after the dog days, there is no rigorous necessity for laziness. San
Giovanni is past, and the most particular feasts of the early summer.
Work is again the order of the day, with only the less important
interval of Sunday to make a little breathing space—breathing space
that will scarcely seem necessary from such pleasurable labour,
perhaps, for all the peasants of the Northern Apennines think it
indispensable even though they cannot be so fitly accused as the
Southern Italians of that love of the _dolce far niente_ which has come
to be considered, sometimes most unjustly, such a good description of
their existence.
To-day is a _giorno feriale_, a working-day proper: let us judge for
ourselves of the aptness of the proverbial reproof.
Standing on the church steps, as we stood on the day of the Corpus
Domini, with the peasants—men and women—gathered in knots on the
piazza, and the priest in their midst, you might see straight before
you a road running right away amongst the meadows to the river’s bank,
while to left of you another way winds itself above the water; and
behind, a third, more rugged than ever, climbs the mountain’s side to
a hamlet on the mountain’s brow. Take either of those three paths, and
you cannot miss coming shortly into the midst of some steady labour.
Down towards the river’s shingle girls are driving cows to their
evening drink, women are spreading yellow linen to bleach in the
sunshine and moistening it with water that they dash up from the
stream with their wooden scoops, or perhaps rolling it into bales
before carrying it home. Below them the torrent’s bed widens out in
the broader expanse of the valley, with plantations of willow trees
guarding its way on the stones, and coronella shrubs bending over from
the rocks; above them the water’s line dwindles away to a mere thread
as it nears the mountains where it has had its birth. With the heavy
homespun in coils on their heads and shoulders, or neatly folded away
in baskets which they swing between them, the _contadine_ climb up to
the meadow’s level, and so home to thatched cottages where walnuts grow
in the fields, to lonelier cottages that stand in strong breezes on the
ridge of the hill-side: home to fractious children, famished husbands,
sons and brothers—the linen, the dinner, and the supper, have been
their day’s work.
And on the broader way that leads to a larger neighbouring village,
there have been also wayfarers. The little town that lies some three
miles off down the river’s course holds a few things which cannot be
procured in the village. It boasts a fair now and then, whence the
head of a household brings back a calf or a heifer perhaps, and even
on common days the town has a few shops that can produce articles of
homely furniture, or even of bright peasant dress.
Nettina has been there this very afternoon. She is coming home as
cooler shadows lengthen over the meadows and furrow the hills: she has
a new wooden _conca_ on her head—the old timeworn copper one has been
soldered so often, and yet always wears through and lets the water
leak! In her hand she carries shoes which clash against a red earthen
pot that is one of her purchases, and her large, shapely feet rise
up and down off the sharp stones as fearlessly as though her way were
across the cool turf of the meadow. Nettina is considered a handsome
girl. She has keen dark eyes, a well-cut face, a brown skin, and black
glossy hair that ripples gladly down beside her face and behind her
ears, its plaits fitting round tightly into the head’s hollow above the
nape of the neck; her teeth stand in beautifully even rows, large and
white, and ready to be shown upon the slightest provocation to a smile.
She walks well: though she must have been walking all day, she walks
well, and is not tired. Her head is erect—the wooden bowl, poised on
the cushion of her own knotted kerchief, only sways with the motion of
her own gait. Her square shoulders scarcely give at all to the swing of
her quick step, but the limbs move freely, and the body sways easily on
the hips, upon one of which she holds a hand, as though to steady her
step.
The last corner of the road has been doubled, and the well-known church
spire with its blue painted belfry is in sight. Here the path from _La
Madonna della Vittoria_ strikes the main road. A man descends it now.
He should be a young man from the strength and speed of his step, but
his face, and even the top part of his figure, is not visible, while
his gait is of necessity stooping, for on his shoulders he bears an
enormous load of hay packed into an enormous wicker pannier of coarsest
network, through the holes of which long grasses press out to hang
in a fringe around him. Nettina, however, seems to know, in spite of
travesty, whether he be a young man or not.
‘A happy night to you, Beppino,’ she calls out, but without stopping
her way.
‘And is it you, Nettina, of the walnut-grove? What, again to Ponte
Novo? How many days in the week do you go to Ponte Novo?’
