“When do you expect the baby?” I asked.
“Tomorrow,” she said, “it will be nine months tomorrow, the first child,
we have not been married quite a year.” Her soft eyes overflowed again.
“Do not cry. You have your husband and you will have your child. That is
something to be thankful for. Did all your family escape?”
“Yes, all that were in our house, six of us,” said Francesco. “We do not
know about the others.” I heard a deep sigh behind me and turned to see
a little wan child, bandaged and pillowed up in a great bed. She never
stirred or smiled during my whole visit. When I spoke to her, she only
gazed at me with great sombre eyes that had lost their childishness,
eyes that had seen sights of horror they could never forget.
“That is my grandchild Caterina,” the old woman explained. “She has been
lame from birth. When we escaped from the house I carried her in my
arms. As we ran the earth beneath us opened and threw stones at us. One
of them struck Caterina and broke her lame leg.”
“Tell me how you escaped?”
The young man, Francesco Calabresi, a plumber of Messina, now spoke:
“We slept in two rooms on the ground floor behind the shop. We were all
asleep in bed when the earthquake came. There were three long shocks and
the earth groaned as it rocked from side to side as if it were in pain.
Though the house fell down about us we were not hurt. The door into the
street was jammed and would not open. I found a small hole in the wall
near it and managed to crawl through it and to help the others out.”
“It was dark, and cold, and it rained--Oh, God, how it rained!” cried
the old woman, “and we were all, except Lucia, naked as the day we were
born.”
Lucia smiled for the first time and opened her dress to show me her high
chemise.
“Yes, I had this on; it was the only thing we saved.” She was evidently
proud that she alone of all the family had escaped with a garment to
hide her nakedness. In Sicily the old Italian habit of sleeping without
night clothes still prevails. There is a widespread prejudice against
night clothes. Nena, an old Venetian servant, once told me that it was
very unwholesome to sleep _dressed_. This absolute nakedness, both of
the living and of the dead, seemed to the rescuers the last touch of
horror.
“It was quite dark,” the old woman continued, “only out over the sea
there was a strange light like fire. We found our way to the Villa
Mazzini. Part of the railing and the gates had been thrown down so that
we could get into the garden. That is how we escaped being killed. We
waited together till it was light, then Francesco went and tried to find
help. We stayed in the villa two days and two nights. The rain never
stopped for one moment. We had no food, no clothes, no shelter, but we
were alive and safe.”
“Did you see any of your neighbors?”
“No, but as we ran we heard people all about us crying
‘_misericordia_.’”
“Did you expect to escape?”
“Oh, no! I believed it was the end of the world. The earth shook and
rumbled underneath us. When it grew light it seemed as if the mountains
of Calabria were coming at us across the straits to crush us.”
Francesco now took up the story: “I made my way down to the Faro. When
it was light I found a boat and rowed out to the ships in the harbor.
Later, when the Russian vessels came, they gave me a little food and a
few clothes. In the end they took us on board their ship, they fed and
clothed us. Russians, did I say, Signora? No, they were angels. They
took us and many, many others to Naples on their great ship. At Naples
the highest _signoria_ waited upon us as if they had been servants. They
gave us white bread and wine and more clothes, shoes also, and they
showed us the kindness of brothers and sisters. We shall never forget
them. Then the Duchess of Aosta paid our fare to Rome.”
“What? The railroad did not take you free?”
“Oh, no! Every one was paid for by the _Duchessa benedetta_.”
As they seemed pleased to have me stay with them, I sat and comforted
them as well as I could for an hour. After a little Lucia came and sat
beside me and promised me that she would not grieve when her time came
to go to the hospital. We made out a list of the things most needed,
headed by a set of plumber’s tools for Francesco and a basket for the
baby to sleep in. I promised to return in a few days, and as I rose to
take leave they clung to me as if I had been an old friend.
“Is it your wish in the future,” I said to Francesco, “to remain in
Rome, or later to return to Messina?” Even now we outsiders had not yet
grasped the awful completeness of the disaster.
