Michele Lombardo, a goldsmith of Trapani, came to me one day and said he wished me to be his compare. I at once had a vision of myself as a black man riding round a circus on a bare-backed horse and jumping through hoops. That was because, at the time, all my knowledge about a compare was derived from a conversation I had had in the house of the Greco family at Palermo. Among the photographs grouped on the wall was one of a pleasant-looking nigger in European costume. I asked who he was, and Carolina said he was an African, a compare. I asked what she meant and she said that her father had held the African’s niece at its cresima. The African’s name was Emanuele, but she had never known his family name. I asked whether he had a profession and she replied:
“Faceva cavallerizza.”
I knew no more about cavallerizza than about a compare or a cresima. She explained the first by saying that the horse goes round and Emanuele on the horse’s back performs gymnastics. That is, he used to do so, but he went to Paris, where a duchess saw him performing and, on account of his agility and his attractive physiognomy, fell in love with him. She was an Egyptian duchess and wore diamonds because she was rich. She was so rich she could do as she liked in other respects besides diamonds, and, liking to marry Emanuele, she did so and made him padrone of a grand hotel in Madrid or Vienna, I forget which, but it was a hotel of the first class, frequented by Russian princesses and American millionaires.
I told Michele about this and he assured me that his proposal concealed no equestrian circus and no Egyptian duchess; to become his compare I should only have to hold his eldest son Pietro, aged seven, at his cresima. Here was an opportunity of solving the mysteries of the cresima and the compare, which Michele, who took my consent for granted, assured me would solve themselves as we proceeded. We went to the bishop’s palace and were shown into his private chapel, where the sagrestano entertained us with conversation while we waited. Only once before had he ever approached an Englishman, and that was at Messina. He was a very rich Englishman and a devout son of the Church; his card with his name and address was still preserved as a ricordo in the sagrestano’s house. This gentleman afterwards died in Naples under dramatic circumstances. He had stepped out one evening to take a mouthful of air, and on returning went upstairs to his room; as he put his latch-key into the door he fell down dead. By his will, which was found in the drawer of his writing-table, he bequeathed all his great wealth to the church of S. Antonio. I wanted to know whether this church is in Messina, or Naples, or England; or, it might be in America or Australia, for they sometimes speak of an Inglese Americano and of an Inglese Australiano. Once I took some of my superfluous luggage to a forwarding agent in Palermo to have it sent to England by piccola velocitÀ. It included a figure of Buddha which I had bought in a curiosity-shop in Malta. The clerk declined to forward the image because it was a product of art, and such things may not be sent out of Italy. I said it was a product of religion; he accepted my correction and proposed to describe it in the form he was filling up as a Madonna. Again I objected, pointing out that anyone could see it was not a lady; it was Buddha. He was as puzzled as I had been over the compare. I attempted a short sketch from memory of Buddha’s life and works, and was so far successful that the figure travelled to London as a Cristo Indiano.
The arrival of the bishop cut short the sagrestano’s reminiscences. There also came a woman with a baby in arms who was to receive its cresima at once, in case it might not live to reach Pietro’s discreet age of seven. The bishop in magnificent vestments of brocade and gold stood with his back to the altar; the woman with the baby knelt before him to his right and the sagrestano put his hand on the baby’s shoulder; Pietro knelt to the bishop’s left and I put my hand on his shoulder. The ceremony, it seems, is a partial repetition of the baptism, or a performance of a part omitted from the baptism, or it is an addition to the baptism—for I did not understand so fully as Michele said I should. Unless accelerated, as in the case of the baby, it takes place when the child is old enough to have mastered the more elementary teaching of the Church but does not yet understand enough to be confirmed; and it consists in the bishop’s using a great many words and gestures and making the sign of the Cross in oil on the child’s forehead. Almost before the oil was on, the sagrestano wiped it off with cotton-wool and the bishop, after cleaning his thumb with half a lemon which the sagrestano had thoughtfully placed on the altar, held out his ring to be kissed by the woman and by Pietro.
