 Prologue
It was probably a dumb and stammering lover who complained that he would address his God in Spanish, write a scientific treatise in German, whisper to the lady of his heart in Italian, and call his dogs in English.
At a pinch, for caressing purposes, our English tongue proves woefully deficient. The wooer feels himself a perspiring mute who flounders and struggles to be eloquent in a sign language. Whenever an American youth reaches a point that demands fervid oratory, he sighs like a furnace and talks like an icicle. Cold northern words freeze upon his lips instead of bursting forth into flames.
Sometimes the author breaks his pen against the same stone wall. To express humor, our language provides abundant means. Drama? Description? Prize fights? Political campaigns? We find plenty of words for them. But in attempting to portray certain tender emotions, the writer of English can prepare a statistical abstract only, less romantic than the multiplication tables.
Therefore do I wish that I might tell this tingling tale of love as first I heard it in the softest of Tuscan syllables, whose liquid music flows like a rivulet that runs sparkling and gossiping among the stones. English is too harsh. The Italian offers a wealth of subtle phrases and delicious innuendo by which the purest woman may convey bald truth with most amazing frankness.
No shock could be given the veriest prude if she could hear this story told by La Contessa Viola, who accepted that man’s nature leads him to the quest and the conquest of woman—perhaps of one, perhaps of many. Yet even if the tale were written in mellow Tuscan, it should not be read at a Puritan fireside, nor judged in light of New England conscience. This is a story for the young in spirit—for those who listen with their hearts.
And these are many. Could we peer beneath the stodgy exterior of counting-house drudges or know the secrets of toilers in a factory, many who crave to listen with heart foremost might be discovered. Many might desert gladly the rattle of subways and the roar of traffic to lounge in the tepid sunshine of the Isle of Capri, gazing at the same rocks whereupon the sirens sat and sang when Ulysses plugged the ears of his mariners with wax lest they hear that amorous song of their undoing.
Chapter One
Inviting and simplistic, yet elegant and lavish at the same time, La Trattoria La Sirena—Café of the Sirens—tenaciously perched on its small landhold between the mountain and the sea along the picturesque jagged southern coast of Capri. Behind the trattoria, overtopping it, hung a gray, grim cliff, gray as the mountain and seemingly as old.
During the long and languorous summer evenings, this beach, the Piccolo Marine, or little sea, was the favorite rendezvous for our colony of idlers who found no leisure to work on this most delightfully indolent of islands. Here we would assemble at Marghetta’s trattoria, citizens of the world who abandoned all pretense of labor and flocked hither to dabble in the water. Stylish bathing outfits? Yes, we wore them, rudimentary yet more decorously modest than those of Russian exiles whom the authorities found such trouble in persuading to wear a fig leaf.
The life and soul of our motley group was La Contessa Viola, a bewitching mite of black-eyed vivacity, a painter who never painted, a poet who never wrote, a musician who never trifled with any instrument save the human heart. Why she called herself Contessa and why she tarried alone on the island none of us inquired. That was her affair, and by the courtesy of Capri, one’s affairs are quite one’s own.
La Contessa Viola employed finesse beyond the wit of women. None could weary of her, for always she contrived to depart at just the tactful point, leaving us eager and unsatisfied. On this drowsy afternoon as Viola and I emerged from the water, I first observed the armlet she wore, a serpent of ruddy Etruscan gold that coiled about her upper arm and whose jealous green eyes glared into her face from the plumpness of a most adorable shoulder. The green eyes also glared at me and seemed to threaten, “Touch this shoulder if you dare,” as Viola negligently draped her beach wrap and we went to sit upon the trattoria’s terrace of sun-baked stones.
“Carissima,” I remarked, “that’s a queer armlet.”
“Yes, a bit of barbarism. I love it—sometimes.” Whatever Viola did or whoever Viola loved, it was only sometimes. She was never monotonous.
After Viola left the bathers, all joy was gone from their romping in the water, and the others did not stay. Dripping artists swarmed to join her upon the terrace. Unclad poets snatched up their beach cloths. Pagan musicians like brown-legged nymphs, capered out of the sea and ran toward her shouting as they came.
“Presto Marghetta! The fish! The butterfish! We starve!” Thereupon Marghetta, the wrinkled old crone who served us, set about frying the fish for chatterers who tumbled in a mass around Viola. The legacy of a sinking sun still warmed our terrace. Above us towered the hoary cliff. With imaginative eyes we gazed along a sea of opalescent peacock blue, stretching away to the lion-trodden sands of Africa.
The day burst with happiness. We laughed. We sang. We talked of poetry, of paintings, of travel, of music, of love—of whatever came. This throbbing hour seemed made for dalliance, and Viola led the discussion. If in the ardor of her discourse La Contessa forgot the beach wrap that kept slipping and slipping away from her, so did the worries of the world slip away from our souls.
“Credo,” exclaimed the volatile Viola, “I maintain that no one woman or no one man can fill the need of the nature of the other. My friends, I speak neither of cattle nor of clods. One clod may be like another clod in every grain and atom, wholly congenial. I speak of human beings, as diverse and complex as ourselves. Two lovers may harmonize in many moods but not in all. Again and again they find themselves at an impasse with no comprehension between them. Do you remember that American signor? Young and brave and oh so rich? We might have loved.
