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- Herausgeber: Reading Essentials
- Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018
The Story of San Michele is the famous memoir by Swedish physician Axel Munthe (1857-1949). Written in English, it has been a best-seller in numerous languages. The author associated with a number of celebrities of his times, all of whom figure in the book. He also knew the very poorest, including immigrants and plague victims. He was an unabashed animal lover, and animals figure prominently, especially his alcoholic pet baboon, Billy. Several discussions with animals and various supernatural beings take place, and the final chapter actually happens after Munthe has died and includes his discussions with Saint Peter at the gates of Heaven. Munthe doesn't seem to take himself particularly seriously, but some of the things he discusses are very serious, such as his descriptions of rabies research, including euthanasia of human patients, and a suicide attempt by a man convinced he had been exposed to the disease. Worldwide, the book has been immensely successful.
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The Story of San Michele
by Axel Munthe
Copyright 1929 Axel Munthe.
This edition published by Reading Essentials.
All Rights Reserved.
THE STORY OF SAN MICHELE
BY
AXEL MUNTHE
AUTHOR OF “MEMORIES AND VAGARIES,” ETC.
WITH A SPECIAL PREFACE BY THE AUTHOR FOR THE AMERICAN EDITION
A SPECIAL PREFACE FOR THE AMERICAN EDITION
REVIEWERS of this book seem to have found considerable difficulty in attempting to classify the Story of San Michele, and I do not wonder. Some have described the book as an Autobiography, others have called it “The Memoirs of a Doctor.” As far as I can understand, it is neither the one nor the other. Surely it could not have taken me five hundred pages to write down the story of my life, even had I not left out its saddest and most eventful chapters. All I can say is that I never meant to write a book about myself; it was, on the contrary, my constant preoccupation the whole time to try to shake off this vague personality. If anyhow this book has turned out to be an Autobiography, I begin to believe that, judging from the sale of it, the simplest way to write a book about oneself consists in trying as hard as one can to think of somebody else. All a man has to do is to sit still in a chair by himself, and look back upon his life with his blind eye. Better still would be to lie down in the grass and not to think at all, only to listen. Soon the distant roar of the world dies away, and the forests and fields begin to sing with clear bird voices, friendly animals come up to tell him their joys and sorrows in sounds and words that he can understand, and when all is silent even the lifeless things around him begin to whisper in their sleep.
To call this book “The Memoirs of a Doctor,” as some reviewers have done, seems to me even less appropriate. Its boisterous simplicity, its unblushing frankness, its very lucidity fit ill with such a pompous sub-title. Surely a medical man, like every other human being, has the right to laugh at himself now and then to keep up his spirits, maybe even to laugh at his colleagues if he is willing to stand the risk. But he has no right to laugh at his patients. To shed tears with them is even worse, a whimpering doctor is a bad doctor. An old physician should, besides, think twice before sitting down in his arm-chair to write his memoirs. Better keep to himself what he has seen of Life and Death. Better write no memoirs at all, and leave the dead in peace and the living to their illusions.
Somebody has called the Story of San Michele a story of Death. Maybe it is so, for Death is seldom out of my thoughts, “Non nasce in me pensier che non vi sia dentro scolpita la Morte” wrote Michel Angelo to Vasari. I have been wrestling so long with my grim colleague; always defeated, I have seen him slay one by one all those I have tried to save. I have had a few of them in mind in this book as I saw them live, as I saw them suffer, as I saw them lie down to die. It was all that I could do for them. They were all humble people, no marble crosses stand on their graves, many of them were already forgotten long before they died. They are all right now. Old Maria Porta Lettere who climbed the 777 Phoenician steps for thirty years on her naked feet with my letters, is now carrying the post in Heaven, where dear old Pacciale sits smoking his pipe of peace, still looking out over the infinite sea as he used to do from the pergola of San Michele, and where my friend Archangelo Fusco, the street-sweeper in Quartier Montparnasse, is still sweeping the star-dust from the golden floor. Down the stately peristyle of lapis-lazuli columns struts briskly little Monsieur Alphonse, the doyen of the Little Sisters of the Poor, in the Pittsburg millionaire’s brand-new frock-coat, solemnly raising his beloved top hat to every saint he meets, as he used to do to all my friends when he drove down the Corso in my victoria. John, the blue-eyed little boy who never smiled, is now playing lustily with lots of other happy children in the old nursery of the Bambino. He has learnt to smile at last. The whole room is full of flowers, singing birds are flying in and out through the open windows, now and then the Madonna looks in to see that the children have all they want. John’s mother, who nursed him so tenderly in Avenue des Villiers, is still down here. I saw her the other day. Poor Flopette, the harlot, looks ten years younger than when I saw her in the night-café on the boulevard; very tidy and neat in her white dress, she is new second housemaid to Mary Magdalen.
