by Mark Helprin
Choosing a middle door at random, he was about to put his hand on the latch but was deterred by a raspy voice from within. Someone was talking to himself. "...to Gisella! But Hermann will be exposed for what he is within a week. In a year's time, I'll be the favorite in court, and the monkey will jump on the nut. On the other hand, no one ever got rich by putting octopus ink in a drinking glass, and the emperor likes Von Schafthausen—mistakenly, of course...." Clearly this man was going to stay up all night, and he was not Patrizia.
Alessandro moved to a door at the end of the hall. Slowly, quietly, he lifted the latch and looked within. There, in the flashing, cloud-scudding moonlight, lay a huge beached whale of a woman, with exceedingly spacious gaps in her teeth, enormous fleshy lips, a porcine nose, and ears shaped like powder horns. Who was she? She had been too ugly to come to dinner. Perhaps she was a maid, or an unfortunate royal relative forever hiding on the upper floors of palaces and inns.
After shutting that door, Alessandro despaired of finding Patrizia, but after his eyes adjusted to the darkness he saw that neatly placed in front of each door was a pair of shoes or boots. Ordinarily, no one was permitted to wear boots in the Schlernhaus, and they were kept on racks under the stairs, but royal shoes and boots were allowed to sleep near their masters and mistresses.
Some were huge, others womanly, and the shoes of the servants had telltale buckles. The door with no shoes in front of it must have been the princess's, since she was probably allowed to wear them even to bed. One pair of slippers was unmistakably petite and had not been left neatly, but thrown down in front of the door as if its owner had had to rush across the cold floor to a warm bed. Alessandro approached these shoes as if they were saintly relics. They were sprawled in front of the last door near the window at the end of the hall, across from the monster, in the moonlight. He was entranced by the casual angle at which she had left them, the way the straps fell, and the way they looked in the white light that machine-gunned across them through rapidly driven clouds, and he wondered if he would be able to love Patrizia herself as much as he could love the poignant and accidental traces of her.
Then a soldier began to stride down the hall. Presented with a choice between love and death, the young Alessandro lifted the latch, pivoted inside, and closed the door silently behind him.
Patrizia lay under a silver satin coverlet illuminated by the light of the moon. She looked different with her braids undone and her golden hair splayed across the pillow. She opened her eyes when he came in, and they followed him as he approached. She herself remained motionless, unafraid.
He put his fingers to his lips. Her hand appeared from under the covers and she did the same. It was a game, but it was more than a game.
"Can you talk Italian?" he whispered.
"Yes," she answered, also in a whisper. "We go to Italy each spring."
"Do you remember me?"
"From Italy?"
"No, from tonight."
"No," she said, lying.
"Oh," he answered, downcast. "I saw you in the dining room."
"What's your name?" she asked.
"Alessandro Garibaldi," he replied.
"Are you related to Garibaldi?" Most of the people she knew were related to other people of whom everyone else had heard.
"I'm his youngest son."
"But didn't he die a long time ago?"
"Yes. Pay it no mind. He was my brother's father, and the uncle of his half wife was my cousin's grandmother's sister. She married my uncle's brother, who was him, and by her he had me. Who is the strange woman in the room across the hall?"
"Did you enter each room?" the girl asked, surprised, and, to Alessandro's delight, jealous.
"It was an accident."
"That's Lorna. She's my cousin. She hides, because she's so ugly. It's very sad, but she's nice, and I love her. She reads to me."
"Look at what the clouds do when they interrupt the moon," Alessandro said. "It makes me dizzy."
"Are you cold?" she asked in a way that would have been unmistakable to anyone but a nine-year-old desperate to do exactly what she wanted him to do.
"No," he answered, shivering not from chill but from the possibility of rejection and the terror of acceptance, both.
"You can come in here with me," she offered, although it was difficult for her to say. "If you want..." She lifted the covers, and he jumped in.
It was warm. It was more than warm. What with the feather bed, her flannel nightgown, the thick down cover, and his woolen clothing and alpaca socks, it was like a Dutch oven.
