The orderly’s tender heart couldn’t bear it any longer and he rushed over to help his young friend. He crossed paths with the Lieutenant Colonel at the door and barely moved aside in time.
Boncompagni reappeared in the room where he’d left his wife. He was calm and had a wry smile on his lips, it looked as though it was all over.
‘From now on,’ he said, ‘I’ll be seeing to the boy’s education.’
xvi Italian: the name given to, respectively, boys and girls aged 8 to 14 during the Fascist years, similar to the Hitler Youth in Germany.
xvii Lines from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, Act 3, Scene 2.
xviii David Constantine (tr., ed.), Heinrich Von Kleist: Selected Writings (Hackett, 1997), p.237.
xix One of the battles of the Napoleonic wars (1806), which ended in a French victory. The officer mentioned is likely the Duke of Brunswick, one of the Prussian commanders.
xx Reference to Plato’s Cave.
xxi Mercedes Capsir (1895–1969) was a Spanish opera singer.
xxii Giosuè Carducci (1835–1907): leading Italian poet of the 19th and early 20th century who was also the country’s first Nobel laureate.
xxiii Horace, Ode III: ‘whatever limit confines the world/may Rome storm it by force and see/where the fire rages the brightest,/and the clouds, the rain and the dew.’ (My translation).
THE DARKROOM
Colonel Baldassare Rossi was especially known among the idle, frivolous members of colonial society for his passion for photography. He would rest his camera on a wooden tripod. He didn’t take photographs on the spot, but rather focused on shooting well-prepared scenes – like those pictures of public ceremonies taken by official licensed photographers, or slightly morbid portraits, ones where the subjects’ heads were encircled by a milky or sulphurous halo. Whenever he was wholly engrossed by his work, he would give orders with irritated severity: he appeared to want to bend the will of others and present his camera with his model’s inert remains.
His portraits were anything but inert or monotonous: his array of pictures featured all imaginable kinds of moods and personalities. At times, he seemed to – and this was the highest form of praise – aspire to the model, or want to fall victim to the inspiration of the moment. Nevertheless, he was the sole author of the script that the model read while striking a single pose, and it was useless to try to convince him to take pictures in that way or the other: one had to surrender oneself to him.
Possibly owing to the fact that he wore a glass eye, the essence of his face appeared to be reserved to his right side, where the immobile eye lay in its orbit, which remained subject to the other side where a useful, working eye furnished him with all the information required for everyday life.
Rossi was a bachelor. That aside, nobody knew anything about his life.
There were those who insinuated that his passion for images concealed repressed or frustrated desires: that man could possess souls through his camera. Others, employing a softer tact, suggested that it was his way of conversing and communicating. A witty soul explained that Rossi’s photographic eye was merely a replacement for his glass eye.
Some women had taken fright when the Colonel, who was usually so measured with his movements, suddenly disappeared behind his instrument with one quick move: instead of his head, all they could see was a piece of black cloth. Thus armed, he looked as though he might attack them. Instead, he contented himself with opening his additional eye in the dark and capturing the desired image.
Which he then returned to his subject, having immortalised her into stillness, as if said woman had fallen under a spell.
One lady, who was devout if nonetheless possibly victim to morbid fantasies, had remarked on leaving Rossi’s studio that she felt as though she’d just left her lover’s room after committing adultery – she had added in her husband’s presence, leaving him to gaze at her with an awkward expression. This might explain why she never showed the portrait the military man had taken of her to anybody, including her offended, curious husband. Strange rumours regarding that portrait made the rounds, which the lady never bothered to deny. Loyal and honest, she was pleased by the strange adventure caused by that photograph.
The Colonel refused to move the farraginous instrument elsewhere, he wouldn’t even consent to take it to the Officers’ Club, which he steadfastly attended. Anyone who wanted their portrait taken had to go to his house and enter his studio on their own.
