The Salzburg Tales (47 page)

The gloomy genius of Willem began to play a part: the idea of a tragic destiny filled their lives. He wrote letters of folly and ambition to his burgherly parents, who begged him to return: his
father even came to Paris to plead with a less mercurial Alfredo for the misty plains of the Netherlands. Then they fled to Geneva. The parents of Willem threatened to cut off his allowance, despite his flourishing talent: the husband of Helena, heroic Minotaur, began to fret at being led by the horns. Thus, discontented in Geneva, they went south to accomplish their destiny. This ended the recital of J. van Hoven.

The next spring, that is, two years ago, I visited Torre del Greco again. I arrived on Saturday night, about ten o'clock: the barber shops were open still, for the Mediterranean beard grows thick, fast and black, but all other shops were closed except a carpenter's, from which the cheerful, heavy, clinking blows were heard all over the street. A youth and a man were hurrying to finish a coffin, wanted for early on the Sunday, I suppose. I took this for a bad omen.

The next day I went to the Villa Ginevra, and found the doors open but no one there: it was a fine day, and they had probably gone into the fields for lunch, and to sketch. I stood on the door-sill and looked up at Vesuvius. Torre del Greco has been thirteen times destroyed by eruptions, and will be again: yet the exceptional fertility of the soil, and the beauty of the spot, induce peasants and aesthetes to live there. Each one who stands under the mountain thinks at some moment of the day: “When next? Will it be tonight?” and leaves his shoes near the door on retiring, to pick them up in rapid flight. Perhaps the earth will tremble and reveal a city in catalepsis: perhaps the Demon of the Mount even now marks us maliciously, from his vantage-point, among the next curiosities of his collection. But each one trusts fatalistically to “not in our time”, his legs, or the assurance of sinking quickly in bubbling Lethe: and then the body, bathed in the liniments of the sweet air, enjoys grosser paroxysms and richer pleasures, and the eyes delight to see the rough old leviathan couched among melons and vines.

Turning into the house, I saw two small green parrots, budgerigars, love-birds, they are called, harbingers of misfortune and discord. I fed them, as if to conciliate them, and went into the studio. After a
few minutes I idly lifted the cloth over the forbidden block of stone. What did I see there? A marble coffin, lucent yellow in colour, with black, violet and green maculations, a carrara piece of finest quality. It was sculptured on the sides and ends in high relief, with scenes from the common life of two lovers, showing first, each solitary and pensive, their meeting, their secret betrothal, their flight over the calm sea from a persecuting father, their alliance and happy love in an earthly paradise; finally, a scene in which both lay dead, covered with flowers, honoured by a beautiful people, with two cupids floating above their peaceful faces and behind them a great funeral pyre. In this I recognised an antique legend of Naples, and a modern reference to themselves. There were other cupids, and medallions showing lesser incidents, and the whole was enclosed with fine mouldings and garlands in pure antique designs. The interior of the sarcophagus, carved in low relief, showed Pluto receiving the lovers in a company of distinguished-looking shades, and perpetuating their alliance in the Kingdom of the Dead, while Venus, Apollo and the Muses threw down garlands from their abode. The bottom of the sarcophagus was lightly covered with freshly-gathered verbena.

As I stood enchanted by the coffin, beautiful in material and workmanship, I heard a slow, light footfall, and turned to see the angry eyes of the woman. I greeted her with an elaborate compliment and apologised a thousand times, but could not resist asking the origin of so fine a thing. Helena took my arm impulsively, and said rapidly: “Willem made it: with all the money we had saved, we bought the block, which is of giallognolo, the finest and costliest of polychrome marbles. That is to receive my body when I die, and Willem's. We came here to hide from the harpies at love's feast, shame, persecution and the long slothful end of decaying passion. When the volcano seems to be restive, we rejoice: if one of us falls sick the other, while he looks anxious, is secretly glad, for if one dies, then the other can die too, or if he wishes to live, at least he can bury his love pure and entire in the immortality of the tomb. Thus we hope to rise not two but one, a phoenix from the mountain's
burning nest. That is why I am always dressed in jewels and why Willem has chosen every ornament of our household with care. But he sends his statues away as soon as he has finished them! He won't leave them to the chances of resurrection!” She opened an iron box and said, “Look here!” Inside were a great number of ornaments, an elegant Lilliput of figurines the size of those of Tanagra, but modern, Willem's sketch books in metal covers, two beautiful mirrors of silver and feminine ornaments of silver and gold. “These will be buried with me, as with the women of old.”

