Collected Novels and Plays (36 page)

Marcello was watching Jane. Once their eyes had met she couldn’t think how or where to look, except into that familiar gaze—familiar to whoever knew Italy—of sexual provocation. “Command me,” his eyes said as clearly as any recitative, “command me, O fair one!” His lips
parted, he began to smile—horribly. Jane’s fist tightened upon the keys. How did he dare, when it was Francis who
suffered, who needed him?

“You’re not leaving!” cried Xenia, piecing it together at last. “When the best part’s coming!”

“Let him go, Pussy,” a voice from the floor said. “I’d just as soon go myself. It stinks.”

“What stinks? We’ve sat here enraptured, Jane and I!”

“Yes,” Jane managed to say, “we have.”

The young man lifted his head. “Are you Jane?”

“Forgive me,” said Xenia. “I’ve forgotten your married name.”

“What
is
it?” mused Francis. “I had it on the tip of my tongue.”

Jane could give them no help in the matter.

“Well, you’re very pretty,” Tommy said. “Are you leaving, too? Let me flirt with you and see how jealous my Pussy gets.”

“Max,” put in the red-haired woman quietly.

Looking away, Jane once more met Marcello’s eyes. The lights had begun to dim. At least she was living up to the yellow dress. Was this what other women called “success with men”?

“Now, you can’t leave us!” Xenia called, only then noticing Marcello.

“But, my dear,” the old man, Max, sought to reason with her, “we have seats downstairs. If we don’t leave now we shall be late.”

Tommy scrambled to his feet. “That’s true,” he said gaily. “Everybody’s leaving. I’m leaving, too.” He turned to Jane. “Want to come?” Xenia seized his wrist.

“I cannot
bear
this,” she announced in a savage whisper. “There are people tonight you must meet. They are watching you. Look!” Indeed, many glances had converged upon their box, piercing the gloom. A few people even hissed for silence. Xenia rose. “Francis, you reason with him! Oh you
children! Tant pis!
We’ll go outside!”

They left the box, all six of them. Jane could hear their voices in the vestibule. In no time Xenia was back.

“You have control over Francis,” she begged. “Why is he in this
state? He could help. Tommy really values his taste. Go out, please, talk to him, Jane. See what you can do!”

“I can’t!”

“You can’t!” scoffed Xenia. “Why can’t you?”

“That boy, Marcello,” Jane brought out nervously, “I don’t like him, I don’t want to be near him.”

“But that’s nonsense, that’s childish—” Xenia broke off and shot the girl a look of triumphant perspicacity. “You’re still in love with Francis, then!”

No, thought Jane. The remark needed only to be made for her to see its irrelevance. Oh, she could shrug and look down in a hurt helpless way that soon got Xenia out of the box, satisfied; but when Jane looked up she was smiling. What she now felt for Francis was something ineffably sweet and sad; remote, too, as if his life had become the closing chapter of a novel in which the characters keep on talking and behaving, quite unaware of a reader already planning what to
do, once finished with their fictive lives. What had Jane to do—go to a party? Write Roger? Not that she felt, yet, any great resurgence of interest in
him.
He was, however, part of a world she recognized. Naively, she wondered if she would ever see Francis again.

Another person entered the box. It was Marcello.

“They’re quarreling outside,” he said. “May I sit here, if I’m not in the way? Oh,
scusi!
” For he had let his knuckle graze her bare arm.

She stared outraged into his eyes, into Xenia’s eyes, into the eyes of all who took for granted that love—
their
kind of love—mattered more than anything else. Then Francis’s voice sounded from the door: “Marcello, I’m going now.”

“I’m not ready to go, Francis,” he said, not looking round.

“Oh I see,” said Francis sarcastically. “Excuse me!”

Jane took a deep breath. “Go!” she told them in hushed fury. “Go this minute, I command you!”

The word “command” undid all three. Francis gave a little helpless
croak. Even Marcello backed away. The door shut behind them. Jane smiled wildly into the dark. How Roger would have laughed, had he been there! A hush overcame the audience.

