The Volcano Lover (19 page)

You can lean—yes, like that. Or clasp something. No, a little higher. And turn your head to the left. Yes, you can seem to dance. Seem. Absolutely immobile. Like that. No. I don't think she would kneel. The left foot a little bit freer. Loll a little. Without the smile. Eyes half lidded. Yes. Like that.

*   *   *

Everyone said her expressions were altogether remarkable and convincing. But even more remarkable was the rapidity with which she moved from one pose to another. Change without transition. From sorrow to joy, from joy to terror. From suffering to bliss, from bliss to horror. It seems the ultimate feminine gift, to be able to pass effortlessly, instantly, from one emotion to another. How men wanted women to be, and what they scorned in women. One minute this. The next minute that. Of course. Thus do all women.

In principle, every kind of character and emotion was represented. But nymphs and muses, Juliets and Mirandas, were far outnumbered by the forlorn and the victimized. Mothers bereft of their children—her Niobe; or driven by an intolerable injury to kill them—her Medea. Maidens dragged by their fathers to the sacrificial altar—her Iphigenia. Women yearning for the lovers who have discarded them—her Ariadne. Or about to kill themselves in despair at being abandoned—her Dido; or to atone for the dishonor of a rape—her Lucrece. These were the poses that excited the greatest admiration.

When the poet saw her, only a year after she arrived in Naples, she had just begun performing at the Cavaliere's assemblies. Her lover had released an astonishing talent, which she would practice for many years and which would never cease to be admired, even by her fiercest detractors. Her gifts as a performer seemed at first identical with her beauty. But her beauty was more like genius, with its conviction of its own persistence, even in discouraging circumstances. For after her beauty went, she still felt like a beauty—available for display and appreciation. Even when she became heavy, she still felt light.

She did not want to be a victim. She was not a victim.

She doesn't miss Charles any more. She is resigned, she is triumphant. She knew she would never experience passionate love again, nor does she hope to. But she was genuinely fond of the Cavaliere, and easily faithful to him. She knows how to give pleasure, and does so as wanted. That Charles was rather chilly and strained in bed had not made her feel rejected. That the Cavaliere turned out to be more amorous than his nephew made her understand, for the first time, what it was to have sexual power over someone. Now she feels like a woman (which is safer than being a girl)—like many women, all of them irresistible. Her capacity for expressiveness, her unslakeable desire to make contact with others, had found its highest outlet in this theatre of simulated, ancient emotions.

*   *   *

What people made of antiquity then was a model for the present, a set of ideal examples. The past was a small world, made smaller by our great distance from it. It had only familiar names (the gods, the great sufferers, the heroes and heroines) representing familiar virtues (constancy, nobility, courage, grace), embodying an irrefutable idea of beauty, both feminine and masculine, and a potent, unthreatening sensuality—because enigmatic, broken, bleached of color.

People wanted to be edified. Knowledge was fashionable then—and philistinism unfashionable. Since each of the poses of the Cavaliere's protégé was a figure from ancient mythology or drama or history, to watch her run through her Attitudes, as they were called, was to be subjected to a kind of quiz.

She unbinds her hair, she rises from her haunches, she lifts her arms in supplication, she drops the goblet to the floor, she kneels and points the knife at her breast …

Gasps. A murmur from the audience. The beginning of applause, while somebody who doesn't recognize the figure is coached in a whisper by a fellow guest. The applause mounts. And the shouts. “Brava, Ariadne!”

Or “Brava, Iphigenia!”

And the Cavaliere standing nearby, both stage manager and privileged spectator, nodded gravely. He would have smiled had he thought it becoming to smile. Observing the old man's tense immobility, his age and thinness contrasting with her youth and opulent body, the poet smiled.

*   *   *

The significant moment! said the poet in his stilted French. That is what great art must render. The moment that is most humane, most typical, most affecting. My compliments, Madame Hart.

Thank you, she said.

Yours is a most unusual art, said the poet gravely. What interests me is how you move so quickly from one pose to another.

