* * *
IX
The Dane
My greatest discovery came about when I met a carpenter who had been the Dane’s companion in his revels. He was an old man who lived by himself in a village not far from Ontàns. From the way he told it I understood instinctively that this story represented his most extraordinary memory.
For him, the Dane was definitely not from Denmark. He might sooner have come from Persia, Georgia or the Ukraine (he had emigrated from those places or rather he had worked for a while on the construction of the Trans-Siberian Railroad), because his skin was deeply tanned by the sun, his hair jet black and always shiny as if he constantly smoothed it with oils, and his eyes slightly slanted, like those of an Asian or at least an inhabitant of the Caucasus Mountains.
He spoke excellent Italian and even learned our dialect in a few days. He picked up languages with incredible ease and was fluent in quite a few, although the old man couldn’t say whether it was actually real foreign languages he had heard the Dane speaking or merely farcical inventions to impress his ingenuous listeners — because as far as imagination was concerned the Dane could have taught the devil a thing or two. I wasn’t disappointed to learn he hadn’t been Nordic. It was merely one more surprise the Dane had had in store for me. “Then why did they call him the Dane?”
“Because he really had been a sailor in Denmark and he often talked about that country.”
“And is it your opinion that he actually was a priest who had cast off his habit?”
No, he certainly didn’t think so. It was the women, the busybodies who used to say that, probably simply because he would recite Latin verses now and then and once at carnival time he put on a costume that looked a little like a priest’s vestments. Besides it was even said he had deserted from some army or other after getting into big trouble. “Why? Was he in hiding?”
Quite the reverse, he stayed as much as he could in the public eye. He would have gladly lived in the top of a belfry or on the roofs of the village just so everybody could see him. He certainly had something odd about him that puzzled people and left them ready to think the worst of him.
He hadn’t lived many years in the village as I had supposed but only thirteen or fourteen months in all. And yet that had been enough time to profoundly affect the imagination of the peasants. He had arrived from Denmark, or wherever, loaded with money. He handed out tips to everybody, in the taverns and shops, and he always had huge bills to pay for the infinite number of things he bought. He even bought our house (for a paltry sum because it was pretty run down and so solitary and close to the magredi that nobody wanted it), made some simple repairs and the prevailing conviction that it was so inconvenient and out of the way quickly disappeared: it began to attract young men and girls as if all at once it had become the most interesting place in the area. At night, with its windows lighted up by oil lamps it was visible from afar, and it gave off constant sounds of merrymaking. The Dane even went so far as to hire a band, complete with drummers and trombone players, and put them up in the house for two weeks during the hottest part of the summer, finding some kind of place for all of them to sleep — in the attic or on the terraces if there wasn’t space in the rooms.
Whoever passed by the house in those days got the impression that its walls would soon come down like the walls of Jericho, so overwhelming were the sound waves that shook every corner of it.
The Dane seemed to have been born solely to enjoy himself and when he was getting ready for a party his powers intensified.
Many young men, who before he arrived had never been the subject of village talk and had always kept quietly busy in the country or working at their own trade, began to spend a lot of time with him, to follow him in the expeditions he made in his carriage to neighboring villages and into the hills, remaining deaf and insensitive to their elders’ objections. Hence the older people began to see in the Dane the image of the Tempter himself, and this gave rise to fearful legends about him.
Even Elvira, a beautiful but reserved girl from Ontàns, she too accepted at once his invitation to dance and let herself be whirled around like a mere instrument in his hands. Her mother scolded her and forbade her to leave the house to go out with that heathen. Her dream was for her daughter to marry a gendarme, an Austrian noncommissioned officer stationed in some city who would take her away from the village so she could escape the work in the fields in that barren and thankless land where there was no need to shove the plow very deep into the earth before it hit stones from the river bed. Elvira had said neither yes or no, but one night she disappeared without even taking one dress with her. Before long a rumor made the rounds that she was living in the Dane’s house. The rumor became a certainty a few days later when the girl reappeared at a festival, still at his side. Her father approached her and told her in a peremptory way to come home. The musicians, seeing his darkened and determined face, his gestures charged with anger, stopped playing and began to stare at him and then glance at each other. “Why should I? I’m his wife now. I do what he wants me to,” said the girl.
“Well then you’re no longer my daughter,” replied her father.
Elvira bent her head and remained motionless in that position until her father had left the piazza, stopping for an instant as he passed the church to see if she was following. When she had bowed her head her shawl had fallen to the ground, but she had not stooped to retrieve it. Only when the man disappeared did the Dane pick it up and hand it to her with a chivalrous gesture. It was the signal for the music to begin again, and this music did not stop until the first light of morning had appeared behind the houses at the edge of the village.
Many wondered where the Dane’s money came from. They were agreed only in maintaining that it couldn’t possibly be clean money. The sailor was certainly a thief or at least a smuggler. Perhaps he’d gotten rich transporting cursed or forbidden merchandise in his ship, which, from what he said had touched the coasts of Denmark, Iceland and Labrador. Perhaps he had murdered a banker in some northern city and then had eluded the police by taking refuge in a tiny no-account village like ours, where no one would think of looking for him.
