Kitabı oku: «Mare Nostrum (Our Sea)», sayfa 12
As though the pulps had understood her complaints, they had fallen on the sandy bottom, flaccid, inert, breathing through their funnels.
A little crab began to descend at the end of a thread desperately moving its claws.
Freya pressed still closer to Ulysses, excited at the thought of the approaching spectacle. One of the bags, transformed into a star, suddenly leaped forward. Its arms writhed like serpents seeking the recent arrival. In vain the guard pulled the thread up, wishing to prolong the chase. The tentacles clamped their irresistible openings upon the body of the victim, pulling upon the line with such force that it broke, the octopus falling on the bottom with his prey.
Freya clapped her hands in applause.
"Bravo!…" She was exceedingly pale, though a feverish heat was coursing through her body.
She leaned toward the crystal in order to see better the devouring activity of that pyramidal stomach which had on its sharp point a diminutive parrot head with two ferocious eyes and around its base the twisted skeins of its arms full of projecting disks. With these it pressed the crab against its mouth, injecting under its shell the venomous output of its salivary glands, paralyzing thus every movement of existence. Then it swallowed its prey slowly with the deglutition of a boa constrictor.
"How beautiful it is!" she said.
The other beasts also seized their live victims, paralyzed and devoured them, moving their flabby bodies in order to permit the passage of their swelling nutritive waves and clouds of various colors.
Then the guard tossed in a crab, but one without any string whatever.
Freya screamed with enthusiasm.
This was the kind of hunt that takes place in the ferocious mystery of the sea, a race with death, a destruction preceded with emotional agony and hazards. The poor crustacean, divining its danger, was swimming towards the rocks hoping to take refuge in the nearest crevice. A polypus came up behind it, whilst the others continued their digestion.
"It's escaping!… It's escaping!" cried Freya, palpitating with interest.
The crab scrambled through the stones, sheltering itself in their windings. The polypus was no longer swimming; it was running like a terrestrial animal, climbing over the rocks by its armed extremities, which were now serving as apparatus of locomotion. It was the struggle of a tiger with a mouse. When the crab had half of its body already hidden within the green lichens of a hole, one of the heavy serpents fell upon its back clutching it with the irresistible suction of his air-holes, and causing it to disappear within his skein of tentacles.
"Ah!" sighed Freya, throwing herself back as though she were going to faint on Ulysses' breast.
He shuddered, feeling that a serpentine band of tremulous pressure had encircled his body. The acts of that unbalanced creature were fraying his nerves.
He felt as though a monster of the same class as those in the tank but much larger—a gigantic octopus from the oceanic depths—must have slipped treacherously behind him and was clutching him in one of its tentacles. He could feel the pressure of its feelers around his waist, growing closer and more ferocious.
Freya was holding him captive with one of her arms. She had wound herself tightly around him and was clasping his waist with all her force, as though trying to break his vigorous body in two.
Then he saw the head of this woman approaching him with an aggressive swiftness as if she were going to bite him…. Her enlarged eyes, tearful and misty, appeared to be far off, very far off. Perhaps she was not even looking at him…. Her trembling mouth, bluish with emotion, a round and protruding mouth like an absorbing duct, was seeking the sailor's mouth, taking possession of it and devouring it with her lips.
It was the kiss of a cupping-glass, long, dominating, painful. Ulysses realized that he had never before been kissed in this way. The water from that mouth surging across her row of teeth, discharged itself in his like swift poison. A shudder unfamiliar until then ran the entire length of his back, making him close his eyes.
He felt as if all his interior had turned to liquid. He had a presentiment that his life was going to date from this kiss, that with it was going to begin a new existence, that he never would be able to free himself from these deadly and caressing lips with their faint savor of cinnamon, of incense, of Asiatic forests haunted with sensuousness and intrigue.
And he let himself be dragged down by the caress of this wild beast, with thought lost and body inert and resigned, like a castaway who descends and descends the infinite strata of the abyss without ever reaching bottom.
CHAPTER VI
THE WILES OF CIRCE
After that kiss, the lover believed that all his desires were about to be immediately realized. The most difficult part of the road was already passed. But with Freya one always had to expect something absurd and inconceivable.
