A Man of Genius (17 page)

The candle was guttering and the sacristan must be eager for them to go. But Robert was insensible. There he was now by the apse, transfixed by another ridiculous beast with seven serpent necks. She returned to stand by him. She didn't dare touch him.

‘He made a third of the stars fall down on earth,' said the sacristan, presuming their ignorance. He said much more but her Italian was not good enough to penetrate his accent and keep up. Robert heard nothing. He looked fixedly at the beast like a dragon with a monstrous bat's wing.

She could make no sense of it, much less of Robert's fascination. Apparently one of the dragon's seven heads wanted to grab a child from a woman but was prevented by a god who took it instead, leaving the woman to go off into the desert. It was an unsatisfactory story as plot or morality. Perhaps she was not giving it enough attention.

She turned back to look at Robert. He must not see her – he hated to be stared at.

She saw enough to understand he was not, after all, much interested in the beast, the woman, the child, not even the stars. His eyes were, she now noticed, fixed on another panel, on the books.

‘Words,' he said loudly. ‘It is about books, potential books, words too sacred, too pure to be written down. And Christ, all about the word, of course, of course but not words at all, just purity in letters.'

He looked wildly, not at her but through her and around. She gazed from him to the pictures. Something was very wrong.

‘See, there are seven angels in seven attitudes. The first played his trumpet and hail, fire and blood rained down on the earth and a third of all the green things died, the grass, trees and stems and leaves, in his mind, do you see? The second angel played his trumpet so that the seas stirred and boats fell under the waves for a flaming mountain was thrown into the sea and the sea turned to blood. Look! a third of ships and sea creatures were destroyed in the blast.'

He said ‘look' and ‘see' but the command was not addressed to her or anyone else. He was speaking now with horrid rapidity. Had he understood all this from the sacristan? Surely not for, with her better Italian, she'd caught almost nothing of what he said.

‘The third angel played his trumpet and a burning star fell from heaven and a third of the earth's rivers and springs became poison, so that anything that drank dropped down and died. Always a third, you see. Not
all
as you'd expect. More than decimating, less than destroying, so clever. The past not as bloody as the present. The fourth angel blasted away and a third of the sun and moon and a third of the stars were darkened. So that the night and the day lost a third of their light. Again not all, but just enough to make everything dark, dreary.'

Ann's anxiety was mounting under this torrent of speech. But he would not, could not stop, and she feared to intervene. He went on rapidly in a low gravelly voice, ‘The fifth angel blew his trumpet and made a star fall on to the earth. When it hit the earth it blew apart and thick smoke darkened what was left of the sun and the air. And out of the dense smoke came manlike grasshoppers with scorpions' tails and stings. From these stings the people left on earth would suffer horribly for five months without dying. All numbers now, all unkind numbers. The little brown people cowered against it but did not die. What was the point? They had not suffered enough, that was the point. The sixth angel turned away from the human beings and attended to his own kind, angels who'd been kept in chains on earth by a river. Who had had the power to keep them there? A cavalry with swords and sulphur which emanated from the horses' mouths.

With this a third of humanity died. So that's it.'

He seemed to look at her, address her, but his eyes were still not focusing on her face.

‘Nothing matters but the seventh angel. Do you see? Do you see? That seventh angel speaks to me, me. They would snatch the book from him if they could. But look here, the last angel coming down on a cloud from heaven, then placing his right foot, only that one, on the inkstand. In his hand, see, he holds an open book, with writing not to be read. It's a book of purity that could be held only by a being who had one foot on the earth, never both. Worldly words could only have made a common world, no heaven of earth. All illusory. No one could receive them. Only my own maniacal will could have kept me from seeing this. The image is dead.'

He was clawing the air with both hands, gesturing to himself alone.

Ann tried to look in case there was anything, anything that could be done to divert this dreadful flow of words. She saw that in the painting, between the angel and a man who leaned forward from the land, was a little angel with a pen. He seemed to be writing with small scratches in a smaller book which the man held to his mouth, appearing to nibble at its top right-hand corner. She could make nothing of its nonsense. Nothing she could say to interrupt. Robert was still talking on and on.

