_A Little Moonshine with Lemon_
“Ye Gods, he doth bestride the narrow world
Like a Colossus...!”
There is a bright moon, so that even the vines make a shadow, and the
Mediterranean has a broad white shimmer between its dimness. By the
shore, the lights of the old houses twinkle quietly, and out of the
wall of the headland advances the glare of a locomotive’s lamps. It is
a feast day, St. Catherine’s Day, and the men are all sitting round the
little tables, down below, drinking wine or vermouth.
And what about the ranch, the little ranch in New Mexico? The time is
different there: but I too have drunk my glass to St. Catherine, so I
can’t be bothered to reckon. I consider that there, too, the moon is in
the south-east, standing, as it were, over Santa Fé, beyond the bend of
those mountains of Picoris.
_Sono io!_ say the Italians. I am I! Which sounds simpler than it is.
Because which I am I, after all, now that I have drunk a glass also to
St. Catherine, and the moon shines over the sea, and my thoughts, just
because they are fleetingly occupied by the moon on the Mediterranean,
and ringing with the last farewell: _Dunque, Signore! di nuovo!_--must
needs follow the moon-track south-west, to the great South-west, where
the ranch is.
They say: _in vino veritas_. Bah! They say so much! But in the wine of
St. Catherine, my little ranch, and the three horses down among the
timber. Or if it has snowed, the horses are gone away, and it is snow,
and the moon shines on the alfalfa slope, between the pines, and the
cabins are blind. There is nobody there. Everything shut up. Only the
big pine-tree in front of the house, standing still and unconcerned,
alive.
Perhaps when I have a _Weh_ at all, my Heimweh is for the tree in
front of the house, the overshadowing tree whose green top one never
looks at. But on the trunk one hangs the various odds and ends of iron
things. It is so near. One goes out of the door, and the tree-trunk is
there, like a guardian angel.
The tree-trunk, and the long work table, and the fence! Then beyond,
since it is night, and the moon shines, for me at least, away beyond is
a light, at Taos, or at Ranchos de Taos. Here, the castle of Noli is on
the western skyline. But there, no doubt it has snowed, since even here
the wind is cold. There it has snowed, and the nearly full moon blazes
wolf-life, as here it never blazes; risen like a were-wolf over the
mountains. So there is a faint hoar shagginess of pine-trees, away at
the foot of the alfalfa field, and a grey gleam of snow in the night,
on the level desert, and a ruddy point of human light, in Ranchos de
Taos.
And beyond, you see them even if you don’t see them, the circling
mountains, since there is a moon.
So, one hurries indoors, and throws more logs on the fire.
One doesn’t either. One hears Giovanni calling from below, to say good
night! He is going down to the village for a spell. _Vado giù, Signor
Lorenzo! Buona notte!_
And the Mediterranean whispers in the distance, a sound like in a
shell. And save that somebody is whistling, the night is very bright
and still. The Mediterranean, so eternally young, the very symbol
of youth! And Italy, so reputedly old, yet forever so child-like and
naive! Never, never for a moment able to comprehend the wonderful,
hoary age of America, the continent of the afterwards.
I wonder if I am here, or if I am just going to bed at the ranch.
Perhaps looking in Montgomery Ward’s catalogue for something for
Christmas, and drinking moonshine and hot water, since it is cold. Go
out and look if the chickens are shut up warm: if the horses are in
sight: if Susan, the black cow, has gone to her nest among the trees,
for the night. Cows don’t eat much at night. But Susan will wander in
the moon. The moon makes her uneasy. And the horses stamp around the
cabins.
In a cold like this, the stars snap like distant coyotes, beyond the
moon. And you’ll see the shadow of actual coyotes, going across the
alfalfa field. And the pine-trees make little noises, sudden and
stealthy, as if they were walking about. And the place heaves with
ghosts. That place, the ranch, heaves with ghosts. But when one has got
used to one’s own home-ghosts, be they never so many, and so potent,
they are like one’s own family, but nearer than the blood. It is the
ghosts one misses most, the ghosts there, of the Rocky Mountains, that
never go beyond the timber and that linger, like the animals, round the
water-spring. I know them, they know me: we go well together. But they
reproach me for going away. They are resentful too.
Perhaps the snow is in tufts on the greasewood bushes. Perhaps the blue
jays fall in a blue, metallic cloud out of the pine-trees in front of
the house, at dawn, in the terrific cold, when the dangerous light
comes watchful over the mountains, and touches the desert far-off,
far-off, beyond the Rio Grande.
And I, I give it up. There is a choice of vermouth, Marsala, red
wine or white. At the ranch, to-night, because it is cold, I should
have moonshine, not very good moonshine, but still warming: with hot
water and lemon, and sugar, and a bit of cinnamon from one of those
little red Schilling’s tins. And I should light my little stove in the
bedroom, and let it roar a bit, sucking the wind. Then dart to bed,
with all the ghosts of the ranch cosily round me, and sleep till the
very coldness of my emerged nose wakes me. Waking, I shall look at once
through the glass panels of the bedroom door, and see the trunk of the
great pine-tree, like a person on guard, and a low star just coming
over the mountain, very brilliant, like someone swinging an electric
lantern.
_Si vedrà la primavera_
_Fiorann’ i mandorlini_--
Ah, well, let it be vermouth, since there’s no moonshine with lemon and
cinnamon. Supposing I called Giovanni, and told him I wanted:
“_Un poco di chiar’ di luna, con canella e limone...._”
Printed in Great Britain at
_The Mayflower Press, Plymouth_. William Brendon & Son, Ltd.