Sicilian Carousel: Adventures on an Italian Island

2: Catania

OUR FELLOW TRAVELERS! Oh God, what was in store for us? But the hotel to which we repaired was all right in its gloomy way, and at least there was plenty of hot water. So we repaired the damage to our beauty and then held up the bar for a calamitously expensive Scotch, feeling that it might help us to overcome the horrors in store for us. But as time wore on, and the pangs of hunger began to twinge at us, we moved into the ghastly white light of the long dining room and took up an emplacement at one of the tables (the group held a strategic corner of the place to itself) marked Carousellos Siciliano. Indeed, wherever we went our reserved seats were thus marked. It was engaging enough, but on this first evening while we waited with impatience for our fellow travelers to arrive (would it be rude to start?) it sounded ghoulish.

However, the Scotch was so expensive we simply couldn’t keep on ordering it. We decided therefore to begin, and to hell with the rest of the Carousel. But in that glaring white light, with its bevy of indolent waiters, everything was indecision. We had taken up positions at the first reserved table and to steady our nerves Deeds tried to be facetious in a reassuring way, telling me that these marked tables had a tang of opera about them, and that he felt he would like to burst into song like a gondolier. But it was heavy stuff and he knew it. Well, boldly we started in on the dinner at last, a disappointing little offering of spaghetti or rice with gravy. It was honest enough fare I suppose, but it had clearly been blessed by British Railways. Moreover, the waiter who served us was suffering either from a terrible bereavement or a deep Sicilian Slight. He could hardly contain his sobs; his head hung low and waved about; his eye rolled. He mastered himself for serving, yes, but only just and when it came to wavering the cheese over the plate his repressed fury almost got the better of him and Deeds mildly took his wrist to help him scatter his Parmesan.

We were well embarked on this introduction to the joys of the island cuisine when there came the noise of a bus and voices of foreign tang — and we knew that our fellows of the Carousel had arrived. They stacked their baggage in the hall and then like ravenous wolves made a beeline for the dining room where we sat, gazing bravely through our tears at them. “God! They do look ghastly,” admitted Deeds, and so they did. And so, I suppose, did we, for when they saw us sitting at a Carousel table their beseeching looks turned heavenward and their lips moved, no doubt in prayer, at the thought of being locked up in a bus with us for two weeks.… It was mutual, this first appraising glance. They straggled in in twos and threes until about fifteen to seventeen hungry people were seated around us being served by the sobster waiter and his colleagues. The white light poured down on us turning us all to the color of tallow. But Deeds had found a very pleasant dry white wine and this helped. In gingerly fashion we started passing the salt and pepper, picking up dropped napkins, and generally showing a leg.

Later of course our companions developed distinct identities but on that first evening in the dismal light it was impossible to distinguish accurately between the Anglican Bishop who had developed Doubts, the timid young archaeologist, the American dentist who had eloped with his most glamorous patient, the French couple of a vaguely diplomatic persuasion and all those others who hung about on the outskirts of our table like unrealized wraiths. Later their characters printed themselves more clearly. Tonight we gathered a few random impressions, that was all. The Bishop was testy and opinionated and had been airsick. He kept sticking his forefinger in his ears and shaking vigorously to clear the canals, as he put it. His wife was both tired and somewhat cowed. We knew nothing then about his nervous breakdown in the pulpit. His name was Arthur. The dentist was shy and hung his head when spoken to in a strong British accent while his partner looked pleasantly saucy. I sympathized with him. The Bishop spoke English as if he had a hot potato in his mouth. The rest of the table was made up by the rather distinguished French couple who could not, I decided, be diplomatic for they spoke no English and were glad to lean on us as translators.

And then Roberto made his relaxed appearance, shaking hands all round and moving smilingly from table to table, slipping from one language to another with smooth skill and checking off our names on the tourist list. He combined charm and kindness; later we discovered that he was efficient as well. He knew Deeds quite well from a previous trip and their greeting was most cordial. My friend explained when he had left us that Don Roberto came of a noble but penniless family and had been a university lecturer in history; but the boredom of academic life with its endless intrigues had sent him in search of something more suitable to a lively nature. He had found it in becoming guide, philosopher, and friend to the travelers on the Carousel. His calm friendliness had an immediately reassuring effect; it acted as a catalyst.

We dug deeper into our charmless food and poured out more stoups of wine. It would have been a pity, after spending so much money on the trip, not to enjoy it a little. The French diplomat had a head which came straight off a Roman coin — the benign features of one of the better emperors. His wife was fearfully pale and looked very ill; she was clearly convalescent after some obscure illness and looked all the time as if she were on the point of fainting. The concern of her husband was very evident. The dentist ate his food with a sort of soundtrack; he was clearly a great masticator, and probably a health food addict. The French Microscopes were far off; they had found another microscope to talk to.

“When I was young,” said Deeds, to nobody in particular, “there was a great Victorian moustache cup among the family heirlooms, out of which my father drank his Christmas punch. On this object the family had had engraved the motto DEEDS NOT WORDS which is perhaps why I am so dashed taciturn.”

Though it was relatively late when our dinner was concluded with a pungent grappa we were disinclined to turn in straight away. A few of our fellow travelers took refuge in the lounge where coffee was available and where there was light enough to write postcards, sort papers, count up currency. Roberto was talking to the pretty German girl about archaeology. There were two striking but severe-looking French ladies sending views of the town to their relations. They were very finely turned out and would obviously be destined to match up with the proconsular gentleman and his distinguished but pale wife. We were to be a group speaking three languages — which offered no problems for Roberto. He smiled and waved to us as we passed through the swing doors into the warm and fragrant darkness outside. It was pleasant to stretch one’s legs once more, and the hot night was full of flower scents. Quite soon, however, Deeds steered us into the little Bellini garden I had hoped to see before we left — for it was here that Martine in high summer had sat to write me a letter and mend the broken thong of a sandal.

