into life for an instant; lights sprang up here and there, as always
on the steamer’s arrival. At the top of the mountain, where stood the
station of the _funicular_, there was another throng of those whose
duty lay in receiving fittingly the gentleman from San Francisco. There
were other arrivals also, but they merited no attention,--several
Russians, who had taken up their abode in Capri,--absent-minded because
of their bookish meditations, unkempt, bearded, spectacled, the collars
of their old drap overcoats turned up; and a group of long-legged,
long-necked, round-headed German youths in Tyrolean costumes, with
canvas knapsacks slung over their shoulders,--these latter stood in
need of nobody’s services, feeling themselves at home everywhere, and
were not at all generous in their expenditures. The gentleman from San
Francisco, on the other hand, who was calmly keeping aloof from both
the one group and the other, was immediately noticed. He and his ladies
were bustlingly assisted to get out, some men running ahead of him
to show him the way: he was surrounded anew by urchins, and by those
robust Caprian wives who carry on their heads the portmanteaux and
trunks of respectable travellers. The wooden pattens of these women
clattered over a _piazetta_, that seemed to belong to some opera,
an electric globe swaying above it in the damp wind; the rabble of
urchins burst into sharp, bird-like whistles,--and, as though on a
stage, the gentleman from San Francisco proceeded in their midst toward
some mediæval arch, underneath houses that had become welded into one
mass, beyond which a little echoing street,--with the tuft of a palm
above flat roofs on its left, and with blue stars in the black sky
overhead,--led slopingly to the grand entrance of the hotel, glittering
ahead.... And again it seemed that it was in honour of the guests from
San Francisco that this damp little town of stone on a craggy little
island of the Mediterranean Sea had come to life, that it was they who
had made so happy and affable the proprietor of the hotel, that it was
they only who had been waited for by the Chinese gong, that now began
wailing the summons to dinner through all the stories of the hotel, the
instant they had set foot in the vestibule.
The proprietor, a young man of haughty elegance, who had met them with
a polite and exquisite bow, for a minute dumbfounded the gentleman
from San Francisco: having glanced at him, the gentleman from San
Francisco suddenly recalled that just the night before, among the rest
of the confusion of images that had beset him in his sleep, he had seen
precisely this gentleman,--just like him, down to the least detail: in
the same sort of frock with rounded skirts, and with the same pomaded
and painstakingly combed head. Startled, he was almost taken aback; but
since, from long, long before, there was not even a mustard seed of any
sort of so-called mystical emotions left in his soul, his astonishment
was dimmed the same instant, passing through a corridor of the hotel,
he spoke jestingly to his wife and daughter of this strange coincidence
of dream and reality. And only his daughter glanced at him with alarm
at that moment: her heart suddenly contracted from sadness, from a
feeling of their loneliness upon this foreign, dark island,--a feeling
so strong that she almost burst into tears. But still she said nothing
of her feelings to her father,--as always.
An exalted personage--Rais XVII,--who had been visiting Capri, had
just taken his departure, and the guests from San Francisco were given
the same apartments that he had occupied. To them was assigned the
handsomest and most expert chambermaid, a Belgian, whose waist was
slenderly and firmly corseted, and who wore a little starched cap that
looked like a pronged crown; also, the stateliest and most dignified
of flunkies, a fiery-eyed Sicilian, swarthy as coal; and the nimblest
of bell-boys, the short and stout Luigi,--a fellow who was very fond
of a joke, and who had changed many places in his time. And a minute
later there was a slight tap at the door of the room of the gentleman
from San Francisco,--the French _maitre d’hôtel_ had come to find
out if the newly arrived guests would dine, and, in the event of an
answer in the affirmative,--of which, however, there was no doubt,--to
inform them that the _carte de jour_ consisted of crawfish, roast
beef, asparagus, pheasants, and so forth. The floor was still rocking
under the gentleman from San Francisco,--so badly had the atrocious
little Italian steamer tossed him about,--but, without hurrying, with
his own hands, although somewhat clumsily from being unaccustomed
to such things, he shut a window that had banged upon the entrance
of the _maitre d’hôtel_ and had let in the odours of the distant
kitchen and of the wet flowers in the garden, and with a leisurely
precision replied that they would dine, that their table must be
placed at a distance from the door, at the farthest end of the dining
room, that they would drink local wine and champagne,--moderately dry
and only slightly chilled. The _maitre d’hôtel concurred_ in every
word of his, in intonations most varied, having, however, but one
significance,--that there was never a doubt, nor could there possibly
be any, about the correctness of the wishes of the gentleman from San
Francisco, and that everything would be carried out punctiliously. In
conclusion he inclined his head, and asked deferentially:
“Will that be all, sir?”
