Twilight in Italy | Page 7

the cross, the muscles,
carved sparely in the old wood, looking all wrong, upside down. And
the icy wind blew them backwards and forwards, so that they gave a
painful impression, there in the stark, sterile place of rock and cold. Yet
I dared not touch the fallen body of the Christ, that lay on its back in so
grotesque a posture at the foot of the post. I wondered who would come
and take the broken thing away, and for what purpose.

On the Lago di Garda

1
THE SPINNER AND THE MONKS
The Holy Spirit is a Dove, or an Eagle. In the Old Testament it was an
Eagle; in the New Testament it is a Dove.

And there are, standing over the Christian world, the Churches of the
Dove and the Churches of the Eagle. There are, moreover, the
Churches which do not belong to the Holy Spirit at all, but which are
built to pure fancy and logic; such as the Wren Churches in London.
The Churches of the Dove are shy and hidden: they nestle among trees,
and their bells sound in the mellowness of Sunday; or they are gathered
into a silence of their own in the very midst of the town, so that one
passes them by without observing them; they are as if invisible,
offering no resistance to the storming of the traffic.
But the Churches of the Eagle stand high, with their heads to the skies,
as if they challenged the world below. They are the Churches of the
Spirit of David, and their bells ring passionately, imperiously, falling
on the subservient world below.
The Church of San Francesco was a Church of the Dove. I passed it
several times in the dark, silent little square, without knowing it was a
church. Its pink walls were blind, windowless, unnoticeable, it gave no
sign, unless one caught sight of the tan curtain hanging in the door, and
the slit of darkness beneath. Yet it was the chief church of the village.
But the Church of San Tommaso perched over the village. Coming
down the cobbled, submerged street, many a time I looked up between
the houses and saw the thin old church standing above in the light, as if
it perched on the house-roofs. Its thin grey neck was held up stiffly,
beyond was a vision of dark foliage, and the high hillside.
I saw it often, and yet for a long time it never occurred to me that it
actually existed. It was like a vision, a thing one does not expect to
come close to. It was there standing away upon the house-tops, against
a glamour of foliaged hillside. I was submerged in the village, on the
uneven, cobbled street, between old high walls and cavernous shops
and the houses with flights of steps.
For a long time I knew how the day went, by the imperious clangour of
midday and evening bells striking down upon the houses and the edge
of the lake. Yet it did not occur to me to ask where these bells rang. Till

at last my everyday trance was broken in upon, and I knew the ringing
of the Church of San Tommaso. The church became a living connexion
with me.
So I set out to find it, I wanted to go to it. It was very near. I could see
it from the piazza by the lake. And the village itself had only a few
hundreds of inhabitants. The church must be within a stone's throw.
Yet I could not find it. I went out of the back door of the house, into the
narrow gully of the back street. Women glanced down at me from the
top of the flights of steps, old men stood, half-turning, half-crouching
under the dark shadow of the walls, to stare. It was as if the strange
creatures of the under-shadow were looking at me. I was of another
element.
The Italian people are called 'Children of the Sun'. They might better be
called 'Children of the Shadow'. Their souls are dark and nocturnal. If
they are to be easy, they must be able to hide, to be hidden in lairs and
caves of darkness. Going through these tiny chaotic backways of the
village was like venturing through the labyrinth made by furtive
creatures, who watched from out of another element. And I was pale,
and clear, and evanescent, like the light, and they were dark, and close,
and constant, like the shadow.
So I was quite baffled by the tortuous, tiny, deep passages of the village.
I could not find my way. I hurried towards the broken end of a street,
where the sunshine and the olive trees looked like a mirage before me.
And there above