Inevitable (12 page)

T
HEY DID NOT CHANGE
their life. Duco, though, after a scene with his mother, no longer slept at Belloni, but in a box room, adjoining his studio, which at first had been full of suitcases and junk. Cornélie regretted the scene, since she had always liked Mrs Van der Staal and the girls. But she felt a surge of pride, and despised Mrs Van der Staal for being unable to understand Duco or her. Still, she would have liked to prevent the estrangement. At her suggestion Duco visited his mother again, but she remained cool and rejected him. After that Cornélie and Duco went to Naples. They were not running away, they just did it; Cornélie told Urania and the prince that she was going to Naples for a while and that Van der Staal might follow her. She did not know Naples and would very much appreciate it if Van der Staal could be her guide in and around the city. Cornélie kept on her rooms in Rome. And they spent two weeks of mindless, pure, intense happiness. Their love burgeoned in the golden southern skies of Naples, by the blue waves of Amalfi, Sorrento, Capri and Castellammare, simple, irresistible and calm. They glided gradually along the purple thread of their lives, hand in hand they followed the lines that had merged into a single path, oblivious to people’s laws and ideas, and their attitude was so lofty that their situation was not something shameless, although in themselves they despised the world. But their happiness
softened all that pride in their soaring souls, as if it were strewing blossoms around them. They were living as if in a dream, at first among the marbles of the museum, later on the flower-covered cliffs of Amalfi, on the beach at Capri, or on the terrace of the hotel in Sorrento: the rush of the sea at their feet; yonder, in a pearly haze, vaguely white, like smudged chalk, Castellammare and Naples and the ghost of Vesuvius, with its hazy plume of smoke.

They kept away from everyone, from all people, all tourists: they ate at a small table and it was generally thought that they were newly-weds. Those who looked them up in the guest book saw their two names and commented in whispers. But they did not hear, they did not see, they were living their dream, looking into each other’s eyes or at the opal sky, the pearly sea, and the hazy white mountains in the distance, with the towns set in them like chalk patches.

When they had almost run out of money they smiled and returned to Rome and lived there as they had before; she in her rooms, he in his studio, and they had their meals together. But they pursued their dream among the ruins on the Via Appia, around Frascati: beyond the Ponte Molle, on the slopes of Monte Mario and in the gardens of the villas, among the statues and paintings, mixing their happiness with the atmosphere of Rome: he interweaving his new love with his love of Rome, she falling in love with Rome for his sake. And that enchantment created a kind of halo around them, so that they did not see ordinary life and did not meet ordinary people.

Finally, one afternoon, Urania found them both at home, in Cornélie’s room, with the fire lit, she staring
smiling into the fire, he sitting at her feet, and she with her arm round his neck. And they were obviously giving so little thought to anything but their own love, that neither of them heard the knock, and both suddenly saw her standing in front of them, as an unsuspected reality. Their dream was over for that day. Urania laughed, Cornélie laughed, and Duco pulled up an armchair. And Urania, happy, beautiful, dazzling, told them that she was engaged. Where on earth had the two of them got to? she asked inquisitively. She was engaged now. She had already been to San Stefano and had seen the old prince. And everything was beautiful, good, and sweet: the old castle “a dear old house”, the old man “a dear old man”. She saw everything through the glittering curtain of her forthcoming tide of princess. The date of the wedding had been set, before Easter, so in just over three months. The ceremony was to be in San Carlo, with all the lustre of a great wedding. Her father was coming over for the occasion with her youngest brother. She was obviously apprehensive about their coming. And she couldn’t stop talking; she told them a thousand details about her trousseau, with which the
marchesa
was helping her. They were to live in Nice, in a large apartment. She was crazy about Nice: it was a good idea of Gilio’s. And in passing, suddenly remembering, she told them that she had become a Catholic. What a burden! But the
monsignori
were looking after everything, she was being guided by them. And the Pope was to receive her in a private audience, together with Gilio … The problem was her audience outfit, black of course, but velvet or satin? What did Cornélie recommend? She had such good taste. And
the black lace veil fastened with diamonds … Tomorrow she was going to Nice with the
marchesa
and Gilio, to see their apartment …

When she left, asking Cornélie to call and admire her trousseau, Cornélie said with a smile:

“She’s happy… Happiness means something different to everyone … A trousseau and a title wouldn’t make me happy.”

“Those are the little people,” he said, “whose paths occasionally cross ours. I prefer to avoid them …” 

And they did not say, though they both thought it—their fingers intertwined, her eyes gazing into his—that
they
were happy too, but in a higher, nobler way; and pride swelled in them: and as if in a vision they saw the line of their life winding up a steep hillside, and happiness strewed blossoms and holding their proud heads in the blizzard of blossoms, with the smile and eyes of love, they continued onward in their dream, removed from humanity and reality.

