“Always. I’m obliged to do that now. My wife can no longer make long journeys on foot.”
“Really? She was such a good walker in Spain!”
“Oh, yes, yes,” he said, with a sigh. “Unfortunately, it wasn’t possible to restore all the qualities she had, and it’s already a great deal for her to have conserved some of them.”
What is he telling me? I thought, as I accompanied Mr. and Mrs. Little to their carriage, which was waiting for them on the piazza a short distance from the dome. There was such a great eccentricity in certain terms he used in speaking about his wife that I wondered whether I had unlearned the English language, or whether, he had always had that slightly over-imaginative fashion of talking.
When we were in the carriage I opened the door and attempted to assist Mrs. Little to climb the footstep.
“No, no!” exclaimed Mr. Little, abruptly. “Let me do it…you don’t know how that’s done.”
At the same time, he took his wife by the waist from behind with both hands and pressed her until she flexed under his grip. Then he introduced Mrs. Little backwards into the vehicle where he sat her down comfortably on the cushions.
“Go and see the Leaning Tower now, then,” I said to him. “I’ll keep Mrs. Little company.”
“Oh, you can leave her alone…that’s unimportant. But I beg you not to lose sight of the coachman.”
“Why is that?”
“I mean that, in the unlikely event that the coachman wants to make off, it will be necessary to prevent him doing so.”
While Mr. Little drew away in the direction of the Leaning Tower, I approached the carriage door and leaned against it lightly in order to try to enter into conversation with Mrs. Little.
I asked her, in succession, several questions, of a perfect banality, undoubtedly, but nevertheless very gracious, and precisely those that good manners not only authorize but command. I asked her how long it was since she had left England, by what route she had traveled to Italy, what she thought of Pisa, etc., etc.
To my great surprise, she did not reply to any of my questions.
I concluded that her faculties were extraordinarily enfeebled.
Knowing that she was at least capable of answering yes or no, I asked her if she was suffering any pain, but she left that question unanswered like the preceding ones: not even a nod of the head, not the slightest movement of the hand; the coldest and bleakest immobility. I cursed the veil, which, by virtue of its unusual thickness, rendered impenetrable a physiognomy that might perhaps have spoken for Mrs. Little herself.
I could not, however, decently seek to lift that veil.
Having recalled the Mr. Little had only obtained reposes from his wife in my presence by touching her right hand, I tried to do likewise, with as much discretion as possible. Little by little, I had already kneaded almost all of the gloved hand with my fingertips without her appearing to feel it—at least, she had not made any movement. Finally, however, under a last pressure of my fingers, she said: “Ho yes, Tom.”
I hoped that, in default of the clear sight of me that she appeared to lack, since she gave the impression of mistaking me for her husband, the faculty of speech had finally returned to her. Thus, I said to her, very gently: “It’s me, Madame—you know, me, Monsieur Le Bref, who once traveled with you in Spain. As for your husband, look, here he is coming back from the Leaning Tower, and by putting your head through the carriage window you’ll be able to see him…if you’d like to?”
But she did not say a word in reply, or budge in the slightest.
Utterly devastated to find the poor woman—who had always been somewhat taciturn, but whom it had once been possible to converse—in a state bordering on infancy, I judged it futile to persist further, and I turned toward the coachman, whose broad face was very open and sympathetic.
Like any good Italian, he liked nothing better than chatting, and we therefore conversed in his native tongue. In a quarter of an hour, in fact, he told me the things regarding the locale that one does not find in the Joanne guide or in Baedeker.
II
When he came back, Mr. Little said: “Have you visited the Campo Santo?”
“Of course; I’ve know it for a long time, and I saw it again yesterday, but I’d gladly return there with you if you haven’t visited it, for I never weary of looking at The Triumph of Death.
“Let’s go, then.” Addressing the coachman, he said: “Driver, to the Campo Santo.”
The coachman did not have far to go to ferry Mrs. Little, the three or four monuments that one has to see in Pisa all being close together.
