Fantastic Night & Other Stories (14 page)

I cannot write any more. My head is so heavy; my limbs ache; I am feverish. I must lie down. Perhaps all will soon be over. Perhaps, this once, fate will be kind to me, and I shall not have to see them take away my boy … I cannot write any more. Farewell dear one, farewell. All my thanks go out to you. What happened was good in spite of everything. I shall be thankful to you till my last breath. I am so glad that I have told you all. Now you will know, though you can never fully understand, how much I have loved you; and yet my love will never be a burden to you. It is my solace that I shall not fail you. Nothing will be changed in your bright and lovely life. Beloved, my death will not harm you. This comforts me.

But who, ah who, will now send you white roses on your birthday? The vase will be empty. No longer will come that breath, that aroma, from my life, which once a year was breathed into your room. I have one last request—the first, and the last. Do it for my sake. Always on your birthday—a day when one thinks of oneself—get some roses and put them in the vase. Do it just as others, once a year, have a Mass said for the beloved dead. I no longer believe in God, and therefore I do not want a Mass said for me. I believe in you alone. I love none but you. Only in you do I wish to go on living—just one day in the year, softly, quietly, as I have always lived near you. Please do this, my
darling, please do it … My first request, and my last … Thanks, thanks … I love you, I love you … Farewell … ”

The letter fell from his nerveless hands. He thought long and deeply. Yes, he had vague memories of a neighbour’s child, of a girl, of a woman in a dancing-hall—all was dim and confused, like a flickering and shapeless view of a stone in the bed of a swiftly running stream. Shadows chased one another across his mind, but would not fuse into a picture. There were stirrings of memory in the realm of feeling, and still he could not remember. It seemed to him that he must have dreamed all these figures, must have dreamed often and vividly—and yet they had only been the phantoms of a dream. His eyes wandered to the blue vase on the writing-table. It was empty. For years it had not been empty on his birthday. He shuddered, feeling as if an invisible door had been suddenly opened, a door through which a chill breeze from another world was blowing into his sheltered room. An intimation of death came to him, and an intimation of deathless love. Something welled up within him; and the thought of the dead woman stirred in his mind, bodiless and passionate, like the sound of distant music

L
AST SUMMER
I
spent a month at Cadenabbia—one of those little places on Lake Como, where white villas are so prettily bowered amid dark trees. The town is quiet enough even during the spring season, when the narrow strand is thronged with visitors from Bellaggio and Menaggio; but in these hot weeks of August it was an aromatic and sunny solitude. The hotel was almost empty. The few stragglers that remained looked at one another quizzically each morning, surprised to see anyone else staying on in so forsaken a spot. For my part, I was especially astonished by the persistence of an elderly gentleman, carefully dressed and of cultivated demeanour, who might have been a cross between an English statesman and a Parisian man-
about-town
. Why, I wondered, did he not go away to some seaside resort? He spent his days meditatively watching the smoke that rose from his cigarette, and occasionally fluttering the pages of a book. There came a couple of rainy days, and in these we struck up acquaintance. He made such cordial advances that the difference between our ages was soon bridged over, and we became quite intimate. Born in Livonia, educated in France and England, he had never had either a fixed occupation or a fixed place of abode. A homeless wanderer, he was, as it were, a pirate or viking—a rover who took his toll of beauty from every place where he chanced to set his foot. An amateur of all the arts, he disdained to practise any. They had given him a thousand happy hours, and he had never given them a moment’s creative force. His life was one of those that seem utterly superfluous, for with his last breath the accumulated store of his experiences would be scattered without finding an heir.

I hinted as much one evening, when we sat in front of the hotel after dinner, watching the darkness steal across the lake.

“Perhaps you are right,” he said with a smile. “I have no interest in memories. Experience is experienced once for all; then it is over and done with. The fancies of fiction, too—do they not fade after a time, do they not perish in twenty, fifty, or a hundred years? But I will tell you an incident which might be worked up 
into a good story. Let us take a stroll. I can talk better when I am on the move.”

We walked along the lovely road bordering the lake, beneath the cypresses and chestnut trees. The water, ruffled by the night breeze, gleamed through the foliage.

“Let me begin with a confession; I was in Cadenabbia last year, in August, and staying at the same hotel. No doubt that will surprise you, for I remember having told you that I make a point of avoiding these repetitions. But you will understand why I have broken my rule as soon as you have heard my story.

Of course the place was just as deserted as it is now. The man from Milan was here, that fellow who spends the whole day fishing, to throw his catch back into the lake when evening comes, in order to angle for the same fish next morning. There were two Englishmen, whose existence was so tranquil, so vegetative, that one hardly knew they were there. Besides these, there was a handsome stripling, and with him a charming though rather pale girl. I have my doubts whether she was his wife—they seemed much too fond of one another for that.

