CARNIVAL AT NAPLES
From the first days of January, Naples was taken with a mania for
work that spread from one house and shop to another, from street to
street, quarter to quarter, from fashionable parts to the poorest,
with a continuous movement, rising and falling. A stronger noise of
saws, planes and hammers came from the factories and workshops: in
the shops, with doors left ajar, and in the houses they sat up late:
the smallest as well as the big industries seemed to have got a
mysterious impulse, a breath of new life, into their half-dying state.
The demand for gloves had increased beyond bounds, especially white
and dove-coloured ones: the humblest general shops kept them. In
the artificial-flower shops, that compete with the French trade
with growing success, a great quantity of boughs, bunches, wreaths
of flowers, and ferns were got ready; big and small bouquets of
bright, warm-coloured flowers to take the eye--the finest intended
for ladies' hair and bosoms, the coarser for decorating houses,
shops, horses and carriages. Roses, camellias, pinks, were most
in request. At all the tailors' and dressmakers', satin, velvet,
gauze, crape, were draped in all styles, made into dresses, mantles,
hoods, and scarves; whilst at the shoe-makers', binders spent ten
hours a day making pink, blue, white, gray, and lilac shoes, fancy,
gold-embroidered boots, and some bound in fur. The glove, flower,
dress, and shoe makers' work began the first hours in the morning
and ended at eleven at night; but the only others that came up to
them were the cardboard shops. Here paper, in men and women's hands,
was bent into a thousand shapes and sizes. It was painted, cut out,
twisted, even curled up; it was made up with straw, metal, and rich
brocade stuff, starting from the twisted paper that holds a sweet or
cracker to the big expensive box. From the little chocolate-box,
made of cardboard and a scrap of satin, to the handsome, neat satchel
with a second cardboard lining; from the roll, made of two or three
old gambling cards, a little Bristol board, and bright-coloured
pictures, to straw cornucopias, covered with ribbons; from ugly,
mean things to lovely and expensive ones, the work was never-ending.
All this paper-work was arranged on large boards; the colours were
dazzling and took the eye. Every day they were sent off to the
sweet-shops, where they were filled with confetti, dainties, sweets,
and sugar almonds.
Yes, the work was hardest, always, in the confectioners', from
the humble Fragalà of San Lorenzo quarter and the gorgeous but
middle-class Fragalà of Spirito Santo up to the exquisite fashionable
confectioner in Piazza San Ferdinando. Above all, there was a
grand making of caraways, white and coloured, of all sizes, with
caraway-seeds and a powdery sugar covering; there were whole stores
of them in tins, canisters of all sizes, overflowing baskets
made like canisters, all kept carefully from damp, which ruins
caraways. Such a stock!--if it had been gunpowder, there would have
been enough to conquer an army. The other heavy work was getting
sausages and black-puddings ready, all covered with yellow bits of
Spanish bread--pig's blood, that is to say--made up with chocolate,
pistachios, vanilla, lemon, and cinnamon, so presented as to hide the
coarseness. In the back-shops they weighed cinnamon, sliced lemons,
crushed pistachio nuts, boiled sweets of all colours and kinds;
ovens roared, stoves were made red-hot, kettles boiled and gurgled,
and workmen, in shirt-sleeves and caps, with bare arms and necks,
stirring with big ladles, beating pestles in marble mortars, looked
like odd figures in purgatory, lighted up by the furnace flames.
All trades were busy: advertisements were put up; whole sheets of
them were spread on the city walls. Fashionable barbers took on
new lads; the three celebrated Naples _pizzaiuoli_ of Freddo and
Chiaia Lanes, of Carità Square, of Port Alba, informed the public,
which loves _pizza_ with Marano and Procida wine, that they would
be open till morning. The Café Napoli, the Grande, and the Europa
covered their windows with thick cloths, and held a grand cleaning
up all through the rooms; the theatres announced four times more
illuminations, whilst at the door of fancy shops, the windows of
miserable or fashionable bazaars, were shown black velvet masks,
wax noses, and huge cardboard heads, three times the natural size,
and much uglier than Nature; network masks, to protect the face from
caraways, ladles for throwing them, long tongs for handing up sweets
or flowers to the balconies, scarves and ribbons, fantastic ballroom
decorations, and entire costumes of tissue-paper. Along the streets
in Monte Calvario quarter, across and parallel to Toledo, in the
darkest old-clothes shops and retail dealers', dominos hung on wooden
pegs for the popular balls: Mephistopheles costumes in red and blue,
Spanish grandees in cotton velvet, harlequins made up of old carpets,
Sorrento peasant women's dresses in gay colours, Pulcinellos, and
almost white dress; above all, shining helmets, with cuirass of
cardboard to match, and wooden swords. Masquerading costumes were on
hire everywhere for a few francs; they gave a jocular tone to these
dull lanes, hanging even from the first-floor balconies, sticking out
in a row from the damp, dark shops with grinning, devilish masks, or
showing sickly faces of white or greeny-blue satin.