‘You’re an ill-educated man to speak so! But I pay no heed to you. Why
should I wish, suppose you, to go to Ponte Novo? But a woman has duties
which you men only remember when she forgets them!’
‘You say well—you say well! All the same the miller’s son who lives at
Ponte Novo is better than the poor devils who grow the _gran turco_ up
in the valley! Eh, I should like to see what you look like now?’
‘But you can’t! And it’s like your impudence to think I should look
anything for you to see! I shall have no shame to tell you, when I go
to say the “Yes” in church, _that_ you may count upon! So I will give
you the holy night.’
And with this greeting Nettina hurries on. She has the water to fetch,
and the supper to see to. She has no time for further parley. Only,
as she walks, her white teeth are the better to be seen, as she thinks
over the little conversation.
The sun has set. The sky is deeper and further than ever, for it is
more transparent now that there is only a remembrance of the rosy glow.
The solid hills meet the air that seems almost solid, too, so far away;
their outlines lie peacefully upon the sky, soft browns and greens of
pastures contrasting with the harsher character of rocks, and again
with the softest quality of clouds. Just opposite, Monte Pilato breaks
from out the quiet line of the horizon to strike up a great mass into
the air, and at the foot of the valley Monte Cranio makes a mitre with
its two sharp peaks, in whose clefts one can see the chestnut trees’
outline even from this distance.
The woods cluster so richly over the country that there scarcely seems
room for the waving wheat to grow, for the large-leaved maize, nor
the tall grass of the meadows. Below the road, some hundred feet, the
river is creeping lazily, but now the rush of water over the weir warns
Nettina that she is close at home, and must leave the river’s bank and
climb a steep bit of path to reach her cottage on the hill’s ridge. Yet
her figure scarcely stoops, nor her pace slackens, though the way is
hard. To her right a little gorge cleaves the land, in which gurgles
a half-parched rill, and Nettina’s lungs have strength, even as she
climbs, for a merry shout to the labourer who works on the opposite
side.
Now she has gained the more level road above. On her right hand, thick
chestnut woods clothe a hill-side that slopes up toward the horizon;
but on her left, fields, and vineyards, and meadows lie in fertile
terraces one below the other, until they reach the valley’s depth where
the stream, shallow sometimes and calm, then tossed and wayward, flows
onward to the larger river. Chestnut woods again are upon the further
slope. They grow and flourish everywhere—tall and sweeping where the
ground is richest, but finding room even upon those narrowest ledges
of earth for which the rock makes a little place. The woods are not
very dense, nor the trees noble and stately, as in English parks and
forests, but the trunks are old, and hollow sometimes, or gnarled again
and sinuous and sweetly scented; the branches are curved, and graceful
with a strange and pertinacious grace; large and full-veined leaves
fan kindly in the breeze. Who would seek fairer and pleasanter woods
wherein to pass summer days?
Now thatched and sloping roofs and whitewashed walls of cottages peep
out from between the trees, and the damsel knows that she will soon be
home. For there is the village which lies opposite to her own across
the gorge, and little lights are already beginning to flicker from its
open doors and windows. Not lamp-lights, or even rushlights; in the
July days, at least, no light is needed after daylight is gone but the
light of dying embers or of newly kindled sticks upon the hearth. These
that she sees are the flames of the wood fires just lit for supper.
And Nettina hastens forward with quicker step. There is a cool wind
creeping softly about, and even the noise of the rushing water below
seems to freshen the air. She has entered the hamlet. Walking upon the
soft dead leaves which have been strewn over the stony way, and running
up the few broken steps beneath the little _pergola_, she turns in at
the cottage door.
The mother is on her knees, blowing from her sound lungs upon the
struggling fire, whence the white wood smoke ascends freely. The
kitchen is an odd and dingy little place, with its solitary window and
blackened ceiling, where slender rafters are set widely apart, that the
chestnuts, strewn over the floor above, may be dried during winter by
the heat from beneath. There is no glass, moreover, to the window, but
only heavy little wooden shutters; but these are not often closed, and
the free air blows in by night and by day, bearing the sweet scent of
carnations, that stand in a broken pot on the sill. There is no door
leading into the sleeping-room—only an aperture in the wall. The pot
hangs over the fire by means of a heavy chain from the centre beam.
For the hearth is in the middle of the room in these Italian cottages,
raised a few inches above the rest of the floor.
