boat along the coast to the Scogli de’ Ciclopi. To the prosy geologists,
who mess about with their little hammers, these tremendous boulders are
no doubt merely evidences of titanic natural convulsions. But to the
rest of mankind, with a love for blind old Homer, they are the stones
poor clumsy Polyphemus hurled at escaping Ulysses and his intrepid
companions. The stately hexameters of the Odyssey give the story a noble
swing--the brawny Greek hero burning out the drunken giant’s eye with
the blazing end of a pole; the escape in the chilly dawn clinging to
the bellies of the cyclop’s sheep while he ran his huge hands over their
backs; the launching of the little boat, and the daring mockery of the
bewildered giant.
Blind and raging, crossed for the second time in his blighted life by
puny beings he could crush with one hand, Polyphemus tore off the top of
a small hill and threw it, missing the Greeks by a hair, but raising
such a wave that their boat was almost washed ashore. Again Ulysses
cried out upon him, and again the giant threw. And to this day the rocks
tower out of the sea, one of them over two hundred feet above water and
a couple of thousand feet in girth. Out of this giant’s missile the
Italian authorities have made them a geodetic survey and hydrographic
station. What would Homer--or Ulysses!--think if he could see the rocks
to-day? Curiously enough, though the Odyssey particularizes regarding
these two of the Scogli, or Rocks, it says nothing whatever as to the
other five of the group.
Right here another picturesque legend dealing with Polyphemus develops.
For miles along this shore, town after town has _Aci_ prefixed to its
name, as a reminder of the story of Galatea and Acis. Polyphemus--huge,
gross, uncouth monster--had no attraction for the dainty nymph, but as
so often happens in even the prosaic days of fact, his bulk did not keep
him from loving Galatea passionately. So when--if one may be
irreverently colloquial--the shepherd boy Acis “cut him out,” Polyphemus
crushed him to death with stones in Galatea’s bower. Olympus heard her
piteous mourning, and from the lifeblood of Acis sprang a crystal stream
which imparted its life to the fields of Catania until jealous Ætna
drank it up. But Acis lives in spite of the giant. Acireale,
Acicastello, Aci San Antonio--how quaintly pagan and Christian myths
mingle in the Latin countries!--and many another Aci perpetuate him.
Acireale, about ten miles from Catania on the main line of the railroad
to Taormina, is a pleasant place to make a stay. Its mineral springs,
the delightful views by sea and shore, the walks and drives in every
direction through surroundings of the keenest interest and beauty, and,
for those who are fond of the water, the little boat trips in the
vicinity, make it a most agreeable spot in which to idle during the soft
Sicilian Spring.
XII
TAORMINA
Sicilian railroad trains have the very amiable--or would some people
spell that word exasperating?--habit of never running according to
schedule. One is tempted at times to wonder why they have a time-table
at all! Express or local, the train is always either too late or too
early. You may take your choice of reaching the station well ahead of
the “due” time, and vegetating until the little locomotive sniffles
shamefacedly in, away late, or going on time and finding the carriage
doors locked, the train ready to leave, and the guards very much
disinclined to open for you. A jingling of one’s pocket usually unlocks
the doors in such circumstances, however.
Did I say, “express or local”? Which it is is a puzzle, since it is all
one. The “local” part of the train has to rush madly by stations
whenever the “express” part does; and the “express” half is obliged to
halt whenever the “local” end comes to a station it especially likes.
Which train you ride in depends entirely on the label that happens to be
on your car! But even with these vagaries, the railways are good, the
employés courteous, usually amenable to jingling reason, and the service
unusually safe. A railroad inspector I talked with explained this safety
tersely. “Italians or Sicilians would not matter. But, _per Baccho_, to
smash up foreigners--we can’t afford it!” As to that, their private
reasons are none of our affair. That we can feel safe, and be safe, is
the main thing.
The day we came to Taormina we reached the station too early, and a
miracle occurred. The train was early, too--fifteen minutes too
early!--and we secured an excellent compartment and waited. That was
decidedly too early to go ahead with safety, so engineer and conductor
strolled about town making friendly calls, a trainman had an _apéritif_
at a nearby _caffé_, and we started at last in leisurely fashion--five
minutes behind time.
