The Baron in the Trees, Page 3

  "No, I'm not coming down into your garden or into mine either ever again. It's all enemy territory to me. You come up with me, and your friends who steal fruit, and perhaps my brother Biagio too, though he's a bit of a coward, and we'll make an army in the trees and bring the earth and the people on it to their senses."

  "No, no, not at all. Just let me explain how things are. You have the lordship of the trees, all right? But if you touch the earth just once with your foot, you lose your whole kingdom and become the humblest slave. D'you understand? Even if a branch breaks under you and you fall, it's the end of you!"

  "I've never fallen from a tree in my life!"

  "No, of course not, but if you do fall, if you do, you change into ashes and the wind'll carry you away."

  "Fairy tales. I'm not coming down to the ground because I don't want to."

  "Oh, what a bore you are!"

  "No, no, let's play. For instance, can I come on to the swing?"

  "Yes, if you manage to sit on it without touching the ground."

  Near Viola's swing was another one, hanging on the same branch, but pulled up by a knot in the ropes so it should not bump against the other. Cosimo let himself down from the branch by gripping one of the ropes—an exercise he was very good at as our mother had made him do a lot of gymnastics—reached the knot, undid it, stood up on the swing, and to give himself impetus bent down on his knees and rocked the weight of his body to and fro. So he got higher and higher. The two swings moved in opposite directions, at the same height now, and passed each other halfway.

  "But if you try sitting down and giving a push with your feet you'll go higher," Viola said.

  Cosimo made a face at her.

  "Come down and give me a push, now, do," said she, smiling sweetly at him.

  "No, I said I wouldn't come down at any cost. . ." And Cosimo began to feel put out again.

  "Do, please."

  "No."

  "Ah, hah! You nearly fell into the trap! If you'd set a foot on the ground you'd have lost everything!" Viola got off her swing and began giving little pushes to Cosimo's. "Oh!" Suddenly she had snatched the seat of the swing on which my brother was standing and overturned it. Luckily Cosimo was holding tight to the ropes. Otherwise he would have dropped to the ground like a ripe fruit.

  "Cheat!" he cried, and clambered up again on the two ropes, but going up was much more difficult than coming down, particularly with the fair-haired girl maliciously pulling the ropes as hard as she could.

  Finally he reached the big branch, and got astride it. With his lace jabot he wiped the sweat off his forehead.

  "Ah! Ah! You didn't get me!"

  "Very nearly."

  "And I thought you were a friend!"

  "You thought!" and she began fanning herself again.

  "Violante!" broke in a sharp female voice at that moment. "Who are you talking to?"

  On the white flight of steps leading to the house had appeared a tall, thin lady, with a very wide skirt; she was looking through a lorgnette. Alarmed, Cosimo drew back into the leaves.

  "With a young man, ma tante," said the little girl, "who was born on the top of a tree and is under a spell so he can't set foot on the ground."

  Cosimo, scarlet in the face, asked himself if the little girl was talking like that to make fun of him in front of her aunt, or to make fun of the aunt in front of him, or just to continue the game, or because she did not care a rap about either him or the aunt or the game, and he saw he was being watched through the lorgnette, whose owner had approached the tree and was gazing at him as if he were some strange parrot.

  "Uh, mais c'est un des Piovasques, ce jeune homme, je crois. Viens, Violante."

  Cosimo bridled with shame; the way the aunt recognized him so easily without even asking herself why he was there and at once called the girl away firmly though not severely, the way Viola followed her aunt's call docilely without even turning around—it all suggested that they considered him of no importance, a person who scarcely existed. And so that extraordinary afternoon of his was fading into a cloud of self-pity.

  Then suddenly the girl made a sign to her aunt, the aunt lowered her head, and the child whispered in her ear. The aunt pointed her lorgnette at Cosimo again. "Well, young man," she said, "would you care to take a cup of chocolate with us? Then we too can get to know you"—and here she gave a sideways glance at Viola—"as you're already a friend of the family."