Alessandro didn't know what to do. When she leaned her head against his chest, gales of wonder and emotion swept over him. He kissed her hair. Never in his life had he smelled anything so sweet or touched anything so soft.
But this moment of utter perfection was as vulnerable to disruption as the mirror-smooth surface of a lake at dawn. Suddenly, and against his strongest wishes, he was disturbed and unhappy because his father didn't know where he was. Perhaps the attorney Giuliani had gone downstairs to look, and, finding the kitchen empty, had stepped outside to ask the cadets what had happened to Alessandro, only to become lost in the fog and chill. Alessandro winced when he thought of his father wandering blindly over the meadow, close to the high cliffs. Or perhaps he was just lying in his bed, thinking and remembering, in a way that always seemed to Alessandro to be very sad.
Alessandro had no choice but to go back. As wonderful and light as things now were—and he felt as if he had been born to slip into Patrizia's bed—he had to leave her and go back to his father, far less angelic a form, with his goat-like Roman lawyer's beard, his thick hands, and the smell of pipe tobacco that had settled into him forever. As powerful a figure as this man was, still, he was more vulnerable than the slight little girl next to Alessandro. Even Alessandro knew, even at this moment, that the world had worn down the attorney Giuliani in ways that his son simply could not understand. The little ones, the delicate ones of nine or eleven, had all the strength, really.
Alessandro's reflections were immediately banished by the metallic sound of a door latch that had been lifted by someone who did not feel obliged to sneak around in alpaca socks.
He dived under the covers. Whatever the danger, the sudden arrival of a third party was a blessing. When he was deep down in the satin, Patrizia held him tenderly and protectively. That she did so in secret was the most intimate gesture Alessandro had ever experienced. The pressure of her hands, their steadiness while she dealt with the interloper, were what he had dreamed of when he had thought that they would mix their hearts.
Just inside the doorway, Lorna stood almost on tiptoe, her arms folded across her breast and her face upturned to the inrush of moonlight, in the most pathetic, awkward, and repulsive stance that can be imagined. And yet, she was a good soul, tormented immeasurably and destined to suffer forever in a body that was a fortress against love, an impregnable glacis. She stood in her cousin's room, in tortured ecstasy, poised like one of the three little pigs in prayer, drinking-in the moonlight with her gloomy cow eyes.
"I had the most marvelous dream!" she exclaimed. "Ich träumte, ich tanzte mit einem Schwan! Er hatte die wunderbarsten flauschigen Polster an dem Füssen, und er war auf einem Mondstrahl in mein Zimmer gekommen—I dreamed I was dancing with a swan! He had the most marvelous little puffy white feet, and he came into my room on a moonbeam."
"Dear God," Patrizia said softly, for she knew that when Lorna had one of her truly wonderful dreams, her custom was to get into her cousin's bed to tell her of it in great detail. "Lorna, dearest one, do you think that perhaps you could tell me in the morning? Tomorrow we rise early to descend to the Seiser Alpe, and I'm so tired!"
"Certainly not!" Lorna said with maddening insensitivity. "You know that if I wait until morning I'll forget the details, and it's the details you love."
"But Lorna..."
"He was a thin swan, he had a beak that was as orange as the orange in the rainbow, and
he loved me. I asked him how he traveled on a moonbeam, and he told me by singing a golden song.... Move over." She half lifted the quilt, and hopped into bed in one quick graceless leap—all of her. The Schlernhaus quivered.
Patrizia, whose name, of course, was not Patrizia, was alarmed. She had lost Alessandro, who was underneath Lorna, completely subsumed. She wondered if he could breathe, or if he were screaming.
"The golden song was like a warbling horn. Once, I heard a bird singing like that, at Grandfather's estate in Klagenfurt.... What is this? Is this your leg?"
As if to answer in the negative, Alessandro, who for the second time in a matter of hours found himself unable to move and without air, bit Lorna fiercely in one of her huge buttocks.
