Palace Intrigues by Dibyendu Ghosal

8/14/2019 Palace Intrigues by Dibyendu Ghosal

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Palace Intrigues

By Dibyendu Ghosal

--:1:--

Having solved the case of Newark Bay Railway Disaster not as a professional

responsibility but only under the influence of my passionate and inquisitive mind, I was planning

for some vacation to rest my body and mind, of leaving the American continent for the eastern

side of the Atlantic ---- I wanted to fly down to the European mainland. The land of Leonardo da

Vinci had always attracted me since my childhood and the recent controversy surrounding the

book The da Vinci Code and the movie based on it, has reason to fire my desire to visit Italy.

With Alexandra managing it well on my behalf, I had no problem in my firm. With my

professional responsibilities in my firm Messrs Berliner Hathaway being shouldered off for a few

months, I decided not to waste this opportunity.

I swiped my access card and pressed the elevator button. No more was said on the ride

up, all the while I watched the floor indicators changing, looking intently in blank, resolute

silence.

My thoughts drifted back to my last vacation as I leaned even further back, crossing my

arms, embracing myself with a warm and comforting feeling of bliss and relief from the reality

that was my life. My last real vacation was three years ago with my girlfriend. My girlfriend

Oindrila and I drove down to Sandbanks and rented a room at a bed and breakfast. We did

nothing constructive for that whole week, choosing to sun and swim, all the while resting not

only body, but mind.

The remainder of the day was uneventful and Oindrila went home as usual in a bland,

unfulfilled mood.

I closed my eyes and squeezed them tight as I tried to shut out the world. It didnt work

as other phones rang. It was enough to make Oindrila want to bring up our hasty breakfast of an

egg on toast with ham.

Even my breakfasts are boring, I thought.

I opened my eyes in time to see a picture on my laptop screensaver. It was something

that I downloaded, an image that gave me some hope for summer and the end of the snow and

cold and slush. It was a warm and inviting picture of several thatched huts, large and round


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sitting on thick bamboo posts hammered into the sandy bottom of the Pacific Ocean. We had a

long walking jetty leading out to and passing each hut with a short walkway. The water was

crystal clear and even on the computer screen looked warm. It was clear enough to see the two

or three meters to the bottom where the sand was a creamy white and small tropical fish swam

amongst outcrops of coral.

When I arrived at my desk, I tossed my lunch bag under it and plopped myself in my

chair with a grand sigh. The open concept floor was empty at this time of day except for three

other workers, but they were at the other end of the floor. I reached over, silently moaning, and

switched on my laptop.

There was that image on my screen, tranquil, clear, clean and peaceful, the tropical

oasis that was my sanctuary.

It didnt take long for me to feel the breeze, and hear the gentle ocean waves. It

happened so fast it caught me off guard. As I stepped back I felt something different - sand, it

was sand at his feet. I couldnt explain what happened, what was happening, but the smell of

the tropics and salt air continued to entice me to explore these new feelings and senses for just

a bit longer.

I could get used to this, I thought lightheartedly.

Nothing else mattered to me now and soon the life I had at the office was just a

nightmare and a lie. This was reality, a reality that was as real as the sand I was lying on. I

rejoiced in the fact that I was awake now, forever rid of that life that never happened and that

the ringing of the phones and complaining clients would never again intrude into my truth.

I blinked several times, thinking that this was too good to be true. I was after all, in his

office - how could this be my paradise? It was a question that I couldnt answer. That morning, I

was sent to my boss Herr Wilhelm's private room.

I dont quite know how to explain it to you, he said, but it was the very fact that your

performance on the job had a spice of intelligence, it was just your exceptional sharpness. I

dont read the things in the newspapers unless theyre thrust upon me. At any rate you missed

my little point.

The little point was when they patted me on the back as when they kicked me in the

shin.

Our company boss Herr Wilhelm told, No one who has not had personal experience of

the complications that arise out of your job could believe how far these spread and how

entangled they become. You know it very well that great acuteness as well as caution is called

for.


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Ya. I know it, sir, I replied.

During your last assignment, you shirked your responsibilities and gave everything upon

a younger ladys shoulder. Am I right?

Ya. Youre absolutely right. But it went off well and cent percent perfect.

But we cant allow this every time. We cant allow your attention to veer to another

matter while on an assignment on behalf of the company, Mr. Corvick.

I left the room in a huff and asked Alexandra if she is ready to fly down with me to

Europe. But her reply shocked me: I cant endanger my life every time for your whimsical

attitude, sir. My family wont allow me this luxury.

Without further speaking a single word, I came out of the building in anger.

I left the U.S. of America for a long absence and full of brave intentions. It is not a

perversion of the truth to pronounce that encounter the direct cause of my departure. If the oral

utterance of the person had the privilege of moving me deeply it was especially on his turning it

over at leisure, hours and days later, that it appeared to yield me its full meaning and exhibit its

extreme importance. I spent the summer in Switzerland and, having in September begun a new

task, determined not to cross the Alps till I should have made a good start. To this end I

returned to a quiet corner I knew well, on the edge of the Lake of Geneva: a region and a view

for which I had an affection that sprang from old associations and was capable of mysterious

revivals and refreshments. Here I lingered late, till the snow was on the nearer hills, almost

down to the limit to which I could climb when my stint, on the shortening afternoons, was

performed. The autumn was fine, the lake was blue and my mental faculties took a new form.

These felicities, for the time, embroidered my life, which I suffered to cover myself with its

mantle. At the end of two months I felt I had learnt the lesson by heart, had tested and proved

its doctrine. Nevertheless I did a very inconsistent thing: before crossing the Alps I wrote to Miss

Alexandra.she was aware of the perversity of this act, and it was only as a luxury, an

amusement, the reward of a strenuous autumn, that she justified it. She had asked of me no

such favour when, shortly before I left the continent, barely five days after our official dinner

party, I went to take leave of her. It was true I had had no ground I had not named his

intention of absence. I had kept his counsel for want of due assurance: it was that particular visit

that was, the next thing, to settle the matter. I had paid the visit to see how much he really cared

for her, and quick departure, without so much as an explicit farewell, was the sequel to this

enquiry, the answer to which had created within me a deep yearning. When I took the liberty of

calling her from Clarence I noted that I owed her an explanation (more than two months later!)

for not having told her what I was doing.


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She replied now briefly but promptly, and gave me a striking piece of news: that of

death, a week before, of Herr Gerhardt, the second partner in the firm.

This exemplary man had succumbed, in the country, to a violent attack of inflammation

of the lungs ---- I would remember that for a long time he had been delicate. Miss Alexandra

added that she believed the deceaseds partner in the firm Herr Wilhelm overwhelmed by the

blow; he would miss him too terribly --- he had been everything in life to him --- in both personal

and professional sides, being bachelor both of them and dedicated to work and their firm which

they had built brick by brick. I, on this, immediately wrote to Herr Wilhelm. I would from the day

of our parting have been glad of wishing to remain in communication with him, but had hitherto

lacked the right excuse for troubling so busy a man. Our long professional as well as personal

discussions came back to me in every detail, but this was no bar to an expression of proper

sympathy with the head of the profession, for had not that very talk made it clear that the late

accomplished gentleman was the influence that ruled his life? What catastrophe could be more

cruel than the extinction of such an influence? This was to be exactly the tone taken by Herr

Wilhelm in answering me upwards of a week later. I made no allusion of course to our

important discussion. He spoke of his partner as frankly and generously as if he had quite

forgotten that occasion, and the feeling of deep bereavement was visible in his words: He took

everything off my hands --- off my mind. He carried on our organization with the greatest art, the

rarest devotion, and I was free, as few men can have been, to drive my pen, to shut myself up

with my trade. This was a rare service the highest he could have rendered me. Would I have

acknowledged it more fitly!

