There is generally some way of doing anything one really wants to do, and by the time we were separating in Catania, at one o’clock in the morning I was promising to try to return in time for the Festa di S. Alfio.
I was back in Catania before the 9th of May and began talking about S. Alfio in the Teatro Machiavelli. One of the actors whose name is Volpes, the one who did the listening father in the play about Rosina and the good young man, is employed by day in the cathedral, his department being the brass-work; he is therefore something of a hagiologist. He was going on business to Lentini, which is situated to the south of Catania on the way toSiracusa, it is the place where the three saintly brothers were martyred, and there he bought for me a book—Storia dei Martiri e della Chiesa di Lentini, by Sebastiano Pisano Baudo (Lentini: Giuseppe Saluta, 1898)—from which I have collected particulars for this story of the Life of S. Alfio.
Towards the end of the first half of the third century after Christ, at Prefetta in Gascony, the wealthy and noble Prince Vitale lived a life of singular piety, united in matrimony to Benedetta di Locusta. Heaven had blessed them with three sons, Alfio born in 230, Filiberto born one year and eight months later and Cirino born one year and four months later again. Prefetta was not only in Gascony, it was also in Aquitaine, and, notwithstanding this, it was in Spain and also in the Abruzzi, which is a region of Italy between Naples and Taranto, if I understand correctly. Owing to its unsettled habits geographers do not mark it on the maps, but they and the historians are agreed that it certainly existed, and perhaps it exists still, if only in a Castellinarian sense. The interesting point is that it was the birthplace of S. Alfio.
The noble and saintly Benedetta, having been brought up in the school of sacrifice, ardently desired to die for the faith. Her husband placed no obstacle in her way. She obtained an interview with the prefect, abused his gods and awaited the sentence which took the form of decapitation.
Prince Vitale after the death of his wife was free to consecrate himself to the education of his three sons. I expected to find that he had them taught medicine, surgery and chemistry, but there is not a word about any of these subjects. Evodio di Bisanzio, flying from country to country to avoid the persecution of Massimino, happened upon Prefetta; he was welcomed by Vitale, who appointed him tutor of his boys. Evodio was learned in the sacred sciences, the Greek fables and how to live rightly. These were the subjects which he taught to his pupils. Alfio copied out the Books of the Prophets, Filiberto the Gospelsand Cirino the Letters of S. Paul and the Acts of the Apostles. Thus they developed a manly spirit, angelic habits and an intelligence, a piety, a devotion which are the rare gifts of a few privileged souls.
Onesimo was their next tutor, a man of deep learning and a fervent missionary who came to Prefetta with a following of thirteen or fourteen disciples and boarded and lodged with Prince Vitale. He was more the kind of tutor Vitale wanted for his boys. Onesimo had no sympathy with flying from persecution; he took the view that it was not enough to copy the sacred Books, his pupils must know how to sacrifice their frail bodies for the glory of the Cross. He instructed them in the practical work of martyrdom.
In the year 249, Decio ascended the imperial throne and issued an edict against the Christians. Vitale and Onesimo heard of it and welcomed this opportunity for the three brothers who swore on the ashes of their mother that they would profit by it. They did not have to wait long. Nigellione, the imperial minister, came to execute the decree. Onesimo and his pupils, in spite of tortures, professed their unalterable faith in the Cross and were sent to Rome together with fourteen other Christians. Vitale, being thus freed from all family responsibilities, exiled himself with his friends and awaited his end in a sacred retreat so retired that our author does not specify it.
In Rome, Onesimo and his band of Christians suffered tortures. While in prison S. Peter and S. Paul appeared to them, healed their wounds, exhorted them to persevere and promised ultimate victory. On the seventh day they were taken before Valeriano, the imperial minister. Failing, as Nigellione had failed, to shake their faith, he sent them with a letter to Diomede, Prince of Pozzuoli, telling him that if he could not win the captives over from their new faith he was to put to death Onesimo and the fourteen disciples by means of fierce tortures, and to send Alfio, Filiberto and Cirino into Sicily to be dealt with accordingto instructions contained in another letter addressed to the crafty Tertullo, Governor of Sicily, at Lentini.
Diomede carried out his instructions. The Christians all refused to sacrifice to the false gods. Onesimo died in consequence of an unusually large stone being placed upon his chest, the fourteen disciples were decapitated and Alfio, Filiberto and Cirino were handed over to fifty soldiers under Captain Silvano, a man of a proud and cruel nature, and taken in a ship to Messina.
The voyage occupied three days; they reposed in Messina for two hours and then, chained together and barefooted, proceeded to Taormina, where Tertullo happened to be hunting for Christians, and to him Captain Silvano delivered the letter from Valeriano. Tertullo’s instructions were to make the most of his attractive appearance and his agreeable manners and by means of cajolery to persuade the three holy brethren to sacrifice to the gods of Rome; in case of failure he was to cause them to suffer many and various tortures and then to deprive them of their lives.
Tertullo concocted a scheme worthy of the devil. No sooner were the youths brought into his presence than he assumed the appearance of an affectionate father, embraced them and inquired sympathetically about their parents and their home. On their telling him they were Christians he endeavoured, with apparent kindness, to turn them from a faith which had brought them nothing but suffering. He promised that if they would sacrifice to the gods of Rome they should enjoy the pleasures of a court life. But there was none of theParis vaut bien une Messeabout the sons of the saintly Benedetta. They spurned his promises and continued to declare themselves firm believers in the true Cross. Tertullo, defeated and angry, thereupon showed himself in his true colours; he dropped the affectionate parent and ordered the brothers to be tortured. He then sent them with Captain Mercurio and a squadron of forty soldiers to Lentini to await his return to that city.
At Mascali they were fatigued, especially Filiberto, who almost succumbed. They prayed to the Omnipotent and, before they had risen from their knees, the azure heavens became obscured, the wind blew, the thunder roared, the lightning flashed and there was a great rain. The forty soldiers fell upon their faces, frightened nearly to death, and in the tempest onward came a venerable man, believed by all who saw him to be S. Andrea. This personage restored the youths; whereupon the rain ceased, the clouds dispersed, the heavens smiled again and the forty soldiers rose from the ground declaring that the God worshipped by their prisoners must be more powerful than they had supposed.
In those days the usual road from Taormina to Lentini passed along by the seashore, but Captain Mercurio took the three brothers by an inland route passing through Trecastagni, perhaps because the road by the shore was encumbered with lava from an eruption of Etna which occurred in the year 251 or 252. When I came to this I thought of Diodorus Siculus and the second Punic war, but I repressed the suspicion that the compiler of the story was consciously borrowing a bit of local colour in order to get S. Alfio to Trecastagni in a picturesque manner.
It was the end of August or the beginning of September in the year 252 when the three saints reached Trecastagni. Here they sat on a rock which diversified the uniformity of the landscape, partook of food and reposed. Exhilarated by a laughing sky of rarest beauty, the holy brethren unloosed their tongues and sang hymns of joy and praise to the Lord for that he had given them the strength and spirit to face their anticipated martyrdom. On the spot where they reposed now stands the parish church of Trecastagni.
