VENDETTAS IN SARDINIA

In many parts of the world vendettas, or blood feuds, form part of the local code of honour, and you are liable to be shot in the back at any moment for something an ancestor did seventy years Our travelling correspondent tells some interesting stories concerning the vendetta as it exists today in Sardinia, Albania, and other countries.

THE Sardinians are probably the mildest-mannered men who ever cut throats. Travel all over their island and you will be received with old Highland hospitality. There are few inns, except in the two or three chief towns, but inns are not needed, for every door is open to the stranger, the best of fare is offered nay, lavished with open hands the fatted calf is instantly slain, the cellars are ransacked for the oldest wine. Indeed, you might almost start a vendetta by refusing hospitality or wanting to hurry away too soon! So long as you do not smile at the womenfolk you are an honoured guest for much longer than you wish to remain. But the etiquette about women is as strict as in any harem-land of the East. When d’Annunzio and other poets went to Sardinia, their harmless smiles and ordinary amenities were misinterpreted, and they had to employ many suave intermediaries and escape from their hosts at night-time in order to avoid knives in their backs.

Vendetta is a horrible snowball. In the good old times we had our duels, somebody was killed or wounded, and there was an end of it but in vendetta lands the first blood is the impulse that starts an endless avalanche. You smile at my wife or chuck my daughter under the chin, and I wait behind a rock and slit your we sand or shoot you in the back. If the whole jury were eve witnesses, they would acquit me first, be cause it is the custom of the country, and, secondly, because they know that summary justice is not very likely to allow me to escape. Your next-of-kin will then proceed to kill me my relations will kill kon and on ad impactum.

I might find my way back to Oxford Street, or the Carse of Gowrie, but I should be stalked for years, like the hero of The Moonstone, and similar novels. I was in Seville some years ago when there was great excitement over an Englishman who, with a gipsy guide, went up the Giralda to see the harvest moon. The Englishman climbed the spiral staircase in front. An uncanny feeling suddenly made him look round, and he caught the gipsy in the act of passing a dagger to stab him in the back. He promptly drew a revolver and shot the scoundrel. Then he went to the police and related what had happened. The police pot him into prison to protect him, and gipsies tried to storm the place for days. A Spanish jury acquitted him, but he only reached home with great difficulty, and was haunted by gipsies for years. That is the spirit of vendetta. And it is handed down from generation to generation-especially in Sardinia, where it forms part of the daily life and has been raised to a fine art.

It is not easy to explain why the vendetta flourishes in one country and is discouraged in another. Next to Sardinia comes Corsica, where the people, after all, are not very different. There is plenty of bloodshed in Sicily, but it is organized by a secret society and has nothing to do with vendetta. Albania runs the blood-fend on very similar lines, and Albania’s hereditary enemy, Montenegro, oddly enough, cherishes almost the same traditions, whereas the Serbians, the cousins of the Montenegrins, are blood-thirsty in quite a different way. It is probably not an accident that fends and feudalism have the same derivation, and clannish traditions must have something to do with the custom.

The great difficulty that Governments find in suppressing vendetta is that its disciples regard it as part of their code of honour. Men who go to church regularly and observe all the religious feasts-black-coated gentlemen of infinite respectability, who could be trusted anywhere with untold gold and frivolous females nevertheless consider it their sacred duty to slay the second consin twice removed of someone who has killed a member of their family in legitimate self-defence. Indeed, there is a stigma on their whole clan if blood has not been wiped out with blood, if many molars have not repaid a single tooth. It ceases to be it never is, in fact a personal affair. It is just primitive, savage justice.

When I was in Abyssinia I used to meet young men with many brass rings on their spears. Each ring represented a male life that had been taken. They would catch some poor Indian trader travelling down to the coast with the trifling earnings of years and slaughter him not for his Maria Theresa dollars, but for his sex, It was merely a question of another ring on the spear. In the same spirit, a Sardinian will waylay and murder the small boy of a hostile family to prove to the world that he has neither forgiven nor forgotten an offence that may have occurred seventy-five years ago.

These horribly long memories of grievances are part and parcel of the system. In Albania I met a man who had killed some-body a quarter of a century previously and then taken sanctuary in a field attached to a church, where it would not have been good form to molest him. He built a hut there and bred children and cattle. For five-and-twenty years he did not emerge for five-and-twenty years he seemed to enjoy perfect security. But the members of the enemy family had taken it in turns to watch unremittingly all that time, and when at last he strolled out, with many precautions, to fetch back a straying cow, he was instantly shot by his victim’s grandson, who was lurking behind a hedge.