A certain bewilderment, for me, disengaged itself from these remarks: they struck me as

a contradiction, a retraction, strange on the part of a man who had not the excuse of

witlessness. I knew Herr Wilhelm having majority partnership in the company even though they

had quite a great friendship at personal level. He was a little selfish. I had certainly not expected

his correspondent to rejoice in the death of his partner and friend, and it was perfectly in order

that the rupture of a tie of more than thirty years should have left him sore. But if Alexandra had

been so clear a blessing what in the name of consistency had the dear man meant by turning

him upside down that night by dosing me to that degree, at the most sensitive hour of my life,

with the doctrine of renunciation? If Herr Gerhardt. was an irreparable loss, then his partners

inspired advice had been a bad joke and renunciation was a mistake. I was on the point of

rushing back to the U.S.A. to show that, for my part, I was perfectly willing to consider it so, and

I went so far as to take the half-prepared documents out of my table-drawer, to insert these into

my portmanteau. This led to my catching a glimpse of certain part of my works I had not looked


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at for months, and that accident, in turn, to my being struck with the high promise they revealed

--- a rare result of such retrospections, which it was my habit to avoid as much as possible: they

usually brought home to me that the glow of composition might be a purely subjective and

misleading emotion. On this occasion a certain belief in myself disengaged itself whimsically

from the serried erasures of my first draft, making me think it best after all to pursue my present

trial to the end. If I could do the job as well under the rigor of privation it might be a mistake to

change the conditions before that spell had spent itself. I would go back to the States, of course,

but I would go back only when I should have finished my works. This was the vow I privately

made, restoring my half-done papers to the table-drawer. It may be added that it took me a long

time to finish my works, for the subject was as difficult as it was fine, and I was literally

embarrassed by its fullness. Something within me warned me that I must make it supremely

good otherwise I should lack, as regards my private behavior, a handsome excuse. I had a

horror of this deficiency and found myself as firm as need be on the question of the light and the

file. I crossed the Alps at last and spent the winter, the spring, the ensuing summer, in Italy,

where still, at the end of a twelvemonth, my task remained unachieved.

--:2:--

After arriving in Italy, I felt a strange queerness. It had a link with my distant past.

They told me I should find Italy greatly changed; in five-and-ten years there is room for

changes. But to me everything is so perfectly the same that I seem to be living my pre-

adolescence over again; all the forgotten impressions of that enchanting time come back to me.

At the moment they were powerful enough; but they afterwards faded away. What in the world

became of them? What ever becomes of such things, in the long intervals of consciousness?

Where do they hide themselves away? In what unvisited cupboards and crannies of our being

do they preserve themselves? They are like the lines of a letter written in sympathetic ink; hold

the letter to the light for a while and the grateful warmth brings out the invisible words. There

have been moments during the last few years when I have felt so portentously old, so finished

that I should have taken as a very bad joke any intimation that this present sense of juvenility

was still in store for me. At all events, I have traveled too far, I have worked too hard, I have

lived in brutal climates and associated with tiresome people.


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I suppose that, whatever serious step one might have taken at this age, after a struggle,

and with a violent effort, and however ones conduct might appear to be justified by events,

there would always remain a certain regret.

I knew it would not last; it is already passing away. But I have spent a delightful day; I

have been strolling all over the place. Everything reminds me of something else, and yet of itself

at the same time; my imagination makes a great circuit and comes back to the startingpoint.

There is that well-remembered odor of spring in the air, and the flowers, as they used to be, are

gathered into great sheaves and stacks, all along the rugged base of the Strozzi Palace. I

remembered all those days individually; they seem to me as yesterday. I found the corner where

she always chose to sit the bench of sun-warmed marble, in front of the screen of ilex.

I sat there for half an hour, and it was strange how near to me she seemed. The place

was perfectly empty --- that is, it was filled with her. I closed my eyes and listened; I could

almost hear the rustle of her dress on the gravel. What is it after all but a sort of refinement of

life? I sat there in the sunny stillness; she was a palpable, audible presence.

The sitting room looks into the garden. The staircase is of white marble, and there is a

medallion by Luca della Robbia set into the wall at the place where it makes a bend. One comes

into the drawing-room one stands in a moment in a great vaulted place hung round with faded

tapestry, paved with bare tiles. In the drawing room, above the fireplace, is a superb Andrea del

Sarto.

il mio inglse (My Englishman), greeted a voice in Italian.

I found him today sitting in the church of Santa Croce, into which I wandered to escape

from the heat of the sun.

Looking out on the river, gliding past in the starlight. There are the same cypresses on

the opposite hills.

No, Im Drayton Corvick and Im from India.

In the nave it was cool and dim; he was staring at the blaze of candles on the great altar,

and thinking, I am sure, of his incomparable LADY. I sat down beside him, and after a while, as

if to avoid the appearance of eagerness, he asked me how I had enjoyed my visit to Casa Silvia,

and what I thought of the pedrona.

This gentleman was Mr. Leonardo, an Italian. He is personally and emotionally involved

with Signora Silvia who was my pre-adolescence years friend.

But I did not disclose about my old friendship with the lady.

An enchantress. I told. An artist an actress, I went on rather brutally.

No, no, theres more. And we sat a long time in silence.


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Shes altogether charming full of frankness and freedom, of that inimitable

disinvoltura, which in an Englishwoman would be vulgar, and which in her is simply the

perfection of apparent spontaneity. But for all her spontaneity she is as subtle as a needle-point,

and knows tremendously well what she is about. If she is not a consummate coquette What

had she in her head she knows very well and told straightforward? I told.

I went again to Casa Silvia, where I found a group of persons, men and women,

probably a coterie or inner circle of friends. I had been told the ladies were at church, but this

was corrected by what I saw from the top of the steps --- they descended from a great height in

arms, with a circular sweep of the most charming effect --- at the threshold of the door which,

from the long bright gallery, overlooked the immense lawn. Three gentlemen, on the grass sat

under the trees, while the fourth figure showed a crimson dress. I did not desire to go to the

room as being conscious of no disrepair from so short and easy a journey and always liking to

take at once a general perceptive possession of a new scene. I stood there a little with my eyes

on the group and on the admirable picture, the wide grounds of an old palace near Florence.

But that lady, do you know whos she? I asked the stranger.

I think shes the daughter of an art curator, senor.

I was slightly nervous; that went with my character as a student of fine prose, went with

the artists general disposition to vibrate; and there was a particular thrill in the idea that the

ladys fianc might be a member of the party. For a young aspirant like me, I had remained just

a figure. I was but splendidly supplied with a social boldness it was really a weakness in him --

- so that, conscious of a want of acquaintance with the three gentlemen in the distance, I gave

way to motions recommended by their not committing me to a positive approach. There was a

fine Italian awkwardness in this.

I knew many of my distinguished contemporaries by their photographs, but had never,

as happened, seen a portrait of the great misguided person, the fianc of the lady. One of the

gentlemen was unimaginable --- he was too young; and the other scarcely looked clever

enough, with such mild undiscriminating eyes. If those eyes were the great persons the

problem presented by the ill-matched parts of his genius would be still more difficult of solution.

Besides, the deportment of their proprietor was not, as regards the lady in the pink dress, such

as could be natural, toward the would-be wife of his bosom.

Suddenly the lady asked me, I think youre Drayton, my Drayton Corvick, oh my friend!

Have you recognized me after so many years. How are you? I asked.

Ya. It had been a long, long time since our parting. Are you staying in the States

nowadays? asked the lady.


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Oh, ya. Near Manhattan Square. But thats my temporary address. Im from India, my

young lady. I think you forgot!

The lady told, I liked the museum when I visited the U.S.A.. Im very fond of art and

music and literature. I missed it in India and I found it in the States.

I was discussing Micheal Angelo. It felt to her as if she were fingering the very quivering

tissue, the very protoplasm of life, as she heard me. It probably gave her a deep satisfaction.

there I laid in the white intensity of my search, and my voice gradually filled her with fear, as if in

a trance.

This lady struck me as altogether pretty, with a surprising juvenility and a high smartness of

aspect, something that served for mystification. Her dear fianc had every right to a charming

wife, but he himself would never have imagined the important little woman in the aggressively

Parisian dress the partner for life. But he had never before seen her look so much as if her

prosperity had deeper foundations. Signora Silvia might have been the fiance of a gentleman

who kept books rather than wrote them. He numbered her years as some thirty. But she

somehow in this case juggled away the excess and the difference one can only see them in a

rare glimpse, like the rabbit in the conjurers sleeve.

I felt I could have understood her better if I might have met her eye; but she scarcely so

much as glanced at me anymore.

