Diversions in Sicily Part 16

"They know all about it," he replied, "especially Giovanni, he knows everything. But they don't say it because they like to go on talking."

"There! now you have done it a third time. You appear to me to know all about it too. How did you find it all out? They did not teach it you at school, did they?"

"I do not remember that any one ever taught it me," he replied; "I seem to have known it always. It cannot be otherwise. It is like eating cheese with maccaroni."

"We seldom eat maccaroni in England," said I, in defence, "and when we do we usually eat sugar with it; perhaps that is why we are so slow."

This was a mistake because I wanted him to talk more about the theatre, and there is something quicksilverish in Micio's temperament; having got on the maccaroni he did not care to return to art.

"What do you eat in England if you do not eat maccaroni? Do you eat chocolate?"

Which reintroduced the original question, and when we had attended to that, it was nearly four o'clock, his sister's dinner-hour and time for him to go home.

In the natural order of things, Micio, being the son of artists, will return to the stage. Should he fail as an adult actor, he will perhaps travel in tiles or in ecclesiastical millinery, or he may get employment on the railway, or as a clerk in the office of the cemetery. I should like to know when the time comes, for I feel towards him somewhat as he feels towards Pietro Longo. And there is a chance that he will tell me, for we promised to exchange postcards, and before parting he gave me his address--

(Indirizzo) ALL' EGREGIO GIOVANOTTO MICIO BOCCADIFUOCO, Casa Educativa Garibaldi, Via Fata Morgana No. 92, Castellinaria.

Four o'clock was also Giovanni's dinner-hour, and this was the day he had promised to dine with me. I was in some fear lest I might choose the wrong restaurant or order something that would disagree with him; the evening's entertainment, on which the whole town depended, was at stake.

But I need not have worried about it. Giovanni lives so entirely among people who are devoted to him that he habitually takes the lead in everything. Consequently he chose the restaurant, and its name was _Quo Vadis_? He also brought a couple of friends, ordered the dinner and, as a matter of course, took me for a drive afterwards to the lighthouse and back.

As we drove through the town, he pointed out the municipio, the post-office, the old Saracen palace, and the other objects of interest.

When we got into the country, it occurred to me that I might not again have Giovanni all to myself, it was the first time we had been alone. If I could now get him to talk about his art, he might tell me exactly how deeply he feels the emotions which he expresses with so much conviction.

I considered how to begin. I had better ask him first which was his favourite character. I turned to put the question. He had fallen asleep, and gave me rather an anxious time, for he repeatedly seemed to be on the point of rolling out of the carriage. It was a relief when, at last, the clattering of the horse's hoofs on the paved streets woke him up, and there was no longer any necessity to hold him in by the coat-tail.

"There now," said Giovanni, as he helped me out, "we have had a delightful drive. Is this your umbrella?" he added, handing it to me; "if I had known you had brought that, I would have put it up to keep the sun off you while you were asleep."

I had not expected this and looked into his eye for a twinkle, I saw nothing but grave politeness and the kindest consideration for my comfort. There are moments when one may regret not having been brought up on impromptu plays; Pietro would have known at once what to do. I could only ask, rather feebly--

"Have I been to sleep?"--a question to which, of course, he did not know the answer; he was quite capable of inventing one, however, so I hastily went on about the umbrella: "Thank you very much. I am afraid it would have been of no use. I intended to take it to be mended. I had an accident with it in the storm last night. Look," and I opened it.

"You will never get that mended. You must buy a new one. Why, it is broken into as many pieces as the quarters of the globe. Ha, ha! The two parts of Enrico's umbrella are three in number and they are the four following, viz. the handle, the ribs, the silk, most of the stick and--and--yes, and this little bit broken off from the end."

"Bravo, Giovanni, bravo!"

"You are coming to see me act this evening?"

"Of course I am."

"And to supper afterwards?"

"Certainly, if I may. I do not want to cause an eruption of Mount Etna, and I do not want you to leave off speaking to me."

"Bravo, bravo!" And away he went, apologizing for leaving me by saying he really must try to get a little sleep before nine o'clock or he would be no good at the performance. And this time I fancied there was something of a twinkle in his eye.

