THE DEPARTURE
As the sun was sinking this Saturday, the bells in the tower of the
principal church began an unwonted clangor, and I was told that the
Squadrito relatives had paid for a special service at vespers for the
safe journey and prosperity of our party. As we wound along our way to
the village we could see little groups of people, some in holiday dress,
and others, for the most part, in the clothes in which they left the
fields, the wine-presses, the cheese-shops, the smithies and the
orchards. As we entered the square we met one of the priests, a benign
old man, one of the truest and best types of the sincere rural clergy I
have ever seen. After taking a pinch of snuff, he offered the box to me
with a quizzical smile, knowing full well the un-Americanism of snuff.
There was a hasty exchange of compliments and well-wishes, then he
passed on to the sacristy.
Jules Breton has caught and put on canvas, more than once, the spirit of
peasant piety which pervaded that vespers; the air of restful,
provincial, old-world religious fixity, breathing through the richly
colored and wonderfully picturesque scene in that ancient church.
Around the tallow-encrusted base of the figure of San Francesco, the
patron saint of the village, flared the great yellow candles. A few
glimmered on the altar. The figure stood on a pedestal a little to one
side of the centre of the church. To the left, kneeling on the worn
stones of the floor, or sitting on tiny rush-bottomed chairs, were the
closely grouped women, some few in the coveted black-lace prayer-shawls,
but the mass in the solid-colored commoner ones, drawn over the head and
spreading out into a cone around the kneeling or sitting figure. These
shawls, dark red, green, or yellow, treasured among the poor, made that
night in the candle-light a softened color-scheme that is indescribable.
To the right were the men and boys, clad for the most part in the baggy
homespun worn in the fields, though here and there some villager boasted
a suit from the tailor’s hands.
As we entered, an old man with furrowed face, horn spectacles and
raucous voice, and a slender, Raphael-faced boy, both in vestments, were
chanting from well-thumbed books held into the light of the candles
about the saint’s figure. Overhead in the choir the old organ toiled
uncertainly through the music of the service, and ever and anon the boy
took up and rang the tinkling silver bell.
His clear, superb soprano voice was in fine contrast with that of the
elder singer, but the whole scene, the portion of the service at the
altar, the muffled murmur of the people repeating the forms, the rustle
and stir as they knelt or rose, the shifting of the shadows on the wall,
was all so strange, almost barbaric, yet so harmonious and beautiful
that its very detail was evasive.
When the service was ended, the people, without haste or without form,
gathered around the priest while he christened a tiny wailing infant,
held up by the midwife, with the proud father at her side. They named it
Giuseppe. Yet another to join the millions of Giuseppes, Giacomos and
Giovannis!
As we left the church, the father of the child followed us and bade us
come to his house, where the christening was being celebrated. Through
the dark, narrow streets we wended our way to the other end of the town,
climbed the stone stairs to an overcrowded upper room, and spent a
politely sufficient length of time eating anise cakes and drinking sweet
wine.
With the tact of womankind, my wife had brought some trinkets of
American origin as a gift for the child, whereat the assemblage beamed
its appreciation, and just before we left the father said to me aside,
as if it was a secret he was keeping from his wife: “If I can save
twenty more lire, the next one will be born in Pittsburg, praise the
Holy Mother.”
At home all the favored neighbors and relatives had gathered for a
dance. The large room on the ground floor of the Casa Squadrito was
ringed around with a double row of guests. Whole families sat together,
on the stairway were seated the youngsters already drowsy; crowding
around the wide door opening into the street were the unbidden, but none
the less interested and curious. The head of the Mannino family, weary
with the labors of his sixty years and the fatigue of a stiff,
home-laundered collar, was nodding before the music struck up,
occasionally raising his head to blink at the light solemnly and to make
sure none of the young men were unduly near his daughter, the heiress of
his hard-got wealth.
Every one who had any heavy gold rings, bracelets or brooches, or any of
the pretentious gold-mounted strands of old coral, which are handed down
so carefully from mother to daughter, had them on, for a display of gold
ornaments is a sure sign of rural social distinction. Feet that were
rarely shod were now encased in _scarpi_ made by Carmelo Merlino and his
fellow craftsmen in the village, and dress among women in the throng
varied from a department store ready-made cloth gown sent home from
America to a ragged working frock, the wearer of which kept her shoeless
and stockingless feet shyly tucked out of sight.
