Graciously a faint flush in the eastern sky increases in volume, deepens in tone; the grim pile of the volcano on the west darkens at the top, and as the ineffable pink spreads around behind it, the cone turns dead and spectral, and the thin, cottony tuft of curling smoke above the main crater eddies upward with all the seeming of steam on a foggy winter’s morning. These first changes come with the measured caution of a master painter working carefully lest through some hasty stroke he spoil the effect of the tone picture to come. The light spreads. Neither camera nor pen can keep pace with the instantaneous transformations on every side. The vast crimson-coppery disc sails slowly up in majesty to eye the little world of Taormina from behind the inky green shoulder of the Greek Theater’s hill. The upper edges of the clouds turn pink and silver; the lower, soft salmon pink, saffron, orange, gold. It is day!
There is something awe-inspiring, archaic, terrible about it all. It suggests the ancient Egyptian belief of Amen-ra riding through the horrible fastnesses of the Tuat in his sacred boat, and emerging in the glory of the resurrection.
It is a chilly performance of a spring morning, and a hungry one. At a quarter before six, an eight o’clock breakfast seems at a starving distance; so the best thing to do is to come down into the street to see the milk being delivered. Right, left, and everywhere are nothing but goats! goats! goats! the whole length of the Corso; by twos, singly, in herds of twenty or more, with a pair of fractious kids roped together under their mother’s usually wide open, yellow old eye, or tied one to each hind leg, very much to mother’s discomfort. They burst out upon the Corso from narrow little gradini as if they had been kicked out of Mola on the crags above, and had not been able to check their speed on the long roll down. The tobacconist whose shop is directly opposite the hotel, opens at dawn to catch the early trade of the Mola goatherds in snuff and sigari. If you catch his eye he will throw wide both arms to include all the goats on the Corso, and exclaim: “Latte de’capri è molto bell’!”
Take his gracefully conveyed hint, and ask for a glass. One of the ragazze—two-thirds at least of the goatherds in Taormina and Mola are young girls—milks a rich, warm, foaming pint. Whatever your misgivings, the tobacconist is quite right—“Milk of goats is very beautiful!”—very grateful to a cold and empty stomach.
The hotel is quite civilized, the honest goatherd milking his animals into bottles which he carries in under the eye of a servant whose business it is to see that there is no adulteration or watering. In the private houses still more scrupulous care is observed. Many a protesting goat is compelled to scramble up as many as four or five flights of dark and difficult stairs to be milked in the “parlor” into the suspicious or indolent housewife’s own can or bottle. The Taorminians are worried by no inspectors or supervision of their milk supply, for the purchasers are their own supervisors, and milk is one thing in Sicily absolutely above reproach.
XIV
LIGHTS AND SHADES
FOUNTAINS in Sicily occupy much the same place in the life of the people that the forum occupied in a Roman community of old. That is, the fountain and its piazza are the center for exchanging news and gossip, for recreation, for all the varied diversions the people have in common. Taormina’s principal fountain lies just outside the old wall, not far from the Porta Catania, the gate facing toward Catania. About the cool and dripping basin gather the graceful young peasant girls, balancing incredibly large and heavy amphorai of water upon their well poised heads; pretty, kittenish children and grimgaunt old rheumatic gossips; loutish waterboys in from the piana with their great barrel-carts to take the ichor of the gods back home; and generally the background for all is a fringe of seedy, admiring youths, casting sheeps’ eyes at the girls and wondering how long it will be until they can get married—or sail for America!
This particular fountain is crowned by the arms of Taormina, which consist of the twin castles of Mola and Taormina, and a mythological creature with the body of a bull, the tail of a fish and the head of a woman. Exactly what this beast is would tax the powers of the most ingenious of zoologists to explain—possibly a “nature-faker” could do it better.
From the Porta Catania the old town wall, perhaps twenty feet in height, rambles up the hillside in weird curves and abrupt angles, following the contour of the ground. Now that it is useless as a defense the thrifty Taorminians have built up a row of tiny houses which cling limpet fashion to the outside of the sturdy old masonry, through which windows have been driven that add greatly to its picturesqueness. Wonderful climbing bougainsvilleas and other vines have sprung up from the fertile soil and spread their graceful tendrils higher and higher until almost every window is smothered in a mass of tender greenery and blossom.
To see these picturesque cottages is to wish to end one’s days in one, or at least to bring some of its perfume and beauty back home. Near by a steep gradino is a floral waterfall. On the house-sides, festooning every post and projecting bit of masonry, brilliant flowers foam in pink spray, as from some perfumed fountain farther up the hill where roses distil their spicy fragrance from long, nodding branches.