It was a good letter, and I had brought it with me to Sicily in order to try and re-experience it here. It had come after a silence of nearly two years and after several long journeys. “We have been brought up to believe that facts are not dreams — and of course they are.” It was strange to think of her penning the words as she sat here among all this greenery. And there were other little touches of observation too, which proved that the writer in her had gone on maturing long after the ambition to write had become dispersed by her domestic concerns. A note about the curious volcanic stone which gave a feeling of weightlessness and insubstantiality, and altered the sound of heels upon it. Then, too, of the marvelous vulgarity of Bellini’s “Puritani” as played in Sicily — its appropriateness to the place and mood. Smoking a cigarette, I pondered these matters beside a silent Deeds. The air was rich with the smell of invisible flowers. I wondered where people went when they died. Right back into the painting I suppose.

“Bedtime,” said Deeds, looking at his watch and I rose to follow him through the dark streets to the hotel. Here we elected to turn in right away for the call on the morrow was to be a relatively early one and I had to rearrange my affairs against a week of hard traveling. The words “hard traveling” were a joke when one thought of the luxury of the Carousel. Nevertheless.

But before I put out my light I could not resist opening the little green file of her letters in order to re-read the two she had sent me from here while she had been touring the island in her little car. There were good things there, things which connected.… “I always remember the way you pronounce the word ‘impossible!’ But Larry dear the impossible has always been just within man’s grasp — happiness and justice and love. You feel it so strongly among these battered vestiges. It is always such a near miss. O why can’t man reach for the apple instead of waiting for Eve?” Why indeed? “The universe is always bliss side up if only he knew it.”

To sleep. To dream. Light airs, ever so faintly sulphurous seemed to drift into the room through the curtains. Does lava have any smell — or am I imagining things?

I had an extraordinarily vivid dream of our long-lost selves reliving a short sequence of our Cyprus lives. The house had been built on a promontory hard by a little Turkish mosque. Underneath was a tiny beach where we bathed half the night. Though the island had plunged into an insurrection against our rule there were pockets of emptiness where one could still find a moment of ordinary peace in which to swim and talk — yet never be too far from a pistol. By that time I was working in Nicosia but I used to slip over the Kyrenia range as often as possible to meet her. As a matter of fact I had got her into bad habits — for we often drove outside the sectors under army control and deep into enemy country, so to speak, in order to see a particular church or bathe at a special beach I knew. How dangerous was it? Not very, but the thing was problematic and depended upon a chance meeting with a platoon of resistance fighters armed with automatic weapons. It salted the whole operation with a fitful uneasiness. One never knew.

And then, too, one had a bad conscience like naughty children who know they are disobeying their parents. But these sallies brought us very close together. She sat beside me with my pistol lying in her lap — just to have it handy in case we were overtaken on some country road by some youthful band of hotheads. More than once a car had been overtaken and shot up by the EOKA youth. Through all the beautiful hills and dales of the island we traveled thus, with our lunch in a hamper and our towels beside us. Nothing ever happened, thank God. But once I had a glimpse of the courage of Martine. We had climbed a hill to visit a church and left the car along the olive groves. Having stayed rather longer than usual we came down at dusk to find three darkly clad men in the middle foreground advancing towards the grove where our car lay.

It looked suspiciously like a reception committee which had finally made contact — perhaps signaled by one of the villages through which we had passed. My heart sank as I measured our distance from the car. I cursed myself for taking such risks, especially with the precious lives of others. How foolhardy to imagine that just by staggering our times and places for excursions we could in the long run escape the vigilance of the terrorists! But there was no time for breast-beating, for they had seen us coming. At all costs we must recover our car. They had something in their hands, perhaps weapons. It was still too far to see clearly. My hand sought the little pistol which lay under a napkin in the food haversack. We advanced arm-in-arm with a simulated nonchalance.

I could have imagined a slightly tremulous Martine in the circumstances, but not at all. The hand on my arm was firm and untrembling and her step was light and confident. It was a moment of tension which did not last long however. We saw that they were forest guards making some sort of inventory of the trees — forest guards and tax collectors no doubt. The only weapons they carried were pens and ink and writing blocks. They talked in preoccupied tones, and looked up idly to see us pass in front of them and regain the car. It was irritating to have been scared by such a meeting; and Martine, divining my pique, smiled and pinched my arm affectionately. “Not this time,” she said, as I let in the clutch and eased the car out of the olive shadow on to the tarmac. The sunny glades smelled of rosemary and dust even in the dream; a blessed wind rose with our movement and cooled our foreheads. Martine was deeply thoughtful — that beautiful face with its snow-brown skin held sideways against the flying olive groves, deeply thinking. No one could look like that and not be thinking very deep thoughts. I offered her a penny. “I was wondering what we will have for dinner,” she replied with the same Socratic air. And then slept like a white Sphinx.

The dream faded into an untroubled sleep, and when I woke it was almost seven on a cloudless morning. Time for a dip in the hotel pool before breakfast. And here I found the gallant Bishop performing feats of youthful athleticism while his wife sat in a deck chair holding his towel. His morning boom of greeting proved that he had become acclimatized by now and was ready for anything. He swung about on elastic calves and even was so bold as to go off the top board — at which his wife covered, not her eyes, but her ears. I hoped he would not become too hearty and decide to hold Protestant services in the lounge as is the way of bishops traveling in heathen countries. I returned to pack and dress and then descended to find Deeds eating a slow breakfast and picking his way through the local Italian paper while Roberto guided him with an occasional bit of free translation. The French proconsular couple shared our table and seemed rested and refreshed.

