The Island of the Day Before (15 page)

"Love her, then," Saint-Savin responded negligently. "It is nothing new. It seems humans derive pleasure from it, unlike animals."

"Animals do not love?"

"No, simple machines do not love. The wheels of a wagon, what is it they do along a slope? They roll towards the bottom. The machine is a weight, and the weight hangs, dependent on the blind need that impels it downwards. So it is with an animal: it is weighted towards intercourse and is not appeased until it has had it."

"But did you not tell me yesterday that men are machines?"

"True, but the human machine is more complex than the mineral and the animal, and it enjoys an oscillatory motion."

"So?"

"So you love, and therefore you desire and do not desire. Love makes us the enemy of ourselves. You fear that attaining your end will disappoint you. You have pleasure in
limine,
as the theologians put it, you enjoy delay."

"That's not so. I ... I want her at once!"

"If that were the case, you would be still only a rustic. But you have wit. If you wanted her, you would already have taken her—and you would be a beast. No, you want your desire to be set aflame, and you want hers to be stirred as well. If her desire were to blaze to such a degree that she was impelled to surrender herself to you at once, probably you would no longer want her. Love flourishes in expectation. Expectation strolls through the spacious fields of Time towards Opportunity."

"But what am I to do in the meantime?"

"Court her."

"But ... she knows nothing yet, and I must confess I have difficulty approaching her...."

"Write her a letter and tell her of your love."

"But I have never written a love-letter! Indeed, I am ashamed to say, I have never written any letter."

"When nature fails, we turn to art. I will dictate to you. A gentleman often enjoys writing letters to a lady he has never seen, and I am equal to the task. As I do not love, I can speak of love better than you, who are struck dumb by love."

"But I believe each person loves in a different way.... It would be artificial."

"If you revealed your love to her in tones of sincerity, you would seem awkward."

"But I would tell her the truth...."

"The truth is a young maiden as modest as she is beautiful, and therefore she is always seen cloaked."

"But I want to tell her of my love, not of the love you would describe!"

"Well, if you would be believed, feign. There is no perfection without the splendor of machination."

"But she would understand that the letter is not speaking of her."

"Never fear. She will believe that what I dictate to you was made to her measure. Come now, sit down and write. Just allow me to summon my inspiration."

Saint-Savin moved about the room as if, Roberto tells us, he were imitating the flight of a bee returning to the honeycomb. He was almost dancing, his eyes restless; he seemed to read in the air the message that did not yet exist.

Then he began: "My lady..."

"Lady?"

"Well, how would you address her? Perhaps: Holà, little hussy of Casale?"

"Puta de los franceses," Roberto couldn't help murmuring, alarmed as Saint-Savin had in jest come so close, if not to the truth, at least to the insult.

"What did you say?"

"Nothing. Very well. Lady. Then what?"

"My lady, in the wondrous architecture of the Universe, it has been written since the natal day of Creation that I would encounter you and love you. But with the first line of this letter, I feel that my soul has already so poured forth that it will abandon my lips and my pen before this is concluded."

"...concluded. But I don't know if that will be comprehensible to a—"

"The truth is all the more appreciated when it is barbed with difficulties, and a revelation is more respected if it has cost us dearly. Let us raise the tone, in fact. Let us say then: My lady..."

"Again?"

"Yes. Lady. For a woman beautiful as Alcidiana, an unassailable dwelling is without doubt necessary, as it was for that Heroine. And I believe that by enchantment you have been transported elsewhere and that your province has become a second Floating Island that the wind of my sighs causes to retreat as I attempt to advance, the province of the Antipodes, a land where ice-floes bar my approach. You look puzzled, La Grive: does it still seem commonplace to you?"

"No, the fact is ... I would say quite the contrary."

"Have no fear," Saint-Savin said, misunderstanding, "there will be no lack of the counterpoint of contradictions. Let us proceed: Perhaps your charms entitle you to remain distant as is proper for the gods. But do you not know that the gods receive with favor at least the fumes of incense we burn to them here below? Do not then refuse my worship: as you possess beauty and splendor to the highest degree, you would make me impious if you prevented me from adoring in your person two of the greatest divine attributes.... Does that sound better?"