Wherever one went, in lower class neighbourhoods as well as in
aristocratic parts, one could see a lively movement, cheerful labour,
a noisy bustling about, a never-ending activity, a daily and nightly
ferment of all forces, the constant, lively, energetic action of
a whole peaceful, laborious town, intent upon one single piece of
work, given up to it heart and mind, hand and foot, using up its
nerves, blood, and muscles in this one tremendous work. Everywhere,
everywhere, one guessed or knew it; it caught the eye; it was written
up what this great work was--'_For the coming carnival festivities_.'
Nothing else but the carnival. The great city gave itself over to
that impetuous, joyous exertion, not for love of work in itself--for
work that is the cause and consequence of well-doing, which in itself
is the ground-work of goodness and respectability. The great town
had not given itself over to that lively activity for any immediate
civic reason, for hygienic improvements, industrial art exhibitions,
changing old quarters or making new ones: it was for the carnival
only--a carnival by official decree of the Prefecture and of the
Municipal Palace; a carnival warmed up by committees, associations,
commissions, set agoing by thousands of people, arranged and carried
out as a great institution, widely spread in the minds of the whole
five hundred thousand inhabitants, made to resound as far as the
southern provinces, echoing even to Rome and to Florence, putting
in the place of any other project, initiative or work, this of
the carnival; nothing but the carnival--enthusiastically, even
deliriously.
But, as at the bottom of all joyous things in this land of Cockayne,
there is an ever-flowing vein of bitterness. This carnival, that
turned all the gravest persons and things in the town into fun and
masquerade--this carnival was a merciful thing. From autumn to
January the damp, grievous scirocco had blown in Naples' streets,
overcoming the energies of healthy people, and making invalids'
maladies worse. The winter crowd of foreigners was smaller than
usual. Many works had been stopped for a time, and those just
starting had been delayed, so that many poor people slept on the
church steps under San Francesco di Paola portico and the Immacolata
obelisk in Piazza Gesù. A great wind of fasting had blown with the
scirocco, so that the official carnival, carried out by the desire of
thousands, was intended, if it succeeded, to satisfy for ten days at
least a lot of starving people, from shoe-binders to flower-makers,
from tailors to shop-clerks, from wandering salesmen to the small
shopkeepers. Twenty days' carnival!--that is to say, ten days'
bread, and a relish with it. The idea had been taken up at once. All
helped, even the least enterprising, knowing they were putting out
their money at good interest. Carnival, carnival, in the streets and
balconies, in the gateways and houses!
On that Shrovetide Thursday the damp winter scirocco had got a spring
softness. Toledo Road, where the carnival spread from one end to
the other, both in its popular and fashionable form, had put on an
extraordinary appearance. All the big shops were shut. The tradesmen
and their ladies wished to enjoy the day's outing, also they were
nervous about their plate-glass windows. All the signs were covered
with linen or tow, as were the gas-lamps. As to the common smaller
shops, they had taken out the glass and put up wooden platforms, and
the owners, with their friends and children, sat with a store of
caraways, having to do battle almost face to face with the people on
the pavement; but they bravely flourished their ladles all the same.