Rough benches stand around it, and these, with a table and a dresser
at the further end, where paste is rolled out for the _maccaroni_,
are all of dark walnut wood. The room is the dwelling-room as well as
the kitchen—this do many little signs of rough comfort and homeliness
abundantly testify. Red earthenware platters are ranged on a shelf,
and several curious water-vessels, of earthenware, or metal, stand
about, giving colour and quaintness to the room. On a low wooden stool
without the doorstep sits a little maiden of some eight or ten years,
dark and richly brown, like the greater part of Italian children; she
shells beans into a platter of quaint yellow ware, and beside her,
upon the low wall of the little terrace, sits another child—older by
a year or two, who carries a tiny, swaddled mummy in her arms. She is
no doubt the daughter of some neighbour, and is sitting here with her
little charge, that she may, at least, not be scolded by the mother and
worried by more babies at home.
‘Hie thee to the well, Nettina,’ says the elder woman, almost without
looking up from her task, as she sees her daughter stand within the
kitchen. ‘Thou hast been long at the fair. But patience! I will kindle
these two sticks while thou art gone, and then we put on the _polenta_.
Haste thee.’
The girl has already twisted her kerchief into a firm little cushion
upon which to rest the water-vessel on her head. Then she takes the
great copper _conca_ and sallies forth.
The village fountain lies hard by, and at this evening hour it is
thronged with women, young and old, in quest of their nightly supply.
A great chattering may be heard; the well is a trysting-place for young
men and maidens, and a place of gossip for the old women: it is noisy.
Nettina has ever been a favourite; proud though she be, she is fond
and gentle, so that, peasant girl as she is, she has more tact and
courtesy than many a high-bred lady. The girls welcome her loudly, and
would fain detain her awhile for the usual exchange of confidences,
but she is firm to-night in her resolve not to loiter, and only laughs
at the importunate questions of companions, all eager to know if
that rumour be true about the new gallant. The _conca_ is filled in
a few minutes, and then lifted to its place on her head; lifted, not
painfully nor clumsily, but with a movement full of that grace for
which these strong and hardy girls are so specially remarkable. Watch
her now as she descends the steep and stony path upon the village. Her
figure—strong and beautifully measured—sways gently upon its hips, her
knees are straightened slightly, and her toes are pointed that she may
the better feel her way as she comes down the hill. The way is rough,
and the stones roll from under her, neither dare she look to her steps
by reason of the burthen on her head; yet her bare feet tread none the
less firmly, nor fear to cling to the rocks. The brown column of her
throat grows erect to support a shapely head from out curved and goodly
shoulders, and, beneath a soft silken kerchief which she wears loosely
across the top part of her figure, the breasts swell tenderly. One
arm rests curved on her hip, as though to steady her gait; and, even
through a sleeve of soft, stout stuff, the firm moulding of the flesh
can be distinctly traced. The other arm hangs at her side, and seems to
emphasize the graceful motion of her limbs.
[Illustration: NETTINA RETURNING FROM THE WELL.]
The _polenta_ is boiling in the great pot, the beans are shelled,
and the neighbour’s baby has been carried away to be unswathed and
swathed again, when Tonietta, playing now in the road, shrieks out in
her piping treble to say that the _signori_ of the _villa_ are about
to come by on their evening walk. Nettina steps out upon the terrace,
the wooden staff in her hand with which she has been stirring the
pot, and even the mother is no less curious to have a peep at the blue
muslin dresses, and starched frills, and elaborate-dressed hair of the
gentry. They pick their way over the dirty ground with dainty shoes,
no wise fitted for mountain wear. The ladies belong to a fine family of
_negozianti_, who have rented the doctor’s house in the larger village.
They are grand now, and glad to be stared at, for it is the eve of a
great _festa_, otherwise might they be seen in the mornings, around
their lodging, in attire far more slatternly than Nettina’s at the
present moment.
‘_Orsù_,’ whispers the elder woman loudly to her daughter, ‘haste thee,
and dish up the _polenta_. The _signori_ will eat with us to-night, who
knows?’
But ere the meal is served and ready, the fine ladies have gone their
way, mobbed and gazed at by many children, commented upon by many
voices of the more learned ones.
