What Happen Then, Mr Bones?, page 18
But in the end, can Harvey help it that he comes from a culture where unicorns are being rubbed out by the combined assaults of rationalism and Protestantism, where peasant magic is increasingly subject to the annihilating blasts of scientific daylight, and where the dark unknown world of leviathan ocean dragons and sea serpents is becoming well known and mapped, even if the few surviving sailors return home see-through and frothing crazy?
Harvey Montague’s life might have been different if, as a young man of twenty-three, he had accepted his half-brother’s invitation to go out to Barbados. Rumour has it that there the sun never stops shining and enormous thundering herds of wild pigs provide a lifetime of free gluttony. Well, certainly his life would have been different because, as his half-brother discovers when he gets there, wild pork is no longer the currency of the island. The pig-hunters have become planters, who have given up tobacco for cotton and cotton for sugar. Consequently, everyone works like slaves because sugar is not made from lying round with a full belly and staring at the sun.
Indeed, the island is despoiled by buildings and machinery — mills to crush the juice from the cane, boiling-houses to boil off the juice to sugar crystals, curing-houses to drain out the molasses, distilleries to turn the molasses into rum. Next Harvey’s half-brother discovers that most of the workers are slaves, and most of the planters are rapacious and pitiless slave-drivers who have driven off any decent white folk to Carolina.
In Carolina it is rumoured that the weather is more hospitable. And it is further rumoured that the new colony has so much land and is so desperate for settlers that privileges include religious freedom, representation on the council that levies taxes, and a hundred and fifty acres of free land for every man, woman and child, including slaves! Ah these rumours — how old and stale or just plain wrong some of them will turn out to be.
Harvey’s half-brother — he has a name but why bother with it, very soon he will be stolen by the Indians — finds his first summer in Carolina appalling, a torrid and humid torpor of mosquitoes and lightning storms, and religious freedom has been scotched by a coup of Anglican fanatics. However, it seems certain he would have been given his hundred and fifty acres of free land had he not applied himself so enthusiastically to a border skirmish among colonists, armed Indians and a troupe of runaway slaves.
Harvey is informed by letter that his half-brother has been captured. The colonists can only conjecture what might have become of him. Possibly he is living a wild larrikin life dressed in feathers and deerskins, raiding other Indian tribes for indigenous slaves or tracking African slaves through the forest for ransom. And at night he is retiring to the wigwam with the voluptuous mahogany daughter of the chief. More probably, Harvey’s half-brother has died during ritual torture by fire and has been eaten in a stew.
4
Unhappily, the body of Harvey’s half-brother is the second body that goes missing from the family in three years. In the year 1720, Harvey’s father dies in France, and it is not possible for Harvey to get the body back, no matter how inconsolably his mother weeps for it.
‘What on earth was he doing there?’ Harvey demands, not having been at home when the foolhardy decision was made.
‘He was on a tour,’ his mother explains. ‘He had never been out of England.’
‘He was an old man. Why did you allow him to go running about alone in France?’
‘And what influence would I have over him?’ His mother dabs her red eyes with her handkerchief. ‘He always did what he pleased.’
‘I am certain you had more influence than you pretend,’ Harvey says severely.
‘Well, then,’ his mother finally replies, ‘I wanted him to go. He wished to, and I wanted him to have his wish.’
Violet Montague leaves the drawing room after this interchange with her son and climbs the stairs to her bedroom where she stands at the window and looks down on the wan garden. Life is over: there can be no life now that her beloved Montague is gone. The best she can hope for is that when she closes her eyes to sleep, her mind will be free of the terrifying visions of plague-pits and pest-coaches, and that when she prays, merciful God will forgive her for the lie she has told her son.
Because her husband had not gone to France to see the sights, as she has just told Harvey. He had gone to Ragusa, that mysterious walled city he had always wanted to visit, the wealthy and pious republic where, it will later be said, all discontent is choked with cream. He had then travelled through certain parts of France on his return journey, since he wished to see the weaponry, and his person had intersected with a dire foreign event. Many an innocent man walks accidentally into the annihilating path of God’s punishments. Can He be expected to curb His will and stay His hand for the sake of these strays? No, He cannot.
