not like. However, I made place on the low bench, and the attention this
time was accepted. Sitting down at the extreme end, he came into the
light, and I saw a burly man in the prime of life, dressed in dark brown
velvet, with a blond little moustache and twinkling blue eyes and a
tipsy look. I thought he might be some local tradesman or farmer. He
asked a few questions, in a boisterous familiar fashion, then went out
again. He appeared with a small iron spit, a slim rod, in one hand, and
in the other hand two joints of kid and a handful of sausages. He stuck
his joints on his rod. But our roaster still held the interminable flat
kid before the now red, flameless fire. The fat-torch was burnt out, the
cinder pushed in the fire. A moment's spurt of flame, then red, intense
redness again, and our kid before it like a big, dark hand.
"Eh," said the newcomer, whom I will call the girovago, "it's done. The
kid's done. It's done."
The roaster slowly shook his head, but did not answer. He sat like time
and eternity at the hearth-end, his face flame-flushed, his dark eyes
still fire-abstract, still sacredly intent on the roast.
"Na-na-na!" said the girovago. "Let another body see the fire." And with
his pieces of meat awkwardly skewered on his iron stick he tried to poke
under the authorised kid and get at the fire. In his soft mutter, the
old man bade him wait for the fire till the fire was ready for him. But
the girovago poked impudently and good humouredly, and said testily
that the authorised kid was done.
"Yes, surely it is done," said I, for it was already a quarter to eight.
The old roasting priest muttered, and took out his knife from his
pocket. He pressed the blade slowly, slowly deep into the meat: as far
as a knife will go in a piece of kid. He seemed to be feeling the meat
inwardly. And he said it was not done. He shook his head, and remained
there like time and eternity at the end of the rod.
The girovago said _Sangue di Dio_, but couldn't roast his meat! And he
tried to poke his skewer near the coals. So doing his pieces fell off
into the ashes, and the invisible onlookers behind raised a shout of
laughter. However, he raked it out and wiped it with his hand and said
No matter, nothing lost.
Then he turned to me and asked the usual whence and whither questions.
These answered, he said wasn't I German. I said No, I was English. He
looked at me many times, shrewdly, as if he wanted to make out
something. Then he asked, where were we domiciled--and I said Sicily.
And then, very pertinently, why had we come to Sardinia. I said for
pleasure, and to see the island.
"Ah, per divertimento!" he repeated, half-musingly, not believing me in
the least.
Various men had now come into the room, though they all remained
indistinct in the background. The girovago talked and jested abroad in
the company, and the half-visible men laughed in a rather hostile
manner.
At last the old roaster decided the kid was done. He lifted it from the
fire and scrutinised it thoroughly, holding the candle to it, as if it
were some wonderful epistle from the flames. To be sure it looked
marvellous, and smelled so good: brown, and crisp, and hot, and savoury,
not burnt in any place whatever. It was eight o'clock.
"It's done! It's done! Go away with it! Go," said the girovago, pushing
the old roaster with his hand. And at last the old man consented to
depart, holding the kid like a banner.
"It looks so _good_!" cried the q-b. "And I am so hungry."
"Ha-ha! It makes one hungry to see good meat, Signora. Now it is my
turn. Heh--Gino--" the girovago flourished his arm. And a handsome,
unwashed man with a black moustache came forward rather sheepishly. He
was dressed in soldier's clothes, neutral grey, and was a big, robust,
handsome fellow with dark eyes and Mediterranean sheepishness. "Here,
take it thou," said the girovago, pressing the long spit into his hand.
"It is thy business, cook the supper, thou art the woman.--But I'll keep
the sausages and do them."
The so-called woman sat at the end of the hearth, where the old roaster
had sat, and with his brown, nervous hand piled the remaining coals
together. The fire was no longer flamy: and it was sinking. The
dark-browed man arranged it so that he could cook the meat. He held the
spit negligently over the red mass. A joint fell off. The men laughed.
"It's lost nothing," said the dark-browed man, as the girovago had said
before, and he skewered it on again and thrust it to the fire. But
meanwhile he was looking up from under his dark lashes at the girovago
and at us.
The girovago talked continually. He turned to me, holding the handful of
sausages.
"This makes the tasty bit," he said.
"Oh yes--good salsiccia," said I.
"You are eating the kid? You are eating at the inn?" he said. I replied
that I was.
"No," he said. "You stay and eat with me. You eat with me. The sausage
is good, the kid will soon be done, the fire is grateful."