All were awaiting our arrival, for Antonio, who was with us, was host as
well as chief musician. A home-made acetylene lamp, of the blacksmith
brother’s contriving, was lighted and set high up on a bracket, throwing
every object in the room, even to the boys perched in the transom, into
sharp relief. The mandolins and guitars hanging on the wall were taken
down, and with a skilful, brilliant prelude—for he is an excellent
mandolin-player—Antonio swept into one of the stirring, if monotonous
time-honored _tarantelle_ airs.
Even though eyes were dancing in young faces all around the room, all
were too shy to take the floor till, Giovanina and Maria Squadrito
urging into acquiescence two of the Di Bianca girls, the four formed a
square and began a swaying, pirouetting movement, preceding the whirling
and crossing over with the accompanying snapping of the fingers in
imitation of the castanet, and the smiting of the tambourines. Round and
round they whirled, across and back, first one set of partners, then the
other, the assemblage applauding a little shyly as yet.
The _tarantelle_ is called after the black spiders about Taranto, whose
dangerous bites killed so many people early in the fifteenth century
that many odd cures were proclaimed, and one that was officially
advocated was music and dancing. I do not know whether the _tarantelle_
dance which was evolved did the spider-victims any good, but a fanatical
wave of dancing swept over the peninsula and the surrounding island, and
the _tarantelle_ became a fixture among the folk-customs of the southern
provinces.
When the young girls were weary, an effort was made to get the young men
out and into action, but all of them seemed to be in the throes of a
monstrous diffidence. Little Giovanni Squadrito, Jr., and his small
brother Tono were not thus afflicted, and dragged out the Di Bianca boy,
a handsome fellow, dressed in the best Roman fashion, and another
youngster who, though a child in years, had massive work-scarred hands.
The four gave an exhibition of dancing that was delightful indeed, and
when Giovanni and Tono went skipping about, their hobnailed shoes
scratching and clattering on the tiles, their mother’s face beamed with
real pride. Although very weary with a hard day’s work preparing for the
departure, she was among the brightest and merriest of the company.
Then Nicola, the blacksmith, and the shoemaker steamship agent,
persuaded a third loutish youth to take the floor, but a fourth dancer
was lacking. At the instant when the last of the other men had refused
to take the floor as yet, the village butcher appeared in the door and
was hailed with acclaim by those who knew his terpsichorean gifts. He
glided into his place on the tiles, drew tighter the knot in his
neckerchief, ran his hand through his Saturday-night stubble of beard,
tossed his hat to a friend and entered upon the most startling, dashing,
withal graceful and self-contained feats in dance movements I have ever
seen. He was on his tiptoes the greater part of the time and gave a
perfect reproduction of the traditional dance.
Then something happened that is rare—the men and women danced together,
waltzing; and when, after a number of varied dances, _tarantelle_ and
square, a dance by the old folks was called for, the first person to
respond was Mrs. Squadrito. In vain the people of his own age endeavored
to get the slumber-smitten Mannino on his feet. At last Giovanina, who
had been dancing almost constantly, filled the vacant place among the
elder people, and the music broke forth once more. I caught my wife’s
eyes turned to me in amazement, and I replied in kind. Caterina
Squadrito, with fifty-five years of hard labor and the bearing and
rearing of ten children behind her, danced a long round of the
_tarantelle_ with an ease, grace and abandon which put to shame the
efforts of her youngest daughter. When she was gyrating and swaying in
the middle of the floor, with all the mass of people about keeping time
to the music, laughing and applauding, that room presented a picture
which I shall never forget.
Not long after this the mothers who were holding their sleeping children
in their arms grew too weary of the burdens and started for home. The
others made haste to follow and filed by us, bowing formally as they
offered their hands, wishing us good-night and _bon riposo_.
Sunday morning bright and early the entire family began that weekly
process of cleaning and dressing up which is, I believe, general in all
rural districts of Christian countries. Little Ina was arrayed in a
pretty little white dress, with a long white veil, and on her head was
set a wreath of artificial leaves and white flowers. Going by in the
street were others. It being her last Sunday, all of her little friends
put on their festa dress in her honor, and a procession of the children
was held from a church in another quarter of the village to the one on
the square.
