Casanova in Bolzano

In Costume

…So what are you waiting for? Get dressed, you aging mountebank, you trembling old quack! Your room is full of shadows: the shadows of your youth. Youth is gone, isn’t it?… but you can still hear its voices, like the tinkling of bells on your decrepit guest’s sleigh. Off he goes, as if bowing and blowing kisses to an invisible audience, together with his servants, his magnificent horses, and his tinkling sled. He is passing under your window right now. They’ve swaddled him in pelts so you can’t even see the tip of his nose, a gaunt and graceless figure in the depths of the carriage, wrapped in fur, protected by his rank, old and in pain, and despite what he says, however he preaches and pontificates, on the point of death. It is he who is wounded now, not as I once was, bleeding in the garden in Pistoia and at the gates of Florence: his wound is fatal. And what about you? Are you happy now, Giacomo? Are you dead? Have they already crossed your arms across your chest? If you had your way you yourself would be making bows and blowing kisses to your invisible audience, receiving their applause. Are you lost for words? Is there a sour taste in your mouth as though you had overeaten and drunk too much? Is it penance and herrings you need? It is a mad world! Now you must kill everything in you: strangle your memories, strangle every tender feeling with your bare hands as if it were an unwanted kitten, strangle everything that smacks of human contact and compassion! Is the time of your youth over?… No, not quite. Yes, you are missing two front teeth. You find the cold harder to bear and like to snuggle up to the fire, muttering, in fur gloves, watching what you eat and carefully rinsing your mouth before kissing anyone because neither your digestion nor your teeth are exactly perfect any more! But this does not constitute a terminal condition. Your stomach, your heart, and your kidneys are faithful servants; your hair is only just beginning to go, a little thin on your crown and your temples: you will have to be careful where your lover plants her hands when she takes hold of your hair! You are not old yet, but you have to be a little careful… particularly of the pox that seems to be ravaging the world, so people say. But all is not lost. That great energy, that spontaneous overflow, that all-or-nothing the old fool spoke about with such contempt, may serve you awhile yet! The virtues of caution, wisdom, forethought, and reason are nothing without the instinctive passions of youth to heat them. What kind of life is it without the desire to take everything the world has to offer and to blow all your resources at the same time, to grab and discard at once?… Enough of this. You are not at the carnival now. You have a different kind of appointment, a different deadline! A deadline that marks the end of youth. You are an adult now, in one of your mature moments of wisdom, the kind you get at four in the afternoon in mid-October. A fine time. Your sun is still shining…. Look around, take a deep sweet breath, feel the rays of the sun, slow down, pay more attention, there’s nothing else you can do in any case. Your youth is leaving you… elsewhere people are laughing, glasses are clinking, a woman is singing, there’s the scent of falling rain, you are standing in a garden, your face wet with tears and rain, the flowers are dead but your heart is wild and happy, you yearn for completeness and annihilation, all the trodden flowers lie around you… that’s what it was like, something like that. Later perhaps, when you are an old man, you will remember it. Now get dressed, because time is passing, there are people already waiting in the ballroom and one inexpressibly tender and alert pair of eyes is looking for you because she must see you…. Where’s the note? Yes, it’s there where he left it. Let’s have a look. Large writing, careful, careworn letters… she’s not the first woman to have written to me, nor will she be the last, I suppose. And with what trembling fingers and glittering eyes that wounded old crow, her husband, explained the meaning of the letter! It really was most amusing! Sometimes it is worth being alive! I must see, yes…. Well, poor thing, what more could she have written when she has been literate for barely a year? He says that no one could mean more or write more beautifully, and perhaps he is right; it is an elegant note, and it might be that other women, like the marquesa, the cardinal’s niece, and M.M., who knew a great deal about both love and literature, wrote more wittily and at greater length, complete with verses, classical references, high vulgarity, and passionate bombast, but, I must admit, they wrote nothing more true. The jealous old fool is right to admire it…. Well, my dove, you shall see me as you desire! You shall see me, though I am not the youngest or handsomest of men, nor, as His Excellency remarked, the greatest of villains, either…. You, my dove, will see me, as you wanted and as he, too, wanted, the ruffled old crow! What a speech he made! What convoluted strategies he devised! All that threatening and prodding! Could he have been the man who betrayed me to the authorities some sixteen months ago in Venice?