Boswell (40 page)

Her nose is a propriety. An attribute. Her mouth… How I love to gaze into the marvelous machinery of her mouth, to watch the tongue as it scales the walls of teeth, to spy on it as it makes its mysterious, wondrous noises. I do not even listen to the words. I don’t even hear them. One listens as one listens to a song, ignoring the words. It is strange to think that they are formed by a brain, that they demonstrate a will. (Away from her I can sometimes think of her as a human being, but when I am with her, never. Even her name, Margaret dei Medici, with its alliterative melody, seems something improbable and anthropomorphic gotten up for children, so that I ’ find I must patronize her, pretend that she is as real as I am, talk of her to herself as one talks of Donald Duck or Mickey Mouse to a child.) How bright of her, I think, to make speech, show anger. It must be just some clever parlor trick performed for company. I should like to see her dance, hear her sing, recite. It is comical that she should wear a dress, jewelry, stockings, complicated underwear, that she should take food and need sleep.

She has eyes. I presume they see. They are green. How remarkable!

How much does she weigh, I wonder. I shall have to lift her.

I have seen the pulse in her neck. It starts my own.

I have seen her legs. Don’t speak of them; they will break your heart.

I have seen her breasts. Enough. You will go mad.

April 22, 1960. Rome.

Rudy Lip said that Margaret is the whore of the world. I knocked him down.

Rudy stared up at me from the floor. “This won’t get around, you know. I’ll never say you hit me defending Margaret’s honor. I’ll say you hit me as a professional warning from one international gigolo to another. Well, it’s too late. You should have hit me years ago.”

April 25, 1960. Rome.

I was with Margaret at the cocktail party at the Embassy. She had seen Rudy Lip and he’d told her I had hit him.

“Why did you do such a stupid thing?” she asked me.

“He’s a son of a bitch.”

“We don’t slam people around for that, do we?”

“He said some things,” I said.

“Ah,” she said. “About me.”

“No, of course not. Why should he say anything about you?”

“Why not? He told you he made love to me.”

“I’d never believe anything like that,” I said.

“Why not? It’s true. Rudy is an attractive man.”

“Oh, Margaret.”

“Don’t look so tragic. You know all about me. You won’t reform my character.”

I told her that character had nothing to do with it, that I was worried about her.

“Why?”

“Damn it, Margaret, what if you had a child?”

“I won’t.”

“Why not?” I said gloomily. “You didn’t let
me
use anything.”

She laughed and said who did I think I was dealing with, anyway? She was a Principessa, a Medici. She had status. She was one of five unmarried women in Roman Catholic Italy fitted for her own diaphragm.

April
30, 1960. Rome.

The Principessa had gone to a concert at the Teatro d’Opera.

I bought a ticket. “Near the Principessa dei Medici’s box, please,” I told the girl.

“Oh, sir,” she said, “the Principessa has a season box. I am not sure where it is. Perhaps the flunky would be able to show it to you.” She indicated a big, distinguished-looking old man in elegant livery. So, I thought, they’re really called flunkies. “He does not speak English, however.”

“I’ll make out,” I said.

I went up to the fellow.
“Dove Principessa Medici?”
I said.

He looked at my clothes. ‘Non
lo so,”
he said.

“Come, come,” I said.
“Venire, venire. Sono Principe Boswell il Eccentrico. Dove Principessa Medici?”

“No lo so.”

“Sono Mister Boswell, il ricce Americano, molti dollars, molti macchinas, lotsa lire. Dove Principessa Medici?”

“No lo so.”

“Sono Boswell the lovesick. Dove Principessa?”

“No lo so.”

“Flunky!” I said to the flunky and walked off.

I rented a pair of opera glasses and scanned the boxes. It was half an hour before I located Margaret. I waved to her but she did not respond. During the intermission I went to her box. She didn’t seem very surprised to see me. “Look,” she said, “there are sixty-three princesses in Europe—sixty-four if you count Anastasia. Twenty-six of those girls are the real thing. Perhaps eight of them will one day succeed to a throne. Why don’t you bother one of them?”

“Oh, Margaret,” I said.

“Just thinking of your career,” Margaret said lightly.

“Margaret, I am not Rudy Lip.”

“Don’t be so self-righteous,” Margaret said. “Mr. Lip serves a worthwhile purpose. Mr. Lip is a craftsman, like a leather worker or a blacksmith. You ought to feel sorry for him—and for me too. We’re both in danger of technological unemployment.”

