During the Spanish campaign in North Africa, in the latter years of the Great War, a company of Spanish soldiers occupied a fort. There was the merest handful of Spaniards, surrounded by at least two thousand Kabyles. Yet the tribesmen retreated and let them take the fort. Later, a Kabyle, carrying a flag of truce, approached the soldiers and, screaming with laughter, cried: “Scratch! Scratch! Scratch!” They didn’t know what he meant, but they found out before the day was over.
The doctor, who had been attending two men who had been wounded, came to the captain and, in a trembling voice, asked him to come to the improvised hospital. “Look,” he said. The wounded men were black with fleas—millions of fleas, attracted by the smell of fresh blood. They were coming in dense clouds, even rising out of the earth—countless trillions of fleas, which had their origins in a vast sewage-ditch which, for centuries, had received the filth of the town. They were mad with hunger; attacked everybody, swarming inches deep; drew points of blood from every man; killed the wounded, devitalized the rest, made eating impossible by pouring into the food as soon as it was uncovered, prevented sleep, made life intolerable. And nothing could be done. The Spaniards had the strictest orders to hold their position. A desperate dispatch was rushed to the general—General Sanjurjo, I believe—who sent a scathing reply. What kind of men were these, he wondered, who could let themselves be driven back by the commonest of vermin? So at last, when reinforcements arrived, there were only twelve men left, all wrecks. The Kabyles hadn’t attacked: they had stood by, enjoying the fun. The rest of the men had been eaten alive; nibbled to death.
And I complained of the polite little insects in the bedrooms at Busto’s.
THE APE AND THE MYSTERY
While the young duke had been talking, the aged Leonardo had been drawing diagrams with a silver point on a yellow tablet. At last the duke said: “You have not been listening to me.”
“I beg your pardon, Magnificence. There was no need. Everything is clear. Your water down there near Abruzzi is turbid and full of bad things, evil humors. Cleanse it, and this flux will pass.”
“What,” said the duke, “I must wash my water?”
“You must wash your water,” said Leonardo.
The young duke stared at him, but he continued still drawing on his tablet: “You must wash your water. Tell your coopers to make a barrel, a vast barrel, as large as this hall, and as high. Now in this barrel you must lay first, clean sand to the height of a man. Then charcoal to the height of a man. Above this, to the height of a man, gravel. Then, to the top, small stones. Now down here, where the sand is, there must be a pipe. The bottom of this great cask will incline at a certain angle. The pipe will be about as large as a man’s arm, but a plate of copper, or brass, suitably perforated, will cover the end embedded in the sand and will be further protected by a perforated case so that it may be withdrawn, if choked with sand, and replaced without considerable loss of pure water.”
“What pure water?” asked the young duke.
“The pure water of Abruzzi, Magnificence. It will pour in foul at the top and come out clean at the bottom. These fluxes are born of the turbidity of the water.”
“It is true that our water is far from clear.”
“The purer the water, the smaller the flux. Now your water poured in at the top will purify itself in its downward descent. The greater pebbles will catch the larger particles floating in it. The smaller pebbles will take, in their closer cohesion, the lesser particles. The gravel will retain what the little pebbles let pass. The charcoal will arrest still tinier pollutions, so that at last the water—having completely purged itself in the lowest layer of sand—will come out pure and sweet. Oxen, or men (whichever you have most of) may pump the water by day and by night into my filter. Even your black pond water, poured in here, would come out clear as crystal.”
“I will do that,” said the young duke, with enthusiasm. “The coopers shall go to work, the rogues. This moment!”
“Not so fast, Magnificence. Let us consider. Where is the cooper that could make such a cask? Where is the tree that could yield such a stave for such a cask? Big pebbles, little pebbles, gravel, charcoal, sand. . . . Yes, reinforce it at the bottom and construct it in the form of a truncated cone. Still, it crushes itself and bursts itself asunder by its own weight. No, Magnificence. Stone is the word. This must be made of stone. And”—said Leonardo, smearing away a design on his tablet and replacing it with another—“between every layer, a grill. To every grill, certain doors. Bronze doors. The grills, also, should be of bronze. As for the pipes—they had better be bronze. A valve to control the flow of the water, a brass valve. Below, a tank. Yes, I have it! We erect this upon . . . let me see . . . fourteen stone columns twenty feet high, so that, since water must always run down to level itself, it would be necessary for your servants only to turn a screw, to open a spring of pure water, gushing out of a bronze pipe in twenty places at once in your palace, as long as the tank is full. I have also an excellent idea for a screw, designed to shut off the water entirely or let it in as you will, wherever you will, either in a torrent or in a jet no thicker than a hair’s breadth. In this case, of course, your Magnificence will need a more powerful pumping engine. . . .”
The young duke asked: “What do you want all those bronze doors for?”
Leonardo said: “Magnificence, you have seen the pebbles in a stream.”
“Naturally.”
“You have seen them, and you have touched them no doubt?”
“Well?”
“They are slimy, are they not? They are covered with little green plants, you will have observed?”
“Well, well?”
“So will be the big pebbles, little pebbles, gravel, charcoal and above all the sand in your Magnificence’s filter. Slime and green stuff will choke it, or make it a source of even more noxious water than ever before. Hence, the bronze doors. Every month the stones, charcoal, sand and so forth, are raked out and the empty places refilled with fresh stuff.”
The young duke did not know what to say. He was uneasy. Turning an enormous seal on the forefinger of his right hand he muttered: “This is all very well. I have the greatest respect for your knowledge, and all that. But . . . stone, bronze doors, bronze gratings . . . I mean to say, bronze pipes, and God-knows-what made out of brass. You know all about these things, of course. But seriously, I really think we’d better let it drop. . . .”
“If you liked the pipes could be simply lead. The gratings would have to be copper, of course, but in about thirty or forty years . . .”
“Thirty or forty years!”
“What is thirty or forty years?” asked Leonardo, with a smile, combing his great beard with his fingers. “If you build, build for ever. Long after you are dead, Magnificence, by what will you be remembered? The fight you fought with Colonna? The bad portrait of you which you hired poor little Ercole to paint? Oho, no, no, no! Your descendants will say: ‘Ah, that was the duke who washed the water here in Abruzzi and cured his people of their belly-aches.’ Therefore I say stone of the hardest and bronze of the toughest. I know, Magnificence; I know.”
“You know everything, Leonardo.”
“I know a little of everything, and not much of anything—with the possible exception of the art of painting. Of that I know something. Yes, I know a certain something about painting pictures. But what is that worth? Little, Magnificence—so little! Your wall, upon which I smear my blood and tears, will fall. The bit of wood that I give my life to cover with pigments will warp, Magnificence, crack and rot. I grind my colors and I refine and refine my oils, and hope and hope for a few years more of life, as Leonardo da Vinci, when I have gone where I belong. But mark my words! One cup of sweet water out of your river down at Abruzzi—one cup of water, pure water, in the belly of a grateful ploughman—will make you immortal, and you will be remembered long after my colors fade. Simply because of a cup of clean water, Magnificence! So I talk in terms of hewn stone and mighty bronze, thinking of that cup of good water.”