… The council is glad to do little favors for influential outsiders; the messer grande is a courteous man and he would not deny a minor service to the cousin of the French king. Well, my duke of Parma, you shall have what you asked for! You made a fine job of dressing your proposition as a gift, you spoke with feeling like a philosopher, you wanted to be producer and patron, master and accomplice, in this curious business, and you shall have what you want…. Might it have been really those two old arthritic hands of yours that deposited me on my straw bed in Venice?… he didn’t say so, not in so many words. Like a retired hangman he consulted his secret list and simply hinted at the possibility before tucking the slip of paper back in his waistcoat pocket and going off with it! Chew on that! he thought. Beware, in case I do it again! He has a point there: it was no fun in the cells. He was right, too, in speaking of other laws and other forms of order, though I could tell him a story or two myself, albeit brief ones, with neat punchlines. Father Bragadin is no angel, of course, when it comes to the public good or when one can gain one man’s favor by selling another man’s life. It is simply the way of the world. We are slow to learn its lessons but maybe it’s better that way. We prepare ourselves to face the world, we find out how it works, and soon enough we discover that there is business more dirty and dangerous than a game of cards, that affairs conducted under a veil of respectability are just as dirty. Take care, Giacomo! Take care tonight! And take care tomorrow morning, too, at cockcrow, when you take your leave in the snow. This is too carefully planned to be harmless: beware the aging grandee, the ancient, august lover who prefers not to strangle his rival, but to use those hands of his rival to strangle love itself and the memory of love… take care! Lights are still burning in the stable, you still have a few gold coins left over from yesterday jangling in your pocket; how would it be if you quickly packed, grabbed that hot sixteen-year-old spring chicken, Teresa, whose kisses have ensured a good night’s sleep these last eight days, and, true to the laws of your own being, following your impeccable logic, forgot the ball, the agreement, and the grand performance, and made off with her tonight?… It might be better than waiting for dawn. Perhaps you should let them get on with it, let the duke of Parma wear his ass’s head and ever after fret over his precious Francesca, her memories of her literary lover, and about what he might yet get up to with her?… Concentrate, Giacomo, little brother! Are you in two minds? Are you thinking of staying now? Do you think your agreement obliges you to carry out your role? Can you not escape a performance that is bound to be false and sad as well as dangerous and unnatural, a performance that may end in real tears and real blood trickling across the boards of the stage, with a real corpse for the stagehands to remove?… But you can already feel the excitement, the involuntary shudder: everything else is beginning to lose focus, desire is stoking the fire in you. Is that desire no longer subject to reason? Do you feel you have no choice but to play the part? Could it be that the jealous old coxcomb calculated right when he appealed to the artist in you, when he drew attention to your art, so you were certain to accept even if it meant that not just the memory of the artist but the artist himself came to a sticky end, stitched up by His Excellency of Parma? But no, you must not rebel, you must not protest: accept the fact that you must stay and finish your business. You can’t escape the responsibilities of your art: your entire life has been fraught with danger, so why stop now? You need the danger, you need to feel that at any moment the curtains of your bed might open and someone stick a knife between your ribs: you need to be aware of the possibility of annihilation; you need the impossible thing that the respectable citizen so desperately and helplessly craves and dreams about as he snores in his nightcap at his wife’s side, while you are creeping through somebody’s cellar or scrambling about on a rooftop, fighting hired assassins, living the reality that they, the virtuous, the shuffling, dare only dream about. You represent change and transformation: you are the flesh-and-blood version of what they call adventure or art. What else can you do? You will assume the part allotted to you, you will use your talent. So it