Occasional Prose (36 page)

Violetta has followed his glance. “This is a secret from everyone. Let it not be one from you.” Without a further word she hands the unbending old man the papers she has brought back from Paris—papers that speak for themselves. He runs a hurried eye through them. “Good God! What a revelation! You think of stripping yourself of all your possessions—everything you have?” Then an explanation occurs to him. “Ah, because of your past. Why let it accuse you?” He is moved to pity. “That past no longer exists,” she announces proudly. “Now I love Alfredo. And God has annulled the past because of my repentance.” Germont is more and more struck. “These are noble feelings,” he observes. Here is not the kind of wanton he had expected to deal with.

With her acute sensibility, Violetta is immediately aware of the change in his feeling toward her. She leans forward impulsively. “How sweet your words sound to me.” Germont ignores this winning speech, intent on his main purpose. “Such feelings demand sacrifices. I am asking one of you.” He has stood up. She leaps up herself, affrighted, trembling like a hunted deer. “Ah, no. Be quiet. You’d ask for terrible things. Yes, I foresaw it. I expected you. I was too happy.” The old man squares his shoulders and stiffens his bony spine, making himself look even taller. “Alfredo’s father demands it in the name of two destinies—the future of his two children.” “
Two
children?” She is startled. Seeing her surprise, Germont takes a deep, preparatory breath. Now he can speak to her of the little sister, the daughter God gave him, pure as an angel.

Pure as an angel. But if her truant brother refuses to return to the bosom of the family, then her fiancé—the youth she loves and who loves her in return—will have to back off from his commitment, which had been the joy of both. On the theme of that pure maiden, Germont waxes eloquent. He soars to a pitch of feeling. As he pleads his suit (or the suit of his daughter), the old burgher in his virtuous plain attire curiously recalls the figure of his son in evening dress in the salon of Violetta’s apartment holding forth on ethereal rapture, mysterious, sovereign love, and so on. Like father, like son. Violetta listens, transfixed. We are witnessing a seduction scene—nothing less than that.

And, like so many women mesmerized by a seducer, Violetta does not understand at first what Alfredo’s father wants of her. “You’re not going to turn the roses of love into thorns,” he has been pleading, carried away on a fresh rhetorical flight. “You won’t withstand my prayers. Your heart will not refuse.” “Oh, I understand,” she cries, brightening, her next words a clear indication that she does not. “For a little while I shall have to live apart from Alfredo. That will be hard. However ...” “That’s not what I’m asking,” he says bluntly.

“Good heavens, what more can you want? I’m offering a great deal.” “Not enough, though.” “You want me to give him up for good?” “It’s necessary.” His terse, staccato replies reveal a different, wholly determined man. They come like short pitiless stabs at her tender, quivering heart. At last she understands what this Nemesis wants of her. As comprehension pierces her, she screams. “Never! No, never!” she shrills, like somebody on the rack. Then she gets hold of herself, her voice drops to a soft pleading tone that begs him pitifully for mercy.

Germont cannot know the love she has burning in her heart. That among the living she has neither friends nor relations. That Alfredo has sworn to her that he will be all of them for her—parents, brother, friends. Nor does her torturer know that she has been stricken by a dread disease, that the end of her days is already in plain sight. And yet he is asking her to give Alfredo up. To such heartless torture, she decidedly prefers death.

Again his attitude changes, to one of respectful sympathy. The resolution of her last few words has showed another side to her, which he must treat with a new deference. The sacrifice will be heavy, he acknowledges. “But still—listen to me calmly—you’re beautiful and young. With time—” “Don’t go on,” she interrupts, as though to spare him useless effort. “I understand you. But for me it’s impossible. I can love only him.” “Granted,” he tells her. “And yet men are inconstant, you know.” To this terrible hint, Violetta reacts with a start, as though the idea that Alfredo could be faithless were coming to her for the first time. “Good God!” she cries out. The paterfamilias, confident that he has touched a vulnerable spot, presses on with his insinuations. A day may come, he prophesies, when the pleasures of Venus pall and boredom is quick to follow. ... What will happen then? “Think!” he bids her. “For you the sweeter affections can never serve as balm, since unions like yours cannot be blessed by heaven.” Violetta drops her eyes, again touched to the quick. The fact that Alfredo cannot marry her, which she has accepted with an easy heart, takes on its full, bleak significance in the father’s relentless optic: they can never have children, a real home, family life, an assured place in society; when love-making loses its first charm, they will find nothing to occupy them, no binding agent to hold them together. “It’s true!” she whispers, excruciated; again the torment he skillfully produces in her is like a physical pain.

