The three men entered the village and walked through the main street.
The low afternoon sun was shining brightly again, and only the people
who lived on the shady side of the street had opened their windows. Many
of them had little iron balconies in which quantities of magnificent
dark carnations were blooming, planted in long, earthenware, trough-like
pots, and hanging down by their long stalks that thrust themselves
between the railings. Outside the windows of the poorer houses, too,
great bunches of herbs were hung up to dry in the sun, and strings of
scarlet peppers had already begun to appear, though it was early for
them yet. Later, towards the autumn, the people hang up the canteloup
melons of the south, in their rough green and grey rinds, by neatly-made
slings of twisted grass, but it was not time for them yet. In some of
the houses the people were packing the last of the oranges to be sent
down to Piedimonte and thence to Messina for England and America,
passing each orange through a wooden ring to measure it, and rejecting
those that were much too small or much too large, then wrapping each one
separately in tissue paper, while other women packed them neatly in thin
deal boxes. The air smelt of them and of the carnations in the
balconies, for Santa Vittoria was a clean and sweet village. The
cleanliness of the thoroughbred Oriental, a very different being from
the filthy Levantine, begins in Sicily, and distinguishes the Sicilians
of the hills from the Calabrians and from the Sicilians of such seaport
towns as Messina. Moreover there are no beggars in the hill towns.
San Giacinto had his pocket full of letters for the post office, and
wished to see the lieutenant in command of the soldiers; but Orsino had
nothing to do, and Ippolito had made up his mind not to return to
Camaldoli without having seen the organ in the church. The two brothers
went off in search of the sacristan, for the church was closed.
They found him, after some enquiry, helping to pack oranges in a great
vaulted room that opened upon the street. He was a fat man, cross-eyed,
with a sort of clerical expression.
'You wish to see the organ,' he said, coming out into the street. 'Truly
you will see a fine thing! If you only do not hear it! It makes boom,
boom, and wee, wee--and that is all it makes. I wager that not even ten
cats could make a noise like our organ. Do you know that it is very
aged? Surely, it remembers the ark of Noah, and Saint Paul must have
brought it with him. But then, you shall see; and if you wish to hear
it, I take no responsibility.'
Ippolito was not greatly encouraged by such a prospect.
'But when you have a festival, what do you do?' he enquired.
'We help it, of course. How should one do? Don Atanasio, the apothecary,
plays the clarinet. He is a professor! Him, indeed, you should hear when
he plays at the elevation. You would think you heard the little angels
whistling in Paradise! I, to serve you, play the double bass a little,
and Don Ciccio, the carpenter, plays the drum. Being used to the hammer,
he does it not badly. And all the time the organ makes boom, boom, and
wee, wee. It is a fine concert, but there is much sentiment of devotion,
and the women sing. It seems that thus it pleases the saints.'
'Do not the men sing too?' asked Orsino, idly.
'Men? How could men sing in church? A man can sing a 'cantilena' in the
fields, but in church it is the women who sing. They know all the words.
God has made them so. There is that girl of the notary in Randazzo, for
instance--you should hear her sing!'
'I have heard her in Rome,' said Orsino. But she sings in a theatre.'
'A theatre? Who knows how a theatre is made? See how many things men
have invented!'
They reached the door of the church.
'Signori, do you really wish to see this organ?' asked the sacristan.
'There is a much better one in the little church outside the gate. But
the day is hot, and if you only wish to see an organ, this one is
nearer.'
'Let me see the good one, by all means,' said Ippolito. 'I wish to play
on it--not to see it! I have seen hundreds of organs.'
'Hundreds of organs!' exclaimed the man to himself. 'Capers! This
stranger has travelled much! But if it is indeed not too hot for you,'
he said, addressing Ippolito, 'we will go to Santa Vittoria.'
'It is not hot at this hour,' laughed Orsino. 'We have walked up from
Camaldoli.'
'On foot!' The fat sacristan either was, or pretended to be, amazed.
'Great signori like you to come all that distance on foot!'
'What is there surprising in that?' enquired Ippolito. 'We have legs.'