The midday gun aroused them from a rapture that had lasted but a few seconds as long as years. The steps of the guard, growing nearer all the time, finally separated the two and unlocked their arms.
Freya was the first to calm herself. Only a slight haze flitted across her pupils now, like the vapor from a recently extinguished fire.
"Good-by…. They are waiting for me."
And she went out from the Aquarium followed by Ferragut, still stammering and tremulous. The questions and petitions with which he pursued her while crossing the promenade were of no avail.
"So far and no further," she said at one of the cross streets of Chiaja. "We shall see one another…. I formally promise you that….
Now leave me."
And she disappeared with the firm step of a handsome huntress, as serene of countenance as though not recalling the slightest recollection of her primitive, passional paroxysm.
This time she fulfilled her promise. Ferragut saw her every day.
They met in the mornings near the hotel, and sometimes she came down into the dining-room, exchanging smiles and glances with the sailor, who fortunately was sitting at a distant table. Then they took strolls and chatted together, Freya laughing good-naturedly at the amorous vows of the captain…. And that was all.
With a woman's skillfulness in sounding a man's depth and penetrating into his secrets,—keeping fast-locked and unapproachable her own,—she gradually informed herself of the incidents and adventures in the life of Ulysses. Vainly he spoke, in a natural reciprocity, of the island of Java, of the mysterious dances before Siva, of the journeys through the lakes of the Andes. Freya had to make an effort to recall them. "Ah!… Yes!" And after giving this distracted exclamation for every answer, she would continue the process of delving eagerly into the former life of her lover. Ulysses sometimes began to wonder if that embrace in the Aquarium could have occurred in his dreams.
One morning the captain managed to bring about the realization of one of his ambitions. He was jealous of the unknown friends that were lunching with Freya. In vain she affirmed that the doctor was the only companion of the hours that she passed outside of the hotel. In order to tranquillize himself, the sailor insisted that the widow should accept his invitations. They ought to extend their strolls; they ought to visit the beautiful outskirts of Naples, lunching in their gay little trattorias or eating-houses.
They ascended together the funicular road of Monte Vomero to the heights crowned by the castle of S. Elmo and the monastery of S. Martino. After admiring in the museum of the abbey the artistic souvenirs of the Bourbon domination and that of Murat, they entered into a nearby trattoria with tables placed on an esplanade from whose balconies they could take in the unforgetable spectacle of the gulf, seeing Vesuvius in the distance and the chain of mountains smoking on the horizon like an immovable succession of dark rose-colored waves.
Naples was extended in horseshoe form on the bow-shaped border of the sea tossing up from its enormous white mass, as though they were bits of foam, the clusters of houses in the suburbs.
A swarthy oysterman, slender, with eyes like live coals, and enormous mustaches, had his stand at the door of the restaurant, offering cockles and shell fish of strong odor that had been half a week perhaps in ascending from the city to the heights of Vomero. Freya jested about the oysterman's typical good looks and the languishing glances that he was forever casting toward all the ladies that entered the establishment … a prime discovery for a tourist anxious for adventures in local color.
In the background a small orchestra was accompanying a tenor voice or was playing alone, enlarging upon the melodies and amplifying the measures with Neapolitan exaggeration.
Freya felt a childish hilarity upon seating herself at the table, seeing over the cloth the luminous summit. Bisected in the foreground by a crystal vase full of flowers, the distant panorama of the city, the gulf, and its capes spread itself before her eager eyes. The air on this peak enchanted her after two weeks passed without stirring outside of Naples. The harps and violins gave the situation a pathetic thrill and served as a background for conversation, just as the vague murmurs of a hidden orchestra give the effect in the theater of psalmody or of melancholy verses moving the listener to tears.
They ate with the nervousness which joy supplies. At some tables further on a young man and woman were forgetting the courses in order to clasp hands underneath the cloth and place knee against knee with frenzied pressure. The two were smiling, looking at the landscape and then at each other. Perhaps they were foreigners recently married, perhaps fugitive lovers, realizing in this picturesque spot the billing and cooing so many times anticipated in their distant courtship.
Two English doctors from a hospital ship, white haired and uniformed, were disregarding their repast in order to paint directly in their albums, with a childish painstaking crudeness, the same panorama that was portrayed on the postal cards offered for sale at the door of the restaurant.
