Читать книгу The Miracle of the Images - Welby Thomas Cox Jr. - Страница 10

Many before this writer have written voluminous passages of the magic and beauty of Venice. Certainly, Thomas Mann was most descriptive. The author must give credit here were credit is due. Mann had a measured hold of my mind for many years...just as Faulkner, Buck, Wouk, Dickens, Hemingway brought to life the words that fed the world. This lowly writer would be less than honest if he did not say that those words and descriptive phrases were devoured by this writer and become a convoluted part of his life and have felt an urgency to share them once again with the world in the hope that none will ever be forgotten...even as the words mesh with those of his own to conclude that there is nothing new under the sun that has not been said or even done. And so we begin with a passage by ship of a strange passenger...a large, silent man intent on seeing the coast of his beloved Venice...the chance late in life to stroll across St. Mark's Square...to sit in the Piazza, sip espresso and gather the evidence that there is no life of more interest than that of watching or describing humanity.

It was an ancient hulk belonging to an Italian line, obsolete, dingy, and grimed with soot. A dirty hunched backed sailor, smirkingly polite, conducted him at once below ships to a cavernous, lamp lit cabin. There behind a table sat a man with a beard like a goat's; he had his hat on the back of his head, a cigarette stump in the corner of his mouth; he reminded of an old-fashioned circus-director. This person put the usual questions and wrote out a ticket to Venice, which he issued to the stranger with many commercial flourishes.

"A ticket for Venice," said he stretching out his arm to dip the pen into the thick ink stand. "One first class to Venice! Here you are signore' Mio. He made some scrawls on the paper, folded the paper with bony yellow fingers and wrote on the outside. "An excellent choice," he rattled on, "Ah, Venice! What a glorious city! Irresistibly attractive to the cultured man for her past history as well as her present charm." His copious gestures and empty phrases gave the odd impression that he feared the stranger might alter his mind. He changed the traveler's pound notes, laying the money on the spotted table-cover with the glibness of a croupier. "A pleasant visit to you, signore, " he said, with a melodramatic bow, "Delighted to serve you." Then he beckoned and called out: "Next" as though a stream of passengers stood waiting to be served, though in point of fact there was not one. The stranger returned to the upper deck.

He leaned an arm on the railing and looked at the idlers lounging along the quay to watch the boat go out. Then he turned his attention to his fellow passengers. Those of second class, both men and women, were squatted on their bundles of luggage on the forward deck. The first cabin consisted of a lively group of youthful clerks from Pola, evidently, who had made up a pleasure excursion to Italy and were not a little thrilled at the prospect, bustling about and laughing with satisfaction at the stir they made. They leaned over the railings and shouted, with a glib command of vulgarity, derisory remarks at such of their fellow-clerks as they saw going to business along the quay; and these in turn shook their fist and shouted just as well back again.

One of the party in a dandified buff suit, a rakish panama with a colored scarf, and a red cravat, was loudest of the loud; he out crowed all the rest. The stranger's eye dwelt on him, and he was shocked to see that the apparent youth was no youth at all. He was an old man, beyond a doubt, with wrinkles and crow-feet round eyes and mouth; the dull carmine of the cheeks was rouge, the brown hair was a wig. His neck was shrunken and sinewy, his turned up 'Toulouse' moustache was dyed and the unbroken double row of yellow teeth he showed when he laughed were but too obviously a cheapish false set. He wore a seal ring on each forefinger, but the hands were those of an old man. The stranger was moved to shudder as he watched the creature and his associates with the rest of the group. Could they not see that he was old, that he had no right to wear the clothes they wore or pretend to be one of them? How could they? The stranger put his hand to his head, he covered his eyes, for he had slept little since he had left Cincinnati. He felt not quite canny, as though the world were suffering a dreamlike distortion of perspective, which he might arrest by shutting it all out for a few minutes and then looking at it fresh. But instead he felt a floating sensation, and opened his eyes with unreasoning alarm to find that the ship's dark sluggish bulk was slowly leaving the jetty. Inch by inch, with two and fro motion of her machinery, the strip of iridescent dirty water widened, the boat maneuvered clumsily and turned her bow to open sea. The stranger moved over to the starboard side, where the hunchbacked sailor had set up a deck-chair for him, and a steward in a greasy dress-coat asked for orders.

