Castellinaria, and Other Sicilian Diversions Part 26

SUBJECT

Describe all that you saw before and after the earthquake.

DESCRIPTION

It was an ugly winter evening and the last day of the Christmas holidays. I was playing with nuts with my companions. About six o'clock we dined and, after we had finished, we began to play at Sette e Mezzo Reale [a game of cards]. We re-charged the acetylene lamps, for we intended to sit up late. The professor opened [the window and went out on] the balcony to see what the weather was like; observing that the sky was frightful and of a reddish colour, he said to his wife:

"My dear Nunzia, listen to these few words and bear them in mind: This is a fatal night, it is a horrible night."

His wife asked, "What are you saying?"

Then the professor replied, "Either we shall have some kind of storm or there will be a great earthquake or a deluge." To these words we paid no attention, but went on with our game.

At one o'clock after midnight we extinguished the acetylene gas and went to bed, where we immediately fell asleep.

At half-past five after midnight there came a great earthquake. I and my companions began to cry and recommend ourselves to G.o.d who can save from every calamity.

After the earthquake was over we dressed in haste and frenzy and went out [into the courtyard], but we could not pa.s.s the front door [into the street] because it was blocked with ruins. Presently our professor crawled out through a hole and we followed him.

In the piazza we saw sights that tore our hearts, and we wept as we thought of those poor unhappy children left without parents or relations. And we thanked G.o.d who had saved us from such a great disaster. Every few moments there came more shocks, and there were we weeping and recommending ourselves to the Lord.

As day broke we saw many wretched creatures being dragged out from under the heaps of rubbish and being put on carts or laid on the ground.

We began to feel hungry and begged our professor to buy us some bread, but he replied:

"There is no place where bread can be bought, we must therefore take courage, climb back into the house and get a few nuts."

[This re-entering the house was dangerous because it might have fallen when they were inside, but they managed it in safety and returned with some maccaroni and bread, also some nuts and two sticks of dried figs which were there for the festa of Christmas.]

We began to eat the food and, seeing some children near us who also were hungry, were moved to compa.s.sion for their condition and gave them each something.

In this way we supported life for two days, but on the third day the food was finished.

[During these two days they were in the ruins of a fish-market, which was better than being out in the open, but not much because the roof was broken. They only had such clothes as they had s.n.a.t.c.hed up in their haste and these were wet through and saturated with mud up to the knees. They caught colds and the professor was ill for months.]

All day long, bodies were being extricated from the ruins and we could hardly bear the stench; to make matters worse it was raining, the houses were on fire, the air was heavy with smoke and there were constant shocks of earthquake. It seemed like the end of the world.

On the third day I went with our professor to the port to inquire whether the survivors would be taken to Naples. The captain replied "Yes." We returned to the market and our path lay among the wounded and the dead.

When we had reached shelter our professor said:

"Let us take courage and return into the house to bring out some clothes and linen and the certificates of my niece." We went to the house, but the door was jammed by reason of the earthquake. While we were shaking it, there came another shock. We remembered another door, which we opened, we went in and found the certificates and brought away all such other things as we thought likely to be useful for the moment and gradually carried them down. Our professor's niece made the things up into bundles and put them on our shoulders and so, pa.s.sing the heaps of dead bodies, of rubbish and ruins, we went to the railway station.

Here they made us get into a second-cla.s.s carriage, which we supposed would start for Catania, and we had nothing to eat but oranges, which were given us by a soldier.

[It must have been while they were in this carriage that Corrado and Vittorio went to the station and took train for Catania, pa.s.sing quite close to them and not seeing them. There were twelve waggon-loads of oranges which had come from Catania before the disaster in the course of trade, and orders were given that they were to be distributed among the survivors. Thus the waggons were emptied and people could be put into them.]

Opposite us was a waggon full of soldiers and sailors. Our professor's niece called a soldier and begged him not to forget us.

He immediately brought us three loaves of bread, five flasks of wine, three tins of preserved meat and some sausage.

Imagine our happiness when we saw that meat after those days of hunger! We drank the wine at once because we had nowhere else to put it and the soldiers wanted their flasks back. We were eating oranges all the time, because they gave us plenty.

After we had been in this waggon two days, one of the railway-men told us that there had come a German steamer which would take us to Naples. We took with us some bread, some oranges and a little salame which we had over, and went to the port, where, fortunately, we found a boat which took us to the steamer.

At five minutes past eleven on the sixth day as the steamer departed from Messina, the professor, his wife and his niece began to cry.

The German sailors prepared bread and also basins of soup with pasta in it, and when the bell sounded at noon they distributed the food among us all.

When we had eaten it, we went below to see whether the women required anything.

At half-past four they gave us soup with rice in it and plenty of meat. Then the captain ordered that the fugitives should go below.

We were taken into the second-cla.s.s cabin which was set apart for the women and children.

Next day when we arrived at Naples they would not let us disembark till we had had coffee, after which we all collected and were landed in boats. First, however, they made all the men descend into one boat and in another boat all the women.

When we had disembarked at Naples they at once wanted all our names and then took us to an inst.i.tution called "Vittoria Colonna," where in order to restore us we were each given a good cup of coffee and milk.

THIS LITTLE DESCRIPTION OF 28 DECEMBER 1908 WRITTEN AT BOLOGNA 27. 1. 09 IS PRESENTED TO MR. HENRY FESTING JONES WHO WILL PRESERVE IT AS A LASTING RECORD OF TURIDDU BALISTRIERI FUGITIVE FROM MESSINA

While they were in Messina the children and the niece slept at night, but the professor and his wife did not sleep at all, and for two of the days the professor and his wife ate nothing and drank nothing. They were able to collect drops of rain water, especially when they were in the railway carriage where they had a roof, and they sometimes collected a little wood and made a fire. Earthquake shocks were continually occurring.

