The Novel of Ferrara

by André Aciman

  He looked up.

  At a height of seventy, eighty meters, a half dozen ducks were crossing the sky above the hide. Ducks—they were ducks, he thought, while he slid out the double-barrelled gun from between his thighs and rested it on the hide’s edge. He could tell by the way that they flew, the sudden, urgent, pulsing rhythm of their short, stocky wings. What kind of duck were they? He’d never been that good at telling right off the various kinds of birds in the valley. And there were dozens of different types of duck.

  They were flying in formation—one at the head and the others in a triangle behind like a squadron of small fighter planes. Hurriedly, like someone running a bit late for an important appointment, and they too were headed in the direction of Romea. “Safe journey,” he murmured. Unless they were suddenly to change direction they’d be arriving within range of the hunters dug in on the shoreline ahead within a minute or so.

  They didn’t veer. With the wind blowing behind them it was also unlikely they would turn around. But he had only just formulated this thought and replaced the double-barrelled gun between his legs when he spotted a pair of birds—two almost imperceptible points against the dark wall of cloud growing denser over the dry land—detach themselves from the flock and, after a wide lateral shift, begin their journey back.

  He took hold of the Krupp once again. There were indeed just two of them: perhaps a faithful couple, male and female. Passing, they must have spotted the decoys. And now they had returned to take a better look, to make sure of things.

  Judging by the slowness with which their forms grew larger, they must have been flying with great difficulty, and you could understand why as this time the wind was against them. But apart from the wind, might they not also have been undecided, wavering about which route to take? Perhaps, who knows, they might give it all up after a while. Another U-turn, and in a few seconds they would have disappeared . . .

  For more than an hour he remained like this, with his gun in hand to watch the birds flying past on their way above him. He didn’t shoot. He didn’t even try a single shot. It was Gavino alone, behind his bush, who would shoot the birds one after the other when they came within range. Bang-bang. Bang-bang-bang. Bang-bang-bang-bang. Bang-bang-bang-bang-bang. A series of two, of three, of four, even of five successive shots—it was rare for him ever to miss his target. And for the creatures, killed or wounded, not to fall down into the water with muffled thuds.

  The first to fall were those two ducks—two mallards in all probability—which having flown almost as far as the opposite shore had turned back struggling bravely against the wind. Soon after the same fate had befallen a brace of widgeons, these two having arrived from behind them, from the sea, but coming down just a bit beyond the decoys, gliding with their open wings. Next another mallard, this time alone. Then, after various pauses, a long line of coots. The number of birds Gavino had shot had quickly risen to some thirty. In the meantime, crouched within the hide, he had totted up nothing. He was just there to watch, and nothing more.

  It was as though, all the while, he’d been dreaming.

  The first two ducks, for example—he’d watched them advance until they were almost hanging motionless in front of the hide, at a range of little over a hundred meters. Suddenly, though, they’d plummeted down. Going at full speed, their brown beaks and their little round bloodshot eyes wide open, he had suddenly found them almost on top of him, unexpectedly enormous. He hadn’t fired at them. They had passed by almost touching him. But a moment later—bang-bang—two shots. His stomach felt the hard recoil.

  A little after that, a coot had also whizzed very close by him with the hiss of a bullet—that too had seemed part of a dream. It whistled across and past at who knows how many miles per hour. And yet he had been able to observe its every detail: exactly as though it had been motionless, photographed, stopped in midair forever. The lavender-black feathers, lightly tinted a yellow-olive on its back. Its head, neck and the underside of its tail-feathers black. Its breast very slightly paler. The ends of its wings white. Its flat beak bluish. The feet green, shading into orange nearer the legs. The irises red, barred and glassy. As can happen sometimes in nightmares, in a second—the second before the five shots fired by Gavino took it in mid-flight and made it plump down into the water like a bundle of sticks—he had been able to see and notice everything and to think about every detail except for taking up his Krupp and pulling the trigger.

