Alone Part 8

"I hope you can stand this food," he whispered, or rather croaked. "For G.o.d's sake, order anything you fancy. As for me, I can't even eat like you people. a.s.ses' milk is what I get, and slops. Done for, this time.

I'm a dying man; anybody can see that. A dying man----"

"Something," I said, "is happening to that moon."

It was in eclipse. Half the bright surface had been ominously obscured since we took our seats. O---- scowled at the satellite, and went on:

"But I won't be carried out of this dirty hole (Bertolini's)--not feet first. Would you mind my gasping another day or two at your place? Rolfe has told me about it."

We moved him, with infinite trouble. The journey woke his dormant capacities for invective. He cursed at the way they jolted him about; he cursed himself into a collapse that day, and we thought it was all over.

Then he rallied, and became more abusive than before. Nothing was right.

Stairs being forbidden, the whole lower floor of the house was placed at his disposal; the establishment was dislocated, convulsed; and still he swore. He swore at me for the better part of a week; at the servants, and even at the good doctor Malbranc, who came every morning in a specially hired steam-launch to make that examination which always ended in his saying to me: "You must humour him. Heart-patients are apt to be irritable." Irritable was a mild term for this particular patient. His appet.i.te, meanwhile, began to improve.

It was soon evident that my cook had not the common sense to prepare his invalid dishes; a second one was engaged. Then, my gardener and sailor-boy being manifest idiots, it became necessary to procure an extra porter to fetch the numberless odd things he needed from town every day, and every hour of the day. I wrote to the messenger people to send the most capable lad on their books; we would engage him by the week, at twice his ordinary pay. He arrived; a limp and lean nonent.i.ty, with a face like a boiled codfish.

This miserable youth promptly became the object of O----'s bitterest execration. I soon learnt to dread those conferences, those terrific scenes which I was forced to witness in my capacity of interpreter.

O---- revelled in them with exceeding gusto. He used to gird his loins for the effort of vituperation; I think he regarded the performance as a legitimate kind of exercise--his last remaining one. As soon as the boy returned from town and presented himself with his purchases, O---- would glare at him for two or three minutes with such virulence, such concentration of hatred and loathing, such a blaze of malignity in his black eyes, that one fully expected to see the victim wither away; all this in dead silence. Then he would address me in his usual whisper, quite calmly, as though referring to the weather:

"Would you mind telling that double-distilled abortion that if he goes on making such a face I shall have to shoot him. Tell him, will you; there's a good fellow."

And I had to "humour" him.

"The gentleman"--I would say--"begs you will try to a.s.sume another expression of countenance," or words to that effect; whereto he would tearfully reply something about the will of G.o.d and the workmans.h.i.+p of his father and mother, honest folks, both of them. I was then obliged to add gravely:

"You had better try, all the same, or he may shoot you. He has a revolver in his pocket, and a shooting licence from your government."

This generally led to the production of a most ghastly smile, calculated to convey an ingratiating impression.

"Look at him," O---- would continue. "He is almost too good to be shot.

And now let's see. What does he call these things? Ask him, will you?"

"Asparagus."

"Tell him that when I order asparagus I mean asparagus and not walking-sticks. Tell him that if he brings me such objects again, I'll ram the whole bundle up--down his throat. What does he expect me to do with them, eh? You might ask him, will you? And, G.o.d! what's this? Tell him (accellerando) that when I send a prescription to be made up at the Royal Pharmacy----"

"He explained about that. He went to the other place because he wanted to hurry up."

"To hurry up? Tell him to hurry up and get to blazes. Oh, tell him----"

"You'll curse yourself into another collapse, at this rate."

To the doctor's intense surprise, he lingered on; he actually grew stronger. Although never seeming to gain an ounce in weight, he could eat a formidable breakfast and used to insist, to my horror and shame, in importing his own wine, which he accused my German maid Bertha of drinking on the sly. Callers cheered him up--Rolfe the Consul, Dr. Dohrn of the Aquarium, and old Marquis Valiante, that perfect botanist--all of them dead now! After a month and a half of painful experiences, we at last learnt to handle him. The household machinery worked smoothly.

A final and excruciating interview ended in the dismissal of the errand-boy, and I personally selected another one--a pretty little rascal to whom he took a great fancy, over-tipping him scandalously. He needed absolute rest; he got it; and I think was fairly happy or at least tranquil (when not writhing in agony) at the end of that period. I can still see him in the sunny garden, his clothes hanging about an emaciated body--a skeleton in a deck-chair, a death's head among the roses. Humiliated in this inactivity, he used to lie dumb for long hours, watching the b.u.t.terflies or gazing wistfully towards those distant southern mountains which I proposed to visit later in the season. Once a spark of that old throttling instinct flared up. It was when a kestrel dashed overhead, bearing in its talons a captured lizard whose tail fluttered in the air: the poor beast never made a faster journey in its life. "Ha!" said O----. "That's sport."

