The Wooden Throne Read online

  I had just read Moby Dick and for me it was the most beautiful of all the books I knew. Every page had been a discovery that multiplied the world, an opening of curtains on topsy turvy landscapes, a free fall into a whirlpool of enthusiasm even though I hadn’t understood everything and was forced to skip many passages. The miracle began with the first line. The moment I read, “Call me Ishmael...,” I felt oddly ashamed that my name was Giuliano, just Giuliano. Ishmael was a real name, a grand name, and possessing it meant being sure of a privileged destiny full of promise. I didn’t want to be Giuliano, I wanted to be Ishmael. In a way I was. I felt as if I had already lived Ishmael’s experiences. I had already been a harpooner on the Pequod; I had already climbed the main mast of several whalers and shouted many times, as I sighted a pod of whales, “Thar she blows!” Yes, I was certain of it....

  Between throws of the harpoon I seemed to hear at intervals a squeaky cry from the direction of the stream. It sounded like a fox or some animal I didn’t know. Bit by bit I stopped being Ishmael and the attic once more was just an attic. I kept quiet, expecting the noise to fade away, as if it too was the result of a caprice of my imagination. I heard the repeated blows of someone sharpening a scythe, the buzzing of grasshoppers and cicadas. It had stopped raining and besides it was even hard to understand where the few drops that had fallen could have come from, since the sky was almost completely clear with only a few tattered white clouds.

  I climbed up to the belvedere. From the village side there was still a glimmer of windowpanes on fire, as if all the children had set about flashing messages with mirrors and with a sudden twinge of anguish I realized how distant Ontàns was, how isolated our house and how Maddalena and I were alone and far away from the world. Just beyond a field or two and a few rows of trees the solitary steppe began, with its few patches of brambles, acacias, poplars and isolated hornbeams, black against the red of the sunset; a few kilometers farther the immense grave, the gravel floodplains, of the Meduna could be discerned. And Maddalena, where did she go when she disappeared in that wilderness? What did she do? Why did she leave me alone so often?

  The cry was repeated but this time I got the precise idea that it was a signal. Someone was circling our house, wanting to communicate with us, or at least reveal his presence. I remembered that it wasn’t the first time I had heard calls from that direction. On those occasions Maddalena had gone and furiously closed the windows and doors on the ground floor.

  I slipped out carefully and began to search where the trees were thickest, creeping through the alfalfa and between the bushes. I tried to make as little noise as possible, because I had arrived at a definite conviction: a pace or two from the house something mysterious was going on and I had to discover it. Perhaps some danger threatened Maddalena, and she was too trusting and imprudent to defend herself....

  I began anxiously to ransack my memory for a useful trick among those I had learned from my disorderly reading, some possible trap or ambush for the sender of the signals. I managed to remember something but nothing suitable. I would have needed knives, nets, bamboo canes and so many things already prepared and prearranged, while I actually had absolutely nothing. I was caught between two contradictory feelings, the conviction that the signal was coming from a dangerous being and the vague sympathy that was already driving me forcefully toward him, as always happened when I encountered someone I didn’t know.

  Reality itself, in its complexity, seemed attractive and adventurous, full of vague enigmas and surprises that had been reserved for me and awaited me as if they had been hidden in strongboxes to which I alone possessed the keys. But I also felt that these things were very far away, that to reach them I would have to cross a vast no-man’s-land full of woods, gravel river beds, hills, mountains....

  As I was looking intensely into the bushes I saw something moving just beyond them. I lunged forward headlong, with a sense of triumph, until a dark and speeding object crashed into my forehead.

  * * *

  V

  The Revelation

  I felt a burst of painful poppings in my ears and from one intensely throbbing point a wave of dizziness spread out through my whole head. I got up staggering but decided at once to sit down; I felt a touch of nausea and a warm trickle was running down my cheek.

