Mary McCarthy

by Mary McCarthy

  O’Hare got up from a chess game at the next table. “Haven’t you heard?” he said. “They’re at the Pensione La Perla. Have a whiskey.”

  The following morning, the Germans from La Perla were in the boat that came to fetch the group from the Buonsantis’ landing. The “French” behaved politely, helping the Germans land their equipment as they helped everyone else, and the English lawyer, already sunning, was particularly assiduous in holding the boat’s painter to steady it for the fat women’s descent. But Laure, usually coöperative, refused to lend a hand.

  “Mais qu’est-ce que tu as, ma petite?” chided her father. Laure would not reply and sat stubbornly at the water’s edge, brooding and casting dark looks at the Englishman, who was chatting in German with the newcomers. Finally, when the others were in swimming, she explained.

  In the boat she had seen the Germans staring pointedly at the number on Dr. Bernheim’s arm. And to bear her out, that morning they all noticed still other Germans, from the Camping, eying the number too, passing and repassing the old man as he sat reading a volume of Stendhal, and actually stopping to get a better view. If Dr. Bernheim was aware of this, he gave no definite sign, but after his second dip he moved his place farther along the rocks, and before the boats came he asked François to row him back—he had taken too much sun.

  “Mais c’est inouï!” burst out Hélène, when her father was gone. “Que mon père ne puisse pas se montrer en public, à cause des Allemands! C’est eux qui auraient dû se cacher!”

  No one could say she exaggerated; it was the Germans, not her father, who had something to be ashamed of, but it was the Germans who were making it impossible for him to appear in public. Because of the Germans ought he to wear a long-sleeved shirt? Or Covermark, as Mike sarcastically proposed?

  This was the turning point. The next day, despite the children’s protests, the “French” set out for Judgment Day Beach. The White Rock had been abandoned to the enemy.

  Judgment Day Beach, like Raven Point, though pleasant for an excursion was not really a substitute for the White Rock. It was a pebbly beach, and the sharp stones hurt the tender feet of the younger children, who were not quite consoled by the stone collections made for them. Moreover, there was no shade—no protective cliffs, no cool caves. The small children sat in their straw hats in a row and demanded to know when Romeo was coming back for them. This was another difficulty. On calm days the boatmen did not like to go to Judgment Day; it was farther than the White Rock, but the price per head, fixed early in the summer, was the same. The advantage to the boatmen was that it was easier to land there, but when the sea was quiet this did not matter, and the boatmen, with the trade they now had, did not care to make the longer trip simply for the “francesi.” Hence, every morning Pierino or Paolo or Romeo, pretending not to have understood the wishes of the “French,” would try to take them to the Rocca Bianca, as if as a matter of course.

  “No, Paolo, niente Rocca Bianca,” some strong will among the passengers would have to interpose. “C’è troppa gente. All’altra spiaggia.” Paolo, muttering, would yield, and they would sail past the marble rocks, as though past a siren, watching the British lawyer and his wife, who had declined to join in the exodus (they had met some lovely couples among the new folk at Rocca Bianca), wave to them cheerily from the marshmallowy cliffs. The boatmen showed their dissatisfaction by arriving late to pick up the “francesi” at lunchtime, with the excuse that they had first to pick up the various parties at the White Rock. Sometimes it was three o’clock before the boats returned to Porto Quaglia, and as they neared the landing, the Buonsantis would see tall Anna standing there, her hand shading her eyes, waiting to make sure they were aboard before putting on the spaghetti. Lunch, with a spoiled roast, would be served at three-fifteen. Those who were in pensione at the inn would find the day’s specialty “finito” or sitting in tepid grease. Anna was cross; the waiters in the inn were cross; the lesser family cooks up and down the main street were cross. The “French” were being punished by the boatmen, and this punishment, like some Biblical malediction, spread over the whole village.

