of twenty
- years ago. But he is pure Sicilian.
- They are mostly young fellows going up the line to Messina to their job:
- not artizans, lower middle class. And externally, so like any other
- clerks and shop-men, only rather more shabby, much less _socially_
- self-conscious. They are lively, they throw their arms round one
- another's necks, they all but kiss. One poor chap has had earache, so a
- black kerchief is tied round his face, and his black hat is perched
- above, and a comic sight he looks. No one seems to think so, however.
- Yet they view my arrival with a knapsack on my back with cold
- disapprobation, as unseemly as if I had arrived riding on a pig. I ought
- to be in a carriage, and the knapsack ought to be a new suit-case. I
- know it, but am inflexible.
- That is how they are. Each one thinks he is as handsome as Adonis, and
- as "fetching" as Don Juan. Extraordinary! At the same time, all flesh is
- grass, and if a few trouser-buttons are missing or if a black hat
- perches above a thick black face-muffle and a long excruciated face, it
- is all in the course of nature. They seize the black-edged one by the
- arm, and in profound commiseration: "Do you suffer? Are you suffering?"
- they ask.
- And that also is how they are. So terribly physically all over one
- another. They pour themselves one over the other like so much melted
- butter over parsnips. They catch each other under the chin, with a
- tender caress of the hand, and they smile with sunny melting tenderness
- into each other's face. Never in the world have I seen such melting gay
- tenderness as between casual Sicilians on railway platforms, whether
- they be young lean-cheeked Sicilians or huge stout Sicilians.
- There must be something curious about the proximity of a volcano. Naples
- and Catania alike, the men are hugely fat, with great macaroni paunches,
- they are expansive and in a perfect drip of casual affection and love.
- But the Sicilians are even more wildly exuberant and fat and all over
- one another than the Neapolitans. They never leave off being amorously
- friendly with almost everybody, emitting a relentless physical
- familiarity that is quite bewildering to one not brought up near a
- volcano.
- This is more true of the middle classes than of the lower. The working
- men are perforce thinner and less exuberant. But they hang together in
- clusters, and can never be physically near enough.
- * * * * *
- It is only thirty miles to Messina, but the train takes two hours. It
- winds and hurries and stops beside the lavender grey morning sea. A
- flock of goats trail over the beach near the lapping wave's edge,
- dismally. Great wide deserts of stony river-beds run down to the sea,
- and men on asses are picking their way across, and women are kneeling by
- the small stream-channel washing clothes. The lemons hang pale and
- innumerable in the thick lemon groves. Lemon trees, like Italians, seem
- to be happiest when they are touching one another all round. Solid
- forests of not very tall lemon trees lie between the steep mountains and
- the sea, on the strip of plain. Women, vague in the orchard
- under-shadow, are picking the lemons, lurking as if in the undersea.
- There are heaps of pale yellow lemons under the trees. They look like
- pale, primrose-smouldering fires. Curious how like fires the heaps of
- lemons look, under the shadow of foliage, seeming to give off a pallid
- burning amid the suave, naked, greenish trunks. When there comes a
- cluster of orange trees, the oranges are red like coals among the darker
- leaves. But lemons, lemons, innumerable, speckled like innumerable tiny
- stars in the green firmament of leaves. So many lemons! Think of all
- the lemonade crystals they will be reduced to! Think of America drinking
- them up next summer.
- * * * * *
- I always wonder why such vast wide river-beds of pale boulders come out
- of the heart of the high-rearing, dramatic stone mountains, a few miles
- to the sea. A few miles only: and never more than a few threading
- water-trickles in river-beds wide enough for the Rhine. But that is how
- it is. The landscape is ancient, and classic--romantic, as if it had
- known far-off days and fiercer rivers and more verdure. Steep, craggy,
- wild, the land goes up to its points and precipices, a tangle of
- heights. But all jammed on top of one another. And in old landscapes, as
- in old people, the flesh wears away, and the bones become prominent.
- Rock sticks up fantastically. The jungle of peaks in this old Sicily.
- * * * * *
- The sky is all grey. The Straits are grey. Reggio, just across the
- water, is white looking, under the great dark toe of Calabria, the toe
- of Italy. On Aspromonte there is grey cloud. It is going to rain. After
- such marvelous ringing blue days, it is going to rain. What luck!
- * * * * *
- Aspromonte! Garibaldi! I could always cover my face when I see it,
- Aspromonte. I wish Garibaldi had been prouder. Why did he go off so
- humbly, with his bag of seed-corn and a flea in his ear, when His
- Majesty King Victor Emmanuel arrived with his little short legs on the
- scene. Poor Garibaldi! He wanted to be a hero and a dictator of free
- Sicily. Well, one can't be a dictator and humble at the same time. One
- must be a hero, which he was, and proud, which he wasn't. Besides people
- don't nowadays choose proud heroes for governors. Anything but. They
- prefer constitutional monarchs, who are paid servants and who know it.
- That is democracy. Democracy admires its own servants and nothing else.
- And you couldn't make a real servant even of Garibaldi. Only of His
- Majesty King Victor Emmanuel. So Italy chose Victor Emmanuel, and
- Garibaldi went off with a corn bag and a whack on the behind like a
- humble ass.
- * * * * *
- It is raining--dismally, dismally raining. And this is Messina coming.
- Oh horrible Messina, earthquake-shattered and renewing your youth like a
- vast mining settlement, with rows and streets and miles of concrete
- shanties, squalor and a big street with shops and gaps and broken houses
- still, just back of the tram-lines, and a dreary squalid
- earthquake-hopeless port in a lovely harbor. People don't forget and
- don't recover. The people of Messina seem to be today what they were
- nearly twenty years ago, after the earthquake: people who have had a
- terrible shock, and for whom all life's institutions are really nothing,
- neither civilization nor purpose. The meaning of everything all came
- down with a smash in that shuddering earthquake, and nothing remains but
- money and the throes of some sort of sensation. Messina between the
- volcanoes, Etna and Stromboli, having known the death-agony's terror. I
- always dread coming near the awful place, yet I have found the people
- kind, almost feverishly so, as if they knew the awful need for kindness.
- * * * * *
- Raining, raining hard. Clambering down on to the wet platform and
- walking across the wet lines to the cover. Many human beings scurrying
- across the wet lines, among the wet trains, to get out into the ghastly
- town beyond. Thank heaven one need not go out into the town. Two
- convicts chained together among the crowd--and two soldiers. The
- prisoners wear fawny homespun clothes, of cloth such as the peasants
- weave, with irregularly occurring brown stripes. Rather nice handmade
- rough stuff. But linked together, dear God! And those horrid caps on
- their hairless foreheads. No hair. Probably they are going to a convict
- station on the Lipari islands. The people take no notice.
- No, but convicts are horrible creatures: at least, the old one is, with
- his long, nasty face: his long, clean-shaven, horrible face, without
- emotions, or with emotions one cannot follow. Something cold, sightless.
- A sightless, ugly look. I should loathe to have to touch him. Of the
- other I am not so sure. He is younger, and with dark eyebrows. But a
- roundish, softish face, with a sort of leer. No, evil is horrible. I
- used to think there was no absolute evil. Now I know there is a great
- deal. So much that it threatens life altogether. That ghastly
- abstractness of criminals. They don't _know_ any more what other people
- feel. Yet some horrible force drives them.
- It is a great mistake to abolish the death penalty. If I were dictator,
- I should order the old one to be hung at once. I should have judges with
- sensitive, living hearts: not abstract intellects. And because the
- instinctive heart recognised a man as evil, I would have that man
- destroyed. Quickly. Because good warm life is now in danger.
- * * * * *
- Standing on Messina station--dreary, dreary hole--and watching the
- winter rain and seeing the pair of convicts, I must remember again Oscar
- Wilde on Reading platform, a convict. What a terrible mistake, to let
- oneself be martyred by a lot of canaille. A man must say his say. But
- _noli me tangere_.
- Curious these people are. Up and down, up and down go a pair of
- officials. The young one in a black gold-laced cap talks to the elder in
- a scarlet gold-laced cap. And he walks, the young one, with a mad little
- hop, and his fingers fly as if he wanted to scatter them to the four
- winds of heaven, and his words go off like fireworks, with more than
- Sicilian speed. On and on, up and down, and his eye is dark and excited
- and unseeing, like the eye of a fleeing rabbit. Strange and beside
- itself is humanity.
- * * * * *
- What a lot of officials! You know them by their caps. Elegant tubby
- little officials in kid-and-patent boots and gold-laced caps, tall
- long-nosed ones in more gold-laced caps, like angels in and out of the
- gates of heaven they thread in and out of the various doors. As far as I
- can see, there are three scarlet station-masters, five black-and-gold
- substation-masters, and a countless number of principalities and powers
- in more or less broken boots and official caps. They are like bees round
- a hive, humming in an important _conversazione_, and occasionally
- looking at some paper or other, and extracting a little official honey.
- But the _conversazione_ is the affair of affairs. To an Italian
- official, life seems to be one long and animated conversation--the
- Italian word is better--interrupted by casual trains and telephones. And
- besides the angels of heaven's gates, there are the mere ministers,
- porters, lamp-cleaners, etc. These stand in groups and talk socialism. A
- lamp-man slashes along, swinging a couple of lamps. Bashes one against a
- barrow. Smash goes the glass. Looks down as if to say, What do you mean
- by it? Glances over his shoulder to see if any member of the higher
- hierarchies is looking. Seven members of higher hierarchies are
- assiduously not looking. On goes the minister with the lamp, blithely.
- Another pane or two gone. _Vogue la galère._
- Passengers have gathered again, some in hoods, some in nothing. Youths
- in thin, paltry clothes stand out in the pouring rain as if they did not
- know it was raining. One sees their coat-shoulders soaked. And yet they
- do not trouble to keep under shelter. Two large station dogs run about
- and trot through the standing trains, just like officials. They climb up
- the footboard, hop into a train and hop out casually when they feel like
- it. Two or three port-porters, in canvas hats as big as umbrellas,
- literally, spreading like huge fins over their shoulders, are looking
- into more empty trains. More and more people appear. More and more
- official caps stand about. It rains and rains. The train for Palermo
- and the train for Syracuse are both an hour late already, coming from
- the port. Flea-bite. Though these are the great connections from Rome.
- Loose locomotives trundle back and forth, vaguely, like black dogs
- running and turning back. The port is only four minutes' walk. If it
- were not raining so hard, we would go down, walk along the lines and get
- into the waiting train down there. Anybody may please himself. There is
- the funnel of the great unwieldy ferry-object--she is just edging in.
- That means the connection from the mainland at last. But it is cold,
- standing here. We eat a bit of bread and butter from the kitchenino in
- resignation. After all, what is an hour and a half? It might just as
- easily be five hours, as it was the last time we came down from Rome.
- And the _wagon-lit_, booked to Syracuse, calmly left stranded in the
- station of Messina, to go no further. All get out and find yourselves
- rooms for the night in vile Messina. Syracuse or no Syracuse, Malta boat
- or no Malta boat. We are the _Ferrovia dello Stato_.
- But there, why grumble. Noi Italiani siamo così buoni. Take it from
- their own mouth.
- * * * * *
- Ecco! Finalmente! The crowd is quite joyful as the two express trains
- surge proudly in, after their half-a-mile creep. Plenty of room, for
- once. Though the carriage floor is a puddle, and the roof leaks. This
- is second class.
- * * * * *
- Slowly, with two engines, we grunt and chuff and twist to get over the
- break-neck heights that shut Messina in from the north coast. The
- windows are opaque with steam and drops of rain. No matter--tea from the
- thermos flask, to the great interest of the other two passengers who had
- nervously contemplated the unknown object.
- "Ha!" says he with joy, seeing the hot tea come out. "It has the
- appearance of a bomb."
- "Beautiful hot!" says she, with real admiration. All apprehension at
- once dissipated, peace reigns in the wet, mist-hidden compartment. We
- run through miles and miles of tunnel. The Italians have made wonderful
- roads and railways.
- * * * * *
- If one rubs the window and looks out, lemon groves with many wet-white
- lemons, earthquake-broken houses, new shanties, a grey weary sea on the
- right hand, and on the left the dim, grey complication of steep heights
- from which issue stone river-beds of inordinate width, and sometimes a
- road, a man on a mule. Sometimes near at hand, long-haired, melancholy
- goats leaning sideways like tilted ships under the eaves of some scabby
- house. They call the house-eaves the dogs' umbrellas. In town you see
- the dogs trotting close under the wall out of the wet. Here the goats
- lean like rock, listing inwards to the plaster wall. Why look out?
- Sicilian railways are all single line. Hence, the _coincidenza_. A
- _coincidenza_ is where two trains meet in a loop. You sit in a world of
- rain and waiting until some silly engine with four trucks puffs
- alongside. Ecco la coincidenza! Then after a brief _conversazione_
- between the two trains, _diretto_ and _merce_, express and goods, the
- tin horn sounds and away we go, happily, towards the next coincidence.
- Clerks away ahead joyfully chalk up our hours of lateness on the
- announcement slate. All adds to the adventurous flavour of the journey,
- dear heart. We come to a station where we find the other diretto, the
- express from the other direction, awaiting our coincidential arrival.
- The two trains run alongside one another, like two dogs meeting in the
- street and snuffing one another. Every official rushes to greet every
- other official, as if they were all David and Jonathan meeting after a
- crisis. They rush into each other's arms and exchange cigarettes. And
- the trains can't bear to part. And the station can't bear to part with
- us. The officials tease themselves and us with the word _pronto_,
- meaning _ready!_ Pronto! And again Pronto! And shrill whistles.
- Anywhere else a train would go off its tormented head. But no! Here only
- that angel's trump of an official little horn will do the business. And
- get them to blow that horn if you can. They can't bear to part.
- * * * * *
- Rain, continual rain, a level grey wet sky, a level grey wet sea, a wet
- and misty train winding round and round the little bays, diving through
- tunnels. Ghosts of the unpleasant-looking Lipari islands standing a
- little way out to sea, heaps of shadow deposited like rubbish heaps in
- the universal greyness.
- * * * * *
- Enter more passengers. An enormously large woman with an extraordinarily
- handsome face: an extraordinarily large man, quite young: and a
- diminutive servant, a little girl-child of about thirteen, with a
- beautiful face.--But the Juno--it is she who takes my breath away. She
- is quite young, in her thirties still. She has that queenly stupid
- beauty of a classic Hera: a pure brow with level dark brows, large,
- dark, bridling eyes, a straight nose, a chiselled mouth, an air of
- remote self-consciousness. She sends one's heart straight back to pagan
- days. And--and--she is simply enormous, like a house. She wears a black
- toque with sticking-up wings, and a black rabbit fur spread on her
- shoulders. She edges her way in carefully: and once seated, is
- terrified to rise to her feet. She sits with that motionlessness of her
- type, closed lips, face muted and expressionless. And she expects me to
- admire her: I can see that. She expects me to pay homage to her beauty:
- just to that: not homage to herself, but to her as a _bel pezzo_. She
- casts little aloof glances at me under her eyelids.
- It is evident she is a country beauty become a _bourgeoise_. She speaks
- unwillingly to the other squint-eyed passenger, a young woman who also
- wears a black-rabbit fur, but without pretensions.
- The husband of Juno is a fresh-faced bourgeois young fellow, and he also
- is simply huge. His waistcoat would almost make the overcoat of the
- fourth passenger, the unshaven companion of the squinting young woman.
- The young Jupiter wears kid gloves: a significant fact here. He, too,
- has pretensions. But he is quite affable with the unshaven one, and
- speaks Italian unaffectedly. Whereas Juno speaks the dialect with
- affectation.
- No one takes any notice of the little maid. She has a gentle, virgin
- moon-face, and those lovely grey Sicilian eyes that are translucent, and
- into which the light sinks and becomes black sometimes, sometimes dark
- blue. She carries the bag and the extra coat of the huge Juno, and sits
- on the edge of the seat between me and the unshaven, Juno having
- motioned her there with a regal inclination of the head.
- The little maid is rather frightened. Perhaps she is an orphan
- child--probably. Her nut-brown hair is smoothly parted and done in two
- pigtails. She wears no hat, as is proper for her class. On her shoulders
- one of those little knitted grey shoulder-capes that one associates with
- orphanages. Her stuff dress is dark grey, her boots are strong.
- The smooth, moon-like, expressionless virgin face, rather pale and
- touching, rather frightened, of the girl-child. A perfect face from a
- mediaeval picture. It moves one strangely. Why? It is so unconscious, as
- we are conscious. Like a little muted animal it sits there, in distress.
- She is going to be sick. She goes into the corridor and is sick--very
- sick, leaning her head like a sick dog on the window-ledge. Jupiter
- towers above her--not unkind, and apparently feeling no repugnance. The
- physical convulsion of the girl does not affect him as it affects us. He
- looks on unmoved, merely venturing to remark that she had eaten too much
- before coming on to the train. An obviously true remark. After which he
- comes and talks a few common-places to me. By and by the girl-child
- creeps in again and sits on the edge of the seat facing Juno. But no,
- says Juno, if she is sick she will be sick over me. So Jupiter
- accommodatingly changes places with the girl-child, who is thus next to
- me. She sits on the edge of the seat with folded little red hands, her
- face pale and expressionless. Beautiful the thin line of her nut-brown
- eyebrows, the dark lashes of the silent, pellucid dark eyes. Silent,
- motionless, like a sick animal.
- But Juno tells her to wipe her splashed boots. The child gropes for a
- piece of paper. Juno tells her to take her pocket handkerchief. Feebly
- the sick girl-child wipes her boots, then leans back. But no good. She
- has to go in the corridor and be sick again.
- After a while they all get out. Queer to see people so natural. Neither
- Juno nor Jupiter is in the least unkind. He even seems kind. But they
- are just not upset. Not half as upset as we are--the q-b wanting to
- administer tea, and so on. We should have to hold the child's head. They
- just quite naturally leave it alone to its convulsions, and are neither
- distressed nor repelled. It just is so.
- Their naturalness seems unnatural to us. Yet I am sure it is best.
- Sympathy would only complicate matters, and spoil that strange, remote
- virginal quality. The q-b says it is largely stupidity.
- * * * * *
- Nobody washes out the corner of the corridor, though we stop at
- stations long enough, and there are two more hours journey. Train
- officials go by and stare, passengers step over and stare, new-comers
- stare and step over. Somebody asks _who_? Nobody thinks of just throwing
- a pail of water. Why should they? It is all in the course of
- nature.--One begins to be a bit chary of this same "nature", in the
- south.
- * * * * *
- Enter two fresh passengers: a black-eyed, round-faced, bright-sharp man
- in corduroys and with a gun, and a long-faced, fresh-colored man with
- thick snowy hair, and a new hat and a long black overcoat of smooth
- black cloth, lined with rather ancient, once expensive fur. He is
- extremely proud of this long black coat and ancient fur lining.
- Childishly proud he wraps it again over his knee, and gloats. The beady
- black-eyes of the hunter look round with pleased alertness. He sits
- facing the one in the overcoat, who looks like the last sprout of some
- Norman blood. The hunter in corduroys beams abroad, with beady black
- eyes in a round red face, curious. And the other tucks his fur-lined
- long coat between his legs and gloats to himself: all to himself
- gloating, and looking as if he were deaf. But no, he's not. He wears
- muddy high-low boots.
- At Termini it is already lamp-light. Business men crowd in. We get five
- business men: all stout, respected Palermitans. The one opposite me has
- whiskers, and a many-colored, patched traveling rug over his fat knees.
- Queer how they bring that feeling of physical intimacy with them. You
- are never surprised if they begin to take off their boots, or their
- collar-and-tie. The whole world is a sort of bedroom to them. One
- shrinks, but in vain.
- There is some conversation between the black-eyed, beady hunter and the
- business men. Also the young white-haired one, the aristocrat, tries to
- stammer out, at great length, a few words. As far as I can gather the
- young one is mad--or deranged--and the other, the hunter, is his keeper.
- They are traveling over Europe together. There is some talk of "the
- Count". And the hunter says the unfortunate "has had an accident." But
- that is a southern gentleness presumably, a form of speech. Anyhow it is
- queer: and the hunter in his corduroys, with his round, ruddy face and
- strange black-bright eyes and thin black hair is a puzzle to me, even
- more than the albino, long-coated, long-faced, fresh-complexioned, queer
- last remnant of a baron as he is. They are both muddy from the land, and
- pleased in a little mad way of their own.
- But it is half-past six. We are at Palermo, capital of Sicily. The
- hunter slings his gun over his shoulder, I my knapsack, and in the
- throng we all disappear, into the Via Maqueda.
- * * * * *
- Palermo has two great streets, the Via Maqueda, and the Corso, which
- cross each other at right-angles. The Via Maqueda is narrow, with narrow
- little pavements, and is always choked with carriages and
- foot-passengers.
- It had ceased raining. But the narrow road was paved with large, convex
- slabs of hard stone, inexpressibly greasy. To cross the Via Maqueda
- therefore was a feat. However, once accomplished, it was done. The near
- end of the street was rather dark, and had mostly vegetable shops.
- Abundance of vegetables--piles of white-and-green fennel, like celery,
- and great sheaves of young, purplish, sea-dust-colored artichokes,
- nodding their buds, piles of big radishes, scarlet and bluey purple,
- carrots, long strings of dried figs, mountains of big oranges, scarlet
- large peppers, a last slice of pumpkin, a great mass of colors and
- vegetable freshnesses. A mountain of black-purple cauliflowers, like
- niggers' heads, and a mountain of snow-white ones next to them. How the
- dark, greasy, night-stricken street seems to beam with these vegetables,
- all this fresh delicate flesh of luminous vegetables piled there in the
- air, and in the recesses of the windowless little caverns of the shops,
- and gleaming forth on the dark air, under the lamps. The q-b at once
- wants to buy vegetables. "Look! Look at the snow-white broccoli. Look at
- the huge finocchi. Why don't we get them? I _must_ have some. Look at
- those great clusters of dates--ten francs a kilo, and we pay sixteen.
- It's monstrous. Our place is simply monstrous."
- For all that, one doesn't buy vegetables to take to Sardinia.
- Cross the Corso at that decorated maelstrom and death-trap of the
- Quattro Canti. I, of course, am nearly knocked down and killed. Somebody
- is nearly knocked down and killed every two minutes. But there--the
- carriages are light, and the horses curiously aware creatures. They
- would never tread on one.
- The second part of the Via Maqueda is the swell part: silks and plumes,
- and an infinite number of shirts and ties and cuff-links and mufflers
- and men's fancies. One realises here that man-drapery and man-underwear
- is quite as important as woman's, if not more.
- I, of course, in a rage. The q-b stares at every rag and stitch, and
- crosses and re-crosses this infernal dark stream of a Via Maqueda,
- which, as I have said, is choked solid with strollers and carriages. Be
- it remembered that I have on my back the brown knapsack, and the q-b
- carries the kitchenino. This is enough to make a travelling menagerie
- of us. If I had my shirt sticking out behind, and if the q-b had
- happened merely to catch up the table-cloth and wrap it round her as she
- came out, all well and good. But a big brown knapsack! And a basket with
- thermos flask, etc! No, one could not expect such things to pass in a
- southern capital.
- But I am case-hardened. And I am sick of shops. True, we have not been
- in a town for three months. But _can_ I care for the innumerable
- _fantasias_ in the drapery line? Every wretched bit of would-be-extra
- chic is called a fantasia. The word goes lugubriously to my bowels.
- Suddenly I am aware of the q-b darting past me like a storm. Suddenly I
- see her pouncing on three giggling young hussies just in front--the
- inevitable black velveteen tam, the inevitable white curly muffler, the
- inevitable lower-class flappers. "Did you want something? Have you
- something to say? Is there something that amuses you? Oh-h! You must
- laugh, must you? Oh--laugh! Oh-h! Why? Why? You ask why? Haven't I heard
- you! Oh--you spik Ingleesh! You spik Ingleesh! Yes--why! That's why!
- Yes, that's why."
- The three giggling young hussies shrink together as if they would all
- hide behind one another, after a vain uprearing and a demand why? Madam
- tells them why. So they uncomfortably squeeze together under the
- unexpected strokes of the q-b's sledge-hammer Italian and more than
- sledge-hammer retaliation, there full in the Via Maqueda. They edge
- round one another, each attempting to get back of the other, away from
- the looming q-b. I perceive that this rotary motion is equivalent to a
- standstill, so feel called upon to say something in the manly line.
- "Beastly Palermo bad-manners," I say, and throw a nonchalant "Ignoranti"
- at the end, in a tone of dismissal.
- Which does it. Off they go down-stream, still huddling and shrinking
- like boats that are taking sails in, and peeping to see if we are
- coming. Yes, my dears, we are coming.
- "Why do you bother?" say I to the q-b, who is towering with rage.
- "They've followed us the whole length of the street--with their _sacco
- militario_ and their _parlano inglese_ and their _you spik Ingleesh_,
- and their jeering insolence. But the English are fools. They always put
- up with this Italian impudence."
- Which is perhaps true.--But this knapsack! It might be full of
- bronze-roaring geese, it would not attract more attention!
- However, and however, it is seven o'clock, and the shops are beginning
- to shut. No more shop-gazing. Only one lovely place: raw ham, boiled
- ham, chickens in aspic, chicken vol-au-vents, sweet curds, curd-cheese,
- rustic cheese-cake, smoked sausages, beautiful fresh mortadella, huge
- Mediterranean red lobsters, and those lobsters without claws. "So good!
- So good!" We stand and cry it aloud.
- But this shop too is shutting. I ask a man for the Hotel Pantechnico.
- And treating me in that gentle, strangely tender southern manner, he
- takes me and shows me. He makes me feel such a poor, frail, helpless
- leaf. A foreigner, you know. A bit of an imbecile, poor dear. Hold his
- hand and show him the way.
- * * * * *
- To sit in the room of this young American woman, with its blue hangings,
- and talk and drink tea till midnght! Ah these naïve Americans--they are
- a good deal older and shrewder than we, once it nears the point. And
- they all seem to feel as if the world were coming to an end. And they
- are so truly generous of their hospitality, in this cold world.
- II.
- THE SEA.
- The fat old porter knocks. Ah me, once more it is dark. Get up again
- before dawn. A dark sky outside, cloudy. The thrilling tinkle of
- innumerable goat-bells as the first flock enters the city, such a
- rippling sound. Well, it must be morning, even if one shivers at it. And
- at least it does not rain.
- * * * * *
- That pale, bluish, theatrical light outside, of the first dawn. And a
- cold wind. We come on to the wide, desolate quay, the curve of the
- harbour Panormus. That horrible dawn-pallor of a cold sea out there. And
- here, port mud, greasy: and fish: and refuse. The American girl is with
- us, wrapped in her sweater. A coarse, cold, black-slimy world, she seems
- as if she would melt away before it. But these frail creatures, what a
- lot they can go through!
- [Illustration: MAP FOR SEA AND SARDINIA]
- Across the great, wide, badly paved, mud-greasy, despairing road of the
- quay side, and to the sea. There lies our steamer, over there in the
- dawn-dusk of the basin, half visible. "That one who is smoking her
- cigarette," says the porter. She looks little, beside the huge _City of
- Trieste_ who is lying up next her.
- * * * * *
- Our row-boat is hemmed in by many empty boats, huddled to the side of
- the quay. She works her way out like a sheepdog working his way out of a
- flock of sheep, or like a boat through pack-ice. We are on the open
- basin. The rower stands up and pushes the oars from him. He gives a
- long, melancholy cry to someone on the quay. The water goes chock-chock
- against the urging bows. The wind is chill. The fantastic peaks behind
- Palermo show half-ghostly in a half-dark sky. The dawn seems reluctant
- to come. Our steamer still smokes her cigarette--meaning the
- funnel-smoke--across there. So, one sits still, and crosses the level
- space of half-dark water. Masts of sailing-ships, and spars, cluster on
- the left, on the undarkening sky.
- * * * * *
- Climb up, climb up, this is our ship. Up we go, up the ladder. "Oh but!"
- says the American girl. "Isn't she small! Isn't she impossibly small! Oh
- my, will you go in such a little thing? Oh dear! Thirty two hours in
- such a little boat? Why no, I wouldn't care for it at all."
- A bunch of stewards, cooks, waiters, engineers, pan-cleaners and
- what-not, mostly in black canvas jackets. Nobody else on the ship. A
- little black bunch of loutish crew with nothing to do, and we the first
- passengers served up to be jeered at. There you are, in the grey light.
- "Who is going?"
- "We two--the signorina is not going."
- "Tickets!"
- These are casual proletarian manners.
- We are taken into the one long room with a long table and many
- maple-golden doors, alternate panels having a wedge-wood blue-and-white
- picture inserted--a would-be Goddess of white marble on a blue ground,
- like a health-salts Hygeia advertisement. One of the plain panels
- opens--our cabin.
- "Oh dear! Why it isn't as big as a china-closet. However will you get
- in!" cries the American girl.
- "One at a time," say I.
- "But it's the tiniest place I _ever_ saw."
- It really was tiny. One had to get into a bunk to shut the door. That
- did not matter to me, I am no Titanic American. I pitched the knapsack
- on one bunk, the kitchenino on the other, and we shut the door. The
- cabin disappeared into a maple-wood panel of the long, subterranean
- state-room.
- "Why, is this the only place you've got to sit in?" cried the American
- girl. "But how perfectly awful! No air, and so dark, and smelly. Why I
- never saw such a boat! Will you really go? Will you really!"
- The state-room was truly rather subterranean and stuffy, with nothing
- but a long table and an uncanny company of screw-pin chairs seated
- thereat, and no outlet to the air at all, but it was not so bad
- otherwise, to me who have never been out of Europe. Those maple-wood
- panels and ebony curves--and those Hygeias! They went all round, even
- round the curve at the dim, distant end, and back up the near side. Yet
- how beautiful old, gold-coloured maple-wood is! how very lovely, with
- the ebony curves of the door arch! There was a wonderful old-fashioned,
- Victorian glow in it, and a certain splendour. Even one could bear the
- Hygeias let in under glass--the colour was right, that wedge-wood and
- white, in such lovely gold lustre. There was a certain homely grandeur
- still in the days when this ship was built: a richness of choice
- material. And health-salts Hygeias, wedge-wood Greek goddesses on
- advertisement placards! Yet they _weren't_ advertisements. That was
- what really worried me. They never had been. Perhaps Weego's Health
- Salts stole her later.
- * * * * *
- We have no coffee--that goes without saying. Nothing doing so early. The
- crew still stands in a gang, exactly like a gang of louts at a
- street-corner. And they've got the street all to themselves--this ship.
- We climb to the upper deck.
- * * * * *
- She is a long, slender, old steamer with one little funnel. And she
- seems so deserted, now that one can't see the street-corner gang of the
- casual crew. They are just below. Our ship is deserted.
- The dawn is wanly blueing. The sky is a curdle of cloud, there is a bit
- of pale gold eastwards, beyond Monte Pellegrino. The wind blows across
- the harbour. The hills behind Palermo prick up their ears on the
- sky-line. The city lies unseen, near us and level. There--a big ship is
- coming in: the Naples boat.
- And the little boats keep putting off from the near quay, and coming to
- us. We watch. A stout officer, cavalry, in grayey-green, with a big
- dark-blue cloak lined with scarlet. The scarlet lining keeps flashing.
- He has a little beard, and his uniform is not quite clean. He has big
- wooden chests, tied with rope, for luggage. Poor and of no class. Yet
- that scarlet, splendid lining, and the spurs. It seems a pity they must
- go second-class. Yet so it is, he goes forward when the dock porter has
- hoisted those wooden boxes. No fellow-passenger yet.
- Boats still keep coming. Ha-ha! Here is the commissariat! Various sides
- of kid, ready for roasting: various chickens: fennel like celery: wine
- in a bottiglione: new bread: packages! Hand them up, hand them up. "Good
- food!" cries the q-b in anticipation.
- It must be getting near time to go. Two more passengers--young thick men
- in black broad-cloth standing up in the stern of a little boat, their
- hands in their pockets, looking a little cold about the chin. Not quite
- Italian, too sturdy and manly. Sardinians from Cagliari, as a matter of
- fact.
- * * * * *
- We go down from the chill upper-deck. It is growing full day. Bits of
- pale gold are flying among delicate but cold flakes of cloud from the
- east, over Monte Pellegrino, bits of very new turquoise sky come out.
- Palermo on the left crouches upon her all-harbour--a little desolate,
- disorderly, end-of-the-world, end-of-the-sea, along her quay front. Even
- from here we can see the yellow carts rattling slowly, the mules
- nodding their high weird plumes of scarlet along the broad weary
- harbour-side. Oh painted carts of Sicily, with all history on your
- panels!
- * * * * *
- Arrives an individual at our side. "The captain fears it will not be
- possible to start. There is much wind outside. Much wind!"
- How they _love_ to come up with alarming, disquieting, or annoying news!
- The joy it gives them. What satisfaction on all the faces: of course all
- the other loafers are watching us, the street-corner loungers of this
- deck. But we have been many times bitten.
- "Ah ma!" say I, looking at the sky, "not so much wind as all that."
- An air of quiet, shrugging indifference is most effectual: as if you
- knew all about it, a good deal more than they knew.
- "Ah si! Molto vento! Molto vento! Outside! Outside!"
- With a long face and a dramatic gesture he points out of the harbour, to
- the grey sea. I too look out of the harbour at the pale line of sea
- beyond the mole. But I do not trouble to answer, and my eye is calm. So
- he goes away, only half triumphant.
- * * * * *
- "Things seem to get worse and worse!" cries the American friend. "What
- will you do on such a boat if you have an awful time out in the
- Mediterranean here? Oh no--will you risk it, really? Won't you go from
- Cività Vecchia?"
- "How awful it will be!" cries the q-b, looking round the grey harbour,
- the many masts clustering in the grey sky on the right: the big Naples
- boat turning her posterior to the quay-side a little way off, and
- cautiously budging backwards: the almost entirely shut-in harbour: the
- bits of blue and flying white cloud overhead: the little boats like
- beetles scuttling hither and thither across the basin: the thick crowd
- on the quay come to meet the Naples boat.
- * * * * *
- Time! Time! The American friend must go. She bids us goodbye, more than
- sympathetically.
- "I shall be awfully interested to hear how you get on."
- So down the side she goes. The boatman wants twenty francs--wants
- more--but doesn't get it. He gets ten, which is five too much. And so,
- sitting rather small and pinched and cold-looking, huddled in her
- sweater, she bibbles over the ripply water to the distant stone steps.
- We wave farewell. But other traffic comes between us. And the q-b,
- feeling nervous, is rather cross because the American friend's ideas of
- luxury have put us in such a poor light. We feel like the poorest of
- poor sea-faring relations.
- * * * * *
- Our ship is hooting for all she's worth. An important last-minuter comes
- surging up. The rope hawsers are being wound clankily in. Seagulls--they
- are never very many in the Mediterranean--seagulls whirl like a few
- flakes of snow in the upper chill air. Clouds spin. And without knowing
- it we are evaporating away from the shore, from our mooring, between the
- great _City of Trieste_ and another big black steamer that lies like a
- wall. We breathe towards this second black wall of steamer: distinctly.
- And of course an individual in an official cap is standing on the bottom
- of our departure ladder just above the water, yelling Barca!
- Barca!--shouting for a boat. And an old man on the sea stands up to his
- oars and comes pushing his clumsy boat with gathering speed between us
- and the other black wall. There he stands away below there, small,
- firing his clumsy boat along, remote as if in a picture on the dark
- green water. And our black side insidiously and evilly aspires to the
- other huge black wall. He rows in the canyon between, and is nearly
- here.
- When lo, the individual on the bottom step turns in the other direction.
- Another boat from the open basin is sweeping up: it is a race: she is
- near, she is nearer, she is up. With a curvet the boat from the open
- rounds up at the ladder. The boat between the gulf backs its oars. The
- official individual shouts and waves, the old man backing his oars in
- the gulf below yells expostulation, the boat from the open carries off
- its prey, our ship begins slowly to puddle-puddle-puddle, working her
- screw, the man in the gulf of green water rows for his life--we are
- floating into the open basin.
- Slowly, slowly we turn round: and as the ship turns, our hearts turn.
- Palermo fades from our consciousness: the Naples boat, the disembarking
- crowds, the rattling carriages to the land--the great _City of
- Trieste_--all fades from our heart. We see only the open gap of the
- harbour entrance, and the level, pale-grey void of the sea beyond. There
- are wisps of gleamy light--out there.
- And out there our heart watches--though Palermo is near us, just behind.
- We look round, and see it all behind us--but already it is gone, gone
- from our heart. The fresh wind, the gleamy wisps of light, the running,
- open sea beyond the harbour bars.
- * * * * *
- And so we steam out. And almost at once the ship begins to take a long,
- slow, dizzy dip, and a fainting swoon upwards, and a long, slow, dizzy
- dip, slipping away from beneath one. The q-b turns pale. Up comes the
- deck in that fainting swoon backwards--then down it fades in that
- indescribable slither forwards. It is all quite gentle--quite, quite
- gentle. But oh, so long, and so slow, and so dizzy.
- "Rather pleasant!" say I to the q-b.
- "Yes. Rather lovely _really_," she answers wistfully. To tell the truth
- there is something in the long, slow lift of the ship, and her long,
- slow slide forwards which makes my heart beat with joy. It is the motion
- of freedom. To feel her come up--then slide slowly forward, with a sound
- of the smashing of waters, is like the magic gallop of the sky, the
- magic gallop of elemental space. That long, slow, waveringly rhythmic
- rise and fall of the ship, with waters snorting as it were from her
- nostrils, oh God what a joy it is to the wild innermost soul. One is
- free at last--and lilting in a slow flight of the elements, winging
- outwards. Oh God, to be free of all the hemmed-in life--the horror of
- human tension, the absolute insanity of machine persistence. The agony
- which a train is to me, really. And the long-drawn-out agony of a life
- among tense, resistant people on land. And then to feel the long, slow
- lift and drop of this almost empty ship, as she took the waters. Ah God,
- liberty, liberty, elemental liberty. I wished in my soul the voyage
- might last forever, that the sea had no end, that one might float in
- this wavering, tremulous, yet long and surging pulsation while ever time
- lasted: space never exhausted, and no turning back, no looking back,
- even.
- * * * * *
- The ship was almost empty--save of course for the street-corner louts
- who hung about just below, on the deck itself. We stood alone on the
- weather-faded little promenade deck, which has old oak seats with old,
- carved little lions at the ends, for arm-rests--and a little cabin
- mysteriously shut, which much peeping determined as the wireless office
- and the operator's little curtained bed-niche.
- * * * * *
- Cold, fresh wind, a black-blue, translucent, rolling sea on which the
- wake rose in snapping foam, and Sicily on the left: Monte Pellegrino, a
- huge, inordinate mass of pinkish rock, hardly crisped with the faintest
- vegetation, looming up to heaven from the sea. Strangely large in mass
- and bulk Monte Pellegrino looks: and bare, like a Sahara in heaven: and
- old-looking. These coasts of Sicily are very imposing, terrific,
- fortifying the interior. And again one gets the feeling that age has
- worn them bare: as if old, old civilisations had worn away and exhausted
- the soil, leaving a terrifying blankness of rock, as at Syracuse in
- plateaus, and here in a great mass.
- * * * * *
- There seems hardly any one on board but ourselves: we alone on the
- little promenade deck. Strangely lonely, floating on a bare old ship
- past the great bare shores, on a rolling sea, stooping and rising in the
- wind. The wood of the fittings is all bare and weather-silvered, the
- cabin, the seats, even the little lions of the seats. The paint wore
- away long ago: and this timber will never see paint any more. Strange to
- put one's hand on the old oaken wood, so sea-fibred. Good old
- delicate-threaded oak: I swear it grew in England. And everything so
- carefully done, so solidly and everlastingly. I look at the lions, with
- the perfect-fitting oaken pins through their paws clinching them down,
- and their little mouths open. They are as solid as they were in
- Victorian days, as immovable. They will never wear away. What a joy in
- the careful, thorough, manly, everlasting work put into a ship: at least
- into this sixty-year-old vessel. Every bit of this old oak wood so
- sound, so beautiful: and the whole welded together with joints and
- wooden pins far more beautifully and livingly than iron welds. Rustless,
- life-born, living-tissued old wood: rustless as flesh is rustless, and
- happy-seeming as iron never can be. She rides so well, she takes the
- sea so beautifully, as a matter of course.
- * * * * *
- Various members of the crew wander past to look at us. This little
- promenade deck is over the first-class quarters, full in the stern. So
- we see first one head then another come up the ladder--mostly bare
- heads: and one figure after another slouches past, smoking a cigarette.
- All crew. At last the q-b stops one of them--it is what they are all
- waiting for, an opportunity to talk--and asks if the weird object on the
- top of Pellegrino is a ruin. Could there be a more touristy question!
- No, it is the semaphore station. Slap in the eye for the q-b! She
- doesn't mind, however, and the member of the crew proceeds to converse.
- He is a weedy, hollow-cheeked town-product: a Palermitan. He wears faded
- blue over-alls and informs us he is the ship's carpenter: happily
- unemployed for the rest of his life, apparently, and taking it as rather
- less than his dues. The ship once did the Naples-Palermo course--a very
- important course--in the old days of the General Navigation Company. The
- General Navigation Company sold her for eighty thousand liras years ago,
- and now she was worth two million. We pretend to believe: but I make a
- poor show. I am thoroughly sick to death of the sound of liras. No man
- can overhear ten words of Italian today without two thousand or two
- million or ten or twenty or two liras flying like venomous mosquitoes
- round his ears. Liras--liras--liras--nothing else. Romantic, poetic,
- cypress-and-orange-tree Italy is gone. Remains an Italy smothered in the
- filthy smother of innumerable Lira notes: ragged, unsavoury paper money
- so thick upon the air that one breathes it like some greasy fog. Behind
- this greasy fog some people may still see the Italian sun. I find it
- hard work. Through this murk of Liras you peer at Michael Angelo and at
- Botticelli and the rest, and see them all as through a glass, darkly.
- For heavy around you is Italy's after-the-war atmosphere, darkly
- pressing you, squeezing you, milling you into dirty paper notes. King
- Harry was lucky that they only wanted to coin him into gold. Italy wants
- to mill you into filthy paper Liras.
- * * * * *
- Another head--and a black alpaca jacket and a serviette this time--to
- tell us coffee is ready. Not before it is time, too. We go down into the
- subterranean state-room and sit on the screw-pin chairs, while the ship
- does the slide-and-slope trot under us, and we drink a couple of cups of
- coffee-and-milk, and eat a piece of bread and butter. At least one of
- the innumerable members of the crew gives me one cup, then casts me
- off. It is most obviously his intention that I shall get no more:
- because of course the innumerable members of the crew could all just do
- with another coffee and milk. However, though the ship heaves and the
- alpaca coats cluster menacingly in the doorway, I balance my way to the
- tin buffet and seize the coffee pot and the milk pot, and am quite
- successful in administering to the q-b and myself. Having restored the
- said vessels to their tin altar, I resume my spin chair at the long and
- desert board. The q-b and I are alone--save that in the distance a very
- fat back with gold-braid collar sits sideways and a fat hand disposes of
- various papers--he is part of the one-and-only table, of course. The
- tall lean alpaca jacket, with a face of yellow stone and a big black
- moustache moves from the outer doorway, glowers at our filled cups, and
- goes to the tin altar and touches the handles of the two vessels: just
- touches them to an arrangement: as one who should say: These are mine.
- What dirty foreigner dares help himself!
- * * * * *
- As quickly as possible we stagger up from the long dungeon where the
- alpaca jackets are swooping like blue-bottles upon the coffee pots, into
- the air. There the carpenter is waiting for us, like a spider.
- "Isn't the sea a little quieter?" says the q-b wistfully. She is growing
- paler.
- "No, Signora--how should it be?" says the gaunt-faced carpenter. "The
- wind is waiting for us behind Cape Gallo. You see that cape?" he points
- to a tall black cliff-front in the sea ahead. "When we get to that cape
- we get the wind and the sea. Here--" he makes a gesture--"it is
- moderate."
- "Ugh!" says the q-b, turning paler. "I'm going to lie down."
- She disappears. The carpenter, finding me stony ground, goes forward,
- and I see him melting into the crowd of the innumerable crew, that
- hovers on the lower-deck passage by the kitchen and the engines.
- * * * * *
- The clouds are flying fast overhead: and sharp and isolated come drops
- of rain, so that one thinks it must be spray. But no, it is a handful of
- rain. The ship swishes and sinks forward, gives a hollow thudding and
- rears slowly backward, along this pinkish lofty coast of Sicily that is
- just retreating into a bay. From the open sea comes the rain, come the
- long waves.
- * * * * *
- No shelter. One must go down. The q-b lies quietly in her bunk. The
- state-room is stale like a passage on the underground railway. No
- shelter, save near the kitchen and the engines, where there is a bit of
- warmth. The cook is busy cleaning fish, making the whiting bite their
- tails venomously at a little board just outside his kitchen-hole. A slow
- stream of kitchen-filth swilkers back and forth along the ship's side. A
- gang of the crew leans near me--a larger gang further down. Heaven knows
- what they can all be--but they never do anything but stand in gangs and
- talk and eat and smoke cigarettes. They are mostly young--mostly
- Palermitan--with a couple of unmistakable Neapolitans, having the
- peculiar Neapolitan hang-dog good looks, the chiselled cheek, the little
- black moustache, the large eyes. But they chew with their cheeks bulged
- out, and laugh with their fine, semi-sarcastic noses. The whole gang
- looks continually sideways. Nobody ever commands them--there seems to be
- absolutely no control. Only the fat engineer in grey linen looks as
- clean and as competent as his own machinery. Queer how machine-control
- puts the pride and self-respect into a man.
- * * * * *
- The rain over, I go and squat against the canvas that is spread over the
- arched sky-lights on the small promenade deck, sitting on the seat that
- is fixed to the sky-light sides. The wind is cold: there are snatches of
- sun and spits of rain. The big cape has come and is being left behind:
- we are heading for a far-off cape like a cloud in the grey air. A
- dimness comes over one's mind: a sort of stupefaction owing to the wind
- and the relentless slither-and-rearing of the ship. Not a sickness, but
- a sort of dim faintness. So much motion, such moving, powerful air. And
- withal a constant triumph in the long, slow sea-gallop of the ship.