Last of all, there was a German family, typical North Germans. A lean, elderly woman, a faded blonde, all elbows and gawkiness; she had piercing blue eyes, and her peevish mouth looked like a slit cut by a knife. The other woman was unmistakably her sister, for she had the same traits, though somewhat softened. The two were always together, silently bent over their needlework, into which they seemed to be stitching all the vacancy of their minds—the pitiless Grey Sisters of a world of tedium and restraints. With them was a girl, sixteen or seventeen years old, the daughter of one or the other. In her, the harshness of the family features was softened, for the delicate contours of budding womanhood were beginning to show themselves. All the same she was distinctly plain, being too lean and still immature. Moreover, she was unbecomingly dressed, and yet there was something wistful about her appearance.

Her eyes were large, and full of subdued fire; but she was so bashful that she could not look anyone in the face. Like the mother and the aunt, she always had some needlework with her, though she was not as industrious as they; from time to time the movements of her hands would grow sluggish, her fingers would
doze, and she would sit motionless, gazing dreamily across the lake. I don’t know what it was that I found so attractive in her aspect on these occasions. Was it no more than the commonplace but inevitable impression aroused by the sight of a withered mother beside a daughter in the fresh bloom of youth, the shadow behind the substance; the thought that in every cheek there lurks a fold; in every laugh, weariness; in every dream, disillusionment? Was it the ardent but aimless yearning that was so plainly manifest in her expression, the yearning of those wonderful hours in a girl’s life when her eyes look covetously forth into the universe because she has not yet found the one thing to which in due time she will cling—to rot there as algae cling to and rot on a floating log? Whatever the cause, I found it pathetic to watch her, to note the loving way in which she would caress a dog or a cat, and the restlessness with which she would begin one task after another only to abandon it. Touching, too, was the eagerness with which she would scan the shabby books in the hotel library, or turn the well-thumbed pages of a volume or two of verse she had brought with her, would muse over the poems of Goethe or Baumbach.”

He broke off for a moment, to say: “What are you laughing at?”

I apologized. “You must admit that the juxtaposition of Goethe and Baumbach is rather quaint.”

“Quaint? Perhaps it is. But it’s not so funny after all. A girl at that age doesn’t care whether the poetry she reads is good or bad, whether the verses ring true or false. The metrical lines are only the vessels in which there can be conveyed something to quench thirst; and the quality of the wine matters nothing, for she is already drunken before she puts her lips to the cup.

That’s how it was with this girl. She was brimful of longing. It peeped forth from her eyes, made her fingers wander tremulously over the table, gave to her whole demeanour an awkward and yet attractive appearance of mingled timidity and impulsiveness. She was in a fever to talk, to give expression to the teeming life within her; but there was no one to talk to. She was quite alone as she sat there between those two chill and circumspect elders, whose needles were plied so busily on either side of her. I was full of compassion for her, but I could not make any advances.
What interest has such a girl in a man of my age? Besides, I detest opening up acquaintance with a family circle, and have a particular dislike for these philistine women of a certain age.

A strange fancy seized me. ‘Here,’ I thought to myself, ‘is a girl fresh from school, unfledged and inexperienced, doubtless paying her first visit to Italy. All Germans read Shakespeare, and thanks to Shakespeare (who never set foot in Italy!) this land will be to her the land of romance and love—of Romeos, secret adventures, fans dropped as signals, flashing daggers, masks,
duennas
, and
billets-doux
. Beyond question she must be dreaming of such things; and what limits are there to a girl’s dreams, those streams of white cloud floating aimlessly in the blue, flashing red and gold when evening falls? Nothing will seem to her improbable or impossible.’ I made up my mind to find her a lover.

That evening I wrote a long letter, a tender epistle, yet full of humility and respect. It was in German, but I managed to impart an exotic flavour to the phrasing. There was no signature. The writer asked nothing and offered nothing. It was the sort of
love-letter
you will find in a novel—not too long—and characterized, if I may use the term, by a reserved extravagance. Knowing that, driven by the urge of her inner restlessness, she was always the first to enter the breakfast-room, I rolled this letter inside her table-napkin.

Next morning, I took up a post of observation in the garden. Watching her through the window, I marked her incredulous surprise. She was more than surprised, she was startled; her pale cheeks were tinted with a sudden flush, which spread down the neck. She looked round in alarm; her hands twitched; furtively, she hid the missive. Through out breakfast she was restless, and could hardly eat a morsel, for her one desire was to get away into an unfrequented alley where she could pore over the mysterious letter—did you speak?”

I had made an involuntary movement, and had to account for it.

“You were taking a big risk. Did you not foresee that she might make inquiries, might ask the waiter how the letter found its way into her table-napkin? Or that she might show it to her mother?”

“Of course I thought of such possibilities. But if you had seen the girl, had noted how she was scared if anyone spoke loudly, you would have had no anxiety at all. There are some young women who are so shamefaced that a man can take with them any liberties he pleases. They will endure the uttermost because they cannot bear to complain about such a thing.

