handsome and restored now the sea was easy. Her two male friends stood
touching her, one at either shoulder.
"Bonjour, Monsieur!" she barked across at me. "Vous avez pris le cafe?"
"Pas encore. Et vous?"
"Non! Madame votre femme...."
She roared like a mastiff dog: and then translated with unction to her
two uninitiated friends. How it was they did not understand her French I
do not know, it was so like travestied Italian.
I went below to find the q-b.
* * * * *
When we came up, the faint shape of land appeared ahead, more
transparent than thin pearl. Already Sardinia. Magic are high lands seen
from the sea, when they are far, far off, and ghostly translucent like
ice-bergs. This was Sardinia, looming like fascinating shadows in
mid-sea. And the sailing ships, as if cut out of frailest pearl
translucency, were wafting away towards Naples. I wanted to count their
sails--five square ones which I call the ladder, one above the
other--but how many wing-blades? That remained yet to be seen.
* * * * *
Our friend the carpenter spied us out: at least, he was not my friend.
He didn't find me _simpatico_, I am sure. But up he came, and proceeded
to entertain us with weary banality. Again the young woman called, had
we had coffee? We said we were just going down. And then she said that
whatever we had today we had to pay for: our food ended with the one
day. At which the q-b was angry, feeling swindled. But I had known
before.
* * * * *
We went down and had our coffee notwithstanding. The young woman came
down, and made eyes at one of the alpaca blue-bottles. After which we
saw a cup of coffee and milk and two biscuits being taken to her into
her cabin, discreetly. When Italians are being discreet and on the sly,
the very air about them becomes tell-tale, and seems to shout with a
thousand tongues. So with a thousand invisible tongues clamouring the
fact, the young woman had her coffee secretly and _gratis_, in her
cabin.
* * * * *
But the morning was lovely. The q-b and I crept round the bench at the
very stern of the ship and sat out of the wind and out of sight, just
above the foaming of the wake. Before us was the open morning--and the
glisten of our ship's track, like a snail's path, trailing across the
sea: straight for a little while, then giving a bend to the left, always
a bend towards the left: and coming at us from the pure horizon, like a
bright snail-path. Happy it was to sit there in the stillness, with
nothing but the humanless sea to shine about us.
But no, we were found out. Arrived the carpenter.
"Ah, you have found a fine place--!"
"Molto bello!" This from the q-b. I could not bear the irruption.
He proceeded to talk--and as is inevitable, the war. Ah, the war--it was
a terrible thing. He had become ill--very ill. Because, you see, not
only do you go without proper food, without proper rest and warmth, but,
you see, you are in an agony of fear for your life all the time. An
agony of fear for your life. And that's what does it. Six months in
hospital--! The q-b, of course, was sympathetic.
The Sicilians are quite simple about it. They just tell you they were
frightened to death, and it made them ill. The q-b, woman-like, loves
them for being so simple about it. I feel angry somewhere. For they
_expect_ a full-blown sympathy. And however the great god Mars may have
shrunk and gone wizened in the world, it still annoys me to hear him
_so_ blasphemed.
* * * * *
Near us the automatic log was spinning, the thin rope trailing behind us
in the sea. Erratically it jerked and spun, with spasmodic torsion. He
explained that the little screw at the end of the line spun to the
speed of travelling. We were going from ten to twelve Italian miles to
the hour. Ah, yes, we _could_ go twenty. But we went no faster than ten
or twelve, to save the coal.
The coal--il carbone! I knew we were in for it. England--l'Inghilterra
she has the coal. And what does she do? She sells it very dear.
Particularly to Italy. Italy won the war and now can't even have coal.
Because why! The price. The exchange! _Il cambio._ Now I am doubly in
for it. Two countries had been able to keep their money high--England
and America. The English sovereign--la sterlina--and the American
dollar--_sa_, these were money. The English and the Americans flocked to
Italy, with their _sterline_ and their _dollari_, and they bought what
they wanted for nothing, for nothing. Ecco! Whereas we poor Italians--we
are in a state of ruination--proper ruination. The allies, etc., etc.
I am so used to it--I am so wearily used to it. I can't walk a stride
without having this wretched _cambio_, the exchange, thrown at my head.
And this with an injured petulant spitefulness which turns my blood. For
I assure them, whatever I have in Italy I pay for: and I am not England.
