Peppino brought my luggage and, with
no nonsense about what I would have for dinner or when or where I should like it, told me that it would be ready at 7.30 in the garden. Accordingly I went down punctually and found a table spread under a trellis of vines from which hung an electric light. Peppino waited on me as, according to his account, he used to do in London, and entertained me with reminiscences of his life there. He had attended divine service at St. Paul’s, which he called il Duomo di Londra, and had found it a more reverent function, though less emotional, than Mass at home. He was enthusiastic about the river Thames, the orators in Hyde Park and the shiny soldiers riding in the streets. He remembered the lions in the Zoological Gardens and the “Cock” at Highbury, where he once drank a whisky-soda and disliked it intensely. He had stood on the base of La Torre del Duca di Bronte (by which he meant the Nelson Column) to see the Lord Mayor’s Show, and considered it far finer than any Sicilian procession—more poetical in conception, he said, and carried out with greater magnificence. He had been to Brighton from Saturday to Monday and burst into tears when he saw the sea again.
It is difficult to travel on the Underground Railway without losing oneself, but Peppino can do it. He got lost once, but that was in some street near Covent Garden, soon after his arrival, and before he had ventured alone in the Underground; he asked his way of a policeman who spoke Italian and told him the way: he believes that all London policemen speak Italian, but he himself prefers English if he can get a chance to speak it.
Sicilians always want to speak English, especially those of the lower orders who invariably consider it as a master-key that will open every door leading to wealth. Sometimes what they say is, of course, nothing more than otiose compliment; sometimes they are merely introducing the subject of their want of money in an artistic manner in the hope of anything from a soldo to a promise to take them into service as valet, courier, coachman, or whatever it may be—a sort of shaking of Fortune’s bag to see what will come out. Sometimes they really do want to learn English and some of them even make attempts to pick up a few words and actually retain them.
I went once from Siracusa to Malta at the end of December; it was abominably rough,
and my luggage was thrown about in the cabin with such violence that some of the things slipped out of my bag. I was too sea-sick to be sure I had picked them all up, but afterwards discovered that the only thing left behind was my new diary for the next year. On returning from Valletta to Siracusa about a fortnight later, I asked the steward if he had found my diary and it was produced by the cabin-boy who must have been a youth of considerable energy and enterprise. He had apparently learnt by ear several English words and, finding a book full of blank paper, had written them down, spelling them the best way he could, that is phonetically, according to Italian pronunciation, and writing the Italian equivalents, spelt in his own way, in a parallel column. His writing is so distinct that I am certain I have got every letter right, but I do not recognize his second English word for latrina, it is probably some corrupt form of lavatory. The vocabulary, though restricted, seems a fairly useful one for a cabin-boy to begin with:
Peppino is not exactly of this class, his parents were able to give him a good education, he took his degree at the University of Palermo and, though he does not practise his profession, is a qualified engineer. When he returned from London his English was probably better than the cabin-boy’s will ever be, but he is a little out of practice.
I had observed a couple of picturesque ruffians hovering about in the gloom of the garden; towards the end of dinner they wandered into the circle of the electric light and resolved themselves into Carmelo and Rosario. We invited them to sit down, gave them wine and cigarettes and talked over the changes that had taken place in the town since I had last been there.
When they had gone, I asked Peppino about Rosario’s misfortune and learnt that he had been put into prison for stabbing his father. He had only wounded him, and Peppino thought the father had probably been in the wrong, for he has a bad history in the books of the police, but Rosario had not done himself any good over it, because, of course, the crime and its consequences have now gone down into his own history.