Foucault's pendulum - Umberto Eco [295]
A commander with a blue kerchief and a rainbow of ribbons from both world wars said: “Reverend, let the boys rest here in the town; they’re worn out. Climb up later, at the end. There’ll be a truck to take you back to ***.”
They rushed to the tavern. The men of the town band, veterans toughened by countless funerals, showed no restraint in grabbing the tables and ordering tripe and all the wine they could drink. They would stay there having a spree until evening. Don Tico’s boys, meanwhile, crowded at the counter, where the host was serving mint ices as green as a chemistry experiment. The ice, sliding down the throat, gave you a pain in the middle of your forehead, like sinusitis.
Then they struggled up to the cemetery, where a pickup truck was waiting. They climbed in, yelling, and were all packed together, all standing, jostling one another with the instruments, when the commander who had spoken before came out and said: “Reverend, for the final ceremony we need a trumpet. You know, for the usual bugle calls. It’s a matter of five minutes.”
“Trumpet,” Don Tico said, very professional. And the hapless holder of that title, now sticky with green mint ice and yearning for the family meal, a treacherous peasant insensitive to aesthetic impulses and higher ideals, began to complain: It was late, he wanted to go home, he didn’t have any saliva left, and so on, mortifying Don Tico in the presence of the commander.
Then Jacopo, seeing in the glory of noon the sweet image of Cecilia, said, “If he’ll give me the trumpet, I’ll go.”
A gleam of gratitude in the eyes of Don Tico; the sweaty relief of the miserable titular trumpet. An exchange of instruments, like two guards.
Jacopo proceeded to the cemetery, led by the psychopomp with the Addis Ababa ribbons. Everything around them was white: the wall struck by the sun, the graves, the blossoming trees along the borders, the surplice of the provost ready to impart benediction. The only brown was the faded photographs on the tombstones. And a big patch of color was created by the ranks lined up beside the two graves.
“Boy,” the commander said, “you stand here, beside me, and at my order play Assembly. Then, again at my order, Taps. That’s easy, isn’t it?”
Very easy. Except that Jacopo had never played Assembly or Taps.
He held the trumpet with his right arm bent, against his ribs, the horn at a slight angle, as if it were a carbine, and he waited, head erect, belly in, chest out.
Mongo was delivering a brief speech, with very short sentences. Jacopo thought that to emit the blast he would have to lift his eyes to heaven, and the sun would blind him. But that was the trumpeter’s death, and since you only died once, you might as well do it right.
The commander murmured to him: “Now.” He ordered Assembly. Jacopo played only do mi sol do. For those rough men of war, that seemed to suffice. The final do was played after a deep breath, so he could hold it, give it time—Belbo wrote—to reach the sun.
The partisans stood stiffly at attention. The living as still as the dead.
Only the gravediggers moved. The sound of the coffins being lowered could be heard, the creak of the ropes, their scraping