One night was enough to bring me out of the lethargy but it was going to take much longer to get my feet to work again. I couldn’t stand up; I had to hang onto whatever I could grab to keep from collapsing on the floor. However, the fact that the tingling sensation was increasing and moving downward toward the soles of my feet was a sign that the condition wasn’t serious and I was getting better. The girl also told me that Pietro, her grandfather, was certain there had been no permanent damage. All I would need was a few days rest. But how would he know? “He looked you over while you were sleeping.”
“So what if he did? He’s no doctor....”
The girl shrugged, as if to say I was impertinent, that for Pietro what I had was nothing and he might very well have said or done otherwise. I didn’t insist but maintained an attitude that denied her the satisfaction of thinking I was convinced. I felt there was no hurry to find out about things, not because I thought I ought to stay in bed for this or that length of time, but rather because I liked the unforeseen period of waiting, which destiny had invented for me, the anticipation of something unknown. I gave a start. What was happening to me? Had I changed my plans by any chance? It was simply a matter of regaining the use of my feet and then I would rush off, fly to Flora’s village.
I asked the girl if she knew where Montalto was and she nodded “yes.” Well, where was it? “Nearby.” But where exactly? “Not in this valley, in the next one, parallel to this one....” How could anyone get there? “It’s a bit complicated. You have to go back the way you came for a good many kilometers, then take another path that leads up toward Slavonia.” Then you couldn’t climb over the mountains and come down on the other side? Yes, you could even do that, but it was difficult. You’d have to be an experienced climber and take along ropes and spikes and whatever you’d need to dig into solid rock. And of course you’d have to wait for the right time of year....
For all that I was resigned to waiting, for all I had decided to let things take their course and be patient, the girl’s vague answers irritated me. (My irritation wasn’t unrelated to the fact that I had noticed her fresh and tranquil beauty.) She seemed to be telling me only one thing at a time on purpose, without going a step beyond what I had asked, or better, stopping just this side of a complete answer. As if she thought my desire to know was useless and naive, simple curiosity, which would pass with time.
She stayed away from the room where they had put me for such long periods that one time, hearing no noises, I wondered if by chance I had been abandoned. Maybe after taking care of me for a while they realized that I was a burden to them, with my hopelessly frozen feet, and thus decided to leave me to my fate once again, like the Lapps who in the course of their wanderings abandon invalids, knowing that this is the price of saving the others....
I soon began to laugh at my childish fantasy. I wasn’t north of the Arctic Circle. I was barely into the Alps, stuck in a remote village far from the main roads and at an impasse before I even reached Montalto, whereas according to my original plan I should already be in Denmark....
I probably fell asleep every now and then because the stove was always lighted and the fire crackling even though I had not yet seen anyone stoking it. I had a great desire to get up and find these people, to corner them and talk to them. I was convinced I had gotten myself into a complicated and sticky situation: I’d ended up in a blind alley, in an unknown village, without even knowing how or why. I had to talk to somebody to figure out what was happening. I didn’t even know how they had found me there in the ruined castle.
I asked the girl the first time she came in to bring me something to eat. At first I got the impression she hadn’t heard me or didn’t intend to answer, as if the question weren’t addressed to her. She appeared not to hear voices close by, only others far away and imperceptible to me. But, after a moment, she answered, “Red saw you. He was hunting in that area.”
“And you all came looking for me?”
“Yes. We knew you’d never make it here by yourself.”
I was hoping she’d tell me more. Instead the girl purposely dropped that subject. Although I was irked and eager to know, I was determined to find out whether she wanted to pursue the discussion and I always left it up to her to speak, but she never picked up the thread again. She would come into the room, but just to straighten up, dust, bring me dinner, and put wood on the fire. It seemed that the only things that mattered to her were things to be done: actions were all that counted and words were vain and absurd forms, or at best profoundly useless. I stubbornly waited for her to talk, simply because I now knew she wouldn’t, and that fact gave me greater authority to label her simple-minded or at least primitive and unsociable. I was sure that Pietro gave her orders and she silently carried them out without even wondering why.... I thought of certain characters I had read about, faithful instruments of the will of others, excessively silent, at times even mute, able to face any difficulty with no fear. I wouldn’t have minded having somebody like that at my beck and call, although I wouldn’t then know what to do with her and we’d have to stand there looking at each other who knows how long, she in expectation and I dead set on waiting for just the right idea.
I didn’t even want to ask the girl her name so she wouldn’t think she had aroused my curiosity or interest in any way; it would be like losing a contest that had never been either announced or agreed to by the contestants. No, she would have to give in first. Or, by indirection, I might accept learning her name from hearing others address her. In the meantime I mentally named her Ninfa, that is I gave her the name of a woman in Ontàns who was noted for her stupidity. Since she wasn’t telling me her name I had decided in revenge not to tell her mine. But whereas I was dying to know hers she certainly didn’t care a whit about knowing mine and thus it wasn’t an even match.