  Fortunately, my shoulders were being supported by two sturdy hands, while a hoarse and gentle voice was saying: “What are you up to, you crazy kid.... You’re spouting blood like a fountain.... Come on, let’s take you to the stream; at least we can wash off that cut!” The man lifted me up on his back and to be able to hold me there, he must have had to call on all his strength. I felt a little better after he had bathed my forehead with cool water, even though the buzzing in my ears continued. I had run into a post half hidden by the bushes.

  The blood, the acute pain and the fact that I had endured it without grimacing made me feel proud of myself and seemed to be the price paid to obtain the exceptional experience I was having. “Were you the one sending out the signals?” I asked the man. He opened his eyes wide and nodded yes. His blond hair stuck out in all directions as if he were scared to death or had just had an electric shock. In a few spots it was pasted down by sweat. “Listen Giuliano...is Maddalena home?” I divined that he had some inexplicable interest in Maddalena that he didn’t want to admit openly, and I hoped by lying to force him to do so. “If you want to see Maddalena, come with me. We can see her right away.” Worried, he began to shake his head; no, no, he couldn’t come now, even though he had some really important things to ask her. He would come some other day, on a more suitable occasion.

  He was breathing heavily; when he said her name he lowered his voice and bent forward over his knees as if Maddalena could see him from the house and maybe even call him in her raucous and dramatic voice.

  He kept taking my hand and jerking me along as if he wanted to get farther away from my house; yet at the same time, I guessed that he was held back by a magical force surrounding Maddalena. Probably he spent half his time day and night hanging about her at a safe distance. He talked in spurts, placing his hands on his chest as though to indicate a heavy weight that rested there and couldn’t be dislodged. “Maddalena, eh, yes, quite a woman, hard worker and a fine lady too when she gets dressed up. Doesn’t even look like she’s from the country. Acts like a real lady.... You like honey?” he digressed unexpectedly. He continually went from one subject to another by complicated and not always visible paths, even though it was clear that everything was connected with everything else.

  Then he said something that astounded me, and I wasn’t sure I had heard right: “You know, Giuliano, I remember Maddalena was really a good friend to your poor mother.... I knew her too...so many, many years ago.... They used to go by my house singing and I used to see them like that a lot, from behind the windows....”

  “Come on, what are you saying?” I laughed in his face. “Maddalena my mother’s friend? Maddalena is my mother!”

  He began to look at me suspiciously, to scrutinize my injury, thinking that the blow had knocked me out of my senses. When he was convinced that I had really meant what I said he stepped backward precipitously, huddled up inside himself as in a fortress and wouldn’t add another word, for all the attempts I made, for all that I pressed him from every angle. There was no trauma for me; only the opening of a new and unforeseen perspective, even though the strange discovery, to really think about it, wasn’t entirely strange, all things considered, because before this I had already had a subtle hint that Maddalena wasn’t my mother. While I continued to protest, to repeat to myself that the man was insane, something inside was telling me that he had spoken the truth.

  Hence, my eager searching, my haste to cross no-man’s-land and approach the hidden treasure chests destined for me, should not be directed exclusively forward into the future, but also backward into the past. I felt as if I had emerged from a dream in which I had been slumbering forever, or as if a veil I had never been aware of
had been gently whisked from my eyes. I remembered that Maddalena had occasionally mentioned a certain Luca, always with disdain, as a rather crazy character without a job or trade, who raised bees, poached and lived all by himself, a dog’s life. Yes, this could only be Luca.... That’s why he knew my name.

  I realized, somewhat nebulously, that what Luca had said was a revelation of great importance; therefore I should not let him get away — I had to find a way to make him tell me more. Besides if I considered him a valuable catch, he judged me the same way: I was the child who lived in the same house as Maddalena, the house where he didn’t dare set foot even in her absence. I was curious to investigate these things, which until then I had believed to be peacefully normal, completely devoid of enigmas or underlying elements.

