IV
These qualities belong to a high order of creative writing, they can never be the property of mere talent, they have no part in concessions to popular and superficial demands. This does not necessarily imply a criticism of the latter: it is not a crime to prefer happiness to misery, and certainly the tangible facts of happiness are success and the omnipotence of love. Tales and stories exist as a source of pleasure, but men take their pleasures with a difference; and for any who are moved by the heroic spectacle of humanity pinned by fatality to earth but forever struggling for release “Tales of My Native Town” must have a deep significance.
No one has abhorred brutality and deception more passionately than Gabriele D’Annunzio, and no one has held himself more firmly to the exact drawing of their insuperable evils. But this is not all; it is not, perhaps, even the most important aspect: that may well be his fascinating art. Here, above all, the contending elements, of his being, the brilliant genius of the Renaissance, predominate; an age bright with blood and gold and silk, an age of poetry as delicately cultivated as its assassinations. It was a period logical and cruel, lovely and corrupt; and, to an extraordinary degree, it has its reflection in D’Annunzio’s writing.
Yet, in him, it is troubled by modern apprehensions, a social conscience unavoidable now to any fineness of perception. His tales are no longer simply the blazing arbitrary pictures of the Quatrocento; they possess our own vastly more burdened spirit. In this, as well, they are as American as they are Italian; the crimes and beggars and misery of Pescara, the problems and hopes of one, belong to the other; the bonds of need and sympathy are complete.
The tales themselves are filled with energy and movement, the emotions are in high keys. At times a contest of will, of temptation playing with fear, as in The Gold Pieces, they rise to pitched battles between whole towns; the factions, more often than not led by Holy reliques and statues, a sacred arm in silver or the sparkling bust of a Saint with a solar disc, massed with scythes and bars and knives, meet in sanguinary struggle. Or again the passions smoulder into individual bitterness and scandal and mean hatred. The Duchess of Amalfi is such a chronicle, the record of Don Giovà’s devastating passion for Violetta Kutufa, who came to Pescara with a company of singers at Carnival.
Nothing is omitted that could add to the veracity, the inevitable collapse, of this almost senile Don Juan; while the psychology of the ending is an accomplishment of arresting power and fitness. There is in The Duchess of Amalfi a vivid presentation of Pescara itself, the houses and Violetta’s room scented with cyprus-powder, the square with the cobblers working and eating figs, a caged blackbird whistling the Hymn of Garibaldi, the Casino, immersed in shadow, its tables sprinkled with water.
Around Pescara is the level sea, the river and mountains and the broad campagnia, the vines, the wine vats and oil presses, the dwellings of mud and reeds; the plain is flooded with magnificent noon, and, at night, Turlendana, drunk, is mocked by the barking of vagrant dogs; the men linger under Violetta’s lighted windows, and the strains of her song run through all the salons, all the heads, of the town.... It is as far away as possible, and yet, in its truth, implied in every heart.
TALES OF MY NATIVE TOWN
I THE HERO
Already the huge standards of Saint Gonselvo had appeared on the square and were swaying heavily in the breeze. Those who bore them in their hands were men of herculean stature, red in the face and with their necks swollen from effort; and they were playing with them.
After the victory over the Radusani the people of Mascalico celebrated the feast of September with greater magnificence than ever. A marvellous passion for religion held all souls. The entire country sacrificed the recent richness of the corn to the glory of the Patron Saint. Upon the streets from one window to another the women had stretched their nuptial coverlets. The men had wreathed with vines the doorways and heaped up the thresholds with flowers. As the wind blew along the streets there was everywhere an immense and dazzling undulation which intoxicated the crowd.
From the church the procession proceeded to wind in and out and to lengthen out as far as the square. Before the altar, where Saint Pantaleone had fallen, eight men, privileged souls, were awaiting the moment for the lifting of the statue of Saint Gonselvo; their names were: Giovanni Curo, l’Ummalido, Mattala, Vencenzio Guanno, Rocco di Cenzo, Benedetto Galante, Biagio di Clisci, Giovanni Senzapaura. They stood in silence, conscious of the dignity of their work, but with their brains slightly confused. They seemed very strong; had the burning eye of the fanatic, and wore in their ears, like women, two circles of gold. From time to time they tested their biceps and wrists as if to calculate their vigour; or smiled fugitively at one another.
The statue of the Patron Saint was enormous, very heavy, made of hollow bronze, blackish, with the head and hands of silver.
Mattala cried:
“Ready!”
The people, everywhere, struggled to see. The windows of the church roared at every gust of the wind. The nave was fumigated with incense and resin. The sounds of instruments were heard now and then. A kind of religious fever seized the eight men, in the centre of that turbulence. They extended their arms to be ready.