In this way I became compare of Michele Lombardo and padrino of Pietro, who is my figlioccio. Being Michele’s compare I am in a way related to all the family and, when I arrive at Trapani, Michele brings as many of his children as he can gather to salute me. Last time he brought five and said:
“Excuse my not bringing more.”
In calling Emanuele her compare, Carolina Greco was not speaking very strictly; the relationship exists between her father and Emanuele’s brother, whose child he held; but family relationships are so close in Sicily, and they speak so loosely about them, that a compare of one member of a family may be said to be compare of them all.
A compare is, however, primarily he who holds a child at its baptism, and this, no doubt, is why S. Giovanni Battista is padrone of compari. Thus I am Compare di Battesimo of Peppino and Brancaccia at Castellinaria. It was the grandfather who actually held Ricuzzu at the baptism, but he did it as my deputy, and the spiritual relationship of compare which exists between Peppino and myself is closer than that of padrino and figlioccio which exists between Ricuzzu and myself.
The first step in establishing the relationship of Compare di Battesimo is usually taken at the wedding of the parents, when he who holds the cup or tazza containing the ring becomes Compare di Anello of the bride and bridegroom and also receives the privilege, or undertakes the obligation, of holding the first baby at its baptism. At Ignazio’s wedding someone held the tazza with the ring and handed it to the priest at the right moment, but I did not see this done because between the happy couple and myself the lady-guests interposed a forest of hats, but I saw the tazza among the wedding presents and thought it was an ash-tray till one of them corrected me. There must have been a Compare di Anello also at the wedding of S. Joachim and S. Anna, and this person, whoever he was, ought to have appeared, and perhaps did appear, in the Nascita as padrino of the Madonna at her baptism, but I did not visit a Nascita on the Day of the Sacred Name of Maria, so I did not see the baptism.
A fourth kind of compare is the Compare di Parentela; the name is used for those relationships by marriage which have no special name. The brother-in-law, for instance, though he may be a compare is not necessarily one, he is a cognato; but the parents of a husband and the parents of his wife are compari to one another, and the husband’s cugino, or cousin, is compare of the wife and so on.
There is yet a fifth kind—the Compare di San Giovanni. The first time I saw Turiddu Balistrieri after his escape from the earthquake at Messina (see Chapter XVII post) it seemed an occasion proper to be solemnised in some way, and we determined to become compari to one another, but as there was no wedding and no baptism or cresima we did not know how to proceed. We consulted an expert in Catania, Peppino Fazio, who said it was an exceptional case. This did not alarm us because exceptional cases are treated tenderly in Sicily. Our expert took time to consider and in a day or two gave his opinion:—The relationship could be established by our going into the country on the 24th June, the day of S. Giovanni, and exchanging cucumbers or pots of basil. Nothing could be simpler, and accordingly on the 24th of June, 1910, Turiddu and I went into the country. He was in Catania, so he spent the day on the slopes of Etna. I was staying with friends at Bath, so I went for a walk on Lansdown. In choosing our tokens we had regard to the arrangements of the postal union; he sent me a few dried leaves of basil and an elaborate drawing of an emerald-green plant in a gamboge pot tied round with a vermilion ribbon as a sign of goodwill and friendship. He drew the design out of his own imagination and coloured it with paints which we had bought together in Naples. I might have sent him a volume of Keats containing a Pot of Basil in an equally transmissible form, but as he does not read English he would not have understood; so I sent him a young cucumber about three inches long. The ceremony was complete, and we are as good a pair of compari as any in the island.