It lasted only a second, but it drew her eyes to me again. My own met them, though not

long enough to help me to understand her.

The special woman was really admirable. She greeted me, toward whom familiarity

should not have engendered a want of ceremony; she made me sit near her, and she asked me

half-a-dozen questions about my occupations and my health.

So, gentleman, how did you enjoy Florence?

I like to live in the past, I said, I go into the galleries, into the old places. Today I spent

two hours in Michael Angelos chapel, at San Lorenzo.

Ya, thats the true past, said she. It was very kind of you, so far away, to have

remembered our poor dear Italy.

The distance makes no difference.

Most of the time I was constantly silent. I suspect I was when I was perplexed.

Before I went away I had a few more words tte--tte with the Signora.


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She was wonderfully nice; irresistible with something so soft and womanly; such

graceful gaiety, so much of the brightness, without any of the stiffness, of good breeding, and

over it all something so picturesquely simple and southern. She is a perfect Italian.

But she really gave a straight and serious look at me, appealingly with her candid

brow.

But I did not know that the lady was the most suspicious and jealous of men! Even

though, I doubt, she fell into a suspicious mood, but she was, fundamentally, not in the least

addicted to thinking evil.

Leonardo is very happy in spite of his doubts, and I confess that in the perception of his

happiness I have lived over again my own. He at last made up his mind to ask me to tell him the

wrong that Madame de Silvia had done to me. I told him that it seemed a pity, just now, to

indulge in painful imagery.

I admit I am open to the charge of playing a double game. I profess an admiration for the

Lady Silvia, for I accept her hospitality; and at the same time I attempt to poison her beloved

fans mind.

One hesitates to destroy an illusion, no matter how pernicious, that is so delightful while

it lasts. These are the moments of life. To be young and ardent, in the midst of an Italian spring,

and to believe in the moral perfection of a beautiful woman!

I have stayed away from Casa Silvia, but I have lingered on for her, under a mixture of

impulses. I have had it on my conscience not to go near the lady again and yet from the

moment she is aware of the way I feel about her, it is open war. There need be no scruples on

either side. She is as free to use every possible art to entangle me more closely as I am to clip

her fine-spun meshes. Here he comes. Now you must know him, she told. There stood that

great novelist near a gathering, not falling into the talk but taking up an old miniature from a

table and regarding it. As the young man approached this celebrity, the eyes of the great man

turned, left and right, to the pictures. The gallery was so long that this transit took some little

time.

This young man was sorry for the great celebrity, as he was at any time for any person

publicly invited to be responsive. He got up, trying to show his compassion, but at the same

instant he found himself encompassed by this artists happy personal art --- a manner of which it

was the essence to conjure away false positions.

But I knew that the ladys strength was not equal to her aspirations.

The smoking-room was on the scale of the rest of the place; high, light and commodious.

I was a faithless smoker; I would puff a cigarette for reasons with which tobacco had nothing to


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Im going to be better, I made bold to reply.

Its so much easier to be worse --- heaven knows Ive found it so. Im not in a great

glow, you know. I see youll be able to keep it up. It will be a great disgrace if you dont. thats

the devil of the whole thing.

You make me very miserable, I ecstatically breathed.

Its a warning, I know, gentleman. The spectacle of a man meant for better things sunk

at my age in such dishonour. Count Vincent, the celebrity, in the same contemplative attitude,

spoke softly but deliberately, and without perceptible emotion. His tone indeed suggested an

impersonal lucidity that was cruel cruel to himself. But he went on while his eyes seemed to

follow the graces of the twentieth century ceiling: Look at me, take my lesson to heart. Dont

become in your old age what I have in mine ----- the depressing, the deplorable illustration of the

worship of false gods!

What do you mean by your old age?

It has made me old.

He answered nothing, nothing more.

My wife likes great celebrities, whether incipient or predominant. She likes newsmakers

like you. Its cruel. Ill tie my vanity to the stake for you. You must come and dine.

I must see you more. Your lady Signora Silvia is so hospitable.

At the end of the moment the thing had turned into a smoke, and out of smoke the last

puff of a big cigar ----- proceeded the voice of the great celebrity. I must leave now.

Most of the company, after breakfast, drove back to town, entering their own vehicles.

Before two weeks had elapsed I met Signora Silvia at a private view of the works of a

young artist who had been so good as to invite her to the stuffy scene. There were certain

females whose heads were surmounted with hats of strange convolution and plumage, which

rose on long necks above the others. One of the heads, I perceived, was much the most

beautiful of the collection, and my next discovery was that it belonged to Silvia. Its beauty was

enhanced by the glad smile she sent me across surrounding obstructions.

Oh, youre alone? I think your husband has not accompanied you.

Weve not yet married. If you had been so kind as to propose it why not you as well as

he?

Why hes so pere de famillie? Would you go to see places? I asked.

Anything you like! she smiled. I know what you mean, that a girl like me should not

waste her life on a wasted person like Count Vincent, she added with a sweet distinctness that

made those near her turn around.


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Let me at least repay that speech by taking you out of this squash, her new admirer

said.

This type of private view will be held next year again. I hope were going to be friends

always. I cant wait till next year to see you.

We should wait.

No, no --- arent we to meet at dinner? she panted with eagerness.

Like a shot, if youll be so good as to ask me!

Its a nice day --- therell be great crowd. Were going to look at the people, to look at

types, the lady went on. Do you know presently my fiancs manner of conducting himself

towards me appeared not quite in harmony?

An indefinite envy rose in this my heart as I took way with her. Her tone had truth and

emotional beauty.

During our frolicking, Silvia evidently was of the impression that she had had a dashing

youth. She had in fact a glimpse of the local world in its gossiping, home keeping, parsimonious

professional walks; for I noted for the first time how nearly she had acquired by contact the trick

of the familiar soft-sounding, almost infantile prattle of the place. I judged her to have imbibed

this invertebrate dialect from the natural way the names of things and people to her lips. I

thought of her having so little in common with my own.

After conversation, poor Miss Silvia had got up, discountenanced and helpless, and as I

stood there before her it would certainly have struck a spectator of the scene that she was

making rare sport of us. Miss Silvia protested in a confusion of exclamations, and murmurs; but

I lost no time in saying that if she would do me the honor to accept the hospitality of my house I

would engage she really should not be bored. Silvia, without definitely answering this speech,

looked away from me as if about to weep, and I remarked that once I had her approval we could

easily come to an understanding. As I made my obeisance to the beautiful lady I asked her if

she would kindly permit me to see her again.

Isnt it touching, the solicitude I have that the other shall enjoy himself? sneered she.

Dont spoil my civility with your compliment.

What do you know about good society?

I said, Ill tell later. Now tell me when youll go tomorrow?

She had been disconcerted, but I had already perceived that when the young girl was

embarrassed she did not --- as most women would have turned away, floundering and hedging,

but came closer with a deprecating to be protected. From the moment I was kind to her she

depended on me absolutely; she took the innocent intimacy for granted.


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At the end of that week, one sweet evening after dinner, she mixed with me without

complaint. We were swept in our joy in the course of two minutes. She uttered a murmur of

ecstasy as fresh as if floating in joy in reflected lights disposed the mind to freedom and ease. I

was sure of her full surrender. I poured treasures of information about the objects before and

around us into her ears.

She gave me a queer look; and as she tried to speak I noticed a rare change in her. She

was other than she had been before --- less natural and less easy. She struck me as less

confident. It was as if something had happened to her during the previous night, or at least as if

she had thought of something that troubled her --- something in particular that affected her

relations with me, made them more embarrassing.

She colored and the tears were rolling down her cheeks; I measured the anguish it cost

her to take such a stand which a dreadful sense of duty had imposed on her. It made me quite

sick to find myself confronted with that particular obstacle; all the more that it seemed to me I

had been distinctly encouraged to leave it out of account.

She must have been conscious that though my face showed the greatest

embarrassment ever painted on a human countenance it was not set as a stone, it was also full

of compassion. It was a comfort to me a long time afterwards to consider that she should not

have seen in me the smallest symptom of disrespect.

I dont know what to do; Im too tormented! she told with vehemence.

Then, turning away from me, she burst into a flood of tears. I stood there dumb,

watching her while her sobs resounded in the empty room. In a moment she was up at me

again.

