THE LAND OF COCKAYNE

A Novel By MATILDE SERAO AUTHOR OF "FAREWELL LOVE!" "FANTASY" "THE CONQUEST OF ROME" ETC.

HARPER & BROTHERS NEW YORK AND LONDON PUBLISHERS—1901

[i]

CHAPTER I

THE LOTTERY DRAWING

The afternoon sun crept into the Piazzetta dei Banchi Nuovi, broadening from Cardone's, the engraver, to Cappa's, the chemist, lengthening on from there up the whole Santa Chiara Road, spreading a light of unusual gaiety over the street, which always wears, even in its most frequented hours, a frigid, claustral aspect. But the great morning traffic, of people coming from the northern districts of the town—Avvocata, Stella, San Carlo all' Arena, San Lorenzo—to go down to the lower quarters of Porto, Pendino and Mercato, or vice versâ, had been slowly slackening since mid-day; the coming and going of carts, carriages and pedlars had ceased; everybody seemed to be taking short cuts by the Chiostro di Santa Chiara and the Vico 1o Foglia towards Mezzocannone Alley, the Gesù Nuovo, San Giovanni Maggiore. Presently the sun's brightness lit up a street by then quite deserted. The shopkeepers on the right side of Santa Chiara—as the left side is only the high, dark enclosure wall of the Poor Clares' Convent—dealers in old dusty or wretched mean new furniture, coloured engravings,

shiny oleographs, wooden and stucco saints, were at the back of their dark shops, eating over a corner of wine-stained tablecloth, with a caraffe of Marano small wine, closed by a twisted vine-leaf, standing by a big dish of macaroni. The porters, seated on the ground at the shop entrance, were eating lazily at a small loaf of bread, cut in two to hold some tasty viand—fried gourd soaked in vinegar, parsnips in green sauce, pomegranates seasoned with vinegar, garlic and pepper. The sharp, greasy smell of the quantity of tomatoes all this macaroni was cooked in, from one end of the street to the other, mingled with the acute odour of sour vinegar and coarse spices. From some passing fruitseller, carrying a nearly empty basket of figs on his head, or pushing a barrow with purple plums, and tough spotted peaches at the [2] bottom of the baskets, the shopkeepers, clerks and porters, lips still red from tomatoes or shining with grease, bargained for a penny-worth of fruit, to finish their meal; two workmen, in front of the Martello printing-shop, where

the small visiting-card press had stopped, deeply coveted a yellow melon; and two seamstresses were waiting on a doorstep chattering, till the seller of pizza passed, which is the shredded rind of tomato, garlic, and wild marjoram, cooked in the oven, and sold at a farthing, a half-penny, a penny, the piece. The pizzaiuolo did pass, in fact, but he was carrying his wooden tray, shining with oil, under his arm, without a bit of pizza; he had sold everything, and was going off to eat his own meal, down to the Porto quarter, where his shop was. The two disappointed seamstresses consulted each other; one of them, a blonde, with a golden aureole round her pale gentle face, moved off with that undulating step that gives an Oriental touch to a Neapolitan woman's charm. She went up Santa Chiara Road, bending her head so as not to get the sun in her face, and went into Impresa Lane, towards the wine-seller's dark shop—which was a drinking-shop, too—almost opposite the Impresa Palace; she was going to buy something to eat for her friend and herself. The Impresa Lane had got

empty, too, after mid-day, when all go back to their houses and shops to eat, as the summer heat gets greater, and the controra—the time of the Neapolitan day that corresponds to the Spanish siesta—begins with food, rest and sleep for tired folk. The dressmaker, a little frightened by the darkness of the cellar, out of which came a sour smell of wine, had stopped on the threshold; blinking, she looked on the ground before going in, feeling that an open underground cave, with a black gaping mouth, was dangerous. But the shop-boy came towards her to serve her.

'Give me something to eat with my bread,' she said, swaying herself a little.

'Fried fish?'

'No.'

'A little dried cod with sauce?'

'No, no'—with disgust.

'A morsel of tripe?'

'No, no.'

'What do you want, then?' the boy asked, rather annoyed.

[3]

'I would like—I would like three-halfpence-worth of meat; we will eat it with our bread—Nannina and I,' said she, with a pretty greedy grimace.

