Casanova's Homecoming

by Arthur Schnitzler

  CHAPTER FOUR.

  The room in which Casanova was now left to his own devices was dimlylighted by two candles. His gaze roamed successively to the fourwindows, looking to the four quarters of heaven. The prospect was muchthe same from them all. The landscape had a bluish sheen. He saw broadplains with no more than trifling elevations, except to the northwardwhere the mountains were faintly visible. A few isolated houses, farms,and larger buildings, could be made out. Among these latter was onewhich stood higher than the rest. Here there was still a light in one ofthe windows, and Casanova imagined it must be the Marchese's mansion.

  The furniture of the room was simple. The double bed stood straight outinto the room. The two candles were on a long table. There were a fewchairs, and a chest of drawers bearing a gilt-framed mirror. Everythingwas in perfect order, and the valise had been unpacked. On the table,locked, lay the shabby portfolio containing Casanova's papers. Therewere also some books which he was using in his work; writing materialshad been provided.

  He did not feel sleepy. Taking his manuscript out of the portfolio, hereread what he had last written. Since he had broken off in the middleof a sentence, it was easy for him to continue. He took up the pen,wrote a phrase or two, then paused.

  "To what purpose?" he demanded of himself, as if in a cruel flash ofinner illumination. "Even if I knew that what I am writing, what I amgoing to write, would be considered incomparably fine; even if I couldreally succeed in annihilating Voltaire, and in making my renown greaterthan his--would I not gladly commit these papers to the flames could Ibut have Marcolina in my arms? For that boon, should I not be willing tovow never to set foot in Venice again, even though the Venetians shouldwish to escort me back to the city in triumph?"

  "Venice!"..... He breathed the word once more. Its splendor captivatedhis imagination, and in a moment its old power over him had beenrestored. The city of his youth rose before his eyes, enshrined in allthe charms of memory. His heart ached with yearning more intense thanany that he could recall. To renounce the idea of returning home seemedto him the most incredible of the sacrifices which his destiny mightdemand. How could he go on living in this poor and faded world withoutthe hope, without the certainty, that he was one day to see the belovedcity again? After the years and decades of wanderings and adventures,after all the happiness and unhappiness he had experienced, afterall the honor and all the shame, after so many triumphs and so manydiscomfitures--he must at length find a resting place, must at lengthfind a home.

  Was there any other home for him than Venice? Was there any good fortunereserved for him other than this, that he should have a home oncemore? It was long since in foreign regions he had been able to commandenduring happiness. He could still at times grasp happiness, but fora moment only; he could no longer hold it fast. His power over hisfellows, over women no less than over men, had vanished. Only where heevoked memories could his words, his voice, his glance, still conjure;apart from this, his presence was void of interest. His day was done!

  He was willing to admit what he had hitherto been sedulous to concealfrom himself, that even his literary labors, including the polemicagainst Voltaire upon which his last hopes reposed, would never secureany notable success. Here, likewise, he was too late. Had he in youthbut had leisure and patience to devote himself seriously to the work ofthe pen, he was confident he could have ranked with the leading membersof the profession of authorship, with the greatest imaginative writersand philosophers. He was as sure of this as he was sure that, grantedmore perseverance and foresight than he actually possessed, he couldhave risen to supreme eminence as financier or as diplomat.

  But what availed his patience and his foresight, what became of all hisplans in life, when the lure of a new love adventure summoned? Women,always women. For them he had again and again cast everything to thewinds; sometimes for women who were refined, sometimes for women whowere vulgar; for passionate women and for frigid women; for maidensand for harlots. All the honors and all the joys in the world had everseemed cheap to him in comparison with a successful night upon a newlove quest.

  Did he regret what he had lost through his perpetual seeking andnever or ever finding, through this earthly and superearthly flittingfrom craving to pleasure and from pleasure back to craving once more?No, he had no regrets. He had lived such a life as none other beforehim; and could he not still live it after his own fashion? Everywherethere remained women upon his path, even though they might no longer bequite so crazy about him as of old.

  Amalia? He could have her for the asking, at this very hour, in herdrunken husband's bed. The hostess in Mantua; was she not in love withhim, fired with affection and jealousy as if he were a handsome lad?Perotti's mistress, pockmarked, but a woman with a fine figure? Thevery name of Casanova had intoxicated her with its aroma of a thousandconquests. Had she not implored him to grant her but a single night oflove; and had he not spurned her as one who could still choose where hepleased?

  But Marcolina--such as Marcolina were no longer at his disposal. Hadsuch as Marcolina ever been at his disposal? Doubtless there were womenof that kind. Perchance he had met more than one such woman before.Always, however, some more willing than she had been available, and hehad never been the man to waste a day in vain sighing. Since not evenLorenzi had succeeded with Marcolina, since she had rejected the hand ofthis comely officer who was as handsome and as bold as he, Casanova, hadbeen in youth, Marcolina might well prove to be that wonder of the worldin the existence of which he had hitherto disbelieved--the virtuouswoman.

