Classic Audiobook Collection - Sea and Sardinia by D. H. Lawrence ~ Full Audiobook [biography]

Episode Date: January 3, 2023

Sea and Sardinia by D. H. Lawrence audiobook. Genre: biography In Sea and Sardinia, D. H. Lawrence turns a simple winter trip into a sharp, restless travel memoir full of landscape, conversation, and cultural friction. Leaving the chill and routines of mainland Italy, Lawrence and his wife, Frieda, set off by train and ship toward Sardinia, an island that feels both near and startlingly separate. As they navigate delays, cramped compartments, and the small dramas of fellow passengers, Lawrence watches everything with a poet's eye and a skeptic's impatience: the shifting sea, the hard outlines of coastal towns, the rhythms of local life, and the uneasy relationship between the island and the larger nation that claims it. In villages and cities alike, he tests his own assumptions about modernity, tradition, and the meaning of freedom, often finding beauty where he least expects it and irritation where others might see romance. By turns comic, lyrical, and biting, the book becomes less a guidebook than a portrait of travel as confrontation - with place, with politics, and with the traveler himself. For ad-free listening try our premium subscription Chapters (Approximate) (00:00:00) Chapter 01 (00:29:10) Chapter 02 (00:54:16) Chapter 03 (01:37:42) Chapter 04 (02:21:29) Chapter 05 (03:05:03) Chapter 06 (03:46:12) Chapter 07 (04:31:16) Chapter 08 (05:13:05) Chapter 09 (05:50:27) Chapter 10 (06:26:18) Chapter 11 (07:07:48) Chapter 12 (07:43:16) Chapter 13 (08:12:23) Chapter 14 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

c and sardinia by d h lawrence chapter one as far as palermo comes over one an absolute necessity to move and what is more to move in some particular direction a double necessity then to get on the move and to know whither why can't one sit still here in sicily it is so pleasant the sunny ionian sea the changing jewel of calabria like a fire-opal moved in the light italy and the panorama of christmas clouds night with the dog star laying a long luminous gleam across the sea as if baying at us orion marching above how the dog star serious looks at one looks at one he is the hound of heaven green glamorous and fierce and then o regal evening star hung westward flaring over the jagged dark precipices of tall sicily then etna that wicked witch resting her thick white snow under heaven and slowly slowly rolling her orange coloured smoke they called her orange coloured smoke they called her the pillar of heaven, the Greeks. It seems wrong at first, for she trails up in a long, magical, flexible line from the sea's edge to her blunt cone, and does not seem tall. She seems rather low under heaven, but as one knows her better, oh awe and wizardry.

Remote under heaven, aloof, so near, yet never with us. The painters try to paint her, and the photographers to photograph her in vain because why because the near ridges with their olives and white houses these are with us because the river-bed are naxos under the lemon groves greek naxos deep under dark-leaved many-fruited lemon groves etna's skirts and skirt bottoms these still are our world our own world even the high villages among the oaks on eton's but etna herself etna of the snow and secret changing winds she is beyond a crystal wall when i look at her low white witch-like under heaven slowly rolling her orange smoke and giving sometimes a breath of rose-red flame then i must look away from earth into the ether into the low imperian and there in that remote region etna is alone if you would see her you must slowly take off your eyes from the world and go a naked seer to the strange chamber of the imperian pedestal of heaven the greeks had a sense of the magic truth of things thank goodness one still knows enough about them to find one's kinship at last there are so many photographs there are so infinitely many water-coloured drawings and oil paintings which purport to render etna but pedestal of heaven you must cross the invisible border between the foreground which is our own and etna pivot of winds in lower heaven there is a dividing line you must change your state of mind a metem psychosis

it is no use thinking you can see and behold etna and the foreground both at once never one or the other foreground and a transcribed etna or etna or etna or etna or etna or etna or eau Etna, Pedestal of Heaven. Why then must one go? Why not stay? Ah, what a mistress, this Etna, with her strange winds prowling round her, like Circe's panthers, some black, some white,

with her strange remote communications and her terrible dynamic exhalations. She makes men mad. Such terrible vibrations of wicked and beautiful electricity, she throws about her like a deadly net. Nay, sometimes verily, one can feel a new current of her demon magnetism, seize one's living tissue, and change the peaceful life of one's active cells. She makes a storming the living plasm and a new adjustment,

and sometimes it is like a madness. This timeless Grecianetna, in her lower heaven loveliness, so lovely so lovely what a torturer not many men can really stand her without losing their souls she is like circe unless a man is very strong she takes his soul away from him and leaves him not a beast but an elemental creature intelligent and soulless intelligent almost inspired and soulless like the etna sicilians intelligent damans and humanly according to us the most stupid people on earth ah horror how many men how many races has etna put to flight it was she who broke the quick of the greek soul and after the greek she gave the romans the normans the arabs the spaniards the french the italians even the-the the English, she gave them all their inspired hour, and broke their souls. Perhaps it is she one must flee from, at any rate one must go, and at once. After having come back only at the end of October, already one must dash away, and it is only the third of January, and one cannot afford to

move. Yet there you are, at the Etna bidding one goes. Where does one go? Where does one go? there is gergenti by the south there is tunis at hand gijenti and the sulphur spirit and the greek guarding temples to make one madder never neither syracuse and the madness of its great quarries tunis africa not yet not yet not the arabs not yet naples rome florence no good at all where then where then spain or sardinia spain or sardinia sardinia which is like nowhere sardinia which has no history no date no race no offering let it be sardinia they say neither romans nor phoenicians greeks nor arabs ever subdued sardinia it lies outside outside the circuit of civilisation like the basque lands sure enough it is is Italian now, with its railways and its motor omnibuses, but there is an uncaptured sardinia still. It lies within the net of this European civilization, but it isn't landed yet, and the net is getting old and tattered. A good many fish are slipping through the net of

the old European civilization, like that great whale of Russia, and probably even Sardinia. sardinia then let it be sardinia there is a fortnightly boat sailing from palermo next wednesday three days ahead let us go then away from abhorred etna and the ionian sea and these great stars in the water and the almond trees in bud and the orange trees heavy with red fruit and these maddening exasperating impossible sicilians who never knew what truth was and have long lost all notion of what a human being is a sort of sulphurous demons and jarmo but let me confess in parenthesis that i am not at all sure whether i don't really prefer these demons to our sanctified humanity why does one create such discomfort for oneself to have to get up in the middle of the night half-past one to go and look at the clock of course this fraud of an american watch as stopped with its impudent phosphorescent face half-past one half-past one and a dark january night ah well half-past one and an uneasy sleep till at last it is five o'clock then light a candle and get up the dreary black morning the candle-light the house-looking night dismal ah well one does all these things for one's pleasure so light the charcoal fire and put the kettle on the queen bee shivering round half dressed fluttering her unhappy candle it's fun she says shuddering great say i grim as death first fill the thermos with hot tea

then fry bacon good english bacon from malta a godsend indeed and make bacon sandwiches make also sandwiches of scrambled eggs make all so sandwiches of scrambled eggs make all also bread and butter, also a little toast for breakfast, and more tea. But, ugh, who wants to eat at this unearthly hour, especially when one is escaping from Bewitched Sicily? Fill the little bag we call the kitchenino. Methylated spirit, a small aluminium saucepan, a spirit lamp, two spoons, two forks, a knife, two aluminium plates, salt, sugar tea, what else? The thermosolated. The thermos. flask the various sandwiches four apples and a little tin of butter so much for the kitchenino for myself and the queen bee then my knapsack and the q b's handbag under the lid of the half-cloudy night sky far away at the rim of the ionian sea the first light like metal fusing so swallow the cup of tea and the bit of toast hastily wash up so that we can find the house decent when we come back

shut the door windows of the upper terrace and go down lock the door the upper half of the house made fast the sky and sea are parting like an oyster shell with a low red gape looking across from the verandah at it one shivers not that it is cold the morning is not at all cold but the ominousness of it that long red slip between a dark sky and a dark ionian sea terrible old bivalve which has held life between its lips so long and here at this house we are ledged so awfully above the dawn naked to it fasten the door windows of the lower veranda one won't fasten at all the summer heat warped it one way the masses of autumn rain warped at another put a chair against it lock the last door and hide the key slim the knack on one's back take the kitchenino in one's hand and look round the dawn-red widening between the purpling sea and the troubled sky a light in the capucine convent across there cocks crowing and the long howling hiccuping melancholy bray of an ass all females are dead all females och o'h oha there's one left so he ends on a moaning grunt of consolation this is what the arabs tell us an ass is howling when he brays very dark under the great carob tree as we go down the steps dark still the garden scent of mimosa and then of jasmine the lovely mimosa tree invisible dark the stony path the goat-winne is out of her shed the broken roman tomb which lulls right over the garden

track does not fall on me as i slip under its massive tilt ah dark garden dark garden with your olives and your wine your meddlers and mulberries and many almond trees your steep terraces ledged high up above the sea i am leaving you slinking out out between the rosemary hedges out of the tall gate onto the cruel steep stony road so under the dark big eucalyptus trees, over the stream and up towards the village. There I have got so far. It is full dawn, dawn not morning, the sun will not have risen. The village is nearly all dark in the red light and asleep still. No one at the fountain by the Capucine gate, too dark still. One man leading a horse round the corner of the Palazzo Corvaya, one or two dark men along the course so, and so over the brow, down the steep cobblestone street between the houses, and out to the naked hill-front. This is the dawn-coast of Sicily, nay, the dawn-coast of Europe, steep like a vast cliff dawn forward, a red dawn with mingled, curdling dark clouds and some gold. It must be seven o'clock, the station down below by the sea, a noise of a train yes a train and we still high on the steep track winding downwards but it is the train from messina to catania half an hour before ours which is from catania to messina

so jolt and drop and jolt down the old road that winds on the cliff face etna across there is smothered quite low quite low in a dense puffer of ink-black clouds playing some devilry in private no doubt the dawn is angly red and yellow above the sea takes strange colours i hate the station pigmy drawn out there beside the sea on this steep face especially in the windless nooks the armen blossom is already out in little puffs and specks and stars it looks very like bits of snow scattered by winter bits of snow bits of blossom fourth day of the year nineteen twenty one only only only blossom and etna indescribably cloaked and secretive in her dense black clouds she has wrapped them quite round her quite low round her skirts at last we are down we pass the pits where men are burning lime red-hot round pits and are out on the highway nothing can be more depressing than an italian high road from syracuse to irolo it is the same horrible horrible dreary slummy high roads the moment you approach a village or any human habitation here there is an acrid smell of lemon juice there is a factory for making citrate the houses flush on the road under the great limestone face of the hill open their slummy doors and throw out dirty water and coffee dregs we walk over the dirty water and coffee dregs mules rattle past with carts other people are going to the station we pass the dazio and are there humanity is externally too much alike

internally there are insuperable differences so one sits and thinks watching the people on the station like a line of caricatures between oneself and the naked sea and the uneasy clouding dawn you would look in vain this morning for the swarthy feline southerner of romance it might as far as features are concerned be an early morning crowd waiting for the train on a north london suburb station as far as features go for some affair and some colourless and none racially typical the only one that is absolutely like a race caricature is a tall stout elderly fellow with spectacles and a short nose and a short nose and a a bristling moustache, and he is the German of the comic papers of twenty years ago, but he is pure Sicilian. They are mostly young fellows going up the line to Messina to their job, not artisans, lower middle class, and externally, so like any other clerks and shopmen, only rather more shabby, much less socially self-conscious. They're lively, they throw their arms round one another's necks they all but kiss one poor chap has had ear-ache so a black kerchief is tied round his face and his black hat is perched above and a comic sight he looks no one seems to think so however

yet they view my arrival with a knapsack on my back with cold disapprobation as unseemly as if i had arrived riding on a pig i ought to be in a carriage and the knapsack ought to be a new suit-case I know it, but am inflexible. That is how they are. Each one thinks he is as handsome as adonis, and as fetching as Don Juan. Extraordinary. At the same time, all flesh is grass, and if a few trouser buttons are missing,

or if a black hat perches above a thick black face-muffle and a long excruciated face, it is all in the course of nature. They seize the black-aged one by the arm, and in profound commiseration. Do you suffer? Are you suffering, they ask? And that also is how they are, so terribly physically all over one another. They pour themselves one over the other like so much melted butter over parsnips. They catch each other under the chin, with a tender caress of the hand,

and they smile with sunny melting tenderness into each other's face. never in the world have i seen such melting gay tenderness as between casual sicilians on railway platforms whether they be young lean-cheeked sicilians or huge stout sicilians there must be something curious about the proximity of a volcano naples and catania alike the men are hugely fat with great macaroni porches they are expansive and in a perfect drip of casual effect and love but the sicilians are even more wildly exuberant and fat and all over one another than the neapolitans they never leave off being amorously friendly with almost everybody omitting a relentless physical familiarity that is quite bewildering to one not brought up near a volcano this is more true of the middle classes than of the lower the working men are perforce thinner and less exuberant but they hang together in clusters and can never be physically near enough it is only thirty miles to messina but the train takes two hours it winds and hurries and stops beside the lavender-gray morning sea a flock of goats trail over the beach near the lapping waves edge dismally great wide deserts of stony river beds run down to the sea and men on asses are picking their way across and women are kneeling by the small stream channel washing clothes the lemons hang pale and innumerable in the thick lemon groves lemon trees like italians seem to be happiest when they're touching one another all round

solid forests of not very tall lemon trees lie between the steep mountains and the sea on the strip of plain women vague in the orchard under shadow are picking the lemons, lurking as if in the undersea. There are heaps of pale yellow lemons under the trees. They look like pale primrose smouldering fires. Curious how like fires the heaps of lemons look under the shadow of foliage, seeming to give off a pallid burning amid the suave, naked greenish trunks. When there comes a cluster of orange trees, the oranges are red like coals among the darker leaves. but lemons lemons innumerable speckled like innumerable tiny stars in the green firmament of leaves so many lemons think of all the lemonade crystals they will be reduced to think of america drinking them up next summer i always wonder why such vast wide river beds of pale boulders come out of the heart of the high-rearing dramatic stone mountains a few miles to the sea a few miles only and never more than a few threading water-trickles in river-beds wide enough for the rhine

but that is how it is the landscape is ancient and classic romantic as if it had known far-off days and fiercer rivers and more verdure steep craggy wild the land goes up to its points and precipices a tangle of heights but all jammed on top of one another and in old landscapes as in old people the flesh wears away and the bones become prominent rock sticks up fantastically the jungle of peaks in this old sicily the sky is all grey the straits are grey red joe just across the water is white-looking under the great dark toe of calabria the toe of italy on asperamonte there is grey cloud it is going to rain after such marvellous ringing blue days it is going to rain what luck aspermonte garibaldi i could always cover my face when i see it aspermonte i wish garibaldi had been prouder why did he go off so humbly with his bag of seed corn and a flea in his ear when his majesty king victoria manual arrived with his little short legs on the scene poor garibaldi he wanted to be a hero and a dictator of free sicily well one can't be a dictator and humble at the same time. One must be a hero which he was, and proud which he wasn't. Besides, people don't nowadays choose proud heroes for governors, anything but. They prefer constitutional monarchs who

are paid servants and who know it. That is democracy. Democracy admires its own servants and nothing else. And you couldn't make a real servant even of Garibaldi, only of his majesty, King Victoria Emmanuel. So Italy chose Victor Emmanuel, and Garibaldi went off with a corn bag and a whack on the behind like a humble ass. It is raining, dismally, dismaly raining, and this is Messina

coming. Oh horrible Messina, earthquake shattered and renewing your youth like a vast mining settlement with rows and streets and miles of concrete shanties, squalor and a big street with shops and gaps

and broken houses still, just back of the tram lines, and a dreary squalid earthquake hopeless port in a lovely harbour. People don't forget and don't recover. The people of Messina seem to be today what they were nearly 20 years ago after the earthquake, people who have had a terrible shock, and for whom all life's institutions are really nothing, neither civilisation nor purpose. The meaning of everything all came,

down with a smash in that shuddering earthquake and nothing remains but money and the throes of some sort of sensation messina between the volcanoes etna and stromboli having known the death-agony's terror i always dread coming near the awful place yet i have found the people kind almost feverishly so as if they knew the awful need for kindness raining raining hard clambering down on to the wet platform and walking across the wet lines to the cover many human beings scurrying across the wet lines among the wet trains to get out into the ghastly town beyond thank heaven one need not go out into the town two convicts chained together among the crowd and two soldiers the prisoners wear fawny homespun clothes of cloths of cloths of cloths of cloths such as the peasants weave with irregularly occurring brown stripes rather nice hand-made rough stuff but linked together dear god and those horrid caps on their hairless foreheads no hair probably they're going to a convict station on the lipery islands the people take no notice no but convicts are horrible creatures at least the old one is with his long nasty face his long nasty face his long long, clean-shaven, horrible face without emotions, or with emotions one cannot follow. Something cold, sightless. A sightless, ugly look. I should loath to have to touch him.

Over the other, I am not so sure. He is young and with dark eyebrows, but a roundish, softish face, with a sort of leer. No evil is horrible. I used to think there was no absolute evil. Now I know there is a great, deal, so much that it threatens life altogether, that ghastly abstractness of criminals. They don't know any more what other people feel, yet some horrible force drives them. It is a great mistake to abolish the death penalty. If I were a dictator, I should order the old one to be hung at once. I should have judges with sensitive living hearts, not abstract intellects, and because of the instinctive heart recognised a man as evil, I would have that man destroyed, quickly, because good, warm life is now in danger.

Standing on Messina Station, dreary, dreary hole, and watching the winter rain and seeing the pair of convicts, I must remember again Oscar Wilde on Reading Platform, a convict. What a terrible mistake to let oneself be martyred by a lot of can I! a man must say his say but no li me tangerie curious these people are up and down up and down go a pair of officials the young one in a black gold-laced cap talks to the elder in a scarlet gold-laced cap and he walks the young man with a mad little hop and his fingers fly as if he wanted to scatter them to the four winds of heaven and his words go off like fire with more than sicilian speed on and on up and down and his eye is dark and excited and unseeing like the eye of a fleeing rabbit strange and beside itself is humanity end of chapter one section one chapter one section two of c and sardinia by d h lawrence this lebravox recording is in the public domain recording by antony ogus what a lot of officials you know them by their caps elegant tubby little officials in kid and patent boots and gold lace caps tall long-nosed ones in more gold-laced caps like angels in and out of the gates of heaven they thread in and out of the various doors

as far as i can see there are three scarlet station-masters five black-and-gold substation-masters and a countless number of principalities and powers in more or less broken boots and official caps they're like bees round a hive humming in an important conversazione and occasionally looking at some paper or other and extracting a little official honey but the conversazione is the affair of affair to an italian official life seems to be one long and animated conversation the italian word is better interrupted by casual trains and telephones and besides the angels of heaven's gates there are the mere ministers porters lamp-cleaners etc these stand in groups and talk socialism a lamp-man slashes along swinging a couple of lamps bashes one against a barrow smear smash goes the glass looks down as if to say what you mean by it glances over his shoulder to see if any member of the higher hierarchies is looking seven members of higher hierarchies are assiduously not looking on goes the minister with the lamp blithely another pain or two gone vaulge la galere passengers have gathered again some in hoods some in nothing youths in thin paltry clothes stand out in the pouring rain as if they did not know it was raining one sees their coat shoulders soaked and yet they do not trouble to keep under shelter two large station dogs run about and trot through the standing trains just like officials they climb up the footboard hop into a train and hop out casually when they feel like it two or three port porters in canvas hats as big as umbrellas

literally spreading like huge fins over their shoulders are looking into more empty trains more and more people appear more and more official caps stand about it rains and rains the train for palermo and the train for saracus are both an hour later already coming from the port flea bite though these are the great connections from rome loose locomotives trundle back and forth vaguely like black dogs running and turning back. The port is only four minutes walk. If it were not raining so hard, we would go down, walk along the lines and get into the waiting train down there. Anybody may please himself. There is the funnel of the great unwieldy ferry object

she is just edging in. That means the connection from the mainland at last. But it is cold standing here. We eat a bit of bread and butter from the kitchenino. in resignation. After all, what is an hour and a half? It might just as easily be five hours, as it was the last time we came down from Rome,

and the Vagons-Lie, booked to Syracuse, calmly left stranded in the station of Messina to go no further. All get out and find yourself rooms for the night in vile Messina. Saracus or no Syracuse, Malta-boat or no multi-boat. We are the Ferrovia delustato,

but there why grumble no italiani siame cozi buerni take it from their own mouth ecco fina mente the crowd is quite joyful as the two express trains surged proudly in after their half-a-mile creep plenty of room for once though the carriage floor is a puddle and the roof leaks this is second-class slowly with two engines we grunt and run chuff and twist to get over the breakneck heights that shut Messina in from the north coast. The windows are opaque with steam and drops of rain. No matter, tea from the thermos flask to the great interest of the other two passengers who had nervously contemplated the unknown object. Ah, says he with joy, seeing the hot tea come out, it has the appearance of a bomb beautiful hot says she with real admiration all apprehension at once dissipated peace rains in the wet mist-hidden compartment we won through miles and miles of tunnel the italians have made wonderful roads and railways if one rubs the window and looks out lemon groves with many wet white lemons earthquake broken houses new shanties a grave of greyed weary sea on the right hand, and on the left the dim grey complication of steep heights

from which issue stone river-beds of inordinate width, and sometimes a road, a man on a mule. Sometimes near at hand, long-haired melancholy goats, leaning sideways like tilted ships under the eaves of some scabby house. They call the house-eves the dog's umbrellas. In town, you see the dogs trotting close under the wall out of the wet here the goats lean like rock listing inwards to the plaster wall why look out sicilian railways are all single line hence the coincidenza a coincidenza is where two trains meet in a loop you sit in a world of rain and waiting until some silly engine with four trucks puffs alongside echo la coincidenza then after a brief conversazione between the two trains direto and mercer express and goods the tin horn sounds and away we go happily towards the next coincidence clerks away ahead joyfully chalk up our hours of lateness on the announcement slate all adds to the adventurous flavour of the journey dear heart we come to a station where we find the other directo the express from the other direction awaiting our coincidental arrival. The two trains run alongside one another,

like two dogs meeting in the street and snuffing one another. Every official rushes to greet every other official, as if they were all David and Jonathan meeting after a crisis. They rush into each other's arms and exchange cigarettes, and the trains can't bear to part, and the station can't bear to part with us. The officials tease themselves, and us with the word pronto meaning ready pronto and again pronto and shrill whistles anywhere else a train would go off its tormented head but no hear only that angels trump of an official little horn will do the business and get them to blow that horn if you can they can't bear to part

rain continual rain a level grey-wet sky a level grey-wet sea a wet and misty train winding round and round the little bays diving through tunnels ghosts of the unpleasant-looking lippery islands standing a little way out to sea heaps of shadow deposited like rubbish-heaps in the universal greyness enter more passengers an enormous large woman with an extraordinarily handsome face, an extraordinarily large man, quite young, and a diminutive servant, a little girl child of about thirteen, with a beautiful face. But the Juno, it is she who takes my breath away.

She is quite young, in her thirties still. She has that queenly stupid beauty of a classic hairer, a pure brow with level dark brows, large, dark bridling eyes. a straight nose a chiselled mouth an air of remote self-consciousness she sends one's heart straight back to pagan days and and she is simply enormous like a house she wears a black toque with sticking up wings and a black rabbit fur spread on her shoulders she edges her way in carefully and once seated is terrified to rise to her feet she sits with that motionlessness of her type, closed lips, face muted and expressionless. And she expects me to admire her. I can see that. She expects me to pay homage to her beauty, just to that, not homage to herself, but to her as a

belpso. She casts little aloof glances at me under her eyelids. It is evident she is a country beauty, become a bourgeois. She speaks unwillingly to the other squint-eyed passenger. a young woman who also wears a black rabbit fur but without pretensions the husband of juno is a fresh-faced bourgeois young fellow and he also is simply huge his waistcoat would almost make the overcoat of the fourth passenger the unshaven companion of the squinting young woman the young jupiter wears kid gloves a significant fact here he too has pretensions but he is quite affable with a-aubble with a little bit of a few little bit of aft of aftainting young woman the young jupiter wears kid gloves a significant fact here he too has pretensions but he is quite affable with the unshaven one and speaks Italian unaffectedly, whereas Juno speaks the dialect with affectation. No one takes any notice of the little maid. She has a gentle virgin moon face, and those lovely grey Sicilian eyes that are translucent, and into which the light sinks and becomes black sometimes, sometimes dark blue. She carries the bag and the extra coat of the huge Juno, and sits on the edge of the

seat between me and the unshaven, Juno having motioned her there with a regal inclination of the head. The little maid is rather frightened. Perhaps she is an orphan child, probably. Her nut-brown hair is smoothly parted and done in two pigtails. She wears no hat, as is proper for her class. On her shoulders one of those little knitted grey shoulder capes that one associates with orphanages. her stuffed dress is dark grey her boots are strong the smooth moon-like expressionless virgin face rather pale and touching rather frightened of the girl child a perfect face from a medieval picture it moves one strangely why it is so unconscious as we are conscious like a little muted animal it sits there in distress she is going to be sick She goes into the corridor and is sick, very sick, leaning her head like a sick dog on the window ledge. Jupiter towers above her, not unkind, and apparently feeling no repugnance.

The physical convulsion of the girl does not affect him as it affects us. He looks on unmoved, merely venturing to remark that she had eaten too much before coming on to the train, an obviously true remark. After which she comes and talks a few common places to me. By and by the girl child creeps in again and sits on the edge of the seat facing Juno. But no, says Juno, if she is sick, she will be sick over me.

So Jupiter accommodatingly changes places with the girl child, who is thus next to me. She sits on the edge of the seat with folded little red hands, Her face pale and expressionless. Beautiful, the thin line of her nut-brown eyebrows. The dark lashes of the silent pellucid dark eyes. Silent motionless, like a sick animal.

But Juno tells her to wipe her splashed boots. The child gropes for a piece of paper. Juno tells her to take her pocket-handkerchief. Febly the sick girl child wipes her boots, then leans back. but no good she has to go in the corridor and be sick again after a while they all get out queer to see people so natural neither juno nor jupiter is in the least unkind he even seems kind but they are just not upset not half as upset as we are the q b wanting to administer t and so on we should have to hold the child's head they just quite naturally leave it alone to its convulsions and are neither distress nor repelled it just is so their naturalness seems unnatural to us yet i am sure it is best sympathy would only complicate matters and spoil that

that strange remote virginal quality. The QB says it is largely stupidity. Nobody washes out the corner of the corridor, though we stop at stations long enough, and there are two more hours' journey. Train officials go by and stare. Passengers step over and stare. Newcomers stare and step over.

Somebody asked who. Nobody thinks of just throwing a pail of water. Why should they? It is all in the course of nature. One begins to be a bit chary of this same nature in the south. Enter two fresh passengers, a black-eyed, round-faced, bright, sharp man in cordroys, and with a gun, and a long-faced fresh-coloured man with thick, snowy hair,

and a new hat, and a long black overcoat of smooth black cloth, lined with rather ancient, once expensive fur. He is extremely proud of this long black coat, an ancient fur lining. Childishly proud, he wraps it again over his knee and gloats. The beady black eyes of the hunter look round with pleased alertness. He sits facing the one in the overcoat, who looks like the last sprout of some Norman blood.

The hunter in corduroy's beams a broadness. with beady black eyes and a round red face curious and the other tucks his fur-lined long coat between his legs and gloats to himself all to himself gloating and looking as if he were deaf but no he's not he wears muddy high-low boots at termini it is already lamplight business men crowd in we get five business men all stout respected palermitans the one opposite me has whiskers and are many-coloured patched travelling rug over his fat knees queer how they bring that feeling of physical intimacy with them you are never surprised if they begin to take off their boots or their collar and tie the whole world is a sort of bedroom to them one shrinks but in vain there is some conversation between the black-eyed beady hunter and the business men also the young white head head one, the aristocrat, tries to stammer out at great length of few words. As far as I can gather, the young one is mad or deranged, and the other, the hunter, is his keeper. They are travelling over Europe together. There is some talk of the count, and the hunter says

the unfortunate has had an accident, but that is a southern gentleness, presumably, a form of speech anyhow it is queer and the hunter in his corduys with his round ruddy face and strange black bright eyes and thing black hair is a puzzle to me even more than the albino long-coated long-faced fresh complexioned queer last remnant of a baron as he is they are both muddy from the land and pleased in a little mad way of their own but it is half-past six we are our own at Palermo, capital of Sicily. The hunter slings his gun over his shoulder, I, my knapsack, and in the throng we all disappear into the Via Maceda. Palermo has two great streets, the Via Macada and the Corso, which cross each other at right angles. The Via Macada is narrow, with narrow little pavements, and is always choked with carriages and foot passengers. It had ceased raining,

but the narrow road was paved with large convex slabs of hard stone, inexpressibly greasy. To cross the Via Maceda, therefore, was a feat. However, once accomplished it was done. The near end of the street was rather dark and had mostly vegetable shops, abundance of vegetables, piles of white and green fennel like celery, and great sheaves of young purplish sea-dust-coloured on, notichokes nodding their buds piles of big radishes scarlet and bluey purple carrots long strings of dried figs mountains of big oranges scarlet large peppers a last slice of pumpkin a great mass of colours and vegetable freshnesses a mountain of black-purple cauliflower like nigger's heads and a mountain of snow-white ones next to them how the dark greasy night-stress and street seems to beam with these vegetables. All this fresh, delicate flesh of luminous vegetables piled there in the air, and in the recesses of the windowless little caverns of the shops,

and gleaming forth on the dark air under the lamps. The cuby at once wants to buy vegetables. Look, look at the snow-vite broccoli! Look at the huge finoki! Why don't we get them? I must have some. look at those great clusters of dates ten francs a kilo and we pay sixteen it's monstrous our place is simply monstrous for all that one doesn't buy vegetables to take to sardinia cross the corso at that decorated maelstrom and death-trap of the quatrocanti i of course am nearly knocked down and killed somebody is nearly knocked down and killed every two minutes but there the the carriages are light and the horses curiously aware creatures they would never tread on one the second part of the veer macaida is the swell part silks and plumes and an infinite number of shirts and ties and cufflinks and mufflers and men's fancies one realizes here that man drapery and man underwear is quite as important as women's if not more i of course in a rage the q b stares at every rag and stitch and crosses and recrosses this infernal dark stream of a via macada which as i have said is choked solid with strollers and carriages be it remembered that i have on my back the brown knapsack and the q b carries the kitchenino this is enough to make a travelling menagerie of us if i had my shirts sticking out behind and if the q b had happened merely to catch up the table-cloth and wrap

it round her as she came out all well and good but a brig brown knapsack and a basket with thermos flask etc no one could not expect such things to pass in a southern capital but i am case hardened and i am sick of shops true we have not been in a town for three months but can i care for the innumerable fantasias in the drapery line every wretched bit of would be extra chic is called a fantasia the word goes lugubriously to my bowels suddenly i am aware of the cubie darting past me like a storm suddenly i see her pouncing on three giggling young husses just in front the inevitable black velveteen tam the inevitable white curly muffler the inevitable lower-class flappers did you want something have you something to say is there something that amuses you oh you must laugh must you oh laugh oh why why you ask why haven't i heard you oh you speak english you speak english yes why that's why yes that's why yes that's why yes that's why That's why. The three giggling young husses shrink together as if they would all hide behind one another

after a vain uprearing and a demand why. Madame tells them why. So they uncomfortably squeezed together under the unexpected strokes of the QB's sledgehammer Italian and more than sledgehammer retaliation there full in the Via Mercada. They edge round one another, each attempting to get back of the other, away from the looming QB.

I perceive that this rotary motion is equivalent to a standstill, so feel called upon to say something in the manly line. Beastly Palermo bad manners, I say, and throw a nonchalant ignorante at the end in a tone of dismissal. Which does it. Off they go downstream, still huddling and shrinking like boats that are taking sales in, and peeping to see if we were coming. Yes, my dears, we are coming.

Why do you bother, say I to the QB, who is towering with rage? They've followed us the whole length of the street, with their saco-militario and their palano inglese, and there you speak English, and that deering insolence. But the English are fools, they always put up with his Italian impudence, which is perhaps true. But this knapsack, it might be full of bronze-roaring geese, it would not attract more attention. However, and however, it is seven o'clock, and the shops are beginning to shut, no more shop-gazing.

Only one lovely place, raw ham, boiled ham, chickens in Aspec, chicken vaudeau-ven, sweet curds, curd cheese, rustic cheesecake, smoked sausages, beautiful fresh mortadella huge mediterranean red lobsters and those lobsters without claws so good so good we stand and cry it aloud but this shop too is shutting i ask a man for the hotel pan tecico and treating me in that gentle strangely tender southern manner he takes me and shows me he makes me feel such a poor frail helpless leaf a foreigner you know a a bit of an imbecile poor dear hold his hand and show him the way to sit in the room of this young american woman with its blue hangings and talk and drink tea till midnight ah these naive americans they are good deal older and shrewder than we once it nears the point and they all seem to feel as if the world were coming to an end and they are so truly generous of their hospitality in this cold world end of chapter i chapter two of sea and sardinia by d h lawrence this libra v ox recording is in the public domain recording by antony ogus the sea the fat old porter knocks ah me once more it is dark get up again before dawn a dark sky outside cloudy the thrilling tinkle of innumerable goat-bear as the first flock enters the city such a rippling sound well it must be morning even if one shivers at it and at least it does not rain

that pale bluish theatrical light outside of the first dawn and a cold wind we come on to the wide desolate quay the curve of the harbour penormous that horrible dawn-power of a cold sea out there and here port mud greased and fish and refuse. The American girl is with us, wrapped in her sweater. A coarse, cold, black, slimy world, she seemed as if she would melt away before it. But these frail creatures, what a lot they can go through. Across the great wide, badly paved, mud, greasy, despairing road of the quayside, and to the sea. There lies our steamer, over there in the door, dusk of the basin, half visible. That one who is smoking her cigarette, says the porter. She looks little beside the huge city of Trieste, who is lying up next her.

Our rowboat is hemmed in by many empty boats, huddled to the side of the key. She works her way out like a sheep-dog, working his way out of a flock of sheep, or like a boat through pack-ice. We are on the open basin. The rower stands up and pushes the oars from him. He gives a long melancholy cry to someone on the key. The water goes chock-ch-ch-ch-ch against the urging boughs. The wind is chill. The fantastic peaks behind Palermo show half-ghostly in a half-dark sky. The dawn seems reluctant to come. Our steamer still smokes her stella. cigarette, meaning the funnel smoke, across there. So one sits still and crosses the level space of half-dark water. Masts of sailing ships and spars cluster on the left, on the undarkening sky. Climb up, climb up, this is our ship. Up we go, up the ladder. How but, says the American girl. Isn't she small? Isn't she impossibly

small. Oh my, will you go in such a little thing? Oh dear. Thirty-two hours in such a little boat. Why no, I wouldn't care for it at all. A bunch of stewards, cooks, waiters, engineers, pan-cleaners and whatnot, mostly in black canvas jackets. Nobody else on the ship. A little black bunch of loutish crew with nothing to do and we the first passengers served up to be jeered at there you are in the grey light who is going we too the signorina is not going tickets these are casual proletarian manners we are taken into the one long room with a long table and many maple golden doors alternate panels having a wedgewood blue and white picture inserted a would-be goddess of white marble on a blue ground, like a health sort's Hygir advertisement. One of the plain panels opens, Arkhamin. Oh dear! Why, it isn't as big as a China closet!

However will you get in? cries the American girl. One at a time, say I. But it's the tiniest place I ever saw. It really was tiny. One had to get into a bunk to shop the door. that did not matter to me i am no titanic american i pitched the knapsack on one bunk the kitchenino on the other and we shut the door the cabin disappeared into a maple-wood panel of the long subterranean state-room why is this the only place you've got to sit in cried the american girl but how perfectly awful no air and so dark and smelly why i never saw boat will you really go will you really the stateroom was truly rather subterranean and stuffy with nothing but a long table and an uncanny company of scroop in chairs seated thereat and no outlet to the air at all but it was not so bad otherwise to me who have never been out of europe those maplewood panels and ebony curves and those hygeas they went all round even round the curve at the dim distant end

and back up the near side yet how beautiful old gold-coloured maple wood is how very lovely with the ebony curves of the door-arch there was a wonderful old-fashioned victorian glow in it and a certain splendour even one could bear the hygeas let in under glass the colour was right knack wedgewood and white in such lovely gold lustre there was a certain homely grandeur still in the days when this ship was built a richness of choice material and healthsorts hygeas wedgewood greek goddesses on advertisement placards yet they weren't advertisements that was what really worried me they never had been perhaps Wego's health sorts stole her later. We have no coffee, that goes without saying, nothing doing so early. The crew still stands in a gang, exactly like a gang of louts at a street corner, and they've got the street all to themselves, this ship. We climb to the upper deck. She is a long, slender, old steamer with one little funnel, and she seems so deserted now that one can't see the street-corner gang of the casual crew. They are just below. Our ship is deserted.

The dawn is wanly bluing. The sky is a curdle of cloud. There is a bit of pale gold eastwards, beyond Monte Pellegrino. The wind blows across the harbour. The hills behind Palermo prick up their ears on the skyline. The city lies unseen, near us and level. There, a big ship is coming in the naples boat and the little boats keep putting off from the near quay and coming to us we watch a stout officer cavalry in grey-green with a big dark blue cloak lined with scarlet the scarlet lining keeps flashing he has a little beard and his uniform is not quite clean he has big wooden chests tied with rope for luggage poor and of no class yet that scarlet splendid lining and the spurs it seems a pity they must go second class yet so it is he goes forward when the dock porter has hoisted those wooden boxes no fellow passenger yet boats still keep coming ha ha here is the commissariat various sides of kid ready for roasting various chickens fennel like celery wine in a bottile new bread packages hand them up hand them up good food cries the q b in anticipation it must be getting near time to go two more passengers young thick men in black broad cloth standing up in the stern of a little boat their hands in their pockets looking a little cold about the chin not quite italian too sturdy and manly sardinians from caliari as a matter of fact

we go down from the chill upper deck it is growing full day bits of pale gold are flying among delicate but cold flakes of cloud from the east over monte pelegrino bits of very new turquoise sky come out palermo on the left crouches upon her all harbour a little desolate disorderly end of the world end of the sea along her key front even from here we can see the yellow carts rattling slowly the mules nodding their high weird plumes of scarlet along the broad weary harbour-side o painted carts of sicily with all history on your panels arrives an individual at our side the captain fears it will not be possible to start there is much wind outside much wind how they love to come up with alarming disquieting or annoying news, the joy it gives them. What satisfaction on all the faces? Of course all the other loafers are watching us, the street-corner loungers of this deck, but we have been many times bitten. Ah, ma, say I, looking at the sky, not so much wind as all that. An air of quiet shrugging indifference is most effectual, as if you knew all about it, a good deal more than they knew.

ah si maltovento mostvento outside outside with a long face and a dramatic gesture he points out of the harbour to the grey sea i too look out of the harbour at the pale line of sea beyond the mole but i do not trouble to answer and my eye is calm so he goes away only half triumphant things seem to get worse and worse cries the americans friend what will you do on such a boat if you have an awful time out in the mediterranean here oh no will you risk it really won't you go from civet to veckia how awful it would be cries the q b looking round the grey harbour the many masts clustering in the grey sky on the right the big naples boat turning her posterior to the quay side a little way off and cautiously budging backwards the almost entirely shut in harbour the bits of blue and flying white cloud overhead the little boats like beetles scuttling hither and thither across the basin the thick crowd on the quay come to meet the naples boat time time the american friend must go she bids us good-bye more than sympathetically i shall be awfully interested to hear how you get on so down the side she goes The boatman wants 20 francs, wants more, but doesn't get it. He gets ten, which is five too much. And so sitting rather small and pinched and cold-looking, huddled in her sweater, she bibles over the Ripley water to the distant stone steps.

