Tourmaline (25 page)

To the captain of the ship that had brought him here he gave a snuff-box with his portrait set in diamonds. To the crew he sent wine and money. He wandered the island, and in three weeks he knew every foot of it. He fortified the garrison at Lon-gone, strengthened watchtowers, disbanded the coast guard and replaced them with his own soldiers.

Meanwhile, the Allies, seeking a comprehensive settlement, gathered in Vienna. Among the group were two emperors, four kings, one queen, two hereditary princes, three grand duchesses, and more than two hundred heads of ducal houses. Balls and banquets were given nightly. There were pantomimes and balloon ascents and a performance of
Fidelio
conducted by Beethoven himself.

The last great party of the crowned heads of Europe, and Napoleon missed it. He could do no better than build a wooden ballroom in the Piazza d’Armi and entertain the Elbans with fireworks.

The grand king of Elba. This cell’s my court. A compact man, impeccably turned out, with nothing much to do.

What time is it?

What time is it now?

Able was I ere I saw Elba. From a hill above Portoferraio, looking up at the peaks of Capanne and Giove, north to the sea, east toward Volterraio, he is reported to have said: “It must be confessed that my island is very small.”

Or else, Francis Cape had considered on more than one occasion, he could begin with a description of the Palazzina dei Mulini, with its pinkish-white plaster facade, green shutters, and the long wing extending on the seaward side toward the cliff edge. Napoleon had lived in the cramped, dark rooms on the ground floor and slept on a collapsible bed. Upstairs, prepared for his wife and son should they ever join him, were the brighter, grander apartments, with gilded canopied beds ringed with carved swans and faded drapes bunched with golden tassels.

Or else Francis could begin with the end — Napoleon on his bed at St. Helena, groaning “tête d’armée,” his last words before swooning into death.

It must have been then, at his last conscious moment, that Napoleon had recognized the mistake he’d made by leaving Elba. Francis Cape would never leave Elba. He didn’t even have the inclination to leave this room he called his home. There was a time when he’d hoped, upon finishing his book, to reward himself by building a modest house of his own, a villetta with a drive flanked with limes and stone pines and a courtyard leading to a garage, behind which would have been the rabbit hutch and a small garden, where he could plant a few vines and olive trees. And keep a tortoise. A villetta with a garden, a garden with a tortoise. That had been his vision of completeness.

But the knowledge that he’d reached the end of his life without either finishing his book on Napoleon or building his house was by no means unendurable. He’d found happiness on Elba. He’d discovered pleasure.

There was one afternoon in particular. Was it April of ’52 or ’53? Bored with his work, he’d gone to visit Adriana, though they didn’t have a lesson scheduled that day. Still, she seemed delighted to see him. Lorenzo had invited Adriana and her mother to come taste his Sangiovese. Signora Nardi had declined. Adriana suggested to Francis that he accompany her in her mother’s place.

On a warm spring day in the dusty light in Lorenzo’s cantina, he’d watched Lorenzo expertly flick the oil from the top of a demi-john filled with red wine. Six months from vine to glass, six months to the day, Lorenzo insisted, makes for a wine that sings of Earth and Sun.

Salute!

Adriana, her cheeks flushed from the wine, her long dark lashes lowering as she took another sip. The simple, correct pleasure contained in Francis’s respectful love. He hadn’t wanted anything more than to admire the child and watch her as she grew up.

Just as a father will admire his own daughter, watching from the distance of propriety the slow transformation of the body. Nothing wrong with that, is there?

It hadn’t been wrong until Murray Murdoch came along. Americans have a special talent for turning paradise into a wasteland. They drill and pound and blast, ransacking the earth, and then they go away without bothering to clean up the mess. Like Murray had gone away after giving Francis Cape a good whack in the chest.

That was…when? Francis had lost track of time. No matter, now that time had lost track of him. Nor did it matter that he hadn’t completed his book. Or married. He was, at long last, without regret. It was as if Murray had beaten out the demons that had been assaulting him of late. Francis was at peace. Looking back, he could say with confidence that in the last decade of his life he’d finally learned how to live.

