Read Online The Nonexistent Knight by Italo Calvino - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Italo Calvino
Ads: Link
them?”
“No!”
“Then how d’you know about them?”
“I know.”
They were silent. Only the croak of frogs could be heard. Raimbaut began to feel a fear coming over him that this croaking might drown everything else, drown him too in a green slimy blind pulsation of gills. But he remembered Bradamante, how she had appeared in battle with raised sword, and all his unease was forgotten. He longed for a time to fight and do prodigious deeds before her emerald eyes.
7
EACH nun is given her own penance here in the convent, her own way of gaining eternal salvation. Mine is this of writing tales. And a hard penance it is. Outside is high summer; from the valley rises a murmur of voices and a movement of water. My cell is high up and through its slit of a window I can see a bend of the river with naked peasant youths bathing, and further on, beyond a clump of willows, girls too have taken off their dresses and are going down to bathe. Now one of the youths has swum underwater and surfaced to look at them and they are pointing at him with cries. I might be there too, in gay company, with young folk of my own station, and servants and retainers. But our holy vocation leads us to esteem the permanent above the fleeting joys of the world. Which remains ... and if this book, and all our acts of piety carried out with ashen hearts, are not already ashes too ... even more ashes than the sensual frolics down at the river which tremble with life and propagate like circles in water...
One starts off writing with a certain zest, bHt a time comes when the pen merely grates in dusty ink, and not a drop of life Hows, and life is all outside, outside the window, outside oneself, and it seems that never more can one escape into a page one is writing, open out another world, leap the gap. Maybe it’s better so. Maybe the time when one wrote with delight was neither a miracle nor grace but a sin, of idolatry, of pride. Am I rid of such now? No, writing has not changed me for the better at all. I have merely used up part of my restless, conscienceless youth. What value to me will these discontented pages be? The book, the vow, are worth no more than one is worth oneself. One can never be sure of saving one’s soul by writing. One may go on writing with a soul already lost.
Then do you think I ought to go to the Mother Abbess and beg her to change my task, send me to draw water from the well, thread flax, shell chickpeas? There’d be no point in that. I’ll go on with my scribe’s duties as best I can. My next job is to describe the paladins’ banquet.
Against all Imperial rules of etiquette, Charlemagne settled at table before the proper time, when no one else had reached the board. Down he sat and began to pick at bread or cheese or olives or peppers, everything on the tables in fact. Not only that, but he also used his hands. Absolute power often slackens all controls, generates arbitrary actions, even in the most temperate of sovereigns.
One by one the paladins arrived in their grand gala robes which, between lace and brocade, still showed chain mail cuirasses, the kind with a very wide mesh, worn with dress armor, gleaming like a mirror but splintering at a mere rapier’s blow. First came Roland, who sat down on his uncle the emperor’s right, and then Rinaldo of Montalbano, Astolf, Anjouline of Bayonne, Richard of Normandy and all the others.
At the very end of the table sat Agilulf, still in his stainless battle armor. What had he come to do at table, he who had not and never would have any appetite, nor stomach to fill, nor mouth to bring his fork to, nor palate to sprinkle with Bordeaux wine? Yet he never failed to appear at these banquets, which lasted for hours, though the time would surely have been better employed in operations connected with his duties. But no! He had the right like all the others to a place at the Imperial table, and he occupied it. And he carried out the banquet ceremonial with the same
“No!”
“Then how d’you know about them?”
“I know.”
They were silent. Only the croak of frogs could be heard. Raimbaut began to feel a fear coming over him that this croaking might drown everything else, drown him too in a green slimy blind pulsation of gills. But he remembered Bradamante, how she had appeared in battle with raised sword, and all his unease was forgotten. He longed for a time to fight and do prodigious deeds before her emerald eyes.
7
EACH nun is given her own penance here in the convent, her own way of gaining eternal salvation. Mine is this of writing tales. And a hard penance it is. Outside is high summer; from the valley rises a murmur of voices and a movement of water. My cell is high up and through its slit of a window I can see a bend of the river with naked peasant youths bathing, and further on, beyond a clump of willows, girls too have taken off their dresses and are going down to bathe. Now one of the youths has swum underwater and surfaced to look at them and they are pointing at him with cries. I might be there too, in gay company, with young folk of my own station, and servants and retainers. But our holy vocation leads us to esteem the permanent above the fleeting joys of the world. Which remains ... and if this book, and all our acts of piety carried out with ashen hearts, are not already ashes too ... even more ashes than the sensual frolics down at the river which tremble with life and propagate like circles in water...
One starts off writing with a certain zest, bHt a time comes when the pen merely grates in dusty ink, and not a drop of life Hows, and life is all outside, outside the window, outside oneself, and it seems that never more can one escape into a page one is writing, open out another world, leap the gap. Maybe it’s better so. Maybe the time when one wrote with delight was neither a miracle nor grace but a sin, of idolatry, of pride. Am I rid of such now? No, writing has not changed me for the better at all. I have merely used up part of my restless, conscienceless youth. What value to me will these discontented pages be? The book, the vow, are worth no more than one is worth oneself. One can never be sure of saving one’s soul by writing. One may go on writing with a soul already lost.
Then do you think I ought to go to the Mother Abbess and beg her to change my task, send me to draw water from the well, thread flax, shell chickpeas? There’d be no point in that. I’ll go on with my scribe’s duties as best I can. My next job is to describe the paladins’ banquet.
Against all Imperial rules of etiquette, Charlemagne settled at table before the proper time, when no one else had reached the board. Down he sat and began to pick at bread or cheese or olives or peppers, everything on the tables in fact. Not only that, but he also used his hands. Absolute power often slackens all controls, generates arbitrary actions, even in the most temperate of sovereigns.
One by one the paladins arrived in their grand gala robes which, between lace and brocade, still showed chain mail cuirasses, the kind with a very wide mesh, worn with dress armor, gleaming like a mirror but splintering at a mere rapier’s blow. First came Roland, who sat down on his uncle the emperor’s right, and then Rinaldo of Montalbano, Astolf, Anjouline of Bayonne, Richard of Normandy and all the others.
At the very end of the table sat Agilulf, still in his stainless battle armor. What had he come to do at table, he who had not and never would have any appetite, nor stomach to fill, nor mouth to bring his fork to, nor palate to sprinkle with Bordeaux wine? Yet he never failed to appear at these banquets, which lasted for hours, though the time would surely have been better employed in operations connected with his duties. But no! He had the right like all the others to a place at the Imperial table, and he occupied it. And he carried out the banquet ceremonial with the same
Similar Books
