“The first thing,” says Delfina, “is to understand what’s behind all this muddle. The baron promised us an explanation.”
“You’re perfectly right,” sighs the baron. (He certainly has a lot of sighing to do today). “I’ll tell you everything.
“Last year, in October, I happened to be in Egypt …”
Baron Lamberto reveals his secret. He lays out the whole story, including every last detail, while Anselmo vigorously nods in confirmation. Once, in fact, Anselmo breaks in to repeat the exact words of the Arab fakir that they chanced to meet in the shadow of the Sphinx: “Remember that the man whose name is spoken remains alive.” Now everything becomes clear in the minds of the twenty-four managing directors. Their suspicions are replaced by swelling emotion. When the baron reaches the point where the bandits cut off first his ear, then his finger, they can no longer contain themselves: they fall to their knees, they kiss his hands, especially the new finger. A couple of the directors even kiss his new ear. When the baron comes to the part where he wakes up in the coffin, Signora Merlo crosses herself and Signora Zanzi, who is an aficionado of the state lottery, murmurs a reference to the Neapolitan book of dreams under her breath: “Dead man talking, that’s number 47.”
Tears run down Anselmo’s cheeks, and he drops his umbrella two or three times. The bank directors bend over and pick it up for him, just to stand out from the crowd.
“Well, that’s the whole story,” says the baron. “And now, what would you say to drinking a toast to the health of everyone here?”
“Speaking of health,” says Delfina, “if I understand what you’ve just told us, it was us who restored your health.”
“That’s quite true.”
“And we’re not even doctors,” Delfina goes on. “We’re better than wizards. We kept this important personage alive with our voices. With our work. Without even understanding the meaning of what we were doing. For weeks, for months, up in the attic repeating your name like so many parrots on perches, without knowing why. By the way, wouldn’t a phonograph record or a tape recording have produced the same effect?”
“No, Signorina,” Anselmo explains. “We experimented, but it didn’t work.”
“It needed the human touch,” says Delfina. “You couldn’t do it without our lungs. For months we held Baron Lamberto’s life in our hands without realizing it, without even suspecting it.”
“That’s right,” Signor Armando exclaims in surprise, “we could have even asked for a raise.”
“That’s not all,” Signor Giacomini realizes in astonishment, “we could have asked for a million dollars. Lord Lamberto, would you have given us a million dollars if we’d asked for it?”
“Why certainly,” the baron admits. “Even two million.”
“But in that case,” Signor Giacomini stammers in amazement, “in that case, in a certain sense, we’ve been … swindled!”
“Swindled my eye!” the director of the Singapore bank explodes. “You were paid very well for your time. I never heard such nonsense!”
“Labor always makes outrageous demands,” the director of the Zurich bank comments.
“But now you won’t need us anymore,” says Delfina.
“Why, that’s the furthest thing from my mind,” the baron hastens to correct her. “I’ll need you as much as before, and price is no object.”
“No, Lord Lamberto,” one of the secretaries shouts from the bottom of the staircase.
“Not true!”
“What! Who is that and how dare he! Remember your station, sir! Don’t say another word.”
It seems as if the twenty-four managing directors all want to jump on the poor little secretary at once, to crush him with their executive mass.
“Quiet, quiet,” says the baron, intrigued. “Let him talk.… Come upstairs, you, speak freely.”
“Your Lordship,” says the secretary, deeply moved. “You no longer need anyone’s help. It’s been hours since anyone said your name and yet, as far as I can see, you’re alive, you don’t seem to be suffering from any physical problems, and you don’t show the slightest sign of aging.”
“It’s true,” Anselmo exclaims. “It’s quite true, Lord Lamberto!”
“It’s true, it’s true,” cry the twenty-four bank directors, in transports of excitement.
Delfina and her friends look at one another. The baron looks at Delfina. It appears that the story is coming to a decisive turning point.
“Anselmo,” says the baron, “let’s check.”
