The Island of the Day Before (22 page)

Roberto could not decide if she was absently attributing to him the words and deeds of another, or if she was coyly provoking him.

What later befell him drove him to compose those few episodes into a far more disturbing story.

I
T WAS—AT
last a firm date—the evening of the 2nd of December, 1642. They were leaving a theater, where Roberto spent every evening in the role of an ardent wooer. Lilia, on coming outside, furtively pressed his hand, whispering, "Monsieur de la Grive, you were not shy that evening. Until tomorrow then, again, on the same stage."

He left in mad turmoil, bidden to such a tryst at a place he could not know, urged to repeat what he had never dared say. And yet she could not have mistaken him for another, because she had called him by his name.

Oh—he writes of having said to himself—today the streams flow back to their source, white chargers scale the towers of Our Lady of Paris, a fire smiles glowing in the ice, for it has truly happened that she has invited me. Or perhaps not, today blood flows from the rock, a grass snake couples with a bear, the sun has turned black, because my beloved has offered me a cup that I will never be able to drain, for I do not know where we are to meet....

Just a step short of happiness, he ran home in despair. The one place where he was sure she could not be.

Lilia's words can be interpreted in a far less mysterious fashion: she was simply reminding him of his remote discourse on the Powder of Sympathy, was urging him to say more, in that same salon of Arthénice where he had already spoken. Since then she had seen him silent and adoring, and this did not correspond to the rules of the game of seduction, so severely regulated. She was recalling him, we would say today, to his social duty. "Come," she was saying to him. "That evening you were not shy, tread again that same stage, I am waiting to see you there." Nor could we expect any other challenge from a précieuse.

But Roberto, on the contrary, had understood: "You are shy, and yet a few evenings ago you were not, and with me you were—" (I suspect that jealousy forbade and at the same time encouraged Roberto to imagine the rest of that sentence). "So tomorrow, again, on that same stage, in that same secret place."

It is natural that—his fancy having taken the most thorny path—he should immediately conceive a case of mistaken identity, of someone who had passed himself off as Roberto and in such guise received from Lilia that for which Roberto would have bartered his life. So, then, Ferrante had reappeared, and all the threads of the past were knotted once more. Maleficent alter ego, Ferrante had thrust himself into this story, playing on Roberto's absences, his delays, his early departures, and at the right moment had garnered the reward for Roberto's speech on the Powder of Sympathy.

And in his distress, Roberto heard a knocking at the door. Ah, Hope! dream of wakeful men! He rushed to open, convinced he would see her on the threshold: it was instead an officer of the Cardinal's guards, with two men as escort.

"Monsieur de la Grive, I presume," he said. Then, identifying himself as Captain de Bar, he went on: "I am sorry to have to do what I am now obliged to do. But you, sir, are under arrest, and I must beg you to give me your sword. If you come with me now in a mannerly fashion, we will board the carriage awaiting us, like two friends, and you will have no cause for embarrassment." He indicated that he did not know the reason for the arrest, and hoped it was all a misunderstanding. Roberto followed him in silence, formulating the same wish, and at the end of the journey, consigned with many apologies to a sleepy guard, he found himself in a cell of the Bastille.

He spent two very cold nights there, visited only by a few rats (a provident preparation for his voyage on the
Amaryllis
) and by a guard who to every question replied only that this place had housed so many illustrious guests that he had long since given up wondering why they had fetched up here; and considering that a great gentleman like Bassompierre had been here for seven years, it was not Roberto's place to start complaining after a few hours.

Having left Roberto for those two days to anticipate the worst, on the third evening de Bar returned, arranged for him to wash, and announced that he was to appear before the Cardinal. Roberto understood at least that he was a prisoner of State.

They reached the palace late in the evening, and already from the stir at the door it was evident that this evening was exceptional. The stairs were crowded with people of every condition scurrying in opposite directions; gentlemen and ecclesiastics came into the antechamber, breathless, and politely expectorated against the frescoed walls, assuming a doleful expression, then entered another hall, from which members of the household emerged, in loud voices calling servants who could not be found and motioning all the others to be silent.

