But now why are they hurrying back down the steps so quickly? Because the cleaning woman hasn’t finished mopping the floor yet. They’ll have to wait in the ground-floor portico. The crowd surrounds them, silent and observant. Those who have already learned to tell them apart points them out to the others—few in number, to tell the truth—who don’t yet know the difference between the managing director from Amsterdam and the managing director from Alexandria, Egypt. The most experienced observers even distinguish, with the naked eye, each individual personal secretary.
“You can come in now,” the cleaning woman shouts from the balcony, “but don’t throw your cigarette butts on the floor!”
They climb back up and vanish through the door. The onlookers crane their necks, looking for other phenomena worthy of study, and they see Duilio the ferryman returning from the island, having already completed his first trip of the day transporting provisions.
Charon hops out of the boat and runs toward the porticoes in the town piazza, followed by the younger reporters (the older ones are still eating breakfast on the hotel terraces).
“Where are you going?”
“Charon, a smile for the press.”
“How are your grandchildren? Did your mother-in-law get over her stomachache?”
The ferryman steps into a stationery shop and, without stopping to catch his breath, orders:
“Quickly, 65 pounds of scotch tape.”
“What? Sixty-five pounds of …?”
“Of scotch tape, scotch tape!”
“I don’t have six pounds of scotch tape, much less sixty-five pounds.”
The stationer shows him five or six rolls of scotch tape in different sizes.
“I’ll take them all. Where can I find the rest?”
“At the home supply store next door.”
Duilio rushes to the home supply store. Then he visits the various tobacconists. He manages to buy a pound, or two at the most, of scotch tape.
“We’ll help you!” shout the young reporters. And they promptly split up into teams, hop in their cars, and roar off in all directions: one group toward Gozzano and Borgomanero, another group heading for Arona and Sesto Calende, a third group for Omegna and Gravellona Toce, to stock up on scotch tape. An hour later, they are all back with mountains of rolls of tape of all colors. They deliver them to Duilio with the pride of someone participating in a historic undertaking.
“I bought blue tape, it goes with the color of the lake.”
“Here you are, seven pounds of scotch tape, compliments of the Gazzetta di Quarna.”
“Eight pounds three ounces in the name of the Corriere della Val Strona.”
Duilio hurls it all into the boat and points his bow toward the island. This new topic of discussion keeps curiosity alive until it’s time for the evening aperitif.
“What are they going to do with all that scotch tape?”
“It’s obvious: they’ll use it to pack up all the cash from the ransom.”
“No paper?”
“You’ll see, they’ll send Duilio to buy paper, too.”
When Duilio gets back from the island and goes running headlong for the porticoes, the crowd is already waiting for him outside the stationer’s. Instead he goes into the hardware store, holds up a skinny steel chain, and orders: “Five hundred yards of chain of this gauge.”
“I can give you five hundred screwdrivers,” says the shop owner, ‘five hundred nail hooks, or five hundred shovels. My hardware store has the most complete assortment of Lake Orta. But a steel chain, it just so happens, of that exact gauge, is something we are fresh out of. I can order it, you’d have it in a couple of days.”
“I need it immediately,” Duilio retorts. “Tell me where I can find it.”
“Why don’t you take five hundred hammers?” the shopkeeper insists. “Look, I also have five hundred pairs of tongs, five hundred pairs of pliers …”
He wheedles, begs, cajoles. No one has ever left his hardware store empty-handed. Duilio, however, is immovable. That’s a figure of speech, of course, because he gets moving immediately and goes in search of the mayor.
“Mister Mayor, thus and such and this and that: what would you recommend?”
“I would recommend Signor Giuseppe from Omegna.”
Signor Giuseppe is famous for finding anything you need in the time it takes to recite the La Cavallina Storna. You can ask him for a 1913 Fiat, a cannon from the Great War, a Sun King costume, a chariot from the reign of the emperor Nero, a chicken-plucking machine: without blinking an eye, he sets out and finds it. For him to find half a kilometer of steel chain would be a walk in the park.
During the course of the day, before nightfall, in order to satisfy the bandits and fill Duilio’s boat with new cargo, Signor Giuseppe finds:
—twenty-four wicker laundry baskets;
—a long-handled chestnut roasting pan with holes in it;
—the complete works of the German philosopher Immanuel Kant;
—a topographic map of the Alps;
—an earthenware piggy bank that moves its piggly tail in gratitude when you insert a coin in the slot.
The bandits, of course, need a variety of materials to complete their work on the balloon that they’re secretly building, but in order to throw everyone off their tracks, they also make requests for objects that have nothing to do with aeronautics. That objective has been achieved. In the Palazzotto della Comunità, where the bankers and their secretaries are in permanent session, no one has any better idea of what’s happening than before. They’re still waiting for a response to their demand to see Baron Lamberto in the flesh and in person, and what they get is a request for a bean sieve. They fear that they will receive, from one minute to the next, a beautifully wrapped package containing one of the baron’s feet—which is exactly what the bandits have threatened—and instead they are obliged deliberate on whether to accept an order for a carton of lollipops.
