A delightful stroll, yesterday, with a wild youngster from the village
of Torco - what joy to listen to analphabetics for a change: they are
indubitably the salt of the earth - down that well-worn track to
Crapolla, only to learn that my friend Garibaldi, the ancient fisherman,
the genius loci, has died in the interval; thence by boat to the lonely
beach of Recomone (sadly noting, as we passed, that the rock-doves at
the Grotto delle Palumbe are now all extirpated), where, for the sake of
old memories, I indulged in a bathe and then came across an object rare
in these regions, a fragment of grey Egyptian granite, relic of some
pagan temple and doubtless washed up here in a wintry gale; thence, for
a little light refreshment, to Nerano; thence to that ill-famed "House
of the Spirits" where my Siren-Land was begun in the company of one who
feared no spirits - victim, already, of this cursed war, but then a
laughter-loving child - and down to the bay and promontory of Ierate,
there to make the unwelcome discovery that certain hideous quarrying
operations on the neighbouring hill have utterly ruined the charm of
this once secluded site; thence laboriously upwards, past that line of
venerable goat-caves, to the summit of Mount San Costanzo.
Nothing has changed. The bay of Naples lay at my feet as of old, flooded
in sunshine.
There is a small outdoor cistern here. Peering into its darkness through
an aperture in the roof, I noticed that there was water at the bottom;
out of the water projected a stone; on the stone, a prisoner for life,
sat the most disconsolate lizard imaginable. It must have tumbled
through the chink, during some scuffle with a companion, into this humid
cell, swum for refuge to that islet and there remained, feeding on the
gnats which live in such places. I observed that its tail had grown to
an inordinate length - from disuse, very likely; from lack of the usual
abrasion against shrubs and stones. An unenviable fate for one of these
restless and light-loving creatures, never again to see the sun; to live
and die down here, all alone in the dank gloom, chained, as it were, to
a few inches of land amid a desolation of black water.
It took my thoughts back to what I saw two days ago while climbing in
the torrid hour of noon up that shadeless path where the vanilla-scented
orchids grow - the path which runs from Sant' Elia past the shattered
Natural Arch to Fontanella. Here, at the hottest turning of the road,
sat a woman in great distress. Beside her was a pink pig she had been
commissioned to escort down to the farm of Sant' Elia. This beast was
suffering hellish torments from the heat and vainly endeavouring, with
frenzied grunts of despair, to excavate for itself a hollow in the earth
under a thinly clothed myrtle bush.
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