It ended almost at once, as if something unforeseen had interrupted the performance. Vague voices filled the theater, laughs and coughs. The two bald old men in the next box glared about, failing to realize, like many others, that with these rude noises the second act had begun. As the curtain parted a slow warm gasp of amusement greeted the scene. The old men, bent over their programs, whispered and winked. So this was Hell!

Before them, beyond the glowing apron of the stage, could be distinguished the lights and boxes of a theater so like their own that a vast mirror might have been set up inside the proscenium. The view being from the vantage of the stage itself, hence unfamiliar to most, heightened the illusion. Gilt and puce, cherub and luster, all had been copied. Somewhere infernal musicians tuned their instruments. The ranks of the damned chattered, called to one another, ruffled
their libretti or wielded great plumed fans, wiped steam from monocles—there was a sense of extreme heat—until at a nod from a horned demon in white tie, a bit elevated above the unseen players, the music began.

First came an overture solemn but shallow in the early-nineteenth-century style. A French horn disgraced itself before seeking shelter in a thumping
tutti.
Everything had to be heard twice. At last, after prolonged chords, Orpheus stepped into a pool of light directly facing the prompter’s box.

This was the treat they’d been waiting for. While Orpheus bowed, smirking in scuffed black tights and gold-laced doublet, a ridiculous hat under one arm, the damned souls hailed him with such fervor as a living audience would have reserved for the latest Italian tenor, possessed of a continental or cinematic reputation, to appear before them in the mustiest Italian opera, the oldest chestnut of all. Then, silence; upon every ear fell the famous
pianissimo
that opened his lament, the gem each would
have sat till dawn to hear. He unwound it like a spool of gold. Tears from his throat, that sobbing petition in six-eight time (save for those highest, softest notes—how did he sustain them?) rang beyond the comprehension of the decorous awe-struck orchestra. Eurydice, Eurydice had been taken from him, was lost forever—
ristorate il mio amore
, and not just the melody but the
language of romantic loss was his,
viver’ non voglio più
, in all its rich incoherence. His notes began to flutter now within a net of runs and turns.
Non dirmi che sia perduta, sento gelar il cuore!
When he had done, the damned souls (in certain of whom there had been leisure to discover, by reference to the location of their boxes or the eccentricity of their dress, suspicious likenesses to their worldly counterparts, those jeweled and decrepit
patrons known to all) rose from their seats, weeping. Flower and glove rained down upon the singer. Fans, themselves enthralled, trembled ignored on the rims of boxes.
Encore! Bis!
the listeners cried.
Bravo! Bis!
And he began again.

But Eurydice, where was she? In rapture they heard his plea, her cruel chaperons, yet not one stirred to summon her. Orpheus himself could be seen to scan the boxes, alive with singers who in soft harmony began now to remark upon the bliss they suffered. Could it be that she alone hadn’t come to hear him? He sang more fervently, one hand to his heart, the other high in the air for guidance, begging again and again,
dunque, bell’ alma,
vieni!
—nor was it possible to tell at which point in his song a high unearthly voice mingled with his own.

It seemed to have come from nowhere, clear and cold as a stream, reaching at once an indifference of volume and passion from which it was not to depart. As instructed by the angel, Orpheus turned his back on the theater of Hell and on its central box which, hitherto in darkness, was now suffused with a weak violet light. One could just make out, against cloths and shadows, the sparkle of a diamond, a white hand limp on the plush rim and, within, the aigrette rising like
an idea from the seated woman’s brow. The voice, frigid and clear as ever, belonged to her.

Little remained but for Orpheus to hear the song that, with his own
and the chorus that reconciled them, wove so mysterious a braid; to hear in her music how she was perpetually unmoved, how alone (or was there a figure behind her, tall, shadowy?) in her box, narrower it seemed than the others, she sat beyond the reach of his wooing. At last he would know that he had placed her there himself, for at her death he had enshrined in his song not Eurydice
but her loss, her absence that, growing bearable through his art, had as well grown irrevocable. With sickening force his knowledge was to break upon him by the end of the ensemble. Then, as foretold, he would turn incredulously to read it in her eyes—only to see her fade, a second and last time, past his reaching voice. His song at an end, again the damned souls would weep, applaud, hurl flowers, cry for encores. There would be no denying them.

