The Life of Polycrates and Other Stories for Antiquated Children

by Connell, Brendan

  Of course neither Tony nor I could interpret his meaning. Only on Frau von Bekken’s death, several months later, did we begin to understand what he had done.

  IV.

  Extracted from The Avant-garde Artists of the Nineteenth Century, by W. B. Fry, London, William Heinemann, 1924:

  Enzio Savino (1864-1901)

  Though certainly not the most successful, if success can be measured in terms of conventional fame, or monetary gain, Enzio Savino was possibly the most influential painter of the symbolist movement, surpassing even Redon and Moreau in influence amongst his fellow artists, and prestige amongst the culturally literate.

  Born in Possagno, near Treviso, the son of a house painter, he was at a young age seduced by the German artist Ferdinand Keller, and moved with him to Paris in 1880, where he published his first series of lithographs, Concerto Campestre, at the age of eighteen—a project that was undoubtedly financed by the purse of the older man.

  Though not attending, he spent much of his time at the École des Beaux-Arts, where he made friends with Gerôme, by whom he was much admired, though to an equal degree feared. Carolus-Duran and Alexandre Cabanel, through uncontrollable jealousy and hate, had a petition passed around to ban Savino from the precincts of the school. The document stated that the young Italian was an evil influence on the other students and that his presence prevented them from going about their work. Savino slapped Cabanel in public and the latter challenged him to a duel. Savino, caring more for vengeance than honour, pulled out a stiletto and stabbed the teacher on the spot, though as luck would have it not mortally wounding him. After spending three months in jail, the young man was released, due to the influential intervention of Keller, who was still living in a nimbus of liquorice fascination.

  His early work is vigorous and naturalistic (cf. The Tree of the Hanged, Bayerisches National Museum, Munich, 1883), but later his style became solemn and flushed with mythological influence, his subject matter for the most part being gleaned from ancient Egyptian and Greek lore. In 1884, he took part in the Salon des Indépendants, with high expectations of success. Unfortunately his work went largely unnoticed and was only praised by a few fellow artists. Enraged and frustrated, he tore his studio apart and left Paris. He was in debt to numerous persons, and involved in countless affairs of the heart. Needless to say, his sudden disappearance caused a great stir, and not a few friends to become enemies.

  Many regarded him more in the light of a low adventurer than a skilled artist, and it must be said that his actions did much to form opinion in this wise. Edmond de Goncourt wrote: “He had the quasi savagery of all southern natures.”

  For nearly two years he was not heard of, and that period of his life is clouded in an almost resinous mystery. In Paris his name was heaped with ridicule, and rumours abounded. Some said that he had been seen in London, promenading between Piccadilly Circus and Hyde Park Corner; others claimed that he was in Germany, living at the expense of an immensely wealthy Baroness. Whatever the case, the year 1886 saw him reappear in Rome, a greatly changed man.

  When he had left Paris, his personality had been that of a gifted guttersnipe. When he arrived in Rome, he did so as a man of culture—not subdued, for his nature was still as fiery as ever—but one with greater knowledge, ability and inner strength.

  He had acquired money. Not a great deal, but enough to dress like a gentleman and open up a studio on the Corso Magenta. In 1887 he exhibited at the Salon dell’Arte Metafisica, where he created a major stir with his Night of Cain (Städelsches Kunstinstitut, Frankfort). This grand canvas was his first major work and was hailed as a masterpiece. Wrote Adolfo de Carolis: “With that [Night of Cain] he showed us the path. He demonstrated how enormous difficulties might be cleared away with ease and made many great painters of the day tremble in despair [fearing] that they would lose the world’s esteem.”

  That same year he produced over ninety canvases, including a number of works which today are regarded as some of his finest creations (e.g. Arte Etiopica, Museum of Art, Cleveland; Minotaur, Louvre, Paris; Tribute to Exechia, Wallraf-Richartz Museum, Köln).

  V.

  Excerpt from a police interview with mortician Gustave Schnittke by Konstable Hermann Bergen:

  KB: . . . and tell me what happened at the wake.

  GS: Well, if you’re concerned about the condition of Chancellor von Bekken’s honour, you would be better served asking Herr Doctor Ormand regarding the circumstances under which . . .

  KB: The doctor is in custody, Herr Schnittke. We will question him soon. For now we need to hear your account of the events.

  GS: I see. (pause) As you know, Frau von Bekken came to our facility early Wednesday morning.

  KB: She visited?

  GS: No, she was deceased. (pause) Doctor Ormand, who is, as you know, the family physician, brought in the body with the help of two attendants, both of whom left immediately following the completion of their grim delivery.

  KB: Describe these two men.

  GS: I do not know whether they were men or women. They were covered in black hoods and robes the way Italian body porters dress.

  KB: They were Italian, you say?

  GS: I could not see, due to the masks. They did not speak. They did not even grunt—Frau von Bekken was slight of frame as it is, and with the soul gone out of her . . .

  KB: You are accusing the good frau of being soulless, Herr Schnittke?