And if everything wasn’t as perfect as it had been, eventually it would be. Francis had only to be patient. Napoleon’s great fault, it could be said, was not ambition but impatience. Desire lit by the
ticktock
of a pocketwatch. Whatever the king wanted he wanted right away. Not even a year had passed and he set sail on the
In-constant
for Corsica, the island of his birth, and from there to France and Fontainebleau. And the next thing you know:

The English front in a concave line of columns four deep, pouring forth a ceaseless storm of musketry. The desperate cry of “Sauve qui peut!” drowned out by the explosions. And all the while a little man with a spyglass watching from the heights of La Belle Alliance.

The answer, as Francis Cape could have told Monsieur Bonaparte, was to stay put once you’ve found paradise. Don’t move. Don’t even get up out of your seat. With all the contingencies within and without, you don’t want to take any chances.

After Murray had left, Francis sank back in his chair, and that’s where he stayed. With the chair positioned at an angle so the right arm was adjacent with one edge of the single small table, Francis had only to turn his head slightly to see out the window. Luckily, he’d left one of the shutters open to let in the night breeze, giving him a view of the brightening sky. Unluckily, he hadn’t bothered to put up the netting, so a mosquito — one of the wicked Mediterranean zanzare that are impossible to trap and kill — flew in and proceeded to torment him by buzzing relentlessly around his ears.

The place on his chest where he’d been hit no longer hurt him. Nothing hurt him anymore. The pink sky, the aroma of caffè drifting up from the bar across the street, the traffic noise increasing as the hours passed — it was all so pleasant. Only the zanzara’s zanzaring —
zanzanzanzan
— to bother him. It was the kind of annoyance he’d totally forget once it had passed.
Zanzanzan.
But he could still relish the tranquillity of soul and setting. A kind of nirvana inflected by pride. He was proud of his patience.
Zanzanzanzanzan.
No matter. He could wait. He could wait forever.

Breakfast at ten, dinner at eight. I am a man of plain tastes. I prefer fresh water to coffee, unsalted bread, sauceless meat, boiled peas with no more than a sprinkling of chopped mint. I drink two glasses of Chambertin in the evening. Look at me. I am the general who walked on foot by the side of the sick as we crossed the fierce hot sands from Jaffa to Cairo. And I am the willing sacrifice to the hatred of the enemies of France. May they prove sincere in their declarations and only have aimed at me!

The day, it appeared, would be overcast; the pink was dulling to a creamy gray. But the wind was gentle, the sea calm for the fishermen. Francis Cape went on waiting. After a while he began to ask himself what he was waiting for. Or whom. He would have admitted, if pressed, that he’d grown tired of seeking out others. The company he kept was always the company he earned with the exhausting effort of courtesy. Fortunately he’d made plenty of friends on Elba, and he knew how to make himself useful. It was Francis, remember, who introduced Murray Murdoch to Lorenzo. Wasn’t he the one who bridged the divide between locals and stranieri? With a foot in both camps, he kept communication open. And when Adriana Nardi had come to him wanting to learn English, he hadn’t turned her away.

Good Francis Cape.
Zanzanzanzanzan.
He sensed that his manners were considered by the locals to be old-fashioned. In contrast to most foreigners, he was gracious, respectful, and, above all, patient.

Just look at him. He could wait and wait and wait without complaining. Doing no more than offering to the world the opportunity to come and visit him. Francis Cape was a gentleman. There weren’t many gentlemen left. The kind of wars that must be fought in this century had reduced the numbers. In modern war, all actions taken had to be as quick as they were cowardly. But back in the days of Waterloo, battlefields were, on the whole, open and fair, and it paid to be patient. Had Napoleon successfully learned how to be patient, he might have triumphed. Instead it was brave old Blucher, who, after having his horse shot under him, was able to get up, brush himself off, and lead his regiment in such a skillful retreat that Napoleon did not know until noon the next day which way he had taken.

Who were the gentlemen left in the world? Recently, Francis had read in the
Tribune
about a man named David Strangeways. Mr. Strangeways had been in charge of Deception Operations in northern Europe during the war. As one of the leading military strategists in England, he was appointed to command the task force overseeing the nuclear tests at Christmas Island. The good man, absolutely opposed to the bomb, was forced to weigh his conscience against his duty. He refused the appointment, quit the military, and went off to take Holy Orders.