Id give you everything.

Thank, Miss, I stammered for all reply.

At a venture I made a wild, vague movement in consequence of which I found myself at

the door. I came out and flung open the door of my car and sped away.

I thought that I had been as kind as possible because I really liked her. I am far from

remembering the succession of feelings during this long day of confusion; it only comes back to

me that there were moments when I pacified my conscience and others when I lashed it into

pain.

The condition she had attached to that act no longer appeared an obstacle worth

thinking of, and for an hour and a half this morning my repentant imagination brushed it aside. It

was absurd I should be able to invent nothing; absurd to renounce so easily and turn away

helpless from the idea that the only way to become possessed was to unite myself to her for life.


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--:3:--

It had been a week that passed since that intimate encounter.

I drew a long breath when I heard of the matter! I remember the place and the hour. It

was at a hill-station in India, only a six months after I had left Florence. A post brought me some

documents, and in one of them was a letter from Italy, with a lot of so-called fashionable

intelligence. There, among various scandals in high life, and other delectable items, I read that

Signora Silvia was about to bestow her hand upon Count Vincent.

Ah, it was a tremendous escape! I had been preparing my heart to be ready to marry the

woman who was capable of that! What would it be like to know a fresh cup of coffee in the

morning but not be able to see, taste or smell it? What would it be like to know a sunrise, but not

be able to experience it? What would it be like to know everything a experience none of it. Can

one imagine not being able to experience physical lovemaking, or having fun?

I wanted to see how he agreed with her after she had devoured him - (to what vulgar

imagery, by the way, does curiosity reduce a man!)

Oh! The new entrant must be an obstinate wretch; it irritates me to think of him. I shall

leave his thought at any rate to his fate; it is so growing insupportably hot.

I remembered the moment I had kept her hand an instant, and then bent my venerable

head and kissed it the last time.

Since then I had left Italy and came to India.

I fell asleep, that night, in my chair. The night was half over when I woke up. Instead of

going to bed, I stood a long time at the window, looking out at the stream. It was a warm, still

night, and the first faint strokes of sunrise were in the sky.

It always rang and today it seemed the ringing was constant. It hadnt stopped all

morning and I was already drained of strength and emotion.

Although I didnt admit it out loud, my personal life suffered because of the stresses at

work. Going home on days like this was not much fun as I brought home a piece of the fruitless

frustration I felt at work.

I looked at the calendar, it was February 29 and a Tuesday morning.

I then checked my watch and compared the time with that of my laptop screen. The

digital clock showed seven minutes past eleven in the morning. I then stood, stretched my


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hands and neck, and turned around glancing over my cubical wall to see out the long

rectangular window. It was still natural light. After I saw the snow falling, and the wind whipping

up gusts of already settled powder off the lower roof line. Snow fell in large clumps as the wind

drove it downward, almost blinding anyone outside with its force. I couldnt even see across to

the next building.

It was a wild, tempestuous night. I was sitting in silence all the evening. Outside, the

wind howled down the street, while the rain beat fiercely against the windows. It was strange

there in the very depths of the town, with ten miles of mans handiwork on every side of me, to

feel the iron grip of Nature and to be conscious that to the huge elemental forces all Solan was

no more than the molehills that dot the fields. I walked to the window and looked out on the

deserted street. A single cab was splashing its way from the narrow corner of the street.

The cab which I had seen had pulled up at our door. I could see a man in the backseat

of the cab.

What can he want? I ejaculated, as a man stepped out of it.

Presently I heard a slow footstep beneath my window, and looking down, made out by

the aid of a streetlight that an unknown person was but waving his right hand at me.

Im from Florence. I think I m surely talking to none other than Mr. Drayton Corvick.

I nodded my head and called to him to come up to my room, and, after an interval, he

made his appearance.

Signora Silvia has sent me to you.

Whats the matter?

There had been a great muddle.

Things that involve a risk are like the Christian faith. They must be seen from the

inside. I replied.

Now it stands that if I mar her happiness, I certainly do not make my own.

What this unknown Italian man explained me in detail was that someone named Mr.

Hamilton Longstraw Gomes has released some intimate and personal letters and documents to

the Italian press and the media. The whereabouts of this person, who is out to destroy the

newly-married life of Signora Silvia in the form of character assassination, is unknown. Signora

Silvia has tried all methods to find out the present living address of this person, but everything

has gone in vain.

This Italian gentleman told, Signora Silvia has earnestly requested you to take up this

case on her behalf, as she knows you are her long-time friend.


16/35

Ya, of course, I m her friend and well-wisher. But its not an easy job to find out a

person in this big world.

But this person Longstraw Gomes has found his name on many peoples lips due to his

flirting with the lady. So it wont be that difficult to find him out.

If you become successful in this pursuit, you must hand over those documents to

Signora Silvia only. Because if any other person gets a hand on those documents, he or she

may try to betray the lady.

What about her husband? Doesnt he know anything about the affair?

Ya. He had heard it from the media but did not believe in these things, as he thinks that

the media and some persons may be out to destroy the happy lives of their noble family.

Can you give me a snap of that Longstraw Gomes? I asked.

No, sir. Signora Silvia does not have any.

I knew it would be difficult for me to embark upon such an adventure, but I could not

decline the request Silvia made in the letter.

--:4:--

It was not difficult to squeeze a little information about Mr. Gomes who was an intimate

beloved of Signora Silvia, because this acquaintance has made him a little famous throughout

the continent of Europe.

It was not the matter of money that Mr. Hamilton was doing this. It was a matter of

emotional betrayal.

I decided to rang my friend Alexandra about this new case in hand which is in no way

professional, not even passionate, but an intimate and personal one.

Alexandra, being based in Boston, was entrusted by me with the job of finding the

history and present whereabouts of this man Mr. Hamilton in the U.S. of A. and also throughout

the entire North America.

I gave Alexandra the little information I was able to collect about this man from my

known sources --- so that she can find other links.

On Investigation, Alexandra found -----

Mr. Hamilton Longstraw Gomes was a young Californian who had turned up in New York

the winter before and who traveled on his moustache, as they were understood to say in his


17/35

native state. This moustache and some of its accompanying features were greatly admired;

several ladies in New York had been known to declare that they were as beautiful as dream.

Taken in connection with his tall stature, his familiar good nature and his remarkable Western

vocabulary that constituted his only social capital; for of the two great divisions, the rich

Californians and the poor Californians. It was well known to which he belonged. He was viewed

as a slightly mitigated cowboy ------ this remarkable straight echo of the prairie.

Mr. Hamilton Longstraw Gomes, according to the legend, had been a trapper, a

squatter, a miner, a pioneer had been everything that one could be in the desperate parts of

America, and had accumulated masses of experience before the age of thirty. He had shot

bears in the Rockies; and it was even believed that he had brought down animals of a still more

dangerous kind among the haunts of men. There had been a story that he owned a cattle ranch

in Texas; but a later and apparently more authentic version of it, though representing him as

looking after the cattle, did not depict him as their proprietor.

He used to dress in crude skins when not in New York and who, in his usual pursuits,

carried his life ----- as well as that of other persons ---- in his hand.

He was a gallant genial specimen of unsophisticated young America.

Silvia had fixed on her amoroso her singular charming eyes, eyes of which it was

impossible to say at any moment whether they were the shyest or the frankest in the world;

Italians have always been passionate than the Americans, and they used to do things that

would never have been expected; though they seemed steadier and less excitable there was

much social evidence to prove them more wildly impulsive.

Five years after their first amorous idyll on the mountain, doomed lovers Silvia and her

sweetheart Hamilton Longstraw Gomes hooked up again in this small town. Their reunion was

passionate, desperate. Silvia, an aspiring rodeo rider, wanted that they should ditch their

families and set up ranch together, hang society. But the stoic Hamilton knew better the

penalties for defying convention.

He said, Im stuck with what I got If you cant fix it, you gotta stand it.

This was Marlboro country upturned, to reveal the myth of macho autonomy undercut by

the brutal realities of a rural economy and small communities -------where desires defeat is

inevitable, triumphing momentarily only on the elusive mountain land.

Her Beloved, a rancher fought a losing battle to sustain his farm, defeated not just by his

own short sightedness and the changing economy but by the land itself, which wanted to go to

sand dunes and rattle snakes, wanted to scrape off its human ticks.


