Castellinaria, and Other Sicilian Diversions Part 22

"Yes," I replied. "What a charming woman and what a strange life!"

They agreed, somewhat coldly as it seemed to me, and they rather markedly refrained from developing the subject I had offered them; but they proposed a counter subject. In a few days it would be Mery's onomastico and they were going to send flowers. I should be in Palermo, would not I send her a message on a picture post-card? Of course I would. So between us we composed it:--

Auguri per l' onomastico. Ringraziamenti per la serata intellettuale e per il caffe. Saluti--non piu, per timore di ingelosire nostro amico Antonio.

Devotissimo suo Enrico. {183}

This was the address:--

ALL' EMINENTISSIMA CARDINALESSA, MERY SO-AND-SO, ALBERGO DELL' ALLEGRIA, CASTELLINARIA.

I chose a card with a picture of St. Peter's; this seemed more appropriate than una ballerina qualunque, which I might have had for the same money, because her onomastico was the 8th September, the birthday of the Madonna, and it was her uncle who had given her the name of Mery and had himself baptised her.

I left Castellinaria next day with the card in my pocket ready to be posted on the 7th September, and went to Palermo, where I know a young doctor. I told him all about it and showed him the post-card. When he saw Mery's real name he burst out laughing.

"Oh! that woman! Why, I know her quite well. She was here with a friend of mine, who asked me to attend her professionally--I mean in my professional capacity. Oh! nothing serious, but we had to communicate with her people and I know all about her. She is not a normal woman. Of course, that rigmarole about the cardinal is all nonsense. She is the daughter of a fisherman of Siracusa. She did dance here once for a few nights, but only at the Biondo, and no one noticed her, she was in one of the back rows of the ballet. Did they tell you why she returned to Castellinaria?"

They had said nothing about it, and my doctor, not being a friend of Antonio and therefore not bound by any ties of omerta, gave me an account of it.

It happened a few months previously: Mery was living in Palermo in a hotel, and her room had a balcony; the next balcony belonged to a room occupied by a young lady and her family, and the young lady was engaged to an officer. One day Etna strayed on to the neighbouring balcony and behaved in a manner that displeased the young lady whose betrothed complained to the proprietor and Mery was requested to leave. She, of course, saw that all this about her dog was merely a casus belli concealing a conspiracy to insult her, and indignantly refused to go.

Next day, while the officer was sitting with his friends outside his usual caffe, Mery happened to pa.s.s on her way to buy a stamp and post a letter. She spoke to the officer, saying:

"You think a lot of yourself, don't you?"

The officer requested her not to address him, whereupon, taking the law into her own hands, she went up to him and made a hole in her manners by scratching his face. A crowd began to collect. Mery permitted herself the use of an expression. It was a Sicilian word, my doctor told me what it was and also its meaning; it appeared to me rather silly than offensive, but he a.s.sured me that it is never used except by people of the very lowest cla.s.s. Mery then made more holes in her manners, reducing them to the condition of one of her father's fishing-nets, and was attempting to do the same with the officer's face when the crowd interfered; Mery was hissed and handed over to the police, who prepared her papers, took her to the railway station and turned her out of the town.

Incidents such as this, by showing Mery that Sicily is no longer being misgoverned by foreigners, may in time, perhaps, teach her not to distrust professional justice. They also may in time, perhaps, teach travellers not to trust to conclusions based upon insufficient data about distinguished-looking ladies in restaurant-cars.

But I sent her the post-card all the same.

CHAPTER XVI THE CORPORAL

One makes friends rapidly in Sicily. I made friends for life with all the coast-guards during three or four hours which I spent with them in their caserma. The corporal was the most demonstrative, and after I returned to England we exchanged post-cards for some months. Then he suddenly left off writing, and I drew the conclusion that it is as easy to unmake friends as to make them. But I was wrong. After four and a half years of undeserved neglect I received another post-card:

Since the death of one of my sisters and the occurrence of several other family troubles I have not been able before this day to write and a.s.sure you of the great affection which I continue to nourish towards you. For this I beg your pardon and your indulgence. I should have much pleasure in writing you a long letter and in telling you many things. Do you permit me to do so?

