The Breaking Point: Short Stories

  Mark you, I realized there must be others. In that dark gondola floating by, at that wide window, even on the bridge from which, as we passed underneath, a figure peering down suddenly withdrew, I knew there must be others who, like myself, found themselves suddenly enchanted, not by the Venice they perceived, but by the Venice they felt within themselves.That uncelestial city from which no traveller returns . . .

  What am I saying, though? I anticipate events and thoughts which no doubt I could not have had during that first half-hour from station to hotel. It is only now, in retrospect, that I realize there must be others like myself who, with the first glimpse, become enchanted, damned. Oh yes, indeed, we know all about the rest, the obvious rest.The people clicking cameras, the hubbub of nationalities, the students, the schoolmistresses, the artists. And the Venetians themselves - the Prince Hal porter, for instance, and the fellow who steered the gondola and was thinking of his pasta supper and his wife and children and the lire I would give him, and all those homeward bounders in the vaporetti no different from other homeward bounders at home who go by bus or tube - those people are part of the Venice of today, just as their forebears were part of the Venice that is past: dukes, and merchants, and lovers, and ravished maidens. No, we have a different key. A different secret. It is what I said before, the Venice within ourselves.

  ‘To ze right,’ shouted Prince Hal, ‘famous palazzo now belonging to American gentleman.’ Foolish and useless as his information was, it did at least suggest that some tycoon, weary of making money, had created an illusion, and, stepping into the speed-boat I saw tethered at the steps, believed himself immortal.

  That was what I felt, you see. I had the sense of immortality, the knowledge, instantaneous as I left the station and heard the lapping water, that time contained me. I was not imprisoned. I was held. And then we left the Grand Canal and were in the backwaters, and Prince Hal fell silent, and there was no sound except the stroke of the long oar as we were propelled along the narrow stream. I remember thinking - curious, wasn’t it? - of the waters that usher us into this life at birth, of the waters that contain us in the womb. Somehow they must have the same stillness, the same force.

  We came out of darkness into light, we shot under a bridge - it was only later that I realized it was the Bridge of Sighs - and there was the lagoon in front of us, and a hundred stabbing, flickering lights, and a great jostle of figures, of people walking up and down. I had to cope at once with my unaccustomed lire, with the gondolier, with Prince Hal, before being swallowed up in the hotel and the paraphernalia of desk-clerk, keys, and page showing me to my room. Mine was one of the smaller hotels, basking in the proximity of the more famous, yet comfortable enough at first glance, though a little stuffy perhaps - odd how they keep a room tight closed before a guest arrives. As I threw open the shutters the warm damp air from the lagoon infiltrated slowly, and the laughter and footsteps of the promenaders floated upwards while I unpacked. I changed and descended, but one glance at the half-empty dining-room decided me against dining there, although my pension terms permitted it, and I went out and joined the promenaders by the lagoon.

  The sensation I had was strange, and never experienced before. Not the usual anticipation of the traveller on the first evening of his holiday, who looks forward to his dinner and the pleasure of new surroundings. After all, in spite of my sister’s mockery I was no John Bull. I used to know Paris quite well. I had been to Germany. I had toured the Scandinavian countries before the war. I had spent an Easter in Rome. It was only that I had been idle of late years, without initiative, and to take my annual holiday in Devon saved planning and, incidentally, my purse.

  No, the sensation I had now, as inevitably I walked past the Doge’s palace - which I recognized from postcards - and into the Piazza San Marco, was one of . . . I hardly know how to describe it . . . recognition. I don’t mean the feeling ‘I have been here before’. I don’t mean the romantic dream ‘This is reincarnation’. Neither of those things. It was as though, intuitively, I had become, at last, myself. I had arrived.This particular moment in time had been waiting for me, and I for it. Curiously, it was like the first flavour of intoxication, but more heightened, more acute. And deeply secret. It is important to remember that; deeply secret. This sensation was somehow palpable, invading the whole of me, the palms of my hands, my scalp. My throat was dry. Physically, I felt I was infused with electricity, that I had become some sort of power-house radiating, into the damp atmosphere of this Venice I had never seen, currents which, becoming charged with other currents, returned to me again. The excitement was intense, almost unbearable. And, to look at me, nobody would guess anything. I was just another Englishman at the fag-end of the tourist season, strolling, walking-stick in hand, on his first night in Venice.