  Nothing else seemed real to him. Gavino, on his little islet, his forehead wrinkled in a frown and his Browning scorching his hands, was busy scanning above and around so as not to be caught unawares. The dog crouched at his feet, but ready after each flurry of shots, to leap into the water to retrieve some fresh birds for his master, holding them tight and high in her dripping mouth, and to add them to the pile of dead birds and those in their death throes. He was sitting in his hide, with his rifle in hand like Gavino, only frozen, unable to make a single move . . . The real and the unreal, the seen and the imagined, the near and the far: everything became blended, tangled up with each other. Even the normal passage of time, measured in minutes and hours, no longer existed, no longer counted.

  Suddenly—it must have been one o’clock in the afternoon—he saw the heron.

  It was flying there in front of him, about two hundred meters away, and once again coming from the north with its characteristic slow and awkward progress like an old Caproni seaplane. He shook himself. “What an idiot!” he exclaimed. It had very much the air of someone who just out of curiosity, quite needlessly, would end up by and by getting himself into deep trouble.

  It began flying lower, much lower than before. How many meters high? Fifty at most. Having swung to the left a short while before, once again lured by the decoys, there was every likelihood it would soon be flying overhead. And with the choke attached to the barrel, his Browning would easily have brought it down.

  He looked in Gavino’s direction. His whole head was sticking out of the bush. He seemed distracted, his head just moving about. Was it possible he hadn’t seen it? That he didn’t think it worth a single G.P. cartridge? Could well be.

  But he couldn’t convince himself of that. He remembered the phrase “It looks good stuffed” and regretted not having clearly and immediately told Gavino that stuffed birds were something he’d never been able to stand.

  It flew forward, now, always farther forward, making a display of itself with extraordinary, unbearable clarity. From the back of its perfectly smooth little head sprouted something thin and wire-like, perhaps a kind of aerial. While his heart in the meantime had begun to beat hard against his ribcage, he was wondering about this, about what the devil that strange thing could be, and was screwing up his eyes to see it better when, suddenly, in the vast expanse of sunlit, windy air, he heard the echo of that now familiar double shot.

  6.

  IT DIDN’T drop immediately. He saw it flutter upward, beat its wide brown wings chaotically, then careen toward the islet from which the shots had issued. It struggled to keep itself aloft, to gain height. But then it suddenly gave up, and dropped as though it were breaking into many pieces. It was indeed just like an old-style Caproni seaplane—he had time to say to himself as it plummeted down and into the water—the type used in the First World War, all canvas, wood and wire.

  He thought it must be dead and that the dog would rush out to retrieve it. But no. As soon as it had resurfaced, it was ready to rise up on its stilt-like legs and began to turn its tiny head to and fro. “Where have I ended up?” it seemed to be asking itself. “And what’s happened to me?”

  It still hadn’t understood a thing. Or very little, for although one wing, the right one, draped down along its side, soon after it moved its shoulderblade as though about to take off and fly. Only then must it have realized it was wounded. And in fact from that moment on, it gave up on any further attempt of that kind.

  Restless, unceasingly swivelling its smooth, fatuous head, which had the look of a pleas
ure seeker’s—elongated behind the nape by that odd, almost imperceptible spiky antenna—it was clearly trying to orient itself, to recognize at least the objects around it. Only a few yards away, half dry and half in the water, it had noticed the punt. What was it? A boat or the body of a large sleeping creature? One way or the other, better keep clear of it. Better not risk reaching the small beach of fine compact sand which that peculiar and threatening thing lay across. Much better. Besides the stabbing pain at its side wasn’t so noticeable anymore. Its wing didn’t hurt as long as it wasn’t moved. Best keep it still.

  He watched it full of anxiety, utterly identifying himself with the creature. He too was in the dark about what had made so many things happen. Why had Gavino fired? And why didn’t he stand up now, and fire another shot, the coup de grâce? Wasn’t that the rule? And the dog? What was Gavino scared of: that the heron, not having yet lost enough blood, might defend itself with its beak? And the heron? What could it do? Waiting there was all well and good, but for how long and to what end? He felt his mind confused, befuddled, crowded with questions to which there were no apparent answers.

