“Yes,” said Peppino, “it is right to pray to win the battle, and we battle the tunnies so we may pray.”
“It is not quite the same thing,” said I. “In battle the enemy has a religion too and can pray against us: it may be fair if both pray equally, especially if both have the same religion. But it is taking a mean advantage of the poor tunnies to pray against them, for they have no religion.”
“Perhaps they have,” said Peppino. “Perhaps they have Signor Vescovo down in the sea and make a procession with tunny priests very well dressed, and bells and banners and incense and singing, and to pray against the death and the boiling in oil, and to escape to be eaten.”
“I should like to see that procession,” I said.
I knew that Peppino had sporting instincts to which I could appeal because, a few days before, he had taken me into his room and shown me the cups he had won. Some of them were English, for when in London he was not occupied as a waiter without intermission; his recreation was to retire from business occasionally for a few weeks, go into training and appear as a champion bicyclist.
So that, after my frugal chop and potato in Holborn, I had been in the habit of giving twopence to an athlete famous enough to have had his portrait in the illustrated papers—that is, if his recollection of me in Holborn was not his invention; anyhow, there were the cups.
It had come to pass by this time that Peppino and I took our meals together and we were attended by the waiter, a native of Messina, named Letterio. This name is given to many of the boys of Messina, and the girls are called Letteria. It seems that when St. Paul was at Messina the citizens gave him a congratulatory address for the Madonna; he took it back with him and gave it to her in Jerusalem. She, in reply, sent them a letter in Hebrew which they have now in the cathedral. At least they have a translation of it. Or, to be exact, a translation of a translation of it. The first translation was into Greek and the second into Latin. This is the letter after which the children are baptized. It is to be hoped they have another translation ready in Sicilian, or perhaps in Tuscan, to take its place in case anything should happen to it. Letterio could not tell me the contents of the letter, but he
knew it was in the Duomo and was his padrona, and was sure that, though only a translation, the meaning of the original had been religiously preserved.
Peppino never spoke a word to Letterio; he talked to me and gesticulated. When he held out one hand flat and patted it with the other, I did not pay much attention to the gesture, assuming that he was merely emphasizing what he was saying to me, and that Letterio brought cutlets because it was time for them. When he tumbled his hands rapidly one over the other and Letterio brought salad, I did not see that it was cause and effect. But when he put his hand to his mouth as though drinking and Letterio brought another bottle of wine, I saw that Peppino had not been saying everything twice over to me, once with words and once with gestures, as a Sicilian usually does, but that he had been carrying on two independent conversations with two people simultaneously.
Talking about Letterio’s name naturally led us to talk about baptisms, and so we returned to the subject of marriage. Another friend of Peppino’s was to be married that evening—yes, poor man! The church was to bless the union at four o’clock next