One villager advanced the hypothesis that the Dane had hoarded every last cent of his pay from the time he first went to sea and had now decided to enjoy it. He had of course spend quite a lot up till now but certainly not entire patrimonies. All sailors, he continued, spend many months’ pay in a few days on prostitutes and in taverns when they go ashore. His hypothesis found no credit. To the folks of Ontàns throwing away one’s savings like that seemed nonsensical, an incomprehensible and unacceptable folly. The old people continued to regard the Dane with extreme suspicion, at least until one night in a tavern a youth just back from Bohemia, where he had been a soldier for seven years under the Hapsburgs, suddenly threw his cap on the floor and shouted, “For God’s sake, it’s perfectly simple! Do you know where the Dane got his money? I bet he won it gambling!” Those present looked at each other. Yes, this was a possible explanation and, all things considered, they were glad to have found an answer that would provide an excuse for the Dane.
The youth had later asked the Dane himself if he really had won his money gambling. The response left everyone stunned. He said he couldn’t remember where his money came from and that the subject didn’t interest him. He thought neither about the past nor the future and therefore it didn’t matter to him whether he could remember where the money came from or how long it would last. “The present is all I care about because whoever lives in the present becomes as eternal as the gods!” Nobody understood what he meant and in substance his comment served only to reinforce the conviction they had all had for a good while, that the Dane was an indecipherable individual. They gave up judging him, almost gave up trying to understand him, and limited themselves to watching the spectacle of his follies.
At times he would ask the musicians to leave and send all the guests away; the sudden emptiness of the rooms would be animated
only by the presence of Elvira, who was quiet and discreet but very hard-working and as majestic as a queen. Then he would climb up to a terrace, lie down on the floor and stay there watching the stars or else playing a triangular guitar fitted with a mute.
Once he lost sleep and spent who-knows-how-much to organize his umpteenth party, but while the event was in full swing, at one in the morning, he walked out and stood near the belfry to watch for a bit with his hands in his pockets and a cigar in the corner of his mouth. Then he took Elvira by the hand and led her away without saying a word. She asked no questions. The party went on for a while, more and more wearily, until people began to leave surreptitiously. Without the Dane the festivities soon collapsed. Only a few stubborn night owls, who perhaps had adopted such habits only after the coming of the Dane, attempted to keep the party going with obvious effort, as people behave with someone who is dying.
The Dane was never seen again in Ontàns. Only later was it learned that he had spent three days shut up in the house stretched out on the bed staring at the floor and caressing it idly with his fingers. He wasn’t sick; he simply didn’t feel like getting up. At daybreak on the third day he went away in the carriage he had arrived in so many months before, taking with him only the woman. In the house, left wide open to the four winds, they found all sorts of things: books, navigation instruments, musical instruments, notebooks, a rudimentary apparatus for distilling grappa. The one who had sold the house to the Dane began saying that if he didn’t come back it would naturally revert to its former owner. Others didn’t agree. From the moment he had sold it and taken the money, he had no more connection with it, and his rights were no greater than anyone else’s. The discussion was cut short by Elvira’s father. He bolted the doors and windows and put the key in his pocket, asserting that the house belonged to his daughter and son-in-law and that he would take care of it for them.
Nobody believed the two of them would return, but the fact that the man had lost a daughter in the affair of the Dane lent an indisputable authority to his words and his decisions.
* * *
X
The Boat
The house did not, however, stay closed forever. Twenty five years later a strange youth turned up in the village, a sort of long-haired vagabond who spoke our dialect but with a foreign accent. He roamed the streets at night and played the guitar.
When he moved into my house, after Elvira’s father had given him the keys, no one doubted that this was the Dane’s son, who had suddenly surfaced from God-knows-where.... “My father,” I thought. Here then was the truth! But even this time I wasn’t really surprised. Somehow I had always believed it must be this way, as when I had found out the truth about Maddalena.
Therefore the Dane, the ex-sailor who had been on the whaler and had navigated all the seas in the world, the mysterious adventurer who disdained money and had galvanized the village, was my father’s father.... I felt a thrill of pride, as if I had discovered some sort of prestigious nobility. Or rather, something even better. Maddalena talked about aristocrats with childish admiration, but I scorned them. I placed the Dane much higher, saw him surrounded by a far greater fascination than mere nobility....
Although my father said almost nothing about his past, it became known in the village that the Dane had departed again almost as soon as he returned to Denmark. He had gone to sea once more and never come back. Elvira, my grandmother, had been a servant and a peasant to make ends meet, until she died in the shipwreck of a ferryboat crossing the Kattegat, and her son had returned to take possession of her house.
