[Illustration]
THE GENTLEMAN FROM
SAN FRANCISCO
_AND OTHER STORIES_
------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE GENTLEMAN FROM
SAN FRANCISCO
_AND OTHER STORIES_
NOTE
The first story in this book "The
Gentleman from San Francisco" is
translated by D. H. Lawrence and S. S.
Koteliansky. Owing to a mistake Mr.
Lawrence's name has been omitted from the
title-page. The three other stories are
translated by S. S. Koteliansky and
Leonard Woolf.
PUBLISHED BY LEONARD & VIRGINIA WOOLF AT
THE HOGARTH PRESS, PARADISE ROAD, RICHMOND
1922
------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE GENTLEMAN FROM
SAN FRANCISCO
_AND OTHER STORIES_
BY
I. A. BUNIN
TRANSLATED FROM THE RUSSIAN BY
S. S. KOTELIANSKY AND LEONARD WOOLF
PUBLISHED BY LEONARD & VIRGINIA WOOLF AT
THE HOGARTH PRESS, PARADISE ROAD, RICHMOND
1922
------------------------------------------------------------------------
_Printed in Great Britain
by
William Clowes and Sons, Limited,
London and Beccles._
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CONTENTS
PAGE
The Gentleman from San Francisco 1
Gentle Breathing 41
Kasimir Stanislavovitch 51
Son 66
------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE GENTLEMAN FROM SAN
FRANCISCO
"Woe to thee, Babylon, that mighty city!"
Apocalypse.
The gentleman from San Francisco--nobody either in Capri or Naples ever
remembered his name--was setting out with his wife and daughter for the
Old World, to spend there two years of pleasure.
He was fully convinced of his right to rest, to enjoy long and
comfortable travels, and so forth. Because, in the first place he was
rich, and in the second place, notwithstanding his fifty-eight years, he
was just starting to live. Up to the present he had not lived, but only
existed; quite well, it is true, yet with all his hopes on the future.
He had worked incessantly--and the Chinamen whom he employed by the
thousand in his factories knew what that meant. Now at last he realized
that a great deal had been accomplished, and that he had almost reached
the level of those whom he had taken as his ideals, so he made up his
mind to pause for a breathing space. Men of his class usually began
their enjoyments with a trip to Europe, India, Egypt. He decided to do
the same. He wished naturally to reward himself in the first place for
all his years of toil, but he was quite glad that his wife and daughter
should also share in his pleasures. True, his wife was not distinguished
by any marked susceptibilities, but then elderly American women are all
passionate travellers. As for his daughter, a girl no longer young and
somewhat delicate, travel was really necessary for her: apart from the
question of health, do not happy meetings often take place in the course
of travel? One may find one's self sitting next to a multimillionaire at
table, or examining frescoes side by side with him.
The itinerary planned by the Gentleman of San Francisco was extensive.
In December and January he hoped to enjoy the sun of southern Italy, the
monuments of antiquity, the tarantella, the serenades of vagrant
minstrels, and, finally, that which men of his age are most susceptible
to, the love of quite young Neapolitan girls, even when the love is not
altogether disinterestedly given. Carnival he thought of spending in
Nice, in Monte Carlo, where at that season gathers the most select
society, the precise society on which depend all the blessings of
civilization--the fashion in evening dress, the stability of thrones,
the declaration of wars, the prosperity of hotels; where some devote
themselves passionately to automobile and boat races, others to
roulette, others to what is called flirtation, and others to the
shooting of pigeons which beautifully soar from their traps over emerald
lawns, against a background of forget-me-not sea, instantly to fall,
hitting the ground in little white heaps. The beginning of March he
wished to devote to Florence, Passion Week in Rome, to hear the music of
the Miserere; his plans also included Venice, Paris, bull-fights in
Seville, bathing in the British Isles; then Athens, Constantinople,
Egypt, even Japan ... certainly on his way home... . And everything at
the outset went splendidly.
It was the end of November. Practically all the way to Gibraltar the
voyage passed in icy darkness, varied by storms of wet snow. Yet the
ship travelled well, even without much rolling. The passengers on board
were many, and all people of some importance. The boat, the famous
_Atlantis_, resembled a most expensive European hotel with all modern
equipments: a night refreshment bar, Turkish baths, a newspaper printed
on board; so that the days aboard the liner passed in the most select
manner. The passengers rose early, to the sound of bugles sounding
shrilly through the corridors in that grey twilit hour, when day was
breaking slowly and sullenly over the grey-green, watery desert, which
rolled heavily in the fog. Clad in their flannel pyjamas, the gentlemen
took coffee, chocolate, or cocoa, then seated themselves in marble
baths, did exercises, thereby whetting their appetite and their sense of
well-being, made their toilet for the day, and proceeded to breakfast.
