"Thinking? But he'll be utterly terrified."
The events that followed proved me to have been utterly mistaken.
While we were exploring around and under the thick clump of trees, a sudden, lacerating double whistle broke the silence. We looked at one another. It was the falconer's whistle, yet he seemed as astonished as we.
"I did not… did not do it. I never whistled," he stammered.
Instinctively, he looked upward.
"The glove, damn it," he cursed, seeing that his faithful pupil, hearing the call, was promptly returning and was looking for his forearm. So the falconer had to pull on his leather glove in furious haste and only just caught the flying beast in time. It was then, out of the corner of my eye, that I saw the white and yellow spot gliding silently to the left, once again in the direction of the Roman wall. Atto too realised this a few (important) moments later.
The parrot had imitated the falconer's whistle perfectly, thus causing the predator to return to its master, down below. Caesar Augustus had thus gained enough time to get away, before his enemy could gain height and, with that, the ability to attack.
"That way!" exclaimed Melani, turning to the falconer.
The wasted time had given Caesar Augustus a distinct advantage. The falcon was once again freed and once again had to gain height. The dog was barking wildly.
"Can your bird not attack at once?" asked Atto, running towards the point where Caesar Augustus had disappeared from sight.
"He has first to gain height. He does not attack horizontally like a goshawk!" replied the falconer, as offended as if he had been asked to attend a wedding dressed in rags.
This gave rise to a wretched, disorderly chase downhill along the Roman walls, following the road that traverses the Barberini property up to Piazza Cosimato. Behind the ancient walls, rhythmically punctuated by antique watchtowers, Caesar Augustus's yellow crest would reappear from time to time. He could not fly higher than the falcon, as herons do to dodge such attacks. He had, however, perfectly understood the enemy's weak points and was employing delaying tactics: flying low and passing very rapidly from a tree to a crack in the wall, then vice versa, alternating brief but lightning sorties with the repeated whistle which he had heard the falconer use and had at once learned to imitate to perfection. The falcon could only obey the commands which he had been taught from his very first training, and with every whistle he came back to his master, who was, understandably, almost out of his mind. A couple of times, Caesar Augustus also used the falconer's "Look! Look!" hunting signal, throwing the adversary into such confusion that, if its master had not got it away from there with yells and curses, it might have turned its warlike attentions to a couple of innocent sparrows fluttering in the vicinity.
The last part of the road was flanked on both sides by two ordinary walls and no longer by Roman ruins. I turned around to look for Atto: we had lost him. Caesar Augustus, too, was nowhere to be seen. I did, however, hope that he would have continued along the same trajectory as he had followed hitherto. In that case, as soon as we reached the first open space, we might perhaps have caught sight of him. It was thus that we came to the front of the convent of the nuns of Saint Francis, in Piazza San Cosimato. Abbot Melani arrived some time later, completely out of breath (despite the fact that he had left off running very early on) and sat down by the roadside:
The hunter wastes much time at stalking
The game he's after, riding, walking,
He combs through hill and dale and hedge, Conceals h imself am ong the sedge,
Oft scares away more than he gets
If he's been slipshod with his nets.
"Thus Albicastro would have mocked me with his beloved Brant, if he had seen the state I am in," Melani sighed philosophically, huffing and puffing like a pair of bellows.
I noticed that the Abbot, as I had discovered many years previously, had a taste for citing quotations on the most varied occasions. Only, especially at difficult moments like this, he no longer had breath enough to sing them; and so, instead of the little songs of Le Seigneur Luigi, his one-time master, he preferred to quote verses.
I then turned to contemplate the piazza. To my surprise, notwithstanding the fact that it was very early on Sunday morning, Piazza San Cosimato was full of people. His Holiness (but this I was to discover only later) had decided freely to grant the little boys and girls of Rome the Jubilee indulgence and the remission of sins, subject only to visiting the Vatican Basilica. For this reason, the children of various quarters were preparing to visit the Vatican in procession, with so many little standards, crosses and crucifixes. The maidens were all dressed in the most splendid lace surplices, and with garlands on their heads, each decorated for some particular devotion. The affecting little procession was attended and guided by the parents and by the nuns of the Convent of Saint Francis, all of whom were crowding into the piazza and witnessed our arrival, all dusty and fatigued, with no little surprise.
The falconer was at his wits' end.
"He is not coming back, I cannot see him," he blubbered.
He had lost sight of his falcon. He feared that he might have been abandoned, as sometimes happen with raptors apparently tamed by their masters yet still in their hearts wild and proud.
"There he is!" cried Atto.
"The falcon?" asked the falconer, his face lighting up.
"No, the parrot."
I too had seen. Caesar Augustus, who must have been rather tired too, had just left a cornice and begun to glide in the direction of the nearby Piazza San Callisto. Atto was by now exhausted, while the falconer had thoughts only for his pupil. Only I and the dog were prepared to follow the parrot, with the opposite intentions: I, to save him, he, to slaughter.
The dog barked like mad and charged to the attack, terrifying and scattering all the children from the ranks of the procession, amidst whom I too plunged in pursuit of the parrot, sowing further confusion and provoking the anguished reproofs of the nuns.
By now Caesar Augustus was flying wearily, perching ever more frequently on windowsills, little shrines and balconies, then flying off only when fear of the dog, which bared its teeth angrily, forced him to seek some new refuge. I could not even ask him to land on the ground and give himself up. The dog was always ahead of me, barking wildly and leaping up furiously, simply longing to get its teeth into the poor fugitive. The passers-by watched in shock as our screaming scrimmage, an extraordinary chimera composed of fleeing wings, biting fangs and legs coming to the rescue, made its way forward.
Several times, I narrowed my eyes, peering into the distance: the bird still seemed to have that wretched scrap of paper hanging onto a talon. After covering a considerable part of the Via di Santa Maria in Trastevere, our bizarre trio turned left and came at last to the bridge of the San Bartolomeo island.
Caesar Augustus landed on a windowsill at the corner, just where the bridge begins. He was quite high up, and the dog (which had perhaps realised by now that it had lost all trace of its master) was beginning to tire of that exhausting, absurd circus. It looked at the parrot, which nothing now seemed likely to shift from its position of safety. To my left stood the San Bartolomeo bridge and, beyond it, that beautiful island, the one single piece of insular territory which completes and embellishes the impetuous flow of fair Tiber. The dog at last turned on its heels, not without one last outburst of rage and disappointment.
"So, do you want to come down? We are alone now."
In the parrot's eyes, I read his willingness to surrender at last to a friend. He was on the point of coming down. Instead, one last cruel reversal intervened.
An old woman who lived in the house had come to the window. She had seen him. Taken aback by the unusual features of that bizarre and beautiful creature, yet incapable of appreciating such splendour and rendered nervous by her own stupidity, the hag tried brutally to drive him away, threatening to strike him. The poor fowl fled, borne on the wind which in that place generously accompanies the current of the river.