‘Why, William, your cheek is glowing from your ride.’ He did not care to say that on the contrary it was her cheek that was sweating and that a comprehensive aroma of wine, garlic and something else that he did not care to name filled his senses with such a potency that it was as though he had recovered his sense of smell after long deprivation of it. In fact, he had to admit that after walking up a further flight of steps to the Count’s draughty salon he felt decidedly weak at the knees and was glad to sit down in one of the worm-eaten walnut chairs that were more or less all there was in the room except for a ragged tapestry flapping between the windows depicting a subject that was impossible to identify.
The Count was a low, rat-faced fellow, a striking exception to the claim he lost no time in pronouncing that the gentlemen of Lombardy were the most handsome in Italy. By contrast he entertained no such illusions about the state of his seat. ‘This castle very bad,’ he said. ‘All good things, pictures, silver, all gone – my uncle take them. Then I marry American girl, I hope I am in Paradiso, ha ha.’ He rammed home the jest by prodding William in the ribs with his clenched fists. ‘But is hell. I expect the millione, I get the zero.’ He made a zero with his thumb and forefinger and squinted through it.
‘I am afraid that we have proved something of a disappointment to the Count,’ said Mr Paradise with his charming smile.
‘Nonsense, my dear. Mr Staphorst and Mr Anderson explained the whole matter of Lucy Two’s portion. If the Count did not take it in, then he has only himself to blame. In any case he did not think fit to inform us that three-quarters of his estate was mortgaged.’
The wrangle warmed up. Wm gained the impression that it was liable to break out at regular intervals and that the actors knew their parts pretty well. He himself found it hard to concentrate, his head seemed to be floating off his shoulders and he had such an ache …
‘Why, William, you are sick,’ said Lucy Paradise, ‘we must get him to bed this instant.’
It was a high fever, Mrs Paradise declared she had never seen a higher. The Count’s view, instantly relayed to the patient, was that William was certain to die and that it was mala fortuna if a stranger died beneath one’s battlements. Lucy pooh-poohed this, though she herself wrote to the Hôtel de Langeac to say that she was greatly afraid that Mr Short’s constitution was not so strong as he himself thought it and that the physician had told her and Mr P that he believed that Mr Short was ‘in a slow consumption’, those had been his very words.
This greatly alarmed Mr Jefferson at first but then he reflected that he had never known Lucy Paradise to give an accurate report of anything. And it was not long before he had a letter from Wm himself saying that he was on the mend and fretting to be off to Milan with Johnny Rutledge rather than remain under the care of the Paradises more or less in perpetuity, as Lucy advised.
At the height of his fever Wm did think that he might well be dying. If so, he reflected, why could he not have some more uplifting accompaniment – monks chanting for the repose of his soul, perhaps – rather than the noise of the Paradises and the Barzizas quarrelling, all four of them fortissimo since Lucy Two was fully a match for her mother and the Count managed to provoke Mr Paradise out of his amiable torpor?
‘Not a penny, not one penny do I receive. You stay here all these month and I meet you all the great nobiltà of Bergamo and you no soldi.’
‘Now listen here, Count, it has been three weeks now and I haven’t seen my Lucy wear her jewels once. It’s my belief that you have pawned the lot. Where is that lovely diamond corsage that Aunt Hetty Ludwell gave her when she could have left it to her Skipwith cousins?’
‘You dare speak of diamonds. The Barziza diamonds—’
The next day Wm felt better, very weak still, but clearer in the head and the terrible aching was gone. His recovery was not greatly assisted by a bedside visit from the Count. ‘You not die, I am certo. I pray to Santa Ursula, she our padrona. When you are better we go to Venezia. Just boys.’
‘What?’
‘You, me, Paradiso and your friend Johnny. No ladies. We have good time.’ Once again the thumb and index finger formed a circle. This time, though, he plunged his other index finger in and out of the ‘O’.
‘Oh, I see. Do you think Mrs Paradise will approve?’