Violet Montague goes to the drawer of her duchesse and takes out a book bound in soft leather. It is the book written by Montague’s mother, Valentina. Violet opens it at the first page and begins to read. Of course she has read it many times before — it’s a story of forbidden love, of illegitimacy and deception, of crime and death. Only now has it become for her a sad story, since the man she once shared the book with is gone, carried off by the Black Death in Marseilles along with one hundred thousand others. When Montague was still alive, it had been for them a fantastical story full of romance and chimeras and wonderful descriptions of old Ragusa, a city that was straight out of a fairytale.
Violet pushes the book aside and lies back on her pillows. The tears run down her rouged cheeks — cheeks that are still pretty despite the cracklepaper skin. Indeed let us be quite clear from the start that Violet was once a woman of extreme beauty, and beauty always leaves its trace on ruined things. When we imagine Violet we must think of Venice, of magnificence undone by time, and when thinking of Venice we might stray to thoughts of venal happiness — such women always promise it, or the memory of it if they are old and we are past it.
To think that Harvey had suggested she might have had some control over Montague! What is that like? That is like suggesting the trees in the garden have some control over the gale, that their beauty might direct its course rather than simply withstand its power. No, it was not written into the rules of their love that the tree, for all its rooted statuesque loveliness, would do anything but bend. What are these rules you speak of? her son might have protested were she ever to have voiced this metaphor. He is twenty years old and too young to understand that all human relations, even or especially the most intimate between men and women, are constructed on a set of rules that become inviolable over time.
What are these rules composed of, how are they made? he would perhaps have demanded, angry that the interior of passion could be anything but unpredictable, even lawless. Well, she would have explained, they are made silently, stealthily of course. You make a move and find you have been acting like a queen when you are nothing but a pawn. You make a timid pawn venture and discover you are threatening the king. What on earth does that mean? Harvey might have cried in his ignorance, and Violet imagines replying more dryly: It means that plainer women manage their men better, that they have him under their authority, not simply under the unreliable charm of their alleged pulchritude. Or perhaps it is only that their men are more malleable, less autocratic, less regal.
Violet smiles through her tears when she recalls Montague’s demeanour. Montague had been a powerfully built man. Even in his final years he had given an impression of superior muscular strength. In later years, though, his skin was not good — he too had a Venetian appearance of collapsed grandeur, was like an old building with moth-eaten drapery and mouldy tapestries. Still, he had a wildness in his eyes as if he had seen things the common man had not, as if he had indulged to excess in the things the common man had never seen. But there was also wisdom in his eyes, a sagacity from these indulgences that the common man could never attain. And he was charming in a way that contradicted this wildness and decay, although it was not the charm of a rascal, a deceiver, it was the charm of character, of integrity. He spoke with an honesty other people weren’t capable of, and there wasn’t a bone in his body that couldn’t care less.
Now Violet must have a funeral with an empty coffin, if such a nihilistic ritual is permitted. God himself must collect Montague’s charred body from the plague pits, if indeed her husband made it that far and was not nailed into his pension. For who knows what actually occurs to the individual in such crises? Weeks after the event one receives a brief explanation, penned in a foreign language by a Catholic priest — a kindness, not strictly required amidst the chaos, if not all the more necessary nonetheless.
It does not matter how many times one reads the note, how hard one tries to read between the lines, it contains only the simple facts and not the details. These will be created by the fevered imagination in the depths of the night. Violet Montague will wake up screaming because she has a dream-vision of Montague, standing at the window of his locked room, slowly turning black from his earlobes to his kneecaps and silently mouthing: Save me.
