Overwhelmed by the spell of the place, Roberto did not reflect on the residue of rain that the leaves were holding, though it surely had not rained for at least three days. The perfumes that stunned him led him to consider any enchantment natural.
It seemed to him natural that a flaccid, drooping fruit should smell like a fermented cheese, and that a sort of purplish pomegranate with a hole at the bottom, when shaken, should give off a faint rattle as a seed danced about inside it, as if this were not a flower at all but a child's toy; nor was he amazed by a cusp-shaped blossom, hard and round at the base. Roberto had never seen a weeping palm, like a willow, but he had one before him, its multiple roots forming a paw from which rose a trunk that ended in a single clump, while the fronds of that plaintive plant sagged, exhausted by their own floridness. He had not yet reached another bush that produced broad and pulpy leaves, stiffened by a central nerve that seemed of iron, ready to be used as dishes or trays, while nearby grew other leaves in the form of limp spoons.
Uncertain if he was wandering in a mechanical forest or in an earthly paradise hidden in the bowels of the earth, Roberto roamed in that Eden that provoked odorous deliriums.
Later, when he tells all this to the Lady, he speaks of rustic frenzies, gardens of caprice, Protean bowers, cedars (cedars?) mad with lovely fury.... Or else he re-experiences it as a floating cavern rich in deceitful automata where, girded with horribly twisted cables, fanatic nasturtiums billow, wicked stolons of barbarous forest.... He will write of the opium of the senses, a whirl of putrid elements that, precipitating into impure extracts, led him to the antipodes of reason.
At first he attributed to the song reaching him from the Island the impression of feathered voices audible among the flowers and plants: but suddenly his flesh crawled at the passage of a bat that grazed his face, and immediately afterwards he had to duck to avoid a falcon that flung itself on its prey, felling it with a blow of its beak.
Moving farther into the lower deck, still hearing the distant birds of the Island, and convinced he was hearing them through the openings of the hull, Roberto now realized those sounds were much closer. They could not come from shore: so other birds, and not far away, were singing, beyond the plants, towards the prow, in the direction of that storeroom from which he had heard noises the night before.
It seemed to him, as he proceeded, that the garden ended at the foot of a tall trunk that went through the upper deck, then he realized that he had arrived more or less at the center of the ship, where the mainmast rose from the very bottom of the keel. But by now artifice and nature were so confused that we can justify also our hero's confusion. For, at that very point, his nostrils began to perceive a mixture of aromas, earthy molds, and animal stench, as if he were moving slowly from a flower garden to a sheepfold.
He was passing the trunk of the mainmast, heading for the prow, when he saw the aviary.
He could think of no other definition for that collection of wicker cages with solid boughs run through them to serve as perch, inhabited by flying creatures striving to discern that dawn of which they had only a beggared light, and to reply with distorted voices to the call of their similars singing in freedom on the Island. Set on the ground or hanging from the hatch of the deck above, the cages were arranged along this other nave like stalagmites and stalactites, creating another grotto of wonders, where the fluttering animals made their dwellings rock beneath the sun's rays, in a glitter of hues, a flurry of rainbows.
If until that day he had never heard birds really sing, neither could Roberto say he had ever seen birds, at least not in such guises, so many that he asked himself if they were in their natural state or if an artist's hand had painted them and decorated them for some pantomime, or to feign an army on parade, each foot-soldier and horseman cloaked in his own standard.
An embarrassed Adam, he could give no names to these creatures, except the names of birds of his own hemisphere: That one is a heron, he said to himself, that a crane, a quail.... But it was like calling a goose a swan.
