Anyway, he was perfect, as Doña Rita had declared. The only thing
unsatisfactory (and even inexplicable) about our Dominic was his nephew,
Cesar. It was startling to see a desolate expression of shame veil the
remorseless audacity in the eyes of that man superior to all scruples and
terrors.
“I would never have dared to bring him on board your balancelle,” he once
apologized to me. “But what am I to do? His mother is dead, and my
brother has gone into the bush.”
In this way I learned that our Dominic had a brother. As to “going into
the bush,” this only means that a man has done his duty successfully in
the pursuit of a hereditary vendetta. The feud which had existed for
ages between the families of Cervoni and Brunaschi was so old that it
seemed to have smouldered out at last. One evening Pietro Brunaschi,
after a laborious day amongst his olive-trees, sat on a chair against the
wall of his house with a bowl of broth on his knees and a piece of bread
in his hand. Dominic’s brother, going home with a gun on his shoulder,
found a sudden offence in this picture of content and rest so obviously
calculated to awaken the feelings of hatred and revenge. He and Pietro
had never had any personal quarrel; but, as Dominic explained, “all our
dead cried out to him.” He shouted from behind a wall of stones, “O
Pietro! Behold what is coming!” And as the other looked up innocently
he took aim at the forehead and squared the old vendetta account so
neatly that, according to Dominic, the dead man continued to sit with the
bowl of broth on his knees and the piece of bread in his hand.
This is why—because in Corsica your dead will not leave you
alone—Dominic’s brother had to go into the _maquis_, into the bush on the
wild mountain-side, to dodge the gendarmes for the insignificant
remainder of his life, and Dominic had charge of his nephew with a
mission to make a man of him.
No more unpromising undertaking could be imagined. The very material for
the task seemed wanting. The Cervonis, if not handsome men, were good
sturdy flesh and blood. But this extraordinarily lean and livid youth
seemed to have no more blood in him than a snail.
“Some cursed witch must have stolen my brother’s child from the cradle
and put that spawn of a starved devil in its place,” Dominic would say to
me. “Look at him! Just look at him!”
To look at Cesar was not pleasant. His parchment skin, showing dead
white on his cranium through the thin wisps of dirty brown hair, seemed
to be glued directly and tightly upon his big bones, Without being in any
way deformed, he was the nearest approach which I have ever seen or could
imagine to what is commonly understood by the word “monster.” That the
source of the effect produced was really moral I have no doubt. An
utterly, hopelessly depraved nature was expressed in physical terms, that
taken each separately had nothing positively startling. You imagined him
clammily cold to the touch, like a snake. The slightest reproof, the
most mild and justifiable remonstrance, would be met by a resentful glare
and an evil shrinking of his thin dry upper lip, a snarl of hate to which
he generally added the agreeable sound of grinding teeth.
It was for this venomous performance rather than for his lies, impudence,
and laziness that his uncle used to knock him down. It must not be
imagined that it was anything in the nature of a brutal assault.
Dominic’s brawny arm would be seen describing deliberately an ample
horizontal gesture, a dignified sweep, and Cesar would go over suddenly
like a ninepin—which was funny to see. But, once down, he would writhe
on the deck, gnashing his teeth in impotent rage—which was pretty
horrible to behold. And it also happened more than once that he would
disappear completely—which was startling to observe. This is the exact
truth. Before some of these majestic cuffs Cesar would go down and
vanish. He would vanish heels overhead into open hatchways, into
scuttles, behind up-ended casks, according to the place where he happened
to come into contact with his uncle’s mighty arm.
Once—it was in the old harbour, just before the _Tremolino’s_ last
voyage—he vanished thus overboard to my infinite consternation. Dominic
and I had been talking business together aft, and Cesar had sneaked up
behind us to listen, for, amongst his other perfections, he was a
consummate eavesdropper and spy. At the sound of the heavy plop
alongside horror held me rooted to the spot; but Dominic stepped quietly
to the rail and leaned over, waiting for his nephew’s miserable head to
bob up for the first time.
“Ohé, Cesar!” he yelled contemptuously to the spluttering wretch. “Catch
hold of that mooring hawser—_charogne_!”
He approached me to resume the interrupted conversation.
“What about Cesar?” I asked anxiously.
“Canallia! Let him hang there,” was his answer. And he went on talking
over the business in hand calmly, while I tried vainly to dismiss from my
mind the picture of Cesar steeped to the chin in the water of the old
harbour, a decoction of centuries of marine refuse. I tried to dismiss
it, because the mere notion of that liquid made me feel very sick.
