“I have plans,” she said, her voice guarded.
We moved together towards the entrance. Signorina Catti, eyes averted, closed the door of the library behind us and wished us a cold good evening. She disappeared along the quadrangle, her heels tap-tapping on the stone floor. My companion waited until the last sound died away. Then she turned to me, smiling, and I became aware of a certain tense excitement that exuded not from her eyes and her mouth alone, but from her whole person.
“We’re in luck,” she said. “I’ve got two passes admitting us to the ducal apartments. I begged them from the Director of the Arts Council himself. It’s an honor. He’s very particular.”
I stared at her. This was a strange volte-face. Or perhaps I had taken her choice of an evening pastime too much for granted.
“The ducal apartments?” I repeated. “But you can see them anytime you like. You take parties of students there every day.”
She laughed, and motioned me to give her a cigarette. I obliged, and lighted it for her.
“The evenings are different,” she said. “No general public, no outside students, nobody from the town or from the university whom the Director does not personally invite. I tell you we’re honored.”
I smiled. It suited me. What must seem to her a great occasion was something my father had done in the past week after week. I was gratified that one at least of the forgotten customs should be continued. As a child I had, now and then, accompanied Aldo or my mother, and watched my father display to his friends the notable features of a room or a picture.
“What happens?” I asked. “Do we stand about hushed, in groups, while the Director expounds some theory?”
“I could not tell you,” she answered. “This is what I am intrigued to find out. I imagine that this evening he will give us a preview of the Festival.”
She glanced down at the two passes in her hand. “It says seven-thirty,” she said, “but I think we might go up. We can always wait in the gallery if the doors are not open.”
It amused me that an invitation from the Director of the Arts Council of Ruffano should produce such an impression upon a lecturer at the university, and so sophisticated a one as Signorina Carla Raspa. She must be lower in the ranks of the hierarchy than I had thought. She reminded me of those tourists who obtain tickets to a papal audience at the Vatican. Only the veil was missing. We mounted the stairs to the gallery above.
“What exactly is this Festival?” I asked.
“The Rector initiated it a few years ago,” she answered. “The Department of Arts in the university here is small and with no titular head, and he keeps it under his own jurisdiction. He runs the Festival in conjunction with the Director of the Arts Council. It has been a terrific success. Each year they choose an historical subject and the students act it out in the ducal apartments, or in the quadrangle, or in the former theater below the palace. This year, because of the Rector’s illness, the Festival is entirely the responsibility of the Director of the Arts Council.”
We had arrived at the head of the stairs. There was already a small group of people waiting outside the closed door leading to the throne room. They were all young—students, doubtless, mostly male. They were chatting among themselves quietly, even soberly, with none of the hilarious, rather forced jocularity that I associated with a student body. Carla Raspa moved forward and shook hands with two or three. She introduced me and explained their status to me.
“All third- and fourth-year students,” she said. “Nobody gets an invitation before the third year. How many of you will be performing in the Festival?”
“We’ve all volunteered,” replied one of them, a shock-headed lad with the side-whiskers that my friends the Pasquales would undoubtedly have dubbed Arts, “but the Director has the final choice. If you don’t measure up to standard you’re out.”
“What’s the standard?” I inquired.
The shock-headed student looked at his companions. They all smiled.
“Tough,” he answered. “You have to be physically fit, for one thing, and able to fence. Why? Search me! It’s a new regulation.”
Carla Raspa intervened. “Last Festival, when the Rector was in charge, it was really beautiful. They enacted the visit of Pope Clement to Ruffano, and Professor Butali himself played the Pope. They had the main door opened to the quadrangle and the students, dressed as the Papal Guard, had to bear the Rector in, where he was received by the Duke and Duchess. Signora Butali played the Duchess, and Professor Rizzio, Director of the Department of Education, the Duke. Then they went in procession through the apartments. The costumes were magnificent.”