'We don't cook meat to-day; it is Saturday. Only tripe for unbelievers on Saturday.'

'Well, give me the salt cod,' she murmured, withholding a sigh. Then she looked into the Impresa court with curiosity, while the youth disappeared into the black depths of the cellar to get the cod. A little ray of sunshine coming from the top turned the court golden; every now and then some man or woman's form crossed it. Antonietta, the seamstress, went on staring, humming a popular dirge, slightly swaying on her hips.

'Here is the cod,' said the youth, coming back. He had put it in a small plate; there were four big bits falling into flakes, in a reddish sauce strongly seasoned with pepper, the sauce, as it waved about, leaving yellow oily marks on the edges of the gray plate.

'Here is the money,' Antonietta murmured, pulling it out of her pocket. But she stood with the plate in her hand, looking at the cod falling to pieces in the juice.

'If I were to take a terno,' she said, as she went on her way, holding the plate carefully, 'I should like to gratify my wish of eating meat every day.'

'Meat and macaroni,' the boy called back, laughing.

'Just so—meat and macaroni,' the seamstress shouted triumphantly, her eyes still fixed on the plate, not to let the sauce fall.

'Morning and evening,' called out the boy from the doorway.

'Morning and evening,' Antonietta answered back.

'You should apply to that youth,' the boy shouted gaily from the cellar, indicating the Impresa court with his eyes.

'I'll come back later,' said the seamstress from the corner of the street; 'I'll bring you the plate.'

Again the Impresa Lane was deserted for a long time. In winter it is much frequented at mid-day by the young students coming out of the University, who take the shortcut to the Gesù and Toledo; but it was summer—the students had their holidays. Still, every now and then, as the hour went on, someone came round the corner from Santa Chiara or Mezzocannone, and stopped in the Impresa gateway—some with a cautious look, others feigning indifference. [4] One of the first had been a shoeblack, with his block—a lame old dwarf, who carried it on his raised hips; he was bent in two, wrapped up in an old great-coat, green, stained and patched, a cap with no peak over his eyes.

He had put down his block under the Impresa portico, and stretched himself out on the ground, as if awaiting customers; but he forgot to beat those two dry claps with the brush on the wood to claim it. Deeply engrossed with a long list of ticket numbers in his hand, the old dwarf's yellow, distorted face was transformed by intense passion. As the hour got near, people went on passing before him, and a murmur of hoarse, strident Neapolitan voices rose in the court.

A man, a workman, stopped near the shoeblack; he might have been thirty-five, but he was wan, and his eyes were dull; his jacket was thrown over his shoulder, showing a coloured calico shirt.

'Do you want a shine?' the bootblack asked mechanically, laying down his list of numbers.

'Just so,' replied the other, grinning; 'I want a shine. If I had another half-penny, I would have played a last ticket at Donna Caterina's to-day.'

'The small game?' asked the shoeblack in a whisper.

'Yes, a little for the Government and a little to Donna Caterina. They are all thieves—all thieves,' the workman afterwards added, chewing his black stump of a cigar, and shaking his head with a look of great distrust.

'You have taken a half-holiday to-day?'

'I never go there on Saturday,' said the other, giving a sickly smile. 'I go to look for Fortune; I must find her some Saturday morning!'

'When do you get your week's money?'

'Eh!' he said, shrugging his shoulders—'generally on Fridays: I have nothing to get.'

'How do you manage to gamble?'

'One can always get it for gambling. Donna Caterina's sister—she of the small game—lends money.'

'Does she take big interest?'

'A sou for each franc every week.'

'Not bad—not bad,' said the shoeblack, with a convinced look.

'I have seventy-five francs to give her,' said the glove-cutter. 'Every Monday there is a storm. She waits for [5] me outside the factory door, shouting and swearing. She is really a witch, Michele. But what can I do? One day or other I will take a terno, and I will pay her.'

'What will you do with the rest of your winnings?' Michele asked, laughing.

'I know what I will do,' cried Gaetano, the cutter. 'In new clothes, a pheasant's feather in my cap, in a carriage with bells, we will all go to amuse ourselves at the Due Pulcinelli, at Campo di Marte.'

'Or at Figlio di Pietro, at Posellipo.'

'At Asso di coppe, at Portici.'

'Inn after inn.'

'Meat and macaroni.'

'And Monte di Procida wine.'