The balconies on the first floor were all differently draped with
bright, cheap muslins, put up with a few nails or pins, with a very
Southern and rather barbarous love of gay colours, some in the style
of church decorations, blue, red, white, and gold, some tucked back
with big camellias, roses, and dahlias, to make the balcony look like
an alcove, an actress's room, a saint's niche, or a wild beasts' show
even. The finest and smartest hangings began near Santa Brigida. Some
Swiss gentlemen had had a chalet put up in their balcony, and the
ladies wore simple, rather silly costumes, with hair down, a big cap,
and gold crosses at their necks. Just after that, at Santa Brigida, a
great man's natural son had hung his balconies with dark-blue velvet,
covered with a silver net, which might represent the firmament, the
kingdom of the moon, or the sea, but, at any rate, it surprised the
good Naples folk. A balcony near the Conte di Mola Lane was made into
a kitchen, with a stove, kettle, frying and stew pans, and eight or
ten youths of good family worked as cooks and scullions, with white
caps and aprons. A famous beautiful woman, whose beauty brought her
wealth and led her into deadly sin, had changed her balcony into a
Japanese hut, all stuffs and tapestries. Now and then she appeared
wrapped in flowing, soft robes, just gathered in at the waist, with
her black hair caught up in a shiny knot held by pins, her eyebrows
arched in an unvarying look of surprise.
The common people smiled admiringly as they passed. They said, with
their vague one idea of the East, 'The Turk, the Turk!' All these
balconies, draped from one end of the street to the other, and the
shop decorations, began to make one dizzy with bright colours,
firing the imagination, giving that quick feeling of voluptuous joy
Southerners get from outside impressions. Towards eleven, wandering
salesmen began to go about, shrieking out their wares. They sold
little boxes of inferior sweets made in bright colours--red bags,
green and white boxes, lilac and yellow horns, carried in big, flat
baskets in one hand. They sold artificial flowers also, made into
sprays, cockades, and bunches, tied on to long poles. Real flowers
were sold, too--white camellias and perfumed violets, from big
baskets; also masks, ladles, linen bags for caraways, red and yellow
paper sunflowers, that twirled round at every breath of wind like
wild things. They sold a bad quality of caraways, bought cheap,
intended to be sold dear in the blind, furious time of the battle.
At mid-day the traffic in sweetmeat-boxes, flowers, musks, and
windmills began. Already the crowd began to fill the balconies and
pavements, running up hurriedly from all the side-streets. On the
first-floor windows and balconies a living, many-coloured hedge of
women swayed about. There was a shimmer of girlish forms brightly
dressed; their faces gently moved up and down like big pink and
white flower-heads, with a blood-red touch now and then from an open
parasol or scarlet hat. The balconies and windows of the second
story were filled with still more excited people, whilst on the
fourth children and girls here and there had thought of letting down
a basket tied to a long bit of ribbon to fish with, smiling from
above on some courteous unknown, who put a flower, some sweets, or a
chocolate-box into the baskets of these smiling beings so near the
sky. The people increased everywhere. Traffic with the hawkers went
on from the balconies to the streets, with loud discussions, offers,
and rejections, making the noise twice as great.
Caraways were not to be thrown before two o'clock, by the committee's
express order, but some stray fights were started already. At San
Sepolcro corner a peasant nurse, slowly swinging her petticoats, was
fired at by some school-boys at close quarters. A grave gentleman,
in top-hat and long great-coat, was violently assaulted in Carità
Square. He tried to go at them with his stick, but he was hissed.
Then he called for the police, announcing pompously he was Cavaliere
Domenico Mayer, a State functionary; but the police would not help,
saying it was carnival, and that he should not tempt people with
his top-hat. And then the misanthropic Secretary of the Finance
Department, full of bitterness, had gone into the San Liborio Lane to
escape. A lady in a broad-brimmed hat, not able to move from one spot
in the pavement near San Giacomo, had a continuous shower of caraways
poured on her by a child on the third story. She heard it fall on her
felt and feathers without daring to move or raise her head, in case
she got the caraways in her face.
At two o'clock exactly a cannon-shot was heard in the distance. Then
there was a sigh of relief from one end of Toledo to the other, from
the street to the upper stories, and the crowd swayed about.
