The Baron in the Trees

by Italo Calvino

  "Oh, es joven, he's young, ideas come and go, que se case, let him marry and they'll change, now come to Granada, do."

  "Muchas gracias a usted. . . I'll think it over. . ." And Cosimo, twiddling his cap of cat's fur in his hands, withdrew with many a bow.

  When he saw Ursula again he was very preoccupied. "You know, Ursula, your father talked to me about you . . . He broached certain subjects . . ."

  Ursula looked alarmed. "You mean he doesn't want us to see each other any more?"

  "No, not that. . . When you are no longer exiled, he wants me to come with you to Granada . . ."

  "Ah, yes! How nice!"

  "But, you see, though I love you, I've always lived on the trees, and I want to stay on them . . ."

  "Oh, Cosimo, we've got lovely trees too . . ."

  "Yes, but meanwhile I'd have to come down to earth for the journey, and once down . . ."

  "Don't worry now, Cosimo. We're exiles, anyway, for the moment and may so remain for the rest of our lives."

  And my brother ceased to think about it.

  But Ursula had guessed wrong. Shortly afterwards, a letter with the royal seal on it reached Don Federico. By gracious clemency of His Catholic Majesty, the ban was revoked. The noble exiles could return to their own homes and their own fiefs. At once there was a great coming and going among the plane trees. "We're returning! We're returning! Madrid! Cádiz! Cádiz!"

  The news soon spread to the town. The inhabitants of Olivabassa arrived with ladders. Some of the exiles descended amid acclamations, others stayed to collect their luggage.

  "But it's not over!" El Conde kept on saying. "The cortes will hear of it! And the Crown!" but as none of his companions in exile showed any desire to agree with him at that moment, and already the ladies were thinking only of their dresses which were now out of fashion and of their wardrobes to be renewed, he began to make speeches to the population of Olivabassa. "Now we're going to Spain and then you'll see! We'll settle our accounts there. I and this young man here will get justice!" and he pointed to Cosimo. Cosimo, confused, made signs of disagreement.

  Don Federico, earned by many hands, had descended to earth. "Baja, joven bizarro!" he shouted to Cosimo. "Come down, you gallant young man! Come with us to Granada!"

  Cosimo was crouching on a branch, reluctant to move.

  And the Prince went on: "Why not? You'll be like a son to me!"

  "The exile is over," said El Conde. "Finally we can put into operation what we have brooded on for so long! Why stay up there on the trees, Baron? There's no reason now."

  Cosimo stretched out his arms. "I came up here before you, my lords, and here I will stay afterwards too!"

  "You want to withdraw!" cried El Conde.

  "No, to resist," replied the Baron.

  Ursula, who had been among the first to go down, and with her sisters was busy filling a coach full of luggage, rushed toward the tree. "Then I'll stay with you! I'll stay with you!" and she began running up the ladder.

  Four or five of the others stopped her, tore her away, took the ladders from the trees.

  "Adiós, Ursula, be happy!" said Cosimo as they carried her forcibly to the coach, which then set off.

  There was a gay barking. The dachshund, Ottimo Massimo, who had snarled with discontent all the time his master had been at Olivabassa, seemed finally happy again. He began to chase, just as a joke, the little cats left behind and forgotten on the trees, and they bristled their fur and hissed at him.

  The exiles departed, some on horseback, some by coach. The road cleared. No one remained on the trees of Olivabassa but my brother. Stuck on the branches here and there was some feather or ribbon or scrap of lace fluttering in the wind, and a glove, a fringed parasol, a fan, a spurred boot.

  } 19 {

  IT WAS a summer—all full moons, croaking frogs, twittering chaffinches—when the Baron was seen at Ombrosa once again. He seemed restless as a bird too, hopping from branch to branch, frowning, inquisitive, indecisive.

  Soon there began to circulate rumors that a certain Cecchina, on the other side of the valley, was his mistress. This girl certainly lived in an isolated house, with a deaf aunt, and an olive branch did pass near her window. The idlers in the square discussed whether she was or not.

  "I saw them, she at the window sill, he on the branch. He was fluttering his arms, like a bat, and she was doubled up with laughter!"

