some selfish protean sea-god to perturb the quiet counterpoint of my existence. It was right that I should try now not to think of him.
He would have me called, so he had told me; until then, I could at least dedicate myself to other matters. I had much to do and so I set about one of the tasks which most pleased me: the cleaning of the aviary. The servant who habitually undertook this was more and more frequently confined to bed by an ugly wound to his foot which refused to heal. It was thus not the first time that I was discharging this duty. I went to collect the feed and set to work.
The reader should not be surprised to learn that the Villa Spada was graced by an attraction as exotic as the aviary. In the Roman villas, all forms of diversion were in great demand. At his Villa on the Pincio, Cardinal de' Medici kept bears, lions and ostriches; at the Villas Borghese and Pamphili, roe deer and fallow deer wandered freely. At the time of Pope Leo X an elephant, Annone by name, had even promenaded among the gardens of the Vatican. Apart from animals, sportive entertainments to astound and divert the guests had never been lacking, such as pall-mall (which was played at the Villa Pamphili), or trucco, otherwise known as billiards, which was played at the villa of the Knights of Malta and at Villa Costaguti, on a court polished with soap or a cloth-covered table, or billiards in the open air, which was to be found at the Villa Mattei, to overcome the melancholy humour of the summer evenings.
The aviary was situated in a secluded corner of the villa, between the chapel and the vegetable gardens, hidden from view by a line of trees and by a tall, thick hedge. It had been so placed as to enjoy sunlight in winter and shade in summer, in order to spare the birds the discomfort of inclement weather. Its aspect was that of a little manor built to a square plan, with a tower at each comer and the central corpus covered in metallic mesh cupolas, surmounted in their turn by splendid pinnacles crowned by iron weathercocks. The interior was painted with frescoes depicting views of the heavens and of distant landscapes, so as to give the fowls an illusion of greater space. Holm oaks and bay laurel bushes, which are evergreen, were planted there, and there were vases with brushwood for building nests as well as four large drinking bowls. The birds (of which there were a number of groups in separate cages) were numerous and most pleasing both to the eye and the ear: nightingales, lapwings, partridges, quails, francolins, pheasants, ortolans, green linnets, blackbirds, calandra larks, chaffinches, turtle-doves and hawfinches, to name but a few.
I entered the aviary timidly, immediately provoking a great flapping of wings. Birds, or so I have been told, should always be fed and cared for by the same person. My presence, instead of their usual master, had sown no little disquiet. I made my way in cautiously while a number of lapwings followed me nervously and a flock of little birds darted around me with hostile movements. I shivered when a blackbird settled boldly on my shoulder, somehow avoiding a collision with a francolin which was fluttering defiantly in my face.
'If you do not stop this at once, I shall depart, and then you shall go without lunch!' I threatened.
In response to this I received only a more aggressive and strident wave of cackling, whistling and fluttering, and further dangerous aerial incursions only a hand's breadth from my head. Intimidated, I took refuge in a corner until the squall calmed down. The government of birds and of aviaries was not, I thought, a trade for me.
When even the most impertinent volatiles had returned to order, I began to clean and refill the drinking and feed bowls with fresh water, chicory, beet, yarrow, lettuce, plantain seeds, grain, bird seed, millet and hemp seed. I then furnished the aviary with fresh supplies of asparagus grass, which is good for building nests. As I was scattering a few pieces of dry bread, a hungry young francolin jumped onto my arm, trying to snatch the tasty booty of breadcrumbs from his companions.
Once I had cleaned the feed bowls and swept the dejections from the ground, I moved at last towards the exit, happy to leave behind me the stink and chaos of the aviary. I was just closing the door when suddenly my heart leapt into my throat.
A pistol shot. A projectile whistled by very close to me. Someone was shooting at me.
I bent down with my hands clutching my head in a gesture of protection. Then I heard a hard, loud voice, clearly addressing me: 'Arrest him! He's a thief.'
Instinctively, I raised my hands in surrender. I turned around, and saw no one. I slapped my forehead and smiled, disappointed at the shortness of my memory. Only then did I slowly look upwards and see him there, in his usual place.
'How witty,' I replied, closing the door of the aviary and trying to hide my shock.
