In 2001 I spent three weeks traveling solo through Sicily, on retreat from the commercial work I’d been doing as a writer and art director. I probed the streets, museums and churches of the island’s cities and crisscrossed what felt like an immense, lonely interior. I found the towns where my paternal grandparents were born and lived before they immigrated to the U.S., along with documents that attested to a family history unknown to my father and his siblings. I took long walks over fields of broom and climbed up to hill towns marked by remnants of medieval walls and castles. I wrote in my journal and took photographs. Those early journal entries were the beginnings of my first novel. I returned three times over the next three years and continued to write.
I met a falconer on one of my walks. We crossed in a field where he had just finished the daily flying of his three birds. A twenty-first century acolyte of Frederick the Great, he kept a paperback copy of the emperor’s On the art of Hunting with Birds in the glove compartment of his aged, dusty Fiat. He very generously shared it with me. I subsequently located a copy of that treatise in the library of the town where I’d been staying and studied it closely, fascinated with the relationship between falconer and falcon and how that might give shape to the dynamic I’d begun to develop between two of my characters, a father and daughter.
° ° °
An excerpt from the novel, True Noble:
My first night here I stayed at a small hotel about a half kilometer out of town. The next morning I set out early. I passed an elderly shepherd on the road. I told him I was looking for a falconer who was supposed to be living here and for a place to rent, something isolated and quiet. He pointed to the hill above town and said, “You see the castle ruins? You see the tower? Enter town through the lower gate. Then work your way up the hill. You’ll find him there.”
Once inside the gate I walked up to the main piazza through a maze of streets. No one was out. I could hear the sounds of cups and plates from the open windows. Of faces being washed, throats and noses cleared. The morning news on a radio. The houses and streets here are all made of stone, in shades of black and gray. In the morning they’re cool and brushed with light; by midday they’re hot and bright. I continued until I reached a small plateau, and the tower, and remnants of castle walls all covered with yellow lichen. Beyond the tower I saw pastures, and fields of wheat, and clusters of rock and oak and beech trees. Here and there, remains of old farm houses. Wisps of yellow broom and stands of thistles. I heard a clang of bells from a herd of cattle in a pasture and then all of a sudden I heard a strange cry that seemed half-bird, half-human. Fa-vor-hee! Fa-vor-hee! I walked higher up the hill, and I saw Lino. He was watching one of his falcons. The falcon was flying in broad swooshes against the dark blue sky, then against the fields with all their honey and amber grasses, and wild olive trees, and violet thistles. Lino was twirling what looked like a lasso, what I now know is the lure, a kind of leash with a weight on which the falconer attaches fresh meat, which is the prey the falcon hunts. The falcon flew from one arabesque into another and Lino raced from side to side, trying to catch the bird’s attention with the lure and his shout, urging it to come back down. At last he threw the lure up into the air and it fell, and the bird swooped down on it, sharp and swift. Lino shouted again and he raised an arm, holding up the glove with fresh meat. The falcon finished eating the meat on the lure and then it flew up to Lino’s glove and fist and ate a second time. Then Lino turned and walked down the hill towards me, with the falcon on his fist.
Lino’s full name is Virgilio, but when he was small he was Virgilino. And since everyone here goes by nicknames, he was, and now still is, Lino. He’s spent most of his life in the sun so it’s hard to say how old he is, maybe sixty, maybe seventy, who knows. His skin’s deeply creased; his hair’s gray; his body’s fairly taut with the exception of a small paunch. His voice is deep, his manner somewhat gruff. He holds his body straight and rigid and walks as if something inside him might break. Overall he exudes a strange magnetism.
Since that first day I’ve noticed several photos on the walls of the falconry, photos taken years ago. Simulations of medieval falcon hunts that Lino participates in, all over the island and the southern boot. He was very good-looking. I was reminded of that painting we saw in London, that time we took a vacation, just the two of us. Portrait of a Young Man by da Messina. You bought the postcard; I found it with your papers. He has a five o’clock shadow and thick brows and lips, and gray eyes that look off to one side. He’s about to say something cynical. Lino once looked like him. But now a scar runs the length of his face, from the right temple down to the chin. A dark welt in his beard, like a gorge in a wilderness. He said it was from a hunting accident years ago, a stupid mistake. And that he let the wound go too long. Because of this disfigurement I trusted him instinctively. I told him all about you.
At first he didn’t say anything. He gathered the falcon to his breast and smoothed its wings, one of his habits. “You need a place that’s remote,” he said, “where you can see everything but no one sees you. You can live in the tower. It’s primitive but it has all the essentials. You’ll be alone there, no one will bother you. You can stay until October.”