‘There are seven thunders, light and fire erupting. But there, quietly, this man through the little angel has written down what he has heard in the thunder – on the book that he is now eating. He must, of course – he must ingest – keep the words inside himself, not let them out; otherwise the small book cannot echo the huge angelic one. There will be no Huns to fall on his Rome. No need, no chance.'

There was an eighth angel but Robert ignored him. Ann saw that the rest of the paintings depicted blood and scourges with the remainder of miserable humanity obliterated. But it was not these that mattered. For all the meaning they held they might have depicted Attila and Napoleon. It was the book and its meaning that clutched at Robert. The work could not and should not be written.

Was this what he was seeing, insanely interpreting rather: that
what he had wanted to do could not be done? Could he really be taking this absurd scriptural jumble seriously?

His voice that had been rising despite its gravelly timbre had now reached its zenith. He stopped suddenly. After such revelation the only way forward was to pitch even higher, making with the stretched strings the great note that would harmonise with everything in the world, that would make the sun and moon one with the earth, the light, the flowers, everything.

He now knew that nothing could be conveyed to others. He must simply swallow his words. Only then would the book of the pale man and the huge book of the dark angel be one and the same. There would be no uprising of the truth through him, only in him.

Robert did not feel he'd seen a vision, only that his mind was moving in distinct levels. Layers shifted, collided, merged, coalesced, separating but making no pattern that would be static, that could be expressed. His mistake – he knew it now – had been the desire to tell what he knew, especially to women. The seeking was right, but the telling was not. And if there was to be no telling, then why?

Ann was terrified. Wanting to intrude. Against all sense, all experience she tried again to take his arm. Doing so, she angered him beyond reason. Her insensitivity was breathtaking. He jerked her away and lurched towards the velvet curtain shrouding the opening. Pushing it aside, he propelled himself into the outside world taking great gulps of air. Ann watched him go. She could almost see his frayed nerves jangling about his silhouette, while feeling her own.

Where would it end? It was sheer fantasy to think she could destroy such a being, however much she wished it. Every bit of him was alive – that's why he couldn't be still. If you cut off his head, his fingers, his feet would still live on.

But neither could she save him.

In the short interval in the chapel beyond his going and her following she tried to respond to ordinary social needs. She thanked the sacristan who'd been silently watching the show. She proffered the usual Italian exaggeration, the intensive thousands, but knew he expected more money for his time of patient listening. She felt sick. She must go to Robert.

Yet something held her momentarily back. The stranger still loitered in the chapel, watching perhaps. He must believe them both sick or crazy. He
must
think something, have some response, for he'd stayed to witness the whole pathetic performance. Had he been entertained? She looked over at him – there was more light in the room for the velvet curtain hadn't swung back completely into place. He'd fastened his eyes on a depiction of the life of John the Baptist. But of course he'd have heard everything. Why hadn't he walked away?

As she pushed back the curtain further to leave, she saw him move towards the sacristan, obviously preparing to pay him. Perhaps he was, after all, English and wanted to compensate for the rudeness, the insanity, of his countrymen.

Robert was standing a little way off with his back to her. He was smoking his pipe. The smoke rose into the hot air above his head. His body was still trembling, the motion interrupted by sudden jerks when he pulled with his left hand at the long hairs at the back of his neck.

She must get help but where could it be found? Would the Contessa be able to assist? She must know about diseases of the mind. But Robert would never regard himself as needing help and perhaps the Contessa never saw her son like this. There was a gulf of rank between them. She doubted she could find help in the Palazzo Savelli.

By now the stranger too had exited. To her surprise he walked over to Ann and Robert and accosted them.

