The Wooden Throne (18 page)

Namu had the courage to approach and take care of things from which others fled in terror. She did everything with the same serenity, unshaken in her imperturbable demeanor befitting an idol or a sleepwalker, as though it were the same to her to help a girl give birth as to lay out the dead for burial.

Once she had spent an entire night keeping watch over a three-year-old child who had died of pneumonia. The Etruscan said that the mother, unable to bear her grief, had run out of the house and fled. Namu had dressed the tiny body and all night long her voice had been heard repeating unintelligible phrases — Namu, who hardly ever spoke, who limited herself to measured skillful gestures when she took care of the sick and the dying. It had been a memorable night. Most of the villagers had gone looking for the mother and all the fields and woods had echoed with her name. Others who had remained gathered together in the house in the next room behind a door with frosted glass windows, not daring to enter the room where Namu was talking to the child as she combed his hair. Behind her back the fire was flickering its last and people outside could see her shadow projected on the wall by the restless flame. Namu went on talking in an absent monotone until one of those present, with an impatient motion, asked Pietro what that crazy old woman was saying. “She’s telling stories. Old Indian legends....”

The Etruscan’s voice had trembled slightly. “Does the mother still live here in the village?” She nodded, holding her body stiff. “Do you know her? What’s her name?” She didn’t answer, merely stared at me as if studying the effect of her story, and it was only much later that I could fully assess the meaning of that look.

By now I was completely well. There was no more reason for me to remain in Cretis; I could leave anytime. Yet I couldn’t seem to decide. One morning I woke up acutely aware that I had come to a dead end in that village, that I had wasted time, given up Denmark and even my destiny itself. How was it possible? How could it have happened...? I shuddered from head to foot; I was becoming unrecognizable, a stranger to myself, as if I had boarded an unknown ship headed for some cryptic destination. Even Montalto seemed to be out of reach; I now thought of it the way you perceive places in a dream that you can’t get to for reasons that are clear enough in the dream but make no sense once you wake up. But then the shell around Montalto, which kept it out of reach, dissolved or at least changed character. There was too much snow and I wouldn’t be able to make it by myself. If I tried I’d run into the same problems I had on the road to Cretis: I’d get lost in the snow, get frozen again and maybe even die because no one could defy the ambiguous Gamester twice and get away with it; it was he after all who had tricked Caesar on the Ides of March. No, next time I wouldn’t be so lucky. I had to wait for spring, when the trip would be little more than a pleasant hike. But after a few months would I still want to go to Montalto to search for Flora? Where did I really want to go anyhow?

I felt as if a crevice was opening inside me, and something was sadly melting away, vanishing as though swallowed in hidden cracks. Perhaps life and the world held no surprising adventures at all, but only meaningless dreams like mirages that always dissolved only to reappear and vanish anew.

I didn’t get to see the Etruscan for the whole day. I thought she might not be feeling well because she was usually in constant motion, absorbed in some task or other, which she would carry out with easy and geometrical precision. I recalled that during the day there had been a kind of rippling nervousness, almost imperceptible, throughout the house. I had heard Pietro talk about boot tracks in the snow under the windows of the girl’s room. There had been talk about this subject more than once; it seemed in fact to have completely taken up everybody’s thought for the whole day. Then, toward five o’clock (the sun had already disappeared behind the mountains) I had heard a man calling from the direction of the woods: “Lia! Lia! Lia!”

The voice was far away but nonetheless the old man and Red started a bit on hearing it. The dog had been barking for some time, then his whining had quieted down as if into a yawn, and a shadow had passed back and forth two or three times among the spruces closest to the house on the side toward the border. Who was he? What did he want? Was his the voice calling Lia? Did the people in the house know him? And was Lia the Etruscan’s name?

