Authors: Stefan Grabinski
At first this eccentricity gave cause for jokes and derision, but in time people got used to the whims of the artist-gravedigger, as the works emerging from under his chisel soon earned praise from even the most knowledgeable of the
cognoscenti.
The previously modest cemetery became, in a dozen years or so, a sepulchral masterpiece and the pride of Foscara, which in turn became the envy of other cities.
From a ragged
lazzarone
, Tossati was transformed into a respected and wealthy citizen, a person of influence and prominence. Eventually he was elected chairman of the city council. Holding such a high office, he no longer personally dug graves, but now directed a large number of helpers, whom he taught in a truly novel manner. Tossati introduced into the burial trade a series of original improvements, cutting the work in half and quickening its tempo. He was no less faithful, though, to his old principles; he didn’t neglect any burial and personally supervised the affair. After the corpse had been lowered into the grave, Tossati himself shovelled the first lump of earth onto the coffin, leaving the rest of the work to his labourers. In this manner his gravedigging functions took on, to a certain extent, a symbolic character, eliciting a pleasing memory of his former role; and not for all the money in the world would he abandon this particular custom.
Now, in general, Tossati was a strange person. His very appearance called attention to itself. Tall, broad-shouldered, his face wide and dreary, he was constantly smiling with a mysterious curl on his lips. His eyes were enigmatic, downcast. Maybe this downward gaze had adapted to his habit of bowing his head toward the ground, which he seemed to be carefully examining. The townspeople jokingly said that Tossati was sniffing for corpses.
Despite the renown of the gifted sculptor, the gravedigger was, in truth, not liked. People feared him and got out of his way. A superstition even developed that a meeting with him at an early hour of the day was a bad omen.
So, when after ten years in Foscara he decided to get married, none of the female inhabitants wanted to give him her hand. They were not tempted by Giovanni’s vast prosperity, nor were they enticed by the promise of a life of affluence. In the end, he married a poor workwoman from a neighbouring village, an orphan given as a favour for an unfavourable fate.
But he didn’t find happiness in family life. After a year of marriage his wife gave him twins: the first was stillborn; the second had been strangely formed in its mother’s womb. This freak, dissimilar to any human baby, died on the third day after its birth. The broken-hearted woman disappeared one day, and all searches for her were in vain.
From then on he lived alone next to the cemetery in his white brick-walled house, and saw the townspeople mostly at funerals. Yet his windows were lit up late into the night, and neighbours frequently heard drunken shouts of people emanating from his home.
Nearly every night Tossati had some guests; but they were certainly not inhabitants of Foscara – at least no one in the city boasted of going there. Carriages drove up in front of the gravedigger’s house, sometimes lavish coaches; strange people from unknown places would get out and go inside. At other times, heavy, usually empty wagons rolled in, creaking through the entrance gate, on which were loaded boxes and heavily boarded-up crates, to be taken away to an unknown destination before daybreak.
The city followed the sculptor’s secretive movements from a distance, not wanting to become involved in the affairs of a strange person who instilled fear in them.
By then the gravedigger and his home were enveloped in gloomy legends that had grown with the years and cemetery tales filled with rotting corpses and the stench of decay. It was said that the dead were visiting John and carrying on secret talks with him through the night. That’s why no one was courageous enough to steal up to his brightly-lit windows and observe his guests.
Tossati knew of the tales surrounding him and didn’t attempt to contradict them; on the contrary, it seemed as if he wanted to cocoon himself in ever thicker strands of mystery behind which he could hide his dark life.
The blasphemer’s entire fortune arose from the cemetery; his home, possessions and life absorbed with time a corpselike fustiness. And everything went along unpunished. As long as he walked the streets of Foscara, the dead seemed to patiently endure the affront. It was as if the evil demon residing in this person kept the world of shadows chained, as if the gravedigger’s satanic will tethered any sign of revolt on the part of the desecrated deceased.
