Read The Nonexistent Knight Online

Authors: Italo Calvino

The Nonexistent Knight (10 page)

Now a cluster of maidens entered dancing. They wore tight robes and had garlands in their hair. Agilulf accompanied their dance by banging his iron gloves on the table in rhythm.

No less festive were the dances taking place in another wing of the castle, in the quarters of the maidens in waiting. Half clothed, the young women were playing at ball and drawing Gurduloo into the game. The squire, dressed in a short tunic which the ladies had lent him, never kept to his place or waited for the ball to be thrown but ran after it and tried to grasp it in any way he could, flinging himself headlong at one or another damsel, then amid his struggles being often struck by another inspiration and rolling with the girl on one of the soft cushions scattered around.

“Oh, what
are
you doing? Oh no, no, you great big camell Oh, see what he's doing to me! No, I want to play ball. Ah! ah! ah!"

Gurduloo was quite beside himself now. What with the warm bath they had given him, the scents and all that pink and white flesh, his only desire now was to merge into the general fragrance.

“Oh oh, here again. Oh, my God! Oh really, aah ...!”

The others went on playing ball as if noticing nothing, jesting, laughing and singing. “Oho! Ohi! The moon does fly on high ...”

The girl whom Gurduloo had whisked away, after a long last cry, returned to her companions rather flushed, rather stunned, then laughing and clapping her hands cried, “Over here, here to me!” and began to play again.

Before long Gurduloo was rolling on another girl.

“Come on, come on, oh what a bore, oh what a thruster, no, you’re hurting...” and she succumbed.

Other women and maidens not participating in the game were sitting on benches and chattering away...“Since Philomena, you know, was jealous of Clara, but...” then one would suddenly feel herself seized round the waist by Gurduloo...“Oh, what a fright!...well, as I was saying, William seems to have gone with Euphemia ... where
are
you taking me?” Gurduloo had loaded her onto a shoulder...“D’you understand? Meanwhile that other silly with her usual jealousy...” The girl was continuing to chatter and gesticulate as, dangling on Gurduloo’s shoulder, she vanished.

Not long after, back she came, rather dishevelled, a shoulder strap tom which she settled back, still gabbing away, “Well, as I was saying, Philomena made such a scene with Clara, and the other, on the other hand...”

In the banqueting chamber dancers and songsters had withdrawn. Agilulf was giving the chatelaine a long list of compositions often played by the Emperor Charlemagne’s musicians.

“The sky darkens,” observed Priscilla.

“ ’Tis night deep night” admitted Agilulf.

“The room which I have reserved for you...”

“Thanks. Listen to the nightingale out there in the park.”

“The room which I have reserved for you ... is my own...”

“Your hospitality is exquisite...'Tis from that oak the nightingale sings. Let us draw close to the window.”

He got up, offered her his iron arm, moved to the window. The gurgle of nightingales was a cue for him to launch out on a series of poetic and mythological references.

But Priscilla cut this off short. “What the nightingale sings about is love. And we...”

“Ah love!” cried Agilulf with such a brusque change of tone that Priscilla was alarmed. Then, without a break, he plunged into a dissertation of the passion of love. Priscilla was tenderly excited. Leaning on his arm, she urged him towards a room dominated by a big four-poster bed.

“Among the ancients, as love was considered a god...” Agilulf was pouring out.

Priscilla closed the door with a double bolt, went up to him, bowed her head on his armor and said, “I’m a little cold, the fire is spent...”

“The opinion of the ancients,” said Agilulf, “as to whether it be better to make love in cold rooms rather than in hot is a controversial one. But the advice of most...”

“Oh, you do know all about love,” whispered Priscilla.

“The advice of most is against stiflingly hot rooms and in favor of a certain natural warmth.”

“Shall I call my maidens, to light the fire?”

“I will light it myself.” He examined the wood in the fireplace, praised the flame of this or that type of wood, enumerated the various ways of lighting fires in the open or in enclosed places. A sigh from Priscilla interrupted him. As if realizing that this new subject was dispersing the amorous atmosphere being created, Agilulf quickly began smattering his speech with references and allusions and comparisons to warmth of emotions and senses.

Priscilla, smiling now, with half-closed eyes, stretching out a hand towards the flames which were beginning to crackle, said, “How lovely and warm ... how sweet it would be to be warm between sheets, prone...”