Thus there are five kinds of compari, namely:—
1. The Compare di Battesimo.
2. The Compare di Cresima.
3. The Compare di Anello.
4. The Compare di Parentela.
5. The Compare di San Giovanni.
It may be said that there are more kinds; the woman who washes the cap in which a baby is baptised becomes comare, but I do not know whether this is so anywhere but in Catania. And the word is sometimes used in a figurative sense as a term of endearment in addressing a partner or any intimate friend, and sometimes with the intention of inspiring confidence in addressing a stranger in a lower station of life. When two plump gentlemen and one thin one entered the yard of the “White Hart” where Mr. Samuel Weller happened to be burnishing a pair of painted tops, the thin gentleman advanced.
“My friend,” said the thin gentleman.
“You’re one o’ the adwice gratis order,” thought Sam, “or you wouldn’t be so wery fond of me all at once.” But he only said, “Well, Sir.”
A Sicilian Mr. Perker might have said, “Compare” instead of “Amico,” and one is expected to believe that no unworthy suspicion would have crossed the mind of a Sicilian Sam Weller.
Between compari there is such complete trust and devotion that no request is ever refused; there is also the conviction, based first on intuition and afterwards on experience, that no request which ought to be refused will ever be made—a conviction which is, I suppose, an element in all friendship. A compare is received in the house as a member of the family and is looked upon as a relation closer than a brother. One can choose as compare a friend in whom one has confidence, whereas there is no choosing a brother, and cases have been known in which brothers did not agree. But any compare taking advantage of his position would be a contemptible traitor and among the sulphur-miners would provide material for a play at the Teatro Machiavelli. Talking it over with Peppino Pampalone he told me that sometimes things do go wrong, so that they say there are three relations more dangerous than enemies—the cognato (the brother-in-law) the cugino (the cousin), and the compare. And they say:
Dagli amici mi guardi Iddio
ChÈ dai nemici mi guardo io.
May God protect me from my friends
For I can protect myself from my enemies.
Peppino says: “If it is the man that would robber you in the street, this man would put his life in danger because every movement of this man you are looking. But if it is a friend then is it other; then you are depending in him that he is coming to salvare you, you are embracing him, kissing him, don’t be regarding the revolver that shall be in his pocket and sometimes would kill you. If it would not be Bruto, he would not succeed to take the life of Cesare. Did you understand?”
But these are exceptional cases.
CHAPTER X
COMPARE BERTO
In 1901 I spent ten days on Mount Eryx, now usually called Monte San Giuliano, near Trapani, where I went to see the nocturnal procession of Noah’s Ark and the Universal Deluge (Diversions in Sicily, Chapter X). During those days I made the acquaintance of about twenty young men of whom Alberto Augugliaro, the son of the professor of mathematics in the Ginnasio, was the chief. I have seen him nearly every year since, first as a student at Trapani, then at the University of Palermo, and again when he was at home on the Mountain for the holidays, in villeggiatura, or doing the practical work for his diploma in the chemist’s shop of his uncle. When he became qualified, his uncle handed the shop over to him and he is now established in it.
One starry September evening in 1909 we were walking together in the balio (the garden on the top of the Mountain), and I asked whether, as he was now over thirty, it was not time for him to think of getting married. He confessed that negotiations were in progress. I inquired the lady’s name, and he came close to me, took my arm and whispered a word in my ear. If he had shouted the word it would have reached no other ear but mine. We were alone upon the Mountain; the Ericini were sleeping within their walls of stone; over their tiled and terraced roofs the stars were pacing through the night; in front of us and to our right and left, far below, encircled by its mountainous amphitheatre, the spacious plain was cooling after the heat of yesterday; behind us, the sea was drowsily patting the shore round the foot of Monte Cofano and along by happy Bonagia, swaying idly in and out of the harbours of Trapani and among the islands—Levanzo, Favognana, and distant Marettimo. Berto need not have whispered the word; but it was a secret—it was the name of his lady.
