The Cloven Viscount

by Italo Calvino

  "Plague and famine!" old Ezekiel was shouting as he went over the fields, fists raised at botched work and damage from drought. "Plague and famine!"

  9

  OFTEN in the mornings I used to go to Pietrochiodo's workshop to see the ingenious carpenter's constructions. He lived in growing anguish and remorse, since the Good 'Un had been visiting him at night, reproving him for the tragic purpose of his inventions, and inciting him to produce mechanisms set in motion by good men and not by an evil urge to torture.

  "What machine should I make then, Master Medardo?" asked Pietrochiodo.

  "I'll tell you. For example you can ..." and the Good 'Un began to describe a machine which he would have ordered were he the Viscount instead of his other half, and to help out his explanation he traced some confused designs.

  Pietrochiodo thought at first that this machine must be an organ, a huge organ whose keys would produce sweet music, and was about to look for suitable wood for the pipes when from another conversation with the Good 'Un he got his ideas more confused, as it seemed that Medardo wanted not air but wheat to pass through the pipes! In fact it was to be not only an organ but a mill grinding com for the poor, and also possibly an oven for baking. Every day the Good 'Un improved his idea and covered more and more paper with plans, but Pietrochiodo could not manage to keep up with him; for this organ-cum-mill-cum-bakery was also to draw up water from wells, so saving donkeys' work, and was to move about on wheels for serving different villages, while on holidays it was to hang suspended in the air with nets all round, catching butterflies.

  The carpenter was beginning to doubt whether building good machines was not beyond human possibility when the only ones which could function really practically and exactly seemed to be gibbets and racks. In fact as soon as the Bad 'Un explained to Pietrochiodo an idea for a new mechanism, the carpenter found a way of doing it occurring to him immediately; and he would set to work and would find every detail coming out perfect and irreplaceable, and the instrument when finished a masterpiece of ingenious technique.

  The torturing thought came to the carpenter, "Can it be in my soul, this evil which makes only my cruel machines work?" But he went on inventing other tortures with great zeal and ability.

  One day I saw him working on a strange instrument of execution, with a white gibbet framed in a wall of black wood, and a rope, also white, running through two holes in the wall at the exact place of the noose.

  "What is that machine, Master?" I asked him.

  "A gibbet for hanging in profile," he said.

  "Who have you built it for?"

  "For one man who both condemns and is condemned. With half of his head he condemns himself to capital punishment, and with the other half he enters the noose and breathes his last. I want to arrange it so one can't tell which is which."

  I realized that the Bad 'Un, feeling the popularity of his good half growing, had arranged to get rid of him as soon as possible.

  In fact he called his constables and said, "For far too long a low vagabond has been infesting our estates and sowing discord. By tomorrow the criminal must be captured and brought here to die."

  "Lordship, it will be done," said the constable, and off they went. Being one-eyed, the Bad 'Un had not noticed that when answering him they had winked at each other.

  For it should be told that a palace plot had been hatching in those days and the constabulary were part of it too. The aim was to imprison and suppress the reigning half-Viscount and hand castle and title over to the other half. The latter however knew nothing of this. And that night he woke up in the hayloft where he lived and found himself surrounded by constables.

  "Have no fear," said the head constable. "The Viscount has sent us to murder you, but we are weary of his cruel tyranny and have decided to murder him and put you in his place."

  "What do I hear? Has this been done? I ask you. The Viscount, you have not already murdered him, have you?"

  "No, but we surely will in the course of the morning."

  "Thanks be to Heaven! No, do not stain yourself with more blood, too much has been shed already. What good could come of rule born of crime?"

  "No matter, we'll lock him in the tower and not bother any more about him."

  "Do not raise your hands against him or anyone else, I beg you! I too am pained by the Viscount's arrogance; yet the only remedy is to give him a good example, by showing ourselves kind and virtuous."

  "Then we'll have to murder you, Signore."

  "Ah no! I told you not to murder anyone."

  "What can we do then? If we don't suppress the Viscount we must obey him."

