While she was alone in the kitchen, whose window gave out on a small courtyard (which was as spartan as a prison cell and just as silent), her thoughts seemed to go around in circles restlessly, like the egg that the spoon in her hand chased around the bowl: it was like she was miming her mind’s confusion to an invisible spectator. A single fact left her speechless: the colony had been conquered by the Italian army after many years of fighting against the natives’ desperate resistance; now the former enemies had become obedient subjects, and the colony had been pacified. One could go out for a walk along the endless plains at any time of day feeling as safe as along the narrow, shady, familiar banks of a Lombard lake.
Nevertheless, danger had finally reemerged, this time in her own sitting room: the man who had turned her house upside down was from the North – with blue eyes, greyish, slick hair, perfectly parted, his face deceptively limpid, just like in those portraits from the early nineteenth century, whose canvas always looked lacquered. The war front – she thought in an ironic, bitter start while her hands came to a rest – had shifted to the North, in fact it now cut her sitting room in half with its invisible line. Perhaps in bygone days her family’s ancient furniture had seen the shadow of a Wojciechowski in her grandparents’ home on the shores of Lake Como, perhaps in the shape of some minor Austro-Hungarian officer who had appeared at a lunch or party, his visit prompted by dark, secret sentimental intentions.
The young man had an incredibly thin waist, looking like one of those Venetian goblets whose extremities almost protrude into nothingness; as for his movements, they were naturally harmonious, but disturbed by a restless will, she thought, a kind of presence within presence, yes, a temporary presence, indeed, a provocative presence, which could nevertheless be amiable enough except when it furthered a man’s unchaste desires. This ductile will, which was emphasised by an obvious precision with his movements, made that relatively small officer more fearful in war than some of his burlier comrades: his aim was more precise and his bullet would strike first. Mrs Bellotti would have liked to see him in a duel, and as soon as she realised that she would have rooted for him (her nervous hand started whirling around to whisk her eggs), she looked as if she’d lost her mind.
Having removed her apron, she went from the kitchen to the sitting room, it seemed as if the preparations for the visit knew no end, like when a director stubbornly insists that his cast reshoot one scene or the other: she had barricaded herself behind bourgeois intimacy against the assault led by powers from the North which, amidst the slumber of African powers, was attacking the colonial house where she had lovingly reconstructed her ancestral home – just like when backdrops depicting the time-honoured Nile are hung when performances of Aida are staged in Italy’s opera houses.
She carried the silver tea service to the kitchen so that the maid could polish it, once she’d finished washing the stairs where a thick film of red dust had settled; two days earlier, the city had been blasted by scorching winds from the south, as though it had wanted to sweep the city into the sea, or sink her like a ship. She removed the slipcovers from her Louis XVIII armchairs, made of dyed maple inlaid with rosewood, which were upholstered in olive green silk. Her ancestors’ home, even if situated in Africa, was an earthly paradise: Lieutenant Wojciechowski would enter it like a tempter. What was at stake wasn’t innocent happiness, but the bourgeois order from which he wanted to take Giulia away – that officer was looking for a brief fling without being forced to pay any tribute to the law; he wasn’t Adam, he was the snake. Nevertheless, this time, the cherub who stood guard at the gates of order, with a flaming sword which turned every way.xxv In other words, Mrs Bellotti would appear before the fact, and not after it; not in order to chase away the sinners, but to vanquish the tempter.
While she was robing her sitting room in its dress uniform, she felt a kind of intoxication. She rolled a carpet down the stairs until it reached the bottom of the landing, the ceremonial effect had to be noticed as soon as one crossed the threshold. She polished her Empire-style mirror, which was framed by a gold fillet studded with acanthus leaves.
She walked along the ancient carpets as though listening to a fable, or telling one. But which fable was it? The story of her family, which adhered to set guidelines.
