Beati Paoli

by Luigi Natoli

part two, chapter 15

Italiano

English

"Now that you are healed," said Coriolano della Floresta to Blasco, that very day when Don Raimondo had a lot of briga "go back to my house. I will come tonight to pick you up in the carriage to take you away from the curiosity of others."

"You will do me a real pleasure," said Blasco, "because I confess to you that I felt and feel uncomfortable here."

"Did you miss something?"

"No..."

"Did you find the assistance of these good people heavy or indiscreet?"

"All the more; I have nothing but to praise them... Behold, I have not given them any grain; I have offered what I had, and they have rejected it so decisively that I have not had the strength to insist; so that I have been of weight to these good people, who do not seem able to give themselves the luxury of a long and costly hospitality."

Coriolano smiled.

"Don't give yourself any thought to that. Your guests do not encounter any discomfort, and you owe them nothing but the gratitude of assistance. But they didn't have any expenses..."

"So that means you..."

"But it was natural, good God, and it's not worth talking about. Wait for me tonight..."

Blasco took his hands in a rush of affection.

"Oh, dear friend, how can I ever repay you?"

"What the hell are you talking about? I've never heard you say anything stupid: Would you like to start?"

"You can't stop me from being grateful..."

"This is about your conscience."

"Or trying to find a way to prove it to you."

"This is not your place. Hell, if I need you, I will not wait for you to guess it; I will come and ask you for the return, and with usury, of that little service that I have rendered you, and so the account will be settled! Wait, then, to talk about it."

Coriolano smiled.

"You are an original and magnificent man, word of honor! But then," he added, changing his tone, "there is another reason that pushed me, so to speak, to urge my exit..."

"What do you mean?"

"Behold, in this house there is a certain smell of mystery, and you know how hateful all that tastes of mystery is to me..."

"What mystery?" asked Coriolano della Floresta with indifference.

"But, for example, I could never see the face of this Belshazzar, Aunt Nora's son..."

"Good reason! All day he goes to work!... He goes to have fun; it's natural."

"It will be; but the evening is at home..."

"He must have been afraid to disturb you, or awe..."

"No, no; it's not what you say. Listen: More than one night I heard whispers in the other room and sometimes a coming and going people. Last night it looked like there was a soldier company in there... They didn't make a fuss, in fact they took care to speak softly and walk on tiptoes, but they felt that there were many. I confess to you that he pricked my curiosity and came down from the bed slowly to see who they were..."

Coriolano watched him carefully.

"And have you seen?"

"Nothing. The door was closed, the key hole covered, the light turned off. My attempt to open up had to be felt because suddenly a deep silence was made, and no matter how much I eavesdropping, I felt nothing!..."

"Ah!...you see? It must have been a hallucination..."

"I wasn't feverish..."

"What does that mean? But let's let this talk go. Tonight, however, you will return to me, and you will be free of all apprehension. Okay? To see you again, then."

Blasco didn't say everything; his suspicions had long been born, and several clues had given him birth and food.

On the second night he spent in that house, between his sleep and his vigil he seemed to see wandering around the bed of strange figures, with unrecognizable faces, who at one of his gesture suddenly disappeared and he had the impression as of dreamed ghosts. But those images had remained marked in his memory and seemed to him similar to those of the people who had collected him on wounded ground. Another night suddenly awoke, as if they had called him, he had heard distinctly in the other room a voice that had not seemed new to him, to recognize that he had wormed all night, but in vain. He couldn't have known which district the house he was in was in. Aunt Nora couldn't tell him.

And he had told him nothing else, changing his speech, when he wanted to know more, or moving away under a pretext; which had increased that air of mystery and increased the annoyance that the young man felt. Coriolano's offer, therefore, seemed to him a deliverance and waited for the evening with great impatience. He thought he saw the appearance of the house and the street, so that he could find them and penetrate that mystery. But he felt a disappointment when, when the knight of Floresta came, he found the carriage almost shaving the door of the house, and on the glass lowered the tendons, so that he could not see anything.

"Why don't you raise your tendons?" he asked Coriolano, visibly displeased.

"Because the carriage has already aroused curiosity for itself and I do not want them to see you; when we are at home, of course I will no longer need to escape from the curiosity of others: Far from it. In my house they know that you have left, and it will be believed that I have come to meet you on the street..."

The explanation was so plausible that Blasco found nothing to dispute. Along the way Coriolano made him A little bit of the news. The Duchess of Motta had left for Messina, after having been dispensed from the court service and that departure had given rise to a thousand rumors; but perhaps it was a diplomatic mission, she observed smiling at the knight of Floresta. The prince of Iraki had been beaten solemnly, at night, in returning home from a vigil.

"Bastonato? How? Why?"

"Why I don't know; how, was in the most abusive way for a noble and for a vain like the prince; they gave him the "horse" as to restless children! All that is done in the city is to speak of this fact; the family is tormented and wants revenge of the affront; the nobility has taken the slander as done to itself, and it is also tormented and the poor Duke of Motta, who was appointed Vicar General to eradicate the bad plant of the bad people, is vexed from all sides, without coming to the head of anything."