The sky was grey, the wind humid. Harbor and island dropped behind, all sight of land soon vanished in mist. Flakes of sodden, clammy soot fell upon the still undried deck. Before the boat was an hour out a canvass had to be spread as a shelter from the rain.

Wrapped in his cloak, cigarette in hand, our traveler rested; the hours slipped by unaware. It stopped raining and the canvass was removed. The horizon was visible right round; beneath the somber dome of the sky stretched the vast plain of the empty sea. But immeasurable unarticulated space weakens our power to measure time as well; the time sense falters and grows dim. Strange, shadowy figures passed and repassed-the elderly coxcomb, the goat bearded man from the bowels of the ship-with vague mutterings and gesturing marching through the strangers mind as he lay. He fell asleep.

At midday he was summoned to luncheon in a corridor like saloon with the sleeping cabins off it. He ate at the head of a long table; the party of clerks, including the old man, sat with the jolly captain at the other end, where they had been carousing since ten o'clock. The meal was awful, and soon done...the stranger thought of the bologna in Covington. The stranger was driven to seek the open and look at the sky...perhaps it would lighten presently above Venice.

He had not dreamed that it could be otherwise, for the city had always given him a brilliant welcome. But sky and sea remained laidened, with spurts of fine, mist-like rain; he reconciled himself to the idea of seeing a different Venice from that he had always approached on the landward side. He stood by the foremast, his gaze on the distance, alert for the first glimpse of the coast. And he thought of the melancholy and susceptible poet who had once seen the towers and turrets of his dreams rise out of these waves; repeated the rhymes born of his awe, his mingled emotions of joy and suffering-easily susceptible to a presence already shaped within him, he asked his own weary heart if a new enthusiasm, a new preoccupation, some late adventure of the feelings could still be in store for the idle traveler.

The flat coast showed on the right, the sea was soon populated with fishing boats. The Lido appeared and was left behind as the ship glided at half speed through the narrow harbor of the same name, coming to a full stop on the lagoon in sight of garish, badly built houses, here it waited for the boat bringing the medical inspectors.

Before long, the examiners apparently satisfied that the ship wasn't rift with disease the engines began to thud again and the ship took up its passage through the Canale di San Marco which had been interrupted so near the goal. Now the stranger saw it once more, that landing place that takes the breath away, that amazing group of incredible structures the Republic set up to meet the awe struck eye of the approaching seafarer; the airy splendor of the palace and Bridge of Siege, the columns of lion and saint on the shore, the glory of the projecting flank of the fairy temple, the vista of gateway and clock. Looking he thought... that to come to Venice, by the station is like entering a palace by the back door. No one should approach, save by the high seas as he was doing now, this most improbable of cities.

The engines stopped. Gondolas pressed alongside, the landing stairs were let down, customs officials came on board...people went ashore. The stranger ordered a gondola. He meant to take up his abode by the sea and needed to be conveyed with his luggage to the landing stage of the little steamers that ply between the city and Lido. They called down his order to the surface of the water where the gondoliers were quarreling in dialect then came another delay while his trunk was carried down the ladder like stairs. Thus he was forced to endure the importunities of the ghastly young/old man, whose drunken state obscurely urged him to pay the stranger the honor of a formal farewell. "We wish you a very pleasant sojourn," he babbled, bowing and scraping. "Pray keep us in mind. Au revoir, excusez et bon jour, votre Excellance." He drooled, he blinked, he licked the corner of his mouth, and the little imperial bristled on his elderly chin. He put the tips of two fingers to his mouth and said thickly, "Give her our love, will you...here his upper plate fell down on the lower one...the stranger escaped down the stairs into the waiting boat.

