Castellinaria, and Other Sicilian Diversions

by Henry Festing Jones

TURIDDU BALISTRIERI

Among the members of Giovanni’s company whose acquaintance I made during my week in Messina were two ladies who acted under their maiden names, viz. Marinella Bragaglia and Carolina Balistrieri; the first is married to Vittorio Marazzi and the second to Corrado Bragaglia, Corrado being the brother of Marinella. I also often saw in the theatre Turiddu (Salvatore) Balistrieri, brother of Carolina and therefore brother-in-law to Corrado and brother-in-law by marriage (or whatever the correct expression may be and, if there is no correct expression, then compare di parentela) to Vittorio and Marinella Marazzi. He was just over eleven, not a member of the company but, being at school in Messina, his sister had taken him to stay with her for the week, and we became great friends. I was thinking of him when writing about Micio buying chocolate and story-books at Castellinaria in Chapter XVIII of Diversions in Sicily. When Giovanni and the company departed from Messina to continue their tour, Turiddu and his younger brother, Gennaro, remained in Messina with their professor and, as their mother, Signora Balistrieri, was touring with another company in South America, they had no home to go to for Christmas and remained with the professor for the holidays.

On the 27th December, Giovanni and his company, after being in Egypt and in Russia, arrived at Udine, north of Venice. They heard nothing of the earthquake until the evening of the 29th December, about forty hours after the event, when the news reached them in the theatre during the performance of La Figlia di Jorio. The next day Giovanni and six of the company started for Messina; they wanted to ascertain for themselves the extent of the

disaster and whether the earthquake had affected Catania, where most of their relations and friends were. Among the six were Corrado Bragaglia and Vittorio Marazzi, whose particular object was to find out what had happened to Turiddu and Gennaro. When the company came to London in the spring of 1910 Corrado gave me an account of their adventures. They arrived in Naples where they were delayed a day, which they spent in meeting fugitives, but they heard no news of the boys. They reached Messina on the 1st January and, taking a basket of provisions and medicines, started for the professor’s house, treading on dead bodies as they walked through the falling rain and fearing lest another shock might come or that at any moment some already shattered house might fall on them. The professor’s apartments were on the first and second floors of one side of a courtyard that stood between a street and a torrent; the front doors of the different apartments opened into the court as in a college building; the professor’s side of the court was nearest the torrent and did not fall, but the other three sides of the court fell and the houses on the opposite side of the street fell, so that the debris made it difficult to approach the street door of the court and still more difficult afterwards to approach the doors of the different sets of apartments.

They found the landlord of the house, and he showed them that the professor’s part of the house had not fallen and told them that the professor and his family had escaped and, he believed, had been taken to Naples or Catania, or—he did not know where. This was satisfactory, at least they no longer thought the children were buried in the ruins, but it did not give much information as to their whereabouts. They went to the station and got a permission to go to Catania. The train was crowded with fugitives, some wounded, some unhurt, and during the journey a passenger gave birth to a baby.

In Catania they asked of Madama Ciccia (i.e. Signora Grasso, Giovanni’s mother), who would certainly have

heard if the children had been seen in the city, but she knew nothing. They sought out the boys’ grandmother, the mother of Signora Balistrieri, but she was not at home, she had deserted her house for fear of another earthquake and had been sleeping in the piazza. They inquired at the hospital and at the institutions where fugitives had been taken. They advertised. They actually found a professor from Messina with pupils, but it was not the one they wanted. They went to Siracusa, to Malta, to Palermo, to Trapani; they got no information and returned to Catania. Then they were struck with remorse for not having entered the professor’s house in Messina—they had only spoken to the landlord—the boys might be buried there after all, alive or dead. They returned to Messina and entered the house; it was all in confusion; they looked through it, but found no trace of the children.