We all moved towards the door of the throne room at the sound of the key turning in the lock. The double doors were flung wide open. A student—I supposed he was a student—stood at the entrance to scrutinize our passes. He must have passed the physical fitness test. He was lean, hard-looking, and reminded me of one of our professional football players from Turin. Perhaps, if we did not behave ourselves, he would be employed by the Arts Director as chucker-out.
We passed into the throne room, and across it to the Room of the Cherubs, whence came a murmur of voices. Others were before us. The atmosphere became more like that of a papal audience than ever, and at the entrance to the Room of the Cherubs there stood a second scrutineer, who this time took our passes from us. I felt bereft, for the passes were like badges, giving status. Then, a little startled, I saw that the electric lights in the Room of the Cherubs had been extinguished. The room was illuminated by flares and torches, which, throwing monstrous shadows upon the fluted ceiling and saffron walls, gave to the whole an eerie, somber flavor, medieval and at the same time strange, exciting. A huge log-fire was burning on the open hearth beneath the priceless chimneypiece, sacrosanct in my father’s time. The leaping flames of the fire drew all eyes like a magnet.
The torchlight and the flames, reflecting shadows on the ceiling, threw little light upon our neighbors, and which of them were fellow guests and which were the hosts it was impossible to tell. All seemed to be young, and nearly all were male. The sprinkling of young women present would appear to be of the company on sufferance.
Slowly the great room filled, yet never for one moment becoming crowded, and as my eyes grew accustomed to the torchlight I saw that we, and some of the rest of the company who must also be newly admitted, stood about in groups, a little uncertain what to do, whereas others, moving more freely and with an air of authority, crossed and recrossed the vast room, now and then turning to stare at the rest of us with the indifferent, slightly contemptuous amusement of the habituated.
Suddenly the scrutineer at the entrance closed the door. He stood against it, his arms folded, his face expressionless. There was an instant silence. One of the women, nerves on edge, broke into a half-laugh, which was immediately hushed by her male companions. I glanced at Carla Raspa. She put out her hand to mine and held it, her fingers tense. The muted atmosphere communicated itself from one to the other, and I felt trapped. Escape, for anyone with a tendency to claustrophobia, would be impossible.
The door leading to the Duke’s bedroom, closed hitherto, was flung open. A man entered, followed by six companions, who ranged themselves about him like a bodyguard. He advanced into the room, and putting out his hand immediately began to greet his guests, who, tension breaking, pressed forward eagerly to be among the first. Carla Raspa, her eyes shining, forgetting me, jostled in the queue.
“Who is it?” I asked.
She did not hear me. She had passed on. But a young man near to me, throwing me an astonished look, said, “Why, Professor Donati, of course, the Director of the Arts Council.”
I stepped back out of the torchlight into the shadows. The figure with his bodyguard came on. A word to one, a laugh to another, a pat on the shoulder to a third—and there was no way of breaking from the line, no possible escape, the movement of those behind me urged me forward. Somehow I had caught up with my companion, and I heard her say, “This is Signor Fabbio.
He is helping Signor Fossi in the library.” I held out my hand and he shook it, saying, “Good, good. I am very pleased to see you,” then, barely looking at me, passed on. Carla Raspa began talking excitedly to the neighbor on her left and not, thank God, to me. For me the tomb had opened. The heavens roared. Christ had come again in all his majesty. The stranger in the via dei Sogni the night before had been no phantom after all, and, if I still dared to doubt it, the name alone was now conclusive.
The Director of the Arts Council. Professor Donati. Professor Aldo Donati. Twenty-two years had brought maturity to the broadened figure, the assured step, the arrogant angle of the head, but the high forehead, the full dark eyes, the mouth with the imperceptible droop at the right corner, and the voice, deeper now but casual, always casual—these things belonged to my brother.
Aldo lived again. Aldo had risen from the dead, and my world was rocking.
