Sea and Sardinia Part 6

To find three masculine, world-lost souls, and world-lost saunter, and saunter on along with them, across the dithering s.p.a.ce, as long as life lasts! Why come to anchor? There is nothing to anchor for. Land has no answer to the soul any more. It has gone inert. Give me a little s.h.i.+p, kind G.o.ds, and three world-lost comrades. Hear me! And let me wander aimless across this vivid outer world, the world empty of man, where s.p.a.ce flies happily.

The lovely, celandine-yellow morning of the open sea, paling towards a rare, sweet blue! The sun stood above the horizon, like the great burning stigma of the sacred flower of day. Mediterranean sailing-s.h.i.+ps, so mediaeval, hovered on the faint morning wind, as if uncertain which way to go, curious, odd-winged insects of the flower. The steamer, hull-down, was sinking towards Spain. s.p.a.ce rang clear about us: the level sea!

Appeared the Cagliari young woman and her two friends. She was looking handsome and restored now the sea was easy. Her two male friends stood touching her, one at either shoulder.

"Bonjour, Monsieur!" she barked across at me. "Vous avez pris le cafe?"

"Pas encore. Et vous?"

"Non! Madame votre femme...."

She roared like a mastiff dog: and then translated with unction to her two uninitiated friends. How it was they did not understand her French I do not know, it was so like travestied Italian.

I went below to find the q-b.

When we came up, the faint shape of land appeared ahead, more transparent than thin pearl. Already Sardinia. Magic are high lands seen from the sea, when they are far, far off, and ghostly translucent like ice-bergs. This was Sardinia, looming like fascinating shadows in mid-sea. And the sailing s.h.i.+ps, as if cut out of frailest pearl translucency, were wafting away towards Naples. I wanted to count their sails--five square ones which I call the ladder, one above the other--but how many wing-blades? That remained yet to be seen.

Our friend the carpenter spied us out: at least, he was not my friend.

He didn't find me _simpatico_, I am sure. But up he came, and proceeded to entertain us with weary ba.n.a.lity. Again the young woman called, had we had coffee? We said we were just going down. And then she said that whatever we had today we had to pay for: our food ended with the one day. At which the q-b was angry, feeling swindled. But I had known before.

We went down and had our coffee notwithstanding. The young woman came down, and made eyes at one of the alpaca blue-bottles. After which we saw a cup of coffee and milk and two biscuits being taken to her into her cabin, discreetly. When Italians are being discreet and on the sly, the very air about them becomes tell-tale, and seems to shout with a thousand tongues. So with a thousand invisible tongues clamouring the fact, the young woman had her coffee secretly and _gratis_, in her cabin.

But the morning was lovely. The q-b and I crept round the bench at the very stern of the s.h.i.+p and sat out of the wind and out of sight, just above the foaming of the wake. Before us was the open morning--and the glisten of our s.h.i.+p's track, like a snail's path, trailing across the sea: straight for a little while, then giving a bend to the left, always a bend towards the left: and coming at us from the pure horizon, like a bright snail-path. Happy it was to sit there in the stillness, with nothing but the humanless sea to s.h.i.+ne about us.

But no, we were found out. Arrived the carpenter.

"Ah, you have found a fine place--!"

"Molto bello!" This from the q-b. I could not bear the irruption.

He proceeded to talk--and as is inevitable, the war. Ah, the war--it was a terrible thing. He had become ill--very ill. Because, you see, not only do you go without proper food, without proper rest and warmth, but, you see, you are in an agony of fear for your life all the time. An agony of fear for your life. And that's what does it. Six months in hospital--! The q-b, of course, was sympathetic.

The Sicilians are quite simple about it. They just tell you they were frightened to death, and it made them ill. The q-b, woman-like, loves them for being so simple about it. I feel angry somewhere. For they _expect_ a full-blown sympathy. And however the great G.o.d Mars may have shrunk and gone wizened in the world, it still annoys me to hear him _so_ blasphemed.

Near us the automatic log was spinning, the thin rope trailing behind us in the sea. Erratically it jerked and spun, with spasmodic torsion. He explained that the little screw at the end of the line spun to the speed of travelling. We were going from ten to twelve Italian miles to the hour. Ah, yes, we _could_ go twenty. But we went no faster than ten or twelve, to save the coal.

The coal--il carbone! I knew we were in for it. England--l'Inghilterra she has the coal. And what does she do? She sells it very dear.

Particularly to Italy. Italy won the war and now can't even have coal.

Because why! The price. The exchange! _Il cambio._ Now I am doubly in for it. Two countries had been able to keep their money high--England and America. The English sovereign--la sterlina--and the American dollar--_sa_, these were money. The English and the Americans flocked to Italy, with their _sterline_ and their _dollari_, and they bought what they wanted for nothing, for nothing. Ecco! Whereas we poor Italians--we are in a state of ruination--proper ruination. The allies, etc., etc.

