Avvenida della Libertà, the fashionable _corso_, or afternoon driving
promenade of all classes, takes place. The handsome street is an endless
chain of moving vehicles of every description. Here a spanking team of
blooded bays with silver-mounted harness draws the smart London trap of
a young Florio; there a rickety old barouche, guiltless of varnish for
many a long year, so crowded with a stout family party of six that its
rheumatic springs creak, and the wind-broken old hack who pulls it feels
his waning powers severely taxed. A splendid young Arab, full of blood
and pride, pulling a new victoria, follows a ducal cart and precedes
another overflow meeting, this time a stag party. Flashily dressed young
gallants with cigarettes and straw hats _à l’Anglais_, loll back in
decent traps and carts, making sheep’s eyes at the demure young girls
who ride in maiden reserve beside their silent mothers.
Every Palermitan who can, rides in this social promenade. What matter if
his vehicle be but a cheap hired victoria; what if he go to bed
supperless; has he not had the supreme delight of playing milord in
elegant leisure among the nobility and the rich _forestieri_ (tourists)
who take the air on the city’s stateliest avenue?
It not infrequently transpires that one carriage, one horse and one
coachman are owned--and alternately used--by two or three families. The
coachman in all probability not having been paid for a year or two,
cannot afford to run away; the emaciated steed, not having had a really
square feed of good sweet oats for an equally distressing period, could
not run away if he would; and if both horse and driver should by fell
conspiracy bolt, the faithful old carriage would quickly fall to pieces
rather than have any part in the undoing of its worthy owners.
[Illustration: “There is nothing to equal the Sicilian cart, carved,
yellow, panelled.”]
Those of the nobles too poor to own a carriage alone, and far too proud
to appear in hired ones, are not too proud to adopt the tactics of their
humbler brethren, and go shares in an outfit with other nobles of equal
pretensions and as poor as themselves. Only one extravagance marks the
common ownership of what might be called these “party rigs.” Each count
or baron or prince naturally boasts “arms” as the insignia of his
rank; and these symbols must of necessity embellish his carriage doors,
that he who walks may know at a glance the name and fame of him who
rides. From this dilemma the Sicilian has contrived an ingenious escape.
Each noble has his own set of emblazoned doors. So when the tired horse
brings his Highness the Prince back to his “palace,” presto! off come
the princely doors, on go the ducal or baronial ones, and his Grace the
Duke or the Baron rides serenely off in his own private equipage!
Of all the vehicles in the world, there is nothing, however, to equal
the Sicilian cart, carved, yellow, paneled with lurid paintings that run
the gamut of myth and history. One we saw had upon its panels scenes
representing Columbus sailing from Palos and discovering America; a
bloody fight around the citadel of Acre; the hermitage of Santa Rosalia;
and on its tailboard a vivid presentation of the massacre of the
Vespers. These carts are never very large, as carts go; but they are so
marvelously wrought, they ought surely to come under the provisions of
the law which forbids the exportation of any works of art. Wheels,
shafts, axles, the edges of sides and posts and tailboards are all
worked into neat geometrical designs, and on the axle is a carving built
up clear to the bottom of the cart, a mass of intricate scroll-work and
gingerbread, in the middle of which sits the patron saint of the
fortunate owner.
“If you expect a cart-driver to tell you the truth, make him swear by
the saint sitting upon his axle,” is almost a proverb in Palermo. Would
there were saints on the cabs, too!
Often the horses’s decorations are equally fantastic, with a three-foot
cock feather rising between his ears, an apoplectic purple bouquet of
yarn upon the saddle, and plenty of shrill little bells at jingly
intervals all over. These gorgeous outfits are used for ordinary
delivery work, and after working hours the family put chairs in and go
for a ride in state. The bit is as queer as the harness: it isn’t a bit
at all, but a plate of spring-steel strapped loosely over the horse’s
nose, an horizontal prong projecting on either side. Attached to the
prongs, the reins give the driver complete control over his animal,
since by pulling them he gently but effectively cuts off the beast’s
breath. This makes runaways impossible, and besides, is much more humane
than a bit of the usual sort.
The city’s street cleaning department is not such a joke as it appears.
