SOFIA
Stelio entered La Foscarina's house like a spirit. His mental
exaltation changed the aspect of things. The hall, lighted by a galley
lamp, appeared immense to him. The detached cabin of a gondola standing
on the pavement near the door, startled him as if he had suddenly seen
a coffin.
"Ah, Stelio!" exclaimed the actress, rising with a start and hastening
toward him impetuously, with all the spring of her eagerness that had
been repressed by expectation. "At last!"
She stopped before him suddenly, without touching him. The swift
impulse vibrated in her visibly. She was like a wind when it falls.
"Who has detained you from me?" was her thought, while her heart was
filled with doubt; for in one instant she had discerned something about
the beloved one that rendered him intangible to her--something strange
and far-away in his eyes.
But he had found her most beautiful at the very moment when she
sprang from the shadows, animated by a violence like that of the
tempest sweeping the lagoons. The cry, the gesture, the sudden halt,
the vibration of her body, the light in her countenance suddenly
extinguished like a fire fallen to ashes, the intensity of her gaze,
like the glow of battle, the breath that parted her lips as heat
breaks open the lips of the earth--all these aspects of her real self
showed a capability of pathos comparable only to the effervescence of
natural energies, the power of cosmic force. The artist recognized in
her the Dionysian creature, the living material, apt for receiving the
rhythms of art, to be modeled according to poetic forms. And, because
he saw her character as varying as the waves of the sea, he found
inert the blind mask he thought to put on her face; the tragic fable
through which she was to pass in sadness seemed narrow, and too limited
was the order of sentiment whence she should draw her expressions,
almost subterranean the soul she must reveal. His mental images were
seized with a sort of panic, a fleeting terror. What could be that
single work in the immensity of life? Æschylus composed more than a
hundred tragedies, Sophocles still more. They had constructed a world
with gigantic fragments lifted by their titanic arms. Their labor was
as vast as a cosmogony. The Æschylian figures seemed still warm with
ethereal life, shining with sidereal light, humid from the fertilizing
cloud. The spirit of the Earth worked in the creators.
"Hide me, hide me! Do not ask me anything, and let me be silent!"
he implored, incapable of concealing his perturbation, powerless to
control the tumult of his disordered thoughts.
The woman's heart beat fast in the ignorance of fear.
"Why? What have you done?"
"I suffer."
"From what?"
"Anxiety, anxiety--from that trouble of mine which you know well."
She clasped him in her arms. He felt that she was trembling in doubt.
"Are you mine--are you still mine?" she asked, in a stifled voice, her
lips pressed to his shoulder.
"Yes--always yours."
This woman always suffered a horrible fear every time she saw him
depart from her, every time she saw him return. When he went, was it
not toward the unknown betrothed? When he returned, was it not to bid
her a last farewell?
She clasped him in her arms with the fondness of a lover, a sister, a
mother--with all human love.
"What can I do for you? Tell me!"
A continual need tormented her to offer, to serve, to obey a command
that urged her toward peril, toward a struggle to seize some good that
she might bring to him.
"What can I give you?"
He smiled wearily, overcome by sudden languor.
"What do you wish? Ah, I know!"
He smiled again, allowing himself to be caressed by that voice, by
those adoring hands.
"You wish for everything, do you not? You desire everything?"
Still he smiled sadly, like an ailing child listening to descriptions
of delightful games.
"Ah, if I only could! But no one in the world can give you anything of
any value, dearest friend. Your poetry and your music--they alone can
demand everything. I remember that ode of yours beginning 'I was Pan.'"
He leaned against the faithful heart his head now filled with the light
of beautiful thoughts.
"'I was Pan.'"
Through his spirit passed the splendor of that lyrical moment, the
delirium of that ode.
"Have you seen your sea to-day? Did you see the storm?"
He shook his head, without speaking.
"Was it a great storm? One day you told me that you have many mariners
among your forefathers. Have you been thinking to-day of your home on
the dunes? Are you homesick for the sand? Do you wish to go back there?
You have worked a great deal there, and have done great work. It is a
consecrated house. Your mother was with you while you worked. You could
hear her stepping softly in the next room. Sometimes she stopped to
listen, did she not?"
He embraced her silently. That voice penetrated his very soul, and
refreshed it.
"And your sister was with you, too? You told me her name once, and I
have not forgotten it. She is called Sofia. I know that she is like
you. I should like to hear her speak once, or to watch her walking
along the road. Once you praised her hands. They are beautiful, are
they not? You told me one day that when she is sad her hands hurt her,
as if they were the roots of her soul. That is what you said--'the
roots of her soul.'"
