The Volcano Lover (16 page)

The duchess counter-offered sixteen hundred pounds. The Cavaliere held firm.

He had not spent much time at court, thoughts of preferment or another appointment to Madrid or Vienna or Paris having long been abandoned. He felt older without Catherine at his side. He sat for his portrait. He told himself it was time to go back. He told others.

Eighteen hundred pounds, said the duchess angrily. Done. He made a few purchases, including Romney's painting of Charles's girl as a priestess of Bacchus, to take back with him to Naples.

He returned, he relapsed into his life, first addressing a backlog of duties, claims, and displays of well-being—he was still good at occupying himself. And he understood that one must combat apathy with new exertions. He undertook a vast project, one that would consume several years: designing fifty acres of English garden in the park of the palace at Caserta. He went on collecting and climbing and cataloguing. He got better at removing treasures from the excavations at Pompeii and Herculaneum under the very eyes of the King's archaeologists. Anything can be done in this country if you know whom to pay off.

Several agreeable, picture-loving English widows of his acquaintance seemed to be proposing to remedy his loneliness, one in London on the eve of his departure, another in Rome, where he stopped for a few weeks on his way back, principally to confer with Mr. Byres, his favorite picture agent there. The lady of Rome tempted him. She was rich, in excellent health, and she played the harp skillfully. With a certain glee he gave Charles an account of her charms, knowing how nervous this would make his beloved nephew, who was counting on being his childless uncle's heir. True, the age of the lady precluded children. However, being a decade younger than the Cavaliere, she still was likely to survive him. But the Cavaliere soon put aside the thought of a rational marriage. Even this lady, so dignified, so inhibited, portended a certain disruption of his habits, a readjustment. What the Cavaliere wanted above all else was calm. He had been meant to be a bachelor … and a widower he would end his days.

What he least wanted, consciously, was any change. He was as well-off as he could be. Yet the groin ached. Fantasy could not be denied. The inner fire was not entirely damped. And so, today, against his better judgment, he was allowing her to arrive. This naïve, innocent girl—she
was
innocent, the Cavaliere could see that, for all her experiences—arriving here, with her mother. Because Charles had his eye on a rich heiress (what was the second son of a lord to do?), Charles had to be serious. That is, he could no longer be guided by his affections. That is, he must be cruel to a woman. But having decided to get rid of the girl, he had not the heart to tell her and, further, had wondered if his newly widowed uncle might not enjoy her companionship. The uncle inherit the nephew's mistress? The Cavaliere knew that Charles was not simply relieving himself of an encumbrance and putting his uncle in his debt; he was also hoping to head off the possibility that his uncle might decide to console his late years with a new wife. He might soon find himself no longer his uncle's heir. But if his uncle liked the girl (whom clearly no one could marry) well enough, Charles was safe. Clever Charles.

She had left London with her mother in March, in the company of an elderly Scottish painter, a friend of the Cavaliere, who was returning to Rome and had agreed to take the two women under his protection. Valerio had been sent to Rome to bring them the rest of the journey. The Cavaliere was having breakfast and reading when he heard the great gateway swinging open. He went to the window and looked down at the traveling chaise pulling into the courtyard, being converged on by footmen and pages. Descending from the seat next to the driver, Valerio offered his hand to the young woman, who stepped lightly to the ground, then helped the stout older woman emerge from the carriage. As they crossed the courtyard toward the red marble staircase on the right, several maids reached out to fondle the girl's dusty yellow dress, and she dallied for a moment, smiling, touching the outstretched hands, responding with delight to the effect she was having. What the Cavaliere noted was a hat, a large blue hat, moving above the play of light on the cobblestones.

Suddenly he thought of Jack, and missed him. He returned to the breakfast table. It's all right to keep her waiting. A bookseller is waiting, too. He finished his cocoa, then went toward the Small Drawing Room, where he had directed that the girl and her mother be told to wait.

Passing through the door held open for him by Gasparo, he saw them sitting in the corner, whispering. The woman noticed him first and stood up hastily. The girl was holding the hat in her lap, and she turned and put it behind her on the seat as she rose. At that
contrapposto
of the body and then the turn back, he experienced a physical shock, as if his heart had plummeted into his belly. He hadn't remembered she was that beautiful. Stupendously beautiful. He must have seen how beautiful she was last year, since when he had possessed this beauty in the form of an image, as the Bacchante in Romney's picture hanging in the hall to his study, which he sees every day. But she is much more beautiful than the painting.

