Last Stories and Other Stories (9780698135482) (84 page)

The papyrus from Heracleopolis, and other such (e.g., the wrapping of the crocodile mummy)— All these are, alas, invented, but some details relating to handwriting, sites of excavation and the like derive from information in E. G. Turner,
Greek Papyri: An Introduction
(London: Oxford at the Clarendon Press, 1968).

Description of the Sphere of Fixed Stars (
“that great blue dome of ultramarine”
)— Based on the ceiling dome of San Spirodione Taumaturgo in Trieste.

Description of
“the gloomy latitudes”
— After a visit to Patagonia in December 2011.

The magical procedures followed on the island— Abbreviated from Sayed Idries Shah,
The Secret Lore of Magic: Books of the Sorcerers
(New York: Citadel Press, 1958), pp. 25–27 (The Key of Solomon, Son of David).

“The Patriarchs”
:
“There is no resurrection without death.”
— Actually, Patriarch Gavrilo (1881–1950), as quoted in Anzulovic, p. 14.

The silver likeness of Saint Blasius— Seen by WTV in Ragusa (Dubrovnik).

Description of Mrs. Cirtovich— After a bust by Ruggero Rova (Trieste 1877–1965),
Il Sorriso,
1910.

The Serbian crosses of black tar— Montague Summers,
The Vampire in Europe
(New Hyde Park, NY: University Books, 1968; orig. ed. 1929?), p. 159.

The lucky man who dies at Easter— Lazarovich-Hrebelianovich and Lazarovich-Hrebelianovich, vol. 1, p. 26.

“Society has no way out of disappointment . . .”
— Djilas, p. 257.

THE MADONNA'S FOREHEAD

In some versions of the tale of why she bled, a frustrated player threw a
boca
ball at the Madonna's forehead. In the others, someone threw a stone, not a brick. She was the Madonna delle Grazie, or “Dei Fiori”—by one account the property of the family
Fiori, since she was found in the nineteenth century when someone was digging in the Fioris' garden.

“we may conceive of the masochism merely as a painting . . .”
— Wilhelm Stekel, M.D.,
Sadism and Masochism: The Psychology of Hatred and Cruelty,
trans. Louise Brink, Ph.D., vol. 1 (New York: Liveright, 1953 repr. of 1929 ed.), p. 210.

Varying opinions regarding the Madonna's forehead— In the end our disagreements solidified into two factions, which assembled themselves in the appropriate cafés. Speaking on behalf of the old men, I want to dig my finger's crook into your collarbone so that you'll believe me when I insist that life was much better when we possessed as many theories as Triestini, and discussion was as many-grooved as the costumes for “Aida” . . .—when we could mumble into our grappas about the Madonna, our mumblings even extending beyond the metaphysical to erotic considerations, so that the rancor with which we contested our interpretations of her spilled blood could, just like our city's yellow, soapy-feeling old marble, dissolve decade by decade in the acidic air. Oh, but human nature's not like that! At my stage of life, all I want is the lovely blue sky with grey cream in it; and however bad it was, the past stays safely past;
that
Trieste's always misty blue and white like a faded travel poster. Until the Romans roofed this territory with their authority, it was contested among Illyrians, Istrians, Celts and others; and after the Romans, first Venice, then Austria and finally Italy got their hands on it. Napoleon was here in 1797, just for the day. But I didn't live through most of that, so it's pleasant to talk about; I never oppose local color; in fact, I'm proud of that blue-and-red fragment of the old Teatro Verdi.— Nowadays it's less complicated. There are only two factions: the light and the darkness. Of course, I forget which is which.

