The Volcano Lover

by Susan Sontag

  Though away at sea, the hero had instructed an agent to bid for two of the fifteen pictures of the Cavaliere’s wife. Go to any price. I must have them. And to the Cavaliere’s wife: I see you are for SALE. How can he, how can he part with pictures of you? When I think that anyone can buy them. How I wish I could buy them all! The one the hero would most like to have acquired was Vigée-Lebrun’s salacious Ariadne; but, unfortunately, it had never been in the Cavaliere’s collection.

  Two more days of sale in early May yielded another three thousand pounds. Then the Cavaliere made his will, the will he always thought he was going to make, and which he had no reason to change now. He felt himself lighter, relieved of a burden.

  * * *

  And what to wear at home, the home you have always wanted, a real home, which means a property in the country, a farm, with a stream running through it. Even when doing the honors of the table, a simple suit of black. And when pacing your property, looking at your livestock, supervising the pruning of trees, a crumpled hat and a striped brown overcoat thrown round your shoulders.

  The summer’s invasion scare had passed without Napoleon’s fleet making its expected appearance in the Channel. The hero had written yet one more letter to the Admiralty. I beg their lordships’ permission to go ashore, as I want repose. And he had asked the Cavaliere’s wife to look for a house where he can settle when he returns, as he expects, in October. She found a property with a two-story house in unspoiled Surrey countryside only an hour’s drive from Westminster Bridge. Against the advice of friends, who thought the century-old brick house and acreage too modest and, at nine thousand pounds, overpriced, the hero borrowed money to purchase it and requested the Cavaliere’s wife to ready it for his return. With her mother, she set about fitting up the house. It was to be beautiful, and needed to be plastered, painted, mirrored, furnished (neither a piano nor flags, trophies, pictures, and china celebrating the hero’s victories would be lacking). It was to be up-to-date: she installed five water closets and put modern stoves in the kitchens. And it was to be something of a farm, with sheepcotes, pigsties, and hen coops.

  I am as much amused with sheap & pigs & hens as ever I was in the court of Naples, she wrote the hero. I hope I do not bore you with these detayls.

  My dearest, the hero replied, I would rather read and hear you on the subject of pigs and hens, sheets and towels, saltcellars and ladles, carpenters and upholsterers, than any speech I shall hear in the House of Lords, for there is no subject which you do not enlighten with your wit and eloquence. I agree to African parrots on the veranda. Assure Fatima that I hope to be home in time for her christening. Please remember to instruct Mr. Morley to put some netting round the edges of the stream and on the bridge to prevent any possibility of our child’s falling in when she comes to live with us. You will have the kindness to remember that I do not want anything in the house but what is my own, and to tell me everything that you and Mrs. Cadogan are doing. You are speaking of our paradise. I do not know how I can bear our separation much longer. How the Conqueror longs to return and become again the Conquered.

  Since his wife and her mother were always at the house in Surrey once the hero returned, the Cavaliere had no choice but to live there too, although he still kept the house in London. They had not forgotten him. It was for him that the stream, which his wife had renamed the Nile, had been stocked with fish. But he had not been allowed to bring his books from the house in London or his French cook. His wife pointed out that he had the library and the servants at the hero’s house at his disposal. He could not explain why he needed the French cook. He was weary of giving things up.

  You give up this, and this, and this. And there is always more.

  The covering of the coach-box was stolen from his carriage while he stopped at an inn for refreshment after a day of fishing in the Wandle. The Cavaliere came out and immediately saw it gone, and the postilion dozing on his perch. Tears nibbled his eyes. On the drive back he could not stop thinking about it. He told his wife as soon as he returned and could get her attention. She said, Oh those are stolen all the time.

  The Cavaliere felt very foolish about minding so much the loss of the cloth on his carriage. Its value was insignificant. But it was not a question of money. Sometimes one becomes attached to things that are worth nothing at all. Sometimes, especially when one is old, it is such things to which one is most attached. The loss of a pen or a pin or a ribbon hurts, hurts unforgettably. He insisted on placing an advertisement for the stolen cloth.

