If it is profit that a man is after, he should become a merchant, and if he does the job of a bookseller then he should renounce the name of poet. Christ forbid that the business followed by such creatures should furnish a man of spirit with his occupation.
Every year I spend a fortune, and so it would be a fine thing if I followed the example of the gambler who placed a bet of a hundred ducats and then beat his wife for not filling the lamps with the cheapest oil.
So print my letters carefully, on good parchment, and that’s the only recompense I want. In this way bit by bit you will be the heir to all my talent may produce.
ARETINO
from a letter dated 22nd June 1537, sent from Venice
Oh quante sono incantatrici, oh quanti
Incantator tra noi, che non si sanno!
ARIOSTO
What strange enchanters in our time abound
What strange enchantresses alike are found!
ARIOSTO
Hugo von Hofmannsthal
ANDREAS
PUSHKIN PRESS
LONDON
CONTENTS
Title Page
The Wonderful Mistress
Journal of Herr von N’s Tour to Venice, 1779
Herr von N’s Adventure in Venice
Andreas or The United
Afterword by Olivier Berggruen
About the Publisher
Also Available from Pushkin Press
Copyright
THE WONDERFUL MISTRESS
THE LADY WITH THE SPANIEL
“UPON MY SOUL,” thought young Herr Andreas von Ferschengelder on the 17th September 1778, his boatman having unloaded his trunk on the stone steps and pushed off again. “What next? The fellow leaves me standing here, there isn’t such a thing as a coach in Venice, that I know, and as for a porter, why should one come this way? It’s as desolate a spot as you’d find in a day’s journey. You might as well turn a man out of the diligence on the Rossauerlände or under the Weissgärbern at six in the morning when he doesn’t know his way about Vienna. I can speak their language—what good is that? They’ll do what they like with me all the same. How does one address utter strangers asleep in their beds? Do I knock and say ‘My good sir’? He knew he would do nothing of the kind; meanwhile, steps were ringing sharp and clear in the morning stillness on the stone pavement: they took a long time to come near, then a masked man emerged from an alley, caught his cloak about him with both hands, and made straight across the square. Andreas advanced a step and bowed. The man raised his hat, and with it the half-mask that was fixed on the inside. He was a man of trustworthy appearance and, to judge from his movements and manners, belonging to the best society. Andreas was anxious to hurry, he thought it ill-mannered to detain for long a gentleman on his way home at such an hour: he said quickly that he was a foreigner just arrived from Vienna by way of Villach and Gorizia. He felt at once that he need not have mentioned this, fell into confusion, and stood stammering Italian.
The stranger approached with a most civil gesture, saying that he was entirely at Andreas’s service. With this movement, his cloak had fallen apart in front, and Andreas could see that the courteous gentleman, under his cloak, had nothing on but his bare shirt, shoes without buckles, and knee-hose hanging down, leaving his calves half bare. He hurriedly begged the stranger not to remain standing in the chilly morning air—he would soon find somebody to direct him to an inn or lodging-house. The man wrapped his cloak tighter about his hips and assured Andreas that he was in no hurry. Andreas was deeply mortified by the thought that the other now knew he had seen his strange déshabillé: his silly remark about the chilly morning air and his embarrassment made him feel hot all over, so that he too, without thinking, threw his travelling cloak open, while the Venetian most obligingly assured him that he was particularly glad to be of service to a subject of the Queen-Empress Maria Theresa, the more so as he had already been on terms of great friendship with several Austrians, for instance, Baron Reischach, Colonel of the Imperial Pandours, and Count Esterhazy. These well-known names, pronounced with such familiarity by the stranger in front of him, inspired Andreas with the utmost confidence. It was true that he knew such great gentlemen by name only, or at most by sight, for he belonged to the minor, or bagatelle, nobility.
When the mask declared that he had what the foreign cavalier needed, and quite close at hand, Andreas was incapable of declining. To his question, put casually when they were already on their way, as to what part of the town they were in, he received the answer: “San Samuele.” And the family to which he was being taken was that of a patrician, a count, who happened to have his elder daughter’s room to let, for she had been living away from home for some time. Meanwhile, they had arrived in a very narrow lane in front of a very high house, which looked distinguished enough, but very dilapidated, for the windows had no glass in them and were all boarded up. The masked man knocked at the door and called several names; an old woman looked down from a high storey and asked what they wanted, and there was a rapid parley between the two. The Count himself had already gone out, the mask explained to Andreas. He always went out at this early hour to buy what was needed in the kitchen. But the Countess was at home, so they could settle about the room and then send for the luggage which had been left behind.
The bolt on the door was withdrawn, they entered a small courtyard, full of washing out to dry, and mounted a steep flight of stone stairs, with steps hollowed out like dishes with age. Andreas did not like the look of the house, and it seemed odd that the Count should be out so early buying provisions, but the thought that he was being introduced by a friend of the Freiherrs von Reischach and Esterhazy cast a bright light over everything and left no room for despondency.
