The Complete Symphonies of Adolf Hitler (5 page)

‘I sat on my bench, now not daring to move, feeling the presence of many beings very near. They seemed to come close to me for warmth and for the little life that I had within me. I sensed that some wished to communicate with me, but either they could not or did not know how; yet there were three presences, less insubstantial than the rest, who appeared to have that ability. Why these three and no others I cannot say; it is a mystery to me. They clustered round me so close that I could vaguely discern their shape. I could just feel their cold breath upon my cheek and hair; and I could hear their voices, at least with my inward ear.

‘The first spirit to address me was, I think, the youngest and female. A vision was impressed upon my imagination of a beautiful raven-haired girl. Her origins were humble, she told me, for she was one of seven, the daughter of a small shopkeeper in Porto Ercole. She could not have known English and my Italian was somewhat more classical than hers, but when our minds met we understood one another perfectly. Her name was Simonetta.

‘ “My father wanted me to marry some man just because he had a shop that was much bigger than our own,” said Simonetta. “Everyone said it was a good match, even though he was old and fat. But I could not have married him because I was already in love. Carlo was a fisherman working on the boats out of Porto Ercole. He was dark like me, and tall, and his eyelashes were long. I had seen him first on the beach walking with bare feet down to his boat and I knew then that he must be mine. He walked so easily; it was the walk of a man who knew what he was doing, where he was going, and he had beautiful feet. So I found a way in which we should meet and we fell in love. We did not say much to one another—there are some things which are beyond words—but he told me he was alone in the world, his mother and father having both died. Carlo and I exchanged tokens. I gave him an old ring which I had found in a drawer of my father’s house and he gave me a little sea shell on a silver chain. Then one night, on the beach, beneath a crowd of stars and a crescent moon, we became man and wife. The next day at dawn he and his boat sailed out into the bay to catch tuna. The weather changed: there was wind and rain, and the sea turned black, but he did not return. I became half mad with grief. I begged some of the other fishermen to go out and look, but they would not for fear of losing their own lives. On the fifth day after he had gone Carlo’s body was washed up on the shore. His face was half eaten away with fishes and gashed by the cruel rocks but the other half I knew to be his. He appeared to be asleep, looking as I had last seen him when I had left him on the beach in the green dawn, and my ring was still on his finger. You think that was what made me come here to cut my throat with a knife? No, it was not that; it was what happened at the funeral. Few went, but there was one there whom I had not seen before. She was a young woman like myself, but painted and dressed in cheap finery. I had seen such women parading up and down on the Strada della Marina and I knew what sort she was. I wondered what she was doing there, and my heart became full of terror. When the coffin was lowered into the grave this woman took something from around her neck and cast it into the grave, and I saw that this thing was a little seashell on a silver chain, like mine. At that moment, I believe I lost my soul. I became distracted. I was a mad thing, and there was no-one who could do anything for me. At last I found myself in the Giardino dei Stranieri because there seemed to be nowhere else that I could go. It is a hard thing to make oneself die, but what followed was still harder. At the moment of my death Carlo, my beloved Carlo came to me in a vision, weeping.

‘ “ ‘Why have you done this thing, carissima?’ he cried. ‘We might have been together for all eternity, but now a gulf is fixed between you and me because of your terrible act.’

‘ “ ‘Do not speak to me, Carlo,’ I shouted at him. ‘I have no desire to spend all eternity with a faithless lover.’

‘ “ ‘Faithless? How faithless?’ said Carlo. ‘I was never faithless to you, Simonetta.’

‘ “I told him not to lie to me, but Carlo said that the dead cannot lie, only the living can do that. So I asked him what that woman was doing at the funeral and why she was wearing the same love token that he had given me.

‘ “Carlo said: ‘It was my sister. Fool that I was, I never spoke of her to you out of shame for what she had become. I did not want even the thought of her to soil the purity of your innocence.’ And so my true lover Carlo left me, and I remain in this place.”

‘With that the shade of Simonetta drifted away, leaving me filled with an immortal sadness. By this time night had descended over the Garden of Strangers and I could see little save the lights of Naples glimmering fitfully in the distance. As I rose to go, shivering, another presence held me, this time a man. He pleaded to be heard and I could not deny him.

