Italo Calvino - [Our Ancestors 02]

by The Baron in the Trees (epub)

  At that time one heard nothing but good said of my brother at Ombrosa. These favorable voices also reached our home—"How nice he is!"

  "He really does know about some things"—in the tone of people wanting to make an objective judgment on someone of a different religion or another political party, and trying to show themselves so open-minded that they can even appreciate ideas far removed from their own.

  The reactions of the Generalessa to this news were brusque and summary. "Are they armed?" she would ask, when they talked of the squads of guards against fires formed by Cosimo. "Do they go on maneuvers?" For she was already thinking of the formation of an armed militia which could, in case of war, take part in military operations.

  Our father, on the other hand, would listen in silence shaking his head, so that it was difficult to understand if all these items of news about his son were painful to him or bored him, or flattered him in some way as if his one longing was a chance to hope in him again. This last must have been the right explanation, as a few days later he mounted his horse and went to look for him.

  It was an open place, where they met, with a row of saplings around. The Baron rode up and down the row two or three times without looking at his son, though he had seen him. Jump by jump the boy moved down from the last tree until he got nearer and nearer. When he was facing Father he took off his straw hat (which took the place in summer of that cap of wildcat fur) and said: "Good day, my Lord Father."

  "Good day, son."

  "Are you in good health?"

  "Considering my years and sorrows."

  "I am pleased to see you so well."

  "That is what I want to say to you, Cosimo. I hear that you are busying yourself for the common good."

  "I hold dear the forest in which I live, Lord Father."

  "Do you know that a part of the wood is our property, inherited from your poor grandmother, the late Lady Elizabeth?"

  "Yes, my Lord Father. In the Belrio area there are thirty chestnuts, twenty-two ashes, eight pines, and a maple. I have copies of all the surveyors' maps, and it was as a member of a family owning woods that I tried to collect together all those with a common interest in preserving them."

  "Ah yes," said the Baron, receiving this answer favorably. "But," he added, "they tell me that it is an association of bakers, market-gardeners and blacksmiths."

  "Them too, Lord Father. Of all professions that are honest."

  "Do you realize that you could lead noble vassals with the title of Duke?"

  "I realize that when I have more ideas than others, I give those others my ideas, if they want to accept them; and that, to me, is leading."

  "And to lead, nowadays, d'you need to be on a tree?" was on the tip of the Baron's tongue to say. But what was the use of bringing that up again? He sighed, absorbed in his thoughts, then loosened the belt on which his sword was hanging. "You are now eighteen years of age . . . It is time you considered yourself an adult . . . I no longer have long to live . . ." and he held out the sword flat on his two hands. "Do you remember you are the Baron of Rondò?"

  "Yes, Lord Father, I remember my name."

  "Do you wish to be worthy of the name and title you bear?"

  "I will try to be as worthy as I can of the name of man, and also of his every attribute."

  "Take this sword—my sword." The Baron raised himself in his stirrups. Cosimo stooped down on the branch and the Baron managed to strap the belt around his waist.

  "Thank you, Lord Father . . . I promise I will make good use of it."

  "Farewell, my son." The Baron turned his horse, gave a slight tug at the reins, and rode slowly away.

  Cosimo stood there a moment wondering whether he ought not to salute him with the sword, then reflected that his father had given it to him as a defense not as an instrument of ceremony, and he kept it sheathed.

  } 15 {

  IT WAS at this time, when he began seeing a lot of the Cavalier, that Cosimo noticed something odd in his behavior, or rather something different from usual, whether odder or less odd. It was as if that abstracted air of his no longer came from a wandering mind, but from a fixed and dominating thought. He would often, now, have talkative moments; and though before, unsociable as he was, he never set foot in the town, now, on the other hand, he was always down at the port, mingling with groups or sitting on the pavements with old sailors and boatmen, commenting on the arrival and departure of ships and the misdeeds of the pirates.