I thought, however, that they eyed me a trifle curiously, as if they too were busy speculating as to what I did in life. The German girl was reading Goethe’s enthusiastic account of his own trip round Italy. I hoped to find the text in English or French as I knew no German. The Microscopes were wolfing their food and calling for refills of coffee with the air of people who knew that it was all paid for in advance. They were determined to leave no crumb unturned. Pretty soon, I could see, complaints would start. The British would revolt over the tea and the absence of fish knives. The French would utter scathing condemnation of the cuisine. Poor Roberto! For the moment, however, all was harmony and peace. The novelty of our situation kept us intrigued and good tempered. The brilliance of the Sicilian sun was enthralling after the northern variety. And then there was the little red bus which we had not as yet met, and which was at this moment drawing up outside the hotel to await us. It was a beautiful little camionette of a deep crimson-lake color and apparently quite new. It was richly upholstered and smelled deliciously of fresh leather. It was also painstakingly polished and as clean inside as a new whistle. It gave a low throaty chuckle — the Italians specialize in operatic horns — and at the signal the chasseurs humped our baggage and started to stow.

We were introduced to its driver, a stocky and severe-looking young man, who might have been a prizefighter or a fisherman from his dark scowling countenance. His habitual expression was somber and depressive, and it took me some time to find out why. Mario was a peasant from the foothills of Etna and understood no language save his own dialect version of Sicilian. He also distrusted nobs who spoke upper class — and of course Roberto spoke upper class and was a nob, being a university man. But from time to time, when a word or a phrase became intelligible to Mario, the most astonishing change came about in that black scowling face. It was suddenly split (as if with an axe blow or a saber cut) by the most wonderful artless smile of a kindly youth. It was only lack of understanding that cast the shadow; the minute light penetrated he was absolutely transformed. But he was grim about his job, and would not touch a drop of drink throughout the trip; it made Roberto, who was a convivial soul, a trifle plaintive to see such devotion to duty. Well, on the sunny morning we gathered around the little bus and eagerly appraised it, for we would be virtually living in it for a week. It looked pretty good to me — the luxury of not having to drive myself. Mario shook hands darkly with us all, the proconsulars, the Microscopes, ourselves, the German girl, the two smart French ladies and the half dozen or so others who as yet swam in a sort of unidentifiable blur, waiting to develop their pictures, so to speak. Among them, as yet unidentified by science, were the egregious fellow called Beddoes, a Miss Lobb of London, and a rapturous Japanese couple, moonstruck in allure and wearing purple shoes.

Deeds and I settled ourselves modestly in the last two seats in the back row, enjoying therefore a little extra legroom and a small lunette window of our own. The others took up dispositions no less thoughtful, realizing that we would need space to stretch and smoke and doze. Across the aisle from us, however, there was an empty row and this was suddenly occupied by a passenger to whom we hadn’t paid attention before. He was a somewhat raffish-looking individual of medium height clad in veteran tweeds with dirty turn-ups; also old-fashioned boots with hooks and eyes and scarlet socks. On his head he wore a beret at a rakish angle from under which effervesced a tangled mop of dirty curls worthy of Dylan Thomas. To everyone’s discomfort he smoked shag in a small and noisome French briar. He talked to himself in a low undertone and smiled frequently, exposing very yellow canines. “A rather rum chap,” whispered Deeds confidentially, and I could bet that after a pause he would sigh and add resignedly, “O well, it takes all sorts.…” The nice thing about Deeds was not only his kindness but his predictability. I felt I already knew him so well by now that I could guess the name of his wife — Phyllis. And so it proved to be. But the chap over the way had started to make conversation — a sort of sharp and knowing line of talk. He said his name was Beddoes and that he was a prep school master. “Just been hurled out of a prep school near Dungeness for behavior unbecoming to an officer and a hypocrite.” He gave a brief cachinnation and sucked on his noisome dottle. Deeds looked thoughtful. Well, I could almost hear him think, if one goes abroad it is to meet new faces in new places.

Yet, at the moment all was harmony, all was beatific calm and indulgence. Even Beddoes seemed all right in his rather sharp-edged way. Later of course we were to ask God plaintively in our prayers what we had done to merit such a traveling companion. But not today, not on this serene and cloudless morning with its smiling promise of hot sunshine and a sea bath along the road. The little hearts blood-colored bus edged off with its cargo into the traffic, feeling its way circumspectly about the town, while Roberto sat down beside the driver and conducted a voice test on the microphone through which he was to keep us intellectually stimulated throughout the Carousel. His own ordeal was just beginning, of course. At breakfast he had bemoaned a guide’s fate to Deeds, saying that one was always telling people something they already knew or something they did not wish to know. One could never win. Sometimes, attacked by hysteria, he had tried telling people false facts at breakneck speed just to see if anyone was awake enough to contradict him: but nobody ever did. But today he ran a certain risk with the Bishop as a passenger, for the latter sat forward eagerly, on the qui vive like a gundog, all set to ingest Roberto’s information. A trifle patronizing as well, for it was clear from his manner that he already knew a good deal. Yes, it was as if he were doing a viva voce in school catechism. Roberto began somewhat defensively by saying that we would not have time to do everything as there was much which merited our judicious attention. “But we will do the two essential things so that you can tell your friends if they ask that you have seen the Duomo and St. Nicolo.” It wasn’t too bad as a ration, Deeds told me; but he had spent a delightful hour in the Bellini Museum and the Fish Market, both of which we should be missing on this trip. No matter. Sicily smelled good in a confused sort of way. I was anxious too to get a first glimpse of that curious architectural bastard, Sicilian baroque, which had so enraptured Martine. “You expect it to be hell, but you find it heavenly — sort of fervently itself like the Sicilians themselves.” At that moment our bus passed under a balcony from which apparently Garibaldi had prefaced a famous oration with the words “O Roma, O morte.”

