The Volcano Lover

by Susan Sontag

  * * *

  Baron Scarpia was an exceptionally passionate man. He understood much about human passions, particularly when they lead to wicked conduct. He understood how sexual pleasure is enhanced by debasing and humiliating the object of one’s desire; this is how he experienced pleasure. He understood how fear, fear of change, fear of what is or seems foreign, therefore threatening, is relieved by banding together with others to harass and injure those who are defenseless as well as different; this is what he saw happening around him. Passion for Scarpia was vehemence, aggression. What he could not understand is a passion that finds happiness in a retreat from vehemence, which makes one self-withdrawn. Like the passion of the collector.

  Numerous as were the converts that enlightened opinion had made among the upper classes, an even greater number were collectors, and collectors have a hard time accepting the consequences of revolutionary upheaval. Their holdings are an investment in the old regime, no matter how many volumes of Voltaire they have read. A revolution is not a good moment for collectors.

  To collect is by definition to collect the past—while to make a revolution is to condemn what is now called the past. And the past is very heavy, as well as large. If the collapse of the old order makes you decide to flee, it’s unlikely you can take everything with you—that was the Cavaliere’s plight. It’s unlikely you can protect it, if you have to stay.

  * * *

  This is one of the sights the baron saw.

  January 19, 1799. Three weeks after the flight from Naples, and something terrible was happening to one of the Cavaliere’s acquaintances and fellow collectors. This man, whose main interests were painting, mathematics, architecture, and geology, was one of the most erudite and studious inhabitants of the kingdom. And far from sharing the republican sympathies of some of the other cultivated aristocrats such as his brother, he was, like most collectors, of a conservative temperament; indeed, this collector was particularly averse to the novelties of the day. He had proposed to follow the King and the Queen to Palermo. But he had been refused permission. Stay in Naples, learned duke! And see how you like the rule of the godless French.

  Surely the approaching French soldiers could not be a greater threat than the pillaging mobs roaming the streets, thought the duke, who remained in his palace in order to deliberate, to make a plan, to announce a plan. At a family council which lasted late into the night of January 18th perhaps the duke, who was recovering from a severe catarrh, did not preside as forcefully as he might have. The crosswinds of peril fractured the usual hierarchies of utterance. The duke’s younger son shouted at his mother. The duke’s young daughter interrupted her father. The duchess angrily contradicted both her husband and her venerable mother-in-law. But the decision that was finally reached as to who among them was to be removed from danger, no, do not call it flight, reinstated the violated hierarchies. The duke and his two sons would retire, that is the word, retire for a while to the villa in Sorrento—leaving behind in the safety of the palace the duchess, their daughter, his aged mother, and the brother who had come out of prison mad.

  The duke was to leave the capital with his sons the next day, after a meeting of nobles in which he was expected to take part. To conserve his strength for the trip he sent his older son, who was nineteen, in his place. The young man sat politely through the many speeches of the nobles reaffirming their loyalty to the Bourbon monarchy in exile in Palermo, after which they agreed they had no other choice but to welcome the French, who would at least bring some order to the city; and at one o’clock he returned through the strangely deserted streets to make his report to his father. During the four hours he had been gone, he learned, his uncle tried to hang himself in the library but was cut down in time and had been put to bed. Three servants were stationed in the room to prevent another attempt.

  The son was sent to bring his uncle, still in his nightgown, to join the family for dinner. As they eased him into his chair, the major-domo brought the news that a mob had gathered at the entrance to the palace and was demanding to see the duke. Against the advice of his wife and mother, the duke, accompanied only by his secretary, went down to talk to them himself. Among the fifty or so bronze-faced people in the courtyard he recognized a flour merchant, his barber, a water seller on the Toledo, and the wheelwright who repaired his carriages. The flour merchant, who seemed to be the hubbub-master, declared that they had come to break up the banquet the duke was giving for his Jacobin friends. The duke smiled gravely. My dear visitors, you are mistaken. It is only I and my family who are at dinner, and it is no banquet.

  Again the flour merchant demanded entrance. Impossible, said the duke, and turned to go inside. A clanking volley of people wielding sticks and knives seized the duke, pushed past the servants, and rushed up the stairs. The family fled to a higher floor, except for the duke’s stuporous brother, who remained at the table crumbling a piece of bread in his hand. The two brothers were dragged down and out of the palace. Some men were sent to stand guard over the family, while the looting began.

  People went from room to room, pulling pictures off walls, opening chests and cupboards, emptying drawers and throwing their contents on the floor. Into the picture gallery, where most of the duke’s magnificent collection of paintings were hung; into his library, which housed myriad valuable papers and documents, the splendid hoard of rare books and priceless manuscripts accumulated one hundred and fifty years ago by an illustrious ancestor, a cardinal, and a great number of modern works; into his study, where his collection of minerals was arrayed in a row of glass-fronted cabinets; into the duke’s chemical laboratories, where dozens of mechanical instruments were kept; into his watchmaking studio, where the duke, who had been instructed in the watchmaker’s art, enjoyed relaxing from his learned pursuits. The windows on the upper floors were flung open and down came paintings, statues, books, papers, implements, and instruments into the courtyard. Meanwhile, people were carrying downstairs all the rich furniture and plate and linen, and leaving the palace. Gradually the doors, windows, balcony railings, beams, and banisters were stripped and carted away.

