Caracole, page 34
Her ironic self snickered at the preposterous melodrama she was instigating, but her tragic self moved with gravity toward her goal. Primitives did things—attacked, killed, struck back—and sobered up later to regret their impetuosity. Civilized people did nothing and prided themselves on the self-consciousness that had tranquilized them. They didn’t understand that their inaction, far from proving how highly evolved they were, actually demonstrated they were suited only to belong to the chorus. They could comment on the deeds of the principles but not step out to become one. Of course every educated person found anything bold ridiculous; and of course every action of any sort creaked with the awkwardness of the discernibly real. Yes, how wonderful that we should exist; how hilarious that we should do or make. But someone worthy of being a protagonist finally steps forward and, no matter how stylelessly or inopportunely, plants the axe in the stomach.
Mathilda knew that sculptors liked to contrast Contemplation with Action, the one musing over books and astrolabes, the other girded for battle. But she would fuse them: she’d become an artist, for surely that was the high destiny of art, to do something in full knowledge of its meaning. A soldier marches or kills: a thinker reflects each act in the angled mirrors circling his mind. Her accomplishment, her synthesis would set a deed into the surround of understanding.
That night, the eve of the ball, she dreamed that a sad but smiling Edwige gave Gabriel to her. Gabriel was singed with shame—his edges were literally charred and crinkled, as though he were a page rescued from the hearth. And she, Mathilda, was opened up like a big fiddle case and her real body, the slender lovely one, was lifted out, held to the light, tuned. Gabriel held her.
Then she woke to discover Daniel had flung himself across her bed and was crying. She blinked into the darkness and lay there listening and wished her boy had someone to kill. His grief seemed so irrelevant now, even to his own predicament. But she smiled and acknowledged that she had been lucky; she’d found her solution without much fuss.
She felt no more responsibility toward her son. How could she, in the light of her decision? Nor did she have much sympathy for what he must be feeling; she could scarcely imagine it. Nonetheless a certain playful charity prompted her to stroke his head and to say, “You’ve lost that girl and I’ve lost Gabriel, but we must be brave.” She could hear her own breath and his in the dark. She went on, remotely amused: “Did you ever really think you and I would know how to impersonate lovers? Don’t worry. We’ll go back to reading all night. Or you’ll explore the city and tell me about it the next morning.”
“Mother,” he said. He always called her Mathilda; not since he’d been a little boy had he called her Mother. By the time he was seven he’d already been shocking guests by pouring out the wine for them and aggressively correcting “Mathilda.” Now he called her Mother and he said, “You will wear the beige silk dress I’ve chosen, won’t you?”
“Yes, my love,” she said. She wondered if she’d be able to do everything neatly at the ball. History, like some importunate monarch, had summoned her and she hoped her curtsy would be accurate and deep. When she stood to go to the toilet the bed under its heap of lights and shadows seemed to shrink and slide away. Suddenly Daniel looked tiny on this piece of dollhouse furniture. When she chose she could restore everything to its normal size, but distancing and diminishing things (right now the sink, her hands under the water) made her laugh, and only her resolution to pull everything off tomorrow night persuaded her to stop fooling around with dimension. When she went back to the bedroom Daniel, poor thing, began to tell her how important he was—important in having “finished” Claude, important in leading the revolution to calm. Mathilda bounced him up to man size for one of his sentences and reduced him down to gnat size for the next. It crossed her mind that this was craziness, but the word meant nothing if there was to be no future. Craziness was a scandal, but nothing without repercussions could be scandalous. In any event, among the people she knew, fear of scandal inhibited whatever impulses hadn’t already been silenced by irony.
Daniel meant nothing to her now. She’d dragged him around with her as though she were a king and he her exotic gift, but the casket upon presentation had turned out to be empty.
The next morning she was sitting on her balcony looking down into a square that was forming in the first light like a sandbar surfacing at low tide. A lamplighter who had one leg shorter than the other was rocking his way along the edge of the square when a shot rang out. The man staggered and fell. Gunsmoke drifted gently away in the cool dawn breeze. After a bit someone entered the square, saw the body and quite comically backed out. Did he hope to avoid the nuisance of contacting the police? Or was he afraid he’d be the next victim?
