The Wooden Throne (11 page)

Essentially I continued not to see clearly into my future. It attracted and enticed me, but remained formless. If by chance I tried to imagine it in a more definite way, it eluded my grasp and thus I would end up by trying to avoid even thinking about it because, if I did, it meant suddenly baring my lack of aptitude for any acceptable and specific job. I wasn’t always successful; of necessity I had to remember sometimes that I was neither fish nor fowl, from whatever angle I regarded myself. I was neither a peasant nor an artisan like other boys my age although I knew how to do many things, but just for fun. I had no property, no family because my folks were dead but I wasn’t a true orphan since I had Maddalena; nor was I a regular student since I wasn’t attending school and schooling didn’t seriously engage me. Who the devil was I then?

I myself didn’t know. But now it was urgent to emerge from this uncertainty.

I planned to marry Flora, to bring her to live in my house permanently, among other reasons, so as to put an end to her constant wandering, to prevent her from treating me so capriciously — coming and going like a wild animal of the woods or the
magredi.
But to do this I had to think of a way to support both of us.

I tried to review a number of possible trades, at least those that held some appeal for me. In my musings there was one rather curious note, that is, while I was thinking about a job I continued at the same time to imagine my future as strangely free, as an unlimited vacation full of untouched possibilities. I desired that Flora should live with me and simultaneously I saw myself touring the world, going to the North Pole or to Siberia, traveling on ancient sailing ships of the kind that had fallen into disuse decades ago, through all the seas where whales flourished. As was true so many years before, the phrase “Call me Ishmael” still had an unequaled attraction for me, if not quite the same as when I had first read it, and it still seemed possible that in the future after having lived through the most complicated adventures, I would begin my memoirs with a phrase like that. Therefore I felt somewhat anxious because I thought that at my age and in my circumstances I ought to decide upon something, if only for Flora’s sake, and I didn’t know how to do it. In the interim until I managed to resolve things I followed what seemed to be the only possible course: for the moment I took my exams seriously. Even though, specifically because of Flora, I lacked the serenity to do so.

Sometimes she was extremely affectionate and appeared unable to live apart from me, while at other times she was distracted or troubled. She would look up at the slightest noise like a startled animal, then, in a disorganized way, resume talking to hide her agitation.

Every once in a while I got the impression that someone was hanging around our house and wondered if it was the youth who had been calling her the day we went to the Villa. I began to ask her again, insistently, who he was. “Some fool who has a lot of time to waste.”

“But you were his lover, tell the truth now....”

“That scarecrow? No. Not him. No....”

I said nothing but I was certain Flora was meeting other men. There were times when she stayed away for days and days, then reappeared as if nothing had occurred or as if she had seen me one or two hours earlier. After one long absence I went out to look for her and succeeded in catching sight of her from a distance at a festival, in the midst of numerous young men who were buzzing around her like flies. They were much older and more elegant than I was and I felt humiliated, almost annihilated, by comparison. When I thought about Flora’s behavior a gray sadness came over me. Only when she ran to take refuge in my house and embraced me and begged me to save her, only then did it seem that I was once again important to her, even if I didn’t understand how and from whom I was supposed to defend her.

There was always something out of phase about our relationship, at once both anguished and humorous; while my feelings had a fluid continuity, she knew only abrupt turns through which I couldn’t seem to follow her. When, for example, I was angry at her because she hadn’t shown up for two weeks, Flora, on the contrary, was in a phase of runaway passion and saw me as her only refuge. She was always ahead of me and seemed somehow to be looking back over her shoulder as if to say; “But what are you waiting for? Hurry up, run, don’t waste my time!”

I thought about her constantly. She occupied the key point on my horizon and would continue to do so for a long time, even after she definitely disappeared.

I saw her for the last time in the days when the first snow fell. From my house four or five mountains were visible, one behind another, and the first to be covered with snow were always the farthest away. On other occasions Flora had not come around for a good while, so a very long time, almost a month, passed before I began to think she really had left. It was still snowing; the next to last mountain, as well as the second from the last, was covered. Perhaps it was just because of this steady advance that, by a curious trick of thought, I began to connect Flora’s disappearance with the snow. Perhaps she had fled the cold and snow because she was meant to live only where life was easier and could be savored at leisure —in warm Mediterranean places — or to respond with the instincts of a migratory bird to a mysterious summons from nature. And I couldn’t have her near me for more than a summer and an autumn....

I looked for her but with no anguish, just a quiet underlying sadness and a profound conviction that I wouldn’t succeed in finding her. I began by asking Lucina, then those of her sisters in whose company I had first seen Flora. They gave me contradictory information, all talking at once and trying to drown each other out, their faces reflecting a mixture of ingenuity, impertinence and amusement at my disappointed search. Lucina especially seemed to imply: “Wait a minute, why bother with that Flora? Let her go. You have me don’t you?”

I realized how stupid I had been not to have tried to find out more about her when I still had time. Even if she didn’t want to say anything in particular, I might have followed her in order to find out where she lived and with whom. I tried to understand what her running away from home might mean. Certainly not very much. Flora always seemed to be fleeing from, or searching for, something and thus running away from home in her case could be merely an insignificant stage in a chaotic life.

I did find girls and young men who had known her, but none of them had anything more than the vaguest information. One had danced a whole evening with her, another had lent her money, and a third had given her a ride in his caleche on her way to do some errands. There was even one who had taken her to the theater in the city to see an operetta, after she had kept asking him over and over. I seemed to read in all of them something more, a hint, maybe only a look in their eyes, something they weren’t saying because of discretion or chivalry. One tall thin youth who kept pulling his pants up, as though they were falling down, answered only, “Flora? Oh yes, yes — I know Flora. Flora...,” and he stared straight ahead, disoriented, as if that name called up a constellation of feelings that couldn’t be expressed or weren’t worth trying to express because no one would understand them anyway. Another was annoyed: “That crazy girl? For God’s sake let’s not talk about her. She even went so far as to cause a small fire in my house. I won’t say any more.”

