Chapter 16

MALA VITA

Sicilians sometimes claim that much of what has been stated in the foregoing chapter is now out of date, and that, with the advance of civilisation, the power of the mafia and the respect for omerta are giving way to confidence in the police. And they go on to regret that Giovanni Grasso should have so much success with his plays in foreign countries, because they contain a great deal of mafia and mala vita which he presents with so much realism that foreigners are encouraged in the idea that all Sicilians are for ever sleeplessly going about with knives in their belts seeking to execute vendettas. But most theatre-goers know by this time that melodramas are not made up of the events of ordinary life. A man does not discover every day that he has been deceived by his wife or that his sister has been betrayed by his compare; when he does make such a discovery he may be pardoned if he loses his self-control. Anyhow, the sleepless vendetta notion is so ludicrously contrary to the fact that Sicily can afford to take the risk. One might as well treat seriously the complaint against the marionettes, that the swaggering talk of Orlando and Rinaldo encourages the boys to behave in real life as though every fancied insult must be wiped out with blood. The boys certainly do fight--they can be seen fighting in the fish-market, one armed with a basket for his shield and another with a stick for his sword, his Durlindana. But boys fight, even in England, with no marionettes to inflame their imaginations, and sometimes they cut one another; still, no one would take too seriously the exclamation of that schoolmaster who, on being called to deal with some such incident, hurried from his study muttering:

"Knives, knives--dangerous weapons; would to heaven they had never been invented!"

What was he going to do at dinner-time? And if the marionettes are to be abolished, what is the Sicilian boy to do when it is time for him to sit down to his evening meal of romance? It is even possible that if he were starved of his marionettes he would more frequently substitute the dangerous weapon for the stick.

We see Sicilian life only in bits at a time and any bit we see may turn out on investigation to be only a bit of acting; and, whether real life or acting, we see it through the veil of romance which is held in front of it by their language and by their gestures, which cause their acting to appear more real--that is, which help it to be more deceptive. By their language I do not mean merely their words and their grammar--we also have a grammar, and our dictionary contains words as many and as expressive as theirs--the romance is rather in their attitude of mind and the consequent use they make of their words. I have read with disgust in an English newspaper an account of a squalid Pentonville murder which, as described in a contemporary Italian journal, appeared worthy to be set to music by Puccini. We are like the audience in Giovanni's theatre--dominated by the imposing romance of the language, and we prefer to be so dominated. Or we are like the audience in the teatrino at Palermo, when the buffo performs a miracle; as soon as we get behind "la mala vita" and see it as "the life of the criminal classes" we have caught a glimpse of how the illusion is worked.

By their gestures I mean something about which in England, in France and even in Northern Italy, nothing is known. It is true that we Northerners can and do communicate with one another in gesture, but in England we mostly omit gesture and use speech, while in France and Northern Italy the gesture is only slight. A Sicilian sometimes omits words, but if he omits gestures it is only by exercising great self-control. When he is talking naturally, every muscle of his body is at work helping him to express his meaning. It is as though he had not yet learnt to trust speech, everything must be acted too, as half-educated people have not yet learnt to trust the written word and if they read must read aloud. At a cinematograph show, when a letter or telegram or the title of the piece is shown on the screen, a murmur goes round the hall; it is the people reading the writing out loud to assure themselves of its meaning. So the talking Sicilian is telling everything twice, once with his voice and once with his gestures and there is so much oil in his backbone that there is nothing creaky, awkward or grudging in his movements; the gestures are made with an exuberance, an intensity and a natural unconscious beauty which seem to lift the matter above the plane of ordinary life. So habitual is this gesticulation that it is often useless. I have been behind the scenes in a marionette theatre, watching the man declaiming for the figures. His energy was tremendous, no wonder he drank out of a black bottle from time to time. I knew he was hidden from the audience and thought he might be suggesting movements for the marionettes to the man who was manipulating them, but that man could not see him either and was improvising the movements of the figures unaided.

