The Pop’s Rhinoceros (116 page)

times its normal size and still growing), when Dommi is picking up the very last of the gondolas and smashing it over his knee, when Wulf, Wolf, and Wilf are apologizing for his excesses in triplicate to the sodden battered poets wading to shore, when little Pierino finally hurls a wizened orange to the starving musicians, who rise as one, already calculating the probable number and division of its segments, only to see it speared in midflight and carried away on the beak of a passing crow, when all this frolicsome fun is being played out for their entertainment on the surface of the Lake of Mars—why has the crowd chosen as its champion the one creature diving invisibly through the water underneath?

SAL- VES- TRO! SAL- VES- TRO! SAL- VES- TRO!

“Yes, that’s right. Salvestro,” murmurs Lucidlo. “Old friend of mine.” He has been saying this for about half an hour now. “Sal-ves-tro. Important to get the pronunciation right, don’t you agree?” Everybody does. Absolutely everyone agrees absolutely wholeheartedly, and as a result the pronunciation of Salvestro’s name is just about perfect, even more perfect when the volume starts to fall off a little, better yet when it quietens to a whisper, and when the last sussuration dies away, leaving an unbroken silence, the perfection of “Salvestro” is absolute. It is not the silence of smooth water. It is the silence of ice. Every head is fixed on the lake, where the two Beasts gaze at each other and where Salvestro does not rise. Old memories tick and tock. The crowd remains quiet. Possibly they are waiting for their champion to shoot up like a vengeful Neptune. Possibly, though, they are waiting for the Beasts. Hanno takes a step backward. His enemy creaks. Another step. Another creak. The Beast is a bloated, ballooning monster, its head the size of a water-barrel, its body the hull of a ship, and still growing as the pressure inside builds to the point where this brine-drenched dung-dunked hide stretches tighter than a drumskin, until, in a fleeting instant of aghast anticipation, everyone realizes what the next moment must inevitably bring. Everyone, that is, except two.

“Salvestro? Is that you?”

“It is, Father Jörg. I’m in here. Underneath you.”

Then the Beast explodes.

The force shoots fragments of Beast-skin and sodden bread high and wide into the air in a spray of gray tatters and pinkish-white clods that spatter the waiting crowds. Small brawls develop around the landing-sites of the horns, and the larger flaps of skin are quickly torn to shreds in the quest for souvenirs. The brooch-sellers pack up and go home. Groot’s bread—fluffy but sodden—splats wetly down on all and sundry, who scrape it off their faces and fling it in disgust to the ground (all except King Caspar and the Mauritians, who, notwithstanding its purplish hue and fishy smell, gobble as much of it as they possibly can). When they look up again, what they see, to their astonishment, is Salvestro, their champion, standing upright on the podium with the strangely dressed old man in his arms. What Salvestro sees is the Pope standing upright on the distant platform. They look at each other across the intervening distance. From his gestures, the
Pope seems to be making a speech, and from the cheers of the crowd it seems to be a popular one, and from the chant that succeeds it, it would seem that it concerns him.

SAL- VES- TRO! SAL- VES- TRO! SAL- VES- TRO!

“Oi! Are you going to stand up there all day?” Dommi’s punt bumps against the podium. “Whoa!” Dommi’s punt-pole suddenly drops a foot, almost unbalancing him. “Come on. Fat Bastards going to feed us dinner. Are these your boots?”

Father Jörg coughs hoarsely. “Have you come to join with me, Salvestro?”
SAL- VES- TRO! SAL- VES- TRO! SAL- VES- TRO!

” Come on, Salvestro!” shouts Dommi.

Plop!

No one hears it, not even Father Jörg. The crowd are shouting too loud and will still be shouting when Dommi has punted both men back to the palace, when he has questioned the manhood of a sullen band of Switzers and headbutted their commander in the face en route to the
tinello,
where Salvestro will find himself seated at the top table, wedged between the Orator of Fernando the Catholic and His Holiness himself, when he looks around and sees that Father Jörg has been seated farther away, amongst the servants, when he wonders, without really worrying, where Amalia can have got to. … They will still be shouting then, but only just. Thirty or forty of them at most. Finally they will be silent, all departed, all forgetful, on their respective routes back to wherever and whatever they came from. As the last one makes his way down the spiral staircase in the eastern wall of the Belvedere, Guidol will be leaning over himself and His Holiness in the midst of an explanation of a dish called
corquignolles,
the musicians will be about to play, and His Holiness will have offered him “whatever it is in my power to grant,” while wondering privately when Ghiberti will return from the errand he has been sent on.
(Sal-ves-tro!
Salvestro? That name is in the ledger somewhere. …) It will be dark. It will be his last night in Ro-ma.

