Lamberto, Lamberto, Lamberto

by Gianni Rodari

  LAMBERTO LAMBERTO LAMBERTO

  Originally published in Italian as C’era due volte il barone Lamberto

  © 1980 Maria Ferretti Rodari and Paola Rodari, Italy

  © 1991 Edizioni EL S.r.l., Trieste, Italy

  Translation © 2011 Antony Shugaar

  Illustrations by Federico Maggioni © Edizioni EL

  First Melville House printing: October 2011

  Melville House Publishing

  145 Plymouth Street

  Brooklyn, NY 11201

  www.mhpbooks.com

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows:

  Rodari, Gianni.

  [C’era due volte il barone Lamberto. English]

  Lamberto Lamberto Lamberto / Gianni Rodari; translated by Antony Shugaar.

  p. cm.

  eISBN: 978-1-61219-004-4

  I. Shugaar, Antony. II. Title.

  PQ4878.O313C4713 2011

  853′.914–dc23

  2011026359

  v3.1

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13 - Epilogue

  IN THE MIDDLE OF THE MOUNTAINS LIES Lake Orta. In the middle of Lake Orta, though not exactly in the middle, is the island of San Giulio. On the island of San Giulio stands the villa of Baron Lamberto, an exceedingly elderly gentleman (he is ninety-three years old) who is very wealthy (he owns twenty-four banks in Italy, Switzerland, Hong Kong, Singapore, and so on) and invariably ill. He has twenty-four maladies. Only his butler Anselmo can remember them all. Anselmo keeps a list of the illnesses, in alphabetical order, in a little pocket notebook: arteriosclerosis, arthritis, arthrosis, asthma, chronic bronchitis, and so forth all the way up to the Z’s, with Zellweger Syndrome. Alongside each illness, Anselmo has written down which medicines need to be taken, at what time of day or night, the foods that are permitted and those that are forbidden, the advice of the various physicians:

  “Stay away from salt, which will drive up your blood pressure.”

  “Reduce your sugar intake, which does not sit well with diabetes.”

  “Avoid excitement, stairways, breezes and drafts, rainfall, sunshine, and the moonlight.”

  There are times when Baron Lamberto feels a slight nagging pain here or there, but he can’t quite pinpoint which of his illnesses is responsible. He’ll ask his butler:

  “Anselmo, a shooting pain here and another one there?”

  “Number six, Lord Lamberto: duodenitis.”

  Or else, he will ask: “Anselmo, that dizziness again. What could it be?”

  “Number nine, Lord Lamberto: your liver. Though we cannot rule out a little mischief from number fifteen, your thyroid condition.”

  The baron gets his numbers mixed up sometimes.

  “Anselmo, I am really suffering from twenty-three today.”

  “Your tonsils?”

  “No, my pancreas.”

  “Begging your pardon, Lord Lamberto, but we have the pancreas listed as number eleven.”

  “Isn’t number eleven gallbladder?”

  “Gallbladder’s seven, Lord Lamberto. Look for yourself.”

  “Well, it doesn’t matter, Anselmo, it doesn’t matter. What’s the weather like?”

  “Foggy, Lord Lamberto. Temperature’s dropping. Snowfall all along the Alps.”

  Baron Lamberto also owns a mansion in Egypt, just a stone’s throw from the pyramids. He has another mansion in California. And then he has one on the Costa Brava, one in Catalonia, and another on the Costa Smeralda, in Sardinia. He also has well-heated apartments in Rome, Zurich, and Copenhagen. In the winter, however, he generally goes to Egypt to bake his old bones in the bright sunlight, especially his longer bones, which are important for their marrow, the biological powerhouse that manufactures red globules and white globules.