  GS: She was dead, of course she was soulless.

  KB: This is what you mean?

  GS: I have said so. May I continue?

  KB: Please.

  GS: Thank you. The family began to arrive about ten minutes later.

  KB: And who was in attendance?

  GS: I was getting to that, Konstable.

  KB: Continue, Please.

  GS: Frau von Bekken’s daughter, Emilie, was the first to arrive. She was accompanied by her fiancé, Wilhelm von Offenbach.

  KB: Von Offenbach?

  GS: From a little-known family, at least in the Chancellor’s circle. A good enough lad—blond, green-eyed, just like his fiancée . . .

  KB: Continue.

  GS: Yes. Not long after . . .

  KB: How long?

  GS: Approximately four and a half minutes after Emilie and von Offenbach arrived, the Chancellor walked in with his military advisor, General Graf von Miltke, and the Reverend Helmuth Spier. The Reverend and the General created quite a stir when they entered the room, spewing invectives at one another right behind the poor Chancellor’s back.

  KB: Poor Chancellor? Is money an issue in this statement?

  GS: (pause) The Chancellor was very sad, sir, as you can imagine one would be after losing one’s spouse.

  KB: Was he weeping?

  GS: Freely.

  KB: That is odd. I must make a note of it. Carry on.

  GS: Emilie, her fiancé and Doctor Ormand . . .

  KB: You speak in familiar terms of “Emilie”?

  GS: I am an old family friend. I have known the good lady since she was a baby.

  KB: Noted. We will speak of this later. Carry on.

  GS: As I was saying, Emilie, von Offenbach and the doctor succeeded in shushing the bickering attendants. The Chancellor trudged over to the table on which his wife’s body lay. He leaned down, tears in his eyes, to kiss her lips one last time. Suddenly, he stopped. A slight grunt escaped his throat, then his eyes widened as if a hammer of revelation had been brought down upon his skull . . .

  KB: Spare us the dramatics.

  GS: Er. (pause) The Chancellor looked quite surprised, then collapsed on the floor screaming, “Mein Gott! It’s true! Ah, hellfire, it is true! Damn my soul, Spier, it’s true!” Doctor Ormand ran and knelt by the Chancellor, trying to calm him, as Reverend Spier, looking rather puzzled, stooped down to look at the corpse’s forehead.

  KB: And what did he see, Herr Schnittke?

  GS: The same thing I saw: words.

  KB: Words. And what did these words sa
y, Herr Schnittke?

  GS: They said, “Here lies Salome, dreaming. The head in the museum her constant companion, wed for eternity in darkest hell. Mele Mele continues on the shores of darkness.”

  KB: And?

  GS: Spier’s reaction took us all by surprise. He stomped his feet about either side of the prone Chancellor, straddling him with his holy vestments, screaming at him. “I told you so, von Bekken, I warned you! Since you were barely off your mother’s tits, I have warned you! ‘Stay away from her,’ I said, and, ‘you have no interests in Africa’. But you persisted and now you have abetted your lusty frau’s eternal condemnation. Herod! HEROD!” he boomed as the chancellor lay there muttering and crying. His mind was quite gone by then, you know, and . . .

  VI.

  A few documents written by Savino to Wexler during the former’s last months:

  [Postcard]

  December 29, 1900

  Rome

  Desperate. Send money!

  [Letter]

  January 10, 1901

  Rome

  Oh, you needn’t be that way about it. I am absolutely miserable and you should have a little sympathy. If I say I need money, you can be damned well sure I do. As you know, the lawyers have a lean on my work and I cannot even set my hands on my past paintings, and I cannot set my hand to new projects for lack of funds. I need a new studio, paints, brushes, all sorts of things—or give me but a stick of charcoal and a bit of cloth and I will do you something for £1. Honestly my friend, things are getting to the edge. Do you know that I will be evicted from this room in a week? Well, it is true. So I tell you plainly: Hurry up and get me something substantial to set myself right. Seriously.

  E.

  [Postcard]

  February 1, 1901

  Rome

  I beg you to send me £20. Sick and miserable.

  [Postcard]

  February 8, 1901

  Rome

  Money. Money. Money.

  (Isn’t the picture on the front of this simply absurd!)

  X.

  Tattooed on the back of Enzio Savino:

  Art-for-art’s-sake is no safe metier, not even for a prodigy such as he who under this, my stylus, bows in subjection. I embed in him, as my student again, the seeds of the fruition of my greatness, the scorpion’s sting of stale vanity, of glory come and gone. May his fame, once invisible, again be manifest to those who never knew ‘The Painter of Eyes’.

  The Slug

  I.

  The ugliest of flowers are those reminiscent of dripping blood, with putrid scents—that smell like the unspoken and make one turn their head away in shame. Then there are monotonous white lilies or those agitated little cowards called anemones; and buzzing gentian and snot-like primrose; so many petals waiting to be covered in slime, as it is that certain minds are repulsed by blue skies and would much rather grovel than stand upright; tongue languishing, spilled out onto the ground, for a centipede to crawl over, for some snail to pass along.

