Pescara Tales

by Gabriele D'Annunzio

  Wherever a wedding was celebrated, a baptism, a votive feast, a funeral, a three-day ceremony of thanksgiving or of propitiation, Mungià’s orchestra was there, always in demand, always acclaimed. It preceded the nuptial processions along streets scattered with flowering bulrushes and odorous herbs, through joyous hails and well-wishes. Five garlanded mules would bear the presents. Two pairs of oxen, their horns wound around with ribbons and their backs covered with caparisons, pulled the burden of furnishments: the cauldrons, the wash tubs, the copper vessels, tinkling and clanging with the oscillations of the whole majestic movement; the benches, the tables, the chests, all the rudely-solid and primordial apparatus for the newly inaugurating household, creaking as it swayed; the table-covers of damask, the gowns rich with floral embroidery, the quilted bodices, silken aprons, every cut and construct of female apparel, laid for all to see in gay assortment, splendid under the sun; and a distaff, busy symbol of the domestic virtues, already charged with cotton, jutting from the pile against the cobalt sky, like a spike of yellow loosestrife.

  The women of the family, each bearing on her head a basket of grain, and on that grain a loaf, and on the loaf a flower, followed behind in an orderly file, all with the same simple and almost hieratic bearing, similar to the caryatids on the Athenian bass reliefs, and as they walked they sang. On arriving at the house, and in the vicinity of the nuptial chamber, they took down the baskets and, one by one, gathering a palmful of the grain, they scattered it over the bride, uttering a ritual expression of well-wishes invoking fecundity and abundance. The mother too partook of the happy ceremonial, if smiling through her tears, touching with a miniature loaf of wheaten bread the daughter’s breast, forehead and shoulders, speaking words of sad love to her the while.

  Then, in the festal courtyard, under an ample sun-shelter of woven rushes, or shielded by the leafy branches of a tree, the wedding revelry would start. Mungià, whose vision at that time had not deteriorated and the ills of old age had yet to burden him, stood erect in the magnificence of a green robe, perspiring, all aflame, blowing into his clarinet with all the vigour of his lungs, inciting his companions with his beating foot. Golpo di Cásoli scourged his viola as if enraged; Quattòrece, barely keeping pace with the growing Moorish fury of the dance, felt the wild tremors of the stroked strings passing through the body of his viol to his propping stomach; Lucicappelle, his head held arrogantly high, fingered with his left hand the frets of his guitar and with his right plucked the strong twin metal strings, assessing meanwhile under lowered eyelids the women outlined at the courtyard’s bounds, flashing their brilliant laughter among the brightness of flowers.

  Then the Mastro delle cerimonie announced the arrival of the viands, carried on vast glazed platters, vaporous, the steaming clouds rising to be lost in tendrils among the hanging foliage; wine passed from hand to hand in vases flanked by S-shaped knurls that had been held in passing thus by generations; arms extended and crossed each other over tables, reaching for bread sprinkled with aniseed, for cheeses rounder than the disk of the full moon, grasping oranges, fistfuls of almonds, olives; the odours of spices blended then with those of seeping juices from vegetables freshly taken from the soil. And here and there the guests competed in proffering the bride small ornaments: a precious stone; perhaps a necklace of large brilliants wound into a cluster like a bunch of grapes: such offerings arriving in a goblet, glimpsed immersed in limpid liquor to be first consumed. And at the height of those festivities the spirits of the revellers were taking fire with Bacchic fervour, growing clamour; until Mungià, advancing, head uncovered, in his raised hand a brimming tumbler, would sing the grand traditional couplet that unfailingly in all the celebrations of the land of Abruzzo invites the culminating earnest toast of friends:

  Here be sweet wine, make gallant cheer:

  To the good health of everyone here!

  THE WAR OF THE BRIDGE: Fragments from the Pescara Chronicle

  Towards the ides of August, as they were determined in those times by the Roman calendar, and while throughout the countryside the reaped corn was drying in the sun most satisfactorily, Antonio Mengarino, an old farmer full of wisdom and probity and a member of the District Council and therefore a man who had been delegated to judge issues of public importance, heard the other councillors discussing the cholera in low voices. Some were saying that the outbreak was spreading in certain Italian provinces, and he heard others suggesting policies for preserving health, and yet others expressed fears about the efficacy of those policies; and he came forward with an expression moving between curiosity and incredulity to listen further.