The four Rossi Palace balconies, first floor on the right, looking
into Toledo, were draped in blue and white linen, caught back by
big red camellias. Luisella Fragalà and her guests had thought of
white and blue dominoes, with high, ridiculous hats and red cockades,
and all the Naddeos, all the Durantes, all the Antonaccis, fat or
thin, young or old, wore dominoes made in the house themselves
to save their clothes from white powder, and, according to them,
give an elegant look to the balcony. Some looked like big bundles,
others like long ghosts; but the carnival madness had overcome these
middle-class women. Besides all, trade was flourishing in these
days. So many goods were sold; the men came back to the house in
high good-humour, whilst all winter had been one complaint, and
economy had got narrower and harder to bear. How happy they were,
all these placid, industrious little women! In this time of carnival
excitement they could share, in their blue and white fancy dresses
and red cockades. Luisella Fragalà had thought out the costume, and
that monkey Carmela Naddeo took up the idea at once and made others
follow suit. They were all there, ladles in hand, guessing what sort
of carriages were to appear, exaggerating, contradicting, shrieking,
laughing, hanging over the railings to see if any carriages were
coming round by the Museum. Only sometimes a cloud came over Luisella
Fragalà's face; some unhappy thought was behind her brown eyes.
Perhaps she was troubled by the thought that the balcony hangings
would be spoilt by the confetti. Perhaps she would have liked to keep
the shop open even on that profitable Carnival Thursday, her love of
selling having instinctively grown so great, as if by that alone she
saw a chance of being saved from imminent peril. Perhaps she secretly
regretted Cesare Fragalà's absence. He was often away lately, and had
disappeared early that Thursday, too. But these clouds were fleeting.
Luisella was going about from one balcony to another with her hood
down, vainly looking for places for the Mayer family, who had come
without being invited. All quietly snubbed them, so as not to give
up their places, saying to each other that the mother and daughter
had no dominoes, and they made a false note on the balcony. They set
themselves in the third row, the mother, as usual, rheumatic, and
wrapped in flannel to the finger-tips; the girl's big eyes still
dully misanthropic, as were her swollen, discoloured lips; the
brother, as usual, very hungry.
'We will not get even a chocolate-box,' they grumbled one after the
other, muttering with their unending rage against humanity.
But the great carnival wave, with ever-increasing force, swallowed
up their rage against mankind also. The noise among the carriages
got tremendous. The confetti war had begun between them and the
pony-carts, done up with myrtle as an attempt at decoration, all
being well filled with masqueraders of both sexes dressed in
bright-coloured calicoes. The Parascandolos, who lived on the other
side of the Rossi Palace, kept their balcony shut, for the Signora
considered herself in mourning; but Don Gennaro Parascandolo, in a
Russian linen dust-cloak and cap, with a bag of sweets hung round his
neck, after walking along Toledo, greeted from hundreds of balconies,
where his past, present, and future clients were, had gone to his
club at Santa Brigida, and from there, amid a group of young and old
boon companions, made a life of it, as they said there. They joked
about him, asked him how many cars he had lent money for, and if
it was true his collection of bills was increased by many princely
autographs. Ninetto Costa, the smart, lucky stock-broker, who had his
own reasons for making a fuss with him, said, to flatter him, that
not a handful of caraways was thrown that day he was not interested
in either providing or scattering. Don Gennaro Parascandolo laughed
paternally, not denying it. He answered those who asked him for
coppers as a joke, 'I have had to get the loan of forty pounds from a
friend to hold carnival with.' Others around shouted, whistled, but
always flattered him. One never knew when one might fall into his
hands. He stood out among them all by his great height and the little
cap oddly set on his big head, throwing ladlefuls of caraways at the
carriages and pony-carts.
Slovenly, in her black dress, grown greenish, and her torn
shawl-fringe, Carmela the cigar-maker had set herself at the corner
of D'Affitto Lane, looking at the passing carriages with her hollow
eyes, her fine fresh mouth working impatiently, the only feature that
was still young in her worn face. Handfuls, ladlefuls of caraways
often new from the balconies and the street, frequently hitting her
face or back; but she only moved a little to avoid it, smiling at the
annoyance, and cleaned her face with a corner of her shawl.
She was waiting there to see her lover, Raffaele, called
Farfariello, pass. He was in a carriage with four others, all dressed
alike; and, indeed, to get this dress, she had had to sell some
copper pans, a chest of drawers, and two long branches of artificial
flowers under a glass case, all things she was keeping for her
marriage. How it tore her heart to sell these things, bought bit by
bit by dint of hard saving!
