To day, our trip towards the countries where destruction goes on,
is much sadder and silent. Whilst on every side, from every person,
from every telephonic communication, from every telegram, the most
distracting news reach us, whilst the first impulse is that of
starting, of running there where people are suffering, where they are
agonizing with fright and sorrow, we all know that the Circumvesuviana
railway is interrupted, and we understand how difficult it is to
go there quickly, or in any useful way. A secret rage is in our
heart against this blind and brutal power on which all our arms of
civilisation fall and break, and we unwillingly resign ourselves to go
as we can, just where the lava permits us, where the eruption allows
us, where Vesuvius wishes, and no further.
We leave Naples by carriage, in the afternoon. The city has a depressed
look, and is unusually quiet. While we cross from Ponte della Maddalena
to S. Giovanni a Teduccio, the last people on the road disappear.
Only now and then an automobile passes us, but the people inside are
quite hidden under their wraps and masks. Then an old dirty char-banc
rolls by, then again a loaded tram, but nobody is laughing, nobody
is speaking. All along the streets, on the sidewalks, in the shops,
silence is getting deeper, and more intense. True it is Sunday, it
is four o'clock, the hour when people here rest, but the silence is
still more intense at Portici, and its closed villas, its closed shops,
have a singular aspect. Now and then something moving comes towards
us, directed to Naples. It is a little cart, two little carts, several
carts, all loaded with furniture, especially with mattresses. A silent
driver leads the wagon, and we turn round to look at these last people
escaping, for in these last fifteen hours everybody has been running
away with his furniture, in all directions, especially towards Naples.
These whom we meet must have been delayed in their flight, they are
worn out from exertion, and almost prostrated. Portici is deserted and
solitary, not a single woman at the window, not a person before the
houses.
Hall doors and shutters are locked, and the most absolute emptiness
and desertion reigns every where. Our mind is getting depressed, and
our sadness increases when we see the complete solitude of Resina and
Torre del Greco, the lovely little towns layed between gardens of
orange trees, and the sea. It is indeed a heart-rending squallor! The
charming towns of Portici, Resina, Torre del Greco, are now completely
abandoned, not a soul is left there. They look as dead towns, quite as
if dead and deserted since many and many years--Nobody is there to tell
us the panic, the terrible panic that has set these people flying for
safety, but we know it, we can easily imagine it since we see with our
mortal eyes, abandon and death every where. But did Resina, Portici,
and Torre del Greco, ever live? Did these windows, these doors ever
open? Were there ever people in these houses, in these streets? Like
an immense colossus the pine of smoke rises on the mountain, and
everything is shut out from our sight on account of the ashes, clouds,
and vapors filling the air. Only the lightning is visible, the thousand
flashes cutting the livid and opaque gray. And life is only there on
the mountain of horrors, whilst here nothing more is living.
*
* *
We now wonder whether we shall still find Torre Annunziata the same
thriving town, full of energy, work, and action, Torre Annunziata
of which we are so proud, which is a glory of ours, since its life
has a great importance, and its population is good active; and very
laborious. This is our hope as we enter it. Alas! Here are some
wagons coming with furniture, and there is a sick man, an old man on
a mattress, laying in a small carriage. They are all slowly moving
towards Naples.
Yes also Torre Annunziata is dead! All the houses are closed, all the
working shops are deserted. Foundries, manufactures, establishments,
all is closed. Never could we have believed that in a single hour, in a
short hour of desperate panic, all this could have happened, and that
this town this magnificent instrument of work and industry, should be
stopped and destroyed like the pines up yonder, in the great valley of
the Oratorio at Boscotrecase.
At mid-night, the nine tenth of the population, at the terrible cry
that the lava is advancing towards the city, begin to escape. In one
single night 30,000 people have abandoned their roof, have gathered
their dear ones, their goods, and have fled to Nocera, Castellamare,
Sarno, Salerno, Naples, Calabria, Basilicata. All have fled in one
single night. But why? And how has this possibly happened? Men of
the people in silent groups, hardly answer our queries; they simply
point to a street towards which people, alighting from carriages and
autos, direct their steps. The lava is there, much nearer than that
which stopped outside Boscotrecase the other night, and which invaded
it altogether later in the night. The lava is yonder, on the livid
background, darkened by the clouds wrapping up the mountain, there
where a large white smoke arises, pushed by the wind. It is the road
which leads to Boscotrecase, the same road which day before yesterday,
while laughing and jesting, we saw full of carriages, cabs, and merry
people. Now, all is changed. From that road the lava has come down.
The great white smoke leads us, while the wind blows harder. We see
trees bending down, they are cypress, the rich cypress of the cemetery
of Torre Annunziata, one of the neatest, most poetical cemeteries I
ever saw.
And the monster is here, quite near. The lava is here, its scorching
monstruosity is here, in front of the cemetery, but somehow it has
branched out, it has not touched the ground sacred to the dead. It
comes down in deformed and grotesque waves, wide, high, incandescent on
the sides and on the edges, it has unwalled a house, it has destroyed
the railway of the Circumvesuviana but, happily, it has not touched the
cemetery.
A dead silence reigns among the people grouped on the low walls,
on stone piles, behind the gates, and all gaze at the lava, at the
monster, but thank heaven, the picturesque cemetery is still untouched.
But what will happen in the night what will happen to-morrow? Can't
the dead rest even under the ground, and they who will want to pray
to-morrow on the tombs of their dear ones, will they be obliged to
realize that a new mound of earth, and this time of fire, has buried
them, and their graves, for the second time.