The Island of the Day Before (11 page)

"Then Ferrante—" Roberto began, and Saint-Savin concluded: "Ferrante stands for your fears and your shame. Often men, rather than admit they are the authors of their fate, see this fate as a romance narrated by a fanciful and scoundrel author."

"But what would this parable, which I have unwittingly constructed, mean for me?"

"Who knows? Perhaps you did not love your father as much as you think, you feared the harshness with which he wanted to punish your virtue, so for him you invented a sinner, to punish him not with your own sins but with those of another."

"Sir, you are speaking to a son who is still mourning his most beloved parent! I believe it is a greater sin to teach contempt of fathers than contempt of Our Lord!"

"Come, come, my dear La Grive! The philosopher must have the courage to criticize all the false teachings that have been inculcated in us, and among these is the absurd respect for old age, as if youth were not the greatest good and the highest merit. Tell me frankly: when a young man is capable of conceiving, judging, and acting, is he not perhaps more skillful in managing a family than some sexagenarian dullard, with snow on his head that has frozen his imagination? What we honor as prudence in our elders is simply panic in action. Would you be subject to them when laziness has weakened their muscles, hardened their arteries, evaporated their spirits, and sucked the marrow from their bones? If you adore a woman, is it not perhaps because of her beauty? Do you continue your genuflections after age has made a phantom of that body, now apt to remind you of the imminence of death? And if you behave thus with your mistresses, why should you not do the same with your old men? You will say that this old man is your father and that Heaven promises you long life if you honor him. Who said so? Some ancient Jews who realized they could survive in the desert only by exploiting the fruit of their loins? If you believe that Heaven grants you a single additional day of life because you have been your father's lap-dog, you are deceived. Do you believe a respectful greeting that causes the plume of your hat to sweep the ground at your parent's feet can heal a malignant abscess or help you pass a stone? If that were so, physicians would not then prescribe their ghastly potions, but to rid you of the Italian sickness they would instead suggest four bows before supper to your lord father, and a kiss to your lady mother at bedtime. You will say to me that without that father you would not exist, nor he without his, and so on back to Melchizedek. But it is he who owes something to you, not you to him: you pay with many years of weeping for his momentary tickle of pleasure."

"You cannot believe what you are saying."

"Well, no. Hardly ever. But the philosopher is like the poet. The latter composes ideal letters for an ideal nymph, only to plumb with his words the depths of passion. The philosopher tests the coldness of his gaze, to see how far he can undermine the fortress of bigotry. I would not have your respect for your father diminished, for you say he taught you well. But do not let memory make you melancholy. I see you weeping...."

"Oh, that is not sorrow. It must be my head wound, which has affected my eyes...."

"You should drink coffee."

"Coffee?"

"I swear that in a short while it will be the fashion. It is a panacea. I will procure you some. It dries the cold humors, dispels wind, strengthens the liver, it is the sovereign cure for hydropsy and scabies, it restores the heart, relieves bellyache. Its steam, in fact, is recommended for fluxions of the eyes, buzzing in the ears, catarrh, rheum or heaviness of the nose, as you will. And then bury with your father the cumbersome brother you created for yourself. And, above all, fall in love."

"Love?"

"Better even than coffee. Suffering for a live being, you will allay the pain for a dead one."

"I have never loved a woman," Roberto confessed, blushing.

"I did not say a woman. It could be a man."

"Monsieur de Saint-Savin!" Roberto cried.

"It is obvious you come from the provinces."

At the height of embarrassment, Roberto took his leave, saying his eyes were too painful; and he put an end to that encounter.

To explain to himself all he had heard, he decided that Saint-Savin had been teasing him: as with duelling, Saint-Savin had wanted to show how many artifices they knew in Paris. And Roberto had indeed come out looking like a provincial. And worse, in taking seriously that talk, he had sinned: which would not have happened if he had taken everything in jest. He drew up a list of the sins he had committed by listening to those many propositions against faith, morals, the state, familial respect. And, thinking of his lapse, he was seized by further anguish: he remembered that, dying, his father had uttered a blasphemy.

