The railway journey soon dispelled the phantoms of the night. As the train sped downhill, the sun rose in splendour behind the Murge hills, devouring mists so thickly couched that, struck by the first beams, they glistered like compact snow-fields, while their shaded portions might have been mistaken for stretches of mysterious swamp, from which an occasional clump of tree-tops emerged, black and island-like. These dreamland effects lasted but a brief time, and soon the whole face of the landscape was revealed. An arid region, not unlike certain parts of northern Africa.
Yet the line passes through places renowned in history. Who would not like to spend a day at Altamura, if only in memory of its treatment by the ferocious Cardinal Ruffo and his army of cut-throats? After a heroic but vain resistance comparable only to that of Saguntum or Petelia, during which every available metal, and even money, was converted into bullets to repel the assailers, there followed a three days’ slaughter of young and old; then the cardinal blessed his army and pronounced, in the blood-drenched streets, a general absolution. Even this man has discovered apologists. No cause so vile, that some human being will not be found to defend it.
So much I called to mind that morning from the pages of Colletta, and straightway formed a resolution to slip out of the carriage and arrest my journey at Altamura for a couple of days. But I must have been asleep while the train passed through the station, nor did I wake up again till the blue Ionian was in sight.
At Venosa one thinks of Roman legionaries fleeing from Hannibal, of Horace, of Norman ambitions; Lucera and Manfredonia call up Saracen memories and the ephemeral gleams of Hohenstaufen; Gargano takes us back into Byzantine mysticism and monkery. And now from Altamura with its dark record of Bourbon horrors, we glide into the sunshine of Hellenic days when the wise Archytas, sage and lawgiver, friend of Plato, ruled this ancient city of Tarentum. A wide sweep of history! And if those Periclean times be not remote enough, yonder lies Oria on its hilltop, the stronghold of pre-Hellenic and almost legendary Messapians; while for such as desire more recent associations there is the Albanian colony of San Giorgio, only a few miles distant, to recall the glories of Scanderbeg and his adventurous bands.
Herein lies the charm of travel in this land of multiple civilizations—the ever-changing layers of culture one encounters, their wondrous juxtaposition.
My previous experiences of Taranto hotels counselled me to take a private room overlooking the inland sea (the southern aspect is already intolerably hot), and to seek my meals at restaurants. And in such a one I have lived for the last ten days or so, reviving old memories. The place has grown in the interval; indeed, if one may believe certain persons, the population has increased from thirty to ninety thousand in—I forget how few years. The arsenal brings movement into the town; it has appropriated the lion’s share of building sites in the “new” town. Is it a ripple on the surface of things, or will it truly stir the spirits of the city? So many arsenals have come and gone, at Taranto!
This arsenal quarter is a fine example of the Italian mania of fare figura—everything for effect. It is an agglomeration of dreary streets, haunted by legions of clamorous black swifts, and constructed on the rectangular principle dear to the Latin mind. Modern, and surpassingly monotonous. Are such interminable rows of stuccoed barracks artistic to look upon, are they really pleasant to inhabit? Is it reasonable or even sanitary, in a climate of eight months’ sunshine, to build these enormous roadways and squares filled with glaring limestone dust that blows into one’s eyes and almost suffocates one; these Saharas that even at the present season of the year (early June) cannot be traversed comfortably unless one wears brown spectacles and goes veiled like a Tuareg? This arsenal quarter must be a hell during the really not season, which continues into October.
For no trees whatever are planted to shade the walking population, as in Paris or Cairo or any other sunlit city.
And who could guess the reason? An Englishman, at least, would never bring himself to believe what is nevertheless a fact, namely, that if the streets are converted into shady boulevards, the rents of the houses immediately fall. When trees are planted, the lodgers complain and finally emigrate to other quarters; the experiment has been tried, at Naples and elsewhere, and always with the same result. Up trees, down rents. The tenants refuse to be deprived of their chief pleasure in life—that of gazing at the street-passengers, who must be good enough to walk in the sunshine for their delectation. But if you are of an inquisitive turn of mind, you are quite at liberty to return the compliment and to study from the outside the most intimate details of the tenants’ lives within. Take your fill of their domestic doings; stare your hardest. They don’t mind in the least, not they! That feeling of privacy which the northerner fosters doggedly even in the centre of a teeming city is alien to their hearts; they like to look and be looked at; they live like fish in an aquarium. It is a result of the whole palazzo-system that every one knows his neighbour’s business better than his own. What does it matter, in the end? Are we not all “Christians”?
The municipality, meanwhile, is deeply indebted for the sky-piercing ambitions which have culminated in the building of this new quarter. To meet these obligations, the octroi prices have been raised to the highest pitch by the City Fathers. This octroi is farmed out and produces (they tell me) 120 pounds a day; there are some hundred toll-collecting posts at the outskirts of the town, and the average salary of their officials is three pounds a month. They are supposed to be respectable and honest men, but it is difficult to see how a family can be supported on that wage, when one knows how high the rents are, and how severely the most ordinary commodities of life are taxed.