The three saints proceeded to Catania, where they passed an uncomfortable night singing hymns in an obscure prison, and at daybreak were taken on towards Lentini. The river Simeto was in flood owing to the recent abundant rain, which is perhaps a reference to the storm atMascali; as soon as the saints put their feet in the stream it shrank and they passed over. Eight of the soldiers attempted to follow in their footsteps, but a sudden rush of water engulfed them together with their horses; this danger caused the remaining thirty-two soldiers to stay where they were, and they patiently waited four days till they were fetched by their comrades who, I suppose, had got over the river and employed the time in drying their uniforms and recovering from their wetting, but at first I feared they had been drowned.
Eight hundred paces to the north of Lentini the glorious brothers met a young man of the Jewish religion who had eaten nothing for a month. Captain Mercurio, having seen and been much touched by the portents performed by his prisoners during the journey, begged them to restore the youth. Immediately, with no assistance from anyone, the saints broke the ropes that bound them, prayed to heaven, approached the sufferer, infused new life into his exhausted frame and restored him to perfect health. The youth and his parents confessed their faith in the Nazarene, Captain Mercurio also declared himself converted and twenty of the soldiers, dismounting from their horses, threw their arms on the ground and prayed to be bound with chains since they now abhorred the false pagan gods and intended for the future to worship only the God of the three brothers.
They entered Lentini on Wednesday the 3rd of September, 252, their hands bound behind them, their heads uncovered and their feet bare, presenting to the emotional crowd an appearance of great nobility. They were put in prison with the twenty converted soldiers, tortured and starved; but a venerable man girdled with grace and celestial light miraculously brought food to them, embraced them and blessed them, their wounds were healed, their strength was restored, their courage was reinforced. Their tortures were increased after this, and so it went on till the 10th of May, 253, when S. Alfio was killed by having histongue pulled out, S. Filiberto was burnt on a gridiron and S. Cirino was boiled in pitch and bitumen.
Eight years later, in June, 261, Vitale in his retirement was cheered by a visit from Neofito and Aquila, who brought to him, as tokens of the martyrdom of his three sons, the mantle of Alfio, the girdle of Filiberto and the veil of Cirino, saturated with blood.
The geographers write Trecastagne on the maps as though the village took its name from Three Chestnut Trees, but the learned say it should be Trecastagni—Tre Casti Agni, that is Three Chaste Lambs, after the three saints who rested on the site of the parish church. Their memory is perpetuated also at Mascali, Catania and Lentini. And they are adored at Aci-reale, Pedara and at other places on the eastern slopes, whence the faithful come to their shrine at Trecastagne on the 10th of May.
One may see in the foregoing story of S. Alfio the foundation of some of the incidents painted on the carts, and perhaps the saints’ travelling bareheaded and barefooted is the origin of the people running so to Trecastagne, but I can find nothing in the book to support the belief that S. Alfio was a medical man or that he ever cured anyone of hernia. Nevertheless that he was a medical man, especially successful in treating hernia, is believed by everyone in and round Catania. Fortified by my book I ventured to doubt it and asked my friends in what university he took his diploma. They replied that I was confusing cause and effect; for in the beginning it was not the universities that made the doctors, it was the doctors that made the universities.
I then pointed out that he could not even cure himselffrom the wounds made by the tortures; SS. Peter and Paul had to come to the Roman prison, S. Andrea had to be called in at Mascali and the old man girdled with grace and celestial light at Lentini. But they disposed of this by reminding me that medical men are notoriously powerless to cure themselves.
Then I objected that a saint who was born in 230 and who died in 253 was too young to have got together anything of a practice. They replied that the carts show him exercising his profession.
“Where are these carts?” I exclaimed. “If they are in Catania, let them be called and give their evidence in the usual manner.”
So we looked at all the carts we met that were not going too fast. On one of them Garibaldi was landing at Marsala and overcoming the Bourbons at Calatafimi; on another Cristoforo Colombo was receiving a bag of gold from Ferdinand and Isabella, who wanted to put an end to all this wearing delay about the discovery of America; on another Don José was being made a fool of by Carmen in the wine-shop of Lillas Pastia; we saw the enthusiasm of the Crusaders on catching sight of Jerusalem; Otello was smothering Desdemona; we saw the Rape of the Sabines and somebody before the Soldan. But none of these pictures threw any light on S. Alfio.
Peppino Di Gregorio said we must have patience. So we patiently turned down another street and saw King Ruggero dismissing the ambassadors: “Return at once to your Lord and tell him that we Sicilians are not—” something for which the artist had left so little room that it was illegible, but the noble attitude of King Ruggero conveyed the meaning: we saw Mazeppa bound to a white horse rushing through a rocky wood and frightening the lions and tigers; Etna was in eruption; banners were being blessed by the Pope; Musolino was tripping over that cursed wire and being taken by the carabinieri; Paolo and Francesca were abandoning the pursuit ofliterature in favour of an eternity of torment—anything rather than go on reading in that book. Still there was nothing about S. Alfio.
They then proposed a visit to the workshop of a man who earns his living by painting carts. We found him at work on the birth of Rinaldo who came into the world with his right hand closed. The doctors and nurses were standing round, wondering; they all tried but they could do nothing. After eight days the baby, yielding to the incessant caresses of his adorata mamma, opened his fist and lo! it contained a scrap of paper with his name—Rinaldo—written upon it.
We begged the artist to show us a cart with the Life of S. Alfio, or the designs for such a life. And he could not. He said such carts were rare and he had no designs; when asked to paint the story of S. Alfio he does it out of his head, putting in anything that his patrons particularly order. We asked how old he makes the saints and he replied that his instructions usually are to make them about sixteen. So that the carts, if we could find them, would not be evidence of anything but the well-known habit of artists to flatter their sitters. Still I should have liked to see pictures of the young doctor, the young surgeon and the young chemist curing patients of hernia and being martyred for the faith.
On the 9th of May in the evening we all went to the Teatro Machiavelli and, coming out a little before midnight, walked up the Via Stesicoro Etnea to the Piazza Cavour. The pavements were lined with people who had come to see the sight and the roadway was left for those who were going to Trecastagne. There were innumerable painted carts, some of them nearly as fine as Ricuzzu’s birthday present; the horses and mules were so splendidly harnessed and so proud of themselves that Peppino Di Gregorio called them “cavalli mafiosi”; they were driving fast out of the city with coloured lights and fireworks. Every now and then came a naked man running in the road and carryinga large wax candle. They speak of them as I Nudi, but they were not really naked; they wore white cotton drawers down to their knees, a broad red waist-band and a broad red scarf and some of them wore a flannel jersey. They were all bare-headed and bare-footed, or rather without boots, for they wore socks; this is enough to satisfy S. Alfio, who, being a doctor, does not insist on their taking needless risk. Nevertheless the socks must get torn to pieces before they are out of the town, and their feet must be bleeding long before they reach Trecastagne. Some of the so-called nudi, both men and women, were fully dressed except that they were without hats or boots. They all ran, occasionally they may rest by walking, but they may not dance and they may not stop and they may not greet their friends in the crowd except by shouting “Con vera fede, Viva S. Alfio!” Each of them carries his candle in his hand and it may cost five or ten francs, some cost as much as twenty francs. For days before the festa they go about Catania with trays collecting soldi from all they meet. But if one of them meets the doctor who attended him in the hospital, he is careful not to make the mistake of asking the doctor for a subscription. So they ran and shouted, and I said:
“These are the carts that ought to have the story of S. Alfio. Couldn’t we stop one and look at it?”
