MOSAIC
Amidst
low-lying sea marshlands, level horizons rises the
town of Rye. It has been an island with a causeway approach but now the
sea has
retreated, has left it cast up like a drowned body on the shore. In the
centre
of the town is a church. Aligned with the high altar swings the great
pendulum
of a clock suspended from the tower. The light, flickering through vast
windows
of myriad-coloured leaded panes, gleams on the brass nodule as it
swings across
the flagged floor, leaving a moving shadow as it attempts to trace the
passage
of time in our world.
The sun glints
on their gilt and daily revolves around their
shadows on the grey stone wall. At night the moon achieves the same
phenomenon
but with a colder, lesser light and to a different regularity, while
the sea
tides wash against the land walls to the south.
Man measures
his time by the juxtaposition of but one of
many earths, with but one of many suns and but one of countless moons.
He
attempts a minute imposition of order upon matter in a universe created
or
existing from the shifting of atoms, continually combining, splitting,
fusing,
disintegrating, passing back to less and forward to more, beyond the
mere
sphere of man-measured time, beyond this puny map that man charts for
his petty
convenience. He creates Books of Hours and Shepheardes Calendars. The
stars of other worlds are visible, but do they see or
do they
care?
March 24, 1962
Who am I? I
ask who I am.
I can ask the
question. A quest. I can seek the answer. How?
Thus. In a diary. It shall not be a formal tale, beginning, middle,
end. No
one lives so. But it shall be a grasping of glimpses of memory, a
collection of
the make-up of a personality, a portrait of light and shadow, myriad
brush
strokes of variegated colour, a disorderly mass - for such is reality -
and
such is time - and such is life.
Another, such
as I, wrote once in her journal:
What sort of
diary should I like mine to be? Something loosely knit and yet not
slovenly, so
elastic that it will embrace any thing, solemn, slight or beautiful
that comes
to my mind. I should like it to resemble some deep old desk, or
capacious
hold-all, in which one flings a mass of odds and ends with out looking
them
through. I should like to come back, after a year or two, and find that
the
collection had coalesced, as such deposits so mysteriously do, into a
mould,
transparent enough to reflect the light of our life, and yet steady
tranquil
compounds with the aloofness of a work of art.
Virginia Woolf,
A
Writers Diary,
April 20, 1919.
In the
beginning of the river of my time I lived near Rye.
Then I left England, came to California. I have been unable to return.
So this
is a tale of exile, a mosaic of broken geographies. Ithaca remains
unfound.
Though Italy has been visited. And Mexico. So expect far-flung
backdrops to my
tale, picture an Elizabeth and non-Aristotelian drama, with rapid scene
changes
from Belmont to Venice and Venice to Bohemia and Bohemia to Illyria and
Illyria
to Sicilia. For this is the tale of Perdita. Let it unfold.
March 25
Two children, a
brother and a sister, Richard and Julia,
under an apple tree. The petals of blossom fall steadily and in the
fields
beyond the sheep are bleating sorrowfully at the joyous lambs. We are
quarrelling. We are sent to search for windfall apples for the cook.
The apples
on the ground are wasp-gnawed, bruised and rotten. I feel that my
brother is
loved more than I. This angers me. I find myself with a broken stick in
my hand
beating down on my brother's head, again and again. The blood starts to
run
thickly, matting his fair hair. More and more it comes, running in
rivulets
down his face, his neck, while he stands and screams. The blue eyes are
covered
with red gore that goes on flowing. The ugly stick with its splinters
and
jutting nail is stained with it. Could not the anger go away and I
stop? I have
no further memory of the scene. It ends in my mind as suddenly as it
began. But
the guilt and nausea of it remain.
Again, we are
playing. The boy snatches the girl's doll,
they struggle and the doll falls with its porcelain head smashed. One
blue
china eye remains open in its grotesque portion of brokenness while
farther
away the other lies closed as the angle has forced the weights even in
death to
perform their mechanical function. Hot anger. Then remembrance, as
before,
stops.
March 27
'Richard'.
'Shush'.
'Look, Richard,
you owe me sixpence. Don't you remember last
night on the ˜bus? Mummy wants the . . . ˜
˜Shush, you'll
scare the fish'.
˜Damn
the fish'.
'Naughty,
naughty. Girls don't swear, only boys can'.
'I
don't care.
Please, Richard'.
Richard was
silent this time, standing by the water, holding
the line intent. Julia shrugged her shoulders and sat down on the bank.
She
joined him in gazing at the telltale red float suspended amidst the
rippling
water. A dragonfly whirred by. And the water reflections undulated on
the trees
above them. The girl felt the rippling, reflecting water become part of
her.
Suddenly the
red plastic float started bobbing. The boy
stood there tense, holding his breath. Julia squealed with excitement,
her
trance forgotten. Then he hauled the line out of the water. From the
hook hung
a gleaming red and silver fish. It writhed and squirmed, shaking and
twisting
its body in an effort to get free. The silver scales flashed and
glittered as
it flung itself from side to side.
The boy jerked
the line and the fish somehow loosened itself
and fell back into the water with a splash that sent the ripples
circling out
over the surface of the pond. The boy said under his breath all the
swear words
that he knew. Julia almost clapped her hands with joy. To see the
gleaming fish
go free was such a funny painful feeling that she had to catch her
breath and
then she laughed. The ripples went on circling over the surface of the
sky-mirroring water and the reflections on the pale green leaves danced.
'Richard,
can I
have a got this time? I promise I won't
break your line. Cross my heart and cut my throat I
won't.
'No,
I'm jolly
well not going to let a sissie girl like you
have it, so there!'
'Well,
next
time then? Please. I'll let you keep that
sixpence. Then you can buy hooks'.
'Ohallrightthen.
But if you dare snap that line you'll get
it!'
Julia nodded
delightedly as she watched her brother place
the dough bait on the hook, cursing whenever his fingers got pricked.
Then he
flung it far out into the water and the bait landed, making circular
ripples
around and around, farther and farther. The girl watched until the last
one had
reached the opposite bank. She could barely see it, it had become so
faint.
Perhaps there were others that were too slight even to be seen.
She clasped her
hands around her knees and laughed softly.
She heard the sound of a tractor ploughing up some fallow field.
Streaks of
sunlight warmed her back and on her hands she watched the flickering
reflections of the water. She used to watch that at school, the
reflection from
sunlight on glass creeping across the blackboard . . . imprisonment . .
. king
john . . . Runnymede . . . 1066 . . .
vernal equinox . . . tradewinds . . . the name, JULIA BOLTON,
carved on
the desk lid with her ivory-handled penknife . . . the smell of ink and
cedarwood pencils . . . and stale cooked abbages along the corridors.
She
wasn't at school though. Often she had gazed out the classroom
windows
and
longed to be by water, in sunlight.
Sudden flurry.
Another fish had bitten. Richard carefully
landed this one as its tail flailed around, its red and silverness
squirming.
The boy grasped it tight in his fist and worked the barbed hook out. He
pt it
in a tin can. It writhed. Gradually its struggles ceased.