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My first week here I’d see Lino come and go in the morning, from the balcony window. He’d have the falcons, wearing their hoods, on a portable perch. He’d put the perch in the back of his Fiat and drive off. Other than that I didn’t see him at all.
One morning I walked over. He was working at the bench. The falcons were on the large perch, still wearing their hoods—the hood being the leather helmet that covers the entire head except for the beak.
“Alice!” he said. “How about I give you a lesson in falconry?”
It was somewhat dark, since the falconry has no electricity and the only light is what comes in from the open door. A rustic candelabra hangs from the rafters but Lino hardly ever uses it. As my eyes adjusted I was able to see beyond the birds on the perch: various farm tools against the walls and on the floor; the bench where Lino was working, where he keeps leather pouches of different sizes, and the leather glove he wears for protection against the talons, and leashes, and cords that I soon learned were called jesses, for securing the falcon to the leash and glove; a scale for weighing the birds and their food, and a log for weights and dates, since their feeding is precisely monitored; jars of antibiotics; the day’s ration of eggs and freshly killed chicks; and a radio with the transmitters he secures around each falcon’s leg when he takes it to fly, so that if it flies off he can trace it and reclaim it, or at least hope to.
That first day I learned how to take the male lanner off the perch and put him back. To do this, you don the falconer’s glove, in my case on the left arm, and attach it by its cord and ring to the cord and ring of the jess, which is tied to one of the bird’s legs. Your arm must always replicate the angle of the perch, forearm always parallel to the ground, at a right angle to the upper arm and elbow. You untie the perch cord, and with your arm in the proper position, simultaneously pull the bird’s jess up and forward while offering your arm as the next perch. Always keep four fingers stretched straight, thumb slightly raised, forearm always at right angle to upper arm and elbow: this way the bird feels safe.
I did this about six times.
When the falcons aren’t flying, which is most of the time, they must be kept in the dark. Kept in the dark and wearing the hood, because if someone suddenly opens the door and they see light they might bate, which means try to escape, and being tied up they would damage their feathers. Seeing nothing renders them calm; dormant; free of anxiety; free of desire.
I said, “I still don’t understand whether the falcons are wild or tame. And where one draws the line.”
“The two females are wild,” he said. “You saw yourself that first day how they fly. They still want to hunt. The male, however, is tame. He imprinted when he was young, so I feed him by hand.”
“But you drew the females down with meat on the lure, the prey was fake. You say they’re wild and they fly to hunt, but they’re not truly hunting.”
He’d been bent over the knife he was cleaning, but then he lifted his head and said, “Yes, but the instinct is still alive, and very strong. Listen, Alice, I’m impressed you’re so interested but I don’t understand why.”
I said, “I can’t explain it yet.” I moved closer to the falcons to inspect their markings, brown and black ribs rippling down white breasts. “You don’t use them to hunt, so what’s the point?”
“The point is to keep them close, but to keep them wild. It’s all a question of equilibrium.”
“Whose equilibrium?”
“Theirs and mine.”
“Theirs in which way?”
“I feed them just enough,” he said, “so that they have the energy they need to fly, to fly high and well—but not too much, so that they still return to me and the food—listen, it’s very complicated.”
“What about your equilibrium?”
“That’s a totally different subject,” he said. “Not for today.”
“You’re attached to them.”
“Of course.”
“And they to you?”
“Listen, Alice,” he said, “living with raptors is not about friendship—it’s about respect. It’s different than with dogs or horses, I’m not their master. The ones who hunt, the ones who still have that instinct—they’re never really trained, not really. We co-exist—that’s what it is. I have no guarantee that when one leaves my fist to fly that it’ll come back, there’s always that risk. But that’s where the thrill is, I tell you—when that bird takes off from my wrist, my soul goes with it. Nihil pulchrius, nihil difficilius. Nothing more beautiful than this art, nothing more difficult than knowing how. Here—look at this.”
He lifted a book from the top of a stack. The Art of Hunting with Birds. De arte venandi cum avibus. Imperatore Federigo Secondo.
“Stupor Mundi—Greatest king Italy ever had,” he said. “Greatest emperor Europe ever had. Some of the things I complain about—he wrote about the same things. People moving too far from the old ways. Moving away from nature, building too many cities, caring too much about man-made things. Then too the kids here today, they don’t know anything. All they care about is technology—computers, video. Then the parents are always working and they don’t teach their kids anything. Maybe they themselves forget the names of things, the difference between a sparrow and a starling. A vulture and a falcon. Anyway—everything we falconers do and believe is right here in this book. Everything. Eight hundred years later almost nothing has changed. If you want to see the real thing, or at least a copy, one that’s complete, go to the library. Right off the main piazza. Ask for Maddalena.”