Part 5

--Dear Donna Matilde, in the first hours of Saturday night, I must confess, we were not much preoccupied. As you know, we have had several showers of cinders here in Ottaiano, but they were short and harmless. Nothing was to be feared, that evening, as I tell you, but towards mid-night the preoccupation began. The crater had fallen in, and at every breath of the Vulcano, a more and more increasing fall of ashes came down, passing over the mountain of Somma which protects us, and striking the whole of our place. The alarm bells began to ring.

--How terrible! I exclaim.

--It was well they rang the bells he says. The peasants who had all returned home for the holy week, were all fast asleep, the women at the sound of the bells, came out from their houses, running madly away, and to be sure many more would have died had the bells not rung.

--How many died here in Ottaiano?

--About seventy, and even those might have been saved, but the night was so dark and the fall of ashes so thick.

--Did they all seem to lose their mind?

--In the beginning no! I telegraphed to Naples, and the poor telegraph operator who sent my telegram, and whose courage and devotion should be enhanced, sent these telegrams under the flashes of the mountain.

Twice the electric shocks threw her down. One only of my three wires, the one to the Military Comand reached its destination.

--And your family, I ask?

He seems moved and hesitating.

--Don't speak to me about that, he exclaims, those hours have been terrible! When I saw that we had to run away, I was obliged to nearly carry my wife who was ill and weak, on the road. Quite exhausted and discouraged, she stopped to recommend me the children, asking me to let her die there in that very place. I knew nothing about my father and mother; my nephews have saved them, they had sworn to die but to save their grand parents, these brave boys. Only after four days I learned that all my people were saved.

--And where did they all go?

--To Avellino! One would hardly believe it! we reached Avellino by an extra train, and there we received from all the population, and principally from good Achille Vetroni, a warm hospitality.

You can tell it to every body in honour of Vetroni and Avellino. Imagine that in the shops, they refused to be paid, when we went to buy shoes and boots.

Yes, they have really done prodigies of devotion and kindness.

Prodigies! Tell every body what the hospitality of Sarno has been for the people from Ottaiano, how touching! You must also add that the first good example, came from the seminary. The good rector has promptly given up his room to M. Cola, who was flying from Ottaiano, quite ill. The seminarists have distributed their own clothes to the people. One can hardly realize all that has been done for the people of Ottaiano everywhere they have gone, to Sarno, Caserta, Castellammare, Marigliano and Nola. We shall never forget it.

--And what will you do now? I ask him after a brief silence.

--With what? he asks me.

--With Ottaiano.

--Rebuild it all, he answers me, quietly.

--Rebuild it all?

--And what else can we do? We are fourteen thousand. Four thousand have already returned. Where do you want us to go? To Turin? To Milan? It is not possible. Don't you see? Settle in the neighbourhood? At Portici! at Torre Annunziata? We shall always be under the Vesuvius, consequently, in constant danger. Better remain where we are.

But the houses have tumbled down. What then?

The roofs yes, but the walls are not cracked.

We shall have to build the new houses with arched small iron vaults little by little! you will all help us, won't you? How can one abandon one's own country? Here all of us possess much or little land, will you take from us also the hope of redeeming it for our children? What would become of us in Milan, Turin, even in Naples?

How could we hope to build up again, if we went away? But we shall need much help.... I say.... You all must unite with us. And we shall work, and we shall have to make the poor peasants work, and give them prizes for their work, and no alms nor any kind of charity.

Life and hope are still strong in this man who has seen death near him and his people, who has seen his village tumble down, and who is now speaking only of its resurrection.

VINCENZA ARPAIA

Here near us a woman is speaking eagerly. She is of the peasant type, but a light of intelligence shines in her eyes, and while talking she mixes correct Italian words with her dialect. She has a handkerchief tied on her head, the image of a Saint hangs down on her breast, and she discusses vivaciously.

I interrogate her. I know she has come back here the day after that frightful shower, and has not moved from here ever since. She counts up the houses that are still standing, she speaks of those who have returned and will return. And I learn, that she is the mid-wife of the village, Vincenza Arpaia.

--Have you your diploma, Vincenza, I ask her?

--Of course! I received it at the University of Naples, and I was appointed to this place, she exclaims with pride. Not a single baby is born here, without my assistance.

--All alive!

--All, madam! And thanks to the Lord there are no orphans. What a destruction! But now it is finished, and it will take more than a hundred years before it happens again.--She refers to the terrible fall of stones at Ottaiano, in 1789, she is rather informed, yet she preserves her popular simplicity.

--And why did you return so soon, Vincenza?

--To attend to my work, and see after new born babies, madam.

--New born babies? here?

