Lucrezia Floriani, page 16
“All you say is admirable,” replied the prince, overwhelmed with sadness, “and you must be right in everything. But let us go and join Salvator who is looking for us, no doubt”
“No, no,” said Lucrezia, “he was tired from his journey and is sleeping in the garden in the shade of the myrtles. Let us go and join the children. I haven’t seen them for the past hour.”
For the first time she had spoken at length to Karol about real things and she flattered herself that she had taken advantage of a good opportunity to rehabilitate in his mind the father whom she loved sincerely. But there are arguments which the mind accepts but which fail to win the heart Karol acknowledged that Lucrezia had made a wise speech in defence of tolerance and in the wish to justify human nature. This did not minimise his revulsion for reality, nor his inability to accept human faults with any other feeling than that of politeness, that perfidious magnanimity which leaves the heart cold and aversion triumphant.
In his opinion Lucrezia ought to have had an environment more worthy of her, that is to say, an environment such as exists for no one: a lake which was more expansive without ceasing to be as peaceful, a dwelling place more picturesque without ceasing to be as comfortable and healthy, a fame less dearly achieved without ceasing to be as brilliant, and above all a father more distinguished, more poetic, without ceasing to be a fisherman. He did not possess a narrow aristocratic spirit the rustic origin, the paternal cottage, the nets hanging on the willow trees at the lakeside pleased him, but to be entirely happy he would have asked for a peasant such as one encounters in poems or plays, one of Byron’s or Schiller’s mountaineers. He liked Shakespeare, but with great reservations: he regarded his characters as based on too close a study of real life and the language they spoke as too earthy. He preferred epic and lyrical syntheses which leave the sad details of humanity in the shadows. That is why he spoke little and hardly listened, only wishing to express his thoughts or gather those of others when they had attained a certain loftiness. To burrow below the surface of the earth in order to analyse the wholesome or noxious vapours it contains, for the purpose of planting appropriately and making full use of what it can produce, would have been for him a vile and revolting labour. But to pluck flowers, admire their brightness, beauty and perfume, without concerning himself with the toil and skill of the gardener, such was the gentle occupation which he reserved for himself in life.
So when Lucrezia thought that she was convincing him it was like a voice speaking in the wilderness. He had listened to her thoughtfully, and in everything she had said he had admired the composition, the ingenious aspects of her system of tolerance and the kindness of her instincts. But in order not to ignore good it was not necessary to accept evil. Her ideas about human relations were diametrically opposed to his. And yet he had a high conception of filial duty. But he was able to make a distinction between duty and feeling, actions and sympathies, which was utterly unknown to Lucrezia. Thus, in her place, he would not have attempted to defend Menapace’s avarice, because in order to find an acceptable side to this vice, one would have had to begin by admitting that it existed in him. Karol would have denied it or would never have uttered a single word about it – which, one must admit, is much simpler….
Then again, when speaking of herself, Lucrezia had hurt him deeply. She had used words which had burned him like a red-hot iron. She had said that she had never been a kept woman, she had depicted the lives and morals of her colleagues with terrible truth. She had told of her first loves and had actually mentioned her first lover by name. Karol would have wished that the mere idea of evil should not occur to her, that she should be unaware of the existence of evil on earth or that she should not remember it when speaking to him. In short, in order to complete the total sum of his fantastic requirements he would have wished that without ceasing to be the kind, tender, devoted, voluptuous and maternal Lucrezia, she should also be the pale, innocent, severe and virginal Lucie. This was all that our sad lover of the impossible asked for!
17.
After his sleep in the shade of the trees Salvator had just awakened full of a sense of well-being and cheerfulness. When we feel well and overflowing with good spirits our senses are not as delicate as usual in observing or guessing the sufferings of others. So it was that Karol’s pallor and dejection escaped the eyes of his friend; and Lucrezia, attributing them to exhaustion, when love and emotion had made him weep at the sight of her portrait, did not dream of being distressed about it.
When, as children, we suffer from a secret sorrow, it is our wish that everything we do to conceal it should be of no avail before the shrewd, benevolent penetration of those who love us; and as at the same time we remain proudly silent we are unjust enough to believe that they are indifferent, because they are not importunate. Many men remain children on this point and Karol was particularly so. Consequently the energetic and noisy gaiety of Salvator depressed him more and more and Lucrezia’s serenity, which had hitherto communicated itself to him through a kind of sympathy, now lost its benign influence for the first time.
For the first time, too, the noise and perpetual activity of the children tired him. They were usually calm under their mother’s eyes, but during dinner they were so delighted and excited by Salvator’s friendly teasing, caresses and laughter that they set up a loud din, upset their glasses on the tablecloth and sang at the top of their voices, constantly repeating the same refrain, like those finches that are made to compete in song by Dutchmen who lay wagers on them. Celio broke his plate and his dog began to bark so loud that no one could hear himself speak.
Madame Floriani was not very strict when she intervened; she laughed in spite of herself at the silly pranks of Salvator and the amusing retorts of her youngsters wild with pleasure and quite beside themselves, as so easily happens with highly strung children when they are over-stimulated.