I stuck firmly to my terms. I would stare fixedly at her as if I expected her to read those terms in my expression. But soon after I would forget; I forgot as well that I had judged her so inept and began to watch her with curiosity as if she were the guardian of some kind of secret. I observed her in every particular (after all I had nothing else to do): her slightly swollen hands, reddened by chilblains but still pretty, small hands with tapering fingers, confident in their movements as they folded a cloth or beat the dust out of a bedside rug at the window; or her black hair, always shiny and well brushed, usually caught at the back of her neck and fastened with a comb; or her full breasts, so vibrant and clearly modelled that they made me think involuntarily of the joy awaiting the man who would one day possess her.
I thought once that I understood what there was about her face that seemed oddly familiar. Her straight nose, her well defined eyes, her high and prominent cheekbones, her frequent immobility, suggested an ancient female prototype I had seen many times in a book on sculpture: the Etruscan woman. I was sure that the girl’s enigmatic face reproduced the features of the figures in Tuscan museums, or even those underground in ancient necropolises, hidden in tombs as yet undiscovered and unexplored. My finding perplexed me. I didn’t know what to make of it, like a person who stumbles upon a peculiar object that attracts his interest but offers no hint as to what it’s for or how it works.
Perhaps the Etruscan (after my discovery I could no longer call her by the offensive name Ninfa) wasn’t born around here but was the daughter or granddaughter of someone who came from the site of ancient Etruria, where those characteristics supposedly still exist.
The emotion of my discovery came back only in those moments when the Etruscan would suddenly lose herself in fantasy and remain immobilized. Then her features would fall into a pattern that could have been copied directly from the faces of ancient statues.
* * *
IV
The House of Silence
I had spent several days in that house and had not yet seen Pietro or Red or anyone from the village. Why, after having saved my life, didn’t those two even stop to look in on me? Why were they neglecting me thi
s way? By contrast, if I had saved a man’s life I’d have hung around him who-knows-how-long, if only for the satisfaction of seeing in him living evidence of my own courage. I was almost offended at their failure to ask me any questions, not even who I was, where I was going, what my intentions were, what the devil I was doing in that God-forsaken valley in the middle of winter. Yes indeed, they were neglecting me shamefully. I had to do something of resounding importance pretty soon if I hoped to shake them out of their indifference and get them to pay attention to me.
But after a bit those feelings were replaced by my curiosity to discover other things about these people’s surroundings. When I noted this I shrugged, almost angry at myself. What did I care about them? It was Flora I was looking for, the rest didn’t matter. When I thought about her my profound uneasiness returned. At that moment Flora was off somewhere in a place that excluded me, keeping company with smiling young men, rich youths with plenty of resources whom I could never measure up to. She was going to parties, dancing till after midnight in ballrooms lighted by huge sparkling chandeliers, rooms full of mirrors in gilded frames.... Had it ever been possible that a girl like Flora would find herself in a tiny mountain village in a valley parallel to this one, where life itself was almost brought to a standstill by a meter of snow? Basically, yes, it was possible. It was even probable, simply because it sounded so totally unlikely. Where Flora was concerned the most astonishing hypothesis always could or would turn out to be true....
I realized that my feet were improving every day; I could already take a few steps with the two canes the Etruscan had brought me. I was in a hurry to get well, although perhaps only in some corner of my spirit half buried under so many other things. Forced inertia had sharpened my curiosity and my sense of anticipation. I had stumbled upon the House of Silence. Except once in a while I seemed to hear a distant humming, which must have had to penetrate who knows how many doors before reaching me, but I could hear nothing else. What on earth could it be?
Once, but only once, I heard a woman singing. I couldn’t catch the words, perhaps they were Slavic. So the Etruscan could sing, if indeed it was the Etruscan.... I tried to spy out other details that would help me understand what she was like, what she thought about. One of the first things I had noted was her tendency to soften and screen everything. For example, she tried to keep out the bright light reflected off the snow and the rocks, and in the daytime she even seemed to be a little uneasy in all that brightness. But as soon as the sun disappeared behind the Dolomites and night fell rapidly over the valley, her confidence and vivacity suddenly returned. She always wore slippers with rope soles in the house. She apparently put them on at the door when she came inside because I would hear the sound of wooden clogs when she walked on the cobbles in the courtyard where the snow had been cleared away from the walls, then the noise would abruptly cease and at the same moment I would hear the squeak of the outside door. The Etruscan even tried somehow to minimize the outlines of her exuberant body, wearing dresses to hide rather than enhance her shape. When she spoke she used the fewest possible words, and those few words seemed to have passed through a filter, which bleached them out and wrapped them in gauze.
Since I didn’t know how to pass the time (obviously playing the flute now and then or looking out the window didn’t fill all my waking hours), I had become acutely sensitive to sounds. I attributed the distant hum to some activity of the old man, the blows of the axe to Red, the clinking of crockery and the squeak of the sewing machine to the Etruscan. For long moments the house would return to silence, as if everyone went to sleep at midday, and I would lie there listening, waiting for the sound that would finally break the stillness, as if the house were under a spell. I sensed a sort of anticipation of something about to happen that perhaps not only I myself but also the Etruscan, Pietro and Red were expecting, maybe without even knowing it. What it might be I didn’t know. And yet I felt that destiny was hiding in some corner of the house, waiting to amaze its inhabitants and myself as well by one of its surprise moves, as when it had brought me into contact with the Jewish photographer and the Dutch student, and then driven me toward Flora’s village....