"But by whom was he beaten?"

"They say, or he says, from the Beati Paoli."

"Oh!... always these!..."

"Mah!..."

The news was so unique and attractive that Blasco didn't even think of throwing a glimpse between the windows that the car's motorbike opened between the curtains and the windows of the door. Soon afterward they came home and seemed to Blasco to enter his house after a long journey. He found his room just as he had left it, as if you had missed it for a few hours.

Dinner awaited them. They cheerfully dined as good friends, chatting more and less. Blasco ventilated the idea of his journey.

"What do you want me to do in Palermo, at least for now?"

"Good God, I understand that you are used to doing something, but deep down what do all the young knights... and also the old? They go from here and there to conversation, they perform their religious duties, they attend some beautiful women, they make fencing, they beat the poor people, every once in a while they go hunting, every afternoon at the walk outside Porta Nuova or the Navy, and all the other hours of the day yawn. So they do in Palermo, and so they do elsewhere. I don't know if in the small lands, in the castles, they will do anything more; perhaps they will make a low hand over the daughters and wives of the vassals and beat those poor devils who dare to protest with submission. What else can they do? They have no other duty but to eat comfortably the incomes of their heritage..."

"But this is not life..."

"I know; but there's nothing else for us. We're noble for this. The only thing of different order we can do is learn to compose a sonnet, with the help of an abbot or our old teacher, and recite it in an academy, on some occasion; which can give us the reputation of spirituals... And if you, dear Blasco, have led a different life, attribute it to not having known your lamentations and to having been abandoned to yourself; otherwise you too would live like this without a construct..."

"You are a singular man, Coriolano; you know and judge this life sarcasticly short and useless, and you too..."

"I also live the same life; don't I? In fact, it is, but I have found a diversion that fits with my attitudes and habits. Study."

"Do you study?"

"Not on the books, let's watch it. Your amazement is reasonable. I study men; a great book inexhaustible, sleeps nature has written and writes all the most unimaginable geniuses, the discovery of which produces unpleasant surprises. So, as I appear to lead the same life as the other knights, I actually continually exercise my spirit in a delightful occupation..."

"You're a philosopher..."

"No. Observer and critic. That's all. But let's get back to you. So you want to leave. Will you pass through Messina?"

"Here's an insidious and mischievous question."

"Sorry. You might have had some curiosity as an observer..."

"Oh no! it would be too melancholy for me. I was born to move, to act. I want to live life, and life is instantly. So I have no time to observe, like you. Curious! we are at the two antipodes and yet we get along and feel bound by a lively sympathy...."

"I'm not surprised. We complete ourselves; you have what I don't have; and I have what is partly lacking in you."

They exchanged a few more words, then split up. Coriolano had some visits to make: Blasco actually didn't want any better than to be alone, to go out and wander the streets and breathe some air in full freedom. So he took the sword, threw himself into the pockets of the undergarment two small guns, and went out of the house without any definite direction; but as soon as he put his foot on the road, he asked himself:

"Which way did I come? From the right, if I'm not mistaken. And then?"

Mechanically he took the road that he supposed had been the one traveled in a carriage, but suddenly he stopped unsolved. He remembered that the carriage had made a turn, but before him three parallel roads opened one after the other and it was not possible to guess from which he had turned. He relied on the case, and took the first one that came to him. He crashed into Cassaro and learned less about it than before. Consider things well, he forgot by then his desire to know where he had been hospitalized, and began to go to the wind wandering through the streets. It could have been three. hours at night; the city entered into the great silence of sleep, troubled by some noble carriage or by the error of the nocturnal smugglers of the garbage, and of that homeless and lawless population, who did not know in the day where he went to hide.

Blasco was turning now this way now. Without realizing it, he found himself in the Piazza del Monte di Pietà, where a strong force of soldiers had stopped and seemed to take orders from a man in black. Blasco stopped a little distant, curious, the shadow made him invisible. He saw that drift split into four groups, three of which strayed in three different directions, but evidently to converge with a wide turn toward the same point. They had no lanterns, or perhaps they had closed them tightly: So they were not round; that maneuver indicated that it was something extraordinary. The fourth draft entered the road leading to Piazza San Cosmo, but the soldiers who composed it went to the corners, shaving the walls, almost hidden in the shadows, and far from each other.

"It must be some big shot, thought Blasco, who was beginning to aspire to the smell of an adventure. I want to enjoy it."

He went behind the last soldier walking in the shadows and stopped at a certain distance, from where he could follow the operations of that night body. The night was serene and, although there was no moon, the stars spread so much light that for the air and the streets there was like a kind of glimmer enough to see grossly what happened twenty steps away.

Blasco realized that the goal of the operations was a two-storey house on the square. In fact, he saw four soldiers entering the doorway, and shortly afterwards he saw one of the second floor balconies opening, and a man looking out violently, and then a girl; but the soldiers were on them, they pulled them in, they closed the balcony.