They recommended me not to try, it would block the stream of traffic and the people would not like it. So we sat in the piazza till about two in the morning and watched them passing.
That was not all we were to see. In the afternoon of the 10th of May everyone who was left in Catania went out towards Trecastagne to see the return of the people, who are said to be drunk after their religious devotions. In order to do this in comfort Peppino Di Gregorio had arranged that we should go to colazione with Giovanni Bianca, a friend of his who has a country house on the Slopes of Etna near the route, and afterwards we would go where we couldsee the return of the devout. First, he said, we must go to the station and fetch Joe, because he was to come too.
I said: “With pleasure, but why go to the station? I thought Joe was employed in the municipio?”
“We shall find him keeping order among the coachmen in the station-yard,” replied Peppino.
And there he was in the uniform of a guardia municipale.
“Why, Joe!” I exclaimed, “I thought you were writing at a desk all day in the Mansion House. I did not know you were a policeman.”
He replied that he was a guardia municipale, which is not exactly the same thing, and was going on to explain the difference between the carabinieri, the pubblica sicurezza, the guardia municipale, the guardia campestre and all the rest of it, when I interrupted him:
“I shall never remember what you are telling me; I shall always think of you as a policeman.”
“All right,” he replied, “I’ll be Joe the Policeman, and Ninu is a policeman too.”
“I can quite believe it,” I said. “When we went to the lava you both treated me just as our policemen in London treat the old ladies and gentlemen who are afraid of the traffic; you helped me along and never let me fall down, and looked after me as though I had been given specially into your charge. London policemen are just like that—very kind and helpful. I know one of them in private life and he is a capital fellow. I made his acquaintance over my bicycle.”
“How was that?” inquired Joe. “Did you get run over and did he pick you up? What did I tell you about living on the slopes of volcanoes?”
“It was not exactly that,” I replied; “it was because I wanted to avoid being run over that I gave my bicycle to a man to sell it for me when the motor-cars began to get on my nerves, and this policeman bought it. He did not give much for it, but if the value of his friendship is taken into the account I think I made rather a good bargain.”
“Tell me about him.”
“Oh, there’s nothing to tell. He comes to see me sometimes, when he is free. We have tastes in common; for instance, we do not like knock-about brothers at a music-hall—they bore us. And then books; our tastes in literature, however, are less alike; but he is quite a reader. Once he had in his pocket TheBeauties of Nature, by Sir John Lubbock—that was to improve his mind—andLittle Lord Fauntleroy, which he was reading for pure enjoyment. I told him that I also had written a book and he wanted to read it, so I lent it to him.”
“I hope he appreciated it?” inquired Joe sympathetically.
“He was extremely polite about it. Next time I saw him he said: ‘Well, I’ve been reading your book’; (he spoke with great deliberation) ‘I can get on with it. Yes. It doesn’t drag upon me. I don’t feel it’s time wasted. But, you know, if I ever do anything of that sort, I think it will be more in the style of Charlie Dickens.’“
“I should not call that very polite of him, was it?”
“I am not so sure. We must distinguish. He was not thinking of the Dickens ofPickwickwith all his beaux moments, he was thinking of that other Dickens of theChristmas Bookswith all his mauvais quarts d’heure.”
“But have you two authors named Dickens in England?”
Then I saw that to my audience Dickens was as much a sealed book as Molière and that my literary policeman must be reserved until I can writeDiversions in London. So I turned the conversation by telling Joe that Dickens is not an uncommon name in England and is a form of Riccardo, as Jones is a form of Giovanni.
While talking we were on our way to Joe’s house, where he changed from his uniform to his private clothes, and then we took the tram to Cibali. Here we bought provisions and carried them with us to the country house, which was not yet properly open for the summer. We had pickedup our host, Giovanni Bianca, on the way, and he took us round and showed us the garden, which was full of flowers and fruit trees and vines; he showed us also the lava of 1669 which destroyed part of Catania. He gave me a piece of primeval lava from the bottom of the well which his father had dug, about 150 feet down. I inquired how old that lava would be. He was not sure, but it would be older than the Romans, older than the Greeks, older than the Sikels or the Sikans.
“Say ten thousand years old,” said Giovanni, and he said it without being in the least embarrassed, but then he is not a canonico and has not Moses hanging as a dead weight on him. He went on to say that he did not really know. “The memory of man,” he said, “works very imperfectly, and to understand these things one ought to study the science of geology.”
In the afternoon we went across country to a spot on the route, past which the people had already begun to come. I asked, what they had been doing at Trecastagne all night. They told me that the journey from Catania takes about three hours, more or less according to the ability of the runner, so that they begin to arrive somewhere about 3 a.m. and keep on arriving all the morning; and others come from other villages on the eastern slopes. Then they make a row till the church is opened and the nudi go in and light their candles before S. Alfio. Some of them go on their knees and lick the stone floor of the church all the way from the entrance to the altar, but this is being discouraged because it covers the floor with blood and is considered not to be hygienic. Perhaps it might also be well to prohibit the running with bare feet, for that must also make the floor in an unhygienic condition, to say nothing of the roads that lead to the village. Some take stones and beat their breasts, and they all shout continually “Con buona fede, Viva S. Alfio!” After Mass they dress and eat and drink. Some of them have carried their food on their backs, others have friends who have brought it in their carts, and thefood includes eels, which come from the Lake of Lentini; thus they enjoy the luxury of eating fish on the Slopes of Etna and moreover fish from the place of S. Alfio’s martyrdom. At midday the car bearing the three saints is brought out into the street, but this, it seems, does not interest the nudi; they have run naked to the shrine, they have lighted their candles, they have performed their vow and are now free to enjoy themselves. Of course, those who suffer from hernia do not attempt to run until after they believe themselves to be cured of that complaint; but rheumatic patients are often much better after running to Trecastagne, the exertion has upon them an effect like that of a Turkish bath, but it knocks them up in other ways.
By the afternoon, when it is time to return, what with the running, the walking, the driving, the fasting, the shouting, the religious exaltation, the want of sleep, the eating and drinking, the fireworks and the jollity of the festa, many of them are drunk. Joe says the festa is a continuation of some Bacchic festival, and this is more than likely, just as it is more than likely that the Bacchic festival was a continuation of some earlier one. He wants S. Alfio to be a transformation of Bacchus, just as Bacchus was a transformation of Dionysus and Dionysus of some earlier divinity, and so on back to him who first discovered wine, ages and ages before the vates sacer who immortalised Noah.
“And how much do the people believe?” I asked.
“Ah!” replied Joe; “who knows? And what is faith?”
“I’m sure I don’t know,” I said; “sometimes one thing and sometimes another. It is a difficult question.”