Charles William Valentine Montague, known to everyone only by his last name, arrives at the gates of the walled city of Ragusa at sunset. He walks straight through the gates to the Corso, which at this hour is thronging with the local populace. They are out taking the late-spring evening air, which is heavy and sweet with the perfume of flowers, and they are greeting those whom they are permitted to greet. There is a caste system here that is legendary in its rigidity: it makes the English look like egalitarians. Thus, of the nobles, the Sorbonnais do not acknowledge the Salamancans and vice versa, though they sit together on the ruling council, while the commoners of the confraternity of St Anthony disdain those of St Lazarus. Naturally everyone despises the worker — the worker even despises himself, or ought to. (But who knows? More likely he sees his own hand in the beauty that surrounds him and goes home secretly content. If there is sufficient food and sunshine it is better to be a creator than a ruler.
Soon a velvet darkness descends on the ambulating citizens and the streets quickly empty. Montague leaves the Corso for the steep and narrow side streets, and under the thicksprent stars he falls in love with the close-pressed villas with their carved portals and balconies wreathed in flowers. In one of these he will dine and take his rest. In the morning he will venture forth to explore the town and assess the architecture, much of which, at first glance, consists of churches.
Montague’s first day in Ragusa dawns fine, and he has not been long in the piazza nearest the palace before a procession appears. A muddle of musicians and a discipline of palace guards surround a tall man wearing a splendid red silk toga and black velvet stole. There is a ripple of excitement among the people. Apparently it is the Rector, the leader who, apart from state occasions and visits to the cathedral, is held prisoner in the palace for the duration of his office — a none too arduous term of one month. All rectors are held in this way lest they go out to drum up support for dictatorship. Montague watches the procession pass, the Rector wearing a small arrogant smile, perhaps for the gloriousness of the day or maybe for the gloriousness of himself — but what in the latter case is there to be arrogant about: it is better to own the day than have the world own you.
So Montague thinks as he goes on his way. He is much given to such thoughts. He values his freedom from the expectations of others above all else. But what deep vein of suspicion must run through these people that their leader should be held prisoner even though he rules for such an impossibly short time, and who in this system could get anything done or be held accountable for things not done? Montague shakes his head in disbelief. The divisions between people here are like deep dark ravines. Still, it is said their diplomacy and statecraft have held the Austrians, Venetians and Turks off — no mean feat — and who could be anything but glad that the rapacious and parasitical Turks have so far been kept out of this beautiful city?
Montague wanders about the town, inspects the fine Custom House and Mint, and then the Church of St Blaise, in the entrance of which he is unexpectedly addressed in English by a wrinkled old woman garbed entirely in black. He is not young himself but this woman is ancient.
‘Good morning sir,’ she says politely.
Montague is astounded. ‘You speak English?’
‘I am English.’ The old woman leans on her stick and laughs.
‘Well, what are you doing here so far from home?’
‘I might well ask you the same.’
‘I am sightseeing,’ Montague offers, and the old woman smiles amicably as if agreeing to accept the lie.
‘Well, I was married to a man from Ragusa. I’m now a widow.’ She says this without a trace of sadness, as if her bereavement had happened many years ago.
‘Oh? And how did you meet your Ragusan? Surely you did not come here to look for him?’
The old woman hobbles to a nearby seat and motions that Montague should sit down with her. He is glad to rest in the shade and listen — he has been walking in the steadily increasing heat for more than two hours. ‘All of the towns on this coast value education very highly,’ the old woman begins, ‘but none more than the Ragusans. It is the custom for the nobles, and sometimes others if they can afford it, to send their sons to universities abroad, to Oxford and Cambridge and suchlike. That is how I met my husband, God rest his soul. I was a girl in Oxford and he came to the university.’
‘It is a very long journey,’ Montague replies.
‘It is,’ the old woman admits, ‘and I myself have never returned to England since my marriage. But the men here are accustomed to odysseys — or perhaps I should say argosies.’
‘And did you have sons who went to Oxford?’
‘I did. The two eldest went to study, but the youngest only went to visit his brothers and for sport. For his fencing.’