Till eleven o'clock they were supposed to stroll cheerfully on deck,
breathing the cold freshness of the ocean; or they played table-tennis
or other games, that they might have an appetite for their eleven
o'clock refreshment of sandwiches and bouillon; after which they read
their newspaper with pleasure, and calmly awaited luncheon--which was a
still more varied and nourishing meal than breakfast. The two hours
which followed luncheon were devoted to rest. All the decks were crowded
with lounge chairs on which lay passengers wrapped in plaids, looking at
the mist-heavy sky or the foamy hillocks which flashed behind the bows,
and dozing sweetly. Till five o'clock, when, refreshed and lively, they
were treated to strong, fragrant tea and sweet cakes. At seven
bugle-calls announced a dinner of nine courses. And now the Gentleman
from San Francisco, rubbing his hands in a rising flush of vital forces,
hastened to his state cabin to dress.
In the evening, the tiers of the _Atlantis_ yawned in the darkness as
with innumerable fiery eyes, and a multitude of servants in the
kitchens, sculleries, wine-cellars, worked with a special frenzy. The
ocean heaving beyond was terrible, but no one thought of it, firmly
believing in the captain's power over it. The captain was a
ginger-haired man of monstrous size and weight, apparently always
torpid, who looked in his uniform with broad gold stripes very like a
huge idol, and who rarely emerged from his mysterious chambers to show
himself to the passengers. Every minute the siren howled from the bows
with hellish moroseness, and screamed with fury, but few diners heard
it--it was drowned by the sounds of an excellent string band,
exquisitely and untiringly playing in the huge two-tiered hall that was
decorated with marble and covered with velvet carpets, flooded with
feasts of light from crystal chandeliers and gilded girandoles, and
crowded with ladies in bare shoulders and jewels, with men in
dinner-jackets, elegant waiters and respectful _maîtres d'hôtel_, one of
whom, he who took the wine-orders only, wore a chain round his neck like
a lord mayor. Dinner-jacket and perfect linen made the Gentleman from
San Francisco look much younger. Dry, of small stature, badly built but
strongly made, polished to a glow and in due measure animated, he sat in
the golden-pearly radiance of this palace, with a bottle of amber
Johannisberg at his hand, and glasses, large and small, of delicate
crystal, and a curly bunch of fresh hyacinths. There was something
Mongolian in his yellowish face with its trimmed silvery moustache,
large teeth blazing with gold, and strong bald head blazing like old
ivory. Richly dressed, but in keeping with her age, sat his wife, a big,
broad, quiet woman. Intricately, but lightly and transparently dressed,
with an innocent immodesty, sat his daughter, tall, slim, her
magnificent hair splendidly done, her breath fragrant with violet
cachous, and the tenderest little rosy moles showing near her lip and
between her bare, slightly powdered shoulder blades. The dinner lasted
two whole hours, to be followed by dancing in the ball-room, whence the
men, including, of course, the Gentleman from San Francisco, proceeded
to the bar; there, with their feet cocked up on the tables, they settled
the destinies of nations in the course of their political and
stock-exchange conversations, smoking meanwhile Havana cigars and
drinking liqueurs till they were crimson in the face, waited on all the
while by negroes in red jackets with eyes like peeled, hard-boiled eggs.
Outside, the ocean heaved in black mountains; the snow-storm hissed
furiously in the clogged cordage; the steamer trembled in every fibre as
she surmounted these watery hills and struggled with the storm,
ploughing through the moving masses which every now and then reared in
front of her, foam-crested. The siren, choked by the fog, groaned in
mortal anguish. The watchmen in the look-out towers froze with cold, and
went mad with their super-human straining of attention. As the gloomy
and sultry depths of the inferno, as the ninth circle, was the submerged
womb of the steamer, where gigantic furnaces roared and dully giggled,
devouring with their red-hot maws mountains of coal cast hoarsely in by
men naked to the waist, bathed in their own corrosive dirty sweat, and
lurid with the purple-red reflection of flame. But in the refreshment
bar men jauntily put their feet up on the tables, showing their
patent-leather pumps, and sipped cognac or other liqueurs, and swam in
waves of fragrant smoke as they chatted in well-bred manner. In the
dancing hall light and warmth and joy were poured over everything;
couples turned in the waltz or writhed in the tango, while the music
insistently, shamelessly, delightfully, with sadness entreated for one,
only one thing, one and the same thing all the time. Amongst this
resplendent crowd was an ambassador, a little dry modest old man; a
great millionaire, clean-shaven, tall, of an indefinite age, looking
like a prelate in his old-fashioned dress-coat; also a famous Spanish
author, and an international beauty already the least bit faded, of
unenviable reputation; finally an exquisite loving couple, whom
everybody watched curiously because of their unconcealed happiness: _he_
danced only with _her_, and sang, with great skill, only to _her_
accompaniment, and everything about them seemed so charming!--and only
the captain knew that this couple had been engaged by the steamship
company to play at love for a good salary, and that they had been
sailing for a long time, now on one liner, now on another.