  Off our coasts there still cruised the feluccas of the Barbary pirates, molesting our traffic. Nowadays it was petty piratage, no longer as in the days when an attack by pirates meant one's ending as a slave at Tunis or Algiers, or losing nose and ears. Now when the Mohammedans managed to overtake a tartan from Ombrosa, they took only the cargo: barrels of dried fish, rounds of Dutch cheese, bails of cotton and the like. Sometimes our people were faster and would escape, firing a round of grapeshot at the felucca's rigging; and the Barbary sailors would reply by spitting, making lewd gestures and shouting insults.

  In fact, it was just petty piracy, and went on because the pashas of those countries claimed certain credits from our merchants and shipowners, which they exhorted, as according to them they had not been properly treated, or even cheated, in some business deal or other. And so they tried to settle their accounts piecemeal by robbery while at the same time continuing their commercial transactions, with constant bickering and bargaining. So it was to neither side's interest to come to a definite break; and navigation hereabouts went on full of hazards and risks, without ever degenerating to tragedy.

  The story I am about to tell was narrated to me by Cosimo in a number of different versions; I am keeping to the one which had the most details and was also the most logical. My brother when describing his adventures certainly added many out of his own head, but I always try to give a faithful report of what he told me, as he is the only source.

  Well, one night Cosimo, who since that watching for fires had got into the habit of waking up at all hours, saw a light coming down into the valley. He followed it silently over the branches with his cat's tread, and saw Enea Silvio Carrega walking along very quietly, in his fez and robe, holding a lantern.

  What was the Cavalier, who usually retired to bed with the chickens, doing up at that hour? Cosimo followed some distance behind. He was careful not to make any noise, even knowing too that his uncle, when walking along so concentratedly, was as good as deaf and saw only a few inches in front of his nose.

  By mule paths and short cuts the Cavalier reached the edge of the sea, on a stretch of pebbly beach, and began to wave his lantern. There was no moon and nothing could be seen on the sea, except moving foam on the nearest waves. Cosimo was on a pine tree a little way from the shore, as at that level the vegetation petered out and it was not so easy to get about on branches. Anyway, he could see quite clearly the old man in his high fez on the deserted beach, waving his lantern toward the dark sea; and then suddenly from that darkness another lantern replied, very near, as if it had been lit that minute, and there emerged, moving very fast, a little boat with a dark square sail and oars—a different boat from the ones of these parts—coming toward the shore.

  By the quavering light of the lantern, Cosimo saw men with turbans on their heads; some remained on the boat and kept it to the beach with little strokes of the oars; others landed, and they had wide swelling red pantaloons, and gleaming scimitars tied to their waists. Cosimo was all eyes and ears. His uncle and the Berbers talked among themselves, in a language which he could not understand but which he felt he almost could grasp, and must surely be the famous Lingua Franca. Every now and again Cosimo understood a word or two in our language, which Enea Silvio would emphasize, mingling these with other incomprehensible words, and the words in Italian were the names of ships, well-known sloops and brigantines belonging to the shipowners of Ombrosa, plying between our port and others nearby.

  It didn't require much imagination to realize what the Cavalier must
have been saying! He was informing the pirates about the times of arrival and departure of the Ombrosa boats, and about the cargoes they were carrying, their routes, and the weapons they had on board. And now the old man must have told them everything he knew, for he turned around and hurried away, while the pirates climbed back onto their boat and vanished into the dark sea. From the speed at which they talked he realized that they must have done this often before. Who knows how long those Berbers' attacks had taken place because of the information supplied by our uncle!

  Cosimo stayed on the pine tree, incapable of tearing himself away from there, from the deserted shore. A wind was blowing, waves were gnawing at the beach. The tree groaned in all its joints and his teeth chattered, not from the cold air, but from the cold of his sad discovery.

