TOTO CARBONARO
One morning, in the autumn of 1908, I was sitting in front of one of the
windows of the albergo looking out across the harbour at the mountains of
Calabria, waiting for coffee and thinking of _Omerta_. I had been
spending a week in Messina with Giovanni Grasso and his company of
Sicilian Players, and _Omerta_ was the play they had performed the
preceding evening. I remembered how at the end Giovanni had staggered in
mortally wounded and refused to give the name of his murderer--though the
audience guessed who it must have been--and then how he had given his
knife to Pasqualino, his young brother, and with his last breath had
spoken these words; "Per Don Toto, quando avrai diciotto anni"; and I had
left the theatre wishing I could see Giovanni as Pasqualino grown up and
executing the vendetta. Giovanni now uses a revolver as being a nobler
weapon, but when I was with him in Messina it was a knife.
The big waiter brought the coffee and stood on my left, the little waiter
followed him, and stood on my right. During the week I had often seen
this boy who was not yet a real waiter, he was learning his business by
waiting on the waiters, and hitherto I had respected the convention by
which I was supposed to be unaware of his existence, except that when he
had made way for me on the stairs we had exchanged greetings. I said to
the big waiter:
"How old is this little fellow?"
"Thirteen."
I glanced at him and saw by his smile of expansive friendliness that he
was pleased to be the subject of our conversation.
"What do you call him?"
"Toto."
I took my knife off the breakfast table and imitating Giovanni, as well
as I could, handed it to the big waiter saying:
"For Don Toto when he shall be eighteen years old."
This was perhaps wrong, it was certainly risky to play with edged tools
in this way in a country where one ought not to give a handkerchief as a
ricordo lest one should be supposed to be intending to pass the tears it
contains. But I assumed he had seen the play and, although the quotation
was not exact, expected him to recognise it, instead of which he was
furious with me:
"You are not to do that. Toto is a very good boy and I shall not accept
the knife."
He said this so sternly that I made up my mind he could know nothing
about the theatre--he must be a foreigner who had yet to learn that a
Sicilian child's confidence is not destroyed by a mere threat to stick a
knife into him, the idea that anyone is going to hurt him is too
preposterous to be taken seriously. Or perhaps he had invested all his
imagination in superstitious securities. Or perhaps I had acted better
than I knew and had seriously alarmed him. But I had not imitated
Giovanni's realism so closely as to deceive Toto. I looked at him. He
was beaming all over his face as he shook his head and said:
"I am not afraid."
The big waiter scowled and went away, abandoning the reckless child to
his fate. Toto put his hand on my arm to attract my attention and
emphasise what he was going to say:
"When you are at home, please will you send me a postcard with a picture
of London?"
"Certainly, my boy; I'll send you as many as you like."
This is all the conversation I had with Toto before I left Messina, which
I did that day, but we have corresponded. On returning to London I sent
him a card with a view of Oxford Circus full of traffic and, not knowing
his full name, addressed it:
A Don Toto,
Piccolo Cameriere all' Albergo Trinacria,
Messina.
He replied at once, thanking me profusely for the beautiful view of what
he called I Quattro Canti di Londra and promising to send me some prickly
pears as soon as they were at their best, having heard that they do not
mature in London. Presently I sent him another post-card secretly hoping
he would show them both to the stupid big waiter. He replied at once
and, among other things, asked if I should like him to come to London.
I never like them to come to London unless they are sure of some settled
employment, and even then I would rather see them in their native
surroundings; so I replied:
No, Toto. Here we already have too many Italians, Austrians, Swiss
and Germans. They come because they believe that the streets of
London are paved with gold, but too many of them find our streets
guttered by the tears of foreign waiters who have failed to find
work. You had much better stay where you are like a good boy, and I
will come to Messina and see you next autumn.
Then a basket arrived containing the prickly pears in a state of pulp,
exuding juice from every pore because he had not attempted to pack them,
and accompanied by a card wishing me a Merry Christmas.
Early in the morning of the 28th December, 1908, Messina was destroyed by
an earthquake. The newspapers particularly mentioned that the Albergo
Trinacria had fallen, killing everyone who was sleeping there that night.
I chanced a card to Toto asking whether he had escaped. On the 6th
January I received a letter from him; he had evidently not received my
card, which was returned to me about eight months later. This is a
translation of Toto's letter:
CATANIA,
1 _Jan._, 1909.
Egregious Signor Enrico,
You must have already heard of the destruction of Messina. By a
miracle I am saved, also my family, except that I do not yet know the
fate of two of my sisters, my father, three nephews and one
brother-in-law. My father was at Reggio Calabria, which was also
destroyed. The Albergo Trinacria was not merely shaken down, it was
also burnt. It was my good fortune not to be on guard that night in
the hotel, otherwise I too should have died. The few who have
escaped have been brought to Catania naked, without a soldo. We are
sleeping in the Municipio, on the floor, with a rug, a piece of bread
and cheese and a glass of wine which the Municipio gives us. They
have made me a present of a shirt because, as the earthquake was at
five in the morning, everyone was asleep and they escaped just as
they were. You may imagine in what a condition I find myself, in
what misery, it is such that you will excuse my posting this letter
without a stamp, but I have not a centesimo to send you the news of
the disaster of Messina. On the post-card which you sent me you
speak of coming in the autumn, but there will be no more coming to
Messina.
