Castellinaria, and Other Sicilian Diversions Part 13

"O my dear Buffo, I am not going to admit that. Besides, it is not true of all critics."

"What I said is not true of all poets."

"Well, if we don't like what we have made them say, let us have someone to follow and show them where they are both wrong."

"All right. Let me see. That will be when they have had time to think it over. That will be the Cold Dawn of the following morning. We will now make the Aurora."

So we found a disengaged lady marionette and began to dress her in a piece of cobwebby grey muslin from which the last few spangles had not yet dropped. I said:

"I'm not at all sure that this is not going too far. Do you think we can really show the Cold Dawn of the following morning escaping out of Paris by the underground road?"

"She must go; she will be wanted at Montalbano to show some of the people that they have saved the wrong things."

"Very true. Yes. That is what people so often do when they travel, they leave behind them the things they want most and take a lot of other things that are useless. Now, that resolution of the dominant seventh was hardly worth saving--at least it was not really new."

"Where did you get it from?"

"I stole it out of the works of the musician whose bust was on your maestro's piano the other day, the one with the Dutch name who lived in Vienna."

"I hope you invented what the critic said?"

"Not exactly. Your poet reminded me of something in Walt Whitman and I twisted it round and gave it to the critic."

"What's Walt Whitman? Is he another Dutchman?"

"He was an American poet, but his mother had a Dutch name."

"Did he come to the teatrino?"

"He never came to Europe. I wish he had been to the teatrino. He would have liked your Escape from Paris, but perhaps he would not have cared so much for the paladins. He wrote something about them."

"What did he say?"

"If he had seen the end of the story, when the angel takes Guido Santo's soul out of his mouth, I believe he would have said that instead of flying up to heaven he flew across the Atlantic with it and installed it 'amid the kitchenware' to animate all the machinery and things in one of the Exhibitions held by the American Inst.i.tute in New York."

"Is that what he said?"

"No. What he said was that all that world of romance was dead:

Pa.s.sed to its charnel vault--laid on the shelf--coffin'd with crown and armour on, Blazon'd with Shakespeare's purple page, And dirged by Tennyson's sweet sad rhyme.

"Well, it is not true. But of course if he never came to the teatrino he could not know. Americans do come to the teatrino. I never know which are Americans and which are English; for the English come too. They come in the winter and the spring, and when they are pleased with some stage trick--"

"I suppose you mean with some miracle?"

"Of course," he replied; "it is the same thing. When they are pleased with some stage miracle, they clap their hands and applaud."

"That is nice and sympathetic of them."

"Yes, and they shout out loud and cry: 'Bravo, very good night.'"

"No, Buffo! Is that really what they say?"

"Yes, they shout: 'Bravo, very good night,' and it is a pleasure to hear them."

"I should think so. I must come in the winter next time and hear them say that."

"They all ask me some questions. I know what they mean, but I cannot speak to them, and, if you please, will you write down for me in English what I shall tell you, so that I can show them the paper?"

"Certainly, my dear Buffo, any little thing of that kind. If any of them come to see the Escape from Paris, I should think they will have a good many questions to ask. For instance, there is the Aurora"--He was finis.h.i.+ng her off by putting a silver fillet round her hair and a s.h.i.+ning star upon her forehead--"I cannot help it, but I still feel unhappy about her. She does not explain herself."

"That will not signify. We must leave room for the imagination to play--not too much, but it is a mistake to be too exact. There must be some mystery which the public can take in any way they choose. It is like the nuts on the bicycle, they must not be left loose, but they must not be screwed too tight."

I gave way, saying: "I suspect you are right. It flatters the spectators to feel that they are helping the performance by using their imagination.

And if they don't understand--well, they can think they do and that flatters them again. And there is another reason why we must not tell the public everything--it would take too long."

"Ah yes! We must not bore the public or they will not come again to the teatrino, and then where would the money come from to pay for my singing lessons?"