--One was born the other day, she cries gaily! A fine boy! He was born on the ruins and I shall take him to S. Giovanni, to the only church still standing, and all the bells must be ringing!

This woman of the people says now unconsciously a great and deep thing. A baby was born on the ruins! Oh! eternal resurrection of life!

Oh baby! You are a symbol! life never ends! it renews itself, and it is the eternal bloom of strength and beauty.

April 22, 1906.

IGNIS ARDENS

When coming out from the station of the Circumvesuviana at Torre Annunziata, as one goes towards the white and flowery cemetery, which was reported destroyed, but fortunately has not been touched by the fire, one suddenly sees, quite in front of the gate, at seven or eight meters from the wall on the left, a large barrier of black or dark gray stones, and pitch coloured rocks, a rocky irregular barrier closing at a certain distance the restful home of the dead, and one wonders: Is this the lava?

Yes, that is the lava. Still, asleep, and dead, it rests now under the sun, having already become a harmless thing, transformed in an arid rocky wall, in a mound of ruins, gathered there in confusion, for an unlimited extension, and going down in an easy slope, like a stair of stones. That is the lava, and who sees it for the first time, must ask himself if, in that accumulation of still things, in that ocean of fused bronze, life has existed, if that mass has not been deposited there by chance, by the untiring arm of gigantic cyclops, and not by its own strength, by its powerful and ardent life of fire. And one smiles almost incredulously, as one would, before a made up spectacle. One would like to tread over those scories, strike them with one's own stick and show them all the contempt that naturally springs from one's souls towards a stone. Stone? Oh no! from the cracks cutting here and there, immense columns of white smoke, tinted with yellow vapours, arise ... and if you look more intensely you perceive many, many more. It is like an immense lighted field, spread all over with smoke, similar to an early dawn in the month of November. That stone is still living. Under those masses, fire is still burning. The blood of the Vulcano beats yet in those stony veins.

The terrible thing appears to you then, in all its majestic and frightful grandeur, always burning like the flame of the Vestals. And you understand then more clearly what must have been the terrible spectacle of this slow fall of living and destructive strength advancing little by little, gaining inch by inch the fields and the houses, this invincible strength carrying flames and destruction in its breast, hearing no control, going where it pleased with the caprice of a perverted will and bringing desolation and death every where it has touched. You will well understand, what this rolling red river must have been in the fatal night, with the black sky shrouded with sun, crowned with lightnings like a revengeful divinity, this slow and voracious river, which has swallowed up half a country. You will well understand, how a picturesque little village can have been destroyed in its rich lands, in one of its fractions, in its first houses.

A nice white little village, located by a black row of stone girdling it with mourning after having wrapped it with destruction, and you will then understand what must have been the panic and terror of yesterday, and what is to day the serious loss of this place which is now hardly spoken of, and which to-morrow will be probably forgotten: of Boscotrecase prisoner of fire, like Brunhilde of the Walkyrian story and which will never be waked up again from her sleep resembling death.

* * * * *

If you want to go to Boscotrecase, from the cemetery of Torre Annunziata, you may, avoiding to go down as far as Scafati, ascend directly the course of the lava and coasting as I have done, three steps further you see the line of the Circumvesuviana cut for several meters by the lava, which has run over the rails, falling on the ground underneath, rails being raised in that place.

Let us go through the fields, the front of the lava is quite wide and one must take a long turn.

All around the black sleeping mass, the country has remained untouched, the vines are in bloom and young green twigs hang from them. One step from the last scories, advanced sentinels of death, little field daisies, all gold, small stars wreathing the head of the monster, are waving at the soft, light blowing breeze, while big bloody poppies like large stains of blood, fill the ground all around.

Half way up over the low walls of the farms, a little house appears at once before you. It is the first one which has been surrounded by the lava. In fact the walls peep out of the crags under the rocks where they are buried. All is in its place, not a shingle is missing from the roof, not a pane from the windows. Only the inexorable lava closes it all around.

And I have like the painful sensation of witnessing the agony of a healthy and good creature, hugged in the arms of a giant who is slowly suffocating it. Still more houses are to be seen farther on; but some of them are in ruin, the lava has leant against the walls, has pressed, has broken some pillars and has opened big cracks in the walls. From a close window, I suddenly perceive, a thin line of grayish smoke.

The work of the hidden fire is only beginning.

The house is burning little by little. The shutters, the doors, all wooden things in contact with the lava, are beginning to burn, then it will be the turn of the beams, of the sustaining arches and the walls; every thing will be consumed to ashes, and only some ruins will remain.

How long will it take? Who knows? The work of fire is silent and tenacious like a human vengeance. After an hour's march we abandon the poor, deserted dwellings, irremessibly condemned, vowed to death, yonder in the great sea of lava, and we get back in the main road, full of dust, leading to Boscotrecase.

