Milking the Moon (38 page)

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I was always broke, of course; I had no money. I lived on what little royalties turned up now and again. I did the illustrations for the Grabbe book
Wit, Satire, Irony, and Deeper Meaning,
for the Gabberbocchus Press. And then they took a hundred copies of
Monkey Poems.
Then I got a check from whoever published
The Untidy Pilgrim
in England. Ten cents here, ten cents there. So I kind of eked out something. After I’d been about six months in this gardener’s cottage is when the princess began to pay me a monthly salary. Of course, she always intended to pay, but she was absentminded and very involved with the printer and the writing. She wrote letters by hand, hundreds of letters a day. I would borrow money from her administrator now and again, and I think he finally said to her, “Well, you know, Walter’s dead broke.” Then right away I was put on salary. It was never anything worth talking about, just a pittance.

I was given an office in a medieval tower next door to this Renaissance palace. It was the Caetani tower from long before the palace. There was a stairway that went from somewhere in the palace into this tower, this gloomy thing. I was there until the princess came one day to look at it. It was winter, and she had dressed as though she were going to the North Pole. She had on a fur coat, and she had this shawl over her head, gloves. She had to go from her room to a stairway and down one stairway and up another stairway and through a thing in the wall to climb another stairway to this office in the medieval tower. She took one look around and she said, “You can’t be very comfortable in here.” Before I knew it, I was being moved into a room in the back of the palace proper, which looked out on the Via Michelangelo Caetani that ran along one side of the palace. That was my office the rest of the time I was there.

I had to baby-sit the princess, baby-sit Roffredo, make contact with people for various reasons. An enormous amount of material came. And her eyes were failing, so it was my duty to go through it. Finally, I was reading the manuscripts and shoving the best at her. And I really tried desperately not to promote my friends and not to low-rate the bores. I told myself, Now, Eugene, don’t you dare push your friends or kick the butts of the bores. I wrote letters, wrote letters. She would tell me to write some woman. Or to send a certain note with a certain manuscript. And of course, I put the
Botteghes
into their wrappings and addressed them, for every number. Took them myself to the post office, and I carefully watched as closely as I could. One day it had been discovered that all of the last issue of
Botteghe
was piled up in a cellar. There was this idiot, Gino, who was from one of the peasant families that had been serfs of the Caetanis from medieval times. So what do you do? They let him sort of be like a footman in the palace, to carry notes from floor to floor because the Prince Caetani would never telephone anybody within the palace. Well, Gino was supposed to take the mail to the post office. So one day the princess was in the courtyard, getting into her car to go somewhere, when the chauffeur opened this storeroom to get a rag to do the windshield or something, and here were all these issues of the magazine, just dumped. And mail, letters—dumped. The princess threw a fit. She never raised hell with the servants. She was a lady. If something was really wrong, she would call the administrator and get him to talk to the offending party. But in this case she really let him have it, in very beautiful Italian. That was one of the only times I’ve heard the princess speak harshly to anybody on earth. So then he sent word that he was going to commit suicide. He walked forty kilometers or whatever from Rome to Ninfa, her weekend place which was the town hall of this medieval village where she restored and made famous the gardens. He turned up there, saying,
“Oh, principessa”
kissing her feet and saying, “I know I’ve been wicked, and I’ll jump in the lake.” And she said, “Oh, no, Gino, for heaven’s sake, behave.” So he still worked at the palazzo, but I delivered the magazines to the post office.

And I quickly realized that the princess was someone who never sent manuscripts back. She stuffed the manuscripts she didn’t like between her bed and the wall. And the maid just swept them out and put them in the garbage. Manuscripts she liked or thought had possibilities or writers she thought she would write and say, “Send me something else in a year,” were piled up on her bedside table. The things she couldn’t tolerate she just stuffed between her bed and the wall. I told her, “Well, you know, Princess, we really should send manuscripts back when they send those little international postage coupons.” “Oh, is that what those funny little things are?” And I said, “In some cases when it’s a known writer or even some very young one that you know who’s poor, we still ought to send them back, even if they didn’t send the coupons.” So I would write little notes. I’ve often had them quoted back to me. “The Princess bids me return this manuscript to you with her gratitude, after having an opportunity to consider it for
Botteghe Oscure.
She hopes that within a year you will send another.” Or, “Thank you so very much. The amount of material on hand is sufficient for two years of
Botteghe Oscure.”
But I always said, “The Princess bids me.” It was quoted back to me a hundred times.

