The Charterhouse of Parma (27 page)

The day was fine; it was about six in the morning: he had borrowed an old single-loading rifle and had shot a few larks, one of which, wounded, would land on the high-road; pursuing it, Fabrizio noticed in the distance a carriage from Parma heading for the Casalmaggiore frontier. He had just reloaded his gun when the carriage, an extremely dilapidated one, approached so slowly that he recognized little Marietta, flanked by the lout Giletti and the old woman she passed off as her mother.

Giletti imagined that Fabrizio had posted himself there in the middle of the road, holding his rifle, to insult him and perhaps even to rob him of little Marietta. As a man of valor, he jumped out of the carriage; in his left hand he was holding a huge rusty pistol, and in his right a sword still in its scabbard, which he used when the company’s needs obliged him to assume the part of some nobleman.

“So, you brigand!” he exclaimed. “I’m glad to find you here a league from the border; I’ll take care of you now, where you’re no longer protected by your purple stockings.”

Fabrizio was busy smiling at little Marietta and quite unconcerned with Giletti’s jealous cries when suddenly he noticed three feet from his chest the barrel of the rusty pistol; he had just time to knock the weapon away with his own rifle: the pistol went off, but without wounding anyone.

“Stop here, you asshole!” Giletti shouted to the coachman. At the same time he was shrewd enough to leap at the barrel of his adversary’s gun, holding it away from his body; Fabrizio and he each pulled at the gun with all their might. Giletti, a much stronger man, placing one hand in front of the other, kept moving up toward the trigger, and was about to seize the weapon when Fabrizio, to prevent this, managed to fire. He had previously noticed that the gun barrel was more than three inches above Giletti’s shoulder: the detonation occurred quite close to the man’s ear. He remained stunned a moment, then recovered almost at once. “So you want to blow my brains out, you scum! I’ll settle your hash for you now.” Giletti threw away the scabbard of his nobleman’s sword and with admirable dispatch made for Fabrizio, who was unarmed and gave himself up for lost.

He ran toward the carriage, which had stopped a dozen paces behind Giletti; he passed to the left and, grabbing the carriage-spring, quickly turned around and passed beside the door on the right-hand side, which stood open. Giletti, who had started forward on his long legs and who had not thought of catching hold of the carriage-spring, made several steps in the wrong direction before he could stop. At the moment Fabrizio passed the open door, he heard Marietta whisper:

“Watch out, he’ll kill you! Here!”

At the same moment, Fabrizio saw what looked like a big hunting-knife
falling out of the carriage-door; he leaned down to pick it up, but at that very second was touched on the shoulder by a swipe of Giletti’s sword. Straightening up, Fabrizio found himself six inches from Giletti, who gave him a furious blow on the face with his sword-hilt; the blow was launched with such force that it left Fabrizio completely dazed; at this moment he was on the point of being killed. Fortunately for him, Giletti was still too close to be able to run him through. Coming to his senses, Fabrizio took to his heels as fast as he could run, and as he did so threw away the sheath of the hunting knife and then, quickly turning around, found himself three paces away from his pursuer. Giletti was upon him; Fabrizio struck at him with the tip of the knife; Giletti had time enough to push the knife upward with his sword, but received the wound full in his left cheek. He passed right by Fabrizio, who felt a stab in his thigh—this was Giletti’s knife, which the latter had had time to open. Fabrizio leaped to the right; he turned around, and now the two adversaries found themselves at a proper fighting range.

Giletti was swearing like a lost soul. “Now I’ll slit your throat for you, you damned priest!” he kept repeating.

Fabrizio was quite out of breath and unable to speak; his face was hurting terribly where the sword-hilt had struck it, and his nose was bleeding copiously; he warded off several blows with his hunting-knife and made a number of lunges without really knowing what he was doing; he had a vague sense of being on display. This notion had been suggested to him by the presence of his workmen, who had formed a circle of some twenty-five or thirty men around the combatants, but at a very respectful distance, for at every moment the two men would leap up and fling themselves upon each other.

