THE NAKED RUNNERS
One may see in the foregoing story of S. Alfio the foundation of some of
the incidents painted on the carts, and perhaps the saints' travelling
bareheaded and barefooted is the origin of the people running so to
Trecastagne, but I can find nothing in the book to support the belief
that S. Alfio was a medical man or that he ever cured anyone of hernia.
Nevertheless that he was a medical man, especially successful in treating
hernia, is believed by everyone in and round Catania. Fortified by my
book I ventured to doubt it and asked my friends in what university he
took his diploma. They replied that I was confusing cause and effect;
for in the beginning it was not the universities that made the doctors,
it was the doctors that made the universities.
I then pointed out that he could not even cure himself from the wounds
made by the tortures; SS. Peter and Paul had to come to the Roman prison,
S. Andrea had to be called in at Mascali and the old man girdled with
grace and celestial light at Lentini. But they disposed of this by
reminding me that medical men are notoriously powerless to cure
themselves.
Then I objected that a saint who was born in 230 and who died in 253 was
too young to have got together anything of a practice. They replied that
the carts show him exercising his profession.
"Where are these carts?" I exclaimed. "If they are in Catania, let them
be called and give their evidence in the usual manner."
So we looked at all the carts we met that were not going too fast. On
one of them Garibaldi was landing at Marsala and overcoming the Bourbons
at Calatafimi; on another Cristoforo Colombo was receiving a bag of gold
from Ferdinand and Isabella, who wanted to put an end to all this wearing
delay about the discovery of America; on another Don Jose was being made
a fool of by Carmen in the wine-shop of Lillas Pastia; we saw the
enthusiasm of the Crusaders on catching sight of Jerusalem; Otello was
smothering Desdemona; we saw the Rape of the Sabines and somebody before
the Soldan. But none of these pictures threw any light on S. Alfio.
Peppino Di Gregorio said we must have patience. So we patiently turned
down another street and saw King Ruggero dismissing the ambassadors:
"Return at once to your Lord and tell him that we Sicilians are not--"
something for which the artist had left so little room that it was
illegible, but the noble attitude of King Ruggero conveyed the meaning:
we saw Mazeppa bound to a white horse rushing through a rocky wood and
frightening the lions and tigers; Etna was in eruption; banners were
being blessed by the Pope; Musolino was tripping over that cursed wire
and being taken by the carabinieri; Paolo and Francesca were abandoning
the pursuit of literature in favour of an eternity of torment--anything
rather than go on reading in that book. Still there was nothing about S.
Alfio.
They then proposed a visit to the workshop of a man who earns his living
by painting carts. We found him at work on the birth of Rinaldo who came
into the world with his right hand closed. The doctors and nurses were
standing round, wondering; they all tried but they could do nothing.
After eight days the baby, yielding to the incessant caresses of his
adorata mamma, opened his fist and lo! it contained a scrap of paper with
his name--Rinaldo--written upon it.
We begged the artist to show us a cart with the Life of S. Alfio, or the
designs for such a life. And he could not. He said such carts were rare
and he had no designs; when asked to paint the story of S. Alfio he does
it out of his head, putting in anything that his patrons particularly
order. We asked how old he makes the saints and he replied that his
instructions usually are to make them about sixteen. So that the carts,
if we could find them, would not be evidence of anything but the
well-known habit of artists to flatter their sitters. Still I should
have liked to see pictures of the young doctor, the young surgeon and the
young chemist curing patients of hernia and being martyred for the faith.