'Poor
fish'.
'Hey,
Julia!
Thought you wanted the rod this tune?'
'Why,
yes. I
must have been dreaming. Here. Give it to me'.
He handed the
rod over to the girl. She struggled with the
bait and then stood up to cast it into the water. The first time it
didn't go
far enough. Richard jeered at her. The next try she fumbled and the
serpentine
line coiled round some of the small branches. She tried again.
The line flung
out and the bait sank, weighted by the lead
shot, leaving the red float wobbling amidst the circling ripples.
Gradually the
float became still. A bird that had been singing, stopped. The two of
them only
heard the chugging of a tractor somewhere far on the horizon.
She stared at
the float. The water around it looked as if
someone had melted down thousand-hued jewels and had put liquid
diamonds amidst
the peacock greens and blues and the muddy browns. Sometimes a breeze
would
cross the water and little wavelets would glitter like the myriad
scales of
fish.
It was sometime
before the fish bit, longer than usual, but
it was a big one, bigger than any the boy had caught. The girl landed
it with
pride and insisted on unhooking it herself. She felt no pity for the
fish now.
'There
you see.
It's bigger than any you've caught'.
'Yeah.
But I've
caught more fish than you have and those two
eels'.
'Ugly
things'.
Ann shuddered.
He took the rod out of her hands.
˜You
know,
Julian, I think that sixpence is worth two go's'.
'I
don't, so
shut up'.
'Okay,
okay.
Keep your hair on'.
He looked
annoyed and the girl grinned in triumph. He cast
the line again and they waited. The girl plucked a blade of grass and
chewed
the juicy end of it, and then reached out for a blackberry growing up
amongst
the thorny ramblers. The trees bowed down over their heads. The water
at their
feet rippled and sparkled.
A spaniel dog
came crashing through the bracken and came up
to the girl, nuzzling his nose into her hand. She started to laugh. The
dog
barked. But the boy was angry at the disturbing noises.
'You've
got to
keep quiet, Prince', the girl said,
˜Richard's fishing'.
The dog went on
barking, jumping up and down. He leapt up
against the boy who lost his balance, slipping in the mud. Julia
laughed at him
and he laughed, too. He struggled to his feet with her help. Prince lay
watching them, thumping his tail. He jumped up and barked again, his
spaniel
ears flying.
'All
right, old
guy. Wait a minute and we'll go for a run'.
He packed up
his home-made rod with care and they set off
for the house. Julia whispered, ˜Don't let Mummy see
that mud'. The boy
dashed
into the yard leaving his rod and catch in the stable house. A litter
of
puppies began to run for his feet, crying and yelping and rolling over
while
their mother, another cocker spaniel, watched the boy anxiously and
thumped her
tail on the brick-laid yard.
He ran back to
join the girl. Prince took off and they
followed after, scrambling over the gate and running down the green
sloping
field with the wind rushing in their ears. The dog was far ahead of
them. They
reached the hedge at the bottom of the field. There Prince lay on the
ground
waiting for them, panting, with his tongue hanging out. Then they
scrambled
over the wooden style and walked together across the next field where
the wood
began. The dog dashed round them in circles, barking. Then he ran off
and
flushed up a bird into the blueness of the sky, pointing with forepaw
raised.
The boy tried
to whistle as they walked along. Julia laughed
at him. He couldn't whistle very well. He cut a hazel switch
from the
hedge
with his pocket knife. He beat the air with it making a sharp, swishing
sound.
He said, 'Daddy is going to sell the pups'.
Julia turned
around sharply, spreading out her hands in a
sudden impetuous gesture 'Why won't he let us keep
them?'
'Silly.
Because
then we'd have eight dogs instead of two,
then more and more'.
When they got
to the wood the boy led the way up a path they
had not been on before. It was strange coming into the wood after the
openness
of the fields. The boughs of the trees filtered through so little
sunlight. The
light would come down in narrow spear shafts gilding the undergrowth
and green
bracken and fern. The rotting leaves on the ground deadened the sould
of their
footsteps. The dog ran along shuffling amongst the leaves, snuffling
with his
nose the strong wood smells. He dug up a dead shrew from under the
leaves.
Julia made him leave it. They ran on through the woods.
They came to a
sunlit glade which was a crossing of the
paths. They boy turned down another path into the half light again.
There were
fungi on the trees, strange toadstools forming out of the mould on the
ground,
creations of decay, coloured like poison. Then suddenly they came into
the
sunlight and the open fields again.
The dog began
barking at something hanging from the tree by
the fence. The girl started to climb over the fence and then saw what
the dog
was barking at. She screamed out. 'Richard, what is
it?' A black crow
rose into
the air, startled, beating its wings. Richard said,
'That's the
gamekeeper's
gallows. He hangs stoats and weasels he's caught there to scare
the
others
away. He picked up a stone and flung it at one of the decaying weasels
hanging
on the plank of wood nailed to the tree trunk. There were dead rabbits,
too.
One was fresh. Its fur was still pretty and soft save for a blood stain
on its
neck. Its eyes had not yet been picked out by the carrion crow.
They walked up
to the house. The boy took his fish in to
show off. The puppies gambolled and played in the sunshine.
March 31
I give the past
to the children as a curiosity, a mere
plaything. The importance of my birth exists in the past tense alone.
And there
it has the colour and unreality of a lending-library novel. The useless
but
bright silver napkin rings are my children's toys. For today we
weave a
new
past.
Joyce Bolton, drawing of Julia and Robin, October 1959
Only as a
diversion to amuse a child is the Pandora's chest
of memory unlocked. As Nanny had revealed to me the bits and pieces and
childhood treasures of her past. My Russian Nanny kept a vast trunk in
our
nursery. It was never opened until, one day, my doll had lost the
ribbons for
her hair. It was to replace these that the chest was at last flung
open. What
treasures we saw inside: wooden Russian dolls with stiff mechanic
joints and
round red-painted circles on their cheeks, more dolls with peasant rich
patterns painted upon them that fitted one inside the other,
generations of
five or seven or ten, a gay profusion of jacquarded cloth, ribbons and
laces, a
riot of reds and blues and golds. And then the gates of Paradise shut.
But my
plain doll had scarlet ribbons in her hair.
April 3
Take
with the harsh hands
Water, wine, bread from stones,
Make blood.
They've spilt enough of it for this.
Bread from
stones, make flesh.
Blood's been often shed in exchange for bread.
Take with the harsh hands,
Water, wine, bread from stones.
Rivulets of
blood shed for creed and bread.
They knew not which nor why nor where
On the barbed wire lies impaled the lacerated flesh.
Take with the
harsh hands.
She
is six years old when her long loose hair is tightly plaited behind her
face
and she is first taken to the school. Her mother is not with her. She
is in
London. War is raging. The young child and her brother are boarded with
a
childless Scots couple who love them dearly. They live in a Sussex
bungalow
filled with fumed oak furniture and which has a sand pit, an orchard, a
tool
shed and a green house with a grape vine, thick and gnarled with age,
thrusting
up against the paned glass roof.