- * * * * *
- A great loud bell: midday and the crew going to eat, rushing to eat.
- After some time we are summoned. "The Signora isn't eating?" asks the
- waiter eagerly: hoping she is not. "Yes, she is eating," say I. I fetch
- the q-b from her berth. Rather wanly she comes and gets into her spin
- chair. Bash comes a huge plate of thick, oily cabbage soup, very full,
- swilkering over the sides. We do what we can with it. So does the third
- passenger: a young woman who never wears a hat, thereby admitting
- herself simply as one of "the people," but who has an expensive
- complicated dress, nigger-coloured thin silk stockings, and suede
- high-heeled shoes. She is handsome, sturdy, with large dark eyes and a
- robust, frank manner: far too robustly downright for Italy. She is from
- Cagliari--and can't do much with the cabbage soup: and tells the waiter
- so, in her deep, hail-fellow-well-met voice. In the doorway hovers a
- little cloud of alpaca jackets grinning faintly with malignant
- anticipation of food, hoping, like blow-flies, we shall be too ill to
- eat. Away goes the soup and appears a massive yellow omelette, like some
- log of bilious wood. It is hard, and heavy, and cooked in the usual
- rank-tasting olive oil. The young woman doesn't have much truck with it:
- neither do we. To the triumph of the blow-flies, who see the yellow
- monster borne to their altar. After which a long long slab of the
- inevitable meat cut into innumerable slices, tasting of dead nothingness
- and having a thick sauce of brown neutrality: sufficient for twelve
- people at least. This, with masses of strong-tasting greenish
- cauliflower liberally weighted with oil, on a ship that was already
- heaving its heart out, made up the dinner. Accumulating malevolent
- triumph among the blow-flies in the passage. So on to a dessert of
- oranges, pears with wooden hearts and thick yellowish wash-leather
- flesh, and apples. Then coffee.
- And we had sat through it, which is something. The alpaca blue-bottles
- buzzed over the masses of food that went back on the dishes to the tin
- altar. Surely it had been made deliberately so that we should not eat
- it! The Cagliarese young woman talked to us. Yes, she broke into that
- awful language which the Italians--the quite ordinary ones--call
- French, and which they insist on speaking for their own glorification:
- yea, when they get to heaven's gate they will ask St. Peter for:
- "OOn bigliay pour ung--trozzième classe."
- Fortunately or unfortunately her inquisitiveness got the better of her,
- and she fell into her native Italian. What were we, where did we come
- from, where were we going, _why_ were we going, had we any children, did
- we want any, etc. After every answer she nodded her head and said Ahu!
- and watched us with energetic dark eyes. Then she ruminated over our
- nationalities and said, to the unseeing witnesses: Una bella coppia, a
- fine couple. As at the moment we felt neither beautiful nor coupled, we
- only looked greener. The grim man-at-arms coming up to ask us again if
- we weren't going to have a little wine, she lapsed into her ten-pounder
- French, which was most difficult to follow. And she said that on a
- sea-voyage one must eat, one must eat, if only a little. But--and she
- lapsed into Italian--one must by no means drink wine--no--no! One didn't
- want to, said I sadly. Whereupon the grim man-at-arms, whom, of course,
- we had cheated out of the bottle we refused to have opened for us, said
- with a lost sarcasm that wine made a man of a man, etc., etc. I was too
- weary of that underground, however. All I knew was that he wanted wine,
- wine, wine, and we hadn't ordered any. He didn't care for food.
- The Cagliarese told us she came now from Naples, and her husband was
- following in a few days. He was doing business in Naples. I nearly asked
- if he was a little dog-fish--this being the Italian for profiteer, but
- refrained in time. So the two ladies retired to lie down, I went and sat
- under my tarpaulin.
- * * * * *
- I felt very dim, and only a bit of myself. And I dozed blankly. The
- afternoon grew more sunny. The ship turned southwards, and with the wind
- and waves behind, it became much warmer, much smoother. The sun had the
- lovely strong winey warmth, golden over the dark-blue sea. The old
- oak-wood looked almost white, the afternoon was sweet upon the sea. And
- in the sunshine and the swishing of the sea, the speedier running of the
- empty ship, I slept a warm, sweet hour away, and awoke new. To see ahead
- pale, uplooming islands upon the right: the windy Egades: and on the
- right a mountain or high conical hill, with buildings on the summit: and
- in front against the sea, still rather far away, buildings rising upon a
- quay, within a harbor: and a mole, and a castle forward to sea, all
- small and far away, like a view. The buildings were square and fine.
- There was something impressive--magical under the far sunshine and the
- keen wind, the square and well-proportioned buildings waiting far off,
- waiting like a lost city in a story, a Rip van Winkle city. I knew it
- was Trapani, the western port of Sicily, under the western sun.
- * * * * *
- And the hill near us was Mount Eryx. I had never seen it before. So I
- had imagined a mountain in the sky. But it was only a hill, with
- undistinguishable cluster of a village on the summit, where even now
- cold wisps of vapour caught. They say it is 2,500 feet high. Still it
- looks only a hill.
- But why in the name of heaven should my heart stand still as I watch
- that hill which rises above the sea? It is the Etna of the west: but
- only a town-crowned hill. To men it must have had a magic almost greater
- than Etna's. Watching Africa! Africa, showing her coast on clear days.
- Africa the dreaded. And the great watch-temple of the summit,
- world-sacred, world-mystic in the world that was. Venus of the
- aborigines, older than Greek Aphrodite. Venus of the aborigines, from
- her watch-temple looking at Africa, beyond the Egatian isles. The
- world-mystery, the smiling Astarte. This, one of the world centres,
- older than old! and the woman-goddess watching Africa! _Erycina
- ridens._ Laughing, the woman-goddess, at this centre of an ancient,
- quite-lost world.
- I confess my heart stood still. But is mere historical fact so strong,
- that what one learns in bits from books can move one so? Or does the
- very word call an echo out of the dark blood? It seems so to me. It
- seems to me from the darkest recesses of my blood comes a terrible echo
- at the name of Mount Eryx: something quite unaccountable. The name of
- Athens hardly moves me. At Eryx--my darkness quivers. Eryx, looking west
- into Africa's sunset. _Erycina ridens._
- There is a tick-tocking in the little cabin against which I lean. The
- wireless operator is busy communicating with Trapani, no doubt. He is a
- fat young man with fairish curly hair and an important bearing. Give a
- man control of some machine, and at once his air of importance and
- more-than-human dignity develops. One of the unaccountable members of
- the crew lounges in the little doorway, like a chicken on one foot,
- having nothing to do. The girl from Cagliari comes up with two young
- men--also Sardinians by their thick-set, independent look, and the touch
- of pride in their dark eyes. She has no wraps at all: just her elegant
- fine-cloth dress, her bare head from which the wisps of hair blow across
- her brow, and the transparent "nigger" silk stockings. Yet she does not
- seem cold. She talks with great animation, sitting between the two
- young men. And she holds the hand of the one in the overcoat
- affectionately. She is always holding the hand of one or other of the
- two young men: and wiping wisps of wind-blown hair from her brow: and
- talking in her strong, nonchalant voice, rapidly, ceaselessly, with
- massive energy. Heaven knows if the two young men--they are third-class
- passengers--were previous acquaintances. But they hold her hand like
- brothers--quite simply and nicely, not at all sticky and libidinous. It
- all has an air of "Why not?"
- She shouts at me as I pass, in her powerful, extraordinary French:
- "Madame votre femme, elle est au lit?"
- I say she is lying down.
- "Ah!" she nods. "Elle a le mal de mer?"
- No, she is not sea-sick, just lying down.
- The two young men, between whom she is sitting as between two pillows,
- watch with the curious Sardinian dark eyes that seem alert and show the
- white all round. They are pleasant--a bit like seals. And they have a
- numb look for the moment, impressed by this strange language. She
- proceeds energetically to translate into Sardinian, as I pass on.
- We do not seem to be going to Trapani. There lies the town on the left,
- under the hill, the square buildings that suggest to me the factories
- of the East India Company shining in the sun along the curious,
- closed-in harbour, beyond the running, dark blue sea. We seem to be
- making for the island bulk of Levanzo. Perhaps we shall steer away to
- Sardinia without putting in to Trapani.
- On and on we run--and always as if we were going to steer between the
- pale blue, heaped-up islands, leaving Trapani behind us on our left. The
- town has been in sight for an hour or more: and still we run out to sea
- towards Levanzo. And the wireless-operator busily tick-tocks and throbs
- in his little cabin on this upper deck. Peeping in, one sees his bed and
- chair behind a curtain, screened off from his little office. And all so
- tidy and pleased-looking.
- From the islands one of the Mediterranean sailing ships is beating her
- way, across our track, to Trapani. I don't know the name of ships but
- the carpenter says she is a schooner: he says it with that Italian
- misgiving which doesn't really know but which can't bear not to know.
- Anyhow on she comes, with her tall ladder of square sails white in the
- afternoon light, and her lovely prow, curved in with a perfect hollow,
- running like a wild animal on a scent across the waters. There--the
- scent leads her north again. She changes her tack from the harbour
- mouth, and goes coursing away, passing behind us. Lovely she is, nimble
- and quick and palpitating, with all her sails white and bright and
- eager.
- We are changing our course. We have all the time been heading for the
- south of Levanzo. Now I see the island slowly edging back, as if
- clearing out of the way for us, like a man in the street. The island
- edges and turns aside: and walks away. And clearly we are making for the
- harbour mouth. We have all this time been running, out at sea, round the
- back of the harbour. Now I see the fortress-castle, an old thing, out
- forward to sea: and a little lighthouse and the way in. And beyond, the
- town-front with great palm trees and other curious dark trees, and
- behind these the large square buildings of the south rising imposingly,
- as if severe, big palaces upon the promenade. It all has a stately,
- southern, imposing appearance, withal remote from our modern centuries:
- standing back from the tides of our industrial life.
- I remember the Crusaders, how they called here so often on their way to
- the East. And Trapani seems waiting for them still, with its palm trees
- and its silence, full in the afternoon sun. It has not much to do but
- wait, apparently.
- The q-b emerges into the sun, crying out how lovely! And the sea is
- quieter: we are already in the lea of the harbour-curve. From the north
- the many-sailed ship from the islands is running down towards us, with
- the wind. And away on the south, on the sea-level, numerous short
- windmills are turning their sails briskly, windmill after windmill,
- rather stumpy, spinning gaily in the blue, silent afternoon, among the
- salt-lagoons stretching away towards Marsala. But there is a whole
- legion of windmills, and Don Quixote would have gone off his head. There
- they spin, hither and thither, upon the pale-blue sea-levels. And
- perhaps one catches a glitter of white salt-heaps. For these are the
- great salt-lagoons which make Trapani rich.
- * * * * *
- We are entering the harbour-basin, however, past the old castle out on
- the spit, past the little lighthouse, then through the entrance,
- slipping quietly on the now tranquil water. Oh, and how pleasant the
- fulness of the afternoon sun flooding this round, fast-sleeping harbour,
- along whose side the tall palms drowse, and whose waters are fast
- asleep. It seems quite a small, cosy harbour, with the great buildings
- warm-colored in the sun behind the dark tree-avenue of the marina. The
- same silent, sleeping, endlessly sun-warmed stateliness.
- In the midst of this tranquillity we slowly turn round upon the shining
- water, and in a few moments are moored. There are other ships moored
- away to the right: all asleep, apparently, in the flooding of the
- afternoon sun. Beyond the harbour entrance runs the great sea and the
- wind. Here all is still and hot and forgotten.
- "Vous descendez en terre?" shouts the young woman, in her energetic
- French--she leaves off holding the young men's hands for the moment. We
- are not quite sure: and we don't want her to come with us, anyhow, for
- her French is not our French.
- The land sleeps on: nobody takes any notice of us: but just one boat
- paddles out the dozen yards to our side. We decide to set foot on shore.
- * * * * *
- One should not, and we knew it. One should never enter into these
- southern towns that look so nice, so lovely, from the outside. However,
- we thought we would buy some cakes. So we crossed the avenue which looks
- so beautiful from the sea, and which, when you get into it, is a cross
- between an outside place where you throw rubbish and a humpy unmade road
- in a raw suburb, with a few iron seats, and litter of old straw and rag.
- Indescribably dreary in itself: yet with noble trees, and lovely
- sunshine, and the sea and the islands gleaming magic beyond the harbour
- mouth, and the sun, the eternal sun full focussed. A few mangy,
- nothing-to-do people stand disconsolately about, in southern fashion,
- as if they had been left there, water-logged, by the last flood, and
- were waiting for the next flood to wash them further. Round the corner
- along the quay a Norwegian steamer dreams that she is being loaded, in
- the muddle of the small port.
- * * * * *
- We looked at the cakes--heavy and wan they appeared to our sea-rolled
- stomachs. So we strolled into a main street, dark and dank like a sewer.
- A tram bumped to a standstill, as if now at last was the end of the
- world. Children coming from school ecstatically ran at our heels, with
- bated breath, to hear the vocal horrors of our foreign speech. We turned
- down a dark side alley, about forty paces deep: and were on the northern
- bay, and on a black stench that seemed like the perpetual sewer, a bank
- of mud.
- So we got to the end of the black main street, and turned in haste to
- the sun. Ah--in a moment we were in it. There rose the palms, there lay
- our ship in the shining, curving basin--and there focussed the sun, so
- that in a moment we were drunk or dazed by it. Dazed. We sat on an iron
- seat in the rubbish-desolate, sun-stricken avenue.
- A ragged and dirty girl was nursing a fat and moist and immovable baby
- and tending to a grimy fat infant boy. She stood a yard away and gazed
- at us as one would gaze at a pig one was going to buy. She came nearer,
- and examined the q-b. I had my big hat down over my eyes. But no, she
- had taken her seat at my side, and poked her face right under my hat
- brim, so that her towzled hair touched me, and I thought she would kiss
- me. But again no. With her breath on my cheek she only gazed on my face
- as if it were a wax mystery. I got up hastily.
- "Too much for me," said I to the q-b.
- She laughed, and asked what the baby was called. The baby was called
- Beppina, as most babies are.
- Driven forth, we wandered down the desolate avenue of shade and sun
- towards the ship, and turned once more into the town. We had not been on
- shore more than ten minutes. This time we went to the right, and found
- more shops. The streets were dark and sunless and cold. And Trapani
- seemed to me to sell only two commodities: cured rabbit skins and
- cat-skins, and great, hideous, modern bed-spread arrangements of heavy
- flowered silk and fabulous price. They seem to think nothing of
- thousands of liras, in Trapani.
- But most remarkable was bunny and pussy. Bunny and pussy, flattened out
- like pressed leaves, dangling in clusters everywhere. Furs! white bunny,
- black bunny in great abundance, piebald bunny, grey bunny:--then pussy,
- tabby pussy, and tortoiseshell pussy, but mostly black pussy, in a
- ghastly semblance of life, all flat, of course. Just single furs.
- Clusters, bunches, heaps, and dangling arrays of plain-superficies puss
- and bun-bun! Puss and bun by the dozen and the twenty, like dried
- leaves, for your choice. If a cat from a ship should chance to find
- itself in Trapani streets, it would give a mortal yell, and go mad, I am
- sure.
- We strolled for ten more minutes in this narrow, tortuous, unreal town,
- that seemed to have plenty of flourishing inhabitants, and a fair number
- of Socialists, if one was to judge by the great scrawlings on the walls:
- W. LENIN and ABASSO LA BORGHESIA. Don't imagine, by the way, that Lenin
- is another Wille on the list. The apparent initial stands for _Evviva_,
- the double V.
- * * * * *
- Cakes one dared not buy, after looking at them. But we found macaroon
- biscuits, and a sort of flat plaster-casts of the Infant Jesus under a
- dove, of which we bought two. The q-b ate her macaroon biscuits all
- through the streets, and we went towards the ship. The fat boatman
- hailed us to take us back. It was just about eight yards of water to
- row, the ship being moored on the quay: one could have jumped it. I gave
- the fat boatman two liras, two francs. He immediately put on the
- socialist-workman indignation, and thrust the note back at me. Sixty
- centimes more! The fee was thirteen sous each way! In Venice or Syracuse
- it would be two sous. I looked at him and gave him the money and said:
- "Per Dio, we are in Trapani!" He muttered back something about
- foreigners. But the hateful, unmanly insolence of these lords of toil,
- now they have their various "unions" behind them and their "rights" as
- working men, sends my blood black. They are ordinary men no more: the
- human, happy Italian is most marvellously vanished. New honors come upon
- them, etc. The dignity of human labour is on its hind legs, busy giving
- every poor innocent who isn't ready for it a kick in the mouth.
- * * * * *
- But, once more in parenthesis, let me remind myself that it is our own
- English fault. We have slobbered about the nobility of toil, till at
- last the nobles naturally insist on eating the cake. And more than that,
- we have set forth, politically, on such a high and Galahad quest of holy
- liberty, and been caught so shamelessly filling our pockets, that no
- wonder the naïve and idealistic south turns us down with a bang.
- * * * * *
- Well, we are back on the ship. And we want tea. On the list by the door
- it says we are to have coffee, milk and butter at 8.30: luncheon at
- 11.30: tea, coffee or chocolate at 3.00: and dinner at 6.30. And
- moreover: "The company will feed the passengers for the normal duration
- of the voyage only." Very well--very well. Then where is tea? Not any
- signs! and the alpaca jackets giving us a wide berth. But we find our
- man, and demand our rights: at least the q-b does.
- The tickets from Palermo to Cagliari cost, together, 583 liras. Of this,
- 250 liras was for the ticket, and 40 liras each for the food. This, for
- two tickets, would make 580 liras. The odd three for usual stamps. The
- voyage was supposed to last about thirty or thirty-two hours: from eight
- of the morning of departure to two or four of the following afternoon.
- Surely we pay for our tea.
- The other passengers have emerged: a large, pale, fat, "handsome"
- Palermitan who is going to be professor at Cagliari: his large, fat, but
- high-coloured wife: and three children, a boy of fourteen like a thin,
- frail, fatherly girl, a little boy in a rabbit-skin overcoat, coming
- rather unfluffed, and a girl-child on the mother's knee. The
- one-year-old girl-child being, of course, the only man in the party.
- They have all been sick all day, and look washed out. We sympathise.
- They lament the cruelties of the journey--and _senza servizio! senza
- servizio!_ without any maid servant. The mother asks for coffee, and a
- cup of milk for the children: then, seeing our tea with lemon, and
- knowing it by repute, she will have tea. But the rabbit-boy will have
- coffee--coffee and milk--and nothing else. And an orange. And the baby
- will have lemon, pieces of lemon. And the fatherly young "miss" of an
- adolescent brother laughs indulgently at all the whims of these two
- young ones: the father laughs and thinks it all adorable and expects us
- to adore. He is almost too washed-out to attend properly, to give the
- full body of his attention.
- So the mother gets her cup of tea--and puts a piece of lemon in--and
- then milk on top of that. The rabbit boy sucks an orange, slobbers in
- the tea, insists on coffee and milk, tries a piece of lemon, and gets a
- biscuit. The baby, with weird faces, chews pieces of lemon: and drops
- them in the family cup: and fishes them out with a little sugar, and
- dribbles them across the table to her mouth, throws them away and
- reaches for a new sour piece. They all think it humorous and adorable.
- Arrives the milk, to be treated as another loving cup, mingled with
- orange, lemon, sugar, tea, biscuit, chocolate, and cake. Father,
- mother, and elder brother partake of nothing, they haven't the
- stomach. But they are charmed, of course, by the pretty pranks and
- messes of the infants. They have extraordinary amiable patience,
- and find the young ones a perpetual source of charming amusement.
- They look at one another, the elder ones, and laugh and comment,
- while the two young ones mix themselves and the table into a
- lemon-milk-orange-tea-sugar-biscuit-cake-chocolate mess. This inordinate
- Italian amiable patience with their young monkeys is astonishing. It
- makes the monkeys more monkey-like, and self-conscious incredibly, so
- that a baby has all the tricks of a Babylonian harlot, making eyes and
- trying new pranks. Till at last one sees the southern Holy Family as an
- unholy triad of imbecility.
- Meanwhile I munched my Infant-Jesus-and-Dove arrangement, which was
- rather like eating thin glass, so hard and sharp. It was made of almond
- and white of egg presumably, and was not so bad if you could eat it at
- all. It was a Christmas relic.--And I watched the Holy Family across the
- narrow board, and tried not to look all I felt.
- * * * * *
- Going on deck as soon as possible, we watched the loading of barrels of
- wine into the hold--a mild and happy-go-lucky process. The ship seemed
- to be almost as empty of cargo as of passengers. Of the latter, we were
- apparently twelve adults, all told, and the three children. And as for
- cargo, there were the wooden chests of the officer, and these fourteen
- barrels of wine from Trapani. The last were at length settled more or
- less firm, the owner, or the responsible landsman seeing to it. No one
- on the ship seemed to be responsible for anything. And four of the
- innumerable crew were replacing the big planks over the hold. It was
- curious how forlorn the ship seemed to feel, now she was ready for sea
- again. Her innumerable crew did not succeed in making her alive. She ran
- her course like a lost soul across the Mid-Mediterranean.
- * * * * *
- Outside the harbour the sun was sinking, gorgeous gold and red the sky,
- and vast, beyond the darkening islands of the Egades group. Coming as we
- did from the east side of the island, where dawn beyond the Ionian sea
- is the day's great and familiar event: so decisive an event, that as the
- light appears along the sea's rim, so do my eyes invariably open and
- look at it, and know it is dawn, and as the night-purple is fused back,
- and a little scarlet thrills towards the zenith, invariably, day by day,
- I feel I must get up: coming from the east, shut off hermetically from
- the west by the steep spikes of the mountains at our back, we felt this
- sunset in the African sea terrible and dramatic. It seemed much more
- magnificent and tragic than our Ionian dawn, which has always a
- suggestion of a flower opening. But this great red, trumpet-flaring
- sunset had something African, half-sinister, upon the sea: and it seemed
- so far off, in an unknown land. Whereas our Ionian dawn always seems
- near and familiar and happy.
- A different goddess the Eryx Astarte, the woman Ashtaroth, _Erycina
- ridens_ must have been, in her prehstoric dark smiling, watching the
- fearful sunsets beyond the Egades, from our gold-lighted Apollo of the
- Ionian east. She is a strange goddess to me, this Erycina Venus, and the
- west is strange and unfamiliar and a little fearful, be it Africa or be
- it America.
- Slowly at sunset we moved out of the harbour. And almost as we passed
- the bar, away in front we saw, among the islands, the pricking of a
- quick pointed light. Looking back, we saw the light at the harbour
- entrance twitching: and the remote, lost town beginning to glimmer. And
- night was settling down upon the sea, through the crimsoned purple of
- the last afterglow.
- The islands loomed big as we drew nearer, dark in the thickening
- darkness. Overhead a magnificent evening-star blazed above the open sea,
- giving me a pang at the heart, for I was so used to see her hang just
- above the spikes of the mountains, that I felt she might fall, having
- the space beneath.
- Levanzo and the other large island were quite dark: absolutely dark,
- save for one beam of a lighthouse low down in the distance. The wind was
- again strong and cold: the ship had commenced her old slither and heave,
- slither and heave, which mercifully we had forgotten. Overhead were
- innumerable great stars active as if they were alive in the sky. I saw
- Orion high behind us, and the dog-star glaring. And _swish!_ went the
- sea as we took the waves, then after a long trough, _swish!_ This
- curious rhythmic swishing and hollow drumming of a steamer at sea has a
- narcotic, almost maddening effect on the spirit, a long, hissing burst
- of waters, then the hollow roll, and again the upheaval to a sudden
- hiss-ss-ss!
- A bell had clanged and we knew the crew were once more feeding. At every
- moment of the day and presumably of the night, feeding was going on--or
- coffee-drinking.
- * * * * *
- We were summoned to dinner. Our young woman was already seated: and a
- fat uniformed mate or purser or official of some sort was finishing off
- in the distance. The pale professor also appeared: and at a certain
- distance down the table sat a little hard-headed grey man in a long grey
- alpaca travelling coat. Appeared the beloved macaroni with tomato sauce:
- no food for the sea. I put my hopes on the fish. Had I not seen the
- cook making whiting bite their own tails viciously?--The fish appeared.
- And what was it? Fried ink-pots. A _calamaio_ is an ink-pot: also it is
- a polyp, a little octopus which, alas, frequents the Mediterranean and
- squirts ink if offended. This polyp with its tentacles is cut up and
- fried, and reduced to the consistency of boiled celluloid. It is
- esteemed a delicacy: but is tougher than indiarubber, gristly through
- and through.
- I have a peculiar aversion to these ink-pots. Once in Liguria we had a
- boat of our own and paddled with the peasant paddlers. Alessandro caught
- ink-pots: and like this. He tied up a female by a string in a cave--the
- string going through a convenient hole in her end. There she lived, like
- an Amphitrite's wire-haired terrier tied up, till Alessandro went
- a-fishing. Then he towed her, like a poodle behind. And thus, like a
- poodly-bitch, she attracted hangers-on in the briny seas. And these poor
- polyp inamorati were the victims. They were lifted as prey on board,
- where I looked with horror on their grey, translucent tentacles and
- large, cold, stony eyes. The she-polyp was towed behind again. But after
- a few days she died.
- And I think, even for creatures so awful-looking, this method is
- indescribably base, and shows how much lower than an octopus even, is
- lordly man.
- Well, we chewed a few ends of oil-fried ink-pots, and gave it up. The
- Cagliari girl gave up too: the professor had not even tried. Only the
- hard-headed grey man in the alpaca coat chewed animatedly, with bouncing
- jaws. Mountains of calamaio remained for the joyous blue-bottles.
- Arrived the inevitable meat--this long piece of completely tasteless
- undercut in innumerable grey-brown slices. Oh, Italy! The professor
- fled.
- Arrived the wash-leather pears, the apples, the oranges--we saved an
- apple for a happier hour.
- Arrived coffee, and, as a magnificent treat, a few well-known pastries.
- They all taste wearily alike. The young woman shakes her head. I shake
- mine, but the q-b, like a child, is pleased. Most pleased of all,
- however, are the blue-bottles, who dart in a black-alpaca bunch to the
- tin altar, and there loudly buzz, wildly, above the sallow cakes.
- The citron-cheeked, dry one, however, cares darkly nothing for cakes. He
- comes once more to twit us about wine. So much so that the Cagliari girl
- orders a glass of Marsala: and I must second her. So there we are, three
- little glasses of brown liquid. The Cagliari girl sips hers and suddenly
- flees. The q-b sips hers with infinite caution, and quietly retires. I
- finish the q-b's little glass, and my own, and the voracious blow-flies
- buzz derisively and excited. The yellow-cheeked one has disappeared with
- the bottle.
- From the professorial cabin faint wails, sometimes almost fierce, as one
- or another is going to be ill. Only a thin door is between this
- state-room and them. The most down-trodden frayed ancient rag of a man
- goes discreetly with basins, trying not to let out glimpses of the awful
- within. I climb up to look at the vivid, drenching stars, to breathe the
- cold wind, to see the dark sea sliding. Then I too go to the cabin, and
- watch the sea run past the porthole for a minute, and insert myself like
- the meat in a sandwich into the tight lower bunk. Oh, infinitesimal
- cabin, where we sway like two matches in a match box! Oh strange, but
- even yet excellent gallop of a ship at sea.
- * * * * *
- I slept not so badly through the stifled, rolling night--in fact later
- on slept soundly. And the day was growing bright when I peered through
- the porthle, the sea was much smoother. It was a brilliant clear
- morning. I made haste and washed myself cursorily in the saucer that
- dribbled into a pail in a corner: there was not space even for one
- chair, this saucer was by my bunk-head. And I went on deck.
- Ah the lovely morning! Away behind us the sun was just coming above the
- sea's horizon, and the sky all golden, all a joyous, fire-heated gold,
- and the sea was glassy bright, the wind gone still, the waves sunk into
- long, low undulations, the foam of the wake was pale ice-blue in the
- yellow air. Sweet, sweet wide morning on the sea, with the sun coming,
- swimming up, and a tall sailing bark, with her flat fore-ladder of sails
- delicately across the light, and a far-far steamer on the electric vivid
- morning horizon.
- The lovely dawn: the lovely pure, wide morning in the mid-sea, so
- golden-aired and delighted, with the sea like sequins shaking, and the
- sky far, far, far above, unfathomably clear. How glad to be on a ship!
- What a golden hour for the heart of man! Ah if one could sail for ever,
- on a small quiet, lonely ship, from land to land and isle to isle, and
- saunter through the spaces of this lovely world, always through the
- spaces of this lovely world. Sweet it would be sometimes to come to the
- opaque earth, to block oneself against the stiff land, to annul the
- vibration of one's flight against the inertia of our _terra firma!_ but
- life itself would be in the flight, the tremble of space. Ah the
- trembling of never-ended space, as one moves in flight! Space, and the
- frail vibration of space, the glad lonely wringing of the heart. Not to
- be clogged to the land any more. Not to be any more like a donkey with a
- log on its leg, fastened to weary earth that has no answer now. But to
- be off.
- To find three masculine, world-lost souls, and world-lost saunter, and
- saunter on along with them, across the dithering space, as long as life
- lasts! Why come to anchor? There is nothing to anchor for. Land has no
- answer to the soul any more. It has gone inert. Give me a little ship,
- kind gods, and three world-lost comrades. Hear me! And let me wander
- aimless across this vivid outer world, the world empty of man, where
- space flies happily.
- * * * * *
- The lovely, celandine-yellow morning of the open sea, paling towards a
- rare, sweet blue! The sun stood above the horizon, like the great
- burning stigma of the sacred flower of day. Mediterranean sailing-ships,
- so mediaeval, hovered on the faint morning wind, as if uncertain which
- way to go, curious, odd-winged insects of the flower. The steamer,
- hull-down, was sinking towards Spain. Space rang clear about us: the
- level sea!
- Appeared the Cagliari young woman and her two friends. She was looking
- handsome and restored now the sea was easy. Her two male friends stood
- touching her, one at either shoulder.
- "Bonjour, Monsieur!" she barked across at me. "Vous avez pris le café?"
- "Pas encore. Et vous?"
- "Non! Madame votre femme...."
- She roared like a mastiff dog: and then translated with unction to her
- two uninitiated friends. How it was they did not understand her French I
- do not know, it was so like travestied Italian.
- I went below to find the q-b.
- * * * * *
- When we came up, the faint shape of land appeared ahead, more
- transparent than thin pearl. Already Sardinia. Magic are high lands seen
- from the sea, when they are far, far off, and ghostly translucent like
- ice-bergs. This was Sardinia, looming like fascinating shadows in
- mid-sea. And the sailing ships, as if cut out of frailest pearl
- translucency, were wafting away towards Naples. I wanted to count their
- sails--five square ones which I call the ladder, one above the
- other--but how many wing-blades? That remained yet to be seen.
- * * * * *
- Our friend the carpenter spied us out: at least, he was not my friend.
- He didn't find me _simpatico_, I am sure. But up he came, and proceeded
- to entertain us with weary banality. Again the young woman called, had
- we had coffee? We said we were just going down. And then she said that
- whatever we had today we had to pay for: our food ended with the one
- day. At which the q-b was angry, feeling swindled. But I had known
- before.
- * * * * *
- We went down and had our coffee notwithstanding. The young woman came
- down, and made eyes at one of the alpaca blue-bottles. After which we
- saw a cup of coffee and milk and two biscuits being taken to her into
- her cabin, discreetly. When Italians are being discreet and on the sly,
- the very air about them becomes tell-tale, and seems to shout with a
- thousand tongues. So with a thousand invisible tongues clamouring the
- fact, the young woman had her coffee secretly and _gratis_, in her
- cabin.
- * * * * *
- But the morning was lovely. The q-b and I crept round the bench at the
- very stern of the ship and sat out of the wind and out of sight, just
- above the foaming of the wake. Before us was the open morning--and the
- glisten of our ship's track, like a snail's path, trailing across the
- sea: straight for a little while, then giving a bend to the left, always
- a bend towards the left: and coming at us from the pure horizon, like a
- bright snail-path. Happy it was to sit there in the stillness, with
- nothing but the humanless sea to shine about us.
- But no, we were found out. Arrived the carpenter.
- "Ah, you have found a fine place--!"
- "Molto bello!" This from the q-b. I could not bear the irruption.
- He proceeded to talk--and as is inevitable, the war. Ah, the war--it was
- a terrible thing. He had become ill--very ill. Because, you see, not
- only do you go without proper food, without proper rest and warmth, but,
- you see, you are in an agony of fear for your life all the time. An
- agony of fear for your life. And that's what does it. Six months in
- hospital--! The q-b, of course, was sympathetic.
- The Sicilians are quite simple about it. They just tell you they were
- frightened to death, and it made them ill. The q-b, woman-like, loves
- them for being so simple about it. I feel angry somewhere. For they
- _expect_ a full-blown sympathy. And however the great god Mars may have
- shrunk and gone wizened in the world, it still annoys me to hear him
- _so_ blasphemed.
- * * * * *
- Near us the automatic log was spinning, the thin rope trailing behind us
- in the sea. Erratically it jerked and spun, with spasmodic torsion. He
- explained that the little screw at the end of the line spun to the
- speed of travelling. We were going from ten to twelve Italian miles to
- the hour. Ah, yes, we _could_ go twenty. But we went no faster than ten
- or twelve, to save the coal.
- The coal--il carbone! I knew we were in for it. England--l'Inghilterra
- she has the coal. And what does she do? She sells it very dear.
- Particularly to Italy. Italy won the war and now can't even have coal.
- Because why! The price. The exchange! _Il cambio._ Now I am doubly in
- for it. Two countries had been able to keep their money high--England
- and America. The English sovereign--la sterlina--and the American
- dollar--_sa_, these were money. The English and the Americans flocked to
- Italy, with their _sterline_ and their _dollari_, and they bought what
- they wanted for nothing, for nothing. Ecco! Whereas we poor Italians--we
- are in a state of ruination--proper ruination. The allies, etc., etc.
- I am so used to it--I am so wearily used to it. I can't walk a stride
- without having this wretched _cambio_, the exchange, thrown at my head.
- And this with an injured petulant spitefulness which turns my blood. For
- I assure them, whatever I have in Italy I pay for: and I am not England.
- I am not the British Isles on two legs.
- Germany--La Germania--she did wrong to make the war. But--there you
- are, that was war. Italy and Germany--l'Italia e la Germania--they had
- always been friends. In Palermo....
- My God, I felt I could not stand it another second. To sit above the
- foam and have this miserable creature stuffing wads of chewed newspaper
- into my ear--no, I could not bear it. In Italy, there is no escape. Say
- two words, and the individual starts chewing old newspaper and stuffing
- it into you. No escape. You become--if you are English--_l'Inghilterra_,
- _il carbone_, and _il cambio_; and as England, coal and exchange you are
- treated. It is more than useless to try to be human about it. You are a
- State usury system, a coal fiend and an exchange thief. Every Englishman
- has disappeared into this triple abstraction, in the eyes of the
- Italian, of the proletariat particularly. Try and get them to be human,
- try and get them to see that you are simply an individual, if you can.
- After all, I am no more than a single human man wandering my lonely way
- across these years. But no--to an Italian I am a perfected abstraction,
- England--coal--exchange. The Germans were once devils for inhuman
- theoretic abstracting of living beings. But now the Italians beat them.
- I am a walking column of statistics, which adds up badly for Italy.
- Only this and nothing more. Which being so, I shut my mouth and walk
- away.
- * * * * *
- For the moment the carpenter is shaken off. But I am in a rage, fool
- that I am. It is like being pestered by their mosquitoes. The sailing
- ships are near--and I count fifteen sails. Beautiful they look! Yet if I
- were on board somebody would be chewing newspaper at me, and addressing
- me as England--coal--exchange.
- The mosquito hovers--and hovers. But the stony blank of the side of my
- cheek keeps him away. Yet he hovers. And the q-b feels sympathetic
- towards him: quite sympathetic. Because of course he treats her--a _bel
- pezzo_--as if he would lick her boots, or anything else that she would
- let him lick.
- * * * * *
- Meanwhile we eat the apples from yesterday's dessert, and the remains of
- the q-b's Infant-Jesus-and-dove cake. The land is drawing nearer--we can
- see the shape of the end promontory and peninsula--and a white speck
- like a church. The bulk of the land is forlorn and rather shapeless,
- coming towards us: but attractive.
- Looking ahead towards the land gives us away. The mosquito swoops on us.
- Yes--he is not sure--he thinks the white speck is a church--or a
- lighthouse. When you pass the cape on the right, and enter the wide bay
- between Cape Spartivento and Cape Carbonara, then you have two hours
- sail to Cagliari. We shall arrive between two and three o'clock. It is
- now eleven.
- Yes, the sailing ships are probably going to Naples. There is not much
- wind for them now. When there is wind they go fast, faster than our
- steamer. Ah Naples--bella, bella, eh? A little dirty, say I. But what do
- you want? says he. A great city! Palermo of course is better.
- Ah--the Neapolitan women--he says, Ã propos or not. They do their hair
- so fine, so neat and beautiful--but underneath--sotto--sotto--they are
- dirty. This being received in cold silence, he continues: _Noi giriamo
- il mondo! Noi, chi giriamo, conosciamo il mondo._ _We_ travel about,
- and _we_ know the world. Who _we_ are, I do not know: his highness the
- Palermitan carpenter lout, no doubt. But _we_, who travel, know the
- world. He is preparing his shot. The Neapolitan women, and the English
- women, in this are equal: that they are dirty underneath. Underneath,
- they are dirty. The women of London--
- But it is getting too much for me.
- "You who look for dirty women," say I, "find dirty women everywhere."
- He stops short and watches me.
- "No! No! You have not understood me. No! I don't mean that. I mean that
- the Neapolitan women and the English women have dirty underclothing--"
- To which he gets no answer but a cold look and a cold cheek. Whereupon
- he turns to the q-b, and proceeds to be _simpatica_. And after a few
- moments he turns again to me:
- "Il signore is offended! He is offended with me."
- But I turn the other way. And at last he clears out: in triumph, I must
- admit: like a mosquito that has bitten one in the neck. As a matter of
- fact one should _never_ let these fellows get into conversation
- nowadays. They are no longer human beings. They hate one's Englishness,
- and leave out the individual.
- * * * * *
- We walk forward, towards the fore-deck, where the captain's lookout
- cabin is. The captain is an elderly man, silent and crushed: with the
- look of a gentleman. But he looks beaten down. Another, still another
- member of the tray-carrying department is just creeping up his ladder
- with a cup of black coffee. Returning, we peep down the sky-light into
- the kitchen. And there we see roast chicken and sausages--roast chicken
- and sausages! Ah, this is where the sides of kid and the chickens and
- the good things go: all down the throats of the crew. There is no more
- food for us, until we land.
- * * * * *
- We have passed the cape--and the white thing is a lighthouse. And the
- fattish, handsome professor has come up carrying the little girl-child,
- while the femalish elder brother leads the rabbit-fluffy small boy by
- the hand. So _en famille_: so terribly _en famille_. They deposit
- themselves near us, and it threatens another conversation. But not for
- anything, my dears!
- The sailors--not sailors, some of the street-corner loafers, are
- hoisting the flag, the red-white-and-green Italian tricolor. It floats
- at the mast-head, and the femalish brother, in a fine burst of feeling,
- takes off his funny hat with a flourish and cries:
- "Ecco la bandiera italiana!"
- Ach, the hateful sentimentalism of these days.
- The land passes slowly, very slowly. It is hilly, but barren looking,
- with few trees. And it is not spikey and rather splendid, like Sicily.
- Sicily has style. We keep along the east side of the bay--away in the
- west is Cape Spartivento. And still no sight of Cagliari.
- "Two hours yet!" cries the Cagliari girl. "Two hours before we eat. Ah,
- when I get on land, what a good meal I shall eat."
- The men haul in the automatic log. The sky is clouding over with that
- icy curd which comes after midday when the bitter north wind is blowing.
- It is no longer warm.
- * * * * *
- Slowly, slowly we creep along the formless shore. An hour passes. We see
- a little fort ahead, done in enormous black-and-white checks, like a
- fragment of gigantic chess-board. It stands at the end of a long spit of
- land--a long, barish peninsula that has no houses and looks as if it
- might be golf-links. But it is not golf-links.
- And suddenly there is Cagliari: a naked town rising steep, steep,
- golden-looking, piled naked to the sky from the plain at the head of the
- formless hollow bay. It is strange and rather wonderful, not a bit like
- Italy. The city piles up lofty and almost miniature, and makes me think
- of Jerusalem: without trees, without cover, rising rather bare and
- proud, remote as if back in history, like a town in a monkish,
- illuminated missal. One wonders how it ever got there. And it seems like
- Spain--or Malta: not Italy. It is a steep and lonely city, treeless, as
- in some old illumination. Yet withal rather jewel-like: like a sudden
- rose-cut amber jewel naked at the depth of the vast indenture. The air
- is cold, blowing bleak and bitter, the sky is all curd. And that is
- Cagliari. It has that curious look, as if it could be seen, but not
- entered. It is like some vision, some memory, something that has passed
- away. Impossible that one can actually _walk_ in that city: set foot
- there and eat and laugh there. Ah, no! Yet the ship drifts nearer,
- nearer, and we are looking for the actual harbour.
- * * * * *
- The usual sea-front with dark trees for a promenade and palatial
- buildings behind, but here not so pink and gay, more reticent, more
- sombre of yellow stone. The harbour itself a little basin of water, into
- which we are slipping carefully, while three salt-barges laden with salt
- as white as snow creep round from the left, drawn by an infinitesimal
- tug. There are only two other forlorn ships in the basin. It is cold on
- deck. The ship turns slowly round, and is being hauled to the quay side.
- I go down for the knapsack, and a fat blue-bottle pounces at me.
- "You pay nine francs fifty."
- I pay them, and we get off that ship.
- III.
- CAGLIARI.
- There is a very little crowd waiting on the quay: mostly men with their
- hands in their pockets. But, thank Heaven, they have a certain aloofness
- and reserve. They are not like the tourist-parasites of these post-war
- days, who move to the attack with a terrifying cold vindictiveness the
- moment one emerges from any vehicle. And some of these men look really
- poor. There are no poor Italians any more: at least, loafers.
- Strange the feeling round the harbour: as if everybody had gone away.
- Yet there are people about. It is "festa" however, Epiphany. But it is
- so different from Sicily: none of the suave Greek-Italian charms, none
- of the airs and graces, none of the glamour. Rather bare, rather stark,
- rather cold and yellow--somehow like Malta, without Malta's foreign
- liveliness. Thank Goodness no one wants to carry my knapsack. Thank
- Goodness no one has a fit at the sight of it. Thank Heaven no one takes
- any notice. They stand cold and aloof, and don't move.
- We make our way through the Customs: then through the Dazio, the City
- Customs-house. Then we are free. We set off up a steep, new, broad road,
- with little trees on either side. But stone, arid, new, wide stone,
- yellowish under the cold sky--and abandoned-seeming. Though, of course,
- there are people about. The north wind blows bitingly.
- We climb a broad flight of steps, always upwards, up the wide,
- precipitous, dreary boulevard with sprouts of trees. Looking for the
- Hotel, and dying with hunger.
- * * * * *
- At last we find it, the Scala di Ferro: through a courtyard with green
- plants. And at last a little man with lank, black hair, like an esquimo,
- comes smiling. He is one brand of Sardinian--esquimo looking. There is
- no room with two beds: only single rooms. And thus we are led off, if
- you please, to the "bagnio": the bathing-establishment wing, on the dank
- ground floor. Cubicles on either side a stone passage, and in every
- cubicle a dark stone bath, and a little bed. We can have each a little
- bath cubicle. If there's nothing else for it, there isn't: but it seems
- dank and cold and horrid, underground. And one thinks of all the
- unsavory "assignations" at these old bagnio places. True, at the end of
- the passage are seated two carabinieri. But whether to ensure
- respectibility or not, Heaven knows. We are in the baths, that's all.
- [Illustration: ISILI]
- The esquimo returns after five minutes, however. There _is_ a bedroom in
- the house. He is pleased, because he didn't like putting us into the
- bagnio. Where he found the bedroom I don't know. But there it was,
- large, sombre, cold, and over the kitchen fumes of a small inner court
- like a well. But perfectly clean and all right. And the people seemed
- warm and good-natured, like human beings. One has got so used to the
- non-human ancient-souled Sicilians, who are suave and so completely
- callous.
- * * * * *
- After a really good meal we went out to see the town. It was after three
- o'clock and everywhere was shut up like an English Sunday. Cold, stony
- Cagliari: in summer you must be sizzling hot, Cagliari, like a kiln. The
- men stood about in groups, but without the intimate Italian watchfulness
- that never leaves a passer-by alone.
- Strange, stony Cagliari. We climbed up a street like a corkscrew
- stairway. And we saw announcements of a children's fancy-dress ball.
- Cagliari is very steep. Half-way up there is a strange place called the
- bastions, a large, level space like a drill-ground with trees,
- curiously suspended over the town, and sending off a long shoot like a
- wide viaduct, across above the corkscrew street that comes climbing up.
- Above this bastion place the town still rises steeply to the Cathedral
- and the fort. What is so curious is that this terrace or bastion is so
- large, like some big recreation ground, that it is almost dreary, and
- one cannot understand its being suspended in mid-air. Down below is the
- little circle of the harbour. To the left a low, malarial-looking sea
- plain, with tufts of palm trees and Arab-looking houses. From this runs
- out the long spit of land towards that black-and-white watch-fort, the
- white road trailing forth. On the right, most curiously, a long strange
- spit of sand runs in a causeway far across the shallows of the bay, with
- the open sea on one hand, and vast, end-of-the-world lagoons on the
- other. There are peaky, dark mountains beyond this--just as across the
- vast bay are gloomy hills. It is a strange, strange landscape: as if
- here the world left off. The bay is vast in itself; and all these
- curious things happening at its head: this curious, craggy-studded town,
- like a great stud of house-covered rock jutting up out of the bay flats:
- around it on one side the weary, Arab-looking palm-desolated malarial
- plain, and on the other side great salt lagoons, dead beyond the
- sand-bar: these backed again by serried, clustered mountains, suddenly,
- while away beyond the plain, hills rise to sea again. Land and sea both
- seem to give out, exhausted, at the bay head: the world's end. And into
- this world's end starts up Cagliari, and on either side, sudden,
- serpent-crest hills.