  "Take this phial. It contains a few drops, the last that remain to me, of the unguent with which the Bohemian hermits healed me and which till now has been most precious to me at a change of weather, when my great scar hurts. Take it to the Viscount and say merely, "Here is a gift from one who knows what it means to have veins that end in plugs!"

  The constables took the phial to the Viscount, who condemned them to be hanged. To save the constables the other plotters planned a rising. They were clumsy, and let out news of the revolt, which was suppressed in blood. The Good 'Un took flowers to the graves and consoled widows and orphans.

  Old Sebastiana was never moved by the goodness of the Good 'Un. When about his zealous enterprises, the Good 'Un would often stop at the old nurse's shack and visit her, always full of kindness and consideration. And every time she would preach him a sermon. Perhaps because of her maternal instinct, perhaps because old age was beginning to cloud her mind, the nurse took little account of Medardo's separation into two halves. She would criticize one half for the misdeeds of the other, give one advice which only the other could follow and so on.

  "Why did you cut off the head of old Granny Bigin's chicken, poor old woman, which was all she had? You're too grown-up now to do such things..."

  "Why d'you say that to me, nurse? You know it wasn't me..."

  "Oho! Then just tell me who it was?"

  "Me but—"

  "There, you see!"

  "But not me here..."

  "Ah, because I'm old you think I'm soft too, do you? When I hear people talk of some rascality I can tell at once if it's one of yours. And I say to myself, I swear Medardo's hand is in that..."

  "But you're always mistaken..."

  "I'm mistaken, am II You young people tell us old folk that we're mistaken ... And what about you? You went and gave your crutch to old Isodoro ..."

  "Yes, that was me...."

  "D'you boast of it? He used it for beating his wife, poor woman..."

  "He told me he couldn't walk because of gout..."

  "He was pretending ... And you at once go and give him your crutch ... Now he's broken it on his wife's back and you go round on a twisted branch ... You've no head, that's what's the matter with you! Always like this! And what about that time when you made Bernardo's bull drunk with grappa..."

  "That wasn't..."

  "Oho, so it wasn't you! That's what everyone says, but it's always him, the Viscount!"

  The Good 'Un's frequent visits to Pratofungo were due, apart from his filial attachment to the nurse, to the fact that he was then dedicating himself to helping the poor lepers. Immune from contagion (also due, apparently to the mysterious cures of the hermits) he would wander about the village informing himself minutely of each one's needs, and not leave them in peace until he had done every conceivable thing he could for them. Often he would go to and fro on his mule between Pratofungo and Dr. Trelawney's, for advice and medicines. The doctor himself had not the courage to go near the lepers, but he seemed, with the good Medardo as intermediary, to be beginning to take an interest in them.

  But my uncle's intentions went further. He was proposing to tend not only the bodies of the lepers but their souls too. And he was forever among them, moralizing away, putting his nose into their affairs, being scandalized, and preaching. The lepers could not endure him. Pratofungo's happy licentious days were o
ver. With this thin figure on his one leg, black-dressed, ceremonious and sententious, no one could have fun without arousing public recriminations, malice and backbiting. Even their music, by dint of being criticized as futile, lascivious and inspired by evil sentiments, grew burdensome and those strange instruments of theirs got covered with dust. The leper women, deprived of their revels, suddenly found themselves face to face with their disease and spent their evenings sobbing in despair.

  "Of the two halves the Good 'Un is worse than the Bad 'Un," they began to say at Pratofungo.

  But it was not only among the lepers that admiration for the Good 'Un was decreasing.

  "Lucky that cannon ball only split him in two," everyone was saying. "If it had done it in three, who knows what we'd have to put up with!"

  The Huguenots now kept guard in turns to protect themselves from him too, as he had now lost respect for them, and would come up at all hours spying out how many sacks were in their granaries, and preaching to them about their prices being too high and spreading this around, so mining their business.

  Thus the days went by at Terralba, and our sensibilities became numbed, since we felt ourselves lost between an evil and a virtue equally inhuman.

