TAORMINA

I had forgotten that DH Lawrence lived for a time in Taormina.

And now, on our holiday in Sicily, there it is, the Via David Herbert Lawrence, in a little unglamorous quarter of the generally glamorous Taormina, at the crux of three roads, where an intensely dark carob tree provides deep shadow from the sun, above the gorge that tipples away below towards the sea.

The Via David Herbert Lawrence.

The local municipality has accorded him the respect of all three names. 

I check on the dodgy internet connection of my phone. He lived here, at Fontana Vecchia, between 1920 and 1922. Wrote The Lost Girl, here, possibly Lady Chatterley.

I mention Lady Chatterley to my companions. They are impressed. Everyone knows of Lady Chatterley.

And the poem Snake. How could I have forgotten that?

Our apartment is just a short way further on. A fifteen minute walk to the town gate, the Gate of the Capuccins, and beyond the traffic crazy outer road, the sedate traffic free boulevard with its boutiques and balconies and squares with resplendent views, its restaurants where here a guitarist serenades the diners, and here a cool jazz trio plays on into the night.

Each time we walk though, we pass the corner where the respectful street sign records its former resident.

In the little piazza, by the carob tree, a small fountain plays, almost unnoticed. This, presumably, is the old fountain itself, the fontana vecchia.

But which is the house that Lawrence and Frieda rented and lived in for nearly two years? There is the little bed and breakfast which bears the name Fontana Vecchia – but surely it is too modern. As are most of the buildings hereabout. They stack up impossibly against the steep hillside, lego-like, with their elevator shafts and Skye dishes. And three cranes stand permanently at the ready, it seems, to drop another box into place. This certainly is not the Fontana Vecchia Lawrence would have recognised. With the bright neon of the Hotel Splendid staring back from nearer the town, this would have been his nightmare.

But I try to imagine it as it was – dusty paths, probably, not roads, with the mountains rising above – obviously Lawrence must have passed by this spot where the carob tree is in his walks up to the village – could it be the same tree – did DHL stand here taking shade – how long do carob trees live?

I peer over walls, into gardens, partly overgrown, that fill the steep slope. Before all this holiday development, which was the garden into which Lawrence strolled, in the heat of the afternoon, towards the watering place? Each time we pass, going out, coming home, I weigh things up, making allowance for the obvious changes that nearly a century of development have wrought.

But why am I so preoccupied? Isn`t this literary pilgrimage lark a bit of a farce?

No one reads Lawrence now, do they?

Does anyone read Lawrence now?

Even to those who have read him, after his revival in the sixties and seventies [the prophet of love!] hasn`t he now become a faintly ridiculous figure – all that ranting and polemical rambling?

No-one in my little group has heard of the poem Snake though my mind is taken back to February or November schoolrooms – the man, the watering hole, the snake – above all the sense of heat.

The feeling of being transported to a hot place

The watering place in the cool shade

Where all is still apart from the gurgling of water,  a low sound just audible to the attuned ear.

And then the privileged encounter with the snake god.

And the clumsy log  thrown, causing the snake to slither back into its hole, leaving Lawrence wretched at the pettiness of his own action.

I decide at last which house it is. The one with green shutters and faded red stucco high above the road. And I see the tall bearded man appear on the balcony, standing for a moment in the noonday heat, then retiring, until, a moment later he appears below making his way down the steep path between the jasmine and the lemon trees.

I have found it just in time.

A moment later there is the honk of a taxi behind.

I turn and signal to the driver

Yes, here we are

To the aeroporto? he asks for confirmation

To the aeroporto, I reply.