Eustace and Hilda (77 page)

But what a fool he was! He had sent Silvestro home, and there would be no gondola at the landing-stage, only hordes of strangers swarming up from below, light and laughter on their faces, and their eyes turned to the east. He looked around him. Everywhere the light was growing stronger; it seemed to be born out of the air, not from that band of dull gold in front which scarcely awoke an echo of its colour from the still sleeping sea. He was in a rectangle framed on two sides by anomalous structures of glass, wood and wire, the flimsy but sufficient barricades of the seaside; and behind lay the line of hotels, each sleepily aspiring to grandeur, cutting off his retreat. Only the way in front lay open, and that was boundless, for there was no dividing line between the sea and sky.

Eustace tried to project himself into the unfolding strangeness, but it was immitigably alien and would take no imprint from his groping thoughts. It was coming into existence without him, almost, he felt, in spite of him, a world whose laws and principles he did not know, the very substance of the foreign. Again he fumbled frantically for his lost identity, his sense of what he, Eustace, was doing here and now. But it had passed into the keeping of another, and he was aware only of an immense reluctance, a limitless spiritual fatigue.

But the others did not seem to be awaiting any sky-born signal, nor did they trouble to take their clothes off. They knew what to do. By ones and twos they slid past him in the twilight, and were hidden from his view almost before the sea received them. On the way out they chattered to each other in low tones, but their voices sounded stronger as they reached the sea. Alone in the forward movement Eustace hung back, like a passenger who has lost his railway ticket and must wait at the barrier until all the others have gone through. He never knew at what moment his dread of the ordeal left him, but suddenly like a ball that finds an incline and begins to roll, he found himself starting to undress. He could not join in the laughter and talking, but he could feel the common impulse—indeed, he could feel nothing else; it seemed to be the first time he had ever acted with his whole being.

As his bare feet touched the sand he saw, not in the least where he had been looking, in, rather than above, the sea, the rim of the rising sun. The group nearest him broke into shouts and began to run. The anonymous being who had been Eustace began to run too. But when they felt the ripples round their feet their pace slackened and the wonder of sensation caught them. It caught their breath, too, for at this hour of the morning even the Adriatic in July was not quite warm—not warm to bodies which in the past twenty-four hours had seen much service, both in work and play, had eaten plentifully and fasted long, had loved and hated and felt indifferent and now, between jest and earnest, were putting all these experiences behind them while the friendly water of the ancient sea crept higher and higher up legs and thighs and stomachs, submerging warts and scars and birthmarks, omitting nothing from its intimate embrace, making free with the flesh that had been theirs so long. Perhaps more essentially, certainly more demonstrably, theirs than the minds which hovered and struggled kite-like in their wake. Scores of heads were now bobbing in the water, moving slowly towards the crescent sun; and among them, and indistinguishable from them, was Eustace's.

What Eustace noticed, walking back between the tram-lines in the broadening daylight, was faces. For hours he seemed to have seen nothing but shapes, or at most the backs of heads; now he realised that he had been suffering from face-starvation, and the one thing he wanted was to see the human countenance. Greedily he studied them, not scrupling to turn round and stare rudely at those who overtook him or whom he overtook. But he was disappointed. How ordinary the faces were, now that he could see them properly! Hardly one to which he could attach a special meaning, hardly one that from any standpoint rose above mediocrity. True, the light was not kind to them; it was mediocre itself, and came from a low, heavy sky that he did not associate with Venice. Could it be that the night of revelry had tired out the day, and given it the same hangover it had given the revellers?

Eustace could read no poetry in the daylight's cynical acceptance of everything it revealed—the waiting tram-lines all ready to grind and squeak, the off-white shops and houses now wearily astir, the shutters opening to expose a hand and an arm, and then perhaps a small, seedy figure in shirt-sleeves and black waistcoat. He could not feel interested in what lay behind those windows. As to his companions of the sea-change, their clothes were shapeless and dripping, or creased and sandy; their shoes needed shining; they dragged their feet and shuffled; their hair was tousled; their hats were out of shape; their voices sounded cross and snappy or dull and flat. And how short they were, almost pygmies!

