Italo Calvino - [Our Ancestors 02]

by The Baron in the Trees (epub)

  She was surprised—very. There was no doubt of that, though her eyes were laughing through her surprise. But she recovered at once and pretended not to care, and smiled with her eyes and mouth, revealing a tooth she had had as a child.

  "You!" and then, trying to use as natural a tone as she could, but not succeeding in hiding her interest and pleasure, she went on, "Ah, so you've stayed up there without ever going down?"

  Cosimo succeeded in transforming a sparrow's note in his throat into a "Yes, Viola, it's me, d'you remember me?"

  "You've never, really never once set a foot on the ground?"

  "Never."

  Then she, as if she had already conceded too much: "Ah, so you managed it, you see! It couldn't have been so difficult then."

  "I was awaiting your return . . ."

  "Excellent. Hey, you, where are you taking that curtain! Leave it all here and I'll see to it!" And she began looking at him again. Cosimo that day was dressed for hunting: hairy all over, with his cap of cat's fur and his musket. "You look like Crusoe!"

  "Have you read it?" he said at once, to show he was up to date.

  Viola had already turned around. "Gaetano! Ampelio! The dry leaves! It's full of dry leaves!" Then to him: "In an hour, at the end of the park. Wait for me." And she hurried away to give more orders, on horseback.

  Cosimo threw himself into the thick of the wood; he would have liked it to be a thousand times thicker, a phalanx of branches and leaves and thorns and bracken and maidenhair, to plunge and bury himself in and only after being completely immersed to be able to understand whether he was happy or mad with fear.

  On the big tree at the end of the park, with his knees tight against a branch, he looked at the time on an old watch that had belonged to his maternal grandfather, General von Kurtewitz, and said to himself: She won't come. But Donna Viola arrived almost punctually, on horseback. She stopped under the tree without even looking up. She was no longer wearing her rider's hat or jacket, but a white blouse, decorated with lace, and a black skirt that was almost nunlike. Raising herself in her stirrups she held out a hand to him on the branch; he helped her; she climbed onto the saddle and reached the branch, then, still without looking at him, rapidly climbed up it, looked about for a comfortable fork, and sat down. Cosimo crouched at her feet, and could begin only by saying: "So you're back?"

  Viola gave him an ironical look. Her hair was as fair as it had been when she was a child. "How do you know that?" said she.

  And he, without understanding her little joke: "I saw you in that field of the Duke's preserve."

  "The preserve's mine. It can fill with weeds, for all I care! D'you know about it? About me, I mean?"

  "No . . . I've only just heard you're a widow now . . ."

  "Yes, of course I'm a widow," and she slapped her black skirt, smoothed it out, and began talking very quickly. "You never know anything. There you are on the trees all day long, putting your nose into other people's business, and yet you know nothing. I married old Tolemaico because my family made me, forced me. They said I was a flirt and must have a husband. For a year I've been the Duchess Tolemaico, and it was the most boring year of my life, though I never spent more than a week with the old man. I'll never set foot in any of their castles or ruins or ratholes, may they fill with snakes! From now on I'm staying here, where I was as a child. I'll stay here as long as I feel like it, of course. Then I'll go off. I'm a widow and can do what I like, finally. I've always done what I liked, to tell the truth; even Tolemaico I married because it suited me to many him. It's not true they forced me to; they wanted to get me married off at any cost, and so I chose the most decrepit suitor I could find. 'Then I'll be a widow sooner,' I said, and so I am, now."

  Cosimo sat there half stunned by this avalanche of news and peremptory statements, and Viola was further away than ever; flirt, widow, duchess, she was part of an unreachable world, and all he could find to say was: "And whom d'you flirt with now?"

  And she: "There. You're jealous. Be careful, as I'll never let you be jealous."

  Cosimo did have a flash of jealousy provoked by this quarrel, then thought at once: What? Jealous? Why admit that I could be jealous of her? Why say, "I'll never let you"? It's as good as saying that she thinks that we . . .

  Then, scarlet in the face, he felt a longing to tell her, to ask her, to hear her, but it was she who asked him dryly: "Tell me about you now. What have you done?"

