A Rich Full Death

by Michael Dibdin

  Prurient fantasies ran riot in my brain. What barely-mentionable secret lay coiled at the heart of this young woman’s relations with Mr Robert Browning? What was so grotesque and unnatural about them? In a word, what exactly used they to do?

  At length, with an effort that was obvious, she looked me full in the face for the first time.

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Nothing?’

  Her eyes magnificently flashed.

  ‘You see? I said you would not believe me! Oh, it is too shameful!’

  Well, the dam had burst now, and in a flood of words and gestures and tears I had the whole story. My salacious conjectures had been very wide of the mark, it seemed.

  According to Beatrice, Browning spent all his time sitting demurely on the sofa, just as I was at that moment (I almost jumped up, as though the cushion had turned red-hot!). She sat beside him, or on the chair opposite, or walked to and fro. She always wore the smock I had seen on the previous evening, and made herself look as young and unsophisticated as possible-to facilitate this Browning would send a note to inform her of his visits in advance. Not of course-save the mark! — that he had stooped to instructing her explicitly how best to gratify his whims; she had learned her lesson as women do, by noting what he praised and criticised.

  There they were then, sitting side by side on the sofa. Browning would ask her what had happened to her that day, and she would tell him about any little incident that had occurred-sometimes inventing, for want of matter. Or he would recount a walk he had been on, describing the plants and flowers and birds and animals and insects he had seen, in a grotesque and colourful way that had amused her at first. Sometimes she would sing to him, folksongs which her mother had taught her.

  And then, invariably, after about half an hour, he would ask her to comb out her hair for him. Depending on the hints he gave her, she would either stand, or sit, or kneel before him, and set to work-teasing out the individual strands to form a clear untangled stream of hair over her face and bosom, then shaking the shining mass over her shoulders, cascading down her back, or twist it all up into a coil which she then let unwind and fall:

  like a gorgeous snake

  The Roman girls were wont, of old,

  When Rome there was, for coolness’ sake

  To let lie curling o’er their bosoms.

  I take the liberty of quoting from one of Mr Browning’s productions, since he is so much more eloquent upon the topic than I.

  And then, after an hour or so, the poet would rise politely and remark that he had to be going. On each visit he would leave a little gift-a scarf, or painted box, or lace handkerchief with her initial embroidered in the corner-which proved to contain, hidden within its folds or recesses, a silver coin.

  And that, if Beatrice was to be believed, is all that happened.

  ‘But does he then never so much as touch you?’ I enquired incredulously.

  ‘He kisses my brow each time when he leaves. It is like a priest’s kiss.’

  ‘Nothing else?’

  ‘Nothing, I swear it! Except that sometimes he touches my hair-hardly touches it, even, but since I have sworn … He just brushes it, with his fingertips. I cannot even feel it. But he does! It sounds crazy, but it is as if my poor hair is somehow hot, and he had burnt himself.

  ‘I am always afraid then. He struggles for breath like one whose heart troubles him. I do not like to watch him, for my mother died so. But after a while he becomes quite normal again, and goes on talking as if nothing has happened. And that is really all-I swear it by our Holy Mother and all the saints. But you will not believe me.’

  Well, Prescott, what say you? What is your impartial verdict? ‘Nay but you, who do not love her, did she speak the truth, my mistress?’ (Again I take a liberty with Mr Browning’s mistress-forgive me, with his verse!)

  Well, I believed her. A few days earlier I should not have. But incredible as her story might sound, it was virtually identical to the account Browning had given Talenti of his relations with Isabel.

  In other words, if Beatrice was lying then she had very remarkably happened to choose a lie which corresponded exactly to Browning’s own description of his relations with another young woman. Such a coincidence was surely infinitely less probable than the one which I was being asked to accept-especially as the more I turned the whole fantastic business over in my mind, the more it seemed to tally with the shadowy outlines of another, barely-perceived, Browning-one whose figure I had dimly caught sight of stalking through the stanzas of his nastier poems.