I was delighted to watch the success of my device. She came back from her walk in the garden, and my own temples throbbed at the sight of her. She was a new girl, with a more sprightly gait. She did not know what to do with herself; her cheeks were burning once more, and she was adorably awkward in her embarrassment. So it went on throughout the day. She glanced at one window after another as if hoping to find there the clue to the enigma, and looked searchingly at every passer-by. Once her eyes met mine, and I averted my gaze, being careful not to betray myself by the flicker of an eyelid. But in that fugitive instant I became aware that a volcano of passionate inquiry was raging within her; I was, indeed, almost alarmed at the realization, for I remembered what I had learnt long years before, that no pleasure is more seductive and more dangerous. than that which comes to a man when he is the first to awaken such a spark in a girl’s eyes.

I watched her as she sat with idle fingers between the two stitching elders, and I saw how from time to time her hand moved towards a particular part of her dress where I was sure the letter lay hidden. The fascination of the sport grew. That evening I wrote a second letter, and continued to write to her night after night. It became more and more engrossing to instil into these letters the sentiments of a young man in love, to depict the waxing of an imaginary passion. No doubt one who sets snares for game has similar sensations; the deer-stalker must enjoy them to the full. Almost terrified at my own success, I was half in mind to discontinue the amusement; but the temptation to persevere in what had been so well begun was too much for me.

By now she seemed to dance as she walked; her features showed a hectic beauty. All her nights must have been devoted to expectation of the morning letter, for there were black rings beneath her eyes. She began to pay more attention to her appearance, and wore flowers in her hair. She touched everything
more tenderly, and looked ever more questioningly at the things upon which her glance lighted, for I had interwoven into the letters numerous indications that the writer was near at hand, was an Ariel who filled the air with music, watched all she did, but deliberately remained invisible.

So marked was the increase of cheerfulness, that even the dull old women noticed it, for they watched her springing gait with kindly inquisitiveness, noted the bloom on her cheeks, and exchanged meaning smiles with one another. Her voice became richer, more resonant, more confident; often it seemed as if she were on the point of bursting out into triumphant song, as if—But you’re amused once more!”

“No, no, please go on with your story. I was only thinking how extraordinarily well you tell it. You have a real talent, and no novelist could better this recital.”

“You seem to be hinting that I have the mannerisms of your German novelists, that I am lyrically diffuse, stilted, sentimental, tedious. I will try to be more concise. The marionette danced, and I pulled the strings skilfully. To avert suspicion from myself (for I sometimes felt her eyes rest on me dubiously), I had implied in the letter that the writer was not actually staying at Cadenabbia but at one of the neighbouring resorts, and that he came over here every day by boat. Thenceforward, whenever the bell rang to indicate the approach of the steamer, she would make some excuse for eluding maternal supervision, and from a corner of the pier would breathlessly watch the arrivals.

One day—the afternoon was overcast, and I had nothing better to do than to watch her—a strange thing happened. Among the passengers was a handsome young fellow, rather overdressed, after the Italian manner. As he surveyed the landing stage, he encountered the young girl’s glance of eager inquiry. A smile involuntarily played round her lips, and her cheeks flamed. The young man started; his attention was riveted. Naturally enough, in answer to so ardent a look, full of so much unexpressed meaning, he smiled, and moved towards her. She took to flight; stopped for a moment, in the conviction that this was the long-expected lover; hurried on again; and then glanced back over her shoulder. The old interplay between desire and dread, yearning and shame, in
which tender weakness always proves the stronger! Obviously encouraged, in spite of his surprise, the young man hastened after her. He had almost caught up with her, and I was feeling in my alarm that the edifice I had been building was about to be shattered, when the two elderly women came down the path. Like a frightened bird, the girl flew to seek their protection. The young man discreetly withdrew, but he and the girl exchanged another ardent glance before he turned away. I had had a warning to finish the game, but still the lure overpowered me, and I decided to enlist chance in my service. That evening I wrote her a letter that was longer than ever, in terms that could not fail to confirm her suspicion. To have two puppets to play with made the amusement twice as great.

Next morning I was alarmed to note signs of disorder; the charming restlessness had been replaced by an incomprehensible misery. Her eyes were tear-stained, and her silence was like the silence which preludes a fit of weeping. I had expected signs of joyous certainty, but her whole aspect was one of despair. I grew sick at heart. For the first time an intrusive force was at work; my marionette would not dance when I pulled the string. I racked my brains vainly in the attempt to discover what was amiss. Vexed and anxious at the turn things had taken, and determined to avoid the unconscious accusation of her looks, I went out for the whole day. When I returned, the matter was cleared up. Their table was not laid; the family had left. She had had to go away without saying a word to her lover. She could not dare to tell her mother and her aunt all that another day, another hour, might mean to her. They had snatched her out of this sweet dream to some pitiful little provincial town. I had never thought of such an end to my amusement. There still rises before my eyes the accusation of that last look of hers, instinct with anger, torment, and hopelessness. I still think of all the suffering I brought into her young life, to cloud it perhaps for many years to come.”