Then I remembered that he had asked me the same question, and I had made the same reply at Nicolosi six weeks before, and I also remembered something that had happened in between. “The other day,” I continued, “I had to wait in the station at Messina, and I asked the porter who was helping me with my baggage whether hehad seen the comet. He replied, ‘No, I have not seen the comet, and I shall not even look for it; I do not believe in the comet.’“
“Oh, well, you know what he meant by that? He had heard that it was going to destroy the world, so he did not want to believe in it; he did not want it to exist; he was not going to encourage such a dangerous phenomenon by having anything to do with it. ‘I’ll leave you alone and I expect you to leave me alone.’“
“Yes; I suppose he thought that if he removed his custom the comet would fail.”
“Precisely. But it is not quite that with S. Alfio; they want him to exist; they are afraid that if they don’t believe in him, he will leave off performing miracles and will no longer cure them.”
“It seems to me,” I said, “that they are dominated by the prepotenza of S. Alfio very much as the sulphur-miners are dominated by the prepotenza of their capo-mafioso.”
“With this distinction,” he replied, “that the capo-mafioso has the power, and sometimes the will, to hurt them; it would require a struggle to destroy his prepotenza and there is the risk of failure. With S. Alfio, if they cared to be master in their own house, they have only got to leave off believing in him, there need be no struggle and there could be no risk.”
“You speak as though they could believe or leave off believing at will.”
“So they can, in the loose sense in which they use the word. They only go on believing because their vanity is involved—it flatters them to attribute the gift of miracles to a creature of their own imagination and, by being satisfied with very little and very poor evidence, they make things easy for S. Alfio. But they could not tell you this themselves, they are half asleep about it.”
I said: “Of course they are half asleep about it, and all S. Alfio’s interests are bound up in their remaining so. They are not only asleep, they are dreaming, as the RedKing dreamt of Alice. If they were to wake up S. Alfio would go out—bang!—just like a candle.”
Alice and the Red King were as unknown to Joe as Poins or Molière or Dickens. I did my best to explain the allusion, but I doubt whether I succeeded, for when I had finished he only said that Tweedledum and Tweedledee had better not go about saying things like that, or their bishop would be warning them to be on their guard as he warned the Canonico Recupero. I must try whether he will understand better if I send him a copy ofThrough the Looking-Glassfor his next onomastico. He told me something which makes me suspect that the people must have a dim feeling of how things really are. It seems that sometimes, though rarely, it pleases them to pretend to believe that their padrone has displeased them. Then they half wake up and depose him; but nothing comes of it, they only choose a new one or, after a short time, reinstate the old one.
We went to a house on the route and sat on a balcony in the sunset and the drunken people pelted down-hill, smothered in the golden glory of the dust they raised, banging their tambourines, blowing their whistles, and singing that now the festa was over they must go home and work to pay the debts it had run them into. It was no more use to think of stopping them to see the pictures now than when they were going out; so I pigeon-holed what the carts say about S. Alfio with my poor mother’s problem about what influence people who never go to church have over their servants. The cavalli mafiosi and the carts were stuck about with coloured feathers and festooned with bunches of garlic, with flowers, with lumps of lard, with little flags and ribbons, with garlands of caruba beans and with vetch. The flags, the ribbons, the flowers and the feathers were, I suppose, for gaiety and festa—pour faire la frime—but garlic has some magically beneficent properties; not only does it avert the evil eye, it is also a symbol of robust health, so that instead of replying to “How do you do?” by saying “As right asrain,” they reply, “As right as garlic.” They believe that to put three crosses of garlic under the bed of a woman in child-birth will ensure a happy issue. There is something fortunate or healthy also about vetch and, no doubt, some special significance about lard and the beans of the carob. These beliefs are based lower than Giovanni Bianca’s primeval lava, and I know no more about their origin than he does, but I suppose they are older than the Romans, older than the Greeks, older than the Sikels and the Sikans—probably much more than ten thousand or fourteen thousand years old. They spring from a soil which has become fertile by catching the dust of ages, tossed to and fro and carried about by every wind of doctrine, wherein generations of beliefs have grown up, flourished and decayed. There is no more fertilising manure for a struggling young faith than the rotting remains of a dead superstition. And the roots pierce down beneath the soil and shoot into the crevices of an intolerance more unyielding than buried lava. To understand these things, one ought to become a pupil of Professore Pitrè, and make a study of the science of demopsicologia, and even then one would only get glimpses of the more recent deposits of civilisation that lie crushed one under the other like the parallel surfaces of rich earth in the pit sunk near Jaci.
Whatever the significance of the things they carried or the origin of their belief in them, the people in the carts kept flinging them to the boys in the road, who caught them and picked them up and carried them off to make their festa with them later on. They were all very lively, but no one seemed to me very drunk, not more drunk than the nudi were naked; there were drunken people among them, but not enough to make me feel sure that S. Alfio ought to be identified with Bacchus. One can see more drunkenness on Hampstead Heath on a Bank Holiday, but one does not hastily identify Saint Lubbock with Dionysus.
Being in Catania for Holy Week I went to the cathedral on Palm Sunday. The archbishop in his yellow mitre, red inside because he is also a cardinal, accompanied by nine canons in white mitres and many priests and others, passed out of the church by a side exit and proceeded to the western entrance, which was closed against him. I heard him knock and listened to the chanted dialogue which he carried on with those inside. I saw the great doors thrown open and watched the procession enter and pass up the nave among crowds of people who waved palm-branches.
After this I called at the Teatro Sicilia, the marionette theatre of Gregorio Grasso, and discovered that he was devoting all the week to the Story of the Passion and would begin that evening with the event which I had seen commemorated by the procession in the cathedral. Here was an opportunity to see something which I had often wished to see and about which I had talked with Achille Greco and his sons in their theatre at Palermo, where they also do the Passion in Holy Week, using a play in verse written by Filippo Orioles of which they have a MS. copy; but they have not performed it recently because it takes too much preparation. Orioles wrote his play for living actors, and it is laid out to get all the events into one performance instead of being a series of seven performances extending over a whole week as in Catania.
Gregorio Grasso took me behind, where one of his assistants, Carmelo, showed me the preparations and toldme about the performance. The first scene was to be the meeting of the Sanhedrin and the beginning of the conspiracy of Annas and Caiaphas to destroy the Nazarene; this makes a firm foundation on which the rest of the drama is built. The second scene would be the departure of Christ with Mary; after that would come the Entry with Palms into Jerusalem, and the evening was to conclude with a cinematograph show.
As a rule in this theatre the back scene is only about a third of the way down the stage, the figures appear in front of it and are manipulated by men who stand on a platform behind, leaning over a strong bar which runs along the top of the scene, their heads, shoulders and arms being concealed by a piece of scenery which falls just low enough. The entry into Jerusalem had been prepared behind this back scene; it was a set group representing Christ on the ass, surrounded by apostles carrying palms, and was to be disclosed by the removal of the back scene, the bar and the platform in front of which the meeting of the Sanhedrin would be shown.