Even the prospect of Venice, which now began to open out before them across the water, the Dogana, the Salute, the islands, the wonderful hollow curve of the riva and the public gardens, looked spiritless and ordinary in the thick, pale, level light. Nothing stood out, nothing asserted itself. Beholding these sorry stage properties, Eustace could not recall the glamour of the night.

And how was he to get back? The landing-stage was thick with people, far too many for the drab flotilla of small black boats, not a gondola amongst them, moored in clusters under the sea-wall. He would have to wait, perhaps an hour or more, for the first steamer. Feeling very tired, he walked to the bank and stood listlessly watching the lucky owners of boats clambering down the side into their craft. If only he had resisted his humanitarian scruples and kept the gondola! Silvestro and Erminio wouldn't have minded: waiting was their métier. How splendid his departure would have been, a kingfisher flash among these dingy boats-of-all-work! The necessity to do as everyone else did struck him like a blow.

A boat was filling up just below him. The youngish man who had got in first took off his shabby coat and made a few preparatory dispositions with the oars, then turned to the bank and stretched out his arms. Like everyone that morning he was very plain in both senses of the word; his sallow skin was porous, his chin stubbly, his black eyes had black smudges under them. A woman on the bank offered him a small child, heavy with sleep, which he took carefully but without enthusiasm. Next the mother availed herself of his arm, then an older woman, bareheaded like the first, but dressed in black and with a black shawl round her shoulders. Her hair was grizzled and as springy and stiff as wire, her eyes were hard. When they had settled themselves into the seat, from which the black leather lining was peeling off, an elderly man, grey-headed and collarless and stiff in his joints, got in with them, and after a short altercation with the younger man sat down on the seat in front. Eustace was thinking how overloaded the boat looked when the younger man, who was standing poised to row, suddenly turned to him and said:

“Piazza San Marco?”

Overjoyed to be leaving Lethe's wharf, Eustace boarded the boat, half expecting it to sink; but it seemed to have the unlimited capacity of all Venetian boats. There was nowhere to sit until, after another brief altercation, the older man resigned his seat and withdrew to the poop. Eustace was distressed, but they all seemed to think it quite natural, and the young man, spreading his coat on the vacant seat, requested Eustace to accommodate himself. Eustace was touched by this attention, though the coat was hardly cleaner than the bench. He sat crouched forward like a figurehead, and even so the young man's hands, as he came forward on his stroke, almost scraped the back of his neck.

Though there was very little wind there was a good deal of motion on the water, and Eustace, tired and empty, soon began to feel it. He stole a look at the other passengers to see how much sympathy he might expect from them should he be sea-sick. The mother was bending over her child. It stirred fretfully and cried, and the older woman made as though to take it from her, but she resisted and their eyes clashed almost angrily. The old man was leaning on his elbow sucking a cigarette, and occasionally spitting; the young man stared ahead of him. They were all absorbed in their own concerns. Warning signals flashed along Eustace's exhausted nerves. They were passing the Armenian monastery; he would fix his mind on that, and on Byron who had surely never been sea-sick when he rowed out there to write. But somehow the monastery seemed a building like any other, and its pink walls, that reminded him of blotting-paper, were no antidote to a queasy stomach. But with his eyes unoccupied, his stomach certainly fared worse; he would hold out till he got to the next landmark, the island monastery of San Servolo. How cleverly the architect had adapted his design to the shape of the island! But the biscuit-coloured walls were lustreless, the windows monotonously regular and sometimes barred: Eustace's eye slid along them without finding relief. The boatman stopped rowing and stretched out his hand towards the building.

“Manicomio,” he remarked with a smile of amusement. “Pazzi,” he added, when Eustace showed no sign of understanding. Seeing that Eustace was still in the dark, he made the international gesture of tapping his forehead. The decorative island of San Servolo was a lunatic asylum.