Every day for the past two months Karol had admired the grace and pretty ways of these cherubs and loved them tenderly for the sake of their mother. It never occurred to him that they had had fathers – and who knew what fathers! It seemed to him that they were so arrayed with the divine gifts of their mother that he thought of them as being born of the Holy Ghost.
Lucrezia was infinitely grateful to him for this affection which he expressed with so much enthusiasm and which revealed itself in acute and poetic observations on their several kinds of beauty and aptitude.
And yet the children did not like him.
They seemed to be afraid of him and one would have found difficulty in explaining why his sweet smiles and his delicate attempts to please them met with such hesitation and shyness. Even Celio’s dog lay with its ears back and did not wag its tail when the prince looked at him and called him. The animal was fully aware that this man spoke of him in a kindly fashion, but that he never touched him and that a secret physical aversion made him fear even the slightest contact with any animal. If dogs have a wonderful instinct which tells them to mistrust people who mistrust them, it is not to be wondered at that children have the same inner warning at the approach of those who do not like them. Karol did not like children in general, although he had never said so, not even to himself. On the contrary, he thought he was very fond of them, because at the sight of a beautiful child he was overcome with the emotion of a poet and the ecstasy of an artist But he was afraid of an ugly or deformed child. The pity he felt at its approach was so painful that he became genuinely ill. He could not accept the slightest physical blemish in a child any more than he could tolerate a moral deformity in a man.
As Madame Floriani’s children were perfectly beautiful and healthy they charmed his eyes; but if one of them had become crippled, apart from the grief he would have felt in his soul, he would have been seized with an unconquerable uneasiness. He would never have dared touch it, carry it in his arms or fondle it. If he had had to face a stupid or wicked child every day he would have regarded it as a calamity sufficient to disgust him with life, and far from undertaking to improve the child, he would have shut himself in his room so as not to see or hear him. In other words, he liked children with his imagination and not with his heart; and whereas Salvator used to say that he would endure the boredom of marriage if only for the sake of experiencing the joys of parenthood, Karol could not think without a shudder of the possible consequences of his liaison with Lucrezia.
At dessert, Celio’s gaiety had reached such a high pitch that as he was cutting some fruit he cut his hand rather badly. On seeing the blood spurt the boy was frightened and was sorely tempted to cry, but his mother, with much presence of mind, calmly took his hand, wrapped it in a napkin and said to him with a smile: “It’s nothing. It isn’t the first nor the last time you will hurt yourself Go on with the beautiful story you were telling us. I’ll dress your hand when you have finished.”
Such a good lesson in fortitude was not wasted on Celio, who began to laugh, but Karol, who at the sight of the blood had almost fainted, did not understand how the mother could be sufficiently brave not to be anxious.
It was even worse when on leaving the table Lucrezia bathed the cut, brought the lips of the wound together and made a firm ligature, and all with a hand which did not tremble once. He could not imagine how a woman could be a surgeon to her own child and he was terrified at the sight of an energy of which he felt himself incapable. Whereas Salvator had helped Lucrezia in this small operation, Karol had gone away and stood on the steps outside the house, not wishing to look, yet observing against his will this simple and everyday scene which assumed for him the proportions of a dream.
Thus it was that here as always, in small things as in great ones, he refused to come to grips with life, and while Lucrezia, quick and courageous, grasped the monster without fear or disgust, he could not make up his mind to touch it with his finger tips.
Celio had been considerably calmed by this accidental blood-letting, but it had had little effect on the other children. The little girls, and above all Beatrice, were still like wild creatures, and little Salvator, quickly passing from joy to anger and then to grief, became so wilful and screamed so persistently and desperately that Lucrezia was obliged to intervene, threaten and finally carry him off to bed against his wishes. This was the first time that he had screamed in this way in Karol’s ears or rather this was the first time that Karol was in a mood to realise that a youngster, however charming, always has tyrannical instincts, a determined will, fits of insane obstinacy and, for purposes of expediency and determination, prolonged howls of fury. The child’s rage and distress, his sobs, his genuine tears which streamed down his pink cheeks like a spring shower, his beautiful little arms which fought the air and attacked his mother’s hair, Lucrezia’s struggle with him, her strong voice scolding him, her supple, sinewy hands which held him as if in a vice, yet without losing that velvet touch which a mother’s hand always has so as not to bruise the delicate limbs – this was a colourful picture for Count Albani who looked on with a smile, unlike Karol who regarded it with the same terror and suffering as he had Celio’s wound and its dressing.
“Oh God,’” he cried involuntarily, “how unhappy is childhood and how cruel it is to have to curb the violent appetites of the weak!”
“Nonsense,” replid Salvator, laughing, “in five minutes he will be sound asleep and after giving him a good spanking to bring about a reaction, his mother will cover him with her kisses while he is sleeping.”
“Do you think that she will lay hands on him?” asked Karol in terror.
“Oh, I haven’t the slightest idea. I can only infer it because that would be the best sedative.”
“My mother never struck or threatened me, I am sure.”