I went out to explore. I too saw the fresh snow full of tracks. Someone must have walked up and down, for who could say how long, in the grip of extreme impatience. Coming back inside I almost bumped into Red, who was carrying a bucket of still-warm milk. Then, raising my eyes, I saw a girl framed in the lighted window and the way her hair was combed alarmed me suddenly. She reminded me of someone.... I went in quietly after letting Red go ahead of me so I wouldn’t be noticed.

I climbed the stairs and approached the lighted room, walking close to the wall, without making any noise. I looked through the keyhole to take her unawares, but the room had returned to darkness. If the woman was still there I couldn’t see her. I was on the point of knocking, so intense was my curiosity, or rather my anxious desire and anticipation. I had never seen the Etruscan with her hair done that way so there must be a stranger in the house. But when had she come, and why hadn’t I seen her before?

I waited for a while at the door, hoping that the stranger was really in that room and that sooner or later she would come out, and I would see her up close despite the darkness. No sound came from the room; thus I thought first that the girl had become conscious of my presence and was cleverly trying to convince me that there was no one there so I would go away. Then I thought she had in fact already left. After a quarter of an hour of useless waiting I decided to lift the siege and went back down the hallway to return to my room. But at the very moment I lost sight of the door it opened silently and a shadow slipped out, running away along the wall. I succeeded in distinguishing only the whiteness of the high-button shoes the girl was wearing.

I waited until the figure had disappeared, then followed her, still persisting in the belief that I had not been noticed or that at least the woman did not suspect she was being watched. At the end of the hallway I began to climb the stairs since on that floor (the third) all the doors had always been closed and perhaps concealed the secret. Then I heard a faint creak and a door behind me opened slightly, perhaps from a draft. From inside came a dim glow. I turned back, still without making any noise (something I had perhaps learned by modeling myself unconsciously on the inhabitants of the house). In the room an oil lamp turned down to its lowest flame illuminated the figure of the stranger in the mirror of a wardrobe. Her hair was long and loose, one of her legs was resting on a stool, and she was in the process of unbuttoning her shoes. She was wearing a very short dress of a changeable color like those worn by dancers in operettas or circus riders. “Flora! Flora!” I called sotto voce and entered quickly for fear that the door might close on me. “I’m not Flora. Flora is my sister.... How do you know her? I’m Lia....”

“And I’m Giuliano,” I whispered. But Lia knew already; they all knew because they had read it on the copy of
Moby Dick
that I had brought with me from Ontàns, even though — queer people that they were — they had never let on that they knew.

It was like a dream in which one falls from one cloud to another or plunges into the sea without ever managing to reach the bottom. Now at last I understood why the girl had often reminded me of something. It wasn’t only because of her Etruscan features; it was a hidden resemblance to Flora that had now been unveiled because she had taken down her hair and put on one of those dresses that I could very easily imagine her sister wearing. More than that, I seemed to remember Flora wearing high-button shoes like Lia’s. I felt a quivering pulse through my veins. So this and not the other was Flora’s home village and I, choosing the wrong place, had actually ended up in the right one. Destiny really was an incomparable joker, inexhaustibly inventive....

We sat down. Lia also was somewhat agitated. Not so much, I felt, because I had surprised her in that dress but more because I had mistaken her for her sister. I tried to profit from her disorientation to make her tell me everything she knew about Flora. Her voice became melancholy, as if Flora represented for her, as for me, a battle lost, an irretrievable love. Where she was, Lia didn’t know. For years now Flora had been living away from home. First she had gone to stay with a relative in a village beyond the Tagliamento, then she had run away from there too, and there was no telling where she had ended up and with whom. Every once in a while they would receive a postcard, always from a different place, and beside her signature there was usually a man’s signature as well — a man who was sometimes named Felice, Valeriano, Peter, Simone, or Michel. Once Flora had even shown up at Cretis with a foreign youth who didn’t understand a word of Italian and limited himself to nodding “yes” every time he was asked a question. It was almost midnight, and everyone in the house had been asleep. Flora had made them get up and after a drink of milk (an interminable drink, enough to take her breath away) had introduced Johannes to them, saying that he was a fantastic young man without equal. She had taken him around the village, wanted everyone to meet him....