  It’s a waste of money to advertise for it, his wife said. It isn’t like the diamond we lost in Dresden.

  “Lost off a Gentleman’s Coach Box, a Crimson Coffoy Hammer Cloth, trimm’d with white Silk Lace about it, embroidered with white and blue.”

  It will never be returned, said the Cavaliere’s wife.

  And, of course, it was not. He often dreamed of the cloth. He might have said that its loss affected him more than anything else with which he had recently parted.

  * * *

  To lie in bed, to give way to the counterforce of an immense fatigue, to float between dream and waking, to remember the past, to have nothing in your mind, to have everything in your mind, to see the faces bent over you, looking worried, there’s my wife, there’s her mother. Someone puts a wet cloth to his lips. What’s that strange raspy sound? Someone in the room is having trouble breathing.

  There are endless passages through which he must walk, until he realizes he no longer has the use of his legs. There are things he has left undone. It is spring and the window is open, there are voices. They ask him many questions. How are you, how do you feel, do you feel better? Surely they don’t expect him to answer. He hadn’t been able to say, though he meant to say, that he had to piss. He won’t tell them the sheet is wet. They might be angry. He wants them to stay as they are now, with their smiling, intent faces—her face, his face. They are holding his hands. How warm their hands are. They have taken him in their arms. He hears the crinkling of cloth. That is his wife on his left. He can feel her bosom. And that is his friend on the other side. He is in his friend’s left arm. He hopes he is not too heavy for them. There is a big hollow space inside his chest where the pain used to be.

  He has escaped the dungeon of thought. He feels elated. He is climbing. It is a laborious ascent. But now the mountain no longer has to be climbed. He has climbed. By a kind of levitation. He was looking up for so long, and now he can look down from this high place. It is a big panorama. So this is dying, thought the Cavaliere.

