The Apprentice Lover (28 page)

A
fter my mother's illness, my father assumed the role of family correspondent. His mode was upbeat. My mother looked “pretty good, for a lady whose health is rotten,” he said. On most days, she was “like her old self—minus the vitality.” The doctors had given her a handful of pills, “every color of the rainbow,” and she gobbled them at intervals throughout the day. Her appetite—no small thing—had fully returned. He and she often talked about me, remembering my superior work at Scranton Prep and Columbia. “When it comes to brains,” he wrote, “you got the goods.” My mother thought I would make an excellent teacher, but he still thought I was going to be an asset to the business one day. My grandfather in particular hoped I would eventually work for Massolini Construction. He was, of course, pleased that I had found the Old Country an interesting place. But what exactly did I like so much? Wasn't the standard of living in Italy below what you could find anywhere in America?

I wrote home faithfully, ignoring all hints about returning to Pennsylvania, taking care to frame my experience on Capri in ways that would make sense in Luzerne County. In one letter, I casually mentioned to my father that I'd been to Salerno, and had stood on the beach where he landed. That news had provoked a single line of response: “As far as I'm concerned, you can keep Salerno.”

The unspoken request in every letter was, “Alex, come home.” But Pittston no longer felt like home. Nowhere did, though the Villa Clio had
at first felt like a place I'd been looking for unsuccessfully all of my life. I refused to criticize it, taking for granted its small guilts and large assumptions. I bought greedily into Grant's view of things, and did my best to make him believe I shared his opinions. Yet now I found our conversations painful. I continued to type manuscripts for
il maestro,
but there was no emotional payoff anywhere. He would merely grunt whenever I appeared at his study with a pile of typescript, barely acknowledging my presence. The possibility of taking another poem to him for criticism had withered.

Once, as I sat taking dictation in my slow fashion (which annoyed him), he lifted the dagger from his desk and flung it toward me, missing my head by two feet or so. The blade whizzed past, sticking in the wall-board with a menacing twang.

I gaped at Grant, barely able to believe that had happened.

“Sorry, old man,” he said, “but I needed to wake you up.”

“I'm perfectly awake,” I said.

He continued the dictation as though nothing had happened, and I tried to resume writing, but my hand shook so badly I could not grip the pen. He wanted to kill me, I thought. And perhaps he would.

Another time, when I had stopped to admire a bed of belladonna lilies, newly flowered, in the lower garden, he came up to me from behind, putting his hands on my shoulders and squeezing. I froze, thinking he might snap my collarbones, then turned to face him.

“Not to worry,” he said, with fumes of whiskey on his breath. “I do like you, Lorenzo, my dear boy. But I did have something to say—rather sotto voce, what?”

I waited attentively.

“Were I you,” he said, “I should forget about Holly. Put her out of your bloody head.”

“That's not possible,” I said.

“Anything is possible.”

I looked away from him.

“You've got the beginnings of a talent,” he said, shifting the subject onto ground where he felt certain of his position. “A glimmer of something in the poems, perhaps. Your prose is tolerable.” From him, these
were mighty compliments. “I should think about travel. A young man must travel, what? Find something to write about.”

We had talked of this before. His own youthful travels in distant lands had been famously crucial to his development. In his writing, he often referred to places he had, quite literally, touched. I recalled another occasion where he said, “It was your man, Hemingway, who suggested one should seek out experience. Quite right, that. Otherwise, one is condemned to write novels about adultery in suburbia. Americans like them, of course.”

“The English do as well,” I replied, more to annoy him than to make a genuine point. That he didn't press for examples relieved me.

We stood face to face, him swaying like a blown rose on its stem. The fragility of his presence struck me: the dry, rough skin that grew more translucent every day, the blue veins in his cheeks, the bad teeth and thinning hair. I was too young to see that, in mere decades, I could find myself similarly worn.

“I should recommend Tangiers,” Grant said. “I have an old friend there, Bowles. American chap. Not a bad writer. He will see you.”

“You're asking me to go?”

“Nonsense,” he said.

I would not back away. “You must tell me if I'm no longer welcome.”

“Dear fellow,” he said, reaching his hands around my neck, “you're absolutely mad.” He leaned close to my ear. “I should miss you terribly if you abandoned our little nest. I should be forlorn.”

