However, the touch of the ridiculous that turns tears to laughter is never far away in Sicily. Turning into a side street, one of those little gradini or flights of slippery stone steps which make up most of Taormina’s lesser byways, and thinking only of the funeral, we were suddenly halted by two of the juvenile troubadours who lie in wait for strangers, or patrol the streets, seeking whom they may charm. They sprang out at our approach, struck tragic attitudes, and began to shout out an old pirate song at the top of their thin little pipes. Lustily they sang, till the veins in their small foreheads bulged blue with the effort, screaming out the bloodthirsty words of the ancient ditty with gusto, and acting their parts like veterans. It was all so sudden, so utterly ludicrous, that we laughed until we cried. The moment we began to laugh, the larger boy frowned, stopped singing, and shaking his pudgy fist at us indignantly, announced: “I am a singer! A very good singer—you listen to me!”
No cosmopolitan tenor could have put more outraged dignity and temperament into a protest. But sturdily they began all over. Here and there we caught a phrase about a wicked captain who stole a lovely maiden from her doting parents and took her away on his rakish barque to rove the smiling seas. Before I could reward them a large boy, who had kept away the crowd during the singing of the infant highwaymen, touched me on the arm.
“Signore—you should pay me all. I....”
“Oh-ho! So you think you are their impresario, do you?” I demanded.
“Sissignore! Si! Si!” he exclaimed joyfully, not in the least understanding anything but that I seemed willing to play into his hands.
“Are you a relative of the great Hammerstein?” I asked.
“Probably, sir. I do not know. Does the gentleman live in Taormina?”
Just then an ancient crone, toothless, and gifted, if anyone ever was, with the “evil eye,” pinched my arm with a vigor astonishing in so aged a creature, and shrilly demanded her gift. Annoyed, I asked her as gently as possible, while the crowd grinned in derision: “But what have you done that I should pay you?”
“Done!” she retorted. “Done! It is enough—am I not here?”
