Casanova in Bolzano

by Marai, Sandor

  But now the man laughed, as easily as he might sneeze, with no intervening change of mood. He laughed silently, more with his eyes than his mouth, his eyes opening wide and filling with light: it was like a sudden opening of windows in a dark room. This light, which was good-humored, crude, blinding, and impudent, inquisitive yet confidential, touched the women. The women themselves did not laugh: they did not cry “Aha!” or exclaim “Oho!” or giggle “Tee-hee.” They listened carefully and watched him. Lucia turned her eyes away a little, looked up at the ceiling as if expecting help from there, and silently, under her breath, groaned, “Mamma mia!” Nanette wrung her hands in an attitude somewhat like prayer. The man, too, kept silent and continued laughing. Now he showed his teeth, yellowing, slightly splayed, part of a large and powerful structure like an undamaged, predatory set of tusks, and his eyes, mouth, teeth, and the whole face laughed silently, with a lazy, comfortable, self-conscious good humor, as if there could be nothing finer or more amusing than this scene, here, in Bolzano, in a room of The Stag, around noon, facing a bunch of startled women who had sneaked in to watch him wake in order that they could gossip about him later in the town and around the local wells. The laughter shook his upper torso. He put his hands on his hips and leaned back gently so as to laugh better. It was as if a feeling that had long been trapped within his body had broken into pieces and was now coursing through him in hot currents, a feeling that was neither deep, nor high, nor tragic, but simply hot and pleasant, like the sense of being alive: so the laughter slowly began to bubble up his throat, found voice, cracked as it stumbled forth, then suddenly flooded out of him the way a crude, popular song might flow from the mouth of a singer. And within a few seconds, his hands still on his hips, he was bent backward and laughing out loud.

  This laughter, a volley of uproarious, all-compassing, tear-wrenching, side-splitting power, filled the room and was audible down the corridor, even across the square. He was laughing as if something had just occurred to him, as if he had understood what had happened, as if the range and depth of human treachery, which was indeed infinite, had irritated him to laughter. He laughed like someone who, having woken from a nightmare, remembered where he was, saw things clearly, and would not be satisfied with mere shadows of whatever he found fearful and laughable. He laughed as though he were preparing for something, some enormous practical joke that would dazzle the world; he laughed like an adolescent, in full throat, with an oddly wolfish howl, as if he were about to sprinkle itching powder on a woman’s bodice, or on the nightshirts of the great, the powerful, and the grand; he laughed as if he were set to execute a marvelous, earth-shaking caper; as if, out of sheer good humor, he were to blow earth itself to smithereens. Both hands on his hips, his belly shaking, his chest protruding, his head cocked to one side, he laughed a hoarse, long, twitching laugh. The laughter choked, then turned to coughing, for he had developed a chill during his travels, and the altitude—the air of the mountains combined with the effects of the November weather—was hard on his constitution. His face grew contorted and flushed.