“Margaret,” I pleaded, “talk seriously with me.”

“How can I when you wave those ridiculous opera glasses at me? Besides,” she said, “you are not a serious person.”

“I am so.”

“No,” she said. “You’re not. You are not serious. You’re only obsessed.”
She
was serious.

“By love,” I said lightly.

“Maybe,” she said. “Oh, I don’t know.”

“I’m taller than you are,” I said absently.

“What?”

“I’m stronger.”

“Don’t show off,” she said.

“I’m older and heavier. Oh, Margaret, we’re perfect for each other.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“It’s because I’m a commoner.”

“Oh, honestly, Boswell,” she said impatiently, “would you want your sister to marry one of them?”

The music began and she had nothing more to say to me.

This conversation with Margaret has illustrated an important principle to me. It was something I was aware of before, of course, but it was only our exchange and something that happened earlier in the week that brought it home to me so forcefully. I had gone to one of those movie houses here in Rome where there is a variety show after the film. They are sort of haphazard and just barely professional, and I find they relax me. When the lights came on after the picture and I looked around to see who was in the house, I noticed two men coming down the aisle toward me. As usual, I was sitting in the front row in order to see into the wings, and when the men passed I saw they carried instruments. The piano player and the drummer were already set up in the pit. The men with the instruments still had their coats on. There was no way of getting into the pit unless they climbed over the railing. It was a little awkward with the instruments, and the piano player reached up and took their cases from the two men and then offered his arm to steady them as they climbed into the pit.

Once he was in the pit the taller of the two men picked up his instrument case and took out a saxophone. He was fitting the pieces together when the piano player came up and started to talk to him. By the earnest expression on both their faces I could almost guess what they were saying.

The piano player was saying, “Henry, it’ll depend upon the timing. If it looks like we’re going to be pressed we’ll just have to forget it, but if I nod after the seals I want you to go into your solo on number 14. It may work out. Douglas was telling me that the trailers will be very short tonight, but the time saved there may be lost during the collection for Victims of Earthquake Relief.”

The sax man nodded and said, “My lip’s a little thick anyway. I was doing a wedding until two this morning.”

“Well, we’ll just have to see,” the piano player said. Then he twirled around on his stool and leaning slightly forward began to address the others. “Listen,” he probably said, “take Rose’s number pianissimo. She was complaining last time that the audience couldn’t hear the taps.”

“There’s a crack in my drum,” the drummer probably said.

“Bass or snare?”

“Bass.”

“Why didn’t you get it skinned?”

“Walter the Skinner is down with flu,” the drummer probably said.

“Oh,” the piano player probably said. “Well, just hit it very lightly. That’ll work out all right in Rose’s number anyway.”

“I use the snare in Rose’s number,” the drummer probably said.

“Okay,” the piano player probably said. “Are we all straight?” He looked at the other musicians.

The other musicians nodded that they were all straight, and indeed they were. It was this which my life lacked. I had never had a conversation like this. I mean, this is the way people talk to each other. This is the way things get done. One man asks another man where Taylor Street is, or what train his wife is coming in on, or how many beds are set up in the hospital for the casualties, and the other man tells him. There’s no hanky-panky. It’s very professional. Serious! Scientific! There are no conversational flights soaring toward planes where life is not lived, no badinage, no repartee. What a calm, silent, serene world, I think.

The Principessa sensed this about me at once. She cannot love me because she thinks she cannot talk seriously to me. She is afraid of me, as one is always a little afraid of anyone who one suspects is not entirely serious. From time to time I have even felt this myself. Why else do I always have so much to say to elevator operators, to clerks, to officials? It’s as though I deliberately seek them out to practice some foreign language on them. But I haven’t the art of it, really. Even with them I am soon involved in conversational maneuvers. I fall back on my English, as it were, and instantly we are into a routine, like two people at some college reunion with nothing in common but their briefly mutual past. If I am ever to be successful in my campaign with the Principessa I must remember what I learned from the musicians. I will be ruthlessly clinical; I will introduce shop talk into love.

“Look, Principessa,” I will say, “the angle hasn’t been right. Slip this pillow beneath your buttocks. Let’s try for fifteen minutes of pre-play tonight. Of course, we’ll have to see how the time is. I haven’t had an orgasm in three weeks and I may not be able to control it. But let’s see how it works out. Are you ready? All right, begin!”

May 4, 1960. Rome.