Some days I would leave at three. Sometimes I worked twenty-four hours a day getting three or four languages proofread and through the printer. There were others who helped, somebody in every language. But Giorgio Bassani was no help at all. He was just a pompous little ass. He was theoretically, more or less, the assistant for the Italian part. And he was this novelist who had written
The Garden of the Finzi-Continis.
I thought he was a wonderful writer but a real monster. The princess invited him to Palazzo Caetani to meet me. She had this long room on the top floor. This was a kind of
soperattico,
a superattic that had been added in the last century to house French and English governesses. She’d had all those rooms thrown into one, with windows all around one side and bookshelves all around the other. Strictly modern, 1930s modern. A lot of white walls and white furniture. Only paintings painted since 1900. She didn’t want the gloom of the Roman palace; she didn’t want the weight of all those centuries of Caetani.

Anyway, she invited Giorgio Bassani to come and meet me there. Well, at the other end of the room, from where she had arranged little sofas, you stepped down a little step and there was a little door where you could just get through. When you went through it, you were just under the ceiling of this huge, huge red room. This was the noble room on the
piano nobile,
the noble floor. Every palace has a
piano nobile,
and the Caetani was no exception. It’s the grand floor that has state occasion rooms. It was a Renaissance room with a gilded ceiling and red damask walls and a grand piano and overstuffed furniture. When I say overstuffed, I mean Victorian overstuffed. I mean stuffed bursting. And gilded curves. The princess never went in there—she hated it—except when there were thunderstorms. She was afraid of thunder, and the curtains were so heavy and the walls so thick that when you closed the inner shutters and then drew the curtains, you could barely hear the thunder. I sat through many a thunderstorm with her there.

But anyway, anybody coming officially would catch an elevator that she’d had installed in the palace corridors and stairways. They’d catch it in the courtyard and go up to the sort of hallway where you entered the grand room. Then in the corner of that grand room, she built a funny little stairway that climbed up to the ceiling. And you went through this little cubbyhole and ended up in modernity. You went from Renaissance to twentieth century, just under the ceiling.

There was a rap on the little door. She said, “That must be Giorgio. Go and let him in.” So I went and stepped down and opened the door. And this nasty little thing came in and did not acknowledge my presence. Being Southern, I thought no matter who opens the door, you would nod or say “Thank you.” The princess was half a block away on that floor, and he obviously knew who I was. But he just looked right at her and put on this great hundred-watt smile.
“Principessa!”
And I thought, Well, what a piece of shit. Obviously he resented my arriving to be her assistant.

Then Giorgio Bassani published a book of all his stories that had been in
Botteghe Oscure.
Now it says in the beginning of the magazine that for anything reproduced from the magazine, acknowledgment must be made. Well, Inaudi, the big publisher in Milano, published Giorgio Bassani’s book, and Giorgio Bassani did not put any acknowledgment of
Botteghe Oscure.
So I, little old bite ass, wrote a nasty letter as an assistant to the princess. She knew I was writing it, and she giggled and gurgled when I showed her the letter I had written, saying, “This is highly irregular; it is usually considered not only a courtesy, but a legality,” and so on and so on, and I sent an actual cover where you see that written in the magazine. He answered to the princess in a rather huffy-puffy letter, and he loathed me because of that letter.

