At last, towards midday, I struck the
driving road that connects San Giovanni with Savelli, crossed a bridge
over the foaming Neto, and climbed into the populous and dirty streets
of the town - the "Siberia of Calabria," as it may well be, for seven
months of the year.
At this season, thanks to its elevation of 1050 metres, the temperature
is all that could be desired, and the hotel, such as it is, compares
favourably indeed with the den at Longobucco. Instantly I felt at home
among these good people, who recognized me, and welcomed me with the
cordiality of old friends.
"Well," they asked, "and have you found it at last?"
They remembered my looking for the double flute, the tibiae pares,
some years ago.
It will not take you long to discover that the chief objects of interest
in San Giovanni are the women. Many Calabrian villages still possess
their distinctive costumes - Marcellinara and Cimi-gliano are celebrated
in this respect - but it would be difficult to find anywhere an equal
number of handsome women on such a restricted space. In olden days it
was dangerous to approach these attractive and mirthful creatures; they
were jealously guarded by brothers and husbands. But the brothers and
husbands, thank God, are now in America, and you may be as friendly with
them as ever you please, provided you confine your serious attentions to
not more than two or three. Secrecy in such matters is out of the
question, as with the Arabs; there is too much gossip, and too little
coyness about what is natural; your friendships are openly recognized,
and tacitly approved. The priests do not interfere; their hands are full.
To see these women at their best one must choose a Sunday or a
feast-day; one must go, morever, to the favourite fountain of Santa
Lucia, which lies on the hill-side and irrigates some patches of corn
and vegetables. Their natural charms are enhanced by elaborate and
tasteful golden ornaments, and by a pretty mode of dressing the hair,
two curls of which are worn hanging down before their ears with an
irresistibly seductive air. Their features are regular; eyes black or
deep gentian blue; complexion pale; movements and attitudes impressed
with a stamp of rare distinction. Even the great-grandmothers have a
certain austere dignity - sinewy, indestructible old witches, with tawny
hide and eyes that glow like lamps.
And yet San Giovanni is as dirty as can well be; it has the accumulated
filth of an Eastern town, while lacking all its glowing tints or
harmonious outlines. We are disposed to associate squalor with certain
artistic effects, but it may be said of this and many other Calabrian
places that they have solved the problem how to be ineffably squalid
without becoming in the least picturesque.
