Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - XXVII. Summer
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Denna sida har korrekturlästs minst en gång.
(skillnad)
(historik)
where the dream ended and where reality began.
Who steered the yacht into this hidden, lonely
cove? Who led my way across this trackless
wilderness to the unknown ruins of Nero’s villa?
Was the shepherd of flesh and blood or was he not
Pan himself who had come back to his favourite
haunts of old to play the flute to his flock of
goats?
Do not ask me any questions, I cannot tell you,
I dare not tell you. You may ask the huge
granite sphinx who lies crouching on the parapet
of the chapel in San Michele. But you will ask
in vain. The sphinx has kept her own secret for
five thousand years. The sphinx will keep
mine.
* * *
I returned from the great adventure, emaciated
from hunger and hardships of all sorts, and
shivering with malaria. Once I had been
kidnapped by brigands, there were plenty of them
in Calabria in those days. It was my rags that
saved me. Twice I had been arrested by the
coastguards as a smuggler. Several times I had
been stung by scorpions, my left hand was still
in a bandage from the bite of a viper. Off Punta
Licosa, where Leucosia, the Siren sister of
Parthenope, lies buried, we were caught in a
south-westerly gale and would have gone to the bottom
of the sea with our heavy cargo had not
Sant’Antonio taken the helm in the nick of time.
Votive candles were still burning before his
shrine in the church of Anacapri when I entered
San Michele. The rumour that we had been
wrecked in the heavy gale had spread all over
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