To my relief, he drew back. After a puzzled look at me, as though trying without success to remember my identity, he turned toward a path that led to the sea and stumbled into the shadows of the cyprus allée. And no bird sang.

 

I began to plot my exit, convinced that the time to leave Capri had come. Vera was increasingly erratic, saying odd things, making innuendoes, clipping my verbal wings with scissoring asides. I felt unwelcome in her kitchen, and avoided what had been a place of warmth and diver
sion. My Italian culinary education skidded abruptly to a halt. With Toni Bonano gone, I had Patrice alone for friendship, though his agonies with Giovanni made him a less than jolly companion. He could not understand how a perfectly healthy, red-blooded queer like Giovanni could prefer a pink-cheeked, bosomy girl of no particular charms to him, a spiritual heir of the
philosophes
. He must somehow get Giovanni off the island, he said, but he knew that was impossible. “These Capresi,” he said, “they have no other place in mind. There is Capri for them—nothing else.”

Holly simply ignored me, although one Sunday afternoon in mid-September, she suggested that we have a picnic together at the Villa Jovis. Rupert and Vera were having a rare meal away from the Villa Clio with Mona and Eddie von Bismarck, whose guest of honor was W. H. Auden. That my favorite poet should have landed on Capri was both thrilling and frustrating. In fact, there seemed a touch of malice in Vera's voice when she told me about the dinner I'd be missing. “He's such an amusing chap,” she said, as she left.

It was a steep climb to the Villa Jovis, often eased for day-trippers by donkeys, whom they engaged in front of the Quisisana. (The sex lives of these pathetic beasts amused guests of the hotel in the late afternoons, as they sipped cocktails on its
terrazza elegante.)
Holly and I approached from the south, coming through dense eucalyptus and oak woods above the Tragara to the villa's manicured grounds. This principal residence of Tiberius was built into the northeastern peak of Capri—placed strategically to survey the island as a whole, the Sorrentine Peninsula beyond, and the Gulf of Naples.

One had to imagine what the villa might have been in its heyday, since only a honeycomb of stone cisterns, reticulated walls, and uneven floors remained. Grassy pathways led from terrace to terrace. The actual living quarters of the emperor had been built close to the edge of the cliff, giving way to imperial baths and a spectacular terrace, with a view to the mainland. We walked through the loggia onto the broad
ambulatio,
with its pocked columns still in place beside ilex and umbrella pines. Tiberius would pace there, in the early evening, contemplating the fate of Rome. (A nearby lighthouse, restored in recent years, communicated with the
mainland; it apparently crumbled only a few days before the emperor's death.)

It was here, on the
ambulatio,
that the emperor once spoke in hushed tones with his supposed friend and political favorite, Sejanus. In a bizarre and brilliant move, he sent his adjutant back to Rome with a sealed letter, which he asked to be read in the presence of all senators. Sejanus and his followers—a potent faction within the Roman government—believed that he was about to be honored with newly created powers. With Tiberius living so far from the center of power, he would act as the emperor's vicar in Rome, his chosen deputy. He listened with horror as the letter, which contained a warrant for his arrest and immediate execution, was read.

Since Holly had not heard this story, I relayed it in some detail, having read the original version in Tacitus. I embellished the tale myself, describing Sejanus as a “fawning young man who secretly believed himself at least the intellectual equal of the emperor.”

“Oh, I meant to tell you,” said Holly, slyly. “Rupert has a letter for you.”

“For me?”

“What a nit you are!”

“You're wicked.”

“Really, Alex—you are such a silly man.”

I drew close to her, nose to nose. “You think I'm a fawning young man, don't you? I'm Sejanus.”

“On the contrary,” she said, “you've stood up nicely to Rupert in the past few weeks. He's quite beside himself.” She backed away from me and peered over the cliff, which dropped to the green sea below. It was there that so many of the emperor's enemies—or supposed enemies—were dashed. In a terrifying flash, I could see Marisa tumbling through the air, her body end over end. The rocks below seemed to reach for her, but the moment of the crash never came. She just tumbled and tumbled.

“Are you all right, Alex?”

I refocused my eyes and saw Holly before me. “Rupert tried to kill me the other day,” I said.

“What?”

“That dagger on his desk,” I said. “He threw it across the room, missing my goddamn head by a couple of feet.”

“Why do I know you're not kidding?”

“He's a bastard,” I said.