- But it still reminds me of Malta: lost between Europe and Africa and
- belonging to nowhere. Belonging to nowhere, never having belonged to
- anywhere. To Spain and the Arabs and the Phoenicians most. But as if
- it had never really had a fate. No fate. Left outside of time and
- history.
- The spirit of the place is a strange thing. Our mechanical age tries to
- override it. But it does not succeed. In the end the strange, sinister
- spirit of the place, so diverse and adverse in differing places, will
- smash our mechanical oneness into smithereens, and all that we think the
- real thing will go off with a pop, and we shall be left staring.
- * * * * *
- On the great parapet above the Municipal Hall and above the corkscrew
- high-street a thick fringe of people is hanging, looking down. We go to
- look too: and behold, below there is the entrance to the ball. Yes,
- there is a china shepherdess in pale blue and powdered hair, crook,
- ribbons, Marie Antoinette satin daintiness and all, slowly and
- haughtily walking up the road, and gazing superbly round. She is not
- more than twelve years old, moreover. Two servants accompany her. She
- gazes supremely from right to left as she goes, mincingly, and I would
- give her the prize for haughtiness. She is perfect--a little too haughty
- for Watteau, but "marquise" to a T. The people watch in silence. There
- is no yelling and screaming and running. They watch in a suitable
- silence.
- Comes a carriage with two fat bay horses slithering, almost swimming up
- the corkscrew high-street. That in itself is a "tour-de-force": for
- Cagliari doesn't have carriages. Imagine a street like a corkscrew
- stair, paved with slippery stone. And imagine two bay horses rowing
- their way up it: they did not walk a single stride. But they arrived.
- And there fluttered out three strangely exquisite children, two frail,
- white satin Pierrots and a white satin Pierrette. They were like fragile
- winter butterflies with black spots. They had a curious, indefinable
- remote elegance, something conventional and "fin-de-siècle". But not our
- century. The wonderful artificial delicacy of the eighteenth. The boys
- had big, perfect ruffs round their necks: and behind were slung old,
- cream-colored Spanish shawls, for warmth. They were frail as tobacco
- flowers, and with remote, cold elegance they fluttered by the carriage,
- from which emerged a large black-satin Mama. Fluttering their queer
- little butterfly feet on the pavement, hovering round the large Mama
- like three frail-tissued ghosts, they found their way past the solid,
- seated Carabinieri into the hall.
- Arrived a primrose-brocade beau, with ruffles, and his hat under his
- arm: about twelve years old. Walking statelily, without a qualm up the
- steep twist of the street. Or perhaps so perfect in his
- self-consciousness that it became an elegant "aplomb" in him. He was a
- genuine eighteenth-century exquisite, rather stiffer than the French,
- maybe, but completely in the spirit. Curious, curious children! They had
- a certain stand-offish superbness, and not a single trace of misgiving.
- For them, their "noblesse" was indisputable. For the first time in my
- life I recognized the true cold superbness of the old "noblesse". They
- had not a single qualm about their own perfect representing of the
- higher order of being.
- Followed another white satin "marquise", with a maid-servant. They are
- strong on the eighteenth century in Cagliari. Perhaps it is the last
- bright reality to them. The nineteenth hardly counts.
- * * * * *
- Curious the children in Cagliari. The poor seem thoroughly
- poor-bare-footed urchins, gay and wild in the narrow dark streets. But
- the more well-to-do children are so fine: so extraordinarily elegantly
- dressed. It quite strikes one of a heap. Not so much the grown-ups. The
- children. All the "chic," all the fashion, all the originality is
- expended on the children. And with a great deal of success. Better than
- Kensington Gardens very often. And they promenade with Papa and Mama
- with such alert assurance, having quite brought it off, their
- fashionable get-up. Who would have expected it?
- * * * * *
- Oh narrow, dark, and humid streets going up to the Cathedral, like
- crevices. I narrowly miss a huge pail of slop-water which comes crashing
- down from heaven. A small boy who was playing in the street, and whose
- miss is not quite a clean miss, looks up with that naïve, impersonal
- wonder with which children stare at a star or a lamp-lighter.
- The Cathedral must have been a fine old pagan stone fortress once. Now
- it has come, as it were, through the mincing machine of the ages, and
- oozed out baroque and sausagey, a bit like the horrible baldachins in
- St. Peter's at Rome. None the less it is homely and hole-and-cornery,
- with a rather ragged high mass trailing across the pavement towards the
- high altar, since it is almost sunset, and Epiphany. It feels as if one
- might squat in a corner and play marbles and eat bread and cheese and be
- at home: a comfortable old-time churchey feel.
- There is some striking filet lace on the various altar-cloths. And St.
- Joseph must be a prime saint. He has an altar and a verse of invocation
- praying for the dying.
- "Oh, St. Joseph, true potential father of Our Lord." What can it profit
- a man, I wonder, to be the potential father of anybody! For the rest I
- am not Baedeker.
- * * * * *
- The top of Cagliari is the fortress: the old gate, the old ramparts, of
- honey-combed, fine yellowish sandstone. Up in a great sweep goes the
- rampart wall, Spanish and splendid, dizzy. And the road creeping down
- again at the foot, down the back of the hill. There lies the country:
- that dead plain with its bunch of palms and a fainting sea, and inland
- again, hills. Cagliari must be on a single, loose, lost bluff of rock.
- From the terrace just below the fortress, above the town, not behind it,
- we stand and look at the sunset. It is all terrible, taking place beyond
- the knotted, serpent-crested hills that lie, bluey and velvety, beyond
- the waste lagoons. Dark, sultry, heavy crimson the west is, hanging
- sinisterly, with those gloomy blue cloud-bars and cloud-banks drawn
- across. All behind the blue-gloomy peaks stretches the curtain of
- sinister, smouldering red, and away to the sea. Deep below lie the
- sea-meres. They seem miles and miles, and utterly waste. But the
- sand-bar crosses like a bridge, and has a road. All the air is dark, a
- sombre bluish tone. The great west burns inwardly, sullenly, and gives
- no glow, yet a deep red. It is cold.
- We go down the steep streets, smelly, dark, dank, and very cold. No
- wheeled vehicle can scramble up them, presumably. People live in one
- room. Men are combing their hair or fastening their collars in the
- doorways. Evening is here, and it is a feast day.
- * * * * *
- At the bottom of the street we come to a little bunch of masked youths,
- one in a long yellow frock and a frilled bonnet, another like an old
- woman, another in red twill. They are arm in arm and are accosting the
- passers-by. The q-b gives a cry, and looks for escape. She has a terror
- of maskers, a terror that comes from childhood. To say the truth, so
- have I. We hasten invisibly down the far side of the street, and come
- out under the bastions. Then we go down our own familiar wide, short,
- cold boulevard to the sea.
- At the bottom, again, is a carriage with more maskers. Carnival is
- beginning. A man dressed as a peasant woman in native costume is
- clambering with his great wide skirts and wide strides on to the box,
- and, flourishing his ribboned whip, is addressing a little crowd of
- listeners. He opens his mouth wide and goes on with a long yelling
- harangue of taking a drive with his mother--another man in old-woman's
- gaudy finery and wig who sits already bobbing on the box. The would-be
- daughter flourishes, yells, and prances up there on the box of the
- carriage. The crowd listens attentively and mildly smiles. It all seems
- real to them. The q-b hovers in the distance, half-fascinated, and
- watches. With a great flourish of whip and legs--showing his frilled
- drawers--the masker pulls round to drive along the boulevard by the
- sea--the only place where one can drive.
- * * * * *
- The big street by the sea is the Via Roma. It has the cafés on one side
- and across the road the thick tufts of trees intervening between the sea
- and us. Among these thick tufts of sea-front trees the little steam
- tram, like a little train, bumps to rest, after having wound round the
- back of the town.
- The Via Roma is all social Cagliari. Including the cafés with their
- outdoor tables on the one side of the road, and the avenue strand on the
- other, it is very wide, and at evening it contains the whole town. Here,
- and here alone carriages can spank along, very slowly, officers can
- ride, and the people can promenade "en masse."
- We were amazed at the sudden crowd we found ourselves amongst--like a
- short, dense river of people streaming slowly in a mass. There is
- practically no vehicular traffic--only the steady dense streams of human
- beings of all sorts, all on a human footing. It must have been something
- like this in the streets of imperial Rome, where no chariots might drive
- and humanity was all on foot.
- Little bunches of maskers, and single maskers danced and strutted along
- in the thick flow under the trees. If you are a mask you don't walk like
- a human being: you dance and prance along extraordinarily like the
- life-size marionettes, conducted by wires from above. That is how you
- go: with that odd jauntiness as if lifted and propelled by wires from
- the shoulders. In front of me went a charming coloured harlequin, all in
- diamond-shaped colours, and beautiful as a piece of china. He tripped
- with the light, fantastic trip, quite alone in the thick crowd, and
- quite blithe. Came two little children hand in hand in brilliant scarlet
- and white costumes, sauntering calmly. They did not do the mask trip.
- After a while a sky-blue girl with a high hat and full skirts, very
- short, that went flip-flip-flip, as a ballet dancer's, whilst she
- strutted; after her a Spanish grandee capering like a monkey. They
- threaded among the slow stream of the crowd. Appeared Dante and
- Beatrice, in Paradise apparently, all in white sheet-robes, and with
- silver wreaths on their heads, arm in arm, and prancing very slowly and
- majestically, yet with the long lilt as if hitched along by wires from
- above. They were very good: all the well-known vision come to life,
- Dante incorporate, and white as a shroud, with his tow-haired,
- silver-crowned, immortal Beatrice on his arm, strutting the dark
- avenues. He had the nose and cheek-bones and banded cheek, and the
- stupid wooden look, and offered a modern criticism on the Inferno.
- * * * * *
- It had become quite dark, the lamps were lighted. We crossed the road to
- the Café Roma, and found a table on the pavement among the crowd. In a
- moment we had our tea. The evening was cold, with ice in the wind. But
- the crowd surged on, back and forth, back and forth, slowly. At the
- tables were seated mostly men, taking coffee or vermouth or aqua vitae,
- all familiar and easy, without the modern self-consciousness. There was
- a certain pleasant, natural robustness of spirit, and something of a
- feudal free-and-easiness. Then arrived a family, with children, and
- nurse in her native costume. They all sat at table together, perfectly
- easy with one another, though the marvellous nurse seemed to be seated
- below the salt. She was bright as a poppy, in a rose-scarlet dress of
- fine cloth, with a curious little waistcoat of emerald green and purple,
- and a bodice of soft, homespun linen with great full sleeves. On her
- head she had a rose-scarlet and white head-dress, and she wore great
- studs of gold filigree, and similar ear-rings. The feudal-bourgeois
- family drank its syrup-drinks and watched the crowd. Most remarkable is
- the complete absence of self-consciousness. They all have a perfect
- natural "sang-froid," the nurse in her marvellous native costume is as
- thoroughly at her ease as if she were in her own village street. She
- moves and speaks and calls to a passer-by without the slightest
- constraint, and much more, without the slightest presumption. She is
- below the invisible salt, the invisible but insuperable salt. And it
- strikes me the salt-barrier is a fine thing for both parties: they both
- remain natural and human on either side of it, instead of becoming
- devilish, scrambling and pushing at the barricade.
- * * * * *
- The crowd is across the road, under the trees near the sea. On this side
- stroll occasional pedestrians. And I see my first peasant in costume.
- He is an elderly, upright, handsome man, beautiful in the
- black-and-white costume. He wears the full-sleeved white shirt and the
- close black bodice of thick, native frieze, cut low. From this sticks
- out a short kilt or frill, of the same black frieze, a band of which
- goes between the legs, between the full loose drawers of coarse linen.
- The drawers are banded below the knee into tight black frieze gaiters.
- On his head he has the long black stocking cap, hanging down behind. How
- handsome he is, and so beautifully male! He walks with his hands loose
- behind his back, slowly, upright, and aloof. The lovely
- unapproachableness, indomitable. And the flash of the black and white,
- the slow stride of the full white drawers, the black gaiters and black
- cuirass with the bolero, then the great white sleeves and white breast
- again, and once more the black cap--what marvellous massing of the
- contrast, marvellous, and superb, as on a magpie.--How beautiful
- maleness is, if it finds its right expression.--And how perfectly
- ridiculous it is made in modern clothes.
- There is another peasant too, a young one with a swift eye and hard
- cheek and hard, dangerous thighs. He has folded his stocking cap, so
- that it comes forward to his brow like a phrygian cap. He wears close
- knee breeches and close sleeved waistcoat of thick brownish stuff that
- looks like leather. Over the waistcoat a sort of cuirass of black, rusty
- sheepskin, the curly wool outside. So he strides, talking to a comrade.
- How fascinating it is, after the soft Italians, to see these limbs in
- their close knee-breeches, so definite, so manly, with the old
- fierceness in them still. One realises, with horror, that the race of
- men is almost extinct in Europe. Only Christ-like heroes and
- woman-worshipping Don Juans, and rabid equality-mongrels. The old,
- hardy, indomitable male is gone. His fierce singleness is quenched. The
- last sparks are dying out in Sardinia and Spain. Nothing left but the
- herd-proletariat and the herd-equality mongrelism, and the wistful
- poisonous self-sacrificial cultured soul. How detestable.
- But that curious, flashing, black-and-white costume! I seem to have
- known it before: to have worn it even: to have dreamed it. To have
- dreamed it: to have had actual contact with it. It belongs in some way
- to something in me--to my past, perhaps. I don't know. But the uneasy
- sense of blood-familiarity haunts me. I _know_ I have known it before.
- It is something of the same uneasiness I feel before Mount Eryx: but
- without the awe this time.
- * * * * *
- In the morning the sun was shining from a blue, blue sky, but the
- shadows were deadly cold, and the wind like a flat blade of ice. We went
- out running to the sun. The hotel could not give us coffee and milk:
- only a little black coffee. So we descended to the sea-front again, to
- the Via Roma, and to our café. It was Friday: people seemed to be
- bustling in from the country with huge baskets.
- The Café Roma had coffee and milk, but no butter. We sat and watched the
- movement outside. Tiny Sardinian donkeys, the tiniest things ever seen,
- trotted their infinitesimal little paws along the road, drawing little
- wagons like handcarts. Their proportion is so small, that they make a
- boy walking at their side look like a tall man, while a natural man
- looks like a Cyclops stalking hugely and cruelly. It is ridiculous for a
- grown man to have one of these little creatures, hardly bigger than a
- fly, hauling his load for him. One is pulling a chest of drawers on a
- cart, and it seems to have a whole house behind it. Nevertheless it
- plods bravely, away beneath the load, a wee thing.
- They tell me there used to be flocks of these donkeys, feeding half wild
- on the wild, moor-like hills of Sardinia. But the war--and also the
- imbecile wantonness of the war-masters--consumed these flocks too, so
- that few are left. The same with the cattle. Sardinia, home of cattle,
- hilly little Argentine of the Mediterranean, is now almost deserted. It
- is war, say the Italiana.--And also the wanton, imbecile, foul
- lavishness of the war-masters. It was not alone the war which exhausted
- the world. It was the deliberate evil wastefulness of the war-makers in
- their own countries. Italy ruined Italy.
- * * * * *
- Two peasants in black-and-white are strolling in the sun, flashing. And
- my dream of last evening was not a dream. And my nostalgia for something
- I know not what was not an illusion. I feel it again, at once, at the
- sight of the men in frieze and linen, a heart yearning for something I
- have known, and which I want back again.
- It is market day. We turn up the Largo Carlo-Felice, the second wide gap
- of a street, a vast but very short boulevard, like the end of something.
- Cagliari is like that: all bits and bobs. And by the side of the
- pavement are many stalls, stalls selling combs and collar-studs, cheap
- mirrors, handkerchiefs, shoddy Manchester goods, bed-ticking,
- boot-paste, poor crockery, and so on. But we see also Madame of Cagliari
- going marketing, with a servant accompanying her, carrying a huge
- grass-woven basket: or returning from marketing, followed by a small
- boy supporting one of these huge grass-woven baskets--like huge
- dishes--on his head, piled with bread, eggs, vegetables, a chicken, and
- so forth. Therefore we follow Madame going marketing, and find ourselves
- in the vast market house, and it fairly glows with eggs: eggs in these
- great round dish-baskets of golden grass: but eggs in piles, in mounds,
- in heaps, a Sierra Nevada of eggs, glowing warm white. How they glow! I
- have never noticed it before. But they give off a warm, pearly
- effulgence into the air, almost a warmth. A pearly-gold heat seems to
- come out of them. Myriads of eggs, glowing avenues of eggs.
- And they are marked--60 centimes, 65 centimes. Ah, cries the q-b, I must
- live in Cagliari--For in Sicily the eggs cost 1.50 each.
- This is the meat and poultry and bread market. There are stalls of new,
- various-shaped bread, brown and bright: there are tiny stalls of
- marvellous native cakes, which I want to taste, there is a great deal of
- meat and kid: and there are stalls of cheese, all cheeses, all shapes,
- all whitenesses, all the cream-colours, on into daffodil yellow. Goat
- cheese, sheeps cheese, Swiss cheese, Parmegiano, stracchino,
- caciocavallo, torolone, how many cheeses I don't know the names of! But
- they cost about the same as in Sicily, eighteen francs, twenty francs,
- twenty-five francs the kilo. And there is lovely ham--thirty and
- thirty-five francs the kilo. There is a little fresh butter too--thirty
- or thirty-two francs the kilo. Most of the butter, however, is tinned in
- Milan. It costs the same as the fresh. There are splendid piles of
- salted black olives, and huge bowls of green salted olives. There are
- chickens and ducks and wild-fowl: at eleven and twelve and fourteen
- francs a kilo. There is mortadella, the enormous Bologna sausage, thick
- as a church pillar: 16 francs: and there are various sorts of smaller
- sausage, salami, to be eaten in slices. A wonderful abundance of food,
- glowing and shining. We are rather late for fish, especially on Friday.
- But a barefooted man offers us two weird objects from the Mediterranean,
- which teems with marine monsters.
- The peasant women sit behind their wares, their home-woven linen skirts,
- hugely full, and of various colours, ballooning round them. The yellow
- baskets give off a glow of light. There is a sense of profusion once
- more. But alas no sense of cheapness: save the eggs. Every month, up
- goes the price of everything.
- "I must come and live in Cagliari, to do my shopping here," says the
- q-b. "I must have one of those big grass baskets."
- We went down to the little street--but saw more baskets emerging from a
- broad flight of stone stairs, enclosed. So up we went-and found
- ourselves in the vegetable market. Here the q-b was happier still.
- Peasant women, sometimes barefoot, sat in their tight little bodices and
- voluminous, coloured skirts behind the piles of vegetables, and never
- have I seen a lovelier show. The intense deep green of spinach seemed to
- predominate, and out of that came the monuments of curd-white and
- black-purple cauliflowers: but marvellous cauliflowers, like a
- flower-show, the purple ones intense as great bunches of violets. From
- this green, white, and purple massing struck out the vivid rose-scarlet
- and blue crimson of radishes, large radishes like little turnips, in
- piles. Then the long, slim, grey-purple buds of artichokes, and dangling
- clusters of dates, and piles of sugar-dusty white figs and
- sombre-looking black figs, and bright burnt figs: basketfuls and
- basketfuls of figs. A few baskets of almonds, and many huge walnuts.
- Basket-pans of native raisins. Scarlet peppers like trumpets:
- magnificent fennels, so white and big and succulent: baskets of new
- potatoes: scaly kohlrabi: wild asparagus in bunches, yellow-budding
- sparacelli: big, clean-fleshed carrots: feathery salads with white
- hearts: long, brown-purple onions and then, of course pyramids of big
- oranges, pyramids of pale apples, and baskets of brilliant shiny
- mandarini, the little tangerine orange with their green-black leaves.
- The green and vivid-coloured world of fruit-gleams I have never seen in
- such splendour as under the market roof at Cagliari: so raw and
- gorgeous. And all quite cheap, the one remaining cheapness, except
- potatoes. Potatoes of any sort are 1.40 or 1.50 the kilo.
- "Oh!" cried the q-b, "If I don't live at Cagliari and come and do my
- shopping here, I shall die with one of my wishes unfulfilled."
- * * * * *
- But out of the sun it was cold, nevertheless. We went into the streets
- to try and get warm. The sun was powerful. But alas, as in southern
- towns generally, the streets are sunless as wells.
- So the q-b and I creep slowly along the sunny bits, and then perforce
- are swallowed by shadow. We look at the shops. But there is not much to
- see. Little, frowsy provincial shops, on the whole.
- But a fair number of peasants in the streets, and peasant women in
- rather ordinary costume: tight-bodiced, volume-skirted dresses of
- hand-woven linen or thickish cotton. The prettiest is of
- dark-blue-and-red, stripes-and-lines, intermingled, so made that the
- dark-blue gathers round the waist into one colour, the myriad pleats
- hiding all the rosy red. But when she walks, the full-petticoated
- peasant woman, then the red goes flash-flash-flash, like a bird showing
- its colours. Pretty that looks in the sombre street. She has a plain,
- light bodice with a peak: sometimes a little vest, and great full white
- sleeves, and usually a handkerchief or shawl loose knotted. It is
- charming the way they walk, with quick, short steps. When all is said
- and done, the most attractive costume for women in my eye, is the tight
- little bodice and the many-pleated skirt, full and vibrating with
- movement. It has a charm which modern elegance lacks completely--a
- bird-like play in movement.
- * * * * *
- They are amusing, these peasant girls and women: so brisk and defiant.
- They have straight backs, like little walls, and decided, well-drawn
- brows. And they are amusingly on the alert. There is no eastern
- creeping. Like sharp, brisk birds they dart along the streets, and you
- feel they would fetch you a bang over the head as leave as look at you.
- Tenderness, thank heaven, does not seem to be a Sardinian quality. Italy
- is so tender--like cooked macaroni--yards and yards of soft tenderness
- ravelled round everything. Here men don't idealise women, by the looks
- of things. Here they don't make these great leering eyes, the inevitable
- yours-to-command look of Italian males. When the men from the country
- look at these women, then it is Mind-yourself, my lady. I should think
- the grovelling Madonna-worship is not much of a Sardinian feature. These
- women have to look out for themselves, keep their own back-bone stiff
- and their knuckles hard. Man is going to be male Lord if he can. And
- woman isn't going to give him too much of his own way, either. So there
- you have it, the fine old martial split between the sexes. It is tonic
- and splendid, really, after so much sticky intermingling and
- backboneless Madonna-worship. The Sardinian isn't looking for the "noble
- woman nobly planned." No, thank you. He wants that young madam over
- there, a young stiff-necked generation that she is. Far better sport
- than with the nobly-planned sort: hollow frauds that they are. Better
- sport too than with a Carmen, who gives herself away too much, In these
- women there is something shy and defiant and un-get-atable. The defiant,
- splendid split between the sexes, each absolutely determined to defend
- his side, her side, from assault. So the meeting has a certain wild,
- salty savour, each the deadly unknown to the other. And at the same
- time, each his own, her own native pride and courage, taking the
- dangerous leap and scrambling back.
- Give me the old, salty way of love. How I am nauseated with sentiment
- and nobility, the macaroni slithery-slobbery mess of modern adorations.
- * * * * *
- One sees a few fascinating faces in Cagliari: those great dark unlighted
- eyes. There are fascinating dark eyes in Sicily, bright, big, with an
- impudent point of light, and a curious roll, and long lashes: the eyes
- of old Greece, surely. But here one sees eyes of soft, blank darkness,
- all velvet, with no imp looking out of them. And they strike a stranger,
- older note: before the soul became self-conscious: before the mentality
- of Greece appeared in the world. Remote, always remote, as if the
- intelligence lay deep within the cave, and never came forward. One
- searches into the gloom for one second, while the glance lasts. But
- without being able to penetrate to the reality. It recedes, like some
- unknown creature deeper into its lair. There is a creature, dark and
- potent. But what?
- Sometimes Velasquez, and sometimes Goya gives us a suggestion of these
- large, dark, unlighted eyes. And they go with fine, fleecy black
- hair--almost as fine as fur. I have not seen them north of Cagliari.
- * * * * *
- The q-b spies some of the blue-and-red stripe-and-line cotton stuff of
- which the peasants make their dress: a large roll in the doorway of a
- dark shop. In we go, and begin to feel it. It is just soft, thickish
- cotton stuff--twelve francs a metre. Like most peasant patterns, it is
- much more complicated and subtle than appears: the curious placing of
- the stripes, the subtle proportion, and a white thread left down one
- side only of each broad blue block. The stripes, moreover, run _across_
- the cloth, not lengthwise with it. But the width would be just long
- enough for a skirt--though the peasant skirts have almost all a band at
- the bottom with the stripes running round-ways.
- The man--he is the esquimo type, simple, frank and aimiable--says the
- stuff is made in France, and this the first roll since the war. It is
- the old, old pattern, quite correct--but the material not _quite_ so
- good. The q-b takes enough for a dress.
- He shows us also cashmeres, orange, scarlet, sky-blue, royal blue: good,
- pure-wool cashmeres that were being sent to India, and were captured
- from a German mercantile sub-marine. So he says. Fifty francs a
- metre--very, very wide. But they are too much trouble to carry in a
- knapsack, though their brilliance fascinates.
- * * * * *
- So we stroll and look at the shops, at the filigree gold jewelling of
- the peasants, at a good bookshop. But there is little to see and
- therefore the question is, shall we go on? Shall we go forward?
- There are two ways of leaving Cagliari for the north: the State railway
- that runs up the west side of the island, and the narrow-gauge secondary
- railway that pierces the centre. But we are too late for the big trains.
- So we will go by the secondary railway, wherever it goes.
- There is a train at 2.30, and we can get as far as Mandas, some fifty
- miles in the interior. When we tell the queer little waiter at the
- hotel, he says he comes from Mandas, and there are two inns. So after
- lunch--a strictly fish menu--we pay our bill. It comes to sixty odd
- francs--for three good meals each, with wine, and the night's lodging,
- this is cheap, as prices now are in Italy.
- Pleased with the simple and friendly Scala di Ferre, I shoulder my sack
- and we walk off to the second station. The sun is shining hot this
- afternoon--burning hot, by the sea. The road and the buildings look dry
- and desiccated, the harbour rather weary and end of the world.
- There is a great crowd of peasants at the little station. And almost
- every man has a pair of woven saddle-bags--a great flat strip of
- coarse-woven wool, with flat pockets at either end, stuffed with
- purchases. These are almost the only carrying bags. The men sling them
- over their shoulder, so that one great pocket hangs in front, one
- behind.
- These saddle bags are most fascinating. They are coarsely woven in bands
- of raw black-rusty wool, with varying bands of raw white wool or hemp or
- cotton--the bands and stripes of varying widths going cross-wise. And on
- the pale bands are woven sometimes flowers in most lovely colours,
- rose-red and blue and green, peasant patterns--and sometimes fantastic
- animals, beasts, in dark wool again. So that these striped zebra bags,
- some wonderful gay with flowery colours on their stripes, some weird
- with fantastic, griffin-like animals, are a whole landscape in
- themselves.
- The train has only first and third class. It costs about thirty francs
- for the two of us, third class to Mandas, which is some sixty miles. In
- we crowd with the joyful saddle-bags, into the wooden carriage with its
- many seats.
- And, wonder of wonders, punctually to the second, off we go, out of
- Cagliari. En route again.
- IV.
- MANDAS.
- The coach was fairly full of people, returning from market. On these
- railways the third class coaches are not divided into compartments. They
- are left open, so that one sees everybody, as down a room. The
- attractive saddle-bags, _bercole_, were disposed anywhere, and the bulk
- of the people settled down to a lively _conversazione_. It is much
- nicest, on the whole, to travel third class on the railway. There is
- space, there is air, and it is like being in a lively inn, everybody in
- good spirits.
- At our end was plenty of room. Just across the gangway was an elderly
- couple, like two children, coming home very happily. He was fat, fat all
- over, with a white moustache and a little not-unamiable frown. She was a
- tall lean, brown woman, in a brown full-skirted dress and black apron,
- with huge pocket. She wore no head covering, and her iron grey hair was
- parted smoothly. They were rather pleased and excited being in the
- train. She took all her money out of her big pocket, and counted it and
- gave it to him: all the ten Lira notes, and the five Lira and the two
- and the one, peering at the dirty scraps of pink-backed one-lira notes
- to see if they were good. Then she gave him her half-pennies. And he
- stowed them away in the trouser pocket, standing up to push them down
- his fat leg. And then one saw, to one's amazement, that the whole of his
- shirt-tail was left out behind, like a sort of apron worn backwards.
- Why--a mystery. He was one of those fat, good-natured, unheeding men
- with a little masterful frown, such as usually have tall, lean,
- hard-faced, obedient wives.
- They were very happy. With amazement he watched us taking hot tea from
- the Thermos flask. I think he too had suspected it might be a bomb. He
- had blue eyes and standing-up white eyebrows.
- "Beautiful hot--!" he said, seeing the tea steam. It is the inevitable
- exclamation. "Does it do you good?"
- "Yes," said the q-b. "Much good." And they both nodded complacently.
- They were going home.
- * * * * *
- The train was running over the malarial-looking sea-plain--past the
- down-at-heel palm trees, past the mosque-looking buildings. At a level
- crossing the woman crossing-keeper darted out vigorously with her red
- flag. And we rambled into the first village. It was built of sun-dried
- brick-adobe houses, thick adobe garden-walls, with tile ridges to keep
- off the rain. In the enclosures were dark orange trees. But the
- clay-coloured villages, clay-dry, looked foreign: the next thing to mere
- earth they seem, like fox-holes or coyote colonies.
- Looking back, one sees Cagliari bluff on her rock, rather fine, with the
- thin edge of the sea's blade curving round. It is rather hard to believe
- in the real sea, on this sort of clay-pale plain.
- * * * * *
- But soon we begin to climb to the hills. And soon the cultivation begins
- to be intermittent. Extraordinary how the heathy, moor-like hills come
- near the sea: extraordinary how scrubby and uninhabited the great spaces
- of Sardinia are. It is wild, with heath and arbutus scrub and a sort of
- myrtle, breast-high. Sometimes one sees a few head of cattle. And then
- again come the greyish arable-patches, where the corn is grown. It is
- like Cornwall, like the Land's End region. Here and there, in the
- distance, are peasants working on the lonely landscape. Sometimes it is
- one man alone in the distance, showing so vividly in his black-and-white
- costume, small and far-off like a solitary magpie, and curiously
- distinct. All the strange magic of Sardinia is in this sight. Among the
- low, moor-like hills, away in a hollow of the wide landscape one
- solitary figure, small but vivid black-and-white, working alone, as if
- eternally. There are patches and hollows of grey arable land, good for
- corn. Sardinia was once a great granary.
- Usually, however, the peasants of the South have left off the costume.
- Usually it is the invisible soldiers' grey-green cloth, the Italian
- khaki. Wherever you go, wherever you be, you see this khaki, this
- grey-green war-clothing. How many millions of yards of the thick,
- excellent, but hateful material the Italian government must have
- provided I don't know: but enough to cover Italy with a felt carpet, I
- should think. It is everywhere. It cases the tiny children in stiff and
- neutral frocks and coats, it covers their extinguished fathers, and
- sometimes it even encloses the women in its warmth. It is symbolic of
- the universal grey mist that has come over men, the extinguishing of all
- bright individuality, the blotting out of all wild singleness. Oh
- democracy! Oh khaki democracy!
- * * * * *
- This is very different from Italian landscape. Italy is almost always
- dramatic, and perhaps invariably romantic. There is drama in the plains
- of Lombardy, and romance in the Venetian lagoons, and sheer scenic
- excitement in nearly all the hilly parts of the peninsula. Perhaps it is
- the natural floridity of lime-stone formations. But Italian landscape is
- really eighteenth-century landscape, to be represented in that
- romantic-classic manner which makes everything rather marvelous and very
- topical: aqueducts, and ruins upon sugar-loaf mountains, and craggy
- ravines and Wilhelm Meister water-falls: all up and down.
- Sardinia is another thing. Much wider, much more ordinary, not
- up-and-down at all, but running away into the distance. Unremarkable
- ridges of moor-like hills running away, perhaps to a bunch of dramatic
- peaks on the southwest. This gives a sense of space, which is so lacking
- in Italy. Lovely space about one, and traveling distances--nothing
- finished, nothing final. It is like liberty itself, after the peaky
- confinement of Sicily. Room--give me room--give me room for my spirit:
- and you can have all the toppling crags of romance.
- So we ran on through the gold of the afternoon, across a wide, almost
- Celtic landscape of hills, our little train winding and puffing away
- very nimbly. Only the heath and scrub, breast-high, man-high, is too big
- and brigand-like for a Celtic land. The horns of black, wild-looking
- cattle show sometimes.
- After a long pull, we come to a station after a stretch of loneliness.
- Each time, it looks as if there were nothing beyond--no more
- habitations. And each time we come to a station.
- Most of the people have left the train. And as with men driving in a
- gig, who get down at every public-house, so the passengers usually
- alight for an airing at each station. Our old fat friend stands up and
- tucks his shirt-tail comfortably in his trousers, which trousers all the
- time make one hold one's breath, for they seem at each very moment to be
- just dropping right down: and he clambers out, followed by the long,
- brown stalk of a wife.
- So the train sits comfortably for five or ten minutes, in the way the
- trains have. At last we hear whistles and horns, and our old fat friend
- running and clinging like a fat crab to the very end of the train as it
- sets off. At the same instant a loud shriek and a bunch of shouts from
- outside. We all jump up. There, down the line, is the long brown stork
- of a wife. She had just walked back to a house some hundred yards off,
- for a few words, and has now seen the train moving.
- Now behold her with her hands thrown to heaven, and hear the wild shriek
- "Madonna!" through all the hubbub. But she picks up her two skirt-knees,
- and with her thin legs in grey stockings starts with a mad rush after
- the train. In vain. The train inexorably pursues its course. Prancing,
- she reaches one end of the platform as we leave the other end. Then she
- realizes it is not going to stop for her. And then, oh horror, her long
- arms thrown out in wild supplication after the retreating train: then
- flung aloft to God: then brought down in absolute despair on her head.
- And this is the last sight we have of her, clutching her poor head in
- agony and doubling forward. She is left--she is abandoned.
- The poor fat husband has been all the time on the little outside
- platform at the end of the carriage, holding out his hand to her and
- shouting frenzied scolding to her and frenzied yells for the train to
- stop. And the train has not stopped. And she is left--left on that
- God-forsaken station in the waning light.
- So, his face all bright, his eyes round and bright as two stars,
- absolutely transfigured by dismay, chagrin, anger and distress, he comes
- and sits in his seat, ablaze, stiff, speechless. His face is almost
- beautiful in its blaze of conflicting emotions. For some time he is as
- if unconscious in the midst of his feelings. Then anger and resentment
- crop out of his consternation. He turns with a flash to the long-nosed,
- insidious, Phoenician-looking guard. Why couldn't they stop the train
- for her! And immediately, as if someone had set fire to him, off flares
- the guard. Heh!--the train can't stop for every person's convenience!
- The train is a train--the time-table is a time-table. What did the old
- woman want to take her trips down the line for? Heh! She pays the
- penalty for her own inconsiderateness. Had _she_ paid for the
- train--heh? And the fat man all the time firing off his unheeding and
- unheeded answers. One minute--only one minute--if he, the conductor had
- told the driver! if he, the conductor, had shouted! A poor woman! Not
- another train! What was she going to do! Her ticket? And no money. A
- poor woman--
- There was a train back to Cagliari that night, said the conductor, at
- which the fat man nearly burst out of his clothing like a bursting
- seed-pod. He bounced on his seat. What good was that? What good was a
- train back to Cagliari, when their home was in Snelli! Making matters
- worse--
- So they bounced and jerked and argued at one another, to their hearts'
- content. Then the conductor retired, smiling subtly, in a way they have.
- Our fat friend looked at us with hot, angry, ashamed, grieved eyes and
- said it was a shame. Yes, we chimed, it _was_ a shame. Whereupon a
- self-important miss who said she came from some Collegio at Cagliari
- advanced and asked a number of impertinent questions in a tone of pert
- sympathy. After which our fat friend, left alone, covered his clouded
- face with his hand, turned his back on the world, and gloomed.
- It had all been so dramatic that in spite of ourselves we laughed, even
- while the q-b shed a few tears.
- * * * * *
- Well, the journey lasted hours. We came to a station, and the conductor
- said we must get out: these coaches went no further. Only two coaches
- would proceed to Mandas. So we climbed out with our traps, and our fat
- friend with his saddle-bag, the picture of misery.
- The one coach into which we clambered was rather crowded. The only other
- coach was most of it first-class. And the rest of the train was freight.
- We were two insignificant passenger wagons at the end of a long string
- of freight-vans and trucks.
- There was an empty seat, so we sat on it: only to realize after about
- five minutes, that a thin old woman with two children--her
- grandchildren--was chuntering her head off because it was _her_
- seat--why she had left it she didn't say. And under my legs was her
- bundle of bread. She nearly went off her head. And over my head, on the
- little rack, was her bercola, her saddle-bag. Fat soldiers laughed at
- her good-naturedly, but she fluttered and flipped like a tart,
- featherless old hen. Since she had another seat and was quite
- comfortable, we smiled and let her chunter. So she clawed her bread
- bundle from under my legs, and, clutching it and a fat child, sat tense.
- * * * * *
- It was getting quite dark. The conductor came and said that there was no
- more paraffin. If what there was in the lamps gave out, we should have
- to sit in the dark. There was no more paraffin all along the line.--So
- he climbed on the seats, and after a long struggle, with various boys
- striking matches for him, he managed to obtain a light as big as a pea.
- We sat in this _clair-obscur_, and looked at the sombre-shadowed faces
- round us: the fat soldier with a gun, the handsome soldier with huge
- saddle-bags, the weird, dark little man who kept exchanging a baby with
- a solid woman who had a white cloth tied round her head, a tall
- peasant-woman in costume, who darted out at a dark station and returned
- triumphant with a piece of chocolate: a young and interested young man,
- who told us every station. And the man who spat: there is always one.
- Gradually the crowd thinned. At a station we saw our fat friend go by,
- bitterly, like a betrayed soul, his bulging saddle-bag hanging before
- and after, but no comfort in it now--no comfort. The pea of light from
- the paraffin lamp grew smaller. We sat in incredible dimness, and the
- smell of sheeps-wool and peasant, with only our fat and stoic young man
- to tell us where we were. The other dusky faces began to sink into a
- dead, gloomy silence. Some took to sleep. And the little train ran on
- and on, through unknown Sardinian darkness. In despair we drained the
- last drop of tea and ate the last crusts of bread. We knew we must
- arrive some time.
- * * * * *
- It was not much after seven when we came to Mandas. Mandas is a junction
- where these little trains sit and have a long happy chat after their
- arduous scramble over the downs. It had taken us somewhere about five
- hours to do our fifty miles. No wonder then that when the junction at
- last heaves in sight everybody bursts out of the train like seeds from
- an exploding pod, and rushes somewhere for something. To the station
- restaurant, of course. Hence there is a little station restaurant that
- does a brisk trade, and where one can have a bed.
- A quite pleasant woman behind the little bar: a brown woman with brown
- parted hair and brownish eyes and brownish, tanned complexion and tight
- brown velveteen bodice. She led us up a narrow winding stone stair, as
- up a fortress, leading on with her candle, and ushered us into the
- bedroom. It smelled horrid and sourish, as shutup bedrooms do. We threw
- open the window. There were big frosty stars snapping ferociously in
- heaven.
- The room contained a huge bed, big enough for eight people, and quite
- clean. And the table on which stood the candle actually had a cloth. But
- imagine that cloth! I think it had been originally white: now, however,
- it was such a web of time-eaten holes and mournful black inkstains and
- poor dead wine stains that it was like some 2000 B.C. mummy-cloth. I
- wonder if it could have been lifted from that table: or if it was
- mummified on to it! I for one made no attempt to try. But that
- table-cover impressed me, as showing degrees I had not imagined.--A
- table-cloth.
- We went down the fortress-stair to the eating-room. Here was a long
- table with soup-plates upside down and a lamp burning an uncanny naked
- acetylene flame. We sat at the cold table, and the lamp immediately
- began to wane. The room--in fact the whole of Sardinia--was stone cold,
- stone, stone cold. Outside the earth was freezing. Inside there was no
- thought of any sort of warmth: dungeon stone floors, dungeon stone walls
- and a dead, corpse-like atmosphere, too heavy and icy to move.
- The lamp went quite out, and the q-b gave a cry. The brown woman poked
- her head through a hole in the wall. Beyond her we saw the flames of the
- cooking, and two devil-figures stirring the pots. The brown woman came
- and shook the lamp--it was like a stodgy porcelain mantelpiece
- vase--shook it well and stirred up its innards, and started it going
- once more. Then she appeared with a bowl of smoking cabbage soup, in
- which were bits of macaroni: and would we have wine? I shuddered at the
- thought of death-cold red wine of the country, so asked what else there
- was. There was malvagia--malvoisie, the same old malmsey that did for
- the Duke of Clarence. So we had a pint of malvagia, and were comforted.
- At least we were being so, when the lamp went out again. The brown woman
- came and shook and smacked it, and started it off again. But as if to
- say "Shan't for you", it whipped out again.
- Then came the host with a candle and a pin, a large, genial Sicilian
- with pendulous mustaches. And he thoroughly pricked the wretch with the
- pin, shook it, and turned little screws. So up flared the flame. We were
- a little nervous. He asked us where we came from, etc. And suddenly he
- asked us, with an excited gleam, were we Socialists. Aha, he was going
- to hail us as citizens and comrades. He thought we were a pair of
- Bolshevist agents: I could see it. And as such he was prepared to
- embrace us. But no, the q-b disclaimed the honor. I merely smiled and
- shook my head. It is a pity to rob people of their exciting illusions.
- "Ah, there is too much socialism everywhere!" cried the q-b.
- "Ma--perhaps, perhaps--" said the discreet Sicilian. She saw which way
- the land lay, and added:
- "Si vuole un _pocchetino_ di Socialismo: one wants a tiny bit of
- socialism in the world, a tiny bit. But not much. Not much. At present
- there is too much."
- Our host, twinkling at this speech which treated of the sacred creed as
- if it were a pinch of salt in the broth, believing the q-b was throwing
- dust in his eyes, and thoroughly intrigued by us as a pair of deep ones,
- retired. No sooner had he gone than the lamp-flame stood up at its full
- length, and started to whistle. The q-b drew back. Not satisfied by
- this, another flame suddenly began to whip round the bottom of the
- burner, like a lion lashing its tail. Unnerved, we made room: the q-b
- cried again: in came the host with a subtle smile and a pin and an air
- of benevolence, and tamed the brute.
- What else was there to eat? There was a piece of fried pork for me, and
- boiled eggs for the q-b. As we were proceeding with these, in came the
- remainder of the night's entertainment: three station officials, two in
- scarlet peaked caps, one in a black-and-gold peaked cap. They sat down
- with a clamour, in their caps, as if there was a sort of invisible
- screen between us and them. They were young. The black cap had a lean
- and sardonic look: one of the red-caps was little and ruddy, very young,
- with a little mustache: we called him the _maialino_, the gay little
- black pig, he was so plump and food-nourished and frisky. The third was
- rather puffy and pale and had spectacles. They all seemed to present us
- the blank side of their cheek, and to intimate that no, they were not
- going to take their hats off, even if it were dinner-table and a strange
- _signora_. And they made rough quips with one another, still as if we
- were on the other side of the invisible screen.
- Determined however, to remove this invisible screen, I said
- Good-evening, and it was very cold. They muttered Good-evening, and yes,
- it was fresh. An Italian never says it is cold: it is never more than
- _fresco_. But this hint that it was cold they took as a hint at their
- caps, and they became very silent, till the woman came in with the
- soup-bowl. Then they clamoured at her, particularly the _maialino_, what
- was there to eat. She told them--beef-steaks of pork. Whereat they
- pulled faces. Or bits of boiled pork. They sighed, looked gloomy,
- cheered up, and said beef-steaks, then.
- And they fell on their soup. And never, from among the steam, have I
- heard a more joyful trio of soup-swilkering. They sucked it in from
- their spoons with long, gusto-rich sucks. The _maialino_ was the
- treble--he trilled his soup into his mouth with a swift, sucking
- vibration, interrupted by bits of cabbage, which made the lamp start to
- dither again. Black-cap was the baritone; good, rolling spoon-sucks. And
- the one in spectacles was the bass: he gave sudden deep gulps. All was
- led by the long trilling of the _maialino_. Then suddenly, to vary
- matters, he cocked up his spoon in one hand, chewed a huge mouthful of
- bread, and swallowed it down with a smack-smack-smack! of his tongue
- against his palate. As children we used to call this "clapping".
- "Mother, she's clapping!" I would yell with anger, against my sister.
- The German word is schmatzen.
- So the _maialino_ clapped like a pair of cymbals, while baritone and
- bass rolled on. Then in chimed the swift bright treble.
- At this rate however, the soup did not last long. Arrived the
- beef-steaks of pork. And now the trio was a trio of castanet smacks and
- cymbal claps. Triumphantly the _maialino_ looked around. He out-smacked
- all.
- The bread of the country is rather coarse and brown, with a hard, hard
- crust. A large rock of this is perched on every damp serviette. The
- _maialino_ tore his rock asunder, and grumbled at the black-cap, who had
- got a weird sort of three-cornered loaf-roll of pure white bread--starch
- white. He was a swell with this white bread.
- Suddenly black-cap turned to me. Where had we come from, where were we
- going, what for? But in laconic, sardonic tone.
- "I _like_ Sardinia," cried the q-b.
- "Why?" he asked sarcastically. And she tried to find out.
- "Yes, the Sardinians please me more than the Sicilians," said I.
- "Why?" he asked sarcastically.
- "They are more open--more honest." He seemed to turn his nose down.
- "The padrone is a Sicilian," said the _maialino_, stuffing a huge block
- of bread into his mouth, and rolling his insouciant eyes of a gay,
- well-fed little black pig towards the background. We weren't making much
- headway.