  At this juncture he laughed, so that the walls reechoed. "Thebungler, the greenhorn!" he exclaimed out loud, as so often in suchself-communings. "He did not know how to make a good use of hisopportunities. Or the Marchesa was hanging round his neck all the time.Or perhaps he took her as a next-best, when Marcolina, the philosopher,the woman of learning, proved unattainable!"

  Suddenly a thought struck him. "To-morrow I will read her my polemicagainst Voltaire. I can think of no one else who would be a competentcritic. I shall convince her. She will admire me. She will say:'Excellent, Signor Casanova. Your style is that of a most brilliant oldgentleman!' God!.... 'You have positively annihilated Voltaire, youbrilliant senior!'"

  He paced the chamber like a beast in a cage, hissing out the words inhis anger. A terrible wrath possessed him, against Marcolina, againstVoltaire, against himself, against the whole world. It was all he coulddo to restrain himself from roaring aloud in his rage. At length hethrew himself upon the bed without undressing, and lay with eyes wideopen, looking up at the joists among which spiders' webs were visible,glistening in the candlelight. Then, as often happened to him afterplaying cards late at night, pictures of cards chased one anotherswiftly through his brain, until he sank into a dreamless sleep.

  His slumber was brief. When he awakened it was to a mysterious silence.The southern and the eastern windows of the turret chamber were open.Through them from the garden and the fields entered a complex of sweetodors. Gradually the silence was broken by the vague noises from nearand from far which usually herald the dawn. Casanova could no longer liequiet; a vigorous impulse towards movement gripped him, and lured himinto the open. The song of the birds called to him; the cool breeze ofearly morning played upon his brow. Softly he opened the door and movedcautiously down the stairs. Cunning, from long experience, he was ableto avoid making the old staircase creak. The lower flight, leading tothe ground floor, was of stone. Through the hall, where half-emptiedglasses were still standing on the table, he made his way into thegarden. Since it was impossible to walk silently on the gravel, hepromptly stepped on to the greensward, which now, in the early twilight,seemed an area of vast proportions. He slipped into the side alley,from which he could see Marcolina's window. It was closed, barred, andcurtained, just as it had been overnight. Barely fifty paces from thehouse, Casanova seated himself upon a stone bench. He heard a cart rollby on the other side of the wall, and then everything was quiet again. Afine grey haze was floating over th
e greensward, giving it the aspect ofa pond with fugitive outlines. Once again Casanova thought of that nightlong ago in the convent garden at Murano; he thought of another gardenon another night; he hardly knew what memories he was recalling;perchance it was a composite reminiscence of a hundred nights, just asat times a hundred women whom he had loved would fuse in memory into onefigure that loomed enigmatically before his questioning senses. Afterall, was not one night just like another? Was not one woman just likeanother? Especially when the affair was past and gone? The phrase,"past and gone," continued to hammer upon his temples, as if destinedhenceforth to become the pulse of his forlorn existence.

  It seemed to him that something was rattling behind him along the wall.Or was it only an echo that he heard? Yes, the noise had really comefrom the house. Marcolina's window had suddenly been opened, the irongrating had been pushed back, the curtain drawn. A shadowy formwas visible against the dark interior. Marcolina, clad in a whitenightdress, was standing at the window, as if to breathe the fragranceof morning. In an instant, Casanova slipped behind the bench. Peepingover the top of it, through the foliage in the avenue, he watchedMarcolina as if spellbound. She stood unthinking, it seemed, her gazevaguely piercing the twilight. Not until several seconds had elapsed didshe appear to collect herself, to grow fully awake and aware, directingher eyes slowly, now to right and now to left. Then she leaned forward,as if seeking for something on the gravel, and next she turned her head,from which her hair was hanging loosely, and looked up towards thewindows in the upper story. Thereafter, she stood motionless for awhile, supporting herself with a hand on either side of the window-frameas though she were fastened to an invisible cross. Now at length,suddenly illumined as it were from within, her features grew plain toCasanova's vision. A smile flitted across her face. Her arms fell to hersides; her lips moved strangely, as if whispering a prayer; oncemore she looked searchingly across the garden, then nodded almostimperceptibly, and at the instant someone who must hitherto have beencrouching at her feet swung across the sill into the open. It wasLorenzi. He flew rather than walked across the gravel into the alley,which he crossed barely ten yards from Casanova, who held his breathas he lay behind the bench. Lorenzi, hastening on, made his way down anarrow strip of grass running along the wall, and disappeared from view.Casanova heard a door groan on its hinges--the very door doubtlessthrough which he, Olivo, and the Marchese had reentered the gardenon the previous day--and then all was still. Marcolina had remainedmotionless. As soon as she knew that Lorenzi was safely away, she drew adeep breath, and closed grating and window. The curtain fell back intoits place, and all was as it had been. Except for one thing; for now, asif there were no longer any reason for delay, day dawned over house andgarden.

  Casanova was still lying behind the bench, his arms outstretched beforehim. After a while he crept on all fours to the middle of the alley, andthence onward till he reached a place where he could not be seen fromMarcolina's window or from any of the others. Rising to his feet with anaching back, he stretched body and limbs, and felt himself restored tohis senses, as though re-transformed from a whipped hound into a humanbeing--doomed to feel the chastisement, not as bodily pain, but asprofound humiliation.