Roberto was also led into that hall, where he saw only people's backs, while all peered in at the door of yet another room, on tiptoe, making not a sound, as if to witness some sad spectacle. De Bar looked around, apparently seeking someone; finally he motioned Roberto to remain in a corner, and went off.

Another guard was trying to make many of those present leave the room, his courtesy varying according to their rank; he saw Roberto unshaven, his clothing disheveled after his detention. When the guard asked him roughly what he was doing there, Roberto answered that the Cardinal was expecting him, to which the guard replied that the Cardinal, to everyone's misfortune, was himself expected by Someone of far greater importance.

In any case, the man left Roberto where he was, and little by little, when de Bar (by now the only friendly face he knew) did not return, Roberto moved closer to the gathering, and after waiting a bit and then pushing a bit, he reached the threshold of the inner room.

There he saw and recognized, in a bed at the far end, resting on a snowbank of pillows, the shadow of the man that all France feared and very few loved. The great Cardinal was surrounded by doctors in black robes, who seemed to be interested chiefly in their own debate; an acolyte wiped the prelate's lips as weak fits of coughing formed a reddish spume; under the covers you could see the painful respiration of a now exhausted body, one hand emerged from a nightshirt, clutching a crucifix. Suddenly a sob escaped the acolyte. Richelieu with effort turned his head, tried to smile, murmuring, "Did you believe I was immortal?"

As Roberto was asking himself who could possibly have summoned him to the bed of this dying man, there was a great confusion behind him. Some whispered the name of the pastor of Saint-Eustache, and as all stood aside, a priest entered with his suite, bearing the holy oil.

Roberto felt someone touch his shoulder; it was de Bar. "Come," he said, "the Cardinal is awaiting you." Bewildered, Roberto followed him along a corridor. De Bar led him into a room, signaling him again to wait, then withdrew.

The room was spacious, with a great globe in the center and a clock on a little table in one corner against red drapery. To the left of the drapery, under a full-length portrait of Richelieu, Roberto finally saw a man with his back to him, in cardinal's robes, standing at a lectern and writing. The Cardinal moved his head slightly, motioning Roberto to approach, but as Roberto did so, the older man bent over the inclined board, placing his left hand as a screen along the margin of the page even though, at the respectful distance where Roberto still stood, he could have read nothing.

Then the personage turned, in an unfolding of purple, and stood for a few seconds erect, as if to reproduce the pose of the great portrait behind him, his right hand resting on the lectern, the left at his breast, affectedly, the palm held upwards. At last he sat on a stool beside the clock, coyly stroked his moustache and goatee, and asked, "Monsieur de la Grive?"

Monsieur de la Grive until this moment had been convinced he was dreaming, in a nightmare of this same Cardinal's dying a dozen yards away, but now he saw him rejuvenated, with features less sharp, as if on the pale aristocratic face of the portrait someone had shadowed the complexion and re-drawn the lip with more defined and sinuous lines. Then that voice with the foreign accent wakened in him the long-forgotten memory of the captain who twelve years before had galloped between the opposing forces at Casale.

Roberto was facing Cardinal Mazarin, and he realized that slowly, during the death-agony of his protector, this man had been assuming his functions. Already the guard referred to "the" Cardinal, as if there were no longer any other.

Roberto was about to answer the question, but he soon became aware that the Cardinal only made a show of interrogating: actually he was asserting, and his interlocutor could only agree.

"Monsieur de la Grive," the Cardinal, in fact, affirmed, "Lord Pozzo di San Patrizio. We know the castle, as we know the Monferrato region well. So fertile, it could even be France. Your father, in the days at Casale, fought with honor and was more loyal to us than others of your compatriots." He said us as if at that time he was already the creature of the King of France. "You also acted bravely on that occasion, we are told. Will you believe, then, that we are all the more, and paternally, sorry that as a guest in this country you have not observed the rules of hospitality? Did you not know that in this kingdom laws are applied equally to citizens and to guests? Naturally, naturally we will not forget that a gentleman is always a gentleman, whatever crime he may have committed: you will enjoy the same advantages granted Cinq-Mars, whose memory you apparently do not execrate as you should. You will also die by the axe and not by the rope."

