Last Stories and Other Stories (9780698135482)

by Vollmann, William T.

  CAT GODDESS

  The bright yet pastel-like oil paintings of Leonor Fini celebrate femininity, androgyny, narcissism, surrealism and decadence. Often her women are Klimt-like in their pallid elongations. Aside from her cats, she loved nothing better than a good quarrel; best of all was when she orchestrated a falling-out between two of her friends. In 2009 I visited a postmortem retrospective of this great artist’s work at the Museo Revoltella—the perfect venue, I decided, admiring some more Tominzes in gilded oval frames: near-naked young women fiddling with themselves. In the dead Baron’s library, the backs of the chairs were carved with twin caryatid-like females who played quite busily with their own breasts. The red velvet cushions reminded me of Leonor Fini’s lips. Mostly, of course, I studied Leonor’s paintings. Entranced, I expressed my appreciation to the coat check girl. She smiled and said: Can you catch me?— Before I realized who she was, a strangely pallid corseted woman in a lace-sleeved red tunic was running through Trieste, daring me to kiss her. Lace around her throat, lace between her legs; oh, my! Finally she permitted me to grasp her from behind while she leaned against an antique column. As it happened, in those days I was still as handsome as Napoleon used to be back in 1805, so when I asked for a kiss, I hoped for assent, but she said: I’ll only make love if you act like a woman.— When I finally agreed, that wary-eyed tease, as magnificently black-clad (in gloves, dress, the whole works) and as regally bored as the Duchess of Aosta, refused to take anything off. Maliciously giggling, she next proposed that I act like a cat. But I did not wish to. Fortunately for my aspirations, the previous night I had caught a ghost-fish, which I was wearing around my neck (for creatures of that sort never stink), so I held it out into the air behind Leonor’s ankles, and then, just as I had hoped, three of her ghost-cats crept out of nowhere to bat that spirit-meat between them and finally share a few nibbles. This sight softened my friend, so she led me into an irregularly edged apartment tower whose windows, each of a different shape, were shuttered by concretions of unpainted planks; and in one room we lay down together to fill each other with Trieste, where the afternoon sky is bluer and the trembling bedroom curtains so much whiter that they might as well be silver and gold.

  Several descriptions of Leonor Fini’s paintings and of photographs of her derive from illustrations in: Museo Revoltella Trieste, Leonor Fini: L’Italienne de Paris [exhibition catalogue] (Trieste: 2009), and Peter Webb, Sphinx: The Life and Art of Leonor Fini (New York: Vendome Press, n.d.).

  A few descriptions of elegant Triestinas are based on photographs in Elvio Guagnini and Italo Zannier, eds., La Trieste dei Wulz: Volti di una Storia: Fotographie 1860–1980 (Trieste: Alinari, 1989).

  The shy little marble girl— Sculpted by Donato Barcaglia, 1871. Now in the Museo Revoltella in Trieste.

  The story (which Leonor especially loved) of Maximilian and “La Paloma”— From Webb, p. 10.

  The “slim, lovely young wasp-waisted beauty in a black jacket-skirt and black tights who held a whip and sometimes permitted him to feed tidbits to her pet bulldog”— Based on a painting by Giuseppe de Nittis, 1878, La Signora del Cane (Ritorno dalle Corse), which I saw at the Museo Revoltella.

  Description of Rijeka— After a visit there in 2009.

  The pale man in the photographer’s doorway in Prague— After a photograph in Pavel Scheufler, Fotografiké Album Čech 1839–1914 (Prague?: Odeon, 1989).

  Leonor’s inability to face the death of her own cats— Webb, p. 207.

  Leonor’s interest first in cadavers, then in mummies and skeletons— Somewhat after a direct quotation in Webb, p. 11.

  “I dislike the deference with which your Rossetti’s been treated.”— Ibid., p. 71, somewhat altered.

  The perfumed cat excrement at Leonor’s— After Webb, p. 46, who implies that the story may be apocryphal.

  The pale women wading naked in dark water— After Museo Revoltella Trieste, pp. 160–61 (La Bagnanti, 1959).

  “The men around me are dead . . .”— Altered from Webb, p. 143.

  “I prefer cats . . .”— Altered from Webb, p. 25.

  “femininity triumphing over a city”— Webb, p. 11 (Leonor is describing her relief of Amazons trampling men).

  The “woman not unlike Giovanna, but with still longer, richer hair”— After Museo Revoltella Trieste, p. 125 (Streghe Amauri, 1947).