We wave farewell. But other traffic comes between us, and the QB, feeling nervous, is rather cross, because the American friends are ideas of luxury have put us in such a poor light. We feel like the poorest of poor seafaring relations. Our ship is hooting for all she's worth. An important last-minuteer comes surging up. The rope hawsers are being wound clankly in. Seagulls, there are never very many in the Mediterranean, seagulls whirl like a few flakes of snow in the upper chill air. Clouds spin. and without knowing it we are evaporating away from the shore from our mooring between the great city of treeste and another big black steamer that lies like a wall we breathe towards this second black wall of steamer distinctly and of course an individual in an official cap is standing on the bottom of our departure ladder just above the water yelling baka baka shouting for a boat and an old man on the sea stands up to his oars and comes pushing his clumsy boat with gathering speed between us and the other black wall there he stands away below there small firing his clumsy boat along

remote as if in a picture on the dark green water and our black side insiduously and evilly aspires to the other huge black wall he rose in the canyon between and is nearly here when low the individual on the bottom step turns in the other direction another boat from the open basin is sweeping up it is a race she is near she is nearer she is up with a kervet the boat from the open rounds up at the ladder the boat between the gulf backs its oars the official individual shouts and waves the old man backing his oars in the gulf below yells expostulation the boat from the open carries off its prey our ship begins slowly to puddle puddle working her screw the man in the gulf of green water rose for his life we are floating into the open basin slowly slowly we turn round and as the ship turns our hearts turn palermo fades from our consciousness the naples boat the disembarking crowds the rattling carriages to the land the great city of trieste all fades from our heart we see only the open gap of the harbour entrance and the level pale grey void of the sea beyond there are wisps of gleamy light out there are wisps of gleamy light out there there and out there our heart watches though palermo is near us just behind we look round and see it all behind us but already it is gone gone from our heart the fresh wind the gleamy wisps of light the running open sea beyond the harbour bars and so we steam out and almost at once the ship begins to take a long slow dizzy dip and a fainting swoon upwards and a long long long

slow dizzy dip slipping away from beneath one the q b turns pale up comes the deck in that fainting swoon backwards then down it fades in that indescribable slither forwards it is all quite gentle quite quite gentle but oh so long and so slow and so dizzy rather pleasant say i to the q b yes rather lovely really she answers wistfully to tell the truth there is something in the long slow lift of the ship and her long slow slide forwards which makes my heart beat with joy it is the motion of freedom to feel her come up then slide slowly forward with the sound of the smashing of waters is like the magic gallop of the sky the magic gallop of the sky the magic gallop of elemental space, that long, slow, waveringly rhythmic rise and fall of the ship, with waters snorting, as it were, from her nostrils. Oh God, what a joy it is to the wild innermost soul! One is free at last, and lilting in a slow flight of the elements, winging outwards. Oh God, to be free of all the hemmed in life, the horror of human tension, the absolute insanity of machine persistence. The agony which a train is to me, really, and the long-drawn-out agony

of a life among tense, resistant people on land, and then to feel the long, slow lift and drop of this almost empty ship as she took the waters. Ah, God! Liberty! Liberty! Elemental Liberty! I wished in my soul the voyage might last forever, that the sea, had no end that one might float in this wavering tremulous yet long and surging pulsation while ever time lasted space never exhausted and no turning back no looking back even the ship was almost empty save of course for the street corner louts who hung about just below on the deck itself we stood alone on the weather-faded little promenade deck which has old oak seats with old carved little lions at the ends for armrests, and a little cabin mysteriously shut, which much peeping determined

as the wireless office and the operator's little curtain bed-niche. Cold, fresh wind, a black-blue, translucent rolling sea on which the wake rose in snapping foam, and Sicily on the left. Monte Pellegrino, a huge, inordinate mass of pinkish rock, hardly crisped with the faintest vegetation looming up to heaven from the sea. Strangely large in mass and bulk, Monti Pellegrino looks,

and bare like a Sahara in heaven and old-looking. These coasts of Sicily are very imposing, terrific, fortifying the interior, and again one gets the feeling that age has worn them bare, as if old old civilizations had worn away and exhausted the soil leaving a terrifying blankness of rock as at saracuse in plateaus and here in a great mass there seems hardly any one on board but ourselves we alone on the little promenade deck strangely lonely floating on a bare ship past the great bare shores on a rolling sea stooping and rolling and rowing rising in the wind the wood of the fittings is all bare and weather silvered the cabin the seats even the little lions of the seats the paint wore away long ago and this timber will never see paint any more strange to put one's hand on the old oak and wood so sea-fiboured good old delicate threaded oak i swear it grew in england and everything so carefully done so solidly and everlastingly i look at the lions with the perfect-fitting oaken pins through their paws clinching them down and their little mouths open they are as solid as they were in victorian days as immovable they will never wear away

what a joy in the careful thorough manly everlasting work put into a ship at least into this sixty-year-old vessel every bit of this old oak wood so sound so beautiful and the whole world-anded the whole wood-old welded together with joints and wooden pins far more beautifully and livingly than iron welds rustless life-born living-tissued old wood rustless as flesh is rustless and happy seeming as iron never can be she rides so well she takes the sea so beautifully as a matter of course various members of the crew wander past to look at us this little promenade deck is over the first-class quarters for full in the stern. So we see first one head, then another, come up the ladder, mostly bareheads, and one figure after another slouches past, smoking a cigarette. All crew? At last the QB stops one of them, it is what they are all waiting for, an opportunity to talk, and asks if the weird object on the top of Pellegrino is a ruin. Could there be a more touristi question? No, it is a semaphore station. Slapping the eye for the QB.

She doesn't mind, however, and the member of the crew proceeds to converse. He is a weedy, hollow-cheeked town product, a palermiton. He wears faded blue overalls and informs us he is the ship's carpenter, happily unemployed for the rest of his life, apparently, and taking it as rather less than his dues.

The ship once did the Naples-Palaimo course, a very important course, in the old days of the general navigation company the general navigation company sold her for eighty thousand leeras years ago and now she was worth two million we pretend to believe but i make a poor show i am thoroughly sick to death of the sound of learers no man can overhear ten words of italian to-day without two thousand or two million or ten or twenty or two learers flying like venomous mosquitoes round his earers leeras learers lyrers nothing else romantic poetic cypress and orange-tree italy is gone remains an italy smothered in the filthy smother of innumerable learer notes ragged unsavory paper money so thick upon the air that one breathes it like some greasy fog behind this greasy fog some people may still see the italian sun i find it hard work through this murk of learers you peer at michael angelo and at botticelli and the rest and see them all as through a glass darkly for heavy around you is italy's after-the-war atmosphere darkly pressing you squeezing you milling you into dirty paper notes king harry was lucky that they only wanted to coin him into gold italy wants to mill you into filthy paper learers another head and a black alpaca jacket and a serviette this time to tell us coffee is ready not before it is time too we go down into the subterranean state-room and sit on the screw-pin chairs while the ship does the slide and slope trot under us and we drink a couple of cups of coffee

and milk, and eat a piece of bread and butter. At least one of the innumerable members of the crew gives me one cup, then casts me off. It is most obviously his intention that I shall get no more, because, of course, the innumerable members of the crew could all just do with another coffee and milk. However, though the ship heaves and the alpaca coats cluster menacingly in the doorway, I balance my way to the tin buffet and seize the coffee pot and the milk pot, and am quite successful in administering to the QB and myself. Having restored the said vessels to their tin altar, I resume my spin chair at the long and dessert board. The QB and I are alone, save that in the distance a very fat back, with gold-brained collar, sits sideways, and a fat hand disposes of various papers. he is part of the one and only table of course the tall lean alpaca jacket with a face of yellow stone and a big black moustache moves from the outer doorway glowers at our filled cups and goes to the tin altar and touches the handles of the two vessels just touches them to an arrangement as one who should say these are mine what dirty foreigner dares help himself

as quickly as possible we stagger up from the long dungeon where the alpaca jackets are swooping like blue bottles upon the coffee-pots into the air there the carpenter is waiting for us like a spider isn't the sea a little quieter says the cuby wistfully she is growing paler no signora how should it be says the gaunt-faced carpenter the vine waiting for us behind cape gallo you see that cape he points to a tall black cliff front in the sea ahead when we get to that cape we get the wind and the sea here he makes a gesture it is moderate ah says the q b turning paler i am going to lie down she disappears the carpenter finding me stony ground goes forward and i see him melting into the crowd of the innumerable crew that hovers on the lower deck passage by the kitchen and the engines The clouds are flying fast overhead And sharp and isolated Come drops of rain So that one thinks it must be spray

But no, it is a handful of rain The ship swishes and sinks forward Gives a hollow thudding and rears slowly backward Along this pinkish lofty coast of Sicily That is just retreating into a bay From the open sea comes the rain Come the long waves No shelter. One must go down. The QB lies quietly in her bunk. The stateroom is stale like a passage on the underground railway. No shelter, save near the kitchen and the engines, where there is a bit of warmth. The cook is busy cleaning fish, making the whiting bite their tails venomously at a little bore just outside his kitchen hole. A slow stream of kitchen-filled swilkers back and forth

the ship's side a gang of the crew leans near me a larger gang further down heaven knows what they can all be but they never do anything but stand in gangs and talk and eat and smoke cigarettes they're mostly young mostly palermotan with a couple of unmistakable neapolitans having the peculiar neapolitan hang-dog good looks the chiselled cheek the little black moustache the large eyes but they chew with their cheeks bulged out and laugh with their fine semi sarcastic noses the whole gang looks continually sideways nobody ever commands them there seems to be absolutely no control only the fat engineer in grey linen looks as clean and as combatant as his own machinery queer how machine control puts the pride and self-respect into a man squat against the canvas that is spread over the arch skylights on the small promenade deck, sitting on the seat that is fixed to the skylight sides. The wind is cold, there are snatches of sun and spits of rain. The big cape has come and is being left behind. We are heading for a far-off cape like a cloud in the grey air. A dimness comes over one's mind, a sort of stupefaction

owing to the wind and the relentless slither and rearing of the ship. Not a sickness, but a sort of dim faintness. So much motion, such moving, powerful air. And with all a constant triumph in the long, slow sea-gallop of the ship. A great loud bell, midday and the crew going to eat, rushing to eat. After some time we are summoned. The signora isn't eating? asked the waiter eagerly, hoping she is not. Yes, she is eating, say I. I fetch the QB from her

birth. Rather wanly she comes and gets into her spin chair. Bash comes a huge plate of thick, oily cabbage soup, very full, swelkering over the sides. We do what we can with it. So does the third passenger, a young woman who never wears a hat, thereby admitting herself simply as one of the people, but who has an expensive, complicated dress, nigger-coloured thin silk stockings, and swayed, high-heeled shoes. She is handsome, sturdy, with large, dark eyes, and a robust, frank manner, far too robustly downright for Italy. She is from Caliari, and can't do much with the cabbage soup, and tells a waiter so in her deep, hail fellow well-met voice. in the doorway hovers a little cloud of alpaca jackets grinning faintly with malignant anticipation of food hoping like blow-flies we shall be too ill to eat

away goes the soup and appears a massive yellow omelet like some log of bilious wood it is hard and heavy and cooked in the usual rank tasting olive oil the young woman doesn't have much truck with it neither do we to the triumph of the blow-flies who see the yellow monster borne to their altar after which a long long slab of the inevitable meat cut into innumerable slices tasting of dead nothing and having a thick source of brown neutrality sufficient for twelve people at least this with masses of strong tasting greenish cauliflower liberally weighted with oil on a ship that was already heaving its heart out made up the dinner accumulating malevolent triumph among the blow flies in the passage so on to a dessert of oranges pairs with wooden hearts and thick yellowish wash leather flesh and apples, then coffee. And we had sat through it, which is something. The alpaca blue bottles buzzed over the masses of food that went back on the dishes to the tin altar.

Surely it had been made deliberately so that we should not eat it. The Caliorese young woman talked to us. Yes, she broke into that awful language which the Italians, the quite ordinary ones, call French, and which they insist on speaking for their own. glorification yea when they get to heaven's gate they will ask st peter for ubillie for un thretheem class fortunately or unfortunately her inquisitiveness got the better of her and she fell into her native italian what were we where did we come from where were we going why were we going had we any children did we want any etc after every answer she nodded her head and said ahoo and watched us with energetic dark eyes then she ruminated over our nationalities and said to the unseeing witnesses una bella copia a fine couple as at the moment we felt neither beautiful nor coupled we only looked greener the grim man at arms coming up to ask us again if we weren't going to have a little wine she lapsed into her ten pound of french which was most difficult to follow and she saw her

said that on a sea voyage one must eat one must eat if only a little but and she lapsed into italian one must by no means drink wine no no one didn't want to said i sadly whereupon the grim man at arms whom of course we had cheated out of the bottle we refused to have opened for us said with a lost sarcasm that wine made a man of a man etc etc i was too weary of that underground however all i knew was that he wanted wine, wine, wine, and we hadn't ordered any. He didn't care for food. The Caliarezi told us she came now from Naples, and her husband was following in a few days. He was doing business in Naples. I nearly asked if he was a little dogfish, this being the Italian for profiteer, but refrained in time. So the two ladies retired to lie down. I went and sat under my tarpa. Paulin. I felt very dim and only a bit of myself, and I dozed blankly. The afternoon grew more sunny. The ship turned southwards, and with the wind and waves behind it became much warmer, much smoother. The sun had the lovely, strong, winy warmth golden over the dark blue sea.

The old oak wood looked almost white. The afternoon was sweet upon the sea, and in the sunshine on the swishing of the sea, the speedier running of the empty ship, I slept a warm, sweet hour away, and awoke new. To see a head pale up blooming islands upon the right, the windy egotes, and on the right a mountain or high conical hill, with buildings on the summit, an in front against the sea, still rather far away, buildings rising upon a key within a harbour, and a mole and a castle forward to sea, all small and far away like a view. The buildings were square and fine. There was something impressive, magical under the far sunshine and the keen wind. The square and well-proportioned buildings waiting far off, waiting like a lost city and a story,

a Rip Van Winkle City. I knew it was Trapani, the western port of Sicily, under the western sun. And the hill near us was Mount Erex, i had never seen it before so i had imagined a mountain in the sky but it was only a hill with undistinguishable cluster of a village on the summit where even now cold wisps of vapour caught they say it is two thousand five hundred feet high still it looks only a hill but why in the name of heaven should my heart stand still as i watch that hill which rises above the sea it is the etna of the west but only a town-crowned hill. To men it must have had a magic almost greater than Etna's,

watching Africa, Africa showing her coast on clear days, Africa the dreaded, and the great watch temple of the summit, world sacred, world mystic, in the world that was. Venus of the Aborigines, older than Greek Aphrodite, Venus of the Aborigines, from her watch temple looking at Africa beyond the Agatian Isles. the world mystery, the smiling Astati, this one of the world centres, older than old,

and the woman goddess watching Africa, erasina ridends, laughing the woman goddess at this centre of an ancient, quite lost world. I confess my heart stood still, but is mere historical fact so strong that one learns in bits from books can move one so? Or does the very word call an echo out of the dark blood. It seems so to me. It seems to me from the darkest recesses of my blood comes a terrible echo at the name of Mount Erex. Something quite unaccountable. The name of Athens hardly moves me. At Erex, my darkness quivers. Erics looking whist into Africa's sunset. Eresina riddens. There is a tick-talking in the little cabin against which I lean. The wireless operator is busy communicating with Trapani no doubt. He is a fat young man with fairish curly hair and an

important bearing. Give a man controlled of some machine and at once his air of importance and more than human dignity develops. One of the unaccountable members of the crew lounges in the little doorway like a chicken on one foot having nothing to do. The girl from Caliari comes up with two young men, also Sardinians by their thick-set, independent look, and the touch of pride in their dark eyes. She has no wraps at all, just her elegant, fine cloth dress, her bare head from which the wisps of hair blow across her brow, and the transparent nigger silk stockings. Yet she does not seem cold. She talks with great animation, sitting between the two young men, and she holds the hand of the one in the overcoat affectionately. She is always holding the hand of one or other of the two young

men, and wiping wisps of wind-blown hair from her brow, and talking in her strong, nonchalant voice, rapidly, ceaselessly, with massive energy. Heaven knows if the two young men, they are third-class passengers, were previous acquaintances, but they hold her hand like brothers, quite simply and nicely, not at all sticky and libidinous. It all has an air of, why not? She shouts at me as I pass in her powerful, extraordinary French, Madame Votr Fem, she is lying down. I say she is lying down. Ah, she nods. Hello, Le Maldemere. No, she is not seasick, just lying down. The two young men between whom she is sitting as between two pillows watch with the curious sardinian dark eyes that seem alert and show the white all round they are pleasant a bit like seals and they have a numb look for the moment impressed by this strange language she proceeds energetically to translate into sardinian as i pass on

we do not seem to be going to trepani there lies the town on the left under the hill the square buildings that suggest to me the factories of the east india company shining in the sun along the curious closed-in harbour beyond the running dark blue sea we seem to be making for the island bulk of lavanso perhaps we shall steer away to sardinia without putting into on and on we run and always as if we were going to steer between the pale blue heaped-up islands leaving trupani behind us on our left the town has been in sight for an hour or more and still we run out to sea towards Levanzo and the wireless operator busily tick-tocks and throbs in in his little cabin on this upper deck peeping in one sees his bed and chair behind a curtain screened off from his little office and all so tidy and pleased-looking from the islands one of the mediterranean sailing ships is beating her way across our track to Tripani i don't know the name of ships but the carpenter says she is a schooner. He says it with that Italian misgiving, which doesn't really know, but which can't bear not to know. Anyhow on she comes with her tall ladder of square sails white in the afternoon light, and her lovely prow, curved in with a perfect hollow, running like a wild animal on a scent

across the waters. There the scent leads her north again. She changes her tack from the harbour mouth and goes coursing away, passing behind us. Lovely she is, nimble and quick and palpitating, with all her sails white and bright and eager. We are changing our course. We have all the time been heading for the south of Ravanzo. Now I see the island slowly edging back, as if clearing out of the way for us, like a man in the street. The island edges and turns aside and walks away, and clearly we are making for the harbour mouth. We have all this time been running out at sea round the back of the harbour. Now I see the fortress castle, an old thing, out forward to sea, and a little lighthouse and the way in, and beyond the town front with great

palm trees and other curious dark trees, and behind these the large square buildings of the south, rising imposingly as if severe big palaces upon the promenade. It all has a stately southern imposing appearance, with all remote from our modern centuries, standing back from the tides of our industrial life. I remember the Crusaders how they called here so often on their way to the east, and Trapani seemed waiting for them still, with its palm trees and its silence,

full in the afternoon sun. It has not much to do but wait, apparently. The QB emerges into the sun, crying out, how lovely! And the sea is quieter. We are already in the lee of the harbour curve. From the north, the many-sailed ship from the islands is running down towards us with the wind. And away on the south, on the sea level, numerous short windmills are turning their sails briskly, windmere, mill after windmill rather stumpy spinning gaily in the blue silent afternoon among the salt lagoons stretching away towards masala but there is a whole legion of windmills and don quixot would have gone off his head there they spin hither and thither upon the pale blue sea levels and perhaps one catches a glitter of white salt heaps for these are the great salt lagoons which make trupani rich end of chapter two section one chapter two section two of c and sardinia by d h lawrence this librevox recording is in the public domain recording by antony we are entering the harbour basin however past the old castle out on the spit past the little lighthouse then through the entrance slipping quietly on the now tranquil water Oh, and how pleasant the fullness of the afternoon sun, flooding this round, fast-sleeping harbour,

along whose side the tall palms drows, and whose waters are fast asleep? It seems quite a small, cosy harbour, with the great buildings warm coloured in the sun behind the dark tree avenue of the marina, the same silent, sleeping, endlessly sun-worned stateliness. In the midst of this tranquillity We slowly turn round Upon the shining water And in a few moments are moored There are other ships moored away to the right

All asleep apparently In the flooding of the afternoon sun Beyond the harbour entrance Runs the great sea and the wind Here all is still and hot and forgotten You descendes on earth? shouts the young woman in her energetic french she leaves off holding the young men's hands for the moment we are not quite sure and we don't want her to come with us anyhow for her french is not our french the land sleeps on nobody takes any notice of us but just one boat paddles out the dozen yards to our side we decide to set foot on shore one should not and we should not and we know

knew it. One should never enter into these southern towns that look so nice, so lovely from the outside. However, we thought we would buy some cakes. So we crossed the avenue which looks so beautiful from the sea, and which when you get into it is a cross between an outside place where you throw rubbish and a humpy unmade road in a raw suburb with a few iron seats and litter of old straw and rag. indescribably dreary in itself yet with noble trees and lovely sunshine and the sea and the islands gleaming magic beyond the harbour mouth and the sun the eternal sun full focused a few mangy nothing-to-do people stand disconsolately about in southern fashion as if they had been left there water-logged by the last flood and were waiting for the next flood to wash them further round the corner along the quay a norwegian steamer dreams that she is being loaded in the muddle of the small port we looked at the cakes heavy and wan they appeared to our sea-rolled stomachs so we strolled into a main street dark and dank like a sewer a tram bumped to a stand still as if now at last was the end of the world children coming from school ecstatically ran at our hill at our hushabye

children coming from school ecstatically ran at our heels with bated breath to hear the vocal horrors of our foreign speech we turned down a dark side alley about forty paces deep and were on the northern bay and on a black stench that seemed like the perpetual sewer a bank of mud so we got to the end of the black main street and turned in haste to the sun ah in a moment we were in it there rose the palms there lay our ship in the shining curving basin and there focused the sun so that in a moment we were drunk or dazed by it dazed we sat on an iron seat in the rubbish desolate sun-stricken avenue a ragged and dirty girl was nursing a fat and moist and immovable baby and tending to a a grimy fat infant boy. She stood a yard away and gazed at us as one would gaze at a pig one was going to buy. She came nearer and examined the QB. I had my big hat down over my eyes. But no, she had taken her seat at my side and poked her face right under my hat brim, so that her tousled hair touched me, and I thought she would kiss me. But again, no. With her breath on my

my cheek she only gazed on my face as if it were a wax mystery i got up hastily too much for me said i to the q b she laughed and asked what the baby was called the baby was called beppina as most babies are driven forth we wandered down the desolate avenue of shade and sun towards the ship and turned once more into the town we had not been on shore more than ten minutes this time we went to the right and found more shops the streets were dark and sunless and cold and tripani seemed to me to sell only two commodities cured rabbit skins and cat-skins and great hideous modern bedspread arrangements of heavy-flowered silk and fabulous price. They seem to think nothing of thousands of learers in Trapani. But most remarkable was bunny and pussy. Bunny and pussy flattened out like pressed leaves, dangling in clusters everywhere. Furs. White bunny, black bunny in great abundance, pie-balled bunny, grey bunny.

Then pussy. tabby pussy and tortoise-shell pussy but mostly black pussy in a ghastly semblance of life all flat of course just single firs clusters bunches heaps and dangling arrays of plain superfishes puss and bun bun puss and bun by the dozen and the twenty like dried leaves for your choice if a cat from a ship should chance to find itself in trepani streets it would give a mortal yell and go mad i am sure we strolled for ten more minutes in this narrow tortuous unreal town that seemed to have plenty of flourishing inhabitants and a fair number of socialists if one was to judge by the great scrawlings on the walls w lenin an abasolaborgesia don't imagine by the way that lenin is another villa on the list the apparent initial stands for eviva the double v cakes one dared not buy after looking at them but we found macaroon biscuits and a sort of flat plaster casts of the infant jesus under a dove of which we bought two the q b ether macaroon biscuits all through the streets and we went towards the ship. The fat boatman held us to take us back.

It was just about eight yards of water to row, the ship being moored on the key. One could have jumped it. I gave the fat boatman two leeras, two francs. He immediately put on the socialist workman indignation and thrust the note back at me, 60 centimes more. The fee was 13 sous each way.

in venice or saracus it would be two sous i looked at him and gave him the money and said badillo we are in tropani he muttered back something about foreigners but the hateful unmanly insolence of these lords of toil now they have their various unions behind them and their rights as working-men sends my blood black they are ordinary men no more the human happy italian is most marvellously vanished new honours come upon them etc the dignity of human labour is on its hind legs busy giving every poor innocent who isn't ready for it a kick in the mouth. But once more in parenthesis, let me remind myself that it is our own English fault. We have slobbered about the nobility of toil till at last the nobles naturally insist on eating the cake. And more than that, we have set forth politically on such a high and galahad quest of holy liberty, and been caught so shamelessly filling our pockets that no wonder the naive and idealistic south turns us down with a bang. Well, we are back on the ship and we want tea.

On the list by the door it says we are to have coffee, milk and butter at 8.30, luncheon at 1130, tea coffee or chocolate at 3, and dinner at 6.30. And moreover, the company will feed the passengers for the normal duration of the voyage only. Very well. Very well. Very well. well. Then where is tea? Not any signs, and the alpaca jackets giving us a wide berth. But we find our man and demand our rights, at least the QB does. The tickets from Palermo to Caliari cost together 583 liras. Of this, 250 liras was for the ticket, and 40 lera each for the food. This for two tickets would make 580 liras, the odd three for usual stamps. The voyage was supposed to last about 30 or 32 hours, from eight of the morning of departure,

to two or four of the following afternoon. Surely we pay for our tea. The other passengers have emerged, a large, pale, fat, handsome Pellermiton, who is going to be Professor at Caliari, his large fat but high-coloured wife and three children a boy of fourteen like a thin frail fatherly girl a little boy in a rabbit-skin overcoat coming rather unfluft and a girl child on the mother's knee the one-year-old girl child being of course the only man in the party they have all been sick all day and look washed out we sympathise they lament the cruelties of the journey and censerceo censerceo without any maid-servant the mother asks for coffee and a cup of milk for the children then seeing our tea with lemon and knowing it by repute she will have tea but the rabbit boy will have coffee coffee and milk and nothing else and an orange and the baby will have lemon pieces of lemon and the fatherly young miss of an adolescent brother laughs indulgently at all the whims of these two young ones. The father laughs and thinks it all adorable and expects us to adore. He is almost too washed out to attend properly to give the full body

of his attention. So the mother gets her cup of tea and puts a piece of lemon in and then milk on top of that. The rabbit boy sucks an orange, slobbers in the tea, insists on coffee and milk, tries a piece of lemon and gets a biscuit. The baby with weird faces choose pieces of lemon and drops them in the family cup and fishes them out with a little sugar and dribbles them across the table to her mouth,

throws them away, and reaches for a new sourpiece. They all think it humorous and adorable. Arrives the milk to be treated as another loving cup mingled with orange, lemon, sugar, tea, biscuit, chocolate and cake. Father, mother, and elder brother partake of nothing. They haven't the stomach.

But they are charmed, of course, by the pretty pranks and messes of the infants. They have extraordinary amiable patience, and find the young ones a perpetual source of charming amusement. They look at one another, the elder ones, and laugh and comment, while the two young ones mix themselves in the table into a lemon-milk-orange-te-sugar-biscuit cake-choclet mess. This inordinate Italian amiable patience with their young monkeys is astonishing. It makes the monkeys more monkey-like, and self-conscious incredibly,

so that a baby has all the tricks of a Babylonian harlot, making eyes and trying new pranks, till at last one sees the southern holy family as an unholy triad of imbecility. meanwhile i munched my infant jesus and dove arrangement which was rather like eating thin glass so hard and sharp it was made of almond and white of egg presumably and was not so bad if you could eat it at all it was a christmas relic and i watched the holy family across the narrow board and tried not to look all i felt going on deck as soon as possible we watched the loading of barrels of wine in into the hold, a mild and happy-go-lucky process. The ship seemed to be almost as empty of cargo as of passengers. Of the latter, we were apparently twelve adults all told, and the three children. And as for cargo, there were the wooden chests of the officer and these fourteen barrels of wine from Prupani.

The last were at length settled more or less firm, the owner or the responsible landsmen seen to it, no one on the ship seemed to be responsible for anything and four of the innumerable crew were replacing the big planks over the hold it was curious how forlorn the ship seemed to feel now she was ready for sea again her innumerable crew did not succeed in making her alive she ran her course like a lost soul across the mid-mediterranean outside the harbour the sun was sinking gorgeous gold and red the sky and vast beyond the darkening islands of the agardes group coming as we did from the east side of the island where dawn beyond the ionian sea is the day's great and familiar event so decisive an event that as the light appears along the sea's rim so do my eyes invariably open and look at it and know it is dawn and as the night purple is fused back and a little scarlet thrills towards the zenith invariably day by day i feel i must get up coming from the east shut off hermetically from the west by the steep spikes of the mountains at our back we felt this sunset in the African sea, terrible and dramatic. It seemed much more magnificent and tragic than our ionian dawn, which is always a suggestion of a flower opening. But this great red trumpet-flaring

sunset had something African, half-sinister upon the sea, and it seemed so far off in an unknown land, whereas our ionian dawn always seems near and familiar and happy. a different goddess the eryxastarte the woman astoroth erasina riddens must have been in her prehistoric dark smiling watching the fearful sunsets beyond the agardes from our gold-lighted apollo of the ionian east she is a strange goddess to me this ericina venus and the west is strange and unfamiliar and a little fearful be it africa or be it america slowly at sunset we moved out of the harbour and almost as we passed the bar away in front we saw among the islands the pricking of a quick-pointed light looking back we saw the light at the harbour entrance twitching and the remote lost town beginning to glimmer and night was settling down upon the sea through the crimson purple of the last afterglow the islands loomed big as we drew nearer dark in the thickening darkness overhead a magnificent evening star blazed above the open sea giving me a pang at the heart for i was so used to see her hang just above the spikes of the mountains that i felt she might fall having the space beneath la vanso and the other large island were quite dark absolutely dark save for one beam of a lighthouse low down

down in the distance the wind was again strong and cold the ship had commenced her old slither and heave slithron heave which mercifully we had forgotten overhead were innumerable great stars active as if they were alive in the sky i saw orion high behind us and the dog star glaring and swish went the sea as we took the waves then after a long trough swish this curious rhythmic swishing and hollow drumming of a steamer at sea has a narcotic almost maddening effect on the spirit a long hissing burst of waters then the hollow roll and again the upheaval to a sudden hiss a bell had clanged and we knew the crew were once more feeding at every moment of the day and presumably of the night feeding was going on or coffee drinking we were summoned to dinner our young woman was already seated and a fat uniform mate or purser or official of some sort was finishing off in the distance the pale professor also appeared and at a certain distance down the table sat a little hard-headed grey man in a long grey alpaca travelling coat appeared the beloved macaroni with tomato sauce no food for the sea i put my hopes on the fish had i not seen the cook making whiting bite their own tails viciously the fish appeared and what was it fried ink-pots a calomayo is an ink-pot also it is a polyp a little octopus which alas frequents the mediterranean and squirts ink if offended this polyp with its tentacles is cut up and fried and reduced to the consistency of boiled celluloid

it is esteemed a delicacy but is tougher than india-rubber gristly through and through i have a peculiar aversion to these ink-pots once in luguria we had a boat of our own and paddled with the peasant paddlers alessandro caught ink-pots and like this he tied up a female by string in a cave the string going through a convenient hole in her end there she lived like an amphitrite's wire-haired terrier tied up till alessandra went to fishing then he towed her like a poodle behind and thus like a poodley bitch she attracted hangers-on in the briny seas and these poor polybin amarrati were the victims they were lifted as prey on board where i looked with horror on their grey translucent tentacles and large cold stony eyes the she-pollip was towed behind again but after a few days she died and i think even for creatures so awful-looking this method is indescribably base and shows how much lower than an octopus even is lordly man well we chewed a few ends of oil-fried ink-pots and gave it up the calliari girl gave up too the professor had not even tried only the hard-headed grey man in the alpaca coat chewed animatedly with bouncing jaws mountains of calamayo remained for the joyous blue bottles arrived the inevitable meat this long piece of completely tasteless undercut in innumerable grey-brown slices. Oh, Italy! The Professor fled.

Arrived the wash-leather pears, the apples, the oranges. We saved an apple for a happier hour. Arrived coffee, and as a magnificent treat, a few well-known pastries. They all taste wearily alike. The young woman shakes her head. I shake mine, but the QB like a child is pleased. pleased most pleased of all however are the blue bottles who dart in a black alpaca bunch to the tin altar and there loudly buzz wildly above the sallow cakes the citron-cheeked dry one however cares darkly nothing for cakes he comes once more to twit us about wine so much so that the caliari girl orders a glass of masala and i must second her so there we are three little glasses of brown liquid the caliari girl sips hers and suddenly flees the q b sits hers with infinite caution and quietly retires I finish the QB's little glass and my own, and the voracious blow-flies buzzed derisively and excited.

The yellow-cheeked one has disappeared with the bottle. From the professorial cabin faint wails, sometimes almost fierce, as one or another is going to be ill. Only a thin door is between this state room and them. The most down-trodden, frayed, ancient rag of a man goes discreetly with basins, trying not to let out glimpses of the awful within. I climb up to look at the vivid drenching stars, to breathe the cold wind, to see the dark sea sliding. Then I too go to the cabin, and watch the sea run past the porthole for a minute,

and insert myself like the meat in a sandwich into the tight lower bunk. Oh, infinitesimal cabin, where we sway like two, matches in a match-box. Oh, strange but even yet excellent gallop of a ship at sea. I slept not so badly through the stifled, drolling night, in fact later on slept soundly, and the day was growing bright when I peered through the porthole, the sea was much smoother. It was a brilliant, clear morning. I made haste and washed myself cursorily in the saucer that dribbled into a pail in a corner. there was not a space even for one chair this saucer was by my bunk-head and i went on deck ah the lovely morning away behind us the sun was just coming above the sea's horizon and the sky all golden all a joyous fire-heated gold

and the sea was glassy bright the wind gone still the waves sunk into long low undulations the foam of the wake was pale ice-blue and the foam of the wake was pale ice-blue in the yellow air. Sweet, sweet wide morning on the sea, with the sun coming swimming up, and a tall sailing bark, with her flat four ladder of sails delicately across the light, and a far, far steamer on the electric vivid morning horizon. The lovely dawn, the lovely, pure, wide morning in the mid-sea, so golden-aired and delighted, with the sea-like sequins shaking, and the sky far, far, far above, unfathomably clear. How glad to be on a ship!

What a golden hour for the heart of man! Or if one could sail forever on a small, quiet, lonely ship, from land to land and aisle to aisle, and saunter through the spaces of this lovely world, always through the spaces of this lovely world. Sweet it will be sometimes to come to the opaque earth, to block oneself against the stiff land,

to annul the vibration of one's flight against the inertia of our terra firma. But life itself would be in the flight, the tremble of space. Ah, the trembling of never-ended space as one moves in flight. Space and the frail vibration of space, the glad, lonely ringing of the heart.

Not to be clogged to the land anymore, not to be any more like a donkey with a log, on its leg, fastened to weary earth that has no answer now, but to be off. To find three masculine world-lost souls and world-lost saunter, and saunter on along with them across the dithering space, as long as life lasts. Why come to anchor? There is nothing to anchor for. Land has no answer to the soul anymore. It has gone inert. Give me a little ship, kind God. And and three world-lost comrades. Hear me, and let me wander aimless across this vivid outer world,

the world empty of man, where space flies happily. The lovely celendine yellow morning of the open sea, paling towards a rare sweet blue, the sun stood above the horizon, like the great burning stigma of the sacred flower of day. mediterranean sailing ships so medieval hovered on the faint morning wind as if uncertain which way to go curious odd-winged insects of the flower the steamer hulled down was sinking towards spain space rang clear about us the level sea appeared the caliari young woman and her two friends she was looking handsome and restored now the sea was easy her two male friends stood touching her one at either shoulder bonjour monsieur she barked across at me you avee pelle de caffé pas encore and you no madame vatre femme she roared like a mastive dog and then translated with unction to her two uninitiated friends how it was they did not understand her french i do not know it was so like travested italian i went below to find the

when we came up the faint shape of land appeared ahead more transparent than thin pearl already sardinia magic a high land seen from the sea when they are far far off and ghostly translucent like icebergs this was sardinia looming like fascinating shadows in mid-sea and the sailing ships as if cut out of fraylist pearl translucency were wafting away towards Naples. I wanted to count their sails, five square ones which I call the ladder, one above the other, but how many wing blades? That remained yet to be seen. Our friend the carpenter spied us out, at least he was not my friend. He didn't find me sympathico, I'm sure, but up he came and proceeded to entertain us with weary banality. Again the young woman called, had we had coffee? We said we were just going down, and then she said that whatever we had today we had to pay for. Our food ended with the one day, at which the QB was angry, feeling swindled,

but I had known before. We went down and had our coffee, notwithstanding. The young woman came down and made eyes at one of the alpaca blue bottles, after which we saw a cup of coffee and milk and two biscuits being taken to her into her cabin discreetly. When Italians are being discreet and on the sly, the very air about them becomes tell-tale and seems to shout with a thousand tongues. So with a thousand invisible tongues clamouring the fact, the young woman had her coffee secretly and gratis in her cabin.

But the morning was lovely. The Cube and I crept round the bench at the very stern of the ship, and sat out of the wind and out of sight just above the foaming of the wake before us was the open morning and the glisten of our ship's track like a snail's path trailing across the sea straight for a little while then giving a bend to the left always a bend towards the left and coming at us from the pure horizon like a bright snail path happy it was to sit there in the stillness with nothing but the humanless sea to shine about us. But no, we were found out. Arrived the carpenter. Ah, you've found a fine place.

Maltobello. This from the QB. I could not bear the eruption. He proceeded to talk and, as is inevitable, the war. Ah, the war, it was a terrible thing. He had become ill, very ill,

because, you see, not only do you go without proper food, without proper rest and warmth, but you see you're in an agony of fear for your life all the time an agony of fear for your life and that's what does it six months in hospital the q b of course was sympathetic the sicilians are quite simple about it they just tell you they were frightened to death and it made them ill the q b woman-like loves them for being so simple about it i feel angry somewhere for they expect a full-blown sympathy and however the great god mars may have shrunk and gone wizened in the world it still annoys me to hear him so blasphemed near us the automatic log was spinning the thin rope trailing behind us in the sea erratically jerked and spun with spasmodic torsion he explained that the little screw at the end of the line spun to the speed of travelling we were going from ten to twelve italian miles to the time to the speed of travelling we were going from ten to twelve italian miles to the the hour. Oh, yes, we could go twenty, but we went no faster than ten or twelve, to save the coal.