At the top the staircase abutted on to a fairly large room, with the fireplace at one end and an alcove at the other. At the single window a half-grown girl was sitting on a low chair, while a woman, no longer young but still handsome, was endeavouring to build up the child’s beautiful hair into a highly elaborate head dress. When Andreas and his guide entered the room, the child, with a scream, darted into the inner room, showing Andreas a thin face, with dark, beautifully traced eyebrows, while the mask turned to the Countess, whom he addressed as cousin, and introduced his young friend and protégé.
There was a short colloquy, the lady named a price for the room, which Andreas agreed to without further discussion. He would have dearly liked to know whether the room looked on to the street or the courtyard, for he felt it would be a dismal prospect to spend his time in Venice in such a room, whether the house was in the town itself or on the outskirts. But he found no moment for his question, the conversation between the other two showed no signs of coming to an end, while the young creature who had vanished swung the door to and fro and cried with spirit that Zorzi must be made to get up at once, for he was lying upstairs in bed with the colic. Then the Countess told the gentlemen just to go up, the boys would soon turn the useless creature out. He would move out at once, and make room for the newcomer’s luggage to be taken up. She apologized for not taking the gentlemen up herself, she had her hands full: she had to get Zustina ready to pay lottery visits with her. All the patrons on the list had to be visited that very day in the course of the morning and afternoon.
Andreas would again have liked to know what was the meaning of all this about the patrons and the lottery, but as his guide, with an energetic and approving nod, seemed to take the matter for granted, he found no convenient opportunity for his question, and they followed two half-grown boys, who were clearly twins, up the steep wooden staircase to Signorina Nina’s room.
At the door the boys halted, and when a faint groan was heard, looked at each other with their nimble squirrel’s eyes and seemed hig
hly pleased. The curtains of the bed were drawn back; on it lay a pale young man. A wooden table by the wall and a chair were covered with dirty brushes and pots of paint, a palette hung on the wall. Opposite to it hung a bright, very pretty mirror, otherwise the place was empty.
“Are you better?” asked the boys.
“Better,” groaned the man in the bed.
“So we can take away the stone?”
“Yes, take it away.”
“When you have the colic you must lay a stone on your stomach, then you get better,” announced one of the boys, while the one nearest to the sick man rolled away a stone which they could hardly have lifted with their full combined strength.
Andreas could hardly bear to see a sick man thus turned out of bed on his account. He stepped to the window and threw wide the half-open shutter: there was water below, sunny ripples were lapping round the brightly painted steps of a very big building opposite, and on a wall a mesh of light-rings was dancing. He leaned out; there was another house, then another, then the lane opened into a big, broad canal lying full in the sunshine. A balcony projected from the corner house, with an oleander on it, its branches swaying in the wind: on the other side cloths and rugs were hanging from airy windows. Opposite, beyond the great waterway, stood a palace with fine stone figures in niches.
He stepped back into the room; the man in the domino had vanished, the young man was standing superintending the boys, who were busy clearing away paint-pots and bundles of dirty brushes from the only table and chair in the room. He was pale and a little unkempt, but well made; there was nothing ill-favoured in his face save for a wry underlip, drawn to one side, which gave him a crafty look.
“Did you notice”—he turned to Andreas—“that he had nothing on under his domino but his shirt? He’s like that once a month. I suppose you know what that means? He’s a gamester. What else could it mean? You should have seen him yesterday. He had an embroidered coat, a flowered waistcoat, two watches with trinkets, a snuff-box, rings on every finger, fine silver shoe-buckles. The scoundrel!” He laughed, but his laughter was not pleasant. “You’ll have a comfortable room here. If you need anything else, call on me. I can show you a coffee-house close by where you’ll be well served if I introduce you. You can write your letters there and make appointments and settle your business—all but what you generally deal with behind locked doors.”
Here he laughed again, and the two boys found the joke excellent, laughing out loud as they struggled with all their might to drag the heavy stone out of the room, with a look on their faces of their sister downstairs.
“If you have any business that needs an honest man,” went on the artist, “I shall be honoured if you trust me with it. If I am not at hand, see that you get a Friuli man; they’re the only safe messengers. You’ll find some of them on the Rialto and in any of the big squares. You can tell them by their country costume. They are trusty and close, they remember names, and can even recognize a mask by his walk and his shoe-buckles. If you want anything from over there, ask me. I am the scene-painter there and can go about the place as I like.”
Andreas understood that he was referring to the grey building opposite, with the brightly coloured stone steps leading down to the water, which had looked too big for an ordinary house and too mean for a palace.
“I mean the San Samuele theatre. I thought you knew that long ago. As I said, I am the scene-painter, your landlady is one of the attendants, and the old man is a candle-snuffer.”
“Who?”
“Count Prampero, who owns this house. Who else should it be? First the daughter was an actress, she got them all in—not the girl you saw—the elder, Nina. She’s worthwhile. I’ll take you to her this afternoon. The little one is coming out next carnival. The boys run errands. But now I must go and look for your luggage.”
