Lawrence Durrell - Sicilian Carousel - Adventures on an Italian Island

He was some time coming, but come he did at last and it was clear that he had dressed for the event for he wore an elaborate outfit topped off by a sort of white silk stock. The material of his dark suit was of obvious weight and quality — it made one perspire just to look at it; but the whole ensemble was beautifully tailored, while his small feet were encased in elastic-sided boots. He was youngish, a man in his forties, with a large dark head, furry as a mole, and skin the color of plum cake. He had a singular sort of expression; a sort of holy expression which one suddenly realized came from the fact that he was scared stiff in case someone asked him a question in a foreign language. His cufflinks gleamed, so did his teeth. He carried pigskin gloves. But he was scared. He looked in fact as if he had just emerged after partaking of the Eucharist with Frank Sinatra. He sat down uncomfortably facing his patient and put a bag containing his instruments on the floor. Roberto now intervened with a spirited outline of the case and everybody’s hands began to move in rhythm with their inner rhetoric — Roberto staggering, falling, holding his stomach.

The lady was looking less alarmed and seemed rather pleased to have merited such a lot of attention. El Dottore listened with a dark and disabused air, nodding from time to time as if he knew only too well what made people fall about and hold their stomachs. From time to time he allowed one hand off the leash, so to speak, and allowed it to describe a few eloquent gestures to illustrate his discourse — he had a rich and agreeable voice as well. The hand evolved in the air in a quite autonomous sort of way and if one had not been able to understand what its owner said one might have imagined it to be picking a grape or milking a goat or waving goodbye to a dying patient. It was expressive and strangely encouraging, for he did have a definite presence. He produced a stethoscope and after waving it about as he was talking made a sudden dart for his patient’s wrist. This she did not mind. He planted it on her pulse and listened gravely and for a long time to her cardiac performance. He nodded slightly. They had now got on to trying to explain to him what her illness was and how she had come to catch it. He did not understand. So everyone, led by Roberto and the woman’s husband, began to make as if to swallow air like the French do. The doctor swallowed with concern as he watched them; he did not seem to have heard of this disease — are Italians immune to it because they talk too much: the air can’t get in? At any rate he did not get it. He raised a carefully manicured finger and scratched his temple as he thought. Then he bowed once more to his pulse, hearkening with great concentration. Ah! After a long and pregnant pause the truth dawned. He put away his little stethoscope with a snap and locked his bag. Sitting well back and with an aggressive tilt to his chin he came up with a remedy which certainly matched the singularity of the disease. “In my opinion the spleen must come out at once,” he said. The translation was handed about to the party in several tongues. The spleen! So that was it!

The only person who refused to register surprise whatever happened — nothing could surprise him, it seemed — was the male Microscope. The spleen, pouf, of course he had heard all about it before. She had always been splenetic — if that is the mot juste —and had had numberless attacks which always wore off after she had been treated in the ordinary way for wind in the rigging. One gathered that there was some immense mauve suppository manufactured in Geneva which would meet the case. Nor were we wrong for the doctor produced a gorgeous fountain pen and wrote out a prescription with untrembling hand which he handed over to Roberto who glanced at it and offered to send someone out to the chemist at once. And the spleen? One could hardly launch her into an operation of that order while we were on the move. She would have to go into hospital. Roberto’s perplexities were grievous to behold. Would her damned spleen hold up until he could get shot of her, could push her over the border? That is what he wanted to know. The doctor shook his head, smiled persuasively, and said that it was up to God. Strangely enough the woman’s husband took the whole matter with a philosophic optimism which seemed rather noble. Or perhaps he had been through these storms often enough to know that they subsided as quickly as they arose? But nobody thought of invoking Santa Lucia — had we been in Greece it would have been the first, the most urgent thing to do, for were we not in her domain? It was just a small indication of the degree to which we, so-called “evolved” Europeans, had become demagnetized to the sense of pagan realities. Spleen!

Well, the doctor, having pronounced upon his client, rose to take his leave; he did not elaborate about taking out the spleen — one could hardly do this in the lounge. He simply shook hands all round, discussed his fee in a gruff tone with Roberto, and slid through the tall doors of the hotel into the sunlight. Much reassured by such a matter-of-fact approach, the female Microscope rose to her feet looking very much better. Her husband, in a surprising gesture of sympathy, put his arm round her and led her up to her room to lie down. Yet all had ended on a note of interrogation, nothing finally had been decided. But Roberto sent a hotel messenger out for the medicine and we all hoped for the best. “In my experience,” said Deeds, “the French have only one national disease and it is not the spleen — it’s the liver. And a more honorable thing than a French liver you could not have. It comes from them being the most discriminating people on earth when it comes to food and drink.” He did not want to labor the point for he saw Beddoes hovering around with the intention of making some dastardly remark, probably about morning sickness. It was time for an early dinner and bed, for we planned an early start on the morrow — unless hampered by the spleen of the French lady.

M ARTINE: “BUT AGRIGENTOfor me is the acid test and I am sure you will feel it as I have; it reminded me of all our passionate arguments about the Greekness of a Cyprus which had never been either geographically or demographically part of Greece. What constituted its special claim to be so? Language of course — the eternal perennity of the obdurate Greek tongue which has changed so little for thousands of years. Language is the key, the passport, and unless we look at the Greek phenomenon from this point of view we will never understand the sort of colonizers they were. It was not blood but language which gave one membership of the Greek intellectual commonwealth — barbarians were not simply people who lived other where but people who did not speak Greek. It is hard for us to understand for we, like the Romans, have a juristic view of citizenship — in the case of the British our innate puritanism makes it a question of blood, of keeping the blood untainted by foreign admixtures. The horror for us is the half-caste, the touch of the tar brush. It is a complete contrast to the French attitude which resembles in a way the ancient Greek notion in its idea of Francophone nations and races. The possession of the French tongue with its automatic entry into the riches of French culture constitutes the only sort of passport necessary for a non-French person whatever the color of his or her skin. It is easier to find a place in a French world than in a British — language determines the fact; yes, if you are black or blue and even with a British passport it is harder to integrate with us.

“This little homily is written in the belief that one day you will visit the temples in that extraordinary valley below the horrid tumble of modern Agrigento’s featureless and grubby slums — and suddenly feel quite bewildered by finding yourself in Greece, one hundred per cent in Greece. And you will immediately ask yourself why (given the strong anti-northern and secessionist sentiments of the Sicilians) there has never been a Greek claim to the island. You will smile. But in fact if we judge only by the monuments and the recorded history of the place we are dealing with something as Greek in sinew and marrow as the Argolid or as Attica. How has it escaped? Because the language is no longer a vital force . There are a few pockets where a vestigial Greek is still spoken, but pathetically few (luckily for the Italians). There is an odd little Byzantine monastery or two as there is in Calabria. But the gleam of its Greekness has died out; its language has been swamped by Italian. Only the ancient place names remain to jolt one awake to the realization that Sicily is just as Greek as Greece is — or never was! The question of Greekness — and the diaspora — is an intriguing one to think about. If we take Athens (that very first olive tree) as the center from which all Greekness radiates outward … Sicily is about like Smyrna is — if we take its pulse today. O please come and see!”