All this took them seven days, during which they scarcely ate and scarcely slept. They knew that if the boys had really been taken to Naples they were probably safe, and now they went there considering that they had done their best with Sicily. In Naples they inquired at the official places, at the hospitals and at the offices of the newspapers where they could see the lists of names before they were published. They found nothing and their thoughts went back to Messina; they wondered whether the children might perhaps have been crushed by a falling house in the streets, and whether they ought to return. In the evening they went to a caffè to read the lists, and by chance took up a Roman paper. They could hardly believe their eyes when they read the names of Turiddu and Gennaro among those who had been taken to the Instituto Vittoria Colonna in Naples. They went there at once, but it was already late at night and the place was shut. Unable to think of eating or sleeping they walked about the streets till six in the morning, when they returned and were admitted. They stated their business, inquired for the children, produced photographs and, after a little delay, Turiddu

and Gennaro came running to them naked. It took some days of red tape, including a legal act whereby Corrado constituted himself their second father, before they were allowed to remove the boys. At last on the 11th January they took possession of them and dressed them in the street with clothes they had bought. Corrado had telegraphed to his wife and to the other relations, and they left Naples and rejoined the company at Udine, where they arrived on the 14th. One of the actors when he saw the children fainted and Corrado was ill for days with a fever.

Turiddu wrote to me from Naples to tell me he was saved, and by August, 1909, when I went to Sicily again, he had left Giovanni and the company and returned to Naples, where I found him and Gennaro with the professor and his family, living in two rooms of an establishment where emigrants are put to wait for their ships to take them to America. They told me their experiences. In Messina the family had consisted of the professor, his wife, his niece (a studentessa), Turiddu and Gennaro with two of their school-fellows, one named Peppino, son of a well-to-do dealer in iron bedsteads, and another named Luigi, son of a well-to-do orange-merchant, who had gone to visit his uncle for Christmas. There was also a servant girl who had gone that night to stay with her people. The parents of Peppino and Luigi were both killed in their houses; fortunately for Peppino he had not gone home or he would probably have been killed. Luigi also escaped because the house of his uncle did not fall or, if it fell, it did not kill him. The servant, who had gone home, was killed.

They puzzled me by their attempts to explain why the professor’s side of the courtyard did not fall. It seems it was partly because, being near the torrent, it had been built more strongly than the other three sides; that was not all, there was also something about a Japanese gentleman who had studied earthquakes at home and who had hurried to Messina, visited the spot and declared that the direction of the shock was from (say) east to west, had it been from

west to east the side near the torrent would certainly have fallen. It may have been north to south—my thoughts had wandered again to the Tower of Siloam. Turiddu, however, had a reason for not being killed in the earthquake; he is naturally lucky because he was born with a caul; he keeps most of it at home and speaks of it as his cammisedda, which is Sicilian for camicetta, his little shirt. He carries a small piece of it in his watch-case, and offered to give it to me as a ricordo, but I thought he had better keep it all; it cannot be lucky to give away any of one’s luck.

While Turiddu was with Giovanni and the company touring in North Italy, he wrote, by desire of his professor, a sort of holiday task about the earthquake. He gave it to me afterwards, when I saw him in Naples, and I have translated it. The passages in square brackets are additions I have made from information the family gave me in Naples.

SUBJECT

Describe all that you saw before and after the earthquake.

DESCRIPTION

It was an ugly winter evening and the last day of the Christmas holidays. I was playing with nuts with my companions. About six o’clock we dined and, after we had finished, we began to play at Sette e Mezzo Reale

“My dear Nunzia, listen to these few words and bear them in mind: This is a fatal night, it is a horrible night.”

His wife asked, “What are you saying?”

Then the professor replied, “Either we shall have some kind of storm or there will be a great earthquake or a deluge.” To these words we paid no attention, but went on with our game.

At one o’clock after midnight we extinguished the acetylene gas and went to bed, where we immediately fell asleep.

At half-past five after midnight there came a great earthquake. I and my companions began to cry and recommend ourselves to God who can save from every calamity.

After the earthquake was over we dressed in haste and frenzy and went out [into the courtyard], but we could not pass the front door [into the street] because it was blocked with ruins. Presently our professor crawled out through a hole and we followed him.

In the piazza we saw sights that tore our hearts, and we wept as we thought of those poor unhappy children left without parents or relations. And we thanked God who had saved us from such a great disaster. Every few moments there came more shocks, and there were we weeping and recommending ourselves to the Lord.

As day broke we saw many wretched creatures being dragged out from under the heaps of rubbish and being put on carts or laid on the ground.

We began to feel hungry and begged our professor to buy us some bread, but he replied:

“There is no place where bread can be bought, we must therefore take courage, climb back into the house and get a few nuts.”

[This re-entering the house was dangerous because it might have fallen when they were inside, but they managed it in safety and returned with some maccaroni and bread, also some nuts and two sticks of dried figs which were there for the festa of Christmas.]