  "Oh, I've done things," he began saying. "I've hunted, even boar, but mostly foxes, hares, pheasants and then, of course, thrushes and blackbirds; and then pirates—Turkish pirates—we had a great fight; my uncle died in it. And I've read lots of books, for myself and a friend of mine, a brigand who was hanged; and I've got the whole Encyclopaedia of Diderot and have also written to him and he's replied, from Paris; and I've done lots of work, sown crops, saved a wood from fire . . ."

  "And will you always love me, absolutely, above all else, and will you do anything for me?"

  At this remark of hers, Cosimo, with a catch at the hearty said: "Yes."

  "You are a man who has lived on the trees for me alone, to learn to love me . . ."

  "Yes . . . yes . . ."

  "Kiss me."

  He pressed her against the trunk, kissed her. Raising his face, he realized her beauty as if he had never seen it before. "Say, how beautiful you are . . ."

  "For you . . ." and she unbuttoned her white blouse. Her breast was young, the nipples rosy. Cosimo just grazed it with his lips, before Viola slid away over the branches as if she were flying, with him clambering after her, and that skirt of hers always in his face.

  "But where are you taking me to?" asked Viola as if it were he leading her, not she him.

  "This way," exclaimed Cosimo, and began guiding her, and at every passage of branches he would take her by the hand or the waist and show her the way over.

  "This way," and they went on to certain olive trees protruding from a cliff, and from the top of these was the sea, of which till now they had glimpsed only a fragment, and even that was half hidden by leaves and branches; but now suddenly they found the sea there facing them, calm and limpid and vast as the sky. The horizon opened wide and high and the blue was stretched and bare, without a sail; and they could count the scarcely perceptible ripples of the waves. Only a very light rustle, like a sigh, ran over the pebbles on the beach.

  With eyes half dazed, Cosimo and Viola moved back into the shade of the dark-green foliage. "This way."

  In a walnut, at the fork of the trunk, was a hollow, formed from an old ax wound, and this was one of Cosimo's refuges. Over it was stretched a boarskin, and around it were a flask, a tool or two, and a bowl.

  Viola flung herself down on the boarskin. "Do you bring other women here?"

  He hesitated. And Viola: "If you haven't, you're not much of a man."

  "Yes . . . One or two . . ."

  She slapped him full in the face. "So that's how you awaited me?"

  Cosimo passed his hand over his scarlet cheek and could think of no word to say; but now she seemed to be in a good mood again. "And what were they like? Tell me. What were they like?"

  "Not like you, Viola, not like you . . ."

  "How d'you know what I'm like, eh, how d'you know?" She was gentle now, and Cosimo never ceased to be surprised at these sudden changes of hers. He moved close to her. Viola was gold and honey.

  "Say . . ."

  "Say . . ."

  They knew each other. He knew her and so himself, for in truth he had never known himself. And she knew him and so herself, for although she had always known herself she had never been able to recognize it until now.

  } 22 {

  THE first pilgrimage they made was to the tree where, in a deep incision in the bark, now so old and deformed that it no longer seemed the work of human hands, were carved in big letters: Cosimo, Viola, and beneath—Ottimo Massimo.

  "Up here? Who did it? When?"

  "I; then."

  Viola
was moved.

  "And what does that mean?" and she pointed to the words Ottimo Massimo.

  "My dog. That is your dog. The dachshund."

  "Turcaret?"

  "Ottimo Massimo, I called him."

  "Turcaret! How I sobbed for him, when I realized as I left that they hadn't put him in the carriage! . . . Oh, I didn't care about not seeing you again, but was desperate at not having the dog any more!"

  "If it hadn't been for the dog I wouldn't have found you again! He sniffed in the wind that you were near, and didn't rest until he found you."

  "I recognized him at once, as soon as I saw him arrive at the pavilion, panting fit to burst. . . The others said, 'And where's this come from?' I bent down to look at his color, his markings. 'But he's Turcaret! The dachshund I had as a child at Ombrosa!'"

  Cosimo laughed. Suddenly she wrinkled up her nose. "Ottimo Massimo! What an ugly name! Where d'you get such ugly names from?" And Cosimo's face clouded over.