At this point Roberto was thinking that the problem now was whether or not La Novarese could read. Once this barrier was overcome, what she read would surely intoxicate her, as he was becoming intoxicated, writing.

"My God," he said, "she should go mad."

"She will. Continue. Far from having lost my heart when I entrusted my freedom to your hands, I find it has grown larger since that day, multiplied, as if, since one heart alone is not enough for my love of you, it were reproducing itself in all my arteries, where I feel it throbbing."

"Good Lord..."

"Keep calm. You are speaking of love, you are not loving. Forgive, my Lady, the raving of a desperate man, or, better, pay no heed to it. Sovereigns have never been held to account for the death of their slaves. Ah yes, I should consider my fate enviable if you take the trouble to cause my destruction. If you will deign at least to hate me, this will tell me I am not indifferent to you. Thus death, with which you think to punish me, will be for me a cause of joy. Yes, death. If love means understanding that two souls were created to be united, when one realizes that the other does not feel this union, he can only die. And this—while my body still lives, though not for long—is the message that my soul, departing from it, sends you."

"...departing from it?"

"...sends you."

"Let me catch my breath. My head is spinning."

"Control yourself. Do not confuse love with art."

"But I love her! You understand? I love her!"

"And I do not. For this reason you have come to me. Write without thinking of her. Think of—let me see—Monsieur de Toiras."

"Monsieur!"

"Do not look like that. He is a handsome man, after all. But write: Lady..."

"Again?"

"Again. Lady, I am fated moreover to die blind. Have you not made of my eyes two alembics, wherein my life must evaporate? And so it happens that the more my eyes are moistened, the more I burn. Perhaps my father did not mold my body from the same clay that gave life to the first man, but, rather, from lime, since the water I shed consumes me. And how does it happen that I still live, though consumed, finding yet more tears to be consumed further?"

"Are you not exaggerating?"

"On grand occasions thought must also be grand."

Now Roberto protested no longer. He felt as if he had become La Novarese and was feeling what she should feel on reading these pages. Saint-Savin continued dictating.

"Abandoning my heart, you have left in it an insolent creature who is your image and who boasts of having the power of life and death over me. And you have gone from me as sovereigns leave the torture chamber for fear of being importuned with pleas for mercy. If my soul and my love are composed of two pure sighs, when I die I will beseech my Agony that the breath of my love be the last to leave me, and I will have achieved—as my last gift—a miracle of which you should be proud, and for one instant at least you will draw a sigh from a body already dead."

"Dead. Is that the end?"

"No, let me think. We need a closing with a
pointe....
"

"A what?"

"Yes, an act of the intellect that expresses the inconceivable correspondence between two objects, beyond all belief, so that in this pleasant play of wit any concern for substance is happily lost."

"I do not understand...."

"You will. Here: let us reverse for the moment the direction of the appeal. In fact, you are not yet dead: let us give her the possibility of hastening to succor this moribund lover. Write: You could perhaps, my Lady, yet save me. I have given you my heart. But how can I live without the very motor of life? I do not ask you to give it back to me; for only in your prison does it enjoy the most sublime of freedoms, but I beg you to send me, in exchange, your own, that could find no tabernacle more prepared to welcome it. To live you have no need of two hearts, and mine beats so hard for you that it can assure you of the most eternal of fervors."

Then, half-turning and bowing like an actor anticipating applause, he asked: "Beautiful, is it not?"

"Beautiful? Why, I find it—how can I say?—ridiculous. Do you see this lady running around Casale delivering hearts, like a sort of page?"

"Would you expect her to love a man who speaks like any ordinary citizen? Sign it and seal it."

"But I am not thinking of the lady. I am thinking that if she were to show it to anyone, I would die of shame."

"She will never do that. She will keep the letter in her bosom, and every night she will light a candle beside her bed to read it, and cover it with kisses. Sign and seal."