Enough! I could tell you in detail of many misfortunes that have
overtaken me, but I have not the courage to write more.
I send you my respects. You will pardon me for being obliged to post
this without a stamp.
TOTO.
He gave me an address in Catania to which I wrote, and he replied 24th
January from Naples, where he and his family had been taken.
Then he left off writing and I thought I had heard the last of him. In
the spring of 1910 I went to Sicily again, and within an hour of arriving
at my hotel in Catania one of the waiters came up to me and said in a
friendly way:
"Good day, sir."
"Good day," I replied, "but I do not recognise you."
He said, "Toto. Messina."
"It is not possible! You were only thirteen at Messina, and how old are
you now?"
"Eighteen."
"How have you managed to become five years older in eighteen months? Is
it an effect of the earthquake?"
"I was sixteen at Messina."
"Then why did that stupid big waiter say you were only thirteen?"
"Ah! well, he is dead now."
I thought of the fate of Ananias and said: "Poor fellow! Do you remember
how angry he was when I wanted to give him my knife and said those words
from _Omerta_?"
"Yes, but he was not really angry with you, he was only pretending."
"No, Toto! Not really? Do you mean he was acting?"
"Yes. I thought you understood. He was always like that, full of fun,
not stupid at all. He was a good man and very kind to me." And poor
Toto's eyes filled with tears.
So it was someone else who had been stupid, and I left off thinking of
Ananias and began to think of those eighteen upon whom the Tower of
Siloam fell.
Toto told me that he was sleeping at home when the earthquake woke him
up, and that he and the others in his house ran out naked as they were
into the street and saw the house fall; they were only just in time. His
father, who was in Reggio, was saved, but one of his sisters was killed
with her husband and three children.
This is all the conversation I had with Toto in Catania; next day on my
inquiring for him they told me he had caught cold and had not come to the
Albergo. I left without seeing him again and next time I was in Catania
they told me he had gone away and they did not know his address.
Possibly he has disappeared for ever, but it is more probable that, like
other meteoric bodies, he will cross my path again some day.
TURIDDU BALISTRIERI
Among the members of Giovanni's company whose acquaintance I made during
my week in Messina were two ladies who acted under their maiden names,
viz. Marinella Bragaglia and Carolina Balistrieri; the first is married
to Vittorio Marazzi and the second to Corrado Bragaglia, Corrado being
the brother of Marinella. I also often saw in the theatre Turiddu
(Salvatore) Balistrieri, brother of Carolina and therefore brother-in-law
to Corrado and brother-in-law by marriage (or whatever the correct
expression may be and, if there is no correct expression, then compare di
parentela) to Vittorio and Marinella Marazzi. He was just over eleven,
not a member of the company but, being at school in Messina, his sister
had taken him to stay with her for the week, and we became great friends.
I was thinking of him when writing about Micio buying chocolate and
story-books at Castellinaria in Chapter XVIII of _Diversions in Sicily_.
When Giovanni and the company departed from Messina to continue their
tour, Turiddu and his younger brother, Gennaro, remained in Messina with
their professor and, as their mother, Signora Balistrieri, was touring
with another company in South America, they had no home to go to for
Christmas and remained with the professor for the holidays.
On the 27th December, Giovanni and his company, after being in Egypt and
in Russia, arrived at Udine, north of Venice. They heard nothing of the
earthquake until the evening of the 29th December, about forty hours
after the event, when the news reached them in the theatre during the
performance of _La Figlia di Jorio_. The next day Giovanni and six of
the company started for Messina; they wanted to ascertain for themselves
the extent of the disaster and whether the earthquake had affected
Catania, where most of their relations and friends were. Among the six
were Corrado Bragaglia and Vittorio Marazzi, whose particular object was
to find out what had happened to Turiddu and Gennaro. When the company
came to London in the spring of 1910 Corrado gave me an account of their
adventures. They arrived in Naples where they were delayed a day, which
they spent in meeting fugitives, but they heard no news of the boys.
They reached Messina on the 1st January and, taking a basket of
provisions and medicines, started for the professor's house, treading on
dead bodies as they walked through the falling rain and fearing lest
another shock might come or that at any moment some already shattered
house might fall on them. The professor's apartments were on the first
and second floors of one side of a courtyard that stood between a street
and a torrent; the front doors of the different apartments opened into
the court as in a college building; the professor's side of the court was
nearest the torrent and did not fall, but the other three sides of the
court fell and the houses on the opposite side of the street fell, so
that the debris made it difficult to approach the street door of the
court and still more difficult afterwards to approach the doors of the
different sets of apartments.
They found the landlord of the house, and he showed them that the
professor's part of the house had not fallen and told them that the
professor and his family had escaped and, he believed, had been taken to
Naples or Catania, or--he did not know where. This was satisfactory, at
least they no longer thought the children were buried in the ruins, but
it did not give much information as to their whereabouts. They went to
the station and got a permission to go to Catania. The train was crowded
with fugitives, some wounded, some unhurt, and during the journey a
passenger gave birth to a baby.
