A cursed day! The Princess was in the company of the old archaeologist. They were sat on a boulder which formed the northern boundary of a tiny lake, where the water was only a few feet deep, where the stream pooled before moving on. The Governor knew that lake well; it was tiny and narrow, like a funnel; he often leaped headfirst from atop that very boulder into the water, to swim above the smooth white stones.
The archaeologist was wearing shorts. His legs were scrawny and worn. It was an intolerably ugly image, which he chose to reveal instead of concealing, almost as though he was trying to show them off – the exact opposite of when a priest dons his sacred vestments – however, just like the Governor, he too appeared to belong to another order.
During the previous day’s lunch, the Governor had noticed how the Princess had listened attentively to the archaeologist’s words. At first, this had brought him pleasure: the archaeologist was a buffoon, and he was providing the court (of which she was the guest of honour) with entertainment. Yet he also just as easily noticed that the old man and the Princess appeared to have embarked on a secret voyage.
The Governor had no time for priests and their rites, and he nursed a hateful attitude towards the archaeologist as though the latter were conspiring to bring about his demise. He was a sorcerer, in possession of powers beyond the Governor’s control, and which in fact actively worked against the Governor’s authority. His archaeological science was nothing but a symbol of that power.
If the Governor had taken a leading role in the revolution of 1922 it had been because its celebration of youth and strength had seemed to place man at the center of the universe once again. He detested the occult, the invisible: youth and strength seemed to him the only realities that could confront constant collapse. Yet he had also been among the first to see through the ridiculous masquerade. He had travelled further along the path of revitalization: he loved prestige and success, and he worshipped the present, all of which swelled his frame. Against the black warp of his desperation, he weaved intricate, deceitful plots. He was horrified by death, by solitude, by silence, by secrets – old age seemed to him like a church, which came with wisdom and dangerous powers of the occult.
The colonial government was spending fabulous sums to facilitate archaeological research. He favoured this approach in order to encourage tourism, instead of purely relying on those deserted beaches. If he had been able to follow his instincts, he would have had the ancient city buried again, concealing all trace of its existence. An uncontaminated landscape filled him with a vital sense of the eternal present, the ruins created a temporal perspective that oppressed him.
The Princess finally stood up. Her gaze fell in his direction. The Governor hid behind an olive tree.
They had taken a path that would bring them in his vicinity. He would only have to advance a step or two, and hide at the top of the path, in order to swoop down to kill the archaeologist. The Governor’s high place in society wasn’t the only consideration keeping him from committing that violent act, nor was it pity. The old man certainly knew some terrible, evil secrets – he was an enchanter.
The archaeologist and the Princess passed him by, heading towards the villa. They had their backs to him now.
The Governor left his hiding place. Only then did he notice that the Princess was limping. Whenever she placed her left foot down, he would hesitate and then grimace as she tried to alleviate the weight on her aching foot. That rhythmical movement was as graceful as a dance. The Governor experienced a confused surge of pity and he ran down the path. He burst onto the scene like a bandit, being so big, formidable and excited. The Princess, frightened, took a step back, but the archaeologist didn’t seem surprised in the slightest.
‘May I offer you my arm?’ the Governor brusquely asked.
The Princess slipped her arm through the Governor’s. Her touch was so light that it certainly wasn’t helping her keep any weight off her foot.
The archaeologist walked ahead, discreetly.
Guided by the archaeologist, the Governor felt that the procession carried an evil omen with it. Her slow pace was exasperating him. He felt as though he was imprisoned in an order, like when he was forced to pay the archaeological digs an official visit, so that the photographers who followed him everywhere could snap their pictures for propaganda purposes. While he was hidden amidst the trees, his presence had been charged with an unequivocal intensity; walking in the sorcerer’s footsteps, while wearing vestments fitting for the ruler of that land, the Governor followed with the wounded Princess on his arm. They looked as though they were taking part in a rite.
Ever since the day that he had been told he would be killed by accident, he detected vanity and treachery in everything that was shown to him, in all the gifts that men and women and nature itself offered him. The days assumed the vain, deceitful and malleable shape of his death, a sort of itinerary, a calendar whose final date had already been set. Even the Princess’s melancholic dance, light-footed and yet desperate, was a kind of death, an escape.
III
‘War,’ Colonel Verri said, gravely and ironically, ‘we’ll have it, there’s no doubt about it, we’ll have it.’
The officers had taken refuge in the kitchen. They had carefully ensured the door was shut.
‘And we’ll lose it!’
‘Of course we’re going to lose it. But we’ll give them hell!’ the Colonel retorted.
‘For honour!’ the Captain exclaimed, as though laying the winning card on the table.
‘That too,’ the Colonel cheerfully conceded, ‘Honour means style. We don’t have any weapons or any kind of organization; we have only our education to aid us in this brewing war. When we come face to face with our enemy, our actions won’t be spurred by our means, which are modest. Our collective aim, our love of the motherland, would throw us into utter desperation in the face of so much confusion and so many lies: but here we have a chance to renew our individual valour, or better yet, our knightly valour, when a man measures himself up against a human ideal, rather than a collective pursuit.’