Further down the village, families are already at supper, eating their
_minestra_ from off wooden platters, while they lounge in the cool upon
steps and balconies of rough stone.
‘A happy evening, pretty ladies! Come and eat a mouthful with us.’
Such are the courteous invitations poured out from all sides upon the
passers-by. Hospitable-natured, for all their rough simplicity and
their poverty, these good peasants are gracious and gentle-mannered,
with never a thought of false shame. What they offer is of their best,
and the gift needs no apology. Frank and primitive people, with winning
and cheery ways, are these. Often have I rested with them beneath
vine-trellised _pergole_, eating of their savoury food, or have sat
upon a wooden bench, when youths and maidens gathered round the hearth
on autumn evenings to toss and roast the chestnuts, and always have I
been cared for as an honoured guest, while yet the merriment and the
plain-speaking went on alike, nor did irksomeness creep in amongst them
because of the presence of one guest who was not of their own caste.
But the twilight is fast deepening into night. The _signore_ have
doffed their holiday clothes, doubtless, and are eating their supper by
this time. Within the cottage there is scarce time to display the goods
bought at the fair, scarce a moment wherein to question and marvel at
the _centesimi_ which were deducted from each bargain, before the men
are all there, clamouring for the supper that is so late to-night, and
laughing at the yellow kerchiefs and tapes and buttons displayed to
view on the kitchen dresser. All the purchases are quickly cleared away
for very shame! Nettina lifts the flat baskets within doors, in which
maize has been drying all day in the sun, and gathers up the golden
cones that were hanging on cords along the cottage’s front; that other
gold of the gourd-flowers, where they trail on the ground, changed to
green an hour ago, when they shut their petals with the sunset.
Men and women close round the hearth, for supper is ready at last.
‘The minestra is good to-night,’ some one remarks; ‘the _faggioli_ are
boiled to a savoury pulp, the _tagliarini_ are finely cut.’ Darkness
has fallen; nine o’clock strikes. ‘Good-night, neighbours; I am weary,’
says Nettina. ‘Good-night.’
The Village Swain.
Ask Nettina what she thinks of him: pretty, proud Nettina, who can
tread so stately a measure at the village _fête_, and can throw
so scornful a glance at the man who has been too frivolous for her
well-ordered mind! Well, maybe she is a bad one to choose for a fair
opinion, for whether he please her or no she will toss her head,
and answer you only with a gruff ‘_Cosa me ne fasso?_’ which, being
interpreted from our dialect, means, What is he to me? So, better than
that, ask our village pet, our dear little cosy, most comfortable,
and convenient of flirts—Bianca del Prato; she will tell you truth!
Yes; though with her lips—curling, smiling, rosy lips—she only simper,
‘he is not amiss,’ yet does not the creeping crimson colour say as
clearly as any words, and would not the two brown eyes say so too, if
only they were not cast down, ‘The village swain? He is charming; he
is beautiful! Life would be nothing without him! And the red kerchief
that I wore at the fair is lovely only because he told me my lips
could shame the colour even of _that_.’ And yet he is not Bianca’s
betrothed. Prepare to be shocked, oh righteous damsels! He is only one
of the village swains—only ‘a young man like every other’—only a youth
whose name and whose voice she knows well, the fire of whose banter she
has stood bravely, the glance of whose eyes she has blushed beneath,
nothing more. But where would be the use of the summer sun, thinks
Bianca, if one might only look pretty for one’s own _gallante_!
There are three village beauties—you have seen them all. There are
_four_ village beaux—of the very first water! So much the better for
the girls, _they_ think! Pietro Mazzacane shall serve us for a type.
If, from the church, you take the straight road that has led you before
to the home of Marrina, the sempstress, and if, instead of following
your shadow, you turn to its right, and cross the river upon those odd
old stepping-stones, if you do this of an evening after work hours,
and climb the opposite hill till you reach the hamlet in front of you,
maybe you may find Pietro smoking a clay pipe on the doorstep, whilst
he devours a goodly bowl of the home _minestra_. He is a tall man, not
heavily built, not even very broad-shouldered; as he lounges, one leg
bent, one arm upraised behind his head, consolation’s emblem in clay
between his lips, as he appears now, propping his manly form against
the grey stone of the cottage wall, you might scarcely believe him to
be strong or even a good labourer. His crisp black hair vies with the
tendrils of his own vines in curly, wayward beauty; his dark, deep
eyes tell of fire that can swiftly be roused, of love tales that can
sweetly be told; his lips are ruddy, his limbs have the subtle shape
which should be theirs. All this you will allow: even of his yellow
skin you will graciously say ‘it harmonises with the rest.’ But still
you doubt that that man can ever labour with the stern strength that
labour demands: he does not look like it. And you are right. Put him to
till _your_ ground, to dig _your_ trenches, to plant _your_ potatoes,
and his long lazy limbs will achieve not a whit more than you gave them
credit for, though his clay pipe will work busier than ever, and his
siestas be the more frequent as also his merry jokes and his friendly
conversations.
