If Wanted, They Can
Always Be Found; If Not, They Are Best Left Alone.
For besides being
usually the least enlightened and least amiable of the populace, they
are inordinately suspicious of political or commercial designs on the
part of strangers - God knows what visions are fermenting in their turbid
brains - and seldom let you out of their sight, once they have known you.
Excepting at Cosenza, Cotrone and Catanzaro, an average white man will
seldom find, in any Calabrian hostelry, what he is accustomed to
consider as ordinary necessities of life. The thing is easily
explicable. These men are not yet in the habit of "handling" civilized
travellers; they fail to realize that hotel-keeping is a business to be
learnt, like tailoring or politics. They are still in the patriarchal
stage, wealthy proprietors for the most part, and quite independent of
your custom. They have not learnt the trick of Swiss servility. You must
therefore be prepared to put up with what looks like very bad treatment.
On your entrance nobody moves a step to enquire after your wants; you
must begin by foraging for yourself, and thank God if any notice is
taken of what you say; it is as if your presence were barely
tolerated. But once the stranger has learnt to pocket his pride and
treat his hosts in the same offhand fashion, he will find among them an
unconventional courtesy of the best kind.
The establishment being run as a rule by the proprietor's own family,
gratuities with a view to exceptional treatment are refused with quiet
dignity, and even when accepted will not further your interests in the
least; on the contrary, you are thenceforward regarded as tactless and
weak in the head. Discreet praise of their native town or village is the
best way to win the hearts of the younger generation; for the parents a
little knowledge of American conditions is desirable, to prove that you
are a man of the world and worthy, a priori, of some respect. But if
there exists a man-cook, he is generally an importation and should be
periodically and liberally bribed, without knowledge of the family, from
the earliest moment. Wonderful, what a cook can do!
It is customary here not to live en pension or to pay a fixed price
for any meal, the smallest item, down to a piece of bread, being
conscientiously marked against you. My system, elaborated after
considerable experimentation, is to call for this bill every morning
and, for the first day or two after arrival, dispute in friendly fashion
every item, remorselessly cutting down some of them. Not that they
overcharge; their honesty is notorious, and no difference is made in
this respect between a foreigner and a native. It is a matter of
principle. By this system, which must not be overdone, your position in
the house gradually changes; from being a guest, you become a friend, a
brother. For it is your duty to show, above all things, that you are not
scemo - witless, soft-headed - the unforgivable sin in the south.
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