Lawrence Durrell: Sicilian Carousel: Adventures on an Italian Island

On arriving home I switched on the lights and took a perfunctory look at Sicily in the encyclopedia. They made it sound like the Isle of Wight. Then the evening papers arrived with their talk of strikes and lockouts and so on, and my resolve faltered at the thought of spending days and nights asleep on my suitcase at Nice or Rome or Catania. But somehow I could not draw back now. I lit a log fire and put on a touch of Mozart to console me against these dark doubts. Tomorrow my friend would ring me with the reservations. I cannot pretend that my sleep was untroubled that night. I regressed in my dreams and found myself in the middle of the war in Cairo or Rhodes, missing planes or waiting for planes which never came. Martine was inexplicably there, behaving with perfect decorum, dressed in long white gloves, and subtly smiling. It was the airport but in the dream it was also Lord’s and we were waiting for the emergence of the cricketers. I slept late and indeed it was my friend’s call which shook me awake. “I have the whole dossier lined up,” he said. He liked to make everything sound official and legal. “When do I leave?” I quavered. He told me the dates. Technically the Carousel started from Catania; my fellow travelers were converging on that town from many different points in Europe.

So it was that I began to land hop sideways across France on a strikeless fifth of July with the pleasant feel of thunder in the air and perhaps the promise of a night storm to come and refresh the Midi. And there was no sign of that old devil the mistral, which was a good omen indeed. It is always sad leaving home, however, and in the early dawn, after a spot of yoga, I took a dip in the pool followed by a hot shower and wandered aimlessly about for a bit in the garden. Everything was silent, the morning was windless. The tall pines and chestnuts in the park did not stir. In the old water tower the brood of white barn owls snoozed away the daylight after their night’s hunting. The old car eased itself lingeringly away across the dry garrigues with their scent of thyme and rosemary and sage. The Sicilian Carousel was on. All my journeys start with a kind of anxious pang of doubt — you feel suddenly an orphan. You hang over the rail watching the land dip out of sight on the circumference of the earth — than you shake yourself like a dog and address yourself to reality once more. You point your mind towards an invisible landfall. Sicily!

Nice was clothed in a fragile brightness; wind furrowed the waters of the bay making the yachts dance and bow. Light clouds, washed whiter than white, passed smoothly against the summer sky. Colored awnings, strips of Raoul Dufy — it was all brilliantly there. Yes, but the airport was a ferment of police and militia armed to the eyes with automatic weapons. We had been having an epidemic of aimless kidnappings and slayings during the past few weeks — the new patriotism. Hence all these precautions. The two Arab gentlemen up front hid something in their shoes — a permit to work or shirk I suppose? It could not have been a gun. Hashish? But I had to hurry to make my connection with Rome and I passed through all the X-raying in a rage of impatience. The travel plan was, as always, brilliantly conceived down to the last detail, but no travel agent can make allowances for such weird contingencies as a tommy gun attack or a police search. Nevertheless I did it, but only just. We skated off the end of the Nice runway and out over the sea once more, rising steadily until the regatta below us became a bare scatter of pinpoints on the hazy blue veil. I had now become quite detached, quite resigned in my feelings; the sort of pleasant travel-numbness had set in. Consigning my soul to the gods of change and adventure I had a short sleep in which I had a particularly vivid dream of Martine — but it was Cyprus, not Sicily. There were problems about her land which I was helping to settle in my limping Greek. And then, superimposed on this scene was the troublesome poem about Van Gogh which, like an equation, had refused to come out over the months. I had become so fed up with it — it was almost very good — that I had tried publishing it in its unfinished state in order to provoke it to complete itself. In vain. It needed both pruning and clinching up in a number of places. It was a charity to suppose that Sicily might do the trick, yet why not? A jolt was in order.

Rome airport was no consolation — for it was being literally riven apart, torn up, bulldozed into heaps, smashed. Red dust rose from it as if from a sacrificial pyre. To the roar of planes was added the squirming and snarling of tractors wrestling with the stumps of trees. It was for all the world like the battles of mammoths in the Pleistocene epoch. Improvised footpaths and bridges across this battlefield awaited the visitors on the international lines. As for the internal and domestic flights a whole new airport had been constructed for them — but transport was lacking. Nor were there any taxis, it seemed. Glad that I had packed so lightly I humped my effects and jogged along like the half-witted Sherpa I was towards the new buildings, following clusters of green arrows. I had a good hour and a half in hand for the Catania plane which was a relief, but when I reached my objective I found that once again all passengers were being X-rayed for guns and then passed through the long smugglers’ tunnel. On the whole a bad ambience in which to start on a holiday journey, but my spirits rose slightly for I saw ahead of me what seemed to be the whole cast of Porgy and Bess , or some other big musical, being processed with operatic dignity by weary policemen. It was complicated by the fact that the only bar lay outside the clearance area and some of the cast kept slipping out of the cordon to buy a drink or a sandwich, to the annoyance of the officials. There were some cries and expostulation. One tipsy member of the party broke into a soft shoe routine which won all hearts but did nothing to settle the problems of the police. At last all was in order and the company assembled in a waiting room for their plane — alas, they were not to be on ours.

I was turned aside into another enclosure where the Catania passengers were submitting resignedly to the same processing. Immediately ahead of me was a huge Sicilian mother who had, as far as I could make out, won a fertility competition and had come up to Rome to receive her prize and make television history by explaining how she had won the trophy. She had her supporting evidence with her in the persons of six large and lugubrious sons with heavy moustaches. They caused quite a fuss in spite of their good nature and had to be pushed and pulled and shoved like cattle. And volubility! How delicious and infantile Italian sounded after a long absence, how full of warmth and good humor. The policemen conducted, so to speak, their swelling emotions with the bunched tips of their fingers — all so molto agitato . The Sicilian version of ox-eyed Hera did her own act back; then all swept into the waiting lounge and sank sighing into seats where the men fell into a prolonged brooding examination of their air tickets. They were on the plane but not of our party. We had been given little distinguishing rosettes for the Carousel. It was about time I pinned mine up. Immediately next to me was an aggrieved French couple with a small child who looked around with a rat-like malevolence. He had the same face as his father. They looked like very cheap microscopes. To my horror the mother wore a Carousel rosette. I bowed and they inclined their heads with coolness.

Then I saw Deeds sitting in a corner also with a distinguishing badge, bowed over his Times . I can’t say I “recognized” him for I did not know him; but what gave me an instant shock of recognition was the clan to which he belonged. The desert boots, the trench coat hiding a faded bush jacket, the silk scarf knotted at his throat, the worn and weathered grip on the floor at his feet.… Had he appeared in a quiz I would have had no hesitation in writing out his curriculum vitae . Colonel Deeds, D.S.O., late Indian Army, later still, Desert Rat. Nowadays I suppose they have broken the mould of that most recognizable of species, the Eighth Army veteran. The clipped moustache, the short back and sides haircut.… “I see you are on this jaunt,” he said mildly, to break the ice. And I said I was. His blue eyes had a pleasant twinkle. He said, “I have just come down from Austria. I don’t suppose there’ll be many of us on this flight.” It was at Catania that we were to join the rest of the Carousel group — though the very word “group” gave me a twinge of resigned horror. If they were all like the two Microscopes in the corner I could just imagine the level of the conversation.