Italo Calvino - [Our Ancestors 02]

by The Baron in the Trees (epub)

  Cosimo thought the moment had come to introduce himself. He moved on to the stout gentleman's plane tree, bowed and said: "The Baron Cosimo Piovasco di Rondò, at your service."

  "Rondòs?" exclaimed the fat man, "Rondòs? Aragonés? Galiciano?"

  "No, sir."

  "Catalán?"

  "No, sir. I am from these parts."

  "Desterrado también?"

  The gaunt gentleman now felt it his duty to intervene and act as interpreter, very bombastically, with: "His Highness Federico Alonso Sánchez y Tobasco asks if your lordship is also an exile, as we see you climbing about on branches."

  "No, sir. Or, at least, not exile by anyone else's decree."

  "Viaja usted sobre los árboles pen gusto?"

  And the interpreter: "His Highness Federico Alonso is gracious enough to ask if it is for pleasure that your lordship uses this mode of travel."

  Cosimo thought a little, then replied, "I do it because I think it suits me, not because I'm forced to."

  "Felíz usted!" exclaimed Federico Alonso Sánchez, sighing. "Ay de mi, ay de mi!"

  And the man in black began explaining, more bombastically than ever: "His Highness deigns to say that your lordship is to be held fortunate in enjoying such a liberty, which we cannot but compare to our own restriction, endured, however, with resignation to the will of God," and he crossed himself.

  And so, from Prince Sánchez' laconic exclamations and a detailed account by the gentleman in black, Cosimo succeeded in reconstructing the story of this colony living on plane trees. They were Spanish nobles who had rebelled against King Charles III about certain contested feudal privileges, and been exiled with their families as a result. On reaching Olivabassa they had been forbidden to continue their journey. Those parts, in fact, on account of an ancient treaty with His Catholic Majesty, could neither give hospitality nor even allow passage to persons exiled from Spain. The situation of those noble families was a very difficult one to cope with, but the magistrates of Olivabassa, who wanted to avoid any trouble with foreign chancelleries, but also had no aversion to these rich foreigners, came to an understanding with them. The letter of their treaty laid down that no exiles were to "touch the soil" of their territory; they only had to be up on trees, and all was in order. So the exiles had climbed up onto the elms and plane trees, on ladders supplied by the commune, which were then taken away. They had been roosting up there for some months, putting their trust in the mild climate, the hoped-for arrival of a decree of amnesty from Charles III, and Divine Providence. They were well supplied with Spanish doubloons and bought many supplies, thus giving trade to the town. To draw up the dishes they had installed a system of pulleys. And on other trees they had set up canopies under which they slept. In fact they had settled themselves very comfortably, or rather, the people of Olivabassa had settled them well, as it was to their advantage. The exiles, for their part, never moved a finger the whole day long.

  It was the first time Cosimo had ever met other human beings living on trees, and he began to ask practical questions.

  "And when it rains, what do you do?"

  "Sacramos todo el tiempo, Señor."

  Then the interpreter, who was Father Sulpicio de Guadalete, of the Society of Jesus, an exile since his Order had been banned in Spain, explained: "Protected by our canopies, we turn our thoughts to Our Lord, thanking Him for the little that suffices us. . ."

  "Do you ever go hunting?"

  "Con el visco, Señor, alguna vez."

  "Sometimes one of us daubs a branch with glue, for amusement!"

  Cosimo was never tired of finding out how they had resolved problems that he had had to deal with too.

  "And washing, what d'you do about that?"

  "Por lavar? Hay lavanedras!" said Don Federico, with a shrug of the shoulders.

  "We give our linen to the washerwomen of the village," translated Don Sulpicio. "Every Monday, to be exact, we drop the dirty clothes basket."

  "No, I meant washing your faces and bodies."

  Don Federico grunted and shrugged his shoulders, as if this problem had never presented itself to him.

  Don Sulpicio thought it his duty to interpret this: "According to His Highness's opinion, these are matters private to each one of us."