  10

  THERE is never a moonlight night but wicked ideas in evil souls writhe like serpents in nests, and charitable ones sprout lilies of renunciation and dedication. So Medardo's two halves wandered, tormented by opposing furies, amid the crags of Terralba.

  Then each came to a decision on his own, and next morning set out to put it into practice.

  Pamela's mother was just about to draw water when she stumbled into a snare and fell into the well. She hung on a rope and shrieked "Help!" Then, in the circle of the wellhead, against the sky she saw the silhouette of the Bad 'Un, who said to her, "I just wanted to talk to you. This is what I've decided. Your daughter Pamela is often seen about with a halved vagabond. You must make him marry her. He has compromised her now and if he's a gentleman he must put it right. That's my decision: don't ask me to explain more."

  Pamela's father was taking a sack of olives from his grove to the oil press, but the sack had a hole in it, and a dribble of olives followed him along the path. Feeling his burden grown lighter, the old man took the sack from his shoulders and realized it was almost empty. But behind him he saw the Good 'Un gathering up the olives one by one and putting them in his cloak.

  "I was following you in order to have a word and had the good fortune of saving your olives. This is what is in my heart. For some time I have been thinking that the unhappiness of others which I desire to help is perhaps increased by my very presence. I intend to leave Terralba. But I do so only if my departure will give peace back to two people—to your daughter who sleeps in a cave while a noble destiny awaits her, to my unhappy right part who should not be left so lonely. Pamela and the Viscount must be united in matrimony."

  Pamela was training a squirrel when she met her mother, who was pretending to look for pine cones.

  "Pamela," said her mother, "the time has come for that vagabond called the Good 'Un to marry you."

  "Where does that idea come from?" said Pamela.

  "He has compromised you and he shall many you. He's so kind that if you tell him so he won't say no."

  "But how did you get such an idea in your head?"

  "Quiet! If you knew who told me you wouldn't ask so many questions; it was the Bad 'Un in person told me, our most illustrious Viscount!"

  "Oh dear!" said Pamela, dropping the squirrel in her lap. "I wonder what trap he's preparing for us."

  Soon afterwards she was teaching herself to hum through a blade of grass when she met her father, who was pretending to look for wood.

  "Pamela," said her father, "it's time you said 'yes' to the Viscount, the Bad 'Un, on condition you marry in church."

  "Is that your idea or someone else's?"

  "Wouldn't you like to be a Viscountess?"

  "Answer my question."

  "All right; imagine, it was told me by the best-hearted man in all the world, the vagabond they call the Good 'Un."

  "Oh, that one has nothing else to think of. You wait and see what I arrange!"

  Ambling through the thickets on his gaunt horse, the Bad 'Un thought over his stratagem; if Pamela married the Good 'Un then by law she would be wife to Medardo of Terralba, his wife that is. By this right the Bad 'Un would easily be able to take her from his rival, so meek and unaggressive.

  Then he met Pamela, who said to him, "Viscount, I have decided that we'll marry if you are willing."

  "You and who?" exclaimed the Viscount.

  "Me and you, and I'll come to the castle and be the Viscountess."

  The Bad 'Un had not expected this at all, and thought, "Then it's useless to arrange all the play acting of getting her married to my other half; I'll marry her myself and that'll be that."

  So he said, "Right"

  Pamela said, "Arrange things with my father."

  A little later Pamela met the Good 'Un on his mule.

  "Medardo," she said, "I realize now that I'm really in love with you and if you wish to make me happy you must ask for my hand in marriage."

  The poor man, who had made that great renunciation for love of her, sat open-mouthed "If she's happy to marry me, I can't get her to marry the other one any more," he thought, and said, "My dear, I'll hurry off to see about the ceremony."

  "Arrange things with my mother, do," said she.

  All Terralba was in a ferment when it was known that Pamela was to marry. Some said she was marrying one, some the other. Her parents seemed to be trying to confuse ideas on purpose. Up at the castle everything was certainly being polished and decorated for a great occasion. And the Viscount had made a suit of black velvet with a big puff on the sleeve and another on the thigh. But the vagabond had also had his poor mule brushed up and mended his clothes at elbow and knee. In church all the candelabras were aglitter.

