G. (22 page)

When she is alone in her room and sure of being alone, a woman
may look at herself in a mirror and put out her tongue. This makes her laugh and, on other occasions, cry.

It was with a woman’s presence that men fell in love. That part of a man which was submissive was mesmerized by the attention which she bestowed upon herself, and he dreamt of her bestowing the same attention upon himself. He imagined his own body, within her realm, being substituted for hers. This was a theme which occurred constantly in romantic poems about unrequited love. That part of a man which was masterful dreamt of possessing, not her body—this he called lust—but the variable mystery of her presence.

The presence of a woman in love could be very eloquent. The way she glanced or ran or spoke or turned to greet her lover might contain the quintessential quality of poetry. This would be obvious not only to the man she loved, but to any disinterested spectator. Why? Because the surveyor and the surveyed within herself were momentarily unified, and this unusual unity produced in her an absolute single-mindedness. The surveyor no longer surveyed. Her attitude to herself became as abandoned as she hoped her lover’s attitude to her would be. Her example was at last one of abandoning example. Only at such moments might a woman feel whole.

The state of being in love was usually short-lived—except in unhappy cases of unrequited love. Far shorter lived than the nineteenth-century romantic emphasis on the condition would lead us to believe. Sexual passion may have varied little throughout recorded history. But the account one renders to oneself about being in love is always informed and modified by the specific culture and social relations of the time.

For the nineteenth-century European middle classes the state of being in love was characterized by a sense of excessive uncertainty in an otherwise certain world. It was a state exempt from the promise of Progress. Its characteristic uncertainty was the result of considering the beloved as though he or she were free. Nothing that was an expression of the beloved’s wishes could be taken for granted. No single decision of the beloved could guarantee the next. Each gesture had to be read for its fresh meaning. Every arrangement became questionable until it had taken place. Doubt produced its own form of erotic stimulation: the lover became the object of the
beloved’s choice in full liberty. Or so it seemed to the couple in love. In reality, the bestowing of such liberty upon the other, the assumption that the other was so free, was part of the general process of idealizing and making the beloved seem unique.

Each lover believed that he or she was the willing object of the other’s unlimited freedom and, simultaneously, that his or her own freedom, so circumscribed until now, was at last and finally assured within the terms of the other’s adoration. Thus each became convinced that to marry was to free oneself. Yet as soon as a woman became convinced of this (which might be long before her formal engagement) she was no longer single-minded, no longer whole. She had to survey herself now as the future betrothed, the future wife, the future mother of X’s children.

For a woman the state of being in love was a hallucinatory interregnum between two owners, her bridegroom taking the place of her father, or later, perhaps, a lover taking the place of her husband.

The surveyor-in-herself quickly became identified with the new owner. She would begin to watch herself as if she were him. What would Maurice say, she would ask, if his wife (that is me) did this? Look at me, she would address the mirror, see what Maurice’s wife is like. The surveyor-in-herself became the new owner’s agent. (A relationship which might well include as much deceit or chicanery as can be found between any proprietor and agent.)

The surveyed-within-herself became the creature of proprietor and agent, of whom both must be proud. She, the surveyed, became their social puppet and their sexual object. The surveyor made the puppet talk at dinner like a good wife. And when it seemed to her fit, she lay the surveyed down on a bed for her proprietor to enjoy. One might suppose that when a woman conceived and gave birth, surveyor and surveyed were temporarily reunited. Perhaps sometimes this happened. But childbirth was so surrounded with superstitution and horror that most women submitted to it, screaming, confused, or unconscious, as to a punishment for their intrinsic duplicity. When they emerged from their ordeal and held the child in their arms they found they were the agents of the loving mother of their husband’s child.

I hope the preceding few pages will throw some light on the story
I am about to tell and in particular on G.’s insistence upon Camille being ‘solitary’ (i.e., unsurveyed by her own agency).

Giolitti in 1911

Since his father’s death in 1908, this is the first time G. has returned to Italy. Lawyers in Livorno settled the problems of his inheritance; he owns three factories, two cargo vessels and fifteen houses near the centre of the city.

The evening haze over Lake Maggiore gives everything the look of a backdrop to a theatre set. The islands seem painted. On the hill rising up behind Stresa are the large villas of the rich. Most of them were built in the nineteenth century. Around their windows and doors are painted vine leaves and oranges and birds. At one of the largest villas with an imitation Renaissance watch-tower, Weymann and G. have been invited to dine.

Why did he crash?

Although there were hundreds of witnesses, accounts of what actually happened vary considerably, as do the explanations. Around the dinner table several theories are suggested.

Chavez was in complete control and was about to make a perfect landing. But unhappily, as a result of the strain of the flight and
the buffeting of the wind, one of his wings folded a few seconds before his wheels touched the ground. This immediately forced the nose of the plane down and it dived, engine first, into the earth.

This theory is proposed and defended with authority by Monsieur Maurice Hennequin who, since he is an engineer working for Peugeot, was indeed the semi-official Peugeot representative at the competition, has to be listened to with respect. He has a habit of holding his listeners’ attention by suddenly stopping in the middle of a sentence to take in a mouthful of food. He gesticulates rigidly with his large hands, as if they were wooden doors opening and shutting to let his words out and to prevent anybody else’s ever entering into the home of his argument.

It would not have been a perfect landing. Chavez misjudged his speed. He was trying to land at about ninety kilometres an hour instead of sixty. What, however, caused the crash was not one but both wings folding, folding up like the wings of a butterfly when it alights.