In a humble corner of the Elysian Fields is the cemetery of the dogs. All my dead friends are there, their bodies are still where I laid them down under «the cypresses by the old Tower, but their faithful hearts have been taken up here. Kind St. Rocco, the little patron-saint of all dogs, is the custodian of the cemetery, and good old Miss Hall is a frequent visitor there. Even the rascal Billy, the drunkard Baboon, who set fire to II Canonico Don Giacinto’s coffin, has been admitted on trial to the last row of graves in the monkey cemetery some way off, after a close scrutiny from St. Peter, who noticed he smelled of whisky and mistook him at first for a human being. Don Giacinto himself, the richest priest in Capri, who had never given a penny to the poor, is still roasting in his coffin, and the ex-butcher of Anacapri, who blinded the quails with a red-hot needle, has had his own eyes stung out by the Devil in person in a fit of professional jealousy.
One reviewer has discovered that “there is enough material in the Story of San Michele to furnish writers of short sensational stories with plots for the rest of their lives.” They are quite Welcome to this material for what it is worth. I have no further use for it. Having concentrated my literary efforts during a lifetime on writing prescriptions, I am not likely to try my hand on short sensational stories so late in the day. Would that I had thought of it before, or I should not be where I am today! Surely it must be a more comfortable job to sit in an arm-chair and write short sensational stories than to toil through life to collect the material for them, to describe diseases and Death than to fight them, to concoct sinister plots than to be knocked down by them without warning! But why do not these professionals collect their material themselves? They seldom do. Novel writers, who insist on taking their readers to the slums, seldom go there themselves. Specialists on disease and Death can seldom be persuaded to come with you to the hospital where they have just finished off their heroine. Poets and philosophers, who in sonorous verse and prose hail Death as the Deliverer, often grow pale at the very mention of the name of their best friend. It is an old story. Leopardi, the greatest poet of modern Italy, who longed for Death in exquisite rhymes ever since he was a boy, was the first to fly in abject terror from cholera-stricken Naples. Even the great Montaigne, whose calm meditations on Death are enough to make him immortal, bolted like a rabbit when the pests broke out in Bordeaux. Sulky old Schopenhauer, the greatest philosopher of modern times, who had made the negation of life the very keystone of his teaching, used to cut short all conversation about Death. The bloodiest war novels were written, I believe, by peaceful citizens well out of the range of the long-distance German gums. Authors who delight in making their readers assist at scenes of sexual orgies are generally very indifferent actors in such scenes. Personally I only know of one exception to this rule, Guy de Maupassant, and I saw him die of it.
I am aware that some of the scenes in this book are laid on the ill-defined borderland between the real and the unreal, the dangerous No Man’s Land between fact and fancy where so many writers of memoirs have come to grief and where Goethe himself was apt to lose his hearings in his “Dichtung und Wahrheit.” I have tried my best by means of a few well-known technical tricks to make at least some- of these episodes pass off as “short sensational stories.” After all, it is only a. question of form. It will be a great relief to me if I have succeeded, I do not ask for better than not to be believed. It is bad enough and sad enough anyhow. God knows I have a good deal to answer for as it is. I shall also take it as a compliment, for the greatest writer of short sensational stories I know is Life. But is Life always true?
Life is the same as it always was, unruffled by events, indifferent to the joys and sorrows of man, mute and incomprehensible as the sphinx. But the stage on which the everlasting tragedy is enacted changes constantly to avoid monotony. The world we lived in yesterday is not the same world as we live in to-day, inexorably it moves on through the infinite towards its doom, and so do we. No man bathes twice in the same river, said Heraclitus. Some of us crawl on our knees, some ride on horseback or in motor-cars, others fly past the carrier-pigeon in aeroplanes. There is no need for hurry, we are all sure to reach the journey’s end.
No, the world I lived in when I was young is not the same world that I live in to-day, at least it does not seem so to me. Nor do I think it will seem so to those who read this book of rambles in search of adventure in the past. There are no more brigands with a record of eight homicides to offer you to sleep on their mattresses in tumbledown Messina. No more granite sphinxes are crouching under the ruins of Nero’s villa in Calabria. The maddened rats in the cholera slums of Naples, who frightened me to death, have long ago retreated in safety to their Roman sewers. You can drive up to Anacapri in a motor-car, and to the top of the Jungfrau in a train, and climb the Matterhorn with rope-ladders. Up in Lapland no pack of hungry wolves, their eyes blazing in the dark like burning coals, is likely to gallop behind your sledge across the frozen lake. The gallant old bear, who barred my way in the lonely Suvla gorge, has long ago departed to the Happy Hunting Fields. The foaming torrent I swam across with Ristin, the Lap-girl, is spanned by a railway-bridge. The last stronghold of the terrible Stalo, the Troll, has been pierced by a tunnel. The Little People I heard patter about under the floor of the Lap tent, no more bring food to the sleeping bears in their winter quarters, that is why there are so few bears in Sweden to-day. You are welcome to laugh incredulously at these busy Little People as much as you like, at your own risk and peril. But I refuse to believe that any reader of this book will have the effrontery to deny that it was a real goblin I saw sitting on the table in Forsstugan and pull cautiously at my watch-chain. Of course it was a real goblin. Who could it otherwise have been? I tell you I saw him distinctly with both my eyes when I sat up in my bed just as the tallow candle was flickering out. I am told to my surprise that there are people who have never seen a goblin. One cannot help feeling sorry for such people. I am sure there must be something wrong with their eyesight. Old uncle Lars Anders in Forsstugan, six feet six in his sheepskin-coat and wooden shoes,
PREFACE
IHAD rushed over to London from France to see about my naturalization, it looked as if my country was going to be dragged into the war by the side of Germany. Henry James was to be one of my sponsors, he had just been naturalized himself, “Civis Britannicus sum,” he said in his deep voice. He knew that I had tried to do my bit and that I had failed because I had become too helpless myself to be of any help to others. He knew the fate that awaited me. He laid his hand on my shoulder and asked me what I was going to do with myself ? I told him I was about to leave France for good to hide like a deserter in my old tower. It was the only place I was fit for. As he wished me good-bye he reminded me how years ago when he was staying with me at San Michele he had encouraged me to write a book about my island home, which he had called the most beautiful place in the world. Why not write the Story of San Michele now if it came to the worst and my courage began to flag? Who could write about San Michele better than I who had built it with my own hands? Who could describe better than I all these priceless fragments of marbles strewn over the garden where the ‘villa of Tiberius once stood? And the sombre old Emperor himself whose weary foot had trod the very mosaic floor I had brought to light under the vines, what a fascinating study for a man like me who was so interested in psychology! There was nothing like writing a book for a man who wanted to get away from his own misery, nothing like writing a book for a man who could not sleep.