  When the spasm was over, his sense of humor seemed to desert him and a terrible fury took hold of him. “I see I have lady visitors,” he muttered through clenched teeth, his voice cracked and sibilant. He crossed his arms across his chest. “What a privilege, dear ladies!” He bowed deeply, ornately, disposing both hands and legs in a parody of courtesy, as if he were in a corridor at Versailles, greeting ladies of the French court on a fine morning, while the king, plump-bellied and purple-faced, was still fast asleep, or as if he were idling away his time with flâneurs and toadies, practicing manners with them. “What a privilege,” he repeated, “for a gentleman of the road like myself! For a fugitive who has only just escaped the hell of a damp, rat-infested prison, having seen not one friendly face nor met a single expression of tenderness in over a year and a half! What honor, and what privilege!” he mocked and minced in a somewhat threatening way. The women felt the threat in his voice, drew closer together like hens in a storm, and slowly backed away toward the door, Lucia using the lower half of her body to feel her way along the wall. The man took slow deliberate steps toward them, pausing at every stride. “To what do I owe the good fortune,” he began, then continued in a cracked but louder voice. “To what do I owe the good fortune of discovering the assembled beauties of Bolzano crowded in my room as I wake? What has prevailed upon the ladies of Bolzano to visit the fugitive, the exile, the man rejected by the rest of society, who is even now pursued by police dogs and wolf packs over borders, whose trail the mercenaries of the Holy Inquisition are trying to follow through bushes and across forest floors with pikes and lances in their hands? Are the ladies not afraid that they come upon the poor fugitive in one of his less charitable moods, at this precise time, the morning after he has spent his first night in a bed fit for human occupation, not on straw that smells of incontinent dogs? Are they not afraid of him now that he has woken and begun to remember? What do the beauties of Bolzano desire of me?” he asked, by now at full volume, his voice breaking with fury. He straightened up in a single violent movement and it was as if, for a moment, he had grown more handsome. His face was bright with anger, like a bare landscape lit by lightning. “Who, after all, am I that the ladies of Bolzano should steal into my room when I have come to claim rights of hospitality in the temporary lodging of the homeless?” It was clear to see that he was enjoying the effects of his speech, the panic it wrought in the women and the advantage it gave him in the situation. His confidence was growing: by now he was playing with them the way a swordsman plays with a lesser opponent, coming closer with every step, his every word like a swish of the blade. “Beauties of Bolzano! You, the haughty brunette, yes you! You, with your virtuous looks and the rosary beads over your cloak! You, with the ample bosom there in the corner! And you, old lady! What are you all looking at with such curiosity? A fire-eater or sword swallower might have arrived in town to demand your attention, but here you are, sneaking about, gaping at a poor feral creature like me! This is not a cage in a traveling circus, ladies. The feral creature is awake and hungry!”

  He laughed again, but bitterly now and in ill humor. “Where have you come from?” he asked with quiet contempt. “From the market? From the inn? There is already talk in town that I am here: spies are sniffing round and keeping their ears open, women are gossiping in parlors and in boxes in the theater, as are you in the market, I suppose. He’s here, they are saying, he’s arrived, how entertaining! What honor you do me!” he repeated indifferently, with just a hint of complaint. “So, here I am. Look at me! This is what I look like! This is the way I really am, not the way I appear in the evening, wigged, lilac-coated, with a sword at my side and rings on my fingers! This is what I’m like, not a whit more handsome, not a day younger! Do you like the look of me? Do you fancy me? Do I live up to my reputation? What do you expect of me? Why don’t we elope, all six of us, hop on a mailcoach and set off to see the world? Am I not Giacomo, itinerant lover, servant to all and exploiter of all, at your ladyships’ service, whenever, wherever you desire? Go away, you brood of hens, clear off!” he cried, his voice terrifying, his brilliant black eyes beginning to glimmer with a faint green light, or so Lucia said later, as she wept and trembled in the marital bed one night, confessing all to her husband. “Imprisoned for sixteen months in the name of virtue and morality! Have you any idea what that means? Sixteen months, four hundred and eighty-eight days and nights on a bed of straw with the stink of human misery in my nostrils, prey to fleas and lice, in the company of rats; sixteen months, four hundred and eighty-eight days in the dark, without sunlight or even real lantern light, living like a mole or a rat, alone with my youth, with the ambitions and desires of manhood, alone with my memories, memories of the life I lived, memories of waking to brightness and of the sweetness of retiring to bed; alone, excluded from the world, in the name of virtue and morality, of which I am the sworn enemy—or at least that is what the messer grande said when
he had me arrested! Four hundred and eighty-eight days stolen from life, erased from it; four hundred and eighty-eight nights when others could look upon the moon and the sea in the harbor and on people’s faces illuminated by lantern light, on women’s faces at the moment the lantern goes out when the only light remaining is that reflected in the eyes of lovers!” His own speech had intoxicated him by now and he was talking extremely loudly, like someone who had been silent for a very long time. “Why are you backing away?” he bellowed and stretched forth his arms. “Am I not here! I have come! You, granny, why are you cowering by the door, and you, you vain silly brown-eyed creature, why don’t you come closer? See, this is the arm that has squeezed many a woman’s waist, these are the hands you have longed to see! Are you not frightened of them? . . . They can twirl a sword and flick through a pack of cards, but they are capable of caressing too! You, you delicate blonde powderpuff, are you acquainted with these fingers? Even in the dark they can tell clubs from spades, but they can also tickle your fancy so you scream out at their touch, and later, when you are toothless, you can lisp to your grandchildren about the time when these fingers closed about your neck! Ladies of Bolzano! Go forth into town and declare that I am here, I have arrived, the performance is about to begin! He is here, the fop, the lady’s consolation, the healer of broken hearts with his arcana of remedies for heartache, the man who knows the recipe for the meal that must be fed the lackluster lover so that he may rise again, virile and amusing in bed the next night! Tell them how you managed to break in, that you have seen me with your own eyes and can certify that I am truly here and have not wasted away in prison: that you have seen this arm, this heart, these shoulders, and all the rest, all present and correct, all in working order! Spread my fame, ladies. And tell your husbands at some appropriately intimate moment, just as you undo your belts and let your skirts drop, that Giacomo, the man who was consigned to prison, darkness, and the underworld, all in the name of virtue and morality, has arrived and is now a truly virtuous and moral creature who craves their forgiveness and support. Do beg for mercy on my behalf, dear ladies, and appeal to the mighty and virtuous, those so clearly without a fault that they dare to, and are able to, pass judgment upon sinners! For a sinner is what I am; go therefore and proclaim how Giacomo repents of his sins. I am a sinner because I know all there is to know about men and women, and because my reputation says that I respect life all the more for it! Go and spread the news that I have arrived.”

