Grace Andreacchi

He was the most beautiful old man I have ever seen. They say the face of vice is ugly, but he was the living proof that it need not always be so. I cannot tell you his precise age – he must have been three hundred years old at the time we met, but one’s first impression was of a man not much over sixty. There was a vigour in his cold eye, a statuesque immobility about his person that belied his real age. On closer acquaintance one became aware of the thin, porcelain skin, the bloodless condition of the lips and hands, tinged with the pale violet blue of northern skies. He was still very upright, with a good figure, a little above the middle height, broad in the chest and narrow at the hips under a grey jerkin; his white hair was long and abundant, tied with a black ribbon. The eyebrows, too, were black, startlingly so given the dreadful whiteness of his complexion – they spread like the antennae of some fine-lined black insect, lightly coated with the pale pink dust of scented face powder. The voice, when he spoke, scarcely rose above a whisper; one sat closer, inclined one’s head in an effort to catch that which sounded as if from far away, as the echoes of thunder that roll upon the mountains, tremendous in themselves but dim to us who are far down upon the plain. In this distant thunder one heard, nonetheless, a nameless sweetness, an ineffable charm that spoke volumes of poetry – in the ordinary pleasantries one seemed to hear other words sounding like musical ghosts behind those actually spoken, words such as ‘moonlight’, ‘love’, ‘embrace’ and so on.

I had come to him on a most delicate mission – an elderly aunt, a sister of my grandmother, lay dying in a Venetian convent. Once the name of Caterina Mazzarò had been renowned from Vienna to London, and south to the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. For over thirty years she had played the part of prima donna assoluta in the great opera houses of Europe. The King of Bavaria had proposed marriage to her; the young Duke of Devonshire had sent ten thousand roses to the theatre at Covent Garden to mark her reappearance there after an absence of three years; it was said that the old Empress of Austria, when she lay confined to bed by her last illness, had wept because she could not go to hear la Mazzarò, and that the diva had heard of it and had left the theatre precipitately just as the audience were taking their places, to appear at the bedside of the dying sovereign and sing whatever it might please Her to command. When my aunt’s voice began to die she sold her jewels and went into the convent. The Holy Sisters of the Child Jesus were not held to a very strict observance of the monastic ideal; I had visited her on numerous occasions throughout my childhood. From my earliest years she had shown a certain partiality for me, and in the end she sent for me and entrusted me with a letter which I was to deliver to the legendary Don Juan Tenorio of Seville. I was twenty years old and had just completed my studies in Germany. You may imagine how my vanity was flattered to be distinguished in such a manner by my marvellous aunt. My sorrow at her coming death, in which, at any rate, I did not readily believe, for no man at twenty believes in the reality of death, life is too much with him, blowing about his head like a noisy gale, so that he fails to hear the imminent silence of death (that will only be heard when the first fury of the gale has somewhat abated; later it grows to such proportions as to drown all sounds and furies in its own white silence) – my sorrow, I say, such as it existed, was mitigated by the thought of a journey to Spain, a country I had never seen, and of an encounter with the man whom my aunt’s distinction and death had thrust upon me.

I took the route over land, for I had some business of my own to attend to in Austria. At Paris I received word of my aunt’s death. I pushed on towards Spain with renewed purpose, harbouring, I think, some unspoken fear that any additional delay might bring upon me a visit from the dead. Thus I managed to cross the Pyrenees with the tramontana, just as autumn swept down upon the countryside like a wave of gold and the great white sleep of summer gave an audible sigh and rendered up its spirit.

In Seville I made inquiries of the Governor and determined that the Cavalier Don Juan Tenorio had retired to his country estate which lay another half day’s journey outside the town. I rode across deserted countryside, through a grey mist of olive groves whose leaves drank gratefully of the light, silvery rain. The castle stood alone, a smudge of gold on a hillside. It was larger than I had expected, and much of it lay in ruins. One tower had fallen completely, its bleached bones open to the sky, but three others still held their heads high. On every side the olive trees had gathered like ballet girls in serried ranks, their fingertips poised above their lacy skirts.

We sat in an upper room, before a good fire, but it did not seem to warm him, he had always the same bloodless white face. He gave me to drink of a strong wine, nearly black, such as they make in that country, and I could see it take its course down his translucent throat, whence it vanished into the aperture of his lace collar. There was a simplicity about his manner that put me at once at my ease, although I had arrived trembling with excitement and an odd kind of fear. I explained my mission; I placed the letter, which I had carried all the journey from Venice next my heart, on the little marble table between us. My explanation he received in silence; the letter he took up and examined without opening, then replaced it on the table. It was written on ivory-coloured paper, and sealed with dark red wax; the blob of wax had the appearance of a fallen petal that had happened to affix itself to the letter. My aunt had always been possessed of this singular artistry in little things. The arms of the Order of the Child Jesus were clearly visible in the wax: a bear upon a field of stars, a reminder of St. Ursula Bonifacio, the founder of the Order.

