ABBA ABBA Page 6

  The host, fat, though with a greyish face scored by deep and dusty runnels, kept saying "Sí, sí, sí" to indulge Llanos, unconvincible as to the virtue of the Madrid way. But then he said something rapid and coarse, full of Roman noises. Llanos laughed. "What was that?" John asked. "What makes you laugh so?"

  Belli was saying in a sort of horrified fascinated trance: "… Cuesti cqui sso rreliquioni – ma ar mi' paese…"

  "Why, yes," Llanos said, surprised. "Those very words. It must be some old Roman saying about Spaniards. 'Here in Rome we have Adam's balls.' – 'Ah, but we in Spain have Adam's – ' "

  "Cazzo," John said, too loudly. Eaters turned unamused, to hear a foreigner use a dirty word, a Roman's privilege.

  Belli had heard John on Nature, through Gulielmi, as well as the coarse host. He was a listening man, so much was evident: he made use of his two ears. He spoke long and bitterly. Gulielmi said: "He says that you free-thinking Protestant English poets have forgotten how to think, freely or otherwise. Excuse me – this is his view, not, as you know, necessarily mine. Free thinking, he says, is anyway no thinking. You have substituted something called Nature for God, and with Nature there is nothing but Truth and Beauty and Goodness till you fall sick, and then Nature becomes lying and ugly and malevolent. You make Nature both God and devil, but it is the one or the other only according to your moods."

  "I did not say that," John said lamely. "I do not think that. As for falling sick, what does he know about my falling sick?"

  "He says, you are evidently and very clearly sick. I think, as you know, you are better today, but he will have it that you are sick."

  Belli looked at John grimly during this, great dark eyes trained on a sick English poet who did not know how to think.

  "He also says that man is born evil."

  "Why?" John asked, sweating worse than ever.

  Belli knew the word. "Perché, perché, perché?" he said in crescendo, and then much of which John could understand little.

  "Why won't unwrite the book, he says. He says those of you who reject the traditional view of man, which is not only Christian but also Jewish and Musulman, those, he says, must write their own book. You will find plenty of material he says, forgive me, up the arsehole of Pasquino's statue."

  "Pasquino?"

  "A bust, not a statue," Llanos said. "On the Via di Pasquino near the Piazza Navona. It is where anonymous lampoons are placed. Satirical verses. You will have seen it."

  "I've seen nothing," John said. "I know nothing." He felt sick and weary and began to taste, with a disquiet that made the sweat gush, a rusty gob that was sliding up to his mouth. Covertly he spat it into his handkerchief, covertly looked. Thank God or Nature, there was no red. The taste of rust was the taste of the wine from Piedmont. His relief was immense. Stowing the handkerchief in his breast, he found there the coda'd sonnet about the dumpendebat. "This," he said to Gulielmi, smiling, "is for you."

  Gulielmi took it, saw what it was, hastily handed it back. "Not now. Perhaps tomorrow."

  "No, no. Take it home, read at leisure."

  Belli was quick to see it was a poem neatly engrossed in green ink. "Un altro sonetto," he said, his nostrils widening. "Su un altro gatto?"

  John understood that. "Not cats," he said. "Cazzi." Belli jerked it out of Gulielmi's hand rudely, then scanned it. He would know no more than that it was a sonnet with a coda. About cazzi. He peered closely at it however and hit a word thrice with his index finger. "Dumpendebat," he said bitterly to Gulielmi. Then he raged at Gulielmi very finely, so that the room stopped eating to listen, using most expressive gestures of his fine ringed hands, and Gulielmi was apologetic and humble, flashing odd brief looks of hurt at John. Belli got up, tore the poem in two, four, eight, snowing the fragments over the dirty dishes. He swished up his grey cloak from the back of his chair, nearly sending flying a full wine jug on the neighbour table. The neighbour eater saved his jug with both hands, barking Romanly, eyes abulge, while the wine danced to its resettling. Belli grabbed his hat from the chairpost and slammed it on his black locks.

  "That," John said, "is mine. That is discourteous." Belli, bowing only to Llanos, strode out in what seemed to be a rage-engendered gale that bore his cloak-folds aloft. "Well," John said. "He wrings at some distress."

