Andreas (9 page)

“Take it out of my sight,” said Nina. “It means nothing but annoyance and brutality to me.”

“I shall mend this one,” said Zorzi, “and paint another, only this time on a Flemish, not a Venetian, ground. It will be still better, and I shall make both the gentlemen pay twice. I should be an ass if I could not manage to make them both pay me.”

“Well, what do you think of it?” she asked, when the artist had vanished with his production.

“I think it is a very good likeness and very ugly.”

“That’s a pretty compliment.”

He made no answer.

“Now you have been with me for not more than a minute and have already said something unkind. Do you think too that men are given greater strength and sharper wits and a louder voice just to make life harder for us poor women?”

“I don’t mean it in that way,” Andreas hastened to
say. “If I were to paint you the picture would turn out quite differently, you may be sure.”

He said so much, and would have liked to say a great deal more, for she seemed unspeakably charming. But the thought that Zorzi might come back into the room at any moment disturbed him, and he said no more. Perhaps he had said enough—he did not know—for it is not words that matter, but a tone of voice—a look.

Nina looked, as if absently, past him; on her upper lip, which was curved like her eyebrows, and seemed as if it were ready to yield to something that was to come, there hovered the shadow of a smile—it seemed to be waiting for a kiss. Without thinking Andreas bent forward, a little dazed, looking at the half-open lips. Romana rose before him, only to vanish into air. He felt as if something delicious, yet intimidating, was settling softly on his heart, to dissolve there.

“We are alone now,” he said, “but who knows for how long?” He stretched out his hand for hers, yet did not take it, for he seemed to feel Zorzi’s hand on the door-handle. Andreas stood up and went to the window.

Andreas looked through the window and saw below him a pretty little roof-garden. On a flat terrace orange trees stood in tubs, lillies and roses grew out of wooden boxes, and ramblers formed a walk and a
little arbour. A fig tree in the middle even bore a few ripe figs.

He asked: “Does the garden belong to you?”

“It doesn’t belong to me, and I should like so much to rent it,” returned Nina, “but I can’t pay those greedy people what they want. If I had it I should have a basin made with a little fountain in it—Zorzi says it could be done—and have a lamp put in the arbour.”

Andreas saw himself going into the neighbour’s house, paying the rent down on the table—then he saw himself coming back to Signorina Nina with the lease. In imagination he was already giving orders for the trellis round the roof-garden to be raised: climbing roses and convolvulus were winding up the slender lattice-work, turning the little space into a living-room, with the stars looking in from above. The night breeze played through it, the inquisitive looks of the neighbours were shut out. Fruit stood in dishes on little tables, among lights under glass shades: Nina was lying on a sofa in a light wrap, much as she lay before him in reality. But what a different Andreas stood before her! Dreamily he felt that other self: he was no chance visitor, to whom a vague, absent-minded quarter of an hour was granted. He was the legitimate lover, the master of the enchanted garden, the master of his mistress.
He was lost in a vague sense of happiness, as though the sound of an Aeolian harp were pulsing through him. He did not know how little need there was of all these schemes, that the very next moment might have meant happiness.

“What is it?” asked Nina, and in her voice there lay the expression of faint wonder that came so naturally to her.

Her voice recalled him to himself. It occurred to him that it must be possible to look down from the roof-garden on to that roof of vine-leaves which stretched from one blank wall to the other and on to the canal which flowed between that courtyard and the garden of the Redentore monastery. The thought of his unknown came to him, but with terror. That being was in the world—here was something from which he could never escape. His breast contracted, he felt as if he must seek a refuge. He turned back into the room, and, leaning on the back of the sofa, bent over Nina. Her upper lip, which was delicately arched, like her eyebrows, was raised in slight wonder.

“I was thinking that I am living in the rooms where you used to live, and that I am living there alone,” he said, but his words came heavily. “If you had the little garden down there, and the arbour with the lamp in it, I should be glad to live there with somebody—
really glad—but not with the one that man carried away. I should not like to live with her in any house, in any arbour, on any island. And you have no arbour, and no lamp in it!”

He would have liked to kneel before her, to lay his head in her lap; but he said all this, and especially the last sentence, in a cold, almost gloomy tone, for he thought that a woman must divine all that was going on in him. In speaking with this hard sarcasm of the Nina of the picture, she must know that another Nina was closer to him, and he to her, than could ever be said in words, and that his whole being was ready to create the circumstances whose non-existence he emphasized so caustically. But at the same moment a strange, sad picture rose before him—it was the memory of childish dreams, which seemed now far remote, and had been repeated
ad nauseam
: he had crept hungry to the pantry to cut himself a piece of bread; he had pressed the loaf to him, knife in hand, but again and again had cut past the loaf into the void.

