Italo Calvino - [Our Ancestors 02]

by The Baron in the Trees (epub)

  "You're making a spectacle of yourself!" began the father, bitterly. "Really worthy of a gentleman!" (He called him by the formal "voi," as he did for the most serious reprimands, but the use of the word now had a sense of distance, of detachment.)

  "A gentleman, my Lord Father, is such whether he is on earth or on the treetops," replied Cosimo, and at once added: "If he behaves with decency."

  "An excellent maxim," admitted the Baron gravely. "And yet only a short time ago you were stealing plums from one of our tenants."

  It was true. My brother had been found out. What was he to reply? He smiled—but not haughtily or cynically—a shy smile, and blushed.

  The father smiled too, a melancholy smile, and for some reason or other blushed too.

  "You're making common cause with the worst little ruffians in the area!" he said then.

  "No, my Lord Father, I'm on my own, and each acts for himself," said Cosimo firmly.

  "I ask you to come down to earth," said the Baron in a calm, rather faint voice, "and to take up the duties of your station!"

  "I have no intention of obeying you, my Lord Father," said Cosimo. "I am very sorry."

  They were ill at ease, both of them, bored. Each knew what the other would say. "And what about your studies? Your devotions as a Christian?" said the father. "Do you intend to grow up like an American savage?"

  Cosimo was silent. These were thoughts he had not yet put to himself and had no wish to. Then he exclaimed: "Just because I'm a few yards higher up, does it mean that good teaching can't reach me?"

  This was an able reply too, though it diminished, in a way, the range of his gesture; a sign of weakness.

  His father realized this and became more pressing. "Rebellion cannot be measured by yards," said he. "Even when a journey seems no distance at all, it can have no return."

  Now was the moment for my brother to produce some other noble reply, perhaps a Latin maxim, but at that instant none came into his head, though he knew so many by heart. Instead he suddenly got bored with all this solemnity, and shouted: "But from the trees I can piss farther," a phrase without much meaning, but which cut the discussion short.

  As though they had heard the phrase, a shout went up from the ragamuffins around Porta Capped. The Baron of Rondò's horse shied, the Baron pulled the reins and wrapped himself more tightly in his cloak, ready to leave. Then he turned, drew an arm out of his cloak, pointed to the sky, which had suddenly become overcast with black clouds, and exclaimed: "Be careful, son, there's Someone who can piss on us all!" and spurred his horse on.

  The rain, long awaited in the countryside, began to fall in big scattered drops. Among the hovels there was a scattering and running of urchins hooded in sacks and singing in dialect: "It's raining! It's raining! No more complaining." Cosimo vanished through leaves drooping with water, which poured showers on his head at a touch.

  As soon as I realized it was raining, I began to worry about him. I imagined him soaking wet, cowering against a tree trunk without ever managing to avoid the oblique rain. And I knew that a storm would not make him return. So I hurried off to our mother. "It's raining! What will Cosimo do, Lady Mother?"

  The Generalessa shook the curtain and looked out at the rain. She was calm. "The worst nuisance from heavy rain is the mud. Up there he's away from that."

  "But will he find enough shelter in the trees?"

  "He'll withdraw to his tents."

  "Which, Lady Mother?"

  "He'll have had the foresight to prepare them in time."

  "But don't you think I'd better go find him and give him an umbrella?"

  As if the word "umbrella" had suddenly torn her from her observation post and flung her back into maternal preoccupations, the Generalessa began saying: "Ja, ganz gewiss! And a bottle of apple syrup, well heated, wrapped in a woolen sock! And some oilcloth, to stretch over the branches and stop the wet coming through . . . But where'll he be now, poor boy! . . . Let's hope you manage to find him . . ."

  Loaded with parcels I went out into the rain, under an enormous green umbrella, holding under my arm another umbrella, shut, for Cosimo.