Is there anyone but must repress a secret thrill, on arriving in Venice for the first time...or returning after a long absence...and stepping into a Venetian gondola? That singular conveyance, come down unchanged from ballad times, black as nothing else on earth except a coffin...what pictures it calls up of lawless, silent adventures in the plashing night; or even more what visions of death itself, the bier and solemn rites and last soundless voyage! And has anyone remarked that the seat in such a bark, the arm chair lacquered in coffin black and duly black upholstered, is the softest, most luxurious, most relaxing seat in the world...even the stranger remembered it as he let his mighty frame down at the Gondolier's feet. Even the voices of the disgruntled rowers was quieted by a strange stillness of the water-city seemed to take up their voices gently, to disembody and scatter them over the sea.

It was warm here in the harbor. The lukewarm air of the sirocco breathed upon the Stranger, he leaned his massive body among the cushions and gave himself to the yielding element, closing his eyes for the very pleasure in an indulgence as unaccustomed as was sweat. "The trip will be short," he remembered, and wished it might last forever. They gently swayed from the boat with its bustle and clamor of voices.

It grew still and stiller all about. No sound but the splash of the oars, the hollow slap of the wave against the steep, black Halbert-shaped, beak of the vessel, and one sound more-a muttering by fits and starts, expressed as it were by the motion of his arms, from the lips of the gondolier. He was talking to himself, between his teeth. The stranger glanced up and saw to his surprise that the lagoon was widening, his vessel was headed for the open sea. Evidently it would not do to give himself up to sweet far niente; he must see his wishes carried out.

"Sir, you are to take me to the steamboat landing," he demanded, and this time turned his hulk round and looked up into the face of the gondolier as he stood there on his little elevated deck, high against the pale grey sky. The man had an unpleasing, even brutish face, and wore blue clothes like a sailor, with a yellow sash, a shapeless straw hat with the braid torn at the brim perched rakishly on his head. His facial structure, as well as the curling blond moustache under the short snub nose, showed him to be of non-Italian stock. Physically rather undersized, so that one would not have expected him to be very muscular, he pulled vigorously at the oar, putting all his body-weight behind each stroke. Now and then the effort he made curled back his lips and bared white teeth to the gums. He spoke in a decided, almost curt voice, looking out to sea over his fare's head: "The signore is going to the Lido."

The traveler answered, "Yes I am but I only took the gondola to cross over to San Marco. I am using the vaporetto from there."

"But the signore cannot use the vaporetto.""And why not?"

"Because the vaporetto does not take luggage."

It was true. The stranger remembered it. He made no answer. But the man's gruff, overbearing manner, so unlike the usual courtesy of his countrymen towards the stranger, was unacceptable and intolerable. The stranger spoke again: "That is my own affair. I may want to give my luggage in deposit. You will turn around."

No answer. The oar splashed, the wave struck dull against the prow. And the muttering began anew, the gondolier talked to himself, between his teeth.

This was always the way it seemed to happen...a little man unwilling to accept instruction until some weight was exacted...and the stranger was often forced to violence in order to mitigate his situation. What should he do? Alone on the water with this tongued-tied obstinate, uncanny man, he sought to enforce his will. And if only he did not excite himself, how pleasantly he might rest! Had he not previously wished that it might last forever? The wisest thing-and how much the pleasantest-was to let matters take their own course. A spell of indolence was upon him; it came from the chair he sat in-this low, black upholstered arm-chair, so gently rocked at the hands of the despotic boatman in his rear. The thought passed dreamily through the stranger's brain that perhaps he had fallen into the cloches of a criminal; but that would have been the criminal's worst nightmare and would certainly rouse the stranger to action. More annoying was the simpler explanation: that the man was only trying to extort money. A sense of duty, a recollection, as it were, that this ought to be prevented, made him collect himself to say:

"How much do you ask for the trip?"

And the gondolier, gazing out over his head, replied: "The signore will pay?"

There was an established reply to this...the stranger made it, instinctively:

"I will pay nothing whatever if you do not take me where I want to go, and I will feed you to the fish."

"The signore wants to go to Lido?"

"But not with you."

"I am a good rower, signore. I will row you well."

