Ocean Sea (19 page)

CHAPTER 5

Bartleboom

I
T WENT LIKE THIS
. He had gone to take the waters, Bartleboom, at the spa of Bad Hollen, a frightful place, if you see what
I mean. He used to go there for certain complaints that bothered him, to do with his prostate, an annoying business, a nuisance. When it gets you down there it’s a real nuisance, always,
nothing serious, mind, but you have to take care, you have to do loads of ridiculous, humiliating things. As for him, Bartleboom always used to go to the spa at Bad Hollen, for example. A frightful
place, among other things.

But anyway.

Bartleboom was there with his fiancée, a certain Maria Luigia Severina Hohenheith, a beautiful woman, there was no doubt, but of the opera-house variety, if you see what I mean. All
front. You felt like turning her around to see if there was anything behind the makeup and the gush and all the rest. You didn’t do it of course, but you felt like it. Bartleboom, to tell the
truth, had not pledged his troth with much enthusiasm; on the contrary. This should be said. One of his aunts, Aunt Matilda, had done everything. You have to understand that at that time he was
virtually surrounded by aunts, and to tell the whole story, he
depended
on them, economically I mean, he didn’t have two pennies to rub together. It was the aunts who paid up. Which
was the exact consequence of that impassioned and total dedication to science that had bound Bartleboom’s life to that ambitious
Encyclopedia of the Limits
etcetera, a great and
meritorious work, which, however, prevented him, obviously, from attending to his professional duties, persuading him every year to leave his position as professor and his corresponding salary to a
temporary substitute, who in this case—that is, throughout the entire seventeen-year period in which this state of affairs continued—was me. From this, as you will understand, springs
my gratitude to him, and my admiration for his work. It goes without saying. These are things that a man of honor does not forget.

But anyway.

Aunt Matilda had done everything, and Bartleboom hadn’t been able to put up much in the way of resistance. He was betrothed. But he hadn’t taken it particularly well. He had lost
some of that sparkle . . . his soul had clouded over, if you see what I mean. It was as if he had expected something different, something quite different. He wasn’t prepared for all that
normality. He soldiered on, no more than that. Then one day, there in Bad Hollen, he and his fiancée and his prostate went to a reception, an elegant affair, all champagne and gay popular
music. Waltzes. And there he met Anna Ancher. She was special, that woman. She painted. And well, too, they said. Another type altogether, compared to Maria Luigia Severina, you understand. It was
she who stopped him, amid the hubbub of the party.

“Excuse me . . . you are Professor Bartleboom, aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“I am a friend of Michel Plasson’s.”

It emerged that the painter had written to her thousands of times, telling her about Bartleboom and other things, and in particular about that
Encyclopedia of the Limits
etcetera, an
account that, according to her, had made quite an impression on her.

“I would be charmed to see your work one day.”

That’s exactly what she said:
charmed.
She said it tilting her little head slightly to one side and pushing back a lock of raven hair from her eyes. Masterly stuff. For Bartleboom
it was as if those words had been injected directly into his bloodstream. They reverberated all the way down to his trousers, so to speak. He mumbled something and from then on he did nothing but
sweat. He sweated brilliantly, he did, when he needed to. The temperature had nothing to do with it. He did it all by himself.

Perhaps it might have all ended there, that story, but the next day, when he was out walking, alone, turning those words and all the rest over and over in his head, Bartleboom saw a carriage
going past, one of those handsome ones, with luggage and hatboxes on the top. It was heading out of town. And inside, he could see her perfectly, was Anna Ancher. It was really her. Raven hair.
Little head. The lot. Even the reverberations in the trousers were the same as the day before. Bartleboom understood. Despite what they say around town, he was a man who, when it was necessary, was
capable of taking his decisions and no mistake, when it was necessary he didn’t hang back. And so he went back home, packed his bags, and, all ready to leave, presented himself before his
fiancée, Maria Luigia Severina. She was busy amid a muddle of brushes, ribbons, and necklaces.

“Maria Luigia . . .”

“Please, Ismael, I am already late . . .”

“Maria Luigia, I wish to inform you that you are no longer betrothed.”