At Gibraltar the sun gladdened them all: it was like early spring. A new
passenger appeared on board, arousing general interest. He was a
hereditary prince of a certain Asiatic state, travelling incognito: a
small man, as if all made of wood, though his movements were alert;
broad-faced, in gold-rimmed glasses, a little unpleasant because of his
large black moustache which was sparse and transparent like that of a
corpse; but on the whole inoffensive, simple, modest. In the
Mediterranean they met once more the breath of winter. Waves, large and
florid as the tail of a peacock, waves with snow-white crests heaved
under the impulse of the tramontane wind, and came merrily, madly
rushing towards the ship, in the bright lustre of a perfectly clear sky.
The next day the sky began to pale, the horizon grew dim, land was
approaching: Ischia, Capri could be seen through the glasses, then
Naples herself, looking like pieces of sugar strewn at the foot of some
dove-coloured mass; whilst beyond, vague and deadly white with snow, a
range of distant mountains. The decks were crowded. Many ladies and
gentlemen were putting on light fur-trimmed coats. Noiseless Chinese
servant boys, bandy-legged, with pitch-black plaits hanging down to
their heels, and with girlish thick eyebrows, unobtrusively came and
went, carrying up the stairways plaids, canes, valises, hand-bags of
crocodile leather, and never speaking above a whisper. The daughter of
the Gentleman from San Francisco stood side by side with the prince,
who, by a happy circumstance, had been introduced to her the previous
evening. She had the air of one looking fixedly into the distance
towards something which he was pointing out to her, and which he was
explaining hurriedly, in a low voice. Owing to his size, he looked
amongst the rest like a boy. Altogether he was not handsome, rather
queer, with his spectacles, bowler hat, and English coat, and then the
hair of his sparse moustache just like horse-hair, and the swarthy, thin
skin of his face seeming stretched over his features and slightly
varnished. But the girl listened to him, and was so excited that she did
not know what he was saying. Her heart beat with incomprehensible
rapture because of him, because he was standing next to her and talking
to her, to her alone. Everything, everything about him was so
unusual--his dry hands, his clean skin under which flowed ancient, royal
blood, even his plain, but somehow particularly tidy European dress;
everything was invested with an indefinable glamour, with all that was
calculated to enthrall a young woman. The Gentleman from San Francisco,
wearing for his part a silk hat and grey spats over patent-leather
shoes, kept eyeing the famous beauty who stood near him, a tall,
wonderful figure, blonde, with her eyes painted according to the latest
Parisian fashion, holding on a silver chain a tiny, cringing, hairless
little dog, to which she was addressing herself all the time. And the
daughter, feeling some vague embarrassment, tried not to notice her
father.
Like all Americans, he was very liberal with his money when travelling.
And like all of them, he believed in the full sincerity and good-will of
those who brought his food and drinks, served him from morn till night,
anticipated his smallest desire, watched over his cleanliness and rest,
carried his things, called the porters, conveyed his trunks to the
hotels. So it was everywhere, so it was during the voyage, so it ought
to be in Naples. Naples grew and drew nearer. The brass band, shining
with the brass of their instruments, had already assembled on deck.
Suddenly they deafened everybody with the strains of their triumphant
rag-time. The giant captain appeared in full uniform on the bridge, and
like a benign pagan idol waved his hands to the passengers in a gesture
of welcome. And to the Gentleman from San Francisco, as well as to every
other passenger, it seemed as if for him alone was thundered forth that
rag-time march, so greatly beloved by proud America; for him alone the
Captain's hand waved, welcoming him on his safe arrival. Then, when at
last the _Atlantis_ entered port and veered her many-tiered mass against
the quay that was crowded with expectant people, when the gangways began
their rattling--ah, then what a lot of porters and their assistants in
caps with golden galloons, what a lot of all sorts of commissionaires,
whistling boys, and sturdy ragamuffins with packs of postcards in their
hands rushed to meet the Gentleman from San Francisco with offers of
their services! With what amiable contempt he grinned at those
ragamuffins as he walked to the automobile of the very same hotel at
which the prince would probably put up, and calmly muttered between his
teeth, now in English, now in Italian--"Go away! Via!"
Life at Naples started immediately in the set routine. Early in the
morning, breakfast in a gloomy dining-room with a draughty damp wind
blowing in from the windows that opened on to a little stony garden: a
cloudy, unpromising day, and a crowd of guides at the doors of the
vestibule. Then the first smiles of a warm, pinky-coloured sun, and from
the high, overhanging balcony a view of Vesuvius, bathed to the feet in
the radiant vapours of the morning sky, while beyond, over the
silvery-pearly ripple of the bay, the subtle outline of Capri upon the
horizon! Then nearer, tiny donkeys running in two-wheeled buggies away
below on the sticky embankment, and detachments of tiny soldiers
marching off with cheerful and defiant music.
After this a walk to the taxi-stand, and a slow drive along crowded,
narrow, damp corridors of streets, between high, many-windowed houses.
