THE BUFFO'S HOLIDAY
I do not remember who started the idea that the buffo should come to
Catania with me; it grew up, as inevitable ideas do, without any of us
being sure whether he suggested it, or Papa, or Gildo, or one of the
sisters, or I, and it became the chief subject of conversation in the
Greco family for days.
It would not be true to say that he had never been away from Palermo,
because when he was a boy all the family went to try their fortune in
Brazil and stayed there five years running a marionette theatre; when
they returned to Palermo, they left behind them in South America the
eldest son, Gaetano, who still keeps a teatrino there. But the buffo saw
no more of South America than he has seen of Sicily and, except for this
five years in Brazil and an occasional day in the country round Palermo,
had never been outside his native town. But he knew that Catania was on
the other side of the island and near the sea, and expected it to be
hotter than Palermo because of the propinquity of Etna. He paid no
attention to my assurances that the temperature would be about the same
and said he should bring his great-coat, not on account of the heat, but
because he hoped that if he was seen with it he might be taken for an
English tourist.
We did not start from Palermo together. I had to go to Caltanissetta,
which is on a line that branches off at S. Caterina Xirbi from the main
line between Palermo and Catania. We arranged to meet at the junction
three days after I left Palermo. I got there from Caltanissetta just
before the train from Palermo arrived, and the buffo was looking out of
the window. As soon as he saw me on the platform he got down and came to
me saying:
"Oh! I am so glad to see you again; now everything will be all right. I
have been wretched ever since you went away. I have not been able to eat
by night or to sleep by day for thinking of you. And this has been going
on for two whole months; but now I shall recover."
So we got into the train and pursued our journey.
"I see you have brought your great-coat," I said.
"Yes," he said, "if I am to be an English gentleman I shall have to wear
it in Catania."
"But won't it do if you carry it over your arm?" I inquired.
"No," he said, "because then they would see my other coat, and that is so
dilapidated they would suspect the truth."
"Your clothes are quite good enough for any English gentleman anywhere,"
I pointed out.
"They are not so good as yours," he replied; "the teatrino is dirty and
they soon wear out. My great-coat appears to be fresh because I seldom
put it on. I shall use it in Catania to conceal the shabbiness of my
other clothes."
"You need not be so particular. My father when he travelled in Italy did
not pay so much attention to his personal appearance."
"You have never told me about your father. Did he travel for some
English firm? Was it tiles? or perhaps sewing-machines? They pay
better, I believe."
"He did not travel for any firm. He was a barrister, an avvocato, and
travelled for recreation during the Long Vacation. I can tell you how he
used to dress, because just before I left London I copied part of a
letter he wrote to my mother, and I have it in my pocket."
This is the extract from my father's letter which I read to the buffo; it
is dated Hotel des Bergues, Geneva, 1 October, 1861:
Reading the _Times_ of Friday this morning I saw a letter signed G.U.
which I have no doubt is a mistake for J.U. and means John Unthank
and which signifies he and his family are in Paris. It is a letter
complaining of the shabby costume of Englishmen and is a foolish
letter but it will have the effect of making me furnish myself with a
new wideawake or something of that sort at Paris for my present
wideawake has got another hole in it and is really very bad though I
don't know why it should wear so fast as I take great care of it and
am rather disappointed that it should fall to pieces. Mr. Unthank
pointed out to me on the Lake of Como that my dressing-gown which I
always wear travelling is out at elbows which indeed I find it is but
that fact seemed to grieve Mr. Unthank less than the shabbiness of my
hat and he offered to give me a new one that is a wideawake of his
own which had been newly lined and not worn as he said since it was
lined if I would throw my old wideawake away. I consented but I left
Milan before he had an opportunity of performing his promise.
"It was kind of your father's friend to offer him his old hat; don't you
think so?"
"Yes, very kind of him. But, you see, he had his reasons."
"Of course, he did not want to be seen with anyone so badly dressed."