The coal, il gabone. I knew we were in for it. England. Linguidera, she has the coal. And what does she do? She sells it very dear, particularly to Italy. Italy won the war, and now can't even have coal, because why? The price, the exchange, El Cambio. Now I am doubly in for it. two countries had been able to keep their money high england and america the english sovereign la stalin and the american dollar sa these were money the english and the americans flocked to italy with their stalinna and their dollari and they bought what they wanted for nothing for nothing echo whereas we poor italians we are in a state of ruination proper ruination the allies etc etc i am so used to it i am so wearily used to it i can't walk astride without having this wretched cambio the exchange thrown at my head and this with an injured petulant spitefulness which turns my blood for i sure them whatever i have in italy i pay for and i am not england i am not the british isles on two legs germany la germania she did wrong to make the war but there you are that was war italy and germany l italia le jamagna they had always been friends in palermo

my god i felt i could not stand in another second to sit above the foam and have this miserable creature stuffing wads of chewed newspaper into my ear no i could not bear it in italy there is no escape say two words and the individual starts chewing old newspaper and stuffing it into you no escape you become if you are english lingletera il cabone and il cambio and as england coal and exchange you are treated it is more than useless to try to be human about it you are a state usury system a coal fiend and an exchange thief every englishman has disappeared into this triple abstraction in the eyes of the italian of the proletariat particularly try and get them to be human try and get them to see that you are simply an individual if you can after all i am no more than a single human man wandering my lonely way across these years but no to an italian i am a perfected abstraction england coal exchange the germans were once devils for inhuman theoretic abstracting of living beings but now the italians beat them i am a walking column of statistics which adds up badly for italy only this and nothing more which being so i shut my mouth and walk away for the moment the carpenter is shaken off but i am in a rage fool that i am it is like being pestered by their mosquitoes the sailing ships are near and i count fifteen sails beautiful they look yet if i were on board somebody would be chewing newspaper at me and addressing me as england coal exchange the mosquito hovers and hovers but the stony blank of the size of the size of the size of the size of the size of the sea

of my cheek keeps him away, yet he hovers, and the QB feels sympathetic towards him, quite sympathetic, because, of course, he treats her, a belpetto, as if he would lick her boots, or anything else that she would let him lick. Meanwhile, the apples from yesterday's dessert, and the remains of the QB's infant Jesus and dove cake. The land is drawing nearer, we can see the shape of the end promontory and peninsula and a white speck like a church the bulk of the land is forlorn and rather shapeless coming towards us but attractive looking ahead towards the land gives us away the mosquito swoops on us yes he is not sure he thinks the white speck is a church or a lighthouse when you pass the cape on the right and enter the wide bay between cape spartivento and cape carbunara then you have have two hours sail to caliari we shall arrive between two and three o'clock it is now eleven yes the sailing ships are probably going to naples there is not much wind for them now when there is wind they go faster faster than our steamer ah naples bella bellar

a little dirty say i but what do you want says he a great city palermo of course is better ah the neapolitan women he he says he a great city palermo of course is better ah the neapolitan women he says apropos or not they do their hair so fine so neat and beautiful but underneath soto soto they are dirty this being received in cold silence he continues no we girae girae kigiramo el mondo we travel about and we know the world who we are i do not know his highness the palermiton carpenter loud no doubt but we who travel know the world he is preparing his shot the neapolitan women and the english women in this are equal that they are dirty underneath underneath they are dirty the women of london but it is getting too much for me you who look for dirty women say i find dirty women everywhere he stops short and watches me no no you have not understood me no i don't mean that i mean that the neapolitan women and the english women have dirty underclothing to which he gets no answer but a cold look and a cold cheek whereupon he turns to the q b and proceeds to be sympathica and after a few moments he turns again to me is offended he is offended with me but i turn the other way and at last he clears out in triumph i must admit like a mosquito that has bitten one in the neck as a matter of fact one should never let these fellows get into conversation nowadays they are no longer human beings they hate one's englishness and leave out the individual

we walk forward towards the foredeck where the captain's look-out cabin is the captain is an elderly man silent and crushed with the look of a gentleman but he looks beaten down another still another member of the tray carrying department is just creeping up his ladder with a cup of black coffee returning we peep down the skylight into the kitchen and there we see roast chicken and sausages roast chicken and sausages ah this is where the sides of kid and the chickens and the good things go all down the throats of the crew there is no more food for us until we land we have passed the cape and the white thing is a lighthouse and the fatish handsome professor has come up carrying the little girl child while the femaleish elder brother leads the rabbit fluffy small boy by the hand so en famie so terribly enfamie they deposit themselves near us and it threatens another conversation but not for anything my dears the sailors not for anything my dears the sailors not sailors some of the street-corner loafers are hoisting the flag, the red, white, and green Italian tricolour. It floats at the mast-head, and the femaleish brother, in a fine burst of feeling, takes off his funny hat, with a flourish, and cries,

Eco la badiniera Italian! Ah, the hateful sentimentalism of these days. The land passes slowly, very slowly. It is hilly, but barren-looking, with few trees. and it is not spiky and rather splendid like sicily sicily has style we keep along the east side of the bay away in the west is cape spartivento and still no sight of calliari two hours yet cries the caliari girl two hours before we eat ah when i get on land what a good meal i shall eat the men haul in the automatic log the sky is clouding over with that icy curd which comes after midday when the bitter north wind is blowing it is no longer warm slowly slowly we creep along the formless shore an hour passes we see a little fort ahead done in enormous black and white checks like a fragment of a gigantic chessboard it stands at the end of a long spit of land a long bearish peninsula that has no houses and looks as if it might be golf links but it is not golf links and suddenly there is caliari a naked town rising steep steep golden-looking piled naked to the sky from the plain at the head of the formless hollow bay it is strange and rather wonderful not a bit like italy the city piles up low lofty and almost miniature and makes me think of jerusalem without trees without cover rising rather bare and proud remote as if back in history like a town in a monkish illuminated missile

one wonders how it ever got there and it seems like spain or malta not italy it is a steep and lonely city treeless as in some old illumination yet withal rather jewel-like like a sudden rose-cut amber jewel naked at the depth of the vast indenture the air is cold blowing bleak and bitter the sky is all curd and that is caliari it has that curious look as if it could be seen but not entered it is like some vision some memory something that has passed away impossible that one can actually walk in that city set foot there and eat and laugh there ah no yet the ship drifts nearer nearer and we are looking for the actual harbour the usual sea-front with dark trees for a promenade and palatial buildings behind but here not so pink and gay, more reticent, more sombre of yellow stone. The harbour itself a little basin of water into which we are slipping carefully, while three salt barges laden with salt as white as snow, creep round from the left, drawn by an infinitesimal tug. There are only two other forlorn ships in the basin. It is cold on deck. The ship turns slowly round and is being hauled to the

key side i go down for the knapsack and a fat blue bottle pounces at me you'll pay nine francs fifty i pay them and we get off that ship end of chapter two chapter three of sea and sardinia by d h lawrence this libre vox recording is in the public domain recording by antony ogus calliari there is a very little crowd waiting on the key mostly men with their hands in their pockets but thank heaven they have a certain aloofness and reserve they are not like the tourist parasites of these post-war days who move to the attack with a terrifying cold vindictiveness the moment one emerges from any vehicle and some of these men look really poor there are no poor italians any more at least loafers strange the feeling round the harbour as if everybody had gone away yet there are people about it is festa however epiphany but it is so different from sicily none of the suave greek italian charms none of the airs and graces none of the glamour rather bare rather stark rather cold and yellow somehow like malta without malta's foreign liveliness thank goodness no one wants to carry my knapsack thank goodness no one has a fit at the sight of it thank heaven no one takes any notice they stand cold and aloof and don't move we make our way through the customs then through the dutcio the city customs house then we are free we set off up a steep new broad road with little trees on either side but stone arid new one

stone, yellowish under the cold sky, and abandoned seeming, though of course there are people about. The north wind blows bitingly. We climb a broad flight of steps always upwards, up the wide, precipitous dreary boulevard, with sprouts of trees, looking for the hotel and dying with hunger. At last we find it, the Scala di Ferro, through a courtyard with green plan. and at last a little man with lank black hair like an eskimo comes smiling he is one brand of sardinian eskimo looking there is no room with two beds only single rooms and thus we are led off if you please to the banuil the bathing establishment wing on the dank ground floor cubicles on either side are stone passage and in every cubicle a dark stone bath and a little bed we can have each a little bath cubicle if there's nothing else for it there isn't but it seems dank and cold and horrid underground and one thinks of all the unsavory assignations at these albanyo places true at the end of the passage are seated to carabinieri but whether to ensure respectability or not heaven knows we are in the baths that's all the eskimo returns after five minutes however

there is a bedroom in the house he is pleased because he didn't like putting us into the banio where he found the bedroom i don't know but there it was large sombre cold and over the kitchen fumes of a small inner court like a well but perfectly clean and all right and the people seem warm and good-natured like human beings one has got so used to the non-human ancient-souled sicilians who are suave and so completely callous. After a really good meal we went out to see the town. It was after three o'clock and everywhere was shut up like an English Sunday. Cold, stony, calliari. In summer you must be sizzling hot calliari like a kiln. The men stood about in groups, but without the intimate Italian watchfulness that never leaves a passer by alone. Strange stony caliari. We climbed up a street like a corkscrew stairway, and we saw announcements of a children's fancy dress ball. Caliari is very steep. Halfway up there is a strange place called the Bastions, a large level space like a drill ground with trees curiously suspended over the town, and sending off a long

shoot like a wide viaduct across above the corkscrew street that comes climbing up. above this bastion place the town still rises steeply to the cathedral and the fort what is so curious is that this terrace or bastion is so large like some big recreation ground that it is almost dreary and one cannot understand its being suspended in mid-air down below is the little circle of the harbour to the left a low malarial-looking sea-plane with tufts of palm-trees and arab-looking houses from this runs out the long spit of land towards that black and white watch fort the white road trailing forth on the right most curiously a long strange spit of sand runs in a causeway far across the shallows of the bay with the open sea on one hand and vast end of the world lagoons on the other there are peaky dark mountains beyond this just as across the vast bay are gloomy hills it is a strange strange landscape, as if here the world left off. The bay is vast in itself, and all these curious things happening at its head, this curious, craggy studded town, like a great stud of house-covered rock jutting up out of the bay flats. Around it on one side, the weary, Arab-looking palm-desolated

malarial plain, and on the other side great salt lagoons, dead beyond the sandbar. These backed again, by serried clustered mountains suddenly, while away beyond the plain, hills rise to sea again. Land and sea both seem to give out, exhausted, at the bay head, the world's end. And into this world's end

starts up Kaliari, and on either side, sudden serpent-crest hills. But it still reminds me of Malta, lost between Europe and Africa and belonging to nowhere, belonging to nowhere never having belonged to anywhere to spain and the arabs and the phoenicians most but as if it had never really had a fate no fate left outside of time and history the spirit of the place is a strange thing our mechanical age tries to override it but it does not succeed in the end the strange sinister spirit of the place so diverse and adverse in differing places

will smash our mechanical oneness into smithereens and all that we think the real thing will go off with a pop and we shall be left staring on the great parapet above the municipal hall and above the corkscrew high street a thick fringe of people is hanging looking down we go to look too and behold below there is the entrance to the ball yes there is a china shepherdess in pale blue and powdered hair crook ribbons mariontoinette sat in daintiness and all slowly and haughtily walking up the road and gazing superbly round she is not more than twelve years old moreover over two servants accompany her she gazes supremely from right to left as she goes mincingly and i would give her the prize for haughtiness she is perfect a little too haughty for vato but marquise to a tea the people watch in silence there is no yelling and screaming and running they watch in a suitable silence comes a carriage with two fat bay horses slithering almost swimming up the corner corkscrew high street. That in itself is a tour de force, for Caliari doesn't have carriages. Imagine a street like a corkscrew stair paved with slippery stone, and imagine two bay horses rowing their way up it. They did not walk a single stride, but they arrived, and there fluttered out

three strangely exquisite children, two frail white sat in pieros, and a white sat in pierrette. They were like fragile winter butterflies with black spots. They had a curious, indefinable, remote elegance, something conventional and fan de sierre, but not our century. The wonderful artificial delicacy of the 18th. The boys had big, perfect ruffs round their necks, and behind were slung old cream-coloured Spanish shawls for warmth. They were frail as tobacco flowers,

and with remote cold elegance they fluttered by the carriage from which emerged a large black satin mamma fluttering their queer little butterfly feet on the pavement hovering round the large mamar like three frail tissueed ghosts they found their way past the solid-seated carabinieri into the hall arrived a primrose brocade bow with ruffles and his hat under his arm about twelve years old walking statelessly without a qualm up the steep twist of the street or perhaps so perfect in his self-consciousness that it became an elegant aplom in him he was a genuine eighteenth century exquisite rather stiffer than the french may be but completely in the spirit curious curious children they had a certain stand-offish superbness and not a single trace of misgiving for them their noblesse was indisputable for the first time in my life i recognised the true cold superbness of the old noblesse they had not a single qualm about their own perfect representing of the higher order of being. Followed another white satin marquise with a maid-servant. They are strong on the 18th century in Caliari, perhaps it is the last bright reality to them.

The 19th hardly counts. Curious the children in Caliari, the poor seem thoroughly poor, bare-footed urchins, gay and wild in the narrow dark streets. But the more well-to-do children are, fine so extraordinarily elegantly dressed it quite strikes one of a heap not so much the grown-ups the children all the chic all the fashion all the originality is expended on the children and with a great deal of success better than kensington gardens very often and they promenade with papa and mamma with such alert assurance having quite brought it off their fashionable get-up who would have expected it. Oh, narrow, dark and humid streets going up to the cathedral like crevices! I narrowly miss a huge pail of slop-water which comes crashing down from heaven. A small boy who was playing in the street and whose miss is not quite a clean miss looks up with that naive impersonal wonder with which children stare at a star or a lamplighter.

the cathedral must have been a fine old pagan stone fortress once now it has come as it were through the mincing machine of the ages and oozed out baroque and sausages a bit like the horrible baldachins in st peter's at rome none the less it is homely and whole and cornery with a rather ragged high mass trailing across the pavement towards the high altar since it is almost sunset and epiphany it feels as if one might squat in a corner and play marbles and eat bread and cheese and be at home, a comfortable old-time churchy feel. There is some striking fillet lace on the various altar-cloths, and St Joseph must be a prime saint. He has an altar and a verse of invocation praying for the dying. O St Joseph, true potential father of our Lord! What can it profit a man, I wonder, to be the potential father of anybody. For the rest I am not Bédicca. The top of Caliari is the fortress, the old gate, the old ramparts of honeycombed, fine,

yellowish sandstone. Up in a great sweep goes the rampart wall, Spanish and splendid, dizzy, and the road creeping down again at the foot, down the back of the hill. There lies the country, that dead plain with its bunch of palms and a fainting sea, and inland again hills. Caliari must be on a single loose, lost bluff of rock. From the terrace just below the fortress above the town, not behind it, we stand and look at the sunset. It is all terrible, taking place beyond the knotted serpent-crested hills that lie bluish and velvety beyond the waste lagoons. Dark, sultry, heavy crimson

the west is, hanging sinisterly with those gloomy blue cloud bars and cloud banks drawn across. All behind the blue gloomy peaks stretches the curtain of sinister smouldering red and away to the sea. Deep below lie the sea mares. They see miles and miles and utterly waste. But the sandbar crosses like a bridge and has a road. All the air is dark, a sombre bluish tone. The great west

burns inwardly, suddenly, and gives no glow, yet a deep red. It is cold. We go down the steep streets, smelly, dark, dank, and very cold. No wheeled vehicle can scramble up them, presumably. People live in one room. Men are combing their hair off. fastening their collars in the doorways. Evening is here, and it is a feast day. At the bottom of the street we come to a little bunch of masked youths, one in a long yellow frock and a frilled bonnet, another like an old woman, another in red twill. They are arm in arm and are accosting the passers by. The QB gives a cry and looks for escape. She has a terror of maskers, a terror that comes from childhood. To say the truth, so have I. We hasten invisibly down the far side of the street

and come out under the bastions. Then we go down our own familiar wide, short, cold boulevard to the sea. At the bottom again is a carriage with more maskers. Carnival is beginning. A man dressed as a peasant woman in native costume is clambering with his great wide skirts and wide skirts. And wide strides onto the box, and flourishing his rib-and-whip, is addressing a little crowd of listeners. He opens his mouth wide, and goes on with a long-y-helling harangue of taking a drive with his mother, another man in old woman's gaudy finery and wig, who sits already bobbing on the box. The would-be daughter flourishes, yells and prances up there on the box of the carriage. The crowd listens attentively and mildly smiles. It all seems real to them. The QB hovers in the distance

half fascinated and watches. With a great flourish of whip and legs, showing his frilled drawers, the masker pulls round to drive along the boulevard by the sea, the only place where one can drive. The big street by the sea is the via Roma. It has the cafes on one side, and across the road the thick tufts of trees intervening between the sea and us. Among these thick tufts of sea-front trees, the little steam tram, like a little train, bumps to rest after having wound round the back of the town. The via Roma is all social calliari, including the cafes with their outdoor tables on the one side of the road, and the avenue strand on the other, it is very wide, and at evening it contains the whole town. Here and here alone, carriages can spank along very slowly,

officers can ride, and the people can promenade en masse. We are amazed at the sudden crowd we found ourselves amongst, like a short, dense river of people, streaming slowly in a mass. There is practically no vehicular traffic, only the steady, dense streams of human beings of all sorts, all on a human footing. It must have been something like this in the streets of Imperial Rome, where no chariots might drive, and humanity was all on foot. Little bunches of maskers and single maskers danced and strutted along in the thick flow under the trees. If you are a mask, you don't walk like a human being.

You dance and prance along, extraordinarily like the life-size marionettes, conducted by wires from above. That is how you go. with that odd jauntiness as if lifted and propelled by wires from the shoulders in front of me went a charming coloured harlequin all in diamond-shaped colours and beautiful as a piece of china he tripped with a light fantastic trip quite alone in the thick crowd and quite blithe came two little children hand in hand in brilliant scarlet and white costumes sauntering calmly they did not do the mind trip. After a while a sky-blue girl with a high hat and full skirts, very short, that went flip, flip, flip, as a ballet dancers, while she strutted. After her a Spanish grandeur, capering like a monkey, they threaded among the slow stream of the crowd. Appeared Dante and Beatrice in paradise,

apparently, all in white sheet robes, and with silver wreaths on their heads, arm in arm, and prancing very slowly and majestically, yet with the long lilt as if hitched along by wires from above. They were very good. All the well-known vision come to life, dante inc Corporate and white as a shroud, with his tow-haired silver-crowned immortal Beatrice on his arm, strutting the dark avenues. He had the nose and cheek-bones and banded cheek, and the stupid wooden look, and offered a modern criticism on the inferno. it had become quite dark the lamps were lighted we crossed the road to the caf roma and found a table on the pavement among the crowd in a moment we had our tea the evening was cold with ice in the wind but the crowd surged on back and forth back and forth slowly at the tables were seated mostly men taking coffee or vermute or aqua vitae all familiar and easy without the modern self-consciousness

There was a certain pleasant natural robustness of spirit and something of a feudal free uneasiness. Then arrived a family with children and nurse in her native costume. They all sat at table together, perfectly easy with one another, though the marvellous nurse seemed to be seated below the sort. She was bright as a poppy, in a rose scarlet dress of fine cloth with a curious little waistcoat of emerald green and purple, and a bodice of soft, homespun linen with great full sleeves. On her head she had a rose scarlet and white headdress, and she wore great studs of gold filigree and similar earrings. The feudal bourgeois family drank its syrup drinks and watched the crowd.

Most remarkable is the complete absence of self-consciousness. They all have a perfect natural sans-fois. The nurse in her marvellous native costume is, as thoroughly to her ease as if she were in her own village street she moves and speaks and calls to a passer-by without the slightest constraint and much more without the slightest presumption she is below the invisible salt the invisible but insuperable salt and it strikes me the salt barrier is a fine thing for both parties they both remain natural and human on either side of it instead of becoming devilish scrambling and pushing at the barricade. The crowd is across the road under the trees near the sea. On this side stroll occasional pedestrians,

and I see my first peasant in costume. He is an elderly, upright, handsome man, beautiful in the black and white costume. He wears the full-sleeved white shirt and the close black bodice of thick native frieze cut low. From this sticks out a short kilt or frill of the same black frieze, a band of which goes between the legs, between the full loose drawers of coarse linen.

The drawers are banded below the knee into tight black freeze gaiters. On his head he has the long black stocking cap hanging down behind. How handsome he is, and so beautifully male. He walks with his hands loose behind his back, slowly, upright, and aloof. the lovely unapproachableness indomitable and the flash of the black and white the slow stride are the full white drawers the black gaiters and black cuirass with the bellero then the great white sleeves and white breast again and once more the black cap what marvellous massing of the contrast marvellous and superb as on a magpie how beautiful maleness is if it finds its right expression and how beautiful manliness is if it finds its right expression and a how perfectly ridiculous it is made in modern clothes there is another peasant to a young one with a swift eye and hard cheek and hard dangerous thighs he has folded his stocking cap so that it comes forward to his brow like a phrygian cap he wears close-knee breeches and close-sleeved waistcoat of thick brownish stuff that looks like leather over the waistcoat a sort of cuirass of black rusty sheepskin the curly wool outside so he strides talking to a comrade

how fascinating it is after the soft italians to see these limbs in their close knee breeches so definite so manly with the old fierceness in the old fierceness in the old fierceness in the old fierceness in the same them still. One realizes with horror that the race of men is almost extinct in Europe. Only Christ-like heroes and woman worshipping don Juan's and rabid equality mongrels. The old hardy indomitable male is gone. His fierce singleness is quenched. The last sparks are dying out in Sardinia and Spain. Nothing left but the herd pluritariat and the herd equality. mongrelism and the wistful, poisonous, self-sacrificial, cultured soul. How detestable! But that curious, flashing black and white costume, I seem to have known it before, to have worn it even, to have dreamed it, to have dreamed it, to have had actual contact

with it, it belongs in some way to something in me, to my past, perhaps, I don't know, but the uneasy sense of blood familiarity haunts me i know i have known it before it is something of the same uneasiness i feel before mount erics but without the awe this time in the morning the sun was shining from a blue blue sky but the shadows were deadly cold and the wind like a flat blade of ice we went out running to the sun the hotel could not give us coffee and milk only a little little black coffee, so we descended to the sea front again, to the Via Roma, and to our cafe. It was Friday. People seemed to be bustling in from the country with huge baskets. The Cafaroma had coffee and milk, but no butter. We sat and watched the movement outside. Tiny Sardinian donkeys, the tiniest things ever seen, trotted their infinitesimal little paws along the road, drawing little wagons like hand-carts.

Their proportion is so small that they make a boy walking at their side look like a tall man, while a natural man looks like a cyclops, stalking hugely and cruelly. It is ridiculous for a grown man to have one of these little creatures, hardly bigger than a fly, hauling his load for him. One is pulling a chest of drawers on a cart, and it seems to have a whole house behind it. Nevertheless, it plods bravely, away beneath the load, a weathing. they tell me there used to be flocks of these donkeys feeding half wild on the wild more like hills of sardinia but the war and also the imbecile wantonness of the war masters consume these flocks too so that fewer left the same with the cattle sardinia home of cattle hilly little argentine of the mediterranean is now almost deserted it is war said the italiana and also the wanton imbecile foul ladsal

of the war-masters it was not alone the war which exhausted the world it was the deliberate evil wastefulness of the war-makers in their own countries italy ruined italy two peasants in black and white are strolling in the sun flashing and my dream of last evening was not a dream and my nostalgia for something i know not what was not an illusion i feel it again at once at the sight of the man men in frieze and linen, a heart yearning for something I have known, and which I want back again. It is market day. We turn up the Largo Carlo Felice, the second wide gap of a street, a vast but very short boulevard, like the end of something. Caliari is like that, all bits and bobs, and by the side of the pavement are many stalls, stalls selling combs and collar-studs, cheap mirrors, handkerchiefs, shoddy Manchester goods, beard-ticking, boot-paste, poor crockery, and so on.

But we see also Madame of Caliari going marketing, with a servant accompanying her, carrying a huge grass-woven basket, or returning from marketing, followed by a small boy, supporting one of these huge grass-woven baskets, like huge dishes on his head, piled with bread, eggs, vegetables, a chicken, and so forth.

Therefore we follow, Madame, going marketing, and find ourselves in the vast market-house, and it fairly glows with eggs, eggs in these great round dish-baskets of golden grass, but eggs in piles, in mounds, in heaps, a Sierra Nevada of eggs, glowing warm white. How they glow! I have never noticed it before,

but they give off a warm pearly effulgence into the air almost a warmth a pearly gold heat seems to come out of them myriads of eggs glowing avenues of eggs and they are marked sixty-sontimes sixty five centimes ah cries the qb i must live in caliari for in sicily the eggs cost one fifty each this is the meat and poultry and bread market there are stalls of new ovarish-shaped bread brown and bright there are tiny stalls of marvellous native cakes which i want to taste there is a great deal of meat and kid and there are stalls of cheese all cheeses all shapes all whitenesses all the cream colours on into daffodil yellow goat cheese sheep's cheese swiss cheese pomegiano strakino cacillo torolone how many cheeses i don't know the names of but they cost about the same as in Sicily. 18 francs, 20 francs, 25 francs the kilo. And there is lovely ham,

30 and 35 francs the kilo. There is little fresh butter too, 30 or 32 francs the kilo. Most of the butter, however, is tinned in Milan. It costs the same as the fresh. There are splendid piles of salted

black olives and huge bowls of green salted olives. There are chickens and ducks and wild fowl at 11 and 12 and 14 francs a kilo. There is mortadella, the enormous bologna sausage, thick as a church pillar, 16 francs. And there are various sorts of smaller sausage, salami, to be eaten in slices. A wonderful abundance of food, glowing and shining. We are rather late for fish, especially on Friday, but a barefooted man offers us two weird objects from the Mediterranean, which teems with marine monsters the peasant women sit behind their wares their home-woven linen skirts hugely full and of various colours ballooning around them

the yellow baskets give off a glow of light there is a sense of profusion once more but alas no sense of cheapness save the eggs every month up goes the price of everything i must come and live in caliari to do my shopping here says the QB. I must have one of those big grass baskets. We went down to the little street, but saw more baskets emerging from a broad flight of stone stairs enclosed. So up we went, and found ourselves in the vegetable market. Here the QB was happier still. Peasant women, sometimes barefoot, sat in their tired little bodices and voluminous coloured skirts behind the piles of vegetables, and never have I seen a loveliest show. The intense deep green of spinach seemed to predominate, and out of that came the monuments of curd-white and black purple cauliflowers, but marvellous cauliflowers like a flower-show, the purple ones intense as great bunches of violets.

From this green white and purple massing struck out the vivid rose scarlet and blue crimson of radishes, large radishes like little turnips in piles. Then the long, slim grey purple buds of artichokes, and dangling clusters of dates, and piles of sugar-dusty white figs, and sombre-looking black figs, and bright burnt figs, basketfuls and basket-fulls of figs, a few baskets of almonds and many huge walnuts, basket pans of native raisins, scarlet peppers like trumpets, and magnificent fennels so white and big and succulent baskets of new potatoes scaly colerabi wild asparagus in bunches yellow budding sparicelli big clean fleshed carrots feathery salads with white hearts long brown purple onions and then of course pyramids of big oranges pyramids of pale apples and baskets of brilliant shiny mandarini the little tangerine orange with their green black leaves. The green and vivid-coloured world of fruit gleams

I have never seen in such splendour as under the market-roof at Caliari, so raw and gorgeous, and all quite cheap, the one remaining cheapness except potatoes. Potatoes of any sort are 140 or 150 the kilo. Oh, cried the Queen Bee, if I don't live a Caliari and come and do my shopping here,

I shall die with one of my wishes unfulfilled. but out of the sun it was cold nevertheless we went into the streets to try and get warm the sun was powerful but alas as in southern towns generally the streets are sunless as wells so the cuby and i creeps slowly along the sunny bits and then perforce are swallowed by shadow we look at the shops but there is not much to see little frowsy provincial shops on the whole but a fair number of peasants in the streets and peasant women in rather ordinary costume tight bodiceid volume skirted dresses of hand-woven linen or thickish cotton the prettiest is of dark blue and red stripes and lines intermingled so made that the dark blue gathers round the waist into one colour the myriad pleats hiding all the rosy red but when she walks the full petticoated peasant woman then the red goes flash flash flash like a bird showing its colours pretty that looks in the sombre street she has a plain light bodice with a peak sometimes a little vest and great full white sleeves and usually a handkerchief or shawl loose knotted it is charming the way they walk with quick short steps when all is said and done the most attractive costume for women in my eye is the tight little bodice and the many-pleated skirt full and vibrating with movement it has a charm which modern elegance lacks completely a bird-like play in movement

they are amusing these peasant girls and women so brisk and defiant they have straight backs like little walls and decided well-drawn brows and they are amusingly on the alert there is a no eastern creeping. Like sharp brisk birds, they dart along the streets, and you feel they would fetch you a bang over the head, as levers look at you. Tenderness, thank heaven, does not seem to be a sardinian quality. Italy is so tender, like cooked macaroni, yards and yards of soft tenderness ravelled round everything. Here men don't idealise women by the looks of things. Here they don't make these great leering eyes, the inevitable yours to command look of Italian males. When the men from the country look at these women, then it is, mind yourself, my lady. I should think the grovelling Madonna worship is not much of a Sardinian feature.

These women have to look out for themselves, keep their own backbone stiff and their knuckles hard. Man is going to be male lord if he can, and woman isn't going to give him too much of his own way either. so there you have it the fine old martial split between the sexes it is tonic and splendid really after so much sticky intermingling and backboneless madonna worship the sardinian isn't looking for the noble woman nobly planned no thank you he wants that young madam over there a young stiff-necked generation that she is far better sport than with the nobly planned sort hollow fraud that they are-and better sport too than with a carman who gives herself away too much in these women there is something shy and defiant unung get atable the defiant splendid split between the sexes each absolutely determined to defend his side her side from assault so the meeting has a certain wild sulty savour each the deadly unknown to the other and at the same time each his own her own native pride and courage taking the dangerous leap and scrambling back give me the old sulty way of love how i am nauseated with sentiment and nobility the macaroni slithery slobbery mess of modern adoration one sees a few fascinating faces in caliari those great dark unlighted eyes there are fascinating dark eyes in sicily bright big with an impudent point of light and a curious roll and long lashes the eyes of old greece surely

but here one sees eyes of soft blank darkness all velvet with no imp looking out of them and they strike a stranger older note before the soul became self-conscious before the mentality of Greece appeared in the world. Remote, always remote, as if the intelligence lay deep within the cave and never came forward. One searches into the gloom for one second while the glance lasts, but without being able to penetrate to the reality.

It recedes like some unknown creature deeper into its lair. There is a creature, dark and potent. But what? Sometimes Velasquith, sometimes goyer gives us a suggestion of these large dark unlighted eyes and they go with fine fleecy black hair almost as fine as fur i have not seen them north of caliari the q b spies some of the blue and red stripe and line cotton stuff of which the peasants make their dress a large roll in the doorway of a dark shop in we go and begin to feel it it is just soft thickish cotton stuff stuff twelve francs a metre like most peasant patterns it is much more complicated and subtle than appears the curious placing of the stripes the subtle proportion and a white thread left down one side only of each broad blue block

the stripes moreover run across the cloth not lengthwise with it but the width will be just long enough for a skirt though the peasant skirts have almost all a band at the bottom with the stripes running round ways. The man, he is the Eskimo type, simple, frank and amiable, says the stuff is made in France, and this is the first rolled since the war. It is the old, old pattern, quite correct, but the material not quite so good. The QB takes enough for a dress. He shows us also cashmirs, orange, scarlet, sky blue, royal blue, good, pure wool cashmirs that were being sent to india and were captured from a german mercantile submarine so he says fifty francs a metre very very wide but they are too much trouble to carry in a knapsack though their brilliance fascinates so we stroll and look at the shops at the filigree gold jewelling of the peasants at a good bookshop but there is little to see and therefore the question is shall we go on shall we go forward there are two ways of leaving caliari for the north the state railway that runs up the west side of the island and the narrow gauge secondary railway that pierces the centre

but we are too late for the big trains so we will go by the secondary railway wherever it goes there is a train at two-thirty and we can get as far as mandas some fifty miles in the interior when we tell the queer little waiter at the hotel he says he comes from mandas and there are two inns so after lunch a strictly fish menu we pay our bill it comes to sixty odd francs for three good meals each with wine and the night's lodging this is ten cheap as prices now are in italy pleased with the simple and friendly scala di ferro i shoulder my sack and we walk off to the second station the sun is shining hot this afternoon burning hot by the sea the road and the buildings look dry and desiccated the harbour rather weary and end of the world there is a great crowd of peasants at the little station and almost every man has a pair of woven saddle-bags a great flat strip of coarse-woven wool with flat pockets at either end stuffed with purchases. These are almost the only carrying bags. The men sling them over their shoulder so that one great pocket hangs in front, one behind. These saddle-bags are most fascinating. They are coarsely woven in bands of raw black, rusty wool, with varying bands of raw white wool or

hemp or cotton. The bands and stripes of varying widths going crosswise. and on the pale bands are woven sometimes flowers in most lovely colours rose-red and blue and green peasant patterns and sometimes fantastic animals beasts in dark wool again so that these striped zebra bags some wonderful gay with flowery colours on their stripes some weird with fantastic griffin-like animals are a whole landscape in themselves the train has only first and third class it costs about thirty francs for the two of us third class to mandas which is some sixty miles in we crowd with the joyful saddle-bags into the wooden carriage with its many seats and wonder of wonders punctually to the second off we go out of caliari on route again end of chapter three chapter four of sea and sardinia by d h h four of sea and sardinia by d h h Lawrence. This Libravox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Anthony Ogas. Mandus The coach was fairly full of people, returning from market. On these railways, the third-class

coaches are not divided into compartments. They are left open, so that one sees everybody as down a room. The attractive saddle-bags, Becolae, were disposed anywhere, and the bulk of the people settled down to a lively conversazione it is much nicest on the whole to travel third class on the railway there is space there is air and it is like being in a lively inn everybody in good spirits at our end was plenty of room just across the gangway was an elderly couple like two children coming home very happily he was fat fat all over with a white moustache and a little non-unamiable frown. She was a tall, lean, brown woman in a brown, full-skirted dress and black apron with huge pocket. She wore no head-covering, and her iron-grey hair was parted smoothly. They were rather pleased and excited being in the train. She took all her money out of her big pocket and counted it, and gave it to him. All the ten lira notes and the five lira and the two and the one, peering at the dirty scraps of pink-backed.

one lira notes to see if they were good. Then she gave him her half-penies, and he stowed them away in the trouser pocket, standing up to push them down his fat leg. And then one saw to one's amazement that the whole of his shirt-tail was left out behind, like a sort of apron worn backwards. Why? A mystery. He was one of those fat, good-natured unheeding men, with a little masterful frown such as usually have tall lean hard-faced obedient wives they were very happy with amazement he watched us taking hot tea from the thermos flask i think he too had suspected it might be a bomb he had blue eyes and standing up white eyebrows beautiful hot he said seeing the tea steam it is the inevitable exclamation does it do you good yes said the q b much good and they both nodded complacently they were going home the train was running over the malarial-looking sea-plain past the down-at-heel palm trees past the mosque-looking buildings at a level crossing the woman crossing-keeper darted out vigorously with her red flag and we rambled into the first village it was built of sun-dried brick adobee houses it was built of sun-dried brick-adobie houses

thick adobey garden walls with tile ridges to keep off the rain in the enclosures were dark orange trees but the clay-coloured villages clay-dry looked foreign the next thing to mere earth they seem like foxholes or coyote colonies looking back one sees calliari bluff on her rock rather fine with the thin edge of the sea's blade curving round it is rather hard to believe in the real sea on the real sea on the rock on the rock rather fine with the thin edge of the sea's blade curving round it is rather hard to believe in the real sea on on this sort of clay-pale plain but soon we begin to climb to the hills and soon the cultivation begins to be intermittent extraordinary how the heathy moor-like hills come near the sea extraordinary how scrubby and uninhabited the great spaces of sardinia it is wild with heath and our butter scrub and a sort of myrtle breast-high sometimes one sees a few head of cattle And then again come the greyish arable patches, where the corn is grown. It is like Cornwall, like the land's end region. Here and there in the distance are peasants working on the lonely landscape. Sometimes it is one man alone in the distance,

showing so vividly in his black and white costume, small and far off like a solitary magpie, and curiously distinct. All the strange magic of Sardinia is in this sight. among the low more like hills away in a hollow of the wide landscape one solitary figure small but vivid black and white working alone as if eternally there are patches and hollows of grey arable land good for corn sardinia was once a great granary usually however the peasants of the south have left off the costume usually it is the invisible soldier's grey-green cloth the italian car key wherever you go wherever you be you see this car key this grey-green war clothing how many millions of yards of the thick excellent but hateful material the italian government must have provided i don't know but enough to cover italy with a felt carpet i should think it is everywhere it cases the tiny children in stiff and neutral frocks and coats it covers their extinguished fathers and sometimes it even encloses the women in its warmth. It is symbolic of the universal grey mist that has come over men, the extinguishing

of all bright individuality, the blotting out of all wild singleness. Oh, democracy, oh, khaki democracy! This is very different from Italian landscape. Italy is almost always dramatic, and perhaps invariably romantic. There is drama in the plains of Lombardy, and romance in the Venetian lagoons and sheer scenic excitement in nearly all the hilly parts of the peninsula. Perhaps it is the natural fluidity of limestone formations. But Italian landscape is really 18th century landscape to be represented in that romantic classic manner, which makes everything rather marvellous and very topical, aqueducts and ruins upon sugarloaf mountains, and craggy ravines and Wilhelmmeister waterfalls all up and down.