Four o'clock P.M. is not such a bad dinner-hour when one is going to bed at four A.M. And four A.M. is not such a bad time for going to bed in Sicily. At some seasons it is better for getting up and then one takes one's siesta during the heat of the day. Either way some alteration of one's usual habits is a good thing on a holiday, and any one in want of a thorough change from the life of the ordinary Londoner might do worse--or, as I should prefer to say, could hardly do better--than spend a week with a Sicilian Dramatic Company.

CHAPTER XIX--BRANCACCIA

After the players were gone I resumed my normal habits. One morning, as Peppino and I were returning to colazione he asked me whether I had seen the procession down on the sh.o.r.e.

"Of course I saw it, but I did not know what it was all about."

"That," said he, "was the bishop; he go to bless the sea and pray G.o.d to send the tunnies. Every spring shall be coming always the tunnies, but if to don't bless the sea, then to be coming few tunnies; if to bless the sea then to be coming plenty many tunnies."

"It was a beautiful procession," I said. "I knew it was the bishop; I saw his mitre and the vestments and the gilded crosses and the smoke of the incense in the sunlight. But do you think it is quite sportsmanlike to pray that many tunnies may be killed?"

"Yes," said Peppino, "it is right to pray to win the battle, and we battle the tunnies so we may pray."

"It is not quite the same thing," said I. "In battle the enemy has a religion too and can pray against us: it may be fair if both pray equally, especially if both have the same religion. But it is taking a mean advantage of the poor tunnies to pray against them, for they have no religion."

"Perhaps they have," said Peppino. "Perhaps they have Signor Vescovo down in the sea and make a procession with tunny priests very well dressed, and bells and banners and incense and singing, and to pray against the death and the boiling in oil, and to escape to be eaten."

"I should like to see that procession," I said.

I knew that Peppino had sporting instincts to which I could appeal because, a few days before, he had taken me into his room and shown me the cups he had won. Some of them were English, for when in London he was not occupied as a waiter without intermission; his recreation was to retire from business occasionally for a few weeks, go into training and appear as a champion bicyclist. So that, after my frugal chop and potato in Holborn, I had been in the habit of giving twopence to an athlete famous enough to have had his portrait in the ill.u.s.trated papers--that is, if his recollection of me in Holborn was not his invention; anyhow, there were the cups.

It had come to pa.s.s by this time that Peppino and I took our meals together and we were attended by the waiter, a native of Messina, named Letterio. This name is given to many of the boys of Messina, and the girls are called Letteria. It seems that when St. Paul was at Messina the citizens gave him a congratulatory address for the Madonna; he took it back with him and gave it to her in Jerusalem. She, in reply, sent them a letter in Hebrew which they have now in the cathedral. At least they have a translation of it. Or, to be exact, a translation of a translation of it. The first translation was into Greek and the second into Latin. This is the letter after which the children are baptized.

It is to be hoped they have another translation ready in Sicilian, or perhaps in Tuscan, to take its place in case anything should happen to it. Letterio could not tell me the contents of the letter, but he knew it was in the Duomo and was his padrona, and was sure that, though only a translation, the meaning of the original had been religiously preserved.

Peppino never spoke a word to Letterio; he talked to me and gesticulated.

When he held out one hand flat and patted it with the other, I did not pay much attention to the gesture, a.s.suming that he was merely emphasizing what he was saying to me, and that Letterio brought cutlets because it was time for them. When he tumbled his hands rapidly one over the other and Letterio brought salad, I did not see that it was cause and effect. But when he put his hand to his mouth as though drinking and Letterio brought another bottle of wine, I saw that Peppino had not been saying everything twice over to me, once with words and once with gestures, as a Sicilian usually does, but that he had been carrying on two independent conversations with two people simultaneously.

Talking about Letterio's name naturally led us to talk about baptisms, and so we returned to the subject of marriage. Another friend of Peppino's was to be married that evening--yes, poor man! The church was to bless the union at four o'clock next morning, after which the happy pair would drive down to the station in a cart, the side panels painted with scenes from the story of Orlando out of the marionette theatre, and the back panel with a ballet girl over the words "Viva la Divina Provvidenza." Then they would take the train to Palermo for a honeymoon of three days. The interval between the two ceremonies was to be spent in dancing and, if I liked, Peppino would take me to see it.