And, having received a long-drawn-out “Yes”[*] in answer, he added that
the _tarantella_ would be danced in the vestibule to-day,--the dancers
would be Carmella and Giuseppe, known to all Italy, and to “the entire
world of tourists.”
“I have seen her on post cards,” said the gentleman from San Francisco
in a voice devoid of all expression. “About this Giuseppe, now,--is he
her husband?”
“Her cousin, sir,” answered the _maitre d’hôtel_.
And, after a little wait, after considering something, the gentleman
from San Francisco dismissed him with a nod.
And then he began his preparations anew, as though for a wedding
ceremony: he turned on all the electric lights, filling all the mirrors
with reflections of light and glitter, of furniture and opened trunks;
he began shaving and washing, ringing the bell every minute, while
other impatient rings from his wife’s and daughter’s rooms floated
through the entire corridor and interrupted his. And Luigi, in his red
apron, was rushing headlong to answer the bell, with an ease peculiar
to many stout men, the while he made grimaces of horror that made the
chambermaids, running by with glazed porcelain pails in their hands,
laugh till they cried. Having knocked on the door with his knuckles, he
asked with an assumed timidity, with a respectfulness that verged on
idiocy:
“_Ha sonato, signore?_ (Did you ring, sir?)”
And from the other side of the door came an unhurried, grating voice,
insultingly polite:
“Yes, come in....”[*]
What were the thoughts, what were the emotions of the gentleman from
San Francisco on this evening, that was of such portent to him? He
felt nothing exceptional,--for the trouble in this world is just that
everything is apparently all too simple! And even if he had sensed
within his soul that something was impending, he would, never the
less, have thought that this thing would not occur for some time to
come,--in any case, not immediately. Besides that, like everyone who
has gone through the rocking of a ship, he wanted very much to eat,
was anticipating with enjoyment the first spoonful of soup, the first
mouthful of wine, and performed the usual routine of dressing even with
a certain degree of exhilaration that left no time for reflections.
Having shaved and washed himself, having inserted several artificial
teeth properly, he, standing before a mirror, wetted the remnants
of his thick, pearly-gray hair and plastered it down around his
swarthy-yellow skull, with brushes set in silver; drew a suit of
cream-coloured silk underwear over his strong old body, beginning to
be full at the waist from excesses in food, and put on silk socks and
dancing slippers on his shrivelled, splayed feet; sitting down, he
put in order his black trousers, drawn high by black silk braces, as
well as his snowy-white shirt, with the bosom bulging out; put the
links through the glossy cuffs, and began the torturous pursuit of the
collar-button underneath the stiffly starched collar. The floor was
still swaying beneath him, the tips of his fingers pained him greatly,
the collar-button at times nipped hard the flabby skin in the hollow
under his Adam’s-apple, but he was persistent and finally, his eyes
glittering from the exertion, his face all livid from the collar that
was choking his throat,--a collar far too tight,--he did contrive
to accomplish his task, and sat down in exhaustion in front of the
pier glass, reflected in it from head to foot, a reflection that was
repeated in all the other mirrors.
“Oh, this is dreadful!” he muttered, letting his strong bald head
drop, and without trying to understand, without reflecting, just what,
precisely, was dreadful; then, with an accustomed and attentive glance,
he inspected his stubby fingers, with gouty hardenings at the joints,
and his convex nails of an almond colour, repeating, with conviction;
“This is dreadful....”
But at this point the second gong, sonorously, as in some heathen
temple, reverberated through the entire house. And, getting up quickly
from his seat, the gentleman from San Francisco drew his collar still
tighter with the necktie and his stomach by means of the low-cut vest,
put on his tuxedo, drew out his cuffs, scrutinized himself once more
in the mirror.... This Carmella, swarthy, with eyes which she knew
well how to use most effectively, resembling a mulatto woman, clad
in a dress of many colours, with the colour of orange predominant,
must dance exceptionally, he reflected. And, stepping briskly out of
his room and walking over the carpet to the next one,--his wife’s--he
asked, loudly, if they would be ready soon?