  I gave our particular whistle but the only answer was the endless patter of the rain on the trees. It was dark; once outside the garden precincts I did not know my way and put my feet haphazardly on slippery stones, spongy grass, puddles, whistling all the time and tipping the umbrella back to send the whistle upwards, so that the rain lashed my face and washed the whistle from my lips. My idea was to go toward some public lands full of tall trees where I thought he might possibly have taken refuge, but in that darkness I got lost and stood there clutching the umbrellas and packages, with only the bottle of syrup, wrapped in its woolen sock, to give me a little warmth.

  Then, among the trees, high in the darkness above, I saw a light which could not be coming from either moon or stars. And at my whistle I seemed to hear his in reply.

  "Cosimooo!"

  "Biagiooo!" came a voice through the rain from the treetops.

  "Where are you?"

  "Here. . . I'm coming toward you, but hurry up as I'm getting wet!"

  We found each other. Wrapped in a blanket, he came down onto the low fork of a willow to show me how to climb up. through complicated interlacing branches, as far as a beech tree with a high trunk, from which came that light. I gave him the umbrella and some of the parcels at once, and we tried to struggle up with the umbrellas open, but it was impossible and we got wet all the same. Finally I reached the place he was leading me to; but I saw nothing except for a faint light that seemed to be coming from the flaps of a tent.

  Cosimo raised one of those flaps and let me in. By the light of a lantern I saw I was in a kind of little room, covered and enclosed on every side by curtains and carpets, crossed by the trunks of the beech tree, with a floor of stakes, all propped on thick branches. At that moment it seemed a palace to me, but soon I began to realize how unstable it was, for the fact that there were two of us inside was upsetting the balance and Cosimo at once had to get down to the business of repairing leaks. He also opened and put out the two umbrellas I had brought to cover two yawning holes in the roof; but the water was pouring in from various other points and we were both soaked and as cold as if we'd stayed outside. However, such a quantity of blankets was amassed there that we were able to bury ourselves under them, leaving only our heads outside. The lantern sent out an uncertain sputtering light, and the branches and leaves threw intricate shadows on the roof and walls of that strange construction. Cosimo drank the apple syrup in great gulps, gasping, "Puah! Puah!"

  "It's a nice house," said I.

  "Oh, it's only provisional," replied Cosimo hurriedly. "I've got to think it out better."

  "Did you build it all yourself?"

  "Of course, who d'you think? It's secret."

  "Can I come here?"

  "No, or you'll show someone else the way."

  "Father said he's giving up the search for you."

  "This must be a secret all the same."

  "Because of those boys who steal? But aren't they your friends?"

  "Sometimes they are and sometimes they aren't."

  "And the girl on the pony?"

  "What's that to do with you?"

  "I meant she's your friend, isn't she, and you play together, don't you?"

  "Sometimes we do and sometimes we don't."

  "Why only sometimes?"

  "Because I may not want to or she may not want to."

  "And her, would you let her up here?"

  Cosimo, frowning, was trying to spread a straw mat over a branch. "Yes. If she came, I'd let her up," he said gravely.

  "Doesn't she want to?"

  Cosimo flung himself down. "She's left."

  "Say," I whispered, "are you engaged?"

  "No," answered my brother and wrapped himself in a long silence.

  Next day the weather was fine, and it was decided that Cosimo would begin taking lessons again with Abbé Fauchelefleur. How,
was not said. Simply and rather brusquely, the Baron asked the Abbé (". . . instead of just standing there looking at the flies, mon abbé. . .") to go and find my brother wherever he might be and get him to translate a little Virgil. Then, fearing he had put the Abbé in too embarrassing a position, he tried to ease his task, and said to me: "Go and tell your brother to be in the garden in half an hour for his Latin lesson." This he said in as natural a tone as he could, the tone which he intended to keep from then on; even with Cosimo in the trees everything must continue as before.

  So the lesson took place. They sat, my brother astride an oak branch, his legs dangling, and the Abbé on the grass beneath, on a stool, intoning hexameters in chorus. I played around there and then wandered off for a short time. When I got back, the Abbé was in the tree. With his long thin legs in their black stockings he was trying to hitch himself onto a fork and Cosimo was helping him by an elbow. They found a comfortable position for the old man, and together deciphered a difficult passage, bending over the book. My brother seemed to be showing great diligence.