The etiquette of vendetta is very scrupulously observed in Albania. I once attended a funeral there, and noticed a couple of mourners who held aloof and were evidently viewed with antipathy. As the sun sank towards the horizon, I observed a growing uneasiness. Then the two mourners expressed the equivalent of Sorry, we mustn’t stop,” mounted their horses, and galloped off into the hills without any formula of goodbye. The law of vengeance is that nothing must be done in the way of reprisal until sunset-the reverse of” let not the sun go down upon your wrath.” Hardly had the last ravs disappeared behind the hills than a group of my hosts set forth on horseback to pursue the two mourners, who had just killed a member of their family. It was all as precise and sportsmanlike as the Waterloo Cup.

Vendetta is regarded as a duty, very far removed from a crime. When I visited the prison at Cettinje, in Montenegro, I asked the jailer what was the principal crime of his inmates.

“Crime!” he protested. “There is no crime in Montenegro!”

“A shot resounded from behind a hill and he bit the dust.”

“Then why are you detaining these worthy citizens ?

“Oh! only for murder.”

The law imposed mild imprisonment for vengeance, just as German law used to profess to punish duelling, but the prisoners would have been despised far more if they had neglected their traditional duties. There were no bolts or bars, and they could stroll out as they pleased. For one thing, they would have found it difficult to escape across the frontier and they always came home to the jail for the Montenegrin equivalent of afternoon tea.

Here in Sardinia, Church and State have been frantically at work for generations trying to suppress the vendetta, but it is very slow work. I remember meeting a Sardinian on the Italian Riviera, near Genoa. He liked but despised the natives, As a matter of fact, Sardinians like to secretly despise nearly everybody; they are full of affability and potential hate. He said to me: “These people have milk in their veins. 1 saw a man today with his bride. Someone spoke to her quite freely, without being introduced and the wretch is still alive!”

From time to time, however, reconciliations do take place. Sixty-five years ago there was a solemn ceremony of forgiveness between two families that had been at war for two centuries, killing one another and destroying one another’s cattle and farmsteads. It made an enormous sensation, and marked an epoch in the history of the island. Only the other day there was a similar event, for which the parish priest and the mayor of Tempio, amid the savage rockland of Angina [Aggius], are jointly responsible, Almost endless negotiations preceded the formal kiss of peace. No one wished to forego his vengeance; the honour of five hostile families was at stake. Again and again, for a whole generation, men and boys had been stabbed, and though everybody knew the culprits and all the reasons for the crimes, no one was ever punished by the law. Then someone having authority suddenly hastened to reason. All the hostile families –  the Leporis, the Pes, the Seazzus, the Spezzigas, and the Vasas – far more hostile than the Montagues and Capulets, agreed to attend Mass together.

Their famous feud has been responsible for no fewer than seventy-five homicides during the last fifteen years. It all began with the murder of Professor Pier Felice Stangoni, a widower who lectured at the Technical Institute of Sassari. What he had done is not quite clear. Some say he had flirted with a Miss Pes and then refused to marry her. Another story is that he was unintentionally killed by a mischievous boy from an unfriendly village. Anyhow, the Professor was taking a country walk with his three little boys, Albert, Mario, and Arnold, when someone lurking in the thickets suddenly hit him on the forehead with a bullet from a catapult and killed him. instantly. There was a sensational trial and the suspects were acquitted. A few months later, however, one of them, Martin Pes, was killed. Thereupon the authorities arrested Professor Stangoni’s father-in-law, Paul Lepori, a vigorous old man, and he was acquitted for lack of evidence. Assassinations followed with furious rapidity. Nicholas Vasa was seriously wounded one day and

killed the next. Members of the various families were found dead in lonely places of disappeared and were never seen again. An immense amount of property was destroyed, Great numbers of innocent people went in daily fear of their lives.

Two hundred members of the various families came from far and near to attend the ceremony of reconciliation. The boys of Tempio Seminary walked first in the procession. Then came Monsignor Sanna, Bishop of Tempio and Castelsardo, followed by the parish priest, the mayor with an Italian flag, and an enormous crowd from the whole countryside. Penitential hymns were sung and Mass was celebrated in the open air amid deep emotion. Then Father Deligios, a famous Franciscan preacher, spoke of the beauty of Sardinia, the hospitality of her people, always gentle and generous except when carried away by traditional hatreds. He alluded to the seventy-five victims and invoked the blessing and pardon of Heaven on the survivors.

Then the members of the hostile families were divided into two long files and went up side by side to receive the episcopal benediction. There was Paul Lepori, “Uncle Paul,” as he is known to the whole country-side, the father-in-law and alleged avenger of the first victim, now ninety years of age and very hoary, but still erect and vigorous. Beside him was Salvatore Pes, the son of Martin Pes, whom old Lepori was accused of killing. Salvatore is now some forty years. of age. Then there were Mario and Arnold Stangoni, sons of the first victim, well able to remember the horror of their father’s. murder, Arnold in the uniform of an ardito (storm-trooper) with two silver medals earned by prowess in the war.