These were his last words, I never saw my friend again.
I returned to my useless solitude in the old tower, humiliated and despondent. While everybody else was offering his life to his country, I spent my days wandering up and down in the dark tower, restless like a caged animal, while the never-ending tidings of suffering and woe were read to me. Now and then of an evening when the relentless light of the day had ceased to torture my eyes, I used to wander up to San Michele in search of news. The flag of the British Red Cross was flying over San Michele where brave and disabled men were nursed back to health by the same sun that had driven me away from my beloved home. Alas for the news! How long was the waiting for those who could do nothing but wait!
But how many of us dare to confess what so many have felt, that the burden of their own grief seemed easier to bear while all men and women around us were in mourning, that the wound in their own flanks seemed almost to heal while the blood was flowing from so many other wounds? Who dared to grumble over his own fate while the fate of the world was at stake? Who dared to whimper over his own pain while all these mutilated men were lying on their stretchers silent with set teeth?
At last the storm abated. All was silent as before in the old tower, I was alone with my fear. Man was built to carry his own cross, that is why he was given his strong shoulders. A man can stand a lot as long as he can stand himself. He can live without hope, without friends, without books, even without music, as long as he can listen to his own thoughts and to the singing of a bird outside his window and to the far-away voice of the sea. I was told at St. Dunstan’s that he can even live without light, but those who told me so were heroes. But a man cannot live without sleep. When I ceased to sleep I began to write this book, all milder remedies having failed. It has been a great success so far as I am concerned. Over and over again I have blessed Henry James for his advice. I have been sleeping much better of late. It has even. been a pleasure to me to write this book, I no longer wonder why so many people are taking to writing books in our days. Unfortunately I have been writing the Story of San Michele under peculiar difficulties. I was interrupted at the very beginning by an unexpected visitor, who sat down opposite to me at the writing table and began to talk about himself and his own affairs in the most erratic manner, as if all this nonsense could interest anybody but himself. There was something very irritating and un-English in the way he kept on relating his various adventures where he always seemed to turn out to have been the hero – too much Ego in your Cosmos, young man, thought I. He seemed to think he knew everything, antique art, architecture, psychology, Death and Hereafter. Medicine seemed to be his special hobby, he said he was a nerve specialist and boasted of being a pupil of Charcot’s as they all do. God help his patients, I said to myself. As he mentioned the name of the master of the Salpêtrière I fancied for a moment that I had seen him before, long, long ago, but I soon dismissed the thought as absurd, for he looked so young and boisterous, and I felt so old and weary. His unceasing swagger, his very youth began to get on my nerves, and to make matters worse it soon dawned upon me that this young gentleman was making mild fun of me the whole time, as young people are apt to do with old people. He even tried to make me believe that it was he and not I who had built San Michele! He said he loved the place and was going to live there for ever. At last I told him to leave me alone and let me go on with my Story of San Michele and my description of my precious marble fragments from the villa of Tiberius.
“Poor old man,” said the young fellow with his patronizing smile, “you are talking through your hat! I fear you cannot even read your own handwriting! It is not about San Michele and your precious marble fragments from the villa of Tiberius you have been writing the whole time, it is only some fragments of clay from your own broken life that you have brought to light.”
TORRE DI MATERITA. 1928.
CONTENTS
I
YOUTH
ISPRANG from the Sorrento sailing-boat on to the little beach. Swarms of boys were playing about among the upturned boats or bathing their shining bronze bodies in the surf, and old fishermen in red Phrygian caps sat mending their nets outside their boat-houses. Opposite the landing-place stood half-a-dozen donkeys with saddles on their backs and bunches of flowers in their bridles, and around them chattered and sang as many girls with the silver spadella stuck through their black tresses and a red handkerchief tied across their shoulders. The little donkey who was to take me up to Capri was called Rosina, and the name of the girl was Gioia. Her black, lustrous eyes sparkled with fiery youth, her lips were red like the string of corals round her neck, her strong white teeth glistened like a row of pearls in her merry laughter. She said she was fifteen and I said that I was younger than I had ever been. But Rosina was old, “é antica,” said Gioia. So I slipped off the saddle and climbed leisurely up the winding path to the village. In front of me danced Gioia on naked feet, a wreath of flowers round her head, like a young Bacchante, and behind me staggered old Rosina in her dainty black shoes, with bent head and drooping ears, deep in thought. I had no time to think, my head was full of rapturous wonder, my heart full of the joy of life, the world was beautiful and I was eighteen. We wound our way through bushes of ginestra and myrtle in full bloom, and here and there among the sweet-scented grass many small flowers I had never seen before in the land of Linnaeus, lifted their graceful heads to look at us as we passed.