Mathilda went in. She’d been satisfied with the look of dying and pleased to discover her heart wasn’t faint, not faint at all.
Weeks before Angelica had asked “Teddy” to take her to the governor’s ball, but he’d turned her down—in his most charming way, of course. Mateo’s love for the girl made refusing her anything difficult. He emphasized the onerousness of his duty to escort Edwige, whom he didn’t name but called “this lady who rents an apartment in my building and insists I take her.”
Mentally Angelica smiled at such a description of the glamorous star, who she knew was the great love of Mateo’s life. Flora had told her of their “torrid affair,” as the city gossip would have it, but Angelica had detected the cruelty of this rival in Teddy’s gratitude to her, Angelica, for the smallest kindness. He’d been damaged by Edwige. Often he spoke in late-night whispers to Angelica of her generosity, by which she could infer Edwige’s meanness. If Angelica had been more worldly she might have feared her kindness would bore a man so habituated to pain—but such a fear would have been misplaced, for Mateo had not been drawn to Angelica’s coldness (which was hidden and would reveal itself only in time, when it was too late) but to her vulnerability (which was apparent from the start because she’d cultivated it as an aspect of her appeal).
Maurizio convinced Angelica to go to the ball as a boy in a costume and mask that would match his own. “We’ll be brothers,” he said hopefully. She readily agreed, since often she’d concealed her gender and moved mysteriously around town in search of adventure.
She knew Gabriel would be at the ball. What would he say to her when he saw her? He’d be in costume and mask as well. Would she recognize him? In all the time since they’d come to the city she’d seen him only once and that had been at the opera. She’d gone with the pharmacist and sat in the highest balcony. At the intermission she’d hurtled down the stairs to mix with the gentry. She had been wearing her emerald necklace, the costume-jewelry Teddy had bought her. At one moment she’d glanced up to a box where she thought she saw a skinnier, sadder Gabriel standing in evening clothes behind the chair of a striking old woman. But Teddy had begged her not to “upset” Gabriel, who certainly looked peculiar, and she’d ducked behind someone then crept back up to the balcony and that darling druggist with his fun pills and droll sex fantasies …
And yet, all along, she’d been curious about Gabriel, almost as though he were a twin, a brother—or her husband, as indeed he was by the lights of her people. She’d felt him somewhere nearby, waiting, dangerous.
She loved making Teddy happy. She thought it strange that he who’d lived in a milieu devoted to pleasure had known so little happiness. The men of her tribe—scarred by the tusk of the wild pig, hunted by irate farmers whose chickens they’d stolen, paralyzed by directional taboos that kept them pent up for days on end—they’d never talked about happiness at all. It wasn’t something they thought about. But these men of the city, overstimulated by talk and art and drink and sex, complained so much about the happiness they were missing that Angelica soon came to think they deserved it—and was thrilled that she represented it to Teddy.
On some days she’d go to a picture dealer with Teddy and look soberly at one painting after another. She really didn’t know what he was seeing, what was taking so long, nor could she imagine why people would spend such demented sums on inscrutable daubs. Nor could she ever predict which one he would like—why he’d find this one “strong” or “courageous” while another he declared to be “weak” or “merely decorative” or “a step backward.” But just as all this concentration and money had authenticated “art” for her as something real, a real thing, in the same way Teddy’s and Flora’s insistence on “happiness” had also brought it into being for her. Happiness was a legitimate commodity, like art. Just as her own people made cult figures the city dwellers called “art,” in the same way the tribesmen often experienced an elation which they called “wild high spirits” but Mateo’s friends might call “happiness.” And yet “wild high spirits” or “going over the top” (depending on how the word was translated) was given as a proof of pleasure at an elaborate banquet, an acknowledgment of the host’s generosity, a demonstration of the greatness of one’s own soul—whereas “happiness,” as she discovered, described private moments as well as public demonstrations. Yet Angelica thought that even for Mateo “happiness” must have its banquet origins, for often he’d look up from a book or hug her in bed and say, “I’m so happy,” as though he were toasting the world.
