Stories in an Almost Classical Mode (4 page)

“I need so much in the way of comfort. I am not a good traveler,” Marcus said. He broke off. Very little could be said without lying. He pressed her hand to his cheek. Orly; the noise of jets. A departure is like a funeral.

Jehane says, “The Ardeatine Gate opens onto the Avenue of the Baths of Caracalla.” She is jealous of Oskar, and Marcus’s mood oppresses her, and she does not look forward to the movie. She pushes the hair back from her face with one hand and imitates Oskar-Willi’s voice: “I wonder that in this part of Rome there are so few structures.” She is making fun of the movie. Loesser and Alliat smile. Oskar says, “Ah,” and continues the line: “Does it say nothing in the guidebook?” Jehane plucks at her lip and pretends to squint at a peculiarly worded paragraph: “It says a pope was besieged and asked the Normans who at that time held Naples to come to his aid, and they came; they rode in armor, and arrived at the city walls at night, and the leader of the Normans ordered this part of Rome set on fire to make light and clear away the defenders and open the narrow streets so that he and his troops could make their way to the center of the city. Ever after, this part of Rome has remained vineyards, gardens, and farmland. No one has lived here.”

Nanna said, “Fools think nothing is serious, but only a fool makes a show of how serious he is.” What one valued showed in one’s manners. One trusted people whose manners were like one’s own. After a dinner party once, when he was fifteen, Marcus said, “Nanna, did I do all right?
Did those people like me?” Nanna replied somewhat angrily that it was impermissible to ask such a question; it was always clear—common sense always indicated quite clearly—our situation vis-à-vis others. He was being self-centered and eager for flattery and was not being nearly clever enough. He said, “Nanna, I thought Cook outdid herself tonight. And, God, how you handled Gamma Foster. Like a master.” Nanna smiled and said, “You were very amusing. You’re always amusing when you try.”

Oskar in a falsetto does Jehane’s next line: “The Normans in Normandy are terrible people.” Loesser recites with him: “Once, on a vacation, I went to a Norman farmhouse and the farmer made ugly overtures to me.” Jehane says in her best Germanic baritone, “My father was killed in Normandy. He was a lieutenant in the Luftwaffe.” Marcus says suddenly, “Did you know there was a Jewish pope? A Jew named Pierleoni, a butcher, was the strongest man in Rome. He gained control of the Castel Sant’Angelo and the island in the Tiber and served the Pope. He had his second son baptized, and when the old Pope died, Pierleoni saw to it his son was elected Pope.” Oskar says, “That is very interesting.” Marcus continues, “However, the bishops outside of Italy refused to recognize him. They did not take baptism seriously enough; they still considered Anacletus the Second a Jew.” “The history of Rome is very rich in incident,” Oskar says, lapsing into Oskar-Willi. “Yes,” says Jehane, taking up her part. Oskar says, “Every people is forgiven its war crimes. The British are forgiven their terror raids, the Americans are forgiven Hiroshima. Only the Germans are not forgiven. I am certain even you, being French, are prejudiced against us.” “Not enough,” says Jehane.

The psychiatrist said, “Don’t take yourself so seriously, boy.” Marcus’s father said, “We do like you. You know you’re always welcome here.” Noreen said, “A little bit of humor is a big, big help.” Marcus’s roommate said, “Take it easy, fella.” Marcus at fifteen said at the dinner table, “I can’t go along with
King Lear
—I don’t believe in tragedy. When people start to take themselves that seriously, I get very uncomfortable.” He spoke with a convert’s snobbery. “He’s only one man. Is it fair to ask an audience to take anyone that seriously? Why doesn’t Lear develop a sense of humor and sit down and laugh awhile?”

I
N THE
Piazzale Numa Pompilio, an immense green bus cuts diagonally across traffic toward the Lancia. The light is blotted from the
Lancia, and green shadows appear on the back of the chauffeur’s neck and Loesser’s hair. Marcus’s work requires that his nerves be uncovered; the nakedness of his nerves is the reach of a pianist’s fingers. The possibility of an accident rends him with anguish. Abruptly and passionately, he lifts his hand to shield Jehane’s face. The speed with which his mind moves is very great, because it has no stillness to be aroused from. It pictures the disorder on the faces of his two sons and his daughter if he should be killed. (By the well-being of his children Marcus measures the goodness of reality.) They will be convinced of their bad luck; nor will there be enough money for them and for their mother—in a sanitarium in the Vosges, her peculiar and private gaiety soars like a balloon, and forgets to return. Marcus hears the rain of sounds of an accident; experiences despair at the waste, and astonishment at the softness of metal, which wrinkles as easily as a flower. He sees time wadded, crumpled, tossed into a fire, thinks Scotland’s burning, and grieves for his children.