T
HE MONTHS PASSED BY
in a dream. And their love caused such a summer to blossom in them, that she ripened in beauty, and he in talent; the pride in them burst outward as self-confidence: in her case blossoming, in his creative energy; her languid charm was transformed into proud slenderness; her form swelled into rounded fullness; a gleam shone in her eyes, happiness around her mouth—his hands trembled with nervous emotion when he took up his brushes, and the skies of Italy created vaulted domes before his eyes like firmaments of love and passionate colour. He created and completed a series of watercolours: hazy evocations of a dream atmosphere, reminiscent of the noblest work of Turner: monuments to nature made of nothing but haze: all the milky blue and pearly mistiness of the Bay of Naples, like a goblet full of light, where a turquoise melts into water—and he sent them to Holland, to London, and he had suddenly found his vocation, his work and his fame: courage, strength, goal and triumph.

She also enjoyed a degree of success with her article: it was reviewed, attacked; her name was mentioned. But she felt a certain indifference when she read her name involved in the Women’s Movement. She shared rather in his life of observation and emotion and often contributed amid the haziness of his vision, in the excessive haze of his tinted dream, a glow of light, an enclosing horizon, a chink of reality, which gave substance to the mistiness
 of his ideal. With him she learned to distinguish and feel nature, art, the whole of Rome, and when a wave of symbolism came over him, she followed him completely. He drafted a great sketch of a theory of women ascending the climbing winding lifeline: they seemed to be moving from a collapsing city of antiquity, whose columns, linked by the occasional architrave, were wrapped in a shimmer of dusk; they seemed to be freeing themselves from the shadow of the ruin, which on the horizon was already dissolving in the night of oblivion—and they pushed forward, hailing each other with cries, waving to each other with a great outstretching of hands, above them a waving swirl of banners and blazons; with muscular arms they grasped hammers and pickaxes, and the throng moved upwards, along the line, to where the light became whiter and whiter, to where in a haze of light one could discern in the far distance a new city, whose iron buildings shone tall in the white shimmering light in the distance like central stations and Eiffel Towers with a reflection of glass arches and glass roofs, and high in the sky the musical bars of sound and conductivity …

And so the influences of each worked on the other’s soul, so that
she
learned to see and he learned to think; that she
saw
beauty, art, nature, haze and emotion and no longer conceived, but felt; that
he
saw as in his sketch—with its very vague modern city of glass and iron—a modern city rising from his dream haze of Rome’s past, and, in accordance with his own nature and disposition, thought about a modern question. She learned mainly to see and think as a woman in love, with the eyes and heart of the man she loved: he worked out the question
in plastic terms. But whatever imperfections there were in the absolute nature of their new spheres of thought and feeling, the interaction that their love engendered brought them a happiness so great, so unified, that at the moment they could not comprehend or contemplate it, that it was almost like a state of ecstasy, a vague unreality in which they dreamed—though it was pure truth and tangible reality. The way they thought, felt and lived was an ideal of reality: ideally entered and achieved along the gradual line of their lives, along the golden thread of their love, and they scarcely registered or comprehended it, since ordinary life still clung to them. But only to an unavoidably small extent. They lived separately, but she would come to see him in the morning and would find him in front of his sketch, and would sit next to him, lean her head on his shoulder, and they would work it out together. He sketched his figures of the theory of woman separately, and he searched for the features and the modelling of the forms: some had the mongoloid quality of the angel of the Annunciation of Memmi; others the slenderness of Cornélie and her later robust, fuller figure; he searched for the folds: in the folds of their
peplos
robes the women freed themselves from the violet dusk of the ruined city and further on they changed their robes as a masquerade of the centuries: the noble lady’s dress with a train, the veils of the sultans, the woollen dresses of cleaning women, the wimple of the sisters of mercy—with the clothing becoming more modern as the wearer embodied a more modern age … And in that grouping the drawing had such an ethereal and sober quality, the transition from falling drapery to practical tight-fitting clothes was so gradual, that Cornélie
could scarcely detect a transition and seemed to see a single style, a single style of dress, though every silhouette was dressed in a different cut and material, with a different line … In the drawing there was a purity recalling the Old Masters, a purity of outline, but modern—highly strung and morbid—and yet without a conventional ideal of symbolic bodily shapes; there was a Raphael-like harmony in the grouping; in the watercolour tint of the first studies the haze of Italy: the ruined city glimmered as she saw the Forum glimmer; the city of glass and iron glittered with its Crystal Palace-like construction, out of a white apotheosis of light, as he had seen around Naples from Sorrento. She felt that he was engaged on a great work and had never been so vitally involved in anything as she was now in his concept and his sketches. She sat still and silent behind him and followed his drawing of the swirling banners and winding blazons, and she held her breath when she saw how with a few smudges of white and dabs of light—as if he had light on his palette—he evoked the dreamlike glass city on the horizon. Then he would ask her something about a figure, put his arm round her waist, pull her towards him, and they would peer endlessly and work out line and concept, till evening fell, the evening chill pervaded the workplace and they slowly got up. They would go out and the Corso would bring them back to real life: sitting silently at Argano’s, they would survey the bustle; and in their little restaurant, looking deep into each other’s eyes, they would eat their simple meal, so visibly harmoniously happy that the Italians, the two who were always at the table furthest from them at the same time, smiled as they greeted them.