At my question Rosina became terrified, and for the first time in our
interview lost her self-control. She threw both her hands above her head
with a dreadful gesture of despair and shrieked:
“Messina? What is it that you say? _Messina non esiste più!_”
It was from Rosina that the eagle-faced man had got his phrase; it was
from her that I for the first time had an inkling of the true extent of
the calamity. When I look back at these last months during which I have
lived with the thought of Messina always with me, till it seems as if
the word Messina must be found seared upon my heart when I am dead, I
hear those words, “_Messina non esiste più!_” When I pass in review the
hundreds of survivors I have seen and talked with in Rome, Syracuse,
Palermo, finally in Messina itself, I see clearest of all the face of
Rosina, the ancient woman; I hear her shriek of woe:
“_Messina non esiste più!_”
II
THE STRAITS OF DEATH
Wednesday, December 30th, the King and Queen of Italy sailed through the
straits and into the harbor of Messina. As their ship, the “Vittorio
Emanuele,” approached the Faro, the gunners of the Russian cruisers, the
English men-of-war, and the Italian battleships began to fire the royal
salute.
“Cease firing!” The signal flashed from the King’s ship; this was no
time for royal salvos. The “Vittorio Emanuele” crept cautiously along,
feeling every inch of her way, for a new terror had been added to the
old perils of Scylla and Charybdis. It was said that under the seething
waters of the uneasy straits a submarine volcano had arisen, and no one
knew how much the bottom of straits or harbor had been altered by the
action of this hidden volcano.
A fleet of small boats filled with desperate half-naked men put off from
the shore and surrounded the King’s ship. This was the third day after
the earthquake; the survivors were starving, dying of cold and hunger,
when in every Italian village men and women had taken the clothes from
their backs, the food from their mouths for them, when in Rome the poor
prisoners in the gaols had voted to a man that the little sums they had
earned and put by against their release should be spent for them. The
shivering figures in the boats stretched out appealing hands towards the
King.
“_Aiutarteci, aiutarteci!_” they cried. “Help us, Majesty. Give us to
eat, give us to drink, clothes to cover us, the abandoned of God and
man!” These broken men were the King’s escort, their frenzied cries
Messina’s greeting to her sovereign. In a crazy felucca a tall old
sailor held up a hand to silence the clamoring crew, snatched a red
biretta from his silver curls, waved it above his head with a ringing
cry:
“Evviva! We have the King, we have all!”
“Thou sayest well, Luigi,” the young _avvocato_, Arcangelo Bonanno,
called out from the pier. He knew Luigi, the old fisherman, and had
sailed with him from Giardini to Messina
[Illustration: MESSINA. THE WATER FRONT. _Page 41._]
[Illustration: MESSINA. A FUNERAL BARGE. _Page 42._]
[Illustration: THE KING AND THE WOUNDED OFFICER. _Page 43._]
in the “Stella del Mare,” one of the few boats spared by the tidal wave
that had made total wrecks of most of the fishing smacks along the
coast.
As the “Vittorio Emanuele” neared the shore those on board saw the white
façade of the palazzata through the gray rain--for still it rained and
always rained a fine cold rain, “not quite like any other rain,” as
Rosina Calabresi had said. “Earthquake rain” I remember she called it.
At first sight it seemed as if the palazzata--the splendid row of
palaces two miles long, that lined the sickle-shaped harbor fronting the
straits--was little damaged. As they came nearer they saw that the outer
wall, with its sculptured façade of graceful reclining goddesses, was an
empty shell.
“There were three shocks,” Rosina said. “One from side to side, one up
and down as if the earth jumped under us, one round and round; that was
the worst, the very earth groaned with the pain of it.”
These three shocks that reduced the beautiful city of Messina to a heap
of ruins, lasted just thirty-two seconds! The sidewise movement threw
down the side walls; then the first, second, third, fourth, and fifth
floors, with all that in them lived, dropped one over the other in awful
chaos to the bottom of the cellars. Along the water front high in air
hung a cloud of dun smoke; for after earthquake and tidal wave came
fire. That drifting smoke was the only thing in sight that moved as the
King approached; it might have been the soul of Messina hanging over the
dead city.
The King’s launch made its way through the harbor’s dreadful
debris,--there were floating corpses everywhere,--and drew up at the
heavy stone quay; here the land looked like the waves of the sea, in
some places it had sunk six feet below the water, in others it had been
heaved high in air. A long line of unrecognized dead had been laid out
for identification; naked and helpless the poor disfigured corpses
washed to and fro with the tide, while those among the survivors who had
the heart and courage tried to find a name for each. Our friend the
Avvocato Bonanno (he had spent the night of the 28th in Taormina and so
escaped destruction) was helping make up the tragic rollcall.
