Castellinaria, and Other Sicilian Diversions

by Henry Festing Jones

CECÈ LUNA

In Palermo I talked with another doctor, Cecè (Francesco) Luna, of Trapani, whose acquaintance I made many years ago on Monte Erice when he was there as a student in villeggiatura. In September, 1909, I found him in the children’s hospital at Palermo. As soon as news of the earthquake reached the city, the Regina Margherita was fitted out to help the wounded and Cecè went in her among the doctors. When they arrived at Messina, they could neither enter the harbour nor take anyone on board because they had to obey orders. It was raining, the sea was rough and covered with little boats full of fugitives, some unhurt, some wounded. One boat contained a young man holding an umbrella over his mother, who was wounded and lying on two tables.

“I am strong. I can wait seven or eight days without food, it is not for me, it is for my mother.”

He cried and prayed till the orders came and she was taken on board.

Cecè, who was put in charge of the taking on board of the fugitives, ordered that the wounded were to be taken

first. He was somewhat surprised that this order was attended to; it was so, however, the wounded were taken in without confusion; but afterwards among the unwounded there was confusion. There was a boy who tried to get on board first, Cecè pulled the boy’s cap off and threw it away, intending it to fall in the sea, but it fell in another boat and the boy went after his cap and gave no more trouble.

The earthquake was at about 5.20 a.m. on 28th December; the Regina Margherita arrived at Messina at 8 a.m. on the 30th December. As soon as Cecè landed, he began searching with others and at 10 a.m. found, in a well-furnished house, a woman dead in bed, killed by a beam which had fallen across her. Under the beam, close to her body, lay a baby girl, very dirty but alive and untouched. It was impossible to say precisely when the child had been born, but certainly only a few hours before the earthquake, just time enough for the midwife to leave the house, for they found no trace of her. Cecè took the baby to the steamer and gave it sugar and water, and when they returned to Palermo they got it a wet-nurse and it was baptised Maria in the children’s hospital. If one has an earthquake in one’s horoscope, surely it could not be placed at a less inconvenient part of one’s life. New-born babies can live three or four days without food; but if this child had not been born before the earthquake, she would not have been born at all, and if she had been born earlier, she would have died of starvation or exposure before she was found. As it happened she was sheltered and her life preserved by the beam which killed her mother. Maria was adopted by a lady of Palermo, and in April, 1910, Cecè told me he had lately seen her and she was beginning to walk.

Cecè had had twenty earthquake babies in his hospital, all with fathers and mothers unknown, and, of course, other hospitals were equally full. When I was at Palermo in 1909 he had only seven of the twenty, the rest having been taken away, some by their fathers and mothers, others by

people who adopted them. Travelling back to England I saw in the railway stations at Rome, Milan, and other places, frames of photographs of unclaimed babies put up in the hope that they might be recognised by chance travellers.

The Regina Margherita stayed at Messina one day, loading, and then returned to Palermo with five hundred unwounded and eighty-two wounded. Cecè remained in Messina, searching, but joined the ship when she returned to Messina, where she took up her station in port as a floating hospital.

He told me of a woman who was in the ruins, alive but unable to move. Her daughter lay dead beside her. It was raining, there was a dripping and she was getting wet. With the morning light she saw it was not the rain that was wetting her, but the blood of her husband and two grown-up sons who were dead in the room above.

He told me of a law-student in Palermo, twenty-four years old, engaged to a young lady who lived in Messina; this young man went to pass his Christmas holidays with his betrothed. He was not in the same house and the earthquake did him no harm; as soon as it was over his first thought was for his fidanzata. He got into the street and made for her house, paying no attention to the cries that issued from the ruins. But, like a wandering knight on his way to assist his lady and embarrassed by meeting other adventures, he was stopped and forced to help in searching a particular house, from which he extricated a beautiful girl, nineteen years of age, unhurt. She would not let him go till he had saved her mother. All the others in the house were killed. Still the girl would not let him go.

“Are you rich?” she asked.

“No.”

“Then take this ring and tell me who you are.”

He took the ring and after giving her all the information she required was allowed to proceed. When he came to the

house of his betrothed he found that she and all her family had perished. He returned to Palermo weeping.

Two months later he received a letter:

I asked if you were rich; you replied “No” and I gave you my ring. You saved my mother and you saved me. My mother has since died from the effects of the shock. If you are free I am ready to marry you and I have money enough for both.

On this they became engaged and after a suitable time intend to marry. Cecè wanted to apologise for the conventionality of this story, but I begged him not to trouble; if unassisted nature were to be always original, the occupation of poets and romancers would be gone.

In one house was a servant, a Roman woman; she was devoted to a young lady of the family and all the family were buried in the ruins, but the Roman servant was unhurt. She could get no help, the house was on the outskirts of the city and such passers-by as there were would not stop. She set to work searching for her young mistress and incidentally saved the whole family. It took her twenty-four hours; they were all wounded and her young mistress was the last she found.

A woman kept a small shop opposite another shop kept by a man who sold coal. The woman had saved money and the carbonajo knew she had her money in her house. He entered the woman’s house after the earthquake, accompanied by another malefactor. The woman’s daughter was killed, but the woman was under the ruins alive and they pulled her out. She exclaimed:

“I do not know you.”

But she did know the carbonajo quite well, or at least well enough to know he was a bad man and to suspect his intention. They asked her where her money was concealed. She only repeated:

“I do not know you.”

They believed her, thinking she was confused by the shock of the earthquake; this was what she intended,

otherwise she feared they would have killed her. They threatened her, and at last she told them where the money was, still protesting that she did not know them. They took her money and then, being afraid she might give the alarm and they might be caught before they could escape, they pinned her down with a large piece of the ruins on her left arm and departed, taking the risk of her being rescued later and saying she had been robbed by unknown men. She was rescued and brought to Palermo. In the hospital she begged Cecè to put an end to her:

“What is the use of living? My daughter is dead, my arm is gangrened, my money is stolen. Let me die and have done with it.”

Cecè did not kill her, he chloroformed her and amputated her arm. She gave information about the carbonajo, who was arrested in Messina. His accomplice escaped, but the woman got back her money and thanked Cecè for amputating her arm instead of killing her.