  "Later on he jumps in!"

  "Nonsense; he's sworn never to leave the trees for his whole life. . ."

  "Well, he's set the rule, he can also allow the exceptions . . ."

  "Eh, if we're talking about exceptions . . ."

  "No, no; it's she who jumps out of the window onto the olive!"

  "How do they set about it then? They must be very uncomfortable . . ."

  "I say, they've never touched each other. Yes, he courts her, or maybe it's her who's leading him on. But he'll never come down from up there . . ."

  Yes, no, he, she, sill, jump, branch . . . the discussions seemed endless. Betrothed youths and husbands, now, reacted at once if their girls or wives as much as raised eyes toward a tree. The women, on their side, would chatter away as soon as they met; what were they talking about? Him.

  Whether it was Cecchina or anyone else, my brother had his love affairs without ever leaving the trees. Once I met him running over the branches with a mattress slung over his shoulder, as easily as he slung guns, ropes, hatchets, water flasks or powder horns.

  A certain Dorothea, a courtesan, admitted to me that she had met him, on her own initiative and not for money, but just to get an idea.

  "And what idea did you get?"

  "Eh! I'm quite satisfied . . ."

  Another, a certain Zobeide, told me she had dreamed of the "man on the trees" (as they called him) and this dream was so detailed, so remarkably well informed, that I think she must have lived it in reality.

  Well, I don't know how those stories got about, but Cosimo must certainly have had a fascination for women. Since he had been with the Spaniards he had begun to take more care of his appearance, and had stopped going around muffled in furs like a bear. He wore stockings and a tapered coat and a tall hat in the English fashion, shaved his beard and combed his wig. In fact, one could tell for sure now, from his dress, whether he was going off on a hunting expedition or to a rendezvous.

  The story goes that a mature and noble lady whose name I will not give, as she was from Ombrosa (her sons and grandsons still live here and might be offended, but at that time it was a well-known story), always used to go about in a coach, alone, with an old coachman on the box, and had herself driven over a part of the main road which passed through the wood. At a certain point she would say to the coachman: "Giovita, the wood is simply chockful of mushrooms. Get down, will you. Fill this and then come back," and she would hand him a big basket. The poor man, racked with rheumatism, got down from the box, loaded the basket on his shoulders, went off the road and began searching among the ferns in the dew, and got deeper and deeper into the beechwood, bowing down under every leaf to find a parasol mushroom or a puffball. Meanwhile, the noble lady would vanish from the coach, as if swept up to heaven, into the thick boughs overhanging the road. No more is known, except that often people passing by would find the coach standing there empty in the wood. Then, as mysteriously as she had vanished, there was the noble lady sitting in the coach again, looking languid. Giovita would return, soaking, with a few mushrooms at the bottom of the basket, and they would set off again.

  Many of these stories were told at the house of five Genoese ladies who gave parties for rich young men (I frequented them myself when I was a bachelor), and that's how these ladies were suddenly taken with the whim to visit the Baron. A certain oak tree, in fact, is still called the Oak of the Five Sparrows, and we old men know what that means. The tale comes from a certain Gé, a raisin merchant, a man whom one can believe. It was a fine sunny day, this Gé; was out shooting in the wood, he reached the oak
tree, and what did he see? Cosimo had taken all five of them up on to the branches, and there they were, one here and one there, enjoying the warm afternoon, quite naked, with their little umbrellas open so as not to catch the sun, and the Baron in the midst of them reading Latin verses, Gé could not make out whether by Ovid or Lucretius.

  So many stories were told of him, and what truth there was in them I don't know. At that time he was rather reserved and coy about these things; but, as an old man, he would tell many stories, almost too many—most of them, though, so fantastic that he could not thread his way through them himself. The fact was that people got into the habit, when a girl was pregnant and no one knew who was responsible, of finding it easiest to blame him. Once a girl described how as she was going picking olives she felt herself raised up by two long arms like a monkey's . . . Shortly afterwards she had twins. Ombrosa became filled with bastards of the Baron, real or false. Now they are all grown up and some, it is true, do resemble him; but this could also have been due to the power of suggestion, as when pregnant women saw Cosimo suddenly jumping from one branch to another, they were apt to get a turn.