But I was not to witness the performance because Turiddu Balistrieri wanted me to go to the Teatro Giacinta Pezzana and see a special performance ofLa Signora dalle Cameliein which he and some of his family, who are all artists, were to take part. I could not go to both and chose Dumas because, in the first place, being Turiddu’s compare it was my duty to support the family. In the second place I had seen the Entry with Palms at the duomo in the morning and had all the rest of the week free to see the marionettes do the rest of the story. So I went to the Teatro Pezzana in the evening. It is a small place, small enough to have been formerly used for marionettes, and was now being used by a Society of Lovers of the Drama. Turiddu was presiding over the box-office and had considered my requirements. He sent me in with his young brother Gennaro, who found me a place, and I saw a play which cannot be considered seriously except as anopportunity for the actress who undertakes the part of Margherita Gautier. On this occasion it was undertaken by Desdemona Balistrieri, Turiddu’s sister, a girl of fifteen years and ten months, two years older than himself; I had never expected to see so young a Margherita Gautier. She gave a remarkable performance with nothing childish about it and nothing—but it would be unbecoming in me to praise the sister of my compare. Her grandmother, the old lady referred to in Chapter XVII (ante) who slept in the piazza after the earthquake, was Prudenza, and her mother, Signora Balistrieri, was Olimpia and appeared between the old generation and the young, joining and yet separating them. Turiddu’s part was small; he was merely a page bringing a letter or a message.
In the afternoon I went to the Teatro Sicilia and found everything prepared for the evening. Christ and the apostles were sitting at the supper-table as in Leonardo’s fresco in Milan; not that they were imitating Leonardo, the early mosaics and the miracle plays, influencing and counter-influencing one another, must have determined the composition of the representations of the Last Supper before Leonardo’s time; he was not inventing, he was giving the people something they were accustomed to see and the marionettes were similarly following their own traditions. I do not think the apostles were all in their usual places, S. John was next to Christ, but Judas was at one end of the table—a terrible fellow with shaggy black hair falling over his face—and he had not spilt the salt. There was no salt for him to spill. Signor Greco told me that when they perform the Orioles play at Palermo, they use a horse-shoe table, Judas sits near one end and not only spills the salt, but behaves like a naughty child, putting his elbows on the table and throwing the plates on the floor so that they break. On the supper-table at Catania therewas a wooden model of a roasted lamb, with jointed neck and legs, lying on a dish. There were plates with lettuces cut up, bread and wine, oil and vinegar and oranges, all real. Each apostle had a glass and there was a metal chalice for Christ. I forget all the things that are on the table in the chapel of the Last Supper at Varallo-Sesia, but I remember they have ripe figs, which is a mistake, because figs do not become ripe till later in the year. Oranges are at their best in Sicily in the spring and lettuces are in season. The audience understand this and know that lettuces are appropriate for supper because they contain some narcotic, so that a raw lettuce is often eaten after dinner. The supper had been prepared in front of the back scene, and behind it, ready to be disclosed at the proper moment, was the garden wherein the capture of Christ was to take place.
Soon after seven o’clock in the evening I was sitting in my room at the albergo and saw a great light which I supposed might have something to do with the electric tram. After this I heard a roaring noise which I supposed might be occasioned by an explosive motor bicycle in the street. Then the glass in the window rattled for a considerable time, which I supposed might be due to a slight shock of earthquake. At about half-past eight I went to the Teatro Sicilia. Gregorio and his assistants were all outside, and received me with congratulations on my courage; I was the only one of their patrons bold enough to think of witnessing the performance, all the others had been too much frightened by the earthquake—if it had been an earthquake; and in about ten minutes we shut up the theatre and came away. I went to the Teatro Machiavelli to see what effect had been produced there. There was some anxiety about the phenomenon, but more, it seemed, as to whether enough people would come to make it worth while to have a performance. We were waiting for instructions when someone brought in a bolletino hastily prepared in a newspaper office with an account of theavvenimento celeste. We sat round and listened while one of the actors read about the convulsion of nature, the trembling of the palaces, the flashes of flame at a great height in the sky, the terror of the inhabitants of Catania. Was the phenomenon of telluric origin—Etna or an earthquake? Was it of atmospheric origin—a thunderbolt or a waterspout? Or could it be a miracle in the dictionary sense of something contrary to the course of nature? No one knew. Gradually a sufficient number of the public overcame their fright and took places in the theatre; and thus I saw a play by Peppino Fazio calledI Delitti del Caporaleof which I have forgotten a great deal, but it contained one incident which I have not forgotten.
There was a scene in the cottage of a brigand who lived with his sister, he was out and she was alone. A corporal of infantry entered and made infamous proposals which she rejected; a struggle followed and was ended by the man shooting the girl through the heart. Overcome by remorse and filled with respect for the dead, he reverently raised the corpse, laid it along the floor by the wall at the back of the cottage and covered it with a sheet. He placed an oil lamp on the floor so that the head, the breast, the hips, the knees and the toes caught the light, while shadows fell in the depressions between. He knelt in prayer and then crept from the solemn scene on which the curtain slowly descended.
We were then transported to a country road outside the caserma of the carabinieri; they were carousing and plotting how to take the brigand. A countryman came and gave information on which they settled a plan of action and the scene ended, but it had occupied a good deal of time and had distracted the mind.
The curtain rose again on the brigand’s cottage. Nothing had been moved. Three carabinieri entered furtively, they noticed what was on the floor, lying by the wall, but did not disturb it, they had other business in hand and concealed themselves behind doors and furniture. There wasa pause and the house was very still. The brigand came home, noisily threw down his gun, clanked about the cottage in his great boots, took his knife and his pistols from his belt and banged them down on the table. As he turned he caught sight of the sheet covering something the form of which was emphasised by the oil lamp burning at its head. He did not speak, but surprise and alarm seized him and appeared in his face and in his attitude. He approached it, raised the sheet and with a yell of terror and grief fell on his knees by the corpse as he recognised his sister. The three carabinieri came from their hiding and took him.
It was a typical drama for the Machiavelli. Notwithstanding the want of variety in their plots—and the title of one of their plays signifies as little as the title of a London pantomime—I have seldom passed an evening there without seeing some incident as striking as this return to the house of death. They know how to do these things with a simplicity and an apparent unconsciousness of the effect they are producing which bring with them a strange astonishment.
This was not the corporal’s only crime, but to clear up this one it may be added that the hand of the corpse clutched a button which, in the struggle, the girl had torn off the man’s coat; this led to his identification, and in prison he met the brigand, who shot him and thus avenged the murder. I have seen happy endings that were more artificial.
Compare Turiddu came early to inquire whether I was much alarmed by the disturbance and to tell me what had happened. A bolide had fallen into the Catanian sea—he took me to the port and showed me precisely where.
“It was near that ship,” he said.
