Kitabı oku: «Orlando. A Biography / Орландо», sayfa 2

All the colors soon faded. Night came. When the orange light of sunset was gone, the torches and bonfires lit up the river. Then the strangest transformation happened: all the churches and palaces seemed to be floating on the air. As Orlando and Sasha skated closer to the carnival, they heard people shout as a rocket flew into the air. Above and around this brilliant circle was the deep black of a winter's night. And then, into this darkness, there began to rise many flowering rockets; snakes; a crown. At one moment, the woods and the hills showed green as on a summer's day; the next moment, all was winter and blackness again.

There was a great crowd on the river: tailors; fishwives; horse sellers; scholars; maids; servants; drunkards; sober citizens. Indeed, all the common people of the London streets were there, stamping their feet, whistling. Most stood opposite a stage upon which some kind of show was going on. A black man was waving his arms. A woman in white lay on a bed. And when the Moor strangled the woman in her bed, Orlando suddenly felt as if it was Sasha whom he killed with his own hands.

At last the play ended, and all had grown dark. The tears were streaming down Orlando's face. Looking up into the sky, he saw that there was nothing but blackness there. Ruin and death, he thought, cover all. Our life ends in the grave, and worms eat us.

Even as he thought this, some hope rose in his memory. The night was dark, so dark; but it was such a night as this that they had been waiting for; it was on such a night as this that they had planned to flee. He remembered everything. The time had come. He embraced Sasha and whispered in her ear, 'Jour de ma vie!²²' It was their signal. At midnight they would meet at an inn near Blackfriars²³. Horses waited there. Everything was ready. So they parted – she went to her tent, he to his.

Long before midnight Orlando was in the little courtyard of the inn, waiting. The night was of an extraordinary blackness and stillness. Many times Orlando's heart jumped at the sound of some footsteps on the cobbled street, or at the rustle of a woman's dress. But they passed, and the street was quieter than before. The lights in the houses went out, and the street lanterns were few there. The darkness then became even deeper than before. Orlando checked the saddles a dozen times at least till he could be sure that everything was ready. Though it was still some twenty minutes to midnight, he could not make himself go indoors. He listened to every footstep, every sound, as if it could be an omen to his venture. Yet, he had no fear for Sasha. She would love this adventure. She would come alone, in her cloak and trousers, dressed like a man. Her light footsteps would hardly be heard, even in this silence.

So he waited in the darkness. Suddenly, something hit him in the face, softly, yet heavily. He started and put his hand to his sword. The blow was repeated a dozen times on his forehead and cheeks. It took him a minute to realize that these blows were raindrops falling. At first, they fell slowly, one by one. But soon the rain began to pour. In five minutes Orlando was soaked to the skin²⁴.

He quickly put the horses under cover and stood in the doorway from where he could still see the courtyard. The air was now thicker than ever, and the rain was so heavy that no footsteps could be heard above it. The roads would be under water now, but he did not think about it. He was looking at the cobbled pathway, waiting for Sasha to come. Sometimes, in the darkness, he seemed to see her, but then the image disappeared.

Suddenly, with an awful ominous voice, which raised fears in Orlando's soul, St. Paul's²⁵ struck the first stroke of midnight. Orlando had decided that she would come on the sixth stroke. But the sixth stroke passed; then the seventh came, and the eighth; and they seemed to promise death and disaster. When the twelfth struck, he knew that he was doomed. He could not reason; she might be late; she might be stopped; she might be lost. The passionate heart of Orlando knew the truth. Other clocks struck, one after another. The whole world seemed to ring with the news of her deceit.

Orlando felt as if he was bitten by a thousand poisonous snakes. He stood in the doorway in the rain without moving. As the minutes passed, he dropped to his knees. He could hear great guns booming, loud noises of falling oak trees, and terrible wild cries. But Orlando stood there till Paul's clock struck two, and then, crying aloud, 'Jour de ma vie!' he jumped on his horse and galloped he knew not where.

