Читать книгу Letters from a Mourning City - Axel Munthe - Страница 6

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T is in times like these, in the midst of cholera and unequalled poverty, that the popular character is brought to light and exposed in all its weakness, but also in all its beauty. No doubt help has come from every part of the country, from every part of the world; but even here, as is so often the case, it is the poor who have exercised the greatest charity, the silent self-sacrificing devotion has come from those who have next to nothing themselves. Who has given most, the wealthy banker who is publicly thanked for having presented the town with 1000 francs, or the poor contadino who comes up to the hospital dragging his only goat along with him, though he had meant to keep it for Christmas, and the Mergellina fisherman, who, after a whole night out at sea, silently empties the contents of his net upon the threshold of his sick neighbour's door—have you the heart to laugh because he has reserved a few fish and sold them under way, in order to buy the candle which is burning now beneath the Blessed Virgin's picture in the sickroom!

All the praise falls to the share of those aristocrats who have presented the Relief Committee with so many pairs of sheets and shirts, their names have figured in all the newspapers, but have they all together given as much as the obscure young fishwife of Vico Grotta Santa whom I saw last night? The story is not long, would you like to hear it?

Anarella—for such is her name—had already attracted my attention yesterday, when I was up in the little lane in which she lives; she had even then taken my part in a discussion that had arisen between some of her neighbours and myself. A fisherman, who shared her husband's boat, had been struck down with cholera the day before, and had been removed by one of the ambulance societies, almost by force, to the hospital, where I accidentally came across him. He was still conscious, but utterly exhausted; he cried continually for his wife and child, and as it was out of my power to do anything for the man himself, I promised him that I would at least go and look after them. He died shortly afterwards. By the time I reached his home, both wife and child had been attacked, and the wife died towards evening. She must have been a general favourite amongst her neighbours, as far as I was able to judge by the poignancy of their grief and the loudness of their lamentations, and I heard a low murmur of "avvelenatore," "assassino," etc.,[1] run through the crowd below. And I found it singularly difficult to convince them that if I had not been able to save her, I was at least innocent of her death—her husband's death they had expected from the moment he had been taken to the hospital, from whence, according to the popular belief, no one ever returns.

It was then that Anarella undertook to plead my cause, which consisted chiefly in the assurance that she herself had seen me taste the medicine before giving it to the sick woman—this appears to have considerably raised my value in the market, and I was left in peace.

Meanwhile the house had become infected from top to bottom, and two fresh cases of cholera occurred that night. As I happened to be on the spot, I glanced round the room in which the mother's corpse still lay. Some lighted candles had been placed by the bed, and beside her lay the child on a heap of rags inside a fishing-basket—it was still alive, but vavama,[2] who was sitting there thumbing her rosary, knew as well as I did that it was dying, whether of starvation or cholera, it was difficult to say. I sent the old woman off to try and get some milk, but she came back, having been unable to procure any. Whilst I was endeavouring to convey to the old grandmother how more and more decidedly I inclined to the double diagnosis of cholera and starvation,—the poor old thing looked as though she had had plenty of personal experience of what the latter meant,—Anarella came into the room. She looked at the child for a moment, saying in an undertone, "Poverina! poverina!"[3] then took it out of the basket, and with a superb gesture, which I shall never forget, she tore open her ragged old fishing jacket and put the child to her breast.

At that very moment her husband entered the room; he has been a pilot, and there isn't much that he is afraid of, still he shared the people's unutterable dread of cholera, and had come to take his wife away from the infected house. When he saw her with the babe at her breast he grew pale; he knew that it was at the risk, not only of her own life, but at that of their own healthy child's, but he said nothing, and only crossed himself in silence. And if I remember rightly, the doctor did the same himself.

** *

Ah yes, it is quite true that the popular character is brought to light and exposed in all its weakness in times like these. But one friendly effort to look upon life from these poor people's point of view, will help you to understand and patiently excuse, many things which would jar upon you otherwise, and teach you at all events to care for this crassly ignorant, but warm-hearted and long-suffering people. And then will the aristocrat's white hand no longer shun the lazzarone's rags, then will the philosopher no longer find it in his heart to raise a laugh at the people's blind superstitions concerning the Madonna and San Gennaro (the patron saint of Naples), then will the doctor refuse the revolver which he has been advised to carry, in order to shield himself from the outbreaks of popular fanaticism during his night rounds in the poor quarter. (The complaints that have been so often raised of late are, alas, only too well founded: doctors have been attacked over and over again by the sick people's relations, and have repeatedly been obliged to defend their own lives.) But I don't think the danger is so very great after all; a little patient sympathy with the sick, a little bread to the hungry crowd around, and a little forbearance towards their attitude of defiant suspicion, is more effective than a pistol shot or an escort of two carabiniers with their clanking swords at your heels.

