Chapter 20

LAVA

We started from Catania at three o'clock on a dull afternoon at the end of March to see one of the streams of lava that Etna was sending out during the eruption of 1910. Peppino Di Gregorio had arranged everything and provided four of his friends to make company for us and to act as guides, some of them having been before. He and I went in a one-horse carriage with two of the friends and the other two came on their bicycles. There was, first, another Peppino who had been in America, where he earned his living by making cigars. He had forgotten how it was done and, besides, it required special tools, so he could not have shown me even if he had remembered. Since his return home to Catania he has been employed by the municipio. He begged me to call him not Peppino but Joe, because he would be so English. Then there was Ninu, also employed by the municipio, a great bullock of a fellow bursting with health, whose legs were too short for him and his smile a dream of romance. The other two were Alessandro, about whom I got no information, and a grave brigadier of the Guardia Municipale.

The road took us up-hill among villas and between walls enclosing fields of volcanic soil, very fertile, and occasionally a recent eruption had buried the fertility under fresh lava, hard and black, on which nothing will grow for years.

Patrick Brydone went to Sicily in 1770, and wrote an account of his journey: _A Tour through Sicily and Malta in a Series of Letters to William Beckford_, _Esquire_, _of Somerly_, _in Suffolk_, _from Patrick Brydone_, _F.R.S._ Near Catania he saw some lava covered with a scanty soil, incapable of producing either corn or vines; he imagined from its barrenness that

it had run from the mountain only a few ages ago; but was surprised to be informed by Signor Recupero, the historiographer of Etna, that this very lava is mentioned by Diodorus Siculus to have burst from Etna in the time of the second Punic war, when Syracuse was besieged by the Romans.

It seems that the stream ran from Etna to the sea, and cut off the passage of a detachment of soldiers who were on their way from Taormina to the relief of the besieged, and Diodorus took his authority from inscriptions on Roman monuments found on the lava itself. So that after about 2000 years this lava had scarcely begun to be fertile. Afterwards Recupero, who was a canonico, "an ingenious ecclesiastic of this place," told Brydone of a pit sunk near Jaci, where they had pierced through seven parallel surfaces of lava, most of them covered with a thick bed of rich earth.

Now, says he [Recupero], the eruption which formed the lowest of these lavas, if we may be allowed to reason from analogy, must have flowed from the mountain at least 14,000 years ago. Recupero tells me, he is exceedingly embarrassed by these discoveries in writing the history of the mountain.--That Moses hangs like a dead weight on him, and blunts all his zeal for enquiry; for that really he has not the conscience to make his mountain so young as that prophet makes the world.--What do you think of these sentiments from a Roman Catholic divine?--The bishop, who is strenuously orthodox--for it is an excellent see--has already warned him to be upon his guard, and not to pretend to be a better natural historian than Moses; nor to presume to urge anything that may in the smallest degree be deemed contradictory to his sacred authority. . . .

The lava, being a very porous substance, easily catches the dust that is carried about by the wind; which, at first I observe, only yields a kind of moss; this rotting, and by degrees increasing the soil, some small meagre vegetables are next produced; which rotting in their turn, are likewise converted into soil. But this process, I suppose, is often greatly accelerated by showers of ashes from the mountain, as I have observed in some places the richest soil, to the depth of five or six feet and upwards; and still below that, nothing but rocks of lava. It is in these spots that the trees arrive at such an immense size. Their roots shoot into the crevices of the lava, and lay such hold of it, that there is no instance of the winds tearing them up; though there are many of its breaking off their longest branches.

We passed several villages, and on one of the churches there was a group of three saints--S. Alfio, the padrone of the district, and his two brothers. I had never heard of S. Alfio, who they told me was a physician and lived in the third century; one of his brothers, S. Filiberto (whom the people call S. Liberto), was a surgeon, and his other brother, S. Cirino, was a chemist. They performed miracles, endured persecution, and were finally martyred for the faith in this way: First they had their three tongues cut out, then they were put into a saucepan such as the maccaroni is boiled in, only larger--large enough to hold three saints--and full of boiling oil: the saucepan was placed on a fire and they were cooked in it. Their bodies were afterwards burnt on a gridiron. This took place out of doors opposite a tavern, and three men, who had come to the tavern to drink, saw it all done. Having seen it, they went to sleep for three hundred years; then they woke up and wanted to pay for their drinks with the money they had in their pockets, which was money made of leather.

"What is this?" asked the landlord.

"It is money," they replied.

"It is no use," said the landlord. While they had been asleep that kind of money had gone out of circulation.

"It is good money," they insisted.

"It is not money at all, it is only a piece of leather."

"It was money yesterday evening," said the spokesman, "when I saw Alfio, Cirino, and Liberto being martyred." This is how the martyrdom of the three saints is represented on carts belonging to those spiritually-minded owners who prefer the Story of S. Alfio to the Story of the Paladins. It seemed to me that the painter had been suspiciously obsessed by the number Three; it was in the third century, there were three saints, they were each martyred three times over, though they cannot have known much about the boiling or the grilling, and there were three drunkards who went to sleep for three centuries. But I said nothing. I thought I would wait till I could see a cart.

