Alone
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Norman Douglas >> Alone
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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 superstitious peasantry, who would
thenceforward never have ventured out of doors after dark, for fear of
encountering his ghost. He would harass 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 documents with
a pressing note to his representatives who, after some demur, paid up,
English-fashion, in full. Then a noteworthy change came over the faces
of men. Everybody beamed upon me in the streets, and there arrived
multitudinous 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-fashion, by at least fifty per cent, had anticipated 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 fashion of Margate. There is a suggestive difference
between the two. The upper classes 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 scum 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 canal 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
God 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 passed. A pension proving uninhabitable, and most
of the better-class 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 "Assassino" 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 snob;
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 butts have doubtless been dropped overboard at
Viareggio for the poisoning of its ten thousand summer visitors.
Quite a jolly crowd of folk assembles 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-fashioned 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, God 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.
But for the fact that, counting on a fortnight's trip to Carrara, I have
asked for certain printed matter to be forwarded here from England, I
would jump into the next train for anywhere.
Running along the sea on either side of Viareggio is a noble forest of
stone pines where the wind is scarce felt, though you may hear it
sighing overhead among the crowns. This is the place for a promenade at
all hours of the day. Children climb the trunks to fetch down a few
remaining cones or break off dried branches as fuel. A sportsman told me
that several of them lose their lives every year at this adventure. What
was he doing here, with a gun? Waiting for a hare, he said. They always
wait for hares. There are none!
Then a poor thin woman, dressed in black and gathering the prickly
stalks of gorse for firewood, began to converse with me, reasonably
enough at first. All of a sudden her language changed into a burning
torrent of insanity, with wild gesticulations. She was the Queen of the
country, she avowed, the rightful Queen, and they had robbed her of all
her children, every one of them, and all her jewels. I agreed--what else
could one do? Being in the combustible stage, she went over the argument
again and again, her eyes fiercely flashing. Nothing could stop the flow
of her words. I was right glad when another woman came to my rescue and
pushed her along, as you would a calf, saying:
"You go home now, it's getting dark, run along!--yes, yes! you're the
Queen right enough--she was in the asylum, Sir, for three months and
then they let her out, the fools--of course you are, everybody knows
that! But you really mustn't annoy this gentleman any more--her husband
and son were both killed in the war, that's what started it--we'll fetch
them tomorrow at the palace, all those things, and the children, only
don't talk so much--they thought she was cured, but just hark at
her!--va bene, it's all yours, only get along--she'll be back there in a
day or two, won't she?--really, you are chattering much too much, for a
Queen; va bene, va bene, va bene--"
A sad little incident, under the pines....
A fortnight has elapsed.
I refuse to budge from Viareggio, having discovered the village of
Corsanico on the heights yonder and, in that village, a family
altogether to my liking. How one stumbles upon delightful folks! Set me
down in furthest Cathay and I will undertake to find, soon afterwards,
some person with whom I am quite prepared to spend the remaining years
of life.
The driving-road to Corsanico is a never-ending affair. Deep in mire, it
meanders perversely about the plain; meanders more than ever, but of
necessity, once the foot of the hills is reached. I soon gave it up in
favour of the steam-tram to Cammaiore which deposits you at a station
whose name I forget, whence you may ascend to Corsanico through a
village called, I think, Momio. That route, also, was promptly abandoned
when the path along the canal was revealed to me. This waterway runs in
an almost straight line from Viareggio to the base of that particular
hill on whose summit lies my village. It is a monotonous walk at this
season; the rich marsh vegetation slumbers in the ooze underground,
waiting for a breath of summer. At last you cross that big road and
strike the limestone rock.
Here is no intermediate region, no undulating ground, between the upland
and the plain. They converge abruptly upon each other, as might have
been expected, seeing that these hills used to be the old sea-board and
this green level, in olden days, the Mediterranean. Three different
tracks, leading steeply upward through olives and pines and chestnuts
from where the canal ends, will bring you to Corsanico. I know them all.
I could find my way in darkest midnight.
Days have passed; days of delight. I climb up in the morning and descend
at nightfall, my mind well stored with recollections of pleasant talk
and smiling faces. A large place, this Corsanico, straggling about the
hill-top with scattered farms and gardens; to reach the
tobacconist--near whose house, by the way, you obtain an unexpected
glimpse into the valley of Cammaiore--is something of an excursion. As a
rule we repose, after luncheon, on a certain wooded knoll. We are high
up; seven or eight hundred feet above the canal. The blue Tyrrhenian is
dotted with steamers and sailing boats, and yonder lies Viareggio in its
belt of forest; far away, to the left, you discern the tower of Pisa. A
placid lake between the two, wood-engirdled, is now famous as being the
spot selected by the great Maestro Puccini to spend a summer month in
much-advertised seclusion. I am learning the name of every locality in
the plain, of every peak among the mountains at our back.