Maurizio came to dress and mask in her room at ten. She’d prepared an elegant cold supper of cucumber soup, chicken and champagne, just as Flora had suggested to her. Angelica greeted him at the door in the costume he’d provided; it matched his. They did a turn before the mirror, singing and dancing the current hit, “Brothers.” Maurizio blushed when Angelica kissed his cheek and murmured, “Incest, anyone?” The costumes only emphasized their differences, Angelica so dark and female, Maurizio so fair and masculine. He was almost a foot taller than she.
The ballroom was the old Council Chamber still graced with its allegorical ceiling of the Marriage of City and Sea and their preparation of a crib for their infant, the Republic, from weeds and seaweed, grass and eelgrass, the national flag (now suppressed, of course) held up by angels and angelfish (“The only two kinds of patriots they could find,” went the quip among the conquerors).
To reach this august chamber—lined on all four sides with carved wood thrones, the former seats of the patriarchs—one followed a devious route. Through the gates, across a courtyard assembled out of spoils from many centuries and countries, up the marble staircase, through a pair of antechambers and the former Senate, then the Star Chamber, the Treasury and the High Court (one low, barred door led directly down to the dungeons). Finally a narrow hall zigzagged into the most recent wing and the Council Chamber, the only room large enough for a ball. The lack of a properly grand or direct entrance had always caused criticism, but Angelica liked the adventure of such a long, delaying, funhouse route. The very narrowness of the last corridor had always prevented women from wearing bustles that were too wide and had enforced the sumptuary laws that otherwise were so gaily flouted.
The general and his wife and daughter were enthroned on a dais in front of a wall covered with a red velvet curtain, newly installed to conceal a fresco that narrated the most important victories of the Republic—not an acceptable theme for the ball, given the present unrest, although hiding the wall had only focused attention on it.
The July night drew Angelica and Maurizio to the open doors giving onto the balcony. A breeze touched Angelica’s right cheek, slipped behind her, then caressed her left shoulder and brushed her exposed neck with its lips. Angelica pictured the breeze as a dancer gracefully performing a game of tag. Like Mateo toasting some unseen banquet, Angelica said to Maurizio, “I’m so happy.”
Yet she was a bit disappointed that her boy’s clothes, which at home she’d thought of as outrageous, had caused no stir and seemed dully conventional beside the shocking or gaudy costumes on every side. She hoped she’d recognize Teddy and his actress. She half-hoped and half-feared Teddy would recognize her. Would he think she was spying on him? He’d often explained he couldn’t take her to various parties and receptions because of his “work,” whatever that was. She hoped she wouldn’t be annoying him if he was at work again tonight. Like “art” and “happiness,” “work” was another one of the invisible but recognized realities of the city. Something like a buttonhole, work seemed to be useful precisely because it was a carefully defined absence.
Walter was standing near a table of refreshments, wearing a pink dress. Angelica had never met him, but she’d seen him at the opera in Mathilda’s box. Now she backed up to him in the crowd and lingered next to him, listening to his conversation. He was saying that he saw much that was good in the revolutionary leadership and no reason not to anticipate the success of “our” cause. For a moment Angelica was confused until she realized that Walter considered himself to be a revolutionary. “After all,” he said, “I was a Septembrist and I’ve always remained loyal to that movement.” Although Mateo had often complained to her of Walter’s lies and pretensions, she liked his way of talking, so lively and entertaining. He seemed so eager to please and so afraid of losing his turn to speak that Angelica was touched. If she lived with him she’d listen to him all day, just to make him feel better. She hoped for his sake that he would outlive his brilliant friends, who teased him so much, and survive to rework the story of their lives so that he’d emerge as the hero.
