caused by gems or by fever—or else because I’ve sought you in vain in every place that fashion makes joyous. So, you see: you’re always in the best seat, in my mind and at the theater.
Do you also remember that little old man who sat at the tiller of our boat? You owe him that tribute of gratitude because ten times he kept you from getting your beautiful blue stockings wet. Now he’s died down there in the big-city hospital, poor devil, in a large, all-white ward, between white sheets, where he chewed on white bread served by the white hands of the sisters of mercy, whose only shortcoming was their inability to understand the petty complaints that the poor fellow was mumbling in his half-barbarous dialect.
But if he had been able to request one thing, he would have wanted to die in the dark corner near his hearth, where his tumbledown bed had stood for so many years “beneath his own rooftiles”; so much so that, when they took him away, he wept and whimpered, the way old men do. He had always lived between those four stone walls, facing that beautiful, treacherous sea with which he had had to contend daily, to draw from it enough to live on, without losing his life in it. And yet, in those moments when he was quietly enjoying his “look-around in the sunshine,” squatting on the rower’s bench of his boat, his knees clasped in his arms, he wouldn’t have turned his head to look at you, and you would have sought in vain in those astonished eyes for the most proud reflection of your beauty—the thing that occurs when all those haughty heads are bowed, making an aisle for you to pass through in the glittering salons, and you see your image in the envious eyes of your best women friends.
Life is rich, as you see, in its inexhaustible variety, and you need have no scruples in enjoying that part of its riches that have fallen to your lot, in your own way. For example, if that girl who peeped out from behind the pots of basil,2 when the rustling of your dress created a revolution in her narrow lane, saw another very well-known face at the window opposite hers, she smiled as if she, too, had been dressed in silks. Who knows what humble joys were in her thoughts at that windowsill, behind that fragrant basil, while her eyes were fixed on that other house wreathed in vines? And the laughter in her eyes wouldn’t have ended as bitter tears there in the big city, far from the stone house walls that had seen her born, and that knew her, had not her grandfather died in the hospital, and her father been drowned, and all her family scattered by a gust of wind that had blown upon
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2. This, to a lover of literature, is reminiscent of the Boccaccio story (Decameron, IV, 5) that Keats used as the basis of his narrative poem “Isabella; or, The Pot of Basil.” Boccaccio’s story, in turn, was based on a Sicilian folk ballad.
sopra – un colpo di vento funesto, che avea trasportato uno dei suoi fratelli fin nelle carceri di Pantelleria: «nei guai!» come dicono laggiù.
Miglior sorte toccò a quelli che morirono; a Lissa l’uno, il più grande, quello che vi sembrava un David di rame, ritto colla sua fiocina in pugno, e illuminato bruscamente dalla fiamma dell’ellera. Grande e grosso com’era, si faceva di brace anch’esso se gli fissavate in volto i vostri occhi arditi; nondimeno è morto da buon marinaio, sulla verga di trinchetto, fermo al sartiame, levando in alto il berretto, e salutando un’ultima volta la bandiera col suo maschio e selvaggio grido d’isolano. L’altro, quell’uomo che sull’isolotto non osava toccarvi il piede per liberarlo dal lacciuolo teso ai conigli nel quale v’eravate impigliata da stordita che siete, si perdé in una fosca notte d’inverno, solo, fra i cavalloni scatenati, quando fra la barca e il lido, dove stavano ad aspettarlo i suoi, andando di qua e di là come pazzi, c’erano sessanta miglia di tenebre e di tempesta. Voi non avreste potuto immaginare di qual disperato e tetro coraggio fosse capace per lottare contro tal morte quell’uomo che lasciavasi intimidire dal capolavoro del vostro calzolaio.
