Doctor Faustus (35 page)

In short, in town as in the isolation of the country village the two led a life remote from the world and mankind, entirely taken up by the cares of their work. At least one can so express it. And shall I say that the departure from the Manardi house, however unwillingly I now as always left Adrian’s side, was accompanied with a certain private feeling of relief? To utter it is equivalent to the obligation of justifying the feeling, and that is hard to do without putting myself and others in a somewhat laughable light. The truth is: in a certain point,
in puncto puncti
as young people like to say, I formed in the company a somewhat comic exception and fell so to speak out of the frame; namely, in my quality and way of life as a benedict, which paid tribute to what we half excusingly, half glorifyingly called “nature.” Nobody else in the castello-house on the terraced lane did so. Our excellent hostess, Signora Peronella, had been a widow for years, her daughter Amelia was a half-idiot child. The brothers Manardi, lawyer and peasant, seemed to be hardened bachelors, yes, one could imagine that neither of them had ever laid a finger on a woman. There was Cousin Dario, grey and mild, with a tiny, ailing little wife, a pair whose love could certainly be interpreted only in the caritas sense of the word. And finally there were Adrian and Rüdiger Schildknapp, who spent month after month in this austere and peaceful circle that we had learned to know, living not otherwise than did the cloistered monks above. Would not that, for me, the ordinary man, have something mortifying and depressing about it?

Of Schildknapp’s particular relation to the wide world of possibilities for happiness, and of his tendency to be sparing with them, as he was sparing with himself, I have spoken before. I saw in it the key to his way of life, it served me as explanation for the fact, otherwise hard for me to understand, that he succeeded in it. It was otherwise with Adrian, although I felt certain that this community of chastity was the basis of their friendship, or if the word is too strong, their life together. I suspect that I have not succeeded in hiding from the reader a certain jealousy of the Silesian’s relations with Adrian; if so, he may also understand that it was this life in common, this bond of continence, with which after all my jealousy had to do.

If Schildknapp, let us say, lived as a roue of the potentialities, Adrian—I could not doubt it—since that journey to Graz or otherwise Pressburg, lived the life of a saint—as indeed he had done up to then. But now I trembled at the thought that his chastity since then, since that embrace, since his passing contagion and the loss of his physicians, sprang no longer from the ethos of purity but from the pathos of impurity.

There had always been in his nature something of
noli me tangere
. I knew that; his distaste for the too great physical nearness of people, his dislike of “getting in each other’s steam,” his avoidance of physical contact, were familiar to me. He was in the real sense of the word a man of disinclination, avoidance, reserve, aloofness. Physical cordialities seemed quite impossible to associate with his nature, even his handshake was infrequent and hastily performed. More plainly than ever this characteristic came out during my visit and to me, I cannot say why, it was as though the “Touch me not!” the “three paces off,” had to some extent altered its meaning, as though it were not so much that an advance was discouraged as that an advance from the other side was shrunk from and avoided—and this, undoubtedly, was connected with his abstention from women.

Only a friendship as keen-eyed and penetrating as mine could feel or divine such a change of significance; and may God keep me from letting my pleasure in Adrian’s company be affected thereby! What was going on in him could shatter me but never sever me from him. There are people with whom it is not easy to live; but to leave impossible.

CHAPTER XXV

The document to which repeated reference has been made in these pages, Adrian’s secret record, since his demise in my possession and guarded like a frightful and precious treasure, here it is, I offer it herewith. The biographical moment has come. And accordingly I myself must cease to speak, since in spirit I have turned my back on his deliberately chosen refuge, shared with the Silesian, where I had sought him out. In this twenty-fifth chapter the reader hears Adrian’s voice direct.

