The Volcano Lover

by Susan Sontag

  In the Cavaliere’s day, the significant moment for the depiction of an intolerable situation was before the full horror had reached its apex, when we can still find something edifying in the spectacle. Perhaps what lies behind this curious theory of the significant moment, and its prejudice in favor of moments that are not too upsetting, is a new anxiety about how to react to or represent deep pain. Or deep injustice. A fear of minding too much—of unappeasable feelings, feelings that would cause an irreparable rupture of protest with the established social order.

  You can look at the most appalling things in art. Even a Laocoön more to our modern taste, with our identification of truth with painful feelings, would happily still be only marble. The coils of the two serpents cannot tighten any further around the Trojan priest and his children. Their agony is forever fixed at this moment. Whatever art shows, it is not going to get any worse. The flute-playing satyr Marsyas, who had had the temerity to challenge Apollo himself to a contest in music, is just about to be flayed. The knives are out; the goofy look, readying himself for (or not fully taking in) his coming martyrdom, is in place around the eyes and mouth; but his tormentors haven’t started yet … to cut. Not even one tiny morsel of flesh. His monstrous punishment is forever only seconds away.

  * * *

  What people admired then was an art (whose model was the classical one) that minimized the pain of pain. It showed people able to maintain decorum and composure, even in monumental suffering.

  We admire, in the name of truthfulness, an art that exhibits the maximum amount of trauma, violence, physical indignity. (The question is: Do we feel it?) For us, the significant moment is the one that disturbs us most.

  * * *

  There are many kinds of quiet, of calm.

  The defiant hero to Lord Keith: I have the honor to tell you that no capital is more quiet than Naples.

  And then there is the calm inside the Cavaliere’s heart.

  The Cavaliere says to himself: Be calm, be calm. You cannot help. It is out of your hands. You no longer have power. You never had real power.

  Seeing from afar. We are here, they are there.

  It is June, July, then August—high summer. In the interior of the Foudroyant, whose floors as in all British warships are painted red to mask the blood shed in casualties, there was little light by day; and nothing to dry out the dampness between decks, where, year round, fires are never allowed except in the galley. At night, and even with the portholes open, the sleeping cabins are stifling. The lovers sweat in each other’s embrace, and the Cavaliere shifts restlessly in his bed, eventually managing to block out the pain in his rheumatic knees, the food smells real or imaginary from the galley several decks below, the relentless cracking of floors and oozy walls produced by the gentle roll of the ship.

  It would have been much more comfortable for them to have taken up residence in the conquered city. One of the sacked palaces could have been quickly fitted up for their comfort: either the former mansion of the British envoy or the gutted royal palace itself. But for the King and the trio there was no question of moving ashore. Naples has become untouchable, a heart of darkness.

  You might have thought that Naples belonged to the imperial center, to ever cherishable Europe, because it had a renowned opera house and glorious museums and brilliant humanitarian reformers and a monarch with the thick Hapsburg lower lip. But no, it had been abandoned by its rulers and redefined as a refractory colony, or a country on Europe’s margin—to be disciplined, mercilessly, as colonies and rebellious provinces are. (Scarpia says: Cruelty is one of the branches of sensibility. Stripping people of their liberty amuses me. I like holding captives.… But this is not Scarpia in action. This is not personal cruelty, this is politics.) Naples was to be dealt with as a colony. Naples became Ireland (or Greece, or Turkey, or Poland). For the sake of the civilized world, said the hero. They are doing the work of civilization—which always means: the work of empire. Unconditional submission! Lop off the rebellion’s head. Execute anyone who balks at this policy.

  Ruffo was never hanged. But the friend and physician of the Cavaliere and his wife, old Domenico Cirillo, was; and the celebrated jurist Mario Pagano, leader of the moderates; and the gentle poet Ignazio Ciaja; and so was Eleonora de Fonseca Pimentel, de facto minister of propaganda, two weeks after the trio set sail in August and returned to Palermo. And many, many others.