“Well, then, abandon that seductive dream.” Germont is close to attaining his object; he has only to drive home his points. Vigor and manly confidence now visibly exude from him, like an athlete’s sweat. He has shown her enough of the bad and threatening aspects of the future; it is time to point to the rewards in store if she behaves. “Be my family’s consoling angel. Violetta”—for the first time he pronounces her name—“think, do think. There’s time still, don’t you see? Young woman, believe me, God is speaking through a father’s voice.” It is a privilege he is offering her if she will only understand. Through the sacred character of the family tie (which she has never known, apparently), she will be drawn into the embrace of the
Padre Eterno
, stern but forgiving, like his human simulacrum. Germont, as if bathed himself in holy light, is showing the fallen woman the path to salvation.

But the prevailing erotic undertone, the caressing voice, deeper and more virile than the son’s mere tenor, start to make one wonder. Isn’t this grave old party the devil? To one more versed in the Gospels than Violetta, this is the familiar temptation in the wilderness, with a perverse Victorian twist. The family is the god to which she and all her sisterhood are required to sacrifice. Indeed, without Violetta and her sisters to “take care of” the coarse lusts of the male, the family as temple of purity could not be enshrined.

Meanwhile, Violetta, writhing on the cross prepared for her, is sadly aware, at last, of her fate. She has been deluded—now she knows it—to suppose that she can rise from ashes and create a new life. There’s no hope for a fallen woman. Even if God in His indulgence can forgive her, man will be implacable.

Bitterly weeping, she turns to the parent-extortioner to tell him to tell his daughter, that fair, pure daughter, how a poor wretch, victim of misfortune, had a single ray of happiness and sacrificed it to her. Having done so, the wretch will die. The extraordinary thing is that Violetta, as though to bear out the father’s well-worn arguments, is transfigured while speaking by her good (as she thinks) action. Although she weeps bitter tears, her feeling for the fortunate, sheltered maiden has no trace of animus or sarcasm; if there is envy, it is a kind of holy envy, suffused with tender piety. And now Germont, perhaps sincerely, is able to offer consolation to his suffering victim. “Weep, weep,” he tells her, “weep, poor woman.” Her tears are good for her—a therapy; she must let them flow. And, now that it is over and she has given way, he is able to see—and admit—that it is a supreme sacrifice he is asking of her. In his own breast already he feels the pain of it. “Courage!” he concludes, on a brisker note. “Your noble heart will conquer.”

A silence intervenes, as at the conclusion of a rite:
ite, missa est
. Then, like a soldier or a hired assassin, she asks him to give her his orders. “Tell him you don’t love him.” “He won’t believe me.” “Leave.” “He’ll follow.” “Then ...” Germont is at a loss; he has no experience in these matters. In his stead, Violetta decides what she must do. But first, like a young knight, she needs his blessing. “Embrace me like a daughter,” she instructs the old man. “That will make me strong.” He puts his arms around her, and for a moment they stand clasped. Then the newly armored woman, the “daughter,” speaks. “He’ll be delivered to you shortly, but he’ll be in a pitiable state.” She points to the garden. “Please wait for him there and comfort him.” She goes to the writing-desk. “What’s in your mind?” he asks, uneasily. She shakes her head. “If you knew, you’d try to stop me.”

Germont is more and more impressed and surprised by her. “Generous woman! And what can I do for
you
?” Violetta has the answer ready for him—another surprise. Advancing from beside the desk, she takes a few steps in his direction. She has been thinking ahead. “I’ll die! When it happens, don’t let him curse my memory. If you do feel something for me, at least tell him what I’ve suffered.” “No, generous spirit, live. You must be happy. Heaven will reward you one day for these tears.” In a new way they are still at cross-purposes. Her realism and urgency are met by uplifting speeches of a deeply conventional sort. Alfredo’s father prefers not to know the truth, which Violetta, for her part, has accepted—almost, in a strange fashion, embraced.

She replies calmly. When she is dead, Alfredo should know of the sacrifice she has made for love of him. He should know that her heart has been his up to her last breath. Germont’s answer to this is, of course, the predictable set of clichés. “Your heart’s sacrifice will find its reward. You will be proud then of such a noble deed.” Violetta is no longer listening. She has heard a sound perhaps from the garden. “Someone’s coming! Go!” “Oh, my heart is so grateful,” he says, turning to leave. “Go!” she repeats and adds, on reflection: “This may be the last time we’ll see each other.” Very simply, she turns to him, and they embrace. Each then enjoins the other to be happy—impossible in both cases—and they bid each other farewell. He goes out by a garden window, and she is alone.

