Carmen and Other Stories (Oxford World's Classics) by Prosper Mérimée

Author:Prosper Mérimée [Mérimée, Prosper]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Published: 1998-10-15T04:00:00+00:00

The sailor suddenly stopped.

‘Why don’t you go on, my friend?’ asked Miss Nevil.

With a nod of his head the sailor drew her attention to a figure emerging from the main hatch of the schooner; it was Orso, coming to enjoy the moonlight.

‘Won’t you finish your lament?’ said Miss Lydia. ‘I was so enjoying it.’

The sailor leaned towards her and said in a very low voice: ‘I give the rimbecco to no one.’

‘The what?’

Without replying, the sailor began to whistle.

‘I’ve caught you admiring our Mediterranean, Miss Nevil,’ said Orso, advancing towards her. ‘You must admit, you won’t see a moon like that anywhere else.’

‘I wasn’t looking at it. I was engrossed in studying the Corsican language. This sailor was singing a most tragic lament, but he broke off just at the finest moment.’

The sailor stooped as if to read his compass better, and tugged Miss Nevil’s pelisse sharply. Clearly, his lament was not one that could be sung in Lieutenant Orso’s presence.

‘What was it you were singing, Paolo France?’ asked Orso. ‘A ballata? A vocero?1 The young lady can understand you, and would like to hear how it ends.’

‘I’ve forgotten the rest, Ors’ Anton,’ said the sailor. And at once he began singing a hymn to the Virgin at the top of his voice.

Miss Lydia listened to the hymn with half an ear and did not press the singer further, but she vowed she would learn the answer to the riddle later. However, her maid, who came from Florence, and thus understood the Corsican dialect no better than her mistress, was also anxious to learn more; and, before Miss Lydia had a chance to give her a warning nudge, she turned to Orso and asked:

‘What does “to give the rimbecco” 2 mean, Captain?’

‘The rimbecco!’ said Orso. ‘Why, that’s the most mortal insult you can offer a Corsican. It means to accuse him of not having taken his revenge. Who has been speaking to you of rimbecco?’

‘Yesterday at Marseilles,’ Miss Lydia replied hastily, ‘the skipper of the schooner used the word.’

‘Who was he talking about? asked Orso sharply.

‘Oh, he was telling us some old story … of the days of … why, I think it was about Vannina d’ornano.’

‘I daresay, miss, that Vannina’s death did not inspire you with much love for our hero, the bold Sampiero?’*

‘But do you really find what he did heroic?’

‘The savage manners of the time excuse his crime. Besides, Sampiero was fighting a war to the death with the Genoese; how could his fellow-countrymen have had any confidence in him if he failed to punish the woman who was trying to negotiate with Genoa?’

‘Vannina’, the sailor said, ‘had set off without her husband’s permission. Sampiero was right to wring her neck.’

‘But it was to save her husband, it was out of love for him, that she was going to intercede with the Genoese on his behalf!’

‘To intercede for him was to dishonour him!’ exclaimed Orso.

‘And to have killed her himself!’ Miss Nevi1 went on. ‘What a monster

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