The light dazzled me. A line of narrow, white marble tables, with rounded edges and a raised rim all the way round, stood beneath the large windows. Most were empty, but on two of them were stretched out two men: one, an old man, who looked pleased not to be alive any more; the other, young, with shining black hair, parted lips revealing the whiteness of his teeth, and a broad, high forehead that seemed still full of thoughts. The instruments required for an autopsy glinted on the tables beside the two bodies.
Herzfeld, who had entered without my noticing, threw his arms round my neck and exclaimed, ‘Thank heavens. There you are, at last. I didn’t know where you’d got to. I was worried about you.’
‘Well?’
‘She’s not here, and she’s not in the deaths register.’
‘So she wasn’t admitted, and as far we know she hasn’t left the place, one way or another. And she’s nowhere to be found!’
‘The newspapers must have been lying. Your caretaker was probably right. She was probably impatient to see you again and set off on her own, and is now waiting for you at Mödling.’
The blood started to flow through my veins again, new life returned to my limbs, and I felt a new strength, overwhelming and joyful, stirring within me. A moment before, I had been feeling utterly bowed down and dwarfish. Now I straightened up and thought myself a giant. Hope came hurtling into the hollow emptiness of my mind like a seething torrent crashing down from a great height. There was within me a confusion of renascent joys, of rekindled desires. Love, pleasure, nature, art and glory sang in my heart in a divine tumult. The scent of jasmine caressed my nostrils and I thought again with fervid delight of the white villa in the Brühl Valley.
Grabbing my good friend Herzfeld by the arm, I cried, ‘Let’s get out of this hellish place.’
And I raced off like a mad child. I was already about to leave the building and step outside, when I saw these words written in big black letters on a nearby door: KARL GULZ’S LABORATORY.
VI
The door was open. I rushed into the room. There, in the middle, on a marble slab, was Carlotta’s body.
‘Carlotta! Carlotta!’ I yelled, throwing myself upon her, and impetuously bringing my face close to hers. Two impassive eyes stared into mine: I felt a shudder run through me. I wanted to place a kiss on that brow, I wanted to carry away that body, but a terrible force repelled me. I recoiled, trembling. I collapsed onto a chair and murmured to myself, ‘There’s nothing! Nothing left!’
Herzfeld came up to me, alarmed. ‘For pity’s sake,’ he said, trying to drag me out, ‘let’s get away from here.’
A moment later I blacked out. For some time – maybe an hour, or two – I remained utterly dead to the world. I dreamed. Everything that had happened swirled around me as though in a thick fog, taking on the appearance of some dreadful and deathly phantasmagoria. It was a frightening faint. A long procession of menacing clouds and ugly memories passed before me. I was scared out of my wits. I thought I was drowning in nothingness. I felt two cold lips biting me on the cheek, and two arms, two scrawny arms, two bones, strangling me in a monstrous embrace. I tried to cry out. My voice died in my throat.
Then I opened my eyes again, and I could still see the corpse’s fixed, impassive eyes.
My heart was torn with anguish, and I was assailed again with horrid visions of worms and shin-bones. And these skeletons stood upright and these worms became enormous, and they began to sway together in a diabolical dance. I laughed.
‘What are you laughing at?’ asked poor Herzfeld, holding my head, bathing my forehead with ice-cold water, and giving me goodness knows what acrid-smelling stuff to sniff.
‘I’m not going mad,’ I replied, ‘unfortunately I’m not going mad. Leave me here. I want to talk to the Doctor.’
Gulz, whom I had not seen, then gravely stepped forward, and stood beside the corpse. ‘Where everything ends for you,’ he said, ‘for us, everything begins. Death is life.’
Had I encountered this man not long before, I would have seized him by the neck and throttled him. Now I looked at him with despairing resignation.
‘This time,’ he went on, ‘fate has been willing to help me, and without any of my doing one of my most ardent desires has been fulfilled. I’m sorry,’ he added after a pause, turning to me, ‘I’m sorry for your sake; but I’m glad for science.’