The cry that escaped from the massive young woman made the rare golden song of her imagined swan as common as a streetcorner ditty. It had the force and power of a great railroad horn. It sounded so terrible that the entire Schlernhaus awoke. Each and every mountaineer, the cadets in their barracks in the fog, the attorney Giuliani, the royal party, and everyone else sat bolt upright in their beds as if they had been struck by lightning. Even little Patrizia began to scream.
"Was ist es!Mach es tot!Mach et tot!—What is it? Kill it! Kill it!" Lorna cried, and resumed her mad howling.
Never before had the lamps of the Schlernhaus been lit simultaneously or so fast. The light that flashed against the fog suggested the work of either a photographer or a cannon. Four soldiers in heavy boots charged through the hallway, bayonets unsheathed. They were so excited that rather than lift the latch they kicked down the door. When it hit the floor it sounded like a bomb. Members of the royal party, born and bred on assassination, gave out a collective moan.
Alessandro sought refuge by wrapping himself up in a ball in the quilt. Patrizia was weeping. Lorna, backed up against the bedposts, was completely silent. Her outstretched finger pointed accusingly at the bundle on the bed.
"What is it? Is it an animal?" asked the officer of the guard, drawing his saber.
"It has horrible fangs? Lorna shouted.
Alessandro peeped from behind a mass of satin. The soldiers were temporarily stunned as he extricated himself from it, stepped off the bed, and started to walk away, intending to return to his room. He was not sure, however, that he was going to be able to do this.
Two sergeants took hold of his ears and dragged him down the hall. He vaguely understood that they had been humiliated, that he had affronted the holiness of order, and that at this moment it was distinctly disadvantageous to be Italian. "Papa!...Papa!...Papa!" he screamed rhythmically, afraid that he was going to be killed. As the whole world collapsed, his tears flowed silently. He was no longer Patrizias lover or Garibaldi's son, but the chief criminal of the Hapsburg Empire, an assassin, an animal with fangs.
"What are you doing!" the attorney Giuliani shouted at the armed soldiers, even though he was in his dressing gown and they seemed to be twice his height. "Let him go!"
Alessandro saw in his father all the light of the world, but the soldiers still held him.
"Are you mad?" the attorney from Rome asked the officer of the guard. "Is this how you treat children?"
"Our children are decent, clean, and well behaved," the officer shouted in a voice so full of hate and rage that the senior Giuliani and his son were silenced. The officer then proceeded to narrate to the assembled onlookers his version of what had happened. Even though he understood little of this, Alessandro trembled.
The princess appeared, scowling in anger, a palsied hand dancing upon her hip. "This child tried to violate my granddaughter," she announced. And then, shaking feebly, she added, "In other times, I would have had him shot."
The attorney Giuliani whitened. He was afraid for Alessandro's life, and he had to take the initiative.
"Sandro," he asked, "is this true?"
Alessandro, who had not understood the accusations, had nonetheless understood their tone, and he knew that his embrace of Patrizia had been the finest and purest thing in the world. "No," he said.
Still, his father raised his hand, and brought it down against Alessandro's face. The sound was heard throughout the hallways as Alessandro collapsed onto the floor.
Then the attorney Giuliani picked up his son. "We're leaving in the morning," he said, and carried the boy back to their room.
Once inside, he lifted Alessandro into bed, and covered him. They were obliged to whisper.
"I'm all right," Alessandro said.
"It wasn't my hand," his father told him. "I was terrified of what they might do. They're not like us."
"I know," Alessandro answered.
"You have to understand," his father begged. "I've never hurt you before, and I'll never hurt you again. The soldiers were armed. Their bayonets had been unsheathed. These people punish their children severely. I didn't want to hit you...."
"I know," Alessandro said, touching his father's face, as his father often touched his. Though he was staring at the attorney Giuliani, he saw the wheel steadily turning in the sunlight, almost with a will of its own.
"Papa? When we go home tomorrow, the wheel will be turning, won't it."