Beddoes made some opprobrious comment about demagogues which earned him a glare from the sensitive Roberto. At the site of the no longer extant Greek theater the guide uttered some wise words about Alcibiades, a name which made the Bishop frown. “A dreadful homo,” said Beddoes audibly. Deeds looked rather shocked and moved three points east, as if to dissociate himself from this troublesome commentator. I hoped he wasn’t going to go on like this throughout the journey. But he was. “Dreadful feller,” said Deeds under his breath. Beddoes proved unquenchable and totally snub proof. Moreover, he had very irritating conversational mannerisms like laying his forefinger along his nose when he was about to say something which he thought very knowing; or sticking his tongue out briefly before launching what he considered a witticism. Now he stuck it out to say, apropos Aeschylus, that his play Women of Etna was based on reality. “The women of Etna,” he went on with a winning air of frankness, “were known in antiquity for their enormous arses. The whole play, or rather the chorus, revolves around them, if I may put it like that. The women …” But Roberto was wearing a little thin, at least his superb patience was markedly strained. “The play is lost,” he hissed, and repeated the observation in French and German, lest there should be any mistake about it. But this remark of Beddoes was not lost on the German girl who was, I later discovered, called Renata and came from Heidelberg. She turned hot and cold. Beddoes winked at her and she turned her back.

The parent Microscopes held hands and yawned deeply. I wasn’t shocked by this, though Roberto looked downcast. The reaction was at least honest and simple. The proconsulars had the air of having read up the stuff before coming on the trip, as of course anyone with any sense would have done. But I prefer to experience the thing first without trimmings and read it up when I get back home. I know that it is not the right way round, for inevitably one finds that one has missed a great deal; but it gives me the illusion of keeping my first impressions fresh and pristine. Besides, in the case of Sicily, I had my guide in Martine whose tastes, as I knew from long ago, coincided very closely with mine. Consequently I was not unprepared for the mixture of styles which she found so delightful. The little hint of austerity from the north housed the profuse and exuberant Sicilian mode, which itself glittered with variegated foreign influences — Moorish, Spanish, Roman.… But even Catanian baroque managed to convey a kind of dialect version of the Sicilian one; though its elements, fused as they were into several successive bouts of building after natural catastrophes, gave off a touching warmth of line and proportion which argued well for the rest. We paid our respects to Saint Agatha, the patron saint, in the cathedral dedicated to her, which wasn’t, however, quite as thrilling as Roberto tried to make it sound — there seemed little about it except the good proportions which we might appreciate. As for Agatha.… “I had an aunt called Agatha,” said Deeds, “who was all vinegar. Consequently the name gives me a fearfully uneasy feeling.”

But St. Nicolo was a different kettle of fish on its queer hill; it had a very strange atmosphere, apparently having been abandoned in the middle of its life to wear out in the sunshine, fronting one of the most elegant and sophisticated piazzas bearing the name of Dante. Apparently they ran out of funds to finish it off in the traditional elated style — and in a way it is all the better for it. The largest church in Sicily according to Roberto, it needs a lot of space clearance to show off its admirable proportions; just like a large but beautifully proportioned girl might. We draggled dutifully round it, with a vast expenditure of color film by the German girl and the Microscopes. Beddoes, too, seemed to admire it for he forbore to comment, but walked about and thoughtfully smoked his dreadful shag. Roberto tactfully sat in a stall for a good ten minutes to let us admire, and then launched into a succinct little vignette about the church and the site which, I am ashamed to say, interested nobody. It is not that culture and sunlight are mutually exclusive, far from it; but the day was fine, the voyage was only beginning, and the whole of the undiscovered island lay ahead of us. The little red coach whiffled its horn to mark its position and we climbed aboard with a pleasant sense of familiarity, as if we had been traveling in it for weeks. I was sure that among our party there would be someone who would prove an anthropomorphic soul (like my brother with his animals) and end by christening it Fido the Faithful. I was equally sure that when the time came to part from it Deeds would recite verses from “The Arab’s Farewell to His Steed.” These sentiments I was rash enough to confide to him, whereupon he looked amused but ever so slightly pained.

But by now we had bisected the town and nosed about the older parts, a journey which involved nothing very spectacular except perhaps a closer look at the little Catanian emblem — the Elephant Fountain with its pretty animal obelisk motif. And now it was time to turn the little bus towards the coastal roads which might bear us away in the direction of Syracuse where we would spend a night and a day in search of the past. But first we had to drag our slow way across the network of dispiriting suburbs which smother Catania as a liana smothers a tree. The sudden appearance of Etna at the end of one vista after another — she seems to provide a backcloth for all the main boulevards — reminded one how often the town had been overwhelmed by the volcano, which made its present size and affluence rather a mystery; for Etna is far from finished yet and Catania lies in its field of fire. But the suburbs … one might have been anywhere; the squalor was not even picturesquely Middle Eastern, just Middle Class. With the same problems as any other urbanized town in the world — devoured like them by the petrol engine, that scourge of our age.

