I
observe incidentally - quite incidentally! - that the architecture
corroborates my theory; so do the guide-books, no doubt, if there are
any. Now I know, furthermore, the origin of that small slab of verde
antico which had puzzled me, mixed up, as it was, among the mosaics of
quite modern marbles in that church whither I had been conducted by a
local antiquarian to admire a certain fresco recently laid bare, and
some rather crude daubs by Romanelli.
Out again, into the path that overlooks the steep ravine. Here I find,
resting in the shadow of the wall, an aged shepherd and his flock and a
shaggy, murderous-looking dog of the Campagna breed that shows his teeth
and growls incessantly, glaring at me as if I were a wolf. "Barone" is
the brute's name. I had intended to clamber down and see whether the
rock-surface bears any traces of human workmanship; the rock-surface, I
now decide, may take care of itself. It has waited for me so long. It
can wait a little longer.
"Does that beast of yours eat Christians?"
"He? He is a perfect capo di c - - . That is his trick, to prevent people
from kicking him. They think he can bite."
I produce half a cigar which he crushes up into his black clay pipe.
"Yours is not a bad life."
"One lives. But I had better times in Zurich."
He had stayed there awhile, working in some factory. He praised its
food, its beer, its conveniences.
Zurich: incongruous image! Straightway I was transported from this
harmonious desolation of Ferento; I lost sight of yonder clump of
withering thistles - thistles of recent growth; you could sit, you could
stand, in their shade - and found myself glancing over a leaden lake and
wandering about streets full of ill-dressed and ungracious folk;
escaping thence further afield, into featureless hills encrusted with
smug, tawdry villas and drinking-booths smothered under noisome
horse-chestnuts and Virginia creepers. How came they to hit upon the
ugliest tree, and the ugliest creeper, on earth? Infallible instinct!
Zurich: who shall sum up thy merciless vulgarity?
So this old man had been there.
And I remembered an expression in a book recently written by a friend of
mine who, oddly enough, had encountered some of these very Italians in
Zurich. He talks of its "horrible dead ordinariness" - some such phrase.
[33] It is apt. Zurich: fearsome town! Its ugliness is of the active
kind; it grips you by the throat and sits on your chest like a
nightmare.
I looked at the old fellow. He was sound; he had escaped the contagion.
Those others, those many hundred thousand others in Switzerland and
America - they can nevermore shake off the horrible dead ordinariness of
that life among machines. Future generations will hardly recognise the
Italian race from our descriptions.