One of them stayed on the balcony and lay there, as if on the lookout. At the bottom of a vicolet that opened next to the house, Blasco saw for a moment the bayonets of another group, which perhaps had turned the position. The other soldiers hid in a doorway. The man in black who commanded them was with these.

"They wait for someone; it is certain," Blasco thought, and he also fell asleep, curious to see the dissolution of that drama.

About two hours passed; perhaps it was midnight. A kind of people, barefoot, coming from Guilla, looked out, looked at the square, and sprinkled. Almost at the same time, on the side of the Monte di Pietà another people, looking like the previous one, came to the square, looked around and scattered also. Shortly thereafter, he reappeared, followed by two men. Though they went casually, they looked around with circumspection. They stopped a few steps from Blasco; one of them said to the people:

"You stay here, if you ever realize there's a burning smell..."

"I know what I have to do..." Blasco thought: "If he gives him yours, he cannot be a man of the people..."

The people remained to spy, while the two were heading towards the little house. They passed before Blascus, who, obeying his impulse, called them with a lighter:

"Pssi..."

The two were surprised, stunned, looking around suspicious; Blasco was almost invisible. To give them guidance, he renewed his call:

"Psì!..." and he added in a low voice "this way!... come this way..."

The two did not move: Blasco saw them throwing their hands under their clothes, as if to arm themselves. Then he came out of the shadows a little, and quickly said,

"Do not make unnecessary noise; the square is occupied by soldiers..." Those two turned around vibrantly with a bike of fear.

Blasco quickly continued:

"If you were going to that house, go back; there are soldiers inside."

At these words the two men overwhelmed and tightened in Blasco. One of them asked him in a low voice, but moved:

"How do you know?"

"I saw them: I've been watching their maneuver for two hours. They have surrounded the house; some are inside; there is one lying on the terrace on the second floor; be careful and you will see it."

They turned and looked and saw, or thought they saw, something black and shapeless. Amazement full of dismay lay on their faces. While silent, however, they wondered with their eyes, as if to find the key to that surprise.

"Thank you, sir! You have given us a service for which we are grateful, and for which you will never regret."

"Oh, it's not the case for thanks; anyone would have done the same, but go now..."

They didn't get to repeat it. They returned quickly. Blasco saw them vanishing in the shadows and then, satisfied with the shot played to the man in black, he came out of his hiding place, to make the round of the square, but, taking a few steps, he found himself face to face with the black man, who, too, came out of his hiding, with gestures of impatience and amazement, he stopped surprised by that meeting.

"Stop there!" he intimated, drawing a blind lantern from under the coat, and illuminating the young man, and almost imperiously added: "Get out of here!"

"I mean, my dear lord, since you have had the... let's say so, the kindness of stopping me, in a rather curious tone, I think I have the right to know who you are, and who gave you permission to stop a knight..."

"Justice of the king; go..."

"Are you the king's justice? Come on, the king's justice can't be so rude and ugly. You are probably a cheater and a rude man and I take you by the collar and teach you to treat my peers!..."

He approached to grab the birro, which he went back, and placed himself on the defensive with a short sword in his hand, cried out:

"Beware that I will have you arrested..."

"I'd like to see this one too, you donkey!..."

But at the noise, there came out the door some soldiers who, with guns flattened, shouted:

"Give it up, or you're dead!"

At the cry, from the other hiding places, from the occupied house they leap out other soldiers, shouting also, while the birro with its hands raised up, desperate, exclaims: "No! no! what the hell are you doing!... Who called you? Ah! damn it!... everything is lost!..."

Blasco imperturbed, with his hands conserted, looked with pleasure, limiting himself to saying:

"Well? What do these brave warriors have?..."

But the birro, furious, who saw its appeasement foiled, cried out:

"You will pay for it!... for Christ; you will pay for it!... Arrest him."

"Ah! ah!... this one too? You're wrong, mamalucco!..."

By dancing back, and drawing his sword, Blasco warned, threatening to stick the first one who dared to put his hands on him. But it was not necessary. A cry of sorrow escaped a soldier and had others arrested and turned around; another cry followed the first; two large pebbles rolled on the ground. Other pebbles came out of the shadow mysteriously, fell among the soldiers, struck, put confusion and dismay.

We couldn't see who threw them; they were unknown hands, invisible, multiplying. From every dark corner, rocks flew: It's a little grabble. Blasco himself, who had remained open-mouthed, with his sword in his hand, was not nearly struck.

Three, four soldiers were wounded, the others powerless to defend themselves from that silent and dense stoneworker, who seemed to fall from the sky, were caught by a mysterious terror, they turned back, fled from here and there and the birro, no less terrified, behind them, threatening with the Blasco fist from Castiglione, who, after the surprise, burst into a noisy laugh.

Half an hour later, the square was empty. Blasco drew the sword, but had suddenly become serious and thoughtful. Who threw those rocks? When did he get that unexpected help?

He resumed his way home with the brain full of those thoughts, and saw only at his passing, from here and beyond from the square, figures of people, similar to those previously seen, curled up on the thresholds of the doors and under the stalls of the shops, losing themselves in the shadows.