But Roberto was well pleased with us for people had begun to unlimber; the Bishop chatted to the two smart ladies from Paris, who spoke English with the delightful accent of the capital which makes the English heart miss a beat. The proconsul made notes in the margin of his Guide Bleu. The Americans became more talkative after a long period of shyness, and the lady remarked loudly, “Yes, Judy is flexible, but not that flexible.” The rest of her discourse was lost in the whiffle of the horn and the clash of changing gears — Mario was scowling and muttering under his breath at some traffic problem; he was the only one of us who seemed out of sorts. Roberto performed his task dutifully, describing everything through the loudspeaker with elegance. A distinct thaw had set in, however, and our voices rose; we spoke naturally to one another instead of whispering. This is how I came to overhear those tantalizing fragments of talk, a phrase here or there, which, divorced from context, were to haunt my sleep. I was to wonder and wonder about the flexibility of Judy, mysterious as a Japanese Koan, until a merciful sleep liberated me from the appalling problem. Then one of the French ladies remarked on a clear note, “Pour moi les Italiens du nord sont des hommes décaféinés,” a sentiment which made the Sicilian blood of Roberto throb with joy. But at last the coast road came in sight and we opened throttle and started to hare along upon winding roads above a fine blue sea. Never have I felt safer than when Mario drove; his timing was perfect, his speeds nicely calculated not to awaken his drowsing or even sleeping charges, should they have been snoozing by any chance.

The opening stages of our journey were sensibly enough planned; this first day was an easy one in terms of time and distance. We wove across the vast and verdant Catanian Plain eagerly watching the skyline for the appearance of a stray Laestrygonian — the terrible ogres of the Homeric legend; I had a feeling that Ulysses had a brush with them but wasn’t sure and made a note in my little schoolchild’s calpin to look them up in more detail. I did not dare to ask the Bishop or Roberto. The Simeto, a sturdy little river, together with two smaller tributaries waters the plain, and it is celebrated for an occasional piece of choice amber floating in it, which it has quarried somewhere on its journey. But where? Nobody knows.

The old road turns inwards upon itself and slopes away towards Lentini and Carlentini whence a brutally dusty and bumpy road leads us onwards into the hills to draw rein at our first Greek site — a resurrected city not unlike Cameirus in Rhodes, but nowhere near as beautiful; yet a little redeemed by the site and the old necropolis. What landscape tasters the ancient Greeks were! They chose sites like a soldier chooses cover. The basic elements were always the same, southern exposure, cover from the prevailing wind, height for coolness and to defeat the humidity of the littoral. They had none of our (albeit very recent) passion for sea bathing; the sea was a mysterious something else pitched between a goddess of luck and a highway. It is not hard to imagine how they were — with their combination of poetry and practicality. There was no barrier, it seems, between the notions of the sacred and the profane either.

After a short briefing we were turned loose among the ruins like a flock of sheep — hardly more intelligent either, you might have thought, to watch us mooching about. The Microscopes had begun to feel hungry, and the pile of box lunches and flasks of Chianti were being unloaded and placed in the shade of a tree against the moment when culture had been paid its due. In the bright sunlight the blonde German girl reminded me a little of Martine for she had the same thick buttercup hair and white-rose coloring which had made my friend such a striking beauty. But not the slow rather urchin smile with the two swift dimples that greeted the lightest, the briefest jest. Nor the blue eyes which in certain lights reminded one of Parma violets. But I was sure that here she had sat upon a tomb while her children played about among the ruins, smoking and pondering, or perhaps reading a page or two of the very same Goethe — as unconditional an addict of Sicily as she herself had become.

It was, however, a well-calculated shift of accent, of rhythm — I meant to spend the first day in the open air, lively with bees in the dazing heat, and where the shade of the trees rested like a damp cloth on the back of the neck. Little did it matter that the pizzas were a trifle soggy — but I am wrong: for the first faint murmurs of protest came from the French camp about precisely this factor. And the two graceful Parisians added that the paper napkins had been forgotten. Roberto swallowed this with resignation. Far away down the mildly rolling hillocks glittered the sea on rather a sad little bit of sandy littoral, and here we were promised an afternoon swim when we had digested our lunch, a prospect which invigorated me and raised the spirits of my companion. But some of us looked rather discountenanced by the thought, and Beddoes swore roundly that he wasn’t going to swim in the sea with all its sharks; he wanted a pool, a hotel pool. He had paid for a pool and he was damn well going to insist on a pool or else.… So it went on.

Deeds, on the contrary, declared that things were not so bad after all; that we were all quite decent chaps and that no great calamities or internal battles need be expected. It was true. Even the Bishop, who in my own mind might be the one to inflict deep irritations on us because of his knowledgeability and insularity and patronizing air — even he went out of his way to humor Roberto in terms which almost made him a fellow scholar. I could see that he was a pleasant and conscientious man underneath an evident Pauline-type neurosis which is almost endemic in the Church of England, and usually comes from reading Lady Chatterley’s Lover in paperback. Deeds had got quite a selection of guides to the island in English and French and these we riffled while we ate. He professed himself extremely dissatisfied by them all.

