“We have done,” he repeated, old and tired now, and leaned against his stick, holding it with both hands. But he continued speaking, still seated, leaning on his stick, not glancing at his host but staring into the fire, frequently blinking and screwing up his eyes, watching the embers.
“I have accomplished one of my missions by giving you the letter. I hope you will look after it properly. I wouldn’t like the love letter of the duchess of Parma to be left on the wine-stained table of some inn, nor would I want you to read it out while in bed with a whore, in that boasting and bragging way men have when under the influence of cheap wine and cheap passion. I would not be in a position to prevent that, of course, but it would cause me great pain, and therefore I hope it will not happen. Yet we may be sure that this kind of letter will not remain a secret, and I would not be at all surprised if at some later time, in another, more refined and more generous age, such brief masterpieces were taught in schools as a model of concision. Nor do I doubt that the letter will be imitated, as is every masterpiece, that through the fine capillaries of memory it will enter the general consciousness of our descendants: lovers will copy it and make irreverent use of it without knowing the least thing about the author and its provenance. They will copy it, and not just once, as if they themselves had composed it, committing it to paper, declaring I must see you, and signing it with their own names or initials, and by some mysterious process the text will actually have become theirs—like all true texts it will be diffused into the world and be blended with life itself, for that is its nature. All the same, I would prefer it if this process were to follow literary precedent at an appropriate pace, not through your bragging and boasting, or declaiming the text aloud in taverns or in a whore’s bed. I would be extremely sorry if that were to happen. But now that I have given you the letter whose true meaning we have, I hope, solved and understood, we must be careful lest our enthusiasm as literary critics, the peculiar and obstinate delight we take in studying it, should divert us from our true obligation: for letters can be as passionate and terrifying as kissing or murder; there is something real and living in them, and we two critics—you the writer and I the reader and connoisseur—have almost forgotten the person behind the letters, she who has committed these perfect lines to paper. It is, after all, she whom we are discussing, and Francesca is inclined to the belief that she must see you. That is the reality to which we must return now that we have finished admiring the beauties of the letter. And here we must be businesslike, since time is passing and the evening is upon us—isn’t it the case that time never flies so fast as when we lose ourselves in admiration of the hidden graces of a first-class text?—but our business is to proceed beyond the eternal literary merits of the text and to explore the meaning in its practical sense, that meaning being neither more nor, alas, less than that the duchess of Parma has fallen in love and must see you. That is an obligation you cannot avoid, even should you wish to. I have already said that I have not come to threaten you, Giacomo: I have simply brought you a letter and all I want is to understand, articulate, and settle something. I have not come to threaten: there is no need for you to stand so rigidly or to twitch like that, there is no question of us engaging in another armed encounter for the sake of Francesca, as we once did in such a laughable and yet admirably masculine manner in Tuscany, our chests bare in the moonlight! The time for that is gone: and I don’t mean just the time of year, however awful in its effects that may be, for the cold cuts through me to the bone even when I am wearing my furs, and heaven knows what it would do if I presented myself half-naked, no, I mean another kind of time, the time that has passed. I have thrown away my sword. I could, of course, buy other swords, better and finer than the old one, for once upon a time, as you will recall, I was not altogether hopeless in a duel. I could buy a sword, one that glittered as I wielded it, a rapier of ice-cold steel to twist wickedly between your ribs: I do, after all, hold your life in my hands. But this is not a threat either, Giacomo: it is a statement, no more. Please don’t protest. There is no need to get excited. Your life is in my hands, that’s all: in vain did you escape from the republic, in vain did the world look on and chuckle in approval, in vain do local laws protect you with their guarantees of personal and institutional freedom, in vain does tradition underwrite the international rights of refugees. According to laws and customs you are invulnerable here, untouchable. But people are aware, and you in particular have good reason to know, that there exists another law, a more subtle, unwritten law, whose custom and practice underlie the visible, practical, and constitutionally approved sort, a law that is more real and more effective everywhere. It is my kind of law: I dispense it, I and a few others in the world, those who are sufficiently intelligent and powerful to live by such unwritten laws without exploiting them. Believe me, Giacomo, when I say that it really was in vain that you escaped, clever monkey that you are, from the Leads on the roof of the Doge’s Palace; in vain that you scuttled like some fugitive water-rat down the filthy and noble waters of the lagoon and reached the far shore in Mestre and later, Valdepiadene; it is in vain that you reside here beyond the perilous border, in a room of The Stag, strutting with confidence, as if you had escaped every danger, for if I wished it you’d be back on the other side of the border in the clutches of the messer grande by this time tomorrow, after sunset, you can bet your life on it. And why? . . . Because power does not work precisely as these local boobies believe it works, and you, who are better traveled and more nimble-witted than they are, will be perfectly aware of the fact. You therefore know that there is no nook or cranny in the world where these calloused, exhausted hands, that are no longer up to dueling, would not reach you if I so wished. That is why I am not threatening you. And it’s not out of the kindness of my heart, nor out of any false if noble sense of compassion that I allow you to keep running—because run you must, Giacomo, on fleet horses, in covered coaches, or on sleighs with polished runners