Our Ancestors by Italo Calvino

Author:Italo Calvino [Calvino, Italo]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House UK
Published: 2010-12-23T06:00:00+00:00

17

Olivabassa was a town in the interior. Cosimo reached it after two days’ journey and many a dangerous passage over the less wooded parts of the route. Whenever he passed near any houses people who had never seen him before gave cries of surprise, and one or two of them even threw stones at him, so that he tried to move as unobserved as possible. But as he neared Olivabassa, he noticed that any woodman or ploughman or olive-picker who saw him showed no surprise at all, in fact the men even greeted him by doffing their hats as if they knew him, and said words which were certainly not in the local dialect and sounded strange in their mouths, such as ‘Señor! Buenas dias Señor!’

It was winter, the trees were partly bare. In Olivabassa a double row of elms and plane trees crossed the town. And my brother, as he came nearer, saw that there were people up on the bare branches, one, two, or even three to each tree, sitting or standing in grave attitudes. In a few jumps he reached them.

They were men in noble garb, plumed tricornes, big cloaks, and noble-looking women too, with veils on their heads, sitting on the branches in twos and threes, some embroidering, and looking down on to the road now and again with a little sideways jerk of the bosom and a stretch of their arms along the branch, as if at a window-sill.

The men bade him greetings that seemed full of rueful understanding: ‘Buenas dias, Señor.’ And Cosimo bowed and doffed his hat.

One who seemed the most authoritative, a heavily-built man wedged in the fork of a plane tree from which he appeared unable to extricate himself, with a liverish complexion through which his shaved chin and upper lip showed black shadows in spite of his advanced years, turned to his neighbour, a pale gaunt man dressed in black and also with cheeks blackish in spite of shaving, and seemed to be asking who was this unknown man coming towards them across the trees.

Cosimo thought the moment had come to introduce himself.

He moved on to the stout gentleman’s plane tree, bowed and said: ‘The Baron Cosimo Piovasco of Rondò at your service.’

‘Rondos?’ exclaimed the fat man, ‘Rondos? Aragones? Galiciano?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Catalan?’

‘No, sir. I am from these parts.’

‘Desterrado tambien?’

The gaunt gentleman now felt it his duty to intervene and interpret, very bombastically, with: ‘His Highness Frederico Alonso Sanchez y Tobasco asks if your lordship is also an exile, as we see you climbing about on branches.’

‘No, sir. Or at least, not exile by anyone else’s decree.’

‘Viaja usted sobre los arboles por gusto?’

And the interpreter: ‘His Highness Frederico Alonso is gracious enough to ask if it is for pleasure that your lordship uses this mode of travel.’

Cosimo thought a little, then replied: ‘I do it because I think it suits me, not because I’m forced to.’

‘Feliz usted!’ exclaimed Frederico Alonso Sanchez, sighing. ‘Ay de mi, ay de mi!’

And the man in black

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