I believed I knew the reason for Flora’s fleeting return: she was too happy to keep all her joy to herself; she needed to show it to others, to communicate it, out of exuberance, generosity and excess vitality.... But it might even be that the opposite was true, that she had dragged her Johannes up here because she felt herself growing tired of him and feared another separation and her own inconstancy. She showed him to everyone, talked to whoever would listen about her happiness, expecting that their union would be reinforced in turn by the fact that everyone knew about it and considered it a firm and enduring thing. This time others would prevent her from breaking off with her young man because putting an end to a menage that everyone knew to be so happy would seem too outrageous and strange, even to her. Yes, this too was possible.

In fact only a few days later (Lia added sorrowfully) they had received another postcard, this time from Florence, with the signature “Vincenzo.”

I felt as if I already knew all these things, hearing her talk about them. However, somehow the worrisome areas of this conversation, Flora’s inconstancy and the names of so many men, fell quickly away from my memory, and I imagined only her exuberant vitality, which galvanized me even at a distance. Now I also knew that Flora was out of reach, that she wasn’t in Montalto or in any known place, and all I could do was to wait for her here, where she had her roots and where perhaps sooner or later she would finally return. This meant that my anxiety to search, my desire for discovery and all kindred sentiments would begin to stagnate, and the outlook would have to be reversed because it was no longer a matter of searching but of waiting. Still, if I hadn’t found Flora, I had nonetheless discovered her sister and her home and this in some way brought me closer to her. My hope of finding her was reinforced by these tokens that chance had placed in my hands.

Lia had taken off her white high-button shoes but was still wearing the short and colorful dress and felt no embarrassment that I should see her that way. “Flora left this for me the last time she came.” She would always ask Lia why she dressed like an old woman. She was young, she ought to dress accordingly, to please others as well as herself. Thus she had given her many dresses, and Lia tried them on now and then in secret. “Now go on out please, Giuliano. I want to change....”

I obeyed. I hadn’t the courage to ask her who the man was who had been hanging about the house calling her.

After days of uncertainty and tormenting indecision I resolved to remain and wait for Flora. I renounced the rest. I was waiting for life and its strange offerings to come to me instead of pursuing them in odd places of the world. Once I decided, I forgot all hesitation and doubt, and everything seemed natural, as if I had always lived in that house. At times, at least in certain things, I was still the primitive and wild being who quickly adapted to his surroundings.

I even experienced a sentiment that made me judge myself a hypocrite: the wait for Flora, all things considered, wouldn’t be too tiresome because Lia was a beautiful girl, even if the continuous discoveries I was making cast a rather enigmatic shadow over her. I felt the sudden urge to redeem myself with an honest gesture. I told Lia in a few words how I had met Flora and what had happened between us. I decided in addition that I ought to begin to help Pietro and Red with their work.

Pietro and Red did their wood carving in a big room on the ground floor; they had a quantity of knives and chisels with which they turned out moldings and ornaments for furniture made in a factory down on the plain. It was the lathe that produced the sound I had heard from my bed. “Of course, if you’d like, there’s work for you too...,” the old man invited me. I considered the phrase to imply that I could stay with them. I recalled, rather amused, that until that point I had made my own plans without consulting my hosts. But both Pietro and Lia, not to mention Red, were such unusual people that they probably wouldn’t wonder at all if I continued to live with them after my recovery without asking anyone’s permission. If I had left they would have bid me good-bye with affection, perhaps with a touch of melancholy, but without asking for an explanation.

Given my quickness to learn new things, after just a few hours I was carving and turning with notable skill. All I needed was to do scrolls, leaves and spirals that were less stiff, to try to give them more grace and movement. This I could see for myself when I compared my work with Pietro’s, because he said I was already becoming an expert.