It just comes to me, she said.

But of course, he said, smiling. I understand. It is the function of art to conceal the difficulties of its execution.

It just comes, said the young woman, reddening. Surely he was not really asking her to explain how she did it.

How do you do it, said the poet. Do you see the personage you are incarnating in your mind's eye?

I think so, she said. Yes.

Her hair looked damp. The poet wondered what it would be like to embrace her. She was not his type. He was attracted to women who were more articulate, or who were humbler, less animated. Her talent had made her feverish. For there was no doubt that her performance was remarkable. She was not only, as was said knowingly by all, a work of art, but was herself an artist. The model as artist? Why not? But genius was something else. And so was happiness. He thought again how lucky the Cavaliere was. He was happy because he did not want more than he had.

There was a long, uncomfortable pause. The young woman did not flinch while this stiff German stared at her.

Would you like some wine?

Later, said the poet. I am not used to such heat.

Yes, the young woman exclaimed. It's hot. Very hot.

The great end of art is to strike the imagination, the poet told her. She agreed. And, in pursuing the true grandeur of design, it may sometimes be necessary for the artist to deviate from vulgar and strict historical truth. She was sweating. And then she told the poet that she had read, she had admired to distraction, his
Werther,
and was very sorry for poor Lotte, who must have felt so guilty for having inspired, innocently, the fatal passion in the too susceptible young man.

You don't feel sorry for the too susceptible young man?

Oh, she said, yes. But … but I feel more sorry for Lotte. She was trying to do what was right. She meant no harm.

I feel sorry for my hero, said the poet. At least I did. All that is very remote to me now. I was only twenty-four when I wrote it. I am not the person I was then.

The young woman, who is only twenty-two, cannot imagine the man standing before her ever to have been someone her own age. He must be about the same age as Charles. Strange what happens to men. They don't care for being young.

And was it a true story? she asked politely.

Everyone asks that, said the poet. Actually, everyone asks if it is my story. And, I confess, I did lend myself—but, as you see, I am still here.

I'm sure your friends are very glad, the young woman said.

I think Werther's death was my rebirth, the poet said solemnly.

Oh.

The poet was always—would always be—in the process of being reborn. Definition of a genius?

To her great relief she saw the Cavaliere approaching. I was just congratulating Madame Hart on the vivacity of her performance, said the poet.

Surely the brilliant Cavaliere would be a match for this ponderous visitor. The men would talk to each other, and she could watch.

But, as it turned out, the conversation between the Cavaliere and the poet was not much more successful than that between the Cavaliere's protégé and the poet. Neither greatly appreciated the other.

The Cavaliere had never read the notorious lachrymose novel about the lovelorn egotist who shoots himself; he suspected he would not like it. Luckily, his illustrious guest was not only one of the most famous writers on the continent and the principal minister of a small German duchy but had scientific interests, particularly in botany, geology, and ichthyology. So they talked about plants and stones and fish.

The poet began to unfurl his theory of the metamorphosis of plants. For some years I have been examining the leaves, pistils, and stamens of many species, and this study has led me to postulate a model from which it would be possible to construct an infinite number of plants, all of which could exist and many of which do. Walking along the seafront here, I had a new thought. You could say that I had an illumination. I am convinced that this Primal Plant does exist. When I leave Naples, I shall go to Sicily, which I am told is a botanist's paradise, and where I have hopes of finding a specimen. &c, &c, &c.

I am making an English garden on the grounds of the palace at Caserta, said the Cavaliere, ever eager to herborize, as soon as the poet had finished. Caserta may indeed rival Versailles, but I have persuaded Their Majesties that they need not yield to French fashion in the matter of gardens. At my suggestion they have engaged the most eminent landscape gardener in the English style, and this garden when completed will contain flora of the most enjoyable variety.

How disappointing the Cavaliere was. The poet changed the subject to Italy.

I have been completely transformed by Italy, he said. The man who left Weimar last year is not the same man who arrived in Naples, and whom you see before you now.