  With him at the Council were two other stalwart products of the land, Giulio Citrullo from the plains, and Achille di Russo from the hills; and while the old man listened he passed signs to them from time to time, winking insinuatingly and curling his lips with disdain to warn them of the deceit which he discerned in the words of the wealthy councillors and the mayor.

  Finally, no longer able to contain himself, he said with the assurance of a man who has seen and knows much:

  ‘Look ye, spare us all this palaver; do we want to be spreadin’ the cholera, or don’t we? Come now, ye can let us into the game.’

  Hearing those incredible words, the other councillors were speechless for a moment; then they burst into laughter.

  ‘Go on with you, Mengarì! What the devil’s talk is that, man?’ exclaimed Don Aiace, the head assessor, giving the old man’s shoulder a rough push with the heel of his hand. And the others, shaking their heads and thumping the mayor’s table with their fists, dilated upon the invincible ignorance of the lower orders.

  ‘Well, but ye don’t ‘magine we think this prattle’s in earnest, now?’ Antonio Mengarino persisted with a vigorous gesture, indignant at the hilarity raised by his words. The innate suspicion of and hostility towards the gentry mounted immediately to the surface in all three peasants. So, they were to be excluded from the secrets of the Council, then! So, they were still considered ignorant clodhoppers! A fine state! Hell and damnation!...

  ‘Do as ye please. We’re away,’ concluded the old man acridly, donning his hat; and the three rustics silently and with a dignified pace left the hall.

  When they had passed the limits of the town and were surrounded by opulent vineyards and fields of Sicilian maze, Giulio Citrullo halted to light his pipe and observe:

  ‘We’ll keep an eye on ‘em, by God. We’ve got their gauge this time!... I wouldn’t want t’ be the mayor when it breaks out!’

  Meanwhile, as it happened, the fear of an imminent outbreak of cholera had already taken possession of every peasant in the province. Around the fruit trees, around the vines, around cisterns, around wells, the farmers kept a constant and tireless, suspicious and threatening vigilance. At night, gunshots frequently disturbed the silence; the dogs, set on high mettle by their masters, barked until dawn. Imprecations against those in the government exploded daily with increasing violence; all the pacific and venerable toils of an agricultural population were infiltrated by a feeling of pointlessness and impatience. Old songs of rebellion, garnished anew with improvised rhymes, rose from the fields.

  Then the old people rekindled their memories of past mortalities, confirming the beliefs in poisoning. One day in ’54 a group of grape pickers catching sight of a man in the top branches of a fig tree and having made him come down found he carried a vial containing some yellowish unguent; forced with menaces to swallow the contents, the man (a native of Padua!) instantly collapsed writhing on the ground, his face livid, his eyes fixed in a ghastly stare, his neck extended, and a green scum visible about his teeth. At Spoltore in ’37, Zinicche, a blacksmith, killed the chancellor Don Antonio Rapino in the middle of the square, and the deaths ceased from that moment, the people were saved.

  And little by little the legends having been resurrected in an initial form were elaborated as they passed from mouth to mouth, and even the most recent ones became marvellous. One of them said t
hat the government had sent seven cases of poison to the City Hall, to be distributed among the countryside mixed with cooking salt. The cases were green, bound with bands of iron and had three locks each. The mayor had been obliged to pay up 7,000 ducats from the communal exchequer to bury the cases and save the country. Another story went about that the mayor received a bounty of five ducats per corpse from the government. The population was too large and it was necessary that the poor should die. The mayor made up the lists himself. Yes, a fine time to make a pile… God’s little bastard!

  And in that manner the ferment grew. The peasants stopped buying at the Pescara market and brought none of their own produce there, all traffic ceased. The figs ripened to maturity and fell from the trees to rot on the ground. The grapes swelling among the vine leaves went unpicked. Night thievery vanished, the thieves being too frightened to touch the poisoned fruit. Salt, the only product still accepted from the city shops, was first offered to cats and dogs, the result then keenly observed.

