The Volcano Lover (10 page)

The Cavaliere on the long brocaded seat which rings the mirrored half of the room, leaning back on the cushions, reading a book, looking up. How well he feels! What could he possibly miss? This is my homeland.

*   *   *

The Cavaliere in his sitting room on the third floor. He watched the column of grey smoke rise, swell, and balance against the sky. Night fell. He watched the reddened mass thrusting upward. Catherine playing the spinet in a nearby room. The thick stream of lava widened.

*   *   *

The Cavaliere on the slopes of the mountain, with Bartolomeo Pumo. Alone with him; just a human pair. The Cavaliere with someone younger than himself, the way it usually was with the Cavaliere—but since Bartolomeo was a servant, he did not need to be avuncular. And because the boy was so quiet and not servile in the usual way, he let himself be guided. It was pleasurable to not always know more, to be led. Just the two of them, in the democracy of nature. When there were others, Pumo fell back into his role and took his place in the chain of injustice.

The Queen's brother, the Archduke Joseph, was visiting, and the Cavaliere took the royal party up to watch the new eruption. For all the hundreds of servants employed in this expedition to ensure their comfort, no amount of cosseting could keep the air from becoming hotter and hotter as they approached. The King began to fret and called for his litter to be set down.

How hot I am, he roared.

Only to be expected, said the Queen, directing an exasperated glance of complicity at her brother.

Oh how cold my wife is, said the King, laughing. No sympathy there. He lurched over to the neighbor litter. Feel how I'm sweating, my brother, the King shrieked, and having taken his astonished brother-in-law's hand drew it inside his shirt. The grotesque familiarity produced an instant eruption of foul humor in the Austrian archduke. Moments later he had deemed the one-eyed boy impertinent enough to break a staff on his head. (Prudent Bartolomeo had only been shouting that it was unsafe for them to remain where they were.) And the Cavaliere, who was scanning a bank of pumice stone the volcano had spat out, couldn't protect him.

The Cavaliere is no democrat. But his chilly heart is not insensitive to a certain idea of justice. Not for him the behavior of his grandfather, of whom it is told that he brained a serving boy while drunk in a tavern near London, and retired without realizing what he had done. The distraught taverner followed him to his room and said, “My lord, do you know that you killed that boy?” Stammered the Cavaliere's ancestor: “Put him on the bill.”

*   *   *

The Cavaliere in his study, in mid-dispatch to Lord Palmerston, looking up from his desk.

It's arrived, said Catherine at the door.

It? Surely not an it, my dear. They promised me a he.

He slid the letter under the blotter and stood up.

Where is it?

She smiled. In a box, she said.

Well, we must go and let him out.

He was still in the large slatted crate, so black you could not make out his shape, bright-eyed, scratching himself. The box stank. The portly major-domo, Vincenzo, stood nearby self-importantly, handkerchief to his nose, while two young pages scratched themselves too.

The servants must fear you are about to start a collection of animals, observed Catherine.

There are enough wild creatures in the vicinity, the Cavaliere replied. I plan to add but one more. And to gaping Pietro and giggling Andrea: Well, let's not keep the poor fellow in captivity any longer.

Andrea picked up some tools, took one step forward.

What are you waiting for? Courage! He won't harm you.

He's looking at me, Excellency! I don't like the way he looks at me.

Of course he's looking at you. He wonders what kind of animal you are.

The boy stood transfixed, wide-eyed. The sweat broke out on his upper lip. The Cavaliere cuffed him gently on the side of the head, took the crowbar and hammer, and set about opening the box himself.

With a squawk, the glossy black Indian monkey scrambled through the falling boards and leapt onto the Cavaliere's shoulder. The servants shrank back and crossed themselves.

You see. See how friendly he is.

The monkey put his paw on the Cavaliere's wig and uttered a small cry. He patted the wig, then inspected his black palm, tensing and unfurling it. The Cavaliere reached up to pluck him from his shoulder, but the monkey was quicker and jumped to the floor. The Cavaliere called for a rope. He gave orders for the monkey to be housed in the principal storeroom below, tied up, made comfortable. Then he went back to his study. He finished his dispatch to Lord Palmerston, consulted one of the volumes on monkeys he had received from his London bookseller, the chapter on diet, and started a letter to Charles. When Catherine came an hour later to summon him to dinner, the Cavaliere gave orders that the monkey was to be fed as well. A bowl of rice and a bowl of goat's milk diluted with water and sweetened with sugar, he said authoritatively.