At other times he related, always in that hoa.r.s.e whisper, anecdotes of his life, a life of reckless adventure, of fortunes made and fortunes lost; or spoke of his old pa.s.sion for art and books. He seemed to have known, at one time or another, every artist and connoisseur on either side of the Atlantic; he told me it had cost about 10,000 to acquire his unique knowledge and taste in the matter of mezzotints, and that he was concerned about the fate of his "Daphnis and Chloe" collection which contained, he said, a copy of every edition in every language--all except the unique Elizabethan version in the Huth library (now British Museum). I happened to have one of the few modern reprints of that stupid and ungainly book: would he accept it? Not likely! He was after originals.

One day he suddenly announced:

"I am leaving you my small library of erotic literature, five or six hundred pieces, worth a couple of thousand, I should say. Some wonderful old French stuff, and as many Rops as you like, and Persian and Chinese things--I can see you gloating over them! Don't thank me. And now I'm off to England."

"To England?"

The doctor peremptorily forbade the journey; if he must go, let him wait another couple of weeks and gain some more strength. But O---- was obdurate; buoyed up, I imagine, with the prospect of movement and of causing some little trouble at home. As the weather had grown unusually hot, I booked at his own suggestion a luxurious cabin on a home-bound liner and engaged a valet for the journey. On my handing him the tickets, he said he had just changed his mind; he would travel overland; there were some copper mines in Etruria of which he was director; he meant to have a look at them en route and "give those people h.e.l.l" for something or other. I tried to dissuade him, and all in vain. Finally I said:

"You'll die, if you travel by land in this heat."

So he did. They carried him out of the train in the early days of June, here at Pisa, feet first....

I never learnt the fate of that library of erotic literature. But his will contained one singular provision: the body was to be cremated and its ashes scattered among the hills of his Alpine property. This was his idea of "being even" with the superst.i.tious peasantry, who would thenceforward never have ventured out of doors after dark, for fear of encountering his ghost. He would hara.s.s them eternally! It was no bad notion of revenge. A sandy-haired gentleman came from Austria to Italy to convey this handful of potential horrors to the mountains, but the customs officials at Ala refused to allow it to enter the country and it ultimately came to rest in England.

Another queer thing happened. Since his arrival from Egypt, O---- had never been able to make up his mind to pay any of his innumerable bills; the creditors, aware of the man's wealth and position, not pressing for a settlement. I rather think that this procrastination, this reluctance to disburse ready money, is a symptom of his particular state of ill-health; I have observed it with several heart-patients (and others as well); however that may be, it became a source of real vexation to me, for hardly was the news of his death made public before I began to be deluged with outstanding accounts from every quarter--tradespeople, hotel keepers, professional men, etc. I finally sent the doc.u.ments with a pressing note to his representatives who, after some demur, paid up, English-fas.h.i.+on, in full. Then a noteworthy change came over the faces of men. Everybody beamed upon me in the streets, and there arrived mult.i.tudinous little gifts at my house--choice wines, tie-pins, game, cigars, ebony walking-sticks, confectionery, baskets of red mullets, old prints, Capodimonte ware, candied fruits, amber mouthpieces, maraschino--all from donors who plainly desired to remain anonymous.

Such things were dropped from the clouds, so to speak, on my doorstep: an enigmatic but not unpleasant state of affairs. Gradually it dawned upon me, it was forced upon me, that I had worked a miracle. These good people, thinking that their demands upon O----'s executors would be cut down, Italian-fas.h.i.+on, by at least fifty per cent, had antic.i.p.ated that eventuality by demanding twice or thrice as much as was really due to them. And they got it! No wonder men smiled, when the benefactor of the human race walked abroad.

Viareggio (February)

Viareggio, dead at this season, is a rowdy place in summer; not rowdy, however, after the fas.h.i.+on of Margate. There is a suggestive difference between the two. The upper cla.s.ses in both towns are of course irreproachable in externals--it is their uniformity of behaviour throughout the world which makes them so uninteresting from a spectacular point of view. A place does not receive its tone from them (save possibly Bournemouth) but from their inferiors; and here, in this matter of public decorum, the comparison is to the credit of Italy. It is beside the point to say that the one lies relatively remote, while the other is convenient for cheap trips from a capital. Set Viareggio down at the very gate of Rome and fill it with the sc.u.m of Trastevere: the difference would still be there. It might be more noisy than Margate. It would certainly be less blatant.

As for myself, I hate Viareggio at all seasons, and nothing would have brought me here but the prospect of visiting the neighbouring Carrara mines with Attilio to whom I have written, enclosing a postcard for reply.

