Free The Nonexistent Knight by Italo Calvino Page A

and tender as newborn babes.”
    The paladins said, “Well, yes, that day or another, if not there it was somewhere else, that’s what happened, there’s no point in splitting hairs...”
    But they were annoyed. This Agilulf always remembered everything, cited chapter and verse even for a feat of arms accepted by all and piously described by those who had never seen it, tried to reduce it to a normal incident of service to be mentioned in a routine evening’s report to a Regimental Commander. Since the world began there has always been a difference between what actually happens in war and what is told afterwards, but it matters little if certain events actually happen or not in a warrior's life. His person, his power, his bearing guarantee that if things did not happen just like that in every petty detail, they might have and still could do so on a similar occasion. But someone like Agilulf has nothing to sustain his own actions, whether true or false. Either they are set down day by day in verbal reports and taken down in registers, or there's emptiness, blankness. He wanted to reduce his colleagues to sponges of Bordeaux wine, full of boasts, of projects winging into the past without ever having been in the present, of legends attributed to different people and eventually hitched to a suitable protagonist.
    Every now and again someone would call Charlemagne in testimony. But the emperor had been in so many wars that he always got confused between one and another and did not really even remember which he was fighting now. His job was to wage war, and at most think of what would come after. Past wars were neither here nor there to him. Everyone knew that tales by chroniclers and bards were to be taken with a grain of salt. The emperor could not be expected to rectify them all. Only when some matter came up with repercussions on military organization, on ranks, for instance, or attribution of titles of nobility or estates, did the king give an opinion. An opinion of a sort, of course; in such matters Charlemagne’s wishes counted for little. He had to stick to the issues at hand, judge by such proofs as were given and see that laws and customs were respected. So when asked his opinion he would shrug his shoulders, keep to generalties, and sometimes get out of it with some such quip as, “Oh! Who knows? War is war, as they say!” Now on this Sir Agilulf of the Guildivern, who kept crumbling bread and contradicting all the feats which—even if not told in versions accurate in every detail—were genuine glories of Frankish arms, Charlemagne felt like setting some heavy task, but he had been told that the knight treated the most tiresome duties as tests of zeal so there was no point in it.
    “I don’t see why you must niggle so Agilulf,” said Oliver. “The glory of our feats tends to amplify in the popular memory, thus proving it to be genuine glory, basis of the titles and ranks we have won.”
    “Not of mine,” rebutted Agilulf. “Every title and predicate of mine I got for deeds well asserted and supported by incontrovertible documentary evidence!”
    “So you say!” cried a voice.
    “Who spoke will answer to me!” said Agilulf, rising to his feet.
    “Calm down, now, be good,” said the others. “You who are always picking at others’ feats, must expect someone to say a word about yours...”
    “I offend no one. I limit myself to detailing facts, with place, date and proofs!”
    “It was I who spoke. I will detail too.” A young warrior had got up, pale in the face.
    “I'd like to see what you can find contestable in my past, Torrismund,” said Agilulf to the youth, who was in fact Torrismund of Cornwall. “Would you deny, for instance, that I was granted my knighthood because, exactly fifteen years ago, I saved from rape by two brigands the King of Scotland’s virgin daughter, Sophronia?”
    “Yes, I do contest that Fifteen years ago Sophronia, the King of Scotland’s daughter, was no