In the afternoon he descended into the cellar vault to visit his new charge. A space had been cleared under a high corner window, bedding had been laid, and the two bowls were empty. The monkey lunged toward the Cavaliere but was restrained by his chain. I meant a rope, thought the Cavaliere. A rope is enough. The monkey was rattling the chain and emitting a shrill whoo-whoo-whoo-whoo, which he kept up for some ten minutes, hardly pausing to take a breath. Finally, panting, exhausted, he lay down. The Cavaliere approached him and squatted to stroke his head, to brush the long hair on the monkey's arms, and to run his fingers down the monkey's belly and legs. The monkey rocked from side to side and made a soft gurgling wrrr, and when the caresses stopped the monkey seized the Cavaliere's thumb and pulled it to his belly. The Cavaliere unfastened the chain, stood up, and waited for what the monkey would do. He looked at the Cavaliere, looked around at the huge room, the forest of objects. The Cavaliere braced himself for a running leap at his own person. The monkey seemed to nod sagely at his new master, and then hopped on top of a large antique bust of Cicero (actually a seventeenth-century copy, as the Cavaliere knew) and began licking his marble curls. The Cavaliere laughed.

*   *   *

The Cavaliere in his study, finishing another letter to Charles. The monkey curled around the feet of a statue of Minerva, dozing or pretending to doze. Dressed in a sleeveless magenta jacket such as the natives wear, leaving bare his hairy rump and long thick tail—quite at home. The littlest citizen of the Cavaliere's private kingdom. The Cavaliere has added a brief postscript about the arrival of the monkey: I have become quite inseparable from an East Indian monkey, a charming alert creature less than a year old who provides me with a new source of entertainment and observation.

Connoisseurs of the natural in the Cavaliere's era relished pointing out, avowing themselves struck by, the affinities between monkeys and human beings. But monkeys, even more than people, are social animals. One monkey can't express a monkey's nature. A single monkey is an exile—and fits of depression sharpen his innate cleverness. A single monkey is good at parodying the human.

Jack, the Cavaliere is continuing his description to Charles, Jack, so I call him, has an intelligent very black face, set off by a light brown beard. On the subject of intelligence he was more explicit with correspondents whose intelligence he respected. He, Jack, is more intelligent than most of the people it is my lot to consort with here, wrote the Cavaliere in a letter to Walpole. And his movements are more genteel, his manners more fastidious.

*   *   *

The Cavaliere in the room where he takes breakfast. Nearby a table covered with cameos, intaglios, shards of lava and pumice harvested from the crater, a new vase he has just purchased. Jack is with him. In less than a month the monkey had become so tame and manageable that he would come at the Cavaliere's call, seat himself in a chair by his side at the breakfast table, and help himself daintily to an egg or a piece of fish from the Cavaliere's plate. His usual mode of taking liquids—he liked coffee, chocolate, tea, lemonade—was to dip his black hairy knuckles in the cup and lick them. But when especially thirsty he would grasp the cup with both hands and drink like his master. Of what the Cavaliere ate, he particularly liked oranges, figs, fish, and anything sweet. In the evening he was sometimes given a glass of Maraschino or the local Vesuvian wine. The Cavaliere, who hardly drank at all, enjoyed watching his guests watching Jack dip and lick, dip and lick. He became tipsy as a child does, this wizened child with a beard, a little rambunctious, and then suddenly, awkwardly, he fell asleep.

In seashells, buttons, and flowers Jack found a rich hoard of objects to stare at and play with. He was astonishingly dexterous. He would meticulously peel a grape, put it down, look at it, and sigh, before popping it into his mouth. His sport was hunting insects. He probed in crevices of the masonry for spiders, and could catch flies with one hand. He watched the Cavaliere practicing the cello, his big, utterly round eyes fixed on the instrument, and the Cavaliere began seating him up front during the weekly musical assembly. But often when he listened to music—he clearly liked music—he bit his nails; perhaps music made him nervous too. He yawned, he masturbated, he searched for lice in his tail. Sometimes he just paced, or sat staring at the Cavaliere. Perhaps he was bored. The Cavaliere was never bored.