  Pamela said that she would not leave the wood until the moment of the nuptial procession. I did the commissions for her trousseau. She sewed herself a white dress with a veil and a long train and made up a circlet and belt of lavender sprigs. As she still had a few yards of veil left, she made a wedding robe for the goat and a wedding dress for the duck, and so ran through the woods, followed by her two pets, until the veil got all torn in the branches and her train gathered every pine cone and chestnut husk drying along the paths.

  But the night before the wedding she was thoughtful and a bit alarmed. Sitting at the top of a hillock bare of trees, with her train wrapped round her feet, her lavender circlet all awry, she propped her chin on her hand and looked round sighing at the woods.

  I was always with her, for I was to act as page, together with Esau, who was, however, not to be found.

  "Who will you marry, Pamela?" I asked her.

  "I don't know," she said. "I really don't know what might happen. Will it go well? Will it go badly?"

  Every now and again from the woods rose a kind of guttural cry or a sigh. It was the two halved swains who, prey to the excitement of the vigil were wandering through glades in the woods, wrapped in their black cloaks, one on his bony horse, the other on his bald mule, moaning and sighing in anxious imaginings. And the horse leaped over ledges and landslides, and the mule clambered over slopes and hillsides, without their two riders ever meeting.

  Then at dawn the horse, urged to a gallop, was lamed in a ravine; and the Bad 'Un could not get to the wedding in time. The mule on the other hand went slowly and carefully and the Good 'Un reached the church punctually, just as the bride arrived with her train held by me and by Esau, who had finally been dragged down.

  The crowd was a bit disappointed at seeing that the only bridegroom to arrive was the Good 'Un leaning on his crutch. But the marriage was duly celebrated, the bride and groom said yes and the ring was passed and the priest said, "Medardo of Terralba and Pamela Marcolfi, I hereby join you in holy matrimony."

  Just t
hen from the end of the nave, supporting himself on his crutch, entered the Viscount, his new velvet suit slashed, dripping and tom. And he said, "I am Medardo of Terralba and Pamela is my wife."

  The Good 'Un staggered up face to face with him. "I am the Medardo whom Pamela has married."

  The Bad 'Un flung away his crutch and put his hand to his sword. The Good 'Un had no option but do the same.

  "On guard!"

  The Bad 'Un threw himself into a lunge, the Good 'Un went into defense, but both of them were soon rolling on the floor.

  They agreed that it was impossible to fight balanced on one leg. The duel must be put off to be better prepared.

  "D'you know what I'll do?'' said Pamela. "I'm going back to the woods." And away she ran from the church, with no pages any longer holding her train. On the bridge she found the goat and duck waiting, and they trotted along beside her.

  The duel was fixed for dawn next day in the Nun's Field. Master Pietrochiodo invented a kind of leg in the shape of a compass which, fixed to the halved men's belts, would allow them to stand upright and move and even bend their bodies backwards and forwards, while the point kept firmly in the ground. Galateo the leper, who had been a gentleman when in health, acted as umpire; the Bad 'Un's seconds were Pamela's father and the chief constable, the Good 'Un's, two Huguenots. Dr. Trelawney stood by to lend his services, and arrived with a huge roll of bandages and a demijohn of balsam, as if to tend a battlefield. A lucky thing for me since he needed my help to carry all those things.

  It was a greenish dawn; on the field the two thin black duelists stood still with swords at the ready. The leper blew his horn; it was the signal; the sky quivered like taut tissue; dormice in their lairs dug claws into soil, magpies with heads under wings tore feathers from their sides and hurt themselves, worms' mouths ate their own tails, snakes bit themselves with their own teeth, wasps broke their stings on stones, and everything turned against itself. Frost lay in wells, lichen turned to stone and stone to lichen, dry leaves to mould, and trees were filled by thick hard sap. So man moved against himself, both hands armed with swords.