Anselmo pulls his little notebook out of his pocket and starts checking the twenty-four maladies, of the skeletal structure, of the muscular apparatus, of the circulatory and nervous systems, and so on. Everything is in tiptop shape. There isn’t a single cell causing trouble. The circulation of reticulocytes is increasing.
“Interesting,” murmurs the baron, “interesting. I feel the way I do on my best days. Why would that be?”
“Lord Lamberto,” says the little secretary, determined to seize a career opportunity, “there is no mistaking the reason why. You’ve been reborn, Your Lordship! Your previous life, the life that hung from the thread of the voices of these … these six … these ladies and gentlemen, is over. Out there, on the lake, a second life began for you. You no longer need anyone! No one at all!”
“Interesting,” the baron repeats, “that must be what happened. I really do feel as if I’ve been reborn. You know, I’m tempted to take a new name, and forget my old one. What would you say to Osvaldo?”
“If I may venture to make a suggestion, what about Renato?” the little secretary said.
“Why Renato?”
“Because it means born twice. And then … there’s the fact that … if you please, my name is Renato, too.”
“Very good,” the baron says. “Intelligent young man. Anselmo, take note of his surname and address. He deserves a promotion. Very good, it strikes me that at this point we can adjourn the assembly.”
“What about us?” asks Signora Merlo.
“Are we fired?” asks Signor Armando.
“Will we at least get severance pay?” asks Signor Bergamini.
The twenty-four managing directors all object in chorus: “Now they want severance pay? What is the world coming to?”
But Baron Lamberto-Renato smiles. A strange smile, though. It looks as if he’s planning to play a trick on someone. More of a prank, really.
“Why not?” he says after smiling for a hundred or so seconds. “Severance pay is in order. Anselmo, prepare for each of these three lovely ladies and three courteous gentlemen … a little bag of chamomile tea. Choose a particularly fine vintage. I would recommend … a Tibet 1975.”
“Bravo!” roar the managing directors and their personal secretaries.
“Bravissimo!” cries the little secretary Renato, determined to strike while the iron is still hot.
Delfina and her friends sit silent and pensive. And baffled. And indignant. Five pairs of eyes focus on Delfina. Perhaps she has an apt retort. You can tell that she’s thinking of one by the way she furrows her brow, from the way she’s tapping her knee with her middle finger.
Baron Lamberto is looking at Delfina curiously, too. For a while she sits there, staring into the middle distance, looking at who knows what—perhaps a ceiling beam or a pane of window glass, through which it is possible to see a white cloud sailing majestically past.
“All right,” she says, at last, to the surprise of one and all. “We gladly accept the baron’s generous gift. His chamomiles are sweet-smelling as the roses of Bulgaria. But we certainly don’t want to let him outdo us in generosity, do we? It strikes me that there is a gift that we can offer him in return …”
“Quite right,” approves the director of the Singapore bank. “Pool your savings and give Baron Lamberto a commemorative object, something made of silver or gold.”
“Perhaps a tea set,” another director suggests.
“A cuckoo clock.”
�
�A keyring shaped like the island of San Giulio.”
“Silence, all of you,” the baron orders “Let’s hear what Delfina has to say.”
“Thank you, Lord Lamberto,” says Delfina with a slight bow. “I would suggest that my five coworkers and I give the baron, free of charge, and for the very last time, a demonstration of our bravura. After all, in all these months, he’s never seen us speak his name. Are you ready?”
And without so much as a glance at her uncomfortable colleagues, Delfina begins: “Lamberto, Lamberto, Lamberto.”
Then Signor Armando works up the courage and opens his mouth: “Lamberto, Lamberto, Lamberto.”
One by one, the others join the chorus: “Lamberto, Lamberto, Lamberto.”
“Fine voices, excellent pronunciation,” the butler Anselmo thinks to himself with satisfaction: after all, when this all started, it was he who selected the six speakers out of the hundreds of candidates.
The baron listens with a faint smile poised like a wasp at the corner of his mouth. Then the smile flies away. Replacing it is a look of astonishment, covering his entire face. The faces of the twenty-four bank directors, too, have shifted from expressions of mere interest and curiosity to open-mouthed incredulity.