  Myself, I don't believe most of these stories told to explain certain births. Nor do I know if he had relations with as many women as they say, but what is sure is that those who had known him preferred to be silent about him.

  And then, if he did have so many women after him, how can one explain the moonlight nights when he wandered like a cat on the fig trees, plums and quinces around the village, in the orchards overlooking the outer circle of the houses of Ombrosa; and there he would lament, with sighs, or yawns, or groans, which, however much he tried to control and render into normal sounds, usually came out of his throat as wails or growls. And the people of Ombrosa, who knew his habits, were not even alarmed when they heard all this in their sleep; they would just turn in bed and say, "There's the Baron out for a woman. Let's hope he finds one and we can sleep."

  Sometimes an old man, one of those who suffer from insomnia and are quite ready to go to the window if they hear a noise, would look out into the orchard and see Cosimo's shadow among the branches of the fig trees, thrown on the ground by the moon. "Can't you get to sleep tonight, your Lordship?"

  "No, the more I toss and turn, the more awake I feel," Cosimo would say, as if talking from his bed, with his face deep in the pillows, longing to feel his eyelids droop, while in fact he was hanging suspended there like an acrobat. "I don't know what it is tonight, the heat, nerves; perhaps the weather is going to change, don't you feel it too?"

  "Oh, I feel it, I feel it. . . but I'm old, your Lordship. You, on the other hand, have a pull at your blood. . ."

  "Yes, it does pull. . ."

  "Well, try and get it to pull a little farther away, Lord Baron, as there's nothing here to give you any relief; only poor folk who have to wake at dawn and want to sleep now. . ."

  Cosimo did not answer. He just rustled off into the orchard. He always knew how to keep within decent limits, and on their side the people of Ombrosa always knew how to tolerate these vagaries of his; partly because he was always the Baron and partly because he was a different Baron from others.

  Sometimes those animal calls of his reached other windows, ears more curious to hear; the lighting of a candle, the sound of muffled laughter, of feminine murmurs in the shadows were certainly meant as jokes on him, or mimicking him. And yet it was already something serious, almost a love call to this human derelict jumping about branches like a werewolf.

  And now one of the more shameless girls would come to the window as if to see what was outside, still warm from her bed, her breasts showing, her hair loose, a white smile between her strong lips. Then a conversation would ensue.

  "Who is it? A cat?"

  And he: "It's a man, a man."

  "A man meowing?"

  "No, sighing."

  "Why? What's up?"

  "Something's up . . ."

  "What?"

  "Come here and I'll tell you . . ."

  But he never got insults from the men, nor were there any vendettas—signs, it seems to me, that he was never as dangerous as all that. Only once, mysteriously, was he wounded. The news spread one morning. The Ombrosa doctor had to clamber up on to the nut tree where he was moaning away. He had a leg full of grapeshot, the little ones used to shoot sparrows with; they had to be taken out one by one with pincers. This hurt, but he soon recovered. It was never quite known how this had happened; he said that he had been hit by mistake while climbing a branch.

  Convalescent, immobilized in the nut tree, he plunged into serious study. At that time he began to write a Project for the Constitution of an Ideal State in the Trees, in which he described the imaginary Republic of Arborea, inhabited by just men. He began it as a treatise on laws and governments; but as he wrote, his impulse to invent complicated stories intervened and out poured a rough sketch of adventures, duels and erotic tales, the latter inserted in a chapter on matrimonial rights. The epilogue of the book should have been this: the Author, having founded the perfect state in the treetops and convinced the whole of humanity to establish itself there and live there happily, came down to inhabit the earth, which was now deserted. This is what it should have been, but the work remained incomplete. He sent a précis to Diderot, signing it simply: "Cosimo Rondò, Reader of the Encyclopaedia." Diderot thanked him with a short note.