His hand, without boldness, without hope even, had taken Nina’s hand, which was charming without being thin, and delicate without being small. She yielded it to him, he even thought he felt the fingers close about his with a soft, steady pressure. Her look was veiled, and the depths of her blue eyes seemed
to darken; the hint of a smile still lay on her upper lip, but a fading, almost anxious smile that seemed to call for a kiss. Nothing could have startled him more deeply than such signs, which would have made another bold, even insolent. He was utterly dazed. How could he grasp what was so simple and so near? He did not think of the woman over whom he was leaning, but in a lightning flash he saw her mother, her father, her sister, her brothers, he saw the choleric duke rise from the space round the sofa, the bleeding head of a parrot in his hand; the head of a Jewish admirer pushed its noiseless way beside him—he looked like the servant, but wore no wig; and the Hungarian captain, whose hair was in plaits, ferociously brandished a curved knife.

He wondered if all the ready money he possessed would be enough to release Nina from all these phantoms, and had to admit, for a week perhaps, for three days. And what good was a single gift, even if it was going to beggar him, when, it seemed to him, decency demanded that he should provide an income, perhaps even a lodging, a house, newly furnished, and servants—at least, he reflected, a maid and a manservant? Gotthilff’s face leered up at him; the beauty of the moment dissolved. He felt he must let go of Nina’s hand; he did so with a gentle pressure. She looked at him; again something
like wonder was mingled with her expression, yet it was cooler than before. He had taken his leave, he did not know how, and had asked permission to return.

Downstairs he found Zorzi, who had the picture, wrapped up in paper, under his arm, and seemed to be waiting for him. He dismissed him quickly. He repented bitterly of having spoken to the man of his unknown; he was glad that Zorzi did not begin to speak of her. For nothing in the world ought he to have put on her track just the man whose eyes seemed to be spying on him and everybody else. He told him that he would soon visit Signorina Nina again, and did not believe it himself. Hardly had Zorzi departed with his picture when he was on his way through the street; under the archway, over the bridge, to the church.

The square lay deserted as before: the empty boat hung motionless below the bridge. It looked to Andreas like a sign of encouragement. He walked as if in a dream and did not really doubt—had no other thought than that the mourner would be sitting there, and would raise her arms anxiously, imploringly, towards him as he entered. Then he would withdraw, knowing that behind his back the other would rise from the same
prie-dieu
to follow him. This mystery was not past for him, but something that was repeated
in the form of a circle, and he only had to step back into the circle to restore it to the present.

He entered the church—it was empty. He returned to the square, stood on the bridge, looked in every house, and found nobody. He went away, wandered through a few streets, then after a time returned to the square and entered the church through the side door, went back through the archway, and found nobody.

I
REMEMBER
things very exactly—always had a good memory, won the Grand Cross of Excellence at school because I could recite the rulers of Austria forwards and backwards. I also took note of all my mother’s servants, and all my grandfather’s minerals, and the names of the stars in Orion.

Reasons for the tour to Venice: Artists, great names. Palaces, behaviour in drawing-rooms, starting a conversation. To make an appearance, to please. What I already knew about Venice: Uncle had friend whose relatives had been cast into
oubliettes
(with nails and razors) …

Arrival: Early morning. Hungry. Chilly. Starts out to look for lodgings. Troop of actors waiting on canal bank. An actress ogles him from the lap of a fellow-actor.

Walks through a street or two. The half-naked gentleman, he has a hat with a veil of coarse lace on his arm, a fine but tattered shirt. He addresses him, says he knows Vienna, mentions names. Declares he has gambled away everything he possesses. I lend
him my cloak; he speaks very nobly of generosity, of times gone by. The gentleman tells how he took a lady of fashion to Grassalkovich’s; she said,
Brutto nome, pare una bestemmia
(an ugly name, it sounds like a curse), and would not have him as a lover. When he is dressed, his tone is much more sociable, less elevated.

Smell of cooking. The stranger will not let him breakfast here, promises to procure him a lodging at a nobleman’s, goes with him.

The lady of the house, the nobleman, the old man. I give money for breakfast to be brought. Am given the room of the daughter, who has left home. Everybody is connected with the theatre. Groans from above: the artist has colic. We go up, the stone is removed; meanwhile the nobleman brings the little fish in his daughter’s handkerchief. We eat real Venetian
frittatura
.

Up again to the artist, he shows me the portrait of a beautiful woman (for dalle Torre), promises to take me to see her. On the way, tells the story of the Duke of Camposagrado’s two pictures; when the brothers send him theirs, he laughs immoderately and assigns a sum of money for them to send him the Goya, copy the Tintorettos. Artist promises to present me to the Duke.