A
ND HE FELT SUFFUSED
with energy: so many thoughts kept looming in his mind that he was constantly finding new motifs and symbolising them in another figure. He sketched, life-size, a woman walking, with that mixture of child, woman and goddess that characterised his figures—and she followed a gradually descending line into gloomy depths without seeing or understanding; her staring eyes were drawn magnetically towards the abyss: indistinct hands hovered around her like a cloud and gently pushed and guided; above, on high rocks, other figures with harps, in bright light, called to her, but she went down into the depths, impelled by the hands; in the abyss strange purple orchids blossomed, like amorous mouths …

One morning when Cornélie arrived in his studio, he had suddenly sketched this idea. It was a surprise to her, as he had not talked about it: the idea had arisen suddenly; putting it down on paper, quickly and spontaneously, had taken him less than an hour. He almost apologised to her for it, when he saw her surprise. She found it beautiful, but spine-chilling and preferred
Banners
, the large watercolour, the procession of women advancing towards the fight for life …

And to please her he put the descending woman aside and worked only on the completion of the militant women. But new ideas kept disturbing his work and in her absence he sketched a new symbol, until the sketches
piled up and were strewn everywhere. She put them away in portfolios; she removed them from the easel and the shelf; she stopped him from wandering too far from
Banners
, and this was the only work that he completed.

So their life seemed to want to move gently on, along a charming line, in a single golden direction, while his symbols flowered to the side, while the azure of their love was like the firmament above, but she pruned the overabundance of flowers and only
Banners
waved above their path, in the firmament of their ecstasy, just as they waved above the militant women …

There was only one diversion: the wedding of the prince and Urania: a dinner, a ball and the ceremony in San Carlo, in the presence of the entire Roman aristocracy, though they welcomed the rich American with some reserve. But when the Prince and Princess of Forte-Braccio left for Nice, that was the end of distractions and the days again glided past along the same charming golden line. Cornélie had only one unpleasant memory: her encounter during the festivities with Mrs Van der Staal, who had cut her dead, turned her back on her and given her to understand that all friendship between them was over. She had resigned herself; she had understood how difficult it was—even if Mrs Van der Staal had been willing to talk to her—to explain her own proud ideas of freedom, independence and happiness to a woman like that set fast in her social and worldly conventions. And she had also snubbed the girls, sensing that that was what Mrs Van der Staal wanted. She was not angry about this, or offended; she could understand this attitude in Duco’s mother: it simply saddened her a little, because she liked
Mrs Van der Staal, and she liked the two girls … But she understood completely: it must be that Mrs Van der Staal knew, or suspected everything. Duco’s mother could not act otherwise, although the prince and Urania, out of friendship, denied any relationship between Duco and her, Cornélie—even though the Roman world treated them simply as friends, acquaintances, compatriots—whatever people whispered behind their fans. But the festivities were now over, they had passed that crossroad with the world and people: now their gold course undulated softly and smoothly before them …

It was then that Cornélie, who had no thought of The Hague, received a letter from home. The letter was from her father and was several pages long, which surprised her, since he never wrote. What she read alarmed her greatly, but did not entirely discourage her, perhaps because she did not appreciate the full weight of her father’s news. He begged her for forgiveness. He had been in financial difficulties for quite some time. He had lost a great deal. They had to move, to a smaller house. The mood at home was bitter; mama was crying all day, the sisters squabbling; the family was giving advice; their friends were being unpleasant. And he begged her forgiveness. He had speculated and lost. And he had also lost her small amount of capital that he was administering, the legacy from her godmother. He asked her not to blame him too much. It might have turned out differently and then he would have been three times as rich. He admitted that he had acted wrongly—but he was still her father and he asked her, his child, to forgive him and return.