Roberto could not be ignorant of a question that had all France talking. The Marquis de Cinq-Mars had tried to convince the King to dismiss Richelieu, and Richelieu had convinced the King that Cinq-Mars was conspiring against the throne. In Lyons the condemned man attempted to behave with bold dignity before the executioner, but the latter made such an appalling mess of the victim's neck that the indignant crowd had then massacred him.

As Roberto, aghast, was about to speak, the Cardinal forestalled him with a gesture. "Come now, San Patrizio," he said, and Roberto inferred that this name was being used to remind him he was a foreigner; though the Cardinal was speaking to him in French when he could have spoken in Italian. "You have succumbed to the vices of this city and this country. As His Eminence the Cardinal is accustomed to saying, the innate frivolity of the French brings them to desire change because of the tedium caused by the present. Some of these light-minded gentlemen, whom the King has taken care to make still lighter by relieving them of their head, seduced you with their subversive propositions. Your case is not the sort that need disturb any tribunal. The States, whose preservation is of necessity extremely dear to us, would quickly be ruined if in matters of crime that tend to their subversion we demanded proofs of the sort required in common law. Two evenings ago you were seen in the company of friends of Cinq-Mars, who uttered yet again sentiments highly treasonable. The witness who saw you in their midst is worthy of trust, for he was there under our orders. And that is enough. No," he again anticipated, bored, "we did not have you brought here to make us listen to protests of innocence, so remain calm and listen yourself."

Roberto was not calm, but he had arrived at some conclusions: at the very moment Lilia was touching his hand, he was seen elsewhere conspiring against the State. Mazarin was so convinced of this that the thought had become fact. It was everywhere murmured that the wrath of Richelieu was not yet sated, and many feared being chosen as further examples. However he may have been chosen, Roberto was in any case doomed.

He could have reflected that, not only two nights previously but often, he had participated in some conversation on leaving the Rambouillet salon; that it was not impossible that among those interlocutors there had been an intimate of Cinq-Mars; that if Mazarin, for reasons of his own, wanted to ruin him, he needed only to interpret maliciously any phrase reported by a spy.... But naturally Roberto's reflections were different, and they confirmed his fears: someone had taken part in a seditious gathering, boastfully assuming his name and his face.

All the more reason to attempt no defense. What remained inexplicable to him was why—if he was already condemned—the Cardinal was taking the trouble to inform him of his fate. Roberto had not been the recipient of any message but was himself the cipher, the riddle that others, still dubious of the king's decisiveness, would have to solve. In silence he awaited an explanation.

"You see, San Patrizio, if we were not honored by the ecclesiastical dignity with which the pope, and the King's wish, invested us a year ago, we would say that Providence was guiding your imprudence. For some time you have been under surveillance, while we wondered how we could ask you to render us a service which you were in no way obliged to perform. We receive your misstep of three evenings ago as a singular gift of Heaven. Now you could be in our debt, and our position changes, to say nothing of yours."

"In your debt?"

"For your life. Naturally it is not in our power to pardon you, but we have the power to intercede. Let us suppose you manage to avoid the rigor of the law through escape. After a year, or even more, the memory of the witness would no doubt be clouded, and he could swear, with no blot on his honor, that the man of three evenings ago was not you; and it could be verified that at that hour you were elsewhere playing tric-trac with Captain de Bar. Then—we do not decide, mind you, we presume, and the opposite could also happen, but we are confident that we are correct—you would be accorded full vindication and unconditional freedom. Be seated, please," he said. "I have a mission to propose to you."

Roberto sat down. "A mission?"

"And a delicate one. In the course of which—we will not shirk the fact—you might risk losing your life. But this is a transaction: you are saved from the certitude of the executioner, and are allowed many chances of returning safe and sound, if you are alert. A year of hardship, shall we say, in exchange for a whole life."