It was during this era of intermittent plague that the latter party detected a fruitful opportunity. Citing the need to halt the spread of the contagion, and acting with a great apparatus of fearful peasantry, the Castellammare gonfalonier began impeding the movement of Pescarans at the start of the wide road that extended north beyond the bridge into the network of Teramo’s uncountable villages. It was his intention to stop up the rival city in a kind of siege, deprive it of any kind of traffic (internal within the confines of the twin cities, or external), attract to his own market the buyers and sellers who normally operated on the right bank of the river, and, having oppressed into enforced inertia every source of revenue ‘over there’, gloat in triumph. He offered the owners of Pescaran fishing smacks twenty carlini, or two ducats, for every hundred pounds of fish, requiring in addition that the boats must berth and unload on his side of the river and that the pact should last until Christmas day.
Now, in the week preceding Christmas the price of fish almost doubled, always rising by more than fifteen carlini to a total of three and a half ducats per hundred pounds, so the injustice of the condition was clearly evident. The masters of the boats refused the offer, preferring to leave their nets idle.
In addition, the wily enemy had it put about that Pescara was greatly afflicted and many were dying; then, professing concern for both the Teramoans in the hinterland of Castellammare and for the folk of Chieti in that of Pescara, he succeeded in rousing those two provinces against the peaceful city, where the plague had in fact already ended. He deterred with violence or imprisoned a number of honest travellers who, as was their common right, had intended using the provincial road on their way elsewhere. A gang of mercenaries was stationed from dawn to sunset at the northern end of the bridge to make a clamour against anyone who approached from the south with the expectation of crossing the river.
The Pescarans began rebelling against such arbitrary actions, to whose moral injustice were added the economic miseries of a numerous class of labourers languishing in unemployment and the pain of many merchants suffering great losses. The cholera, as said, had disappeared from the city and showed signs of fading on the coast as well, where its departing residues had only killed off a few old invalids. All the citizens, now feeling themselves in the flower of health, were eager to resume their usual labours.
Then it was that the people’s tribunes rose to action: Francesco Pomárice, Antonio Sorrentino and Pietro D’Amico. Crowds gathered on streets, divided to listen to one of these, then another, applauded, proposed, shouted; a great tumult was gathering in the depths of the populace. For light relief some recounted the heroic case of Moretto di Claudia, who, apprehended by the mercenaries and imprisoned in a lazaretto for those with the plague, and there held for five days with no food save some crusts of bread, managed to escape through a window, swam across the river and returned dripping with water to the bosom of his people, panting, famished and glowing with glory and joy.
The mayor, meanwhile, apprehensive of the gathering violence, set about to hold parley with il Gran Nimico, the Archenemy Castellammare. While invested with the knightly accolade of a cavaliere, the mayor was a diminutive Doctor of Laws, all glossy and curly, with dandruff scattered over his shoulders, and bright little eyes well-exercised in sweet dissimulations. The Archenemy was represented in a personal form by a degenerate grandson of the goodly late Gargantuasso: an enormous lout, this scion, blowing breath like a horse, thundering, all-devouring. The colloquy took place on neutral ground, and the illustrious prefects of Teramo and Chieti attended.
But towards dusk a mercenary who had been commissioned to enter Pescara with a message addressed to one of the Commune’s councillors, detoured to a cantina for a drink with some local loafers, after which the lot of them rambled in a rowdy pack about the streets. He was spotted by the tribunes and seized. Among the shouts and acclamations of the Pescara mob, his turn it became to be propelled along the riverbank to the city’s own lazaretto. It was the time of day when the setting sun poured its light on the dazzling waters of the river, and perhaps the red ambience inflamed further the soul of every stirred plebeian there.
Then, from the opposite bank, from among the willows and osiers on that side, rose a throng of Castellammarese intent with a great vehemence of gestures on intervening in the outrage.