Here prelates with broad cardinal's trains and beaks shaped like alembics spread grass-colored wings, swelling a rosy throat and revealing an azure breast, chanting in almost human sound; there multiple squads performed in great tourney, venturing assaults on the depressed domes that circumscribed their arena, among dove-gray flashes and red and yellow thrusts, like oriflammes that a squire threw and caught. Grouchy light cavalry, with long nervous legs in a cramped space, neighed indignantly cra-cra-cra, at times hesitating on one foot and peering around suspiciously, shaking the tufts on their elongated heads ... Only in one cage, built to his measure, a great captain in a bluish cloak, his jerkin as vermilion as his eye and a cornflower plume on his helmet, emitted a dove's lament. In a small coop nearby, three foot-soldiers remained on the ground, without wings, little skipping clumps of muddied wool, mouse-muzzles moustached at the root of long curved beaks equipped with nostrils the little monsters used to sniff as they pecked the worms encountered in their path.... In a cage that wound like a narrow alley, a small stork with carrot legs, aquamarine breast, black wings, and flushed beak moved hesitantly, followed by its offspring in Indian file and, as its path ended, it croaked with vexation, first stubbornly trying to break what seemed to it a tangle of withes, then stepping back, reversing direction, with its young bewildered, not knowing whether to go forward or backward.
Roberto was divided between excitement at his discovery, pity for the prisoners, and the desire to release them and see his cathedral invaded by those heralds of an airy army, to save them from the siege to which the Daphne, besieged in her turn by the others, their similars outside, had constrained them. He imagined they were hungry, and saw that in the cages there were only crumbs of food, and the dishes and bowls that should have contained water were empty. But not far off he found sacks of grain and shreds of dried fish, prepared by those who meant to take this booty to Europe, for a ship does not go into the seas of the opposite south without bringing back to the courts or academies evidence of those worlds.
Proceeding further, he found also a pen made of planks with a dozen animals scratching inside it, belonging, he decided, to the poultry species, even though at home he had never seen any with such plumage. They too seemed hungry, but the hens had laid (and were glorifying the event like their sisters all over the world) six eggs.
Roberto seized one immediately, pierced it with the tip of his knife, and sucked it as he had done as a child. Then he placed the others inside his shirt and, to compensate the fecund mothers and fathers who were staring at him with great outrage, shaking their wattles, he distributed water and food; and he then did the same, cage by cage, wondering by what providence he had landed on the Daphne just as the animals were about to starve. In fact, by now he had been on the ship two nights, so someone had tended the aviaries the day before his arrival at the latest. He felt like a guest who arrives at a feast, tardy, to be sure, but while the last of the other guests are just leaving and the tables have not yet been cleared.
For that matter, he said to himself, it is an established fact that someone was here earlier and now is here no longer. Whether it was one day or ten days before my arrival, my fate remains unchanged, or, at most, it becomes more of a mockery: being shipwrecked a day earlier, I could have joined the sailors of the Daphne, wherever they have gone. Or perhaps not, I could have died with them, if they are dead. He heaved a sigh (at least it had nothing to do with rats) and concluded that he had at his disposal also some chickens. He reconsidered his thought of freeing the bipeds of nobler lineage and decided that if his exile were to last long, they might even prove edible. The hidalgos before Casale were beautiful and varicolored, too, and yet we fired on them, and if the siege had lasted, we would even have eaten them. Anyone who soldiered in the Thirty Years' War (that is what I call it, but those alive at the time did not call it that, and perhaps they did not even understand that it was one long war in the course of which, every now and then, somebody signed
a peace treaty) learned how to harden his heart.
CHAPTER 4
Fortification Display'd
WHY DOES ROBERTO evoke Casale when describing his first days on the ship? His taste for parallels is one reason, of course: besieged then, besieged now. But from a man of his century we demand something better. If anything, what should have fascinated him in the similarity are the differences, fertile in elaborate antitheses: Casale he had entered of his own choice, to prevent others from entering; he had been cast up on the Daphne, and yearned only to leave it. But I would say, rather, that while he lived a life of shadows, he recalled a story of violent deeds performed in broad daylight, so that the sun-filled days of the siege, which his memory restored to him, would compensate for this dim roaming. And perhaps there was something more to it. In the first part of Roberto's life, there had been only two periods in which he learned something of the world and of the ways of inhabiting it; I refer to the few months of the siege and to the later years in Paris. Now he was going through his third formative period, perhaps the last, at the end of which maturity might coincide with dissolution, and he was trying to decipher its secret message, seeing the past as a figure of the present.