“That is Maddalena, youngest daughter of Count Q.; I danced with her on
Christmas Day. This is her old grandmother, yes, I am sure, I remember
the little mole on her cheek. And this--might be Nina, the eldest
daughter; look for an emerald scarab on her left hand. Ah, God, the
human brutes!” The emerald ring, the finger it had graced were both
gone, cut off by ghouls that rob the dead.
The launch touched the quay, and the King stepped on shore where he was
met by the few city officials who had survived. The spokesman began a
halting address of welcome:
“The visit of your august majesty is an honor that we shall never
forget, in the name of the city--“
The King cut the good man short with an abrupt:
“_Scusi_, do not let us talk nonsense,” and in silence led the way to
the barracks where hundreds of his brave soldiers had perished.
“Snuffed out,” Bonanno said, “or so we hope, like so many rush candles.”
A few steps farther on the King met four soldiers carrying a wounded
officer on a litter. The King glanced at the man and a flash of
recognition lighted his face.
“_Fermate!_” he cried. The bearers set down the litter; the King propped
the poor head, rolling helplessly from side to side, with a fragment of
gray military cloak folded for a pillow, wiped the ashen face, and
whispered the one brave word ever on his lips “_Coraggio!_”
The streets through which the King passed were mountains of rubbish, the
houses heaps of ruins, the air pestilential; the fire still burned in
many places, and the smell of roasting flesh was simply overpowering.
The few survivors who hung about the ruins added to the despair of the
scene; some crazed with hunger, thirst, despair, behaved like maddened
children; they talked of their dead or lost families with the terrible
indifference of the insane; their minds were not strong enough to grasp
what had happened. Others, oftenest women, appealed to every passer-by,
imploring help in their frenzied efforts to reach some beloved being
buried under tons of masonry. A woman tearing desperately with her bare
hands at a huge mass of stone it would have taken a regiment of men a
week to move recognized the King; she ran as if in frantic haste, threw
[Illustration: MESSINA. THE BARRACKS. _Page 43._]
[Illustration: MESSINA. RUINS OF A CHURCH. _Page 44._]
[Illustration: MESSINA. DIGGING FOR THE BURIED-ALIVE. _Page 47._]
[Illustration: THE KING AT MESSINA. _Page 45._]
herself at his feet, raised her bleeding hands in an agony of appeal.
“_Maestá, aiuto!_ Save them! They are alive. I hear them, my husband, my
son, my only son.”
“It is too much,” the King broke from her with a sob. “Help her, you
others, if you can,” he cried to his aides and pushed on through the
ghastly ruin of what three days ago had been the famous Marina, one of
the most beautiful streets in the world.
“The King’s walk through Messina,” said Bonanno the _avvocato_ who
followed him, “was like the walk of Dante and Virgil through the
Inferno. At every step raving men, weeping women clutched at him, clung
to him, stretched out their hands to him. Those hands! I dream of them
now, hairy hands of men, transparent hands of women, old shrivelled
hands with gripping fingers, chubby hands of little children lifted to
the King, as if he could help them. I would not have been in his place,
no, not for three kingdoms.”
From that desperate throng one tragic figure must stand out clear in the
King’s memory as it does in Bonanno’s--the Deputy Ludovico Fulci pacing
back and forth before the ruin of his brother’s house. Though Bonanno
knew him well, he did not at first recognize him; in four days the
deputy had grown twenty years older.
“Nicoló, Nicoló! Art thou yet alive?” he shrieked. “Oh, my brother, make
one little sign! Until tonight I heard his voice crying for help! It has
grown weaker and weaker; now I hear no sound. If help had come in time,
I could have saved him, saved my brother, do you hear? Him, his wife,
his little child, God knows how many others now dead, _sotto le
macerie_.”
Under the masonry! No one who was in Italy during this dreadful season
will ever forget that phrase, “_sotto le macerie_,” the deadly refrain
of the great tragedy. Where is your mother, your lover, your child? The
answer was always the same “_sotto le macerie_.”
The King, Bonanno said, above all else insisted that his visit should
bring no interruption to the rescue work: indeed it proved an impetus to
it, for he did much to establish something approaching system. The work
of excavation was begun by the Russian sailors. Three Russian warships,
the “Cesarevich,” the “Makaroff” and the “Slava,” cruising off the
Calabrian coast, met a vessel--some say English, some say
Italian--flying to Naples with the news of the earthquake: the Russians
hurried to Messina, they were the first to arrive on the ground. What
they did there Sicily will remember as long as her history survives.
