Castellinaria, and Other Sicilian Diversions Part 33

Peppino Fazio was standing at a kiosk near the Quattro Canti with two young cousins, buying b.u.t.ton-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 done much 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 pa.s.sage 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 sh.e.l.l, as a secret place of repose where the one is trans.m.u.ted 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 all breathing 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 ic.u.men 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 Gra.s.so'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 in _Feudalismo_ there 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 G.o.d? 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.

"What I have written I have written," said Pilate.

They had brought the sentence with them and pointed out to him that he had condemned "il Re dei Giudei" the King of the Jews and, inasmuch as condemning a king is a serious step and might get him into trouble, suggested that for his own safety he should add the letter "o" to the word "Re." This would make it that he had condemned "Il Reo dei Giudei,"

the Criminal of the Jews. Pilate was persuaded and agreed to add the letter. He went away and fetched his pen, which looked like a feather from the tail of a hawk, and Annas held the paper; but Pilate's pen refused to write, it was wafted from his hand by a power stronger than his, it hung in the air before their eyes and fluttered away to heaven.

This miracle was accompanied by music; and, if I had been consulted, I should not have advised the _Marcia Reale Italiana_, because that composition, on account of its inherent frivolity, has always seemed to me unfit for the accompaniment of any manifestation of power. To despise Bellini because he is not Schubert would be to adopt the att.i.tude of the buffo's critic who escaped from Paris in the teatrino at Palermo; nevertheless the countrymen of Schubert have known how to appear before the world clothed in the solemn splendour of Haydn's majestic Hymn to the Emperor, while the Italians come mountebanking along in an ill-fitting, machine-made suit of second-hand flourishes, as though that were the best they could lay their hands on. They have not done themselves justice.

But this is not the place for a digression; before returning to Pilate and his visitors, however, let me say distinctly that the music was the Italian _Marcia Reale_ played, not as the other sc.r.a.ps were played, but with a loud and jaunty heartlessness as though the miraculous pen were jeering at the priests:

"There! you didn't expect that; now, did you?"

Joseph and Nicodemus also came to Pilate begging the body of Jesus. The priests objected, for they had not forgotten the prophecy about building the Temple of G.o.d in three days, and they feared trickery. Pilate compromised, granting the request but setting a guard.

Next we saw the Descent from the Cross, effected by Joseph and Nicodemus; and while the body lay on a couch, a melancholy Miserere was sung behind.

The Entombment followed, the Madonna in black lamenting and weeping.

The last scene was in a wood, where Judas came to finish his remorse. He refused all comfort and all the benevolent suggestions of the angels who visited him. They told him that G.o.d is ever willing to pardon the sinner who sincerely repents and freely confesses his sin. It is with G.o.d always as it is with men at the season of the Gloria. But the wretched Judas could not think of repentance and confession; his cowardly soul was not torn by sorrow for past sin, it was paralysed by fear of future punishment; or we may have been intended to understand that the road to perdition lies through madness. He spoke three sentences, and the last word of each was echoed by a diabolical voice and then appeared written in letters of blood and fire:--Giuda:--Dio:--Stesso. These words made a sentence by themselves and signified: "_Judas_ is against _G.o.d_ and against _Himself_." Faith, Hope, and Charity appeared to him separately; he would have nothing to do with any of them and they all deserted him.

A devil approached and Judas trembled, knowing his time had come. He went and fetched a rope, and with the devil's help accomplished his fatal destiny by hanging himself to one of the trees of the wood, and as his wicked soul came out of his mouth the devil greedily s.n.a.t.c.hed it away and carried it down to be eternally tormented in h.e.l.l. It was like an untidy black hen.

EASTER DAY

I had to go into the country for the night, and so was obliged to miss the Resurrection as presented by the marionettes. I did not, however, much mind, because I had seen the Gloria in the cathedral, where the Christ over the altar was modelled much better than any figure in the theatre. Besides, I called on Gregorio in the course of the day and had a talk with him and his son, Angiolino, who told me what is done on the last evening of the drama, and showed me the preparations. The first scene, representing the tomb, was nearly ready. After the curtain rises there is an earthquake, and Misandro comes to see whether the watching soldiers are doing their duty; he finds them asleep and wakes them. This is repeated, and the third time Misandro sees the tomb open with a loud noise and a bright light--"like the bolide," said Angiolino. Christ rises, and Misandro, seeing the actual Resurrection, is convinced that Christ is the Son of G.o.d and not a magician; he goes to spend the rest of his life preaching the gospel among the heathen. I did not ask what music accompanies the miracle of the Resurrection; I confess I was afraid to do so after what I had heard accompanying the flight of the pen. If I had been consulted here I should have advised silence to suggest that no music could be found suitable for the tremendous mystery that was being accomplished. But I do not think such advice would have been accepted.

Then Herod is ill and commands Pilate to send Jesus to cure him. Pilate commands the priests to produce Jesus, reminding them that he had washed his hands; but each of the priests accuses the other of being responsible, and so they enter upon their eternal punishment of mutual recrimination.