In Catania they asked of Madama Ciccia (i.e. Signora Grasso, Giovanni's
mother), who would certainly have heard if the children had been seen in
the city, but she knew nothing. They sought out the boys' grandmother,
the mother of Signora Balistrieri, but she was not at home, she had
deserted her house for fear of another earthquake and had been sleeping
in the piazza. They inquired at the hospital and at the institutions
where fugitives had been taken. They advertised. They actually found a
professor from Messina with pupils, but it was not the one they wanted.
They went to Siracusa, to Malta, to Palermo, to Trapani; they got no
information and returned to Catania. Then they were struck with remorse
for not having entered the professor's house in Messina--they had only
spoken to the landlord--the boys might be buried there after all, alive
or dead. They returned to Messina and entered the house; it was all in
confusion; they looked through it, but found no trace of the children.
All this took them seven days, during which they scarcely ate and
scarcely slept. They knew that if the boys had really been taken to
Naples they were probably safe, and now they went there considering that
they had done their best with Sicily. In Naples they inquired at the
official places, at the hospitals and at the offices of the newspapers
where they could see the lists of names before they were published. They
found nothing and their thoughts went back to Messina; they wondered
whether the children might perhaps have been crushed by a falling house
in the streets, and whether they ought to return. In the evening they
went to a caffe to read the lists, and by chance took up a Roman paper.
They could hardly believe their eyes when they read the names of Turiddu
and Gennaro among those who had been taken to the Instituto Vittoria
Colonna in Naples. They went there at once, but it was already late at
night and the place was shut. Unable to think of eating or sleeping they
walked about the streets till six in the morning, when they returned and
were admitted. They stated their business, inquired for the children,
produced photographs and, after a little delay, Turiddu and Gennaro came
running to them naked. It took some days of red tape, including a legal
act whereby Corrado constituted himself their second father, before they
were allowed to remove the boys. At last on the 11th January they took
possession of them and dressed them in the street with clothes they had
bought. Corrado had telegraphed to his wife and to the other relations,
and they left Naples and rejoined the company at Udine, where they
arrived on the 14th. One of the actors when he saw the children fainted
and Corrado was ill for days with a fever.
Turiddu wrote to me from Naples to tell me he was saved, and by August,
1909, when I went to Sicily again, he had left Giovanni and the company
and returned to Naples, where I found him and Gennaro with the professor
and his family, living in two rooms of an establishment where emigrants
are put to wait for their ships to take them to America. They told me
their experiences. In Messina the family had consisted of the professor,
his wife, his niece (a studentessa), Turiddu and Gennaro with two of
their school-fellows, one named Peppino, son of a well-to-do dealer in
iron bedsteads, and another named Luigi, son of a well-to-do
orange-merchant, who had gone to visit his uncle for Christmas. There
was also a servant girl who had gone that night to stay with her people.
The parents of Peppino and Luigi were both killed in their houses;
fortunately for Peppino he had not gone home or he would probably have
been killed. Luigi also escaped because the house of his uncle did not
fall or, if it fell, it did not kill him. The servant, who had gone
home, was killed.
They puzzled me by their attempts to explain why the professor's side of
the courtyard did not fall. It seems it was partly because, being near
the torrent, it had been built more strongly than the other three sides;
that was not all, there was also something about a Japanese gentleman who
had studied earthquakes at home and who had hurried to Messina, visited
the spot and declared that the direction of the shock was from (say) east
to west, had it been from west to east the side near the torrent would
certainly have fallen. It may have been north to south--my thoughts had
wandered again to the Tower of Siloam. Turiddu, however, had a reason
for not being killed in the earthquake; he is naturally lucky because he
was born with a caul; he keeps most of it at home and speaks of it as his
cammisedda, which is Sicilian for camicetta, his little shirt. He
carries a small piece of it in his watch-case, and offered to give it to
me as a ricordo, but I thought he had better keep it all; it cannot be
lucky to give away any of one's luck.
While Turiddu was with Giovanni and the company touring in North Italy,
he wrote, by desire of his professor, a sort of holiday task about the
earthquake. He gave it to me afterwards, when I saw him in Naples, and I
have translated it. The passages in square brackets are additions I have
made from information the family gave me in Naples.
SUBJECT
Describe all that you saw before and after the earthquake.
DESCRIPTION
It was an ugly winter evening and the last day of the Christmas
holidays. I was playing with nuts with my companions. About six
o'clock we dined and, after we had finished, we began to play at
Sette e Mezzo Reale [a game of cards]. We re-charged the acetylene
lamps, for we intended to sit up late. The professor opened [the
window and went out on] the balcony to see what the weather was like;
observing that the sky was frightful and of a reddish colour, he said
to his wife:
"My dear Nunzia, listen to these few words and bear them in mind:
This is a fatal night, it is a horrible night."
His wife asked, "What are you saying?"
Then the professor replied, "Either we shall have some kind of storm
or there will be a great earthquake or a deluge." To these words we
paid no attention, but went on with our game.
At one o'clock after midnight we extinguished the acetylene gas and
went to bed, where we immediately fell asleep.
