It is simple enough. You want to speak to Luigi So-and-so. A
good-natured individual, who seems particularly anxious to help,
summarizes affairs by saying:
"The gentleman wants Luigi So-and-so."
There is evidently some joke in the mere suggestion of such a thing;
they all smile. Then a confused murmur of voices goes up:
"Luigi - Luigi. . . . Now which Luigi does he mean?"
You repeat his surname in a loud voice. It produces no effect, beyond
that of increased hilarity.
"Luigi - Luigi. . . ."
"Perhaps O'Zoccolone?"
"Perhaps O'Seticchio?"
"Or the figlio d' O'Zibalocchio?"
The good-natured individual volunteers to beat the surrounding district
and bring in all the Luigis he can find. After half an hour they begin
to arrive, one by one. He is not among them. Dismissed with cigars, as
compensation for loss of time.
Meanwhile half the village has gathered around, vastly enjoying the fun,
which it hopes will last till bedtime. You are getting bewildered; new
people flock in from the fields to whom the mysterious joke about Luigi
must be explained.
"Luigi - Luigi," they begin again. "Now, which of them can he mean?"
"Perhaps O'Marzariello?"
"Or O'Cuccolillo?"
"I never thought of him," says the good-natured individual. "Here, boy,
run and tell O'Cuccolillo that a foreign gentleman wants to give him a
cigar."
By the time O'Cuccolillo appears on the scene the crowd has thickened.
You explain the business for the fiftieth time; no - he is Luigi, of
course, but not the right Luigi, which he regrets considerably. Then the
joke is made clear to him, and he laughs again. You have lost all your
nerve, but the villagers are beginning to love you,
"Can it be O'Sciabecchino?"
"Or the figlio d' O'Chiappino?"
"It might be O'Busciardiello (the liar)."
"He's dead."
"So he is. I quite forgot. Well, then it must be the husband of
A'Cicivetta (the flirt)."
"He's in prison. But how about O'Caccianfierno?"
Suddenly a withered hag croaks authoritatively:
"I know! The gentleman wants O'Tentillo."
Chorus of villagers:
"Then why doesn't he say so?"
O'Tentillo lives far, far away. An hour elapses; at last he comes, full
of bright expectations. No, this is not your Luigi, he is another Luigi.
You are ready to sink into the earth, but there is no escape. The crowd
surges all around, the news having evidently spread to neighbouring
hamlets.
"Luigi - Luigi. . . . Let me see. It might be O'Rappo."
"O'Massassillo, more likely."
"I have it! It's O'Spennatiello."
"I never thought of him," says a well-known voice. "Here, boy, run and
tell - - "
"Or O'Cicereniello."
"O'Vergeniello."
"O'Sciabolone. ..."
"Never mind the G - - d - - son of b - - ," says a cheery person in
excellent English, who has just arrived on the scene. "See here, I live
fifteen years in Brooklyn; damn fine! 'Ave a glass of wine round my
place. Your Luigi's in America, sure. And if he isn't, send him to Hell."
Sound advice, this.
"What's his surname, anyhow?" he goes on.
You explain once more.
"Why, there's the very man you're looking for. There, standing right in
front of you! He's Luigi, and that's his surname right enough. He don't
know it himself, you bet."
And he points to the good-natured individual. . . .
These countryfolk can fare on strange meats. A boy consumed a snake that
was lying dead by the roadside; a woman ate thirty raw eggs and then a
plate of maccheroni; a man swallowed six kilograms of the uncooked fat
of a freshly slaughtered pig (he was ill for a week afterwards); another
one devoured two small birds alive, with beaks, claws and feathers. Such
deeds are sternly reprobated as savagery; still, they occur, and nearly
always as the result of wagers. I wish I could couple them with equally
heroic achievements in the drinking line, but, alas! I have only heard
of one old man who was wont habitually to en-gulph twenty-two litres of
wine a day; eight are spoken of as "almost too much" in these degenerate
days. . . .
Mice, says Movers, were sacrificially eaten by the Babylonians. Here, as
in England, they are cooked into a paste and given to children, to cure
a certain complaint. To take away the dread of the sea from young boys,
they mix into their food small fishes which have been devoured by larger
ones and taken from their stomachs - the underlying idea being that these
half-digested fry are thoroughly familiar with the storms and perils of
the deep, and will communicate these virtues to the boys who eat them.
It is the same principle as that of giving chamois blood to the
goat-boys of the Alps, to strengthen their nerves against
giddiness - pure sympathetic magic, of which there is this, at least, to
be said, that "its fundamental conception is identical with that of
modern science - a faith in the order or uniformity of nature."
I have also met persons who claim to have been cured of rachitic
troubles in their youth by eating a puppy dog cooked in a saucepan. But
only one kind of dog is good for this purpose, to be procured from those
foundling hospitals whither hundreds of illegitimate infants are taken
as soon as possible after birth. The mothers, to relieve the discomfort
caused by this forcible separation from the new-born, buy a certain kind
of puppy there, bring them home, and nourish them in loco infantis.
These puppies cost a franc apiece, and are generally destroyed after
performing their duties; it is they who are cooked for curing the
scrofulous tendencies of other children. Swallows' hearts are also used
for another purpose; so is the blood of tortoises - for strengthening the
backs of children (the tortoise being a hard animal). So is that of
snakes, who are held up by head and tail and pricked with needles; the
greater their pain, the more beneficial their blood, which is soaked up
with cotton-wool and applied as a liniment for swollen glands.