I said: “Dearest lady, how can you live in this irrational way, with such funereal ideas? This is not for one young, rich, talented and beautiful! How many people on earth have your advantages, and how many, having them, would give way to such deplorable notions? Have you written to your husband of your ideas?”

“My husband is simply a Philistine,” she said angrily: “and besides he has done what I did not wish: he says he has divorced me: I expected him to wait a little longer till I made up my mind!”

Then I said: “Then Willem is happy: you can both be happy together now without these harpies you mentioned?”

She replied: “No, we are not happy: we are mad. But that is part of our system, too: to die mentally for a richer flower to blow in time for us to design it before our hands are paralysed and our eyes blinded: so Willem says: and it is well said.”

She covered the marble, grandiose expression of the decay which had already taken place. “Every day we put fresh herbs in here to give it a sweet smell: it almost seems to be our home, more than this villa, or any other spot on earth.” She said this drearily but naïvely.

When Willem returned I did not speak of the sarcophagus, or of Helena's tale. I saw that his imaginative fire and mental disorders had much increased, and that he looked at Helena with a peremptory possessive passion, as if she were a drug that he ate and inhaled, necessary to the cherished derangement of his senses. It was as if by her alone he, formerly a shade, had been able to reach his demoniac incarnation. I then saw that to her infirm, compliant soul, the true
husband could only be a succubus. I considered them both lost, and left Torre the same day.

I went down to Torre del Greco at the end of the summer again to see my friends, and to compliment Willem on some work he had exhibited in Rome just before. I was well-known in the village now. In the street on my way someone called me to tell me that the “Dutch lady”, my friend, in the Villa Ginevra, had an infectious skin disease and was much disfigured: I should take care of myself.

Willem took me into the living-room and called Helena. Presently she entered. She was lightly dressed, and all her bare skin, that of her face as well, was covered with tubercles. She was wearing her set of emeralds to deck out her disfigurement. She said, “It is incurable, the peasants say, but, indeed, I have not tried to find out.” She explained that she had caught it from a beggar boy she had found lying outside the house, stabbed by one of his companions with a knife and left there to the mercy of the first Samaritan. The child had died.

Willem showed himself solicitous. I said to him when she had gone out: “You should have a doctor here or send her to a hospital: besides, aren't you afraid of catching it yourself?”

“What if I do?” he replied: “I have nothing beyond Helena.”

He was working hard and joyfully all the time of my visit, and she too was perfectly happy now that they had been struck by evil. They had bought a small chapel in the Campo Santo for their sarcophagus. She wore her jewels always “to show that she honoured the disease, and to grace the envelope of her soul”, so Willem said, and did not even look at me, confident as he was of their destiny.

Helena died before the end of last winter, completely vanquished by her lover's madness. The burial, with its sarcophagus of giallognolo, and the jewels, ornaments and statuettes said to be folded in the body's winding-sheet, attracted attention. An indiscreet amateur offered to buy the sarcophagus from the sculptor. The attentions of sundry villainous characters marauding round the tomb
induced Willem to put a bronze door at its entrance. He visited it morning and evening and strewed the pavement with herbs and flowers. The inhabitants thought he was mad, and the young girls looked mournfully after him as he passed by.

The happening was reported in the American papers, and the husband, who had threatened his wife with divorce, but had never really divorced her, jealous and disconsolate to the last, obtained permission to move his wife's body to America, and to take possession of the jewels he had given her. The young lover, apprised of this, said the man “could have his baubles”: this was the exalted language he used. The husband was already on the sea, coming to claim his own.