Visits to deadly-clean museums, smoothly and pleasantly lighted, but
monotonously, as if from the reflection of snow. Or visits to churches,
cold, smelling of wax, and always the same thing: a majestic portal,
curtained with a heavy leather curtain: inside, a huge emptiness,
silence, lonely little flames of clustered candles ruddying the depths
of the interior on some altar decorated with ribbon: a forlorn old woman
amid dark benches, slippery gravestones under one's feet, and somebody's
infallibly famous "Descent from the Cross." Luncheon at one o'clock on
San Martino, where quite a number of the very selectest people gather
about midday, and where once the daughter of the Gentleman from San
Francisco almost became ill with joy, fancying she saw the prince
sitting in the hall, although she knew from the newspapers that he had
gone to Rome for a time. At five o'clock, tea in the hotel, in the smart
salon where it was so warm, with the deep carpets and blazing fires.
After which the thought of dinner--and again the powerful commanding
voice of the gong heard over all the floors, and again strings of
bare-shouldered ladies rustling with their silks on the staircases and
reflecting themselves in the mirrors, again the wide-flung, hospitable,
palatial dining-room, the red jackets of musicians on the platform, the
black flock of waiters around the _maître d'hôtel_, who with
extraordinary skill was pouring out a thick, roseate soup into
soup-plates. The dinners, as usual, were the crowning event of the day.
Every one dressed as if for a wedding, and so abundant were the dishes,
the wines, the table-waters, sweetmeats, and fruit, that at about eleven
o'clock in the evening the chamber-maids would take to every room rubber
hot-water bottles, to warm the stomachs of those who had dined.
None the less, December of that year was not a success for Naples. The
porters and secretaries were abashed if spoken to about the weather,
only guiltily lifting their shoulders and murmuring that they could not
possibly remember such a season; although this was not the first year
they had had to make such murmurs, or to hint that "everywhere something
terrible is happening." ... Unprecedented rains and storms on the
Riviera, snow in Athens, Etna also piled with snow and glowing red at
night; tourists fleeing from the cold of Palermo.... The morning sun
daily deceived the Neapolitans. The sky invariably grew grey towards
midday, and fine rain began to fall, falling thicker and colder. The
palms of the hotel approach glistened like wet tin; the city seemed
peculiarly dirty and narrow, the museums excessively dull; the
cigar-ends of the fat cab-men, whose rubber rain-capes flapped like
wings in the wind, seemed insufferably stinking, the energetic cracking
of whips over the ears of thin-necked horses sounded altogether false,
and the clack of the shoes of the signorini who cleaned the tram-lines
quite horrible, while the women, walking through the mud, with their
black heads uncovered in the rain, seemed disgustingly short-legged: not
to mention the stench and dampness of foul fish which drifted from the
quay where the sea was foaming. The gentleman and lady from San
Francisco began to bicker in the mornings; their daughter went about
pale and head-achey, and then roused up again, went into raptures over
everything, and was lovely, charming. Charming were those tender,
complicated feelings which had been aroused in her by the meeting with
the plain little man in whose veins ran such special blood. But after
all, does it matter _what_ awakens a maiden soul--whether it is money,
fame, or noble birth?... Everybody declared that in Sorrento, or in
Capri, it was quite different. There it was warmer, sunnier, the
lemon-trees were in bloom, the morals were purer, the wine
unadulterated. So behold, the family from San Francisco decided to go
with all their trunks to Capri, after which they would return and settle
down in Sorrento: when they had seen Capri, trodden the stones where
stood Tiberius' palaces, visited the famous caves of the Blue Grotto,
and listened to the pipers from Abruzzi, who wander about the isle
during the month of the Nativity, singing the praises of the Virgin.