This is the opinion of the Italian host, a director of the Pirelli rubber firm in Milan who has made generous donations to the Aero Club and believes, like Lord Northcliffe, that aviation has a great military and commercial future. His voice is habitually modulated to express the sweetness of reason itself. The position of his villa, its painted ceilings, the idea of dining beneath Chinese lanterns on the open platform of the imitation watch tower, the live flamingoes in the garden below, the new factory opened, all testify, he feels, to the reasonableness of his views. He believes in encouraging trade unions and offering incentives to his workers. How often has he quoted to his less successful and more belligerent business colleagues the words of the great Giolitti as Prime Minister:

‘The upward movement of the popular classes is accelerating day by day, and it is an invincible movement, because it is common to all civilized countries and is based upon the principle of the equality of all men. Let no one delude himself that he can prevent the popular classes from conquering their share of political and economic influence. It depends chiefly on us, on the attitude of the constitutional parties in their relations with the popular classes, whether the emergence of these shall be a new conservative force,
a new element of prosperity and greatness, or whether instead it shall be a whirlwind that will be the ruin of our country’s fortunes.’

Only as a last resort would the host think in terms similar to those of his uncle: The cavalry! Don’t delay! Martial law and the cavalry! And then he would not shout such words in a Milan hotel; he would quietly pick up a telephone.

His wife asks whether it would not have been safer to land in the lake.

As the result of the cold experienced during the crossing, the pilot’s hands became so numb and frozen that he could no longer handle his controls properly.

This is the suggestion of the Contessa R., who is a great patron of the Milanese opera.

The Contessa raises her hand, its fingers supplely converging towards an apex. It is a dancer’s miming gesture for a flower about to open: it is also the gesture of a child trying to pick something out of a jar. Suddenly, on the word ‘frozen’, she shoots out fingers and thumb and holds them stiffly outstretched while she passes her other hand over the supposedly frozen one, indicating by tentative touches how icy its surface must be.

What intelligence! a man whispers to the young lady beside him, what intelligence behind those grey hairs! By Christmas, the young woman replies, she will have recovered from the loss of Gino, and her hair will be as black as five years ago.

Why does nobody consult Monsieur Chavez himself? The speaker is a woman of about thirty. Her voice is slightly rasping, as if it had once been ruined by a fit of inordinate demonic laughter. Are not most of the controls worked by the feet?

Could you please tell me her name?

Madame Hennequin. Surely you were introduced?

Her first name, I mean.

I do not know her maiden name.

Her
prénom
.

Ah. I am so sorry. Camille.

Geo remembers nothing after the Gondo gorges.

Poor Geo!

The hostess, wearing a golden bracelet made in the form of an ancient Etruscan one, extends her arm in beckoning invitation to Weymann. Monsieur Weymann, she says (Weymann is a friend of Maurice Hennequin—hence the invitation), you are the flyer and our guest of honour, tell us your opinion.

Weymann smiles but replies tersely in English: You can’t trust a plane like that. Do you know what its wings are made of? Cotton and wood.

Chavez was suffering from a kind of euphoria. He believed that he had succeeded in his venture and the worst was behind him; at the last moment he became reckless.

This is the theory of Harry Schuwey, a Belgian industrialist.

A woman who was just previously smiling at Camille Hennequin and sharing some joke with her says: I don’t find that very convincing, Harry. Her manner of address indicates that she is probably his mistress.

And she?

Mathilde. Mathilde Le Diraison.

My dear Mathilde, replies the Belgian, that is because you have no imagination at all. A young man of twenty-four who has just flown over the Alps for the first time in history believes that he is immortal, the world seems to lie at his feet (the Belgian gives a little laugh), believe me, moments of success are the most dangerous.

But he
is
immortal, says Madame Hennequin, schoolchildren will learn his name in the history books.

If she were not so well dressed one might mistake her for a schoolteacher. Her features and her figure possess a kind of angularity which suggests a distinct if circumscribed independence of mind.

That will depend, says her husband, on what he does in his further
exploits. (In Monsieur Hennequin’s choice of the word ‘exploits’ there is an unconscious condescension, the result of jealousy.) His is a great achievement, I would be the last to deny it, but in the coming years there will be many more even more spectacular ones. Am I not right? He addresses himself to his host whose agreement is certain.

In ten years somebody will fly the Atlantic, says the host.

The first man to fly round the world! says the host’s wife wearily.

Will somebody fly to the moon one day? asks Madame Hennequin. Monsieur Hennequin smiles indulgently at his exotic wife and says with pride: She is an extremist, a dreamer, is Camille.

I am scarcely less interested in her than G. I will describe her to you as I now see her. She is thin. Her bones look as though they are too big for her skin; an effect not unlike that of a child wearing clothes she has outgrown. Her movements are very fastidious, as though they too are too small for her and she must take care not to outdo them. Her face glows, and her eyes are both soft and very translucent, like absolutely clear water in which fur is reflected.

She notices G. gazing at her. Most men when they stare at an unknown woman who attracts them, have already begun in their imagination the process of seducing and undressing her; they already see her in certain positions with certain expressions on her face; they are already beginning to dream about her. And so, when she intercepts their look, one of two things happens: either they continue to stare at her shamelessly because her real existence does not disturb their dream: or else she will read a flicker of shame in their eyes expressed as a momentary hesitation to which she will be obliged to respond either encouragingly or discouragingly.