He had lunch in a restaurant, sitting near the window. Cold noon, a cold light. Outside the trees had already lost their leaves. It was in the Villa Borghese; the air of the great park was damp and still, the sound of things far off came through it like distant icefalls. Before him was a piece of paper on which he was writing, during the long intervals between courses, a list of those things which could even for a short while, save him, that is to say, pleasures which remained. Wood fires, he had written, The London Times, dinners with friends…
Time had spoiled for Viri. It reeked in his pockets. He had projects, somewhat vague, appointments, but nothing to do. His eye would not fix on things, it slipped off them like a dying insect. He was staggering, swaying between those times when he had no strength at all, no reason, no urge to struggle, when he felt, ah, if only he could run to death like a fanatic, a believer, delirious, dazed, on those quickened feet that run to love—and then, in the quiet of the early afternoon, seated somewhere, opening the newspaper, he was completely different.
He stood in the bathroom amid the white chair, the sill of gray marble, the huge frosted windows which seemed to intensify the light. The inward curve of the bidet’s edge, the smoothness of it gave him for a moment a sensation of deepest longing. The curve complemented the portion of the body meant to fit against it, and he weakened as one does at the sight of an empty garment or the underclothes, fresh and minimal, of a loved woman, tossed aside.
He could not see himself clearly, that was the thing. He knew he had talent, intelligence, that he was not going to perish like a mollusk washed up on shore. All the past, he told himself, all that had been so difficult, that he had struggled with like a traveler with too many bags—idealism, loyalty, all your virtues, your decency—they will be needed when you are old, they will preserve you, keep you alive; that is, they will interest someone. And then, a day later, the disease would strike; it was something he did not recognize or understand. Suddenly he had never been so nervous, frightened, depressed. He had a flash of realizing what a breakdown was: the act of life going out of control. His chest ached, his legs were cold, he kept swallowing, his mind raced foolishly. He looked out on the back courts in the winter afternoon, courts with glassed-in balconies and landings. His only contact with the world, beyond the faint sound of traffic, the voices in the hallway that never ceased, was the black telephone, a frightening instrument shrill as a nightmare and over which abrupt voices came, voices whose mood he could hardly guess. He had no strength, no desire to go out. The thought of people terrified him. He did not want to speak Italian; it was not his language, not his sensibility. He wanted to see his children again, only once, before the end.
The next day, in the sunshine, everything was better. The sky was mild, people were smiling and friendly. It was as if they could see he was an invalid, the survivor of a wreck.
He went to the office of two architects with whom he had corresponded. They were young and serious. One of them he had met in New York. The reception room was calm and luxurious, the luxury that is formed of infallible choices. It spoke of order, understanding, he felt immediately at home. The fever had passed.
The secretary looked up. “Buon giorno.”
“I’m Mr. Berland.”
“Good morning, Mr. Berland.” Her face was turned upwards, a small, intelligent face, short hair, black, like the wing of a bird. “We were expecting you,” she said. “Mr. Cagli has someone in his office; it will just be a few minutes.”
“That’s all right.”
They looked at one another. It seemed she nodded slightly, in the way of the East. “Have you been in Rome long?” she asked.
“Several weeks.”
“Do you like it?”
“It’s strange; I think I’m not quite accustomed to it yet.”
“Do you speak Italian?”
“Well, I’ve started.”
“Bene,” she said simply.
“I’m a disgrace to it.”
“No, I don’t think so. Trova quale più facile, parlare o capire?”
“Capire.”
“Sì,” she agreed.
She smiled. Her mouth was small as a child’s. Her name was Lia Cavalieri. She was thirty-three. She lived near the Protestant Cemetery. Had he been there? she asked. He was slow in replying. He recognized her. “No,” he murmured.
“Keats is buried there.”
“Is he? Here in Rome?”
“Then you haven’t seen his grave? It’s very moving. It’s off in a corner by itself. It has no name on it, you know.”
“No name?”
“A beautiful inscription, but no name.”
She was about to say, “I’ll take you there if you like,” but restrained herself. She said it on his second visit.
They walked toward the grave on a soft, winter day. The ground was dry underfoot. Far off, near a tree, he could see the two stones. Afterwards they went to lunch.
Like Montaigne whose life he was reading, he had met an Italian woman during a journey there and fallen in love. All that was missing was the baths of Lucca. Montaigne had been forty-eight. A freshet thought dead had burst forth.
5
LIA WAS FROM THE NORTH. HER father had been born in Genoa with its steep necropolis; her mother, more romantically, in Nice. She told him all this. He loved the details of her life, they electrified him. He had entered the period when everything in his own seemed to be repetition, occurring for the second or third time, a performance for which he knew every possibility. She made that forgotten.
“Nice. Didn’t that once belong to Italy?”
“Everything did once,” she said.
The names she told him, the history, the incidents of her childhood—all of it was new, all of it glinted like the energy in the black of her hair. She had a resigned intelligence, she was fastidious, she was shy. The great unhappiness of her life was that she had never married.
From the moment he had seen her sitting confident and small behind her desk, when he saw her type or use the telephone, he realized how capable she was. But she had ventured nothing, she was merely waiting, all these years she was waiting for a man. She was a kind of brilliant cripple; she could imagine anything, but she could not walk. And he was only slightly better. Though from the first he felt enormously drawn to her, he was uncertain; he had not hunted in so long and had been poor at it even then.
They went to dinner in a restaurant named for the baker’s daughter, La Fornarina, who had been a mistress of Raffaello. It was winter, the garden was closed. She had wanted to talk to him as soon as she saw him, she said. She had formed an idea of him from having heard him talked about and from letters, but no expectation could explain the closeness and recognition she felt when he entered the reception room for the first time.
“You are one in a thousand,” she told him. “Yes, you are very special.”
A warmth flooded through him, a dizziness as if he had fought an enemy. With a word, a glance she embraced him; she had opened the dull sky, the light poured down. It is always an accident that saves us. It is someone we have never seen.
She knew Rome as a lifelong prisoner knows it. She knew its shops, its sun flats, its streets with a special view. She would show him some of that. His hungers returned to him, his yearnings, his capacity for joy.
She filled his glass with wine but took only a little for herself which she did not drink. She told him, without the slightest urgency, that she had no power to resist him.