In the afternoon Camela took little Ina by the hand and set off for some
place by herself. I noticed that a sort of solemnity pervaded the
household; that she was crying as she went; that no one offered to
accompany her; and that she carried a large bouquet of flowers. I soon
learned that she had climbed the hill behind the town to the graveyard
on its summit, to spend the last hours she could ever spend beside the
graves of her father and her mother.
There were renewed streams of visitors later in the day, and at night a
pleasant gathering at the home of the Giuntas, where we were shown,
among other things, a very fine collection of old jewelry, inherited by
our hostess from an aunt. In this company there were fewer people, and
they were more select as village society goes than the large gathering
at the Squadritos’ the night before. Antonio, being very popular in the
village, and quite democratic despite his prosperity, had asked humble
and pretentious alike to his home, and neither caste gave a sign, such
as they would have given on the street, that they were not of the same
strata. There are some very fine and delicate things in Italian social
customs. Before we left we were bidden to a little garden party which
Mrs. Giunta had planned for us on the afternoon of the next day. It was
to be held on a scrap of an estate owned by the family, situated up the
_torrente_ a short distance.
[Illustration: Ina and Her Friends in Procession to the Church for
Farewell Blessings]
That night, after we had returned home, we were serenaded by a troupe of
the village male vocalists, who wandered about until near dawn. The boy,
Salvatore Vazzana, whom I have mentioned as singing in the church, sang
“Luna, O Luna,” with a triple guitar accompaniment. The serenaders were
then standing in the white moonlight at a point down by the _torrente_
wall, so that in the stillness the clear, sweet voice and the throbbing,
twanging _compagnamento_ carried to every part of the town and came back
faintly from the farther hills.
The Giuntas are a large family. All the present heads of separate
households are the children of one aged woman, still living in
Gualtieri, who has given birth to twenty-two, all told. Most of these
are living, and nearly all have prospered. One is the only man in Italy
who can stop a government train, even the Brindisi express, in any spot
beside the track where he may appear. He shows his badge as
inspector-general, and the train pulls up and takes him on. This
attribute was related to us by every fresh group of people we met in the
community, and he is considered by them to be a very wonderful man
indeed. Our host, on the Sunday evening before mentioned, is one of the
few men who own land about Gualtieri or in the district controlled by
the Duke of Avarna.
Monday afternoon he and his wife and one or two other guests called for
us at the house, and, accompanied by Antonio, Giovanina, Maria, Camela,
little Ina, Giovanni, Jr., and Tono, we walked over the _torrente_ path,
in the blazing sun, to the gate of one of his farms of garden size. At
the gate we met his brother, the village doctor, bound ahorse to see
some patients higher up in the mountains. After looking over the
splendidly cultivated place and inspecting the irrigation devices, very
old and clumsy, but none the less effective, we sat down to a repast of
fruits of more sorts than I can remember and name. The photograph of the
party in the garden tells its own story. If all landowners in Italy
dealt as mercifully with their tenants as our host appeared to deal with
his people, there would be a different story to tell of southern Italy
to-day.
Monday evening was a time of turmoil. First of all the great mass of
trunks was got off to the station before dark. Then those who had
delayed till the last minute to bring messages for friends and to bid us
farewell appeared. I took all the messages, but drew the line at
presents for relatives in Missouri, especially twenty-pound forms of
cheese and five-gallon cans of olive oil. In the Squadrito household
there was too much excitement for great grief, only now and then one of
the members would break out with a wail and throw his or her arms around
some one of those who were to go. By eleven o’clock everything was
packed up, and Antonio mandatorily dismissed all the neighbors and sent
everybody to bed. As the silence of the outer night crept into the
house, there became audible the sobbing of the poor old mother as she
lay thinking of the near separation from her own flesh and blood.
The heads of the weary and worn seemed scarcely to have touched their
pillows before awakening voices rang in the house and street, the
feeling of dread, chill exhaustion and discomfort that goes with
sleep-breaking at one o’clock seemed to rest numbingly on every one. The
tumultuous grief of the night before had given place to a sort of hushed
woe. A short time to dress, a bite to eat, then into the dark, narrow
streets with sleep-heavy eyes, to meet a crowd of hundreds come to see
the party off. It is wonderful how little noise that concourse made as
it moved out of the square, over the ancient bridge, to the beginning of
the mountain road.