‘Swear to God that you will not defile those limbs,’ I exclaimed, rising to my feet, and making a supreme effort to revive a little passion in my heart and voice.
‘Feel how cold they are,’ the Doctor continued. ‘Feel, they’re more chilly than the steel instruments I have in my hand. The lovely pinkness of these limbs doesn’t come from the redness of the blood, but from a coloured liquid injected into the tissues. I have rediscovered Ruysch of Leiden’s secret. And my specimens excel those of the Amsterdam Museum. Please take a look around you.’
I looked. The room was lined with vases of all sizes, filled with anatomical specimens, and glass-cases containing embalmed bodies that appeared to be alive. Over the cupboards were a great many unframed paintings hanging on the walls. Among them, I noticed one of someone I knew, painted by Raal: it was a portrait of a poor old man who had posed as a model for me, for my first life-studies, and whom I had been very fond of. He had died two years ago; but there in the glass-case, beneath his portrait, he seemed to be breathing. His long, silvery beard fell over his broad chest, and running vertically across the lines on his tranquil brow was a thick scar, which had given the good old man countless opportunties to tell of battles that had taken place half a century earlier. Raal could well have copied the vital figure in his painting from such a mummy, so true to life were its colouring and features, and even its facial expression, not only in terms of the person’s physical aspect, but also his moral character.
‘This,’ Gulz went on in a slow voice, ‘is only a part, the superficial part, of my studies. In this, I need the artist to help me, to remind me of the appearance of life. But appearance is only formal: I seek to find how it is determined by matter. As Man’s bones, entrails, and tissues explain life, so they explain beauty. Art embraces science. You know, sir, that the right auricle of the heart is the last part of the human body to cease functioning. The time will come, I swear, when physiology and psychology will form a single discipline. Not only will I die before this union takes place, but so will many more generations depart this world. Nevertheless, it will take place. And, for myself, I should be happy if I could in some way aid this great discovery – a discovery that will finally reveal what men have been seeking for thousands upon thousands of years: the explanation of their being, the material substance and the workings of their thoughts and feelings.’
‘There’s the material substance,’ I said, in a tone of grim irony, pointing to Carlotta’s corpse.
‘Do you think a tree has a soul? And does it not live, and die? What is it that makes it live? Certain special activities of certain molecules. The life of a leaf and the life of Schiller’s mind differ only in degree. The essence is the same. The mystery of vegetal life has been discovered; so, too, will that of animal life be discovered, and ultimately of intelligent life. But how many years is it since we’ve known with certainty how plants live and die? For how many centuries before that was this easy problem ineffectually investigated? Are we to tell ourselves now that the book of Nature is closed? On the contrary, it is more open to us today than ever before. And men will read it all, to the very last page.’
While the Doctor spoke, I kept my eyes fixed upon the corpse, with its arms lying straight by its sides, the hands resting upturned on the marble, legs together, head tilted back a little, mouth half-open, eyes staring, hair hanging down over centre of the far end of the table: a vain symmetry, lugubrious and chilling. This body meant nothing to me any more.
‘Think, sir,’ Gulz continued, ‘think what remains of your passion. Had you loved a spirit, you would love her still, if only in memory. But you loved
a fleeting manifestation of matter, and it’s natural that, when the object of passion changes form, passion should die. Yet I love this body a thousand times more now than before. inasmuch as it helps to bring me closer to the truth. In a word, the only concrete thing, the only real thing, is science. The rest is illusion or fantasy.’
I had felt crushed. These harsh and at the same impassioned words, both bland and sinister, subdued me. No light dawned in my mind, but a deep and dismal calm entered my heart. Looking round, I saw my picture of Arethusa, still on the floor, leaning against the wall.
‘I’d like to buy back that painting, Doctor,’ I murmured, drawing from my pocket the money that Herzfeld had handed over to me that morning, and which I had not touched.