  If they were a mob, one would have said that the beast had had its fill of blood. Since they were individuals, claiming to be acting for the public good—My principle is to restore peace and happiness to mankind, wrote the hero—one says that they did not know what they were doing. Or that they were dupes. Or that they must have felt guilty after all.

  Eternal shame on the hero!

  * * *

  They stayed on board the Foudroyant six weeks. Six weeks is a long time.

  Strange seeing Naples day after day in reverse shot, from the sea—instead of as observed by the Cavaliere for so many years from his windows and terraces, looking out into the great view. With Capri and Ischia behind them now, and Vesuvius to the right rather than to the left, a ghostly grey cutout in sunset light, and the sea-forts and the palaces on the Chiaia goldenly vibrant, three-dimensional, taking the light off the sea.

  And strange, too, seeing the hero in reverse. From another view, the view of history, the judgment that posterity—along with many of his contemporaries—was to pass on the hero and his companions. The hero not chivalrous, high-minded, but vindictive, self-righteous; even if a dupe, proving himself capable of hardening his heart against the most obvious claims of mercy. The Cavaliere not benevolent, detached, but spiritless, passive. The Cavaliere’s wife not merely exuberant and vulgar, but cunning, cruel, bloodthirsty. All three giving themselves over to a terrible crime.

  A new face for each of them. But of the three, the one thought most culpable was the Cavaliere’s wife.

  They were a family—a family doing wrong. And family was the model of rule, mostly misrule, that was being challenged by revolution. One consequence of the old model, in which eligibility for rulership was conferred by being born into a ruling family, was that women, a few women, had a visible and very real share in power. Occasionally monarchs themselves, often advisers to the monarch, who was a son, husband, brother—whatever the degree of their subjection, women cannot be entirely banished from family life. (The new model of rule, which revoked whatever legitimate claim women had to governance, was the assembly—composed only of men, since it derived its legitimacy from a hypothetical contract among equals. Women, defined as neither fully rational nor free, could not be a party to this contract.)

  They were a family—a family that had gone wrong, in which the influence of a woman had become predominant. Part of the scandal of their misdeeds was that a woman played so visible a role in them. It became another household drama of the old regime, featuring a powerful woman—that is, a woman exercising inappropriate power—who, having ventured out of the sphere appropriate to women (children, domestic duties, some talented dabbling in the arts), had become power-hungry, depraved, and through her sexual wiles had enslaved a weak male and corrupted a righteous one.

  * * *

  Stories were told, and invented, about the Cavaliere’s wife to illustrate the new reputation she acquired for vengefulness and heartlessness.

  For instance, the persecution of the liberal aristocrat Angelotti, whom Scarpia had picked up for possession of forbidden books, was remade into a story about the implacable pursuit by the Cavaliere’s wife of a man who years before had mortally offended her by referring in public to her sordid past.

  It was in 1794, the year of the Terror, when Scarpia had received his commission from the Queen to round up republican conspirators and fellow travelers of the French Revolution. During a grand party at the British envoy’s mansion, his wife was going on in her usual clamorous way about the dear, dear Queen, the horrors of the French, the infamy of the revolution, and the perfid
y of certain aristocrats who dared sympathize with the murderers of order, decency, and the Queen’s sister. These traitors, she said, no mercy should be shown them.

  Although the Marchese Angelotti, who was one of the guests, could not have felt it was he who was being singled out for attack, since at that time he was not yet an anti-monarchist, he decided to take her remarks personally. Perhaps he was simply put off by her vulgarity and aggressiveness, as more and more people were now. Or perhaps he didn’t like a woman talking so much. Whatever the reason, the story goes that he was so incensed by her ferocious tirade against the republicans that he clapped his hands and raised his glass. I wish to toast our hostess, he cried, and to acknowledge the pleasure I have in seeing her in such good spirits and occupying so exalted a station, so different from the one in which I first encountered her.

