The Cloven Viscount Read online

  Once again Pietrochiodo had done a masterly job. The compass legs made circles on the field and the duelers flung themselves into assaults of clanking metal and thudding wood, into feints and lunges. But they did not touch each other. At every lunge the sword's point seemed to go straight at the adversary's fluttering cloak, and each seemed determined to make for the part where there was nothing, that is the part where he should have been himself. Certainly if instead of half duelers there had been two whole ones, they would have wounded each other again and again. The Bad 'Un fought with fury and ferocity, yet never managed to launch his attacks just where his enemy was; the Good 'Un had correct mastery, but never did more than pierce the Viscount's cloak.

  At a certain point they found themselves sword-guard to sword-guard; the points of their wooden legs were stuck in the ground like stakes. The Bad 'Un freed himself with a start and was just losing his balance and rolling to the ground when he managed to give a terrific swing not right on his adversary but very close; a swing parallel to the margin interrupting the Good 'Un's body, and so near that it was not clear at once if it was this side or the other. But soon we saw the body under the cloak go purple with blood from head to groin and there was no more doubt. The Good 'Un swayed, but as he fell in a last wide, almost pitiful, movement he too swung his sword very near his rival, from head to abdomen, between the point where the Bad 'Un's body was not and the point where it might have been. Now the Bad 'Un's body also spouted blood along the whole length of the huge old wound; the lungs of both had burst all their vein ends and reopened the wound which had divided them in two. Now they lay face to face and the blood which had once been one man's alone again mingled in the field.

  Aghast at this sight I had not noticed Trelawney; then I realized that the doctor was jumping up and down with joy on his grasshopper's legs, clapping his hands and shouting, "He's saved, he's saved! He's saved! Leave it to me."

  Half and hour later we bore back one single wounded man on a stretcher to the castle. Bad and Good 'Uns had been tightly bound together; the doctor had taken great care to get all guts and arteries of both parts to correspond, and then a mile of bandages had tied them together so tightly that he looked more like an ancient embalmed corpse than a wounded man.

  My uncle was watched night and day as he lay between life and death. One morning looking at that face crossed by a red line from forehead to chin and on down the neck, it was Sabastiana who first said, "There, he's moved."

  A quiver was in fact going over my uncle's features, and the doctor wept for joy at seeing it transmitted from one cheek to the other.

  Finally Medardo shut his eyes and his lips; at first his expression was lopsided; he had one eye frowning and the other supplicating, a forehead here corrugated and there serene, a mouth smiling in one comer and gritting its teeth in the other. Then gradually it became symmetrical again.

  Dr. Trelawney said, "Now he's healed."

  And Pamela exclaimed, "At last I'll have a husband with everything complete."

  So my uncle Medardo became a whole man again, neither good nor bad, but a mixture of goodness and badness, that is, apparently not dissimilar to what he had been before the halving. But having had the experience of both halves each on its own, he was bound to be wise. He had a happy life, many children and a just rule. Our life too changed for the better. Some might expect that with the Viscount entire again, a period of marvellous happiness would open, but obviously a whole Viscount is not enough to make all the world whole.

  Now Pietrochiodo built gibbets no longer, but mills, and Trelawney neglected his will-'o-the-wisps for measles and chickenpox. I, though, amid all this fervor of wholeness, felt myself growing sadder and more lacking. Sometimes one who thinks himself incomplete is merely young.

  I had reached the threshold of adolescence and still hid among the roots of the great trees in the wood to tell myself stories. A pine needle could represent a knight, or a lady, or a jester. I made them move before my eyes and enraptured myself in interminable tales about them. Then I would be overcome with shame at these fantasies and would run off.

  A day came when Dr. Trelawney left me too. One morning into our bay sailed a fleet of ships flying the British flag and anchored offshore. The whole of Terralba went to the seashore to look at them, except me, who did not know. The gunwales and rigging were full of sailors carrying pineapples and tortoises and waving scrolls with maxims on them in Latin and English. On the quarterdeck, amid officers in tricorn and wig, Captain Cook fixed the shore with his telescope, and as soon as he sighted Dr. Trelawney gave orders for him to be signalled by flag, "Come on board at once, Doctor, as we want to get on with that game of cards."

  The doctor bade farewell to all at Terralba and left us. The sailors intoned an anthem, "Oh, Australia!" And the doctor was hitched on board astride a barrel of cancarone. Then the ships drew anchor.

  I had seen nothing. I was deep in the wood telling myself stories. When I heard later, I began running towards the seashore crying, "Doctor! Doctor Trelawney! Take me with you! Doctor, you can't leave me here!"

  But already the ships were vanishing over the horizon and I was left behind, in this world of ours full of responsibilties and will-'o-the-wisps.

  ALSO BY ITALO CALVINO

  Visit www.hmhbooks.com to find more books by Calvino, including:

  The Baron in the Trees

  The Castle of Crossed Destinies

  Cosmicomics

  Difficult Loves

  If on a winter's night a traveler

  Invisible Cities

  Italian Folktales

  Marcovaldo, or The seasons in the city

  Mr. Palomar

  The Nonexistent Knight and The Cloven Viscount

  t zero

  Under the Jaguar Sun

  The Uses of Literature

  The Watcher and Other Stories