On the way, Mr. Little said to me: “If I thought that one could have confidence in this coachman, we could leave Mrs. Little in the carriage and visit the Campo Santo without her…there would be much less inconvenience for us.”
“Do you think,” I objected, “that Mrs. Little that won’t want to visit the Campo Santo, which is the greatest curiosity in Pisa?”
“What do you expect her to make of it? When I take her to visit something with me, it’s in order not to be alone, to have someone to talk to who will reply to me. From the moment that you’re with me, my dear Monsieur Le Bref, I no longer have the same reasons for having my wife on my arm.”
“If that’s the way it is, my dear Mr. Little, you can trust your coachman. No mishap will overtake Mrs. Little in his hands.”
“You think he’s honest?”
“As his horse, who, like him, gives the impression of being a very worthy animal, Mr. Little.”
“In that case, I’ll give him a good tip.”
Then, passing his head through the window, he said to him wife, while taking her hand: “Until later, Betty.”
And as he clasped her, she replied: “Ho yes, Tom.”
Then we walked silently as far as the Campo Santo.
As we went in, Mr. Little said to me: “Isn’t it horrible, my dear Monsieur Le Bref, to see my wife changed into that almost inert mass?”
“It’s undoubtedly very sad,” I remarked. And, without thinking in depth about the opinion I was uttering, I added, in order to console the worthy Mr. Little slightly: “But it’s still better than having nothing of her at all.”
“Oh, I’m very glad to hear you say that…it’s so much better, my dear Monsieur Le Bref, that it was indispensable to my life. If my wife were entirely lacking to me, I wouldn’t have survived for a month, not one month.”
The custodian was waiting for us at the door, to which he had just brought four or five visitors back. A little chagrined, it seemed to me, that there were only two of us, he deigned nevertheless to propose to show us around the Campo Santo and give us the appropriate explanations.
The first thought that struck me at the door of the renowned cemetery was that Mrs. Little could not be long delayed in dying, given the deplorable state in which she found herself, and I wondered fearfully what would become of her unfortunate husband then—but it goes without saying that I made no mention of that painful reflection. Furthermore, my mind did not take long, like his, to be entirely captivated by The Triumph of Death, Orcagna’s admirable fresco,28 simultaneously so naïve and so profound.
To the right of the spectator, the group of lords and ladies sitting and chatting gallantly under the trees to the sound of sweet music; nearby, the angels and demons drawing the corporeal souls from the mouths of moribund men and women, or seeking to snatch them in mid-air; further away, the unfortunates vainly imploring Death; to the far left, other powerful lords and ladies on horseback are following a hunt, and suddenly, in the guise of game, finding at a bend in the path three open coffins, the first containing a fresh cadaver, the send a putrefied cadaver and the third a mere skeleton; on the nearby mountain, monks at the door of their chapel, one of whom is leading a hind while another accompanied by a hind and a rabbit are wandering together on a volcanic hillock into which culpable souls are being plunged by demons; the entire curious ensemble, strewn with steamers with inscriptions that, unfortunately,
are scarcely distinguishable any longer, retained Mr. Little and myself for a long time.
Like any good Englishman worthy of the name, Mr. Little was equipped with marine binoculars, through which he looked at the various parts of the fresco successively.
“Do you see, my dear Monsieur Le Bref,” he said to me suddenly, “that fat naked monk over whom an angel and a demon are fighting, the angel pulling him by the arms and the demon by the legs?”
“Yes, perfectly, and I even find the idea that Orcagna had there rather amusing.”
“Well, now look slightly above and to your right, at that female angel clad in a robe with long creases, who is rising toward the sky with a man in her arms. Don’t you think that the angel resembles Mrs. Little, and that the man in her arms is also a little like me?”
“Except for the costume,” I said, smiling, the man in the fresco being as naked as a worm.
“The face…,” said Mr. Little, very seriously. And he added: “May my dear Betty carry me thus in her arms, all the way to the throne of God!”