Soon after Christmas he announced in the most open manner, that is to say on a post-card, that the preliminaries were over and that his engagement to Giuseppina had been made public; I sent congratulations to them both and he replied in a letter which, omitting the formalities, runs thus in English:
I, on my part, and Giuseppina, on hers, are extremely contented because we both love you with that love which is strong and powerful enough to raise the heart and to transport us above the breathable air; and, as our thoughts frequently fly to you, our distant English friend, we make you a proposition, but you will understand that we lay no obligation upon you and we do not ask you to take any trouble. Here it is in two words: It is our most vivid desire that you should become our compare: that is, that you should hold the tazza containing the ring at our wedding. I repeat, it is our most vivid desire that you will accede to our request for this honour and we shall be most grateful to you if you will content us. It is for you to send your answer which we await with anxiety.
Now, I cannot be more dear to Berto than he is to me—I am not sure about the breathable air, but he is one of the best fellows I know—so I wrote saying I was more flattered, honoured, and pleased by his request than I could express in words. Moreover, it fell out very conveniently because the ceremony was to take place in the following April at a time when I intended to be in Sicily. Then came the difficulty about the wedding present, and whether there was any special duty for a compare to perform besides holding the ring. I remembered Ignazio’s ash-tray and asked whether perhaps I ought to bring something of the kind from London. Berto replied that the tazza is a sacred object belonging to the church and is lent for the ceremony and, as I did not seem to know much about it, he kindly informed me that the customs of his country on the occasion of a wedding are as follows:
The father and the mother of the bridegroom and the father and the mother of the bride invite the relations and friends, who all offer presents of greater or less value according to the degree of relationship and friendship. The ring is chosen by the bridegroom in consultation with the bride. The compare, of his own accord, offers a present to the couple, more usually he offers it only to the bride.
All this I have told you merely as information with regard to the customs of my country; it is not necessary for you to give any present but, if you wish to do so, do as you wish. Wedding presents are lifelong records of relationship and of friendship.
If I am to speak frankly, loyally and sincerely to you as the friend I have always been to you, I recommend you to bring some present for the bride because, as you who have travelled so much must know, in small places not to receive a present from the compare would be to provoke the remark among all who talk that the bride and bridegroom were not complimented by the compare. I tell you this because you are my dearest friend and not because I wish to be critical. Bring anything you choose and be sure that whatever may be offered by you will be accepted by my bride. For me—nothing. I have sufficient in the thought and the comfort of your friendship.
So I consulted my sister, who recommended me to visit a jeweller’s shop. There is one in Regent Street where I take my sleeve-links to be repaired when I have the misfortune to break them. She approved and I went and explained the situation to the young man, who was very kind about it and, after a few false starts, cordially advised one of a line of gold pendants much in vogue to be worn with a light chain. He had an apparently inexhaustible stock, and I became as confused and helpless as when some change is necessary in my spectacles and the oculist wants to know whether I see better with this or with that. I have no idea how long I was there, but in the end I selected a meaningless object of a design which the young man assured me was original and exclusive, and which I hoped would appear fairly unobjectionable to the recipient. After which, not being at all content to leave Berto resting solely on the thought and comfort of my friendship, I chose for him a dozen silver teaspoons. My sister, to whom I showed these articles, approved and, of her own unprompted generosity, added a piece of Irish lace as a special gift from herself to the bride, though she is unacquainted with any of the family except from my description. Thus loaded I travelled to Trapani and went up the Mountain in the public automobile, arriving on a Thursday morning early in April, 1910, the wedding being fixed for the following Saturday.
Berto met me at the Trapani gate of the town and took me to the Albergo Sicilia, where I had stayed when I was on the Mountain in 1901. Signor Bosco has died since, and his widow keeps on the inn with the help of some members of her family of six daughters and four sons. One of these sons is Peppi, a blacksmith, who plays a trombone in the municipal band. Another is Alberto, one of the chauffeurs who drive the automobile up and down the Mountain. Alberto and one of his sisters appeared as children in the procession of the Universal Deluge. They were sitting at the feet of Sin and holding one another’s hands to represent the wicked population destined to destruction. Alberto is now married. His wedding took place in the morning, and at three o’clock in the afternoon three hundred guests were entertained at dinner in the Albergo Sicilia, after which they danced till dawn and, as the wedding was in December, they must have been rather tired; but it was an exceptional case.
