THE NASCITA
Once I was at Trapani in September, and observed in a small shop in a
back street some queer little dolls' heads made of wax. They seemed to
form a set, some women and some men, and there were hands of wax to
match. I did not think much about them, one cannot very well investigate
everything one notices in a Sicilian town, and, as I turned away, these
little heads were driven out of mine by Ignazio Giacalone, who was coming
down the street. He is a young avvocato whom I have known since he was a
student. He told me that he was going to be married next day, and
invited me to his wedding.
In the evening another friend of mine, also an avvocato, Alberto Scalisi,
came to the albergo to take his coffee and, as we all sat smoking and
talking, something was said about an article on the Nascita written by
him and recently published in _L'Amico_, a Trapanese Sunday newspaper. I
knew nothing about the Nascita, but I knew something about the avvocato
whose acquaintance I had made a few years previously at the house of my
friend Signor Decio D'Ali, with whom I had been dining. After dinner
many guests, including the avvocato Scalisi, came to the house to
rehearse a play they were preparing for a charity performance; they were
all amateurs, and I never saw amateurs act so well. The Signora Decio
D'Ali and the Avvocato Scalisi were the best; his was a comic part, and
he did it with so much natural humour that I was anxious to read his
article whatever the Nascita might be, as to which they gave me some
preliminary information. They reminded me of the Presepio, the
representation of the Nativita at Bethlehem, which it is the custom in
many places to make at Christmas; there is a most elaborate one, treated
as though the event had happened in modern times, preserved in the
convent of S. Martino, in Naples; there is one in the Musee de Cluny in
Paris, _L'Adoration des Rois et des Bergers_, Art Napolitain XVIII
siecle. I was most familiar with such things in the chapels on the Sacro
Monte at Varallo-Sesia, where the figures are the size of life. When
they saw I had got hold of the idea, they told me that in Trapani it is
the custom in the homes of the sailors to celebrate the 8th September by
making a representation of the house of S. Joachim as it appeared on the
occasion of the birth of his daughter, the Madonna, and to keep it on
view for three weeks, till S. Michael's day. They do not do this in any
other town, and the avvocato's article was about one he had seen.
Next morning about 7.30 Ignazio's father most politely called for me in a
carriage and pair and, accompanied by two other guests, we drove to the
house of the bride's family, where there was a crowd of people, and we
were all presented; then we proceeded to the Municipio, where the civil
part of the marriage was performed; after which we returned to the
bride's house and went through the religious service at an altar that had
been erected in one of the rooms. We admired the presents and the
flowers, partook of refreshments and exchanged compliments till it was
time to go, and I carried away with me a copy of _L'Amico_ given me by
the Avvocato Scalisi, who was one of the guests.
While reading his article I recognised that the little waxen heads and
hands must be part of the raw material for a Nascita, and in my mind I
identified certain figures in the museum which Conte Pepoli was then
arranging in the disused convent of the Annunziata as remains of old
examples of the Nascita and of the Nativita. Nothing would do for it
then but I must see a Nascita, and the difficulty was how to proceed.
One cannot very well go round knocking at all the doors in a Sicilian
town and asking if they have made a Nascita; the Avvocato Scalisi had
gone off to another wedding or to defend a mafioso, or to transact
whatever business falls to the lot of a Trapanese avvocato. Mario, my
coachman, takes no interest in anything to do with religion in any shape,
so he was no use, and everyone else I spoke to was very kind about it but
evidently did not know how to help me.
I considered what I should do if at Hastings or Grimsby or Newlyn I
wanted to get inside a fisherman's cottage, and it occurred to me that I
should consult the parson. I knew a priest at Trapani whose acquaintance
I had made at Custonaci, but I did not know where he was. I boldly
stopped a couple of strange priests in the street and asked if they knew
my priest; they did, and one of them took me to his house. It was rather
mean of me to call upon him merely to ask him to help me to find a
Nascita, I ought to have wanted to salute him and enjoy his company; but
he did not appear to think it rude, and we went together to the old part
of the town where the sailors live and asked at a house where he knew
they always used to make a Nascita, but this year there was none. They
told us of another likely house, but again we were disappointed. We
tried several more without success, and at last I exclaimed:
"What a lack of faith!"
But my priest replied that that was not the explanation; it was lack of
money, because these things cannot be made for nothing.
We could not then call at more houses because he was busy with his own
affairs; it was his dinner-time, or he had to go to a wedding or a
funeral or to do whatever it is that Trapanese priests do in the
afternoon, so we postponed our search till the evening, when he returned
with his brother, another priest, who knew a family who had made a
Nascita, and we went to their house.