“Marisa told me he'd done the same to her,” she said, coolly, “only a few days before she died.”

I could believe almost anything about Grant, but this stretched credulity. Marisa was utterly compliant: hardly a threat to him. He had clearly made a calculated assault on her from many angles, physical and mental, in the weeks leading up to her death. He had not, I hoped, wished her to kill herself, but he tried his best to drive her away.

Holly said, wistfully, “He can be so considerate at times.”

“Now you're the nit,” I said. “He's a monster. A brilliant writer, maybe, but a monster.”

“I suppose,” she said.

“Do you love him?”

“I don't think so,” she said.

“We've got to get away.”

“I don't know.”

“I do,” I said.

Below us, the sun glittered on the sea, driving a path toward Naples and a whole world that was not Capri. To my eye, it beckoned brightly.

I
woke up early the next day, eager to leave the island. Already the whole scene on Capri felt like a dream: remote and insubstantial, phantasmagoric.

I loved walking to the piazzetta for breakfast, lingering over coffee and pastries, writing poetry. I could write in the morning, before the tasks of the day consumed me, when my mind felt clear and large, awake. I'd been filling a notebook with rough drafts of poems in the past weeks, and considered this my secret hoard. I planned to raid those pages for months to come, finding fragments of verse that might, with a little coaxing, become poems. It was a lesson I'd learned from Grant, who often sat in the garden under his favorite lemon tree with a notebook in hand, scribbling odd lines, images, unusual words, names for characters in future fictions, titles that might one day find a poem or novel attached to them.

It was a brilliant morning, the sea on fire below as I made my way toward the piazzetta along the familiar path. I felt keenly alert as I followed the Tragara above the Unghia Marina, while sunlight sharpened its edges on the tumbling dolomitic shelves of Mount Solaro. The rooftop of the Certosa di San Giacomo—an obvious landmark above the Marina Piccola—glistened, as if made of tinfoil. I deeply enjoyed the Camerelle in early morning, with its cloistered aura, the distinctive smell of dung, cat piss, and laundry soap permeating the air as shirts and bedsheets flapped on balconies. The paving stones below were a rich amber color,
bordered by late summer flowers. It struck me that Capri never disappointed the senses, rushing at every organ full blast, with variety and texture. I felt a pang, and knew I would miss the island. I might never again recapture this world of light and sound, of smell and taste. Covetously, I ran my fingers along the walls, prizing the chalky stone with its rough and porous grain.

Emerging into the piazzetta from the shadows of the via Vittorio Emanuele, I temporarily lost my vision. The sun was too bright to absorb, so I waited for my eyes to adjust in the shade of a candy-striped awning, taking a whole table to myself at the Bar Alfonso. The Capresi never used these tables, since they charged a little more for the drinks and food in the open air. But I didn't care, having spent very little of my grandfather's money in the past months.

I settled in, opening my notebook to a blank page. The waiter, a young, smooth-cheeked fellow in a white jacket, knew me well by now; he didn't have to ask what I wanted but simply brought an espresso with an almond-encrusted cornetto, still warm from the oven. It was a sign that I'd been accepted as a regular. Contented, I stared ahead, vaguely watching the local traffic in the piazzetta, and vaguely waiting for that elusive thing called inspiration. I was trying (without success) to keep my immediate problems as far from my conscious mind as possible.

With a disorienting rush, I realized that the man sitting at the next table was W. H. Auden. One could hardly mistake the famously grooved face, the lidded eyes with pouches below them, or the hair combed straight to one side like an English schoolboy en route to chapel. His rumpled linen jacket needed laundering, and there were ashes on his gray trousers. On the table before him was last Friday's edition of the
Daily Telegraph
, and he was reading the sports pages. (Grant had told me about Auden's obsession with games, and we'd often talked about his notion of poetry as “a game of knowledge.”)

Though I wanted to introduce myself, it seemed gauche and rude to disturb him while he was having breakfast, taking a break from his life as “W. H. Auden.” It would, in fact, have annoyed me that morning had someone unexpectedly appeared at my side demanding attention. I savored the solitude in company one finds in a public café—an atmos
phere cherished by writers. On the other hand, I had only one life, and Auden meant a lot to me. I might never have another chance to meet him, to hear the voice, to look into his eyes. The encounter would probably strike him as a mild irritation, a petty disturbance in an otherwise uneventful day; but it would matter to me. I would think of it for decades to come, cursing myself to the grave if I didn't make the move.