  And so, once again, they set off for Egypt. But they didn’t stay long. In fact, during a walk along the banks of the Nile, they met an Egyptian fakir and stood absorbed in conversation for a bit. Directly after this meeting, Baron Lamberto and his manservant Anselmo took the first plane back to Italy, and hurried back to the seclusion of the villa on the island of San Giulio, to work on certain experiments. Time went by, and soon they were not alone. In the attic of the villa, now, there were six people who, day and night, droned the baron’s name over and over:

  “Lamberto, Lamberto, Lamberto …”

  “Lamberto, Lamberto, Lamberto …”

  The first to start was young Signorina Delfina, and then Signor Armando took over from her. As Signor Giacomini finished up, Signora Zanzi started. Then it was Signor Bergamini’s turn, followed by Signora Merlo, and then it came around to Signorina Delfina again. They each did a one-hour shift; at night, two-hour shifts.

  “Lamberto, Lamberto, Lamberto …”

  “Lamberto, Lamberto, Lamberto …”

  Occasionally Signorina Delfina can’t help but laugh. As she’s about to fall asleep, she wonders: “What a strange job! What is it good for? Are rich people crazy?”

  The other five don’t laugh and they don’t wonder. They’re well paid: in fact, they receive the same salary as the President of the Italian Republic, plus board, lodging, and unlimited hard candy. The hard candy is in case their throats get parched. So why should they think twice?

  “Lamberto, Lamberto, Lamberto …”

  What they don’t know is that in every corner of the villa there are tiny hidden microphones to capture their chanting, wired to tiny and equally invisible hidden speakers scattered throughout the villa below. There’s a speaker under the pillow in Baron Lamberto’s bed, there’s another in the grand piano in the ballroom. There are two in the master bathroom: one is incorporated in the handle of the hot water faucet, the other is in the cold water faucet. At any moment of the night or day, whether he is in the library or the wine cellar, in the dining room or the bathroom, Baron Lamberto can press a button and listen:

  “Lamberto, Lamberto, Lamberto …”

  At least once every half hour, the butler Anselmo also checks to make sure that upstairs, in the attic, work is proceeding without interruption, that the name is being pronounced accurately, that every syllable is being given its proper emphasis, and that the six workers are honestly earning their salaries and hard candy.

  At first, the baron is less than fully satisfied.

  “You have to admit, Anselmo,” he complains, “you can’t hear the capital L.”

  “Unfortunately, Your Lordship, there doesn’t seem to be a way of pronouncing upper-case letters differently from lower-case letters. Spoken Italian does have its shortcomings.”

  “I understand, but it’s troubling, Anselmo. The ‘L’ that begins my name sounds no different from the ‘l’ that begins leech, lizard, and lollipop. It’s dispiriting. I have to wonder how the great Napoleon was able to tolerate the fact that the very same ‘N’ that began his imperial first name shared the initial sound of namby-pamby, natter, and nosehair.”

  “Or nursery, nausea, and nictitation,” added Anselmo.

  “What is nictitation?”

  “To open and shut one’s eyes momentarily and involuntarily, Your Lordship.”

  The baron thinks for a moment.

  “Well, at the very least, as they pronounce my name, they should try to see it in their mind’s eye, spelled with a nice big capital ‘L.’ ”<
br />
  “That we can do,” said Anselmo. “On all the walls in the attic we’ll post big signs with your name written in block print, so they can see it as they pronounce it.”

  “Good idea. We should also speak to Signora Zanzi about the way she draws out the second syllable of Lamberto, and then clips off the third and final syllable. She sounds like a sheep bleating—be-e-e-eh, be-e-e-eh—and we can’t have that.”

  “I’ll attend to it, My Lord. If I may venture to do so, I shall also ask Signor Bergamini to be a little less emphatic in the way he punctuates each of the three syllables. There is, if I may say so, the faintest reminiscence of a soccer cheer: Lam-ber-to! Lam-ber-to!”

  “Make it so, Anselmo, make it so. And do they have any requests for me?”

  “Signora Merlo asks whether she might tend to her knitting during her shift.”

  “Tell her that she may knit, provided she doesn’t count her stitches aloud.”

  “Signor Giacomini asks permission to fish from the window of the northern mansard, which directly overlooks the water.”

  “But there are no fish in Lake Orta …”

  “I pointed that fact out to him. I explained that Lake Orta is a dead lake. He told me that he cares about fishing, not about catching fish, and that to a real fisherman, there is absolutely no difference between a dead lake and a live lake.”

