Seven Gothic Tales (45 page)

I had had no time to try to stop her, and for a moment I meant to follow her. But standing on the brink of the precipice I saw that she had not fallen far, but onto a sort of projection about twenty feet down. She seemed in the dim light to be lying on her face, all covered by her large cloak.

I found Pilot weeping aloud at my side, and together the three of us worked for an hour or more to bring her up. We cut our
cloaks by the light of the lantern, knotting the strips together. When we had finished we hung the lantern out over the edge of the road. Our task was made more difficult for us, first by the lantern suddenly going out, as the candle within it burnt down, and then by the snow, which started to fall again.

The first time that they lowered me down, I missed the terrace and kept hanging in the air. Finally I found my foothold on it, and touched her. She seemed quite without life. Her head fell back as I lifted it, like the head of a dead flower, but still her body was not quite cold. I tried to make fast the rope around her, but it would not do. As they dragged her up, her body beat against the rocks in a dreadful manner. I had to shout to the others and to lift her back into my arms. The terrace on which we stood was narrow and covered with thick snow. It was not easy to move about on it. The great gulf was below us, and once or twice I despaired of getting her up. I thought then of how it had been my question to her which had driven her into this great white full-moon death, in the end.

At last I managed to make a sort of noose in which to place my one foot, and to make fast her body to mine somehow, and I cried to the others to draw us up. This they did more quickly and easily than I had thought they could do it. As they loosened her from me, and I fell down flat, unable to hold myself up, I heard many voices around us, crying out that she was not dead.

When again I could lift my head I saw, without surprise, the old Jew of Rome, Amsterdam and Andermatt, with our party. It seemed to me natural that he should have come up with us. His coach was standing on the road, and his coachman and valet had helped to draw up Olalla and me. How he had ever managed to get his heavy carriage along in the night, on that road, I do not know; only to a Jew anything is possible.

They lifted Olalla into the carriage, and the Jew made me come in with her, as I was bleeding at the hands and knees. I sat there with him, holding her feet, and remembering how I had first
met him in the street of Rome. I was very thirsty and cold, for I had been wet with sweat, and the night air went to my bones. At last we got to the large square stone building of the monastery, from a couple of windows of which light was shining out. People came out to meet us.

Here I had some hot wine to drink, and my hands washed. When I then inquired about Olalla, they showed me into a large room, where on a table two candles were burning.

Olalla was lying, as immovable as before, upon a stretcher which they had placed on the floor. I think that they had meant to carry her somewhere, but had given it up. They had only loosened her clothes. A large fur rug, which belonged to the Jew, was spread over her. Her head was slightly turned upon the pillow, and a dark shadow covered the one side of her face.

The old Jew sat on a chair near her, still in his furred cloak and with his tall hot on his head, his chin resting on the button of his walking stick. He did not take his dark eyes off her face, and hardly moved. I was surprised, on looking at a big clock in the room, to find that it was only three hours after midnight.

I sat down myself, for a long time without speaking. As then the clock struck, I made up my mind to speak to the Jew. If I had killed Olalla by my question, I might as well get an answer now, and he would know. I talked to him a little, and he answered me very civilly. I then told him all that I knew about her, and asked him, while we were waiting here, to tell me of her. For a time he did not seem to want to speak. Then in the end he spoke with much energy. Pilot and the Baron were in there too. Pilot came up from his chair at the other end of the room to look at her, and went back again. The Baron had fallen asleep in his chair. Later on, however, he woke up and joined us.

“I have indeed,” said the Jew, “known this woman at a time when all the world knew her and worshiped her by her real name. She was the opera singer, Pellegrina Leoni.”

At first these words meant nothing to me, so that there was a
silence. But then my memory woke up, and recalled to me my childhood.

“Why,” I cried, “that is not possible. That great singer was the star of whom my father and mother used to rave. When they came back from Italy they would talk of nothing else. And I well remember their tears when she was hurt at the theater fire of Milan, and died. But all this must have been when I was ten years old, thirteen years ago.”

