Minerva consoles me through my daily chores,
Morpheus tucks me in and bids me sleep,
Bacchus warms my heart and helps me to forget.
This was the situation our “Straggler-Cat” found himself in when my native city saw the arrival of that poet whom Nature, from the moment of his birth, seemed to have stamped with a mark of baleful predestination. He arrived in a carriage drawn by four majestic horses, so that, seeing him halt at the limits of the city, people gazed at him with the same wonder which must have stricken the crowds of olden times when the Bucentaur set sail from the Basin of San Marco. But this was the amazement of servile minds ensnared by the false luster of celebrity, not of devout and humble souls. He only had to step down from the carriage for men of all ages to swarm around him, prostrating themselves to the point of licking the ground and seizing his hand to kiss it, almost as if it carried the Piscatory Ring of His Holiness, and immediately they offered him all kinds of services. Yet he, with the air of an individual who sought nothing but to reaffirm his strength and prestige, quickly shooed off that parasitic crowd, and, leaving the horses and carriage in a stable, he made for the canals with only his luggage. Having disembarked at St. Mark’s Square, it took him little time to come across an opportune hostel, so foolproof is a libertine’s instinct for finding promising terrain. So he reached Frezzeria and, admiring the freedom with which many well-bred ladies went strolling in the evening, accompanied by their stylish servants, and finding himself enticed by the aroma that blew from certain coffee shops, where it was difficult to distinguish a highborn dame from a woman of the world, he immediately decided that this, for now, was the right place to put down his unsavory roots. He requested and obtained lodging in the house of the merchant, and under its roof he stayed, long enough to violate every rule of decency and common living.
Thus far, Your Eminence, I would not appear to have said anything in the least bit contentious or liable to doubt. Nor will I depart from the stringent truth by describing the room where the poet lived and wrote some of his most famous and celebrated verses, as a tiny, unadorned room with nothing except for a bed, a couple of chairs and a desk. It indeed seems that, time and again, those souls plagued by Romanticism find a supreme thrill in the simulation of poverty, in donning the robes of the friar, all to allow the flames of their lust to excite them better and more underhandedly. I shall not ponder for long, either, whether that dwelling had a Bible and a missal-book along with the furniture I’ve listed, or if one could find even one sonnet dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary within that poet’s vast works.
His enemies say that he loves only what he has to escape from, that genuine emotions are not enough for him and that he is never so pleased as when he sees the shadow of death overhanging the nuptial bed where he lies. Similar shadows must have festooned our city, whose obvious decline might perhaps have disappointed those with simple tastes, but not our Englishman: “I have been familiar with ruins too long to dislike desolation.” And ruins and desolation were what he found, and where he didn’t find them, he took every means to create them.
He wrote back to one of his cronies in England that, in his eyes, Venice was a “bewitching city,” and “the greenest island of my imagination.” So freely could the whims of a Romantic lend alluring color to the miasmal bogs that were ready to swallow him whole! In his usual error—or gazing with an eye that ignored the counsel of his mind—he even humored himself to describe the woman with whom he would unite in sin, as “altogether like an antelope; she has the large black oriental eyes, with that peculiar expression in them which is seen rarely among Europeans—even the Italians—and which many of the Turkish women give themselves by tinging the eyelids, an art not known out of that country, I believe.” And again he indulged in over-portraying her, “mouth small—skin clear and soft, with a kind of hectic colour,” failing indeed to observe that the hint of purple enlivening her cheeks was a thing she owed not to hectic fever—in barer words, consumption—but to the open air and hot sun she caught from afternoon strolls along the marina, none of which were any cure for the impropriety of her nature. But whatever judgments he made regarding the aforesaid woman, he rarely strayed from the truth writing about the love he felt for her, especially since she agreed to share his bed at any time of his choosing, a convenience which a man of his temperament was highly inclined to welcome.
I won’t linger, Your Eminence, in describing their communion; if sublime words ever came from anywhere, it was not from the closed circle of carnal embrace. Nor will I dwell on relating how their idle hours were spent by day, nor the nights consumed in the vain but deadly fires of their misdeed, nor the spite, resentment and the jealousy that haunted their lovemaking as an omen of a more eternal tempest. On several occasions she was seen outside, flustered and upset as if her soul was at the point of breaking, or tearing at the shoulder of her footman and, with no warning, showering him in the most vicious abuses that have ever risen from a woman’s lips. But the blistering grievances she spat seemed like trifles to the poet. He only had to gaze at her sweetly to draw her to him again like a mellow yeanling, and, with a short-lived caress, to put her back in her accustomed yoke.