We were shown into a large room, at the end of which, on a long table,
was a sort of rabbit hutch or doll's house, all on one floor, about
eighteen inches high, with the front off showing that it was divided into
eight square compartments, so that the whole hutch was about twelve feet
long, the width of the room. These compartments were the rooms of
Joachim's house or flat, as we should say, and the figures in them were
about eight inches high. In the arts actual size counts for little and,
as with the marionettes, I soon accepted the dolls as representatives of
men and women and felt as though I were present at some such family
festival as Ignazio's wedding, and the rooms, all leading one into the
other, contributed to the illusion.
We were asked to begin with the entrance. The front part of it had been
let to a cobbler who was sitting at his bench mending a shoe, and if it
had been real life he would have been singing. Behind him was a garden
of artificial flowers with a fountain of real water that was not playing
that evening. A door led through the side wall into the second
compartment, which was a salone. The porter, in evening dress, was
introducing a married couple, also in evening dress, who had been invited
and were accompanied by their baby in the arms of the wet-nurse. This
compartment was divided by a partition with an open door through which
one saw an alcove, or back room, with a buffet loaded with sweets, cakes,
and ices, at which the guests were to refresh themselves as they passed.
At Ignazio's wedding footmen carried the refreshments about on trays. A
door in the side led to the third compartment, where children were
dancing to a toy piano with four real notes. I struck one and it
sounded. A lady doll was playing, and I looked at her music, but the
notes were too small for my eyes, so I asked our hostess what music it
was, and she replied that it was a selection from the _Geisha_. I
remembered then that there had recently been in the town a travelling
opera company performing that work which is so popular in Italy that one
often hears the boys whistling the airs in the streets. A surname is not
of much practical use in Sicily, and some of my friends have not mastered
mine, but by those who know it, and who also know that it is the same as
that of the composer of the _Geisha_, I have sometimes been credited with
the music of his opera, a compliment which it distresses me to be
compelled to decline. In the alcove behind were musicians playing
guitars. I did not strike a note on a guitar, feeling sure that it would
be out of tune with the piano.
A door in the side wall led to the fourth room, where S. Joachim was
entertaining four kings who wore their crowns. These kings have nothing
to do with Gaspare, Melchiorre, and Baldassare, who fall down and worship
the infant Jesus, opening their treasures and presenting unto him gifts,
gold and frankincense and myrrh, on the occasion of the Nativita. Those
three were led from the East to the manger at Bethlehem by the miraculous
star; these in Joachim's room came in response to the usual cards of
invitation sent by the family, just as the relations and guests came to
Ignazio's wedding. The Madonna had, I think my priest told me, forty
kings and sixty condottieri in her pedigree. Invitations had been issued
to all their descendants, and no doubt all had accepted, but, owing to
want of means on the part of the artist who made this Nascita and want of
space in the rabbit hutch, only four kings could be shown. It is not
everyone who can entertain so many as four kings; there were none at
Ignazio's wedding. In this room there was also a monsignore with red
buttons to his sottana, he had an attendant who, my priest told me, was a
seminarista. In the alcove behind was Joachim's bed, and the empty cup
from which he had drunk his morning black coffee stood on the table by
his bedside.
The door leading to the fifth room was partly concealed by a notice with
these words: "E Nata Maria," and, accordingly, here we found the new-born
child in an elaborate cradle attended by three angels who were planted on
the floor in front of her, rather a Christmas-cardy group. Four queens
with crowns had come, no doubt they were the wives of Joachim's kings,
and there was a Jewish priest whom I took to be Simeon, he had a
head-covering with horns such as Caiaphas wears at Varallo. My priest,
however, assured me that Simeon was not a priest, he was only "un uomo
qualunque"; and he would have it that the figure represented Melchizedek.
This occasion must not be confused with a subsequent one when the _Nunc
Dimittis_ was improvised by Simeon, who, he said, could not have lived
long enough to be present on both occasions.
"Reverend Father," I objected, "pardon me if I give you an example which
points in the other direction. The best man or, as you would say, the
compare at my grandfather's wedding not only lived to perform the
ceremony of marrying my father and mother, but lived long enough also to
marry my brother."
The priest wavered, but was not convinced; he repeated that this was
Melchizedek and that he always appears at the birth of the Madonna, and I
was so much under the spell of the Nascita that I could not remember
precisely when Melchizedek lived. Whoever this personage was, he had
passed into this room from Joachim's room on the day of the Sacred Name
of Maria, that is on the Sunday after the birth, and he had officiated at
the baptism. On the floor was a bath of water with cinnamon, in which
the baby had been washed and with which the guests were to cross
themselves. S. Anna was in her bedroom in the alcove behind, but not in
bed, she got up and sat in a chair on the ninth day after the birth.
