And thinking out some
further polite remarks to be addressed to my twenty-dollar friend, in
the event of our meeting at Catanzaro. . . .
One must have traversed the Sila in order to appreciate the manifold
charms of the mountain town - I have revelled in them since my arrival.
But it has one irremediable drawback: the sea lies at an inconvenient
distance. It takes forty-five minutes to reach the shore by means of two
railways in whose carriages the citizens descend after wild scrambles
for places, packed tight as sardines in the sweltering heat. Only a
genuine enthusiast will undertake the trip more than once. For the
Marina itself - at this season, at least - is an unappetizing spot; a
sordid agglomeration of houses, a few dirty fruit-stalls, ankle-deep
dust, swarms of flies. I prefer to sleep through the warm hours of the
day, and then take the air in that delightful public garden which, by
the way, has already become too small for the increasing population.
At its entrance stands the civic museum, entrusted, just now, to the
care of a quite remarkably ignorant and slatternly woman. It contains
two rooms, whose exhibits are smothered in dust and cobwebs; as
neglected, in short, as her own brats that sprawl about its floor. I
enquired whether she possessed no catalogue to show where the objects,
bearing no labels, had been found. A catalogue was unnecessary, she
said; she knew everything - everything!
And everything, apparently, hailed from "Stromboli." The Tiriolo helmet,
the Greek vases, all the rest of the real and sham treasures of this
establishment: they were all discovered at Stromboli.
"Those coins - whence?"
"Stromboli!"
Noticing some neolithic celts similar to those I obtained at Vaccarizza,
I would gladly have learnt their place of origin. Promptly came the answer:
"Stromboli!"
"Nonsense, my good woman. I've been three times to Stromboli; it is an
island of black stones where the devil has a house, and such things are
not found there." (Of course she meant Strangoli, the ancient Petelia.)
This vigorous assertion made her more circumspect. Thenceforward
everything was declared to come from the province - dalla provincia; it
was safer.
"That bad picture - whence?"
"Dalla provincia!"
"Have you really no catalogue?"
"I know everything."
"And this broken statue - whence?"
"Dalla provincia!"
"But the province is large," I objected.
"So it is. Large, and old."
I have also revisited Tiriolo, once celebrated for the "Sepulchres of
the Giants" (Greek tombs) that were unearthed here, and latterly for a
certain more valuable antiquarian discovery. Not long ago it was a
considerable undertaking to reach this little place, but nowadays a
public motor-car whirls you up and down the ravines at an alarming pace
and will deposit you, within a few hours, at remote Cosenza, once an
enormous drive.