Mrs Paradise did not approve. ‘I declare this to be the vilest and most disgusting scheme that ever I heard of. To prance off whoring after women in the backstreets of that insanitary plague pit, well, I know Mr Paradise to be capable of anything and I would not be in the least surprised one of these fine days to find his corpse floating down some dirty canal, but I had thought better of you, William Short. I shall be charitable because I am a charitable person and assume that it is because of your mortal illness that you have been led astray by my son-in-law who has no more morals than an Arkansas polecat. If you had been in your right mind, you would not have consented to abandon us poor womenfolk with a baby teething and hare off after your own selfish pleasures.’
‘My dear,’ said Mr Paradise who had barely come into Wm’s sickroom but remained hovering at the door, prepared for a swift exit, ‘we had in mind merely to show William the beauties of the place, the Grand Canal and—’ The carafe of water that had been on the bedside table smashed against the door with Mr Paradise safely on the other side of it. However, he was still skulking on the landing, perhaps to regain his breath, and Mrs Paradise ran out and dragged him back by the lapels. He stood there mute and unresisting while she pummelled him with her fierce little fists. ‘You are not to go, do you hear me, you shall not go. You are a monster of selfishness. You. Shall. Not. Go.’
She was hitting him so hard it was a miracle he had any breath left in his body. William thought he ought to intervene if he was not to stand accused of being accessory to murder and he clambered gingerly out of bed and attempted to pinion the termagant. But Lucy whirled round and now began drumming on his chest with equal ferocity. Through his thin nightshirt each blow stung like the devil. It seemed as though the punishment would never end. Then abruptly she stopped.
‘Get back to bed, you stupid boy. John, go and tell the Count this instant that you have not the smallest intention of going anywhere without your wife and he must say the same.’
‘Yes, my dear heart, of course. I should have consulted you, I know I ought.’ The Paradises withdrew.
In the beautiful quiet that succeeded their exeunt Wm quickly came to three conclusions: that he would never again travel anywhere with John and Lucy Paradise even if they paid him (a most unlikely contingency), that the sooner he left the Castello Barziza the better, and that he and Johnny Rutledge might pass a tolerably jolly time in Venice somewhat along the lines suggested by the Count. He was pondering how these excellent plans might be executed when Mrs Paradise came raging back into the room, bright red in the face, the strings of her bonnet flying like streamers behind her.
‘You are a lying hypocrite, William Short. I had painted you as the innocent of the party but now the Count tells me that you were the author of it all along. I shall never believe another word you say.’
‘I promise you, Lucy, I said only how agreeable it would be to make an excursion to Venice and the Count kindly offered to put us up at his palace.’
‘Palace,’ she snorted. ‘I am sure that it is no better than a fleabitten hovel to judge by what we have had to endure here. You shall not escape scot-free. I shall make sure that Mr Jefferson hears every particular of this shameful episode. When we return to Paris I shall paint everybody in their true colours, see if I do not. I can assure you that Mr Jefferson, that dear good man, will never again be so deceived in his secretary – secretary forsooth, whoremonger would be the mot juste I fancy.’
As it transpired, this return to Paris was to occur sooner than anyone thought. For while the trip to Venice was still being fought over, flattened, then resurrected with ladies included, there arrived letters from Mr Anderson, one of their bankers in London.
/> ‘No more soldi, they have not a penny left, zero,’ ejaculated the Count, half furious, half triumphant. Again the thumb and forefinger circled, this time without any intrusion from the other forefinger. ‘They must go back to Parigi.’ And go they did, floated thither only via a loan of eighty pounds sterling, extracted from the unwilling Count who was reconciled to unbelting this tidy sum only by the thought that he would not have to see his parents-in-law for a long time, perhaps with luck never again.
William, restored to something close to health, set off with J. Rutledge. They ambled through the vines and mulberry trees round the shores of Lake Garda, then on to Verona and Padua whence they took a delightful creaky old barge down the River Brenta. In Vicenza, so he wrote Mr Jefferson, he had been tempted to buy Scamozzi’s edition of Palladio in four fine folios, for he found he had got a thirst for classical architecture. There was a villa by Pisarro between some cypress trees halfway down the Brenta that had bowled him over, and he had formed the fancy of buying it and retiring there to grow wine and make silk. Johnny Rutledge wrote Mr Jefferson too, about the virtues of the olive tree, and later the beauties of the Tarpeian Rock and other estimable subjects.