CAT GODDESS

The bright yet pastel-like oil paintings of Leonor Fini celebrate femininity, androgyny, narcissism, surrealism and decadence. Often her women are Klimt-like in their pallid elongations. Aside from her cats, she loved nothing better than a good quarrel; best of all was when she orchestrated a falling-out between two of her friends. In 2009 I visited a postmortem retrospective of this great artist's work at the Museo Revoltella—the perfect venue, I decided, admiring some more Tominzes in gilded oval frames: near-naked young women fiddling with themselves. In the dead Baron's library, the backs of the chairs were carved with twin caryatid-like females who played quite busily with their own breasts. The red velvet cushions reminded me of Leonor Fini's lips. Mostly, of course, I studied Leonor's paintings. Entranced, I expressed my appreciation to the coat check girl. She smiled and said: Can you catch me?— Before I realized who she was, a strangely pallid corseted woman in a lace-sleeved red tunic was running through Trieste, daring me to kiss her. Lace around her throat, lace between her legs; oh, my! Finally she permitted me to grasp her from behind while she leaned against an antique column. As it happened, in those days I was still as handsome as Napoleon used to be back in 1805, so when I asked for a kiss, I hoped for assent, but she said: I'll only make love if you act like a woman.— When I finally agreed, that wary-eyed tease, as magnificently black-clad (in gloves, dress, the whole works) and as regally bored as the Duchess
of Aosta, refused to take anything off. Maliciously giggling, she next proposed that I act like a cat. But I did not wish to. Fortunately for my aspirations, the previous night I had caught a ghost-fish, which I was wearing around my neck (for creatures of that sort never stink), so I held it out into the air behind Leonor's ankles, and then, just as I had hoped, three of her ghost-cats crept out of nowhere to bat that spirit-meat between them and finally share a few nibbles. This sight softened my friend, so she led me into an irregularly edged apartment tower whose windows, each of a different shape, were shuttered by concretions of unpainted planks; and in one room we lay down together to fill each other with Trieste, where the afternoon sky is bluer and the trembling bedroom curtains so much whiter that they might as well be silver and gold.

Several descriptions of Leonor Fini's paintings and of photographs of her derive from illustrations in: Museo Revoltella Trieste,
Leonor Fini: L'Italienne de Paris
[exhibition catalogue] (Trieste: 2009), and Peter Webb,
Sphinx: The Life and Art of Leonor Fini
(New York: Vendome Press, n.d.).

A few descriptions of elegant Triestinas are based on photographs in Elvio Guagnini and Italo Zannier, eds.,
La Trieste dei Wulz: Volti di una Storia: Fotographie 1860–1980
(Trieste: Alinari, 1989).

The shy little marble girl— Sculpted by Donato Barcaglia, 1871. Now in the Museo Revoltella in Trieste.

The story (which Leonor especially loved) of Maximilian and “La Paloma”— From Webb, p. 10.

The
“slim, lovely young wasp-waisted beauty in a black jacket-skirt and black tights who held a whip and sometimes permitted him to feed tidbits to her pet bulldog”
— Based on a painting by Giuseppe de Nittis, 1878,
La Signora del Cane (Ritorno dalle Corse),
which I saw at the Museo Revoltella.

Description of Rijeka— After a visit there in 2009.

The pale man in the photographer's doorway in Prague— After a photograph in Pavel Scheufler,
Fotografiké Album Čech 1839–1914
(Prague?: Odeon, 1989).

Leonor's inability to face the death of her own cats— Webb, p. 207.

Leonor's interest first in cadavers, then in mummies and skeletons— Somewhat after a direct quotation in Webb, p. 11.

“I dislike the deference with which your Rossetti's been treated.”
— Ibid., p. 71, somewhat altered.

The perfumed cat excrement at Leonor's— After Webb, p. 46, who implies that the story may be apocryphal.

The pale women wading naked in dark water— After Museo Revoltella Trieste, pp. 160–61 (
La Bagnanti,
1959).

“The men around me are dead . . .”
— Altered from Webb, p. 143.

“I prefer cats . . .”
— Altered from Webb, p. 25.

“femininity triumphing over a city”
— Webb, p. 11 (Leonor is describing her relief of Amazons trampling men).

The
“woman not unlike Giovanna, but with still longer, richer hair”
— After Museo Revoltella Trieste, p. 125 (
Streghe Amauri,
1947).

Descriptions of mummies, Sekhmet, Hathor, etcetera— Based on visits to the Museo Egizio di Torino in 2009 and 2012.

THE TRENCH GHOST

Description of the trenches at Redipuglia— After a visit there in May 2012.

“I am not this.”
— This simple yet profound point is indebted to
I Am That: Talks with Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj,
trans. from the Marathi taperecordings [
sic
] by Maurice Frydman, rev. & ed. Sudhakar S. Dikshit (Durham, NC: Acorn Press, 1973), p. 59: “To know what you are you must first investigate and know what you are not.”

Description of the pillboxes at Tungesnes (on the coast west of Stavanger)— After a visit there in September 2011.

“Find what is it that never sleeps and never wakes, and whose pale reflection is our sense of ‘I.'”
— Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, p. 12.

“the pinnacle of military deployment approaches the formless.”
— Ralph D. Sawyer, with Mei-Chün Sawyer, comp. and trans.,
The Seven Military Classics of Ancient China
(San Francisco: Westview, 1993), p. 335 (“Questions and Replies between T'ang T'ai-tsung and Li Wei-king” [written in Tang or Sung period], quoting Sun-tzu).