“It is easy to love on Capri. Many times he and I rode together in a small boat. It thrilled me to watch the power of his muscles at the oars, and against his hair of curling gold, my own head seemed like a raven nestling against the sunset. I was content. So happy! One day we swam together in the Grotto Azure. I admired his long, white legs, saw his strong arms buffet the blue water and dash up showers of broken opals. He was wonderful! Oh, if my lover could only have kept swimming forever and not disillusioned me!”
The small contessa sighed, her beach cloth dropped, and her bosom trembled. The pathos of her lips came forth in words. “That night, a night of limpid moonlight, we dined at the Hotel Quisana. I whispered to him of Tasso, of my beloved Tasso. Tasso the Divine who said,
ZZZZZ
Nor did its hard law bind
Souls nursed in freedom
But that law of gold which nature’s own hand wrote,
What pleases is permitted.
ZZZZZ
“Ah!” Viola tossed her lovely arms. “That is the law of love, of love that knows no other law, ma che!”
She gave a gesture of disgust and continued, “That poetry which I quoted to this American, did it rouse him? Did his eyes grow fonder? Did his blood run hot with Tasso and with me? Did his fingers seek mine beneath the table? No! Diavolo! The brute! Instead he orders one large beefsteak with onions from the waiter. Onions! So I left him there.
“Yes, I sprang from the table and rushed into the moonlight, there to stroll with Enrico, whose kisses did ever ravish me. That night I longed to dance, to be gay. But Madonna Mia! How awkward is that Enrico. He tramped over my slippers like a clumsy cow until I flew alone to my villa. I hated the American. I loathed Enrico. I believe that no man can be all—and no woman.”
Because of her flexible creed that no man or no woman could fill the other’s needs, this charitable Contessa did pardon men their inconsistencies and by the same philosophy excused the fickleness of women who shifted their lovers as they changed their moods.
“Yes, we must pardon them.” Worldly wise Viola shrugged the pink perfection of her shoulders, and the green eyes of the snake glittered. “But whether we pardon them or not, such errors will ever be. Someday I may find the man who in all things is as I desire. Until that day, perhaps I will make my little mistakes. So, for the moment, I am quite unattached.”
Unattached, a little contessa is a dangerous thing. Never did Viola look more tempting than when she sprang up in anger at the unpoetical American signor, at the clumsy Enrico, and at all men who gave promise and fell short. With a pert pout, she gathered the beach cloth about her shapeliness and vanished into the bathhouse. So also did I disappear, hastily donning my clothing and rushing out again fully dressed to wait until Viola reappeared.
Viola was worth the waiting, for that clever contessa knew exactly how long to keep a man dangling, long enough to whet his expectation but never long enough to try his temper. Always too there was some novelty about her or touch of symbolism. So when she emerged from the bathhouse with all the idlers watching for her, she came out twirling a parasol with concentric rings of deep purple and scorching yellow—like a target.
Precisely what Viola was was a target for every eye. I could not take my eyes from her or from the green snake as she sauntered past with a nod, beckoning, “Come, Mio amico. Come with me. I am in the mood.” Being a man, I went.
All of Viola’s moods were alluring, even the silence in which we climbed together, zigzagging up the rocky path that mounted toward walls of dazzling whiteness hanging suspended in sunshine against a gray stone cliff. That was Viola’s nesting place, the Villa Ariadne. Huge, white-washed urns stood upon its corners, their vines trailing downward in a cascade of brilliant blossoms. At a gate of blatant blue, we entered, crossing her tiny garden, Viola and I underneath her arbors that were drooping with pendant grapes.
The north room of this charming villa its dilettante mistress called her studio. One entire side and a sloping roof were constructed of glass, the light tempered by adjustable shades. Immediately Viola threw wide the slats and turned to me.
“My friend,” she said, “a while ago we spoke of that perfect companionship that all humanity is seeking. Once such a love did come to a man and a woman. Behold!”
Viola possessed a vivid sense of drama. Without in the least preparing me, she caught a tasseled cord that controlled a bank of draperies on the wall. I had never seen those shrouds of rich velvet drawn apart and had supposed they concealed an unsightly closet, perhaps a doorway. Now by one swift jerk she flung them back to reveal a painting.
Involuntarily I gasped. “Is that you?”
“No.” La Contessa shook her head. “This woman is only my counterpart, a remote ancestress.”
Soon I realized that the painting was not Viola, could not be, for its pigments were cracked with age and time had dimmed the luster of its gilded frame. Yet as Viola herself faced me from her position beside it, the painting seemed identical with this living contessa.
The canvas showed a young woman, wholly nude, except for a coiling snake around her upper left arm, just where Viola was wearing hers. On what seemed a slight parapet, the figure stood erect, half starting forward from a shadowy background that might have been a tomb or a pagan altar. At her feet lay her robe.
As a pure white lily emerges from unfolded leaves, so did this marvelous one rise from her robe, intrepid and not ashamed, with arms flung wide apart. Above her fearless head I now deciphered the inscription “Behold my body.”
Vague lights revealed no other human presence, yet it was manifest that she confronted a multitude of people, inviting, nay commanding that every eye should gaze upon her. The audacious conception was unlike all other nudes, neither saint nor sinner nor a cold Diana nor a capering Bacchante, but a woman, tensely alive and dominated by an exalted purpose. A miracle of artistry, and here was I, centuries later, standing silent before her, awed by a holy reverence.
“Who is she?” I turned to Viola. “And why does she say, ‘Behold my body’?”
“It is of her that I would tell you—the woman who found her mate. Sit there, my friend, and listen.”
Continues... |
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