  Only the old man with the rowboat and his grandson remained faithful to the “French,” but it was a long row to Judgment Day, and the boat could not go back and forth many times in a morning. Soon another old man, with Garibaldi mustaches and an ancient dinghy, turned up at the pier; then a third, an octogenarian with a rakishly worn sailor’s cap, a cheroot, and a leaky outboard motor. But this created further bad blood with the “regular” boatmen, who would sometimes decline to take a group they had seen patronizing the old men and the boy. In short, the balance of Nature at Porto Quaglia was upset. Some days it would happen that most of the “French” did not go to swim at all. After a family dispute, the sulking children would take their bathing suits and walk down to the plage modeste at the end of the village, while their parents sat at home fuming and declaring that they might as well be in Paris, Rome, or London. One morning the Brées and the Livios quietly crossed to Punta Sabbia—on the theory that the “Germans” encamped there had all gone to the Rocca Bianca. But this attempted “castling,” as Arturo Buonsanti called it, did not work out either. The position was deadlocked: the “French,” having surrendered Rocca Bianca, refused to be returned there under duress; the boatmen continued to lay siege to them by the device of marooning them at Judgment Day Beach. The Milanese publisher took to going late and bringing a cold lunch; Elisabeth, the American, brought steaks one day for twenty and cooked them on the beach. But the absence of shade at Judgment Day, as well as the absence of wood, discouraged these solutions.

  By September, the “French” were talking of buying outboard motors for the children’s rowboats; the engineer went to look at a sailboat that was for sale across the river. “Make yourselves independent of the boatmen,” Mike counselled. But if every family had a boat, what then? Who was to promise them that next year the “Germans” would not push on to Judgment Day?

  “You could sell them your boats,” said Mike shrewdly, waggling his beard. But the “French” were cold to this idea and cold to the idea of acquiring shore property—another notion Mike broached. Though he was receiving cables telling him to get back to work from his editor nearly every day (with a two-hundred-lire delivery charge), he lingered, feeling it his duty as an American to exercise his ingenuity on a problem that the “French” by themselves could not solve.

  “Why don’t you get together and buy the Rocca Bianca?” he said to Hélène one morning as they were swimming. Far off to the right, they could see the white point jutting into the sea; from here it was evident that the marble there had once been quarried—slices had been taken off. This in fact was what had suddenly given him the idea.

  “It is public property,” said Hélène. “The shore belongs to the comune.”

  “Are you sure?” he said. “If the shore belongs to the comune, how come all the bathing establishments are across the river?”

  “They are concessions. Leased from the comune by business interests.” But the Belle Arti, Hélène went on, would not permit anybody to lease a landmark like the White Rock. And they would be right.

  She and Mike began to argue heatedly. He bet her that by bribery or influence the “French” could lease the White Rock and post it with “No Trespassing” signs. “Supposing you all got together”—he counted—“there must be at least twelve families of you, and some pretty important people, by Italian standards. You could fix the Belle Arti and the mayor—” “No,” said Hélène.

  “What do you mean ‘no’? Assuming you could, for the sake of argument—” “No,” said Hélène.

  Mike took a few short exasperated strokes toward shore. Then he turned back. “I’ll bet you,” he said patiently, “that within ten years—no, five—somebody buys that whole cliff, leases the Rocca Bianca for ninety years, and builds a hotel. With a bar and a terrace.”

  “And dressing rooms cut into the rock,” concurred Hélène. “And showe
rs and toilets for signore and signori. And a night club over the water—why not? They would make a road and sell off plots of land for villas and villini. After that, a shopping center. It will happen. You are right. Arturo pense la même chose.”

  Mike’s jaw dropped. He swallowed water. “Well, then,” he said, spluttering, “if you see it coming so clearly, why don’t you get in there first?” “Preventive war,” commented Hélène.

  Mike ignored this. “Between you, you could raise the money for the necessary bribes.”

  “It would not be cheap.”

  Mike floated. “You’d buy the land above of course, too. You’d have to, to protect yourselves. And if you had the land, you’d build—the whole group of you. Why pay rent in Porto Quaglia? Say twelve houses.” He narrowed his eyes, thinking. “You could build twelve houses in those trees if you kept them inconspicuous. In good taste. Blending with the landscape. Leaving green areas. You’d form a syndicate—incorporate. Get a good modern architect from Milan. Use native building materials.”

  “C’est-à-dire le marbre,” said Hélène.