***
Casale, at the beginning, was a story of sorties. Roberto tells this story to the Lady, transfiguring it, as if to say that, unable as he had been to storm the castle of her intact snow, shaken but not undone by the flame of his two suns, in the flame of that earlier sun he had still been able to pit himself against those who laid siege to his Monferrato citadel.
The morning after the men from La Griva arrived, Toiras sent some single officers, carbines on their shoulder, to observe what the Neapolitans were installing on the hill conquered the previous day. The officers approached too closely, and shots were exchanged: a young lieutenant of the Pompadour regiment was killed. His comrades carried him back inside the walls, and Roberto saw the first slain man in his life. Toiras decided to have his men occupy the hovels he had mentioned the day before.
From the bastions it was easy to observe the advance of the ten musketeers, who at a certain point separated in an attempt to seize the first house, as if with pincers. Cannon fire from the walls passed above their heads and tore the roof off the house: like a swarm of insects, Spaniards dashed out and fled. The musketeers let them escape, took the house, barricaded themselves inside, and began laying down a harassing fire towards the hill.
It seemed advisable to repeat the operation against the other houses: even from the bastions it was clear that the Neapolitans had begun digging trenches, edging them with fagots and gabions. But these did not circumscribe the hill, they ran towards the plain. Roberto learned that this was how the enemy started constructing mine tunnels. Once these reached the walls, they would be packed, along their final stretch, with kegs of powder. It was thus necessary to prevent the initial digging from reaching a depth sufficient to allow further digging underground, otherwise the enemy from that point on could work under cover. This was the whole game: to anticipate from outside, in the open, the construction of the tunnels, and to dig countermine-tunnels of one's own from the other direction, until the relief army arrived and while provisions and ammunition lasted. In a siege there is nothing else to do: harry the other side, and wait.
The following morning, as promised, it was the turn of the outwork. Roberto found himself grasping his caliver in the midst of an unruly bunch of men who back in Lu or Cuccaro or Odalengo had never wanted to work. With some surly Corsicans, they were all crammed into boats to cross the Po, after two French companies had already touched the other shore. Toiras and his staff observed from the right bank, and old Pozzo saluted his son before waving him on with one hand, then put his forefinger to his cheekbone and pulled the skin down, as if to say, "Keep your eyes open!"
The three companies made camp in the outwork. Construction had not been completed, and part of the finished walls had already collapsed. The men spent the day barricading the gaps. The position was well protected by a ditch, beyond which some sentries were posted. When night fell, the sky was so bright that the sentries dozed off, and not even the officers considered an attack possible. But suddenly they heard the charge sounded, and they saw the Spanish light cavalry appear.
Roberto had been set by Captain Bassiani behind some bales of straw that patched a fallen part of the outer wall: he had no time to realize what was happening. Each cavalryman had a musketeer behind him and, as they arrived at the ditch, the horses began to follow it, surrounding the post while the musketeers fired, eliminating the few sentries. Then each musketeer jumped from his horse's back, rolling into the ditch. As the horsemen formed a semicircle before the entrance, opening heavy fire and forcing the defenders to seek cover, the musketeers, unharmed, reached the gate and the more vulnerable breaches.
The Italian company, which was on guard, had emptied its weapons and then scattered, seized with panic, and they would long be reviled for this; but the French companies could do no better. Between the first attack and the scaling of the walls only a few minutes had passed, and the rest of the men were surprised by the attackers, who were inside the walls before the defenders could even grab their weapons.