The duel seemed to be slackening a little; the blows no longer succeeded each other with the same speed, when Fabrizio said to himself: “From the pain I feel in my face, he must have disfigured me.” Furious at this idea, he leaped upon his foe, knife-point at the ready, so that it entered the right side of Giletti’s chest and emerged near the left shoulder; at the same instant, Giletti’s sword ran at full length into Fabrizio’s upper arm, but the blade slid under the skin, and the wound was not serious.

Giletti had fallen; at the moment when Fabrizio advanced toward him, staring at his left hand, which was holding a knife, this hand opened quite mechanically and released his weapon. “The bugger is dead,” Fabrizio said to himself.

He looked at Giletti’s face: blood was pouring out of his mouth. Fabrizio ran to the carriage. “Do you have a mirror?” he shouted to Marietta, who had gone dead white and stared at him without answering. The old woman opened a green workbag with great aplomb and handed Fabrizio a little mirror with a handle, no bigger than his hand. Studying his face, Fabrizio worked his features. “My eyes are all right,” he said to himself, “which is something, anyway.” He looked at his teeth, none of which was broken. “Why am I in such pain?” he asked himself half-aloud.

The old woman answered: “Because the top of your cheek was crushed between Giletti’s sword-hilt and the bone there. Your cheek is horribly swollen and discolored: put some leeches on it right away and it will be nothing.”

“Oh yes, leeches, right away,” Fabrizio said with a laugh as he recovered his composure. He saw that the workmen had surrounded Giletti and were staring at him without daring to touch him.

“Help that man!” he shouted to them. “Open his coat …” He was going to continue, but looking up he saw five or six men about three hundred yards away on the high-road, walking deliberately toward the scene of the action. “Those must be the police,” he realized, “and since there’s been a man killed, they’ll arrest me and I’ll have the honor of making a solemn entry into the city of Parma. What a story for the courtiers on Marchesa Raversi’s side who detest my aunt!”

With lightning speed, he tossed all the money in his pockets to the workmen and leaped into the carriage. “Keep the police from coming after me,” he shouted to his men, “and I’ll make your fortunes for you; tell them I’m innocent, tell them this man
attacked me and tried to kill me
. And you,” he said to the coachman, “see how fast your horses can gallop. Four gold napoleons for you if you cross the Po before those men can get hold of me.”

“Right you are!” the coachman said. “But there’s no need to fear: those men back there are on foot, and even trotting these little fellows
of mine would leave them far behind.” With these words, he put his horses to a gallop.

Our hero was startled by the word
fear
the coachman had employed: the fact is that he had indeed been in extreme fear after receiving the sword-hilt blow to his face.

“We might run into people riding toward us,” the cautious coachman remarked, thinking of his four napoleons, “and the men behind us might call out to them to stop us.” Which meant, reload your weapons …

“Oh, how brave you are, my dearest Abbé!” exclaimed Marietta, embracing Fabrizio.

The old woman looked out the door of the carriage; after a little while she pulled her head back inside. “No one is after you, sir,” she said to Fabrizio quite coolly; “and there’s no one on the road ahead. You know how finicky the Austrian police can be: if they see you coming at a gallop like this, along the banks of the Po, they’ll be sure to stop you, have no doubt about that.”

Fabrizio looked out the carriage door. “Trot the horses,” he told the coachman. “What passport do you have?” he asked the old woman.

“Three, instead of one,” she answered, “and each one cost us four francs: isn’t it a shame for poor dramatic artists like ourselves, traveling all year round! Here’s Monsieur Giletti’s passport,
dramatic artist
, that will be you; here are our two passports, for Marietta and me. But Giletti had all our money in his pocket; what will become of us?”

“How much did he have?” asked Fabrizio.

“Forty good scudi worth five francs,” the old woman answered.

“In other words, six francs and change,” said Marietta laughing; “I don’t want anyone cheating my dearest Abbé.”