But Raffaele had insisted on having forty francs--blood from a
snail--because he was in despair at making a poor appearance among
his friends; and she, getting white when she heard him swear, had
sold all these things, and, like a fool, was quite pleased at heart
when she handed him the money, because he had smiled and promised to
take her and her mother to an inn at Campo the last Carnival Sunday
if she took as much as even an _ambo_ on Saturday. She, quite proud
of this fantastic promise, kept down her heart's bitterness, and went
as slovenly as a beggar that carnival day, her hair falling on her
neck, without a sou in her pocket, to see her handsome lover passing
proudly in a carriage, smoking a Naples cigar, in new clothes and
hat on one side, with that intensely indifferent look characteristic
of the _guappo_, or aspirants to it. She waited patiently, thinking
only of him, not caring about her day's work, as there was a holiday
at the factory. She quietly bore all the pushing about that noon-day
carnival that she took no part in, for she was wrapped up like a
Buddhist in contemplation of her lover.
On the people went, on foot and in carriages, through the clouds of
caraways, flowers, chocolates, through the shower of coloured paper
from the upper stories, where, as they were not able to take part in
the caraway war, they amused themselves in that way. The noise got
clamorous, swaying about sonorously, rising to the skies that gentle
scirocco day.
Carmela, confused by the noise and wild sights that noon-day,
when Naples' rejoicing became epic, screwed up her eyes, not to
lose sight of the two-horse carriages going along at a foot-pace,
white with powder. Now and then one of the large cars appeared.
There was the Parthenope Siren, a huge, pink lady with blonde hair
hanging down. She was made of cardboard, and the body ended up
in blue waves. This Siren was dragged along on a car full of men
dressed as fish--oysters, carp, bull-heads. One car represented a
merchant-vessel, a Tartana. The ship had rigging and sailors dressed
in pink and white stripes, also in blue and white with long red
caps. There was a car with eight or ten Jacks-in-the-box, from which
gentlemen dressed in satin burst out in the midst of flowers. On
one car all the Neapolitan masks were shown: Pulcinella, Tartaglia,
Don Nicolai, Columbrina, Barilotto the clown, the _guappo_, the old
woman--even to the newest mask of a pretentious, fast youth, Don
Felice Scioscimocca.
When these cars passed, very slowly, almost quivering on their
wheels, showering down caraway, confetti, and presents, they were
much applauded. The Siren excited rather risky jokes; the Tartana
was thought picturesque; the Jacks-in-the-box luxurious and smart;
and the Naples masks were hailed with shouts of recognition and
quick-flying dialogues from all the balconies in dialect, which the
masks replied to in a lively way. There was one swaying movement from
the top to the bottom of Toledo, both in the balconies and the crowds
round the carriages.
Carmela looked and looked. She saw the two sisters Concetta and
Caterina, pass in a carriage, the horses covered with flowers stuck
in the shiny brass harness. She owed Donna Concetta thirty-five
francs since ever so long, and managed to give her a few francs now
and then just for interest, and she had often staked on the _small
game_ with Donna Caterina when she had not enough money for the
Government Lottery, or, perhaps, only one penny left. The sisters
were in full dress, the hair done up like a trophy on the top of the
head with gold chains, and they wore heavy necklaces, pearl earrings,
thick rings, keeping up their usual discreet, severe expression,
casting oblique glances, and pursing up their lips. Two men were with
them in workmen's Sunday attire, with shiny long hair, hat over the
ear, in black jackets, with a spent cigar in a corner of the mouth.
The four, silent and solemn, looked at each other now and then with
serious, pleased glances of gratified pride, shaking their heads to
get rid of the caraways off their hat-brims, smiling at the people
who threw them. They looked to right and left haughtily, just like
rich, common people.
Carmela bit her lips on seeing the two calm, ferocious heapers-up of
other people's money, but immediately after the usual words came from
her heart to her lips:
'It doesn't matter, it doesn't matter.'
