Fantastic Tales

by Iginio Ugo Tarchetti

  I returned to the orchestra.

  He was still occupying his seat; he had stayed in the same position as before, his cheek resting on his hand. Yet his face, after a sudden, bright red flush, turned instantly to a cadaverous paleness. It was not difficult to notice that he was suffering, aware of the curious, almost reproachful glances fixed on him, and he remained motionless in his seat only to dissemble his agitation, avoiding any acknowledgement of his peculiar complicity in that incident.

  When the crowd appeared to shift its attention away from him, he left the theater, and I too left.

  Perhaps no one knew of the much more lamentable incident that had taken place a few hours earlier; perhaps no one remarked on the singular and incomprehensible circumstance of that void he seemed to form around himself, nor did anyone give thought to the relations that seemed to join all these facts. I, however, was constantly thinking of them. He obviously possessed something inexplicable and fatal.

  I had seen him alone in the center of a space formed almost miraculously amidst an extremely dense crowd, and I had seen the same phenomenon repeated in a theater filled with spectators. I had seen a boy who received his caresses run down by the wheels of a carriage, and a girl he noticed overcome by a sudden malaise. The idea that a simple coincidence caused this series of events seemed impossible to me. And if it were not a coincidence, then who was he? What influence could this man exercise?

  * * *

  —

  Eight days later, I was in Café Martini—that haunt of painters who never paint, singers who never sing, writers who never write, and elegant people who are always penniless. Quite a few of them were sitting around a table talking about some sort of newly invented pie, something similar to a pudding, which that night had been added to the restaurant’s menu.

  The conversation turned from this subject, and after passing through the idea of pudding and the goose the wealthy classes in London used to give the poor on Christmas day, it arrived at the speech the queen of England had recently delivered in parliament.

  A sentence from this speech gave a powerful shot to the discussion and on the return volley drove it to the possibility of war in Italy. From there, bouncing down the slope of personal opinions and foresight, it reached predictions; from predictions it rolled to presentiments; and from presentiments it entered the court of spiritual life, stopping at fate, sorcery, and spells; so that five minutes after the excellence of the new pie had been vigorously defended, I was relating to this group of idlers what I had witnessed a few days ago—the incomprehensible events involving the unknown young man.

  Needless to say, they laughed and refused to believe me. The girl’s fainting that night had become rather well known, but the causes, they said, must be different. Nonetheless, the subject of this new turn in our discourse was found interesting, and the conversation, after wavering over so many topics, settled firmly on this one. Everyone set forth his own ideas, everyone had something to tell in this connection. And as happens whenever we face the frightening world of the incomprehensible and supernatural—we mock it at the outset to show off our courage but end up terrified by what we hear, often by what we ourselves relate—each of us felt possessed by a mixture of fear and amazement. Whenever the conversation showed any signs of languishing, moreover, we did our utmost to renew and rekindle it with the insatiability children have for listening to terrifying tales of witches and fairies.

  We had nearly exhausted our entire repertoire of ideas on this thesis, when an old actor whom we had all known for some time—one of the most celebrated caryatids in that café—stood up at the nearby table where he had been listening and came to take a chair in our group.

  “The gentleman is right,” he said, pointing at me. “I do not know the young man he spoke of a little while ago, and I cannot corroborate the influence he attributes to him, but the fact that men exist who are fatal in such a way—indeed, much more fatal than that young man—nothing can call into question. Have any of you heard the name of Count Corrado di Sagrezwitch?”

  No one had.

  “That is strange, since he has acquired a terrible reputation in almost every country in Europe and many of the United States. He is considered the most fatal man in memory: his presence anywhere signals an inevitable misfortune. He is always found on the scene of the most terrible calamities, and he has witnessed the most frightening disasters. He was in South America when the church in San Iago burned and more than a thousand people perished; he was traveling two years ago on the Pacific Railroad when that collision occurred in which more than three hundred passengers lost their lives; he was at Saint Petersburg when the palace of Prince Yakorliff collapsed and many noblewomen and state dignitaries were found dead. In the mines of Ireland and those of Alstau Moor in Scotland—places that he has often visited—his name is never heard without fear; each of his visits signaled some of the catastrophes that have been so frequent and so dreaded in the mines. Count Sagrezwitch has already traveled in Italy on several occasions. He is thought to have been in Turin during September of 1864, when the Convention that the government signed with Napoleon III to withdraw French troops ultimately precipitated a tragic uprising. Yet no one, as far as I know, saw him there.”

  “And do you know him?”

  “I have met him four times in my travels. You know that as an actor and theatrical impresario I have covered almost all of Europe and a good bit of the New World. This is perhaps how I could be aware of the extraordinary man’s existence and know him personally. The first time I saw him was in Berlin, where I made my debut in the title role of Mozart’s masterpiece, Don Giovanni. Then I encountered him in a coffeehouse in New York, when the war of secession was still raging in America, exactly on the eve of the separatists’ ultimate defeat. The third time was again in Berlin—”

  “Where was he born?”