  "And, I beg your pardon, but where d'you do your daily duties?"

  "Ollas, Señor."

  And Don Sulpicio, in his modest tone, said: "We use certain jars, in truth."

  Taking his leave of Don Federico, Cosimo, with Father Sulpicio as guide, went on a round of visits to the other members of the colony, in their respective residential trees. All these hidalgos and ladies preserved, even in circumstances that were still of some discomfort, their usual manners and air of composure. Some of the men used horses' saddles to straddle the branches, and this appealed very much to Cosimo, who in all these years had never thought of such a system (stirrups—he noted at once—did away with the discomfort of having to keep the feet dangling, which brought on pins and needles after a bit). Others were pointing naval telescopes (one of them had the rank of admiral) which they probably only used to look at each other from one tree to another, in idleness and gossip. The ladies, old and young, all sat on cushions embroidered by themselves, sewing (they were the only ones doing anything at all) or stroking big cats. On those trees there were a great number of cats, as well as birds, in cages—perhaps they were victims of the glue—except for some free pigeons which came and perched on the hand of some girl, and were stroked longingly.

  In this arboreal drawing room Cosimo was received with grave hospitality. They offered him coffee, then at once began talking of the palaces they had left behind in Sevilla, or Granada, and of their possessions and granaries and stables, and invited him to visit them when they were reinstated. Of the king who had banished them they spoke in a tone that was both of fanatical aversion and devoted reverence, sometimes being able to separate clearly the person with whom they had a family feud and the royal title from whose authority their own stemmed. Sometimes, on the other hand, they combined these two viewpoints in a single outburst; and Cosimo, every time the conversation fell on their sovereign, did not know where to look.

  Over all the gestures and conversation of the exiles there hung an aura of mourning and gloom, which corresponded in part to their natures, in part to conscious determination—as sometimes happens to those struggling for a cause with a rather vague conviction, which they try to eke out by an imposing bearing.

  In the girls—who at first glance all seemed to Cosimo a little hairy and sallow—there rippled a note of gaiety that was always bridled in time. Two of these were playing at shuttlecock from one tree to another. Tic tac, tic tac, then a little scream; the shuttlecock had fallen into the road. A beggar from Olivabassa gathered it up and threw it back for a fee of two pesetas.

  On the last tree, an elm, was an old man, called El Conde, without a wig, and poorly dressed. Father Sulpicio, as he drew near, lowered his voice, and Cosimo found himself doing the same. El Conde was moving aside a branch with an arm every now and then and looking down over at the slope of the hill and a plain of bare green and gold merging into the distance.

  Sulpicio murmured to Cosimo a story about one of his sons held in King Charles' prisons and tortured. Cosimo realized that while all those hidalgos were in a way acting the exile, and every now and again having to recall and repeat to themselves why they were there, this old man was the only one really suffering. This gesture of moving the branch as if waiting for another land to appear, this plunging of his gaze deeper and deeper into the undulating distance as if hoping never to see the horizon, but to succeed, perhaps, in making out some place, alas, far too far away—this was the first real sign of exile that Cosimo saw. And he understood, too, how much those other hidalgos must depend on El Conde's presence, as being the only thing that held them together, gave them a purpose. It was he, perhaps the poorest of them and certainly the least important of them back home, who told them what they s
hould be suffering and hoping.

  On his way back from these visits, Cosimo saw on an alder tree a girl whom he had not seen before. In a couple of leaps he joined her.

  She was a girl with lovely eyes the color of periwinkles, and sweet-smelling skin. She was holding a bucket.

  "How is it that when I saw everyone I never saw you?"

  "I was drawing water at the well," and she smiled. From the bucket, which was a little askew, was dripping some water. He helped her to set it straight.

  "So you get down from the trees?"

  "No, there's a twisted old cherry tree whose branches hang over a courtyard wall. We drop our buckets from there. Come."

  They went along a branch, and climbed the wall. She went first, as a guide over the cherry tree. Beneath was the well.