"And that little ridge of stone," says my companion, "--do you see it,
jutting into the fields down there? It has a queer name. We call it La
Sirena."
La Sirena....
It is good to live in a land where such memories cling to old rocks.
By what a chance has the name survived to haunt this inland crag,
defying geological changes, outlasting the generations of men, their
creeds and tongues and races! How it takes one back--back into hoary
antiquity, into another landscape altogether! One thinks of those Greek
mariners coasting past this promontory, and pouring libations to the
Siren into an ocean on whose untrampled floor the countryman now sows
his rice and turnips.
Paganisme immortel, es-tu mort? On le dit.
Mais Pan, tout bas, s'en moque, et la Sirene en rit.
They are still here, both sea and Siren; they have only agreed to
separate for a while. The ocean shines out yonder in all its luminous
splendour of old. And the Siren, too, can be found by those to whom the
gods are kind.
My Siren dwells at Corsanico.
Viareggio (May)
Those Sirens! They have called me back, after nearly three months in
Florence, to that village on the hill-top. Nothing but smiles up there.
And never was Corsanico more charming, all drenched in sunlight and
pranked out with fresh green. On this fourteenth of May, I said to
myself, I am wont to attend a certain yearly festival far away, and
there enjoy myself prodigiously. Yet--can it be possible?--I am even
happier here. Seldom does the event surpass one's hopes.
Later than usual, long after sunset, under olives already heavy-laden,
through patches of high-standing corn and beans, across the little
brook, past that familiar and solitary farmhouse, I descended to the
canal, in full content. Another golden moment of life! Strong
exhalations rose up from the swampy soil, that teemed and steamed under
the hot breath of spring; the pond-like water, once so bare, was
smothered under a riot of monstrous marsh-plants and loud with the music
of love-sick frogs. Stars were reflected on its surface.
Star-gazing, my Star? Would I were Heaven, to gaze on thee with many
eyes.
Such was my mood, a Hellenic mood, a mood summed up in that one word
[Greek: tetelestai]--not to be taken, however, in the sense of "all's
over." Quite the reverse! Did Shelley ever walk in like humour along
this canal? I doubt it. He lacked the master-key. An evangelist of a
kind, he was streaked, for all his paganism, with the craze of
world-improvement. One day he escaped from his chains into those
mountains and there beheld a certain Witch--only to be called back to
mortality by a domestic and critic-bitten lady. He tried to translate
the Symposium. He never tried to live it....
I have now interposed a day of rest.
My welcome in the villa situated in the street called after a certain
politician was that of the Prodigal Son. There was a look bordering on
affection in the landlady's eyes. She knew I would come back, once the
weather was warmer. She would now give me a cool room, instead of that
old one facing south. Those much-abused cement floors--they were not so
inconvenient, were they, at this season? The honey for breakfast?
Assuredly; the very same. And there was a tailor she had discovered in
the interval, cheaper and better than that other one, if anything
required attention.
And thus, having lived long at the mercy of London landladies and London
charwomen--having suffered the torments of Hell, for more years than I
care to remember, at the hands of these pickpockets and hags and harpies
and drunken sluts--I am now rewarded by the services of something at the
other end of the human scale. Impossible to say too much of this good
dame's solicitude for me. Her main object in life seems to be to save my
money and make me comfortable. "Don't get your shoes soled there!" she
told me two days ago. "That man is from Viareggio. I know a better
place. Let me see to it. I will say they are my husband's, and you will
pay less and get better work." With a kind of motherly instinct she
forestalls my every wish, and at the end of a few days had already known
my habits better than one of those London sharks and furies would have
known them at the end of a century....
My thoughts go back to her of Florence, whom I have just left. Equally
efficient, she represented quite a different type. She was not of the
familiar kind, but rather grave and formal, with spectacles, dyed hair
and an upright carriage. She never mothered me; she conversed, and gave
me the impression of being in the presence of a grande dame. Such, I
used to say to myself, while listening to her well-turned periods
enlivened with steely glints of humour--such were the feelings of those
who conversed with Madame de Maintenon; such and not otherwise. It would
be difficult to conceive her saying anything equivocal or vulgar. Yet
she must have been a naughty little girl not long ago. She never dreams
that I know what I do know: that she is mistress of a high police
functionary and greatly in favour with his set--a most useful landlady,
in short, for a virtuous young bachelor like myself.
On learning this fact, I made it my business to study her weaknesses and
soon discovered that she was fond of a particular brand of Chianti. A
flask of this vintage was promptly secured; then, dissatisfied with its
materialistic aspect, I caused it to be garlanded with a wreath of
violets and despatched it to her private apartment by the prettiest
child I could pick up in the street. That is the way to touch their
hearts. The offering was repeated at convenient intervals.