I gave the required permission, and presently received the long letter--much too long to be reproduced, but amounting to this:

That he was sorry to hear I had had a cold, and wished he could have had it instead; we could only hope that heaven would give me good health for a hundred years; that he was now writing the long letter about which there had been delay in consequence of his having been away at home on leave when the necessary permission reached him; that he had no words in which to express his joy at hearing that I was soon coming to Sicily, as it was now sixty-three months since he had been in my presence. "Year after year and I have not seen you, spring after spring and I have not seen you, autumn after autumn and I have not seen you, and I have always looked for your coming and have not seen you."

He went on to say that the young lady to whom he was engaged was a beautiful and honest girl, well educated and of a superior but unfortunately poor family. He was longing for the day when he might introduce her to me, for he had now been engaged over four years, and his misery was that he did not know when they could be married. He was thirty-five, and had been in service fifteen years and a half; on attaining forty he would be able to retire from the service and marry, but in the meantime he was losing all his youth under military discipline; he had applied for a permanent government post which might be given him at any moment, and then he could retire from the coast-guard service and return to his business; he was a carpenter by trade, and there would then be no obstacle to his marrying. And sometimes he was in despair because he could marry at once if only he could deposit 8000 francs--a sum that was beyond his means. He saw no way out of his trouble. He had been very unfortunate ever since he was born, and supposed he should continue to be so until he died; but he had always been economical, and had saved about half the sum required; if only he could get the remaining 4000 francs it would be a great good fortune, and in a few days he hoped to send me his photograph together with that of his young lady.

I replied congratulating him on his engagement and regretting that it was not in my power to help him to hasten his marriage. Even if there had been any reason why I should help him I should not have contemplated mixing myself up with the regulations regarding the marriage of coast-guards made by a friendly nation. If one were to begin, it would take a great deal of money to go round Italy endowing all the coastguards who want to marry; not that he had asked me to do this, he had not even asked me to help him, but it is as well to be prepared for what seems likely to happen next, and I was using a sanctified form of refusal.

In his reply he did not mention the subject; he said he had been transferred to Castellinaria and had been promoted. He was now Caporale Maggiore. I did not know before that coastguard corporals, like musical scales and Hebrew prophets, could be either major or minor.

I again congratulated him, and hoped his promotion might help to hasten his marriage. Next time I was at Castellinaria I asked Peppino where I should find the caserma of the Guardia di Finanza.

"It is in the church," said Peppino.

"What church? Not the duomo?"

"No; this other church where is no longer the praying and they shall enchant no more the Glory of the Ma.s.s with music and the bells are not ringing and there is the cortile near the sea. It is not very long far."

Then I knew he meant the disused church of S. Maria dell' Aiuto which I had often admired. I called there the following day about three in the afternoon and inquired for the corporal. His comrade who let me in took me along two sides of a beautiful cloister, with sculptured marble columns, and upstairs into the barber's shop, where we found the corporal with a towel round his neck being shaved. He was so surprised to see me that I was afraid there would be an accident, but the barber was clever and nothing serious happened. After the shaving he took me into the dormitory, which extends all along one side of the cloister on the first floor with windows looking on the gra.s.s and flowers of the cortile on one side and over the sea on the other--very fresh and healthy. Some of his comrades, who had been on duty all night, were sleeping in their beds, other beds were empty, and their owners were blacking their boots and polishing their b.u.t.tons. He told them to entertain me, which they did while he finished his dressing. He then returned and proposed taking me out.

As we went along he asked whether he might take me to see his young lady.

I was surprised to hear she was in the town, knowing it was not her native place, and asked whether the remaining 4000 francs had dropped from heaven. He replied that he was still waiting. He was to have a month's leave soon, and intended to take the girl to his home and introduce her to his family; in the meantime he had hired a room, and it was very expensive--twenty francs a month, in the house of most respectable people. I foresaw complications when they should arrive at home, at least I thought the journey might provoke remark among the friends of the family, but I said nothing, and we went to the house of the respectable people. Here I was introduced to the fidanzata, whose name was Filomena, and who appeared to be, as he had said, rather above him in station and of refined and lady-like manners. She was embroidering the top part of a sheet--the part that is turned down and lies over the pillow when the bed is made--no doubt for her trousseau.