We began to eat the food and, seeing some children near us who also were hungry, were moved to compassion for their condition and gave them each something.

In this way we supported life for two days, but on the third day the food was finished.

[During these two days they were in the ruins of a fish-market, which was better than being out in the open, but not much because the roof was broken. They only had such clothes as they had snatched up in their haste and these were wet through and saturated with mud up to the knees. They caught colds and the professor was ill for months.]

All day long, bodies were being extricated from the ruins and we could hardly bear the stench; to make matters worse it was raining, the houses were on fire, the air was heavy with smoke and there were constant shocks of earthquake. It seemed like the end of the world.

On the third day I went with our professor to the port to inquire whether the survivors would be taken to Naples. The captain replied “Yes.” We returned to the market and our path lay among the wounded and the dead.

When we had reached shelter our professor said:

“Let us take courage and return into the house to bring out some clothes and linen and the certificates of my niece.” We went to the house, but the door was jammed by reason of the earthquake. While we were shaking it, there came another shock. We remembered another door, which we opened, we went in and found the certificates and brought away all such other things as we thought likely to be useful for the moment and gradually carried them down. Our professor’s niece made the things up into bundles and put them on our shoulders and so, passing the heaps of dead bodies, of rubbish and ruins, we went to the railway station.

Here they made us get into a second-class carriage, which we supposed would start for Catania, and we had nothing to eat but oranges, which were given us by a soldier.

[It must have been while they were in this carriage that Corrado and Vittorio went to the station and took train for Catania, passing quite close to them and not seeing them. There were twelve waggon-loads of oranges which had come from Catania before the disaster in the course of trade, and orders were given that they were to be distributed among the survivors. Thus the waggons were emptied and people could be put into them.]

Opposite us was a waggon full of soldiers and sailors. Our professor’s niece called a soldier and begged him not to forget us. He immediately brought us three loaves of bread, five flasks of wine, three tins of preserved meat and some sausage.

Imagine our happiness when we saw that meat after those days of hunger! We drank the wine at once because we had nowhere else to put it and the soldiers wanted their flasks back. We were eating oranges all the time, because they gave us plenty.

After we had been in this waggon two days, one of the railway-men told us that there had come a German steamer which would take us to Naples. We took with us some bread, some oranges and a little salame which we had over, and went to the port, where, fortunately, we found a boat which took us to the steamer.

At five minutes past eleven on the sixth day as the steamer departed from Messina, the professor, his wife and his niece began to cry.

The German sailors prepared bread and also basins of soup with pasta in it, and when the bell sounded at noon they distributed the food among us all.

When we had eaten it, we went below to see whether the women required anything.

At half-past four they gave us soup with rice in it and plenty of meat. Then the captain ordered that the fugitives should go below. We were taken into the second-class cabin which was set apart for the women and children.

Next day when we arrived at Naples they would not let us disembark till we had had coffee, after which we all collected and were landed in boats. First, however, they made all the men descend into one boat and in another boat all the women.

When we had disembarked at Naples they at once wanted all our names and then took us to an institution called “Vittoria Colonna,” where in order to restore us we were each given a good cup of coffee and milk.

this little description
of
28 december 1908
written at bologna 27. 1. 09
is presented to
mr. henry festing jones
who will preserve it as a lasting record
of
turiddu balistrieri
fugitive from messina

While they were in Messina the children and the niece slept at night, but the professor and his wife did not sleep at all, and for two of the days the professor and his wife ate nothing and drank nothing. They were able to collect drops of rain water, especially when they were in the railway carriage where they had a roof, and they sometimes

collected a little wood and made a fire. Earthquake shocks were continually occurring.

The professor is also an imbalsamatore and, as an example of his skill, gave me a stuffed bird which I was to take to London. He said it was a kind of quail, a bird that reposes near Messina when migrating. His niece, the studentessa, gave me as a ricordo a pin-cushion; on one side it has an advertisement of a shop in Messina and on the other a picture of a lady trying on a new garter, which has been bought at the shop and which fits perfectly to the delight of her maid and the astonishment of her grandmother. They had saved these things after the earthquake. One does not look a gift-horse in the mouth, but I have sometimes wondered whether the buffo’s Cold Dawn had followed the professor and the studentessa in their flight and whispered to them that they had saved the wrong objects. Still, a pin-cushion is always useful.