A
ND SO THE
next day he went back to pray in the cathedral of Sant'Evasio. He was also seeking refreshment: on that early June afternoon the sun beat down on half-deserted streets—as, at this moment, on the
Daphne,
he felt the heat spreading over the bay, the sides of the ship absorbed it, and the wood seemed red-hot. But then he had felt the need to confess both his own sin and his father's. In the nave he stopped a religious, who first said he was not of this parish but, seeing the look in the youth's eyes, consented and sat in a confessional to hear the penitent.

Padre Emanuele cannot have been very old, perhaps forty, and according to Roberto he was "florid, pink of face, regal, and affable," and Roberto felt encouraged to confide all his sufferings. He told first of all about the paternal blasphemy. Was this sufficient reason to keep his father from reposing now in the bosom of the Father, to make him moan in Hell? The confessor asked a few questions and led Roberto to admit that no matter when old Pozzo died, that event would most likely have occurred while he was taking the name of the Lord in vain: cursing was a bad habit you pick up from the peasants, and the lords of the Monferrato countryside considered it a sign of superiority to speak, in the presence of their equals, with the words of their villeins.

"You see, my son," the confessor concluded, "your father died while he was performing one of those grand & noble Acts through which a Man is said to enter the Paradise of Heroes. Now, while I do not believe such a Paradise exists, for I believe that in the Kingdom of Heaven both Beggars & Sovereigns, Heroes & Cowards live together in holy accord, surely our Almighty King will not have denied His Kingdom to your Father only because his Tongue slipped a bit at a moment when he had a great Enterprise on his mind, and I would dare say that at such moments a similar Ejaculation can even be a way of calling God as Witness & Judge of the great Deed. If you are still tormented, pray for the Soul of your Parent & have some Masses said for him, not so much to persuade the Lord to change his Verdict—as He is not a Vane that turns as the bigots blow—but, rather, for the good of your own Soul."

Roberto told him then about the seditious talk of a friend to whom he had listened, and the priest opened his arms in a disconsolate gesture: "My Son, I know little of Paris, but from what I have heard I learn how many Malefactors, Climbers, Abjurers, Spies, Intriguers exist in that new Sodom. And among them there are False Witnesses, Robbers of Ciboria, Tramplers on Crucifixes, & those who bribe Beggars to make them deny God, & even people who in Mockery have baptized Dogs.... And this is considered following the Fashion of the Time. In the Churches they no longer say Prayers, but stroll and laugh, wait in ambush behind columns to entrap Ladies; there is constant Noise even during the Elevation. They claim to philosophize & they assail you with malicious Whys; why has God given Laws to the World, why is Fornication prohibited, why was the Son of God made Flesh; & they distort your every Reply to transform it into a Proof of Atheism. These are the Fine Wits of the Time: Epicureans, Pyrrhonians, Diogenians, & Libertines! So you must not lend your Ear to such Seductions, which come from the Evil One."

As a rule Roberto does not abuse those capital letters in which the writers of his day excelled: but when he attributes sayings to Padre Emanuele, he employs many, as if the priest not only wrote but also spoke them, enforcing his words with special dignity—a sign that he was a man of great and attractive eloquence. And in fact, thanks to those words Roberto felt so relieved that, coming out of the confessional, he chose to linger awhile with the older man. He learned that the priest was a Savoyard Jesuit and surely not a negligible figure, for he was resident in Casale as observer and envoy of the duke of Savoy: a normal mission during a siege in those days.

Padre Emanuele carried out his mission gladly: the gloomy siege afforded him opportunity to conduct in a leisurely way some studies that could not have tolerated the distractions of a capital city like Turin. And, questioned as to his occupation, he said that he, too, like the astronomers, was constructing a telescope.

"You must have heard some talk about that Florentine Astronomer who used the Telescope, or Spyglass, that hyperbole of the eyes, to explain the Universe, & how with the Telescope he saw what the eyes had only imagined. I have great respect for this use of Mechanical Instruments to understand, as they say nowadays, the Res Extensa. But to understand the Res Cogitans, that is to say our way of knowing the World, we can use only another Telescope, the same that Aristotle formerly used, and which is neither a tube nor a lens, but a Weft of Words, Perspicacious Idea, because it is only the gift of Artful Eloquence that allows us to understand this Universe."

Speaking thus, Padre Emanuele led Roberto out of the church and, strolling, they climbed up to the bastion, to a place that was calm that afternoon, as a muffled sound of cannon fire arrived from the opposite side of the city. They had before them the imperial encampments in the distance, but for a long stretch the fields were empty of troops and wagons, and the meadows and hills shone in the spring sun.