The unhappy merchant endured his wife’s betrayal as only an ambitious, disappointed, love-struck and helpless man could endure such a thing. A cute tale, spun by the evil-minded, claims that the Straggler-Cat was a creature incapable of true suffering, and that his tears were no more valid in the court of human woes than the weeping of sopranos in stage melodramas. That mean prejudice would have been shattered had anyone drawn close enough to view the terrible bite marks which can still be seen gouged into the wood of his kneeler, or certain scratches which remain on the furniture in his shop for any sharp-eyed visitor to notice—not to speak of recollections which people still trade about the solitary walks he took on sunny afternoons, dragging his feet and brushing close to the wall. His partial self-exile from the sight of his domestic spouse must have happened very early, and perhaps it came more out of instinct or lazy discretion than at his wife’s explicit urgings. Yet all the same, there had to be crucial moments in the day when the three of them could not avoid coexisting. And these are precisely the moments which the town gossip—cultivated and vulgar alike—has been most drawn to in its anecdotes and speculations:
The Marquis of Zandonai told me, for instance, that the friends of Contessa Albizzi liked to imagine the trio supping in the most nervous of silences, with the Straggler-Cat bent over his plate and unwilling to raise his eyes for fear of meeting the uncouth gaze of the poet—that face crossed with free-hanging hairs in which Marianna loved to glimpse the fascinating hieroglyphs of Heroic Destiny. Those inclined to cruder fantasies may prefer to think of a scene torn by a much harder contrast of power: the legitimate husband in a corner, taking his soup, while the other two, drinking together from the same cup, laugh and point at him. But in every case, the inequality of the two contenders always springs to our attention. Nor would we drift too far from reality if we imagined how they spent one of their evenings together. The poet has just finished reciting one of his incandescent verses, and his mistress, still swept with emotion, turns to her husband and asks: “. . . and now, Straggler-Cat, dear, why don’t you try reciting some of your lovely verses?” Whatever happened, the limits of human tolerance must have been breached a good many times if what they say isn’t a complete myth.
Conceivably, you have read or heard a certain poem, Your Eminence, which the Englishman happened to complete in my city. The poem describes a magician locked within the walls of an alpine castle inhabited by spirits and demonic beings, whose shadowy, arcane presences came to him obediently in the vast silence of those icy mountains. More, you would recall what happened when the magician, laid low by awful remorse over his incestuous crimes, asked not for more power, but to forget who he was and enjoy the deepest oblivion—and how none of these things were granted. Neither the melodious apparition of the Witch of the Alps, nor
of the kinswoman he had taken in illicit love, was sufficient comfort for his soul tormented by regrets. An abbot tried to give him solace with modest and holy words, but not even these could make his proud spirit ask for the forgiveness which would have been the only release from his afflictions. As arrogant to God as he was to the Evil One, he preferred to die rejecting everyone and everything rather than bow his forehead. Nor do we know if death gave him the oblivion he sought. And as pitiless as that creature was, so too was the man who aspired to be the thing his imaginings had produced.
They say that he was still laboring over that very poem when his pen suddenly stopped as if stricken by a pitiless enchantment. Now a very different oblivion from what his hero Manfred had sought for fell over his mind and held him from bringing the dramatic work to a close. It often happens that poets spoiled by Romanticism project themselves into the personalities they happen to create, and after having aggrandized these mannequins, they fancy themselves aggrandized in turn. Or perhaps, after conjuring the Devil with their quills and envisaging his presence, black wings and all, they fancy themselves worthy to have him appear before them just as they’d pictured. This is ignoring of course that the Father of Lies knows far subtler arts of manifestation, and revealing himself so baldly gives him no pleasure.
So our poet had spent his days versifying and chasing skirts, until that strange, and perhaps even faintly miraculous, event.
Of those who saw the merchant during that ordeal, a few mentioned him to me with that ironic indifference people adopt, out of habit, to describe men stricken by conjugal misfortune. They were, indeed, rather sparing in their accounts of his tribulations and their cause. Some even seemed to hold back from fear of revealing details which—though they weren’t quite sure—nonetheless caused them to suspect something horrifying and arcane. And I could tell you that I was just conferring with a face from that locality when a window sprang open above our heads and the very subject of our discussion appeared. And since he was watching us both so intently, my friend shut his mouth and left me, running as fast as he could. What could suddenly have entered those eyes which, years before, had only been cause for laughter and pity, eyes so soft and helpless that they seemed to shrink into their sockets if others met their stare? Suffering allows no rest for the man who becomes its prey; but, as often happens to the animal that hears the barking of hounds behind it and yet manages to evade capture—its terror-sharpened eye finding a path through the foliage which brings it momentary salvation—so a man can sometimes happen to find solace in an action or gesture that soothes his anguish but briefly.
