It was a pleasant walk too to rejoin the little bus which waited for us in a small piazza nearby. Of course I realized that we would hardly see a tithe of the treasures available in Palermo, for we were leaving for Messina in the early afternoon. Nevertheless when I actually stood in the hushed shadow of the cathedral in Monreale and waited my turn to enter its august portals, I knew what it was. It was as if we had turned a page in the storybook which was Sicilian history and emerged into a period which echoed the most unusual juxtaposition of styles imaginable. This pure Palermo Sicilian is an extraordinary thing, the most beautifully realized merging of the grave and lofty Norman shapes with riotous and intricate Byzantine and Moorish decorative motifs, a brilliant syncopation of the grave central theme. It was my first taste of Sicilian baroque-Moorish — I think there is no established designation for this weird Gaudi-Arabian-Gothic. But it comes off in a magnificently innocent and playful way. The central religious solemnity of the impulse has been rendered childish, naïve and touching as a child’s view of the Garden of Eden. Most of this work belongs to the period of Norman rule. Indeed the cathedral was the work of William the Good, while in its precincts lay the tombs of the other Williams, Good, Bad and Downright Indifferent; but no tomb for Rosalie who had first brought us this inkling of a sea change.
A whole town has grown round the cathedral but it draws its life from this great munificent work, one of the wonders of Christendom today. The marble rood screen, the sparkling mosaics and the gorgeous Byzantino-Moorish decoration make the whole thing feel as vibrant in color as the heart of a pomegranate. Yet quickened and excited as one was by the novelty of this style one could not help asking oneself who actually worshipped here: or did all the denominations regard it as their own altar of worship? “You have a point,” said Deeds who had read all the relevant books on the subject. “The dons seem to think that the style grew up as a kind of political accident; the Normans wanted to create an all-inclusive style for political reasons — they wanted a home-grown Sicilian style to emphasize the separateness of the island, its political uniqueness. With all the many races and religions it was very necessary to seek some kind of unifying motif. Maybe so. Myself I think that it was even simpler — giving work to the local artisan, creating jobs for the locals in order to keep them happy. It was completely unplanned; it just happened that the mix was a godsend, and worked. Genius in fact but quite accidental. And the jobs kept the chaps quiet and silenced criticism. These bloodthirsty northern invaders were sometimes relatively peaceful people and longed for a quiet life; why not mollify local resentments and satisfy local needs? Unless you prefer to believe that old William was an architectural genius and had the whole thing built to specification. I don’t myself.”
And there we had to leave the matter for I was determined to spend a few moments loitering in the cool and water-sounding colonnades which stretched away tenebrously from one side of the main building. Deeds left me for a moment to buy a few postcards in order to illustrate his remarks with views of the Cefalu Cathedral.
Yes, it was a new world with a different world style and attitude. The various elements of this Norman-Oriental thing had no right to fuse so happily together and form something which was downright cheeky exuberant but without archness. After all, when one thought of the relative gravity and staticness of the two differing styles — Norman architecture reaching to high heaven like a grave bear, and the Oriental feeling for intaglio, for marquetry, for the involuted forms of the Arabic script. No, it should not have worked so marvelously well as to constitute something preeminently Sicilian. One thinks of a place where the marriage did not work — Cyprus, where the Turks knocked off the towers of medieval cathedrals to add minarets; and of course the pictures one has seen of the Acropolis transformed into a mosque.… Here the whole thing is a triumphant success — would that something similarly fond and creative had emerged on the political scale after the long suppurating Crusades. I made my way slowly back to the huge doors and looked for traces of my friend. He was busy postcard hunting in the veritable tourist bazaar that had grown up in the little square outside the cathedral. What mountains of rubbish in bad taste the poor tourist is obliged to buy, for want of something pretty to spend his souvenir money on. Or have they gauged our taste aright? It would seem so. One wonders what the old Greek equivalent would have been — in the time of Pausanias say. Sellers of magic herbs, snake oil (still used in Cyprus against the sting of scorpions), spells.… “Nothing ever changes,” said Deeds comfortably when I broached the idea to him. “Any Greek cathedral or Italian has always been like that; first of all it was a place of pilgrimage, you came from far away, you bought a candle, you left a thank you gift or an ex voto. Now in order to mark the event you felt you ought to buy a medal or a trinket which would prove to your pals back at home that you had actually done the trip — you had been to Mecca.”
“And that would give you a right to call yourself Hadji-Deeds or Hadji-Durrell?”
“Exactly. And you would sport a green turban.” “It would be simpler than buying all this trash.” There was a yellow-eyed man, a gipsy, leaning against a wall and playing monotonously upon a Jew’s harp, its dull twang rising above the chatter and turmoil of the market. His wife was circulating in the crowd touting for fortunes. Mario was oozing his bus through the crowd with the slowness of oil in order to place it square before the entrance. I suddenly realized that it was crazy — to leave Palermo with so much unseen, and with the prospect of a night of carnival to witness. But our itinerary had been fixed by other hands, elsewhere, and with another part of me I felt I ought to stick with my fellow travelers. Anyway it was not for long — the Carousel would come to an end at Messina, whence we would be scattered all over Taormina for the “supplementary free week,” but in different hotels. Nevertheless … “It seems mad not to stay longer,” I said, and Deeds agreed but added, “You can come back in your free week, just rent a little car. This trip is only a spot reconnaissance.” It was the right way to look at it. Superficial as it was I felt that the admiring recognition of the force of the new architecture was really the key to this end of Sicily. I had grasped the language of its later invaders. Moreover, I had bitten off a sufficiently large chunk of the Norman Oriental aesthetic to chew on for the present; a glimpse of Cefalu Cathedral would help, of course, and that was scheduled for the late afternoon. We regained our places and moved slowly off down the long glades towards the capital, whence the roads led outwards again along a grim stretch of coast, towards Cefalu.