But do not judge our Pietro’s powers from _your_ trenches. Get up
some day, when the steaming land bids men know how brazen will be the
mid-day’s heat—get up when Pietro, when Nettina, and when Bianca get
up: at three o’clock in the morning. The sky is grey. Perhaps there is
not a cloud, and yet it is grey with a solemn greyness, and one would
scarcely dare to hope for the rosy young light that will steal over it
before long to flush it slowly into warm and fulsome life.
The mountains seem very near; their peaks and cones look very tall as
they stand out of the morning mists that creep around their girth and
wind themselves away into the hollows of the hills. Perhaps you find it
almost cold. So does not Pietro. Only the sack in which he is to carry
down a load from the mountain is wound round his shoulders above his
linen shirt, but the keen exercise stands in place of covering, for an
hour’s hearty lung-labour has brought him out upon the cone of Monte
Marzo, some five hundred feet above the placid valley of his home.
Bianca has driven the cows to pasture upon the slopes just below, but
the village swain has only time for one shout in far-off greeting now;
it is his _own_ business that he is about, and his own corn must not
rot, nor his own land lie fallow for want of a good day’s swing of the
pickaxe. What say you now? Are not his muscles tough, and is that arm
not mighty that hurls the _zappa_ above his head and brings it down
again into the stiff clay to dig up his field?
Look around you off this mountain-top. Behind you lies Monte Stella,
before you the range of the Polcevera hills, to your right Antola with
her great stretching shoulder and heavy-browed summit; below you are
valleys, where meadows lie and waters flow and fall and trickle; and
everywhere on high hills and descending slopes there is cultivation.
It is no lazy race of men that has notched those mountain-sides with
terraces the better to train the vines towards the sun, that has
planted them with corn and maize, with peas and beans and potatoes,
with fruit trees of every kind, that has trained the gourds and the
vines, that has utilised every strip and corner of land upon the
steeps, that has quarried the stone, and fed and tended the silk-worms.
‘_Per Bacco_, the Lord Himself could do no more,’ Pietro would tell you
as he shoulders his huge pickaxe and, beneath the chestnut wood hard
by, gathers and crowds into his sack no mean load of the first fallen
leaves to strew beneath the cattle in cattle-sheds. One does not go
down the mountain empty-handed, even after a hard day’s work, and no
one could say that Pietro does not show to advantage running down the
steep with faggots on his shoulders and over his head—running to keep
his balance on the rough and rapid incline. Though Bianca would laugh
if you found anything to admire in him at such a moment! ‘A young man
not amiss, I grant you, but with a load of _foglia_ on his head—_Dio_,
what a taste!’
No, Bianca likes him better on the days when, he being somebody else’s
brother working with her own father, she can go with ‘somebody else’
to take the meal to them at midday; better still on the days when he
is threshing with all the neighbours on her father’s threshing-floor,
and comes to eat a _cena_ of her own preparing in her own home; best
of all, when there is a fair at Ponte Novo or Bossola, and she, who
is going to buy _conche_, can walk by his side, who is going to buy
cattle.
Yes, those are fine days! One goes to see a friend the evening before,
and gets one’s hair plaited in a beautiful _resca di pesce_ for the
morrow’s adventure. [It does not get tossed as you might fancy; the
sleep of the just is sweet and sound.] Then to rise with the daybreak,
to don one’s best _bordato_ dress, to fold one’s yellow kerchief, and
tie one’s heavy shoes, that all ‘goes without saying’ for a girl. That
would be done for mere pride’s sake, whether one’s _gallante_ lives in
Genoa, as Bianca’s does, or no.