I laughed, not quite understanding him. He was certainly a bit tipsy.
"Signora," he said, turning to the q-b. She did not like him, he was
impudent, and she shut a deaf ear to him as far as she could. "Signora,"
he said, "do you understand me what I say?"
She replied that she did.
"Signora," he said, "I sell things to the women. I sell them things."
"What do you sell?" she asked in astonishment.
"Saints," he said.
"Saints!" she cried in more astonishment.
"Yes, saints," he said with tipsy gravity.
She turned in confusion to the company in the background. The fat
soldier came forward, he was the chief of the carabinieri.
"Also combs and bits of soap and little mirrors," he explained
sarcastically.
"Saints!" said the girovago once more. "And also _ragazzini_--also
youngsters--Wherever I go there is a little one comes running calling
Babbo! Babbo! Daddy! Daddy! Wherever I go--youngsters. And I'm the
babbo."
All this was received with a kind of silent sneer from the invisible
assembly in the background. The candle was burning low, the fire was
sinking too. In vain the dark-browed man tried to build it up. The q-b
became impatient for the food. She got up wrathfully and stumbled into
the dark passage, exclaiming--"Don't we eat yet?"
"Eh--Patience! Patience, Signora. It takes time in this house," said the
man in the background.
The dark-browed man looked up at the girovago and said:
"Are you going to cook the sausages with your fingers?"
He too was trying to be assertive and jesting, but he was the kind of
person no one takes any notice of. The girovago rattled on in dialect,
poking fun at us and at our being there in this inn. I did not quite
follow.
"Signora!" said the girovago. "Do you understand Sardinian?"
"I understand Italian--and some Sardinian," she replied rather hotly.
"And I know that you are trying to laugh at us--to make fun of us."
He laughed fatly and comfortably.
"Ah Signora," he said. "We have a language that you wouldn't
understand--not one word. Nobody here would understand it but me and
him--" he pointed to the black-browed one. "Everybody would want an
interpreter--everybody."
But he did not say interpreter--he said _intreprete_, with the accent
on the penultimate, as if it were some sort of priest.
"A what?" said I.
He repeated with tipsy unction, and I saw what he meant.
"Why?" said I. "Is it a dialect? What is your dialect?"
"My dialect," he said, "is Sassari. I come from Sassari. If I spoke my
dialect they would understand something. But if I speak this language
they would want an interpreter."
"What language is it then?"
He leaned up to me, laughing.
"It is the language we use when the women are buying things and we don't
want them to know what we say: me and him--"
"Oh," said I. "I know. We have that language in England. It is called
thieves Latin--_Latino dei furbi_."
The men at the back suddenly laughed, glad to turn the joke against the
forward girovago. He looked down his nose at me. But seeing I was
laughing without malice, he leaned to me and said softly, secretly:
"What is your affair then? What affair is it, yours?"
"How? What?" I exclaimed, not understanding.
"_Che genere di affari?_ What sort of business?"
"How--_affari_?" said I, still not grasping.
"What do you _sell_?" he said, flatly and rather spitefully. "What
goods?"
"I don't sell anything," replied I, laughing to think he took us for
some sort of strolling quacks or commercial travellers.
"Cloth--or something," he said cajolingly, slyly, as if to worm my
secret out of me.
"But nothing at all. Nothing at all," said I. "We have come to Sardinia
to see the peasant costumes--" I thought that might sound satisfactory.
"Ah, the costumes!" he said, evidently thinking I was a deep one. And he
turned bandying words with his dark-browed mate, who was still poking
the meat at the embers and crouching on the hearth. The room was almost
quite dark. The mate answered him back, and tried to seem witty too. But
the girovago was the commanding personality! rather too much so: too
impudent for the q-b, though rather after my own secret heart. The mate
was one of those handsome, passive, stupid men.
"Him!" said the girovago, turning suddenly to me and pointing at the
mate. "He's my wife."
"Your wife!" said I.
"Yes. He's my wife, because we're always together."
There had become a sudden dead silence in the background. In spite of it
the mate looked up under his black lashes and said, with a half smile:
"Don't talk, or I shall give thee a good _bacio_ to-night."
There was an instant's fatal pause, then the girovago continued:
"Tomorrow is festa of Sant 'Antonio at Tonara. Tomorrow we are going to
Tonara. Where are you going?"
"To Abbasanta," said I.
