Sicilian Idyll

by ELLERY SEDGWICK

1

NOTHING ever happens in Sicily,”remarked the young Italian lady in very positive terms when my friend the proprietress at our pleasant pensione in Taormina remonstrated with her on her habit of driving alone on the lonely mountain roads which circle Aetna. “There used to be adventure long ago. Now nothing ever happens.”

The two ladies were motoring with Randazzo a few miles behind, and the dazzling cone of the volcano was in full view ahead. The Signorina had taunted fate, and fate responded with an alacrity that set the nerves of both women on fire. From a patch of furze alongside the road, a pistol shot exploded like a clap of thunder. A man staggered from the bushes and the next instant collapsed on the roadway while blood oozing from his arm rippled in a little pool of scarlet on the metaled surface. The women stopped short. A car came from the other direction. The driver stuck his head out, took one sharp look at the crumpled body, and drove on. Another car, close behind, paused hardly an instant and then shot ahead. Something had happened in Sicily.

The ladies were agitated. They jumped out of the car, stripped the bloody coat from the unfortunate wayfarer, made a tourniquet of a scarf, and bound the wounded arm tightly. Emergency is a great stiffener of morale. Between them they managed to lift the sufferer into the back seat of the sedan, wondering all the while at the brutality of the Levite who had passed by on the other side. It seemed incredible in a Christian country. But something must be done. The women drove hurriedly on to the next village and asked where in God’s name the doctor lived.

In Sicily overwork is not the banc of the people. In any village at any hour you will see groups of them, idle yesterday, idle today, and looking with hopeful confidence to an idle tomorrow. A circle of these philosophic observers surrounded the car. They peered into the interior and noted well the figure of the sufferer. But one and all showed a singularly dispassionate interest. They seemed merely watching the way of the world, yet one of them went so far as to mutter, “Hospital’s below on the right.”

On drove the women, now nearly frantic. They stopped before a house which served as a makeshift hospital. They tooted the horn. A minute passed, then another. Finally the door did open and an aged man walked slowly towards the car. He looked curiously at the wounded passenger and slowly shook his head. But my friend of Taormina was in no mood fur delay. She forced the old doctor to help and the three of them lugged their heavy burden into the little room that did duty for operations. Once the sufferer’s sleeve was ripped off, it was evident that the bullet had passed clean through his arm. The octogenarian, his hand trembling as with palsy, swabbed out the wound and daubed it with disinfectant. At length he spoke: “It needs stitches but my hands are too shaky. You must hold the needle.” The young lady in search of adventure looked dazed but the energetic mistress of the Taormina pensionc screwed her courage to the sticking point. “You show me how and I’ll do the sewing,” she said to the doctor, and so the operation was performed.

When it was over and the tension abated, the lady said to the doctor, “What does this all mean?” Then, with halting and embarrassment, the story came slowly out, part at the time, part later.

The victim was well known in the neighborhood, a personable man, father of a family; but domesticity was not to his liking and he spent his time philandering in the company of a young woman who was herself betrothed. Don Juan had a way with him and the girl would not say him nay. So it came about that the honest lover grew angry. Time and again he warned the intruder and then used the argument Sicilians understand. One more visit and lie would shoot the man. The visit was made and the shooting accomplished. Every villager knew what must come; and when it came, it was no business of his to interfere. Any man who played a part or even admitted knowledge of the afdair would surely be called as a witness, and in Sicily it is not common prudence to testify against a man. There may be consequences.

So it was that weeks followed the shooting and nothing was done. Then authority from far away discovered that law and order demanded a trial and a trial was held. The accused, whom all knew to be the guilty man, was put in the dock, and the court listened to a long file of witnesses testifying that they knew nothing whatsoever about the regrettable occurrence. The prosecutor raised his voice and waved his arms, but in total default of evidence the prisoner was discharged. Real justice had been done, philandering had been punished, why bother with a trial.

Six months later my friend of Taormina, shocked at this miscarriage of law, sought out the presiding judge. “You were certain of his guilt,” she said, “why did you not send him to prison?”

The judge’s face was a study in worldly wisdom. “And what,” he said, “do you think would have happened to me?”