He listened, almost happy. How had she discovered the secret of
soothing him, the balm for his soul? From what hidden spring did she
draw the fluid melody of those memories?
"Sofia never will know the good she has done to the poor traveler. I
know little of Sofia herself, but I know that she resembles you, and I
have often pictured her to myself. I can see her at this moment. When
I have been in distant countries, far-away among strangers, feeling
almost lost, she has appeared to me often, and borne me company. She
has appeared to me suddenly, when I had neither called nor expected
her. Once I saw her at Mürren, where I had arrived after a long, weary
journey, made in order to see a poor friend who was at the point of
death. Day was breaking; the mountains had that cold, delicate color
of beryl that is seen only among glaciers. Why did she come? We
waited, together. The sun touched the summits of the mountains. Then a
brilliant rainbow crowned them for a moment, then vanished. And Sofia
vanished with the rainbow, with the miracle."
He listened, almost happy. Were not all the beauty and all the truth
that he himself would like to express contained in a stone, or in a
flower of those mountains? The most tragic struggle of human passions
was not worth the apparition of that mystic light upon the eternal
snows.
"And another time?" he asked softly, for the pause was long, and he
feared that she would not continue. She smiled, then looked sad.
"Another time I was at Alexandria in Egypt, in a time of confused
horror, as if after a shipwreck. The city had an aspect of
putrefaction, like a city in decay. I remember: a street full of
muddy water; a white horse, thin as a skeleton, that splashed in the
water, its mane and tail of an ochre color; the turrets of an Arabian
cemetery, the far-away gleam of the marsh of Mareotis. What misery!
What disgust!"
"Oh, dear soul, never, never again shall you be left alone and
despairing," said Stelio in his heart, now filled with fraternal
tenderness for the nomad woman who recalled the sadness of her
continual wanderings.
"And another time?" he said aloud.
"Another time it was in Vienna, in a museum. There was a great, empty
hall, the rain whipped against the windows; innumerable precious relics
were there in crystal cases; the signs of death were everywhere, exiled
things no longer prayed to or adored. Together Sofia and I leaned over
a case containing a collection of holy arms, with their metal hands
fixed in an immovable gesture. There were martyr's hands sown with
agates, amethysts, topaz, garnets, and pale turquoises. Through certain
openings, splinters of bone were visible. One hand held a golden lily,
another a miniature city, another clasped a column. One was smaller
than the others; it had a ring on every finger, and held a vase full of
ointment: the relics of Mary Magdalene. Exiled things, become profane,
no longer prayed to or adored. Is Sofia devout? Has she the habit of
prayer?"
He did not reply. He felt that he should not speak, nor give any
visible sign of his own life in the enchantment of that distant life.
"Sometimes your sister used to enter your room while you were at work,
and lay a blade of grass on the page newly begun."
The enchantress trembled; a veiled image seemed to be suddenly
revealing itself.--Do you know that I began to love her--the girl that
sings, the girl whom you cannot have forgotten--because I thought of
your sister? Yes--in order to pour into a pure soul the tenderness my
soul wished to offer to your sister, from whom so many cruel things
separated me! Do you know that?--
Those words quivered with life, but they were not spoken; yet the voice
trembled at their mute presence.
"Then you would grant yourself a few moments of rest. You went to the
window with her, and both gazed out upon the sea. A plowman drove his
young oxen over the sand to teach them a straight furrow. When they
were finally taught, they no longer plowed the sand, but went up on the
hill. Who has told me these things?"
He himself had told her once, almost in the same words, but now these
memories came back like unexpected visions.
"Then flocks of sheep passed along the shore; they came from the
mountains, and were on the way to the plains of the Puglia. All was
still; a golden silence covered the shore. Later, you went with
your sister, and followed the tracks left by the sheep along the wet
sand.... Who has told me all these things?"
Stelio's fevered mind was calmed. A slow peace, like slumber, descended
upon him.
"Then sudden storms sprang up; the sea sometimes overflowed the dunes
and the land, leaving foam on juniper and tamarisk trees, on myrtle and
rosemary. Heaps of seaweed and jetsam would be thrown on the beach. A
boat had been wrecked somewhere. The sea brought firewood to the poor,
and mourning to heaven knows whom! The beach would be thronged with
people, each trying to collect the largest bundle of wood. Then your
sister would bring other aid--bread, wine, vegetables, linen. Blessings
would rise louder than the noise of the waves. You looked out of the
window, and thought that none of your beautiful images was worth the
odor of warm bread. You left the half-finished page, and hurried to
help Sofia, speaking to the women, the children and the old men.... Who
has told me all these things?"