The
frail Scotswoman rings the convent doorbell. The girl and her brother
lean
close against her skirts. The door is opened. It is the first time the
girl has
seen a nun. The garbed figure whose face is framed by a stiff, snowy
coif,
smiles sweetly and bids them enter. They walk along a sunny white
corridor to
the parlour. There they are greeted by the headmistress and shown into
chairs.
Talk. Talk in waves and rhythms, incomprehensible. The children fidget.
They
feel guilty, knowing they should not do so. The nun talks forever to
their
foster mother. When they are ready to leave she swoops down and kisses
the
girl's forehead. The sharp coif feels uncomfortable but the
kiss is
gentle.
There are butterflies in the walled garden beyond the window. A bell
chimes
slowly. The interview is broken off and they leave, the girl and her
brother holding
hands as they go down the stairs from the grey stone doorway with the
Latin
inscription on the lintel.
PAX INTRANTIBUS
SALUS EXEUNTIBUS
BENEDICTIO
HABITANTIBUS
Words in a strange language, left an unsolved mystery until, some years later, the Latin mistress introduces her first year pupils to the ancient tongue by helping them translate the many classic mottoes to be found throughout the school grounds on mossy stone lintels and baroque Italian archways. Then and only then did she decipher:
Peace to those
who enter here
Salutation to
those who leave us
And blessings
upon those who abide here
Elsewhere in
the garden of Paradise
it said,
SALVE ATQUE VALE
April 4
She remembered,
in Italy, the naked
child standing amidst the wheat. A scene glimpsed briefly in the golden
landscape from a swift moving car. The child's mother stood
apart, her
hair
bound in a blue cloth, grasping the grain with one hand and the swiping
sickle
in the other. The father was drinking from a cool amphora. The
parents'
faces
squinted in the bright noon light. Their backs were bowed, their faces
glistening with runnels of moisture.
But the child
was free, stalwart and
golden, in his hand a sceptre of wheat, on his face a look of kingly
triumph.
Then the scene vanished as it had come, eclipsed, glimpsed, eclipsed
through
swift near trees. The car sped onwards. The glance at vital myth gone,
save for
the image of memory.
April 5
A gathering on
the lawn. Tea cups
clattering elegantly in saucers. A garden party at Powdermill House in
those
halcyon days of the late thirties. The guests, writers, dancers, an
M.P. or
two, a sculptress with red hair, a dame and a poet. Quite one or two
county
families. Husbands, wives, a few small children. A mother with her
child, a
daughter in flounced white silk, a mere baby of four months.
Dame Lilian
Baylis was old, with
little life left of all her magnificent years as founder of the Royal
Ballet, the
English National Opera, the Old Vic and Sadler's Wells. Her
eyes were
dim. Her
legs, dancer's legs, were tired. She took the small girl on her
lap.
The baby
was a chubby thing. It smiled at her. Dame Lilian declared, and in a
manner
becoming to her theatrical career, 'I am your fairy godmother,
little
Julia. I
predict that one day you, too, will be a great dancer. You will charm
the world
with your gift as you now charm an old lady with your youth'.
The baby
waved
its hands solemnly in the air. Her mother felt a burst of pride. Dame
Lilian
had said . . . Her daughter would be . . .
Dame Lilian
died within the year.
The theatrical world mourned. A mother determined on a ballet career
for her
little daughter.
The war came.
The girl grew older.
When the wireless filled her parents' London drawing room with
concert
music
the little girl pirouetted and danced upon the Aubusson carpet. For
hours she
danced in joy of untrained movement. The magic times would come when
the music
came inside her, her dance and the music came together, knit and were
married,
became one and the same. Then she was happy. The mother watched and
planned.
The girl's father took her to see the Sadler's Wells
Ballet. The little
girl
thought that when they got there
everyone would get up and dance, even she would dance. Her
disappointment was
bitter that the only dancers were those on a stage far away. That a
platform
divorced them from the beholder, they were seen above adults'
head
imperfectly.
She began to cry. To the consternation of her father.
Her mother
enrolled her in a dance
class. Her Nanny took the little girl. They waited in an anteroom where
the
other pupils sat around and talked. A girl came down some stairs
singing. The
little girl stared in disbelief. Then they went into the practice room.
She
left her Nanny behind. The pupils lined up down the room. Some were at
the
barre. She found herself in the centre row. The instructress in a black
leotard
anounced the arrival of a new pupil to the class. Then she told them to
start.
Julia thought
she was meant to dance
as she had in front of the wireless upon the pale Aubusson. She
commenced to
twirl and skip and pirouette. Then a hot blush mounted to her face. The
others
were not doing this. They were not dancing at all. They were stiffly
raising
their arms and placing their feet awkwardly into odd positions. The
girls at
the barre were swinging their legs in front and behind. She was
supposed to do
this. This was not dancing! She stumbled to a stop and stood, watching
in
panic, hot shame in her heart. She remembers no more of this incident.
Other such
dancing schools swim
before her memory. Gleaming oak polished floors and bronze slippers
with a tiny
diamond on each, the clean handkerchief, white silk frilled dress,
white socks,
silk ribbon around the long loose hair. The other children. The teacher
in shimmering
mauve watered silk and long jangling strings of beads and the light
falling
through great mullioned windows. Or the ballet school with its barre,
the great
grand piano, the William Morris wallpaper, the room that must have once
been
the drawing room of the large house. The windows that looked out onto a
tangled, ill-cared-for garden. Her embarrassment when she could not
hear the
teacher's instructions because of her war-deafened ears. Her
fumbling
and
stumbling, perspiring, cold and clammy in her black short silk practice
frock.
'Must I go, Mummy? I hate it'.
It was when the
war was over that
her mother decided to take her to London for an audition. She was to
miss
school for that day. Had she practiced her dances? A large bouquet of
flowers
was gathered from the country garden and taken with them on the tedious
train
journey. Their scent filled the closed carriage. The dingy London
streets. A
ride in a red bus. The square of Convent Garden filled with flowers and
vegetable stalls and hawkers. Dank concrete stairway. Asking
information of
where to go from a cross-looking man. Being ushered onto a vast stage.
Something about it being a quarter of a mile lone. Ghost-like hanging
scenery,
a greyness over everything. Workers shifting pieces endlessly. Staring
into the
curtain behind which, that night, would be countless faces, staring,
talking,
fluttering, waiting for it to lift.
Miss Ashburn,
the director, came up.
Graciously accepted the flowers, talked to the mother, while the
daughter
stared at another girl, self-assured, jolly, waiting with her mother
for their
turn. 'Now show me what you can do, dear'. The girl
startled, turned
back and
mumbled something about a waltz. 'All right, show me your
waltz'. She
started
to waltz stiffly across the stage away from the figures of her mother
and the
director. 'Wait! Come back here! You'll get lost,
dear'. She came back
feeling
silly. 'Now show me your basic steps'. She fumbled
through them. At the
ballet
school her pupil teacher rarely taught her because she could never hear
her
instruction and so was left to stare into the ruined garden for an hour
and
then return home. Miss Ashburn looked worried. Then she examined the
girl's
feet, making her stand against a great theatrical bed of blues and
golds to be used
on one of the sets that night. She turned to the mother and told her
the child
should continue to go to the local school, come back later when had
made some
improvements, thanked them again for the flowers. The other mother and
her
daughter smiled as they made their way towards the exit.