  Cosimo sat there staring round-eyed at aunt and niece. His heart was beating fast. Here he was being invited by the Ondarivas of Ombrosa, the haughtiest family in the neighborhood, and the humiliation of a moment before changed to triumph: he was getting back at his father by this invitation from enemies who had always snubbed him, and Viola had interceded for him, and he was now officially accepted as a friend of hers and would play with her in that garden so different from all other gardens. All this Cosimo felt, but an opposite though confused emotion at the same time; an emotion made up of shyness, prides loneliness and determination; and amid this contrast of feelings my brother seized the branch above him, climbed it, moved into the leafiest part, on to another tree, and vanished.

  } 3 {

  IT WAS endless, that afternoon. Every now and then we heard a plop, a rustle in the garden, and ran out hoping that it was him, that he had decided to come down. But no, I saw a quiver on the top of the magnolia; Cosimo appeared from the other side of the wall and climbed over.

  I went up the mulberry to meet him. At seeing me he seemed put out; he was still angry with me. Sitting on a branch of the mulberry above me, he began slicing off bits of bark with his rapier, as if he did not want to speak to me.

  "The mulberry is easy," I exclaimed, just for something to say. "We'd never been on it before . . ."

  He went on whittling the branch with the blade, then said sourly: "Well, did you enjoy the snails?"

  I held out a basket. "I've brought you some dried figs, Mino, and a slice of pie . . ."

  "Did they send you?" he exclaimed, still distant, but his mouth watering as he looked at the basket.

  "No, I had to escape from the Abbé," I said hurriedly. "They wanted to keep me doing lessons all the afternoon, so I couldn't see you, but the old man fell asleep! Mother's worried you might fall and wanted a search made for you, but since Father hasn't seen you on the holm oak for a while, he says you've come down and are hiding away brooding over your misdeeds, and we're not to worry."

  "I never came down!" said my brother.

  "Have you been in the Ondariva garden?"

  "Yes, but always from one tree to another, without ever touching the ground!"

  "Why?" I asked. It was the first time I heard him announce this rule of his, but he had said it as if it were already understood between us, almost as if he wanted to reassure me that he had not broken it; so I did not dare persist in my questions.

  Instead of answering me, he said: "You know, it'd take days and days to explore that garden of the Ondarivas! If you saw the trees! From the American forests!" Then he remembered he was angry with me and so should not enjoy telling me of his finds. He finished, brusquely: "Anyway I won't take you there. You can go around here with Battista, from now on, or the Cavalier!"

  "No, Mino, do take me!" I exclaimed. "You mustn't blame me about the snails, they were foul, but I couldn't bear their scolding!"

  Cosimo was gulping down the tart. "I'll try you out," he said. "You've got to show me you're on my side, not on theirs."

  "Ask me anything you want, then."

  "Get me some ropes, long strong ones, as I'll have to tie myself to get over some places up here: then an oarlock, and hooks and nails . . . big ones . . ."

  "What d'you want to make? A crane?"

  "We'll need to get a lot of stuff up, we'll see later; planks, bamboo . . ."

  "You want to make a hut in a tree! Where?"

  "If needs be. We'll choose the place later. Meanwhile you can leave the things for me there in that hollow oak. Then I'll let
down the basket by the rope and you can put whatever I need in it."

  "But why? You talk as if you're going on hiding for a long time . . . Don't you think they'll forgive you?"

  He turned around, red in the face. "What do I care if they forgive me or not? And I'm not hiding; I'm not afraid of anyone! What about you, are you afraid of helping me?"

  Though I now realized that my brother was refusing to come down for the time being, I pretended not to understand this so as to make him declare himself and say, for instance: "Yes, I want to stay in the trees till afternoon tea, or dusk, or supper, or till it gets dark," something in fact which would show a limit, a proportion to his protest. Instead of which he said nothing of the kind, and I began to feel alarmed.