“Very well, Ismael, we shall discuss it later.”

“And as a consequence, I am no longer betrothed either.”

“That’s obvious, Ismael.”

“Good-bye, then.”

What was amazing about that woman was the slowness of her reactions. We talked about the matter more than once with Bartleboom. He was absolutely fascinated by that phenomenon, he had also
studied it, so to speak, and had ended up by acquiring a virtually scientific and complete competence in the subject. In the circumstances, he was therefore perfectly aware that the time at his
disposal to get away from that house scot-free was between twenty-two and twenty-six seconds. He had calculated that this would have been enough for him to reach the coach. And in fact it was in
the precise moment that he was lowering his bottom onto the seat of the conveyance that the clear morning air of Bad Hollen was shattered by an inhuman scream:

“BAAAAAAARTLEBOOM!”

What a voice she had, that woman. Even years afterwards, in Bad Hollen, they said that it was as if someone had dropped a piano straight onto a warehouse full of crystal chandeliers.

Bartleboom had made his inquiries: the Anchers stayed at Hollenberg, fifty-four miles north of Bad Hollen. He set off. He was wearing his Sunday best. Even his hat was his Sunday hat. He was
sweating, true, but within the limits of common decency. The coach bowled along the road between the hills. Everything seemed to be going in the best way possible.

Bartleboom was quite clear about the words he would say to Anna Ancher, when he appeared before her:

“Miss Ancher, I have been waiting for you. I have been waiting for you for years.”

And, bingo, he would hand her the mahogany box with all the letters, hundreds of letters, a sight that would leave her dumbfounded with amazement and tenderness. It was a good plan, no mistake.
Bartleboom ran through it over and over again during the journey, and this provides food for thought on the complexity of the minds of certain great scholars and thinkers—as was Professor
Bartleboom, beyond any shadow of a doubt—to whom the sublime faculty of concentrating on an idea with abnormal perspicacity and profundity has the questionable corollary of removing
instantly, and in a singularly complete fashion, all other neighboring, related, and associated ideas. Mad as hatters, in short. So, for example, Bartleboom spent the whole journey verifying the
unassailable logic of his plan, but only seven miles outside Hollenberg, and specifically between the villages of Alzen and Balzen, he remembered, to be precise, that that mahogany box, and
therefore all the letters, hundreds of letters,
was no longer in his possession.

Things like that come as a real blow. If you see what I mean.

As a matter of fact, Bartleboom had given the box with the letters to Maria Luigia Severina, on the day of their betrothal. Without much conviction, he had nonetheless brought her the lot, with
a certain solemnity, saying, “I have been waiting for you. I have been waiting for you for years.”

After those ten, twelve seconds of the customary hiatus, Maria Luigia had rolled her eyes, arched her neck, and, incredulous, had proffered a single elementary word:

“Me?”

“Me?” was not exactly the response that Bartleboom had been dreaming of for years, while he was writing those letters and living on his own, getting by the best he could. And so it
goes without saying that he was left a little disappointed in the circumstances, as you can understand. This also explains why, later, he never brought up the matter of the letters again, limiting
himself to checking that the mahogany box was still there, at Maria Luigia’s, and God only knew if anyone had ever opened it. It happens. You have your dreams, personal stuff, intimate, and
then life decides it doesn’t want to play along, and it dismantles them, a moment, a few words, and everything falls apart. It happens. That’s why life is such a wretched business. You
have to resign yourself. Life has no
gratitude,
if you see what I mean.

Gratitude.

But anyway.

Now the problem was that he needed the box, but it was in one of the worst possible places, that is to say somewhere in Maria Luigia’s house. Bartleboom got off the coach at Balzen, five
miles outside Hollenberg, spent the night at the inn, and the next morning took the coach going in the other direction, back to Bad Hollen. His odyssey had begun, if you can believe me.

He adopted the usual technique with Maria Luigia; it could not fail. He presented himself unannounced in the room where she was languishing in bed, getting over her nervous prostration, and
without preamble said, “I have come to take the letters, dear.”

“They are on the desk, my treasure,” she replied with a certain tenderness. Then, after exactly twenty-six seconds, she emitted a strangulated groan and fainted. Bartleboom, it goes
without saying, was already long gone.