  “Then he may fish with my blessing.”

  The baron gets to his feet, supporting himself with his two walking-sticks, each with a solid-gold pommel, and takes three hobbling steps (his limp: no. 8) as far as the sofa. He drops wearily onto the soft cushions, pushes a button, and listens:

  “Lamberto, Lamberto, Lamberto …”

  “That’s Signorina Delfina’s voice.”

  “Yes, Your Lordship.”

  “What a lovely pronunciation. You can hear each letter so distinctly, and as you have surely noticed, Anselmo, every letter in my name is different.”

  “Quite so, My Lord, and, begging your pardon, so is every letter in my own name.”

  “And in your name. And in Delfina’s. I do like a name in which none of the letters appear more than once. Though other kinds of names can be nice in their way. My poor mother, for example, was named Ottavia, a name with a double ‘t’ and two ‘a’s. In her case, it made for a mellifluous effect. But I was always sorry that my sister chose to have her only son baptized Ottavio. Now, Ottavio begins and ends with the same vowel. The two ‘o’s create the effect of a parenthesis. To have a parenthesis for your name, think of that … Perhaps that’s why I’ve never really liked Ottavio. I can’t imagine leaving all my wealth to him … But unfortunately I have no other relatives …

  “No, Your Lordship.”

  “They all died before me, all but Ottavio. There he sits, just waiting to attend my funeral, of course. Any news of my beloved nephew?”

  “No, Your Lordship. The last time we heard from him was when he asked for a loan of 25 million dollars to pay off a gambling debt. That was a year ago.”

  “I remember, he lost the money at skittles, moral defective that he is and always has been. Well, well, would you be so good as to make me a pot of chamomile tea, Anselmo?”

  Baron Lamberto has the world’s greatest chamomile collection. He has chamomiles from the Alps and the Apennines, from the Pyrenees and the Caucasus, the Sierras and the Andes, and even from the high valleys of the Himalayas. Every variety of chamomile is carefully catalogued and stored on special shelves, with an index card indicating the place, year, and day it was harvested.

  “I would suggest,” said Anselmo, “a 1945 Campagna Romana.”

  “Quite so, you’re the expert.”

  One day every year, the villa opens its wrought-iron gates and hardwood portals, and tourists are invited in to see Baron Lamberto’s collections: the chamomile collection, the umbrella collection, the collection of seventeenth-century Dutch paintings … Visitors come from all over the globe, and the boatmen of Lake Orta, who transport them across the water to the island in their rowboats and motorboats, earn bagsful of gold and silver.

  IT’S SIGNORA ZANZI’S SHIFT.

  “Lamberto, Lamberto, Lamberto …”

  She’s very careful not to draw out the second syllable, to keep from bleating like a sheep, as she was admonished. Like Signora Merlo, she knits to ward off the boredom, and she enjoys it. She doesn’t even need to count the stitches; her hands do the counting for her.

  In another room in the attic, young Armando listens to Signorina Delfina’s musings.

  “Something about this work,” Delfina is saying, “doesn’t sit right.”

  “I think it’s easy,” Armando replies. “Just think if they had asked us to repeat the word ‘pterosaur.’ ”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It’s a flying reptile from prehistoric times. It was one of the words in the crossword puzzle last week.”

  “What does the pronunciation have to do with it? This work would be a mystery even if we just had to say ‘polenta’ or ‘crème brulée’ over and over day and night.”

  “I don’t see anything mysterious about it: the baron pays us, and we do what he tells us to do. He supplies the capital, we supply the labor. The donkey pulls the cart wherever the master tells him to pull it.”

  “And what is the product? I worked for ten years in a stocking mill. The boss paid us (and not much, if you want to know the truth), I worked, and in the end there was a pile of stockings. What do we produce?”

  “Signorina, don’t make life more complicated than it needs to be. Let’s imagine that someone wants to pay you to advertise Peek-Pook soap. You don’t have to make soap, you just have to say: Peek-Pook, Peek-Pook, Peek-Pook. And everyone hurries out to buy a bar of Peek-Pook soap, because when they wash their face in the morning, they think they can hear your lovely little voice and they think they can see your pretty little nose.”

