Now, they hastily addressed themselves to the first of the posts—and then continued round the fan of the race-track, rehearsing their own intimate Palio. Unspoken words seemed to circulate between them. No barking, but rolls of the eye—the whites of their eyes rolled like those of negroes against the coloured fur, while Fa’s black jets gleamed with a dark, clownish radiance—rolls of the eye that seemed instantly to be understood, indicating a different direction or a different post, and above all a call to industrious joyful companionship. Episodes and encounters marked their progress. Here at the hub of the town more was likely to happen—although the Campo itself, because of its curious tilted shape and its quiet historical recession, seemed always more deserted than other Italian squares. Nevertheless at one point Enrico, running along, was seen suddenly to wheel; he returned nosing to what he had nearly passed—a scrap of ham-rind left like miraculous manna by the sweepers. His pace had nearly taken him beyond it, but that square-nostriled mandrill nose had saved him. Now he settled his mouth down to the scrap, and with mournful eyes began to eat. As he munched the pupils were raised thoughtfully, showing a lugubrious droop of white beneath, and those whole eyes, stricken with the conscience of sin, moved slowly from side to side. He was like a man weighed with sorrow—or a child doing what he knew was wrong. In some curious way he seemed to be listening to his stomach. It was notable that this was the one occasion when the news of a discovery was not circulated to the others.
But the others! The others had found at last a brother animal—not one but two, a brother each. Osvaldo had found a cat, and Fa had looked up suddenly to find a dog sitting almost invisible in a dark doorway. Fa abruptly stiffened—shocked, outraged. He raised his small self to what he must have imagined was a monstrous size. On the points of his paws, on inexorably stiffened legs, with neck erect and eyes implacably averted, he walked up and down quivering in front of this sitting Sienese dog. It was an exhibition of outrage, cold outrage. The Sienese, fat and well-groomed and almost well-bred, took no notice whatever.
With Osvaldo it was different; perhaps because his meeting was with a cat. And such a cat—fat, sleek, striped, heraldic! The dogs of Italy do not chase cats like their brash northern brothers. There was no reason for the cat to do other than continue to sit and gaze across the Campo—with imperturbable placidity that must have seemed remarkable to the excitable Genoese. That huge dark-striped cat, in the erect posture of some heraldic beast, simply sat and considered the Campo. Osvaldo stood opposite, his head hung, his paw half-raised, blinking his yellow eyes uncertainly. In Genoa the cats were lean and thin-jawed; their kittens were as meagre as large mice; they moved all the time, creeping and slinking. Nothing was more different than this well-fed, gloss-coated monster.
But in neither case could anything be done, the Sienese animals made no move whatsoever. Finally, Osvaldo turned away, shaken, from his cat; and Fa made longer and longer circles away from his dog, so that soon he could appear to walk away naturally, unconcerned. Enrico alone had profited—and that not overmuch, the rind had been tough and salt.
Such, then, were the minor encounters of these three eager lovers of life. Before the following day, we saw them again twice: once down by one of the town’s gates, down past a long pink wall surmounted with leaves green against the blue, where one saw the town end unencumbered by suburbs, and the gentle dark-ribbed patchwork of the Tuscan fields map out to the horizon beyond; where those dogs had found two other dogs making love, and as dogs will, were circling the indifferent couple with excited sallies and a jabber of barks—animated as the chatter at a tea-party on the mention of human love. And again we saw them, of all things, trooping out from the cathedral door, industriously pacing the marble mosaics, disappointed and possibly ejected from that extraordinary hall, having no interest in the lofty rows of popes’ heads, the graven fruit decorations and the striped totem pillars that give that place a cold exotism, as of a tufted African village frozen into stone. No, they were not to be touched by such ceremonies of stone—they went in search of life.
The next day they found it. Some time in the late afternoon we were at the hotel window, looking out on to an odd interjunction of roads running at different levels that complicated pleasantly the view. Of these, the main road was embanked, and thus passed slightly above eye-level from our window, while a short gully of steps descended from it to the lower street beneath. Presently as if it were a matter of course, the three dogs came pounding in their ceaseless single file up the lower road. And at the same moment, from along the upper road, came the sound of a kettle-drum and marching feet.
The dogs heard it, erected their ears, faltered and stopped. From where they stood they could see nothing of the upper road, they could only hear the marching feet, which now came to a halt, and the kettle-drum which ceased to tap and began a long, mounting, death-like roll. They stood there listening—it was plain they did not like what they heard. Enrico and Osvaldo stood with tongues lolling, panting quietly, heads lowered listening; Enrico’s shaggy forehead appeared furrowed with thought, listening for some unpalatable truth; Osvaldo searched blindly with his visionary eyes, but his lowered head seemed to be waiting for the whip to fall. Fa stood erect, tremendously rigid, his small pink tongue pouting straight out forward—at first sight one thought he might be wild with laughter. Meanwhile, we could see what in fact continued on the upper road. A group of the Porcupine Ward, the Istrice, had come marching with flags towards their votive church and had stationed themselves there on the way to perform a sbandierata, a flourish of flags.