She was badly shaken at first, but soon regained her calm. She was in too happy a mood of harmonious existence for her father’s news to destroy it. She received the letter in bed, and stayed there for a little, thought it over, then got dressed, ate as usual and went to Duco. He received her enthusiastically and showed her three new sketches … She reproached him gently for allowing himself to be distracted too easily from his main idea, and said that these digressions would drain his energy and stamina. She urged him in particular to keep working on
Banners
. And she looked intently at the great watercolour, at the ancient, crumbling Forum-like city; the procession of the women towards the Metropolis of the Future, up there in the days of light … And suddenly it dawned on her that her past too had collapsed and that the crumbling arches were hanging threateningly over her head. She gave him her father’s letter to read. He read it twice, looked at her in bewilderment, and asked what she was going to do. She said that she had already thought about it, but that for the moment all she was sure of was what she would do immediately. Give up her rooms and move in with him in his studio. She had just enough to pay for her rooms. But then she would be penniless. Completely penniless. She had never wanted alimony from her husband. She was just waiting for the fee from her article. He immediately put out his hands to her, drew her to him, kissed her and said that he had immediately had the same idea. Move in with him. Live with him. He had enough: a trifling inheritance from his father; he was earning on top of that: he would have enough for both of them. And they laughed and kissed and looked around
the studio. Duco slept in a small adjoining cubicle, rather like a long built-in wardrobe. And they looked round to see what they could do. Cornélie had the answer: here, drape a curtain over a cord and put the bed and washbasin behind it. That was all she needed. Just that little alcove; otherwise Duco would not have proper light. They were very cheerful and thought it was a very cosy idea. They immediately went out, bought an iron bed, a washstand, and hung up the curtain themselves. Then they both went to pack cases in Via dei Serpenti—and dined in the
osteria
. Cornélie suggested eating at home occasionally, as it was cheaper … When they got home she was delighted that her construction took up so little space, scarcely a couple of square metres, with the little bed behind it. They were very merry that evening. Their bohemian existence amused them. They were in Italy, the land of sunshine, beauty and
lazzaroni
, beggars dreaming on the steps of cathedrals, and they felt an affinity with that sunny poverty. They were happy, they didn’t need anything. They would live on nothing. On very little, at least. They faced the future smiling and lucid. They were closer now, they were living closer together. They loved each other and were happy, in a land of beauty, in an ideal world of symbols and life-embracing art.

The following morning he worked hard, without a word, lost in his dream, his work, and she too, silent, content, happy, carefully checked her blouses and skirts, and worked out that she would not need anything for a whole year, and that her old clothes were sufficient for their life of happiness and simplicity.

And she wrote a very short reply to her father, saying 
that she forgave him, felt sympathy for them all, but was not returning to The Hague. She would support herself, by writing. Italy was cheap. That was all she wrote. She did not mention Duco. She took leave of her family, in her mind and in life. She had not found any sympathy among any of them during her sad marriage, or during the agony of her divorce, and now she in turn felt no warmth. And her happiness made her one-sided and selfish. She wanted nothing but Duco, nothing but their togetherness and harmony. He worked and smiled at her now and then as she lay on the sofa and reflected. She looked at the women marching to battle; she too would not be able to remain lying on the sofa, she too would have to fight. She had a presentiment that she would have to fight: for him. He was now working in the art business, but if that, after a positive result, after a personal and public success, were to slacken off—for a moment—it would be normal and logical and
she
would have to fight. He was all that was noble in both their lives, his art could not support her. His fortune amounted to almost nothing. She would like to work and earn money for both of them, so that he could hold fast to the pure principles of his art. But how, how was one to fight, work, work for their lives and for a living? What could she do? Write? It paid so little. What else? A slight melancholy enveloped her, because there was so little she could do. She had some minor talents and skills: she had a good style, she sang, played the piano, she could make a blouse and she knew a little about cooking She would cook herself now and then and sew her own clothes. But all of that was so petty, so little. Fight, work? How? Well, she would do what she could.
And suddenly she picked up a Baedeker, leafed through it and sat down at Duco’s desk, at which she also wrote. And she thought for a moment and began an article. A travel letter for a magazine on the area around Naples: that was easier than starting immediately on Rome. And in the studio, filled with the slight heat of a stove, as it was north-facing and chilly, it became absolutely still: only her pen scratched occasionally, or he rummaged among his crayons and pencils. She wrote a few pages but could not find an ending … Then she got up and he turned and smiled at her: his smile of affectionate happiness …

And she read out what she had written to him. It was not the style of her pamphlet. It was not invective: it was a sweet travel letter …

He quite liked it, but did not think it anything special … But it didn’t have to be, she said defensively. And he hugged her, for her hard work and courage. It rained that day and they did not go out for their lunch; she had some eggs and tomatoes and made an omelette on a paraffin stove. They drank only water and ate lots of bread with it. And while the rain lashed the large, uncurtained studio window, they enjoyed their meal, like two birds huddling close together to avoid getting wet.