“No,” said the Jew. “Yes, she died. The great opera singer died. Thirteen years ago, as you rightly say. But the woman lived on, for these thirteen years.”

“Explain yourself,” I said to him.

“Explain myself?” he repeated. “Young Sir, you are asking much. You might say: ‘Disguise your meaning into such phrases as I am used to hear, which mean nothing.’ Pellegrina was, at the theater fire of Milan, badly hurt. From the injuries and the shock she lost her voice. She never sang a note again as long as she lived.”

It was clear to me, as he spoke, that this was the first time that he had ever given words to this story. I was so much impressed by his suffering and terror at his own words that I could find nothing to say, even though I wanted to hear more, for I found no explanation in his statement. But Pilot asked him: “Did she, then, not die?”

“Die, live. Live, die,” said the Jew. “She lived as much as any of you, or more.”

“Still,” Pilot said, “all the world believed her to be dead.”

“She made it believe that,” said the Jew. “We—she and I—took much trouble to make it believe so. I saw her grave filled. I erected a monument upon it.”

“Were you her lover?” the Baron asked.

“No,” said the old Jew with great pride and contempt. “No, I have seen her lovers running about, yapping around her, flattering and fighting. No. I was her friend. When at the gate of paradise
the keeper shall ask me: ‘Who are you?’ I shall give that great angel no name, no position or deed of mine in the world to be recognized by, but I shall answer him: ‘I am the friend of Pellegrina Leoni.’ You, who killed her now, as you have told me, by asking her who she was—when in your time you are asked, on the other side of the grave, ‘Who are you?’—what will you have to answer? You will have, before the face of God, to give your names, as at the Hotel of Andermatt.”

Pilot, at these words, seemed ill at ease; he wanted to speak, but thought better of it.

“Now, young gentlemen,” said the old Jew, “leave me to tell this tale at my pleasure. Listen well, for there will be no such tale again.

“All my life I have been a very rich man. I inherited great fortunes from my father and mother, and from their people, who were all great traders. Also, for the first forty years of my life I was a very unhappy man, such as you yourselves are. I traveled much. I had always been fond of music. I was even a composer, and composed and arranged ballets, for which I had a liking. For twenty years I kept my own
corps du ballet
, to perform my works before me and my friends, or before me alone. I had a staff of thirty young girls, none more than seventeen, whom my own ballet master taught, and who used to dance naked before me.”

The Baron woke up to attention, and grinned kindly at the old man. “You were not bored,” he said.

“Why not?” asked the old Jew. “I was, on the contrary terribly bored, bored to death. I might very well then have died from boredom, had I not happened to hear, upon a small theater stage of Venice, Pellegrina Leoni, who was then sixteen years old. Then I understood the meaning of heaven and earth, of the stars, life and death, and eternity. She took you out to walk in a rose garden, filled with nightingales, and then, the moment she wanted to, she rose and lifted you with her, higher than the moon. Had you ever been frightened of anything, miserable creature that you were,
she made you feel as safe, above the abyss, as in your own chair, Like a young shark in the sea, mastering the strong green waters by a strike of her fins, thus did she swim along within the depths and mysteries of the great world. Your heart would melt at the sound of her voice, till you thought: This is too much; the sweetness is killing me, and I cannot stand it. And then you found yourself on your knees, weeping over the unbelievable love and generosity of the Lord God, who had given you such a world as this. It was all a great miracle.”

I felt a great compassion for this old Jew, who had to pour out his heart to us. He had not talked of these things till now; and now that he had begun he could not stop himself. His long delicate nose threw a sad shadow upon the whitewashed wall.

“I had the honor, as I have said,” he went on, “to become her friend. I bought for her a villa near Milan. When she was not traveling, she stayed there, and had many friends around her, and sometimes also we were alone together, and then used to laugh much at the world, and to walk arm in arm in the gardens in the afternoons and evenings.