  } 20 {

  I CANNOT say much of that period, because it was the time of my first journey into Europe. I was a young man and could make whatever use I liked of the family patrimony, as my brother needed very little. The same was true of my mother, who had been getting very much older recently, poor dear. My brother had asked to sign a power of attorney in my favor over all our possessions, on the condition that I give him a monthly allowance pay his taxes, and keep his affairs in order. All I had to do was to take over direction of the estate and choose myself a wife, and already I saw ahead of me that regulated and pacific life which, in spite of all the great upheavals at the turn of the century, I have succeeded, in fact, in living.

  But before starting this, I allowed myself a period of travel. I also went to Paris, just in time to see the triumphant reception of Voltaire on his return there after many years, for the staging of one of his plays. But these are not the memoirs of my life, which would not be worth writing; I only mention this journey, because everywhere I went I was struck by the fame of the tree-climbing man of Ombrosa, in foreign countries too. Once in an almanac I saw a figure with the words beneath: "L'homme sauvage d'Ombreuse (Rep. Génoise). Vit seulement sur les arbres."

  They had represented him all covered in leaves, with a long beard and a long tail, eating a locust. This figure was in the Chapter of Monsters, between the Hermaphrodite and the Siren.

  When faced with this kind of fantasy I was usually careful not to reveal that the man was my brother. But I proclaimed it very loud when I was invited to a reception in honor of Voltaire in Paris. The old philosopher was in his armchair, surrounded by a court of ladies, gay as a cricket and prickly as a porcupine. When he heard I came from Ombrosa he addressed me thus: "Is it near you, mon cher Chevalier, that there is that famous philosopher who lives on the trees comme un singe?"

  And I, flattered, could not prevent myself replying: "He's my brother, Monsieur, le Baron de Rondeau."

  Voltaire was very surprised, perhaps partly at finding the brother of such a phenomenon apparently so normal, and began asking me questions, such as: "But is it to be nearer the sky that your brother stays up there?"

  "My brother considers," answered I, "that anyone who wants to see the earth properly must keep himself at a necessary distance from it," and Voltaire seemed to appreciate this reply.

  "Once it was only Nature which produced living phenomena," he concluded. "Now 'tis Reason." And the old sage plunged back into the chatter of his theistic adorers.

  Soon I had to interrupt my journey and return to Ombrosa, recalled by an urgent dispatch. Our mother's as
thma had suddenly got worse and the poor woman could no longer leave her bed.

  When I crossed the threshold and raised my eyes toward our house I was sure I would see him there. Cosimo was crouching on a high branch of a mulberry tree just outside the sill of our mother's bedroom. "Cosimo," I called, but in a muffled voice. He made me a sign which meant both that our mother was rather better but still in bed, and that I should come up quietly.

  The room was in shadow. My mother lay in bed with a pile of pillows propping up her shoulders, and she seemed larger than I had ever seen her. Around her were a few women of the house. Battista had not yet arrived, as the Count her husband, who was to accompany her, had been held back for the vintage. In the shadow of the room glowed the open window in which Cosimo was framed on the branch of a tree.

  I bent down to kiss our mother's hand. She recognized me at once and put her hand on my head. "Ah, so you have arrived, Biagio . . ." She spoke in a faint voice when the asthma did not grip her throat too much, but clearly and with great feeling. What struck me, though, was hearing her addressing both of us, Cosimo and myself, as if he were at her bedside too. And Cosimo answered her from the tree.

  "Is it long since I took my medicine, Cosimo?"

  "No, only just a few minutes, Mother. Wait before you take more, as it won't do you any good just now."

  At a certain point she said, "Cosimo, give me a sliver of orange," and I felt surprised. But I was even more surprised when I saw Cosimo stretching into the room through the window a kind of ship's harpoon and with it pick up a sliver of orange which was put into our mother's hand.

  I noticed that for all these little services she preferred to turn to him.

  "Cosimo, give me my shawls."

  And he with his harpoon would search among the things thrown on an armchair, take up the shawls and hand them to her. "Here they are, Mother."

  "Thank you, Cosimo, my son." She always spoke as if he were only a yard or two away, but I noticed that she never asked him services which he could not do from the tree. In such cases she always asked either me or the women.