I am not the British Isles on two legs.
Germany--La Germania--she did wrong to make the war. But--there you
are, that was war. Italy and Germany--l'Italia e la Germania--they had
always been friends. In Palermo....
My God, I felt I could not stand it another second. To sit above the
foam and have this miserable creature stuffing wads of chewed newspaper
into my ear--no, I could not bear it. In Italy, there is no escape. Say
two words, and the individual starts chewing old newspaper and stuffing
it into you. No escape. You become--if you are English--_l'Inghilterra_,
_il carbone_, and _il cambio_; and as England, coal and exchange you are
treated. It is more than useless to try to be human about it. You are a
State usury system, a coal fiend and an exchange thief. Every Englishman
has disappeared into this triple abstraction, in the eyes of the
Italian, of the proletariat particularly. Try and get them to be human,
try and get them to see that you are simply an individual, if you can.
After all, I am no more than a single human man wandering my lonely way
across these years. But no--to an Italian I am a perfected abstraction,
England--coal--exchange. The Germans were once devils for inhuman
theoretic abstracting of living beings. But now the Italians beat them.
I am a walking column of statistics, which adds up badly for Italy.
Only this and nothing more. Which being so, I shut my mouth and walk
away.
* * * * *
For the moment the carpenter is shaken off. But I am in a rage, fool
that I am. It is like being pestered by their mosquitoes. The sailing
ships are near--and I count fifteen sails. Beautiful they look! Yet if I
were on board somebody would be chewing newspaper at me, and addressing
me as England--coal--exchange.
The mosquito hovers--and hovers. But the stony blank of the side of my
cheek keeps him away. Yet he hovers. And the q-b feels sympathetic
towards him: quite sympathetic. Because of course he treats her--a _bel
pezzo_--as if he would lick her boots, or anything else that she would
let him lick.
* * * * *
Meanwhile we eat the apples from yesterday's dessert, and the remains of
the q-b's Infant-Jesus-and-dove cake. The land is drawing nearer--we can
see the shape of the end promontory and peninsula--and a white speck
like a church. The bulk of the land is forlorn and rather shapeless,
coming towards us: but attractive.
Looking ahead towards the land gives us away. The mosquito swoops on us.
Yes--he is not sure--he thinks the white speck is a church--or a
lighthouse. When you pass the cape on the right, and enter the wide bay
between Cape Spartivento and Cape Carbonara, then you have two hours
sail to Cagliari. We shall arrive between two and three o'clock. It is
now eleven.
Yes, the sailing ships are probably going to Naples. There is not much
wind for them now. When there is wind they go fast, faster than our
steamer. Ah Naples--bella, bella, eh? A little dirty, say I. But what do
you want? says he. A great city! Palermo of course is better.
Ah--the Neapolitan women--he says, a propos or not. They do their hair
so fine, so neat and beautiful--but underneath--sotto--sotto--they are
dirty. This being received in cold silence, he continues: _Noi giriamo
il mondo! Noi, chi giriamo, conosciamo il mondo._ _We_ travel about,
and _we_ know the world. Who _we_ are, I do not know: his highness the
Palermitan carpenter lout, no doubt. But _we_, who travel, know the
world. He is preparing his shot. The Neapolitan women, and the English
women, in this are equal: that they are dirty underneath. Underneath,
they are dirty. The women of London--
But it is getting too much for me.
"You who look for dirty women," say I, "find dirty women everywhere."
He stops short and watches me.
"No! No! You have not understood me. No! I don't mean that. I mean that
the Neapolitan women and the English women have dirty underclothing--"
To which he gets no answer but a cold look and a cold cheek. Whereupon
he turns to the q-b, and proceeds to be _simpatica_. And after a few
moments he turns again to me:
"Il signore is offended! He is offended with me."
But I turn the other way. And at last he clears out: in triumph, I must
admit: like a mosquito that has bitten one in the neck. As a matter of
fact one should _never_ let these fellows get into conversation
nowadays. They are no longer human beings. They hate one's Englishness,
and leave out the individual.
* * * * *
We walk forward, towards the fore-deck, where the captain's lookout
cabin is. The captain is an elderly man, silent and crushed: with the
look of a gentleman. But he looks beaten down. Another, still another
member of the tray-carrying department is just creeping up his ladder
with a cup of black coffee. Returning, we peep down the sky-light into
the kitchen. And there we see roast chicken and sausages--roast chicken
and sausages! Ah, this is where the sides of kid and the chickens and
the good things go: all down the throats of the crew. There is no more
food for us, until we land.