At half-past five after midnight there came a great earthquake. I
and my companions began to cry and recommend ourselves to God who can
save from every calamity.
After the earthquake was over we dressed in haste and frenzy and went
out [into the courtyard], but we could not pass the front door [into
the street] because it was blocked with ruins. Presently our
professor crawled out through a hole and we followed him.
In the piazza we saw sights that tore our hearts, and we wept as we
thought of those poor unhappy children left without parents or
relations. And we thanked God who had saved us from such a great
disaster. Every few moments there came more shocks, and there were
we weeping and recommending ourselves to the Lord.
As day broke we saw many wretched creatures being dragged out from
under the heaps of rubbish and being put on carts or laid on the
ground.
We began to feel hungry and begged our professor to buy us some
bread, but he replied:
"There is no place where bread can be bought, we must therefore take
courage, climb back into the house and get a few nuts."
[This re-entering the house was dangerous because it might have
fallen when they were inside, but they managed it in safety and
returned with some maccaroni and bread, also some nuts and two sticks
of dried figs which were there for the festa of Christmas.]
We began to eat the food and, seeing some children near us who also
were hungry, were moved to compassion for their condition and gave
them each something.
In this way we supported life for two days, but on the third day the
food was finished.
[During these two days they were in the ruins of a fish-market, which
was better than being out in the open, but not much because the roof
was broken. They only had such clothes as they had snatched up in
their haste and these were wet through and saturated with mud up to
the knees. They caught colds and the professor was ill for months.]
All day long, bodies were being extricated from the ruins and we
could hardly bear the stench; to make matters worse it was raining,
the houses were on fire, the air was heavy with smoke and there were
constant shocks of earthquake. It seemed like the end of the world.
On the third day I went with our professor to the port to inquire
whether the survivors would be taken to Naples. The captain replied
"Yes." We returned to the market and our path lay among the wounded
and the dead.
When we had reached shelter our professor said:
"Let us take courage and return into the house to bring out some
clothes and linen and the certificates of my niece." We went to the
house, but the door was jammed by reason of the earthquake. While we
were shaking it, there came another shock. We remembered another
door, which we opened, we went in and found the certificates and
brought away all such other things as we thought likely to be useful
for the moment and gradually carried them down. Our professor's
niece made the things up into bundles and put them on our shoulders
and so, passing the heaps of dead bodies, of rubbish and ruins, we
went to the railway station.
Here they made us get into a second-class carriage, which we supposed
would start for Catania, and we had nothing to eat but oranges, which
were given us by a soldier.
[It must have been while they were in this carriage that Corrado and
Vittorio went to the station and took train for Catania, passing
quite close to them and not seeing them. There were twelve
waggon-loads of oranges which had come from Catania before the
disaster in the course of trade, and orders were given that they were
to be distributed among the survivors. Thus the waggons were emptied
and people could be put into them.]
Opposite us was a waggon full of soldiers and sailors. Our
professor's niece called a soldier and begged him not to forget us.
He immediately brought us three loaves of bread, five flasks of wine,
three tins of preserved meat and some sausage.
Imagine our happiness when we saw that meat after those days of
hunger! We drank the wine at once because we had nowhere else to put
it and the soldiers wanted their flasks back. We were eating oranges
all the time, because they gave us plenty.
After we had been in this waggon two days, one of the railway-men
told us that there had come a German steamer which would take us to
Naples. We took with us some bread, some oranges and a little salame
which we had over, and went to the port, where, fortunately, we found
a boat which took us to the steamer.
At five minutes past eleven on the sixth day as the steamer departed
from Messina, the professor, his wife and his niece began to cry.
The German sailors prepared bread and also basins of soup with pasta
in it, and when the bell sounded at noon they distributed the food
among us all.
When we had eaten it, we went below to see whether the women required
anything.
At half-past four they gave us soup with rice in it and plenty of
meat. Then the captain ordered that the fugitives should go below.
We were taken into the second-class cabin which was set apart for the
women and children.
Next day when we arrived at Naples they would not let us disembark
till we had had coffee, after which we all collected and were landed
in boats. First, however, they made all the men descend into one
boat and in another boat all the women.
When we had disembarked at Naples they at once wanted all our names
and then took us to an institution called "Vittoria Colonna," where
in order to restore us we were each given a good cup of coffee and
milk.
THIS LITTLE DESCRIPTION
OF
28 DECEMBER 1908
WRITTEN AT BOLOGNA 27. 1. 09
IS PRESENTED TO
MR. HENRY FESTING JONES
WHO WILL PRESERVE IT AS A LASTING RECORD
OF
TURIDDU BALISTRIERI
FUGITIVE FROM MESSINA
While they were in Messina the children and the niece slept at night, but
the professor and his wife did not sleep at all, and for two of the days
the professor and his wife ate nothing and drank nothing. They were able
to collect drops of rain water, especially when they were in the railway
carriage where they had a roof, and they sometimes collected a little
wood and made a fire. Earthquake shocks were continually occurring.
