Part 50

She was again singing outside. I called her, wanting to know what it was she kept singing all the time. "They are songs from the mountains," she replied, "all canzone d'amore." "Say them slowly, Filomena. I will write them down." I began, but was so delighted at the way she repeated the verses, her excellent declamatory and rhythmic sense, that I was almost unable to write. And to my surprise, I discovered that they were all what we call ritornellos. But written down, they are dull larvae, compared with what they are with the proper pronunciation and expression. What is it Byron says?:

I love the language, that soft bastard Latin, Which melts like kisses from a female mouth, And sounds as if it should be writ on satin.

I shall really feel a void when Filomena goes away. The unfortunate part of it is that her dialect pronunciation is so difficult to make out, and that she swallows so many syllables in order to make the metre right, as there are generally too many feet, and it is only the delicacy of her declamation that makes up for the incorrectness of the rhymes and the verses. For instance, she constantly says lo instead of il (lo soldato), and she can never tell me how many words there are in a line, since neither she nor Maria knows what a single word, as opposed to several, is, and because it is no use spelling the word to her and asking: "Is that right?" since she cannot spell, and does not recognise the letters. Saredo tells me that a driver who once drove him and his wife about for five days in Tuscany sang all day long like Filomena, and improvised all the time. This is what she, too, does continually; she inserts different words which have about the same meaning, and says: "It is all the same" (c'è la stessa cosa). On the other hand, she always keeps to the metre, and that with the most graceful intonation; never a faulty verse:

Fior di giacinto! La donna che per l'uomo piange tanto-- Il pianto delle donne è pianto finto.

Amore mio! Non prendite le fiori di nessuno, Se vuoi un garofletto, lo do io.

Fior di limone! Limone è agra, e le fronde son' amare, Ma son' più' amare le pene d'amor'.

Lo mi' amore che si chiama Peppe, Lo primo giuocatore delle carte Prende 'sto cuore e giuoca a tre-sette.

Flower of the hyacinth! The woman who weeps so much for the man's sake-- Yet, the complaint of women is a feigned one.

My love! Do not accept flowers from anyone. If thou wilt have a wall-flower, I will give it thee.

Flower of the lemon! The lemon is sharp, and its leaves are bitter; But more bitter are the torments of love.

My beloved, whose name is Peppe, He is the first to play cards, He has taken this heart and is playing a game of Three to Seven with it.]

In this way I wrote out some scores.

* * * * *

Spent an hour teaching Filomena her large letters up to N, and making her say them by rote, and with that end in view have divided them into three portions--ABCD--EFG--ILMN. She manages all right, except that she always jumps E and L. Lesson closed: "Were you at church to-day, Filomena?" "No, I have nothing to confess." "Did you go to church last Sunday?" "No, I have not been for six weeks now. I have committed no sin. What wrong do I do? I have no love affair, nothing." "What used you to confess?" "A few bad words, which had slipped out. Now I do nothing wrong." "But one can go wrong, without committing any sin, when one is high-minded, for instance." "I am not high-minded. If you, on the other hand, were to imagine yourself better than the friends who come to visit you, that would be quite natural; for you are better."

* * * * *

The day has been long. This evening the girl had errands to do for me. She came in here after her Sunday walk in the Campagna. I said: "Shall we read?" (Just then a band of young people passed along the street with a harmonica and a lot of castanets, and commenced a song in honour of Garibaldi. With all its simplicity, it sounded unspeakably affecting; I was quite softened.) She replied: "With pleasure." I thought to myself: "Now to see whether she remembers a word of what I said to her yesterday." But she went on at once: "Signore, I have been industrious." She had bought herself an ABC and had taught herself alone not only all the large letters, but also all the little ones, and had learnt them all off by heart as well. I was so astonished that I almost fell back in the bed. "But what is this, Filomena? Have you learnt to read from someone else?" "No, only from you yesterday. But for five years my only wish has been to learn to read, and I am so glad to be able to." I wanted to teach her to spell. "I almost think I can a little." And she was already so far that--without spelling first--she read a whole page of two-letter spellings, almost without a mistake. She certainly very often said: "Da--ad," or read fo for of, but her progress was amazing. When she spells, she takes the words as a living reality, not merely as words, and adds something to them, for instance, s--a, sa; l--i, li; r--e, re; salire alle scale, (jump down the stairs.) "Filomena, I could teach you to read in three weeks." She: "I have always thought it the greatest shame for a man or woman not to be able to read." I told her something about the progress of the human race, that the first men and women had been like animals, not at all like Adam and Eve. "Do you think I believe that Eve ate an apple and that the serpent could speak? Non credo mente. Such things are like mal'occhi (belief in the evil eye)." And without any transition, she begins, sempre allegra, as she calls herself--to sing a gay song. Just now she is exceedingly delighted with a certain large red shawl. There came a pedlar to the door; she sighed deeply at the sight of the brilliant red; so I gave it her.

