Lawrence Durrell - Sicilian Carousel - Adventures on an Italian Island

Duty thus done, Roberto kissed the long patrician fingers of the old lady and we made our way back into the sunshine to negotiate the little curling streets back to the main square where by now the rest of the party must be sitting under awnings and writing postcards or drinking lemonade. The day was bright and hot, and it was quite a contrast to think back to the evening before with its mists and murmurs of another world, another order of life. Nothing could be more ordinary in its beauty than Erice by day, with all the little shops functioning — post office, bank, gendarmerie . The minute main square was built upon a slope — indeed such an acute tilt that everything tended to slide about and run down to the bottom. Tables at this angle were in danger of falling over, as were chairs; as one wrote one’s postcards or drank one’s beer, one found one was insensibly sliding downhill. People who came out of the cafe had to brake sharply in order not to find themselves rolling about like dice.

A very fat policeman made something of an act of this natural attribute of Erice’s Piazza Nationale by allowing himself to slide helplessly downhill until he ended up on the lap of a friend who was trying to eat ice cream at an angle of fifty degrees. Just how the poor cafe owner managed to dispose his tables and chairs was something of a mystery — it would have seemed necessary to wedge them in place. Over the lintel of the butcher’s hung a peeled and dry little kid which bore a label reading “Castrato” and giving a price per pound. This intrigued Beddoes who said: “It’s a rum word, I thought it meant something frightful that Monteverdi did to his choirboys to enable them to hit high C.” The kid was so neatly cut in half that it looked rather like a violin hanging up there; the rest of the meat on display was pretty indifferent-looking stuff; of course, like all Mediterranean islands Sicily is a lamb country.

Our little visit had cost us a bit of time and by now the others had already done the cathedral and the Church of St. John as well as the public gardens, so full of yellow broom; but the real heart of the place was the restored towers and the old castle standing grimly on its sacred site, sweating with every gush of mists from the lowlands. What a farewell sweep the eye takes in up there — the whole sweep of western Sicily exposed in a single slice, as if from an airplane! Roberto was disposed to be knowledgeable about the Aeneid with its famous cruise along this coast which is described in poetic detail — but to my shame I have never read it, and I rather doubted whether anyone else had either. But the few lines he quoted from memory sounded sinewy and musical on that fine silent air and I made a mental note to repair this grave omission as soon as I could happen upon a version of the poem in parallel text. We were leaving and suddenly as we entered the bus I had a sudden reversion to the mood of the night before — a sudden atmosphere of unreality in which some momentous happening lay embedded, encysted, waiting to flower. But the faces of my fellow travelers did not seem to express any untoward emotion and it was perhaps my own imagination. But whatever they were, these small preoccupations, they were swept away like cobwebs by the fine speed of our descent, for Mario was in a particularly expansive humor and swung the little bus about with a professional dexterity that was marvelous — in the sense that it caused us no alarm, so confident were we in his ability. And the land swept about with him on this turntable of a road, swinging like a cradle this way and that. At one corner he slowed for the Japanese girl and her camera and I caught a glimpse of a couple of appropriate eagles sitting motionless in the mid-heaven, staring down at the vanished altars of Erice.

W E WERE ONthe Palermo run at last, once we had arrived at sea level, but we hoped to take a running look at Segesta — a temple and a site hardly less important than the others, for it had had a full share in the ancient politics and the wars, even though its position lay some little way inland. Running along the sea roads the bays opened in all their blueness, and the gentle limestone valleys seemed awash with yellow wheat. But goodness it was hot. In half an hour of this we felt the full power of the sun’s rays on our roof and were glad of the air-cooling devices. Roberto had an unexpected sneezing fit, the first manifestation of which got into the loudspeaker and shook us all up. But he was happy, there was little to describe, and so he decided to sing us a couple of Sicilian folk songs, which he did in a remarkably true and robust tenor, while we tried to help him out with the choruses. Then with courtesy he asked us each to sing a song of our country, and this threw a sudden shyness over us all. Yet after much giggling and persuading Miss Lobb went forwards and sang to us of the “ Foggy Foggy Dew,” which was very warmly applauded. Surprisingly, the Japanese girl took her place at the microphone but it was only to sing “Parlez Moi d’Amour.” There were of course numerous abstentions due to shyness.