Delfina quickens the pace, beating time on one knee with her hand and using gestures and glances to urge her colleagues to go faster and faster.
“Lamberto Lamberto Lamberto.”
With the months of training they’ve had, they easily accelerate from sixty beats a minute to eighty, a hundred, a hundred twenty … At two hundred beats a minute they resemble six raving demons, battling one another with tongue-twisters for ammunition.
“Lambertolambertolambertolam.”
Before the increasingly incredulous eyes of all those present, Baron Lamberto-Renato begins growing younger and younger, rejuvenating visibly and quickly. Now anyone would take him for a twenty-five year old. He’s a young man who might be competing in collegiate field and track, a promising actor ready to take the stage and play the role of someone’s first sweetheart. His age drops from college degree to high school diploma. And it continues to plummet, as Delfina and her colleagues continue spitting out his name at machine-gun speed: “Lambertolambertolambertolamberto.”
When the baron is just seventeen and his physique is so slender that all his clothing hangs loosely from his frame, he starts to grow shorter too, running backward through his growth years.
“Stop! Stop!” the butler Anselmo shouts in terror.
The twenty-four managing directors stand open-mouthed, incapable of finding words to utter.
Lamberto looks like a little boy dressing up in his father’s clothing: his trousers are much longer than his legs, any signs of whiskers have vanished from his face. Now he might be fifteen or so …
“Lambertolambertolambertolamber.”
“Stop, have mercy!”
Lamberto has a startled expression on his face, he can’t really grasp what’s happening to him … He tugs at the sleeves of his jacket to free his hands. He runs his hand across his face …
At this point, he might be about thirteen …
And now Delfina stops saying his name and motions to the others to stop as well. Complete silence falls, and Anselmo is seen hightailing it out of the room, but he is back almost immediately, carrying a lovely outfit with short pants. “Master Lamberto, would you care to change into this? It was a gift given to you in nineteen … make that 1896 … It’s not the latest fashion, but it’s just adorable. Come, young master, step this way …”
As Anselmo leads Lamberto into an adjoining room to change into something more youthful, sobbing can be heard … It’s the secretary named Renato crying bitterly.
“I thought,” he tells Delfina between sobs, “that you no longer had any power over the life of His Lordship. Alas, it’s the end of my career!”
“Now, now,” Delfina consoles him, “don’t take it so hard, you’re still young, tomorrow is another day, etc. etc.”
“At least tell me what I got so wrong.”
“This is where you went astray,” Delfina explains to him patiently. “You developed a theory but you didn’t bother to verify it.”
“But isn’t it true that the baron was feeling well even though no one was pronouncing his name?”
“Perhaps the effect of the funeral was still persisting, with all those people saying his name for free. In any case, I decided to run an experiment. And while I was at it, I also wanted to see what would happen if I introduced the variable of speed. Is that all perfectly clear and distinct?”
“I’ll say,” Renato sighs. “You certainly have an experimental mindset. Would you marry me?”
“Of course not.”
“Why.”
“Because I won’t.”
“Ah, now I see.”
But now Lamberto reappears, with Anselmo leading him by the hand, and with the appearance of a bewildered and helpless young boy. He looks around, uncertain what to do next. He looks at the people in the room as if he’d never seen them before. He sees Delfina and a shy smile appears on his little-boy face.
“Delfina,” he says, “would you like to become my mommy?”
“That takes the cake,” Delfina replies. “First you ask me to be your wife, now you want me to become your mother. Do you always have to reach for me to stand on your own two feet?”
Lamberto looks as if he’s about to burst into tears. At that very moment, the managing director of the Shanghai bank, who has been busily consulting with his colleagues, clears his throat and says: “Lord Lamberto … or rather … that is … Master Lamberto … the situation appears to have changed radically. You are no longer old enough to be the chairman of twenty-four banks in Italy, Switzerland, Hong Kong, Singapore, and elsewhere … We must appoint a guardian for you, because you’re a minor. In the meanwhile … we’ve had an idea. With your attractive youthful face, you seem perfectly suited to win over the hearts of the television audience. We’ll make a television commercial for the Lamberto Banks in which you … let’s see … in which you pull the door of the vault shut behind you as you smile and say: ‘I’m as safe in here as in my cradle.’ What do you think of the idea?”