- "You've seen Cagliari?" the black-cap said to me, like a threat.
- "Yes! oh Cagliari pleases me--Cagliari is beautiful!" cried the q-b,
- who travels with a vial of melted butter ready for her parsnips.
- "Yes--Cagliari is _so-so_--Cagliari is very fair," said the black cap.
- "_Cagliari è discreto._" He was evidently proud of it.
- "And is Mandas nice?" asked the q-b.
- "In what way nice?" they asked, with immense sarcasm.
- "Is there anything to see?"
- "Hens," said the _maialino_ briefly. They all bristled when one asked if
- Mandas was nice.
- "What does one do here?" asked the q-b.
- "_Niente!_ At Mandas one does _nothing_. At Mandas one goes to bed when
- it's dark, like a chicken. At Mandas one walks down the road like a pig
- that is going nowhere. At Mandas a goat understands more than the
- inhabitants understand. At Mandas one needs socialism...."
- They all cried out at once. Evidently Mandas was more than flesh and
- blood could bear for another minute to these three conspirators.
- "Then you are very bored here?" say I.
- "Yes."
- And the quiet intensity of that naked yes spoke more than volumes.
- "You would like to be in Cagliari?"
- "Yes."
- Silence, intense, sardonic silence had intervened. The three looked at
- one another and made a sour joke about Mandas. Then the black-cap turned
- to me.
- "Can you understand Sardinian?" he said.
- "Somewhat. More than Sicilian, anyhow."
- "But Sardinian is more difficult than Sicilian. It is full of words
- utterly unknown to Italian--"
- "Yes, but," say I, "it is spoken openly, in plain words, and Sicilian is
- spoken all stuck together, none of the words there at all."
- He looks at me as if I were an imposter. Yet it is true. I find it quite
- easy to understand Sardinian. As a matter of fact, it is more a question
- of human approach than of sound. Sardinian seems open and manly and
- downright. Sicilian is gluey and evasive, as if the Sicilian didn't want
- to speak straight to you. As a matter of fact, he doesn't. He is an
- over-cultured, sensitive, ancient soul, and he has so many sides to his
- mind that he hasn't got any definite one mind at all. He's got a dozen
- minds, and uneasily he's aware of it, and to commit himself to anyone of
- them is merely playing a trick on himself and his interlocutor. The
- Sardinian, on the other hand, still seems to have one downright mind. I
- bump up against a downright, smack-out belief in Socialism, for
- example. The Sicilian is much too old in our culture to swallow
- Socialism whole: much too ancient and rusé not to be sophisticated about
- any and every belief. He'll go off like a squib: and then he'll smoulder
- acridly and sceptically even against his own fire. One sympathizes with
- him in retrospect. But in daily life it is unbearable.
- "Where do you find such white bread?" say I to the black cap, because he
- is proud of it.
- "It comes from my home." And then he asks about the bread of Sicily. Is
- it any whiter than _this_--the Mandas rock. Yes, it is a little whiter.
- At which they gloom again. For it is a very sore point, this bread.
- Bread means a great deal to an Italian: it is verily his staff of life.
- He practically lives on bread. And instead of going by taste, he now,
- like all the world, goes by eye. He has got it into his head that bread
- should be white, so that every time he fancies a darker shade in the
- loaf a shadow falls on his soul. Nor is he altogether wrong. For
- although, personally, I don't like white bread any more, yet I do like
- my brown bread to be made of pure, unmixed flour. The peasants in
- Sicily, who have kept their own wheat and make their own natural brown
- bread, ah, it is amazing how fresh and sweet and _clean_ their loaf
- seems, so perfumed as home-bread used all to be before the war. Whereas
- the bread of the commune, the regulation supply, is hard, and rather
- coarse and rough, so rough and harsh on the palate. One gets tired to
- death of it. I suspect myself the maize meal mixed in. But I don't know.
- And finally the bread varies immensely from town to town, from commune
- to commune. The so-called just and equal distribution is all my-eye. One
- place has abundance of good sweet bread, another scrapes along, always
- stinted, on an allowance of harsh coarse stuff. And the poor suffer
- bitterly, really, from the bread-stinting, because they depend so on
- this one food. They say the inequality and the injustice of distribution
- comes from the Camorra--la grande Camorra--which is no more nowadays
- than a profiteering combine, which the poor hate. But for myself, I
- don't know. I only know that one town--Venice, for example--seems to
- have an endless supply of pure bread, of sugar, of tobacco, of
- salt--while Florence is in one continual ferment of irritation over the
- stinting of these supplies--which are all government monopoly, doled out
- accordingly.
- We said Good-night to our three railway friends, and went up to bed. We
- had only been in the room a minute or two, when the brown woman tapped:
- and if you please, the black-cap had sent us one of his little white
- loaves. We were really touched. Such delicate little generosities have
- almost disappeared from the world.
- It was a queer little bread--three-cornered, and almost as hard as ships
- biscuit, made of starch flour. Not strictly bread at all.
- * * * * *
- The night was cold, the blankets flat and heavy, but one slept quite
- well till dawn. At seven o'clock it was a clear, cold morning, the sun
- not yet up. Standing at the bedroom window looking out, I could hardly
- believe my eyes it was so like England, like Cornwall in the bleak
- parts, or Derbyshire uplands. There was a little paddock-garden at the
- back of the Station, rather tumble-down, with two sheep in it. There
- were several forlorn-looking out-buildings, very like Cornwall. And then
- the wide, forlorn country road stretched away between borders of grass
- and low, drystone walls, towards a grey stone farm with a tuft of trees,
- and a naked stone village in the distance. The sun came up yellow, the
- bleak country glimmered bluish and reluctant. The low, green hill-slopes
- were divided into fields, with low drystone walls and ditches. Here and
- there a stone barn rose alone, or with a few bare, windy trees attached.
- Two rough-coated winter horses pastured on the rough grass, a boy came
- along the naked, wide, grass-bordered high-road with a couple of milk
- cans, drifting in from nowhere: and it was all so like Cornwall, or a
- part of Ireland, that the old nostalgia for the Celtic regions began to
- spring up in me. Ah, those old, drystone walls dividing the fields--pale
- and granite-blenched! Ah, the dark, sombre grass, the naked sky! the
- forlorn horses in the wintry morning! Strange is a Celtic landscape, far
- more moving, disturbing than the lovely glamor of Italy and Greece.
- Before the curtains of history lifted, one feels the world was like
- this--this Celtic bareness and sombreness and _air_. But perhaps it is
- not Celtic at all: Iberian. Nothing is more unsatisfactory than our
- conception of what is Celtic and what is not Celtic. I believe there
- never were any Celts, as a race.--As for the Iberians--!
- [Illustration: TONARA]
- Wonderful to go out on a frozen road, to see the grass in shadow bluish
- with hoar-frost, to see the grass in the yellow winter-sunrise beams
- melting and going cold-twinkly. Wonderful the bluish, cold air, and
- things standing up in cold distance. After two southern winters, with
- roses blooming all the time, this bleakness and this touch of frost in
- the ringing morning goes to my soul like an intoxication. I am so glad,
- on this lonely naked road, I don't know what to do with myself. I walk
- down in the shallow grassy ditches under the loose stone walls, I walk
- on the little ridge of grass, the little bank on which the wall is
- built, I cross the road across the frozen cow-droppings: and it is all
- so familiar to my _feet_, my very feet in contact, that I am wild as if
- I had made a discovery. And I realize that I hate lime-stone, to live on
- lime-stone or marble or any of those limey rocks. I hate them. They are
- dead rocks, they have no life--thrills for the feet. Even sandstone is
- much better. But granite! Granite is my favorite. It is so live under
- the feet, it has a deep sparkle of its own. I like its roundnesses--and
- I hate the jaggy dryness of lime-stone, that burns in the sun, and
- withers.
- * * * * *
- After coming to a deep well in a grassy plot in a wide space of the
- road, I go back, across the sunny naked upland country, towards the pink
- station and its out-buildings. An engine is steaming its white clouds in
- the new light. Away to the left there is even a row of small houses,
- like a row of railway-mens' dwellings. Strange and familiar sight. And
- the station precincts are disorderly and rather dilapidated. I think of
- our Sicilian host.
- The brown woman gives us coffee, and very strong, rich goats' milk, and
- bread. After which the q-b and I set off once more along the road to the
- village. She too is thrilled. She too breathes deep. She too feels
- _space_ around her, and freedom to move the limbs: such as one does not
- feel in Italy and Sicily, where all is so classic and fixed.
- The village itself is just a long, winding, darkish street, in shadow,
- of houses and shops and a smithy. It might almost be Cornwall: not
- quite. Something, I don't know what, suggests the stark burning glare of
- summer. And then, of course, there is none of the cosiness which
- climbing roses and lilac trees and cottage shops and haystacks would
- give to an English scene. This is harder, barer, starker, more dreary.
- An ancient man in the black-and-white costume comes out of a hovel of a
- cottage. The butcher carries a huge side of meat. The women peer at
- us--but more furtive and reticent than the howling stares of Italy.
- So we go on, down the rough-cobbled street through the whole length of
- the village. And emerging on the other side, past the last cottage, we
- find ourselves again facing the open country, on the gentle down-slope
- of the rolling hill. The landscape continues the same: low, rolling
- upland hills, dim under the yellow sun of the January morning: stone
- fences, fields, grey-arable land: a man slowly, slowly ploughing with a
- pony and a dark-red cow: the road trailing empty across the distance:
- and then, the one violently unfamiliar note, the enclosed cemetery lying
- outside on the gentle hill-side, closed in all round, very compact,
- with high walls: and on the inside face of the enclosure wall the marble
- slabs, like shut drawers of the sepulchres, shining white, the wall
- being like a chest of drawers, or pigeon holes to hold the dead. Tufts
- of dark and plumy cypresses rise among the flat graves of the enclosure.
- In the south, cemeteries are walled off and isolated very tight. The
- dead, as it were, are kept fast in pound. There is no spreading of
- graves over the face of the country. They are penned in a tight fold,
- with cypresses to fatten on the bones. This is the one thoroughly
- strange note in the landscape. But all-pervading there is a strangeness,
- that strange feeling as if the _depths_ were barren, which comes in the
- south and the east, sun-stricken. Sun-stricken, and the heart eaten out
- by the dryness.
- "I like it! I like it!" cries the q-b.
- "But could you live here?" She would like to say yes, but daren't.
- We stray back. The q-b wants to buy one of those saddle-bag
- arrangements. I say what for? She says to keep things in. Ach! but
- peeping in the shops, we see one and go in and examine it. It is quite a
- sound one, properly made: but plain, quite plain. On the white
- cross-stripes there are no lovely colored flowers of rose and green and
- magenta: the three favorite Sardinian colors: nor are there any of the
- fantastic and griffin-like beasts. So it won't do. How much does it
- cost? Forty-five francs.
- There is nothing to do in Mandas. So we will take the morning train and
- go to the terminus, to Sorgono. Thus, we shall cross the lower slopes of
- the great central knot of Sardinia, the mountain knot called
- Gennargentu. And Sorgono we feel will be lovely.
- Back at the station we make tea on the spirit lamp, fill the thermos,
- pack the knapsack and the kitchenino, and come out into the sun of the
- platform. The q-b goes to thank the black-cap for the white bread,
- whilst I settle the bill and ask for food for the journey. The brown
- woman fishes out from a huge black pot in the background sundry hunks of
- coarse boiled pork, and gives me two of these, hot, with bread and salt.
- This is the luncheon. I pay the bill: which amounts to twenty-four
- francs, for everything. (One says francs or liras, irrespective, in
- Italy.) At that moment arrives the train from Cagliari, and men rush in,
- roaring for the soup--or rather, for the broth. "Ready, ready!" she
- cries, going to the black pot.
- V.
- TO SORGONO.
- The various trains in the junction squatted side by side and had long,
- long talks before at last we were off. It was wonderful to be running in
- the bright morning towards the heart of Sardinia, in the little train
- that seemed so familiar. We were still going third class, rather to the
- disgust of the railway officials at Mandas.
- At first the country was rather open: always the long spurs of hills,
- steep-sided, but not high. And from our little train we looked across
- the country, across hill and dale. In the distance was a little town, on
- a low slope. But for its compact, fortified look it might have been a
- town on the English downs. A man in the carriage leaned out of the
- window holding out a white cloth, as a signal to someone in the far off
- town that he was coming. The wind blew the white cloth, the town in the
- distance glimmered small and alone in its hollow. And the little train
- pelted along.
- It was rather comical to see it. We were always climbing. And the line
- curved in great loops. So that as one looked out of the window, time and
- again one started, seeing a little train running in front of us, in a
- diverging direction, making big puffs of steam. But lo, it was our own
- little engine pelting off around a loop away ahead. We were quite a long
- train, but all trucks in front, only our two passenger coaches hitched
- on behind. And for this reason our own engine was always running fussily
- into sight, like some dog scampering in front and swerving about us,
- while we followed at the tail end of the thin string of trucks.
- I was surprised how well the small engine took the continuous steep
- slopes, how bravely it emerged on the sky-line. It is a queer railway. I
- would like to know who made it. It pelts up hill and down dale and round
- sudden bends in the most unconcerned fashion, not as proper big railways
- do, grunting inside deep cuttings and stinking their way through
- tunnels, but running up the hill like a panting, small dog, and having a
- look round, and starting off in another direction, whisking us behind
- unconcernedly. This is much more fun than the tunnel-and-cutting system.
- They told me that Sardinia mines her own coal: and quite enough for her
- own needs: but very soft, not fit for steam-purposes. I saw heaps of it:
- small, dull, dirty-looking stuff. Truck-loads of it too. And
- truck-loads of grain.
- At every station we were left ignominiously planted, while the little
- engines--they had gay gold names on their black little bodies--strolled
- about along the side-lines, and snuffed at the various trucks. There we
- sat, at every station, while some truck was discarded and some other
- sorted out like a branded sheep, from the sidings and hitched on to us.
- It took a long time, this did.
- * * * * *
- All the stations so far had had wire netting over the windows. This
- means malaria-mosquitoes. The malaria climbs very high in Sardinia. The
- shallow upland valleys, moorland with their intense summer sun and the
- riverless, boggy behaviour of the water breed the pest inevitably. But
- not very terribly, as far as one can make out: August and September
- being the danger months. The natives don't like to admit there is any
- malaria: a tiny bit, they say, a tiny bit. As soon as you come to the
- _trees_ there is no more. So they say. For many miles the landscape is
- moorland and down-like, with no trees. But wait for the trees. Ah, the
- woods and forests of Gennargentu: the woods and forests higher up: no
- malaria there!
- The little engine whisks up and up, around its loopy curves as if it
- were going to bite its own tail: we being the tail: then suddenly dives
- over the sky-line out of sight. And the landscape changes. The famous
- woods begin to appear. At first it is only hazel-thickets, miles of
- hazel-thickets, all wild, with a few black cattle trying to peep at us
- out of the green myrtle and arbutus scrub which forms the undergrowth;
- and a couple of rare, wild peasants peering at the train. They wear the
- black sheepskin tunic, with the wool outside, and the long stocking
- caps. Like cattle they too peer out from between deep bushes. The myrtle
- scrub here rises man-high, and cattle and men are smothered in it. The
- big hazels rise bare above. It must be difficult getting about in these
- parts.
- Sometimes, in the distance one sees a black-and-white peasant riding
- lonely across a more open place, a tiny vivid figure. I like so much the
- proud instinct which makes a living creature distinguish itself from its
- background. I hate the rabbity khaki protection-colouration. A
- black-and-white peasant on his pony, only a dot in the distance beyond
- the foliage, still flashes and dominates the landscape. Ha-ha! proud
- mankind! There you ride! But alas, most of the men are still
- khaki-muffled, rabbit-indistinguishable, ignominious. The Italians look
- curiously rabbity in the grey-green uniform: just as our sand-colored
- khaki men look doggy. They seem to scuffle rather abased, ignominious
- on the earth. Give us back the scarlet and gold, and devil take the
- hindmost.
- * * * * *
- The landscape really begins to change. The hillsides tilt sharper and
- sharper. A man is ploughing with two small red cattle on a craggy,
- tree-hanging slope as sharp as a roof-side. He stoops at the small
- wooden plough, and jerks the ploughlines. The oxen lift their noses to
- heaven, with a strange and beseeching snake-like movement, and taking
- tiny little steps with their frail feet, move slantingly across the
- slope-face, between rocks and tree-roots. Little, frail, jerky steps the
- bullocks take, and again they put their horns back and lift their
- muzzles snakily to heaven, as the man pulls the line. And he skids his
- wooden plough round another scoop of earth. It is marvellous how they
- hang upon that steep, craggy slope. An English labourer's eyes would
- bolt out of his head at the sight.
- There is a stream: actually a long tress of a water-fall pouring into a
- little gorge, and a stream-bed that opens a little, and shows a
- marvellous cluster of naked poplars away below. They are like ghosts.
- They have a ghostly, almost phosphorescent luminousness in the shadow of
- the valley, by the stream of water. If not phosphorescent, then
- incandescent: a grey, goldish-pale incandescence of naked limbs and
- myriad cold-glowing twigs, gleaming strangely. If I were a painter I
- would paint them: for they seem to have living, sentient flesh. And the
- shadow envelopes them.
- Another naked tree I would paint is the gleaming mauve-silver fig, which
- burns its cold incandescence, tangled, like some sensitive creature
- emerged from the rock. A fig tree come forth in its nudity gleaming over
- the dark winter-earth is a sight to behold. Like some white, tangled sea
- anemone. Ah, if it could but answer! or if we had tree-speech!
- * * * * *
- Yes, the steep valley sides become almost gorges, and there are trees.
- Not forests such as I had imagined, but scattered, grey, smallish oaks,
- and some lithe chestnuts. Chestnuts with their long whips, and oaks with
- their stubby boughs, scattered on steep hillsides where rocks crop out.
- The train perilously winding round, half way up. Then suddenly bolting
- over a bridge and into a completely unexpected station. What is more,
- men crowd in--the station is connected with the main railway by a post
- motor-omnibus.
- An unexpected irruption of men--they may be miners or navvies or
- land-workers. They all have huge sacks: some lovely saddle-bags with
- rose-coloured flowers across the darkness. One old man is in full
- black-and-white costume, but very dirty and coming to pieces. The others
- wear the tight madder-brown breeches and sleeved waistcoats. Some have
- the sheepskin tunic, and all wear the long stocking cap. And how they
- smell! of sheep-wool and of men and goat. A rank scent fills the
- carriage.
- They talk and are very lively. And they have mediaeval faces, _rusé_,
- never really abandoning their defences for a moment, as a badger or a
- pole-cat never abandons its defences. There is none of the brotherliness
- and civilised simplicity. Each man knows he must guard himself and his
- own: each man knows the devil is behind the next bush. They have never
- known the post-Renaissance Jesus. Which is rather an eye-opener.
- Not that they are suspicious or uneasy. On the contrary, noisy,
- assertive, vigorous presences. But with none of that implicit belief
- that everybody will be and ought to be good to them, which is the mark
- of our era. They don't expect people to be good to them: they don't want
- it. They remind me of half-wild dogs that will love and obey, but which
- won't be handled. They won't have their heads touched. And they won't be
- fondled. One can almost hear the half-savage growl.
- The long stocking caps they wear as a sort of crest, as a lizard wears
- his crest at mating time. They are always moving them, settling them on
- their heads. One fat fellow, young, with sly brown eyes and a young
- beard round his face folds his stocking-foot in three, so that it rises
- over his brow martial and handsome. The old boy brings his stocking-foot
- over the left ear. A handsome fellow with a jaw of massive teeth pushes
- his cap back and lets it hang a long way down his back. Then he shifts
- it forward over his nose, and makes it have two sticking-out points,
- like fox-ears, above his temples. It is marvellous how much expression
- these caps can take on. They say that only those born to them can wear
- them. They seem to be just long bags, nearly a yard long, of black
- stockinette stuff.
- The conductor comes to issue them their tickets. And they all take out
- rolls of paper money. Even a little mothy rat of a man who sits opposite
- me has quite a pad of ten-franc notes. Nobody seems short of a hundred
- francs nowadays: nobody.
- They shout and expostulate with the conductor. Full of coarse life they
- are: but so coarse! The handsome fellow has his sleeved waistcoat open,
- and his shirt-breast has come unbuttoned. Not looking, it seems as if he
- wears a black undervest. Then suddenly, one sees it is his own hair. He
- is quite black inside his shirt, like a black goat.
- But there is a gulf between oneself and them. They have no inkling of
- our crucifixion, our universal consciousness. Each of them is pivoted
- and limited to himself, as the wild animals are. They look out, and they
- see other objects, objects to ridicule or mistrust or to sniff curiously
- at. But "thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself" has never entered
- their souls at all, not even the thin end of it. They might love their
- neighbour, with a hot, dark, unquestioning love. But the love would
- probably leave off abruptly. The fascination of what is beyond them has
- not seized on them. Their neighbour is a mere external. Their life is
- centripetal, pivoted inside itself, and does not run out towards others
- and mankind. One feels for the first time the real old mediaeval life,
- which is enclosed in itself and has no interest in the world outside.
- And so they lie about on the seats, play a game, shout, and sleep,
- and settle their long stocking-caps: and spit. It is wonderful in
- them that at this time of day they still wear the long stocking-caps
- as part of their inevitable selves. It is a sign of obstinate and
- powerful tenacity. They are not going to be broken in upon by
- world-consciousness. They are not going into the world's common clothes.
- Coarse, vigorous, determined, they will stick to their own coarse dark
- stupidity and let the big world find its own way to its own enlightened
- hell. Their hell is their own hell, they prefer it unenlightened.
- And one cannot help wondering whether Sardinia will resist right
- through. Will the last waves of enlightenment and world-unity break over
- them and wash away the stocking-caps? Or is the tide of enlightenment
- and world-unity already receding fast enough?
- Certainly a reaction is setting in, away from the old universality,
- back, away from cosmopolitanism and internationalism. Russia, with her
- Third International, is at the same time reacting most violently away
- from all other contact, back, recoiling on herself, into a fierce,
- unapproachable Russianism. Which motion will conquer? The workman's
- International, or the centripetal movement into national isolation? Are
- we going to merge into one grey proletarian homogeneity?--or are we
- going to swing back into more-or-less isolated, separate, defiant
- communities?
- Probably both. The workman's International movement will finally break
- the flow towards cosmopolitanism and world-assimilation, and suddenly in
- a crash the world will fly back into intense separations. The moment has
- come when America, that extremist in world-assimilation and
- world-oneness, is reacting into violent egocentricity, a truly
- Amerindian egocentricity. As sure as fate we are on the brink of
- American empire.
- For myself, I am glad. I am glad that the era of love and oneness is
- over: hateful homogeneous world-oneness. I am glad that Russia flies
- back into savage Russianism, Scythism, savagely self-pivoting. I am glad
- that America is doing the same. I shall be glad when men hate their
- common, world-alike clothes, when they tear them up and clothe
- themselves fiercely for distinction, savage distinction, savage
- distinction against the rest of the creeping world: when America kicks
- the billy-cock and the collar-and-tie into limbo, and takes to her own
- national costume: when men fiercely react against looking all alike and
- being all alike, and betake themselves into vivid clan or
- nation-distinctions.
- The era of love and oneness is over. The era of world-alike should be at
- an end. The other tide has set in. Men will set their bonnets at one
- another now, and fight themselves into separation and sharp distinction.
- The day of peace and oneness is over, the day of the great fight into
- multifariousness is at hand. Hasten the day, and save us from
- proletarian homogeneity and khaki all-alikeness.
- I love my indomitable coarse men from mountain Sardinia, for their
- stocking-caps and their splendid, animal-bright stupidity. If only the
- last wave of all-alikeness won't wash those superb crests, those caps,
- away.
- * * * * *
- We are struggling now among the Gennargentu spurs. There is no single
- peak--no Etna of Sardinia. The train, like the plough, balances on the
- steep, steep sides of the hill-spurs, and winds around and around. Above
- and below the steep slopes are all bosky. These are the woods of
- Gennargentu. But they aren't woods in my sense of the word. They are
- thin sprinkles of oaks and chestnuts and cork-trees over steep
- hill-slopes. And cork-trees! I see curious slim oaky-looking trees that
- are stripped quite naked below the boughs, standing brown-ruddy,
- curiously distinct among the bluey grey pallor of the others. They
- remind me, again and again, of glowing, coffee-brown, naked aborigines
- of the South Seas. They have the naked suavity, skin-bare, and an
- intense coffee-red colour of unclothed savages. And these are the
- stripped cork-trees. Some are much stripped, some little. Some have the
- whole trunk and part of the lower limbs ruddy naked, some only a small
- part of the trunk.
- * * * * *
- It is well on in the afternoon. A peasant in black and white, and his
- young, handsome woman in rose-red costume, with gorgeous apron bordered
- deep with grass-green, and a little, dark-purple waistcoat over her
- white, full bodice, are sitting behind me talking. The workmen peasants
- are subsiding into sleep. It is well on in the afternoon, we have long
- ago eaten the meat. Now we finish the white loaf, the gift, and the tea.
- Suddenly looking out of the window, we see Gennargentu's mass behind us,
- a thick snow-deep knot-summit, beautiful beyond the long, steep spurs
- among which we are engaged. We lose the white mountain mass for half an
- hour: when suddenly it emerges unexpectedly almost in front, the great,
- snow-heaved shoulder.
- How different it is from Etna, that lonely, self-conscious wonder of
- Sicily! This is much more human and knowable, with a deep breast and
- massive limbs, a powerful mountain-body. It is like the peasants.
- * * * * *
- The stations are far between--an hour from one to another. Ah, how weary
- one gets of these journeys, they last so long. We look across a
- valley--a stone's throw. But alas, the little train has no wings, and
- can't jump. So back turns the line, back and back towards Gennargentu, a
- long rocky way, till it comes at length to the poor valley-head. This it
- skirts fussily, and sets off to pelt down on its traces again, gaily.
- And a man who was looking at us doing our round-about has climbed down
- and crossed the valley in five minutes.
- The peasants nearly all wear costumes now, even the women in the fields:
- the little fields in the half-populated valleys. These Gennargentu
- valleys are all half-populated, more than the moors further south.
- It is past three o'clock, and cold where there is no sun. At last only
- one more station before the terminus. And here the peasants wake up,
- sling the bulging sacks over their shoulders, and get down. We see
- Tonara away above. We see our old grimy black-and-white peasant greeted
- by his two women who have come to meet him with the pony--daughters
- handsome in vivid rose and green costume. Peasants, men in black and
- white, men in madder-brown, with the close breeches on their compact
- thighs, women in rose-and-white, ponies with saddle-bags, all begin to
- trail up the hill-road in silhouette, very handsome, towards the
- far-off, perched, sun-bright village of Tonara, a big village, shining
- like a New Jerusalem.
- * * * * *
- The train as usual leaves us standing, and shuffles with trucks--water
- sounds in the valley: there are stacks of cork on the station, and coal.
- An idiot girl in a great full skirt entirely made of coloured patches
- mops and mows. Her little waistcoat thing is also incredibly old, and
- shows faint signs of having once been a lovely purple and black brocade.
- The valley and steep slopes are open about us. An old shepherd has a
- lovely flock of delicate merino sheep.
- And at last we move. In one hour we shall be there. As we travel among
- the tree slopes, many brown cork-trees, we come upon a flock of sheep.
- Two peasants in our carriage looking out, give the most weird,
- unnatural, high-pitched shrieks, entirely unproduceable by any ordinary
- being. The sheep know, however, and scatter. And after ten minutes the
- shrieks start again, for three young cattle. Whether the peasants do it
- for love, I don't know. But it is the wildest and weirdest inhuman
- shepherd noise I have ever heard.
- * * * * *
- It is Saturday afternoon and four o'clock. The country is wild and
- uninhabited, the train almost empty, yet there is the leaving-off-work
- feeling in the atmosphere. Oh twisty, wooded, steep slopes, oh glimpses
- of Gennargentu, oh nigger-stripped cork-trees, oh smell of peasants, oh
- wooden, wearisome railway carriage, we are so sick of you! Nearly seven
- hours of this journey already: and a distance of sixty miles.
- But we are almost there--look, look, Sorgono, nestling beautifully among
- the wooded slopes in front. Oh magic little town. Ah, you terminus and
- ganglion of the inland roads, we hope in you for a pleasant inn and
- happy company. Perhaps we will stay a day or two at Sorgono.
- The train gives a last sigh, and draws to a last standstill in the tiny
- terminus station. An old fellow fluttering with rags as a hen in the
- wind flutters, asked me if I wanted the _Albergo_, the inn. I said yes,
- and let him take my knapsack. Pretty Sorgono! As we went down the brief
- muddy lane between hedges, to the village high-road, we seemed almost to
- have come to some little town in the English west-country, or in Hardy's
- country. There were glades of stripling oaks, and big slopes with oak
- trees, and on the right a saw-mill buzzing, and on the left the town,
- white and close, nestling round a baroque church-tower. And the little
- lane was muddy.
- Three minutes brought us to the high-road, and a great, pink-washed
- building blank on the road facing the station lane, and labelled in huge
- letters: RISTORANTE RISVEGLIO: the letter N being printed backwards.
- _Risveglio_ if you please: which means waking up or rousing, like the
- word _reveille_. Into the doorway of the Risveglio bolted the flutterer.
- "Half a minute," said I. "Where is the Albergo d'Italia?" I was relying
- on Baedeker.
- "Non c'è più," replied my rag-feather. "There isn't it any more." This
- answer, being very frequent nowadays, is always most disconcerting.
- "Well then, what other hotel?"
- "There is no other."
- Risveglio or nothing. In we go. We pass into a big, dreary bar, where
- are innumerable bottles behind a tin counter. Flutter-jack yells: and at
- length appears mine host, a youngish fellow of the Esquimo type, but
- rather bigger, in a dreary black suit and a cutaway waistcoat suggesting
- a dinner-waistcoat, and innumerable wine-stains on his shirt front. I
- instantly hated him for the filthy appearance he made. He wore a
- battered hat and his face was long unwashed.
- Was there a bedroom?
- Yes.
- And he led the way down the passage, just as dirty as the road outside,
- up the hollow, wooden stairs also just as clean as the passage, along a
- hollow, drum-rearing dirty corridor, and into a bedroom. Well, it
- contained a large bed, thin and flat with a grey-white counterpane, like
- a large, poor, marble-slabbed tomb in the room's sordid emptiness; one
- dilapidated chair on which stood the miserablest weed of a candle I
- have ever seen: a broken wash-saucer in a wire ring: and for the rest,
- an expanse of wooden floor as dirty-grey-black as it could be, and an
- expanse of wall charted with the bloody deaths of mosquitoes. The window
- was about two feet above the level of a sort of stable-yard outside,
- with a fowl-house just by the sash. There, at the window flew lousy
- feathers and dirty straw, the ground was thick with chicken-droppings.
- An ass and two oxen comfortably chewed hay in an open shed just across,
- and plump in the middle of the yard lay a bristly black pig taking the
- last of the sun. Smells of course were varied.
- The knapsack and the kitchenino were dropped on the repulsive floor,
- which I hated to touch with my boots even. I turned back the sheets and
- looked at other people's stains.
- "There is nothing else?"
- "Niente," said he of the lank, low forehead and beastly shirt-breast.
- And he sullenly departed. I gave the flutterer his tip and he too ducked
- and fled. Then the queen-bee and I took a few mere sniffs.
- "Dirty, disgusting swine!" said I, and I was in a rage.
- I could have forgiven him anything, I think, except his horrible
- shirt-breast, his personal shamelessness.
- We strolled round--saw various other bedrooms, some worse, one really
- better. But this showed signs of being occupied. All the doors were
- open: the place was quite deserted, and open to the road. The one thing
- that seemed definite was honesty. It must be a very honest place, for
- every footed beast, man or animal, could walk in at random and nobody to
- take the slightest regard.
- So we went downstairs. The only other apartment was the open public bar,
- which seemed like part of the road. A muleteer, leaving his mules at the
- corner of the Risveglio, was drinking at the counter.
- * * * * *
- This famous inn was at the end of the village. We strolled along the
- road between the houses, down-hill. A dreary hole! a cold, hopeless,
- lifeless, Saturday afternoon-weary village, rather sordid, with nothing
- to say for itself. No real shops at all. A weary-looking church, and a
- clutch of disconsolate houses. We walked right through the village. In
- the middle was a sort of open space where stood a great, grey
- motor-omnibus. And a bus-driver looking rather weary.
- Where did the bus go?
- It went to join the main railway.
- When?
- At half-past seven in the morning.
- Only then?
- Only then.
- "Thank God we can get out, anyhow," said I.
- We passed on, and emerged beyond the village, still on the descending
- great high-road that was mended with loose stones pitched on it. This
- wasn't good enough. Besides, we were out of the sun, and the place being
- at a considerable elevation, it was very cold. So we turned back, to
- climb quickly uphill into the sun.
- * * * * *
- We went up a little side-turning past a bunch of poor houses towards a
- steep little lane between banks. And before we knew where we were, we
- were in the thick of the public lavatory. In these villages, as I knew,
- there are no sanitary arrangements of any sort whatever. Every villager
- and villageress just betook himself at need to one of the side-roads. It
- is the immemorial Italian custom. Why bother about privacy? The most
- socially-constituted people on earth, they even like to relieve
- themselves in company.
- We found ourselves in the full thick of one of these meeting-places. To
- get out at any price! So we scrambled up the steep earthen banks to a
- stubble field above. And by this time I was in a greater rage.
- * * * * *
- Evening was falling, the sun declining. Below us clustered the
- Sodom-apple of this vile village. Around were fair, tree-clad hills and
- dales, already bluish with the frost-shadows. The air bit cold and
- strong. In a very little time the sun would be down. We were at an
- elevation of about 2,500 feet above the sea.
- No denying it was beautiful, with the oak-slopes and the wistfulness and
- the far-off feeling of loneliness and evening. But I was in too great a
- temper to admit it. We clambered frenziedly to get warm. And the sun
- immediately went right down, and the ice-heavy blue shadow fell over us
- all. The village began to send forth blue wood-smoke, and it seemed more
- than ever like the twilit West Country.
- But thank you--we had to get back. And run the gauntlet of that
- stinking, stinking lane? Never. Towering with fury--quite unreasonable,
- but there you are--I marched the q-b down a declivity through a wood,
- over a ploughed field, along a cart-track, and so to the great high-road
- above the village and above the inn.
- It was cold, and evening was falling into dusk. Down the high-road came
- wild half-ragged men on ponies, in all degrees of costume and
- not-costume: came four wide-eyed cows stepping down-hill round the
- corner, and three delicate, beautiful merino sheep which stared at us
- with their prominent, gold-curious eyes: came an ancient, ancient man
- with a stick: came a stout-chested peasant carrying a long wood-pole:
- came a straggle of alert and triumphant goats, long-horned, long-haired,
- jingling their bells. Everybody greeted us hesitatingly. And everything
- came to a halt at the Risveglio corner, while the men had a nip.
- I attacked the spotty-breast again.
- Could I have milk?
- No. Perhaps in an hour there would be milk. Perhaps not.
- Was there anything to eat?
- No--at half past seven there would be something to eat.
- Was there a fire?
- No--the man hadn't made the fire.
- Nothing to do but to go to that foul bedroom or walk the high-road. We
- turned up the high-road again. Animals stood about the road in the
- frost-heavy air, with heads sunk passively, waiting for the men to
- finish their drinks in the beastly bar--we walked slowly up the hill. In
- a field on the right a flock of merino sheep moved mistily, uneasily,
- climbing at the gaps in the broken road bank, and sounding their
- innumerable small fine bells with a frosty ripple of sound. A figure
- which in the dusk I had really thought was something inanimate broke
- into movement in the field. It was an old shepherd, very old, in very
- ragged dirty black-and-white, who had been standing like a stone there
- in the open field-end for heaven knows how long, utterly motionless,
- leaning on his stick. Now he broke into a dream-motion and hobbled after
- the wistful, feminine, inquisitive sheep. The red was fading from the
- far-off west. At the corner, climbing slowly and wearily, we almost ran
- into a grey and lonely bull, who came stepping down-hill in his measured
- fashion like some god. He swerved his head and went round us.
- We reached a place which we couldn't make out: then saw it was a
- cork-shed. There were stacks and stacks of cork-bark in the dusk, like
- crumpled hides.
- "Now I'm going back," said the q-b flatly, and she swung round. The last
- red was smouldering beyond the lost, thin-wooded hills of this interior.
- A fleece of blue, half-luminous smoke floated over the obscure village.
- The high-way wound down-hill at our feet, pale and blue.
- And the q-b was angry with me for my fury.
- "Why are you so indignant! Anyone would think your moral self had been
- outraged! Why take it morally? You petrify that man at the inn by the
- very way you speak to him, _such_ condemnation! Why don't you take it as
- it comes? It's all life."
- But no, my rage is black, black, black. Why, heaven knows. But I think
- it was because Sorgono had seemed so fascinating to me, when I imagined
- it beforehand. Oh so fascinating! If I had expected nothing I should not
- have been so hit. Blessed is he that expecteth nothing, for he shall not
- be disappointed.
- I cursed the degenerate aborigines, the dirty-breasted host who _dared_
- to keep such an inn, the sordid villagers who had the baseness to squat
- their beastly human nastiness in this upland valley. All my praise of
- the long stocking-cap--you remember?--vanished from my mouth. I cursed
- them all, and the q-b for an interfering female....
- * * * * *
- In the bar a wretched candle was weeping light--uneasy, gloomy men were
- drinking their Saturday-evening-home-coming dram. Cattle lay down in the
- road, in the cold air as if hopeless.
- Had the milk come?
- No.
- When would it come.
- He didn't know.
- Well, what were we to do? Was there no room? Was there nowhere where we
- could sit?
- Yes, there was the _stanza_ now.
- _Now!_ Taking the only weed of a candle, and leaving the drinkers in
- the dark, he led us down a dark and stumbly earthen passage, over loose
- stones and an odd plank, as it would seem underground, to the stanza:
- the room.
- The stanza! It was pitch dark--But suddenly I saw a big fire of
- oak-root, a brilliant, flamy, rich fire, and my rage in that second
- disappeared.
- The host, and the candle, forsook us at the door. The stanza would have
- been in complete darkness, save for that rushing bouquet of new flames
- in the chimney, like fresh flowers. By this firelight we saw the room.
- It was like a dungeon, absolutely empty, with an uneven, earthen floor,
- quite dry, and high bare walls, gloomy, with a handbreadth of window
- high up. There was no furniture at all, save a little wooden bench, a
- foot high, before the fire, and several home-made-looking rush mats
- rolled up and leaning against the walls. Furthermore a chair before the
- fire on which hung wet table-napkins. Apart from this, it was a high,
- dark, naked prison-dungeon.
- But it was quite dry, it had an open chimney, and a gorgeous new fire
- rushing like a water-fall upwards among the craggy stubs of a pile of
- dry oak roots. I hastily put the chair and the wet corpse-cloths to one
- side. We sat on the low bench side by side in the dark, in front of this
- rippling rich fire, in front of the cavern of the open chimney, and we
- did not care any more about the dungeon and the darkness. Man can live
- without food, but he can't live without fire. It is an Italian proverb.
- We had found the fire, like new gold. And we sat in front of it, a
- little way back, side by side on the low form, our feet on the uneven
- earthen floor, and felt the flame-light rippling upwards over our faces,
- as if we were bathing in some gorgeous stream of fieriness. I forgave
- the dirty-breasted host everything and was as glad as if I had come into
- a kingdom.
- So we sat alone for half an hour, smiling into the flames, bathing our
- faces in the glow. From time to time I was aware of steps in the
- tunnel-like passage outside, and of presences peering. But no one came.
- I was aware too of the faint steaming of the beastly table-napkins, the
- only other occupants of the room.
- * * * * *
- In dithers a candle, and an elderly, bearded man in gold-coloured
- corduroys, and an amazing object on a long, long spear. He put the
- candle on the mantel-ledge, and crouched at the side of the fire,
- arranging the oak-roots. He peered strangely and fixedly in the fire.
- And he held up the speared object before our faces.
- It was a kid that he had come to roast. But it was a kid opened out,
- made quite flat, and speared like a flat fan on a long iron stalk. It
- was a really curious sight. And it must have taken some doing. The whole
- of the skinned kid was there, the head curled in against a shoulder, the
- stubby cut ears, the eyes, the teeth, the few hairs of the nostrils: and
- the feet curled curiously round, like an animal that puts its fore-paw
- over its ducked head: and the hind-legs twisted indescribably up: and
- all skewered flat-wise upon the long iron rod, so that it was a complete
- flat pattern. It reminded me intensely of those distorted, slim-limbed,
- dog-like animals which figure on the old Lombard ornaments, distorted
- and curiously infolded upon themselves. Celtic illuminations also have
- these distorted, involuted creatures.
- The old man flourished the flat kid like a bannerette, whilst he
- arranged the fire. Then, in one side of the fire-place wall he poked the
- point of the rod. He himself crouched on the hearth-end, in the
- half-shadow at the other side of the fire-place, holding the further end
- of the long iron rod. The kid was thus extended before the fire, like a
- hand-screen. And he could spin it round at will.
- [Illustration: SORONGO]
- But the hole in the masonry of the chimney-piece was not satisfactory.
- The point of the rod kept slipping, and the kid came down against the
- fire. He muttered and muttered to himself, and tried again. Then at
- length he reared up the kid-banner whilst he got large stones from a
- dark corner. He arranged these stones so that the iron point rested on
- them. He himself sat away on the opposite side of the fire-place, on the
- shadowy hearth-end, and with queer, spell-bound black eyes and
- completely immovable face, he watched the flames and the kid, and held
- the handle end of the rod.
- We asked him if the kid was for the evening meal--and he said it was. It
- would be good! And he said yes, and looked with chagrin at the bit of
- ash on the meat, where it had slipped. It is a point of honour that it
- should never touch the ash. Did they do all their meat this way? He said
- they did. And wasn't it difficult to put the kid thus on the iron rod?
- He said it was not easy, and he eyed the joint closely, and felt one of
- the forelegs, and muttered that was not fixed properly.
- He spoke with a very soft mutter, hard to catch, and sideways, never to
- us direct. But his manner was gentle, soft, muttering, reticent,
- sensitive. He asked us where we came from, and where we were going:
- always in his soft mutter. And what nation were we, were we French? Then
- he went on to say there was a war--but he thought it was finished. There
- was a war because the Austrians wanted to come into Italy again. But
- the French and the English came to help Italy. A lot of Sardinians had
- gone to it. But let us hope it is all finished. He thought it was--young
- men of Sorgono had been killed. He hoped it was finished.
- Then he reached for the candle and peered at the kid. It was evident he
- was the born roaster. He held the candle and looked for a long time at
- the sizzling side of the meat, as if he would read portents. Then he
- held his spit to the fire again. And it was as if time immemorial were
- roasting itself another meal. I sat holding the candle.
- * * * * *
- A young woman appeared, hearing voices. Her head was swathed in a shawl,
- one side of which was brought across, right over the mouth, so that only
- her two eyes and her nose showed. The q-b thought she must have
- toothache--but she laughed and said no. As a matter of fact that is the
- way a head-dress is worn in Sardinia, even by both sexes. It is
- something like the folding of the Arab's burnoose. The point seems to be
- that the mouth and chin are thickly covered, also the ears and brow,
- leaving only the nose and eyes exposed. They say it keeps off the
- malaria. The men swathe shawls round their heads in the same way. It
- seems to me they want to keep their heads warm, dark and hidden: they
- feel secure inside.
- She wore the workaday costume: a full, dark-brown skirt, the full white
- bodice, and a little waistcoat or corset. This little waistcoat in her
- case had become no more than a shaped belt, sending up graceful,
- stiffened points under the breasts, like long leaves standing up. It was
- pretty--but all dirty. She too was pretty, but with an impudent, not
- quite pleasant manner. She fiddled with the wet napkins, asked us
- various questions, and addressed herself rather jerkily to the old man,
- who answered hardly at all--Then she departed again. The women are
- self-conscious in a rather smirky way, bouncy.
- When she was gone I asked the old man if she was his daughter. He said
- very brusquely, in his soft mutter, No. She came from a village some
- miles away. He did not belong to the inn. He was, as far as I
- understood, the postman. But I may have been mistaken about the word.
- But he seemed laconic, unwilling to speak about the inn and its keepers.
- There seemed to be something queer. And again he asked where we were
- going. He told me there were now two motor-buses: a new one which ran
- over the mountains to Nuoro. Much better go to Nuoro than to Abbasanta.
- Nuoro was evidently the town towards which these villages looked, as a
- sort of capital.
- * * * * *
- The kid-roasting proceeded very slowly, the meat never being very near
- the fire. From time to time the roaster arranged the cavern of red-hot
- roots. Then he threw on more roots. It was very hot. And he turned the
- long spit, and still I held the candle.
- Other people came strolling in, to look at us. But they hovered behind
- us in the dark, so I could not make out at all clearly. They strolled in
- the gloom of the dungeon-like room, and watched us. One came forward--a
- fat, fat young soldier in uniform. I made place for him on the
- bench--but he put out his hand and disclaimed the attention. Then he
- went away again.
- The old man propped up the roast, and then he too disappeared for a
- time. The thin candle guttered, the fire was no longer flamy but red.
- The roaster reappeared with a new, shorter spear, thinner, and a great
- lump of raw hog-fat spitted on it. This he thrust into the red fire. It
- sizzled and smoked and spit fat, and I wondered. He told me he wanted it
- to catch fire. It refused. He groped in the hearth for the bits of twigs
- with which the fire had been started. These twig-stumps he stuck in the
- fat, like an orange stuck with cloves, then he held it in the fire
- again. Now at last it caught, and it was a flaming torch running
- downwards with a thin shower of flaming fat. And now he was satisfied.
- He held the fat-torch with its yellow flares over the browning kid,
- which he turned horizontal for the occasion. All over the roast fell the
- flaming drops, till the meat was all shiny and browny. He put it to the
- fire again, holding the diminishing fat, still burning bluish, over it
- all the time in the upper air.
