I Was Not Encouraged,
However, To Undertake This Study, The Manager Evidently Suspecting Some
Ulterior Motive To Underlie My Simple Questions.
He was not at all
responsive to friendly overtures.
Restive at first, he soon waxed
ambiguous, and finally taciturn. Perhaps he thought I was a tax-gatherer
in disguise. A large structure combining the features of palace,
fortress and convent occupies an eminence, and is supposed by some to
stand on the site of old Heracleia; it was erected by the Jesuits; the
workpeople live in humble dwellings that cluster around it. Those that
are now engaged in cutting the corn receive a daily wage of two carlini
(eightpence) - the Bourbon coinage still survives in name.
You walk to this building from the station along an avenue of eucalypti
planted some forty years ago. Detesting, as I do, the whole tribe of gum
trees, I never lose an opportunity of saying exactly what I think about
this particularly odious representative of the brood, this eyesore, this
grey-haired scarecrow, this reptile of a growth with which a pack of
misguided enthusiasts have disfigured the entire Mediterranean basin.
They have now realized that it is useless as a protection against
malaria. Soon enough they will learn that instead of preventing the
disease, it actually fosters it, by harbouring clouds of mosquitoes
under its scraggy so-called foliage. These abominations may look better
on their native heath: I sincerely hope they do. Judging by the "Dead
Heart of Australia" - a book which gave me a nightmare from which I shall
never recover - I should say that a varnished hop-pole would be an
artistic godsend out there.
But from here the intruder should be expelled without mercy. A single
eucalyptus will ruin the fairest landscape. No plant on earth rustles in
such a horribly metallic fashion when the wind blows through those
everlastingly withered branches; the noise chills one to the marrow; it
is like the sibilant chattering of ghosts. Its oil is called "medicinal"
only because it happens to smell rather nasty; it is worthless as
timber, objectionable in form and hue - objectionable, above all things,
in its perverse, anti-human habits. What other tree would have the
effrontery to turn the sharp edges of its leaves - as if these were not
narrow enough already! - towards the sun, so as to be sure of giving at
all hours of the day the minimum of shade and maximum of discomfort to
mankind?
But I confess that this avenue of Policoro almost reconciled me to the
existence of the anaemic Antipodeans. Almost; since for some reason or
other (perhaps on account of the insufferably foul nature of the soil)
their foliage is here thickly tufted; it glows like burnished bronze in
the sunshine, like enamelled scales of green and gold. These eucalypti
are unique in Italy. Gazing upon them, my heart softened and I almost
forgave the gums their manifold iniquities, their diabolical thirst,
their demoralizing aspect of precocious senility and vice, their peeling
bark suggestive of unmentionable skin diseases, and that system of
radication which is nothing short of a scandal on this side of the
globe.
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