The Wooden Throne Read online

  But I could never get anything out of them. Once they got what they wanted they immediately stopped talking like poor wretches begging to be saved and began laughing, cackling and hissing the shrill sounds of their incomprehensible language. They would answer me distractedly, craftily, with a phrase or two, in no way taking me seriously. “Do you come from Russia? From Hungary? From Slavonia?” I asked, but they replied with the names of nearby villages, totally uninteresting places I had already seen over and over — then they would burst out laughing like maniacs. “Have you ever been in Denmark?” They looked at one another as if they’d never heard the name.

  I soon realized it was useless to keep asking; it wouldn’t work and once again my curiosity would remain unsatisfied.

  I finally became aware of their coarseness, their greed, and the irreparable hypocrisy that engulfed them from head to foot. I noticed the filth and stench of their caravans and their ragged clothes and fled in disgust. But later it often happened that my attitude would change once more. From my house I would hear their singing, the whinnying of horses, the girls’ laughter, or I would see the flames of their camp fires when night was coming on and suddenly the force that had always drawn me toward them would come to life again and I would go back down to the stream where they were camped. I envied them because in a few days they would hitch up their horses again, put out their fires, and start off who-knows-where. Now and then for an instant I would again fall prey to the old fear-desire that they would kidnap me.

  Besides I was forever subject to secret attractions in things: a voice would be enough, a sound, a flight of birds, the scudding of clouds across the sky, a train whistle. For me everything had a double face, the first banally visible, the second enigmatic and discoverable only in fortunate circumstances. At times even what stood behind the face of death appeared charged with attractions.

  By complicated negotiation, of which I saw only the final results, Maddalena managed to inform herself about scholastic programs and bring home to me old schoolbooks belonging to students who by now probably even had gray hair and children of their own. She would put them down in front of me with her customary self-satisfaction, but, glancing through their pages, which were often filled with odd-looking marks, she would give me a worried look as though to assess my resourcefulness and find out whether I would continue to study by myself.

  It was a problem only to her. I dived into the books and in a short time read and reread all the ones about history, literature, geography, science and astronomy. On the other hand, those about mathematics, chemistry or geometry hadn’t the slightest attraction and I neglected them until a few days before the exams. In this way, reading and studying at my own whim, and by myself, I was able to maintain the totally arbitrary image of existence that I had created for myself, the image, that is, of an immense vacation in which one could always do whatever came to mind while awaiting some event that would open wide the doors of the future.

  I particularly liked the history books. The deeds of Caesar, Alexander the Great, Hannibal and Genghis Khan were adventures something like Ishmael’s. I didn’t think for a moment that they had really happened somewhere in the world in remote times, even as my life was unfolding now. For me historical figures were either sympathetic or unsympathetic heroes and I took sides for or against them as if what they did was occurring in the present moment and might still have an uncertain outcome. I felt acute suspense as I read about the succession of events and experienced a twinge of anguish as I came upon epilogues that I would have wished otherwise.

  I was torn by painful longings when I learned that Alexander had died at only thirty-three, or that Caesar had been stabbed by his adopted son the day of the Ides of March. And his wife had even had a bad dream and, possessed of a vague foreboding that something tragic would happen, begged him not to go that day to the Senate. But why, why did Caesar go just the same?

  I was assaulted by restless anxiety as if I might still stop him at the door, running to him across abysses of space and time. I saw him among the white columns in the atrium of his house, uncertain about what to do as he studied Calpurnia’s face, trying to understand whether there was any substance to her obscure premonition. Yes, there had been many signs of his destiny but he hadn’t known how to interpret them. To me they all seemed clear, now that the event had irreparably occurred. The expression “the Ides of March” sufficed in itself to call up thickening shadows of the gloomiest of fates. But in reality it all became clear only after the blows of the dagger had tumbled him to earth at the feet of the statue of Pompey. He had held the head of his rival in his hand after Pompey had been betrayed and killed by Ptolemy, and at the very feet of a stone Pompey Caesar himself had fallen. There was in all this a singularity of coincidences, a crossroads where the ways of destiny intersected and its mysterious language became clear. I thought I might write something about Caesar, more than anything else to compensate him for what fate had taken so abruptly from him, to help him complete what he had left half finished — his works for peace, the colossal projects he had only had time to conceive. In my memoir Caesar achieved all these things, and derived from them a profound satisfaction because he had feared he wouldn’t get them done in time, had feared that death would interrupt him. But at a certain point everything in his mind got mixed up and darkened and at the end it became clear that all this had been only a fleeting dream unfolding in Caesar’s mind between the instant the murderous dagger struck and the moment his consciousness flickered out forever.

  Once in a while Maddalena would ask me if I was succeeding in studying alone, would inquire about what I had learned; I would begin to recount the intrigues of Egyptian or Byzantine courts, or tell her sinister stories from the Renaissance about poisons and conspiracies, maybe unconsciously trying to scare her. She would nod quietly, her face full of awe and admiration, securely convinced that I hadn’t been wasting my time. Narrating these extravagant events, half-invented, I had the impression that part of me was listening too, was considering me ironically as if to ask what the devil I was going on about, as if to apply to me the words “buffoon,” “comedian,” “impostor,” words that others didn’t have the courage to say out loud to my face.

