Italian Escapades, part 4

Part four of six of Ulla's radio broadcast account from her youth on Finnish radio, from 1957.

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Italian Escapades

4.

Sardinia back then was a fairly unknown and wild country, rarely visited by tourists. In order to help me with my trip my friend Italo Tavolato on Capri had given me a letter of recommendation, among others to Grazia Deledda. However, now there's no time for my adventures in the Sardinian mountain villages with their primitive and superstitious inhabitants. Because now my Destiny approaches, in November 1920 on Sicily and in Taormina.

I came to Taormina aroundt the end of November and decided to stay over the winter months to write about my Sardinian journey about which I had made notes on the island. While I oriented myself and looked for a room I put up at San Domenico where I right away met Georg and Hanna Pauli in company with Karl-Otto and Lisen Bonnier who were on a trip to Italy. Their old friend F U Wrangel was also present but he stayed at a pension.

This way I got acquianted with my new publisher Bonnier would take over my books since Olle Dahlberg had made a grandiose bankrupty the past year. However, I still knew nothing about these changes.

After a few days I found a room which I thought suited me both when it came to price and location. It was at the top of a towerlike house where the owner had a small antiques shop on the ground floor. The room had a lovely view over the sea and a big stove gave a sense of homelike atmosphere considering the approaching rainy season. In addition electric light was included.

A lively old Sicilian woman with a weather-beaten face and bushy hair cleaned for me and every morning as she groaningly had climbed the stairs she greeted me happily: ”Brava signorina, brava!”

That was indeed a refreshing morning greeting but as much as she busied herself with the furnace the smouldering smoke kept breaking in and the window had to be kept open in order not to suffocate. Finally we came up with the splendid idea to let a chimney-sweep examine the flue. It was found to be stuffed with bird nests.

As far as the electric light was concerned it was out of order every half hour in all of Taormina so running rushlights came in use most of the time. And it sure did rain. All the time and every day, so my room was a damp dump.

I had found a small trattoria where I had my meals with signora Gallina who always had cauliflower on the menu. So I mostly had cavolfiore, wine, and gorgonzola to live through the day.

Italian Escapades, part 3

Here is part three of six of Ulla's radio broadcast account on Finnish radio from 1957.

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Italian Escapades

3.

Doctor Munthe had not yet written the Story of San Michele which led to a horrible invasion of old American ladies and other tourist hordes. Asphalt roads did not yet exist, neither buses or cars, chairlifts or similar arrangements.The Monte Solaro hillsides shimmered proudly and majestically and the walk to Anacapri with ever increasing contour lines all the way up to the old Hotel Molaro* from where there is a view over the Gulf of Naples and where the lights at night from Naples like a string of pearl lights bordered all of Posilippo. Those were unforgettable walks.

Since 1920 I have been to Capri seven times and sometimes stayed half a year. When I went the last time 1954 and saw the whole misery I told myself that this is probably the last time I come here.

”Capri nowadays is a waste bin framed with diamonds” an old cultivated Italian put it lately, saddened by the degradation of the island. Of course nature can't be ruined but God save us from all these elderly foreign women who, wearing shorts and with flabby thighs like accordion bellows loaf around on the piazza and pay for a lover, usually an ex chauffeur or a fishing boy who has climbed in life with the help of the distasteful charity of these ladies. Finito signora. At least for those who have lived on Capri before World War I.

This is where I settled at the beginning of April 1920 and stayed well into August. On the island their were plenty of Italian artists who in those days could rent a villa for a few hundred lire a month. The Germans who formerly flooded Capri were now after World War I completely gone. Mostly Neapolitans lived there, oftentimes in splendid private villas.

During all week the island was peaceful, only on Saturdays some Neapolitans would come to stay over the weekend and on Sunday mornings ordinary people would show up and go home again with the evening ferry.

Early mornings were for swimming among the rocks down at Torre Saracena. After the siesta everybody was working until meeting again around eight on the piazza to look at the evening ferry from Naples make the harbor. Later during dinner one would usually sit at the terrace of Café Morgana in the warm starry sky night of the South, drinking coffee or wine.

This is where I wrote a collection of Italian novels during the summer. I called it ”Seducers” (Förförare) and I had already had a few ideas in Rome. The rest I picked up at Capri, for that was an island where strange things always took place.

When the book was finished I stayed a few weeks in Venice but my real goal, which I had aimed for all summer, was Sardinia.