"That is what he says in his letter to the _Times_. I copied that in the
British Museum. He does not mention my father by name, he merely speaks
of well-dressed Englishmen in Paris (by which he means people like
himself) frequently seeing a respectable professional man disguised as an
omnibus conductor or cab-driver and 'being compelled to stand talking
with a vulgar-looking object because they have unfortunately recognised
an old acquaintance and not had time to run across the road to avoid
him.' My father, no doubt, thought of Mr. Unthank's conversations with
him at Como and Milan and said to himself, 'That's me.' The cap fitted
him and he put it on."
"Excuse me; your father cannot have put the cap on, he says he had to
leave Milan too soon for that."
"O my dear Buffo, I am so sorry. When I said the cap, I did not mean the
wideawake, I was only using an English idiom."
"I see, I understand. We also have a similar expression, but it is not
about hats, it is about boots, I think, or coats. I will find out and
tell you."
"My father does not say he 'had to leave'; he only says he left; and my
mother, who agreed with his friends and thought his taste in dress
deplorable, believed that he ran away to escape from Mr. Unthank's hat."
"Oh! but a hat is always worth something. I should have waited for the
hat. Was it really a very bad one?"
"I do not remember it, I should think it must have been pretty bad. The
dressing-gown was awful. It was maroon, and his friends called it his
wife's mantle. After he left off wearing it, it was given to us children
for dressing up. It was no use for anything else and it was not much use
for that. So you see, Buffo, you need not trouble about your clothes if
you want to appear English. You do not look in the least like a
cab-driver."
"Perhaps not; but I think it will be safer for me not to be an
Englishman. All this about your father's dressing-gown happened half a
century ago, and the letter and the article in the _Times_ must have done
some good because the English gentlemen who come to the teatrino do not
dress like that now. You are always beautifully dressed."
"Thank you very much, Buffo, but if that is more than merely one of your
Sicilian compliments, it only shows that I inherit my ideas about dress
from my mother rather than from my father."
"I think I had better be a Portuguese gentleman from Rio, a friend of
yours, over on a visit, and you shall be a Sicilian."
"We will be a couple of cavalieri erranti like Guido Santo and Argantino
on their travels. But I do not think it will quite do for me to be a
Sicilian. I cannot talk dialect and I cannot gesticulate. And then, am
I not too well dressed?"
"That will not matter; you shall be an aristocratic Sicilian, they are
often quite well dressed. And as for the dialect and the gesticulation,
it is now the fashion among the upper classes to speak Tuscan and not to
gesticulate. It is considered more--I cannot remember the word, I saw it
in the _Giornale di Sicilia_, it is an English word."
"Do you mean it is more chic?"
"It is not exactly that and chic is a French word. One moment, if you
please. It is--we say lo snobismo."
"I see. Very well; I will play the Sicilian snob, but I never saw one so
I shall have to do it extempore as Snug had to play the part of Lion."
"What is Snug? another American poet?
"He was a joiner and lived in Athens at the time when all the good things
happened. But his father, the author of his being, as we say, was an
English poet and cast him for the part of Lion in _Pyramus and Thisbe_."
"What is Thisbe? a wandering knight?"
"No. Thisbe was the lady loved by Pyramus and was acted by Flute the
bellows-mender. It's all in that poet who said what I told you when we
were making the Escape from Paris--you remember, about holding the mirror
up to nature."
"I wish I could read your English poets. I like everything English. The
Englishmen who come to the teatrino are always good and kind--tutti
bravi--I wish I were an Englishman--a real one I mean, like you."
Here were more compliments, so I replied: "I wish I were a Sicilian
buffo."
"Ah! but you could not be that," said he. "Now I could have my hair cut
short, grow a beard on my chin, a pair of spectacles on my eyes and heels
on my boots and then I should only have to be naturalised. But you could
never be a buffo--not even an English one."
"No; I suppose not. You see, I'm too serious. Gildo says I take a
gloomy view of life."
"Yes," he agreed, "why do you?"
"I don't know," I replied. "My poor mother--my adorata mamma, as you
call her--used to make the same complaint. She thought I inherited my
desponding temperament from my father."
"As you inherited your taste in dress from her."
"Just so. But I think I am like Orlando and your other paladins, and
that I am as I am because it was the will of heaven."
