Alone

N >> Norman Douglas >> Alone

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I know nothing of the social history of Olevano--of its origin, so far
as foreigners are concerned. It is the easiest and the flimsiest thing
in the world to invent; there are so many analogies!

The first foreign resident of Olevano was a retired Anglo-Indian army
officer with unblemished record, Major Frederick Potter. He came across
the place on a trip from Rome, and took a fancy to it. Decent climate.
Passable food. You could pick up a woodcock or two. He was accustomed to
solitude anyhow, all his old friends being dead or buried, or scattered
about the world. He had tried England for a couple of years and
discovered that people there did not like being ordered about as they
should be; they seemed to mind it less, at Olevano. He had always been
something of a pioneer, and the mere fact of being the first "white man"
in the place gave him a kind of fondness for it.

It was he, then, who discovered Olevano--Freddy Potter. We can see him
living alone, wiry and whiskered and cantankerous, glorying in his
solitude up to the fateful day when, to his infinite annoyance, a
fellow-countryman turns up--Mr. Augustus Browne of London. Mr. Browne is
a blameless personality who, enjoying indifferent health, brings an
equally blameless old housekeeper with him. He is not a sportsman like
Potter, but indulges in a pretty taste for landscape painting, with
elaborate flowers and butterflies worked into the foreground. So they
live, each in jealous seclusion, drinking tea at fixed hours, importing
groceries from England, dressing for dinner, avoiding contact with the
"natives" and, of course, pretending to be unaware of one another's
existence.

As time goes on, their mutual distrust grows stronger. The Major has
never forgiven that cockney for invading Olevano, his private domain,
while Browne finds no words to express his disgust at Potter, who
presumably calls himself a Briton and yet smokes those filthy cheroots
in public (this was years and years ago). Why is the fellow skulking
here, all by himself? Some hanky-panky with regimental money; every one
knows how India plays the devil with a man's sense of right and wrong.
And Potter is not long in making up his mind that this civilian has
bolted to Olevano for reasons which will not bear investigation and is
living in retirement, ten to one, under an assumed name. Browne! He
really might have picked out a better one, while he was about it. That
water-colour business--a blind, a red herring; the so-called lady
companion----

The natives, meanwhile, observe with amazement the mutual conduct of two
compatriots. They are known, far and wide, as "the madmen" till some
bright spirit makes the discovery that they are not madmen at all, but
only homicides hiding from justice; whereupon contempt is changed to
grudging admiration.

Browne dies, after many years. His lady packs up and departs. The old
Major's delight at being once more alone is of short duration; he falls
ill and is entombed, his last days being embittered by the arrival of a
party of German tourists who declare they have "discovered" this
wonderful new spot, and threaten to bring more Teutons in their rear to
participate in its joys.

They come, singly and in batches, and soon make Olevano uninhabitable to
men of the Potter and Browne type. They keep the taverns open all night,
sing boisterous choruses, kiss each other in the street "as if they were
in their bedrooms," organise picnics in the woods, sketch old women
sitting in old doorways, start a Verschoenerungsverein and indulge in a
number of other antics which, from the local point of view, are held to
be either coarse or childish. The natives, after watching their doings
with critical interest, presently pronounce a verdict--a verdict to
which the brightest spirits of the place give their assent--a verdict
which, by the way, I have myself heard uttered.

"Those Englishmen"--thus it runs--"were at least assassins. These people
are merely fools."

POSTSCRIPT--One thing has occurred of late which would hardly have
happened were the Germans still in occupation of Olevano. At the central
piazza is a fountain where the cattle drink and where, formerly, you
could rest and glance down upon the country lying below--upon a piece of
green landscape peering in upon the street. This little view was like a
window, it gave an aerial charm to the place. They have now blocked it
up with an ugly house. The beauty of the site is gone. It is surprising
that local municipalities; however stupid, however corrupt, should not
be aware of the damage done to their own interests when they permit such
outrages. The Germans--were any of them still here--would doubtless have
interfered en masse and stopped the building.

Something should be done about these reviewers.

There has followed me hither a bundle of press notices of a recent book
of mine. They are favourable. I ought to be delighted. I happen to be
annoyed.

What takes place in this absurd book? The three unities are preserved. A
respectable but rather drab individual, a bishop, whose tastes and moods
are fashioned to reflect those of the average drab reader, arrives at a
new place and is described as being, among other things, peculiarly
sensitive on the subject of women. He cannot bear flippant allusions to
the sex. He has preserved a childlike faith in their purity, their
sacred mission on earth, their refining influence upon the race. His
friends call him old-fashioned and quixotic on this point. A true woman,
he declares, can do no wrong. And this same man, towards the end of the
book, watches how the truest woman in the place, the one whom he admires
more than all the rest, his own cousin and a mother, calmly throws her
legitimate husband over a cliff. He realises that he is "face to face
with an atrocious and carefully planned murder." Such, however, has been
the transformation of his mind during a twelve days' sojourn that he
understands the crime, he pardons it, he approves it.

Can this wholesale change of attitude be brought about without a plot?
Yet many of these reviewers discover no such thing in the book. "It
possesses not the faintest shadow of a plot," says one of the most
reputable of them. This annoys me.

I see no reason why a book should have a plot. In regard to this one, it
would be nearer the truth to say that it is nothing but plot from
beginning to end. How to make murder palatable to a bishop: that is the
plot. How? You must unconventionalise him, and instil into his mind the
seeds of doubt and revolt. You must shatter his old notions of what is
right. It is the only way to achieve this result, and I would defy the
critic to point to a single incident or character or conversation in the
book which does not further the object in view. The good bishop soon
finds himself among new influences; his sensations, his intellect, are
assailed from within and without. Figures such as those in chapters 11,
19 and 35; the endless dialogue in the boat; the even more tedious
happenings in the local law-court; the very externals--relaxing wind and
fantastic landscape and volcanic phenomena--the jovial immoderation of
everything and everybody: they foster a sense of violence and
insecurity; they all tend to make the soil receptive to new ideas.

If that was your plot, the reviewer might say, you have hidden it rather
successfully. I have certainly done my best to hide it. For although the
personalities of the villain and his legal spouse crop up periodically,
with ominous insistence, from the first chapter onwards, they are always
swallowed up again. The reason is given in the penultimate chapter,
where the critic might have found a resume of my intentions and the key
to this plot--to wit, that a murder under those particular circumstances
is not only justifiable and commendable but--insignificant. Quite
insignificant! Not worth troubling about. Hundreds of decent and honest
folk are being destroyed every day; nobody cares tuppence; "one dirty
blackmailer more or less--what does it matter to anybody"? There are so
many more interesting things on earth. That is why the bishop--i.e. the
reader--here discovers the crime to be a "contemptible little episode,"
and decides to "relegate it into the category of unimportant events." He
was glad that the whole affair had remained in the background, so to
speak, of his local experiences. It seemed appropriate. In the
background: it seemed appropriate. That is the heart, the core, of the
plot. And that is why all those other happenings find themselves pushed
into the foreground.

I know full well that this is not the way to write an orthodox English
novel. For if you hide your plot, how shall the critic be expected to
see it? You must serve it on a tray; you must (to vary the simile) hit
the nail on the head and ask him to be so good as to superintend the
operation. That is the way to rejoice the cockles of his heart. He can
then compare you to someone else who has also hit the nail on the head
and with whose writings he happens to be familiar. You have a flavour of
Dostoievsky minus the Dickens taint; you remind him of Flaubert or
Walter Scott or somebody equally obscure; in short, you are in a
condition to be labelled--a word, and a thing, which comes perilously
near to libelling. If, to this description, he adds a short summary of
your effort, he has done his duty. What more can he do? He must not
praise overmuch, for that might displease some of his own literary
friends. He must not blame overmuch, else how shall his paper survive?
It lives on the advertisements of publishers and--say those persons,
perhaps wisely--"if you ill-treat our authors, there's an end to our
custom." Commercialism....

Which applies far less to literary criticism than to other kinds. Of
most of the critics of music and art the best one can say is that there
are hearty fellows among them who, with the requisite training, might
one day become fit for their work. England is the home of the amateur in
matters intellectual, the specialist in things material. No bootmaker
would allow an unpractised beginner to hack his leather about in a
jejune attempt to construct a pair of shoes. The other commodity, being
less valuable than cowhide, may be entrusted to the hands of any
'prentice who cares to enliven our periodicals with his playful
hieroglyphics. Criticism in England--snakes in Iceland. [15]

All alone, for a wonder, I climbed up to the sanctuary of St. Michael
above Serrone, that solitary white speck visible from afar on the upper
slopes of Mount Scalambra. It is a respectable walk, and would have been
inconveniently warm but for the fact that I rose with the nightingales,
reaching my destination at the very moment when the sun peered over the
ridge of the mountain at its back. A delicious ramble in the dewy shade
of morning, with ten minutes' rest on a wall at Serrone, talking to an
old woman who wore those ponderous red ornaments designed, I suppose, to
imitate coral.

I had hoped to meet at this hermitage some amiable and garrulous
anchorite who would share my breakfast. It is the ideal place for such a
life, and many are the mountain solitaries of this species I have known
in Italy (mostly retired shepherds). There was he of Scanno--dead, I
doubt not, by this time--that simple-hearted venerable with whom I
whiled away the long evenings at the shrine of Sant' Egidio, gazing over
the placid lake below, or up stream, at the dusky houses of Scanno
theatrically ranged against their hill-side. I became his friend, once
and for ever, after finding a wooden snuff-box he had lost--his only
snuff-box; it lay at the edge of the path among thick shrubs, and he
could hardly believe his eyes when he saw it again. One of my many
strokes of luck! Once I found a purse--

The little structure here was barred and deserted. I had no company save
a couple of ravens who, after assuring themselves, with that infernal
cunning of theirs, that I carried no gun, became as friendly as could be
expected of such solemn fowls. They are always in pairs--incurably
monogamous; whereas the carrion crow, for reasons of its own, has a
fondness for living in trios. This menage a trois may have subtle
advantages and seems to be a step in the direction of the truly social
habits of the rook; it enables them to fight with more success against
their enemies, the hawks, and fosters, likewise, a certain
lightheartedness which the sententious raven lacks. No one who has
watched the aerial antics of a triplet of carrion crows can deny them a
sense of fun.

After an hour's contemplation of the beauties of nature I descended once
more through that ilex grove to Serrone. And now it began to grow
decidedly warm. The wide depression between this village and Olevano
used to be timbered and is still known as la selva or la foresta. Vines
now occupy the whole ground. If they had only left a few trees by the
wayside! Walking along, I encountered a sportsman who said he was on the
look-out for a hare. Always that hare! They might as well lie in wait
for the Great Auk. Not long ago, an old visionary informed me that he
had killed a hare beside the Ponte Milvio at Rome. Hares at Ponte
Milvio! They reminded me of those partridges in Belgrave Square. In my
younger days there was not a general in the British army who had not (1)
shot partridges in Belgrave Square and (2) been the chosen lover of
Queen Isabella of Spain....

Up to the castle, in the afternoon, for a final chat. We sit under the
vine near the entrance of that decayed stronghold, while babies and hens
scramble about the exposed rock; he talks, as usual, about the war. He
can talk of nothing else. No wonder. One son is maimed for life; the
other has been killed outright, and it looks as if no amount of
ironmongery (medals, etc.) would ever atone for the loss. This happy
land is full of affliction. Mourning everywhere, and hardships and
bitterness and ruined homes. Vineyards are untilled, olives unpruned,
for lack of labourers. It will take years to bring the soil back into
its old state of productivity. One is pained to see decent folk
suffering for a cause they fail to understand, for something that
happens beyond their ken, something dim and distant--unintelligible to
them as that Libyan expedition. None the less, he tells me, there is not
a single deserter in Olevano. An old warrior-brood, these men of
Latium....

Thence onward and upward, towards evening by that familiar path, for a
second farewell visit to Giulio's farm. It is a happy homestead, an
abode of peace, with ample rooms and a vine-wreathed terrace that
overlooks the smiling valley to the south. A mighty bush of rosemary
stands at the door. The mother is within, cooking the evening meal for
her man and the elder boys who work in the fields so long as a shred of
daylight flits about the sky. The little ones are already half asleep,
tired with a long day's playing in the sunshine.

Here is my favourite, Alberto, an adorable cherub and the pickle of the
family. I can see at a glance that he has been up to mischief. Alberto
is incorrigible. No amount of paternal treatment will do him any good.
He hammers nails into tables and into himself, he tumbles down from
trees, he throws stones at the girls and cuts himself with knives and
saws; he breaks things and loses things, and chases the hens
about--disobeys all the time. Every day there is some fresh disaster and
fresh chastisement. Two weeks ago he was all but run over by the big
station motor--pulled out from the wheels in the nick of time; that scar
across his forehead will remain for life, a memento of childish
naughtiness. Alberto understands me thoroughly. He is glad to see me.
But a certain formality must be gone through; every time we meet there
is a moment of shy distrust, while the ice has to be broken afresh--he
must assure himself that I have not changed since our last encounter.
Everything, apparently, is in order to-night, for he curls up
comfortably on my knee and is soon fast asleep, all his little tragedies
forgotten.

