They must have hitched a ride up the mountain—he and Poppy and the children—for he could never in his condition have made it on foot, but that part would remain hidden forever, because Poppy had simply forgotten and the kids were too young to remember. Then at the palace he had fallen asleep, into a slumber which by all rights should have lasted round the clock, so heavy was his exhaustion, but which instead was tormented by such dreams of stress and urgency (these he remembered: Michele calling to him, Francesca weeping, an appalling foretaste of death in which he felt the precious bottle floating away from his grasp upon the black waters of some storm-swept gulf) that he awoke wailing aloud, sopping in sweat, and while the room circled around him listened to the movie people yawping and cackling in their descent down the stairway toward the pool. It was pitch-dark outside. The air was so humid that it seemed to lap against his skin like a huge tongue. Don Giovanni was blaring in his ear, in queer elongated chords and phrases. When had he turned the phonograph on? He did not know, but he did know that it must have been playing for hours, automatically click-clacking its stack of records, and that the distortion was not in the music but in the fever raging in his brain. He turned the music up louder—its very volume seemed to give him confidence, to lend support to the theft he knew he must perform without delay—and then, staggering about and colliding with every accursed object that littered the blacked-out room, he managed to douse his head in a basin full of water, which did not sober him but soothed his headache some and brought momentary coolness to his throbbing brow and face. He heard Poppy talking softly to Peggy in the other bedroom, the rest of the children were asleep. At this point, he recalled, he had forgotten about Francesca, had forgotten about Mason’s implied threat against her in the car, or that he might even try to make good that threat this very night; all these things had been pushed to the back of his mind in favor of one single overwhelming thought now which had taken on the quality of a paranoid obsession or a raging runaway lust: I’ve got to get those pills down to Michele. I’ve just got to. For already there had been the gap of a day and a half in the treatment, and his intuition (which later he discovered was a correct one) told him that too long a lapse between the cessation of one drug and the beginning of another would allow the disease to make savage, renewed, perhaps final inroads upon a system already ruinously weakened and depressed. And he thought: Well at least I won’t have to refrigerate these buggers. At least maybe once I get this started I’ll be able to get some sleep.
So he padded through the dark upstairs and out into the courtyard and then up the stairway to Mason’s balcony. He recalled that at the time it did not bother him how he would get the drug. He neither had a prevision of Mason refusing him the bottle, nor, if Mason did refuse him, of how he would deal with the situation and face Mason down. He only knew that by agreement the bottle was his prerogative and his right, and he was out to take it. He was reasonably sure where the bottle was—in the upstairs bathroom where Mason had kept some of the streptomycin for a while, along with the rest of his medications—and not for a second did it cross his mind that anything would intervene to prevent him from getting it; the fixity of drunken obsession at this point governed his every act and impulse. So it was with all the more impotence and desolation that, minutes later, he found himself downstairs again in the dark bedroom, empty-handed. He had gone up, and he had come down, and the miracle drug was still in Mason’s bathroom. What had happened? He did not know. He was only dimly aware of having entered Mason’s place with a great show of authority and strength—to find the salone deserted except for the benevolent director, Cripps, and the pale young American he had encountered hours before on the road. Then as usual, horrid, humiliating, self-defeating things had happened. He had fallen somehow—was it against a piano? Now a great C-major chord strummed in his brain, and his ribs ached mercilessly. He could still hear himself running off at the mouth—though what he had said he no longer knew—and his failure, his inability to cope with the situation brought him to such a pitch of rage that he leaned from the window and began to howl madly into the night. “What’s the matter?” he remembered Poppy crying, breathless, red-eyed, rushing to him in her nightgown. “Those movie stars, they’ll think you’re batty ! Oh, Cass!” she screamed. “What’s the matter with you? You’re turning into a maniac! Be quiet! You’re going crazy! You’re driving all of us crazy!” But she was off down the hallway on the full blast of his advancing wrath. “God damn you, Poppy, you think I don’t know … all crazy … and furthermore, the bleeding Micks … and who was it … when Hitler croaked was the only country outside Japan that sent their sympathy … who was it, by God … the Republic of Ireland or Erah or however the bloody hell you pronounce it!” And then once again he was in the dark prison of the room, trembling, chilled, head in his hands as he listened to some heartless, lost, wailing hillbilly music—“It was only because they hated the English!” he heard Poppy’s faint voice in the distance—and forced his reeling brain to work out a new stratagem.
