Inevitable (3 page)

C
ORNÉLIE FOUND THE FIRST DAYS
in Rome extremely exhausting. She did too much, as everyone does who has just arrived; she wanted to embrace the whole city at once, and the distances, though covered in a carriage, wore her out. In addition she was constantly disappointed, in paintings, in statues, in buildings. At first she did not dare admit those disappointments to herself, but one afternoon, dog-tired, after a painful disappointment in the Sistine Chapel, she admitted it. Everything she saw and already knew from her studies was a disappointment. She decided not to see anything else for the time being. And after her gruelling days of going out in the morning, out in the afternoon, it was a luxury to abandon herself to the subconscious stream of days. She stayed home in the mornings in a
peignoir
, in her cosy, lofty birdcage of a sitting-room, wrote letters, dreamed a little, her arms folded round her head, read Ovid, Petrarch, listened to some street musicians, who with trembling tenor voices, to the plaintive twang of their guitars filled the quiet street with the sobbing passion of music. At lunch she felt she had been fortunate in her choice of
pensione
: in her corner at table she found the Baroness Von Rothkirch with her nonchalant condescension towards Rudyard interesting, as she saw how travel can uproot someone from their narrow circle. The young baroness, who did not worry at all about life and just painted and sketched,
interested her when she whispered to Rudyard, so that Cornélie did not understand. Miss Hope was so naive, so childishly scatterbrained, that Cornélie could not see how Hope Senior, the rich stocking-manufacturer over there in Chicago, simply let this girl travel alone with her excessive monthly allowance and total lack of worldliness and understanding of people; and Rudyard himself, although she was sometimes repelled by him, fascinated her despite that repulsion. So although she had not struck up a deeper friendship with any of these table companions, there were people around her to whom she could talk, and the table conversation was a diversion from the whole day’s loneliness.

For in these days of weariness and disappointment she took only a short afternoon walk down the Corso or the Pincio, then returned home, made tea for herself in her silver teapot, and daydreamed in front of the wood fire till it was time to dress for dinner.

And the well-lit dining-room with the Guercino ceiling was cheerful. The
pensione
was full: the
marchesa
was sleeping in the bathroom, having given up her own room. There was a constant buzz of voices at table, the waiters trotted about and spoons and forks clattered. The melancholy mood of so many restaurants with set menus was absent here. People knew each other and the bustle of Roman life, the oxygen of Roman air, seemed to have injected vitality into their gestures and conversations. Amid that vitality the two scruffy aesthetic ladies stood out with their unchanging attitude: always in evening dress, the woollens, the beads, the reading of the thick tome; the angry looks because people were talking.

And after dinner people sat in the drawing-room, in the hall, getting to know this person and that, and talking of Rome, Rome, Rome … There was always great excitement about the music in the various churches: people consulted the
Herald
, asked Rudyard, who knew everything, and surrounded him, while he smiled, fat and polite, and distributed tickets, telling them the days and times when there was an important service in such and such church. Now and then, in passing, he gave English ladies who were not
au fait,
information about the complex formalities and hierarchies of Catholic worship: he told them the nationalities indicated by the various colours of the seminarists whom one met in hordes on the Pincio in the afternoon, staring at St Peter’s, in ecstasy at the mighty symbol of their mighty religion; he told them the difference between a church and a basilica; he told intimate stories about the life of Leo XIII. He talked about all this in a fascinating, insinuating tone: the English ladies, eager for information, hung on his every word, found him most charming, asked him for a thousand details.

