A Sacerdotal And Flabbily Pompous Old
Man - Straightway My Opinion Of His Books, Never Very High, Fell To Zero,
And Has There Remained.
He knew these regions well, and doubtless
sojourned at one time or another at yonder caravanserai-hotel, abandoned
of late, but then filled with a crowd of noisy enthusiasts who have
since been sacrificed to the war-god.
Doubtless he drank wine with them
on that terrace overlooking the brown houses of Olevano, though I
question whether he then paid as much as they are now charging me;
doubtless he rejoiced to see that stately array of white lilies fronting
the landscape, though I question whether he derived more pleasure from
them than I do....
While at Bellegra, this afternoon, I gazed landwards to where, in the
Abruzzi region, the peaks are still shrouded in snow.
How are they doing our there, at Scanno? Is that driving-road at last
finished? Can the "River Danube" still be heard flowing underground in
the little cave of Saint Martin? Are the thistles of violet and red and
blue and gold and silver as gorgeous as ever? [14] And those legions of
butterflies - do they still hover among the sunny patches in the narrow
vale leading to Mount Terrata? And Frattura, that strange place - what
has happened to Frattura? Built on a fracture, on the rubble of that
shattered mountain which produced the lake lower down, it has probably
crumbled away in the last earthquake. Well I remember Frattura! It was
where the wolf ate the donkey, and where we, in our turn, often
refreshed ourselves in the dim hovel of Ferdinando - never with greater
zest than on the hot downward march from Mount Genzana. Whether those
small purple gentians are still to be found on its summit? And the
emerald lizard on the lower slopes? Whether the eagles still breed on
the neighbouring Montagna di Preccia? They may well be tired of having
their nest plundered year after year.
What foreigner has older and pleasanter memories of Scanno? I would like
to meet that man, and compare notes.
And so, glancing over the hills from Bellegra, I sent my thoughts into
those Abruzzi mountains, and registered a vow to revisit Scanno - if only
in order to traverse once more by moonlight, for the sake of auld lang
syne, the devious paths to Roccaraso, or linger in that moist nook by
the lake-side where stood the Scanno of olden days (the Betifuli, if
such it was, of the Pelignians), where the apples grow, where the sly
dabchick plays among the reeds, and where, one evening, I listened to
something that might have been said much sooner. Acque Vive....
I kept my vow. Our bill at Scanno for wine alone was 189 francs, and for
beer 92 francs; figures which look more formidable than they are and
which I cite only to prove that we - for of course I was not
alone - enjoyed ourselves fairly well during those eighteen days. By the
way, what does Baedeker mean by speaking of the "excellent wines" of
Scanno, where not a drop is grown? He might have said the same of
Aberdeen.
The season was too late for the thistles, too late for the little
coppers and fritillaries and queens of Spain and commas and all the rest
of that fluttering tribe in the narrow vale leading to Terrata, though
wood-pigeons were still cooing there. Scanno has been spared by the
earthquake which laid low so many other places; it has prospered;
prospered too much for my taste, since those rich smoky tints,
especially of the vaulted interiors, are now disappearing under an
invasion of iron beams and white plaster. The golden duskiness of
Scanno, heightened as it was by the gleaming copper vessels borne on
every young girl's head, will soon be a thing of the past. Young trees
along the road-side - well-chosen trees: limes, maples, willows, elms,
chestnuts, ashes - are likewise doing well and promise pretty effects of
variegated foliage in a few years' time; so are the plantations of pines
in the higher regions of the Genzana. In this matter of afforestation,
Scanno continues its system of draconic severity. It is worth while, in
a country which used to suffer so much from reckless grazing of goats on
the hill-sides, and the furious floods of water. The Sagittario stream
is hemmed in by a cunning device of stones contained within bags of
strong wire; it was introduced many years ago by an engineer from
Modena. And if you care to ascend the torrents, you will find they have
been scientifically dammed by the administration, whereas the peasant,
when they overflow and ruin his crops, contents himself with damning
them in quite an amateurish fashion. Which reminds me that I picked up
during this visit, and have added to my collection, a new term of abuse
to be addressed to your father-in-law: Porcaccio d'un cagnaccio! Novel
effects, you perceive, obtained by a mere intensification of colour.
As to Frattura - yes, it is shattered. Vainly we tried to identify
Ferdinando's abode among all that debris. The old man himself escaped
the cataclysm, and now sells his wares in one of the miserable wooden
shanties erected lower down. The mellow hermit at St. Egidio, of whom
more on p. 171, has died; his place is taken by a worthless vagabond.
Saint Domenico and his serpents, the lonely mead of Jovana (? Jovis
fanum), that bell in the church-tower of Villalago which bears the
problematical date of 600 A.D. - they are all in their former places.
Mount Velino still glitters over the landscape, for those who climb high
enough to see it. The cliff-swallows are there, and dippers skim the
water as of old. Women, in their unhygienic costume, still carry those
immense loads of wood on their heads, though payment is considerably
higher than the three half-pence a day which it used to be.
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