The parting with the mother and sisters occurred at the door of the
Squadrito home. The mother was so overcome with her sorrow that, shaken
with dry sobs and murmuring broken blessings, her daughters, unable to
speak themselves from weeping, loosened her arms from about Antonio and
Camela and bore her to her couch.
At the edge of the village a group of donkeys was in readiness. Here the
crowd paused. Not more than seventy-five elected to walk the seven miles
to the station and back, and there were few relatives among them.
Antonio’s father was as completely broken down as if he was giving his
favorite son and the others to the grave, instead of their departing for
a happy land.
It was with difficulty that those natural leaders among the people
effected the final separations, but at last, in the starlight, the two
groups drew apart on the highway, the cavalcade with its foot retinue
ascending along the face of the hill, the great, black mass of the crowd
grouped about the end of the bridge shouting farewells. Some one struck
up a farewell song, several voices joined in, among them the Vazzana
boy’s clear soprano; but one by one they broke, and soon the song failed
and ceased; and as the procession turned the corner that hid the town
from view the long file of those left behind could be dimly seen moving
back to the darkened homes.
It were ill indeed not to speak of “Bella.” The day before, when donkeys
were being hired for the ride to the station, I had been struck by the
gentle and affectionate way in which she stood beside her owner’s young
wife, and had marked her for my own. Experience with the army mule of
Missouri extraction and his despised cousin, the Mexican burro, should
have made me less trustful.
For a half hour we cantered along in the dark, the babel of talk all
about us. At the rougher places I held my camera carefully balanced on
Bella’s neck in front of me, in order that it be not banged against
projecting rocks or by other laden beasts pressing close alongside at
times. When one wishes to urge a Sicilian donkey forward, one kicks him
in the ribs and shouts high and nasally:
“Ah-a-a-ah!”
We came to a sharp bend in the road, where it turned over a high bridge
crossing a deep ravine. Bella heard the braying of the lead donkey
already across the bridge and on the other side of the ravine, and
suddenly, without consulting me, turned aside and plunged, like a goat,
from rock to rock down into the blackness of the ravine. I had been in
the tail of the train, and no one missed me, I knew. She would not be
checked on her downward course; in fact I was too busy clinging to the
precious camera and holding on, to attempt to argue with her. The limbs
of olive-trees and the raking thorns of the _mura_ swept us from stem to
stern. If she knew where she was going I felt very glad, for I certainly
did not. High and faint above me I could hear the voices of the party. I
was wondering what my chances were for getting out without a broken
neck, when suddenly my fair beast struck level ground, and in an instant
more a steep ascent. All sounds to show that the party was still in the
vicinity had died away. The donkey went up that precipitous slope with
an action that seemed nearly “hand over hand,” and, holding the strap of
the camera in my teeth, I merely clung desperately about her neck. A
stone loosened by her hoofs went crashing, down, down, down, and a cold
sweat broke out on my brow.
But in a short time, without one misstep or one minute’s uncertainty,
she made the climb, came out into a level open space, and stood stock
still, looking to the left, and working her ears. I bent down and
touched the ground with my fingers, encountering the warm, thick dust of
the highway, and in a moment more heard the voices of our party as they
turned a bend. Bella had taken a short cut across the ravine. Not having
missed us they did not wonder how we had got so far ahead, and I said
nothing about the matter.
Soon we wound through the slumbering town of Pagia. A head was now and
then thrust out to murmur a sleepy “_Bona notte_,” and when some one of
us answered, “We go to America,” there was always a hearty, “_Bon
viaggio e bona fortuna_.”
Just beyond the village we heard something, encountered often before,
but never under such eerie surroundings. Somewhere in the paths higher
up, a shrill young voice raised a wild, plaintive song, and at the end
of the first line held the note long drawn out and rounded, though
nasal, while many other voices, men, women and children, struck in on a
major chord and held it as long as they had breath. This was repeated
over and over. It was a band of peasants already on their way to their
distant work, singing in the plagal modes, in the darkness and
loneliness of the hills.