Back to Valmontone.
At Zagarolo, where you touch the Rome-Naples line, I found there was no
train to this place for several hours. A merchant of straw hats from
Tuscany, a pert little fellow, was in the same predicament; he also had
some business to transact at Valmontone. How get there? No conveyance
being procurable on account of some local fair or festival, we decided
to walk. A tiresome march, in the glow of morning. The hatter, after
complaining more or less articulately for an hour, was reduced to groans
and almost tears; his waxed moustache began to droop; he vowed he was
not accustomed to this kind of exercise. Would I object to carrying his
bundle of hats for him? I objected so vigorously that he forthwith gave
up all hope. But I allowed him to rest now and then by the wayside. I
also offered him, gratis, the use of a handful of my choicest Tuscan
blasphemies, [16] for which he was much obliged. Most of them were
unfamiliar to him. He had been brought up by his mother, he explained.
They seemed to make his burden lighter.
Despite wondrous stretches of golden broom, this is rather a cheerless
country, poorly cultivated, and still bearing the traces of mediaeval
savagery and insecurity. It looks unsettled. One would like to sit down
here and let the centuries roll by, watching the tramp of Roman legions
and Papal mercenaries and all that succession of proud banners which
have floated down this ancient Via Labiena.
That rock-like structure, visible in the morning hours from Olevano, is
a monstrous palace containing, among other things, a training school for
carbineers. Attached thereto is a church whose interior has an unusual
shape, the usual smell, and a tablet commemorating a visit from Pius IX.
There is a beautiful open space up here, with wide views over the
surrounding country. It gives food for thought. What an ideal spot, one
says, for the populace to frequent on the evenings of these sultry days!
It is empty at that hour, utterly deserted. Now why do they prefer to
jostle each other in the narrow, squalid and stuffy lane lower down? One
would like to know the reason for this preference. I enquired, and was
told that the upper place was not sufficiently well-lighted. The
explanation is not wholly convincing, for they have the lighting
arrangements in their own hands, and could easily afford the outlay. It
may be that they like to remain close to the shops and to each other's
doors for conversational purposes, since it is a fact that, socially
speaking, the more restricted the area, the more expansive one grows. We
broaden out, in proportion as the environment contracts. A psychological
reason....
I leaned in the bright sunshine over the parapet of this terrace,
looking at Artena near-by. It resembled, now, a cluster of brown grapes
clinging to the hillside. An elderly man, clean-shaven, with scarred and
sallow face, drew nigh and, perceiving the direction of my glance,
remarked gravely:
"Artena."
"Artena," I repeated.
He extracted half a toscano cigar from his waistcoat pocket, and began
to smoke with great gusto. A man of means, I concluded, to be able to
smoke at this hour of an ordinary week-day. He was warmly dressed, with
flowing brown tie and opulent vest and corduroy trousers. His feet were
encased in rough riding-boots. Some peasant proprietor, very likely, who
rode his own horses. Was he going to tell me anything of interest about
Artena? Presumably not. He said never another word, but continued to
smile at me rather wearily. I tried to enliven the conversation by
pointing to a different spot on the hills and observing:
"Segni."
"Segni," he agreed.
His cigar had gone out, as toscanos are apt to do. He applied a match,
and suddenly remarked:
"Velletri."
"Velletri."
We were not making much progress. A good many sites were visible from
here, and at this rate of enumeration the sun might well set on our
labours.
"How about all those deserters?" I inquired.
There was a fair number of them, he said. Young fellows from other
provinces who find their way hither across country, God knows how. It
was a good soil for deserters--brushwood, deep gullies, lonely stretches
of land, and, above all, la tradizione. The tradition, he explained, of
that ill-famed forest of Velletri, now extirpated. The deserters were
nearly all children--the latest conscripts; a grown man seldom deserts,
not because he would not like to do so, but because he has more
"judgment" and can weigh the risks. The roads were patrolled by police.
A few murders had taken place; yes, just a few murders; one or two
stupid people who resented their demands for money or food--
He broke off with another weary smile.
"You have had malaria," I suggested.
"Often."
The fact was patent, not only from his sallow face, but from the
peculiar manner....
They brought in a deserter that very afternoon. He lay groaning at the
bottom of a cab, having broken his leg in jumping down from somewhere.
The rest of the conveyance was filled to overflowing with carbineers. A
Sicilian, they said. The whole populace followed the vehicle uphill,
reverently, as though attending a funeral. "He is little," said a woman,
referring either to his size or his age.
An hour later there was a discussion anent the episode in the
fashionable café of Valmontone. A citizen, a well-dressed man, possibly
a notary, put the case for United Italy, for intervention against
Germany, for military discipline and the shooting of cowardly deserters,
into a few phrases so clear, so convincing, that there was a general
burst of approval. Then another man said:
"I hate those Sicilians; I have good personal reasons for hating them.
But no Sicilian fears death. If they are not brilliant soldiers, they
certainly make first-class assassins, which is only another branch of
the same business. This boy deserts not because he is afraid of death,
but because he still owes a debt. He feels he ought to do something to
repay his parents who nursed him when he was a child, and not be
sacrificed to that kidnapping camorra of blackguards out yonder"--and he
pointed with his thumb, spitting contemptuously the while, in the
direction of Rome.
Nobody had any comment to make on this speech. Not a word of protest was
raised. The man was entitled to an opinion like everybody else, and
might even have obtained his share of approval had the victim been a
native. He was only a Sicilian--an outsider. What is one to say of this
patriarchal, or parochial, attitude? The enlargement of Italy's
boundaries--Albania, Cyrenaica, Asia Minor and so forth--is an ideal
that few Italians bother their heads about. They are not sufficiently
dense--not yet. [17] To found a world-empire like the British or Roman
calls for a certain bullet-headed crassness. One has only to look at the
Germans, who have been trying to do so for some time past. That
collecting mania.... One single boy who collects postage stamps can
infect his whole school with the complaint, and make them all jealous of
his fine specimens. England has been collecting, for many centuries,
islands and suchlike; she is paying the penalty of her acquisitive
mania. She has infected others with the craze and cannot help incurring
their envy, seeing that they are now equally acquisitive, but less
fortunate. All the good specimens are gone!
That Pergola tavern deserves its name, the courtyard being overhung with
green vines and swelling clusters of grapes. The host is a canny old
boy, up to any joke and any devilry, I should say. He had already taken
a fancy to me on my first visit, for I cured his daughter Vanda of a
raging toothache by the application of glycerine and carbolic acid. We
went into his cellar, a dim tunnel excavated out of the soft tufa, from
whose darkest and chilliest recesses he drew forth a bottle of excellent
wine--it might have lain on a glacier, so cold it was. How thoughtful of
Providence to deposit this volcanic stuff within a stone's-throw of your
dining-table! Nobody need ice his wine at the Pergola.
After a capital repast I sallied forth late at night and walked,
striving to resemble a rich English tourist who has lost his way, along
the lonely road to Artena, in order to be assassinated by the deserters
or, failing that, to hear at least what these fellows have got to say
for themselves. My usual luck! Not a deserter was in sight.
Of my sleeping accommodation with certain old ladies, of what happened
to their little dog and of other matters trivial to the verge of
inanity, I may discourse upon the occasion of some later visit to
Valmontone. For this, the second, was by no means the last. Meanwhile,
we proceed southwards.