“God, give me strength.” She sits down at the desk, writes something, then rings the bell. Annina appears. “You wanted me?” “Yes. Deliver this yourself.” Annina glances at the folded sheet of paper and is surprised by the name of the addressee. She gives a little shriek. “Quiet,” her mistress tells her. “Be off.” The girl goes out. Violetta ponders. Now she must write to Alfredo. But what will she tell him? And where will she get the courage? She writes and seals the letter.

Alfredo enters, in city clothes. “What are you doing?” he immediately wants to know. “Nothing,” she tells him, hiding the letter. “You were writing!” he exclaims. “Yes, no, no,” she answers in confusion. “Why so perturbed? Whom were you writing to?” She faces him. “To you.” “Give me that sheet of paper.” “No, not now.” He is embarrassed by his own brusqueness. “Forgive me. I’m a little upset.” She rises. “What has happened?” “My father has arrived.” “You’ve seen him?” “No. He left me a stiff letter. But I’m waiting for him. He’ll fall in love with you as soon as he sees you.”

She becomes extremely agitated. “He mustn’t find me here. Let me leave. ... You calm him, and then I’ll throw myself at his feet.” She can barely hold back her tears. “He won’t want to separate us anymore. We’ll be happy. Because you love me. You do, don’t you, Alfredo?” “Oh, so much! But you’re crying?” “I just felt the need of tears. But now I’m over it. See? I’m smiling at you.” She makes an effort. “I’ll be there, among those flowers, always near you, always, always near you. Alfredo, love me as much as I love you. Love me, Alfredo. ... Good-bye.” She runs out into the garden.

Strangely enough, Alfredo seems quite undisturbed by this precipitate departure. “That dear heart lives only for my love,” he observes, somewhat fatuously. As we have already seen, he is not a noticing young man. He sits down and opens a book (can it be
Manon Lescaut
?) and glances at the clock on the chimney-piece. “It’s late. Maybe I shan’t see my father today.” The old servant, Joseph, comes in. “Madame has left. A carriage was waiting for her and by now it’s speeding along the road to Paris. And Annina left even sooner than she did.” “I know it,” Alfredo tells him. “Calm down.” Joseph mutters to himself. “What does it all mean?” After the servant has left the room, Alfredo puts down his book and ponders. Violetta, he decides, has gone off to speed up the disposal of her property. But Annina will prevent it. Through the French windows the father’s tall black-clad figure can be seen crossing the garden. “Somebody’s in the garden!” Alfredo exclaims. “Hello, who’s there?”

A gold-braided messenger appears in a side doorway. “Monsieur Germont?” “I am he,” answers Alfredo. The messenger is out of breath. “A lady in a carriage, not far from here, gave me this for you.” He hands a letter to Alfredo, pockets a tip, and leaves. Alfredo studies the letter. “From Violetta! Why am I disturbed? Maybe she’s asking me to join her. Why, I’m trembling. Oh, Lord, courage!” He unfolds the letter and begins to read. “‘Alfredo, when you get this letter—’ Ah!” Turning, with a wild cry, he finds himself face to face with his father, who stands silently waiting as Alfredo falls into his arms. “Oh, Father!” “Oh, my son! Oh, how you’re suffering!” He is shocked by the young man’s racking sobs, evidently an unfamiliar spectacle for him. To the original surge of pity, parental impatience is a natural sequel. “Oh, dry those tears. Come back to us. Be once more the pride and boast of your father.”

The invitation to dry his tears and come home does appear somewhat ill-timed. It’s as if Germont were blind to the awful grief he is witnessing, with the wilful blindness of old age. While the young man sits unhearing, the old man decides to rally him by singing the praises of their native Provence. The father, like so many Southerners, is a patriot—not to say a booster—of the local air and light. Provence, he seems to be saying, can cure whatever ails anyone.

He invokes the blue sea, the soil, the glittering sun of Alfredo’s forefathers. Who could expunge them from the heart of a true-born Provençal? If only Alfredo in his sorrow would remember the joy he once knew under those sparkling skies, the peace that once again can shed its effulgence on a native son! In the course of this reverie laced with exhortation, he has convinced himself that all Alfredo’s troubles came from leaving home. And he has treated himself to a bath of sentiment on his own account, the pitiful old sire of a distant son, his white head bowed with shame. He has suffered more than Alfredo can ever know. But if he has found his boy again, if his own power of hope does not falter, if the voice of honor has not been entirely silenced in the errant youth, then God has heard him!