  So I believed her, and told her so, and a little rim of shining tenderness appeared in her eyes. I had the feeling of having passed a test, and with an air almost proprietary, got up and strode idly about the room, enquiring more generally about Beatrice’s circumstances. What of her family? And how had she come to meet Mr Browning?

  She replied in the Tuscan manner, frankly and openly. Her mother had died when she was eight, leaving her and her five brothers and sisters to be brought up by an aunt, whose main virtue had been that while she lived she had protected the children from the worst excesses of their father. But with her death the situation of the children became desperate-particularly that of the girls, who were continually subjected to amorous advances on the part of their surviving parent, who had to be kept at bay by the elder brothers.

  Beatrice had meanwhile found work in service to an English family, and the contrast between the squalor of her home life and the gracious atmosphere of culture and polite manners which she breathed in the foreign household where she lived, returning home once weekly, made a deep and lasting impression on her. Then her employers suddenly departed, their daughter having lost her struggle with the octopus in her lungs, and poor Beatrice suddenly found herself plunged back once again into the inferno of her own family.

  She was desperate to find a new position, and contacted a number of friends of her old employers, including the Brownings, in the hope that one of them might wish to employ her. The Brownings had no need of further staff themselves, but had heard through Mr Powers that a newly-arrived American couple were looking for a pleasant reliable girl who spoke some English. And thus it was that Beatrice came to work for the Eakins.

  Deeply grateful, she looked in at Casa Guidi one evening after work to thank her benefactors. When she left, Mr Browning insisted on her taking a cab, for which he paid, and even very gallantly escorted her to it. He asked if everything was satisfactory with her new job, and Beatrice replied that it was, except the post was not live-in’-for this was before the Eakins moved to the villa-so that she had still to spend her evenings at home, with all the horrors this entailed.

  Mr Browning murmured that something might be done. Could she meet him at a cafe in a few days’ time to discuss the matter further?

  ‘And what exactly did you think Mr Browning meant when he said that something might be done?’ I enquired ironically.

  ‘I don’t know. I didn’t care.’

  ‘You must have had some notion, nevertheless.’

  ‘You sound like that policeman! I tell you I didn’t care. If you knew how we lived, all crammed together like puppies, and that disgusting father of mine always trying to touch me-why should I have cared? Anything would have been better than that!’

  And so she went to the rendezvous. Prudent Mr Browning, however, did not appear. Instead, the waiter handed Beatrice a note directing her to come to an address in Via Dante Aligheri.

  ‘When I arrived he simply handed me the key and said he would return in a few days to see that all was well. I could hardly believe it. Two rooms all to myself! It was like being in heaven-so much space and air! I told my family the Americans had changed their minds, as foreigners will, and that I was going to live with them. Much they cared! I never see them now, except my sisters sometimes at church. Two days later Mr Browning came, and we sat and talked for three-quarters of an hour, as I said, and when he went he left a coin behind.

  ‘It has been like t
hat ever since. At first I looked forward to his visits. I was a little lonely, for one thing, but also I admired him-truly! I thought it wonderful that any man should be so noble, so pure and selfless, as priests should be but never are. Not ours, at least-your heretic priests may be better. But then, by degrees, all changed. At first I grew bored with this dressing-up. Am I not young enough? Why pretend to be a child? “If this man really sought my good,” I thought, “he would not try and make me what I no longer am. He would let me be, let me grow, and take delight in that”

  ‘But there was also something else-something more difficult to speak about. This way of his with me-so cool and distant, gossiping like neighbours from one balcony to another-all that was well enough at first, when we were still strangers. But with time it began to trouble me. It is unnatural: men do not behave so with women, that much I know! And so what had seemed pure and noble at first came to seem a hideous and shameful secret which I knew I must keep hidden from all the world-just as he keeps me hidden away here. Do you understand what I mean? I blush to say it, but a time came when I almost wished this Browning would use me as my father tried to do. No, do not look like that! I did not love him-never! But that at least would have been a human thing-I could have understood him, and felt that all was well. As it is, I was frightened. I am frightened.’