  “Some say he is American, others Polish. No one knows his native country with certainty, perhaps not even his name. In America he is known as the Duke of Nevers; in Europe I always heard the name Count Sagrezwitch; the Scottish miners called him ‘the fatal man.’ He is fluent in many languages and has assimilated the habits and customs of all the countries he has visited: in Italy he is Italian, in England English, and in America he is the model American…”

  “How old can he be?”

  “He appears to be about fifty, but his jet black hair and beard do not show the slightest trace of age. He is a man of medium height, with a disagreeable look, although his features are normal and rather elegant. In the winter he almost always wears a fur hat shaped like a turban, and as a rule he readily dons the dress of any country where he finds himself. To judge from the way he usually squanders his money, one would say that he is very wealthy. Nonetheless, on several occasions he has been seen lodging at second-rate inns and maintaining a very frugal way of life. In New York, for example, he certainly stayed at the Fifth Avenue Hotel, that marble colossus containing twelve hundred rooms, but he occupied a bed in the waiting area provided for travelers who have extremely limited means at their disposal. It is reported that he is aware of his fatal influence and takes pleasure in exercising it. His continual traveling from one corner of the globe to the other cannot be fortuitous. It is known, however, that he has no lovers, no friends, perhaps not even any acquaintances, except for a few, very superficial relationships. Those who know of his power avoid him deliberately; those who are ignorant of it, instinctively.” The actor paused, seeing that several of us were smiling with an air of incredulity, then resumed. “That some people deny him this power, this sort of mysterious and terrible mission, is a most natural thing. No one can prove that the misfortunes which occurred in the places he happened to be, and at the times he happened to be there, found their cause in his will, or in what we call his influence. He is, furthermore, a man like all others; he talks, dresses, acts like every other man, and there is nothing that opposes our describing him as affable
and gentlemanly. Yet it seems to me blindness to deny what the majority of men has admitted, and particularly to deny it because it is not understood.”

  “It is not that we deny,” I told him, “we doubt. Incidentally, you forgot to tell us where you met him the fourth time.”

  “Ah!” he began again, somewhat reassured by my words. “This last encounter has a very recent date. I saw him two months ago in London, when the queen’s theater burned. In fact, I know that he was intending to pass through Italy soon, and if he chose this season to travel here, it seems quite likely that the festivities at carnival would have led him to Milan.”

  “To Milan!”

  “Yes, and I wish that you could see him. I cannot tell you the motive for this wish, but it seems to me that the mere sight of him would help you to understand so many things I am unable to explain to you. And you could no longer doubt the truth of my assertions…You would observe,” he resumed after several moments, “something very remarkable in his dress—I mean the freshness and fineness of his gloves, which he used to change so many times in a single day that no one has ever seen his bare hands. His appearance is distinguished by another singularity that is no less noteworthy—namely, the power of his gaze. It possesses a magnetic, inexplicable quality that virtually compels you to stare and greet him in spite of yourself.”

  “Greet him!” we exclaimed, smiling.

  “Yes, greet him.”

  “Oh, I would like to see him!”

  “Indeed!”

  “We shall see him!”

  At that instant—it could have been two in the morning—the door of the café opened, and a large, heavyset man entered the room. Given the portrait just sketched for us, with the fur hat, the hands sheathed in the most spotless gloves, the singular facial expression, we did not take long to recognize him as the man who had been the subject of our conversation. Then—it was either amazement or confusion caused by that surprise—we all stood up at once to greet him. He raised his hand to his hat in a courteous gesture that was sincere yet restrained, and he took a seat at the other end of the room.

  I cannot express the confusion, amazement, and irritation which overcame us at that moment. We realized that we appeared weak to him, to ourselves, and perhaps ridiculous. Everybody remained absorbed in this thought, nor did anyone dare resume the conversation. The silence increased our confusion.

  The unknown man asked for a cup of punch, which he drank eagerly. He threw a silver scudo on the tray and gave the waiter the change from the price of his drink. When the waiter turned to walk away, he tripped over one of the back legs of the man’s chair and fell. The tray slipped from his hand, and he struck his face against the shards of the cup, which had broken, cutting himself in such a way that he was instantly covered with blood.

  At that sight we all rose as if moved by a single will and rushed headlong from the room.

  * * *

  —

  In the early days of my residence in Milan, I was forced, almost against my wishes, to become acquainted with a family who had years ago rendered me some very useful services through the mediation of friends. They were living in one of those gray, isolated hovels that flanked the canal on the western side of the city—an old house with two floors which the roof seemed to compress and squeeze together like a heavy leaden weight, so low and narrow were they. All around it stood some black, worm-eaten boards that supported dwarfish pumpkins and convolvulus ailing with chlorosis.

  Day and night a nearby silk factory wrapped the house in a cloud of smoke, while the dampness from the canal stained the exterior plaster of the walls and covered them with mold and small sorrel plants. Swarms of flies entered one’s mouth and nose as soon as one looked out the window; and the chattering, beating, and singing of the laundresses who rinsed and hung out their wash on the boards with the pumpkins created a continual, deafening uproar from morning to night.