  Then came the news one day that the good Christians of Naples were dying in large numbers. And at the name of that transcendental realm, that coast of opulence where some home-grown intrepid Giovanni-the-Bold had once travelled to and made his fortune, imaginations took fire.

  The time of the vintage had come upon the country; but the gloom continued, since the Lombardi merchants were buying up the suspect local grapes to take to the towns of the north (where they concocted, as they were wont, their own unnatural beverages) the joy of the trodden must was therefore muted, few were the legs of the grape-treaders dancing in vats, and little of singing was heard from the women.

  But once the tasks of the vineyards had ended and the fruit trees were bare, then the fears and suspicions began to abate, since now at least the governing class had fewer opportunities to spread the poison.

  Great beneficent rains fell on the country; the nourished soil welcomed the labours of ploughing and sowing, the mild sun of autumn days and the benign dispensation of the moon in its first quarter favouring the dormant seedlings in their beds.

  One morning, the news was broadcast throughout the region that at Villareale, near the oaks of Don Settimio, on the river’s right bank, three women had died after eating together some macaroni soup bought in the city. Indignation erupted in every soul, and with especial vehemence since everyone had by now grown calm and believed himself secure.

  ‘A grand thing; that devil’s progeny might ha’ warned us he was about to make more money! But he can do nothin’ to us, now the fruit has all gone. An’ we won’t go to Pescara.’

  ‘He played a bad card, there.’

  ‘He wants to kill us? Well he’s mistaken his time, a curse on ’im…’

  ‘Where’s he goin’ to put the stuff? In the macaroni, in the salt? Well, we won’t eat macaroni, and the cats and dogs get first taste of the salt.’

  ‘Ah, the little lord, the rogue! What did we ever do to him, poor devils that we are? Damnation, but his time will come…’

  And so the rumblings increased in every direction, mixed with contumely and contempt for the men of the Commune and ‘the govmint’.

  In Pescara, suddenly three, four, then five local individuals became ill. Evening fell, and together with the humid vapours from the river there descended on all homes a great, funereal fear. People from every quarter moved in agitation through the streets in the direction of the City Hall, where the mayor, the councillors and the gendarmerie descended and ascended the stairs in a misery of confusion, all talking loudly at once, giving contradictory commands and unable to decide anything, where to go, what measures to take.

  In the way of natural phenomena, two things, overexcitement and visceral disorder, progressed together. All, feeling the least disturbance in the belly, fell instantly into fits of trembling and teeth-chattering, looked into each other’s faces, departed quickly from their neighbours to lock themselves in their houses. Dinners remained cold and uneaten on tables.

  Then in the late hours of the night, when the first tumult of panic had quietened, the guards began lighting fires on the corners of streets, burning sulphur and pitch. The red glow of the flames illuminated walls and windows, and the useless odour of bitumen spread over the dismayed city. From a distance, under the serene moonlight, it seemed as if bands of merry dockworkers must be busy at their work stopping up the seams of a multitude of vessels.

  Such was the entry of the ‘Asiatic’ into Pescara.

  The contagion followed like a snake the course of the river, insinuating itself first into the seashore hamlets, those clusters of little low houses where mariners and numbers of old people engaged in minor handicrafts lived.

  Of those who were afflicted, almost all died, because none would take the available medicaments. No amount of reasoning or demonstrations availed in persuading them. Anisafine, a hunchback who sold watered-down aniseed liquor to the soldiers, when presented the glass clamped tight his lips and shook his head vigorously in refusal. The doctor attempted to convince him with patient explanations; then he himself drank half the contents; and then almost all his assistants put the rim to their mouths. Anisafine continued to shake his head.

  ‘But see,’ the doctor exclaimed, ‘we’ve drunk some of it first, ourselves…’

  Anisafine laughed in a jeering cackle:

  ‘Hee-hee-hee. But ye took the antidote first,’ he said. And in a little while he died.