  Whispers around the table. All eyes turned to the Marchese.

  Where was that, you may well ask, he shouted.

  Avid silence.

  In London, he continued loudly. At Vauxhall Gardens, some dozen years ago. Yes, I suppose I may claim the honor of having known the Cavaliere’s wife longer than anyone else at this table, including His Excellency, her husband.

  The Cavaliere cleared his throat. He alone continued to eat.

  Yes, continued the Marchese, I was walking with two friends, the Count del *** from here and an English friend of ours, Sir ***, when I was accosted by one of those creatures who roam the public gardens in the evening looking for a meal and willing to pay for it. This one was no more than seventeen, and irresistible, from her bonnet to her pale stockings, and she had the most beautiful blue eyes. I suppose we Neapolitans are always enthralled by blue eyes. I took leave of my friends and must have found the company of this delightful creature even more agreeable than I expected, though being a foreigner I could not understand everything she said in her charming country accent. She loved to talk, but fortunately that was not the only thing she loved to do. Our liaison lasted eight days. She could not, I think, have been too long in her profession, for she still had a flavor of country innocence, which often adds a certain piquancy to what might be considered one of the more facile pleasures of a great city. As I said, our liaison lasted eight days, leaving me with recollections no more intense than the encounter deserved. Imagine my delight after so many years, on meeting her again, to see her quite transformed, transposed to another life, and set down among us here to be the ornament of our local musical society, the delight of the distinguished British ambassador, and the dear friend of our Queen—

  It is told that the Queen ordered Angelotti’s arrest a few days later at the Cavaliere’s wife’s request, and the Marchese was promptly sentenced to three years in the galleys, where he converted from the cause of constitutional monarchy to republicanism. Of course, the tellers of tales could as well have said that he was arrested at the request of the Cavaliere, so infatuated was the old man with his wife. But the blame always fell on the Cavaliere’s wife. After it was all over, it was said that the hero would never have done what he did had he not been under the influence of the woman with whom he was so abjectly in love, who was the closest friend of the Neapolitan Queen. On his own, it was thought, the British admiral would never have consented to become the Bourbon executioner.

  Not only were the men in the story seen as a woman’s dupe, but so were the women. After it was all over, and their actions were the scandal of Europe, some said that it was the Cavaliere’s vicious wife who had influenced the excitable Queen and persuaded her to order the judicial murder of the Neapolitan patriots—though others insisted it was the vicious Queen who had made a pawn of her doting, credulous friend. Either way, the Queen herself was to be more censured than the King. One of despotic Maria Theresa’s hellish brood, didn’t she have complete mastery over her ignorant, passive husband? (On his own, it was thought, the King would never have authorized such cruelties.) The woman can be blamed for being at the scene of the crime, even if it is only to cheer the men on. And also blamed when, being less than all-powerful, she is absent. For when it had been decided that a royal presence in the Bay of Naples was needed to confer full legitimacy on the restoration’s sanguinary course, the Queen had wanted, wanted very much, to accompany her husband, to join her friends on the Foudroyant. But the King, who longed for a vacation from his overbearing wife, had ordered her to remain in Palermo.

  Letting the woman, or women, in the story take the rap is a resourceful way of occluding the full coherence as politics of what was decreed from the hero’s flagship. (This is often part of misogyny’s usefulness.) Accounts of the Queen invariably reflected the perennial disparagement of women rulers and dominant female consorts—objects of mockery and condescension (for being unbecomingly virile) or of double-standard calumnies (for being frivolous or sexually insatiable). But the Queen’s role did fit a familiar mold—governance by a household—and she had the right credentials. The participation of the Cavaliere’s wife in the White Terror that followed the suppression of the Neapolitan Republic seemed entirely gratuitous and far more reprehensible. Who was this social upstart, this drunk, this femme fatale, this posturing, exuberant, overdressed … actress? A soubrette who has insinuated herself in the heart of a public drama but then goes off on her own tangent—is she not a woman? therefore, not fully responsible?—whenever she wants.

