By now So-and-So’s condemnation was certain. Quietly he walked back into his room, dressed without haste and went out. As he crossed the courtyard—the heart of the house—the look he threw it was almost absent-minded.
5
El rojo pas de la blanca aurora
(Góngora)
. . . Mais la croix de l’aurore se casse et se ride . . .
Up there, snow on the mounatins, barely seen in the light of the stars, and where was So-and-So going? He did not know and he didn’t care. He didn’t care about anything. Familiar, rock-strewn roads, rolling away beneath his random steps; then grassy slopes. Then through the circle of the hills and even farther on, through the passes first gentle, then steep. The contours of the mountain ranges, the valleys. A wood-covered slope skirts a long valley which comes to an end against the lofty sky. It is the hornbeam wood, the sacred refuge of the November woodcocks. Black, gloomy hornbeam, as it is called. Snow, snow. Into the woods. The light breeze, then the sparkling wind which rises before the dawn. An east wind. And far off a faint, uncertain brightness, a hint of pallor on the bluish transparent sky. Behind him there is still the black pitch with just a touch of blue, and everything grows dark, submerging itself in the night. An even more somber night, since only the largest, reddest stars throb mournfully and a waning moon, tragic and lopsided, russet and sinister, looks like a sail fallen in a sudden calm. Undecided whether to be terrorized by the diurnal danger which hovers imperceptibly on the horizon, the night looks at it askance as at a silly dog, holding its breath. Once again it seemed to So-and-So, who was following the path of the night, that he was in the depths of the sea and that the boundless slope of the sky was the surface of that sea, so far above his head: he had a sense of the immensity of the void beneath the hood of the sky, as if water filled it and rendered it palpable (the moon a pink jellyfish floating on the skin of the water, the stars starfish with their tenuous, swimming pulsation). Vertiginous fright. Yet an indefinable heightening, a surge of that distant brightness, brought him back to his senses.
Dark hornbeam. Few people, apart from hunters, know the dark hornbeam. The white hornbeam is bland and innocent, not much different from hazelnut; the dark ones have a grim, pertinacious, obstinate nature. They too bloom like all other plants and put forth leaves, but they do it perhaps in secret and no one has ever seen them bud and cover themselves with leaves. In all seasons a wood of dark hornbeam is nothing but a low underbrush, almost a tangled and knotty crawling along the ground. Solid as a stone, from which spring neat, very long withies, apparently flexible and hard as steel, in reality as slimy and prehensile as tentacles. It is not given us to know what particular mission the dark hornbeam is appointed to perform on this earth. But a reflection of its somber and impenetrable spirit discloses a sense of dread in whoever penetrates among that pearly people.
The hunter who attempts to open a path through a wood of dark hornbeam, not only inevitably leaves shreds of himself among the clawing knuckles of the roots and branches, and must not only struggle to free his shotgun a thousand times from a cluster of dry twigs which has mockingly seized it or grips it tightly like a dog clamps onto a bone; but the miserable creature, lost in the cosmic darkness and pearly entanglement of the shoots, must also, in order to get by, at every moment pull aside the lithe impudence of the withies. And at each instant the withies, tensed and strengthened for a second, hiss and beat down—precise and sure, gauged to the millimeter—on his frozen ears, the veined back of his hand, his cheeks, the skin beneath his eyes, on his quickly closed lids, on everything in him which is intimate and delicate. Having lashed out, often with its thinnest, most supple tip, the withy, as though nothing had happened, returns to its normal position and only a slight, indifferent swaying testifies to its furtive act. One does not know how it happens: in a thicket of other trees—let’s even say of white hornbeam—a flexible branch which snaps back after having been bent, would at the most lash the person who comes after you. But here all amazement is quickly exhausted—as quickly as one exhausts all reserves of will. One becomes the prey of the spell cast by that airy and pearl-like, impudent and fierce people. Knotty gnomes and malicious sylphs, whose voice is that rustle and hiss, dance freely around in their wild saraband. The whiplash, without losing any of its biting twang, seems almost to linger and adhere to the flesh and often sounds like the fluttering of a woodcock’s wings when, hindered by the underbrush, it rises in flight; it is but another mean trick which the wood plays on the hunter. And yet, even if the fluffy tuft of turtle-hued feathers swiveling on a sharp beak were at that moment to pass a yard away from the barrel of his shotgun, the hunter would dazedly let it go.