After the benediction, old Paul Lepori and Salvatore Pes solemnly embraced and wept on each other’s shoulders, amid the intense emotion and loud applause of the crowd. Then kissing became general and there were solemn vows of mutual love and respect.

Everybody is confident about the permanence of the reconciliation. Dr. Mario Stangoni, son of the first victim, stood at the recent provincial elections and was triumphantly returned by the votes of ex-enemy families, and now there is talk of a marriage such as that which ended the Wars of the Roses. After all, the last reconciliation has endured for sixty-five years, s0 there is no reason to despair of the present case. Sardinians are a dramatic, primitive people and their emotions have certainly been touched.

This is the story of the latest reconciliation. Two families carried on a feud until they were both nearly destroyed. They fought like wild beasts, concentrating every nerve, every emotion, in the business of killing the traditional foe. Year after year, in ambush and open fight, members of both families fell victims to the implacable rancour. Oddly enough, however, the two heads of the respective clans, sturdy old men, remained unmolested. Youths and even children were laid low, but the chiefs remained, like stalwart oaks, undisturbed by the raging tempest of crime.

At last they remained almost alone. A few more murders, and they would have been the solitary representatives of their slaughtered lines. They took no special precautions to guard against attack. In fact, one afternoon, one of them was riding quietly back to Sassari, accompanied only by a servant. A few miles from home a shot resounded from behind a hill and he bit the dust. He shook himself and rose to his elbows, but he knew that his hour had struck.

He called quietly to his servant. “Take off the saddle,” he said,

When this was done, he took cover very stealthily behind it, pointing his gun in the direction of the place from which death had. been let loose upon him.

Then he bade his servant run towards the town, shouting as he ran, “My master is dead!

The man who had fired the shot was completely taken in by this device. First, he peered out cautiously; then his whole body appeared above the hill. It was the chieftain of the other family!

The wounded man took a long, deliberate aim, fired, and saw with satisfaction that he had hit his mark. The servant came running back, recalled by the shot, and to him the old man said, grimly:

“Tell them to bring two biers, for we are two dead men.” And so it proved.

They found the chieftain with his head resting on the hard pillow afforded by his saddle, and in death he still clung to his gun. After this last tragedy the few survivors of the two families consented to make peace, for it seemed to them that they had carried. out the law of vendetta to its bitter end.

But vendetta is in their blood the very children play at vendetta, just as little Spaniards play at ball-fights. A trifling accident or a petty quarrel may easily lead to another feud lasting for centuries and spreading a reign of terror over whole provinces, You can scarcely travel anywhere in Sardinia. without seeing wayside crosses commemorating deeds of blood, and the whole character of the country lends itself to law-lessness. The distances between villages are enormous, and they are perched on inaccessible mountains or hidden away in remote recesses. You may travel for miles, and miles through a wilderness of fragrant, purple-coloured scrub without ever encountering a human being. Rocks and thickets everywhere afford excellent cover for lurking assassins. There has always been much brigandage in the island. It is not the sort of brigandage that holds up travellers or stage-coaches these are too few to make it worth while, But if anyone comes to a disagreement with the authorities, he has only to take to the hills and all idea of pursuit must be abandoned.

In old days vendettas were carried out more systematically and on a grander scale, Sometimes big bands-almost small armies-raided whole villages, slaughtering and destroying wholesale. Now the affair savours rather of relentless, premeditated murder by individuals, There is not even the trace of chivalry of Albanian fends. If an Albanian eats his enemy’s salt, even unawares, there must be no bloodshed for the next twenty-four hours, Sardinians respect no such conventions. They have not even the ordinary sportsman’s instinct of warning before striking.

I met a girl near Sassari who had swum a lake with a knife in her mouth on a pitch-dark night, crawled up to a cottage, and killed an aged couple in their sleep; and she seemed to be regarded as a heroine. Then I was told of a boy of twelve who climbed on to the roof of a cottage and set fire to the thatch, doing it so deliberately that half his clothes were burned, and as he fled away he was chased by three of the ferocious sheep dogs for which the island is famous. They tore him limb from limb-even the domestic animals seem to take part in a Sardinian vendetta.

Then, again, a young married couple had just set up house in a lonely farm when the bridegroom was enticed out by a message that lus father lay wounded in a neighbouring coppice. There he was set upon and blinded while his hapless bride was carried oft and never heard of again. These and a dozen similar outrages, utterly unprovoked by the victims, ate narrated quite callously every day. They are mere incidents of civil war and arouse no indignation among neutral families.

And the most amazing thing is that, apart from this one criminal kink in their brains, Sardinians are among the most engaging and amiable of mortals. The Italian Government neglects them, concedes practically nothing in return for their heavy taxes, leaves them almost without roads and railways and schools, They grumble incessantly, but they were the first to volunteer for the war and acquitted themselves like heroes, They belong to another age and cannot fairly be judged by modern standards of civilization.