She is a great lover and a connoisseur of wine, like myself. We taste and drink together every dinner-time. As she always waits upon me, I often give her a little cake and wine while I am eating. Now we have begun a new wine, white Roman muscat. But I change my wine almost every other day. Filomena had taken the one large bottle and stacked up newspapers round it on the table, so that if K.B. came he should not see it. It so happened that he came to-day, whilst I was dining and she eating with me. There was a ring; she wanted to go. "Stay; perhaps it is not for me at all; and in any case, I do not ask anyone's permission for you to be here." He came in, and said in Danish, as he put his hat down: "Oh, so you let the girl of the house dine with you; I should not care for that." Filomena, who noticed his glance in her direction, and his gesture, said, with as spiteful a look, and in as cutting a voice as she could muster: "Il signore prende il suo pranzo con chi lui pare e piace." (The gentleman eats with whomsoever he pleases.) "Does she understand Danish?" he asked, in astonishment. "It looks like it," I replied. When he had gone, her furia broke loose. I saw her exasperated for the first time, and it sat very comically upon her. "Did you ask him whom he eats with? Did he say I was ugly? Did you ask him whether his ragazza was prettier?" (She meant a Danish lady, a married woman, with whom she had frequently met K.B. in the street.)

She said to me yesterday: "There is one thing I can do, sir, that you cannot. I can carry 200 pounds' weight on my head. I can carry two conchas, or, if you like to try me, all that wood lying there." She has the proud bearing of the Romans.

Read with Filomena for an hour and a half. She can now spell words with three letters fairly well. This language has such a sweet ring that her spelling is like music. And to see the innocent reverence with which she says g-r-a, gra,--it is what a poet might envy me. And then the earnest, enquiring glance she gives me at the end of every line. It is marvellous to see this complete absorption of a grown-up person in the study of a-b, ab, and yet at the same time there is something almost great in this ravenous thirst for knowledge, combined with incredulity of all tradition. It is a model such as this that the poets should have had for their naïve characters. In Goethe's Roman Elegies, the Roman woman's figure is very inconspicuous; she is not drawn as a genuine woman of the people, she is not naïve. He knew a Faustina, but one feels that he afterwards slipped a German model into her place. Filomena has the uncompromising honesty and straightforwardness of an unspoilt soul. Her glance is not exactly pure, but free--how shall I describe it? Full, grand, simple. With a concha on her head, she would look like a caryatid. If I compare her mentally with a feminine character of another poet, Lamartine's Graziella, an Italian girl of the lower classes, like herself, I cannot but think Graziella thin and poetised, down to her name. The narrator, if I remember rightly, teaches her to read, too; but Graziella herself does not desire it; it is he who educates her. Filomena, on the contrary, with her anxiety to learn, is an example and a symbol of a great historic movement, the poor, oppressed Roman people's craving for light and knowledge. Of Italy's population of twenty-six millions, according to the latest, most recent statistics, seventeen millions can neither read nor write. She said to me to-day: "What do you really think, sir, do you not believe that the Holy Ghost is una virtù and cannot be father of the child?" "You are right, Filomena." "That is why I never pray." "Some day, when you are very unhappy, perhaps you will pray." "I have been very unhappy; when I was a child I used to suffer horribly from hunger. I had to get up at five o'clock in the morning to work and got eight soldi for standing all day long in a vineyard in the sun and digging with a spade, and as corn was dear and meat dear, we seven children seldom had a proper meal. Last year, too, I was hungry often, for it was as the proverb says: 'If I eat, I cannot dress myself, and if I dress myself I cannot eat.' (What a sad and illuminating proverb!) Sir, if there were any Paradise, you would go there, for what you do for me. If I can only read and write, I can earn twice as much as I otherwise could. Then I can be a cameriera, and bring my mistress a written account of expenditure every week."

Filomena knows that Saredo is a professor at the University. But she does not know what a professor or a University is. She puts her question like this: "Probably my idea of what a university is, may not be quite correct?"