The professor is also an imbalsamatore and, as an example of his skill,
gave me a stuffed bird which I was to take to London. He said it was a
kind of quail, a bird that reposes near Messina when migrating. His
niece, the studentessa, gave me as a ricordo a pin-cushion; on one side
it has an advertisement of a shop in Messina and on the other a picture
of a lady trying on a new garter, which has been bought at the shop and
which fits perfectly to the delight of her maid and the astonishment of
her grandmother. They had saved these things after the earthquake. One
does not look a gift-horse in the mouth, but I have sometimes wondered
whether the buffo's Cold Dawn had followed the professor and the
studentessa in their flight and whispered to them that they had saved the
wrong objects. Still, a pin-cushion is always useful.
RAILWAY PORTERS
Some years ago the station porter who attended to my luggage at Messina
gave me his name and address, saying that if I would send him a post-card
next time I came, he would meet me and look after me. Since then I have
passed through Messina once, and sometimes twice, a year and he has
always met me. I wrote to him from London after the earthquake inquiring
whether he was alive or dead, but he did not receive my card till nearly
eight months later, after it had been returned to me and I had sent it to
him again. I had in the meantime heard, in an indirect way, that he was
one of the station porters who had survived. In the August following the
earthquake I sent him a card to say I was coming by steamer from Naples,
and he was in a little boat in the port to meet me.
There was a difference in his manner and a new look in his eyes. When he
had been talking some time, I mentioned it, and he admitted that he felt
different since the earthquake. His house fell and he lay buried in the
ruins with nothing to eat or drink and seriously wounded. A friend came
looking for him and after three days he was extricated, restored to life
and properly taken care of. But his wife and child were killed and his
home destroyed. He has been born again naked into the world, no wonder
there is a strange look in his eyes. We were joined by his cousin,
another porter, who was seven days in the ruins, starved into
unconsciousness. When the soldiers rescued him they thought he was dead,
but they took him where the doctors gradually brought him back to life.
He did not mind the dying after it had once set in, everything gave way
to the indolent pleasure of irresponsible drifting, but the restoration
was a difficult and exhausting business. He will be thought to be dead
again some day, and will be allowed to continue his sleep in peace
without any troublesome awakening.
I looked in the eyes of the men who were hanging about among the
temporary wooden sheds in the piazza in front of the station, and saw in
many of them the expression that was in my porter's eyes, the expression
that betrays those who are the figli del terremoto, those who have been
born again with the earthquake for their second mother, and I remembered
that the same expression was in the eyes of Turiddu's professor in
Naples. I had supposed it to be normal with the professor, but it was
the first time I had seen him; now I understood that it was not there
before. They have not all this look. Turiddu has not got it, nor has my
porter's cousin. The professor is sixty-two, Turiddu is only twelve and
was able to sleep. My porter is about forty-two, his cousin is not yet
thirty. Again, the professor had the responsibility of his party;
Turiddu had none. My porter has lost his wife and child; his cousin is
unmarried.
These two porters told me a great deal that I had read in the papers in
England; to hear it from them on the spot made it more real, and
especially to see their gestures describing how the earthquake took the
houses and worried them as a terrier worries a rat. Few houses were not
wrecked. I pointed to one which I knew to be the Palazzo dei Carabinieri
at a corner of a street leading out of the station piazza, but my porter
replied:
"You are looking at a corner of it and can only see two walls. The other
walls and the floors have fallen. If the shutters were open you would
see the sky where the rooms ought to be."
At the other corner of the street used to stand the Albergo di Francia,
where I stayed once when all the other hotels were full because the wind
was so strong that the ferry-boat could not get out of the harbour to
take the travellers across the straits. The albergo was lying in a heap
on the ground; in its fall it had crushed and killed and buried the young
landlord, Michele;--"God rest his soul in heaven, so merry!"
I uttered some banality about their having passed through a terrible
time. They accepted my remark as a final summing up and said it was
better not to talk about it. It was evidently a relief to them to talk
of something else.
Before Messina can be rebuilt on its old site, the ruins must be cleared
away and the disputes about the boundaries must be settled, and this will
take time. Meanwhile the people are living in the wooden bungalows of a
New Messina which is growing up outside the old town. I spent two days
there in the spring of 1910 and again in 1911. The Viale San Martino is
the principal street. There are hotels, bookshops, sweet-shops,
tobacconists, jewellers, butchers, restaurants with tables ready spread,
and the lottery offices are open. Most of the huts have no upper storey
and some are no bigger than half a dozen sentry boxes knocked into one.
It is very dusty. The boys are crying papers up and down the street,
there are barbers' saloni and shops with silver-topped canes. The
earthquake seems to be forgotten in the intensity of the bubbling life.
As I passed the Municipio in a side street, I saw a wedding party going
in. One evening I went to the theatre and saw _Feudalismo_ with Giovanni
Grasso, a homonymous cousin of the great Giovanni, in the principal part
and Turiddu's mother, Signora Balistrieri, as one of the women.
The first time I was in Messina after the earthquake all this was only
beginning and many of the people were living in railway waggons in the
sidings, of which few now remain. It was strange to see rows of railway
carriages with curtains to the windows and some with steps up to the door
and a little terrace outside with creepers growing over it. The cabins
and the waggons are supposed to be safe, because they would not crush
their tenants in another earthquake. But they do not seriously fear
another earthquake; Messina has been so thoroughly destroyed that it must
now be the turn of some other town.