‘ “Signor,” he said, “I know you to be a great artist, and because of this you will understand and sympathise.”

‘So you see, my boy, my reputation extends even beyond the grave. It is quite wonderful what publicity will do these days. Well, this person, or shade, who insisted on calling himself Maestro Martini, was a curious fellow. I sensed rather than saw that he was a small nervous person, forever restless, and he told his story, accompanied by a whole repertoire of little groans, grunts and squeaks, as if the air around him was infected by his turbulence.

‘ “Signor,” said Martini, “I was born in the city of Nola, the son of the town choirmaster and music teacher, and early I showed an aptitude and a diligence for the art of music. My talent was for the violin and very soon I exceeded what my father could teach me, so I was sent to Naples where I had lessons with Maestro Tardini. I made good progress and was accepted among the second violins at the San Carlo Theatre. But my ambition was to be a great virtuoso, like the great Paganini, travelling the world and exhibiting my art to the admiration of all. I longed above all else to show everyone what an artist I was, so I practised, gave lessons on the instrument to unruly boys, and saved from my meagre salary, because I had decided to prove myself by giving a concert in this city. Eventually I imagined that I saw my opportunity, having discovered from my teacher, Maestro Tardini that the great virtuoso and composer Sivori was about to visit the city. I would persuade Tardini, a friend of Sivori’s, to invite the Maestro to my concert after which he would praise my great gift, endorse my genius and initiate my career as a virtuoso. What I could do in the way of assiduous practice, the hiring of a concert hall, the engagement of musicians and their rehearsing, I did. When the great day arrived I was as ready as I would ever be.

‘ “For the first half I had prepared some Paganini caprices, then after the interval I would play the great E Minor Concerto of Mendelssohn which was just then beginning to be all the rage. Ah, signor! I know what you are thinking! You are thinking that the whole concert was a fiasco and that is why I am here! You are wrong, signor. The concert went superbly and I played as well, if not better than I had ever played with the result that the reception I received was most gratifying. Afterwards I awaited a visit from Maestro Tardini and the great Sivori, but imagine my disappointment when it was only Signor Tardini who called on me after the concert. He said that Sivori had sent his profuse apologies, but that he could not come to thank me in person for he had some pressing business. I asked Tardini what his friend had thought and then I saw my teacher hesitate. Sivori, he said, had thought my playing most correct and accurate, that I would always be a most valuable member of an orchestra, and, no doubt, in time an admirable teacher of the instrument, but I would never be a virtuoso. I lacked the fire, he said, the inner spirit of the true maestro. It was nothing to be ashamed of, he said: some had the spark and some had not. Maestro Tardini laid a kind hand on my shoulder and said that this too was his opinion, but that I was not to be downhearted for such gifts were given to very few.

‘ “When he had left me, I went out and wandered the streets weeping, because I too knew that he was right. I possessed everything in the way of diligence and knowledge, but I lacked the one thing that I needed and wanted. After I had wept I felt a great rage inside me against God who had denied me the only thing that I had ever desired. The prize that I would have toiled through wind and rain to achieve had been capriciously snatched from me. I had done so much; I had achieved so little. I thought that God was a cheat and this world was a sham, so I thought I would cheat both of them. I bought some spirits of aconite and some drops of laudanum at an apothecary’s. I mixed them together in a small glass bottle and set off for the Garden of Strangers.

‘ “It was on an evening just like this,” said the little violinist, “I do not know how long ago, for time has ceased to have a meaning for me, that I came here to die. I have drained my little bottle of laudanum mixed with spirits of aconite, and, as I wait for the poison to work, a terrible thing happens: a nightingale begins to sing his song in a nearby brake. You might ask, signor, what is so terrible about the song of a nightingale. Well, in itself nothing. What I hear is a passionate trill of pure untrammelled beauty: the great maestro Paganini himself could not have produced such ecstasy. It ravishes me, but its beauty scorches my soul, for it makes me see the truth of what I have done. God made this little brown bird to give us a night song more exquisite than anything made by the mind and skill of man, and yet—and yet!—that little brown bird would never be aware of what he was doing. It would be his song, no more than that to him. Its loveliness would quite escape him, and I who perceived it could never tell him. The supreme gift that God gives to man, is not the gift of making beauty, like this nightingale, but the gift of appreciating it, and I have thrown it away. I could have lived out my entire life among the second violins of the San Carlo, and still triumphed because I could in my humble way have lived in beauty and for it. I have cast my life into the shadows, not for the sake of art, but for the sake of vanity. I thought I had taken revenge upon God but I have only taken revenge upon myself. And you, signor, have you lived for beauty?”