Sardinia is another thing, much wider, much more ordinary, not up and down at all, but running away into the distance, unremarkable ridges of moor-like hills running away, perhaps to a bunch of dramatic peaks on the south-west. This gives a sense of space which is so lacking in Italy. Lovely space about one, and travelling distances, nothing finished nothing final it is like liberty itself after the peaky confinement of sicily room give me room give me room for my spirit and you can have all the toppling crags of romance so we ran on through the gold of the afternoon across a wide almost celtic landscape of hills our little train winding and puffing away very nimbly only the heathen scrub breast-high man is too big and brigand-like for a celtic land the horns of black wild-looking cattle show sometimes after a long pull we come to a station after a stretch of loneliness each time it looks as if there were nothing beyond no more habitations and each time we come to a station most of the people have left the train and as with men driving in a gig who get down at every public house so the passengers usually alight for an airing at each station

our old fat friend stands up and tucks his shirt-tail comfortably in his trousers which trousers all the time make one hold one's breath for they seem at each very moment to be just dropping right down and he clambers out followed by the long brown stalk of a wife so the train sits comfortably for five or ten minutes in the way the trains have at last we hear whistles and horns and our old fat friend running and clinging like a fat crab to the very end of the train as it sets off at the same instant a loud shriek and a bunch of shouts from outside we all jump up there down the line is the long brown stalk of a wife she had just walked back to a house some hundred yards of for a few words and has now seen the train moving now behold her with her hands thrown to heaven and hear the wild shriek madonna through all the hubbub but she picks up her two skirt knees and with her thin legs in grey stockings starts with a mad rush after the train in vain the train inexorably pursues its course prancing she reaches one end of the platform as we leave the other end, then she realised it is not going to stop for her. And then, oh horror, her long arms thrown out in wild supplication after the retreating train, then flung aloft to God, then brought down in absolute despair on her head. And this is the last sight we have of her, clutching her poor head

in agony and doubling forward. She is left, she is abandoned. The poor fat husband has been all the time on the little outside platform at the end of the carriage, holding out his hand to her and shouting frenzid scolding to her, and frenzid yells for the train to stop. And the train has not stopped, and she is left, left on that God-forsaken station, in the waning light. So his face all bright, his eyes round and bright as two stars,

absolutely transfigured by dismay, chagrin, anger and distress, He comes and sits in his seat, a blaze, stiff, speechless. His face is almost beautiful in its blaze of conflicting emotions. For some time he is as if unconscious in the midst of his feelings. Then anger and resentment crop out of his consternation. He turns with a flash to the long-nosed, insidious Phoenician-looking guard. Why couldn't they stop the train for her? And immediately, as if someone had set fire to him,

him, off flares the guard. Hey, the train can't stop for every person's convenience. The train is a train. The timetable is a timetable. What did the old woman want to take her trips down the line for? Hey, she pays a penalty for her own inconsiderateness. Had she paid for the train, hey? And the fat man all the time firing off his unheeding and unheeded answers. One minute, only one minute. If he the conductor had told the driver, if he the conductor had shouted, "'A poor woman! Not another train! What was she going to do? Her ticket, and no money! A poor woman!' "'There was a train back to Caliari that night,' said the conductor,

at which the fat man nearly burst out of his clothing like a bursting seed-pod. He bounced on his seat. What good was that? What good was a train back to Caliari when their home was in Snelly? Making matters worse, so they bounced and jerked and argued at one another to their heart's content then the conductor retired smiling subtly in a way they have our fat friend looked at us with hot angry ashamed grieved eyes and said it was a shame yes we chimed it was a shame whereupon a self-important miss who said she came from some collegio at caliari advanced and asked a number of imperturbish questions in a tone of perch sympathy after which our fat friend left alone covered his clouded face with his hand turned his back on the world and gloomed it had all been so dramatic that in spite of ourselves we laughed even while the q b shed a few tears well the journey lasted hours we came to a station and the conductor said we must get out these coaches went no further other. Only two coaches would proceed to mandus, so we climbed out with our traps and our fat friend with his saddle-bag the picture of misery. The one coach into which we clambered was rather crowded. The only other coach was most of it first-class, and the rest of the train was freight. We were two insignificant passenger wagons at the end of a long string of freight, vans and trucks. There was an empty seat, so we sat on it,

only to realise after about five minutes that a thin old woman with two children her grandchildren was chuntering her head off because it was her seat why she had left it she didn't say and under my legs was her bundle of bread she nearly went off her head and over my head on the little rack was her burkela her saddle-bag fat soldiers laughed at her good-naturedly but she fluttered and flipped like a tart featherless old hen since she had another seat and was quite comfortable we smiled and let her chunter so she clawed her bread bundle from under my legs and clutching it and a fat child sat tense it was getting quite dark the conductor came and said there was no more paraffin if what there was in the lamps gave out we should have to sit in the dark there was no more paraffin all along the line so he climbed to the lamp's gave out we should have to sit in the dark there was no more paraffin all along the line so he climbed on the seats and after a long struggle with various boys striking matches for him he managed to obtain a light as big as a pea we sat in this clair obscure and looked at the sombre shadowed faces round us the fat soldier with a gun the handsome soldier with huge saddle-bags the weird dark little man who kept exchanging a baby with a solid woman who had a white cloth tied round her head a tall peasant woman in costume who darted out at a dark station and returned triumphant with a piece of chocolate, a young and interested young man who told us every station,

and the man who spat, there is always one. Gradually the crowd thinned, at a station we saw our fat friend go by, bitterly, like a betrayed soul, his bulging saddle-bag hanging before and after, but no comfort in it now, no comfort. the pea of light from the paraffin lamp grew smaller we sat in incredible dimness and the smell of sheep's wool and peasant with only our fat and stoic young man to tell us where we were the other dusky faces began to sink into a dead gloomy silence some took to sleep and the little train ran on and on through unknown sardinian darkness in despair we drained the last drop of tea and at the last crusts of bread we knew we must arrive some time it was not much after seven when we came to mundus mundus is a junction where these little trains sit and have a long happy chat after their arduous scramble over the downs

it had taken us somewhere about five hours to do our fifty miles no wonder then that when the junction at last heaves in sight everybody bursts out of the train like seeds from an exploding pod and rushes somewhere for something to the station restaurant of course hence there is a little station restaurant that does a brisk trade and where one can have a bed a quite pleasant woman behind the little bar a brown woman with brown parted hair and brownish eyes and brownish tan complexion and tight brown velvadine bodice she led us up a narrow winding stone stair as up a fortress leading on with her candle and ushered us in to the bedroom. It smelled horrid and sourish, as shut up bedrooms do. We threw open the window. There were big frosty stars snapping ferociously in heaven. The room contained a huge bed, big enough for eight people, and quite clean. And the table on which stood the candle actually had a cloth. But imagine that cloth. I think it had been originally white. Now, however, it was such a web of time-eaten holes and mournful black ink-stains and poor dead wine-stains that it was like some two thousand b c mummy-cloth i wonder if it could have been lifted from that table or if it was mummified on to it

i for one made no attempt to try but that table cover impressed me as showing degrees i had not imagined a table-cloth we went down the fortress stair to the eating-room here was a long table with soup-plates upside down and a lamp burning an uncanny naked acetylene flame we sat at the cold table and the lamp immediately began to wane the room in fact the whole of sardinia was stone cold stone stone cold outside the earth was freezing inside there was no thought of any sort of warmth dungeon stone floors dungeon stone walls and a dead corpse-like atmosphere too heavy and icy to move the lamp went quite out and the q b gave a cry the brown woman poked her head through a hole in the wall beyond her we saw the flames of the cooking and two devil figures stirring the pots the brown woman came and shook the lamp it was like a stodgy porcelain mantelpiece vase shook it was like a stodgy porcelain mantelpiece vase shook it well and stirred up its innards and started it going once more then she appeared with a bowl of smoking cabbage soup in which were bits of macaroni and would we have wine i shuddered at the thought of death cold red wine of the country so asked what else there was there was malvadja malvoise the same old marmsy that did for the duke of clarence so we had a pint of malvadja and were comforted at least we were being so when the lamp went out again the brown woman came and shook and smacked it and started it off again but as if to say shan't for you it whipped out again then came the host with a candle and a pin a large genial sicilian with pendulous mustaches

and he thoroughly pricked the wretch with the pin shook it and turned little screws so up flared the flame we were a little nervous he asked us where we came from etc and suddenly he asked us with an excited gleam were we socialists ah ha he was going to hail us as citizens and comrades he thought we were a pair of bolshevist agents i could see it and as such he was prepared to embrace us but no the q b disclaimed the honour i merely smiled and shook my head it is a pity to rob people of their exciting illusions ah there is too much socialism everywhere cried the q b ma perhaps perhaps said the discreet sicilian she saw which way the land lay and added si volle leon pocettino di socialismo one wants a tiny bit of socialism in the world a tiny bit of socialism in the world a tiny bit but not much not much at present there is too much our host twinkling at this speech which treated of the sacred creed as if it were a pinch of salt in the broth believing the q b was throwing dust in his eyes and thoroughly intrigued by us as a pair of deep ones retired no sooner had he gone than the lamp flame stood up at its full length and started to whistle the q b drew back not satisfied by this-this but another flame suddenly began to whip round the bottom of the burner like a lion lashing its tail unnerved we made room the q b cried again in came the host with a subtle smile and a pin and an air of benevolence and tamed the brute what else was there to eat there was a piece of fried pork for me and boiled eggs for the q b as we were proceeding with these in came the remainder of the night's entertainment three station officials two in scarlet peaked caps one in a black and gold peaked cap

they sat down with a clamour in their caps as if there was a sort of invisible screen between us and them they were young the black cap had a lean and sardonic look one of the red caps was little and ruddy very young with a little moustache we called him the mayalino the gay little black pig he was so plump and food nourished and frisky the third was rather puffy and pale and had spectacles they all seemed to present us the blank side of their cheek and to intimate that no they were not going to take their hats off even if it were dinner-table and a strange signora and they made rough quips with one another one another still as if we were on the other side of the invisible screen determined however to remove this invisible screen i said good evening and it was very cold they muttered good evening and yes it was fresh and italia never says it is cold it is never more than fresco but this hint that it was cold they took as a hint at their caps and they became very silent till the woman came in with the soup-hole then they clamoured at her particularly the maillina what was there to eat she told them beef-stakes of pork whereat they pulled faces or bits of boiled pork they sighed looked gloomy cheered up and said beef-stakes then and they fell on their soup and never from among the steam have i heard a more joyful trio of soup swulkering they sucked it in from their spoons with long gusto-rich sucks the myelino was the treble he trilled his soup into his mouth with a swift sucking vibration interrupted by bits of cabbage which made the lamp start to dither again black cap was the baritone good rolling spoon sucks and the one in spectacles was the base he gave sudden deep gulps all was led by the long trilling of the maillino then suddenly to vary matters he cocked up his spoon in one hand chewed a huge mouthful of bread and swallowed it down with a smack-smacks

smack of his tongue against his palate as children we used to call this clapping mother she's clapping i would yell with anger against my sister the german word is schmatson so the maelino clapped like a pair of cymbals while baritone and bass rolled on then in chimed the swift bright treble at this rate however the soup did not last long arrived the beak steaks of pork and now the trio was a trio of castan nets smacks and cymbal claps. Triumphantly the myelino looked around. He outsmacked all. The bread of the country is rather coarse and brown with a hard, hard crust. A large rock of this is perched on every damp serviette. The myelino tore his rock asunder and grumbled at the black cap, who had got a weird sort of three-cornered loaf roll of pure white bread, starch white. He was a swell with this white bread. suddenly black cap turned to me where had we come from where were we going what for but in laconic sardonic tone i like sardinia cried the q b

why he asked sarcastically and she tried to find out yes the sardinians please me more than the sicilian said i why he asked sarcastically they are more open more honest he seemed to turn his nose down the padrono is a sicilian said the maelino stuffing a huge block of bread into his mouth and rolling his insoucient eyes of a gay well-fed little black pig towards the maelino stuffing a huge block of bread into his mouth and rolling his insusient eyes of a gay well-fed little black pig towards the background. We weren't making much headway. You have seen Caliari? The black cap said to me like a threat. Yes, oh, Caliari pleases me. Caliari is beautiful, cried the QB, who travels with a vial of melted butter, ready for her parsnips. Yes, Caliari is so-so, Caliari is very fair, said the black cap. Caliari is discretto. He was evidently proud of it. And is man doth nice? asked the QB. In what way nice?

They asked with immense sarcasm. Is there anything to see? Hens, said the Maelino briefly. They all bristled when one asked if Mandas was nice. What does one do here? asked the QB. Niente. At Mandas one does nothing. At Mandas one goes to bed when it's dark like a chicken.

At mandas one walks down the road like a pig that is going nowhere. that mandas a goat understands more than the inhabitants understand but mandas one needs socialism they all cried out at once evidently mandas was more than flesh and blood could bear for another minute to these three conspirators then you were very bored here say i yes and the quiet intensity of that naked yes spoke more than volumes you would like to be in caliari yes silence intense sardonic silence had intervened the three looked at one another and made a sour joke about mundas then the black cap turned to me can you understand sardinian he said somewhat more than sicilian anyhow but sardinian is more difficult than sicilian it is full of words utterly unknown to italian yes but say i it is spoken openly in plain words and sicilian and sicilian is full of words it is spoken openly in plain words and sicilian is spoken all stuck together none of the words there at all he looks at me as if i were an impostor yet it is true i find it quite easy to understand sardinian as a matter of fact it is more a question of human approach than of sound sardinian seems open and manly and downright sicilian is gluey and evasive as if the sicilian didn't want to speak straight to you as a matter of fact he doesn't he is an over-cultured sensitive ancient soul and he has so many size to his mind that he hasn't got any definite one mind at all he's got a dozen minds and uneasily he's aware of it

and to commit himself to any one of them is merely playing a trick on himself and his interlocutor the sardinian on the other hand still seems to have one downright mind i bump up against a downright smack-out believe in socialism for example the sicilian is much too old in our culture to swallow socialism whole much too ancient and ruse not to be sophisticated about any and every belief he'll go off like a squib and then he'll smoulder acridly and sceptically even against his own fire one sympathises with him in retrospect but in daily life it is unbearable where do you find such white bread say i to the black cap because he is proud of it it comes from my home and then he asks about the bread of sicily is it any whiter than this the man doth rock yes it is a little whiter at which they gloom again for it is a very sore point this bread bread means a great deal to an italian it is verily his staff of life he practically lives on bread and instead of going by taste he now like all the world goes by eye he has got it into his head that bread should be white so that every time he fancies a darker shade in the loaf a shadow falls on his soul nor is he altogether wrong for although personally i don't like white bread any more yet i do like my brown bread to be made of pure unmixed flour the peasants in sicily who have kept their own wheat and make their own natural brown bread ah it is amazing how fresh and sweet and clean their loaf seems so perfumed as home-bred yewere used all to be before the war, whereas the bread of the commune, the regulation supply, is hard

and rather coarse and rough, so rough and harsh on the palate, one gets tired to death of it. I suspect myself the maize meal mixed in, but I don't know, and finally the bread varies immensely from town to town, from commune to commune. The so-called just and equal distribution is all my eye. One place has abundance of good sweet bread, and other scrapes along, always stinted, on an allowance of harsh coarse stuff. And the poor suffer bitterly, really, from the bread stinting, because they depend so on this one food. They say the inequality and the injustice of distribution comes from the Camorra, La Grande Camara, which is no more nowadays than a profiteering combine, which the poor hate. But for my own. But for my own,

myself, I don't know. I only know that one town, Venice, for example, seems to have an endless supply of pure bread, of sugar, of tobacco, of salt, while Florence is in one continual ferment of irritation over the stinting of these supplies, which were all government monopoly, doled out accordingly. We said good-night to our three railway friends and went up to bed. We had only been in the room a minute or two when the brown woman tapped and if you please the black cap had sent us one of his little white loaves we were really touched such delicate little generosities have almost disappeared from the world it was a queer little bread three-cornered and almost as hard as ship's biscuit made of starch flour not strictly bread at all the night was cold the blankets flat and heavy but one slept quite well till dawn at seven o'clock it was a-clock it was a-clipped a cold the blankets flat and heavy but one slept quite well till dawn at seven o'clock it was a clear cold morning, the sun not yet up. Standing at the bedroom window looking out, I could hardly

believe my eyes it was so like England, like Cornwall in the bleak parts or Derbyshire Uplands. There was a little paddock garden at the back of the station, rather tumbled down with two sheep in it. There were several forlorn looking out buildings, very like Cornwall. And then the wide forlorn country road stretched away between borders of grass and low dry stone walls towards a grey stone farm with a tuft of trees and a naked stone village in the distance. The sun came up yellow, the bleak country glimmered bluish and reluctant. The low green hill slopes were divided into fields with low dry stone walls and ditches. Here and there a stone barn rose alone, or with a few bare windy trees attached. Two rough-coated winter horses pastured on the rough grass. A boy came along the naked, wide,

grass-bordered high road, with a couple of milk cans, drifting in from nowhere. And it was all so like Cornwall, or a part of Ireland, that the old nostalgia for the Celtic regions began to spring up in me. Ah, those old dry stone walls dividing the fields, pale and granite blenched. Are the dark somber grass, the naked sky, the forlorn horses in the wintry morning. Strange is a Celtic landscape, far more moving, disturbing than the lonely glamour of Italian Greece. Before the curtains of history lifted, one feels the world was like this, this Celtic bareness and somberness and air. But perhaps it is not Celtic at all, Iberian.

Nothing is more unsatisfactory than our conception of what is Celtic and what is not Celtic. I believe there never were any Celts as a race. As for the Iberians. Wonderful to go out on a frozen road, to see the grass in shadow bluish with hoar frost, to see the grass in the yellow winter sun,

beams melting and going cold twinkly wonderful the bluish cold air and things standing up in cold distance after two southern winters with roses blooming all the time this bleakness and this touch of frost in the ringing morning goes to my soul like an intoxication i am so glad on this lonely naked road i don't know what to do with myself i walk down in the shallow grassy ditchy ditches under the loose stone walls. I walk on the little ridge of grass, the little bank on which the wall is built. I cross the road, across the frozen cow-droppings, and it is also familiar to my feet, my very feet in contact, that I am wild as if I had made a discovery. And I realize that I hate limestone, to live on limestone or marble or any of those limy rocks. I hate them. They are dead rocks. They have no love. thrills for the feet even sandstone is much better but granite granite is my favourite it is so live under the feet it has a deep sparkle of its own i like its roundnesses and i hate the jaggy dryness of limestone that burns in the sun and withers after coming to a deep well in a grassy plot in a wide space of the road i go back across the sunny naked up land country towards the pink station and its outbuildings. An engine is steaming its white clouds in the new light. Away to the left there is even a row of small houses,

like a row of railway men's dwellings, strange and familiar sight. And the station precincts are disorderly and rather dilapidated. I think of our Sicilian host. The brown woman gives us coffee and very, strong, rich goats, milk and bread, after which the QB and I set off once more along the road to the village. She too is thrilled. She too breathes deep. She too fills space around her and freedom to move the limbs, such as one does not feel in Italian Sicily, where all is so classic and fixed. The village itself is just a long winding darkish street in shadow of houses and shops and

smithy. It might almost be Cornwall, not quite. Something I don't know what suggests the stark burning glare of summer. And then, of course, there is none of the cozeness which climbing roses and lilac trees and cottage shops and haystacks would give to an English scene. This is harder, bearer, starker, more dreary. An ancient man in the black and white costume comes out of a hovel of a cottage. The butcher carries a huge side of meat. The women peer at us, but more furtive and reticent than the howling stairs of Italy. So we go on, down the rough cobbled street, through the whole length of the village, and emerging on the other side past the last cottage, we find ourselves again facing the open country on the gentle downslope of the rolling hill.

The landscape continues the same. The landscape continues the same. low rolling upland hills dim under the yellow sun of the january morning stone fences fields grey arable land a man slowly slowly ploughing with a pony and a dark red cow the road trailing empty across the distance and then the one violently unfamiliar note the enclosed cemetery lying outside on the gentle hillside closed in all round very compact with high walls and on the inside face of the enclosure wall the marble slabs like shut drawers of the sepulchres shining white the wall being like a chest of drawers or pigeon-holes to hold the dead tufts of dark and plumy cypresses rise among the fire flat graves of the enclosure. In the south, cemeteries are walled off and isolated very tight. The dead as it were are kept fast in pound. There is no spreading of graves over the face of the country. They are penned in a tight fold, with cypresses to fatten on the bones. This is the one thoroughly strange note in the landscape. But all pervading there is a strangeness, that strange feeling,

as if the depths were barren, which comes in the south and the east, sun-stricken, sun-stricken, and the heart eaten out by the dryness. I like it, I like it, cries the QB, but could you live here? She would like to say yes, but dant. We stray back. The QB wants to buy one of those saddle-bag arrangements.

I say what for? She says to keep things in. ah but peeping in the shops we see one and go in and examine it it is quite a sound one properly made but plain quite plain on the white cross stripes there are no lovely coloured flowers of rose and green and magenta the three favourite sardinian colours nor are there any of the fantastic and griffin-like beasts so it won't do how much does it cost forty-five francs there is nothing to do in mandas so we will take the morning train and go to the terminus to sogano thus we shall cross the lower slopes of the great central knot of sardinia the mountain knot called genagentu and sogano we feel will be lovely back at the station we make tea on the spirit lamp fill the thermos pack the knapsack and the kitchenino and come out into the sun of the platform the cube b goes to thank the black cap for the white bread whilst i settle the bill and ask for food for the journey the brown woman fishes out from a huge black pot in the background sundry hunks of coarse boiled pork and gives me two of these hot with bread and salt this is the luncheon i pay the bill which amounts to twenty-four francs for everything one says francs or lear as irrespective in italy at that moment arrived the train from caliari and men right

in roaring for the soup or rather for the broth ready ready she cries going to the black pot end of chapter four chapter five of sea and sardinia by d h lawrence this librivox recording is in the public domain recording by antony ogus to soorgono the various trains in the junction squatted side by side and had long long talks before at last we were off it was wonderful to be running in the bright morning towards the heart of sardinia in the little train that seemed so familiar we were still going third class rather to the disgust of the railway officials at mandas at first the country was rather open always the country was rather open always the long spurs of hills steep-sided but not high and from our little train we looked across the country across hill and dale in the distance was a little town on a low slope but for its compact fortified look it might have been a town on the english towns a man in the carriage leaned out of the window holding out a white cloth as a signal to someone in the far-off town that he was coming the wind blew the the white cloth the town in the distance glimmered small and alone in its hollow and the little train pelted along it was rather comical to see it we were always climbing and the line curved in great loops so that as one looked out of the window time and again one started seeing a little train running in front of us in a diverging direction making big puffs of steam but lo it was our only little engine pelting off around a loop away ahead. We were quite a long train, but all trucks in

front, only our two passenger coaches hitched on behind. And for this reason our own engine was always running fussily into sight, like some dog scampering in front and swerving about us, while we followed at the tail end of the thin string of trucks. I was surprised how well the small engine took the continuous steep slopes, how bravely it emerged on the skyline. It is a queer railway. I would like to know who made it. It pelts uphill and down dale and round sudden bends

in the most unconcerned fashion, not as proper big railways do, grunting inside deep cuttings and stinking their way through tunnels, but running up the hill like a panting small dog and having a look round and starting off in another direction, whisking us behind unconcernedly. This is much more fun than the tunnel and cutting system. They told me that Sardinia mines her own coal,

and quite enough for her own needs, but very soft, not fit for steam purposes. I saw heaps of it, small, dull, dirty-looking stuff, truckloads of it too, and truckloads of grain. At every station we were left ignominiously planted, while the little engines, they had gay gold names on their black little bodies,

strolled about along the sidelines, and snuffed at the various trucks. There we sat at every station, while some truck was discarded, and some other sorted out like a branded sheep from the sidings, and hitched on to us. It took a long time, this did. all the stations so far had had wire netting over the windows this means malaria mosquitoes the malaria climbs very high in sardinia

the shallow upland valleys moorland with their intense summer sun and the riverless boggy behaviour of the water breathed the pest inevitably but not very terribly as far as one could make out august and september being the danger months the natives don't like to admit there is any malaria a tiny bit they say a tiny bit as soon as you come to the trees there is no more so they say for many miles the landscape is moorland and down like with no trees but wait for the trees ah the woods and forests of genagentu the woods and forests higher up no malaria there the little engine whisks up and up around its loose curves, as if it were going to bite its own tail, we being the tail, then suddenly dives over the skyline out of sight, and the landscape changes. The famous woods begin to appear. At first it is only hazel thickets, miles of hazel thickets, all wild, with a few black cattle trying to peep at us out of the green myrtle and arbate a scrub which forms the undergrowth, and a couple of rare wild peasants, peering at the train. They wear the black sheep's skin tunic with the wool outside and the long stocking caps. Like cattle they too peer out from between deep bushes. The myrtle scrub here rises man high and cattle and men are smothered in it. The big hazels rise bare above. It must be difficult getting about in these parts. Sometimes in the distance one sees a black and white peasant riding

lonely across a more open place, a tiny vivid figure. I like so much the proud instinct, which makes a living creature distinguish itself from its background. I hate the rabby, carkey protection, colouration. A black and white peasant on his pony, only a dot in the distance beyond the foliage, still flashes and dominates the landscape. Ah, ha, proud mankind, there you ride. But a most of the men are still khaki muffled rabbit indistinguishable ignominious the italians look curiously rabidy in the grey-green uniform just as our sand-coloured khaki men look doggie they seem to scuffle rather abased ignominious on the earth give us back the scarlet and gold and devil take the hindmost the landscape really begins to change the hillsides tilt sharper and sharper A man is ploughing with two small red cattle On a craggy tree-hanging slope As sharp as a roof side

He stoops at the small wooden plough And jerks the plough lines The oxen lift their noses to heaven With a strange and beseeching snake-like movement And taking tiny little steps With their frail feet Move slantingly across the slope-face Between rocks and tree-roots

little frail jerky steps the bullocks take and again they put their horns back and lift their muzzles snakily to heaven as the man pulls the line and he skids his wooden plough round another scoop of earth it is marvellous how they hang upon that steep craggy slope an English labourer's eyes would bolt out of his head at the sight there is a stream actually a long tress of a waterfall pouring into a little gorge, and a stream bed that opens a little, and shows a marvellous cluster of naked poplars away below.

They are like ghosts. They have a ghostly, almost phosphorescent luminousness in the shadow of the valley by the stream of water. If not phosphorescent, then incandescent. A grey, goldish pale incandescence of naked limbs and myriad cold, cold, glowing twigs, gleaming, strangely. If I were a painter I would paint them, for they seem to have living sentient flesh, and the shadow envelops them. Another naked tree I would paint is the gleaming mauve-silver fig, which burns its cold incandescence, tangled, like some sensitive creature emerged from the rock. A fig-tree come forth in its nudity, gleaming over the dark winter earth, is a sight to behold. like some white tangled sea an enemy. Ah, if it could but answer,

or if we had tree speech. Yes, the steep valley sides become almost gorges, and there are trees, not forests such as I had imagined, but scattered grey smallish oaks and some lithe chesnuts, chestnuts with their long whips, and oaks with their stubby boughs,

scattered on steep hill sides, where rocks crop out, the train perilously winding round half-way up then suddenly bolting over a bridge and into a completely unexpected station what is more men crowd in the station is connected with the main railway by a post-motor omnibus an unexpected eruption of men there may be miners or navvies or land workers they all have huge sacks some lovely saddle-bags with rose-coloured flas hours across the darkness. One old man is in full black and white costume, but very dirty and coming to pieces. The others wear the tight, madder-brown breeches and sleeved waistcoats. Some have the sheepskin tunic, and all wear the long stocking cap, and how they smell, of sheep-wool and of men and goat, a rank scent fills the carriage. They talk and are very lively,

and they have medieval faces, ruse, never really abandoning their defences for a moment, as a badger or a polecat never abandons its defences. There is none of the brotherliness and civilised simplicity. Each man knows he must guard himself and his own. Each man knows the devil is behind the next bush. They have never known the post-Renaissance Jesus, which is rather an eye-opener. not that they are suspicious or uneasy on the contrary noisy assertive vigorous presences but with none of that implicit belief that everybody will be and ought to be good to them which is the mark of our era they don't expect people to be good to them they don't want it they remind me of half-wild dogs that will love and obey but which won't be handled they won't have their heads touched and they won't be fondled they won't have their heads touched and they won't be fond of farmy one can almost hear the half-savage growl. The long stocking caps they wear as a sort of crest,

as a lizard wears his crest at mating time. They are always moving them, settling them on their heads. One fat fellow young, with sly brown eyes and a young beard round his face, folds his stocking foot in three, so that it rises over his brow martial and handsome. the old boy brings his stocking foot over the left ear a handsome fellow with a jaw of massive teeth pushes his cap back and lets it hang a long way down his back then he shifts it forward over his nose and makes it have two sticking-out points like fox ears above his temples it is marvellous how much expression these caps can take on they say that only those born to them couldn't wear them they seem to

to be just long bags nearly a yard long of black stockinette stuff the conductor comes to issue them their tickets and they all take out rolls of paper money even a little mothy rat of a man who sits opposite me has quite a pad of ten franc notes nobody seems short of a hundred francs nowadays nobody they shout and expostulate with the conductor full of coarse life they are but so coarse the handsome fellow has his sleeved waistcoat open and his shirt-breast has come unbuttoned not looking it seems that if he wears a black under-vest then suddenly one sees it is his own hair he is quite black inside his shirt like a black goat but there is a gulf between oneself and them they have no inkling of our crucifixion our universal consciousness each of them is pivoted and limited to himself as the wild animals are. They look out, and they see other objects, objects to ridicule or mistrust, or to sniff curiously at. But thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself, has never entered their souls at all, not even the thin end of it. They might love their neighbour, with a hot, dark, unquestioning love, but the love would probably leave off abruptly. The fascination of what is beyond them has not seized on them. Their nature, their nature,

neighbour is a mere external. Their life is centripetal, pivoted inside itself, and does not run out towards others and mankind. One filled for the first time the real old medieval life, which is enclosed in itself and has no interest in the world outside. And so they lie about on the seats, play a game, shout and sleep, and settle their long stocking caps, and spit. It is a is wonderful in them that at this time of day they still wear the long stocking caps as part of their inevitable selves it is a sign of obstinate and powerful tenacity they are not going to be broken in upon by world consciousness they are not going into the world's common clothes coarse vigorous determined they will stick to their own coarse stark stupidity and let the big world find its own way to its own enlightened hell Their hell is their own hell. They prefer it unenlightened. And one cannot help wondering whether Sardinia will resist right through. Will the last waves of enlightenment and world unity break over them and wash away the stocking caps? Or is the tide of enlightenment and world unity already receding fast enough? Certainly a reaction is setting in, away from the old universality, back, away from cosmopolitanism and internationalism, Russia, with her third international,

is at the same time reacting most violently away from all other contact, back, recoiling on herself into a fierce, unapproachable Russianism, which motion will conquer? The workman's international, or the centripetal movement, international isolation? Are we going to merge into one great proletarian homogeneity? or are we going to swing back into more or less isolated, separate, defiant communities? Probably both.

The workman's international movement will finally break the flow towards cosmopolitanism and world assimilation, and suddenly in a crash the world will fly back into intense separations. The moment has come when America, that extremist in world assimilation and world oneness, is reacting into violent egocentricity, a truly Amerindian egocentricity. As sure as fate we are on the brink of American Empire. For myself I am glad. I'm glad that the era of love and oneness is over, hateful homogenous world oneness. I'm glad that Russia flies back into savage Russianism, scytheism, savagely self-pivoting. I'm glad that America is doing the same. i shall be glad when men hate their common world alike clothes when they tear them up and clothe themselves fiercely for distinction savage distinction savage distinction against the rest of the creeping world when america kicks the billy-cock and the collar and tie into limbo and takes to her own national costume when men fiercely react against looking all alike and being all alike and betake themselves into vivid clan or nation distinction The era of love and oneness is over. The era of world alike should be at an end.

The other tide has set in. Men will set their bonnets at one another now and fight themselves into separation and sharp distinction. The day of peace and oneness is over. The day of the great fight into multifariousness is at hand. Hasten the day and save us from proletarian homogeneity and khaki all alikeness. I love my indomitable coarse men

from Mountaine Sardinia for their stocking caps and their splendid animal bright stupidity, if only the last wave of all aliqueness won't wash those superb crests, those caps away. We're struggling now among the genargentu spurs.

There is no single peak, no Etna of Sardinia. The train like the plough balances on the steep, steep sides of the hill spurs, and winds around and around. Above and below the steep slopes are all bosky. These are the woods of Gena Gentu, but they aren't woods in my sense of the word. They are thin sprinkles of oaks and chestnuts and corked trees over steep hill slopes, and corked trees. I see curious, slim, oaky-looking trees that are stripped quite naked below the boughs, standing brown ruddy, curiously distinct among the

bluey grey pallor of the others. They remind me again and again of glowing coffee-brown, naked aborigines of the South seas. They have the naked suavity, skin bare, and an intense coffee-red colour of unclothed savages, and these are the stripped cork trees. Some are much stripped, some little. Some have the whole trunk and part of the lower limbs, ruddy naked, some only a small part of the trunk. It is well on in the afternoon. A peasant in black and white, and his young handsome woman in rose-red costume, with gorgeous apron bordered, deep with grass green, and a little dark purple waistcoat over her white full bodice, are sitting behind me talking. The workman peasants are subsiding in

to sleep. It is well on in the afternoon. We have long ago eaten the meat. Now we finish the white loaf, the gift, and the tea. Suddenly looking out of the window, we see Gena Gentu's mass behind us, a thick, snow-deep knot-summit, beautiful beyond the long, steep spurs among which we are engaged. We lose the white mountain mass for half an hour, when suddenly it emerges unexpectedly, almost in front the great snow-heaved shoulder. How different it is from Etna, that lonely, self-conscious wonder of Sicily, this is much more human and knowable, with a deep breast and massive limbs, a powerful mountain body, it is like the peasants.

The stations are far between, an hour from one to another, are how weary one gets of these journeys they last so long. we look across a valley as stones throw but alas the little train has no wings and can't jump so back turns the line back and back towards genagentu a long rocky way till it comes at length to the poor valley head this it skirts fussily and sets off to pelt down on its traces again gaily and a man who was looking at us during our roundabout has climbed down and crossed the valley in five minutes and a man who was looking at us during our roundabout has climbed down and crossed the valley in five minutes it the peasants nearly all wear costumes now even the women in the fields the little fields in the half-populated valleys these genagentu valleys are all half populated more than the moors further south it is past three o'clock and cold where there is no sun at last only one more station before the terminus and here the peasants wake up sling the bulging sacks over their shoulders and get down we see tonara away above we see our old grimy black and white peasant greeted by his two women who have come to meet him with the pony daughters handsome in vivid rose and green costume peasants men in black and white men in madder brown with the close breeches on their compact thighs women in rose and white ponies with saddle-bags all begin to trail up the hill-road in silver luit, very handsome, towards the far-off, perched some bright village of Tanara, a big village,

shining like a new Jerusalem. The train, as usual, leaves us standing, and shuffles with trucks, water sounds in the valley. There are stacks of cork on the station and coal. An idiot girl in a great full skirt entirely made of coloured patches, mops and mows. Her little waistcoat thing is also incredibly old and shows faint signs of having once been a lovely purple and black brocade the valley and steep slopes are open about us an old shepherd has a lovely flock of delicate marino sheep and at last we move in one hour we shall be there as we travel among the tree slopes many brown corp trees we come upon a flock of sheep two peasants in our courage looking out give the most weird unnatural high-pitched shrieks entirely unproducible by any ordinary being the sheep know however and scatter and after ten minutes the shrieks start again for three young cattle

whether the peasants do it for love i don't know but it is the wildest and weirdest in human shepherd noise i have ever heard it is saturday afternoon and four o'clock the country is wild and uninhabited the train almost empty yet there is the leaving off work feeling in the atmosphere oh twisty wooded steep slopes o glimpses of jenagentoo o nigger stripped cork trees oh smell of peasants, oh wood and wearisome railway carriage, we are so sick of you. Nearly seven hours of this journey already, and a distance of sixty miles. But we are almost there. Look, look, Sorgon, nestling beautifully among the wooded slopes in front. Oh, magic little town, ah, you terminus and ganglion of the inland roads, we hope in you for a pleasant inn and happy company. perhaps we will stay a day or two at sorgono the train gives a last sigh and draws to a last standstill in the tiny terminus station an old fellow fluttering with rags as a hen in the wind flutters asked me if i wanted the albergo the inn i said yes and let him take my knapsack pretty sorgono as we went down the brief muddy lane between hedges to the village high road we see

seemed almost to have come to some little town in the English West country or in Hardee's country. There were glades of stripling oaks and big slopes with oak trees, and on the right a sawmill buzzing, and on the left the town white and close nestling round a Baroque church tower, and the little lane was muddy. Three minutes brought us to the high road, and a great pink-washed building blank on the road facing the station land, and labelled in huge letters restaurante risvelio the letter n being printed backwards risvelio if you please which means waking up or rousing like the word ravei into the doorway of the risvelio bolted the flutterer half a minute said i where is the albergo d'italia i was relying on bedica nonse puh replied my rag feather there isn't it any more this answer being very frequent

nowadays is always most disconcerting. Well, then, what other hotel? There is no other. Rizvelio or nothing. In we go. We pass into a big, dreary bar where are innumerable bottles behind a tin counter.

Flutter Jack yells, and at length appears mine host, a youngish fellow of the Eskimo type, but rather bigger, in a dreary black suit and a cutaway waistcoat, suggesting a dinner waistcoat, an innumerable wine-stains on his shirt front. I instantly hated him for the filthy appearance he made.

He wore a battered hat, and his face was long unwashed. Was there a bedroom? Yes. And he led the way down the passage, just as dirty as the road outside, up the hollow wooden stairs, also just as clean as the passage, along a hollow, drum-rearing, dirty corridor and into a bedroom. Well, it contained a large bed, thin and flat, with a grey-white counterpane, like a large, poor, marble-slab tomb in the room's sordid emptiness,

one dilapidated chair on which stood the miserablest weed of a candle I have ever seen, a broken wash-sauce-sour-in-a-wire-ring, and for the rest an expanse of wooden floor as dirty grey black as it could be, and an expanse of wall charted with the bloody deaths of mosquitoes. The window was about two feet above the level of a sort of stable yard outside, with a foul house just by the sash. There at the window flew lousy feathers and dirty straw. The ground was thick with chicken droppings.

an ass and two oxen comfortably chewed hay in an open shed just across and plump in the middle of the yard lay a briskly black pig taking the last of the sun smells of course were varied the knapsack and the kitchenino were dropped on the repulsive floor which i hated to touch with my boots even i turned back the sheets and looked at other people's stains there is nothing else niente said he of the lank low forehead and beastly shirt-breast and he suddenly departed i gave the flutterer his tip and he too ducked and fled then the queen bee and i took a few mere sniffs dirty disgusting swine said i and i was in a rage i could have forgiven him anything i think except his horrible shirt-breast his personal shamelessness we strolled round saw various other bedrooms some worse one really better but this showed signs of being occupied all the doors were open the place was quite deserted and open to the road the one thing that seemed definite was honesty it must be a very honest place for every footed beast man or animal could walk in at random and nobody to take the slightest regard so we went downstairs the only other apartment was the open public bar which seemed like part of the road a muleteer leaving his mules at the corner of the risvelio was drinking at the counter this famous inn was at the end of the village we strolled along the road between the houses down hill a dreary hole a cold hopeless lifeless saturday afternoon weary village rather sore

with nothing to say for itself. No real shops at all, a weary-looking church and a clutch of disconsolate houses. We walked right through the village. In the middle was a sort of open space where stood of great grey motor omnibus, and a bus driver looking rather weary. Where did the bus go? It went to join the main railway. When? At half-past seven in the morning. Only then. only then thank god we can get out anyhow said i we passed on and emerged beyond the village still on the descending great high-road that was mended with loose stones pitched on it this wasn't good enough besides we were out of the sun and the place being at a considerable elevation it was very cold so we turned back to climb quickly uphill into the sun we went up a little side-turning past a bunch of poor houses towards a steep little lane between banks and before we knew where we were we were in the thick of the public lavatory in these villages as i knew there are no sanitary arrangements of any sort whatever every villager and village-aress just betook himself at need to one of the side roads it is the immemorial italian custom why bother about privacy the most socially constituted people on earth they even like to relieve themselves in company

we found ourselves in the full thick of one of these meeting-places to get out at any price so we scrambled up the steep earthen banks to a stubble-filled above and by this time I was in a greater rage. Evening was falling, the sun declining. Below us clustered the Sodom apple of this vile village. Around were fair tree-clad hills and dales, already bluish with the frost shadows. The air bit cold and strong. In a very little time the sun would be down.

We were at an elevation of about two thousand five hundred feet, above the sea. No denying it was beautiful, with the oak slopes and the wistfulness and the far-off feeling of loneliness and evening. But I was in too great a temper to admit it. We clambered frinzedly to get warm, and the sun immediately went right down, and the ice-heavy blue shadow fell over us all. The village began to send forth blue-wood smoke, and it seemed more than ever like the twilight west country but thank you we had to get back and run the gauntlet of that stinking stinking lane never towering with fury quite unreasonable but there you are i marched the cubie down a declivity through a wood over a ploughed field along a cart-track and so to the great high-road above the village and above the inn it was cold and evening was falling into the dusk. Down the high road came wild, half-ragged men on ponies, in all degrees of costume and not costume. Came four wide-eyed cows stepping downhill round the corner, and three delicate, beautiful

merino sheep which stared at us with their prominent gold curious eyes. Came an ancient, ancient man with a stick. Came a stout-chested peasant, carrying a long woodpole. came a straggle of alert and triumphant goats long horde long haired jingling their bells everybody greeted us hesitatingly and everything came to a halt at the risvelio corner while the men had a nip i attacked the spotty breast again could i have milk no perhaps in an hour there would be milk perhaps not was there anything to eat no at half-past seven there would be something to was there a fire no the man hadn't made the fire nothing to do but to go to that foul bedroom or walk the high road we turned up the high road again animals stood about the road in the frost heavy air with heads sunk passively waiting for the men to finish their drinks in the beastly bar we walked slowly up the hill in a field on the right a flock of marino sheep moved misty uneasily, climbing at the gaps in the broken road bank and sounding their innumerable

small, fine bells with a frosty ripple of sound. A figure which in the dusk I had really thought was something inanimate, broke into movement in the field. It was an old shepherd, very old, in very ragged, dirty black and white, who had been standing like a stone there in the open field end

for heaven knows how long, utterly motionless, leaning on his stick. Now he broke into a dream motion and hobbled after the wistful feminine inquisitive sheep. The red was fading from the far off west. At the corner, climbing slowly and wearily,

we almost ran into a grey and lonely bull who came stepping down hill in his measured fashion like some god. He swerved his head and went round us. We reached a place which we couldn't make out, then saw it was a cork shed. There were stacks and stacks of cork bark in the dusk, like crumpled hides. Now I'm going back, said the QB flatly, and she swung round. The last red was smouldering beyond the lost, thin wooded hills of this interior. A fleece of blue, half-luminous smoke

floated over the obscure village. The highway wound down hill at our feet, pale and blue. And the QB was angry with me for my fury. Why you so indignant, anyone would think your moral self had been outraged? Why take it morally? You petrify that man at the inn by the very way you speak to him. Such condemnation. Why don't you take it as it comes? It's all life. but no my rage is black black black why heaven knows but i think it was because sorgonoh had seemed so fascinating to me when i imagined it beforehand oh so fascinating if i had expected nothing i should not have been so hit blessed is he that expecteth nothing for he shall not be disappointed i cursed the degenerate aborigines the dirty-breasted host who dared to keep such an inn, the sordid villagers

who had the baseness to squat their beastly human nastiness in this upland valley. All my praise of the long stocking cap, you remember, vanished from my mouth. I cursed them all, and the QB for an interfering female.

In the bar, a wretched candle was weeping light, uneasy, gloomy men were drinking their Saturday evening home-coming dram. cattle lay down in the road in the cold air as if hopeless had the milk come no when would it come he didn't know well what were we to do was there no room was there nowhere where we could sit yes there was the stunza now now taking the only weed of a candle and leaving the drinkers in the dark he led us down a dark and stumbling earth and passage over loose stones and an odd plank as it would seem underground to the stunza, the room.