So in the evening we went to a house at the other end of the town, "far away--beyond the Cappucini," as Peppino said. We entered by a back door which led directly into a small bedroom containing the music: one clarionet, a quartet of Saxhorns, and one trombone. The room also contained four babies in one bed, and two more on a mattress on the floor, all peacefully sleeping. These were the babies that had succ.u.mbed to the late hour, their mothers having brought them because they wanted their suppers, and would presently want their breakfasts. We sat among the band and the babies for some time to get accustomed to the noise, and then pa.s.sed into the room where the dancing was going on. All round sat the friends and relations, some with babies, some without; and all the ladies very serious, the bride in the middle chair of a row along one wall was so desperately serious that she was quite forbidding.

As when the traveller asks the chambermaid if he can have his linen back from the wash in time to catch an early train, and notices an expression pa.s.sing across her face as she replies, "Impossibilissimo!"--well knowing that nothing is easier, only she wants an extra fifty centimes--even such an expression did I see not pa.s.sing across the face of the bride, but frozen upon it as she sat with her back up against the wall frowning on the company. Peppino said she was all right. Brides have to behave like this; they consider it modest and maiden-like to appear to take no interest or pleasure in their wedding ceremonies.

The bridegroom was a very different sort of person--gay, alert and all the time dancing, talking, laughing and gesticulating with every one, as though his good spirits and vitality were inexhaustible.

The guests on the chairs left s.p.a.ce for only two couples at a time. At the first opportunity Peppino began to dance, choosing for his partner a young lady who was not merely the prettiest girl in the room, but the most beautiful girl I have ever seen. She was also an exception to the other ladies in that she looked happy, especially when dancing with Peppino. She had a quant.i.ty of fine, black, curly hair, a dark complexion and surprising eyes, like Love-in-a-mist when the morning sun s.h.i.+nes on it, full of laughter and good humour. Her eyelids, her nose and chin, her full lips and the curves of her cheeks were modelled with the delicate precision of a violin, and when she moved it was with that wave-o'-the-sea motion which Florizel observed in Perdita's dancing. I put her black hair and complexion down to some Arabian ancestor, and her blue eyes to some Norman strain.

"Who is that wonderfully beautiful girl you have been dancing with, Peppino?" said I.

He replied, with a rather bored air, that her name was Brancaccia, and that she was the daughter of a distant cousin of his father who kept a curiosity shop in the corso.

"How long has this been going on, Peppino? Why did you never mention Brancaccia to me before?"

He replied in a tone, as though closing the discussion, that there had never been any reason to mention her, that he had known her all her life, and she was nothing to him.

I changed the subject and, saying it was a long time since I had been to a ball, asked if there was anything I ought to do. He said that I was expected to dance. Now my dancing days terminated many years ago when I was told that my dancing was the very prose of motion, but I did not want to say so, because I thought it just possible I might be allowed to dance with Brancaccia if I played my cards judiciously; so I merely said modestly I was afraid of knocking up against the other couple. Peppino silenced this objection by promising to dance with me himself, and to see that all went well. So I danced a waltz with Peppino. He, of course, complimented me upon my proficiency, and told me I ought now to dance with the bridegroom. So I danced another waltz with the bridegroom. He then said it was expected that I should dance with the bride. This naturally alarmed me, but I boldly asked her and she consented with a stiff bow: we performed a polka together and I restored her to her seat, feeling as though I had crossed from Siracusa to Valletta in a storm, more frightened than hurt, it is true, but glad it was over, especially as I now considered myself ent.i.tled to introduce the subject of dancing with Brancaccia. Peppino received the proposition without enthusiasm, saying she was her own mistress and I could do as I liked.

"But first," he said, "there shall be a contraddanza; did you know what is contraddanza? All right, I shall tell you. A dancing man shall be crying to the people to do and they shall do, but if to don't know, better to don't dance or would come confusion; better to see and to expect."

"All right, Peppino," I said. "I don't know enough about it; I will look on and wait, and when it is over I shall ask Brancaccia to dance a waltz with me."