By some instinct, he rode along the river bank in the direction of the sea. It was almost morning; the sky was turning a pale yellow, and the rain nearly stopped. He found himself on the banks of the Thames at Wapping and saw the most extraordinary sight. Where there had been thick ice for three months and more, now was a stream of yellow waters. The river broke free in the night. There were icebergs everywhere. Some of them were as broad as a field and as high as a house; others were no bigger than a man's hat. The river was flowing and twisting like a snake, tossing the icebergs from bank to bank, smashing them against the piers, destroying everything that stood in their way.

But the most awful sight was the terror of the people trapped in the night on the moving islands of ice. Whether they jumped into the water, or stayed on the ice, their doom was certain. Some of these poor creatures were standing on their knees, praying. One old man was reading aloud from a holy book. As they were carried out to sea, some could be heard crying for help, confessing their sins and making promises if God would hear their prayers. Others sat still and silent, staring blindly before them. One group of young sailors were shouting tavern songs. An old nobleman went down not far from where Orlando stood. Many drowned holding some silver pot or other treasure tightly; and some poor ones drowned because they jumped from the bank into the river as they saw valuable possessions of all sorts being carried away on the icebergs. Among other strange sights was a cat with its kitten; a table laid for a supper of twenty; a couple in bed.

Astonished, Orlando could do nothing for some time but watch the waters flow as they went past him. At last, he spurred his horse and galloped along the river bank in the direction of the sea. He reached that place where – not even two days ago – the ships of the Ambassadors had stood frozen. Quickly, he counted them all: the French; the Spanish; the Austrian; the Turkish. All were still there, except for the Russian ship. For a moment, Orlando thought that it must have sunk; but then, raising his eyes, he saw the shape of a ship on the horizon, with the black eagles flying from the mast.

The ship of the Muscovite Embassy was going out to sea.

2

In the summer that followed that terrible winter which saw the frost, the flood, the deaths of many people, and which ruined Orlando's hopes, as he was banned from Court, he went to his great house in the country and lived there in solitude.

One June morning – it was Saturday the 18th – Orlando did not get up at his usual hour, and when his servants went to call him, he was found asleep and could not be awakened. He lay as if in a trance, almost without breathing. The dogs were barking under his window; drums were beaten in his room; his feet were covered with mustard – still he did not wake up, take food, or show any sign of life for seven whole days.

On the seventh day, he woke at his usual time – a quarter before eight – and sent everyone out of his room, which was natural enough. Strangely enough, he was not aware of any trance, but simply dressed himself and sent for his horse as if he had woken from a usual night's sleep. Yet some change – as it was suspected – must have taken place in his brain, because though he was perfectly rational and even gloomier than before, he seemed to have forgotten some events of his past life. He would listen when people spoke of the great frost, or the skating, or the carnival, but he never gave any sign that he had witnessed them himself. When the events of the past six months were discussed, he seemed puzzled, as if he was listening to stories which some other person had already told him. If Russia was mentioned, or Princesses, or ships, he would become gloomy and get up and look out of the window or call one of the dogs to him. But the doctors only told him to lie in bed all day and ride forty miles between lunch and dinner, and left him to himself. In their opinion, all the strangeness was due to the fact that he had been asleep for a week.

But if it was sleep, then what was its nature? Was it a cure? Was it the finger of death? Are people made so that they have to take death in small doses daily or they could not go on with their life? Had Orlando died for a week, and then come to life again? And if so, of what nature is death and of what nature life?

Now Orlando led a life of extreme solitude. His disgrace at Court and his grief were partly the reason of it. He seldom invited anyone to visit him, though he still had many friends. To be alone, in the great house of his fathers, suited him well. Solitude was his choice. Nobody quite knew how he spent his time. In the dark of the evening, the servants, whose business was to dust empty rooms and to tidy the beds that were never slept in, watched a light passing along the galleries and the banqueting-halls, up the stairs, into the bedrooms, and knew that it was their master taking a walk through the house, alone. None of them dared follow him, of course, because the house was haunted by a great variety of ghosts.

When the light disappeared, Mrs. Grimsditch, the housekeeper, would say to Mr. Dupper, the chaplain, that she hoped his Lordship had not had any bad accident. Mr. Dupper would answer that his Lordship was probably on his knees, among the tombs of his ancestors, in the Chapel, half a mile away on the south side. They agreed that it was such a pity to see a fine nobleman moping about the house when he might be hunting the fox and deer. In short, all his serving men and women thought that his Lordship was a handsome and pleasant gentleman; they respected him and cursed the foreign Princess.

