Castellinaria, and Other Sicilian Diversions Part 12

Although I had to miss a great deal that it would have been interesting to see on the stage, I spent a couple of mornings with the buffo in his workshop helping to make the scene of the people escaping, which was perhaps even better than being among the audience later. I think he is most happy when he is holding up the mirror to nature and reproducing modern Palermitan life as it appears to him. He enjoyed the devils and the subterranean road, but the inhabitants of Paris in modern costume, each saving his most precious object and escaping with the Pope through the subterranean road to Montalbano, was a larger canvas and gave him more opportunities. As a creative artist he is in the fortunate position of being up to a certain point his own impresario, stage-manager and performer. Nevertheless he has to rely on the co-operation of his father and Gildo, and there is always the public to be considered, therefore it is possible that some of the things we made and contemplated in the workshop did not get so far as to be presented on the stage.

There was a sluggard carrying a mattress under each arm; and a drunkard carrying a bottle of wine, a real gla.s.s bottle that would catch the light and make an effect. Another man had on his back a table and was carrying a plate, a knife, fork, spoon and napkin; he was a glutton. The masks Pasquino and Onofrio were making a comic escape and talking in dialect; Pasquino was carrying his wife Rosina on his shoulder and a pillow in his hand, and Onofrio was saving an article of crockery made at Caltagirone.

And because the buffo was studying to become a singer he had made a musician:

"But I cannot show his voice," he complained.

"He might be practising a solfeggio," I suggested, "which you could sing for him." But this was not treating the buffo's voice with proper respect. "Or put a piece of music-paper in his hand and make him a composer."

"Bravo! But what is written on the music-paper?"

I said: "_Stornelli Montagnoli_."

He began to hum meditatively:

[Picture: Music in the Play]

"No," he said, "that won't do. In the first place it is not yet known in Palermo, and when it is, it will be so popular that no one in particular will think of saving it."

"Very well then," I replied, "make it that he has just discovered an entirely new resolution of the dominant seventh and has written it down before he forgets it."

"All right. And this is the painter; he has his easel and a picture which he has only just begun; that is more precious to him than all the pictures he has finished because it is so full of hope."

"Bravo, Buffo. And where is the miser?"

"Oh Caspita!" he exclaimed. "How clever you are! Of course there must be a miser. We will make him at once."

So we selected an old man marionette who happened to have nothing particular to do at the moment, and got a piece of sacking out of which we made a bag and filled it--not with gold--

"No," said the buffo, "that must be one of the things the people do not see, they must imagine the gold." Then we loaded the miser with his bag and added him to the crowd of fugitives.

And he had made a woman saving a mouse-trap; she was a suffragette. That was because he had read in the _Giornale di Sicilia_ that in England a meeting of suffragettes had been dispersed by letting mice in among them.

The buffo's suffragette had argued thus:

"In all the world there are mice; Montalbano will be no exception. How do I know what sort of house I shall have there? It will probably be over-run with mice. If I take this trap with me, at least I shall be able to catch some of them."

It turned out that she had to sleep on the floor in someone else's house like a fugitive from Messina, and the mouse-trap came in very handy.

And he had made a chemist who was saving a medicine chest and a few instruments. The chemist had argued thus:

"In Montalbano there will be no order. Here in Paris the restaurants are well-managed and the food is good. How can I tell what sort of food they will give us there? Very likely we shall have to depend a great deal upon chance. I will take these instruments and medicine and earn money by curing those who will be sure to be upset by the badness of the food."

And a man came weeping; his father had died the day before and there had not been time to bury the body, but it had been put into a coffin and the undertaker's men were laughing because the son was rich and had promised to pay them extra for carrying the body to Montalbano and burying it there; but the son did not see they were laughing, he was in front to show them the way.

Two boys came along, each saving a marionette, one had Orlando, the other Rinaldo; they forgot that they were escaping and stopped to make the paladins fight; a third boy came and said they were his marionettes and the others had stolen them, and the boys left Orlando and Rinaldo lying on the stage and began to fight among themselves till their three mothers followed.

"Be quick, be quick, you silly boys, be quick," shouted the mothers, hustling everything before them--boys, marionettes and all--as an autumn hurricane sweeps away the fallen leaves.

"What is that man doing?" I inquired.

"Which man?"

"The one standing in the corner there--he seems to have a camera."

"Yes, that's right. He has been sent by the Cinematograph Company to reproduce the scene for their show."

"Oh! I see. That's a capital idea; the people will like that."

"Yes, won't they?"

And two men were dragging a heavy bundle along on the ground between them, and I asked:

"What's in the bundle?"

"Clothes," he replied.

And there was a woman carrying a hen in a basket, and the hen escaped from the basket, laid an egg in the middle of the stage and cackled back into Paris; but the woman saved the egg and said: "Better an egg to-day than a hen to-morrow."

Another woman was carrying her baby on one arm and leading a child by the hand, and the child was crying because it had to walk too fast and was tired.

"This is the astronomer," said the buffo.

"Is that his umbrella under his arm? It seems too long and too bright."

"No; that is Halley's comet which he has predicted for next spring. He does not want to leave it behind, the Turks might destroy it and he would lose his reputation."

There was the boy from the barber's shop opposite; he had been playing with a black kitten when the alarm came and he joined the fugitives just as he was, in his white tunic with the kitten in his arms and a comb stuck in his bushy hair. And there came a troop of old women, chattering and shuffling along and understanding no more about it all than I should have understood if I had not had my buffo, my programme raisonne, to explain it.

Then I said: "Buffo mio, we have had a musician and a painter, where is the poet?"

"Here he comes." And there came a pale, Alfred de Musset youth with long hair, a roll of paper and a quill pen. "Do you know what he is saying?

He is saying: 'Better to embrace and be betrayed than to suffer and die in ignorance.'"

"Is that the philosophy of the buffo?" I inquired.

"It is the philosophy of the poet," he replied.

"Isn't it rather beyond the public? Will they understand?"

"The public won't hear that; it is only for you and me. There are many things we do not tell the public because they are the public; but we understand because we are artists."

"Very well. And then if we have a poet we must have a critic--won't this one do? he has a book; perhaps he is going to review it, or perhaps it is his encyclopaedia to save him from making mistakes."

"If you like, he shall be the critic; only then you ought to tell me what he is saying."

"He is saying: 'I despise everything because it is not something else.'"

"Bravo, bravo! That is better than what the poet said."