  Although it was nearly nine o’clock the crowd was still dense on the piazza. I wondered how many amongst them felt the same current, the same intuition. Nevertheless, I must dine, and to escape the crowd I chose a turning to the right halfway down the piazza which brought me to one of the side-canals, very dark and still, and as luck had it to a restaurant nearby. I dined well, with excellent wine, at far less expense than I had feared, and lighting a cigar - one of my small extravagances, a really good cigar - I strolled back again to the piazza, that same electric current with me still.

  The crowd had thinned, and instead of strolling had concentrated into two marked groups before two separate orchestras. These orchestras - rivals, so it appeared - had their stance in front of a couple of cafés, also rivals. Separated by perhaps some seventy yards, they played against one another with gay indifference. Tables and chairs were set out about the orchestras, and the café clientèle drank and gossiped and listened to the music in a semi-circle, backs turned to the rival orchestra whose beat and rhythm made discord to the ear. I happened to be closest to the orchestra in mid-piazza. I found an empty table and sat down. A burst of applause from the second audience nearer the church gave warning that the rival orchestra had come to a breathing-space in its repertoire. This was the signal for ours to play louder still. It was Puccini, of course. As the evening progressed there came the songs of the day, the hit tunes of the moment, but as I sat down and looked about for a waiter to bring me a liqueur, and accepted - at a price - the rose offered to me by an ancient crone in a black shawl, the orchestra was playing Madame Butterfly. I felt relaxed, amused. And then I saw him.

  I told you I was a classical scholar. Therefore you will understand - you should understand - that what happened in that second was transformation. The electricity that had charged me all evening focused on a single point in my brain to the exclusion of all else; the rest of me was jelly. I could sense the man at my table raise his hand and summon the lad in the white coat carrying a tray, but I myself was above him, did not exist in his time; and this self who was non-existent knew with every nerve fibre, every brain-cell, every blood corpuscle that he was indeed Zeus, the giver of life and death, the immortal one, the lover; and that the boy who came towards him was his own beloved, his cup-bearer, his slave, his Ganymede. I was poised, not in the body, not in the world, and I summoned him. He knew me, and he came.

  Then it was all over. The tears were pouring down my face and I heard a voice saying, ‘Is anything wrong, signore?’

  The lad was watching me with some concern. Nobody had noticed anything; they were all intent upon their drinks, or their friends, or the orchestra, and I fumbled for my handkerchief and blew my nose and said, ‘Bring me a curaçao.’

  3

  I remember sitting staring at the table in front of me, still smoking my cigar, not daring to raise my head, and I heard his quick footstep beside me. He put down the drink and went away again, and the question uppermost in my mind was, ‘Does he know?’

  You see, the flash of recognition was so swift, so overwhelming, that it was like being jerked into consciousness from a lifetime of sleep. The absolute certainty of who I was and where I was, and the bond between us, pos
sessed me just as Paul was possessed on the Damascus road. Thank heaven I was not blinded by my visions; no one would have to lead me back to the hotel. No, I was just another tourist come to Venice, listening to a little string band and smoking a cigar.

  I let five minutes or so go by, and then I lifted my head and casually, very casually, looked over the heads of the people towards the café. He was standing alone, his hands behind his back, watching the orchestra. He seemed to me about fifteen, not more, and he was small for his age, and slight, and his white mess jacket and dark trousers reminded me of an officer’s kit in Her Majesty’s Mediterranean fleet. He did not look Italian. His forehead was high, and he wore his light brown hair en brosse. His eyes were not brown but blue, and his complexion was fair, not olive.There were two other waiters hovering between the tables, one of them about eighteen or nineteen and both of them obvious Italians, the eighteen-year-old swarthy and fat.You could tell at a glance they were born to be waiters, they would never rise to anything else, but my boy, my Ganymede, the very set of his proud head, the expression on his face, the air of grave tolerance with which he regarded the orchestra, showed him to be of a different stamp . . . my stamp, the stamp of the immortals.