So we let the Cold Dawn follow among the rest. There were half a dozen rollicking blue-jackets off the wars.h.i.+p in the port, they had been spending the evening with their girls and were escaping with them. When I objected that Paris was a sea-port town only in a Bohemian sense, he replied that that was enough for him; and when I said that if the sailors really had a s.h.i.+p anywhere near, they would have done better to escape by sea, he complained that I was being fastidious.

There were soldiers arm-in-arm and singing, they had been interrupted while drinking in a wine-shop in a side street off the Via Macqueda and were saving the marsala which they had not finished.

After them came the maresciallo dei carabinieri in the uniform he wears for a festa, with a plume in his three-cornered hat. He was a broad, beefy fellow, taller than the soldiers, being made of a marionette who is usually a giant. He came swinging along, all so big and so burly, followed by a lady, showily dressed, who walked mincingly and was saving a pair of pink satin shoes and a powder-puff. She kept calling to him to stop, she wanted to speak to him. But he would not listen, he was not going to pay any attention to her--not in his gala uniform, it would not have been proper. Besides, there were people looking.

A blind musician with a broken nose and a falsetto voice was led by his mate who carried a 'cello. An interrupted wedding party followed, and school-children with their professors, sick people out of the hospital with doctors and nurses to help them, and a rabble of water-sellers, shoe-blacks, pedlars and men pus.h.i.+ng carts.

Then followed the paladinessa Ettorina still mad, so mad that they were dragging her along and forcing her to escape while she struggled to get free and did not want to go, because a mad person does not understand danger. And paladins and warriors came--Amantebrava, Lungobello, Ottonetto and many more whose names I do not remember.

Last of all came Pope Gregorio III. He was not one to leave the city till the last of his flock had been saved. He wore his tiara and was in white robes with a red cross front and back; he carried his crosier in his left hand and on his right thumb was a diamond ring which sparkled as he blessed the people. So he pa.s.sed with his Secretary of State, his cardinals, his bishops, his monsignori, his acolytes, his chamberlains, his Guardia n.o.bile and his Swiss Guard; some carried lighted candles, some carried banners and others crosses; some were swinging incense and others were intoning the psalm _In Exitu Israel_. The solemn pomp of the procession disappeared into the opening of the subterranean road and the sound of the singing could no longer be heard. They were all safely gone. The stage was empty. Yet the curtain did not fall.

Then came a poor mad boy, a sordo-muto, who had been overlooked. He was in a great hurry, making frightful inarticulate noises and running this way and that, being too much alarmed to go straight. Before he had found the mouth of the tunnel the curtain fell and we did not see what became of him. He may have been left behind after all.

CATANIA

CHAPTER VII THE BUFFO'S HOLIDAY

I do not remember who started the idea that the buffo should come to Catania with me; it grew up, as inevitable ideas do, without any of us being sure whether he suggested it, or Papa, or Gildo, or one of the sisters, or I, and it became the chief subject of conversation in the Greco family for days.

It would not be true to say that he had never been away from Palermo, because when he was a boy all the family went to try their fortune in Brazil and stayed there five years running a marionette theatre; when they returned to Palermo, they left behind them in South America the eldest son, Gaetano, who still keeps a teatrino there. But the buffo saw no more of South America than he has seen of Sicily and, except for this five years in Brazil and an occasional day in the country round Palermo, had never been outside his native town. But he knew that Catania was on the other side of the island and near the sea, and expected it to be hotter than Palermo because of the propinquity of Etna. He paid no attention to my a.s.surances that the temperature would be about the same and said he should bring his great-coat, not on account of the heat, but because he hoped that if he was seen with it he might be taken for an English tourist.

We did not start from Palermo together. I had to go to Caltanissetta, which is on a line that branches off at S. Caterina Xirbi from the main line between Palermo and Catania. We arranged to meet at the junction three days after I left Palermo. I got there from Caltanissetta just before the train from Palermo arrived, and the buffo was looking out of the window. As soon as he saw me on the platform he got down and came to me saying:

"Oh! I am so glad to see you again; now everything will be all right. I have been wretched ever since you went away. I have not been able to eat by night or to sleep by day for thinking of you. And this has been going on for two whole months; but now I shall recover."