On the day of departure--a very memorable day for the family from San
Francisco--the sun did not come out even in the morning. A heavy fog hid
Vesuvius to the base, and came greying low over the leaden heave of the
sea, whose waters were concealed from the eye at a distance of half a
mile. Capri was completely invisible, as if it had never existed on
earth. The little steamer that was making for the island tossed so
violently from side to side that the family from San Francisco lay like
stones on the sofas in the miserable saloon of the tiny boat, their feet
wrapped in plaids, and their eyes closed. The lady, as she thought,
suffered worst of all, and several times was overcome with sickness. It
seemed to her that she was dying. But the stewardess who came to and fro
with the basin, the stewardess who had been for years, day in, day out,
through heat and cold, tossing on these waves, and who was still
indefatigable, even kind to every one--she only smiled. The younger lady
from San Francisco was deathly pale, and held in her teeth a slice of
lemon. Now not even the thought of meeting the prince at Sorrento, where
he was due to arrive by Christmas, could gladden her. The gentleman lay
flat on his back, in a broad overcoat and a flat cap, and did not loosen
his jaws throughout the voyage. His face grew dark, his moustache white,
his head ached furiously. For the last few days, owing to the bad
weather, he had been drinking heavily, and had more than once admired
the "tableaux vivants." The rain whipped on the rattling window-panes,
under which water dripped on to the sofas, the wind beat the masts with
a howl, and at moments, aided by an onrushing wave, laid the little
steamer right on its side, whereupon something would roll noisily away
below. At the stopping places, Castellamare, Sorrento, things were a
little better. But even the ship heaved frightfully, and the coast with
all its precipices, gardens, pines, pink and white hotels, and hazy,
curly green mountains swooped past the window, up and down, as it were
on swings. The boats bumped against the side of the ship, the sailors
and passengers shouted lustily, and somewhere a child, as if crushed to
death, choked itself with screaming. The damp wind blew through the
doors, and outside on the sea, from a reeling boat which showed the flag
of the Hotel Royal, a fellow with guttural French exaggeration yelled
unceasingly: "Rrroy-al! Hotel Rrroy-al!" intending to lure passengers
aboard his craft. Then the Gentleman from San Francisco, feeling, as he
ought to have felt, quite an old man, thought with anguish and spite of
all these "Royals," "Splendids," "Excelsiors," and of these greedy,
good-for-nothing, garlic-stinking fellows called Italians. Once, during
a halt, on opening his eyes and rising from the sofa he saw under the
rocky cliff-curtain of the coast a heap of such miserable stone hovels,
all musty and mouldy, stuck on top of one another by the very water,
among the boats, and the rags of all sorts, tin cans and brown
fishing-nets, and, remembering that this was the very Italy he had come
to enjoy, he was seized with despair.... At last, in the twilight, the
black mass of the island began to loom nearer, looking as if it were
bored through at the base with little red lights. The wind grew softer,
warmer, more sweet-smelling. Over the tamed waves, undulating like black
oil, there came flowing golden boa-constrictors of light from the
lanterns of the harbour.... Then suddenly the anchor rumbled and fell
with a splash into the water. Furious cries of the boatmen shouting
against one another came from all directions. And relief was felt at
once. The electric light of the cabin shone brighter, and a desire to
eat, drink, smoke, move once more made itself felt.... Ten minutes later
the family from San Francisco disembarked into a large boat; in a
quarter of an hour they had stepped on to the stones of the quay, and
were soon seated in the bright little car of the funicular railway. With
a buzz they were ascending the slope, past the stakes of the vineyards
and wet, sturdy orange-trees, here and there protected by straw screens,
past the thick glossy foliage and the brilliancy of orange fruits....
Sweetly smells the earth in Italy after rain, and each of her islands
has its own peculiar aroma.
The island of Capri was damp and dark that evening. For the moment,
however, it had revived, and was lighted up here and there as usual at
the hour of the steamer's arrival. At the top of the ascent, on the
little piazza by the funicular station stood the crowd of those whose
duty it was to receive with propriety the luggage of the Gentleman from
San Francisco. There were other arrivals too, but none worthy of notice:
a few Russians who had settled in Capri, untidy and absent-minded owing
to their bookish thoughts, spectacled, bearded, half-buried in the
upturned collars of their thick woollen overcoats. Then a group of
long-legged, long-necked, round-headed German youths in Tirolese
costumes, with knapsacks over their shoulders, needing no assistance,
feeling everywhere at home and always economical in tips. The Gentleman
from San Francisco, who kept quietly apart from both groups, was marked
out at once. He and his ladies were hastily assisted from the car, men
ran in front to show them the way, and they set off on foot, surrounded
by urchins and by the sturdy Capri women who carry on their heads the
luggage of decent travellers. Across the piazza, that looked like an
opera scene in the light of the electric globe that swung aloft in the
damp wind, clacked the wooden pattens of the women-porters. The gang of
urchins began to whistle to the Gentleman from San Francisco, and to
turn somersaults around him, whilst he, as if on the stage, marched
among them towards a mediæval archway and under huddled houses, behind
which led a little echoing lane, past tufts of palm-trees showing above
the flat roofs to the left, and under the stars in the dark blue sky,
upwards towards the shining entrance of the hotel.... And again it
seemed as if purely in honour of the guests from San Francisco the damp
little town on the rocky little island of the Mediterranean had revived
from its evening stupor, that their arrival alone had made the hotel
proprietor so happy and hearty, and that for them had been waiting the
Chinese gong which sent its howlings through all the house the moment
they crossed the doorstep.
The sight of the proprietor, a superbly elegant young man with a polite
and exquisite bow, startled for a moment the Gentleman from San
Francisco. In the first flash, he remembered that amid the chaos of
images which had possessed him the previous night in his sleep, he had
seen that very man, to a _t_ the same man, in the same full-skirted
frock-coat and with the same glossy, perfectly smoothed hair. Startled,
he hesitated for a second. But long, long ago he had lost the last
mustard-seed of any mystical feeling he might ever have had, and his
surprise at once faded. He told the curious coincidence of dream and
reality jestingly to his wife and daughter, as they passed along the
hotel corridor. And only his daughter glanced at him with a little
alarm. Her heart suddenly contracted with home-sickness, with such a
violent feeling of loneliness in this dark, foreign island, that she
nearly wept. As usual, however, she did not mention her feelings to her
father.