  So that timid and mysterious old man whom we, as boys, had always judged to be false and whom Cosimo had thought he had gradually learned to appreciate and understand was now revealed as a miserable traitor, an ungrateful wretch willing to harm his own country, which had taken him in when he was but driftwood after a life of errors. Had he been swept to such a point of nostalgia for countries and people where he must have found himself, for once in his life, happy? Or did he nurture a deep rancor against the home in which every mouthful he ate must have been one of humiliation? Cosimo was divided between the impulse to rush off and denounce him as a spy and so save our merchants' cargoes, and the thought of the pain it would cause our father, because of the affection which linked him so inexplicably to his half brother. Cosimo could already imagine the scene: the Cavalier manacled amid police, between two lows of Ombrosans cursing him, and so being led to the square having the noose put over his head, being hanged . . . After that night of watching over the dead body of Gian dei Brughi, Cosimo had sworn to himself that he would never again be present at an execution; and now he had to be the judge of whether to condemn to death one of his own relations!

  This thought tortured him the whole night long and all of the next day too, as he moved endlessly from one branch to another, slipping, saving himself with his arms, letting himself slither on the bark, as he always did when preoccupied. Finally he made his decision; a compromise: to terrify both the pirates and his uncle, and put a stop to their criminal dealings without the intervention of the law. He would perch on that pine tree at night, with three or four loaded guns (by now he had collected an entire arsenal for his various hunting needs). When the Cavalier met the pirates he would begin firing one musket after another, making the bullets whistle over their heads. On hearing that firing, pirates and uncle would each make his own escape. And the Cavalier, who was certainly not brave, at the chance of being recognized and the certainty that his meetings on the beach were now watched, would be sure to break off relations with the Berber crew.

  So Cosimo waited on the pine tree for a couple of nights, his muskets at the ready. And nothing happened. The third night, down came the old man in his fez, trotting along the pebbles of the beach, waving his lantern, and again a boat approached, with sailors in turbans.

  Cosimo had his finger ready on the trigger, but did not fire, for this time everything was different. After a short colloquy, two of the pirates landed and signaled toward the boat and the others began unloading cargo: barrels, bales, sacks, demijohns, cases full of cheeses. There was not just one boat, but a number of them, all heavily loaded; and a row of porters in turbans began winding along the beach, preceded by our uncle, leading them with his hesitant steps to a cave among the rocks. There the Moors set down all those goods, certainly fruit of their latest piracies.

  Why were they bringing this on shore? Later it was easy to reconstruct the circumstances. As the Berber felucca had to anchor in one of our ports (for some legitimate business, as was always going on between them and us in the middle of all their piracy) and therefore had to undergo a search by our customs, they had to hide their stolen goods in a safe place, so as to retrieve them on their return. In this way the men of the felucca would prove they had nothing to do with the latest robberies on the high seas, and strengthen their normal commercial relations with Ombrosa too.

  All this was clear afterwards. At that moment Cosimo did not stop to ask himself questions. There was a pirate treasure hidden in a cave, the pirates were re-embarking and leaving it there; it must be moved as soon as possible. The first idea that crossed my brother's mind was to go and wake the merchants of Ombrosa, who were presumably the legitimate owners of the stuff. But then he remembered his collier friends starving in the woods with their families. He did not hesitate, but hurried off over the branches straight to where, around patches of gray beaten earth, the Bergamese were sleeping in rough shacks.

  "Quick! Come on, all of you! I've found the pirates' treasure!" From under the tents and branches of the shacks came puffing, shuffling, cursing, and finally exclamations of surprise, and questions. "Gold? Silver?"

  "I haven't seen properly . . ." said Cosimo. "From the smell, I'd say that there was a lot of stockfish and goat's cheese."

  At these words all the men of the woods sprang to their feet. Those of them who had muskets snatched them up, others took hatchets, spits, spades, or stakes, but they all took some receptacle or other to put the stuff into, even broken coal hods and blackened sacks. A long procession started. "Hura! Hota!" Even the women went down with empty baskets on their heads, and the boys all hooded in sacks, holding torches. Cosimo went ahead from land pine to olive, from olive to sea pine.