It was a bright afternoon in summer when the merchant, by now well hounded by his torments, suddenly found himself of a mind to break his humiliating routine—so much so, indeed, that I might be permitted to think that what followed wasn’t entirely his own doing. Neither Ruzzante the Paduan nor the Roman Plautus had ever described marital distresses as sordid and laughable as those he’d lived through. And since it pleased the Englishman to no end to intensify the scorn of others as a condition to his own delight, one often heard his thundersome voice heaving abuses at the miserable shadow that loitered around, uncertain if it could still recognize the house as its own. But what could our Amphitryon do when the Jupiter in his home had barred the door to him, all the better to enjoy his wife? And perhaps some demonic intercession had even allowed this! Now was the scheduled hour when the private congress between the poet and Marianna reached its height of passion, and no person—especially not the merchant—would have dared disturb its murky sanctity. The house, as ever, was silent and an immodest twilight reigned over it. What gave our Straggler-Cat the boldness to choose that precise time to intrude into his own dwelling and swiftly climb the stairs is beyond the guess of any man who has never held such intimate shame in his heart. But he dared to do it, and, pressed by a blinding fury, he came close to that door which, as if on the sly, his imagination had breached many times. None could say now if he gripped a weapon in his hand or if his fainthearted valor was the sole armament, but once the door was open, nothing save for his eyes would shred the nestling couple. Venus—as it’s said in Lucretius—had already sown the fields of woman and already the lovers were pressed anxiously tight, tooth to amorous tooth, when the poet raised his head and saw the Straggler-Cat watching him. He said nothing, but his exhausted carnality yielded to the concentrated power of hatred and pain that shot from those once meek and fearful eyes. He tried then to cover his limbs, but the more of his miserable nudity the blanket hid, the more he felt he was exposing: that stare, which had become diamond-sharp, cut deep into his suddenly transparent being and opened vast and hidden wounds within it. And, as it happens in a city whose battlements are crumbling under a determined onslaught, when its citizens cling to each other while enemies rush in to carry out their plunder and devastation, so the poet clung to his woman. But that wretched filial gesture proved almost worthless to impede the silent claws that would dig into his depths, which were now open as daylight, and steal their unguarded treasures. He lay on that bed exactly like a thirsty man in a dream who has consumed every trace of water and now sits dying of thirst in the middle of a river. Nor do we know how long he remained there: only after the merchant had left with his hands full from an intangible robbery did he come around and find himself stripped of everything, in a confined solitude, forgetful and speechless.
Your Eminence, our late lamented Bishop Alfonsini, while speaking one day to a crowd of poets, musicians and painters who had agreed to hear him at St. Mark’s Basilica, said well that what we call “personality” is nothing more than a theft, and that it is the sum of foolishness to take pride in this supposed quality. Those who expect to turn their personality into an excuse for rebellion against human and divine laws are, in reality, behaving like gypsies who, having taken away some elegant garment or some precious necklace from others, now adorn themselves with it, and, finding their presence in the mirror more beautiful or captivating than it was before, do not hesitate to imagine that they have suddenly transformed into queens or gentlefolk. Indeed these goods only have to be repossessed for them to newly find themselves in all the misery and nakedness of their natural state. For verily only those who renounce themselves, and refuse to look at the bounties of Creation with eyes clouded by avidity and false desire, shall enter the Kingdom of Heaven, where all things are clear and pure.
The life the three of them shared wasn’t broken up as suddenly as one might expect after what had occurred; they still had their suppers together—many, many suppers—and their solitary walks and secret dialogues continued all the same. If something had changed, it was in the balance of their coexistence, as if some force had intervened to shift the weights on an invisible scale. The poet’s nights of musing and creative toil—the fruits of which Marianna was always the first to taste—changed so severely that they lost all their hallowed quietude, exchanging it for the sound of pacing feet, torn paper and barren sighs. Even his morning rides along the coast, where the artist mingled his self-love with the contemplation of the waves, lacked the blusterous security they once held and turned swift and convulsive. His outbursts of rage and joy alike were smothered under a gray fog.
Once, while he was trying in vain to continue the work he had set into motion, his mistress approached him unseen and, folding her arms around his neck, she uttered his name in a smitten, coquettish tone. If the poet’s fit of anger still betrayed a virile urge to rebel, even this barrier fell when his head sank into the woman’s lap and stayed there. And his hands just as often seemed given to hers while they sat wordless in a box seat at the theater. Against the merchant, they were more than just a pair of lovers facing a betrayed spouse; they now behaved like two creatures seeking a defensive stronghold in the shape of a common alliance. The man’s presence had lost its old circumspection, and even if his footsteps remained hushed, he no longer hesitated to appear in front of them and give sidelong glances. He circulated through the household looking
like a black beetle that comes into view from a place no one is sure of and disappears somewhere just as uncharted. One day, the poet stood alone on a balcony, gazing out at Venice’s generous expanse, where he hoped to recover the lost voice of his poetry. All of a sudden he winced as a foretoken of the images he yearned for seemed to be reborn in his mind. A smile had already come back to his lips and he was already preparing to put the suggestions of his insight to paper, when a dark power emerged to rob him of his premonitions with a greedy suction. The Englishman spun around just in time to see the merchant retreat behind an awning with the ravenous motion of a beast clutching warm prey between its teeth. And because at other times he sensed a predator at his back, he came to fear his landlord’s absence as much as his presence. It was often the case that he and Marianna would call out for him if they didn’t see his figure hunkering nearby. The merchant himself would respond quickly to their calls and straightaway reveal himself with a modest, “What is it?” But at night—while the Straggler-Cat did his mysterious and solitary work inside the shop—Marianna lay in her bed and listened to the poet’s agitated pacing echo through the house, and, never daring to move and join him, she let the sound of footsteps nourish her pained slumber.
The Twenty Days of Turin Page 14