So-and-So had entered such a wood, but now he walked almost rapidly: the hornbeams must have realized his indifference, and the game mustn’t have seemed too rewarding to them. Snow—which dawn has brightened a bit. Scratches, hisses and lashes run over his skin like the dull, constant roar of a torrent. Snow—but what is that white form which seems to leap from the snow and leap on the snow? There are completely white hares—a false, unheeded voice suggested to So-and-So. Too large and too small to be a hare. A lost sheep? the same voice insists, talking to itself. But it does not matter, for that white form which runs ahead of him, dawn-colored as the spider is the color of a gray shadow, seems to guide So-and-So. It races toward the brightness of the dawn.
Here begins that phase of the story which one might call the horizontal walk, and the writer, since his hero lacks awareness, is forced to peep through with his own coarse imagination. Everyone has seen that beautiful movie star walk with utter surrender toward redemption or love. Her eyes stare into the distance and her glance is completely horizontal; the obstacles, the asperities of the terrain are overcome and smoothed out, yet those eyes do not bend to look at them. The legs and body, softly, as though spellbound by the adamantine horizontality of that look, bend, stretch, twist and yield to the earth’s surface of their own accord, so as not to disturb the inflexible direction of her desire. And if a branch or a trailing shawl hampers her step, if sand or swamp makes it drag, the instep and the shin and the knee, everything, will pull it along and conquer without feeling the weight, just so long as that eye remains free and that look swims straight above the entire world. Everyone has also seen Mickey Mouse riding blissfully on some baroque conveyance which stretches and shrinks in the most exaggerated fashion, and so gives the beast the sensation of riding on a wonderfully smooth road. Well, this is more or less how So-and-So was walking, his eyes fixed on that white shape. As in the movies. His feet sludged through the snow and stumbled over the knuckles of the roots, the withies struck down with a swish on his tenderest flesh, and the white shape, now close, now farther away, guided him toward the glow of dawn.
Until he fell down and lay there. Now the dawn was at its height, all things were trembling with drops, fresh, silvered, pearly: the stony slopes were dappled with silver. Beneath the jade sky the intertwined shoots, for an instant tamed and bewildered, seemed a forest of pearl-like and votive torches raised to the sky. Stretched out in the snow, So-and-So felt the cold penetrate deeper into his bones, his heart. And a malign shadow veined the dawn. The sky changed color, darkened with a yellow tinge. In front of So-and-So, through the tangle of branches, extended the white and immaculate valley: on one side the rounded flank of a mountain spur, which was also swelling and white with pure snow. Over that swelling the first light of dawn cast its yellow reflection: and the entire spur was transformed into the monstrous body of the spider. The kind of spider which has a small cluster of sanies for a body.
How long was So-and-So there, stretched out in the snow? Certainly the cold in his bones and heart was now ice, utter ice. Slow but sure, it liquified the last flickers of warmth and gripped, penetrating the skin. It penetrated and gripped. It gripped in an ever tighter vise which closed more and more rapidly, like the eye of a camera. Look, there is still a tiny point of light and heat, then—nothing more. As at th
e movies.
But by now what did those spiders matter to So-and-So? Indeed, it seemed to him that all of his resolutions had become an immense love and that he was tasting the deep-felt joy of a reconciliation with the ancestral enemy. At the same time an inner rumble warned him that something was taking place in his entrails: and a need resplendently materialized, a compelling, irresistible need: his lips colored with a weak smile.
Let the spidery flesh flourish!