This was why people were astonished to see Baldassare Rossi head over to Mrs Campana’s house one day, schlepping his instrument and all the big light bulbs to her place on Via Regina Elena. Curious passers-by stopped to watch as the officer ordered the camera and its tripod, which were semi-wrapped in that piece of black cloth, to be brought out of the car. However, the gossipers had no reason to grow suspicious: helping the Colonel in his task (in the absence of Captain Campana) was Campana’s orderly, as well as his son, Natalino.
Mrs Campana welcomed the Colonel with a conspiratorial smile. Despite it being two in the afternoon, she was in evening dress, wearing makeup and jewelry. Truth be told, she appeared more drawn to the shapeless body hidden under the black cloth than its military escort. There was a brightness and sonorousness to her, and the makeup she wore at that unusual hour turned the house into the corridors at the opera.
The orderly had watched her, astonished, while Natalino was excited and jealous. He was ten years old and had just begun classes at the local middle school.
Poking his head out of his room, the tutor, Klaus Lichtenberg, a man in his thirties who was giving him German lessons. He discreetly helped the Colonel with his equipment, wordlessly substituting the orderly, who was clumsy and in a hurry. But why all these ceremonies?
The only one who knew that secret was the photographer. The previous night, Mrs Campana had gone up to him in the Club’s great hall on Corso Italia.
‘Colonel,’ she’d said, ‘I’m forced to confide in you in a way I’ve never done before. But I know it’s the only way to overcome your hesitation. I’m doomed, the doctor said I simply must return to Italy right away. He made it clear to me that there’s no hope left. I told my husband that I had to go home because my mother had been afflicted by a terrible illness… it would be useless to torture him over this, he’ll know everything after the fact: not even pain managed to bring us closer together. I’m going to leave my son here. I know that these are my last days with him… the mail boat for Naples leaves next Saturday. What am I going to tell him? Offer him some moral maxim? There will be plenty of people who will do that, in fact they’ll associate those maxims with his dead mother as if I was giving him those lectures myself. It’ll be the most boring part of all this, I don’t want to start now. I’ve got another plan in mind. I want to leave my son a lot of photos. So many photos. I want you to come to my house and photograph me in various poses and different clothes: it’ll be like living all the years stolen away from me here in Africa in the space of a single day. But I can’t come all the way to your house dragging a trunk full of clothes, people will think I’ve left my husband for you. It’ll be so much easier to bring your celebrated camera to my house. You’ll hand the photos over to my son when I’m dead: you’ll tell him that his mother sent them to him, instead of the letters she’ll never write.’
Baldassare Rossi displayed no emotion whatsoever. ‘When would you like me to come?’ he asked, giving her a slight nod of his head.
‘Maybe it would be best not to waste any time: come tomorrow.’
‘At what time?’
‘At two in the afternoon, I think we’ll have enough to keep us busy for a while.’
‘Will the Captain be there to help me?’
‘The Captain is off on a mission. His orderly and my son are here with me. Then there’s a young German professor. He knows more about music than electric instruments, but maybe he’ll come in handy. He’s writing a thesis on the Greek ruins of Cyrenaica and the studies carried out by Northe
rn European scholars: from Thrige to Bates and Wilamowitz, of whom he speaks almost every day as though he were preparing us to sit an exam.’
As it turned out, Herr Klaus was of great help. He wasn’t acquainted with the camera’s workings, as he knew nothing about electricity, but he was diligent and promptly obeyed orders. In half an hour’s time, the studio had been reassembled in Mrs Campana’s sitting room. Mrs Campana posed for her first photograph.
Then she disappeared. Amidst the silence that ensued, neither of the two men exchanged a word. Mrs Campana reappeared another half hour later wearing a different long dress. A new pose. One time while wearing black gloves. Then she slipped her arms into long white ones. She even displayed a range of moods: cheerful, melancholy, alert, pensive, aggressive, absent. She almost always heeded the Colonel’s suggestions. On a single occasion, she insisted on being photographed in a strange pose, her naked arms distended in an arch in front of her, or as Herr Klaus thought, as if she was trying to embrace the invisible.
