Had I a Hundred Mouths (3 page)

I begun some days to let Leander loose. He strayed from the cave more and more. I warned him not to, but he'd wander in the woods. I saw him begin to leap and to run, the way a cripple does—or a crippled animal. Because that's what he would have looked like to any hunter if any had come out there, and they would have shot him dead. Once when I came and could not find him and I was afraid to call out his name, I looked and looked and finally found him by the log pond where the old kiln was and heavy trees that vines crawled up to the top of and then fell down, all blooming, morning glory and honeysuckle and muscadine vines, and trumpets; this was where I found Leander. I saw him sitting on the old walls of the kiln, looking into the pond. It was just at twilight. An owl begun to make its hurting sound. And I thought, who is this creature of the woods, borned in the woods and burnt in the woods and healed, and hiding in the woods from his persecutors and from all humanity? And at that time I was afraid for Leander and for myself, wondering what we would ever do. There was a road going to be built soon across the woods—that's the Highway now, I-17—and I heard talk of some kind of a plant going to be started—which is now of course the Dye Works that turned the river yellow—and I was scared. And I said to Leander, you muss not ever do that again, run off from the cave that far. But Leander didn't want to go on living hiding, I saw that, he wanted free, I could see that. And I knew that he had seen himself in the pond.

But he went on. Leander went on living, continued the uncle. Why? You'd have thought he'd just hang himself from a tree or drown hisself in the log pond—many times I expected to come and find that he had done that, killed himself by his own hand. Like his mother did. But Leander stayed alive and kept living, don't know why. And then one day when I came to the cave he was gone. I looked everywhere. I couldn't call because I didn't know who'd hear me. At first I run this way and then I run that way and then I was going around in circles. If even a branch of a tree cracked, I thought it was Leander. Then I got my bearings from the black piece of smokestack of the old sawmill that stuck up like a knife and I ran to the kiln and whispered Leander! I saw some birds that must have been his friends and I asked the birds, where's Leander? And I saw a doe and her fawn and they perked up and looked right at me and I said, please tell me where has Leander gone. Because he'll never make it all alone. And then when I shone a light into Leander's old dark corner of the cave, something gleamed. And there, on a tree root, dangling on a string, was the red ring, the sad red ring. The uncle reached under the bed, drew up the bottle of whiskey to his mouth and took a deep swallow from it, the deepest of all. Then he was quiet for a long time. Finally the older nephew asked, “What happened to Leander?” and the uncle answered softly, “I never saw Leander again. I went away and never came back again to the cave in the sawmill woods. Wasn't too long before bulldozers leveled the place and men came in and built the state highway through there: I-17. Underneath the highway lays forever the red ring.”

And then they lay silent together for a long time, the uncle, the older nephew and the young one. And in a while the nephews heard their uncle sleeping. But the older nephew did not sleep. He lay fiercely awake and felt the flesh of his uncle against his side, the beat of his heart and the breeze of his breath, whiskey-laden, upon his cheek.

Some years later, the older nephew, who had long ago left the place, came back home to his uncle's funeral. He had died, they called and told him, alone in a drifter's Mission, drunk on a cot, in Houston, where he'd gone to seek his brother and sister (who had renounced him) but had gone to the Methodist mission, Harbor Lights, near the Ship Channel on Navigation Boulevard. And as he stood at the grave, a group of hooded white figures came out from the trees and gathered around the coffin; and he saw, when one of them lifted for a moment his mask, the face of his young cousin. Did he want to speak, to tell something to him? The older cousin felt a chill of terror and rage; but he held still until the preacher, who had stepped forward and was reading Galatians 6:8, “For he that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption,” had finished. And then he turned his back to the place and left it forever—or so he vowed.

And then more years passed and the older nephew had drunk his uncle's whiskey, had looked here and there, had lost love and speech, had been living hidden for nights and days away from life in a dark world of fear and dumbness, Leander's brother, bound back to the land of his uncle. And returning home late one night on a darkened street in a cold city, the older cousin heard a ghostly sound of breaking glass, and he saw coming towards him out of the darkness a startling shape of beauty and oddness. As if drawn together, the figure and the cousin moved toward each other; and when they confronted each other it was as though they had come together out of the ages, face to face. The nephew looked upon a phantom face, as if what face had been there had been burned away and this was the painted mask of it. The creature's head was covered with a rich mane of hair, and in the streetlight there appeared to be a red glow over it. The being was clothed in a glimmering garment of scales of glass; and colored feathers were reflected in their mirrors. And the nephew saw that gaudy rings glistened on scarred brown hands. Leander! he whispered. Why did he think that this was the burnt boy, the orphan child of lust, that on a long-ago Good Friday afternoon signaled the end of his boyhood? Leander! he called. But there was no sign of feeling in the shadowed ancient eyes which, for a searing moment, locked upon him. And then the phantom being moved around the nephew and went on, swathed in the delicate tinkling of glass.

