Castellinaria, and Other Sicilian Diversions Part 19

The father and the mother of the bridegroom and the father and the mother of the bride invite the relations and friends, who all offer presents of greater or less value according to the degree of relationship and friendship. The ring is chosen by the bridegroom in consultation with the bride. The compare, of his own accord, offers a present to the couple, more usually he offers it only to the bride.

All this I have told you merely as information with regard to the customs of my country; it is not necessary for you to give any present but, if you wish to do so, do as you wish. Wedding presents are lifelong records of relationship and of friendship.

If I am to speak frankly, loyally and sincerely to you as the friend I have always been to you, I recommend you to bring some present for the bride because, as you who have travelled so much must know, in small places not to receive a present from the compare would be to provoke the remark among all who talk that the bride and bridegroom were not complimented by the compare. I tell you this because you are my dearest friend and not because I wish to be critical. Bring anything you choose and be sure that whatever may be offered by you will be accepted by my bride. For me--nothing. I have sufficient in the thought and the comfort of your friendship.

So I consulted my sister, who recommended me to visit a jeweller's shop.

There is one in Regent Street where I take my sleeve-links to be repaired when I have the misfortune to break them. She approved and I went and explained the situation to the young man, who was very kind about it and, after a few false starts, cordially advised one of a line of gold pendants much in vogue to be worn with a light chain. He had an apparently inexhaustible stock, and I became as confused and helpless as when some change is necessary in my spectacles and the oculist wants to know whether I see better with this or with that. I have no idea how long I was there, but in the end I selected a meaningless object of a design which the young man a.s.sured me was original and exclusive, and which I hoped would appear fairly un.o.bjectionable to the recipient.

After which, not being at all content to leave Berto resting solely on the thought and comfort of my friendship, I chose for him a dozen silver teaspoons. My sister, to whom I showed these articles, approved and, of her own unprompted generosity, added a piece of Irish lace as a special gift from herself to the bride, though she is unacquainted with any of the family except from my description. Thus loaded I travelled to Trapani and went up the Mountain in the public automobile, arriving on a Thursday morning early in April, 1910, the wedding being fixed for the following Sat.u.r.day.

Berto met me at the Trapani gate of the town and took me to the Albergo Sicilia, where I had stayed when I was on the Mountain in 1901. Signor Bosco has died since, and his widow keeps on the inn with the help of some members of her family of six daughters and four sons. One of these sons is Peppi, a blacksmith, who plays a trombone in the munic.i.p.al band.

Another is Alberto, one of the chauffeurs who drive the automobile up and down the Mountain. Alberto and one of his sisters appeared as children in the procession of the _Universal Deluge_. They were sitting at the feet of Sin and holding one another's hands to represent the wicked population destined to destruction. Alberto is now married. His wedding took place in the morning, and at three o'clock in the afternoon three hundred guests were entertained at dinner in the Albergo Sicilia, after which they danced till dawn and, as the wedding was in December, they must have been rather tired; but it was an exceptional case.

In the afternoon Berto came for me and took me to the house of his bride to pay my respects. The house belongs to her; she has two brothers and a sister all married and settled, and on Berto's marriage he will leave the house of his parents and go and live in his wife's house. We entered through a door that led through a high blank wall into a courtyard where there were flowering plants in pots, and steps leading up to the living-rooms on the first floor over a bas.e.m.e.nt which is used partly as stabling and partly as storage. This is the form of most of the houses on the Mountain, and the blank wall and courtyard give them an air of seclusion. We went up the steps and were received by the bride and many of her relations, some of whom I had already met, for Giuseppina is a cousin of Berto's mother. They showed me over the house; the rooms all led into one another and, though they were not in a row, it was rather like going over S. Joachim's house when it is being prepared for the family festa of the Nascita. It would have been still more like it if we had come in by the other front door, for the side we entered is on a street that goes up-hill and the house is at a corner with another front door in the other street at the top of the hill and level with the living-rooms. This other front door leads straight into a hall, which will be occupied by the musicians on the evening of the wedding, from this one pa.s.ses to the dining-room where the servants are to dance, then to the salone where the guests are to dance.

We sat in the salone, about twenty of us in a circle, talking the usual talk, and one of the young ladies asked me whether we had compari at an English wedding. I said we had something of the kind. She inquired what I should be called if I were compare at an English wedding, and, seeing no way out of it, I modestly murmured:

"In England I should be called the Best Man."

This naturally led to a torrent of compliments, which I battled with for some moments, and finally subdued by asking to see the rest of the house.

