His lordship the baron, on the other hand, would never presume to listen in on a private conversation. His poor mother, when he was small, taught him never to listen at keyholes. He only listens to make sure that the work is being done properly:
“Lamberto, Lamberto, Lamberto …”
Those voices give him a feeling of safety, of security. It’s as if there was a guard standing watch over him, warding off enemies. He knows perfectly well that the people in the attic are repeating his name because they are paid to do so. But they do such a good job, and occasionally pronounce his name with such grace and kindness, that the baron can hardly help but think: “Listen: they really love me.”
ONE MORNING, AS THE BARON LOOKS AT himself in the mirror, he discovers that, in the still of the night, a hair has sprung up on his head. A single blond hair. There it is, quivering in the middle of his bald pate, which is checkered with brown liver spots.
“Anselmo! Come see. Hurry!”
Anselmo trots along in such haste that he forgets his umbrella, and halfway there he is obliged to turn around and go back for it.
“Look: a hair. It’s been forty-five years since anything of the sort has been seen on my scalp.”
“Just a moment, Your Lordship.”
Anselmo hurries off in search of the big magnifying glass the baron uses to examine the stamps in his collection. Under the lens, the hair looks like a golden sapling in the bright sunlight. But there’s something more …
“With Your Lordship’s indulgence,” says Anselmo, “this is not just any hair, it’s a naturally wavy hair, possibly even curly.”
“When I was small,” the baron whispers, choked with emotion, “my poor mother used to call me her little ‘curlytop.’ ”
As long as he has the magnifying glass in his hand, Anselmo takes advantage of the opportunity to explore carefully the entire surface of his master’s scalp, in silence. Underneath the skin, he can admire the ingenious architecture of the osseous dome, nature’s original model for the Pantheon, for St. Peter’s cathedral, and for the motorcycle helmet.
“Here,” he finally says, “where the right parietal bone meets the ethmoid, either the lens deceives me, or I’m having visions, or a second hair is coming up. Yes, I see it, it’s penetrated the scalp, the tip is cautiously extending beyond the skin, it’s pushing out little by little, now it’s …”
“You’d make a first-rate radio announcer,” the baron comments.
“No, I’m sure of it now: it’s another blond hair. Pure silk. But no, wait, wait …”
“What now? Has the hair taken fright? Has it retreated to the safety of its lair?”
“Your wrinkles, Lord Lamberto …”
The old gentleman’s face was congealed in a dense network of wrinkles, some of them fine and light, barely sketched across the surface of the epidermis, while others are creases as deep as moats. His face looked like the snout of a centenarian tortoise.
“It is my impression,” Anselmo went on, “that the wrinkles are smoothing out. I remember counting three hundred wrinkles at the corner of this eye but now I’d bet my umbrella that there are fewer, far far fewer. The skin is smoothing out before my eyes. From the deepest layers young cells are rising to the surface, bursting with life and optimism, to take the place of the old cells that are sinking in a melancholy farewell.”
“Anselmo,” said the baron, “I see the same face I had yesterday. Two hairs don’t make a spring.”
The next morning, however, he is forced to admit that his wrinkles are disappearing. The texture of his skin no longer gives the unpleasant impression of touching sandpaper. His hair, at various points on his scalp, even tufts up rakishly. His eyes, which until a couple of weeks before were hidden behind the heavy curtains of his eyelids, look out on the world with a renewed liveliness. You can see the light blue iris surrounding the black dot of the pupil like Lake Orta surrounding the island of San Giulio.
“I would say,” says the baron, as he analyzes his own sensations, “that the rods and cones in my retinas seem to have awakened from a long, long sleep. The optic nerve was like a clogged pipe: now the messages shoot out and dart back to the brain at supersonic speed. It strikes me that it’s early to declare victory, but one thing is certain: for many years, no doctor and no medicine has managed to give me such a feeling of well being. Anselmo, I’m starting to feel better.”
“Let’s go over the checklist,” says the butler, pulling his notebook out of his pocket.
“All right.”