Then on another occasion, there was this manuscript that the daughter of Benedetto Croce, the philosopher, brought to show the princess. Eleanor Croce said, “I don’t know what you’ll think of this, but it was sent to me anonymously, as I am a friend of yours and of
Botteghe Oscure.
The writer begged me to show it to you.” She said, “Well, I’ve read it, and I don’t know. It’s Sicilian. It’s beautifully written, but it sounds to me like one of those onetime writers writing about his family in Sicily. So here it is.” The princess read it. She loved it. By then I had enough Italian, and I said, “Well, you know, Princess, I’m a novice at Italian, but it was fascinating.” She said, “We’ll publish it.” She said, “I’d already decided, but I was curious to see what you’d make of it.” But Bassani said, “Oh no, this is trash, this is some journalist. I advise you not to publish it, it’s not worth it.”

It was a chapter from
The Leopard.
Every Italian publisher had turned it down, and so he, the prince of Lampedusa, sent it anonymously to this lady he knew was intelligent, Eleanor Croce, and said, “You are a friend of the publisher of
Botteghe Oscure.
I should like so much to beg you most humbly to pass it to her.” And it was a chapter of
The Leopard.

So right away there was interest after the princess published it, because a new number of
Botteghe Oscure
was beginning to be meaningful. It was a British publisher who wrote first to inquire about it, because by then British publishers began to have their foreign readers, people in London who spoke French or Italian or German.

And then, of course, who takes credit for it? After it had been published in every language and was this huge success, Bassani would say it was he who received the manuscript. And after the prince of Lampedusa died and Princess Caetani died, it was Giorgio Bassani who was honored for discovering the manuscript. There was a ceremony in Milano where he went to accept the prize.

I don’t know what sign of the zodiac he is, but he’s one of those people that I get warning signals from. My hair stood on end that first day I met him. I happen to like snakes; there is no animal in the world with whom to compare Giorgio Bassani. Except the race of self-congratulatory editors. Editors in the grass. He made so many enemies because of the way he used his power as an editor of
Botteghe Oscure.
He had refused so many things or advised her to refuse so many things. I think the princess did not realize the extent to which he flicked his tail to right and to left as a literary lion. I think she saw through him, but she just saw this amusing little thing who was a very good writer. But he had little lines around his eyes that were tight. Like nerves or a false smile had gotten engraved. His literary-lion smile: “
Buon giorno, principessa!”
As though God had sent invisible lightning and those fake smile lines had gotten etched by invisible lightning. I’m sure he’s still alive. He has to be. People like that never die young. Well, you know, you have to think about his upbringing in a moment when Italy was anti-Semitic. He was part Jewish or all Jewish and so sensitive and nervous about that. I would give lessons in neurosis if my life had been his. And it’s a rough thing for an artist of any kind, anywhere, in the world today. Homer had it easy. He could sit by the fire, tell stories all night, and they’d feed him and drink him. Give him a place to sleep. But life’s gotten more complicated. And I’ve often felt sorry for Bassani. But he was a monster. A monster. I put him on my shit list. I make a weekly shit list, and when it’s finished, I burn it. I consign those names to oblivion.

Those Cats and Monkeys That I Collect

Once in a pile of manuscripts I found this story called “The
Portobello Road” which I just loved. The princess didn’t particularly like it, but I just loved it. Muriel Spark was totally unknown. She’d only done book reviews, and she was having a little book on John Masefield coming out. John Masefield was poet laureate, but he certainly was not a popular author or big figure in English letters at that time. He’s since been seen to be indeed a major talent. But at that moment, he was just sort of old hat. But Muriel liked him, and she had done this little book. So she had been a critic and biographer but at a given moment turned to fiction. But somebody from England who knew Muriel bad-mouthed Muriel. The person said something like “Oh, she’s this tiresome woman, tiresome woman.” It may have been T. S. Eliot who said she was a mess. I’ve forgotten. I think it was. Because she’d interviewed him in some newspaper. He knew who she was. And the princess didn’t like to get involved in anything with feuds. She said, “I’ve heard of this Muriel Spark. Cousin Tom says she is difficult.” She was just going to throw it out. I said, “Princess, this is a great story,” and we published it in
Botteghe Oscure.