Among minor matters, he mentioned that he had already been three times
to prison for "certain little affairs of blood," while defending
"certain friends." Was it not dull, I asked, in prison? "The time passes
pleasantly anywhere," he answered, "when you are young. I always make
friends, even in prison." I could well believe it. His affinities were
with the blithe crew of the Liber Stratonis. He had a roving eye and the
mouth of Antinous; and his morals were those of a condescending tiger-cub.
Arriving at Delianuova after sunset, he conceived the project of
accompanying me next morning up Montalto. I hesitated. In the first
place, I was going not only up that mountain, but to Bova on the distant
Ionian littoral - -
"For my part," he broke in, "ho pigliato confidenza. If you mistrust
me, here! take my knife," an ugly blade, pointed, and two inches in
excess of the police regulation length. This act of quasi-filial
submission touched me; but it was not his knife I feared so much as that
of "certain friends." Some little difference of opinion might arise,
some question of money or other argument, and lo! the friends would be
at hand (they always are), and one more stranger might disappear among
the clefts and gullies of Montalto. Aspromonte, the roughest corner of
Italy, is no place for misunderstandings; the knife decides promptly who
is right or wrong, and only two weeks ago I was warned not to cross the
district without a carbineer on either side of me.
But to have clothed my thoughts in words during his gracious mood would
have been supremely unethical. I contented myself with the trite but
pregnant remark that things sometimes looked different in the morning,
which provoked a pagan fit of laughter; farewelled him "with the
Madonna!" and watched as he withdrew under the trees, lithe and buoyant,
like a flame that is swallowed up in the night.
Only then did the real business begin. I should be sorry to say into how
many houses and wine-shops the obliging owner of the local inn conducted
me, in search of a guide. We traversed all the lanes of this straggling
and fairly prosperous place, and even those of its suburb Paracorio,
evidently of Byzantine origin; the answer was everywhere the same: To
Montalto, yes; to Bova, no! Night drew on apace and, as a last resource,
he led the way to the dwelling of a gentleman of the old school - a
retired brigand, to wit, who, as I afterwards learned, had some ten or
twelve homicides to his account. Delianuova, and indeed the whole of
Aspromonte, has a bad reputation for crime.
It was our last remaining chance.
We found the patriarch sitting in a simple but tidy chamber, smoking his
pipe and playing with a baby; his daughter-in-law rose as we entered,
and discreetly moved into an adjoining room. The cheery cut-throat put
the baby down to crawl on the floor, and his eyes sparkled when he heard
of Bova.
"Ah, one speaks of Bova!" he said. "A fine walk over the mountain!" He
much regretted that he was too old for the trip, but so-and-so, he
thought, might know something of the country. It pained him, too, that
he could not offer me a glass of wine. There was none in the house. In
his day, he added, it was not thought right to drink in the modern
fashion; this wine-bibbing was responsible for considerable mischief; it
troubled the brain, driving men to do things they afterwards repented.
He drank only milk, having become accustomed to it during a long life
among the hills. Milk cools the blood, he said, and steadies the hand,
and keeps a man's judgment undisturbed.
The person he had named was found after some further search. He was a
bronzed, clean-shaven type of about fifty, who began by refusing his
services point-blank, but soon relented, on hearing the ex-brigand's
recommendation of his qualities.
XXXI
SOUTHERN SAINTLINESS
Southern saints, like their worshippers, put on new faces and vestments
in the course of ages. Old ones die away; new ones take their place.
Several hundred of the older class of saint have clean faded from the
popular memory, and are now so forgotten that the wisest priest can tell
you nothing about them save, perhaps, that "he's in the
church" - meaning, that some fragment of his holy anatomy survives as a
relic amid a collection of similar antiques. But you can find their
histories in early literature, and their names linger on old maps where
they are given to promontories and other natural features which are
gradually being re-christened.
Such saints were chiefly non-Italian: Byzantines or Africans who, by
miraculous intervention, protected the village or district of which they
were patrons from the manifold scourges of medi-aevalism; they took the
place of the classic tutelar deities. They were men; they could fight;
and in those troublous times that is exactly what saints were made for.
With the softening of manners a new element appears. Male saints lost
their chief raison d'etre, and these virile creatures were superseded
by pacific women. So, to give only one instance, Saint Rosalia in
Palermo displaced the former protector Saint Mark. Her sacred bones were
miraculously discovered in a cave; and have since been identified as
those of a goat. But it was not till the twelfth century that the cult
of female saints began to assume imposing dimensions.
Of the Madonna no mention occurs in the songs of Bishop Paulinus (fourth
century); no monument exists in the Neapolitan catacombs. Thereafter her
cult begins to dominate.
She supplied the natives with what orthodox Christianity did not give
them, but what they had possessed from early times - a female element in
religion.