‘Fancy that. For I am a fencing master myself.’
The old woman frowns darkly. ‘Well, you should give it up. Fencing is a very dangerous occupation. My brother-in-law died of it.’ And she pats his hand as if this confidence might have injured him.
After a suitable pause, Montague asks, ‘And how has life treated you here?’ He is interested in the old woman’s comparisons.
‘It is a very beautiful place,’ she says, and sighs as if she regretted the fact. ‘We have had enough of everything. Of good food and accommodations. Look at the houses above the Corso — are they not palaces? One lives very soberly, however. For example, there is no theatre. As for travelling clowns and acrobats and the like, well they are all run out of town. Our real passion is for mathematics and the sciences.’
‘Oh? I had heard the Ragusans had an excessive love of literature. That all the rectors had to be poets.’
The old woman makes a wry face. ‘You have been misinformed. Such bad poetry cannot be called literature. Would you care for an orange?’
She produces from her black cloth bag two large bright orbs and offers him one of them. He accepts it gratefully.
‘I have never become fully accustomed to ignoring everyone not of my own social group,’ the woman says, slowly peeling her orange. ‘The divisions here are deeper and less permeable than in England. Even a rich and well-educated commoner cannot become a noble, cannot hold anything but the most insignificant office. One’s name must be in the Golden Book or one must for ever serve.’
‘And is your family’s name in the Golden Book?’ Montague inquires as he sucks the rich sweet juice from an orange segment.
The old woman laughs. ‘A husband and three sons who went to Oxford. A brother-in-law who went for larks. We were either in the Book or immensely rich. You can choose.’
‘I think you are rather mischievous,’ Montague says.
The old woman drops the last segments of her orange in her lap and claps her hands in delight. ‘Yes, indeed. All old women are mischievous. That is our chief entertainment.’
Montague stretches his long legs. He is now so relaxed in this deep and scented shade he could easily fall asleep. ‘And have you ventured out there?’ he asks, waving his hand towards the East.
‘What? Into the irrational underworld of the Ottoman Turks and the Orthodox?’ She shudders expressively.
‘You haven’t been tempted by Constantinople?’
‘I haven’t been tempted by being murdered on the journey. And nor do I wish to go anywhere closer. I have seen a copy of Orthodoxy’s rendition of John the Baptist. It was the picture of a madman. He was wildly thatched with camel hair, gaunt as a famished monk, and foaming at the mouth with locusts and dripping honey.’
Montague laughs, as she seems to expect him to. ‘So what is your summation?’ he asks after a brief silence. ‘Better than Oxford or worse?’
The old woman smiles. ‘The Oxford I remember is that of my childhood. And a child’s life is nothing if not free compared to the later years. So if I were to say England seems freer to me, I could well be mistaking the nature of childhood for the nature of my birthplace. Possibly many adult exiles make this exact mistake.’
‘Exiles,’ Montague echoes. ‘You consider yourself an exile?’
‘I didn’t when I was young. I thought I had come to paradise. But to be old in a foreign country … Do you know I never think in their language? Only in English. I pray in English and I sing hymns in English. Sometimes it seems my very soul is English. That if heaven were run by foreigners, my soul wouldn’t know how to conduct itself. But enough of this,’ she suddenly admonishes herself. ‘The beauty that surrounds me sustains me. And I have such fine sons and beautiful daughters. And God has spared us more of the worst earthquakes.’
‘Earthquakes?’
‘Oh yes. There is one every twenty years. But nothing like the horror of 1667. It was only a few years before I came here as a bride. The sea was tilted back from the harbour four times, each time leaving it bone dry, and each time rushing back in a flood-wave which pounded ships to pieces amidst the docks and cliffs. Public buildings and houses were in ruins, with the Rector of the republic and five thousand citizens buried beneath them. Then fires broke out and bands of peasants from the mountain areas swooped down and plundered what was left. The nightmare still lives in the memory of the town.’