“In five minutes, Dad!” a girl’s voice, ringing and by now gay,
responded from the other side of the door.
“Very well,” said the gentleman from San Francisco.
And, leisurely, he walked down red-carpeted corridors and staircases,
descending in search of the reading room. The servants he met stood
aside and hugged the wall to let him pass, but he kept on his way
as though he had never even noticed them. An old woman who was late
for dinner, already stooping, with milky hair but _décolettée_ in a
light-gray gown of silk, was hurrying with all her might, but drolly,
in a hen-like manner, and he easily out-stripped her. Near the glass
doors of the dining room, where all the guests had already assembled,
and were beginning their dinner, he stopped before a little table
piled with boxes of cigars and Egyptian cigarettes, took a large
Manila cigar, and tossed three _lire_ upon the little table; upon the
closed veranda he glanced, in passing, through the open window: out of
the darkness he felt a breath of the balmy air upon him, thought he
saw the tip of an ancient palm, that had flung wide across the stars
its fronds, which seemed gigantic, heard the distant, even noise of
the sea floating in to him.... In the reading room,--snug, quiet,
and illuminated only above the tables, some gray-haired German was
standing, rustling the newspapers,--unkempt, resembling Ibsen, in round
silver spectacles and with the astonished eyes of a madman. Having
scrutinized him coldly, the gentleman from San Francisco sat down in
a deep leather chair in a corner near a green-shaded lamp, put on his
_pince nez_, twitching his head because his collar was choking him,
and hid himself completely behind the newspaper sheet. He rapidly
ran through the headlines of certain items, read a few lines about
the never-ceasing Balkan war, with an accustomed gesture turned the
newspaper over,--when suddenly the lines flared up before him with a
glassy glare, his neck became taut, his eyes bulged out, the _pince
nez_ flew off his nose.... He lunged forward, tried to swallow some
air,--and gasped wildly; his lower jaw sank, lighting up his entire
mouth with the reflection of the gold fillings; his head dropped back
on his shoulder and began to sway; the bosom of his shirt bulged out
like a basket,--and his whole body, squirming, his heels catching the
carpet, slid downward to the floor, desperately struggling with someone.
Had the German not been in the reading room, the personnel of the hotel
would have managed, quickly and adroitly, to hush up this dreadful
occurrence; instantly, through back passages, seizing him by the head
and feet, they would have rushed off the gentleman from San Francisco
as far away as possible,--and never a soul among the guests would have
found out what he had been up to. But the German had dashed out of
the reading room with a scream,--he had aroused the entire house, the
entire dining room. And many jumped up from their meal, overturning
their chairs; many, paling, ran toward the reading room. “What--what
has happened?” was heard in all languages,--and no one gave a sensible
answer, no one comprehended anything, since even up to now men are
amazed most of all by death, and will not, under any circumstances,
believe in it. The proprietor dashed from one guest to another,
trying to detain those who were running away and to pacify them with
hasty assurances that this was just a trifling occurrence, a slight
fainting spell of a certain gentleman from San Francisco.... But no one
listened to him; many had seen the waiters and bell-boys tearing off
the necktie, the vest, and the rumpled tuxedo off this gentleman, and
even, for some reason or other, the dancing slippers off his splayed
feet, clad in black silk. But he was still struggling. He was still
obdurately wrestling with death; he absolutely refused to yield to her,
who had so unexpectedly and churlishly fallen upon him. His head was
swaying, he rattled hoarsely, like one with his throat cut; his eyes
had rolled up, like a drunkard’s.... When he was hurriedly carried
in and laid upon a bed in room number forty-three,--the smallest,
the poorest, the dampest and the coldest, situated at the end of the
bottom corridor,--his daughter ran in, with her hair down, in a little
dressing gown that had flown open, her bosom, raised up by the corset,
uncovered; then his wife, big and ponderous, already dressed for
dinner,--her mouth rounded in terror.... But by now he had ceased even
to bob his head.