When Mrs Campana left the sitting room, the German was shocked to see a tear, a single tear, leaking out of the Colonel’s working eye.
He took a step back, embarrassed, when he realised that the Colonel’s other eye was fixed upon him with a glassy look of reproach, as though he’d committed a faux pas with his curiosity.
He went into the corridor. He saw Mrs Campana, who was coming towards him while wearing a close-fitting black taffeta dress. While he backed up against the wall, the lady walked past him like a ghost, and for the final time, she stepped inside her sitting room, which had been transformed into a darkroom.
Lichtenberg went downstairs. He didn’t want to see his pupil, he didn’t want him to see he was scared. He felt guilty, even though he didn’t know the reason why.
His heart skipped a beat when he saw a ghost wearing a black hood leave the sitting room and descend the stairs while being carried on the shoulders of the Colonel and the orderly. It wasn’t even as if he’d seen Mrs Campana’s lifeless body. He went out onto the street and started walking hurriedly.
Natalino was right behind him, looking even smaller while he chased that six foot-tall man, mocking and restless, he wanted to know why his lesson had been interrupted that day.
That evening, Natalino learned that his mother would soon be leaving; as for him, he would have to go to boarding school. He immediately connected the announcement of his mother’s trip with that afternoon in the darkroom.
‘Why are you crying now? You’re a big man, come on! You know who I took all those photographs for? For you!’
Natalino allowed her to console him. Recalling fables he’d heard years before, he said, fearfully, that the Colonel’s glass eye seemed to him like a clock that marked an hour that could not be exceeded.
On the day of her departure, Mrs Campana confided in the foreigner. He lived in two of the rooms on the ground floor, which had been given to him in exchange for his services as a tutor. She told him that she didn’t want her son to associate her image with the arduous road that led to the graveyard, but instead the downhill path of life: ‘Life must seduce him into living, and I want the image of me to reside in that flux, I don’t want him to situate it in a cemetery, where life has come to an end.’
From the window, one could see all the passers-by from the waist up.
‘Here’s what all those photographs depicting elegance, desire and vanity that I’m going to leave him will achieve. His mommy will lead him into the light by the hand: and when I’m gone, the images will do it for me.’
Her figure was harmonious, her features delicate, she was carefully composed, and she lingered for a moment, immobile.
‘Make sure he keeps up with his logical analysis…’ she enjoined him.
Lichtenberg’s thoughts turned to the secret tear in the Colonel’s eye.
On that day, the scrappy bits and ends of his thesis lay dormant before him, they looked like tombstones. Natalino surprised him while idling in his room downstairs and having walked up to him carefully, shook his elbow.
WEDDING MARCH
Terzi was a haughty man, whom nobody had ever managed to humble. He struck one as a remnant of that era of duels, when a man could strike fear into the hearts of many with his anger, his umbrageous sense of honour, as well as his dexterity and confidence with a sword or pistol. Lieutenant Miccoli used to say that Terzi’s head was made of stone, exactly of the kind used at the top of the architraves in old palaces: if he never bowed his head it was simply because it would have probably snapped!
His daughter, Elda, was his spitting image. She was highly vivacious and generous, but she also shared his indomitable willpower. Terzi used to say that if only his own soldiers had had her temperament, their enemies during the war would have had a much tougher time. This ridiculous sort of praise was the only kind of approval anybody had heard him give a living soul. ‘Elda is his Achilles’ heel,’ Miccoli insinuated. He swore that he would court her in order to mock her statue-like father, but then pulled back and declared that he wasn’t in the mood; truth be told, he was frightened.
The son, who had arrived ten years after Elda and was in his second year at middle school, was also afraid. Terzi was very hard on him. Claudio was an excellent student at school and submissive at home. He only seemed to really be alive, just like at school, whenever he stood outside of his father’s shadow.