  6 April 1803

  Just because I have closed my eyes and am lying quite still they suppose I cannot hear what they are saying, though I hear perfectly well. But it is better thus, the chamber is so large, the curtains fluttering on the windows are afflicted with a nervous disorder, everything cannot be brought into one view. The light closes my eyes. Softly, someone said, it cannot last much longer. And I heard everything they said earlier while I slept, while I did not want to wake. Not yet. To awake is to be surprised. I have never cared much for surprises. Tolo and my wife are pressing against me. They have made peace since I became ill. In Naples Tolo comported himself with her like a surly retainer, looking down at the ground whenever she addressed him, but they have been conversing quietly, then pausing, like old friends, and just now I felt their heads lean toward each other over my breast and their lips touch. How odd that my faithful Neapolitan cyclops should be wearing a British naval uniform. Perhaps he has donned this costume to amuse me. He understands me very well. It would sometimes happen that I took fright, as when he drew me over the river of lava and my heart thundered in my breast, but I did not show it, it was not fitting that I show fear. He may suppose, mistakenly, that I am afraid or dejected now. He is very fearless, Tolo. He has won many battles. Everyone admires him. Though of obscure birth, he is now a Sicilian duke. The King would like to make him the thunder-cyclops who lurks inside Etna, but I am sure that Tolo still prefers our Vesuvius, as I do
. We cannot climb Etna together. There was no peerage for me. But allowing myself to be cast down by this provides no remedy, as there is nothing to be gained by agitating oneself when in the grip of fear. Better to hold very still. Thus giving the impression one is not afraid, which reassures the others, because it is necessary to set an example for others, and in this fashion becoming more tranquil oneself. En route to Palermo I trembled and shook with the shaking and trembling of the ship, and Tolo came to sit with me and hold my feet, as I wish he would do now because they are quite cold, I wish he would rub them. And foolish as it may seem to have taken up my pistols, what did I imagine I could do with them, execute the storm, I was able to sit quite calmly after that, when Tolo had to return to the deck, because he too had to set an example of calmness. I sat still and closed my eyes and the storm subsided. And I know if I lie here without moving I will not be frightened. They are speaking now. It cannot last much longer. Perhaps Tolo is fearless because he sees only half of what others see. Half-blind he won his greatest battles. And if I keep both eyes closed I will see no danger at all. Where true danger lies is altogether unpredictable. My friends here imagined me in constant peril from the volcano, and told me how displeased they would be to hear that I had perished in an eruption like Pliny the Elder, but they were wrong to fear for my safety. No calamity ever befell me, at least not on the volcano. The volcano was a haven. Naples itself was very salubrious. I felt so well. The air. I do not feel well now. And the sea. When I swam from my boat, the delicious sensation of the water supporting my limbs. I am glad they are holding me because my limbs are very heavy. I detect some impediment to my breathing. I would not be ill if I were still in Naples. The air was considerate to Catherine. If Pliny had not been fat and always short of breath, he would not have died when Vesuvius erupted. He did not divine, no one knew then, that it was a volcano. How surprised they must have been. When he took a ship to rescue some of the victims of the eruption, those who accompanied him did not perish. He alone succumbed to the volcano’s mephitic fumes. Perhaps the volcano was harmful to Catherine. I recall that she was very sorry to die and asked me to see to it that she not be buried. She was very tired. I believe she is resting now in her room. Many persons want to rest. After reaching the shore, Pliny felt tired and a sheet was spread on the ground for him to lie down for a brief rest, from which he never recovered. One cannot know when one is going to die, but one can take reasonable precautions. While avoiding unreasonable precautions. For, now I remember why, I was holding the pistols so as to shoot myself when I would feel the ship about to go down. I was more afraid of the water filling my throat, choking off the air, than of metal opening my head. I shall not panic again. How absurd if I had killed myself because I heard too loud a noise, because the vessel tipped too far to one side. A noise may subside, an oblique object may right itself. And then I would have died before I am supposed to die. Tolo’s mother said I would not die then in the storm, and she proved correct. She reassured me that I would live to the age I have now attained, which I cannot remember, though it will come to me in a moment. I do not care for predictions. Any number makes one’s life shorter than it ought to be. At twenty-two, yes, events of one’s youth are easier to recall, the month was September and the year 1752, when the calendar was changed, I saw a crowd following a sign inscribed GIVE US OUR ELEVEN DAYS, because the ignorant thought the eliminated days were being subtracted from their lives. But nothing is ever subtracted. And one will never convince the ignorant that they are ignorant, nor fools that they are fools. However, it is natural to wish to prolong one’s being, wretched though it may be. It cannot last much longer. In Naples aged persons are knocked down every day by the darting calashes with their insolent drivers crying to all and sundry to get out of the way. One of these, I saw it, was an old fellow, very old, very thin, the merest skeleton, a skeleton in rags, who would carry each foot to the ground