'Birds also have legs,' observed the man. 'But they fly. It is only the
chickens that walk, like poor people. I say that money is wings. If I
were a great signore, like you, I would not even walk upstairs. I would
be carried. Why should I walk? In order to be tired? It would be a
folly, if I were rich. I, if you ask me, I like to eat well, to drink
well, and then to sleep well. A man who could do these three things
should be always happy. But the poor are always in thought.'
'So are the rich,' observed Ippolito.
'Yes, signore, for their souls, for we are all sinners; but not for
their bodies, because they have always something to eat. What do I say?
They eat meat every day, and so they are strong and have no thought for
their bodies. But one of us, what does he eat? A little bread, a little
salad, an onion, and with this in our bodies we have to move the earth.
The world is thus made. Patience!'
Thus philosophising, the fat man rolled unwieldily along beside the two
gentlemen, swinging his keys in his hand.
'If I had made the world, it should be another thing,' he continued, for
he was a loquacious man. 'In the first place, I would have made wine
clear, like water, and I would have made water black, like wine. Thus if
the wine-seller put water into his wine, we should all see it. Another
thing I would have done. I would have made corn grow on trees, like
olives. In that way, we should have planted it once in two hundred
years, as we do the olive trees, and there would have been less fatigue.
Is not that a good thought?'
'Very original,' said Orsino. 'It had never struck me.'
'I would also have made men so that their hair should stand on end when
they are telling lies, as the donkey lifts his tail when he brays. That
would also have been good. But the Creator did not think of it in time.
Patience! They say it will be different in Paradise. Hope costs little,
but you cannot cook it.'
'You are a philosopher,' observed Ippolito.
'No, signore,' answered the sacristan. 'You have been misinformed. I am
a grocer, or, to say it better, I am the brother of the grocer. When it
is the season, after Santa Teresa's day, I kill the pigs and salt the
hams and make the sausages. I am also the sacristan, but that yields me
little; for although there is much devotion in our town at festivals,
there is little of it among private persons. Sometimes an old woman
brings a candle to the Madonna, and she gives a soldo to have it
lighted. What is that? Can one live with a soldo now and then? But my
brother, thanks be to Heaven, is well-to-do, and a widower. He makes me
live with him. He had a son once, but, health to you, Christ and the sea
took the boy when he was not yet twenty. Therefore I live with him, to
divert him a little, and I kill the pigs, speaking with respect of your
face.'
'And what do you do during the rest of the year?' enquired Orsino, as
they neared the gate.
'Eh, I live so. According to the season, I pack oranges, I trim vines, I
make the wine for my brother, and the oil, I take the honey and the wax
from the bees, I graft good fruit upon the wild pear trees--what should
I do? A little of everything, in order of eat.'
'But your brother seems to be rich. Have you nothing?'
'Signore, to me money comes like a freshet in spring and runs away, and
immediately I am dry. But to my brother it comes like water into a well,
and it stays there. Men are thus made. The one gives, the other takes;
the one shuts his hand, the other opens his. My mother, blessed soul,
used to say to me, "Take care, my son, for when you are old, you will go
in rags!" But thanks be to Heaven, I have my brother, and I am as you
see me.'
They came to the little church with its freshly whitewashed walls and
tiled roof.
'This is the chapel of Santa Vittoria,' said the fat sacristan. 'The
church in the town is dedicated to Our Lady of Victories, but this is
the chapel of the saint, and there is more devotion here, though it is
small, and at the great feast of Santa Vittoria the procession starts
from here and goes to the church, and returns here.'
'It looks new,' observed Ippolito.
'Eh, if all things were what they seem!' The man chuckled as he turned
the key in the lock. 'You shall see inside whether it is new. It is
older than Saint Peter's in Rome.'