  Quite a few minutes passed in this state. Until, suddenly, he realized the heron had moved.

  It was steering itself in his direction—this he could verify after raising his hand to his eyes to shield them from the water’s glare—right toward the hide. This he understood. The heron had spotted the decoys. Brightly colored and catching the oblique sunlight, it was only natural they should have seemed a flock of real birds, busy feeding. It was worth trusting them. There wouldn’t be any danger in that neighborhood, that was for sure.

  It moved forward dragging its wing in the water, with short rapid successive spurts broken by brief pauses, carefully choosing the shallowest stretches of water. It passed beside the decoys, came on again, ever farther on. And finally it was face to face with him, just a meter away from the hide, about to reach the shore. It stopped once more. All brown, except for the feathers on its neck and breast which were a faint beige and its legs which were the yellowish-brown of bone stripped of flesh, of relics, it dipped its head to one side, looking at him, with curiosity, certainly, but unalarmed. And motionless, hardly breathing—aware that the bird was losing blood from a gash half way along the wing by the joint—he had the chance to stare back for a considerable time.

  It was now right up against the hide, just like a frozen old codger hoping to catch some sun, and although he could no longer see the bird he could sense its presence. Every now and then it shifted to find a better place or to clean its feathers with its beak. Big, bony, out of proportion, and impeded to boot, it moved clumsily and kept bumping into the hide.

  For minute after minute, though, it did the right thing and kept perfectly still. Tucked well in from the cold whistling gusts of the seawind, and with the warm planks of the hide at its back, what was it up to? Perhaps it had even cheered up a bit. Although even now it hadn’t understood very well, it had to keep a sharp eye out for everything. Gather its strength: this for the moment, it was telling itself, must be the main aim. And once it had gathered its strength, whoosh, it would suddenly spread its wing and fly away.

  More time passed, who knows how much.

  All of a sudden, three shots were fired in close succession, followed by thuds which shook him with pain.

  He turned his head toward Gavino.

  “Isn’t that enough now?” he said half-aloud.

  He waited for the birds to surface—all three of them coots, lifeless—and looked at his watch.

  Unfortunately it was no later than two o’clock, and there would be light good enough to shoot in for at least another hour and a half. But even if, personally, he’d had more than enough at this point, would it be alright to lift his arm and signal to Gavino to call it a day? True, for a while the heron hadn’t budged at all. But in case it should still be alive, what could he do with it anyway? Finish it off point-blank—no, that was out of the question. Capture it then? Lean out of the hide, gather it in his arms and then carry it back to town? In the car? And to keep it where? In a cage down in the courtyard? He could foresee Nives’s response when she saw him return with a creature like that, and wounded besides, with no end of fees to pay the vet just for starters. He could foresee her shouting, her protests and her whining. . . .

  The dog had ended its traipsing back and forth. He’d retrieved the last coot, and carried it to his master. Then, turning by chance to the right, toward the sandbank, as if seeking a prompt of some sort from that direction, she saw the heron once more.

  It was now some ten meters away from the hide, and judging by the direction it had taken it looked as if it was heading for the sandbank. The din of the last shots just before had certainly given it a fright. Then it had seen the dog go back and forth three times, each time coming ashore with a coot in its mouth. And although wounded, although weakened with loss of blood, and so, more than ever eager to enjoy the last heat of the sun, shielded from the wind, from one moment to the next the bird had decided it would be sensible to move somewhere safer, and quickly. The broad sandbank there, covered with thick plants more or less the same color as its feathers, and at the same time high enough to allow a way through without being spotted, perhaps represented the best solution to all its problems. To hide in there, for the meantime, awaiting the night which was not far off. And then, after that, to wait and see. Because it wasn’t clear that the sandbank was completely surrounded by water. Who could say whether or not it was linked in some way with dry land? And dry land within reach would have meant another possibility of escape, perhaps even of safety, or if perhaps not of absolute safety, the almost certain guarantee of keeping alive at least until tomorrow.