By this time we had reached Nicolosi, that is we had nearly traversed the first of the three zones into which the Slopes of Etna are divided. This lowest one is the Regione Piemontese and Nicolosi is about 2250 feet above the sea--the place from which tourists often start to make the ascent of the volcano. Here we spent a declamatory half-hour discussing where we should eat the provisions we had brought from Catania and drink the wine we had bought at Mascalucia on the way. The discussion ended by our being received in a peasant's hut, where we spread a table for ourselves and the woman stood a low paraffin lamp in the middle of the cloth. This is a bad plan, the light dazzles one for seeing those sitting opposite and their shadows are thrown big and black on the wall and ceiling so that one cannot see the room, but I should say it was like Orlando's bedroom in the contadino's cottage on Ricuzzu's cart, the only room in the house, poorly furnished and used for all purposes. The woman of the hut had a baby in her arms and I said to Ninu:

"I wonder whether I may look at the baby?"

"Of course you may," he replied, "why not?"

So I asked the woman, who smiled proudly and gave me the baby at once. She called it Turi (Salvatore) and said it was three weeks old. It was asleep and I nursed it till the table was ready, which was not long, for everything was cold. I handed Turi back to his mother and sat down, with Joe on one side of me and Ninu on the other. Presently Ninu inquired why I had asked whether I might look at the baby. I replied that I had heard that Sicilian peasants are so superstitious they do not like strangers to look at their babies for fear of the evil eye; I admitted that I had never yet met with a peasant so superstitious as to refuse to show me her baby, but on the Slopes of Etna, during an eruption, I had thought it wise to be careful.

Ninu, in the Sicilian manner, was about to say that anyone could tell by my appearance that there was nothing to fear from me, when Joe interrupted him:

"She is an intelligent woman," said Joe.

I said: "I suppose you mean that she throws her intelligence into the scale with her maternal pride, and together they overbalance any little superstition which the proximity of the volcano may have fostered."

"That's the way to put it," he replied.

"Why do people talk so much about the evil eye? Do they think it is picturesque, or do they really believe in it?"

Joe considered for a moment. Then he said: "Sometimes a peasant may decline to hand over her baby because she thinks the stranger looks clumsy and is likely to drop it; it would be rude to let him suspect this, so she allows him to think she has a superstitious reason. And some of her neighbours believe--at least--well, what do you mean by believing? What is faith?"

"I'm sure I don't know. Sometimes one thing, sometimes another. It is a difficult question."

"Perhaps it is that she believes that her neighbours believe," said Joe, tentatively.

"That is not the faith of S. Alfio and his brothers, that is not the faith that wins a martyr's crown or that removes mountains."

"No, but it has its reward if it enables the believer to feel that he is not singular, it is comfortable to feel that one thinks as one's neighbours think."

I said: "Thou art a happy man, Poins, to think as other men think."

"I do not know anyone called Poins," said Joe, "it is not a Sicilian name; but to think as other men think is as comfortable as a crown of martyrdom, and if it can be won without any martyrdom worth speaking of--why, so much the better."

I agreed, and went on: "And then there are the men who never think of religion or theology, but go to Mass to please their wives."

"Plenty of them," he said, "and by pleasing their wives they reap the reward of avoiding domestic friction, whereby they perform a miracle greater than removing Etna."

I thought of my poor mother who used to say:

"But, my dear, if you never go to church what hold have you over the servants?"

At the time, I remember, I pigeon-holed her problem among others that are still awaiting solution, and she died before I realised how well she had translated into the language of modern Bayswater the "Paris vaut bien une Messe" of Henri Quatre.

"If you want to see faith," said Peppino Di Gregorio, "why don't you stay and go to the festa of S. Alfio at Trecastagne? You might even see a miracle there."

It seems that when anyone is in hospital with a broken leg after an accident or suffering from any illness, especially hernia, he cries in his despair, making use of this form:

"O, S. Alfio! cure me of this illness, restore my broken leg or cure my hernia" (or as may be) "and for the love of my wife, of my children, of my mother" (or as may be) "I will run naked to Trecastagne and light a candle before your shrine."

After making this vow, the patient recovers and then he must not fail. With any other saint there may be failure, but not with S. Alfio, for he is more powerful than the Madonna or than the Padre Eterno or than the Redeemer. He is the Padrone and performs miracles.

"But how long should I have to stay? When is this festa?"

It would not be till the 10th of May, nearly six weeks ahead, and that made it a matter requiring consideration and, as it was now half-past seven and dark, we had to leave off talking and start for the lava.

Those of our friends who had made the excursion before were delightful as company, but we hardly wanted them as guides, because the way was shown by hundreds of people who were returning, many of them carrying torches, and we only had to walk in the opposite direction. We also carried a light--the acetylene lamp off Ninu's bicycle, and it functioned as inefficiently as the bull's-eye lantern which Mr. Pickwick took with him on his nocturnal expedition at Clifton. The road was broad enough, but strewn with big lumps of lava lying half-hidden in lava sand. I stumbled frequently, but I never fell, because one of my friends was always at my elbow and caught me; either it was the brave brigadier or Alessandro or Joe or the other Peppino or that great hulking Ninu with his operatic smile lighted up by his fitful lamp. They took care of me all the way until, after about an hour, we turned into a vineyard, called the Contrada Fra Diavolo, and our progress was stopped by a sloping embankment over twenty feet high.