'Just so, one only lives once,' the glove-cutter philosophically concluded, pulling his jacket up on his shoulder.

'I don't get into debt,' the shoeblack added, after a minute's silence.

'Lucky you!'

'I would get no one to lend me a sou, anyhow. But I play everything. I have no family; I can do what I like.'

'Lucky you!' Gaetano repeated, with a troubled look.

'Three sous for a sleeping-place, five or six for food,' went on the shoeblack, 'and who says a word to me? I did not want to marry; I had a rage for gambling: it stands in place of everything.'

'May he that invented marriage be hanged!' blasphemed Gaetano, getting clay colour.

Four o'clock was approaching, and the Impresa court filled up with people. In that space of a hundred metres was a crowd of common people pressed together, chattering in a lively way or waiting in resigned silence, looking up to the first-floor at the covered balcony, where the lottery drawing was to come off. But all was shut up above, even the wooden shutters, behind the glass of the great balcony. As other people came up continually, the crowd reached to the wall of the court even. Women that were pushed back had squatted on the first steps of the stair; others, more bashful, hid under the balcony among the pillars that held it up, leaning against a shut stable door. Another woman, still young, but with a pallid, worn, fascinating face, rather strange, melancholy black eyes, hollow-rimmed, and thick black locks loose on her neck, [6] had climbed on a stone left in the courtyard, perhaps from the time the palace was built or restored. She looked very thin in her dyed black gown, that went in folds over her lean breast; she was swinging one foot in a broken, out-at-heel

shoe, pulling up on her shoulders now and then a wretched little shawl, dyed also. She overlooked the crowd, gazing at it with downcast, sad eyes. It was almost entirely composed of poor people—cobblers who had shut up their bench in the dens they lived in, had rolled their leather aprons round their waists: in shirt-sleeves, cap over the eyes, they pondered in their minds the numbers they had played, slightly moving their lips; servants out of place, who, instead of trying for a master, used up the last shilling from the pawned winter coat, dreaming of the terno that from servants would make them into masters, whilst an impatient frown crossed the gray faces, where the beard, no longer shaven, grew in patches. There were hackney coachmen, who had left their cab in the care of a friend, brother, or son, waiting patiently, hands in pocket, with the stolidity of a cabman used to waiting hours for a hire; there were letters of furnished rooms, hirers of servants, who in summer, with all the strangers and students gone, sat pining in their chairs under the board

that forms their whole shop, at the corners of San Sepolcro Lane, Taverna Penta, Trinità degli Spagnuoli; having played a few sous taken from their daily bread, they came to hear the lottery drawn, being unemployed—and lazy. There were hands at humble Neapolitan trades, who, leaving the factory, warehouse, or shop, giving up their hard, badly-paid work, clutching in their worn-out waistcoat pocket the five sous ticket, or bundle of numbers at the little game, had come to pant over that dream that might become a reality. There were still more unlucky people—that is to say, all those who in Naples do not live by the day even, but by the hour, trying a hundred trades, good at all, but unable, unluckily, to find safe remunerative work; unfortunates without home or shelter, shamefully torn and dirty, they had given up their bread that day to play a throw. One read in their faces the double marks of fasting and extreme abasement.

Some women were noticeable among the crowd—slovenly women, of no particular age, nor beauty; servants out of place, desperate gamblers' wives, who gambled themselves, [7] dismissed workwomen, and among them all Carmela's pale, fascinating face, the girl seated on the stone—a faded face with big, tired eyes. Later on, as the hour for the drawing got near, and the noise increased, among the few gray women's faces and torn calico dresses, discoloured from too frequent washings, quite a different woman's face showed. She was a tall, strong woman of the lower class, with a high-coloured dark face; her chestnut hair was drawn back, elaborately dressed—the fringe on her narrow forehead had even a touch of powder; and heavy earrings of uneven, round, greeny-white pearls pulled down her ears, so that she had had to secure them by a black silk string, fearing they would break the lobes; a gold necklace and a thick gold medallion hung over the white muslin vest, all embroidered and tucked with lace. She pulled up a transparent black silk