II
Mrs Bellotti presided over everything in silence. Serra was talking about something, one of his programmes, which everyone was acquainted with and which they thus hardly paid any attention to; programmes which had nothing to do with the painful, dramatic notes that one could occasionally hear while walking by the isolated little house, where dreams transformed into sounds, into a chilling, meandering Chopinesque, once the mask of mundanity had been dropped amidst unbearable memories. It was as if Serra had sent a bland body-double around the city in order to deflect the curiosity of others from himself. Serra never invited anybody to his house, but Wojciechowski had been spotted leaving his abode on several occasions.
Mrs Bellotti had carefully brushed her hair, had put on a black dress, which was elegant as if straightly-cut as a uniform: not a military one, but one which adhered to faith and a sense of order. She wore a beautiful string of pearls around her neck, which she’d inherited from her mother, the pearls were small and irregularly-shaped, and they almost reached down to her waist. She stood up to pour the tea. Her maid had begun to do so – but as if she’d prearranged the unexpected twist – she had stood up to do it herself.
Giulia kept her eyes fixed on her mother. The latter’s hand was still, but her heart, buried underneath the black cloth, trembled with anticipation. Her eyes were moist.
He’s late! Giulia had the habit of using the style of opera librettos even in her inner monologues. Now she couldn’t find the right affectation to express her thoughts, the pang in the pit of her soul. She cited works of opera, but her ironic intentions had yielded pathetic results. She’d forgotten the gesture the soprano usually made at this point, during the final act of La Traviata. Wojciechowski smiled, the incomprehensible gesture was incredibly graceful.
The Lieutenant was sat on a small, Neo-Classical chair, whose backrest was decorated with crossed arrows, and he had crossed his legs, resting his right ankle on his left knee. The chair creaked under the weight. It wasn’t an elegant pose, but there had always been an ironic sense of exaggeration about that man, as though he too were quoting characters from various operas. Mrs Berlotti felt as if he’d converted their home into a stage, so that he could then abandon it, allowing reality to split into two, and the foreigner, like the actor, constituted an alternative to an established set of values.
Why was he being accused of such horrible things? Why did nobody know anything about his past? His ancestors belonged to a different community. It was said that Wojciechowski had put out a rumour that he’d once killed a man. Whereas he had in all likelihood refused to squash the slander in order to make a mockery of both reality and the present.
‘And now Serra will play something for us,’ Wojciechowski announced.
Serra, who had already stood to his feet, headed to the piano. Nobody had ever seen him play, and he shielded himself with irritation. Yet in Wojciechowski’s presence, it was as if everyone’s automatic instincts were stuck, just like we’re capable of flying in our dreams, or how we do things that would seem heinous to us in our waking life.
‘Do you like Wagner?’ Wojciechowski asked the mother, completely unmoved by what he’d just heard, the finale of Liszt’s arrangement of Tristan und Isolde. He then mockingly added that those last ten minutes, where Isolde ‘tried to dissolve herself like a pill into the warmth of Creation’ were rambling and stifling. The phrase shared the nature of his gestures, borrowed from a secret repertory of punctual exaggerations devoid of any elegance, in fact they were wilfully rude and antagonistic. Serra, who perhaps had grown used to hearing him speak differently when they were alone, suddenly stood to his feet, irritated. Thanks to one of Wojciechowski’s diabolical tricks, Serra’s irritation had
n’t manifested itself when he’d been invited to play, but was instead showing up now. He shut the fallboard with an awkward gesture and there was a loud thud: it was as if the gesture had been performed not by the highly courteous pianist, but rather by Wojciechowski, who had nevertheless not budged from his seat.
This continual recourse to theatrical expedients, like his rude comment about Isolde’s song, left Mrs Bellotti chilled to the core. That man, just like an artist – not in the service of knowledge and beauty – exaggerated life in any way he could whenever he could. The same legend that accompanied the little Lieutenant was nothing but a manipulation of texts.