“What is the name of this flower?” said I to Gioia. She took the flower from my hand, looked at it lovingly and said: “Fiore!”
“And what is the name of this one?” She looked at it with the same tender attention and said “fiore!”
“And how do you call this one?”
“Fiore! Bello! Bello!”
She picked a bunch of fragrant myrtle, but would not give it to me. She said the flowers were for S. Costanzo, the patron saint of Capri who was all of solid silver and had done so many miracles, S. Costanzo, bello! bello!
A long file of girls with tufa stones on their heads slowly advanced towards us in a stately procession like the caryatides from the Erechtheum. One of the girls gave me a friendly smile and put an orange into my hand. She was a sister of Gioia’s and even more beautiful, thought I. Yes, they were eight sisters and brothers at home, and two were in Paradiso. Their father was away coral-fishing in “Barbaria,” look at the beautiful string of corals he had just sent her, “che bella collana! Bella! Bella!”
“And you also are bella, Gioia, bella, bella!”
“Yes,” said she.
My foot stumbled against a broken column of marble, “Roba di Timberio!” explained Gioia.
“Timberio cattivo, Timberio mal’occhio, Timberio camorrista!”1) and she spat on the marble.
“Yes,” said I, my memory fresh from Tacitus and Suetonius, “Tiberio cattivo!”
We emerged on the high road and reached the Piazza with a couple of sailors standing by the parapet overlooking the Marina, a few drowsy Capriotes seated in front of Don Antonio’s osteria, and half-a-dozen priests on the steps leading to the church, gesticulating wildly in animated conversation: “Moneta! Moneta! Molta moneta; Niente moneta!” Gioia ran up to kiss the hand of Don Giacinto who was her father confessor and un vero santo, though he did not look like one. She went to confession twice a month, how often did I go to confession?
Not at all!
Cattivo! Cattivo!
Would she tell Don Giacinto that I had kissed her cheeks under the lemon trees?
Of course not.
We passed through the village and halted at Punta Tragara.
“I am going to climb to the top of that rock,” said I, pointing to the most precipitous of the three Faraglioni glistening like amethysts at our feet. But Gioia was sure I could not do it. A fisherman who had tried to climb up there in search of seagulls’ eggs had been hurled back into the sea by an evil spirit, who lived there in the shape of a blue lizard, as blue as the Blue Grotto, to keep watch over a golden treasure hidden there by Timberio himself.
Towering over the friendly little village the sombre outline of Monte Solaro stood out against the Western sky with its stern crags and inaccessible cliffs.
“I want to climb that mountain at once,” said I.
But Gioia did not like the idea at all. A steep path, seven hundred and seventy-seven steps, cut in the rock by Timberio himself led up the flank of the mountain, and half-way up in a dark cave lived a ferocious werewolf who had already eaten several cristiani. On the top of the stairs was Anacapri, but only gente di montagna lived there, all very bad people; no forestieri ever went there and she herself had never been there. Much better climb to the Villa Timberio, or the Arco Naturale or the Grotta Matromania!
“No, I had no time, I must climb that mountain at once.”
Back to the Piazza, just as the rusty bells of the old campanile were ringing 12 o’clock. to announce that the macaroni was ready. Wouldn’t I at least have luncheon first under the big palm-tree of the Albergo Pagano. Tre piatti, vino a volonta, prezzo una lira. No, I had no time, I had to climb the mountain at once. “Addio, Gioia bella, bella! Addio Rosina!” “Addio, addio e presto ritomol” Alas! for the presto ritorno!
“E un pazzo inglese,” were the last words I heard from Gioia’s red lips as, driven by my fate, I sprang up the Phoenician steps to Anacapri. Half-way up I overtook an old woman with a huge basket full of oranges on her head. “Buon giorno, signorino.” She put down her basket and handed me an orange. On the top of the oranges lay a bundle of newspapers and letters tied up in a red handkerchief. It was old Maria Porta-Lettere who carried the post twice a week to Anacapri, later on my life-long friend, I saw her die at the age of ninety-five. She fumbled among the letters, selected the biggest envelope and begged me to tell her if it was not for Nannina la Crapara[“The Goat-woman.”] who was eagerly expecting la lettera from her husband in America. No, it was not. Perhaps this one? No, it was for Signora Desdemona Vacca.