I turned my face to the wall and began staring at a tapestry. I saw nothing, heard nothing. People moved about the room and talked, a thousand aircraft could have hummed about me in the air, it would not have signified. One aircraft two-and-twenty years ago had never crashed, this was all that mattered. Or if it crashed it had not burned, or if it burned the pilot had come out of it unscathed. My brother lived. My brother had not died.
Someone touched my arm. It was Carla Raspa. She said to me, “What do you think of him?”
I said, “I think he’s God.”
She smiled, and putting up her hand she whispered, “So do they all.”
I drew back against the wall. I did not want her to see that I was shaking. My dread was that I might collapse, fall, draw attention to myself and Aldo discover me here, before all these people. Later, of course, later… But not now. It was impossible to think, to plan. I must not give myself away. I must stop shaking.
“Inspection over,” murmured Carla Raspa. “He’s going to speak.”
There was one chair in the room, the fifteenth century stool with the narrow back that usually stood before the fireplace. One of the bodyguard stepped forward and placed it in the center of the room. Aldo smiled, and gestured with his hand. Everyone sat down upon the floor, some of us with our backs to the wall, others huddled close together, nearer to the speaker. The torchlight still threw shadows on the ceiling, now more grotesque than ever because of the massed heads. How many of us there were I could not tell—eighty, perhaps a hundred, perhaps more. Aldo sat down in the chair, the firelight flickered, and with a supreme effort I tried to still my shaking hands.
“Five hundred and twenty-five years ago this spring, the people of Ruffano killed their Duke,” he said. “You won’t find how they drove him to his death in the guidebooks or in the official history of the times; the censors, you see, even then, stepped in to hide the truth. I am referring, of course, to Claudio, first Duke of Ruffano, known as the Falcon, despised and rejected of men because they feared him. Why did they fear him? Because he had the ability to read their souls. Their petty lies, their small deceits, their competition one with another in the commerce of the day—for all the Ruffanesi ever thought about was to enrich themselves at the expense of the starving peasantry—were condemned by the Falcon, and rightly so. They understood nothing of art, nothing of culture, and this at a time when a new age was dawning, the age of the Renaissance. The bishop and his priests allied themselves with the nobles and the merchants to keep the people ignorant, little better than beasts, and to obstruct the Duke by every possible means within their power.
“It was his intention to gather around him at his Court young men of distinction—birth did not matter, if they had intelligence and wit—who by their personal courage, force of arms, and single-minded devotion to Art in all its branches should form themselves, as it were, into an elite—call them fanatics if you will—who by their example would act as a torch, a fire to every dukedom in the country. Art would reign supreme, galleries filled with beautiful things be of more account than banking houses, a bronzed statuette of greater price than bales of cloth. He raised for this purpose taxes, which the merchants refused to pay. He held tournaments and knightly exercises at the Court, thereby to train his young courtiers, and the people vilified him as a debauchee.
“Five hundred and twenty-five years have passed, and I believe the time has come to reinstate the Duke. Or rather, to do honor to his memory. That is why, since it has fallen to me, in the absence of the Rector of the university, Professor Butali, whom we all revere and honor, to arrange this year’s Festival, I have decided to enact the uprising of the city of Ruffano against their much misunderstood lord and master, Claudio, first duke, and called by all—the Falcon.”
He paused. I knew this pause. He had employed it in the past when we were lying beside one another in the bedroom that we shared and he was telling me a story.
“Some of you,” he continued, “know about this already. We have had our rehearsals. You must remember that the flight of the Falcon, which will be the name of this season’s celebration—for such was the manner of Claudio’s passing—has never before been acted, and probably never will be again. I want it so to live in all your minds, and in the memories of everyone who sees it, that it will endure for all time. What has been enacted up to the present in our Festival plays will be as nothing compared to this. I want to stage the greatest production that this city has ever seen. Because of this, I am going to ask for even more volunteers than we have had in previous years.”
A murmur rose from the seated ranks below him on the floor. Every hand shot up into the air. The faces, pale in the flickering light, were turned to his.