AT BOSCOTRECASE

Entering the little town one receives the impression that nothing abnormal has happened there.

Truly few people are circulating in the streets, the shops are open, women are standing at the doors of their houses, sewing, chattering, while streams of children play in the sun. We go about the street which bears the name of Cardinal Prisco. It is extremely quiet, almost asleep in the meridian hours and we get to the Oratorio.

At the end of the road, between two houses we are surprised to see a kind of fence made of wood and beams, in the shape of a cross. Is it a barricade? No it is the barrier! On the other side there is lava.

There it is, in fact, the black enemy, there in the village, running between two wings of houses, sneaking in a little lane, there it lies dead without the strength to go any farther.

And this is only a little stream, but at a short distance, what vast and imposing river. All the Oratorio square is invaded and submerged. It is like a row of stormy waves, petrified as by a strange prodigy, standing erect among the edifices. Here, and there on the crest, a soldier, a sentinel appears. The image of S. Anna, the patron of the place has been taken elsewhere to a house on the ground floor, in Oratorio street, and the opened windows look like empty, while the bells hang in a silence which will have no end. I turn to another side, through a path the soldiers are opening. I pass between two lines of infantry diggers, small creatures curved on the stones, in an audacious and patient work.

They look and smile under the shade of their straw hats, and start again to work.

How many days have they been there?

How long will they still remain? Who knows? They themselves don't know it. And they bend on the fatiguing and tenacious work like brave boys asking nothing for themselves, and they give all their fatigue, strength, youth, happy in the hard striking of their picks, in the hard digging of their hoe, singing softly the ritornelli, of their native songs as if they were in their native villages beyond the mountains working in the corn fields or among the vines.

THE LAVA IN THE TOUR

This large tract of Lava which thanks to the works of repair can be crossed in a carriage, has cut the town in two. From this point the streets begin again to be quiet and the houses to be inhabited, normal life seems to reign every where.

Here is Citarella street, here is Giordano street with its green orchards, and the dogs sleeping on the thresholds of the houses, and the old people bathing in the sun. But suddenly another branch of lava is standing in front of you, it is the one that has invaded the other side of the Oratorio cutting the communication with Tre Case.

It has sneaked in the town, getting in the lanes, through the orchards, assaulting the houses from behind, reversing itself from the ground-floors against which the wave has struck. I see a house completely surrounded and taken by the lava, quite in front of Pagliarella street, it is the house of a certain Giuseppe Principini. The first floor has fallen in, the lava has penetrated through a window at the shoulders of the house, it has invaded the first room, it has filled the second, it has made the floor fall in, and has then reversed itself down in a cascade which has remained petrified, looking almost like a fantastic bridge of black scories, gracefully modelled on bronze. Another little room near is full of lava up to the windows. Among the black masses, a little twisted serpent peeps out. It is all that remains of a bed stead. The wall near the house is dry, the water has evaporated, before the fire touched it.

THE SEA OF LAVA

On the three first high steps of the branch of lava which runs to Tre Case, I met engineer Pasquale Acunzo, a technical engineer. He has been at his place untiringly, from the first moment of the danger, directing the work of dikes when the lava was coming down, and now he directs the construction of the street which must unite Boscotrecase to its nearest centers. All our communications with Torre Annunziata and Tre Case are cut off; it is the death of the country. The only road that remains open to us, is the long and rough one to Scafati. Engineer Acunzo accompanies us up the steep way, on the lava. M. Luigi Casella, worthy mayor of Boscotrecase, joins us. He has been one of the bravest and busiest in this sad fight, and has given himself entirely to the saving of his country, uncaring of himself, of his goods, of his houses which he has lost, all buried under the lava. The front part of the lava is getting higher and higher. From its brief starting point, it touches already the first floor of a house. We walk near the balconies, with their banisters split, all bent outside as if a gigantic hand had twisted them. Working men belonging to the Genio Civile, are working hard to carry away all that can be saved, to demolish what is in danger, and to prop up the rest. Gushes of suffocating smoke, come out from the cracks. Here also the silent work of fire has begun. All around the temperature is very high: it feels as if one was near the mouth of an oven.

All at once, here we are on the large spreaded lavas, opening wide and free as far as the skirts of the mountain. It is a sea, rough and upset, a race of points, pics, crests, a chain of small hills as far as the eye can reach. The sun snatches from that sea reflections of bronze which become more and more opaque with the drawing back of the wave up the mountain.