The drummer had planted himself, feet astride and firm, in the centre of the road. With implacable elbows he drew from the drum its ceaseless coil of sound, ever more rigid, ever growling out a greater power. Four or five of the others had stationed themselves at intervals along the road. These men carried standards, flowing white flags of great width, upon which were emblazoned patterns and the dark effigy of a crouching porcupine: these flags they twisted in the air with graceful mastery. Each man wore a particoloured black-and-white mediaeval jacket and hose; each wore a mediaeval cap, and showed thus underneath a grave clear-shaped mediaeval face; the quarterings and stripes of black and white, splendid colours of the dark-red city, showed bravely against walls of that ubiquitous dark burning.
In all principal elements there was nothing in that scene to suggest that the centuries had passed—suddenly in front of one on the everyday street, in the sunlight, was flashed the flesh-and-blood mediaeval happening. The clothes did not behave as stage properties, muscles rippled within them and the bodies were filled with the true blood. With strong grace they wielded the heavy flags, twisting and furling and swinging them above their heads, slewing them down to the ground like cabers, hanging back against their weight and deftly manipulating their hands in a music of equipoise and inspired motion. The huge banners swam through the air like coloured winds, like bubbling swathing smoke, viscous heavy elements beautiful on the moving air. Fiercely toothed patterns sprang into being, vanished in a sweeping furl. A porcupine appeared high above, sat for a moment in chivalric splendour, vanished. All the whole flags and their staffs were tossed suddenly high up, as if they themselves leapt, hesitated in the upper air, sank down more slowly into the hands of the standard-bearer. Then again great circles—and still from the drum a constant drumming, the drumming never ceased. It seemed as though the flags themselves were alive and trying to wrestle away like wild birds from their athletic captors. It was a battle between flags and men.
Windows had opened, heads had appeared. Several passers-by had paused to watch. But these did not disturb the truth of that scene, they themselves were the anachronisms, a drab intrusion upon the splendid brick and the bright designs of livery. The pageant succeeded: a small gilt procession will triumph over mundane crowds—but here, by how much more was their success achieved! Then, of course, we saw that other intruders were at work. The dogs. Osvaldo was climbing the steps.
He took one loo
k, drew back crouching—gave a whelp of fright, and loped shivering down the steps, tail between trailing legs. The others looked at him sharply, sadly.
A pause—it seemed for reflection, for necessary indecision. Then carefully, slowly, with a hesitation that never quite asserted itself, the three of them, no longer in single file, but abreast climbed the steps. They stopped before the top. Below the very last step they stopped, and stood there furtively pointing their nose over the top, as if it were a parapet: small Fa had to raise himself on two legs. Six uneasy eyes flickered with distrust as they watched the flags; one recognized the germ of hysteria. What they saw could not have been flags—but great wrestling coloured shapes pouncing on the wind, zooming low over the men that fought them. Nothing quite similar had been seen before: except, though much smaller, in the shape of birds.
Were these then giant birds of fierce colour that had descended in droves upon the town, sharp of beak and horrid-eyed? Remorseless, lidless, steel-eyed birds? Eagle-giants to tear out the vitals, thrusters and squawkers, great feathered bolts of muscle and iron claw, divers and risers, vile destroyers of gravity? Bones and feathers and cruelty—but as for feathers, one could not quite see, they flickered and furled so swiftly: were they snakes, was it fire, or worse—animated sharp-teethed cloths, living cloths headless and limbless, savage with consuming life, unclean and unknown? … Whatever this was, it had never before been seen, it was dangerous. And there was no smell.
On rolled the nerve-searing drums, the dogs stood still—poised to move in two directions at once. They were stretched—by their legs and tails lowered and moving backwards, by their noses extended forward to draw in the air with anxious sniffs. Their eyes showed the white; and because they were interested and thus grew lively, appeared again most considering, wise, intelligent. Patricians’ careful eyes they cast on those unearthly flags—and then, as nothing happened, as the flags made no attack, they took courage. Enrico—as if he were taking the pipe from his gruff and bearded muzzle—gave a low growl. One could not hear this for the drums, but the sound could be seen vibrating his body, one lip was raised. And Fa, propping himself alongside, heard it, heard it as a sign, realized the mounting of confidence, and quickly, in his excitable way, raised his muzzle in a peppering of short white barks. Osvaldo continued to stare with nerveless yellow eyes—and then presently he too raised his long nose into a position almost vertical, like the elevation of a sky-gun, and set up a long, unbroken howl.
The flags swooped and tossed, bellied and swirled in the rising sbandierata; the drummer’s elbows held their noise in an iron grip; the dogs mounted their howls and barking in chorus. But a deadlock is never satisfactory for the lively ones. One cannot stay still—any action is preferable, backwards or forwards. And these three dogs from the sea could no longer contain themselves. Buttressed with barking, their confidence rose—and suddenly as one they raced forward at the nearest flag. It was circling low on the ground, they tore at its swiftly-moving swathe—and got their faces soundly lashed; for a moment they were lost, enveloped, blinded in a fog of silk; then up fled the great banner and circled thrashing at the higher air, the dogs crouched dazed—and then they were leaping at it, throwing themselves high like bags of limp dog, snapping, snarling, barking their last breath.