  But for Ottimo Massimo now there was no cloud to mar his happiness. His old dog's heart that had been divided between two masters was finally at peace, after having worked day after day to attract the Marchesa toward the borders of the game preserve, to the ilex on which Cosimo was crouching. He had pulled her by the skirt, or skipped away with some object of hers, off toward the field so that she should follow, and she had exclaimed: "But what do you want? Where are you dragging me? Turcaret! Stop it! What a maddening little dog to find again!" But seeing the dachshund had already brought back the memories of childhood, a nostalgia for Ombrosa. And she had at once begun preparing her move from the ducal pavilion and her return to the old villa with its strange vegetation.

  She had returned, Viola had. For Cosimo, now began the best period of his life, and for her too, who would go galloping over the country on her white horse and when she caught sight of the Baron between branches and sky would dismount, climb up the slanting trees and branches, on which she soon became almost as expert as he and could reach him anywhere.

  "Oh, Viola, I don't know, I don't know where I could still climb . . ."

  "To me . . ." Viola would say quietly, and he felt himself almost in a frenzy.

  Love for her was a heroic exercise; the pleasure of it was mingled with trials of courage and generosity and dedication and straining of all the faculties of her being. Their world was a world of trees—intricate, gnarled and impervious.

  "There!" she would exclaim, pointing to a fork high in the branches, and they would launch out together to reach it and start between them a competition in acrobatics, culminating in new embraces. They made love suspended in the void, propping themselves or holding onto branches, she throwing herself upon him, almost flying.

  Viola's determination in love accorded with Cosimo's, but sometimes clashed with his. Cosimo avoided the refinements of dalliance, the wanton perversities; nothing in love pleased him that was not natural. The republican virtues were in the air; a period was coming which would be both licentious and severe. Cosimo, insatiable lover, was a stoic, an ascetic, a puritan. Always in search of happiness in love, he would never be a mere voluptuary. He reached the point of distrusting kisses, caresses, verbal play—everything that clouded or replaced the wholesomeness of nature. It was Viola who revealed that in its fullness. And with her he never knew the sadness after love, preached by theologians; on this subject he even wrote a philosophic letter to Rousseau, who, perhaps disturbed by it, did not reply.

  But Viola was also a refined, spoiled, capricious woman, ever yearning in body and soul. Cosimo's love fulfilled her sensually but left her imagination unsatisfied. From that came quarrels and cloudy resentments. But these did not last long, so varied was their life and world around.

  When tired they would go back to their refuges in the thickest press of leaves: hammocks which enwrapped their bodies like furled leaves, or hanging pavilions with curtains flapping in the breeze, or beds of feathers. At such contrivances Donna Viola was very talented. Wherever she happened to be, the Marchesa had the gift of creating around her ease, luxury and elaborate comfort—elaborate in appearance, but accomplished by her with miraculous facility, for everything she wanted had to be carried out at once and at all costs.

  On these aerial alcoves of theirs the robins would perch to sing, and between the curtains would flutter butterflies, in pairs, chasing each other. On summer afternoons, when sleep took the two lovers side by side, a squirrel would enter, looking for something to nibble, and stroke their faces with its feathery tail or plunge its teeth into a big toe. Then they would pull the curtains to more carefully; but a family of tree mice began gnawing at the roof of the pavilion and fell down on their heads.

  This was the time in which they were discovering each other, telling of their lives, questioning.

  "And did you feel alone?"

  "I hadn't you."

  "But alone before the rest of the world?"

  "No. Why? I always had contacts with other people; I picked fruit, pruned trees, studied philosophy with the Abbé, fought the pirates. Isn't it like that for everyone?"

  "You're the only one like that, that's why I love you."

  But the Baron had not yet realized what Viola would accept from him and what not. Sometimes a mere nothing, a word or a tone of his was enough to loose the fury of the Marchesa.

  He might say for example: "With Gian dei Brughi I used to read novels, with the Cavalier I made plans for irrigation. . ."

  "And with me?"

  "With you I make love. Like picking fruit or pruning . . ."

  She would be silent, motionless. At once Cosimo would realize he had unchained her anger; suddenly her eyes would become cold as ice.