‘Very well. My memory will suffice now,’ replied Gulz with a sigh, and he offered me his hand. Heaven knows why, I shook it. And having cast a final glance at Carlotta’s body, I very slowly left the room, leaning on Herzfeld’s arm.
As we crossed the bridge over the Danube I took out of my wallet the jasmine flower I had picked the previous day in the pergola of the house in Teufelsmühle, and stopping by the parapet, I let it drop.
After a moment the white speck had disappeared in the dark green waters.
CHRISTMAS EVE
This is my poor Giorgio’s manuscript: the Giorgio that I taught to read, and write, and so many other fine things. And often, as a child, he would stand on one side of me, and poor Emilia on the other, and they would smother me with kisses. I remember that one day Emilia suddenly said to me, ‘Maria, you’ve a white hair!’ And she tried to pull it out. My hair was my greatest pride. Twenty years later, Giorgetta, who is now in heaven, was sitting on my lap, and she said to me in the same voice and with the same wonder as her mother, ‘Maria, you’ve a black hair!’ And she pulled a face, because she liked these snow-white curls of mine.
There is nothing about my Giorgio that I do not love. But this manuscript, which I don’t much understand, wrings my heart and makes me weep. I find no peace except in church, praying to God. I would have given my own good health, my life, to see those three dear children, who are no longer with me, well and happy.
Signor Giorgio’s manuscript
I had been suffering terrible stomach pains for several days. I could not eat. I had been dining alone at the Cavour Inn that evening, and I had to leave the table after the soup. The room was cold and virtually empty. There were three Germans, sighing at every mouthful, and a Frenchman, in despair at not knowing whom to bore to death, chatted desultorily with the waiters, saying that for him there had never been any such thing as Easter, or Christmas, or New Year’s Day, or any other women’s foolishness or childish nonsense. Then, happy to have solemnly professed his strength and freedom of spirit, he stuck his snout into his plate.
In the street, the reddish, almost dark glow of the streetlamps could be picked out, one by one. But the very thick fog was suffused with a pale whitish glimmer, both brighter and denser around the lamps, by which it was barely possible to discern a stretch of shining wet pavement, the dim shadow of a person who bumped into you in passing, the indistinct shape of a carriage driving by; cautiously and soundlessly. Otherwise, the streets, usually so full of people and vehicles, were almost deserted: the silence seemed full of pitfalls. Everything became vast and mysterious. You lost your bearings. You suddenly found yourself at the corner of a street that you thought was still some distance ahead, or you assumed you had reached a crossing that was further on. You sought your way through the mist, soaked through, stiff with cold, suspecting that you had turned deaf and blind.
I stumbled on the steps projecting from the church of San Francesco, and a woman’s cry emerged from the thick fog. Then a ragged child came running between my legs, begging for money, and wishing me a Merry Christmas, or some such thing. I pushed him aside. I gave him nothing. He persisted. I threatened him. I was in an ugly state of mind. In the Galleria, a reeling drunkard was singing some tedious old song. Under the portico in the Piazza del Duomo, there were two police officers walking along slowly, with measured steps.
In the narrow streets beyond Piazza Mercanti, the fog, trapped between the tall houses, had thinned a little. You could see that all the shops were shut, even the inns had their doors closed. But high-spirited sounds of merriment emerged from windows here and there. Happiness reigned in every dining-room. I heard the clinking of glasses, shrieks of joy, loud choruses of vulgar, shameless laughter. It was an orgy – but the blessed orgy of the family. I stopped to listen beneath one of the noisiest balconies. At first I could make out nothing at all, then gradually I managed to distinguish voices amid the great clatter of plates and glasses. A child was shouting, ‘Mama, another slice of panettone.’ Someone else was clamouring, ‘Papa, another drop of wine.’ And I could tell what the mother and father were saying, and I could just see the jovial grandfather and smiling grandmother. I pulled up the collar of my coat over my ears.
