“Agnese’s old grandfather. He lay quite still in his bed and went down in it to the lowest floor of the house. The beams fell so as to protect the bed. When we found him he was without a scratch, but quite blind from the dust in his eyes. I shook the old man by the shoulder to rouse him. He turned his blind eyes towards me and cried with the voice of a wounded lion:
“‘Leave me in peace! The earth is dying; I die with the earth!’”
Arcangelo’s stories of miraculous escapes would fill a volume; that of Marietta is one of the most extraordinary.
“Marietta certainly owes her life to me,” he began, “or rather to my ears. You must know that my ears are remarkable—so were my father’s. I have in truth the hearing of a cat. No one else could have heard the faint knocking inside the heap of rubbish that had been Ugo’s workshop. At first I doubted my senses, then I remembered that Marietta lived in the little room behind the carpenter’s shop, and it occurred to me at the same time that Ugo was working at a job in Catania. I gave information and after many hours of hard work the soldiers succeeded in making a space large enough to let down a basket with food and water to the woman buried under the ruins, whose tapping I had heard. I could now hear what she said; she was quite unhurt; her bed had been placed under an arch, the safest place of course, and the arch remained standing; she had not so much as a bruise. The house had fallen so that unless great care was taken the remaining walls would crumble and crush the woman under the arch. The fifth morning I came with a piece of bread and three dried figs I had found in the ruins for her; I made the usual signal; there was no answer.
“‘Marietta, canst thou hear?’ I called to her. She did not reply. I put my ear to the hole; what did I hear? A sharp thin voice that wailed and wailed but said no word.
“‘Marietta, art thou alive?’ ‘I am alive, and so is the child. Water, for the love of Mary!’ Poverina! Alone in that dark pit she had borne her first child. On the eighth day we took Marietta and her baby from the macerie. It was a boy, stout and strong as a young bull, for we had fed the mother and her milk had not failed. Miracles? Ah, well, that is as one believes. I myself put the two of them on the train for Taormina. There be many rich forestieri at Taormina; I doubt not they have cared for Marietta; they have great charity, those forestieri of Taormina. They have charity, and they understand us a little, those who live among us here in Sicily; they shared our calamity, they knew our people. Some others do not understand, and should not judge. It may be true that this official ran away, that this other was relieved of office for incompetence. This they know, but they do not know the state of mind and body to which those men were reduced. It was better that they fled, for they were not fit to hold positions of responsibility; few of us were; we were too much broken. No one who has not seen Messina, who has not known the survivors, can understand; it was not like a battle, where men go in prepared for death, it was quite another thing!”
While the King was at Messina martial law was proclaimed. General Mazza, who was at home on sick leave, left his bed and hurried to Messina to take command of the troops. I asked Bonanno what manner of man the general was; I remember his answer well.
“A good man and a brave soldier. He has but one fault, the incurable one: he is sixty-eight years old and out of health besides!”
The proclaiming of martial law was a military necessity. The prison at Messina had been destroyed by the earthquake, and the convicts, the scum of Sicily, were at large. From Naples, from Palermo, from all over Italy, the offscouring of the cities raced, like beasts of prey who scent the carnage of battle, to the ruin of Messina, the beautiful. It seemed as if Nature’s cruelty in destroying half a province roused the basest passions in the base, and the noblest in the noble. The soldiers on their rounds at night saw things—desecrations of the helpless dead, offences against nature—that turned them from thoughtless boys to grave men. Here again the Russians, swift to save, swift to punish, terrible in their anger, set the example. A young Russian midshipman, a beautiful boy,—his blue eyes were like ice with fire below, Bonanno said,—found one of the human vultures at work. The midshipman had very little Italian, only a few words; they were enough:
“Ladro!” he cried and put his pistol to the ruffian’s head, “condannato a morte,” and fired.