And a doctor must not be too particular with regard to the consideration in which his profession is held, nor must he be too sensitive as to the amount of faith which the poor people repose in his skill; the lazzaroni are as sceptical with regard to the infallibility of his medicines as the doctor very likely is himself in the inmost depths of his heart. But they go a step further, and are of opinion that all sorts of horrors lie at the bottom of their mixtures—various poisons "the evil eye," serpents' tongues, a few hairs off the devil's head, etc. etc., ingredients which, to the best of my belief, are not usually included in the pharmacopœia. The patient himself is as a rule too ill to offer much resistance, but those who stand around follow every movement of the doctor's with the profoundest suspicion. I knew a doctor who, every time he endeavoured to dose a patient, was greeted with these words, "Bevete voi primo,"[4] and of course he did so—the only objection to this mutual drug-drinking (which may perhaps be recommended to certain mixture-loving physicians) being that the doctor, who is not down with cholera, is pretty sure to feel rather sleepy after all the opium drops. . . .

This introduction to doctors and officials is, after all, so new an experience for the inhabitants of the poor quarters, that one can almost understand their mistrust. At ordinary times no policeman goes near the place—which no doubt tends to impart a certain comfortable sensation to many a black-eyed fellow, whose conscience, may be, is no cleaner than his face. And the inhabitants of the fondaci, bassi, and sottoterrani of the Mercato, Pendino, Porto, and Vicaria quarters, come into the world and go out of it without the doctor's assistance in either one case—or the other. But often enough through the little aperture, which in these sort of houses serves the purpose of both window and door, a lean old monk may be seen slipping in. . . .

A propos of monks, as we have perhaps had enough cholera for to-day, let me wind up my letter by devoting a few words to them!

The critic shakes his head as he reads the following words in the above paragraph, "a lean old monk;" there isn't a novel or a book of travels on Italy in which monks are not invariably represented as red-cheeked and corpulent, and our Italian authorities and æsthetic oracles at home—especially if they happen to be fat themselves—refuse point-blank to allow the monks to grow thin; but the poor old fellows have done so all the same, since they have been harried to death by United Italy, and I beg to enter a protest against these gentlemen's classical representation of the typical fat monk. I know that it is part and parcel of a modern description of Italy to have a hit at the monks. Every traveller itching to reduce his impressions to black and white (scribbling and malaria are the two diseases which invariably attack travellers in this part of the world, more especially Northerners, and they are both equally disagreeable to come across), though he may know no more about Italy than what he has read in Bædaeker's handbook, though he may never have felt the heart of Italy's ideal beauty beating beneath the bark, is at all events able to report on the number of round-faced monks whom he has seen tossing off their bumpers and gormandising ad libitum. I am well aware that it isn't popular to stand up for the monks, but I mean to do so all the same—and indeed it is no more than my bounden duty, for I number many a good friend amongst the kindly old brothers. As it is, they have such a wretched time of it, these poor remaining monks, they are so timid in the consciousness that wherever they go they must silently and uncomplainingly accept the scorn and raillery which is their daily bread; perhaps it is on that account that they get on best with the poor, who always treat them kindly.

Poor old monks! they are doomed to extinction in any case,—why not let them depart in peace?

And they are not my only protégés. I have others besides them, and now that we are on the subject I may as well produce them from the hidden depths of my compassionate sympathy. Were I ruler over a vast, vast kingdom, I would divide the lands into three equal parts, and deal it out to the three innocent victims of modern civilisation: monks, Laplanders, and Red Indians. But how would they all get on together—that is the question? I wonder whether the Redskins would modify their bad habits to the extent of scalping one another only, or whether, when their old inclinations were roused, they would try their hand on my other subjects as well? But I should wander about my kingdom and try to keep things straight, and of one thing I am quite sure, I should be on good terms with the whole lot!—Or perhaps, all things taken into consideration, I might abdicate and turn monk myself. . . .