In the afternoon Berto came for me and took me to the house of his bride to pay my respects. The house belongs to her; she has two brothers and a sister all married and settled, and on Berto’s marriage he will leave the house of his parents and go and live in his wife’s house. We entered through a door that led through a high blank wall into a courtyard where there were flowering plants in pots, and steps leading up to the living-rooms on the first floor over a basement which is used partly as stabling and partly as storage. This is the form of most of the houses on the Mountain, and the blank wall and courtyard give them an air of seclusion. We went up the steps and were received by the bride and many of her relations, some of whom I had already met, for Giuseppina is a cousin of Berto’s mother. They showed me over the house; the rooms all led into one another and, though they were not in a row, it was rather like going over S. Joachim’s house when it is being prepared for the family festa of the Nascita. It would have been still more like it if we had come in by the other front door, for the side we entered is on a street that goes up-hill and the house is at a corner with another front door in the other street at the top of the hill and level with the living-rooms. This other front door leads straight into a hall, which will be occupied by the musicians on the evening of the wedding, from this one passes to the dining-room where the servants are to dance, then to the salone where the guests are to dance.
We sat in the salone, about twenty of us in a circle, talking the usual talk, and one of the young ladies asked me whether we had compari at an English wedding. I said we had something of the kind. She inquired what I should be called if I were compare at an English wedding, and, seeing no way out of it, I modestly murmured:
“In England I should be called the Best Man.”
This naturally led to a torrent of compliments, which I battled with for some moments, and finally subdued by asking to see the rest of the house. We went to the room which had been arranged as the buffet; the walls were adorned with large looking-glasses, and in the middle was a table for the cakes and sweets. The buffet is to be my bedroom next time I come to the Mountain. We passed through two other saloni and then inspected two bedrooms, one for the happy couple, the other for Berto’s mother, who is to stay with them for the first few days. The presents were arranged on a table by the side of the nuptial couch, which had arrived that morning from Palermo together with the rest of the bedroom suite, very handsome, and made of Hungarian ash. The presents were rather as I have seen wedding presents in England, plenty of spoons and forks, gold brooches, rings, bracelets, some set with diamonds and some with other stones, and I was glad I was not really back in Regent Street choosing my pendant.
We went into the courtyard and into the stable where we saw Mille-lire the donkey, who is scarcely bigger than a Saint Bernard dog and only cost thirty-five lire. It was Berto who gave him the name of Mille-lire to signify that his value far exceeds his price. He has a cart to match and can take four people, but I think they must be rather small people. He shares his stable with thirty-eight chickens, old and young, and two ducks, who all come out into the courtyard to be fed in the sun. There are also three pigeons, making a total of forty-four creatures. In addition there are two cats who live in the house and two tortoises who live in the courtyard. Tortoises are found wild among the rocks in the mountains and the peasants bring them up to the town and sell them. These came from Monte AspÁracio, which is near Cofano; they cost forty centimes each, and bring good luck to the house. On Mount Eryx there is a convent of nuns of S. Teresa, to whom flesh is forbidden, but the prohibition does not extend to tortoises, which the nuns eat with tomato sauce. When the nuns begin to feel the infirmities of age they are no longer limited to this strange meat, the prohibition is withdrawn, and they live like other old ladies, eating what they choose. I have no idea how many fourpenny tortoises would make a meal for a healthy young nun on Monte San Giuliano, where one’s appetite is sharpened by the air. They occasionally add a few snails, which are also permitted; there is a kind of snail which is found underground and is considered a luxury by others besides the nuns of S. Teresa.