2

I RECOUNT this story at length because better than description it tells the Sicilian character. Let it be remembered of Mussolini that, black as were his misdeeds, he had strong virtues. After more than a century of rapine, it was he who put an end to organized Mafia, and so dextrous were his methods that his emissary was not even assassinated. Under the chaotic rule of the Bourbons, driven from the luxurious kingdom of Naples and herded under Nelson’s protection to the safety of Sicilian exile, this subject people had made a rude defense for themselves by forming a blood brotherhood, all for each and each for all, obeying their own law and executing tribal justice after the barbarous fashion of our own Ku Klux Klan.

Now Mafia as a brutal fact is gone but its ghost still stalks the island. A peculiarly truculent and ferocious ghost it is. Furtively the people speak of it as Omerta, but the word has dangerous overtones, and when a foreigner is the interlocutor it seldom creeps into conversation. Omerta is the spirit which holds civil law in contempt and metes out justice according to the decision of family or clan. In cities it has yielded to the orderly processes of government. The upper classes are commonly free from it, but through the central and western provinces it has a deep and pervasive influence over the lives and habits of the peasants.

The subject is most curious. Mafia, the original society, is not strictly an association. It has no statutes — a Mafioso is no criminal. Indeed he is the very opposite and thinks himself too nobly proud not to follow the dictates of his own conscience. lie will tolerate no insult. He will rely on his own character and courage. Usually respectful to others, he invariably demands respect for himself. If another offend him, no scion of knighthood would be more punctilious in demanding retribution. To him, wrong is personal. To appeal to the public is simple poltroonery. The manly man consults his own family, then acts. Indeed it might be said that Mafia is an assertion of personality, of confidence in a man’s own power. To turn the other cheek is to hoist the white feather.

If, because of circumstance or infirmity, a Sicilian is debarred from defending his own rights (non si Fid a), he turns to someone whose regard for honor is delicate as his own, and I am informed by an authority that if this person is unknown to him, a sign or mere syllable will suffice to make the stranger fully understand. Thus it is something quite other than humility that Omerta signifies. Omu means a man, strong, brave, and implacable, and Omertà a complete declaration of independence, the right and duty of righting wrong by force.

While we were in Sicily, a terrible illustration of the working of Omerta was under general but very private discussion. A peasant girl belonging to a respectable family gave birth to an illegitimate baby. Not long after, she was run over by a train and it was discovered that she had been tied fast to the track. Nothing had been proved about the murder, but it was widely believed that her family had sat in solemn judgment upon her disgrace and that her execution had swiftly followed. But there was as yet no evidence, and no indictment had been made.

The code of Omerta is as specific as that which once regulated the duello. Punishment is personal and private, all appeal to civil authority absolutely taboo. Indeed, rather than denounce an assailant publicly and so proclaim his own impotence to the world, Omerta bids a man renounce the dearest of his earthly desires — vengeance itself. Strangest almost of all, a man brought into court for some deed of private revenge will not utter a syllable in his own behalf. Whether principal or accessory, he will silently accept his sentence and, without a tremor, watch the enemy he thinks guilty go absolutely unpunished. Even when the injury could obviously be corrected by the court, he still maintains his obstinate silence.

The obligations of Omerta extend also to women, who take the same attitude in cases when it would be natural to call on the police or on the district attorney. If a pickpocket steals a purse and a policeman chases him, not a soul in the crowd, man or woman, will try to stop that thief, and if he is caught no witness will testify against him. Even the man who is robbed, though he may claim his pocket book, will not go into court to bear witness against the culprit.

Again, supposing a grocer is caught giving short weight, the populace will be all on his side. Should a cabby run over a man in the street, the one object of the bystander will be to help the driver escape; for to the Sicilian the dead are dead. It is the living who need help.

An attitude such as this leads inevitably to distrust of the stranger. Ask a peasant to show you his cottage, and he is all reluctance. Ask anybody whether some friend of yours lives in the same building with him, or even in his vicinity, and your interlocutor will remember what was taught him in his babyhood in the sibilant blur of his mother’s dialect : “Cast non si ’nni ‘insignano — a dwelling must never be revealed.” Who knows whether the inquirer is not a detective — or worse, a collector of taxes?

