Extinction (46 page)

climbing expedition to the Ortler
, he said, and Father had saved his life by throwing him a rope down the rock face at the last moment,
at the very last moment
. It did not seem to trouble him in the least that he was the only one eating while we looked on. Our only concern was that he should enjoy his supper. The kitchen had made a special effort for Spadolini. His supper had not been hastily rustled up but was carefully prepared, as I saw at once. At Sitten in Switzerland, in the Rhône Valley, he said, he and Father had once visited a little church,
a Romanesque church
, where they had seen a picture of
Christ with a strangely distorted face,
unnaturally distorted
. Father had told Spadolini that this picture impressed him more than any he had ever seen. Father was a great
connoisseur of art
and
a friend of artists
. Spadolini seemed to relish the word
artists
and repeated it more than once, for his own delectation. He was a
lover of nature
, said Spadolini.
And a lover of justice
, he added, and he knew where he stood with his religious faith.
Your father was a good Catholic
, he said, with a glance at my sisters. With this he concluded his characterization of Father and, simultaneously, his supper. Nobody uses a napkin so elegantly to wipe his mouth, I thought. Caecilia poured him some wine. Leaning back, he said he had to be in Rome the following evening, as the Pope had summoned him to his presence, but with this Pope one never knew whether the person he had summoned would be received at the appointed time. The most dreadful conditions prevailed in Rome, he said. The political climate had become much worse, with both the Communists and the Fascists planning to seize power in the near future. But neither the Communists nor the Fascists will succeed, he said. When he went out he never knew whether he would get home alive. The Fascists simply picked people off, whether or not they had anything to do with their cause, just to draw attention to themselves. It was
a time of unrest, a dreadful time
. On the other hand, it was the most interesting time that Italy had seen. I’m so attached to Rome, he said, that I can’t imagine myself leaving it, though it’s not for me to decide whether or not I stay.
I’m at the mercy of the higher powers
. I wondered what was the basis of my admiration for Spadolini. He himself supplies the answer, by his very presence, I thought. It’s the way he says things, the way he presents himself as he says them, that compels my admiration, I thought, not
what
he says. He says everything differently from everyone else, I thought. Then suddenly, without any apparent embarrassment, he began to talk about Mother. He said it was impossible to describe her, and then proceeded to do so. She was always elegant, and it was she who first took him to the Vienna Opera, to see
Der Rosenkavalier
. It was through her that he had met the most famous women singers who performed at the Vienna Opera, and he still had the most cordial contacts with them. It was she who had acquainted him with Austrian music by taking him to Philharmonic concerts when she was in Vienna. Together with Father they had attended concerts at the
Musikverein and elsewhere. In particular he owed it to Mother that he had heard so much Mahler in Vienna. She had drawn his attention to Mahler, whom she was very fond of at the time, and taken him to every possible Mahler concert. She was
highly musical
, and he had always thought it a pity that she did not play an instrument, as she would probably have been
a great pianist
. His chief regret at being moved from Vienna and suddenly posted overseas was that it cut him off from music. Mother had gone with him on a boat trip up the Danube to Dürnstein in the Wachau. She had taken him around Salzburg and shown him the Salzkammergut; then shortly after their first meeting she had invited him to Paris, which he had never visited before. At that time, as a mere counselor, he did not have the opportunity for travel that he later enjoyed as nuncio, and so he was
fairly restricted
, as he put it. Mother also invited him to Florence, where she was spending several weeks with my father in the fall. It was through her that he first got to know the city properly. He had often been to Florence, but it was Mother who
taught him to love the city of the Uffizi
. And he owed it to her that he knew Upper Austria so well,
those beautiful lakes and mountains
, he said, and all those magnificent castles, such as one finds nowhere else. And the glorious landscape of Upper Austria, he said, the most beautiful in Austria. He had always had a deep respect for Mother and could not help loving such an extraordinary person. They had had an incomparable friendship, spanning thirty years. Mother had
restored his health
, he said. Again and again she had supplied him with the best medicines and visited him in his darkest hours, when he lay
at death’s door
, in a more or less hopeless condition, having been given up by the doctors. Your mother was the best doctor I ever had. She brought
these Upper Austrian herbs
to me in Rome, and they cured me. Perhaps I owe my life to these Upper Austrian herbs that your mother brought me. She had spared no effort in visiting him, he said, and traveled to Rome under the most difficult circumstances in order to save him.