We went to the room which had been arranged as the buffet; the walls were adorned with large looking-gla.s.ses, and in the middle was a table for the cakes and sweets. The buffet is to be my bedroom next time I come to the Mountain. We pa.s.sed through two other saloni and then inspected two bedrooms, one for the happy couple, the other for Berto's mother, who is to stay with them for the first few days. The presents were arranged on a table by the side of the nuptial couch, which had arrived that morning from Palermo together with the rest of the bedroom suite, very handsome, and made of Hungarian ash. The presents were rather as I have seen wedding presents in England, plenty of spoons and forks, gold brooches, rings, bracelets, some set with diamonds and some with other stones, and I was glad I was not really back in Regent Street choosing my pendant.

We went into the courtyard and into the stable where we saw Mille-lire the donkey, who is scarcely bigger than a Saint Bernard dog and only cost thirty-five lire. It was Berto who gave him the name of Mille-lire to signify that his value far exceeds his price. He has a cart to match and can take four people, but I think they must be rather small people. He shares his stable with thirty-eight chickens, old and young, and two ducks, who all come out into the courtyard to be fed in the sun. There are also three pigeons, making a total of forty-four creatures. In addition there are two cats who live in the house and two tortoises who live in the courtyard. Tortoises are found wild among the rocks in the mountains and the peasants bring them up to the town and sell them.

These came from Monte Asparacio, which is near Cofano; they cost forty centimes each, and bring good luck to the house. On Mount Eryx there is a convent of nuns of S. Teresa, to whom flesh is forbidden, but the prohibition does not extend to tortoises, which the nuns eat with tomato sauce. When the nuns begin to feel the infirmities of age they are no longer limited to this strange meat, the prohibition is withdrawn, and they live like other old ladies, eating what they choose. I have no idea how many fourpenny tortoises would make a meal for a healthy young nun on Monte San Giuliano, where one's appet.i.te is sharpened by the air. They occasionally add a few snails, which are also permitted; there is a kind of snail which is found underground and is considered a luxury by others besides the nuns of S. Teresa.

After the stable and the courtyard we went to the terrace whence, over the roofs and cupolas and among the towers and belfries of the town, there is a view of the sea and the plain. Then we visited the kitchen and saw the oven for baking the bread. All the well-to-do families on the Mountain possess land on the campagna where they grow their own corn; they take it to the mill to be weighed and ground, and fetch back the flour which is also weighed; they know that if they leave a hundred kilograms of grain they must receive ninety-nine of flour, and in this wasted kilogram of flour lurks the true reason why the miller wears a white hat. They bake their own bread and sometimes make their own maccaroni at home. They grow their own grapes and make their own wine.

They have olive trees for oil, and goats whose milk they drink, considering it lighter and more digestible than cows' milk. Berto's sister has a private goat of her own, who lives down in the country and comes up every morning, a journey of three-quarters of an hour, and she milks it herself. Thus they pa.s.s their lives very close to Mother Earth, and the seasons sensibly affect their comfort. They have little use for money except to buy coffee, fish, sugar, meat, and clothes, or the stuff of which they make their clothes, and some of them raise their own linen and wool. But they want money when there is a family festa; Berto told me he had spent 700 lire merely for the sweetmeats and cakes at his wedding.

All Friday and most of Sat.u.r.day I spent in being presented to various members of the family and in making preparations. Berto recommended me to visit the barber on Sat.u.r.day afternoon and, as a good Sicilian, I followed his advice and went to the salone of Peppino. When Samuel Butler first came to Mount Eryx in 1892 to see whether he could identify the localities with those described as Scheria and Ithaca in the _Odyssey_, he slipped in the street and put his ankle out of joint. The doctor was away, and his foot was set by Peppino, who is a barber-surgeon with a salone close to the spot where the accident happened. Accordingly Peppino is the barber I employ when I am on the Mountain. While he was attending to me I observed a change in the salone, and, on asking where the looking-gla.s.ses were, was told they had been lent to Berto to ornament the buffet of his wedding festa.

After the barber, I had my dinner, as I found there would be no opportunity to do so when once the wedding ceremonies had begun, and then I dressed. In the meantime a cloud began to collect on the Mountain and the wind began to blow.

CHAPTER XI BERTO'S WEDDING

A Sicilian wedding is conducted either on system _a_, when the happy couple go away for their honeymoon and the ceremony is performed in the morning, or on system _b_, when they do not go away but have a ball at home, and then the ceremony is performed in the evening. The wedding of Ign.a.z.io proceeded on system _a_, that of Berto and Giuseppina on system _b_. As for Alberto Bosco, his wedding was either a combination of _a_ and _b_ or an exceptional case.