Like Francesco Calabresi, my plumber, the Avvocato Bonanno described
their work in rescuing the entombed men, women and children as something
superhuman.
“They did not wait for orders, they did not need them; each of them was
an inspired leader; they saw no danger, but rushed like madmen among
crumbling ruins, toppling walls; they worked like Titans I tell you. The
English were not long behind the Russians, as you may believe. What a
people! We Sicilians know what we owe them! Did these foreigners save
many lives? Yes, hundreds, thousands of lives. More than all, the sight
of their incredible labors--I say it to you again, they worked like gods
not men--broke the spell of apathy that at first held us powerless.
_Madonna mia!_ I myself felt it, though at Taormina the shock was light.
At first I was stunned, dazed, lacked power to lift a hand! These
unfortunates, you may believe, were worse. The first man I met after I
returned to Messina was a colleague of mine; we had worked in the same
office. He was quite stupefied. He did not know if any of his family had
escaped or not, he did not seem to care. The visit of the King roused
the people; ah! it was like cordial to one who faints. Imagine, on the
fourth day hardly a cup of water, scarcely a loaf of bread had come to
us from the outside. Was it wonderful we believed the end of the world
had come, that we were abandoned by God and man?”
And all this time the great stream of supplies was pouring in a steady
flood toward Messina. The city was like a man who dies of starvation in
the midst of plenty, because he has lost the power to swallow.
“I went first to the house where I had lived,” Bonanno said. “It was a
heap of ruins fallen outwards into the street; the inner wall was
standing. How did I know the house? From the crimson paper on my bedroom
wall. That wall--I can show it to you still--was perfect. There was the
crucifix my mother hung over the bed, the palm from last Palm Sunday;
there was the Venetian mirror without a crack, a portrait of Lola, the
Spanish dancing girl (she is among the missing). A lot of soldiers were
at work excavating our house; an officer with an iron crowbar lay flat
on a mass of rubbish, and pried with all his might at a great stone
coping from under which came faint groans. Another officer lay on his
back below and somehow,--it looked a miracle,--they got a purchase on
the stone. With strength that seemed incredible they tugged and heaved
and at last lifted the great mass of granite; then they stopped to
breathe and the soldiers quickly cleared away the smaller rubbish. We
took out Agnese, the wife of my landlord, and her little child; they
could not speak; their mouths were full of mortar. When we had freed
their mouths and nostrils from the mortar we found they were both too
much hurt to stand. We carried them to the field hospital in the piazza,
where the doctors from the English ships were at work under a tarpaulin
stretched over some posts. Not much of a hospital, but they worked,
those doctors, as the sailors worked, like demons, as one might say,
with all respect. Wet to the skin, fasting like we others, but working
till their eyes refused to see, their hands to use the knife.”
“Was Agnese’s husband saved too?”
“Antonio? Yes, he was saved; that was a strange case, one of the
strangest. He was saved by his dog. That blessed animal--I knew him
well, his name was Leone--would not let Antonio sleep, but barked and
barked and pulled at the blankets till Antonio got up from his bed,
dressed himself and went out of the house. It was about half past four
o’clock. He could not tell why he did so; it seemed as if the dog’s
intelligence controlled his. Leone led the way, Antonio followed to the
Piazza del Duomo, where he sat down on the steps of the Cathedral. Leone
was not satisfied and still barked and whined and ran back and forth,
until Antonio finally got up and went and sat down on a bench in the
middle of the piazza. He was sitting there with the dog beside him when
the earthquake came and the marble Bambino fell down out of the arms of
the Madonna over the door of the Matrice, just at the place where he had
been sitting; if he had remained there he would surely have been killed.
These things
[Illustration: MESSINA. THE CATHEDRAL BEFORE THE DISASTER. _Page 50._]
[Illustration: THE CATHEDRAL AFTER THE DISASTER. _Page 50._]
[Illustration: ARCANGELO’S HOUSE. _Page 48._]
[Illustration: MESSINA. WHERE MARIETTA LIVED. _Page 51._]
are not to be explained but there were many such happenings.”
“Were there any others saved from your house?”