Through the door in the side the guests were to pass to the sixth room,
where there were nuns engaged in household duties, mending the linen,
darning the stockings, and so on. One was working a sewing-machine, and
in the alcove behind was their bedroom.
The side door led to the seventh room, where there was another nun
ironing and directing the servants who were making quince marmalade and
extract of pomidoro and discharging similar autumnal duties; behind was
the servants' bedroom.
Lastly we came to the eighth room, which, like the front entrance, filled
the whole compartment and had no alcove. This was the kitchen and
dining-room in one. The hospitable board was spread with such profusion
that there was not room on it for another egg-cup. Here Joachim was to
entertain the kings and queens to dinner later on. Three Turks and one
female servant were controlling affairs, making the cuscuso and preparing
the maccaroni. There were young chickens in a corner; I inquired for
their mother, and was told she was busy making the soup; then I saw that
a saucepan was simmering on the stove. The walls were hung with brightly
polished copper cooking utensils and there were baskets of maccaroni on
the floor.
The three principal rooms were carpeted with tissue-paper advertisements
of a new bar in the Via Torrearsa which has lately been opened by
relations of our host. Each room was lighted by a naked candle kept in
place upon the floor by a drop of wax. All the walls were hung with
wall-papers, originally designed for larger apartments, and adorned with
pictures, among which I observed Carlo Dolci's _Ecce Homo_. The Avvocato
Scalisi saw, or says he saw, two saints flanking an advertisement of
cod-liver oil, and in Joachim's room was a portrait of Pope Pius X
blessing the company which included besides the kings a couple of
officers in uniform. But then the Avvocato Scalisi is a humorist, and
the trouble with humorists is that they are too fond of assuming all
their readers to be humorists also, whereas they sometimes have a reader
of another kind who is puzzled to know whether what they say is to be
taken seriously or not.
We were about to make our compliments preliminary to departure, when our
host produced a tray with marsala and biscuits, so we sat down for a few
minutes and I observed what I took to be a little waxen paladin among the
wine-glasses. He was, however, no paladin, though he wore armour and a
helmet; he was S. Michele waiting to arrive on his festa, the 29th
September. It was now the 20th and, partly to please me and partly
because it did not much matter for a day or two, he arrived at once. He
had wings, but they wanted repairing, so I carried him carefully from the
tray and deposited him in the corner of the room in which the baby lay.
My priest found several other examples of the Nascita and took me to see
them before I left Trapani. The differences were slight; in one case
there were only three rooms; in another the rooms were divided so as to
vary in size; in another the rooms had windows at the back with
balconies. Sometimes the guests were reading the _Giornale di Sicilia_,
and I saw opera-glasses on the table in one room and in another the
gentlemen had deposited their tall hats on the sofa. There were
book-cases full of books and the bedrooms were furnished down to the most
insignificant but necessary details. S. Joachim in one of the houses was
entertaining only three friends, and they had no kingly marks upon them;
they were perhaps descendants of the condottieri. I thought afterwards
of going back to inquire, but one cannot very well return to a house
where one has seen a Nascita and ask to be allowed to look again to make
sure whether or not the guests have hung up their crowns on the hat pegs
of the umbrella-stand at the front entrance. There was something about
these gentlemen, something in their costume as they sat at a round table
with S. Joachim, a queer 1830 feeling that put me in mind of Mr. Pickwick
and his three friends sitting in their private room at the "George and
Vulture," George Yard, Lombard Street, except that they were only
drinking coffee.
In the garden at the entrance to one house was a baby taking the air in a
perambulator and a band of eight musicians with a conductor. There was
real water with a tap and a basin in the kitchen so that the guests might
wash their hands after dinner. There was a mouse-trap in the corner of
the kitchen. In one room the guests were playing cards, in another
eating ices, and I observed a toy piano with the extended compass of six
notes.
In all the kitchens there was a Turk for the cuscuso. It is made with
fish, semolina, and onions in a double saucepan which in England is
called a steamer. In the bottom part water is boiled; in the top part,
over the holes, they put a layer of chopped onions, and over that the
semolina which has been previously made into very small balls by damping
it. The onions prevent the semolina from falling through the holes into
the water, and the steam of the water coming through cooks the semolina
and the onions. The fish are put into the water at the right moment and
are boiled while the semolina is being steamed. It is all served
together like bouillabaisse, the semolina answering to the bread, and
extract of pomidoro is added. One would not be likely to meet with
cuscuso in the houses of the well-to-do; one might get it in the albergo
by insisting on it, but they would rather not provide it because, like
the Discobolus in Butler's poem _A Psalm of Montreal_, it is vulgar. I
have eaten it only once when I dined with my compare Michele Lombardo, a
jeweller, to whose son I stood as padrino at his cresima, and I do not
care to eat it again, not because it is vulgar, but because I did not
find it nearly so good as bouillabaisse. The recipe for it has
penetrated to Trapani from Africa as a result of the constant intercourse
between Sicily and the French colony of Tunis, the fishermen of Trapani
going over to the African coast not only for fish, but also for coral and
for sponges.