They looked then like three sacks erratically bouncing—Fa’s white ball moving faster but lower than the larger brown two others. Ears well back, eyes quick with long white fury, teeth open, they gathered themselves and leapt at the enormous bird threatening from above. This was no plaything—they fought hysterically. One knew it instantly when for a moment the flag circled lower and menaced, with no illusions of dogged valour, for a second they cowed back guarding themselves … and meanwhile the standard-bearers plied their flags, they had no time in their exertion to watch the dogs. Nevertheless, the ritual of the sbandierata dictated that soon the banners should descend. The dogs leapt higher.
The Italians love their dogs as they love life—but they also love ceremony, and in all ceremony there is the touch of death. The will to live may also be the will to die. Whether it is a rite of harvest or marriage or church, death resides somewhere in the pomp, the order, the finality—and what is always a sense of immolation. All life for the time is suspended, a pause in living comes to revere the solemn act. There prevails an echo of all past sacrifice, solemnly one remembers the many years this rite has been preserved over the graves of others. There is an awe in the very finality resident in ceremony—all completion is a symbol and desire of death. A city such as Siena, grave and crenellated, stony and austere beyond its sun-warmed colour, is hung around with the cold breath of dead, glorious history. Other cities, as Naples, can bear their past differently, can vibrate with life so much that their time-scarred ground, repository of the ancients, seems the more fertile for its buried old ghosts, and death is so fortuitous and facile a part of the daily struggle that it is neither welcomed nor revered. But not so Siena, the quieter, cleaner, graver city of mediaeval calm.
The drummer suddenly shook his head to one of the people watching. This man took the message and dashed forward, doubled up, to kick Osvaldo sharply on his bony flank. Osvaldo gave a yelp, looked round astonished at this man, hesitated—wondered why he had been attacked; was he not in battle for a brother man against the dangerous bird? And then receiving another kick, slunk sorrowfully away to the side of the street. Enrico was dealt with similarly—small Fa saw what was coming and followed.
They sat in a doorway, framed by the severe stone lintel. Their eyes glanced with apprehension at the drummer, at those watching; the kicks had not hurt, but the meaning was absolute. Sometimes their heads turned to the flags and revolved with them. In a nearby doorway sat a Sienese cat, well-fed, tranquil, heraldic. It seemed at last that Osvaldo, Enrico and Fa had assumed some of the same sedentary pose. They seemed to be considering the fatal words, that breath of the worm that says: ‘Perhaps it is time to settle down….’ Contentedly to die.
When a minute later the sbandierata was over and the drumming group marched away and was lost along that narrow street, they were still sitting there. Life, it seemed, was over; trotting was done. No more now but to sit in doorways, to sit and wait. Calmly to await the cold breath. They had been touched by the city, they had been permitted to see beyond the veil. No more to do but wait, satisfied, content, half-dead already.
Pastorale
ONE first heard a sound like low-toned cowbells, like many cowbells crushed and chorded together—and then round the narrow corner of old grey walls nosed the chromium grill, the long bonnet, and then all the pale gleaming length of a torpedo-shaped roadster. It wheeled noiselessly, thick-tyred, up the soft earth street, and stopped at the centre of the village. That was not far, the whole squat clump of the inner village hardly extended more than four of its lengths round the long automobile. But how it took charge of the graven, shabby place! Each house was built thickly of dark rock, windows were so small that one noticed no curtains—and the irregular street, rather a space between houses than a street, was all brown beaten earth, with a few cobbles, a slash of crumbling tar. Grey and dust-brown—the colour of the mules that sometimes trudged through like white-lipped fools.
Against such earthen textures the pearl-pale car shone with a princely lustre; the chromium flashed precious silver, the clean canvas of its hood sat reefed like Parisian cloth, the luggage of yellow pigskin and gold clasps told the tale of Pullman seats and luxury. At the wheel sat a young lean dark man; the sun flashed on his oiled hair, on the platinum watch glittering from his soft glove, on the white card he now studied. The woman at his side, her face like a soft white nut in its rich brown hat, peered over—and then, with eyes screwed, looked up at the house above in disbelief.
I thought that they must have been given an introduction to the pension, perhaps from the Syndicat d’Initiative back at Ajaccio. This mountain village, Piana, lay half-way up the jagged coast; one needed a recommendation. I was about to ca
ll down to Madame Paolo that there were customers—when through the lace curtains I saw that old black cormorant already bustling about the car, bowing and smiling, tugging at the luggage; she must have been at her own window below minutes before me, shadowy eyes rapacious behind the curtain. The man and woman hoisted themselves out of the car; the seats were set low; it was an effort to haul oneself out from such a comfortable car, the woman showed much awkwardly opened leg. But this in no way discomfited the peasant boys, who stood absorbed with respect at such new-arrived wonders. The couple never paused to wish these onlookers a good day, they seemed not to see them. But when Madame Paolo tried to lift a big suitcase, the man smiled pleasantly and took it from her.
The Stories of William Sansom Page 11