  "Why," he asked himself, "did I not go to the window while it was stillopen? Why did I not leap over the sill? Could she have offered anyresistance; would she have dared to do so; hypocrite, liar, strumpet?"

  He continued to rail at her as though he had a right to do so, as thoughhe had been her lover to whom she had plighted troth and whom she hadbetrayed. He swore to question her face to face; to denounce her beforeOlivo, Amalia, the Marchese, the Abbate, the servants, as nothing betterthan a lustful little whore. As if for practice, he recounted to himselfin detail what he had just witnessed, delighting in the invention ofincidents which would degrade her yet further. He would say that she hadstood naked at the window; that she had permitted the unchaste caressesof her lover while the morning wind played upon them both.

  After thus allaying the first vehemence of his anger, he turnedto consider whether he might not make a better use of his presentknowledge. Was she not in his power? Could he not now exact by threatsthe favors which she had not been willing to grant him for love? Butthis infamous design was speedily abandoned; not so much becauseCasanova realized its infamy, as because, even while the plan crossedhis mind, he was aware of its futility. Why should Marcolina,accountable to no one but herself, be concerned at his threats? In thelast resort she was astute enough, if needs must, to have him drivenfrom the house as a slanderer and blackmailer. Even if, for one reasonor another, she were willing to give herself to him in order to preservethe secret of her amours with Lorenzi (he was aware that he wasspeculating on something beyond the bounds of possibility), a pleasurethus extorted would become for him a nameless torment. Casanovaknew himself to be one whose rapture in a love relationship was athousandfold greater when conferring pleasure than when receiving it.Such a victory as he was contemplating would drive him to frenzy anddespair.

  Suddenly he found himself at the door in the garden wall. It was locked.Then Lorenzi had a master-key! But who, it now occurred to him to ask,had ridden the horse he had heard trotting away after Lorenzi had leftthe card table? A servant in waiting for the purpose, obviously.

  Involuntarily Casanova smiled his approval. They were worthy of oneanother, these two, Marcolina and Lorenzi, the woman philosopher and theofficer. A splendid career lay before them.

  "Who will be Marcolina's next lover?" he thought questioningly. "Theprofessor in Bologna in whose house she lives? Fool, fool! That isdoubtless an old story. Who next? Olivo? The Abbate? Wherefore not? Orthe serving-lad who stood gaping at the door yesterday when we drove up?She has given herself to all of them. I am sure of it. But Lorenzi doesnot know. I have stolen a march on him there."

  Yet all the while he was inwardly convinced that Lorenzi was Marcolina'sfirst lover. Nay, he even suspected that the previous night was thefirst on which she had given herself to Lorenzi. Nevertheless, as hemade the circuit in the garden within the wall, he continued to indulgethese spiteful, lascivious fantasies.

  At length he reached the hall door, which he had left open. He mustregain the turret chamber unseen and unheard. With all possible cautionhe crept upstairs, and sank into the armchair which stood in frontof the table. The loose leaves of the manuscript seemed to have beenawaiting his return. Involuntarily his eyes fell upon the sentence inthe middle of which he had broken off. He read: "Voltaire will doubtlessprove immortal. But this immortality will have been purchased at theprice of his immortal part. Wit has consumed his heart just as doubt hasconsumed his soul, and therefore....."

  At this moment the morning sun flooded the chamber with red light, sothat the page in his hand glowed. As if vanquished, he laid it on thetable beside the others. Suddenly aware that his lips were dry, hepoured himself a glass of water from the carafe on the table; the drinkwas lukewarm and sweetish to the taste. Nauseated, he turned his headaway from the glass, and found himself facing his image in the mirrorupon the chest of drawers. A wan, aging countenance with dishevelledhair stared back at him. In a self-tormenting mood he allowed thecorners of his mouth to droop as if he were playing the part ofpantaloon on the stage; disarranged his hair yet more wildly; put outhis tongue at his own image in the mirror; croaked a string of inaneinvectives against himself; and finally, like a naughty child, blew theleaves of his manuscript from the table on to the floor.

  Then he began to rail against Marcolina again. He loaded her withobscene epithets. "Do you imagine," he hissed between his teeth, "thatyour pleasure will last? You will become fat and wrinkled and old justlike the other women who were young when you were young. You will be anold woman with flaccid breasts; your hair will be dry and grizzled; youwill be toothless, you will have a bad smell. Last of all you will die.Perhaps you will die while you are still quite young. You will become amass of corruption, food for worms."

  To wreak final vengeance upon her, he endeav
ored to picture her as dead.He saw her lying in an open coffin, wrapped in a white shroud. But hewas unable to attach to her image any sign of decay, and her unearthlybeauty aroused him to renewed frenzy. Through his closed eyelids he sawthe coffin transform itself into a nuptial bed. Marcolina lay laughingthere with lambent eyes. As if in mockery, with her small, white handsshe unveiled her firm little breasts. But as he stretched forth hisarms towards her, in the moment when he was about to clasp her in hispassionate embrace, the vision faded.