Our people responded with equivalent fury; and the captive mercenary meanwhile hammered the door of his prison with all the force of his bare hands and feet, shouting:
‘Lemme go! Lemme out!’
‘You just take a nap in there and don’t pother yourself,’ some from the populace advised him; while one added kindly:
‘An’ if yer only knew how many has snuffed it in there. Can yer not smell the stink? Don’t it make yer want to throw up?’
But such dialogue barely registered among the bellowing and hurrahing of the aroused Pescara citizenry.
Over by the Flagmast came the glint of musket barrels. It was the little mayor arriving at the head of a squad of militiamen to liberate the mercenary and forestall the ire of il Gran Nimico; and instantly, the provoked plebeians responded with a tumult of imprecations against the appeaser.
For the length of the road, from the lazaretto to the city and from there to the bridge, a clamour of hisses and contumely accompanied the escort convoying the prisoner to his release. The uproar continued by torchlight until all voices had grown hoarse.
After that first impulse, the revolt spread with new, unexpected developments. All the shops closed, all the citizens gathered in the streets, rich and poor mingling together in total familiarity, gripped by a furious madness to talk, to shout, to gesticulate, to manifest in a thousand diverse ways their one patriotism.
From moment to moment a tribune arrived with some new notice; groups of people dissolved, united again, varied their composition according to the latest current of opinion. And because the sudden freedom of that day acted upon the spirit, and every in-breath of air furthered their exultation like mouthfuls of wine, the native playfulness of the Pescarans was aroused, and they proceeded with their rebellion – for, unexpectedly, in that this chronicle concludes – in a gay and ironic manner, just for its own sake, for the fun of it, out of spite, or for a change from the diurnal round.
The Archenemy’s stratagems were redoubled. Accords with him were made and as soon betrayed by his wily procrastinations that the poltroonery of the little mayor made possible.
On the morning of All Saints, towards the seventh hour, while the first offices were being celebrated in the churches, the tribunes began their rounds of the city, followed by crowds that increased and became noisier with every step. When the whole population was gathered, Antonio Sorrentino addressed it with a stirring harangue; then, organized in an orderly procession, all marched to the Communal Palace. The streets were still blue with shadows and the housetops were crowned in early sunlight.
As the Palace came into sight, an immense outcry exploded. All mouths hurled vituperations at the pettifogging Doctor of Laws, the building’s incumbent, all fists were raised in attitudes of menace, while among the myriad individual cries certain long sonorous oscillations of sound re-echoed in the spaces between the buildings, like orchestral complements to an operatic chorus. Among the confusion of heads and of vestments, vermillion cantles of the city’s banners fluttered as if agitated by the great breath of the populace.
No one was to be seen on the balcony of the Palace. The sunlight descending from the rooftops of buildings crept towards the public sun-dial, all dark with ciphers and lines over which the indicatory column cast its trembling shadow like a finger. Flights of pigeons curved in the blue heights between the turret of the D’Annunzio mansion and the bell-tower of the Abbey.
The shouting increased. A handful of the more animated launched an assault on the Palace stairs. The little mayor, pale and appalled, gave way to the will of the people, left his great chair, resigned his office and came down to the street, flanked by th
e city guard and accompanied by his councillors. He left the precincts of the city and retired to the heights of Spoltore.
The doors of the Palace were then locked and something like a provisional anarchy reigned over Pescara. To impede the imminent battle between the Pescarans and Castellammarese the Bourbon militia independently set up a barrier at the extreme left end of the bridge, where the hired mercenaries had previously gathered. Having laid their flags and banners aside, the mob took to the Chieti road, on which it was expected the provincial prefect would arrive, summoned in great agitation by a royal commissioner. The common resolve seemed bent on ferocious aggression.
But little by little the placatory virtues of the mild November sun appeased their ire. Out on the wide road the country women, turned out in their best silks of many colours and hung about with lumpy jewellery, silver filigrees and gold necklaces, were returning from Pescara’s churches. The spectacle of all those females, their rubicund and jocund faces glowing like great apples, soothed and quietened every spirit; jesting remarks and laughter broke out spontaneously, and the lengthy period of waiting for the prefect came to seem almost a delectation.