She saved my life with her herbal remedies
, Spadolini exclaimed. My mother’s medicinal herbs from Upper Austria
had preserved him for humanity
—these were his very words, uttered with a degree of pathos but with a charm that made them not in the least embarrassing. If necessary, he said, I’ll recommend these medicinal herbs from Upper Austria to the Pope. He paused for some minutes,
and none of us dared break the silence. My brother-in-law, sitting opposite Spadolini, was utterly speechless, and my sisters respectfully observed this perfectly timed silence. Spadolini went on to say that only the previous week he had arranged to go with Mother to Calabria, but it was not to be. To the Trullis, he said. It had long been her dream to see Calabria, a dream that she had hoped to realize in early summer. But suddenly everything has changed, he said. He then talked of the Etna excursion that he once had made from Taormina with Mother and me. I think it was some five or six years ago that Mother visited me in Rome. For days I walked around Rome with her, trying to find some shoes that she had set her heart on. They had to be blue and made of a particular kind of pigskin, as thin and as soft as glove leather, and after searching for days we finally found the right ones. She bought three pairs. She dragged me to several dinners with acquaintances of hers, not relatives, just to establish an alibi for my father’s benefit, to cover up her continual meetings with Spadolini, which no one really begrudged her and everyone knew about, but which she constantly tried to conceal. She took me with her to these dreadful dinners, but she did not return home with me, because she wanted to spend the night with Spadolini—and she did. I did not begrudge my mother these nocturnal meetings with Spadolini. I felt sorry for her because she was dependent on them, as I was bound to conclude. I know that after these dinners Spadolini would be waiting for her somewhere in Trastevere, where they would repair to an apartment belonging to friends of his and stay together till morning. I was sorry not only for Mother but for Spadolini too. On the other hand, I despised them both. But on the excursion to Etna, at the end of January, they took me with them. In Taormina we naturally stayed at the Timeo. We hired a taxi and drove up to the snowline. From there we went by cable car to the Etna plateau. The main crater was shrouded in fog. There was nothing to be seen. All three of us were the happiest people imaginable. Spadolini now described our Etna excursion. We took the cable car to the top and went into the restaurant, he said. But it was so cold that we wanted to stay there only long enough for a cup of tea. Then your mother and I, he said, addressing me, decided to walk down the mountain on foot, but you refused because you said you were afraid. Do you remember? Yes, I said, I was afraid. You were afraid, said Spadolini, but
we weren’t. I took your mother’s hand and we walked down the mountain. You went back by cable car. We saw you in the cable car from below, and you saw us from above, he said. Suddenly there was a snowstorm, so dense that we couldn’t see you anymore. We couldn’t see you, and you couldn’t see us. The cable car was no longer visible to us, and we were no longer visible to you as you stood in the cable car. You said later that it had swayed so much that you were afraid it would be wrenched from its moorings. You said you had looked for us in the snow under the cable car but lost sight of us. The cable car swayed so much that you thought your last hour had come, said Spadolini. We couldn’t see anything either in the snowstorm and crouched in a crevice in the ice. In minutes the snow had drifted so high that we were almost buried. As in the Alps, said Spadolini, as in the Alps. We thought we were going to perish, as people perish in the Alps. We could no longer see a thing, said Spadolini. If we don’t want to freeze to death we must keep going, I thought. I got hold of your mother and went on. But I was soon exhausted, and she got hold of me, and so on, said Spadolini. You had long since arrived at the station in the valley, and the snowstorm hadn’t stopped. You notified the police. But they didn’t go up the mountain because the storm was too fierce. We were in a lava crevice, said Spadolini, and thought we were going to fall down the mountainside. We didn’t move. But your mother kept saying, We must go on. She got hold of me and pushed me forward, farther and farther forward, said Spadolini. Finally we crouched in a lava crevice, convinced that we were going to die. I prayed, said Spadolini, silently, without your mother’s knowing. Quite silently. Then the snowstorm abated, and we were saved. You had warned us, Spadolini said. We shouldn’t have gone down the mountain on foot. Lots of people have perished that way. Etna is a deadly mountain, he said with some pathos. But your mother and I were lucky, he said. I’ll never forget our Etna excursion. Then we went back to Taormina. Exhausted and half frozen, we went to our beds. That evening we turned up in the dining room in full rig, as if nothing had happened. I should have listened to you, but my love for your mother made me quite crazy. Just imagine what would have happened if your mother hadn’t repeatedly gotten hold of me and pushed me, he said, literally pushed me down the mountain! When necessary, your mother
