Sicilian Carousel by Lawrence Durrell
I don’t think there was one of us who could have given a coherent account of the next hour’s voyaging—we all fell into a leaden sleep, only very vaguely conscious of the wheels of our little bus rubbing along the tarmac. There was sea, and a fresh wind, and there were scattered villages here and there when the horn did its warning work. But the transition in time to a vast and cavernous warehouse in Marsala happened like a piece of avant-garde film cutting. The jolt of stopping in the middle of a sort of impromptu cocktail party shocked us awake; for Mario had edged the whole bus into the echoing dark cave where, disposed along two vast trestle tables, was a constellation of beautiful bottles of every size and color. We were to take part in a promotional dégustation for the famous product of the island. Moreover, our hosts, the packers and shippers, were a large and beaming crowd of big-mustached elderly men who were obviously half-mad with impatience to get at the bottles and were only held back by the laws of etiquette from anticipating our arrival. A united huzza went up as we swung into the cool of the great barn. “My goodness the whole darn Mafia,” said Beddoes with approval; and out we all got to shake their hands and pat them on the back. A great show of amity followed and it was not long before we were beautifully implicated in studying the varying merits of the wines—one went up and down as if on a keyboard, testing and criticizing the wine. For each of us was to be offered a sample bottle as a present. Beddoes spared no effort to get to the bottom of the matter and played the half-filled sample tumblers as if they were a xylophone.
One of the directors of this partly promotional yet wholly life-enhancing operation, a whiskered gentleman who looked like the giant panda off duty, made a short emotionally charged speech to give us a brief historical glimpse of the Marsala trade. A speech which, said Beddoes, “was calculated to make the patriotic Briton’s blood course in his veins.” British shippers had played a great part in the production and development of Marsala. “Indeed,” said Beddoes, warming to his theme under the influence of his third sample, “it was not a case of trade following the flag but simply a question of the flag following the drink. In this matter we lead, I think.” He became knowledgeable now about Canary and Sack and Sherry, while Deeds waxed primly tedious about China tea and Indian. Altogether we were in a lather of British self-congratulation when a little patch of acrimony developed in another corner of the barn owing to some unfortunate reference to the Mafia by one of the Microscopes. It was rapidly smoothed over by politeness and Roberto explained somewhat plaintively. “It’s all adverse propaganda. The Mafia doesn’t exist. Long ago it was certainly a fact. But it was not unlike England. We sent one son to the Navy, one to the Army, one to the Church and one … to the Mafia.” If it was a joke—I think it was—it did not help to heal the breach. “Our Mafia today is called The Trade Unions,” said Beddoes forcefully. And so forth.
I said under my breath in demotic Greek: “I abjure the foul fiend!” an incantation which keeps one safe from all harm, and then turned my back on them all to watch the deep vibrant light sifting through a rainbow of sunbeams and striking their faces with marvelously liquid shadow, dense with oil and varnish. It was so very much an oil painting that I could almost smell it. But if the tragic truth must be told the wine tasting was not a great event for me, for my palate had long since been utterly corrupted by French wine; and even among the heavy artillery these Italian syrups did not measure up against, say, the muscat of Frontignan, to mention but one sweet wine which grew near me. I had had the same belly wearying experience in Cyprus with Commanderia, which has at least the literary merit of being brewed from the original Malvoisie grape. No. I artfully contrived to give my little case of complimentary samples to Miss Lobb, who being a Londoner had probably been brought up on port flip.
So gradually the party drew to an end and our hosts, bedewed with warm feeling and alcohol, found it hard to part from people so marvelously charming as we—if that is good English; profound expressions of brotherly love flew about, followed by an exchange of visiting cards and expressions of regard and esteem. Mario ground his teeth with impatience and mistrust at all this facile amiability. He was dying to hit the road again. One had forgotten that he sternly refused all drinks while on duty. Roberto had begun by being pious and ended up a tiny bit soaked.
At last we were away. As we swung about in the dusty streets, seeking out the coast road, Miss Lobb, borne upon a wave of sympathy and gratitude for the little gift I had made her, found her way to the back of the coach and engaged us in conversation on the subject (unexpectedly) of astrology. “I believe in the stars,” she said firmly. “If you believe in them they are usually right and never let you down.” Well, this was really arguable, but somehow whatever Miss Lobb did was all right with us. She had been following with the closest attention our vague arguments about landscapes and climates and atmospheres, and had wondered why the stars never figured in these deliberations. The reason was simple. Neither Deeds nor I were at all astrology prone; but we were open minded about it. I was sure that one could use the astrological map to “skry” just as one used a crystal ball. The quality of the vision … that was another matter. But what Miss Lobb now produced was a sort of little handbook of horoscopes devoted not to people but to places.