  Descriptions of mummies, Sekhmet, Hathor, etcetera— Based on visits to the Museo Egizio di Torino in 2009 and 2012.

  THE TRENCH GHOST

  Description of the trenches at Redipuglia— After a visit there in May 2012.

  “I am not this.”— This simple yet profound point is indebted to I Am That: Talks with Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, trans. from the Marathi taperecordings [sic] by Maurice Frydman, rev. & ed. Sudhakar S. Dikshit (Durham, NC: Acorn Press, 1973), p. 59: “To know what you are you must first investigate and know what you are not.”

  Description of the pillboxes at Tungesnes (on the coast west of Stavanger)— After a visit there in September 2011.

  “Find what is it that never sleeps and never wakes, and whose pale reflection is our sense of ‘I.’”— Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, p. 12.

  “the pinnacle of military deployment approaches the formless.”— Ralph D. Sawyer, with Mei-Chün Sawyer, comp. and trans., The Seven Military Classics of Ancient China (San Francisco: Westview, 1993), p. 335 (“Questions and Replies between T’ang T’ai-tsung and Li Wei-king” [written in Tang or Sung period], quoting Sun-tzu).

  “It is the body that is in danger, not you.”— Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, p. 412.

  THE FAITHFUL WIFE

  A few details of daily life in preindustrial Bohemia are indebted to information in Sylvia Welner and Kevin Welner, eds., Small Doses of Arsenic: A Bohemian Woman’s Story of Survival (New York: Hamilton Books / The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, 2005), pp. 4–23, 33–35. [The letter-writer’s surname is not given; she is simply introduced as Tonca, writing to her son Jaroslav. Her childhood recollections take place in the early twentieth century; I have assumed that the early-nineteenth-century existence of Michael and Milena’s family was no richer than hers.]

  Return of female Romanian vampires; tale of Alexander of Pyrgos— Summers, The Vampire in Europe, pp. 310, 232.

  The Bohemian custom of masking oneself on the way home from a funeral— Ibid., p. 287.

  The seventh Mansion of the Moon, called Alarzach— Francis Barrett, A Magus, or Celestial Intelligencer: A Complete System of Occult Philosophy (Secaucus, NJ: Citadel Press, 1975 pbk. repr. of 1975 ed.; orig. pub. 1801), Book I, p. 154.

  The tale of Merit— Her grave-goods and her husband’s are on display (“the tomb of Kha”) at the Museo Egizio di Torino.

  “I have found a woman more bitter than death . . .”— Heinrich Kramer and James Sprenger, The Malleus Maleficarum, trans. Rev. Montague R. Summers (New York: Dover, 1971 repr. of 1948 rev. ed; orig. Latin ed. ca. 1484), p. 47. (Sentence originally began with “And I have found . . .”).

  The vampire who first chuckles, then whinnies like a horse— Pëtr Bogatyrëv, Vampires in the Carpathians: Magical Acts, Rites, and Beliefs in Subcarpathian Rus’, trans. Stephen Reynolds and Patricia A. Krafcik, w/ bio. intro. by Svetlana P. Sorokina (New York: East European Monographs, dist. Columbia University Press, 1998; orig. French ed. 1929), p. 132.

  The Dark Man by the water (“he torments people when he finds them by the waterside”)— Ibid., p. 133.

  The eleventh Mansion of the Moon, called Azobra— Barrett, p. 155.

  “Some say that vampires have two hearts.”— Information from Radu Florescu and Raymond T. McNally, The Complete Dracula: Two Books in One! Combining “Dracula, a Biography of Vlad the Impaler,” and the bestseller “In Search of Dracula” (Acton, MA: Copley, 1985), p. 95.

  Some of the later descriptions of Milena floating in her bath are inspired by Bonnard paintings.
>
  DOROTEJA

  What is done with cristallium etcetera— Dr. G. Storms, Anglo-Saxon Magic (The Hague: Martinius Nijhoff, Centrale Drukkerij N.V., Nijimegen, 1948), p. 235 (The Holy Drink against elf-tricks). Since I have moved this spell to Bohemia, I changed elves to goblins.

  “This is my help against the evil late birth . . .”— Ibid., pp. 196, 199 (Against Miscarriage; original reads “this as my help . . .”).

  Rite of washing in silver-water on New Year’s Day— Bogatyrëv, p. 42.

  Churchgoing of dead souls on Holy Saturday— Ibid., p. 68.

