The Pine of Don Lorenzo
by Paul Rohrer with 3 illustrations by Otto Linnekogel
Translated by Joe Bandel
“Back then we rode with smuggled goods over the mountains,” shouted Michael.
He was drunk and lying on a stone park bench with his jacket unbuttoned. His hand, wearing ten rings from our most dangerous robberies, clutched the stone head of the arm rest. There was the ring of Count Corzan, the Bishop of Valona’s emerald, the ruby of the Duchess of Acra, and other rings bearing fiery glittering jewels.
“We knew that Don Lorenzo with his Venetian livery was tracking us through the ravines. There was a full moon like today when we made our move and killed him right in the middle of his fancy masked ball.”
The rest of us crouched, stretched out in the grass and cursed because the old Castilian had spoiled the drunken celebration for us and for Michael. What devil had made him start talking about the ghost of Don Lorenzo? We had successfully arrived at the lonely bay unnoticed and had delivered our Lombard silk, Skadar velvet, jewelry and spice boxes to our customers in the city. Now we just wanted to sleep peacefully in the ruins of the half fallen down castle. But an old man kept hopping about incessantly on his pillar of a stump, a Dutch flute in his toothless mouth. He was indifferent to the pleading of our captain.
“Don Lorenzo still lives here among the flowers and trees that he has planted,” he repeated. And with a shaky hand he drew a wide semicircle through the air and over the nighttime park. “There is no plant that is not his. The wild roses are his desire, the thorny undergrowth his hatred, the tangled vindictive pines his twisted hands.”
“Then I want to sleep where he sleeps,” bellowed Michael suddenly, and his passion made chills run up our spines. “I want to sleep in the room where he took my woman. It will be his evil conscience against my own! Give me a light!”
Horror seized us. The meal in the green meadow, which had started so happily, which had left us with nothing more than a couple of buxom whores, threatened to become a fight against the invisible. All of the fellows had already experienced the plundering of a Turkish galley in battle and that of a coastal village. They knew what a mandrake or statue of St. John was used for, and that all creatures are not of this world.
“He is crazy,” one shouted. Several of us wanted to grab Michael and take him forcefully down to the beach and onto the ship. But he pulled his sword out of its sheathe. With flat, furious blows the captain drove away everyone from around his body until he stood alone next to the stone bench. But we, who knew his rages,fled into the shadows of the nearest trees, almost more astonished at his rage than over the composure with which the Castilian lifted his lantern and waited for Michael. Michael ordered him forward with a curt wave of his hand, and he limped forward, as if leading Michael to see some rare painting, and not a single person cared enough about their own salvation to take the opportunity to go along.
“A scoundrel,” I wheezed, “who is leading him to his folly.”
But a growl around the circle proved that no one had any desire to be separated from their bottle and put their own fates at risk. Meanwhile the yellow glow of the lantern snaked through the high grass, which year out and year in had never been mowed, until it reached the pointed arch of the gate. When Michael disappeared through it into the immense black mass of the castle with its spacious wings that surrounded the park I lost track of him. There was something in the manner in which he became more distant as he moved away, it seemed to me as if he was under some supernatural compulsion rather than his own will— his movements took on those of a puppet, and this impression became so strong— that a boundless inexplicable fear arose inside me.
Solidly determined not to let him down, I broke away from the others and hurried toward the castle. The murmur of the night wind whispered around its facade and bent the tops of the trees that rose out of the swampy moat next to it.
Already the lantern, which had slipped through the gateway hall, made the outline of the portcullis visible for a moment, then quickly lit up the arch and rushed across the courtyard. In the meantime I bit open one of the cartridges that I always carried on my bandoleer, and with trembling fingers poured the powder into the gun barrel. Then with a loaded weapon I followed the winding path, as the two ahead of me moved through crumbling halls and echoing corridors. Not as much as a whispered word flew between them. You could only hear the clumping of the old man and the sonorous, massive footsteps of Michael. I stopped at the heads of their long shadows and soon stepped onto the bristling silhouette of the caretaker, then on the edge of the braids, that looked like snakes protecting the captain’s skull.
Blinded mirrors upon the walls reflected back the broken eye of a window, colorful silk draperies wrapped around the stage. In one chamber musical instruments lay in a heap as if they had been discarded while fleeing from a masked ball that had been interrupted. Since the night of that murder, when we had stormed the crowded festival with torches and daggers and avenged Michael’s honor, the life of the castle had fallen off like the patched rags of a beggar’s corpse. No one had dared to even carry away so much as a wig. And ever since then our galleon was often anchored in the bay, the wild park served our wild joys and the dry oleander provided the fires, with which we kept the merchants away and lured them into the dangerous limestone reefs. But even the boldest of us had never dared to reenter the castle itself.
I don’t know whether it was necessary or it was the malice of the Castilian, that we had to wander through all those dead rooms, through corridors and cellars, and even through a chapel which still smelled of rotting incense. They finally ended up in one room, in whose alcove stood a canopy bed. Then I heard them speaking softly, while I, from behind a chest, peeked through the doorway. The beam of light from the raised lantern played over that very bed, over the golden decorations, over the frescoes on the walls, from which the plaster was peeling off, and over the thick cobwebs on the window panes.