He took the coach again, this time in the direction of Hollenberg, and on the evening of the next day he presented himself at the Ancher residence. They accompanied him into the drawing-room,
where he very nearly dropped dead, stone dead in his tracks. The young lady was at the piano, and she was playing—with her little head, the raven hair, and all the rest—playing like an
angel. Alone there, she and the piano and that was all. Unbelievable. Bartleboom stood as if turned to stone, with his mahogany box in his hand, on the threshold of the drawing room, completely
besotted. He couldn’t even manage to sweat. All he could do was stare.

When the music finished, the young lady looked toward him. Definitively ravished, he crossed the drawing room, stood before her, placed the mahogany box on the piano, and said, “Miss Anna,
I have been waiting for you. I have been waiting for you for years.”

Once again the response was a singular one:

“I’m not Anna.”

“Begging your pardon?”

“My name is Elisabetta. Anna is my sister.”

Twins, if you see what I mean.

Like two peas in a pod.

“My sister is at Bad Hollen, at the spa. About fifty miles from here.”

“Yes, I know the road, thank you.”

Things like that come as a blow. And no mistake. A real blow. Fortunately Bartleboom had resources, he had real spiritual staying power, in that carcass of his. He took to the road again,
destination Bad Hollen. If that was where Anna Ancher was, that was where he had to go. Simple. He was more or less halfway there when things began to strike him as being a little less simple. The
fact is, he couldn’t manage to get that music out of his head. Or the piano, the hands on the keyboard, the little head with the raven hair, the whole vision, in other words. Stuff so perfect
that it seemed the devil’s work. Or the work of fate, said Bartleboom to himself. The Professor began to suffer over this story of the twins, both the pianist and the painter, he
couldn’t make head or tail of anything anymore, it was understandable. The more time passed, the less he understood. You might say that for every mile of road, he understood a mile less. He
got off at Pozel, six miles out of Bad Hollen. And there he spent the night. The next day he took the coach for Hollenberg: he had opted for the pianist. More attractive, he thought. He changed his
mind on the twenty-second mile: at Bazel, to be precise, where he got off and spent the night. He left again early the next morning with the coach for Bad Hollen—already intimately betrothed
to Anna Ancher, the painter—only to stop at Suzer, a little town two miles from Pozel, where he definitively established that, as far as character was concerned, he was cut out more for
Elisabetta, the pianist. In the days that followed, his oscillatory movements took him once more to Alzen, then to Tozer, from there to Balzen, and then back again as far as Fazel, and thence, in
order, to Palzen, Rulzen, Alzen (for the third time), and Colzen. By that time the local folk were convinced that he was an inspector from some ministry. Everybody treated him very well. At Alzen,
the third time he passed through, he even found a reception committee waiting for him. He took but little account of this. He wasn’t a formal type. He was a simple man, was Bartleboom, one
hell of a simple man. And a fair one. Really.

But anyway.

That business could not go on forever. Even though the citizenry appeared well disposed. Sooner or later it had to stop. Bartleboom understood this. And after twelve days of passionate
oscillation, he dressed suitably for the occasion and headed straight for Bad Hollen. He had decided: he would live with a painter. He arrived on a Sunday evening. Anna Ancher was not at home. She
would be back shortly. “I’ll wait,” he said. And he took a seat in a sitting room. It was there that a simple and ruinous image suddenly came to mind with the force of a lightning
bolt: his mahogany box, all nice and shiny, sitting on the piano in the Anchers’ house. He had forgotten it there. These are things that normal people find hard to understand, me for example,
because it’s part of the mystery of great minds, it’s their specialty, the mechanisms of genius, capable of magnificent acrobatics and colossal screw-ups. Bartleboom was one of that
species. Colossal screw-ups, sometimes. But he did not get flustered. He got to his feet and, leaving a message that he would return later, repaired to a little hotel outside town. The next day he
took the coach for Hollenberg. He was beginning to get to know that road rather well, he was becoming, so to speak, a real expert on it. If ever they had instituted a university chair for studies
on that road, you could bet that it would have been his, guaranteed.