  "Do you see, Baron?"

  "How d'you know I'm a baron?"

  "I know everything." She smiled. "My sisters told me of your visit at once."

  "Those girls playing shuttlecock?"

  "Irena and Raimunda, yes."

  "The daughters of Don Federico?"

  "Yes."

  "And what's your name?"

  "Ursula."

  "You're much better at getting about trees than anyone else here."

  "I've been on 'em since I was a child; at Granada we had huge trees in the patio."

  "Can you pick that rose?" At the top of a tree was flowering a rambling rose.

  "A pity, no."

  "All right, I'll pick it for you." He went off and came back with the rose.

  Ursula smiled and held out her hands.

  "I want to pin it on myself. Tell me where."

  "On my head, thank you." And she guided his hands.

  "Now tell me," Cosimo asked, "d'you know how to reach that walnut tree?"

  "Can one?" She laughed. "I'm not a bird."

  "Wait." Cosimo threw her the end of a rope. "If you tie yourself to that rope, I'll swing you over."

  "No . . . I'm afraid . . ." But she was laughing.

  "It's my system. I've been traveling like this for years, doing it all by myself."

  "Madre mía!"

  He ferried her over. Then he came himself. It was a young walnut tree, not big at all. They were very close. Ursula was still panting and red from her flight.

  "Frightened?"

  "No." But her heart was beating fast.

  "You haven't lost the rose." And he touched it to set it straight So, close together in the tree, their arms were around each other at every move.

  "Uh!" said she; and then, he first, they kissed.

  So began their love, the boy happy and amazed, she happy and not surprised at all (nothing happens by chance to girls). It was the love so long awaited by Cosimo which had now inexplicably arrived, and so lovely that he could not imagine how he had even thought it lovely before. And the thing most new to him was that it was so simple, and the boy at that moment thought it must be like that always.

  } 18 {

  THE peach and almond and cherry trees were in blossom. Cosimo and Ursula spent their days together on the trees. The spring even colored with gaiety the funereal proximity of her relatives.

  My brother soon made himself useful among the colony of exiles, teaching them various ways of moving from one tree to another, and encouraging the grandees to abandon, for a moment, their habitual composure and practice a little movement. He also threw across some rope bridges, which allowed the older exiles to pay each other visits. And so, during the year, almost, that he spent with the Spaniards, he gave the colony many devices invented by himself: water tanks, ovens, bags of fur to sleep in. It was his joy in new inventions that made him help those hidalgos in their habits, even though they in no way agreed with the opinions of his favorite authors; thus, seeing the desire of those pious persons to go regularly to confession, he scooped out a confessional from a tree trunk, in which the lanky Don Sulpicio could insert himself and through a little curtained grating listen to their sins.

  The pure passion for technical innovation, in fact, was not enough to save him from paying homage to accepted forms; ideas were needed. Cosimo wrote to Orbecche, the bookseller, to send him by the post from Ombrosa to Olivabassa some volumes that had arrived meanwhile. So he was able to read out loud to Ursula Paul et Virginie and La Nouvelle Héloïse.

  The exiles would often hold meetings on a big oak tree, parliaments in which they drafted letters to their sovereign. At first, these letters must always have had a tone of indignation, protest and threat, almost of ultimatum; but gradually one or another of them proposed formulas that were blander and more respectful, and eventually they drafted a petition in which they prostrated themselves humbly at His Gracious Majesty's feet and implored his forgiveness.

  Then El Conde rose. All were silent. El Conde, looking up, began speaking in a low vibrant voice, and said everything that he had in his heart. When he sat down again, the others were serious and mute. No one mentioned the petition any more.

  Cosimo had by now become one of the community and took part in the discussions. And there, with ingenious youthful fervor, he would explain the ideas of philosophers and the wrongdoings of sovereigns, and how states could be governed by justice and reason. But the only ones among them who listened at all were El Conde, who though old, was always searching for new ways of understanding and acting; Ursula, who had read a few books; and a couple of girls who were rather more wide awake than the others. The rest of the colony had heads like leather soles, fit only to drive nails into.