Heaving a deep and joyful sigh, he crossed the room and acknowledged the girl's shy curtsy and the awkward lurch the mother intended as one. He directed Stefano to show Mrs. Cadogan the two rooms in the rear of the second floor that he was giving them. The girl leaned forward impulsively and brushed her lips against his cheek. He started back as if he had been scratched.

She must be exhausted from the long journey, he told her.

She was so happy, she told him. It was her birthday, she told him. She found the city so beautiful. She took his hand, she burned his hand, and drew him out on the terrace. And it was, indeed, beautiful—he could see that again—bathed in a sunlit haze, the red roofs tumbling down, the flower gardens and mulberry and lemon trees, the upthrust of cacti and slim, tall palms.

And that, uncle? she exclaimed, pointing to the mountain and its reddening plume of smoke. Will there be an eruption soon?

Are you afraid? he said.

Lordy, no, I want to see it! she cried. I want to see everything. It's so … fine, she said, smiling, pleased to have found such a genteel word.

She was young, still engulfed in the ecstasy of being alive, which touched him. And he knew of her virtues—her abject devotion to Charles, who had been campaigning for almost a year to make his uncle agree to receive her. Her passion is admiration, Charles wrote to the Cavaliere. She already admires you, said Charles. The Cavaliere thought he might enjoy behaving toward her more disinterestedly than other men had done. He will give her shelter—perhaps it would be better to put the two women in the four front rooms on the third floor—and show the girl the admirable sights.

You may make of her what you like, Charles had said. The material, I can guarantee, is good.

But he did not feel very pedagogic at first. For the moment he just wanted to look at her. He cannot yet master the emotion her beauty provokes in him. Is it a sign of old age that he so instantly doted on her? For he is old. His life is over. Add this beauty to his collection? No. He would polish a little. And then send her home. Charles really was a dastard.

So the Cavaliere temporized and delayed over the next weeks, unable to believe that he was being given another chance, that life erupts anew. What had such youth to do with him? Though he knew she was his for the possessing (or so he thought), he was afraid of making a fool of himself, and he was genuinely moved by her credulity. She really did believe that Charles was coming to fetch her in a few months. Still, he would be a fool not to take the gratification offered him, without fuss, without sentimentality. Surely the girl understood. She must be used to men and their wicked ways—being passed from one to the next. True, she did love Charles. But she must be expecting his advances. Poor Emma. Wicked Charles. And he put his bony hand on hers.

The sharpness of her rejection, her tears, her cries irked him—Charles had promised someone tractable—and impressed him, too. In the age-old way that men judge women, his esteem for her mounted because she refused him. Yet she seemed genuinely to enjoy his company, not only to look up to him. To be eager to learn. Surely then, happy. He gave her a carriage for her own use. He showed her—her placid, homely mother always in attendance—the marvels of the region. He took her to Capri, and together they visited the gloomy ruins of Tiberius' villa, stripped by predatory archaeologists of its ravishing floors of inlaid marble only a generation ago. To Solfatara, where they strolled on the scorching, sulphurous plain. To the dead cities, where they peered into a cluster of sunken houses. And to Vesuvius, setting out at four one morning beneath a full moon in a carriage that took them to Resina, where mules and Tolo were waiting to bring them as far as the lava sprawling three miles from the top. He watched her watching. She was enthralled by everything he showed her, he could tell; she besieged him with questions. She seemed only to want to please him; and if sometimes when he joined her on the terrace to admire a sunset her cheeks were wet with tears, that was understandable, she was far from home, that rogue his nephew really should have told her the truth, she was very young, what had Charles said? (He'd been vague about her age.) She must be twenty-three now. Which made the Cavaliere, at fifty-six, the age of the Elder Pliny when he succumbed to the noxious smoke, some thirty-three years older than this country Venus.

*   *   *

In fact, the difference between them was thirty-six years. She turned twenty-one the April day she arrived in Naples.

Oh Charles on that day you allways smiled on me & staid at home & wos kind to me & now I am so far away. From her first letter.

