by Iris Danbury
“I don’t know. Possibly some repair work has been carried out and they could not copy all the old decorations so well.”
They walked down to the harbour where some of the houses stood perilously close to the water level. A number of fishing boats were moored or drawn up on the narrow strip of shingle beach.
“I notice that every boat has an eye painted on each side of the prow,” Rosamund observed. “To avert the evil eye?”
Niccolo laughed. “Certainly. It’s the eye of Osiris, they say, and without it you cannot hope to win good fortune. That’s most necessary for fishermen.”
“Naturally. Perhaps we should all paint attractive eyes on our handbags to entreat good luck,” she suggested.
“Handbags are not as old as boats,” he reminded her.
In Palermo the hotel Niccolo had chosen faced the sea and after dinner Rosamund and Stephen strolled along the Foro Italico, a wide paved promenade flanking massive buildings. There were seats, an avenue of trees and at one point a derelict bandstand.
“This used to be a favourite corso,” Stephen told her. “Years ago, that is, so I’m told. People walked up and down, listened to the music, rode in their carriages along the roadway.”
“But now it’s practically deserted. Why?”
“The war, I suppose. All that part over there on the seafront was destroyed in the bombardment of the Second World War and so far it’s never been rebuilt. It’s one of those situations where the life of the town, once stopped, never regains its former liveliness. Nowadays the inhabitants are dashing about in their cars up the Via Roma and down Vittorio Emanuele.”
Rosamund was impressed by the melancholy air of the place. Occasional groups of young men hurried along or turned up the side streets; a man exercising his dog and at one point a tiny cafe, now closed, set in the base of the wall of one of those forbidding buildings, that was the sum total of activity here, although the wide roadway was busy with cars and vans.
“What are these buildings?” she asked. “They look like barracks.”
“One is the National Gallery of Sicily, but this is the back of it. The entrance is in another street. All this part was once the Arab quarter of Palermo and along here was the Governor’s Palace, but that’s a long time ago.”
When they turned back towards the hotel, she noticed a long strip of light on the seaward side of the road.
“Looks like a fair,” she said. “Let’s go and look.”
But first there was the chair market. Chairs, mainly for garden or outdoor use, of every shape and size, every colour and material. Each firm, or owner apparently occupied a section. A canvas cover on steel poles protected the wares from the rain and apparently the goods were left here all night, as well as all day. The whole length was extremely well lit and it seemed that young men took it in turns to act as night watchmen.
Rosamund was intrigued by the extent of the collection. Basket weave, plastic, steel and canvas, white painted iron, every imaginable kind was on sale. There were large settees, swinging hammocks and tiny chairs for the baby.
“There must be enough chairs for all the gardens and balconies of Europe, let alone Sicily,” she observed.
“Well, it’s the start of the summer season,” returned Stephen. “I suppose this is the right time for the display.” Farther along the waste ground on the seaward side was a small fair with a few sideshows and much noise. She and Stephen did not stay long to explore it.
“Does it go on half the night?” she asked. “I hope it isn’t dead opposite our hotel.”
Stephen laughed. “Are you afraid of losing your beauty sleep?”
“Not really. In any case my room is at the back of the hotel and looks out on to a little garden.”
Niccolo proved an admirable guide next day when he took his companions on a tour of the chief sights of the city. The Cathedral with its varied styles of Arab and Norman, according to the period in which it was built, and flanked by a tower with two Gothic arches, was impressive, but Rosamund was even more intrigued by two other churches with round domes painted red.
“Those really look Oriental,” she said to Stephen. “Isn’t it wise to preserve the architecture so well instead of demolishing all the history of the building with a tiled roof?”
Niccolo took them to the Pretoria fountain, adding that it looked even better at night when floodlit. They went by taxi to the English Garden, an attractive park in the city, but with exotic palm trees and oleanders, hibiscus and camellias, Rosamund thought it rather less than typical of English gardens.