Looks are not its strong point--keeping the town immaculate is. The
carts are simply scaly old specimens of these brilliant equipages; and
the animals are tiny Sardinian donkeys, as pretty and gentle as any pet
lamb, and scarcely bigger. One velvety little gray beauty we saw on the
Via Maqueda was undoubtedly heartbroken at having such disagreeable work
to do. We talked to him and petted him, but to all our caresses he
made not the slightest response, merely hanging his head and suffering
his fate silently, like the brave little beast that he was.
[Illustration: “The city’s street-cleaning department is not such a joke
as it appears.”]
Perhaps it is the cleanliness of these streets that makes the people use
them as drying-rooms. In Naples they wash in the streets, and hang the
clothes from window to window in narrow alleys. But in Palermo the
people go much farther--they cover the façades of their very finest
houses with linen which flaps in plain sight even during the fashionable
_corso_ on the broad avenue.
On this same Via Maqueda are the two large theaters. The Mássimo, or
Largest Theater, is a splendid structure, well named, for it is the
largest theater not only in Italy but in all Europe, a dignified
adaptation of ancient Greek ideals to present day needs. A block farther
on is the Politeama Garibaldi, with a Roman triumphal arch entrance, and
a two-storied Greek colonnade encircling frescoed walls whose
polychromatic decorations are so exceedingly Pompeiian they suggest that
Palermo may be the birthplace of a new renaissance in Italian art.
The Sicilian of any class is always picturesque, always individual. He
could scarcely be anything else if he tried, and the life of the masses
in the city is like a show at the theater--a show, at that, in which
even the supernumeraries are ever imbued with due regard for the proper
setting and action of the piece. There is no more typical specimen of
this condensed picturesqueness than the water-seller, whose bellow has
musical quality and charm, as you discover after your first shock. He
calls up Egypt and the streets of Cairo. Really, he is the survival of
an ancient Arab custom. You find him everywhere, especially among the
lanes of the Fiera di Pascua, the Easter Fair, a piece bitten right out
of the heart of Coney Island. The Easter season, by the way, is an
exceedingly fortunate time to spend in Sicily, because of the
multitudinous festivities going on.
For the Fair, great bare sheds spring up overnight in the square beside
the Mássimo, mushroom-like--a sunstruck Babel of crazily built and
decorated shops and stalls and booths where everything imaginable is to
be bought, from tinware and toys to rosaries and vegetables. About the
booths eddies a jovial mob, pushing, chattering, playing practical jokes
on one another, eating candy and the dubious Sicilian equivalents for
frankfurters and kraut. Bands blare out fitful, horrible music from the
roofs or windows of small sheds curiously mounted with painted legends
or astonishing pictures in which the lack of perspective is the most
prominent feature, unless it is the artist’s entire disregard for the
principles of anatomy. “Barkers” in plate armor manufactured out of
ancient kerosene tins from which the odor has by no means departed,
vie with ridiculous clowns and short skirted dancers in proclaiming the
attractions of their rival marionette and “minstrel” shows. And
everybody wants to pose. Indeed, the Sicilians have a good humored mania
for getting in the way of the camera, even when they know they are not
wanted there and will never see a single copy of the picture.
[Illustration: “‘Barkers’ in plate-armor ... in the Easter Fair, a piece
bitten right out of Coney Island.”]
I leveled my camera at one queer stall, and instantly the people sprang
together solidly, completely obscuring the booth, each man crying to his
neighbor: “_Aspett’! Aspett’! Il fotografo!_” In vain I pleaded. In vain
Gualterio shouted and threatened and argued. The merrymakers laughed,
and nodded, and stood like statues. In the confusion an important
policeman stepped up, saluted respectfully, and said: “Excellency will
be kind enough to move out into the street again. He is attracting
citizens, and blocking the entire square.”
Then he began unhurriedly turning over the human kaleidoscope.
III
A NIGHT OF DISSIPATION
Palermo is chimneyless. Hovels and palaces alike have no fires, except
for cooking, and among the poorer classes very little of that is done at
home, the people being steady patrons of the _cucine economice_, or
“economical kitchens,” especially of those in the vicinity of the great
public markets.
Anxious to see these typical aspects of city life in tabloid form, we
had our own dinner early one evening, and told Gualterio to take us
through the poorer quarters, to show us the people getting their
suppers, both at home and in the old market. Obeying literally, he drove
us through countless _piccoli vicoli_ or narrow alleys, dark little
canyon-like slits between the houses.
