The Heron

by Giorgio Bassani

  He walked away, but at the first crossing took a left, once more entering the thick of the inhabited zone.

  He walked down one street after another – dismal little roads flanked by the small one-storey houses of the town’s oldest district. He met no one. From the gaps in the closed shutters filtered the pinkish light of impoverished families. All he heard was the odd scrap of sound from radios.

  At crossings he lifted his eyes to read the street signs. He knew it: just after the Liberation almost all of the street names had been changed. Narrow alleys had been dedicated to no-lesser figures than Carlo Marx, Federico Engels and Giuseppe Stalin, to Antonio Gramsci and to Clelia Trotti – the famous elementary school teacher and socialist who died of consumption during the winter of 1944 here at Codigoro’s local jail – to E. Curiel and so on. The pre-war ceramic signs had not been taken down, but simply covered over with plaster. And on the layer of plaster they had hand-written the new names, with a brush dipped in black paint. Reading them was not an easy task. Time and bad weather were already erasing them. He spelled out: LO MAR, ANTON GRAMSCI, E. CURIEL, USEPPE TALIN, C E IA ROTTI. He filled in the blanks of the missing letters. And didn’t walk on until he’d succeeded in doing so.

  In Via Antonio Labriola, which must have been just behind the square, he was stopped in his tracks by two discreetly lit ground-floor windows. He drew close to the nearest one, and standing a little to one side, looked inside through the glass.

  In front of him was a low-ceilinged, medium-sized, rectangular room – clearly some kind of eating house. The walls hung with pots and copper pans, the sooty fireplace, the two tables each occupied by four card-players who wore hats or berets and had a glass of red wine inches from their elbows left him in no doubt about that. But why was it that those eight players, so silent and motionless, although they resembled in every way the customers in the Bosco Elìceo and Caffè Fetman, seen here, closed in this room behind the pane of glass, should look so strange and out of reach?

  He focused his attention on the four who sat at the nearest table. All of them were between thirty and forty; at least three of them looked like labourers. The one to the right, thin, bony, seen in profile with his cheeks dark with stubble and a hooked nose, might have been a bricklayer. The one in front, in the middle, with a big face and snub nose, with his black beret at an angle and his oil-stained hands, a mechanic. The third, to the left, crouched in the wickerwork chair, hunchbacked in his cyclist’s sweater, might also have been a bricklayer, or perhaps a farm-worker, one of those who tends the animals The fourth, by contrast, broad-shouldered, chunky, thick-necked, with a brown Homburg at a rakish angle, was not a workman, that was for sure, but perhaps an employee of the Land Reclamation Company or of the Eridania, or a small landowner. There wasn’t a spare seat in the room. Everyone and everything fulfilled a precise function. He felt as though he were standing before a framed painting. Impossible to enter into. There was no place and no space not taken.

  What should he do? Where should he go?

  He lifted his arm and exposed his watch face to the light. Ten past seven.

  He pushed himself back with his chest from the window, and spotted the dark form of Santa Maria Ausiliatrice’s apse and its belltower sited across the end of the alleyway. There it was. In church he’d surely find a pew to rest on. He could sit apart, in a corner, so as not to be seen, should Ulderico and his children arrive. Crossing the threshold would be the only moment he’d run any risk. But was it at all likely that he’d meet the Cavaglieris as he was entering? In any case, it was worth being careful.

  He would never have guessed the church’s interior was so vast. With a single nave and its unadorned rough-cast walls, and its floor almost entirely filled by two rows of pews divided by an aisle which led to the main altar, it made him think of a cinema, an empty out-of-hours cinema where nothing was showing. There was hardly a soul. Only the priest and a novice down there by the altar, busy preparing something, and four or five old women hunched here and there in the pews.

  Halfway up the side wall opposite the entrance he noticed a chapel, the only one: a half-dark niche containing nothing but a large black crucifix carved in wood. It was there he’d find a place for himself. Should it prove necessary, he’d withdraw to the back of the chapel. On tiptoes, he made his way there.

  Once he was seated, he began to scrutinize the distant, incomprehensible activities of the priest and the novice scuttling between the main altar and the sacristy. He still felt far from at ease. Having taken off his cap, his head felt cold. Besides, the proximity of the crucifix, of that blackened, nailed corpse, disturbed and intimidated him.

  He yawned. How many people could the church seat?

  He began to count the pews. Starting with the first row and moving back, he counted up to forty. Each row of pews would easily accommodate some twenty people. Two times four is eight. So it would seat a congregation of eight hundred.

  He yawned again. A good half of the pews, especially those towards the front, closest to the main altar, bore a miniature white sign above with the usual names – Callegari, Callegarini, Benazzi, Tagliati, Putinati, Pimpinati, Borgatti, Felletti, Mingozzi, Bottoni, etc. – more or less the same ones you’d find among the poorest workmen and labourers in the surrounding country. And the Cavaglieris? Did they, too, have their own church pew? It was almost worth the bother of going to check.

  He realized he was stepping on something, and peered down. Some paper. It looked like a newspaper.