Plop! Plop! Plop!…

Poor Towser. Even his corpse is useless.

And poor little Pierino—such a difficult day for the pygmy-poet, for the producer of the Painful Paean. A clout around the ear, an immovable melon, an unreachable grapefruit, then the climactic escrowed orange, and now everyone’s disappeared and left him all on his own. Little Pierino begins to sniffle again, then cry.

“Two thousand seven hundred and three. Two thousand seven hundred and two. Two thousand seven hundred and one. Two thousand seven hundred and none … Oh, hello, little boy. Who are you?”

Little Pierino raises his tearstained face and wipes his freely running nose. A girl is standing in front of him.

“I’m little Pierino,” says little Pierino. “I’m a—”

“Little Pierino the poet?” asks the girl, an expression of incredulous delight suffusing her artless features, as it seems to the diminutive dithyrambist.

He nods proudly. “What were you counting?”

“Oh”—she gestures airily—“just the leaves falling out of the trees, or God’s acts of mercy, or the saved, or the damned, or the people who will remember Salvestro.”

“Salvestro? Who’s he?”

“Six thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine. Never mind. Do you know any games, little Pierino? I only know leapfrog and the rat game.”

“I know a poem,” offers little Pierino. “It’s about His Holiness. Shall I recite it for you?”

Amalia nods eagerly.

His right hand moves to his breast (plucking the Orphic lyre), his left arm extends toward Amalia (tuning it to the Aeolian mode). Little Pierino opens his mouth.

You were born, O Leo, in fair Florence town,

Where the fields are green and the earth beneath brown. …

And so on, while Amalia claps and laughs, dances and cries: the perfect audience for the pipsqueak panegyrist. She even joins in the anapest-skip at the end of each line.

“That was lovely, little Pierino,” she reassures him when the final hendecasyl-lable has been sent rolling down the empty passage. “Although …”

“Although what?”

Two thousand two hundred and two, thinks Amalia. She has been counting silently and still is. Aloud she says, “It is so perfect, its numbers so smooth, its figures so ornate. … But you have left something out, haven’t you, little Pierino?”

“Have I?” He might be about to cry again.

“His Holiness’s visit to Prato, little Pierino. Of course, he was not Pope Leo then, only Cardinal Medici, but he had such fun while he was there. …” She stops, for little Pierino actually is crying now. She puts her arms about the wee weepy wordsmith. “Don’t worry, little Pierino. We’ll write the Prato part together, and then you can recite it to His Holiness. He will be amazed by you, just as I am.”

Little Pierino’s runny nose nuzzles her snow-white neck. “All right,” he sniffs gratefully.

One thousand and twelve. One thousand and eleven and counting. Poor Salvestro. At this rate, nobody’s going to remember him at all. …

“Poor” be damned, and “Poor Salvestro” doubly damned. Forget the saved. Forget the leaves. God’s small acts of mercy? On the face of it, Salvestro’s having an excellent time. Just count the number of new friends he has made: a Pope, a
cook, an Ambassador, a Cardinal, an underbutler, a wine-server, a noisy man and a quiet man, a short man and a tall man, a shivering band of musicians with lamp-blacked faces, men in caps (red, black, green, and blue), a Senator, a financier, a dozen curvaceous courtesans (all, for some reason, called Imperia), a Baron, a Lord, no priests, innumerable poets (his “honest toil” is already being extemporized upon), fivescore mud-caked beggars, and a secretary. Everyone wants to meet Salvestro, except perhaps the secretary, weighed down by a stoutly bound folio and trying to gesture discreetly to His Holiness, who is preoccupied, as is Salvestro, by Guidol’s explanation of the
corquignolles
.

“Now we come to the eleventh layer. Unlike layers one to five, which, as you will recall, nourish the natural spirits produced in the liver, or layers six to ten, which feed the vital spirits of the blood, the eleventh layer is sustenance for the animal spirits of the brain.”

Guidol turns over a wafer of pastry and discloses a greenish paste latticed with stringy red things and studded with highly polished periwinkles. Both men are finding it hard to follow this explanation, for Guidol has a habit of talking into his sleeve and his accent thickens when he becomes excited. “You’re not French, are you, Guidol?” asks His Holiness on a hunch.