Then he realized he must have dozed off again, drowsing fitfully on the sour bed, only to wake up twenty minutes or half an hour later in the flat harsh light, his heart thumping wildly. He staggered to his feet and went upstairs. For a moment he stood swaying in the dark and odorous living room, hand pressed against his sweating brow, listening to the chatter at the edge of the swimming pool. It had begun to drizzle outside. He saw rainspecks drifting stickily against the windowpanes, at the same time saw the figures around the pool rise and disband and begin to ascend Indian-file back up through the garden toward the palace. Around the pool the floodlights blinked out one by one. He stood in pitchdarkness then, listening to the voices of the movie people approaching nearer, trying to make his brain work, trying frantically to make his head work and figure out a way in which he might steal up to Mason’s and take the drug without detection. Suddenly, with maddening belatedness, there occurred to him a way, the way—why did these solutions reveal themselves so coyly, after such a perilous long delay? Because, of course, the back stairway was the answer. By the dark back stairway (the same servants’ stairs up which he had so often heaved and shoul- dered boxes of Mason’s groceries) he could make a quick entry into the rear of Mason’s quarters, creep down the hall past the kitchen and into the bathroom, take off with the bottle and, barring some awkward encounter, escape notice. With Mason and the movie people in the salone, only the possibility of encountering old Giorgio or one of the scullery maids would stand in his way—and this would be a simple matter to deal with. The drug, he knew, was all but in the bag. He tightened his belt. There was a ringing in his ears, and now a plunging vertigo, which caused him to wobble dangerously and to propel himself across the black room listing heavily to starboard in a kind of limping, one-sided shuffle, like a man favoring a game leg. He cracked his head against the side of the easel, and was still cursing beneath his breath when at last, with great effort, he located the door and threw it open. Here at the threshold he stood for a moment, regaining his balance, acquainting his eyes with the light. For a long moment he heard nothing, save for the fluttering swoop and patter of a bird which tried to gain exit from the courtyard through a skylight. He had slowly lifted his eyes, trying to catch sight of the bird, when the outer door of the courtyard swung open and in from the street burst Francesca—barefoot, hair atangle, covering her ripped bodice as she scampered across the tiles toward him, and sobbing as if her heart would break. And somehow he knew what had happened even before she told him. Yes, he’s done it, he thought, the bastard went and done it like he said.
In the dark living room, holding her close to his breast, stroking her hair as her tears streamed warm against his cheek, he listened and did not say a word as she told him what Mason had done. “Porco,” she sobbed, “he is the devil! Oh, Cass, I must kill myself!” He patted her steadily, gently on the arm. “I was ready to go home. So I could meet you like you said this morning. The people had gone to the pool. I was in the pantry. I had
some things in a bag for Papa. Some eggs, some tomatoes, a cardboard bottle of American milk, and that is all. He came into the pantry and he turned on the light. I had unbuttoned the top of my dress, you see —to change—and he—he was watching. I mean, he stood there and watched me. And I tried to turn, to cover myself, but before I could do anything he clutched me—grasped hold of my arm. I tried to make him stop, to make him let go. I cried out, and he twisted my arm and hurt me. Then he said to me: ’What have you in the bag?’ In English, which I mainly understood. And I said: ’Nothing.’ Then he said something else in English, very angry, which I could not understand. He was very angry, very red in the face, and he kept saying these angry words in English that I could not understand. He kept twisting my arm, then finally he said, ‘Dove the earrings?’ Which is something I understood. And I said I did not know where the earrings were, I did not know what he was talking about. Then he said some more in English, very, very angry, and he said the word thief over and over, which I understood. Then I started to cry, and I said I was not a ladra, that I had not thieved from him anything but the milk and the tomatoes and the eggs. Which were for my Papa. And I tried to give him the bag back, but then he began to shout, and then all of a sudden he became quiet and looked at me in a strange way—here. And then he took his other hand and stroked me—here. And I began to turn away from him but he twisted my arm and then—” She fell silent, weeping softly, terribly, without restraint against Cass’ shoulder. “He kept twisting my arm, and oh it hurt so, Cass! I tried to call out—I called for you, ’Cass! Cass!—but there was too much noise, the music in the salone, the machines in the kitchen. And then he did a fierce, quick thing. Still twisting my arm, he pushed me down the back hallway. And he took me to his bedroom and pushed me down on the big bed and locked the door. I tried to get up but he pushed me down again and ripped my dress. Then he said in English, This is what we do to a thief,’ which I understood. Then he came to me on the bed. I scratched him! I scratched his face! But yet he—Oh, Cass, I must kill myself!”