  Then I don't know what happened, why the pupil made off; perhaps because the Abbé's mind had wandered and he had begun staring into the void as usual; the fact is that suddenly only the black figure of the old priest was left crouched in the branches, his book on his knees, looking at a white butterfly flying by and following it with mouth agape. When the butterfly vanished, the Abbé suddenly realized he was there alone on the tree and felt frightened. He clutched the trunk and began shouting: "Au secours! Au secours!" until people came with a ladder and little by little be calmed down and descended.

  } 9 {

  IN FACT, Cosimo, despite that escape of his, which had upset us all so much, lived almost as closely with us as he had before. He was a solitary who did not avoid people. In a way, indeed, he seemed to like them more than anything else. He would squat above places where peasants were digging, turning manure or scything the fields, and call out polite greetings. They would raise their heads in surprise and he at once tried to show them where he was, for he had got over the pastime we had so often indulged in when we had been together on the trees before, of thumbing his nose and making faces at passers-by. At first the peasants were rather confused at seeing him covering such distances all on branches, and did not know whether to greet him by doffing their hats as they did with the gently or to shout at him as they did with urchins. Then they got into the habit of chatting with him about their work or the weather, and seemed to find the game he was playing up there no better and no worse than so many other games they had seen the gentry play.

  He would sit for whole half-hours at a time, watching their work from the trees and asking questions about seeds and manure which it had never occurred to him to do when he'd been on the ground, prevented then by shyness from ever addressing a word to villagers or servants. Sometimes, he would point out if the furrow they were digging was going straight or crooked; or if the tomatoes in a neighbor's field were already ripe; sometimes he would offer himself for little assignments, such as going to tell the wife of a scyther to bring a whetstone, or warning someone to turn off the water in an orchard. And if, when he was moving around with these messages for the peasants, he happened to see a flight of sparrows settling on a field of corn, he would shout and wave his cap to scare them away.

  In his solitary turns around the woods, encounters with humans were memorable though rare, for they were with folk whom people like us never used to meet. In those times a variety of wanderers used to camp in the forests: colliers, tinkers, glass cutters, families driven far from their homes by hunger, to earn their bread by these unstable jobs. They would set up their workshops in the open, and erect shacks, made of branches, to sleep in. At first they were rather alarmed by the boy dressed in fur passing over their heads, particularly the women, who took him for a hobgoblin; then he became friends with them, and spent hours watching them work, and in the evening when they sat around the fire he would settle on a branch nearby, to hear the tales they told.

  In a glade covered with beaten cinders the colliers were the most numerous. They would shout "Hura! Hota!" as they were from Bergamo and their speech was impossible to understand. They were the strongest and most self-contained, a corporate body ranging throughout the woods, with links of blood and friendship and enmity. Cosimo would sometimes act as messenger between one group and another, pass on news, and he was asked to go on various errands for them.

  "The men under the Red Oak have told me to tell you Hanfa la Hapa Hota'l Hoc!"

  "Answer 'em Hegn Hobet Ho de Hot!"

  He would remember the mysterious aspirated syllables, and try to mimic them, as he tried to mimic the twitter of the birds which woke him in the morning.

  By now the news had spread that a son of the Baron of Rondò had been up in the trees for months; yet our father tried to keep it secret from strangers. There came to visit us, for instance, the Count and Countess of Estomac, on their way to France, where they had estates in the bay of Toulouse. I do not know what self-interest lay behind this visit; claims to certain rights, or the confirmation of a diocese to their son, who was a bishop, for which they needed the agreement of the Baron of Rondò; and our father, as can be imagined, built on this alliance a castle of projects for his dynastic pretensions on Ombrosa.

  There was an agonizingly boring dinner, with endless ceremonial, and bowing and scraping all around. The guests had with them a young son, a bewigged little prig. The Baron presented his sons, that is me alone, and added: "My daughter Battista, poor girl, lives such a retired life, is so very pious, that I don't know if you'll be able to see her," and at that moment she showed up, that idiot, in a nun's wimple covered all over with ribbons and frills, a powdered face, and mittens. It should be emphasized that since that business of the young Marchese della Mela she had never once set eyes on a young man, apart from pages and village lads. The young Count of Estomac bowed; she broke into hysterical laughter. The Baron, who had already given up his daughter as a lost cause, now began to mill over new possibilities in his mind.