These days, then, were a time of recuperation for Cornélie. She recovered from her exhaustion, and became indifferent to Rome. But she had no thought of leaving early. Whether she was here or somewhere else, it was the same: she had to be somewhere. Apart from that the
pensione
was good, and her table companions were excellent company. She no longer read Hare’s
Walks through Rome
or Ovid’s
Metamorphoses
, but reread Ouida’s
Ariadne
. She did not like the book as much as when she had found it in The Hague three years before, and read nothing else. But she enjoyed herself for a whole evening with the Von
Rothkirch ladies looking at Miss Hope’s collection of seals and sample album. How keen those Americans were on nobility and royalty. The baroness magnanimously stamped her coat-of-arms in the album. The samples were much admired, gold brocade, silk as heavy as silver, foliage-patterned tulle. Miss Hope told them how she had acquired them: she knew one of the queen’s lady’s maids through her having previously served an American lady and for a high price that maid was able to provide her with the samples: a precious scrap, picked up while the queen was having a fitting, sometimes even cut from a wide seam. The child was prouder of her collection of samples than an Italian prince of his paintings, said Baroness Von Rothkirch. But despite that ridiculousness, that vanity, the beautiful American girl appealed to Cornélie because of the spontaneity and honesty of her nature. In the evenings she looked utterly charming, in a black low-cut dress or a red chiffon blouse. For that matter, it was different every evening. It was a kaleidoscope of outfits, blouses, jewels. She wandered through the ruins of the Forum in a tailored off-white linen suit, lined in orange silk, and her white lace petticoat tripped airily over the foundations of the Basilica Julia or the temple of Vesta. Her busily designed hats provided a dash of the colours of the Avenue de l’Opéra or Regent’s Street amid the tragic earnestness of the Colosseum or in the palace ruins of the Palatine. The young baroness teased her about her orange silk lining, so in keeping with the Forum; about her hats, so in keeping with the seriousness of a site of Christian martyrdom, but she never became angry. “But it’s a lovely hat!” she would reply in her Yankee accent, giving
a splendid view of her fine teeth, but opening her mouth wide, as if she were cracking hazelnuts. And the child was delighted, delighted with the “old baroness” and the “young baroness”, delighted at being in a
pensione
run by a down-at-heel Italian
marchesa
. And the moment she caught sight of the grey lion’s mane of the Marchesa Belloni, she would leave the others, rush up to her—according to Mrs Von Rothkirch, because a marchioness is above a baroness—pull ‘la Belloni’ into a corner and monopolise her, if possible for the whole evening. Rudyard joined the two of them, the marchioness and Miss Hope, and seeing this Cornélie again wondered what Rudyard was, who he was, and what he was after. But it did not interest the baroness, who had just obtained a ticket to mass in the Papal chapel, and the young baroness said only that he was a good raconteur of saints’ legends, which helped explain some paintings in Doria and Corsini.

O
N ONE OF THOSE EVENINGS
Cornélie made the acquaintance of the Dutch family, next to whom the
marchesa
had first wanted to seat her: Mrs Van der Staal and her two daughters. They were also staying in Rome for the whole winter, they had friends there and went out. The conversation flowed easily, and Mrs Van der Staal invited Cornélie up to her sitting-room for a chat. The following day she went to the Vatican with her new friends, and heard that Mrs Van der Staal was expecting her son from Florence, who was to come to Rome to pursue his archaeological studies.

Cornélie was glad to find a Dutch element in the hotel that was not uncongenial. She enjoyed being able to speak Dutch and freely admitted it. In the space of a few days she was on intimate terms with Mrs Van der Staal and the two girls, and the first evening after the arrival of Mr Van der Staal Jr, she revealed more of herself than she had ever thought herself capable of doing to strangers whom she had known just a few days.

They were in the Van der Staals’ sitting-room, Cornélie in an easy chair, by the tall blazing wood fire, as it was a chilly evening.

She had talked about The Hague, about her divorce, and now she talked about Italy, about herself.

“I can’t see anything any more,” she confessed. “My head is spinning from Rome. I can’t see any more colours,
any more shapes. I don’t recognise people any more. They swirl about me so. Sometimes I feel a need to sit alone for hours in my birdcage, upstairs, in order to recover. This morning in the Vatican, I can’t remember it, I didn’t retain a thing. Things are always dull and grey around me. Then the people in the
pensione
. The same faces every day. I see them and yet I don’t see them. I see … Mrs Von Rothkirch and her daughter, then the beautiful Urania, Rudyard and the English lady, Miss Taylor, who is always worn out with sightseeing, and finds everything ‘most exquisite’. But my memory is so bad that in my solitude I have to work it out: Mrs Von Rothkirch is tall, stately, with the smile of the German empress, whom she resembles slightly, talkative yet indifferent, as if her words were just falling indifferently from her lips …”

“You’re very observant …” said Van der Staal.

“Oh, don’t say that!” said Cornélie, almost annoyed. “I can’t see anything, can’t retain anything. I have no impressions. Everything around me is grey. I don’t really know why I travel … When I’m alone I think of the people I meet … I’ve got Mrs Von Rothkirch now and I’ve got Else. A round witty face with tall eyebrows, and always a witticism or a ‘punch line’: I sometimes find it tiring, it makes me laugh so much. But still, they are nice. Then there’s the beautiful Urania. She tells me everything: she is as communicative as I am at this moment. And Rudyard too, I can see him in front of me.”

“Rudyard!” smiled Mrs Van der Staal and the girls.

“What is he?” asked Cornélie, curious. “He’s always so polite, he recommended a wine to me; he’s always able to get tickets.”

“Don’t you know what Rudyard is?” asked Mrs Van der Staal.

“No, and neither does Mrs Von Rothkirch.”