"Ah Abbasanta! You should come to Tonara. At Tonara there is a brisk
trade--and there are costumes. You should come to Tonara. Come with him
and me to Tonara tomorrow, and we will do business together."
I laughed, but did not answer.
"Come," said he. "You will like Tonara! Ah, Tonara is a fine place.
There is an inn: you can eat well, sleep well. I tell you, because to
you ten francs don't matter. Isn't that so? Ten francs don't matter to
you. Well, then come to Tonara. What? What do you say?"
I shook my head and laughed, but did not answer.
To tell the truth I should have liked to go to Tonara with him and his
mate and do the brisk trade: if only I knew what trade it would be.
"You are sleeping upstairs?" he said to me.
I nodded.
"This is my bed," he said, taking one of the home-made rush mats from
against the wall. I did not take him seriously at any point.
"Do they make those in Sorgono?" I said.
"Yes, in Sorgono--they are the beds, you see! And you roll up this end a
bit--so! and that is the pillow."
He laid his cheek sideways.
"Not really," said I.
He came and sat down again next to me, and my attention wandered. The
q-b was raging for her dinner. It must be quite half-past eight. The
kid, the perfect kid would be cold and ruined. Both fire and candle were
burning low. Someone had been out for a new candle, but there was
evidently no means of replenishing the fire. The mate still crouched on
the hearth, the dull red fire-glow on his handsome face, patiently
trying to roast the kid and poking it against the embers. He had heavy,
strong limbs in his khaki clothes, but his hand that held the spit was
brown and tender and sensitive, a real Mediterranean hand. The girovago,
blond, round-faced, mature and aggressive with all his liveliness, was
more like a northerner. In the background were four or five other men,
of whom I had distinguished none but a stout soldier, probably chief
carabiniere.
* * * * *
Just as the q-b was working up to the rage I had at last calmed down
from, appeared the shawl-swathed girl announcing "Pronto!"
"Pronto! Pronto!" said everybody.
"High time, too," said the q-b, springing from the low bench before the
fire. "Where do we eat? Is there another room?"
"There is another room, Signora," said the carabiniere.
So we trooped out of the fire-warmed dungeon, leaving the girovago and
his mate and two other men, muleteers from the road, behind us. I could
see that it irked my girovago to be left behind. He was by far the
strongest personality in the place, and he had the keenest intelligence.
So he hated having to fall into the background, when he had been
dragging all the lime-light on to himself all the evening. To me, too,
he was something of a kindred soul that night. But there we are: fate,
in the guise of that mysterious division between a respectable life and
a scamp's life divided us. There was a gulf between me and him, between
my way and his. He was a kindred spirit--but with a hopeless difference.
There was something a bit sordid about him--and he knew it. That is why
he was always tipsy. Yet I like the lone wolf souls best--better than
the sheep. If only they didn't feel mongrel inside themselves.
Presumably a scamp is bound to be mongrel. It is a pity the untamable,
lone-wolf souls should always become pariahs, almost of choice: mere
scamps.
Top and bottom of it is, I regretted my girovago, though I knew it was
no good thinking of him. His way was _not_ my way. Yet I regretted him,
I did.
* * * * *
We found ourselves in a dining room with a long white table and inverted
soup-plates, tomb-cold, lighted by an acetylene flare. Three men had
accompanied us: the carabiniere, a little dark youth with a small black
moustache, in a soldier's short, wool-lined great-coat: and a young man
who looked tired round his blue eyes, and who wore a dark-blue overcoat,
quite smart. The be-shawled damsel came in with the inevitable bowl of
minestrone, soup with cabbage and cauliflower and other things. We
helped ourselves, and the fat carabiniere started the conversation with
the usual questions--and where were we going tomorrow?
I asked about buses. Then the responsible-looking, tired-eyed youth
told me he was the bus-driver. He had come from Oristano, on the main
line, that day. It is a distance of some forty miles. Next morning he
was going on over the mountains to Nuoro--about the same distance again.
The youth with the little black moustache and the Greek, large eyes, was
his mate, the conductor. This was their run, from Oristano to Nuoro--a
course of ninety miles or more. And every day on, on, on. No wonder he
looked nerve-tired. Yet he had that kind of dignity, the wistful
seriousness and pride of a man in machine control: the only god-like
ones today, those who pull the iron levers and are the gods in the
machine.