  I watched him covertly, the small clasped hands, the small foot in its black shoe tapping time to the music. If he recognized me, I said to myself, he will look at me. This evasion, this play of watching the orchestra, is only a pretext, because what we have felt together, in that moment out of time, has been too strong for both of us. Suddenly - and with an exquisite feeling of delight and apprehension in one - I knew what was going to happen. He made a decision. He looked away from the orchestra and directly across to my table, and still grave, still thoughtful, walked up to me and said,

  ‘Do you wish for anything more, signore?’

  It was foolish of me, but, do you know, I could not speak. I could only shake my head. Then he took away the ash-tray and put a clean one in its place. The very gesture was somehow thoughtful, loving, and my throat tightened and I was reminded of a biblical expression surely used by Joseph about Benjamin. I forget the context, but it says somewhere in the Old Testament, ‘for his bowels did yearn upon his brother’. I felt that, exactly.

  I went on sitting there until midnight, when the great bells sounded and filled the air, and the orchestras - both of them - put away their instruments, and the straggling listeners melted away. I looked down at the scrap of paper, the bill, which he had brought me and put beside the ash-tray, and, as I glanced at the scribbled figures and paid, it seemed to me that the smile he gave me, and the little bow of deference, were the answer I had been seeking. He knew. Ganymede knew.

  I went off alone across the now deserted piazza, and passed under the colonnade by the Doge’s palace where an old hunched man was sleeping. The lights were no longer bright but dim, the damp wind troubled the water and rocked the rows of gondolas on the black lagoon, but my boy’s spirit was with me, and his shadow too.

  I awoke to brilliance. The long day to be filled, and what a day! So much to experience and to see, from the obvious interiors of San Marco and the Doge’s palace to a visit to the Accademia and an excursion up and down the Grand Canal. I did everything the tourist does except feed the pigeons; too fat, too sleek as they were, I picked my way amongst them with distaste. I had an ice at Florians. I bought picture postcards for my nieces. I leant over the Rialto bridge. And the happy day, of which I enjoyed every moment, was only a preliminary to the evening. Deliberately I had avoided the café on the right-hand side of the piazza. I had walked only on the opposite side.

  I remember I got back to my hotel about six, and lay down on my bed and read Chaucer for an hour - the Canterbury Tales in a Penguin edition. Then I had a bath and changed. I went to the same restaurant to dine where I had dined the night before. The dinner was equally good and equally cheap. I lit my cigar and strolled to the piazza. The orchestras were playing. I chose a table on the fringe of the crowd, and as I put down my cigar for a moment I noticed that my hand was trembling.The excitement, the suspense, were unbearable. It seemed to me impossible that the family group at the table beside me should not perceive my emotion. Luckily I had an evening paper with me. I opened it and pretended to read. Someone flicked a cloth on my table, and it was the swarthy waiter, the ungainly youth, asking for my order. I motioned him away.‘Presently,’ I said, and went on reading, or rather going through the motions of reading. The orchestra began to play a little jigging tune, and looking up I saw that Ganymede was watching me. He was standing by the orchestra, his hands clasped behind his back. I did nothing, I did not even move my head, but in a moment he was at my side.

  ‘A curaçao, signore?’ he said.

  Tonight recognition went beyond the first instantaneous flash. I could feel the chair of gold, and the clouds above my head, and the boy was kneeling beside me, and the cup he offered me was gold as well. His humility was not the shamed humility of a slave, but the reverence of a loved one to his master, to his god. Then the flash was gone and, thank heaven, I was in control of emotion. I nodded my head and said, ‘Yes, please,’ and ordered half a bottle of Evian water to be brought to me with the curaçao.