There’s a gentleman for you. An oddity, certainly. The appropriately named Mr. Strangeways.

Francis recognized that he himself had been less than a gentleman in recent months. Suspicion does not allow for much gentility. Suspicious of Adriana’s involvement with Murray, Francis had been forced to act in ways that could only be described as cowardly.

Yet from this tranquil vantage point, looking back over his life, he could say with confidence that though he’d made mistakes of a moral nature, he’d never done anything terribly wrong. Not like Napoleon, who would have improved his state of mind, along with his eternal prospects, if he’d asked to be forgiven —

For the murder of the youthful d’Enghien: convicted of capital crimes against the Republic, he asked for nothing more than an interview with me. I refused and ordered the prisoner immediately remanded, led to a ditch outside the castle, and shot by a party of elite gendarmes standing on the parapet above him. His body was thrown into a grave without a funeral.

For the murder of the humble Palm, bookseller of Naumburg, convicted of libel after publishing an inciting pamphlet and shot immediately.

For the murder of Stabbs, son of a clergyman. The officers of Pavia. And all the male inhabitants massacred at Lugo.

Even for the murder of the twenty bystanders in the Rue St-Nicaise, who were blown up in my place.

Napoleon, it must be admitted, was a confused man. Had his army been defeated early on, he would have lived to be a gentleman. That’s what he’d aspired to when he was a youth on Corsica. But for a powerful man, tyranny will always be easier than gentility.

Francis Cape had never been in a position where he was burdened with great power. At best, he could be described as distinguished. His Elban neighbors called him il professore. He liked the title, even if it wasn’t accurate. The only teaching he ever did was of elemental English to a young Italian girl. And really, it must be said that she ended up teaching him far more than he had taught her, though what she’d taught him could not be put into words. What he’d learned —
zanzanzanzanzan.
What he’d come to understand. Now that he was in a position to reflect upon the wisdom he’d gained from experience, he couldn’t begin and didn’t want to try to describe it. And he in no way minded being at a loss for words. This new serenity — it was most welcome, after the past year. He understood without really understanding what it was he understood. Murky certainty was good enough for him. Knowledge that exceeds the capacity of the language to articulate it should be respected. This was similar to but not the equivalent of faith. God being the mysterious subject of faith, knowledge being the definite content of a subject.

Silence was a form of respect. Patient silence. Francis’s happiness was contingent upon his ability to experience pleasure without giving in to desire — a formula easily mastered. If he spaced his meals as Napoleon did — breakfast at ten, dinner at eight — if he ate heartily but simply, he could avoid the pangs of hunger. Similarly, he could love without needing to possess the object of his love, simply by enjoying the feeling of respectful, patient admiration.

Deprived of my pension, I had to cut the number of my servants by one-third and pay half of each salary with promissory notes. I’ve even replaced my Chambertin with a coarse local wine. I am forced to do almost everything for myself — soon I will be going to the market and cooking. If I plead poverty, it is out of justified concern.

Francis was beginning to feel mildly hungry. Though he would have preferred a panino made by Ninanina, he heated himself a can of soup on his gas bombola and, after eating, resumed his position in the chair and continued to wait.

Sooner or later, someone would have to come visit him. The postman, if no one else. On days when the postman didn’t find him enjoying the sunlight from a bench on Piazza Repubblica, he’d come find Francis at home.

The clamor of the town had quieted with siesta. Francis went on waiting. The coo of pigeons outside his window returned to him as the sound of his happiness — the purr of a contented man.

It amused him to think of Napoleon reduced to shopping at the market, arguing with fishmongers over the cost of octopus.

Murat, where are you? Soult and Bernadotte? Where has everybody gone? Marie-Louise? My incomparable Josephine?

This foolish little king who was destroyed by his own ambition. Had they been included in some artist’s scheme of heaven and hell, Francis would have been floating on a puffy cloud, looking down, and Napoleon would have been impaled on fiery prongs, looking up.