“Alsatian,” replies Guidol. “Now, these plum-flavored tendons. Any guesses as to the meat?” They shake their heads. “Wolf.” The dish containing the
corquignolles
is deep enough to hold a cow’s head, with horns. So far, they have excavated rather less than an inch. Perhaps, thinks His Holiness, it is time to ask this Salvestro for the second time if he has decided what he wants yet, or Guidol just how many layers of these
corquignolles
remain.

“Four hundred and twenty-seven. Four hundred and twenty-five …” Amalia’s skipping. Both senses.

Meanwhile, at the other end of the
tinello,
a jolly
Mohrenfest
is starting up, King Caspar and Mauritians tuning up their violas, lutes, sackbuts, and some other instrument. Hackbrett? Dulcimer? Call it an alpine zither. Dommi leads the applause by thumping vigorously on the table, which promptly splinters and sends flagons of Tuscan rotgut crashing to the floor together with platters of steamed chicken and tureens of mushy turnips. Everyone else claps, and King Caspar announces that their first tune tonight will be that old favorite
“Il Grasso Porco di Cattivo Umore.”

Soon two of the Imperias start dancing a frisky
morescho,
incorporating sly allusions to the simple life of the peasant girls whose shapeless shifts are the (distant) models for these courtesans’ taffeta-lined gamurras, bobbing and curtsying, hoeing and milking. “Honest toil,” the poets murmur approvingly, wondering if the rhythmic flop of their breasts might lend itself to a tetrameter. Soon everyone is on their feet and hopping around, although King Caspar, mindful of the fact that the Supreme Pontiff paying his fee values suavity and a facile diminuendo ranging from the lachrymose to the sepulchral over anyone actually enjoying themselves, resolutely maintains a sedate tempo against the wilder riffs of his
Mauritians and the alpine zitherer in particular, whom he shoots disapproving glares whenever he runs his plectrum down the strings.

From the top table it appears that everyone below is having a splendid time. The Pope taps his finger in time to his theme tune, Guidol begins explaining the fifteenth layer of the
corquignolles
(puréed squirrel gizzards and chitterlings marinated in snake venom), Dovizio points and says, “There’s Rosserus,” and Bibbiena collapses in fits of giggles. “Another notch,” murmurs La Cavallerizza. Vitelli reaches behind her. Salvestro notes that the Pope’s book-hampered secretary is waving frantically to His Holiness, but only when he, Salvestro, is looking the other way. He waves back but gets no response. The Ambassador sitting beside him has not said a word in over half an hour. It does not matter. He has reached his decision. He has decided what he wants, leaning over now to whisper it in His Holiness’s ear, rather pink and fat, he notes. His Holiness beams delightedly. “Blasphemous, my dear Sylvestro! Wonderful.”

“One hundred and eighty-three. One hundred and eighty-two …”

“Right!” bellows Neroni, drowning out the hundred and eighty-first chorus of
“II Grasso Porco di Cattivo Umore. ““Shut up!”

Seventy-nine beggars, sixty-three poets, five skiving incognito kitchen workers, eleven assorted members of the lower orders, three gate-crashers, King Caspar, the six Mauritians, and just under a baker’s dozen of women all claiming to be called Imperia grind to a halt, look up, and utter a collective, “Uh?”

“Thank you.
Thank you very much!
Now, as you know, His Holiness the Pope Leo for an abiding remembrance, meditating fittingly in the inmost counsels of his heart upon the unwearied fervor of lofty devotion, the purity of blameless faith, the respect for the Holy Apostolic See, and the ardor of lofty virtues, whereby our very dear son in Christ …”

And there Neroni stops. He stares across the hall at the man standing beside His Holiness, the man he should be naming now. He does not really like giving speeches. He prefers just shouting, but inept though he is, this has never happened to him before. He stands there as though struck dumb while a fruitless struggle takes place between his mouth and his memory. He seems to have forgotten the man’s name.

“Him!”
he shouts eventually, pointing at Salvestro. “He has made himself, in manifold ways, pleasing, serviceable, and agreeable, namely by bringing here today a certain beast which His Holiness Pope Leo greatly desired. And thus His Holiness deems it fitting and expedient that, that this bringer of the beast should be granted a gift, appropriate in measure to the magnitude of the task, which has now been chosen, and granted …” Here Neroni pauses; his speechmaking is not completely inept. “And is”—another pause—” that he should hear
His Holiness’s confession!”