The Prince of Cleve lay stretched out on a bed, dying, two rooms away from the kitchen where the officers were located.
‘You’ll see how far we get, you’ll see!’
The kitchen was the only place they could speak without being heard in that small house. There were many people there, and in such a restricted setting, they were pressed shoulder to shoulder.
‘We’re in for the long haul,’ the Colonel declared, ‘we’ll give them hell! Do the English really think they can swat us away like flies? As if!’
The door swung open and the Princess appeared. All the officers stood to attention.
‘Please, be seated.’ The Princess only needed a little relief in the shade. The officers provided a comfortable arbor, their shadows provided her with shelter. She sat down at the table. All that white hair on the Colonel’s head looked as though a painter had imprinted their bizarre signature upon it. There was something rather pathetically excessive to it, ridiculous perhaps, and yet consoling – that white hair brought the Princess some relief and the Colonel kindly consented, as though he were carrying her upon his back.
‘We’ll show the English what we’re made of, yes we will,’ the Colonel added, bitterly.
The future had arrived, and one could already hear it ringing. The Princess made a despairing gesture. The future! It too was atrocious, unbearable. She stretched her hand across the table. The Colonel hurriedly grabbed it and hid it in the palm of his.
Silence had spread its spider web. All was still, except the boiling coffee maker, the desperate lament of a beast everyone ignored.
The doorbell rang, incredibly loudly. Lieutenant Rossi hastened to open the door.
The officers were all on their feet, immobile. The Governor was barely able to squeeze through all the assembled men. The Princess concealed her hand in her lap, and lingered motionless. A smile so brightly white it was as though someone had shone a spo
tlight on it. She looked incredibly gracious, despite hiding her hand in her lap like a cat.
She stood up. She smoothed her skirt with her hand and then took a deep breath: the ceremony was about to begin. The Governor had come to greet his officer. There was no doubt that this greeting was like a Sacrament of Extreme Unction. The Princess gathered her strength, and led the procession.
The Governor’s frame was so large that he looked like an eagle that had been stuffed into a small room. His face was almost six feet away from the Prince’s. There was something limitless and hard-edged to his presence.
Diligent when it came to fulfilling his duties, he had come to take his leave from Cleve, and stifling his instincts, he carried himself with a paternal and vigorous calm.
The Prince had taken to dying with cool modesty. That motionless eagle a few feet from him was a theatrical conceit, a lavish kind of decoration, a shadow. The Prince refused to accept the mundane, sentimental comfort that the Governor had come to bring him, the pompous goodbye gesture from the Supreme Authority of the land.
At this juncture, the Governor, the mighty eagle that had filled the room with his presence, hung his head. Power and all Supreme Authorities are humbled before Death. This was also the reason behind Youth’s humiliation (the four young lieutenants could barely stay still, they were worse than choirboys).
What did Colonel Verri’s presence represent? His hair was white. And what about the two officers standing to the Governor’s right, the ones nobody had seen before? Captain Sorrentino was as restless as a racehorse. He was a generous, violent and ironic man who had lost himself in the attempt to re-conciliate himself with the ungallant era into which he’d been parachuted. He kept the Prince’s gaze with a kind of furor. Then, as though an executioner had just lopped his head off, he bent his neck into a deep bow.
Space in the room was restricted, and the assembled gentlemen’s faces were bunched together, like on a canvas. The dark background gave the silence an aura of solemnity.
The efforts to save Cleve’s life had been abandoned. The Governor’s visit had only occurred on the condition that the doctor would be sent away. The ceremony in which Power, Youth, Strength, Courage, Wisdom and Order had been humiliated would have lacked any meaning if there had been any hopes of saving him. The presence of science itself would have been an attempt to mediate, and the religious solemnity of the scene would have been lost.
Colonel Verri ran a hand through the white river of his hair, as though trying to dry it.
The Princess took a step forward. Her features were closely guarded, secret. The Governor observed her. Would she drift into a monologue? She was so little and gracious and yet was always dealt a difficult role to play! The Governor would have gladly laid himself at her feet like a carpet, she was so delicate that he would do everything in his power to… the Governor put all his means into transforming himself into a beast – a loyal and ferocious dog.
‘I feel so close to death,’ the Prince said, ‘that I don’t want to see anything that might make me regret leaving life behind.’
The Princess wrapped up her words again, crumpling up the page she would have wanted to place before her husband’s eyes, the concluding act of that earlier confession, and her pleas for forgiveness. Her face, as tiny as a swallow’s beak, was clean, and would be forever sealed. She left the place of honour, by the top of the bed, and resumed her seat to the Prince’s right. The officers all took a step forward. Those faces coalesced into a gloomy, virile chorus that sang of blind melancholy – a lament for horns lost in the valley.
iii ‘Hymn to Eros’ in Sophocles’s Antigone.
iv Lines drawn from Gabriele D’Annunzio’s play Città Morta, or The Dead City, Act 1, Scene 1. Gabriele D’Annunzio, G. Mantellini (tr.), The Dead City: A Tragedy (Chicago: Laird & Lee, 1902), p.13-14.