Leander! he softly called, once more, Leander! And he was calling to his uncle and his uncle's sorrow and to all storytelling, all redemption: Leander, Leander. But the figure steadily moved away, as if it were made of glass and falling delicately to pieces in its ruined march, into the gloom of the night, farther and farther away from any recognition, any redemption, any forgiveness.

And all that night the nephew put this down and told again the story that his uncle told him, a story that he could not have told before had he had a hundred mouths to tell it with. In the morning, in the silver light of dawn over the old city of his miracles, miraculously refreshed he saw in the mirror his naked body, its skin, its haunch, its breast: the ancient sower's flesh, the reaper's.

T
HE
T
EXAS
P
RINCIPESSA

Who would've dreamed that I would get the Palazzo? Well let me try and stay on what you asked me about before we were so rudely interrupted—by me. That ever happen to you? Start out to tell one thing and get off onto another? Well let me try and stay on what you asked me about. Welcome to the Palazzo.

The Texas Principessa had married a Naples Prince of an old line. Hortense Solomon (we called her Horty) was herself of an old line—of dry goods families. Texas Jews that had intermarried and built up large stores in Texas cities over the generations. Solomon's Everybody's Store was an everyday word in the mouths of Texas people and an emporium—which was their word—where Texas people were provided with everything from hosiery to clocks. The Solomons, along with the Linkowitzes, the Dinzlers and the Myrons, were old pioneers of Texas. They were kept to their faith by traveling Rabbis in early days, and later they built Synagogues and contributed Rabbis and Cantors from their generations—except those who married Texas Mexicans or Texas Frenchmen. These, after a while, melted into the general mixture of the Texas population and ate cornbread instead of bagels and preferred barbeque pork and tamales to lox and herring. That ever happen to you? Let's see where was I?

Oh. The Naples Prince, Renzi da Filippo, did not bring much money to the marriage because the old line of da Filippos had used up most of it or lost it; or had it taken from them in one way or another—which was O.K. because they had taken it from somebody else earlier on: sometimes there is a little justice. That ever happen to you? Renzi was the end of the line. Someone who was the end of a line would look it, wouldn't you think so? You could not tell it in Renzi da Filippo, he looked spunky enough to
start
something; he was real fresh and handsome in that burnt blond coloring that they have, sort of toasted—toast-colored hair and bluewater eyes and skin of a wheaty color. He was a beauty everyone said and was sought after in Rome and London and New York. Those Italianos! About all he had in worldly goods was the beautiful Palazzo da Filippo in Venice, a seventeenth-century hunk of marble and gold that finally came into his hands. Had Hortense Solomon not given her vows to Renzi in wedlock, Palazzo da Filippo might have gone down the drain. It needed repair in the worst kind of way—all those centuries on it—and those repairs needed a small fortune—which Horty had a lot of. As soon as the marriage was decided upon, there was a big party. The Prince was brought to Texas and an announcement party was thrown, and I mean
thrown
, on the cold ranch river that flowed through the acres and acres of hot cattle-land owned by the Solomons. The gala stirred up socialites as far as Porto Ercole and Cannes, from which many of the rich, famous and titled flew in on family planes. Horty Solomon—which was very hard for Italians to say so they called her La Principessa di Texas—started right in with her plans for fixing up the Palazzo. The plans were presented in the form of a little replica of the Palazzo used as a centerpiece for the sumptuous table. Two interior decorators called The Boys, favorites of Horty's from Dallas, exhibited their color schemes—a lot of Fuchsia for Horty loved this favorite color of hers. “You're certainly not going to redecorate that Palazzo” (they said Palazzo the way she did, so that it sounded like “Plotso”), “you're certainly not going to furnish it out of Solomon's Everybody's Store!” The Boys declared to Horty as soon as they heard of her plans to redo the Plotso da Filippo. “Nor,” said they, “are you going to make it look like a West Texas ranch house. We're using Florentine silk and Venetian gold, with rosy Fuchsia appointments!”

When Palazzo da Filippo was in shape, the Texas relatives poured in. The Palazzo was crawling with them, young and old. The Palazzo could have been a big Texas house. Black cooks and maids from East Texas mingled with Italian servants. The Venetians loved it. “Viva la Principessa di Texas!” they cried. Those Italianos!