* * * * *
We have passed the cape--and the white thing is a lighthouse. And the
fattish, handsome professor has come up carrying the little girl-child,
while the femalish elder brother leads the rabbit-fluffy small boy by
the hand. So _en famille_: so terribly _en famille_. They deposit
themselves near us, and it threatens another conversation. But not for
anything, my dears!
The sailors--not sailors, some of the street-corner loafers, are
hoisting the flag, the red-white-and-green Italian tricolor. It floats
at the mast-head, and the femalish brother, in a fine burst of feeling,
takes off his funny hat with a flourish and cries:
"Ecco la bandiera italiana!"
Ach, the hateful sentimentalism of these days.
The land passes slowly, very slowly. It is hilly, but barren looking,
with few trees. And it is not spikey and rather splendid, like Sicily.
Sicily has style. We keep along the east side of the bay--away in the
west is Cape Spartivento. And still no sight of Cagliari.
"Two hours yet!" cries the Cagliari girl. "Two hours before we eat. Ah,
when I get on land, what a good meal I shall eat."
The men haul in the automatic log. The sky is clouding over with that
icy curd which comes after midday when the bitter north wind is blowing.
It is no longer warm.
* * * * *
Slowly, slowly we creep along the formless shore. An hour passes. We see
a little fort ahead, done in enormous black-and-white checks, like a
fragment of gigantic chess-board. It stands at the end of a long spit of
land--a long, barish peninsula that has no houses and looks as if it
might be golf-links. But it is not golf-links.
And suddenly there is Cagliari: a naked town rising steep, steep,
golden-looking, piled naked to the sky from the plain at the head of the
formless hollow bay. It is strange and rather wonderful, not a bit like
Italy. The city piles up lofty and almost miniature, and makes me think
of Jerusalem: without trees, without cover, rising rather bare and
proud, remote as if back in history, like a town in a monkish,
illuminated missal. One wonders how it ever got there. And it seems like
Spain--or Malta: not Italy. It is a steep and lonely city, treeless, as
in some old illumination. Yet withal rather jewel-like: like a sudden
rose-cut amber jewel naked at the depth of the vast indenture. The air
is cold, blowing bleak and bitter, the sky is all curd. And that is
Cagliari. It has that curious look, as if it could be seen, but not
entered. It is like some vision, some memory, something that has passed
away. Impossible that one can actually _walk_ in that city: set foot
there and eat and laugh there. Ah, no! Yet the ship drifts nearer,
nearer, and we are looking for the actual harbour.
* * * * *
The usual sea-front with dark trees for a promenade and palatial
buildings behind, but here not so pink and gay, more reticent, more
sombre of yellow stone. The harbour itself a little basin of water, into
which we are slipping carefully, while three salt-barges laden with salt
as white as snow creep round from the left, drawn by an infinitesimal
tug. There are only two other forlorn ships in the basin. It is cold on
deck. The ship turns slowly round, and is being hauled to the quay side.
I go down for the knapsack, and a fat blue-bottle pounces at me.
"You pay nine francs fifty."
I pay them, and we get off that ship.
III.
CAGLIARI.
There is a very little crowd waiting on the quay: mostly men with their
hands in their pockets. But, thank Heaven, they have a certain aloofness
and reserve. They are not like the tourist-parasites of these post-war
days, who move to the attack with a terrifying cold vindictiveness the
moment one emerges from any vehicle. And some of these men look really
poor. There are no poor Italians any more: at least, loafers.
Strange the feeling round the harbour: as if everybody had gone away.
Yet there are people about. It is "festa" however, Epiphany. But it is
so different from Sicily: none of the suave Greek-Italian charms, none
of the airs and graces, none of the glamour. Rather bare, rather stark,
rather cold and yellow--somehow like Malta, without Malta's foreign
liveliness. Thank Goodness no one wants to carry my knapsack. Thank
Goodness no one has a fit at the sight of it. Thank Heaven no one takes
any notice. They stand cold and aloof, and don't move.