  Meanwhile it was moving ever farther away, arduously dragging its broken wing behind it, and he felt able to read this whole series of reasonings from the posture of its stubborn little slender neck. But how wrong it was!—he suddenly exclaimed to himself. It was completely deluding itself—fine as far as reaching the sandbank but the dog, soon to be off the leash and free to follow her nose, with all that blood it kept on losing, wouldn’t have the slightest difficulty in flushing it out—it was fooling itself to such an extent, it was obvious, the stupid thing, that if the thought of shooting it hadn’t seemed to him the very same in some way as shooting himself, he would have immediately opened fire. So that, if nothing else, it would be all over.

  III

  1.

  HE wanted to return to Codigoro as soon as possible.

  “Goodbye,” Gavino was saying. “If you need me again, you can always contact me via the engineer.”

  “Understood.”

  “And thanks.”

  “For what? It’s me that should be thanking you.”

  He had already backed the car up. Through the windscreen he could see the humped back of the suspension bridge. In a moment he would be gone.

  He wound up the car window, and only at this moment, after a fairly animated disagreement between them about the distribution of the game—he trying to offload the whole lot on to Gavino and the latter obstinately refusing to accept any of it—he began to examine the man’s face. Dignified as ever but on the alert—cracked lips, the gaunt face of one who’s gone hungry, he was smiling weakly as if asking to be forgiven. Finally he was confident that, even through the dirty window, he could see Gavino for who he really was. Someone paid a wage of five hundred lire a day. In the end an undistinguished peasant, a poor devil.

  And yet, a minute or so later on the minor road to Pomposa, going over this again in his mind gave him no comfort. A hired laborer—he kept repeating to himself—a wretch who despite the airs he gave himself of a gentleman and a Communist Party member, despite his pretence of not accepting any gifts, not even a brace of ducks, and especially not the carcass of a heron only fit to hand over to the taxidermist. On his motorbike and with the dog straining to trot along behind him, who knows how long it would take him to reach Codigoro? It was utterly
useless; without worrying that the car going at full speed might end up in the valley or else in the wide canal which, after Pomposa, flanked the righthand side of the road, he took the curves so fast that the tyres whistled on the asphalt. It was exactly as if Gavino, the dog, and everything the two of them forced him to remember, were gaining on him or were even now hot on his heels.

  He sped along with his hands gripping the steering wheel and his eyes fixed on the road; and kept on thinking.

  At Codigoro he would certainly have been able to get rid of the dead birds with which the car boot was crammed: an embarrassing and revolting freight that at every curve he seemed to sense shifting softly from side to side. At Codigoro, in addition, famished as he was—since the moment he’d turned his back on the Tufanelli house and Volano, he had again felt such an appetite that he feared nothing would satisfy it—he could eat a proper meal, and not only the “fine turbot” which Bellagamba had spoken of at eight o’clock that morning, but anything and everything else he cared to order. What’s more, the stop at Codigoro, which fitted in perfectly with his plan, would give him an excuse to put off for at least another three hours his return to Ferrara which, with every kilometer, seemed overcast with ever darker and gloomier hues. All considered, between having lunch, offloading the game on to somebody, and relaxing for a while—but Uldrico? Couldn’t he also pay a visit to the Cavaglieri household?—he wouldn’t have time to hit the road again before six. And if at six, the fog were to come, all well and good. In that case he would arrive when he arrived—with the dinner table already cleared or, maybe, sometime before, all of them would already have gone to bed, the Manzolis downstairs included.

  A little before Codigoro, at the level of the cemetery, a compact, black wall of mist suddenly appeared in front of the bonnet obliging him to put his foot down violently on the brake. Fog, no, it didn’t seem to him like fog. Perhaps it was only a low cloud which a breath of wind would be strong enough to disperse. In the meanwhile, however, at hardly a quarter past three in the afternoon, it was as if night had already fallen. The clear air that had surrounded him until only a moment ago now seemed in the distant past, so remote as to be unbelievable.