And so it was, by two or three centuries. It was a dark little building,
of the Norman period, with low arches and solid little pillars
terminating in curiously-carved capitals. It had a little nave with
intercommunicating side chapels, like aisles. Over the door was a small
loft containing the organ, the object of Ippolito's visit. In the uneven
floor there were slabs with deep-cut but much-worn figures of knights
and prelates in stiff armour or long and equally stiff-looking robes,
their heads surrounded by almost illegible inscriptions. Over the
principal altar there was a bad painting of Saint Vittoria, half covered
with ex-voto offerings of silver hearts, while on each side of the
picture were hung up scores of hollow wax models of arms, legs, and
other parts of the human body, realistically coloured, all remembrances
of recoveries from illness, accident, and disease, attributed to the
beneficent intervention of the saint. But above, in the little vault of
the apse, there were some very ancient and well-preserved mosaics,
magnificently rich in tone. There was, of course, no dome, and the dim
light came in through low windows high up in the nave, above the lower
side chapels. The church was clean and well kept, and on each side there
were half a dozen benches painted with a vivid sky-blue colour.
The two brothers looked about, with some curiosity, while the fat
sacristan slowly jingled his bunch of keys against his leg.
'Here the dead walk at night,' he observed, cheerfully, as the two young
men came up to him.
'What do you mean?' asked Orsino, who had been much amused by the man's
conversation.
'The old Pagliuca walk. I have seen their souls running about the floor
in the dark, like little candle flames. A little more, and I should have
seen their bodies too, but I ran away. Soul of my mother! I was
frightened. It was on the eve of Santa Vittoria, five years ago. The
candles for the festival had not come, though we had waited all day for
the carrier from Piedimonte. Then he came at dark, for he had met a
friend in Linguaglossa, and he was a drunkard, and the wine was new, so
he slept on his cart all the way, and it was by the grace of the Madonna
that he did not roll off into the ditch. But I considered that it was
late, and that the office began early in the morning, and that many
strangers came from Bronte and the hill village to our festa, and that
it would be a scandal if they found us still dressing the church in the
morning. So I took the box of candles on my back and came here, not
thinking to bring a lantern, because there is always the lamp before the
altar where the saint's bones are. Do you understand?'
'Perfectly. But what about the Pagliuca?'
'My brother said, "You will see the Pagliuca"--for everyone says it. But
I had a laugh at him, for I thought that a dead man in his grave must be
as quiet as a handkerchief in a drawer. So I came, and I unlocked the
door, thinking about the festival, and I came in, meaning to take a
candle from the box and light it at the altar lamp, so that I might see
well to stick the others into the candlesticks. But there was the flame
of a candle burning on the floor. It ran away from me as I came in, and
others ran after it, and round and round it. Then I knew that I saw the
souls of the old Pagliuca, and I said to myself that presently I should
see also their bodies--an evil thing, for they have been long dead. Then
I made a movement--who knows how I did? I dropped the box and I heard it
break, and all the candles rolled out upon the floor as though the dead
Pagliuca were rattling their bones. But I counted neither one nor two,
but jumped out into the road with one jump. Santa Vittoria helped me;
and it was a bright moonlight night, but as I shut the door, I could see
the souls of the Pagliuca jumping up and down on the pavement. I said
within me, when the dead dance, the living go home. And my face was
white. When I came home, my brother said, "You have seen the Pagliuca."
And I said, "I have seen them." Then he gave me some rum, and I lay in a
cold sweat till morning. From that time I will not come here at night.
But in the daytime it is different.'
Orsino and Ippolito knew well enough that in old Italian churches, where
many dead are buried under the pavement, it is not an uncommon thing to
see a will-o'-the-wisp at night. But in the dim little church, with the
dead Pagliuca lying under their feet, there was something gruesome about
the man's graphic story, and they did not laugh.
'Let us hope that we may not see any ghosts,' said Orsino.
'Amen,' answered the sacristan, devoutly. 'That is the organ,' he said,
pointing to the loft.
He led the way. On one side of the entrance a small arched door gave
access to a narrow winding staircase in the thickness of the wall,
lighted by narrow slits opening to the air. Though the loft had not
appeared to be very high above the pavement, the staircase seemed very
long. At last the three emerged upon the boarded floor, at the back of
the instrument, where four greasy, knotted ropes hung out of worn holes
in the cracked wood. The rose window over the door of the church threw a
bright light into the little forest of dusty wooden and metal pipes
above. The ropes were for working the old-fashioned bellows.
