A Rich Full Death

18

Beatrice may have considered the room which the philanthropic Mr Browning had taken for her to be spacious and airy, as by the standards of the Florentine populace it indeed was; but to my senses it nevertheless appeared distinctly cramped, and on such a night as that, intolerably close and stuffy. I therefore walked over and opened a tall double-door giving on to a small balcony, and stepped outside. It was cooler here; the air was hushed, and from the distance there came a low exploratory rumble, like a kettledrummer trying his instruments quietly in the empty hall before the concert begins.

A few moments later when Beatrice emerged there was barely enough room for us both. As we stood there side by side in the darkness like two conspirators, I realised once again how remarkably at ease I felt in her company, despite the social gulf between us, and the ambiguous nature of our relations. It was no doubt her foreignness which made the thing possible at all-and once possible, it could not but be easy.

I pointed out old Dante’s house, fifty yards off on the other side of the street.

‘Do you think he chose these rooms because of your name?’ I asked playfully.

Beatrice’s reply was that characteristic Italian plosive which means that the speaker does not know, does not care, and cannot imagine why any sensible person should do either.

‘Who knows what goes on in his head?’ she said. ‘But I don’t want to speak of him.’

I was leaning over the balcony, looking down at the empty street-when I suddenly felt her right arm lightly brush my face, and caught the perfume of her brown skin. The thing might have gone for nothing, had she not looked at me. But that glance, I know not why, bereft me of all reason, and the next instant I had seized her, lowered my face to hers, and was madly kissing her!

Arresting this initial impulse was as hopeless as thinking twice about diving into a deep pool a moment after you have jumped. But another moment later, shocked by the delicious impact, I saw my gesture for what it had been-the unbridled licence of a degenerate, who had basely yielded to his animal instincts and forced his repulsive caresses on a helpless girl, rushing in where poets evidently feared to tread. Desperately I struggled to disengage myself, preparing a speech of fulsome apology.

I struggled. But why did I have to struggle with someone who should have been pushing me away with all her feeble strength? The answer, I realised with amazement, was that far from forcing me away, or collapsing flaccidly, a sacrificial victim to my loathsome embraces, Beatrice was responding to my passion with a vehemence that equalled if not exceeded my own. She was kissing as much as kissed, her beautiful live mouth sporting with mine like a creature which had at long last found its fellow, and was glad.

My experience of the female sex-apart from casual encounters with women of the streets-had until that evening been limited to a single experience of love which was illicit, protracted, and as devoid of joy as it was of hope. The object of my desires, when she at length yielded to them, did so in such a way that they were instantly extinguished, and nothing remained but my excitement. This, although of course intense, was entirely superficial. I was excited by the idea of possessing this woman I had so long desired-excited by the idea, not by the act itself, which was in every way brutal, brief and unsatisfactory.

This being so, I was quite unprepared for the very different experience of that night-for I did not return home until morning. And it was Beatrice who wished it! You may not believe that, but it is true. I thought I was seducing her, and all the time it was really she who was seducing me! I am convinced she foresaw the whole encounter-indeed that knowledge came to me, quite literally, in a flash.

The flash in question was lightning, and it awoke me out of a profound slumber, with a confused impression of being at sea. I seemed to see an open companion-way, the hatches banging back and forth in a high wind, and a stretch of slippery deck beyond, with squalls of rain driving across it-memories dredged up from those years when my father sent me out on the schooners plying across the gulf to Nova Scotia, to make a man of me. As if to confirm the illusion, the thunder sounded out like ripping calico when a sail splits.

I sat bolt upright, and found myself in a strange bed. On the other side of the room the windows lay swinging open in the wind gusting around the house. The air was filled with the fresh damp smell of rain, and with the sound of it pelting down. Then, suddenly, I made out some sort of shape moving in the darkness. Terror gripped my heart! It had all been too smooth, too convenient and easy. The woman’s tales had been lies, just like the man’s! I had been decoyed to that house-his house-to be made away with!

Then the lightning-as bodiless as moonlight, though far intenser than the sun-suffused the scene again, and I saw that the figure was Beatrice, as naked as Eve. The torrential rain blowing in through the window, which she had gone to shut, had sprayed her shoulders and bosom, and the skin gleamed like polished bronze. It was the most erotic image I had ever seen, and all my fears were swept away as I sprang from the bed and rushed towards her, and found her in the darkness, and embraced her repeatedly.

She did plan it, though! She all but admitted as much the next morning as we sat over our coffee. But not for Browning-for herself! She is in love with me, Prescott. Imagine it-Robert Browning’s chosen mistress in love with me! She scorns him, and calls me a real man-as indeed I am with her.