Strange shadowy forms flitted about under our horse’s very feet; black
doorways gave yawning glimpses of deeper gloom beyond, lighted only by a
tiny candle; here and there we passed vague silhouettes--a hungry man
standing, hat on, before a table or sideboard gulping down his meager
dinner, or a woman, Rembrandt-like, knitting, mending, reading, or
amusing a child, in soft relief against the murk of the interior. Sharp
cries from the driver warned away the children sitting in the street, so
narrow that the wheels of our carriage scraped the house walls on both
sides while going through; women knitting slipped their chairs
momentarily back into the doorways in order to let us pass. Street lamps
at long intervals twinkled feebly, and after six or eight such streets
were traversed we emerged into the glare and brilliance of the slightly
depressed Piazza Caraccioli, home of the Fiera Vecchia or Old Market.
Halting the victoria on one side of the square, we wandered about on
foot among a bedlam more picturesque than, and fully as noisy as, the
Easter Market. To describe the scene adequately is impossible--no one
who has not seen it can gather more than the vaguest idea from any
printed description of this vivid cross-section of lower class Sicilian
customs.
Dazzling light and pitchy darkness alternate sharply, with no
intermediate nuances of softer shadow, and the hurrying people rush
hither and yon like so many busy ants. Adding to the confusion of the
scene, the peddler and vendor shout out their wares: “Water!” “Olives!”
“Artichokes!” “Fish!” A chorus of lesser cries swell into diapason
invitations to buy all manner of things one does not wish and can not
possibly use, and there is much good natured chaff for the
_forestieri_. Men, women and children by the score are everywhere, some
eating where they stand, some carrying food home.
Small pails of gleaming charcoal bear upon their heads great kettles of
boiling artichokes. Steam and aroma from the cooking meats and
vegetables; the smoke of lamps, candles and torches and burning fat and
grease in the frying pans; escaping gases from the ranges in the
“economical kitchens,” from the charcoal fires, and from the coal
stoves; the innumerable smells of fresh vegetables, meat, fish, both
salt and fresh, cut flowers and goats, with an additional tang of cheap
wine, gushing from big casks into pails and bottles in the open shops,
mingle in a composite odor by no means as unpleasant as might be
thought.
The whole scene is a delight to the eye. Here is a good sized wine shop,
its front entirely open, showing two rows of casks and an imposing array
of copper bright as the sun; yonder a vegetable store completely covered
with onions suspended in long strings, bunches and wreaths, decorated
fancifully with green leaves and little rosettes which afford a
background of decidedly striking type for an image of the Holy Bambino,
itself of onion color, and barely discernible among the rustling strings
of bulbs over the door.
[Illustration: “Vendors of fried entrails ... squat beside their
baskets.”]
[Illustration: “The people are steady patrons of the Economical
Kitchens.”]
Beside us a tiny restaurant, its front all gas-range, yawns enticingly,
while opposite glows the fiery eye of an artichokeman’s tiny charcoal
fire. Vendors of fried entrails and stomachs squat beside their frying
pans and baskets, perforated ladles in their hands, exactly like our
frankfurter men; while water-men with their highly colored stands full
of clinking glasses swing along, bellowing cheerfully.
Great gaudy signs in blue, red and yellow proclaim the prices of empty
eggs, strung on threads, or impaled upon wooden spearlets, and stuck up
over the front of a shop. Evidently the Palermitan distinguishes as we
do between “eggs,” “fresh eggs” and “strictly fresh eggs,” for the price
varies considerably. However, the careful buyer we watched trusted not
in signs or portents, but weighing each egg carefully as he bought,
placed a dozen or more of the fragile things in his coat pockets despite
the throng. Why a purchaser never comes home with an omelet in his
clothes is a mystery, for we found it exceedingly difficult to work our
way through the crowd. Yet, when I questioned the egg-seller he declared
that no one ever broke an egg.
