by Colm Toibin
His Roman friends, he realized, did not tire of each other’s company; they managed most evenings in the time before they would scatter for the summer to hold an event, however small, in which they could entertain each other. He was extended an open invitation, and he allowed such social occasions to become part of his routine in Rome. He was careful when he joined them not to dwell too much on his earlier life in the city, not to remark too often on how little or how much had changed or how things had been done in these streets, these very rooms, in the 1870s, even if he thought these matters might be of interest to the younger generation, resident and visitor alike. He did not wish to be regarded as a fossil, but he also wanted to keep the past to himself, a prized and private possession.
When Maud Elliott alerted him to a special dinner she was planning, however, he understood from her tone that she and her husband and the Waldo Storys cared a great deal for the past, for the city during the time when their parents were in their prime. She was giving a dinner in honour of her Aunt Annie, formerly Miss Annie Crawford, daughter of the sculptor Thomas Crawford, and for many years the Baroness von Rabe, and now a widow. Henry had not seen her for a very long time, but he knew from others that her flinty and formidable presence, her bad temper and her hard intelligence and flaring wit had lost nothing over time. He noticed that the Elliotts were expending a great deal of energy on the evening in question, the meal to be held on the terrace under the pergola; they were planning toasts and speeches and were behaving as though uniting their elderly aunt with her old friend would be one of the highlights of the Roman season.
THE BARONESS took in the company sharply, her thin hair elaborately combed and her skin like bottled fruit. When one of the young men asked her about the changes she had witnessed in Rome, she pursed her lips, as though she had been approached by a ticket collector, and spoke loudly.
‘I don’t go in for change. It is not one of my subjects. I have always taken the view that noticing change is a mistake. I notice what is directly in front of me.’
‘And what do you notice?’ one of the young men asked archly.
‘I notice the sculptor Andersen,’ the Baroness said, nodding in the direction of Henrik Andersen who was seated nervously on the edge of a chaise longue, ‘and I should say that noticing him, despite my advanced years and my gentle upbringing, gives me nothing but satisfaction.’
Andersen sat watching her, like a rare, sleek animal, as all eyes turned on him.
‘And I notice you too, Baroness, with equal pleasure,’ he said.
‘Don’t be a fool,’ she replied and stared at the sculptor until he blushed.
When Maud Elliott, once supper had ended, asked him to speak, Henry was tired of the brittle old lady who enjoyed the wine more than was entirely necessary and felt free to comment on many matters and several people with a frankness which gave way to a brusqueness as the evening wore on. He took pleasure as he began his speech in the idea that she could not interrupt him. He spoke, as he had not intended to, about the Rome he came to a quarter of a century earlier not because he wished, he said, to become nostalgic or mark the changes, but because on these occasions with old friends and some new faces, as the summer season was soon to begin, it was time to light a candle and go through the house and take stock, and this was what, in the Roman context, he proposed briefly to do. No one who had ever loved Rome as Rome could be loved in youth, he said, will want to stop loving her. It was not only the colours and the manners which were all new to him when he had sojourned in the city in his own twenties, but the shadows of certain former presences in the studios of the American artists, notably that of his compatriot Nathaniel Hawthorne who had a decade before that found so much inspiration in the city and offered so much in turn. It was in this city in the rival houses of the Terrys and the Storys that he had first met the actress Fanny Kemble, that he had encountered Matthew Arnold, that he had first imagined some of the characters who would people his own books, figures for whom Rome was the ground of their making and their undoing, a place of exile but also a place of refuge, a place of beauty and, in the small world of Anglo-American life, a place of immense intrigue. Even the names of the palaces would be enough, he said, to conjure up a sense of nobility, of dedication to art, and indeed to hospitality. For a young man from Newport, he said, the apartment of the Storys in Palazzo Barberini or the Terrys lodged in Palazzo Odescalchi, or even Caffé Spillmann on Via Condotti, were places of glory, long held and treasured in the memory, and he wished to raise a glass not only to the Baroness, whom he had first met in those years when American beauty flourished in Rome, but to the old city itself which he had never ceased to love and hoped that he would never cease to visit.
When he sat down, he noticed that the sculptor Andersen, who had been watching him, had tears in his eyes, and he noticed him further as he listened patiently to the Baroness von Rabe discuss the merits of her brother the novelist Marion Crawford and those of Mrs Humphrey Ward.
‘They have, of course,’ she said, ‘a very great talent, and they are popular with the reading public on both sides of the Atlantic. And they treat Italian subjects very beautifully, perhaps because they understand Italy, and their characters are so refined. I and many others have enjoyed reading their work. They will endure, I think.’
The Baroness, in finishing, looked at Henry as though daring him to contradict her. Clearly, he had displeased her, and she seemed uncertain whether she had made herself disagreeable enough. He sat with her as she made up her mind that she had not.
‘I read several articles by your brother William, and then a whole book of his,’ she said. ‘It was given to me by an old friend who knew all of you in Boston, and in a note he said to me that your brother’s style was the very model of clarity, not a word wasted, and no nonsense, every sentence beginning and ending in exactly the right place.’