MILITARY MANEUVERS
‘I don’t know if I saw any ancient tombs on those mountains. Those tombs also belong to warriors, condottieri whose actions have been celebrated by history. They came from the East and their tombs mark their journey’s exact itinerary. I retraced their steps in the opposite direction just six months ago. I had to stop at the colony’s border, instead of retracing this mighty river to its source: the black stone of Arabia, the mecca of devout pilgrimages. Regretfully, I had to stop my journey far sooner than that. Yet I can’t stop thinking about that long strip of tombs. On days like this, when I hear the general command shouting for war, I see yet another strip of tombs, superimposed on top of thousands of similar strips. The earth, for those who are not ignorant, like the general command, which insists on trampling on virgin lands, is a tangle of roads. Roads that have been travelled on by others before us, and which others will travel on after us.’
Dismantling the camp took up the entire day. General Desiderius Occhipinti didn’t seem to be in a hurry to return to the city.
Atop the camel-hump of a hill, surrounded by a wall in utter disrepair, lay an arid cemetery, where the soldiers had thrown the remains of their peeled oranges. The General hopped over the wall, followed by Captain Valentini. The General approached a tomb, which resembled a sword blade, and using his hand he carefully wiped away the dust caked around the stone. He had knelt down on one knee. The tomb was bare and porous.
‘I explored up and down the entire littoral in the past few days – there are few signs indicating our presence here and they are all superficial. The arid earth, the desert, and these useless shrubs: everything here contradicts our vision of the world, which, despite Fascisms’ guise of idealism, remains positivist at heart. There is a profound harmony between the native’s vision of their world and their natural surroundings. Our efforts, to borrow from our propaganda efforts, all go to waste in the midst of nature’s solemn silence. This land doesn’t want us here.’
The General stood up. Captain Valentini helped him up with his arm. The youthful Lieutenant Rossi was waiting for them at the bottom of the cemetery.
‘What’s your opinion on this, Captain? Will the English be the ones who turf us out of this colony, or will it be it the natural violence of this very land that chases us away? Last Saturday’s sand storm, just before the maneuvers began, was truly frightening. One day I think we’ll disappear in exactly the same manner: as though the earth had swallowed us up, or as though the winds had hurled us into the ocean. The colony is an artificial organism, and we are destined to die.’
COURTLINESS
Professor Favagalli’s conference passed through the club’s ballroom like a Corpus Domini procession in a cathedral: all expressions employed were in costume, whether historical or traditional. The Professor had been invited by the women’s committee to celebrate the hundred and fiftieth anniversary of Alessandro Manzoni’s birth.
‘When we talk of words, we are talking merely of style,’ Colonel Verri said.
‘There’s only one way out of all this, except silence of course,’ Captain Sorrentino impatiently insisted, ‘and that is through irony.’
The hall was crowded. At a glance, it looked as though the entire city had squeezed its way in, like a civic assembly. Why had General Occhipinti offered to play the role of King Desiderius? Professor Favagalli had announced, in the letter in which he had accepted the ladies’ invitation, that his conference would be restricted to Manzoni’s play, Adelchi; yet he had also requested, as though asking for a down payment, that four officers be present to voice the roles during the tragedy’s final scene. General Desiderius Occhipinti was an introverted man. Yet all of a sudden, like a guilty man who consents to confessing his sins in public, here he was stepping onto a stage of his own free will. Incapable of accepting the fact that some phenomena cannot be explained, Mrs Betti remarked that General Occhipinti had agreed to play the role of King Desiderius because they shared the same name: ‘That coincidence must have sparked his idea.’
‘But why did he accept?’ Captain Sorrentino thundered. He was a restless officer and he couldn’t stand it whenever someone c
heapened an event by providing a mediocre explanation for it.
Professor Favagalli perfumed his sentences with the most pretentious words and colourful combinations. Nobody had ever seen such a waste of precious materials – or such excess – in that colonial city. Yet all that overabundance – like in a church filled to capacity where one then stubbornly attempts to exorcise horror vacui – actually came off as rather depressing. Manzoni’s sentences allowed for few breathing spaces, like placid notes played on an organ. Captain Sorrentino, who was having a hushed conversation with Colonel Verri, as though ensconced in the secrecy of the confessional, automatically stopped speaking and began to listen. It was as though he was reluctantly and distractedly watching a funeral procession pass by.
Professor Favagalli’s words flowed as warm as tears. He loved to recite passages from plays, but he lacked the talent for it. Phrases crumbled on his lips. He was drawn to the theatre, and he would endlessly speculate over betrayals and martyrdoms – but the era he lived in was averse to all forms of excess, and thus kept them out.
Nobody found the courage to clap when General Desiderius Occhipinti, Captain Valentini, Captain Landucci and Lieutenant Ross stepped onto the stage.
Professor Favagalli slinked off into the audience. The four officers were the royal carriage everyone had come to see, or maybe the charrette des condamnés.v The public eagerly awaited that reading as though an abdication or regicide were about to be announced.
General Desiderius Occhipinti’s recitation immediately left everyone in the public both disconcerted and disappointed.
The Fourth Shore Page 6