Alone

N >> Norman Douglas >> Alone

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18

One does not ask for wash-hand basins of sang-de-boeuf. One wonders,
merely, whether this avoidance of sanguine tints in the works of man be
an instinctive paraphrase of surrounding nature, or due to some cause
lying deep down in the roots of Italian temperament. I am aware that the
materials for producing crimson are not common in the peninsula. If they
liked the colour, the materials would be forthcoming.

The Spaniards, a different race, sombre and sensuous, are not averse to
red. Nor are the Greeks. Russians have a veritable cult of it; their
word for "beautiful" means red. It is therefore not a matter of climate.

In Italy, those rare splashes of scarlet--the flaming horse-cloths of
Florence, a ruddy sail that flecks the sea, some procession of
ruby-tinted priests--they come as a shock, a shock of delight. Cross the
Mediterranean, and you will find emotional hues predominating; the land
is aglow with red, the very shadows suffused with it. Or go further
east....

Meanwhile, Attilio hovers discreetly near the hotel-entrance, ready to
convey me to Jericho. He is a small mason-boy to whom I contrived to be
useful in the matter of an armful of obstreperous bricks which refused
to remain balanced on his shoulder. Forthwith, learning that I was a
stranger unfamiliar with Levanto, he conceived the project of abandoning
his regular work and becoming my guide, philosopher and friend.

"Drop your job for the sake of a few days?" I inquired. "You'll get the
sack, my boy."

Not so, he thought. He was far too serviceable to those people. They
would welcome him with open arms whenever--if ever--he cared to return
to them. Was not the mason-in-chief a cousin of his? Everything could be
arranged, without a doubt.

And so it was.

He knows the country; every nook of the hills and sea-shore. A
pleasanter companion could not be found; observant and tranquil, tinged
with a gravity beyond his years--a gravity due to certain family
troubles--and with uncommon sweetness of disposition. He has evidently
been brought up with sisters.

We went one day up the valley to a village, I forget its name, that sits
on a hill-top above the spot where two streams unite; the last part of
the way is a steep climb under olives. Here we suddenly took leave of
spring and encountered a bank of wintry snow. It forced us to take
refuge in the shop of a tobacconist who provided some liquid and other
refreshment. Would I might meet him again, that genial person: I never
shall! We conversed in English, a language he had acquired in the course
of many peregrinations about the globe (he used to be a seaman), and
great was Attilio's astonishment on hearing a man whom he knew from
infancy now talking to me in words absolutely incomprehensible. He
asked:

"You two--do you really understand each other?"

On our homeward march he pointed to some spot, barely discernible among
the hills on our left. That was where he lived. His mother would be
honoured to see me. We might walk on to Monterosso afterwards. Couldn't
I manage it?

To be sure I could. And the very next day. But the place seemed a long
way off and the country absolutely wild. I said:

"You will have to carry a basket of food."

"Better than bricks which grow heavier every minute. Your basket, I
daresay, will be pretty light towards evening."

The name of his natal village, a mere hamlet, has slipped my memory. I
only know that we moved at daybreak up the valley behind Levanto and
presently turned to our right past a small mill of some kind; olives,
then chestnuts, accompanied the path which grew steeper every moment,
and was soon ankle-deep in slush from the melted snow. This was his
daily walk, he explained. An hour and a half down, in the chill twilight
of dawn; two hours' trudge home, always up hill, dead tired, through mud
and mire, in pitch darkness, often with snow and rain.

"Do you wonder," he added, "at my preferring to be with you?"

"I wonder at my fortune, which gave me such a charming friend. I am not
always so lucky."

"Luck--it is the devil. We have had no news from my father in America
for two years. No remittances ever come from him. He may be dead, for
all we know. Our land lies half untilled; we cannot pay for the hire of
day labourers. We live from hand to mouth; my mother is not strong; I
earn what I can; one of my sisters is obliged to work at Levanto. Think
what that means, for us! Perhaps that is why you call me thoughtful. I
am the oldest male in the family; I must conduct myself accordingly.
Everything depends on me. It is enough to make anyone thoughtful. My
mother will tell you about it."