“It is the body that is in danger, not you.”
— Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, p. 412.

THE FAITHFUL WIFE

A few details of daily life in preindustrial Bohemia are indebted to information in Sylvia Welner and Kevin Welner, eds.,
Small Doses of Arsenic: A Bohemian Woman's Story of Survival
(New York: Hamilton Books / The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, 2005), pp. 4–23, 33–35. [The letter-writer's surname is not given; she is simply introduced as Tonca, writing to her son Jaroslav. Her childhood recollections take place in the early twentieth century; I have assumed that the early-nineteenth-century existence of Michael and Milena's family was no richer than hers.]

Return of female Romanian vampires; tale of Alexander of Pyrgos— Summers,
The Vampire in Europe,
pp. 310, 232.

The Bohemian custom of masking oneself on the way home from a funeral— Ibid., p. 287.

The seventh Mansion of the Moon, called
Alarzach
—
Francis Barrett,
A Magus, or Celestial Intelligencer: A Complete System of Occult Philosophy
(Secaucus, NJ: Citadel Press, 1975 pbk. repr. of 1975 ed.; orig. pub. 1801), Book I, p. 154.

The tale of Merit— Her grave-goods and her husband's are on display (“the tomb of Kha”) at the Museo Egizio di Torino.

“I have found a woman more bitter than death . . .”
— Heinrich Kramer and James Sprenger,
The Malleus Maleficarum,
trans. Rev. Montague R. Summers (New York: Dover, 1971 repr. of 1948 rev. ed; orig. Latin ed.
ca.
1484), p. 47. (Sentence originally began with “And I have found . . .”).

The vampire who first chuckles, then whinnies like a horse— Pëtr Bogatyrëv,
Vampires in the Carpathians: Magical Acts, Rites, and Beliefs in Subcarpathian Rus',
trans. Stephen Reynolds and Patricia A. Krafcik, w/ bio. intro. by Svetlana P. Sorokina (New York: East European Monographs, dist. Columbia University Press, 1998; orig. French ed. 1929), p. 132.

The Dark Man by the water (“he torments people when he finds them by the waterside”)— Ibid., p. 133.

The eleventh Mansion of the Moon, called
Azobra—
Barrett, p. 155.

“Some say that vampires have two hearts.”
— Information from Radu Florescu and Raymond T. McNally,
The Complete Dracula: Two Books in One! Combining “Dracula, a Biography of Vlad the Impaler,” and the bestseller “In Search of Dracula”
(Acton, MA: Copley, 1985), p. 95.

Some of the later descriptions of Milena floating in her bath are inspired by Bonnard paintings.

DOROTEJA

What is done with cristallium etcetera— Dr. G. Storms,
Anglo-Saxon Magic
(The Hague: Martinius Nijhoff, Centrale Drukkerij N.V., Nijimegen, 1948), p. 235 (The Holy Drink against elf-tricks). Since I have moved this spell to Bohemia, I changed elves to goblins.

“This is my help against the evil late birth . . .”
— Ibid., pp. 196, 199 (Against Miscarriage; original reads “this
as
my help . . .”).

Rite of washing in silver-water on New Year's Day— Bogatyrëv, p. 42.

Churchgoing of dead souls on Holy Saturday— Ibid., p. 68.

The dead woman who returned to bite her husband's finger— Ibid., p. 120.

THE JUDGE'S PROMISE

Epigraph:
“And finally let the Judge come in . . .”
—
The Malleus Maleficarum,
p. 231.

The incident in Neinstade (which supposedly took place in 1603)— Elaborated after Summers,
The Vampire in Europe,
p. 201.

“the ill-fated Bohemian rectangle”
— Phrase quoted in Joseph Wechsberg,
Prague, the Mystical City
(New York: Macmillan, 1971), p. 1.

Police work of Frederick the Great and the Police President of Berlin (both actually in the early nineteenth century)— Clive Emsley,
Policing and Its Context 1750–1870
(New York: Schocken Books, 1983), pp. 99–100.

Location of the Golem's corpse and Dr. Faustus's residence— Wechsberg, pp. 5, 38.

Travails of Bohemian linen-weavers— Jaroslav Pánek, Oldrich Tuma et al.,
A History of the Czech Lands
(Charles University in Prague: Karolinum Press, 2009), p. 292.

Description of the second medallion of the sun— Information from Shah, pp.
46–47.