Meglio per loro che son morti, e non «mangiano il pane de re,» come quel poveretto che è rimasto a Pantelleria, e quell’altro pane che mangia la sorella, e non vanno attorno come la donna delle arancie, a viver della grazia di Dio; una grazia assai magra ad Aci-Trezza. Quelli almeno non hanno più bisogno di nulla! Lo disse anche il ragazzo dell’ostessa, l’ultima volta che andò all’ospedale per chieder del vecchio e portargli di nascosto di quelle chiocciole stufate che son così buone a succiare per chi non ha più denti, e trovò il letto vuoto, colle coperte belle e distese, e sgattaiolando nella corte andò a piantarsi dinanzi a una porta tutta brandelli di cartaccie, sbirciando dal buco della chiave una gran sala vuota, sonora e fredda anche di estate, e l’estremità di una lunga tavola di marmo, su cui era buttato un lenzuolo, greve e rigido. E dicendo che quelli là almeno non avevano più bisogno di nulla, si mise a succiare ad una ad una le chiocciole che non servivano più, per passare il tempo. Voi, stringendovi al petto il manicotto di volpe azzurra, vi rammenterete con piacere che gli avete dato cento lire al povero vecchio.
them—a direful gust of wind that had even brought one of her brothers to the prison on Pantelleria: “into trouble,” as people down there say.
Those of her brothers who died had a better fate; one at Lissa,3 the eldest, the one who resembled a bronze David, standing tall with his harpoon in his fist and brusquely illuminated by the ivy-wood fire.4 Big and tall as he was, he, too, turned as red as embers whenever you stared at his face with your bold eyes. All the same, he died like a good sailor, on the foremast, clinging to the rigging, raising his cap aloft and once more saluting the flag with his wild, masculine islander’s cry. The other one, the man who, on the little island, didn’t dare touch your foot to free it from the rabbit snare in which you had become entangled, careless woman that you are, was lost on a gloomy winter’s night, alone, amid the unleashed fury of the breakers, when sixty miles of storm and darkness separated his boat from the shore, where his family was awaiting him, scurrying to and fro like lunatics. You couldn’t have imagined with what desperate, cheerless courage that man was capable of struggling against such a death, even though he had let himself be intimidated by your shoemaker’s masterpiece.
Better off, the brothers who are dead and aren’t “eating the king’s bread” like that poor fellow on Pantelleria, or that other bread which their sister is eating, and who aren’t roaming about like that orange vendor, living off charity; charity is very hard to come by in Aci Trezza. At least the dead have no more need of anything! The young son of the inn proprietress said the same thing the last time he went to the hospital to ask about the old man, and to sneak in for him some of those stewed snails that are so good to suck on for someone who’s lost all his teeth, and he found the bed empty, the blankets all spread out neatly on it. Slinking away into the courtyard, he took up his stand in front of a door covered with torn shreds of paper; squinting through the keyhole, he saw a big empty room, echoing and cold even in summer, and one end of a long marble table on which had been thrown something stiff and heavy wrapped in a sheet. After saying that the dead, at least, have no more need of anything, in order to pass the time he started sucking out the snails one by one, since they had lost their original purpose. You, clutching your blue-fox muff to your bosom, will recall with pleasure that you gave the poor old man a hundred lire.
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3. An island off the coast of Croatia, now called Vis. It was the scene of a naval battle in 1866, in which the Italians were defeated by the Austrians, during the Austro-Prussian War. 4. The unusual word ellera was rendered as “lanterns” in a previous translation.
Ora rimangono quei monellucci che vi scortavano come sciacalli e assediavano le arancie; rimangono a ronzare attorno alla mendica, a brancicarle le vesti come se ci avesse sotto del pane, a raccattar torsi di cavolo, buccie d’arancie e mozziconi di sigari, tutte quelle cose che si lasciano cadere per via ma che pure devono avere ancora qualche valore, perché c’è della povera gente che ci campa su; ci campa anzi così bene che quei pezzentelli paffuti e affamati cresceranno in mezzo al fango e alla polvere della strada, e si faranno grandi e grossi come il loro babbo e come il loro nonno,
e popoleranno Aci-Trezza di altri pezzentelli, i quali tireranno allegramente la vita coi denti più a lungo che potranno, come il vecchio nonno, senza desiderare altro; e se vorranno fare qualche cosa diversamente da lui, sarà di chiudere gli occhi là dove li hanno aperti, in mano del medico del paese che viene tutti i giorni sull’asinello, come Gesù, ad aiutare la buona gente che se ne va.