  * * *

  Probably it would have been regarded as yet another proof of her heartlessness were it known that the Cavaliere’s wife, she alone of the trio, did visit the martyred city during the six weeks the Foudroyant lay anchored in the bay. It could not be the hero, whose role required him to keep to his floating command post, the better to administer the sentence passed on the gleaming, despoiled city. Nor the Cavaliere, who whenever he went on deck could not help picking out in the amphitheatre of buildings and gardens above the port the mansion where he had lived for more than thirty-five years, over half his life; the prospect of going ashore, and succumbing to the temptation to inspect his ravaged and muck-strewn dwelling, filled him with anticipated grief. But one scorching July day, the Cavaliere’s wife went ashore for a few hours, laughing away the pleas of her husband and her lover, who were beside themselves with worry over this foolhardy adventure.

  But she will be in disguise, she told them gaily. Fatima, Julia, and Marianne, the three maids she had brought with her from Palermo, were sewing her costume as they spoke. At Palermo, hadn’t she frequently accompanied the hero on nocturnal rambles through the city, dressed in sailor’s clothes. For the excursion to Naples she will wear widow’s weeds, which will permit her to cover herself entirely.

  A carriage with attendants in the employ of the British met the small boat that brought the Cavaliere’s wife to a landing at a safe remove from the harbor’s swarm of beggars, vendors, whores, and foreign sailors. Nearby in a second carriage were four officers from the Foudroyant, dispatched by the anxious hero with instructions never to let her ladyship out of their sight and to guard her life with their own. They saw her stumble as she stepped from the boat, then totter while she paused to cover her face with a black silk shawl. Must have started early today. God almighty! I say, do you think we should help her? No, look, she’s recovered herself. Everyone knew that the admiral’s siren abused her wine. But they were mistaken. It was not the wine she had been sipping on the boat but the dizzying shock of firm ground under her feet, after nearly four weeks aboard the swaying ship.

  She told the driver her destination, was helped by the footmen into the carriage, and settled back in the harrowing heat to peer from behind the curtain at the strip of buildings, people, vehicles unwinding alongside her. The streets were as crowded as ever, but there seemed to be more than the usual number of women entirely swathed in black, as she is. She made a stop to acquire an enormous bouquet of jasmine and cameo pink roses.

  The Cavaliere’s wife uncovered her face and entered the cool cavernous church. It was between masses and very quiet, with a scattering of da
rk figures in prayer framed between the soaring columns. She dipped her fingers in the stoup, genuflected, and crossed herself, afterward kissing the tips of her fingers as people do here. Before penetrating farther into the church she hesitated, for she could not help expecting that she would be recognized, that people would rush toward her, as in the old days, and touch her dress and beg favors and alms from the second most powerful woman in the kingdom, the wife of the British envoy. When no one took notice of her, she was a little disappointed. A star, as opposed to an actress, always wants to be recognized.

  In the last year in Naples she had come on many afternoons to San Domenico Maggiore, pretending to study the inscriptions on the old tombs of the Neapolitan nobility; in fact, to watch people pray and imagine the comfort of some kind of benevolent protective presence, always on call. Now she wanted to protect someone else. The hero was in pain, many kinds of pain, not just in his arm and eye. He spoke of a tightening around his heart, and in the middle of the night when she lay beside him and he was already asleep, he groaned so piteously. She had begun to pray silently for his health—she had never prayed as a child, but it comforted her to pray in this foreign religion—and the Madonna often came into her mind. She became convinced, lying beside him, listening to the ship’s bell tolling the hours, that if she could visit this church again, and make an offering to this statue of the Madonna, her prayer would certainly be heard. She did not want protection for herself, she wanted it for the man she loved. She wanted to take his pain away.