- * * * * *
- While this was in process a man entered with a loud _Good evening_. We
- replied Good-evening--and evidently he caught a strange note. He came
- and bent down and peered under my hat-brim, then under the q-b's
- hat-brim, we still wore hats and overcoats, as did everybody. Then he
- stood up suddenly and touched his cap and said _Scusi_--excuse me. I
- said _Niente_, which one always says, and he addressed a few jovial
- words to the crouching roaster: who again would hardly answer him. The
- omnibus was arrived from Oristano, I made out--with few passengers.
- This man brought with him a new breezy atmosphere, which the roaster did
- not like. However, I made place on the low bench, and the attention this
- time was accepted. Sitting down at the extreme end, he came into the
- light, and I saw a burly man in the prime of life, dressed in dark brown
- velvet, with a blond little moustache and twinkling blue eyes and a
- tipsy look. I thought he might be some local tradesman or farmer. He
- asked a few questions, in a boisterous familiar fashion, then went out
- again. He appeared with a small iron spit, a slim rod, in one hand, and
- in the other hand two joints of kid and a handful of sausages. He stuck
- his joints on his rod. But our roaster still held the interminable flat
- kid before the now red, flameless fire. The fat-torch was burnt out, the
- cinder pushed in the fire. A moment's spurt of flame, then red, intense
- redness again, and our kid before it like a big, dark hand.
- "Eh," said the newcomer, whom I will call the girovago, "it's done. The
- kid's done. It's done."
- The roaster slowly shook his head, but did not answer. He sat like time
- and eternity at the hearth-end, his face flame-flushed, his dark eyes
- still fire-abstract, still sacredly intent on the roast.
- "Na-na-na!" said the girovago. "Let another body see the fire." And with
- his pieces of meat awkwardly skewered on his iron stick he tried to poke
- under the authorised kid and get at the fire. In his soft mutter, the
- old man bade him wait for the fire till the fire was ready for him. But
- the girovago poked impudently and good humouredly, and said testily
- that the authorised kid was done.
- "Yes, surely it is done," said I, for it was already a quarter to eight.
- The old roasting priest muttered, and took out his knife from his
- pocket. He pressed the blade slowly, slowly deep into the meat: as far
- as a knife will go in a piece of kid. He seemed to be feeling the meat
- inwardly. And he said it was not done. He shook his head, and remained
- there like time and eternity at the end of the rod.
- The girovago said _Sangue di Dio_, but couldn't roast his meat! And he
- tried to poke his skewer near the coals. So doing his pieces fell off
- into the ashes, and the invisible onlookers behind raised a shout of
- laughter. However, he raked it out and wiped it with his hand and said
- No matter, nothing lost.
- Then he turned to me and asked the usual whence and whither questions.
- These answered, he said wasn't I German. I said No, I was English. He
- looked at me many times, shrewdly, as if he wanted to make out
- something. Then he asked, where were we domiciled--and I said Sicily.
- And then, very pertinently, why had we come to Sardinia. I said for
- pleasure, and to see the island.
- "Ah, per divertimento!" he repeated, half-musingly, not believing me in
- the least.
- Various men had now come into the room, though they all remained
- indistinct in the background. The girovago talked and jested abroad in
- the company, and the half-visible men laughed in a rather hostile
- manner.
- At last the old roaster decided the kid was done. He lifted it from the
- fire and scrutinised it thoroughly, holding the candle to it, as if it
- were some wonderful epistle from the flames. To be sure it looked
- marvellous, and smelled so good: brown, and crisp, and hot, and savoury,
- not burnt in any place whatever. It was eight o'clock.
- "It's done! It's done! Go away with it! Go," said the girovago, pushing
- the old roaster with his hand. And at last the old man consented to
- depart, holding the kid like a banner.
- "It looks so _good_!" cried the q-b. "And I am so hungry."
- "Ha-ha! It makes one hungry to see good meat, Signora. Now it is my
- turn. Heh--Gino--" the girovago flourished his arm. And a handsome,
- unwashed man with a black moustache came forward rather sheepishly. He
- was dressed in soldier's clothes, neutral grey, and was a big, robust,
- handsome fellow with dark eyes and Mediterranean sheepishness. "Here,
- take it thou," said the girovago, pressing the long spit into his hand.
- "It is thy business, cook the supper, thou art the woman.--But I'll keep
- the sausages and do them."
- The so-called woman sat at the end of the hearth, where the old roaster
- had sat, and with his brown, nervous hand piled the remaining coals
- together. The fire was no longer flamy: and it was sinking. The
- dark-browed man arranged it so that he could cook the meat. He held the
- spit negligently over the red mass. A joint fell off. The men laughed.
- "It's lost nothing," said the dark-browed man, as the girovago had said
- before, and he skewered it on again and thrust it to the fire. But
- meanwhile he was looking up from under his dark lashes at the girovago
- and at us.
- The girovago talked continually. He turned to me, holding the handful of
- sausages.
- "This makes the tasty bit," he said.
- "Oh yes--good salsiccia," said I.
- "You are eating the kid? You are eating at the inn?" he said. I replied
- that I was.
- "No," he said. "You stay and eat with me. You eat with me. The sausage
- is good, the kid will soon be done, the fire is grateful."
- I laughed, not quite understanding him. He was certainly a bit tipsy.
- "Signora," he said, turning to the q-b. She did not like him, he was
- impudent, and she shut a deaf ear to him as far as she could. "Signora,"
- he said, "do you understand me what I say?"
- She replied that she did.
- "Signora," he said, "I sell things to the women. I sell them things."
- "What do you sell?" she asked in astonishment.
- "Saints," he said.
- "Saints!" she cried in more astonishment.
- "Yes, saints," he said with tipsy gravity.
- She turned in confusion to the company in the background. The fat
- soldier came forward, he was the chief of the carabinieri.
- "Also combs and bits of soap and little mirrors," he explained
- sarcastically.
- "Saints!" said the girovago once more. "And also _ragazzini_--also
- youngsters--Wherever I go there is a little one comes running calling
- Babbo! Babbo! Daddy! Daddy! Wherever I go--youngsters. And I'm the
- babbo."
- All this was received with a kind of silent sneer from the invisible
- assembly in the background. The candle was burning low, the fire was
- sinking too. In vain the dark-browed man tried to build it up. The q-b
- became impatient for the food. She got up wrathfully and stumbled into
- the dark passage, exclaiming--"Don't we eat yet?"
- "Eh--Patience! Patience, Signora. It takes time in this house," said the
- man in the background.
- The dark-browed man looked up at the girovago and said:
- "Are you going to cook the sausages with your fingers?"
- He too was trying to be assertive and jesting, but he was the kind of
- person no one takes any notice of. The girovago rattled on in dialect,
- poking fun at us and at our being there in this inn. I did not quite
- follow.
- "Signora!" said the girovago. "Do you understand Sardinian?"
- "I understand Italian--and some Sardinian," she replied rather hotly.
- "And I know that you are trying to laugh at us--to make fun of us."
- He laughed fatly and comfortably.
- "Ah Signora," he said. "We have a language that you wouldn't
- understand--not one word. Nobody here would understand it but me and
- him--" he pointed to the black-browed one. "Everybody would want an
- interpreter--everybody."
- But he did not say interpreter--he said _intreprete_, with the accent
- on the penultimate, as if it were some sort of priest.
- "A what?" said I.
- He repeated with tipsy unction, and I saw what he meant.
- "Why?" said I. "Is it a dialect? What is your dialect?"
- "My dialect," he said, "is Sassari. I come from Sassari. If I spoke my
- dialect they would understand something. But if I speak this language
- they would want an interpreter."
- "What language is it then?"
- He leaned up to me, laughing.
- "It is the language we use when the women are buying things and we don't
- want them to know what we say: me and him--"
- "Oh," said I. "I know. We have that language in England. It is called
- thieves Latin--_Latino dei furbi_."
- The men at the back suddenly laughed, glad to turn the joke against the
- forward girovago. He looked down his nose at me. But seeing I was
- laughing without malice, he leaned to me and said softly, secretly:
- "What is your affair then? What affair is it, yours?"
- "How? What?" I exclaimed, not understanding.
- "_Che genere di affari?_ What sort of business?"
- "How--_affari_?" said I, still not grasping.
- "What do you _sell_?" he said, flatly and rather spitefully. "What
- goods?"
- "I don't sell anything," replied I, laughing to think he took us for
- some sort of strolling quacks or commercial travellers.
- "Cloth--or something," he said cajolingly, slyly, as if to worm my
- secret out of me.
- "But nothing at all. Nothing at all," said I. "We have come to Sardinia
- to see the peasant costumes--" I thought that might sound satisfactory.
- "Ah, the costumes!" he said, evidently thinking I was a deep one. And he
- turned bandying words with his dark-browed mate, who was still poking
- the meat at the embers and crouching on the hearth. The room was almost
- quite dark. The mate answered him back, and tried to seem witty too. But
- the girovago was the commanding personality! rather too much so: too
- impudent for the q-b, though rather after my own secret heart. The mate
- was one of those handsome, passive, stupid men.
- "Him!" said the girovago, turning suddenly to me and pointing at the
- mate. "He's my wife."
- "Your wife!" said I.
- "Yes. He's my wife, because we're always together."
- There had become a sudden dead silence in the background. In spite of it
- the mate looked up under his black lashes and said, with a half smile:
- "Don't talk, or I shall give thee a good _bacio_ to-night."
- There was an instant's fatal pause, then the girovago continued:
- "Tomorrow is festa of Sant 'Antonio at Tonara. Tomorrow we are going to
- Tonara. Where are you going?"
- "To Abbasanta," said I.
- "Ah Abbasanta! You should come to Tonara. At Tonara there is a brisk
- trade--and there are costumes. You should come to Tonara. Come with him
- and me to Tonara tomorrow, and we will do business together."
- I laughed, but did not answer.
- "Come," said he. "You will like Tonara! Ah, Tonara is a fine place.
- There is an inn: you can eat well, sleep well. I tell you, because to
- you ten francs don't matter. Isn't that so? Ten francs don't matter to
- you. Well, then come to Tonara. What? What do you say?"
- I shook my head and laughed, but did not answer.
- To tell the truth I should have liked to go to Tonara with him and his
- mate and do the brisk trade: if only I knew what trade it would be.
- "You are sleeping upstairs?" he said to me.
- I nodded.
- "This is my bed," he said, taking one of the home-made rush mats from
- against the wall. I did not take him seriously at any point.
- "Do they make those in Sorgono?" I said.
- "Yes, in Sorgono--they are the beds, you see! And you roll up this end a
- bit--so! and that is the pillow."
- He laid his cheek sideways.
- "Not really," said I.
- He came and sat down again next to me, and my attention wandered. The
- q-b was raging for her dinner. It must be quite half-past eight. The
- kid, the perfect kid would be cold and ruined. Both fire and candle were
- burning low. Someone had been out for a new candle, but there was
- evidently no means of replenishing the fire. The mate still crouched on
- the hearth, the dull red fire-glow on his handsome face, patiently
- trying to roast the kid and poking it against the embers. He had heavy,
- strong limbs in his khaki clothes, but his hand that held the spit was
- brown and tender and sensitive, a real Mediterranean hand. The girovago,
- blond, round-faced, mature and aggressive with all his liveliness, was
- more like a northerner. In the background were four or five other men,
- of whom I had distinguished none but a stout soldier, probably chief
- carabiniere.
- * * * * *
- Just as the q-b was working up to the rage I had at last calmed down
- from, appeared the shawl-swathed girl announcing "Pronto!"
- "Pronto! Pronto!" said everybody.
- "High time, too," said the q-b, springing from the low bench before the
- fire. "Where do we eat? Is there another room?"
- "There is another room, Signora," said the carabiniere.
- So we trooped out of the fire-warmed dungeon, leaving the girovago and
- his mate and two other men, muleteers from the road, behind us. I could
- see that it irked my girovago to be left behind. He was by far the
- strongest personality in the place, and he had the keenest intelligence.
- So he hated having to fall into the background, when he had been
- dragging all the lime-light on to himself all the evening. To me, too,
- he was something of a kindred soul that night. But there we are: fate,
- in the guise of that mysterious division between a respectable life and
- a scamp's life divided us. There was a gulf between me and him, between
- my way and his. He was a kindred spirit--but with a hopeless difference.
- There was something a bit sordid about him--and he knew it. That is why
- he was always tipsy. Yet I like the lone wolf souls best--better than
- the sheep. If only they didn't feel mongrel inside themselves.
- Presumably a scamp is bound to be mongrel. It is a pity the untamable,
- lone-wolf souls should always become pariahs, almost of choice: mere
- scamps.
- Top and bottom of it is, I regretted my girovago, though I knew it was
- no good thinking of him. His way was _not_ my way. Yet I regretted him,
- I did.
- * * * * *
- We found ourselves in a dining room with a long white table and inverted
- soup-plates, tomb-cold, lighted by an acetylene flare. Three men had
- accompanied us: the carabiniere, a little dark youth with a small black
- moustache, in a soldier's short, wool-lined great-coat: and a young man
- who looked tired round his blue eyes, and who wore a dark-blue overcoat,
- quite smart. The be-shawled damsel came in with the inevitable bowl of
- minestrone, soup with cabbage and cauliflower and other things. We
- helped ourselves, and the fat carabiniere started the conversation with
- the usual questions--and where were we going tomorrow?
- I asked about buses. Then the responsible-looking, tired-eyed youth
- told me he was the bus-driver. He had come from Oristano, on the main
- line, that day. It is a distance of some forty miles. Next morning he
- was going on over the mountains to Nuoro--about the same distance again.
- The youth with the little black moustache and the Greek, large eyes, was
- his mate, the conductor. This was their run, from Oristano to Nuoro--a
- course of ninety miles or more. And every day on, on, on. No wonder he
- looked nerve-tired. Yet he had that kind of dignity, the wistful
- seriousness and pride of a man in machine control: the only god-like
- ones today, those who pull the iron levers and are the gods in the
- machine.
- They repeated what the old roaster said: much nicer for us to go to
- Nuoro than to Abbasanta. So to Nuoro we decided to go, leaving at
- half-past nine in the morning.
- * * * * *
- Every other night the driver and his mate spent in this benighted
- Risveglio inn. It must have been their bedroom we saw, clean and tidy. I
- said was the food always so late, was everything always as bad as today.
- Always--if not worse, they said, making light of it, with sarcastic
- humor against the Risveglio. You spent your whole life at the Risveglio
- sitting, waiting, and going block-cold: unless you were content to
- drink _aqua vitae_, like those in there. The driver jerked his head
- towards the dungeon.
- "Who were those in there?" said I.
- The one who did all the talking was a mercante, a mercante girovago, a
- wandering peddler. This was my girovago: a wandering peddler selling
- saints and youngsters! The other was his mate, who helped carry the
- pack. They went about together. Oh, my girovago was a known figure all
- over the country.--And where would they sleep? There, in the room where
- the fire was dying.
- They would unroll the mats and lie with their feet to the hearth. For
- this they paid threepence, or at most fourpence. And they had the
- privilege of cooking their own food. The Risveglio supplied them with
- nothing but the fire, the roof, and the rush mat.--And, of course, the
- drink. Oh, we need have no sympathy with the girovago and his sort.
- _They_ lacked for nothing. They had everything they wanted: everything:
- and money in abundance. _They_ lived for the _aqua vitae_ they drank.
- That was all they wanted: their continual allowance of _aqua vitae_. And
- they got it. Ah, they were not cold. If the room became cold during the
- night: if they had no coverings at all: pah, they waited for morning,
- and as soon as it was light they drank a large glass of _aqua vitae_.
- That was their fire, their hearth and their home: drink. _Aqua vitae_,
- was hearth and home to them.
- I was surprised at the contempt, tolerant and yet profound, with which
- these three men in the dining-room spoke of the others in the _stanza_.
- How contemptuous, almost bitter, the driver was against alcohol. It was
- evident he hated it. And though we all had our bottles of dead-cold dark
- wine, and though we all drank: still, the feeling of the three youths
- against actual intoxication was deep and hostile, with a certain burning
- _moral_ dislike that is more northern than Italian. And they curled
- their lip with real dislike of the girovago: his forwardness, his
- impudent aggressiveness.
- * * * * *
- As for the inn, yes, it was very bad. It had been quite good under the
- previous proprietors. But now--they shrugged their shoulders. The
- dirty-breast and the shawled girl were not the owners. They were merely
- conductors of the hotel: here a sarcastic curl of the lip. The owner was
- a man in the village--a young man. A week or two back, at Christmas
- time, there had been a roomful of men sitting drinking and roistering at
- this very table. When in had come the proprietor, mad-drunk, swinging a
- litre bottle round his head and yelling: "Out! Out! Out, all of you! Out
- every one of you! I am proprietor here. And when I want to clear my
- house I clear my house. Every man obeys--who doesn't obey has his brains
- knocked out with this bottle. Out, out, I say--Out, everyone!" And the
- men all cleared out. "But," said the bus-driver, "I told him that when I
- had paid for my bed I was going to sleep in it. I was not going to be
- turned out by him or anybody. And so he came down."
- * * * * *
- There was a little silence from everybody after this story. Evidently
- there was more to it, that we were not to be told. Especially the
- carabiniere was silent. He was a fat, not very brave fellow, though
- quite nice.
- Ah, but--said the little dark bus-conductor, with his small-featured
- swarthy Greek face--you must not be angry with them. True the inn was
- very bad. Very bad--but you must pity them, for they are only ignorant.
- Poor things, they are _ignoranti_! Why be angry?
- The other two men nodded their heads in agreement and repeated
- _ignoranti_. They are _ignoranti_. It is true. Why be angry?
- And here the modern Italian spirit came out: the endless pity for the
- ignorant. It is only slackness. The pity makes the ignorant more
- ignorant, and makes the Risveglio daily more impossible. If somebody
- let a bottle buzz round the ears of the dirty-breast, and whipped the
- shawl from the head of the pert young madam and sent her flying down the
- tunnel with a flea in her ear, we might get some attention and they
- might find a little self-respect. But no: pity them, poor _ignoranti_,
- while they pull life down and devour it like vermin. Pity them! What
- they need is not pity but prods: they and all their myriad of likes.
- * * * * *
- The be-shawled appeared with a dish of kid. Needless to say, the
- _ignoranti_ had kept all the best portions for themselves. What arrived
- was five pieces of cold roast, one for each of us. Mine was a sort of
- large comb of ribs with a thin web of meat: perhaps an ounce. That was
- all we got, after watching the whole process. There was moreover a dish
- of strong boiled cauliflower, which one ate, with the coarse bread, out
- of sheer hunger. After this a bilious orange. Simply one is not _fed_
- nowadays. In the good hotels and in the bad, one is given paltry
- portions of unnourishing food, and one goes unfed.
- * * * * *
- The bus-driver, the only one with an earnest soul, was talking of the
- Sardinians. Ah, the Sardinians! They were hopeless. Why--because they
- did not know how to strike. They, too, were _ignoranti_. But this form
- of ignorance he found more annoying. They simply did not know what a
- strike was. If you offered them one day ten francs a stint--he was
- speaking now of the miners of the Iglesias region.--No, no, no, they
- would not take it, they wanted twelve francs. Go to them the next day
- and offer them four francs for half a stint, and yes, yes, yes, they
- would take it. And there they were: ignorant: ignorant Sardinians. They
- absolutely did not know how to strike. He was quite sarcastically hot
- about it. The whole tone of these three young men was the tone of
- sceptical irony common to the young people of our day the world over.
- Only they had--or at least the driver had--some little fervour for his
- strikes and his socialism. But it was a pathetic fervour: a _pis-aller_
- fervour.
- * * * * *
- We talked about the land. The war has practically gutted Sardinia of her
- cattle: so they said. And now the land is being deserted, the arable
- land is going back to fallow. Why? Why, says the driver, because the
- owners of the land won't spend any capital. They have got the capital
- locked up, and the land is dead. They find it cheaper to let all the
- arable go back to fallow, and raise a few head of cattle, rather than to
- pay high wages, grow corn, and get small returns.
- Yes, and also, chimes in the carabiniere, the peasants don't want to
- work the land. They hate the land. They'll do anything to get off the
- land. They want regular wages, short hours, and devil take the rest. So
- they will go into France as navvies, by the hundred. They flock to Rome,
- they besiege the Labor bureaus, they will do the artificial Government
- navvy-work at a miserable five francs a day--a railway shunter having at
- least eighteen francs a day--anything, anything rather than work the
- land.
- Yes, and what does the Government do! replies the bus-driver. They pull
- the roads to pieces in order to find work for the unemployed, remaking
- them, across the campagna. But in Sardinia, where roads and bridges are
- absolutely wanting, will they do anything? No!
- There it is, however. The bus-driver, with dark shadows under his eyes,
- represents the intelligent portion of the conversation. The carabiniere
- is soft and will go any way, though always with some interest. The
- little Greek-looking conductor just does not care.
- * * * * *
- Enters another belated traveller, and takes a seat at the end of the
- table. The be-shawled brings him soup and a skinny bit of kid. He eyes
- this last with contempt, and fetches out of his bag a large hunk of
- roast pork, and bread, and black olives, thus proceeding to make a
- proper meal.
- [Illustration: FONNI]
- We being without cigarettes, the bus-driver and his companion press them
- on us: their beloved Macedonia cigarettes. The driver says they are
- _squisitissimi_--most, most exquisite--so exquisite that all foreigners
- want them. In truth I believe they are exported to Germany now. And they
- are quite good, when they really have tobacco in them. Usually they are
- hollow tubes of paper which just flare away under one's nose and are
- done.
- We decide to have a round drink: they choose the precious _aqua vitae_:
- the white sort I think. At last it arrives--when the little dark-eyed
- one has fetched it. And it tastes rather like sweetened petroleum, with
- a dash of aniseed: filthy. Most Italian liquors are now sweet and
- filthy.
- At length we rise to go to bed. We shall all meet in the morning. And
- this room is dead cold, with frost outside. Going out, we glance into
- the famous stanza. One figure alone lies stretched on the floor in the
- almost complete darkness. A few embers still glow. The other men no
- doubt are in the bar.
- Ah, the filthy bedroom. The q-b ties up her head in a large, clean white
- kerchief, to avoid contact with the unsavory pillow. It is a cold, hard,
- flat bed, with two cold, hard, flat blankets. But we are very tired.
- Just as we are going to sleep, however, weird, high-pitched singing
- starts below, very uncanny--with a refrain that is a yelp-yelp-yelp!
- almost like a dog in angry pain. Weird, almost gruesome this singing
- goes on, first one voice and then another and then a tangle of voices.
- Again we are roused by the pounding of heavy feet on the corridor
- outside, which is as hollow and resonant as a drum. And then in the
- infernal crew-yard outside a cock crows. Throughout the night--yea,
- through all the black and frosty hours this demoniac bird screams its
- demon griefs.
- * * * * *
- However, it is morning. I gingerly wash a bit of myself in the broken
- basin, and dry that bit on a muslin veil which masquerades upon the
- chair as a towel. The q-b contents herself with a dry wipe. And we go
- downstairs in hopes of the last-night's milk.
- There is no one to be seen. It is a cold, frost-strong, clear morning.
- There is no one in the bar. We stumble down the dark tunnel passage. The
- stanza is as if no man had ever set foot in it: very dark, the mats
- against the wall, the fire-place grey with a handful of long dead ash.
- Just like a dungeon. The dining-room has the same long table and eternal
- table-cloth--and our serviettes, still wet, lying where we shovelled
- them aside. So back again to the bar.
- And this time a man is drinking _aqua vitae_, and the dirty-shirt is
- officiating. He has no hat on: and extraordinary, he has no brow at all:
- just flat, straight black hair slanting to his eyebrows, no forehead at
- all.
- Is there coffee?
- No, there is no coffee.
- Why?
- Because they can't get sugar.
- Ho! laughs the peasant drinking _aqua vitae_. You make coffee with
- sugar!
- Here, say I, they make it with nothing.--Is there milk?
- No.
- No milk at all?
- No.
- Why not?
- Nobody brings it.
- Yes, yes--there is milk if they like to get it, puts in the peasant. But
- they want you to drink _aqua vitae_.
- I see myself drinking _aqua vitae_. My yesterday's rage towers up again
- suddenly, till it quite suffocates me. There is something in this
- unsavoury, black, wine-dabbled, thick, greasy young man that does for
- me.
- "Why," say I, lapsing into the Italian rhetorical manner, "why do you
- keep an inn? Why do you write the word Ristorante so large, when you
- have nothing to offer people, and don't intend to have anything. Why do
- you have the impudence to take in travellers? What does it mean, that
- this is an inn? What, say, what does it mean? Say then--what does it
- mean? What does it mean, your Ristorante Risveglio, written so large?"
- Getting all this out in one breath, my indignation now stifled me. Him
- of the shirt said nothing at all. The peasant laughed. I demanded the
- bill. It was twenty-five francs odd. I picked up every farthing of the
- change.
- "Won't you leave any tip at all?" asks the q-b.
- "Tip!" say I, speechless.
- So we march upstairs and make tea to fill the thermos flask. Then, with
- sack over my shoulder, I make my way out of the Risveglio.
- * * * * *
- It is Sunday morning. The frozen village street is almost empty. We
- march down to the wider space where the bus stands: I hope they haven't
- the impudence to call it a Piazza.
- "Is this the Nuoro bus?" I ask of a bunch of urchins.
- And even they begin to jeer. But my sudden up-starting flare quenches
- them at once. One answers yes, and they edge away. I stow the sack and
- the kitchenino in the first-class part. The first-class is in front: we
- shall see better.
- There are men standing about, with their hands in their pockets,--those
- who are not in costume. Some wear the black-and-white. All wear the
- stocking caps. And all have the wide shirt-breasts, white, their
- waistcoats being just like evening dress waistcoats. Imagine one of
- these soft white shirt fronts well slobbered, and you have mine host of
- the Risveglio. But these lounging, static, white-breasted men are
- snowily clean, this being Sunday morning. They smoke their pipes on the
- frosty air, and are none too friendly.
- * * * * *
- The bus starts at half-past nine. The campanile is clanging nine. Two or
- three girls go down the road in their Sunday costume of purplish brown.
- We go up the road, into the clear, ringing frosty air, to find the lane.
- And again, from above, how beautiful it is in the sharp morning! The
- whole village lies in bluish shadow, the hills with their thin pale oak
- trees are in bluish shadow still, only in the distance the frost-glowing
- sun makes a wonderful, jewel-like radiance on the pleasant hills, wild
- and thinly-wooded, of this interior region. Real fresh wonder-beauty
- all around. And such humanity.
- Returning to the village we find a little shop and get biscuits and
- cigarettes. And we find our friends the bus-men. They are shy this
- morning. They are ready for us when we are ready. So in we get,
- joyfully, to leave Sorgono.
- One thing I say for it, it must be an honest place. For people leave
- their sacks about without a qualm.
- * * * * *
- Up we go, up the road. Only to stop, alas, at the Risveglio. The little
- conductor goes down the lane towards the station. The driver goes and
- has a little drink with a comrade. There is quite a crowd round the
- dreary entrances of the inn. And quite a little bunch of people to
- clamber up into the second class, behind us.
- We wait and wait. Then in climbs an old peasant, in full black-and-white
- costume, smiling in the pleased, naïve way of the old. After him climbs
- a fresh-faced young man with a suit-case.
- "Na!" said the young man. "Now you are in the automobile."
- And the old man gazes round with the wondering, vacant, naïve smile.
- "One is all right here, eh?" the young citizen persists, patronizing.
- But the old man is too excited to answer. He gazes hither and thither.
- Then he suddenly remembers he had a parcel, and looks for it in fear.
- The bright-faced young man picks it from the floor and hands it him. Ah,
- it is all right.
- I see the little conductor in his dashing, sheep-lined, short military
- overcoat striding briskly down the little lane with the post-bag. The
- driver climbs to his seat in front of me. He has a muffler round his
- neck and his hat pulled down to his ears. He pips at the horn, and our
- old peasant cranes forward to look how he does it.
- And so, with a jerk and a spurt, we start uphill.
- "Eh--what's that?" said the peasant, frightened.
- "We're starting," explained the bright-faced young man.
- "Starting! Didn't we start before?"
- The bright face laughs pleasedly.
- "No," he said. "Did you think we had been going ever since you got in?"
- "Yes," says the old man, simply, "since the door was shut."
- The young citizen looks at us for our joyful approval.
- VI.
- TO NUORO.
- These automobiles in Italy are splendid. They take the steep, looping
- roads so easily, they seem to run so naturally. And this one was
- comfortable, too.
- The roads of Italy always impress me. They run undaunted over the most
- precipitous regions, and with curious ease. In England almost any such
- road, among the mountains at least, would be labelled three times
- dangerous and would be famous throughout the land as an impossible
- climb. Here it is nothing. Up and down they go, swinging about with
- complete sang-froid. There seems to have been no effort in their
- construction. They are so good, naturally, that one hardly notices what
- splendid gestures they represent. Of course, the surface is now often
- intolerably bad. And they are most of them roads which, with ten years'
- neglect, will become ruins. For they are cut through overhanging rock
- and scooped out of the sides of hills. But I think it is marvellous how
- the Italians have penetrated all their inaccessible regions, of which
- they have so many, with great high-roads: and how along these high-roads
- the omnibuses now keep up a perfect communication. The precipitous and
- craggily-involved land is threaded through and through with roads. There
- seems to be a passion for high-roads and for constant communication. In
- this the Italians have a real Roman instinct, _now_. For the roads are
- new.
- The railways too go piercing through rock for miles and miles, and
- nobody thinks anything of it. The coast railway of Calabria, down to
- Reggio, would make us stand on our heads if we had it in England. Here
- it is a matter of course. In the same way I always have a profound
- admiration for their driving--whether of a great omnibus or of a
- motor-car. It all seems so easy, as if the man were part of the car.
- There is none of that beastly grinding, uneasy feeling one has in the
- north. A car behaves like a smooth, live thing, sensibly.
- All the peasants have a passion for a high-road. They want their land
- opening out, opening out. They seem to hate the ancient Italian
- remoteness. They all want to be able to get out at a moment's notice, to
- get away--quick, quick. A village which is two miles off the high-road,
- even if it is perched like a hawk's nest on a peak, still chafes and
- chafes for the great road to come to it, chafes and chafes for the
- daily motor-bus connection with the railway. There is no placidity, no
- rest in the heart of the land. There is a fever of restless irritation
- all the time.
- And yet the permanent way of almost every railway is falling into bad
- disrepair, the roads are shocking. And nothing seems to be done. Is our
- marvellous, mechanical era going to have so short a bloom? Is the
- marvellous openness, the opened-out wonder of the land going to collapse
- quite soon, and the remote places lapse back into inaccessibility again?
- Who knows! I rather hope so.
- * * * * *
- The automobile took us rushing and winding up the hill, sometimes
- through cold, solid-seeming shadow, sometimes across a patch of sun.
- There was thin, bright ice in the ruts, and deep grey hoar-frost on the
- grass. I cannot tell how the sight of the grass and bushes heavy with
- frost, and wild--in their own primitive wildness charmed me. The slopes
- of the steep wild hills came down shaggy and bushy, with a few berries
- lingering, and the long grass-stalks sere with the frost. Again the dark
- valley sank below like a ravine, but shaggy, bosky, unbroken. It came
- upon me how I loved the sight of the blue-shadowed, tawny-tangled winter
- with its frosty standstill. The young oaks keep their brown leaves. And
- doing so, surely they are best with a thin edge of rime.
- One begins to realize how old the real Italy is, how man-gripped, and
- how withered. England is far more wild and savage and lonely, in her
- country parts. Here since endless centuries man has tamed the impossible
- mountain side into terraces, he has quarried the rock, he has fed his
- sheep among the thin woods, he has cut his boughs and burnt his
- charcoal, he has been half domesticated even among the wildest
- fastnesses. This is what is so attractive about the remote places, the
- Abruzzi, for example. Life is so primitive, so pagan, so strangely
- heathen and half-savage. And yet it is human life. And the wildest
- country is half humanized, half brought under. It is all conscious.
- Wherever one is in Italy, either one is conscious of the present, or of
- the mediaeval influences, or of the far, mysterious gods of the early
- Mediterranean. Wherever one is, the place has its conscious genus. Man
- has lived there and brought forth his consciousness there and in some
- way brought that place to consciousness, given it its expression, and,
- really, finished it. The expression may be Proserpine, or Pan, or even
- the strange "shrouded gods" of the Etruscans or the Sikels, none the
- less it is an expression. The land has been humanised, through and
- through: and we in our own tissued consciousness bear the results of
- this humanisation. So that for us to go to Italy and to _penetrate_ into
- Italy is like a most fascinating act of self-discovery--back, back down
- the old ways of time. Strange and wonderful chords awake in us, and
- vibrate again after many hundreds of years of complete forgetfulness.
- And then--and then--there is a final feeling of sterility. It is all
- worked out. It is all known: _connu, connu!_
- This Sunday morning, seeing the frost among the tangled, still savage
- bushes of Sardinia, my soul thrilled again. This was not all known. This
- was not all worked out. Life was not only a process of rediscovering
- backwards. It is that, also: and it is that intensely. Italy has given
- me back I know not what of myself, but a very, very great deal. She has
- found for me so much that was lost: like a restored Osiris. But this
- morning in the omnibus I realize that, apart from the great rediscovery
- backwards, which one _must_ make before one can be whole at all, there
- is a move forwards. There are unknown, unworked lands where the salt has
- not lost its savour. But one must have perfected oneself in the great
- past first.
- * * * * *
- If one travels one eats. We immediately began to munch biscuits, and the
- old peasant in his white, baggy breeches and black cuirass, his old
- face smiling wonderingly under his old stocking cap, although he was
- only going to Tonara, some seven or eight miles, began to peel himself a
- hard-boiled egg, which he got out of his parcel. With calm wastefulness
- he peeled away the biggest part of the white of the egg with the
- shell--because it came away so. The citizen of Nuoro, for such the
- bright-faced young man was, said to him--"But see how you waste
- it."--"Ha!" said the old peasant, with a reckless indifferent wave of
- the hand. What did he care how much he wasted, since he was _en voyage_
- and riding for the first time in his life in an automobile.
- The citizen of Nuoro told us he had some sort of business in Sorgono, so
- he came back and forth constantly. The peasant did some work or other
- for him--or brought him something down from Tonara. He was a pleasant,
- bright-eyed young man, and he made nothing of eight hours in a
- motor-bus.
- He told us there was still game among these hills: wild boars which were
- hunted in big hunts, and many hares. It was a curious and beautiful
- sight, he said, to see a hare at night fascinated by the flare of the
- lamps of the automobile, racing ahead with its ears back, always keeping
- in front, inside the beam, and flying like mad, on and on ahead, till
- at some hill it gathered speed and melted into the dark.
- * * * * *
- We descended into a deep, narrow valley to the road-junction and the
- canteen-house, then up again, up and up sharp to Tonara, our village we
- had seen in the sun yesterday. But we were approaching it from the back.
- As we swerved into the sunlight, the road took a long curve on to the
- open ridge between two valleys. And there in front we saw a glitter of
- scarlet and white. It was in slow motion. It was a far-off procession,
- scarlet figures of women, and a tall image moving away from us, slowly,
- in the Sunday morning. It was passing along the level sunlit ridge above
- a deep, hollow valley. A close procession of women glittering in
- scarlet, white and black, moving slowly in the distance beneath the
- grey-yellow buildings of the village on the crest, towards an isolated
- old church: and all along this narrow upland saddle as on a bridge of
- sunshine itself.
- Were we not going to see any more? The bus turned again and rushed along
- the now level road and then veered. And there beyond, a little below, we
- saw the procession _coming_. The bus faded to a standstill, and we
- climbed out. Above us, old and mellowed among the smooth rocks and the
- bits of flat grass was the church, tanging its bell. Just in front,
- above, were old, half-broken houses of stone. The road came gently
- winding up to us, from what was evidently two villages ledged one above
- the other upon the steep summit of the south slope. Far below was the
- south valley, with a white puff of engine steam.
- And slowly chanting in the near distance, curving slowly up to us on the
- white road between the grass came the procession. The high morning was
- still. We stood all on this ridge above the world, with the deeps of
- silence below on the right. And in a strange, brief, staccato monody
- chanted the men, and in quick, light rustle of women's voices came the
- responses. Again the men's voices! The white was mostly men, not women.
- The priest in his robes, his boys near him, was leading the chanting.
- Immediately behind him came a small cluster of bare-headed, tall,
- sunburnt men, all in golden-velveteen corduroy, mountain-peasants,
- bowing beneath a great life-size seated image of Saint Anthony of Padua.
- After these a number of men in the costume, but with the white linen
- breeches hanging wide and loose almost to the ankles, instead of being
- tucked into the black gaiters. So they seemed very white beneath the
- back kilt frill. The black frieze body-vest was cut low, like an evening
- suit, and the stocking caps were variously perched. The men chanted in
- low, hollow, melodic tones. Then came the rustling chime of the women.
- And the procession crept slowly, aimlessly forward in time with the
- chant. The great image rode rigid, and rather foolish.
- After the men was a little gap--and then the brilliant wedge of the
- women. They were packed two by two, close on each other's heels,
- chanting inadvertently when their turn came, and all in brilliant,
- beautiful costume. In front were the little girl-children, two by two,
- immediately following the tall men in peasant black-and-white. Children,
- demure and conventional, in vermilion, white and green--little
- girl-children with long skirts of scarlet cloth down to their feet,
- green-banded near the bottom: with white aprons bordered with vivid
- green and mingled colour: having little scarlet, purple-bound, open
- boleros over the full white shirts: and black head-cloths folded across
- their little chins, just leaving the lips clear, the face framed in
- black. Wonderful little girl-children, perfect and demure in the
- stiffish, brilliant costume, with black head-dress! Stiff as Velasquez
- princesses! The bigger girls followed, and then the mature women, a
- close procession. The long vermilion skirts with their green bands at
- the bottom flashed a solid moving mass of colour, softly swinging, and
- the white aprons with their band of brilliant mingled green seemed to
- gleam. At the throat the full-bosomed white shirts were fastened with
- big studs of gold filigree, two linked filigree globes: and the great
- white sleeves billowed from the scarlet, purplish-and-green-edged
- boleros. The faces came nearer to us, framed all round in the dark
- cloths. All the lips still sang responses, but all the eyes watched us.
- So the softly-swaying coloured body of the procession came up to us. The
- poppy-scarlet smooth cloth rocked in fusion, the bands and bars of
- emerald green seemed to burn across the red and the showy white, the
- dark eyes peered and stared at us from under the black snood, gazed back
- at us with raging curiosity, while the lips moved automatically in
- chant. The bus had run into the inner side of the road, and the
- procession had to press round it, towards the sky-line, the great valley
- lying below.
- The priest stared, hideous St. Anthony cockled a bit as he passed the
- butt end of the big grey automobile, the peasant men in gold-coloured
- corduroy, old, washed soft, were sweating under the load and still
- singing with opened lips, the loose white breeches of the men waggled as
- they walked on with their hands behind their backs, turning again, to
- look at us. The big, hard hands, folded behind black kilt-frill! The
- women, too, shuffled slowly past, rocking the scarlet and the bars of
- green, and all twisting as they sang, to look at us still more. And so
- the procession edged past the bus, and was trailing upwards, curved
- solid against the sky-line towards the old church. From behind, the
- geranium scarlet was intense, one saw the careful, curiously cut backs
- of the shapen boleros, poppy-red, edged with mauve-purple and green, and
- the white of the shirt just showing at the waist. The full sleeves
- billowed out, the black head-cloths hung down to a point. The pleated
- skirts swing slowly, the broad band of green accentuating the motion.
- Indeed that is what it must be for, this thick, rich band of jewel
- green, to throw the wonderful horizontal motion back and forth, back and
- forth, of the suave vermilion, and give that static, Demeta splendor to
- a peasant motion, so magnificent in colour, geranium and malachite.
- All the costumes were not exactly alike. Some had more green, some had
- less. In some the sleeveless boleros were of a darker red, and some had
- poorer aprons, without such gorgeous bands at the bottom. And some were
- evidently old: probably thirty years old: still perfect and in keeping,
- reserved for Sunday and high holidays. A few were darker, ruddier than
- the true vermilion. This varying of the tone intensified the beauty of
- the shuffling woman-host.
- * * * * *
- When they had filed into the grey, forlorn little church on the
- ridge-top just above us, the bus started silently to run on to the
- rest-point below, whilst we climbed back up the little rock-track to the
- church. When we came to the side-door we found the church quite full.
- Level with us as we stood in the open side doorway, we saw kneeling on
- the bare stoneflags the little girl-children, and behind them all the
- women clustered kneeling upon their aprons, with hands negligently
- folded, filling the church to the further doorway, where the sun shone:
- the bigger west-end doorway. In the shadow of the whitewashed, bare
- church all these kneeling women with their colour and their black
- head-cloths looked like some thick bed of flowers, geranium, black
- hooded above. They all knelt on the naked, solid stone of the pavement.
- There was a space in front of the geranium little girl-children, then
- the men in corduroys, gold-soft, with dark round heads, kneeling
- awkwardly in reverence; and then the queer, black cuirasses and full
- white sleeves of grey-headed peasant men, many bearded. Then just in
- front of them the priest in his white vestment, standing exposed, and
- just baldly beginning an address. At the side of the altar was seated
- large and important the modern, simpering, black-gowned Anthony of
- Padua, nursing a boy-child. He looked a sort of male Madonna.
- "Now," the priest was saying, "blessed Saint Anthony shows you in what
- way you can be Christians. It is not enough that you are not Turks. Some
- think they are Christians because they are not Turks. It is true you are
- none of you Turks. But you have still to learn how to be good
- Christians. And this you can learn from our blessed Saint Anthony. Saint
- Anthony, etc., etc...."
- The contrast between Turks and Christians is still forceful in the
- Mediterranean, where the Mohammedans have left such a mark. But how the
- word _cristiani_, _cristiani_, spoken with a peculiar priestly unction,
- gets on my nerves. The voice is barren in its homily. And the women are
- all intensely watching the q-b and me in the doorway, their folded hands
- are very negligently held together.
- "Come away!" say I. "Come away, and let them listen."
- * * * * *
- We left the church crowded with its kneeling host, and dropped down past
- the broken houses towards the omnibus, which stood on a sort of level
- out-look place, a levelled terrace with a few trees, standing silent
- over the valley. It should be picketed with soldiers having arquebuses.
- And I should have welcomed a few thorough-paced infidels, as a leaven
- to this dreary Christianity of ours.
- But it was a wonderful place. Usually, the life-level is reckoned as
- sea-level. But here, in the heart of Sardinia, the life-level is high as
- the golden-lit plateau, and the sea-level is somewhere far away, below,
- in the gloom, it does not signify. The life-level is high up, high and
- sun-sweetened and among rocks.
- We stood and looked below, at the puff of steam, far down the wooded
- valley where we had come yesterday. There was an old, low house on this
- eagle-perching piazza. I would like to live there. The real village--or
- rather two villages, like an ear-ring and its pendant--lay still beyond,
- in front, ledging near the summit of the long, long, steep wooded slope,
- that never ended till it ran flush to the depths away below there in
- shadow.
- And yesterday, up this slope the old peasant had come with his two
- brilliant daughters and the pack-pony.
- And somewhere in those ledging, pearly villages in front must be my
- girovago and his "wife". I wish I could see their stall and drink aqua
- vitae with them.
- "How beautiful the procession!" says the q-b to the driver.
- "Ah yes--one of the most beautiful costumes of Sardinia, this of
- Tonara," he replied wistfully.
- * * * * *
- The bus sets off again--minus the old peasant. We retrace our road. A
- woman is leading a bay pony past the church, striding with long strides,
- so that her maroon skirt swings like a fan, and hauling the halter rope.
- Apparently the geranium red costume is Sunday only, the week-day is this
- maroon, or puce, or madder-brown.
- Quickly and easily the bus slips down the hill into the valley. Wild,
- narrow valleys, with trees, and brown-legged cork trees. Across the
- other side a black and white peasant is working alone on a tiny terrace
- of the hill-side, a small, solitary figure, for all the world like a
- magpie in the distance. These people like being alone--solitary--one
- sees a single creature so often isolated among the wilds. This is
- different from Sicily and Italy, where the people simply cannot be
- alone. They _must_ be in twos and threes.
- But it is Sunday morning, and the worker is exceptional. Along the road
- we pass various pedestrians, men in their black sheepskins, boys in
- their soldiers' remains. They are trudging from one village to another,
- across the wild valleys. And there is a sense of Sunday morning freedom,
- of roving, as in an English countryside. Only the one old peasant works
- alone: and a goatherd watching his long-haired, white goats.
- Beautiful the goats are: and so swift. They fly like white shadows along
- the road from us, then dart down-hill. I see one standing on a bough of
- an oak-tree, right in the tree, an enormous white tree-creature
- complacently munching up aloft, then rearing on her hind legs, so
- lengthy, and putting her slim paws far away on an upper, forward branch.
- * * * * *
- Whenever we come to a village we stop and get down, and our little
- conductor disappears into the post-office for the post-bag. This last is
- usually a limp affair, containing about three letters. The people crowd
- round--and many of them in very ragged costume. They look poor, and not
- attractive: perhaps a bit degenerate. It would seem as if the Italian
- instinct to get into rapid touch with the world were the healthy
- instinct after all. For in these isolated villages, which have been
- since time began far from any life-centre, there is an almost sordid
- look on the faces of the people. We must remember that the motor-bus is
- a great innovation. It has been running for five weeks only. I wonder
- for how many months it will continue.
- For I am sure it cannot pay. Our first-class tickets cost, I believe,
- about twenty-seven francs each. The second class costs about
- three-quarters the first. Some parts of the journey we were very few
- passengers. The distance covered is so great, the population so thin,
- that even granted the passion for getting out of their own villages,
- which possesses all people now, still the bus cannot earn much more than
- an average of two hundred to three hundred francs a day. Which, with two
- men's wages, and petrol at its enormous price, and the cost of
- wear-and-tear, cannot possibly pay.
- I asked the driver. He did not tell me what his wages were: I did not
- ask him. But he said the company paid for the keep and lodging for
- himself and mate at the stopping-places. This being Sunday, fewer people
- were travelling: a statement hard to believe. Once he had carried fifty
- people all the way from Tonara to Nuoro. Once! But it was in vain he
- protested. Ah well, he said, the bus carried the post, and the
- government paid a subsidy of so many thousands of lire a year: a goodly
- number. Apparently then the government was the loser, as usual. And
- there are hundreds, if not thousands of these omnibuses running the
- lonely districts of Italy and Sicily--Sardinia had a network of systems.