  “Save the compliments. We’re not advertising Baron Lamberto; he’s not for sale. We work hidden away in an attic, as if we were doing something illegal.”

  “Maybe it’s a military secret.”

  “Oh, please …”

  “An atomic secret.”

  “Oh, impossible …”

  “Signorina, I’ve done some calculations: every time I pronounce the word Lamberto I earn five hundred lire. That’s nothing to sneeze at. The fringe benefits are excellent. The food is first class. Just today, for instance, Signor Anselmo served us risotto with truffles and Peking duck. I worked for twelve years in a refrigerator factory, and I ate bologna sandwiches the whole time. Working here, I started to gain weight, but then I asked—on behalf of us all—if we could have a gym in one of the rooms, and the request was granted in just twenty-four hours. You’ve seen the exercise equipment: only millionaires enjoy this kind of luxury. You like to exercise as much as I do. So what are you complaining about?”

  “I’m not complaining. I just like to know the reason for things.”

  “And once you find out the reason, what’ll you do with it then? Make a cup of coffee?”

  Now it’s Signora Merlo’s shift. In another room in the attic, Signor Bergamini and Signor Giacomini are enjoying their break. Signor Giacomini, as usual, is fishing. He’s cast hook, line, and bait out the window and he’s patiently waiting. Anyone can catch a fish—the real art of fishing is in the waiting. At least, that’s his opinion.

  “It’s like the Olympic Creed,” he explains. “The most important thing in the Olympic Games is not to win but to take part.”

  Behind him, Signor Bergamini is waiting, too. A coincidence that smacks of the miraculous has brought together a true fisherman and an authentic observer of fishermen, someone who never grows impatient if the fisherman doesn’t catch anything, but one who just stands there, hands in his pockets, puffing calmly on his pipe, watching, and letting time go by without saying a word.

  When they do talk, the fisherman and the observer of the fishermen recollect past fishing exper
iences, or share their opinions on any number of subjects.

  “Have you noticed,” asks Signor Giacomini, “that Signor Anselmo never goes anywhere without his umbrella?”

  “I think he even takes it with him when he takes a shower,” replies Signor Bergamini.

  And in fact Signor Anselmo always carries a blacksilk umbrella, dangling from his arm on its wooden handle.

  “Lovely person, though.”

  “Absolutely.”

  When it’s Signor Giacomini’s shift, he leaves the fishing rod propped against the windowsill and asks Signor Bergamini to keep an eye on the float. Signor Bergamini is a genuine observer of fishermen: he keeps watching even after the fisherman leaves.

  As he watches, he listens to the conversation of Signora Zanzi and Signora Merlo, who are busily knitting in the living room. Signora Merlo is worried. She has a cousin named Umberto and another cousin named Alberto. When it’s her shift, her two cousins’ names are continually at the tip of her tongue, and she’s been on the verge of saying “Um-” or “Al-” instead of “Lam-” hundreds of times. Once she gets past the first syllable, it’s smooth sailing, because all three names have the same second and third syllables: Umberto, Alberto, Lamberto. But for her the first syllable is always the result of a mental struggle, a fight between brain and tongue that takes place at the speed of light. Each time, she has to choose the correct syllable of the three: “Lam,” “Al,” or “Um.”

  “Luckily, so far,” she says, “I’ve never gotten it wrong.”

  “You’ll get used to it, wait and see. But believe you me, I have my own challenges. I think of all kinds of words that start with “lam,” like lamppost, lambchop, lambaste, lamprey, lampoon. The first syllable is a snap. The trouble starts with the second syllable. But you know, it’s between me and my conscience. They pay me to say Lamberto. If I said lambskin I’d feel like I was stealing.”

  Occasionally, down in the kitchen, the butler, Anselmo, pushes the appropriate button and listens to the conversations going on in the attic. They keep him company while he prepares the timbale or the veal in cream sauce. He’s not eavesdropping; it’s just a way of learning new things. Anselmo is a scholar of the human condition.