Outside Julia
begged her mother to
let them stay and see the ballet that was being given that night. Her
mother
became angry. They had spent enough money as it was, she said, and they
had to
catch the train. The girl's hands reeked from having held the
flowers
so long.
They were empty and displeasing to her. Her mother did not smile and
for days
she remained cold and distant towards the girl.
April 6
To my Icarian
Uncle
Spitfire pilot
of the R.A.F.,
Tortured mind.
I
haven't
forgotten how you once described
The land
falling upwards to your plane,
In a sickening
landslide reversed.
My brother
won't forget how you
Cried when he
shot his toy gun at you. You
Were the first
adult he had ever seen cry.
You had been
his hero.
He
won't forget
either the day you killed the dog,
Breaking its
back, and had tried to set the house
On fire, merely
because we had told you what
We saw the day
when they shot
The German
plane down in the field by our house.
We were going
to show you as a curiosity
The hole it had
made. We told you how the pilot had
Died, screaming
in flames, the twisting of metal in
heat.
And so the
sea-darkness of nameless emotion had risen
With a deadly
lurch, slapped violently against your
Identity, and
you had drowned in lunacy.
Children are
callous.
April 8
Psychology,
literature, history, all
were to be studied in an attempt to plumb human personality. In
psychology a
great deal of time was given to Pavlov's salivating dogs and
also to
tests
which attempted to reduce personality to a matter of numbered
statistics, but
beyond the theoretical formula that personality = heredity x
environment, that
field of study proved unprofitable. The wrong direction had been taken
and it
led nowhere. Literature was of more value. I found that the writing of
man
mirrored man. I read interminably. But I was seeing a reflection, a
shadow of
the real thing. History disappointed me because it failed to tell of
the people
involved within the great historical actions. It is not equipped to do
that. It
has a falseness like that of the analogy to the human body that Bacon
makes out
to be the commonwealth. The working of the historian tends to depict
those
human traits that are at the bestial end of the scale rather than the
angelic
or even humane. Its spirit is the spirit of the mob. And I wanted to
believe in
free will. Neither psychology nor history gave me rein for this.
Literature
could. I read Milton, Milton who believed wholly and entirely in the
Free Will
of Man. Milton who wrote of English flower-filled meadows, whose words
to me
became truth.
In college we
had a friend, a
bearded Sicilian who majored in philosophy. He had formulated a theory
of
determinism and he would walk with us for blocks working his theory out
verbally. With words and concepts he built a fantastic, invisible
structure
which had, nevertheless, its own reality. There was only one argument
with
which I could attack it. And that argument I purloined from Milton.
His theory
refuted predestination.
The past can not be changed at all nor by any means. The past is
irrevocable.
But the present, determined by the past, is also the agent of future
determinism. And so, in a sense, having the power to determine,
although
determined, it is, paradoxically free. A person living on the narrow
thread of
the present whose personality is supposedly determined by what has gone
before
yet has the power and the freedom of being himself the agent for
determining
the act, who makes the choice. For all acts are based on the choice of
the individual
even when it is the choice of not choosing; of letting events continue
without
acting is also a choice. And the future does not exist. Only the
present with
the past behind it, the influence of the past on it, is real and has
power.
Each individual is the agent of determinism. Each individual has the
choice of
how he will determine the future. He is the determining agent himself
and
therefore he is free. He is, as the existentialists say, chained to
freedom.
For many hours
we listened as this
argument was unfolded by my philosopher friend, walking in the streets,
watching his sensitive face while we heard his words, walking in
sunlight and
starlight, beneath trees and clouds. The 'professor' as
he was called
by us,
would take us by the power of his words beyond thoughts of things
around us. We
would live in an intellectual kingdom divorced from the petty reality
of
physical things. We were beyond Plato's cave and in the
spiritual
sunlight of
which that great philosopher speaks. And then we would have to return
home.
Of what is a
human? I am yet too
young to know. I tried to find the answer in the poor deceptive mirror
of the
printed page. I should have gone out into the streets and found him
there. I
went out to look. But I found not people but a mask on the face of
every man.
Each seemed to sya, ˜This is what I wish you to think I am. The
real
'I', I do
not wish to show. It is not what I think you would care to see. Or if
you cared
to see it and did, you might harm me. Therefore to protect myself and
live I
wear this mask'.
I was intent on
breaking the mask.
But I never could. I knocked on the doors of homes and was shown the
front room
which was clean and garnered but the back room with all its delights
and
individuality was not shown me. Until I fell headlong in love.
California is
six thousand miles
away from Sussex. It is dry and dusty and has a different beauty. There
I knew
the longing to find primroses and to hear the cuckoo song of spring and
watch
the trees burst into leaf and be April with its showers and blossom.
Once,
twice, three times I knew this and I thought my heart would break. But
in the
third spring someone would come and say, ˜Let's go and
have coffee'.
Over cups
of coffee and the cadence of juke-box music I knew that he knew that
which was
in my heart. So I learned to know a person. The world became a thing of
fruitfulness, of completeness.
I had not known
before that it was
this that opened the door, that allowed one to pass beyond the
anteroom. I had
laughed at love. All the poetry of the world until this has been as
valueless
fool's gold when it spoke of the power of love. But now I could
no longer
laugh.
I, too, belonged to the confraternity of lovesick poets. Although these
poems I
hide. Only he has read them.
April 9
Ferdinand/Miranda
Game and play
Of love and
Chess
Castles
overthrown, queen captured,
Upon the motley
board
Alone.
The martial red
awaits the move.
Let me kiss you.
Do you mind?
Do you enjoy
Cherries from
off the laden boughs of summer?
Do but bid me
get them.
Ah, I forgot
your pawn.
And now it is
your move.
Miranda, though
art most lovely,
See, the sun
makes rainbows of your hair.
It glints like
the light on
New minted
pennies.
Let me give you
cherries.
But see how
The black
rook advances.
Ah, my king.
So, it's
checkmate
Alas.
But do come
gather cherries
Before they
fall and fade.
April 10
Paestum
We had
quarrelled. No, we had not
quarrelled. And that had made it all the worse. The anger had not
broken
surface, had had no outlet. I was full of it.
The sun was too
hot for our child so
my father stayed with him, took care of him at the wine-shaded albergo
where we
had lunch. My husband had not been eager to see Paestum. Indeed, in a
sulk, he
had caused us to miss the bus the day before. Now we were here. An
extra night
in southern Italy. My father did not reproach us for our absurd anger
and the
added expense. I apologised. My husband did not.
The anger and
the heat grew worse.
We walked in the blinding sunlight towards the entrance. The plain now
only had
ruins, a handful of habitations, the sparkling bay and expanses of
infertile
and dry weeds, wheat and rye mutated back to wildness. The wealth of
Paestum
was obliterated by disease, its population long gone, its livelihood
lost. Even
its roses famous in antiquity were now wild, the simple petaled tudor
form one
sees in English hedgerows, cultivation barbarized.
Between squat,
powerful columns we
walked. But we could not walk in harmony. Rage filled me. The last
thing I
wanted was to be close to him. No enjoyment of classic Greek could come
in his
presence. While he stood gazing, I slipped away. And as I left the
anger left
me. Had it come from him, then, and not from within myself?
I was free. I
no longer cared where
he was, what he felt. I saw a butterfly, golden, tawny, flit among the
stones.
Towards the Temple of Neptune I went, like a child, wandering at the
dawn of
time. The rosy shafts gathered me to their epicentre, and there I
stood, gazing
at the alternations of warmth, sunned stone, tawny tawdry grain and sea
water
glimpsed briefly.
Temple
of Neptune, Paestum
Then I tried to
populate the vast
old city, calling up those crowds of merchants, haggling over their
shipments,
Bassanios, Gratianos. They refused to come. Had the city always been
dead,
ruined since time began? But the columns lived, their tension spoke of
power
and warmth. Architecture beyond ornamentation, the marriage of art and
science,
with its own meaning, its own life.
A lizard then
suddenly scuttered up
one side of a column right before me. I had touched its sandstone,
sun-warm
surface. The lizard stopped scuttering and hung there, its eyelid
blinking
slowly.
Then I knew the
ruins lived. When
the temples were newly built, unruined, lizards such as these had
climbed their
shafts to hang and bask in the golden light. Paestum became alive. A
bridge was
made in time, life and stone co-mingled.
Then I saw my
husband come towards
me. I had forgotten the emotions of the morning and now all their power
was
gone. He, too, had forgotten. And he smiled.
All the way
home he could not stop
talking of Paestum.
April
11
Prospero/
Miranda
Julia's
father,
John Robert Glorney
Bolton, was the son of an Irish painter and portraitist, John Nun
Bolton. Julia
scarcely knew him. The war separated Julia and Richard from their
parents, its
aftermath brought work habits that kept Glorney in London and the
children in
the country. Julia's father was mostly a stranger to her.
But there were
moments together. One
in particular, a remembrance of October sunlight, the wallflowers
growing
against the brick in warm golds and brown's and Julia's
father putting
a book
in her lap. She was to read. The print was eighteenth century and at
first she
stumbled over, then mastered, the long s's like f's.
The binding was
luxuriant
old leather and the pages, turning, made the sound of subdued waves of
the sea.
It was a volume of Gibbon's Decline and
Fall of the Roman Empire.
She remembers,
too, on a winter's
day, his reading to her Plato's tale of the death of Socrates.
Then she
understood death, the extinction of intellect, the finis of identity.
Socrates had a way in her young mind of getting mixed up with Gandiji.
And
Glorney Bolton was one of Gandhi's biographers. Julia's
father could
not paint,
but yet he had not denied his father's calling. After Oxford he
became
a
biographer and journalist, the portrait painter whose palette held
words for
pigments.
April 12
Sometimes,
perhaps, you have seen a
dragonfly born, its metamorphosis. It drops its last sheath and like a
prism or
diamond cut glass takes on the myriad colours of refracted light, but
above all
it is blue. It alights on some rock or leaf and there in the sunlight
unfolds
itself and takes on strength and life from the sun. The dappled light
of the
pool flickers around it, and its wings stretch and tremble and it waits
for
full strength to come.
John, as he
watched her, thought
that Irena was like a beautiful insect, her character unfolding,
continually
unsheathing itself. He should, perhaps, have not married an actress.
She made
him feel clumsy, like a lumbering bear, or like a heavy bumblebee
around a
delicate flower. Even now he felt a blush rising, the heat of shame. As
a child
he had felt remorse at touching the weak dragonflies' wings and
crippling them
before they attained their full strength.
She was
watching him, standing there
and behind her the firelight flickered. It was a coal fire and amongst
the
orange flames was one blue one, that suddenly flared up from time to
time. She
stood there, tall with her hands on her thin, lithe waist. She raised
herself
as if she would, in stretching, reach so high that she would finally
take off
in flight.
She wore vivid
blue chiffon that
draped and fell away from her new forming wings, growing and yet not
fully
strong. Her hair was lustrous and dark like a bird's wing and
smoothed
back
over her head without a parting. The smoothness accumulated in the
shining
coils of a braided coronet. The firelight glinted in the dark mass and
caught red-gold
lights. Her pale neck reminded one of a swan's, its fairytale,
exotic
quality.
Irena
Whitecastle, besides being
beautiful, was also an actress of genius. She sighed. The sound was
like
water
rippling over a quiet
country pond which glinted in exotic and alien colours. She made even
the
elegant French style room of creams and golds seem but a foil to her
brightness. 'John', she whispered. John Whitecastle was
captivated, he
was
eternally captivated. 'John, say goodnight to the children for
me. I'm
too
tired, and don't stay to tell them stories. Come back
soon'.
John
Whitecastle kissed his wife and
did as she bade him. Until he was out of the room he felt like a clumsy
oaf.
But John Whitecastle's colleagues felt differently. They knew
him for
an outstanding
surgeon. Away from Irena and under the great chaste lights of the
operating
rooms his hands were as sure and as deft as the movements of a dancer.
It was
only with Irena that he felt this sense of inadequacy, of clumsiness
and a lack
of graciousness.
John
Whitecastle went to the
children's room. Little John and Elizabeth were asleep. Their
faces
rested on
fair pillows in complete innocence. John wished they were awake. He
worried
because they were pale and longed to take them to the countryside. He
wished to
give them more the feeling of a family. But his hours were very long.
And his
wife was an actress. Irena acted so many roles that she seemed to
forget her
own. John did not know what she really was like. He had never known.
She seemed
to have no past, no being, only an exquisite exterior and personalities
that
she assumed and discarded as she did her theatrical costumes and
make-up. The
directors would shout at her when she explained that needed time off
when she
was carrying little John and then Elizabeth. She did not like child
bearing. He
should be grateful that she conceded so much. Little John's
face was
sensitive
and thin. Elizabeth got her way by screaming and crying. Neither child
really
knew how to laugh. They were taken care of by a hired nursemaid who
took them
for walks in dreary city parks and by a governess who prepared them for
boarding school. John Whtiecastle felt suddenly weary.
When he went
back to the room with
the flickering firelight he started to tell his wife about an idea he
had. But
Irena was telling him something at the same time. He stopped to listen
to her,
but in his weariness he heard only her voice and did not follow the
sense of
her words. As Irena talked she glided around the room, her chiffon
drapery
floating around creating endless patterns against the pale gold wall
behind.
She captivated him. Once when he was a child he had read a story by
Anatole
France of a monk who had renounced al evil, but who, when he was in
prison for
his goodness, was released and led into the fields of day by a being so
beauteous that he fell down and worshipped. And the being was Satan.