  Calls came from down below. It was our father shouting, "Cosimo! Cosimo!" and then, realizing already that Cosimo would not answer him, "Biagio! Biagio!" He was calling me.

  "I'll go and see what they want. Then I'll come and tell you," said I hurriedly. This eagerness to keep my brother informed also, I must admit, coincided with a hurry to get away for fear of being caught consorting with him on top of the mulberry and having to share the punishment he was certain to get. But Cosimo did not seem to see this shadow of cowardice on my face; he let me go, not without shrugging his shoulders to show how little he cared about what our father might have to say to him.

  When I got back he was still there; he had found a good place to settle, on a lopped branch, and was sitting with his chin on his knees and his arms tight around his shins.

  "Mino! Mino!" I called, clambering breathlessly up. "They've forgiven you! They're waiting for us! There's tea on the table, and Father and Mother already sitting down and putting out slices of cake on the plates! And there's a cream and chocolate cake, but not made by Battista, you know! She must have shut herself in her room, red with rage! They stroked my hair and said: 'Go and tell poor Mino we'll make it all up and not mention it again!' Quick, let's go!"

  Cosimo was chewing a leaf. He did not move.

  "Hey," said he, "try to fetch me a blanket, will you, without anyone seeing, and bring it to me. It must be cold, up here, at night."

  "You're not going to spend the night in the trees!"

  He did not answer. Chin on knees, he went on chewing the leaf and looking ahead. I followed his look, which went straight to the wall of the Ondariva garden, just where the white magnolia flower showed, with a kite flying beyond it.

  So we got to evening. The servants came and went laying the table; in the dining room the candelabra were already lit. Cosimo must have been able to see all this from the tree, and Baron Arminio turned to the shadows outside the window and called: "If you want to stay up there, you'll starve!"

  That evening we sat down to supper without Cosimo for the first time. He was astride a high branch of the holm oak, sideways, so that we could see only his dangling legs; and we could only just see those if we leaned out of the window and peered, for the room was brightly lit and it was dark outside.

  Even the Cavalier felt it his duty to lean out and say something, but as usual he could not manage to express any opinion on the matter. All he said was: "Oooh . . . strong wood . . . It'll last a hundred years . . ." and then a few words in Turkish, perhaps the one for holm oak; he seemed, in fact, to be talking about the tree and not my brother.

  Our sister Battista, on the other hand, showed a kind of envy for Cosimo, as if, used to keeping the family on tenterhooks with her crazy whims, she had now been outdone at her own game; and she was endlessly biting her nails (she would bite them without raising a finger to her mouth, but lowering her head and raising her elbow).

  The Generalessa was reminded of some soldiers who had been on sentry duty in the trees around a camp either in Slavonia or Pomerania, and how they had sighted the enemy, and so avoided an ambush. This memory, quite suddenly, brought her out of her maternal preoccupations and back to her favorite military atmosphere, and now, as if she had finally succeeded in understanding her son's behavior, she became calmer, almost proud. No one paid any attention to her except the Abbé Fauchelefleur, who listened with grave assent to her warlike tale and the parallel she drew from it, for he would have grasped at any argument to persuade himself that what was happening was natural and so clear his mind of responsibility and worry.

  After supper we went off to sleep early, not changing our schedule even that night. By now our parents had decided that they would not give Cosimo the satisfaction of taking notice of him, and would wait for exhaustion, discomfort and the cold night air to bring him down. Everyone went up to bed. Seen from the outside, the candlelight must have looked like golden eyes shining through the windows. What coziness, what memories of warmth must have seeped from that house so known and near, to my brother in the night chill. I leaned from the window of our room and made out his shadow bent over a hollow of the holm oak, between branch and trunk, wrapped in the blanket, and—I think—bound around with the rope to avoid falling.