- They are splendid--and they are perhaps an absolute necessity for a
- nervous restless population which simply cannot keep still, and which
- finds some relief in being whirled about even on the _autovie_, as the
- bus-system is called.
- The autovie are run by private companies, only subsidised by the
- government.
- * * * * *
- On we rush, through the morning--and at length see a large village, high
- on the summit beyond, stony on the high upland. But it has a magical
- look, as these tiny summit-cities have from the distance. They recall to
- me always my childish visions of Jerusalem, high against the air, and
- seeming to sparkle, and built in sharp cubes.
- It is curious what a difference there is between the high, fresh, proud
- villages and the valley villages. Those that crown the world have a
- bright, flashing air, as Tonara had. Those that lie down below, infolded
- in the shadow, have a gloomy, sordid feeling and a repellent population,
- like Sorgono and other places at which we had halted. The judgment may
- be all wrong: but this was the impression I got.
- We were now at the highest point of the journey. The men we saw on the
- road were in their sheepskins, and some were even walking with their
- faces shawl-muffled. Glancing back, we saw up the valley clefts the snow
- of Gennargentu once more, a white mantle on broad shoulders, the very
- core of Sardinia. The bus slid to a standstill in a high valley, beside
- a stream where the road from Fonni joined ours. There was waiting a
- youth with a bicycle. I would like to go to Fonni. They say it is the
- highest village in Sardinia.
- * * * * *
- In front, on the broad summit, reared the towers of Gavoi. This was the
- half-way halt, where the buses had their _coincidenza_, and where we
- would stay for an hour and eat. We wound up and up the looping road, and
- at last entered the village. Women came to the doors to look. They were
- wearing the dark madder-brown costume. Men were hastening, smoking their
- pipes, towards our stopping place.
- We saw the other bus--a little crowd of people--and we drew up at last.
- We were tired and hungry. We were at the door of the inn, and we entered
- quickly. And in an instant, what a difference! At the clean little bar,
- men were drinking cheerfully. A side door led into the common room. And
- how charming it was. In a very wide chimney, white and stone-clean, with
- a lovely shallow curve above, was burning a fire of long, clean-split
- faggots, laid horizontally on the dogs. A clean, clear bright fire, with
- odd little chairs in front, very low, for us to sit on. The funny, low
- little chairs seem a specialty of this region.
- The floor of this room was paved with round dark pebbles, beautifully
- clean. On the walls hung brilliant copper fans, glittering against the
- whitewash. And under the long, horizontal window that looked on the
- street was a stone slab with sockets for little charcoal fires. The
- curve of the chimney arch was wide and shallow, the curve above the
- window was still wider, and of a similar delicate shallowness, the white
- roof rose delicately vaulted. With the glitter of copper, the expanse of
- dark, rose-coloured, pebbled floor, the space, the few low,
- clean-gleaming faggots, it was really beautiful. We sat and warmed
- ourselves, welcomed by a plump hostess and a pleasant daughter, both in
- madder-brown dress and full white shirt. People strayed in and out,
- through the various doors. The houses are built without any plan at all,
- the rooms just happening, here or there. A bitch came from an inner
- darkness and stood looking at the fire, then looked up at me, smiling in
- her bitch-like, complacent fashion.
- * * * * *
- But we were dying with hunger. What was there to eat?--and was it nearly
- ready? There was _cinghiale_, the pleasant, hard-cheeked girl told us,
- and it was nearly ready. _Cinghiale_ being wild boar, we sniffed the
- air. The girl kept tramping rather fecklessly back and forth, with a
- plate or a serviette: and at last it was served. We went through the
- dark inner place, which was apparently the windowless bit left over,
- inside, when the hap-hazard rooms were made round about, and from thence
- into a large, bare, darkish pebbled room with a white table and inverted
- soup-plates. It was deathly cold. The window looked north over the
- wintry landscape of the highlands, fields, stone walls, and rocks. Ah,
- the cold, motionless air of the room.
- But we were quite a party: the second bus-driver and his mate, a bearded
- traveller on the second bus, with his daughter, ourselves, the
- bright-faced citizen from Nuoro, and our driver. Our little dark-eyed
- conductor did not come. It dawned on me later he could not afford to pay
- for this meal, which was not included in his wage.
- The Nuoro citizen conferred with our driver--who looked tired round the
- eyes--and made the girl produce a tin of sardines. These were opened at
- table with a large pocket-knife belonging to the second conductor. He
- was a reckless, odd, hot-foot fellow whom I liked very much. But I was
- terrified at the way he carved the sardine-box with his jack-knife.
- However, we could eat and drink.
- Then came the _brodo_, the broth, in a great bowl. This was boiling hot,
- and very, very strong. It was perfectly plain, strong meat-stock,
- without vegetables. But how good and invigorating it was, and what an
- abundance! We drank it down, and ate the good, cold bread.
- Then came the boar itself. Alas, it was a bowl of hunks of dark, rather
- coarse boiled meat, from which the broth had been made. It was quite
- dry, without fat. I should have been very puzzled to know what meat it
- was, if I had not been told. Sad that the wild boar should have received
- so little culinary attention. However, we ate the hunks of hot, dry meat
- with bread, and were glad to get them. They were filling, at least. And
- there was a bowl of rather bitter green olives for a condiment.
- The Nuoro citizen now produced a huge bottle of wine, which he said was
- _finissimo_, and refused to let us go on with the dark wine on the
- table, of which every guest was served with a bottle. So we drank up,
- and were replenished with the redder, lighter, finer Sorgono wine. It
- was very good.
- The second bus-conductor also did not eat the inn meal. He produced a
- vast piece of bread, good, home-made bread, and at least half of a roast
- lamb, and a large paper of olives. This lamb he insisted on sending
- round the table, waving his knife and fork with dramatic gestures at
- every guest, insisting that every guest should take a hunk. So one by
- one we all helped ourselves to the extraordinarily good cold roast lamb,
- and to the olives. Then the bus-conductor fell to as well. There was a
- mass of meat still left to him.
- It is extraordinary how generous and, from the inside, well-bred these
- men were. To be sure the second conductor waved his knife and fork and
- made bitter faces if one of us took only a little bit of the lamb. He
- wanted us to take more. But the _essential_ courtesy in all of them was
- quite perfect, so manly and utterly simple. Just the same with the q-b.
- They treated her with a sensitive, manly simplicity, which one could not
- but be thankful for. They made none of the odious politenesses which are
- so detestable in well-brought-up people. They made no advances and did
- none of the hateful homage of the adulating male. They were quiet, and
- kind, and sensitive to the natural flow of life, and quite without airs.
- I liked them extremely. Men who can be quietly kind and simple to a
- woman, without wanting to show off or to make an impression, they are
- men still. They were neither humble nor conceited. They did not show
- off. And oh God, what a blessed relief, to be with people who don't
- bother to show off. We sat at that table quietly and naturally as if we
- were by ourselves, and talked or listened to their talk, just as it
- happened. When we did not want to talk, they took no notice of us. And
- that I call good manners. Middle-class, showing off people would have
- found them uncouth. I found them almost the only really well-bred people
- I have met. They did not show off in any way at all, not even a show of
- simplicity. They knew that in the beginning and in the end a man stands
- alone, his soul is alone in itself, and all attributes are nothing--and
- this curious final knowledge preserved them in simplicity.
- When we had had coffee and were going out, I found our own conductor in
- a little chair by the fire. He was looking a bit pathetic. I had enough
- sense to give him a coffee, which brightened him. But it was not till
- afterwards, putting things together, that I realized he had wanted to be
- with us all at table, but that his conductor's wages probably did not
- allow him to spend the money. My bill for the dinner was about fifteen
- francs, for the two of us.
- * * * * *
- In the bus again, we were quite crowded. A peasant girl in Nuoro costume
- sat facing me, and a dark-bearded, middle-aged man in a brown velveteen
- suit was next me and glowering at her. He was evidently her husband. I
- did not like him: one of the jealous, carping sort. She, in her way, was
- handsome: but a bit of a devil as well, in all probability. There were
- two village women become fine, in town dress and black silk scarves over
- their heads, fancying themselves. Then there was a wild scuffle, and
- three bouncing village lasses were pushed in, laughing and wild with
- excitement. There were wild farewells, and the bus rolled out of Gavoi
- between the desolate mountain fields and the rocks, on a sort of
- table-land. We rolled on for a mile or so: then stopped, and the excited
- lasses got down. I gathered they had been given a little ride for a
- Sunday treat. Delighted they were. And they set off, with other
- bare-headed women in costume, along a bare path between flat,
- out-cropping rocks and cold fields.
- * * * * *
- The girl facing me was a study. She was not more than twenty years old I
- should say: or was she? Did the delicate and fine complication of lines
- against her eyes mean thirty-five? But anyhow she was the wife of the
- velveteen man. He was thick-set and had white hairs in his coarse black
- beard, and little, irritable brown eyes under his irritable brows. He
- watched her all the time. Perhaps, she was after all a young, new
- girl-wife. She sat with that expressionless look of one who is watched
- and who appears not to know it. She had her back to the engine.
- [Illustration: GAVOI]
- She wore her black head-cloth from her brow and her hair was taken tight
- back from her rather hard, broad, well-shaped forehead. Her dark
- eyebrows were very finely drawn above her large, dark-grey, pellucid
- eyes, but they were drawn with a peculiar obstinate and irritating lift.
- Her nose was straight and small, her mouth well-shut. And her big,
- rather hostile eyes had a withheld look in them, obstinate. Yet, being
- newly wed and probably newly-awakened, her eyes looked sometimes at me
- with a provoking look, curious as to what I was in the husband line,
- challenging rather defiantly with her new secrets, obstinate in
- opposition to the male authority, and yet intrigued by the very fact
- that one was man. The velveteen husband--his velveteens too had gone
- soft and gold-faded, yet somehow they made him look ugly, common--he
- watched her with his irritable, yellow-brown eyes, and seemed to fume in
- his stiff beard.
- She wore the costume: the full-gathered shirt fastened at the throat
- with the two gold filigree globes, a little dark, braided, stiff bolero
- just fastened at the waist, leaving a pretty pattern of white breast,
- and a dark maroon skirt. As the bus rushed along she turned somewhat
- pale, with the obstinate pinched look of a woman who is in opposition to
- her man. At length she flung him a few words which I did not catch--and
- her forehead seemed to go harder, as she drooped her lashes occasionally
- over her wide, alert, obstinate, rather treacherous eyes. She must have
- been a difficult piece of goods to deal with. And she sat with her knees
- touching mine, rocking against mine as the bus swayed.
- * * * * *
- We came to a village on the road: the landscape had now become wider,
- much more open. At the inn door the bus stopped, and the velveteen
- husband and the girl got down. It was cold--but in a minute I got down
- too. The bus conductor came to me and asked anxiously if the q-b were
- ill. The q-b said no, why? Because there was a signora whom the motion
- of the bus made ill. This was the girl.
- There was a crowd and a great row at this inn. In the second dark room,
- which was bare of furniture, a man sat in a corner playing an accordion.
- Men in the close breeches were dancing together. Then they fell to
- wrestling wildly, crashing about among the others, with shouts and
- yells. Men in the black-and-white, but untidy, with the wide white
- drawers left hanging out over the black gaiters, surged here and there.
- All were rowdy with drink. This again was rather a squalid inn but
- roaring with violent, crude male life.
- The Nuoro citizen said that here was very good wine, and we must try it.
- I did not want it, but he insisted. So we drank little glasses of merely
- moderate red wine. The sky had gone all grey with the afternoon
- curd-clouds. It was very cold and raw. Wine is no joy, cold, dead wine,
- in such an atmosphere.
- The Nuoro citizen insisted on paying. He would let me pay, he said, when
- he came to England. In him, and in our bus men, the famous Sardinian
- hospitality and generosity still lingers.
- * * * * *
- When the bus ran on again the q-b told the peasant girl who again had
- the pinched look, to change places with me and sit with her face to the
- engine. This the young woman did, with that rather hard assurance common
- to these women. But at the next stop she got down, and made the
- conductor come with us into the compartment, whilst she sat in front
- between the driver and the citizen of Nuoro. That was what she wanted
- all the time. Now she was all right. She had her back to the velveteen
- husband, she sat close between two strange young men, who were condoling
- with her. And velveteens eyed her back, and his little eyes went littler
- and more pin-pointed, and his nose seemed to curl with irritation.
- The costumes had changed again. There was again the scarlet, but no
- green. The green had given place to mauve and rose. The women in one
- cold, stony, rather humbled broken place were most brilliant. They had
- the geranium skirts, but their sleeveless boleros were made to curl out
- strangely from the waist, and they were edged with a puckered rose-pink,
- a broad edge, with lines of mauve and lavender. As they went up between
- the houses that were dark and grisly under the blank, cold sky, it is
- amazing how these women of vermilion and rose-pink seemed to melt into
- an almost impossible blare of colour. What a risky blend of colours! Yet
- how superb it could look, that dangerous hard assurance of these women
- as they strode along so blaring. I would not like to tackle one of them.
- * * * * *
- Wider and colder the landscape grew. As we topped a hill at the end of a
- village, we saw a long string of wagons, each with a pair of oxen, and
- laden with large sacks, curving upwards in the cold, pallid Sunday
- afternoon. Seeing us, the procession came to a standstill at the curve
- of the road, and the pale oxen, the pale low wagons, the pale full
- sacks, all in the blenched light, each one headed by a tall man in
- shirt-sleeves, trailing a static procession on the hill-side, seemed
- like a vision: like a Doré drawing. The bus slid past, the man holding
- the wagon-pole, while some oxen stood like rock, some swayed their
- horns. The q-b asked the velveteener what they were carrying. For a long
- time he took no notice of the question. Then he volunteered, in a snappy
- voice, that it was the government grain being distributed to the
- communes for bread. On Sunday afternoon too.
- Oh this government corn! What a problem those sacks represent!
- * * * * *
- The country became wider as we dropped lower. But it was bleak and
- treeless once more. Stones cropped up in the wide, hollow dales. Men on
- ponies passed forlorn across the distances. Men with bundles waited at
- the cross-roads to pick up the bus. We were drawing near to Nuoro. It
- was past three in the afternoon, cold with a blenched light. The
- landscape seemed bare and stony, wide, different from any before.
- We came to the valley where the branch-line runs to Nuoro. I saw little
- pink railway-cabins at once, lonely along the valley bed. Turning sharp
- to the right, we ran in silence over the moor-land-seeming slopes, and
- saw the town beyond, clustered beyond, a little below, at the end of the
- long declivity, with sudden mountains rising around it. There it lay, as
- if at the end of the world, mountains rising sombre behind.
- So, we stop at the Dazio, the town's customs hut, and velveteens has to
- pay for some meat and cheese he is bringing in. After which we slip into
- the cold high-street of Nuoro. I am thinking that this is the home of
- Grazia Deledda, the novelist, and I see a barber's shop. De Ledda. And
- thank heaven we are at the end of the journey. It is past four o'clock.
- The bus has stopped quite close to the door of the inn: Star of Italy,
- was it? In we go at the open door. Nobody about, free access to anywhere
- and everywhere, as usual: testifying again to Sardinian honesty. We peer
- through a doorway to the left--through a rough little room: ah, there in
- a dark, biggish room beyond is a white-haired old woman with a long,
- ivory-coloured face standing at a large table ironing. One sees only the
- large whiteness of the table, and the long pallid face and the querulous
- pale-blue eye of the tall old woman as she looks up questioning from the
- gloom of the inner place.
- "Is there a room, Signora?"
- She looks at me with a pale, cold blue eye, and shouts into the dark for
- somebody. Then she advances into the passage and looks us up and down,
- the q-b and me.
- "Are you husband and wife?" she demands, challenge.
- "Yes, how shouldn't we be," say I.
- A tiny maid, of about thirteen, but sturdy and brisk-looking, has
- appeared in answer to the shout.
- "Take them to number seven," says the old dame, and she turns back to
- her gloom, and seizes the flat iron grimly.
- We follow up two flights of cold stone stairs, disheartening narrow
- staircase with a cold iron rail, and corridors opening off gloomily and
- rather disorderly. These houses give the effect, inside, of never having
- been properly finished, as if, long, long ago, the inmates had crowded
- in, pig-sty fashion, without waiting for anything to be brought into
- order, and there it had been left, dreary and chaotic.
- Thumbelina, the little maid, threw open the door of number seven with
- _eclat_. And we both exclaimed: "How fine!" It seemed to us palatial.
- Two good, thick white beds, a table, a chest of drawers, two mats on the
- tiled floor, and gorgeous oleographs on the wall--and two good
- wash-bowls side by side--and all perfectly clean and nice. What were we
- coming to! We felt we ought to be impressed.
- * * * * *
- We pulled open the latticed window doors, and looked down on the street:
- the only street. And it was a river of noisy life. A band was playing,
- rather terribly, round the corner at the end, and up and down the
- street jigged endless numbers of maskers in their Carnival costume, with
- girls and young women strolling arm-in-arm to participate. And how
- frisky they all were, how bubbly and unself-conscious!
- The maskers were nearly all women--the street was full of women: so we
- thought at first. Then we saw, looking closer, that most of the women
- were young men, dressed up. All the maskers were young men, and most of
- these young men, _of course_, were masquerading as women. As a rule they
- did not wear face-masks, only little dominoes of black cloth or green
- cloth or white cloth coming down to the mouth. Which is much better. For
- the old modelled half-masks with the lace frill, the awful proboscis
- sticking forward white and ghastly like the beaks of corpse-birds--such
- as the old Venice masks--these I think are simply horrifying. And the
- more modern "faces" are usually only repulsive. While the simple little
- pink half-masks with the end of black or green or white cloth, these
- just form a human disguise.
- It was quite a game, sorting out the real women from the false. Some
- were easy. They had stuffed their bosoms, and stuffed their bustles, and
- put on hats and very various robes, and they minced along with little
- jigging steps, like little dolls that dangle from elastic, and they put
- their heads on one side and dripped their hands, and danced up to flurry
- the actual young ladies, and sometimes they received a good clout on the
- head, when they broke into wild and violent gestures, whereat the
- _actual_ young ladies scuffled wildly.
- They were very lively and naïve.--But some were more difficult. Every
- conceivable sort of "woman" was there, broad shouldered and with rather
- large feet. The most usual was the semi-peasant, with a very full bosom
- and very full skirt and a very downright bearing. But one was a widow in
- weeds, drooping on the arm of a robust daughter. And one was an ancient
- crone in a crochet bed-cover. And one was in an old skirt and blouse and
- apron, with a broom, wildly sweeping the street from end to end. He was
- an animated rascal. He swept with very sarcastic assiduity in front of
- two town-misses in fur coats, who minced very importantly along. He
- swept their way very humbly, facing them and going backwards, sweeping
- and bowing, whilst they advanced with their noses in the air. He made
- his great bow, and they minced past, daughters of dog-fish, pesce-carne,
- no doubt. Then he skipped with a bold, gambolling flurry behind them,
- and with a perfectly mad frenzy began to sweep after them, as if to
- sweep their tracks away. He swept so madly and so blindly with his besom
- that he swept on to their heels and their ankles. They shrieked and
- glowered round, but the blind sweeper saw them not. He swept and swept
- and pricked their thin silk ankles. And they, scarlet with indignation
- and rage, gave hot skips like cats on hot bricks, and fled discomfited
- forwards. He bowed once more after them, and started mildly and
- innocently to sweep the street. A pair of lovers of fifty years ago, she
- in a half crinoline and poke bonnet and veil, hanging on his arm came
- very coyly past, oh so simpering, and it took me a long time to be sure
- that the "girl" was a youth. An old woman in a long nightdress prowled
- up and down, holding out her candle and peering in the street as if for
- burglars. She would approach the _real_ young women and put her candle
- in their faces and peer so hard, as if she suspected them of something.
- And they blushed and turned their faces away and protested confusedly.
- This old woman searched so fearfully in the face of one strapping lass
- in the pink and scarlet costume, who looked for all the world like a
- bunch of red and rose-pink geraniums, with a bit of white,--a _real_
- peasant lass--that the latter in a panic began to beat him with her
- fist, furiously, quite aroused. And he made off, running comically in
- his long white nightdress.
- There were some really beautiful dresses of rich old brocade, and some
- gleaming old shawls, a shimmer of lavender and silver, or of dark, rich
- shot colours with deep borders of white silver and primrose gold, very
- lovely. I believe two of them were actual women--but the q-b says no.
- There was a Victorian gown of thick green silk, with a creamy blotched
- cross-over shawl. About her we both were doubtful. There were two
- wistful, drooping-lily sisters, all in white, with big feet. And there
- was a very successful tall miss in a narrow hobble-skirt of black satin
- and a toque with ospreys. The way she minced and wagged her posterior
- and went on her toes and peered over her shoulder and kept her elbows in
- was an admirable caricature. Especially the curious sagging heaving
- movement of "bustle" region, a movement very characteristic of modern
- feminism, was hit off with a bit of male exaggeration which rejoiced me.
- At first she even took me in.
- We stood outside our window, and leaned on the little balcony rail
- looking down at this flow of life. Directly opposite was the chemist's
- house: facing our window the best bedroom of the chemist, with a huge
- white matrimonial bed and muslin curtains. In the balcony sat the
- chemist's daughters, very elegant in high-heeled shoes and black hair
- done in the fluffy fashion with a big sweep sideways. Oh very elegant!
- They eyed us a little and we eyed them. But without interest. The river
- of life was down below.
- * * * * *
- It was very cold and the day was declining. We too were cold. We decided
- to go into the street and look for the café. In a moment we were out of
- doors, walking as inconspicuously as possible near the wall. Of course
- there was no pavement. These maskers were very gentle and whimsical, no
- touch of brutality at all. Now we were level with them, how odd and
- funny they were. One youth wore a thin white blouse and a pair of his
- sister's wide, calico knickers with needlework frills near the ankle,
- and white stockings. He walked artlessly, and looked almost pretty. Only
- the q-b winced with pain: not because of the knickers, but because of
- that awful length, coming well below the knee. Another young man was
- wound into a sheet, and heavens knows if he could ever get out of it.
- Another was involved in a complicated entanglement of white crochet
- antimacassars, very troublesome to contemplate. I did not like him at
- all, like a fish in a net. But he strode robustly about.
- We came to the end of the street, where there is a wide, desolate sort
- of gap. Here the little band stood braying away, there was a thick crowd
- of people, and on a slanting place just above, a little circle where
- youths and men, maskers and one or two girls were dancing, so crowded
- together and such a small ring that they looked like a jiggly set of
- upright rollers all turning rickettily against one another. They were
- doing a sort of intense jigging waltz. Why do they look so intense?
- Perhaps because they were so tight all together, like too many fish in a
- globe slipping through one another.
- There was a café in this sort of piazza--not a piazza at all, a formless
- gap. But young men were drinking little drinks, and I knew it would be
- hopeless to ask for anything but cold drinks or black coffee: which we
- did not want. So we continued forwards, up the slope of the village
- street. These towns soon come to an end. Already we were wandering into
- the open. On a ledge above, a peasant family was making a huge bonfire,
- a tower of orange-coloured, rippling flame. Little, impish boys were
- throwing on more rubbish. Everybody else was in town. Why were these
- folk at the town-end making this fire alone?
- We came to the end of the houses and looked over the road-wall at the
- hollow, deep, interesting valley below. Away on the other side rose a
- blue mountain, a steep but stumpy cone. High land reared up, dusky and
- dark-blue, all around. Somewhere far off the sun was setting with a bit
- of crimson. It was a wild, unusual landscape, of unusual shape. The
- hills seemed so untouched, dark-blue, virgin-wild, the hollow cradle of
- the valley was cultivated like a tapestry away below. And there seemed
- so little outlying life: nothing. No castles even. In Italy and Sicily
- castles perching everywhere. In Sardinia none--the remote, ungrappled
- hills rising darkly, standing outside of life.
- * * * * *
- As we went back it was growing dark, and the little band was about to
- leave off its brass noise. But the crowd still surged, the maskers still
- jigged and frisked unweariedly. Oh the good old energy of the bygone
- days, before men became so self-conscious. Here it was still on the hop.
- We found no café that looked any good. Coming to the inn, we asked if
- there was a fire anywhere. There wasn't. We went up to our room. The
- chemist-daughters had lighted up opposite, one saw their bedroom as if
- it were one's own. In the dusk of the street the maskers were still
- jigging, all the youths still joyfully being women, but a little more
- roughly now. Away over the house-tops the purple-red of a dying sunset.
- And it was very cold.
- There was nothing for it but just to lie in bed. The q-b made a little
- tea on the spirit-lamp, and we sat in bed and sipped it. Then we covered
- ourselves up and lay still, to get warm. Outside the noise of the
- street came unabated. It grew quite dark, the lights reflected into the
- room. There was the sound of an accordion across the hoarseness of the
- many voices and movements in the street: and then a solid, strong
- singing of men's voices, singing a soldier song.
- "Quando torniamo in casa nostra--"
- We got up to look. Under the small electric lights the narrow, cobbled
- street was still running with a river of people, but fewer maskers. Two
- maskers beating loudly at a heavy closed door. They beat and beat. At
- last the door opens a crack. They rush to try to get in--but in vain. It
- had shut the moment it saw them, they are foiled, on they go down the
- street. The town is full of men, many peasants come in from the outlying
- parts, the black and white costume now showing in the streets.
- We retire to bed again out of the cold. Comes a knock, and Thumbelina
- bursts in, in the darkness.
- "Siamo qua!" says the q-b.
- Thumbelina dashes at the window-doors and shuts them and shuts the
- casement. Then she dashes to my bedhead and turns on the light, looking
- down at me as if I were a rabbit in the grass. Then she flings a can of
- water against the wash-bowls--cold water, icy, alas. After which, small
- and explosive, she explodes her way out of the room again, and leaves
- us in the glaring light, having replied that it is now a little after
- six o'clock, and dinner is half past seven.
- So we lie in bed, warm and in peace, but hungry, waiting for half past
- seven.
- * * * * *
- When the q-b can stand it no more she flounces up, though the clock from
- the Campanile has struck seven only a few minutes before. Dashing
- downstairs to reconnoitre, she is back in a breath to say that people
- are eating their heads off in the long dining room. In the next breath
- we are downstairs too.
- The room was brightly lighted, and at many white tables sat diners, all
- men. It was quite city-like. Everyone was in convivial mood. The q-b
- spied men opposite having chicken and salad--and she had hopes. But they
- were brief. When the soup came, the girl announced that there was only
- bistecca: which meant a bit of fried cow. So it did: a quite, quite
- small bit of fried beef, a few potatoes and a bit of cauliflower.
- Really, it was not enough for a child of twelve. But that was the end of
- it. A few mandarini--tangerine oranges--rolled on a plate for dessert.
- And there's the long and short of these infernal dinners. Was there any
- cheese? No, there was no cheese. So we merely masticated bread.
- There came in three peasants in the black and white costume, and sat at
- the middle table. They kept on their stocking caps. And queer they
- looked, coming in with slow, deliberate tread of these elderly men, and
- sitting rather remote, with a gap of solitude around them. The peculiar
- ancient loneliness of the Sardinian hills clings to them, and something
- stiff, static, pre-world.
- * * * * *
- All the men at our end of the room were citizens--employees of some
- sort--and they were all acquaintances. A large dog, very large indeed,
- with a great muzzle, padded slowly from table to table, and looked at us
- with big wistful topaz eyes. When the meal was almost over our
- bus-driver and conductor came in--looking faint with hunger and cold and
- fatigue. They were quartered at this house. They had eaten nothing since
- the boar-broth at Gavoi.
- In a very short time they were through their portions: and was there
- nothing else? Nothing! But they were half starved. They ordered two eggs
- each, in padella. I ordered coffee--and asked them to come and take it
- with us, and a brandy. So they came when their eggs were finished.
- A diversion was now created at the other side of the room. The red wine,
- which is good in Sardinia, had been drunk freely. Directly facing us
- sat a rather stout man with pleasant blue eyes and a nicely shaped head:
- dressed like any other town man on a Sunday. The dog had waddled up to
- him and sat down statuesque in front of him. And the fat man, being
- mellow, began to play with the big, gentle, brindled animal. He took a
- piece of bread and held it before the dog's nose--and the dog tried to
- take it. But the man, like a boy now he was ripe with wine, put the
- mastiff back with a restraining finger, and told him not to snatch. Then
- he proceeded with a little conversation with the animal. The dog again
- tried to snatch, gently, and again the man started, saved the bread, and
- startled the dog, which backed and gave a sharp, sad yelp, as if to say:
- "Why do you tease me!"
- "Now," said the man, "you are not to snatch. Come here. Come here. Vieni
- qua!" And he held up the piece of bread. The animal came near. "Now,"
- said the man, "I put this bread on your nose, and you don't move,
- un--Ha!!"
- The dog had tried to snatch the bread, the man had shouted and jerked it
- away, the animal had recoiled and given another expostulating yelp.
- The game continued. All the room was watching, smiling. The dog did not
- understand at all. It came forward again, troubled. The man held the
- bread near its nose, and held up a warning finger. The beast dropped
- its head mournfully, cocking up its eye at the bread with varied
- feelings.
- "Now--!" said the man, "not until I say three--_Uno--due--_" the dog
- could bear it no longer, the man in jerking let go the bread and yelled
- at the top of his voice--"_e tre!_" The dog gulped the piece of bread
- with a resigned pleasure, and the man pretended it had all happened
- properly on the word "three."
- So he started again. "Vieni qua! Vieni qua!" The dog, which had backed
- away with the bread, came hesitating, cringing forward, dropping its
- hind-quarters in doubt, as dogs do, advancing towards the new nugget of
- bread. The man preached it a little sermon.
- "You sit there and look at this bread. I sit here and look at you, and I
- hold this bread. And you stop still, and I stop still, while I count
- three. Now then--uno--" the dog couldn't bear these numerals, with their
- awful slowness. He snatched desperately. The man yelled and lost the
- bread, the dog, gulping, turned to creep away.
- Then it began again.
- "Come here! Come here! Didn't I tell thee I would count three? Già ! I
- said I would count three. Not one, but three. And to count three you
- need three numbers. Ha! Steady! Three numbers. Uno--due E TRE!" The
- last syllables were yelled so that the room rang again. The dog gave a
- mournful howl of excitement, missed the bread, groped for it, and fled.
- The man was red with excitement, his eyes shining. He addressed the
- company at large. "I had a dog," he said, "ah, a dog! And I would put a
- piece of bread on his nose, and say a verse. And he looked at me so!"
- The man put his face sideways. "And he looked at me _so_!" He gazed up
- under his brows. "And he talked to me so--o: Zieu! Zieu!--But he never
- moved. No, he never moved. If he sat with that bread on his nose for
- half an hour, and if tears ran down his face, he never moved--not till I
- said _three_! Then--ah!" The man tossed up his face, snapped the air
- with his mouth, and gulped an imaginary crust. "AH, that dog was
- trained...." The man of forty shook his head.
- "Vieni qua! Come here! Tweet! Come here!"
- He patted his fat knee, and the dog crept forward. The man held another
- piece of bread.
- "Now," he said to the dog, "listen! Listen. I am going to tell you
- something.
- Il soldato va alla guerra--
- No--no, Not yet. When I say _three_!
- Il soldato va alla guerra
- Mangia male, dorme in terra--
- Listen. Be still. Quiet now. UNO--DUE--E--TRE!"
- It came out in one simultaneous yell from the man, the dog in sheer
- bewilderment opened his jaws and let the bread go down his throat, and
- wagged his tail in agitated misery.
- "Ah," said the man, "you are learning. Come! Come here! Come! Now then!
- Now you know. So! So! Look at me so!"
- The stout, good-looking man of forty bent forward. His face was flushed,
- the veins in his neck stood out. He talked to the dog, and imitated the
- dog. And very well indeed he reproduced something of the big, gentle,
- wistful subservience of the animal. The dog was his totem--the
- affectionate, self-mistrustful, warm-hearted hound.
- So he started the rigmarole again. We put it into English.
- "Listen now. Listen! Let me tell it you--
- So the soldier goes to the war!
- His food is rotten, he sleeps on the floor--
- "Now! Now! No, you are not keeping quiet. Now! Now!
- Il soldate va alla guerra
- Mangia male, dorme in terra--"
- The verses, known to every Italian, were sung out in a sing-song
- fashion. The audience listened as one man--or as one child--the rhyme
- chiming in every heart. They waited with excitement for the
- One--Two--and Three! The last two words were always ripped out with a
- tearing yell. I shall never forget the force of those syllables--E TRE!
- But the dog made a poor show--He only gobbled the bread and was uneasy.
- This game lasted us a full hour: a full hour by the clock sat the whole
- room in intense silence, watching the man and the dog.
- * * * * *
- Our friends told us the man was the bus-inspector--their inspector. But
- they liked him. "Un brav' uomo! Un bravo uomo! Eh si!" Perhaps they were
- a little uneasy, seeing him in his cups and hearing him yell so nakedly:
- AND THREE!
- We talked rather sadly, wistfully. Young people, especially nice ones
- like the driver, are too sad and serious these days. The little
- conductor made big brown eyes at us, wistful too, and sad we were going.
- For in the morning they were driving back again to Sorgono, over the old
- road, and we were going on, to Terranova, the port. But we promised to
- come back in the summer, when it was warmer. Then we should all meet
- again.
- "Perhaps you will find us on the same course still. Who knows!" said the
- driver sadly.
- VII.
- TO TERRANOVA AND THE STEAMER.
- The morning was very clear and blue. We were up betimes. The old dame of
- the inn very friendly this morning. We were going already! Oh, but we
- hadn't stayed long in Nuoro. Didn't we like it?
- Yes, we like it. We would come back in the summer when it was warmer.
- Ah yes, she said, artists came in the summer. Yes, she agreed, Nuoro was
- a nice place--_simpatico, molto simpatico_. And really it is. And really
- she was an awfully nice, capable, human old woman: and I had thought her
- a beldame when I saw her ironing.
- She gave us good coffee and milk and bread, and we went out into the
- town. There was the real Monday morning atmosphere of an old,
- same-as-ever provincial town: the vacant feeling of work resumed after
- Sunday, rather reluctantly; nobody buying anything, nobody quite at
- grips with anything. The doors of the old-fashioned shops stood open: in
- Nuoro they have hardly reached the stage of window-displays. One must
- go inside, into the dark caves, to see what the goods are. Near the
- doorways of the drapers' shops stood rolls of that fine scarlet cloth,
- for the women's costumes. In a large tailor's window four women sat
- sewing, tailoring, and looking out of the window with eyes still
- Sunday-emancipate and mischievous. Detached men, some in the black and
- white, stood at the street corners, as if obstinately avoiding the
- current of work. Having had a day off, the salt taste of liberty still
- lingering on their lips, they were not going to be dragged so easily
- back into harness. I always sympathise with these rather sulky, forlorn
- males who insist on making another day of it. It shows a spark of
- spirit, still holding out against our over-harnessed world.
- There is nothing to see in Nuoro: which, to tell the truth, is always a
- relief. Sights are an irritating bore. Thank heaven there isn't a bit of
- Perugino or anything Pisan in the place: that I know of. Happy is the
- town that has nothing to show. What a lot of stunts and affectations it
- saves! Life is then life, not museum-stuffing. One could saunter along
- the rather inert, narrow, Monday-morning street, and see the women
- having a bit of a gossip, and see an old crone with a basket of bread on
- her head, and see the unwilling ones hanging back from work, and the
- whole current of industry disinclined to flow. Life is life and things
- are things. I am sick of gaping _things_, even Peruginos. I have had my
- thrills from Carpaccio and Botticelli. But now I've had enough. But I
- can always look at an old, grey-bearded peasant in his earthy white
- drawers and his black waist-frill, wearing no coat or over-garment, but
- just crooking along beside his little ox-wagon. I am sick of "things,"
- even Perugino.
- * * * * *
- The sight of the woman with the basket of bread reminded us that we
- wanted some food. So we searched for bread. None, if you please. It was
- Monday morning, eaten out. There would be bread at the forno, the oven.
- Where was the oven? Up the road and down a passage. I thought we should
- smell it. But no. We wandered back. Our friends had told us to take
- tickets early, for perhaps the bus would be crowded. So we bought
- yesterday's pastry and little cakes, and slices of native sausage. And
- still no bread. I went and asked our old hostess.
- "There is no fresh bread. It hasn't come in yet," she said.
- "Never mind, give me stale."
- So she went and rummaged in a drawer.
- "Oh dear, Oh dear, the women have eaten it all! But perhaps over
- there--" she pointed down the street--"they can give you some."
- They couldn't.
- I paid the bill--about twenty-eight francs, I think--and went out to
- look for the bus. There it was. In a dark little hole they gave me the
- long ticket-strips, first-class to Terranova. They cost some seventy
- francs the two. The q-b was still vainly, aimlessly looking along the
- street for bread.
- "Ready when you are," said our new driver rather snappily. He was a
- pale, cross-looking young man with brown eyes and fair "ginger" hair. So
- in we clambered, waved farewell to our old friends, whose bus was ready
- to roll away in the opposite direction. As we bumped past the "piazza" I
- saw Velveteens standing there, isolate, and still, apparently, scowling
- with unabated irritation.
- I am sure he has money: why the first class, yesterday, otherwise. And
- I'm sure _she_ married him because he is a townsman with property.
- * * * * *
- Out we rolled, on our last Sardinian drive. The morning was of a
- bell-like beauty, blue and very lovely. Below on the right stretched the
- concave valley, tapestried with cultivation. Up into the morning light
- rose the high, humanless hills, with wild, treeless moor-slopes.
- But there was no glass in the left window of the _coupé_, and the wind
- came howling in, cold enough. I stretched myself on the front seat, the
- q-b screwed herself into a corner, and we watched the land flash by. How
- well this new man drove! the long-nosed, freckled one with his gloomy
- brown eyes. How cleverly he changed gear, so that the automobile mewed
- and purred comfortably, like a live thing enjoying itself. And how dead
- he was to the rest of the world, wrapped in his gloom like a young
- bus-driving Hamlet. His answers to his mate were monosyllabic--or just
- no answers at all. He was one of those responsible, capable, morose
- souls, who do their work with silent perfection and look as if they were
- driving along the brink of doom, say a word to them and they'll go over
- the edge. But gentle _au fond_, of course. Fiction used to be fond of
- them: a sort of ginger-haired, young, mechanic Mr. Rochester who has
- even lost the Jane illusion.
- Perhaps it was not fair to watch him so closely from behind.
- His mate was a bit of a bounder, with one of those rakish military caps
- whose soft tops cock sideways or backwards. He was in Italian khaki,
- riding-breeches and puttees. He smoked his cigarette bounderishly: but
- at the same time, with peculiar gentleness, he handed one to the ginger
- Hamlet. Hamlet accepted it, and his mate held him a light as the bus
- swung on. They were like man and wife. The mate was the alert and
- wide-eyed Jane Eyre whom the ginger Mr. Rochester was not going to spoil
- in a hurry.
- * * * * *
- The landscape was different from yesterday's. As we dropped down the
- shallow, winding road from Nuoro, quite quickly the moors seemed to
- spread on either side, treeless, bushy, rocky, desert. How hot they must
- be in summer! One knows from Grazia Deledda's books.
- A pony with a low trap was prancing unhappily in the road-side. We
- slowed down and slid harmlessly past. Then again, on we whizzed down the
- looped road, which turned back on itself as sharply as a snake that has
- been wounded. Hamlet darted the bus at the curves; then softly padded
- round like an angel: then off again for the next parabola.
- We came out into wide, rather desolate, moorland valley spaces, with low
- rocks away to the left, and steep slopes, rocky-bushy, on the right.
- Sometimes groups of black-and-white men were working in the forlorn
- distances. A woman in the madder costume led a panniered ass along the
- wastes. The sun shone magnificently, already it was hotter here. The
- landscape had quite changed. These slopes looked east and south to the
- sea, they were sun-wild and sea-wild.
- The first stop was where a wild, rough lane came down the hill to our
- road. At the corner stood a lonely house--and in the road-side the most
- battered, life-weary old carriage I have ever seen. The jaunty mate
- sorted out the post--the boy with the tattered-battered brown carriage
- and brown pony signed the book as we all stood in the roadway. There was
- a little wait for a man who was fetching up another parcel. The post-bag
- and parcels from the tattered carriage were received and stowed and
- signed for. We walked up and down in the sun to get warm. The landscape
- was wild and open round about.
- Pip! goes Mr. Rochester, peremptorily, at the horn. Amazing how
- obediently we scuffle in. Away goes the bus, rushing towards the sea.
- Already one felt that peculiar glare in the half-way heavens, that
- intensification of the light in the lower sky, which is caused by the
- sea to sunward.
- Away in front three girls in brown costume are walking along the side of
- the white high-road, going with panniers towards a village up a slight
- incline. They hear us, turn round, and instantly go off their heads,
- exactly like chickens in the road. They fly towards us, crossing the
- road, and swifter than any rabbits they scuttle, one after another, into
- a deep side-track, like a deep ditch at right angles to the road. There,
- as we roll past, they are all crouched, peering out at us fearfully,
- like creatures from their hole. The bus mate salutes them with a shout,
- and we roll on towards the village on the low summit.
- * * * * *
- It is a small, stony, hen-scratched place of poor people. We roll on to
- a standstill. There is a group of poor people. The women wear the
- dark-brown costume, and again the bolero has changed shape. It is a
- rather fantastic low corset, curiously shapen; and originally,
- apparently, made of wonderful elaborate brocade. But look at it now.
- There is an altercation because a man wants to get into the bus with two
- little black pigs, each of which is wrapped in a little sack, with its
- face and ears appearing like a flower from a wrapped bouquet. He is told
- that he must pay the fare for each pig as if it were a Christian.
- _Cristo del mondo!_ A pig, a little pig, and paid for as if it were a
- Christian. He dangles the pig-bouquets, one from each hand, and the
- little pigs open their black mouths and squeal with self-conscious
- appreciation of the excitement they are causing. _Dio benedetto!_ it is
- a chorus. But the bus mate is inexorable. Every animal, even if it were
- a mouse, must be paid for and have a ticket as if it were a Christian.
- The pig-master recoils stupified with indignation, a pig-bouquet under
- each arm. "How much do you charge for the fleas you carry?" asks a
- sarcastic youth.
- A woman sitting sewing a soldier's tunic into a little jacket for her
- urchin, and thus beating the sword into a ploughshare, stitches
- unconcernedly in the sun. Round-cheeked but rather slatternly damsels
- giggle. The pig-master, speechless with fury, slings the pig-bouquets,
- like two bottles one on either side the saddle of the ass whose halter
- is held by a grinning but also malevolent girl: malevolent against
- pig-prices, that is. The pigs, looking abroad from their new situation,
- squeal the eternal pig-protest against an insufferable humanity.
- "Andiamo! Andiamo!" says ginger Mr. Rochester in his quiet but intense
- voice. The bus-mate scrambles up and we charge once more into the strong
- light to seaward.
- * * * * *
- In we roll, into Orosei, a dilapidated, sun-smitten, god-forsaken little
- town not far from the sea. We descend in piazza. There is a great, false
- baroque façade to a church, up a wavering vast mass of steps: and at
- the side a wonderful jumble of roundnesses with a jumble of round
- tiled roofs, peaked in the centre. It must have been some sort of
- convent. But it is eminently what they call a "painter's bit"--that
- pallid, big baroque face, at the top of the slow incline, and the very
- curious dark building at the side of it, with its several dark-tiled
- round roofs, like pointed hats, at varying altitudes. The whole space
- has a strange Spanish look, neglected, arid, yet with a bigness and a
- dilapidated dignity and a stoniness which carry one back to the Middle
- Ages, when life was violent and Orosei was no doubt a port and a
- considerable place. Probably it had bishops.
- [Illustration: NUORO ]
- The sun came hot into the wide piazza; with its pallid heavy façade up
- on the stony incline on one side, and arches and a dark great courtyard
- and outer stair-ways of some unknown building away on the other, the
- road entering down-hill from the inland, and dropping out below to the
- sea-marshes, and with the impression that once some single power had had
- the place in grip, had given this centre an architectural unity and
- splendour, now lost and forgotten, Orosei was truly fascinating.
- But the inhabitants were churlish. We went into a sort of bar-place,
- very primitive, and asked for bread.
- "Bread alone?" said the churl.
- "If you please."
- "There isn't any," he answered.
- "Oh--where can we get some then?"
- "You can't get any."
- "Really!"
- And we couldn't. People stood about glum, not friendly.
- There was a second great automobile, ready to set off for Tortolì, far
- to the south, on the east coast. Mandas is the railway junction both for
- Sorgono and Tortolì. The two buses stood near and communed. We prowled
- about the dead, almost extinct town--or call it village. Then Mr.
- Rochester began to pip his horn peremptorily, so we scuffled in.
- The post was stowed away. A native in black broad-cloth came running and
- sweating, carrying an ox-blood suit-case, and said we must wait for his
- brother-in-law, who was a dozen yards away. Ginger Mr. Rochester sat on
- his driver's throne and glared in the direction whence the
- brother-in-law must come. His brow knitted irritably, his long, sharp
- nose did not promise much patience. He made the horn roar like a
- sea-cow. But no brother-in-law.
- "I'm going to wait no longer," said he.
- "Oh, a minute, a minute! That won't do us any harm," expostulated his
- mate. No answer from the long faced, long-nosed ginger Hamlet. He sat
- statuesque, but with black eyes looking daggers down the still void
- road.
- "_Eh va bene_", he murmured through closed lips, and leaned forward
- grimly for the starting handle.
- "Patience--patience--patience a moment--why--" cried the mate.
- "Per l'amor' di Dio!" cried the black broad-cloth man, simply sizzling
- and dancing in anguish on the road, round the suit-case, which stood in
- the dust. "Don't go! God's love, don't start. He's got to catch the
- boat. He's got to be in Rome tomorrow. He won't be a second. He's here,
- he's here, he's here!"