But with Niccolo it was not all churches and famous monuments, for back in the older part of the town, he led the way down a street market in full swing. Shops lined the street and stalls of every kind encroached on the narrow roadway, so that one could walk only in single file.
Rosamund paused to buy a kilo of large, juicy lemons and Stephen found a wine shop with good Marsala at low prices. Strange fish were laid out on slabs or lurked in large buckets; green or red peppers and aubergines made splashes of colour and everywhere the noise was deafening.
When Rosamund paused to fondle a little tabby and white cat, the butcher to whom it apparently belonged smiled and came forward with a gory titbit which he dangled before the cat. Rosamund hastily set the cat down on the ground, for she was wearing a white dress, and had no desire to have it spattered.
“Soon she has her kittens,” the butcher remarked jovially in Italian. “She needs much food.”
Rosamund smilingly agreed and walked away quickly to catch up with the others. They were nowhere to be seen. Stupidly she had now missed them. At the end of the street where it turned a right angle and the stalls thinned out, she tried to peer as far ahead as she could, looking for Erica in a blue trouser suit or Adriana in a yellow dress.
But then she saw Niccolo pushing his way through the crowd towards her.
“Sorry, Niccolo. I dawdled,” she apologised.
“It is all right. I would always come back for you if you were lost.”
She glanced at him, then away quickly, for in his eyes was an ardent gleam that she did not want to encourage.
As she walked beside him to rejoin Stephen and the two girls, she reflected on the difference between Niccolo and Brent. Brent would have been certain to scold her for lagging behind, if indeed he would have bothered to come and look for her at all.
Then she was irritated with herself for even thinking of Brent and comparing him with another man. Since he was away in Stromboli, that was surely a good place to leave him and not allow him to intrude on her thoughts.
Niccolo had booked seats at one of the marionette theatres for the evening. “It begins at eight o’clock, so we might have a small meal beforehand and then we can take supper somewhere at a restaurant afterwards.”
Rosamund winced. All this delightful eating was wonderful, but in the course of a year in Sicily how much extra weight would she put on?
The entrance to the puppet theatre that Niccolo had chosen was in a side street not far from the shore and near a gate that he said was once an Arab gate that led up to the castle. The door was flanked by wall pictures of battle scenes between elegantly-horsed Norman knights in highly-coloured armour. Niccolo shepherded his party up a narrow flight of stairs to a small balcony that gave a good view of the stage and at precisely eight o’clock up went the curtain to display a lively affray of knights charging, their swords upraised, then slashing downwards on their enemies.
The speed of action of the marionettes was so fast that it was difficult to believe that the metallic figures with their waving plumes of pink or orange or peacock green were actually being manipulated by the puppet-master and his assistants.
Some of the scenes which followed told an adventure story involving some of the old heroes, Orlando, Rinaldo, Angelica and others. Here was a knight kneeling against a convincing background of a cave in which lay his dead enemy, while an angel with quivering white wings hovered over the stage. A king wearing his crown heade
d four knights about to besiege a castle, two combatants engaged in hand-to-hand fighting with much clanging of shields and armour.
To Rosamund the whole performance was enjoyable, even though she did not understand one word of the dialogue intoned by unseen speakers. The glittering clangour, the incredibly swift movements, the fact that these traditional entertainments still survived, all gave her a sense of satisfaction.
When the show was finished and the puppet-master and his staff had taken their final bows, Rosamund was still in a dream of the romantic Knights of France.
Niccolo took his guests to a small restaurant in the Via Vittorio Emanuele.
“Does each theatre stage its own shows?” queried Stephen. “Or are there practically no differences between one and another?”
“All are based on the old traditional stories, the Norman Knights,” replied Niccolo. “The traditions go back a very long way, and I think it’s possible that at one time there were quite different stories portrayed. Even then most had a Norman background, but about a hundred years ago, one man put all the stories and legends into one huge volume and the puppeteers refer to this book.”
