missed the Last Supper, arriving just before the curtain rose on the garden. It was a beautiful scene. Christ was kneeling at a rock in the background, the disciples were sleeping in the foreground and the wings were hidden by branches of real trees. An angel descended with a cup from which the principal figure drank. When the angel had departed there was a pause—the lights changed and through the silence we heard the tramp, tramp of approaching people; soldiers came on preceded by Judas, who betrayed his Master with a kiss, Peter cut off Malchus’s right ear, the Nazarene was taken and the curtain fell.
WEDNESDAY
Turiddu came in the morning and we conducted my friends round the town. We went to the shop where the old Swiss watchmaker sells the amber of which Brancaccia’s necklace is made; we went to the market, where we ate a prickly pear, just to see what it was like, and the man politely refused payment because we were foreigners; in the market also we bought bergamot snuff-boxes; we then showed them the port, where they bought crockery, and the Villa Bellini, where they took photographs; after which we went back to the albergo, where we had luncheon. Then we accompanied them to the station and saw them off for Taormina. Turiddu was as pleased as anyone, he liked making the acquaintance of his compare’s English friends and they thought him a delightful boy. Strictly speaking they were not English; the two ladies were Inglesi Americane, which Turiddu said he understood because his mother had acted in the Argentina and, though South America is not North America, it appeared pedantic to insist on the distinction. The two gentlemen, again, were really Inglesi Irlandesi, and here also we were in trouble because he mistook Irlandesi for Olandesi and thought they were what we should call Boers.
After they had gone I went to the Teatro Sicilia to learn
what I had missed by not seeing the Cena. Carmelo told me that when Christ has spoken the words “This is my body” he breaks the bread and gives each of the apostles a piece. Judas does not eat his piece, he steals it and leaves the room. In his absence Christ blesses the wine and gives the others to drink, he washes their feet and they go out to the Mount of Olives. This is followed by a scene of Judas coming to Annas and Caiaphas, showing his piece of bread and telling them that he had heard Christ speak blasphemy. Carmelo explained that the priests were Hebrews—there were Hebrews, he said, in those days, living in that country—and Hebrews believe that bread is the Body of God; therefore for a man—and they thought Christ was merely a man—to declare that the bread was his body amounted to blasphemy. This was evidence against the Nazarene; it carried the story on a step and the plotting priests prepared everything for the betrayal and capture of Christ—the final scene which we saw.
I did not know, or had forgotten, that Hebrews were so particular about bread, but Carmelo assured me that they never throw bread away, and if they find a piece on the floor they pick it up and put it in a hole in the wall and keep it. It may be eaten, but may never be otherwise destroyed. I thought of Ruskin telling his readers in The Elements of Drawing that stale crumb of bread is better than india-rubber to rub out their mistakes, but “it crumbles about the room and makes a mess; and besides, you waste the good bread, which is wrong; and your drawing will not for a long while be worth the crumbs. So use india-rubber very lightly.”
“Are you a Christian?” asked Carmelo suddenly.
I was not embarrassed. A few days before, when one of the priests at Tindaro asked me the same question, I replied that I had been baptised into the Christian faith soon after birth. The priest said that between the two Churches of Rome and England there were unfortunate differences as to the mysteries but I need not concern
myself with them. “Nature does not believe in the mysteries,” said my priest, who was a most friendly person, and as I had been baptised, if I lived a good life, and he was politely certain I did, then I was a Christian. So I considered myself justified in answering Carmelo’s question in the affirmative.
In the evening I returned to the Teatro Sicilia; Carmelo put me into a good place and this time I saw the whole performance. The Nazarene was taken before Annas, Caiaphas, Pilate and Herod. The priests taxed him with being a magician. Herod proposed that he should perform a miracle if he could, but Christ was silent and did nothing. Herod therefore concluded that the priests were wrong and that Christ must be mad. He directed that he should be clothed in white and taken back to Pilate, and this was done.