not forward and obliquely but perpendicularly and with a kind of stamp, setting down the entire sole at once. This was not fearlessness but obstinacy. I would not want to walk if I could not remain vertical. But lying here, even if I no longer have the use of my arms and my legs but have only my reason and my sadness, I can still enjoy watching events unfold. Who would wish to have the curtain fall on the play before it is finished. Who said it cannot last much longer. Even if no story ever finishes, or rather one story turns into another, and that into another, &c &c &c, I would like to know when and how damned Bonaparte gets his comeuppance and, ah, someone has closed the window. I heard carriage wheels. I believe they are planning to take me on a journey. But at least I have lived to see the collusion with revolutionary infamy subside in England. Human nature is so perverse that it is absurd even to hope, much less to desire, that society can ever be translated to another, better plane. The most one can aspire to is a very slow uplifting. Nothing conical. For what rises too high will tumble down. It is difficult for anything to stand for very long. My body is leaving me. I wonder if I could stand now. I should be practicing standing if we are about to go on a journey. I would surprise them if I stood up with my cold heavy legs. Tolo will come when this little fellow in the admiral’s uniform goes away, and he will rub my legs. But I want my wife to stay. She need not always go with him. She can stay with me and sing to me. For her I would even open my eyes. She is being very kind now. Lately she has not been so kind to me as I would have wished. I trust she is not being kind because I am ill, for I intend to become tolerably well again. There are persons who become protective of something only when it is endangered or damaged or nearly gone. The ignorant laborers at Pompeii and Herculaneum had no thought of what they were sundering and burying with pick and shovel, until Winckelmann visited the excavations and denounced the utter lack of method and care with which they were being conducted, and a more cautious method was adopted. And then soon after he was murdered by a horrible young man, no Ganymede I was told but an ugly brute with pockmarks, whom my susceptible friend invited to his hotel room and had the imprudence to show some of the treasures he was conveying to Rome. I should have thought Winckelmann would fancy only youths with faces and bodies like the Greek statues whose beauties he extolled, but there is no single standard of taste despite all the eager legislators, and then if one is to be murdered, if such is one’s destiny, one cannot anticipate who the murderer will be. Never, not once, did I fear the flash of a knife while living for thirty-seven years among a violent and intemperate people. But in the safety of my bed, of my England, it cannot last much longer, night terrors are one of the infirmities I now have to bear, which I trust will pass when I have recovered, I wish I were not thinking about them now. My own mother advances toward me while opening her robe and making lewd signs. A circle of men and women sit feasting on dead bodies, softly smacking their lips and spitting out bits of white bone, like the pumice stone I have collected on the volcano. And a bloated man floating in the water and a pregnant woman dangling from a gibbet. In dreams I have been taken to be hanged, most disagreeable, even though I protested that I was unable to walk, in dreams a band of men with knives were closing about me while I lay helpless in bed. I often dream now that I am about to be murdered. Usually I can master myself when I awake, although these phantasms prolong themselves for some minutes into my waking state, but if necessary I pull on the bell rope and bring old Gaetano to sit by me until I fall back to sleep. And once, I believe it was the other evening, I heard myself cry out, most piteously I fear, and my wife and my cyclops entered the room and inquired if I was in pain. No, there is no pain, I replied. It was only a dream, but I am surprised how vivid it was. Let me not dwell on it. I prefer, I have always preferred, to dwell on what is pleasant, and fortunate, of which I have much to recall. First of all, my good health. In all the years in Naples I was hardly ever ill. An occasional disorder of the stomach, nothing more. My distinguished physician often remarked on my strong constitution and firm state of nerves. An excellent man, Cirillo. I enjoyed listening to him discourse on recent discover
ies in the science of living beings. I had only to maintain nature’s endowment, eschewing excessive drink and food, especially highly seasoned dishes, which turn the body’s fluids thick and viscous, sluggish and torpid, and narrow the channels through which they circulate. And to practice a moderate and continual stimulation of the animal functions by riding, swimming, climbing, and other forms of exercise. Bodily action invariably restored me to myself. And if when indoors I suffered from lowness of spirits, I had only to read or take up my violin or my cello and I was immediately cheerful again. I was not difficult to console. Nature made me even-tempered. Age has made me phlegmatic. Nothing disturbs me. I cannot be much of a bother to those who are caring for me now. If they would call Simon to shave me, my face would not feel so stiff. I was always fortunate. Beauty surrounded me. I surrounded myself with beauty. Each enthusiasm a new crater of an old volcano. To enter a shop or an auction room or a fellow collector’s sanctum, and be surprised. But not to show it. It could be mine. As one passion begins to fail it is necessary to form another, for the whole art of going through life tolerably is to keep oneself eager about anything. Although the King’s enthusiasms, billiards and fishing excepted, were conducted immoderately, and he himself was