  "It was he," Gulielmi said, "who wrote the original. You translated what he wrote."

  "I did not know. How could I know?"

  "I told you the author had destroyed it in anger and shame. He did not know that I had a copy."

  "Anger and shame – why? It is a mere bawdy joke. It is the sort of thing any poet will do in fun. It is somewhat childish to be angry and ashamed."

  "You will never understand Belli," Gulielmi sighed. "Nor, I think, will I. He is like two men always fighting each other. Most men learn to come to terms with their higher and lower selves. After all, we are all equipped with an apparatus of generation, and we all have aspirations to the pure life of the soul. But Belli is not satisfied with how God made him, which seems to mean that he is not satisfied with God, and this feeds an ever-growing guilt."

  "He is married?" Llanos asked.

  "He married a widow of some wealth, and he is both joyful and guilty about that. His childhood was poor and unhappy, and the poverty and unhappiness should, so his strange scheme of justice would have it, both continue and not continue. He is unfaithful, I think, but not physically. He has a Beatrice or Laura somewhere in the Marche, and he writes her the most spiritual poems."

  "I am sorry to say," Llanos said, "that he does not write well. Not that I have seen much of what he has written."

  "I think he does write well," Gulielmi said, "though not supremely well. But as he is torn between his soul and his lower instincts, so is he also torn between the language of Petrarch or Dante and the rough speech he hears all about him in Rome. He has seen what Carlo Porta can do with the language of the Milan streets. He feels, I think, that he may have a duty to the low and dirty language of his native city. But that language, as you are perhaps a little learning, Mr Keats, is not the language of the soul."

  "His," Llanos said, "was one of the names I was given. The name of an opener of doors, very friendly with cardinals." It was as though he thought it was time to be apologising for knowing Belli.

  "Well," John said, "I cannot expect him to listen to me now, but I could have counselled him to a way out of his guilt and unhappiness. The way out is the way out of the conception of ourselves as unified beings. We are, in fact, unities in name and appearance and voice and a set of habits only. We are nothing more, and to flesh ourselves with character we must identify ourselves, swiftly, temporarily, with one or other of our brothers and sisters of the universe. We have to dress up in the borrowed raiment of a comet, the moon, a pecking sparrow, a snowflake, boiling water, a billiard ball rolling towards a pocket. The dumpendebat self of our friend and the stabat mater self are but two among the many selves available. I see, though, that this atomising of the self would never appeal. It is not very Christian. But then I do not believe in the existence of art that is Christian. Art is not anything but art."

  "You have Michelangelo in your mind, I think," Llanos faintly smiled. "And the thought also that it is not Signor Belli's soul that must be saved but his art."

  "How else can a man save his soul save through art of some kind or other? A saint's life, I suppose, is a kind of art, in which the material is not stone or words or paint but conduct. And it is in the saint's art like the poet's that we that we -" The slattern and the serving-lout had returned to the kitchen from somewhere dark at the back, no longer fumbling and fumbled, sleek, rather, if sleekness was at all possible to two such, sleek as street cats could sometimes be -

  "The saint's art?" said Gulielmi.

  "Forgive me, I was distracted. I was thinking of the putting off of self and the striving to live inside other beings. St Francis of Assisi perhaps was such a saint-artist. And Signor Belli perhaps," he smiled now, "has the makings
possibly of a kind of saint. He worries enough to be a saint. I must go home," he coda'd. "You will forgive my unseasonable tiredness. It has been a long day. But a pleasant one, an instructive one," he quickly added.

  "Perhaps you walked too much. If so it is my fault." Gulielmi was, it seemed, in a mood to be guilty about everything. "Tomorrow I go north," he said gloomily. "A matter of some small property near Pisa." He seemed prepared to dredge guilt out of owning a small property, out of the prospect of travel on its behoof. "I may see your friend Mr Shelley there. We have had some correspondence about his play The Cenci. It may or may not be translatable. It is about incest." He reached the bottom of gloom and began to rise. "We shall meet again," he said. "In the new year. And crack something together."

  "Crack?" Llanos said.