“Signora Desdemona Vacca,” repeated old Maria, incredulously. “Perhaps they mean la moglie dello Scarteluzzo,”[“The wife of the Hunchback.”] she said meditatively. The next letter was for Signor Ulisse Desiderio. “I think they mean Capolimone,”[“Lemonhead.”] said old Maria, “he had a letter just like this a month ago.” The next letter was for Gentilissima Signorina Rosina Mazzarella. This lady seemed more difficult to trace. Was it la Cacciacavallara?[“The Cheese-woman.”] or la Zopparella?[“The lame woman.”] Or la Capatosta?[“The Hardhead.”] Or la Femmina Antica?[“The Ancient woman.”] Or Rosinella Pane Asciutto?[“Stale Bread.” ] Or perhaps la Fesseria?[ Not for ears polite.] suggested another woman who had just overtaken us with a huge basket of fish on her head. Yes, it might be for la Fesseria if it was not for la moglie di Pane e Cipolla[“The wife of Bread and Onions.”]. But was there no letter for Peppinella ’n’coppo u camposanto[“Above the Cemetery.”] or for Mariucella Caparossa[“Carrots.”] or for Giovannina Ammazzacane[“Kill-dog.”] who were all expecting lalettera from America? No, I was sorry there was not. The two newspapers were for Il reverendo parroco Don Antonio di Giuseppe and Il canonico Don Natale di Tommaso, she knew it well, for they were the only newspaper-subscribers in the village. The parroco was a very learned man and it was he who always found out who the letters were for, but to-day he was away in Sorrento on a visit to the Archbishop, and that was why she had asked me to read the envelopes. Old Maria did not know how old she was, but she knew that she had carried the post since she was fifteen when her mother had to give it up. Of course she could not read. When I had told her that I had sailed over that very morning with the post – boat from Sorrento and had had nothing to eat since then, she gave me another orange which I devoured skin and all, and the other woman offered me at once from her basket some frutta di mare which made me frightfully thirsty. Was there an inn in Anacapri? No, but Annarella, la moglie del sagrestano could supply me with excellent goat-cheese and a glass of excellent wine from the vineyard of the priest Don Dionisio, her uncle, un vino meraviglioso. Besides there was La Bella Margherita, of course I knew her by name and that her aunt had married “un lord inglese.” No, I did not, but I was most anxious to know La Bella Margherita.
We reached at last the top of the seven-hundred and seventy-seven steps, and passed through a vaulted gate with the huge iron hinges of its former draw-bridge still fastened to the rock. We were in Anacapri. The whole bay of Naples lay at our feet encircled by Ischia, Procida, the pine-clad Posilipo, the glittering white line of Naples, Vesuvius with its rosy cloud of smoke, the Sorrento plain sheltered under Monte Sant’Angelo and further away the Apennine mountains, still covered with snow. Just over our heads, riveted to the steep rock like an eagle’s nest, stood a little ruined chapel. Its vaulted roof had fallen in, but huge blocks of masonry shaped into an unknown pattern of symmetrical network, still supported its crumbling walls.
“Roba di Timberio,” explained old Maria.
“What is the name of the little chapel?” I asked eagerly.
“San Michele.”
“San Michele, San Michele!” echoed in my heart. In the vineyard below the chapel stood an old man digging deep furrows in the soil for the new vines. “Buon giorno, Mastro Vincenzo!” The vineyard was his and so was the little house close by, he had built it all with his own hands, mostly with stones and bricks of the Roba di Timberio that was strewn all over the garden. Maria Porta-Lettere told him all she knew about me and Mastro Vincenzo invited me to sit down in his garden and have a glass of wine. I looked at the little house and the chapel. My heart began to beat so violently that I could hardly speak.
“I must climb there at once,” said I to Maria Porta-Lettere! But old Maria said I had better come with her first to get something to eat or I would not find anything and driven by hunger and thirst I reluctantly decided to follow her advice. I waved my hand to Mastro Vincenzo and said I would come back soon. We walked through some empty lanes and stopped in a piazzetta. “Ecco La Bella Margherita!”
La Bella Margherita put a flask of rose-coloured wine and a bunch of flowers on the table in her garden and announced that the “macaroni” would be ready in five minutes. She was fair like Titian’s Flora, the modelling of her face exquisite, her profile pure Greek. She put an enormous plate of macaroni before me, and sat herself by my side watching me with smiling curiosity. “Vino del parroco,” she announced proudly, each time she filled my glass. I drank the parroco’s health, her health and that of her dark-eyed sister, la bella Giulia, who had joined the party, with a handful of oranges I had watched her picking from a tree in the garden. Their parents were dead and the brother Andrea was a sailor and God knows where he was but her aunt was living in her own villa in Capri, of course I knew that she had married un lord inglese? Yes, of course I knew, but I did not remember her name. “Lady G – ,” said La Bella Margherita proudly. I just remembered in time to drink her health, but after that I did not remember anything except that the sky overhead was blue like a sapphire, that the parroco’s wine was red like a ruby, that La Bella Margherita sat by my side with golden hair and smiling lips.
“San Michele!” suddenly rang through my ears. “San Michele!” echoed deep down in my heart!
“Addio, Bella Margherita!” “Addio e presto ritorno!” Alas for the presto ritorno!
I walked back through the empty lanes steering as straight as I could for my goal. It was the sacred hour of the siesta, the whole little village was asleep. The piazza, all ablaze with sun, was deserted. The church was closed, only from the half-open door of the municipal school the stentorian voice of the Rev. Canonico Don Natale trumpeted in sleepy monotony through the silence: “Io mi ammazzo, tu ti amazzi, egli si ammazza, noi ci ammazziamo, voi vi ammazzate, loro si ammazzano,” repeated in rhythmic chorus by a dozen barelegged boys, in a circle on the floor at the feet of their school master.