“Number one: arteriosclerosis.”
“We sent a blood sample to Milan for tests last week.”
“Your Lordship is right. The results arrived with this morning’s mail: in excellent condition. Your Lordship now has the arteries of a forty-year-old. Number three: deformative arthrosis.”
“Anselmo, just take a look at my hands for yourself. The fifty and more bones in either hand have never been so agile. And that’s not even to mention the eight delicate carpal bones in each wrist. They’re champing at the bit to be given a little exercise.”
Baron Lamberto leaps to his feet and sits down on the piano bench. He runs up and down the chords once or twice, and suddenly the robust harmonies of Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations echo through the villa. Baron Lamberto hasn’t tickled the ivories in forty-two years.
He stops playing, raises the lid, and pushes a button.
“Lamberto, Lamberto, Lamberto …”
The baron winks one eye at his butler. In the attic, work proceeds as usual.
Baron Lamberto stands up again, walks two or three steps, and bursts into laughter:
“Look,” he said, “I forgot to walk with my two faithful gold-pommeled walking sticks, and I haven’t fallen down. My bones and muscles are back on the job. I almost feel like taking a nice swim in the lake.”
“Let’s not exaggerate, Your Lordship. Let’s cross out number eight, your limp, and resume our checklist.
“Number four: asthma.”
“My last attack was many months ago. We had just come back from Egypt.”
“Number five: chronic bronchitis.”
“The last time I coughed was during Carnival, when a morsel of food went down the wrong pipe.”
“Number seven: gallbladder.”
“The inflammation must have taken a holiday, my dear Anselmo, because I no longer feel any discomfort down there.”
They go over the checklist for several days. Baron Lamberto and his trusted manservant cover the following areas systematically, leaving no stone unturned:
—the skeletal system;
—the muscular system (that system alone took two full mornings because there are more than six hundred muscles, and they each have to be checked, one at a time);
—the nervous system (it’s all so complicated that it gets on your nerves);
—the digestive tract (by now, the baron could probably digest snails with their shells);
—the circulatory system;
—the lymphatic system;
—the endocrine glands;
—the reproductive system.
Everything is in tiptop shape, from the Merkel’s corpuscles, which warn the brain when bathwater is scalding hot or icy cold, to the thirty-three vertebrae of the spinal column, both the true, or movable, ones and the five fused vertebrae.
Every part of the body, every component of each part, and every element of each component is examined with strict attention, lest some malady lie concealed, the beginning of a dysfunction, the suspicion of a sabotage. The two investigators explore and reexplore the labyrinth of the veins and arteries, emerging from ventricles and auricles, mingling with erythrocytes and leucocytes.
“Your Lordship, the reticulocytes are multiplying magnificently.”
“What exactly are reticulocytes?”
“Younger red blood cells.”
“Well, then, let’s hear it for youth.”
The baron and his butler venture into the tunnel of Cor
ti and make their way into the ear; they disembark on the islets of Langerhans, clamber up the slopes of the Adam’s apple, wander through the labyrinth of the Malpighian corpuscles which are bundled together in the kidneys, swing back and forth with the oxygen and carbon dioxide that enter and are expelled from the lungs, climb over the Varolian bridge, speak into the Eustachian tube, operate the Golgi apparatus, stretch the tendons, reflect on the reflexes, feed the phagocytes, tickle the intestinal villi, and twirl the double helix of DNA. Every so often they lose sight of one another.
“Your Lordship, where are you hiding?”
“I’m just entering the pylorus. Where are you?”
“Not far from you. I’m floating through the gastric juices. We’ll meet up in a minute at the duodenum.”
Anselmo keeps a record of everything in the logbook. But in a sense, perhaps, all those examinations aren’t necessary. A mirror is the only test required. Anyone who took a look at Baron Lamberto would have guessed he was, at most, forty years old, and hale and healthy for his age.