She doubtless did, though I gleaned not so much as the drift of her
speech. The mortal has yet to be born who can master all the dialects of
Italy; this one seemed to bear the same relation to the Tuscan tongue
which that of the Basses-Pyrenees bears to French--it was practically
another language. Listening to her, I caught glimpses, now and then, of
familiar Mediterranean sounds; like lamps shining through a fog, they
were quickly swallowed up in the murk. Unlike her offspring, she had
never been to school. That accounted for it. A gentle woman, frail in
health and manifestly wise; the look of the house, of the children, bore
witness to her sagacity. Understanding me as little as I understood her,
our conversation finally lapsed into a series of smiles, which Attilio
interpreted as best he could. She insisted upon producing some apples
and a bottle of wine, and I was interested to notice that she poured out
to her various male offspring, down to the tiniest tot, but drank not a
drop herself, nor gave any to her big daughters.

"She is sorry they will not let you stay at Levanto."

"Carrara lies just beyond the war-zone. I want to visit the marble-mines
when the weather grows a little warmer, and perhaps write something
about them. Ask her whether you can join me there for a week or so, if I
send the money. Make her say yes."

She said yes.

With a companion like this, to reflect my moods and act as buffer
between myself and the world, I felt I could do anything. Already I saw
myself exploring those regions, interviewing directors as to methods of
work and output, poking my nose into municipal archives and libraries to
learn the history of those various quarries of marble, plain and
coloured; tracking the footsteps of Michael Angelo at Seravezza and
Pietrasanta and re-discovering that old road of his and the inscription
he left on the rock; speculating why the Romans, who ransacked the
furthermost corners of the earth for tinted stones, knew so little of
the treasures here buried; why the Florentines were long content to use
that grey bigio, when the lordly black portovenere, [2] with its golden
streaks, was lying at their very doors....

The gods willed otherwise.

Then, leaving that hospitable dame, we strolled forth along a winding
road--a good road, once more--ever upwards, under the bare chestnuts. At
last the watershed was reached and we began a zigzag descent towards the
harbour of Monterosso, meeting not a soul by the way. Snow lay on these
uplands; it began to fall softly. As the luncheon hour had arrived we
took refuge in a small hut of stone and there opened the heavy basket
which gave forth all that heart could desire--among other things, a
large fiasco of strong white wine which we drank to the dregs. It made
us both delightfully tipsy. So passed an hour of glad confidences in
that abandoned shelter with the snowflakes drifting in upon us--one of
those hours that sweeten life and compensate for months of dreary
harassment.

A long descent, past some church or convent famous as a place of
pilgrimage, led to the strand of Monterosso where the waves were
sparkling in tepid sunshine. Then up again, by a steep incline, to a
signal station perched high above the sea. Attilio wished to salute a
soldier-relative working here. I remained discreetly in the background;
it would never do for a foreigner to be seen prying into Marconi
establishments in this confounded "zone of defense." Another hour by
meandering woodland paths brought us to where, from the summit of a
hill, we looked down upon Levanto, smiling merrily in its conch-shaped
basin....

All this cloudless afternoon we conversed in a flowery dell under the
pine trees, with the blue sea at our feet. It was a different climate
from yesterday; so warm, so balmy. Impossible to conceive of snow! I
thought I had definitely bidden farewell to winter.

Trains, an endless succession of trains, were rumbling through the
bowels of the mountain underneath, many of them filled with French
soldiers bound for Salonika. They have been going southward ever since
my arrival at Levanto.

Attilio was more pensive than usual; the prospect of returning to his
bricks was plainly irksome. Why not join for a change, I suggested, one
of yonder timber-felling parties? He knew all about it. The pay is too
poor. They are cutting the pines all along this coast and dragging them
to the water, where they are sawn into planks and despatched to the
battle-front. It seemed a pity to Attilio; at this rate, he thought,
there would soon be none left, and how then would we be able to linger
in the shade and take our pleasure on some future day?

"Have no fear of that," I said. "And yet--would you believe it? Many
years ago these hills, as far as you can see to right and left and
behind, were bare like the inside of your hand. Then somebody looked at
the landscape and said: 'What a shame to make so little use of these
hundreds of miles of waste soil. Let us try an experiment with a new
kind of pine tree which I think will prosper among the rocks. One of
these days people may be glad of them.'"

"Well?"

"You see what has happened. Right up to Genoa, and down below
Levanto--nothing but pines. You Italians ought to be grateful to that
man. The value of the timber which is now being felled along this
stretch of coast cannot be less than a thousand francs an hour. That is
what you would have to pay, if you wanted to buy it. Twelve thousand
francs a day; perhaps twice as much."

