MALA VITA
Sicilians sometimes claim that much of what has been stated in the
foregoing chapter is now out of date, and that, with the advance of
civilisation, the power of the mafia and the respect for omerta are
giving way to confidence in the police. And they go on to regret that
Giovanni Grasso should have so much success with his plays in foreign
countries, because they contain a great deal of mafia and mala vita which
he presents with so much realism that foreigners are encouraged in the
idea that all Sicilians are for ever sleeplessly going about with knives
in their belts seeking to execute vendettas. But most theatre-goers know
by this time that melodramas are not made up of the events of ordinary
life. A man does not discover every day that he has been deceived by his
wife or that his sister has been betrayed by his compare; when he does
make such a discovery he may be pardoned if he loses his self-control.
Anyhow, the sleepless vendetta notion is so ludicrously contrary to the
fact that Sicily can afford to take the risk. One might as well treat
seriously the complaint against the marionettes, that the swaggering talk
of Orlando and Rinaldo encourages the boys to behave in real life as
though every fancied insult must be wiped out with blood. The boys
certainly do fight--they can be seen fighting in the fish-market, one
armed with a basket for his shield and another with a stick for his
sword, his Durlindana. But boys fight, even in England, with no
marionettes to inflame their imaginations, and sometimes they cut one
another; still, no one would take too seriously the exclamation of that
schoolmaster who, on being called to deal with some such incident,
hurried from his study muttering:
"Knives, knives--dangerous weapons; would to heaven they had never been
invented!"
What was he going to do at dinner-time? And if the marionettes are to be
abolished, what is the Sicilian boy to do when it is time for him to sit
down to his evening meal of romance? It is even possible that if he were
starved of his marionettes he would more frequently substitute the
dangerous weapon for the stick.
We see Sicilian life only in bits at a time and any bit we see may turn
out on investigation to be only a bit of acting; and, whether real life
or acting, we see it through the veil of romance which is held in front
of it by their language and by their gestures, which cause their acting
to appear more real--that is, which help it to be more deceptive. By
their language I do not mean merely their words and their grammar--we
also have a grammar, and our dictionary contains words as many and as
expressive as theirs--the romance is rather in their attitude of mind and
the consequent use they make of their words. I have read with disgust in
an English newspaper an account of a squalid Pentonville murder which, as
described in a contemporary Italian journal, appeared worthy to be set to
music by Puccini. We are like the audience in Giovanni's
theatre--dominated by the imposing romance of the language, and we prefer
to be so dominated. Or we are like the audience in the teatrino at
Palermo, when the buffo performs a miracle; as soon as we get behind "la
mala vita" and see it as "the life of the criminal classes" we have
caught a glimpse of how the illusion is worked.
By their gestures I mean something about which in England, in France and
even in Northern Italy, nothing is known. It is true that we Northerners
can and do communicate with one another in gesture, but in England we
mostly omit gesture and use speech, while in France and Northern Italy
the gesture is only slight. A Sicilian sometimes omits words, but if he
omits gestures it is only by exercising great self-control. When he is
talking naturally, every muscle of his body is at work helping him to
express his meaning. It is as though he had not yet learnt to trust
speech, everything must be acted too, as half-educated people have not
yet learnt to trust the written word and if they read must read aloud.
At a cinematograph show, when a letter or telegram or the title of the
piece is shown on the screen, a murmur goes round the hall; it is the
people reading the writing out loud to assure themselves of its meaning.
So the talking Sicilian is telling everything twice, once with his voice
and once with his gestures and there is so much oil in his backbone that
there is nothing creaky, awkward or grudging in his movements; the
gestures are made with an exuberance, an intensity and a natural
unconscious beauty which seem to lift the matter above the plane of
ordinary life. So habitual is this gesticulation that it is often
useless. I have been behind the scenes in a marionette theatre, watching
the man declaiming for the figures. His energy was tremendous, no wonder
he drank out of a black bottle from time to time. I knew he was hidden
from the audience and thought he might be suggesting movements for the
marionettes to the man who was manipulating them, but that man could not
see him either and was improvising the movements of the figures unaided.