The stunza. It was pitch dark, but suddenly I saw a big fire of oak root, a brilliant, flamy, rich fire, and my rage in that second disappeared. The host and the candle forsook us at the door. The stunza would have been in complete darkness, save for that rushing bouquet of new flames in the chimney, like fresh flowers. By this firelight we saw the room. It was like a dungeon absolutely empty, with an uneven earthen floor quite dry, and high bare walls gloomy,

with a hand-breadth of window high up. There was no furniture at all, save a little wooden bench, a foot high before the fire, and several homemade-looking rush mats rolled up. up and leaning against the walls. Furthermore, a chair before the fire on which hung wet table napkins. Apart from this, it was a high, dark, naked prison dungeon. But it was quite dry, it had an open chimney and a gorgeous new fire rushing like a waterfall upwards among the craggy stubs of a pile of dry oak roots. I hastily put the chair in the wet corpse cloths. I hastily put the chair in the wet corpse

cloths to one side. We sat on the low bench side by side in the dark in front of this rippling rich fire, in front of the cavern of the open chimney, and we did not care any more about the dungeon and the darkness. Man can live without food, but he can't live without fire. It is an Italian proverb. We had found the fire like new gold, and we sat in front of it, a little way back side by side on the form our feet on the uneven earthen floor and felt the flame light rippling upwards over our faces as if we were bathing in some gorgeous stream of fireiness i forgave the dirty-breasted host everything and was as glad as if i had come into a kingdom so he sat alone for half an hour smiling into the flames bathing our faces in the glow from time to time i was aware of steps in the time-and-a-one of steps in the time like passage outside and of presence is peering but no one came i was aware too of the faint steaming of the beastly table napkins the only other occupants of the room in dithers a candle and an elderly bearded man in gold-coloured corduys and an amazing object on a long long spear he put the candle on the mantel ledge and crouched at the side of the fire arranging the oak roots

He peered strangely and fixedly in the fire And he held up the speared object before our faces It was a kid that he had come to roast But it was a kid opened out, made quite flat And speared like a flat fan on a long iron stalk It was a really curious sight And it must have taken some doing The whole of the skin kid was there

the head curled in against a shoulder, the stubby-cut ears, the eyes, the teeth, the few hairs of the nostrils, and the feet curled curiously round, like an animal that puts its forepour over its ducked head, and the hind-legs twisted indescribably up, and all skewered flat-wise upon the long iron rod so that it was a complete flat pattern.

It reminded me intensely of those distorted, slim-limbed, dog-like animals which figure on the old lombard ornaments, distorted and curiously enfolded upon themselves. Celtic illuminations also have these distorted, involuted creatures. The old man flourished the flat kid like a bannerette whilst he arranged the fire, then in one side of the fireplace wall he poked the point of the rod He himself crouched on the half-end In the half-shadow at the other side of the fireplace

Holding the further end of the long iron rod The kid was thus extended before the fire Like a hand-screen And he could spin it round at will But the hole in the masonry of the chimney-piece Was not satisfactory The point of the rod kept seat, slipping, and the kid came down against the fire. He muttered and muttered to himself,

and tried again. Then at length he reared up the kid banner whilst he got large stones from a dark corner. He arranged these stones so that the iron point rested on them. He himself sat away on the opposite side of the fireplace on the shadowy hearth end, and with queer spellbound black eyes and completely immovable face, he watched the flames and the kid and held the handle end of the rod. We asked him if the kid was for the evening meal, and he said it was.

It will be good, and he said yes, and looked with chagrin at the bit of ash on the meat where it had slipped. It is a point of honour that it should never touch the ash. Did they do all their meat this way?

He said they did. And wasn't it, difficult to put the kid thus on the iron rod? He said it was not easy, and he eyed the joint closely, and felt one of the forelegs, and muttered that that was not fixed properly. He spoke with a very soft mutter, hard to catch, and sideways, never to us direct, but his manner was gentle, soft, muttering, reticent, sensitive. He asked us where we came from and where we were going, always in his soft matter. And what nation were we?

Were we French? Then he went on to say there was a war, but he thought it was finished. There was a war because the Austrians wanted to come into Italy again. But the French and the English came to help Italy. A lot of Sardinians had gone to it, but let us hope it is all finished.

He thought it was. Young men of Sorgano had been killed. He hoped it was finished. Then he reached. for the candle and peered at the kid it was evident he was the born roaster he held the candle and looked for a long time at the sizzling side of the meat as if he would read portents then he held his spit to the fire again and it was as if time immemorial were roasting itself another meal i sat holding the candle end of chapter five section one chapter five section one chapter five section two of c and sardinia by d h lawrence this libravox recording is in the public domain recording by antony ogus a young woman appeared hearing voices her head was swathed in a shawl one side of which was brought across right over the mouth so that only her two eyes and her nose showed the cuby thought she must have toothache but she laughed and said no

as a matter of fact that is the way a head-dress is worn in sardinia even by both sexes it is something like the folding of the arab's the point seems to be that the mouth and chin are thickly covered also the ears and brow leaving only the nose and eyes exposed they say it keeps off the malaria the men swayed shawls round their heads in the same way it seems to me they want to keep their heads warm, dark and hidden. They feel secure inside. She wore the work-a-day costume, a full dark-brown skirt, the full white bodice, and a little waistcoat or corset. This little waistcoat in her case had become no more than a shaped belt, sending up graceful, stiffened points under the breasts, like long leaves standing up. It was pretty, but all dirty. She too was pretty. She too was but with an impudent not quite pleasant manner she fiddled with the wet napkins asked us various questions and addressed herself rather jerkily to the old man who answered hardly at all then she departed again the women are self-conscious in a rather smirky way bouncy when she was gone i asked the old man if she was his daughter he said very brusquely in his soft mutter no she came from her

a village some miles away he did not belong to the inn he was as far as i understood the postman but i may have been mistaken about the word but he seemed laconic unwilling to speak about the inn and its keepers there seemed to be something queer and again he asked where we were going he told me there were now two motor-buses a new one which ran over the mountains to nioro much better to go to nioro than to to Abbasanta, Nuro was evidently the town towards which these villages looked as a sort of capital. The kid roasting proceeded very slowly, the meats never being very near the fire. From time to time the roaster arranged the cavern of red-hot roots, then he threw on more roots, it was very hot, and he turned the long spit, and still I held the candle. other people came strolling in to look at us but they hovered behind us in the dark so i could not make out all clearly they strolled in the gloom of the dungeon-like room and watched us one came forward a fat fat young soldier in uniform i made place for him on the bench but he put out his hand and disclaimed the attention then he went away again the old man propped up the road and then he too disappeared for a time the thin candle guttered the fire was no longer flamy but red the roaster reappeared with a new shorter spear thinner and a great lump of raw hog-fat spitted on it this he thrust into the red fire

it sizzled and smoked and spit fat and i wondered he told me he wanted it to catch fire it refused he groped in the hearth for the bits of twig with which the fire had been started these twig stumps he stuck in the fat like an orange stuck with cloves then he held it in the fire again now at last it caught and it was a flaming torch running downwards with a thin shower of flaming fat and now he was satisfied he held the fat torch with its yellow flares over the browning kid which he turned horizontal for the occasion all over the roast fell the flaming drops till the meat was all shiny and browny he put it to the fire again holding the diminishing fat still burning bluish over it all the time in the upper air while this was in process a man entered with a loud good evening we replied good evening and evidently he caught a strange note he came and bent down and peered under my hat brim then under the q b's hat brim we still wore hats and overcoats as did everybody then he stood up suddenly and touched his cap and said scozy excuse me i said niente which one always says and he addressed a few jovial words to the crouching roaster who again would hardly answer him the omnibus was arrived from oristano i made out with a few passengers this man brought with him a new breezy atmosphere which the roaster did not like however i made place on the low bench and the attention this time was accepted sitting down at the extreme end he came into the light and i saw a burly man in the prime of life dressed in dark brown velvet with a blond little moustache and twinkling blue eyes and a tipsy look

i thought he might be some local tradesman or farmer he asked a few questions in a boisterous familiar fashion then went out again he appeared with a small iron spit a slim rod in one hand and in the other hand two joints of kid and a handful of sausages he stuck his joints on his rod but our roaster still held the interminable flat kid before the now red flameless fire the fat torch was burnt out the cinder pushed in the fire a moment's spurt of flame then red intense redness again and our kid before it like a big dark hand hey said the newcomer whom i will call girovago it's done the kid's done it's done the roaster slowly shook his head but did not answer he sat like time and eternity at the hearth end his face flame flushed his dark eyes still fire abstract still sacredly intent on the roast na na na said the girovago let another body see the fire and with his pieces of meat awkwardly skewered on his iron stick he tried to poke under the authorised kid and get at the fire in his soft mutter the old man bade him wait for the fire till the fire was ready for him but the jirovago poked impigently and good-humouredly and said testily that the authorised kid was done yes surely it is done said i for it was already a quarter to eight the old roasting priest muttered and took out his knife from his pocket he pressed the blade slowly slowly deep into the meat as far as a knife will go into a piece of kid he seemed to be feeling the meat inwardly and he said it was not done he shook his head and remained there like time and eternity at the end of the rod

the girovago said sanguadadillo but couldn't roast his meat and he tried to poke his skewer near the coals so doing his pieces fell off into the ashes and the invisible onlookers behind raised a shout of laughter however he raked it out and wiped it with his hand and said no matter nothing lost then he turned to me and asked the usual wents and whither questions these answered he said wasn't german i said no i was english he looked at me many times shrewdly as if he wanted to make out something then he asked where were we domiciled and i said sicily and then very personally why had we come to sardinia i said for pleasure and to see the island ah pedivimento he repeated half musingly not believing me in the least various men had now come into the room though they all remained indistinct in the background the girovago talked and gestured abroad in the company and the half-visible men laughed in a rather hostile manner at last the old roaster decided the kid was done he lifted it from the fire and scrutinized it thoroughly holding the candle to it as if it were some wonderful epistle from the flames to be sure it looked marvellous and smelled so good brown and crisp and hot and savoury not burnt in any place whatever it was eight o'clock it's done it's done go away with it go said the girovago pushing the old rooster with his hand and at last the old man consented it apart holding the kid like a banner it looks so good cried the q b and i am so hungry ah it makes one hungry to see good meat signora now it is my turn hey gino the gerovago flourished his arm and a handsome unwashed man with a black moustache came forward rather sheepishly

he was dressed in soldiers clothes neutral grey and was a big robust handsome fellow with dark eyes a mediterranean sheepishness here take it thou said the jerova prasping the long spit into his hand it is thy business cook the supper thou art the woman but i'll keep the sausages and do them the so-called woman sat at the end of the hearth where the old roaster had sat and with his brown nervous hand piled the remaining coals together the fire was no longer flamy and it was sinking the dark-browed man arranged it so that he could cook the meat he held the spit nearer negligently over the red mass. A joint fell off. The men laughed. It's lost nothing, said the dark-browed man, as the Girovago had said before, and he skewered it on again and thrust it to the fire. But meanwhile, he was looking up from under his dark lashes at the Girovago and at us. The Girovago talked continually. He turned to me, holding the handful of sausages. This makes the tasty bit, he said. oh yes good salsiccia said i you're eating the kid you're eating at the inn he said i replied that i was no he said you stay and eat with me you eat with me the sausage is good the kid will soon be done the fire is grateful i laughed not quite understanding him he was certainly a bit tipsy signora he said turning to the q b she did not like him he was impudent and she shut a deaf ear to him-he was as far as she could. Signora, he said, do you understand me what I say?

She replied that she did. Signora, he said, I sell things to the women, I sell them things. What do you sell, she asked in astonishment. Saints, he said. Saints? she cried in more astonishment. Yes, saints, he said, with tipsy gravity. She turned in confusion to the company in the background. The fat soldier came forward.

he was the chief of the carabinieri also combs and bits of soap and little mirrors he explained sarcastically saints said the giravago once more and also the ragazzini also youngsters wherever i go there is a little one comes running calling babbo babbo daddy daddy wherever i go youngsters and i'm the babbo all this was received with a kind of silent sneer from the invisible assembly in the background The candle was burning low, the fire was sinking too. In vain the dark-browed man tried to build it up. The QB became impatient for the food. She got up wrathfully and stumbled into the dark passage, explaining, don't we eat yet? Hey, patience, patience, signora,

it takes time in this house, said the man in the background. The dark-browed man looked up at the Girovago and said, said, are you going to cook the sausages with your fingers? He too was trying to be assertive and jesting, but he was the kind of person no one takes any notice of. The Girovago rattled on in dialect, poking fun at us and our being there in this inn. I did not quite follow. "'Signora,' said the Gerovago, "'do you understand Sardinian?' "'I understand Italian and some Sardinian,' she replied rather hotly, and i know that you're trying to laugh at us to make fun of us he laughed fatly and comfortably ah signora he said we have a language that you wouldn't understand not one word nobody here would understand it but me and him he pointed to the black-browed one everybody would want an interpreter everybody

but he did not say interpreter he said intreprette with the accent on the penultimate as if it were some sort of priest a what said i he repeated with tipsy unction and i saw what he meant why said i is it a dialect what is your dialect my dialect he said is sassari i come from sassery if i spoke my dialect they would understand something but if i speak this language they would want an interpreter. What language is it, then? He leaned up to me, laughing. It is the language we use when the women are buying things, and we don't want them to know what we say, me and him. Oh, said I.

I know. We have that language in England. It is called Thieves Latin. Latino de Forby. The men at the back suddenly laughed, glad to turn the joke against the forward Girovago. he looked down his nose at me but seeing i was laughing without malice he leaned to me and said softly secretly what is your affair then what affair is it yours how what i exclaimed not understanding keeneri di afari what sort of business how affari said i still not grasping what do you sell he said flatly and rather spitefully what goods

i don't sell anything replied i laughing to think he took us for some sort of strolling quacks or commercial travellers cloth or something he said cajolingly slyly as if to worm my secret out of me but nothing at all nothing at all said i we have come to sardinia to see the peasant costumes i thought that might sound satisfactory ah the costumes he said evidently thinking i was a deep one and he turned banding words with his dark-browed mate who was still poking the meat at the embers and crouching on the hearth the room was almost quite dark the mate answered him back and tried to seem witty too but the girovago was the commanding personality rather too much so too impudent for the q b though rather after my own secret heart the mate was one of those handsome passive stupid men him said the gerovago turning suddenly to me and pointing at the mate he's my wife your wife said i yes he's my wife because we're always together there had become a sudden dead silence in the background in spite of it the mate looked up under his black lashes and said with a half smile don't talk or i shall give thee a good butchow to-night there was an instant's fatal pause then the girovago continued to-morrow is festa of san antonio at tonara to-morrow we are going to tanara where are you going to abasanta said i ah abasanta you should come to to Tanara. At Tanara there is a brisk trade, and there are costumes. You should come to Tanara.

Come with him and meet at Adara to-morrow, and we will do business together. I laughed, but did not answer. Come, said he, you will like Tanara. Ah, Tanara is a fine place. There is an inn. You can eat well, sleep well. I tell you, because to you, ten francs don't matter. Isn't that so? Ten francs don't matter to you. Well, then come to Tanara. what what do you say i shook my head and laughed but did not answer to tell the truth i should have liked to go to tautara with him and his mate and do the brisk trade if only i knew what trade it would be you are sleeping upstairs he said to me i nodded this is my bed he said taking one of the home-made rush mats from against the wall i did not take him seriously at any point do they make those in sogano i said yes in sogano they are the beds you see and you roll up this end a bit so and that is the pillow he laid his cheek sideways not really said i he came and sat down again next to me and my attention wandered the cuby was raging for her dinner it must be quite half-past eight the kid the perfect kid would be cold and ruined both fire and candle were burning low

someone had been out for a new candle but there was evidently no means of replenishing the fire the mate still crouched on the hearth the dull red fire glow on his handsome face patiently trying to roast the kid and poking it against the embers. He had heavy strong limbs in his khaki clothes, but his hand that held the spit was brown and tender and sensitive, a real Mediterranean hand. The Girovago, blonde, round

face, mature and aggressive, with all his liveliness, was more like a northerner. In the background were four or five other men of whom I had distinguished none, but a stout soldier, probably chief carabiniere. Just as the

QB was working up to the rage I had at last calmed down from, appeared the shawl-swathed girl announcing, Pronto! Pronto, pronto, said everybody. High-time too, said the QB, springing from the low bench before the fire. Where do we eat? Is there another room? There is another room, signora, said the carabiniere. So we trooped out of the fire-warm dungeon, leaving the Chirovago and his mate and two other men, mule of tears from the road behind us. I could see that it irk my Girovago to be left behind. He was by far the strongest personality in the place, and he had the keenest intelligence. So he hated having to fall into the background when he had been dragging all the limelight

onto himself all the evening. To me too, he was something of a kindred soul that night. But there we are. Fate in the guise of that mysterious division between a respect life and a scamp's life divided us there was a gulf between me and him between my way and his he was a kindred spirit but with a hopeless difference there was something a bit sordid about him and he knew it that is why he was always tipsy yet i like the lone wolf souls best better than the sheep if only they don't feel mongrel inside themselves presumably a scamp is bound to be mongrel it is a pity the untamable lone wolf souls should always become pariahs almost of choice mere scamps top and bottom of it is i regretted my gilovago though i knew it was no good thinking of him his way was not my way yet i regretted him i did we found ourselves in a dining-room with a long white table and inverted soup-plates tomb cold lighted by an acetyline flare three men had accompanied us the carabiniera a little dark youth with a small black moustache in a soldier's short wool-lined great-coat and a young man who looked tired round his blue eyes and who wore a dark blue overcoat quite smart the basholled damsel came in with inevitable bowl of minestrone soup with cabbage and cauliflower and other things we helped ourselves and the fat carabinieri started the conversation with the usual questions and where were we going to-morrow

i asked about buses then the responsible-looking tired-eyed youth told me he was the bus driver he had come from oristano on the main line that day it is a distance of some forty miles. Next morning he was going on over the mountains to Nooro, about the same distance again. The youth with the little black moustache and the Greek large eyes was his mate, the conductor. This was their run, from Oristano to Nooro, a course of ninety miles or more.

And every day on, on, on. No wonder he looked nerve tired. Yet he had that kind of dignity, the wistful seriousness and pride of a man in machine control, the only godlike ones today, those who pull the iron levers and are the gods in the machine. They repeated what the old roaster said, much nicer for us to go to Noorro than to Abbasanta.

So to Noorro we decided to go, leaving at half-past nine in the morning. Every other night the driver and his mate spent in this benighted Rizvelio Inn, it must have been their bedroom we saw clean and tidy i said was the food always so late was everything always as bad as to-day always if not worse they said making light of it with sarcastic humour against the you spend your whole light at the risvelio sitting waiting and going block cold unless you are content to drink aqua vitae like those in there the driver jerked his head towards the dungeon who were those in there said i the one who did all the talking was a macante a maconte girovago a wandering pedlar this was my girovago a wandering pedlar selling saints and youngsters the other was his mate who helped carry the pack they went about together oh my girovargo was a known figure all over the country and where would they sleep there in the room where the fire was dying they would unroll

the mats and lie with their feet to the hearth for this they paid threepence or at most fourpence and they had the privilege of cooking their own food the rivulio supplied them with nothing but the fire the roof and the rush-mat and of course the drink oh we need have no sympathy with the gerovago and his sort they lacked for nothing they had everything they wanted everything and money in abundance they lived for the aquavita they drank that was all they wanted their continual allowance of aquavitae and they got it ah they were not cold if the room became cold during the night if they had no coverings at all pa they waited for morning and as soon as it was light they drank a large glass of aqua vitae that was their fire their hearth and their home drink aqua vitae was hearth and home to them i was surprised at the contempt tolerant and yet profound with which these men in the dining-room spoke of the others in the stunza. How contemptuous, almost bitter the driver was against alcohol. It was evident he hated it, and though we all had our bottles of dead, cold, dark wine, and though we all drank, still the feeling of the three youths against actually intoxication was deep and hostile, with a certain burning moral dislike that is more northern than Italian.

And they curled their lip with real dislike of the Girovago, his forwardness, his impudent aggressiveness. As for the inn, yes it was very bad. It had been quite good under the previous proprietors, but now they shrugged their shoulders. The dirty breasts and the shawled girl were not the owners. They were merely conductors of the hotel. Here are sarcastic curl of the lip. The owner was a man in the village, a young man. A week or two back at Christmas time, there had been a room full of men sitting drinking and roistering at this very table. When in had come the proprietor, mad drunk swinging a little bottle round his head and yelling, out, out, out, all of you, out, every one of you. I am proprietor here, and when I want to clear my

house, I clear my house. Every man obeys, who doesn't obey, has his brains knocked out with his bottle. Out, out, I say, out, everyone. And the men all cleared out. But, said the bus driver, I told him that when I had paid for my bed, I was going to sleep in it. I was not going to be turned out by him or anybody, and so he came down. There was a little silence from everybody after this story. Evidently there was more to it that we were not to be told. Especially the caribinieri was silent. He was a fat, not very brave fellow, though quite nice.

Ah, but, said the little dark bus conductor, with his small-featured, swarthy Greek face, you must not be angry with them true the inn was very bad very bad but you must pity them for they are only ignorant poor things they are ignoranti why be angry the other two men nodded their heads in agreement and repeated ignoranti they are inuranti it is true why be angry and here the modern italian spirit came out the endless pity for the ignorant it is only slackness the pity makes the ignorant more ignorant, and makes the Rizvelio daily more impossible. If somebody let a bottle buzz round the ears of the dirty breast, and whip the shawl from the head of the perch young madam, and sent her flying down the tunnel with a flea in her ear, we might get some attention, and they might find a little self-respect. But no, pity them, poor ignorante, while they pull life down,

and devour it like vermin. Pity them. What they need is not pity but prods. They're in all their myriad of likes the bashold appeared with a dish of kid needless to say the ignoranti had kept all the best portions for themselves what arrived was five pieces of cold roast one for each of us mine was a sort of large comb of ribs with a thin web of meat perhaps an ounce that was all we got after watching the whole process there was moreover a dish of strong boiled cauliflower which one with the coarse bread out of sheer hunger after this a bilious orange simply one is not fed nowadays in the good hotels and in the bad one is given paltry portions of unnourishing food and one goes unfed the bus-driver the only one with an earnest soul was talking of the sardinians ah the sardinians they were hopeless why because they did not know how to strike they too were but this form of ignorance he found more annoying they simply did not know what a strike was if you offered them one day ten francs a stint he was speaking now of the miners of the ilias region no no no they would not take it they wanted twelve francs go to them the next day and offer them four francs for half a stint and yes yes yes they would take it and there they were ignorant ignorant sardinians they absolutely did did not know how to strike he was quite sarcastically hot about it the whole tone of these three young men was the tone of sceptical irony common to the young people of our day the world over only they had or at least the driver had some little fervour for his strikes and his socialism but it was a pathetic fervour a pisalais fervour we talked about the land the war has practically gutted sardinia of her cattle so they say

dead and now the land is being deserted the arable land is going back to fallow why why says the driver because the owners of the land won't spend any capital they have got the capital locked up and the land is dead they find it cheaper to let all the arable go back to fallow and raise a few head of cattle rather than to pay high wages grow corn and get small returns yes and also chimes in the caribiniera the peasant don't want to work the land. They hate the land. They'll do anything to get off the land. They want regular wages, short hours, and Dev will take the rest. So they will go into France as navvies by the hundred.

They flock to Rome. They besiege the Labour bureaus. They will do the artificial government navvy work at a miserable five francs a day, a railway shunter having at least 18 francs a day, anything, anything, rather than work the land. Yes, and what does the government do? replies the bus driver. They pull the roads to pieces in order to find work for the unemployed,

remaking them across the Campagna. But in Sardinia, where roads and bridges are absolutely wanting, will they do anything? No. There it is, however. The bus driver with dark shadows under his eyes represents the intelligent portion of the conversation. The carabiniera is soft and will go anyway, though always with some interest the little greek-looking conductor just does not care enters another belated traveller and takes a seat at the end of the table the beshawed brings him soup and a skinny bit of kid

he eyes this last with contempt and fetches out of his bag a large hunk of roast pork and bread and black olives thus proceeding to make a proper meal we being without cigarettes the bus driver and his companion press them on us, their beloved Macedonia cigarettes. The driver says they are exquisitissimmy, most most exquisite, so exquisite that all foreigners want them.

In truth I believe they are exported to Germany now, and they are quite good when they really have tobacco in them. Usually there are hollow tubes of paper which just flare away under one's nose and are done. We decided to have a

round drink they choose the precious aqua vitae the white sort i think at last it arrives when the little dark-eyed one has fetched it and it tastes rather like sweetened petroleum with a dash of aniseed filthy most italian liqueurs are now sweet and filthy at length we rise to go to bed which will all meet in the morning and this room is dead cold with frost outside going out we glanced into the famous stunza one figure alone lies stretched on the floor in the almost complete darkness a few embers still glow the other men no doubt are in the bar ah the filthy bedroom the q b ties up her head in a large clean white kerchief to avoid contact with the unsavory pillow it is a cold hard flat bed with two cold hard flat blankets but we are very very very very tired. Just as we are going to sleep, however, weird, high-pitched singing starts below, very uncanny, with the refrain that is yelp, yelp, yelp, almost like a dog in angry pain. Weird, almost gruesome, this singing goes on, first one voice and then another, and then a tangle of voices. Again we are roused by the pounding of heavy feet on the corridor outside, which is

as hollow and resonant as a drum and then in the infernal crew-yard outside a cock-crows throughout the night yea through all the black and frosty hours this demoniac bird screams its demon griefs however it is morning i gingerly wash a bit of myself in the broken basin and dry that bit on a muslin veil which masquerades upon the chair as a towel the q b contents herself with a dry wipe and we go downstairs in hopes of the last night's milk there is no one to be seen it is a cold frost strong clear morning there is no one in the bar we stumble down the dark tunnel passage the stunza is as if no man had ever set foot in it very dark the mats against the wall and the fireplace grey with a handful of long dead ash just like a dungeon the dining-room has the same long table and eternal table-cloth and our serviettes still wet lying where we shoveled them aside so back again to the bar and this time a man is drinking aqua vitae and the dirty shirt is officiating he has no hat on and extraordinary he has no brow at all just flat straight black hair slanting to his eyebrows no forehead at all is there coffee no coffee why because they can't get sugar oh laughed the peasant drinking aqua vitai you can make coffee with sugar here say i they make it with nothing is there milk no no milk at all no why not nobody brings it yes yes there is milk if they like to get it puts in the peasant but they want you to drink aqua vitai

i see myself drinking aqua vitae my yesterday's rage towers up again suddenly till it quite suffocates me there is something in this unsavory black wine dabbled thick greasy young man that does for me. Why, say I, lapsing into the Italian rhetorical manner, why do you keep an inn? Why'd you write the word restaurante so large, when you have nothing to offer people, and don't intend to have anything? Why do you have the impudence to take in travellers? What does it mean that this is an inn? What, say, what does it mean? Say then, what does it mean? What does it mean your restaurante, Rizvelio, written so large? Getting all this out in one, breath my indignation now stifled me him of the shirt said nothing at all the peasant laughed i demanded the bill it was twenty-five francs odd i picked up every farthing of the change won't you leave any tip at all asked the cubie tip say i speechless so we march upstairs and make tea to fill the thermos flask then with sack over my shoulder i make my way out

of the Rizvelio. It is Sunday morning. The frozen village street is almost empty. We march down to the wider space where the bus stands. I hope they haven't the impudence to call it a piazza. Is this a new ardu, bus? I ask a bunch of urchins. And even they begin to jeer. But my sudden upstarting flare quenches them at once.

One answers yes, and the edge away. i stow the sack and the kitchenino in the first-class part the first class is in front we shall see better there are men standing about with their hands in their pockets those who are not in costume some wear the black and white all wear the stocking caps and all have the wide shirt-breasts white their waistcoats being just like evening-dressed waistcoats imagine one of these soft white shirt-fronts well slobbered and you have mine host of the risvelio but these lounging static white-breasted men are snowily clean this being sunday morning they smoke their pipes on the frosty air and are none too friendly the bus starts at half-past nine the campanile is clanging nine two or three girls go down the road in their sunday costume of purplish brown we go up the road into the clear ringing frosty the air to find the lane and again from above how beautiful it is in the sharp morning the whole village lies in bluish shadow the hills with their thin pale oak trees are in bluish shadows still only in the distance the frost glowing sun makes a wonderful jewel-like radiance on the pleasant hills wild and thinly wooded of this interior region real fresh wonder beauty all around and such humanity returning to the village we find a little shop and get biscuits and cigarettes and we find our friends the busmen they are shy this morning they are ready for us when we are ready so in we get joyfully to leave one thing i say for it it must be an honest place for people leave their sacks about without a qualm up we go up the road only to stop alas at the resvelliw it is value

The little conductor goes down the lane towards the station. The driver goes and has a little drink with a comrade. There is quite a crowd round the dreary entrances of the inn, and quite a little bunch of people to clamber up into the second class behind us. We wait and wait. Then in climbs an old peasant in full black and white costume, smiling in the pleased, naive way of the old. After him climbs a fresh-faced young man,

with a suitcase. "'Now,' said the young man, "'now you're in the automobile.' And the old man gazes round with the wondering, vacant, naive smile. "'One is all right here, eh?' The young citizen persists, patronising. But the old man is too excited to answer.

He gazes hither and thither. Then he suddenly remembers he had a parcel and looks for it in fear. The bright-faced young man picks it from the floor and hands it to him. Ah, it is all right. I see the little conductor in his dashing sheep-line, short military overcoat, striding briskly down the little lane with the post-bag.

The driver climbs to his seat in front of me. He has a muffler round his neck, and his hat pulled down to his ears. He pips at the horn, and our old peasant cranes forward to look how he does it. And so with a jerk and a spurt, we start uphill. "'Eh, what's that?' said the peasant frightened.

"'We're starting,' explained the bright-faced young man. "' Starting? Didn't we start before?' The bright-face laughs pleasedly. "'No,' he said. "'Did you think we had been going ever since you got in?' "'Yes,' says the old man simply, "'since the door was shut.' "'The young citizen looks at us for our joyful approval.'

end of chapter five chapter six of c and sardinia by d h lawrence this lebravox recording is in the public domain recording by antony ogus to nuoro these automobiles in italy are splendid they take the steep looping road so easily they seem to run so naturally and this one was comfortable too the roads of italy always impress me they run undaunted over the most precipitous regions and with curious ease in england almost any such road among the mountains at least would be labelled three times dangerous and would be famous throughout the land as an impossible climb here it is nothing up and down they go swinging about with complete saint-froix there seems to have been no effort in their constructs they are so good naturally that one hardly notices what splendid gestures they represent of course the surface is now often intolerably bad and they are most of them roads which with ten years neglect will become ruins for they are cut through overhanging rock and scooped out of the sides of hills but i think it is marvellous how the italians have penetrated all their inaccessible regions of which they have so much they have so much they have so much many, with great high roads, and how along these high roads the omnibuses now keep up a perfect communication. The precipitous and cragily involved land is threaded through and through with

roads. There seems to be a passion for high roads and for constant communication. In this the Italians have a real Roman instinct now, for the roads are new. The railways too go piercing through rock for miles and miles, and nobody thinks anything of it. The Coast Railway of Calabria down to the Reggio will make us stand on our heads if we had it in England. Here it is a matter of course. In the same way, I always have a profound admiration for their driving, whether of a great omnibus or of a motor car. It all seemed so easy, as if the man were part of the car. There is none of that beastly grinding, uneasy feeling one has in the north. A car behaves like a smooth, live thing sensibly. All the peasants have a passion for a high road. They want their land

opening out, opening out. They seem to hate the ancient Italian remoteness. They all want to be able to get out at a moment's notice, to get away, quick, quick. A village which is two miles off the high road, even if it is perched like a hawk's nest on a peak, still chafes and chafes for the great road to come to it, chafes and chafes for the daily motor-bus connection with the railway. There is no placidity, no rest in the heart of the land. There is a fever of restless irritation all the time. And yet the permanent way of almost every railway is falling into bad disrepair. The roads are shocking. and nothing seems to be done.

Is our marvellous mechanical era going to have so short a bloom? Is the marvellous openness, the opened-out wonder of the land, going to collapse quite soon, and the remote places lapsed back into inaccessibility again? Who knows? I rather hope so. The automobile took us rushing and winding up the hill, sometimes through cold, solid-seeming shadow, sometimes across a patch of sun.

There was thin bright ice in the ruts and deep grey haw-frost on the grass. I cannot tell how the sight of the grass and bushes heavy with frost and wild, in their own primitive wildness, charmed me. The slopes of the steep wild hills came down shaggy and bushy, with a few berries lingering,

and the long grass stalks sear with the frost. Again the dark valley sank below like a ravine, but shaggy, bosky, unbroken. It came upon me how I loved the sight of the blue-shadowed, tawny, tangled winter, with its frosty standstill. The young oaks keep their brown leaves, and doing so surely they are best with a thin edge of rhyme. One begins to realize how old the real Italy is, how man gripped and how withered. England is far more. England is far more wild and savage and lonely in her country parts here since endless centuries man has tamed the impossible mountain-side into terraces

he has quarried the rock he has fed his sheep among the thin woods he has cut his boughs and burnt his charcoal he has been half domesticated even among the wildest fastnesses this is what is so attractive about the remote places the abruitsy for example life is so primitive so pagan so strangely heathen and half savage and yet it is human life and the wildest country is half humanized half brought under it is all conscious wherever one is in italy either one is conscious of the present or of the medieval influences or of the far mysterious gods of the early mediterranean wherever one is the place has its conscious genus man has lived there and brought forth his consciousness there and in some way brought that place to consciousness given it its expression and really finished it the expression may be prosopine or pan or even the strange shrouded gods of the etruscans or the sickles none the less it is an expression the land has been humanised through and through and we in our own tissueed consciousness bear the results of this humanisation so that for us to go to italy and to penetrate into italy is like a most fascinating act of self-discovery back back down the old ways of time strange and wonderful chords awake in us and vibrate again after many hundreds of years of complete forgetfulness and then and then there is a final feeling of sterility it is all worked out it is all known conu conu this sunday morning seeing the frost among the tangled still savage bushes of sardinia my soul thrilled again this was not all known this was not all worked out life was not only a process of rediscovering backwards it is that also and it is that also and it is

that intensely. Italy has given me back, I know not what of myself, but a very, very great deal. She has found for me so much that was lost, like a restored Osiris. But this morning in the omnibus, I realise that apart from the great rediscovery backwards, which one must make before one can be whole at all, there is a move forwards. There are unknown, unworked lands, where the sort has not lost its savour, but one must have perfected oneself in the great past first. If one travels, one eats. We immediately began to munch biscuits, and the old peasant in his white baggy breeches and black cuirass, his old face smiling wonderingly under his old stocking cap, although he was only going to Tenara, some seven or eight miles, began to peel himself a hard-boiled

egg which he got out of his parcel. With calm wastefulness he peeled away the biggest part of the white of the egg with the shell, because it came away so. The citizen of Nooro, for such the bright-faced young man was, said to him, but see how you waste it? Ha, said the old peasant, with a reckless, indifference wave of the hand. What did he care how much he wasted, since he was en voyage, and riding for the first time in his life in an automobile. The citizen of Nooro told us he had some sort of business in Sorgonaux, so he came back and forth constantly. The peasant did some work or other for him,

or brought him something down from Tanara. He was a pleasant, bright-eyed young man, and he made nothing of eight hours in a motor-bus. He told us there was still game among these hills, wild boars which were hunted in big hunts and many hares. It was a curious and beautiful sight, he said, to see a hare at night, fascinated by the flare of the lamps of the automobile, racing ahead with its ears back, always keeping in front, inside the beam,

and flying like mad, on and on ahead, till at some hill it gathered speed and melted into the dark. We descended into a deep narrow valley To the road junction and the canteen house Then up again, up and up sharp to Tanara Our village we had seen in the sun yesterday But we were approaching it from the back As we swerved into the sunlight

The road took a long curve onto the open ridge between two valleys And there in front we saw a glitter of scarlet and white It was in slow motion. It was a far-off procession, scarlet figures of women, and a tall image moving away from us slowly in the Sunday morning. It was passing along the level sunlit ridge, above a deep hollow valley. A close procession of women glittering in scarlet white and black, moving slowly in the distance beneath the grey yellow buildings of the village on the crest, towards an isolated, old church, and all along this narrow upland saddle as on a bridge of sunshine itself. Were we not going to see any more? The bus turned again and rushed along the now-level road, and then veered, and there beyond, a little below, we saw the procession coming. The bus faded to a standstill, and we climbed out. Above us, old and mellowed among the smooth rocks, and the bits of

flat grass was the church, tanging its bell. Just in front above were old, half-broken houses of stone. The road came gently winding up to us from what was evidently two villages, ledged one above the other upon the steep summit of the south slope. Far below was the south valley, with a white puff of engine steam. And slowly chanting in the near distance, curving slowly up to us on the white road between, the grass came the procession the high morning was still we stood all on this ridge above the world with the deeps of silence below on the right and in a strange brief staccato monody chanted the men and in quick light rustle of women's voices came the responses again the men's voices the white was mostly men not women the priest in his robes his boys near him was leading the chanting immediately behind him came a small cluster of bareheaded tall sunburnt men all in golden velveteen corduroy mountain peasants bowing beneath the great life-size seated image of st anthony of padua

after these a number of men in the costume but with the white linen breeches hanging wide and loose almost to the ankles instead of being tucked into the black gaiters so they seemed very white beneath the black kilt frill the black frie's body vest was cut low like an evening suit and the stocking caps were variously perched the men chanted in low hollow melodic tones then came the rustling chime of the women and the procession crept slowly aimlessly forward in time with the chant the great image rode rigid and rather foolish after the men was a little gap and then the brilliant wedge of the women they were packed two by two close on each other's heels chanting inadvertently when their turn came and all in brilliant beautiful costume in front were the little girl children two by two immediately following the tall men in peasant black and white children demure and conventional in vermilion white and green little girl children with long skirts of scarlet cloth down to their feet green banded near the bottom with white aprons bordered with vivid green and mingled colour having little scarlet purple bound open belleros over the full white shirts and black headcloths folded across their little chins just leaving the lips clear the face framed in black wonderful little girl children perfect and demure in the stiffish brilliant costume with black head-dress stiffers velasquered velasquith princesses

the bigger girls followed and then the mature women a close procession the long vermilion skirts with their green bands at the bottom flashed a solid moving mass of colour softly swinging and the white aprons with their band of brilliant mingled green seemed to gleam at the throat the full-bosomed white shirts were fastened with big studs of gold filigree two linked filigree globes and the great white shirt were fastened with big studs of gold filigree globes and the great white silk sleeves billowed from the scarlet purpleish and green-edged belleros the faces came nearer to us framed all round in the dark cloths all the lips still sang responses but all the eyes watched us so the softly swaying coloured body of the procession came up to us the poppy scarlet smooth cloth rocked in fusion the bands and bars of emerald green seemed to burn across the red and the showy white the dark eyes peered and stared at us from under the black snooed gazed back at us with raging curiosity while the lips moved automatically enchant the bus had run into the inner side of the road and the procession had to press round it towards the sky-line the great valley lying below the priest stared hideous st anthony cockled a bit as he passed the butt end of the big grey automobile. The peasant men in gold-coloured corduroy, old washed soft, were sweating under the load and still singing with opened lips. The loose white breeches of the men waggled as they walked on with their hands behind their backs, turning again to look at us. The big hard hands folded behind black-kilt frill. The women too shuffled slowly past, rocking the scarlet and the bars of green, and all twisting as they sang to look at us still more and so the procession edged past the bus and was trailing upwards curved solid against the sky-line towards the old church

from behind the geranium scarlet was intense one saw the careful curiously cut backs of the shapen belleros poppy red edged with mauve purple and green and the white of the shirt just showing at the waist the full sleep bellowed out the black headcloths hung down to a point the pleated skirts swing slowly the broad band of green accentuating the motion indeed that is what it must be for this thick rich band of jewel green to throw the wonderful horizontal motion back and forth back and forth of the suave vermilion and give that static to meet a splendour to a peasant motion so magnificent in colour geranium and malachite. All the costumes were not exactly alike. Some had more green, some had less. In some the sleeveless belleros were of a darker red, and some had poorer aprons without such gorgeous bands at the bottom. And some were evidently old, probably thirty years old, still perfect and in keeping, reserved for Sunday and high holidays. A few were darker, rudder than the true vermilion. This varying of the tone intensified the beauty of the shuffling woman host.