exceedingly repulsive in his person and altogether lacking in wit and discernment, I preferred his company to that of the intelligent Queen. Women are often discontented, I have observed. I think many of them are bored. I am never bored as long as I have an enthusiasm to share or observe. I have appreciated every enthusiasm except the religious ones, and while in Vienna I enjoyed fishing in the Danube. Catherine hoped that I would become a believer, but it is not my nature, which is sceptical. While I would hardly deny that illusions are necessary for human life to be supportable, the sour sad tales of Christianity hold no charm for me. I do not wish to be indignant. My mouth is very dry. The first principle of the science of felicity is not to succumb to indignation or self-pity. Or water. I would like some water. They do not hear me. The pressure of a hand. But the affections stray. A Venus cannot remain faithful. And I am not Mars. But I refused all opportunities to avenge myself. I did not sell my Venus. Faithful in spite of myself, for I did try to sell her. But I never loved a painting quite as much as my Correggio. I am surprised that Charles is not in the room, it is not kind, for I did not forget to make him my heir. I know he is despondent because I do not have more money. Charles is not as happy as he expected to be. There was no Venus for Charles. He loves his gems and scarabs and ring bezels. And he is much older now. I believe he has envied me. First in the arts of happiness. While satisfying myself, at the same time I have been useful to others. I have never overestimated my abilities. While there are more exalted destinies, I maintain that to discover what is beautiful and share that with others is also a worthy employment for a life. Art must not be merely the object of fruitless admiration. I said that. A work of art must inspire the leading artists and craftsmen of one’s own time. It was I who brought the vase back to England which Wedgwood now puts out in many copies. Plumpity dumpity. Who said that. When one has lived as long as I have, one is bound to mix everything up, but I am endeavoring to get it right now. It is to be expected that many subjects come to mind at the same time, because I have had a very long life. But I do not need to touch them or handle them. My arms and legs are heavy and I am not sure where my back is. The heavy baggage, the burden of every journey, could not feel as heavy as my body does now. Something pressing down on me. Everything very close. A child had been buried for weeks under the house after the earthquake, after Catherine died. I wonder if she knew enough to hope that she might be rescued, or did she believe that she was buried alive forever. I mean the child, the child who had been pressing her fist to the side of her face and emerged from the ground with a hole in her cheek. Men do not like to acknowledge the finality of catastrophe. Pagano wrote an essay in which he made the earthquake in Calabria an emblem of the dissolution of society and a return to primitive equality. I cannot remember why he advanced such a preposterous notion. He was very intelligent, Pagano. But something happened to him, I do not remember what it is. I have noticed that authors are capable of raising up any event to the height of a lesson or a warning or a punishment, but it is my view that a man of sense, why are the voices becoming softer, I trust they are not leaving me when my mouth is dry, my tongue is stiff, it is my view that a man of sense will observe the unrolling of events with calm, with measured detachment. Even under this weight. When a catastrophe occurs, one should try to save oneself and the others. That estimable Roman Pliny the Elder felt obliged to try to rescue the victims of the volcano. He was reared to be a gentleman. But then there are those who teach themselves how they must behave. This is common in the age I have lived to see, where the gifted may rise from the lowest station in life. The meanly-born learn to surpass themselves. When Vesuvius erupted again, Tolo landed in his boat and rescued the King and Queen and brought us all to Palermo. But he lost the vases. There was a storm and they went to the bottom of the sea. I have the impression that I am not reasoning with the same clarity and equanimity that have always been mine. Voices crying bella cosa è l’acqua fresca. Tolo should tell me why his men chose to save the admiral in the coffin instead of my vases, which would have brought delight and instruction to many. My bankers expected them to be saved. An admiral is not worth very many guineas. I refer to the admiral in the coffin, a man of no great distinction or accomplishments. But there is much glory to be won at sea. Who does not laud the intrepid commander whose name I have forgotten but it is on everyone’s lips. No, not Pliny the Elder but another admiral, who is anything but corpulent and does not suffer from asthma. But that was Catherine. No, both. It is perfectly possible for two human beings to resemble each other. Were that not the case how could we understand anything about our fellow creatures, for it is only by assiduous comparison of the various types of, yes, the admiral, my great friend, our country’s savior. So the King of Naples hailed him. His words. But I mean this country, England. And this admiral, who has become as a son to me, and whose well-being and peace of mind mean more to me than my own, for it has not been easy for me these past five years, I must admit, the world in which I felt at home is greatly altered. Old customs thrown down. New sentiments which I do not understand and can only deplore, for alas I do understand them, and therefore shall not assume a dullness of comprehension which has never been mine. To others I am a fool. She should be punished for making the others think of me as a fool. May I have some water, I wonder if they hear me. I can hear them perfectly well.