The Island of the Day Before (19 page)

The Intruder could not be a savage come from the Island or a surviving sailor, either of whom might have done anything (attack him in broad daylight, try to kill him in the dark, beg for mercy) but not feed chickens and wind clockworks. So on the
Daphne
a man of peace and learning was concealed, perhaps the occupant of the room with the maps. Then—if he was here, and since he had been here first—he was a Legitimate Intruder. But this nice antithesis did not allay Roberto's angry anxiety.

If the Intruder was Legitimate, why was he hiding? In fear of the illegitimate Roberto? And if he was hiding, why then was he making his presence obvious by creating this horological concert? Was he perhaps a man of perverse mind who, afraid of Roberto and unable to face him, wanted to destroy him by driving him to madness? But to what end would he do this, inasmuch as, equally shipwrecked on this artificial island, he could derive only advantage from an alliance with a companion in misfortune? Perhaps, Roberto said further to himself, the
Daphne
concealed other secrets that He was unwilling to reveal to anyone.

Gold, then, and diamonds, and all the riches of the Terra Incognita, or of the Islands of Solomon of which he had heard Colbert speak...

It was the evocation of the Islands of Solomon that brought Roberto a kind of revelation. Why, of course, the clocks! What were so many clocks doing on a ship headed for seas where morning and evening are defined by the course of the sun, and nothing else need be known? The Intruder had come to this remote parallel also to seek, like Dr. Byrd,
el Punto Fijo!

Surely this was it. By an extraordinary coincidence, Roberto, having set out from Holland to follow, as the Cardinal's spy, the secret maneuvers of an Englishman, almost clandestine on a Dutch ship, in search of the
Punto Fijo,
now found himself on the (Dutch) ship of Another, from God knows what country, bent on discovering the same secret.

H
OW HAD HE
got himself into this imbroglio?

Roberto allows only brief glimpses of the years between his return to La Griva and his entrance into Parisian society. From scattered hints we deduce that he stayed home to care for his mother until he was almost twenty, reluctantly arguing with stewards about sowing and harvests. Once his mother had followed her husband to the grave, Roberto discovered he was alien to that world. He must then have entrusted the land to a relative, retaining for himself a substantial income, after which he set off to travel the world.

He had remained in correspondence with some men he met at Casale, whose acquaintance had prompted him to extend his knowledge. I do not know how he arrived at Aix-en-Provence, but certainly he was there, for he recalls gratefully two years spent with a local gentleman versed in every science, possessor of a library rich not only in books but in art objects, antiquities, and embalmed animals. While a guest in Aix, he must have met that master to whom he refers often, with devout respect, as the Canon of Digne and sometimes as le doux prêtre. It was with the Canon's letters of introduction that, at an uncertain date, Roberto finally confronted Paris.

Here he immediately got in touch with the Canon's friends, and was enabled to frequent one of the most distinguished places of the city. He often mentions a cabinet of the brothers Dupuy and recalls how, every afternoon there, his mind opened more and more, stimulated by men of learning. But I find references to other cabinets he visited in those years, boasting rich collections of medals, Turkish knives, agate stones, mathematical rarities, shells from the Indies....

We can tell the sort of circle in which he moved during the happy April (or perhaps May) of his youth by his frequent quotation of teachings that to us seem dissonant. He spent his days learning from the Canon how a world made of atoms could be conceived, just as Epicurus had taught, and yet willed and governed by Divine Providence; but, attracted by that same love for Epicurus, he spent his evenings with friends who called themselves Epicureans and could combine debate about the eternity of the world with the society of beautiful ladies of scant virtue.

He often mentions a band of friends, carefree but still not ignorant at twenty of things that others would be proud of knowing at fifty: Linières, Chapelle, Dassoucy, a philosopher and poet who went around with a lute slung over his shoulder, Poquelin, who translated Lucretius but dreamed of becoming the author of comedies, and Hercule Savinien, who had fought valiantly at the siege of Arras, composed declarations of love for fantastic lovers, and made a show of affectionate intimacy with young gentlemen, from whom he boasted of having acquired the Italian disease, while at the same time he mocked a comrade in vice "qui se plasoit a l'amour des masles" and said tauntingly that the man had to be forgiven for his shyness, which led him always to hide behind the backs of his friends.