Deeds and I had not brought our music, nor had the Bishop. But Beddoes sang a surprisingly discreet version of Colonel Bogey, to the chorus of which we all joined in heartily, though the soldier next to me rather avoided my eye, doubtless because he remembered the ribald Eighth Army version of the song. But it was a stirring melody and had been made world famous by the film of the famous Bridge on the River Kwai, so nobody could feel left out. What with the heat and the dust, however, this song contest left us rather weary and it was very pleasant when, after curling through the soft green hills, we came into a smiling and verdant valley where the old temple stood — the general atmosphere of the place reminding one not of Mycenae this time but of gracious quiet Olympia. There were no strange atmospheres and no bogies; just the exceptional heat and the quiet density of the old temple sitting there with some of the assurance of a country town hall. Under a fine tree there was a rather handsome tavern where we were to have lunch, I surmised.

The smooth hills were densely thicketed with holm oak and laurel and rosemary and buzzing with crickets. A picturesque place with noble and romantic associations, though Deeds for the first time swore under his breath at people who could shove a motor road right through such a place, without blushing. They were simply unaware of anything but tourist gold. Just like the Greeks of today, and the Italians of yesterday. The only consolation is that it will all fall apart again and vanish into dust — for our civilization seems to be far less solid than those which have already vanished and left us these vestiges of lost greatness. But no, Deeds would not be consoled. “Here God is definitely mocked,” he asserted, “though thank God Segesta’s position is still fairly remote and one rarely finds it crowded — you can still sit in the theater and drowse, which is something.” It was true; ours was the only bus at the site, and by now, to my astonishment, we did not get on each other’s nerves any more. If we had not become friends we had become in a sense partners and ready to make allowances. Even the dentist’s lady had started to take a liking to Beddoes, who had swept her into a tango during a moment in the bar in Agrigento where a jukebox churned out jazz. As for the dentist he had assuaged a tiresome toothache which afflicted the child Microscope after he had been eating too many sweets. Even the Bishop had taken a hand at pontoon during a halt. Deeds had done tricks with string which fascinated and awed. In short we had all shaken down.

The place, the temple … how impossible it is to convey the charm of atmosphere in a travel folder or a photo. One is forced to fake, and the result is always a false emphasis. This place, even if there had been no temple, would have radiated a quiet magnetism and well being, just like an Aesculapium — like Cos or like Epidaurus. I have spent half a lifetime trying to analyze why and the only result has been to decide that it has something to do with fresh water and green in a limestone context. The sanatoria of the ancient world were chosen for their seclusion and the purity of their air; in our age also, but we tend to place too much emphasis on mountains, most likely because for so long the most popular of human diseases has been tuberculosis, which nowadays has all but disappeared. As for Segesta, so far nothing has been found to indicate that it was a spa unless the presence of sulphur springs near Calatafimi might hint at it. But of course here again nothing about it is known with any real exactitude — everything is conjecture. The people claimed to come from Troy though some say that they were Italians from the north; but the stamp of their Greekness remains, for their coinage bore a Greek legend, and their architects were Athenian in mind and scope. It did not need the learned dissertations of guidebooks to tell one about the splendor of this particular temple, standing there so quietly in the vale, wise as an elephant bearing the world on its back. What was missing was the context simply, the vanished town which would have put everything in its place and reduced the sense of strangeness and alienation which I must say I personally found exciting and stimulating. But the feeling of deep composure and calm was conveyed not only by the temple and theater but by the whole site. “I slept here in the grass once without a blanket,” said Deeds with a gesture, “by starlight in summer — what a huge display of jewels. And so silent.” The gesture he sketched suggested someone who just spontaneously sinks to the ground, rendered completely defenseless by the beauty and silence of the place. Of course he had seen it all years ago, hence his irritation. He must have intuited my thought for he said: “Twenty years I suppose; we came up on it by mule back from the direction of Calatafimi. It came to us valley by valley, in little sips so to speak, appearing and disappearing; each time from a different angle and a different light. At first it was tiny, like a little dice floodlit by the sun. Then it grew. Then at last you arrived with your tongue cleaving to your palate with thirst, but with the feeling of moral grandeur that must come to people who complete an arduous pilgrimage. It was unfenced then and one could put a sleeping bag down anywhere inside the temple. No road, you see, no access. Nowadays of course one drives straight up to these places by bus and so one doesn’t get the pleasure of the effort. One just rapes them.”