– Insomma l’ideale dell’ostrica! direte voi. – Proprio l’ideale dell’ostrica, e noi non abbiamo altro motivo di trovarlo ridicolo che quello di non esser nati ostriche anche noi. Per altro il tenace attaccamento di quella povera gente allo scoglio sul quale la fortuna li ha lasciati cadere mentre seminava principi di qua e duchesse di là, questa rassegnazione coraggiosa ad una vita di stenti, questa religione della famiglia, che si riverbera sul mestiere, sulla casa, e sui sassi che la circondano, mi sembrano – forse pel quarto d’ora – cose serissime e rispettabilissime anch’-esse. Parmi che le irrequietudini del pensiero vagabondo s’addor-menterebbero dolcemente nella pace serena di quei sentimenti miti, semplici, che si succedono calmi e inalterati di generazione in generazione. – Parmi che potrei vedervi passare, al gran trotto dei vostri cavalli, col tintinnìo allegro dei loro finimenti e salutarvi tranquillamente.
Forse perché ho troppo cercato di scorgere entro al turbine che vi circonda e vi segue, mi è parso ora di leggere una fatale necessità nelle tenaci affezioni dei deboli, nell’istinto che hanno i piccoli di stringersi fra loro per resistere alle tempeste della vita, e ho cercato di decifrare il dramma modesto e ignoto che deve aver sgominati gli attori plebei che conoscemmo insieme. Un dramma che qualche volta forse vi racconterò e di cui parmi tutto il nodo debba consistere in ciò: – che allorquando uno di quei piccoli, o più debole, o più incauto, o più egoista degli altri, volle staccarsi dal gruppo per vaghezza dell’ignoto, o per brama di meglio, o per curiosità di conoscere il mondo, il mondo
Now there still remain those urchins who escorted you like jackals and laid siege to the oranges; they’re still there buzzing around the beggar woman, pawing her clothes as if she had bread under them, picking up cabbage stalks, orange peels, and cigar butts, all those things that are dropped in the street but must surely still have some value, because there are poor folk who live off them; in fact, they live off them so well that those hungry little paupers with puffy stomachs will grow up amid the mud and dust of the street. They’ll get as big and tall as their fathers and grandfathers, and they’ll populate Aci Trezza with other little paupers, who will cheerfully eke out their own difficult living just as long as they’re able to, like that old grandfather, without wishing for anything different. If they do want to do something he couldn’t do, it’s to be able to close their eyes for the last time in the same place where they first opened them, treated by the village doctor who rides over every day on his little donkey, like Jesus, to help out good people who are leaving this world.
“In short, an oyster’s aim in life!” you’ll say. Yes, exactly an oyster’s aim in life, and the only reason we have to find it ridiculous is that we weren’t born as oysters ourselves. In other respects, those poor people’s tenacious attachment to the rock onto which Fortune let them fall while she was planting princes here and duchesses there; that courageous resignation to a life of hardships; that religious love of family, which is reflected in their attitude to their work, their home, and the stones around it—all these things seem to me (perhaps only momentarily) very significant and honorable in their own right. I think that the restlessness of our vagabond thoughts would be softly lulled asleep in the serene peace of those gentle, simple feelings, which continue in unchanging calm from generation to generation.—I think that I could watch you riding by in your carriage, your horses trotting smartly and their harness bells tinkling merrily, and wave to you in peace of mind.
Perhaps because I’ve tried too hard to look into the whirlwind that surrounds you and follows you around, I now seem to have discerned a necessity ordained by fate in the tenacious affections of the weak, in little people’s instinct for sticking together to combat the storms of life; and I’ve tried to decipher the modest, unseen drama that must have dispersed the humble actors whom we met together. A drama that I may recount to you some day, of which the entire plot seems to me to consist of this: whenever any one of those little people, because he was either weaker, more incautious, or more selfish than the others, decided to detach himself from the group out of infatuation with
da pesce vorace com’è, se lo ingoiò, e i suoi più prossimi con lui. – E sotto questo aspetto vedete che il dramma non manca d’interesse. Per le ostriche l’argomento più interessante deve essere quello che tratta delle insidie del gambero, o del coltello del palombaro che le stacca dallo scoglio.
the unknown, or a yearning for better things, or curiosity about what the big world was like, that world, like the voracious fish that it is, swallowed him whole, and his nearest and dearest with him.—And, looked at in this way, you see that the drama is not without interest. For oysters, the most interesting story line must be one that concerns the danger of prawns or the knife of the diver who detaches them from their rock.