But is it only his? This is a dialogue which lies before us. Another, quite other, quite frightfully other, is the principal speaker, and the writer, in his stone-floored living-room, only writes down what he heard from that other. A dialogue? Is it really a dialogue? I should be mad to believe it. And therefore I cannot believe that in the depths of his soul Adrian himself considered to be actual that which he saw and heard—either while he heard and saw it or afterwards, when he put it on paper; notwithstanding the cynicisms with which his interlocutor sought to convince him of his objective presence. But if he was not there, that visitor—and I shudder at the admission which lies in the very words, seeming even conditionally and as a possibility to entertain his actuality—then it is horrible to think that those cynicisms too, those jeerings and jugglings, came out of the afflicted one’s own soul…

It goes without saying that I have no idea of turning over Adrian’s manuscript to the printer. With my own hand I will transcribe it word for word in my text from the music-paper covered with his script, which I characterized earlier in these memoirs: his small, old-fashioned, florid, very black round-hand, the writing of a scribe, a monk, one might say. He used his music notepaper obviously because no other was at hand at the moment, or because the little shop down in the Piazza St. Agapitus had no proper writing-paper. There are always two lines on the upper five-line system and two on the bass; the white spaces in between are covered throughout with two lines each.

Not with entire definiteness can the time of writing be made out, for the document bears no date. If my conviction is worth anything, it was certainly not written after our visit to the mountain village or during our stay there. Either it comes from earlier in the summer, of which we spent three weeks with the friends, or it dates from the summer before, the first they spent as guests of the Manardis. That at the time we were there the experience which is the basis of the manuscript lay already in the past; that Adrian at that time had already had the conversation which follows, amounts with me to a certainty; so does it that he wrote it down at once after the event, presumably the very next day.

So now I copy it down—and I fear that no distant explosions jarring my retreat will be needed to make my hand shake as I write and my letters to be ill-formed.

* * *

Whist, mum’s the word. And certes I schal be mum, will hold
my
tunge, were it sheerly out of shame, to spare folkes feelings, for social considerations forsooth! Am firmly minded to keep fast hold on reason and decency, not giving way even up till the end. But seen Him I have, at last, at last! He was with me, here in this hall, He sought me out; unexpected, yet long expected. I held plenteous parley with Him, and now thereafter I am vexed but sith I am not certain whereat I did shake all the whole time: an ‘twere at the cold, or at Him. Did I beguile myself, or He me, that it was cold, so I might quake and thereby certify myself that He was there, Himself in person? For verily no man but knows he is a fool which quaketh at his proper brain-maggot; for sooner is such welcome to him and he yieldeth without or shaking or quaking thereunto. Mayhap Fie did but delude me, making out by the brutish cold I was no fool and He no figment, since I a fool did quake before Him? He is a wily-pie.

Natheles I will be mum, will hold
my
tonge and mumchance hide all down here on my music-paper, whiles my old jester-fere
in eremo
, far away in the hall, travails and toils to turn the loved outlandish into the loathed mother tongue. He weens that I compose, and were he to see that I write words, would but deem Beethoven did so too.

All the whole day, poor wretch, I had lien in the dark with irksome mygrym, retching and spewing, as happeth with the severer seizures. But at eventide quite suddenly came unexpected betterment. I could keep down the soup the Mother brought me (“
Poveretto!
); with good cheer drank a glass of rosso (“
Bevi, bevi!
”) and on a sudden felt so staunch as to allow myself a cigarette. I could even have gone out, as had been arranged the day before. Dario M. wanted to take us down to his club and introduce us to the better sort of Praenestensians, show us reading-room, billiard-room, and about the place. We had no heart to offend the good soul, but it came down to Sch. going alone, I being forgiven due to my attack. From
pranzo
he stalked off with a sour countenance, down the street at Dario’s side to the farmers and philistines, and I stopped by myself.

I sate alone here, by my lamp, nigh to the windows with shutters closed, before me the length of the hall, and read Kirkegaard on Mozart’s
Don Juan
.

Then in a clap I am stricken by a cutting cold, even as though I sat in a winter-warm room and a window had blown open towards the frost. It came not from behind me, where the windows lie; it falls on me from in front. I start up from my boke and look abroad into the hall, belike Sch. is come back for I am no more alone. There is some bodye there in the mirk, sitting on the horsehair sofa that stands almost in the myddes of the room, nigher the door, with the table and chairs, where we eat our breakfasts. Sitting in the sofa-corner with legs crossed; not Sch., but another, smaller than he, in no wise so imposing and not in truth a gentilman at all. But the cold keeps percing me.