  "A bottle. You too, Don Valentino. If you are still to be here."

  "Oh yes, I shall be here. The times are not yet auspicious for my return to Spain. There is a certain – It is repressive in Spain just now. It is not very liberal. I will come to see you," he said to John, "on, ha, appropriate, the Spanish Steps, if I may. There is much interest in Spain," he added, "in the poets of England."

  "In England we all love Don Quixote."

  So, very amicable together, separating, they separated. John walked home, thinking. Tomorrow he must make a start, must. Heroic couplets perhaps, after all. And personal, a personal beginning. Here I am in Rome and a boy called Mario came, and I thought, the eternal Roman. And my mind went back to, and I do in my own way what Shakespeare did, the murder of Julius Caesar, and Marius saw it and ran home, afraid. And. It was not really what he had in mind, though. Something carved, not flowing. He would write anyway, he would make a beginning.

  Beneath an ilex on a hill of Rome

  At sunset I gazed down upon the dome

  Of Buonarroti crowning Peter's fane -

  This will never do, back to your gallipots. Thinking, frowning, arms behind him, hands tight clasped, hat pushed back from brow, he came to with a great start crossing the Corso. His heart leaped, fell, thudded. Eight hooves stumbled and clattered recovering, two bay horses' heads were reined back, there was a double whinneying, the horses' bull-eyes looked down in horror surely exaggerated. The Roman coachman was very loud with dirty words, his whip raised as if to lash John. The flames in the coachlamps danced, the coach rocked, the liveried tiger at the rear booed and made tearing gestures. "Mi displace," John said. A lady put her head out.

  "Che succede?"

  John realised that he was, thank Bacchus, not untipsy. He swept off his hat and bowed courtlily low, saying:

  "Alma Venus."

  Pauline Bonaparte, the Princess Borghese, pallidly beautiful under the faint moon that Horace and Vergil had known, only a little engulesed by the capering lampflame, rested one delicate hand on the crest of the coat of arms that was gilded on the coach door. She was in a ballgown of turquoise, her hair flashed with gems, her kashmir wrap had fallen some way back off her glowing shoulders. Her perfume was heavy and somewhat spicy, as if she were to be eaten. She recognised John. She said something in rapid Corsican Italian which, for all John knew, could be about his being a wretched wight alone and palely loitering. But she smiled, her eyes smiled. "Votre ami," she said more slowly. "Votre bel ami."

  "Parti, madame. Je le regrette. H élas, hélas, parti."

  "Qui êtes-vous, monsieur?"

  "Un po ète anglais, madame. Le nom n'importe rien. Le nom ne vivra guère. Scritto," he added, "in acqua."

  "Voulez-vous profiter de mon carrosse, monsieur?"

  What was that word? Did it mean caress? Did he wish to profit from her caress? What was she saying?

  "Merci bien, madame, vous êtes gentille. Mais -" And, for lack of the right words, he gestured that he lived near and was well able to walk thither. He bowed, she inclined her beautiful smiling gemmed head, she nodded to the coachman to proceed. John stood, watching. Carrosse meant coach. The coach proceeded.

  He awoke that night much disturbed. Healthy, even strong, the strength of grilled veal in his arteries. He awoke to physical desire from a dream in which he was on the point of fulfilling it. His dear girl, F.B., leered at him naked in some tent of blue satin reeking of hyacinths, her breasts bigger naked than he had known them clothed, her rounded arms seeking him as though blindly, though her eyes were open, dilated, full of lust. His main aim in the dream, it appeared, was to shut those eyes, which he did, with kiss after kiss, so that his head went into the clickclock of the Haydn slow movement Severn had once played. The eyelids accepted the kisses but were quick to open again after each, and his kisses engaged fluttering lashes before lids. He closed his own eyes then and put his lips to hers and seemed to start to tumble towards a dark hyacinth-reeking membranous pit. John Florio read aloud from his World of Words as from a bible. He cackled "Fica" in the imagined voice of Robert Burton. "A figge. Also used for a woman's quaint." So that explained the Marvell line about her quaint honour turning to dust. Shakespeare was there, picking it seemed fig-seeds from bad teeth with a new-cut swan-quill. He nodded. It was a signal to spend seed, and John cried no no, hurtling himself back to waking. The church clock chimed a quarter.