"Twelve thousand francs a day!"

"And do you know who planted the trees? It was a Scotsman."

"A Scozzese. What kind of animal is that?"

"A person who thinks ahead."

"Then my mother is a Scotsman."

I glanced from the sea into his face; there was something of the same
calm depth in both, the same sunny composure. What is it, this limpid
state of the mind? What do we call this alloy of profundity and
frankness? We call it intelligence. I would like to meet that man or
woman who can make Attilio say something foolish. He does not know what
it is to feel shy. Serenely objective, he discards those subterfuges
which are the usual safeguard of youth or inexperience--the evasions,
reservations and prevarications that defend the shallow, the weak, the
self-conscious. His candour rises above them. He feels instinctively
that these things are pitfalls.

"Have you no sweetheart, Attilio?"

"Certainly I have. But it is not a man's affair. We are only children,
you understand--siamo ancora piccoli."

"Did you ever give her a kiss?"

"Never. Not a single one."

I relight my pipe, and then inquire:

"Why not give her a kiss?"

"People would call me a disrespectful boy."

"Nobody, surely, need be any the wiser?"

"She is not like you and me."

A pause....

"Not like us? How so?"

"She would tell her sister."

"What of it?"

"The sister would tell her mother, who would say unpleasant things to
mine. And perhaps to other folks. Then the fat would be in the fire. And
that is why."

Another pause....

"What would your mother say to you?"

"She would say: 'You are the oldest male; you should conduct yourself
accordingly. What is this lack of judgment I hear about?'"

"I begin to understand."

Siena

Driven from the Paradise of Levanto, I landed not on earth but--with one
jump--in Hell. The Turks figure forth a Hell of ice and snow; this is my
present abode; its name is Siena. Every one knows that this town lies on
a hill, on three hills; the inference that it would be cold in January
was fairly obvious; how cold, nobody could have guessed. The sun is
invisible. Streets are deep in snow. Icicles hang from the windows.
Worst of all, the hotels are unheated. Those English, you know,--they
refuse to supply us with coal....

Could this be the city where I was once nearly roasted to death? It is
an effort to recall that glistening month of the Palio festival, a month
I spent at a genuine pension for a set purpose, namely, to write a study
on the habits of "The Pension-cats of Europe"--those legions of elderly
English spinsters who lead crepuscular lives in continental
boarding-houses. I tore it up, I remember; it was unfair. These ladies
have a perfect right to do as they please and, for that matter, are not
nearly as ridiculous as many married couples that live outside
boarding-houses. But when Siena grew intolerable--a stark,
ill-provisioned place; you will look in vain for a respectable grocer or
butcher; the wine leaves much to be desired; indeed, it has all the
drawbacks of Florence and none of its advantages--why, then we fled into
Mr. Edward Hutton's Unknown Tuscany. There, at Abbadia San Salvatore
(though the summit of Mount Amiata did not come up to expectation) we at
last felt cool again, wandering amid venerable chestnuts and wondrously
tinted volcanic blocks, mountain-fragments, full of miniature glens and
moisture and fernery--a green twilight, a landscape made for fairies....

Was this the same Siena from which we once escaped to get cool? Muffled
up to the ears, with three waistcoats on, I move in and out of doors,
endeavouring to discover whether there be any appreciable difference in
temperature between the external air and that of my bedroom. There
cannot be much to choose between them. They say I am the only foreigner
now in Siena. That, at least, is a distinction, a record. Furthermore,
no matches, not even of the sulphur variety, were procurable in any of
the shops for the space of three days; that also, I imagine, cannot yet
have occurred within the memory of living man.

While stamping round the great Square yesterday to keep my feet warm, a
Florentine addressed me; a commercial gentleman, it would seem. He
disapproved of this square--it was not regular in shape, it was not even
level. What a piazza! Such was his patriotism that he actually went on
to say unfriendly things about the tower. Who ever thought of building a
tower at the bottom of a hill? It was good enough, he dared say, for
Siena. Oh, yes; doubtless it satisfied their artistic notions, such as
they were.

This tower being one of my favourites, I felt called upon to undertake
its defence. Recollecting all I had ever heard or read to its credit,
citing authorities neither of us had ever dreamt of--improvising
lustily, in short, as I warmed to my work--I concluded by proving it to
be one of the seven wonders of the world. He said:

"Now really! One would think you had been born in this miserable hole.
You know what we Florentines say:

Siena
Di tre cose e piena:
Torri, campane,
E figli di putane."