  He leaned down, picked it up and straightened it out.

  It wasn’t a newspaper, but some Catholic propaganda print-out. On the first page there was only a thickly inked woodcut. It showed a hand tightly squeezing some ripe olives. Its rough, knotty fingers with enormous nails were dripping with oil. Atop the image in spaced-out capital letters it read: TAKE NO THOUGHT FOR THE MORROW.

  He opened the sheet and smoothed it out.

  There was a great deal to read within. The font and point size kept on varying to keep the readers on their toes, and even the layout changed every now and then. Sometimes the lineation suddenly shifted to short lines centred and arranged in columns as if they were verses of a poem.

  ‘Have you ever closely observed a mole?’ he read, staring at the top of the sheet and narrowing his eyes to decipher the tiny italics of the first lines. ‘Its forepaws are like spades it uses to dig the earth before it, as you might with a spoon. It uses its back legs to push its body forwards. Its head is like a wedge, its nose like a pointed chisel, and both have been created so as not to be broken. Its tiny eyes are almost entirely hidden by its fur, and its outer ears likewise.

  ‘Do you think it made itself that way, adapting its body to a life underground? And why have other animals that live in a similar way adapted differently? Yes, because of God. But would a God so infinitely great concern himself with such insignificant creatures?

  ‘Don’t listen to the voice of atheistic materialism! But rather observe all that surrounds you with the good, clear eye of a child of God. Then you will agree with St Augustine who attests: “God takes care of every creature He has made as if it were the only one in the world, and of all as if each one were unique.”

  ‘There are, however, different kinds of care.

  ‘You take care of your shoes, of your hunting dog, of your parrot, of your potted geranium on the windowsill, of your radio, of your motorbike. And you say to your little girl “Careful not to fall!”, “This draught will give you a cold!”, “Are you hungry?”, “I run to see why she’s crying …” And you wrap her tightly in your arms to dry her tears.

  ‘In truth, of all His creatures, God has a very special care for Man, whom He loves with a father’s heart.

  ‘After having provided for your benefit the sun, fruits, stones to build your houses, leather and wool from animals to clothe you, grass and flowers to delight you, He bends down over you to hear the beating of your heart, to calm it with the utter certainty He gives your life
.

  ‘He tells you: “Take no thought for food or raiment. Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they? And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin, and yet I say unto you, that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these …”

  ‘Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is cast into the fire, shall He not much more think of you! He always provides for your good, be assured, even when things do not turn out as you would have wanted.’

  He had arrived at the bottom of the third page.

  ‘The parrot?’ he wondered. ‘What has the parrot to do with all this?’

  He turned to the next page. Empty. There was nothing more to read.

  3

  He went out by the same side door he had come in by. And almost immediately, having taken a few steps in the dark down the evil-smelling little alley running alongside the church, he found himself once again in the square, beside the sacristy.

  Once more he came to a halt.

  Gradually widening like a chalice or a funnel, the square spread itself before him in all its enormity. To the right, nearby, the shadowy mass of the local Fascists’ ex-headquarters. To the left, no less tall but set further back, the I.N.A. building, with its dozens of brightly lit windows. In the background, at what suddenly seemed to him a vast distance, so even the thought of crossing it on foot filled him with fatigue, with unbounded boredom, three points of light shone out: two of an equally dull yellow from the cafes opposite each other, the Fetman and the Moccia, and one of a shop window which he had only just noticed, adjacent and to the right of the low central block of the Trade Union hall, and ablaze with the same bright white light of an industrial establishment in full swing as that which flooded the square from the I.N.A. building. There was no fog. During the last half hour the air had instead become crystal clear, so that it allowed him to see every detail not only of the monument to the Fallen in the middle of the square, but also, behind that, the minuscule bedbug-like carapace of the Aprilia’s roof. He sniffed the air. The smell of urine and incense lingered in his nostrils. Mingling with these, and the usual smell of the valleys, was a new odour: of burning, of roasted chestnuts. He looked around in search of the humble iron brazier replete with charcoal which must have been nearby, but without success. Who knows where it was.

  He moved on.

  He walked slowly, letting his legs carry him towards the centre of the square, while the surrounding space and everything within it, the monument to the Fallen, the Fascist ex-headquarters, the I.N.A. building, gradually assumed a different, a transformed aspect. Even the Aprilia was changing its appearance. No longer the shell it had seemed just before. One could see the double back-window with its trapezoid frame. And, within a moment or two, it would be possible to read, white on a black background, the numbers on the Ferrara licence plate.

  He headed towards Caffè Fetman. However, having covered three-quarters of the distance, and noticing a group of customers leaving the premises, who then stopped to chat in front of the entrance – four of them, all wearing cloaks, who seemed to be paying attention to the Aprilia, and discussing it – so as not to have to get into the car beneath their gaze, he preferred to move to the right, towards the brightly lit window beside the Trade Union hall. Some time before, he’d figured out what it was – the taxidermist’s workshop which Bellagamba had mentioned. It didn’t matter. Without now feeling the least bit repelled by the idea, he allowed his legs to lead him, one step after another, to a yard or so from the big glass window.