Ippolito went round and took the thin deal cover from the keyboard. He
was surprised to find a double bank of keys, and an octave and a half of
pedals, which is very uncommon in country organs. He was further
unprepared to see the name of a once famous maker in Naples just above
the keys, but when he looked up he understood, for on a gilded scroll,
supported by two rickety cherubs above his head, he read the name of the
donor.
'FERDINANDUS PALIUCA PRINCEPS CORLEONIS
COMES SANCTAE VICTORIAE SICULUS DONAVIT
A.D. MDCCCXXI.'
The instrument was, therefore, the gift of a Ferdinando Pagliuca, Prince
of Corleone, Count of Santa Vittoria, probably of one of those Pagliuca
whose souls the fat sacristan believed he had seen 'jumping up and down
the pavement.'
The sacristan tugged at the ropes that moved the bellows. Ippolito
dusted the bench over which he had leaned to uncover the keys, slipped
in, swinging his feet over the pedals, pulled out two or three stops,
and struck a chord.
The tone was not bad, and had in it some of that richness which only old
organs are supposed to possess, like old violins. He began to prelude
softly, and then, one by one, he tried the other stops. Some were fair,
but some were badly out of tune. The cornopean brayed hideously, and the
hautboy made curious buzzing sounds. Ippolito promised himself that he
would set the whole instrument in order in the course of a fortnight,
and was delighted with his discovery. When he had finished, the fat
sacristan came out from behind, mopping his forehead with a blue cotton
handkerchief.
'Capers!' he exclaimed. 'You are a professor. If Don Giacomo hears you,
he will die of envy.'
'Who is Don Giacomo?'
'Eh, Don Giacomo? He is the postmaster and the telegrapher, and he plays
the old organ in the big church on Sundays. But when there is a festival
here, a professor comes to play this one, from Catania. But he cannot
play as you do.'
Orsino had gone down again into the church while Ippolito had been
playing. They found him bending very low over an inscription on a slab
near the altar steps.
'There is a curious inscription here,' he said, without looking up. 'I
cannot quite read it, but it seems to me that I see our name in it. It
would be strange if one of our family had chanced to die and be buried
here, ages ago.'
Ippolito bent down, too, till his head touched his brother's.
'It is not Latin,' he said presently. 'It looks like Italian.'
The fat sacristan jingled his keys rather impatiently, for it was
growing late.
'Without troubling yourselves to read it, you may know what it is,' he
said. 'It is the old prophecy about the Pagliuca. When the dead walk
here at night they read it. It says, 'Esca Pagliuca pesca Saracen.' But
it goes round a circle like a disc, so that you can read it, 'Saracen
esca Pagliuca pesca'--either, Let Pagliuca go out, the Saracen is
fishing, or, Let the Saracen go out, Pagliuca is fishing.'
'"Or Saracinesca Pagliuca pesca"--Saracinesca fishes for Pagliuca,' said
Ippolito to Orsino, with a laugh at his own ingenuity.
'Who knows what it means!' exclaimed the sacristan. 'But they say that
when it comes true, the last Corleone shall die and the Pagliuca
d'Oriani shall end. But whether they end or not, they will walk here
till the Last Judgment. Signori, the twilight descends. If you do not
wish to see the Pagliuca, let us go. But if you wish to see them, here
are the keys. You are the masters, but I go home. This is an evil place
at night.'
The man was growing nervous, and moved away towards the door. The two
brothers followed him.
'The place is consecrated,' said Ippolito, as they reached the entrance.
'What should you be afraid of?'
'Santa Vittoria is all alone here,' answered the man, 'and the Pagliuca
are more than fifty, when they come out and walk. What should a poor
Christian do? He is better at home with a pipe of tobacco.'
The sun had set when they all came out upon the road, and the afterglow
was purple on the snow of Etna.