  But the old Count made a show of indifference. He asked: "Didn't you have another son, Monsieur Arminio?"

  "Yes, the eldest," said our father, "but, as luck would have it, he's out shooting."

  He had not lied, as at that period Cosimo was always in the woods with his gun, after hares and thrushes. The gun was one I had got for him, it was the light one Battista had used against the mice and which for some time she—having given up that particular sport—had abandoned on a nail.

  The Count began to ask about the game thereabouts. The Baron in his replies kept to generalities, as, taking no interest in the world around him, he did not know how to shoot. I now interrupted the conversation, though I had been forbidden to say a word when grownups were talking.

  "And what does anyone as young as you know about it?" asked the Count.

  "I go and fetch the game my brother brings down, and take them up the . . ." I was just saying when our father interrupted me.

  "Who asked you to say anything? Go and play."

  We were in the garden. It was evening and still light, since it was summer. And now over the plane trees and oaks Cosimo came calmly along, with his cap of cat's fur on his head, his gun slung on one shoulder, a spear on the other, and his legs in gaiters.

  "Hey, hey!" exclaimed the Count, getting up and moving his head to see better, much amused. "Who's that? Who's that on the trees?"

  "What? What? I really don't know . . ." began our father, and instead of looking in the direction where the other was pointing, looked in the Count's eyes as if to assure himself he could see well.

  Cosimo meanwhile had reached a point right above them, and was standing on a fork with legs spread apart.

  "Ah, it's my son, yes, Cosimo. Just a boy, you see. To give us a surprise he's climbed up there . . ."

  "Is he your eldest son?"

  "Yes, yes, of the two boys he's the eldest, but only by a little, you know. T
hey're still children, playing . . ."

  "But he must be a bright lad to go over branches like that. And with that arsenal on him . . ."

  "Eh, just playing," and with a terrible effort at lying which made him go red all over he called: "What are you doing up there? Eh? Will you come down? Come and greet our Lord Count here!"

  Cosimo took off his cat's-fur cap, and bowed. "My respects, Lord Count."

  "Ah, ah, ah!" laughed the Count. "Fine, fine! Let him stay up there, let him stay up there, Monsieur Arminio! A very clever boy at getting about trees!" and he laughed.

  And even that little dolt of a count kept on repeating: "C'est original, ça c'est tres original!"

  Cosimo sat down there on the fork, our father changed the subject and talked on and on in the hope of diverting the Count's attention. But every now and again the Count raised his eyes and there my brother always was, up that tree or another, cleaning his gun, or greasing his gaiters or, as night was coming, on donning his flannel shirt.

  "Oh! But look! He can do everything up there, that boy can! What fun! Ah, I'll tell them about it at Court, the very first time I go there. I'll tell my son the Bishop! I'll tell my aunt the Princess!"

  My father could scarcely control himself any longer. And he had another worry on his mind; he could not see his daughter around, and the young Count had vanished too.

  Cosimo had gone off on one of his tours of exploration, and now came panting back. "She's given him the hiccups! She's given him the hiccups!"

  The Count looked worried. "Oh, that's unfortunate. My son suffers a lot from hiccups. Do go, like a good boy, and see what's happening. Tell 'em to come back."

  Cosimo went jumping off, and came back panting more than ever. "They're chasing each other. She wants to put a live lizard under his shirt to get rid of his hiccups! He doesn't want her to!" And off he skipped for another look.

  So we spent that evening at home, not so very different in truth from others, with Cosimo sneaking around the edges of our lives from up on the trees; but that time we had guests, and as a result the news of my brother's behavior spread over the courts of Europe, to the great shame of our father. Quite a baseless shame, for the Count of Estomac went away with a favorable impression of our family, and as a result our sister Battista became engaged to the little Count.