  He stopped there, fascinated.

  Hunting rifles, belts full of cartridges, fishing rods, nets, lark mirrors, decoys for the valley, gumboots, woollen fabrics as well as fustian and velvet, and of course the stuffed animals, mainly birds, but there was also a fox, a marten, some squirrels, the odd tortoise: full to the brim, with things strewn in what only seemed to be disorder, the window shone before him like a small, sunny, self-sufficient universe, parallel but unreachable. He was well aware that the pane of glass between him and the interior was what rendered it so. And since the pane of glass, so spotlessly clean it seemed invisible, reflected a part of his own image – barely a shadow, it was true, but still annoying – in order to be completely rid of this faint residual shadow and to pretend the glass itself wasn’t there, he drew even closer, almost touching the window with his forehead, so that he sensed a coldness colder than the evening air.

  Beyond the windowpane, silence, absolute immobility, peace.

  He observed, one by one, the stuffed animals, all of them resplendent in their death, more alive than when they lived.

  The fox, for example, which occupied the middle of the window display horizontally, between a pair of matching gumboots standing upright, and a half-opened Browning rifle, was twisting its snout to the side, gnashing its teeth as if in the act of turning it had ended up there in that instant; and its yellow eyes, full of hatred, its bright white teeth, its flaming red maw, its thick and luminous russet-blond fur, its bushy overgrown tail, all gleamed with an overbearing, almost insolent health, preserved by a magic spell from any assault, both now and in the future. Even the squirrels, placed where you’d least expect to find them – there was one whose neat little head, and nothing more, peeked out of a fine leather game bag – although motionless, they still managed to express all the sly grace, the gleeful agility of their nature, like that of Walt Disney’s dwarves, but with something more, something extra, perhaps related to their being there, safe, and for ever, separate, behind the thick glass. In the violent, convergent light of the lamps their black beady eyes shone joyously, feverishly, devilishly, with knowingness and irony.

  It was towards the birds, however, that his gaze kept on returning.

  The ducks, at least a dozen of them in a compact group, were squashed into the fore-stage of the little theatre, so close it seemed he could have touched them, and calm at last and without fear, no longer forced to keep to the heights, suspended on their short trembling wings in the still, treacherous air. The birds of prey, by contrast, with the exception of an eagle owl perched in a central and dominant coign, were further off, in a long row, on the shelf of a kind of partition which formed the back and sides of the window display. Reading the brass labels at the foot of the fake ebony pedestals on which each of these birds was posed upright, he recognized, one by one, a kestrel, a buzzard, a peregrine, an osprey, a sparrowhawk … These birds were also vivid, and shone as if polished with a vitality which ran no risk of decay, but most of all they had become far more lovely than they’d been when they were breathing and blood ran fast in their veins – he alone, perhaps, he thought, was in a position truly to understand the perfection of their final, imperishable beauty, to fully appreciate it.

  At one point, the better to see the green on a mallard’s feathers, he had to draw back a fraction. Immediately, reflected in the pane, he once again saw the shape of his own face.

  He then tried to look at himself as he had that same morning in the bathroom mirror. And while he was rediscovering, beneath his fur cap, the same features he awoke to every day – the receded hairline, the three horizontal furrows across his brow, the long, fleshy nose, the heavy, tired-looking eyelids, the soft, almost womanish lips, the dint in his chin, the cheeks blurred with stubble – but still such as to appear veiled, distant, as though just a few hours had been enough to sprinkle the dust of years and years over them, he felt a secret thought slowly forming within him, as yet confused but still rich with mysterious promise, a thought that would free him, and save him.

  4

  If merely imagining himself dead overwhelmed him with such a sudden wave of happiness, he reasoned, well then, why not actually kill himself? And why not as soon as possible? No, he should do it this same night, in his room, with the Browning or
the Krupp. And he already knew exactly how.

  He drove on down the road to Ferrara in the cold, clear night lit by the moon.

  A little before the Eridania sugar refinery and the Land Reclamation Office he had stopped at an A.G.I.P. petrol station to buy five hundred lire’s worth of petrol and to have the windscreen cleaned, and now, back in the car, having decided what he had decided, he found it even easier to identify with the stuffed animals in the Cimini shop in Codigoro. Once in a while he shook his head. How stupid, how ridiculous and grotesque, life, precious life, became once you saw it through the shop windows of a taxidermist! And how much better, straightaway, he felt at the mere thought of finally being done with all that tedious back-and-forth business of eating and defecating, drinking and urinating, sleeping and waking, of making trips and staying put, which life consisted of! Perhaps, for the first time in his life, he began to think of the dead without any fear. Only they, the dead, counted for something, only they were truly alive. It would take a couple of years to be reduced to nothing more than a skeleton – he’d read that somewhere. After which, the dead experience no further change for ever. Clean, hard, very beautiful, they then became like precious stones or the noble elements. Immutable, and so, eternal.