"I admit that Siena is deficient in certain points," I replied. "That
wonderful dome of yours, for example--there is nothing like it here."

"No, indeed. Ah, that cupola! Ah, Brunelleschi--che genio!"

"I perceive you are a true Florentine. Could you perhaps tell me why
Florentines, coming home from abroad, always rejoice to see it rising
out of the plain?"

"Some enemy has been talking to you...."

A little red-haired boy from Lucca, carrying for sale a trayful of those
detestable plaster-casts, then accosted me.

Who bought such abominations, I inquired?

Nobody. Business was bad.

Bad? I could well believe it. Having for the first time in my life
nothing better to do, I did my duty. I purchased the entire collection
of these horrors, on the understanding that he should forthwith convey
them in my presence to the desolate public garden, where they were set
up, one after the other, on the edge of a bench and shattered to
fragments with our snow-balls. Thus perished, not without laughter and
in a good cause, three archangels, two Dantes, a nondescript lady with
brocade garments and a delectable amorino whose counterpart, the sole
survivor, was reserved for a better fate--being carried home and
presented as a gift to my chambermaid.

She was polite enough to call it a beautiful work of art.

I was polite enough not to contradict her.

Both of us know better....

This young girl has no illusions (few Tuscans have) and yet a great
charm. Her lover is at the front. There is little for her to do, the
hotel being practically empty. There is nothing whatever for me to do,
in these Arctic latitudes. Bored to death, both of us, we confabulate
together huddled in shawls and greatcoats, each holding a charcoal pan
to keep the fingers from being frostbitten. I say to myself: "You will
never find a maidservant of this type in Rome, so sprightly of tongue,
distinguished in manner and spotless in person--never!"

The same with her words. The phrases trip out of her mouth, immaculate,
each in full dress. Seldom does she make an original remark, but she
says ordinary things in a tone of intense conviction and invests them
with an appetizing savour. Wherein lies that peculiar salt of Tuscan
speech? In its emphasis, its air of finality. They are emphatic, rather
than profound. Their deepest utterances, if you look below the surface,
are generally found to be variants of one of those ancestral saws or
proverbs wherewith the country is saturated. Theirs is a crusted charm.
A hard and glittering sanity, a kind of ageless enamel, is what
confronts us in their temperament. There are not many deviations from
this Tuscan standard. Close by, in Umbria, you will find a softer type.

One can be passably warm in bed. Here I lie for long, long hours,
endeavouring to generate the spark of energy which will propel me from
this inhospitable mountain. Here I lie and study an old travel-book. I
mean to press it to the last drop.

One seldom presses books out, nowadays. The mania for scraps of one kind
or another, the general cheapening of printed matter, seem to have
dulled that faculty and given us a scattered state of mind. We browse
dispersedly, in goatish fashion, instead of nibbling down to the root
like that more conscientious quadruped whose name, if I mentioned it,
would degrade the metaphor. Devouring so much, so hastily, so
irreverentially, how shall a man establish close contact with the mind
of him who writes, and impregnate himself with his peculiar outlook to
such an extent as to be able to take on, if only momentarily, a
colouring different from his own? It is a task requiring submissiveness
and leisure.

And yet, what could be more interesting than really to observe things
and men from the angle of another individual, to install oneself within
his mentality and make it one's habitation? To sit in his bones--what
glimpses of unexplored regions! Were a man to know what his fellow truly
thinks; could he feel in his own body those impulses which drive the
other to his idiomatic acts and words--what an insight he would gain!
Morally, it might well amount to "tout comprendre, c'est ne rien
pardonner"; but who troubles about pardoning or condemning?
Intellectually, it would be a feast. Thus immersed into an alien
personality, a man would feel as though he lived two lives, and
possessed two characters at the same time. One's own life, prolonged to
an age, could never afford such unexpected revelations.

The thing can be done, up to a point, with patient humility; for
everybody writes himself down more or less, though not everybody is
worth the trouble of deciphering.