The station is Giardini-Taormina, at the sea level; and Giardini, though
theoretically Taormina’s “harbor,” is only a little fishing village. Yet
here twenty-five centuries ago the first of Sicily’s deliverers, the
noble Timoleon of Corinth, landed to begin the work that built him such
fame and gave Sicily such liberty. And in 1860 the second Deliverer,
Giuseppe Garibaldi, after completing his work in Sicily, embarked here
for Reggio di Calabria to continue his campaign of liberation on the
Italian mainland. Nowadays nobody stops to look at Giardini twice, since
far above, on the great cliffs against which it nestles, lies the
favorite beauty spot of Sicily, the haunt of artist and traveler the
year around.
If you so much as look doubtfully at the rickety old landaus that meet
the train, a driver will pile your luggage into one, almost push you in
after it, and cracking his whip, start slowly up the road, a long,
gentle ascent built in great sweeping curves. Splendid views unveil
themselves at every foot of the way. Below lies the sea, ranging from
transparent, broken-edged emerald at the beach, to fathomless azure in
the depths, and a dull, dusty, almost colorless void at the horizon. It
is streaked with wind-paths, flecked with tiny whitecaps, dotted with
fishing boats flitting about like white bats, while far up the Strait
where Italy seems to reach over and embrace its lovely sister, it is
easy to imagine Scylla and Charybdis reaching out hungry, gleaming hands
for the hapless voyagers rashly passing between. It is hard to think of
anything else than the Argonauts, even amid the beauty of wild and
cultivated flowers, vegetation clinging tenaciously to the face of the
cliffs, or growing in luxuriance upon terraces in lovely banked and
esplanaded gardens. Picturesque villas of every type range all the way
from the usual bare, square, white hut-style to artists’ abominations in
all manner of castellated, battlemented, machicolated forms.
A turn in the road opens a matchless vista of Ætna; another,--and
squarely in front glimmers the red and tan ruin of the Greek Theater,
perched high upon the jutting crest of a mound from which the spectators
of the play had magnificent views to amuse them in case they tired of
the work of the chorus. Standing on tiptoe at the very edges of
precipitous acclivities big, pleasant looking hotels peer down with
staring window-eyes, very attractive, but a trifle suggestive of what
might happen should the edge of some particular precipice crumble off.
If you have been staying all along the way at the usual Swiss hotels
with their familiar Franco-German cooking, why not try a genuinely
Sicilian hostelry for once! Such quarters are to be found on the main
street, in a hotel which wanders up and down the hillside in an ungainly
series of overlapping stories and queer detached turrets and belvederes.
From the street, the entrance looks very much like a black hole in the
wall. It is exactly the same as the door of a little carpenter shop
alongside, with the single exception of an inscription in faded paint:
_Ristorante_.
[Illustration: “The red and tan ruin of the Greek Theater ... But it is
Ætna that makes Taormina.”]
The greatest charm of the place is a garden, which rambles about partly
on the level, partly down steep little banks, and then, in the rear,
rolls up to a stone wall beyond which is one of the milky white roads of
the country. It is crammed with the wildest sort of tangled climbing
roses, tiny things the rich color of a Maréchal Niel but no bigger than
a ten-cent piece; large red, yellow, pink and white roses; splendid
geraniums, orange trees, lemons, medlars, almonds, stubby agaves,
prickly pear, pink-flowered climbing cactus, and wonder of wonders, even
a pair of apple trees! Ivy, numerous other vines and brilliant
convolvulus riot about them all, while down the center runs a path under
lemon-arches half smothered in rose bloom.
Beside this walk is a trellis bower covered with thousands of the tiny
yellow roses, and furnished with a marble-topped table and an iron
chair--an ideal literary workshop. But alas! the village tinsmith
evidently shared my prejudice in its favor. When I came out prepared to
work he had already preëmpted it for his mechanical workshop, and was
filling the air with clatter and the noxious fumes of smoldering
charcoal as he knocked together watering-pots to keep the garden green.
There are so many means of communication between the wings and the
dining-room that it is very easy to lose one’s self. Beware the kitchen
stair especially, where a large, plump, elderly, and exceedingly
dignified goat often blocks the way. Try to push her gently aside, and
you are astonished to find how heavy and strong a goat is. Take her
firmly by her stump of a tail and one horn, to hoist her bodily, and the
proverbial pig under the stile could make no more distressing noise.
