The smooth hills were densely thicketed with holm oak and laurel and rosemary and buzzing with crickets. A picturesque place with noble and romantic associations, though Deeds for the first time swore under his breath at people who could shove a motor road right through such a place, without blushing. They were simply unaware of anything but tourist gold. Just like the Greeks of today, and the Italians of yesterday. The only consolation is that it will all fall apart again and vanish into dust — for our civilization seems to be far less solid than those which have already vanished and left us these vestiges of lost greatness. But no, Deeds would not be consoled. “Here God is definitely mocked,” he asserted, “though thank God Segesta’s position is still fairly remote and one rarely finds it crowded — you can still sit in the theater and drowse, which is something.” It was true; ours was the only bus at the site, and by now, to my astonishment, we did not get on each other’s nerves any more. If we had not become friends we had become in a sense partners and ready to make allowances. Even the dentist’s lady had started to take a liking to Beddoes, who had swept her into a tango during a moment in the bar in Agrigento where a jukebox churned out jazz. As for the dentist he had assuaged a tiresome toothache which afflicted the child Microscope after he had been eating too many sweets. Even the Bishop had taken a hand at pontoon during a halt. Deeds had done tricks with string which fascinated and awed. In short we had all shaken down.
The place, the temple … how impossible it is to convey the charm of atmosphere in a travel folder or a photo. One is forced to fake, and the result is always a false emphasis. This place, even if there had been no temple, would have radiated a quiet magnetism and well being, just like an Aesculapium — like Cos or like Epidaurus. I have spent half a lifetime trying to analyze why and the only result has been to decide that it has something to do with fresh water and green in a limestone context. The sanatoria of the ancient world were chosen for their seclusion and the purity of their air; in our age also, but we tend to place too much emphasis on mountains, most likely because for so long the most popular of human diseases has been tuberculosis, which nowadays has all but disappeared. As for Segesta, so far nothing has been found to indicate that it was a spa unless the presence of sulphur springs near Calatafimi might hint at it. But of course here again nothing about it is known with any real exactitude — everything is conjecture. The people claimed to come from Troy though some say that they were Italians from the north; but the stamp of their Greekness remains, for their coinage bore a Greek legend, and their architects were Athenian in mind and scope. It did not need the learned dissertations of guidebooks to tell one about the splendor of this particular temple, standing there so quietly in the vale, wise as an elephant bearing the world on its back. What was missing was the context simply, the vanished town which would have put everything in its place and reduced the sense of strangeness and alienation which I must say I personally found exciting and stimulating. But the feeling of deep composure and calm was conveyed not only by the temple and theater but by the whole site. “I slept here in the grass once without a blanket,” said Deeds with a gesture, “by starlight in summer — what a huge display of jewels. And so silent.” The gesture he sketched suggested someone who just spontaneously sinks to the ground, rendered completely defenseless by the beauty and silence of the place. Of course he had seen it all years ago, hence his irritation. He must have intuited my thought for he said: “Twenty years I suppose; we came up on it by mule back from the direction of Calatafimi. It came to us valley by valley, in little sips so to speak, appearing and disappearing; each time from a different angle and a different light. At first it was tiny, like a little dice floodlit by the sun. Then it grew. Then at last you arrived with your tongue cleaving to your palate with thirst, but with the feeling of moral grandeur that must come to people who complete an arduous pilgrimage. It was unfenced then and one could put a sleeping bag down anywhere inside the temple. No road, you see, no access. Nowadays of course one drives straight up to these places by bus and so one doesn’t get the pleasure of the effort. One just rapes them.”
I think his little homily must have sounded a trifle reproachful for all at once everyone — almost everyone — decided to get out and walk a bit, as if to atone for our slack philistinism. However morally worthy, as a gesture it was somewhat intrepid because of the heat beating down from the rocks and vales. We were far from the sea here and the valley gathered up the rays of sunlight like a green burning glass. Nevertheless we set off in a straggle, I with Deeds and Roberto; we were shortly joined by the Count who was a good amateur botanist and was collecting wild flowers and leaves to press in the pages of his Goethe. “You know,” he said, “I am very skeptical about our attitude to the past; I don’t believe that we have a shadow of an inkling about how a Greek thought. Understanding and sympathy need a common culture. We are so different that it is idle to pretend that we can for a moment appreciate what their attitude to life and death was. I think we fake the whole thing. Fake reverence. Fake understanding. No, it has all disappeared once and for all; there is no way of recovering such a remote past by the imagination. Do I depress you?” We assured him stoutly that he did not, but in fact he did. I felt suddenly the fatigue of this journey growing upon me — the fatigue of the speed which did not give time to take in enough. A brilliant butterfly sat on a leaf. And suddenly I felt nothing but pure hate for the Carousel.
On we pressed in the heat, bursting with vainglory and good intentions, anxious to do the honest thing by one of the most beautiful ancient Greek theaters in existence when there came an encounter so hubris punishing as to be worthy of some ancient Greek fable. Beside the road, upon a large rock, sat a couple of very fragile and very ancient people, obviously a man and his wife, both older than the rock upon which they perched. The man was of an incomparable distinction from every point of view — worn but excellent light tweeds, gillie’s hat, light cape, solid gold-handled walking stick.… He looked like a senior Druid. His wife was beautiful and silver and fragile, a fitting mate for a man so handsome, whose silver hair spoke of age and serenity, but whose old eyes spoke of culture. Moreover, a lunch basket lay open between them, and she was in the act of reading from a book — it sounded like ancient Greek in an Erasmic pronunciation.
GRECIAN TEMPLE AT SEGESTA
Suddenly we appeared round the corner, puffing our noble way uphill; the reading stopped and the couple gazed at us with a quiet aristocratic commiseration. Scrutiny would be the word — a long cold scrutiny which made us aware of the extent to which we were disturbing the peace of this honeyed place. That wasn’t all. As we passed the old man spoke to his wife in a low clear voice, not intended to be overheard, and what he said was: “Poor tourist scum.” It was like machine gun fire — the whole front line wavered. We had been assailed in our poor fragile corporate identity; we had been weighed and found wanting. We could look at ourselves now with the proper misgiving and see just what a scruffy raggle-taggle mob we were, ill assorted and self-assertive with our little red bus. We felt suddenly terribly ashamed and full of self-pity. And here were these damned British aristocrats sniffing their contempt down their long aquiline supercilious noses. They had doubtless done things the right way — they had probably walked the last hundred miles, sleeping in the trees, and pausing from time to time to read select chunks of Theocritus or Thucydides to each other. Here they were, professionally appreciating the place in the right way while we, a sweaty mob of people of all shapes and sizes were galloping about destroying the peace.… I was furious, we were all furious, we were hopping mad. Hopping mad. Hopping.