The Island of the Day Before (17 page)

At the end of the street he encountered Saint-Savin. "My dear La Grive," he said, "you fell ill a Frenchman and you are healed a Spaniard. This part of the city is now in enemy hands."

"And we may pass?"

"Do you not know that a truce has been signed? And, in any case, the Spanish want the castle, not us. In the French sector wine is growing scarce, and the Casalesi bring it up from their cellars as if it were the Most Precious Blood. You will not be able to keep good Frenchmen from frequenting certain taverns in this quarter, where the tavern-keepers are now bringing in excellent wine from the country. And the Spaniards receive us like great gentlemen. Except that the proprieties must be respected: if you want to brawl, you must brawl in your own quarter and with compatriots, for in this area we must behave politely, as is correct between enemies. So I confess the Spanish quarter is less amusing than the French, for us at least. But do join us. This evening we want to serenade a lady who had concealed her charms from us until the other day, when I saw her look out of a window for an instant."

And so that evening Roberto found again five familiar faces from the court of Toiras. Even the abbé was of the company, and for the occasion had decked himself out in laces and furbelows, with a satin sash. "The Lord forgive us," he said with flaunted hypocrisy, "but the spirit must yet be appeased if we are still to perform our duty...."

The house was in a square in what was now the Spanish part of the city, but the Spanish at that hour must all have been in the pothouses. In the rectangle of sky outlined by the low roofs and the crowns of the trees flanking the square, the moon reigned serene, only slightly pocked, and was reflected in the water of a fountain murmuring in the center of that rapt quadrangle.

"O fairest Diana," Saint-Savin said, "how calm and peaceful must your cities and your villages be, that do not know war, for the Selenites live in their own natural felicity, ignorant of sin...."

"No blasphemy, Monsieur de Saint-Savin!" the abbé said. "For even if the moon were inhabited, as Monsieur de Moulinet has fancied in that recent romance of his, and as the Scriptures do not teach us, those inhabitants would be most unhappy, as they would not know the Incarnation."

"And it would have been most cruel of the Lord God to deprive them of that knowledge," Saint-Savin rebutted.

"Do not seek to penetrate divine mysteries. God had not vouchsafed the preaching of His Son even to the natives of the Americas, but in His goodness He now sends missionaries there, to carry the light to them."

"Then why does Monsieur the Pope not send missionaries also to the moon? Are the Selenites perhaps not children of God?"

"Do not talk foolishness!"

"I will ignore your having called me a fool, Monsieur l'Abbé, but you must know that beneath this foolishness lies a mystery, which certainly our Lord Pope does not wish to reveal. If the missionaries were to discover inhabitants on the moon, and saw them looking at other worlds within the range of their eyes but not of ours, they would see them wondering if on those other worlds there are not other creatures living, similar to us. And the Selenites would then ask themselves if the fixed stars also are not so many suns surrounded by their moons and by their other planets, and if the inhabitants of those planets also see other stars unknown to us, which would be that many more suns with as many planets, and so on and on, to infinity...."

"God has made us incapable of conceiving the infinite, so be content, human races, with the
quia
."

"The serenade, the serenade," the others were whispering. "That is the window." The window was bathed in a rosy light that came from the interior of an imagined chamber. But the two debaters were by now aroused.

"And further," Saint-Savin insisted, mocking, "if the world were finished and surrounded by the Void, God would also be finished: since His task, as you say, is to dwell in Heaven and on earth and in every place; He could not dwell where there is nothing. The Void is a non-place. Or else, to enlarge the world He would have to enlarge Himself, and be born for the first time where before He was not, and this would contradict His proclaimed eternity."

"Enough, sir! You are denying the eternity of the Eternal One, and this I cannot allow. The moment has come for me to kill you, so that your so-called wit can no longer weary us!" And he drew his sword.

"If that is your wish," Saint-Savin said, saluting and putting himself on guard. "But I will not kill you: I do not wish to subtract soldiers from my king. I will simply disfigure you, so that you will live wearing a mask, as the Italian comedians do, a fitting distinction for you. I will draw a scar from your eye to your lip, and I will give you this neat pig-castrator's cut, but only after having taught you, between a feint and a parry, a lesson in natural philosophy."