The enemy, exploiting this surprise, were slaughtering the garrison, and they were so numerous that while some continued felling the defenders still on their feet, others had already begun despoiling the fallen. Roberto, after firing on the musketeers, was reloading painfully, his shoulder sore from the recoil; he was unprepared for the charge of the cavalry. As the charge passed over his head through the breach, a horse's hoofs buried him under the collapsing barricade. It was a stroke of luck: protected by the fallen bales, he survived the first, murderous impact, and now, glancing from beneath his rick, he saw with horror the enemies finishing off the wounded, hacking at a finger in order to steal a ring, or a whole hand for a bracelet.
Captain Bassiani, to compensate for the shame of his men's rout, fought on bravely; but he was surrounded and had to surrender. From the riverbank they saw that the situation was critical, and Colonel La Grange, who had left the outwork after an inspection and was regaining Casale, wanted to rush to the assistance of the defenders, but he was restrained by his officers, who advised him rather to ask the city for reinforcements. From the right bank more boats set out, while Toiras, having been wakened abruptly, now arrived at full tilt. It quickly became clear that the French were routed, and the only thing to do was to lay down some covering fire to help the survivors reach the river.
In this confusion old Pozzo could be seen impatiently galloping back and forth between the staff and the jetty, seeking Roberto among those who had escaped. When it was almost certain that no more boats were coming, he was heard to utter "Oh cripes!" Then, as a man who knew the whims of the river, making a fool of those who had till then heaved and rowed, he chose a spot opposite one of the sandbars and spurred his horse into the water. Crossing a bar, he was on the other shore without even having made the animal swim, and he dashed like a madman, sword upraised, towards the outwork.
As the sky was already growing light, a group of enemy musketeers surrounded him, having no idea who this solitary rider was. The solitary rider rode through them, eliminating at least five with unerring downward blows; he encountered two cavalrymen, made his horse rear, bent to one side, avoiding a thrust, and suddenly sat erect, swinging his blade in a circle: the first adversary slumped over his saddle with his guts slipping down into his boots as the horse ran off; the second remained with his eyes wide, his fingers seeking one ear which, while still attached to his cheek, was hanging below his chin.
Pozzo arrived at the outwork. The invaders, busy stripping the last to fall—fugitives shot in the back—had no idea where this man had come from. He entered the compound, calling his son in a loud voice; he swept away another four people as he described a circle, jabbing his sword at all the cardinal points. Emerging from the straw, Roberto saw him at a distance and, before recognizing his father, he
recognized Pagnufli, his father's mount and his own playmate for years. He stuck two fingers into his mouth and let out a whistle the animal knew well, and in fact Pagnufli reared, pricked up his ears, and began carrying the father towards the breach. Pozzo saw Roberto and shouted, "What are you doing in a place like that? Mount, you lunatic!" And as Roberto sprang onto the horse's back and clung to his father's waist, Pozzo said, "God's truth, you're never where you should be." Then, spurring Pagnufli again, he galloped off towards the river.
Now some of the looters realized that this man in this place was out of place, and they pointed at him, shouting. An officer wearing a dented cuirass and with three soldiers following him tried to block Pozzo's path. The old man saw him, started to swerve, then pulled on the reins and cried, "Talk about fate!" Roberto looked ahead and realized that this was the Spaniard who had let them pass three days before. The officer, too, had recognized his prey, and he advanced, eyes gleaming, sword upraised.
Old Pozzo rapidly shifted his sword to his left hand, drew his pistol from his belt, and held out his arm, all so quickly that the Spaniard was surprised; in his impetuosity he was now almost facing Pozzo, who however did not fire at once. He allowed himself the time to say, "Sorry about the pistol. But you're wearing a breastplate, so I have every right—" He pressed the trigger and felled the man with a bullet in his mouth. The soldiers, seeing their leader fall, took flight, and Pozzo replaced the pistol, saying, "We'd better go on before they lose their temper.... Move, Pagnufli!"