crape shawl on her shoulders every now and then, to show her hands, which were covered with thick gold rings up to the second joint. Her eye was grave and quiet, with a slight look of quiet audacity, her mouth settled and severe; but on going through the crowd, on her way to sit on the third step of the stair, to see and hear better, she kept that bend of the head, rather coquettish and mysterious, peculiar to the Neapolitan lower class, and the swaying of her body under the shawl that a Naples woman dressed in the French fashion soon loses. Still, in spite of the natural sympathy that womanly figure inspired among the crowd, there was almost a hostile murmur and something like an indignant movement. She shrugged her shoulders disdainfully, and sat alone, upright, on the third step, keeping the shawl up on her shoulders, her ring-laden hands crossed in front. The murmur went on here and there. She looked at the crowd severely twice or thrice—rather proudly. The voices ceased; the woman's eyelids fluttered, as if from gratified pride.

But, finally, over all the others—over Carmela, with her faded face and great sad eyes; over Donna Concetta, with her ringed fingers and powdered fringe, the handsome, healthy, rich Concetta, the usurer, sister to Donna Caterina, the holder of the small game—above the crowd in the court, entrance, and street, a woman's form stood out, drawing at least one look from the people gathered together. It was the woman on the first-floor of the Impresa Palace, sitting sideways behind the balcony railings; one saw her [8] profile bending over the bright steel fittings of a Singer sewing-machine, lifting her head now and then, whilst her foot, coming from under a modest blue-and-white striped petticoat, beat evenly on the iron pedal, regularly rising and falling. Among the stir of voices, the conversations from one end of the court to the other, and stamping of feet, the dull quaver of the sewing-machine was lost; but the seamstress's figure stood out in profile on the balcony's gloomy background, her hands pushing the bit of white

linen under the machine needle, her foot untiringly beating the pedal, her head rising and bending over her work, with no ardour, but no weariness, evenly on. A thin, rather pink cheek was shown in profile, and a thick chestnut tress neatly arranged close to the nape of the neck, the corner of a fine mouth, and the shade of long eyelashes thrown on the cheeks, could also be seen. During the hour the crowd was pouring into the court, the young seamstress had not looked down twice, giving a short indifferent glance and lowering her head again, taking the piece of linen slowly along in her hands, so that the seam should be quite straight. Nothing distracted her from her work—neither angry voice or lively remarks, nor the noise or the increasing trampling of the crowd; she had never looked at the covered balcony, where in a short time the drawings would be called out. The people from below stared at the delicate, industrious white sewer, but she went on with her work as if not even an echo of that half-covered, half-open excitement came up to her; she seemed so far off, so

reserved, so wrapped up in a quite detached, different world, that one could fancy her more a statue than a reality—more of an ideal figure than a living woman.

But all at once a long shout of satisfaction burst out from the crowd in all varieties of tone, rising to the most stridulent and going down to the deepest note: the big balcony on the terrace had opened. The people waiting in the road tried to get in at the entrance, those standing there crushed into the court; it was quite a squeeze, all faces were raised, seized by burning curiosity and anguish. A great silence followed. Looking keenly, one could see by the moving of some woman's lips that she was praying, whilst Carmela, the girl with the attractive, worn face and very sad black eyes, played with a black string tied round her neck that had a medallion of our Lady of Sorrows and a [9] forked bit of coral. There was universal silence of expectation and stupor. On the terrace two Royal Lottery ushers had arranged a long narrow table covered with green cloth, and three armchairs behind it for the three authorities to sit in—a Councillor of the Prefecture, the Lottery Director at Naples, and a representative of the municipality. The

urn for the ninety numbers was placed on another little table. It is a big urn, made of transparent metal, lemon-shaped, with brass bands going from one end to the other, surrounding it as the meridian line goes round the earth: these shining bands make it strong without spoiling its transparency. The urn is slung in the air between two brass pegs; a metal handle by one, when touched, makes the urn twist round on its axis. The two ushers who had brought out all these things to the terrace were old, rather bent, and sleepy-looking. The three authorities, in great-coats and tall hats, seemed bored and sleepy too, sitting behind the table; the Prefecture Councillor, with his deep, black dyed moustaches, was drowsy: he looked as if he had touched them in in brown on his sleepy dark face; it was the same with the secretary, a youth with a dark beard. These folk moved slowly, like automatons, so that a common man from the crowd called out, 'Move on! move on!' Silence again, but a great wave of emotion when the little boy who was to take the numbers out of the urn appeared on the balcony.