Diversions in Sicily

by Henry Festing Jones

The brigadier was in sight when we came out of the church and before we had met in the piazza I became aware that I had caught cold—not a very remarkable thing in a wet January with a Sicilian wind. He was as courteous as ever, though a little inclined to grumble because I had not let him know when to expect me so that he could have met me on my arrival. I pleaded uncertainty caused by the bad weather, and he promised to forgive me if I would spend the night at the caserma instead of returning to Trapani. He would give me his own room all to myself, for he had to be out on duty guarding the coast between Monte San Giuliano and Cofano from 9 p.m. till 6 a.m. and, if he should find the coast quiet and wish to lie down in the early morning, there would be no difficulty, because one of his men had left him, so that he had four beds and only three guards to put into them.

It was getting late; we had taken longer to come than I had anticipated, the horses were tired. There is no inn at Custonaci, but I knew that Mario could manage somehow; so I accepted, and we went through the village, down the cliff by a steep and difficult path, and across the plain. On the way we talked of our day at Selinunte and I asked after his companions there, but he had heard nothing further of any of them. Soon we met one of the guards who had come from the caserma to look for us. He crossed himself as he told us that, coming along, he had heard the bells ring and knew that the picture of the Madonna was being unveiled. He was a man of few words, or found our conversation uninteresting, for he said nothing else all the rest of the way.

The caserma is quite close to and facing the sea. All round the door is a skeleton porch of wood, which in the summer is fitted with wire gauze to keep out the mosquitoes. Going through this, we were in the general room where I was introduced to the other two guards. Behind this room, with windows looking inland over the plain towards Custonaci, is the kitchen, and these two rooms make up the middle of the bungalow.

The right wing consists of the brigadier’s sitting-room, out of which a door leads to his bedroom, and the left wing is all one large room, occupied by the men as their bedroom.

The brigadier took me into his sitting-room to rest. There were only a few things in it, merely his table with his books and official papers and three or four chairs; but everything, as at Selinunte, was clean and tidy. On the wall was an extensive eruption of postcards and among them those that had come from me. As I looked on the tranquil whitewash of this secluded caserma, dotted with views of our complicated and populous London, with its theatres and motor buses and the feverish rush of its tumult, I found myself wondering what it would be like to listen to the Pastoral Symphony in the Messiah, performed with occasional interpolations from Till Eulenspiegel.

The brigadier proposed a stroll while the guards prepared supper—they take it by turns to be cook, one each day, but this being an occasion, all three would be cooks to-night. We called at a cottage in the hope of buying some fish, but the weather had been too bad and there was none. We met

a young man, however, who had a kid for sale and wanted 95 centesimi per kilo; the brigadier would only give 80. The young man could not deal; the kid belonged to his father, and he had no power to exceed his instructions; he would go home and call at the caserma in the morning with the ultimissimo prezzo. We passed a great hole in the ground like a dry well. The brigadier said that if it were not so very near the caserma, it might do as a hiding-place for any one flying from justice, or for brigands to conceal a prisoner.

“Or for smugglers to keep their spoils in,” I said; and the brigadier chuckled.

He showed me the stone that had been put up to mark the spot at which the Madonna was landed by the French sailors as they returned from Alexandria. We strolled back and tied up the pig which had broken loose and, the brigadier said, was not yet old enough, meaning that there would be no pork for supper yet awhile. With all this difficulty about pork and fish and kid, the simple life, as lived at the caserma, appeared to be less simple than it might have been if the shops had been a little nearer.

Supper consisted of chicory served with the water it had been boiled in, to which was added some oil; there was also bread and wine, then chicken and afterwards poached eggs which they call eggs in their shirtsleeves. Before we had finished I told them that we have a proverb in England that too many cooks spoil the broth, and added that I had never known precisely how many were supposed to be too many, but that, judging by the excellence of the repast, certainly more than three would be required in the caserma of Custonaci. I said this because I was beginning to feel it was time that something of the kind should come from me. Sicilians are not only polite in themselves, but the cause that politeness or an attempt at it, is in other men; and this was the best I could do at the moment in their manner. Knowing I was among experts, I had not much fear as to their reception of my little compliment, just as a student of the violin is less nervous when performing before a master of the instrument than before the general public. The brigadier and his guards accepted it as though it were of the finest quality, and even complimented me upon it.