The discovery increased Eustace's malaise, and he looked round desperately for some new object on which to concentrate. There were a great many to choose from, for he was now riding the waters of the Bacino in the heart of picturesque Venice—the extremely agitated waters, and it behoved him to act quickly. But all the buildings were so off colour he did not know which to look at—literally off colour, for under the hard, thick glare the pinks and greys, scarcely distinguishable from each other, had the same monotonous message for his mind. The sighings and subsidings within him grew more imperative and told him his time was short. The rose-brown campanile of San Giorgio Maggiore was as dumb as the shut, pallid face of the church it guarded. From the great blank oblong of the Doge's palace the pink lozenges had faded altogether. A colourless Venice! Fortune's ball, topping the Dogana, looked a tedious nought, an empty O, a mere dull round, robbed of its gold-green patina. Nothing could injure the shape of the Salute, but even it seemed less impressive, a uniform lifeless grey, a few tones darker than the sky, but made of the same substance.

And how must he appear, thought Eustace suddenly, to all these glorious buildings, the delight and despair of Guardi, Canaletto, Marieschi, Turner, Sargent, and how many more? What must they think of this poor creature huddled in his overcoat, tossing up and down in a dirty little black boat, his unshaven face green with nausea, his companions the refuse of the Venetian populace?

Desperately he looked for comfort outside the charmed circle of architectural aristocrats. As sickly as the rest of him, his eyes travelled slowly across the heaving water of the Giudecca Canal and rested on the austere geometry of the Redentore Church. He had forgotten it. It still drew his eyes with its mysterious apartness, its proud isolation. Eustace fancied that unlike the circle of notables it had not suffered a sea-change, it had not shed its glory of the night before. The controlled strength and the call to discipline in that stern regard were just the tonic he needed.

Drawing a less hazardous breath he instinctively turned round. But the dews of sickness had come out on his brow and his companions in the boat imagined him worse than he was. Far from being horrified or shocked they were all sympathy. Cries of ‘Ahi, poveretto!' rang out; even the baby roused itself and smiled at him as if this was something it thoroughly understood. Silencing a buzz of advice and counter-advice the young man, to Eustace's dismay, held his forehead with one hand while with the other he pressed to his lips a flagon of red wine that had been conjured out of the bottom of the boat. The wine was sour and rough, but most reviving. But the time they reached the Piazzetta, Eustace was feeling nearly well. Only in body, however. His spirits had again sunk to zero. He had remembered to bring so many things for the expedition: a book in case he should be bored, two handkerchiefs in case he lost one, a bottle of aspirin, and of course his brandy flask, which he had forgotten to use. But no money. He was so used to being paid for he had forgotten to bring any. Until the young man gave him the wine, the question of payment had not occurred to Eustace. But it must have occurred to the young man; indeed, it must have been his reason for offering Eustace the lift.

Eustace rehearsed the sentences which were to make his position clear—the shame he felt, the kindness he could never acknowledge, the rich reward waiting at the Palazzo Sfortunato. But hardly had he begun, “Scusi, signore——,” when the young man, backed up by all his relations, passionately disclaimed any wish to be repaid. He smiled; they all smiled; they diffused the dignity and reserve of people whose lives are spent in bestowing unrequited favours; they seemed to be, for the first time that morning, enjoying themselves. Nothing had been a trouble, everything had been a pleasure, might they all soon meet again.

With his own hand lifted in salute Eustace turned away from the fluttering hands in Charon's boat. Twenty minutes later, crossing the traghetto, he saw the boat again, and waved, but the family did not see him so absorbed were they in a dispute with another boat, or if they did see him, they preferred not to recognise him. At other times their changed demeanour would have pained Eustace; this morning he thought, people are like that: happy and pleasant one moment, cross and disagreeable the next. One must accept it, and like them in moderation all the time—not so much as when they are smiling, or so little as when they are quarrelling. He would not worry because he had no money to pay the gondolier at the traghetto. The gondolier knew him, and another time would do. “Un altra volta.” At the old formula the man shrugged his shoulders and raised the ghost of a smile—very different from the delighted grins he was wont to bestow on Eustace. But again Eustace did not mind. Who was he to be a ray of happiness? Seen without it people were more themselves, just as Venice was perhaps more itself seen through this blanket of dense white light. Kindness did not disappear because crossness was its near neighbour; the beauty of Venice would return, even if to-day it was eclipsed. The great thing was to be interested, and not to let interest be affected too much by one's joys and desires. ‘Binding with briers my joys and desires.' The fact that Venice could be ugly was interesting; the fact that people could be unpleasant was interesting; let us leave it at that.