"It appears you like children," says the mother.

"I like this one, because he is never out of trouble. He reminds me of
myself. I shall steal him one of these days, and carry him off to Rome.
From there we will walk on foot to Brindisi, along an old track called
the Via Appia. It will require two of three years, for I mean to stop a
day, or perhaps a week, at every single tavern along the road. Then I
will write a book about it; a book to make myself laugh with, when I am
grown too old for walking."

"Giulio is big enough."

"I'll wait."

No chance of undertaking such a trip in these times of war, when a
foreigner is liable to be arrested at every moment. Besides, how far
would one get, with Giulio? Nevermore to Brindisi! As far as Terracina;
possibly even to Formia. There, at Formia, we would remain for the rest
of our natural lives, if the wine at the Albergo della Quercia is
anything like what it used to be; there, at Formia, we would pitch our
tent, enacting every day, or perhaps twice a day, our celebrated
Faun-and-Silenus entertainment for the diversion of the populace. I have
not forgotten Giulio's besetting sin. How nearly he made me exceed the
measure of sobriety at Rojate!...

Night descends. I wander homewards. Under the trees of the driving-road
fireflies are dancing; countrymen return in picturesque groups, with
mules and children, from their work far afield; that little owl, the
aluco, sits in the foliage overhead, repeating forever its plaintive
note. The lights of Artena begin to twinkle.

This Artena, they say, had such a sorry reputation for crime and
brigandage that the authorities at one time earnestly considered the
proposition of razing it to the ground. Then they changed their minds.
It seemed more convenient to have evil-doers all collected into one
place than scattered about the country. To judge by the brightness of
the lamps at this distance of twelve miles, the brigands have evidently
spared no expense in the matter of street-illumination.

And now the lights of Segni station are visible, down in the malarious
valley, where the train passes from Rome to Naples. Every night I have
beheld them from my window; every night they tinged my thoughts with a
soft sadness, driving them backwards, northwards--creating a link
between present and past. Now, for the last time, I see them and recall
those four journeys along that road; four, out of at least a hundred;
only four, but in what rare company!

Valmontone

Back to Valmontone.

At Zagarolo, where you touch the Rome-Naples line, I found there was no
train to this place for several hours. A merchant of straw hats from
Tuscany, a pert little fellow, was in the same predicament; he also had
some business to transact at Valmontone. How get there? No conveyance
being procurable on account of some local fair or festival, we decided
to walk. A tiresome march, in the glow of morning. The hatter, after
complaining more or less articulately for an hour, was reduced to groans
and almost tears; his waxed moustache began to droop; he vowed he was
not accustomed to this kind of exercise. Would I object to carrying his
bundle of hats for him? I objected so vigorously that he forthwith gave
up all hope. But I allowed him to rest now and then by the wayside. I
also offered him, gratis, the use of a handful of my choicest Tuscan
blasphemies, [16] for which he was much obliged. Most of them were
unfamiliar to him. He had been brought up by his mother, he explained.
They seemed to make his burden lighter.

Despite wondrous stretches of golden broom, this is rather a cheerless
country, poorly cultivated, and still bearing the traces of mediaeval
savagery and insecurity. It looks unsettled. One would like to sit down
here and let the centuries roll by, watching the tramp of Roman legions
and Papal mercenaries and all that succession of proud banners which
have floated down this ancient Via Labiena.

That rock-like structure, visible in the morning hours from Olevano, is
a monstrous palace containing, among other things, a training school for
carbineers. Attached thereto is a church whose interior has an unusual
shape, the usual smell, and a tablet commemorating a visit from Pius IX.

There is a beautiful open space up here, with wide views over the
surrounding country. It gives food for thought. What an ideal spot, one
says, for the populace to frequent on the evenings of these sultry days!
It is empty at that hour, utterly deserted. Now why do they prefer to
jostle each other in the narrow, squalid and stuffy lane lower down? One
would like to know the reason for this preference. I enquired, and was
told that the upper place was not sufficiently well-lighted. The
explanation is not wholly convincing, for they have the lighting
arrangements in their own hands, and could easily afford the outlay. It
may be that they like to remain close to the shops and to each other's
doors for conversational purposes, since it is a fact that, socially
speaking, the more restricted the area, the more expansive one grows. We
broaden out, in proportion as the environment contracts. A psychological
reason....

