UMBERTO ECO : THE PRAGUE CEMETERY (18 page)

"My dear Dumas, how I've missed you!" the general shouted. When Dumas offered him his congratulations, Garibaldi replied, "Not me, not me, congratulate these men. They have been giants!" And then to his men: "Give Monsieur Dumas the finest apartment in the building, right now. Nothing is too good for a man who has brought me letters announcing the arrival of two and a half thousand men, ten thousand rifles and two steamships!"

I viewed the hero with the suspicion I had felt for all heroes since my father's death. Dumas had described him as an Apollo, but to me he seemed of modest stature, not fair but mousy, with short bandy legs and, judging from his gait, suffering from rheumatism. I saw him mount his horse with some difficulty, helped by two of his men.

Toward the end of the afternoon, a crowd had gathered below the royal palace shouting, "Long live Dumas, long live Italy!" The writer was clearly delighted, but I had the impression the whole thing had been staged by Garibaldi, who understood his friend's vanity and badly needed the promised rifles. I mingled with the crowd and found it hard to understand what they were saying in their incomprehensible dialect, like the language of Africans, but I did catch one brief exchange. Someone asked who this fellow Dumas was that they were cheering, and the other replied that he was a Circassian prince who was rolling in money and had come to place his wealth at Garibaldi's service.

Dumas introduced me to some of the general's men, and I was struck by the hawk-like gaze of Garibaldi's lieutenant, the terrible Nino Bixio, and felt so intimidated that I left. I needed to look for an inn where I could come and go without being seen.

The locals now think I am one of Garibaldi's men, while the expedition corps think I am a reporter.

I saw Nino Bixio again as he was passing through the city on horseback. He is said to be the real military leader behind the expedition. Garibaldi gets distracted, always thinking about tomorrow. He is fine during attacks, urging his men on, but Bixio looks after the here and now and keeps the troops in line. As he was passing, I heard one of Garibaldi's men say to his comrade: "Look at that gaze, flashing everywhere. His figure cuts like a saber. Bixio! Even his name sounds like a bolt of lightning."

It's obvious that Garibaldi and his lieutenants have hypnotized these volunteers. That's bad — leaders with too much charisma should be removed immediately, for the peace and security of the kingdom. My masters in Turin are right. This Garibaldi myth mustn't be allowed to spread north, otherwise all the king's subjects up there will be wearing red shirts and it'll become a republic.

(15th June) Difficult to talk to the local people. The only thing certain (15th June) Difficult to talk to the local people. The only thing certain is that they're trying to exploit anyone who, according to them, looks Piedmontese, even though very few volunteers come from Piedmont. I've found a tavern where I can dine cheaply and try various dishes with unpronounceable names. I managed to choke on some bread rolls stuffed with spleen, but with a good local wine was able to get through two or three of them. Over dinner I befriended two volunteers, one called Abba, just over twenty years old, from Liguria, and the other Bandi, a journalist about my own age from Livorno. Their accounts enabled me to build up a picture of the arrival of Garibaldi's men, and their first battles.

"Ah, my dear Simonini," said Abba, "if you only knew. The landing at Marsala was a complete circus! There in front of us are the Bourbon ships, the
Stromboli
and the
Capri
. Our ship, the
Lombardo
, gets caught on a reef, and Nino Bixio says it's better they capture it with a hole in its belly than safe and sound, and indeed we ought to sink the
Piemonte
as well. 'Fine waste,' say I, but Bixio was right, we shouldn't give away two ships to the Bourbons. And anyway, that's what great leaders do — they burn their boats after landing so there's no retreat. The
Piemonte
starts the landing, and the
Stromboli
begins its cannonade but fires wide. The commander of an English ship in port goes aboard the
Stromboli
and tells the captain there are English subjects ashore and he'll hold him responsible for any international incident — the English, you know, have large financial interests in Marsala because of the wine. The Bourbon captain says he couldn't care less about international incidents and once again gives the order to fire, but the cannon shoot wide again. When the Bourbon ships finally manage to score a few hits, the only damage they cause is to chop a dog in half."