The abbé attacked, trying to strike home at once with great slashes, shouting at his opponent that he was a poisonous insect, a flea, a louse to be crushed mercilessly. Saint-Savin parried, then pressed him, driving him back against a tree, but philosophizing at every move.

"Aha! What wild slashes and thrusts, the vulgar chops of one blinded by rage! You lack any Idea of fencing. But you also lack charity, in your contempt for fleas and lice. You are too small an animal to be able to imagine the world as a big animal can, as the divine Plato displays it to us. Try to imagine the stars as worlds with other lesser animals, and remember that lesser animals in turn serve as worlds to still lesser breeds: then you will not find it contradictory to think that we—and also horses and elephants—are whole worlds for the fleas and the lice that inhabit us. They do not perceive us because of our bigness, as we do not perceive larger worlds because of our smallness. Perhaps there is now a population of lice that takes your body for a world, and when one of them has traveled there from forehead to nape, his fellows say of him that he has dared venture to the confines of the known earth. This little populace considers your hair the forests of their country, and when I have struck you, they will see your wounds as lakes and seas. When you use your comb, they believe this agitation is the flux and reflux of the ocean, and it is their misfortune to inhabit such a changeable world, because of your inclination to comb your hair constantly like a female, and now that I snip off that tassel, they will take your cry of anger for a hurricane. There!" And he snipped off an ornament, almost ripping the abbé's embroidered jacket.

The abbé foamed with rage. He had moved to the center of the square, looking behind him to make sure there was room for the movements he was now essaying, then retreating so that the fountain would protect his back.

Saint-Savin seemed to dance around him, without attacking. "Raise your head, Monsieur l'Abbé. Look at the moon, and reflect that if your God was able to make the soul immortal, He could easily have made the world infinite. But if the world is infinite, it will be so in time as well as in space, and therefore it will be eternal, and when there is an eternal world, which has no need of creation, then it will be unnecessary to conceive the idea of God. Oh, what a fine joke, Monsieur l'Abbé. If God is infinite, you cannot curtail His power: He could never
ab opere cessare,
and therefore the world will be infinite; but if the world is infinite, then there will no longer be God, just as there will soon be no more tassels on your jacket!" And suiting the deed to the word, he snipped off a few more appendages of which the abbé was so proud, then he shortened his guard, lifting the tip slightly; and as the abbé tried to close the distance, Saint-Savin sharply struck the flat of his opponent's blade. The abbé almost dropped his sword, clutching with his left hand his aching wrist.

He cried: "I must finally cut you open, you villain, you blasphemer! Holy womb! By all the damned saints of Paradise, by the blood of the Crucified!"

The lady's window was opened, someone looked out and shouted. By now all present had forgotten the purpose of their enterprise and were moving around the two duellers, who shouted as they skirted the fountain, while Saint-Savin confounded his enemy with a series of circular parries and feints on the tip of his weapon.

"Do not call on the mysteries of the Incarnation for help, Monsieur l'Abbé," he quipped. "Your holy Roman church has taught you that this ball of mud of ours is the center of the Universe, which turns around it, acting as its minstrel and strumming the music of the spheres. Be careful, you are allowing yourself to be driven too close to the fountain, you are getting your hem wet, like an old man suffering from stones.... But what if, in the great Void, infinite worlds are moving, as a great philosopher said before your similars burned him in Rome, and very many of them are inhabited by creatures like us, and what if all had been created by your God, where does the Redemption then fit?"

"What will God do with you, sinner!" the abbé cried, parrying a cut with some effort.

"Was Christ perhaps made flesh only once? Was Original Sin committed only once, and on this globe? What injustice! Both for the other worlds, deprived of the Incarnation, and for us, because in that case the people of all the other worlds would be perfect, like our progenitors before the Fall, and they would enjoy a natural happiness without the weight of the Cross. Or else infinite Adams have infinitely committed the first error, tempted by infinite Eves with infinite apples, and Christ has been obliged to become incarnate, preach, and suffer Calvary infinite times, and perhaps He is still doing so, and if the worlds are infinite, His task will be infinite, too. Infinite His task, then infinite the forms of His suffering: if beyond the Galaxy there were a land where men have six arms, as in our own Terra Incognita, the Son of God would be nailed not to a cross but to a wooden construction shaped like a star—which seems to me worthy of an author of comedies."