Among those who hear is the cook. Full of apologies, and unheeding
terrific protests, she grabs at the animal’s beard and a horn or leg,
and literally yanks her inside. But the moment she lets go, Signora Goat
bounces out again as though on the end of a rubber band.
Taormina is bound to the green hillside by one long, curving white
ribbon of a street, with flying tag-ends of alleys and byways. This
Corso Vittorio Emmanuele is the artery that carries the thin but pulsing
tide of the town’s affairs, a narrow, wind-swept chasm, but far from
being a dull one. Traffic is brisk, and the tiny shops, whose dark
interiors are scarcely more than visible, do a lively trade with the
townsfolk and _contadini_. Here and there a curio store--Taormina lives
and fattens on the gullible foreigner, be he collector, artist, or
traveler only--displays a great stringful of pottery hung beside the
door to tempt the unwary browsing antiquary with tangible memories of
“the glory that was Greece.”
All about artistic decay is embayed by square, ugly, utilitarian
buildings which the natives consider more practical than the exquisite
finery of their noble predecessors. The very unexpectedness with which
delicate bits of ruin appear constitutes one of the town’s greatest
charms. Yet happy in its isolation is the Badia Vecchia, a bit of fine
old crumbling, machicolated stone tower once the nunnery of Taormina,
surrounded by a brilliant patch of lavender-flowered cactus among the
trees on the irregular hillside above the town. Roofless and abandoned,
it stands outlined in soft brown against the cobalt sky, its delicate
windows still bordered by snowy marble diapering, its walls partly
checkered in black lava and white marble, a noble Gothic picture,
saturated with the atmosphere of Norman days.
A rugged, winding path leads up this hillside to the ancient castle,
crowning a crag far above, though the usual route is by way of Mola.
To-day the chief importance of the castle is as a platform for viewing
the stirring panorama of shore and hills. Just beyond Giardini on a
little promontory now covered by a luxuriant lemon plantation, those
ardent pioneers under Theocles--it seems hardly fair to call them
pirates, as some writers have done--established Naxos, the elder sister
of all Greek colonies in Sicily, in 735 B.C. One thing of especial
interest about Naxos is that outside its walls on what quickly became
neutral ground, the colonists erected an altar and shrine to Apollo
Archegetes, not merely the patron of Naxos, but the patron of all
Hellenic Sicily. Hither all the Greeks could come in safety for a
blessing ere departing on a journey, no matter what internecine strife
might rage in the island. The athletes and patrons of the Olympic and
Isthmian Games came here before sailing, to secure the favor of the god
in their endeavors to wrest the laurel from their brethren of Greece.
Naxos, however, was short-lived compared with the other cities. In 476
B. C., the Tyrant Hieron of Syracuse, who might well be called “the
juggler of colonies,” forcibly depopulated it and resettled its
inhabitants in the city of Leontinoi. This seems to have been a favorite
amusement of tyrants. To satisfy a passing whim, or as a means of
punishment, the tyrant of the moment would calmly compel some
unfortunate community to move in a hurry to a spot of his own choosing.
However, there seem to have been people living in Naxos seventy-three
years later, for we read that in 403 Dionysius destroyed it completely,
and ever since it has existed only as a name, as the first milestone
along the path of the superior incoming Greek civilization that made
Sicily great.
The Taormina castle, by the way, is an excellent vantage point from
which to pick out the places to which excursions may be made, and there
are many very attractive ones--by boat, on foot, or on donkeyback, to
Capo di Taormina and Capo di Sant’Andrea, where the coast is
pock-marked with curious grottoes, to Monte Venere, to Monte Zirreto,
and to many another local beauty spot.
In Sicily you must not believe everything you think you hear--and above
all, you must not act rashly upon such an impression. When a Sicilian
is feeling well, his “Good morning, sir!” sounds like “Spartacus to the
gladiators.” When anyone addresses you as though murder were
contemplated, with yourself as the victim, be easy. It is most likely to
be a polite wish for a pleasant journey, delivered with characteristic
Latin fervor and inflection. Our first morning in Taormina, a wild
looking peasant beauty bearing upon her shapely head a huge dripping
amphora, stopped us with uncouth gestures and a laugh so eldritch it
startled us. Jerking her finger at _La Signora_, she poured forth a
torrent of impassioned Sicilian dialect we failed to understand, though
I thought she said we were folk unfit to be in Taormina and had better
leave immediately.