The hours pass. The situation becomes increasingly odd. The sun is already setting over the mountains to the west. A chill evening breeze is sweeping across the lake. Along the Orta lakeshore, anyone who has a sweater is wearing it. In the bars, the number of orders for beer and ice cream drops as the orders for hot drinks increase. The day has been full of unexpected events and incomprehensible objects, but the negotiations haven’t budged.
Then night falls well and truly, and nothing remains to be said, you couldn’t argue that it wasn’t dark. It’s a moonless night. In the darkness, the island of San Giulio—its coastline dimly illuminated by the spotlights of the besieging forces (the intensity of the spotlights turned down to keep from disturbing the baron’s sleep)—seems like an island of ghosts, it gives a person the shivers just to look at it.
At a certain hour, a reporter standing sentinel in the main square of Orta thinks he sees a large black shadow looming over the villa’s roof. But he’s so young that no one pays him any mind. His older colleagues don’t even poke their noses outside of the warm café where they are holed up playing poker.
“A black shadow, you say? Maybe it’s the devil.”
“Did you check to see if it had horns?”
“Was there a whiff of brimstone?”
After a while, not even the young reporter sees the shadow anymore.
“I thought it was right there, on top of the roof. It must have been an optical illusion.”
Instead, of course, it was the balloon taking flight. No one sees it rising through the darkness, with the 24-L’s huddling under its belly, in the twenty-four wicker laundry baskets. The inverna, the chilly wind that blows across the lake from the south, pushes the balloon toward the mountains of the Valle d’Ossola. Its silent navigation through the night is completely untroubled. In a few hours it could cross the border without even glimpsing it, and enter Swiss air space without paying customs. It could … But matters, at a certain point, decide to take a new drift. On one of those mountains there is a Boy Scout encampment. Those meritorious
young men have chosen to launch a series of signal flares at exactly midnight to communicate with another group of Boy Scouts who have pitched their tents on a neighboring peak. One of the flares brightly illuminates the solemn aerostat and its twenty-four baskets. The second one unintentionally grazes the balloon and sets it on fire.
At that moment, fortunately, the balloonists are only a few dozen yards over the mountain peak. The fire spreads slowly. As a result, before the balloon can explode, the twenty-four Lambertos are able to scramble to the ground and surrender to the Boy Scouts, whom they have taken for policemen. Once they’ve surrendered, too bad for them, it’s too late to yell “no fair!”
The news bounces for a few hours from one ham radio operator to another without making its way into official channels. An amateur radio operator in Domodossola, who has failed to understand exactly how matters stand, does manage to transmit a report that flying saucers have landed on Mount Moro. Another operator in Locarno, at the northern tip of Lake Maggiore, receives only a garbled transmission and transmits the news that twenty-four Boy Scouts were eating sausages in the Val Vigezzo. The ham radio operators of Piedmont, Lombardy, and the Canton Ticino are all manning their equipment and there is a dizzying welter of communications, in a confusion of “over and out” and “do you read me?” until no one understands what is going on.
It is almost dawn when the report—finally clear and unambiguous— reaches Orta: the gang of the twenty-four Lambertos had been captured without a shot fired, at an elevation of 6,500 feet above sea level, by a group of little boys in shorts. Orders are immediately issued, countermanded, and reissued. A police speedboat, packed with armed men, cautiously edges over to the island … whereupon the shutters of a window in the villa are flung open with a crash and the disheveled head of the butler Anselmo appears, shouting a series of incomprehensible statements.
“What did you say? A little louder, if you please!”
Anselmo also shakes the umbrella in the air, as if that had the power of amplifying his weak voice, rendered hoarse by the various hardships and frights.
“The baron is dead!” he shouts. “Send a carpenter right away to make a casket!”
Poor Anselmo. It took him an entire day to remember that the room where the bandits locked him is directly above the utility closet. He toiled all night long to carve a hole in the floor so that he could lower himself into the utility closet and make his way to the window. He’s covered with plaster, dusty from head to foot, and his hands are bleeding
“The baron has died!” he shouts. “What on earth are you doing? Don’t get any closer or they’ll open fire! These people will stop at nothing!”
“Stay calm,” a policeman shouts back. “Stay calm, the emergency is over! The bandits have been captured.”
Anselmo doesn’t stop to hear another word. He runs up to the attic to resume his quarrel with those six sleepyheads. There is no way to resume the discussion, however, because they continue to sleep like so many innocent babies. All that Anselmo can do is write in block letters on a sheet of paper, which he then places prominently, so that they’ll be able to read it the moment they awaken:
BECAUSE OF YOU, BARON LAMBERTO IS DEAD.
YOU’RE ALL FIRED ON THE SPOT.
Then he runs to open the bedroom where young Ottavio is being held prisoner. He, on the other hand, is sleeping like a particularly wicked baby.
“What time is it?” he asks, yawning, when Anselmo throws open the windows.
“Five thirty.”
“In the afternoon?”
“In the morning, in the morning! Hurry, get out of bed.”
“What for? At this hour of the morning there can’t be anything urgent to do.”
“Have you forgotten that His Lordship the Baron, your uncle, is dead?”