After the stable and the courtyard we went to the terrace whence, over the roofs and cupolas and among the towers and belfries of the town, there is a view of the sea and the plain. Then we visited the kitchen and saw the oven for baking the bread. All the well-to-do families on the Mountain possess land on the campagna where they grow their own corn; they take it to the mill to be weighed and ground, and fetch back the flour which is also weighed; they know that if they leave a hundred kilograms of grain they must receive ninety-nine of flour, and in this wasted kilogram of flour lurks the true reason why the miller wears a white hat. They bake their own bread and sometimes make their own maccaroni at home. They grow their own grapes and make their own wine. They have olive trees for oil, and goats whose milk they drink, considering it lighter and more digestible than cows’ milk. Berto’s sister has a private goat of her own, who lives down in the country and comes up every morning, a journey of three-quarters of an hour, and she milks it herself. Thus they pass their lives very close to Mother Earth, and the seasons sensibly affect their comfort. They have little use for money except to buy coffee, fish, sugar, meat, and clothes, or the stuff of which they make their clothes, and some of them raise their own linen and wool. But they want money when there is a family festa; Berto told me he had spent 700 lire merely for the sweetmeats and cakes at his wedding.
All Friday and most of Saturday I spent in being presented to various members of the family and in making preparations. Berto recommended me to visit the barber on Saturday afternoon and, as a good Sicilian, I followed his advice and went to the salone of Peppino. When Samuel Butler first came to Mount Eryx in 1892 to see whether he could identify the localities with those described as Scheria and Ithaca in the Odyssey, he slipped in the street and put his ankle out of joint. The doctor was away, and his foot was set by Peppino, who is a barber-surgeon with a salone close to the spot where the accident happened. Accordingly Peppino is the barber I employ when I am on the Mountain. While he was attending to me I observed a change in the salone, and, on asking where the looking-glasses were, was told they had been lent to Berto to ornament the buffet of his wedding festa.
After the barber, I had my dinner, as I found there would be no opportunity to do so when once the wedding ceremonies had begun, and then I dressed. In the meantime a cloud began to collect on the Mountain and the wind began to blow.
CHAPTER XI
BERTO’S WEDDING
A Sicilian wedding is conducted either on system a, when the happy couple go away for their honeymoon and the ceremony is performed in the morning, or on system b, when they do not go away but have a ball at home, and then the ceremony is performed in the evening. The wedding of Ignazio proceeded on system a, that of Berto and Giuseppina on system b. As for Alberto Bosco, his wedding was either a combination of a and b or an exceptional case.
Berto’s brother NicolÀo came to fetch me at 5.30 p.m. and took me to the house of the bride’s brother in the piazza, where the bride was waiting. Her dress was of pale grey crÈpe trimmed with dull silver embroidery and she wore zagara in her bonnet. Exceptional cases being excepted, it may be said that brides only wear white silk and a veil and wreath of orange blossom, as Ignazio’s bride did at the religious ceremony, when the wedding is conducted on system a. I failed to discover any rule about a cortÈge of bridesmaids, if there is such a rule it is probably elastic. The other ladies wore dresses as for a dance in England in the country in the winter. The gentlemen, like the guests at the Nascita, wore evening dress. And of course we all had cloaks or over-coats.
When we were about to leave the house, Peppi Bosco, with his trombone and the rest of the municipal band, began to play, and to the strains of their music we crossed the piazza in the fog. The bride was conducted by her brother, the bridegroom came next escorting a lady cousin, I followed, as compare, with Berto’s mother, and the others came after. We entered the municipio and went upstairs into a large room. The sindaco sat behind a table, the bride and bridegroom sat facing one another in two armchairs on the opposite side of the table and we ranged ourselves about the room.