  As I watched him slip past the tables towards the café, I saw a large man in a white raincoat and a broad-brimmed trilby hat step out from the shadows beneath the colonnade and tap him on the shoulder. My boy raised his head and smiled. In that brief moment I experienced evil. A premonition of disaster. The man, like a great white slug, smiled back at Ganymede and gave him an order. The boy smiled again, and disappeared.

  The orchestra swung out of the jigging tune and ceased, with a flourish, to a burst of applause. The violinist wiped the perspiration from his forehead and laughed at the pianist. The swarthy waiter brought them drinks. The old woman in the shawl came to my table as she had done the night before and offered me a rose. This time I was wiser: I refused. And I became aware that the man in the white mackintosh was watching me from behind a column . . .

  Do you know anything of Greek mythology? I only mention the fact because Poseidon, the brother of Zeus, was also his rival. He was especially associated with the horse; and a horse - unless it is winged - symbolizes corruption. The man in the white mackintosh was corrupt. I knew it instinctively. Intuition bade me beware. When Ganymede returned with my curaçao and my Evian I did not even look up, but continued reading the newspaper. The orchestra, refreshed, took the air once more.The strains of ‘Softly Awakes my Heart’ strove for supremacy with the ‘Colonel Bogey’ march from its rival near the church.The woman with the shawl, her roses all unsold, came back to my table in desperation. Brutally I shook my head, and in doing so saw that the man in the white mackintosh and the trilby hat had moved from the column and was now standing beside my chair.

  The aroma of evil is a deadly thing. It penetrates, and stifles, and somehow challenges at the same time. I was afraid. Most definitely I was afraid, but determined to give battle, to prove that I was the stronger. I relaxed in my chair, and, inhaling the last breath of my cigar before laying it in the ash-tray, puffed the smoke full in his face. An extraordinary thing happened. I don’t know whether the final inhalation turned me giddy, but for an instant my head swam, and the smoke made rings before my eyes, and I saw his hideous, grinning face subside into what seemed to be a trough of sea and foam. I could even feel the spray.When I had recovered from the attack of coughing brought on by my cigar the air cleared: the man in the white mackintosh had disappeared, and I found that I had knocked over and smashed my half-bottle of Evian water. It was Ganymede himself who picked up the broken pieces, it was Ganymede who wiped the table with his cloth, it was Ganymede who suggested, without my ordering it, a fresh half-bottle.

  ‘The signore has not cut himself ?’ he said.

  ‘No.’

  ‘The signore will have another curaçao. There may be some pieces of glass in this. There will be no extra charge.’

  He spoke with authority, with quiet co
nfidence, this child of fifteen who had the grace of a prince, and then, with exquisite hauteur, he turned to the swarthy youth who was his companion-at-arms, and handed him my debris with a flow of Italian. Then he brought me the second half-bottle of Evian, and the second glass of curaçao.

  ‘Un sedativo,’ he said, and smiled.

  He was not cocky. He was not familiar. He knew, because he had always known, that my hands were trembling and my heart was beating, and I wanted to be calm, to be still.

  ‘Piove,’ he said, lifting his face and holding up his hand, and indeed it was beginning to rain, suddenly, for no reason, out of a star-studded sky. But a black straggling cloud like a gigantic hand blotted out the stars as he spoke, and down came the rain on to the piazza. Umbrellas went up like mushrooms, and those without them spread across the piazza and away home like beetles to their lair.

  Desolation was instant.The tables were bare, the chairs upturned against them. The piano was covered with a tarpaulin, the music-stands were folded, the lights inside the café became dim. Everyone melted away. It was as though there had never been an orchestra, never been an audience of clapping people. The whole thing was a dream.

  I was not dreaming, though. I had come out, like a fool, without my umbrella. I waited under the colonnade beside the now deserted café, with the rain from a nearby spout spattering the ground in front of me. I could hardly believe it possible that five minutes ago all had been gay and crowded, and now this wintered gloom.

  I turned up the collar of my coat, trying to make up my mind whether to venture forth across the streaming piazza, and then I heard a quick brisk footstep leave the café and trot away under the colonnade. It was Ganymede, his small upright figure still clad in his white mess jacket, his large umbrella held above him like a pennant.