No one comes now. An invalid is very interesting at first, and arouses sympathy. If he continue ill too long, people unconsciously think it impossible for him to get well, and stay away. So the only resource left me all day is to chat with Filomena, to whom Maria has entrusted the nursing of me. Every evening I read with her; yesterday she had her fourth lesson, and could almost read straight off. Her complexion and the lower part of her face are like a child's; her undeveloped mental state reveals itself, thus far, in her appearance. I told her yesterday, as an experiment, that there were five continents and in each of them many countries, but she cannot understand yet what I mean, as she has no conception of what the earth looks like. She does not even know in what direction from Rome her native village, Camerino, lies. I will try to get hold of a map, or a globe. Yesterday, we read the word inferno. She said: "There is no hell; things are bad enough on earth; if we are to burn afterwards, there would be two hells." "Good gracious! Filomena, is life so bad? Why, you sing all day long." "I sing because I am well; that is perfectly natural, but how can I be content?" "What do you wish for then?" "So much money (denari) that I should be sure of never being hungry again. You do not know how it hurts. Then there is one other thing I should like, but it is impossible. I should like not to die; I am so horribly afraid of death. I should certainly wish there were a Paradise. But who can tell! Still, my grandmother lived to be a hundred all but three years, and she was never ill for a day; when she was only three years from being a hundred she still went to the fields like the rest of us and worked, and was like a young woman (giovanotta). Mother is forty-two, but although she is two years older than my aunt, she looks quite young. Chi lo sa! Perhaps I may live to be a hundred too, never be ill--I never have been yet, one single day,--and then go in and lie down on the bed like she did and be dead at once."

"She really is sweet!" said R. this evening. The word does not fit. Her laugh, her little grimaces, her witticisms, quaint conceits and gestures are certainly very attractive, but her mode of expression, when she is talking freely, is very unreserved, and if I were to repeat some of her remarks to a stranger, he would perhaps think her coarse or loose. "We shall see what sort of a girl you bring home to us when you are well again, and whether you have as good taste as our Frenchman. Or perhaps you would rather visit her? I know how a fine gentleman behaves, when he visits his friend. She is often a lady, and rich. He comes, knocks softly at the door, sits down, and talks about difficult and learned things. Then he begs for a kiss, she flings her arms round his neck; allora, il letto rifatto, va via." She neither blushes nor feels the slightest embarrassment when she talks like this. "How do you know such things, when you have no experience?" "People have told me; I know it from hearsay. I myself have never been in love, but I believe that it is possible to love one person one's whole life long, and never grow tired of him, and never love another. You said the other day (for a joke?) that people ought to marry for a year or six months; but I believe that one can love the same person always."

In such chat my days pass by. I feel as though I had dropped down somewhere in the Sabine Mountains, been well received in a house--Maria is from Camarino, too,--and were living there hidden from the world among these big children.

Yesterday, Uncle had his National Guard uniform on for the first time. He came in to show himself. I told him that it suited him very well, which delighted him. Filomena exhibited him with admiration. When Maria came home later on, she asked the others at once: "Has the signore seen him? What did he say? Does not he want to see him again?"

Written down a score of ritornellos; I have chosen the best of them. Many of them are rather, or very, indecent. But, as Filomena says: "You do not go to Hell for singing canzone; you cannot help what they are like." The indecent ones she will only say at a terrific rate, and not a second time. But if one pay attention, they are easy to understand. They are a mixture of audacity and simple vulgarity. They all begin with flowers. She is too undeveloped to share the educated girl's abhorrence of things that are in bad taste; everything natural, she thinks, can be said, and she speaks out, quite unperturbed. Still, now she understands that there are certain things--impossible things--that I do not like to hear her say.

I was sitting cutting a wafer (to take powders with) into oblates. She: "You must not cut into consecrated things, not even put the teeth into it. The priest says: 'Thou shalt not bite Christ.'" Unfortunately, she has not any real impression of religion, either of its beauty or its underlying truth. None of them have any idea of what the New Testament is or contains; they do not know its best-known quotations and stories. Religion, to them, is four or five rigmaroles, which are printed in our Abecedario, the Creed, the Ave Maria, the various Sacraments, etc., which they know by heart. These they reject, but they have not the slightest conception of what Christianity is. If I quote a text from the New Testament, they have never heard it.

But they can run the seven cardinal virtues, and the seven other virtues, off by rote. One of these last, that of instructing the ignorant, is a virtue which the priesthood (partly for good reasons) have not practised to any remarkable extent in this country.

Yesterday Maria came home in a state of great delight, from a trattoria, where a gentleman had spoken tanto bene, tanto bene against religion and the Pope and the priests; there were a few Caccialepri present (a derogatory expression for adherents of the priests), who had just had to come down a peg or two. When she had finished, to my astonishment, she said to me, exactly this: "It is Nature that is God, is it not so?"