The Ninth Man/Chapter 3
CHAPTER III
AS I would have gone, my duties being over and my lists given to the captain, I heard the voice of Mazzaleone as though he spoke low in my ear, yet he was many paces behind me, say, "Stay, boy," and I wheeled as though the voice of him had been a power that turned me on my heels; and I hope I looked at him squarely enough while he told me I was to go forth into the city and bring him back news of what I saw.
"Be eyes for me," said he.
He sighed deeply, as though a great weakness were upon him, and I with a fear in my heart turned and left him, to do as he bade me—fear, because I now saw the game of cat-and-mouse which he was playing with us. I had heard of other conquerors possessing a town; but he possessed us, it seemed to me, as no conqueror had possessed any. Though I had but a shadow of the subtlety of his imagination, I hated him that he should sit there and watch us through the narrow, bright slits of his eyes, and rest his long, tired length with the spectacle of us.
Yet as I went from him, love struggled with hate in my heart, and both of them were subject to admiration. And when later his page boy, Carlo, killed himself because of more than a passing displeasure of Mazzaleone, I did not wonder, for the least sight of him stirred thus powerfully the hearts of those who came near him in one way or another, as he had stirred the town of San Moglio. Even as he possessed the town so he possessed me. I became a part of him—his eyes. That is why certain scenes are burned into me as by fire.
There are times yet when I see in my sleep the narrow uphill streets of San Moglio, red and black with the flames and smoke of torches, the town rushing through, a hungry flood in pursuit of hot and smoking life after its cold fear of death. I was young. I thought of and had loved San Moglio as I might love a fair and warlike and austere woman, and I had found that the soul of San Moglio was like the lean hag who lusted for life and for revenge even from the grave.
Bands of men and boys—and women, too—went through the streets, terrible and revolting in their rejoicings. The business of living and dying and of buying and selling for a moment sank to unimportance.
"We are to live," San Moglio shouted, "therefore, let us live." And they lived at their hardest. The savage rejoicing of the piazza would not spend itself, and finally it was the sight of three fat women teetering and shrieking, crying and dancing, as though they were girls, around a May-pole, that sickened me. I went out up to the little piazza of Ogni Santi, and there sat by the fountain a man whose head was bowed on his hands, and as I came nearer I saw that it was the Brother Minor, Agnello, and I saw that he wept. And as he wept he cried aloud, "The Lord take from me this cup."
Two loutish boys were throwing mud at him, but he heeded them not; and they, still tormenting him, cried, "Why do you weep?"
Said he, his hands in his eyes, "Because I have but thirty days to live innocent, and then, by taking an innocent life I give my innocence." And he wept again, and the boys laughed together, and one cried:
"Kill yourself, then!" Then they ran off after their sheep, crying, "Kill yourself!"
At this he dropped his hands from his eyes, and, kneeling upright, he raised his face up to heaven and gave thanks to God that from the mouths of children he had been taught how to avoid the sin of taking the life of another.
So I stayed there for a time and went back into the town as though refreshed with water. Though he had not seen me nor spoken to me, I was glad to have come near him in his simplicity, for San Moglio was keeping step to some mighty and inaudible music, as a city will when it becomes a mob. The very children ceased their play and ran through its streets, small shrieking furies, more terrible than the wantoning girls, their grace and their youth, and that they knew not why they ran, marking the depth of us.
It seemed to me that in all this great city, but for my lady, I saw not one familiar face. Can the whole heart and soul of a town be like a changeling, or had San Molio worn a mask? I wondered. Or under the torture of Mazzaleone's suspense had the town gone mad? Everywhere I saw change, even as great as in my cousin Gemma, a meek and pious girl. A long-eyed girl she was, downcast, too timid to look at one straight, given to shy, sidelong glances, a slim, honey-colored girl. I liked to tease her, to see the soft pink mount in her bashful cheeks. Now as I passed by her house I saw her at the window, herself, but changed—soft yet, like a hazy sky in summer, but beckoning, inviting, and glancing now at Guido and now at young Leoncavello, playing them more skilfully with her white and desirable innocence than any courtezan, while my aunt watched the game.
As I told these things to Mazzaleone I felt as ashamed as one who sees his mother indecorous in some public place. "Give them life," said he; "they snap at it and gulp it down like a hungry dog; and since they wish amusement they shall have what they wish. Everything they wish they shall have—I could envy them their gusto," he added.
And so he set about giving a festa of great magnificence, and asked all the nobles within the town of San Moglio; and he judged them rightly, for even the nobles, in their zest for life, had no mind to show spite to Mazzaleone.
For the common people there was dancing in the street, and wine and music for all who wished. And so it was that the whole town fell to its great, lustful rejoicing, that they were to live.