The people had rushed to the cathedral to pray S. Agatato avert further harm. They also went to the Piazza S. Nicola hoping it might be large enough to hold them all in case there was an earthquake, for they were all thinking of Messina. The sailors, believing that what they saw fall into the sea was the moon, drew their boats up into safety. The sea did rise, but only eight centimetres, not so much as it would have risen if the moon had really fallen into it. When the newspapers came out I read more particulars: that a barber in the Via Lincoln had been so much frightened that he cut the throat of the customer he was shaving, fortunately, however, no damage was done as the wound was only skin-deep; that a woman ran naked into the Via Garibaldi, not having time in her fright to put any clothes on; that a waiter handing a dish to a lady in the Birraria Svizzera dropped it on her silk dress, which was ruined; and that a priest in the Quattro Canti was seen moving his arms like an electric fan and was heard to exclaim “God save me!” He did not say “God save us” because he was an egoist.
It should be added that the article was written by Peppino Fazio, who confessed to me that though these things may have happened he did not see them. He found them in his imagination. It should perhaps be added further that he knows his public and is not afraid of being taken seriously.
I also saw an account of an interview with Professor Riccò of the Observatory, who stated that an aerolite had fallen out of the profundity of space and that it had not been ascertained where it had struck our planet.
As no one had gone to the Teatro Sicilia on Monday the marionettes were thrown a day late and the programme arranged for the Monday was remanded to the Tuesday, like a festa. I half feared I might be prevented again from seeing it because some friends from England arrived in Catania for the night and I did not know whether they would care to go. They were, however, much interested when I made the proposal. We were rather late, andmissed the Last Supper, arriving just before the curtain rose on the garden. It was a beautiful scene. Christ was kneeling at a rock in the background, the disciples were sleeping in the foreground and the wings were hidden by branches of real trees. An angel descended with a cup from which the principal figure drank. When the angel had departed there was a pause—the lights changed and through the silence we heard the tramp, tramp of approaching people; soldiers came on preceded by Judas, who betrayed his Master with a kiss, Peter cut off Malchus’s right ear, the Nazarene was taken and the curtain fell.
Turiddu came in the morning and we conducted my friends round the town. We went to the shop where the old Swiss watchmaker sells the amber of which Brancaccia’s necklace is made; we went to the market, where we ate a prickly pear, just to see what it was like, and the man politely refused payment because we were foreigners; in the market also we bought bergamot snuff-boxes; we then showed them the port, where they bought crockery, and the Villa Bellini, where they took photographs; after which we went back to the albergo, where we had luncheon. Then we accompanied them to the station and saw them off for Taormina. Turiddu was as pleased as anyone, he liked making the acquaintance of his compare’s English friends and they thought him a delightful boy. Strictly speaking they were not English; the two ladies were Inglesi Americane, which Turiddu said he understood because his mother had acted in the Argentina and, though South America is not North America, it appeared pedantic to insist on the distinction. The two gentlemen, again, were really Inglesi Irlandesi, and here also we were in trouble because he mistook Irlandesi for Olandesi and thought they were what we should call Boers.
After they had gone I went to the Teatro Sicilia to learnwhat I had missed by not seeing the Cena. Carmelo told me that when Christ has spoken the words “This is my body” he breaks the bread and gives each of the apostles a piece. Judas does not eat his piece, he steals it and leaves the room. In his absence Christ blesses the wine and gives the others to drink, he washes their feet and they go out to the Mount of Olives. This is followed by a scene of Judas coming to Annas and Caiaphas, showing his piece of bread and telling them that he had heard Christ speak blasphemy. Carmelo explained that the priests were Hebrews—there were Hebrews, he said, in those days, living in that country—and Hebrews believe that bread is the Body of God; therefore for a man—and they thought Christ was merely a man—to declare that the bread was his body amounted to blasphemy. This was evidence against the Nazarene; it carried the story on a step and the plotting priests prepared everything for the betrayal and capture of Christ—the final scene which we saw.
I did not know, or had forgotten, that Hebrews were so particular about bread, but Carmelo assured me that they never throw bread away, and if they find a piece on the floor they pick it up and put it in a hole in the wall and keep it. It may be eaten, but may never be otherwise destroyed. I thought of Ruskin telling his readers inThe Elements of Drawingthat stale crumb of bread is better than india-rubber to rub out their mistakes, but “it crumbles about the room and makes a mess; and besides, you waste the good bread, which is wrong; and your drawing will not for a long while be worth the crumbs. So use india-rubber very lightly.”
“Are you a Christian?” asked Carmelo suddenly.
I was not embarrassed. A few days before, when one of the priests at Tindaro asked me the same question, I replied that I had been baptised into the Christian faith soon after birth. The priest said that between the two Churches of Rome and England there were unfortunate differences as to the mysteries but I need not concernmyself with them. “Nature does not believe in the mysteries,” said my priest, who was a most friendly person, and as I had been baptised, if I lived a good life, and he was politely certain I did, then I was a Christian. So I considered myself justified in answering Carmelo’s question in the affirmative.
In the evening I returned to the Teatro Sicilia; Carmelo put me into a good place and this time I saw the whole performance. The Nazarene was taken before Annas, Caiaphas, Pilate and Herod. The priests taxed him with being a magician. Herod proposed that he should perform a miracle if he could, but Christ was silent and did nothing. Herod therefore concluded that the priests were wrong and that Christ must be mad. He directed that he should be clothed in white and taken back to Pilate, and this was done.
We were then in the house of the Madonna, and S. John came and told her and the other Maries all that had happened to her son. Each of the holy women carried a handkerchief and the lamentation became monotonous.
Judas had received the thirty pieces of silver and began his remorse by taking them, in a red purse, back to the priests, who scoffed at him and turned him out. His rage and despair were extreme and gave the audience an opportunity to relieve their feelings by laughing.
Before the last scene Gregorio in his ordinary clothes came on and told the audience the programme for the next day. He also apologised for presenting the Passion with marionettes, he usually performs it with living actors, he himself being the Nazarene. This year, however, he did not feel strong enough to undertake the part or to get all the other actors together; and he appealed to our consideration and begged us to accept marionettes.
In the days when Giovanni Grasso acted in his own Machiavelli theatre, before he went on tour and acquired his world-wide reputation, they used to do the Passion there also, and he was Judas. Sometimes he doubled hispart and did Annas as well, or Pilate or the good centurion, making any necessary alterations in those places where his two characters ought to have appeared together. It would be a great thing to see Giovanni as Judas, but I suppose he will never do it again.
I noticed that all the figures had been newly dressed and painted for the occasion and the pupils of their eyes were freshly varnished to catch the light. About the soldiers there was still some reminiscence of paladins, but the principal characters had been prepared with due regard to the works of the great masters—though here again I suppose they were really following the traditions of the theatre as preserved by the pictures. The figures gained by hiding their legs, but Joseph of Arimathæa and Nicodemus had not this advantage. They were princes and were like Shakespearean young men of the brilliant water-fly type, such as Osric. Misandro was also a prince. He was a swaggerer and behaved as badly as any paladin, but he was not a buffo. When they do the Natività at Christmas a buffo is permitted, he accompanies the Shepherds as their servant, and I should like to see him. Misandro was all in golden armour, as fine a figure as one could expect a Prince of Judæa to be. He had a contrast in Claudio Cornelio the good centurion. Claudio was left alone with Christ and confessed his faith, while a bright light from the cinematograph box illuminated the stage as though to signify that if we believe, all will become clear. The most successful of the figures was Pilate. He was in black with a red sash and his robes fell in folds of great dignity.