“Don Lorenzo’s bedroom,” I heard the old man say. Michael was sunk down in an armchair. He dug his fingers into his eye sockets and groaned in memory. You didn’t need to know him to know that he would have liked to tear Lorenzo’s corpse from out of the grave and rip it to pieces.
“Michael,” I called and jumped out, “come back!”
The captain rose up and broke out into a crazed laughter.
“Where is there to go?” He asked. “I must seek him out again. He shall not believe that I was a coward!”
But something troubled me much more than his frenzied laughter. Suddenly the old Castilian was missing.
“Where is your guide?” I replied in terror.
Michael looked at me without understanding. What guide? Was I so drunken from the plundered Malvasia wine that I was seeing ghosts in my delirium?
“God in heaven,” I screamed in growing horror and threw myself against the door which I had just came through. It was locked. Despite that it appeared to only be made of light wood it would not give way as I tried to spring it with Michael’s sword.
“A rusty lock,” he sneered.
By then I was jumping, crazy as a rat in a trap, against the window, trying to check whether escape was possible there. I wiped the cobwebs away from the window panes with the sleeve of a gold embroidered jacket which I had snatched from the councilor of Ragusa. You could see right down to the bay, in the middle of which our pirate galleon lay at anchor. The full moon made the mountains appear as if covered in snow, and the sea flowed like molten silver. Low on the horizon stood some narrow, supernaturally white banks of clouds. However, as I contemplated the plunge from the heights of the window down to the park, it was not the impossibility of escape from that cursed room that curdled my blood, but something else entirely.
The largest of the pines, which Don Lorenzo had at one time planted down at the edge of the meadow and beneath which we had enjoyed our evening, had left their places. They now stood gloomy and majestic in the open space half way between the castle and our earlier camp.
“You lie,” hissed Michael, when I called out in a strangled voice for him to come and look. “Why should his trees be wandering around?”
Breathlessly we marked the countless blossoms of wild daffodils that covered the meadow, to see if the trees were actually moving. It was difficult to tell for sure, but soon there was no doubt that the pines were dragging their rigid crowns up the slope with a terrible slowness, pushing forward like a snail in its house.
Now it was Michael who suddenly tore himself out of his stupor, and howling, turned away from the window and crashed against the door. I myself, stepped back. Weak with terror I leaned against the wall and watched the efforts of the captain. With his bullish power he smashed the heavy top of a table against the opening. The wood splintered under the terrible impact, yet the door gave way as little as if it were the wall. The terrible tale of the Castilian took form. Don Lorenzo’s ghost invisibly filled the things around us with a cruel vengeance, which had been denied him in life. I felt how his and Michael’s passion began to wrestle for the last time, and without hearing anything with my body, my brain heard, as if a fire passed through the walls and the ceiling, through the plaster and stone, a deep breath of the murdered that trickled down, and in which the moon mixed its pale light with that of the lantern. I would have much rather been standing in a losing battle next to the large deck lantern of our galleon.
While the captain struggled against the wall, I saw how a dark mass slowly rose up in a clear corner of the window. It was the top of a pine swelling and growing right before my eyes.
“Michael,” I groaned.
Then he saw it and with a curse tore the pistol away from me. Before I could stop him, he aimed it and fired at the strange creature. The new powder cap, which I had placed on the pistol the day before did it’s duty.
Michael’s shot thundered terribly loud in the small room. The flash of fire struck against the window pane. It rattled as the bullet went through it, and the powerful smoke of gunpowder filled the room.
But it was as if by this deed the moon had been extinguished, and we immediately stood in front of a completely dark window.
“What is that?” I screamed and raised the lantern. The smoke roiled back and forth, but through it I could see that the pine was now pressing its branches against the glass. They were no longer calm like they had seemed before. The light brown wood curled and rolled back and forth like a snake, and even in the poor light, the long needles trembled as if they were the fingers of this terrible living tree. They pushed against the window panes. They tried to push through everywhere. And then it happened. The glass gave way and bulged inward like a viscous mass. But through the round hole, which the bullet had made, a slender branch had already slipped through and pressed even further into the room.
The captain stood at the end of the bed, in one hand the smoking pistol, the other was so scratched from the wood that all the blood which had drained from his face seemed to be dripping from his fingers. Then a delicate, thin crackling announced that the window could not withstand any more pressure and was going to give way. With heavy knees I crashed once more against the door. I don’t know if it opened by itself or even if some ghost chased me through the desolate castle until I came to the courtyard and collapsed at the fountain. My companions found me there the next morning. They had to use blasting powder to clear the way to Michael’s room. He lay dead on the four poster bed. There was not a single trace of what had happened there during the night, except for one tender pine needle, that was stuck in his chest right through his heart. We gambled with dice for the ten precious rings that were mementos of our ten greatest pirate adventures which he wore on his hand. The emerald of the Bishop of Valona, the ruby of the Duchess of Acra, and all the others. Then we buried our captain and as a funeral service threw a burning torch into the cursed building. Since there was no wind at that time, our galleon lay for three more days in the glowing embers of the fire that was painted over the sea.
Anarchistbanjo's World 