is settled and you are staying! To work then! Clap three times and get them to bring water in the silver jug, let Balbi shift his horny feet and find you an appropriate outfit in town, let Giuseppe be called for to steam and pamper your face, and have a word with little Teresa, tell her to wrap her things in a bundle and to meet you at the edge of town at dawn. I will take her to Munich and sell her as wife to the elector’s chief secretary. I will do things properly. Cheer up, there’s nothing else you can do. The duke of Parma has thought of everything. He understands me completely and has calculated correctly; he knew I would stay and make my one-night-only guest appearance, however demanding it may be, even if it cost me my neck in the end, even if the lovely ladies of Bolzano finish up singing mournful three-part harmonies over my corpse. Yes, you greedy, clever, puzzled old man, you have calculated correctly. You firmly believe that wealth, power, cunning, and a little circumspection are enough to see the thing through. But let me send you a message, now, before I put on my costume, start painting my face, and summon every time-honored feature of my art for the performance: beware! For you, too, should take care! What do you think I am? Do you really think I am some kind of conjuror who can produce a masterpiece at a moment’s notice: what an idea! You should be careful, for I am only human, and so is she. You demand, in your desperation, that we should collaborate on a single work of instantaneous genius. How could I be sure of doing that? I have never known what the morning light would bring. Not that I regret it. Half my life is over and I have never regretted anything, nor was ever bored for an instant: I have been stabbed, I have been offered drinks laced with poison, I have slept under the stars without a penny in my pocket, I have no one I could call a friend: all I have is my notoriety, but I have not regretted any of it. The best part of life is gone: I have neither house nor apartment, not a stick of furniture to my name, not a watch, not even a ring that I could truly call mine. I order new clothes in every town I visit and feel no obligation to stay in any of them, yet you, the duke of Parma, are jealous of me. You who are tied to everything and are nothing but the things you are tied to — palaces, birth, name, title, lands, possessions, sentiments, and jealousies — you, who now, when life is “almost” over, as you never tire of saying — indeed you keep repeating the word in the vain hope that by flirting with it, by saying it often enough, you might actually delay your fate and avoid your final appointment with reality — find yourself in a tangle of contradictions between what you want and what there is; are you not secretly, somewhere deep in your soul, jealous of my ability to wrap myself in clouds and travel on moonbeams, to ride the wind across borders where nobody waits or takes leave of me; of me, the man without a room, without furniture, without a single possession anywhere in the world that he can truly call his own?… Enough, my boy, wake up, prepare yourself. Give a nice loud whoop, the way you used to. There’s an icy wind hooting and tugging at the skirts of the ladies of Bolzano: you, too, should be like the wind, hooting with laughter! Life isn’t over yet, there’s no question of “almost” for you. You need not rely on conjuring tricks because you are the real thing! So beware, Duke, I am no longer afraid of the morning. Let the storm whose gusts are already blowing about my heart and through my mind carry me forward, let there be tears and vows, kisses and death, let everything be condensed or slowed down, as life will have it, let it all happen despite the morning. I shall serve you well tonight, dear Duke! You have purchased me in all my miraculous, wonder-working reality. I shall be like those ancient wrestlers who knew they would have to pay for their performance with their lives: I will not be churning out a dutifully composed text to whisper in her ear, no, I shall do better and improvise a true text! Are you not afraid, you old schemer, that the performance might turn out to be all too successful?… Her letter is rather imperious and the spell she casts may be more effective than the ingenious strategy you have devised for your remaining days. Do you think you will save the tenderness and affection you imagined she might offer you when you married her? Are you not afraid that human passions might not be subject to nice calculation, that the greatest of artists might make a mistake, that the game might turn into a reality, a kiss become a true bond, that a trickle of blood might spread and become a tide in which life itself ran away from you?… Yes, we have an agreement. So both of us should now see that it is carried out: you with your ass’s head, in your palazzo, with your painstaking schemes and your squint, and I in costume, the perfect costume in which no one will recognize me except the woman for whom I wear it! Are Balbi and Teresa ready for departure?… Balbi!… Hey, Balbi!…