“Isn’t it only natural, sir,” the old woman went on with the greatest
sang-froid
, “that I should try to gouge you out of thirty-four scudi? What are thirty-four scudi to you? And we—we’ve lost our protector; who will take care of us and find us lodgings and argue about charges with the coachman when we’re traveling, and scare everyone off? Giletti may not have been handsome, but he was very useful, and if the child here weren’t such a fool as to have fallen in love with you first,
Giletti would never have noticed a thing, and you would have given us good money. I can promise you we’re poor as church mice.”

Fabrizio was touched; he took out his purse and gave the old woman several napoleons. “As you see,” he told her, “fifteen are all I have left, so there’s no use trying any more tricks on me.” Little Marietta threw her arms around his neck, and the old woman kissed his hands. The carriage trotted on. When they saw the black-and-yellow-striped barriers up ahead announcing Austrian territory, the old woman said to Fabrizio:

“It would be better if you were to cross on foot, with Giletti’s passport in your pocket; we’re going to stop here for a while with the excuse of refreshing our
toilette
. Besides, the customs officers will be going through our things. If you trust me, you’ll stroll quite casually through Casalmaggiore; you might even go into a café and drink a glass of brandy; once past the village, don’t waste any time. The police are watchful as the devil in Austrian territory: they’ll soon know there’s been a man killed: you’re traveling with a passport that’s not your own; that’s enough to get you two years in prison. Head for the Po on your right as you leave town, rent a boat, and make your escape to Ravenna or Ferrara; leave the Austrian States as fast as you can. With two louis you should be able to buy another passport from some customs-officer—the one you have would be fatal to you; remember that you’ve killed the man.”

Approaching the pontoon-bridge of Casalmaggiore on foot, Fabrizio carefully reread Giletti’s passport. Our hero was in a state of fear: he vividly recalled what Count Mosca had told him about the danger he would incur by entering the Austrian States; now, two hundred paces ahead, he saw the terrible bridge which would afford him access to that country whose capital, in his eyes, was the Spielberg. But what else could he do? The Duchy of Modena, which borders the State of Parma to the south, returned fugitives to Parma according to a special convention; the frontier of the State extending over the mountains toward Genoa was too far; his misadventure would be known in Parma long before he could reach those mountains; so nothing remained but the States of Austria on the left bank of the Po. Before anyone had time
to write the Austrian authorities requesting his arrest, perhaps some thirty-six hours or two days would have passed. Having duly considered all these matters, Fabrizio set fire to his own passport with his cigar: in Austrian territory he would do better as a vagabond than as Fabrizio del Dongo, and it was quite possible he would be searched.

Aside from his natural repugnance to entrusting his life to the unfortunate Giletti’s passport, this document presented certain material difficulties: Fabrizio’s height reached at most some five feet five inches, and not five feet ten as the passport specified; he was nearly twenty-four years old and looked younger, Giletti thirty-nine. We will confess that our hero paced a good half an hour along the Po embankment near the pontoon-bridge before making up his mind to cross it. “What would I advise someone else to do in my place?” he asked himself at last. “Obviously: cross the bridge: it is dangerous to remain in the State of Parma; police might be sent in pursuit of a man who has killed another, even in self-defense.” Fabrizio examined the contents of his pockets, tore up all the papers he found there, and retained only his handkerchief and his cigar-case: it was essential to shorten the examination he would have to undergo. He thought of one terrible objection that might be raised, to which he found only poor answers: he was claiming that his name was Giletti, and all his linen was initialled F.D.

As we see, Fabrizio was one of those unfortunates tormented by their imagination; this is frequently the defect of intelligent men in Italy. A French soldier of equal or even inferior courage would have ventured to cross the bridge immediately, without brooding in advance upon the difficulties; but he would also have proceeded with all his composure when, at the end of the bridge, a short fellow dressed in gray said to him: “Go into the police office and show your passport.”