"So the English were helping you?"

"Let's just say they were quite happy to get in the way to embarrass the Bourbons."

"What contact does the general have with the English?"

Abba made a gesture to indicate that foot soldiers like him obey orders without asking too many questions. "But listen to this one. Arriving in the city, the general had given orders to take over the telegraph and cut the wires. They send a lieutenant with a few men, and the fellow in the telegraph office runs off when he sees them coming. The lieutenant goes into the office and finds a copy of the dispatch just sent to the military commander at Trapani: 'Two steamships flying a Piedmont flag have just arrived in port and are landing men.' At that very moment the reply arrives. One of the volunteers who had worked at the telegraph office in Genoa translates: 'How many men and why are they landing?' The officer gets him to transmit: 'Sorry, I've made a mistake, they're two merchant ships from Girgenti with a cargo of sulfur.' Answer from Trapani: 'You are an idiot.' The officer reads it, very pleased with himself, cuts the wires and leaves."

"Let's be honest," commented Bandi, "the landing wasn't a complete circus as Abba suggests. When we came alongside the Bourbon ships, the first grenades and gunfire finally got going. We were having fun, of course. In the midst of the explosions, a plump old friar, hat in hand, turned up to welcome us. Someone shouted, 'Come to make yourself a pain in the ass, Friar?' But Garibaldi raised his hand and said, 'Good Friar, what are you looking for? Can't you hear the bullets whistling?' And the friar answered, 'I'm not afraid of bullets. I'm a servant of poor Saint Francis and a son of Italy.' 'You're with the people, then?' asked the general. 'With the people, yes, with the people,' replied the friar. And that was when we realized that Marsala was ours. The general sent Crispi to the tax collector in the name of Vittorio Emanuele, king of Italy, to requisition all revenues. These were handed over to Acerbi, the quartermaster general, who issued a receipt. A Kingdom of Italy did not yet exist, but that receipt given by Crispi to the tax collector is the first document in which Vittorio Emanuele is described as king of Italy."

I took the opportunity to ask, "But isn't Nievo the quartermaster?"

"Nievo is Acerbi's deputy," explained Abba. "So young, and already a great writer. A true poet. His brilliance shines. He's always alone, gazing into the distance, as if trying to reach to the horizon. I understand that Garibaldi's about to appoint him colonel."

Bandi's praises went further: "At Calatafimi he was getting a little behind, distributing bread. Bozzetti called him into battle and he leapt into the fray, swooping down on the enemy like a great black bird, the wings of his cloak wide open, so a bullet immediately tore a hole through it."

This was quite enough for me to feel an antipathy toward this Nievo. He and I must have been about the same age and he already thought himself famous. The warrior poet. Of course your cloak will get shot through if you flap it open like that — a fine way of showing offa hole that could have been in your breast.

At that point Abba and Bandi described the battle of Calatafimi — a miraculous victory, a thousand volunteers on one side and twenty-five thousand well-armed Bourbons on the other.