The mention of bed suggested a series of new observations to Agilulf; according to him the difficult art of bed making was unknown to the serving maids of France, and in nobles’ palaces could be found only ill-stretched sheets.

“Oh no, do tell me, my bed too ...?” asked the widow.

“Certainly yours is a queen’s bed, superior to all others in the Imperial dominions, but my desire to see you surrounded only with things worthy of you in every detail makes me eye that fold there with some apprehension...”

“Oh, a fold!” cried Priscilla, also swept by the passion for perfection communicated to her by Agilulf.

They undid the bed, finding and deploring little folds and puckers, portions too stretched or too loose, and this search gave moments of stabbing anguish and others of ascent to ever higher skies.

Having upset the whole bed as far as the mattress, Agilulf began to remake it according to the rules. This was an elaborate operation. Nothing was to be left to chance, and secret expedients were put to work. All this with diffuse explanations to the widow. But every now and again something left him dissatisfied, and he would begin all over again.

From the other wings of the castle rang a cry, or rather a moan or bray, forced out unwillingly.

“What's that?” started Priscilla.

“Nothing, it’s my squire’s voice,” said he.

With that shout mingled others more acute, like strident sighs soaring to the sky.

“What’s that now?” asked Agilulf.

"Oh, just the girls,” said Priscilla. ‘Playing ... youth, you know.”

And they went on remaking the bed, listening every now and again to the sounds of the night.

“Gurduloo’s shouting ...”

“What a noise those girls do make ...”

“The nightingale.”

“The cicadas...”

The bed was now ready, puckerless. Agilulf turned towards the widow. She was naked. Her robes had fallen chastely to the floor.

“Naked ladies are advised,” declared Agilulf, “that the most sublime of sensual emotions is embracing a warrior in full armor.”

“You don’t need to teach me that!” exclaimed Priscilla. “I wasn’t born yesterday!” So saying, she took a leap and clamped herself to Agilulf, entwining her legs and arms around his armor.

One after the other she tried all the ways in which armor can be embraced, then, all langor, entered the bed.

Agilulf knelt down beside her pillow. “Your hair,” he said.

Priscilla when disrobing had not undone the high array of her brown mane of hair. Agilulf began illustrating the place of loose hair in the transport of the senses. “Let’s try.”

With firm delicate movements of his iron hands he loosened her castle of tresses and made her hair fall down over her breast and shoulders.

“But,” he added, “it is certainly more subtle for a man to prefer a woman whose body is naked but hair elaborately dressed, even covered with veils and diadems.”

“Shall we try again?”

“I will dress your hair myself.” He dressed it and showed his capacity at weaving tresses, winding and twisting them round and fixing them with big pins. Then he made an elaborate arrangement of veils and jewels. So an hour passed, but Priscilla, on his handing her the mirror, had never seen herself so lovely.

She invited him to lie down by her side. “They say,” said he, “that every night Cleopatra dreamt she had an armed warrior in her bed.”

“I’ve never tried,” she confessed, “they usually take it off beforehand.”

“Well, try now.” And slowly, without soiling the sheets, he entered the bed fully armed from head to foot and stretched out taut as if on a tomb.

“Don’t you even loosen the sword from its scabbard?”

“Amorous passion knows no half measures.”

Priscilla shut her eyes in ecstasy.

Agilulf raised himself on an elbow. “The fire is smoking. I will get up to see why the flue does not draw.”

The moon was just showing at the window. On his way back from fireplace to bed Agilulf paused. “Lady, let us go out onto the battlements and enjoy this late moonlit eve.”

He wrapped her in his cloak. Entwined, they climbed the tower. The moon silvered the forest. A homed owl sang. Some windows of the castle were still alight and from them every now and again came cries or laughs or groans or a bray from the squire.

“All nature is love ...”

They returned to the room. The fire was almost out. They crouched down to puff on the embers. Now that they were close to each other, with Priscilla’s pink knee grazing his metallic greave, a new, more innocent intimacy grew.

When Priscilla went to bed again the window was already touched by first light. “Nothing disfigures a woman’s face like the first ray of dawn,” said Agilulf. But to get her face to appear in the best light he had to move bed, posts and all.