Once I heard a sudden acceleration of sounds. My heart beat faster. I probably thought: “This is it.” The Etruscan entered the house with her clogs on and I heard the echo of her anxious rush up the stairs. Red had dashed in too and I heard his frightened muttering and the noise of his hob-nailed boots stamping about in the entryway. Even Pietro must have hastened up the stairs because I had heard the regular blows of his cane on the steps. Something strange was going on, there was no doubt about it. Probably it had to do with danger; maybe an avalanche or something of that kind was threatening the village. But I thought of other more fantastic or improbable causes too: a dirigible sighted emerging from behind the rocky peaks or a pack or wolves come down from the mountains or the arrival of a celebrity like the emperor from Vienna come back to visit his former possession.
At first I thought I’d get up, grab my canes and dash to the window or toward the stairs. Then I decided to do nothing: let the surprise come to me — that way the anticipation of strange possibilities would last longer. The commotion went on for about a half hour. I also thought I heard a sinister crackling and a noise like wind whistling through a knothole. A shock of recognition set my blood to tingling. A fire? I sniffed intently to see if I could smell smoke. Perhaps the joke of destiny consisted in driving me out of here too; after luring me so far away from home with its mirages, now it wanted to force me to end this unforeseen pause and put me back on the road to Denmark. Maybe before a week went by I’d be on my way again, limping along on my lame foot with my pack on my back, a homeless vagabond once more. Just as the Etruscan, even though she didn’t know it, had been modelled after the stone face of a statue or funeral urn I may have had my model in some mythic protagonist who roamed the earth without rest, like Ulysses or the Wandering Jew. I would have liked to think so anyhow because I had always loved those legendary figures and in that case I wouldn’t be the indefinable man, available for every possibility — I’d have a distinct identity. Maybe I had Gypsy blood in my veins. Or, more likely, it was simply the Dane’s blood rebelling against that of Lilia or my grandmother Elvira, both of whom had loved home and the quiet life.
After a half hour everything quieted down again. The Etruscan came into my room, the dark skin of her cheeks unusually flushed and her arms and hands still smudged with soot. “The kitchen chimney caught fire,” she smiled, “nothing serious. It’s all out now.”
She picked up the dishes from the bedside table and as she reached the door I had an urge to call her back and ask her name. But it seemed like a capitulation, so I resisted. She would have to tell me herself. I had made up my mind and there was no way I was going to change it.
This little episode stirred up the energy that had been dormant during my idleness. I got out of bed and seized the two canes, determined to try my strength, but after ten steps I went down in a heap: my feet were still like wood. Thoroughly discouraged, I stayed sitting there for a while on the immaculately clean floorboards. Then I dragged myself back to bed again (what humiliation if they had found me in that position!)
I had just gotten myself settled when Pietro came in followed at a certain distance by the girl, almost as though she felt some inexplicable reverence where he was concerned. The old man massaged my feet and had me move them several times, nodding his head in approval. He was pleased with himself since my feet were progressing exactly as he had predicted. Everything was fine. “Well, I’m not so sure about that. I tried to get up just now and fell flat on the floor.”
“Don’t worry about it. It won’t be more than a few days now. I’ve seen plenty of cases of frostbite....”
“Really? Where?”
He shrugged, as if to say it didn’t matter. Then he mentioned that he had been in Alaska during the Gold Rush, when prospectors would venture into impossible places without so much
as a second thought, and then often find themselves in real trouble.
I kept watching the Etruscan’s eyes but they offered no confirmation of what I was hearing. They remained immobile. The old man paused, then recounted that once he and two others, a Pole and an Irishman, had gotten lost in a snowstorm near Point Barrow, a good bit north of the Colville River and had managed to stay alive by roasting bear flesh, covering themselves with the still-greasy and bloodstained bearskins and taking refuge in dark caves.
He didn’t go on. He passed his big hand over his hair and said it had happened so many years ago, maybe even before my mother was born and now it was all just a vague memory. “Tell me more...,” I begged. He raised his head slowly, then shook it and smiled. Then he approached a wooden chair in the back of the room and sat down, leaning his elbows on the arms. “If I were to tell the truth, I’d say it doesn’t even seem like it was me inside that greasy skin in that arctic cold. It’s like it was a story someone told me....”
“Please, just tell me how it ended....”
“Another time. You think about getting better now.... Think about getting better....”
He was already out of the room, still talking, so his voice faded away in the stairwell. I didn’t yet believe what I had heard. It had been like the pealing of golden bell, a mysterious rippling surge of latent energy, an awakening of sleeping images. Alaska, the prospectors.... This time, however, it wasn’t a case of boyish daydreams, but real events. Who was this man anyway? Where had he been, what had he done? He was surely very old but still strong and healthy. I even suspected he might have told me a made up story not to deceive me but simply because he had somehow (perhaps from the books or old maps in my sack) intuited my thirst for tales of adventure. But even admitting that it might be fiction the story filled me with a bubbling flashing euphoria.
The Wooden Throne Page 13