"Enough! I will put an end to your comedy!" the abbé screamed, beside himself, and he flung himself at Saint-Savin, wielding his final blows.

Saint-Savin parried them effectively, then there was a static instant. While the abbé had his sword raised after a prime parry, Saint-Savin moved towards him as if to attack, and pretended to fall forward. The abbé stepped to one side, hoping to strike him as he fell. But Saint-Savin, who had not lost control of his legs, sprang up like lightning, supporting himself with his left hand on the ground as the right darted upwards: it was the coup de la mouette. The tip of the sword marked the abbé's face from the base of the nose to the upper lip, slicing off the left half of his moustache.

The abbé was cursing as no Epicurean would ever have dared to, while Saint-Savin stood erect and saluted, and the witnesses applauded his master stroke.

But at that very moment, from the end of the square, a Spanish patrol arrived, attracted perhaps by the noise. Instinctively, the French put their hands to their swords, the Spanish saw six armed enemies and cried betrayal. A soldier aimed his musket and fired. Saint-Savin fell, struck in the chest. The officer saw that four men, rather than engage in fighting, rushed to the fallen man, throwing aside their weapons. He looked at the abbé, covered with blood, realized that he had interrupted a duel, gave a command to his patrol, and all of them disappeared.

Roberto bent over his poor friend. "Did you see," Saint-Savin murmured with an effort, "did you see, La Grive, my mouette? Ponder it and practice it. I would not have the secret die with me...."

"Saint-Savin, my friend"—Roberto was weeping—"you must not die in such a foolish way!"

"Foolish? I defeated a fool and I am dying on the field, and by enemy lead. In my life I have observed a wise mean ... To speak always seriously provokes irritation. To be always witty, contempt. To philosophize always, sadness. To jest always, uneasiness. I have played every role, according to the time and the occasion, and once in a while I have also been court jester. But this evening, if you tell the story well, it will not have been a comedy but, rather, a fine tragedy. And do not grieve at my dying, Roberto." He called him by name for the first time. "Une heure après la mort, notre âme évanouie, sera ce qu'elle estoit une heure avant la vie.... Lovely verses, are they not?"

He died. Deciding on a noble lie, to which the abbé consented, all said that Saint-Savin died in a clash with some Landsknechts who were approaching the castle. Toiras and all the officers mourned him as a hero. The abbé told how in the clash he, too, had been wounded, and he prepared to receive an ecclesiastical benefice on his return to Paris.

In a brief period of time Roberto lost father, beloved, health, friend, and probably the war.

He could find no consolation in Padre Emanuele, who was too taken up with his councils. Roberto returned to the service of Monsieur de Toiras, last familiar image, and bearing his orders, he witnessed the final events.

On September 13th envoys of the King of France, the duke of Savoy, and Captain Mazzarini arrived at the castle. The relief army was also negotiating with the Spanish. Not the least bizarre note in that siege: the French sought a truce in order to arrive in time to save the city; the Spanish granted it because their camp, devastated by the plague, was also in a critical state, desertions were increasing, and Spinola was by now clinging to life with his teeth. Toiras found himself forced to accept the terms of the agreement imposed by the newcomers, which allowed him to continue defending Casale after Casale was already taken. The French would establish themselves in the citadel, abandoning the city and the castle itself to the Spanish, at least until the 15th of October. If by that date the relief army had not arrived, the French would abandon the citadel, too, truly defeated. Otherwise the Spanish would relinquish both city and castle.

Meanwhile, the besiegers had to provide the besieged with victuals. This is surely not the way we might feel a siege should have gone in those days, but such was the agreement. This was not waging war, it was playing dice, interrupting the game when the opponent had to go and urinate. Or perhaps it was like betting on a winning horse. And the horse was that approaching army, whose dimensions increased gradually on the wings of hope, though no one had seen it. Living in Casale, in the citadel, was like living on the
Daphne:
imagining a distant Island, and with intruders in the house.