Christ appears to the Magdalene, to Luke, to Matthew and to a contadino.

He takes two of them to a tavern, where he breaks bread and vanishes. So they recognise him and go to tell the good news to the Madonna and the other holy women. Doubting Thomas is convinced. Jesus breathes the Holy Spirit upon them and they receive the gift of tongues. The last scene is the Ascension, and Christ as he is received into heaven speaks words of comfort to his mother, telling her it will not be long before she joins him.

The marionettes were behindhand with their Gloria, because the bolide having transferred Monday's programme to Tuesday had syncopated the succeeding performances into counterpoint of the fourth order, and everything that happened after that was one beat late. Had they moved concurrently with the Church, and reached the Resurrection on the Sat.u.r.day, they would have repeated it on the Sunday to fill up the time till Easter Monday, when they were to return to _Erminio della Stella d'Oro_, a story of romance and chivalry invented by Angelo Gra.s.so, the father of Gregorio and of Giovanni.

I asked Gregorio where he had found the particulars for Misandro and the remorse of Judas and for the dream of Pilate's wife and the pen that flew away. He replied that he did not know where they came from, they are traditional in the theatre and had probably come out of the libraries.

As to Judas and the angel preventing him from drowning himself in the well, I asked whether they have in Sicily the saying about a man being born to be hanged and whether any allusion was intended. Angiolino said they have such a saying, or something like it, but it had never occurred to him to suppose that any allusion was intended, it might be so, but he thought not.

The Christ that had been prepared for the Resurrection in the Teatro Sicilia was not the marionette that had been on the Cross; the stigmata were there, the spear wound was wanted in the scene with Thomas, and the people were free to take it as being the same figure with all the other marks of suffering removed, or they might think it was a different one, or they might come behind the scenes and find out for themselves as I did. Dwellers in another planet, if they watch the recurrence of the mystery of our spring, may think the flowers they saw sinking into the earth last autumn return again with the marks of decay removed, they cannot come behind our scenes and make sure; but we know that a new generation is born. The marionettes are not didactic; if the people choose to see in the Resurrection of Christ any one of Nature's ageless mysteries they may do so; they may see the birth of the younger generation, the blossoming of fresh flowers after winter, the awakening to a new day after sleep; or, if they prefer it, they may see the resurrection of their own dead bodies at the sound of the Last Trump--one of those mysteries in which, as my priest at Tindaro told me, Nature does not believe, and with which I need not concern myself.

I do not think they saw in it any of these meanings. At Ober-Ammergau the play is presented so that Mendelssohn need not have hesitated to advise the late Prince Consort to honour a performance with his presence.

In the Teatro Sicilia other tastes have to be consulted. I think the audience looked on at the Pa.s.sion of Christ as they are accustomed to look on at _I Delitti del Caporale_ or _Feudalismo_ or at the _Story of the Paladins_ or _Erminio della Stella d'Oro_; if they suspected any symbolism or mystery, the melodrama with which they were saturated provided a context that determined the direction of the resolution. They saw wicked priests conspiring with a cowardly traitor and an overbearing bully to bring about the destruction of an innocent man. They saw the innocent man pa.s.sing through misfortune and in the end triumphing over his enemies by means of a happy ending, which reminded them of the happy ending of a Machiavelli play, when the hero returns from prison and the bad people are punished. They saw a mother weeping for her son, but they saw no allusion to Ceres weeping for loss of Proserpine, although their Castrogiovanni was her Enna--just as Angiolino saw no reference to Judas having been born to be hanged, although they have the saying in Sicily, and he is the son of the house. I do not think they saw any significance in the fact that this mystery of the Death and Resurrection of the G.o.d is repeated every spring. I imagine that the point made by Joseph of Arimathaea in his speech for the defence, that the wonders done by Christ on earth were miracles and were not occasioned by magic, was lost upon them. It would take a long time to make one of them understand that la Durlindana, the sword of Orlando, was a magical sword and not a miraculous one. And yet this distinction between miracle and magic was the pivot of the plot as it was presented to them. If they had felt themselves lifted out of their ordinary routine I do not think they would have done what they did after the curtain had fallen on the section of the story presented each evening.

At the Machiavelli they are accustomed to remain for the farce and the Canzonettisti Napoletani which close the performance; so at the Sicilia they remain for the cinematograph. Every evening during Holy Week the programme posted up at the door concluded with these words "Indi Cinematografo," and there were always three parts to the show. First there was cruelty--victorious tyrants forcing conquered queens to drink their lovers' blood, or some horror of the Inquisition, or the barrel of Regulus b.u.mping down-hill and coming to smash at the bottom. The second part was a modern comedy carried on in Parisian drawing-rooms or on board an electric launch on an American river. The third part was always a wild farce and usually contained an impossible chase. Not till after the cinematograph had concluded its show did the audience go away contented.