The professor is also an imbalsamatore and, as an example of his skill, gave me a stuffed bird which I was to take to London. He said it was a kind of quail, a bird that reposes near Messina when migrating. His niece, the studentessa, gave me as a ricordo a pin-cushion; on one side it has an advertis.e.m.e.nt of a shop in Messina and on the other a picture of a lady trying on a new garter, which has been bought at the shop and which fits perfectly to the delight of her maid and the astonishment of her grandmother. They had saved these things after the earthquake. One does not look a gift-horse in the mouth, but I have sometimes wondered whether the buffo's Cold Dawn had followed the professor and the studentessa in their flight and whispered to them that they had saved the wrong objects. Still, a pin-cushion is always useful.

RAILWAY PORTERS

Some years ago the station porter who attended to my luggage at Messina gave me his name and address, saying that if I would send him a post-card next time I came, he would meet me and look after me. Since then I have pa.s.sed through Messina once, and sometimes twice, a year and he has always met me. I wrote to him from London after the earthquake inquiring whether he was alive or dead, but he did not receive my card till nearly eight months later, after it had been returned to me and I had sent it to him again. I had in the meantime heard, in an indirect way, that he was one of the station porters who had survived. In the August following the earthquake I sent him a card to say I was coming by steamer from Naples, and he was in a little boat in the port to meet me.

There was a difference in his manner and a new look in his eyes. When he had been talking some time, I mentioned it, and he admitted that he felt different since the earthquake. His house fell and he lay buried in the ruins with nothing to eat or drink and seriously wounded. A friend came looking for him and after three days he was extricated, restored to life and properly taken care of. But his wife and child were killed and his home destroyed. He has been born again naked into the world, no wonder there is a strange look in his eyes. We were joined by his cousin, another porter, who was seven days in the ruins, starved into unconsciousness. When the soldiers rescued him they thought he was dead, but they took him where the doctors gradually brought him back to life.

He did not mind the dying after it had once set in, everything gave way to the indolent pleasure of irresponsible drifting, but the restoration was a difficult and exhausting business. He will be thought to be dead again some day, and will be allowed to continue his sleep in peace without any troublesome awakening.

I looked in the eyes of the men who were hanging about among the temporary wooden sheds in the piazza in front of the station, and saw in many of them the expression that was in my porter's eyes, the expression that betrays those who are the figli del terremoto, those who have been born again with the earthquake for their second mother, and I remembered that the same expression was in the eyes of Turiddu's professor in Naples. I had supposed it to be normal with the professor, but it was the first time I had seen him; now I understood that it was not there before. They have not all this look. Turiddu has not got it, nor has my porter's cousin. The professor is sixty-two, Turiddu is only twelve and was able to sleep. My porter is about forty-two, his cousin is not yet thirty. Again, the professor had the responsibility of his party; Turiddu had none. My porter has lost his wife and child; his cousin is unmarried.

These two porters told me a great deal that I had read in the papers in England; to hear it from them on the spot made it more real, and especially to see their gestures describing how the earthquake took the houses and worried them as a terrier worries a rat. Few houses were not wrecked. I pointed to one which I knew to be the Palazzo dei Carabinieri at a corner of a street leading out of the station piazza, but my porter replied:

"You are looking at a corner of it and can only see two walls. The other walls and the floors have fallen. If the shutters were open you would see the sky where the rooms ought to be."

At the other corner of the street used to stand the Albergo di Francia, where I stayed once when all the other hotels were full because the wind was so strong that the ferry-boat could not get out of the harbour to take the travellers across the straits. The albergo was lying in a heap on the ground; in its fall it had crushed and killed and buried the young landlord, Michele;--"G.o.d rest his soul in heaven, so merry!"

I uttered some ba.n.a.lity about their having pa.s.sed through a terrible time. They accepted my remark as a final summing up and said it was better not to talk about it. It was evidently a relief to them to talk of something else.

Before Messina can be rebuilt on its old site, the ruins must be cleared away and the disputes about the boundaries must be settled, and this will take time. Meanwhile the people are living in the wooden bungalows of a New Messina which is growing up outside the old town. I spent two days there in the spring of 1910 and again in 1911. The Viale San Martino is the princ.i.p.al street. There are hotels, bookshops, sweet-shops, tobacconists, jewellers, butchers, restaurants with tables ready spread, and the lottery offices are open. Most of the huts have no upper storey and some are no bigger than half a dozen sentry boxes knocked into one.

It is very dusty. The boys are crying papers up and down the street, there are barbers' saloni and shops with silver-topped canes. The earthquake seems to be forgotten in the intensity of the bubbling life.

As I pa.s.sed the Municipio in a side street, I saw a wedding party going in. One evening I went to the theatre and saw _Feudalismo_ with Giovanni Gra.s.so, a h.o.m.onymous cousin of the great Giovanni, in the princ.i.p.al part and Turiddu's mother, Signora Balistrieri, as one of the women.

The first time I was in Messina after the earthquake all this was only beginning and many of the people were living in railway waggons in the sidings, of which few now remain. It was strange to see rows of railway carriages with curtains to the windows and some with steps up to the door and a little terrace outside with creepers growing over it. The cabins and the waggons are supposed to be safe, because they would not crush their tenants in another earthquake. But they do not seriously fear another earthquake; Messina has been so thoroughly destroyed that it must now be the turn of some other town.