If a traveler is so lucky as to have a chance to sec a court trial, he should not neglect the golden opportunity. Not elsewhere can he behold the apparent acme of human imbecility. The witnesses look blank, the prisoner wears an expression of total vacuity. Should he go so far as to implore the mercy of the court, no shadow of an idea will be permitted to fall across his face.

Things like this will not happen forever. It is well to chronicle them now. But it is Sicily, not Sicilians, the guidebook bids us observe. Let us turn to the enchanted island.

3

YOU remember the story. When the anthem of the heavenly host brought shepherds the glad tidings that Christ was born, from every Grecian land arose one universal groan: Great Pan is dead! The gods have fled Olympus. I will not press my facts, but I have it on the authority of reason that for centuries thereafter gods of Greece lived on amongst the vales and wooded hills of Sicily. Some believe they are still there in hiding and I will not gainsay them. Certain it is that Ceres (daughter of Saturn), goddess of harvests, and her daughter, Proserpina, were for ages the best loved of Sicilian deities. What we are told is that Proserpina daily gathered her apron full of flowers and that once when she was plucking the hundred-headed narcissus in the fields of Enna, hard by the lovely lake of Pergusa, Pluto’s black chariot alighted beside her and the King of Darkness whisked her to his dismal kingdom,

Ceres, or Demeter as Greeks call her, was responsible for all growing things, and during the years of her doleful search no green shoot came upon the fields. There was famine in the land. The gods ransacked the whole earth. Through the day, Aurora sought for traces of the lost child. By night, Hesperus took on the watch but the girl-goddess was not found until her hiding place was whispered to the searchers by the fountain Arethusa, whose waters skirting the underworld flow from the river Alpheus, chief stream of the Peloponnesus, beneath the salt waters of the Mediterranean to gush forth hard by the city of Syracuse, as you see them to this day.

If you think my description too romantic, let me be scholarly and quote Cicero. “For Sicilians believe that Ceres and her daughter were born in these districts and that Ceres was first discovered in these lands and Libera, whom they name Proserpina from the country about Enna, a place which as it lies in the center of the island is called the navel of Sicily. And when Ceres wished to seek and find her, it is said she lighted her torches at those flames which burst from Aetna and carrying the torches before her, wandered over the whole earth.”

Now Cicero lived in the twilight of the gods. Since then, much learning has brought skepticism and it is become t he rule of miracles that only believers can know them to be true. But of a certainty, there is a direct connection between the gods of the old dispensation and the saints of the new, between Olympus and the Christian Heaven, which has been but too little studied. Of this the tale of Proserpina affords an interesting illustration.

There still exists at Castrogiovanni, near Enna, a very ancient statue, for centuries implicitly believed to represent the Virgin and her Child. Habitually it was carried in devotional processions. Only within a generation have critics scanned it closely. Then there came to be no doubt whatsoever that although the attitude of mother and child conforms precisely to the Christian formula, the child is a girl, Proserpina, and the mother, Ceres. In this disconcerting situation the statue was incontinently removed from the church and relegated to a museum. The investigators continued their search. It was remembered that the Arcadians still called Proserpina “Saviour,” for had she not restored fertility to the earth? Further, scholars remembered a passage in Pausanias, in which the ancient traveler noted that in his day Demeter was referred to as “The Mistress" — which corresponds, of course, to Madonna. Furthermore Pausanias recalls a marvelous statue by Praxiteles, representing Demeter with Persephone in her arms — very famous, he remarks, among the Athenians — and from his careful description it appears to be the precise prototype of the Madonna of Castrogiovanni. There is, then, plausible evidence that the traditional figure beloved beyond any other throughout the Christian world was given its form by the Grecian sculptor. In our day there have been dug up in Sicily numbers of terra cotta statuettes, attesting the devotion of antiquity to the goddess of fruitfulness. Tradition shapes the world.

