Castellinaria, and Other Sicilian Diversions

by Henry Festing Jones

Before Messina can be rebuilt on its old site, the ruins must be cleared away and the disputes about the boundaries must be settled, and this will take time. Meanwhile the people are living in the wooden bungalows of a New Messina which is growing up outside the old town. I spent two days there in the spring of 1910 and again in 1911. The Viale San Martino is the principal street. There are hotels, bookshops, sweet-shops, tobacconists, jewellers, butchers, restaurants with tables ready spread, and the lottery offices are open. Most of the huts have no upper storey and some are no bigger than half a dozen sentry boxes knocked into one. It is very dusty. The boys are crying papers up and down the street, there are barbers’ saloni and shops with silver-topped canes. The earthquake

seems to be forgotten in the intensity of the bubbling life. As I passed the Municipio in a side street, I saw a wedding party going in. One evening I went to the theatre and saw Feudalismo with Giovanni Grasso, a homonymous cousin of the great Giovanni, in the principal part and Turiddu’s mother, Signora Balistrieri, as one of the women.

The first time I was in Messina after the earthquake all this was only beginning and many of the people were living in railway waggons in the sidings, of which few now remain. It was strange to see rows of railway carriages with curtains to the windows and some with steps up to the door and a little terrace outside with creepers growing over it. The cabins and the waggons are supposed to be safe, because they would not crush their tenants in another earthquake. But they do not seriously fear another earthquake; Messina has been so thoroughly destroyed that it must now be the turn of some other town.

I replied: “Yes, the Veil of S. Agata preserved Catania this time, but it may desert her next time as the Letter of the Madonna deserted you last winter. By the by, what has become of that miraculous Letter? Was it destroyed or did anyone save it?”

They did not know and muttered something about “stupidagini,” and perhaps there will be no need to trouble oneself with any such thoughts when one is living the life after death. Later on, in another part of the island, I asked a dignitary of the Church, who had not been through the earthquake, what had become of the Madonna’s Letter and he assured me that it had been preserved. I had pretty well made up my mind that this would be his answer before putting the question; but if the earthquake had destroyed Girgenti and I had asked him about the letter from the Devil, which is said to be preserved in the cathedral there, I should have expected him to tell me that that letter had not survived the shock.

GIUSEPPE PLATANIA

In Catania I saw my friend Lieutenant Giuseppe Platania, who was quartered in Messina during the winter of 1908-9. He was away for Christmas and returned about midnight on the 27th December and went to bed at two in the morning on the 28th. He was awakened by the falling of a picture, which hit him. He guessed the reason, covered his head with the pillows and lay still, waiting. He had to wait fifty-seven seconds—at least many people told me the earthquake lasted fifty-seven seconds, but the recording instruments were broken, so it is not certain how long it lasted. When the room left off rocking, Giuseppe put out his hand for the match-box, but the table was no longer by his bedside. He heard cries for help, and a man who was sleeping in the next room came with a light, then he saw that the floor of his room had fallen, but not under his bed, which was in a corner. He and the man with the light managed to get to the window and let themselves down into a side street, but they saw no way out because the exit was closed by the fallen houses. Their window was on the first floor and they climbed back into the house, helped another man who was there, got themselves some clothes and returned into the side street. Here they felt no better off and were afraid of the houses falling on them, but Giuseppe’s soldier servant, Giulio Giuli, a contadino of Nocera, appeared among them. He had come to look for his master and crept through the ruins into the side street. He told them that Messina was destroyed, which they would not believe; everyone seems to have supposed at first that the earthquake had only damaged his own house. Giulio showed them the way out, and so they got into the town and realised the extent of the disaster. If Giulio had not come, Giuseppe and his friends would probably have been destroyed by more houses falling into their narrow street before they could have found a way out.

Giuseppe had changed his bedroom about ten days

previously. The house he used to live in was completely destroyed, he showed me a photograph of its ruins. His mother and his brother Giovanni, in Catania, heard of the disaster, but could get no particulars because communication was broken. Giovanni went to Messina to inquire for his brother, not knowing where his new room was, but he knew the number of his regiment. He stopped a soldier in the street who was wearing the number in his cap and who told him where to find Giuseppe. In the meantime Giulio had walked about fifteen miles to Alì, whence he took the train to Catania, told the mother her son was safe, and returned to Messina to help in the work of rescuing victims.

Giuseppe directed his soldiers in the rescue work and afterwards received a medal “Per speciali benemerenze.” While at work they saw a hand among the ruins and began to dig round it, all the time in fear lest the disturbing of the rubbish might make matters worse for the victim and for themselves. The hand belonged to a woman whose head had been protected by being under a wooden staircase. She showed no sign of life and it was already four days since the disaster. They wetted her lips with marsala and poured some into her mouth and thus restored her. Giuseppe told me that nothing made more impression on him than seeing this woman’s breast begin to heave as life returned.