They repeated what the old roaster said: much nicer for us to go to
Nuoro than to Abbasanta. So to Nuoro we decided to go, leaving at
half-past nine in the morning.
* * * * *
Every other night the driver and his mate spent in this benighted
Risveglio inn. It must have been their bedroom we saw, clean and tidy. I
said was the food always so late, was everything always as bad as today.
Always--if not worse, they said, making light of it, with sarcastic
humor against the Risveglio. You spent your whole life at the Risveglio
sitting, waiting, and going block-cold: unless you were content to
drink _aqua vitae_, like those in there. The driver jerked his head
towards the dungeon.
"Who were those in there?" said I.
The one who did all the talking was a mercante, a mercante girovago, a
wandering peddler. This was my girovago: a wandering peddler selling
saints and youngsters! The other was his mate, who helped carry the
pack. They went about together. Oh, my girovago was a known figure all
over the country.--And where would they sleep? There, in the room where
the fire was dying.
They would unroll the mats and lie with their feet to the hearth. For
this they paid threepence, or at most fourpence. And they had the
privilege of cooking their own food. The Risveglio supplied them with
nothing but the fire, the roof, and the rush mat.--And, of course, the
drink. Oh, we need have no sympathy with the girovago and his sort.
_They_ lacked for nothing. They had everything they wanted: everything:
and money in abundance. _They_ lived for the _aqua vitae_ they drank.
That was all they wanted: their continual allowance of _aqua vitae_. And
they got it. Ah, they were not cold. If the room became cold during the
night: if they had no coverings at all: pah, they waited for morning,
and as soon as it was light they drank a large glass of _aqua vitae_.
That was their fire, their hearth and their home: drink. _Aqua vitae_,
was hearth and home to them.
I was surprised at the contempt, tolerant and yet profound, with which
these three men in the dining-room spoke of the others in the _stanza_.
How contemptuous, almost bitter, the driver was against alcohol. It was
evident he hated it. And though we all had our bottles of dead-cold dark
wine, and though we all drank: still, the feeling of the three youths
against actual intoxication was deep and hostile, with a certain burning
_moral_ dislike that is more northern than Italian. And they curled
their lip with real dislike of the girovago: his forwardness, his
impudent aggressiveness.
* * * * *
As for the inn, yes, it was very bad. It had been quite good under the
previous proprietors. But now--they shrugged their shoulders. The
dirty-breast and the shawled girl were not the owners. They were merely
conductors of the hotel: here a sarcastic curl of the lip. The owner was
a man in the village--a young man. A week or two back, at Christmas
time, there had been a roomful of men sitting drinking and roistering at
this very table. When in had come the proprietor, mad-drunk, swinging a
litre bottle round his head and yelling: "Out! Out! Out, all of you! Out
every one of you! I am proprietor here. And when I want to clear my
house I clear my house. Every man obeys--who doesn't obey has his brains
knocked out with this bottle. Out, out, I say--Out, everyone!" And the
men all cleared out. "But," said the bus-driver, "I told him that when I
had paid for my bed I was going to sleep in it. I was not going to be
turned out by him or anybody. And so he came down."
* * * * *
There was a little silence from everybody after this story. Evidently
there was more to it, that we were not to be told. Especially the
carabiniere was silent. He was a fat, not very brave fellow, though
quite nice.
Ah, but--said the little dark bus-conductor, with his small-featured
swarthy Greek face--you must not be angry with them. True the inn was
very bad. Very bad--but you must pity them, for they are only ignorant.
Poor things, they are _ignoranti_! Why be angry?
The other two men nodded their heads in agreement and repeated
_ignoranti_. They are _ignoranti_. It is true. Why be angry?
And here the modern Italian spirit came out: the endless pity for the
ignorant. It is only slackness. The pity makes the ignorant more
ignorant, and makes the Risveglio daily more impossible. If somebody
let a bottle buzz round the ears of the dirty-breast, and whipped the
shawl from the head of the pert young madam and sent her flying down the
tunnel with a flea in her ear, we might get some attention and they
might find a little self-respect. But no: pity them, poor _ignoranti_,
while they pull life down and devour it like vermin. Pity them! What
they need is not pity but prods: they and all their myriad of likes.
