During these meditations on my part, the old man hobbled busily to and
fro with a bucket, bearing water from a fountain near at hand wherewith
to splash the carriage-wheels. He persisted in this singular occupation
for an unreasonably long time. Water was good for the wheels, he
explained; it kept them cool.
At last we started, and I began to slumber once more. The carriage
seemed to be going down a steep incline; endlessly it descended, with a
pleasant swaying motion. . . . Then an icy shiver roused me from my
dreams. It was the Crati whose rapid waves, fraught with unhealthy
chills, rippled brightly in the moonlight. We crossed the malarious
valley, and once more touched the hills.
From those treeless slopes there streamed forth deliciously warm
emanations stored up during the scorching hours of noon; the short scrub
that clothed them was redolent of that peculiar Calabrian odour which
haunts one like a melody - an odour of dried cistus and other aromatic
plants, balsamic by day, almost overpowering at this hour. To aid and
diversify the symphony of perfume, I lit a cigar, and then gave myself
up to contemplation of the heavenly bodies. We passed a solitary man,
walking swiftly with bowed head. What was he doing there?
"Lupomanaro," said the driver.
A werewolf. . . .
I had always hoped to meet with a werewolf on his nocturnal rambles, and
now my wish was gratified. But it was disappointing to see him in human
garb - even werewolves, it seems, must march with the times. This
enigmatical growth of the human mind flourishes in Calabria, but is not
popular as a subject of conversation. The more old-fashioned werewolves
cling to the true versipellis habits, and in that case only the pigs,
the inane Calabrian pigs, are dowered with the faculty of distinguishing
them in daytime, when they look like any other "Christian." There is a
record, in Fiore's book, of an epidemic of lycanthropy that attacked the
boys of Cassano. (Why only the boys?) It began on 31 July, 1210; and the
season of the year strikes me as significant.
After that I fell asleep in good earnest, nor did I wake up again till
the sun was peering over the eastern hills. We were climbing up a long
slope; the Albanian settlements of Vaccarizza and San Giorgio lay before
us and, looking back, I still saw Spezzano on its ridge; it seemed so
close that a gunshot could have reached it.
These non-Italian villages date from the centuries that followed the
death of Scanderbeg, when the Grand Signior consolidated his power. The
refugees arrived in flocks from over the sea, and were granted tracts of
wild land whereon to settle - some of them on this incline of the Sila,
which was accordingly called "Greek" Sila, the native confusing these
foreigners with the Byzantines whose dwellings, as regards Calabria, are
now almost exclusively confined to the distant region of Aspromonte.
Colonies of Albanians are scattered all over South Italy, chiefly in
Apulia, Calabria, Basilicata, and Sicily; a few are in the north and
centre - there is one on the Po, for instance, now reduced to 200
inhabitants; most of these latter have become absorbed into the
surrounding Italian element.