  They were just about to reach the other side of the rock, with the cave opening beyond, when on top of a twisted fig tree appeared the white shadow of a pirate, who raised his scimitar and shouted the alarm. A few leaps and Cosimo was on a branch above him. He pointed his sword at the man's back, till he jumped over the cliff.

  In the cave a meeting of the pirate chiefs was taking place. (Cosimo, in all that coming and going of unloading, had not realized they had stayed behind.) Hearing the sentinel's cry they came out and found themselves surrounded by a hoard of men and women black with charcoal, hooded in sacks and armed with stakes. Baring their scimitars the Moors rushed forward to cut a way through. "Hura! Hota!" "Inshiallah!" The battle began.

  The colliers were superior in number, but the pirates better armed. It's well known, though, that for fighting scimitars there's nothing better than stakes. Cling! Cling! And the Damascene blades withdrew all jagged at the edges. Their muskets, on the other hand, thundered and smoked, but to no purpose. Some of the pirates (officers, as could be seen) had lovely muskets, entirely embossed; but the tinder had got damp in the cave and wouldn't spark. Now some of the colliers began stunning the pirate officers by hitting them over the head with stakes, to get their muskets away from them. But with those turbans, every blow on the Berbers' heads was muffled as if by cushions; it was better to kick them in the stomach, as their midriffs were bare.

  Seeing that the one weapon in good supply was stones, the colliers began flinging them in handfuls. The Moors, then, began throwing stones back. With this stone throwing, the battle eventually took on a more orderly aspect, but as the colliers were trying to enter the cave, attracted more and more by the smell of stockfish coming out of it, and the Berbers were trying to escape toward their tender still on the beach, there was no great reason to fight.

  Then the Bergamese launched an assault to break into the cave. The Mohammedans were still resisting under hails of stones when they saw the way to the sea was free. Why go on resisting, then? Better hoist sails and be off.

  On reaching the boat, three pirates, all nobles and officers, unfurled the sails. With a leap from a pine tree on the beach, Cosimo flung himself onto the mast, gripped the crossbar at the top, and from up there, hanging on by the knees, unsheathed his sword. The three pirates raised their scimitars. My brother, with slashes to right and slashes to left, kept all three at bay. The boat was still beached and wobbling now from side to side. At that moment the moon came out and glinted on the sword given by the Baron to his son
, and on the Mohammedan blades. My brother slipped down the mast and plunged his sword into the breast of a pirate who was dropping overboard. Up he went again, swift as a lizard, defending himself with two parries from the others' slashes, slid down once more and thrust the sword through a second pirate, went up, had a short skirmish with the third, slid down and transfixed him too.

  The three Mohammedan officers were lying half in the sea, their beards full of seaweed. The other pirates at the cave mouth were stunned with stones and blows from stakes. Cosimo was looking triumphantly around from the top of the mast, when from the cave, like a cat with its tail afire, leaped the Cavalier Carrega, who had been hidden there till now. He ran up the beach with head down, gave the boat one shove, which floated it away from the beach, jumped in, seized the oars and began rowing as hard as he could out to sea.

  "Cavalier! What are you doing! Are you mad?" said Cosimo, gripping the mast. "Go back to shore! Where are we going?"

  No answer. It was clear that Enea Silvio Carrega wanted to reach the pirate ship to save himself. Now his felony had been discovered once and for all, and if he stayed on shore he would certainly end on the gibbet. So he rowed and rowed, and Cosimo, though he still had his bared sword in his hand and the old man was disarmed and weak, was at a loss what to do next. At bottom he didn't want to do his uncle any harm at all, and, another thing, to reach him he would have to come right down the mast and this descent onto a boat was equivalent to descending to earth, and the question whether he had not already deviated from his unspoken inner laws by jumping from a tree with roots to the mast of a boat was too complicated to think out at that moment. So he did nothing and settled on top of the mast, his legs astraddle, moving off on the waves, while a slight wind swelled the sail, and the old man never stopped rowing.