A Dancer in Darkness

by David Stacton

  Antonio was on his knees. His eyes were closed. And that was all. But it upset Bosola.

  Sometimes we come upon people unexpectedly when they are in the midst of that special world where the self lives. We are abashed. We draw back. We catch a glimpse of each other across the landscape of silence. It is a look of mutual recognition from which we never recover.

  Bosola set down the candles and Antonio rose. After a moment of insight, it is as though we had come suddenly into a darkened room. For a moment we lose our bearings. Our eyes still project the image of what we have just seen. And what Bosola had seen was goodness. It was unendurable. He turned and fled.

  For the ambitious man should never be doomed to see the object he covets with the eyes of a man who does not covet it at all. Ambition must see everything from the front, or else die.

  That day the Cardinal was holding levee. Here were all the rich and great. And now they did not seem rich and great. Bosola passed them in the anterooms and shivered. He had wanted to rise by these people. Now it occurred to him that he would rather pull them down on top of him.

  The one thing kept from the masses, is that the great ones of the world are freaks. They have been so pulled about by eminence that they no longer have any shape of their own. Greatness is like a cancer. It grows unseen until it is strong enough to gobble us up. Greatness is a disease.

  Bosola with his eyes opened stood in the middle of a pest house, and it revolted him. For once in his life he saw the running sores of those who rode themselves too hard.

  At the head of that procession pranced the Cardinal, with his curiously asexual charm. For the man who is only one sex is not only rare. He is also a monster. Like the deaf mute, he is cut off from communication with far more than half the world. Yet the Cardinal was not effeminate. He was only clever, and as lacking in sexual differentiation as is the sexual act itself.

  It was more than Bosola could bear. He had not the courage of his predilections.

  So when at evening Antonio came upon him, he burst into a tirade as children burst into tears at a kind word from their mothers.

  Antonio listened silently.

  “Perhaps you do not belong here,” he said. His eyes seemed to search Bosola’s face for something that was not there.

  “What?” The idea took Bosola aback. It had never occurred to him that he belonged anywhere else, for his nature had been bent on one purpose, as a tree is bent one way by the prevailing wind. Besides, though he might hate, hatred is the mulch of ambition. It burns the fingers, but it feeds the will.

  “Why not?” asked Antonio. “I am going to Amalfi tomorrow. Something could be found for you to do.”

  “I cannot leave here.”

  “You do not belong here,” said Antonio. “You are a good man.”

  Bosola shook his head. Goodness was a weakness, and he would not be weak. Goodness made him feel less than he was. Indeed, if someone tells us we are good, we feel a sort of helpless silliness steal over our faces, our knees wobble, and our testicles draw up, as they do when we are afraid. The worst tempters, after all, are not the devils, but the saints. Besides, he had his own reasons for not wanting to go to Amalfi.

  Antonio left him and moved down the stairs to the hall. Bosola wandered restlessly through the palace, he did not know why, as it gradually fell asleep, for he clung to ambition as a blind man clings to his cane, or a leper to his bell. He could not give it up.

  Far ahead of him, down in the main hall, towards midnight, he seemed to hear the angry rise and fall of voices. Only one sconce burned down there. Bosola crept to the balustrade of the loggia and peered down.

  It was the Cardinal and Ferdinand, pacing back and forth in the litter of the hall, for the servants would not sweep it out until just before dawn. Ferdinand was manifestly in a temper. The Cardinal seemed alternately to be fanning him up and soothing him down. They talked in furious whispers. Bosola craned forward.

  “He shall not go,” snapped Ferdinand. “He shall not go to that strumpet.”

  “He is harmless.”

  “I know my sister. I know what she will do.”

  The Cardinal looked at his brother warily, waved a jewelled hand, and smiled.

  “If she will do it now, then she has done it before.”

  “She is not to remarry. I will not have that man go there.” Ferdinand was trembling like a wet dog. He seized his brother by the shoulders. “What are you plotting? What are you doing to me?”