I was at a loss to know how one established the sign of a country or a town, but some of the findings which she now read out to us, working slowly round the heavens, were interesting and suggestive, though obviously highly empirical. Among the places which figured in our discussions about Greece and Greater Greece we found that Greece was Taurus while Sicily was in the sign of the Lion. Would this explain their likenesses and differences? There was not enough detail to judge. But there was many a surprise—such as finding that Germany, England, Japan, Israel, and Poland were all in the same sign, Aries. I was naturally more interested in the places which had played a part in my own life and it was interesting to see that Cyprus was in Taurus—so incidentally were Dublin, Palermo, Parma, Leipzig, Persia, Georgia and Asia Minor for good measure. Meanwhile Marseilles, Florence, Naples, Padua, and Birmingham were all clustered together in Aries. “Well I’m dashed if I know what to think,” said Deeds, which was a polite way of voicing his innate skepticism. But Miss Lobb was serious and her face had become round and school girlish. But “If you think it too silly I won’t go on,” she said; no, we assured her of our devoted attention and agnosticism and she plunged deeper into her little volume.
London, Melbourne, and San Francisco were all in the Twins; so were America, Belgium, Wales, and Lower Egypt.
The sign of Cancer harbored Holland, New Zealand, Rhodesia, Paraguay, and among the towns Amsterdam, Algiers, Venice, Berne, Constantinople, Genoa and New York.
In the Lion together with Sicily were France, all Italy, Northern Roumania, also Rome, Prague, Ravenna, Damascus, Chicago, Bombay, Bristol, Cremona.
We were so engrossed in this witchcraft that we got quite a start when Mario drew rein on the coast road in a clump of trees and Roberto sang out for Deeds. It was another little war cemetery.
Deeds obediently but reluctantly got down to do his little tour of inspection and he was instantly replaced by Beddoes and the German girl whose boy friend was also mad about astrology. Alas, we failed to find any trace of Dungeness in the manual, to the great disappointment of Beddoes who said that it must be an evilly aspected place with a swingeing Saturn in the ascendant. But there was plenty of other material at hand, and almost everyone was keen to know the ruling sign of his or her country or hometown. Switzerland, Brazil, and Turkey were Virgin, as were Virginia and Croatia. Of the capitals under the influence of Virgo were Jerusalem, Paris, Lyon, Heidelberg, Boston, Los Angeles, Babylon, and Baghdad!
This led to a good deal of argument and counterargument; the Microscopes were a bit irritated to be bracketed with heathen towns and asked me to register their skepticism translating from the French and to convey the same to Miss Lobb; but she simply pursed her lips and said, quite firmly, “Nevertheless!” What
By the time Deeds came back to his seat we were deep in the penetralia of this strange system, without, however, being able to determine how the maps had been established—how could a town have a birthday? Nevertheless once stuck into this business the public interest forced us to continue. We forthwith announced: in the sign of the Balance, or the Scales in English, were grouped China, Tibet, Argentina, Upper Egypt, and Indochina; while the cities in the same sign numbered Frankfurt, Copenhagen, Vienna, Nottingham, and Amiens.
“I think the whole thing is highly questionable,” said the Bishop, forever guardian of the nation’s conscience. “It depends how much one can bring oneself to believe.” Beddoes shot back, “What about the Thirty-nine Articles?” and Deeds pacified the contestants by asking what their birth sign was. The Bishop had a troublesome Saturn and Beddoes a badly aspected Mars which explained, though it did not excuse, everything. Miss Lobb pursued her quietly triumphant way with the air of an early Christian with faith enough to snuff out the stake.
But of course like everyone else I was really only profoundly interested in my own sign—the wretched Fishes, with their coiling uncertainties and fugues; I obtained no comfort from the knowledge that Portugal and Normandy came under this sign, and also Nubia, the Sahara and Galicia; but it certainly did give me a start to find that among the towns which found themselves under the fishy influence were both Alexandria and Bournemouth—though what they had in common with Seville, Compostella, Ratisbon and Lancaster I could not tell.… Anyway, after this instructive session Miss Lobb put away her book and resumed her seat with a quiet air of self-approbation, as if she had done her duty. A discursive argument now broke out around the general theme of astrology. The Bishop was conciliatory and Beddoes was snarly. I think the remark about the Thirty-nine Articles had made a hole in the Bishop’s intellectual lining; at any rate he kept hull down and did not provoke any more grapeshot. On we went.
