Lawrence Durrell: Sicilian Carousel: Adventures on an Italian Island

But Deeds was quite a find. He had, he said (somewhat apologetically), managed to secure one of the “plum” jobs on the Allied Graves Commission which entitled him to have a regular “swan” every two years, notably in Sicily his favorite island. (“You can have the whole Med, but leave me Sicily.”) The jargon was heart warmingly familiar — it was Cairo 1940. It was the lingo of El Alamein, of the Long Range Desert Group. We had done everything together, it seemed, except meet; and, I might add, fight, for I had spent those years safely in the Embassy at Cairo and later on in Alexandria. But it was a mystery how we had not contrived to meet. We were both, for example, at the fateful party given by Baron the photographer in a tethered Nile houseboat where he lived. Our chief entertainment was provided by a huge belly dancer like a humming top who, as she rotated, kept altering the axis of the overcrowded boat; once, twice, it shivered and righted itself again. But just as the orchestra swept into a climax the whole thing suddenly turned over with its hundred guests and we were all of us in the Nile. Deeds like myself had waded ashore, but a shadow was cast over what was a hilarious evening by the death of one of the guests, who had grabbed the landline of electric wire which fed the lights on the houseboat. He was instantly electrocuted. We remembered many other occasions at which we had both been present, both in Cairo and then later in Cyprus. Yet we had never met! It was bizarre. He even remembered Martine, “Rich society girl wasn’t she? Good dancer.” But I did not feature in these memories. Where had I been, he wanted to know?

As for Martine he remembered her, indeed had known old Sir Felix, her father. “A good-looking blonde? Yes, I do remember. She looked rather spoiled.” Martine would not have forgiven him the description, for when I first met her it was only too true; and curiously enough when first we found ourselves alone on the deserted beaches beyond Famagusta, it was roughly her own estimate of herself. She had just come back from a trip to Indonesia and Bali and proposed to try her hand at a travel book about the experience. “I found,” she said somewhat disarmingly, “that I was becoming hopelessly spoiled by money, birth, and upbringing. I decided to stop being a society fashion plate and start trying to realize myself. But how, when you haven’t much talent? I started with this journey, which I did entirely by bus and train. I avoided all the Embassies and all my compatriots. Now I want to settle in this island and live quite alone. But I’d like to write.”

She was forthright and without vainglory and consequently very touching. I was terribly glad that chance had made us friends as I too had decided to settle in the island and was experiencing numberless difficulties in shaping up my little house in Bellapais, in the shadow of the Tree of Idleness which was for two marvelous summers our point of rendezvous.…

The Catania lounge had filled up now and I delayed expatiating on Martine to Deeds; I simply said that it gave me pleasure to recall her memory and that in venturing into Sicily I felt that I was accepting too late an invitation which I should have taken up years before. And also I expressed my misgivings about this way of doing it. I had begun to think that my decision to join the Carousel was utterly mad. “I shall loathe the group, I feel it. I was not made for group travel.” Deeds looked at me with a quizzical air and said, after a pause: “Yes, one always does at first. It’s just like joining a new battalion. You think: God, what horrible people, what ghastly faces and prognathous jaws, what badly aspected Saturns! Jesus, save me! But then after a time it wears off. You get to know them and respect them. And after a couple of battles you don’t want to part with them. You see, you’ll be sorry when it comes time to say goodbye.” I didn’t believe a word of it, but the presence of this quiet reserved Army officer was comforting, simply because we had a good deal in common and had lived through the same momentous epoch. “Remains to be seen,” I said warily and Deeds unfolded his Times and scrutinized the cricket scores with the air of a priest concentrating on Holy Writ. I was tempted to ask him how Hampshire was doing, but it would have been false to do so; I had been out of touch with cricket for more than fifteen years and it was possible that Hampshire no longer existed as a county eleven. I turned and watched the sea unrolling beneath us, and the distant smudges of the island printing themselves on the hazy trembling horizon. Deeds grunted from time to time. In his mind’s eye he could see green grass, hear the clicking of cricket balls.…

The evening had begun to fall softly and the grey-green theatrical light of the approaching sunset had begun to color everything. The dusk seemed to be rising from the ground like a faint grey smoke. From this height the sea looked motionless and the relief map of the island’s southern slopes had attained a fixity of tone which made it look fabricated, unreal. Indeed, to be sincere, it was not vastly different from flying over Crete or Rhodes — at least not yet. I murmured something like this to Deeds who agreed but said, “Wait till we reach Etna — that’s an individual sort of feature.” So wait I did, drinking a bitter blush of Campari. We were slowly descending now in a carefully graduated descent: this could only be judged by the fact that the minutiae below us began suddenly to come into focus, to become coherent forms like farms and lakes and valleys. “There!” said my companion at long last and Etna took the center of the stage to capture our admiring vision. It was very close indeed — for we had come down low to prepare the run in on Catania airport. It looked like a toy — but a rather dangerous one. Moreover, it gave a small puff of dark smoke — a languid gesture of welcome, as if it had heard we were coming. Though we were flying not directly over it (I presumed because of the hot currents which it siphoned off), we were not too far to the side to avoid looking down into the charred crater — a black pit in the recesses of which something obscure boiled and bubbled. Then, as the range spread out a little I saw that it was not simply one crater but a whole network of volcanoes of which Etna was the most considerable in size and beauty. But everywhere there were other little holes in the earth crust, for all the world as if the whole pie had burst out because of the heat in minor geysers. It was beautiful in its toy-like way, this range, and yet I could not avoid a slight feeling of menace about it. There was really no reason, in spite of the occasional severity of an outburst of lava. Etna had become an almost domesticated showpiece, and we were promised an “optional” ascent to the crater in the last week of the tour.

I was reminded, too, that the volcanic crack which here traversed the southern tip of Sicily passed also through the Ionian Sea, under Xante and a part of Greece near Corinth, and finally through Cyprus where it usually tore Paphos apart. Twice during my years there I had been woken by its passing during the night — with the mad roar of an underground train, seeming to pass under my very bed, while the dust rose in clouds and the timbers of my old house groaned in their sleep. Earthquakes, I have experienced quite a number! The premonitory signs too are strange if you are on the seacoast. The water becomes still and lifeless and almost opaque; a few little involuntary waves spin up, as if the sea was trying to be sick. And then the dead leaden hue of the horizon! Birds stop singing suddenly and dogs lope back to their kennels full of an inexplicable uneasiness. And then, when it does come, at first one only notices the eccentric behavior of solid objects, like an electric wire swinging like a pendulum or an armchair mysteriously airborne. Then comes the roar like a thousand avalanches. And the small birds in the orchard fall to the ground and chirp.… “If you drew a line along the earth crack, the long fault which ends somewhere in Persia I suppose — Could one find similarities of temperament and outlook in the inhabitants who live along it?” Deeds shook his head; “The sort of question I distrust,” he said, “unless you would say that they were all a little cracked. Revolutionary secessionists — Sicily is as much that as Crete and Cyprus.”