* * * * *
The be-shawled appeared with a dish of kid. Needless to say, the
_ignoranti_ had kept all the best portions for themselves. What arrived
was five pieces of cold roast, one for each of us. Mine was a sort of
large comb of ribs with a thin web of meat: perhaps an ounce. That was
all we got, after watching the whole process. There was moreover a dish
of strong boiled cauliflower, which one ate, with the coarse bread, out
of sheer hunger. After this a bilious orange. Simply one is not _fed_
nowadays. In the good hotels and in the bad, one is given paltry
portions of unnourishing food, and one goes unfed.
* * * * *
The bus-driver, the only one with an earnest soul, was talking of the
Sardinians. Ah, the Sardinians! They were hopeless. Why--because they
did not know how to strike. They, too, were _ignoranti_. But this form
of ignorance he found more annoying. They simply did not know what a
strike was. If you offered them one day ten francs a stint--he was
speaking now of the miners of the Iglesias region.--No, no, no, they
would not take it, they wanted twelve francs. Go to them the next day
and offer them four francs for half a stint, and yes, yes, yes, they
would take it. And there they were: ignorant: ignorant Sardinians. They
absolutely did not know how to strike. He was quite sarcastically hot
about it. The whole tone of these three young men was the tone of
sceptical irony common to the young people of our day the world over.
Only they had--or at least the driver had--some little fervour for his
strikes and his socialism. But it was a pathetic fervour: a _pis-aller_
fervour.
* * * * *
We talked about the land. The war has practically gutted Sardinia of her
cattle: so they said. And now the land is being deserted, the arable
land is going back to fallow. Why? Why, says the driver, because the
owners of the land won't spend any capital. They have got the capital
locked up, and the land is dead. They find it cheaper to let all the
arable go back to fallow, and raise a few head of cattle, rather than to
pay high wages, grow corn, and get small returns.
Yes, and also, chimes in the carabiniere, the peasants don't want to
work the land. They hate the land. They'll do anything to get off the
land. They want regular wages, short hours, and devil take the rest. So
they will go into France as navvies, by the hundred. They flock to Rome,
they besiege the Labor bureaus, they will do the artificial Government
navvy-work at a miserable five francs a day--a railway shunter having at
least eighteen francs a day--anything, anything rather than work the
land.
Yes, and what does the Government do! replies the bus-driver. They pull
the roads to pieces in order to find work for the unemployed, remaking
them, across the campagna. But in Sardinia, where roads and bridges are
absolutely wanting, will they do anything? No!
There it is, however. The bus-driver, with dark shadows under his eyes,
represents the intelligent portion of the conversation. The carabiniere
is soft and will go any way, though always with some interest. The
little Greek-looking conductor just does not care.
* * * * *
Enters another belated traveller, and takes a seat at the end of the
table. The be-shawled brings him soup and a skinny bit of kid. He eyes
this last with contempt, and fetches out of his bag a large hunk of
roast pork, and bread, and black olives, thus proceeding to make a
proper meal.
[Illustration: FONNI]
We being without cigarettes, the bus-driver and his companion press them
on us: their beloved Macedonia cigarettes. The driver says they are
_squisitissimi_--most, most exquisite--so exquisite that all foreigners
want them. In truth I believe they are exported to Germany now. And they
are quite good, when they really have tobacco in them. Usually they are
hollow tubes of paper which just flare away under one's nose and are
done.
We decide to have a round drink: they choose the precious _aqua vitae_:
the white sort I think. At last it arrives--when the little dark-eyed
one has fetched it. And it tastes rather like sweetened petroleum, with
a dash of aniseed: filthy. Most Italian liquors are now sweet and
filthy.
At length we rise to go to bed. We shall all meet in the morning. And
this room is dead cold, with frost outside. Going out, we glance into
the famous stanza. One figure alone lies stretched on the floor in the
almost complete darkness. A few embers still glow. The other men no
doubt are in the bar.
Ah, the filthy bedroom. The q-b ties up her head in a large, clean white
kerchief, to avoid contact with the unsavory pillow. It is a cold, hard,
flat bed, with two cold, hard, flat blankets. But we are very tired.
Just as we are going to sleep, however, weird, high-pitched singing
starts below, very uncanny--with a refrain that is a yelp-yelp-yelp!
almost like a dog in angry pain. Weird, almost gruesome this singing
goes on, first one voice and then another and then a tangle of voices.
Again we are roused by the pounding of heavy feet on the corridor
outside, which is as hollow and resonant as a drum. And then in the
infernal crew-yard outside a cock crows. Throughout the night--yea,
through all the black and frosty hours this demoniac bird screams its
demon griefs.
* * * * *