before the night is through. As soon as you have finished your business in Bolzano and met the duchess, who, as she has commanded both you and me, must see you, we will draw a line under the affair and place a full stop at the end of the last sentence. That is why I have no thought of threatening you in revealing to you the vague outline of what might happen behind the scenes, and exposing the real, effective relations of power. I am merely explaining and cautioning. And there is no trace of bitterness in my heart when I say that, no sense of injury, no false male pride, not any more. For you, like me, are merely a cat’s-paw, an actor, the tool of the fate that is toying with us both, a fate whose purposes sometimes appear unfathomable. Sometimes it seems the hand it is playing is not entirely above board, that it is playing for its own amusement; a manner of playing that you, who understand not only written slips of paper but those prinked out with spots and numbers too, are in the best position to comprehend. That is why I have come to you. What I want is that you should stay till morning and accommodate yourself to the duchess’s desire, which is more command than desire, something neither of us can refuse to obey, for behind it lies the must to which the duchess of Parma gives such perfect literary expression. You are, therefore, to remain in Bolzano until the morning. Should I threaten you? Should I reason with you? Should I beg you? Explain things to you? What should I do with you? . . . I could kill you, but then you would be more deadly than before. You would retain your current stocky, fleshy, full-blooded reality, a reality I would have turned into a shade, a memory, a rival impervious to blows, the rotten corpse of a once vigorous presence, an amorous shadow forever lurking in the folds of the curtains of my wife’s four-poster bed, taking my place on her pillow after midnight, your voice haunting other men’s voices, your eyes looking at her through unknown men’s eyes. That is why I will not kill you. Should I send you away? Order you now, this very night, to take to the sledge waiting at the gate, shrouded in the wings of your cloak, so that, under the stewardship and protection of my servants, you should rush over mountain passes, through moonl
it forests restless with the shadows of wolves, into a foreign country where you might disappear from the best years of the duchess’s life? . . . I could insist on that, too, and you’d have no choice but to obey, because, after all, you want to save your skin, and it is that fact which allows me to exercise a degree of control over you, for you are still careful of your life, solicitous of your esteemed person, your flesh and bones and are not desperately anxious to risk them, while I, on the other hand, no longer fear for my life and am interested only in one thing which, to me, is finer and more valuable. That is why you must obey me. For this and other reasons of your own. For now I am willing to put my power and strength at the disposal of your own interests and intentions, providing we can come to a friendly, sensible agreement. That is the reason I have come to you tonight. I want to make you an offer. I have thought a great deal about you. I saw before me your face in the theater at Bologna, the way you yawned, and I remembered how, in that moment, without knowing anything much about you, I instinctively understood the nature of your being. And now I know you properly, or as well as anyone can know you, I am sure it would be a mistake to kill you. A man who is loved is a dangerous rival in death: you’d sit with us at table, lie beside the duchess in her bed, precede us into rooms, your light, ghostly footsteps would tread close behind us as we walked through the garden: you would, in short, be omnipresent. You would become funereal, your outlines blurred by ceremony, hidden among the silver and black hangings of feeling and memory. But a fierce scarlet cloud of revenge would trail behind you, its silently smoking fire lighting up the corridors. And I would have become the selfish, cowardly, stupid nonentity who had killed the unique, the miraculous person that Francesca had to see! No, my boy, I will not kill you. I could, of course, simply hand you over into the clutches of the messer grande and he wouldn’t make the same mistake twice. I could do it because I have influence and influence has long arms and moves in mysterious ways. Do you remember that morning some sixteen months ago when Venetian agents forced their way into your room and you railed at them, spitting with indignation, demanding that you be informed of your crimes? You will certainly recall the next sixteen months, buried away, sprawling on a rotten straw bed, still wondering what it was you were accused of. Do you think it might have been a word in the right ear, a little flexing of muscles that landed you there? It might easily have been my doing. Not that I am saying it was, I only mention it because I think you should consider it as a possibility among others, something you should give some thought to once this night is through. Because, although I am not a writer and am not preparing to embark on any kind of career, and though I am losing my hair and suffer shooting pains in my arms, and though time is certainly not on my side, I am nevertheless possessed of effective means. And, if I wanted to, I could still stretch out my arm and touch a life that considers itself secure in Venice, under the protection of Papa Bragadin. How pale you look! You have taken a step back. Are you looking for your dagger? Is it revenge you want? . . . Control yourself, my boy. I have come unarmed, as you see, and there is nothing to stop you running me through in an act of revenge and then taking to your heels to escape the police of half the world, until you are caught and find yourself on the scaffold. But how pointless that would be! You would lose everything and even your revenge would be tinged with doubt about my part in your imprisonment. Calm down. I haven’t said I was responsible for that. I have merely thrown a little light on the faint possibility that I might have been. I have fought too many battles and have lived too full a life to feel any compassion for you. My compassion is not easily earned. Only weak and frightened people shed crocodile tears and hug their enemies to their bosoms with false enthusiasm. I will not take you to my bosom, Giacomo. I will neither kill you nor exile you before your time is due. What course, if any, is there left to me, then? . . . Well, I