  Sometimes I felt the importance of my studying for the “normal” schools (there was no one else in the village doing this), but for the most part my consciousness of being a student disappeared and the period so spent became in the end a farcical interval, remote and improbable. It was as if the whole business of school and studying concerned some other boy who, like me, was named Giuliano Bertoni, who, like me, was a little savage, but who at bottom wasn’t me. I did everything with fabulous levity, committing myself only up to a certain point, sliding over things like a sled on ice. I was always telling stories to myself in a perennial monologue in which there was no question of asking whether what I said was true or if I really believed it.

  * * *

  XII

  Lucina

  About that time my solitude came abruptly to an end. A family including girls of various ages moved in not far from us. They settled in an abandoned house after repairing it haphazardly. They had tried to rent a part of our house from Maddalena but she wouldn’t hear of it and in fact sent them away with ill humor because they were as insistent and importunate as the Gypsies. Wretchedly poor, they too were forever in search of something to eat: crabs, fish, frogs, snails — and they knew all the greens that could be put on the table. They raised an infinity of different animals and worked at tasks I had never seen, such as collecting mulberry bark or hunting moles, then tacking the skins up to dry and stretch in the sun.

  Right away I was both attracted and repelled by them as I had been by the Gypsies, and I didn’t know whether to seek out or avoid those little girls who acted as if they had been bitten by the tarantula. Even if I had chosen not to associate with them I wouldn’t have succeeded. The ones closest to my age pounced on me at once. They would call me and follow me through the house if
Maddalena wasn’t home, furtively pocketing a piece of bread or cheese left out in sight. Searching for food was for them a kind of noisy game that provoked endless laughter mixed with continual shoves, slaps, hair pulling, bites and yanks on pinafores or skirts already much mended and patched. They pushed each other down, rolled in the grass, thistles or water-hemlock of the magredi, fighting over a frog or a snail.

  I might at any moment catch sight of their slender legs the color of earth, flashing and kicking in the air before they got up and ran off at top speed. Sometimes they scuffled, or pretended to, right next to me as if to invite me to take part in their squabbles. I acted contemptuous. For me they were too noisy and vulgar. Although I too had grown up more or less wild I was considerably calmer; I liked moderation and silence.

  Yet at the same time those little girls possessed something that constrained me to pursue them, something I couldn’t resist. Every now and then one of them would suddenly come up to me and give me a push or trip me, then run away like a deer, shouting boisterously, “Catch me if you can!” Impossible not to accept the challenge. Thus we engaged in furious chases that lasted for half an hour at a time, even when we were dead tired and panting heavily. Sometimes one of them would pretend to be tired, to have decided to let me catch her and would throw herself down in the grass. I would approach to grab her but she would give me another treacherous push that might even send me sprawling and would get up and run swiftly away, her hair flying in the wind.

  From the time they came I hardly touched my books, nor thought any more about preparing for exams or writing stories; neither did I waste further time puzzling over what I might need for a polar expedition. Even Maddalena, who always left me free to do what I wanted, even she now and again would say to me, “Don’t be always following those crazy ponies around. It’s not the thing to do....” Because of some sort of hesitation she didn’t explain the reason, as if there were something important to add but it was too complicated and embarrassing to say right out. I knew Maddalena was right. Yet when she was away I rushed down to the cortile as soon as I heard the squeals and laughter of the sisters.

  Once they surprised me in the meadow, where I was lying in the grass reading. They had crept up silently, like polecats, and I realized it only when the shadow of one of them fell across my face. Before I had time to get up two jumped on top of me and immobilized my legs and arms while the third began to undo the straps of my pants. Their impudence provoked an outburst of masculine rage, as well as an indistinct uneasiness, and with a few desperate jerks I succeeded in shaking them off. Their violence had aroused in me a confused urge to pummel them, to squeeze them hard enough to hurt them. As soon as they saw my face distorted in anger they fled in three different directions, howling with pretended terror.

  I chased one of them, whose name was Lucina, and when I was about to grab her she managed to leap inside the door to my house and tried to close it by force. If I had inserted my fingers she would have cut them clean off. I was in time to stick my clog in the way and the door wouldn’t shut. Lucina screamed, burst out laughing, then ran away inside the house. I was furious at the fact that she wasn’t the least bit scared, that she was faking fear by her screams and that, quite the reverse, she was expressing her satisfaction at my exasperation by her constant laughter.

  She stamped harder than I could on the wooden steps leading to the attic, as though instead of attempting to get away she was trying on purpose to let me know which way she was going, to defy me and to show she wasn’t afraid of me. I pursued her furiously but with a sense of not believing any more in my rage, of faking it to myself just to have an excuse to seize her in the darkness of the attic and find out what would happen next. Further than that my imagination wouldn’t go; the image of what might occur didn’t take definite shape, though it remained filled with trembling anticipation.