The sindaco had often before sat at that table and received other wedding parties, nevertheless he appeared at a loss, or perhaps he disapproved of matrimony. At any rate he was not going to acquiesce in the proceedings until he had dwelt, as elderly people will, on the serious nature of the duties the young people were proposing to undertake. He went so far as to put clearly before them aspects of the case which they might have overlooked and to read them legal extracts of a discouraging nature. They were unmoved, and the sindaco, still dissatisfied, asked Berto point-blank whether he really wished, under the circumstances, to take Giuseppina to be his wife. Berto replied in the affirmative. Concealing his surprise, the sindaco turned to Giuseppina and asked her whether she wished to be married to Berto. She said she did; and indeed it was the reason why we were all there, as the sindaco must have known if he had given the matter a thought, for the wedding had been the talk of the town since Christmas; but the law does not regard hearsay evidence. Finding there was no help for it, he pronounced the necessary words and, no doubt with a view of disclaiming personal responsibility should he hereafter be taxed with marriage-mongering, invited them to sign the book with a pen made entirely of gold in the form of a feather, which he afterwards offered them as a wedding present with his best wishes and a paper on which his clerk had neatly engrossed the legal extracts.
We descended into the piazza now vacated by Peppi Bosco, who had been playing in it with his municipal music during the ceremony, and, forming ourselves into a procession as before, walked down the principal street of the town, and I was thinking of many things. As we passed the club I remembered how once in the winter Berto had taken me there and introduced me to all the notabilities of the place and I had wondered how the fog agreed with the billiard table. We passed the farmacia where Berto spends his time making up prescriptions and gossiping with his friends. We went on down the street and my thoughts wandered to other subjects. In the first place there was my hat, or rather Berto’s uncle’s hat, for, though I had remembered about the guests at the Nascita wearing evening clothes, I had forgotten that they brought their cylindrical hats, and Berto had borrowed one for me, which was so small I had to hold it on. And the wind blew and roared and shook the shutters and banged the windows and doors and smashed the glass down on to the roughly paved streets, and the dense, chilly cloud went through the cracks and penetrated into every house and damped the beds and discoloured the whitewash of the walls. And I had Berto’s mother on one arm and could not keep his uncle’s hat on my head. At last I took it off and carried it under my other arm, putting on my head a cap which I happened to have in my pocket.
We came to the steep part of the street near the salone of Peppino and I thought of his looking-glasses that were temporarily adorning the future bedroom of Berto’s compare, and I thought of Butler’s accident and of the authoress of the Odyssey writing her poem up here three thousand years ago. And what are three thousand years to Time in his flight? An interval that he can clear with a flap or two of his mighty wings. No one knows how often he has flapped them since these narrow roughly paved streets began to give the town its irregular shape; no one knows anything of the prehistoric incarnations of her who has reigned here as Phoenician Astarte, as Greek Aphrodite, as Roman Venus, and who now reigns here as Italian Maria. We were adding one more to the processions that during unnumbered ages have passed along the streets of Mount Eryx worshipping the Mystery of Birth.
We turned down by the Palazzo Platamone and at last reached the Matrice. The floor was hidden by the people standing on it and the ceiling by thousands of wax candles hanging from it. The organ was playing antiphonally with Peppi Bosco, who had preceded us with his trombone and his municipal music. We went into the sagrestia and I did not at first recognise the Arciprete Messina who received us, for I had not previously seen him in his vestments, but he knew me. We had met in the street when he was wearing his ordinary clothes the day before and I had told him I had his photograph taken by Butler, who wanted his face because it is particularly round, like that of so many of the Ericini, and Butler used to say they are descended from the Cyclopes who formerly lived here—Cyclopes means circle-faced, not one-eyed.
After signing the register we left the sagrestia, pushed our way through the people, and stood outside the altar-rails in a circle, the arciprete, Berto, Giuseppina, myself and another priest. I held an old silver tazza, on which the ring was placed. The music was tremendous and had to be made to play piano. The arciprete read the words and, at the proper moment, I handed the tazza, from which he took the ring and gave it to the bridegroom, who placed it upon the bride’s finger. And the Madonna di Custonaci sat over the altar with the Child at her breast smiling down upon our little circle and giving her blessing to Berto and Giuseppina who, with the sanction of their relations and friends, were taking the first step on the path that leads to motherhood.