  “Why, yes!” Mike ejaculated. “Yes. Come to think of it, you’d have a free marble supply. That’d be something to leave Laure and François. A marble house. How about it, Hélène?” If he could have nudged her in the water, he would have done so. “Don’t laugh. I’m serious. They laughed at Columbus. How about it?”

  “Non, merci,” she answered, striking out for shore. “What do you mean, ‘non, merci’?” he called after her.

  Hélène swung around in the water. Seeing the American’s plaintive expression, she was angry. “J’ai dit non,” she said. “Mon père n’a pas été cinq ans à Auschwitz pour devenir propriétaire d’une villa en marbre sur la côte ligurienne.” “I can’t understand you,” yelled Mike. “You’re talking too fast.” “I said my father has not spent five years in Auschwitz to become the owner of a marble villa in Italy.”

  “I don’t see the connection,” called Mike.

  “We are plain people,” shouted Hélène. “What do you call it—wandering Jews.”

  Mike reflected for a minute. “I don’t get it,” he said. “Are you against owning property?”

  “Yes,” shouted Hélène, though this was not the truth—she was against being the kind of person who would preempt a natural marvel like some common piece of shore property, but she did not know how to express this in English, least of all to Mike, whose relentless American logic made it impossible, she said to herself, to have a reasonable conversation with him. Moreover, she had never known how to answer the insane argument that one ought to do something bad because if one did not someone else would do it instead. She struck out for shore again.

  “You French have no vision!” Mike’s voice roared after her indignantly. He backstroked a few moments, to cool off, not sure himself whether he had been joking about the marble villas and she had taken him seriously, in which case he would have a right to feel injured, or whether he had been serious and would have a right to feel injured at not having been taken seriously enough.

  On the shingle they found another argument going on—one party asserting that the source of beauty was in Nature and the other claiming that Nature was simply a sentimental name for tradition, the way things had “always” been. A fishing boat, Elisabeth had said, belonged to Nature, while a smart motorboat did not. But Arturo begged to differ. A fishing boat on the horizon appeared to be a part of Nature because it had “always” been there, like the sun in the sky, or the mountains, or the stars. But the stars in fact had changed; the Pole Star of the ancients was no longer the Pole Star of today. A horse or a pair of oxen in a field were viewed as a part of Nature, but when there were no horses or oxen there would be another Nature, and a tractor, to Laure’s children, would be an intrinsic part of it. For that, said the painter, you would need a new Millet; it was the artists who decided what was Nature and what was not. Why then, said Elisabeth, could you paint a good picture of a carriage, while an Alfa Romeo could “sit” only for advertisements? What about a plastic dish, said a woman’s voice. The engineer said there was no inherent reason that plastics should be uglier than marble; it was a question of good design. No, said the editor; plastics offered no resistance to the manufacturer, which made them inferior to marble. “Inherently,” he added tartly, skipping a stone across the water.

  The discussion veered to the White Rock. It had not “always” been there, said Mike. “Si!” objected Hélène.

  “No,” said Mike. “Some acquisitive group around Dante’s time must have formed a corporation to exploit the marble there. Originally, the whole point must have been green, covered with trees, like the rest of these slopes. Then somebody struck marble. The White Rock is the end result of man’s tampering with Nature. If he’d left Nature alone, there’d be no White Rock.”

  “Il justifie le capitalisme,” observed Laure in her still childish voice.

  “Il justifie le progrès,” said François sombrely, with a malign look at the American. “Et tu es contre le progrès?” asked his father, smiling. “Mais naturellement,” retorted François. “Moi aussi,” said Laure. “Moi non,” said Catherine.

  “Regard-moi ça, papa!” bitterly exclaimed Hélène. “Mes enfants sont devenus conservateurs, grace aux Allemands.”

  It was a fact, as already had been noticed, that the coming of the “Germans” was bringing out the worst in the community.

  The doctor looked up from his Stendhal. She would not, he said tranquilly, want them to take all their views from books. They must learn from what they saw around them.

  “From Nature’s book, eh?” quoted Mike, with a loud laugh, clapping the old man on the shoulder.

  And from what they heard, the doctor added in a lowered voice to his daughter: children, like old people, were afraid of any suggestion of change; one had to be careful how one spoke of it to them—let them see more and hear less. He looked at his watch. “Viens, mon fils,” he said to his grandson. “C’est l’heure.”