Further it blends itself in a grayish and uniform stratus. Here and there dense smoke comes out from the cracks it is like the burning of copious incense to an unknown God, a God of terror and destruction. Now and then small houses are seen. Here is a half tumbled down palace, the panes of the windows are all pierced with holes it is the home of M. Bifulco. Here is a part of a ruined wall, it is the little church that Bernardo Tanucci has built in remembrance of another eruption. And other houses, and other ruins, and everything buried under the great infinite sea, scattered everything. But as a contrast, if you look down, the slope at the left, there beyond the stretch of green orchards, behind the white girdles of the houses, far, away, at the end there is the sea ample and serene, bathed in a soft, sapphire colour just as in an April day. The sea shining as a hope, in front of the ruins of a country, which has no other confort but to hope.

THE VERY SERIOUS DAMAGES

It is urgent to provide.

The damages of Boscotrecase are very grave and serious. It is calculated, that two hundred and fifty houses have been surrounded by lava or destroyed, almost the fourth part of the town, and with them about a thousand acres of land are destroyed, each acre here is worth two thousand francs. The lava has thus swallowed two million francs.

And the houses are worth perhaps another million, perhaps more. And there is a suburb Tre Case which has remained cut out from all communications, because the lava surrounds it on every side.

What is done for this country? Our courageous soldiers are working, it is true, M. Acunzo's working men are also desperately working, and the mayor, good M. Casella does what he can. But it is necessary to do much and to give much. This poor devastated and blocated country must spring up to life again, measures must be taken by those that can and must.

The population is all back, and those who have found the little houses untouched by the fire, but emptied by thieves, have, gone back to it, providing at best to all that had been stolen, and those who have not found it any longer, have arranged themselves the best they could, resigned, because they hope.

And the hopeful words on everybody's lips, the trusting words repeated by all those who accompanied, me especially by M. Acunzo and Mayor Casella, have greatly moved me for I felt that by encouraging them, I was only an accomplice in a pitiful lie.

Our return has been discouraging, and while our little tram was rapidly going down through the fields, I was looking at the great and silent murderer still proudly showing its top all covered with ashes, almost as an espiation.

OPEN ROADS

It is possible now for every body to go everywhere, in the places where the conflagration has passed in all its most varied and terrible forms. The Circumvesuviana and all those great men who are its very soul, strength, and organism accomplish real miracles, from Giuseppe Sirignano, to Emmanuele Rocco and its director Ingaranni, all deserve the deepest sympathy and gratitude. It is owing to them and their abnegation that the Circumvesuviana has been able to resume its work, rendering thus both a great service to the work of help and to the help organizers. But for them no one could have got to Torre Annunziata, Boscotrecase, Ottaiano, San Giuseppe, or Somma Vesuviana, for the lava, the burning stones, lapillus and ashes have passed every where. Now one may go over there, not only by rail but to certain points by auto, and to some others by carriages. The roads are open. They certainly are not pleasure or excursion roads, you do not go there as you would go to a pic-nic, but whoever has a charitable heart, may go now and see, this most terrible catastrophe of the Vesuvian comunes. It is a pilgrimage of piety which certainly will bear its good fruits. So many people need to see in order to believe, so many people need to let the truth of human troubles descend from their eyes into their hearts. The roads are opened for trains, automobiles, carriages, even bicycles, and for those who have to go on foot, many roads are quite practicable. Let every person of good will know it. The misery of the people there is great, help must be great. The crowd, the crowd must go with the 5000 lire, of the modest giver and the 50000 of the richer one. The roads are open, the pilgrimage can be made, without spending much, without asking too much, without taking too much trouble, without losing much time. And those who go will realize how great this calamity is, and how great the remedy must be.

April 23th 1906.

THE WAY TO GO

Well, my dear readers, you who are living in Naples, you who will come to Naples to morrow or later, you can now safely go on the roads damaged by the eruption, by any means of transportation you like. The best, of course, the one I would suggest as the best, being more comfortable, very rapid and suiting all pockets is the quite popular railway of the Circumvesuviana, that same road, which has saved men and things, which is really the best help for the reorganization of life, up there. It will carry you easily to see the lava at Torre Annunziata, and farther still if you like to see the new Pompei, that is, Ottaiano and S. Giuseppe of Ottaiano. Reader, if you are a woman going, don't wear nice clothes, because there is always some wind raising the ashes and your clothes would be ruined; put on a simple woollen dress, a gown, a shirt waist and a simple figaro, so that you may take it off if it gets too hot. Put on a small hat, if you go there by train, and a cap if you go by automobile, and cover up either of them with a white, gray, or pale lilac veil hiding thus your face, your hair, and your neck. If you possess a big white chiffon scarf, wrap up your hat and face in it and tie it under your chin. If you have weak eyes put on a myrtle green or golden brown veil but large and closed. Wear a good pair of black boots, with low heels and comfortable. A parasol is useless: with your large veil, you are protected from the sun, whilst a parasol would be an encumbrance.