I replied: "Yes, the Veil of S. Agata preserved Catania this time, but it
may desert her next time as the Letter of the Madonna deserted you last
winter. By the by, what has become of that miraculous Letter? Was it
destroyed or did anyone save it?"
They did not know and muttered something about "stupidagini," and perhaps
there will be no need to trouble oneself with any such thoughts when one
is living the life after death. Later on, in another part of the island,
I asked a dignitary of the Church, who had not been through the
earthquake, what had become of the Madonna's Letter and he assured me
that it had been preserved. I had pretty well made up my mind that this
would be his answer before putting the question; but if the earthquake
had destroyed Girgenti and I had asked him about the letter from the
Devil, which is said to be preserved in the cathedral there, I should
have expected him to tell me that that letter had not survived the shock.
GIUSEPPE PLATANIA
In Catania I saw my friend Lieutenant Giuseppe Platania, who was
quartered in Messina during the winter of 1908-9. He was away for
Christmas and returned about midnight on the 27th December and went to
bed at two in the morning on the 28th. He was awakened by the falling of
a picture, which hit him. He guessed the reason, covered his head with
the pillows and lay still, waiting. He had to wait fifty-seven
seconds--at least many people told me the earthquake lasted fifty-seven
seconds, but the recording instruments were broken, so it is not certain
how long it lasted. When the room left off rocking, Giuseppe put out his
hand for the match-box, but the table was no longer by his bedside. He
heard cries for help, and a man who was sleeping in the next room came
with a light, then he saw that the floor of his room had fallen, but not
under his bed, which was in a corner. He and the man with the light
managed to get to the window and let themselves down into a side street,
but they saw no way out because the exit was closed by the fallen houses.
Their window was on the first floor and they climbed back into the house,
helped another man who was there, got themselves some clothes and
returned into the side street. Here they felt no better off and were
afraid of the houses falling on them, but Giuseppe's soldier servant,
Giulio Giuli, a contadino of Nocera, appeared among them. He had come to
look for his master and crept through the ruins into the side street. He
told them that Messina was destroyed, which they would not believe;
everyone seems to have supposed at first that the earthquake had only
damaged his own house. Giulio showed them the way out, and so they got
into the town and realised the extent of the disaster. If Giulio had not
come, Giuseppe and his friends would probably have been destroyed by more
houses falling into their narrow street before they could have found a
way out.
Giuseppe had changed his bedroom about ten days previously. The house he
used to live in was completely destroyed, he showed me a photograph of
its ruins. His mother and his brother Giovanni, in Catania, heard of the
disaster, but could get no particulars because communication was broken.
Giovanni went to Messina to inquire for his brother, not knowing where
his new room was, but he knew the number of his regiment. He stopped a
soldier in the street who was wearing the number in his cap and who told
him where to find Giuseppe. In the meantime Giulio had walked about
fifteen miles to Ali, whence he took the train to Catania, told the
mother her son was safe, and returned to Messina to help in the work of
rescuing victims.
Giuseppe directed his soldiers in the rescue work and afterwards received
a medal "Per speciali benemerenze." While at work they saw a hand among
the ruins and began to dig round it, all the time in fear lest the
disturbing of the rubbish might make matters worse for the victim and for
themselves. The hand belonged to a woman whose head had been protected
by being under a wooden staircase. She showed no sign of life and it was
already four days since the disaster. They wetted her lips with marsala
and poured some into her mouth and thus restored her. Giuseppe told me
that nothing made more impression on him than seeing this woman's breast
begin to heave as life returned.
The soldiers had to shoot the horses and dogs for eating the corpses, and
the thieves for pilfering. The horses had escaped from their stables,
which were broken by the earthquake, and the dogs had come in from the
country. And besides the pilfering they told me of other things the
doing of which had better be ignored by those who seriously cultivate the
belief that civilisation and education have already so transformed human
nature that all restraints may be safely removed, things which,
nevertheless, were done by human beings in Messina while the houses were
tottering during the closing days of 1908 and the opening weeks of 1909.
I inquired whether the townspeople were themselves guilty of these
horrors and they said: No. The bad things were done by people who came
into the city from the country, like the dogs, and across the straits
from Calabria to take advantage of the catastrophe. As my friend Peppino
Fazio in Catania put it:
"The earthquake was very judiciously managed; it killed only the wicked
townspeople; it did not touch the good ones, they all escaped."
Giuseppe's brother, Giovanni Platania, is a scientific man and a
professor; he went often from Catania to Messina during the early part of
1909 to study the behaviour of the sea during the earthquake--the
maremoto. He has embodied the results of his researches in an opuscolo
on the subject _Il Maremoto dello Stretto di Messina del 28 Dicembre_
1908 (Modena. Societa Tipografica Modenese, 1909). It took him twelve
hours to return to Catania from one of his first visits; the journey in
ordinary times is performed by the express in two hours and a half.
