The Nonexistent Knight by Italo Calvino Read Free Book Online Page B

There was, in fact, but at first sight, what with green and yellow rags faded and patched all over, and a face covered with freckles and a ragged beard, the eye was apt to pass him over and confuse him with the color of earth and leaves.
    “But that’s Gurduloo!”
    “Gurduloo? Yet another name! D’you know him?”
    “He’s a man without a name and with every possible name. Thank you, apprentice, not only have you laid bare an irregularity in our organization, but you have given me the chance of refinding the squire assigned to me by the emperor’s order, and lost at once.”
    The Lorraine cooks, having finished distributing rations to the troops, now left the vat to Gurduloo. “Here, all this soup’s for you!”
    “All is soup!” exclaimed Gurduloo, bending over the pot as if leaning over a window sill, and taking great sweeps with his spoon to bring off the most delicious part of the contents, the crust stuck to the sides.
    “All is soup!” resounded his voice from inside the vat, which tipped over at his onslaught.
    Gurduloo was now imprisoned in the overturned pot. His spoon could be heard banging like a cracked bell, and his voice moaning, “All is soup!” Then the vat moved like a tortoise, turned over again, and Gurduloo reappeared.
    He had cabbage soup spattered, smeared, all over him from head to toe, and was stained with blacking. With liquid sticking up his eyes he felt blind and came on screeching, “All is soup!” with his hands forward as if swimming, seeing nothing but the soup covering eyes and face, “All is soup!” brandishing the spoon in one hand as if wanting to draw to himself spoonfuls of everything around, “All is soup!”
    Raimbaut found this so disturbing that it made his head go round, not so much with disgust as doubt at the possibility of that man in front of him being right and the world being nothing but a vast shapeless mass of soup in which all things dissolved and tinged all else with itself. “Help! I don’t want to become soup,” he was about to shout, but Agilulf was standing impassively near him with arms crossed, as if quite remote and untouched by the squalid scene, and Raimbaut felt that he could never understand his own apprehension. The anguish which the sight of the warrior in white armor always made him feel was now counterbalanced by this new anguish caused by Gurduloo. This thought saved his balance and made him calm again.
    “Why don’t you make him realise that all isn’t soup and put an end to this saraband of his?” he said to Agilulf, managing to speak in a tone without trace of annoyance.
    “The only way to cope with him is to give him a clear-cut job to do,” said Agilulf, and to Gurduloo, “You are my squire, by order of Charles King of the Franks and Holy Roman Emperor. From now on you must obey me in all things. And as I am charged by the Superintendency for Inhumation and Compassionate Duties to provide for the burial of those killed in yesterday’s battle, I will provide you with stake and spade and we will proceed to the field to bury the baptized flesh of our brethren whom God now has in glory.”
    He also asked Raimbaut to follow him and so take note of this other delicate task of a paladin.
    All three walked towards the field; Agilulf with his step which was intended to be loose but was actually like walking on nails, Raimbaut with eyes staring all round, impatient to see again the places he had passed the day before beneath a hail of darts and blows, Gurduloo, with spade and stake on his shoulder, not at all impressed by the solemnity of his duties, singing and whistling.
    From a rise could be seen the plain where the crudest fighting had taken place. The soil was covered with corpses. Vultures sat, with talons grappling the shoulders or the faces of the dead, and bent their beaks to peck gutted bellies.
    The behavior of these vultures can scarcely be called appealing. Down they swoop as a battle nears its end, when the field is