At midday the dignitary’s vehicle came into sight and stopped where the crowd had formed a semicircle that blocked the way. Antonio Sorrentino gave another harangue, not devoid of a certain flowery eloquence. Others took the opportunity of his pauses to call out in various tones for justice against this or that abuse, to question the scope and validity of measures that had been recently promulgated. At the head of the prefect’s carriage two great equine, barely-animated skeletons shook from time to time their string of bells and bared pale gums at the rebels in a derisive grimace. From his seat beside the coachman the representative of the central constabulary, bearded like some operatic elder whose face had been made up druidically to stress his piety, tried with grave gestures from his height to moderate the ardour of the tribune.
As the orator in full flight ascended to the limits of his eloquence, the prefect, rising on the foot-board of the carriage, found a moment to interrupt him timidly and tender an uncertain utterance, but his words were instantly overborne by the people’s shout:
‘To Pescara! Let him speak in Pescara!’
His carriage rolled onwards, seeming to be borne along and almost whelmed by a fervid wave of citizens. It entered the city, and since the Palace had been shut up it stopped before the quarters housing now the people’s delegates. Ten had been nominated by acclamation, and they went into the building with the prefect to commence discussions. The crowd outside completely filled the street. Eruptions of impatience broke out from time to time and here and there within its mass.
The street was narrow here and the houses on each side sent forth a pleasant warmth; the intense blue of a Mediterranean sky, the grasses waving on glimpsed embankments, the roses in window-boxes, the white walls, and perhaps, too, the celebrity of the district, seemed to emit some genial, slow-spreading narcotic. The distinction of that quarter lay in its lodging the best-looking women of the city, damsels of lively graces and from generation to generation perpetuating in that area an uninterrupted tradition of beauty. The immense decrepit building owned by Don Fiore Ussorio was ever a breeding-garden of florid children and nymph-like young women, a palazzo fronted by little galleries exuberant with carnations and supported on grotesque brackets of sculptured stone in the forms of provocative satyrs.
After a while the crowd’s impatience subsided, to be replaced by indolent chatter on various subjects, interests that passed from person to person and from one street intersection to another.
Domenico di Matteo, a kind of rustic blowhard Rodomont, verbalized at high volume on the asininity and avidity of doctors, murderers all, who were killing the sick for the premiums they received from the Commune. He described certain wondrous cures of his own. On one occasion he had been afflicted with a great pain in the chest and was on the point of dying in agony, burning with thirst because the doctor had forbidden him to drink. One night while everybody was asleep he got up and went on tiptoe to look for the water vat; finding it he thrust his whole head in and drank like a cart horse until the vat was dry. By next morning he was cured. On another occasion, when he and a companion were feverish with a three-day fit of malaria that seemed impossible to relieve with quinine, they agreed to try something else. They were then on the river and on the other bank was a sunny vineyard, its vines laden most enticingly with ripe grapes. They undressed, dived into the chilly water, swam across the current, made it to the other side and fed to satiety on the grapes; then they returned in the same manner: the fever disappeared. Yet another time, afflicted with the French disease and having vainly spent fifteen ducats on doctors and medicines, on seeing his mother doing the laundry he was suddenly taken by a happy idea. He swallowed, one after another, five glasses of lye water, and the condition left him.
But up there on balconies, at windows and in galleries, bevies of pretty faces thronged and succeeded one another, and all the men on the street lifted their eyes to those apparitions. Their faces remained tilted up in the sunlight, and all of them, because the customary dining hour had passed unsatisfied, felt a certain vacuousness and languor in mind and belly. Short conversations crossed each other between the street and the windows. Young men cast up unseemly witticisms and disgraceful propositions to the belles, who replied with modest gestures and shaking heads, or they withdrew or simply laughed merrily. The fresh laughter of those mouths poured down like crystals of a loosened necklace, sprinkling on those below, in whom libidinous cravings were beginning to prick and to supervene on political passion. The growing midday heat, rebounding from the walls, mingled with that being generated in this stew of bodies. White reflections dazzled the eyes. Some enervating and stupefying thing was descending on that fasting multitude.