But a very original car was coming down from the top of Toledo,
raising a colossal laugh, from right to left, up and down. It was
a great bed, with a bright pink cotton quilt, such as are used in
Naples. It had an open canopy, with images of the Virgin and patron
saints on the hangings. In bed, tucked in with white sheets, were two
people, with huge pasteboard heads, one an old man in a night-cap,
the other an old woman in a mob-cap. Very caressing, affected old
people; they nodded their great heads, pulled the coverlids from each
other with that selfish, shivering habit old people have; offering
snuff to each other, bowing, sneezing, and stretching themselves
out; greeting people in the balconies, thanking them for the shower
of caraways they got, and shaking them off the bed-clothes. It
was not found out who they were, but they displayed that familiar
caricature--a corner of a bedroom--without anyone thinking it too
risky; for Southerners are used to sleeping in the open air, they
live so much in public in this warm, easy-going country.
What about it? Everyone laughed. Even the people in Don Crescenzio's
shop at Nunzio Corner, just beyond Carità Passage, laughed. It was
really the lottery bank, No. 117, a shop usually shut from Saturday
at noon till Tuesday, the crush beginning on Thursday up to Saturday
at twelve o'clock.
Don Crescenzio, the lottery banker, a handsome man, with a red beard,
worked there with his two lads, who were anything but lads: one, an
old man of seventy, bent, half-blind, his nose always on the gambling
register, made people say their lottery numbers three times, to
make no mistakes, and wrote them very, very slowly. The other was a
colourless type of no particular age; his face had undecided lines,
his beard was an indefinite colour, one of those queer beings that
are employed as witnesses by ushers, as middlemen at the pawn-shop,
as distributors of handbills, and agents for furnished rooms. Don
Crescenzio lorded it over his two _young men_. That Thursday he had
quite changed his shop, putting up a gallery in it draped in white
and crimson, to which he invited his best customers. Yes, they were
all there, those that came every week to put down the best of their
income--money hardly earned, either snatched from domestic economies,
or got by cunning expedient, bold at first, and then shameful.
All were there at the lottery shop, turned into a stand. The Marquis
di Formosa, Don Carlo Cavalcanti, with his lordly air; Dr. Trifari,
red of face, hair, and beard, bloated as if he were going to burst,
a suspicious look in his false blue eyes; Professor Colaneri, more
than ever that day, clearly showed the indelible marks of a priest
who has given up the Church; then Ninetto Costa, come from his club
in Don Gennaro Parascandolo's company, felt drawn by a powerful,
irresistible desire to his haunt; and other eight or ten--a court
judge, a steward of a princely house, a sickly painter of saints,
and Cozzolino the barber, who was a great Cabalist, down to the
shoeblack Michele, in a corner on the ground, a hunchback and lame,
his wrinkled old face full of irrestrained passion; beside him was
Gaetano, the glove-cutter, more worn and pale than before, his eyes
burning with discontent, uneasiness in every line of his face. Don
Crescenzio's clients held their carnival in the shop dear to their
ruling passion, and as they were tormented to buy caraways, they,
too, threw them at the carriages, but mostly at the passers-by, among
whom they found acquaintances sometimes. No one was surprised to see
such different sorts of people together--a Marquis, a stock-broker,
a court judge, a doctor, a professor, down to a workman. Carnival,
carnival! The gentle popular madness had seized all brains; the
warmish day, the bright colours, the whims in the thousands
of vehicles passing, the clamour of a hundred thousand people
overpowered even those suffering from another fever, which was pushed
back for a time into a corner of the mind.
When Cesare Fragalà passed on foot, laughing and shouting, in a
Russia-linen dust-cloak and travelling-cap, two long bags of caraways
at his sides, which he emptied against balconies of his acquaintance
and went filling again at every corner of the street from wandering
salesmen, joking with everyone, fat, strong, and jovial, needing an
outlet to his spirits--when he passed before Don Crescenzio's shop
there was a chorus of greetings. Under the Rossi Palace, before
his own balconies, he had already had half an hour's fight from
below with his wife and her friends. Luisella, Carmela Naddeo, the
Durantes, and the Antonaccis had thought Cesare's idea so original
and he so charming that they had knocked him down by dint of caraway
showers; he had been obliged to run away, laughing, keeping down his
head, pulling his cap over his ears. There were noisy greetings,
therefore, from Don Crescenzio's shop, and calls for him to come in.
Was he not a customer, too, always hopeful of getting eighty thousand
francs hard cash to open a shop in San Ferdinando? But Cesare was
too satisfied wandering about alone, laughing and shrieking with
everyone, buffeted by the caraways, red, panting with health and fun.