Feeling welcome in a society of keen wits, Roberto became—if not a sage—a scorner of the insipid, which he found both in gentlemen of the court and in certain enriched bourgeois who ostentatiously displayed empty boxes bound in morocco leather from the Levant with the names of the greatest authors printed in gold on the spine.

In short, Roberto had entered the circle of those honnêtes gens who, even if they did not come from the nobility of the blood but, rather, from the noblesse de robe, represented the cream of this world. But he was young, eager for new experiences and, despite both his erudite company and his libertine routs, he did not remain insensitive to the fascination of the aristocracy.

For a long time, as he strolled at evening along rue Saint-Thomas-du-Louvre, he had admired from the outside the Palais Rambouillet, its handsome façade adorned with cornices and friezes, architraves and pilasters, in a play of red brick, white stone, and dark slate. He looked at the lighted windows, he saw the guests enter, and he imagined the loveliness, already famous, of the inner garden. He pictured the salons of that little court, celebrated in all Paris, established by a woman of taste who considered the other court coarse, subject to the whim of a king incapable of appreciating the refinements of the spirit.

Finally Roberto sensed that as a Cisalpine he would enjoy some credit in the house of a lady born of a Roman mother, from a line more ancient than Rome itself, stemming from a family of Alba Longa. Not by chance, about fifteen years earlier an honored guest in that house, Cavalier Marino, had led the French to the paths of a new poetry destined to make the art of the ancients pale.

Roberto managed to gain admittance to this temple of elegance and intellect, of gentlemen and
précieuses
(as they were then called), sages without pedantry, gallants without libertinism, wits without vulgarity, purists without absurdity. He found himself at his ease in that atmosphere: it seemed to him that he was allowed to breathe the air of the great city and of the court without having to bow to those dictates of prudence inculcated in him at Casale by Senor de Salazar. He was not asked to conform to the will of a potentate, but, rather, to show his distinction. Not to simulate, but to test himself—though always observing the rules of good taste—against persons superior to him. He was not asked to be a courtier but to be bold, to exhibit his skill in good and courteous conversation, and to be able to utter profound thoughts lightly.... He did not feel a servant but a dueller, of whom courage, totally intellectual, was demanded.

He was learning to avoid affectation, to use in every circumstance his ability to conceal art and effort so that what he did or said would seem a spontaneous gift, as he tried to become master of that studied ease of manner that in Spain was called
despejo
and in Italy
sprezzatura.

Accustomed to the spaces of La Griva redolent of lavender, after entering the hotel of Arthénice, Roberto moved among cabinets where the perfume of countless corbeilles wafted always, as in an eternal spring. The few aristocratic houses he had known had consisted of cramped rooms around a central staircase; but at Arthénice's the stairs had been placed in a corner at the end of the courtyard, so that all the rest was a succession of salons and cabinets, with tall doors and windows, one facing the other; the chambers were not tiresomely red or the color of tanned leather but of various hues, and the Chambre Bleue of the Guest had walls of that color, trimmed in gold and silver.

Arthénice received her friends recumbent in her chamber, among screens and thick tapestries to protect guests from the cold: she could suffer neither the light of the sun nor the heat of braziers. Fire and daylight overheated the blood in her veins and made her swoon. Once she forgot a brazier under her bed and came down with erysipelas. She was like certain flowers that, if their freshness is to be preserved, must neither be always in the light nor always in the shade and require gardeners to create for them a special season. Umbratile, Arthénice received in bed, her legs in a bearskin bag, and she covered her head with so many nightcaps that, as she wittily said, she went deaf at Martinmas and recovered her hearing at Easter.

And yet, even if no longer young, this Hostess was the very portrait of grace, large and well-made, with admirable features. The light in her eyes was beyond description, yet it did not instill improper thoughts: it inspired a love tempered by awe, purifying the hearts it enflamed.