Reuss XVII., a high personage who had spent three whole weeks on Capri,
had just left, and the visitors were installed in the suite of rooms
that he had occupied. To them was assigned the most beautiful and expert
chambermaid, a Belgian with a thin, firmly corseted figure, and a
starched cap in the shape of a tiny indented crown. The most experienced
and distinguished-looking footman was placed at their service, a
coal-black, fiery-eyed Sicilian, and also the smartest waiter, the
small, stout Luigi, a tremendous buffoon, who had seen a good deal of
life. In a minute or two a gentle tap was heard at the door of the
Gentleman from San Francisco, and there stood the _maître d'hôtel_, a
Frenchman, who had come to ask if the guests would take dinner, and to
report, in case of answer in the affirmative--of which, however, he had
small doubt--that this evening there were Mediterranean lobsters, roast
beef, asparagus, pheasants, etc., etc. The floor was still rocking under
the feet of the Gentleman from San Francisco, so rolled about had he
been on that wretched, grubby Italian steamer. Yet with his own hands,
calmly, though clumsily from lack of experience, he closed the window
which had banged at the entrance of the _maître d'hôtel_, shutting out
the drifting smell of distant kitchens and of wet flowers in the garden.
Then he turned and replied with unhurried distinctness, that they would
take dinner, that their table must be far from the door, in the very
centre of the dining-room, that they would have local wine and
champagne, moderately dry and slightly cooled. To all of which the
_maître d'hôtel_ gave assent in the most varied intonations, which
conveyed that there was not and could not be the faintest question of
the justness of the desires of the Gentleman from San Francisco, and
that everything should be exactly as he wished. At the end he inclined
his head and politely inquired:
"Is that all, sir?"
On receiving a lingering "Yes," he added that Carmela and Giuseppe,
famous all over Italy and "to all the world of tourists," were going to
dance the tarantella that evening in the hall.
"I have seen picture-postcards of her," said the Gentleman from San
Francisco, in a voice expressive of nothing. "And is Giuseppe her
husband?"
"Her cousin, sir," replied the _maître d'hôtel_.
The Gentleman from San Francisco was silent for a while, thinking of
something, but saying nothing; then he dismissed the man with a nod of
the head. After which he began to make preparations as if for his
wedding. He turned on all the electric lights, and filled the mirrors
with brilliance and reflection of furniture and open trunks. He began to
shave and wash, ringing the bell every minute, and down the corridor
raced and crossed the impatient ringings from the rooms of his wife and
daughter. Luigi, with the nimbleness peculiar to certain stout people,
making grimaces of horror which brought tears of laughter to the eyes of
chambermaids dashing past with marble-white pails, turned a cart-wheel
to the gentleman's door, and tapping with his knuckles, in a voice of
sham timidity and respectfulness reduced to idiocy, asked:
"Ha suonato, Signore?"
From behind the door, a slow, grating, offensively polite voice:
"Yes, come in."
What were the feelings, what were the thoughts of the Gentleman from San
Francisco on that evening so significant to him? He felt nothing
exceptional, since unfortunately everything on this earth is too simple
in appearance. Even had he felt something imminent in his soul, all the
same he would have reasoned that, whatever it might be, it could not
take place immediately. Besides, as with all who have just experienced
sea-sickness, he was very hungry, and looked forward with delight to the
first spoonful of soup, the first mouthful of wine. So he performed the
customary business of dressing in a state of excitement which left no
room for reflection.
Having shaved, washed, and dexterously arranged several artificial
teeth, standing in front of the mirror, he moistened his silver-mounted
brushes and plastered the remains of his thick pearly hair on his
swarthy yellow skull. He drew on to his strong old body, with its
abdomen protuberant from excessive good living, his cream-coloured silk
underwear, put black silk socks and patent-leather slippers on his
flat-footed feet. He put sleeve-links in the shining cuffs of his
snow-white shirt, and bending forward so that his shirt front bulged
out, he arranged his trousers that were pulled up high by his silk
braces, and began to torture himself, putting his collar-stud through
the stiff collar. The floor was still rocking beneath him, the tips of
his fingers hurt, the stud at moments pinched the flabby skin in the
recess under his Adam's apple, but he persisted, and at last, with eyes
all strained and face dove-blue from the over-tight collar that enclosed
his throat, he finished the business and sat down exhausted in front of
the pier glass, which reflected the whole of him, and repeated him in
all the other mirrors.
"It is awful!" he muttered, dropping his strong, bald head, but without
trying to understand or to know what was awful. Then, with habitual
careful attention examining his gouty-jointed short fingers and large,
convex, almond-shaped finger-nails, he repeated: "It is awful...."
As if from a pagan temple shrilly resounded the second gong through the
hotel. The Gentleman from San Francisco got up hastily, pulled his
shirt-collar still tighter with his tie, and his abdomen tighter with
his open waistcoat, settled his cuffs and again examined himself in the
mirror.... "That Carmela, swarthy, with her enticing eyes, looking like
a mulatto in her dazzling-coloured dress, chiefly orange, she must be an
extraordinary dancer----" he was thinking. So, cheerfully leaving his
room and walking on the carpet to his wife's room, he called to ask if
they were nearly ready.