"Garibaldi is leading us," said Abba, "on a bay gelding fit for a grand vizier, with a magnificent saddle and fretted stirrups, wearing a red shirt and Hungarian-style cap. At Salemi we're joined by local volunteers. They arrive from all directions, on horseback, on foot, an evillooking mob, mountain folk armed to the teeth, with bandit faces and eyes like the barrels of pistols. But led by gentry, local landowners. Sa lemi is filthy, its streets like open sewers, but the monks had fine monasteries and we're billeted there. We get conflicting information about the enemy — four thousand, no, ten thousand, twenty thousand, with horses and cannon, north, no south, advancing, retreating . . . And all of a sudden the enemy appears. There'd be about five thousand men, but someone said, 'Nonsense, there's ten thousand of them.' Between us and them a barren plain. The Neapolitan riflemen make their way down from the hills. How calm, how confident — you can see they're well trained, not like our rabble. And their bugles, what a mournful sound! The first shots don't ring out until half past one in the afternoon. They're fired by the Neapolitan riflemen who have come down through the prickly pear cactuses. 'Don't reply, don't fire back!' our captains shout. But the rifle bullets whistle past us with such a din that we can hardly keep still. We hear a bang, then another, then the general's bugler sounds the call to arms and the charge. The bullets rain down like hailstones. On the hill there's a cloud of smoke from the cannon firing on us. We cross the plain and break through the enemy's front line. I turn back and see Garibaldi standing on the hill, his sword still sheathed over his right shoulder, advancing slowly and keeping an eye on the action. Bixio gallops to shelter him with his horse and shouts, 'What are you trying to do, General? You'll get killed.' And he answers, 'What better way to die than for my country?' And he continues on, heedless of the hail of bullets. I feared, in that instant, the general had decided it was impossible to win and was trying to get killed. But just then one of our cannon blasts out from the road. We seem to have the support of a thousand men. 'Onward, onward, onward!' All you can hear is the bugle, which has never stopped sounding the charge. With bayonets fixed we pass through the first, the second, the third line, up the hill. The Bourbon battalions retreat higher, regroup and seem to grow in strength. They still look invincible — they're up there on the summit and we're beneath the ridge, exhausted. There's a moment's rest, with them above and us flat on the ground. Gunfire here and there. The Bourbons start rolling boulders, throwing stones. Someone says the general's been hit. I see a fine-looking youth among the prickly pear cactuses, fatally injured, supported by two companions. He's pleading with his companions to take pity on the Neapolitans because they too are Italians. The whole slope is strewn with dead and wounded, but not a groan is to be heard. Now and then, from the summit, the Neapolitans cry, 'Long live the king!' Meanwhile, reinforcements arrive. Bandi, I remember that was when you appeared, covered in wounds, but worst of all with a bullet stuck in your left breast, and I thought you'd be dead in half an hour. And yet there you were on the final assault, ahead of everyone — what spirit you had!"

"Nonsense," said Bandi, "they were only scratches."

"And what about the Franciscans who were fighting with us? One friar, all filth and bones, was loading a blunderbuss with handfuls of shot and pebbles, then clambering up to within sight of the enemy and firing it. I saw one who'd been hit in the thigh pull the bullet out of his flesh and carry on firing."

Abba then began to describe the battle at Ponte dell'Ammiraglio: "By God, Simonini, a day out of Homer! Pure poetry. We are at the gates of Palermo and a troop of local insurgents come to help us. Someone — perhaps he's the first sentry we take by surprise — cries out 'Oh, God!,' staggers backward, takes three or four steps sideways like a drunkard and falls into a ditch beneath two poplar trees, near a dead Neapolitan rifleman. And I can still hear one of our Genoese comrades, just as lead shot was hailing down on us, shouting, 'Hell, which way?' And a bullet hits him in the forehead, splitting open his skull. At Ponte dell'Ammiraglio, along the road, over the arches, under the bridge and in the fields, they're massacred by bayonets. Near dawn we hold the bridge, but we're cut off by fierce gunfire from an infantry line behind a wall, and charged by cavalry from the left, but we drive them back into the fields. Once over the bridge, we regroup at the crossroads by Porta Termini, but we're bombarded by cannon from a ship in the port and are under fire from a barricade in front of us. We carry on regardless. A bell rings out the tocsin. We continue on through the narrow streets, and at a certain point — dear God, what a vision!—three ravishing young girls dressed in white, clinging to a railing with hands as white as lilies, are watching us in silence. They look like angels you see in church frescoes. 'Who are you?' they ask, and we tell them we're Italians and ask who they are, and they tell us they're nuns. 'Oh, poor young things,' we say — we wouldn't mind releasing them from that prison and offering them some sweet amusement — and they cry, 'Long live Saint Rosalia!' We reply, 'Long live Italy!' They also shout 'Long live Italy!' with gentle holy voices, and wish us victory. We fought for another five days in Palermo before the armistice . . . but with no young nuns to comfort us, just whores!"