“Right,” says Ottavio. “We’ll have to arrange for a maritime funeral.”
YEARS WILL PASS AND CENTURIES WILL go by before the light-blue waters of Lake Orta will see another funeral like Baron Lamberto’s—it was prettier than a color movie. The weather that day seemed to be doing its best to be memorable. The light was like molten silver. The circle of mountains raised their green and azure curtains and behind their peaks loomed Mount Rosa, like a giant peering over the shoulders of mere mortals.
Near and far, standing on the lakeshore or perched on the hillsides—some higher, others lower—how many bell towers are there around Lake Orta? More than thirty, without a doubt. And all of them, beginning at dawn, were solemnly pealing their bells. And in every belfry, there was a sexton or an altar boy enjoying the spectacle
Fifty thousand people have gathered along the eastern lakeshore, and just as many line the western shoreline. The promontory on which the city of Orta perches is so crowded with people that, if it were not a piece of solid rock, it would probably sink under the weight. Baron Lamberto was already famous before the island was occupied by bandits. He was already famous when he was alive. So you can imagine, now that he’s dead.
The corpse is to be transported by boat from the island to Orta, and from there it will be taken to Domodossola, where Baron Lamberto is to be buried in the family vault.
There’s no more than 400 yards of lakewater between the island and Orta: not far enough for the funeral procession to stretch out in its full length. It was therefore decided that it should not proceed along a straight line, but instead wind its way in a broad series of curves, moving slowly in picturesque meanderings, like certain Chinese bridges that, in order to go from point A to point B, follow a zigzagging itinerary so that those who cross them can admire the panorama from a variety of vantage points.
Leading the procession is a barge carrying priests and altar boys. Among them, we note the grandsons of Duilio the ferryman, who always seem to pop up everywhere. They’re so full of energy that you almost expect to see them go scampering across the surface of the water without sinking. They fight over the aspersory filled with holy water, the aspergillum for sprinkling it, and the censer, and they get more than a few smacks in the back of the head from the assistant parish priest.
The barge is followed by twenty-four boats, all identical, each of which carries the managing director of one of the banks and his personal secretary, for a total of forty-eight functionaries dressed in black, with somber expressions on their faces. The fact is that when they reached the island, Baron Lamberto had already been nailed into his coffin.
“But what about us?” they say.
“And what about you?” asks Ottavio, shameless.
“Well, it’s only natural … we’d have liked to pay our respects to the deceased … if nothing else, identify the baron in our official capacity …”
“The identification has been performed by the family members, that is, me, his only nephew, and his butler, Anselmo.”
So the twenty-four managing directors are left to mull over their suspicions, and as the funeral wends its way across the lake, they wonder whether the casket really contains the baron or a mysterious impostor. And if the latter, where is the real baron?
Following the bankers comes the barge carrying the coffin. At the helm is Diulio, jocularly known as Charon, and today playing the part of an authentic ferryman of dead souls. The barge flies a black banner with a large golden “L” at its center. In the wake of the barge follow two small rowboats. In one, the nephew Ottavio pretends to sob into a white handkerchief with black edging. Actually, if he weren’t afraid of losing his balance, he would be dancing a jig of happiness: in just a few hours he’ll finally learn how much of his uncle’s vast estate will wind up in his cash-starved pockets. In the other small rowboat, standing erect, leaning on his trim and dignified black umbrella, is Anselmo, brooding over his suspicions about the nephew Ottavio. But who would believe him, if he openly accused him? All right, he might be able to prove that it was Ottavio who slipped the sedatives into the dinner of the inhabitants of the attic. So what? What physician, what criminal judge would ever believe that what killed
the baron was not having his name pronounced? They’d look at him as if he were crazy. Maybe they’d say: “Are you trying to palm off the story of the fakir on us? You realize that we live in the twentieth century?”
Anselmo weeps. Even from far away, if someone has a precision-made navy spyglass in hand, they can see the big salt tears rolling down his cheeks and plopping onto the umbrella.
Other boats follow in their wake, bearing authorities and officials of all kinds, both civilian and military, national and foreign. Then come the boats flying the banners of the associations to which Baron Lamberto was a benefactor, great public philanthropist that he’s always been: the Bocce Society of Orta, the Union of Anglo-Prussian Banks, the Association of the Friends of High Finance, the Society for the Advancement of Internal Revenue, the Juventus Athletic Club of Armeno, and so on. The banners form a lovely composition of bright colors.
Then come 127 motorboats piled high with wreaths and floral arrangements from all five of the earth’s continents. There’s even one from Tierra del Fuego. Just counting the wreaths is a big job for the onlookers. Some count a few extra, others count a few less. To avoid a quarrel, they agree on a total number of 320 wreaths. Still, there’s a diminutive, tightly wound gentleman who insists there are 321. There’s always a freethinker who is reluctant to go along with the majority view.
Meanwhile, whispers and hisses, questions and answers, exclamations and comments fly from the tens of thousands of mouths lining the lake:
“Poor Baron Lamberto, even with all the money he had.…”
“Eh, Lamberto, he was rich all right.”
Lamberto, Lamberto, Lamberto Page 8