was what they call a
fearless woman
. Energetic, said Spadolini, full of verve. And that evening she looked so elegant, wearing a Persian dress, a cream-colored dress, he said—you’re bound to remember it. My God, he said, how good your mother looked in that dress! Perhaps you don’t remember your mother as I do, he said. I have the most wonderful memories of her. I felt terrible when I heard the news, said Spadolini. It was the most terrible news I’d had for a long time. How often your mother saved me from death—that’s the truth—by inviting me to Wolfsegg. Here I had the peace I needed in order to survive, he said. This house and this landscape are dearer to me than any others. The high culture that is to be found everywhere here shields one from despair. When I was nuncio in Peru I constantly thought of Wolfsegg, of you and your mother. Thinking of you here enabled me to survive
there
. But Peru is a magnificent country, said Spadolini, magnificent, magnificent. The news was the saddest I could possibly have received, he said. He got up and said that he would now go across to the Orangery and see the dead. Before we all left the room, he came up to me and said that the death of my mother was the
greatest loss
he could have suffered. Don’t lose control, he said. You’re now the master of Wolfsegg. The time had come for Spadolini to visit the Orangery. The other guests had long since retired to their rooms. Noises could still be heard from the kitchen, but silence reigned everywhere else. Caecilia led the way, almost running and opening all the doors. She arrived first at the Orangery. For the last ten or twelve yards she slowed down to a walking pace. She did not go straight in but waited for Spadolini, who was following her. He had lost none of his composure. He was wearing the most elegant shoes I have ever seen. I had noticed them earlier as I walked behind him up to the second floor. It was always a delight to see him buying his shoes, only in the Via Condotti, of course, never on the Corso, where I bought mine. I looked admiringly at them in the fresh grass. They showed up particularly well in the light of the catafalque lamps, which lit up part of the park, while the rest was in darkness. Spadolini wanted me, or Amalia at least, to enter the Orangery first, but we ceded precedence to him. He took Caecilia’s arm and went in. He halted in front of the coffins and pressed Caecilia to his side. My brother-in-law stood behind her, and Amalia stood behind Spadolini, while I stationed myself in the background,
behind them all. The huntsmen who were keeping watch stood stock-still, their faces impassive, as at a military lying in state. The scene reminded me of the monument to the Unknown Soldier in Warsaw, which I had once seen with Johannes when we met in Warsaw for a trip to Krakow. He had been hunting near Zakopane, and I had been visiting relatives near Wilamowice. For a few minutes we all stood motionless. Then I conceived a sudden desire to see the faces of my sisters, my brother-in-law, and Spadolini, instead of the dead and by now quite alien faces of my father and my brother. I went up to the coffins and pretended to check the ice blocks, lifting the sheets, looking under them, then dropping them again, though I was interested only in the faces of Spadolini, my sisters, and my brother-in-law. Yet their faces gave no hint of what was going on in their minds. They betrayed nothing. They were quite motionless, like curtains behind which everything lay hidden. I had hoped that these faces would reveal what lay behind them, but everything that would have interested me remained hidden. They’re all so clever and controlled, I thought as I stood in front of them, not knowing whether they had divined my purpose. I could well believe this of Spadolini, and of my sisters. The only one who showed his true face, with no curtain drawn over it, as it were, was my brother-in-law, the wine cork manufacturer. He had not drawn a curtain over his stolidity, of which he was not even aware, I thought. All the others had their facial curtains drawn; my brother-in-law, the wine cork manufacturer, was the only one who did not interest me at all. What the others are thinking behind these facial curtains would certainly be extremely interesting, I told myself. But I know what