JELI IL PASTORE
Jeli, il guardiano di cavalli, aveva tredici anni quando conobbe don Alfonso, il signorino; ma era così piccolo che non arrivava alla pancia della bianca, la vecchia giumenta che portava il campanaccio della mandra. Lo si vedeva sempre di qua e di là, pei monti e nella pianura, dove pascolavano le sue bestie, ritto ed immobile su qualche greppo, o accoccolato su di un gran sasso. Il suo amico don Alfonso, mentre era in villeggiatura, andava a trovarlo tutti i giorni che Dio mandava a Tebidi, e divideva con lui il suo pezzetto di cioccolata, e il pane d’orzo del pastorello, e le frutta rubate al vicino. Dapprincipio, Jeli dava del-l’eccellenza al signorino, come si usa in Sicilia, ma dopo che si furono accapigliati per bene, la loro amicizia fu stabilita solidamente. Jeli insegnava al suo amico come si fa ad arrampicarsi sino ai nidi delle gazze, sulle cime dei noci più alti del campanile di Licodia, a cogliere un passero a volo con una sassata, e montare con un salto sul dorso nudo delle sue bestie mezze selvaggie, acciuffando per la criniera la prima che passava a tiro, senza lasciarsi sbigottire dai nitriti di collera dei puledri indomiti, e dai loro salti disperati. Ah! le belle scappate pei campi mietuti, colle criniere al vento! i bei giorni d’aprile, quando il vento accavallava ad onde l’erba verde, e le cavalle nitrivano nei pascoli; i bei meriggi d’estate, in cui la campagna, bianchiccia, taceva, sotto il cielo fosco, e i grilli scoppiettavano fra le zolle, come se le stoppie si incendiassero! il bel cielo d’inverno attraverso i rami nudi del mandorlo, che rabbrividivano al rovajo, e il viottolo che suonava gelato sotto lo zoccolo dei cavalli, e le allodole che trillavano in alto, al caldo, nell’azzurro! le belle sere di estate che salivano adagio adagio come la nebbia; il buon odore del fieno in cui si affondavano i gomiti, e il ronzìo malinconico degli insetti della sera, e quelle due note dello zufolo di Jeli, sempre le stesse – iuh! iuh! iuh! che facevano pensare alle cose lontane, alla festa di San Giovanni, alla notte di Natale, all’alba della scampagnata, a tutti quei grandi avvenimenti trascorsi, che sembrano mesti, così lontani, e facevano guardare in alto, cogli occhi
JELI THE HERDSMAN
Jeli, the horseherd, was thirteen when he met Don Alfonso, the child of the gentry; but he was so small that he didn’t even come up to the belly of Whitie, the old mare who wore the bell of the herd. He was always to be seen here and there, in the mountains and on the plain, where his animals were grazing; he’d be standing motionless on some embankment or squatting on some big stone. All the time that his friend Don Alfonso was on vacation in the country at Tebidi, he’d go out to meet him without fail every day. They’d share Alfonso’s bar of chocolate, the little herd boy’s loaf of barley bread, and the fruit filched from the neighbor’s orchard. At first Jeli addressed the young gentleman as “your excellence,” as the custom is in Sicily, but after they had a real knockdown fight, their friendship was firmly established. Jeli taught his frien
d how to climb up to magpies’ nests or to the tops of walnut trees taller than the bell tower in Licodia, how to hit a sparrow on the wing with a stone, and how to leap onto the bare back of his half-wild horses, seizing the first one that came within reach by the mane and not allowing yourself to be alarmed by the angry neighing of the unbroken colts, or by their desperate bucking. Oh, the lovely rides across the harvested fields, with manes flying in the wind; the beautiful April days when the wind raised waves in the green grass and the horses neighed in the pastures; the lovely summer noontides when the bleached countryside lay silent beneath the overcast sky, and the crickets chirped in the turf as if the stubble were on fire; the beautiful winter sky seen through the naked boughs of the almond tree, shuddering in the north wind, and the frozen path echoing beneath the horses’ hooves, and the larks trilling up there, in the warm blue sky; the lovely summer evenings rising very slowly, like the mist; the good smell of the hay in which your elbows sank, and the melancholy buzz of the insects at evening, and that two-note piping of Jeli’s, always the same—ee-oo, ee-oo—which made you think about faraway things, about St. John’s Day,1 Christmas Eve, the dawn of a picnic day, all those great events of
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1. June 24.
umidi, quasi tutte le stelle che andavano accendendosi in cielo vi piovessero in cuore, e l’allagassero!
Sicilian Stories Page 9