"That is only another way of saying the same thing," observed the buffo;
which rather surprised me because I did not know he took such a just view
of the significance of evolution.
On arriving at Catania we went to the albergo and, instead of following
the usual course and giving his Christian name and surname, Alessandro
Greco, he preferred to specify his profession and describe himself as
"Tenore Greco." They posted this up in the hall under my name, with the
unexpected result that the other guests ignored him, thinking the words
applied to me and that I was a tenor singer from Greece.
The first thing to be done was to go out and get something to eat, and as
we went along the buffo expressed his delight with the appearance of
Catania. He had no idea that such a town could exist outside Palermo or
Brazil.
"It is beautiful," he exclaimed, "yes, and I shall always declare that it
is beautiful. But, my dear Enrico, will you be kind enough to tell me
why it is so black?"
"That, my dear Buffo," I replied, "is on account of the lava."
"But how do you mean--the lava? What is this lava that you speak of, and
how does it darken the houses and the streets?"
To which I replied as follows: "The lava is that mass of fire which
issues from Etna and then dissolves itself and becomes formed into black
rock, and, as it is excessively hard, the people of Catania use it for
building their houses and for paving their streets."
I do not remember expressing myself precisely in these words, but the
buffo wrote me an account of his holiday and this is what he says I said.
It seems that I continued thus:
"This house, for example, is built of lava, this pavement is lava, those
columns are lava, that elephant over the fountain is sculptured in lava,
this is lava, that is lava, everything is lava; even those--"
"Stop, stop," interrupted the buffo, "for pity's sake stop, or I shall
begin to think that you and I also are made of lava."
We reached the Birraria Svizzera and sat down.
"Are you hungry, Buffo?"
"I am always hungry. My subterranean road is always ready."
"That's capital," I replied. "And what particular fugitive would you
like to send down it now?"
"Seppia and interiori di pollo," he replied without hesitation.
Now the first of these is cuttle-fish and looks as though the cook in
sending to table something that ought to have been thrown away had tried
to conceal it by emptying a bottle of ink into the dish; the second is
un-selected giblets. So I replied:
"Very well; but I don't think I'll join you. No one will believe I am a
Sicilian unless I eat maccaroni, and perhaps I will have a veal cutlet
afterwards; that will be more suited to my subterranean road."
"You had better have what I have," said he, "it is exquisite."
"Not to-day," I replied gently.
So we ate our dinner and discussed what we should do during the evening.
He wanted to go to the marionette theatre, and I was not surprised, for I
remembered that the vergers of Westminster Abbey and of Salisbury
Cathedral spend their holidays making tours to visit other cathedrals;
cooks go to Food Exhibitions; Scotch station-masters come to London and
spend their time in the Underground railways; and English journalists
when they meet on an outing, say to one another:
"It is a foggy morning; let us go in and split three or four
infinitives."
So I took him to the Teatro Sicilia and introduced him to the proprietor,
Gregorio Grasso, a half-brother of Giovanni Grasso, and we went behind
the scenes to study the difference between the Catanian and the
Palermitan systems. He was first struck by the immense size of the place
as compared with his own little theatre; next by the orchestra which,
instead of being a mechanical piano turned by a boy, consisted of a
violin, a guitar and a double-bass played by men; and finally by the
manner of manipulating the figures, which distressed him so seriously
that he forgot he was a Portuguese gentleman and began to give Gregorio a
lesson to show him how much better we do things in Palermo; but it came
to nothing, because a method that produces a good effect when applied to
a small and fairly light marionette will not do when applied to one that
is nearly a metre and a half high and weighs about fifty kilogrammes; it
is like trying to play an elaborate violin passage on the horn. Soon we
were politely invited to go to the front, where we were shown into good
places, and the performance began. In the auditorium there was the
familiar, pleasant, faint crackling of melon seeds and peanuts which the
people were munching as at home, and a man pushing his way about among
them selling lemonade, and water with a dash of anise in it.