‘I told the wretch that I had, that I had drifted with every passion till my soul was a stringed lute on which all winds could play. I told him many wonderful things, but I doubt if he listened: the dead never do. I could have told him that I had lost everything for beauty, except for my life and perhaps my soul, but by that time the little cloud which was all that was left of Maestro Martini had gone. I myself was getting cold and weary and was about to rise when something huge and monstrous sat down beside me.

‘I wanted to leave but I felt transfixed by this cold and malignant presence: something told me that he was the one last vision to which I would be subjected. It was a man who had quitted his life in his sixties: I was in the company of a being bloated by experience.

‘ “Allow me to introduce myself, Signor,” he said. “I am the Count of San Gimigniano. My family is the ancient one of Contarini. When I was young I had wealth and position; more importantly I had the assurance to know what I wished to do with my powers. I determined to use them to experience everything, to drain, as you might say, the cup of pleasure to the dregs. I was a fine looking young man, made many conquests, and married well. Yet I was never satisfied. Was it Augustine who declared himself restless until he found rest in God? I too was restless until I could rest in the perfect enjoyment of pleasure. I counted myself a saint of sensuality, a mystic of the flesh.

‘ “My search took me to strange places, earning me the hatred and disapproval of many small-minded moralisers. My wife eventually refused to speak to me and I was shunned by my own people, but this did not matter to me. I was a seeker who was still wealthy, so I moved to Naples. There, as I grew old, my body was scarred by the scourges and diseases of my quest, but my appetite remained undiminished.

‘ “It is a fact that the older one becomes the more one seeks out youth, perhaps because it has properties that can revive the old. It is also a fact—a most regrettable one—that the young so seldom appreciate what the old can give to them in the way of wisdom and experience. All too often one is forced to pay heavily for what might previously have come to one joyously, freely given and freely taken.

‘ “I became in my latter years fascinated by the concept of purity; so I made it my mission to seek it out and capture it. There may be some foolish and mean-spirited people who would see this as a corrupt and corrupting thing, but I did not. I took to going to church—a practice which I took less than seriously in my youth—and found myself especially beguiled by the sacramental rite of the first communion in which young boys and girls dressed in virginal white come to taste of the body and the blood of Jesus for the first time.

‘ “I was in the Duomo one Sunday watching this adorable ceremony when I saw her. She was no more than twelve years old and her face was like a flower. I was captivated. To me she was the beatific vision to which the saints of old laid claim. Oh, she was pure and sweet, and I felt that I could be pure and sweet with her! I paid my old friend the sacristan a few scudi to discover the name of the blessed infant and where she lived.

‘ “I found to my joy that she was an orphan, a foundling, that her name was Maria and that she was cared for in a convent by the Sisters of San Pancrazio. This was the most infernal good luck, because I happened to know one of the Sisters, a certain Sister Marta. Our past association was such that, by means of bribery and threats of disclosure, she was persuaded to obtain access for me to this Maria. I was in Paradise, but the girl was to be my crucifixion and downfall.

‘ “I presented myself to the Convent of San Pancrazio as a benevolent elderly gentleman of means who wished to do something good for the girl, to aid her prospects in life. And so I would have done, had fate given me the chance. I visited her several times in the convent and managed to gain her trust, even, I think, her love. I then initiated legal proceedings to adopt her as my daughter, but the Mother Superior, a cursed, meddling old woman must have made enquiries as to my reputation, and she suddenly denied me all access to my Maria. By this time, you must understand, Maria had driven me half mad with passion. I swear she had encouraged my feelings, but it was then—I freely admit it—that I made a tragic mistake. Instead of biding my time and slowly regaining the trust of all, on a reckless impulse I hired a pair of ruffians to seize the girl on her way to confession and bring her to me.