I did not know what to do. The streets were like a graveyard, the theatres were all closed; owing to the Christmas holiday there were no newspapers. I was all by. myself, alone in Milan, where I had no friends, male or female, no acquaintances: alone in the world. This time a year ago, on Christmas Day, after lunch in the handsome dining-room of our house in Via di Po, I had been down on the carpet, with Giorgetta and her little friends making me give them horse-rides, climbing on my back and using the whip. And Emilia chided me, ‘Really, Giorgi, shame on you: playing with children at the age of twenty-three.’ And she said to Giorgetta, ‘Leave your uncle in peace.’ But the children, taking no notice, continued to dance round me, and to deafen me with their cries. I then got to my feet and picked them up in my arms, one at a time, giving them the last of the sugared almonds and a kiss on the cheek.
What happiness! Such happiness!
The walk and the fog had given my body a great hunger that frightened me. The immoderate and indiscriminate amounts of pepsin that I had taken in the last few days, which had not achieved anything except to make the excruciating pains in my stomach worse than ever, were probably doing what they were supposed to all of a sudden, and stimulating gastric activity. I felt as if I could devour an ox, but unfortunately I had long grown accustomed to the dreadful tricks of the pylorus. And yet that evening I had a restless desire to have a good time. Even the grief that usually overwhelmed me completely, allowing no opportunity for boredom, gave way to yawns. For the first time in a month – since my beloved Emilia had placed her hand, already cold, on my hair, while I hid my tears in her pillow; since I had fled from Turin and gone wandering from place to place through Italy – I felt the want of some distraction, the need to talk to someone, to open my heart to a friend, a woman, or a doctor, and to tell of my moral anguish, and physical agony. A renewed selfishness grew within me. I regretted not being in Turin, where I would have dined, and chatted and wept, with kind-hearted Maria. A little before it was time to go to bed, she would have whispered to me, in that very meek voice of hers, ‘Signor Giorgio, for pity’s sake, have a little faith. Listen: do your old nurse a kindness, say the rosary with me. Go on, be a good fellow: it won’t take long. Then, you’ll see, God and the Madonna will instil a great resignation into your heart, and you will gradually be filled with the peace and comfort of the just. Giorgetta and Signora Emilia are praying for you. You could get closer to them by praying a little, too, Signor Giorgio.’ And to see the face of that woman who is almost a mother to me smile with sublime gratification, I should probably have done as Emilia used to do; I should have knelt and said the rosary responses.
I found myself near the Biblioteca Ambrosiana. Whenever I walked without knowing where I was going – and this was something that was always happening to me – my legs would carry me to the streets in that vicinity. In one of these streets lived a shop girl that I had noticed on the second day of my brief stay in Milan. Afterwards, I had gone back to see her three or four times, virtually every evening in fact, at about five thirt
y: the time of day when it is already dark and the streetlights come on; when the toing and froing of people hurrying home for dinner, and the coming and going of carriages, cast a certain busy impatience even upon the quiet stroller, thrilling his imagination.
I feel a deep shame in confessing it, but this milliner had attracted me because of her resemblance to Emilia. My grief was heightened by a vague sense of remorse. By seeking out and studying – as instinct irresistibly compelled me – certain minute and fleeting similarities between my beloved Emilia’s appearance and that of the women I met, and even photographs that I saw, I felt I was profaning her sacred memory. And all too often I was then forced to acknowledge that these resemblances existed only in my imagination. The number of times I have stood for half-an-hour staring in a photographer’s shop-window! And yet I had in my wallet four different portraits of Emilia, as well as three of Giorgetta that could have been three pictures of Emilia as a child. Nevertheless, during the five days I was in Florence, I remember having gone twice to the far end of the Corso di Porta Romana, even though it was raining, specially to look at an attractive little head in a picture-framer’s shop, in among a great many stiff sergeants of the line and a great many ugly countrywomen all decked in frills; a head that I had seen for the first time when I happened to be making my way on foot to La Certosa, and which I would like to have bought, had shame not restrained me.
Senso (And Other Stories) Page 9