On the 9th of May in the evening we all went to the Teatro Machiavelli
and, coming out a little before midnight, walked up the Via Stesicoro
Etnea to the Piazza Cavour. The pavements were lined with people who had
come to see the sight and the roadway was left for those who were going
to Trecastagne. There were innumerable painted carts, some of them
nearly as fine as Ricuzzu's birthday present; the horses and mules were
so splendidly harnessed and so proud of themselves that Peppino Di
Gregorio called them "cavalli mafiosi"; they were driving fast out of the
city with coloured lights and fireworks. Every now and then came a naked
man running in the road and carrying a large wax candle. They speak of
them as I Nudi, but they were not really naked; they wore white cotton
drawers down to their knees, a broad red waist-band and a broad red scarf
and some of them wore a flannel jersey. They were all bare-headed and
bare-footed, or rather without boots, for they wore socks; this is enough
to satisfy S. Alfio, who, being a doctor, does not insist on their taking
needless risk. Nevertheless the socks must get torn to pieces before
they are out of the town, and their feet must be bleeding long before
they reach Trecastagne. Some of the so-called nudi, both men and women,
were fully dressed except that they were without hats or boots. They all
ran, occasionally they may rest by walking, but they may not dance and
they may not stop and they may not greet their friends in the crowd
except by shouting "Con vera fede, Viva S. Alfio!" Each of them carries
his candle in his hand and it may cost five or ten francs, some cost as
much as twenty francs. For days before the festa they go about Catania
with trays collecting soldi from all they meet. But if one of them meets
the doctor who attended him in the hospital, he is careful not to make
the mistake of asking the doctor for a subscription. So they ran and
shouted, and I said:
"These are the carts that ought to have the story of S. Alfio. Couldn't
we stop one and look at it?"
They recommended me not to try, it would block the stream of traffic and
the people would not like it. So we sat in the piazza till about two in
the morning and watched them passing.
That was not all we were to see. In the afternoon of the 10th of May
everyone who was left in Catania went out towards Trecastagne to see the
return of the people, who are said to be drunk after their religious
devotions. In order to do this in comfort Peppino Di Gregorio had
arranged that we should go to colazione with Giovanni Bianca, a friend of
his who has a country house on the Slopes of Etna near the route, and
afterwards we would go where we could see the return of the devout.
First, he said, we must go to the station and fetch Joe, because he was
to come too.
I said: "With pleasure, but why go to the station? I thought Joe was
employed in the municipio?"
"We shall find him keeping order among the coachmen in the station-yard,"
replied Peppino.
And there he was in the uniform of a guardia municipale.
"Why, Joe!" I exclaimed, "I thought you were writing at a desk all day in
the Mansion House. I did not know you were a policeman."
He replied that he was a guardia municipale, which is not exactly the
same thing, and was going on to explain the difference between the
carabinieri, the pubblica sicurezza, the guardia municipale, the guardia
campestre and all the rest of it, when I interrupted him:
"I shall never remember what you are telling me; I shall always think of
you as a policeman."
"All right," he replied, "I'll be Joe the Policeman, and Ninu is a
policeman too."
"I can quite believe it," I said. "When we went to the lava you both
treated me just as our policemen in London treat the old ladies and
gentlemen who are afraid of the traffic; you helped me along and never
let me fall down, and looked after me as though I had been given
specially into your charge. London policemen are just like that--very
kind and helpful. I know one of them in private life and he is a capital
fellow. I made his acquaintance over my bicycle."
"How was that?" inquired Joe. "Did you get run over and did he pick you
up? What did I tell you about living on the slopes of volcanoes?"
"It was not exactly that," I replied; "it was because I wanted to avoid
being run over that I gave my bicycle to a man to sell it for me when the
motor-cars began to get on my nerves, and this policeman bought it. He
did not give much for it, but if the value of his friendship is taken
into the account I think I made rather a good bargain."
"Tell me about him."
"Oh, there's nothing to tell. He comes to see me sometimes, when he is
free. We have tastes in common; for instance, we do not like knock-about
brothers at a music-hall--they bore us. And then books; our tastes in
literature, however, are less alike; but he is quite a reader. Once he
had in his pocket The _Beauties of Nature_, by Sir John Lubbock--that was
to improve his mind--and _Little Lord Fauntleroy_, which he was reading
for pure enjoyment. I told him that I also had written a book and he
wanted to read it, so I lent it to him."
"I hope he appreciated it?" inquired Joe sympathetically.
"He was extremely polite about it. Next time I saw him he said: 'Well,
I've been reading your book'; (he spoke with great deliberation) 'I can
get on with it. Yes. It doesn't drag upon me. I don't feel it's time
wasted. But, you know, if I ever do anything of that sort, I think it
will be more in the style of Charlie Dickens.'"
"I should not call that very polite of him, was it?"
"I am not so sure. We must distinguish. He was not thinking of the
Dickens of _Pickwick_ with all his beaux moments, he was thinking of that
other Dickens of the _Christmas Books_ with all his mauvais quarts
d'heure."
"But have you two authors named Dickens in England?"
