Just as I had decided in favour of the last-named, he gave a more than
usually vigorous jerk, sat up in bed and, opening his eyes, remarked:
"Those fleas!"
This, then, was the malady. I enquired why he had not joined his
companions.
He was tired, he said; tired of life in general, and of flute-playing in
particular. Tired, moreover, of certain animals; and with a tiger-like
spring he leapt out of bed.
Once thoroughly awake, he proved an amiable talker, though oppressed
with an incurable melancholy which no amount of tobacco and Venosa wine
could dispel. In gravely boyish fashion he told me of his life and
ambitions. He had passed a high standard at school, but - what would
you? - every post was crowded. He liked music, and would gladly take it
up as a profession, if anything could be learnt with a band such as his;
he was sick, utterly sick, of everything. Above all things, he wished to
travel. Visions of America floated before his mind - where was the money
to come from? Besides, there was the military service looming close at
hand; and then, a widowed mother at home - the inevitable mother - with a
couple of little sisters; how shall a man desert his family? He was born
on a farm on the Murge, the watershed between this country and the
Adriatic. Thinking of the Murge, that shapeless and dismal range of
limestone hills whose name suggests its sad monotony, I began to
understand the origin of his pagan wistfulness.
"Happy foreigners!" - such was his constant refrain - "happy foreigners,
who can always do exactly what they like! Tell me something about other
countries," he said.
"Something true?"
"Anything - anything!"
To cheer him up, I replied with improbable tales of Indian life, of
rajahs and diamonds, of panthers whose eyes shine like moonbeams in the
dark jungle, of elephants huge as battleships, of sportive monkeys who
tie knots in each others' tails and build themselves huts among the
trees, where they brew iced lemonade, which they offer in friendliest
fashion to the thirsty wayfarer, together with other light
refreshment - -
"Cigarettes as well?"
"No. They are not allowed to cultivate tobacco."
"Ah, that monopolio, the curse of humanity!"
He was almost smiling when, at 2.30 a.m., there resounded a furious
knocking at the door, and the rest of the band appeared from their
unknown quarters in the liveliest of spirits. Altogether, a memorable
night. But at four o'clock the lantern was extinguished and the cavern,
bereft of its Salvator-Rosa glamour, resolved itself into a prosaic and
infernally unclean hovel. Issuing from the door, I saw those murky
recesses invaded by the uncompromising light of dawn, and shuddered. . . .
The railway journey soon dispelled the phantoms of the night. As the
train sped downhill, the sun rose in splendour behind the Murge hills,
devouring mists so thickly couched that, struck by the first beams, they
glistered like compact snow-fields, while their shaded portions might
have been mistaken for stretches of mysterious swamp, from which an
occasional clump of tree-tops emerged, black and island-like. These
dreamland effects lasted but a brief time, and soon the whole face of
the landscape was revealed. An arid region, not unlike certain parts of
northern Africa.
Yet the line passes through places renowned in history. Who would not
like to spend a day at Altamura, if only in memory of its treatment by
the ferocious Cardinal Ruffo and his army of cut-throats? After a heroic
but vain resistance comparable only to that of Saguntum or Petelia,
during which every available metal, and even money, was converted into
bullets to repel the assailers, there followed a three days' slaughter
of young and old; then the cardinal blessed his army and pronounced, in
the blood-drenched streets, a general absolution. Even this man has
discovered apologists. No cause so vile, that some human being will not
be found to defend it.
So much I called to mind that morning from the pages of Colletta, and
straightway formed a resolution to slip out of the carriage and arrest
my journey at Altamura for a couple of days. But I must have been asleep
while the train passed through the station, nor did I wake up again till
the blue Ionian was in sight.
At Venosa one thinks of Roman legionaries fleeing from Hannibal,
of Horace, of Norman ambitions; Lucera and Manfredonia call up
Saracen memories and the ephemeral gleams of Hohen-staufen; Gargano
takes us back into Byzantine mysticism and monkery. And now from
Altamura with its dark record of Bourbon horrors, we glide into the
sunshine of Hellenic days when the wise Archytas, sage and lawgiver,
friend of Plato, ruled this ancient city of Tarentum. A wide sweep of
history! And if those Periclean times be not remote enough, yonder lies
Oria on its hilltop, the stronghold of pre-Hellenic and almost legendary
Messapians; while for such as desire more recent associations there is
the Albanian colony of San Giorgio, only a few miles distant, to recall
the glories of Scanderbeg and his adventurous bands.
Herein lies the charm of travel in this land of multiple
civilizations - the ever-changing layers of culture one encounters, their
wondrous juxtaposition.
My previous experiences of Taranto hotels counselled me to take a
private room overlooking the inland sea (the southern aspect is already
intolerably hot), and to seek my meals at restaurants. And in such a one
I have lived for the last ten days or so, reviving old memories. The
place has grown in the interval; indeed, if one may believe certain
persons, the population has increased from thirty to ninety thousand
in - I forget how few years.