  He went over to the window, stretched out his arms, and opened the casement wide. The cold expansive November light flooded into the room with the force of an alpine waterfall. He held the window open, his head bent back in the light, bathing his pale face in the brightness, his eyes closed to its refreshing touch, and he smiled.

  “Go now!” he said without moving, with closed eyes, still smiling, to the women cowering in the corner. “Go and say that I am here. The underworld has vanished. The sun is out.”

  He breathed deeply. Quietly, with a touch of wonder in his voice, as if he were informing the world of a particularly rare piece of good news, he declared: “I am awake.”

  And so he stood with eyes closed, not bothering to turn his head toward the door over whose threshold the inquisitive women of the Bolzano market tiptoed out into the corridor. Female feet tap-tapped with sharp quick steps down the stairs. He heard their clatter, neither moving nor opening his eyes, but with half-opened mouth gulped down the cold light like someone who could see and was aware of everything that was happening in the room. Then he called out to Teresa, the young girl who had remained behind and whose red but not unshapely hands were even now on the door handle.

  “You, you stay here.”

  He spoke casually yet commandingly, knowing that his orders were not to be countermanded. He was watching the square, scanning the clear outlines of the houses bathed in light. He gave a gentle sigh as if he were only just now waking and stirring, finally realizing that he had things to do and that the day had imposed certain obligations on him. “Come closer,” he said in a distracted, friendly voice.

  Five-finger Exercise

  He turned and moved swiftly across to the gilt-legged, floral-silk-covered armchair that stood before the fireplace and the great mirror, sat down, and crossed his right leg, which was sinewy and powerful like those of people who ride or walk a lot, over his left knee, resting his arms on the chair, keeping his eyes on the girl, solemnly inspecting her. “A little closer,” he ordered her quietly. “Come right up to me.” And when the girl had finally made her steady way over to him he took hold of her small red hand and lifted it lightly into the air as if he were a cavalier and she his partner at a dance, or like a tailor inspecting his latest ball gown as demonstrated by a model; he took it in an amiable, professional manner, turning the girl in a half circle with a gentle, almost incidental adjustment of his hand.

  “What is your name?” he asked, and when Teresa told him, inquired further. “How old are you?”

  Having heard the answer he nodded, humming and hawing as he considered it.