“It took me some time to analyze why — it’s the sheer multiplicity of the subject matter. The damned island overflows with examples of the same type of thing — you have six cathedrals where in other places you would save up your admiration for the one or two prime examples. How can a guidebook do justice to them all? It just can’t, old man. Here you get six for the price of one, and the very excellence of what it has ends by fatiguing you.” I wondered if he was right. The illustrations, however, to his books seemed to bear him out to a certain extent. Perhaps that is why Martine had remarked more than once in her letters, “What we lack here is a ‘pocket’ Sicily; there hasn’t been one since Goethe. The present guides lack poetry, and the existing star system devised for ruins is rather unsatisfactory. Please hurry up.” But it was not a task that could be undertaken on such brief acquaintance with the place; I would never manage more than a journal of voyage with a brief snapshot of her from time to time — the absentee landlord of Naxos. Nor did I dare so much as to regret her death — I could hear the chuckle which would certainly have greeted such a sentiment. On many domains Martine might have been deficient and lacking in human experience; but on what I considered prime matters like death and love she was wise beyond experience. She would frequently disappear to India without leaving me a word; there was some Indian princeling there who was as attached to her as I was. When she returned it was always with carpets and shawls and screens to deck out her house on the promontory. But this was not all, for her Prince sent her back laden with issues of the Pali texts, annotated in a spidery hand by his father, and bearing a royal bookplate. These we would read together and discuss at great length, lying in the deep grass of the ruined Abbey of Bellapais, or among the shattered pillars of Salamis. The range and prolixity of Indian thought haunted her with its promises of a serenity at the heart of self-realization, but there was no way to advance in this direction without self-discipline. She had quite defeated tobacco and only drank very modestly, out of mere politeness, and indeed with something approaching distaste. At least she eyed my heroic potations with an expression which might be described as compassion bordering on scorn!

Her Prince encouraged these fragile aspirations which were (so she hoped) going to transform the spoiled society girl, anesthetized by too many parties, into someone very valuable to herself and to others. No, the aspirations did not go as far as sainthood. But she planned for calm, balance, and a personal freedom in her solitude. She, like me, had wanted to settle in Greece, but the vagaries of the Control Exchange had defeated these intentions. But Cyprus was a sterling-area Greece, and that decided us.… Though I had not actually met her for about six months — during which we were both taken up with buying a house, or land, and in general feeling our way towards an island residence — I had seen her about the little harbor of Kyrenia, always alone, and usually reading a book. She wore a Wren’s white mess jacket with brass buttons and a dark swimsuit which showed off to perfection not only her line but also the blonde skin which the sun turned to brown sugar. Nobody could tell me who she was — indeed I knew nobody to ask. But once or twice a week I passed her as she lay asleep on the mole, myself also with a towel and a book. Then one day we found ourselves sitting together at a lunch party and felt the tug of a familiarity which we had been too polite to profit by: we already knew each other so well by sight. She was amused and pleased when she found out that I spoke Greek and could become a friendly Caliban for her; myself, as I was passing through a particularly lonely period of my life, I was delighted by such a chance friendship. From then on we met once or twice a week for dinner — and when there was any need for an interpreter she had no hesitation in driving up to Bellapais and digging me out.

Our friendship prospered in the very notion that we were going to become neighbors; and that we were both going to live alone and work. I showed her a half-finished novel called Justine, while she, with much hesitation, entrusted me with a half-finished travel book called provisionally The Bamboo Flute. It was about her first solo flight around Indonesia and Bali and it was organized in a series of cinematic rushes which at that stage had a bright but highly provisional air. But there were good things in it about colors and smells. I remember one sharp comparison of smell between a crowded country bus in Indonesia and the London Tube; the Indonesians however primitively they were forced to live, she said, smelled of nothing, were astonishingly clean; but the London Tube smelled of wet mackintosh and concrete and damp hairdos.

Inevitably our book discussions found a place in the general context of all the others — of the readings of Indian texts, of the amateur attempts upon the world of breathing exercises, attempts at meditation. It was an idyllic time spent in blue weather on the green grass of the ancient Abbey; I had been elected what the Chinese called (so she said) “a friend of the heart.” And indeed so had Piers who made frequent summer appearances in order to advise her about her house and add afterthoughts to his own beautiful house in Lapithos. It was the last summer before the Fall — before the political situation, envenomed by neglect and stupidity, burst into flame and turned into a fully-fledged insurrection. For a longish while, however, the manifestations of the crisis remained quite moderate — for the Cypriot Greeks were most peaceable people and they knew that the British people in the island were not the architects of the policies which ruled it. But with the arrival of troops and the gradually mounting toll of incidents and counter incidents tempers wore thin and at last wore out altogether. All our hopes of a peaceful and productive life in this paradisiacal place went up in smoke.

As the problems connected with the buying of her land, and permission to build upon it, proved somewhat long — for the Government, if honest, was somewhat dilatory — Piers persuaded Martine to build an encampment of mock Indonesian huts on her land where she could live during the summer and see her house emerge from the scrub and arbutus of the little promontory. The island, we discovered, produced an excellent rush matting in several thicknesses and the heaviest proved tough and weatherproof for walls and roofing. The idea was miraculous in its simplicity — the local carpenters could run up a whole room in a day. It was like playing at dolls’ houses; for a couple of hundred pounds Martine built herself a temporary matting house with room enough to invite her summer guests, with kitchens and bathrooms — everything, for there was water on the land which Piers could later draw off for the big house.