‘Does she expect an answer?’ he said.

His eyes were very dark, without any light in them at all, as if cut from some black, heavy stuff such as velvet or lead.

‘No, indeed. I’m afraid – she is already dead.’

‘When?’ I gave him the date and circumstances of my aunt’s death as well as I was able. He listened closely, his eyes on my face, then there was a settling, not quite a sigh, about his whole person, and a little smile teased at the corners of his bloodless lips. ‘So… Caterina Mazzarò is no more,’ he mused. ‘She thought of me in the end, did she? Oh – witch, witch, charming little witch!’ With a quick movement of his hand he tossed the letter, which I had been at such pains to guard, into the fire. Without thinking what I was about, I sprang to my feet and attempted to draw it out, to the accompaniment of his ribald laughter. Too late! It was quite burnt.

‘But don’t you want to know what it says?’ I asked desperately. I certainly did.

‘I know quite well what it says. She asks me to forgive her.’

‘For… breaking your heart?’ I hazarded, breathlessly. I felt I was on the verge of a great romance, that I was about to hear a tale that would point the way to love in all its disreputable glory. Again he laughed.

‘You are her nephew?’ he said.

‘Great-nephew.’

‘No matter. You have just the same simplicity of soul – un coeur simple. Listen to me, young devil. People will tell you it is men such as I who lead others to perdition. Completely untrue! It is the simple souls like that witch, your aunt, who are responsible for most of the trouble in this world, and ten parts out of ten of damnation in the next. Let them once get hold of an idea and they never let it go. You suppose I was in love with your aunt? What nonsense! I don’t fall in love with beautiful witches like that – I take them whole, like bonbons – so!’ He lifted an invisible dainty to his lips and appeared to swallow it in one bite, followed by a loud smack as he kissed the air. ‘Did you never wonder what Caterina, of all people, was doing in the convent – this coeur simple, this prima donna assoluta? Why did she not retire to her palazzo to collect emeralds and handsome young men?’ I had often wondered, but hadn’t the faintest idea. The black feelers of his eyebrows rose upon their white field in a comical dance of inquiry. ‘Sister Caterina,’ he said, giving the first word more derisive emphasis than I would have believed possible. ‘Where is she now, the good sister, the holy sister? God is not so easily fooled as all that,’ he said.

‘But what had she done?’ I said, uneasy in my mind. I was beginning to be sorry I had ever come on this pointless journey. The letter had been destroyed unread, my adored aunt held up to ridicule – I was afraid to hear more but unable to resist the temptation to ask.

‘What had she done?’ he echoed. ‘With her jealous tricks, her evil spite – she drove away the only creature worthy of love I have ever known.

‘I had been in Venice some time, pursuing a life of pleasure. I was no longer in the first energetic flush of youth; on the contrary, while I retained a sufficiency of good looks and physical power to attract women, in secret I was often tired, and nearly always bored, even to the point of contemplating my own end with a certain morbid satisfaction. I had reached the age when a man discovers his inability to prolong the pleasures of the senses, not so much by virtue of the body’s weary reluctance, as by a deadly satiety in the soul. There is a sameness, a numbing idea of endless repetition that, once the greedy appetite of youth is past, gives rise to a terrible nausea. One turns, then, to ever more diverse pleasures in the effort to experience once more that fierce desire, and the delight in its achievement, that alone give moral fervour to life. I turned to women ever younger, to children, girls or boys, it was the same – moments of agonized pleasure, close to madness, in the fear and anguish of these children, quickly replaced by the old satiety. I had recourse to the violent pleasures of the homo-erotic, but these I found to be ultimately uninteresting, for in another man one finds, as in a mirror, all that one hates most in one’s self, and out of this hatred arises a homicidal lust – and this too palls.