In a loggia above them la Ciccarina suddenly appeared, the belle of the belles, the rose of roses, the golden fish desired by every amorous angler. With a unanimous movement all gazes turned upward in her direction. She, triumphantly, simply, smiled down like a queen before her people, the sunlight illuminating her face, rosy like the flesh of some succulent fruit, her hair, of a leonine colour that seemed to contain a golden flame within its depths, overrunning her forehead, her temples, her neck with undulating wilful waves. The aura and fascination of a natural Venus emanated from all her person; and she stood unpretentiously between two cages of blackbirds, smiling, not offended by the glimmers of desire flashing from those eyes fixed unmovingly on her.
The blackbirds whistled, sang their rustic madrigals, with fluttering wings found purchase on the walls of their cages, and la Ciccarina withdrew, still smiling. The mass of people continued to fill the street, dazed, almost blinded by the reflected sunlight, by that woman-vision, sensing the first light-headedness of hunger.
Then a tribune, one of the now newly-styled parlamentari, thrusting his head from a window of what had become ‘the Delegation’, shouted down in a high-pitched voice:
‘Citizens, the matter will be decided in three hours!’…
THE RETURN OF TURLENDANA
The travellers were following the seashore.
Along the littoral low hills springtime was already returning and in the bright sunlight their modest undulations were a variable green that corresponded with the changes in their vegetation as each curve was passed and left behind. Every new hilltop displayed a crown of flowering trees that each recurrence of the mistral swayed, and perhaps it was then that many of their flowers fell, for from a distance the crests of the hills seemed to be covered in a carpet of some tint between pink and violet, and the view in that direction for the duration of those breaths appeared to tremble and grow blurred, like a reflection on pond water when disturbed, or like a painting faded by some attempt to clean it.
The sea, its turquoise colour splendid and alive with the inner vitality of a Persian gem, extended virginally serene southwards along a new-moon curving coast. Here and there on its surfac
e meandered zones of a somewhat darker blue revealing the course of unseen currents.
Turlendana, in whom little knowledge of this country remained, his sentiment of belonging here almost extinguished after many years of peregrinations, walked on with a tired and limping gait, never turning to look about him.
The camel stopped often to pluck a morsel from some wild shrub, and Turlendana then growled a short utterance to move it on; and each time in response the great, puce-coated beast lifted its head slowly from the plant, laboriously grinding with its teeth whatever provender it found.
‘Hu, Barbarà!’
The she-ass, the little and snow-white Susanna, under the assiduous torments of the macaque monkey riding on her back, conveyed from time to time by lamenting brays a plea to be disburdened of her cavalier. But Zavalì, tirelessly and mercilessly and with a kind of frenzy, with rapid short gesticulations, sometimes of petulance sometimes of mischievous playfulness, ran up and down the ass’s spine, leapt on her head and sat there secured by a grip of the great ears, ran back to lift Susanna’s tail and flail its tuft, sought for parasites in the ass’s hide, clawing it obstinately with his nails until some matter could be raked and brought to his mouth; at which the macaque then fell to chewing with a thousand variant movements of his face. But at moments too, and quite suddenly, he gathered himself to sit gravely and immobile on the ass, holding in one hand a foot twisted back on itself like some gnarled tree-root, fixing on the sea his round, orange-irised eyes that now filled with wonder, while his brow wrinkled and his delicate rosy ears trembled with some mysterious simian distress. Then with a malicious gesture he recommenced his whirl of feverish activities.
Pescara Tales Page 27