Mrs Terzi often had an opinion, that is, until her husband expressed his: his mere appearance in an affair would cause her to vanish. Resentful, Elda would say: ‘It’s like we don’t have a mother.’
‘I’d like to see how you would handle it if you were his wife…’ Mariangela Terzi would say while sobbing.
‘He and I will have our reckoning one day.’
She seemed to be waiting for the opportunity to challenge that man and his pressing sense of honour to a duel.
The opportunity finally arrived, and it was as banal as it could have possibly been.
Elda had fallen in love with a young man of obscure origins, who had emigrated to the colony just like people used to head over to America fifty years earlier. He apparently aspired to be an artist. Nobody, of course, had ever spent a cent on any of his sculptures. He made a living by giving drawing lessons.
The Colonel’s wrath exploded right on time. Nobody knew what he might have wanted in a son-in-law, but needless to say, the unlucky wretch couldn’t aspire to the role. He hadn’t expressed any particular reservations in regards to the young man, whom he’d barely seen: it was as though he were dealing with the ghost of a dream, the kind one chases away, annoyed, when one wakes up. Nevertheless, while he had woken up, his daughter was still submerged in her dream, where the ghost was still alive.
Much drama – or indeed, melodrama – erupted in that house. Mrs Terzi seemed so scared that she displayed the most severity towards the young man. She constantly talked of the matter and let herself slip into hysterics, as though that odious young man was a brute who was trying to rape her.
Claudio was well aware that there wasn’t room for another man in his father’s house, and the rejection of Elda’s beloved offered virtual proof. His nose was always stuck in a book, as though he was hiding in them. Every time he sat for an exam, he got a higher grade: every ceremony or honourable mention was a mockery, as if the spirit of knowledge had understood that he studied so excessively because he was afraid of real life.
The wicked affair unfolded along predictable patterns, with a crescendo of tension but no new plot elements. The young man didn’t seem so indolent at all, and had found himself a good job with a well-respected local businessman. No unflattering rumours circulated about him in that colonial city. He was reserved. However, none of these efforts had yielded any fruit: Colonel Terzi’s opinions were autonomous and irrevocable.
The wedding day eventually arrived. Elda made herself a short white dress.
The only people present at the ceremony were the friends of Attilio Rossi, the groom. Terzi i
gnored the event altogether. Instead, he showed up at the Officers’ Club with his wife at the same time they always did. The guests’ curiosity was intense; yet that expression of his gave them no satisfaction, he seemed to use the same expression for everything. Claudio arrived at the church looking very pale, but well dressed. He had disobeyed his father’s orders for the first time. If he had managed to slip out of the house, it was only because nobody dared imagine he would attempt to take part in that ceremony. Was he challenging his father, perhaps? Truth be told, he was absolutely convinced that a tragedy would occur: either when the couple entered or left the cathedral, his father would be lurking in wait in the parvis, or he would have summoned his soldiers to appear and then gunfire would have ensued. His melancholy mood seemed to be troubled by those deranged visions: then it would finally be over, and his father would triumph once again, but by then he was no longer there, having fallen into the heap of bodies alongside his sister, still in her wedding dress next to Attilio and his friends, whom nobody knew.
The gunfire did not transpire, neither before the ceremony, nor after it. Claudio hesitated for a long time before going home. When he finally appeared, exhausted, nobody thought to speak to him.
Terzi was convinced that even his daughter’s studies – a thesis on German philology – would soon adopt the bohemian bend her life had taken. In Colonel Terzi’s dictionary – nay, his cosmology – the word bohemian indicated a realm of absolute evil.
Claudio was horrified to notice that his parents no longer mentioned their daughter’s name.
Nevertheless, one day, after months had passed, the Colonel found himself face to face with his daughter and his son-in-law when attending a dinner party at his friends’ house by the sea. It wasn’t a trap, the host hadn’t been in the city for long and knew nothing of the complicated matrimonial affair.
The Fourth Shore Page 15