Unpleasant thoughts of the _Maffiusi_--the _Mano Nera_ we loosely call
them--swept through me. The girl’s utterance was so fierce, her
expression so positively menacing, I wondered whether she might not be
really an agent of the dreaded band. But before my combined annoyance
and alarm led me into difficulties, two Taorminians came up and
explained in Italian: “The _signorita_ is afraid your _Signora_ will
lose her handkerchief. It is falling out of her belt.”
I was glad I had not shouted for the police!
When I asked the girl, who could understand Italian perfectly, though
she spoke none herself, if I might photograph her, she consented without
a trace of her former ferocity and--with a self-respect unfortunately
rare in Taormina--refused any gratuity, merely wishing us a torrential
good day as she vanished up the black and smoky stairs of a stone hut on
one of the side streets.
It is a pity the town has not more like her. The Taorminians display
comparatively little of the simple geniality and charm of the
Palermitans, little of their bright-faced innocence and heartiness. At
first it is hard to understand why, since they are no less Sicilian than
their fellows of the capital. But a slight acquaintance with them will
convince the most casual observer that they have learned their own value
only too well as replicas of Greek and Roman and Saracenic beauty.
Consequently many of them have turned from simple hill folk into
insincere, lazy, professional poseurs, alert for camera or pencil, and
lost forever to the childlike graces that distinguish their brothers.
And not only are the people replicas of the past, but their native music
is reminiscent also--pure Greek melodies that have floated down the
river of time from the days when Bion and Theocritus rambled these same
hills and wrote songs eternally young; Saracenic love-songs full of the
wild spirit of desert and river, quavering and melancholic; passionate
lyric romances suggestive of cavalier Norman days. But it is the Greek
that, being the purest and simplest strain, has always prevailed. Every
day little shepherd lads stir the terrific solitudes of wind-swept
mountain steeps with wordless songs drawn as by magic from their reedy
flutes, music shrilly sweet and unforgettable. And at dinner in the
evening you may hear some little minstrel wandering up and down the
Corso, fluting his heart out in the moonlight.
[Illustration: “The girl’s utterance was fierce, her expression
positively menacing.”]
In your eagerness you peradventure hale him into the mysterious
labyrinthine “Garden of the Moon” behind the hotel, where the silvery
blue orb of a great arc-lamp glows among the interlacing almonds and
medlars, and bid him play. But he is a shy, embarrassed Pan, stiff of
finger, timid of lip until he forgets the listening bystanders. Then the
magic pipe takes up again the silver strain. There is no hotel upon the
mountainside, but only the melody, the moon-mellowed primeval forest,
the slumbering forms of the little shepherd’s weary flock. The music
ceases--the elfin charm is broken. Rudely over the fairy ring of your
vision burst the ungentle voices of moderns in tailor-fashioned clothes,
stiff boots and Paris hats, wearing no chaplets of ivy or acanthus upon
ambrosial locks--and worst of all, some of them smoking cigarettes!
One such night I pleaded with the little minstrel, urged him by strange
and magic names he never knew, to let me have his reed. Reluctantly,
unsmiling, he gave it up, and as I write, it lies close by. But alas, no
more it knows the Grecian strain--it will not sing for me!
XIII
SOME MOUNTAIN VISTAS
The ignorance and illiteracy to which reference has already been made
are the chief misfortunes of the Sicilians. Since schools are few and
far between, little girls are taught only to sew, knit and cook. The
boys, more unfortunate, receive little or no instruction at all--there
is work for them as soon as they are old enough, and they are useful in
the fields and about the stables and goatpens at six or eight. The
children of wealthy or noble families seem to be regarded as superior
beings who have to learn practically nothing, and who accordingly go
through life unworried by knowing anything. A few years ago an English
lady undertook to make Taormina over single handed, and though the town
still has a long and thorny road to travel, the results the Hill School
has accomplished in helping the people to help themselves have surpassed
all anticipations, and prove that even with both heredity and
environment against them, the people are willing to learn and to work
when shown how.