"But let us imagine, for the sake of argument, that she cannot read. She will have to find someone to read it to her...."

"Monsieur de la Grive! Are you telling me you have been captivated by a peasant? That you have squandered my inspiration to embarrass a rustic? You must give me satisfaction."

"It was just a hypothesis. A jest. But I was taught that the prudent man must consider situations, circumstances, and along with the possible also the impossible...."

"You see? You are learning to express yourself properly. But you have considered badly and chosen the most risible among possibilities. In any case, I would not wish to force you. Strike out the last sentence and continue now as I say...."

"But if I strike it out, then I will have to rewrite the letter."

"So you are lazy, into the bargain. But the wise man must exploit misfortune also. Strike it out.... Done? Now then." Saint-Savin dipped one finger into a pitcher, then he allowed a drop to fall on the cancelled line, making a little damp spot, its edges irregular, growing gradually darker as the water caused the black ink, diluting it, to flow back on the sheet. "Now write. Forgive me, my Lady, if I lack the heart to allow the survival of a thought that, stealing from me a tear, has frightened me with its boldness. Thus may an Aetnaean fire generate the loveliest stream of brackish water. But ah, my Lady, my heart is like a seashell that, imbibing the beautiful sweat of dawn, generates the pearl and grows to be one with it. At the thought that your indifference would take from my heart the pearl it has so jealously fed, my heart flows from my eyes.... Yes, La Grive, this is unquestionably better, we have restrained the excesses. Better to end by reducing the vehemence of the lover, to increase the emotion of the beloved. Sign, seal, and send. Then wait."

"Wait for what?"

"The north of the Compass of Prudence consists in unfurling the sails to the wind of the Favorable Moment. In these affairs waiting never does any harm. Presence takes the edge off hunger, and distance sharpens it. Maintaining your distance, you will be considered a lion, while being present, you could become a mouse born of the mountain. You are certainly rich in fine qualities, but qualities lose their luster if touched too often, whereas fancy travels farther than sight."

Roberto thanked him and rushed home, concealing the letter in his bosom as if he had stolen it. He feared someone might rob him of the fruit of his theft.

I will find her, he told himself, I will bow and hand her the letter. Then he tossed in his bed, thinking how she would read it with her lips. By now he was imagining an Anna Maria Francesca Novarese endowed with all those virtues Saint-Savin had attributed to her. Declaring, even if in another's voice, his love, he had felt more than ever a lover. Doing something uncongenial, he had been enticed by Genius. He now loved La Novarese with the exquisite violence he described in his letter.

A few days later, setting out to find the one from whom he had been so prepared to remain distant, heedless of the danger as cannon fire rained down on the city, he saw her at a street corner, laden with sheaves like a mythological figure. With great inner tumult he ran to her, not knowing quite what he would do or say.

Having approached her, trembling, he stood before her and said, "Young lady..."

"Me?" the girl answered, laughing, and said, "Well?"

"...well," Roberto could think of nothing better to say. "Could you tell me which direction I should take for the Castle?" And the girl, throwing back her head and the great mass of her hair, said, "Oh, that way, of course." And she turned the corner.

At that corner, as Roberto was uncertain whether or not to follow her, a whistling cannon ball fell, knocking down a garden wall and raising a cloud of dust. He coughed, waited till the dust settled, and realized that by ambling too hesitantly through the spacious fields of Time he had missed the Favorable Moment.

To punish himself, he scrupulously tore up the letter and turned towards home, while the shreds of his heart lay crumpled on the ground.

His first, imprecise, love convinced him forever that the beloved object must dwell in the distance, and I believe this conviction sealed his fate as a lover. During the next days he went back to every corner (where he had received information, where he had found a trail, where he had heard her mentioned, where he had seen her) to reconstruct a landscape of memory. He thus laid out a Casale of his own passion, transforming alleys, fountains, squares into the River of Inclination, the Lake of Indifference, or the Sea of Hostility: he made the wounded city into the Land of his personal unsated Tenderness, an island (presage even then) of his solitude.