Further down the lane stood a stately Roman matron. It was Annarella herself, beckoning me with a friendly waving of the hand to come in. Why had I gone to La Bella Margherita instead of to her? Did I not know that her cacciacavallo was the best cheese in all the village? And as for the wine, everybody knew that the parroco’s wine was no match for that of the Rev. Don Dionisio. “Altro che il vino del parroco!” she added with a significant shrug of her strong shoulders. As I sat under her pergola in front of a flask of Don Dionisio’s vino bianco it began to dawn upon me that maybe she was right, but I wanted to be fair and had to empty the whole flask before giving my final opinion. But when Gioconda, her smiling daughter, helped me to a second glass from the new flask I had made up my mind. Yes, Don Dionisio’s vino bianco was the best! It looked like liquid sunshine, it tasted like the nectar of the Gods, and Gioconda looked like a young Hebe as she filled my empty glass. “Altro che il vino del parroco! Did I not tell you so,” laughed Annarella. “E un vino miracoloso!” Miraculous indeed, for suddenly I began to speak fluent Italian with vertiginous volubility amid roars of laughter from mother and daughter. I was beginning to feel very friendly toward Don Dionisio; I liked his name, I liked his wine, I thought I would like to make his acquaintance. Nothing was easier, for he was to preach that evening to “le Figlie di Maria” in the church.
“He is a very learned man,” said Annarella. He knew by heart the names of all the martyrs and all the saints and had even been to Rome to kiss the hand of the Pope. Had she been to Rome? No. And to Naples? No. She had been to Capri once, it was on her wedding day, but Gioconda had never been there, Capri was full of “gente malamente.” I told Annarella I knew of course all about their patron saint, how many miracles he had done and how beautiful he was, all of solid silver. There was an uncomfortable silence.
“Yes, they say their San Costanzo is of solid silver,” ejaculated Annarella with a contemptible shrug of her broad shoulders, “but who knows, chi lo sa?” As to his miracles you could count them on the top of your fingers, while Sant’ Antonio, the patron saint of Anacapri had already done over a hundred. Altro che San Costanzo! I was at once all for Sant’Antonio, hoping with all my heart for a new miracle of his to bring me back as soon as possible to his enchanting village. Kind Annarella’s confidence in the miraculous power of Sant’Antonio was so great that she refused point-blank to accept any money.
“Pagherete un’altra volta, you will pay me another time.”
“Addio Annarella, addio Gioconda!”
“Arrividerla, presto ritorno, Sant’Antonio vi benedica! La Madonna vi accompagni!”
Old Mastro Vincenzo was still hard at work in his vineyard, digging deep furrows in the sweet-scented soil for the new vines. Now and then he picked up a slab of coloured marble or a piece of red stucco and threw it over the wall, ‘Roba di Timberio,’ said he. I sat down on a broken column of red granite by the side of my new friend. Era molto duro, it was very hard to break, said Mastro Vincenzo. At my feet a chicken was scratching in the earth in search of a worm and before my very nose appeared a coin. I picked it up and recognized at a glance the noble head of Augustus, ‘Divus Augustus Pater.’ Mastro Vincenzo said it was not worth a baiocco, I have it still. He had made the garden all by himself and had planted all the vines and figtrees with his own hands. Hard work, said Mastro Vincenzo showing me his large, horny hands, for the whole ground was full of roba di Timberio, columns, capitals, fragments of statues and teste di cristiani, and he had to dig up and carry away all this rubbish before he could plant his vines. The columns he had split into garden steps and of course he had been able to utilize many of the marbles when he was building his house and the rest he had thrown over the precipice. A piece of real good luck had been when quite unexpectedly he had come upon a large subterranean room just under his house, with red walls just like that piece there under the peach tree all painted with lots of stark naked cristiani, tutti spogliati, ballando come dei pazzi,[All naked, dancing like mad people.] with their hands full of flowers and bunches of grapes. It took him several days to scrape off all these paintings and cover the wall with cement, but this was small labour compared to what it would have meant to blast the rock and build a new cistern, said Mastro Vincenzo with a cunning smile. Now he was getting old and hardly able to look after his vineyard any more, and his son who lived on the mainland with twelve children and three cows wanted him to sell the house and come and live with him. Again my heart began to beat. Was the chapel also his? No, it belonged to nobody and people said it was haunted by ghosts. He himself had seen when he was a boy a tall monk leaning over the parapet and some sailors coming up the steps late one night had heard bells ringing in the chapel. The reason for this, explained Mastro Vincenzo, was that when Timberio had his palace there he had fatto ammazzare Gesù Cristo, put Jesus Christ to death, and since then his damned soul came back now and then to ask forgiveness from the monks who were buried under the floor in the chapel. People also said that he used to come there in the shape of a big black snake. The monks had been ammazzati by a brigand called Barbarossa, who had boarded the island with his ships and carried away into slavery all the women who had taken refuge up there in the castle overhead, that is why it was called Castello Barbarossa. Padre Anselmo, the hermit, who was a learned man and besides a relation of his, had told him all this and also about the English who had turned the chapel into a fortress and who in their turn had been ammazzati by the French.