Charles was to follow in the autumn. He had told her. She wrote him every few days. The heat mounted, the fleas and lice multiplied. She tried to appear cheerful to the Cavaliere, who lavished gifts upon her, chief among them his own presence.

He breakfastes dines supes & is constantly bye me looking into my face, she reported to Charles. I cant stir a hand or a legg or foot but what he is marking it as gracefull & fine. Their is two painters in the house painting me but not as good as Romney. I wore the blue hat you gave me. He as given me a camels shawl & a beautiful goun cost 25 guinees & some little things of is wife. He tels me I am a grate work of art & I am sorry to see that he loves me.

Her letters to Charles became more abject, more pained. She tells her dear Charles, Charles, that she belongs to him, and to him only will she belong, and nobody shall be his heir apparent. She tells him of all the marvelous sights she has seen, which she would so much prefer to see in his company. She pleads with him to write her; to come to Naples as he has promised, now. Or to send for her to come back to him.

After two months there was a letter.

Dear Charles, she replied, oh my heart is intirely broke. And Charles Charles how with that cool indeference to advise me to go to bed with him. Your uncle! Oh that worst of all—but I will not no I will not rage. If I wos with you I wood murder you & myself boath. Nothing shall ever do but going home to you. If that is not to be I will go home to London & their go into every excess of vice tell I dye & leave my fate as a warning to young whomen never to be two good. For you have made me love you—you made me good—& now you have abbandoned me & some violent end shall finish our connexion if it is to finish. She ended: It is not to your intrest to disoblidge me for you dont know the power I have hear. Onely I never will be his mistress—if you afront me I will make him marry me. God bless you forever.

This was written on August 1st. She continued to write, to plead, to say goodbye, and held off the Cavaliere another five months. In December she informed Charles that she had resolved to make the best of things. I have decided to be resonable, she wrote. I am a pretty whoman & one cant be evrything at once.

*   *   *

Impossible to Describe
 …

It is impossible to describe her beauty, said the Cavaliere; impossible to describe how happy she makes me.

It is impossible to describe how much I miss you, Charles, wrote the girl. Impossible to describe how angry I am.

And of the volcano, erupting, in which the Cavaliere delighted anew: It is impossible to describe the beautiful appearance of the girandoles of red-hot stones, far surpassing the most astonishing fireworks, wrote the Cavaliere, who then went on to offer a batch of comparisons, none of which do justice to what he sees. For, like any object of grand passion, the volcano unites many contradictory attributes. Entertainment and apocalypse. A cycle of substance displaying all four elements: starting with smoke, then fire, then flowing lava, ending in lava rock, the most earth-solid of all.

Of the girl, the Cavaliere would often say to himself, to others: She resembles … she is like … she could play.… It is more than resemblance. Embodiment. Hers was the beauty he had adored on canvas, as a statue, on the side of a vase. She the Venus with the arrows, she the reclining Thetis awaiting her bridegroom. Nothing had ever seemed to him as beautiful as certain objects and images—the reflection, no, the memorial, of a beauty that never really existed, or existed no longer. Now he realized the images were not only the record of beauty but its harbinger, its forerunner. Reality splintered into innumerable images, and images burned in one's heart because they all spoke of one beauty.

The Cavaliere has beauty
and
the beast.

People were bound to say, because of the substantial loan he had made to Charles, that his nephew had sold the girl to him. Let them think what they will. If there was one advantage to living so far from home, in this capital of backwardness and sensual indulgence, it was that he could do what he wanted.

In the promenade of carriages at sunset on the Chiaia, he introduced her to the local society and, one Sunday, to the King and Queen. He could not take her to the palace, but outdoors, under the sky, she could be presented to everyone. All true lovers of beauty were captivated by her, he could see that. So were ordinary people, beggars and washerwomen in the streets, who took her for an angel. When he showed her Ischia, some peasants knelt before her, and a priest who came to the house made the sign of the cross and declared that she had been sent among them for a special purpose. The maids the Cavaliere had given her came to beg for intercession in her prayers, because, they said, she resembled the Virgin. She clapped her hands with glee at the sight of horses decorated with artificial flowers, crimson tassels, plumes on their heads. The driver gravely leaned forward, extracted a plume, and handed it to her. When people saw her, they brightened. She was so blithe, so full of joy. Anyone who didn't like her was a damned snob. How could one not admire her and be joyful in her presence?