Note: Here the writer believes that it is advisable, for a multiplicity of reasons one more intuitive than the next, to put a full stop. He will, just for the record, mention a circumstance which however does not seem essential to him. So-and-So—one later discovered—was not at all a sea captain, nor had he roamed the world encountering, as he claimed, the most astounding adventures. His life had been that of the usual poorly-paid clerk, right down to the day of his retirement. He had no relatives of any kind, and as for his little son, who later died of convulsions, at one time the usual nasty gossips had inferred that he was not his. Not content with that, they had gone about insinuating that the so-called captain (in fact, an assistant chief clerk in a ministerial department of the capital) was afflicted by a physical defect, so that he could not think of having sons or even women but only a very chaste wife. Chaste, of course, where he was concerned. How and when the captain had afterwards gone to live in the small town where we have found him, has been impossible to ascertain. As for Rosalba, who had been taken from an orphanage at the age of one, she managed to lure the lawyer’s son so effectively that he, in the teeth of the usual ample advice of his parents, decided at all costs to marry her and since then the writer has lost sight of her.
But, as is quite clear, these are only negligible details.
Translated by Raymond Rosenthal
EDITOR’S NOTE: The original title of this story was W.C., but since its first publication in the magazine Caratteri required something more rounded and extended, the present substitution was made, “but that is the death of the king of France” being a phrase one often hears applied to musical compositions that are long and wearisome.
1 How indeed can one tolerate the sight of an innocent spider which, crushed by some clumsy broom, still attempts to flee, strewing the floor with its legs and smearing it with a yellowish slime (its blood!), tottering wildly on its few remaining legs and then, finally, lying with its legs cross-shaped, dead?
2 Correct! interjects the writer, as always inappropriately. Does one remember the color of the eyes of a dead woman one has loved? Rather than reality, it is the fantastic form which in such circumstances takes shape in us, and this, since it is fantastic, does not have logical attributes but only ideal ones.
3 In short, Rosalba is alluding, perhaps unconsciously, to the reassuring certainty of the so-called apodictic truths. Perhaps she was trying to hint at the existence of a category of events beyond experience: events which cannot be known.
4 The writer must again beg pardon for the dubious imagery of our excellent captain, who obviously also had read Russian novels.
Giovanni and His Wife
TO BEGIN with, let us come to an agreement on what it means to be out of tune (vocally out of tune, that is—to simplify the discussion which, in any case, might hold for any kind of dissonance). To be out of tune does not apply, as is commonly believed, to someone who reproduces by singing, whistling or humming a song or musical phrase in an inexact fashion, departing more or less from the original score: at the most one could accuse such a person of a meager musical memory. Nor—I’ll go so far as to say—does it apply to someone who, by his faulty reproduction, offends against the norms which by tradition and general consent regulate the relationships between sounds or groups of sounds. (Modern music could offer comfort to such a person!) To be out of tune applies only to those who each time that they repeat a song, repeat it always differently and always offend the above-mentioned norms and never (except by some inexplicable accident) adhere to the original score, it being understood, of course, that they are not aware of it and on the contrary are firmly convinced each time that they are reproducing the score to the letter. In short, to be out of tune consists precisely in the inability to have any sort of relationship with the score, or to establish a steady point of reference in the great tossing sea of sounds.
These introductory remarks were necessary for the exposition of the following case which, I believe, is unique in the story of relationships between people.
There was a certain man in our town (I shall call him Giovanni) who lived only for music. Especially for lyric or operatic music or whatever you wish to call it. It was also claimed that he was endowed with a singularly melodious and robust voice, and he himself said that he devoted all of his time to singing. It was claimed, I repeat, since Giovanni, who was rich and completely independent, not only didn’t make the slightest effort to have a public career, but did nothing to share his precious gift with anyone else. Indeed, not even his friends had ever heard him sing. But, in recompense, everyone had heard him in the opera houses, learnedly discussing the capacity of one singer or another as well as this or that note and how it had been delivered.
I had not always known Giovanni well, but gradually we became more and more friendly and so, one fine day, yielding to my reiterated insistence, he decided to grant me a concert in his house, which I had not yet been to. When I arrived there I quickly understood the reason for his constant reserve, as the reader will also immediately understand.