‘Caterina was my mistress at the time. I was attracted to her by her art and intelligence, her culture as well as her beauty. Among the hundreds of singers, musici, actresses, acrobats, charlatans and clowns who found employment in Venice, she was in the front rank. She was young then, perhaps twenty-six or seven, with a pale white skin and a long, strong throat like a column of marble. She had been the mistress of two dukes and a cardinal when I took her away from all of them. Also her lady’s maid, a pretty little thing from the Abruzzi, the two downstairs maids, the little girl who brought us butter and eggs from the country, a fine young laundress as strong as a horse, and of course the baker’s wife as well. No harem is complete without la Fornarina. I suppose it is the flour that keeps their skin so very white. You are wondering how I kept them all happy. Ah, but that would be telling…

Caterina’s taste was legendary. It was she who began the vogue for bathing in red wine, which she would then invite her numerous admirers to drink. She set the style in everything from the acciaccatura she tossed with a little roll of the head, delightful to see, to mode of dress – she was the first to appear in public with her breasts swathed in nothing but black point de Venise. She served pearls among the oysters at her suppers, and raw meat to those whose manners she found too rough. She kept a little dwarf, a black Spaniard as talented as he was ugly, who accompanied her on the mandolin. In the evenings she sang after supper for a crowd of young men. She would tease and torment the dwarf, box his ears and pull his thick hair until the tears streamed from his eyes, declaring the while to the company that she was certain he was less than a human creature, and had no real feelings such as our own. Then, in compensation, she would take the dwarf on her lap and allow him to fondle those lace-encrusted breasts, even to lavish kisses upon her, pressing his thick, ugly lips to her throat and face, for she delighted in contrasts – it was one of the marks of her genius. Before an audience, be it at the theatre or in the salon, she knew the value of ugliness and knew how to make use of it to point out her own beauty. I have said that she was intelligent, and it was in this taste for contrasts that her intelligence most showed itself. She had an imagination for juxtaposition that continued to surprise me – and, you see, I was very much in need of surprise. I did not realise how far that imagination would take her, although I should have done, the signs were perfectly clear.

‘For already her star was no longer the brightest in the firmament. There was a new soprano in Venice that winter, a young castrato who went by the name of Farinelli. He was not yet the great figure he was to become, but it was immediately apparent that he would soon eclipse every other singer in both virtuosity and pathetic power. I had seen him on the stage several times: he was a slender, good-looking boy, very fair, with dark, expressive eyes. His stage manner was not good – he stood as still as a statue while he sang, but once he began there was no resisting the beauty of that voice. He might have sung upside down and in his nightclothes and it would not have made the slightest difference. He was said to be simple and unaffected, of an upright and virtuous character. He was of good family, and his unnatural condition was said to be owing to a childhood accident. Perhaps in this case for once it was true. Most lies eventually turn out to be true. That he was modest was later borne out by his remarkable career at the court of Spain. He left Venice suddenly, before his engagement had run its course. It was whispered that someone had tried to poison him.

‘It was during the Carnival, at a masked ball given by the Princess of Santa Croce, the same who was the mistress of Cardinal Mazzini. Caterina went as a beggar boy, in a pair of blue silken breeches she smeared with dirt from the hearth; her white calves were bare, and on her feet were blue silk slippers ripped open at the toes and adorned with diamond buckles. Her chemise was trimmed in rich Valenciennes lace, slashed into tatters that fluttered most becomingly about her arms and breast. Her face was artfully smudged with dirt under the eyes and upon one soft white cheek. She carried a plate of ruby-coloured glass for alms, which she took care to crack first. In this state of sumptuous misery she went among the guests, begging alms and bowing low whenever she received anything. Soon the plate was full of gold and silver coins, trinkets, and strass diamonds. I myself was in a domino, for I am never effective in any role but my own. As usual, I was bored – the music seemed to me a horrible din, I felt no inclination for dancing; despite the dainty offerings I found I was neither hungry nor thirsty. The déguisements, aside from Caterina’s coup de theâtre, were mostly obvious and uninteresting. I stepped out onto the balcony for a breath of air.

‘The great canal lay glistening in the moonlight, lurid where lit by the torches of passing gondolas. Behind the tall, thin windows of the palaces, the lights of the carnival were burning. I could hear the drunken voices of revellers going by in the dark, the water lapping incessantly at the quay, the grey chumble of rats under the pilings, the brittle tinkle-tankle of a clavichord within the house. The night air was damp, thick, like a soft, wet cloth laid over the face – it smelled of wood smoke and the cold, dead smell that rises from the bottom of the sea.

‘While I stood thus in solitary contemplation, a gondola of luxurious appurtenances drew up just below. I saw a footman in red livery and gold lace step out, then give his hand to a lady. She was dressed all in white – white dress, white fur mantle, and a white mask trimmed with ostrich feathers. Her form was tall and very slender, and she moved with a pale languor that, appearing out of the moonlight and water as she did, suggested a nymph or spirit. I felt an odd frisson, an unaccustomed excitement took hold of me. In a moment she had vanished inside the house. I went in to join the revelry, determined to find her out.