He listened as though the Baroness were describing a very large and delicious meal she had devoured, nodding regularly. No one else was paying any attention to them except Andersen who smiled at Henry when he glanced at him; his expression seemed to make clear that he understood what was taking place. Henry, Andersen’s eyes said, had all his sympathy. The Baroness was not yet finished.
‘I remember you when you were young and all the ladies followed you, nay fought with each other to go riding with you. That Mrs Sumner and young Miss Boott and young Miss Lowe. All the young ladies, and others not so young. We all liked you, and I suppose you liked us as well, but you were too busy gathering material to like anyone too much. You were charming of course, but you were like a young banker collecting our savings. Or a priest listening to our sins. I remember my aunt warning us not to tell you anything.’
She leaned towards him conspiratorially.
‘And I think that is what you are still doing. I don’t think you have retired. I wish, however, that you would write more clearly and I’m sure the young sculptor, who is watching you, I’m sure he wishes the same.’
Henry smiled at her and bowed.
‘As you know, I do my best to please you.’
As others began to distract the Baroness and absorb her attention, Henry moved towards Andersen.
‘I thought that your speech was magnificent,’ the sculptor said. Henry was surprised at how American his accent sounded.
‘And I do not know what the old lady was saying to you, but I think that you are a very patient listener.’
‘She spoke,’ Henry said quietly, ‘as she promised not to – of old times.’
‘I loved what you said about Rome. It made us all wish we had been here then.’
Andersen had been leaning against the wall, but now he stood to his full height. The expression on his face was almost solemn and, although he commanded a view of the entire room, he directed his attention only to Henry. After a few moments, he moved his mouth as though he wished to speak but clearly thought better of it. In the shadowy light of the apartment, he veered between displaying a vulnerability, an e
xtraordinary, half-blank handsomeness and a strangely thoughtful introspection. He swallowed nervously before he whispered.
‘Obviously, you love Rome and you have been happy here.’
It was close to a question and he watched Henry, waiting for a response; Henry merely nodded, conscious of the mixture of strength in the frame and a kind of weakness, like sadness, in the eyes of the sculptor.
‘Do you have a place you go to, I mean a monument or a painting in Rome that you love and visit regularly?’ the sculptor asked him.
‘I have been going almost daily to the Protestant cemetery which I suppose is in itself a work of art, an important monument, but perhaps you meant—’
‘No,’ Andersen interrupted him, ‘that is what I meant. I asked you the question because whatever it is, I should like to accompany you there. Even if it is your habit to go alone, I would ask you to make an exception.’
Henry could see an earnestness breaking through the shyness with some resolve and determination. He had expected another tone altogether, intense perhaps, but ironic as well, and rather more easy and worldly. This moved him with its sincerity, its lack of any reserve.
‘I should like to do this soon,’ Andersen said.
‘Tomorrow at eleven, then,’ Henry said simply. ‘We can meet at my hotel and set out together. Have you not been to the cemetery before?’
‘I have been there, sir, but I should like to go again, and shall look forward to tomorrow.’
Andersen gazed at him for a moment, having noted the name of the hotel, and did not smile and then bowed and made his way artfully across the room.
IN THE MORNING Andersen, Henry saw, was nervous and shy. He did not speak when Henry appeared, merely offered his customary bow. Henry could not tell how alert he was to his own handsomeness, a handsomeness which, when he smiled, gave way to an astonishing clear-eyed beauty. As they made their way by cab to the old walled graveyard near the pyramid, Andersen’s expression managed to be both searching and tenderly hesitant at the same time. Even though he spoke like an American, he did not have the calm and confident manners of one. Henry wondered if his seeming indifference to his own appeal, his lack of brashness and his intense presence arose simply from his Scandinavian origin. Yet when Andersen alighted from the cab and turned and waited for him at the gate, there was an aggression in his movements which belonged to someone more confident than he seemed when he smiled or spoke or allowed his face to rest.
For Henry the cemetery, more than any of the city’s monuments or works of art or famous buildings and thoroughfares, was the place where art and nature had most sonorously and resonantly combined, and now, in the shade offered by the gnarled, thickgrowing black cypresses and the well-worn paths and the carefully tended flowers and shrubs, it was a place of comfort, of great warm peace. As they walked directly towards the pyramid itself and the grave of the poet Keats it seemed to him that Andersen’s shyness and reticence had cast a spell on them both which could not be easily broken in this most solemn of places.
He was not sure if Andersen was aware of the story of Keats’s last days in the city, or even if he knew that the gravestone, which was not inscribed with the poet’s name, marked his final resting place. Henry felt acutely the sculptor’s presence; he liked being beside him, the silence broken by birdsong, with only cats for company; and the sense of the dead, including the tragic young poet, deeply at rest, protected in warm, rich earth. And the air all around, the clear sky and the secluded spaces of the cemetery, proclaiming that with rest came the end of sorrow; and this rest seemed to him now, on a May morning in Rome, suffused with love or something close to it.
They walked quietly and at random through the graveyard. Andersen held his hands behind his back, and read each inscription and then remained as though at prayer. Henry was his guide only in that he moved when Henry moved and stood still when Henry stopped.