“Agnese’s old grandfather. He lay quite still in his bed and went down
in it to the lowest floor of the house. The beams fell so as to protect
the bed. When we found him he was without a scratch, but quite blind
from the dust in his eyes. I shook the old man by the shoulder to rouse
him. He turned his blind eyes towards me and cried with the voice of a
wounded lion:
“‘Leave me in peace! The earth is dying; I die with the earth!’”
Arcangelo’s stories of miraculous escapes would fill a volume; that of
Marietta is one of the most extraordinary.
“Marietta certainly owes her life to me,” he began, “or rather to my
ears. You must know that my ears are remarkable--so were my father’s. I
have in truth the hearing of a cat. No one else could have heard the
faint knocking inside the heap of rubbish that had been Ugo’s workshop.
At first I doubted my senses, then I remembered that Marietta lived in
the little room behind the carpenter’s shop, and it occurred to me at
the same time that Ugo was working at a job in Catania. I gave
information and after many hours of hard work the soldiers succeeded in
making a space large enough to let down a basket with food and water to
the woman buried under the ruins, whose tapping I had heard. I could now
hear what she said; she was quite unhurt; her bed had been placed under
an arch, the safest place of course, and the arch remained standing; she
had not so much as a bruise. The house had fallen so that unless great
care was taken the remaining walls would crumble and crush the woman
under the arch. The fifth morning I came with a piece of bread and three
dried figs I had found in the ruins for her; I made the usual signal;
there was no answer.
“‘Marietta, canst thou hear?’ I called to her. She did not reply. I put
my ear to the hole; what did I hear? A sharp thin voice that wailed and
wailed but said no word.
“‘Marietta, art thou alive?’ ‘I am alive, and so is the child. Water,
for the love of Mary!’ _Poverina!_ Alone in that dark pit she had borne
her first child. On the eighth day we took Marietta and her baby from
the _macerie_. It was a boy, stout and strong as a young bull, for we
had fed the mother and her milk had not failed. Miracles? Ah, well, that
is as one believes. I myself put the two of them on the train for
Taormina. There be many rich _forestieri_ at Taormina; I doubt not they
have cared for Marietta; they have great charity, those _forestieri_ of
Taormina. They have charity, and they understand us a little, those who
live among us here in Sicily; they shared our calamity, they knew our
people. Some others do not understand, and should not judge. It may be
true that this official ran away, that this other was relieved of office
for incompetence. This they know, but they do not know the state of mind
and body to which those men were reduced. It was better that they fled,
for they were not fit to hold positions of responsibility; few of us
were; we were too much broken. No one who has not seen Messina, who has
not known the survivors, can understand; it was not like a battle, where
men go in prepared for death, it was quite another thing!”
While the King was at Messina martial law was proclaimed. General Mazza,
who was at home on sick leave, left his bed and hurried to Messina to
take command of the troops. I asked Bonanno what manner of man the
general was; I remember his answer well.
“A good man and a brave soldier. He has but one fault, the incurable
one: he is sixty-eight years old and out of health besides!”
The proclaiming of martial law was a military necessity. The prison at
Messina had been destroyed by the earthquake, and the convicts, the scum
of Sicily, were at large. From Naples, from Palermo, from all over
Italy, the offscouring of the cities raced, like beasts of prey who
scent the carnage of battle, to the ruin of Messina, the beautiful. It
seemed as if Nature’s cruelty in destroying half a province roused the
basest passions in the base, and the noblest in the noble. The soldiers
on their rounds at night saw things--desecrations of the helpless dead,
offences against nature--that turned them from thoughtless boys to grave
men. Here again the Russians, swift to save, swift to punish, terrible
in their anger, set the example. A young Russian midshipman, a beautiful
boy,--his blue eyes were like ice with fire below, Bonanno said,--found
one of the human vultures at work. The midshipman had very little
Italian, only a few words; they were enough:
“_Ladro!_” he cried and put his pistol to the ruffian’s head,
“_condannato a morte_,” and fired.
After this the soldiers’ orders were explicit; when the offence was
monstrous, the human monsters were shot without delay. It is a terrible
thing to proclaim martial law but there was no other way. Not only were
the Red Cross Knights of Europe, England and America pressing on to the
relief of the afflicted city, but the murderers, thieves and ravishers
from the four quarters of the earth were hastening in search of plunder
and rapine to Messina, the rich, to Reggio, the prosperous, the sister
city across the uneasy straits.