The words were all declaimed either from memory or extempore, and there were several speakers. The one who had most to do did it with a great deal of energy, especially as Judas and Misandro. Gregorio spoke for Christ and a woman spoke for the women and the angels.
The Christ was of course a failure, in art all Christs are failures, even the Christ in the chapels at Varallo-Sesia, even the Christ in the pictures by the masters. The ChildChrist may be a success, at least we can sometimes fancy that that baby might become the Saviour of the World, he reminds us of those babies we have all seen in real life with a look in their eyes as though they had solved the riddle of the universe. But the Man Christ does not convince; we only tolerate him because we have been brought up to acquiesce in the convention. The Christs of pictures and statues are not, however, such failures as the Christ at Ober-Ammergau; by keeping still and not trying to appear so real they leave more to the imagination. If all these fail how can a marionette be expected to succeed? Hiding its legs when it moves is not enough. Gregorio knew he was attempting the impossible and did his best to save the figure from being worse than it might have been, but the result was rather as though it were all the time apologising for having undertaken the part. He made it move very little and very slowly, so slowly that the action of the drama was interrupted. He allowed it no gestures, except an occasional raising of the hand. He spoke for it only the few words given to Christ in the gospels. When it caused a miracle, there came a great light, as when the good centurion confessed his faith, and there was music. When it entered, the drum beat a Saracen rhythm and there was music again. By these means the figure was detached from the others and appeared as though belonging to another world. When the marionettes do the Orioles play at Palermo, Christ speaks much more than the words from the gospels and is treated more like one of the other characters, at least nothing is done to suggest that they are giving the Passion with the part of Christ as nearly omitted as possible.
The music at Catania was faint and scrappy. Gounod’sMeditation on Bach’s First Preludeoccurred frequently, but it seldom got beyond the first ten or twelve bars, sometimes not beyond the second or third. And there were similar short references to some of the more sentimental melodies of Bellini and Verdi. It was not intended to distract theattention; it was rather to provide an unobtrusive background for the ear against which the voice spoke, as the scenery was a background for the eye against which the figures moved.
This was the day for visiting the sepulchres in the churches. Turiddu took me to the cathedral, and we saw a procession moving slowly down the nave. It turned up one of the aisles and entered a sepulchre which had been prepared, passing between a double file of dismal creatures entirely shrouded in white except for two eye-holes, like those ghouls that issued stealthily from charnel-houses in German fairy tales, and used to pursue me in dreams when I was a boy. One by one the lights on the altar were extinguished, Phrygian cadences dropped inconclusively from the choir above, the archbishop came out of the sepulchre and the hooded ghosts crept with him. A Dominican occupied the pulpit and began a sermon, but as we could not get near enough to hear what he said, we came away. Turiddu afterwards took me to visit a few more sepulchres, and it was a gloomy business.
In the evening, at the Teatro Sicilia, the curtain rose on Christ bound to the column, and there were two Turks armed with scourges. They did not actually scourge him, it was enough that they told Misandro they had executed their orders. Peter denied his master and the cock crew thrice. While Judas was continuing his remorse, Peter appeared to him, and, confessing his sin of denying Christ, proposed to expiate it by throwing himself into a well; he tempted Judas to follow his example and preceded him to show the way. But we saw that it was not really Peter, it was a devil. Judas was about to follow the devil when an angel appeared and stopped him. He was to die a different death, and not yet.
A tearful scene between mother and son came next; Idid not care for it, but the dream of Claudia, the wife of Pilate, was, as Carmelo said, “una visione tremenda.” In a dress of scarlet satin trimmed with gold and lace, she sat in an arm-chair in a garden and went to sleep. Christ appeared to her. She spoke to him, but he did not reply, and as she woke he vanished. She slept again, and Annas appeared to her in red fire, threatening her if she yielded to the emotions which the vision of the Man of Sorrows had raised in her heart. She woke in dismay as he vanished. She slept again, and saw Pilate in hell surrounded by devils. She woke in fright. She slept again, and a devil appeared and talked to her, justifying Pilate. S. Michele came and killed the devil.
The Machiavelli was closed. At the Sicilia the performance began with the trial of Christ. Pilate sat in the middle with Joseph of Arimathæa and Nicodemus on his right, Caiaphas, Annas, and Misandro on his left. Beyond Nicodemus was the Nazarene in a red cloak holding a reed and crowned with thorns; and beyond Misandro was Barabbas. Pilate made the opening speech. Caiaphas then spoke for the prosecution; the question in debate was whether Christ was the Son of God, and he accused Christ of being a deceiver. Nicodemus followed for the defence. Then Annas for the prosecution. He said: “The voice of God is the voice of the people.” He was followed by Joseph, who maintained that the wonders performed by Christ were not done by magic, they were miracles; that is he was not a magician, he was the Son of God. Misandro spoke last.
Here a messenger arrived from Claudia telling her dream and begging Pilate to go to her. The Court rose and Pilate went home to comfort his wife, while the others talked among themselves just as barristers do in the Royal Courts of Justice in the Strand when the sitting is suspended.
Pilate returned and took his seat. He proposed to liberate Christ and to sacrifice Barabbas. He presented Christ to the people, saying:
“Ecce Homo.”
And the crowd shouted: “Not this man, but Barabbas.”
Pilate ironically congratulated them:
“You are right, O ignorant People!” and, telling Barabbas to go and thieve again, he liberated him.
Then the false witnesses came. One was a soldier, the other a Turk. They took the oath to speak the truth and nothing but the truth. They were both of them stupid and comic, confused and contradictory, and made the audience laugh, and when one of them admitted that he had been bribed, Annas in his rage gobbled like a turkey.
Pilate closed the debate and washed his hands in a basin held by a servant. Then he wrote the sentence and made Misandro read it. The trial lasted a whole hour, the intention being, I suppose, to reproduce that tediousness which is so characteristic of real trials.
In the next scene Judas continued his remorse and Peter—it was really Peter this time—came and counselled him to ask pardon of Jesus, but he would not listen.
Then came the journey to Calvary and the meeting with the Daughters of Jerusalem and S. Veronica, Misandro ill-treating the women and Claudio Cornelio protecting them.
The last scene was the Crucifixion. The thieves were in place. At the back was the Cross lying on the ground. The figure of Christ was nailed to it by a Turk with a hammer; the Cross was raised; Misandro approved; the Turk gave the sponge; Misandro reviled Christ, saying: “Thou that destroyest the temple of God and buildest it in three days, save thyself”; Christ and the thieves held their dialogue; the Madonna and S. John stood at the foot of the Cross while Christ spoke the sentences and inclined his head. Then there was the earthquake, and we saw the souls in purgatory surrounding the Cross and heard them welcoming their Lord.
Compare Turiddu came early and we went to the duomo to see the Gloria. The church was full and he told me to be careful about my watch and my money because—“picketi pocketi”; and then he asked me whether I understood those two words which his mother had brought back from one of her tours.