There was no charge for the tickets because it was the policy of the
authorities to empty the town; in this way malefactors who escaped from
the prison got easily away. In the train was a woman who talked, saying
that no one could blame her for travelling to Catania free, especially as
she had not deserved to be put in prison--she had been put there for
nothing. There was also a man who did not exactly say he was a thief,
but he informed his fellow-travellers that the bundle he had with him had
been confided to his care by the padrone of his house. There was no
reason why he should have told them this, no one had asked him about his
bundle, and Giovanni drew his own conclusions.
GIULIO ADAMO
In Trapani I talked with another friend, a doctor, Giulio Adamo of
Calatafimi. Communication was broken and it was not until the evening of
the 29th that they began to know in Trapani that there had been an
earthquake in Messina. Giulio went with others by train to Milazzo and
the train could go no further. They continued the journey by boat from
Milazzo to Messina, where he arrived on the 30th. When they approached
the city and saw the row of houses facing the harbour where the Albergo
Trinacria was, they thought the disaster could not have been so very
great. But it was only the facciata that was standing, the houses behind
were down. There was great disorder, heaps of bodies, no water to drink
because the pipes were broken, and for the three days Giulio was there
they only had bread from Palermo and the oranges which were in the
railway-waggons.
CECE LUNA
In Palermo I talked with another doctor, Cece (Francesco) Luna, of
Trapani, whose acquaintance I made many years ago on Monte Erice when he
was there as a student in villeggiatura. In September, 1909, I found him
in the children's hospital at Palermo. As soon as news of the earthquake
reached the city, the _Regina Margherita_ was fitted out to help the
wounded and Cece went in her among the doctors. When they arrived at
Messina, they could neither enter the harbour nor take anyone on board
because they had to obey orders. It was raining, the sea was rough and
covered with little boats full of fugitives, some unhurt, some wounded.
One boat contained a young man holding an umbrella over his mother, who
was wounded and lying on two tables.
"I am strong. I can wait seven or eight days without food, it is not for
me, it is for my mother."
He cried and prayed till the orders came and she was taken on board.
Cece, who was put in charge of the taking on board of the fugitives,
ordered that the wounded were to be taken first. He was somewhat
surprised that this order was attended to; it was so, however, the
wounded were taken in without confusion; but afterwards among the
unwounded there was confusion. There was a boy who tried to get on board
first, Cece pulled the boy's cap off and threw it away, intending it to
fall in the sea, but it fell in another boat and the boy went after his
cap and gave no more trouble.
The earthquake was at about 5.20 a.m. on 28th December; the _Regina
Margherita_ arrived at Messina at 8 a.m. on the 30th December. As soon
as Cece landed, he began searching with others and at 10 a.m. found, in a
well-furnished house, a woman dead in bed, killed by a beam which had
fallen across her. Under the beam, close to her body, lay a baby girl,
very dirty but alive and untouched. It was impossible to say precisely
when the child had been born, but certainly only a few hours before the
earthquake, just time enough for the midwife to leave the house, for they
found no trace of her. Cece took the baby to the steamer and gave it
sugar and water, and when they returned to Palermo they got it a
wet-nurse and it was baptised Maria in the children's hospital. If one
has an earthquake in one's horoscope, surely it could not be placed at a
less inconvenient part of one's life. New-born babies can live three or
four days without food; but if this child had not been born before the
earthquake, she would not have been born at all, and if she had been born
earlier, she would have died of starvation or exposure before she was
found. As it happened she was sheltered and her life preserved by the
beam which killed her mother. Maria was adopted by a lady of Palermo,
and in April, 1910, Cece told me he had lately seen her and she was
beginning to walk.
Cece had had twenty earthquake babies in his hospital, all with fathers
and mothers unknown, and, of course, other hospitals were equally full.
When I was at Palermo in 1909 he had only seven of the twenty, the rest
having been taken away, some by their fathers and mothers, others by
people who adopted them. Travelling back to England I saw in the railway
stations at Rome, Milan, and other places, frames of photographs of
unclaimed babies put up in the hope that they might be recognised by
chance travellers.
The _Regina Margherita_ stayed at Messina one day, loading, and then
returned to Palermo with five hundred unwounded and eighty-two wounded.
Cece remained in Messina, searching, but joined the ship when she
returned to Messina, where she took up her station in port as a floating
hospital.
He told me of a woman who was in the ruins, alive but unable to move.
Her daughter lay dead beside her. It was raining, there was a dripping
and she was getting wet. With the morning light she saw it was not the
rain that was wetting her, but the blood of her husband and two grown-up
sons who were dead in the room above.
He told me of a law-student in Palermo, twenty-four years old, engaged to
a young lady who lived in Messina; this young man went to pass his
Christmas holidays with his betrothed. He was not in the same house and
the earthquake did him no harm; as soon as it was over his first thought
was for his fidanzata. He got into the street and made for her house,
paying no attention to the cries that issued from the ruins. But, like a
wandering knight on his way to assist his lady and embarrassed by meeting
other adventures, he was stopped and forced to help in searching a
particular house, from which he extricated a beautiful girl, nineteen
years of age, unhurt. She would not let him go till he had saved her
mother. All the others in the house were killed. Still the girl would
not let him go.
"Are you rich?" she asked.
"No."
"Then take this ring and tell me who you are."