believe I have found the only acceptable solution. I will strike a bargain with you. I realize that in proposing this bargain, which will be not a whit more crooked or honest than such bargains usually are, I am addressing both your feelings and your intelligence. So let me put it plainly: I want to buy you, my boy. You can name your price, and in case false modesty, false ambition, or any other false feeling prevent you, I will tell you the price, the price I am willing to pay to prevent the reality from becoming a ghostly rival, to ensure that you finally vanish from my life, having completed your business and played your part by allowing the duchess to see you, as she must, as she wishes. . . . I am buying you: these are ugly words, not the words an author or a duchess are likely to use, but they are my words, and they, too, are precise. I have weighed them and chosen them carefully. I know your services will not be cheap, but I am rich and powerful and I shall pay you in gold and clemency, in advice and connections, in documents and cash. Whatever it costs it will be a bargain. Please don’t protest. I shall buy you as people buy a donkey for carrying water on the market in Toulon, as they buy a slave on the market at Smyrna: I shall buy you as if I were buying a curio from one of the silversmiths on the Ponte Vecchio. Are you still protesting? Are you staring at the floor and biting your lips? . . . Are you planning some terrible act of revenge, a revenge that might at once wipe out this insult as well as the disgrace of your imprisonment in Venice? . . . Please control yourself. Naturally, I must pay you for those injuries, too, and will offer you the full pleasures of the world, for one has to buy the whole man, with the full complement of his moods and passions, or the bargain is meaningless. I am buying you because you are a mere mortal. Think it over carefully: it is almost a compliment. I used the word ‘almost’ at the beginning of our conversation and I repeat it now because words bind and their binding power extends to both the past and the future. It is almost a compliment, believe me, for what is man in the daily traffic of the world? . . . A chance combination of character and fate, no more. I know your character and have researched your history, so I know, with absolute certainty, that however pale you grow, however you gasp and stare, you will kill neither me nor yourself. Not because you are a coward!—not at all!—but because it is simply not in your character to do so, because, in your heart of hearts, you are already calculating how much you dare demand of me, because the bargain fundamentally appeals to you, and because there are certain things that you can do nothing about for, after all, how could you? . . . It’s how you are. The fact that you are not averse to a bargain might be the one and only fully human feature of your character. Don’t worry about how much you can demand of me, Giacomo: I will give you what you ask for. And more on top of that! I may be acting against my business principles in telling you this, but let that be, for I confess that whatever figure you dream up is of no interest to me. Let me offer you a thousand ducats in gold this very evening. Is that too little? Fine. Let us say two thousand, in cash, to see you through Munich and Paris. Not enough? That’s all right, my boy, carry on by all means, I understand. Let us therefore say ten thousand ducats, together with a letter of credit for use in Paris. Still not enough? . . . I understand, I really do understand, my boy. Let me throw in a letter of safe passage for use on the road, so you may travel like the prince de Condé, and, in addition, a personal introduction to the elector, who will be happy to hear the story of your escape from your own lips. Is that still not enough? . . . Well, why not? I’m not a petty man. All right, I will trump it all with a letter of introduction to my cousin, Louis himself.”
He extended the wasted, aristocratic hand that had until now been held to the fire and turned it over, palm upward, as if he were offering him the world.
“See this?” he asked, almost moved by his own generosity. “Nobody has received as much from me. It is true that the situation is unique in that I have never before played postman, lawyer, and go-between in persuading a man and woman to come together for a common purpose. . . . This evening is indeed unique, since for the first time in my life I shall be wearing in public the mask that befits every aging lover. The ass’s head. So it’s settled. You will receive that le
tter, too. Have you any idea of its value? And you will have money on top of that, money in gold and money in the form of credit to be redeemed at the most exquisite address, at any town from any conveyor of your choosing, to the full amount I have promised. I am paying a high price for you, Giacomo, as one must for a gift purchased at the close of one’s life, for something one wants to offer a woman by way of farewell, the only woman one loves. That is why I want to strike a bargain with you. I am buying you in a proper, aboveboard fashion, and the letter I shall write to my cousin, Louis, which a trusted servant will give you at dawn, providing everything happens as we have agreed, will be the first and last begging letter I address to His Most Christian Majesty, who will not deny my request. Louis will receive you at Versailles: the letter guarantees that! It is no more than I owe—not to you, nor even to myself—but to the woman on whose behalf I have played postman, the woman I love. It is your price tag. And now that I have settled that price I don’t think you can demand more of me. The other letter will open frontiers for you, and you will sleep as comfortably in the inns of foreign towns as your mother once did in the lap of the beautiful diva. The police will no longer bother you, and should clouds of strife or entanglement gather around you and enemies pursue you, it will be enough for you to show that letter and your pursuer will immediately be transformed into an admiring friend. I do this so you may safely find your way through this ugly world. It is the price of our contract. What do I demand in exchange? A great deal, naturally. I demand that you accommodate yourself to the wishes of the duchess of Parma. I demand you spend this night with the duchess of Parma.”
He raised the silver-handled stick high in the air with an easy movement, and at the end of the sentence he knocked twice, lightly, on the marble floor with it, as if knocking might put the seal on his words.