  I thought of the Dane, who had spent several stormy months in that house, and who had probably on occasion followed a girl as she climbed swaying up the creaky stairs of the attic. Certainly not my grandmother, who was much too dignified to behave that way, according to what I had heard, but some other among those who had been attracted by the music and dancing that filled the house at all hours.

  Lucina fled for a little longer, then suddenly seemed to resign herself and curled up on the floor on top of a pile of sacks. I took hold of her long hair and held her still, thinking about what I could do to her, choosing among various possibilities and studying her reactions. She tried to escape from me with a sudden jerk, passing under my legs; not succeeding she started to bite my calf, like a mad dog. I yelled, picked her up bodily and threw her back down on the pile of sacks, as if she were some animal caught devastating the garden. Then I leaped on top of her, holding her arms fast and keeping her legs closed with mine. We were both breathing hard and not just from the effort.

  We had now reached the end of what I had foreseen, the dark and mysterious part was beginning. Lucina was laughing, a nervous and strident laugh and I began to do the same, as if I wanted to play down what was happening.

  When she stopped struggling I freed one of her hands and with my own began to caress her slender legs, the bronzed eels I had so often seen flashing in the sun and air. She let me, seemed to invite me to continue. I felt shudders all over; hot and cold alternating in my limbs, as if they didn’t belong to me any more and were following unknown laws on their own, laws over which I had no control. Still it seemed impossible that the sequence of dark and secret, but powerfully attractive, events that happened between men and women was there within easy reach, ready for me to experience. There had to be a mistake, something that wouldn’t work or a hidden trick that would soon snap shut like a trap; I was sure that my right to go further would be contested.

  In fact something did happen once I thought that now it wouldn’t, since Lucina seemed to want what I wanted. At a certain point she drew herself up, lunged at me, head down, and tore herself out of my hands violently enough to succeed even against an enraged will to hold on to her. But I didn’t even think of it. If she wanted to escape she was absolutely free to do so; motionless and inert, I watched her run away, as though I had emerged from an exalted reverie.

  Lucina was laughing and in her laugh there appeared to be mockery toward me, while actually (I understood it) there was only nervous tension about that limit she had brushed against with avid curiosity but lacked the courage to cross.

  Subsequently the memory of what had happened in the attic sharpened my sense of a reality that escaped me, which revealed itself nebulously on the other side of a veil just to arouse my desire and then withdrew and disappeared. These feelings were linked to my desire to see what was beyond the mountains or to discover the secrets hidden behind the figure of the Dane and my family history, or even what I felt was contained in the situation of the Gypsies, who also possessed a secret I couldn’t even scratch, hopelessly concealed as it was behind the songs and the crafty hypocrisy.

  There were other episodes like this one, with Lucina or one of her sisters. All the girls had about them something harsh and untamed. My wrestles with them were like biting into an unripe fruit that sets your teeth on edge so you don’t know whether to chew it up or spit it out in disgust.

  * * *

  XIII

  The White Horses

  One day I saw the sisters with another girl who from a distance I mistook for one of them because she had the same long hair of an unusual chestnut color that took on greenish reflections against the light, like bronze. No one told me her name or why she had arrived in our neighborhood along with the others or where she had come from. She simply entered at once into our games.

  I noticed immediately that she was more shapely than those mad ponies: a sign for me that she had turned up in their group by chance and wouldn’t stay with them; rather she would have frowned at the way our games often ended up. Or been downright outraged if I had made the same attempts with her. I thought she was slightly older tha
n I was and before long I began to harbor a vague grudge against her, believing she had some bigger boy keeping an eye on her.

  I soon had to change my opinions. The new arrival was even more reckless than the others. She ran as fast and had an astounding ability to climb trees, as if her arms and legs were tentacles equipped with suction cups. Her skill almost offended me. I sensed a challenge. I began to compete with her, scaling the tallest poplars, whose trunks in some spots were smooth as leather. Up there, however, I was subject to vertigo and had to come down hurriedly, while she laughed and started to sing.

  I decided cheerfully that she had a screw loose, becoming all the more convinced when she risked breaking her neck to climb on the roof of a sawmill where a kitten was mewing desperately, perhaps starving to death. “Come back down, please — come on now.... What’s your name?”

  “Flora,” she shouted boldly.

  I was invaded by a sensation like a musical buzz; I felt the stirring of something dormant and far off that was coming to life again, stretching gracefully like a nymph waking up in a river or a fountain. Was this the same Flora I had played doctor with some nine or ten years before? When I asked her she shrugged her shoulders and said she didn’t remember. How could she with all the places she’d been? For her the question was closed and liquidated, while I obstinately kept looking for any trace that might throw a bridge between her and my far distant memory. I almost doubted now that the Flora I recalled had ever really existed.

  When she was climbing somewhere (even into my room once, hoisting herself up on the gutters) I couldn’t take my eyes off her legs, which were much more attractive than Lucina’s or those of the other sisters. She noticed and found it amusing. One time, coming down from a tree she got a tear in her white embroidered blouse. I felt sorry at once, distressed. My clothes were all torn and mended, so they weren’t worth worrying about whatever happened to them. But a blouse as pretty as that....