Back in Paris enduring the coldest winter in living memory, and to tell the truth a little starved of company, Mr Jefferson thought of his boys with pride and pleasure. He wrote his protégé a long and thoughtful letter of advice. William could not hope to secure a permanent diplomatic post if he stayed in Europe because America handed out such offices on the knowledge of persons and not by the recommendation of others. Even the best appointments offered no chance of saving money, TJ assured his secretary from bitter experience, and afforded but a bare existence and a solitary one too, for a married man could not live on them.
A young man indeed may do without marriage in a great city. In the beginning it is pleasant enough; but take what course he will whether that of rambling, or of a fixed attachment, he will become miserable as he advances in years. It is then too that he will want the amusement and comfort of children. To take a middle course and pass the first half of your life in Europe and the latter in America is still worse. The attachments and habits formed here in your youth would render the evening of life more miserable still in America than it would be here. The only resource, then, for a durable happiness is to return to America … I think you will never wish to return to Europe. You will then be sensible that the happiness of your own country is more tranquil, more unmixed, more permanent.
Wm read these words with a tear brimming in his eye, not so much for the advice itself but for the feeling behind it. It was the thought of his master anxiously brooding on his future and taking such evident pleasure in his letters, seeing Italy through his eyes. Well, not seeing quite all of the Italy that he and Johnny were seeing.
‘I make that nineteen women we have had between us since we left Bergamo, amico mio.’
‘Are you counting that singer outside the Teatro Olimpico because …’
‘No, she was interrupta, I don’t score any but the full article. And believe me, she was no singer.’
Back in South Carolina Johnny had been nicknamed Rutter. In normal circumstances he was an easygoing, tolerant fellow, a little dull and stolid perhaps, always ready to fall in with anyone’s plans, but when a woman under the age of sixty came within range he was a different person.
‘When my prick says go, I go, like the centurion.’
‘Centurion?’
‘Don’t they read you no Bible in Virginia? He says Go and I goeth.’
But Wm did not delude himself into thinking that it was Johnny who was leading him astray. He had his own urgencies pent up. Twice when he was with a woman during those delirious months, once in a calle behind the Arsenal and then in one of those curious little wooden shacks the far side of the Tiber, he had gone in so hard that she cried out, not from pleasure but from pain or fear. Was he making up for lost time or for lost contentment, or compensating for rejection? Certainly he had never thought of himself as violent. He surprised himself.
One morning in Naples, though: ‘Johnny, my prick is on fire.’
‘You’re a lucky man.’
‘No, it is the torture of the damned when I piss.’
‘You are merely sore, amico, you have overdone it. You must learn moderation like me.’
‘No, no, I am infected, I must find a doctor.’
‘These Neapolitan quacks are more likely to kill you. Just slaver some ointment over the offending article and forget about it.’
The doctor, however, pronounced the case to be a gonorrea indisputabile and dosed him with mercury, which was almost as agonising as the complaint itself. This diagnosis proved more reliable than the slow consumption detected by the Barzizas’ physician though no more welcome. Apart from the general debility and the local itching there was also the humiliation, not improved by Johnny’s disposition to treat the matter with elephantine levity.
See Naples and die, the saying went, and Wm determined to fulfil at least the first half of the agenda at the risk of completing the second. They made their way slowly through the crowded streets, their dusty boots skidding on the rotten fruit, their travel-stained coats showered with more mud from the ridiculously high wheels of the carriages of the local nobiltà in their gay costumes who rattled past with a hoity-toity disregard for the ragged and noisy Neapolitans who filled the side gutters. In the foothills beyond the city the young Americans stumbled through almond orchards just coming into blossom and finally reached the last licks of the lava from the mountain and journeyed on through the sulphurous rocks and pools of the Phlegrean Fields. Everywhere they encountered the smell of decay and the unsightly scabs and eruptions of the earth, not to mention the no less unsightly scabs and eruptions in Wm’s own groin. He felt like some strange creature of the underworld spewed up by these volcanic belches. Yet as they peered over the crater of Vesuvius and reeled back from the clouds of ash and pumice stone that were thrown in their faces, he was surprised by an unexpected sensation of cheerfulness.