Intoxicated by this discovery, she at once launched into what gradually turned into a miniature village almost, with a main square from which all the huts led off, with grouped water points and drainage and septic tanks. Piers, the born architect and planner, was lost in admiration and envy at this freestyle building and often, when he ran into problems with the big house, would swear and ask her why the devil she could not live forever in a matting house, repairing it at little cost as fast as it deteriorated? There were times when she almost agreed, when the big house seemed too solid and too consciously thought out — for at heart, like all the family of Gainsboroughs, Martine was something of a gipsy. The instinct had perhaps worn itself out a little — though her father, old Sir Felix, had expressly chosen a traveling profession — diplomacy — which sent him to a new country every few years. She had been marked by this wandering life, and she spoke with eloquence and insight of what it had meant to her and to her brother, in terms of actual domicile, to inhabit buildings which were beautifully appointed but in which nothing belonged to one — everything belonged to the Office of Works, even the choice plate. One brought one’s books and pictures into play to be sure, but an embassy for all its comfort could never be a home. But this was how she knew Rome, Moscow, Buenos Aires: and this was how she had become a linguist. But her childhood had been full of this strange sense of not belonging; lying awake at night listening for the official Rolls which wheeled on to the gravel after midnight, bringing their parents back from some boring reception — so fatigued by their social duties that they could hardly exchange a word and often even dined alone in silence; simply to recover from the deep wasting fatigue of a life which was a mirror life. Only at holiday times did things seem to come alive, but then the cottage in Devon was owned, it was theirs like the mill in Ireland and the flat in Capri. The subtle difference cut very deep; but was it really necessary to own the house one lived in in order to feel happy? Surely there was something false about the proposition? Then perhaps it was simply the artifices and limitations of the diplomatic life? She had begun to look upon diplomats as kindly lampreys gesturing in the dark pools of the profession among the fucus and drifting weeds of protocol and preciousness. Nor was this really fair — for Sir Felix was far from being a mountebank, hence no doubt his frequent relegation to quite minor missions in the role of a lifesaver or life-giver — to ginger them up, or to create new openings as he had in Latin America. But Martine in a dim incoherent way wanted a different life: and here it was.

These long-lost events, which my memory had so carelessly and capriciously stored away, came back to me now with full force as we munched our stale pizzas and drank heartening draughts of Chianti; it was a memory touched off by the fact that here, like in Cyprus, we were seated on the hot time-worn stones of a vanished Greek civilization, in the drowsy heat of the Mediterranean sun. Sacked temples, quake-shattered citadels, ruined fortresses, exhausted wells … the old tragic pattern was the same, a long barren lesson in history which seeks always for the stable and is undermined by the shifts and betrayals of man’s consciousness itself as reflected in the ebb and flow of temporal events. And yet — what was he not capable of, man? Any benevolent tyrant who could enjoy a thirty-year rule was capable of launching humanity on a new vector, on to the peaceful pursuits of husbandry and art and science. Then, abruptly, like the explosions from some Etna of the mind, the whole thing overturned and both guilty and innocent were drenched in blood. One would have to believe very deeply in Nature to expect a meaning to emerge from all this senseless carnage; if one were really truthful one could not help but see her as some frightful demented sow gobbling up her own young at every remove. But Martine, underneath the spoilt playgirl or fashion plate, was hunting after some absolute belief in the Tightness of Process — and only the philosophy of the Indians seemed to offer that.

Nearby in a mulberry tree, half-dead and desiccated by the sun, there was a great concourse of ravens or rooks — I could not tell which. They were like Methodist parsons holding one of their amusing conventions in some Harrogate hotel. They submitted with modest attention to the theological addresses of two obvious elders of the church. Almost they made notes. We watched them with wonder and curiosity, trying to imagine what could be the subject of their grave colloquy. In vain. After a long moment, and in response to no immediately visible signal, the whole company wheeled suddenly up into the sky and performed several slow and rather irresolute gyrations — as if they were trying to locate a beam of light or sound, an electrical impulse which would orient them. They wheeled several times in a most indecisive manner; then suddenly a breakaway group detached itself and headed northward, and the rest, their minds set at rest, wheeled into line and followed them. Direction assured they broke into several clusters the better to talk; one could hear their grave club chatter as they diminished in the distance, leaving the field clear for the drone of bees and the sharp stridulations of the cicada. I was dozing. I was nearly asleep in fact. It was a good way to start off, with a siesta in Sicily.

It had become very hot up there in the dusty foothills, hotter than Provence at this hour in summer. The light wind which had cooled us all morning had subsided and the whole of nature, it seemed, was itself subsiding into the death-like composure of the siesta hour. Sensible men in such places preferred to sleep in a shuttered room until almost sunset when the coolness once more started and when a walk upon the Gorso and a Cinzano at a cafe became imperatives. I lay for a while in the shade with my eyes closed, recalling another anecdote which had emerged from the casual conversation of Martine. Once upon a time, as children in a foreign capital, she and her brother had been sent to play with the children of a fellow diplomat whose little girl and boy were about the same age as they were. They were accordingly decanted by their nurse at the Japanese Embassy where the two Japanese children waited for them with friendly politeness. Introductions once effected, their small hosts led them to their playroom — a large studio with high bright windows. “You must not forget that we, like all English children, had a playroom stuffed with toys, from rocking horses to bicycles and model cars — just about everything. But when we entered the Japanese playroom we were struck dumb, we were thunderstruck. There was nothing in it save for one solitary object on the windowsill against the studio window. This was a great white ship, a fully rigged Japanese galleon in full sail. Just that and nothing more in this spotless shining room. We stood still in front of our Japanese hosts feeling suddenly terribly ashamed.”

Sleep had almost wrapped me up when I felt a restraining hand upon my arm, and Roberto stood smiling before me. “We are off,” he said, and as if to underline the thought the far-off bus gave a little whiffle of sound. Languidly we returned to it to find Mario sitting on the step sorting out his first aid kit with pensive attention. “Yes,” said Roberto catching my eye, “we must take every precaution. You tourists are capable of anything from dysentery to sunstroke, from fever to broken bones. And it’s always our fault! That is why we carry a full medical kit with us.” He had hardly uttered the words when the American dentist advanced and requested a Band-Aid as he had cut his finger in some mysterious way. More classical was the wasp sting incurred by one of the French ladies. Pleased to show his medical prowess, Roberto whipped out his tweezers and drew the sting before drenching the wound in ammonia. “He’s right,” said Deeds, “people are such fools anything could happen.” And so we rolled down the dusty inclines towards the far off blue promise of a first sea bathe, though truth to tell the little beach was not the prettiest I had ever seen, and there was quite a disturbed little sea running. Beddoes would have things to say about it!