When they had filed into the grey forlorn little church on the ridgetop just above us, the bus started silently to run on to the rest point below, whilst we climbed back up the little rock track to the church. When we came to the side door, we found the church quite full. level with us as we stood in the open side doorway we saw kneeling on the bare stone flags the little girl children and behind them all the women clustered kneeling upon their aprons with hands negligently folded filling the church to the further doorway where the sun shone the bigger west end doorway in the shadow of the whitewashed bare church all these kneeling women with their colour and their black headcloths look like the blue-washed and their black headcloths look like the blue-shunds some thick bed of flowers, geranium, black hooded above. They all knelt on the naked, solid stone of the pavement. There was a space in front of the geranium little girl children, then the men in corduroy is gold soft, with dark round heads, kneeling awkwardly in reverence, and then the queer black cuirasses and full white sleeves of grey-headed peasant men, many bearded. Then just in front of them, the priest

in his white vestment, standing exposed, and just baldly beginning an address. At the side of the altar was seated large and important, the modern, simpering black-gowned Anthony of Padua, nursing a boy child. He looked a sort of male, Madonna. Now, the priest was saying, Blessed St. Anthony shows you in what way you can be Christians. It is not enough that you are not Turks. Some think they are Christians because they are not Turks.

It is true you are none of you, Turks, but you have still to learn how to be good Christians, and this you can learn from our blessed St. Anthony, St. Anthony, etc., etc. The contrast between Turks and Christians is still forceful in the Mediterranean, where the Mohammedans have left such a mark. But how the word Christiani, Christiani,

spoken with a peculiar priestly unction gets on my nerves the voice is barren in its homily and the women are all intensely watching the cubie and me in the doorway their folded hands are very negligently held together come away say i come away and let them listen we left the church crowded with its kneeling host and dropped down past the broken houses towards the omnibus which stood on a sort of level outlook place, a levelled terrace with a few trees, standing silent over the valley. It should be picketed with soldiers having aquabuses, and I should have welcomed a few thorough-paced infidels as a leaven to this dreary Christianity of ours.

But it was a wonderful place. Usually the life-level is reckoned as sea-level, but here in the heart of Sardinia, the life-level is high as the golden-lit plateau and the sea-level is somewhere far away below in the gloom it does not signify the life-level is high up high and sun sweetened and among rocks we stood and looked below at the puff of steam far down the wooded valley where we had come yesterday there was an old low house on the eagle perching piazza i would like to live there the rilville village or rather two villages like an earring and its pendant lay still beyond in front leging near the summit of the long long steep wooded slope that never ended till it ran flush to the depths away below there in shadow and yesterday up this slope the old peasant had come with his two brilliant daughters and the pack pony and somewhere in those ledging pearly villages in front must be my girovago and his old peasant had come with his two brilliant daughters and the pack pony and somewhere in those ledging pearly villages in front must be my girovalgo and his wife. I wish I could see their stool and drink aqua vitae with them.

How beautiful the procession, says the QB to the driver. Ah, yes, one of the most beautiful costumes of Sardinia, this of Tenara, he replied wistfully. The bus sets off again, minus the old peasant. We retrace our road. A woman is leading a bay pony past the church, striding with long strides, so that her maroon skirt swings like a fan and hauling the halter rope. Apparently the geranium red costume is Sunday only. The weekday is this maroon, or puce or madder brown. Quickly and easily, the bus slips down the hill into the valley.

Wild, narrow valleys with trees and brown-legged cork trees. Across the other side, a black and white peasant is working alone on a tiny terrace of the hillside a small solitary figure for all the world like a magpie in the distance these people like being alone solitary one sees a single creature so often isolated among the wilds this is different from sicily and italy where the people simply cannot be alone they must be in twos and threes but it is sunday morning and the worker is exceptional along the road we pass various pedestrians men in their black sheepskins boys in their soldiers remains they are trudging from one village to another across the wild valleys and there is a sense of sunday morning freedom of roving as in an english country country's countryside only the one old peasant works alone and a goat heard watching his long-haired white goats beautiful the goats are and so swift they fly like white shadows along the road from us then dart down hill i see one standing on a bough of an oak tree right in the tree an enormous white tree creature complacently munching up aloft then rearing on her hind-legs. so lengthy and putting her slim paws far away on an upper forward branch whenever we come to a village we stop and get down and our little conductor disappears into the post-office for the post-bag

this last is usually a limp affair containing about three letters the people crowd round and many of them in very ragged costume they look poor and not attractive perhaps a bit degenerate it would seem as if the Italian instinct to get into rapid touch with the world were the healthy instinct after all. For in these isolated villages which have been since time began, far from any life centre, there is an almost sordid look on the faces of the people. We must remember that the motor-bus is a great innovation. It has been running for five weeks only. I wonder for how many months it will continue. for I'm sure it cannot pay. Our first-class tickets cost, I believe, about 27 francs each. The second class costs about three-quarters the first. Some parts of the journey we were very few passengers. The distance covered is so great, the population so thin, that even granted the passion for getting out of their own villages, which possesses all people now, still the bus cannot earn much more than an average of

200 to 300 francs a day, which with two men's wages and petrol as its enormous price, and the cost of wear and tear cannot possibly pay. I asked the driver. He did not tell me what his wages were, I did not ask him, but he said the company paid for the keep and lodging for himself and mate at the stopping places. This being Sunday, fewer people were travelling, a statement hard to believe. he had carried fifty people all the way from Tanara to Nuoro once. But it was in vain, he protested. Ah well, he said, the bus carried the post, and the government paid a subsidy of so many thousands of lira a year, a goodly number.

Apparently then the government was the loser, as usual. And there are hundreds, if not thousands of these omnibuses running the local districts of Italy and Sicily, Sardinia had a network of system. they are splendid and they are perhaps an absolute necessity for a nervous restless population which simply cannot keep still and which find some relief in being whirled about even on the auto via as the bus system is called the auto via are run by private companies only subsidised by the government on we rush through the morning and at length see a large village high on the summit beyond stony on the high up but it has a magical look as these tiny summit cities have from the distance they recall to me always my childish visions of jerusalem high against the air and seeming to sparkle and built in sharp cubes it is curious what a difference there is between the high fresh proud villages and the valley villages those that crown the world have a bright flashing air as tranara had those that like

down below, involved in the shadow, have a gloomy sordid feeling and a repellent population like Sorgono, and other places at which we had halted. The judgment may be all wrong, but this was the impression I got. We were now at the highest point of the journey. The men we saw on the road were in their sheepskins, and some were even walking with their faces shawl muffled. Glancing back, we saw up the valley clefts the snow of genogenetum once more a white mantle on broad shoulders the very core of sardinia the bus slid to a standstill in a high valley beside a stream where the road from fony joined ours there was waiting a youth with a bicycle i would like to go to fony they say it is the highest village in sardinia in front on the broad summit rear the towers of gavoyi this was the halfway halt where the buses had their coincidenza and where we would stay for an hour and eat we wound up and up the looping road and at last entered the village women came to the doors to look they were wearing the dark mudder brown costume

men were hastening smoking their pipes towards our stopping-place we saw the other bus a little crowd of people and we drew up at last we were tired and hungry we were at the door of the inn and we entered quickly and in an instant what a difference at the clean little bar men were drinking cheerfully a side door led into the common room and how charming it was in a very wide chimney white and stone's clean with a lovely shallow curve above was burning a fire of long clean split faggots laid horizontally on the dogs a clean clear bright fire with odd little chairs in front very low for us to sit on the funny low little chairs seem a speciality of this region the floor of this room was paved with round dark pebbles beautifully clean on the walls hung brilliant copper fans glittering again the whitewash and under the long horizontal window that looked on the street was a stone slab with sockets for little charcoal fires the curve of the chimney-arch was wide and shallow the curve above the window was still wider and of a similar delicate shallowness the white roof rose delicately vaulted with the glitter of copper the expanse of dark rose-coloured pebbled floor the space the few low clean gleaming faggots it was really beautiful we sat and warmed ourselves welcomed by a plump hostess and a pleasant daughter both in madder brown dress and full white shirt people strayed in and out through the various doors the houses are built without any plan at all the rooms just happen

here or there a bitch came from an inner darkness and stood looking at the fire then looked up at me smiling in her bitch-like complacent fashion but we were dying with hunger what was there to eat and was it nearly ready there was singhala the pleasant hard cheap girl told us and it was nearly ready singiala being wild boar we sniffed the air the girl kept tramping rather feckly back and forth with a plate or a serviette and at last it was served we went through the dark inner place which was apparently the windowless bit left over inside when the haphazard rooms were made round about and thence into a large bare darkish pebbled room with a white table and inverted soup plates it was deathly cold the window looked north over the wintry landscape of the highlands fear stone walls and rocks ah the cold motionless air of the room but we were quite a party the second bus driver and his mate a bearded traveller on the second bus with his daughter ourselves the bright-faced citizen from nuaro and our driver our little dark-eyed conductor did not come it dawned on me later he could not afford to pay for this meal which was not included in his wage the nuoro old citizen conferred with our driver, who looked tired round the eyes, and made the girl produce a tin of sardines. These were opened at table with a large pocket-knife belonging to the

second conductor. He was a reckless, odd, hot-foot fellow whom I liked very much, but I was terrified at the way he carved the sardine box with his jack-knife. However, we could eat and drink. then came the brodo the broth in a great bowl this was boiling hot and very very strong it was perfectly plain strong meat-stock without vegetables but how good an invigorating it was and what an abundance we drank it down and ate the good cold bread then came the bore itself alas it was a bowl of hunks of dark rather coarse boiled meat from which the broth had been made it was quite dry without fat i should have been very puzzled to know what meat it was if i had not been told sad that the wild boar should have received so little culinary attention however we ate the hunks of hot dry meat with bread and were glad to get them they were filling at least and there was a bowl of rather bitter green olives for a condiment the nooro citizen now produced a huge bottle of wine which he said was finissimo and refused to let us go on with the dark wine on the table of which every guest was served with a bottle so we drank up and were replenished with the red a lighter finer sorgono wine it was very good the second bus conductor also did not eat the inn meal he produced a vast piece of bread good home-made bread and at least half-house

half of a roast lamb and a large paper of olives this lamb he insisted on sending round the table waving his knife and fork with dramatic gestures at every guest insisting that every guest should take a hunk so one by one we all helped ourselves to the extraordinarily good cold roast lamb and to the olives then the bus conductor fell to as well there was a mass of meat still left to him it is extraordinary how generous and from the inside well-bred these men were to be sure the second conductor waved his knife and fork and made bitter faces if one of us took only a little bit of the lamb he wanted us to take more but the essential courtesy in all of them was quite perfect so manly and utterly simple just the same with the q b they treated her with a sensitive manly simplicity which one could not be but be thankful for they made none of the odious politenesses which are so detestable in well-brought-up people they made no advances and did none of the hateful homage of the adulating male they were quiet and kind and sensitive to the natural flow of life and quite without airs i liked them extremely men who can be quietly kind and simple to a woman without wanting to show off or to make an impression, they are men still. They were neither humble nor conceited. They did not show off. And, oh, God, what a blessed relief to be with people who don't bother to show off.

We sat at that table quietly and naturally as if we were by ourselves, and talked or listened to their talk just as it had happened. When we did not want to talk, they took no notice of us, and that I call good manners. Middle classed. showing off people would have found them uncouth. I found them almost the only really well-bred people I have met. They did not show off in any way at all, not even a show of simplicity. They knew that in the beginning and the end a man stands alone, his soul is alone in itself, and all attributes are nothing, and this curious final knowledge preserved them in simplicity. When we had had coffee and were going out i found our own conductor and a little chair by the fire he was looking a bit pathetic i had enough sense to give him a coffee which brightened him

but it was not till afterwards putting things together that i realised he had wanted to be with us all at table but that his conductor's wages probably did not allow him to spend the money my bill for the dinner was about fifteen francs for the two of us end of chapter six section one chapter six section two of c and sardinia by d h lawrence this librovoc's recording is in the public domain recording by antony in the bus again we were quite crowded a peasant girl in nuoro costume sat facing me and a dark-bearded middle-aged man in a brown velveteen suit was next me and glowering at her he was evidently her husband i did not like him one of the jealous carping sort she in her way was handsome but a bit of a devil as well in all probability there were two village women become fine in town dress and black silk scarves over their hens fancying themselves then there was a wild scuffle and three bouncing village lasses were pushed in laughing and wild with excitement there were wild farewells and the bus rolled out of govoy between the desolate mountain fields and the rocks on a sort of table-land we rolled on for a mile or so then stopped and the excited lasses got down i gathered they had been given a little ride for a sunday treat delighted they were and they set off with other bare-headed women in costume along a bare path between flat outcropping rocks and cold fields the girl facing me was a study she was not more than twenty years old i should say or was she did the delicate and fine complication of lines against her eyes mean thirty-five

but anyhow she was the wife of the velveteen man he was thick-set and had white hairs in his coarse black beard and little irritable brown eyes under his irritable brows he watched her all the time perhaps she was after all a young new girl wife she sat with that expressionless look of one who is watched and appears not to know it she had her back to the engine she wore her black headcloth from her brow and her hair was taken tight back from her rather hard broad well-shaped forehead her dark eyebrows were very finely drawn above her large dark grey pellucid eyes but they were drawn with a peculiar obstinate an irritating lift. Her nose was straight and small, her mouth well shut, and her big rather hostile eyes had a withheld look in them, obstinate.

Yet being newly wed and probably newly awakened, her eyes looked sometimes at me with a provoking look, curious as to what I was in the husband line, challenging rather defiantly with her new secrets, obstinate in opposition to the male authority, and yet intrigued by the very fact that one was man the velveteen husband his velveteens too had gone soft and gold faded yet somehow they made him look ugly common he watched her with his irritable yellow-brown eyes and seemed to fume in his stiff beard she wore the costume the full-gathered shirt fastened at the throat with the two gold filigree globes a little dark braided stiff belero just fastened at the waist leaving a pretty pattern of white breast and a dark maroon skirt As the bus rushed along, she turned somewhat pale, with the obstinate, pinched look of a woman who is in opposition to her man.

At length she flung him a few words, which I did not catch, and her forehead seemed to go harder, as she drooped her lashes occasionally over her wide, alert, obstinate, rather treacherous eyes. She must have been a difficult piece of goods to deal with, and she sat with her knees touching mine, rocking again. against mine as the bus swayed. We came to a village on the road. The landscape had now become wider, much more open. At the indoor, the bus stopped, and the velveteen husband and the girl got down. It was cold, but in a minute I got down too. The bus conductor came to me, and asked anxiously if the QB were ill. The QB said no, why? Because there was a signora whom the motion of the bus made ill. This was the girl. There was a crowd and a great row at this inn. In the second dark room which was bare of furniture, a man sat in a corner playing an accordion. Men in the

close breeches were dancing together. Then they fell to wrestling wildly, crashing about among the others with shouts and yells. Men in the black and white but untidy with the wide white drawers left hanging out over the black gaiters surged here and there. All were rowdy with drink. This again was rather a squalid in, but roaring with violent, crude, male life. The Noura citizen said that here was very good wine, and we must try it. I did not want it, but he insisted, so we drank little glasses of merely moderate red wine. The sky had gone all grey, with the afternoon curred clouds. It was very cold and raw. Wine is no joy, cold dead wine in such an atmosphere. The Nauru citizen insisted on paying. He would let me pay, he said, when he came to England.

In him and in our busmen, the famous Sardinian hospitality and generosity still lingers. When the bus ran on again, the QB told the peasant girl, who again had the peasant girl who again had the inched look to change places with me and sit with her face to the engine this the young woman did with that rather hard assurance common to these women but at the next stop she got down and made the conductor come with us into the compartment while she sat in front between the driver and the citizen of nooro that was what she wanted all the time now she was all right she had her back to the velveteen husband she sat close between two strange young men who were condoling with her and velveteen's eyed her back and his little eyes went littler and more pinpointed and his nose went littler and more pinpointed and his nose went seemed to curl with irritation the costumes had changed again there was again the scarlet but no green the green had given place to mauve and rose the women in one cold stony rather humbled broken place were most brilliant they had the geranium skirts but their sleeveless belleros were made to curl out strangely from the waist and they were edged with a puckered rose pink a broad edge with large of mow ve and lavender as they went up between the houses that were dark and grisly under the blank cold sky it is amazing how these women of vermilion and rose pink seemed to melt into an almost impossible blare of colour what a risky blend of colours

yet how superb it could look that dangerous hard assurance of these women as they strode along so blaring i would not like to tackle one of them wider and colder the landscape grew as we topped a hill at the end of a village we saw a long string of wagons each with a pair of oxen and laden with large sacks curving upwards in the cold pallid sunday afternoon seeing us the procession came to a standstill at the curve of the road and the pale oxen the pale low wagons the pale full sacks all in the blenched light-and the pale-oxen the pale-full sacks all in the blenched light each one headed by a tall man in shirt sleeves, trailing a static procession on the hillside, seemed like a vision, like a d'ore drawing. The bus slid past the man holding the wagon pole, while some oxen stood like rock, some swayed their horns. The cubie asked the velveteena what they were carrying. For a long time he took no notice of the question. Then he volunteered heard in a snappy voice that it was the government grain being distributed to the communes for bread on sunday afternoon too oh this government corn what a problem those sacks represent

the country became wider as we dropped lower but it was bleak and treeless once more stones cropped up in the wide hollow dales men on ponies passed forlorn across the distances men with bundles waited at the cross-roads to pick up the bus we were drawing near to nooro it was past three in the afternoon cold with a blenched light the landscape seemed bare and stony wide different from any before we came to the valley where the branch line runs to nooro i saw little pink railway cabins at once lonely along the valley bed turning sharp to the right we ran in silence over the the moorland seeming slopes and saw the town beyond clustered beyond a little below at the end of the long declivity with sudden mountains rising around it there it lay as if at the end of the world mountains rising sombre behind so we stop at the dutcio the town's customs hut and velveteens has to pay for some meat and cheese he is bringing in after which we slip into the cold high street of nuoro I am thinking that this is the home of Grazie de Leda, the novelist, and I see a barber's shop, Deledda, and thank heaven we are at the end of the journey. It is past four o'clock. The bus has stopped quite close to the door of the inn. Star of Italy, was it? In we go at the open door. Nobody about, free access to anywhere and everywhere, as usual, testifying again to Sardinian honesty. peer through a doorway to the left through a rough little room ah there in a dark bigish room beyond is a white-haired old woman with a long ivory-coloured face standing at a large table ironing one sees only the large whiteness of the table and the long pallid face and the querulous pale blue eyes of the tall old woman as she looks up questioning from the gloom of the inner place is there a room signora

she looks at me with a pale cold blue eye and shouts into the dark for somebody then she advances into the passage and looks us up and down the cubie and me are you husband and wife she demands challenges yes how shouldn't we be say i a tiny maid of about thirteen but sturdy and brisk-looking has appeared in answer to the shout take them to number seven says the old dame and she turns back to her gloom and seizes the flat-iron grimly we follow up two flights of cold stone stairs disheartening narrow staircase with a cold iron rail and corridors opening off gloomily and rather disorderly these houses give the effect inside of never having been properly finished as if long long ago the inmates had crowded in pigsty fashion without waiting for anything to be brought into order and there it had been left dreary and chaotic thumbelina the little maid threw open the door of number seven with a clah and we both exclaimed how fine it seemed to us palatial two good thick white beds a table a chest of drawers two mats on the tiled floor and gorgeous oleographs on the wall and two good wash-bowls side by side and all perfectly clean and nice what were we coming to and we felt we ought to be impressed we pulled open the latticed window doors and looked down on the street the only street and it was a river of noisy life a band was playing rather terribly round the corner at the end and up and down the street jigged endless numbers of maskers in their carnival cost with girls and young women strolling arm in arm to participate and how frisky they all were how bubbly and unself-conscious

the maskers were nearly all women the street was full of women so we thought at first then we saw looking closer that most of the women were young men dressed up all the maskers were young men and most of these young men of course were masquerading as women as a rule they did not wear face masks only little dominoes of black cloth or green cloth or white cloth coming down to the mouth which is much better for the old modelled half-masks with the lace frill the awful proboscis sticking forward white and ghastly like the beaks of corpse birds such as the old venice masks these i think are simply horrifying and the more modern faces are usually only repulsive while they are usually only repulsive while the old venice masks of the old venice masks are usually only repulsive while the old venice masks while the simple little pink half-masks with the end of black or green or white cloth these just form a human disguise it was quite a game sorting out the real women from the false some were easy they had stuffed their bosoms and stuffed their bustles and put on hats and very various robes and they minced along with little jigging steps like little dolls that dangled from elastic and they put their heads on one side and drip their hands and they had dipped their hands and they had their heads on one side and drip their hands and danced up to flurry the actual young ladies and sometimes they received a good clout on the head when they broke into wild and violent gestures whereat the actual young ladies scuffled wildly they were very lively and naive but some were more difficult every conceivable sort of woman was there broad-shouldered and with rather large feet the most usual was the semi-peasant with a very full bosom and very full bosom and very skirt and a very downright bearing but one was a widow in weeds drooping on the arm of a robust daughter and one was an ancient crone in a crochet bed cover and one was in an old skirt and blouse and apron with a broom wildly sweeping the street from end to end he was an animated rascal he swept with very sarcastic assiduity in front of two town misses in fur coats who minced very

importantly along. He swept their way very humbly, facing them and going backwards, sweeping and bowing, whilst they advanced with their noses in the air. He made his great bow, and they minced past, daughters of dogfish, Pesecane do doubt. Then he skipped with a bold gambling flurry behind them, and with a perfectly mad frenzy began to sweep after them, as if to sweep their tracks away. He swept so madly and so blindly with his besom that he swept onto their heels and their ankles. They shrieked and glowered round, but the blind sweeper saw them not. He swept and swept and swept and pricked their thin, silts, and they, scarlet with indignation and rage, gave hot skips like cats on hot bricks, and fled discomforted forwards. He bowed once more after them, and started, marty mildly and innocently to sweep the street a pair of lovers of fifty years ago she and a half crinoline and poke bonnet and veil hanging on his arm came very coyly past oh so simpering and it took me a long time to be sure that the girl was a youth an old woman in a long night-dress prowled up and down holding out her candle and peering in the street as if for burglars she would approach the real young women and put her candle in their faces and peer so hard as if she suspected them of something and they blushed and turned their faces away and protested confusedly

this old woman searched so fearfully in the face of one strapping lass in the pink and scarlet costume who looked for all the world like a bunch of red and rose-pink geraniums with a bit of white a real peasant lass that the latter in a panic began to beat him with her fist furiously quite aroused and he made off running comically in his long white night-dress there were some really beautiful dresses of rich old brocade and some gleaming old shawls a shimmer of lavender and silver or of dark rich shot colours with deep borders of white silver and primrose gold very lovely i believe two of them were actual women but the q b says no there was a victorian gown of thick green silk with a creamy blotched cross-over shawl about her we both were doubtful there were two wistful drooping lily sisters all in white with big feet and there was a very successful tall miss in a narrow hobble skirt of black satin and a toque with ospreys the way she minced and wagged her and went on her toes and peered over her shoulder and kept her elbows in was an admirable caricature especially the curious sagging heaving movement of bustle region a movement very characteristic of modern feminism was hit off with a bit of male exaggeration which rejoiced me at first she even took me in we stood outside our window and leaned on the little balcony rail looking down at this flow of life directly opposite was the chemist's house facing our window the best bedroom of the chemist with a huge white matrimonial bed and muslin curtains in the balcony sat the chemist's daughters very elegant in high-hilled shoes and black hair done in the fluffy fashion with a big sweep sideways oh very elegant

They eyed us a little and we eyed them, but without interest. The river of life was down below. It was very cold and the day was declining. We too were cold. We decided to go into the street and look for the cafe. In a moment we were out of doors, walking as inconspicuously as possible near the wall. Of course there was no pavement. These maskers were very gentle and whimsical, no touch of brutality or to. all. Now we were level with them how odd and funny they were. One youth wore a thin white blouse and a pair of his sister's wide calico knickers with needlework frills near the ankle and white stockings. He walked artlessly and looked almost pretty. Only the QB winced with pain, not because of the knickers, but because of that awful length, coming well below the knee. Another young man was

wound into a sheet and heaven knows if he could ever get out of it another was involved in a complicated entanglement of white crocey antimacassas very troublesome to contemplate i did not like him at all like a fish in a net but he strode robustly about we came to the end of the street where there is a wide desolate sort of gap here the little band stood braying away there was a thick crowd of people and on a slanting place just above, a little circle where youths and men, maskers and one or two girls were dancing, so crowded together and such a small ring, that they looked like a jiggly set of upright rollers, all

turning ricketyly against one another. They were doing a sort of intense jigging-walls. Why do they look so intense? Perhaps because they were so tight altogether, like too many fish in a globe, slipping through one another. There was a cafe in this sort of piazza, not a piazza at all a formless gap but young men were drinking little drinks and i knew it would be hopeless to ask for anything but cold drinks or black coffee which we did not want

so we continued forwards up the slope of the village street these towns soon come to an end already we were wandering into the open on a ledge above a peasant family was making a huge bonfire a tower of orange-coloured rippling flame little impish boys were throwing on more rubbish everybody else was in town why were these folk at the town end making this fire alone we came to the end of the houses and looked over the road wall at the hollow deep interesting valley below away on the other side rose a blue mountain a steep but stumpy cone high land reared up dusky and dark blue all around somewhere far off the sun was setting with a bit bintry conne somewhere far off the sun was setting with a bit of crimson it was a wild unusual landscape of unusual shape the hills seem so untouched dark blue virgin wild the hollow cradle of the valley was cultivated like a tapestry away below and there seemed so little outlying life nothing no castles even in italy and sicily castles perching everywhere in sardinia none the remand the remand moat ungrappled hills rising darkly standing outside of life as we went back it was growing dark and the little band was about to leave off its brass noise but the crowd still surged the maskers still jigged and frisked unwearedly oh the good old energy of the bygone days before men became so self-conscious here it was still on the hop we found no cafe that looked any good Coming to the inn, we asked if there was a fire anywhere. There wasn't. We went up to our room.

The chemist daughters had lighted up opposite. One saw their bedroom as if it were one's own. In the dusk of the street, the maskers were still jigging, all the youths still joyfully being women, but a little more roughly now. Away over the housetops, the purple-red of a dying sunset, and it was very cold. There was nothing for it but just to lie in bed. The Q.B. made a little tea on the spirit lamp, and we sat in bed and sipped it. Then we covered ourselves up and lay still to get warm. Outside the noise of the street came unabated. It grew quite dark, the lights reflected into the room.

There was the sound of an accordion across the hoarseness of the many voices and movements in the street, and then a solid strong singing of men's voices singing a soldier song wheno tooniamo in casa we got up to look under the small electric lights the narrow cobbled street was still running with a river of people but fewer maskers two maskers beating loudly at a heavy closed door they beat and beat at last the door opens a crack they rushed to try to get in but in vain it had shut the moment it saw them they are foiled on they go down the street the town is full of men many peasants come in from the outlying parts the black and white costume now showing in the streets we retire to bed again out of the cold comes a knock and thumbolina bursts in in the darkness siama qua says the cubie thumbulina dashes at the window doors and shuts them and shuts the casement then she dashes to my bed-head and turns on the light looking down at me as if i were a rabbit in the grass then she flings a can of water against the wash-bowls cold water icy alas after which small and explosive she explodes her way out of the room again and leaves us in the glaring light having replied that it is now a little after six o'clock and dinner is half-past seven so we lie in bed warm and in peace but hungry waiting for half-past seven when the q b can stand it no more she flounces up though the clock from the campanilla has struck seven only a few minutes before

dashing downstairs to reconnoit her she is back in a breath to say that people are eating their heads off in the long dining-room in the next breath we are downstairs too the room was brightly lighted and at many white tables sat diners all men it was quite city-like everyone was in convivial mood the q b spied men opposite having chicken and salad and she had hopes but they were brief when the soup came the girl announced that there was only bisteka which meant a bit of fried cow so it did a quite quite small bit of fried beef a few potatoes and a bit of cauliflower really it was not enough for a child of twelve but that was the end of it a few mandarini tangerine oranges rolled on a plate for dessert and there's the long and short of these infernal dinners was there any cheese no there was no cheese so we merely masticated bread they came in three peasants in the black and white costume and sat at the middle table they kept on their stocking-caps and queer they looked coming in with slow deliberate tread of these elderly men and sitting right rather remote with a gap of solitude around them the peculiar ancient loneliness of the sardinian hills clings to them and something stiff static pre-world all the men at our end of the room were citizens employees of some sort and they were all acquaintances a large dog very large indeed with a great muzzle padded slowly from table to table and looked at us with big wistful topaz eyes when the meal was almost over our bus driver and conductor came in looking faint with hunger and cold and fatigue they were quartered at this house they had eaten nothing since the bore broth at govoi

in a very short time they were through their portions and was there nothing else nothing but they were half starved they ordered two eggs each in pedella i ordered coffee and asked them to come take it with us and a brandy so they came when their eggs were finished a diversion was now created at the other side of the room the red wine which is good in sardinia had been drunk freely directly facing us as a rather stout man with pleasant blue eyes and a nicely shaped head dressed like any other town man on a sunday the dog had waddled up to him and sat down statuesque in front of him and the fat man being mellow began to play with a big gentle brindled animal he took a piece of bread and held it before the dog's nose and the dog tried to take it but the man like a boy now he was right with wine put the mastive back with a restraining finger and told him not to snatch then he proceeded with a little conversation with the animal the dog again tried to snatch gently and again the man started saved the bread and startled the dog which backed and gave a sharp sad yelp as if to say why do you tease me now said the man you are not to snatch come here come here vienne and he held up the piece of bread the animal came near now said the man i put this bread on your nose and you don't move the dog had tried to snatch the bread the man had shouted and jerked it away the animal had recoiled and given another expostulating yelp the game continued all the room was watching smiling the dog did not understand at all it came forward again

troubled. The man held the bread near its nose and held up a warning finger. The beast drop its head mournfully, cocking up its eye at the bread with varied feelings. Now, said the man, not until I say three. Oh, no doorway! The dog could bear it no longer. The man in jerking, let go the bread, and yelled at the top of his voice, Ere! The dog gulped the piece of bread with a resigned pleasure, and the man pretended it had all happened properly on the word three. So he started again, Viennikoa, Viennikoa! The dog which had backed away with the bread came hesitating, cringing forward, dropping its hindquarters in doubt, as dogs do, advancing towards the new nugget of bread. The man

preached his a little sermon, You sit there and look at this bread, I sit here and look at you, and I hold this bread, and you stop still, and I stop still. And you stop still? And I stop still. while I count three. Now then, oh no. The dog couldn't bear these numerals with their awful slowness. He snatched desperately. The man yelled and lost the bread. The dog, gulping, turned to creep away. Then it began again. Come here, come here. Didn't I tell thee I would count three? Jia, I said I would count three. Not one but three. And to count three, you need three numbers. ha steady three numbers one doo and three the last syllables were yelled so that the room rang again the dog gave a mournful howl of excitement missed the bread groped for it and fled the man was red with excitement his eyes shining he addressed the company at large i had a dog he said ah a dog and i would put a piece of bread on his head on his eyes shining he addressed the company at large i had a dog he said ah a dog and i would put a piece of bread on his

his nose and say a verse and he looked at me so the man put his face sideways and he looked at me so he gazed up under his brows and he talked to me so zou zhoo but he never moved no he never moved if he sat with that bread on his nose for half an hour and if tears ran down his face he never moved not till i said three then ah the man tossed up his face snapped the air with his mouth and gulped a imaginary crust. Ah, that dog was trained. The man of forty shook his head. Vienne, quay. Come here. Tweet. Come here. He patted his fat knee, and the dog crept forward. The man held another piece of bread. Now, he said to the dog, listen, listen, I'm going to tell you something. Il soldato va la Guerrra. No, not yet. When I say three, the soldierto val la la greira manja malle dorme in terra listen be still quiet now one do o two and three it came out in one simultaneous yell from the man the dog in sheer bewilderment opened his jaws and let the bread go down his throat and wagged his tail in agitated misery ah said the man you are learning come come here come now then now you know so so look at me so the stout good-looking man of forty bent forward his face was flushed the veins in his neck stood out

he talked to the dog and imitated the dog and very well indeed he reproduced something of the big gentle wistful subservience of the animal the dog was his totem the affectionate self-mistrustful warm-hearted hound so he started the rigmarole again we put it into english listen now listen let me tell it you so the soldier goes to the war his food is rotten he sleeps on the floor now now no you are not keeping quiet now the soldato va la gera man jamal le dame in terra the verses known to every italian were sung out in a sing-song fashion the audience listened as one man or as one child the rhyme chiming in every heart they waited with the excitement for the one two and three the last two words were always ripped out with a tearing yell i shall never forget the force of those syllables but the dog made a poor show he only gobbled the bread and was uneasy the game lasted us a full hour a full hour by the clock sat the whole room in intense silence watching the man and the dog our friends told us the man was the bus inspector their inspector but they liked him um bravo omo um bravo omo eh si perhaps they were little uneasy seeing him in his cups and hearing him yell so nakedly and three we talked rather sadly wistfully young people especially nice ones like the driver are too sad and serious these days the little conductor made big brown eyes at us wistful too and sad we were going for in the morning they were driving back again to sorgon o'er over the old road and we were going on to terra nova the port but we promised to come back in the summer when it was warmer then we should all meet again perhaps you will find us on the same course still who knows said the driver sadly end of chapter six

chapter seven of sea and sardinia by d h lawrence this librivox recording is in the public domain recording by antony ogus to terra nova and the steamer the morning was very clear and blue we were up at times the old dame of the inn very friendly this morning we were going already oh but we hadn't stayed long in nuoro didn't we like it yes we like it we would come back in the summer when it was warmer ah yes she said artists came in the summer yes she agreed nuoro was a nice place sympathico motto simpatico and really it is and really she was an awfully nice capable human old woman and i had thought her a belle dame when i saw her ironing she gave us good coffee and milk and bread and we went out into the town there was the real monday morning atmosphere of an old same as ever provincial town the vacant feeling of work resumed after sunday rather reluctantly nobody buying anything nobody quite at grips with anything the doors of the old-fashioned shops stood open in new oral they have hardly reached the stage of window displays one must go inside into the dark caves to see what the goods are near the doorways of the draper's shop stood rolls of that fine scarlet cloth for the women's costumes in a large tailor's window four women sat sewing tailoring and looking out of the window with eyes still sunday amount and mischievous. Detached men, some in the black and white, stood at the street corners,

as if obstinately avoiding the current of work. Having had a day off, the salt taste of liberty still lingering on their lips, they were not going to be dragged so easily back into harness. I always sympathise with these rather sulky, forlorn males, who insist on making another day of it. it shows a spark of spirit still holding out against our over-harnessed world there is nothing to see in nuoro which to tell the truth is always a relief sights are an irritating bore thank heaven there isn't a bit of perugino or anything peasant in the place that i know of happy is the town that has nothing to show what a lot of stunts and affectations it saves life is then life not museum stuffing one could saunter along the rather inert narrow monday morning street and see the women having a bit of a gossip and see an old crone with a basket of bread on her head and see the unwilling ones hanging back from work and the whole current of industry disinclined to flow life is life and things are things i am sick of gaping things even perugino's i've had my thrills from carpacho and botticelli but now i've had enough but i can always look at an old grey-bearded peasant in his earthy white drawers and his black waist frill wearing no coat or over-garment but just crooking along beside his little ox-wagon i'm sick of things even perugino

the sight of the woman with the basket of bread reminded us that we wanted some food so we searched for bread none if you please it was monday morning eaten out there would be bread at the foreno the oven where was the oven up the road and down a passage i thought we should smell it but no we wandered back our friends had told us to take tickets early for perhaps the bus would be crowded so we bought yesterday's pastry and little cakes and slices of native sausage and still no bread i went and asked our old hostess there is no fresh bread it hasn't come in yet she said never mind give me stale so she went and rummaged in a drawer oh dear oh dear the women have eaten it all but perhaps over there she pointed down the street they can give you you a-a-deer oh dear oh dear the women have eaten it all but perhaps over there she pointed down the street they can give you some. They couldn't. I paid the bill about twenty-eight francs, I think, and went out to look for the bus. There it was. In a dark little hole they gave me the long ticket strips, first-class to Terra Nova. They cost some seventy francs, the two. The QB was still vainly, aimlessly looking along the street for bread.

"'Bere you are?' said our new driver, rather snapperly. he was a pale cross-looking young man with brown eyes and fair ginger hair so in we clambered waved farewell to our old friends whose bus was ready to roll away in the opposite direction as we bumped past the piazza i saw velveteen standing there isolate and still apparently scowling with unabated irritation i'm sure he has money why the first-class yesterday otherwise and i'm sure he's sure that she married him because he is a townsman with property out we rolled on our last soddenian drive the morning was of a bell-like beauty blue and very lovely below on the right stretched the concave valley tapestried with cultivation up into the morning light rose the high humanless hills with wild treeless moor slopes but there was no glass in the left window of the coupe and the wind came howling in cold enough i stretched myself on the front seat the q b screwed herself into a corner and we watched the land flushed by how well this new man drove the long-nosed freckled one with his gloomy brown eyes how cleverly he changed gear so that the automobile mewed and purred comfortably like a live thing enjoying itself and how dead he was to the rest of the world wrapped in his gloom like a young bus-driving hamlet his answers to his mates were monosyllabic or just no answers at all he was one of those responses

responsible capable morose souls who do their work with silent perfection and look as if they were driving along the brink of doom say a word to them and they'll go over the edge but gentleofant of course fiction used to be fond of them a sort of ginger-haired young mechanic mr rochester who has even lost the jane illusion perhaps it was not fair to watch him so closely from behind his mate was a bit of a bounder with with one of those rakish military caps whose soft tops cock sideways or backwards he was in italian car key riding breeches and putties he smoked his cigarette bounderishly but at the same time with peculiar gentleness he handed one to the ginger hamlet hamlet accepted it and his mate held him alight as the bus swung on they were like man and wife the mate was the alert and wide-eyed jane air whom the ginger mr rochester was not going to spoil in a hurry the landscape was different from yesterday's as we dropped down the shallow winding road from new oro quite quickly the moors seemed to spread on either side treeless bushy rocky desert how hot they must be in summer one knows from gratia del edda's books a pony with a low trap was prancing unhappily in the roadside we slowed down and slid harmlessly past then again on we whizzed down down we whizzed down the looped road which turned back on itself as sharply as a snake that has been wounded hamlet darted the bus at the curves then softly padded round like an angel then off again for the next parabola we came out into wide rather desolate moorland valley spaces with low rocks away to the left and steep slopes rocky bushy on the right sometimes groups of black and white men were working in the forlorn

distances. A woman in the madder costume led a panniered ass along the wastes. The sun shone magnificently. Already it was hotter here. The landscape had quite changed. These slopes looked east and south to the sea. They were sun-wild and sea-wild. The first stop was where a wild rough lane came down the hill to our road. At the corner stood a lonely house, and in the roadside the most battered life-weary old carriage i have ever seen the jaunty mate sorted out the post the boy with the tattered battered brown carriage and brown pony signed the book as we all stood in the roadway there was little weight for a man who was fetching up another parcel the post bag and parcels from the tattered carriage were received and stowed and signed for we walked up and down in the sun to get warm the landscape was warm wild and open round about. Pip goes Mr. Rochester peremptorily at the horn. Amazing how obediently we scuffle in.

Away goes the bus rushing towards the sea. Already one felt that peculiar glare in the halfway heavens, that intensification of the light in the lower sky, which is caused by the sea to sunward. Away in front three girls in brown costume are walking along the side of the white hyro. going with panniers towards a village up a slight incline. They hear us, turn round, and instantly go off their heads, exactly like chickens in the road.

They fly towards us, crossing the road, and, swifter than any rabbits, they scuttle, one after another, into a deep side track, like a deep ditch at right angles to the road. There, as we roll past, they are all crouched, peering out at us fearfully, like creatures from their hole. The busmate salutes them with a shout, and we roll on towards the village on the low summit. It is a small stony, hen-scratch place of poor people. We roll on to a standstill.

There is a group of poor people. The women wear the dark brown costume, and again the belero has changed shape. It is a rather fantastic low corset, curiously shapen, and originally apparently made a wonderful elaborate brocade but look at it now there is an altercation because a man wants to get into the bus with two little black pigs each of which is wrapped in a little sack with its face and ears appearing like a flower from a wrapped bouquet he is told that he must pay the fare for each pig as if it were a christian christo delmondo a pig a little pig and paid for as if it were a christian a pig a little pig and paid for as if it were a christian a christian a pig a little pig and paid for as if it were a christian He dangles the pig bouquets, one from each hand, and the little pigs open their black mouths and squeal with self-conscious appreciation of the excitement they are causing.