We make our way through the Customs: then through the Dazio, the City
Customs-house. Then we are free. We set off up a steep, new, broad road,
with little trees on either side. But stone, arid, new, wide stone,
yellowish under the cold sky--and abandoned-seeming. Though, of course,
there are people about. The north wind blows bitingly.
We climb a broad flight of steps, always upwards, up the wide,
precipitous, dreary boulevard with sprouts of trees. Looking for the
Hotel, and dying with hunger.
* * * * *
At last we find it, the Scala di Ferro: through a courtyard with green
plants. And at last a little man with lank, black hair, like an esquimo,
comes smiling. He is one brand of Sardinian--esquimo looking. There is
no room with two beds: only single rooms. And thus we are led off, if
you please, to the "bagnio": the bathing-establishment wing, on the dank
ground floor. Cubicles on either side a stone passage, and in every
cubicle a dark stone bath, and a little bed. We can have each a little
bath cubicle. If there's nothing else for it, there isn't: but it seems
dank and cold and horrid, underground. And one thinks of all the
unsavory "assignations" at these old bagnio places. True, at the end of
the passage are seated two carabinieri. But whether to ensure
respectibility or not, Heaven knows. We are in the baths, that's all.
[Illustration: ISILI]
The esquimo returns after five minutes, however. There _is_ a bedroom in
the house. He is pleased, because he didn't like putting us into the
bagnio. Where he found the bedroom I don't know. But there it was,
large, sombre, cold, and over the kitchen fumes of a small inner court
like a well. But perfectly clean and all right. And the people seemed
warm and good-natured, like human beings. One has got so used to the
non-human ancient-souled Sicilians, who are suave and so completely
callous.
* * * * *
After a really good meal we went out to see the town. It was after three
o'clock and everywhere was shut up like an English Sunday. Cold, stony
Cagliari: in summer you must be sizzling hot, Cagliari, like a kiln. The
men stood about in groups, but without the intimate Italian watchfulness
that never leaves a passer-by alone.
Strange, stony Cagliari. We climbed up a street like a corkscrew
stairway. And we saw announcements of a children's fancy-dress ball.
Cagliari is very steep. Half-way up there is a strange place called the
bastions, a large, level space like a drill-ground with trees,
curiously suspended over the town, and sending off a long shoot like a
wide viaduct, across above the corkscrew street that comes climbing up.
Above this bastion place the town still rises steeply to the Cathedral
and the fort. What is so curious is that this terrace or bastion is so
large, like some big recreation ground, that it is almost dreary, and
one cannot understand its being suspended in mid-air. Down below is the
little circle of the harbour. To the left a low, malarial-looking sea
plain, with tufts of palm trees and Arab-looking houses. From this runs
out the long spit of land towards that black-and-white watch-fort, the
white road trailing forth. On the right, most curiously, a long strange
spit of sand runs in a causeway far across the shallows of the bay, with
the open sea on one hand, and vast, end-of-the-world lagoons on the
other. There are peaky, dark mountains beyond this--just as across the
vast bay are gloomy hills. It is a strange, strange landscape: as if
here the world left off. The bay is vast in itself; and all these
curious things happening at its head: this curious, craggy-studded town,
like a great stud of house-covered rock jutting up out of the bay flats:
around it on one side the weary, Arab-looking palm-desolated malarial
plain, and on the other side great salt lagoons, dead beyond the
sand-bar: these backed again by serried, clustered mountains, suddenly,
while away beyond the plain, hills rise to sea again. Land and sea both
seem to give out, exhausted, at the bay head: the world's end. And into
this world's end starts up Cagliari, and on either side, sudden,
serpent-crest hills.
But it still reminds me of Malta: lost between Europe and Africa and
belonging to nowhere. Belonging to nowhere, never having belonged to
anywhere. To Spain and the Arabs and the Phoenicians most. But as if
it had never really had a fate. No fate. Left outside of time and
history.
The spirit of the place is a strange thing. Our mechanical age tries to
override it. But it does not succeed. In the end the strange, sinister
spirit of the place, so diverse and adverse in differing places, will
smash our mechanical oneness into smithereens, and all that we think the
real thing will go off with a pop, and we shall be left staring.