A wonderfully ugly boy in a cheap blue gown, too small to fit him, sidled up to her and asked her to dance. His entire side was exposed where the snaps refused to close. Even so, his ribs were protruding and he was terribly gaunt. She in her smart but dull boy’s suit and this ugly boy in his garish gown, with a big blue cloth rose sewn to the bosom, twirled across the floor. She felt comfortable in his arms. She wondered what he looked like under his mask. Did he know she was a girl despite her costume? Many men had obviously been fooled and she missed their lingering looks.
She was revolved out onto the broad dark balcony. She and the boy waltzed more and more lentamente between potted palms in stone vats. He was suddenly kissing her and moving his hands all over her. The taste in his mouth awakened memories, as did the little clicking sound he made when he cleared his throat. He raised her mask and pushed his own back.
“Gabriel,” she said. “How did you—”
“The man dressed in the same costume you’re wearing pointed you out.”
They kissed in the shadows. She remembered how he hadn’t liked to kiss her at Madder Pink, how he’d never told her he loved her; she dimly recalled that no one had talked much about “love” back there so long ago.
His hand seemed annoyed with her boy’s tunic—it wanted to get to her breast. To torment him she put her hand down his bodice and squeezed his nipple. When his fingers finally gophered up her tunic, she lowered her hand and found his big erect penis muzzled behind the sleazy fabric—just where she’d known it would be; a black drool mark was seeping up through the blue silk.
The sound and smell of the forest on a summer night came back to her and she felt they were in their hollow again, thrashing about on the ground—a vivid scene conjured here on this shadowy balcony behind the indiscreet palm tree pretending to hide its eyes but peeking at them through spread fingers.
“Mother” stopped tolling. The silence, after two days of clangor, sounded ominous. Down below masquers dressed as dukes and duchesses were laughing the hearty boisterous laugh of the conquerors as they drifted across the piazza. They probably were dukes and duchesses.
An unlit ship gliding through the harbor blew its baritone foghorn and slid across the illuminated face of Mateo’s palace, hiding it for ten long seconds as a magician might lightfinger something under his silk square.
Gabriel and Angelica sought privacy. They crept down corridors and up stairs, Gabriel holding his open lady’s fan over his aching erection. Once when they thought they’d found a perfect corner, a soldier helmed in darkness stepped forward, clicked his heels and saluted.
Finally they returned to the ballroom and ducked behind the red velvet curtains covering the insurrectionist fresco. Here at last, in a hot passageway only two feet wide, separated from thousands of dancers by just a thickness of fabric, Gabriel hiked up his skirt, pulled down Angelica’s trousers and plunged into her. They couldn’t so much as whisper or sigh; every sound would be heard through the curtain. On the other side, only a few inches away, a woman was asking her husband who everyone was, and Angelica, even in her delirium, could tell the man knew no one. At least his voice didn’t inspire confidence.
Angelica loved Gabriel. He was her husband. This “love” they talked so much about, as real and invisible as “art” or “happiness” or “work,” now seemed so full and present within her that she looked and looked into Gabriel’s eyes—did he feel it too? Surely anything so strong must be shared. She couldn’t be hearing so much love unless he was saying at least some of it to her. She reworked their past so that every tough, animal grappling followed by aversion now seemed to have prefigured love and the promise of happiness. What had been all silence and shame now became talk, the eloquence of love.
“But do you think that can be Mathilda in the beige gown and black mask? She certainly has the mature figure, doesn’t she—and how odd of her to have chosen the same gown as Claude. At least I assume that’s Claude—no, here, here—” the woman’s murmur switched to a hiss “—next to the general. See?”
Gabriel’s woman’s wig was askew and his lipstick smeared as he poured himself into Angelica. He felt as the sun must feel just before it sets. As they uncoupled with the pain of sensations too acute to be pleasurable, Angelica sneaked a worried look at Gabriel. She wondered if he’d become as remote as he used to after sex, but no, he winked at her and helped her pull her trousers up and hugged her then tugged his own dress down after playfully slapping at his half-erect penis as though it were an overeager dog. Now the same woman on the other side of the curtain was saying in a bored voice, “They claim that men like tribal girls because their skin is cool in the summer.”