‘Excuse me for addressing you but I couldn't help noticing you were English,' he said in a voice that was clear and precise but a little strange, as if he'd learned to talk in different regions, letting no one
accent predominate. ‘I am taking this opportunity to insist on speaking my language by asking if you will join me in a glass of wine. You see that
taverna
there, down the side street. We might pass a half-hour there if you would honour me . . .'

The invitation was addressed to them both but Robert, still standing separately, continued to smoke and stare elsewhere. His face in profile was listless though there was a twitch in the exposed eye. He was in earshot but would not hear. Before she could answer the stranger, Robert had walked a further few paces off.

‘You are English, then?' Ann said, her eyes trailing after Robert.

The man looked at Robert and, observing he couldn't hear, addressed Ann alone. ‘Yes and no,' he answered, ‘I'm originally from the north, but I have been in England, mostly London, very often, and regard English as one of my native languages, if one may have more than one. My mother was half-English. My name is Aksel Jakobsen.'

It was kind of him to venture so much and there was no easy response. They both fell silent. The man glanced again at Robert, then she felt his eyes on her. He pitied her of course, her drabness, her humiliating worry. She felt ashamed. She hoped a look would convey all: apology, misery, even now fear.

It would be good to have company, to drink sociably, but how could Robert help exposing how mad he'd become, how enthralled to this madness they both were? For, after all, she could only reveal herself as contingent and unwomanly. But did it really matter what a stranger or anyone thought? Could she possibly still care?

‘Thank you,' she said, ‘that would be a pleasure. Though we are both tired and not good company. We are Mr and Mrs James, Robert and Ann James.' She felt an urge to burst into hysterical laughter at the normality of what she said.

The stranger made no effort to force himself on Robert, who continued smoking at a distance. Nor did he indicate any surprise at his lack of response.

‘Are you returning to Venice tonight?'

‘Oh yes, we must.'

He understood: it would be cheaper to travel late than to find lodging from home.

‘When we have rested a while, may I accompany you? I too want to return this night. I am travelling by boat down the river. It is already hired and there is room for more passengers. I am staying on La Giudecca.'

‘But that is a coincidence. We too. I think perhaps I have seen you somewhere . . . but I cannot be sure of course.'

He bowed and was silent a moment. ‘I lodge near the Zitelle.'

Robert was still ignoring them both, his back now turned to them. He shuddered at intervals.

Ann and Aksel Jakobsen walked past him towards the
taverna
. She willed Robert to follow but feared to glance round to check. When they had already made some distance, he started from his reverie and moved in their direction. Like a reluctant bulldog on a leash.

It was an uneasy gathering. The stranger talked of commonplace matters, nothing more of himself or his business in Italy. Politely he enquired about Ann, her life, her plans. He seemed interested.

‘I am leaving shortly to see Caroline – my mother.' She corrected herself hurriedly, she was off her guard today, far too much had happened. ‘She is ill in Paris and I must go to attend her.'

‘Your father is dead then?' he said.

‘Indeed. Sadly I did not know him. He died before I was born.'

In all the way back, Robert ignored the new acquaintance who had paid for their easier journey home.

When they landed on the
fondamenta
by Sant'Eufemia, he immediately walked off and was enclosed by the dark. Ann was left to make thanks and farewells.

In other times she would have asked this strange, forbearing man about the possible earlier encounters. He'd not responded when she mentioned the Palazzo Grimani. Perhaps she had after all been wrong. More likely, she'd been less memorable to him than he to her. She had little energy left to interrogate coincidence.

She doubted she would see him again: he would surely never seek
them out after such a display of craziness and discourtesy as Robert had made. Also, she planned to leave for Paris so soon. They were birds of passage, people passing through and on.

When she reached their apartment, she found Robert stretched out snoring on the floor. Disgust and envy flowed over her in equal measure. She had not slept properly in weeks and here was this body that sat so heavily on her mind lying prone, unconscious. Her eyes took in the scene: evidently he had stumbled against the door which had opened with his force; then he'd crashed on to a chair, now pushed against the table, slipped, fallen – and slept where he fell.