The buffo thought the marionettes of Catania were magnificent,
well-modelled and sumptuously dressed; but their size and their weight
make it impossible for them to move with the delicacy and naturalness
which he and his father and brother know so well how to impart to those
at home. They may start fairly well, but sooner or later the figure will
betray to the public the fatigue of the operator who is standing
exhausted on the platform behind, no longer capable of communicating any
semblance of life to the limbs of the puppet. He did not, however,
arrive at this conclusion all at once, for, in the course of the
performance when I asked him how it was that the marionettes of Catania
were not more expressive, he replied:
"I suppose it must be on account of the lava."
The figures appear against the back-cloth and the operator cannot reach
forward to bring them nearer to the audience, thus the front part of the
stage is free--or rather it would be free, but the public are permitted
to stray on to it, and thus the stage presents a picture of marionettes
with two or three live people sitting at each side.
"Buffo mio," I said, "does it appear to you to be a good plan that the
public should go on the stage and mingle with the paladins? It is not
allowed in our own theatre at home."
"I am not sure that it is a bad plan," he replied, "it is true we do not
allow it in Palermo; but one moment, if you please, there is something
coming into my head. Ah! yes, it is about holding up the mirror to
nature. Now here, in Catania, this stage presents a truer mirror of
nature than ours in Palermo. For have you not observed in life that,
with the exception of a few really sensible people like you and me, most
men are merely puppets in the hands of others? They do not act on their
own ideas nor do they think for themselves; also they adopt any words
that are put into their mouths. Now, it seems to me that the proportion
of real men compared with marionettes is not greater on this stage than
we observe it to be in life, and therefore we may say that the proprietor
of this theatre is following the advice of your poet."
He noticed that one of the chief characteristics of the Catanian
marionettes comes into evidence when they are fighting. Two of them take
up their positions opposite each other, sidling round and round like
fighting cocks preparing to set to; they raise their scimitars, cross
them and rub them one against the other, like butchers sharpening their
knives; after a certain time spent in this sword exercise, they cross the
stage and, turning suddenly round, face one another and strike; the
consequence of this manoeuvre is that they both fall to the ground. We
were looking on at such a duel and when the climax came the buffo rose to
his feet and clapped his hands expecting the rest of the public to join,
but to his surprise they remained cold, and declined "to crown his
applause with their acquiescence," as he expressed it. He turned
wonderingly to the young man who was selling lemonade and said, speaking
with difficulty in broken Tuscan, as a Portuguese gentleman from Rio
might be expected to do:
"Tell me, Caro mio, why do not the public join me in applauding?"
"My dear Sir," replied the young man, "it is out of the question. You do
not seem to be aware of the identity of the marionette who has just been
killed. He is a Christian and the brother-in-law of Rinaldo. He is
Ruggiero, a very noble youth. The public do not applaud, because they
are sorry for his death and, besides, it would be an insult to Rinaldo if
they were to applaud at the death of his brother-in-law."
On hearing this the buffo borrowed my handkerchief and wiped away two
tears, one from each of his eyes, then he returned it politely and began
mumbling to himself.
"What are you saying?" I inquired. "Why do you speak so low?"
"Oh, it's nothing," he replied, "I was merely reciting a prayer for the
repose of the soul of poor Ruggiero."
* * * * *
The next morning I was down before him and had nearly finished my coffee
when he came slowly and sadly into the dining-room. I said:
"Good morning, Buffo mio, and I hope you have had a good night and slept
well after your long journey and your evening at the theatre."
He sat down, put his arm on the table and mournfully rested his head on
his hand.
"My dear Enrico," he said, "I have passed a night of horror. I did not
get to sleep at all, and then I was continually waking up again--"
"Nonsense, Buffo," I exclaimed.
"But it's not nonsense. Ah! you do not know what it is to lie awake all
night, sleepless and trembling, between sheets that are made of lava, and
to hear footsteps and the clanking of armour and to see Rinaldo shining
in the dark and threatening you as he holds over you his sword, Fusberta,
and shouts in your ear: 'How dare you applaud when my brother-in-law is
killed?'"