"So much is true, when men begin to speak the truth." And once again the stranger began to relax, knowing the bullet had passed. "That is true, you row me well... even if you intend to roll me as well."

But nothing of the sort happened. Instead, they fell in with company: a boat came alongside and waylaid them, full of men and women singing to guitar and mandolin. They rowed persistently bow for bow with the gondola and filled the silence that had rested on the waters with their lyric love of gain. The stranger tossed money into the hat they passed about. The music stopped at once. They rowed away. And once more the gondolier's mutter became audible as he talked to himself in fits and snatches.

Thus they rowed on, rocked by the wash of a steamer returning citywards. At the landing two municipal officials were walking up and down with their hands behind their backs...in their own pockets and eyes looking toward the lagoon. The stranger was helped to shore by an old man with boat-hook who is a permanent feature of every landing-stage in Venice; he passed along the notes that he felt fairly compensated gondolier and gondola..."Place the luggage on the deck." He ordered, "I will go into the hotel to make certain of the reservation...when I return you will decide if you row or feed the fish."

The stranger returned, his luggage safely on the dock... "He ran away, signore," said the old man, "A bad lot, a man without a license. He is the only gondolier without one...he knew the officials were on the lookout...so signore you have free passage." He held out his hat... The Stranger dropped a few coins and directed that his luggage be brought directly to the Hotel des Bains. The luggage was loaded on a handcart and the Stranger followed them through the avenue, that white blossoming avenue with taverns, booths, and pensions on either side, which runs across the island diagonally to the beach.

The Stranger entered the hotel from the garden terrace at the back and passed through the vestibule and hall into the office. His arrival was expected, and the Stranger was served with courtesy and dispatch. The manager, a small, soft dapper man with black moustache and a caressing way with him, wearing a French frock coat, himself took him up in the lift and showed him his room. It was a pleasant chamber, furnished in cherry-wood, with lofty windows looking out to sea. It was decorated with strong scented flowers. Most essential, it had the biggest bed in the hotel, suitable for the Strangers six foot seven inch frame.

The Stranger, unused to speaking of what he sees and feels, has mental experiences which are at once more intense and less articulate than those of a gregarious man. They are sluggish, yet more wayward, and never without a melancholy tinge. Sights and impressions which others push aside with a glance, a lite comment, a smile, occupy him more than their due; they sink silently in, they take on meaning, they become experience, emotion, adventure. Solitude gives birth to the original in us, to beauty unfamiliar and perilous-to poetry. But also, it gives birth to the opposite: to the perverse, the illicit, and the absurd. Thus the Strangers mind still dwelt with disquiet on the episodes of his journey thus far: on the horrible old fop with his drivel, on the outlaw boatman and his gouging. They did not offend his reason, they hardly afforded food for thought; yet they seemed by their very nature fundamentally strange, and thereby vaguely disquieting. Yet here was the sea; even in the midst of such thoughts he saluted it with his eyes, exulting that Venice was near and accessible. At length he turned around, disposed his personal belongings and made certain arrangements with the chambermaid for his comfort, washed up, and was conveyed to the ground floor by the green-uniformed Swiss who ran the lift.

The stranger took one of the many ferry boats from Lido to Venice, He would walk again among the tourist and watch the little nuns dressed in crisp habits...a remarkable and unusual sight for the stranger...nuns had long since given up the habits for more practical street clothing like suits, painters pants, surgical outfits or jeans. But here in Venice headed toward St. Mark's Square crossing the Bridge of Siege they were in abundance and adorable he thought as he slouched away in squeaky shoes from the landing toward the Bridge of Siege, the place were the hangman came with prisoners about to die. There they stood and looked out at their assassins...those who had condemned them to hang by the neck until they were dead.

Claude Wermuth took it all in, he watched the tourist heave to and fro...watched them mount the Bridge and then disperse into St. Marks Square craning necks to view the tower and the opulent carvings...the massive marble statues of the horses above the Cathedral and then into the square to find a café' to sit and sip espresso as Wermuth found himself doing while watching all the beautiful people about him.