  The Cardinal shook him off. “I do not plot. I watch,” he said quietly.

  “You want Amalfi for yourself.”

  The Cardinal did not answer directly. “She is your sister,” he said. “I hope you do not know why you are so angry, for that is a sin.”

  Ferdinand stopped in the middle of the hall and burst out laughing. “What would you know of sin?” he demanded. “Sin is a passion.”

  The Cardinal was very still. Then he moved towards the stairs, and his robes swished over the marble as he ascended, as though he moved upward on a raft of snakes. Below Bosola, Ferdinand looked up, and when he did, his eyes were white with fury.

  Bosola withdrew.

  *

  Early next morning Antonio and his little retinue set out on the Naples road.

  Bosola felt sad. When the company had vanished down the street, he stripped off his scarlet livery and returned to the guard. Nothing had happened, and yet life was no longer the same.

  V

  A month later the Cardinal sent for him once more.

  By then Bosola had lapsed back into a scowling indifference. He had almost forgotten Antonio. He had spent the month roistering with Marcantonio. There was nothing more voluptuous than violence, nothing more satisfying to the soul while it was going on, nothing sadder when it was done. Indeed, the sadness was so unbearable, that it only led to more violence, like a drug, which enlivens the senses only the more permanently to impair them. It was the age of Caravaggio. Slitting the noses of a few gallants out late at night in the back alleys was a kind of joy. If he could be nothing, then it was something that they would never be the same again. The sides of their noses flapped and streamed with blood. We would take the whole world down with us, if we were able.

  The Cardinal had no such ambitions. Bosola found him poring over a map of Amalfi and its dependencies, which had been flung out across the desk.

  It was a beautiful map, blue and black on parchment, with miniature winds in the corners.

  The Cardinal grunted but did not look up. “This is ridiculous,” he said. “How long have you been here?”

  “Eight months.”

  “We may as well drop the pretence,” said the Cardinal. “If there is any hue and cry after you, it has fallen off by now. Still, you may as well be Ferrante for a while.” The Cardinal glanced at him sharply. “Do you think I have used you harshly? Still, I do not think you are altogether happy here.” Abruptly his manner changed. “I cannot keep you here,” he said. “You are restless and I must be discreet. Besides, I have no use for you.”

  Bosola became motionless, like a stalked bird.

  The Cardinal looked at him for a very long time, and something elusively like pity seemed to flood through the contempt at the bottom of his eyes. He gave a grunt and scribbled silently on a sheet of parchment, poured sand on it, blew the sand off, folded the letter, sealed it, and all this time said nothing more to Bosola.

  Every year the Cardinal’s insolence grew more kindly, more indulgent, and more smoothly adapted to its purpose, for some men are born adapted only to eminence, and what would be vices in a lesser station, become virtues in them. Bosola admired him, even while inwardly raging against him. The Cardinal now had that ultimate cunning that does not have to hide itself in order to work its effect.

  His Eminence wet his ring with spittle, impressed his seal, and returned the ring to his finger.

  “Antonio offered you asylum,” he said.

  “He wanted me to go with him.”

 
“Just so.” The Cardinal paced up and down the room impatiently, peering now and then at Bosola. “Why do you think I sent him there?”

  “I do not know.”

  “My sister has a lively nature, so I am told.” He stopped his pacing. “I am told,” he said. “My brother is not. Do you understand me?”

  “Yes, your Eminence.”

  “It is good the man has taken a fancy to you.” The Cardinal held out the letter. “You need not mention this interview. I am sending you to my brother Ferdinand. He has a mission for you. If you are wise, you will accept it. If you are sensible, you will report everything he says and does to me. He will see you tonight. Then return here.” He glanced down at the map before him. “I shall know if you lie to me. And there are spies everywhere, so I am told, even at Amalfi.” He nodded, and then ignored Bosola completely.