4

AN OBJECT for a drive is always pleasant. A charitable friend of ours had begged from a rich California parish enough old suits and dresses to make a Sicilian holiday. With some scores of these aboard, our car scaled a perpendicular mountain with the miniature village of Forza d Agro as its pinnacle, its castle and great gray church inviting sightseers. Enshrined within the church was a fourteenth-century picture of the Virgin such as museums envy. We stood and gazed while the sacristan told his tale. More than one cruel temptation in the form of a cash offer for the picture had been withstood, but finally a sum had been offered that would have clothed and fed the village. ’The parish priest weakened. The Blessed Virgin would wish, he reasoned, to sacrifice herself for poor people. “And then,” said the sacristan in a voice which taught us that he felt his own prayers had been answered, “a miracle happened. The old priest died! ”

But more than one miracle was needed to keep the Virgin safe. The wicked tempter, foiled, resolved to steal. One night the picture vanished. The folk prayed and lo! before the year was gone the Virgin was discovered beneath a haymow in a barn. Then it was recognized that Heaven had done enough. A heavy iron screen was wrought and bolted to the wall. Behind it the Virgin sits secure.

The sad thing about miracles is that they happen far away and long ago. But Sicily is Sicily and they happen here and now. There is ample proof of this in another church, buried among the hills, little known to guidebooks. Its patrons are three saints, once Roman youths, whose tongues were rooted out because they called on Christ’s name. The dumb naturally worship there, but the saints watch over all people and their vigilance is attested by scores ol votive pictures hanging on the sacristy walls, each an illustration of some villager snatched from death by the timely interposition of divine mercy. The multifarious record runs back more than two hundred years and forward to this very day. The imminent dangers of the past were conflagrations, the great wheels of carts, the breaking of a topmost bough. As years went on, perils multiplied — the grinding wheels of locomotives, teetering ladders, bursting shotguns. Then came war, shells, explosives. Now the quieter hazards of the hospital and the assault of bacteria cry out for saintly succor. Do the saints, I wonder, assist the doctor or prevail against him?

Never was more urgent need of saints than today, and never were they more tireless in their beneficence. The community has its special artist, who omits no detail of wonder in delineating the latest miracle. But then, every Sicilian community has its holy protector or protectress. Local as they are, there is a universality about these semi-deities and a timelessness. Nearly half of them are black, as their pictures and statues show, for the relics come down from the days when Moors in Sicily were thick as mulberries.

Without her saints Sicily would be a fairy tale without a fairy.

The traveler has the choice of entering Sicily by Messina or Palermo. Once Messina had its especial interest, but earthquake has done its worst and the city is modern. However, the cathedral — rebuilt on ancient lines — is handsome, and even the hurried tourist should spend an hour in the little museum. Many classical museums claim passing attention, but what I lingered over was a rather coarsely sculptured fourteenth-century Virgin and Child. Some legend is attached to it, for it is labeled the “Madonna of the Crippled Child,” and the hideously deformed foot of the infant suggests the sympathy our Saviour had for the halt. There is, I believe, an ancient story that Christ was crippled from birth; but in this instance it may be that the donor was so afflicted and called on Heaven to reward his piety. I recall one other example of this curious tradition. In the sacristy of the lovely church of Villeneuve-lès-Avignon is as exquisite a Madonna as ever was wrought in alabaster. Mary in her heavenly robe of white and blue and gold holds a Child whose foot is pitifully clubbed. I wonder what it means.

There was a time when Palermo was as delightful a city as I have known, but war has wrecked the sea front once glorious with palaces and towers. No longer are the streets gay with puppet shows ol Orlando’s furious duel with Ferrau, or Punch’s domestic fracas with Judy. These have well-nigh disappeared and great is the pity therefor. Was ever jollier rascal than Punch with his vermilion nose or a sprier spouse than Judy battling with her broom until the Devil took the hindmost! Who remembers now that a millennium ago Punch was Pontius Pilate, and Judy Judas Iscariot! As usual, only the devil remains unchanged. Time transforming all else has driven from the streets many wonderful Sicilian carls, their sides, wheels, and braces all intricately carved and painted in brightest color, telling of Roncesvalles, of Esther and Ahasuerus or the Blessed Virgin and her angels. Not long since, every village had its artistic specialist carving with his cunning chisel battles of long ago. One such I have seen myself, chanting half a canto of Orlando Furioso as he labored at his spirited design; but his sons will earn a more prosaic living.