A fat-bellied bottle with a petticoat of straw and a long neck attracted Freya's hands to the table. She ridiculed the sobriety of Ferragut, who was diluting with water the reddish blackness of the Italian wine.
"Thus your ancestors, the Argonauts, must have drunk," she said gayly.
"Thus your grandfather, Ulysses, undoubtedly drank."
And herself filling the captain's glass with an exaggeratedly careful division of the parts of water and wine, she added gayly:
"We are going to make a libation to the gods."
These libations were very frequent. Freya's peals of laughter made the Englishmen, interrupted in their conscientious work, turn their glances toward her. The sailor felt himself overcome by a warm feeling of well-being, by a sensation of repose and confidence, as though this woman were unquestionably his already.
Seeing that the two lovers, terminating their luncheon hastily, were arising with blushing precipitation as though overpowered by some sudden desire, his glance became tender and fraternal…. Adieu, adieu, companions!
The voice of the widow recalled him to reality.
"Ulysses, make love to me…. You haven't yet told me this whole day long that you love me."
In spite of the smiling and mocking tone of this order, he obeyed her, repeating once more his promises and his desires. Wine was giving to his words a thrill of emotion; the musical moaning of the orchestra was exciting his sensibilities and he was so touched with his own eloquence that his eyes slightly filled with tears.
The high voice of the tenor, as though it were an echo of Ferragut's thought, was singing a romance of the fiesta of Piedigrotta, a lamentation of melancholy love, a canticle of death, the final mother of hopeless lovers.
"All a lie!" said Freya, laughing. "These Mediterraneans…. What comedians they are for love!…"
Ulysses was uncertain as to whether she was referring to him or to the singer. She continued talking, placid and disdainful at the same time, because of their surroundings.
"Love,… love! In these countries they can't talk of anything else. It is almost an industry, somewhat scrupulously prepared for the credulous and simple people from the North. They all harp on love: this howling singer, you … even the oysterman…."
Then she added maliciously:
"I ought to warn you that you have a rival. Be very careful, Ferragut!"
She turned her head in order to look at the oysterman. He was occupied in the contemplation of a fat lady with grisled hair and abundant jewels, a lady escorted by her husband, who was looking with astonishment at the vendor's killing glances without being able to understand them.
The lady-killer was stroking his mustache affectedly, looking from time to time at his cloth suit in order to smooth out the wrinkles and brush off the specks of dust. He was a handsome pirate disguised as a gentleman. Upon noticing Freya's interest, he changed the course of his glances, poised his fine figure and replied to her questioning eyes with the smile of a bad angel, making her understand his discretion and skillfulness in ingratiating himself behind husbands and escorts.
"There he is!" cried Freya with peals of laughter. "I already have a new admirer!…"
The swarthy charmer was restrained by the scandalous publicity with which this lady was receiving his mysterious insinuations. Ferragut spoke of knocking the scamp down on his oyster shells with a good pair of blows.
"Now don't be ridiculous," she protested. "Poor man! Perhaps he has a wife and many children…. He is the father of a family and wants to take money home."
There was a long silence between the two. Ulysses appeared offended by the lightness and cruelty of his companion.
"Now don't you be cross," she said. "See here, my shark! Smile a bit. Show me your teeth…. The libations to the gods are to blame. Are you offended because I wished to compare you with that clown?… What if you are the only man that I appreciate at all!… Ulysses, I am speaking to you seriously,—with all the frankness that wine gives. I ought not to tell you so, but I admit it…. If I should ever love a man, that man would be you."
Ferragut instantly forgot all his irritation in order to listen to her and envelop her in the adoring light of his eyes. Freya averted her glance while speaking, not wishing to meet his eye, as though she were weighing what she was saying while her glance wandered over the widespread landscape.
Ulysses' origin was what interested her most. She who had traveled over almost the entire world, had trodden the soil of Spain only a few hours, when disembarking in Barcelona from the transatlantic liner which he had commanded. The Spaniards inspired her both with fear and attraction. A noble gravity reposed in the depths of their ardent hyperbole.