18/35

On investigation in the other side of the Atlantic, I got to learn many things about these

ex-lovers:

Of course Italian culture is the best in Europe, but I daresay I like to be bad, Silvia used

to say artlessly.

Oh, theres no doubt youre awfully bad, Mr. Gomes often broke out, with joyous

eagerness. Naturally he could never know that what she had principally in mind was an

exchange of opinions that had taken place between her and herself.

He used to lay his philosophy before Silvia in pursuance of a theory that if she disliked

New York on a short acquaintance she could not fail to like it on a long. He believed in New

York mind not so much indeed in its literary, artistic, philosophic or political achievements, as

in its general quickness. It was thoroughly bright and responsive. If she would only set up by the

turn of her hand a blest snug social centre, a temple of interesting talk in which this charming

organ might expand and where she might inhale its fragrance in the most convenient and

luxurious way, without, as it were, getting up from her chair; if she would only just try this

graceful good-natured experiment ---- which would make everyone like her so much too --- he

was sure all the wrinkles in the gilded scroll of his fate would be smoothed out.

But Signora Silvia did not rise at all to his conception and had not the least curiosity

about the New York mind. She had seen great dinners and balls and meets and runs and races;

she had seen garden-parties, she had mingled with men and women at these parties, and

distinguished companies collected in splendid castles; but all these gave her no clue to a train of

conversation, to any idea of social agreement that the interest of talk, its continuity, its

accumulations from season to season, should not be lost.

He apparently had the art of making her shy, more shy than usual ---- since she was

always a little so; she discouraged him, discouraged him completely and reduced him to naught.

He was not a man who wanted drawing out, he was remarkably copious; but she seemed

unable to follow him in any direction. He used to try to adapt his life to her needs.

None of the innumerable victims of old-world tyranny welcomed to the land of freedom

had yet offered more lavish incense to that goddess than this emancipated Florence debutante.

He knew such a character was complicated, in just the measure that he was foretold, by

the difficulty of domesticating any lady at all liberally chosen. The difficulty was not dissipated by

his having taken a high tone about it. His high tone had given him courage when he decided to

take the great step. Drop by drop the conviction had entered his mind. He felt every time he

looked at her that the beautiful woman he had adored was filled with a dumb insuperable

ineradicable purpose. Her blooming antique beauty and the general loftiness of her breeding


19/35

came fast to seem to him but the magnificent expression of a dense, patient, ponderous power

to resist. He was on occasion so angry as to ask himself, remembering that in England ---- Lady

Claras and Lady Florences were as thick as blackberries but she would have nothing to do, if

she could help it, with his country.

And ultimately Silvia altogether ignored him. The news of his sweethearts planned

marriage to Count Vincent had, no doubt, shocked this American to the core.

--:5:--

Our record is concerned with the remote consequences of this affair, which made a

great deal of trouble for poor Silvia. Her friends pursued the fugitive to remote rocky fastnesses

and finally overtook him in California; but they had not the boldness to propose to him to stop

his crooked designs on the Silvia family.

The history of this betrayal was circulated in a thousand newspapers and promptly

displayed on the broadcasting media. This question of the media had been for our troubled

Silvia one of the most definite results of her closest friend-cum-beloveds coup de tete. Her first

thought had been of the public prints and her first exclamation a prayer that they should not get

hold of the story. They had, however, got hold of it with a myriad wildly-waved hands. Lady

Silvia never caught them in the act.

The phials of a rank vulgarity had been opened on the house of the Silvias

In the meantime, I had cabled my accomplice Mr. Clarkson about the matter and

requested him to thoroughly enquire about this person Hamilton Longstraw Gomes throughout

the Europe. Mr. Clarkson had some influential contacts in Europe and it was not difficult for him

to search. After a few weeks, he informed me that he had found out that certain someone

exactly in the name of Hamilton Longstraw Gomes was staying in Venice.

But still I had doubts. Because there could be another person with the same name.

Clarksons optimism gave me a faint glimmer of hope. He told me that this Longstraw Gomes,

who was at present staying in Venice, had a past American connection.

In the meantime, Alexandra also informed me through an email that she would not be

able to fly down to Italy to join me in my pursuit as she was suddenly very busy with her job in

the firm, even though she wished to some and begged for pardon on the rude answer she had

given to me before I left the States. Missing the services of a brave young lady who was of


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immense help during my previous adventure and could be of immense help this time too, did not

make me happy at all.

So, I came to Venice alone.

It was not difficult to extract the exact address of this Hamilton Longstraw Gomes. I

presented myself as a person searching for a staying place for a few weeks or more.

I had taken Mr. Longstraw Gomes into my confidence; without him in truth I should have

made but little advance, for the fruitful idea in the whole business dropped from his friendly lips.

It was the woman beside him who found the short cut and loosed the Gordian knot.

Simply make them take you in on the footing of a lodger ----- I dont think that unaided I

should have risen to that. He offered this happy suggestion that the way to become an

acquaintance was first to become an intimate. His name had been mixed up years before with

one of the greatest names of Italy, and he now lived obscurely in Venice, lived unvisited, in a

dilapidated old palace. This scarcely respectable American were believed to have lost in his

long exile all national quality, besides being as his name implied of some remoter British

affiliation who asked no favours and desired no attention. His suffering was like American

suffering in particular, he should not have it on his conscience. The little better half had him in

the great cold tarnished Venetian sala, the central hall of the house, paved with marble and

roofed with dim cross-beams, and had not even asked me to sit down.

Mr. Longstraw had no chance of knowing anything about my curiosity, but he was

interested in me, ---- as always in the joys and sorrows of his ex-beloved, I thought. As I went,

in his gondola, gliding there under the sociable hood with the bright Venetian picture framed on

either side of the movable window, I saw how my eagerness amused the owner and that he

found my interest in my possible spoil a fine case of monomania. One does not defend ones

god: ones god is in himself a defense. Besides, today, after his long comparative obscuration,

he hangs high in the heaven of my literature for all the world to see. The strange thing had been

for me to discover in the America that he was still alive.

He was ashamed of making a speech so little in the real tone of Venice. As if a man

needed an excuse for having loved the great Italian lady! He had been not only one of the most

brilliant minds of his day ----- and in those years, as every one knows, many ---- but one of the

most handsome.

The wife, according to Mr. Longstraw, was of minor antiquity, and the conjecture was

risked. The world had recognized, in the past year or so, but I had recognized him the most. He

had nothing to fear from us because he had nothing to fear from the truth. There had been an

impression that he had treated her badly, just as there had been an impression that he had


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served, as the Italian populace says, several other ladies in the same masterful way. Each of

these cases I had been able to investigate, and I had never acquitted him conscientiously of any

grossness. It appeared to me that he had not walked straighter in the given circumstances. He

used to flung himself at the head of the ladies in each of the cases, and while the fury raged ---

the more that it was very catching accidents, some of them grave, had not failed to occur.

I exhausted in the course of months my wonder that I had not found him out sooner, and

the substance of my explanation was that he had kept so quiet. The young man on the whole

had had reason for doing so. But it was a revelation to me that self-effacement on such a scale

had been possible in the latter half of the twentieth century. He had not hidden himself away in

an undiscovered hole, had boldly settled down in a city of exhibition. The one apparent secret of

his safety had been that Venice contained so many much greater curiosities. Mr. Longstraw had

not the nerves of an editor. It was meanwhile no explanation of the young mans having eluded

me to say that he lived abroad, for my investigations had again and again taken me ------- not

only by correspondence but by personal inquiry --- to America, England, to Italy, in which

countries, so many of the too few years of his career had been spent. Oddly enough, even if I

had had the materials ----- and I had often wondered what could have become of it ----- this

would have been the most difficult episode to handle.

The gondola stopped, the old palace was there.

How charming! Its white and pink! I exclaimed.

It had an air not so much of decay as of quite discouragement, as if it had rather missed

its career. But its wide front, with a balcony from end to end of the piano noble or most important

floor, was architectural enough. It overlooked a clean, melancholy, rather lonely canal, which

had a narrow riva or convenient footway on either side.