  The dead woman who returned to bite her husband’s finger— Ibid., p. 120.

  THE JUDGE’S PROMISE

  Epigraph: “And finally let the Judge come in . . .”— The Malleus Maleficarum, p. 231.

  The incident in Neinstade (which supposedly took place in 1603)— Elaborated after Summers, The Vampire in Europe, p. 201.

  “the ill-fated Bohemian rectangle”— Phrase quoted in Joseph Wechsberg, Prague, the Mystical City (New York: Macmillan, 1971), p. 1.

  Police work of Frederick the Great and the Police President of Berlin (both actually in the early nineteenth century)— Clive Emsley, Policing and Its Context 1750–1870 (New York: Schocken Books, 1983), pp. 99–100.

  Location of the Golem’s corpse and Dr. Faustus’s residence— Wechsberg, pp. 5, 38.

  Travails of Bohemian linen-weavers— Jaroslav Pánek, Oldrich Tuma et al., A History of the Czech Lands (Charles University in Prague: Karolinum Press, 2009), p. 292.

  Description of the second medallion of the sun— Information from Shah, pp. 46–47.

  “And though it was sore grief to us to hear such things of you, inspector . . .”— Tweaked a trifle from The Malleus Maleficarum, pp. 255–56 (formula uttered to a penitent relapsed heretic).

  Characteristics of various demons— Shah, pp. 86–88.

  Definition of Abnahaya— Barrett, p. 156.

  The witch’s purpose in digging up a dead man’s head— Ibid., p. 108.

  “The Romanians say that a vampire can go up into the sky . . .”— Information from Summers, The Vampire in Europe, p. 306.

  The myth of a secret tunnel from Prague’s Jewish Ghetto to Jerusalem— Wechsberg, p. 29.

  The witch-events of Saint John’s Day— Bogatyrëv, p. 76.

  “this sort of creature does not give anything for nothing.”— Shah, p. 80 (Grimorium Verum, oldest known version 1517).

  JUNE EIGHTEENTH

  Epigraph: “So long as there is an Emperor . . .”— Joan Haslip, The Crown of Mexico: Maximilian and His Empress Carlota (New York: Holt, Rhinehart & Winston, 1972 repr. of 1971 English ed.), p. 367.

  Various information on Maximilian’s life and career was obtained from Haslip, and Jasper Ridley, Maximilian and Juárez (New York: Ticknor & Fields, 1992).

  Maximilian’s aspirations: a castle and garden by the sea— Haslip, p. 113. Some of my descriptions of Miramar are a trifle anachronistic, since the place was merely a “bungalow” when he and Charlotte lived there (Ridley, p. 185).

  “Owing to some radical defect in the Mexican character . . .”— R. Lockwood Tower, ed., A Carolinian Goes to War: The Civil War Narrative of Arthur Middleton Manigault (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1992 pbk. repr. of 1983 ed.; orig. ms. prob. bef. 1868), p. 322 (Appendix II: The Mexican War Service of Arthur Middleton Manigault).

  Maximilian’s china blue eyes and beautiful teeth— Information from J. J. Kendall, Late Captain H.M. 44th and 6th Regiments, and subsequently in the Service of His late Majesty, the Emperor of Mexico, Mexico Under Maximilian (London: T. Cautley Newby, 1871), p. 157. According to a German observer, however, the Emperor’s “chief defect is his ugly teeth, which he shows too much as he speaks” (Haslip, p. 235).

  “Matters ran on pretty well for the first two years . . .”— Kendall, p. 185.

  “No Mexican has such warm feelings for his country and its progress as I.”— Charles Allen Smart, Viva Juárez: A Biography (New York: J. B. Lippincott, 1963), p. 357 (said in 1865).

  Ten-year serfdom for negroes— Ridley calls this “particularly ironic” (p. 216) since Maximilian had just abolished peonage. The new decree was for the convenience of ex-Confederate colonists.

  “We see nothing to respect in this country . . .”— Haslip, p. 268.

  “If necessary, I can lead an army . . .”— Ibid., p. 302.

  Details of Maximilian’s last days and execution— Ridley, pp. 262–77, Haslip, pp. 484–98.

  “I am here because I would not listen to this woman’s advice” and Maximilian’s reply— Slightly reworded from Haslip, p. 494.

  Curtopassi scissoring away his signature— Thus Haslip. According to Ridley (p. 265), it was Lago.