The gesticulating Sicilian, however, is not more deeply moved by what he is describing than the phlegmatic Englishman is when he is quietly telling something. I have sometimes ventured to laugh at the Sicilian for his unnecessary vehemence, and he has stopped in the middle of it all and joined in the laughter. It would be extremely interesting to see Giovanni Grasso in the part of an English gentleman, a Wyndham or a Hawtrey part. I believe he would succeed because I believe he would succeed in anything he set his mind to do, but for him to reproduce an Englishman's tranquillity would be as much of an effort as it would be for an English actor to reproduce a Sicilian's mobility.

Their power of acting is not confined to those who are actors by profession; the love of improvising little scenes in daily life may be said to be characteristic of them. To suppose that they do this from a love of lying would be to simplify unduly; they have the artist's power of seeing a thing in two senses at once, and they assume that they will not be misunderstood, at all events, they are not going to give it all away by explaining, and if the stranger is taken in--well, as a rule, it does not very much signify. Just as omerta makes things difficult for the Sicilian police, so this love of acting makes things difficult for the foreign traveller. There is a story in the form of a dialogue between a foreigner in Palermo inquiring of a native about a tree that was clipped into a fantastic shape. It can hardly be given in English because it turns on the double meaning of "naturale," which means sometimes "natural" and sometimes "naturally," but if it be added that "scusi" = "excuse me"; "quest' albero" = "this tree"; "e" = "is"; "o" = "or," any reader will be able to understand it:

FOREIGNER: Scusi, Signore; quest' albero e artificiale o naturale?

PALERMITAN: Artificiale.

FOR: Oh, artificiale?

PAL: Naturale.

FOR: E naturale?

PAL: Artificiale.

FOR: (_getting irritated_): Scusi, Signore; quest' albero e artificiale o naturale?

PAL: Artificiale, naturale.

And then the foreigner goes home and writes a book about his travels, saying that the natives are so stupid they do not even know whether their trees are clipped into odd shapes by nature or art. But the apparently grave and courteous Palermitan knew what he was doing all the time and was enjoying it as a child enjoys committing a harmless piece of mischief.

If one were to pierce through it and understand them as they may be supposed to understand themselves, one would not necessarily be in a position to give an opinion about the mafia, for, besides those who speak of the growing confidence in the police, there are others who assert that the improvement, if any, is slight and only on the surface, and that the spirit of the mafia is not confined to the mala vita, but extends to the upper classes and influences even the administration of justice and the elections. When the natives differ on such a point, a mere foreigner can hardly decide; but I have more frequently heard the opinion expressed in favour of improvement. Certainly, in the Teatro Machiavelli, when murderers are taken by the police it is often done now with the approval of the audience, which they tell me would not have been the case some years back.

Before writing about the mala vita one ought at least to have seen a man murdered in the street. I have never seen this, nor have I ever even seen the body of a murdered man lying in the street. All that I know about the mala vita in Sicily has been gathered from conversation, books and plays. Lest it should be thought that in thus disclaiming practical knowledge of the subject I am inspired by omerta--as a traveller may shut his eyes to unpleasant incidents out of regard for his hosts--I will here collect together all the occasions when I have thought myself to be in the immediate neighbourhood of the mala vita.

At Castellinaria the barber who keeps the shop opposite the Albergo della Madonna--the shop in which Alfio Mascalucia was assistant--always seemed to me to be a man one would readily trust with all one's possessions. He must be now over forty, married and with a family. Peppino told me the other day that in his youth, meaning between the ages of eighteen and twenty-six, this barber had been a notorious ricottaro and had often been in prison for crimes of various kinds. When I heard this, his extremely courteous manner reminded me of the Robin Hood side of the Cristiani, and of the oriental hospitality of the mafiosi towards strangers. I asked Peppino whether I ought to discontinue my custom. He said not unless I was dissatisfied with him as a barber. Then I realised that I must have forgotten where I was for the moment.

Carmelo and his brother Rosario at Castellinaria have both been in prison for attempting to murder, but they can neither of them be said ever to have belonged to the class of habitual criminals.

In the Teatro Machiavelli Peppino Fazio gave me as a ricordo one of the knives used by the mafiosi. The blade doubles on the handle, so that when open it is about twice as long as when shut; some are as long as twenty-four inches when open, mine is only eighteen. Being intended for the theatre, it has never been sharpened or pointed but, except for this it is a real mala vita knife. They told me there would be nothing to fear so long as I continued the life of blameless respectability which had no doubt become habitual to me--or some nonsense of that kind--but that if I should happen to be caught by the police in doubtful surroundings and searched, even this knife, in spite of its arrested adolescence, might get me into trouble.