  She crossed herself.

  ‘But it will soon be over! He will tire of me-find some younger girl, and turn me out of here. It is terrible to think what will become of me then. My people will have no mercy on me, for I have committed a great sin.’

  ‘But you said there has been no sin!’ I exclaimed.

  ‘Of course there has-the worst in Italy! I have turned my back on my family! Unless some other foreigner takes me in, I am lost.’

  It crossed my mind that it would be extremely unwise of Browning to risk simply ‘turning out’ Beatrice, in view of the disastrous damage she could do his reputation by telling others what she had just told me.

  Then that thought, and its disturbing consequences, was lost in the lingering look Beatrice gave me as she spoke these final words-and at last I felt I understood why she had assumed that prim and proper manner at first. It was not that she had changed her ideas about me. On the contrary, she had been afraid that after what I had seen the previous evening I might have changed mine about her, and had wished to make it very clear that she was not just some demi-mondaine with whom anyone might trifle away a pleasant evening for a price. A marked change had come over her manner since I had accepted that despite appearances this was not what she had been to Browning. Was she now not intimating what she might be to me, and I to her?

  18

  Beatrice may have considered the room which the philanthropic Mr Browning had taken for her to be spacious and airy, as by the standards of the Florentine populace it indeed was; but to my senses it nevertheless appeared distinctly cramped, and on such a night as that, intolerably close and stuffy. I therefore walked over and opened a tall double-door giving on to a small balcony, and stepped outside. It was cooler here; the air was hushed, and from the distance there came a low exploratory rumble, like a kettledrummer trying his instruments quietly in the empty hall before the concert begins.

  A few moments later when Beatrice emerged there was barely enough room for us both. As we stood there side by side in the darkness like two conspirators, I realised once again how remarkably at ease I felt in her company, despite the social gulf between us, and the ambiguous nature of our relations. It was no doubt her foreignness which made the thing possible at all-and once possible, it could not but be easy.

  I pointed out old Dante’s house, fifty yards off on the other side of the street.

  ‘Do you think he chose these rooms because of your name?’ I asked playfully.

  Beatrice’s reply was that characteristic Italian plosive which means that the speaker does not know, does not care, and cannot imagine why any sensible person should do either.

  ‘Who knows what goes on in his head?’ she said. ‘But I don’t want to speak of him.’

  I was leaning over the balcony, looking down at the empty street-when I suddenly felt her right arm lightly brush my face, and caught the perfume of her brown skin. The thing might have gone for nothing, had she not looked at me. But that glance, I know not why, bereft me of all reason, and the next instant I had seized her, lowered my face to hers, and was madly kissing her!

  Arresting this initial impulse was as hopeless as thinking twice about diving into a deep pool a moment after you have jumped. But another moment later, shocked by the delicious impact, I saw my gesture for what it had been-the unbridled licence of a degenerate, who had basely yielded to his animal instincts and forced his repulsive caresses on a helpless girl, rushing in where poets evidently feared to tread. Desperately I struggled to disengage myself, preparing a speech of fulsome apology.

  I struggled. But why did I have to struggle with someone who should have been pushing me away with all her feeble strength? The answer, I realised with amazement, was that far from forcing me away, or collapsing flaccidly, a sacrificial victim to my loathsome embraces, Beatrice was responding to my passion with a vehemence that equalled if not exceeded my own. She was kissing as much as kissed, her beautiful live mouth sporting with mine like a creature which had at long last found its fellow, and was glad.

  My experience of the female sex-apart from casual encounters with women of the streets-had until that evening been limited to a single experience of love which was illicit, protracted, and as devoid of joy as it was of hope. The object of my desires, when she at length yielded to them, did so in such a way that they were instantly extinguished, and nothing remained but my excitement. This, although of course intense, was entirely superficial. I was excited by the idea of possessing this woman I had so long desired-excited by the idea, not by the act itself, which was in every way brutal, brief and unsatisfactory.