  The moon rose late and shone above the branches. In their nests slept the titmice, huddled up like him. The night, the open, the silence of the park were broken by rustling of leaves and distant sounds, and the wind sweeping through the trees. At times there was a far-off murmur—the sea. From my window I listened to the scattered whispering and tried to imagine it heard without the protection of the familiar background of the house, from which he was only a few yards. Alone with the night around him, clinging to the only friendly object: the rough bark of a tree, scored with innumerable little tunnels where the larvae slept.

  I went to bed but did not blow out the candle. Perhaps that light at the window of his own room would keep him company. We shared a room, with two little cots in it. I looked at his, untouched, and at the darkness outside the window where he was, and turned over between the sheets feeling perhaps for the first time the pleasure of being naked, with bare feet, in a warm white bed, and seeming to sense at the same time the discomfort he must be in, tied up there in his rough blanket, his legs buttoned in his gaiters, without being able to turn around, with bones aching. It is something which has never left me since that night, the realization of my good fortune in having a bed, clean sheets, a soft mattress! And as that went through my mind, which had been fixed for so many hours and so completely on the person we all had on our minds, I dozed off and so fell asleep.

  } 4 {

  I DON'T know if it's true, the story they tell in books, that in ancient days a monkey could have left Rome and skipped from tree to tree till it reached Spain, without ever touching earth. The only place so thick with trees in my day was the whole length, from end to end, of the gulf of Ombrosa and its valley right up to the mountain crests; the area was famous everywhere for this.

  Nowadays these parts are very different. It was after the arrival of the French that people began chopping down trees as if they were grass which is scythed every year and grows again. They have never grown again. At first we thought it was something to do with the war, with Napoleon, with the period. But the chopping went on. Now the hillsides are so bare that when we look at them, we who knew them before, it makes us feel bad.

  Anyway, in those days wherever one went there were always leaves and branches between us and the sky. The only trees growing near the ground were the lemons, but even among them rose the twisted shapes of fig trees, arching their domes of heavy leaves over the orchards up toward the hills. There were the brown boughs of the cherry, the tender quince, peach, almond or young pear, the big plum, and sorb apples and carobs too, with an occasional mulberry or knobby walnut. Where the orchards ended, the olive groves began—silvery gray, a cloud tufted out halfway up the hillsides. In the background, crouching between the port below and the rock above, was the village; and there, too, the roofs were feathery with the tops of trees: plane trees, and oaks too, haughty and detached, branching out—an orderly riot—where the nobles had built their villas and walled in their parks.

  Above the olives began the woods. At
one time the pines must have dominated the whole area, for a few tufts still sprouted out here and there down the slopes as far as the beaches. The oaks then were thicker than they seem to me today, for they were the first, most valuable victims. Higher up, the pines gave way to chestnuts, which went on and on up the mountainsides as far as the eye could reach. This was the world of sap amid which we lived, we inhabitants of Ombrosa, almost without our noticing it.

  The first to give any real thought to all this was Cosimo. He realized that as the trees were so thick he could move for several miles by passing from one branch to another, without ever needing to descend to earth. Sometimes a patch of bare ground forced him to make long detours, but he soon got to know all the necessary routes and came to measure distances by quite different estimates than ours, bearing always in mind the twisted trail he had to take over the branches. And where not even a jump would carry him on to the nearest branch, he began to use various tricks of his own. But all that I will describe later. So far we have only reached that first dawn when he woke up to find himself amid fluttering starlings on top of a holm oak, soaked in cold dew, frozen stiff, with bones aching, his legs and arms tingling, and set out happily to explore the new world.

  He reached the last tree of the park, a plane tree. Below him the valley swept away under a sky of wispy clouds and smoke curling up from the slate roofs of cottages hiding behind rocks like piles of stones; the figs and cherries formed another sky, of leaves; lower down thrust out the spreading branches of plums and peaches. Everything was clear and sharp, even the grass, blade by blade, all except the soil with its crawling pumpkin leaves or dotted lettuces or fuzz of crops: it was the same on both sides of the V in which the valley opened over a high funnel of sea.