“
Chi e costa?
” is what I shout with some catch in my throat, propping my hands on the chair-arms, in such wise that the book falls from my knees to the floore. Answers the quiet, slow voice of the other, a voice that sounds trained, with pleasing nasal resonance: “Speak only German! Only good old German without feigned-ness or dissimulation. I understand it. It happens to be just precisely my favoured language. Whiles I understand only German. But fet thee a cloak, a hat and rug. Thou art cold. And quiver and quake thou wilt, even though not taking a cold.”

“Who says
thou
to me?” I ask, chafing.

“I,” he says. “I, by your leave. Oh, thou meanest because thou sayst to nobody thou, not even to thy jester gentilman, but only to the trusty play-fere, he who clepes thee by the first name but not thou him. No matter. There is already enough between us for us to say thou. Wei, then: wilt fet thyself some warm garment?”

I stare into the half-light, fix him angrily in mine eye. A man: rather spindling, not nearly so tall as Sch., smaller even then I.

A sports cap over one ear, on the other side reddish hair standing up from the temple; reddish lashes and pink eyes, a cheesy face, a drooping nose with wry tip. Over diagonal-striped tricot shirt a chequer jacket; sleeves too short, with sausage-fingers coming too far out; breeches indecently tight, worn-down yellow shoes. An ugly customer, a bully, a
strizzi
, a rough. And with an actor’s voice and eloquence.

“Well?” he says again.

“First and foremost I fain would know,” say I in quaking calm, “who is bold enough to force himself in to sit down here with me.”

“First and foremost,”, he repeats. “First and foremost is not bad at all. But you are oversensitive to any visit you hold to be unexpected and undesired. I am no flattering claw-back come to fetch you into company, to woo you that you may join the musical circle; but to talk over our affairs. Wilt fetch thy things? It is ill talking with teeth chattering.”

I sat a few seconds lenger, not taking my eyes off him. And the cutting cold, coming from him, rushes at me, so that I feel bare and bald before it in my light suit. So I go. Verily I stand up and pass through the next door to the left, where my bedchamber is (the others being further down on the same side), take my winter cloke out of the presse that I wear in Rome on tramontana days and it had to come along as I wist not where I might leave it else; put my hat on too, take my rug and so furnished go back to my place.

There he still sits in his, just as I left him.

“Ye’re still there,” say I, turning up my coat-collar and wrapping my plaid about my knees—“even after I’ve gone and come back? I marvel at it. For I’ve a strong suspicion y’are not there at all.”

“No?” he asks in his trained voice, with nasal resonance. “For why?”

I: “Because it is nothing likely that a man should seat himself here with me of an evening, speaking German and giving out cold, with pretence to discuss with me gear whereof I wot nor would wot naught. Miche more like is it I am waxing sicke and transferring to your form the chills and fever against the which I am wrapped, sneaped by frost, and in the beholding of you see but the source of it.”

He (quietly and convincingly laughing, like an actor): “Tilly-vally, what learned gibberidge you talk! In good playne old German, ‘tis fond and frantick. And so artificial! A clever artifice, an ‘twere stolen from thine own opera! But we make no music here, at the moment. Moreover it is pure hypochondria. Don’t imagine any infirmities! Have a little pride and don’t lose grip of yourself! There’s no sickness breaking out, after the slight attack you are in the best of youthful health. But I cry you mercy, I would not be tactless, for what is health? Thuswise, my goodly fere, your sickness does not break out. You have not a trace of fever and no occasion wherefore you should ever have any.”

I: “Further, because with every third word ye utter you uncover your nothingness. You say nothing save things that are in me and come out of me but not out of you. You ape old Kumpf with turns of phrase yet look not as though you ever had been in academie or higher school or ever sat next to me on the scorn-er’s bench. You talk of the needy gentilman and of him to whom I speak in the singular number, and even of such as have done so and reaped but little thank. And of my opera you speak too. Whence could you know all that?”

He (laughs again his practised laugh, shaking his head as at some priceless childishness): “Yea, whence? But see, I do know it. And you will conclude therefrom to your own discredit that you do not see aright? That were truly to set all logick upso-down, as one learns at the schools. ‘Twere better to conclude, not that I am not here in the flesh, but that I, here in my person, am also he for whom you have taken me all the whole time.”