I am so used to it--I am so wearily used to it. I can't walk a stride without having this wretched _cambio_, the exchange, thrown at my head.

And this with an injured petulant spitefulness which turns my blood. For I a.s.sure them, whatever I have in Italy I pay for: and I am not England.

I am not the British Isles on two legs.

Germany--La Germania--she did wrong to make the war. But--there you are, that was war. Italy and Germany--l'Italia e la Germania--they had always been friends. In Palermo....

My G.o.d, I felt I could not stand it another second. To sit above the foam and have this miserable creature stuffing wads of chewed newspaper into my ear--no, I could not bear it. In Italy, there is no escape. Say two words, and the individual starts chewing old newspaper and stuffing it into you. No escape. You become--if you are English--_l'Inghilterra_, _il carbone_, and _il cambio_; and as England, coal and exchange you are treated. It is more than useless to try to be human about it. You are a State usury system, a coal fiend and an exchange thief. Every Englishman has disappeared into this triple abstraction, in the eyes of the Italian, of the proletariat particularly. Try and get them to be human, try and get them to see that you are simply an individual, if you can.

After all, I am no more than a single human man wandering my lonely way across these years. But no--to an Italian I am a perfected abstraction, England--coal--exchange. The Germans were once devils for inhuman theoretic abstracting of living beings. But now the Italians beat them.

I am a walking column of statistics, which adds up badly for Italy.

Only this and nothing more. Which being so, I shut my mouth and walk away.

For the moment the carpenter is shaken off. But I am in a rage, fool that I am. It is like being pestered by their mosquitoes. The sailing s.h.i.+ps are near--and I count fifteen sails. Beautiful they look! Yet if I were on board somebody would be chewing newspaper at me, and addressing me as England--coal--exchange.

The mosquito hovers--and hovers. But the stony blank of the side of my cheek keeps him away. Yet he hovers. And the q-b feels sympathetic towards him: quite sympathetic. Because of course he treats her--a _bel pezzo_--as if he would lick her boots, or anything else that she would let him lick.

Meanwhile we eat the apples from yesterday's dessert, and the remains of the q-b's Infant-Jesus-and-dove cake. The land is drawing nearer--we can see the shape of the end promontory and peninsula--and a white speck like a church. The bulk of the land is forlorn and rather shapeless, coming towards us: but attractive.

Looking ahead towards the land gives us away. The mosquito swoops on us.

Yes--he is not sure--he thinks the white speck is a church--or a lighthouse. When you pa.s.s the cape on the right, and enter the wide bay between Cape Spartivento and Cape Carbonara, then you have two hours sail to Cagliari. We shall arrive between two and three o'clock. It is now eleven.

Yes, the sailing s.h.i.+ps are probably going to Naples. There is not much wind for them now. When there is wind they go fast, faster than our steamer. Ah Naples--bella, bella, eh? A little dirty, say I. But what do you want? says he. A great city! Palermo of course is better.

Ah--the Neapolitan women--he says, a propos or not. They do their hair so fine, so neat and beautiful--but underneath--sotto--sotto--they are dirty. This being received in cold silence, he continues: _Noi giriamo il mondo! Noi, chi giriamo, conosciamo il mondo._ _We_ travel about, and _we_ know the world. Who _we_ are, I do not know: his highness the Palermitan carpenter lout, no doubt. But _we_, who travel, know the world. He is preparing his shot. The Neapolitan women, and the English women, in this are equal: that they are dirty underneath. Underneath, they are dirty. The women of London--

But it is getting too much for me.

"You who look for dirty women," say I, "find dirty women everywhere."

He stops short and watches me.

"No! No! You have not understood me. No! I don't mean that. I mean that the Neapolitan women and the English women have dirty underclothing--"

To which he gets no answer but a cold look and a cold cheek. Whereupon he turns to the q-b, and proceeds to be _simpatica_. And after a few moments he turns again to me:

"Il signore is offended! He is offended with me."

But I turn the other way. And at last he clears out: in triumph, I must admit: like a mosquito that has bitten one in the neck. As a matter of fact one should _never_ let these fellows get into conversation nowadays. They are no longer human beings. They hate one's Englishness, and leave out the individual.

We walk forward, towards the fore-deck, where the captain's lookout cabin is. The captain is an elderly man, silent and crushed: with the look of a gentleman. But he looks beaten down. Another, still another member of the tray-carrying department is just creeping up his ladder with a cup of black coffee. Returning, we peep down the sky-light into the kitchen. And there we see roast chicken and sausages--roast chicken and sausages! Ah, this is where the sides of kid and the chickens and the good things go: all down the throats of the crew. There is no more food for us, until we land.