“When I was in Sicily several years ago,” continued Stephen, “I was told about the puppet theatres, but I supposed they were a kind of glorified Punch and Judy show, so I never bothered to visit one of them. But I enjoyed this one.”
In view of what Stephen had told her about his avoidance of theatres, Rosamund wondered if he had not included every possible kind of theatre in his self-imposed ban.
“And what did you think of it, Erica?” asked Niccolo.
Her smile was politely false as she answered, “Oh, it was very good.”
In her turn Rosamund answered more enthusiastically. “I thought it was fascinating and romantic, with all that banging and clanging and loud trumpets. Some time I should like to go again, perhaps to another theatre.”
“I shall have pleasure in taking you when we can find a chance,” promised Niccolo, his brown eyes alight with that ardent gaze she tried to avoid meeting.
“While we’re in Palermo, we ought to go out to see Monreale,” suggested Stephen.
Rosamund was filled with a sense of wonder and astonishment next day when they visited the lovely cloisters where each pair of pillars showed different and most exquisite mosaic decoration and every double arch was intricately carved. Inside the great Cathedral the glittering mosaics needed time to stand and stare. Here were representations all around the walls of almost workaday events, Noah building the Ark with men hammering and sawing planks of wood, and later hauling animals up a precipitous gangway into the safety of the Ark. Above the altar a figure of Christ in glowing colours of blues and tawny reds surmounted by pointed arches and above the nave a ceiling of ornamented beams reflecting the light from the polished inlaid marble floor.
When they emerged into the square in front of the Cathedral with its tall palms, Rosamund remained silent. To see such splendour in a building where Sicilian art had reached this height was to experience the timelessness of eight centuries rolled back as though they were only eight years.
“Two tons of gold were used in the mosaics and decorations inside,” she heard an English voice say as he shepherded a party of tourists through the massive doors.
It was not a mere two tons of gold that had been lavished on the intricacies of the building, but the work of hand and brain of many thousands through the years that now provided so magnificent a structure.
There were other places to visit in the town of Monreale, churches and gardens and viewpoints from which to take in the sweep of mountains and citrus groves surrounding Palermo lying in its golden shell, the Conca d’Oro, and washed by the dark sapphire sea. But Rosamund was still bemused by the Cathedral and could not so easily slip back into a sightseer’s frame of mind.
Unbidden, her thoughts swerved to Brent. Had he been equally impressed or was he, as a geologist, appreciative only of the architecture and ornamentation of Nature, the rock strata, the fantastic shapes of mountains and the rifts made by the restless earth? What was wrought by man in a few centuries was probably not so important to Brent as the changes counted in millions of years.
In Palermo in the evening Niccolo took his companions to a restaurant by the sea at Acquasanta, a little way out of the town towards the west. The restaurant attached to the hotel had been built so that its three glass sides overlooked the sea.
Rosamund had been slightly disappointed when Niccolo had first suggested dining here, for she would have preferred to visit a theatre or a concert hall or even roam about Palermo streets, but now with the whole illuminated mass of the city and harbours stretched before her, she was appeased. She would never forget this lovely sparkling sight that resembled a lavish handful of jewellery thrown down on black velvet.
Going back to Taormina the following day, Rosamund reflected that she could understand why Stephen wanted to return to Sicily, even for the excuse of writing a book about his theories. A year would surely never be long enough to explore all the beautiful parts of the island.
“I haven’t even seen one Greek temple yet,” she complained to him when they were working in his study a day or so later.
“Ah, yes, we shall have to make a really leisurely tour of all the south side of the island and the interior. You’ll love Agrigento and the Roman villa at Piazza Armerina. Then there’s Syracuse.”
“I wonder we can spare the time to work at all,” she said slyly.
“Certainly it’s a place to encourage the dolce vita,” he agreed.