  "Why, what is it, Viola, what have I said?"

  She was far away as if she did not see or hear, a hundred miles from him, her face like marble.

  "But no, Viola, what is it, why, listen . . ."

  Viola got up; agile, with no need of help, she began climbing down the tree. Cosimo had not yet understood what his mistake could have been, had not had time to think it over, perhaps preferred not to think of it at all, not to understand it, the better to proclaim his innocence. "No, no, you didn't understand, Viola, listen . . ."

  He followed her on to a branch lower down. "Viola, don't go, please don't go, not like this, Viola . . ."

  She spoke now, but to the horse, which she had reached and taken by the bridle. She mounted and off she went.

  Cosimo began to despair, to jump from tree to tree. "No, Viola, do stay, Viola!"

  She had galloped away. He followed her over the branches. "Please, Viola, I love you!" But he had lost sight of her. He flung himself on uncertain branches, made risky leaps. "Viola! Viola!"

  When he was sure of having lost her and could not restrain his sobs, suddenly she reappeared at the trot, without raising her eyes.

  "Look, do look, Viola. Look what I'm doing!" and he began banging himself against a trunk with his bare head (which was, in truth, very hard).

  She did not even look at him. She was already away.

  Cosimo waited for her to return, zigzagging among the trees.

  "Viola! I'm desperate!" and he flung himself into empty space, head down, gripping a branch with his legs and hitting himself with his fists all over his head and face. Or he began to break branches in a fury of destruction, and a leafy elm was reduced in a few seconds to a bare stripped bark as if a hailstorm had passed.

  But he never threatened to kill himself; indeed he never threatened anything. Emotional blackmail was not for him. He did what he felt like doing and announced it while he was actually doing it, not before.

  Then suddenly Donna Viola, unpredictable as her anger, reappeared. Of all Cosimo's follies which seemed never to have reached her, one had suddenly set her aflame with pity and love. "No, Cosimo, darling, wait for me!" And she jumped from her saddle and rushed to clamber up a trunk, and his arms were ready to raise her on high.

  Love took over again with a fury equal t
o the quarrel. It was, really, the same thing, but Cosimo had not realized it. "Why d'you make me suffer?"

  "Because I love you."

  Now it was his turn to get angry. "No, no, you don't love me! People in love want happiness, not pain!"

  "People in love want only love, even at the cost of pain."

  "Then you're making me suffer on purpose."

  "Yes, to see if you love me."

  The Baron's philosophy would not go any further. "Pain is a negative state of the soul."

  "Love is all."

  "Pain should always be fought against."

  "Love refuses nothing."

  "Some things I'll never admit."

  "Oh yes, you do, now, for you love me and you suffer."

  Like his outbursts of despair, Cosimo's explosions of uncontainable joy were noisy. Sometimes his happiness reached such a point that he had to leave his love and go jumping off and shouting and proclaiming her wonders to the world.

  "Yo quiero the most wonderful puellam de todo el mundo!"

  Those sitting on the benches at Ombrosa, idlers or old salts, got quite into the habit of these sudden appearances of his. There he would come leaping through the ash trees declaiming:

  "Zu dir, zu dir, gunaika,

  Vo cercando il mio ben

  En la isla de Jamaica

  Du soir jusqu'au matin!"

  or:

  Il y a un pré where the grass grows toda de oro Take me away, take me away, che io ci moro!

  then he would vanish.

  His studies of classic and modern languages, however little pursued, were enough to let himself go in this clamorous expression of his feelings, and the more he was shaken to the roots by intense emotion, the more his language became obscure. They remember here how once, at the Feast of the Patron Saint, when the people of Ombrosa were gathered in the square around the Tree of Plenty and the festoons and the flagpole, the Baron appeared on the top of a plane tree and with one of those leaps of his, which only his acrobatic agility could produce, jumped onto the Tree of Plenty, clambered to the top, shouted: "Que viva die schöne Venus posteriór!" let himself slither down the pole almost to the ground, stopped, groped his way up to the top again, tore from the trophy a round rosy cheese, and with another of his jumps returned to the plane tree and fled, leaving the people of Ombrosa bewildered.