While still debating whether or not to interrupt him, I found myself standing by his table. The decision seemed to have been made for me.

He looked up and, to my relief, smiled—his teeth were brown, uneven. “You're not Italian,” he said. “I can always tell by the jeans. You bought those in America, didn't you?”

“I'm Alex Massolini,” I said. “I work for Rupert Grant—as his secretary.”

“Ah, my old chum! Please, sit.” He offered me a cigarette, but I refused.

“Americans despise smokers,” he said. “But it's a foul habit, this not smoking.” A white scum gathered in the corners of his lips.

“I've got nothing against smoking,” I said, taking a seat.

“Good chap!” He sucked at the cigarette, inhaling with gusto. The smoke disappeared into his lungs forever as a quiet satisfaction flooded his face. His fingers were tobacco-stained, the nails bitten.

“I'm very glad to meet you,” I said.

He studied my features. “Let me guess: you're a poet,” he said.

“How did you know?”

“I've a sixth sense for such things, my dear. Tell me about your poems. I'm all ears.”

“I've written very little. It's more that I'm trying to write poems.”

“Well done,” he said, irrelevantly. His mind seemed to wander, then he snapped back into focus. “Whom do you read?”

This was easy. “I've been reading your poems for a long time,” I said.

“That's not possible,” he responded, wiping fresh ashes from the sleeve of his jacket. “You haven't been alive long enough for that to be the case.”

“Let's say that as long as I've been interested in poetry, I've admired yours.”

He seemed embarrassed by this, taking a sip of coffee.

“‘Musée des Beaux Arts' is almost a perfect poem,” I said.

Auden smiled. “Almost? Whenever anyone tells me they like a particular poem, I feel as though I've been pickpocketed,” he said. “No matter. I like that poem as well as you do. I should like it just as well if someone else had written it.”

“It's inspired,” I said.

“Oh, dear,” he said, with a worried look. “I'm not very keen on that notion. Inspiration. What's that? A passing feeling, with no real connection to any present reality. I place very little weight on how I felt about a certain poem whilst writing it. One must be careful not to overestimate such things. A poem is a verbal machine. Nothing more. One tinkers. There are decent mechanics and poor ones.”

“You seem to prefer formal poetry.”

“One does whatever appears to work. I like it when gifts come in neat boxes, don't you?” He twisted the cigarette into an ashtray. “I often tell young friends who want to be poets that they should learn everything they can about rhymes, meters, stanza forms, and so on. A poet who writes free verse has to invent the world afresh in every poem, and only the greatest—or luckiest—pull it off. Whitman could manage, or Eliot. For the most part, free verse is sloppy. One doesn't like squalor on the page.”

Since he was in a chatty mood, I decided to risk something. “Some of your poems are obscure,” I said. “Does it bother you when critics say that?”

“They're not obscure to me,” he said. “I'm writing for myself, after all. My readers are just eavesdropping, would you say?”

“I suppose.”

“Look, dear. I pay no attention to critics. In a way, I wish poets would be judged only by their peers, like physicists. Nobody ever said, ‘But I didn't understand your formula, Dr. Einstein.' Notice that bad physicists are usually not applauded. But what of bad poets? Do you read the reviews in the Sunday papers? Shocking. And the prizes! I'm always appalled by the shortlists, and offended by the winners.”

“I don't think about that,” I said, and it was true. That sort of profes
sional envy would come later, when I actually had something to compare with others.

Auden was delighted, however. “Try to remain obscure as long as you can,” he said. “It's much safer. And forget about this word ‘inspiration.' A young poet has to court his own muse, but Dame Philology should become his mistress. Go deeply into words. And don't be concerned with originality.”

“So far, that hasn't been a problem,” I said. “I'm an imitator.”

“I'm sure Rupert would approve,” he said. “He's been imitating me for decades.” There was an artful pause. “And what do you make of Rupert? Tell the truth now. I won't tattle.”

“He's very disciplined,” I said.

“Of course,” Auden said. “Discipline, in a man of intelligence, is a sign of ambition.”

“His best work is probably in the novels.”

“Alas, I've never read one.”

“Really?”

“I prefer detective stories, that sort of thing.”

“You've written prose.”

“Quite a lot, I should say. Had to make a living. Mostly book reviews, lectures. It's all a bit scrappy.”