  Cianchine, a mentally-retarded butcher, acted in the same way. The doctor as a last attempt forced the medicine down between the sick man’s teeth. Cianchine spat it out in anger and horror; then he took to hurling abuse against those around him, tried two or three times to get up and flee, and he died like a rabid dog, held down by two guards, themselves in a state of utter terror.

  The public kitchens, set up spontaneously by a group of charitable persons, were from the start believed by the mob to be nothing more than a laboratory of toxicity. The beggars preferred to starve than eat meat cooked in those cauldrons. Costantino from Corròpoli, the cynic, walked around scattering doubts and warnings among his tribe, circling the kitchens and telling everyone aloud and with an emphatic gesture:

  ‘They won’t catch me!’

  The Catalan from Gissi was the first to overcome her fear. She entered timidly, ate some tiny mouthfuls and examined their effect on her, drank a little wine in sips; then, feeling herself restored and her strength returned, she smiled widely in wonder and pleasure. All the beggars were waiting for her outside, and when they saw her returning unharmed they made a rush inside to eat and drink too.

  One could visualise the picture and re-create it as a tableau – suitably enough, since the kitchens had been set up in an old open-air theatre in the neighbourhood of Portanova. The scene can be imagined: The huge pots boil in the orchestra pit, their steam invading the stage behind; visible through the haze is old scenery depicting a feudal castle illuminated by a full moon. Here, at midday, the legion of the poor gather around a roughly-fashioned refectory table. As the hour approaches, the area of the stalls fills with a swarm of multi-coloured rags and a babble of raucous voices. New figures appear among those already familiar, one notable arrival is Liberata Lotta from Montenerodòmo, with the stupendous face of an octogenarian Minerva, regal, possessed of an austere brow, her hair tightly packed on her head like an adhering helm. She holds in her hands a vase of green glass that seems a cornucopia of mysteries, and she waits aside silently, waits to be summoned…

  But the great episode of this chronicle of the cholera is the War of the Bridge.

  It may need to be explained that an ancient enmity has persisted between Pescara and Castellammare Adriatico, between those two communities separated from each other respectively at their north and south by the fair Pescara River. The conflicting sides have long and assiduously practiced attacks and retaliations on each other, one opposing with all its powers the thriving of the other; and because these days commerce is understood to be the principle of all happ
iness, and since Pescara has been favoured in that respect by its abundant manufactures, the folk of Castellammare have been indefatigably determined to attract trade, and have put into practice all kinds of astute measures to lure merchants away from the enemy and redirect them towards their own territory on the river’s left bank.

  Now, an old bridge straddles the river, its wooden span resting on a row of great tarred vessels, all wound about with chains and kept in place by moorings. Above the sides of the span, hempen ropes and cables crisscross each other in contrived patterns descending from a pair of tall masts planted on each of the two embankments, hanging down in curves from those masts to become the low parapets of the bridge – and so giving the structure altogether an appearance of some barbaric siege-engine. The uneven decking-planks squeak and squeal with the weight of carts, and when a company of soldiers crosses this monstrous aquatic mechanism it sways from side to side and surges wavelike from one end to the other, while resonating like a drum to the cadence of the marching feet.

  From that location comes the popular legend of Saint Cetteus the Liberator, whose floating body was said to have been recovered and initially buried nearby, and the Saint, borne on his annual great pageant through the city, still stops in the middle of the bridge to receive the salutations of the sailors anchored just downstream on their decorated craft.

  Thus it is, that between the prospect of Montecorno in the west and the sea to the east, this humble pontifice stands like a veritable monument to the adjoining native races, well-nigh inhering in its antiquity a certain sanctity, and by the originality of its structure offers outsiders a certain perspective on people who in many ways continue to live by an order of primordial and practical simplicity.

  The mutual detestation that exists between the Pescarans and Castellammarese inflames, their animosities butt into each other, on those boards that are so slowly being consumed under laborious quotidian traffic; and since it is over them that the southern city’s industries happily pour their wares for dissemination into the hinterlands of Teramo behind Castellamare, oh, with what joy Pescara’s adversaries would cut the binding cables and push off to drift and sink those seven detested pontoons!