He seemed to enjoy his coffee, however, and to be ready for plenty of
exertion. He wanted a piece of lava to take home with him, and would it
not be possible to pick up a piece if we went to the slopes of Etna? So
we made inquiries and were told where to find the station of the
Circum-Etnea Railway and started soon after breakfast for Paterno. The
soil was black with lava and the wind was tremendous and carried the
gritty dust into our mouths and down our necks. In that way he got
plenty of lava to take home, but he wanted a large piece, and we could
not stop the train and get out and break a piece of rock off, besides, we
had nothing to break it with. We were like that old sailor in the poem
who was surrounded by water, water everywhere, but not a drop of a kind
to satisfy his immediate requirements. It was just as bad at Paterno;
from the station to the town all our energies were required to get along
in the blinding wind and the stinging dust and then we had to have our
luncheon.
"And what would you like for colazione, Buffo?"
"Seppia and interiori di pollo, if you please."
But he had to be a Sicilian and eat maccaroni with me, because the inn
could not provide what he wanted. Altogether the day was perhaps
something of a failure, and we returned without the piece of lava.
In the evening we went to the Birraria Svizzera, and he ate his seppia
while I got through my maccaroni. When his interiori di pollo came I
said:
"I will do my best to eat what you eat, not exactly but as nearly as I
can. Instead of a veal cutlet I will have part of an esteriore di pollo.
It rather surprises me that you should always eat the same things. Gildo
said you like plenty of variety."
"So I do," he replied. "Look at my plate. Can you imagine a more
delicious variety?"
I looked and said: "Certainly there is variety; I doubt whether our
English fowls could show so much. But--well, as long as you like it--"
Being rather tired after our day in the country we did not go to any
theatre, we stayed in the Birraria till bed-time talking and listening to
the music.
* * * * *
Next day was the last of the buffo's holiday, and I proposed another
excursion, but he said:
"Suppose we pretend that we have come to Catania on an excursion, and
then we can spend the day in the city. I want to buy some things to take
home with me for my sisters."
Accordingly we looked in the shop-windows and chose three ornamental
combs made of celluloid for the three sisters, a snuff-box for papa, made
of dried bergamot skin smelling so as to scent the snuff, and a pair of
braces for Gildo. It seemed a pity that the buffo should not have
something also, so he chose for himself a handkerchief with a picture of
the elephant of lava over the fountain in the piazza and he gave me in
return a metal pencil-case. Then the question of the piece of lava had
to be taken up again. We consulted the landlord, who produced a
bit--exactly what was wanted and only one franc fifty. We had been
wandering about in search of it and there it was all the time in the same
house with us.
"What on earth are you going to do with it, Buffo?"
"Why, everyone who goes to Catania brings home a piece of lava."
"Yes, but what do they want it for? It might be a neat chimney ornament,
but you have no fireplace in your house. Or you might use it as a
paper-weight, but in your family you scarcely ever write a letter."
He looked at me sadly for a moment and then said:
"I thought you were an artist and now you are being practical.
Usefulness is not everything. This piece of lava will be for me an
object of eternal beauty, and when I contemplate it I shall think of the
happy time we have spent here together."
I said: "O Buffo! don't go on like that or you will make me cry."
In the evening we went to the Teatro Machiavelli and saw a performance by
living players. In the first act a good young man introduced Rosina to
the cavaliere, who congratulated him on having won the affections of so
virtuous and lovely a girl. The cavaliere gave a bad old woman one
hundred francs, and in return she promised to procure him an interview
with Rosina. The bad old woman persuaded Rosina to enter a house in
which we knew the cavaliere was. The good young man asked the bad old
woman what she had done with his girl; of course she had done nothing
with her, but we heard shrieks. The good young man became suspicious,
broke open the door of the house and, on learning the worst, shot the bad
old woman dead and was taken by the police.
"This seems as though it were going to be a very interesting play," said
the buffo when the curtain had fallen.
"Yes," said I, "what do you think will happen next?"
"You ought to know that," he replied; "it's no use asking me. I never
saw a Sicilian play in Rio."
"Of course not; I was forgetting. I should say that the good young man
will be acquitted because it was justifiable homicide or that he will
return after a short term of imprisonment; in any case I think he will
marry Rosina and live happily ever after."
