Part 33 (1/2)
Peppino Fazio was standing at a kiosk near the Quattro Canti with two young cousins, buying b.u.t.ton-holes of violas; he gave me the one he had intended for himself.
”Wear this,” he said, ”it is the primavera. Proserpine has risen from the underworld, she has returned to Enna and is scattering flowers again.
Stay; let us exchange; I will take another bunch and you shall pay the man for it one soldo. Buona Pasqua.”
So we exchanged bunches. ”Wear this,” I said, echoing his words, ”it is the primavera; the time for visiting sepulchres is over. Proserpine has sent these flowers down from Castrogiovanni by the morning train. Buona Pasqua.”
In the next piazza, in the shadow of the statue of Bellini, was one of the men from the Teatro Machiavelli; he had brought out his dog and talked of going a-birding, he hoped it was not too early for quail, he had already seen ripe strawberries in the market. Buona Pasqua.
Then I came upon Joe, the Policeman, keeping order in the street.
He said: ”Buona Pasqua. You are very good-looking this morning.” He meant I was looking very well, but he will be so English.
I replied: ”Buona Pasqua. But, my dear Joe, you ought not to be wearing flowers in uniform, ought you?”
”It is the primavera,” he said. He also told me that the revolvers and the squibs and the plates had not done much damage this year--perhaps ten or a dozen accidents, but none fatal, so far as was yet known.
I went along the Via Stesicoro, not considering my steps because I was looking up the street, wondering how long the Gloria would take to melt the snow on Etna, and I stumbled across Carmelo.
”Buona Pasqua, Carmelo, and have you been to church this morning?”
No, he had been to the port with his friends to see the steamer in which they were to go to Naples; there they would change into another steamer and be taken to the States. They had begged, borrowed, stolen, or, it may be, possibly even earned enough soldi to begin their new life upon another soil and under other skies in a new world. Buona Pasqua.
I returned to the albergo and found that Turiddu had been and had left for me a characteristic Sicilian cake--a ring of bread on one side of which, half embedded in the pasta, were four new-laid eggs. This was accompanied by a note from his mother begging me to accept it as her Easter offering of goodwill. She was telling me more than that the hens had begun to lay again. She was reminding me of how I had seen her at the Teatro Pessana as the link between her mother and her children, joining them and separating them like a pa.s.sage of modulation. I understood her to mean that for the future I was to see an egg as a transitional something between the hen that laid it and the chicken that will burst from its sh.e.l.l, as a secret place of repose where the one is trans.m.u.ted into the other, as a sacred temple wherein is prepared a mystery of resurrection. Mothers know some things that cannot be told except in symbolism, and not very clearly then, symbols being as perplexing as unresolved diminished sevenths which may be understood in many different senses. I read the riddle of the eggs in the sense suggested by the context of the Gloria, and I think I read it aright, for in Catania on that Easter morning we were all of one mind, we were all breathing the Gloria, we were all filled with the spirit of the new life, the spirit that animated also our far-away English monk as he sat in his Berks.h.i.+re cell making music for
Summer is ic.u.men in, Lhude sing cuccu.
In the evening I went to the Machiavelli. The theatre had been taken by a young amateur who carries on a business of forwarding oranges and other fruit. He gave a performance of one of Giovanni Gra.s.so's plays, _Feudalismo_, part of which I was obliged to see because in the second act there is a song sung behind, and Turiddu had been asked to sing it; on such a day the claims of the family were stronger even than on Palm Sunday. His voice has not yet broken, but if it turns out to be as good for a man as it is now for a boy, he ought to do well with it. I must not continue--it would be more unbecoming in me to praise my compare for his singing than to praise his sister for her acting.
After the song in _Feudalismo_ there was time also for the second representation at the Teatro Sicilia. The performance began with the wounding of Christ. Then Annas and Caiaphas discussed the question of whether, after all, they might not have made a mistake in treating Christ as a magician. They had been alarmed by the earthquake, the atmospheric disturbances and the rising of the dead from their graves. Could these phenomena signify that he was the Son of G.o.d? And something else troubled them; on consideration they did not like the wording of Pilate's sentence. They went to his palace, but Pilate was not disposed to listen to their objections.
”What I have written I have written,” said Pilate.
They had brought the sentence with them and pointed out to him that he had condemned ”il Re dei Giudei” the King of the Jews and, inasmuch as condemning a king is a serious step and might get him into trouble, suggested that for his own safety he should add the letter ”o” to the word ”Re.” This would make it that he had condemned ”Il Reo dei Giudei,”
the Criminal of the Jews. Pilate was persuaded and agreed to add the letter. He went away and fetched his pen, which looked like a feather from the tail of a hawk, and Annas held the paper; but Pilate's pen refused to write, it was wafted from his hand by a power stronger than his, it hung in the air before their eyes and fluttered away to heaven.
This miracle was accompanied by music; and, if I had been consulted, I should not have advised the _Marcia Reale Italiana_, because that composition, on account of its inherent frivolity, has always seemed to me unfit for the accompaniment of any manifestation of power. To despise Bellini because he is not Schubert would be to adopt the att.i.tude of the buffo's critic who escaped from Paris in the teatrino at Palermo; nevertheless the countrymen of Schubert have known how to appear before the world clothed in the solemn splendour of Haydn's majestic Hymn to the Emperor, while the Italians come mountebanking along in an ill-fitting, machine-made suit of second-hand flourishes, as though that were the best they could lay their hands on. They have not done themselves justice.
But this is not the place for a digression; before returning to Pilate and his visitors, however, let me say distinctly that the music was the Italian _Marcia Reale_ played, not as the other sc.r.a.ps were played, but with a loud and jaunty heartlessness as though the miraculous pen were jeering at the priests:
”There! you didn't expect that; now, did you?”
Joseph and Nicodemus also came to Pilate begging the body of Jesus. The priests objected, for they had not forgotten the prophecy about building the Temple of G.o.d in three days, and they feared trickery. Pilate compromised, granting the request but setting a guard.
Next we saw the Descent from the Cross, effected by Joseph and Nicodemus; and while the body lay on a couch, a melancholy Miserere was sung behind.
The Entombment followed, the Madonna in black lamenting and weeping.
The last scene was in a wood, where Judas came to finish his remorse. He refused all comfort and all the benevolent suggestions of the angels who visited him. They told him that G.o.d is ever willing to pardon the sinner who sincerely repents and freely confesses his sin. It is with G.o.d always as it is with men at the season of the Gloria. But the wretched Judas could not think of repentance and confession; his cowardly soul was not torn by sorrow for past sin, it was paralysed by fear of future punishment; or we may have been intended to understand that the road to perdition lies through madness. He spoke three sentences, and the last word of each was echoed by a diabolical voice and then appeared written in letters of blood and fire:--Giuda:--Dio:--Stesso. These words made a sentence by themselves and signified: ”_Judas_ is against _G.o.d_ and against _Himself_.” Faith, Hope, and Charity appeared to him separately; he would have nothing to do with any of them and they all deserted him.