And afterwards, as she lay there dazed and hurting, fastidious Mason (taking the precaution to secrete the door key in the pocket of his dressing gown) had bathed and combed himself, returned, attired in silk, plastering with Band-Aids the gouged-out wounds she had inflicted upon his cheeks. He seemed contrite now, she said, and he tried to put things right as she lay weeping on the bed. For a while he was very sorry, muttering amends. She understood almost none of what he said, though he murmured to her much that hinted of emolument and recompense: the words he said were “dollars,” “molto lire” and “dinero,” a Spanish word which she comprehended. But his contrition, so honest, so sincere, dwindled with the passing minutes and turned to lust as, once again, slyly removing his dressing gown, he tried to take her. This time, however, she moved too swiftly for him and a universal trick, heard long ago from the lips of one of the loose female gossips of the village, served her in good stead: she rose up on her elbows as he nakedly mounted, lifting one leg sharply and driving her knee with all her force into that place which had caused him so much pleasure and her an extremity of pain. As she told Cass this, and despite her grief, a note of almost joyful vengeance crept into her voice. “I think I broke both of them,” she whispered fiercely, and even in his drunk heartbreak Cass verged near gruesome laughter. So, while Mason lay writhing on the bed, Francesca recaptured the key. “I unlocked the door and ran out,” she moaned. “And he got up and came after me, shouting. Oh, Cass, he was absolutely mad! I understood what he said. He said he was going to kill me. He picked up an ashtray and I thought he was going to hit me with it. I kill you!’ he said. But I ran out and down the stairs. And then I ran out on the street. I must have hurt him good, Cass, because he could not catch me. But—oh, Madonna!—what am I going to do? Cass, what will I do?”
That was her story and it was, he knew (turning on the light to see her tear-stained face, shock-ravaged eyes), as close to the bare and bitter truth as modesty would permit her to tell. For a long while he held her in his arms, touched to the heart by a love for her which, curiously deepened by her misery, seemed so sweet and sharp as to be almost insupportable. For minutes she sobbed without letup, as if all the injustice and pain and cruelty in the world had come homing to her breast. Down below, the crashing chords of Mozart thundered without ceasing. At last Cass set her down upon the couch, where she lay crumpled, legs asprawl, still weeping, close to hysteria. Slowly, tenderly, he soothed her, and after a bit she lay still like one asleep. With a half-filled bottle of brandy he went to the window and looked out into the gray and lowering night. Now is the time, he thought, now I’ll have to deal with the scum face to face. Now. I can wait no longer. Yet even as he thought this he turned back and saw Francesca lying there and knew again in the midst of his fury that with each ticking of the clock Michele’s chance for life diminished and dimmed, and that revenge once more must be briefly postponed. I got to get that P.A.S., he thought, I got to get Michele rolling again. Mason can wait, and the revenge will be sweeter for the waiting. But now it occurred to him that at least he might be able to scare Mason; it seemed to him necessary to make Mason aware that he himself knew what had taken place, and it was for some reason the only honorable course—like a remnant from the dueling code—to prepare his adversary for the showdown to come. For a moment, he thought he was going to vomit. The spasm passed. He sat down at the littered table and with a pen spelled out the note: Youre in deep trouble, lm going turn you in to bait for buzards. And as he wrote, barely able to guide the pen with his shaking, intractable fingers, he knew that the skull-splitting pain in his head was the result no longer of booze, or of fatigue, but of a fury he had never thought it possible for one man alone to possess.