I was given up to one reflection: if the young man lived in such a big and imposing house

he could not be in any sort of misery and, therefore, would not be tempted by a chance to let a

couple of rooms.

At first I could not decide it was doubtless very weak of me. I wanted still to think I

might get a footing, and was afraid to meet failure, for it would leave me without another arrow

for my bow. I sat there hesitating and thinking it over now and before taking the trouble of

becoming an inmate. I had not the resource of simply offering them a sum of money down. In

that way I might get what I wanted without bad nights.

I knew that the man wont have her relics and letters so much as spoken off; they are

personal, intimate. I can arrive at my spoils only by putting him off his guard, and I can put him


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off guard only by ingratiating diplomatic arts. Hypocrisy, duplicity are my only chance. I am sorry

for it, but there is no baseness I would not commit for Silvias sake.

My accomplice Mr. Clarkson, who is in London, had already informed me what had

happened to him on his respectfully writing to this man. No notice whatever had been taken of

his first letter, and the second had been answered very sharply. They had none of Lady Silvias

heartfelt remains --- those intimate and love letters, and if they had had wouldnt have dreamt

of showing them to any one on any account whatever. He had begged to let him alone.

Mr. Clarkson had found out the present address from the postage stamp of the

envelope.

I inferred that it proved familiarity, and familiarity implies the possession of mementoes,

of tangible objects. I can not tell how that Lady affects me ----- how it bridges over the gulf of

time and brings our villain near to me. ---- nor what an edge it gives to my desire to make the

married life of Lady Silvia happy. One do not say Lord Dante.

--:6:--

I must work out, I must work out, I said to myself ten minutes later and while I waited,

upstairs, in the dusky sala, where the bare scagliola floor gleamed vaguely in a chink of the

closed shutters. The place was impressive, yet looked somehow cold and cautious.

My house owner or his wife had not contented herself with opening the door from above

by the usual arrangement of a creaking pulley, though the woman had looked down at me first

from an upper window, dropping the cautious challenge which in Italy precedes the act of

admission. I took out my false card out of my pocket and held it up to her smiling as if it were a

magic token.

I wondered why these two surely do not live (two quite couple I see you are quiet, at

any rate) in ten rooms!

I had now struck the note that translated my purpose, and I did not reproduce the whole

of the tune I played. I ended by making my entertainer believe me an undesigning person,

though I did not even attempt to persuade them I was not an eccentric one. In these two fellows

at any rate a grateful susceptibility to human contact had not died out, and contact of a limited

order there would be after my coming to live in the house.

Cest la moindre des choses


23/35

I did count it as a triumph, but only for the commentator. There was an odd apartment

inside --- it was a spacious, shabby parlor with a fine old painted ceiling under which a strange

figure sat alone at one of the windows. As the door of the room suddenly closed behind me, I

was really face to face with the Longstraw of some of Signora Silvias most exquisite, erotic and

intimate passions. I grew accustomed to him afterwards, though never fully; but as he sat there

before me my heart beat as fast as if the miracle of resurrection had taken place for my benefit.

He was too strange, too terribly resurgent. Then came a check from the perception that we were

not really face to face, in as much as he had over his eyes a horrible grey shade which served

for him almost as a mask. It created a presumption of some ghastly deaths head lurking behind

it. The scheming and well-built Hamilton Longstraw as a grinning skull --- the vision hung there

until it passed. He was dressed in black.

This young man and his wife remained impenetrable and their attitude worried me.

I passed out of the room, thinking how hard it would be to circumvent this man. As I

stood in the sala again I saw that the wife had followed me. But she made no more overture;

she only stood there with a dim, though not a languid smile, and with an effect of irresponsible,

incompetent youth almost comically at variance with the faded facts of her person. It struck me

that her inefficiency was inward, which was not the case with her husband.

After a few days of analysis in my room, I decided that I must take her into my

confidence and penetrate her so as to finally getting into the mans secrets. I had perfectly

considered the possibility of Hamiltons destroying those documents on the day he should feel

his end at hand. I believed that he would cling to them till then, and I was as convinced of his

reading Silvias love letters over every night or at least pressing them to his lips.

Whenever I found any opportunity of finding his wife alone, I used to follow her and try to

shut her up for a considerable time and she interested me extremely. I knew that it will not take

long to make my discovery.

Do you suppose your husband has some suspicion of me or anybody else?

Her honest eyes gave me no sign I had touched a mark.

I shouldnt think so.

You call it so easily? I said.

Do you think weve any weak points?

Thats exactly what Im asking. Youd only have to identify and mention them for me to

respect them religiously.


24/35

She looked at me hereupon with that air of timid but candid and even gratified curiosity

with which she had confronted me from the first; after which she said: theres nothing to tell.

Were aliens here and so we keep quiet. Weve no life here.

I wish I might think I should bring you a little.

Its all right.

There were twenty things I desired to ask her how in the world did they live; whether

they had any friends or visitors, any relations in America or in any other countries.

Imagination is not always the mother of truth. You must remember, my gentleman,

she told me in the tune of an advice.

I must leave now, she returned without looking at me. I stayed there awhile longer,

wandering about the bright desert the sun was pouring in --- of the old house, thinking the

situation over on the spot.

--:7:--

Perhaps it did, but all the same, five weeks later, I had made no measurable advance.

One may push on through a breach, but one cant batter down a dead wall. She returned that

the breach I had already made was big enough to admit an army and accused me of wasting

precious time when I ought to have been carrying on the struggle in the field. The man had

definitely expected to gather amusement from the drama of my intercourse with his wife, and

was not disappointed that the drama had not come off.

There could be no Venetian business without patience, and since I adored the place I

was much more in the spirit of it for having laid in a large provision. That spirit kept me perpetual

company and seemed to look out at me from the revived mortal face ---- in which all his genius

and treachery shone. I foresaw that I should have a summer after my own literary heart. See

how it glows in the with advancing summer ; how the sky and the sea and the rosy air and the

marble of the palaces all shimmer and melt together. My eccentric private errand became a part

of the general romance --- I felt even a mystic companionship, a moral fraternity with all those

who in the recent past had been in the service of art.

I lingered in the sala when I went to and fro; I used to watch as long as I thought

decent --- the door that led to Mr. Hamiltons part of the room. A person observing me might

have supposed I was trying to cast a spell on it or attempting some odd experiment in

hypnotism. But I was only praying it might open what treasure probably lurking behind it. After


25/35

all they were under my hand. He had lived for years with Signora Silvia, had exchanged love

letters and mementoes definitely some esoteric knowledge had rubbed off on her. My critical

heart used to thrill. It was as if at such a moment as that, in the stillness and after long

contradiction of the day, Mr. Hamiltons secrets were in the air. I looked up at the closed

windows and they showed no sign of life. These couple passed their days in the dark. But this

only emphasized their having matters to conceal. Their motionless shutters became as

expressive as eyes consciously closed, and I took comfort in the probability that, though

invisible themselves most of the time, they kept me in view between the lashes.

Meanwhile the real summer days arrived and began to pass, and as I look back upon

them they seem to me almost the happiest of my life. I had always some business of writing in

my hand I used to carry books and portfolios, while the golden hours elapsed and the plants in

the small garden drank in the light and the inscrutable old palace turned pale and then, as the

day waned, began to recover and flush and my papers rustled in the wandering breeze of the

Adriatic.

There was a further implication that Mr. Hamilton had had a perverse and reckless

youth, albeit a generous character, and that she had braved some wondrous chances. By what

passions had he been ravaged, by what adventures had he been blanched, what store of

memories had he laid away for the monotonous future?

It had happened to me to regret that he had known Europe at all. but as his fate had

ruled otherwise I went with him I tried to judge how the general old order would have struck

him. The relations he had entertained with the special new had even a livelier interest. His own

country after all had had most of his life, and his muse, as they said at that time, was essentially

European.

I was seldom at home in the evening. I spent the late hours either on the water the

moonlights of Venice are famous --- or in the splendid square which serves as a vast forecourt

to the strange old church of Saint Mark. I sat in front of Florians caf eating ices, listening to

music: I remember how the immense cluster of tables and little chairs stretches like a

promontory into the smooth lake of the Piazza. The great basilica, with its low domes and

bristling embroideries, the mystery of its mosaic and sculpture, looked ghostly in the tempered

gloom.