  It was perhaps one of his few mistakes, for no man likes to be taken up only to be ignored. To be bullied, blackmailed, tortured, that Bosola was willing to expect. But to be ignored fed his inner insecurity, and therefore made him rage the more. Yet even while he raged, he knew he would obey, for he sought advantage as a man trapped in a tunnel seeks even the smallest chink of light.

  VI

  Ferdinand was a man who could not sleep. It was not that he feared nightmares. His nightmares all took place during his waking life. It was that he feared to dream, for his dreams had a forbidden sweetness more terrible than Eden.

  He was the ruin of a passionate boy, burly, handsome, scowling, and muscular. He was also impotent.

  His palace was ill-run and disorderly. All night long doors opened and shut down its corridors, and the least said about it the better. Bosola made his way undetected up the stairs, and then saw a dwarf peering down at him from the shadows. The dwarf disappeared as he reached the landing and turned towards the suite of rooms occupied by Ferdinand.

  It was not difficult for him to find his way. The palaces in this section of Rome had been run up by a builder thirty years before, on speculation, and were almost identical. They were grandiose, but small.

  There was nobody to announce him, not so much because he was unexpected, as because nobody was expected. He slipped into a long gallery and found Ferdinand pacing up and down the length of it, while torches fixed on the walls gave a flickering, uncertain light that turned the marble floor into a swamp of shadows.

  “Who’s there?” called Ferdinand, and his voice reverberated against the walls. He came swiftly down the room and peered at Bosola.

  Bosola handed him the letter and explained his errand.

  Ferdinand looked at the seal, slit it open, and then grabbed one of the torches from its socket and held it above Bosola. He began to chuckle.

  “Yes, you’ll do,” laughed Ferdinand. “By God, you’ll do.” Instead of putting the torch back in its socket, he flung it on the floor, so that the sparks danced like a cloud of midges.

  Bosola relaxed. He had not been recognized, for, like an animal, Ferdinand had little memory. He had only desires. The man was shaking with some sort of passion Bosola did not understand, and his voice was husky with rage.

  “My sister would disgrace us all. She would disgrace me,” he said. “She is a widow. She is a girl. Find out who she sees, and what she does. I would not have her marry anyone. Women are venal, lubricious, cunning without wit, and spiteful as foxes. Let her do what she will, but marry she shall not.” Ferdinand rubbed his face with his hands. “Let her do nothing. Why should she lie under some boatman or stable-boy? My brother is foolish. He throws temptation in her way. Insinuate yourself with that white-faced fool. Do you think I do not know why she wants him there, or why my brother has sent him there?”

  He stood stock still in the middle of the gallery, in the one dark patch the torches did not light, and it was as though he stood at the bottom of a well.

  “She shall not,” he said tautly. “She shall not, shall not. Do you think I have no thoughts? Men think I have no thoughts. My brother thinks I have no thoughts. Why otherwise would I walk here all night long? I do not sleep.”

  Out of Ferdinand’s face there again peered that young, adolescent face that had never gotten its own way, so that, even though he was dangerous, there was something vulnerable and touching about him too.

  “Go, tell my brother everything I say. She shall not drag me through that filth. She shall not marry.” Ferdinand threw a bag at Bosola. “Go, and destroy her. For that is what you are paid to do. And that is what I pay you to do, for that is what life is.”

  Bosola stooped to pick the money up.

  “Take it,” cried Ferdinand. “Don’t you think I know as well as he, that the truth has to be doubly paid for?” Abruptly he strode to the far end of the gallery and stood there, facing the room, his face hidden in shadows, and the hall was quiet.

  Bosola hesitated. The bag lay at his feet, with a long shadow behind it, cast by the torch on the wall.

  “Go!” shouted Ferdinand, and he sounded frightened. “Go!”

  Bosola retrieved the bag and went.

  *

  It was late, and he was very sleepy, but apparently the Cardinal never slept. There was a couch in the little room he used as an oratory, where he took naps, and that was all the attention he had the time to pay to sleep. Bosola told him what had happened.