Tossati still walked around a little stooped and still smiled to no one in particular. In his last years of earthly tramping this smile never left his face, and it even seemed to have become gentle. During this time, Tossati’s face gave the impression of a mummy with a set expression: it was the constantly smiling face of a good-natured soul.
For the stonemason had been wearing the same gypsum mask for two years. The material from which he had made it imitated so perfectly the colour of flesh, and the mask adhered so hermetically to his face, that it wasn’t noticed at all: he went among people freely, not awakening either suspicion or laughter. Only an accident revealed his real face, a strange, unusual occurrence, after which one didn’t see him any more among the living … .
It happened in autumn, on one of those sad, rainy days when the damp earth is enveloped by mists and plunges into gloomy pensiveness. In the afternoon, amidst threatening grey skies, a funeral took place. The town was burying its richest inhabitant, a widely esteemed merchant and owner of the silk mill. The great funeral procession – comprised of the town’s first families, the representatives of every trade and the flower of the city’s youth – accompanied the deceased to the cemetery, where he was placed in his family tomb.
Tossati was in an excellent mood that day and furtively rubbed his hands with glee. The deceased was unusually rich and was laid in the tomb in very costly attire. As he was taking the body off the bier, the gravedigger noticed two diamond signets on the merchant’s middle and little fingers and a priceless ruby stud on his chest. Furthermore, he hadn’t buried anyone for a long while in such a good state of preservation and so well suited to anatomical explorations – the old professor from Padua would be most pleased. The double reward portended well; it necessitated, in truth, hard and laborious work, particularly as the tomb would be securely closed. Yet the affair would be worth the trouble.
Later that day, he got the sudden impulse to drop by The Hyena, an inn not far from the cemetery. This tavern, constructed years ago thanks to his covert efforts and funds, was given this odd name by an unknown carpenter who had arrived at the gravedigger’s special request. The name was justified by the front of the building, which had a stone hyena arching its spotted back over the inn. Soon the inn became the meeting place of pall bearers and gravediggers, who after every burial carried on a wake of their own, drinking away their earnings.
Out of principle Giovanni didn’t show himself in this den of gambling and drinking, though he liked to pass by in the evening and listen to the drunken gaiety of his people.
Despite this, he wasn’t able to resist temptation that day and decided to spend some time there in disguise. He first put on the attire of a high-ranking noble; then he attached his inseparable mask, secured a beard over it, and further hid himself with a wide hat. Thus dressed, he entered the inn early to observe at his leisure the funeral celebrations of his ‘children.’
That evening a considerable number of people, of various occupations and positions, were congregating at the inn – the season was raw, boredom stifled one at home, and a Saint’s Day feast, which would start the next day, brought many customers from surrounding areas. The proprietor of the inn, a sly, roguishly smiling old man, ran from table to table like a spinning top; he curled himself up, hemmed and hawed, poured wine and encouraged the singing. A group of wandering gypsies, squatting in the corner of the room, played melancholic-wild songs.
Around nine o’clock Tossati’s men entered, and the inn took on its true character.
Tossati didn’t take part in the conversations. Squeezed in a dark corner of the room, he covered his face with the wide brim of his hat so that he wouldn’t be recognized, and just consumed innumerable mugs of the honey wine in silence. He listened and observed.
People’s humour was exceptional, the mood, particularly after the entrance of the cemetery workers, gay. Anecdotes abounded, witticisms sparkled, jokes exploded. Peter Randone, a tall, stick-like scoundrel, especially outdid his companions by describing lewd scenes from his own experiences.
After midnight the inn started to slowly empty. The customers, wearied from drinking, went out one by one from the smoke-filled room and disappeared into the black night. Tossati, having overdone it, fell asleep. His hand dropped lazily on the table, pulling off the hat from his leaden head. At some moment his body, overpowered by drink, slid from the bench and fell heavily to the floor. The gravedigger didn’t wake up; intoxicated sleep overpowered him completely. The good-natured mask, hitching against the table leg, slipped off his face and rolled under the chair with a soft rustle. None of this was noticed in the general tumult, and Giovanni slept in peaceful delight under the bench, undisturbed by anyone. But when the inn emptied around two and only the black brotherhood of death remained, the well-dressed customer lying under the bench attracted the curious glances of the last revellers.