He took the ring and after giving her all the information she required
was allowed to proceed. When he came to the house of his betrothed he
found that she and all her family had perished. He returned to Palermo
weeping.
Two months later he received a letter:
I asked if you were rich; you replied "No" and I gave you my ring. You
saved my mother and you saved me. My mother has since died from the
effects of the shock. If you are free I am ready to marry you and I have
money enough for both.
On this they became engaged and after a suitable time intend to marry.
Cece wanted to apologise for the conventionality of this story, but I
begged him not to trouble; if unassisted nature were to be always
original, the occupation of poets and romancers would be gone.
In one house was a servant, a Roman woman; she was devoted to a young
lady of the family and all the family were buried in the ruins, but the
Roman servant was unhurt. She could get no help, the house was on the
outskirts of the city and such passers-by as there were would not stop.
She set to work searching for her young mistress and incidentally saved
the whole family. It took her twenty-four hours; they were all wounded
and her young mistress was the last she found.
A woman kept a small shop opposite another shop kept by a man who sold
coal. The woman had saved money and the carbonajo knew she had her money
in her house. He entered the woman's house after the earthquake,
accompanied by another malefactor. The woman's daughter was killed, but
the woman was under the ruins alive and they pulled her out. She
exclaimed:
"I do not know you."
But she did know the carbonajo quite well, or at least well enough to
know he was a bad man and to suspect his intention. They asked her where
her money was concealed. She only repeated:
"I do not know you."
They believed her, thinking she was confused by the shock of the
earthquake; this was what she intended, otherwise she feared they would
have killed her. They threatened her, and at last she told them where
the money was, still protesting that she did not know them. They took
her money and then, being afraid she might give the alarm and they might
be caught before they could escape, they pinned her down with a large
piece of the ruins on her left arm and departed, taking the risk of her
being rescued later and saying she had been robbed by unknown men. She
was rescued and brought to Palermo. In the hospital she begged Cece to
put an end to her:
"What is the use of living? My daughter is dead, my arm is gangrened, my
money is stolen. Let me die and have done with it."
Cece did not kill her, he chloroformed her and amputated her arm. She
gave information about the carbonajo, who was arrested in Messina. His
accomplice escaped, but the woman got back her money and thanked Cece for
amputating her arm instead of killing her.
FUGITIVES AND VICTIMS
At Caltanissetta they told me that the trains were bringing fugitives
from Messina all day and all night. The fugitives were mostly naked and
all very dirty, some with rugs, some with cloaks, some with rags. A
woman got out of the train clothed, like Monna Vanna, in nothing but a
cloak which a soldier had given her. They asked her:
"What do you want done for you?"
She opened her cloak and showed that she wanted everything.
Another woman came with her daughter whose leg was broken and they were
both naked. The doctor said to the mother:
"And what do you want?"
"Help for my daughter."
To another destitute woman: "And you?"
"Shoes for my baby."
Michele, a young man, was known to be in Reggio where he was employed in
the Municipio. His father went from Caltanissetta to look for him and
returned after four days, during which he had searched for his son and
suffered mental anguish and physical discomfort. His friends went to the
station to meet him. He talked politics to them and asked their opinion
about the rotation of crops.
"And Michele?" they inquired.
"Oh! Michele," here he began to laugh: "Michele; yes, he is buried under
the ruins of a house three storeys high."
They could get nothing more out of him except laughter and that Michele
was lying under a house three storeys high. A few months later,
Michele's body was found, with no traces of decay, brought to
Caltanissetta and buried. Then his friends wrote elegies in verse about
him and handed them round for approval.
Plenty of people went mad besides Michele's father. The streets of
Messina were full of mad people. They told me of one who lost his wife.
Within a fortnight he married a widow whose husband had been destroyed.
This happy couple spent their honeymoon in digging out the bodies of
their previous spouses and having them suitably buried.
When I say they married, a widow may not legally marry for ten months
after the death of her husband, but this couple married on credit, as
they call it. There were many fugitives who found a temporary asylum in
a prison in Catania and who similarly married on credit, intending to
return later and contribute to the population of the new Messina.
There was a family living on the top floor of a house close to the
railway station near the port in Reggio. They were not hurt, but they
could not get down because the earthquake had destroyed the stairs. The
man made a rope of sheets, with the help of which he carried his wife
down, then he went up and fetched his children one after another, three
or four children. He went up again to fetch his money and while in his
room the house fell with him, killing and burying him in the ruins. But
he had saved his wife and children.
They told me of a victim, pinned down in a cellar, unable to rise; a
chicken, whose coop had been broken, escaped and passed near; the victim
caught the chicken, killed it, plucked it and ate it raw. They told me
of others, not pinned down but imprisoned in rooms, who ate what they
found in cupboards--oil, biscuits, salame, uncooked maccaroni. These
victims were saved and lived to recount their sufferings. But there were
others, pinned down and imprisoned, whose bodies were not extricated till
they had lain for weeks and months beside their emptied cupboards, no
longer on the watch for escaping chickens. I was in Catania about a year
and a half after the earthquake and saw the funeral of one whose body had
recently been found; it was not the last.
THE SLOPES OF ETNA