I decided to send a floral tribute to the wife of the house. This came from the idea that

she had very little in common with my own.

Her sociability looked too much visible.


26/35

She perhaps would not know of the existence of the mementoes and letters, and I

welcomed that presumption it made me feel more safe with her --- till I remembered we had

believed the letter of disavowal received by my accomplice in London. Moreover if, with her

husband, she had always escaped invasion, there was little occasion for her having got into her

head that people were after the letters. People had not been after them, for people had not

heard of their whereabouts.

I approached the woman, the wife of Mr. Longstraw Gomes.

Have you heard about the romance of your husband and Lady Silvia?

We dont care for that anymore, told the woman.

Did he like her immensely?

And she didnt she like him?

She said her husband is a god. She gave me this information flatly, without expression;

her tone might have made it a piece of trivial gossip. But it stirred me deeply as she dropped the

words into the summer night; their sound might have been the light rustle of an not-so-old

unfolded love-letter.

Fine! I murmured. And then tell me, please --- has he got some love-letters that

Signora Silvia used to write to him? these are distressingly rare.

I dont know, said the woman, now there was discomfiture in her face. well, good bye.

She added; and she turned into the house.

I said to myself, Surely you would know, should not you, if he had some and still

having?

Santo Dio! she exclaimed, without heeding my question. she was visibly alarmed. The

proof of it was that she began to hide again, so that for a week I kept missing her. I found my

patience ebbing.

--:8:--

Her extreme limpidity was almost provoking, and I felt for the moment that she would

have been more satisfactory if she had if she had been less ingenious.

An older look even than usual came at this into the face of her - a confession it seemed,

of helplessness, an appeal to me to deal fairly, generously with him. She was of yielding nature

and capable of doing almost anything to please a person markedly kind to her. It was strange


27/35

enough that she had not the least air of resenting my want of consideration for her husbands

character, which would have been in the worst possible taste if anything less vital --- from my

point of view ---- had been at stake.

The fear of what this side of her character might have led her to do me nervous for days

afterwards. I waited for an intimation from her.

But, unable to suppress my curiosity, I approached the host.

Have you come to tell me youll take the rooms for a few months more? he asked as I

approached him, startling me by something coarse in his cupidity almost as much as if he had

not already given me a specimen of it. His desire to make our acquaintance lucrative had been,

a false note in my image of the man who had inspired a great Signora with immortal lines and

charming personality. Like all persons who achieve the miracle of changing their point of view in

critical situations, he had been intensely converted.

He made a movement, drawing himself together as if, in a spasm of dread at having lost

his prize, he had been impelled to the immense effort of rising to snatch it from me. I instantly

placed it in his hand, saying: I should like to have it myself, but with your ideas it would be quite

beyond my mark.

I heard him catch his breath as after a strain or an escape. I did not understand what to

do with him. He had fits of horrid imprudence. He is so easily tired --- and yet he had already

begun to roam about the house. And he looked down at his yoke-fellow of long years with a

vacancy of wonder, as if all their contact and custom had not made him perversities, on

occasion, any more easy to follow.

The reason for this had been that he really did not want to give me a grain of succor -

our density was a thing too perfect in its way to touch. He had formed the habit of depending on

it, and if the spell was to break it must break by some force of its own. He was a man with some

safe preserve for sport.

I know what Im about. Im not losing my mind. I dare say youd like to think so, said he

with a crudity of cynicism. Before I reached the door of their own apartment he bade me stop,

and he took a long last look up and down the noble sala. I confess that in spite of this urgency I

was guilty of the indiscretion of lingering; it held me there to feel myself so close to the objects I

coveted ---- which would be probably put away somewhere in the faded unsociable room. The

place had indeed a bareness that suggested no hidden values; there were neither dusky nooks

nor curtained corners, neither massive cabinets nor chests with iron bands. Moreover it was

possible, it was perhaps even likely, that the young scheming man had consigned his relics to

his bedroom, to some battered box that was shoved under the bed, to the drawer of some


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dressing-table, where they would be in the range of vision by the dim light. None the less I

turned an eye on every article of furniture, on every conceivable cover for a hoard, and noticed

that there were half a dozen things with drawers, and in particular a tall old secretary with silver

ornaments of the style of the Empire ---- a respectable somewhat infirm but still capable of

keeping rare secrets. I stared at it so hard that the wife noticed me and changed color.

Her doing this made me think I was right and that, wherever they might have been

before, the documents at that moment languished behind the peevish little lock of the secretary.

It was hard to turn my attention from the dull mahogany front when I reflected that a plain panel

divided me from the goal of my hopes; but I gathered up my slightly covered prudence and with

an effort took leave of my host.

That little trick he has committed his betrayal of the lady he loved once or still love most

for. Is not there for every magician or trick-star a particular thing of that sort, the thing that most

makes him apply himself, the thing without the effort to achieve which the trick-star would not

play at all, the very passion of his passion?

The charm of the topic of each of his deeds overflows into an emotion as lively as his

own. There is an idea in his work without which he would not have given a straw for the whole

job. It is the finest fullest intention of the lot, and the application of it has been a triumph of

patience, of ingenuity. This little trick of the mind plays over the surface of it. The order, the

form, the texture of his deeds will perhaps some day constitute for the initiated a complete

representation of it. So it is naturally the thing for the amateur investigator to look for.

Probably we are little demons of subtlety. If their great affair is a secret, that is only

because it is a secret in spite of itself.

Just to hasten that difficult birth, cant he give us a clue? I thought.

I know that his whole lucid effort gives me the clue. The thing is as concrete there as a

bird in a cage, a bait on a hook, a piece of cheese in a mousetrap, as my foot is struck into my

shoe.

Weve got a heart in our body I thought, is that an element of form or an element of

feeling? It is the organ of life.

Some idea about lifesome sort of philosophysome kind of game he is up to with his

style - a sort of buried treasure

It is a beauty so rare, so greatthe loveliest thing in the world


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--:9:--

If I returned on several occasions to the little house in Venice I dare say it was as much

for news of the man. The hours spent there by Mr. Longstraw were present to my fancy as

those of a chess player bent with a silent scowl, all the lighted winter, over his board and his

moves. As my imagination filled it out the picture held me fast. On the other side of the table

was a ghostlier form, the faint figure of an antagonist good-humouredly but a little wearily secure

---- an antagonist who leaned back in her chair with her hands in her pockets and a smile on her

face. She would take up a chessman and hold it poised a while over one of the little squares,

and then would put it back in its place with a long sigh of disappointment. I had asked them at

an early stage of business if it might not contribute to their success to have some closer

communication with him. He immediately replied that he had no wish to approach the altar

before he had prepared the sacrifice. He quite agreed with the woman both as to the delight and

as to the honor of the chase ---he would bring down the animal with his own rifle.

Ultimately his courage has dropped, his ardor had gone away just to leave us together.

For some time before his going we had indulged in no allusion to the buried treasure, and from

his silence, which my reserve simply emulated, he could not face the triumph. I showed

magnanimity in not reproaching him with his collapse, for the sense of his having thrown up the

game made me feel more than ever how much I at last depended on him. Little by little my

curiosity not only had begun to ache again, but had become the familiar torment of my days and

my nights. There are doubtless people to whom torments of such an order appear hardly more

natural than the contortions of disease; but I dont after all know why I should in this connection

so much as mention them. The stake on the table was of a special substance and our roulette

the revolving mind, but we sat round the green board as intently as the grim gamblers at Monte

Carlo. It was a desert in which he had lost himself, but in which too the woman had dug a hole

in the sand --- a cavity out of which she had still more remarkably pulled him.

That only made one - everything only made one - yearn the more of it; only rounded it off

with a mystery finer and subtler.

But the person got a shock. I saw the immediate shock throb away little by little and then

gather again into waves of wonder and curiosity --- waves that promised, I could perfectly judge,

to break in the end with the fury of my own highest tides. I may say that today as victims of

unappeased desire there isnt a pin to choose between us. The poor mans state is almost my

consolation; there are really moments when I feel it to be quite my revenge.