For this is a modern town built on a plain of mud and sand, a town of heartrending monotony, the least picturesque of all cities in the peninsula, the least Italian. It has not even a central piazza! You may conjure up visions of Holland and detect something of an old-world aroma, if you stroll about the ca.n.a.l and harbour where sails are now flapping furiously in the north wind; you may look up to the snow-covered peaks and imagine yourself in Switzerland, and then thank G.o.d you are not there; of Italy I perceive little or nothing. The people are birds of prey; a shallow and rapacious brood who fleece visitors during those summer weeks and live on the proceeds for the rest of the year. There is no commerce to liven them up and make them smilingly polite; no historical tradition to give them self-respect; no agriculture worth mentioning (the soil is too poor)--in other words, no peasantry to replenish the gaps in city life and infuse an element of decency and depth. An inordinate amount of singing and whistling goes on all day long. Is it not a sign of empty-headedness? I would like the opinion of schoolmasters on this point, whether, among the children committed to their charge, the habitual whistlers be not the dullest of wit.

And so five days have pa.s.sed. A pension proving uninhabitable, and most of the better-cla.s.s hotels being closed for the winter, I threw myself upon the mercy of an octroi official who stood guarding a forlorn gate somewhere in the wilderness. He has sent me to a villa bearing the name of a certain lady and situated in a street called after a certain politician. He has done well.

A kindlier dame than my hostess could nowhere be found. She hails from the province of the Marche and has no high opinion of this town, where she only lives on account of her husband, a retired something-or-other who owns the house. Although convulsed with grief, both of them, at the moment of my arrival--a favourite kitten had just been run over--they at once set about making me comfortable in a room with exposure due south.

The flooring is of cement: the usual Viareggio custom. Bricks are cold, stone is cold, tiles are cold; but cement! It freezes your marrow through double carpets. For meals I go to the "a.s.sa.s.sino" or the Vittoria hotel; the fare is better at the first, the company at the other....

The large dining-room at the "Vittoria" is not in use just now. We take our meals in two smaller rooms adjoining each other, one of which leads into the kitchen where privileged guests may talk secrets with the cook and poke their noses into saucepans. At a table by herself sits the little signorina who controls the establishment, wide awake, pale of complexion, slightly hump-backed, close-fisted as the devil though sufficiently vulnerable to a bluff masculine protest. Our waiter is noteworthy in his line. He is that exceptional being, an Italian sn.o.b; he can talk of nothing but dukes and princes, Bourbons by choice, because he once served at a banquet given by some tuppenny Parma royalties round the corner.

The food would be endurable, save for those vile war-time maccheroni.

The wine is of doubtful origin. Doubtful, at least, to the uninitiated who smacks his lips and wonders vaguely where he has tasted the stuff before. The concoction has so many flavours--a veritable Proteus! I know it well, though its father and mother would be hard to identify. It was born on the banks of the Tiber and goes by the name of ripa: ask any Roman. Certain cheap and heady products of the south--Sicily, Sardinia, Naples, Apulia, Ischia--have contributed their share to its composition; Tiber-water is the one and constant ingredient. This ripa is exported by the ton to wine-less centres like Genoa and there drunk under any name you please. A few b.u.t.ts have doubtless been dropped overboard at Viareggio for the poisoning of its ten thousand summer visitors.

Quite a jolly crowd of folk a.s.sembles here every evening. There is, of course, the ubiquitous retired major; also some amusing gentlemen who run up and down between this place and Lucca on mysterious errands connected, I fancy, with oil; as well as a dissipated young marquis sent hither from Rimini by the ridiculously old-fas.h.i.+oned father to expiate his sins--his gambling debts, his multifarious and costly love-adventures, and the manslaughter of a carpenter whom he ran over in his car. [6] My favourite is a fat creature with a glorious fleshy face, the face of some Neronian parvenu--a memorable face, full of the brutal prosperity of Trimalchio's Banquet. He told me, yesterday, a long story about a local saint in one of their villages--a saint of yesterday who, curing diseases and performing various other miracles, began to think himself, as their manner is, G.o.d Almighty, or something to that effect.

The police shot him as a revolutionary, because he had gathered a few adherents.

"Rather an extreme measure," I suggested.

"It is. Not that I love the saints. But I love the police still less."

"Like every good Italian."

"Like every good Italian...."

News from Attilio. He cannot come. Both mother and sister are ill. He delayed writing in the hopes of their getting better; he wanted to join me, but they are always "auguale"--the same; in short, he must stay at home, as appears from the following plaintive and rather puzzling postcard, the address of which I had providentially written myself:

Caro G. N. Dorcola ho ricevuto la sua cara lettera e son cozi contento da sentire le sue notizzie io non posso venire perche mia madre e amalata e mia sorella Enrica era tardato ascirvere perche mi credevo che tesano mellio ma invece sono sempre auguale perche volevo venire ci mando dici mille baci e una setta dimano addio al Signior D. Dor.