Berto's brother Nicolao came to fetch me at 5.30 p.m. and took me to the house of the bride's brother in the piazza, where the bride was waiting.

Her dress was of pale grey crepe trimmed with dull silver embroidery and she wore zagara in her bonnet. Exceptional cases being excepted, it may be said that brides only wear white silk and a veil and wreath of orange blossom, as Ign.a.z.io's bride did at the religious ceremony, when the wedding is conducted on system _a_. I failed to discover any rule about a cortege of bridesmaids, if there is such a rule it is probably elastic.

The other ladies wore dresses as for a dance in England in the country in the winter. The gentlemen, like the guests at the Nascita, wore evening dress. And of course we all had cloaks or over-coats.

When we were about to leave the house, Peppi Bosco, with his trombone and the rest of the munic.i.p.al band, began to play, and to the strains of their music we crossed the piazza in the fog. The bride was conducted by her brother, the bridegroom came next escorting a lady cousin, I followed, as compare, with Berto's mother, and the others came after. We entered the municipio and went upstairs into a large room. The sindaco sat behind a table, the bride and bridegroom sat facing one another in two armchairs on the opposite side of the table and we ranged ourselves about the room.

The sindaco had often before sat at that table and received other wedding parties, nevertheless he appeared at a loss, or perhaps he disapproved of matrimony. At any rate he was not going to acquiesce in the proceedings until he had dwelt, as elderly people will, on the serious nature of the duties the young people were proposing to undertake. He went so far as to put clearly before them aspects of the case which they might have overlooked and to read them legal extracts of a discouraging nature.

They were unmoved, and the sindaco, still dissatisfied, asked Berto point-blank whether he really wished, under the circ.u.mstances, to take Giuseppina to be his wife. Berto replied in the affirmative. Concealing his surprise, the sindaco turned to Giuseppina and asked her whether she wished to be married to Berto. She said she did; and indeed it was the reason why we were all there, as the sindaco must have known if he had given the matter a thought, for the wedding had been the talk of the town since Christmas; but the law does not regard hearsay evidence. Finding there was no help for it, he p.r.o.nounced the necessary words and, no doubt with a view of disclaiming personal responsibility should he hereafter be taxed with marriage-mongering, invited them to sign the book with a pen made entirely of gold in the form of a feather, which he afterwards offered them as a wedding present with his best wishes and a paper on which his clerk had neatly engrossed the legal extracts.

We descended into the piazza now vacated by Peppi Bosco, who had been playing in it with his munic.i.p.al music during the ceremony, and, forming ourselves into a procession as before, walked down the princ.i.p.al street of the town, and I was thinking of many things. As we pa.s.sed the club I remembered how once in the winter Berto had taken me there and introduced me to all the notabilities of the place and I had wondered how the fog agreed with the billiard table. We pa.s.sed the farmacia where Berto spends his time making up prescriptions and gossiping with his friends.

We went on down the street and my thoughts wandered to other subjects.

In the first place there was my hat, or rather Berto's uncle's hat, for, though I had remembered about the guests at the Nascita wearing evening clothes, I had forgotten that they brought their cylindrical hats, and Berto had borrowed one for me, which was so small I had to hold it on.

And the wind blew and roared and shook the shutters and banged the windows and doors and smashed the gla.s.s down on to the roughly paved streets, and the dense, chilly cloud went through the cracks and penetrated into every house and damped the beds and discoloured the whitewash of the walls. And I had Berto's mother on one arm and could not keep his uncle's hat on my head. At last I took it off and carried it under my other arm, putting on my head a cap which I happened to have in my pocket.

We came to the steep part of the street near the salone of Peppino and I thought of his looking-gla.s.ses that were temporarily adorning the future bedroom of Berto's compare, and I thought of Butler's accident and of the auth.o.r.ess of the _Odyssey_ writing her poem up here three thousand years ago. And what are three thousand years to Time in his flight? An interval that he can clear with a flap or two of his mighty wings. No one knows how often he has flapped them since these narrow roughly paved streets began to give the town its irregular shape; no one knows anything of the prehistoric incarnations of her who has reigned here as Phoenician Astarte, as Greek Aphrodite, as Roman Venus, and who now reigns here as Italian Maria. We were adding one more to the processions that during unnumbered ages have pa.s.sed along the streets of Mount Eryx worshipping the Mystery of Birth.

We turned down by the Palazzo Platamone and at last reached the Matrice.