"I see," he replied. "You think it will be a comedy. People who take a
gloomy view of life naturally expect something cheerful in the theatre.
But what if it is a tragedy? And how are you going to dispose of the
cavaliere? Is he to carry his wickedness through your comedy?"
"You want it to be a tragedy because you are a buffo, I suppose. Now let
me think. If you are right--"
Before I could see my way to a tragic plot, the curtain rose on Act II.
The women of the village were going to Mass, but Rosina, reduced to
ragged misery, fell on the steps, not worthy to enter. The cavaliere
came by and offered her money, which she indignantly spurned. A good old
woman, who happened to be passing, scowled at the cavaliere and kindly
led Rosina away. An old man returned from America, where he had been for
twenty years to escape the consequences of a crime the details of which
he ostentatiously suppressed. This was his native village; he began
recognising things and commenting on the changes. Rosina came to him
begging. He looked at her and passed his hand over his eyes as he said:
"My girl, why are you begging at your age--so young, so fair?"
"Ah! Old man, I am in ragged misery because my father committed a
crime."
"A crime! What crime?"
So Rosina told him about it and the escape of the criminal to America.
The tears in her voice were so copious that her words were nearly
drowned, but that did not signify; we were intelligent enough to have
already guessed the relationship between them and we knew that she must
be supplying the details which he had suppressed.
He struggled with his surging emotions as he watched her delivering her
sad tale and we felt more and more certain that we must be right. There
came a pause. She buried her face in her hands. The old man spoke:
"Twenty years, did you say?"
"Twenty years."
"And what was your mother's name?"
"Concetta."
"Dio mio! And your name?"
"Rosina."
"Mia figlia!"
"Mio padre!"
Here they fell into each other's arms and the orchestra let loose a
passage of wild allegria which it had been holding in reserve. The
revelation of the cause of the ragged misery followed and was nearing its
conclusion when the cavaliere happened to pass by. Rosina pointed him
out to her father, who first made a speech at him and then shot him dead.
Rosina wept over his body, although she hated him, and the curtain fell.
"That was very beautiful," said the buffo. "Do you still think it will
be a comedy? I still believe it will be a tragedy."
"I am not sure," I replied, "but we shall soon know. Did not the old man
listen well?"
"Yes. It was like life. Did you observe how he made little calculations
for himself while she told him the story?"
"Yes, and one could see it all agreed with what he knew."
"He was like your father reading his friend's letter. The cap fitted him
and he put it on."
"Bravo, Buffo!"
"And when he made as though he would stroke her hair and drew back
because he was not yet sure--oh, it was beautiful! But there was one
thing I did not quite understand. Why did the cavaliere fall dead?"
"Because the father shot him," I replied.
"He aimed in the other direction."
"I also noticed that the old man fired to the right and the cavaliere
fell on his left, but that was only because of a little defect of stage
management. It does not do to be fastidious. You must not forget that
they are doing the play as Snug the joiner did Lion, it has never been
written. It will go more smoothly next time."
"Thank you. You see, I am not a regular theatre-goer. There is another
thing that puzzled me. You remember the bad old woman in the first act
who was shot? Should you think I was being too fastidious if I asked you
why she rose from the dead and led Rosina kindly away in the second act?
No doubt it will be explained presently, but, in the meantime, if you--"
"She did not rise from the dead; it was a different woman."
"It was the same woman."
"Anyone could tell you are a Portuguese or an Englishman or whatever you
are--a foreigner of some kind; no Sicilian would make such an objection.
It was the same actress, but a different character in the drama. That
was either because they have not enough ladies in the company, or because
the lady who ought to have taken one part or the other is away on a
holiday, or because the lady who acted wanted to show she could do a good
old woman and a bad old woman equally well."
"Thank you very much. You can hardly expect--But hush! they are
beginning the third act, which will explain everything."