"What wheel?"
"The cable wheel."
"Yes, it turns all the time."
"Even when we don't see it? Even if we're not there?"
"Of course. It has nothing to do with us."
"Even if we're dead?"
"Yes."
"Then, Papa," Alessandro announced, "I'm not afraid to die."
"ARE YOU all right?" Nicolò asked. "We've been here for hours. The moon is headed down. Maybe we should go on, unless you want to sleep."
"Help me up and we'll go," the old man said.
As they took to the road, Nicolò asked, "What were you thinking? I could see that you weren't asleep."
"I wasn't asleep. I was thinking of something that happened a long time ago."
"What?"
"The way history, geography, and politics influence love. And the way it, in turn, influences them."
"That doesn't sound like much. I mean, you could make up a hundred stories to show that, couldn't you."
"You could."
"And that's not very imaginative—making things up—is it."
Alessandro closed one eye and lowered his head almost like a bull. "I suppose not," he said, "Mr. Sambucca."
"What was the real story? I ask you what you were thinking, and you tell me history, geography, politics, love. All I wanted to know was what happened to who. Isn't that enough?"
"It's enough when you're seventeen and most of it is ahead of you, but when most of it has passed, you try to make sense of it. Sometimes you do, and sometimes you don't. I was just thinking of my father. I should have comforted him more than I did. Once, he had to hit me in front of some Austrian soldiers, and it made him unhappy out of all proportion; not only at the time, but for the rest of his life. He believed that he had betrayed me, and I could never convince him that it wasn't so."
"Did they make him do it?"
"In a way."
"You should have killed them."
"I did. And not too much later, either."
"How did you do it?"
"How did I do what?"
"Kill them."
"I shot them with a rifle, and, at close range, I used a bayonet."
"Jesus!" Nicolò said, his eyes wide. "How did you do it? I mean, how exactly do you do that?"
"I'm afraid I'm not going to satisfy your curiosity."
"Why not? You weren't the only one ever to be in a war."
"I know, but I survived. That puts me on a lower plane."
"A lower plane?"
"Lower than the one of those who perished. It was their war, not mine. I was able to walk out of it, leave it behind. Though God preserved me, the best stories were theirs, and these were cut short. The real story of a war is no story at all—blackness, sadness, silence. The stories they tell of comradeship and valor are all to m
ake up for what they lacked. When I was in the army I was always surrounded by thousands of men, and yet I was almost always alone. Whenever I made friends, they were killed.
"If I describe what I saw of the war, you'll know it from the point of view of the living, and that is the smallest part of the truth. The truth itself is what was finally apprehended by those who didn't come back."
"Then tell me the smallest part of the truth," Nicolò said, "for how else can I know?"
"There isn't enough time between here and Sant' Angelo for even the smallest part of the truth," was Alessandro Giuliani's reply.
They were walking down into a long valley. The moon was low and full. As it rested on the jagged horizon below them it seemed miraculously close, as if they had risen to it or it had dipped down to earth to take a look. It seemed to be in league with the dawn, glowing pearly and blue at one and the same time.
Though the moon soon disappeared beyond the ridge behind them, most of the world remained in its light, even as they themselves were walking in shadow. Alessandro had begun to shake with fatigue. How stupid, he thought, to have set out on such an expedition. He simply did not have the strength that once he had had, and now Nicolò was setting a fast pace without realizing how difficult it was for the lame old man to keep up. And yet, because the world beyond was illumined in a softening white glow, he kept on, hoping that, even if he did not deserve it, strength would find him as it had so many times before.
If it did, he thought, and by some grace he were to be lifted from his fatigue and pain, he would tell Nicolò what Nicolò had asked to hear. They hadn't far to go until they parted, and in the time they had he would tell a simple tale in which he would skirt the danger of a lost or broken heart, though he knew that recollection could be more powerful and more perilous than experience itself. What vanity had moved him to think he could walk over the mountains again, pushing forward day and night, like a young soldier?