Castellinaria, and Other Sicilian Diversions

by Henry Festing Jones

Totò told me that he was sleeping at home when the earthquake woke him up, and that he and the others in his house ran out naked as they were into the street and saw the house fall; they were only just in time. His father, who was in Reggio, was saved, but one of his sisters was killed with her husband and three children.

This is all the conversation I had with Totò in Catania; next day on my inquiring for him they told me he had caught cold and had not come to the Albergo. I left without seeing him again and next time I was in Catania they told me he had gone away and they did not know his address. Possibly he has disappeared for ever, but it is

more probable that, like other meteoric bodies, he will cross my path again some day.

TURIDDU BALISTRIERI

Among the members of Giovanni’s company whose acquaintance I made during my week in Messina were two ladies who acted under their maiden names, viz. Marinella Bragaglia and Carolina Balistrieri; the first is married to Vittorio Marazzi and the second to Corrado Bragaglia, Corrado being the brother of Marinella. I also often saw in the theatre Turiddu (Salvatore) Balistrieri, brother of Carolina and therefore brother-in-law to Corrado and brother-in-law by marriage (or whatever the correct expression may be and, if there is no correct expression, then compare di parentela) to Vittorio and Marinella Marazzi. He was just over eleven, not a member of the company but, being at school in Messina, his sister had taken him to stay with her for the week, and we became great friends. I was thinking of him when writing about Micio buying chocolate and story-books at Castellinaria in Chapter XVIII of Diversions in Sicily. When Giovanni and the company departed from Messina to continue their tour, Turiddu and his younger brother, Gennaro, remained in Messina with their professor and, as their mother, Signora Balistrieri, was touring with another company in South America, they had no home to go to for Christmas and remained with the professor for the holidays.

On the 27th December, Giovanni and his company, after being in Egypt and in Russia, arrived at Udine, north of Venice. They heard nothing of the earthquake until the evening of the 29th December, about forty hours after the event, when the news reached them in the theatre during the performance of La Figlia di Jorio. The next day Giovanni and six of the company started for Messina; they wanted to ascertain for themselves the extent of the

disaster and whether the earthquake had affected Catania, where most of their relations and friends were. Among the six were Corrado Bragaglia and Vittorio Marazzi, whose particular object was to find out what had happened to Turiddu and Gennaro. When the company came to London in the spring of 1910 Corrado gave me an account of their adventures. They arrived in Naples where they were delayed a day, which they spent in meeting fugitives, but they heard no news of the boys. They reached Messina on the 1st January and, taking a basket of provisions and medicines, started for the professor’s house, treading on dead bodies as they walked through the falling rain and fearing lest another shock might come or that at any moment some already shattered house might fall on them. The professor’s apartments were on the first and second floors of one side of a courtyard that stood between a street and a torrent; the front doors of the different apartments opened into the court as in a college building; the professor’s side of the court was nearest the torrent and did not fall, but the other three sides of the court fell and the houses on the opposite side of the street fell, so that the debris made it difficult to approach the street door of the court and still more difficult afterwards to approach the doors of the different sets of apartments.

They found the landlord of the house, and he showed them that the professor’s part of the house had not fallen and told them that the professor and his family had escaped and, he believed, had been taken to Naples or Catania, or—he did not know where. This was satisfactory, at least they no longer thought the children were buried in the ruins, but it did not give much information as to their whereabouts. They went to the station and got a permission to go to Catania. The train was crowded with fugitives, some wounded, some unhurt, and during the journey a passenger gave birth to a baby.

In Catania they asked of Madama Ciccia (i.e. Signora Grasso, Giovanni’s mother), who would certainly have

heard if the children had been seen in the city, but she knew nothing. They sought out the boys’ grandmother, the mother of Signora Balistrieri, but she was not at home, she had deserted her house for fear of another earthquake and had been sleeping in the piazza. They inquired at the hospital and at the institutions where fugitives had been taken. They advertised. They actually found a professor from Messina with pupils, but it was not the one they wanted. They went to Siracusa, to Malta, to Palermo, to Trapani; they got no information and returned to Catania. Then they were struck with remorse for not having entered the professor’s house in Messina—they had only spoken to the landlord—the boys might be buried there after all, alive or dead. They returned to Messina and entered the house; it was all in confusion; they looked through it, but found no trace of the children.