Irena was
like that beauteous being, John though, but without the evil, only the
good.
All through time man has coupled beauty with the good.
Her movements
were liquid music.
They were studied and yet effortless. Everything she touched and did
and saw
became a work of art. And always she reminded him of beauty remembered
from
childhood of the new born wings of dragonflies, of the hypnotic gaze of
an exotic
snake amongst the bracken, of the jewel eyes of a toad and sometimes of
the
purity of falling drops of water catching sunlight from a lone
angler's
rod
cast amongst the osier reeds.
Irena's
words
came floating to John
Whitecastle's ears. They were beautifully modulated, they came
as the
sounds of
summer come drifting over fields of golden wheat. Irena was an exotic
poppy,
gypsy red and scarlet velvet amidst the golden sheaves. John
Whitecastle spoke
also, forgetting what his wife was saying, not having heard her words.
'Irena,
come
here by my side'. She
came and he could smell the perfume she wore. It was warm, vibrant,
expensive.
She curled around his feet like a feline creature, a magnificent
princely cat
with all the elegance and superiority of that animal.
'John!'
she
laughed like rippling
water. 'I am sure you did not hear a word I said'. She
propped her chin
on her
hand, her elbow resting on the pale carpet. Her eyes looked at him. The
position she assumed was one that children like, but then again she was
far
from being a child.
John went on
talking into her eyes.
'Irena, the children need to go to the country. We can go to my
parents' place.
Do you remember how I put cherries over your ears? They will be ripe
soon and I
can get a holiday. Garth, you know, who was at medical school with me,
can take
over the practice for a week or two weeks perhaps. Can you get away
from your
theatre? It would the children so much good'.
There had been
the time he had taken
her there. She was like an exotic plant in his parents'
Georgian house
amidst
the castle ruins. The cherries were ripe on the trees that were trained
to the
old walls. He had hung the red fruit over her ears. They looked well on
her,
better than the jewels he gave her. But she disputed that point. She
loved
rubies and emeralds and diamonds. And she loved large, even vulgar
stones.
John's mother had been distressed when Irena scorned the old
fashioned
Whitecastle tiara and the heirloom necklaces and brooches. She had, it
is true,
had some of these reset and these she seemed to like better. A visit to
Cartier
went to her head like wine. She never liked the country or simple
pleasures.
Her eyes were blind to the loveliness of dappled light on water and the
harvest
gold accented with the scarlet of poppies. John, who had a god seat on
a horse,
was surprised to find that Irena could not ride well. Elegant as she
was, she
could not ride a trotting horse with grace. She disliked horses. John
would be
disappointed. But she did love the exotic peaches brought in from the
sunny
south wall where they were grown so carefully. She only liked
expensive, exotic
things.
'I know
Garth
will take over for
me', John Whitecastle found himself saying. John had gone up to
the
cold north
to medical school. Edinburgh had the finest medical school in the
world. And
both Garth and he competed for the top honours. They were the most
brilliant
students of their year, it was said. They competed in a friendly way.
On the
surface there was friendship but underneath each desired to do better
than the
other. Now both were celebrated Harley Street surgeons. They had
exchanged the
Edinburgh of delicate Gothic pinnacles for the London of iron railing
and fog,
the Thames at low tide and nursemaids wheeling perambulators in parks
where the
very trees were covered with soot.
Garth was a
Scot. He was tall,
dark-haired with intense blue eyes. He had gone through medical school
entirely
on bursars because his parents were too poor to pay for it. John
Whitecastle
was also dark, a Norman. His eyes were hazel. His family had estates in
the
south and he grew up amidst the fields and meadows where sheep were
shorn of
their wool and where golden wheat was reaped and harvested. Skylarks
soared and
sang. The sea was not far away. In the summer they would swim out in
the great
rollers and in the winter the sea mists would come inland. During the
holidays,
as a student, he would ask Garth to stay with him. They would follow
hounds, a
sport which the Whitecastles introduced to Garth. John's
father, a
stern
country Justice of the Peace, had also been Master of the Fox Hounds
for years.
In the summer John and Garth would swim in the sea, rejoicing in their
prowess.
Irena answered.
John suddenly felt
again that she acted. Her attitude changed. Always she changed. Her
companions
in the theatre world were like her in that way, too. Of all the roles
they
played he never knew which one was their real self, by which one he
could judge
their real attitude toward things. Likewise he had never known, he
felt, who the
real Irena was. His eyes followed her. She stood up elegantly. How
could she
get up from that position and still be graceful, he marvelled. As she
spoke in
reply she lighted a cigarette in her long holder. John realized that
again he
had blundered. He should have lit it for her. Once he had laughed at
her
because he though the affectation of a cigarette holder was absurd. The
next
day she had bought a jewelled one, one that was very expensive.
'John,
darling', she said. ˜I wish
you had been listening earlier. Peacock, you know, the young playwright
with
the auburn hair, has just written a play for me. We start rehearsals
Monday. I can't possibly leave, at
least
not for some months. You know, it's a terribly beautiful play.
Peacock
writes
lines that are poetry. And he wrote the main part with me in mind. I
have the
script over there. You must read it, John'.
'I wish
Peacock
and his stupid play
were at the bottom of the sea. Listen, the children need to feel a
family
around them. It isn't fair'. John knew she was angry,
knew it was no
use. The
light from the coal fire was dying down. Irena stood there. He knew he
could
never have his way with her. The play would be perfect, like some fine
rare
gem, because of her acting. Her acting was like the brilliance of an
enduring
diamond and yet it constantly changed like the unsheathing of a
dragonfly.
Never was it quite the same.
John would go
backstage to his
wife's dressing room, the star's dressing room, to tell
her how
wonderful he
thought she was. But so many people would be there whom he did not
know, all of
them crowding around while she removed her make-up with blobs of
smearing cold
cream, yet managing to look beautiful all the while. She would talk to
them,
her manner changing with each person. She introduced them to John, Mr
So-and-So, the Director, So-and-So, the critic, So-and-So, of the cast,
and yet
some other vague personality. John did not belong to their crowd. But
she
reigned over them all. John wondered whether she was sincere, whether
she could
ever cease acting with them or with him. After all, the word
'hypocrite' came
from the Greek for actor.
John
Whitecastle thought of his
children. 'Very well then, Irena', he heard his voice
saying into the
silence
of the room. 'I shall take the children to the country. I shall
go down
for
only three days but shall leave them for as long as they like it. My
mother
will love to have them'.
The next
weekend John left London
taking with him Elizabeth and little John. The two children seemed so
forlorn
to him as they stood there by his side, amidst the swarming railway
station
crowd, beneath the steel girders of Edwardian functional architecture
and
surrounded by the noise of raucous loudspeakers and the shunting and
letting
off of steam of the engines. They were afraid to go near the great
engines and
talk with the driver as he would have done in the hope of a ride on the
footplate. But they had fun those three days. John tried to teach them
to swim
in the sea. They took walks together in the countryside. He left
instructions
that they be given riding lessons. They went fishing all three. And
John
Whitecastle even heard his children laugh.