But no. He just sat and scowled upon the shingle, sucking at his pipe. The rest of us showed a commendable burst of energy, changing into our bathing costumes in a nearby thicket and advancing intrepidly towards the sea, which frolicked about in a disconcerting manner — at least for those who did not, or could not, dive through the waves which broke on the shore, in search of the relative calm beyond. The American dentist’s lady friend behaved too irresolutely, too pensively, and was knocked down in a heap — or perhaps she had decided to fall in just this beautiful soft waxen way. We all rushed to help in order to get our hands on that beautiful form but her man was there ahead of us, alive to every eventuality. Deeds bumped his toe. The pebbles were blazing hot and we all scuttled about with burning soles, to cool them at last in the innocent surf. I swam a little, regretting that I was not in better shape physically: a winter of French cooking had done me in. Perhaps the modest fare of Sicily — if one could defeat its copiousness — might do the trick? But no, because when one traveled this way one was always famished, and the only choice lay between spaghetti and rice.…

The sea tasted of oysters and brine when I inadvertently swallowed a mouthful. Some anxiety was now caused by the German beauty who had apparently decided to swim over to Piraeus, so far out was she. (She explained later that she was simply keeping pace with the sinking sun.) But how was Roberto to know this, as he stood shouting at her on the brink and wringing his responsible hands? She was finally persuaded to come back to us, which she did at a smart crawl — to be fiercely rebuked by the guide who said he would post no more letters for her unless she showed more good sense. But she seemed unaware that she had done anything to cause alarm and annoyance. She shook out her blonde hair and of course the gallant soul of Roberto melted, his wrath cooled like lava. But the sun was already behind the hills and the night had begun to fall. We should arrive after dark in Syracuse — the town which Martine had esteemed superior to all the towns of Sicily. We dressed once more, relaxed into happy fatigue by water and sun, and recovered the saturnine Mario and our little bus — together with all the belongings we had left in it. The atmosphere of the interior was now becoming ever so faintly disorderly — the disorder of gypsies who have no time to be tidy when they are on the road. Binoculars, scarves, Thermos flasks, picnic baskets and cameras; we carried all this lumber with us like all modern pilgrims do, and Mario watched over it all while we were absent, sitting to play himself a hand of patience on a little board erected over the wheel; or else to study a Sicilian paper with great care and slowly while he sucked a match stick which he had carved into a toothpick.

Darkness fell while we were on the road; the familiar daylight forms receded and melted slowly away into the tenebrous hinterlands around us. We put on coats and scarves and settled into our seats, glad of the warmly lighted bus which we could feel burrowing its way through the darkness towards Syracuse. Mario played his chuckling horn, sometimes it seemed for pure pleasure as there was hardly any traffic on the road. It was a horn on two notes, like a magpie’s rattling call. In silent villages he let out this pretty call sign to register our presence. Answer came there none. Then as we climbed a hillock and took a smooth curve Roberto announced that we had reached Augusta and this was well worth sitting up for.

It was of an extraordinary beauty, this little oil port. A thousand tulips of light and colored smoke played about its derricks and towers and drums — a forest of refineries whose beauty was made quite sinister by the fact that the whole was deserted. There was not a soul in the whole place, not a dog, nor a cat: there wasn’t even a guard post. Yet the light played about in it, the smoke gushed and spat, as if it were the very forge of the Titans, and a thousand invisible trolls were hard at work in it. Its beauty was quite breathtaking. I watched it in diminishing perspective, reflected in the windows of the bus, and it seemed like a thousand wax lights afloat on the waters of chaos. Two days later we were to pass it in daylight and to have our ardor quenched by its hideous ugliness, its ungainly spider-like instruments. But indeed it was an important guarantee of Sicily’s economic progress. No more would she be a poor relation of the north. Roberto spared us statistics tonight out of sheer tact, and because he knew that in two days’ time he could spout them all out by daylight. “Augusta,” said Deeds shaking his head. “All through the damn war we tried to shell it, with never a single hit. How could it have escaped? But it did.” I thought I knew the answer. “Every time the Fleet Air Arm tried to bomb Augusta or even Catania the Italians came back and knocked a piece off my balcony in Alexandria. Finally there was no balcony left.” The little spots of light receded into the rolling hills, until Augusta looked like a small forest fire, or the brindles on a tiger’s hide. It hung for a while like a sinking constellation and then extinguished itself while ahead of us, more warming but less spectacular, glowed the lights of Syracuse. We had begun to feel hungry and watched with a certain envy the Americans who poured out coffee from a vacuum flask and ate a sandwich in a lingering way. I thought that, after all, I would sleep like a lead soldier tonight once I had had dinner and a drink.

Marble Stele: Syracuse

One day she dies and there with splendor

On all sides of her, for miles and miles,

Stretches reality in all its rich ubiquity,

The whole of science, magic, total time.

The hanging gardens of folly, the aloof sublime,

Just as far as thinking reaches,

Though lost now the nightingale’s corroboration

Of spring in meadows of dew uprising.

Only the avid silence preaches.

“Whence came we, blind one?” asks the nursery rhyme,

“And whither going, say?” The cherub questions us

“In the dark of his unknowing clad

He charms eternity, makes all process glad.”

Time has made way at last, the dream is ended

Least said is soonest mended.

Hear old Empedocles as calmly wise

As only more than mortal man can be

Who stands no nonsense from eternity.

“The royal mind of God in all

Its imperturbable extravagance,

Admits no gossip. All is poetry.

There is no which, nor why, nor whence.”