“You don’t remember, Karol. Moreover that would hardly be a reason for proving that it wasn’t occasionally necessary to use extreme measures. I myself have no theories on education and as for that which concerns infants, you saw that my art lies not so much in repressing them as in bringing out the worst in them. I don’t know how Lucrezia sets about it so as to make herself feared, but I think that the best method is the one that succeeds. I do not know if there is any need to beat children a little now and then, I shall know about it when I shall have some of my own, but it will not be part of my duties. I have too heavy a hand; it will be their mother’s function.”
“And I, if I had the misfortune of being a father,” Karol retorted and his voice was strained, as if he were suffering, “I could not tolerate the discordant sound of rebellion and threats, the conflict with one’s children, the bitter tears shed by a helpless creature who does not understand the laws of the impossible, the sham tempers whipped up by paternal morality, the sudden frightful upheaval of domestic calm, the storms in a tea-cup which I know are nothing, but which would perturb my soul as if they were serious events.”
“In that case, dear friend, you must not perpetuate your noble race, for such storms are inevitable. Do you seriously believe that you never asked for the moon, and roared with fury before you understood that your mother could not give it to you?”
“No, I don’t think so … I have no idea … I can’t say.”
“I am only using a metaphor, but I should be greatly surprised if something similar had not happened to you, for it seems to me that you have retained some of these longings for the impossible and that you still ask God sometimes to place the stars in the hollow of your hand”
Karol was silent and Lucrezia, having succeeded in pacifying her child, returned and suggested a trip on the lake. Little Salvator had not undergone the time-honoured punishment of a beating. His mother was well aware that the coolness of the bedroom, the darkness and softness of his cot, the undivided attention she had given him and the sound of her voice when she would sing him the air which would lull him to sleep – all this would calm him almost instantaneously. She also guessed, yet without knowing what serious proportions these trifles assumed in Karol’s eyes, that all the noise must have annoyed him a little.
To create a diversion she took him on the lake with Salvator Albani, Celio, Stella and Beatrice, but they had not gone very far when they encountered old Menapace who was setting out to cast his nets. The children wanted to jump on to his boat and their mother, seeing that the old fisherman wished to give them a practical demonstration of an art which in his eyes was the greatest of all, agreed to entrust them to him.
Karol was afraid when he saw the three children, still overexcited, depart with such a cold, selfish old man whom he regarded as hardly capable of rescuing them from the water or even preventing them from falling into it.
He said as much to Lucrezia, but she did not share his anxiety.
“Children reared in the midst of danger get to know it very well,” she replied, “and if one of them falls into our lake it is always a stranger who has come here on an outing and who does not know how to look after himself Celio swims like a fish and Stella, wild as she is to-night, will watch over her little sister like a mother. Besides, we shall follow them and not lose sight of them.”
Yet Karol refused to be reassured. In spite of himself he expressed the anxiety which comes from paternal concern and ever since he had seen Celio cut himself, his head had been filled with visions of unforeseen catastrophes. In short, his peace was disturbed both morally and physically as from this fatal day, a day on which nothing outstanding had occurred for the others, but when the habit and need of suffering had once more awakened in him.
And yet the excursion was very peaceful The lake was magnificent in the reflections of the setting sun and the children had become calmer and were taking a serious pleasure in watching their grandfather cast his nets in a flowery, scent-laden creek. Salvator no longer spoke of Venice and by a fortunate chance the name of Boccaferri was not mentioned again. Lucrezia gathered some water-lilies and jumping from one boat to the other with a nimbleness and skill unexpected in a person apparently somewhat heavily built but which recalled the habits of her youth, she adorned the heads of her daughters with these beautiful flowers.
Karol was beginning to regain his inner calm. With consummate skill and coolness old Menapace was steering the boat through the rocks and tree-trunks which strewed the lake shore. None of the children seemed in danger of drowning and Karol was becoming accustomed to seeing them run from one boat to the other, handling the rudder and leaning over the side, yet not to starting with fear at every one of their movements.
The evening breeze began to rise, mild and balmy, bringing with it the fragrance of the blossoming vine and the vanilla-scented bean.
But it was written that this day would end the blissful calm of Karol and would mark for him the beginning of a series of small, indefinable sufferings. Salvator thought the water-lilies so beautiful that he insisted that Lucrezia, too, should put some in her dark hair. She refused, saying that she had had enough of wearing heavy ornaments and coiffures when she was at the theatre and that she was happy that she no longer felt the discomfort of even a single pin on her head. But Karol shared his friend’s wish and she agreed to putting a few flowers in her magnificent tresses.
All was going well save the coiffure which Karol was helping to arrange, but without art or skill, so great was his fear of pulling a single hair of that precious head.
Salvator had the unfortunate idea of lending a hand. He undid the prince’s work, took Lucrezia’s rich hair in both hands and, guided only by his taste, he rolled it easily and casually and twined it with rushes and flowers. He succeeded very well, for he had an aptitude for what is called “fiddling about”, too familiar an expression, but difficult to replace. He possessed a good understanding of statuary from the point of view of ornamentation.