The gesticulating Sicilian, however, is not more deeply moved by what he
is describing than the phlegmatic Englishman is when he is quietly
telling something. I have sometimes ventured to laugh at the Sicilian
for his unnecessary vehemence, and he has stopped in the middle of it all
and joined in the laughter. It would be extremely interesting to see
Giovanni Grasso in the part of an English gentleman, a Wyndham or a
Hawtrey part. I believe he would succeed because I believe he would
succeed in anything he set his mind to do, but for him to reproduce an
Englishman's tranquillity would be as much of an effort as it would be
for an English actor to reproduce a Sicilian's mobility.
Their power of acting is not confined to those who are actors by
profession; the love of improvising little scenes in daily life may be
said to be characteristic of them. To suppose that they do this from a
love of lying would be to simplify unduly; they have the artist's power
of seeing a thing in two senses at once, and they assume that they will
not be misunderstood, at all events, they are not going to give it all
away by explaining, and if the stranger is taken in--well, as a rule, it
does not very much signify. Just as omerta makes things difficult for
the Sicilian police, so this love of acting makes things difficult for
the foreign traveller. There is a story in the form of a dialogue
between a foreigner in Palermo inquiring of a native about a tree that
was clipped into a fantastic shape. It can hardly be given in English
because it turns on the double meaning of "naturale," which means
sometimes "natural" and sometimes "naturally," but if it be added that
"scusi" = "excuse me"; "quest' albero" = "this tree"; "e" = "is"; "o" =
"or," any reader will be able to understand it:
FOREIGNER: Scusi, Signore; quest' albero e artificiale o naturale?
PALERMITAN: Artificiale.
FOR: Oh, artificiale?
PAL: Naturale.
FOR: E naturale?
PAL: Artificiale.
FOR: (_getting irritated_): Scusi, Signore; quest' albero e artificiale o
naturale?
PAL: Artificiale, naturale.
And then the foreigner goes home and writes a book about his travels,
saying that the natives are so stupid they do not even know whether their
trees are clipped into odd shapes by nature or art. But the apparently
grave and courteous Palermitan knew what he was doing all the time and
was enjoying it as a child enjoys committing a harmless piece of
mischief.
If one were to pierce through it and understand them as they may be
supposed to understand themselves, one would not necessarily be in a
position to give an opinion about the mafia, for, besides those who speak
of the growing confidence in the police, there are others who assert that
the improvement, if any, is slight and only on the surface, and that the
spirit of the mafia is not confined to the mala vita, but extends to the
upper classes and influences even the administration of justice and the
elections. When the natives differ on such a point, a mere foreigner can
hardly decide; but I have more frequently heard the opinion expressed in
favour of improvement. Certainly, in the Teatro Machiavelli, when
murderers are taken by the police it is often done now with the approval
of the audience, which they tell me would not have been the case some
years back.
Before writing about the mala vita one ought at least to have seen a man
murdered in the street. I have never seen this, nor have I ever even
seen the body of a murdered man lying in the street. All that I know
about the mala vita in Sicily has been gathered from conversation, books
and plays. Lest it should be thought that in thus disclaiming practical
knowledge of the subject I am inspired by omerta--as a traveller may shut
his eyes to unpleasant incidents out of regard for his hosts--I will here
collect together all the occasions when I have thought myself to be in
the immediate neighbourhood of the mala vita.
At Castellinaria the barber who keeps the shop opposite the Albergo della
Madonna--the shop in which Alfio Mascalucia was assistant--always seemed
to me to be a man one would readily trust with all one's possessions. He
must be now over forty, married and with a family. Peppino told me the
other day that in his youth, meaning between the ages of eighteen and
twenty-six, this barber had been a notorious ricottaro and had often been
in prison for crimes of various kinds. When I heard this, his extremely
courteous manner reminded me of the Robin Hood side of the Cristiani, and
of the oriental hospitality of the mafiosi towards strangers. I asked
Peppino whether I ought to discontinue my custom. He said not unless I
was dissatisfied with him as a barber. Then I realised that I must have
forgotten where I was for the moment.
Carmelo and his brother Rosario at Castellinaria have both been in prison
for attempting to murder, but they can neither of them be said ever to
have belonged to the class of habitual criminals.
In the Teatro Machiavelli Peppino Fazio gave me as a ricordo one of the
knives used by the mafiosi. The blade doubles on the handle, so that
when open it is about twice as long as when shut; some are as long as
twenty-four inches when open, mine is only eighteen. Being intended for
the theatre, it has never been sharpened or pointed but, except for this
it is a real mala vita knife. They told me there would be nothing to
fear so long as I continued the life of blameless respectability which
had no doubt become habitual to me--or some nonsense of that kind--but
that if I should happen to be caught by the police in doubtful
surroundings and searched, even this knife, in spite of its arrested
adolescence, might get me into trouble.