“Then beware,” laughed the girls.

“Are you Catholic?” asked Mrs Van der Staal.

“No …”

“And nor is the beautiful Urania? Or the Von Rothkirchs?”

“No …”

“Well, that’s why ‘la Belloni’ put Rudyard on your table. Rudyard is a Jesuit. In every
pensione
in Rome there’s a Jesuit who has free board and lodging, if the owner is on good terms with the church, and with great charm tries to win souls …”

Cornélie found this hard to believe.

“Believe me,” Mrs Van der Staal went on. “In a
pensione
like this, an important, reputable
pensione
, a great deal of intrigue goes on …”

“‘La Belloni’ …?” asked Cornélie.

“Our
marchesa
is a born intriguer. Last winter three English sisters were converted.”

“By Rudyard?”

“No, by another priest. Rudyard came here this winter.”

“Rudyard walked along with me for quite a way this morning in the street,” said young Van der Staal. “I let him talk, and sounded him out.”

Cornélie fell back in her chair.

“I’m tired of people,” she said with the strange honesty that she had in her. “I’d like to sleep for a month without seeing anyone.” And after a little while she got up, said good night and went to bed, with her head swimming …

S
HE STAYED IN
for a few days, and ate in her room. One morning, however, she went for a walk in the Borghese gardens and bumped into the young Van der Staal on his bicycle.

“You don’t cycle?” he asked, jumping off.

“No …”

“Why not?”

“It’s a kind of movement that doesn’t agree with my kind of person,” replied Cornélie, annoyed at meeting someone who disturbed the solitude of her walk.

“May I walk with you?”

“Of course.”

He left his bicycle in the charge of the gateman, and walked along beside her, naturally, without saying much.

“It’s so beautiful here,” he said.

His words sounded simple and sincere. She looked at him closely, for the first time.

“You’re an archaeologist, aren’t you?” she asked.

“No,” he said defensively.

“What then?”

“Nothing. Mama says that to excuse me. I’m nothing and a quite useless member of society. And not even all that rich.”

“But you’re studying, aren’t you?”

“No. I read a bit here and there. My sisters call that studying.”

“Do you like going out, as your sisters do here?”

“No, I think it’s dreadful. I never go with them.”

“Don’t you enjoy meeting and studying people?”

“No. I like paintings, statues and trees.”

“Poet?”

“No. Nothing. Really, nothing.”

She looked at him more and more attentively. He was walking beside her as if it were the most natural thing in the world, a tall thin fellow of maybe twenty-six, still more a boy than a man in his build and his face, but on the other hand with a certainty and calm that made him older than his years. He was pale, he had dark, cool, almost accusing eyes, and there was something nonchalant about his tall, thin figure in his dishevelled cycling suit, as if he cared nothing about his arms and legs.

He said nothing more, but walked beside her, easily, companionably, without finding it necessary to talk. But Cornélie became nervous and did not know what to say.

“It’s so beautiful here,” she stammered.

“Oh, it’s very beautiful here,” he replied calmly, without seeing that she was nervous. “So green, so wide, so peaceful: those long avenues, those perspectives of avenues, an ancient arch over there, and there, look, so blue, so distant, St Peter’s, always St Peter’s. Shame about all those funny things further on; that cafeteria, that milk stand … They spoil everything these days … Let’s sit down here: it’s so beautiful …”

They sat down on a bench.

“It’s so marvellous when something is beautiful,” he went on. “People are never beautiful. Things are beautiful: statues, paintings. And so are trees, clouds!”

“Do you paint?”

“Sometimes,” he admitted reluctantly. “A bit. But actually everything’s already been painted, and I can’t really say I paint.”

“Do you write too perhaps?”

“Even more has been written than has been painted. Perhaps not everything has been painted yet, but
everything
has been written. Every new book that has no particular scholarly importance is superfluous. All poetry has been said and every novel has been written.”

“Don’t you read much?”

“Almost nothing. I sometimes leaf through ancient writers.”

“But what do you do then?” she asked suddenly, in irritation.

“Nothing,” he said calmly, and looked at her humbly. “I do nothing, I exist.”

“Do you think that a good approach to life?”

“No …”

“But why don’t you try a different one?”

“Like buying a new jacket, or a new bicycle?”

“You’re not being serious,” she said crossly.

“Why are you so angry with me?”

“Because you irritate me,” she said in annoyance.

He got up, took his leave very politely, and said:

“Then I’d rather go and cycle a bit.”

And he slowly walked off.

“Idiotic fellow!” she thought petulantly.

But she was upset at having squabbled with him, because of his mother and his sisters.