My priest was inclined to treat the Nascita with tolerant contempt; he
muttered the word "Anacronismo" several times and, since I have
ascertained that Melchizedek was a contemporary of Abraham, I think he
should not have done so. I said that the anachronisms did not disturb
me. I told him that in the marionette theatre in Palermo, when
Cristoforo Colombo embarks from the port of Palos in Spain to discover
America, a sailor, sitting on the paddle-box of the piroscafo, the
steamboat, sings that Neapolitan song _Santa Lucia_. I passed over the
anticipation of steam and contented myself with asking the buffo whether
the song had been composed so long ago and also whether its popularity
had extended from Naples into Spain. He replied that it had extended to
Palermo and that his audience connected it in their minds with the sea,
and as for the date of its composition he had made no inquiries, but he
knew it was older than "O Sole Mio"; we do not go to the arts for
accurate archaeological details.
"I will make you a paragon," said the buffo. "When I was returning from
Catania I looked out of the side windows of the train and saw that the
telegraph posts, as we passed by, were some distance apart. But I made
friends with the guard, who took me into his van, and when I looked at
them again out of the back window of the train they seemed to get closer
and closer together in the distance until, far away, there appeared to be
no space between them; but I knew that there was always the same space
between them. So it is with the centuries, when they are in the distant
past it is difficult to distinguish in what century any particular event
happened. History may settle such points, but the arts come to us from a
country of the imagination whose laws of time and space are not as our
laws. Art is trying to get the people to realise that a thing happened,
not to teach them precisely when."
I quoted this to my priest, and he admitted its justice; also he was so
polite as to waive his objection about anacronismo, which, I then saw,
had only been started in consideration of my being a professor; not that
I am really a professor but he had introduced me to our host as one, and
I had accepted the distinction so as to avoid the dreary explanation that
would have been forced upon me after a disclaimer. He having waived his
anacronismo so generously, it was now my turn to trump up an objection
which I could deal with afterwards as circumstances might require. In
making my choice I did not forget his cloth and, imitating as well as I
could his tone of tolerant contempt, muttered the word "Irriverenza"
several times. He saw what I meant at once and, in his reply, somewhat
followed my lead.
"Where," he asked, "is the irreverence in making S. Joachim's friends
arrive in tall hats and dress clothes? Why should they not read the
_Giornale di Sicilia_ and play cards? Where is the irreverence in making
the children celebrate his daughter's birth by dancing to a piano? Why
should not the Madonna have her baby-linen made on an American
sewing-machine?"
As he took this line so decidedly and we had given up the anacronismo, I
gave up the irreverence at once and agreed with him that there is no
reason against any of these things being done if it helps the spectators.
The arts are concerned more with faith than with reason, more with the
spirit than with the flesh, more with truth than with fact, and we can
never get away from the intention of the artist. Even in that Art of
Arts which we call Life, our judgment must always be influenced by the
spirit in which we believe that a thing is done. I have read somewhere
that one coachman will flick flies off his horse with the intention of
worrying the flies, while another (Mario, for instance) does the same
thing with the intention of relieving the horse. When a modern Frenchman
in the spirit of the _Scenes de la Vie de Boheme_ paints the guests in
modern evening dress at a _Marriage in Cana of Galilee_ we are offended.
The Nascita is not done by such an artist; it is peculiarly a woman's
subject, being a picture of home life with a birth for its occasion, and
is usually made by a girl who has never heard of Bohemia. She has seen
trains in the railway station and ships in the port, but probably has
never herself travelled in either. Her father or her brother has perhaps
been fishing for sponges off Sfax and may have returned with stories of
the wonders of Tunis, and so she may have heard of a boulevard, but she
is not affected by it. She makes her Nascita as the medieval painters
made their pictures, and is not seeking to attract attention or to
astonish or to advertise herself or to make money. Sicilians are all
artists, and the Nascita is the girl's pretext for making as close a
representation as she can of the life to which she and her friends are
accustomed. It is for her what the Shield of Achilles was for Homer,
what the Falstaff scenes in _King Henry IV_ were for Shakespeare, or what
the Escape from Paris was for my buffo in Palermo.
MOUNT ERYX