The design had been traced and traced again from the tracing so often that it was difficult to say what it represented. There was a bal.u.s.trade of columns like those that were taken from old Kew Bridge and sold to support sun-dials; there were cauliflowery arabesques, and among the spiky foliage there were meaningless ponds of open-work made by gathering the threads of the linen together into wonderful patterns. In the middle of all this stood one who after a few more tracings will have quite lost the semblance of a woman; the five fingers of her hands and the five toes of her feet had already become so conventionalised that all one could be sure of was that there were still five of each. The corporal said that this monster was Helen gazing out to sea from the topless towers of Ilium. She was really looking the other way, exhibiting to the spectator all that remained of the face that launched the thousand ships of which half a dozen were shown riding at anchor behind her back. I did not venture to criticise, because the corporal knew all about it, having seen the _Story of Hector_ done by the marionettes. Filomena was embroidering this most beautifully; I should say that the needle-working of it was as much above all praise as the design of it was beneath all blame.

Most of the room was taken up by a bed large enough to hold three or four Filomenas without crowding, and upon it lay a mandoline and a guitar.

The corporal called for music; Filomena cheerfully complied, left her broidery-frame, and took up the mandoline, whose only t.i.tle to be considered a musical instrument is that Mozart uses it for the pizzicato accompaniment which Don Giovanni plays while he sings "Deh Vieni."

Filomena, knowing nothing about Mozart, used her mandoline for the delivery of a melody which she performed with great skill, though it was but a silly tune and sounded sillier than it was because of the irritating tremolo. It was like her embroidery--very well done but not worth doing. She had been taught the mandoline by the nuns, who had also taught her needlework. I expected the corporal to accompany her on the guitar; he admitted that he was pa.s.sionately devoted to music, but excused himself from performing on the ground that he had not studied it.

This is not usually put forward as an objection; the rule is for them to play and tell one, unnecessarily but with some pride, that they are doing it all by ear. And in their accompaniment they show themselves to be artists of the school that preaches "Simplify, simplify, simplify" in that they exclude all harmonies except those of the tonic, dominant and sub-dominant. But they make the mistake of not being careful always to play each in its right place; they carry their simplifying process to the length of using their chosen harmonies in regular order, one after the other, two bars each--it may come right and it may not, and when it does not the resulting complexities ruin the simplicity. This sort of thing might become unbearable, but I know how to escape from people of the corporal's cla.s.s without being rude. I do not tell them I have another engagement--that is not accepted because, as there is no time in Sicily, punctuality is not recognised. If they have a proverb about it, it ought to be, "Never put off till to-morrow what can be done the day after."

Nor do I say I have letters to write--that only provokes discussion:

"We thought you had come all this way to see us, and now you want to write to England! You can talk to your English friends when you are at home."

The course is to say one wants to sleep; one need not sleep, but no objection is made, and one is usually allowed to depart at once. I have not ventured to try this among my aristocratic friends, I doubt whether it would work with them--besides, they disarm me by handing round tea--but with corporals I employ it freely, and the knowledge that I can always get away in a moment, even if I choose to remain, imparts to their company a sense of freedom which I regret to say I have sometimes looked for in vain in the educated drawing-rooms of the upper cla.s.ses.

Before Filomena could begin her third piece I put my method in practice, and for once it did not work quite smoothly, but the result was not unsatisfactory.

Certainly I might sleep, said the corporal; but why go away? He hoped I should dine with them. I might name my own hour and, as for sleeping, there was the bed. Besides, his brother was coming to dinner:

"I want you to know my brother," said the corporal; "he is not like me."

"But, my dear Corporal, that is no recommendation," I replied. "Is he also a coast-guard?"

"No. He is a dentist and very clever. He is an artificial dentist and he had to work to learn his profession."

"Well, I suppose every dentist must learn his profession before he is qualified. Dentists have to be made, they are not like poets. No one is a natural born dentist."

"He had to work very hard. For a whole year he went to the hospital every day four times a week."

"A clever dentist is a useful ally. I should like to know him. I might want his help while I am here. What is his name?"

"Ah yes! That will interest you, he has an English name." Then he said something that sounded like "He ran away" with the "r" and the "w" both misty. As I did not recognise it, he wrote it down for me--"Ivanhoe."

"If you send him your teeth," continued the corporal, "he will repair them and return them to you as good as new."

"Some of them are getting loose," I admitted, "but they wouldn't come out so easily as you think, and how should I ever get them in again?--Oh, I see what you mean, he is a dentist in artificial teeth."

"Of course. When I say he is not like me, I mean that he is a man of great learning, really well educated. He is very clever. You will see him at dinner. I must not keep you talking, you wish to sleep. There is the bed; why not lie down? If only we were in my own house at home--"

and so on.