"In five minutes, Dad," came the gay voice of the girl from behind the
door. "I'm arranging my hair."
"Right-o!" said the Gentleman from San Francisco.
Imagining to himself her long hair hanging to the floor, he slowly
walked along the corridors and staircases covered with red carpet,
downstairs, looking for the reading-room. The servants he encountered on
the way pressed close to the wall, and he walked past as if not noticing
them. An old lady, late for dinner, already stooping with age, with
milk-white hair and yet _decolletée_ in her pale grey silk dress,
hurried at top speed, funnily, henlike, and he easily overtook her. By
the glass-door of the dining-room, wherein the guests had already
started the meal, he stopped before a little table heaped with boxes of
cigars and cigarettes, and taking a large Manilla, threw three liras on
the table. After which he passed along the winter terrace, and glanced
through an open window. From the darkness came a waft of soft air, and
there loomed the top of an old palm-tree that spread its boughs over the
stars, looking like a giant, bringing down the far-off smooth quivering
of the sea.... In the reading-room, cosy with the shaded reading-lamps,
a grey, untidy German, looking rather like Ibsen in his round
silver-rimmed spectacles and with mad astonished eyes, stood rustling
the newspapers. After coldly eyeing him, the Gentleman from San
Francisco seated himself in a deep leather armchair in a corner, by a
lamp with a green shade, put on his pince-nez, and, with a stretch of
his neck because of the tightness of his shirt-collar, obliterated
himself behind a newspaper. He glanced over the headlines, read a few
sentences about the never-ending Balkan war, then with a habitual
movement turned over the page of the newspaper--when suddenly the lines
blazed up before him in a glassy sheen, his neck swelled, his eyes
bulged, and the pince-nez came flying off his nose.... He lunged
forward, wanted to breathe--and rattled wildly. His lower jaw dropped,
and his mouth shone with gold fillings. His head fell swaying on his
shoulder, his shirt-front bulged out basket-like, and all his body,
writhing, with heels scraping up the carpet, slid down to the floor,
struggling desperately with some invisible foe.
If the German had not been in the reading-room, the frightful affair
could have been hushed up. Instantly, through obscure passages the
Gentleman from San Francisco could have been hurried away to some dark
corner, and not a single guest would have discovered what he had been up
to. But the German dashed out of the room with a yell, alarming the
house and all the diners. Many sprang up from the table, upsetting their
chairs, many, pallid, ran towards the reading-room, and in every
language it was asked: "What--what's the matter?" None answered
intelligibly, nobody understood, for even to-day people are more
surprised at death than at anything else, and never want to believe it
is true. The proprietor rushed from one guest to another, trying to keep
back those who were hastening up, to soothe them with assurances that it
was a mere trifle, a fainting-fit that had overcome a certain Gentleman
from San Francisco.... But no one heeded him. Many saw how the porters
and waiters were tearing off the tie, waistcoat, and crumpled dress-coat
from that same gentleman, even, for some reason or other, pulling off
his patent evening-shoes from his black-silk, flat-footed feet. And he
was still writhing. He continued to struggle with death, by no means
wanting to yield to that which had so unexpectedly and rudely overtaken
him. He rolled his head, rattled like one throttled, and turned up the
whites of his eyes as if he were drunk. When he had been hastily carried
into room No. 43, the smallest, wretchedest, dampest, and coldest room
at the end of the bottom corridor, his daughter came running with her
hair all loose, her dressing-gown flying open, showing her bosom raised
by her corsets: then his wife, large and heavy and completely dressed
for dinner, her mouth opened round with terror. But by that time he had
already ceased rolling his head.
In a quarter of an hour the hotel settled down somehow or other. But the
evening was ruined. The guests, returning to the dining-room, finished
their dinner in silence, with a look of injury on their faces, whilst
the proprietor went from one to another, shrugging his shoulders in
hopeless and natural irritation, feeling himself guilty through no fault
of his own, assuring everybody that he perfectly realized "how
disagreeable this is," and giving his word that he would take "every
possible measure within his power" to remove the trouble. The tarantella
had to be cancelled, the superfluous lights were switched off, most of
the guests went to the bar, and soon the house became so quiet that the
ticking of the clock was heard distinctly in the hall, where the lonely
parrot woodenly muttered something as he bustled about in his cage
preparatory to going to sleep, and managed to fall asleep at length with
his paw absurdly suspended from the little upper perch.... The Gentleman
from San Francisco lay on a cheap iron bed under coarse blankets on to
which fell a dim light from the obscure electric lamp in the ceiling. An
ice-bag slid down on his wet, cold forehead; his blue, already lifeless
face grew gradually cold; the hoarse bubbling which came from his open
mouth, where the gleam of gold still showed, grew weak. The Gentleman
from San Francisco rattled no longer; he was no more--something else lay
in his place. His wife, his daughter, the doctor, and the servants stood
and watched him dully. Suddenly that which they feared and expected
happened. The rattling ceased. And slowly, slowly under their eyes a
pallor spread over the face of the deceased, his features began to grow
thinner, more transparent ... with a beauty which might have suited him
long ago....