Lamberto turns to Anselmo, then to Delfina, in search of advice. But Delfina doesn’t say a thing. It’s up to him this time. He clenches his teeth and his fists. He thinks it over for a long while and then, at last, gets to his feet and says in a firm voice: “Not on your life! My guardian will be Anselmo, who’s used to obeying orders from me, not one of you, you old bank guards, you old stuffed owls! As for me, I want to study, I want to …”
His face lights up. At last, a broad, happy smile appears on Lamberto’s face. He even starts dancing a little jig around the room.
“I want to become an artist in an equestrian circus. That’s always been my dream and this time I have a whole lifetime ahead of me to achieve it.”
“Bravo!” shouts Signora Zanzi, more deeply moved than ever.
“The idea is absurd, improbable, and even slightly obscene,” declares the director of the Singapore bank.
“You are obscene, absurd, and even slightly obnoxious,” Lamberto answers him.
“Bravo!” shouts Signora Merlo.
The bank directors all huddle together and talk. Delfina and the others cluster together and talk. Even Anselmo talks and talks, while Lamberto continues to dance, caper, and stick out his tongue at the gentleman from Singapore.
“I’m going to be a trapeze artist, an acrobat, a juggler, a tightrope dancer, a lion tamer, an elephant trainer, a clown, a trumpeter, and a drummer, and I’ll train seals, dogs, fleas, and dromedaries …”
He’ll do this. He’ll do that. What will he do? No one can say yet. But now Delfina is very happy with the gift she dreamed up for him.
Just then, Signor Giacomini—who’s grown tired of standing around doing nothing and so has cast his fishing line out the window—reels in a two-pound fish.
“Whoever
said that this is a dead lake?” shouts Signor Giacomini excitedly. “Anselmo, grease the pan, we’ve got fish to fry. And anyone who wants to say anything bad about Lake Orta will have me to answer to.”
FAIRY TALES USUALLY BEGIN WITH A BOY, a young man, or a girl who experiences a series of adventures and then becomes a prince or a princess, gets married, and then hosts a grand banquet. This fairy tale, on the other hand, begins with a ninety-four-year-old man who, after a number of adventures, becomes a thirteen-year-old boy. Is this an insult to the reader? No, because there’s a perfectly good explanation.
Lake Orta, where the island of San Giulio and Baron Lamberto is located, is unlike any of the other lakes in Piedmont and Lombardy, in northern Italy. It’s a lake that marches to a different drummer. A freethinker that, instead of sending its water south, the way Lake Maggiore, Lake Como, and Lake Garda do in a proper, disciplined manner, sends its water north, as if to empty into Mount Rosa, instead of the Adriatic Sea.
If you go to Omegna and stand in the Piazza del Municipio, you’ll see a river flowing out of Lake Orta that runs due north toward the Alps. It’s not a big river, but it’s not a little brooklet either. It’s called the Nigoglia, and unlike most Italian rivers, it takes a feminine article: La Nigoglia.
The people of Omegna are very proud of this rebellious river, and they’ve fished up a motto for themselves that says, in dialect:
La Nigoja la va in su
e la legg la fouma nu.
Which means:
La Nigoglia runs uphill
and we make our own laws.
It strikes me as a very nice motto. Always think with your own mind. Of course, in the end, the sea gets its due: in fact, the waters of the Nigoglia, after running northward for a short distance, pour into the Strona, the Strona runs to the Toce, and then into Lake Maggiore, and after that, via the rivers Ticino and Po, those waters pour into the Adriatic Sea. Order is restored. But Lake Orta is still proud of itself for what it’s done. Is that a sufficient explanation for a fairy tale that obeys only its own rules? We hope it is.
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