We were not in the church ten minutes, and the music became forte again as our procession passed out into the fog. We went to the bride’s house and entered by the door that leads into the courtyard which was occupied by Peppi Bosco, who had again preceded us with his trombone and municipal music. The bride retired and, after a few moments, reappeared among the guests, escorted by Berto and accompanied by someone bearing a large tea-tray piled up with sugared almonds, which she ladled to us in handfuls with a silver coffee-cup. On whatever system a Sicilian wedding is conducted it would be incomplete without sugared almonds, and they are sent in boxes to all friends who are unable to attend. Several boxes were given to me for my near relations who, by virtue of my having become compare of Berto and Giuseppina, are now in a manner related to them. And the bride also gave me for my sister a special gift of a handkerchief embroidered by someone in the neighbourhood.
After the almonds, the music began in the front hall and we danced. There were waltzes, polkas and contraddanze, also games involving dances. I did not try to dance the waltzes or the polkas, they were quite different from those I used to be taught; Berto said they were dancing the ballo figurato. Nor did I dance the tarantella, which I never was taught in any form, but I saw it danced by Berto’s mother and a brother of the bride. I danced in three contraddanze, first with Berto’s mother, then with his bride, then with his sister. One of the dancers called out in French what we were to do, and the mistakes we made added to the amusement. Frequently there was a promenade, the partners walking arm-in-arm round the room, which gave time to recover ourselves when we had got into any great confusion. Sometimes he who directs the contraddanza is so fertile in invention that he can make it last two hours. I do not think any that I danced lasted above half an hour, and they always ended by our promenading away to the buffet, which was under the joyous direction of Berto’s father. Here we ate sweetmeats and cakes and drank rosolio, which is any kind of light liqueur.
Berto’s brother NicolÀo took me away at 3 a.m., and I wanted someone to show me the road because the cloud was still on the Mountain, and they do not keep the streets lighted all night. But the rest danced for another hour and then departed, leaving Berto’s mother to attend to the bride and to stay in the house.
Next day at noon we all called to inquire and I remained to dinner at two. While we were at table we heard the drum beating a Saracen rhythm and went to the window. It was the festa of S. Francesco da Paola; he was coming out of his church and going up to the balio on the top of the Mountain. The fog had cleared away, leaving a few light clouds whose shadows chased one another across the campagna and out to sea, where they played with the islands that were swimming in it, each separate and distinct in the brightness like those on a China plate. S. Francesco turned his back to the islands; he had not come out to bless the sea. Nor had he come to bless Cofano; he knew it was beyond his power to make that rocky wilderness to blossom as a rose. The translucent mountains stood back in a rugged amphitheatre before him, reverently saluting the throne of Venus; he acknowledged their salute, but he did not bless the barren mountains; he remembered the words of his Master: To him that hath shall be given, and from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he seemeth to have.
Good old San Cicciu da Paola turned his eyes away from the mountains and looked down upon the exuberance of the campagna. Every patch was a mother’s breast suckling the young bread and wine and oil, making the little figs to swell on their branches and the big blobby oranges to grow bigger and blobbier among their leaves. The salad was pushing, pushing up through the soil; peaches, apples, pears, medlars and plums were forming inside their faint pink and snowy blooms; there were almonds and blossoming pomegranates, asparagus and tomatoes, artichokes in disorderly tufts and beans combed into tidy rows. In the hollow places, like marshy pools reflecting the sky, lay beds of pale blue flax to be woven into wedding sheets for Mount Eryx.
San Cicciu looked upon it and saw that it was good, and he blessed all that fertility. He was doing for the campagna what the Cyclopean arciprete had asked the Madonna to do for Berto and Giuseppina.