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As it turned out, the precaution had not been needed, for two hours later, just as I

finished my dinner, the wife appeared, unannounced, in the open doorway of the room in which

my simple repasts were served. I felt no surprise at seeing her. it was immense, but in a case in

which there was a particular reason for boldness it never have prevented her from running up to

my floor. I saw that she was now quite full of a particular reason.

I bowed to her, going down to smoke a cigar. I was nervous; I could not go further; I

could not leave the place. I do not know exactly what I thought might happen, but I felt it

important to be there. I wandered about the alleys ---- the warm night had come on ---- smoking

cigar after cigar and studying the light in Mr. Hamiltons windows. They were open now, I could

see; the situation was different. Sometimes the light moved, but not quickly; it did not suggest

the hurry of a crisis. I bit my cigar hard while it assailed me again that perhaps there were now

no papers and letters to carry!

I strolled through the fine superfluous hall, where on the marble floor --- particularly as at

first I said nothing ----- my footsteps were more audible than I had expected. When I reached

the other end --- the wide window, inveterately closed suddenly, connecting with the balcony

that overhung the canal ---- I submitted that we had best remain there. The air of the canal

seemed heavier, hotter than that of the sala. The place was hushed and void; the quiet

neighborhood had gone to sleep. A lamp, here and there, over the narrow black water

glimmered in double; the voice of a man going homeward singing came to me from a distance.

This did not prevent the scene from being very comme il faut.

The ladys apartment was closed; which seemed a hint that my faltering friend had gone

to bed in impatience of waiting for me. I stood in the middle of the place, considering, hoping

she would hear me and perhaps peep out. There was no light in the room. if I have frankly

stated the importunities, the indelicacies, of which my desire to possess myself of those

documents had made me capable I need not shrink, it seems to me, from confessing this last

indiscretion. It may be objected that their leaving the place dark was a positive sign that they

released me.

The door of the couples room was open and I could see beyond it the faintness of a

taper. There was no sound --- my footstep caused no one to stir. I came further into the room; I

lingered there, a pencil torch in hand. I found myself at the same moment given up to something

else. I had a definite purpose, but felt myself held to the spot by an acute, though absurd, sense

of opportunity. Opportunity for what I could not have said, in as much as it was not in my mind

that I might proceed to thievery. Even had this tempted me I was confronted with the evident

fact that the young man did not leave his secretary, his cupboard, and the drawers of his table


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gaping. I had no keys, no tools, and no ambition to smash his furniture. None the less it came to

me that I was now, perhaps alone, unmolested, at the hour of freedom and safety, nearer to the

source of my hopes than I ever been. I held up my torch; let the light play on the different

objects as if it could tell me something. Still there came no movement from the other room.

Were they sleeping sound --- generous creatures --- on purpose to leave a stranger like me the

field?

I stopped in front of the secretary, gaping at it vainly and no doubt grotesquely; for what

had it to say to me after all? In the first place it was locked, and in the second it almost surely

contained nothing in which I was interested. The secretary was conspicuous, more exposed in a

room in which he could no longer mount guard. It opened with a key, but there was a small

brass handle, like a button as well; I saw this as I played my torch over it. I did something more

for the climax of my crisis. He did not left the key, but the lid would probably move if I touched

the button. The possibility pressed me hard and I bent very close to judge. I did not propose to

do anything, not even --- not in the least --- to let down the lid; I only wanted to test my theory, to

see if the cover would move. I touched the button with my hand --- a mere touch would tell me;

and as I did so --- it is embarrassing for me --- I looked over my shoulder. It was a chance, an

instinct, for I had really heard nothing. I almost let my luminary drop and certainly I stepped

back, straightening myself up at what I saw. The woman stood there in her nightdress, by the

door-way of her room, watching me; she had lifted the everlasting curtain that covered half her

face, and for the first, the last, the only time I beheld her extraordinary eyes. They glared at me;

they were like the sudden drench, for a caught burglar, of a flood of gaslight; they made me

horribly ashamed.

She suddenly retreated before me in horror; and the next thing I knew she had fallen

back with a spasm, as if death had descended on her.

I left Venice the next morning, directly on learning that my hostess had not succumbed,

to the shock I had given her --- the shock I may also say she had given me. I went to

Castelfranco ; I took walks and drives; I spent hours seated smoking at the doors of the cafes,

where there were flies and yellow curtains, on the shady side of the sleepy little squares. But I

scantily enjoyed my travels: I had had to gulp down a bitter draught and could not get rid of the

taste. There was a moment when I stood convinced that the only way to purge my dishonor was

to take myself straight away on the instant; to sacrifice my hopes.

Really the soreness passed; yet if I had scruples about going back I had others about

not doing so, and I wanted to put myself on better footing. The end of it was that I did return to


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Venice on the tenth day; and as my gondola gently bumped against the palace steps a fine

palpitation of suspense showed me the violence my absence had done me.

I tiptoed into the palace. I wanted to let the woman see I still took an interest in them.

Hers was no breast for the pride or the pretence of independence. I was cautious; not ignobly, I

think, for I felt her knowledge of life to be so small that in her unsophisticated vision. It was not

that I was not on pins and needles to know, but that I thought it more decent not to show greed

again so soon after the catastrophe. I hoped she herself would break the ice, but she never

glanced that way, and I thought this natural at the time. Later on, that night, it occurred to me

that her silence was matter for suspicion; since if she had talked of my movements, of anything

so detached as the Giorgione at Castelfranco.

It took the lady rather longer than I had expected to act on my calculation; but when at

least she came out she looked at me without surprise. I had not played even to that mild extent

on her sensibility. What I did say was virtually the truth that I was too nervous, since I

expected her now to settle my fate.

Your fate? said she, giving me a queer look.

I mean about those love letters sent exchanged between your husband and Signora

Silvia. You must know. Havent you a little interest in that?

Yes, there are a great many. I was struck with the way her voice trembled as she told

me this.

I may see them?

Ive got them but I cant show them, she lamentably added.

Not even to me? I broke into a tone of infinite remonstrance and reproach.

But you have to promise that you and your friend Silvia wont publish these to tarnish

my husbands image.

She must have been conscious that though my face showed the greatest

embarrassment ever painted on a human countenance it was not set as a stone, it was also full

of compassion. It was a comfort to me a long time afterwards to consider that she should not

have seen in me the smallest symptom of disrespect.

I promise.

Youll also have to promise that nobody will ever know our whereabouts.

Ya. That too, I promise.

Id give you everything.

But I was thinking of what I shall answer Silvia.


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I looked away to the opposite and of the sala as at something very interesting. The next

thing I remember is that I was downstairs and out of the house. My gondola was there and my

gondolier, reclining on the cushions, sprang up as soon as he saw me. I jumped in, and to his

usual Dove commanda? replied, in a tone that made him stare: Anywhere; out into the

lagoon!

I forgot what I did, where I went after leaving the Lido, and at what hour or with what

recovery of composure I made my way back to my boat. I only know that just after the

afternoon, when the air was aglow with the sunset, I was standing before the church of Saints

John and Paul and looking up at the small square-jawed face of Bartolommeo Colleoni, the

terrible condottiere who sits so sturdily astride of his huge bronze horse on the high pedestal on

which Venetian gratitude maintains him. I found myself staring at the triumphant captain as if he

had an oracle on his lips. The western light shines into all his grimness at that hour and makes it

wonderfully personal. And if he were thinking of battles and stratagems they were of a different

quality from any I had to tell him of.

As I was preparing to leave the house with all those intimately scribbled colorful papers,

which was kept so carefully on table in my room, I recognized she had bade me good-bye ---

she said something about hoping I should be happy.

Good-bye?

Probably she could not feel the interrogation.

I knew Silvias ex-beau could scarcely bear his loss.

I assure you of the pleasure with which I would put myself at your service.

I saw in a moment my good lady had never before spoken to in sympathetic fashion ----

with a humorous firmness that did not exclude sympathy, that was quite founded on it. She

might have told me that my sympathy was impertinent, but this by good fortune did not occur to

her. I left her with the understanding that she would submit my proposal to her soul and I might

come back the next day for her decision.

But before biding her good-bye, I saw that the lady remained impenetrable and her

attitude worried me by suggesting that he had a fuller v

Palace Intrigues by Dibyendu Ghosal

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Transcript of Palace Intrigues by Dibyendu Ghosal