Entered the proprietor. "Gia, e morto!" whispered the doctor to him. The
proprietor raised his shoulders, as if it were not his affair. The wife,
on whose cheeks tears were slowly trickling, approached and timidly
asked that the deceased should be taken to his own room.
"Oh no, madame," hastily replied the proprietor, politely, but coldly,
and not in English, but in French. He was no longer interested in the
trifling sum the guests from San Francisco would leave at his cash desk.
"That is absolutely impossible." Adding by way of explanation, that he
valued that suite of rooms highly, and that should he accede to madame's
request, the news would be known all over Capri and no one would take
the suite afterwards.
The young lady, who had glanced at him strangely all the time, now sat
down in a chair and sobbed, with her handkerchief to her mouth. The
elder lady's tears dried at once, her face flared up. Raising her voice
and using her own language she began to insist, unable to believe that
the respect for them had gone already. The manager cut her short with
polite dignity. "If madame does not like the ways of the hotel, he dare
not detain her." And he announced decisively that the corpse must be
removed at dawn: the police had already been notified, and an official
would arrive presently to attend to the necessary formalities. "Is it
possible to get a plain coffin?" madame asked. Unfortunately not!
Impossible! And there was no time to make one. It would have to be
arranged somehow. Yes, the English soda-water came in large strong
boxes--if the divisions were removed.
The whole hotel was asleep. The window of No. 43 was open, on to a
corner of the garden where, under a high stone wall ridged with broken
glass, grew a battered banana tree. The light was turned off, the door
locked, the room deserted. The deceased remained in the darkness, blue
stars glanced at him from the black sky, a cricket started to chirp with
sad carelessness in the wall.... Out in the dimly-lit corridor two
chambermaids were seated in a window-sill, mending something. Entered
Luigi, in slippers, with a heap of clothes in his hand.
"Pronto?" he asked, in a singing whisper, indicating with his eyes the
dreadful door at the end of the corridor. Then giving a slight wave
thither with his free hand: "Patenza!" he shouted in a whisper, as
though sending off a train. The chambermaids, choking with noiseless
laughter, dropped their heads on each other's shoulders.
Tip-toeing, Luigi went to the very door, tapped, and cocking his head on
one side asked respectfully, in a subdued tone:
"Ha suonato, Signore?"
Then contracting his throat and shoving out his jaw, he answered himself
in a grating, drawling, mournful voice, which seemed to come from behind
the door:
"_Yes, come in...._"
When the dawn grew white at the window of No. 43, and a damp wind began
rustling the tattered fronds of the banana tree; as the blue sky of
morning lifted and unfolded over Capri, and Monte Solaro, pure and
distinct, grew golden, catching the sun which was rising beyond the
far-off blue mountains of Italy; just as the labourers who were mending
the paths of the islands for the tourists came out for work, a long box
was carried into room No. 43. Soon this box weighed heavily, and it
painfully pressed the knees of the porter who was carrying it in a
one-horse cab down the winding white high-road, between stone walls and
vineyards, down, down the face of Capri to the sea. The driver, a weakly
little fellow with reddened eyes, in a little old jacket with sleeves
too short and bursting boots, kept flogging his wiry small horse that
was decorated in Sicilian fashion, its harness tinkling with busy little
bells and fringed with fringes of scarlet wool, the high saddle-peak
gleaming with copper and tufted with colour, and a yard-long plume
nodding from the pony's cropped head, from between the ears. The cabby
had spent the whole night playing dice in the inn, and was still under
the effects of drink. Silent, he was depressed by his own debauchery and
vice: by the fact that he gambled away to the last farthing all those
copper coins with which his pockets had yesterday been full, in all four
lire, forty centesimi. But the morning was fresh. In such air, with the
sea all round, under the morning sky headaches evaporate, and man soon
regains his cheerfulness. Moreover, the cabby was cheered by this
unexpected fare which he was making out of some Gentleman from San
Francisco, who was nodding with his dead head in a box at the back. The
little steamer, which lay like a water-beetle on the tender bright
blueness which brims the bay of Naples, was already giving the final
hoots, and this tooting resounded again cheerily all over the island.
Each contour, each ridge, each rock was so clearly visible in every
direction, it was as if there were no atmosphere at all. Near the beach
the porter in the cab was overtaken by the head porter dashing down in
an automobile with the lady and her daughter, both pale, their eyes
swollen with the tears of a sleepless night.... And in ten minutes the
little steamer again churned up the water and made her way back to
Sorrento, to Castellamare, bearing away from Capri for ever the family
from San Francisco.... And peace and tranquillity reigned once more on
the island.