The curtain rose again. The background represented an elegant circular
temple built of sponge cake, strawberry ice and spangles; it stood at the
end of a perspective of columns constructed of the same materials, and
between the columns were green bushes in ornamental flower-pots--all very
pretty and gay--"molto bellissimo," as the buffo said. The orchestra
struck up a jigging tune in six-eight time in a minor key with a refrain
in the tonic major, and a washed-out youth in evening dress with a
receding forehead, a long, bony nose, an eye-glass, prominent
upper-teeth, no chin, a hat on the back of his head, a brown greatcoat
over his arm, shiny boots, a cigarette and a silver-topped cane, entered.
I whispered:
"Is he dressed well enough for an Englishman?
"Yes," whispered the buffo, "but this is no Englishman. Don't you see
who it is and where we are? This is the good young man in paradise. His
punishment has been too much for him and he has died in prison."
"But, Buffo mio," I objected, "it's a different person altogether; it's
not a bit like him."
"It may be a different actor--I think it is--but it is the same character
in the drama. That is either because they have too many men in the
company, or because the actor who did the good young man in the first act
has gone home to supper and another is finishing his part for him, or
because--I can't think of any other reason just now, and I want to hear
what he is saying."
Except for his clothes, the creature on the stage was little more than a
limp and a dribble, but there was enough of him to sing a song telling us
in the Neapolitan dialect that his notion of happiness was to stroll up
and down the Toledo ogling the girls. When he had finished acknowledging
the applause he departed and his place was taken by a lady no longer
young, in flimsy pale blue muslin, a low neck and sham diamonds. There
lingered about her a hungry wistfulness, as though she were still hoping
to get a few more drops of enjoyment out of the squeezed orange of her
wasted life.
"And this must be Rosina," whispered the buffo; "Dio mio, how death has
aged her!" Seeing I was about to speak, he interrupted me: "It does not
do to be fastidious. No real Sicilian would make any objection."
The lady sang a song telling us in the Neapolitan dialect that her notion
of happiness was to stroll up and down the Toledo ogling the men. When
she had finished acknowledging the applause she departed and, almost
immediately, they both came on together.
"I told you so," exclaimed the buffo triumphantly; "they have met in
paradise and are happy at last."
They performed a duet in the Neapolitan dialect and showed us how they
strolled up and down the Toledo ogling one another. After they had
finished acknowledging the applause the curtain fell and we all left the
theatre. I said:
"I do not know whether you are aware of what you have done, but by making
that temple of spangled pastry into heaven you have wrecked your
tragedy."
"Oh, I gave up my tragedy as soon as I saw where we were, and the play
ended quite in your manner, didn't it? like the Comedy of Dante. Or do
you mean that you have any doubts about that last act taking place in
heaven?"
"I have many doubts about that."
"I admit, of course, that it would have been more satisfactory, and much
clearer as a comedy, if we could have seen them both die before they went
to paradise."
"Would you like me to tell you the plain, straightforward, honest, manly,
brutal truth about it?"
"Very much indeed, if you don't mind; but I should not like you to strain
yourself on my account."
"All right, Buffo, I'll be careful. Now listen. I don't believe that
the last act, as you call it, had anything to do with the story. It was
a music-hall turn added at the end of the play merely to close the
entertainment and send the audience away in good spirits."
"But that wrecks your comedy. And if the play was neither comedy nor
tragedy, what was it? You cannot expect a simple Portuguese gentleman
from Rio to understand your Sicilian dramas all at once."
"And we have not time now to discuss the question exhaustively, for if
you do not go to bed immediately you will never be up to-morrow in time
to catch your train back to Palermo, and if you are late what will papa
say and what will the public think when they find nothing ready in the
teatrino?"
"That is true. Good night and thank you very much for my holiday and for
all you have done for me."
"Prego, prego; I thank you for giving me the pleasure of your company."
"Not at all."
"But I assure you--"
"If you go on like this I shall begin to cry, and then I shall not sleep
at all, and that will be worse than sitting up to discuss the play. So
good night, finally."
"Good night, Buffo. You will forgive me if I do not see you off in the
morning; I do not want to get up at half-past five. I wish you Buon
viaggio. Give my love to papa and Gildo and my respectful compliments to
the sisters. Have you got your lump of lava and all your other goods?
That's right. Sleep well and do not dream of Rosina and the good young
man."
"Arrivederci."
TRAPANI