[Illustration: “She charged ten cents a month each for tuition.... ‘It
is much for some!’”]
Within one of the dark doorways along the Corso is a typically
Taorminian institution, a knitting school where little tots sit demurely
knitting, crocheting or embroidering with faces as expressionless as the
visages of so many trained kittens. The “lady principal” comes forward
graciously to welcome visitors in her tiny domain, and readily grants
permission to make photographs. But the room is lighted only from the
front door, and the little heads and bodies are so difficult to keep in
repose for even a few seconds that photography is speedily abandoned for
an inspection of the work of the pupils, babies of from three upward,
except that occasionally an older girl takes a “post graduate course” in
fine embroidering. They click away industriously as their visitors pass
along the line, and some do not even glance up, so thoroughly have they
been drilled by the schoolmistress. Each juvenile knitter uses two long
needles and wears a belt with a little leather plastron, in which the
butt-end of the stationary needle rests, to protect the thinly clad
little body from the prick of the sharp steel instrument.
When we visited the school, I asked the teacher how much she charged for
tuition.
“Ten cents a month each,” was her grave reply. “It is much for some to
pay.”
“Does that pay you?”
She waved her hand at the circle of twenty-five pupils. “It does!”
The food of the people is intended to support life rather than gratify
the palate. And though the little ones, like normal children anywhere in
the world, are gifted with a sweet tooth, their desire for _dolci_ is
very, very seldom gratified. So when you loiter about the door of the
little school, be sure to have a bag of sweet cakes with you--the bakers
along the Corso all sell them. The “lady principal” will gladly permit
you to distribute the glistening, white-iced treasures, and you will be
amply repaid in watching the pupils--the daintiness with which they
accept and hold the proffered delicacies, the timid “_Graz’, Signora!
Graz’!_” of each, the perfect restraint of eager eyes and mouths.
A very important personage in this little mountain town is Signor
Atenasio Pancrazio, banker, steamship agent, postal messenger, and
storekeeper; and curious indeed are his business methods. On four days
which we noticed especially because of a desire to get at some of Signor
Atenasio’s money, he opened his bank-store at the somewhat irregular and
unusual hours of eleven-thirty, a quarter before nine, noon, and twenty
minutes past three. And then, to make the hours appear still less like a
matter of sordid business for gain, the gentleman threw wide his doors
on a Sunday morning and kept open shop, bank and house until long after
everybody but the ubiquitous tourist had gone to bed.
Banker though he is, the good gentleman has ideas above mere
money-making, and if you are content to sit at his feet in the big, dim
counting-room--which smells of cheese and wine, of garlic and
rubber-stamp ink--you can learn much about the Sicilian problem, which
is as perplexing to the Italian Government as the Irish bogy is to
Downing Street. When absentee landlordism is combined with ignorance and
poverty, it makes a problem indeed.
The agricultural system is very old. It had its inception as long ago as
the days when Pope Gregory the Great was one of the most important
proprietors in the island, in the name and person of the Church. He was
a good and careful landlord, but others are the opposite, and the
system, always unjust, has degenerated. At the present time an estate is
nominally managed on behalf of the owner by a factor, who most often
re-rents it to someone else. This third person in turn, not wishing to
cultivate it personally, leases it in small patches to the farmer at
exorbitant rates, or to a fourth factor, who repeats the operation. Thus
when the peasant finally comes into possession of his acres, he is
paying so heavy a rental that it is practically impossible to do more
than make his actual expenses.
Driven to desperation by such a condition and often in actual need, he
has recourse to the money-lender, who loans readily--and collects with
grim certainty, practically enslaving the wretched farmer. The usurers
grow rich, but they hoard up their evil fortunes, keeping the money out
of circulation, and the country is the poorer. Naturally the steamship
office becomes the most important place in towns where discontent
prevails. The companies have men ready to answer all questions, and more
than willing to encourage the peasant to give up his hardly earned
savings, providing he is physically sound. Indeed, they even send glib
and persuasive agents about to drum up trade in likely districts by
painting glowing pictures of the golden streets of America.