- This startled the fate-fixed, sharp-nosed driver. He released the handle
- and looked round, with dark and glowering eyes. No one in sight. The few
- glum natives stood round unmoved. Thunder came into the gloomy dark eyes
- of the Rochester. Absolutely nobody in sight. Click! went his face into
- a look of almost seraphic peace, as he pulled off the brakes. We were on
- an incline, and insidiously, oh most subtly the great bus started to
- lean forwards and steal into motion.
- "Oh _ma che!_--what a will you've got!" cried the mate, clambering in
- to the side of the now seraphic-looking Rochester.
- "Love of God--God!" yelled the broad-cloth, seeing the bus melt forwards
- and gather momentum. He put his hands up as if to arrest it, and yelled
- in a wild howl: "O Beppin'! Bepp_in_--O!"
- But in vain. Already we had left the little groups of onlookers behind.
- We were rolling downwards out of the piazza. Broad-cloth had seized the
- bag and was running beside us in agony. Out of the piazza we rolled,
- Rochester had not put on the engines and we were just simply rolling
- down the gentle incline by the will of God. Into the dark outlet-street
- we melted, towards the still invisible sea.
- Suddenly a yell--"OO--ahh!!"
- "È qua! È qua! È qua! È qua!" gasped broad-cloth four times. "He's
- here!" And then: "Beppin'--she's going, she's going!"
- Beppin' appeared, a middle-aged man also in black broad-cloth, with a
- very scrubby chin and a bundle, running _towards_ us on fat legs. He was
- perspiring, but his face was expressionless and innocent-looking. With a
- sardonic flicker of a grin, half of spite, half of relief, Rochester put
- on the brakes again, and we stopped in the street. A woman tottered up
- panting and holding her breast. Now for farewells.
- "Andiamo!" said Rochester curtly, looking over his shoulder and making
- his fine nose curl with malice. And instantly he took off the brakes
- again. The fat woman shoved Beppin' in, gasping farewells, the
- brother-in-law handed in the ox-blood-red suit-case, tottering behind,
- and the bus surged savagely out of Orosei.
- * * * * *
- Almost in a moment we had left the town on its slope, and there below us
- was a river winding through marshy flats to the sea, to where small
- white surf broke on a flat, isolated beach, a quarter of a mile away.
- The river ran rapidly between stones and then between belts of high sere
- reeds, high as a man. These tall reeds advanced almost into the slow,
- horizontal sea, from which stood up a white glare of light, massive
- light over the low Mediterranean.
- Quickly we came down to the river-level, and rolled over a bridge.
- Before us, between us and the sea rose another hill, almost like a wall
- with a flat top, running horizontal, perfectly flat, parallel with the
- sea-edge, a sort of narrow long plateau. For a moment we were in the
- wide scoop of the river-bed. Orosei stood on the bluff behind us.
- Away to the right the flat river-marshes with the thick dead reeds met
- the flat and shining sea, river and sea were one water, the waves
- rippled tiny and soft-foot into the stream. To the left there was great
- loveliness. The bed of the river curved upwards and inland, and there
- was cultivation: but particularly, there were noble almond trees in full
- blossom. How beautiful they were, their pure, silvery pink gleaming so
- nobly, like a transfiguration, tall and perfect in that strange cradled
- river-bed parallel with the sea. Almond trees were in flower beneath
- grey Orosei, almond trees came near the road, and we could see the hot
- eyes of the individual blossoms, almond trees stood on the upward slope
- before us. And they had flowered in such noble beauty there, in that
- trough where the sun fell magnificent and the sea-glare whitened all the
- air as with a sort of God-presence, they gleamed in their incandescent
- sky-rosiness. One could hardly see their iron trunks, in this weird
- valley.
- But already we had crossed, and were charging up the great road that was
- cut straight, slant-wise along the side of the sea-hill, like a stairway
- outside the side of the house. So the bus turned southward to run up
- this stairway slant, to get to the top of the sea's long table-land. So,
- we emerged: and there was the Mediterranean rippling against the black
- rocks not so very far away below on our right. For, once on the long
- table-land the road turned due north, a long white dead-straight road
- running between strips of moorland, wild and bushy. The sea was in the
- near distance, blue, blue, and beating with light. It seemed more light
- than watery. And on the left was the wide trough of the valley, where
- almond trees like clouds in a wind seemed to poise sky-rosy upon the
- pale, sun-pale land, and beyond which Orosei clustered its lost grey
- houses on the bluff. Oh wonderful Orosei with your almonds and your
- reedy river, throbbing, throbbing with light and the sea's nearness, and
- all so lost, in a world long gone by, lingering as legends linger on. It
- is hard to believe that it is real. It seems so long since life left it
- and memory transfigured it into pure glamour, lost away like a lost
- pearl on the east Sardinian coast. Yet there it is, with a few grumpy
- inhabitants who won't even give you a crust of bread. And probably there
- is malaria--almost sure. And it would be hell to have to live there for
- a month. Yet for a moment, that January morning, how wonderful, oh, the
- timeless glamour of those Middle Ages when men were lordly and violent
- and shadowed with death.
- "Timor mortis conturbat me."
- The road ran along by the sea, above the sea, swinging gently up and
- down, and running on to a sea-encroaching hilly promontory in the
- distance. There were no high lands. The valley was left behind, and
- moors surrounded us, wild, desolate, uninhabited and uninhabitable moors
- sweeping up gently on the left, and finishing where the land dropped low
- and clifflike to the sea on the right. No life was now in sight: even no
- ship upon the pale blue sea. The great globe of the sky was unblemished
- and royal in its blueness and its ringing cerulean light. Over the moors
- a great hawk hovered. Rocks cropped out. It was a savage, dark-bushed,
- sky-exposed land, forsaken to the sea and the sun.
- * * * * *
- We were alone in the _coupé_. The bus-mate had made one or two sets at
- us, but he rather confused us. He was young--about twenty-two or three.
- He was quite good-looking, with his rakish military cap and his
- well-knitted figure in military clothes. But he had dark eyes that
- seemed to ask too much, and his manner of approach was abrupt,
- persistent, and disconcerting. Already he had asked us where we were
- going, where we lived, whence we came, of what nationality we were, and
- was I a painter. Already he knew so much. Further we rather fought shy
- of him. We ate those pale Nuoro pastries--they were just flaky pastry,
- good, but with nothing inside but a breath of air. And we gnawed slices
- of very highly-flavoured Nuoro sausage. And we drank the tea. And we
- were very hungry, for it was past noon, and we had eaten as good as
- nothing. The sun was magnificent in heaven, we rushed at a great,
- purring speed along that moorland road just above the sea.
- And then the bus-mate climbed in to share the coupé with us. He put his
- dark, beseeching and yet persistent eyes on us, sat plumb in front of
- us, his knees squared, and began to shout awkward questions in a strong
- curious voice. Of course it was very difficult to hear, for the great
- rushing bus made much noise. We had to try to yell in our Italian--and
- he was as awkward as we were.
- However, although it said "Smoking Forbidden" he offered us both
- cigarettes, and insisted we should smoke with him. Easiest to submit. He
- tried to point us out features in the landscape: but there were none to
- point, except that, where the hill ran to sea out of the moor, and
- formed a cape, he said there was a house away under the cliffs where
- coastguards lived. Nothing else.
- Then, however, he launched. He asked once more was I English and
- was the q-b German. We said it was so. And then he started the
- old story. Nations popped up and down again like Punch and Judy.
- Italy--l'Italia--she had no quarrel with La Germania--never had
- had--no--no, good friends the two nations. But once the war was started,
- Italy had to come in. For why. Germany would beat France, occupy her
- lands, march down and invade Italy. Best then join the war whilst the
- enemy was only invading somebody else's territory.
- They are perfectly naïve about it. That's what I like. He went on to say
- that he was a soldier: he had served eight years in the Italian cavalry.
- Yes, he was a cavalryman, and had been all through the war. But he had
- not therefore any quarrel with Germany. No--war was war, and it was
- over. So let it be over.
- But France--_ma la Francia!_ Here he sat forward on his seat, with his
- face near ours, and his pleading-dog's eyes suddenly took a look of
- quite irrational blazing rage. France! There wasn't a man in Italy who
- wasn't dying to get at the throat of France. France! Let there be war,
- and every Italian would leap to arms, even the old. Even the old--_anche
- i vecchi_. Yes, there must be war--with France. It was coming: it was
- bound to come. Every Italian was waiting for it. Waiting to fly at the
- French throat. For why? Why? He had served two years on the French
- front, and he knew why. Ah, the French! For arrogance, for insolence,
- Dio!--they were not to be borne. The French--they thought themselves
- lords of the world--_signori del mondo!_ Lords of the world, and masters
- of the world. Yes. They thought themselves no less--and what are they?
- Monkeys! Monkeys! Not better than monkeys. But let there be war, and
- Italy would show them. Italy would give them _signori del mondo_! Italy
- was pining for war--all, all, pining for war. With no one, with no one
- but France. Ah, with no one--Italy loved everybody else--but France!
- France!
- We let him shout it all out, till he was at the end of it. The passion
- and energy of him was amazing. He was like one possessed. I could only
- wonder. And wonder again. For it is curious what fearful passions these
- pleading, wistful souls fall into when they feel they have been
- insulted. It was evident he felt he had been insulted, and he went just
- beside himself. But dear chap, he shouldn't speak so loudly for all
- Italy--even the old. The bulk of Italian men are only too anxious to
- beat their bayonets into cigarette-holders, and smoke the cigarette of
- eternal and everlasting peace, to coincide at all with our friend. Yet
- there he was--raging at me in the bus as we dashed along the coast.
- And then, after a space of silence, he became sad again, wistful, and
- looked at us once more with those pleading brown eyes, beseeching,
- beseeching--he knew not what: and I'm sure I didn't know. Perhaps what
- he really wants is to be back on a horse in a cavalry regiment: even at
- war.
- But no, it comes out, what he thinks he wants.
- When are we going to London? And are there many motor-cars in
- England?--many, many? In America too? Do they want men in America? I say
- no, they have unemployment out there: they are going to stop immigration
- in April: or at least cut it down. Why? he asks sharply. Because they
- have their own unemployment problem. And the q-b quotes how many
- millions of Europeans want to emigrate to the United States. His eye
- becomes gloomy. Are all nations of Europe going to be forbidden? he
- asks. Yes--and already the Italian Government will give no more
- passports for America--to emigrants. No passports? then you can't go?
- You can't go, say I.
- By this time his hot-souled eagerness and his hot, beseeching eyes have
- touched the q-b. She asks him what he wants. And from his gloomy face it
- comes out in a rap. "_Andare fuori dell'Italia._" To go out of Italy. To
- go out--away--to go away--to go away. It has become a craving, a
- neurasthenia with them.
- Where is his home? His home is at a village a few miles ahead--here on
- this coast. We are coming to it soon. There is his home. And a few miles
- inland from the village he also has a property: he also has land. But he
- doesn't want to work it. He doesn't want it. In fact he won't bother
- with it. He hates the land, he detests looking after vines. He can't
- even bring himself to try any more.
- What does he want then?
- He wants to leave Italy, to go abroad--as a chauffeur. Again the long
- beseeching look, as of a distraught, pleading animal. He would prefer to
- be the chauffeur of a gentleman. But he would drive a bus, he would do
- anything--in England.
- Now he has launched it. Yes, I say, but in England also we have more men
- than jobs. Still he looks at me with his beseeching eyes--so desperate
- too--and so young--and so full of energy--and so longing to _devote_
- himself--to devote himself: or else to go off in an unreasonable
- paroxysm against the French. To my horror I feel he is believing in my
- goodness of heart. And as for motor-cars, it is all I can do to own a
- pair of boots, so how am I to set about employing a _chauffeur_?
- * * * * *
- We have all gone quiet again. So at last he climbs back and takes his
- seat with the driver once more. The road is still straight, swinging on
- through the moorland strip by the sea. And he leans to the silent,
- nerve-tense Mr. Rochester, pleading again. And at length Mr. Rochester
- edges aside, and lets him take the driving wheel. And so now we are all
- in the hands of our friend the bus-mate. He drives--not very well. It is
- evident he is learning. The bus can't quite keep in the grooves of this
- wild bare road. And he shuts off when we slip down a hill--and there is
- a great muddle on the upslope when he tries to change gear. But Mr.
- Rochester sits squeezed and silently attentive in his corner. He puts
- out his hand and swings the levers. There is no fear that he will let
- anything go wrong. I would trust him to drive me down the bottomless pit
- and up the other side. But still the beseeching mate holds the steering
- wheel. And on we rush, rather uncertainly and hesitatingly now. And thus
- we come to the bottom of a hill where the road gives a sudden curve. My
- heart rises an inch in my breast. I know he can't do it. And he can't,
- oh Lord--but the quiet hand of the freckled Rochester takes the wheel,
- we swerve on. And the bus-mate gives up, and the nerve-silent driver
- resumes control.
- * * * * *
- But the bus-mate now feels at home with us. He clambers back into the
- coupé, and when it is too painfully noisy to talk, he simply sits and
- looks at us with brown, pleading eyes. Miles and miles and miles goes
- this coast road, and never a village. Once or twice a sort of lonely
- watch-house and soldiers lying about by the road. But never a halt.
- Everywhere moorland and desert, uninhabited.
- And we are faint with fatigue and hunger and this relentless travelling.
- When, oh when shall we come to Siniscola, where we are due to eat our
- midday meal? Oh yes, says the mate. There is an inn at Siniscola where
- we can eat what we like. Siniscola--Siniscola! We feel we must get down,
- we must eat, it is past one o'clock and the glaring light and the
- rushing loneliness are still about us.
- * * * * *
- But it is behind the hill in front. We see the hill? Yes. Behind it is
- Siniscola. And down there on the beach are the Bagni di Siniscola, where
- many forestieri, strangers, come in the summer. Therefore we set high
- hopes on Siniscola. From the town to the sea, two miles, the bathers
- ride on asses. Sweet place. And it is coming near--really near. There
- are stone-fenced fields--even stretches of moor fenced off. There are
- vegetables in a little field with a stone wall--there is a strange white
- track through the moor to a forsaken sea-coast. We are near.
- Over the brow of the low hill--and there it is, a grey huddle of a
- village with two towers. There it is, we are there. Over the cobbles we
- bump, and pull up at the side of the street. This is Siniscola, and here
- we eat.
- We drop out of the weary bus. The mate asks a man to show us the
- inn--the man says he won't, muttering. So a boy is deputed--and he
- consents. This is the welcome.
- And I can't say much for Siniscola. It is just a narrow, crude, stony
- place, hot in the sun, cold in the shade. In a minute or two we were at
- the inn, where a fat, young man was just dismounting from his brown pony
- and fastening it to a ring beside the door.
- The inn did not look promising--the usual cold room opening gloomily on
- the gloomy street. The usual long table, with this time a foully
- blotched table-cloth. And two young peasant madams in charge, in the
- brown costume, rather sordid, and with folded white cloths on their
- heads. The younger was in attendance. She was a full-bosomed young
- hussy, and would be very queenly and cocky. She held her nose in the
- air, and seemed ready to jibe at any order. It takes one some time to
- get used to this cocky, assertive behaviour of the young damsels, the
- who'll-tread-on-the-tail-of-my-skirt bearing of the hussies. But it is
- partly a sort of crude defensiveness and shyness, partly it is barbaric
- _méfiance_ or mistrust, and partly, without doubt, it is a tradition
- with Sardinian women that they must hold their own and be ready to hit
- first. This young sludge-queen was all hit. She flounced her posterior
- round the table, planking down the lumps of bread on the foul cloth with
- an air of take-it-as-a-condescension-that-I-wait-on-you, a subdued grin
- lurking somewhere on her face. It is not meant to be offensive: yet it
- is so. Truly, it is just uncouthness. But when one is tired and
- hungry....
- We were not the only feeders. There was the man off the pony, and a sort
- of workman or porter or dazio official with him--and a smart young man:
- and later our Hamlet driver. Bit by bit the young damsel planked down
- bread, plates, spoons, glasses, bottles of black wine, whilst we sat at
- the dirty table in uncouth constraint and looked at the hideous portrait
- of His reigning Majesty of Italy. And at length came the inevitable
- soup. And with it the sucking chorus. The little _maialino_ at Mandas
- had been a good one. But the smart young man in the country beat him. As
- water clutters and slavers down a choky gutter, so did his soup travel
- upwards into his mouth with one long sucking stream of noise,
- intensified as the bits of cabbage, etc., found their way through the
- orifice.
- They did all the talking--the young men. They addressed the sludge-queen
- curtly and disrespectfully, as if to say: "What's she up to?" Her airs
- were finely thrown away. Still she showed off. What else was there to
- eat? There was the meat that had been boiled for the soup. We knew what
- that meant. I had as lief eat the foot of an old worsted stocking.
- Nothing else, you sludge queen? No, what do you want anything else
- for?--Beefsteak--what's the good of asking for beefsteak or any other
- steak on a Monday. Go to the butcher's and see for yourself.
- The Hamlet, the pony rider, and the porter had the faded and tired
- chunks of boiled meat. The smart young man ordered eggs in padella--two
- eggs fried with a little butter. We asked for the same. The smart young
- man got his first--and of course they were warm and liquid. So he fell
- upon them with a fork, and once he had got hold of one end of the eggs
- he just sucked them up in a prolonged and violent suck, like a long,
- thin, ropy drink being sucked upwards from the little pan. It was a
- genuine exhibition. Then he fell upon the bread with loud chews.
- What else was there? A miserable little common orange. So much for the
- dinner. Was there cheese? No. But the sludge-queen--they are quite
- good-natured really--held a conversation in dialect with the young men,
- which I did not try to follow. Our pensive driver translated that there
- _was_ cheese, but it wasn't good, so they wouldn't offer it us. And the
- pony man interpolated that they didn't like to offer us anything that
- was not of the best. He said it in all sincerity--after such a meal.
- This roused my curiosity, so I asked for the cheese whether or not. And
- it wasn't so bad after all.
- This meal cost fifteen francs, for the pair of us.
- * * * * *
- We made our way back to the bus, through the uncouth men who stood
- about. To tell the truth, strangers are not popular nowadays--not
- anywhere. Everybody has a grudge against them at first sight. This
- grudge may or may not wear off on acquaintance.
- The afternoon had become hot--hot as an English June. And we had various
- other passengers--for one a dark-eyed, long-nosed priest who showed his
- teeth when he talked. There was not much room in the coupé, so the goods
- were stowed upon the little rack.
- With the strength of the sun, and the six or seven people in it, the
- coupé became stifling. The q-b opened her window. But the priest, one of
- the loudtalking sort, said that a draught was harmful, very harmful, so
- he put it up again. He was one of the gregarious sort, a loud talker,
- nervy really, very familiar with all the passengers. And everything did
- one harm--_fa male, fa male_. A draught _fa male, fa molto male_. _Non è
- vero?_ this to all the men from Siniscola. And they all said Yes--yes.
- The bus-mate clambered into the _coupé_, to take the tickets of the
- second-class passengers in the rotondo, through the little wicket. There
- was great squeezing and shouting and reckoning change. And then we
- stopped at a halt, and he dashed down with the post and the priest got
- down for a drink with the other men. The Hamlet driver sat stiff in his
- seat. He pipped the horn. He pipped again, with decision. Men came
- clambering in. But it looked as if the offensive priest would be left
- behind. The bus started venomously, the priest came running, his gown
- flapping, wiping his lips.
- He dropped into his seat with a cackling laugh, showing his long teeth.
- And he said that it was as well to take a drink, to fortify the stomach.
- To travel with the stomach uneasy did one harm: _fa male, fa male--non
- è vero?_ Chorus of "yes."
- The bus-mate resumed his taking the tickets through the little wicket,
- thrusting his rear amongst us. As he stood like this, down fell his
- sheepskin-lined military overcoat on the q-b's head. He was filled with
- grief. He folded it and placed it on the seat, as a sort of cushion for
- her, oh so gently! And how he would love to devote himself to a master
- and mistress.
- He sat beside me, facing the q-b, and offered us an acid drop. We took
- the acid drop. He smiled with zealous yearning at the q-b, and resumed
- his conversations. Then he offered us cigarettes--insisted on our taking
- cigarettes.
- The priest with the long teeth looked sideways at the q-b, seeing her
- smoking. Then he fished out a long cigar, bit it, and spat. He was
- offered a cigarette.--But no, cigarettes were harmful: _fanno male_. The
- paper was bad for the health: oh, very bad. A pipe or a cigar. So he lit
- his long cigar and spat large spits on the floor, continually.
- Beside me sat a big, bright-eyed, rather good-looking but foolish man.
- Hearing me speak to the q-b, he said in confidence to the priest: "Here
- are two Germans--eh? Look at them. The woman smoking. These are a couple
- of those that were interned here. Sardinia can do without them now."
- Germans in Italy at the outbreak of the war were interned in Sardinia,
- and as far as one hears, they were left very free and happy, and treated
- very well, the Sardinians having been generous as all proud people are.
- But now our bright-eyed fool made a great titter through the bus: quite
- unaware that we understood. He said nothing offensive: but that sort of
- tittering exultation of common people who think they have you at a
- disadvantage annoyed me. However, I kept still to hear what they would
- say. But it was only trivialities about the Germans having nearly all
- gone now, their being free to travel, their coming back to Sardinia
- because they liked it better than Germany. Oh yes--they all wanted to
- come back. They all wanted to come back to Sardinia. Oh yes, they knew
- where they were well off. They knew their own advantage. Sardinia was
- this, that, and the other of advantageousness, and the Sardi were decent
- people. It is just as well to put in a word on one's own behalf
- occasionally. As for La Germania--she was down, down: bassa. What did
- one pay for bread in Germany? Five francs a kilo, my boy.
- * * * * *
- The bus stopped again, and they trooped out into the hot sun. The priest
- scuffled round the corner this time. Not to go round the corner was no
- doubt harmful. We waited. A frown came between the bus Hamlet's brows.
- He looked nerve-worn and tired. It was about three o'clock. We had to
- wait for a man from a village, with the post. And he did not appear.
- "I am going! I won't wait," said the driver.
- "Wait--wait a minute," said the mate, pouring oil. And he went round to
- look. But suddenly the bus started, with a vicious lurch. The mate came
- flying and hung on to the footboard. He had really almost been left. The
- driver glanced round sardonically to see if he were there. The bus flew
- on. The mate shook his head in deprecation.
- "He's a bit _nervoso_, the driver," said the q-b. "A bit out of temper!"
- "Ah, poor chap!" said the good-looking young mate, leaning forward and
- making such beseeching eyes of hot tolerance. "One has to be sorry for
- him. Persons like him, they suffer so much from themselves, how should
- one be angry with them! _Poverino._ We must have sympathy."
- Never was such a language of sympathy as the Italian. _Poverino!
- Poverino!_ They are never happy unless they are sympathising pityingly
- with somebody. And I rather felt that I was thrown in with the
- _poverini_ who had to be pitied for being _nervosi_. Which did not
- improve my temper.
- However, the bus-mate suddenly sat on the opposite seat between the
- priest and the q-b. He turned over his official note book, and began to
- write on the back cover very carefully, in the flourishing Italian hand.
- Then he tore off what he had written, and with a very bright and zealous
- look he handed me the paper saying: "You will find me a post in
- England, when you go in the summer? You will find me a place in London
- as a chauffeur--!"
- "If I can," said I. "But it is not easy."
- He nodded his head at me with the most complete bright confidence, quite
- sure now that he had settled his case perfectly.
- On the paper he had written his name and his address, and if anyone
- would like him as chauffeur they have only to say so. On the back of the
- scrap of paper the inevitable goodwill: _Auguri infiniti e buon
- Viaggio_. Infinite good wishes and a good journey.
- I folded the paper and put it in my waistcoat pocket, feeling a trifle
- disconcerted by my new responsibility. He was such a dear fellow and
- such bright trustful eyes.
- * * * * *
- This much achieved, there was a moment of silence. And the bus-mate
- turned to take a ticket of a fat, comfortable man who had got in at the
- last stop. There was a bit of flying conversation.
- "Where are they from?" asked the good-looking stupid man next to me,
- inclining his head in our direction.
- "Londra," said our friend, with stern satisfaction: and they have said
- so often to one another that London is the greatest city in the world,
- that now the very word Londra conveys it all. You should have seen the
- blank little-boy look come over the face of the big handsome fellow on
- hearing that we were citizens of the greatest city in the world.
- "And they understand Italian?" he asked, rather nipped.
- "Sicuro!" said our friend scornfully. "How shouldn't they?"
- "Ah!" My large neighbour left his mouth open for a few moments. And then
- another sort of smile came on to his face. He began to peep at us
- sideways from his brown eyes, brightly, and was henceforth itching to
- get into conversation with the citizens of the world's mistress-city.
- His look of semi-impudence was quite gone, replaced by a look of
- ingratiating admiration.
- Now I ask you, is this to be borne? Here I sit, and he talks
- half-impudently and patronisingly about me. And here I sit, and he is
- glegging at me as if he saw signs of an aureole under my grey hat. All
- in ten minutes. And just because, instead of _la Germania_ I turn out to
- be _l'Inghilterra_. I might as well be a place on a map, or a piece of
- goods with a trade-mark. So little perception of the actual me! so much
- going by labels! I now could have kicked him harder. I would have liked
- to say I was ten times German, to see the fool change his smirk again.
- * * * * *
- The priest now chimed up, that he had been to America. He had been to
- America and hence he dreaded not the crossing from Terranuova di
- Sardegna to Cività Vecchia. For he had crossed the great Atlantic.
- Apparently, however, the natives had all heard this song of the raven
- before, so he spat largely on the floor. Whereupon the new fat neighbour
- asked him was it true that the Catholic Church was now becoming the one
- Church in the United States? And the priest said there was no doubt
- about it.
- * * * * *
- The hot afternoon wore on. The coast was rather more inhabited, but we
- saw practically no villages. The view was rather desolate. From time to
- time we stopped at a sordid-looking canteen house. From time to time we
- passed natives riding on their ponies, and sometimes there was an
- equestrian exhibition as the rough, strong little beasts reared and
- travelled rapidly backwards, away from the horrors of our great
- automobile. But the male riders sat heavy and unshakeable, with
- Sardinian male force. Everybody in the bus laughed, and we passed,
- looking back to see the pony still corkscrewing, but in vain, in the
- middle of the lonely, grass-bordered high-road.
- * * * * *
- The bus-mate climbed in and out, coming in to sit near us. He was like a
- dove which has at last found an olive bough to nest in. And we were the
- olive bough in this world of waste waters. Alas, I felt a broken reed.
- But he sat so serenely near us, now, like a dog that has found a master.
- The afternoon was declining, the bus pelted on at a great rate. Ahead we
- saw the big lump of the island of Tavolara, a magnificient mass of rock
- which fascinated me by its splendid, weighty form. It looks like a
- headland, for it apparently touches the land. There it rests at the
- sea's edge, in this lost afternoon world. Strange how this coast-country
- does not belong to our present-day world. As we rushed along we saw
- steamers, two steamers, steering south, and one sailing ship coming from
- Italy. And instantly, the steamers seemed like our own familiar world.
- But still this coast-country was forsaken, forgotten, not included. It
- just is not included.
- * * * * *
- How tired one gets of these long, long rides! It seemed we should never
- come up to Tavolara. But we did. We came right near to it, and saw the
- beach with the waves rippling undisturbed, saw the narrow waters
- between the rock-lump and the beach. For now the road was down at
- sea-level. And we were not very far from Terranova. Yet all seemed still
- forsaken, outside of the world's life.
- The sun was going down, very red and strong, away inland. In the bus all
- were silent, subsiding into the pale travel-sleep. We charged along the
- flat road, down on a plain now. And dusk was gathering heavily over the
- land.
- We saw the high-road curve flat upon the plain. It was the harbour head.
- We saw a magic, land-locked harbour, with masts and dark land encircling
- a glowing basin. We even saw a steamer lying at the end of a long, thin
- bank of land, in the shallow, shining, wide harbour, as if wrecked
- there. And this was our steamer. But no, it looked in the powerful glow
- of the sunset like some lonely steamer laid up in some land-locked bay
- away at Spitzbergen, towards the North Pole: a solemn, mysterious,
- blue-landed bay, lost, lost to mankind.
- * * * * *
- Our bus-mate came and told us we were to sit in the bus till the
- post-work was done, then we should be driven to the hotel where we could
- eat, and then he would accompany us on the town omnibus to the boat. We
- need not be on board till eight o'clock: and now it was something after
- five. So we sat still while the bus rushed and the road curved and the
- view of the weird, land-locked harbour changed, though the bare masts of
- ships in a bunch still pricked the upper glow, and the steamer lay away
- out, as if wrecked on a sand-bank, and dark, mysterious land with bunchy
- hills circled round, dark blue and wintry in a golden after-light, while
- the great, shallow-seeming bay of water shone like a mirror.
- In we charged, past a railway, along the flat darkening road into a flat
- God-lost town of dark houses, on the marshy bay-head. It felt more like
- a settlement than a town. But it was Terranova-Pausanias. And after
- bumping and rattling down a sombre uncouth, barren-seeming street, we
- came up with a jerk at a doorway--which was the post-office. Urchins,
- mudlarks, were screaming for the luggage. Everybody got out and set off
- towards the sea, the urchins carrying luggage. We sat still.
- * * * * *
- Till I couldn't bear it. I did not want to stay in the automobile
- another moment, and I did not, I did not want to be accompanied by our
- new-found friend to the steamer. So I burst out, and the q-b followed.
- She too was relieved to escape the new attachment, though she had a
- great _tendre_ for him. But in the end one runs away from one's
- _tendres_ much harder and more precipitately than from one's _durs_.
- The mudlarking urchins fell upon us. Had we any more luggage--were we
- going to the steamer? I asked how one went to the steamer--did one walk?
- I thought perhaps it would be necessary to row out. You go on foot, or
- in a carriage, or in an aeroplane, said an impudent brat. How far? Ten
- minutes. Could one go on board at once? Yes, certainly.
- So, in spite of the q-b's protests, I handed the sack to a wicked
- urchin, to be led. She wanted us to go alone--but I did not know the
- way, and am wary of stumbling into entanglements in these parts.
- I told the bus-Hamlet, who was abstract with nerve fatigue, please to
- tell his comrade that I would not forget the commission: and I tapped my
- waistcoat pocket, where the paper lay over my heart. He briefly
- promised--and we escaped. We escaped any further friendship.
- * * * * *
- I bade the mud-lark lead me to the telegraph office: which of course was
- quite remote from the post-office. Shouldering the sack, and clamouring
- for the kitchenino which the q-b stuck to, he marched forward. By his
- height he was ten years old: by his face with its evil mud-lark pallor
- and good-looks, he was forty. He wore a cut-down soldier's tunic which
- came nearly to his knees, was barefoot, and sprightly with that alert
- mudlarking quickness which has its advantages.
- So we went down a passage and climbed a stair and came to an office
- where one would expect to register births and deaths. But the urchin
- said it was the telegraph-office. No sign of life. Peering through the
- wicket I saw a fat individual seated writing in the distance. Feeble
- lights relieved the big, barren, official spaces--I wonder the fat
- official wasn't afraid to be up here alone.
- He made no move. I banged the shutter and demanded a telegraph blank.
- His shoulders went up to his ears, and he plainly intimated his
- intention to let us wait. But I said loudly to the urchin: "Is _that_
- the telegraph official?" and the urchin said: "Si signore"--so the fat
- individual had to come.
- * * * * *
- After which considerable delay, we set off again. The bus, thank heaven,
- had gone, the savage dark street was empty of friends. We turned away to
- the harbour front. It was dark now. I saw a railway near at hand--a
- bunch of dark masts--the steamer showing a few lights, far down at the
- tip of a long spit of land, remote in mid-harbour. And so off we went,
- the barefoot urchin twinkling a few yards ahead, on the road that
- followed the spit of land. The spit was wide enough to carry this road,
- and the railway. On the right was a silent house apparently built on
- piles in the harbour. Away far down in front leaned our glimmering
- steamer, and a little train was shunting trucks among the low sheds
- beside it. Night had fallen, and the great stars flashed. Orion was in
- the air, and his dog-star after him. We followed on down the dark bar
- between the silent, lustrous water. The harbour was smooth as glass, and
- gleaming like a mirror. Hills came round encircling it entirely--dark
- land ridging up and lying away out, even to seaward. One was not sure
- which was exactly seaward. The dark encircling of the land seemed
- stealthy, the hills had a remoteness, guarding the waters in the
- silence. Perhaps the great mass away beyond was Tavolara again. It
- seemed like some lumpish berg guarding an arctic, locked-up bay where
- ships lay dead.
- [Illustration: TERRANOVA]
- On and on we followed the urchin, till the town was left behind, until
- it also twinkled a few meagre lights out of its low, confused blackness
- at the bay-head, across the waters. We lad left the ship-masts and the
- settlement. The urchin padded on, only turning now and again and
- extending a thin, eager hand toward the kitchenino. Especially when some
- men were advancing down the railway he wanted it: the q-b's carrying
- it was a slur on his prowess. So the kitchenino was relinquished, and
- the lark strode on satisfied.
- * * * * *
- Till at last we came to the low sheds that squatted between the steamer
- and the railway-end. The lark led me into one, where a red-cap was
- writing. The cap let me wait some minutes before informing me that this
- was the goods office--the ticket office was further on. The lark flew at
- him and said "Then you've changed it, have you?" And he led me on to
- another shed, which was just going to shut up. Here they finally had the
- condescension to give me two tickets--a hundred and fifty francs the
- two. So we followed the lark who strode like Scipio Africanus up the
- gangway with the sack.
- * * * * *
- It was quite a small ship. The steward put me in number one cabin--the
- q-b in number seven. Each cabin had four berths. Consequently man and
- woman must separate rigorously on this ship. Here was a blow for the
- q-b, who knows what Italian female fellow-passengers can be. However,
- there we were. All the cabins were down below, and all, for some
- mysterious reason, inside--no portholes outside. It was hot and close
- down below already. I pitched the sack on my berth, and there stood the
- lark on the red carpet at the door.
- I gave him three francs. He looked at it as if it were my death-warrant.
- He peered at the paper in the light of the lamp. Then he extended his
- arm with a gesture of superb insolence, flinging me back my gold without
- a word.
- "How!" said I. "Three francs are quite enough."
- "Three francs--two kilometers--and three pieces of luggage! No signore.
- No! Five francs. Cinque franchi!" And averting his pallid, old
- mudlarking face, and flinging his hand out at me, he stood the image of
- indignant repudiation. And truly, he was no taller than my upper
- waistcoat pocket. The brat! The brat! He was such an actor, and so
- impudent, that I wavered between wonder and amusement and a great
- inclination to kick him up the steps. I decided not to waste my energy
- being angry.
- "What a beastly little boy! What a horrid little boy! What a _horrid_
- little boy! Really--a little thief. A little swindler!" I mused aloud.
- "Swindler!" he quavered after me. And he was beaten. "Swindler" doubled
- him up: that and the quiet mildness of my tone of invocation. Now he
- would have gone with his three francs. And now, in final contempt, I
- gave him the other two.
- He disappeared like a streak of lightning up the gangway, terrified lest
- the steward should come and catch him at his tricks. For later on I saw
- the steward send other larks flying for demanding more than one-fifty.
- The brat.
- * * * * *
- The question was now the cabin: for the q-b simply refused to entertain
- the idea of sharing a cabin with three Italian women, who would all be
- sick simply for the fuss of it, though the sea was smooth as glass. We
- hunted up the steward. He said all the first-class cabins had four
- berths--the second had three, but much smaller. How that was possible I
- don't know. However, if no one came, he would give us a cabin to
- ourselves.
- The ship was clean and civilised, though very poky. And there we were.
- * * * * *
- We went on deck. Would we eat on board, asked another person. No, we
- wouldn't. We went out to a fourth little shed, which was a refreshment
- stall, and bought bread and sardines and chocolate and apples. Then we
- went on the upper deck to make our meal. In a sheltered place I lit the
- spirit lamp, and put on water to boil. The water we had taken from the
- cabin. Then we sat down alone in the darkness, on a seat which had its
- back against the deck cabins, now appropriated by the staff. A thin,
- cold wind was travelling. We wrapped the one plaid round us both and
- snugged together, waiting for the tea to boil. I could just see the
- point of the spirit-flame licking up, from where we sat.
- * * * * *
- The stars were marvellous in the soundless sky, so big, that one could
- see them hanging orb-like and alone in their own space, yet all the
- myriads. Particularly bright the evening-star. And he hung flashing in
- the lower night with a power that made me hold my breath. Grand and
- powerful he sent out his flashes, so sparkling that he seemed more
- intense than any sun or moon. And from the dark, uprising land he sent
- his way of light to us across the water, a marvellous star-road. So all
- above us the stars soared and pulsed, over that silent, night-dark,
- land-locked harbour.
- * * * * *
- After a long time the water boiled, and we drank our hot tea and ate our
- sardines and bread and bits of remaining Nuoro sausage, sitting there
- alone in the intense starry darkness of that upper deck. I said alone:
- but no, two ghoulish ship's cats came howling at us for the bits. And
- even when everything was eaten, and the sardine-tin thrown in the sea,
- still they circled and prowled and howled.
- We sat on, resting under the magnificent deep heavens, wrapped together
- in the old shepherd's shawl for which I have blessed so often a Scottish
- friend, half sheltered from the cold night wind, and recovering somewhat
- from the sixty miles bus-ride we had done that day.
- As yet there was nobody on the ship--we were the very first, at least in
- the first class. Above, all was silent and deserted. Below, all was
- lit-up and deserted. But it was a little ship, with accommodation for
- some thirty first-class and forty second-class passengers.
- In the low deck forward stood two rows of cattle--eighteen cattle. They
- stood tied up side by side, and quite motionless, as if stupefied. Only
- two had lain down. The rest stood motionless, with tails dropped and
- heads dropped, as if drugged or gone insensible. These cattle on the
- ship fascinated the q-b. She insisted on going down to them, and
- examining them minutely. But there they were--stiff almost as Noah's Ark
- cows. What she could not understand was that they neither cried nor
- struggled. Motionless--terribly motionless. In her idea cattle are wild
- and indomitable creatures. She will not realise the horrid strength of
- passivity and inertia which is almost the preponderant force in
- domesticated creatures, men and beast alike. There are fowls too in
- various coops--flappy and agitated these.
- * * * * *
- At last, at about half past seven the train from the island arrived, and
- the people surged out in a mass. We stood hanging over the end of the
- upper deck, looking down. On they poured, in a thick mass, up the
- gangway, with all conceivable sorts of luggage: bundles, embroidered
- carry-alls, bags, saddle-bags--the q-b lamenting she had not bought
- one--a sudden surging mass of people and goods. There are soldiers
- too--but these are lined upon the bit of a quay, to wait.
- Our interest is to see whether there will be any more first-class
- passengers. Coming up the wide board which serves as gangway each
- individual hands a ticket to the man at the top, and is shooed away to
- his own region--usually second class. There are three sorts of
- tickets--green first-class, white second, and pink third. The
- second-class passengers go aft, the third class go forward, along the
- passage past our cabins, into the steerage. And so we watch and watch
- the excited people come on board and divide. Nearly all are
- second-class--and a great many are women. We have seen a few first-class
- men. But as yet no women. And every hat with ospreys gives the q-b a
- qualm.
- For a long time we are safe. The women flood to the second-class. One
- who is third, begs and beseeches to go with her friends in the second. I
- am glad to say without success. And then, alas, an elderly man with a
- daughter, first-class. They are very respectable and pleasant looking.
- But the q-b wails: "I'm sure she will be sick."
- * * * * *
- Towards the end come three convicts, chained together. They wear the
- brownish striped homespun, and do not look evil. They seem to be
- laughing together, not at all in distress. The two young soldiers who
- guard them, and who have guns, look nervous. So the convicts go forward
- to the steerage, past our cabins.
- * * * * *
- At last the soldiers are straightened up, and turned on board. There
- almost at once they start making a tent: drawing a huge tarpaulin over a
- cross rope in the mid-deck below us, between the first and second class
- regions. The great tarpaulin is pulled down well on either side and
- fastened down, and it makes a big dark tent. The soldiers creep in and
- place their bundles.
- And now it is the soldiers who fascinate the q-b. She hangs over the bar
- above, and peers in. The soldiers arrange themselves in two rows. They
- will sleep with their heads on their bundles on either side of the tent,
- the two rows of feet coming together inwards. But first they must eat,
- for it is eight o'clock and more.
- Out come their suppers: a whole roast fowl, hunks of kid, legs of lamb,
- huge breads. The fowl is dismembered with a jack-knife in a twinkling,
- and shared. Everything among the soldiers is shared. There they sit in
- their pent-house with its open ends, crowded together and happy, chewing
- with all their might and clapping one another on the shoulder lovingly,
- and taking swigs at the wine bottles. We envy them their good food.
- * * * * *
- At last all are on board--the omnibus has driven up from town and gone
- back. A last young lout dashes up in a carriage and scuffles aboard. The
- crew begins to run about. The quay-porters have trotted on board with
- the last bales and packages--all is stowed safely. The steamer hoots and
- hoots. Two men and a girl kiss their friends all round and get off the
- ship. The night re-echoes the steamer's hoots. The sheds have gone all
- dark. Far off the town twinkles very sparsely. All is night-deserted.
- And so the gangway is hauled up, and the rope hawsers quickly wound in.
- We are drifting away from the quay side. The few watchers wave their
- white handkerchiefs, standing diminutive and forlorn on the dark little
- quay, in the heart of the dark, deserted harbour. One woman cries and
- waves and weeps. A man makes exaggerated flag-wagging signals with his
- white handky, and feels important. We drift--and the engines begin to
- beat. We are moving in the land-locked harbour.
- * * * * *
- Everybody watches. The commander and the crew shout orders. And so, very
- slowly, and without any fuss at all, like a man wheeling a barrow out of
- a yard gate, we throb very slowly out of the harbour, past one point,
- then past another, away from the encircling hills, away from the great
- lump of Tavolara which is to southward, away from the outreaching land
- to the north, and over the edge of the open sea.
- * * * * *
- And now to try for a cabin to ourselves. I approach the steward. Yes, he
- says, he has it in mind. But there are eighty second-class passengers,
- in an accommodation space for forty. The transit-controller is now
- considering it. Most probably he will transfer some second-class women
- to the vacant first-class cabins. If he does not do so, then the steward
- will accommodate us.
- I know what this means--this equivocation. We decide not to bother any
- more. So we make a tour of the ship--to look at the soldiers, who have
- finished eating, sitting yarning to one another, while some are already
- stretched out in the shadow, for sleep. Then to look at the cattle,
- which stand rooted to the deck--which is now all messy. To look at the
- unhappy fowls in their coops. And a peep at the third-class--rather
- horrifying.
- And so to bed. Already the other three berths in my cabin are occupied,
- the lights are switched off. As I enter I hear one young man tenderly
- enquiring of the berth below: "Dost thou feel ill?" "Er--not much--not
- much!" says the other faintly.
- Yet the sea is like glass, so smooth.
- I am quickly rolled in my lower berth, where I feel the trembling of the
- machine-impelled ship, and hear the creaking of the berth above me as
- its occupant rolls over: I listen to the sighs of the others, the wash
- of dark water. And so, uneasily, rather hot and very airless, uneasy
- with the machine-throbbing and the sighing of my companions, and with a
- cock that crows shrilly from one of the coops, imagining the ship's
- lights to be dawn, the night goes by. One sleeps--but a bad sleep. If
- only there were cold air, not this lower-berth, inside cabin
- airlessness.
- VIII.
- BACK.
- The sea being steady as a level road, nobody succeeded in being
- violently sick. My young men rose at dawn--I was not long in following.
- It was a gray morning on deck, a gray sea, a gray sky, and a gray,
- spider-cloth, unimportant coast of Italy not far away. The q-b joined
- me: and quite delighted with her fellow-passenger: such a nice girl, she
- said! who, when she let down her ordinary-looking brown hair, it reached
- rippling right to her feet! Voilà ! You never know your luck.
- The cock that had crowed all night crowed again, hoarsely, with a sore
- throat. The miserable cattle looked more wearily miserable, but still
- were motionless, as sponges that grow at the bottom of the sea. The
- convicts were out for air: grinning. Someone told us they were
- war-deserters. Considering the light in which these people look on war,
- desertion seemed to me the only heroism. But the q-b, brought up in a
- military air, gazed upon them as upon men miraculously alive within the
- shadow of death. According to her code they had been shot when
- re-captured. The soldiers had unslung the tarpaulin, their home for the
- night had melted with the darkness, they were mere fragments of gray
- transit smoking cigarettes and staring overboard.
- We drew near to Cività Vecchia: the old, mediaeval looking port, with
- its castle, and a round fortress-barracks at the entrance. Soldiers
- aboard shouted and waved to soldiers on the ramparts. We backed
- insignificantly into the rather scrubby, insignificant harbour. And in
- five minutes we were out, and walking along the wide, desolate boulevard
- to the station. The cab-men looked hard at us: but no doubt owing to the
- knapsack, took us for poor Germans.
- * * * * *
- Coffee and milk--and then, only about three-quarters of an hour late,
- the train from the north. It is the night express from Turin. There was
- plenty of room--so in we got, followed by half a dozen Sardinians. We
- found a large, heavy Torinese in the carriage, his eyes dead with
- fatigue. It seemed quite a new world on the mainland: and at once one
- breathed again the curious suspense that is in the air. Once more I read
- the Corriere della Sera from end to end. Once more we knew ourselves in
- the real active world, where the air seems like a lively wine
- dissolving the pearl of the old order. I hope, dear reader, you like the
- metaphor. Yet I cannot forbear repeating how strongly one is sensible of
- the solvent property of the atmosphere, suddenly arriving on the
- mainland again. And in an hour one changes one's psyche. The human being
- is a most curious creature. He thinks he has got one soul, and he has
- got dozens. I felt my sound Sardinian soul melting off me, I felt myself
- evaporating into the real Italian uncertainty and momentaneity. So I
- perused the Corriere whilst the metamorphosis took place. I like Italian
- newspapers because they say what they mean, and not merely what is most
- convenient to say. We call it naïveté--I call it manliness. Italian
- newspapers read as if they were written by men, and not by calculating
- eunuchs.