Di or Benedetto, it is a chorus. But the busmate is inexorable. Every animal, even if it were a mouse, must be paid for and have a ticket as if it were a Christian. The pig master recoils, stupefied with indignation, a pig-bouquet of, and a pig-bouquet of a Christian. A pig-mastor, a pig-bucket, under each arm. How much you charge for the fleas you carry? Asked a sarcastic youth. A woman sitting sewing a soldier's tunic into a little jacket for her urchin and thus beating the sword into a ploughshare

stitches unconcernedly in the sun. Round-cheeked but rather slatternily damsels giggle. The pig-master, speechless with fury, slings the pig bouquets like two bottles, one on either side the saddle of the ass whose halter is held by a grinning but also malevolent girl malevolent against pig prices that is the pigs looking abroad from their new situation squeal the eternal pig protest against an insufferable humanity and jamo and jamo says ginger mr rochester in his quiet but intense voice the bus mate scrambles up and we charge once more into the strong light to seaward. In we roll into Orozahe, a dilapidated sun-smitten, God-forsaken little town, not far from the sea. We descend in the piazza. There is a great false baroque façade to a church

up a wavering vast mass of steps, and at the side a wonderful jumble of roundnesses, with a jumble of round-tiled roofs peaked in the centre. It must have been some sort of convent, but it is eminently what they call a painter's bit, that pallid, big, baroque face at the top of the slow incline, and the very curious stark building at the side of it, with its several dark-tiled round roofs, like pointed hats at varying altitudes. The whole space has a strange Spanish look, neglected, arid,

yet with a bigness and a dilapidated dignity and a stoniness, which carry one back to the Middle Age, when life was violent an orsay was no doubt a port and a considerable place probably it had bishops the sun came hot into the wide piazza with its pallid heavy faade up on the stony incline on one side and arches on a dark great courtyard and outer stairways of some unknown building away on the other the road entering downhill from the inland and dropping out below to the sea marshes and with the impression that once some single power had had the place in grip had given this centre an architectural unity and splendour now lost and forgotten orosey was truly fascinating but the inhabitants were churlish we went into a sort of bar-place very primitive and asked for bread well alone said the churl if you please there isn't any he answered oh where can we go get some then you can't get any really and we couldn't people stood about glum not friendly there was a second great automobile ready to set off for tortoli far to the south on the east coast mandas is the railway junction both for sogano and totolly the two buses stood near and communed we proud about the dead almost extinct town or call it village then mr rochester

began to pip his horn peremptorily so he scuttled in the post was stowed away a native in black broad cloth came running and sweating carrying an ox-blood suitcase and said we must wait for his brother-in-law who was a dozen yards away ginger mr rochester sat on his driver's throne and glared in the direction whence the brother-in-law must come his brow knitted irritably his long sharp nose did not prompt miss much patience he made the horn roar like a sea-cow but no brother-in-law i'm going to wait no longer said he oh a minute a minute that won't do us any harm expostulated his mate no answer from the long-faced long-nosed ginger hamlet he sat statuesque but with black eyes looking daggers down the still void road ev abenny he murmured through closed lips and leadened forward grimaced for the starting handle patience patience patience a moment why cried the mate bellamordidio cried the black broadcloth man simply sizzling and dancing in anguish on the road round the suitcase which stood in the dust don't go god's love don't start he's got to catch the boat he's got to be in rome to-morrow he won't be a second he's here he's here he's here this startled the fate fix sharp-nosed driver he released the handle and looked round with dark and glowering eyes no one in sight the few glum natives stood round unmoved thunder came into the gloomy dark eyes of the rochester absolutely nobody in sight click went his face into a look of almost seraphic peace as he pulled off the brakes we are on an incline and insidiously almost subtly the great bus started to lean forwards and steal into motion oh mackay what a will you've got cried the mate clambering into the side of the now seraphic-looking rochester love of god god yelled the broad cloth seeing the bus melt

forwards and gather momentum. He put his hands up as if to arrest it and yelled in a wild howl, Oh, Beppin! Bepin! Oh! But in vain. Already we had left the little groups of onlookers behind. We were rolling downwards out of the piazza. Broad cloth had seized the bag and was running beside us in agony. Out of the piazza we rolled. Rochester had not put on the engines, and we were just simply rolling down the gentle incline by the will of God. Into the dark outlit street we melted towards the still invisible sea. Suddenly a yell, oh! Ah! Equi, quai, quai, quai, quah, gasped broadcloth four times. He's here, and then, Beppin, she's going, she's going! Beppin appeared, a middle-aged man, also in black broadcloth, with a very scrubby chin and a bundle running towards us on fat leg.

he was perspiring but his face was expressionless and innocent looking with a sardonic flicker of a grin half of spite half of relief rochester put on the brakes again and we stopped in the street a woman tottered up panting and holding her breast now for farewells and yarmo said rochester curtly looking over his shoulder and making his fine nose curl with malice and instantly he took off the brakes again the fat woman shoved bepin in gasping farewells the brother-in-law handed in the ox-blood red suit-case tottering behind and the bus surged savagely out of orosay almost in a moment we had left the town on its slope and there below us was a river winding through marshy flats to the sea to where small white surf broke on a flat isolated beach a quarter of a mile away the river ran rapidly between stones and then between belts of high sere reeds high as a man these tall reeds advanced almost into the slow horizontal sea from which stood up a white glare of light massive light over the low mediterranean quickly we came down to the river level and rolled over a bridge before us between us and the sea rose another hill almost like a wall with a flat top running horizontal perfectly flat parallel with the sea edge a sort of narrow long plateau for a moment we were in the wide scoop of the river bed orose stood on the bluff behind us away to the right the flat river marshes with the thick dead reeds met the flat and shining sea river and sea were one water the waves rippled tiny and soft foot into the stream to the left there was great loveliness the bed of the river curved upwards and inland and there was cultivation but particular

there were noble almond trees in full blossom how beautiful they were their pure silvery pink gleaming so nobly like a transfiguration tall and perfect in that strange cradled river-bed parallel with the sea almond trees were in flower beneath grey orosay almond trees came near the road and we could see the hot eyes of the individual blossoms armen trees stood on the upward slope before us and they had flowered in such noble beauty there in that trough where the sun fell magnificent and the sea glare whitened all the air as with a sort of god presence they gleamed in their incandescent sky rosiness one could hardly see their iron trunks in this weird valley but already we had crossed and were charging up the great road that was cut straight slantwise along the side of the sea hill like a stairway outside the sea-hill like a stairway outside the side of the sun of a house. So the bus turned southward to run up this stairway slant, to get to the top of the sea's long table land. So we emerged, and there was the Mediterranean, rippling against the black rocks, not so very far away below on our right. For, once on the long table land the road turned due north, a long white, dead straight road running between strips of moorland, wild and bushy,

the sea was in the near distance blue blue and beating with light it seemed more light than watery and on the left was the wide trough of the valley where almond trees like clouds in a wind seemed to poise sky rosy upon the pale sun-pale land and beyond which orosay clustered its lost grey houses on the bluff oh wonderful orosay with your almonds and your reedy river throbbing throbbing with light and the sea's nearness, and also lost, in a world long gone by, lingering as legends linger on. It is hard to believe that it is real. It seems so long since life left it, and memory transfigured it into pure glamour, lost away like a lost pearl, on the East Sardinian coast. Yet there it is, with a few grumpy inhabitants who won't even give your crust of bread, and probably there is malaria almost sure and it would be held to have to live there for a month yet for a moment that january morning how wonderful oh the timeless glamour of those middle ages when men were lordly and violent and shadowed with death timor mortis contubat may the road rang along by the sea above the sea swinging gently up and down and running on to a sea in encroaching hilly promontory in the distance. There were no high lands. The valley was left behind,

and moors surrounded us, wild, desolate, uninhabited and uninhabitable moors, sweeping up gently on the left, and finishing where the land dropped low and cliff-like to the sea on the right. No life was now in sight, even no ship upon the pale blue sea. The great globe of the sky was unblemished and royal, its blueness and its ringing cerulean light over the moors a great hawk hovered rocks cropped out it was a savage dark-bushed sky-exposed land forsaken to the sea and the sun we were alone in the coupe the busmate had made one or two sets at us but he rather confused us he was young about twenty-two or three he was quite good-looking with his rakish military cap and his well-knitted figure in military clothes but he had dark eyes that seemed to ask too much and his manner of approach was abrupt persistent and disconcerting already he had asked us where we were going where we lived whence we came of what nationality we were and was i a painter already he knew so much further we rather fought shy of him we ate those pale nuoro pastries they were just flaky pastry good but with nothing inside but a breath of air and we gnawed slices of very highly flavoured nuoro sausage

and we drank the tea and we were very hungry for it was past noon and we had eaten as good as nothing the sun was magnificent in heaven we rushed at a great purring speed along that moorland road just above the sea and then the busmate climbed in to share the coupé with us he put his dark beseeching and yet persistent eyes on us sat plumb in front of us his knees squared and began to shout awkward questions in a strong curious voice of course it was very difficult to hear for the great rushing bus made much noise we had to try to yell in our italian and he was as awkward as we were however although it said smoking forbidden he offered us both cigarettes and insisted we should smoke with him easiest to submit he tried to point us out features in the landscape but there were none to point except that where the hill ran to sea out of the moor and formed a cape he said there was a house away under the cliffs where coast guards lived nothing else then however he launched he asked once more was i english and was the cube be German. We said it was so. And then he started the old story. Nations popped up and down again like Punch and Judy, Italy, Litalia. She had no quarrel with La Germania, never had had. No, no, good friends, the two nations. But once the war was started, Italy had to come in. For why? Germany would beat France,

occupy her lands, march down, and invade Italy. Best then join the war, whilst the enemy, he was only invading somebody else's territory. They are perfectly naive about it. That's what I like. He went on to say that he was a soldier. He had served eight years in the Italian cavalry. Yes, he was a cavalry man, and had been all through the war. But he had not, therefore, any quarrel with Germany.

No, war was war, and it was over. So let it be over. But France! Mal la Francia! Here he sat forward on his... seat with his face near ours and his pleading dog's eyes suddenly took a look of quite irrational blazing rage france there wasn't a man in italy who wasn't dying to get at the throat of france france let there be war and every italian would leap to arms even the old even the old and gave ecchi yes there must be war with france it was coming it was bound to come every italian was waiting for it waiting to fly at the french throat for why why he had served two years on the french front and he knew why ah the french for arrogance for insolence deo they were not to be born the french they thought themselves lords of the world signore de mondeau

lords of the world and masters of the world yes they thought themselves no less and what are they monkeys monkeys not better than monkeys but let there be war and italy would show them italy would give them signore del mondo italy was pining for war all all pining for war with no one with no one but france ah with no one italy loved everybody else but france france france we let him shout it all out till he was at the end of it the passion and energy of him was amazing he was like one possessed i could only wonder and wonder again for it is curious what fearful passions these pleading wistful souls fall into when they feel they have been insulted it was evident he felt he had been insulted and he went just beside himself but dear chap he shouldn't speak so loudly for all italy even the old the bulk of italian men are only too anxious to beat their bayonets into cigarette-holders and smoke the cigarette of eternal never-lasting peace to coincide at all with our friend yet there he was raging at me in the bus as we dashed along the coast and then after a space of silence he became sad again wistful and looked at us once more with those pleading brown eyes beseeching beseeching he knew not what and i'm sure i didn't know perhaps what he really wants is to be back on a horse in a cavalry regiment even at war but no it comes out what he thinks he wants when are we going to london and are there many motor-cars in england many many in america too do they want men in america i say no they have unemployment out there they are going to stop immigration in april or at least cut it down why he asked sharply because

because they have their own unemployment problem. And the QB quotes how many millions of Europeans want to emigrate to the United States. His eye becomes gloomy. Are all nations of Europe going to be forbidden? he asks. Yes, and already the Italian government will give no more passports for America to emigrants. No passports?

Then you can't go? You can't go, say I. By this time his hot-souled eagerness and his hot beseeching eyes have touched the QB. She asks him what he wants, and from his gloomy face it comes out in a rap, and are a fiore del Italia,

to go out of Italy, to go out away, to go away, to go away, it has become a craving, a neurasthenia with them. Where is his home? His home is at a village a few miles ahead,

here on this coast. We're coming to it soon. There is his, home and a few miles inland from the village he also has a property he also has land but he doesn't want to work it he doesn't want it in fact he won't bother with it he hates the land he detests looking after vines he can't even bring himself to try any more what does he want then he wants to leave italy to go abroad as a chauffeur again the long beseeching look as of a distraught pleading animal he would prefer to be the chauffeur of a gentleman but he would drive a bus he would do anything in england now he has launched it yes i say but in england also we have more men than jobs still he looks at me with his beseeching eyes so desperate too and so young and so young and so i say but in england also we have more men than jobs still he looks at me with his beseeching eyes so desperate too and so young and so so full of energy and so longing to devote himself to devote himself or else to go off in an unreasonable paroxysm against the french to my horror i feel he is believing in my goodness of heart and as for motor-cars it is all i can do to own a pair of boots so how am i to set about employing a chauffeur we have all gone quiet again so at last he climbs back and takes his seat with the driver once more

the road is still straight swinging on through the moorland strip by the sea and he leans to the silent nerve-tent mr rochester pleading again and at length mr rochester edges aside and lets him take the driving-wheel and so now we are all in the hands of our friend the busmate he drives not very well it is evident he is learning the bus can't quite keep in the grooves of this wild bare road and he shuts off when we slip down a hill and there is a great muddle on the up-slope when he tries to change gear but mr rochester sits squeezed and silently attentive in his corner he puts out his hand and swings the levers there is no fear that he will let anything go wrong i would trust him to drive me down the bottomless pit and up the other side but still the beseeching mate hold the steering-wheel and on we rush rather uncertainly and hesitatingly now and thus we come to the bottom of a hill where the road gives a sudden curve my heart rises an inch in my breast i know he can't do it and he can't o lord but the quiet hand of the freckled rochester takes the wheel we swerve on and the busmate gives up and the nerve's silent driver resumes control but the bus-mate gives up and the nerve's silent driver resumes control but the bus busmate now feels at home with us he clambers back into the coupe and when it is too painfully noisy to talk he simply sits and looks at us with brown pleading eyes miles and miles and miles goes this coast road and never a village once or twice a sort of lonely watch-house and soldiers lying about by the road but never a halt everywhere moorland and desert uninhabited and we are faint with fatigue and hunger and this relentless travelling when oh when shall we come to siniscola where we are due to eat our midday meal oh yes says the mate there is an inn at siniscola where we can eat what we like

we feel we must get down we must eat it is past one o'clock and the glaring light and the rushing loneliness are still about us but it is behind the hill in front we see the hill yes behind it is siniskola and down there on the beach are the bany di sinisgola where many forestieri strangers come in the summer therefore we set high hopes on sinisgola from the town to the sea two miles the bathers ride on asses sweet place and it is coming near really near there are stone-fenced fields even stretches of moor fenced off there are vegetables in a little field with a stone wall there is a strange white track through the moor to a forsaken sea-coast we are near over the brow of the low hill and there it is a grey huddle of a village with two towers there it is we are there over the cobbles we bump and pull up at the side of the street this is siniscola and here we eat we drop out of the weary bus the mate asks a man to show us the inn the man says he won't muttering so a boy is deputed and he consents this is the welcome and i can't say much for siniscola it is just a narrow crude stony place hot in the sun in the shade. In a minute or two we were at the inn, where a fat young man was just dismounting from his brown pony and fastening it to a ring beside the door. The inn did not look promising,

the usual cold room opening gloomily on the gloomy street, the usual long table, with this time a foully-blotched tablecloth, and two young peasant madams in charge, in the brown costume rather sordid and with folded white cloths on their heads the younger was in attendance she was a full-bosomed young hussy and would be very queenly and cocky she held her nose in the air and seemed ready to jibe at any order it takes one some time to get used to this cocky assertive behaviour of the young damsels the who'll tread on the tail of my skirt bearing of the hussies but it is partly a sort of crude defenciveness and shyness partly it is barbaric mefiance or mistrust and partly without doubt it is a tradition with sardinian women that they must hold their own and be ready to hit first this young sludge queen was all hit she flounced her posterior round the table planking down the lumps of bread on the foul cloth with an air of take it as a condescension that i wait on you a subdued grin lurking somewhere on her face It is not meant to be offensive, yet it is so. Truly it is just uncouthness. But when one is tired and hungry, We were not the only feeders. There was the man off the pony, and a sort of workman or portal or datsio official with him, and a smart young man, and later our hamlet driver.

bit by bit the young damsel plank down bread plates spoons glasses bottles of black wine whilst we sat at the dirty table in uncouth constraint and looked at the hideous portrait of his reigning majesty of italy and at length came the inevitable soup and with it the sucking chorus the little maelino at mandas had been a good one but the smart young man in the country beat him as water clutters and slavers down a choky gutter so did his soup travel upwards into his mouth with one long sucking stream of noise intensified as the bits of cabbage etc found their way through the orifice they did all the talking the young men they dressed the sludge queen curtly and disrespectfully as if to say what's she up to her airs were finally thrown away still she showed off what else was there to eat there was the meat that had been boiled for the soup we knew what that meant i had as leaf eat the foot of an old woosted stocking nothing else you sludge queen no what do you want anything else for beefsteak what's the good of asking for beefsteak or any other steak on a monday go to the butchers and see for yourself the hamlet the pony rider and the porter had the faded and tired chunks of boiled meat the smart young man ordered eggs in pedella two eggs fried with a little butter we asked for the same the smart young man got his first and of course they were warm and liquid so he fell upon them with a fork and once he had got hold of one end of the eggs he just sucked them up in a prolonged and violent suck like a long thin ropy drink being sucked upwards from the little pan it was a genuine exhibition

then he fell upon the bread with loud chews what else was there a miserable little common orange so much for the dinner was there cheese no but the sludge queen they're quite good-natured really held a conversation in dialect with the young men which i did not try to follow our pensive driver translated that there was cheese but it wasn't good so they wouldn't offer it us and the pony man interpolated that they didn't like to offer us anything that was not of the best he said it in all sincerity after such a meal this roused my curiosity so i asked for the cheese whether or not and it was wasn't so bad after all. This meal cost 15 francs for the pair of us. End of Chapter 7, Section 1. Chapter 7, Section 2 of C. and Sardinia by D.H. Lawrence. This Libre Vox's recording is in the public domain, recording by Anthony Ogus. We made our way back to the bus, through the uncouth men who stood about. To tell the truth, strangers are not popular. nowadays, not anywhere. Everybody has a grudge against them at first sight. This grudge may or may not

wear off on acquaintance. The afternoon had become hot, hot as an English dune, and we had various other passengers, for one a dark-eyed, long-nosed priest who showed his teeth when he talked. There was not much room in the coupe, so the goods were stowed upon the little rack. With the strength of the sun and the six or seven people in it, the coupé became stifling. The QB opened her window. But the priest, one of the loud talking sort, said that a draught was harmful, very harmful,

so he put it up again. He was one of the gregarious sort, a loud talker, nervy really, very familiar with all the passengers, and everything did one harm. Famale, Famale! Famallé! a draft fa malte fa malte deigno malle this to all the men from siniscola and they all said yes yes the busmate clambered into the coupe to take the tickets of the second-class passengers in the rotondo through the little wicket there was great squeezing and shouting and reckoning change and then we stopped at a halt and he dashed down with the post and the priest got down for a drink with the other man

men the hamlet driver sat stiff in his seat he pipped the horn he pipped again with decision men came clambering in but it looked as if the offensive priest would be left behind the bus started venomously the priest came running his gown flapping wiping his lips he dropped into his seat with a cackling laugh showing his long teeth and he said that it was as well to take a drink to fortify the stomach to travel with the stomach uneasy did one harm fa malay fa malay non everro chorus of yes the busmate resumed his taking the tickets for the little wicket thrusting his rear amongst us as he stood like this down fell his sheepskin line military overcoat on the q b's head he was filled with grief he folded it and placed it on the seat as a sort of cushion for her oh so gently and how he would love to devote himself to a master and mistress he sat beside me facing the q b and offered us an acid drop we took the acid drop he smiled with zealous yearning at the q b and resumed his conversations then he offered us cigarettes insisted on our taking cigarettes the priest with the long teeth looked sideways at the q b seeing her smoking then he fished out a long cigar bit it and spat he was offered a cigarette but no cigarettes were harmful fan the paper was bad for the health oh very bad a piper or cigar so he lit his long cigar and spat large spits on the floor continually beside me sat a big bright-eyed rather good-looking but foolish man hearing me speak to the q b he said in confidence to the priest here are two germans eh look at them the woman smoking these are a couple of those that were interred here sardinia can do without them now

germans in italy at the outbreak of the war were interned in sardinia and as far as one hears they were left very free and happy and treated very well the sardinians having been generous as all proud people are but now our bright-eyed fool made a great titter through the bus quite unaware that we understood he said nothing offensive but that sort of tittering exultation of common people who think they have you at a disadvantage annoyed me however i kept still to hear what they would say but it was only trivialities about the germans having nearly all gone now they're being free to travel they're coming back to sardinia because they liked it better than germany oh yes they all wanted to come back they all wanted to come back to sardinia oh yes they knew where they were well off they knew their own advantage sardinia was this that and the other of advantageousness and the sardy were decent people it is just as well to put in a word on one's own behalf occasionally as for la gemania she was down down basa what did one pay for bread in germany five francs a kilo my boy the bus stopped again and they trooped out into the hot sun the priest scuffled round the corner this time not to go round the corner was no doubt harmful we waited a frown came between the bus hamlet's brows He looked nerve-worn and tired. It was about three o'clock.

We had to wait for a man from a village with the post, and he did not appear. I'm going, I won't wait, said the driver. Wait, wait a minute, said the mate, pouring oil. And he went round to look. But suddenly the bus started with a vicious lurch. The mate came flying and hung on to the footboard. He had really almost been left.

The driver glanced round Sardonic. to see if he were there. The bus flew on. The mate shook his head in deprecation. He's a bit nervoso of the driver, said the QB, a bit out of temper. Ah, poor chap, said the good-looking young mate, leaning forward and making such beseeching eyes of hot tolerance. One has to be sorry for him. Persons like him, they suffer so much from themselves. How should one be angry with them? Poverino, we must have sympathy. never was such a language of sympathy as the italian poverino pavarino they are never happy unless they are sympathising pityingly with somebody and i rather felt that i was thrown in with the pavarini who had to be pitied for being nervozy which did not improve my temper however the busmate suddenly sat on the opposite seat between the priest and the q b he turned over his official note-book and began to write on the back cover very careful

in the flourishing italian hand then he tore off what he had written and with a very bright and zealous look he handed me the paper saying you will find me a post in england when you go in the summer you will find me a place in london as a chauffeur if i can said i but it is not easy he nodded his head at me with the most complete bright confidence quite sure now that he had settled his case perfectly on the paper he had written his name and his address and if any one would like him as chauffeur they have only to say so on the back of the scrap of paper the inevitable good-will augurie infiniti a bon viaggio infinite good wishes and a good journey i folded the paper and put it in my waistcoat pocket feeling a trifle disconcerted by my new responsibility he was such a dear fellow and such bright trustful eyes this much achieved there was a moment of silence and the busmate turned to take a ticket of a fat comfortable man who had got in at the last stop there was a bit of flying conversation where are they from asked the good-looking stupid man next me inclining his head in our direction londra said our friend with stern satisfaction and they have said so often to one another that london is the greatest city in the world that now the very word londra conveys it all you should have seen the blank little boy look come over the face of the big handsome fellow on hearing that we were citizens of the greatest city in the world and they understand italian he asked rather nipped "'Succooro!' said our friend scornfully.

"'How shouldn't they?' "'Ah, my large neighbour left his mouth open for a few moments.' And then another sort of smile came on to his face. He began to peep at us sideways from his brown eyes, brightly, and was henceforth itching to get into conversation with the citizens of the world's mistress city. His look of semi-impedence was quite gone, replaced by a look of ingratiating admiration now i ask you is this to be born here i sit and he talks half impudently and patronisingly about me and here i sit and he is glegging at me as if he saw signs of an aureole under my grey hat

all in ten minutes and just because instead of la jamania i turn out to be linghiltera i might as well be a place on a map or a piece of goods with a trade mark, so little perception of the actual me, so much going by labels, I now could have kicked him harder. I would have liked to say I was ten times German to see the fool change his smirk again. The priest now chined up that he had been to America, he had been to America, and hence he dreaded not the crossing from Tenoradovo di Sardena to Sivitavekia, for he had crossed the Great Atlantic. Apparently, however, the natives had all heard this song of the Raven before, so he spat largely on the floor, whereupon the new fat neighbour asked him, was it true that the Catholic Church was now becoming the one church in the United States? And the priest said there was no doubt about it. The hot afternoon wore on. The coast was rather more inhabited, but we saw practically no villages. the view was rather desolate from time to time we stopped at a sordid-looking canteen-house from time to time we passed natives riding on their ponies and sometimes there was an equestrian exhibition as the rough strong little beasts reared and travelled rapidly backwards away from the horrors of our great automobile but the male rider sat heavy and unshakable with sardinian male force everybody in the bus laughed and we passed looking back to see the ponies still corkscrewing but in vain in the middle of the lonely grass-bordered high-road the bus-mate climbed in and out coming in to sit near us he was like a dove which has at last found an olive-bow to nest in and we were the olive-bow in this world of waste waters

alas i felt a broken reed but he sat so serenely near us now like a dog that has found a master the afternoon was declining the bus pelted on at a great rate ahead we saw the big lump of the island of tavolara a magnificent mass of rock which fascinated me by its splendid weighty form it looks like a headland for it apparently touches the land there it rests at the sea's edge in this lost afternoon world strange how this coast country does not belong to our present-day world as we rushed along we saw steamers two steamers steering south and one sailing ship coming from italy and instantly the steamers seemed like our own familiar world but still this coast country was forsaken forgotten not included it just is not included it just is not included how tired one gets of these long long rides it seemed we should never come up to tavalara but we did we came right near to it and saw the beach with the waves rippling undisturbed saw the narrow waters between the rock lump and the beach for now the road was down at sea level and we are not very far from terra nova yet all seemed still forsaken outside of the world's life The sun was going down, very red and strong, away inland. In the bus all were silent, subsiding into the pale travelled sleep. We charged along the flat road, down on a plain now,

and dusk was gathering heavily over the land. We saw the high road curve flat upon the plain. It was the harbour head. We saw a magic land-locked harbour, with masts and dark land encircling a glowing bay. we even saw a steamer lying at the end of a long thin bank of land in the shallow shining wide harbour as if wrecked there and this was our steamer but no it looked in the powerful glow of the sunset like some lonely steamer laid up in some landlocked bay away at spitzberg and towards the north pole a solemn mysterious blue-landed bay lost lost to mankind our busmate came and told us we were to sit in the bus till the post-work was done then we should be driven to the hotel where we could eat and then he would accompany us on the town omnibus to the boat we need not be on board till eight o'clock and now it was something after five so we sat still while the bus rushed and the road curved and the view of the weird landlocked harbour changed though the bare masts of ships in a bunch still pricked the upper glow

and the steamer lay away out as if wrecked on a sand-bank and dark mysterious land with bunchy hills circled round dark blue and wintry in a golden after-light while the great shallow seeming bay of water shone like a mirror in we charged past a railway along the flat darkening road into a flat god-loss town of dark houses on the marshy bay head it felt more like a settlement than a town but it was terra nova pausanias and after bumping and rattling down a sombre uncouth barren seeming street we came up with a jerk at a doorway which was the post-office urchins mudlarks were screaming for the luggy Everybody got out and set off towards the sea, the urchins carrying luggage. We sat still. Till I couldn't bear it. I did not want to stay in the automobile another moment, and I did not. I did not want to be accompanied by a new friend of the steamer. So I burst out, and the QB followed. She too was relieved to escape the new attachment, though she had a great tarned her for him. but in the end one runs away from one's tondre much harder and more precipitately than from one's d'urre the mud-larking urchins fell upon us had we any more luggage were we going to the steamer i asked how one went to the steamer did one walk

i thought perhaps it would be necessary to row out you go on foot or in a carriage or in an aeroplane said an impudent brat how far ten minutes could one go to go to-go out you go on foot or in a carriage or in an aeroplane said an impudent brat how far ten minutes could one go on board at once yes certainly so in spite of the q b's protests i handed the sack to all wicked urchin to be led she wanted us to go alone but i did not know the way and am wary of stumbling into entanglements in these parts i told the bus hamlet who was abstract with nerve fatigue pleased to tell his comrade that i would not forget the commission and i tap my waistcoat pocket where the paper lay over my heart. He briefly promised, and we escaped. We escaped any further friendship. I bade the mudlark lead me to the telegraph office, which of course was quite remote from the post-office. Shouldering the sack and clamouring for the Kitchenino, which the QB stuck to, he marched forward. By his height he was ten years old. By his face with its evil mudlark pallor and good looks, he was forty. he wore a cut-down soldier's tunic which came nearly to his knees was barefoot and sprightly with that alert mud-larking quickness which has its advantages

so we went down a passage and climbed a stair and came to an office where one would expect to register births and deaths but the urchin said it was the telegraph office no sign of life peering through the wicket i saw a fat individual seated writing in the distance feeble lights relieved the big barren official spaces i wonder the fat official wasn't afraid to be up here alone he made no move i banged the shutter and demanded a telegraph blank his shoulders went up to his ears and he plainly intimated his attention to let us wait but i said loudly to the urchin is that the telegraph official and the urchin said si signore so the fat individual had to come come after which considerable delay we set off again the bus thank heaven had gone the savage dark street was empty of friends we turned away to the harbour front it was dark now i saw a railway near at hand a bunch of dark masts the steam are showing a few lights far down at the tip of a long spit of land remote in mid-harbour and so off we went the barefoot urchin twinkling a few lights the steamer showing a few lights far down at the tip of a long spit of land remote in mid-harbour and so off we went the barefoot urchin twinkling a few yards ahead on the road that followed the spit of land the spit was wide enough to carry this road and a railway on the right was a silent house apparently built on piles in the harbour away far down in front leaned our glimmering steamer and a little train was shunting trucks among the low sheds beside it night had fallen and the great stars flashed erion was in the air and his dog star after him we followed on down the dark bar between the silent lustrous water the harbour was smooth as glass and gleaming like a mirror

hills came round encircling it entirely dark land ridging up and lying away out even to seaward one was not sure which was exactly seaward the dark encircling of the land seemed stealthy the hills had a remorse moateness guarding the waters in the silence perhaps the great mass away beyond was tavalara again it seemed like some lumpish burg guarding an arctic locked-up bay where ships lay dead on and on we followed the urchin till the town was left behind until it also twinkled a few meagre lights out of its low confused blackness at the bay head across the waters we had left the shipmasts and the settlement The urchin padded on, only turning now and again and extending a thin, eager hand towards the Kitchenino. Especially when some men were advancing down the railway, he wanted it. The QBs carrying it was a slur on his prowess. So the Kitchenino was relinquished, and the lark strode on satisfied.

Till at last we came to the low sheds that squatted between the steamer and the railway end. The lark led me into one where a red cap was writing. The cap let me wait some minutes before informing me that this was the goods office. The ticket office was further on. The lark flew at him and said, Then you've changed it, have you? And he led me on to another shed which was just going to shut up. Here they finally had the condescension to give me two tickets,

a hundred and fifty francs the two. So we followed the lark, who strode like Skippy O'Rourke, africarnas up the gangway with the sack it was quite a small ship the steward put me in number one cabin the q b in number seven each cabin had four berths consequently man and woman must separate rigorously on this ship here was a blow for the q b who knows what italian female fellow-passengers can be however there we were all the cabins were down below and all for some reason inside no port potholes outside it was hot and close down below already i pitched the sack on my berth and there stood the lark on the red carpet at the door i gave him three francs he looked at it as if it were my death warrant he peered at the paper in the light of the lamp then he extended his arm with a gesture of superb insolence flinging me back my gold without a word how said i three francs are quite enough three francs are quite enough three francs two kilometers and three pieces of luggage no signore no five francs tinkwe franki and averting his pallid old mud-larking face and flinging his hand out at me he stood the image of indignant repudiation and truly he was no taller than my upper waistcoat pocket the brat the brat he was such an actor and so impudent that i wavered between wonder and amusement and a great inclination to kick him up

the steps. I decided not to waste my energy being angry. What a beastly little boy! What a horrid little boy! What a horrid little boy! Really a little thief! A little swindler! I mused aloud. Swindler, he quavered after me, and he was beaten. Swindler doubled him up. That and the quiet mildness of my tone of invocation. Now he would have gone with his three francs, and now in final contempt i gave him the other two he disappeared like a streak of lightning up the gangway terrified lest the steward should come and catch him at his tricks for later on i saw the steward send other larks flying for demanding more than one fifty the brat the question was now the cabin for the cubies simply refused to entertain the idea of sharing a cabin with three italian women who would all be sick simply for the fire of it that the sea was smooth as glass we hunted up the steward he said all the first-class cabins had four berths the second had three but much smaller how that was possible i don't know

however if no one came he would give us a cabin to ourselves the ship was clean and civilized though very pokey and there we were we went on deck would we eat on board asked another person no we wouldn't we went out to a fourth little shed which was a refreshment stool and bought bread and sardines and chocolate and apples then we went on the upper deck to make our meal in a sheltered place i lit the spirit lamp and put on water to boil the water we had taken from the cabin then we sat down alone in the darkness on a seat which had its back against the deck cabins now appropriated by the staff a thin cold wind was travelling we were at the one plaid round us both and snugged together waiting for the tea to boil i could just see the point of the spirit flame licking up from where we sat the stars were marvellous in the soundless sky so big that one could see them hanging orb-like and alone in their own space yet all the myriads particularly bright the evening star and he hung full flashing in the lower night with a power that made me hold my breath. Grand and powerful, he sent out his flashes so sparkling that he seemed more intense than any sun or moon. And from the dark uprising land he sent his way of light to us across the water, a marvellous

star road. So all above us the stars soared and pulsed over that silent, night-dark land-locked harbour, after a long time the water boiled and we drank our hot tea and ate our sardines and bread and bits of remaining nuoro sausage sitting there alone in the intense starry darkness of that upper deck i said alone but no two ghoulish ships cats came howling at us for the bits and even when everything was eaten and the sardine tin thrown in the sea still they circled and prowled and howled we sat on resting under the magnificent deep heavens wrapped together in the old shepherd's shawl for which i have blessed so often a scottish friend half sheltered from the cold night wind and recovering somewhat from the sixty miles bus ride we had done that day as yet there was nobody on the ship we were the very first at least in the first class above all was silent and deserted below all was lit up and deserted but it was a little ship with accommodation for some thirty-first-class and forty-second-class passengers. In the low-deck forward stood two rows of cattle, eighteen cattle. They stood tied up side by side and quite motionless, as if stupefied.

Only two had lain down. The rest stood motionless, with tails dropped and heads dropped, as if drugged or gone insensible. These cattle on the ship fascinated the QB. She insisted on going down to them and examining them minutely. But there they were, stiff almost as Noah's ark cows. What she could not understand was that they neither cried nor struggled. Motionless, terribly motionless. In her idea cattle are wild and indomitable creatures.

She will not realise the horrid strength of passivity and inertia, is almost a preponderant force in domesticated creatures men and beasts alike there are fowls too in various coops flapping and agitated these at last at about half-past seven the train from the island arrived and the people surged out in a mass we stood hanging over the end of the upper deck looking down on they poured in a thick mass up the gangway with all conceivable sorts of luggage bundled embroidered carry-alls, bags, saddle-bags, the QB lamenting she had not bought one, a sudden surging mass of people and goods. There are soldiers, too, but these are lined upon the bit of a key to wait.

Our interest is to see whether there will be any more first-class passengers. Coming up the wide board which serves as a gangway, each individual hands a ticket to the man at the top and is shooed away to his own region, usually second class. There are three sorts of tickets, green first class, white second and pink third.

The second class passengers go aft, the third class go forward along the passage past our cabins into the steerage. And so we watch and watch the excited people come on board and divide. Nearly all are second class

and a great many are women. We have seen a few first class men, but as yet no women, and every hat with ospreys gives the QB a qualm. For a long time we are safe. The women flood to the second class. One who is third begs and beseeches to go with her friends in the second, I am glad to say without success. And then, alas, an elderly man with a daughter first class. They are very respectable and pleasant looking, but the QB whales. I'm sure she will be sick. Towards the end come three convicts chained together. They wear the brownish striped, homespun, and do not look evil. They seem to be

laughing together, not at all in distress. The two young soldiers who guard them and who have guns look nervous. So the convicts go forward to the steerage past our cabins. At last the soldiers are straightened up and turned on board. There almost at once they start making a tent, drawing a huge tarpaulin over a cross-rope in the mid-deck below us between the first and second-class regions. The great tarpaulin is pulled down well on either side and fastened down, and it makes a big dark tent.

The soldiers creep in and place their bundles, and now it is the soldiers who, fascinate the q b she hangs over the bar above and peers in the soldiers arrange themselves in two rows they will sleep with their heads on their bundles on either side of the tent the two rows of feet coming together inwards but first they must eat for it is eight o'clock and more out come their suppers a whole roast fowl hunks of kid legs of lamb huge breads the fowl is dismembered with a jack-knife in a twinkling and shared. Everything among the soldiers is shared. There they sit in their penthouse with its open ends, crowded together and happy,

chewing with all their might, and clapping one another on the shoulder lovingly, and taking swigs at the wine-bottles. We envy them their good food. At last all are on board. The omnibus has driven up from town and gone back. A last young lout dashes up in a carriage, and scuffles aboard.

The crew begins to run about. The key porters have trotted on board with the last bales and packages. All is stowed safely. The steamer hoots and hoots. Two men and a girl kiss their friends all round and get off the ship. The night re-echos the steamer's hoots.

The sheds have gone all dark. Far off the town twinkles very sparsely. All is night deserted. and so the gangway is hauled up and the rope hawsers quickly wound in we are drifting away from the quay side the few watchers wave their white handkerchiefs standing diminutive and forlorn on the dark little key in the heart of the dark deserted harbour one woman cries and waves and weeps a man makes exaggerated flag-wagging signals with his white hanky and feels important we drift and the engines begin to beat we are moving in the land-locked harbour everybody watches the commander and the crew shout orders and so very slowly and without any fuss at all like a man wheeling a barrow out of a yard gate we throb very slowly out of the harbour past one point then past another away from the encircling hills away from the great lump of tavelara which is to southward away from the outreaching land to the north

and over the edge of the open sea. And now to try for a cabin to ourselves. I approach the steward. Yes, he says he has it in mind, but there are 80 second-class passengers in an accommodation space for 40. The transit controller is now considering it. Most probably he will transfer some second-class women

to the vacant first-class cabins if he does not do so then the steward will accommodate us i know what this means this equivocation we decide not to bother any more so we make a tour of the ship to look at the soldiers who have finished eating sitting yarning to one another while some were already stretched out in the shadow for sleep then to look at the cattle which stand rooted to the deck which is now all messes to look at the unhappy fowls in their coops and are people at the third class rather horrifying and so to bed already the other three berths in my cabin are occupied the lights are switched off

as I enter I hear one young man tenderly inquiring of the birth below does thou feel ill not much not much says the other faintly yet the sea is like glass so smooth. I am quickly rolled in my lower berth where I feel the trembling of the machine-impelled ship, and hear the creaking of the berth above me as its occupant rolls over. I listen to the sighs of the

others, the wash of dark water, and so uneasily, rather hot and very airless, uneasy with the machine throbbing and the sighing of my companions and with a cock that crows shrilly from one of the coops imagining the ship's lights to be dawn the night goes by one sleeps but a bad sleep if only there were cold air not this lower berth inside cabin airlessness end of chapter seven chapter eight of sea and sardinia by d h lawrence this Libravox recording is in the public domain, recording by Anthony Ogus. Back. The sea being steady as a level road, nobody succeeded in being violently sick. My young men rose at dawn, I was not long in following. It was a grey morning on deck, a grey sea, a grey sky,

and a grey spider-cloth, unimportant coast of Italy not far away. the q b joined me and quite delighted with her fellow-passenger such a nice girl she said who when she let down her ordinary-looking brown hair it reached rippling right to her feet voila you never know your luck the cock that had crowed all night crowed again hoarsely with a sore throat the miserable cattle looked more wearily miserable but still were motionless as sponges that grow at the bottom of the sea the convicts were out for air grinning some one told us they were war deserters considering the light in which these people look on war desertions seemed to me the only heroism but the q b brought up in a military air gazed upon them as upon men miraculously alive within the shadow of death according to her code they had been shot when recaptured the soldiers had unsung the tarpaulin their home for the night had melted with the darkness they were mere fragments of great transit smoking cigarettes and staring overboard. We drew near to Civita Vecya, the old medieval-looking port with its castle, and around fortress barracks at the entrance. Soldiers aboard shouted and waved to soldiers on the ramparts.