A quarter of an hour later everything in the hotel had assumed some
semblance of order. But the evening was irreparably spoiled. Some
guests, returning to the dining room, finished their dinner, but in
silence, with aggrieved countenances, while the proprietor would
approach now one group, now another, shrugging his shoulders in polite
yet impotent irritation, feeling himself guilty without guilt, assuring
everybody that he understood very well “how unpleasant all this was,”
and pledging his word that he would take “all measures within his
power” to remove this unpleasantness. It was necessary to call off the
_tarantella_, all unnecessary electric lights were switched off, the
majority of the guests withdrew into the bar, and it became so quiet
that one heard distinctly the ticking of the clock in the vestibule,
whose sole occupant was a parrot, dully muttering something, fussing
in his cage before going to sleep, contriving to doze off at last with
one claw ludicrously stretched up to the upper perch.... The gentleman
from San Francisco was lying upon a cheap iron bed, under coarse woolen
blankets, upon which the dull light of a single bulb beat down from
the ceiling. An ice-bag hung down to his moist and cold forehead.
The livid face, already dead, was gradually growing cold; the hoarse
rattling, expelled from the open mouth, illuminated by the reflection
of gold, was growing fainter. This was no longer the gentleman from
San Francisco rattling,--he no longer existed,--but some other.
His wife, his daughter, the doctor and the servants were standing,
gazing at him dully. Suddenly, that which they awaited and feared was
consummated,--the rattling ceased abruptly. And slowly, slowly, before
the eyes of all, a pallor flowed over the face of the man who had died,
and his features seemed to grow finer, to become irradiated, with a
beauty which had been rightfully his in the long ago....
The proprietor entered. “_Già è morto_,” said the doctor to him
in a whisper. The proprietor, his face dispassionate, shrugged his
shoulders. The wife, down whose cheeks the tears were quietly coursing,
walked up to him and timidly said that the deceased ought now to be
carried to his own room.
“Oh, no, madam,” hastily, correctly, but now without any amiability and
not in English, but in French, retorted the proprietor, who was not
at all interested now in such trifling sums as the arrivals from San
Francisco might leave in his coffers. “That is absolutely impossible,
madam,” said he, and added in explanation that he valued the apartments
occupied by them very much; that, were he to carry out her wishes,
everybody in Capri would know it and the tourists would shun those
apartments.
The young lady, who had been gazing at him strangely, sat down on
a chair, and, stuffing her mouth with a handkerchief, burst into
sobs. The wife dried her tears immediately, her face flaring up. She
adopted a louder tone, making demands in her own language, and still
incredulous of the fact that all respect for them had been completely
lost. The proprietor, with a polite dignity, cut her short: if madam
was not pleased with the customs of the hotel, he would not venture to
detain her; and he firmly announced that the body must be gotten away
this very day, at dawn, that the police had already been notified, and
one of the police officers would be here very soon and would carry
out all the necessary formalities. Was it possible to secure even a
common coffin in Capri, madam asks? Regrettably, no,--it was beyond
possibility, and no one would be able to make one in time. It would be
necessary to have recourse to something else.... For instance,--English
soda water came in large and long boxes.... It was possible to knock
the partitions out of such a box....
At night the whole hotel slept. The window in room number forty-three
was opened,--it gave out upon a corner of the garden where, near a high
stone wall with broken glass upon its crest, a phthisic banana tree
was growing; the electric light was switched off; the key was turned
in the door, and everybody went away. The dead man remained in the
darkness,--the blue stars looked down upon him from the sky, a cricket
with a pensive insouciance began his song in the wall.... In the dimly
lit corridor two chambermaids were seated on a window sill, at some
darning. Luigi, in slippers, entered with a pile of clothing in his
arms.
“_Pronto?_ (All ready?)” he asked solicitously, in a ringing whisper,
indicating with his eyes the fearsome door at the end of the corridor.
And, he waved his hand airily in that direction.... “_Partenza!_” he
called out in a whisper, as though he were speeding a train, the usual
phrase used in Italian depots at the departure of trains,--and the
chambermaids, choking with silent laughter, let their heads sink on
each other’s shoulder.