  It was too early, objected the others, but the old man insisted that François should take him and the younger children home. Mike and Arturo pushed the rowboat off.

  “Regarde, mon fils,” said the doctor, as the boat rounded into the harbor.

  The boy at the oars briefly raised his eyes to the marble mountains in the distance.

  “Elles sont belles, les montagnes?”

  “Oui,” admitted François.

  “Pourquoi?” said his grandfather.

  All the children gazed at the white-capped peaks.

  “Parce que le marbre ressemble à la neige,” the boy answered promptly. But it was a cheat, he added in his hoarse, angry voice. “C’est truqué, quoi. C’est de la fausse neige. Et cela ne justifie pas le progrès.”

  Perhaps not, the old man replied serenely, but it justified snow. This afternoon, he continued, hopping out of the boat and holding the painter for his grandson, they would all go to see the quarries.

  The youngest children looked doubtful. “Elles sont loin, les carrières.”

  Not too far, said the doctor; they would start right after lunch.

  It was the first time the “French” had visited the marble quarries, though for several years a sign, “Visitate le cave di marmo,” had been urging them to do so, on the road from Viareggio. This sign, in fact, which recently had begun reiterating its message in German, had killed their interest in the trip. But now several cars filled with “French” followed the doctor in his old Peugeot. The last car in the procession was the poet’s battered Austin station wagon; having got wind of the expedition, he had brought his wife, a stroller, and four of his children—the baby had been left at home.

  The first stop was at one of the quarries advertised on the road from Carrara. It was a “commercial” quarry; near the entrance was a stand selling Coca-Cola and beer and another selling marble souvenirs. Around the souvenir stand were German tourists in a group; a tourist bus stood waiting, and the cars
parked along the highway were all marked with a big “D” for Deutschland. The quarry, which was not very deep, was no longer worked, and the principal attraction was a train track on which carts carrying blocks of marble shuttled back and forth. This was not the real thing, Mike protested.

  “Bien sûr,” said the doctor, but it would amuse the younger children. The real quarries lay beyond, high in the mountains; the doctor had telephoned the doctor from Carrara, who had suggested the itinerary. After the “play” quarry, they would leave the tourist area and visit the mills where the marble was cut.

  The mills lay along a stream that had turned white with marble dust; they made an atrocious noise, cutting the marble into slices with big iron blades—the small children were frightened. They wanted to go back and see the little train again.

  The adults glanced at each other. The poor mountain villages that straggled out from the mills were extremely dusty; everyone began to cough. The mills themselves were dismal; the water from the stream used in the cutting process splashed over the ground, creating a gray mud. The streets of the villages were caked with gray mud; there were no trees, and the air was cold and wintry, for the mountains cut off the afternoon sun.

  “Ça suffit, papa!” exclaimed Hélène, but the doctor would not heed her, leading them from village to village, mill to mill, consulting from time to time a slip of paper. They ought to see everything, he said. In each mill, he asked questions, which Arturo translated, while the others paced restively about, the Irishman pushing the stroller; the doctor wanted to know the details of the cutting mechanism, the incidence of silicosis among the mill workers—were there many tuberculars?

  “Tu es en vacances, papa!” irritably cried Hélène. “Yes, Doctor,” said the poet. “Take it easy; you’re on holiday.”

  Finally the cars left the melancholy mills and proceeded farther into the mountains along a narrow winding road, past chambers of smooth gray marble cut into the hillsides and heaps of marble gravel. Suddenly the doctor braked, and the “French” for the first time saw, right before their eyes, the snow fissures and gleaming glaciers they had known for so many years from across the river. These in fact were marble slides—avalanches of quite ordinary-looking stones that had tumbled down the mountainsides. Seen close up, they were not even white but a pale leaden gray in some places and a pale urinous yellow in others. Dr. Bernheim glanced at his slip of paper, and the cars continued upward till they arrived at a narrow bridge across a chasm; here a worker stopped them. They were at Fantiscritti, the last name on the doctor’s list. It was the end of the road. Because of the dangerous marble slides, cars were not permitted to go any farther; if the francesi wanted to visit the quarries beyond, they would have to go on foot.