We backed insignificantly into the rather scrubby, insignificant harbour, and in five minutes we were out, and walking along the wide, desolate boulevard to the station. The cabmen looked hard at us, but no doubt, owing to the knapsack, took us for poor Germans. Coffee and milk, and then only about three quarters of an hour late, the train from the north. It is the night express from Turin. There was plenty of room, so in we got,

followed by half a dozen Sardinians. We found a large, heavy, Torernese, in the carriage his eyes dead with fatigue it seemed quite a new world on the mainland and at once one breathed again the curious suspense that is in the air once more i read the corriere de la sara from end to end once more we knew ourselves in the real active world where the air seems like a lively wine dissolving the pearl of the old order i hope dear reader you like the metaphor yet i cannot forbear repeating how strongly one is sensible of the solvent property of the atmosphere suddenly arriving on the mainland again and in an hour one changes one's psyche the human being is a most curious creature he thinks he has got one soul and he has got dozens i felt my sound sardinian soul melting off me i felt myself evaporating into the real italian uncertainty and momentaneity so i peruse the coriere whilst the metamorphosis took place i like italian newspapers because they say what they mean and not merely what is most convenient to say we call it naivety i call it manliness italian newspapers read as if they were written by men and not by calculating eunuchs

the train ran very heavily along the meremma it began to rain then we stopped at a station where we should not stop somewhere in the meremma country the invisible sea not far off the low country cultivated and yet forlorn oh how the turin man sighed and wearily shifted his feet as the train stood meaningless there it sat in the rain oh express at last on again till we were winding through the curious long troughs of the Roman Capagna. There the shepherds minded the sheep, the slender-footed marino sheep. In Sardinia the Marinos were very white and glistening, so that one thought of the scriptural white as wool. And the black sheep among the flock were very black, but these capunya were no longer white but dingy.

And though the wildness of the Campania is a real wildness still, it is a historic wildness familiar in its way as a fireside is familiar so we approach the hoperous sprawling of modern rome over the yellow tiber past the famous pyramid tomb skirting the walls of the city till at last we plunge in into the well-known station out of all the chaos we are late it is a quarter to twelve and i have to go out and change money and i hope to find my two friends. The QB and I dashed down the platform, no friends at the barrier. The station moderately empty. We bolt across to the departure platforms. The Naples train stands ready. In we pitch our bags, ask a naval man not to let anyone steal them, then I fly out into town while the QB buys food and wine at the buffet. It no longer rains and Rome feels as ever, rather holiday-like and not inclined to care about anything i get a hundred and three lire for each pound note pocket my money at two minutes past twelve and bolt back out of the piazza deleterne

ah ha there are the two missing ones just ascending vaguely from a carriage the one gazing inquiringly through his monocle across the tram lines the other very tall and alert and elegant looking as if he expected us to appear out of the air for his convenience which is exactly what happens we fly into each other's arms oh there you are where's the q b why are you here we've been to the arrival platform no sign of you of course i only got your wire half an hour ago we flew here well how nice to see you oh let the man wait what going on at once to naples but must you oh but how flighty you are birds of passage veraimente then let us find the cue be quick and they won't let us on the platform no they're not issuing platform tickets to-day oh merely the guests returning from the savoy bavarian wedding in the north a few royal duchesses about oh well we must try and wangle him at the barrier a woman trying in vain to be let on to the station but what a roman matron can't do an elegant young Englishman can. So our two heroes wangle their way in, and fall into the arms of the QB by the Naples train. Well now, tell us all about it! So we rush into a four-branched candlestick of conversation. In my ear murmurs he of the monocle about the Sahara. He is back from the Sahara

a week ago, the winter sun in the Sahara. He with the smears of paint on his elegant trousers, is given the q b a sketchy outline of his now grande passeon click goes the exchange and he of the monocle is detailing to the q b his trip to japan on which he will start in six weeks time while he of the paint smears is expiating on the thrills of the etching needle and concocting a plan for a month in sardinia in may with me doing the scribbles and he the pictures what sort of pictures out flies the name of goya and well now a general rush into oneness and won't they come down to sicily to us for the arm and blossom in about ten days time yes they will why when the arm and blossom is just stepping on the stage and making its grand bow and they will come next day somebody has smitten the wheel of a coach two ringing smacks with a hammer this is a sign to get in the q b is terrified the train will slip through her fingers i'm frightened i must get in very well then you sure you have everything you want everything a fiasco vino oh two all the better well then ten days time all right quite sure how nice to have seen you if only a glimpse yes yes poor q b yes you're quite safe good-bye good-bye the door is shut we are seated the train moves out of the station and quickly on this route rome disappears we have are out on the wintry Campagna where crops are going. Away on the left we see the Tivoli hills, and think of the summer that is gone, the heat,

the fountains of the Velodeste. The train rolls heavily over the Campania towards the Alban mounts, homewards. So we fall on our food and devour the excellent little beefsteaks and rolls and boiled eggs, apples and oranges and dates, and drink the good red wine, and wild discussed plans and the latest news and are altogether thrilled about things so thrilled that we are well away among the romantic mountains of the south centre before we realise that there are other passengers besides ourselves in the carriage half the journey is over why there is the monastery on its high hill in a wild moment i suggest we shall get down and spend a night up there at monte cassino and see the other friend the monk who knows so much about the world being out of it but the cuby shudders thinking of the awful winter coldness of that massive stone monastery which has no spark of heating apparatus and therefore the plan subsides and a at Casino Station I only get down to procure coffee and sweet cakes. They always have good things to eat at Casino Station. In summer, big fresh ices and fruits and iced water. In winter,

toothsome sweet cakes which make an awfully good finish to a meal. I count Casino halfway to Naples. After Casino, the excitement of being in the north begins quite to evaporate. The southern heaviness descends upon us. Also the sky begins to darken and the rain falls. I think of the night before us on the sea again, and I am vaguely troubled lest we may not get a berth. However, we may spend the night in Naples, or even sit on in this train which goes forward all through the long, long night, to the Straits of Messina. We must decide as we near Naples. half-dosing one becomes aware of the people about one. We are travelling second class.

Opposite is a little, Hold Your Own school-mistressy young person in Pansney. Next her, a hollow-cheeked white soldier with ribbons on his breast. Then a fat man in a corner. Then a naval officer of low rank. The naval officer is coming from Fjome, and is dead with sleep, and perhaps, mortification. Danuncio has just given up. Two compartments away we hear soldiers singing,

Marshall still though bruised with fatigue, the Danuncio bragging songs of Fiume. They are soldiers of the Danuncio Legion, and one of them, I hear the six soldiers saying, is very hot and republican still. Private soldiers are not allowed with their reduced tickets to travel on the express trains, but these legionaries are not penniless. They have paid the excess and come along. For the moment they are sent to their homes, and with heads dropping with fatigue, we hear them still defiantly singing down the carriage for denuncio. A regular officer went along, a captain of the Italian, not the Fume army. He heard the chance and entered the carriage. The legionaries were quiet, but they lounged and

ignore the entry of the officer. On your feet, he yelled Italian fashion. The vehemence did it. Reluctantly as may be, they stood up in the compartment. Salute! And though it was bitter, up went their hands

in the salute whilst he stood and watched them. And then, very superb, he sauntered away again. They sat down glowering. Of course they were beaten. Didn't they know it? the men in our carriage smiled curiously in slow and futile mockery of both parties the rain was falling outside the windows were steamed quite dense so that we were shut in from the world

throughout the length of the train which was not very full could be felt the exhausted weariness and the dispirited dejection of the poor danuncio legionaries in the afternoon silence of the mist enclosed half-empty train train, the snatches of song broke out again and faded in sheer dispirited fatigue. We ran on blindly and heavily, but one young fellow was not to be abashed. He was well built, and his thick black hair was brushed up like a great fluffy crest upon his head. He came slowly and unabated down the corridor, and on every big, missed opaque pain he scrawled with his finger, W. Danunzio Gabby, W. Danuncio Gabrieli. The six soldier laughed thinly, saying to the schoolmistress,

Oh, yes, they are fine chaps, but it was folly. Danuncio is a world poet, a world wonder. But Fume was a mistake, you know. And these chaps have got to learn a lesson. They got beyond themselves. Oh, they aren't short of money. Danuncio had wagon loads of money there in Fume,

and he wasn't altogether mean with it. the schoolmistress who was one of the sharp ones gave a little disquisition to show why it was a mistake and wherein she knew better than the world's poet and wonder it always makes me sick to hear people chewing over newspaper pulp the sick soldier was not a legionary he had been wounded through the lung but it was healed he said he lifted the flap of his breast pocket and there hung a little silver medal it was his wound metal he wore it concealed and over the place of the wound he and the schoolmistress looked at one another significantly then they talked pensions and soon were on the old topic the schoolmistress had her figures pat as a schoolmistress should why the ticket-collector the man who punches one's tickets on the train now had twelve thousand lire a year twelve thousand lire monstrous whilst a fully qualified professore a schoolmaster who had been through all his training and had all his degrees was given five thousand five thousand for a fully qualified professore and twelve thousand for a ticket puncher the soldier agreed and quoted other figures but the railway was the outstanding grievance every boy who left school now said the schoolmistress wanted to go on the railway oh but said the soldier the soldier the the train men.

The naval officer who collapsed into the most uncanny positions, blind with sleep, got down at Capua to get into a little train that would carry him back to his own station, where our train had not stopped. At Caserta, the sick soldier got out. Down the great avenue of trees, the rain was falling. A young man entered, remained also the schoolmistress and the stout man. knowing we had been listening the school mystery spoke to us about the soldier then she had said she was catching the night-boat for palermo i asked her if she thought the ship would be very full oh yes very full she said why hers was one of the last cabin numbers and she had got her ticket early that morning the fat man now joined in he too was crossing to palermo the ship was sure to be quite full by now were we depending on booking births

at the port of Naples? We were. Whereupon he and the schoolmistress shook their heads, and said it was more than doubtful. Nay, it was as good as impossible. For the boat was the renown Cita di Trieste, that floating palace, and such was the fame of her gorgeousness that everybody wanted to travel by her. First and second class alike, I asked. Oh yes, also first class, replied the schoolma'am rather spitefully. so I knew she had a white ticket. Second. I cursed the Sita de Trieste and her gorgeousness, and looked down my nose.

We had now two alternatives, to spend the night in Naples, or to sit on all through the night to next morning, and arrive home with Heaven's Aid in the early afternoon. Though these long-distance trains think nothing of six hours late, but we were tired already, what we should be like after another time, twenty-four hours sitting, heaven knows. And yet to struggle for a bed in a Naples hotel this night,

in the rain, all the hotels being at present crowned with foreigners, that was no rosy prospect. Oh dear! However, I was not going to take their discouragement so easily. One has been had that way before. They loved to make the case look desperate. Were we English? asked the schoolmistress. We were. Ah, a fine thing. thing to be english in italy now why rather tart from me because of the cumbo the exchange you english with your money exchange you come here and buy everything for nothing you take the best of everything and with your money you pay nothing for it whereas we poor italians we pay heavily for everything at an exaggerated price and we can have nothing ah it is all very nice to be english in italy now you can travel you go to the hotels you can see a everything and buy everything and it costs you nothing what is the exchange to-day she whipped it out a hundred and four twenty this she told me to my nose and the fat man murmured bitterly giya gia ay ay her impertinence and the fat man's quiet bitterness stirred my bile has not this song been sung at me once too often by these people you are mistaken said i to the schoolmistress we don't buy any means live in italy for nothing even with the exchange at a hundred and three we don't live for nothing we pay and pay through the nose for whatever we have in italy and you italians see that we pay what you put all the tariff you do on foreigners and then say we live her for nothing i tell you i could live in england just as well on the same money perhaps better compare the cost of things in england with the cost here in italy and even considering the exchange italy costs nearly as much as england

some things are cheaper here the railway comes a little cheaper and is infinitely more miserable travelling is usually a misery but other things clothes of all sorts and a good deal of food is even more expensive here than in england exchange considered oh yes she said england had had to bring her prices down this last fortnight in her own interests indeed this last fortnight this last fortnight this last six months said i whereas prices rise every single day here hear a word from the quiet young man who got in at caserta yes he said yes i say every nation pays in its own money no matter what the exchange and it works out about equal but i felt angry am i always to have the exchange flung in my teeth as if i were a personal thief but the woman persisted ah she said we italians we we are so nice we're so good no is yi so good-natured but others they are not warn me they're not good-natured to us and she nodded her head and truly i did not feel at all good-natured towards her which she knew and as for the italian good-natured it forms a sound and unshakable basis nowadays for their extortion and self-justification and spite darkness was falling over the rich flat plains that lie around naples over the tall uncanny vines with their brown thongs in the intensely cultivated black earth it was night by the time we were in that vast and thievish station about half-past five we were not very late should we sit on in our present carriage and go down in it to the port along with the schoolmistress and risk it but first look at the coach which was going on to

Sicily. So we got down and ran along the train to the Syracuse coach. Hubbub, confusion, a wedge in the corridor, and for sure no room. Certainly no room to lie down a bit. We could not sit tight for 24 hours more. So he decided to go to the port and to walk. Heaven knows when the railway carriage will be shunted down. Back we went therefore for the sack and told the schoolmistress our intention. You can but try, she said frostily. So there we are with the sack over my shoulder and the kitchenino in the QB's hand bursting out of that thrice damned and annoying station, and running through the black, wet gulf of a Naples night in a slow rain. Cabman, look at us, but my sack saved me. I am weary of that boa constrictor, a Naples cabman after dark.

by day there is more or less a tariff. It is about a mile from the station to the key where the ship lies. We make our way through the deep gulf-like streets over the slippery black cobbles. The black houses rise massive to a great height on either side, but the streets are not in this part very narrow. We plunge forwards in the unearthly half-darkness of this great, uncontrolled city.

There are no lights at all from the buildings, only the small electric lamps of the streets. So we emerge on the harbour front and hurry past the great storehouses in the rainy night to where the actual entrances begin. The tram bangs past us. We scuffle along that pavement ridge which lies like an isthmus

down the vast black quicksands of that harbour road. One feels peril all round. but at length we come to a gate by the harbour railway no not that on to the next iron gate of the railway crossing and so we run out past the great sheds and the buildings of the port station till we see a ship rearing in front and the sea all black but now where is that little hole where one gets the tickets we are at the back of everywhere in this desert jungle of the harbour darkness a man directs us round the corner and actually does not demand money. It is the sack again. So, there I see the knot of men, soldiers chiefly, fighting in a bare room round a tiny wicket.

I recognise the place where I have fought before. So while the QB stands guard over sack and bag, I plunge into the fray. It literally is a fight. Some thirty men, all at once, want to get at a tiny wicket in a blank wall. There are no queue rails, there is no order, just a hole in a blank wall, and thirty fellows, mostly military, pressing at it in a mass.

But I have done this before. The way is to insert the thin end of oneself, and without any violence, by deadly pressure and pertinacity, come at the goal. One hand must be kept fast over the money pocket, and one must be free to clutch the wicket's side when one gets there. and thus one is ground small in those mills of god demos struggling for tickets it isn't very nice so close so incomparably crushed and never for a second must one be off one's guard for one's watch and money and even hanky when i first came to italy after the war i was robbed twice in three weeks floating round in the sweet old innocent confidence in mankind since then i have never ceased to be on my guard somehow or other waking and sleeping one's spirit must be on its guard nowadays which is really what i prefer now i have learnt it confidence in the goodness of mankind is a very thin protection indeed

integur vitais sclerisque purus will do nothing for you when it comes to humanity however efficacious it may be with lions and wolves therefore tight on my guard like a screw biting into a bit of wool I bite my way through that not of fellows to the wicket, and shout for two first class. The clerk inside ignores me for some time, serving soldiers. But if you stand like doomsday, you get your way. Two firsts, said the clerk. Husband and wife, say I, in case there is a two-birth cabin. Jokes behind. But I get my tickets, impossible to put my hand to my pocket. The tickets cost about a hundred and five francs each clutching paper change and the green slips with a last gasp i get out of the knot so we've done it as i sought my money and stow away i hear another ask for one first-class nothing left says the clerk so you see how one must fight i must say for these dense and struggling crowds they are only intents not violent and not in the least brutal i always feel a certain sympathy with the men in them bolt through the pouring rain to the ship and in two minutes we are aboard and behold each of us has a deck cabin i one to myself the cubita herself next door palatial not a cabin at all but a cabin at all but a

proper little bedroom with a curtain bed under the porthole windows a comfortable sofa chairs table carpets big wash-bowls with silver taps a hold deluxe i dropped the sack on the sofa with a gasp drew back the yellow curtains of the bed looked out of the porthole at the lights of naples and sighed with relief one could wash thoroughly refreshingly and change one's linen wonderful end of chapter eight section one chapter eight section two of sea and sardinia by d h lawrence this lebravox recording is in the public domain recording by antonyogus the stateroom is like an hotel lounge many little tables with flowers and periodicals armchairs warm carpet bright but soft lights and people sitting about chatting a loud group of english people in one corner very assured two quiet english ladies various italians seeming quite modest here one could sit in peace and rest pretending to look at an illustrated magazine so we rested after about an hour there entered a young englishman his wife whom we had seen on our train so at last the coach had been shunted down to the port where should we have been had we waited the waiters began to flap the white tablecloths and spread the tables nearest the walls dinner would begin at half-past seven immediately the boat started we sat in silence till eight or nine tables was spread then we let the other people take their choice after which we chose a table by ourselves neither of us wanting company

so we sat before the plates and the wine-bottles and sighed in the hopes of a decent meal food by the way is not included in the hundred and five francs alas we sat before the plates and the wine-bottles and sighed in the hopes of a decent meal food by the way is not included in the hundred and five francs alas we were not to be alone two young neapolitans pleasant quiet blonde or semi-blond they were well bred and evidently of northern extraction afterwards we found out they were jeweller's but i like their quiet gentle manners the dinner began and we were through the soup when up pranced another young fellow rather strapping and loud a commercial traveller for sure he had those cocky assured manners of one who is not sure of his manners he had a rather high forehead and black hair brushed up in a showy wing and a large ring on his finger not that a ring signifies anything here most of the men wear several all massively jewelled if one believed in all the jewels why italy would be more fabulous than fabled india but our friend the bounder was smart and smelled of cash not money but cash i had an inkling of what to expect when he handed the salt and said in english salt thank you but i ignored the advance however he did not wait long through the windows across the room the q b saw the lights of the harbour slowly moving oh she cried are we going and also in italian patiamo all watched the lights the bounder screwing round. He had one of the fine bounderish backs. Yes, he said, we, going. Oh, cried she,

do you speak English? Yes, some English I speak. As a matter of fact, he spoke about forty disconnected words, but his accent was so good for these forty. He did not speak English. He imitated an English voice making sounds, and the effect was startling. He had served on the Italian front with the Scots guards, so he told us in Italian. He was Milanese. Oh, he had had a time with the Scots guards. Whiskey, eh, whiskey! Come along, boys, he shouted. And it was such a Scotch voice shouting, so loud-mouthed and actual, I nearly went under the table. It struck us both like a blow. afterwards he rattled away without misgiving he was a traveller for a certain type of machine and was doing sicily shortly he was going to england and he asked largely about first-class hotels

then he asked was the cuby french was she italian no she was german ah german and immediately out he came with the german word deuch deyche from deutchland oh yes deutchland uber allis ah i know no more what deutchland unter alice now deutchland unta alice and he bounced on his seat with gratification of the words of germin as of english he knew half a dozen phrases no said the cubie not deutschland unta allus not for long anyhow how how for long you think so i think so too too said the bounder. Then in Italian, Lajamania won't stand under rule for long. No, no. A present is England, Uber Alas.

England, over alas. But Germany will rise up again. Of course, said the QB. How shouldn't she? Ah, said the bounder, while England keeps the money in her pocket, we shall none of us rise up. Italy won the war, and Germany lost it.

And Italy and Germany, they both are down, and England is up. They both are down and England is up. England and France. Strange, isn't it? Ah, the Allies. What are the Allies for? To keep England up? And France halfway. And Germany and Italy down. Ah, they won't stay down for ever, said the QB. You think not? Ah, we will see. We will see how England goes on now. England is not going on so marvellously after all. say i how not you mean ireland no not only ireland industry altogether england is as near to ruin as other countries ma with all the money and we others with no money how will she be ruined and what good would it be to you if she were oh well who knows if england were ruined a slow smile of anticipation spread over his face how he would love it how they would all love it if england were ruined ruined that is the business part of them perhaps would not love it but the human part would the human part fairly licks its lips at the thought of england's ruin the commercial part however quite violently disclaims the anticipations of the human part and there it is

the newspapers chiefly speak with the commercial voice but individually when you are got at in a railway carriage or is now on a ship up speaks the human voice and you know how they love you this is no doubt inevitable when the exchange stands at a hundred and six men go humanly blind i suppose however much they may keep the commercial eye open and having gone humanly blind they bump into one's human self nastily a nasty jar you know then how they hate you underneath they hate us and as human beings we are objects of envy and malice they hate us with envy and despise us with jealousy which perhaps doesn't hurt commercially humanly it is to me unpleasant the dinner was over and the bounder was lavishing cigarette muratis if you please we had all drunk two bottles of wine two other commercial travellers who joined the bounder at our table two smart young fellows one a bounder and one gentle and nice our two jewellers remained quiet talking their share but quietly and so sensitively one could not help liking them so we were seven people six men whisky will you drink whisky mister said our original bounder yes one small scotch one scotch whisky all this in a perfect scotty voice of a man standing at a bar calling for a drink it was comical one could not but laugh and very impertinent he called for the waiter took him by the button-hole and with a breast-to-breast intimacy asked if there was whisky the waiter with the same tone of you

you and i are men who have the same feelings said he didn't think there was whisky but he would look our bounder went round the table inviting us all to whiskeys and pressing on us his expensive english cigarettes with great aplomb the whisky came and five persons partook it was fiery oily stuff from heaven knows where the bounder rattled away spouting his bits of english and his four words of german he was in high feather wriggling his large raunches on his chair and waving his hands he had a peculiar manner of wriggling from the bottom of his back with fussy self-assertiveness it was my turn to offer whisky i was able in a moment's lull to peer through the windows and see the dim lights of capri the glimmer of anacupri up on the black shadow the lighthouse we had passed the the island in the midst of the babble i sent out a few thoughts to a few people on the island then i had to come back the bounder had once more resumed his theme of lingletera litalia la jamania he swanked england as hard as he could of course england was the top dog and if he could speak some english if he were talking to english people and if as he said he was going to england in april why was he so much the more top-doggy than his companions who could not rise to all these heights at the same time my nerves had too much to bear where were we going and where had we been and where did we live and ah yes english people lived in italy thousands thousands of english people lived in italy yes it was very nice for them there used to be many germans but now the germans were down but the english what could be better

for them than Italy now. They had sun, they had warmth, they had abundance of everything, they had a charming people to deal with, and they had the Cambio, Ecco. The other commercial travellers agreed. They appealed to the QB if it was not so. And altogether, I had enough of it. Oh yes, said I, it's very nice to be in Italy, especially if you are not living in a hotel, and you have to attend to things for yourself. It is very nice to be overcharged every time and then insulted if you say a word. It's very nice to have the cumbeo thrown in your teeth

if you say two words to any Italian, even a perfect stranger. It's very nice to have waiters and shop people and railway porters sneering in a bad temper and being insulting in small, mean ways all the time. It is very nice to feel what they all feel, what they all feel against you,

and if you understand enough Italian, it's very nice to hear what they say when you've gone by. Oh, very nice, very nice indeed. I suppose the whiskey had kindled this outburst in me. They sat dead silent. And then our bounder began

in his sugary, deprecating voice, Why, no, why no, it is not true, signore, no, it is not true. Why, England is the foremost nation, in the world and you want to pay her out for it but no signore but no what makes you say so why we italians are so good-natured no italiani samosi bwani wei bwani they were the identical words of the schoolmistress buoni said i yes perhaps buoni when it's not a question of the exchange and of money but since it is always a question of cambio and soldi now when it is always a question of cambio and soldi now when it is a question of combeo and soldi now when it is a question of is always in a small way insulted i suppose it must have been the whisky anyhow italians can never bear hard bitterness the jeweller's looked distressed the bounders look down their noses half exulting even now and half sheepish being caught the third of the commie voyageur the gentle one made large eyes and was terrified that he was going to be sick he represented a certain italian liqueur and he modestly asked us to take a glass of it he went with the waiter to secure the proper brand so he drank and it was good but he the giver sat with large and haunted eyes then he said he would go to bed

our bounder gave him various advice regarding sea-sickness there was a mild swell on the sea so he of the liqueur departed our bounder thrummed on the table and hummed something and asked the q b if she knew the rosen cavalier he always appealed to her she said she did and ah he was passionately fond of music said he then he warbled in a head voice a bit more he only knew classical music said he and he mewed a bit of mazorksky the q b said mazorksky was her favourite musician for opera ah cried the bounder if there were but a piano there is a piano said his mate yes he replied but it is locked up then let us get the key said his mate with a plougham the waiters being men with the same feelings as artu would give them anything so the key was forthcoming we paid our bills mine about sixty francs then we went along the faintly rolling ship up the curved staircase to the drawing-room our bounder unlocked the door of this drawing-room and switched on the lights it was quite a pleasant room with deep divans upholstered in pale colours and palm-trees standing behind little tables and a black upright piano our bounder sat on the piano stool and gave us an exhibition he splashed out noise on the piano in splashes like water splashing out of a pail he lifted his head and shook his black mop of hair and yelled out some fragments of opera and he wriggled his large bounder's back upon the piano-stool wriggling upon his well-filled haunches evidently he had a great deal of feeling for music but very little prowess he yelped it out and wriggled and splashed the piano-stooled the piano

his friend the other bounder a quiet one in a pale suit with stout limbs older than the wriggler stood by the piano whilst the young one exhibited across the space of carpet sat the two brother jeweller deep in a divan their lean semi-blond faces quite inscrutable the q b sat next to me asking for this and that music none of which the wriggler could supply he knew force scraps and a few splashes not more the elder bounder stood near him quietly comforting encouraging and admiring him as a lover encouraging and admiring his ingenuey betrothed and the q b sat bright-eyed and excited admiring that a man could perform so unselfconsciously self-consciously self-conscious and give himself away with such generous wriggles for my part as you may guess i did not admire i had had enough rising i bowed and marched off the q b came after me good-night said i at the head of the corridor she turned in and i went round the ship to look at the dark night of the sea morning came sunny with pieces of cloud and the sicilian coast towering pale blue in the distance how wonderful it must have been to ulysses to venture into this mediterranean and open his eyes on all the loveliness of the tall coasts. How marvellous to steal with his ship into these magic harbours!

There is something eternally morning glamorous about these lands as they rise from the sea, and it is always the odyssey which comes back to one as one looks at them, all the lovely morning wonder of this world in Homer's Day. Our bounder was dashing about on deck in one of those raincoats, gathered in at the waist and ballooning out into skirts below the waist. He greeted me with a cry of, It's a long way to Tipperary! Very long, said I.

Goodbye, Piccadilly, he continued. Ciao, said I, as he dashed jauntily down the steps. Soon we saw the others as well, but it was morning, and I simply did not want to speak to them, except just good day. For my life I could. couldn't say two more words to any of them this morning except to ask the mild one if he had been sick he had not so we waited for the great chita de trieste to float away into palermo harbour it looked so near the town there the great circle of the port the mass of the hills crowding round panormous the all harbour i wish the bulky steamer would hurry up for i hated her now

i hated her swankiness she seemed made for commercial travellers with cash i hated the big picture that filled one end of the state-room an elegant and ideal peasant girl a sort of italia strolling on a lovely and ideal cliff's edge among myriad blooms and carrying over her arm in a most sophisticated fashion a bow of arm and blossom and a sheaf of anemones i hated the waiters and the cheap elegance the common deluxe i dislike the people who all turned their worst cash greasy sides outwards on this ship vulgar vulgar post-war commercialism and dogfish money stink i longed to get off and the bloated boat edged her way so slowly into the port and then more slowly still edged round her fat stern and even then we were kept for fifteen minutes waiting for someone to put up the gangway for the first class the second class of course were streaming off and melting like thawed snow into the crowds of onlookers on the key long before we were allowed to come off glad glad i was to get off that ship i don't know why for she was clean and comfortable and the attendants were perfectly civil glad glad i was not to share the deck with any more commercial travellers glad i was to be on my own feet independent no i would not take a carriage i carried my sack on my back to the hotel looking with the jaundiced eye on the lethargic traffic of the harbour front it was about nine o'clock later on when i had slept i thought as i have thought before the italians are not to blame for their spite against us we england have taken upon ourselves for so long the role of leading nation

and if now in the war or after the war we have led them all into a real old swinery which we have notwithstanding all-ontent cant then they have a legitimate grudge against us if you take upon yourself to lead you must expect the mud to be thrown at you if you lead into a nasty morass especially if once in the bog you think of nothing else but scrambling out over other poor devil's backs pretty behaviour of great nations and still for all that i must insist that i am a single human being an individual not a mere national unit a mere chip of linghiltara or la jamania i am not a chip of any nasty old block. I am myself. In the evening the QB insisted on going to the marionettes for which she has a sentimental passion. So the three of us, we were with the American friend once more, chased through dark and tortuous side streets and markets of Palermo in the night, until at last a friendly man led us to the place. The back streets of Palermo felt friendly, not huge and rather horrible like Naples, near the port. The theatre was a little hole opening simply off the street. There was no one in the

little ticket box, so we walked past the door screen. A shabby old man with a long fennel stalk hurried up and made us places on the bat benches and hushed us when we spoke of tickets. The play was in progress. A serpent dragon was just having a tussle with a knight in brilliant brass armour, and my heart came into my mouth. The audience consisted mostly of boys, gazing with frantic interest on the bright stage. There was a sprinkling of soldiers and elderly men. The place was packed,

about fifty souls crowded on narrow little ribbons of benches, so close one behind the other, that the end of the man in front of me continually encroached and sat on my knee. I saw on a notice, that the price of entry was forty centimes. We had come in towards the end of the performance, and so sat rather bewildered, unable to follow.

The story was the inevitable paladin of France. One heard the names Rinaldo, Orlando, again and again. But the story was told in dialect, hard to follow. I was charmed by the figures. The scene was very simple, showing the interior of a castle. but the figures which were about two-thirds of human size were wonderful in their brilliant glittering gold armour and their martial prancing motions all were knights even the daughter of the king of babylon she was distinguished only by her long hair all were in the beautiful glittering armour with helmets and visors that could be let down at will i am told this armour has been handed down for many generations it certainly is love one actor alone was not in armour the wizard magice or malvigie the merlin of the paladin he was in a long scarlet robe edged with fur and wore a three-cornered scarlet hat

so we watched the dragon leap and twist and get the knight by the leg and then perish we watch the knights burst into the castle we watch the wonderful armour-clashing embraces of the delivered knights Orlando and his bosom friend, and the little dwarf, clashing their armoured breasts to the breasts of their brothers and deliverers. We watched the would-be tears flow, and then the statue of the witch suddenly go up in flames, at which a roar of exultation from the boys. Then it was over. The theatre was empty in a moment, but the proprietors and the two men who sat near us would not let us go. we must wait for the next performance my neighbour a fat jolly man told me all about it his neighbour a handsome tipsy man kept contradicting and saying it wasn't so but my fat neighbour winked at me not to take offence this story of the paladour of france lasted three nights we had come on the middle night of course but no matter each night was a complete story i am sorry i have forgotten the names of the knights but the story was that orlando and his friend and the little dwarf owing to the tricks of that same dwarf who belonged to the paladin had been captured and immured in the enchanted castle of the ghastly old witch who lived on the blood of christians it was now the business of rinaldo and the rest of the paladin by the help of majechi the good wizard to release their captured brethren from the ghoulish old witch

so much i made out of the fat man's story while the theatre was filling he knew every detail of the whole paladin cycle and it is evident the paladin cycle has lots of versions for the handsome tipsy neighbour kept saying he was wrong he was wrong and giving different stories and shouting for a jury to come and say who was right he or my fat friend a jury gathered and a storm began to rise but the stout proprietor with a fennel wand came and quench the noise telling the handsome tipsy man he knew too much and wasn't asked whereupon the tipsy one sulked ah said my friend couldn't i come on friday friday was a great night on friday they were giving i beatty pauli the blessed pools he pointed to the walls where were the placards announcing the blessed pools these pools were evidently some awful secret society with masking hoods and daggers and awful eyes looking through the holes. I said, were they assassins like the black hand? By no means, by no means.

The Blessed Pools were a society for the protection of the poor. Their business was to track down and murder the oppressive rich. Ah, they were a wonderful, a splendid society. Were they, said I, a sort of Camorra? Ah, on the contrary, here he lapsed into a tense voice, they hated the Camorra.

These, the blessed Pools, were the powerful and terrible enemy of the Grand Cormorah. For the Grand Cormorah oppresses the poor, and therefore the Pools track down in secret the leaders of the Grand Cammora and assassinate them, or bring

them to the fearful hooded tribunal which utters the dread verdict of the Beatty Paoli. And when once the Beatty Paoli have decreed a man's death, all over, ah bellissimo bellissimo why don't i come on friday it seems to me a queer moral for the urchins thick-packed and gazing at the drop scene they are all males urchins or men i ask my fat friend why there are no women no girls ah he says the theatre is so small but i say if there is room for all the boys and men there is the same room for girls and women oh no not in this

small theatre besides this is nothing for women not that there is anything improper he hastens to add not at all but what should women and girls be doing at the marionette show it was an affair for males i agreed with him really and was thankful he hadn't a lot of smirking twitching girls and lasses in the audience this male audience was so tense and pure in its attention but hissed the play is going to begin A lad is grinding a broken street piano under the stage. The padroni yells, Silencio, with a roar, and reaching over, pokes of streperous boys with his long fennel stalk, like a beadle in church. When the curtain rises, the piano stops, and there is dead silence. On swings a night, glittering, marching with that curious, hippety lilt,

and gazing round with fixed and martial eye. he begins the prologue telling us where we are and dramatically he waved his sword and stamps his foot and wonderfully sounds his male marshal rather husky voice then the paladour his companions who are to accompany him swing one by one on to the stage till they are five in all handsome knights including the babylonian princess and the knight of britain they stand in our a handsome glittering line, and then comes Merlin in his red robe. Merlin has a bright fair rather chubby face and blue eyes, and seems to typify the northern intelligence. He now tells them in many words how to proceed and what is to be done. So then, the glittering knights are ready. Are they ready? Rinaldo flourishes his sword with the wonderful cry, Andjammo, let us go. And the others respond, Andjammo, splendid word. The first enemy were the knights of Spain, in red curtels and half turbans. With these a terrible

fight. First of all rushes in the Knight of Britain. He is the boaster, who always in words does everything, but in fact, poor knight of Britain, he fools lamed. The four paladin have stood shoulder to shoulder, glittering, watching the fray. Fourth now steps another night,

and the fight recommences. Terrible is the smacking of swords. Terrible the gasps from behind the dropped visors. Till at last the night of Spain falls, and the paladin stands with his foot on the dead. then loud acclamations from the paladin and yells of joy from the audience silencio yells the padroni flourishing the fennel's stalk dead silence and the story goes on

the knight of britain of course claims to have slain the foe and the audience faintly jeeringly hisses he's always the boaster and he never does anything the knight of britain whispers my fat friend he has forgotten my nationality i wonder if the knight of britain is pure tradition or if a political touch of to-day has crept in however this fray is over merlin comes to advise for the next move and are we ready we are ready andiamo again the word is yelled out and they set off at first one is all engaged watching the figures their brilliance their blank martial stare, their sudden angular gestures. There is something extremely suggestive in them. How much better they fit the old legend tales than living people would do. Nay, if we are going to have human beings on the stage, they should be masked and disguised.

For in fact drama is enacted by symbolic creatures formed out of human consciousness, puppets, if you like, but not human individuals. Our stage is all wrong, so boring in its personality. Gradually, however, I found that my eyes were of minor importance. Gradually it was the voice that gained hold of the blood. It is a strong rather husky male voice that acts direct on the blood, not on the mind. Again the old male Adam began to stir at the roots of my soul. Again the old first-hand indifference, the rich,

untamed male blood rocked down my veins? What does one care? What does one care for precept and mental dictation? Is there not the massive, brilliant, outflinging recklessness in the male soul, summed up in this sudden word, Anjamo! Andjamo! And jamo! Let us go on! Anjamo! Let us go hell knows where, but let us go on. the splendid recklessness and passion that knows no precept and no school teacher whose very molten spontane is its own guide i loved the voices of the paladin rinaldo's voice and orlando's voice the voice of men once more men who are not to be tutored to be sure there was merlin making his long speeches in rather a chuntering prosy tone but who was he was he a palis and a splendour not he a long-gown chanterer it is the reckless blood which achieves all the piff-piff-piffing of the mental and moral intelligence is but a subsidiary help a mere instrument the dragon was splendid i have seen dragons in wagner at covent garden and at the prince regenten theatre in munich and they were ridiculous but this dragon simply frightened me with his leaping and twisting, and when he sees the night by the leg, my blood ran cold. With smoke and

sulphur leaps in Belzebub, but he is merely the servant of the great old witch. He is black and grinning, and he flourishes his posterior and his tail. But he is curiously inefficacious, a sort of lackey of wicked powers. The old witch with her grey hair and staring eyes succeeds in being ghastly. With just a touch she would be a tall benevolent old lady. But listen to her, hear her horrible female voice, with its scraping yells of evil lustfulness. Yes, she fills me with horror, and I am staggered to find how I believe in her as the evil principle. Belzebub, poor devil, is only one of her instruments. It is her old, horrible, gurning female soul, which locks up the heroes, and which sends forth the awful and almost omnipotent malevolence the old ghastly woman's spirit is the very core of mischief and i felt my heart getting as hot against her as the hearts of the lads in the audience were

red deep hate i felt of that symbolic old ghoul female poor male belzebub is her loutish slave and it takes all merlin's bright-faced intelligence and all the surging hot earth of the paladour to conquer her she will never be finally destroyed she will never finally die till her statue which is immured in the vaults of the castle is burned oh it was a very psychoanalytic performance altogether and one could give a very good freudian analysis of it but behold this image of the witch this white submerged idea of woman which rules from the deeps of the unconscious behold the reckless untamable male knights would do for it as a statue goes up in flame it is only paper over wires the audience yells and yells again and would god the symbolic act were really achieved it is only little boys who yell men merely smile at the trick they know well enough the white image endures so it is over the knights look at us once more orlando hero of heroes has a slight inward cast of the eyes this gives him that look of almost fierce good-nature which these people adore the look of a man who does not think but whose heart is all the time red-hot with burning generous blood passion this is what they adore so my nights go they all have wonderful faces and are so splendidly glittering and male i am sorry they will be laid in a box now there is a great gasp of relief the piano starts its lame rattle somebody looking round laughs and we all look round

and seated on the top of the ticket office is a fat solemn urchin of two or three years hands folded over his stomach his forehead big and blank like some queer little buddha the audience laughs without southern sympathy physical sympathy that is what they love to feel and to arouse but there is a little after scene in front of the drop curtain jerks out a little fat flat caricature of an Neapolitan, and from the opposite side jerks the tool caricature of a Sicilian. They jerk towards one another and bump into one another with a smack. And smack goes the Neapolitan down on his posterior, and the boys howl with joy. It is the eternal collision between the two peoples, Neapolitan and Sicilian. Now goes on a lot of fooling between the two clowns in the two dialects. alas i can hardly understand anything at all but it sounds comic and looks very funny the neapolitan of course gets most of the knocks and there seems to be no indecency at all unless once the boys howl and rock with joy and no one says silencio but it is over all is over the theatre empties in a moment and i shake hands with my fat neighbour affectionate and in the right spirit truly i loved them all in the theatre the generous hot southern blood so subtle and spontaneous that asked for blood contact not for mental communion or spirit sympathy i was sorry to leave them End of Chapter 8. End of C. and Sardinia by D. H. Lawrence.