Thereupon, hopping softly, he ran up to the very door, gave it the
merest tap, and, inclining his head to one side, in a low voice, asked
with the utmost deference:
“_Ha sonato signore?_”
And, squeezing his throat, thrusting out his lower jaw, in a grating
voice, slowly and sadly, he answered his own question, as though from
the other side of the door:
“Yes, come in....”[*]
And at dawn, when it had become light beyond the window of room
number forty-three, and a humid wind had begun to rustle the tattered
leaves of the banana tree; when the blue sky of morning had lifted
and spread out over the Island of Capri, and the pure and clear-cut
summit of Monte Solaro had grown aureate against the sun that was
rising beyond the distant blue mountains of Italy; when the stone
masons, who were repairing the tourists’ paths on the island, had set
out to work,--a long box that had formerly been used for soda water
was brought to room number forty-three. Soon it became very heavy,
and was pressing hard against the knees of the junior porter, who
bore it off briskly on a one horse cab over the white paved highway
that was sinuously winding to and fro over the slopes of Capri, among
the stone walls and the vineyards, ever downwards, to the very sea.
The cabby, a puny little man with reddened eyes, in an old, wretched
jacket with short sleeves and in trodden-down shoes, was undergoing
the after effects of drink,--he had diced the whole night through in
a _trattoria_, and kept on lashing his sturdy little horse, tricked
out in the Sicilian fashion, with all sorts of little bells livelily
jingling upon the bridle with its tufts of coloured wool, and upon the
brass points of its high pad; with a yard-long feather stuck in its
cropped forelock,--a feather that shook as the horse ran. The cabby
kept silent; he was oppressed by his shiftlessness, his vices,--by the
fact that he had, that night, lost to the last mite all those coppers
with which his pockets had been filled. But the morning was fresh; in
air such as this, with the sea all around, under the morning sky, the
after effects of drink quickly evaporate, and a man is soon restored
to a carefree mood, and the cabby was furthermore consoled by that
unexpected sum, the opportunity to earn which had been granted him by
some gentleman from San Francisco, whose lifeless head was bobbing from
side to side in the box at his back.... The little steamer,--a beetle
lying far down below, against the tender and vivid deep-blue with
which the Bay of Naples is so densely and highly flooded,--was already
blowing its final whistles, that reverberated loudly all over the
island, whose every bend, every ridge, every stone, was as distinctly
visible from every point as if there were absolutely no such thing as
atmosphere. Near the wharf the junior porter was joined by the senior,
who was speeding with the daughter and wife of the gentleman from San
Francisco in his automobile,--they were pale, with eyes hollow from
tears and a sleepless night. And ten minutes later the little steamer
was again chugging through the water, again running toward Sorrento,
toward Castellamare, carrying away from Capri, for all time, the family
from San Francisco.... And again peace and quiet resumed their reign
upon the island.
Upon this island, two thousand years ago, had lived a man who had
become completely enmeshed in his cruel and foul deeds, who had for
some reason seized the power over millions of people in his hands,
and who, having himself lost his head at the senselessness of this
power and from the fear of death by assassination, lurking in ambush
behind every corner, had committed cruelties beyond all measure,--and
humankind has remembered him for all time; and those who, in their
collusion, just as incomprehensively and, in substance, just as cruelly
as he, reign at present in power over this world, gather from all over
the earth to gaze upon the ruins of that stone villa where he had dwelt
on one of the steepest ascents of the island. On this splendid morning
all those who had come to Capri for just this purpose were still
sleeping in the hotels, although, toward their entrances, were already
being led little mouse-gray burros with red saddles, upon which, after
awaking and sating themselves with food, Americans and Germans, men and
women, young and old, would again clamber up ponderously this day, and
after whom would again run the old Caprian beggar women, with sticks in
their gnarled hands,--would run over stony paths, and always up-hill,
up to the very summit of Mount Tiberio. Set at rest by the fact that
the dead old man from San Francisco, who had likewise been planning
to go with them but instead of that had only frightened them with a
_memento mori_, had already been shipped off to Naples, the travellers
slept on heavily, and the quiet of the island was still undisturbed,
the shops in the city were still shut. The market place on the
_piazetta_ alone was carrying on traffic,--in fish and greens; and the
people there were all simple folk, among whom, without anything to do,
as always, was standing Lorenzo the boatman, famous all over Italy,--a
tall old man, a care-free rake and a handsome fellow, who had served
more than once as a model to many artists; he had brought, and had
already sold for a song, two lobsters that he had caught that night and
which were already rustling in the apron of the cook of that very hotel
where the family from San Francisco had passed the night, and now he
could afford to stand in calm idleness even until the evening, looking
about him with a kingly bearing (a little trick of his), consciously
picturesque with his tatters, clay pipe, and a red woolen _beretta_
drooping over one ear.