At first Rosamund had not been thrillingly interested in her employer’s project, that of trying to trace the connection between the early inhabitants of Sicily, the Sikelians who inhabited the eastern part of the island, and other Mediterranean peoples centred on Crete.
It was Stephen’s theory that the island of Thera, near Crete, was the lost Atlantis, and that after the enormous earthquake known to have taken place about 1500 B.C., when Thera was literally shattered into small pieces, survivors first fled to Crete and then to Sicily, taking their culture with them.
Rosamund had copied many pages of notes for Stephen and now she had become deeply interested. She began to read thoroughly one book after another borrowed from the Mandelli library and took great pleasure in the photographs that she had taken.
She had taken Brent at his word and used his cottage for developing and printing, yet she would have preferred not to be surrounded with this evidence of his occupation, even though he had not appeared for some time. His books stacked in a pile on the table, a bent old kettle, an earthenware coffee pot and a couple of thick stoneware mugs, all these contrived to remind her most forcibly of his personality, his brusque manners and sardonic sense of humour.
Several times Stephen had mentioned Brent and his long absence. "You haven’t heard from him by chance?” he asked Rosamund.
“Not a word. The last I knew he was off to Stromboli. So I suppose he’s still there.”
Stephen frowned. “Erica doesn’t seem to have heard from him either. I expect he’s no letter-writer.”
Then one afternoon Rosamund was sitting with Maria in the garden outside the kitchen door. Maria was laboriously reading one of the illustrated stories in the primer that Rosamund had bought.
When the older woman succeeded in pronouncing a longer word, Rosamund encouraged her. “I, too, am learning better Italian,” she told her.
At the sound of a car, neither glanced up, for Erica was out somewhere driving her father’s Fiat. But the familiar voice made both women look up.
Brent was back. “Hi, you two!” he shouted in greeting.
Then he said something in Italian to Maria that made her laugh. Her shoulders shook with merriment and finally she hid her face in her hands while Brent stood there with a most mischievous grin on his face.
Rosamund looked from one to the other, hoping to be told the joke, but Maria muttered that she must go indoors and attend to the cook
ing. Brent merely asked, “Where’s Tomaso?”
“I don’t know. Perhaps you could ask Maria—when she can recover from laughing.”
Brent who had turned slightly away now swung back towards her. “Jealous? Because you can’t share the joke? Do you want to know what I said?”
“No. Obviously it doesn’t concern me.”
“But if it did?”
“Oh, don’t let’s worry the subject to death,” she snapped.
“A fine welcome home! Still, what can you expect from a redhead who has no sense of humour?”
“My hair’s too dark a red for me to be a redhead,” she told him.
But that was a mistake, for now he came closer to her, picked up a thick strand of hair which lay on her shoulders and seemed keen to examine it hair by hair. She was conscious of his nearness. If she had been on more amicable terms with him, it would have been a logically inevitable step to being folded in his arms, but her love was too deep now to be satisfied with these light gestures, casual kisses given idly and meaning nothing.
With a quick gesture she put up her hand and released her hair from his grasp.
“As you suggest, I’ll ask Maria where Tomaso is.” His tone was abrupt and as he walked away towards the kitchen, Rosamund stood there aware of his sudden coldness.
Stephen and Erica were delighted to hear of Brent’s return and both declared that he must join them at dinner. But Brent had other ideas, for Lucia, who had now been promoted to waiting at table, shyly whispered a message to Stephen that the English signore had gone out with Tomaso.
During the next day much hammering and clanging of metal seemed to be going on in one of the old stables belonging to the villa. When Rosamund passed she heard voices, apparently those of Brent and Tomaso, but the door was firmly shut.
“What are they doing out there?” she asked Maria, who first began to laugh, then quickly straightened her face. “He is helping Tomaso to mend something,” she explained.
“Oh, I see. Some garden tool.”
Rosamund thought no more about it, but the repairs seemed to be taking some time, for next day the two men were still hard at work sawing and knocking.