Andreas, left alone, threw back the shutters and fixed them. The hasp of one was broken: he made up his mind to have it seen to at once. Then he put all the remaining paint-pots and brushes outside the door and, with a linen rag he found lying under the bed, scoured the paint spots off his table till it shone clean. Then he carried the paint-stained rag out of the room, looked for a corner to hide it in, and discovered a twig broom, with which he swept out his room. When he had finished he put the pretty little mirror straight, drew the bed-curtains, and sat down on the single chair at the foot of the bed, his face towards the window. The kindly breeze came in, stroking his young face with a faint smell of seaweed and sea freshness.
He thought of his parents and of the letter he would have to write to them in the coffee-house. He resolved to write something in this fashion:
My kind and honoured parents,
I have safely arrived in Venice. I have taken a cheerful, very clean and airy room with a noble family who happen to have it to let. The room looks on to the street, but instead of the earth, there is water below, and the people go about in gondolas, or, if they are poor, in great barges rather like the Danube ferry-boats. These boats take the place of porters, so that I shall be very quiet. There is no cracking of whips or shouting.
He thought he would mention too that there were messengers in Venice so clever that they could recognize a mask by his gait and shoe-buckles. That would please his father, who was very eager to collect the peculiarities and oddities of foreign lands and customs. He was in doubt whether to say that he was living quite close to a theatre. In Vienna that had been his dearest wish. Many years ago, when he was ten or twelve years old, he had two friends who lived in the Blaue Freihaus in the Wieden, on the same staircase in that fourth courtyard where the theatre was set up in a shed. He remembered how wonderful it was to be visiting them towards evening, to see the scenery carried out—a canvas with a magic garden, a bit of a tavern inside, the candle-snuffer, the murmur of the crowd, the mandoletti sellers.
More poignant than all the rest, the confused hum of the instruments tuning up—to this day it went to his heart to think of it. The floor of the stage was uneven, the curtain too short in places. Jackboots came and went. Between the neck of a bass fiddle and the head of a fiddler a sky-blue shoe, embroidered with tinsel, once appeared. The sky-blue shoe was more wonderful than all the rest. Later a being stood there with this shoe on—it belonged to her, was one with her blue and silver gown: she was a princess, dangers surrounded her, an enchanted wood closed round her, voices sounded from the branches, monkeys came rolling fruit along, from which lovely children sprang, shining. All that was beautiful, but it was not the two-edged sword which had pierced his soul, from the tenderest delight and unutterable longing to tears, awe, and ecstasy, when the blue shoe lay alone beneath the curtain.
He made up his mind not to mention that the theatre was so near, nor even the strange costume of the gentleman who had brought him to the house. He would have had to say that the man was a gambler who had played away everything, down to his shirt, or else go out of his way to conceal that detail. He would not, of course, be able to tell about Esterhazy, and that would have pleased his mother. He was quite willing to mention the rent, two sequins a month—it was not much, considering his means. But what was the good of that, seeing that he had, in a single night, by a single act of folly, lost half his journey money? Never would he be able to confess that to his parents, so what was the good of boasting about his thrift? He was ashamed in his own sight and did not want to think of the three disastrous days in Carinthia, but the face of the rascally servant already stood before him, and, whether he would or no, he had to recall it all minutely and from the very beginning: every day, morning or evening, it would all come back to him.
ONCE MORE he was in the inn Zum Schwert in Villach after a hard day’s travelling, and was just going up to bed when, on the very staircase, a man stood offering himself as servant or courier. He: he needed nobody, was travelling alone, looked after his horse himself during the day, and the ostler would do so at night. The other would not leave him, went sidling upstairs with him, step by step, as far as his
room, then stepped into the doorway, standing square in it, so that Andreas could not shut the door: it was not fitting for a young gentleman of quality to travel without a servant: it would look paltry down in Italy, they were infernally nice on that point. And how he had done little else all his life but ride abroad with young gentlemen—his last was Freiherr Edmund von Petzenstein, and before that the canon, Count Lodron—Herr von Ferschengelder must know them. How he had ridden ahead as travelling courier, ordered everything, arranged everything, till the count was speechless with amazement, “he had never travelled so cheap,” and their quarters were of the best. How he spoke Flemish and Romansch and Italian, of course, as fluently as you please, and knew all about the money, and the tricks of inn-keepers and postilions—nobody could beat him there; all they could say was: “There’s no coming at your gentleman. He’s in safe hands.” And how he knew all about buying a horse, so that he could get the better of any horse-dealer, even the Hungarians, and they were the best, let alone the Germans or Walloons. And as for personal service, he was valet and barber and perruquier, coachman and huntsman, beater and loader, knew all about hounds and guns, correspondence, casting accounts, reading aloud, writing billets in all languages, and could serve as interpreter or, as the Turks say, dragoman. It was a marvel that a man like him was free, and indeed the Freiherr von Petzenstein had wanted his brother to have him à tout prix, but he had taken it into his head to be servant to Herr von Ferschengelder—not for the wages—that was of no matter to him. But it would just suit him to be of assistance to a young gentleman making his first tour, and to win his affection and esteem. It was confidence he had set his heart on, that was the reward that a servant like him looked for. What he wanted was friendship and trust, not money. That was why he had not been able to hold out in the Imperial Cavalry, where there was nothing but tale-bearing and the stick—no trust. Here he passed his tongue over his moist, thick lip like a cat.
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