  Descriptions of retablos— After text and illustrations in Elizabeth Netto Calil Zarur and Charles Muir Lovell, eds., Art and Faith in Mexico: The Nineteenth-Century Retablo Tradition (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2001). The votive caption in my text is invented.

  Description of the Holy Child of Atocha— After two illustrations in Zarur and Lovell, pp. 108–9.

  “in France it was no longer permissible to be mistaken.”— Haslip, p. 196.

  The reality of Princess Salm-Salm’s seduction attempt, which is reported in several biographies of the Emperor, does not convince Ridley, who asserts (pp. 266–67) that it “sounds like the gossip of an officers’ mess.”

  The various discontents of Charlotte— Haslip proposes (p. 127) that “Maximilian, who was neither very virile nor highly sexed and who was only attracted by the novel and exotic, found that with Charlotte he could no longer function as a man.”

  “You must stay here for the night . . .”— Haslip, p. 487.

  The gardener’s daughter in Cuernevaca— Ridley, p. 171. According to Haslip, she was the gardener’s wife. Concepción Sedano is said to have given birth to Maximilian’s son in August 1866 and died “of grief” the following year. The son might have been a man who was shot as a spy in France during World War I.

  The slave-girls of Smyrna— Ridley, p. 50.

  Reading material of Miramón and Maximilian— Ridley, pp. 270–71.

  First dream: Description of Maximilian’s embalmed corpse— After an illustration in Gilbert M. Joseph and Timothy J. Henderson, eds., The Mexico Reader: History, Culture, Politics (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002), p. 268 (letter from Empress Carlota to Empress Eugénie, 1867).

  Details of Maximilian’s postmortem journey: The Novara, the hearse in Trieste; the marble tomb in Vienna— Gene Smith, Maximilian and Carlota: A Tale of Romance and Tragedy (New York: William Morrow, 1973), pp. 284–85.

  “Anything is better than to sit contemplating the sea at Miramar . . .”— Haslip, p. 361.

  “Just as when upon first penetrating the Brazilian jungle he nearly shouted for joy . . .”— This sentence is grounded in the following haunting words of Maximilian’s, which do indeed refer to the Brazilian jungle (1860): “It was the moment when all we have read in books becomes imbued with life, when the rare insects and butterflies contained in our limited and laboriously formed collections suddenly take wing, when the pygmy growth of our confined glasshouses expand into giant plants and forests, . . . the moment in which the book gains life—the dream reality” (quoted in Haslip, p. 130).

  Maximilian’s order for two thousand nightingales— Haslip, p. 361.

  Second dream (based on the sacrificial incarnation of Tezatlipoca, whose name is also transliterated Teczatlipoca)— J. Eric Thompson, in charge of Central and South American Archaeology, Field Museum, Chicago, Mexico Before Cortez: An Account of the Daily Life, Religion, and Ritual of the Aztecs and Kindred Peoples (New York: Scribner’s, 1937), pp. 205–210. The victim was chosen from a pool of idle young men who were kept on reserve for the purpose. His enjoyments lasted for a year; h
e was not unlike one of our American range cattle, who wander freely under the sky, grazing and copulating until they pay our price (which at least spares them old age). Tezatlipoca’s four wives were Flower Goddess, Maize Goddess, Water [Goddess?] and Salt Goddess. On p. 212 the author remarks: “This ceremony signified that those who had had riches and pleasures during their life would in the end come to poverty and pain.”

  Description of the quetzal-feather headdress— After an illustration in Brian M. Fagan, Kingdoms of Gold, Kingdoms of Jade: The Americas Before Columbus (New York: Thames and Hudson, 1991), p. 12.

  “amidst cool night winds”— One meaning of “Tezatlipoca” was “night wind.” Another was “youth.” He was “associated with human rulership,” all three of these details according to Joseph and Henderson, pp. 75–76 (Inga Clendinnen, “The Cost of Courage in Aztec Society”).

  The obsidian mirror— This was another reified meaning of the name Tezatlipoca, who represented war, darkness and masculinity. The surrogate’s death facilitated the potency of other men. Zarur and Lovell, p. 104.

  Description of the sacrificial stone basin— After an illustration in Fagan, p. 21.

  “Never complain, for it is a sign of weakness.”— Ridley, p. 48 (one of Maximilian’s twenty-seven principles).

  “God bless the Emperor!”— Haslip, p. 498.

  Carlota: “One sees red . . .”— Smith, p. 291. [Ellipsis in original between “gay.” and “The frontier.”]

  The incarnation of Teteoinan— Details from Thompson, p. 186.