  Luca took me to his house. Although it was clean, it was saturated with odors: smoke, soot, wet Fustian, sweaty clothes. The walls were full of hunting trophies, and from time to time I would forget the reason why I had followed Luca, lost as I was in gazing at the heads of roebuck and wild boars. It was the first time I had found myself in the company of a real hunter, and I almost wondered why I didn’t feel all the emotion I imagined I would feel if I had been told ahead of time about such an encounter. I felt as if I weren’t taking full advantage of the opportunity. Then I returned to thinking about Luca’s revelation, and my awareness of all it meant continued to increase. My mother had died many years ago; her death was an event outside my experience. Since Maddalena wasn’t what I had believed her to be, it was as if I were losing my mother for the second time and both times in a peculiar manner — without feeling any grief. I was caught up in an extremely strange turn of events, like the characters in certain stories I had read, for instance, Romulus and Remus or even Moses; and this brought me a feeling akin to satisfaction. I decided that it was something to think about calmly, that it was too unpredictable and important to consider at once, there in the poacher’s house.

  My head still resonated from the blow received and in the depths of my consciousness flickered the idea that it was late, that I ought to go home. Luca didn’t know what more to do with me to make me think well of him. “You’d like to go hunting, wouldn’t you? You’d like that? Want to go after roebucks or wood grouse, up there on the mountain .... If you want to I’ll take you. Let’s see if you say yes....” “Sure I’d like to. But you’re joking; I don’t believe you....” “What? Me joke? I don’t even know what it means to joke. For me every word spoken is like a shiny stone, like a precious coin....”

  All excited, he set about readying his gun and his cartridge belt. Then it was really true, we were going up the mountain, like this, at night? I knew I shouldn’t accept. I felt a vague unease, a faint perplexity, all the more because it seemed I hadn’t locked the house and put the key behind the usual flower pot. Shouldn’t I at least let Maddalena know.... But basically I found it natural to go off like this, capriciously, without being accountable to anyone. If Maddalena wasn’t my mother the house was no longer my home, and I had neither a roof nor a family anymore; I was merely a vagabond who could go where he wanted to, up and down the world like a Gypsy. Maybe I wouldn’t even come back: a trick to punish Maddalena for not being my mother and for having hidden the truth from me for so long. But this thought quickly created an unexpected ramification; for a moment it appeared that my house was a place full of wonderful things I had never been aware of even though I lived there, just as I had never realized that Maddalena wasn’t my mother. I shook myself. It wasn’t this I should be thinking about. It was the mountain, hunting roebuck.

  Luca was moving about the house, going in and out of doors, euphoric and out of breath, until he had prepared a quantity of things in a corner of the kitchen: knapsack, hatchet, binoculars, cartridge belt, blankets, heavy sweaters, and various cardboard and metal boxes. He was breathing almost with difficulty. Then, in the midst of these preparations he suddenly stopped, brought up short by a disturbing thought. “You must be hungry, boy. So am I. Never mind, I’ll take care of that right away!”

  We ate a piece of cold rabbit and some bread and slightly sour apples with a glass of wine. Luca laughed from time to time and talked about the roebuck, more with gestures of hand and head than with words. “They run along on the gravel. Sometimes you hear the stones roll down and you don’t see anybody. It’s them, the roebuck. If you look closely at the snow you see their hoof-tracks. Roebuck look dark from far away. Like wolves....”

  * * *

  VI

  The Escape

  He loaded everything into the caleche and we left. The oil lantern barely lighted the path which crossed the lonely magredi. The vehicle bounced violently over holes and stones and at every bump Luca whipped the mule and then turned his cheerful face toward me. He stopped suddenly when we encountered a wagon driver who was returning late with a load of hay: “Listen, tell Maddalena that Giuliano is with me. We’re going to the mountains, we’ll be gone three days....”

