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The wind was favourable, the sea untroubled; we made good time, arriving at the harbour of Paola as dusk was falling. There was only one i
However, the lentil soup they served us with in the room below was welcome enough, as were the sardines, freshly caught and fried with black olives.
After supper, since it was still early, I walked for a while among the steep streets of the town, my two guards following close behind. Higher up it was pleasant, a light breeze was coming off the sea and the moon was near the full, giving light enough to see by. It was a question of passing some few hours. The people of the marshes would know of my arrival, word had been sent; next day the bird-catchers would come down to the harbour, having walked through the night with their caged herons.
We would agree the price, I would make the payment and see the birds carried on board. I would send my escort back with the ship; their presence was oppressive to me, and once I had paid over the money there would be no more need of them. With the departure of the ship I would be free to continue my journey to Bari.
I descended again to the harbour and walked there for a while. I was restless, my nerves were tense, there seemed some edge of promise in the night. I was unwilling to return to my cramped and windowless room at the i
I returned to the i
"What is new about them?" I asked her.
"Why," she said, "they are the ones that are travelling here and there in the country." And she looked at me as if there must be something sadly lacking in a person who did not know even this much.
"Woman," I said, as patiently as possible, "that they are travelling about is nothing to the point. It is what dancers very often do. I was enquiring into what is new about them."
"They come from far, it is dancing not seen before."
"Will they not come here?"
"No, it is why he is gone. People say they will go next to Melfi, but nobody can know, they go here and there wherever the fancy takes them.
They sleep by the roadside."
She spoke sourly – perhaps in her heart she envied this freedom. "The women are whores," she said. "They have demons in the belly – and in what lies below. That is why he has gone there, the pig, along with all the others – the town is empty of men tonight, only the priest is left.
They are whores and pagans, no one can understand their speech."
"Demons in the belly?" I said, but she made no answer. Suddenly it came to me that these might be the dancers that the Greek trader had spoken of and at once I formed the intention of going to see if this was indeed so. It was a diversion that made strong appeal to me in my restless mood; it would take up some of the slack time of waiting.
Are there horses here," I asked her.
"No, he has taken the horse. There are mules that can be hired in the town."
I sent Mario to conduct this business, while I waited with the other in the i
The boy who served there came forward, offering to go with us and show us the way. The moon was high as we set off. Our guide went in front with a lantern, but the moonlight was enough to see by, glinting on the stones of the track. The memory of that moonlit journey often comes to me now, and I still find it strange that but for the coincidence of the dancers being close by when I had already heard mention of them, and the fact that I had felt some sort of promise in the night, I would have done the safer thing and waited in the town to finish the task I was saddled with, and so my life would have taken a different course and I would not be the same person as the one who is writing this. Certain things about myself I would not have discovered, and what is not discovered can never truly belong to us; it is only that knowledge of itself the soul knows how to summon that can truly be said to dwell within the soul. It is Boethius who says this in his 'Consolation of Philosophy' – I believe it is to be found there.
Passo di Lupo was a cluster of low buildings hanging on a hillside, with the castle of the lord above it and the ope
We tied the mules a little way below and left the boy in charge of them.
Above us were a beat of drums and a play of shadows, movements that resembled those of a flail when corn is threshed, half obscured by the forms of the people watching. We pressed forward, the three of us forming a wedge to drive a way through to the front.
My sight was confused at first. The red of the flames contended with the white of the moon to make a light that belonged to neither. Something dipped in pitch had been put in the fire and it made the flames leap and caused a smoke that was black and acrid. There were three dancers, all women, moving in a slow circle, one younger than the other two and a little taller. They were barefoot and they wore bands of copper round their ankles and they were dressed in the same ma