Scrappy, indeed. I had, with excitement, read and admired
The Dyer's Hand
, a volume of aphoristic essays and reviews. But I understood that he'd focused on poetry with a unique vengeance. Few poets had written with such variety, in so many forms, many invented for the occasion. The range of his voice, from colloquial to formal modes, dazzled me. The problem was, the audience for such virtuosity was surely dying.

“Do you have anyone in mind, when you write a poem?” I wondered.

“What a funny question,” he said. “Do you know, sometimes, when I read a book and adore it, it seems to have been written for my eyes only. I don't want anyone else in the world to know about it, so I keep mum. As a poet, I should like to imagine that thousands of chaps—or ladies—are out there feeling like that about my poems. They've all got a tremendous and wonderful secret which they are loath to share.”

What he said made such astonishing good sense, and he clearly
enjoyed saying things he'd probably said a thousand times before. He would make, I thought, a marvelous teacher.

“Tell me something of yourself, Alan.”

“Alex,” I said.

“Yes, yes. So you are happy at the Villa Clio? It's a lovely spot.”

“Not really,” I said.

“Oh, dear. I suspect the worst, so tell me the truth.”

“It's not so bad,” I said. “I'm in love.”

He drew back, feigning disbelief. “In love? Not very wise, dear,” he said. “Who is she? Or he?” He lowered his voice. “Not Rupert, I should hope? He doesn't deserve it.”

“An English girl,” I said. “Rupert's research assistant.”

“He's very keen on his research, isn't he? I've heard about this obsession—from Vera, the poor darling.”

“I don't know what to do,” I said.

“Make a complete fool of yourself,” he said. “It's your right and your duty. You're a young man. Do what follows naturally—as the night the day.”

“I'm going to leave Capri,” I said, “as soon as possible. And with Holly, if she'll come.”

“Oh, she'll come,” Auden said. “Abduct her, if she won't. The Italian police are hopeless. You have absolutely nothing to worry about.”

I laughed, saying I would take his advice, and this cheered him inordinately. For whatever reason, I had the feeling that he needed my cheer that morning. His bright, healthy spirit seemed uncomfortably trapped in a flabby, unwholesome body that had never willingly been found on a squash court. His complexion—the skin papery and sulfurous—reflected a life of booze and cigarettes. (“His apartment in New York always looked like an ashtray that no one bothered to empty,” Grant once told me.) It didn't surprise me when, only a couple of years later, he died—a man in his early sixties, but one whose flesh had long since become irrelevant.

After a few further minutes of chatter, I sensed that Auden wished to regain his solitude. The fleshy eyes kept glancing away from me, toward the sports pages. His fingers began to drum the table.

“I've taken enough of your time, Mr. Auden,” I said, rising.

“How nice to meet you,” he said, putting forward a hand to shake, a habit perhaps acquired in New York.

I returned to my table and began to write—a true story about an old man called Gus who lived in my neighborhood in Pittston. He occupied an otherwise abandoned Bricktex building on the corner of our block, and children tended to taunt him. Mothers warned against speaking to him at all. The grandmother of a friend informed me that Gus “ate children for breakfast.” One day, I caught up to him as he limped along the street, starting a conversation. He seemed glad for my company, and invited me to his filthy apartment (old newspapers were stacked waist-high in every corner). He offered me cookies and a glass of Coke, served in a coffee-stained cup, and—with some reservations—I ate and drank. Gus was supposedly retarded, but I found our conversation delightful—he talked of nothing but the Yankees and their current season. “Mickey Mantle,” he said, “very good. He hits so many homers!” He grinned at me, toothlessly. “And you,” he said, “what is your name and do you play baseball?” I told him about my Little League team and my dream of pitching for the Braves like Warren Spahn. I also confessed to problems with throwing a curve. “It's hard,” I said, and he nodded aggressively. Curve balls are hard to throw, he agreed, extracting a baseball from the pocket of his sweatshirt. “Put your fingers like this,” he said, showing me how to place my fingers on the seams of the ball in a particular way. “Try it,” he said, handing me the ball. “I think you will throw a curve today.”

I left him that day with a feeling of peculiar exhilaration. I was not Gus, and I was not retarded, and I would never, ever live in such a peculiar apartment. And if, by some rotten twist, I found myself in parallel circumstances, I would open my heart to every child on the street.