- * * * * *
- The train ran very heavily along the Maremma. It began to rain. Then we
- stopped at a station where we should not stop--somewhere in the Maremma
- country, the invisible sea not far off, the low country cultivated and
- yet forlorn. Oh how the Turin man sighed, and wearily shifted his feet
- as the train stood meaningless. There it sat--in the rain. Oh express!
- At last on again, till we were winding through the curious long troughs
- of the Roman Campagna. There the shepherds minded the sheep: the
- slender-footed merino sheep. In Sardinia the merinos were very white and
- glistening, so that one thought of the Scriptural "white as wool." And
- the black sheep among the flock were very black. But these Campagna were
- no longer white, but dingy. And though the wildness of the Campagna is a
- real wildness still, it is a historic wildness, familiar in its way as a
- fireside is familiar.
- So we approach the hopeless sprawling of modern Rome--over the yellow
- Tiber, past the famous pyramid tomb, skirting the walls of the city,
- till at last we plunge in, into the well-known station, out of all the
- chaos.
- We are late. It is a quarter to twelve. And I have to go out and change
- money, and I hope to find my two friends.--The q-b and I dash down the
- platform--no friends at the barrier. The station moderately empty. We
- bolt across to the departure platforms. The Naples train stands ready.
- In we pitch our bags, ask a naval man not to let anyone steal them, then
- I fly out into town while the q-b buys food and wine at the buffet.
- It no longer rains, and Rome feels as ever--rather holiday-like and not
- inclined to care about anything. I get a hundred and three lira for each
- pound note: pocket my money at two minutes past twelve, and bolt back,
- out of the Piazza delle Terme. Aha, there are the two missing ones, just
- descending vaguely from a carriage, the one gazing inquiringly through
- his monocle across the tram-lines, the other very tall and alert and
- elegant, looking as if he expected us to appear out of the air for his
- convenience.
- Which is exactly what happens. We fly into each other's arms. "Oh there
- you _are_! Where's the q-b? Why are you here? We've been to the arrival
- platform--no _sign_ of you. Of course I only got your wire half an hour
- ago. We _flew_ here. Well, how nice to see you.--Oh, let the man
- wait.--What, going on at once to Naples? But must you? Oh, but how
- flighty you are! Birds of passage _veramente_! Then let us find the q-b,
- quick!--And they won't let us on the platform. No, they're not issuing
- platform tickets today.--Oh, merely the guests returning from that
- Savoy-Bavarian wedding in the north, a few royal Duchesses about. Oh
- well, we must try and wangle him."
- At the barrier a woman trying in vain to be let on to the station. But
- what a Roman matron can't do, an elegant young Englishman can. So our
- two heroes wangle their way in, and fall into the arms of the q-b by the
- Naples train. Well, now, tell us all about it! So we rush into a
- four-branched candlestick of conversation. In my ear murmurs he of the
- monocle about the Sahara--he is back from the Sahara a week ago: the
- winter sun in the Sahara! He with the smears of paint on his elegant
- trousers is giving the q-b a sketchy outline of his now _grande
- passion_. Click goes the exchange, and him of the monocle is detailing
- to the q-b his trip to Japan, on which he will start in six weeks' time,
- while him of the paint-smears is expatiating on the thrills of the
- etching needle, and concocting a plan for a month in Sardinia in May,
- with me doing the scribbles and he the pictures. What sort of pictures?
- Out flies the name of Goya.--And well now, a general rush into oneness,
- and won't they come down to Sicily to us for the almond blossom: in
- about ten days' time. Yes they will--wire when the almond blossom is
- just stepping on the stage and making its grand bow, and they will come
- next day. Somebody has smitten the wheel of a coach two ringing smacks
- with a hammer. This is a sign to get in. The q-b is terrified the train
- will slip through her fingers. "I'm frightened, I must get in."--"Very
- well then! You're sure you have everything you want? Everything? A
- fiasco of vino? Oh _two_! All the better! Well then--ten days' time. All
- right--quite sure--how nice to have seen you, if only a
- _glimpse_.--Yes, yes, poor q-b! Yes, you're quite safe. Good-bye!
- Good-bye!"
- The door is shut--we are seated--the train moves out of the station. And
- quickly on this route Rome disappears. We are out on the wintry
- Campagna, where crops are going. Away on the left we see the Tivoli
- hills, and think of the summer that is gone, the heat, the fountains of
- the Villa D'Este. The train rolls heavily over the Campagna, towards the
- Alban Mounts, homewards.
- * * * * *
- So we fall on our food, and devour the excellent little beef-steaks and
- rolls and boiled eggs, apples and oranges and dates, and drink the good
- red wine, and wildly discuss plans and the latest news, and are
- altogether thrilled about things. So thrilled that we are well away
- among the romantic mountains of the south-centre before we realise that
- there are other passengers besides ourselves in the carriage. Half the
- journey is over. Why, there is the monastery on its high hill! In a wild
- moment I suggest we shall get down and spend a night up there at
- Montecassino, and see the other friend, the monk who knows so much about
- the world, being out of it. But the q-b shudders, thinking of the awful
- winter coldness of that massive stone monastery, which has no spark of
- heating apparatus. And therefore the plan subsides, and at Cassino
- station I only get down to procure coffee and sweet cakes. They always
- have good things to eat at Cassino station: in summer, big fresh ices
- and fruits and iced water, in winter toothsome sweet cakes which make an
- awfully good finish to a meal.
- * * * * *
- I count Cassino half way to Naples. After Cassino the excitement of
- being in the north begins quite to evaporate. The southern heaviness
- descends upon us. Also the sky begins to darken: and the rain falls. I
- think of the night before us, on the sea again. And I am vaguely
- troubled lest we may not get a berth. However, we may spend the night in
- Naples: or even sit on in this train, which goes forward, all through
- the long long night, to the Straits of Messina. We must decide as we
- near Naples.
- Half dozing, one becomes aware of the people about one. We are
- travelling second class. Opposite is a little, hold-your-own
- school-mistressy young person in pince-nez. Next her a hollow-cheeked
- white soldier with ribbons on his breast. Then a fat man in a corner.
- Then a naval officer of low rank. The naval officer is coming from
- Fiume, and is dead with sleep and perhaps mortification. D'Annunzio has
- just given up. Two compartments away we hear soldiers singing, martial
- still though bruised with fatigue, the D'Annunzio-bragging songs of
- Fiume. They are soldiers of the D'Annunzio legion. And one of them, I
- hear the sick soldier saying, is very hot and republican still. Private
- soldiers are not allowed, with their reduced tickets, to travel on the
- express trains. But these legionaries are not penniless: they have paid
- the excess and come along. For the moment they are sent to their homes.
- And with heads dropping with fatigue, we hear them still defiantly
- singing down the carriage for D'Annunzio.
- A regular officer went along--a captain of the Italian, not the Fiume
- army. He heard the chants and entered the carriage. The legionaries were
- quiet, but they lounged and ignored the entry of the officer. "On your
- feet!" he yelled, Italian fashion. The vehemence did it. Reluctantly as
- may be, they stood up in the compartment. "Salute!" And though it was
- bitter, up went their hands in the salute, whilst he stood and watched
- them. And then, very superb, he sauntered away again. They sat down
- glowering. Of course they were beaten. Didn't they know it. The men in
- our carriage smiled curiously: in slow and futile mockery of both
- parties.
- The rain was falling outside, the windows were steamed quite dense, so
- that we were shut in from the world. Throughout the length of the
- train, which was not very full, could be felt the exhausted weariness
- and the dispirited dejection of the poor D'Annunzio legionaries. In the
- afternoon silence of the mist-enclosed, half-empty train the snatches of
- song broke out again, and faded in sheer dispirited fatigue. We ran on
- blindly and heavily. But one young fellow was not to be abashed. He was
- well-built, and his thick black hair was brushed up, like a great fluffy
- crest upon his head. He came slowly and unabated down the corridor, and
- on every big, mist-opaque pane he scrawled with his finger W D'ANNUNZIO
- GABRIELE--W D'ANNUNZIO GABRIELE.
- The sick soldier laughed thinly, saying to the schoolmistress: "Oh yes,
- they are fine chaps. But it was folly. D'Annunzio is a world poet--a
- world wonder--but Fiume was a mistake you know. And these chaps have got
- to learn a lesson. They got beyond themselves. Oh, they aren't short of
- money. D'Annunzio had wagon-loads of money there in Fiume, and he wasn't
- altogether mean with it." The schoolmistress, who was one of the sharp
- ones, gave a little disquisition to show _why_ it was a mistake, and
- wherein she knew better than the world's poet and wonder.
- It always makes me sick to hear people chewing over newspaper pulp.
- The sick soldier was not a legionary. He had been wounded through the
- lung. But it was healed, he said. He lifted the flap of his breast
- pocket, and there hung a little silver medal. It was his wound-medal. He
- wore it concealed: and over the place of the wound. He and the
- schoolmistress looked at one another significantly.
- Then they talked pensions: and soon were on the old topic. The
- schoolmistress had her figures pat, as a schoolmistress should. Why, the
- ticket-collector, the man who punches one's tickets on the train, now
- had twelve thousand Lira a year: twelve thousand Lira. Monstrous! Whilst
- a fully-qualified _professore_, a schoolmaster who had been through all
- his training and had all his degrees, was given five thousand. Five
- thousand for a fully qualified _professore_, and twelve thousand for a
- ticket puncher. The soldier agreed, and quoted other figures. But the
- railway was the outstanding grievance. Every boy who left school now,
- said the schoolmistress, wanted to go on the railway. Oh but--said the
- soldier--the train-men--!
- * * * * *
- The naval officer, who collapsed into the most uncanny positions, blind
- with sleep, got down at Capua to get into a little train that would
- carry him back to his own station, where our train had not stopped. At
- Caserta the sick soldier got out. Down the great avenue of trees the
- rain was falling. A young man entered. Remained also the schoolmistress
- and the stout man. Knowing we had been listening, the schoolmistress
- spoke to us about the soldier. Then--she had said she was catching the
- night boat for Palermo--I asked her if she thought the ship would be
- very full. Oh yes, very full, she said. Why, hers was one of the last
- cabin numbers, and she had got her ticket early that morning. The fat
- man now joined in. He too was crossing to Palermo. The ship was sure to
- be quite full by now. Were we depending on booking berths at the port of
- Naples? We were. Whereupon he and the schoolmistress shook their heads
- and said it was more than doubtful--nay, it was as good as impossible.
- For the boat was the renowned _Città di Trieste_, that floating palace,
- and such was the fame of her gorgeousness that everybody wanted to
- travel by her.
- "First and second class alike?" I asked.
- "Oh yes, also first class," replied the school-marm rather spitefully.
- So I knew she had a white ticket--second.
- I cursed the _Città di Trieste_ and her gorgeousness, and looked down my
- nose. We had now two alternatives: to spend the night in Naples, or to
- sit on all through the night and next morning, and arrive home, with
- heaven's aid, in the early afternoon. Though these long-distance trains
- think nothing of six hours late. But we were tired already. What we
- should be like after another twenty-four hours' sitting, heaven knows.
- And yet to struggle for a bed in a Naples hotel this night, in the rain,
- all the hotels being at present crammed with foreigners, that was no
- rosy prospect. Oh dear!
- However, I was not going to take their discouragement so easily. One has
- been had that way before. They love to make the case look desperate.
- Were we English? asked the schoolmistress. We were. Ah, a fine thing to
- be English in Italy now. _Why?_--rather tart from me. Because of the
- _cambio_, the exchange. You English, with your money exchange, you come
- here and buy everything for nothing, you take the best of everything,
- and with your money you pay nothing for it. Whereas we poor Italians we
- pay heavily for everything at an exaggerated price, and we can have
- nothing. Ah, it is all very nice to be English in Italy now. You can
- travel, you go to the hotels, you can see everything and buy everything,
- and it costs you nothing. What is the exchange today? She whipped it
- out. A hundred and four, twenty.
- This she told me to my nose. And the fat man murmured bitterly _già !
- già !_--ay! ay! Her impertinence and the fat man's quiet bitterness
- stirred my bile. Has not this song been sung at me once too often, by
- these people?
- You are mistaken, said I to the schoolmistress. We don't by any means
- live in Italy for nothing. Even with the exchange at a hundred and
- three, we don't live for nothing. We pay, and pay through the nose, for
- whatever we have in Italy: and you Italians see that we pay. What! You
- put all the tariff you do on foreigners, and then say we live here for
- nothing. I tell you I could live in England just as well, on the same
- money--perhaps better. Compare the cost of things in England with the
- cost here in Italy, and even considering the exchange, Italy costs
- nearly as much as England. Some things are cheaper here--the railway
- comes a little cheaper, and is infinitely more miserable. Travelling is
- usually a misery. But other things, clothes of all sorts, and a good
- deal of food is even more expensive here than in England, exchange
- considered.
- Oh yes, she said, England had had to bring her prices down this last
- fortnight. In her own interests indeed.
- "This last fortnight! This last six months," said I. "Whereas prices
- rise every single day here."
- Here a word from the quiet young man who had got in at Caserta.
- "Yes," he said, "yes. I say, every nation pays in its own money, no
- matter what the exchange. And it works out about equal."
- But I felt angry. Am I always to have the exchange flung in my teeth, as
- if I were a personal thief? But the woman persisted.
- "Ah," she said, "we Italians, we are so nice, we are so good. Noi, siamo
- così buoni. We are so good-natured. But others, they are not buoni, they
- are not good-natured to us." And she nodded her head. And truly, I did
- not feel at all good-natured towards her: which she knew. And as for the
- Italian good-nature, it forms a sound and unshakeable basis nowadays for
- their extortion and self-justification and spite.
- * * * * *
- Darkness was falling over the rich flat plains that lie around Naples,
- over the tall uncanny vines with their brown thongs in the intensely
- cultivated black earth. It was night by the time we were in that vast
- and thievish station. About half-past five. We were not very late.
- Should we sit on in our present carriage, and go down in it to the port,
- along with the schoolmistress, and risk it? But first look at the coach
- which was going on to Sicily. So we got down and ran along the train to
- the Syracuse coach. Hubbub, confusion, a wedge in the corridor, and for
- sure no room. Certainly no room to lie down a bit. We _could_ not sit
- tight for twenty-four hours more.
- So we decided to go to the port--and to walk. Heaven knows when the
- railway carriage would be shunted down. Back we went therefore for the
- sack, told the schoolmistress our intention.
- "You can but try," she said frostily.
- * * * * *
- So there we are, with the sack over my shoulder and the kitchenino in
- the q-b's hand, bursting out of that thrice-damned and annoying station,
- and running through the black wet gulf of a Naples night, in a slow
- rain. Cabmen look at us. But my sack saved me. I am weary of that
- boa-constrictor, a Naples cabman after dark. By day there is
- more-or-less a tariff.
- It is about a mile from the station to the quay where the ship lies. We
- make our way through the deep, gulf-like streets, over the slippery
- black cobbles. The black houses rise massive to a great height on either
- side, but the streets are not in this part very narrow. We plunge
- forwards in the unearthly half-darkness of this great uncontrolled city.
- There are no lights at all from the buildings--only the small electric
- lamps of the streets.
- So we emerge on the harbour front, and hurry past the great storehouses
- in the rainy night, to where the actual entrances begin. The tram bangs
- past us. We scuffle along that pavement-ridge which lies like an isthmus
- down the vast black quicksands of that harbour road. One feels peril all
- round. But at length we come to a gate by the harbour railway. No, not
- that. On to the next iron gate of the railway crossing. And so we run
- out past the great sheds and the buildings of the port station, till we
- see a ship rearing in front, and the sea all black. But now where is
- that little hole where one gets the tickets? We are at the back of
- everywhere in this desert jungle of the harbour darkness.
- * * * * *
- A man directs us round the corner--and actually does not demand money.
- It is the sack again. So--there, I see the knot of men, soldiers
- chiefly, fighting in a bare room round a tiny wicket. I recognise the
- place where I have fought before.
- So while the q-b stands guard over sack and bag, I plunge into the fray.
- It literally is a fight. Some thirty men all at once want to get at a
- tiny wicket in a blank wall. There are no queue-rails, there is no
- order: just a hole in a blank wall, and thirty fellows, mostly military,
- pressing at it in a mass. But I have done this before. The way is to
- insert the thin end of oneself, and without any violence, by deadly
- pressure and pertinacity come at the goal. One hand must be kept fast
- over the money pocket, and one must be free to clutch the wicket-side
- when one gets there. And thus one is ground small in those mills of God,
- Demos struggling for tickets. It isn't very nice--so close, so
- incomparably crushed. And never for a second must one be off one's guard
- for one's watch and money and even hanky. When I first came to Italy
- after the war I was robbed twice in three weeks, floating round in the
- sweet old innocent confidence in mankind. Since then I have never ceased
- to be on my guard. Somehow or other, waking and sleeping one's spirit
- must be on its guard nowadays. Which is really what I prefer, now I have
- learnt it. Confidence in the goodness of mankind is a very thin
- protection indeed. _Integer vitae scelerisque purus_ will do nothing for
- you when it comes to humanity, however efficacious it may be with lions
- and wolves. Therefore, tight on my guard, like a screw biting into a bit
- of wood, I bite my way through that knot of fellows, to the wicket, and
- shout for two first-class. The clerk inside ignores me for some time,
- serving soldiers. But if you stand like Doomsday you get your way. Two
- firsts, says the clerk. Husband and wife, say I, in case there is a
- two-berth cabin. Jokes behind. But I get my tickets. Impossible to put
- my hand to my pocket. The tickets cost about a hundred and five francs
- each. Clutching paper change and the green slips, with a last gasp I get
- out of the knot. So--we've done it. As I sort my money and stow away, I
- hear another ask for one first-class. Nothing left, says the clerk. So
- you see how one must fight.
- I must say for these dense and struggling crowds, they are only intense,
- not violent, and not in the least brutal. I always feel a certain
- sympathy with the men in them.
- * * * * *
- Bolt through the pouring rain to the ship. And in two minutes we are
- aboard. And behold, each of us has a deck cabin, I one to myself, the
- q-b to herself next door. Palatial--not a cabin at all, but a proper
- little bedroom with a curtained bed under the porthole windows, a
- comfortable sofa, chairs, table, carpets, big wash-bowls with silver
- taps--a whole _de luxe_. I dropped the sack on the sofa with a gasp,
- drew back the yellow curtains of the bed, looked out of the porthole at
- the lights of Naples, and sighed with relief. One could wash thoroughly,
- refreshingly, and change one's linen. Wonderful!
- * * * * *
- The state-room is like a hotel lounge, many little tables with flowers
- and periodicals, arm-chairs, warm carpet, bright but soft lights, and
- people sitting about chatting. A loud group of English people in one
- corner, very assured: two quiet English ladies: various Italians seeming
- quite modest. Here one could sit in peace and rest, pretending to look
- at an illustrated magazine. So we rested. After about an hour there
- entered a young Englishman and his wife, whom we had seen on our train.
- So, at last the coach had been shunted down to the port. Where should we
- have been had we waited!
- * * * * *
- The waiters began to flap the white table-cloths and spread the tables
- nearest the walls. Dinner would begin at half-past seven, immediately
- the boat started. We sat in silence, till eight or nine tables were
- spread. Then we let the other people take their choice. After which we
- chose a table by ourselves, neither of us wanting company. So we sat
- before the plates and the wine-bottles and sighed in the hopes of a
- decent meal. Food by the way is not included in the hundred-and-five
- francs.
- Alas, we were not to be alone: two young Neapolitans, pleasant, quiet,
- blond, or semi-blond. They were well-bred, and evidently of northern
- extraction. Afterwards we found out they were jewellers. But I liked
- their quiet, gentle manners. The dinner began, and we were through the
- soup, when up pranced another young fellow, rather strapping and loud, a
- commercial traveller, for sure. He had those cocky assured manners of
- one who is not sure of his manners. He had a rather high forehead, and
- black hair brushed up in a showy wing, and a large ring on his finger.
- Not that a ring signifies anything. Here most of the men wear several,
- all massively jewelled. If one believed in all the jewels, why Italy
- would be more fabulous than fabled India. But our friend the bounder was
- smart, and smelled of cash. Not money, but cash.
- I had an inkling of what to expect when he handed the salt and said in
- English "Salt, thenk you." But I ignored the advance. However, he did
- not wait long. Through the windows across the room the q-b saw the
- lights of the harbour slowly moving. "Oh," she cried, "are we going?"
- And also in Italian: "Partiamo?" All watched the lights, the bounder
- screwing round. He had one of the fine, bounderish backs.
- "Yes," he said. "We--_going_."
- "Oh," cried she. "Do you speak English?"
- "Ye-es. Some English--I speak."
- As a matter of fact he spoke about forty disconnected words. But his
- accent was so good for these forty. He did not speak English, he
- imitated an English voice making sounds. And the effect was startling.
- He had served on the Italian front with the Scots Guards--so he told us
- in Italian. He was Milanese. Oh, he had had a time with the Scots
- Guards. Wheesky--eh? Wheesky.
- "Come along _bhoys_!" he shouted.
- And it was such a Scotch voice shouting, so loud-mouthed and actual, I
- nearly went under the table. It struck us both like a blow.
- Afterwards he rattled away without misgiving. He was a traveller for a
- certain type of machine, and was doing Sicily. Shortly he was going to
- England--and he asked largely about first-class hotels. Then he asked
- was the q-b French?--Was she Italian?--No, she was German. Ah--German.
- And immediately out he came with the German word: "Deutsch! Deutsch, eh?
- From Deutschland. Oh yes! Deutschland über alles! Ah, I know. No
- more--what? Deutschland unter alles now? Deutschland unter alles." And
- he bounced on his seat with gratification of the words. Of German as of
- English he knew half a dozen phrases.
- "No," said the q-b, "Not Deutschland unter alles. Not for long,
- anyhow."
- "How? Not for long? You think so? I think so too," said the bounder.
- Then in Italian: "La Germania won't stand under all for long. No, no. At
- present it is England über alles. _England über alles._ But Germany will
- rise up again."
- "Of course," said the q-b. "How shouldn't she?"
- "Ah," said the bounder, "while England keeps the money in her pocket, we
- shall none of us rise up. Italy won the war, and Germany lost it. And
- Italy and Germany they both are down, and England is up. They both are
- down, and England is up. England and France. Strange, isn't it? Ah, the
- allies. What are the allies for? To keep England up, and France half
- way, and Germany and Italy down."
- "Ah, they won't stay down for ever," said the q-b.
- "You think not? Ah! We will see. We will see how England goes on now."
- "England is not going on so marvellously, after all," say I.
- "How not? You mean Ireland?"
- "No, not only Ireland. Industry altogether. England is as near to ruin
- as other countries."
- "Ma! With all the money, and we others with no money? How will she be
- ruined?"
- "And what good would it be to you if she were?"
- "Oh well--who knows. If England were ruined--" a slow smile of
- anticipation spread over his face. How he would love it--how they would
- all love it, if England were ruined. That is, the business part of them,
- perhaps, would not love it. But the human part would. The human part
- fairly licks its lips at the thought of England's ruin. The commercial
- part, however, quite violently disclaims the anticipations of the human
- part. And there it is. The newspapers chiefly speak with the commercial
- voice. But individually, when you are got at in a railway carriage or as
- now on a ship, up speaks the human voice, and you know how they love
- you. This is no doubt inevitable. When the exchange stands at a hundred
- and six men go humanly blind, I suppose, however much they may keep the
- commercial eye open. And having gone humanly blind they bump into one's
- human self nastily: a nasty jar. You know then how they hate you.
- Underneath, they hate us, and as human beings we are objects of envy and
- malice. They hate us, with envy, and despise us, with jealousy. Which
- perhaps doesn't hurt commercially. Humanly it is to me unpleasant.
- The dinner was over, and the bounder was lavishing cigarettes--Murattis,
- if you please. We had all drunk two bottles of wine. Two other
- commercial travellers had joined the bounder at our table--two smart
- young fellows, one a bounder and one gentle and nice. Our two jewellers
- remained quiet, talking their share, but quietly and so sensitively. One
- could not help liking them. So we were seven people, six men.
- "Wheesky! Will you drink Wheesky, Mister?" said our original bounder.
- "Yes, one small Scotch! One Scotch Wheesky." All this in a perfect
- Scotty voice of a man standing at a bar calling for a drink. It was
- comical, one could not but laugh: and very impertinent. He called for
- the waiter, took him by the button-hole, and with a breast-to-breast
- intimacy asked if there was whisky. The waiter, with the same tone of
- you-and-I-are-men-who-have-the-same-feelings, said he didn't think there
- was whisky, but he would look. Our bounder went round the table inviting
- us all to whiskies, and pressing on us his expensive English cigarettes
- with great aplomb.
- The whisky came--and five persons partook. It was fiery, oily stuff from
- heaven knows where. The bounder rattled away, spouting his bits of
- English and his four words of German. He was in high feather, wriggling
- his large haunches on his chair and waving his hands. He had a peculiar
- manner of wriggling from the bottom of his back, with fussy
- self-assertiveness. It was my turn to offer whisky.
- I was able in a moment's lull to peer through the windows and see the
- dim lights of Capri--the glimmer of Anacapri up on the black
- shadow--the lighthouse. We had passed the island. In the midst of the
- babel I sent out a few thoughts to a few people on the island. Then I
- had to come back.
- The bounder had once more resumed his theme of l'Inghilterra, l'Italia,
- la Germania. He swanked England as hard as he could. Of course England
- was the top dog, and if he could speak some English, if he were talking
- to English people, and if, as he said, he was going to England in April,
- why he was so much the more top-doggy than his companions, who could not
- rise to all these heights. At the same time, my nerves had too much to
- bear.
- Where were we going and where had we been and where did we live? And ah,
- yes, English people lived in Italy. Thousands, thousands of English
- people lived in Italy. Yes, it was very nice for them. There used to be
- many Germans, but now the Germans were down. But the English--what could
- be better for them than Italy now: they had sun, they had warmth, they
- had abundance of everything, they had a charming people to deal with,
- and they had the _cambio_! Ecco! The other commercial travellers agreed.
- They appealed to the q-b if it was not so. And altogether I had enough
- of it.
- "Oh yes," said I, "it's very nice to be in Italy: especially if you are
- not living in an hotel, and you have to attend to things for yourself.
- It is very nice to be overcharged every time, and then insulted if you
- say a word. It's very nice to have the _cambio_ thrown in your teeth, if
- you say two words to any Italian, even a perfect stranger. It's very
- nice to have waiters and shop-people and railway porters sneering in a
- bad temper and being insulting in small, mean ways all the time. It's
- very nice to feel what they all feel against you. And if you understand
- enough Italian, it's very nice to hear what they say when you've gone
- by. Oh very nice. Very nice indeed!"
- I suppose the whisky had kindled this outburst in me. They sat dead
- silent. And then our bounder began, in his sugary deprecating voice.
- "Why no! Why no! It is not true, signore. No, it is not true. Why,
- England is the foremost nation in the world--"
- "And you want to pay her out for it."
- "But no, signore. But no. What makes you say so? Why, we Italians are so
- good-natured. Noi Italiani siamo così buoni. Siamo così buoni."
- It was the identical words of the schoolmistress.
- "Buoni," said I. "Yes--perhaps. Buoni when it's not a question of the
- exchange and of money. But since it is always a question of _cambio_
- and _soldi_ now, one is always, in a small way, insulted."
- I suppose it must have been the whisky. Anyhow Italians can never bear
- hard bitterness. The jewellers looked distressed, the bounders looked
- down their noses, half exulting even now, and half sheepish, being
- caught. The third of the _commis voyageurs_, the gentle one, made large
- eyes and was terrified that he was going to be sick. He represented a
- certain Italian liqueur, and he modestly asked us to take a glass of it.
- He went with the waiter to secure the proper brand. So we drank--and it
- was good. But he, the giver, sat with large and haunted eyes. Then he
- said he would go to bed. Our bounder gave him various advice regarding
- seasickness. There was a mild swell on the sea. So he of the liqueur
- departed.
- * * * * *
- Our bounder thrummed on the table and hummed something, and asked the
- q-b if she knew the _Rosencavalier_. He always appealed to her. She said
- she did. And ah, he was passionately fond of music, said he. Then he
- warbled, in a head voice, a bit more. He only knew classical music, said
- he. And he mewed a bit of Moussorgsky. The q-b said Moussorgsky was her
- favourite musician, for opera. Ah, cried the bounder, if there were but
- a piano!--There is a piano, said his mate.--Yes, he replied, but it is
- locked up.--Then let us get the key, said his mate, with aplomb. The
- waiters, being men with the same feelings as our two, would give them
- anything. So the key was forthcoming. We paid our bills--mine about
- sixty francs. Then we went along the faintly rolling ship, up the curved
- staircase to the drawing room. Our bounder unlocked the door of this
- drawing room, and switched on the lights.
- It was quite a pleasant room, with deep divans upholstered in pale
- colours, and palm-trees standing behind little tables, and a black
- upright piano. Our bounder sat on the piano-stool and gave us an
- exhibition. He splashed out noise on the piano in splashes, like water
- splashing out of a pail. He lifted his head and shook his black mop of
- hair, and yelled out some fragments of opera. And he wriggled his large,
- bounder's back upon the piano stool, wriggling upon his well-filled
- haunches. Evidently he had a great deal of feeling for music: but very
- little prowess. He yelped it out, and wriggled, and splashed the piano.
- His friend the other bounder, a quiet one in a pale suit, with stout
- limbs, older than the wriggler, stood by the piano whilst the young one
- exhibited. Across the space of carpet sat the two brother jewellers,
- deep in a divan, their lean, semi-blond faces quite inscrutable. The
- q-b sat next to me, asking for this and that music, none of which the
- wriggler could supply. He knew four scraps, and a few splashes--not
- more. The elder bounder stood near him quietly comforting, encouraging,
- and admiring him, as a lover encouraging and admiring his _ingénue_
- betrothed. And the q-b sat bright-eyed and excited, admiring that a man
- could perform so unself-consciously self-conscious, and give himself
- away with such generous wriggles. For my part, as you may guess, I did
- not admire.
- I had had enough. Rising, I bowed and marched off. The q-b came after
- me. Good-night, said I, at the head of the corridor. She turned in, and
- I went round the ship to look at the dark night of the sea.
- * * * * *
- Morning came sunny with pieces of cloud: and the Sicilian coast towering
- pale blue in the distance. How wonderful it must have been to Ulysses to
- venture into this Mediterranean and open his eyes on all the loveliness
- of the tall coasts. How marvellous to steal with his ship into these
- magic harbours. There is something eternally morning-glamourous about
- these lands as they rise from the sea. And it is always the Odyssey
- which comes back to one as one looks at them. All the lovely
- morning-wonder of this world, in Homer's day!
- Our bounder was dashing about on deck, in one of those rain-coats
- gathered in at the waist and ballooning out into skirts below the waist.
- He greeted me with a cry of "It's a long, long way to Tipperary." "Very
- long," said I. "Good-bye Piccadilly--" he continued. "Ciao," said I, as
- he dashed jauntily down the steps. Soon we saw the others as well. But
- it was morning, and I simply did not want to speak to them--except just
- Good-day. For my life I couldn't say two more words to any of them this
- morning: except to ask the mild one if he had been sick. He had not.
- So we waited for the great _Città di Trieste_ to float her way into
- Palermo harbour. It looked so near--the town there, the great circle of
- the port, the mass of the hills crowding round. Panormus, the
- All-harbour. I wished the bulky steamer would hurry up. For I hated her
- now. I hated her swankiness, she seemed made for commercial travellers
- with cash. I hated the big picture that filled one end of the
- state-room: an elegant and ideal peasant-girl, a sort of Italia,
- strolling on a lovely and ideal cliff's edge, among myriad blooms, and
- carrying over her arm, in a most sophisticated fashion, a bough of
- almond blossom and a sheaf of anemones. I hated the waiters, and the
- cheap elegance, the common _de luxe_. I disliked the people, who all
- turned their worst, cash-greasy sides outwards on this ship. Vulgar,
- vulgar post-war commercialism and dog-fish money-stink. I longed to get
- off. And the bloated boat edged her way so slowly into the port, and
- then more slowly still edged round her fat stern. And even then we were
- kept for fifteen minutes waiting for someone to put up the gangway for
- the first class. The second class, of course, were streaming off and
- melting like thawed snow into the crowds of onlookers on the quay, long
- before we were allowed to come off.
- * * * * *
- Glad, glad I was to get off that ship: I don't know why, for she was
- clean and comfortable and the attendants were perfectly civil. Glad,
- glad I was not to share the deck with any more commercial travellers.
- Glad I was to be on my own feet, independent. No, I would _not_ take a
- carriage. I carried my sack on my back to the hotel, looking with a
- jaundiced eye on the lethargic traffic of the harbour front. It was
- about nine o'clock.
- * * * * *
- Later on, when I had slept, I thought as I have thought before, the
- Italians are not to blame for their spite against us. We, England, have
- taken upon ourselves for so long the rôle of leading nation. And if now,
- in the war or after the war, we have led them all into a real old
- swinery--which we have, notwithstanding all Entente cant--then they have
- a legitimate grudge against us. If you take upon yourself to lead, you
- must expect the mud to be thrown at you if you lead into a nasty morass.
- Especially if, once in the bog, you think of nothing else but scrambling
- out over other poor devils' backs. Pretty behaviour of great nations!
- And still, for all that, I must insist that I am a single human being,
- an individual, not a mere national unit, a mere chip of l'Inghilterra or
- la Germania. I am not a chip of any nasty old block. I am myself.
- * * * * *
- In the evening the q-b insisted on going to the marionettes, for which
- she has a sentimental passion. So the three of us--we were with the
- American friend once more--chased through dark and tortuous side-streets
- and markets of Palermo in the night, until at last a friendly man led us
- to the place. The back streets of Palermo felt friendly, not huge and
- rather horrible, like Naples near the port.
- The theatre was a little hole opening simply off the street. There was
- no one in the little ticket box, so we walked past the door-screen. A
- shabby old man with a long fennel-stalk hurried up and made us places on
- the back benches, and hushed us when we spoke of tickets. The play was
- in progress. A serpent-dragon was just having a tussle with a knight in
- brilliant brass armour, and my heart came into my mouth. The audience
- consisted mostly of boys, gazing with frantic interest on the bright
- stage. There was a sprinkling of soldiers and elderly men. The place was
- packed--about fifty souls crowded on narrow little ribbons of benches,
- so close one behind the other that the end of the man in front of me
- continually encroached and sat on my knee. I saw on a notice that the
- price of entry was forty centimes.
- We had come in towards the end of the performance, and so sat rather
- bewildered, unable to follow. The story was the inevitable Paladins of
- France--one heard the names _Rinaldo!_ _Orlando!_ again and again. But
- the story was told in dialect, hard to follow.
- I was charmed by the figures. The scene was very simple, showing the
- interior of a castle. But the figures, which were about two-thirds of
- human size, were wonderful in their brilliant, glittering gold armour,
- and their martial prancing motions. All were knights--even the daughter
- of the king of Babylon. She was distinguished only by her long hair. All
- were in the beautiful, glittering armour, with helmets and visors that
- could be let down at will. I am told this armour has been handed down
- for many generations. It certainly is lovely. One actor alone was not
- in armour, the wizard Magicce, or Malvigge, the Merlin of the Paladins.
- He was in a long scarlet robe, edged with fur, and wore a three-cornered
- scarlet hat.
- So we watched the dragon leap and twist and get the knight by the leg:
- and then perish. We watched the knights burst into the castle. We
- watched the wonderful armour-clashing embraces of the delivered knights,
- Orlando and his bosom friend and the little dwarf, clashing their
- armoured breasts to the breasts of their brothers and deliverers. We
- watched the would-be tears flow.--And then the statue of the witch
- suddenly go up in flames, at which a roar of exultation from the boys.
- Then it was over. The theatre was empty in a moment, but the proprietors
- and the two men who sat near us would not let us go. We must wait for
- the next performance.
- My neighbour, a fat, jolly man, told me all about it. His neighbour, a
- handsome tipsy man, kept contradicting and saying it wasn't so. But my
- fat neighbour winked at me, not to take offence.
- This story of the Paladins of France lasted three nights. We had come on
- the middle night--of course. But no matter--each night was a complete
- story. I am sorry I have forgotten the names of the knights. But the
- story was, that Orlando and his friend and the little dwarf, owing to
- the tricks of that same dwarf, who belonged to the Paladins, had been
- captured and immured in the enchanted castle of the ghastly old witch
- who lived on the blood of Christians. It was now the business of Rinaldo
- and the rest of the Paladins, by the help of Magicce the _good_ wizard,
- to release their captured brethren from the ghoulish old witch.
- So much I made out of the fat man's story, while the theatre was
- filling. He knew every detail of the whole Paladin cycle. And it is
- evident the Paladin cycle has lots of versions. For the handsome tipsy
- neighbour kept saying he was wrong, he was wrong, and giving different
- stories, and shouting for a jury to come and say who was right, he or my
- fat friend. A jury gathered, and a storm began to rise. But the stout
- proprietor with a fennel-wand came and quenched the noise, telling the
- handsome tipsy man he knew too much and wasn't asked. Whereupon the
- tipsy one sulked.
- Ah, said my friend, couldn't I come on Friday. Friday was a great night.
- On Friday they were giving I Beati Paoli: The Blessed Pauls. He pointed
- to the walls where were the placards announcing The Blessed Pauls. These
- Pauls were evidently some awful secret society with masking hoods and
- daggers and awful eyes looking through the holes. I said were they
- assassins like the Black Hand. By no means, by no means. The Blessed
- Pauls were a society for the protection of the poor. Their business was
- to track down and murder the oppressive rich. Ah, they were a wonderful,
- a splendid society. Were they, said I, a sort of camorra? Ah, on the
- contrary--here he lapsed into a tense voice--they hated the camorra.
- These, the Blest Pauls, were the powerful and terrible enemy of the
- grand camorra. For the Grand Camorra oppresses the poor. And therefore
- the Pauls track down in secret the leaders of the Grand Camorra, and
- assassinate them, or bring them to the fearful hooded tribunal which
- utters the dread verdict of the Beati Paoli. And when once the Beati
- Paoli have decreed a man's death--all over. Ah bellissimo, bellissimo!
- Why don't I come on Friday?
- It seems to me a queer moral for the urchins thick-packed and gazing at
- the drop scene. They are all males: urchins or men. I ask my fat friend
- why there are no women--no girls. Ah, he says, the theatre is so small.
- But, I say, if there is room for all the boys and men, there is the same
- room for girls and women. Oh no--not in this small theatre. Besides this
- is nothing for women. Not that there is anything improper, he hastens to
- add. Not at all. But what should women and girls be doing at the
- marionette show? It was an affair for males.
- I agreed with him really, and was thankful we hadn't a lot of smirking
- twitching girls and lasses in the audience. This male audience was so
- tense and pure in its attention.
- But hist! the play is going to begin. A lad is grinding a broken
- street-piano under the stage. The padrone yells _Silenzio!_ with a roar,
- and reaching over, pokes obstreperous boys with his long fennel-stalk,
- like a beadle in church. When the curtain rises the piano stops, and
- there is dead silence. On swings a knight, glittering, marching with
- that curious hippety lilt, and gazing round with fixed and martial eyes.
- He begins the prologue, telling us where we are. And dramatically he
- waves his sword and stamps his foot, and wonderfully sounds his male,
- martial, rather husky voice. Then the Paladins, his companions who are
- to accompany him, swing one by one onto the stage, till they are five in
- all, handsome knights, including the Babylonian Princess and the Knight
- of Britain. They stand in a handsome, glittering line. And then comes
- Merlin in his red robe. Merlin has a bright, fair, rather chubby face
- and blue eyes, and seems to typify the northern intelligence. He now
- tells them, in many words, how to proceed and what is to be done.
- So then, the glittering knights are ready. Are they ready? Rinaldo
- flourishes his sword with the wonderful cry "Andiamo!" let us go--and
- the others respond: "Andiamo". Splendid word.
- The first enemy were the knights of Spain, in red kirtles and half
- turbans. With these a terrible fight. First of all rushes in the Knight
- of Britain. He is the boaster, who always in words, does everything. But
- in fact, poor knight of Britain, he falls lamed. The four Paladins have
- stood shoulder to shoulder, glittering, watching the fray. Forth now
- steps another knight, and the fight recommences. Terrible is the
- smacking of swords, terrible the gasps from behind the dropped visors.
- Till at last the knight of Spain falls--and the Paladin stands with his
- foot on the dead. Then loud acclamations from the Paladins, and yells of
- joy from the audience.
- "_Silenzio!_" yells the padrone, flourishing the fennel-stalk.
- Dead silence, and the story goes on. The Knight of Britain of course
- claims to have slain the foe: and the audience faintly, jeeringly
- hisses. "He's always the boaster, and he never does anything, the Knight
- of Britain," whispers my fat friend. He has forgotten my nationality. I
- wonder if the Knight of Britain is pure tradition, or if a political
- touch of today has crept in.
- However, this fray is over--Merlin comes to advise for the next move.
- And are we ready? We are ready. _Andiamo!_ Again the word is yelled out,
- and they set off. At first one is all engaged watching the figures:
- their brilliance, their blank, martial stare, their sudden, angular,
- gestures. There is something extremely suggestive in them. How much
- better they fit the old legend-tales than living people would do. Nay,
- if we are going to have human beings on the stage, they should be masked
- and disguised. For in fact drama is enacted by symbolic creatures formed
- out of human consciousness: puppets if you like: but not human
- _individuals_. Our stage is all wrong, so boring in its personality.
- Gradually, however, I found that my eyes were of minor importance.
- Gradually it was the voice that gained hold of the blood. It is a
- strong, rather husky, male voice that acts direct on the blood, not on
- the mind. Again the old male Adam began to stir at the roots of my soul.
- Again the old, first-hand indifference, the rich, untamed male blood
- rocked down my veins. What does one care? What does one care for precept
- and mental dictation? Is there not the massive brilliant, out-flinging
- recklessness in the male soul, summed up in the sudden word: _Andiamo!_
- Andiamo! Let us go on. Andiamo!--let us go hell knows where, but let us
- go on. The splendid recklessness and passion that knows no precept and
- no school-teacher, whose very molten spontaneity is its own guide.
- I loved the voices of the Paladins--Rinaldo's voice, and Orlando's
- voice: the voice of men once more, men who are not to be tutored. To be
- sure there was Merlin making his long speeches in rather a chuntering,
- prosy tone. But who was he? Was he a Paladin and a splendour? Not he. A
- long-gowned chunterer. It is the reckless blood which achieves all, the
- piff-piff-piffing of the mental and moral intelligence is but a
- subsidiary help, a mere instrument.
- The dragon was splendid: I have seen dragons in Wagner, at Covent Garden
- and at the Prinz-Regenten Theater in Munich, and they were ridiculous.
- But this dragon simply frightened me, with his leaping and twisting. And
- when he seized the knight by the leg, my blood ran cold.
- With smoke and sulphur leaps in Beelzebub. But he is merely the servant
- of the great old witch. He is black and grinning, and he flourishes his
- posterior and his tail. But he is curiously inefficacious: a sort of
- lackey of wicked powers.
- The old witch with her grey hair and staring eyes succeeds in being
- ghastly. With just a touch, she would be a tall, benevolent old lady.
- But listen to her. Hear her horrible female voice with its scraping
- yells of evil lustfulness. Yes, she fills me with horror. And I am
- staggered to find how I believe in her as _the_ evil principle.
- Beelzebub, poor devil, is only one of her instruments.
- It is her old, horrible, grinning female soul which locks up the heroes,
- and which sends forth the awful and almost omnipotent malevolence. This
- old, ghastly woman-spirit is the very core of mischief. And I felt my
- heart getting as hot against her as the hearts of the lads in the
- audience were. Red, deep hate I felt of that symbolic old ghoul-female.
- Poor male Beelzebub is her loutish slave. And it takes all Merlin's
- bright-faced intelligence, and all the surging hot urgency of the
- Paladins, to conquer her.
- She will never be finally destroyed--she will never finally die, till
- her statue, which is immured in the vaults of the castle, is
- burned.--Oh, it was a very psychoanalytic performance altogether, and
- one could give a very good Freudian analysis of it.--But behold this
- image of the witch: this white, submerged _idea_ of woman which rules
- from the deeps of the unconscious. Behold, the reckless, untamable male
- knights will do for it. As the statue goes up in flame--it is only
- paper over wires--the audience yells! And yells again. And would God the
- symbolic act were really achieved. It is only little boys who yell. Men
- merely smile at the trick. They know well enough the white image
- endures.
- So it is over. The knights look at us once more. Orlando, hero of
- heroes, has a slight inward cast of the eyes. This gives him that look
- of almost fierce good-nature which these people adore: the look of a man
- who does not think, but whose heart is all the time red hot with
- burning, generous blood-passion. This is what they adore.
- So my knights go. They all have wonderful faces, and are so splendidly
- glittering and male. I am sorry they will be laid in a box now.
- There is a great gasp of relief. The piano starts its lame rattle.
- Somebody looking round laughs. And we all look round. And seated on the
- top of the ticket office is a fat, solemn urchin of two or three years,
- hands folded over his stomach, his forehead big and blank, like some
- queer little Buddha. The audience laughs with that southern sympathy:
- physical sympathy: that is what they love to feel and to arouse.
- But there is a little after-scene: in front of the drop-curtain jerks
- out a little fat flat caricature of a Neapolitan, and from the opposite
- side jerks the tall caricature of a Sicilian. They jerk towards one
- another and bump into one another with a smack. And smack goes the
- Neapolitan, down on his posterior. And the boys howl with joy. It is the
- eternal collision between the two peoples, Neapolitan and Sicilian. Now
- goes on a lot of fooling between the two clowns, in the two dialects.
- Alas, I can hardly understand anything at all. But it sounds comic, and
- looks very funny. The Neapolitan of course gets most of the knocks. And
- there seems to be no indecency at all--unless once.--The boys howl and
- rock with joy, and no one says Silenzio!
- But it is over. All is over. The theatre empties in a moment. And I
- shake hands with my fat neighbour, affectionately, and in the right
- spirit. Truly I loved them all in the theatre: the generous, hot
- southern blood, so subtle and spontaneous, that asks for blood contact,
- not for mental communion or spirit sympathy. I was sorry to leave them.
- FINIS.
- End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Sea and Sardinia, by D. H. Lawrence
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