Tales of My Native Town

by Gabriele D'Annunzio

VIII MUNGIA

Through all the country of Pescara, San Silvestro, Fontanella, San Rocco, even as far as Spoltore, and through all the farms of Vallelonga beyond Allento and particularly in the little boroughs where sailors meet near the mouth of the river,—through all this country, where the houses are built of clay and of reeds, and the fire material is supplied by drift wood from the sea, for many years a Catholic rhapsodist with a barbarian and piratical name, who is as blind as the ancient Homer, has been famous.

Mungia begins his peregrinations at the beginning of spring, and ends them with the first frosts of October. He goes about the country, conducted by a woman and a child. Into the peaceful gardens and the serenity of the fields he brings his lamenting religious songs, antiphonies, preludes and responses of the offices of the dead. His figure is so familiar to all, that even the dogs in the backyards do not bark at his approach. He announces his advent with a trill from his clarionet, and at the well-known signal, the old wives come out upon the thresholds to welcome him, place his chair under the shade of a tree in the yard, and make inquiries as to his health. All the peasants come from their work, and form a subdued and awed circle about him, while with their hard hands they wipe the perspiration of toil from their foreheads, and, still holding their implements, assume a reverent attitude. Their bare arms and legs are knotted and misshapen from the severe toil of the fields; their twisted bodies have taken on the hue of the earth—working in the soil from the dawn of day, they seem to have something in common with the trees and the roots.

A sort of religious solemnity is thrown over everything by this blind man. It is not the sun, it is not the fulness of the earth, not the joy of spring vegetation, not the sounds of the distant choruses that gives to all the feeling of admiration, of devotion, and more than all, the sadness of religion. One of the old women gives the name of a departed relative to whom she wishes to offer songs and oblations. Mungia uncovers his head.

His wide shining cranium appears encircled with white hair; his whole face, which in its quiet calm has the appearance of a mask, wrinkles up when he takes the clarionet in his mouth. Upon his temples, under his eyes, beside his ears, around his nostrils and at the corners of his mouth, a thousand lines become visible, some delicate, some deep, changing with the rhythm of the music by which he is inspired. His nerves are at a tension, and over his jaw bones the purple veins show, like those of the turning vine-leaves in the autumn, the lower eyelid is turned outward, showing a reddish line, over his whole face the tough skin is tightly drawn, giving the appearance of a wonderful carving in relief; the light plays over the face with its short, stiff, and badly shaved beard, and over the neck, with its deep hollows, between the long still cords which stand out prominently, flashing like dew upon a warty and mouldy pumpkin; and, as he plays, a thousand vibrating minor notes float out upon the air, and the humble head takes on an appearance of mystery. His fingers press the unsteady keys of the box-wood clarionet, and the notes pour out. The instrument itself seems almost human, and to breathe with life, as inanimate objects which have been long and intimately associated with men often do; the wood has an unctuous glare; the holes, which in the winter months become the nests of little spiders, are still filled with cobwebs and dust; the keys are stained with verdigris; in places beeswax has been employed to cover up breaks; the joints are held together with paper and thread, while about the edge one can still see the ornaments of its youth. The blind man’s voice rises weak and uncertain, his fingers move mechanically, searching for the notes of a prelude, or an interlude of days long passed.

His long, deformed hands, with knots upon the phalanges of the first three fingers, and with the nails of his thumbs depressed and white in colour, resemble somewhat the hands of a decrepit monkey; the backs are of the unhealthy colour of decayed fruit, a mixture of pink, yellow and blue shades; the palms show a net-work of lines and furrows, and between the fingers the skin is blistered.

When he has finished the prelude, Mungia begins to sing, “Libera Me Domine,” and “Ne Recorderis,” slowly, and upon a modulation of five notes. The Latin words of the song are interspersed with his native idioms, and now and then, to fill out the metrical rhythm, he inserts an adverb ending in ente, which he follows with heavy rhymes; he raises his voice in these parts, then lowers it in the less fatiguing lines. The name of Jesus runs often through the rhapsody; not without a certain dramatic movement. The passion of Jesus is narrated in verses of five lines.

The peasants listen with an air of devotion, watching the blind man’s mouth as he sings. In the season, the chorus of the vintagers comes from the fields, vieing with the notes of the pious songs; Mungia, whose hearing is weak, sings on of the mysteries of death; his lips adhere to his toothless gums, and the saliva runs down and drips from his chin; placing the clarionet again to his lips, he begins the intermezzo, then takes up the rhymes again, and so continues to the end. His recompense is a small measure of corn and a bottle of wine or a bunch of onions, and sometimes a hen.

He rises from his chair, a tall, emaciated figure, with bent back and knees turning a little backward. He wears upon his head a large green cap, and no matter what the season, he is wrapped in a peasant cloak falling from his throat below his knees and fastened with two brass buckles. He moves with difficulty, at times stopping to cough.

When October comes, and the vineyards have been vintaged and the yards are filled with mud and gravel, he withdraws into a garret, which he shares with a tailor who has a paralytic wife, and a street pauper with nine children who are variously afflicted with scrofula and the rickets. On pleasant days he is taken to the arch of Portanova, and sits upon a rock in the sun, while he softly sings the “De Profundis” to keep his throat in condition. On these occasions, mendicants of all sorts gather around him, men with dislocated limbs, hunchbacks, cripples, paralytics, lepers, women covered with wounds and scabs, toothless women, and those without eyebrows and without hair; children, green as locusts, emaciated, with sharp, savage eyes, like birds of prey; taciturn, with mouths already withered; children who bear in their blood diseases inherited from the monster Poverty; all of that miserable, degenerate rabble, the remnants of a decrepit race. These ragged children of God come to gather about the singer, and speak to him as one of themselves.