  In fact, El Conde now began to want to read books instead of spending his time brooding over the landscape. Rousseau he found a little crude, but he liked Montesquieu; it was a first step. The other hidalgos read nothing, though one or two of them secretly asked Father Sulpicio to get Cosimo to lend them La Pucelle so they could go off and read the more risqué passages. So, with El Conde chewing over his new ideas, the meetings on the oak tree took on a new turn; there was even talk of going off to Spain and starting a revolution.

  At first, Father Sulpicio did not sense the danger. He was not a man of great subtlety himself, and being cut off from all the hierarchy of his superiors he was no longer in touch with the way people's minds were being poisoned these days. But as soon as he was able to reorder his ideas (or as soon, said others, as he received certain letters with the bishop's seal) he began to say that the devil had insinuated itself into that community of theirs and that they would bring a hail of lightning down on themselves "which would burn up the trees with everyone on them."

  One night Cosimo was awakened by a groan. He hurried toward it with a lantern and on El Conde's oak tree saw the old man bound to the trunk with the Jesuit tightening the knots. "Stop, Father! What are you doing?"

  "The arm of the Holy Inquisition, son! Now it is for this wretched old man to confess his heresy and spit out the devil. Then it will be your turn."

  Cosimo drew his sword and cut the ropes. "En garde, Father! There are other arms which serve reason and justice!"

  The Jesuit drew a naked sword from his cloak. "Baron of Rondò, for some time your family has had accounts to settle with my Order!"

  "He was right, my poor old father," exclaimed Cosimo, as the steel crossed. "The Society does not forgive!"

  They fought, swaying about on the trees. Don Sulpicio was an excellent fencer, and my brother very often found himself in difficulties. They were at the third round when El Conde pulled himself together and began to call out. The other exiles woke, hurried to the spot, and intervened. Sulpicio put his sword away at once, and, as if nothing had happened, at once began calling for calm.

  An event so serious would have been impossible to silence in any other community, but not in that, considering their wish to reduce all thought in their heads to a minimum. So Don Federico offered his good offices, and a kind of reconciliation was arranged between Don Sulpicio and El Conde, which left everything as it had been before.

  Certainly Cosimo had to be careful, and when he
went about the trees with Ursula he was in constant fear of being spied on by the Jesuit. He knew that their relationship was worrying Don Federico, for the girl was no longer allowed out with him. Those noble families, in truth, were accustomed to a very strict moral code; but they were on the trees there, in exile, and did not worry so much any longer about such things. Cosimo seemed to them a fine young man, with a title too, and one who knew how to make himself useful, and who stayed there with them of his own free will; and if there did happen to be a tenderness between him and Ursula and they often saw them going off among the trees looking for fruit and flowers, they shut an eye so as not to find anything to criticize.

  Now, however, with Don Sulpicio putting pressure on him, Don Federico could no longer pretend to know nothing. He called Cosimo to an audience on his plane tree. At his side was the long black figure of Sulpicio.

  "Baron, you are often seen about with my niña, they tell me."

  "She is teaching me to speak vuestra idioma, Your Highness."

  "How old are you?"

  "Almost diez y nueve."

  "Joven! Too young! My daughter is of marrying age. Why do you go about with her?"

  "Ursula is seventeen."

  "Are you thinking already of casarte?"

  "Of what?"

  "My daughter teaches you Spanish badly, hombre. I mean if you are thinking of choosing yourself a novia, of setting up a home."

  Sulpicio and Cosimo both moved their hands forward. The conversation was taking a turn desired neither by the Jesuit nor, even less, by my brother.

  "My home . . ." said Cosimo, waving a hand toward the highest branches and the clouds, "my home is everywhere, everywhere I can climb to, upwards . . ."

  "No es esto," and Prince Federico Alonso shook his head. "Baron, if you care to visit Granada when we return, you will see the richest fief in the Sierra. Mejor que aqui."