Indeed, Mr. Dupper was right. Orlando now enjoyed the thoughts of death, and, after walking along galleries and ballrooms with a candle in his hand, looking at picture after picture, he would come into the family chapel and sit for hours watching the tapestries stir in the moonlight. Even this was not enough for him, so he would go down into the sepulcher where his ancestors lay, coffin upon coffin, for ten generations together. The place was so seldom visited that the rats made holes in the coffins, and a bone or a skull would catch at his cloak or roll under his foot as he passed. It was a grim sepulcher, dug deep beneath the house as if the first Lord of the family had wished to show how the skeleton lies beneath the flesh: how people that dance and sing above must then lie below; how the crimson velvet turns to dust; how the ring loses its ruby and the eye shines no more.

'Nothing is left of all these Princes, except the dates,' Orlando would say, taking a skeleton hand in his, bending it this way and that, then putting it back with the other bones. 'Whose hand was it? The right or the left? The hand of man or woman, of old or young? Had it held a rose or cold steel?'

So, taking his candle, he returned to that curious, moody walking down the galleries, looking for something among the pictures. Soon it was interrupted by a spasm of sobbing when he saw a snow landscape painting by an unknown artist. Then it seemed to him that life was not worth living any more. Forgetting the bones of his ancestors, he stood there, shaking with sobs, desiring a treacherous woman in Russian trousers. She had gone. She had left him. He would never see her again. And so he sobbed. And so he went back to his room. And Mrs.

Grimsditch, seeing the light in the window, thanked God his Lordship was safe again.

Back in his room, Orlando sat at the table and opened the works of Sir Thomas Browne²⁶.

Strangely, Orlando had many moods: melancholy, laziness, passion, love of solitude. But the mood for books was an early one. As a child, he was sometimes found at midnight still reading. When servants took his candle away, he used glow-worms. When they took the glow-worms away, he almost burnt the house down with a tinder. To put it simply, he was a nobleman infected with a love of literature. Many people of his time, especially of his rank, did not have the infection and thus were free to run or ride or make love. But some were early infected by this disease, the nature of which was to substitute an illusion for reality. So when Orlando opened a book, everything around him turned to mist. The nine acres of stone which were his house, one hundred and fifty servants, his eighty horses, countless carpets, sofas, and china – all disappeared.

So Orlando would sit by himself, reading in solitude. He would often read six hours into the night; and when the servants came to him for orders, he would put away his book and look as if he did not understand what was said to him. This broke the hearts of Mrs. Grimsditch, the housekeeper, of Mr. Dupper, the chaplain, and of all the others. A fine gentleman like that, they said, had no need of books. Let him leave books, they said, to the sick or the dying.

But worse was yet to come²⁷. Orlando fell in love with writing. It is a disaster for any man, and especially for a rich one. He would give every penny he had to write one little book and become famous; yet no gold would buy him the treasure of a well-written line.

Happily, Orlando was strong enough, and the disease never broke him down as it had broken many others. Yet when he had read for an hour or so, and the call of the night watchman showed that it was the dead of night²⁸ and all were asleep, he crossed the room, took a silver key out of his pocket, and unlocked a great cabinet which stood in the corner. Inside there were about fifty drawers, and in each drawer lay a thick document, all written in Orlando's hand. He paused, thinking which one to open.

The truth was that Orlando had been afflicted with this disease for many years. Never had any boy asked for sweets or apples as Orlando asked for paper and ink. He would hide behind curtains, or in the cupboard behind his mother's bedroom, with an inkpot in one hand, a pen in another, and a roll of paper on his knee. Thus he had written, before he turned twenty-five, about forty-seven plays, histories, romances, poems; some in prose, some in verse; some in French, some in Italian; all romantic, and all very long. One of them he had had printed; but he had never dared show it even to his mother because for a nobleman, as he knew, to write was a disgrace.

Now, however, was the dead of night, and he was alone, so he chose one thick document called 'Xenophila: A Tragedy', and another thin one, called simply 'The Oak Tree'. But then he paused.