Presently Dominic, hailing an idle boatman, directed him to go and fish
his nephew out; and by-and-by Cesar appeared walking on board from the
quay, shivering, streaming with filthy water, with bits of rotten straws
in his hair and a piece of dirty orange-peel stranded on his shoulder.
His teeth chattered; his yellow eyes squinted balefully at us as he
passed forward. I thought it my duty to remonstrate.
“Why are you always knocking him about, Dominic?” I asked. Indeed, I
felt convinced it was no earthly good—a sheer waste of muscular force.
“I must try to make a man of him,” Dominic answered hopelessly.
I restrained the obvious retort that in this way he ran the risk of
making, in the words of the immortal Mr. Mantalini, “a demnition damp,
unpleasant corpse of him.”
“He wants to be a locksmith!” burst out Cervoni. “To learn how to pick
locks, I suppose,” he added with sardonic bitterness.
“Why not let him be a locksmith?” I ventured.
“Who would teach him?” he cried. “Where could I leave him?” he asked,
with a drop in his voice; and I had my first glimpse of genuine despair.
“He steals, you know, alas! _Par ta Madonne_! I believe he would put
poison in your food and mine—the viper!”
He raised his face and both his clenched fists slowly to heaven.
However, Cesar never dropped poison into our cups. One cannot be sure,
but I fancy he went to work in another way.
This voyage, of which the details need not be given, we had to range far
afield for sufficient reasons. Coming up from the South to end it with
the important and really dangerous part of the scheme in hand, we found
it necessary to look into Barcelona for certain definite information.
This appears like running one’s head into the very jaws of the lion, but
in reality it was not so. We had one or two high, influential friends
there, and many others humble but valuable because bought for good hard
cash. We were in no danger of being molested; indeed, the important
information reached us promptly by the hands of a Custom-house officer,
who came on board full of showy zeal to poke an iron rod into the layer
of oranges which made the visible part of our cargo in the hatchway.
I forgot to mention before that the _Tremolino_ was officially known as a
fruit and cork-wood trader. The zealous officer managed to slip a useful
piece of paper into Dominic’s hand as he went ashore, and a few hours
afterwards, being off duty, he returned on board again athirst for drinks
and gratitude. He got both as a matter of course. While he sat sipping
his liqueur in the tiny cabin, Dominic plied him with questions as to the
whereabouts of the guardacostas. The preventive service afloat was
really the one for us to reckon with, and it was material for our success
and safety to know the exact position of the patrol craft in the
neighbourhood. The news could not have been more favourable. The
officer mentioned a small place on the coast some twelve miles off,
where, unsuspicious and unready, she was lying at anchor, with her sails
unbent, painting yards and scraping spars. Then he left us after the
usual compliments, smirking reassurringly over his shoulder.
I had kept below pretty close all day from excess of prudence. The stake
played on that trip was big.
“We are ready to go at once, but for Cesar, who has been missing ever
since breakfast,” announced Dominic to me in his slow, grim way.
Where the fellow had gone, and why, we could not imagine. The usual
surmises in the case of a missing seaman did not apply to Cesar’s
absence. He was too odious for love, friendship, gambling, or even
casual intercourse. But once or twice he had wandered away like this
before.
Dominic went ashore to look for him, but returned at the end of two hours
alone and very angry, as I could see by the token of the invisible smile
under his moustache being intensified. We wondered what had become of
the wretch, and made a hurried investigation amongst our portable
property. He had stolen nothing.
“He will be back before long,” I said confidently.
Ten minutes afterwards one of the men on deck called out loudly:
“I can see him coming.”
Cesar had only his shirt and trousers on. He had sold his coat,
apparently for pocket-money.
“You knave!” was all Dominic said, with a terrible softness of voice. He
restrained his choler for a time. “Where have you been, vagabond?” he
asked menacingly.
Nothing would induce Cesar to answer that question. It was as if he even
disdained to lie. He faced us, drawing back his lips and gnashing his
teeth, and did not shrink an inch before the sweep of Dominic’s arm. He
went down as if shot, of course. But this time I noticed that, when
picking himself up, he remained longer than usual on all fours, baring
his big teeth over his shoulder and glaring upwards at his uncle with a
new sort of hate in his round, yellow eyes. That permanent sentiment
seemed pointed at that moment by especial malice and curiosity. I became
quite interested. If he ever manages to put poison in the dishes, I
thought to myself, this is how he will look at us as we sit at our meal.
But I did not, of course, believe for a moment that he would ever put
poison in our food. He ate the same things himself. Moreover, he had no
poison. And I could not imagine a human being so blinded by cupidity as
to sell poison to such an atrocious creature.