A little item in the newspaper led to some talk, one morning, about the
war. I found she shared the view common to many others, that this is an
"interested" war. Society has organized itself on new lines, lines which
work against peace. There are so many persons "interested" in keeping up
the present state of affairs, people who now make more money than they
ever made before. Everybody has a finger in the pie. The soldier in the
field, the chief person concerned, is voiceless and of no account when
compared with this army of civilians, every one of whom would lose, if
the war came to an end. They will fight like demons, to keep the fun
going. What else should they do? Their income is at stake. A man's heart
is in his purse.
I asked:
"Supposing, Madame, you desired to end the war, how would you set about
it?"
Whereupon a delightfully Tuscan idea occurred to her.
"I think I would abolish this Red-Cross nonsense. It makes things too
pleasant. It would bring the troops to their senses and cause them to
march home and say: Basta! We have had enough."
"Don't you find the Germans a little prepotenti?" "Prepotenti: yes. By
all means let us break their heads. And then, caro Lei, let us learn to
imitate them...."
That afternoon, I remember, being wondrously fine and myself in such
mellow mood that I would have shared my last crust with some shipwrecked
archduchess and almost forgiven mine enemies, though not until I had hit
them back--I strolled about the Cascine. They have done something to
make this place attractive; just then, at all events, the shortcomings
were unobserved amid the burst of green things overhead and underfoot.
Originally it must have been an unpromising stretch of land, running, as
it does, in a dead level along the Arno. Yet there is earth and water;
and a good deal can be done with such materials to diversify the
surface. More might have been accomplished here. For in the matter of
hill and dale and lake, and variety of vegetation, the Cascine are not
remarkable. One calls to mind what has been attained at Kew Gardens in
an identical situation, and with far less sunshine for the landscape
gardener to play with. One thinks of a certain town in Germany where, on
a plain as flat as a billiard table, they actually reared a mountain,
now covered with houses and timber, for the disport of the citizens. To
think that I used to skate over the meadows where that mountain now
stands!
There was no horse-racing in the Cascine that afternoon; nothing but the
usual football. The pastime is well worth a glance, if only for the sake
of sympathizing with the poor referee. Several hundred opprobrious
epithets are hurled at his head in the course of a single game, and play
is often suspended while somebody or other hotly disputes his decision
and refuses to be guided any longer by his perverse interpretation of
the rules. And whoever wishes to know whence those plastic artists of
old Florence drew their inspiration need only come here. Figures of
consummate grace and strength, and clothed, moreover, in a costume which
leaves little to the imagination. Those shorts fully deserve their name.
They are shortness itself, and their brevity is only equalled by their
tightness. One wonders how they can squeeze themselves into such an
outfit or, that feat accomplished, play in it with any sense of comfort.
Play they do, and furiously, despite the heat.
Watching the game and mindful of that morning's discourse with Madame de
Maintenon, a sudden wave of Anglo-Saxon feeling swept over me. I grew
strangely warlike, and began to snort with indignation. What were all
these young fellows doing here? Big chaps of eighteen and twenty! Half
of them ought to be in the trenches, damn it, instead of fooling about
with a ball.
It would have been instructive to learn the true ideas of the rising
generation in regard to the political outlook; to single out one of the
younger spectators and make him talk. But these better-class lads
cluster together at the approach of a stranger, and one does not want to
start a public discussion with half a dozen of them. My chance came from
another direction. It was half-time and a certain player limped out of
the field and sat down on the grass. I was beside him before his friends
had time to come up. A superb specimen, all dewy with perspiration.
"Any damage?"
Nothing much, he gasped. A man on the other side had just caught him
with the full swing of his fist under the ribs. It hurt confoundedly.
"Hardly fair play," I commented.
"It was cleverly done."
"Ah, well," I said, warming to my English character, "you may get harder
knocks in the trenches. I suppose you are nearly due?"
Not for a year or so, he replied. And even then ... of course, he was
quite eligible as to physique ... it was really rather awkward ... but
as to serving in the army ... there were other jobs going. ... Was
anything more precious than life?... Could anything replace his life to
him?... To die at his age....
"It would certainly be a pity from an artistic point of view. But if
everybody thought like that, where would the Isonzo line be?"
If everybody thought as he did, there would be no Isonzo line at all.
German influence in Italy--why not? They had been there before; it was
no dark page in Italian history. Was his own government so admirable
that one should regret its disappearance? A pack of knaves and
cutthroats. Patriotism--a phrase; auto-intoxication. They say one thing
and mean another. The English too. Yes, the English too. Purely
mercenary motives, for all their noble talk.
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