I couldn’t even find out whether she lived alone or with some relative. I thought Flora was capable of having a little room hidden away somewhere simply because of her desire to be as independent as a wild animal, to let no one know where she lived, and thus have no one underfoot when she didn’t want him, preferring instead to go herself to see whomever she wanted when she wanted to see him.

As I pieced together the little I could find out, an even better portrait of her elusiveness emerged. All those who had known her retained an image of her that was extremely lively, but brief and without depth because she had disappeared from sight so quickly.

I completely forgot almost everything else, exams, my projects, Maddalena; and my life was reduced to restless wandering in the piazzas and taverns searching for Flora or for information about her. Every time I heard a train whistle I felt a shock, as if she were on it and I hadn’t been able to detain her simply because of a trivial delay. But by this time I was resigned; I understood that my searching was only a singular and prolonged way of saying good-bye to her. I had been little more than a momentary encounter in her life, one among so many. I had no more hope of finding her, but the search itself filled my existence.

Flora again became what she was when I had first seen her running beside the stream and in the
magredi,
or climbing the poplar trees: a stranger.... She herself had been the first one to remove from my eyes the veil that had for so long (perhaps from the time I had played doctor in the attic) been wrapped around the mystery of woman. And yet this was how things were. The times we had made love, and especially the first time, seemed like a happy dream, an experience that reposed there in the strong box containing my destiny, still waiting to be lived. The past spent with Flora seemed like the future, whereas so many other times it had seemed that the opposite was true.

Flora’s image expanded and metamorphosed into something much vaster than she was, something that contained everything I yearned for: it became the phantom associated with imprecise adventures; and the desire to find her united somehow with very different things, even though she remained the same and I remembered every detail of the hours we had spent together. So intense in fact were those memories that they were followed by a momentary disorientation when I came back to reality and realized that they had been only imaginary.

I discovered in myself a visionary tendency. Certainly I had always had it but I had never noticed it. Now, however, when I would imagine distant or impossible things, I was aware of their nature, aware that I was enlarging reality with fantasy. But if becoming an adult meant renouncing all this, I didn’t want to grow up.

A certain curious idea used to keep popping up in my head: that the things around me, the villages, the hills, the mountains, the steppe-like
magredi,
the
grave
of the streams, the Contessa’s Villa, were the components of an orchestra that was playing music that others couldn’t hear but I could. Now, however, the music was growing fainter; sometimes it ceased altogether. I was subject to frequent spells of acute listlessness. At times I thought I understood perfectly how the Dane, at the end of his sojourn in our house, had not even bothered to get out of bed, and then had gone off suddenly to the North. But these were moments. After a pause due to fatigue things returned to normal. The places where I had been with Flora now held a fascination they hadn’t possessed before; they seemed to express the regret that she had been there with me and then had disappeared. Perhaps it also had to do with my conviction that I would soon abandon them, my places, and the imperceptible and gradually diminishing music was really a farewell meant for me.

Those years I lived in Ontàns after Flora’s disappearance seem even now like a limbo of waiting. In its best moments my life then was like a stage where from one moment to the next a magnificent performance was going to be given, which would fulfill my every expectation. But I always saw myself as only a spectator. If I should have had to perform also, I wouldn’t have known what part to play. Maybe I might even have taken on some sort of role without major difficulties because I had a sufficient dose of the theatrical in my makeup to carry it off. But it would have been precisely that, a role detached from myself, which didn’t coincide with what I really was. What was I, really? I didn’t know.
I was a mystery filled with so many, too many things.
Perhaps the world seemed to me to be a pleasant secret waiting to be unveiled only because I was projecting into it what existed in me.

I began to feel rushed, to think I ought to be coming to a conclusion. Something was pressing me. I took up my studies again with greater persistence, even if I didn’t see what could come of my exams, because I sensed the necessity to hasten things and get them done. I went as far as to finish a number of carpentry projects and some ironwork I had started, even though they were essentially useless things, not much more than toys.

I had to look deeply into myself and assess the reality of my desire to be a sailor or a polar explorer, to set off, therefore, for places where such things could actually come about. The moment of choice had arrived. But what I had thought of in the past as easy and simple now in fact bristled with complications. It wasn’t that such pursuits were completely fanciful and foolish; people did engage in them — they were things that could actually be done. But I had to find out if they attracted me enough to commit myself to face all the difficulties involved. The choice, the necessity for profound introspection disoriented me, exposed and emphasized my feeling of ineptitude. Perhaps I simply had a tendency to flee the concrete and was content only with what satisfied my imagination. Hence the future remained something like a mirage that didn’t evaporate (at most it might change), but couldn’t be reached, displacing itself always further on.

At times, when Maddalena looked at me she seemed to be taken by sudden remorse for never having seriously worried about my future. She would hold her head and stare at me as if to say: “But what have I made of him? What security have I given him?” But these moments, like my spells of listlessness, didn’t last long. Maddalena, now more than in the past, went about as in a trance, jumping from one thing to another as if all her actions were divided up into mutually impenetrable compartments. It seemed there were two people inside her, each one acting with no knowledge of the other. Indeed she herself seemed to be convinced that this was so when the first part of herself would find unexpected evidence of the second part. “When did I shorten this dress? When did I clean that drawer?” she would wonder anxiously and stand there for a bit staring at the ceiling. She was full of expectations, impulses, and projects, but at the same time she never decided to undertake anything because whatever she did she felt defeated before she got started.