"You are an exaggerated being, a meridional who enlarges everything and lies about everything, believing all his own lies. But I am sure that if you should ever be really in love with me, without fine phrases or passionate fictions, your affection would be more sane and deep than that of other men…. My friend, the doctor, says that you are a crude people and that you have only simulated the nervousness, unbalanced behavior, and intrigues that accompany love in other civilized countries even to refinement."
Freya looked at the sailor, making a long pause.
"Therefore you strike," she continued, "therefore you kill when you feel love and jealousy. You are brutes but not mediocre. You do not abandon a woman intentionally; you do not exploit her…. You are a new species of man for me, who has known so many. If I were able to believe in love, I would have you at my side all my life…. All my life long!"
A light, gentle music, like the vibration of fragile and delicate crystal, spread itself over the terrace. Freya followed its rhythm with a light motion of the head. She was accustomed to this cloying music, this Serenata of Toselli,—a passionate lament that always touches the soul of the tourist in the halls of the grand hotels. She, who at other times had ridiculed this artificial and refined little music, now felt tears welling up in her eyes.
"Not to be able to love anybody!" she murmured. "To wander alone through the world!… And love is such a beautiful thing!"
She guessed what Ferragut was going to say,—his protest of eternal passion, his offer to unite his life to hers forever, and she cut his words short with an energetic gesture.
"No, Ulysses, you do not know me; you do not know who I am…. Go far from me. Some days ago it was a matter of indifference to me. I hate men and do not mind injuring them, but now you inspire me with a certain interest because I believe you are good and frank in spite of your haughty exterior…. Go! Do not seek me. This is the best proof of affection that I can give you."
She said this vehemently, as if she saw Ferragut running toward danger and was crying out in order to ward him from it.
"On the stage," she continued, "there is a role that they call 'The Fatal Woman,' and certain artists are not able to play any other part. They were born to represent this personage…. I am a 'Fatal Woman,' but really and truly…. If you could know my life!… It is better that you do not know it; even I wish to ignore it. I am happy only when I forget it…. Ferragut, my friend, bid me farewell, and do not cross my path again."
But Ferragut protested as though she were proposing a cowardly thing to him. Flee? Loving her so much? If she had enemies, she could rely upon him for her defense; if she wanted wealth, he wasn't a millionaire, but….
"Captain," interrupted Freya, "go back to your own people. I was not meant for you. Think of your wife and son; follow your own life. I am not the conquest that is cherished for a few weeks, no more. Nobody can trust me with impunity. I have suckers just like the animals that we saw the other day; I burn and sting just like those transparent parasols in the Aquarium. Flee, Ferragut!…. Leave me alone…. Alone!"
And the image of the immense barrenness of her lonely future made the tears gush from her eyes.
The music had ceased. A motionless waiter was pretending to look far away, while really listening to their conversation. The two Englishmen had interrupted their painting in order to glare at this gentleman who was making a lady weep. The sailor began to feel the nervous disquietude which a difficult situation creates.
"Ferragut, pay and let us go," she said, divining his state of mind.
While Ulysses was giving money to the waiters and musicians, she dried her eyes and repaired the ravages to her complexion, drawing from her gold-mesh bag a powder puff and little mirror in whose oval she contemplated herself for a long time.
As they passed out, the oysterman turned his back, pretending to be very much occupied in the arrangement of the lemons that were adorning his stand. She could not see his face, but she guessed, nevertheless, that he was muttering a bad word,—the most terrible that can be said of a woman.
They went slowly toward the station of the funicular road, through solitary streets and between garden walls one side of which was yellow in the golden sunlight and the other blue in the shade. She it was who sought Ulysses' arm, supporting herself on it with a childish abandon as if fatigue had overcome her after the first few steps.
Ferragut pressed this arm close against his body, feeling at once the stimulus of contact. Nobody could see them; their footsteps resounded on the pavements with the echo of an abandoned place. The fermented ardor of those libations to the gods was giving the captain a new audacity.
"My poor little darling!… Dear little crazy-head!…" he murmured, drawing closer to him Freya's head which was resting on one of his shoulders.
He kissed her without her making any resistance. And she in turn kissed him, but with a sad, light, faint-hearted kiss that in no way recalled the hysterical caress of the Aquarium. Her voice, which appeared to be coming from afar off, was repeating what she had counseled him in the trattoria.