I purpose to apply this method; to squeeze the juice, the life-blood,
out of what some would call a rather dry Scotch traveller. I read his
book in England for the first time two years ago, and have brought it
here with a view to further dissection. Would I had known of its
existence five years earlier! Strange to say, despite my deplorable
bookishness (vide Press) this was not the case; I could never ascertain
either the author's name or the title of his volume, though I had heard
about him, rather vaguely, long before that time. It was Dr. Dohrn of
the Naples Aquarium who said to me in those days:

"Going to the South? Whatever you do, don't forget to read that book by
an old Scotch clergyman. He ran all over the country with a top-hat and
an umbrella, copying inscriptions. He was just your style: perfectly
crazy."

Flattered at the notion of being likened to a Scottish divine, I made
all kinds of inquiries--in vain. I abandoned hope of unearthing the
top-hatted antiquarian and had indeed concluded him to be a myth, when a
friend supplied me with what may be absurdly familiar to less bookish
people: "The Nooks and By-ways of Italy." By Craufurd Tait Ramage, LL.D.
Liverpool, 1868.

A glance sufficed to prove that this Ramage belonged to the brotherhood
of David Urquhart, Mure of Caldwell, and the rest of them. Where are
they gone, those candid inquirers, so full of gentlemanly curiosity, so
informative and yet shrewdly human; so practical--think of Urquhart's
Turkish Baths--though stuffed with whimsicality and abstractions? Where
is the spirit that gave them birth?

One grows attached to these "Nooks and By-ways." An honest book, richly
thoughtful, and abounding in kindly twinkles.

Now, regarding the top-hat. I find no mention of it in these letters.
For letters they are; letters extracted from a diary which was written
on his return from Italy in 1828 from "very full notes made from day to
day during my journey." 1828: that date is important. It was in 1828,
therefore, when the events occurred which he relates, and he allowed an
interval of forty years to elapse ere making them public.

The umbrella on the other hand is always cropping up. It pervades the
volume like a Leitmotif. It is "a most invaluable article" for
protecting the head against the sun's rays; so constantly is it used
that after a single month's wear we find it already in "a sad state of
dilapidation." Still, he clings to it. As a defence against brigands it
might prove useful, and on one occasion, indeed, he seizes it in his
hand "prepared to show fight." This happened, be it remembered, in 1828.
Vainly one conjectures what the mountain folk of South Italy thought of
such a phenomenon. Even now, if they saw you carrying an umbrella about
in the sunshine, they would cross themselves and perhaps pray for your
recovery--perhaps not. Yet Ramage was not mad at all. He was only more
individualistic and centrifugal than many people. Having formed by
bitter experience a sensible theory--to wit, that sunstroke is
unpleasant and can be avoided by the use of an umbrella--he is not above
putting it into practice. Let others think and do as they please!

For the rest, his general appearance was quite in keeping. How
delightful he must have looked! Why have we no such types nowadays?
Wearing a "white merino frock-coat, nankeen trowsers, a large-brimmed
straw hat, and white shoes," he must have been a fairly conspicuous
object in the landscape. That hat alone will have alarmed the peasantry
who to this day and hour wear nothing but felt on their heads. And note
the predominance of the colour white in his attire; it was popular, at
that period, with English travellers. Such men, however, were unknown in
most of the regions which Ramage explored. The colour must have inspired
feelings akin to awe in the minds of the natives, for white is their
bete noire. They have a rooted aversion to it and never employ it in
their clothing, because it suggests to their fancy the idea of
bloodlessness--of anaemia and death. If you want to make one of them ill
over his dinner, wear a white waistcoat.

Accordingly, it is not surprising that he sometimes finds himself "an
object of curiosity." An English Vice-Consul, at one place, was "quite
alarmed at my appearance." Elsewhere he meets a band of peasant-women
who "took fright at my appearance and scampered off in the utmost
confusion." And what happened at Taranto? By the time of his arrival in
that town his clothes were already in such a state that "they would
scarcely fit an Irish beggar." Umbrella in hand--he is careful to
apprise us of this detail--and soaked moreover from head to foot after
an immersion in the river Tara, he entered the public square, which was
full of inhabitants, and soon found himself the centre of a large crowd.
Looking, he says, like a drowned rat, his appearance caused "great
amazement."

"What is the matter? Who is he?" they asked.

The muleteer explained that he was an Englishman, and "that immediately
seemed to satisfy them."

Of course it did. People in those times were prepared for anything on
the part of an Englishman, who was a far more self-assertive and
self-confident creature than nowadays.

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18