“Look!” said Mastro Vincenzo, pointing to a heap of bullets near the garden wall and “look” he added, picking up an English soldier’s brass button. The French, he continued, had placed a big gun near the chapel, and had opened fire on the village of Capri held by the English. “Well done,” he chuckled. “The Capresi are all bad people.” Then the French had turned the chapel into a powder magazine, that was why it was still called La Polveriera. Now it was nothing but a ruin, but it had proved very useful to him, for he had taken most of his stones for his garden walls from there.
I climbed over the wall and walked up the narrow lane to the chapel. The floor was covered to a man’s height with the débris of the fallen vault, the walls were covered with ivy and wild honeysuckle and hundreds of lizards played merrily about among big bushes of myrtle and rosemary stopping now and then in their game to look at me with lustrous eyes and panting breasts. An owl rose on noiseless wings from a dark corner, and a large snake asleep on the sunlit mosaic floor of the terrace, unfolded slowly his black coils and glided back into the chapel with a warning hiss at the intruder. Was it the ghost of the sombre old Emperor still haunting the ruins where his imperial villa once stood?
I looked down at the beautiful island at my feet. How could he live in such a place and be so cruel! thought I. How could his soul be so dark with such a glorious light on Heaven and Earth! How could he ever leave this place, to retire to that other even more inaccessible villa of his on the eastern cliffs, which still bears his name and where he spent the last three years of his life?
To live in such a place as this, to die in such a place, if ever death could conquer the everlasting joy of such a life! What daring dream had made my heart beat so violently a moment ago when Mastro Vincenzo had told me that he was getting old and tired, and that his son wanted him to sell his house? What wild thoughts had flashed through my boisterous brain when he had said that the chapel belonged to nobody? Why not to me? Why should I not buy Mastro Vincenzo’s house, and join the chapel and the house with garlands of vines and avenues of cypresses and columns supporting white loggias, peopled with marble statues of gods and bronzes of emperors and . . . I closed my eyes, lest the beautiful vision should vanish, and gradually realities faded away into the twilight of dreamland.
A tall figure wrapped in a rich mantle stood by my side.
“It shall all be yours,” he said in a melodious voice, waving his hand across the horizon. “The chapel, the garden, the house, the mountain with its castle, all shall be yours, if you are willing to pay the price!”
“Who are you, phantom from the unseen?”
“I am the immortal spirit of this place. Time has no meaning for me. Two thousand years ago I stood here where we now stand by the side of another man, led here by his destiny as you have been led here by yours. He did not ask for happiness as you do, he only asked for forgetfulness and peace, and he believed he could find it here on this lonely island. I told him the price he would have to pay: the branding of an untarnished name with infamy through all ages.
“He accepted the bargain, he paid the price. For eleven years he lived here surrounded by a few trusty friends, all men of honour and integrity. Twice he started on his way to return to his palace on the Palatine Hill. Twice his courage failed him, Rome never saw him again. He died on his homeward journey in the villa of his friend Lucullus on the promontory over there. His last words were that he should be carried down in his litter to the boat that was to take him to his island home.”
“What is the price you ask of me?”
“The renunciation of your ambition to make yourself a name in your profession, the sacrifice of your future.”
“What then am I to become?”
“A Might-Have-Been, a failure.”
“You take away from me all that is worth living for.”
“You are mistaken, I give you all that is worth living for.”
“Will you at least leave me pity. I cannot live without pity if I am to become a doctor.”
“Yes, I will leave you pity, but you would have fared much better without it.”
“Do you ask for anything more?”
“Before you die, you will have to pay another price as well, a heavy price. But before this price is due, you will have watched for many years from this place the sun set over cloudless days of happiness and the moon rise over starlit nights of dreams.”
“Shall I die here?”
“Beware of searching for the answer to your question, man could not endure life if he was aware of the hour of his death.”
He laid his hand on my shoulder, I felt a slight shiver run through my body. “I shall be with you once more at this place when the sun has set to-morrow; you may think it over till then.”
“It is no good thinking it over, my holiday is at an end, this very night I have to return to my every day’s toil far away from this beautiful land. Besides I am no good at thinking. I accept the bargain, I will pay the price, be it what it may. But how am I to buy this house, my hands are empty.”
“Your hands are empty but they are strong, your brain is boisterous but clear, your will is sound, you will succeed.”
“How am I to build my house? I know nothing about architecture.”
“I will help you. What style do you want? 'Why not Gothic? I rather like the Gothic with its subdued light and its haunting mystery.”
“I am going to invent a style of my own, such that not even you shall be able to give it a name. No mediaeval twilight for me! I want my house open to sun and wind and the voice of the sea, like a Greek temple, and light, light, light everywhere!”
“Beware of the light! Beware of the light! Too much light is not good for the eyes of mortal man.”
“I want columns of priceless marble, supporting loggias and arcades, beautiful fragments from past ages strewn all over my garden, the chapel turned into a silent library with cloister stalls round the walls and sweet sounding bells ringing Ave Maria over each happy day.”
“I do not like bells.”