The truth was that he had begun to weary of all this soulless fucking. The whole deceitful ritual sickened him: the false flirtation in the foyer, the stilted badinage, the chink of coin if required, then the rattling on the bedstead, the smell of bad fish and the quick throb of release – he had had enough of it all. Even before he got the clap he had tried to say something of this to the Rutter, who remained magnificently impervious: ‘Had enough, amico? All the more for me then.’
In the Corso Wm bought an iron macaroni mould and a treatise on the manufacture of silk, both items earnestly desired by Mr Jefferson. Then he walked down to Monsieur Grand’s agents, Donat, Orsi et fils, at their offices by the quay. Funds were running low. He had already spent nearly all the £700 he had allowed for the whole tour. Mr Jefferson’s letter of credit was looking decidedly dog-eared.
The walk took him quite some while. He had to proceed in a crablike fashion with knees wide apart to stop his sores rubbing. Child beggars, some looking no more than six or seven years old, imitated his gait and tugged at his sleeve. One exposed his tiny genitals with a lewd gesture. Wm wondered what the urchin would do if he retaliated. Not much probably. He would have seen chancres and pustules like that every day of his life. The poverty and squalor in this city were really not picturesque at all.
There were two letters waiting for him at the bankers’, one inside the other’s envelope. When he had successfully obtained the money – Mr Jefferson’s name had come up trumps once more – he rushed outside and stood on the pavement with the macaroni mould under his arm and tore open the smaller envelope first.
You are quite right, as you always are. It is my own fault. I implore you to forget me and you do me the kindness of doing so. What else did I expect? Yet this silence is too cold and painful to bear with so many hundreds of miles separating us. I know that it shows how weak is my nature but I would greatly value a few words from your hand if only to show that you bear me no ill
will and that you still feel at least some small portion of that affection that I have felt for you and shall always feel. We must be friends, do you not see that? I am sure you do, for otherwise there would be a false ending to a chapter that had nothing false in it.
I heard that you were ill, even gravely ill. They did not mean me to hear it, at least I think they did not. But I overheard Mr Jefferson saying to Madame de Tessé that it was feared you might have contracted a slow consumption but that he personally believed it to be no more than a fever caught in crossing the Alps at that season. Mr Jefferson did not think to inform me directly of all this, which naturally I took badly, although I know he has only your best interests at heart. But when he next came to the rue de Seine, I was bold to presume on my prerogative as hostess and enquire of him how you did and he said you were quite well again to his great relief. I am not sure which of us blushed the more deeply. But after that I knew I had to hear from you directly or I would contract a fever myself. So I beg you to forgive this letter or if you cannot forgive it at least respond to it and let me know that you are as well as Mr Jefferson says you are. You cannot imagine the happiness that just a few lines in your hand would give your devoted R.
Good old Vendôme has volunteered to put my letter in with Mr Jefferson’s for I had not your address but nobody must know of this.
Wm let the macaroni mould slip from under his arm. It clattered into the gutter from where it was retrieved by an alert urchin who immediately demanded soldi for his services. In his delight Wm gave him what must have been the equivalent of a week’s wages.
The other letter, Mr Jefferson’s, brought news from both continents. In America the elections had been held, the opposition to the constitution was growing feebler by the day, the new government would be beginning on Wednesday next, Mr Adams was generally expected to be the Vice-President. In France there had been a fray in Brittany. Only a few dead and things there were now quiet. The States-General were likely to meet under happy auspices. Great numbers of American vessels were now arriving in the ports of France with flour and wheat to remedy the famine caused by the terrible failure of the harvest. Altogether, in fact, things were going along pretty well and no evil was to be apprehended.
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