He downed the brandy in the bottle to its dregs. After a few minutes Francesca stirred with a small cry; he went to her and helped her to her feet. He gave her the note to deliver to Giorgio for Mason on her way out of the palace. And he was somehow clearheaded enough to ask for Mason’s bedroom key. Then he told her to go home to the valley, that later he would join her there. “Vd ’” he said. “Go. Try not to cry any more.” Together they went to the door; holding her close, he pressed upon her lips a wild and despairing kiss. And then she was gone. Long after, he thought it strange that, taking leave of him, she whispered “Addio,” which means not “good-by” but “good-by forever.” Probably, he reasoned, it was only a sad, unconscious way of expressing the loss, so complete and irrevocable, of that part of her which Mason had taken instead of Cass himself. For in no way could she have known—any more than he—that when she pattered across the courtyard, and then vanished into the night, they would never lay eyes on one another again… .
“No,” Cass said to me, “I never made love to Francesca, ever. I wanted to, God knows. So did she, I know. We would have sooner or later, I know. But we never made love. I don’t know what it was that held me back. It wasn’t breaking the marriage vows, or anything like that—I was too far gone to worry about a thing like that. No, it was something else, something I find it hard to put my finger on. Maybe it was because she was so young… . No, it wasn’t that either, really. Maybe just her beauty—this sweetness and radiance she had which made me simply want to contemplate her, to sit in this light of hers, so that the thought of knowing her, of possessing her, of loving her utterly and completely became a kind of daydream which was all the more mad and glorious because of the anticipation. It was somehow as if I knew that if I waited long enough it would just happen, and it would be a thousand times dearer to both of us because of all the hours and days spent brooding and dreaming about it. And you might think it had something to do with some notion of purity or chastity, but it really wasn’t that a bit. No, I found some kind of joy in her, you see—not just pleasure—this joy I felt I’d been searching for all my life, and it was almost enough to preserve my sanity all by itself. Joy, you see—a kind of serenity and repose that I never really knew existed. I even almost stopped dr
inking several times there. I reckon I just—I just cared for her, that’s all. I loved her. I loved her crazily, it was that simple—the bleeding beginning and end of the matter.
“And—well, she did finally pose for me. In the nude, I mean. Remember I told you how at first she thought I was going to get my hands on her that way? Funny thing, now that I look back on it, about the only two things I did in the way of work there in Sambuco was this dirty painting I turned out for Mason, and these sketches of Francesca, which I’ve still got. You might say that combination sort of made up the two extremes of the sacred and profane. Anyway, there was a place down in the valley where I’d take her—one marvelous little secluded grove where there were willows and a grassy bank and a stream flowing through. I’d pose her there—she wasn’t in the least self-conscious. We’d sit there in the afternoon and I’d sketch away. She’d chatter on about this and that and grab for flowers—I had a hell of a time making her keep still—and finally she’d settle down and grin a bit and then look gravely toward the sea, and we wouldn’t say a word, just sit there sketching and posing and listening to the water flowing over the rocks and the crickets in the grass and the cowbells on the slopes. She’d have taken off her clothes and let her hair down—fantastic hair, it came down to her waist. Anyway, we’d sit there and it seemed as if we were under a spell—as if all my madness had been washed away for the moment, clean, and all her toil and misery, too, her sorrow over Michele had vanished into the air, and there we were in the pure sunshine, untouched by anything except this momentary, fabulous, bountiful peace. Then she’d get restless again and start chattering away, and teasing me about this and that, and so I’d have to close up shop, and we’d walk away from the place wrapped around each other, shaking with desire. God knows we should have gone on and done it. But—” He paused. “Anyway, I’ll never forget that grove, with the rocks and the cowbells ringing on the hills and the willows, and her in the middle of it, giggling, with her hair like a wild lovely cloud around her, trying to keep still… .
William Styron: The Collected Novels: Lie Down in Darkness, Set This House on Fire, The Confessions of Nat Turner, and Sophie's Choice Page 103