The monkey had a most extraordinarily sweet, trusting disposition. He would take hold of the Cavaliere's hand and walk with him, helping himself along at the same time with his other hand applied to the ground. The Cavaliere had to stoop slightly to accommodate the monkey's need. He did not like changing his posture, and he did not want a substitute child. He began adding a tiny bit of teasing to his treatment of the monkey, a little bit of cruelty, a touch of deprivation. Salt in his milk. A cuff on the head. Whoo-whoo-whoo-whoo, lamented the monkey, when the Cavaliere visited him in the early morning. Jack seized his hand. The Cavaliere pulled it away.

One morning, when the Cavaliere went to the cellar storeroom, the monkey's pallet was empty. He had chewed through his rope. He was hiding. The testy Cavaliere barricaded himself in his study. The servants, cursing, searched every room in the mansion. On the third evening they found him in the wine cellar with a leather-bound folio of Piranesi's work on chimney-pieces gnawed beyond salvaging. Alessandro stepped forward to put the rope on him; the monkey snarled and bit his hand. The Cavaliere was summoned. Jack cringed but let the Cavaliere pick him up. The monkey pulled at the Cavaliere's wig. The Cavaliere held him more firmly. It was as if Jack had gone on a retreat, to reconsider his own nature, and reemerged more monkey-like: sly, quarrelsome, prurient, mischievous. The Cavaliere did not want a mock child. He wanted a mock protégé, a jester … and poor Jack loved him abjectly enough to oblige. Now his training, his real use to the Cavaliere could begin.

He taught Jack to mime the connoisseur's hooded stare, putting him through his paces when visitors were poring over the Cavaliere's objects. They would look up and see the Cavaliere's pet monkey studying a vase through a magnifying glass, or leafing quizzically through a book, or turning a cameo over in his paw and holding it to the light. Very valuable. Yes. Decidedly. Yes, I see. Most interesting.

Glass to one eye, Jack would squint, look up, scratch his head, then return to his scrutiny.

Is this a fake?

Fake!

Fake!!

Then Jack would relent and put the object down. (If a monkey could smile, he might have smiled.) Just looking. You can't be too careful.

The Cavaliere's visitors laugh at the monkey. The Cavaliere laughs at himself.

He let the monkey torment the servants and even Catherine, who, loath to have too many tastes and inclinations that separated her from her husband, professed to be attached to the monkey, too. Jack always seemed to divine when Catherine was retiring from a room to go to the water closet, and would rush after her and clap his eye to the keyhole. Jack diligently masturbated in front of Catherine, kept grabbing the page Gaetano's cock when the Cavaliere took him fishing. His scabrous antics amused his master. Even when he once knocked over a vase, the Cavaliere was not really upset (to be sure, it was not one of the most valuable and, when repaired, no one would know the difference). Jack was a little footnote to his life that said: all is vanity, all is vanity.

*   *   *

The world seemed made of concentric circles of mockery. At the center the Cavaliere pivots with Jack. Everything in the social zoo could be predicted. He would not get another diplomatic appointment. He knew how his life would go on to the end: tranquil, interesting, unstirred by passion. Only the volcano held a surprise.

1766, 1767, 1777 … 1779. Each eruption bigger than the previous one, each further embellishing the prospect of catastrophe. This was bigger than ever. The doors and windows of his country villa near Portici were swinging on their hinges. Jack was jumping about nervously, hiding under tables, flinging himself in the Cavaliere's lap. Catherine, who disliked the monkey almost as much as the servants did, feigned concern for his little person, his little fears. He was given some laudanum. Catherine returned to the harpsichord. Admirable Catherine, thought the Cavaliere.

Watching from the terrace, the Cavaliere saw bursts of white vapor rising pile over pile to a height and bulk three times as great as the mountain itself, and gradually filling with streaks of black, exactly as the Younger Pliny had described his eruption:
candida interdum, interdum sordida et maculosa
(sometimes white, sometimes dirty and blotched) according to the amount of soil the cloud carried with it. A summer storm followed, the weather turned torrid, and a few days later a fountain of red fire ascended from the crater. One could read in bed at night by the gloomy blaze of the mountain a few miles away. In a communication to the Royal Society, the Cavaliere described these black stormy clouds and the bright column of fire with flashes of forked lightning as more beautiful than alarming.