He is pressed back against the seat as the Lancia, accelerating, moves left, eludes the bus, faces oncoming traffic, hurtles to the right, slows to a more reasonable speed. He has been misled. Sunlight floods his eyes. Alliat’s hair stirs slightly in the wind. The chauffeur expostulates,
“Imbecille! Omicidio!”

Marcus snorts, chokes, then snorts again—he is a fool. He wants to make a noise. Loesser and Oskar turn and look at him. Loesser demands, “What is so funny.” Between spurts of laughter, Marcus says, “We were not killed.” Oskar, eyeing him, tentatively begins to laugh, like someone who parts the branches of a bush to start a rabbit—he hopes to discover the nature of the joke. Jehane says,
“Nous étions presque tués!”
Marcus gasps and says, “All’s well that ends well.” Jehane cries out that this shows the effects of a reactionary government; an oppressed people reverts to savagery. Loesser cuts in in his high, clear voice: The Romans are not a people, they are a history. Their history has made them megalomaniac and simplified their desires: they want power, life after death, and the pleasures of the body and of art.

Alliat exclaims, “Ah!” and Marcus sits up, shoves aside his laughter. The Arch of Constantine is written into the movie; the lovers are to shelter under it from the sun and speak there for the first time of their love. The movie is to be ironic but not a comedy; the lovers are without choice, sensualists in the Greek tradition, in the tradition of the moment uninflected by the presence of God. The Arch, hardly more than an
interference, draws near, metamorphoses into a stream of sunlight. Marcus thinks of wings carved in stone, of things become their opposites, of the mood of music striving to be architecture. The jamb of the Arch is out of true from age, and whatever boast it had once been meant to make has been obscured by its lapse from geometry. Oskar will stand beneath it, his arm around Jehane, and point across the street to the rows of evenly spaced cypresses clipped flat on top and cylindrically at the sides to mimic columns, and say, “That was a Temple of Venus.”

The Arch is suddenly near: a door without walls; no one need pass through it. But the Colosseum, which rises to the right, is an immense circle, with a multitude of doors that one must pass through to enter or to leave. Marcus breaks into a sweat, and exclaims, “Loesser, we have the symbolism all wrong!”

“What?” says Loesser, frowning. He is satisfied with his script. If Marcus deviates too much from it, then what is filmed will not be Loesser’s work; he does not feel he is a pensioner of Marcus’s.

Marcus, wordless, points. Outside the car windows wheel the barrel vaults of the Colosseum, tier on tier.

Loesser says in confusion, “The Colosseum, Marcus? You said you thought it was a cliché.”

“The Colosseum is a wall,” Marcus says. “If the lovers …” The car has entered the Piazza del Colosseo. Directly ahead, in the side of a hill, is the entrance to the remains of the Domus Aurea, Nero’s house, the Golden House. Underground, a cave; the word “grotesque” comes from the figures in its wall paintings—
grotteschi,
things in a grotto. The image grows. The Colosseum. Nero’s house. Marcus never claimed to know, only to see. On the topmost rim of the Colosseum is a place—there—visible as the car passes, where the stones have started to fall; the courses waver, large cracks, uneven V’s, are kept from growing by a modern brick wall that rises in a smooth sweep to hold the stones in place.

Marcus says excitedly, “The lovers come out of the Domus Aurea; they will see the Colosseum falling. No. We’ll start when they go into Nero’s house. No. She refuses to go in. At first.
‘Lui, il était fou …’
Nero the madman, do you see it? She’s afraid. I mean, she doesn’t know the person she’s fallen in love with. What will he do to her? … He insists. They go in. She says,
‘Comme un tombeau ici
.’ ”

“
Naturellement,
” Loesser mutters. He says, “Marcus, we planned this episode to—” but he is interrupted.

Marcus says, “No, no, listen to me. It’s dark in the Golden House, and he says ‘Boo!’ to scare her—my God, as if she needed it! He wants her to embrace him. She does. She clutches at him. Then we cut to—They are walking out—out into the sunlight, and he whispers in her ear,
‘Je t’aime, je t’aimerai toujours,
’ and she sees the Colosseum falling. These will be real lovers,” Marcus exults. “They go into the Colosseum; they pick their way among ruins, and Oskar can whisper, ‘
Tu es belle, tu es belle, belle, belle.
’ ” Marcus presses his hands together. He says sentimentally, “They kiss in one of the archways, little figures in an archway.
Then
Oskar can point to the Temple of Venus.”