A few weeks ago, he was an old man, held up only by his medicines and by his gold-pommeled walking sticks, and now look at him: a man in the prime of his life, almost a youngster, straight, tall, blond, and athletic. He’s developed the habit of swimming around the island every morning just to stay in shape. He performs even the most demanding pieces on the piano without breaking a sweat. He does calisthenics. He chops wood for the fireplace. He rows, he goes sailing and keeps the mainsail distinct from the jib, he dives off of diving boards and, if there are none, out of trees. In the meantime, his twenty-four banks continue to send in their weekly profit reports. And all this time, in the attic of his villa, six ignorant employees, day and night, continue to repeat his name without knowing the reason why (though Signorina Delfina continues to wonder).
“Lamberto, Lamberto, Lamberto …”
“The old Egyptian knew what he was talking about,” Lamberto muses, deeply satisfied. “Exactly what were his words? ‘The name is spoken’ … ‘The name lives’ … something like that.”
“I made a note of his exact words,” says Anselmo, leafing through his notebook. “Here we are: ‘The man whose name is spoken remains alive.’ ”
“Very good,” said the baron, nodding his head approvingly. “Very good indeed. ‘The man whose name is spoken …’ And it was true, considering the results of the cure. Ah, ancient wisdom!”
“If I remember correctly,” Anselmo points out, “it was a secret of the pharaohs.”
The baron thinks in silence.
“But the pharaohs all died. Why is that, if they all knew that saying?”
“Well, they must not have believed it. They must have thought it was just a saying of their grandparents, not a prescription that could cure all diseases.”
“That must be it,” the baron concludes. “What a strange character that old fakir was. I took him for a beggar.”
“That’s certainly what he looked like. The hovel he lived in looked like a chicken coop. There were hens perched on his head.”
“Maybe they were pecking at the lice,” the baron laughs. He puts one hand on the grand piano and leaps over it from a standing start. “If I’m born again, I’ll be an acrobat in a equestrian circus.”
“But what are you saying, Lord Lamberto? You can’t die now.”
“Ah, true enough. I’d forgotten.”
The baron pushes a button.
“Lamberto, Lamberto, Lamberto …”
Every morning he has a new tooth. His old false teeth are in the garbage pail. He can crush walnuts with his new molars.
“Lamberto, Lamberto, Lamberto …”
“The man whose name is spoken remains alive.”
IN ROME STANDS THE DOME OF ST. PETER’S cathedral. From high atop the dome, if you know just where to look, you can make out a penthouse surrounded by a sprawling terrace, where a young man in his mid-thirties sits lost in thought in the shade of a patio umbrella. This is Ottavio, Baron Lamberto’s nephew, and he’s mulling things over. He has just lost the last of the inheritance left to him by his late mother, gambling at skittles. Today, the tavern keeper will be sending up his monthly bill for soda pop, which he consumes voraciously, generously treating all his friends. How can he hope to pay?
“I’m ruined,” he admits to himself. “My one last hope is if Uncle Lamberto finally makes up his mind to die and leaves his estate to me in his will. Or at least a couple of his banks … He must be a hundred by now. The smart thing to do would be to go pay a call, just to remind him that I’m the only child of his only sister. What should I do? Should I go or should I stay? I’ll flip a coin—my last hundred lire piece. There: I’ll leave immediately.”
A five-hour drive, a five-minute boat ride, a five-minute stroll through the narrow lanes of the island of San Giulio, and Ottavio is knocking at the huge front door of the baronial villa.
A beaming young athlete swings open the door.
“Good afternoon, did you wish to see someone?”
“Baron Lamberto, please.”
The young man steps away with a bow. A moment later, he reappears at the door, with the same radiant smile.
“Yes, was there someone you wished to see?”
“My good sir, are you trifling with me? I asked to see Baron Lamberto. Where is he?”
“He’s right here—you’re looking at him. Ottavio, my nephew, only son of my only sister, don’t you recognize your ever-loving uncle anymore?”
Ottavio is stunned—he faints and drops to the pavement. When he recovers consciousness, he does his best to dissemble his shock: “My delight at seeing you brimming over with health was just too much. The heart has a mind of its own. My, but I’m pleased. What’s your method? Have you started a new cure?”