He went among the carts and carriages, borne by the crowd, through a
burst of excitement, which the time of day made keener. The quietest
did silly things now. Those standing on the cars, at first only
merry, looked like so many demons. Raffaele, nicknamed Farfariello,
loving Carmela's betrothed, passed in a carriage; to be seen better,
he and his friends had made up their minds to sit on the roof. From
there they waved white silk handkerchiefs, tied to sticks like flags,
at the crowd. Alas! he did not see her, the girl who waited so many
hours for him at the corner of D'Affitto Lane. She, having cried out,
waved her arms and a bit of white stuff, felt stunned at the neglect,
but whispered to herself as a consolation, 'It does not matter.'
But she still stayed there, hemmed in by that growing carnival
frenzy. A thicker crowd closed in under the balcony where the lovely
lady dressed as a Japanese was. She, getting excited, began to send
down a shower of confetti by handfuls and boxfuls, as if she had a
store in the house, a servant handing them to her. A shout of rogues
and enthusiastic common folk rose to the skies, whilst she from
above, quite serious, but a pink flame in her cheeks, recklessly
flung down confetti, sweets, and chocolate-boxes. On the balcony
draped with blue and silver net, the exalted personage's son had
thought of the joke of tying a bottle of champagne, a game pie or a
big chocolate-box, to a long rod, and letting it down to the level
of the crowd's outstretched hands, pulling it up, dancing it about,
amidst the longing cries, uplifted hands, and open mouths of the
people below, until a shout of triumph announced some lucky one had
carried off the prize of the new Cockayne. The rod was pulled up,
and the young fellows, who had taken a mad fancy to the game, tied
on some other eatable or drinkable--a bottle of bourdeaux, a cheese
wrapped in silver paper, or a bag of confetti, and the game started
again, with an unutterable row and obstruction to traffic. The men
in the cars now, having taken in new stores as the evening went on,
danced, sang, and threw things, behaving like demons.
It was at this most exciting time of the day that a new cart came
out from a side-street of Toledo, arriving late, the horses drawing
it at a foot-pace. It was queer and fantastic, being a philosopher's
chemical laboratory, where a wretched old Faust sat cursing all
human things in a frozen, melancholy way. It formed a dark room,
with two shelves of books, a furnace, and an alchemist's retort, and
there was an open Koran on a carved wooden desk. A bent old man in
a black velvet skull-cap, with a long yellowy-white beard, tottered
about the car, throwing boxes of sweets shaped like books, retorts,
alembics, furnaces, to the crowd in the streets and balconies, each
having a figure of Mephistopheles. But they were good sweets. Then
a chimerical touch got into the carnival fury. The sorcerer's car
seemed quite supernatural. The old man, whom the laughing women
in the balconies called the Devil, his bald head in the skull-cap
quivering, threw out things, magically producing them from beneath
the car. Now and then amid the clamour of the populace a shrill voice
called out to the decrepit sorcerer, 'Give us lottery numbers! give
us tips!'
Having got to San Ferdinando, Faust's car turned to go back the same
way up Toledo, when a most curious, indescribable thing happened. The
old man took out of a copper alembic, beside the boxes of sweets,
long, narrow strips of yellow paper and threw them to the crowd, who
rushed furiously on them. A shout went before, and followed Faust's
car, 'These are _storni, storni_!'
To carry out a new, splendid, eccentric generosity pleasing to the
people, the old man threw lottery-tickets of two or three numbers,
ready paid for next Saturday, at two sous each. They are called
_storni_. He nobly threw handfuls of them to the people, laughing in
his thick, white beard, forgetting he was old, holding his head back
with ferocious gaiety.
What a shout everywhere, from the streets and windows up to the sky
paling at sunset! What a lengthened shout of desire and enthusiasm!
The whole population raised their hands and arms as if to seize the
promised land. They cast themselves on the ground and kicked each
other, so as to snatch a lottery-ticket, with its conditional promise
of ten or two hundred francs gain. What joyous excitement among
men, women, boys, rich and poor, needy and comfortably off! What
an irresistible rush, that from holy fear respected the sorcerer's
car; they made a triumph for him of glorious shouts from one end of
Toledo to the other! But when he had thrown ten thousand tickets to
the crowd he disappeared, no one knew where or how.