“It won’t mock anything in that context, Marcus,” Loesser says. “You said when we were doing the script that you didn’t want to do
Wuthering Heights on the Seven Hills.”

“Good God, you’re stupid, you don’t see anything!” Marcus bursts out. He adds, “For Christ’s sake, leave me alone. I have a day’s shooting ahead of me.” Jehane peeks at Loesser in the rearview mirror, and Loesser, meeting her glance, raises his eyebrows as if to say, “I don’t understand a word. What am I supposed to do?” Marcus sits, his hand over his eyes. The image, if captured, is a landfall, a mooring, the transfiguration of danger into safety, his life’s work. The Golden House that is a cave, the Colosseum falling, half fallen.
“Tu es belle, belle, belle!”
is a harbor, is a spasmodic twinkling of the hypnotist’s mirror, is a blank white concavity in which Marcus’s mind rolls like a metal ball helplessly, obstinately, noisily. His forehead dampens. He cannot let this obsession with a half-glimpsed image interfere with the day’s shooting any more than he can the news of Nanna’s death or the rearoused wonder at her meaning in his life.

At prep school, he told the doctor, “It scares me when I make up my mind. My mind seems to have a mind of its own … I guess; that’s a joke.” He said, “Tell me, do you inherit your mind? I’m very quiet or else I’m a fanatic. Do you think it’s because I’m Irish and Jewish, and a lot of Spanish, if you go back far enough?” He promises himself he will get to Loesser later, seduce, cajole, nag him—bend him to the image and see that it is captured. He tells himself he does not need the image for the movie. But he cannot be consoled. Delay is dangerous, suspense beyond him. He tells himself,
“It doesn’t matter.
” His method for calming himself at such moments, the only one that works, is to abandon caring; he subsides into what he calls his Christian mood. He grows calmer, abandoning for the moment his enormous and inchoate hopes,
like a Christian assigning the spiritual portion of existence to the care of the vicars of God and modestly resigning himself to the sensual remnant, which is transient, sun-brittle on a summer’s day, and sour to the tongue like grass.

N
ANNA TOOK
him in at the suggestion of the doctor at Andover. The doctor said, “He suffers from having no sense of belonging.” He said to Marcus, “Your mother wants you to be happy here or she wouldn’t have sent you to Andover.”

“She doesn’t send me. My grandmother pays for it.”

“But your mother agrees. She signs the reports and so on.”

“She wouldn’t approve of this school if she knew more about it. She wouldn’t like it if I changed.”

“Would she want you to be rude to the teachers, to most of the students?”

Marcus said, “If I ever got to be like them, I’d shoot myself. My mother would shoot me. I study. I mostly use my memory. I show I can do it, and then I
despise
it.”

The doctor said, “You seem to have a great interest in moral questions.”

Marcus said, without self-consciousness, “Thank you. It comes from traveling around in different houses. You get to thinking about what’s right in one house and not in another.”

The doctor said to Marcus’s father that Marcus could not handle the conflict between his loyalty to his mother and the education offered by the school, and that Marcus would not betray his mother by going to live with his father. (“I have no problems,” Marcus had said. “My mother is wonderful. She takes good care of me.”) Nanna took him in and gave him a camera.

In Nanna’s house he found himself stilled. In the new silence he read, at once a little in love with other people’s minds and with his own; in the stillness he could have these mental affections. His strength no longer went so much into survival. Nanna said he was a genius; he thought himself to be stunningly ordinary, the world’s guest, on sufferance, someone bluffing, a common boy. The genius Nanna referred to he took to be a social thing that earned the admiration of outsiders and did not extend into the house, where Nanna frowned on and discountenanced temperament, wild talk, rude behavior,
burning eyes, uncombed hair, and flushed and nervous mannerisms.

Nanna’s intelligence awed him. She had known and admired Maeterlinck. With the camera she gave him, Marcus made a movie, a sea-and-harbor étude to be set to Debussy’s “La Mer.” Nanna thought it very dear, excellent, quite beautiful in its way. (But it was mannered and incoherent, because Marcus’s understanding of Nanna’s taste was fitful.)