I dropped into a doze and saw the dunes of Selinunte rise in my memory with a sort of concentrated melancholy. What was interesting to notice was that at this point in the journey a new rhythm had set in, a rhythm based on fatigue and fresh air. We had started to catnap at all times of the day like bedouin. Quarter of an hour was enough to restore good humor and extinguish heat weariness. We had also learned to double up a bit—it is no use pretending that traveling in a bus does not gradually begin to feel cramping, restricting. Thus when we passed a series of caravans with highly decorated sideboards it was no surprise to see that the gypsies (for they were gypsies and not villagers) who occupied them, were blissfully asleep, lying anyhow on the jogging bottom, like a litter of puppies, dead to the world. It was the rhythm of the open road. And I think we poor tourists felt a subconscious tug towards the freedom and adventure of the Romany life—it contrasted so radically with our own. Some of the fatigue had leaked into my dream, and I yawned as I saw the string of temples rising one after another on the dunes. Then other vaguer thoughts and visions came to intrigue me. I remembered Martine writing, “Then somewhere before Trapani everything changes and becomes—not to exaggerate—ominous; or at least fraught with moment. It is the spirit of Erice advancing to meet you. I was terrified. I expected It to happen when I reached Erice. What? I don’t know what. Just It.”
A large bird smashed itself against our windshield and was dashed aside into death—leaving a large smear of blood on the glass. Mario swore and wiped the spot clean with a cloth.
The thump of the collision woke me up.
Birdsong: Erice
Rock-lavender full of small pious birds
On precipices torn from old sky,
Promiscuous as the goddess of the grove.
No wonder the wise men listening pondered why
If speech be an involuntary response to stress,
How about song then? Soft verbs, hard nouns
Confess the voices submission to desire.
A theology of insight going a-begging.
This Aphrodite heard but cared not,
The unstudied mating call of birds was one
With everything in the mind’s choir.
Someone sobbing at night or coughing to hide it.
The percussion of the sand-leopard’s concave roar
A vocabulary hanging lightly in viper’s fangs.
All this she knew, and more: that words
Releasing in the nerves their grand fatigue
Inject the counter poison of love’s alphabet.
Erice
AT ERICE ONE feels that all the options of ordinary life are reversed. I do not know how else to put it. We steer our lives by certain beliefs which are perhaps fables but which give us the courage to continue living. But what happens even before you reach the “sickle” of Trapani is that you lose your inner bearings, become insecure. It’s as if the giant of the mountain up there, riding its mists, had kicked away your crutches. History begins to stammer; the most famous and most privileged temple to Aphrodite in the whole of the Mediterranean has vanished without leaving a trace. The one late head of Aphrodite is nothing to write home about. The holy shrine of Eryx has been blown out like a light, yet as at Delphi, one can still smell the sulphur in the air. You feel it in the burning sun like a cold touch on the back of the neck. But I am going too fast for we are still approaching Trapani, that deceptively happy and unremarkable town so beautifully perched upon its seagirt headland. The old part of the town, rather as in the case of Syracuse, occupies a firm promontory thrust out into the sea like a pier; the town has developed on the landward side. Salt pans and windmills, yes, and the view from the so-called Ligny Tower is a fine one; but what is really fine is the fresh sea wind, frisky as a fox terrier, which patters the awnings and bends the trees and sends old sailors’ caps scuttering along the cobbles of the port. Westward a fine expanse of the Tyrrhenian Sea, smoldering in the sinking sun; two of the Egadi Isles with the choice names of Levanzo and Favignana glow with a kind of mysterious malevolence.
We were tired, we were really in no mood for further sightseeing, and Roberto let us off easily with a short visit to an indifferent church and a glimpse of the stern battlements constructed by Charles V. But the main thing was the frolicking wind whose playfulness allayed somewhat the curious feeling of tension and misgiving which I felt when I gazed upwards towards the ramps of Monte Giuliano and saw the sharp butt of Erice buried in the mountain like a flint axe head which had broken off with the impact. There was a short administrative pause while Mario made some growling remarks to the world at large and some adjustments to his brakes. Somewhere in the town a small municipal band had slunk into a square and started to play fragments of old waltzes and tangos. The sudden gusts of wind offered the musicians a fortuitous nautical syncopation—the music fading and reviving, full of an old-world charm. The Petremands ate a vividly colored ice cream and bought one for Mario. The Bishop had broken a shoelace. The old pre-Adamic couple were fast asleep in their seats, arm in arm, smile in smile, so to speak. It is pleasant when sleeping people smile and obviously enjoy their dreaming; they looked like representations of the smiling Buddha—though he is very far from asleep, sunk rather in smiling meditation. At last we began the ascent.
The sun was over the border now, rapidly westering, apparently increasing speed in its long slide into the ocean. Our little red bus swung itself clear of the crooked streets of Trapani and then started its tough climb up the dark prow of Eryx. Adieu Via Fardella, Via Pepoli! The road now began to mount in short spans on a steepening gradient, swinging about first to the right, then to the left; and there came a gradually increasing sobriety of spirit, a premonition perhaps of the Erycinean Aphrodite whose territory we were approaching. I am not romancing, for several of my fellow travelers expressed a sharpened sense of excitement in their several ways. Mario varied his engine speeds with great skill and the little motor had us valiantly swarming up the steep cliffs in good order.
The vegetation gradually thinned away, or made room