Giulia had lingered in surprise when she’d seen her mother open her mouth, presumably to compliment Serra, who had stood up from the piano, but had then closed it again, as though struck by the comments made by Wojciechowski, who both desired and hated his friend’s musical talents. She stood up to offer her guests some multi-coloured pastries, trying to distract everyone. The plate was made of silver, with a kind of knotted cord wrapped all the way around it, it was rather elegant. There was a piece of pink organza shadow work embroidery underneath the pastries’ fluted paper.
Seduced by a foreigner! Giulia thought, putting the plate back on the console. Whereby the scandal (she was making an aside, like in the old comedies) didn’t lay in the seduction of which her mother was wholly ignorant, but rather in the person who had seduced her: a foreign character, whose very presence is a sin! The act became less important than the person who perpetrated the act, who attracts all attention. Yet what sense did it make to think of Wojciechowski as a foreigner? After all, even though his parents were foreigners, he was born in Italy and wore an Italian army uniform. Or was anyone who had a different past automatically a foreigner? She had been seduced by the devil!
The officer accepted the cup of tea from the mother’s hand as though he were signing an oath of loyalty. Yet Giulia had no doubts: she would betray him. The law had been converted into comedy, an example of infinite human possibilities. In order to guarantee a pact, one had to guarantee one’s presence: yet who would vouch for the foreigner’s presence? He could easily be elsewhere just as much as he was here. Using that name to refer to an Italian officer struck her mother as a lie – and his court was a lie too: she had, if anything, learned the truth of the facts and people on the stage, which was dazzling and ephemeral.
After all, isn’t an actor on a stage perhaps nothing more than a metaphor for the foreigner? Reality vanished in references and mirrors.
The mother offered him some tea. No, Wojciechowski took his without. Something bothered her about his gaze. The people the officer drew close to him changed. Everything happened very quickly, but something (in those people) never returned to normal, as though part of their mechanisms had malfunctioned.
Mrs Bellotti straightened her bust and lingered in that pose for a moment. But the soul of another is a dark place,xxvi she thought, unwittingly quoting an old Russian master. She was torn between piety and diffidence. She picked up the plate with the lemon slices on it and slid it into his cup of tea as though she’d wanted to contradict the guest who said he liked his tea plain, or had wanted to poison it.
Lieutenant Wojciechowski smiled. Weapons were useless. Home is a sacred place! Tall and upright, Mrs Bellotti looked like a priestess. You’ll be sorry! her wrath made her golden bracelets tremble. But was it really wrath? If his sacrilege appeared fatal to her, she could nevertheless see – just beyond it – the punishment. The war will sweep everything away: people, things, traditions, laws, intrigues – as well as that Lieutenant who wore a beautiful uniform, whose extravagance was probably nothing more than an ironic way to emphasise the pointlessness of vanity and the interchangeability of everything.
For the second time, she felt torn between piety and hostility.
Another spoonful of sugar?
She bent over. Her face was now a few inches away from Wojciechowski’s. They looked into one another’s eyes while the mother, who wasn’t paying any attention to what the officer was saying, spooned up some sugar and put it in the waiting cup which he had held out.
Serra picked up a subject which he thought would prove a distraction and defuse the ceremony’s tension: ‘Why go through all this trouble? Please sit down…’ and he stood, only to remain standing awkwardly in the middle of the room, holding his cup of tea. The mother barely managed to tear her gaze away from Wojciechowski’s blue eyes. Go away, go away! She was willing to forgive all his transgressions if he would only leave her house. Wojciechowski’s eyes were still. Yet again, she refused to meet his gaze, no matter what they offered. I only care about one little thing, to divert your destiny away from this house; as for reforming your character, only God can do that.
Having returned to her seat, she asked Serra if his mother had made up her mind to go live with him in the colony. Why was she hesitating?
Conversational conventions: this particular question blended in with the silk of the armchairs and the silver multi-pronged candelabras on the console. She tried to make an impression on Wojciechowski. The silver tea service appeared out of the grotesque.