The great glories of Palermo, however, still glow in their original beauty: the mosaics of Monreale, of the Palatine Chapel, and of the Martorana take their place as equals beside the marbles of Athens and the glass of Chartres. The first two of them have never been permitted to fall into decay; and though the workmanship of later repairs is manifestly inferior, their whole effect is of overwhelming beauty.

What a race were the Normans who brought these wonders into existence! Their grandfathers were those Scandinavian Vikings who, as Disraeli remarked, were gnawing bones in the forests of Thuringia while his Hebrew ancestors were welcoming the Queen of Sheba. Either they were discontented with their diet or else gnawed to some purpose, for presently we see the redoubtable Conqueror seizing Harold’s kingdom and conquering England. For all his qualities, William had no eye for beauty. Not so his kinsfolk, who descended on Italy and thence made themselves masters of all Sicily. The ancestor of this branch was one Tailcred — not that Tancred, hero of romance, who was his descendant in the fourth or fifth generation. Kings are wont to think their ancestors great as themselves, but this lordling had only ten men to call him master.

Such an establishment was too narrow for Tancred’s grandson, Roger, who, with Norman genius for finding opportunity where trouble was, swooped down on Italy, the favorite battleground of Europe. Selecting with sagacity a succession of victorious causes, he carved a pretty kingdom for himself and did not cease his efforts until Sicily was his also. As great a warrior as William the Conqueror, Roger was his equal as a statesman. At that time the island was more than half infidel and Saracen. Roger declared complete toleration and offered to all his subjects the career open to talent. The whole population responded. Roger surrounded himself with Saracenic officers of state and his famous Admiral George, “Emir of Emirs,” was a Christian with a Moorish background. Now a world figure, Roger was courted by Guelph and Ghibelline alike, wavering between the two with great finesse. He even went so far in satiating his pride as to war upon the Emperor of the East on more than equal terms.

Roger himself had too many irons in the fire to give due heed to magnificence as the buttress of greatness, but his son and grandson, both King Williams, in their skillful fencing with the Papal power understood the’ importance of investing a bishop of their own with a grandeur matching that of the Bishop of Rome. And so to glorify God and with the same gesture give warning to the Pope, the Cathedral of Monreale was designed and a monument worthy of heaven was built on earth. The Palatine Chapel followed, and for good measure Admiral George of his own munificence added the Martorana. In the resplendence of their mosaics the three are inseparable and unique in the world.

In those days the spiritual allegiance of Christians was divided bet wen the Eastern and Western churches. Greek artists taught the Latin. Greek saints paralleled Latin saints on the burnished walls of cathedral and chapel; Greek inscriptions balanced Latin inscriptions. But over each central altar the majestic head of Christ Pantokrator taught that arbitrament between East and West is His and only His.

I cannot leave the subject of mosaics without a word of that sublime countenance which to my thinking, beyond all other representation of our Saviour, portrays the perfect union of godhead with humanity. An hour’s distance from Palermo in the cathedral of the city of Cefalu is an immense mosaic head of the Christ of the Last Judgment. There is the just and perfect judge. In all the great heads of Christ in mosaic the contours of the face are very similar; but this supreme figure lacks the almost cruel inflexibility of other examples. In its place there is the serenity of consummate understanding and of the impossibility of error, combined with the beauty of perfect sympathy. To every man sensible of sin such a countenance brings comfort and hope. There is not another expression like it, in the whole world.

Sicily, forecourt of Heaven! Greeks, Carthaginians, Romans, Moors, French, Italians — all the breeds of Europe hav e fought for her. Now she is possessed by a race of peasants w ho, if they do not see her beauty, feel it in their marrowbones. The cottager who fares forth to earn quintuple wages on our Western railroads or huge tips in New York restaurants, or who builds beautiful walls by the grace of his knowing eye, has one basic hope — to return with money enough to sit quiet in the Sicilian sun. I know a violinist whose sweet, true boyish song in the streets of Taormina once fell on the ears of Robert Hichens, the novelist. He was sent to study music in Paris and lived to become first violin in the Chicago orchestra. He had sought happiness through the world. Now he has found it sitting once again under the vines of his father’s garden, passing his bow over the beloved strings, pausing now and then to glance over the blue waters skirting the island he loves best in all the world.