  The Cardinal listened as would a doctor to the symptoms of a patient he has no time to attend.

  “In particular you will attach yourself to Antonio,” he said. He picked up a letter from his desk. “You will leave now. That will get you to Naples by tomorrow dusk. There you will deliver this letter for me.” He paused. “It is to your sister.” Bosola started and the Cardinal smiled. “Are you fond of your sister?”

  “She is an admirable woman.”

  The Cardinal shrugged. “No doubt. But since she did not tell me she had a brother, I presume she did not wish the fact known. But, as you see, I know it.”

  He held out the letter, and Bosola knew that it contained nothing. It was merely a pretext.

  “That is all,” said the Cardinal sharply.

  So Bosola departed.

  Late the next afternoon he reached Naples, and for once even Naples was overcast and dull. At dusk he went to the convent. Hate her he might, but he did not want to see his sister trapped. One of them, at least, should be set free.

  VII

  Sor Juana was the greatest female poet of her age. But in all her life she wrote only one poem because she could not help it. Like everything else she did, that poem was bland, twisted, sombre, brilliant, and yet deceptively easy. It was also knowledgeable, for knowledge was her passion, not poetry, not people, not God.

  It was on the night Bosola came to visit her that she began that poem. She wrote it to dazzle. Instead it began to dazzle her. It was called The Dream. And because it did dazzle her, it lit up corners of her Self she had not wished to see: for it is true: the dream of reason produces monsters: and monsters are only what we cannot be, but others can.

  As all such things do, the poem came quietly into her head, sat down, and then clamoured to be let out.

  On an impulse she could not explain, but one that had sadness in it, she had gone to the nursery to see the child which the Cardinal had left in her care. Though by now she knew perfectly well who that child was, she refused to admit that she knew.

  On a dark night, the trees, the pointed towers

  like lichenous darkness, in Egyptian sleep

  I sat and wept beside the obelisk

  on a pebbled path whose stones were cruciform.

  Shadows and shapes would soothe me if they could.

  But another voice called from the heavy tree….

  She found the child sleeping in its cradle, under a muslin canopy, and looking around her to see that she was not observed, she parted the flimsy cloth and then looked down.

  She knew nothing about children except that, once, she could not remember what it had been like, she had been one. The more profound
ly we experience the world, the more we are shut off from the general experience of it. Always, when we think we have mastered it utterly, we find that the mind has a false bottom, which suddenly gives way like a trap-door and drops us down into the basement of the soul. And very strange things are stored there. It is the lumber room of faith. It contains, among other things, the earlier models of the gods upstairs.

  She had never wanted, and she would never have, a child. But she regretted any incapacity, and this child was doomed. Like a puppy wagging the tail that is soon to be docked, it had the pathos of confidence, and how gently it lay sleeping, and how beautiful it was.

  … I sit alone,

  fearing this weeping that is not my own,

  since only the good can feel the sense of shame.

  Knowledge is only to know we cannot know.

  Dark creatures nestle in the wings of sense,

  and like an owl….

  What owl?

  It was in the nursery that Bosola found her, for he had the talents of a good spy: he knew his way into closed rooms. He knew how to find out what had not happened yet.

  He caught a peculiar look on her face. It seemed quite genuine. As she bent over the cradle, the immense medal of St. Michel she wore by a chain round her neck dangled down and caught the light. He could see from the glance she gave him that she was furious to be caught in such a mood.

  “I have brought you a letter,” he said.

  He handed it to her, and when she saw the seal, her long jointed fingers ran over it like a crab, reaching for its weakest spot and tearing it open.

  “But it says nothing,” she said, with a frown.

  “What did you expect it to say?”

  She looked down at the child in its cradle, pink and defenceless. She did not answer. She folded her hands.

  “Then the Cardinal knows who you are.” She sighed. “You should never have gone back there.”