This was the broad nose of the stream of lava. It was coming towards us at about eighty feet an hour, but its velocity varies according to the slope of the ground and the cooling and consistency of the material. The course of the stream described a curve from the mouth to the place where we stood, and the width of it gradually increased until opposite us it was about a quarter of a mile broad. There was plenty of smoke, fiery with the light reflected from the glowing stream, and especially thick in the direction of the mouth. The lava was sluggish, viscous, heavy stuff, full of bubbles, pushing itself along and kneading itself like dough. Red-hot boulders and shapeless lumps of all manner of sizes were continually losing their balance and rolling lazily down the slope towards us; as they rolled they disengaged little avalanches of rapid sparks, and when they reached the ground they sometimes fell against a vine stump and set it in a blaze for a moment. They said that this is Etna's cunning way of taking a glass of wine; he opens a mouth and consumes a vineyard. All the time there was a roaring noise like coals being thrown on the fire, only much louder, and the great sloping wall glowed in the places where open crevasses left by the crumbling blocks had stirred it. It was too hot for us to go very near, nevertheless, my companions were not content to leave without bringing some pieces of lava away. They went towards it with canes which the vines will not want this year, unless the stream stops before it has broadened over the contrada, and with much difficulty and scorching, manipulated bits of red-hot lava until they had got them far enough away to deal with them, and then, balancing them on the end of two canes, they brought them to where I was resting near a doomed hut.

After spending an hour, fascinated by the spectacle, we returned by the sandy, rocky road to Nicolosi. While the carriage was being got ready, I said to Joe:

"You know, if I lived on the Slopes of Etna, close to such a sight as we have been contemplating, I think I should believe in the evil eye and S. Alfio and everything else."

He assured me that it would not have any such effect unless, perhaps, during the periods of actual eruption--as soon as the eruption was over I should forget all about it.

"Do we not all live on the slopes of volcanoes?" asked Joe. "An eruption cannot do more than ruin you or kill you. And without coming to live on the Slopes of Etna you might be ruined or die at any moment. How do you know that you have not now in you the seeds of some fatal disease that will declare itself before you return home? Or you may be run over in the street or killed in a railway accident any day. And as for ruin, next time you look into an English newspaper you may see that all your investments have left off paying dividends and have gone down to an unsaleable price. Perhaps at this moment, in some Foreign Office, a despatch is being drafted that will lead to a declaration of war and the ruin of England and you with it. And yet you never worry about all this."

"Then perhaps I had better begin to believe in S. Alfio at once?"

"Especially if you are threatened with hernia."

"You said something about hernia before. What has hernia to do with it?" I inquired.

"S. Alfio's first miracle was to cure one of his brothers of that complaint, which he had contracted while carrying a beam."

"But was not S. Alfio a medical man? Why do you call it a miracle when a medical man cures his patient? Have you been reading the plays of Moliere?"

"Who is Moliere?" asked one of them. "Did he write his plays in the Catanian dialect?"

It does not do to make these allusions when talking with Sicilians who are employed in the municipio. One might as well quote _Candide_ to some young schoolmaster who thinks the only thing worth knowing is the date of the Battle of Salamis. So I returned to S. Alfio and asked whether he always answers all prayers; they said the people believe he does or they hope he will. One of them, thinking I was inclined to scoff, rebuked me, saying:

"If you had been to Trecastagne and seen what I have seen, you would believe. I saw in the church there a dumb man. He tried to shout 'Viva S. Alfio,' but could only make inarticulate noises. The people encouraged him, and he went on trying till at last he said the words distinctly. I heard him say them. You are making a mistake in not going to Trecastagne. You might also behold a miracle and then you would believe as I do."

I thought of Geronte when his daughter recovers her speech in _Le Medecin Malgre Lui_ and wanted to ask how long this dumb man retained his miraculous power and whether his relations and friends were pleased about it and whether, after the novelty had worn off, they continued shouting "Viva S. Alfio." But I said nothing; I was afraid of confirming them in the notion that I was scoffing, whereas I was very much impressed; the influence of the stream of lava was still upon me and all that Joe had said about living on the slopes of volcanoes. And I was wondering whether I could manage to be back in Catania for the 10th of May and see the people running naked to Trecastagne. I was not anxious to go there myself, not because I should have had to run naked all the thirteen kilometres, they would have let me wear my clothes and drive in a painted cart, but because there is no albergo there and it would have meant being up all night. If S. Alfio had earned his reputation by restoring those who spend sleepless nights in the street, I might have given him a chance of exercising his power on me.

There is generally some way of doing anything one really wants to do, and by the time we were separating in Catania, at one o'clock in the morning I was promising to try to return in time for the Festa di S. Alfio.