“How do I look?” asked the widow.

“Most lovely.”

Priscilla was happy. But the sun was rising fast and to follow its rays Agilulf continually had to move the bed.

“’Tis dawn,” said he. His voice had already changed. “My duty as knight requires me to set out on my road at this hour.”

“Already!” moaned Priscilla.

“I regret, gentle lady, but ’tis a graver duty urges me.”

“Oh how lovely it was...”

Agilulf bent his knee. “Bless me, Priscilla.” He rose, called his squire. He had to wander all over the castle before he finally spied him, exhausted, asleep like a log in a kind of dog kennel. “Quick, saddle up!” but he had to carry Gurduloo himself. The sun in its continuing ascent outlined the two figures on horseback against golden leaves in the woods—the squire balanced like a sack, the knight straight, pollarded like the slim shadow of a poplar.

Maidens and servant maids had hurried around Priscilla.

“How was it, mistress, how was it?”

“Oh, if you only knew! What a man, what a man...”

“But do tell, do describe, how was it? Tell us.”

“A man ... a man ... a knight ... a continuous ... a paradise...”

“But what did he
do?
What did he
do?”

“How can one tell that? Oh, lovely, how lovely it was...”

“But has he got everything? Yet ... Do tell ...”

“I simply wouldn’t know now ... So much ... But what about you, with that squire...?”

“Oh, nothing, no, did you? No, you? I really forget...”

“What? I could hear you, my dears...”

“Oh well, poor boy, I don’t remember, I don't remember either, may you ... what, me? Mistress, do tell us about him, about the knight, eh? What was Agilulf like?”

“Oh, Agilulf!”

9

AS I write this book, following a tale told in an ancient almost illegible chronicle, I realise only now that I have filled page after page and am still at the very beginning. For now the real ramifications of the plot get under way: Agilulf and his squire’s intrepid journey for proof of Sophronia’s virginity, interwoven with Bradamante’s pursuit and flight, Raimbaut’s love, and Torrismund’s search for the Knights of the Grail. But this thread, instead of running swiftly through my fingers, is apt to sag or stick and when I think of all the journeys and obstacles and flights and deceits and duels and jousts that I still have to put on paper I feel rather dazed. How this discipline as convent scribe and my assiduous penance of seeking words and all my meditations on ultimate truths have changed me. What the vulgar—and I too till now—considered as the greatest of delights, the interweaving adventures which make up every knightly tale, now seem to me pointless decoration, mere fringe, the hardest part of my task.

I long to hurry on with my story, tell it quickly, embellish every page with enough duels and battles for a poem but when I pause and start rereading I realise that my pen has left no mark on the paper and the pages are blank.

To tell it as I would like, this blank page would have to bristle with reddish rocks, flake with pebbly sand, spout sparse juniper trees. In the midst of a twisting ill-marked track, I would set Agilulf, passing erect on his saddle, lance at rest. But this page would have to be not only a rocky slope but the dome of sky above, slung so low that there is room only for a flight of cawing rooks in between. With my pen I should also trace faint dents in the paper to represent the slither of an invisible snake through grass or a hare crossing a heath, suddenly coming into the clear, stopping, sniffing around through its short whiskers, then vanishing again.

Everything moves on this bare page with no sign, no change on its surface, as after all everything moves and nothing changes on the earth’s crinkly crust; for there is but one single expanse of the same material, as there is with the sheet on which I write, an expanse which in spite of contractions and congealings in different forms and consistencies and various subtle colorings can still seem smeared over a flat surface. And even when hairy or feathery or knobbly bits seem at various times to move, that is but the change between the relations of various qualities distributed over the expanse of uniform matter, without anything changing in fact. The only person who can be said definitely to be on the move is Agilulf, by which I do not mean his horse or armor, but that lonely self-preoccupied, impatient something jogging along on horseback inside the armor. Around him pine cones fall from branches, streams gurgle over pebbles, fish swim in streams, maggots gnaw at leaves, tortoises rub their hard bellies on the ground, but all this is mere illusion of movement, perpetual revolving to and fro like waves. And in this wave Gurduloo is revolving to and fro, prisoner of the world’s stuff, he too smeared like the pine cones, fish, maggots, stones and leaves, a mere excrescence on the earth’s crust.

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