Yes, said the Cavaliere, not any more interested in self-transformation (the poet's favorite subject) than he was, for all his knowledge of gardens and the volcano, in botanical or geological theory. Yes, Italy is the most beautiful country in the world, I suppose. And truly there is no city more beautiful than Naples. Allow me the pleasure of showing you the view from my observatory.

Beauty, thought the poet scornfully. What a simple-minded epicurean this Englishman was. As if there were no more to the world than beauty! Here was a man incapable of delving deeply into what interested him. A mere dilettante, he would have called him, had dilettante not been then a term of praise.

Transformation, sighed the Cavaliere. Here was a man incapable of not taking himself seriously. He reflected that the poet undoubtedly exaggerated the extent to which he had been transformed by his Italian journey and that this concern with self-transformation was a rather overbearing piece of egotism.

And both were right. But the poet's convictions are more valuable to us; his vanity more pardonable; his sense of superiority more … superior. With genius, as with beauty—all, well almost all, is forgiven.

Thirty years later, in his
Italian Journey,
Goethe will write that he had a delightful time at the Cavaliere's assembly. He was not telling the truth. He was young enough then, restless enough, to have not enjoyed himself very much at all. To have minded that he learned nothing from any conversation that evening—for he felt himself undernourished mentally as well as under-appreciated. I am bent on my own improvement, the poet was writing his friends. Pleasure, yes—that too. I have pleasures and these quicken and enlarge my ability to feel. How superior he had felt to these people. And how superior he was.

*   *   *

In most of the stories in which a statue comes to life, the statue is a woman—often a Venus, who steps off her pedestal to return the embrace of an ardent man. Or a mother, but then she is likely to remain in her niche. Statues of the Virgin and of female saints do not become ambulatory; there is movement only in compassionate eyes, a tender mouth, a delicate hand—speaking or gesturing to the kneeling supplicant, to console or to protect. Rarely does a female statue come to life in order to take revenge. But when the statue is a man, his purpose is almost always to do or to avenge a wrong. A male statue who wakens—in the modern version, a machine given human form and then animated—comes to kill. And his being-really-a-statue packs him full with the martial virtue of single-mindedness, makes him unswervable, implacable, immune to the temptations of mercy.

It's a dinner party. Sophisticated people who have dressed up in handsome and revealing clothes are enjoying themselves in the atmosphere in which such dedicated partygoers enjoy themselves best—something of both brothel and salon, minus the exertions or risks of either. The food, whether chewy or delicate, is bountiful; the wine and champagne are costly; the lighting is muted and flattering; the music, and the aromas of flowers on the table, enveloping and suffusing; some sexual tomfoolery is taking place, both of the wanted and of the other kind (“We're just having fun,” says the would-be Don Juan, interfered with by the one who notices him relentlessly pressing his unwanted attentions on some woman); the servants are efficient and smile, hoping for a good tip. The chairs are yielding, and the guests profoundly enjoy the sensation of being seated. There are treats for all five senses. And mirth and glibness and flattery and genuine sexual interest. The music soothes and goads. For once, the gods of pleasure are getting their due.

And in comes this guest, this alien presence, who is not here to have fun at all. He comes to break up the party and haul the chief reveler down to hell. You saw him at the graveyard, atop a marble mausoleum. Being drunk with self-confidence, and also a little nervous about finding yourself in this cemetery, you made a joke to your sidekick. Then you halloed up to him. You invited him to the party. It was a morbid joke. And now he's here. He's grizzled, perhaps bearded, with a very deep voice and a lumbering, arthritic gait, not just because he is old but because he is made of stone; his joints don't bend when he walks. A huge, granite, forbidding father. He comes to execute judgment, a judgment that you thought outmoded or that didn't apply to you. No, you cannot live for pleasure. No. No.

He reaches out and dares you to shake his hand. The earth below rumbles, the floor of the partying room gapes open, flames start to rise—