“She turned to me as a child to its mother. She gave me many pet names, and she used to take my fingers and play with them, telling me that I had the finest hands in the world, hands made to handle only diamonds. As we had first met in Venice, and as my name was Marcus, she used to call herself my lioness. That was what she was: a winged lioness. I alone, of all people, knew her.

“She had in her life two great, devouring passions, which meant everything to her proud heart.

“The first was her passion for the great soprano, Pellegrina Leoni. This was a zealous, a terribly jealous love, such as that of one of your priests for the miracle-working image of the Virgin, which he attends, or of a woman for her husband, who is a hero, or of a diamond-cutter for the purest diamond that has ever been found. In her relation to this idol she had no forbearance and no rest. She gave no mercy, and she asked for none. She worked
in the service of Pellegrina Leoni like a slave under the whip, weeping, dying at times, when it was demanded of her.

“She was a devil to the other women of the opera, for she needs must have all the parts for Pellegrina. She was indignant because it was impossible for her to perform two rôles within the same opera. They called her Lucifera there. More than one time she boxed the ears of a rival on the stage. Both old and young singers were constantly in tears when acting with her. And for all this she had no cause whatever, she was so absolutely the star of all the heavens of music. It was not only, either, in regard to her voice that she was jealous of Pellegrina Leoni’s honor. She meant Pellegrina to be, likewise, the most beautiful, elegant, and fashionable of women, and in this connection she was fairly ridiculous in her vanity. On the stage she would wear none but real jewels, and the most magnificent attire. She would appear in the rôle of Agatha, a village maiden, all covered with diamonds and with a train three yards long. She drank nothing but water for fear of spoiling the complexion of Pellegrina. And were a prince or a cardinal or the pope himself to call on her before noon, she would meet him with her hair done up in curling pins, and her face covered with zinc cream, so that in the evening she might sweep the floor with all the other women, not only of the stage but of the parquet and boxes as well—and she had the most brilliant audiences of all the world. It was the fashion to adore Pellegrina Leoni. The greatest people of Italy, Austria, Russia, and Germany thronged to her
salons
. And she was pleased about it; she liked to see them all at Pellegrina’s feet. But she would be rude to the Czar of Russia himself, and risk a sojourn in Siberia, before she would give up her own repertoire or her regular hours of practice.

“And the other great passion, young gentlemen, of this great heart was her love for her audience. And that was not for the great people, the proud princes and magnates and the lovely ladies, all in jewels; not even for the famous composers, musicians, critics, and men of letters, but for her galleries. Those poor people of the
back streets and market places, who would give up a meal or a pair of shoes, the wages of hard labor, to crowd high up in the hot house and hear Pellegrina sing, and who stamped the floor, shrieked and wept over her—she loved them beyond everything in the world. This second passion of hers was as mighty as the first, but it was as gentle as the love of God, or of your Virgin, for the world. You people of the North, you do not know the women of the South and the East when they love. When they embrace their children, and weep over their dead, they are like holy flames When, after the first performance of
Medée
, the people of the town outspanned the horses of my carriage, in which she was driving, to draw it themselves, she did not look at the Ducas who put their noble shoulders to the task. No, she wept a rain of warm tears, more precious than diamonds, she lifted a rainbow of sweet smiles, over the streetsweepers, the carriers, the fruitsellers and watermen of Milan. She would have died for them. I was with her in the carriage, and she held my hand. She was not herself the child of very poor people. She was a baker’s daughter, and her mother, the child of a Spanish farmer. I do not know where she had caught her passion for those lowest in the world. It was not exactly for them alone that she sang, for she wanted the applause of the great connoisseurs as well; but she wanted that for the sake of her galleries. She grieved for them when times were hard and they were suppressed. She would give them all her money and sell her clothes for them. It was curious that they never begged much of her, as if they had realized that she had given them the best she had to give when she sang to them. Had they asked her, they should have had all. Her gardens and her house were open to them, and she would sit with the children of the poor under the oleander trees of her terraces when she refused to receive great lords of England, who had crossed the sea to see her.