The floor was hidden by the people standing on it and the ceiling by thousands of wax candles hanging from it. The organ was playing antiphonally with Peppi Bosco, who had preceded us with his trombone and his munic.i.p.al music. We went into the sagrestia and I did not at first recognise the Arciprete Messina who received us, for I had not previously seen him in his vestments, but he knew me. We had met in the street when he was wearing his ordinary clothes the day before and I had told him I had his photograph taken by Butler, who wanted his face because it is particularly round, like that of so many of the Ericini, and Butler used to say they are descended from the Cyclopes who formerly lived here--Cyclopes means circle-faced, not one-eyed.

After signing the register we left the sagrestia, pushed our way through the people, and stood outside the altar-rails in a circle, the arciprete, Berto, Giuseppina, myself and another priest. I held an old silver tazza, on which the ring was placed. The music was tremendous and had to be made to play piano. The arciprete read the words and, at the proper moment, I handed the tazza, from which he took the ring and gave it to the bridegroom, who placed it upon the bride's finger. And the Madonna di Custonaci sat over the altar with the Child at her breast smiling down upon our little circle and giving her blessing to Berto and Giuseppina who, with the sanction of their relations and friends, were taking the first step on the path that leads to motherhood.

We were not in the church ten minutes, and the music became forte again as our procession pa.s.sed out into the fog. We went to the bride's house and entered by the door that leads into the courtyard which was occupied by Peppi Bosco, who had again preceded us with his trombone and munic.i.p.al music. The bride retired and, after a few moments, reappeared among the guests, escorted by Berto and accompanied by someone bearing a large tea-tray piled up with sugared almonds, which she ladled to us in handfuls with a silver coffee-cup. On whatever system a Sicilian wedding is conducted it would be incomplete without sugared almonds, and they are sent in boxes to all friends who are unable to attend. Several boxes were given to me for my near relations who, by virtue of my having become compare of Berto and Giuseppina, are now in a manner related to them.

And the bride also gave me for my sister a special gift of a handkerchief embroidered by someone in the neighbourhood.

After the almonds, the music began in the front hall and we danced.

There were waltzes, polkas and contraddanze, also games involving dances.

I did not try to dance the waltzes or the polkas, they were quite different from those I used to be taught; Berto said they were dancing the ballo figurato. Nor did I dance the tarantella, which I never was taught in any form, but I saw it danced by Berto's mother and a brother of the bride. I danced in three contraddanze, first with Berto's mother, then with his bride, then with his sister. One of the dancers called out in French what we were to do, and the mistakes we made added to the amus.e.m.e.nt. Frequently there was a promenade, the partners walking arm-in-arm round the room, which gave time to recover ourselves when we had got into any great confusion. Sometimes he who directs the contraddanza is so fertile in invention that he can make it last two hours. I do not think any that I danced lasted above half an hour, and they always ended by our promenading away to the buffet, which was under the joyous direction of Berto's father. Here we ate sweetmeats and cakes and drank rosolio, which is any kind of light liqueur.

Berto's brother Nicolao took me away at 3 a.m., and I wanted someone to show me the road because the cloud was still on the Mountain, and they do not keep the streets lighted all night. But the rest danced for another hour and then departed, leaving Berto's mother to attend to the bride and to stay in the house.

Next day at noon we all called to inquire and I remained to dinner at two. While we were at table we heard the drum beating a Saracen rhythm and went to the window. It was the festa of S. Francesco da Paola; he was coming out of his church and going up to the balio on the top of the Mountain. The fog had cleared away, leaving a few light clouds whose shadows chased one another across the campagna and out to sea, where they played with the islands that were swimming in it, each separate and distinct in the brightness like those on a China plate. S. Francesco turned his back to the islands; he had not come out to bless the sea.

Nor had he come to bless Cofano; he knew it was beyond his power to make that rocky wilderness to blossom as a rose. The translucent mountains stood back in a rugged amphitheatre before him, reverently saluting the throne of Venus; he acknowledged their salute, but he did not bless the barren mountains; he remembered the words of his Master: To him that hath shall be given, and from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he seemeth to have.

Good old San Cicciu da Paola turned his eyes away from the mountains and looked down upon the exuberance of the campagna. Every patch was a mother's breast suckling the young bread and wine and oil, making the little figs to swell on their branches and the big blobby oranges to grow bigger and blobbier among their leaves. The salad was pushing, pushing up through the soil; peaches, apples, pears, medlars and plums were forming inside their faint pink and snowy blooms; there were almonds and blossoming pomegranates, asparagus and tomatoes, artichokes in disorderly tufts and beans combed into tidy rows. In the hollow places, like marshy pools reflecting the sky, lay beds of pale blue flax to be woven into wedding sheets for Mount Eryx.

San Cicciu looked upon it and saw that it was good, and he blessed all that fertility. He was doing for the campagna what the Cyclopean arciprete had asked the Madonna to do for Berto and Giuseppina.