  And if on the contrary I never came back? I might become a hunter or even play the flute at festivals. These seemed like promising possibilities especially because they were remote, while in all probability they would have been disturbing if they were imminent and I had to decide at once. But I still had so much time before me. I regretted not having brought the flute. It looked as if everything that was happening belonged to a chain of things that were unwinding one after another in the simplest and most natural way.

  I fell asleep at intervals, abandoning myself to the caleche with confidence, even though I didn’t know where it was taking me. Indeed I felt I had been born to climb on board the first vehicle in reach and set off wherever it happened to be going. In my more conscious moments I felt a thrill of happiness because I was going to the mountains, those very mountains I could see from home and which looked like gigantic stage settings, put there to conceal villages forever immersed in an atmosphere of festive ritual. On the summits, on the striated rocks that I could see from my terraces and which no one or almost no one could attain, there were hawks’ and eagles’ nests, and on the taluses (what were the taluses? huge piles of gravel?) bounded the roebuck. Now I was going up there with Luca and all the mysteries of the mountains would be unveiled.

  Once I woke up completely and found to my surprise that I was wrapped in a blanket and lying on top of a pile of hay. What had happened? Had we already arrived in the mountains? What time was it? And Luca? I got up, rubbing my eyes. I managed to find the door to the hayloft and to lift up the wooden bolt. Outside Luca was doing something or other around the caleche. The oil lantern illuminated the vehicle with a wavering and greasy flame while the mule calmly went on eating a mouthful of hay. Not far away was a group of houses barely touched by a bright reflection coming from behind the horizon and in the other direction an immense and profoundly dark form loomed over us. Thus we had arrived in the mountains.... It seemed like an extravagant dream.... It wasn’t possible the mountains would allow themselves to be reached so easily and moreover while I was asleep and hadn’t even taken note of the roads leading me to them. Luca, his hair every which way, his eyes round and startled, looked like a rumpled night bird generated by the mountain and its secret gorges. “It’s no go, no go, this state of affairs. We’ll have to turn back. I don’t trust this wheel on the roads here,” he muttered in an even voice. We loaded the blankets again and started rapidly back. I tried to hide my disappointment, but I could have sworn it would have ended this way, that the mountain would rebuff me. It was like when the heron escaped while I slept and dreamed of great flocks of birds as white as he was. It seemed natural that the mountain had succeeded in maintaining its mysteries inviolate. I had been there but almost all of the time asleep. Still, along with the disappointment, there was something like a feeling of relief, of a risk avoided. The enigma was still there, intact, and my fantasies would be able to go on hovering about it, anxious to resolve it.

  Luca left me in sight of my house and for nothing in the world
did I want to approach it. Once I was alone I sat down, a little disoriented, and all at once I felt all the fatigue of the trip, of the sleep lost, of a night in the open. It was dawn.

  Only when I crossed the threshold did I begin to consider seriously what Maddalena’s reaction to my nocturnal flight might be. Usually I would begin to worry about something only when it was upon me, because at a distance it would seem unreal and even unlikely ever actually to happen. I slipped into bed right away, not feeling like confronting Maddalena, preferring to wait out events. I forced myself to listen for potential sounds from other rooms. Nothing. Maddalena was out, thus the confrontation had been postponed.

  I slept profoundly for many hours and upon awakening began to listen carefully. Total silence. I went to the kitchen to look for something to eat, then sat down to read, waiting for her to return. But hours passed and the house remained silent, as if it had fallen into a strange catalepsy. Maybe Maddalena had gone out to look for me, to seek help (it was possible the wagon driver hadn’t found her), and at that hour who could tell where she was. Or she could even have decided not to come back, to stay there in those places where she went so often, because after all she wasn’t my mother and she could have unexpectedly realized that I didn’t mean a thing to her. In this way I recalled the business about my mother, which came and went with a curious intermittence and created in me a disorientation that I didn’t know how to deal with. I couldn’t manage to feel like an orphan because I had Maddalena; and on the other hand, I felt that she was no longer a true mother, but something very different.