* * * * *
Antonio Amati met Margherita the maid on the staircase as she was
going in, too, rather tired. Brusquely, as if he would have preferred
not to speak, perhaps, he asked her:
'How is your mistress?'
'She is better,' the old domestic said in a low voice. 'Why have you
not been to see her, sir?'
'I have a lot to do,' the doctor muttered, without, however, knocking
at his door.
'That is true; but you are so kind, sir.'
'And then there was no need of me,' he added in a hesitating tone.
'Who can tell?' Margherita retorted in a still lower and mysterious
voice. 'Why don't you come in now, sir?'
'I will come,' he said, with his head down, as if he was giving in to
a superior will.
She put a key in the lock and opened it, going before the doctor
into the quiet house, right on to the drawing-room, and he, though
accustomed to keep down his own impressions, felt at once the cold
silence and emptiness of the big room. He found the girl in black
before him, smiling vaguely, holding out her hand--a long, cold, tiny
one, which he kept a minute in his, more as a doctor than a friend.
'Are you quite well again?'
He spoke in a low voice, feeling the oppressive surroundings.
'Not altogether,' she said in her clear, tired voice. 'I had another
fainting-fit one night; but very short--at least, I think so.'
'Did no one come to your help?' he said regretfully.
'No; no one knew about it; it was at night, in my own room.... It
doesn't matter,' she added, with a slight smile.
'Why did you not go to the country?'
'My father hates the country,' she said. 'I will not leave him here
alone.'
'But why do you not go out? It is carnival to-day; why did you not go
to see it? Do you want to die of melancholy?'
'Signora Fragalà did ask me, but I hardly know her. I think I would
have had to wear a mask. My father does not like such things; he is
right.'
She spoke in a gentle, pretty voice, with a tired sound in it. Amati,
who had been working all that day by sick-beds while others enjoyed
the carnival, felt rested by that harmonious voice and the tired,
delicate calmness of the young girl. They were alone, facing each
other--around them was a great silence; they hardly looked at each
other, but they spoke as if their souls had long lived together, in
joy and sorrow.
'Where were you a little ago?' Antonio Amati asked brusquely.
'I was in the chapel,' Bianca Maria answered, taking no offence at
the question.
'Do you pray a great deal?'
'Not enough,' she replied, raising her eyes heavenwards.
'Why do you pray so much?'
'I must do it.'
'You don't sin,' the unbeliever muttered, trying to make a joke of it.
'One never knows,' she said gravely. 'One must pray for those that
don't pray themselves.'
So saying, she gave him a passing glance. He bent his head.
'You spend too many hours in the cold church. It will do you harm.'
'I don't think so; and, then, what does it matter?'
'Don't say that,' interrupting her quickly.
'Few things can hurt me,' she replied in a tone he understood and did
not want to inquire into.
'Let us go and see the carnival from Signora Fragalà's windows. She
asked me, too;' and he got up promptly to carry her off.
'Let us stay here,' Bianca gently retorted. 'Here at least there is
peace. Don't you think this calm and silence good for one, too?'
'You are right,' Amati owned, sitting down again quite subdued.
'My father has gone out with his friends to see the carnival,' she
went on quietly. 'Everyone in the palace is out on the balconies that
look on Toledo; no noise reaches here, you see.'
They looked at each other frankly. That strange hour of
unconsciousness, when he saved her, and she knew he was saving her,
had set up something like an inward life between them. What she felt
was a humble need of protection, help, and counsel; his feeling was a
very tender pity. He could not keep back a question that rose to his
mind.
'Is it true you wish to be a nun?' he asked in rather a choked voice.
'I would like it,' she said simply.
'Why should you?'
'Just because,' she replied with a woman's favourite answer.
'Why should you be a nun? No one wants to be a nun nowadays. Why
should you do it?'
'Because, if there is one single person in the world that should go
into a convent, it is I; because I have neither desires, nor hopes,
nor anything before me. As that is so, you see, I must at least have
prayer across this void desert and the desolation that comes before
death.'
'Don't say that--don't say it!' he implored, as if for the first time
fatality had breathed on his energy and destroyed it.