ORTIGIA

CHAPTER XXII O FOUNTAIN ARETHUSE

When "Arethusa arose From her couch of snows In the Acroceraunian mountains" she had scarcely reached the age at which women begin to dream of love. She spied the approaching river-G.o.d Alpheus and, to preserve what was dearer to her than life, for she was a nymph of Diana, plunged heroically into the earth. Alpheus, who had reached the age when men desire to act, plunged in after her. They flowed along inside the ground and under the sea, he following her, all the way from Greece to Sicily and, according to the recognised habit of G.o.ds and demi-G.o.ds believed to be dead and buried, they rose again. The place of Arethusa's resurrection is the island of Ortigia, but, although I have the story from the fountain head, it all happened so long ago that I have not been able to ascertain whether Alpheus rose there or at a spot on the mainland of Sicily nearer Etna where S. Alfio is the patron saint, and although the "e" in Alpheus takes the stress and the "i" in Alfio does not, nevertheless, the custode of the spring, who was himself my informant, may confuse the two names. The difference between the versions is that between tragedy and comedy. If they, the pursued and her pursuer, rose in the same place it can hardly be that he did not catch her. If he rose somewhere else, then she may still preserve her everlasting virginity and they will neither of them ever reach the age when experience teaches both men and women to regret. She will be ever flying, he ever pursuing, like the maiden and the lover on that Grecian Urn which an eminent authority, baffled in his attempts at identification, thinks was "probably imagined"

by Keats.

I possess a Bible and Prayer-book bound together in one volume which was given me on leaving Rottingdean by my sincere friend, the master of the preparatory school there. It contains, just before the First Chapter of Genesis, a Chronological Map "with remarkable persons and events collaterally placed." I remember how I used to mitigate the tedium of divine service by reading to myself that the creation of the world occupied one of the weeks of the year 4004 B.C.; that Egypt was founded about 2190 B.C.; that Troy fell about 1180 B.C., seventy years or so before the birth of King David; and that Homer and Elijah flourished contemporaneously between 1000 and 900 B.C. My schoolmaster wrote my name in the book with a suitable inscription and a reference to Psalm cxix. 105. I turned up the pa.s.sage and drew the conclusion that he desired his gift to be a lantern unto my feet and a light unto my paths.

And so it was until other knowledge, the rudiments of which he had himself endeavoured to impart to me, threw glimmerings across my way and I pa.s.sed through a distracted period of inability to distinguish the signals of danger from those of safety. Much the same thing has happened to many others and a.s.sistance has sometimes been found in compromise and accommodation. Thus the statement about 4004 B.C., when read by the light of another statement in the Book, does not seriously conflict with the teachings of modern science. Until further knowledge shall eclipse the few feeble lanterns that are now doing their best to illuminate my course I shall continue to hold the opinion that, as in the sight of Him, who is the Life of the Universe, a thousand years are but as yesterday, so in the sight of man, who has been G.o.d's image upon earth for more ages than anyone can tell, six thousand years are but as last week. And I shall keep my thousands in a condition as elastic as may be necessary to bear any stretching that future discoveries may put upon them.

It was many thousands of such weeks ago, when Mother Earth was herself in her infancy, before her baby bones had hardened, that Arethusa first came to the island she has made her home. She is still coming and can be seen to-day still rising as fresh as ever. The story of the early days of her exile was not told by Clio because Clio was only a modern Agamemnon in history, many a brave muse had flourished before she was thought of. One of them took for her infinite papyrus the firmament of s.p.a.ce, those heavens which shall one day be rolled together as a scroll, whereon she inscribed chapters in stars and volumes in constellations. We cannot see all her works, nor can we read all we see, but we know that she put us into one of her books. A few paragraphs of that chapter which forms our planet lie scattered around Siracusa; we recognise her ma.n.u.script in the shape of the Great Harbour, in the depth of the sea, in the height of the hills, in the strata of the rocks, in the soil, in the vegetation.

There were early muses who employed flint implements and arrow-heads for records, and neglected to clear away the remains of prehistoric meals in caverns. Others preferred to write their chronicles upon pots, urns and tombs or to scrawl placid monosyllables upon polygonal walls. But with all their industry the muses have never been able to keep pace with the material that has acc.u.mulated round the dwellings of men and women. They have done their best and, when their mother Mnemosyne began to fail and the business was split up first into three, then four, seven, eight, and ultimately into nine departments, it was hoped that a better result would be shown; but they have never had an adequate allowance, and have always been in financial difficulties, besides which they have disagreed among themselves, and quarrelling wastes time.

Clio in her matter-of-fact way built a storehouse wherein to preserve her treasures; her curious, imaginative sisters peeped through the key-hole.

"Dear me!" they said to one another. "What a collection! Do you think we could get inside and see it properly?"

They waited till Clio went one day with Neptune to pay a visit to the Ethiopians "who lie in two halves, one half looking on to the Atlantic and the other on to the Indian Ocean," they induced Vulcan to come and pick the lock for them and soon they were roaming all over the palace.

"How admirably arranged!" exclaimed one of them.