A man with a pretentious stand like the American quick lunch counters
stood behind a narrow smoking counter full of hidden fire, bearing a
frying pan on top. On his left a bowl of strong shredded cheese faced
other dishes of butter and rolls. He was a very popular caterer, too,
for while we stood watching him a number of customers came up, giving an
order in the peasant dialect which we could not understand, and the
proprietor with a deft turn of his hand split a roll, covered it
liberally with a rich thick layer of shredded cheese looking like
toothpicks, placed upon that a few scraps of the meat he was cooking
below, and deluging the whole with a spoonful or two of boiling grease,
served up the tit-bit to his eager customer. In Sicily the butchers sell
the offal and entrails of slaughtered animals, which in America are
turned over the soap manufacturers or thrown away. The kitchen-man who
buys them cuts up the stuff, boils it in its own fat, and sells it in
the reeking buns at a penny apiece. The sturdy Sicilian seems to enjoy
and thrive on this horrible mess, and even the children come toddling up
to clamor for their share.
Macaroni of all sorts, curled, fluted, twisted, frilled, chopped into
squares and lead pencil lengths, woven, braided into shapes numberless,
decorates several of the stalls. Other booths sell candles; others,
shoes; still others, nothing but cheese. Cobblers are everywhere,
although it seems impossible--in a town where so many people go
barefoot--that one-tenth of the shoemakers, who work from six o’clock in
the morning until nearly midnight, can find anything to do.
Notwithstanding this external poverty, however, there are in the houses
of the very poorest in practically every section of the town
sewing-machines, whose tireless treadles throb and pulse by day and far
into the night, the seamstress bending over her work lighted only by
the spasmodic flickerings of a little candle.
Tiring after an hour or so of the bustle and confusion and glare, we set
off again. In and out we wound, as in a dream, peopling the streets with
imaginary rascals ready to rob or kidnap, until at last in a small open
square we came to the brilliantly lighted wineshop and café of _Sainte
Rosalie_, whose proprietor, himself partly French, thus Gallicizes the
name of the town’s patron saint, and at the same time adds distinction
to his café in the eyes of lower class Palermo. We stopped curiously,
and the proprietor, immediately forgetting his patrons, invited us to
get out and inspect the place.
Filling almost one entire side of the large front room is a huge stove
built of mortar-covered brickwork, upon which bubbled a couple of
cauldrons, one full of goats’ stomach, the other containing scraps of
something or other. Both smelled good--but how they looked! Opposite the
stove hung meat which had been fresh that morning; piles of vegetables
completely filled up the counter and various tables. All the coppers and
cooking utensils were spotless, and marvelous to relate, there is a real
chimney, and running water, both hot and cold. Sometimes you see a house
which has a genuine iron cooking stove--but it stands in the parlor and
the stovepipe is thrust conveniently out into the street above the
closed lower half of the front door.
The café is divided into two parts by an arch, and no curtains being
hung, the diners can see perfectly how their food is being cooked.
Leading us through into the _Sala di pranzo_, the proprietor, with a
sweeping bow, waved us into two chairs at a table beside two native
couples who were taking their belated suppers. The peasants greeted us
frankly and pleasantly, the women smiling, and the men doffing their
caps with a hearty “_Buona sera, signori!_”
Not knowing exactly what was expected of us, we ordered _vino e pasta_,
supposing we would receive some sour, fiery fluid, and the bad Sicilian
bread. Instead there was set before us a large flagon of reddish-brown,
rather heavy dessert wine, a little too sweet to be palatable to
Americans, but nevertheless delicious. Clean though coarse napkins and
glasses accompanied it, and delicious almond sweet-cakes in far greater
quantity than we could eat. The price of this refreshment was so
ridiculously small that we wondered at first whether Boniface had not
made a mistake.
Our trip through the market and the _piccoli vicoli_ thus pleasantly
finished, I told Gualterio to take us to the theater.
That anyone would be willing to miss a minute of pleasure he must pay
for was incomprehensible to his simple mind. Draining his beaker at a
gulp, he nearly dropped the glass in astonishment. “_Ma--signore! É
troppo tard’! Ora si finisc’ il prim’ atto!_” he exclaimed. “It is too
late! The first act is surely over!”
[Illustration: “The Holy Bambino ... barely discernible among the
rustling strings of onions over the door.”]
”Oh, I did not mean the fine theaters where the rich people go, but a
little theater, a theater of the people--where you go when you have an
evening to yourself.”