People's Memory is a strange thing. Dipping his pen in the ink, Orlando suddenly saw the mocking face of the lost Princess and immediately asked himself a million questions. Where was she; and why had she left him? Was the Ambassador her uncle or her lover? Was she forced? Was she married? Was she dead?

But then a different face overlay the face of the Princess in Orlando's mind. Whose is it?he asked himself. And looking at the new picture which lay on top of the old, he had to wait perhaps half a minute before he could say to himself, This is the face of that rather fat, shabby man who sat in Twitchett's room so many years ago when old Queen Elizabeth came here; and I saw him, sitting at the table, as I stopped on my way downstairs, and he had the most amazing eyes. But who the devil was he? Not a nobleman; not one of us… A poet, I dare say!

Orlando paused because Memory still held before him the image of a shabby man with big, bright eyes. Still he looked, still he paused. Once before he had paused, and Love had burst into his life. From Love he had suffered, and now, again, he paused, and in jumped Ambition, and Poetry, and Desire of Fame. Standing upright, alone in his room, he vowed that he would be the first poet of his family and would make a name for himself²⁹. His ancestors had fought and killed, but what was left of all that killing, and drinking, and love-making, and hunting, and riding, and eating? A skull; a finger. Then, turning to the book of Sir Thomas Browne and comparing that achievement with those of his ancestors, he cried that their deeds were dust and ashes, but this man and his words were immortal.

He soon saw, however, that the battles to win a kingdom were not even half as hard as the battle which he was now fighting to win immortality against the English language. Anyone familiar with the composition will not need to be told the story in detail; how he wrote and it seemed good; read and it seemed horrible; corrected and tore the paper up; cut out; put in; was excited; was in despair; had his good nights and bad mornings; found ideas and lost them; acted his people's parts as he ate; as he walked; now cried; now laughed; chose between this style and that; and still could not decide whether he was a genius or the greatest fool in the world.

To find the answer to this last question after many months of his battle, he decided to break the solitude of years and meet with the outer world. He had a friend in London, Giles Isham, of Norfolk, who knew certain writers and could put him in touch with³⁰ some of them. For Orlando, there was a glory about a man who had written a book and had it printed. He could think of no greater happiness than to be allowed to sit behind a curtain and hear them talk. He thought with pride that he himself had always been called a scholar and laughed at for his love of solitude and books. He had never been good at pretty phrases. He would often stand still and blush when talking to ladies. He had twice fallen from his horse. Recalling these episodes of his social life, he hoped that all the troubles of his youth, his clumsiness, his blushes, his long walks, and his love of the country proved that he himself was not an aristocrat by birth, but a writer. For the first time since the night of the great flood he was happy.

He now paid Mr. Isham of Norfolk to deliver to Mr. Nicholas Greene³¹ of Clifford's Inn a document in which Orlando expressed his admiration for his works – as Nick Greene was a very famous writer at that time; and his desire to meet him in person, if Mr. Nicholas Greene would be so kind as to visit him. That last thing Orlando almost did not dare ask for because he had nothing to offer in return. To Orlando's delight, quite soon, Mr. Greene accepted the Noble Lord's invitation and thus was received at seven o'clock on Monday, April the twenty-first, in the southern hall of the main building.

Many Kings, Queens, and Ambassadors had been received there. Judges and warriors had stood there. The loveliest ladies of the land had come there. There were coats of arms³² with their lions and their leopards. There were the long tables with the gold and silver plates. There were vast marble fireplaces where nightly a whole oak tree, with its million leaves and its bird nests, was burnt to ashes. Nicholas Greene, the poet, stood there now, dressed in his old hat and a shabby black coat, holding a small bag in one hand.

Orlando, who rushed to greet him, was slightly disappointed. The poet was of medium height, lean and somewhat stooped. Entering the hall, he stepped on a dog, and the dog bit him. What is more, Orlando did not know where to place him³³. He belonged neither to servants, nor to noblemen. His head with its high forehead and big nose was fine, but the chin was small. The eyes were brilliant, but the lips hung loose³⁴. The expression of the face was disturbing – it was neither noble or pleasant to look at; nor was it a well-trained face of a servant. He was a poet, but it seemed that he would rather criticize than praise; quarrel than make peace; struggle than rest; hate than love. His movements were quick, and there was something suspicious in his glance. Orlando was taken aback³⁵. Yet they went to dinner.