His mother
organized a tennis party
and John played several sets. Garth and he had played a lot together.
When he
did not play he sat with Elizabeth. One day she, too, would play tennis
dressed
in white linen. One day, too, he would see Elizabeth's
daughter. After
they, at
last, released him from the asylum where he had been placed on a charge
of
insanity. One of the evenings they got into a discussion of
Peacock's
plays.
It was with a
light heart that John
Whitecastle returned to London. The country had done him good. His
children
were happy. He felt relaxed and full of new vigour. He longed to see
Irena
again. It would be good, too, to get back to the dramatic moments in
the
operating theatre under the harsh white lights, where he could feel his
skill
as a surgeon assert itself.
He mounted the
stairs to their flat.
It had been late evening when his train got in and he had taken a taxi
so as
not to lose time. He knew Irena would be home from rehearsals. Perhaps
she
would be in the French drawing room arranging a bouquet of expensive
flowers in
a vase. His mother had had sweet smelling sweetpeas in every room when
he was
there. He liked to see women arrange flowers.
He unlocked the
door of their flat
with his latchkey and walked down the corridor. It was then that he
heard the
voices. Irena's and another's. Was it Garth's
or young Peacock's?
Something
within his head gave way. It
was like blinding light and yet it was darkness. One side of him was
perfectly
aware of the turmoil of the other, of the wildness of the action, but
lacked
control, had not even desire to control, but stood aside, apart, as an
onlooker. It was aware that the other part of him picked up the gun
kept in the
bureau drawer and walked over to the bedroom door, opened it and shot
him. The
whole thing seemed to be perfectly and coldly rational. What was
abnormal was
that the action was devoid of any emotion. With the explosion was a
scream of
Irena's and then nothing for a long time except the glinting,
prismatic
light
on the unfolding of a dragonfly's wings, strengthening itself
in the
dappled
sunlight that flickered over the ripples of a country pond.
April 13
A Poem for my
Son
You were born
when the golden
Wheat dancing
in waves to the wind
Fell to the
sickles of farmer folk
And stacked in
shocks sunned goldenly
˜Til
the wagons
came and garnered them
Into storehouse
and barn.
And when the
rose red apples like your
Silken plump
cheeks were harvested
And garnered
into winter attics.
And the onions
were festooned from the rafters
And the
lavender stripped and
Laid between
fair linen in cupboards.
And as winter
came you learned to smile
And the stars
smiled and trembled in the
Sky above vast
lands of snow. You and I
Went fishing
for stars.
We hung them
round your cradle in an endless
Sparkling chain
and laughed and smiled together
Until you
squalled for food and shook the chains with
anger
And I gave you
milk. You suckled my breast
Lustily and
grew strong and
Satiated drew
you head away
Looking up and
crowing with
Pleasure.
With the spring
We went out
into the fields, you and I,
You tried so
hard to say words in our language.
We gathered
flowers.
You grabbed
them and my hair.
Do you remember
the daffodils growing wild in the
Woods and the
bluebells, the primroses, the gorse,
The vetch, the
violets,
The daisy chain
chaplets we wove for you,
King of your
dark eyes, your auburn hair
And your apple
red cheeks?
And the
hawthorn blossom falling speckled the grass
And you laughed.
And in the
summer
When along the
hedgerows the wild roses and
The ivy
tendrils wove white and dark green
Canopies of
shade
You became sun
gold.
You took your
first few faltering steps
And laughed
when you tumbled.
We dined then
on strawberries, clotted cream,
With never a
care in the world.
April 14
A book, that is
the thread Ariadne
gave to Theseus, the unappreciative Theseus, that he might follow
through all
the passageways and corridors that were the maze of her life and so
understand
her. A portrait, a map, a journal. Different moods, different facets.
All that
she might write, of what she might be. Uneven, textured, varied,
coloured.
Sketches, a writer's notebook.
An environment
of the past, Sussex
and England. Also Italy. The present tense of California. The theme of
alienation and exile.
She at the hub
of a spider's web,
fraught in relationships to poles, daughter to father and mother,
sister and
brother, wife to husband, mother and sons.
The symbol of
the sun clock, the
placement of action within a geographic area and in a social era that
determines and rules all unaware. And which is but the backdrop, the
chart upon
which to plot the ship's course.
April 15
Italian
Interludes
I. Praiano
I listen,
Though my ears are deaf. I
listen with my eyes and to the moiety of sound. I follow the words, the
looks.
Beautiful strangers they are, of another world. They sit at tables,
consuming
sacramental food. The cleanliness of fish and fine sea wine. The
conversation
is in diverse tongues and yet I follow, tasting the words like kisses
from lip
to lip while the sense explodes like fireworks upon the brain. I smile.
And sip
more wine.
The sea at our
side slaps against
the rock. Waking this morning I had seen it rise up window with Homeric
hue.
The wind-spewn, wine-dark water, puissant with being, two prows against
it
whose shape belonged to Bayeux art, to the paintings of Greek vases. I
like it
too well. I speak of this, of the cleanliness of the sun, of the
simplicity of
the food, the humanity of the people.
Today I sit
with my father and his
friends, listening while they talk. Tomorrow, my husband will come. I
wonder
how they will blend, how they will react to one another. And I am a
little
afraid. Afraid of the unknown. The world of tonight is one I know. Its
language
is mine. I have been away so long but it is a homecoming. I understand
the
mannerisms, the differing tongues, the relationships. They are the
script of a
play I know by heart. Everything is predetermined. But my husband will
be the
unknown factor.
The fishing
boats are leaving one by
one into the darkness, their lamps tied to each prow. They diminish
into the
unknown horizon of night.
II. Siena
We lodge for
the night in Siena at a
place my father knows. It is the home of an elderly lady. She is
aristocratic,
impoverished and dying. The dolls of her childhood are arrayed on the
couch in
the hall. They are without life, infinitely old. Their faces are
cracked and
their china eyeballs stare at us without comprehension; their painted
lips are
laughing at some forgotten pleasantry and their clothes are grey with
dust.
We pass through
the hall and the
dolls' heads do not turn to watch us go. We follow the servant
as she
shows us
to our rooms. She opens a door for the signora and her child. I carry
in my
sleeping son and lay him down on the bed from which the red damask
cover has
been turned back. The damask is tattered and the lace-edged linens do
not have
that whiteness I have become so used to in Italy. But the room is
palatial. The
same red silk hangs on the walls. The ceiling is frescoed with
Venus'
children.
At the louvred window swings a long mirror which catches and flings
back the
shifting light of the street. A ewer and basin stand on the marble wash
stand.
I find on the door the tacked notice, required by the Italian
government,
stating the price of the rooms and the class of the lodging, both lowly.
Robin was
asleep when I carried him
in. I changed him for the night and he awoke. Together we lay and
looked up at
the painted ceiling. 'Bambino, bambini', I exlain.