I leaned in the bright sunshine over the parapet of this terrace,
looking at Artena near-by. It resembled, now, a cluster of brown grapes
clinging to the hillside. An elderly man, clean-shaven, with scarred and
sallow face, drew nigh and, perceiving the direction of my glance,
remarked gravely:

"Artena."

"Artena," I repeated.

He extracted half a toscano cigar from his waistcoat pocket, and began
to smoke with great gusto. A man of means, I concluded, to be able to
smoke at this hour of an ordinary week-day. He was warmly dressed, with
flowing brown tie and opulent vest and corduroy trousers. His feet were
encased in rough riding-boots. Some peasant proprietor, very likely, who
rode his own horses. Was he going to tell me anything of interest about
Artena? Presumably not. He said never another word, but continued to
smile at me rather wearily. I tried to enliven the conversation by
pointing to a different spot on the hills and observing:

"Segni."

"Segni," he agreed.

His cigar had gone out, as toscanos are apt to do. He applied a match,
and suddenly remarked:

"Velletri."

"Velletri."

We were not making much progress. A good many sites were visible from
here, and at this rate of enumeration the sun might well set on our
labours.

"How about all those deserters?" I inquired.

There was a fair number of them, he said. Young fellows from other
provinces who find their way hither across country, God knows how. It
was a good soil for deserters--brushwood, deep gullies, lonely stretches
of land, and, above all, la tradizione. The tradition, he explained, of
that ill-famed forest of Velletri, now extirpated. The deserters were
nearly all children--the latest conscripts; a grown man seldom deserts,
not because he would not like to do so, but because he has more
"judgment" and can weigh the risks. The roads were patrolled by police.
A few murders had taken place; yes, just a few murders; one or two
stupid people who resented their demands for money or food--

He broke off with another weary smile.

"You have had malaria," I suggested.

"Often."

The fact was patent, not only from his sallow face, but from the
peculiar manner....

They brought in a deserter that very afternoon. He lay groaning at the
bottom of a cab, having broken his leg in jumping down from somewhere.
The rest of the conveyance was filled to overflowing with carbineers. A
Sicilian, they said. The whole populace followed the vehicle uphill,
reverently, as though attending a funeral. "He is little," said a woman,
referring either to his size or his age.

An hour later there was a discussion anent the episode in the
fashionable cafe of Valmontone. A citizen, a well-dressed man, possibly
a notary, put the case for United Italy, for intervention against
Germany, for military discipline and the shooting of cowardly deserters,
into a few phrases so clear, so convincing, that there was a general
burst of approval. Then another man said:

"I hate those Sicilians; I have good personal reasons for hating them.
But no Sicilian fears death. If they are not brilliant soldiers, they
certainly make first-class assassins, which is only another branch of
the same business. This boy deserts not because he is afraid of death,
but because he still owes a debt. He feels he ought to do something to
repay his parents who nursed him when he was a child, and not be
sacrificed to that kidnapping camorra of blackguards out yonder"--and he
pointed with his thumb, spitting contemptuously the while, in the
direction of Rome.

Nobody had any comment to make on this speech. Not a word of protest was
raised. The man was entitled to an opinion like everybody else, and
might even have obtained his share of approval had the victim been a
native. He was only a Sicilian--an outsider. What is one to say of this
patriarchal, or parochial, attitude? The enlargement of Italy's
boundaries--Albania, Cyrenaica, Asia Minor and so forth--is an ideal
that few Italians bother their heads about. They are not sufficiently
dense--not yet. [17] To found a world-empire like the British or Roman
calls for a certain bullet-headed crassness. One has only to look at the
Germans, who have been trying to do so for some time past. That
collecting mania.... One single boy who collects postage stamps can
infect his whole school with the complaint, and make them all jealous of
his fine specimens. England has been collecting, for many centuries,
islands and suchlike; she is paying the penalty of her acquisitive
mania. She has infected others with the craze and cannot help incurring
their envy, seeing that they are now equally acquisitive, but less
fortunate. All the good specimens are gone!

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