Now listen carefully! What time is it?… Near midnight? A good time, the time when day completes its magic round and witches reach for their broomsticks. Are you drunk? Your breath stinks of garlic, your lips are shiny with grease, you look positively cross-eyed. It must be that Verona wine. Stop staggering about for an instant and listen to me! We have a great opportunity, Balbi! There has been a wonderful turn of events! You may well rub your hands because your prayers are answered: our time in Bolzano is over and we shall set out at dawn. Tell the innkeeper to prepare the bill and hitch up some horses! You will pack and bid farewell to the kitchen maids and to all the people you gulled, you old skirt-lifter, you horse thief…. No, on the other hand, wait, it may be better not to say anything to them just yet. You can write your fond and amorous farewells from Munich in the morning. I want you to pack, if there is anything to pack, then to go to your room and wait for daybreak. Make sure it is the best horses they are hitching up, and have a word with the coach keeper too: it’s a closed carriage I want, with fur blankets and hot water bottles! Make sure everyone is ready and everything in its place! Tell them that it’s either a shower of gold or a sound beating for them in the morning, it depends on them which! No questions! Clap both hands over your mouth and listen very carefully. When I call you I want you to grab your things and to dash to the carriage. You will seat yourself next to the driver! I am not asking you to do this, Balbi, but ordering you! Take utmost care until we are beyond the reach of Venice for the palm of the messer grande is as itchy as your neck. I want no complaints from you! Have I had bad news?… You will find out about a hundred miles from here, if I judge the time to be right. Now go into town and find me a costume! What kind? One for a ball, numbskull, a marvelous, perfectly unique costume, the kind that will turn everyone’s head when I step into the ballroom, but under which no one will recognize me…. What’s that? All the costumes in Bolzano have been sold for tonight? Idiot! The kind of mask and costume I am looking for is not the traditional carnival outfit, not Pierrot or Harlequin, not Prince of Persia with Vizier, not Head Cook and Scullery Boy, not Oriental Knight, not Pasha in Turban with Scimitar, not Court Fool in pretend rags, with cap-and-bells and mock scepter. That stuff is old hat: it is boring and conventional. No, Balbi, let’s find something new and original for tonight. What if I dressed simply as a knight appropriate to my name and rank, a chevalier of France fresh from the court of King Louis…? No, perhaps not. Hush, don’t disturb me when I’m thinking. Wait! What if I went as an author, a scholar, a philosopher, with black-rimmed pince-nez perched on my nose, a mortarboard on my head, wearing a white collar and a black cloak? Not such a bad idea, an author… it takes one author to know another. What do you think? Are there other writers in Bolzano? Think about it carefully, Balbi. The brotherhood of authors is a secret society, with invisible insignia: you, being uncultured, think that Monsieur Vendôme or Madame Montespan might have precedence over authors in an audience with the king, but it’s not like that. Messieurs La Fontaine and Corneille and even Bossuet are at the front of the line, though Corneille is a little unkempt… you, of course, understand nothing of this, how could you? No, the author costume is wrong. We must find something else. What if I went as a hunter, with horn, dagger and bow, Nimrod at the Chase, Nimrod and Diana in the Primeval Forest? No, the symbolism is too transparent. Have you no ideas of your own? Don’t the kitchen maids like you to entertain them with your wit and garlic breath?… That’s it, Balbi! I have it! Kitchen maids! It’s perfect! Quick, call for little Teresa! And let them bring a skirt, a blouse, white stockings, a beauty spot, some Viennese cloth for a shawl, a bonnet, and a white silk mask… what are you staring at?… yes, tonight I shall dress as a woman! Take that stupid grin off your face! It’s the perfect disguise. I shall want a fan and something to stuff my bodice with, Neapolitan fashion: feathers from a pillow will do. Now hurry! Wake the servants! And let’s get this room tidy, open some windows, build up the fire, let’s have some sweet dessert wine on the table, a little cold chicken, some dressed salad, and ham and cheese, too, with white bread, silverware, and porcelain, the best of everything. Innkeeper!… Where are you hiding, you old pimp, you murderer of tourists and traveling salesmen?