A curious expression came over his face, but making sure that we knew
what we were talking about, he drove rapidly to the door of a dirty and
dilapidated looking house in a small side court. Though we did not
expect marionette shows to be given in a very splendid auditorium, we
were scarcely prepared for this, rather hesitating to enter.
The door was divided, the lower half closed, the upper open. Inside hung
a short, flapping black curtain, while about the door loitered a little
group of street urchins who dodged up when the doorkeeper’s back was
turned, to peep eagerly into the slit of brilliance that revealed the
stage between the upper edge of the half-door and the bottom of the
curtain.
As we, too, peeped, Gualterio whispered that here was a theater whose
audience numbered the very poorest and the humblest in the city, adding
apologetically: “Perhaps it is too poor for Excellency. I have been here
and enjoyed the performance, but Excellency is accustomed to the fine
theaters, and the Signora may not like this very well.”
On the contrary, that was exactly the sort of theater we did wish to
see. The glimpse we got through the open door of the auditorium however,
was not reassuring; and furthermore there was not a woman present. I
knew all about the custom of the Sicilian theaters, which announce two
different sorts of plays--“To-night for men;” “This is a play for
ladies.” Naturally, seeing no sign of the more particular sex, I jumped
at the conclusion that this must be a man’s night. But disturbed by our
conversation outside, the doorkeeper-proprietor and at least half of the
audience politely arose and insisted that we should enter. With some
misgivings we did so, paying two cents apiece for seats. Afterward I
learned that the impresario had charged us exactly double what anyone
else paid.
The seats consisted of a few hard wooden benches without any backs, and
the one reserved place in the entire theater--which was a room perhaps
thirty feet square with two galleries some five feet above the floor on
both sides--was a single broken-backed kitchen chair perched upon one of
the benches in the middle of the house. The only well dressed man in the
room, who occupied it, gallantly sprang down at once, and with a
delightfully courtly bow and smile assisted the protesting Signora to
his place. The audience numbered about forty or fifty fisherman,
peddlers, a cabman or two and a miscellaneous collection of as jovial
looking pirates as ever scuttled a ship or slit a throat. But for all
their appearance, they behaved exactly like American opera-goers, and
the stir that our entrance made set every tongue chattering at a lively
pace.
The stage stretched across the end of the pit at a height of perhaps
three or four feet above the floor, and on a rack of some kind at the
left of the place where the footlights should have been, was a quantity
of wilted green vegetables. Thinking of what happens to inferior actors
in the rural districts here, I inquired with some anxiety if the
vegetables had been laid aside for that purpose. But the man to whom I
spoke, missing the joke entirely, replied with the utmost simplicity:
“Oh, no, Giuseppe laid his pack there because it was too big to place
between the seats.”
How homelike it would seem to the weary street hawker in New York, could
he but stop at the theater on his way home, and occasion no remark by
leaving his left-over stock in trade at the feet of the actors for the
time being.
As soon as La Signora was ensconced upon her uncertain “reserved seat,”
the men who sat beside me on either hand began to explain the play in
what they probably considered words of one syllable. The fancily dressed
young man at my right seemed impatient at the remarks of my white-haired
left-hand neighbor, who smelled strongly of tar, and whose sixty years
and showerbath dialect made him both attractive and unintelligible to
me. Both men talked at once and at high speed. In the meantime everyone
else all over the house was talking cheerfully; and the play was
proceeding as calmly as though there were no interruption. Between the
two explanations, neither of which I could understand, I had
considerable difficulty in catching the words of the play, which was
being read by a gentleman whose lungs must have been rubber and whose
throat brass. He stood back of the proscenium somewhere and bellowed or
whispered in fine frenzy at every dramatic point, as the marionettes
performed their astonishing evolutions.
The puppets were handsome armored figures about three feet high, clothed
in glittering plate and chain armor, accoutered cap-à-pie, their shields
properly blazoned and their surcoats faithful models of the garments
worn by the ancient knights. Marching, filing and counter-filing, they
made addresses to the accompaniment of stiff, clattering gestures,
fought duels of deadly outcome with clashing weapons and rasping wires
in the glare of half a dozen smoky oil lamps, and moved about easily,
manipulated by the expert hands of operators who were standing in the
wings. Every little while a human hand would burst into view,
grotesquely gigantic compared with the puppet whose fate was in its
keeping.