“Wait,” he said. “Not all will be chosen. I shall choose later those whom I think fit. The point is this…” Once again he paused. He leaned forward in his chair, watching their faces. “You know my methods,” he said. “We used them last year, and the year before. It is essential that every volunteer should believe in the part he plays, should think himself into his creation. This year you will be the courtiers at the Falcon’s palace. You will be that small body of dedicated men. You, the Arts students of the university, will, by your very nature, become the elite. You are so already. For this you are here in Ruffano, for this you have your reason for living. Yet you are a minority in the university, your ranks are small, the immense numbers swamping the other Faculties are barbarians and Goths and Vandals who, like the merchants of five hundred years ago, understand nothing of art, nothing of beauty. They would, if they had the power, destroy all the treasures we possess in the apartments here, perhaps even pull down the palace itself, and put in its stead… what? Factories, offices, banks, commercial houses, not to give employment and an easier life to the peasant who lives no better now than he did five centuries ago, but to enrich themselves, to better themselves, to own more cars, more television sets, more biscuit-box villas on the Adriatic, thus breeding ever greater discontent, poverty and misery.”
Suddenly he rose. He held up his hand to silence the burst of applause that echoed to the fluted ceiling.
“That’s enough,” he said, “no more from me tonight. What we are going to do now is to give you a short display of the sort of training we have already carried out with volunteers. Keep back from the square, or you may get hurt!”
The applause, checked, turned to instant silence. The crowd leaned forward, intent on what was to follow. Two of the bodyguard came and took away the chair. Four more advanced, holding flares in either hand, and formed a square in the center of the room, lit by the flames alone.
Aldo took his place beside one of the flares. As he did so two figures leapt into the square. They wore white shirts, the sleeves rolled to the elbow, and black jeans. Their faces were masked, not for protection but to conceal their features. Each carried a naked sword. They fought as duelists fought in days gone by, in earnest, not in play. There was no feint in parry or thrust, no pretence in the crouching stance of the competitors. The steel blades rang as they clashed and struck and dived, and when one of the du
elists soon proved himself to have a longer reach than his adversary and in pursuit drove him to his knee, pointing the blade at his throat, a gasp rose from the huddled ranks as the half-fallen man, panting, stared through the narrow slits of his mask and the sharpened tip drew blood. A scratch, no more, perhaps, than a razor’s slip might do, but the sword had done it, the drops of blood ran down his throat and stained the white shirt below.
“Enough!” cried Aldo. “You have shown what you can do. Well fought, and thank you.”
He threw his handkerchief to the fallen man who, rising to his feet, stanched the wound. Both men left the lighted square and disappeared through the door to the Duke’s bedchamber.
The spectators, stunned by the realism of the display, were too shaken to applaud. They waited, breathless, for Aldo to speak again. Once more I was reminded of my boyhood days and the effect he had had upon me then. This was the same power, but maturer, dangerous.
“You have seen,” said Aldo, “that mock battles are not for us. Now, will the few women among us leave the room, and any of the rest who do not wish to volunteer? It will not be held against them. Those who care to offer themselves as volunteers remain.”
One girl pushed forward, protesting, but he shook his head. “I’m sorry,” he said, “no women. Not for this. Go home and learn how to bandage, yes, but fighting is for us.”
The door leading to the throne room was flung open. Slowly, reluctantly, the few women passed through it, followed by some dozen men, no more. I was among them. The scrutineer in the throne room waved us on. We walked silently to the gallery outside, and the door was closed behind us. We were, I suppose, about eighteen to twenty all told. The girls, contemptuous, did not even wait for escorts. Those who knew each other well linked arms and clattered down the stairs. The men, shame-faced, defensive, offered each other cigarettes.
“I can’t swallow that stuff,” said one. “It’s fascism all over again, that’s what he’s driving at.”
The Flight of the Falcon Page 11