She does not of course expect me to marry her. Rather I am to replace her previous protector-who will be politely instructed to discontinue his visits forthwith, as his attentions are no longer desired.

‘He will ask why,’ Beatrice pointed out.

Then tell him!’

‘He will ask your name.’

Tell him!’

‘It’s strange! I thought you were his friend.’

‘So did I, once,’ I replied grimly. But I did not feel grim-on the contrary, I awaited the outcome with the liveliest interest.

So much for this part of my tale. Meanwhile events elsewhere were moving rapidly towards their astonishing climax yesterday.

Last Wednesday morning readers of the local news-sheet were startled by a headline in thunderous capitals, reading ‘TERRIBLE DEATH OF AN UNKNOWN WRETCH!!!’ Here, roughly Englished, is the story which appeared underneath:

‘It is early. Sol has not yet shaken his locks above the snowy Apennines, nor will not do so for many hours to come. The city slumbers; each burgher, of whatever rank or station, dreaming of the madcap merrymaking and joyful japes in store at Carnival-tide. The streets are silent, save for the steady reassuring sound of the watchman going his rounds, ever-vigilant in defence of the lives and property of his fellow-citizens.

‘As he makes his way along Via di Calimala, near the Old Market, this upright servant of the people perceives a pleasant odour-a perfume redolent of joyful hours around the familial board after Sunday mass, the roast sizzling on the fire. But the zealous watchman straightway thrusts this deceitful vision aside: at hand is a humble palace, once cradle to many generations of Florentines, but which has stood untenanted since Arno in his anger rose two lustra since.

‘Wherefore then this olfactory ignis fatuus, this fata morgana of the nostrils, this fragrant will-o’-the wisp? Such is the question which leaps to the alert constable’s mind, and without an instant’s delay or a single thought for his own safety the intrepid one irrupts into the edifice-ignoring, in his single-minded dedication to Duty, the directive affixed to its walls by our enlightened civic authorities, warning the citizenry of the perils attendant upon any such ingression.

‘Within, the darkness is of Cimmerian intensity-a very abyss of impenetrable obscurity which threatens to extinguish by its overwhelming preponderance the feeble rays of the watch’s lantern.

‘But stay! What is this other light? What this weird luminance which seems to emanate from the very walls themselves? And what, ah God! say, what is that fiery portal gaping there like the very maw of our Dante’s celebrated Inferno?

‘What a terrible scene! A citizen of Lucca, sure, would straightway turn and fly from such an awful apparition! Never would a faint-hearted Siennese or braggart Pistoian have stood his ground-nay, though it were broad daylight and they in five or ten, as one would they have turned and fled!!

‘No daylight here. No cheering companions. It is the witching-hour, when hell-hags roam. Our man is all alone. But in his breast there beats a Florentine heart!!! Unmoved, he boldly advances upon the terrific vision-which shrinks-dwindles-fades before his unquailing orbs, into another horror, no less ghastly for being of this world. Too much so!

Within the wall he discovers a capacious oven, relic of those happier times when the fruits of Ceres were elaborated here for distribution to the populace. Once again a fire glows within, as when the baker plied his life-sustaining art.

‘But what dreadful sight is this? With what unnatural cargo is the oven now freighted? Not with bread, nor yet a fragrant pot of beans, but with a HUMAN BODY!!!! An unrecognisable and loathsome mass of carbonised flesh and bone! Whose unconsumed extremities appear more frightful still by contrast with the ruin of the rest!’

It was in fact by those ‘unconsumed extremities’-which included a large hand sporting several unusual rings, one of them bearing the seal of his Church-that the authorities succeeded in identifying the victim, the Reverend Urizen K. Tinker.

The unfortunate ecclesiastic was apparently lured to his death by means of a note which his wife-for, unlikely as it may seem, Tinker proved to possess an uxorial appendage-told the police had been delivered to their rooms at about ten o’clock the previous evening, but which had subsequently been burned by its recipient. Tinker had then left home, without tendering any explanation to his wife, who in turn had not dared request one.

The official theory at present appears to be that Tinker was murdered late on Tuesday night, presumably by the author of the note: there is no indication of his identity, nor of the motive for the crime-the public prints made no mention of any puzzling inscription having been found at the scene, so there was no reason to think that it formed a part of the series of which only Browning and I were as yet aware.

The assassin is supposed to have attempted to conceal the outrage by incinerating the corpse in a disused baker’s oven- which, however, does not explain why he failed to take the elementary precaution of removing the highly distinctive rings his victim was wearing. Indeed, it seems more likely that one hand had been left dangling out of the oven precisely so that Tinker’s identity mould be established. But in that case why was any attempt made to burn the body at all? The thing appeared a fathomless mystery.