… Come here and do as I say! I want that fire blazing in the grate, fresh sheets on the bed, the best and finest pillowslips, a counterpane with your best lace cover, some ambergris sprinkled on the embers, two armchairs placed by the fire, a small ebony table with flowers over there, I don’t care what it costs, do you hear, red roses, yes, now, in November, in the snow! Where from? That’s up to you. From the duke’s greenhouse, for all I care, but now, tonight! The chicken should be accompanied by pickled eggs. I want the ham and cheese on a glass tray in one piece…. Wait! The bread should be toasted in thin slices, and the butter should be served on freshly fallen snow! Now let’s get busy. The coachman should begin to warm the coach with hot water bottles, let the horses be given some fodder, have him polish the brasses until they glitter, and let everyone stand by at dawn, in a heated kitchen, with some hot and cold food for the journey and a cask of wine, the best of everything! During the night, though, the place should be as silent as the grave, the grave where you yourselves will be resting, I assure you, if you do not carry out my orders immediately and to the letter! No, my friend, you don’t yet know me: I am terrifying when in a temper! Please be aware that my connections and influence exceed the merely mortal… there’s no need for me to spell them out to you, since you yourself have seen the kind of people who have been waiting outside my door tonight and every night! You, you murderer of traveling salesmen, you shall have a hundred gold pieces if all is done as I demand: inform your staff that however overcast the sky of Bolzano may be at daybreak it will shower them with gold, providing everyone remains at his or her station through the night, on constant call! And let all this happen without any noise whatsoever, you understand, silently and invisibly! Are you still here?… Close the window now, that’s enough fresh air. Sprinkle some attar of roses on the bed and draw the curtains round it. Have the flowers arrived?… Where did you get them? You found them in the reception room of the lady from Bergamo?… Tomorrow we shall send her better ones, a finer-scented selection, a whole basketful of them, a hundred, no, ninety-nine as a mark of delicacy, don’t forget! Yes, you may spread the table and bring the food! The wine…. Show me, let’s have a sniff! I am not going to taste it but you will answer with your head if I can smell the slightest trace of cask on it! I won’t taste it now because I have just rinsed my mouth…. Giuseppe, good, I am glad you have arrived, throw the towel over my shoulders: I want some blush on my cheeks, yes, both cheeks, a little something for the lips, a beauty patch just under my right cheekbone, some rice powder on my wig, and now we shall tie it up in the little bonnet we have borrowed from Teresa. Is it past midnight?… Now you can go. Be off with you all. I don’t want to see any of you till dawn. Not you, Teresa, my little one, you stay with me. Tie the skirt around my waist, adjust the garter on my knees, lend me the silk shawl I bought you yesterday, and arrange it across my shoulders…. That’s right, thank you. Am I sitting properly with my legs crossed, the way a woman sits, fan in hand, when she is being attended by a gentleman?… I find I am not at all sure of the way women move. Is this how you hold a fan?… Thank you, my dear. Do you find me pretty like this?… My nose is too big? The mask will cover it, Teresa. Now come here, little one, sit on my knees, and don’t worry if you crease the folds of your skirt. I’ll buy you a finer one in Munich, a velvet and silk outfit, as many outfits, of whatever kind you want… are you surprised? But that was the idea, right from the start. You don’t want to fade and droop here, my little snowdrop, in the bar, in the arms of drunken travelers. Tomorrow, at dawn, I shall take you with me. We shall take Balbi, too, but we will take care to lose him on the way. It is no more than he deserves. Yes, we are going to Munich at dawn, as soon as day breaks. Why are you crying? Give me a kiss, as you have so often done before, with closed eyes, open mouth, nice and easy. Why are you trembling like that? Hush, child, prepare for the journey, for your new life which will be wonderful: there’ll be gold, a fine apartment, you shall have your own pony and trap in Munich, and a servant to pull off your shoes and stockings and help you into your silk nightdress. Don’t you want that?… Are you sure? Are you shaking your head? Have you nothing to say? You want to stay here? You want me to leave you here?