"What do you see, my boy?" Padre Emanuele asked Roberto, who, still lacking eloquence, replied, "Fields."

"To be sure, anyone can see Fields down there. But you well know that, depending on the position of the Sun, the color of the Sky, the hour of the day & the season of the year, those fields can appear to you in varying Guise & inspire different Feelings. To the peasant, weary after his work, they appear as Fields & nothing more. Similar is the case of the savage fisherman terrified by those nocturnal Images of Fire sometimes visible in the Sky & frightening to behold; but as soon as the Meteorists, who are also Poets, dare call them Crined Comets, Bearded & Tailed, Goats, Beams, Shields, Torches & Thunderbolts, these figures of speech clarify for you the clever Symbols through which Nature means to speak, as she uses these Images as Hieroglyphics, on the one hand referring to the Signs of the Zodiac & on the other to past Events. And the Fields? You see how much you can say of Fields & how, as you speak, you see & comprehend more: Favonius blows, the Earth opens, the Nightingales weep, the leaf-crowned Trees swagger, & you discover the wondrous genius of the Fields in the variety of their strains of Grasses nourished by the Streams that play in happy puerility. The festive Fields rejoice with jaunty merriment, at the appearance of the Sun they open their countenance & in them you observe the arc of a smile, & they celebrate the return of the Star, intoxicated with the gentle Austral kisses & laughter on the Earth itself that expands in dumb Happiness, & the matutinal warmth so fills them with Joy that they shed tears of Dew. Crowned with Flowers, the Fields submit to their Genius & compose subtle Hyperboles of Rainbows. But their Youth soon learns it must hasten to death, their laughter is troubled by a sudden pallor, the sky fades & lingering Zephyr already sighs over a languishing Earth, so that on the arrival of the winter heavens' first frowns, the Fields sadden & reveal skeletons of Frost. There, my son: if you had said simply that the Fields are pretty, you would have done nothing but depict for me their greening—which I already know of—but if you say the Fields laugh, you show me the Earth as Animate & reciprocally I will learn to observe in human Countenances all the refinements that I have perceived in the fields.... And this is the office of the supreme Figure of all: Metaphor. If Genius, & therefore Learning, consists in connecting remote Notions & finding Similitude in things dissimilar, then Metaphor, the most acute and farfetched among Tropes, is the only one capable of producing Wonder, which gives birth to Pleasure, as do changes of scene in the theater. And if the Pleasure produced by Figures derives from learning new things without effort & many things in small volume, then Metaphor, setting our mind to flying betwixt one Genus & another, allows us to discern in a single Word more than one Object."

"But one must know how to invent metaphors, which is not something for a rustic like me, who in all his life has seen fields only as the place for shooting at birds...."

"You are a Gentle Man, & it will not be long before you become what in Paris they call an Honest Man, skilled in verbal joust as in that of the sword. And knowing how to conceive Metaphors, & thus to see a World immensely more various than it appears to the uneducated, is an Art that is learned. For, I must tell you, in this world where today all lose their minds over many & wondrous Machines—some of which, alas, you can see also in this Siege—I construct Aristotelian Machines, that allow anyone to see with Words...."

In the days that followed, Roberto made the acquaintance of Signor della Saletta, who represented the city fathers in their dealings with Toiras. The commander was complaining, Roberto had heard, about the Casalesi, in whose loyalty he had little faith. "Do they not understand," Toiras said, irritated, "that even in times of peace Casale is in no condition to allow one simple foot-soldier or a mere basket of victuals to enter without asking leave of the Spanish ministers? That the protection of the French is the city's only guarantee of being respected?" But, now, from Signor della Saletta Roberto learned that Casale was not exactly comfortable with the dukes of Mantua either. Gonzaga policy had always been to put down any Casale opposition, and for sixty years the city had suffered the progressive reduction of many privileges.

"You understand, Signor della Griva?" Saletta said. "First we complained of too many taxes, and now we are bearing the expense of maintaining the garrison. We do not love having the Spanish in our midst, but are we expected really to love the French? Are we dying for our own sake, or for theirs?"

"And for whom did my father die?" Roberto asked. Signor della Saletta was unable to answer him.