'I said, Arrest him, he's a thief!' Boooom!'
That second pistol shot, which seemed even more real than the first one, clearly announced the strangest creature in all the Villa Spada: Caesar Augustus, parrot.
I should take this opportunity to explain the nature and conduct of that bizarre volatile, which was to play no small part in the events I am about to recount.
I knew that, because of its unique qualities, the parrot had been given such grandiose names as 'Light of the Avian Realm' and 'Monarch of the East Indies', and that the first exemplars had been brought to Alexander the Great from the Isle of Taprobane, since which time many other species had been discovered in the West Indies, especially in Cuba and Manacapan. Everyone knows that the parrot (of which some say there exist over a hundred varieties) possesses the most singular faculty of imitating the human voice, and not only that, but noises, sounds, and much else. Years ago in Rome, the parrot of the most excellent Cardinal Madruzzo and that of the Cavalier Cassiano Dal Pozzo were renowned for imitating the human voice poorly while perfectly mimicking dogs and cats. Then there were those which knew how to imitate the song of other birds, even of more than one species. Outside the Papal States, the parrot belonging to His Most Serene Highness the Prince of Savoy was still remembered for its prompt and fluent eloquence. It is said that Cardinal Colonna's parrot could recite the whole Creed. Lastly, another white and yellow parrot of the same species as Caesar Augustus had just arrived on the Barberini estate, adjoining the Villa Spada, and this one too was said to be a good speaker.
Caesar Augustus was, however, on quite another level from all his fellow parrots. He mimicked human speech to perfection, even the voices of persons whom he had known for only a very short time and whose accents he had barely heard, reproducing tones, cadences and even slight defects in pronunciation. He reproduced the sounds of nature, including thunder, the rushing of torrents, the rustling of leaves and the howling of the wind, even the sound of the waves breaking on the beach. He was no less skilled an imitator of dogs, cats, cows, donkeys, horses and of course all kinds of birds, and perhaps he could also mimic other sounds which I had not yet heard him produce. He would faithfully imitate the squealing of hinges, approaching footsteps, the firing of pistols and muskets, the ringing of a doorbell, horses' hooves trotting, a door slamming hard, the cries of street vendors, an infant crying, the clash of blades in a duel, all the subtleties of laughter and lamentations, the clatter of dishes and glasses, and many more sounds.
It was as though for Caesar Augustus the whole cosmos was an immense gymnasium in which he could day after day refine his indescribable, unsurpassable talents for mimicry. Gifted with a prodigious memory, he was able to bring forth voices and whispers weeks after hearing them, thus surpassing any human faculty.
No one knew how old he was: some said fifty, others even seventy. In truth, anything was possible, given the well-known longevity of parrots, which not infrequently live for over a century and survive their masters.
His incomparable talent, which could have made of Caesar Augustus the most famous parrot of all time, did, however, have its limits. The parrot of the Villa Spada had, indeed, refused to display his gifts for as long as anyone could remember. In short, he pretended to be dumb. Fruitless were requests, flattery, orders, even the cruel fast to which he was subjected, on the orders of Cardinal Spada himself, to convince him to perform. Nothing worked; Caesar Augustus had for years and years (no one knew how many) withdrawn into the most stubborn silence.
Of course, no one knew why this had happened. Some remembered that Caesar Augustus had first belonged to Father Virgilio Spada, the uncle of Cardinal Spada, who had died some forty years previously. It had been Virgilio, a man of letters immersed in antiquities and the classical world, who had named the parrot after the most celebrated Roman emperor. It must have been a token of love; it was indeed said that Virgilio cared much for his feathered friend and there were those among the servants who murmured that the death of his master had cast Caesar Augustus into the blackest melancholy. Had it been the weight of mourning that stopped the parrot's beak? It was indeed as though he had taken a vow of silence, in the sad and insensate expectation of his late master's return to life.
I, however, knew that this was not the case. Caesar Augustus did speak, verily, and I was witness to that: the sole witness, to be exact. I myself could not tell why this should be; I suspected that he felt a particular liking for me. I was in fact the only one who treated him with courtesy; unlike the servants of the villa, I avoided teasing