"So you had better be careful," said one of them; "but if you do get put into prison, let us know and you shall be treated as well as any ricottaro. I will bring you a good dinner every day."

"Yes," said another, "and I will bring you cigarettes."

"And I," said a third, "will fetch your linen and bring it back to you nicely washed and ironed."

Whenever I show my knife to any of my English friends, for I am happy to say I got it safely home, they always exclaim that it is an entirely prosaic object. And so it is. It is as unromantic as an escape of gas.

Several times I have been in a theatre when the performance has been interrupted by a disturbance among the audience, but I have never seen it develop into a serious row.

Once in Palermo my bedroom looked over a small piazza, and one night I heard talking and looked out. I saw a crowd and distinguished a man disputing from below with another man on a balcony about fifteen feet from mine, and there was a woman in the room behind him. The dispute was all in dialect, but evidently they were very angry. Presently the man on the balcony drew a revolver, it shone in the doubtful light, and he threatened the man below; but nothing further happened and presently the crowd dispersed, the man on the balcony retired and all was quiet. Perhaps this was the prelude to a murder, and I may have read about it afterwards in the newspaper without knowing how near I had been to the crime.

There was one other occasion when I thought I was going to see something of the mala vita. On the cliff at Castellinaria are some remains of polygonal buildings which have been made a national monument. The custode's cabin is just below, in a sheltered place where Peppino and I sometimes go and sit after supper. One moonlight evening, it was rather late, but the lamp was still shining in the cabin and the custode was still hanging about, I heard someone approaching and, looking up, saw, against the sky, a sinewy, slight woman in a long black dress with a black shawl over her head. She was coming rapidly along the edge of the cliff with a shuffling, swaying motion, and as she came she was continually rearranging the shawl over her head and chattering volubly to herself in a hoarse, coarse, raucous voice. The custode glanced at her as she drew near and I thought he flinched. I do not know how I knew it, but I was sure she was his wife. She was beside herself with passion. She must have found out something--something about some other woman. I felt as I have felt at an Ibsen play--as though I were looking through the keyhole into a room where dirty linen was about to be washed. She shook and trembled all over like an express train approaching a country station. Reason told me that Peppino and I were safe, we were on the platform; nevertheless accidents do happen and there was the poor custode on the line. She drew up in front of us, and her draperies swirled round her with the suddenness of her stopping. She became silent and still, while she looked at me as though fixing my appearance on her brain for this life and the next; she looked at Peppino in the same way and at the custode. Then the chattering began again and the restless rearranging of her shawl over her head. Suddenly she turned, poured herself into the cabin and exploded. It was not as with an earthquake, for the walls were left standing and the roof and foundations were unshaken, and an earthquake, they say, seems to last for an eternity, whereas this woman seemed to take but a moment to complete her work of desolation. She pounced upon something among the debris and laughed hysterically as she hid it in her bosom.

The storm was over. She was transformed into a rather beautiful and extremely graceful woman of about thirty. She exchanged a few words of friendly chaff with her husband, smiled at Peppino and bowed to me as she passed out, went up the path against the moonlit sky and faded into the night.

All this was about a pack of cards. She had promised to lend the cards to a neighbour that evening; her husband was to have brought them home early in the day; he had forgotten to do so and she had come to fetch them. So there was no murder and no dirty linen, but the cabin had to be tidied.

What would this woman do had she the motive and the cue for passion that I had supposed for her? If her husband ever does entertain another lady in his cabin and his wife hears of it, I hope I may not be in the neighbourhood. But if I were to be there and to witness the crime, omerta would forbid me, as a good Sicilian, to say anything about it. I should have to forget the claims of justice and go to prison, if necessary, rather than give such information as might lead to the conviction of the person or persons guilty.

Lastly, there was the lady in the restaurant-car--but perhaps she ought not to be included in the list. Let her have the benefit of the doubt and a chapter to herself.

CASTELLINARIA