Maddalena must have known all these things. She had lived with my father for two years; how could she not know? And yet she stubbornly refused to tell me anything; when I questioned her she unleashed a barrage of angry words at me and went off, slamming the door behind her. “But of course all that stuff they told you is true,” she once admitted. “What the devil else do you want to know? It’s an obsession with you. You’re unhinged just like all the rest of your family!” she went on, red-faced and probably even angrier because she knew I had every right to know. I gave up on her, but the Dane returned ever more frequently to my thoughts. Perhaps he was still alive somewhere, and it wouldn’t therefore be impossible to find him. I imagined it would be a difficult undertaking but not out of the question, since I was always accompanied by the idea that destiny paid particular attention to events concerning me. I felt that the Dane’s shadow had reached me, spread over me, and held a mortgage on my fate. Maybe he had returned to Denmark after Elvira’s death....
In no way did I apply any moral judgment to his conduct. If he had abandoned my grandmother, I was sure there had been a good reason, and besides it could be that he had found it impossible to come back. I was proud that he had been rich and generous, and that right here in the village and in the house where I was born he had given splendid parties, probably the greatest ones this place had ever seen. To me it seemed their echoes could still be heard among the trees in the piazza and in the rooms of the house. The Dane really had been the way I always thought he was. And yet at the same time even for me he continued to be as cryptic as he had been forty years ago for the peasants of Ontàns.
I was all excited about my continuous discoveries. One day I decided to write a story about the Dane, but while I thought about it I lost all desire to talk about him and began instead to recount a dream I had had about my mother.
I had dreamed of an intensely green sea, with waves topped by spray but slow and silent, which seemed suited only to gently rock a ship, certainly not to endanger it. I was watching from a rocky reef as shiny and white as stream pebbles. Toward the west I saw a dark object no bigger than a cricket moving forward slowly, wavering back and forth.
I thought it was a rowboat far, far away but coming toward me, heading right for me. Only after a long time did I see that it was smaller than a ship but much larger than a rowboat. It had big portholes above, a keel painted violet, and it moved ahead slowly, sliding over the waves as though driven by the wind. It had no sails and therefore must have had a motor whose sound was totally absorbed by the sea. I saw the helm astern but no one was steering. No face appeared at any porthole. At first I thought the boat was empty, but then I realized this wasn’t possible because from inside came a muted song hardly audible because of the distance.
“O che bel castello, marco ‘ndiro ‘ndiro ‘ndello,
o che bel castello, marco ‘ndiro ‘ndiro ‘nda....”
The voice was my mother’s voice. Having approached within a hundred meters of my reef, the boat stopped, the slight hum of the motor ceased completely, and only my mother’s song could be heard. I waited for her to appear, to come out on deck or at least look out of a porthole. Instead nothing. I had to content myself with knowing she was on that boat, but I would never see her face. Once the song ended the boat moved on, sliding over the waves as before, until it became a black speck once again and disappeared over the horizon.
It was the first time I liked something I had written and hence I decided to save it. I hid the sheet of paper in a wooden drawer in the soap- making shed Maddalena never used. But it subsequently got lost simply because I had wanted to find an unusual hiding place. A family of Gypsies set up camp near our house beside the stream and asked Maddalena if they could use the fireplace in that shed. She shrugged her shoulders. They could do whatever they pleased. Thus they used anything they could find as kindling and my story was burned. I didn’t care. I remembered every detail and could rewrite it whenever I might want to. But I didn’t do it. I reflected instead that the dream revealed an anguish that I had had but never noticed until now: the thought that I didn’t possess a photograph of my mother, that perhaps none even existed, and I would never know what she looked like. That was why I hadn’t seen her face but only heard her voice. Maddalena had no photograph of her. My great grandfather’s family had disappeared many years ago, and in his house lived distant relatives who had never cared about me and had a
llowed me to be brought up by a stranger. The only possibility was that a photo might be hidden in the house among my father’s papers, but I had rummaged through them for years and never found anything. Thus my mother remained a closed door I would never open, or an empty room. Perhaps it was precisely this awareness working within me, beneath my careless serenity, that produced my sensation of not being complete, my desire to search far and wide for who knows what, and this was why my fancy took hold of anything that led me in the strangest possible directions....
* * *
XI
The Ides of March
I even envied the Gypsies because they roamed the world and when they arrived in our neighborhood I would soon begin to hang around their camp.
At first I didn’t dare approach them, like Luca with Maddalena; then I would pluck up courage and begin to play with the smaller boys until I was ready to try the same thing with the ones my age. But they never really played. They were always looking for things to eat or to wear and as they moved about their eyes glittered as they identified things they might find useful. They seized cats or imprudent hens who had wandered a little too far from the farmyard, and I would say nothing, believing that my omertà gave me the right to question them. It didn’t matter a bit to me that they were thieves and that they were always asking me for something in their whining and petulant voices, as long as they told me what I wanted to know, that is, where they came from, where they were going, how they lived and what they were looking for in their constant wanderings.
The Wooden Throne Page 5