Willem changed suddenly. He visited the tomb infrequently and seemed to be ready to relinquish the body. J. van Hoven, his friend in Rome, went down to console him during this time, and hoped that death had cured his outrageous folly. He proposed a visit to Vesuvius and round the Neapolitan shore to fill in the time till Helena's husband arrived, for Willem insisted on their meeting now that she was dead, and on handing over to the husband the things she had left for him. He worked day and night in his studio, but would not let J. van Hoven enter.

They set out for the mountain. They were three days on the road, stopping at Pompeii and wandering round the flanks of the mountain. Willem carried a heavy pack, from which sometimes under the hot sun a peculiar smell, somewhat disagreeable, was disengaged. This was clay, and other materials, said Willem, with which he intended to model on the spot if he was struck by some face or sculpture. It was already April and spring was on the way.

“Can you imagine,” said Willem one day, “how Proserpine took her look at the earth before she went down below to marry Pluto? The scent of these fields is so strong and the sun so bright that one could remember them when dead. This bright air could calm for a moment them of the burning hearts, and restore to life them enchanted by the dreadful poppy.”

“Think,” said he mournfully one day, the last day before they began their ascent of the mountain, “that this black earth contains the flesh of other dancing fauns, the milk of how many other Venuses.” Willem had not slept for three nights, and he now continually called the attention of Johann van Hoven to creatures and voices, fauns in bushes, masks hung in mid-air, faces on the mountainside, vases in the earth writhing with snakes, Medusan heads in the clouds, nests of lizards, and swiftly gliding forms, gigantic and slender as shadows, which crossed his path. Van Hoven did not see any of these things, nor hear these voices and strains of music which the other heard: he only heard the rumble of the mountain, and feared it.

“You are too tired to go up today,” he said.

“I will sleep better when I do,” said Willem: “that pure air will do me good.” He pointed upwards, as he spoke, towards the crest of the mountain, which was at the moment crowned with thick smoke. “Let's wait until the wind changes,” said van Hoven. “Besides, we have no time now: tomorrow will arrive the gentleman for whom you are waiting.”

“All is in order,” said Willem: “he will see that nothing has been taken from him, if he gets there before I do.”

The mountain had been restive for some months, and a slight eruption had been predicted for the following month, that is, last May, of this year. Stromboli had lately been in eruption, and seismic disturbances had been reported in all the region. J. van Hoven was indisposed to make the journey, being no fire-worshipper, and “not wishing to get his tail singed out of season”, he said to his friend. The following day, notwithstanding, finding the wind blowing in the opposite direction, Willem insisted on making the ascent and on taking his famous pack with him.

They set off in a carriage from Pompeii, and rising through vineyards and rich gardens, orchards and chestnut trees, came to Casa Bianca. There they took horses and, turning to the right, rode above the “Mouths of 1906” and so still to the right, on beyond the
“Valley of Inferno”. They had been since Casa Bianca on the cone of ashes, and passed dreary hills of scoriæ, and lavafields and black dangerous declivities furrowed with rain and ashes. Half-way up the cone they stopped, fed their horses, ate, and drank from their flasks. Van Hoven had brought mineral water, but Willem, feeling ill and weak, had brought a heady wine, dangerous to drink on such a hot day and after such fatigue.

After he had drunk once, he cried out “Libation!” and drank a cup to “Vulcan, exile of heaven, husband of Venus, original warprofiteer and amateur of the fine arts, whose collection excels those of any rich man on earth, rough smith, shoer of the horses of the Apocalypse, mighty forecloser of mortgaged farms …”

His friend cried, “Enough!” Whereupon Willem pressed a cup upon him and to his great embarrassment forced him to propose a toast; J. van Hoven said, “To the mountain”; and drank. Willem then filled a third cup, put it to the horses' mouths and poured the remainder on the parched and cracked lips of the earth, saying “This is his share,” and pointing to the crater. Willem pressed on, and his friend sulkily followed. The heat was great and in the mountain were frequent detonations.

The whole coastline, with its bays and many islands, towers, castles and groves lay before them; the fabulous coast, the headland on which Virgil wrote, the sulphurous caves where Dante saw Inferno, the rocky tombs of the Sirens, and crowned Naples lay bright in the calm tide, and the olive slopes stretched out like a coast of Paradise in the sun.