No, she didn’t try to impress him with her possessions (Just a few moments earlier, Serra had said: ‘Foreigners have gone to the ends of the earth in order to collect antiquities,’ God knows to whom he was alluding), but rather by trying to show him that: this is a house and every house is precious, just like individual lives.
The only plausible guarantee at Mrs Bellotti’s disposal was what was similar, or rather what was recoverable through an analogue process, or better yet what was identical, for what is real is normal: otherwise what we inherit loses its value and once disowned it becomes a hostile force. Hadn’t she strived to avoid exactly such continuity by bringing all her Empire, Charles X and Louis Philippe-style furniture to her house overseas? This was the reason behind their presence, and not the magical suggestion of Bonaparte’s Egyptian expedition, or the conquest of Algiers desired by Charles X and his successor. In that sitting room, hostile to Wojciechowski’s presence, were the objects and symbols of unity of the house. And it didn’t matter at all that their style had spread across Europe, right up to the frozen lands of Wojciechowski’s ancestors. Sacredness wasn’t intrinsic to the beauty of the model, but rather it was conferred by their daily use, the precious patina added to it by her family and by her native land. Thus, a memory that is dear to us isn’t connected to the maker of the object, but rather the one who gave it to us. She didn’t want to inspire admiration in her guest – admiration, she would say, restrains one’s greed and wealth redeems all vices – but her piety, possibly mixed in with some fear which Wojciechowski no longer remembered, hidden in the pleats of his soul, which they hadn’t yet reached, to extirpate all his willpower and wickedness.
Yet the silk didn’t seem to put up a sufficient resistance, the immaculate candour of the maid’s bonnet and pinafore – which was embroidered – was evanescent: everything appeared weak and open to attack, anything that this scoundrel left untouched would be ravaged by time or its unholy servant, war, which was now drawing near. The mother saw the tea service taken to another house, and her armchairs would soon be gone, as would everything else, including the four of them as they sipped their cups of tea. Nevertheless, she wanted to resist the Lieutenant’s acceleration of that ruin.
Once again, the instinct to get up and threaten him took a hold of her: Easy, easy… – but she didn’t know how to follow that up.
Serra was complimenting her on the cake. In that sitting room, he behaved as though he were in the mess hall: every movement and sentence had been fixed and predetermined, adhering to a ritual which he was well acquainted with, and closely observed. Yet did the symbols in this mess hall of his have any meaning? He was an incredibly erudite man, yet he didn’t involve himself much in his culture. In fact, he looked like a priest of social conventions,xxvii an erudite man who wore the garbs of Leporello as he chased that reckless Don
Juan, reciting the words of the dead.
For your mother, for your mother… – yes, because even Wojciechowski had to have a mother, who feared for her son, who was perhaps even more exposed to danger than others. The thought of another mother softened her heart: giving life to a creature is not the same thing as signing a deal with the devil, but God forbid, it was still a risk regardless.
She recalled what people had said about Wojciechowski. He had been accused of horrendous things because nobody knew anything about his past; one can corrupt one’s descendants, not one’s ancestors, jealous hands that worked in secret. Perhaps it was nothing more than slander, the result of the envy of his less fortunate comrades. It was even said that he’d been sent to the colony as punishment (so that, perhaps, he would be immediately dispatched to the front lines once the war had been declared, the body of the nation being impatient to rid itself of that defective addition). There were also those who said that he had been posted there by highly-placed people to spare him the consequences of a mistake.
Whichever prologue had prefaced his story, this man, an appellation she employed with extreme denigration, was now in her sitting room. If the Italians were defeated in the war and the enemy army occupied the city, she would be forced to host a barbarian in her house, and she would no longer feel horrified by that presence. The Lieutenant’s real or presumptive sins smeared his uniform like blood stains. The felony – the word she used to describe Wojciechowski’s designs on Giulia – seemed to her as irredeemable and fatal as death.
The Fourth Shore Page 18