Arrive at the beautiful lady’s. Bird in cage, fine porcelain hyacinths in front. Camposagrado. Present;
details of the Pyrenean village where the Duke is magistrate.

The young lady in the other room with him. Camposagrado very angry, devours the bird and goes. I am introduced, behave with reserve. The old woman suggests I should give a present. I withdraw, cannot take things lightly. This would be the moment for an irresponsible blackguard or a clever swindler. I invite her to supper.

Go out on to the Piazza. Miss a procession, see a patrician putting on a harlequin costume. Go to the theatre. The veiled (masked) lady. Letter received on the Piazzetta.

The Knight Sacramozo sits down beside me. His appearance. The servant with the letter. The servant seems to know the Knight. Tell the Knight that I have invited the courtesan. He is surprised that it all fits in.—Go to bed. Mosquitoes.

Next morning: appointment with the Knight. To the lady’s, at her morning toilet. Am first shown into an anteroom, while the lady retires with the Knight. The lady comes, makes somewhat casual apologies. The Knight goes to breakfast with me, explains his conception of love. Former passion for the courtesan. His attempted suicide.

In the afternoon the nobleman returns to bring me my cloak, takes me to the notary.

In the evening, near Madonna dell’Orto. The beautiful lady at a window.

In the church, Camposagrado with servants to light him; returns alone, is attacked by a dog. He masters the dog with his teeth.

A
NDREAS
: two halves which gape asunder.—Andreas’s character not yet formed: he must first find himself in these vicissitudes. His shyness, his pride—all untested till now.—Not clear about his own state of mind—always too much, too little. Doubts whether he really committed the crime on the dog.

Andreas: main line, courage—the courage incorporated in the air of Venice, courage in the night of storm. Morality: courage.

Tour due to the calculating
snobisme
of his father.

How Andreas imagines the life of great gentlemen (from the tales of the lackey, his grandfather, from his own experiences too). From the stag-rutting into the castle, changes clothes, hair dressed, calls for a mistress to take her to the opera
Armida
.

Andreas (if he goes to the bottom of it) goes to Venice chiefly because the people there are always masked. After the adventure in the country with the haughty Countess, who had treated him like a lackey, the idea, half-dreamed, had taken shape
in his mind that the adventure would have been glorious if he had been masked. In a general way he is now haunted by the difference between being and seeming—for instance, when he sees haycocks which look like countrywomen in hats or like monks, and which give him an eerie and solemn feeling, and are really senseless things.

Chapters (provisional): I. Castle Finazzer. II. Arrival. III. Three New Friends. IV. The Knight of Malta. V. Double Life. VI. A Conversation. VII. The Demonic. VIII. Departure.

Chapter I. The end. The mountains:—he has no wish to live there; at this moment he is richer than the mountaineer, richer than the mountain-dweller; he feels no need to relate things to Romana—it is entirely self-enjoyment, but possible only through her. When he had that—it was the pledge that he would possess Romana too.

Camposagrado: a thick-set man, with a pearl drop in one ear containing a fragment of the Host.

C
HAPTER
V. The New Friend (The Knight of Malta).

Andreas had fallen into an unpleasant state of mind. The thought of home poisoned the “here”: the “here” made him think more sadly of home.

He delivered the letter and was told that the
master was dead. The business friend gone away. He asked for his trunk, a sign that he was longing for news from home. The bread tastes stale. He misses the coaches, the elegance; the people mean so little, compared with the Graben and the Kohlmarkt. A lady descending from her equipage in Vienna.

He tries to see Nina, without any real hope. (Zorzi tells him that the Knight wants to know his name; asks whether he needs anything. Andreas declines.) He dislikes the part of him that wants to go to her. He is not received.

Evening. Talk with Zustina on the staircase. He asks her why she does not wish to marry. How could she suspect that he was speaking of himself? She rebuffs him. Her justification: “They are gentlemen: there is good in every one of them. The mother of a simpleton has taken a ticket for him.” He, jealous of happy people. He tells her that he is probably leaving Venice. She is unmoved.—Her picture of the world: family tyrants or gamblers of all kinds. She removes herself from him.

Various visits to Nina, a second time two days later, a third—but always obstacles. Once somebody is with her, another time “out,” or “ill”—once he is shown in and hears her in the next room, but “she has had to go out.” Yet he is always encouraged to return.—The situation becomes quite inexplicable
when Zustina says to him: “Nina is so sorry that you are neglecting her.”—Feeling of helplessness.