‘That rascal really got drunk! Let’s take a look at him in the light!’
‘We’ll see whose mama’s boy it is!’
‘Some rich merchant or cavaliere – a man about town in pursuit of adventure. Come on, let’s get him out from under that bench!’
Several eager hands stretched out toward the sleeper and laid him on his back. But when they saw the face of the drunken man, everyone recoiled simultaneously. The cemetery men’s eyes were lit up in horrified amazement. Because the body of the stranger, attired in elegant, soft garments, had a corpse’s head. The deeply sunken eyes stared out with what seemed cold death; the yellow, shriveled skin merged with the tint of the jutting cheek bones; the hairless, earless skull shone with the smoothness of glazed tibias … .
A vague murmur ran through the group. The affair made them uneasy. The first one to ‘get his wits about him’ was Randone:
‘What kind of stupid joke is this! Which one of you dug out this corpse for this masquerade? Well, speak up while you still have the chance!’
Silence. They glanced at each other in astonishment, not understanding what this was all about. No one pleaded guilty.
‘Ha!’ resumed Randone, ‘we’ll let it go for the time being; we’ll deal with the joker later on. Now let’s take this body on our shoulders while there is still time and head straight for the cemetery! In two hours it’ll be daybreak – we have to hurry before it gets light. If the town hears of this, we’re done for!’
Silently they carried out the order. Six men raised Tossati and, placing him on their shoulders, made their way out toward the cemetery. They went quickly, glancing about in apprehension in case someone was watching. They didn’t pay attention to the mud spattering them up to their knees as they sloshed through puddles of rainwater. A strange fear and their leader’s command drove them on – or someone else’s command, or an internal necessity. They didn’t speak; they didn’t feel the unusual temperature of the body; they didn’t notice that the hands of the corpse still hadn’t rotted; they didn’t for a moment pay attention to the difference between the state of the head and the rest of the body. Just as long as they moved forward, as quickly as possible, so as to be finished with the whole affair!
They plunged into the cool paths of the cemetery; they passed the main road, crossed several side ones, and turned right, amongst the fresh graves. Here, beside a jasmine tree hidden by thickets, they stopped and lowered Tossati to the ground.
‘To your shovels,’ resounded the quiet order of Peter Randone.
They briskly grabbed the handles and began to scoop out wet lumps of earth.
In fifteen minutes the grave was already deep.
Randone spoke again. ‘To the bottom with him!!’
Tossati didn’t budge, he didn’t stir; he slept soundly.
Eager black hands hurled him into the hole. The thud of the dropped body merged with the impact of shovels throwing back the earth. The men worked with rare fervour, as if in a mad race. In several minutes the hole was filled up. Freshly carried and hastily packed-down earth topped off the grave.
Then the group breathed freely. With soiled hands, they wiped pearly drops of sweat from their foreheads; they looked about with a strange, quizzical glance. Then, not saying anything, they took their shovels and put as much distance as possible between themselves and the grave … .
It was perhaps four in the morning. A light rain started to fall again, sifted as if through a sieve. Beaded tears flowed down from cemetery birches and ran silently along paths; damp and pendulant willows swung sadly in the wind. Dawn’s grey radiance, passing through the wall of trees, studied with amazement the melancholy retreat. Some evil birds, blinded by the pall of night, flapped their wings ominously amongst the branches and dug themselves deeper into the leaves. The rain drizzled, the wind soughed in the trees, the dawn became misty … .
A long, black procession of Tossati’s men moved out stealthily from the cemetery gate, their step heavy, uncertain, their heads bowed low … .
(Pages from a discovered diary)
And the rib, which the Lord God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man. And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man. Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.
Genesis
2:22â24
I have been intoxicated with joy for six days now and can hardly believe my good fortune. Six days ago I entered a new phase of life, one so markedly different than what preceded, that it seems I am living through a great cataclysm.