"Begone, Ulysses! Do not see me any more. I tell you this for your own good…. I bring trouble. I should be sorry to have you curse the moment in which you met me."
The sailor took advantage of all the windings of the streets in order to cut these recommendations short with his kisses. She advanced limply as though towed by him with no will power of her own, as though she were walking in her sleep. A voice was singing with diabolic satisfaction in the captain's brain:
"Now it is ripe!… Now it is ripe!…"
And he continued pulling her along always in a direct line, not knowing whither he was going, but sure of his triumph.
Near the station an old man approached the pair,—a white-haired, respectable gentleman with an old jacket and spectacles. He gave them the card of a hotel which he owned in the neighborhood, boasting of the good qualities of its rooms. "Every modern comfort…. Hot water." Ferragut spoke to her familiarly:
"Would you like?… Would you like?…"
She appeared to wake up, dropping his arm brusquely.
"Don't be crazy, Ulysses…. That will never be…. Never!"
And drawing herself up magnificently, she entered the station with a haughty step, without looking around, without noticing whether Ferragut was following her or abandoning her.
During the long wait and the descent to the city Freya appeared as ironical and frivolous as though she had no recollection of her recent indignation. The sailor, under the weight of his failure and the unusual libations, relapsed into sulky silence.
In the district of Chiaja they separated. Ferragut, finding himself alone, felt more strongly than ever the effects of the intoxication that was dominating him, the intoxication of a temperate man overcome by the intense surprise of novelty.
For a moment he had a forlorn idea of going to his boat. He needed to give orders, to contend with somebody; but the weakness of his knees pushed him toward his hotel and he flung himself face downward on the bed,—whilst his hat rolled on the floor,—content with the sobriety with which he had reached his room without attracting the attention of the servants.
He fell asleep immediately, but scarcely had night fallen before his eyes opened again, or at least he believed that they opened, seeing everything under a light which was not that of the sun.
Some one had entered the room, and was coming on tiptoe towards his bed. Ulysses, who was not able to move, saw out of the tail of one eye that what was approaching was a woman and that this woman appeared to be Freya. Was it really she?…
She had the same countenance, the blonde hair, the black and oriental eyes, the same oval face. It was Freya and it was not, just as twins exactly alike physically, nevertheless have an indefinable something which differentiates them.
The vague thoughts which for some time past had been slowly undermining his subconsciousness with dull, subterranean labor, now cleared the air with explosive force. Whenever he had seen the widow this subconsciousness had asserted itself, forewarning him that he had known her long before that transatlantic voyage. Now, under a light of fantastic splendor, these vague thoughts assumed definite shape.
The sleeper thought he was looking at Freya clad in a bodice with flowing sleeves adjusted to the arms with filagree buttons of gold; some rather barbarous gems were adorning her bosom and ears, and a flowered skirt was covering the rest of her person. It was the classic costume of a farmer's wife or daughter of other centuries that he had seen somewhere in a painting. Where?… Where?…
"Doña Constanza!…"
Freya was the counterpart of that august Byzantian queen. Perhaps she was the very same, perpetuated across the centuries, through extraordinary incarnations. In that moment Ulysses would have believed anything possible.
Besides he was very little concerned with the reasonableness of things just now; the important thing to him was that they should exist; and Freya was at his side; Freya and that other one, welded into one and the same woman, clad like the Grecian sovereign.
Again he repeated the sweet name that had illuminated his infancy with romantic splendor. "Doña Constanza! Oh, Doña Constanza!…" And night overwhelmed him, cuddling his pillow as when he was a child, and falling asleep enraptured with thoughts of the young widow of "Vatacio the Heretic."
When he met Freya again the next day, he felt attracted by a new force,—the redoubled interest that people in dreams inspire. She might really be the empress resuscitated in a new form as in the books of chivalry, or she might simply be the wandering widow of a learned sage,—for the sailor it was all the same thing. He desired her, and to his carnal desire was added others less material,—the necessity of seeing her for the mere pleasure of seeing her, of hearing her, of suffering her negatives, of being repelled in all his advances.
She had pleasant memories of the expedition to the heights of S.
Martino.