Sights of the town. A trial. Processions. Jesuits. Churches. Pictures: Tintoretto: distinction, boldness, self-confidence.

Envy of all human beings, hypochondria, growing distaste for people. Too many people, would have liked to sweep them all away from him. Longing for trees (to embrace a tree). Gazing towards the mountains. Recollection of that moment. Melancholy. His thoughts become more disorderly and impure.

Sea-monster for ten
soldi
from Crete, peculiar interior. To fill the void in him, goes not to the church but to the booth. The Spanish woman (the mask).

The merman: “What a spectacle—but alas! only a spectacle!”—gives him all that the theatre did not give him, although an animal, and hardly a real one. Pain that the merman should impress him more than the real theatre.

The mask. Her arm rests on his. The mask speaks tenderly. “Our first meeting was a great day for me. I had just arrived from a dreadful place; your face was the first—I could not but love it. I was free for anything, would have liked to swoop down from above, sure that I could fly. Have you any idea of what it means to be a prisoner?” (he thinks of the lead roofs).

He doubts. She: “What I say is real—cannot you feel it?” (the pressure of her hand). He assures her that when he was with Nina that time, he thought of nothing but her. “And on your later visits?”

The mask speaks tenderly; she speaks of Nina—he puts things together: “It is she.” The blood surges to his heart.

The mask: “I
forced
a certain person to ask your name. There is a lifetime between that day and this.”

Andreas resolves to put various questions to Zustina in order to find out the truth about his unknown. Again does nothing. It means too much effort.

In the house: “Your friend was asking for you”—a vine-leaf with a drop of blood on it.

Lonelier here among people than there on the dog’s grave.

A mask wishes to take him to gaming-rooms. He refuses, turns back in the anteroom, asks her to tell him at any rate who she is and where she is going to take him. The mask has told him that there are various people interested in him besides the Knight. (Two persons at least. How does she know?) On the staircase, he thinks he recognizes the young Spanish woman, or another young person from Nina’s house. (She knows too about his visits to Nina.)

Enters a church, hopes to see the Spanish woman. Is rapt into a dreamlike height, but only for a moment. There is somebody kneeling behind him, sighing, like a being at his mercy. This person leans against the edge of the step—looks into the distance.

T
HE NEXT
day to the Dogana. Letter about the
condition
of the Empress. Discomfort. The whole world so dreadfully puppet-like.

Somebody follows him in a gondola, catches up with him: the Knight, who says he has been looking for him in the little coffee-house. A letter, similar to the first, has been thrown into the Knight’s house. “Do you really know nothing about it? Might I ask you to go over in your mind the people you have met in society? Nothing stands alone: everything is fulfilled in circles. Much escapes us, and yet it is in us, and all we need to know is how to bring it to the surface. Somebody I am deeply devoted to is greatly distressed by this affair. I will tell you what was in the letter. Have you any relatives in Italy?” (
Fluidum
of kinship).

Andreas: “I should like to tell you so much about myself that your suspicions would be disarmed.”—Strange lack of self-confidence that his word does not seem to suffice even to himself! At the same time, mortal fear that, once the suspicion is removed, the Knight will lose all interest in him. How happy he felt
when the man was sitting by him! Wonder that even this man should suffer some secret torment.

Pleasant stroll afterwards. Knight: “Do not miss going to Murano—you hear the best music there. Your ambassador often goes there too.”

Meanwhile a one-armed messenger brings a letter for Andreas. “Who is it from?”—“Your Honour knows.” Knight wonders at the coincidence. He asks the Knight to go with him. The Knight refuses. Is piqued—assumes that Andreas was laughing at him. “You receive the messenger I was telling you about.”

F
IRST SIGHT
of the Knight. Intimation of harmonious contrast between appearance and spirit. Something witty about him that is simply that contrast.

At the beginning, Andreas’s chief objection to the Knight: the casualness of the acquaintance. “He cannot be worth much, since he had time to spend with me.”

The hours with Sacramozo were the radiance in his day. How astonished he was when Sacramozo spoke to him! Then he was annoyed, because it made the Knight seem ordinary.

How the Knight, in his eyes, always grows in beauty out of his ugliness, and he gradually comes to feel that the essence of the man is all love, or all form. His double nature: when he speaks on mystic subjects (for
him, given the right connections, everything in the world, even the most commonplace circumstances and doings, can be included in them) he is candid, accessible to union, merely human, communicative of himself, accessible by enthusiasm.