Giovanni had a wife, whom I now saw, a woman of great beauty and suavity. She was, so it seemed, very devoted to him. Blonde and very young, indeed almost a girl, and from a family which was without a doubt at least as noble as his own.
After having taken our places in the drawing room where the grand piano was located, Giovanni asked me to select a few from among the many arias—all from very well known operas—which he felt he knew best. So I selected some of those which were most familiar to me, in order to appreciate his art more fully, and then Giovanni, with his wife accompanying him, began to sing.
I was dumbfounded, unable at first to believe my own ears. In the exordium (it was the popular recitative from Aida which begins with the words Se quel guerriero io fossi . . .) I did not recognize a single note, nor could I grasp a single consecutive bar. Now, don’t misunderstand me: it was not a matter here of the common off-key singing, ranging from a quarter to half a tone, to which amateur singers and people singing on the street have more or less accustomed us. It was a real jamboree of capriciously clashing sounds, which, believe me, not only had no relation whatsoever to the score but also did not bear the slightest relation to each other.
I had no reason to think that my memory of the tune had failed me, and besides, the accompaniment was there and must have meant something. I could do nothing but hope that my friend was following his personal counterpoint and that this would eventually establish a firm relationship between the notes of the score and those emitted by him. Alas, I soon realized that any given note of the score was always matched by a different note in the singing. And even calling them notes is a bit too much: they were something intermediate or adulterated which cannot be found in nature, that is, on the keyboard. Even if I had wished to judge those bellows as something entirely independent from the score—as an original composition or improvisation—I would have been immediately undeceived by a resumption of the melody (let us call it that), when from those lips, prettily pursed and almost smiling, issued sounds which were not only discordant and lacerating but brand-new. Giovanni’s voice in itself was not at all harsh or insipid; and yet, used so badly, it could not help but be disagreeable.
After the first piece Giovanni absently asked me for my opinion and before I could reply he had started another, then a third, a fourth. . . . I had to be careful to hide my reactions since, as he sang, he kept looking at me.
At last, to bring their hospitable courtesy to a worthy close, he asked his wife to perform a few duets wit
h him, including some ensemble singing, and she graciously consented. And here a new, unimaginable surprise awaited me, indeed the greatest surprise of the evening. It is hardly a matter for wonder, it is even completely natural that a person who sings out of tune, if he has no way of checking on himself, does not know that he is singing out of tune. But what follows is truly a matter for amazement.
I must explain that, during the entire exhibition, I had assiduously observed the young wife’s face, trying to determine what she thought of all this, and all that I had seen was the rapt expression with which she continued to gaze at her husband. This, however, did not seem to imply a definite opinion. Now, as soon as she opened her mouth, I immediately realized that she sang as much out of tune as he did. And that wasn’t all—and this is the astounding part—she sang out of tune precisely and identically in his fashion, as if to his direction, according to his inspiration, his mode, no matter how varying and momentary. I am at a loss to add anything else.
If I had needed proof, I would have been supplied with incontrovertible evidence by the “duo” of this first duet, and then by the others which followed. Well, he who wishes to refer back to the introductory remarks which I have set at the beginning of this story, will easily understand that two people who sing out of tune cannot, by definition, sing together, except by mere chance and for a single note, at least a single note at a time. Yet these two unfailingly agreed on each and every note, or whatever you might call them, and they sang entire pieces with such moving accord in their out-of-tuneness that I, amazed, consternated, dejected, let my shapely ears be lacerated almost willingly, meanwhile abandoning myself to philosophical reflections, half bitter, half comforting.
I can imagine the objection that will be raised. Could it not have been that although she was aware of how matters stood, out of an excess of devotion and so as not to hurt her husband, the woman was trying not to disillusion him and was making an effort to follow him in his distortions, proving by this that she possessed an especially subtle ear? But, leaving aside my presence, which would have frustrated such a plan, who, even among the most expert of singers, could have succeeded in reproducing the sounds emitted by Giovanni, which, as I have already said, bore no relation at all to the universally known notes and, during their emission, were continually different and varied? Besides, the seriousness and gravity with which she went about her singing was by no means ambiguous.
Gogol's Wife Page 14