‘The names never cease to interest me,’ Henry said. ‘The sad names of the English who died in Rome.’
He sighed.
Andersen shook his head briefly and turned to study the skinny tan-coloured cat which hovered behind him, tail in the air. Henry looked around too, as the cat purred lazily and narrowed its eyes and then moved against the back of Henry’s legs, pushing the full weight of its bony body against him, rubbing itself, and then moving nonchalantly away to find a spot in sunlight and settle there.
‘The cat knows what it wants,’ Andersen said. His laugh was loud and sudden, almost shrill, and it made Henry want to walk away. Instead, he turned and smiled and edged along the pathways until they reached Shelley’s grave at the back wall of the cemetery where the birdsong was at its most vibrant.
Now that the silence between them had been restored, he felt that the sadness he had spoken about meant nothing against the act of completion which the spirits all around them had undergone. Here in this cemetery, which they began to stroll around once more, the state of not-knowing and not-feeling which belonged to the dead seemed to him closer to resolved happiness than he had ever imagined possible.
Andersen must have believed, Henry thought, that this lingering at certain graves and not at others was, with the exception of the graves of the poets, quite without a plan. He seemed puzzled as Henry made his way purposefully, there being no direct path, to the grave of Constance Fenimore Woolson whose name, Henry believed, could have meant nothing to him. This spot had been his final destination on each of his earlier visits; now he almost regretted having come here once more, knowing that he would have to say something about the grave and make sure that it was understood. He was relieved for a moment when Andersen’s attention fell on the carved stone angel over the tomb of William Wetmore Story, which Story had carved himself, and went towards it to study it more closely. Andersen touched the white wings and the face, stood back to contemplate them, his face suddenly hardened in concentration. As his friend moved around the angel a second time, Henry saw to the right the grave of John Addington Symonds and thought, as he did on each visit to this hallowed ground, about how the Wetmore Storys and Symonds and Constance had loved Italy, they had that much in common, that they had lived in beautiful places believing that the light and the views and the grand rooms were worth all the years of exile, the loss of their native countries. Constance, he thought, would allow herself to meet the others irregularly; the wealth and social ambition and soft art of the Wetmore Storys would bore her as much as Symonds’s sexual obsessions and purple prose. The tablet with her name engraved on it was a model of decorum compared with the elaborate tomb of the Storys. In the evenings, he smiled to himself, she would wish to be alone. Her America was not theirs, her Italy was more modest and her art more ambitious. But she would have known how to write about them.
He glanced up and saw that Andersen was watching him.
‘Constance was a great friend,’ he said. ‘I knew the Storys of course and was in touch with poor Symonds, but Constance was a great friend.’
Andersen looked down at the tablet and must have seen, Henry thought, that Constance was one of the recent dead. He made to speak, but clearly thought better of it. Henry sighed and turned away, realizing that he should not have taken someone he knew so little to such an intimate place. But more important perhaps, he felt that he should not have spoken just now, as the saying of her name had brought tears to his eyes. He turned away and tried to regain control but found that he was being held by the sculptor, his shoulders cupped against Andersen’s chest and Andersen’s hands reaching around to grasp his hands and hold them as firmly as he could. He was surprised at Andersen’s strength, the size of his hands. He immediately checked that there was nobody in view before allowing the embrace to continue, feeling the other man’s warm, tough body briefly holding him, wanting desperately to allow himself to be held much longer, but knowing that this embrace was all the comfort he would receive. He held his breath for as long as he could and kept his eyes closed and then Andersen released him and they walked quietly bac
k to the cemetery gate.
IN THE CAB as they travelled to Andersen’s studio in Via Margutta, he wondered how he would tell Andersen about how he had lived. As an artist, he recognized, Andersen might know, or at least fathom the possibility, that each book he had written, each scene described or character created, had become an aspect of him, had entered into his driven spirit and lay there much as the years themselves had done. His relationship with Constance would be hard to explain; Andersen was perhaps too young to know how memory and regret can mingle, how much sorrow can be held within, and how nothing seems to have any shape or meaning until it is well past and lost and, even then, how much, under the weight of pure determination, can be forgotten and left aside only to return in the night as piercing pain.
Andersen suggested that before making a tour of where he worked they eat lunch in the small restaurant below his studio. Almost as soon as he entered the small and, for him, familiar space, being welcomed with friendly gestures by the proprietor and his wife, he became talkative and engaged. Henry was surprised not only by how much the sculptor knew about him, but by how freely now he relayed the information. He was also surprised at how unselfconsciously Andersen spoke to him about his own talent and how fluently he could quote those who had come to admire it.
He listened to Andersen as lunch was served; the sculptor’s face seemed to change as much as his personality had changed. His eyes had lost their softness and sympathy and his expression became more focussed as he reacted to each thing he himself said, adding to it in a torrent of explanation and contestation. His earlier silences, Henry realized, had been part of a great withholding which was now being released. In the dim light of the restaurant, Henry relished the sight of him across the table, his young face moving in rapt animation, so restless and ambitious, so ready for life, so raw.