«You’ll soon be meeting the general,» said Dumas, and his face lit up with admiration at the mere mention of the man. «With his fair beard and blue eyes he seems like Jesus in Leonardo’s Last Supper.
Shortly afterward there was great commotion aboard. The sailors were about to haul up a large turtle of the kind to be found south of Corsica. Dumas was delighted.
«There’ll be work to do. First you have to turn it on its back. The turtle innocently stretches out its neck and you take advantage of its imprudence to cut off its head—thwack!—before hanging it by the tail to let it bleed for twelve hours. Then you turn it on its back again, insert a strong blade between the carapace and the breastplate, being very careful not to perforate the gallbladder, otherwise it becomes inedible.
Remove the innards and retain only the liver—the transparent pulp inside serves no purpose, but there are two lobes that, because of their whiteness and their flavor, seem like two veal noisettes. Finally, remove the membranes, the neck and the flippers. Cut them into pieces the size of walnuts, leave them to soak, then add the pieces to a good broth, with pepper, cloves, carrot, thyme and a bay leaf, and cook together for three or four hours over low heat. In the meantime, prepare strips of chicken seasoned with parsley, chives and anchovy, cook them in boiling broth, then add them to the turtle soup, into which you’ve poured three or four glasses of dry Madeira. If you have no Madeira, you can use Marsala with a small glass of brandy or rum, though that would be second best, un pis-aller. We’ll taste our soup tomorrow evening.»
I felt a certain liking for a man who so enjoyed good food, despite his dubious breeding.
(13th June) The Emma arrived in Palermo the day before yesterday. With Redshirts everywhere, the city looks like a poppy field. But many of Garibaldi’s volunteers are dressed and armed any old way, some with no more than a feather in their hat and wearing ordinary civilian dress. Red cloth is now hard to find, and a shirt of that color costs a fortune—perhaps it is more readily available to the many sons of local aristocrats, who didn’t enlist with Garibaldi’s men until after the first bloody battles, than to the volunteers who came here from Genoa. Bianco had given me enough money to survive in Sicily and, so as not to look like a dandy, I immediately found myself a well-worn uniform with a shirt that was beginning to turn pink after many washes, and some threadbare trousers; the shirt alone had cost me fifteen francs, and I could have bought four for the same price in Turin.
Here everything is expensive—an egg costs four soldi, a pound of bread six soldi, a pound of meat thirty. I don’t know if it’s because the island is poor and the occupiers are using up the few remaining resources, or if the people of Palermo have decided that the Garibaldini are manna from heaven and are fleecing them for all they can.
The meeting between the two great men at the Palazzo del Senato («like the Hôtel de Ville in Paris in 1830!» cried Dumas ecstatically) was very theatrical. Of the two, I don’t know who was more histrionic.
«My dear Dumas, how I’ve missed you!» the general shouted. When Dumas offered him his congratulations, Garibaldi replied, «Not me, not me, congratulate these men. They have been giants!» And then to his men: «Give Monsieur Dumas the finest apartment in the building, right now. Nothing is too good for a man who has brought me letters announcing the arrival of two and a half thousand men, ten thousand rifles and two steamships!»
I viewed the hero with the suspicion I had felt for all heroes since my father’s death. Dumas had described him as an Apollo, but to me he seemed of modest stature, not fair but mousy, with short bandy legs and, judging from his gait, suffering from rheumatism. I saw him mount his horse with some difficulty, helped by two of his men.
Toward the end of the afternoon, a crowd had gathered below the royal palace shouting, «Long live Dumas, long live Italy!» The writer was clearly delighted, but I had the impression the whole thing had been staged by Garibaldi, who understood his friend’s vanity and badly needed the promised rifles. I mingled with the crowd and found it hard to understand what they were saying in their incomprehensible dialect, like the language of Africans, but I did catch one brief exchange. Someone asked who this fellow Dumas was that they were cheering, and the other replied that he was a Circassian prince who was rolling in money and had come to place his wealth at Garibaldi’s service.
Dumas introduced me to some of the general’s men, and I was struck by the hawk-like gaze of Garibaldi’s lieutenant, the terrible Nino Bixio, and felt so intimidated that I left. I needed to look for an inn where I could come and go without being seen.
The locals now think I am one of Garibaldi’s men, while the expedition corps think I am a reporter.
I saw Nino Bixio again as he was passing through the city on horseback. He is said to be the real military leader behind the expedition. Garibaldi gets distracted, always thinking about tomorrow. He is fine during attacks, urging his men on, but Bixio looks after the here and now and keeps the troops in line. As he was passing, I heard one of Garibaldi’s men say to his comrade: «Look at that gaze, flashing everywhere. His figure cuts like a saber. Bixio! Even his name sounds like a bolt of lightning.»
It’s obvious that Garibaldi and his lieutenants have hypnotized these volunteers. That’s bad—leaders with too much charisma should be removed immediately, for the peace and security of the kingdom. My masters in Turin are right. This Garibaldi myth mustn’t be allowed to spread north, otherwise all the king’s subjects up there will be wearing red shirts and it’ll become a republic.
(15th June) Difficult to talk to the local people. The only thing certain is that they’re trying to exploit anyone who, according to them, looks Piedmontese, even though very few volunteers come from Piedmont. I’ve found a tavern where I can dine cheaply and try various dishes with unpronounceable names. I managed to choke on some bread rolls stuffed with spleen, but with a good local wine was able to get through two or three of them. Over dinner I befriended two volunteers, one called Abba, just over twenty years old, from Liguria, and the other Bandi, a journalist about my own age from Livorno. Their accounts enabled me to build up a picture of the arrival of Garibaldi’s men, and their first battles.
«Ah, my dear Simonini,» said Abba, «if you only knew. The landing at Marsala was a complete circus! There in front of us are the Bourbon ships, the Stromboli and the Capri. Our ship, the Lombardo, gets caught on a reef, and Nino Bixio says it’s better they capture it with a hole in its belly than safe and sound, and indeed we ought to sink the Piemonte as well. ‘Fine waste,’ say I, but Bixio was right, we shouldn’t give away two ships to the Bourbons.
And anyway, that’s what great leaders do—they burn their boats after landing so there’s no retreat. The Piemonte starts the landing, and the Stromboli begins its cannonade but fires wide. The commander of an English ship in port goes aboard the Stromboli and tells the captain there are English subjects ashore and he’ll hold him responsible for any international incident—the English, you know, have large financial interests in Marsala because of the wine. The Bourbon captain says he couldn’t care less about international incidents and once again gives the order to fire, but the cannon shoot wide again. When the Bourbon ships finally manage to score a few hits, the only damage they cause is to chop a dog in half.»
«So the English were helping you?»
«Let’s just say they were quite happy to get in the way to embarrass the Bourbons.»
«What contact does the general have with the English?»
Abba made a gesture to indicate that foot soldiers like him obey orders without asking too many questions. «But listen to this one. Arriving in the city, the general had given orders to take over the telegraph and cut the wires. They send a lieutenant with a few men, and the fellow in the telegraph office runs off when he sees them coming. The lieutenant goes into the office and finds a copy of the dispatch just sent to the military commander at Trapani: ‘Two steamships flying a Piedmont flag have just arrived in port and are landing men.’ At that very moment the reply arrives. One of the volunteers who had worked at the telegraph office in Genoa translates: ‘How many men and why are they landing?’ The officer gets him to transmit: ‘Sorry, I’ve made a mistake, they’re two merchant ships from Girgenti with a cargo of sulfur.’ Answer from