I told Margaret that I meant to have all the experiences and she said she had already had them and couldn’t we do something else, and I told her very frankly, I said, “Listen, Principessa, Margaret—dear—this is
my
love affair and we’ll do it my way. It’s not my fault you’re a depraved sybarite and come to me deflowered and spoiled and idly rich and all.”

“Well,” she asked, “what
are
all the experiences?”

“Actually,” I said, “I was hoping you could help me. After all, this is rather outside my usual line.”

“Well, what did you have in mind? Something flashy and expensive?”

“No, no,” I said. “I think not. Why not utilize the resources at hand?”

“Like Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck in
Roman Holiday?”

“That’s it, that’s it,” I said. “You can pretend you’re just an ordinary shopgirl and I’ll be an ordinary shopper. Cinderella in reverse, you see. Young love at its simplest and most innocent, with all the anxiety about screwing and everything left in. I’m thirty-two years old but I think I could handle it.”

“Well,” she said doubtfully.

“Please,” I said. “You’ll see.”

“What could we do? The things I can think of don’t seem like much fun.”

“Say what you’re thinking.”

“We could go to the Colosseum by moonlight,” she said doubtfully.

“Excellent,” I said. “We’ll do that. For a starter we’ll go to the Colosseum by moonlight.”

We went to the Colosseum by moonlight, but we had to wait two days because it was raining. On the morning of the third day I called Margaret and told her that the paper said fair, and we promised to meet that night

“I’ll pick you up at the
pensione,”
Margaret said.

“No, no,” I said. “I mustn’t see your car. Come in by bus.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Margaret said. “No buses come this far out the Appia Antica that time of night.”

“All right,” I said, “but don’t pick me up. Park your car on a side street and I’ll meet you in front of the place.”

“Aren’t you afraid I’ll be raped?”

“Are you kidding? The whore of the world?” This was our little joke.

I met Margaret at the main entrance to the Colosseum.

“It’s locked,” she said.

“Why? What could anyone take?”

“It’s locked,” she said. “Try it yourself.”

I went up to the big iron gate that had been set across the main arch. It was sealed only by a small Yale lock. I’ll break it, I decided, queerly pleased that I was still something of an outsider, that some violations were still a matter of strength.

For some reason I did not want Margaret to watch me. “I think I might be able to pick the lock,” I said. “You stand over there and warn me if anyone comes.”

I turned back to the lock. I spat on my hands. Tugging at the lock experimentally, I saw that I wouldn’t be able to twist the metal. It was sturdier than I had thought. If I were to break it I would have to pull the bolt loose in exactly the same way that I would if I’d had a key. Gripping the torso of the lock in my palm I pulled heavily against the bolt. It didn’t move. What’s this? I thought testily. What’s this? I put both hands around the lock, working my finger through the steel arch. I set my feet carefully into position, like an athlete seeking leverage, and strained against the lock mightily. I heard the gate itself creak as it bulged petuantly on its hinges, but the lock remained intact. I could almost see the thick, brutish overbite of the jagged metal inside the lock.

“Hurry,” Margaret said, thirty feet away.

Shut up, I thought. Leave me alone.

“In a minute, Margaret,” I said. “This is delicate work.”

All right, I thought. Now! I folded both hands about the lock, lacing my fingers. I invoked Sandusky. It was an intrusion. I thought of myself alone in the gymnasium, in the jockstrap, under the weights, the tons of metal on my back. I heaved against the lock. “Because,” I murmured, “because my heart is pure.” It didn’t budge. “Because, because,” I insisted, “because my fucking heart is pure!” I broke my heart against that lock. It wouldn’t give. My strength is gone, I thought. And in an Olympic year. It was important. Panic filled me like something sour. I was out of condition and the condition was singleness, and my strength—any I’d ever had—had been in that. You were not in it for the money, I thought. You were
not.
I had been shorn. Had I touched my head I would have felt scalp. Hairless as Samson, like some gross fairy, I sweated outside the Colosseum in the moonlight, in the soft air. In rain I might have broken it, I thought. In rougher weather. The condition was singleness, and I was out of it. Aloneness. My strength was in solitude. In being a stranger in town, in lies, in indifference. In the heart’s decision to go it alone, in its conviction that it could hold out against the world’s ponderous siege. For months, for years, guaranteed for life like an expensive watch. Oh Christ, I thought, it isn’t fair, to be burdened like that, to
have
to be a hero. Who needs it? To have always to reject and refuse and negate like some saint in reverse. Not to give quarter, that was simply good generalship, but not to
accept
it, that was insanity.