‘We danced the minuet together. She was an exceedingly fine dancer, moving with a lithe grace and agility that were modified by a majestic carriage. She must be some great lady of the stage, I thought, and I racked my brains in an effort to determine who she might be, but among the many actresses, singers, ballerinas, and cocottes of Venice I knew of none so tall, straight, and slender, with so white a skin and such long-fingered, tapering hands. For a while I entertained the suspicion that she might be en travesti, but I soon had to abandon this as an impossibility. I have much experience in such things, and she had not the feel of a man – I don’t know how else to put it. When one takes the hand of a woman there is an instantaneous movement of the spirit, felt as a sudden quickening in the flesh. Never had I felt it so strongly – at once I was on tiptoe with desire. Yet she had not the scent of a woman about her. She was colder, somehow, her hands were chill despite the hellish heat of the ballroom; she hadn’t the warm feline stink that rises from the cracks and crevices of female flesh. Still less did she smell like a man. Her odour was glacial and serene, like the white lilies that bloom at Eastertide and are called after Our Lady, madonna lilies. Her voice, too, could never have belonged to boy or man. It was rich and sweet, with a pure, ringing tone such that I understood at once how a blind man too may fall in love. I was certain she must be some famous singer, but all the musicians in the city were intimately known to me. A visitor, then.

‘Soon I had her alone on that same balcony above the glittering canal. I lavished kisses upon her hands, as cool to my burning lips as a white sorbet. I took her in my arms and kissed her mouth; she was curiously acquiescent, bereft of the usual feminine tricks, the delicate writhings and raillery that constitute a woman’s strength. She received my ardent kiss with – curiosity is the only word for it. As for me, this mouth, which has feasted on every delicacy in the catalogue of saints and sinners, which has gorged itself on rosy lips as on stuffed partridges; this same mouth, which remembers still a mother’s kiss, a drink of pure water, the holy Eucharist; which has defiled itself with blood, excrement, tears and which I had thought completely versed in all the possibilities appertaining to a small, nerve-ridden cavity by means of which we speak, sing, pray, spit, suck, whistle, lie, abjure, swear, betray, wheedle, coax, shout, lick, bite, or even kiss – this organ was merely astonished.

‘It was something new, this. I was eager, very eager, her mouth opened easily, perhaps, as I have said, too easily, to my command, for a woman will always put up a fight, if only for the pleasure of surrender. My tongue was arid, thirsty – and I was surprised by a deep-sounding resonance there. I once had occasion to examine a violin from the hand of the great Stradivarius, and, as I took the shining creature in my hands and let my fingers play over the light and dark surfaces of the wood, I experienced that same sensation – of a limitless beauty sounding somewhere just out of reach.

“So that’s how you do it!” she said to herself. And then to me, “You are Don Juan Tenorio of Seville, are you not?”

“At your service, Signorina. But I’m afraid you have the advantage of me there. Won’t you please remove your mask? Your voice is so lovely – and it seems somehow familiar to me. I’m sure if I were to just get a glimpse of you…”

“Not tonight,” she said. “It’s quite impossible.”

“But when am I to see you again?”

“Do you really wish to see me again?”

“Desperately.”

“Then be at the Café Florian every morning at six.”

“Every morning?”

“I won’t be there the first morning, nor yet the second, but perhaps on the third or fourth if the weather is fine.”

“Come with me now,” I said, pressing her close, lavishing kisses on her beautiful throat.

“What you wish is quite impossible,’ she said, with an air of perfect tranquillity. Armed for the habitual struggle, I was unprepared for this, and before I knew what was happening she slipped from my grasp and vanished into the crowd.

‘I was there the next morning well before the appointed hour. There was no one but an old priest, probably a spy for the Inquisition, and a very young man who sat reading a newspaper. It was still dark – the stars were glittering over the domes of San Marco. Slowly the rosy light of day crept from its bed in the sea ever higher into the sky. The last of the night’s revellers went by in the piazza, their voices and footsteps swallowed up by the great crescendo of morning light. I waited thus for an hour and then returned home in an evil temper. This scene was repeated in all its particulars on the second day. On the third day I had no sooner taken my seat than the young man with the newspaper approached me and, inclining his head respectfully, addressed me in a high, clear voice which I recognized instantly as that of my companion at the ball.

“I see I shall have to introduce myself after all,’ he said. ‘I am Farinelli.”

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Grace Andreacchi is the author of the novels SCARABOCCHIO and POETRY AND FEAR .