Mattala cried:
“One! Two! Three!”
Simultaneously the men made the effort to raise the statue to the altar. But its weight was overpowering, and the figure swayed to the left. The men had not yet succeeded in getting a firm grip around the base. They bent their backs in their endeavour to resist. Biagio di Clisci and Giovanni Curo, the least strong, lost their hold. The statue swerved violently to one side. L’Ummalido gave a cry.
“Take care! Take care!” vociferated the spectators on seeing the Patron Saint so imperilled. From the square came a resounding crash that drowned all voices.
L’Ummalido had fallen on his knees with his right arm beneath the bronze. Thus kneeling, he held his two large eyes, full of terror and pain, fixed on his hand which he could not free, while his mouth twisted but no longer spoke. Drops of blood sprinkled the altar.
His companions, all together, made a second effort to raise the weight. The operation was difficult. L’Ummalido, in a spasm of pain, twisted his mouth. The women spectators shuddered.
At length the statue was lifted and L’Ummalido withdrew his hand, crushed and bleeding and formless. “Go home, now! Go home!” the people cried, while pushing him toward the door of the church.
A woman removed her apron and offered it to him for a bandage. L’Ummalido refused it. He did not speak, but watched a group of men who were gesticulating and disputing around the statue.
“It is my turn!”
“No!—no! It’s my turn!”
“No! let me!”
Cicco Ponno, Mattia Seafarolo and Tommaso di Clisci were contending for the place left vacant by L’Ummalido.
He approached the disputants. Holding his bruised hand at his side, and with the other opening a path, he said simply:
“The position is mine.”
And he placed his left shoulder as a prop for the Patron Saint. He stifled down his pain, gritting his teeth, with fierce will-power.
Mattala asked him:
“What are you trying to do?”
He answered:
“What Saint Gonselvo wishes me to do.”
And he began to walk with the others. Dumbfounded the people watched him pass. From time to time, someone, on seeing the wound which was bleeding and growing black, asked him:
“L’Umma’, what is the matter?”
He did not answer. He moved forward gravely, measuring his steps by the rhythm of the music, with his mind a little hazy, beneath the vast coverlets that flapped in the wind and amongst the swelling crowd.
At a street corner he suddenly fell. The Saint stopped an instant and swayed, in the centre of a momentary confusion, then continued its progress. Mattia Scafarola supplied the vacant place. Two relations gathered up the swooning man and carried him to a nearby house.
Anna di Cenzo, who was an old woman, expert at healing wounds, looked at the formless and bloody member, and then shaking her head, said:
“What can I do with it?”
Her little skill was able to do nothing. L’Ummalido controlled his feelings and said nothing. He sat down and tranquilly contemplated his wound. The hand hung limp, forever useless, with the bones ground to powder.
Two or three aged farmers came to look at it. Each, with a gesture or a word, expressed the same thought.
L’Ummalido asked:
“Who carried the Saint in my place?”
They answered:
“Mattia Scafarola.”
Again he asked:
“What are they doing now?”
They answered:
“They are singing the vespers.”
The farmers bid him good-bye and left for vespers. A great chiming came from the mother church.
One of the relations placed near the wound a bucket of cold water, saying:
“Every little while put your hand in it. We must go. Let us go and listen to the vespers.”
L’Ummalido remained alone. The chiming increased, while changing its metre. The light of day began to wane. An olive tree, blown by the wind, beat its branches against the low window.
L’Ummalido began to bathe his hand little by little. As the blood and concretions fell away, the injury appeared even greater. L’Ummalido mused:
“It is entirely useless! It is lost. Saint Gonselvo, I offer it up to you.”
He took a knife and went out. The streets were deserted. All of the devotees were in the church. Above the houses sped, like fugitive herds of cattle, the violet clouds of a September sunset.
In the church the united multitude sang in measured intervals as if in chorus to the music of the instruments. An intense heat emanated from the human bodies and the burning tapers. The silver head of Saint Gonselvo scintillated from on high like a light house. L’Ummalido entered. To the stupefaction of all, he walked up to the altar and said, in a clear voice, while holding the knife in his left hand:
“Saint Gonselvo, I offer it up to you.”
And he began to cut around the right wrist, gently, in full sight of the horrified people. The shapeless hand became detached little by little amidst the blood. It swung an instant suspended by the last filaments. Then it fell into a basin of copper which held the money offerings at the feet of the Patron Saint.
L’Ummalido then raised the bloody stump and repeated in a clear voice:
“Saint Gonselvo, I offer it up to you.”