Then I saw that to my audience Dickens was as much a sealed book as
Moliere and that my literary policeman must be reserved until I can write
_Diversions in London_. So I turned the conversation by telling Joe that
Dickens is not an uncommon name in England and is a form of Riccardo, as
Jones is a form of Giovanni.
While talking we were on our way to Joe's house, where he changed from
his uniform to his private clothes, and then we took the tram to Cibali.
Here we bought provisions and carried them with us to the country house,
which was not yet properly open for the summer. We had picked up our
host, Giovanni Bianca, on the way, and he took us round and showed us the
garden, which was full of flowers and fruit trees and vines; he showed us
also the lava of 1669 which destroyed part of Catania. He gave me a
piece of primeval lava from the bottom of the well which his father had
dug, about 150 feet down. I inquired how old that lava would be. He was
not sure, but it would be older than the Romans, older than the Greeks,
older than the Sikels or the Sikans.
"Say ten thousand years old," said Giovanni, and he said it without being
in the least embarrassed, but then he is not a canonico and has not Moses
hanging as a dead weight on him. He went on to say that he did not
really know. "The memory of man," he said, "works very imperfectly, and
to understand these things one ought to study the science of geology."
In the afternoon we went across country to a spot on the route, past
which the people had already begun to come. I asked, what they had been
doing at Trecastagne all night. They told me that the journey from
Catania takes about three hours, more or less according to the ability of
the runner, so that they begin to arrive somewhere about 3 a.m. and keep
on arriving all the morning; and others come from other villages on the
eastern slopes. Then they make a row till the church is opened and the
nudi go in and light their candles before S. Alfio. Some of them go on
their knees and lick the stone floor of the church all the way from the
entrance to the altar, but this is being discouraged because it covers
the floor with blood and is considered not to be hygienic. Perhaps it
might also be well to prohibit the running with bare feet, for that must
also make the floor in an unhygienic condition, to say nothing of the
roads that lead to the village. Some take stones and beat their breasts,
and they all shout continually "Con buona fede, Viva S. Alfio!" After
Mass they dress and eat and drink. Some of them have carried their food
on their backs, others have friends who have brought it in their carts,
and the food includes eels, which come from the Lake of Lentini; thus
they enjoy the luxury of eating fish on the Slopes of Etna and moreover
fish from the place of S. Alfio's martyrdom. At midday the car bearing
the three saints is brought out into the street, but this, it seems, does
not interest the nudi; they have run naked to the shrine, they have
lighted their candles, they have performed their vow and are now free to
enjoy themselves. Of course, those who suffer from hernia do not attempt
to run until after they believe themselves to be cured of that complaint;
but rheumatic patients are often much better after running to
Trecastagne, the exertion has upon them an effect like that of a Turkish
bath, but it knocks them up in other ways.
By the afternoon, when it is time to return, what with the running, the
walking, the driving, the fasting, the shouting, the religious
exaltation, the want of sleep, the eating and drinking, the fireworks and
the jollity of the festa, many of them are drunk. Joe says the festa is
a continuation of some Bacchic festival, and this is more than likely,
just as it is more than likely that the Bacchic festival was a
continuation of some earlier one. He wants S. Alfio to be a
transformation of Bacchus, just as Bacchus was a transformation of
Dionysus and Dionysus of some earlier divinity, and so on back to him who
first discovered wine, ages and ages before the vates sacer who
immortalised Noah.
"And how much do the people believe?" I asked.
"Ah!" replied Joe; "who knows? And what is faith?"
"I'm sure I don't know," I said; "sometimes one thing and sometimes
another. It is a difficult question."
Then I remembered that he had asked me the same question, and I had made
the same reply at Nicolosi six weeks before, and I also remembered
something that had happened in between. "The other day," I continued, "I
had to wait in the station at Messina, and I asked the porter who was
helping me with my baggage whether he had seen the comet. He replied,
'No, I have not seen the comet, and I shall not even look for it; I do
not believe in the comet.'"
"Oh, well, you know what he meant by that? He had heard that it was
going to destroy the world, so he did not want to believe in it; he did
not want it to exist; he was not going to encourage such a dangerous
phenomenon by having anything to do with it. 'I'll leave you alone and I
expect you to leave me alone.'"
"Yes; I suppose he thought that if he removed his custom the comet would
fail."
"Precisely. But it is not quite that with S. Alfio; they want him to
exist; they are afraid that if they don't believe in him, he will leave
off performing miracles and will no longer cure them."
"It seems to me," I said, "that they are dominated by the prepotenza of
S. Alfio very much as the sulphur-miners are dominated by the prepotenza
of their capo-mafioso."
"With this distinction," he replied, "that the capo-mafioso has the
power, and sometimes the will, to hurt them; it would require a struggle
to destroy his prepotenza and there is the risk of failure. With S.
Alfio, if they cared to be master in their own house, they have only got
to leave off believing in him, there need be no struggle and there could
be no risk."
"You speak as though they could believe or leave off believing at will."
"So they can, in the loose sense in which they use the word. They only
go on believing because their vanity is involved--it flatters them to
attribute the gift of miracles to a creature of their own imagination
and, by being satisfied with very little and very poor evidence, they
make things easy for S. Alfio. But they could not tell you this
themselves, they are half asleep about it."
I said: "Of course they are half asleep about it, and all S. Alfio's
interests are bound up in their remaining so. They are not only asleep,
they are dreaming, as the Red King dreamt of Alice. If they were to wake
up S. Alfio would go out--bang!--just like a candle."
Alice and the Red King were as unknown to Joe as Poins or Moliere or
Dickens. I did my best to explain the allusion, but I doubt whether I
succeeded, for when I had finished he only said that Tweedledum and
Tweedledee had better not go about saying things like that, or their
bishop would be warning them to be on their guard as he warned the
Canonico Recupero. I must try whether he will understand better if I
send him a copy of _Through the Looking-Glass_ for his next onomastico.
He told me something which makes me suspect that the people must have a
dim feeling of how things really are. It seems that sometimes, though
rarely, it pleases them to pretend to believe that their padrone has
displeased them. Then they half wake up and depose him; but nothing
comes of it, they only choose a new one or, after a short time, reinstate
the old one.
We went to a house on the route and sat on a balcony in the sunset and
the drunken people pelted down-hill, smothered in the golden glory of the
dust they raised, banging their tambourines, blowing their whistles, and
singing that now the festa was over they must go home and work to pay the
debts it had run them into. It was no more use to think of stopping them
to see the pictures now than when they were going out; so I pigeon-holed
what the carts say about S. Alfio with my poor mother's problem about
what influence people who never go to church have over their servants.
The cavalli mafiosi and the carts were stuck about with coloured feathers
and festooned with bunches of garlic, with flowers, with lumps of lard,
with little flags and ribbons, with garlands of caruba beans and with
vetch. The flags, the ribbons, the flowers and the feathers were, I
suppose, for gaiety and festa--pour faire la frime--but garlic has some
magically beneficent properties; not only does it avert the evil eye, it
is also a symbol of robust health, so that instead of replying to "How do
you do?" by saying "As right as rain," they reply, "As right as garlic."
They believe that to put three crosses of garlic under the bed of a woman
in child-birth will ensure a happy issue. There is something fortunate
or healthy also about vetch and, no doubt, some special significance
about lard and the beans of the carob. These beliefs are based lower
than Giovanni Bianca's primeval lava, and I know no more about their
origin than he does, but I suppose they are older than the Romans, older
than the Greeks, older than the Sikels and the Sikans--probably much more
than ten thousand or fourteen thousand years old. They spring from a
soil which has become fertile by catching the dust of ages, tossed to and
fro and carried about by every wind of doctrine, wherein generations of
beliefs have grown up, flourished and decayed. There is no more
fertilising manure for a struggling young faith than the rotting remains
of a dead superstition. And the roots pierce down beneath the soil and
shoot into the crevices of an intolerance more unyielding than buried
lava. To understand these things, one ought to become a pupil of
Professore Pitre, and make a study of the science of demopsicologia, and
even then one would only get glimpses of the more recent deposits of
civilisation that lie crushed one under the other like the parallel
surfaces of rich earth in the pit sunk near Jaci.
Whatever the significance of the things they carried or the origin of
their belief in them, the people in the carts kept flinging them to the
boys in the road, who caught them and picked them up and carried them off
to make their festa with them later on. They were all very lively, but
no one seemed to me very drunk, not more drunk than the nudi were naked;
there were drunken people among them, but not enough to make me feel sure
that S. Alfio ought to be identified with Bacchus. One can see more
drunkenness on Hampstead Heath on a Bank Holiday, but one does not
hastily identify Saint Lubbock with Dionysus.
CATANIA