When he is in ordinary surroundings, he is completely set apart by courtesy; inconceivable that he could be touched, influenced, reached. It is impossible, when he is in this state, to attempt to remind him of the other. Here he exercises a power which is as coercive as the other is persuasive. Sometimes, in his worldly aloofness, he seems still stranger to Andreas: the idea “the power of despair” to be applied to him in this situation.

Meetings with the Knight. The only being able to concentrate him: at the same time bewilders him: by being at home in the world: by his discretion, his acceptance of everything as a matter of course—Andreas’s fear in imperfect moments: that everything in Sacramozo may be merely show.

The Knight does not invite him home; seems to take for granted that he has friends, that he knows where the pictures are to be seen, etc.

The essence of his being: the secrets; alludes to them by
minus dicere,
not by
plus dicere
. The essence of his being a knowledge of the mystery of how man is organized.

C
ONVERSATIONS
with Sacramozo:

Andreas full of prejudices; the worst against himself; his money prejudices, his prejudices as regards the world—as regards himself: thinks he has thrown away his happiness, everything is deteriorating, everything is stale. Sacramozo:

“You are rich in hidden powers.—You exclude the extraordinary—you are wrong. You speak of happiness. How could you enjoy it? Ask rather—who is it that enjoys it?”

Sacramozo teaches him to realize the function of poetry through Ariosto: poetry is not concerned with nature. The poet is a poet by virtue of his penetration
of
nature (of life).

As to Ariosto: the true domain of poetry is the impossible (the youth whose body moved through his armour).

Poetry as the present. The mystic element in poetry: the conquest of time.—

It is in the transitions that we recognize the sublime. All life is a transition.

In all our doings we must follow examples: there lies the grandeur of Christianity.—Unspiritual Christians cheat God: dirt behind the altar.—

To know our element: we really live only under the eyes of one who loves us. Sacramozo: “Attention means as much as love. I beg you to treat my soul
with attention. Who is attentive? The diplomat, the official, the doctor, the priest … not one attentive enough. The statement ‘I have neglected nothing’—who can pronounce it of himself with a clear conscience?”

What we truly participate in, to that we are already half united. Sacramozo on the participation of negroes in their masters’ pleasure: he has found what he sought—he has received a letter.

Sacramozo explains the repulsion of the soul for what it has recently experienced.

How far a man like Sacramozo has outgrown all fears, yet all terrors are near him, to be called up at the slightest touch: what fear, terror, timidity mean.

How far, for Sacramozo, all material is material for the divine.—Andreas broods: “Why with me, of all people?”—(Andreas must overcome that.) Sacramozo: “Everything is everywhere, but only for the moment.”

To be able to ask somebody’s pardon—how far this means a higher understanding has been reached.

All that a man like Sacramozo is henceforth incapable of—there lies his grandeur.

Sacramozo objects to the expression “to go deeper into things”—it should be replaced by “to become aware”—“to remember.”

Spirit is of
one essence
. In the spiritual world, there are no stages, only degrees of penetration. Spirit is
action, perfect or less perfect. At some point you are preventing the world from thinking. Human beings are the sufferings and acts of the spirit.

Through Sacramozo, Andreas realizes that he loves Romana Finazzer.

Sacramozo believes in the twofold. Thus he tells the two determining experiences of his life. “It takes a man of natural genius (like Francis of Assisi) to be determined for ever by a single experience. The ordinary human being, when his way is cut off in one direction by some dreadful experience, will move in the other.”—As a rule, too, we create an individual out of a type by crossing it with another species: Narcisse is a rogue, but a respectable musician (cf. Goethe’s
Note
).

Knight: “You often mention your uncle in a peculiar way—he must mean a great deal to you” (more encouragement from Sacramozo inconceivable). Andreas blushed. The story of Uncle Leopold and the two momentous days. Beside the death-bed: the widow, the second family—peasant lads.—The della Spina: “We have both lost so much, dear lady.”—While Andreas is speaking, Castle Finazzer, that day of gloom, comes back to him. The Knight (with a warm-hearted look): “You told that beautifully.”

The human is nobly contained in him, and is beautifully detached.—He proposes a visit.

C
HAPTER
VI. A Visit.
“Who knows his own element?”

By the company of the Knight of Malta, by but a single allusion to him, Andreas’s existence is refined and concentrated. If he meets him, he can be sure that something remarkable or at least unexpected will happen to him afterwards. His senses grow keener, he feels more capable of enjoying the individual in others. Feels himself in a greater and higher sense an individual. Love and hate are closer to him. He feels the constituent elements of his own being grow more interesting to himself, has the presentiment of beauty behind them. He feels the Knight’s mastery in the playing of his own part. There is no situation in which he could not imagine him. In the Knight, he encounters supreme receptiveness for identity.