Here Orlando was, for the first time, suddenly ashamed of the number of his servants and of the richness of his table. At dinner, the poet said that although the name of Greene was common, the family had been of the highest nobility in France. Unfortunately, they had lost their wealth and status and simply left their name to the royal district of Greenwich. Then he talked about lost castles, coats of arms, cousins in the north, noble families in the west, how some Greens wrote their name with an e at the end, and others without. Only by the end of the dinner did Orlando dare mention a more important matter than the Greens; that is the subject of poetry.

When the word was first mentioned, the poet's eyes flashed; he forgot his fine gentleman manners, banged his glass on the table, and began telling one of the longest and most passionate stories that Orlando had ever heard – about his play; another poet; and a critic. Orlando understood only that poetry was harder to sell than prose, and though the lines were shorter, it took longer to write.

So the talk went on and on, until Orlando mentioned that he himself had been trying to write. At that, the poet jumped up from his chair. A mouse had squeaked in the wall, he said. The truth was, he explained, that his nerves were in a poor state. A mouse's squeak could upset him for two weeks. The poet then gave Orlando the full story of his health for the past ten years or so. It had been so bad that it was a miracle that he still lived. He had had the palsy, the gout, the three kinds of fevers; in addition to which he had heart, spleen, liver and spine problems. Sometimes he woke with a brain like lead; other times it was as if a thousand candles or fireworks were burning inside him. He could feel a rose leaf through his mattress, he said. Altogether, he was finely made and curiously put together, and it surprised him that he had only sold five hundred copies of his poem. But that, of course, was due to the conspiracy against him. All he could say, in the end, banging his fist on the table, was that the art of poetry was dead in England.

'But what about Shakespeare, Marlowe, Ben Jonson, Browne, Donne³⁶?' Orlando asked.

Greene laughed. Shakespeare, he admitted, had written some things that were good enough; but he had taken them from Marlowe. Marlowe was probably a nice boy, but what else could you say of a man who died before he was thirty? As for Browne, he was writing poetry in prose, and people soon got tired of it. Donne wrapped up his lack of meaning in hard words. As for Ben Jonson – that was his friend, and he never said bad things about his friends.

No, he concluded, the great age of literature had passed; the great age of literature was the Greek, not the Elizabethan age. In the past, men cherished an ambition. Now all young writers were writing any trash that would sell, and Shakespeare was one of them. Though it hurt him to say it, because he loved literature as he loved his life, he could see no good in the present and had no hope for the future. Here he poured himself another glass of wine.

Orlando was shocked by what he had heard; yet the critic himself did not seem pessimistic. On the contrary³⁷, the more he criticized his own time, the more pleased with himself he became. He could remember, he said, a night at a tavern when Kit Marlowe was there. Kit was rather drunk and in a mood to say silly things. He was saying that they were on the verge of a great age in English literature, and that Shakespeare would play an important role in it. Happily for himself, he was killed two nights later in a drunken fight, and so did not live to see how it turned out. 'Poor foolish fellow,' said Greene, 'to go and say things like that! A great age! The Elizabethan – a great age?'

'So, my dear Lord,' Greene continued, sitting comfortably in his chair, holding the wine-glass between his fingers, 'we must make the best of it, cherish the past and honor those writers who write not for pay but for glory. If only I had a pension of three hundred pounds a year, paid quarterly, I would live for the poetry and fine writing alone. But it's necessary to have a pension to do it.'

By this time Orlando had lost all hope of discussing his own work with the poet. The talk now moved on to the lives and characters of Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, and the rest, all of whom Greene had known personally and about whom he had a thousand funny stories to tell. These were his gods, and Orlando had never laughed so much in his life.