"So you had better be careful," said one of them; "but if you do get put
into prison, let us know and you shall be treated as well as any
ricottaro. I will bring you a good dinner every day."
"Yes," said another, "and I will bring you cigarettes."
"And I," said a third, "will fetch your linen and bring it back to you
nicely washed and ironed."
Whenever I show my knife to any of my English friends, for I am happy to
say I got it safely home, they always exclaim that it is an entirely
prosaic object. And so it is. It is as unromantic as an escape of gas.
Several times I have been in a theatre when the performance has been
interrupted by a disturbance among the audience, but I have never seen it
develop into a serious row.
Once in Palermo my bedroom looked over a small piazza, and one night I
heard talking and looked out. I saw a crowd and distinguished a man
disputing from below with another man on a balcony about fifteen feet
from mine, and there was a woman in the room behind him. The dispute was
all in dialect, but evidently they were very angry. Presently the man on
the balcony drew a revolver, it shone in the doubtful light, and he
threatened the man below; but nothing further happened and presently the
crowd dispersed, the man on the balcony retired and all was quiet.
Perhaps this was the prelude to a murder, and I may have read about it
afterwards in the newspaper without knowing how near I had been to the
crime.
There was one other occasion when I thought I was going to see something
of the mala vita. On the cliff at Castellinaria are some remains of
polygonal buildings which have been made a national monument. The
custode's cabin is just below, in a sheltered place where Peppino and I
sometimes go and sit after supper. One moonlight evening, it was rather
late, but the lamp was still shining in the cabin and the custode was
still hanging about, I heard someone approaching and, looking up, saw,
against the sky, a sinewy, slight woman in a long black dress with a
black shawl over her head. She was coming rapidly along the edge of the
cliff with a shuffling, swaying motion, and as she came she was
continually rearranging the shawl over her head and chattering volubly to
herself in a hoarse, coarse, raucous voice. The custode glanced at her
as she drew near and I thought he flinched. I do not know how I knew it,
but I was sure she was his wife. She was beside herself with passion.
She must have found out something--something about some other woman. I
felt as I have felt at an Ibsen play--as though I were looking through
the keyhole into a room where dirty linen was about to be washed. She
shook and trembled all over like an express train approaching a country
station. Reason told me that Peppino and I were safe, we were on the
platform; nevertheless accidents do happen and there was the poor custode
on the line. She drew up in front of us, and her draperies swirled round
her with the suddenness of her stopping. She became silent and still,
while she looked at me as though fixing my appearance on her brain for
this life and the next; she looked at Peppino in the same way and at the
custode. Then the chattering began again and the restless rearranging of
her shawl over her head. Suddenly she turned, poured herself into the
cabin and exploded. It was not as with an earthquake, for the walls were
left standing and the roof and foundations were unshaken, and an
earthquake, they say, seems to last for an eternity, whereas this woman
seemed to take but a moment to complete her work of desolation. She
pounced upon something among the debris and laughed hysterically as she
hid it in her bosom.
The storm was over. She was transformed into a rather beautiful and
extremely graceful woman of about thirty. She exchanged a few words of
friendly chaff with her husband, smiled at Peppino and bowed to me as she
passed out, went up the path against the moonlit sky and faded into the
night.
All this was about a pack of cards. She had promised to lend the cards
to a neighbour that evening; her husband was to have brought them home
early in the day; he had forgotten to do so and she had come to fetch
them. So there was no murder and no dirty linen, but the cabin had to be
tidied.
What would this woman do had she the motive and the cue for passion that
I had supposed for her? If her husband ever does entertain another lady
in his cabin and his wife hears of it, I hope I may not be in the
neighbourhood. But if I were to be there and to witness the crime,
omerta would forbid me, as a good Sicilian, to say anything about it. I
should have to forget the claims of justice and go to prison, if
necessary, rather than give such information as might lead to the
conviction of the person or persons guilty.
Lastly, there was the lady in the restaurant-car--but perhaps she ought
not to be included in the list. Let her have the benefit of the doubt
and a chapter to herself.
CASTELLINARIA