… Still quiet? I am leaving in the morning, child. Tonight I shall celebrate, in a costume, as is right and proper, but once light breaks we will take to the road, and you will be my companion and chambermaid, but later you will be a lady, too, at least for a while…. Are you smiling yet? Go to your room, pray, sleep, and prepare for the journey. Wait for me at dawn at the edge of town, where the road branches north and west, by the stone cross. You can trust me… you know very well you can trust me. But there is something in your smile that I have seen only once before, in Verona, I think, something unself-conscious and decadent, something gentle yet dangerous at the same time…. I will explain that later. Scrub your hands. Wash your hair tonight, apply camomile tea to your hair and your face, then spread this cream over it… wait, you shall have a rose as a memento of this night. Now go and think over what I have said…. Go, because I myself have to go. Sweet dreams, my child. Tomorrow you will wake to a new life by the stone cross, in the carriage, in my arms, under the protection of my cloak…. Addio, cara fanciulla! Addio, mia diletta! Arrivederci domani! Iniziamo una vita nuova!… Una vita felice!… Phew! Is everyone gone?… Let’s get going. Just the mask, quickly. It’s a nice mask, familiar, Venetian style, white silk: let it cover my face as it has so often done at difficult and dangerous moments in my life. One more glance in the mirror… the beauty patch has slipped a little, a touch more red needed for the lips, smooth the eyebrows, and just a pinch of candle soot, the merest dab under the eyes…. Yes, perfect! The greatcoat will cover me as I make my way across the street. How the snow is falling! Mind your voice, Giacomo, speak with your fan and your eyes only if at all possible! Everything is in place, yes, the cold chicken, the butter on fresh snow, the wine in the engraved decanter, the roses in the marble basket, there’s attar of roses on the pillow, the curtains of the bed are closed…. I think that should be all, yes. Perhaps one more log on the fire… something is missing? I can’t think what it is. What was it, something important I mustn’t forget… something more important than roses, wine, ambergris, or the roast ham…. Oh, I know. The dagger! Into my bosom with you, faithful companion. Into my bosom, under the bodice, down among the feathers: an excellent costume. Only a woman could hide a dagger in such a place, and it certainly gives you confidence knowing there is a dagger just above your heart. It’s much the best way of setting forth on an engagement!… I don’t think I have forgotten anything. So get going. Wait… what is it now? Why aren’t you on your way? You are alone. Check the mirror. The costume is excellent, everybody and everything is in place, a few more moments and the performance can begin according to the agreement, according to the rules you discussed with the duke of Parma. Why are you hanging back? Why is your heart beating so loudly? What is this feeling that has taken possession of you, grips your heart, and makes you indecisive, so you hesitate here with a dagger in your bosom, a mask on your face, and a fan in your hand…. What is happening to you, Giacomo? Acrobats suffer the same sense of dizziness when they look down on the crowd from the top of a human pyramid, seeking a familiar pair of eyes in the audience…. What unsettles you, what is it you are trying to remember? Hush, restless heart, stop this drumming. It is love you are afraid of, yes it is… you fear the emotion that binds, as the duke of Parma realized in his agony, in his increasing need, he who knows you all too well: it is this feeling that you fear, that casts its shadow across your path, it is the feeling you have fled ever since childhood. Don’t be afraid, poor fool. You can overcome it. Don’t be afraid. There is no feeling that can take complete control of you: you may suffer a few days of grief, but after a week or so of discomfort, you will find your way to the card table, or set to entertaining people the way they have always liked being entertained, playing your part in the human comedy, laughing or being laughed at, swindling or being swindled… and so the memory will fade. It won’t kill you, no fear of that. Come the morning, you will abscond with the kitchen maid as you have done before, and will again, no doubt, in the future. There is nothing you can do about it. Let us do it without sentimentality or fear. The teardrop you are shedding will smudge the makeup on your face and your beauty patch will come unstuck… but I am not afraid of a teardrop or two. I must see you…. It is a beautiful letter. I don’t think I have ever received lovelier. Yes, this woman and I are fated to be linked in some fashion, in a different sort of way, by a different power, a different desire. She herself cannot prevent that. So set about your task, comedian. Stand up straight, throw the cloak across your shoulder, put on your mask…. How silent it is. There’s only the moaning of the wind. Off to the ball with you, attend to your worldly business, follow your fate, be firm, be level-headed. Who is there?…