So time passed, and Orlando felt for his guest a strange mixture of liking and contempt, of admiration and pity, of fear and fascination. He talked only about himself all the time, yet was such good company that one could listen to his stories for ever. Then he was so witty; then he was so irreverent; then he was so free; then he was so full of strange ideas in his head. He could make salad in three hundred different ways; knew all about mixing wines; played several musical instruments, and was the first person, and perhaps the last, to fry cheese in the great marble fireplace. The fact that he did not know many other common things amazed Orlando who had never met anybody of his kind before. Even the maids laughed at his jokes, and the servants stayed in the room to hear his stories. Indeed, the house had never been so lively as now that he was there. This gave Orlando much to think about and to compare this way of life with the old. In the end, he came to the conclusion that he had invited to his house a spirit of unrest that would never let him sleep well again.

At the same moment, Nick Greene came to quite the opposite conclusion. Lying in bed on the softest pillows between the smoothest sheets, he thought that he needed to escape somehow. Getting up, dressing and hearing the fountains fall, he thought that unless he could hear the roar of the cobbled streets, he would never write another line. If this goes on much longer, he thought, hearing the servants lay the table with silver dishes, I will fall asleep and die.

So he found Orlando in his room, and explained that he had not been able to sleep all night because of the silence. Indeed, the house was surrounded by a park and a wall. Silence, he said, was bad for his nerves. He wanted to end his visit that very morning. Orlando felt some relief at this, yet also a great reluctance to let him go. The house, he thought, would seem very dull without him. As the poet was leaving, Orlando dared give him his play and ask his opinion of it. The poet took it; he started muttering something about ambition when Orlando interrupted him by promising to pay the pension quarterly.

The great hall had never seemed so large and so empty when the poet went away. Orlando knew that he would never have the courage to fry cheese in the marble fireplace again. He would never have the wit to tell jokes about Italian pictures; never have the skill to mix punch as it should be mixed. Yet what a relief, what a luxury to be alone once more, after these six weeks.

Upon return, Nick Greene found things going on much as he had left them. Mrs. Greene was giving birth to a baby in one room; Tom Fletcher³⁸ was drinking gin in another. Books were lying on the floor; dinner was set on a table where the children had been playing with mud. But this, Greene felt, was the atmosphere for writing; here he could write, and so he did. The subject was made for him. A noble Lord at home. A Visit to a Nobleman was the title of his new poem. It was a very spirited satire. It was done so that no one could doubt that the young Lord in the poem was Orlando. And if there had been any doubt about it, Greene added some passages from Orlando's play, which he found extremely wordy.

The booklet was soon printed and sent by friends to Orlando himself. When he had read it, which he did quietly and calmly from start to finish, he called his servant and told him to drop the document in the filthiest mud on the estate. Then he added that he wanted to buy two fine dogs.

'Because I have done with men', he said.

Yet, he paid the pension quarterly.

Thus, at the age of thirty, the young nobleman had not only had every experience that life has to offer, but had seen the worthlessness of them all. Love and ambition, women and poets were all vain. The night after reading Greene's Visit to a Nobleman, he burnt fifty-seven of his works, keeping only ' The Oak Tree', which was his boyish dream and very short. Two things he could still trust: dogs and nature. So he called his dogs to him and walked through the park.

He had been alone for so long, writing and reading in his room, that he had almost forgotten the pleasures of nature, which can be great in June. When he reached that high hilltop from where on fine days half of England and some of Wales and Scotland could be seen, he dropped down under his favorite oak tree and felt that if he never spoke to another man or woman as long as he lived, if he never met a poet or a Princess again, he would still live quite happily.

Here he came then – day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year. He saw the young ferns grow; he saw the green leaves turn golden; he saw the moon rise and the sun set; he saw how spring follows winter and autumn summer; how night follows day and day night; he saw a storm and then fine weather; he saw how things stayed the same for two or three hundred years. Time passed and nothing whatsoever happened.

But Time, which makes animals and plants bloom and fade, unfortunately, has no such simple effect on the mind of man. The mind of man has a strange effect on the time. There is a big difference between time on the clock and time in the mind. An hour may become fifty or a hundred years in one's mind; on the other hand, an hour may seem as one second. When a man has reached the age of thirty, as Orlando now had, time when he is thinking becomes unusually long; and time when he is acting becomes unusually short. Thus Orlando gave his orders and did his business in a second; but when he was alone on the hilltop under the oak tree, the seconds became years.