On this same Via Maqueda are the two large theaters. The Mássimo, or Largest Theater, is a splendid structure, well named, for it is the largest theater not only in Italy but in all Europe, a dignified adaptation of ancient Greek ideals to present day needs. A block farther on is the Politeama Garibaldi, with a Roman triumphal arch entrance, and a two-storied Greek colonnade encircling frescoed walls whose polychromatic decorations are so exceedingly Pompeiian they suggest that Palermo may be the birthplace of a new renaissance in Italian art.
The Sicilian of any class is always picturesque, always individual. He could scarcely be anything else if he tried, and the life of the masses in the city is like a show at the theater—a show, at that, in which even the supernumeraries are ever imbued with due regard for the proper setting and action of the piece. There is no more typical specimen of this condensed picturesqueness than the water-seller, whose bellow has musical quality and charm, as you discover after your first shock. He calls up Egypt and the streets of Cairo. Really, he is the survival of an ancient Arab custom. You find him everywhere, especially among the lanes of the Fiera di Pascua, the Easter Fair, a piece bitten right out of the heart of Coney Island. The Easter season, by the way, is an exceedingly fortunate time to spend in Sicily, because of the multitudinous festivities going on.
For the Fair, great bare sheds spring up overnight in the square beside the Mássimo, mushroom-like—a sunstruck Babel of crazily built and decorated shops and stalls and booths where everything imaginable is to be bought, from tinware and toys to rosaries and vegetables. About the booths eddies a jovial mob, pushing, chattering, playing practical jokes on one another, eating candy and the dubious Sicilian equivalents for frankfurters and kraut. Bands blare out fitful, horrible music from the roofs or windows of small sheds curiously mounted with painted legends or astonishing pictures in which the lack of perspective is the most prominent feature, unless it is the artist’s entire disregard for the principles of anatomy. “Barkers” in plate armor manufactured out of ancient kerosene tins from which the odor has by no means departed, vie with ridiculous clowns and short skirted dancers in proclaiming the attractions of their rival marionette and “minstrel” shows. And everybody wants to pose. Indeed, the Sicilians have a good humored mania for getting in the way of the camera, even when they know they are not wanted there and will never see a single copy of the picture.
I leveled my camera at one queer stall, and instantly the people sprang together solidly, completely obscuring the booth, each man crying to his neighbor: “Aspett’! Aspett’! Il fotografo!” In vain I pleaded. In vain Gualterio shouted and threatened and argued. The merrymakers laughed, and nodded, and stood like statues. In the confusion an important policeman stepped up, saluted respectfully, and said: “Excellency will be kind enough to move out into the street again. He is attracting citizens, and blocking the entire square.”
Then he began unhurriedly turning over the human kaleidoscope.
III
A NIGHT OF DISSIPATION
PALERMO is chimneyless. Hovels and palaces alike have no fires, except for cooking, and among the poorer classes very little of that is done at home, the people being steady patrons of the cucine economice, or “economical kitchens,” especially of those in the vicinity of the great public markets.
Anxious to see these typical aspects of city life in tabloid form, we had our own dinner early one evening, and told Gualterio to take us through the poorer quarters, to show us the people getting their suppers, both at home and in the old market. Obeying literally, he drove us through countless piccoli vicoli or narrow alleys, dark little canyon-like slits between the houses.
Strange shadowy forms flitted about under our horse’s very feet; black doorways gave yawning glimpses of deeper gloom beyond, lighted only by a tiny candle; here and there we passed vague silhouettes—a hungry man standing, hat on, before a table or sideboard gulping down his meager dinner, or a woman, Rembrandt-like, knitting, mending, reading, or amusing a child, in soft relief against the murk of the interior. Sharp cries from the driver warned away the children sitting in the street, so narrow that the wheels of our carriage scraped the house walls on both sides while going through; women knitting slipped their chairs momentarily back into the doorways in order to let us pass. Street lamps at long intervals twinkled feebly, and after six or eight such streets were traversed we emerged into the glare and brilliance of the slightly depressed Piazza Caraccioli, home of the Fiera Vecchia or Old Market.