  Perhaps less than a hundred people live in the center of Milan, and they know this part of its outskirts with precision. Milan is the exact miniature of a huge metropolis; it has everything that is characteristic of the great capitals, but in small proportions. That last strip of houses which skirted the canal from Porta Nuova to Porta Ticinese is what the Marinella is to Naples, the Temple to Paris, and the Seven Dials to London.

  Averse to knowing new things and people—partly by instinct, partly by design—I have always considered a new acquaintance as a new burden placed on my life. This one, however, I have not regretted. The family consisted of honest merchants who moderately prospered in business and had come to live in that solitary house so as to enjoy in peace the small fortune they had scraped together.

  Silvia, the only heir to that fortune, was one of the most dazzling beauties I have ever seen, and she was only seventeen when I met her. She was not one of those delicate, refined beauties that we often prefer to robust ones—for several years now, love has taken a giant step toward spiritualism—but her beauty, although ineffably serene, although blooming with all the graces of youth and health, was tempered by a kind, thoughtful quality that beauties of this sort ordinarily do not possess. I can say no more about it; each of us carries a different ideal of beauty within himself, and when it is said that a woman is lovely, everything that can be said about her has been said. A painter or sculptor could provide a less partial image with their art; literature cannot—the other arts speak to the senses, literature to the mind. I have seen two engravings by Jubert, two angels symbolized by two adolescent girls, nude, plump, rosy: the vividness and fullness of their figures make them true women of the people. And yet the artist could endow those faces with so much spirituality that they were bewitching and one was unable to look at them without being enraptured. In Carraccio’s Madonnas, I have observed the same contrast. Silvia’s beauty was of this sort, and in a sense it resolved the same problem—the spirituality of matter.

  She was one of those simple, pious, modest souls who never know any rancor in their lives, rich in that charming frivolity which nature has dispensed so liberally to women, happy in the order and quiet that their own simplicity has created around themselves, and that their want of passion can never disturb.

  During my first visits to Silvia’s family, I met one of her cousins, a certain Davide, a mature, practical young man who had arrived in Milan not long ago and was for a time concerned with the financial affairs of the house. He was threatening like all cousins —I do not know whether equally fortunate—and it was difficult for me to admit that he was flirting with the girl. Like all other men, he was neither handsome nor ugly. Male beauty is a cipher whose code has still not been broken; even for the majority of women, it remains insignificant. In men we look for character; women seek simply a man—they are the authors of that well-known aphorism: a man is always handsome.

  I confess that my discovery was one of the essential reasons I neglected my acquaintance with this family. I had not set my sights on Silvia’s dowry or beauty, but I understood that Davide’s love, which I believed was reciprocated, cast me in a certain inferior light, and I felt humiliated. In any man who approaches a woman, one assumes the desire to court her; in two men approaching her at the same time, one supposes the virtual duty to struggle in order to win her favor. At least society and the human heart continue to harbor such prejudices; lexicons may have changed, but things and passions have not: every circle of women still comprises a small, intimate court of love where courteous weapons battle for the affection of a favored lady. And then I have always felt so inadequate in the presence of a practical man that I have never had sufficient spirit to engage in any struggle with such an enemy. What is a scholar, a man of letters, a sage, compared to what we call a man of the world? Intellect is still such a small thing! How much do ignorant men, with their common sense, bourgeois, crude, trivial, how much do they advance us in science and the knowledge of things! We can only stumble like children over the smallest obstacles
in life!

  This awareness of my inferiority, then, rendered my visits less frequent (in the very city where I now live I am acquainted with families I visit every three or four years, as though I were returning from a voyage circumnavigating the globe). Later, after the death of Silvia’s father, the one person in that family to whom I was especially obligated, I found an excuse to break off the relationship completely.

  Thus, nearly a year had passed when, a few days after the singular appearance of Count Sagrezwitch at Café Martini, I ran into Davide, whom I had not seen for some time. He seemed much changed.

  He grasped my hands and looked at me with a sad, troubled expression—that mixture of reserve and confidence possessed by people who want you to realize they have a painful secret, which, however, they do not want to confide in you.

  “You have made yourself scarce at my cousin’s house,” he said to me. “Your sudden absence caused a rather painful shock in that family. You know that my aunt put trust in you, and then…she had gotten into the habit of seeing you. If only you knew! New misfortunes have befallen that house; Silvia is about to die—”

  “About to die!”

  “Yes, the poor girl is suffering from a wasting disease, some mysterious illness that the doctors can neither understand nor describe precisely, but they have declared it incurable. She is going to marry—”

  “You, perhaps?”

  “Not me,” he said sadly, “a rich foreigner, to whom I was subordinated. She conceived a passion for him that I never would have thought her capable of. She was planning to marry him when she fell ill, and this wedding, even if it is performed now as I believe they have resolved, can never have any influence on her health. I doubt that happiness has the power to make her live any longer. At least she will be happy for those few moments of life she has left. She will also be happy without me,” he added with bitterness. “It is not difficult to see that she deteriorates every day, and the course of this deterioration, so rapid and mysterious, is impossible to stop.”