'Bimbo!' his soft
voice
replies. And then he begins his nightly chant of words, of all the
words he
knows, words like lalle,
(for latte, milk), Mama,
cane, cattivo. The
litany becomes softer, dwindles away and then he sleeps once more. I
undress
quietly, leave the light burning and lie down beside him. The children
of the
ceiling peer out from behind the clouds and
mock me.
I lie there,
and with approaching weariness
dream Alice-in-Wonderland dreams, reliving the day. Setting off in the
tourist
bus that morning from Monte Mario with my father and his friend,
listening
forever to the voice of the guide chanting of Etruscans, Tuscans,
watching the
male and female cypress both pass and diminish into Giotto landscapes.
The
cleanliness of Aquapendente where we lunched in a trattoria of gleaming
parquet
and blue and white tiled walls, more Dutch than Italian. And the terror
of San
Gimignano, its tall towers and lightning bolts, rain, sharp ozone,
electric
madness and hellish din. And now Siena in the weariness of night, its
streets
washed clean by rain.
A ceiling cupid
laughs at me. Like
Robin he is eighteen months old, chubby, can toddle, laugh, play but
not yet
speak. My child's most complicated communication to date is
'Mama, da
me la!'
Together we play in the roman squares and parks with the wolf fountains
and
stone lions. 'Guarda,
leone!' Nearer and nearer goes the hand to the lion's
jaws. Nearer,
neaer. Then quick, snatch it away, growl, laughter. Robin plays with
the
Italian children. A little girl at San Giovanni lets him use her
skipping rope.
But he can't jump yet. He smiles while she tries to teach him.
His hair
falls
on his forehead, his arms and legs and short and plump. I can't
keep
his shoes
as white as can the Roman matrons and I despair. Although his shoes are
not the
whitest, I know him a princely child.
Another boy is
aiming his bow at me.
There's no arrow in its taut string.
III. Sessa
Aurunca
The Via Appia,
tree-shrouded,
unravelled itself beneath the wheels of the bus. We travelled swiftly,
outrageously. The bullock carts, the laden, paniered donkeys proceeded
along
the same plane but in a dimension that differed from ours in speed, in
era. One
held one's breath yet somehow it all worked, it harmonized
without
violation.
The bus lurched to pass, the passengers would lean, sway, then resume
their
balance. The horn would blast out its musical scale in mockery. Once in
front
and now behind us would be the hay-laden cart, the clopping horse, the
peasant
woman sitting atop the load with her child. Sense emerged from
impossibility.
No collision, speed maintained.
My father and
his friends left their
seats and conferred with the driver. The bus came to a stop. Surely we
were yet
far from the city of Naples, our destination? We all got out and the
bus drove
off in a triumphant swirl of dust and noise. There we stood, facing the
road in
an orderly line. My father and his friend were smiling. They had
planned a
surprise for me. The child I held in my arms was half asleep with
noonday
drowsiness. They turned and walked along the side of the road. They
gave no
explanation and I asked for none, only waited to see what would unfold.
Though
this was not Naples, but countryside. We turned up a lane and a farm
dog ran to
us barking, followed by Amalia in her blue dress patched and patched
again with
light and dark blue slivers of cloth, her friendly lined face framed by
a
yellow kerchief. Maria, her daughter, came too. Then Antonio, the idiot
son.
And last Vito.
Vito greeted
us. So did they all in
their dialect. A chicken was caught and in the cavernous darkness of
the
kitchen it was slaughtered. Amalia cut the cock's throat with a
dinner
knife
and let the blood flow into the plate Maria held. Robin watched all
this
curiously. My eyes adjusted to the darkness of the room. Food was kept
in a
kneading trough of wood. Dishes dried on an upside down basket frame.
Wheat was
stored in burlap sacks. Onions swung from the rafters. In the corner
stood an
earthenware amphora full of cool water. Antonio and Vito came in often
to lift
it and take a drink from its lip. A fire was lit in the corner on the
floor
beneath the chimney and the cock was fried. Zucchini squash was
prepared also
and a salad of lettuce and olive oil. Maria took Robin with her to her
parents'
bedroom. They went up an outside staircase and Maria let Robin unlock
the door
with a huge iron key. She brought down crude white plates, crystal
glasses, a
loaf of bread, snowy napkins.
We ate at a
rough-hewn table under a
shady vine. The chickens came and pecked our legs. The wine we drank
Vito had
made himself. His grapevines swung from fruit tree to fruit tree. His
wheat was
ripening and in its midst were olive trees. Beneath the fruit trees
grew
squash, onions, potatoes. Ancient eruptions of Versuvius made his soil
rich and
fertile.
My
father's
friend and Vito talked
in dialect. They were cousins. From time to time Amato would tell me
things of
the family in his broken English. They had two hectares of good land,
two
daughters who were married, two sons who had jobs elsewhere. Antonio
was their
eldest, conceived out of wedlock and an idiot. But a good farmer. A
stupid,
hard-working child. Antonio grinned at me, hearing his name and knowing
he was
being spoken of, his blue eyes laughed. He was stunted and smelly, but
nice. He
was twenty-five years old and would inherit the farm. Maria, the
unmarried
daughter, was fourteen. She held Robin on her lap and made him eat. Her
mother
was, one by one, teaching her the tasks of running a household. Last
year Maria
learned how to launder clothes snowy white, this year to cook, next
year she
could bake bread. Amalia was teaching her slowly, completely, as she
herself
had been taught. Maria's formal education was long ago dropped.
But
when we
left she was reading a Roman newspaper Amato had brought from cover to
cover.
The house, the
farm was devoid of
any modern touch. It had remained an unspoiled piece of life from the
Golden
Age. One concession alone was made to the twentieth century, a radio
from
Germany that worked on batteries and had good tone. Vito bought it to
listen to
opera and to concerts. That day its battery was almost worn down and
the family
listened with their ears to the set. They had no money to buy a new
one. Their
crops they bartered for seed and cloth. Coin was something they almost
never
used.
After the meal
Robin was taken up to
the large bedroom to sleep. He was too restless. Amalia told me to lie
with
him. The bed was huge, far off the brick floor. Faded banners hung on
the rough
wall above its head. The board was inlaid with mother of pearl. A dark
locked
press from which had come the plates and crystal stood in the corner.
The
window had no glass but closed with wooden shutters. The marble
washstand had
hanging from linen damask towels with hand knotted fringes. They had
come with
Amalia's dowry. We slept.
In the evening
after coffee we left
to catch the bus to Naples. We flagged one down, standing in the road,
the
Appian Way, and progressed on our journey.
April 18
A song of Rye
Sixpences
O Rye
Town's a
fair town
Of cobbled
streets and Dolphin Taverns.
Beyond lies
Sussex, Kent,
All England
stretching
Into Wales and
over
Rippling sea to
Ireland.
Marshes
surround Rye Town
Where lambs can
skip and ewes do bleat.
Beyond are
primrose woods and mossy banks
And bluebell
carpets magical.
Nightingales
and cuckoos sing
Terue, terue,
jug, jug, cuckoo,
And hawthorn
blossoms on the hedge.
For England in
April is Shakespeare
And England in
May is Milton,
With a hey,
nonny, nonny, ney,
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