  He lay nursing a rod gone flaccid, listening to the song of the fountain in the piazza. He thought he knew now why Belli was angry and ashamed to have written that sonnet. The danger of play. One offended the gods at one's peril. The caress was a carrosse to the dark world.

  Stabat mater dolorosa

  Apud lignum lachrymosa

  Dum pendebat filius.

  He had touched nothing of poetry, nothing, save in odd single lines he did not well understand. Pretty tales, gods and nymphs stolen from the marbles Elgin stole. Meanwhile a body hung on a cross and a mother wept. Play. Sonnet competitions over the teacups in Leigh Hunt's untidy house. Crowning each other with laurels: play. Apollo was not amused, was not mocked. John sweated in fear and prayed: "Whoever presides over poetry, spare me to dare the darkness. Everything is an allegory of the unknown. Teach me the way of the reading of the signs. Give me time to grow. I promise faithful service. No more play." Then he fell into heavy sleep.

  SIX

  Severn came early the next morning to John's room. He had been out in the cool sunlight to post a letter to Will Haslam. It had been on Haslam's recommendation that John had come here, Haslam was a true friend who would be happy to learn that the advice had proved sound, that John was stronger in body and as active as ever in mind. A hopeful letter, then, and hope was confirmed in Severn as he found John awake, sitting up in bed and scribbling. He had made a knee desk of a big old book whose faded title Severn could roughly make out – A Word of Worlds or something. John had paper and a newly cut quill. On the chair beside his bed were the penknife, the inkwell, the drained milk cup of the previous day. John's eyes were bright, his cheeks healthily, so it seemed, flushed. His redgold hair was uncombed.

  "Sabrina fair, how is the Roman morning?"

  "I saw a very pretty little crib outside a church whose name I forget, with a little chubby Jesus child choked in tinsel. The Romans are already thinking of Christmas. It is but two weeks to go now. You stayed out yesterday. You should have said you would not be home for dinner. As we have to pay for two I ate two. I was dyspeptic. Signora Angeletti gave me some bubbling fountain water. It helped."

  "Bubbling Severn. I am bubbling too, words are bubbling. I had this mad notion yesterday of a long poem on Rome, the history of Rome and the unchangingness of the Roman. Then I woke in the night and it was, lo, revealed unto me that such a tale must be in prose. It is not for me, then."

  "So what are you writing?"

  "For the moment I am succumbing to madness and revelling in it. I am back to the notion of a river, though it is not necessarily the Severn. It might well be the Jordan. I am letting the river carry everything on his back, or hers. I see the river, though, as very male. See what I have done, and if you laugh I shall be pleased."

  Severn took the
sheet and read:

  A bearded corpse, a corpse with lesser beard,

  Father and son, hands death-clasped, as they feared

  The river's disuniting, and, above,

  Swooping through clouds, the ghost of a black dove,

  And cleft by rocks a melon with black teeth,

  While an old signpost rose from underneath

  The joyous waters, with outlandish script

  I could not read. Then, with their grey hides stripped

  As from an ancient beating, bloated dogs

  Sailed on their backs…

  "I cannot very well laugh at something I fail altogether to understand."

  "I do not understand it either," John said cheerfully. "But it is not the poet's task to be clear, even to the poet. Hens lay eggs but can say nothing of the richness of yolk and airy blandness of albumen. Talking of eggs, I think I could -" Then he started to cough. He shrugged at it, coughing, as at a transient nuisance. Then the coughing increased and became paroxysmal. John's eyes showed fear, his nails grappled A World of Words in panic. Severn breathed fast and shallow. Scarlet gushed out and John moaned, choking. He tried madly to use his manuscript as a cup. The inky quill fell from the knee desk and wrote briefly on the coverlet. Severn was quick with the cup that had held milk. John filled it and groaned "Oh God God." There was a thick bubbling in his chest, then throat. Severn opened the casement and threw the rich red out like slops. He shut it again against the mild chill and was in time to offer the vessel for another filling of crimson. Severn looked at it fascinated and said calmly: