Diversions in Sicily

by Henry Festing Jones

The next morning the cloud had gone and I returned to Trapani. The bus started very early and I had to rise before the sun, but the view would have repaid sitting up all night. We saw Marettimo hovering over Levanzo “on the horizon all highest up in the sea to the West,” as Ithaca is described in the Odyssey. We saw Ustica floating over Cofano and Capo S. Vito. We looked down on Custonaci, the Sanctuary of the Madonna and the great curve of the bay from Cofano to the foot of the mountain. We gazed over the low, undulating country covered with villages, roads, fields and villas that lay all around us on the inland sides—the country through which in 1860 Garibaldi marched to Calatafimi with his thousand volunteers after landing at Marsala. We saw Monte Inice

and the heights above Segesta. We saw Pantellaria, halfway to Africa, but we could not see Africa itself for Cape Bon is only visible under very exceptional atmospheric conditions.

I have been on the mountain in the spring and eaten quails for supper. It was the time of their migration, and they had been caught as they rested on the islands. I have never been able to ascertain exactly what it is that the quails do. First I read in a book that when going north in the spring they rest on Levanzo and when returning south in the autumn, on Favognana. Levanzo being north of Favognana this meant that, in both cases, they choose for their resting-place the second island they come to. There is no mistake about this being what I read, for I made a memoria technica about it at the time out of what Rockstro, my old counterpoint master, used to say musicians do in performing the diatonic major scale unaccompanied. In ascending they pass over the grave supertonic and take the acute supertonic, and in descending they pass over the acute supertonic and take the grave supertonic; the two supertonics being only a comma apart, as the two islands are only a very little way from one another.

Then I was told by a native of Trapani that this is just what the quails do not do, and that, in fact, they rest on the first island they come to, namely, on Favognana when going north, and on Levanzo when going south, being too tired to fly across the geographical comma that divides the two islands. I was next told by another native of Trapani that the quails rest on all the three islands indiscriminately and not merely on Levanzo and Favognana, thus destroying any attempt at purity of intonation and introducing equal temperament along with Marettimo, which had not hitherto been touched upon. He also said that if in any year it was found that the quails avoided any one of the islands, the reason would be that there were too many people on it. Finally, I was told by another native that when the quails were going north in the spring of 1906 the wind suddenly changed and blew most of them into Trapani itself, and people picked them up by hundreds in the streets. It does not matter, of course, so long as one gets the quails for supper, but if one really did want to know, one would have as much difficulty as in finding out how Orlando got hold of la Durlindana and where it originally came from.

The student from Castelvetrano was still there with his melancholy eyes, studying philosophy. He said he found the mountain more suitable for his purpose than his native town because it was more tranquil. I had been at Castelvetrano, but had not noticed that it was a particularly noisy place, indeed, I could no more have distinguished between the tranquillity of Castelvetrano and that of the mountain than between the acute and the grave supertonic.

The next time I met this student he had completed his studies and was employed as a clerk in the Italian railway station at Chiasso, the frontier town on the S. Gottardo, at an annual salary of 1,080 lire, which is about £43 4s. He could hardly have been sent to a station more remote from his native town. He had had a holiday of twelve days, and had gone home to embrace his adorata mamma. The government gave him a free pass, so he travelled by rail, crossing from Reggio to Messina, and it took him forty-six hours. When he arrived at Castelvetrano he was so knocked up by the journey and the change of air that he was obliged to go to bed, where he remained till it was time for him to get up and return to Chiasso, and this

means that he was in bed for more than a fortnight, because his holiday was extended to twenty days in consideration of his illness. He was quite contented about his position and prospects and told me these facts without any complaint. On the whole, Mount Eryx would appear to be not such a bad school for philosophers: nevertheless, when one considers the large part played in evolution by the inherited desire of the organism to live beyond its income, one may doubt whether it is good for a country’s progress that many of its men should be so philosophically contented with so little. They do not, however, include the whole of the population, for Italy cannot be said to be without examples of aggressive discontent. It is somewhere between the two extremes that practical commonsense should be looked for. In the meantime, if it is a question of sharing a supper of spring quails on Mount Eryx, a peaceful, gentle philosopher is probably a more agreeable companion than a socialistic nihilist.

If one had the power of choosing one’s company, this philosopher would counsel one not to exercise it; for he looks upon choosing as a presumptuous kind of trying

to control nature. I pointed out that one cannot altogether detach oneself from nature and that doing nothing is still choosing not to choose, but he replied that it is the lesser evil, as in choosing not to write a tragedy in five acts, which I had to admit can seldom be wrong. Further he asked, inasmuch as we had neither arranged our meeting nor ordered the quails, were we not at the moment both enjoying the advantage of having acted on his philosophy? I bowed and said I had been particularly fortunate this evening; but in Sicily one is always safe because the people are so charming that the art of travelling among them consists in allowing things to happen and in being ready to welcome whatever may come.

Perhaps the best season for going on the mountain is the late summer and early autumn, when the Trapanese come up for the villegiatura. It is not too hot during the day, as it is by the sea, and it can be almost chilly by night, which it never is below. Every one is in a holiday frame of mind; even the ladies of Eryx go out, whereas during the winter they seldom leave the house, unless, perhaps, after a storm for a turn in the balio to see how the trees look