  A few hours and many bribes later, the duke’s family was allowed to leave the palace, after being searched to make sure that they had not pocketed any of their possessions. Their pleas to be allowed to take the duke and his brother with them were met with jeers. At least allow my son who is ill to come with us, cried the old duchess. No. At least allow me to say goodbye to my father, cried the duke’s young daughter. No. Are you not yourselves husbands, fathers, sons? cried the duke’s wife. Have you no pity? Yes to the first. To the second: No.

  The weeping family was led out a back entrance and shoved into the street.

  Throughout this time the duke and his brother, shivering in his nightgown, had been kept under guard in the stable. When the bonfire was lit, they were brought out into the courtyard and roped to chairs so they could watch.

  All afternoon the burning went on. The Raphael, the Titian, the Correggio, the Giorgione, the Guercino, and all the other sixty-four pictures … into the fire. And the books, works of history, travel, and science, and on arts and manufactures; the complete Vico and Voltaire and d’Alembert … into the fire. Into the soaring bonfire, what does not burn: his collection of Vesuvian rocks—taken from fire, returned to fire. The delicate watches, the pendulums, the compasses, the telescopes with platinum mirrors, the microscopes, the chronometers, barometers, thermometers, odometers, graphometers, echometers, hydrometers, vinometers, pyrometers … broken, melting. The light darkened. The fire went on burning. Night fell. The stars came out. And the burning burned. The brother cried for a while and begged to be untied and then fell asleep. The duke watched, his eyes stinging. He coughed convulsively, he said nothing. When there was no more to hurl in the flames, members of the mob gathered near the chairs to shout insults at them. Jacobins. French-lovers. Then several men took courage and laid hands first on the duke, pulling off his stockings and shoes, then severing the rope t
hat tied his arms behind his back so they could take his silk coat, waistcoat, cravat, and linen shirt. The duke writhed as they pulled off his clothes, not to oppose what was being done to him but rather to make it easier for them, so he could more quickly resume his stiff posture of uncomplaining rectitude, the sole reproach he deemed consonant with his dignity. Torso bared, he lifted his head again. Still he kept silent.

  More courage, more cruelty. A barrel of tar, which stood in a corner of the courtyard, had been rolled near the fire. A few men dipped wooden bowls into the barrel and threw the scorching tar on the brother, who woke up with a cry and then flung his head back as if he had been shot. Then someone shot him. They untied the body and heaved it onto the bonfire. The duke screamed.

  * * *

  At the entrance to the courtyard someone was watching the scene: a man in a black cloak and handsome powdered wig flanked by several municipal soldiers in uniform. Those in the crowd who became aware of him, even if they did not recognize him, regarded him with fear.

  The man in black was staring fixedly at the duke, not at his face but at the pale, heavy abdomen swelling and contracting with his sobs. His feet were red—he had been shot in both legs—but he still kept himself upright in the chair, his arms again tied behind his back.

  Neither the man in black nor his guards moved to intervene. But the duke’s tormentors had paused. Though they seemed to know he would not stop them, they were not sure they could go on. Everyone was afraid of the man in black—except for the barber, who was one of his informants.

  The barber stepped forward, his razor in hand, and sliced off the duke’s ears. As they fell from his head, an apron of blood appeared on the lower part of his face. The crowd yelled, the bonfire trembled, and the man in black hummed with satisfaction and left, so the drama could go on to its end.

  * * *

  You saw when I left, said Scarpia the next day in a tavern by the harbor to a member of the mob in his employ. What happened then? Was he still alive?

  Yes, said the man. Yes, that’s what I’m saying. He was crying and the blood was running down from his face and head.

  Still alive?

  Yes, my lord. But you know how, when sweat runs down your chest—

  (The man was a sedan-chair carrier, an occupation that would make him particularly familiar with the vagaries of sweat.)

  —you know, when sweat runs down your chest, and sometimes it collects in the center—

  (The immaculately garbed baron didn’t know; but go on …)

  —you know how, well, the blood was collecting in the center, and he was trying to make it run down.

  The sedan-chair carrier stopped his narrative to mime the action, lowering his chin on his chest and blowing through pursed lips toward an imaginary spot above his larded waist.

  Blowing, he said. You know. He just kept blowing. Blowing air. That’s all he did. To make the blood run down. Then one of our fellows thought he was trying a magic spell, blowing on himself to make himself disappear, and shot him again.

  And was he dead then?

  Nearly dead. He’d lost so much blood.

  Still alive?

  Yes. Yes. Then more of our people came up and went at him with their knives. Someone slashed at the front of his breeches and cut off … you know, and held them up to the crowd. And then we dumped the body in the tar barrel and threw it on the fire.

  * * *

  When news of these heinous events reached Palermo, the Cavaliere shuddered and fell silent. He had liked the duke, and admired his collections. Much of what had been destroyed was irreplaceable. Besides the paintings, in the duke’s library there were several unpublished works by the prolific Athanasius Kircher. And, the Cavaliere recalled, the manuscript—he feared it might have been the only copy—of his friend Piranesi’s autobiography. What a loss. The Cavaliere grimaced. What a terrible loss.

  The Cavaliere’s wife and the hero talked of little else for days. They saw in the fate of the duke and his brother the propensity of all undisciplined crowds to relapse into savagery, and the need to protect the sanctity of property, the property of the privileged. These were of course also the Cavaliere’s convictions, but he held them less volubly, with less indignation. Although a collection is far more than just a special, particularly vulnerable form of property-holding, the collector’s rue is difficult to share, except with other collectors. And to the vulnerability of the state and of the flesh, the Cavaliere had become almost resigned.

  The Queen was neither indignant nor rueful. When she read the long description by her most trusted agent left behind in Naples of the gory fate of the duke and his brother and of other nobles at the hands of the mob, the Queen had been taking tea with her most trusted agent here in Palermo. After finishing Scarpia’s letter, she passed it to the Cavaliere’s wife. Je crois que le peuple avait grandement raison, said the Queen.

  Even the Cavaliere’s wife flinched.

  The Cavaliere’s wife did not like Scarpia. Nobody liked Scarpia. But she tried, as she always did, to see matters from the Queen’s point of view. The Queen had explained to her dear friend that she did not trust Prince Pignatelli, the regent they had appointed before leaving—and, as she was soon able to point out, she was right, for Pignatelli abandoned the city a few weeks later. Neither did the Queen trust that Calabrian, Cardinal Ruffo, who was preparing to return in secrecy to lead the resistance against the French. But she did trust Baron Scarpia, she told the Cavaliere’s wife.

  Vouz verrez, ma chère Miledy. Notre Scarpia restera fidèle.

  * * *

  In the days following the murder of the duke and his brother, mobs continued to sack and pillage the aristocrats’ properties, and the patriots, as they called themselves, took refuge in the sea-fort of Ovo, from whose battlements at night they could see the fires of the French encampments outside the city. When General Championnet’s army entered Naples, Scarpia went into hiding. Of the three days of murderous combat between the populace and the French soldiers, and the moment when the tricolor was hoisted over the royal palace and the revolutionaries emerged from the fortress, he could not give an eyewitness account to the Queen.

  His hiding place, in the chambers of a bishop who was one of his informers, was a secure one. But, of course, no hiding place is entirely secure; he would have known how to track himself down (the right bribes, the right application of torture). He knew the revolutionaries must be looking for him. Wasn’t he responsible for the deaths of some of the premature conspirators? Hadn’t he persecuted many of those now leading the republic? Jurists, scholars, defrocked priests, professors of mathematics and chemistry—the twenty-five men appointed by the French general to serve as a provisional government were like a roll call of the kind of cosmopolites and subversives Scarpia had been putting in jail whenever he had a pretext. But apparently they didn’t know how to find him. Unstimulated by fear, Scarpia felt the acrid essence of himself each day more diluted by the bishop’s tiresome I-always-knew and But-never-did-I-expect and, not least, by this unaccustomed stint of celibacy. The first time he ventured out, to get a woman, he was sure he was recognized. The second time, to exhibit himself watching the curious crowd watching a large pine tree being planted in front of the ex-royal palace, he was not so sure. He spent a few more days with the bishop and then went home, wrote a long report to the Queen, and waited to be arrested. And waited. His enemies, it seemed, were too high-minded for anything like revenge.

  Now he was biding his time while these protégés of self-styled enlightenment put on their ridiculous floppy red Phrygian caps and addressed each other as Citizen and made speeches and took down royal emblems and planted their Tree of Liberty in squares throughout the city and went into committee to write a constitution modeled on that of the French republic. They were dreamers, all of them. They would see. He would have his revenge.

  You can always count on the gullibility of the benevolent. They go along, marching ahead, thinking they have the people behind them, a
nd then they turn around and … nobody there. The mob has peeled off, looking for food or wine or sex or a nap or a good brawl. The mob is unwilling to be high-minded. A mob wants to fight or to disperse. The Jacobin lords and ladies with their sentimental ideas of justice and liberty—they thought they were giving the people what they wanted, or what was good for them. Which, in their sonorous naïveté, they believed to be the same thing. No, the lash, and punctual displays of pomp glorifying state and ecclesiastical power, that’s what the people want. Of course, these professors and liberal aristocrats thought they understood the people’s need for pageantry, and were planning a festival celebrating the Goddess of Reason. Reason! What kind of spectacle is that! Did they really expect the people to love reason—no, Reason—as they loved the King? Did they really expect the people to take to the new calendar that had been decreed, with Italianized versions of the names of the French revolutionary calendar?