“As she certainly will, my dear Mr. Little,” I replied, “when the moment comes…but it’s premature, thank God, to think of your assumption.”
Save for the magisterial sign of The Triumph of Death, which is developed on one of its interior walls and suits such a place so well, the Campo Santo is not at all lugubrious in itself. It is a pretty rectangular meadow surrounded by galleries. And yet, when the custodian explained the symbolism of the three coffins in the fresco to us, it seemed to us that we actually scented a cadaverous odor distributed around us. In order to escape it, I caught myself pinching my nose, as one of the riders on Orcagna’s fresco is doing.
After checking, I realized that the odor in question was emanating from the custodian, as if his body were impregnated with the juice of a human putrescence several centuries old.
Fortunately, a clump of geraniums was emerging from the excavation of a ancient tomb. I detached two or three leaves, which Mr. Little and I crushed between our fingers in order to respire the perfume.
“At which hotel are you staying?” Mr. Little asked me, as we went back to the carriage where Mrs. Little was waiting for us.
“The Albergo Europa, on the Lugarno.”
“We’re neighbors,” he said. “I’m at the Albergo Roma. When do you intend to leave Pisa?”
“Tomorrow morning.”
“To go where?”
“To Siena.”
“We'll leave with you. At what time?”
“Quarter past nine.”
“That’s agreed—but where shall we go now?”
“If you wish, we can go to see the fountain in the Piazza dei Cavalieri and the monument to the grand duke Leopold I on the Piazza Santa Catarina, after which you’ll have seen everything that Pisa has of the most curious.”
Mr. Little made me climb into the carriage, which had four seats, and I sat down opposite Mr. Little, still veiled, still motionless and still silent.
She seemed as indifferent to our return as she had been to our departure. Her attitude, more than starchy, chilled me. I wanted to say something gracious to her, but the words would not come to my lips. I contented myself with smiling at her and a slight inclination of the head.
The worthy Mr. Little took her hand and said: “You’re very glad to find yourself with dear Monsieur Le Bref again, who has been such a good friend to us, aren’t you, Betty?”
“Ho yes, Tom.”
“How many times have you said to me: ‘I’ll never forget, Tom, that you owe your life to Monsieur Le Bref’?”
“Ho yes, Tom.”
“Alas, I’ll never forget either, that you owe your death to me, my dear Betty.”
And as he said that, Mr. Little uttered a little sob, which he tried in vain to stifle, and which dissolved in a flood of tears.
I did not seek at first to explain the enigma contained in the words “you owe your death to me,” spoken by a husband to a wife who, although enfeebled, especially intellectually, it seemed to me, was no less alive, it also seemed to me.
The fit of sincere dolor that had overtaken Mr. Little impressed me far more vividly than his wife, for the latter remained quite inert while I, by contrast, held out my hands to him—which he did not see, however, his face being plunged into his own.
Meanwhile, we had arrived at the Piazza dei Cavalieri, and the coachman, following the order he had received from me, had just stopped our vehicle near the fountain.
As the carriage stopped, Mr. Little hastily removed his hands from his face, held them out to me in his turn, damp with tears, and said: “Forgive me, Monsieur Le Bref, forgive my moment of weakness.” Then he added, while wiping his hands and face with the aid of his handkerchief: “Where are we, if you please, Monsieur Le Bref?”
“We’re at the fountain in the Piazza dei Cavalieri.
“Ah!”
“Do you see those women with their shawls knotted over their heads, in the process of catching the water-jet escaping from the mouth of that Amour in a little funnel? Notice the extremely graceful form of their buckets.”
He leaned out of the window in order to see better. As for Mrs. Little, she had no more budged than a statue, and neither her husband nor I had troubled her meditation.
Suddenly, Mr. Little threw himself backwards as if seized by fear, and I saw surge forth at the carriage door a tall fellow clad in a black hooded cloak that only allowed his eyes, his teeth and his hands to show.
He extended a little alms-box toward us, saying: “Pei poveri infirmi.”