His Eminence, the Cardinal Archbishop, was conducting a service in a side chapel—blessing the baptismal water, or the font, or both, or perhaps doing something else, for Turiddu is not such an authority on ecclesiastical matters as Carmelo is on matters theatrical. He knows more than I do, however; it was he who made me go to see the Gloria on the Saturday, without him I should have missed it by waiting till the Sunday. The western doors were thrown open and we looked through into the sunshine and up to the arch that stands at the top of the Via Garibaldi. The archbishop finished his service and returned through the congregation to the space within the rails of the principal altar. Behind him as he stood and concealing the altar and the east end of the church hung a curtain from the roof to the floor. There was chanting and movement among the priests; they continually kept going and coming, disappearing into the secret place behind the great curtain and reappearing; they were preparing the mystery. Presently the curtain shook and the congregation understood. The suppressed excitement grew and a murmuring began, caused, I suppose, by everyone telling everyone else, as Turiddu told me, that the curtain was about to fall. Another instant—and its fall revealed the Gloria.
Above the altar was a tomb and above the tomb was the figure of the risen Christ triumphing over death; in his left hand he held a banner and, with his right, he blessed the people. There were lights, and sudden music from the organ and from the choir; the deafening bells clanged and, through the great open doors, we heard the sound ofrevolvers being shot off into the air and of fireworks being exploded.
Turiddu could not see over the heads of the people; I lifted him up, he looked at the Gloria and turning himself round in my arms kissed me as he said:
“Buona Pasqua, Compare.”
Everyone was saying “Buona Pasqua” to everyone else, everyone standing near a friend or a relation was exchanging kisses with him or her as a sign of goodwill; many were weeping for joy, and those who had been quarrelling became reconciled, forgiving one another their offences and entering upon a new life, vowing that, with the help of their Heavenly Father, who had revealed to them the Mystery of the Resurrection, they would from this day avoid all further disputes even though, in order to perform the vow, it should be necessary to avoid one another’s company. This is not imaginative writing, like Peppino Fazio’s account of the effect of the bolide, it is what I saw—the effect of the Gloria.
And the spirit of the Gloria floated down the nave and through the open doors and out into the piazza, where the elephant of lava stands over the fountain. It passed up the Via Garibaldi, down the Corso, along the Stesicoro Etnea, it spread itself through the city and became identified with the morning sunshine.
“Come along,” said Turiddu, “let’s go and buy a paschal lamb for mother.”
We followed the Gloria into the piazza among the fireworks and the revolvers.
I said: “What about the plates, Turiddu? Don’t the people throw the crockery out of window in their joy? We must be careful.”
He replied that they only do that in the poorer parts of the town, and they always look first to make sure that no one is passing. But we had better be careful, all the same, because the revolvers are loaded and the squibs are dangerous.
He took me past the municipio, where the band was playing, and we came to a sweet-shop, where paschal lambs made of almond paste and sugar were flocking together on all the tables and shelves. They were not like the one at the Last Supper, they were in their fleeces and were standing or lying among candied fruits and tufts of dried grass that had been artificially dyed unlikely colours. Turiddu chose one, and I sent him off home with it as an Easter offering of goodwill to his mother.
Peppino Fazio was standing at a kiosk near the Quattro Canti with two young cousins, buying button-holes of violas; he gave me the one he had intended for himself.
“Wear this,” he said, “it is the primavera. Proserpine has risen from the underworld, she has returned to Enna and is scattering flowers again. Stay; let us exchange; I will take another bunch and you shall pay the man for it one soldo. Buona Pasqua.”
So we exchanged bunches. “Wear this,” I said, echoing his words, “it is the primavera; the time for visiting sepulchres is over. Proserpine has sent these flowers down from Castrogiovanni by the morning train. Buona Pasqua.”
In the next piazza, in the shadow of the statue of Bellini, was one of the men from the Teatro Machiavelli; he had brought out his dog and talked of going a-birding, he hoped it was not too early for quail, he had already seen ripe strawberries in the market. Buona Pasqua.
Then I came upon Joe, the Policeman, keeping order in the street.
He said: “Buona Pasqua. You are very good-looking this morning.” He meant I was looking very well, but he will be so English.
I replied: “Buona Pasqua. But, my dear Joe, you ought not to be wearing flowers in uniform, ought you?”
“It is the primavera,” he said. He also told me that the revolvers and the squibs and the plates had not donemuch damage this year—perhaps ten or a dozen accidents, but none fatal, so far as was yet known.
I went along the Via Stesicoro, not considering my steps because I was looking up the street, wondering how long the Gloria would take to melt the snow on Etna, and I stumbled across Carmelo.
“Buona Pasqua, Carmelo, and have you been to church this morning?”
No, he had been to the port with his friends to see the steamer in which they were to go to Naples; there they would change into another steamer and be taken to the States. They had begged, borrowed, stolen, or, it may be, possibly even earned enough soldi to begin their new life upon another soil and under other skies in a new world. Buona Pasqua.
I returned to the albergo and found that Turiddu had been and had left for me a characteristic Sicilian cake—a ring of bread on one side of which, half embedded in the pasta, were four new-laid eggs. This was accompanied by a note from his mother begging me to accept it as her Easter offering of goodwill. She was telling me more than that the hens had begun to lay again. She was reminding me of how I had seen her at the Teatro Pessana as the link between her mother and her children, joining them and separating them like a passage of modulation. I understood her to mean that for the future I was to see an egg as a transitional something between the hen that laid it and the chicken that will burst from its shell, as a secret place of repose where the one is transmuted into the other, as a sacred temple wherein is prepared a mystery of resurrection. Mothers know some things that cannot be told except in symbolism, and not very clearly then, symbols being as perplexing as unresolved diminished sevenths which may be understood in many different senses. I read the riddle of the eggs in the sense suggested by the context of the Gloria, and I think I read it aright, for in Catania on that Easter morning we were all of one mind, we were allbreathing the Gloria, we were all filled with the spirit of the new life, the spirit that animated also our far-away English monk as he sat in his Berkshire cell making music for
Summer is icumen in,Lhude sing cuccu.
Summer is icumen in,Lhude sing cuccu.
In the evening I went to the Machiavelli. The theatre had been taken by a young amateur who carries on a business of forwarding oranges and other fruit. He gave a performance of one of Giovanni Grasso’s plays,Feudalismo, part of which I was obliged to see because in the second act there is a song sung behind, and Turiddu had been asked to sing it; on such a day the claims of the family were stronger even than on Palm Sunday. His voice has not yet broken, but if it turns out to be as good for a man as it is now for a boy, he ought to do well with it. I must not continue—it would be more unbecoming in me to praise my compare for his singing than to praise his sister for her acting.
After the song inFeudalismothere was time also for the second representation at the Teatro Sicilia. The performance began with the wounding of Christ. Then Annas and Caiaphas discussed the question of whether, after all, they might not have made a mistake in treating Christ as a magician. They had been alarmed by the earthquake, the atmospheric disturbances and the rising of the dead from their graves. Could these phenomena signify that he was the Son of God? And something else troubled them; on consideration they did not like the wording of Pilate’s sentence. They went to his palace, but Pilate was not disposed to listen to their objections.