21.
The Buchanans learned of Mr. Tanning’s impending marriage on their fourth day in Rome.

They stood together outside the Hotel Eden. The cable still fluttered in Larry’s good hand. A doorman splendidly outfitted—all he lacked was a flaming sword—signaled for a taxi.

“It could have been much worse,” said Larry. “You know who it could have been.
La trampessa
.”

“We must be on the lookout for a nice present,” said Enid.

Lily asked, “Would you call Lady Good attractive?”

“Oh, definitely!”

“We like her very much, Lily,” her father said.

“It’s intelligent of Prudence,” added her mother, “to have the wedding in New York.”

“Will we go to it?”

“If we’re invited, sweetie.”

“Another thing,” said Larry. “I won’t have you killing yourself to get the Cottage ready by,” he glanced at the cable, “May fifteenth.”

“I was thinking,” Enid mused, “she may not
want
red in the ocean room.”

The doorman asked where they were going.

Enid had started for the taxi, but stepped back. Where
were
they going?

“Mummy,” Lily whispered in her ear, “can we go do what you said?”

“What did I say, my pearl?”

“That if I wanted you’d ask Daddy if I could sell it.”

“Now what’s the trouble?” he demanded.

Enid was flustered. The ring, the gold ring Francis gave Lily for Christmas. She had thought of taking it to a shop and asking—

“I’m sick and tired of shops,” said Larry. “We’ve done nothing but spend money for four days. Why don’t we try to see something?”

“Villa-Borghese-Vatican-Museum-San-Pietro-Foro-Romano-Roman-Forum,” recited the doorman encouragingly.

The taxi-driver shot for the moon. “Tivoli! Villa d’Esté! Villa of Hadrian!” he wheedled. “
Moho bella giornata, Signori. Spenderepoco!
”

No. Tivoli was too far. Besides, half the fun of Tivoli was a soufflé, and that evening they’d be going back to Alfredo’s for rum omelets. It didn’t do to overdo. As for the Vatican, they would see it tomorrow. A business connection had arranged a Special Audience with the Pope, not the easiest feat during Easter Week. Lily and her mother had already bought black gauze veils, lace-trimmed, and rehearsed obeisances in their suite at the Eden.
“What would Alice say!” Lily kept exclaiming. As yet, neither Enid nor Larry guessed the extent of Alice’s influence.

Wasn’t there, Enid was asking, something of Michelangelo’s they could go see? “You’re interested in sculpture, sweetie,” she reminded Lily. The famous Moses—where was that?

“San Pietro in Vincoli!” cried doorman and driver in unison. Soon the Buchanans were rattling over cobblestones towards it.

Larry did his best. “Isn’t this great?” he said, rubbing his hands. “Look at those palm trees. You’d never think we were on the same latitude as Trenton, New Jersey.” But a vein ticked angrily at his temple. “What about Francis and some ring?” he growled.

“It’s the little antique gold ring Francis gave Lily for Christmas,” said Enid cheerfully.

“This one.” Lily spoke as if she had numberless rings. She removed her new white glove and showed it.

“That was a damn nice present,” Larry declared, “say what you like about Francis.”

Enid agreed. “It was. Lily just thinks she’s a little grown-up for it now. I can understand that, Larry, can’t you? After all, a ring with an
owl
, like her baby plate and mug …” Her mother’s reasonable voice made light of Lily’s real feelings about the ring, its dangerous fragility. The gold was too soft, she could bend it without thinking. Once it snapped, she would have damaged a precious thing, impossible to
repair. Also, the owl’s eyes unnerved her, round and knowing, like Francis’s own. If ever she left the ring on her dresser, it gazed after her so reproachfully! “… I told her she might sell it to buy something she really wants,” Enid wound up.