He was a member of the Brotherhood of Mercy, which collects for the sick. I told Mr. Little that in English, and he joined his offering with mine, Mrs. Little still remaining impassive.
After having seen the Piazza Santa Catarina and the monument to the grand duke Leopold I, we had ourselves taken back to the Lugarno, where I quit Mr. and Mrs. Little, reminding them that we were to meet at the railway station the following morning at nine o’clock.
III
They did not miss the rendezvous. Mrs. Little, still veiled, was clad for the circumstance in a large overcoat, as was Mr. Little. He gave his arm to his wife, whose jerky footsteps resounded on the external platform of the station.
“If you would care to climb up first,” Mr. Little said to me, “you can take my wife, not by the hands but by the forearms, while I push her by the waist.”
“Gladly,” I replied. Unfortunately, however, I forgot the instruction to take Mrs. Little by the forearms. I grasped her hands, and as I lifted her up she voiced her eternal: “Ho yes, Tom.”
Mr. Little and I sat her down in a corner, where she seemed to abandon herself to slumber.
I recalled then, by contrast with that dejection, the extreme animation that Mrs. Little had had five years earlier at the railway station in Bordeaux, when, blocking the carriage window, she had shouted in order to prevent me from climbing into her compartment; “Loa! Loa!”
The one in which we were now sitting was soon completed by a family composed of five individuals, all very becoming.
There was a professor from the University of Pisa, who was going to the vicinity of Siena with his wife and three daughters in order to attend a wedding celebration. Hazard had placed the gentleman in question beside me.
By way of a request for information that I made, and which he provided in the most affable manner, conversation was engaged between us and became quasi-general. Only Mrs. Little, in her corner, did not participate in it.
On seeing that dejected attitude, the professor’s wife could not help asking: “La signora è ammalata?”
“Un poco,” I said.
As for Mr. Little, whether he understood the lady’s question or not, he made no response. In fact, he had just asked the professor for information that, he said, he had not found in his guide, regarding the cheeses of Parma, and he was entirely intent on that matter, which interested him greatly, being, as they say, in the business.
“Ar
e you very fond of cheeses?” asked the professor, in good English.
“I manufacture them in Chester.”
“In Chester…oh, then I understand.”
With that, Mr. Little and the professor exchanged cards. The latter, Signor Giammani, who taught chemistry at the University of Pisa, had written at one time, and even published, a comparative study of all known cheeses.
Mr. Little had had a stroke of luck. Signor Giammani gave us, in English, a veritable lecture on the similar or distinctive qualities of the various cheeses that shared the gastronomic favor of Europe. I confess that I was very interested in it on my own account, although I had never wanted to try any other cheese than cream cheese. It even made the journey from Pisa to Siena seem short. For his part, Mr. Little was delighted.
At one moment, taking Mrs. Little’s hand, he exclaimed: “You hear, my dear Betty, the obliging things that this gentleman, who is one of the most competent men in Europe, is saying about our Cheshire cheeses?”
To which Mr. Little replied, as was her habit: “Ho yes, Tom.” Then, Mr. Little having touched her shoulder, she bowed slightly.
She repeated her little salute in the same manner when, once we had arrived at Siena station, Signor Giammani and his family took their leave of us, very gracefully, and descended from the compartment.
When we had got down in our turn, I noticed that two of the professor’s daughters turned round covertly to watch Mrs. Little walking, and that they were laughing at the poor woman’s gait.
We arrived at lunch-time at the Aquila Nero inn, which had been recommended to us by Signor Giammani as one of the best in Siena. Our first concern, naturally, was to ask for rooms and have our baggage taken up. We were given two that were adjacent.
After a few minutes I heard Mr. Little close and lock the door of his room, and then knock on mine.
“Are you going down for lunch?”
“Very gladly…but isn’t Mrs. Little coming down?”
“What would be the point?”
“To have lunch.”
“You’re wrong,” he told me, “to joke in that fashion. You know full well that she can’t eat.”
Singular Amours Page 22