  II.

  “No, it is not that. It is just that I don’t feel my life is going in the direction that I wish.”

  “But you have a wonderful job.”

  “Which I am going to quit.”

  “Why?” Marcus asked. “You make almost twice as much money as I do.”

  “I have other opportunities,” Dino replied. “And there are more important things than making money.”

  He smiled. Involuntarily. He was a tall, very good-looking young man with broad shoulders, dark blond hair and soft brown eyes. His features were symmetrical.

  “He has nice bone structure,” a woman had once said of him.

  “Well, you have always been fortunate,” his friend, Marcus Hunziker, said now—somewhat thoughtlessly, since fortune is something that is not only intensely subjective, but also almost impossible to understand or calculate.

  The glasses of Prosecco were emptied of their last drops.

  The two men separated. Each went his own way.

  Dino looked up at the cloudless sky and felt sad, at the flowers in the park and felt repulsed.

  III.

  The fact is that nothing is more valued in this world than banality.

  IV.

  He caught sight of a stooping, pigeon-chested man, morphine-sedated, with a loose, flexible nose and ten fingers dangling to the ground. A hallucinating pedestrian. A shame, stinking like a urinal, hand now floating up, now extended to beg a coin.

  Dino lay a five franc piece in that palm; wished it were his: grimy untrimmed nails and quivering digits; envied the ugly—bit his lip when he saw dwarves and felt intensely jealous of hunchbacks. Very short, balding men in baggy, ill-fitting pants fascinated him. Below average mammals. Hiccupping, stuttering idiots with social disabilities, cognitive dysfunctions, tumbling backward on the evolutionary scale.

  V.

  Some carnivorous fish; a city on fire.

  VI.

  He exercised as little as possible, purposefully stooped and went on a fried-foods diet; was attracted to women whose eyeliner was streaked along their cheeks; pleading psychological problems, day after day did not appear for work until, drawing his last pay-cheque, he was put on the unemployment roles, along with blind gardeners and women who scratched themselves as they mumbled about hard times.

  VII.

  The sky has the taste of disgust, screeching like an intoxicated cow or an old tyre.

  VIII.

  The colour of vomit.

  IX.

  Dreamed: a metal cylinder, pollution, blue lakes raped by clouds of smut, dead fish flopping listlessly on the shore.

  X.

  Gradually his complexion began to change—to grow pasty, unhealthy. His teeth went from white to yellow, from yellow to green, and his breath smelled like the oldest of Appenzellers. His past seemed distant—galloping away like a horse hurling itself into hell.

  XI.

  He developed a taste for the cheapest wine—those vinegary distillations the litre bottles of which are unmarked by date—the types of grape poor pensioners drink so as to send their memories paddling off on thrifty lagoons populated by drowsy toads and featherless water birds. After drinking a few bottles of that liquid which was the tint of mule blood, eating a piece of liver fried in peanut oil, he would stroll off onto the piazza, sniff around the dresses of German tourists, swagger through the cafés, snatching up handfuls of potato chips from the counters, visiting remodelled urinals and subsequently striking up conversations with deaf widowers or young women who had grown fat on alpine cheese and who would deal with his advances by making guttural sounds and displaying mouthfuls of staggered teeth.

  XII.

  His smile looked like bloody sheep fat.

  XIII.

  “I am gaining ground,” he drawled, as he looked at himself in the mirror.

  XIV.

  He searched out beings to befriend, took a train to Milan, scavenged in the gutters, picked up tramps with oozing flesh and drank horrible pale liquids with men who played dice in alleyways. Later, he would wake up on the edge of town, in some ditch and, after picking the earwigs and beetles out of his hair, wander to some road-side bar where he would stand a round to truck-drivers and those whores who hunt on the outskirts, pot-bellied women with muscular calves from much walking.

  XV.

  Indeed, progress he was making. His friends had fallen away from him, at first one by one—and then en masse. If one happened to see him approaching on the street, they would be sure to hurry away in order to avoid him—avoid the evil smell that came from his person, the depressing atmosphere that surrounded him like a sea of miasma.

  XVI.

  Women no longer smiled at him and, if he smiled at them, their usual rebuttal was “Disgusting!” which filled him with a satisfaction difficult to explain, but one which is probably not entirely unknown to our readers, who undoubtedly have at times felt a certain pride in the stench spewed out of their underarms, a certain smugness as their bellies grow
larger and drag closer to the earth, stuffed as they are with old grease and new wine—the rinds of some unhealthy bit of cheese, the scrapings of a fry pan, or a few bites of mealy apple, a half moon of fermented citrus . . .

  “Well, thank God for brothels,” he said to himself.

  Because the friends you pay for are certainly better than those who sanctimoniously claim to offer themselves selflessly. The friends you pay for will twist themselves into almost any position, stand on their heads, apply their outdated lips to your knuckles as you stuff a few worthy banknotes down their brightly-coloured and disordered brassieres.