“Ma! Perche andare a Venezia?”
“Sono marinaio.”
“Ah! Marinaio! Bene!” and without even calling for my papers they strutted on along the highway.
A wonderful word is this Italian “ma.” Let not the uninitiated suppose that the term designates a maternal ancestor. But—and that is its real meaning—it is a useful vocable and like all useful things is greatly overworked. If an Italian of the masses wishes to express disgust, surprise, resignation, depression of spirits, or any one of a score of other impressions, he has merely to say “ma” with the corresponding accentuation and timbre and his hearers know his opinion exactly. It takes the place of our “All right!” “Hurry up!” “Quit it!” “Let ’er go!” “The devil he did!” “Rot!” “Dew tell!” “Cuss the luck!” “Nuff said!” “D—n it!” and there its meanings by no means cease.
Poverty stalks abroad in Italy. Even in this richer northern section it required no telescope to make out its gaunt and furrowed features. Ragged children quarrelled for the possession of an apple-core thrown by the wayside; the rolling fields were alive with barefooted women toiling like demon-driven serfs. A sparrow could not have found sustenance behind the gleaners. In wayside orchards men armed with grain-sacks stripped even the trees of their leaves; for what purpose was not evident, though the beds to which I was assigned in village inns suggested a possible solution of the problem.
The peasant of these parts possesses three beasts of burden: a team of gaunt white oxen—or cows—an undersized ass, and his wife. Of the three, the last is most useful. The husbandman does not load his hay on wagons; a few blades might fall by the wayside. He ties it carefully in small bundles, piles them high above the baskets strapped on the backs of his helpmeet, and drives her off to the village, often miles distant. They are loads which the American workman would refuse to carry—so does the Italian for that matter; but the highway is animate with what look, at a distance, like wandering haystacks, from beneath which, on nearer approach, peer women, or half-grown girls, whose drawn and haggard faces might have served as models to those artists who have depicted on canvas the beings of Dante’s hell.
A traveler, ignorant of Italian, wandering into Como at my heels on that sweltering afternoon, would have been justified in supposing that the advance agent of a circus had preceded him. Had he taken the trouble to engage an interpreter, however, he would have learned that a more serious catastrophe had befallen. The very night before a longed-hoped-for heir to the throne of Vittore Emanuele had dropped into his reserved seat on the neck of the Italian tax-payer. On the city gate, on house-walls everywhere, on the very façade of the cathedral, great, paste-sweating placards announced the casuality in flaunting head-lines, and a greater aggregation of adjectives than would be required in our own over-postered land to call public attention to the merits of Chow Chow Chewing Gum, or the Yum Yum Burlesque Company. Worst of all, the manifesto ended, not with expressions of condolence to the proletariat, but with a command to swear at once loyalty and fealty to “Il Principe di Piemonte.” Everywhere jostling groups were engrossed in spelling out the proclamation; but it was quite possible to pass through the streets of Como without being trampled under foot by its citizens in their mad rush to carry out the royal order.
Nightfall found me in quest of a lodging in Pusiano, a lakeside village midway between Como and Lecco. It was no easy task. The alberghi of Italy—but why generalize? They are all tarred with the same stick. The proprietor, then, of the Pusiano hostelry, relying for his custom on those who know every in and out of the town, had not gone to the expense of erecting a sign. I found, after long and diligent search, the edifice that included the public resort under its roof; but as the inn had no door opening on the street, I was still faced with the problem of finding the entrance. Of two dark passages and a darker stairway before me, it was a question which was most suggestive of pitfalls set for unwary travelers, and of dank, underground dungeons. I plunged into one of the tunnels with my hands on the defensive; which was fortunate, for I brought up against a stone wall. The second passage ended as abruptly. I approached the stairway stealthily; stumbled up the stone steps, over a stray cat and a tin pan, and into the common room of the Pusiano inn—common because it served as kitchen, dining-room, parlor, and office.
My wants made known, the proprietor half rose to his feet, sat down again, and motioned me to a seat. I took a place opposite him on one of the two benches inside the fire-place, partly because it had been raining outside, but chiefly on account of an absence of chairs that left me no choice in the matter. Shrouded in silence I filled my pipe. The landlord handed me a glowing coal in his fingers and dropped back on his bench without once subduing his stare. His wife wandered in and placed several pots and kettles around the fire that toasted our heels. Still not a word. I leaned back and, gazing upward, watched as much of the smoke as could find no other vent pass up the chimney. Now and then a drop of rain fell with a hiss on pan or kettle.
“Not nice weather,” grinned the landlord, and the ice thus broken, we were soon engaged in animated conversation. Too animated in fact, for in emphasizing some opinion mine host had the misfortune to kick over a kettle of boiling macaroni and was banished from the chimney corner by a raging spouse. Being less given to pedal gesticulation, I kept my place, and strove to answer the questions which the exile fired at me across the room.