  This being so, I was quite unprepared for the very different experience of that night-for I did not return home until morning. And it was Beatrice who wished it! You may not believe that, but it is true. I thought I was seducing her, and all the time it was really she who was seducing me! I am convinced she foresaw the whole encounter-indeed that knowledge came to me, quite literally, in a flash.

  The flash in question was lightning, and it awoke me out of a profound slumber, with a confused impression of being at sea. I seemed to see an open companion-way, the hatches banging back and forth in a high wind, and a stretch of slippery deck beyond, with squalls of rain driving across it-memories dredged up from those years when my father sent me out on the schooners plying across the gulf to Nova Scotia, to make a man of me. As if to confirm the illusion, the thunder sounded out like ripping calico when a sail splits.

  I sat bolt upright, and found myself in a strange bed. On the other side of the room the windows lay swinging open in the wind gusting around the house. The air was filled with the fresh damp smell of rain, and with the sound of it pelting down. Then, suddenly, I made out some sort of shape moving in the darkness. Terror gripped my heart! It had all been too smooth, too convenient and easy. The woman’s tales had been lies, just like the man’s! I had been decoyed to that house-his house-to be made away with!

  Then the lightning-as bodiless as moonlight, though far intenser than the sun-suffused the scene again, and I saw that the figure was Beatrice, as naked as Eve. The torrential rain blowing in through the window, which she had gone to shut, had sprayed her shoulders and bosom, and the skin gleamed like polished bronze. It was the most erotic image I had ever seen, and all my fears were swept away as I sprang from the bed and rushed towards her, and found her in the darkness, and embraced her repeatedly.

  She did plan it, though! She all but admitted as much the next morning as we sat over our coffee. But not for Browning-for herself! She is in love with me, Prescott. Imagine it-Robert Browning’s chosen mistress in love with me! She scorns him, and calls me a real man-as indeed I am with her.<
br />
  She does not of course expect me to marry her. Rather I am to replace her previous protector-who will be politely instructed to discontinue his visits forthwith, as his attentions are no longer desired.

  ‘He will ask why,’ Beatrice pointed out.

  Then tell him!’

  ‘He will ask your name.’

  Tell him!’

  ‘It’s strange! I thought you were his friend.’

  ‘So did I, once,’ I replied grimly. But I did not feel grim-on the contrary, I awaited the outcome with the liveliest interest.

  So much for this part of my tale. Meanwhile events elsewhere were moving rapidly towards their astonishing climax yesterday.

  Last Wednesday morning readers of the local news-sheet were startled by a headline in thunderous capitals, reading ‘TERRIBLE DEATH OF AN UNKNOWN WRETCH!!!’ Here, roughly Englished, is the story which appeared underneath:

  ‘It is early. Sol has not yet shaken his locks above the snowy Apennines, nor will not do so for many hours to come. The city slumbers; each burgher, of whatever rank or station, dreaming of the madcap merrymaking and joyful japes in store at Carnival-tide. The streets are silent, save for the steady reassuring sound of the watchman going his rounds, ever-vigilant in defence of the lives and property of his fellow-citizens.

  ‘As he makes his way along Via di Calimala, near the Old Market, this upright servant of the people perceives a pleasant odour-a perfume redolent of joyful hours around the familial board after Sunday mass, the roast sizzling on the fire. But the zealous watchman straightway thrusts this deceitful vision aside: at hand is a humble palace, once cradle to many generations of Florentines, but which has stood untenanted since Arno in his anger rose two lustra since.

  ‘Wherefore then this olfactory ignis fatuus, this fata morgana of the nostrils, this fragrant will-o’-the wisp? Such is the question which leaps to the alert constable’s mind, and without an instant’s delay or a single thought for his own safety the intrepid one irrupts into the edifice-ignoring, in his single-minded dedication to Duty, the directive affixed to its walls by our enlightened civic authorities, warning the citizenry of the perils attendant upon any such ingression.