“It’s new, but it’s also ancient,” the baron says with a giggle.
“It’s a secret,” the butler Anselmo breaks in, with a wink of the eye to his master, almost as if respectfully reminding him to watch his step.
“A Chinese secret?” Ottavio ventures.
“You’re cold,” says Anselmo.
“An Indian secret?”
“Getting colder.”
“Persian?”
“Colder still, Signor Ottavio.”
“Well, what a delight it’s been to see you,” says the baron. “Now you’ll have to excuse me for a moment. Anselmo, offer him something to drink, freshly squeezed orange juice, a cup of chamomile tea, whatever he’d like.”
“A soda, thanks very much.”
By the time Anselmo returns with a bottle of soda, the baron is back as well, in a wetsuit, diving mask, scuba tanks, and flippers.
“Would you care to come with me on a little excursion around the lakebed?”
“Thanks, Uncle Lamberto, but the mouthpiece hurts my teeth.”
“Well, then why don’t you make yourself comfortable? Anselmo will show you to your room. We’ll see you at dinner.”
Baron Lamberto moves off, leaping along like a grasshopper. His blond ringlets bounce festively in the evening breeze.
“He’s wonderfully fit,” says Ottavio. “You’d never guess he was ninety-three.”
“He’ll turn ninety-four tomorrow afternoon at 3:25,” Anselmo points out.
“The situation is tragic,” Ottavio thinks gloomily, lying on the bed in his room, absentmindedly counting the beams in the ceiling. “I came here hoping to find a man on his deathbed and what do I see? An Olympic champion with his muscles, teeth, and hair in place. The inheritance is slipping away. Who’ll pay the monthly installments on my custom sports car? Where will I get the money to bet on skittles? Urgent action must be taken.”
The first thing he does, right after dinner, is to sneak into the kitchen, purloin the carving knife that Anselmo used to slice the pheasant with cognac, and hide it under the pillow on his bed. Then he goes to sleep, but only after setting his alarm clock to go off at midnight. The alarm clock has chimes that play The Garibaldi Hymn b
y Ponchielli: let the tombs be unhinged, let the dead rise from the earth. After the alarm clock has chimed the hymn, Ottavio rises from the bed without a sound, without stopping even to put on his slippers, and tiptoes barefoot to listen at his Uncle Lamberto’s keyhole. He can hear him snoring vigorously through the door. The time is right. He slips into the room, creeps up to the bed, takes aim by the bright moonlight filtering in through the window, and lifting the carving knife—zac zac—he cuts his ever-loving uncle’s throat. Then he goes back to bed, without bothering to wind the alarm clock.
When he opens his eyes the next morning, he hears someone singing:
I feel so well, I feel like a king,
A sail in the morning is just the right thing
Heavens! It’s Uncle Lamberto, even healthier than the day before, in a sailor’s suit. There’s not so much as a scratch on his throat.
“Up and at ’em, Ottavio! Let’s go sailing.”
Ottavio begs off with the excuse that lakewater makes him seasick, and stays in his room and ponders: “The carving knives they make these days couldn’t cut a bouillon cube. I’ll try again, with something a little more lethal.”
The following night he tries again, with an automatic carbine he pilfered from the gun room. He winds up his alarm clock and sets it so he can get a couple hours’ sleep, to make sure he’s rested and ready when the time comes. When the alarm goes off, without even waiting to hear the entire Garibaldi Hymn, he slips soundlessly into his Uncle Lamberto’s bedroom. His uncle is snoring blissfully, without a hint of suspicion. Ottavio levels the muzzle of the rifle to his uncle’s heart, places his finger on the trigger, and squeezes off seven shots. As he hurries back to bed, he rubs his hands in anticipation: “We’ll see this time!”
And who wakes him up the following morning? None other than Uncle Lamberto, wriggling like a perch, and singing:
I feel so well, I feel like a king,
A swim in the morning is just the right thing
Lamberto, Lamberto, Lamberto Page 2