Here I must inform you something of which you were asking about, that on his very wedding night in a villa in Monaco (the beautiful Prince gambled on his wedding night) the beautiful Prince Renzi burst a blood vessel in his inner ear and succumbed (the newspapers' word for it). He just plain died in his wedding bed is what it was. You were asking about how he died. Vicious talk had it that the only stain on the nuptial (newspapers' word)—only stain on the nuptial sheets came from the Prince's ear. Crude. The poor bride, who had been married before—a big textile man from Birmingham, Alabama—was stunned. Poor Horty. Tragedy dogged her, as you well can see. I myself have never experienced the death of a husband but I have experienced two divorces and let me tell you they are simular, they are like a death. They are no fun. My last divorce was particularly nasty. Thank God there was no issue, as the Wills said. Both my husbands were without issue. Issue indeed. That's a joke for the last one, who issued it to
Old Granddad
instead of me—mind as well say it; and excuse the profanity—that one had little issue except through his mouth… when he threw up his Bourbon. Crude, I know. But that's mainly the kind of issue
he
had. That ever happen to you? Let's see where was I. Oh. Anyway, this left me in London, quite penniless; tell you why I was in London some other time. Don't have time for that garden path now—it's a memory lane I choose at the moment to take a detour from. But the thing of it is, this is how Horty Solomon got the Palazzo da Filippo, which is what you were asking me about: under the auspices of a sad circumstance—a broken blood vessel leading to death; but a tragedy leading to a new life for her. And for me, as you will soon hear the story (that you were asking about). Anyway, Horty went on with her plans for the Palazzo, now all hers.

As I said somewhere—I can't tell a story straight to save my life, my mind races off onto a hundred things that I remember and want to tell right then, don't want to wait. That ever happen to you?
Anyway
, as I said somewhere, Texans flooded into the canals of Venice because of the Principessa:
Venezia
was half Texas some days—and loved it. And if you've ever heard a Texan speaking Italian, you won't believe the sound of it. Big oilmen came to the Palazzo and Texas college football players—Horty had given them a stadium in Lampasas (they called her Cousin Horty)—Junior League ladies, student concert pianists (Horty was a patron of the Arts, as you will see more about), and once a Rock group—they had that Grand Canal jumping, and some seventeenth-century tiles
fell
, I can tell you. And maybe something from even earlier, a Fresco or two from the Middle Ages. And talented young people who wanted to paint or write came over to the Palazzo. See what Horty did? Some of them were offered rooms in the Palazzo, to write in or paint in, or practice a musical instrument in; and they accepted. See what she did? Palazzo da Filippo jived, that was the word then; it was in the nineteen fifties. That joint jumped, as they said.

I said back there that I was going to tell you why I was in London. Or did I? Can't remember. Just try to remember something with all this noise around here. Italians are noisy, sweet as they are—singing and calling on the Canals. Now where was I? Oh. London. Well, forget London for the time being—
if
I haven't already told it to you. Just keep London in the back of your mind. Now where was I? Oh. Well, you have asked me to tell you what you are hearing—the story of the Texas Principessa, my old schoolmate and life-long pal, that you asked about. After the Prince's death, Horty pulled herself together and got the Palazzo together—a reproduction of Palazzo da Filippo was engraved on Renzi's tombstone
with
Horty's changes incorporated (which, of course, I thought was rather nifty, wouldn't you?)—and Horty pleaded with me in April by phone and cable to come stay. “Come and stay as long as you want to, stay forever if you're happy in the Palazzo; just come on,” Horty said, long distance, to me in London. Horty loved to have people in the house. This doesn't mean that she always loved being with them. Sometimes I've seen it happen that a motorboat would arrive and disburse a dozen guests and a week later depart with the same guests and not one of them had ever
seen
the Principessa. Horty would've confined herself off in her own apartment in the far right top wing and there remain in privacy. Simply did not want to have anything to do with them, with her guests. “That's Horty,” everyone said. They'd had a grand time, gone in the Principessa's private motorboats to Torcello, to lunch at the Cipriano, to cocktails at other palazzos, been served divine dinners with famous Italians at the da Filippo. But no Horty. She usually—she was so generous—gave expensive presents to her guests to get them to forgive her. Once she gave everybody an egg—a sixth-century—
B.C
.
!
—egg of Chinese jade. Amounted to about a dozen eggs. Somebody said the retail value on those eggs was about $150 apiece. Where was I? Oh.