I had not seen or heard from Browning since the Friday night when I had crouched in the darkness at the head of the stairs outside Beatrice’s rooms, praying that he would not catch sight of me. However, the morning following the discovery of Tinker’s corpse I received the following note:

Dear Booth,

Heureka! The secret of the inscriptions is mine! Eleven o’clock tomorrow morning, at the gate to the Boboli Gdns. ‘Recover hope, all ye who enter!’

R.B.

Of the many thoughts which streamed through my mind as I scanned these lines, the uppermost was simply a sense of shock at the realisation that Browning still had not the slightest inkling of what had happened. Here he was, dashing me off a hasty summons, quite as though he could dispose of my time and person in the same old free and easy way as ever; as though I were still his acolyte, to be ordered to appointments when it suited him, and then dismissed and scorned and sniggered at by his high-class friends when the situation changed!

Well, he was mistaken, very much so-and the time had come to let him know, to make him feel it. For a moment I was tempted to return a delicately wounding letter in reply-as short and pointed as a stiletto.

But I soon thought better of it. Not that I wished to spare his feelings-had he spared mine? — but rather I saw that I had to deliver much more than just a smart rejoinder, a neat snub. There was too much at stake for that. I had to cut all my involvement with Mr Robert Browning, to disassociate myself from his ‘investigations’ before it was too late.

Playing the amateur police detective had seemed a worthwhile price to pay for sharing Browning’s company, back in the days when that had been the summum bonum of my existence-and when the truth behind poor Isabel’s death had been the sole object of our quest. How long ago and far away all that seemed now! My idol had proved to have feet not just of clay but of mud and grime and every sort of filth; while the jealous lover we had originally sought had swollen up, as in a dream, out of all proportion, and become a homicidal maniac whose atrocities were turning ‘our’ Florence into a slaughter-house.

It was high time to withdraw, to get out from under-while I still could! And to do that-to make Browning understand that I was in earnest, and would not be swayed-I should have to see him one last time in person.

I took a leaf out of Beatrice’s book, and arrived for our appointment dressed in my most sombre and formal apparel. If I hoped Mr Browning might be given pause for thought and reflection by this, I was quickly disappointed, for he just hailed me with all his characteristic gusto, and thrust his pass-a privilege which comes of living in the Guidi Palace-under the nose of the guard, who duly admitted us into the Grand-Duke’s domain.

It soon became clear that Browning was in his most energetic form. He hurried me along a promenade, between massive shiny evergreen hedges, so fast that I thought there must be something he wished to show me at the end. Once we got there, however, he merely turned down another alley-this one covered in trellises, where in a few months the vines will bud and leaf — and I began to realise that my companion’s haste was an index not of any urgency in our goal, but of his state of nervous excitement. And so we went on, circumnavigating the magnificent gardens at a cracking pace, passing the bold vistas and romantic prospects so artfully arranged to catch the eye without so much as a glance, while Browning talked, and talked, and talked.

I found it extremely odd to be trotting along beside the man, knowing what I knew; and odder still to think how recently I used to idolise him, and to dread nothing so much as the one thing I now sought above all: to be rid of him and his never-ending talk full of allusions in half a dozen languages I do not know to half a hundred books I have never read and do not wish to read.

How his self-indulgent verbosity used to inspire me when I thought he was the real right thing I had found at last! And how it disgusts me now I know what manner of thing he is. Listen:

‘It was the word “manto” first set me thinking. The Italian of course means a coat, from the Latin mantellum, cognate with the familiar “mande”. Greek, on the other hand, has mantis: a prophet or soothsayer, whence all our compounds that terminate in “-mancy”. ‘By your necromancy you have disturbed him, and raised his ghost’ and so on-this of course being just what the late Miss Edith Chauncey was at when she met with her unfortunate accident. It is however unlikely, despite her fame, that our local soothsayer will have a city named after her-as was the case with the daughter of blind Tiresias, one of her predecessors. The city in question is Mantova Gloriosa, the birthplace of the Mantuan Swan sung by Cowper …’

And so on, and so on. But do not fear-I shall spare you any more of the facetious riddles and learned references and pedantic explications I had to suffer, and bring you immediately where he in the end came out.

‘Does not this garden, on such a day as this, seem a vision of paradise?’ Browning rhetorically enquired. ‘And yet, in that note I sent you, I suggested it might bear a slightly-adapted motto from a celebrated account of another place. You took the hint, I trust? There is no need for me to explain further. No?’

I did not speak.

‘Why, man, that’s the key!’ Browning cried impatiently. ‘Old Dante and his Inferno!’