TRABONELLA

CHAPTER XII SULPHUR

Caltanissetta is a busy town of some 45,000 inhabitants near the middle of the island and about 2000 feet above the sea. It depends for its prosperity on almonds, grapes, olives and sulphur, especially the last, for there is much sulphur in the pores of the rock. I have several friends there of whom one, Beppe (Giuseppe) Catena, is an engineer with an interest in Trabonella, the largest sulphur mine in the neighbourhood, and another, Gigino (Luigi) Cordova, is an advocate. Sometimes Beppe is in the town and sometimes Gigino and I go to Trabonella and find him there. It is an hour's drive along a road that winds among rolling hills. Through the depressions between the near hills other hills appear, and through their depressions higher hills, and beyond these are higher hills again until the view is bounded by the Monti delle Madonie where the snow lingers until May. It must have been some such country as this that was in the mind of him who first spoke of the sea running mountains high.

I do not know whether it is more beautiful in spring or in autumn. I know that in spring the gra.s.s under the orange trees is spotted with purple flowers, and that crimson vetch incarnadines the hills, as though Lady Macbeth had dipped her little hand into their mult.i.tudinous green; the hedges bloom with rosemary and scarlet geranium, the banks with sweet pea and brilliant mesembryanthemum, and the rough places are full of asphodel; there are a few eucalyptus trees and now and then a solemn row of cypresses; we may pa.s.s a hut of grey thatch and perhaps a few horses or a sprinkling of tethered goats; sometimes we see a herd of bullocks tended by a boy who has come out this morning in black sheep-skin leggings up to his hips, and I think he learnt his song from happy nightingales that set the April moonlight to music.

But in autumn the prospect is as fair. The harvest is over; the earth, bronzed by the summer heat, is resting after her labour and nature is making variations in the ochres and umbers that in spring were half hidden, huddled together in the steep places where nothing will flourish; the stubble shows in lines of pale yellow on the brown earth among patches of almost colourless green and other patches black with burning which change the value of the olives, pistachios, carubas and aloes; here and there is a shrivelled thistle, here and there a lone pine; sometimes we see a string of mules winding in and out on its way home, losing and finding itself among the undulations like a little fleet of fishing boats that rise and fall with the swell, and I think Schubert must have pa.s.sed this way when he felt stirring within him the mellow loveliness of the second Entr'acte to _Rosamunde_:

[Picture: Rosamunde]

We need not choose one or the other, we need only wait to have both; for spring is the modulation to the dominant, the awakening, the going out in search of adventure, while autumn is the return to the tonic, the coming home in search of repose, the falling asleep; the first leads to the second as naturally as youth leads to age.

Last time Gigino and I went to Trabonella it was spring, and we took with us his young brother Michelino, aged thirteen, who had never been there before. We arrived in the afternoon and found Beppe, who took us round, and we showed Michelino the works. Empty trucks were gliding down a sloping railway into the mine, while others were gliding up filled with the harvest of the deep. We saw the broken pieces of rock being put into great furnaces and we watched the treacly sulphur that was melted out of the pores and came oozing through a tap into a mould. It is then purified and made into shapes like candles, and I thought of Kentish giants handling such bars of sulphur to fumigate the hops in the glow of an oast-house fire. We introduced Michelino to the overseers, directors and managers and to the doctor. We returned to the hut where Beppe lives, and dined out of doors in the yard behind. It all seemed to me very healthy and like the accounts one reads and the ill.u.s.trations one sees of life in a new country, with the advantage that Caltanissetta is only about eight kilometres away. But Beppe objected that the nearness of Caltanissetta was no advantage because it induces a feeling of "Well, it doesn't matter; I can always go to town for that," and so they put up with much that they might remedy if they were really beyond the reach of civilisation. Consequently he was not able to treat us as we deserved.

We replied that we were glad it was so, because he was treating us much better.

After dinner we joined the other managers and directors in a room of a larger building; a mandoline and guitar were brought and some of them played. Presently Michelino sang. He surprised me by the beauty and power of his young voice and by his management of it, also by his musical intelligence and by his complete self-possession. He sang the tenor songs of many operas and other popular melodies, especially I remember his singing the _Stornelli Montagnoli_, which is so beautiful that the buffo said it would save itself in the Escape from Paris. To all this the guitar-player vamped an accompaniment which Michelino relentlessly silenced by a gesture when it became unbearable. It was absurd to see him lording it over the company, nearly a dozen of us and the youngest nearly old enough to be his father. When it was time to retire, beds were found for the visitors and I pa.s.sed a comfortable night in Beppe's hut.