“And here where we stand with this beautiful island rising like a sphinx out of the sea below our feet, here I want a granite sphinx from the land of the Pharaohs. But where shall I find it all!”
“You stand upon the site of one of Tiberio’s villas. Priceless treasures of bygone ages lie buried under the vines, under the chapel, under the house. The old emperor’s foot has trod upon the slabs of coloured marble you saw the old peasant throw over the wall of his garden, the ruined fresco with its dancing fawns and the flower-crowned bacchantes once adorned the walls of his palace. Look,” said he, pointing down to the clear depths of the sea a thousand feet below. “Didn’t your Tacitus tell you at school that when the news of the Emperor’s death had reached the island, his palaces were hurled into the sea?”
I wanted to leap down the precipitous cliffs at once and plunge into the sea in search of my columns. “No need for such a hurry,” he laughed, “for two thousand years the corals have been spinning their cobwebs round them and the waves have buried them deeper and deeper in the sand, they will wait for you till your time comes.”
“And the sphinx? Where shall I find the sphinx?”
“On a lonely plain, far away from the life of to-day, stood once the sumptuous villa of another Emperor, who had brought the sphinx from the banks of the Nile to adorn his garden. Of the palace nothing remains but a heap of stones, but deep in the bowels of the earth still lies the sphinx. Search and you will find her. It will nearly cost you your life to bring it here, but you will do it.”
“You seem to know the future as well as you know the past.”
“The past and the future are all the same to me. I know everything.”
“I do not envy you your knowledge.”
“Your words are older than your years, where did you get that saying from?”
“From what I have learned on this island today, for I have learned that this friendly folk who can neither read nor write are far happier than I, who ever since I was a child have been straining my eyes to gain knowledge. And so have you, I gather from your speech. You are a great scholar, you know your Tacitus by heart.”
“I am a philosopher.”
“You know Latin well?”
“I am a doctor of theology from the university of Jena.”
“Ah! that is why I fancied I detected a slight German twang in your voice. You know Germany?”
“Rather,” he chuckled.
I looked at him attentively. His manners and hearings were those of a gentleman, I noticed for the first time that he carried a sword under his red mantle and there was a harsh sound in his voice I seemed to have heard before.
“Pardon me, sir, I think we have already met in the Auerbach Keller in Leipzig, isn’t your name? . . .” As I spoke the words, the church bells from Capri began to ring Ave Maria. I turned my head to look at him. He was gone.
Footnotes
1)
The old emperor who lived the last eleven years of his life on the island of Capri and is still very much alive on the lips of its inhabitants, is always spoken of as Timberio.
II
QUARTIER LATIN
QUARTIER LATIN. A student’s room in the Hôtel de l’Avenir, piles of books everywhere, on tables, chairs and in heaps on the floor, and on the wall a faded photograph of Capri. Mornings in the wards of La Salpêtrière, Hôtel-Dieu and La Pitié, going from bed to bed to read chapter after chapter in the book of human suffering, written with blood and tears. Afternoons in the dissecting rooms and amphitheatres of l’École de Médecine or in the laboratories of the Institut Pasteur, watching in the microscope with wondrous eyes the mystery of the unseen world, the infinitely small beings, arbiters of the life and death of man. Nights of vigil in the Hôtel de l’Avenir, precious nights of toil to master the hard facts, the classical signs of disorder and disease collected and sifted by observers from all lands, so necessary and so insufficient for the making of a doctor. Work, work, work! Summer holidays with empty cafés in Boulevard St. Michel, École de Médecine closed, laboratories and amphitheatres deserted, clinics half-empty. But no holiday for suffering in the hospital wards, no holiday for Death. No holiday in the Hôtel de l’Avenir. No distraction but an occasional stroll under the lime-trees of the Luxembourg Gardens, or a greedily enjoyed hour of leisure in the Louvre Museum. No friends. No dog. Not even a mistress. Henri Murger’s “Vie de Bohême” was gone, but his Mimi was still there, very much so, smilingly strolling down the Boulevard St. Michel on the arm of almost every student, when the hour for the apéritif was approaching, or mending his coat or washing his linen in his garret while he was reading for his exam.
No Mimi for me! Yes, they could afford to take it easy, these happy comrades of mine, to spend their evenings in idle gossip at the tables of their cafés, to laugh, to live, to love. Their subtle Latin brain was far quicker than mine, and they had no faded photograph of Capri on the wall of their garret to spur them on, no columns of precious marble waiting for them under the sand at Palazzo al Mare. Often during the long wakeful nights, as I sat there in the Hôtel de l’Avenir, my head bent over Charcot’s ‘Maladies du Systéme Nerveux,’ or Trousseaux’s ‘Clinique de l’Hôtel Dieu,’ a terrible thought flashed suddenly through my brain: Mastro Vincenzo is old, fancy if he should die while I am sitting here or sell to somebody else the little house on the cliff, which holds the key to my future home! An ice – cold perspiration burst out on my forehead and my heart stood almost still with fear. I stared at the faded photograph of Capri on the wall, I thought I saw it fade away more and more into dimness, mysterious and sphinx-like till nothing remained but the outline of a sarcophagus, under which lay buried a dream. . . . Then rubbing my aching eyes, I plunged into my book