  “Why,” he eventually asked, “why did you let those women into my room?” And then, as if he were not expecting an answer, he immediately continued: “People think I am a decadent fellow, Teresa, and indeed I am just what they say. I am tired of traveling. A man gets a reputation because the world is small and because transport has very much improved these last few years, so news travels fast. Thanks to gossip in the press and in the corridors of theaters, people know everything and there are no more secrets: indeed, I do believe, there is no personal life left. It was quite different when I was young. Venice today is like a glass box with people sitting in the window, cheating, lying, stuffing their bellies, and making love in public. Have you ever been to Venice? I’ll take you there sometime. From a Saturday through to a Monday,” he added as an afterthought. “No, dear child, you should not believe what Venetians say. Look into my eyes. Do you see how sad they are? . . . The gossips have turned me into a figure of fun, a marketplace scandal, so that everywhere I go now, spoiled youths and spies, denizens of gambling dens, and women who prosper because there are women younger and clumsier than themselves, turn their heads to watch me; poor wallflowers and others who hang about dance halls whisper my name to each other as they promenade; from balconies and from passing coaches, with beagle eyes, they follow me; women glance at me as if shortsighted. They raise their gilded lorgnettes, turn their heads away, and lisp: ‘Oh! Is that he? . . . What a disgrace! . . . Why do they tolerate such people in town? Invite him in!’ That’s the way women go on. Come closer, my dear. Look into my eyes. Are you afraid of me? . . .”

  “I’m not afraid,” said the girl.

  The stranger thought this over.

  “That’s not good,” he responded a little anxiously.

  But Teresa, who was both servant and relative at The Stag, really did not fear him. Now that she is standing there, allowing her hands to be at once caressed and grasped in this peculiar manner that seems both to give and take, perhaps it is necessary to say something about her after all. For though the girl was a person of no account, an unattached young female, there was occasionally something that played about her lips that spoke volumes to men. She was sixteen, as has already been stated, acquainted with the rank secrets of the rooms and recesses of The Stag Inn; she made and stripped beds, she emptied basins after guests had used them, she had a skirt of dark-blue cloth that was given her as a memento by a trader from Turin, she had a neatly cut pale-green bodice that was left behind at the bottom of a wardrobe by a traveling actress, she had a prayer book bound in white leather that included a portrait of the Blessed Saint of Padua, and other than that she had nothing at all to call her own. Except perhaps a Venetian comb. She slept in the attic above the guest rooms, near the space occupied by Balbi, and her home was in the southern Tyrol, in a village that practically gasped for air at the foot of a great mountain, so oppressed was it by the peak, by the condition of the land,
and by poverty. Her father set off one day to become a mercenary in the service of the king of Naples and never returned. Teresa looked at the stranger and was not afraid.

  The fear that had first gripped her the previous night when the innkeeper, who sometimes beat her and sometimes invited her into his widower’s bed, asked her to observe the stranger; the fear that startled her when she saw the stranger half-asleep, snoring and snuffling, shortly after he had eaten his meal, had, now that the man had taken her hand, passed away. She was a little embarrassed by her hand, which was red from washing and carrying wood, and rough and scaly from the wind that eternally whistled round Bolzano, the wind she thought she would never get used to. She was therefore somewhat reluctant to yield her hand to this man whose own hand was firm yet soft, aristocratic, and smooth to the touch, like cool, finely worked leather. But touching it relaxed her. Yes, his hand, the grip of it, had about it something that would both give and take. And from his cool palm there slowly spread, across the skin and through the veins, an extraordinary warmth different from that which the stove gave out, more like when one went and sat out in the sun. This warmth radiated and extended; then, for a moment or two, it seemed to cease, as when one blows out a candle or a draft puts out a lantern—it was a sensation of approaching flames and thunder. Then it warmed again. Teresa was no longer afraid. She wasn’t thinking of anything. Her favorite pastime was talking to the dog, the sharp-eared little white dog in the garden of The Stag, and to no one else; she also liked to spend an hour or two, winter or summer, in one of the chapels of the church, under the picture of the Virgin, just beneath the pulpit. At these times she closed her eyes and thought of nothing. Occasionally she did think of love but only in the way a fisherman thinks of the sea. She was acquainted with love and was not afraid of it.