In those rooms, the Hostess conducted, without imposition, debates on friendship and love, but they touched with equal levity on matters of morality, politics, philosophy. Roberto discovered the qualities of the other sex in their most tender expression, worshipping at a distance unapproachable princesses, like the beautiful Mademoiselle Paulet, known as "La Lionne" because of her proud mane, and ladies who could enhance their beauty with a wit that the venerable Academies attributed only to men.

After a few years of this school he was ready to meet the Lady.

He saw her for the first time one evening when she appeared in dark garb, veiled like a modest moon hiding behind clouds of satin.
Le bruit,
that unique mode which in Parisian society took the place of truth, told him contradictory things about her: that she had suffered a cruel widowhood, at the loss not of a husband but of a lover, and she glorified that loss to reaffirm her dominion over it. Some whispered to Roberto that she concealed her face because she was a splendid Egyptian, come from Morea.

Whatever the truth might have been, at the mere movement of her dress, at the light progress of her footsteps, at the mystery of her hidden face Roberto's heart was hers. He was illuminated by those radiant shadows, he imagined her a dawn bird of night, he thrilled at the miracle by which light became dark and darkness radiant, ink turned to milk, ebony to ivory. Onyx flashed in her hair, and the delicate fabric that revealed, concealing, the outlines of her face and her body had the same silvery atrament of the stars.

But suddenly, and on that same evening of their first encounter, her veil dropped for an instant from her brow, and he was able to glimpse under that sickle moon the luminous abyss of her eyes. Two loving hearts looking at each other say more things than all the tongues of this Universe could express in a day—Roberto flattered himself, sure that she had looked at him and, in looking, had seen him. And, on returning to his house, he wrote her.

My Lady,

The fire with which you burned me exhales such fine smoke that you cannot deny having been dazzled by it, though you may find blame in those blackening fumes. The sole power of your gaze made me abandon the weapons of pride and leads me to implore you to demand of me my life. How much I myself have fostered your victory, I who began fighting as one who wishes to be defeated, offering to your attack the most vulnerable part of my body: a heart already weeping tears of blood, proof that you have deprived my house of water to make it prey to the fire whose victim I am, through your so brief regard!

He found the letter so splendidly informed by the dictates of the Aristotelian machine of Padre Emanuele, so apt to reveal to the Lady the nature of the one person capable of such tenderness, that he did not consider it necessary to affix his signature. He did not yet know that the précieuses collected love letters as they did geegaws and bangles, more interested in their conceits than in their author.

In the weeks and months that followed he received no sign of reply. The Lady meanwhile had abandoned first her black garb, then the veil, and finally appeared to him in all the whiteness of her skin, not moorish, in her blond locks, in the triumph of her pupils, no longer elusive, windows of Aurora.

But now that his gaze could freely meet hers, he learned how to intercept her looks while they were directed at others; he basked in the music of words not addressed to him. He could not live save in her light, but he was condemned to remain in the penumbra of another body absorbing her rays.

One evening he caught her name, hearing someone call her Lilia; it was certainly the precious name of a précieuse, and he knew well that such names are given in jest: the marquise herself had been called Arthénice as an anagram of her real name, Cathérine—but it was said that the masters of that
ars combinatoria,
Racan and Malherbe, had also excogitated Eracinthe and Carinthée. And still he felt that Lilia and no other name could be given to his Lady, lily-like in her scented whiteness.

From that moment on the Lady was for him Lilia, and it was to Lilia that he dedicated amorous verses, which he then promptly destroyed, fearing they were an inadequate tribute:
Ah sweetest Lilia / hardly had I plucked a flower when I lost it! / Do you scorn to see me? / I pursue you and you flee / I speak to you and you are mute....
But he didn't speak to her, save with his gaze full of querulous love, for the more one loves, the more one tends to rancor, shivering with cold fire, aroused by sickly health, the soul uplifted like a leaden feather, swept away by love's dear effects without affection; and he went on writing letters that he sent unsigned to the Lady, and verses for Lilia, which he jealously kept for himself, to reread them every day.