"You must have thought me ridiculous because of my sensitiveness and my tears. You, on the other hand, were as you always are, impetuous and daring…. The next time we shall drink less."
The "next time" was an invitation that Ferragut repeated daily. He wanted to take her to dine at one of the trattorias on the road to Posilipo where they could see spread at their feet the entire gulf, colored with rose by the setting sun.
Freya had accepted his invitation with the enthusiasm of a school girl. These strolls represented for her hours of joy and liberty, as though her long sojourns with the doctor were filled with monotonous service.
One evening Ulysses was waiting for her far from the hotel so as to avoid the porter's curious stares. As soon as they met and glanced toward the neighboring cab-stand, four vehicles advanced at the same time—like a row of Roman chariots anxious to win the prize in the circus—with a noisy clattering of hoofs, cracking of whips, wrathful gesticulations and threatening appeals to the Madonna. Listening to their Neapolitan curses, Ferragut believed for an instant that they were going to kill one another…. The two climbed into the nearest vehicle, and immediately the tumult ceased. The empty coaches returned to occupy their former place in the line, and the deadly rivals renewed their placid and laughing conversation.
An enormous upright plume was waving on their horses' heads. The cabman, in order not to be discourteous to his two clients, would occasionally turn half-way around, giving them explanations.
"Over there," and he pointed with his whip, "is the road of Piedigrotta. The gentleman ought to see it on a day of fiesta in September. Few return from it with a firm step. S. Maria di Piedigrotta enabled Charles III to put the Austrians to flight in Velletri…. Aooo!"
He moved his whip like a fishing rod over the upright plume, increasing the steed's pace with a professional howl…. And as though his cry were among the sweetest of melodies, he continued talking, by association of ideas:
"At the fiesta of Piedigrotta, when I was a boy, were given out the best songs of the year. There was proclaimed the latest fashionable love song, and long after we had forgotten it foreigners would come here repeating it as though it was a novelty."
He made a short pause.
"If the lady and gentleman wish," he continued, "I will take them, on returning, to Piedigrotta. Then we'll see the little church of S. Vitale. Many foreign ladies hunt for it in order to put flowers on the sepulcher of a hunch-back who made verses,—Giacomo Leopardi."
The silence with which his two clients received these explanations made him abandon his mechanical oratory in order to take a good look at them. The gentleman was taking the lady's hand and was pressing it, speaking in a very low tone. The lady was pretending not to listen to him, looking at the villas and the gardens at the left of the road sloping down toward the sea.
With noble magnanimity, however, the driver still wished to instruct his indifferent clients, showing them with the point of his whip the beauty and wonders of his repertoire.
"That church is S. Maria del Parto, sometimes called by others the Sannazaro. Sannazaro was also a noted poet who described the loves of shepherdesses, and Frederick II of Aragon made him the gift of a villa with gardens in order that he might write with greater comfort… Those were other days, sir! His heirs converted it into a church and–"
The voice of the coachman stopped short. Behind him the pair were talking in an incomprehensible language, without paying the slightest attention to him, without acknowledging his erudite explanations. Ignorant foreigners!… And he said no more, wrapping himself in offended silence, relieving his Neapolitan verbosity with a series of shouts and grunts to his horse.
The new road from Posilipo, the work of Murat, skirted the gulf, rising along the mountain edge and constantly emphasizing the declivity between the covering of its feet and the border of the sea. On this hanging slope may be seen villas with white or rosy facades midst the splendor of a vegetation that is always green and glossy. Beyond the colonnades of palm trees and parasol pines, appeared the gulf like a blue curtain, its upper edge showing above the murmuring tops of the trees.
An enormous edifice appeared facing the water. It was a palace in ruins, or rather a roofless palace never finished, with thick walls and huge windows. On the lower floor the waves entered gently through doors and windows which served as rooms of refuge for the fishermen's skiffs.
The two travelers were undoubtedly talking about this ruin, and the forgiving coachman forgot his snub in order to come to their aid.
"That is what many people call the Palace of Queen Joanna…. A mistake, sir. Ignorance of the uneducated people! That is the Palazzo di Donn' Anna, and Donna Anna Carafa was a great Neapolitan signora, wife of the Duke of Medina, the Spanish viceroy who constructed the palace for her and was not able to finish it."…