* * * * *
On the great parapet above the Municipal Hall and above the corkscrew
high-street a thick fringe of people is hanging, looking down. We go to
look too: and behold, below there is the entrance to the ball. Yes,
there is a china shepherdess in pale blue and powdered hair, crook,
ribbons, Marie Antoinette satin daintiness and all, slowly and
haughtily walking up the road, and gazing superbly round. She is not
more than twelve years old, moreover. Two servants accompany her. She
gazes supremely from right to left as she goes, mincingly, and I would
give her the prize for haughtiness. She is perfect--a little too haughty
for Watteau, but "marquise" to a T. The people watch in silence. There
is no yelling and screaming and running. They watch in a suitable
silence.
Comes a carriage with two fat bay horses slithering, almost swimming up
the corkscrew high-street. That in itself is a "tour-de-force": for
Cagliari doesn't have carriages. Imagine a street like a corkscrew
stair, paved with slippery stone. And imagine two bay horses rowing
their way up it: they did not walk a single stride. But they arrived.
And there fluttered out three strangely exquisite children, two frail,
white satin Pierrots and a white satin Pierrette. They were like fragile
winter butterflies with black spots. They had a curious, indefinable
remote elegance, something conventional and "fin-de-siecle". But not our
century. The wonderful artificial delicacy of the eighteenth. The boys
had big, perfect ruffs round their necks: and behind were slung old,
cream-colored Spanish shawls, for warmth. They were frail as tobacco
flowers, and with remote, cold elegance they fluttered by the carriage,
from which emerged a large black-satin Mama. Fluttering their queer
little butterfly feet on the pavement, hovering round the large Mama
like three frail-tissued ghosts, they found their way past the solid,
seated Carabinieri into the hall.
Arrived a primrose-brocade beau, with ruffles, and his hat under his
arm: about twelve years old. Walking statelily, without a qualm up the
steep twist of the street. Or perhaps so perfect in his
self-consciousness that it became an elegant "aplomb" in him. He was a
genuine eighteenth-century exquisite, rather stiffer than the French,
maybe, but completely in the spirit. Curious, curious children! They had
a certain stand-offish superbness, and not a single trace of misgiving.
For them, their "noblesse" was indisputable. For the first time in my
life I recognized the true cold superbness of the old "noblesse". They
had not a single qualm about their own perfect representing of the
higher order of being.
Followed another white satin "marquise", with a maid-servant. They are
strong on the eighteenth century in Cagliari. Perhaps it is the last
bright reality to them. The nineteenth hardly counts.
* * * * *
Curious the children in Cagliari. The poor seem thoroughly
poor-bare-footed urchins, gay and wild in the narrow dark streets. But
the more well-to-do children are so fine: so extraordinarily elegantly
dressed. It quite strikes one of a heap. Not so much the grown-ups. The
children. All the "chic," all the fashion, all the originality is
expended on the children. And with a great deal of success. Better than
Kensington Gardens very often. And they promenade with Papa and Mama
with such alert assurance, having quite brought it off, their
fashionable get-up. Who would have expected it?
* * * * *
Oh narrow, dark, and humid streets going up to the Cathedral, like
crevices. I narrowly miss a huge pail of slop-water which comes crashing
down from heaven. A small boy who was playing in the street, and whose
miss is not quite a clean miss, looks up with that naive, impersonal
wonder with which children stare at a star or a lamp-lighter.
The Cathedral must have been a fine old pagan stone fortress once. Now
it has come, as it were, through the mincing machine of the ages, and
oozed out baroque and sausagey, a bit like the horrible baldachins in
St. Peter's at Rome. None the less it is homely and hole-and-cornery,
with a rather ragged high mass trailing across the pavement towards the
high altar, since it is almost sunset, and Epiphany. It feels as if one
might squat in a corner and play marbles and eat bread and cheese and be
at home: a comfortable old-time churchey feel.
There is some striking filet lace on the various altar-cloths. And St.
Joseph must be a prime saint. He has an altar and a verse of invocation
praying for the dying.
"Oh, St. Joseph, true potential father of Our Lord." What can it profit
a man, I wonder, to be the potential father of anybody! For the rest I
am not Baedeker.
* * * * *
The top of Cagliari is the fortress: the old gate, the old ramparts, of
honey-combed, fine yellowish sandstone. Up in a great sweep goes the
rampart wall, Spanish and splendid, dizzy. And the road creeping down
again at the foot, down the back of the hill. There lies the country:
that dead plain with its bunch of palms and a fainting sea, and inland
again, hills. Cagliari must be on a single, loose, lost bluff of rock.