A Dancer in Darkness Read online

  Then, with Cariola behind, she left her apartments and was escorted down the stairs to the great hall. There had been no such festivities there since her marriage, and now the court was young again she would have to dance.

  III

  Antonio came from the north, from Bologna, which was ancient, settled, rich, and ostentatious. His duties there had been dull and well defined. He had wanted to get away. A seemingly chance acquaintance with the Cardinal, and some influence with the Bolognese Papal Legate, had brought him south. He found that strange mixture of splendour and squalor which the Spanish had installed in Calabria new to him. He found that he was expected to do everything, and do it, too, with very little to do it with.

  Any other gentleman at Amalfi would have found the position demeaning. Antonio did not. He had a great many little skills which, since he was a gentleman, were dignified into accomplishments, and they came in handy when it came to contriving a pageant, the seating of a banquet, or the entertainment that was to follow afterwards.

  The Duchess, like most gentlewomen and all children, thought the world came ready-made. She wandered through the world a little like Eve through Paradise before the Fall, and because everything was there, it never occurred to her to ask where it had come from. Courtiers were as matter of fact to her as trees.

  But Antonio had worked hard to prepare this evening for her, and moreover he had enjoyed the work, for even as a child he had had a passion for the dance.

  As a child, his enthusiasm had seemed amusing. But as he grew up, his skill merely became something unbecoming to a gentleman, so he put it away, like any other toy. But we never put away our toys for good. The dance was something that helped him to transcend himself. Once, on the deserted, wind-swept beach below Livorno, he had come across some gypsies huddled round a camp-fire, and they had let him dance with them. They had even cheered him on. It was the highest and most impersonal pleasure he had ever known. Yet he preferred that this passion of his remain unknown, and if it showed at all, it showed in the tight, smoothly defined precision of his calves.

  But now, preparing for the Duchess’s entertainment, he threw himself wholeheartedly into the ballet which was to crown the evening. It was a Silvae, with court ladies for nymphs, courtiers for satyrs, the Duchess, Daphne, and Antonio, Apollo. He made certain that her steps would be easy, so she need not rehearse; but he did not know why he chose the part of Apollo for himself.

  The dance was to be held in the great hall. He held not the customary one rehearsal, but five, and those serious ones; and he was still rehearsing as servants carried in trees in tubs to turn the room into a mock forest. The courtiers were taken aback, but then amused. After all, their lives were dull enough. For them a little exertion was a novelty. Antonio despaired of ever forcing them to dance at all. Indeed, they were so heavily dressed that if they could just keep to their positions and figures he would be satisfied.

  He threw himself into his own role until sweat poured down his face, which was scarcely seemly. In the eyes of the others he was demeaning himself to the rank of a professional, a street player or a gypsy. He did not notice. He was too flushed.

  Just before the performance he checked the hall for the last time. Trees stood about among the statuary, the tall fluffy oranges of Calabria, and a bush of laurel at the far end of the room, behind which the musicians had taken up their stations. It seemed to him that he had never looked better. He was wrong. For at whatever we do best, it is in that we give ourselves away. They were always a surprise to him. He did not know his own feelings until he had danced them out.

  The Duchess reached the foot of the main stair, escorted by courtiers, and moved towards the dais at which she and they were to sit. The musicians struck up. It was a prelude designed to represent the end of winter and the coming of spring, on the recorder, lute, viol, and cembalo. Snow dripped. Ice cracked. The first water ran through the cembalo, and buds popped within the lute.

  There came then a gracious aria, a chiming verse by the Court Poet, full of death, morbidezza, winter, and spring. As the chorus took it up the court ladies, disguised as the nine muses, issued forward in a ragged clump. Their only virtue was that they were young girls. Muses emphatically they were not. Antonio sprang into view, striking a pasteboard lute, and drew them to and fro like a swarm of bees. He forgot how ungainly they were. The music apostrophized each of them, and then, with a stroke of his lute, he made them severally disappear.

  The Court Poet’s placidly plodding lyric took voice again, and spoke of Antonio’s search for Daphne. Should he find her here, or here, or here? Each here was a variation which Antonio had worked out during the night, moving himself on the black and white floor of the hall, as though he had been a chessman.

  Then, to a long descending scale on the cembalo, followed by a reedy tweak on the lute stop, he discovered Daphne where the Court Poet had intended her to be all along, and footed forward towards the Duchess, with those exaggerated but perfectly genuine mock gestures of pleasure and surprise that the period demanded.

  Despite herself the Duchess was startled. She rose, looking down at his flushed, absorbed face, and it was like looking at St. Veronica’s shroud. There was the same intense blindness in his eyes. Then she allowed him to lead her forward, down from the dais, and knowing that something was happening, she moved through her steps in a daze, retiring each time as he expressed desire, respect, bafflement, sorrow, enchantment, and despair. She had no time to think, for then came the chase. She had only to run upon her toes and flutter her hands at her bosom and in the air. Yet as she gravely fled before him, her flight became real to her. When she reached the clump of laurel, she vanished into its safety with gratitude.

  She did not know what agitated her so. From the leaves she peered out at him, as his hands beseeched her not to be metamorphosed. Beside her the machinery of a clever transparency lit up and showed the actual change. His hands fluttered all around her hiding-place, like birds set free in a storm. And then came the same rapid rippling of his fingers down his loins that showed extinguished desire. The transparency faded. He did a dance of sorrow round the bush, and she saw his legs, his feet, his calves, his torso swaying like bamboo, and the long line of his body, sinuous and truthful, was something she would never be able to forget. For it spoke directly. It told her it loved her. She wondered if he knew, and knew that so far he did not. That selfless étude of his, that graceful, hopeless movement of his leg, which tapered into nothingness, was an entire impassioned speech something inside her answered instantly. She clapped her hand over her mouth, so as not to speak, but it was too late. Without realizing it, she had fallen in love with a soul, and of all the forms of love, that is the only seemingly irrevocable.

  The muses came back to lead him sauntering away. It was such an artificial sorrow. The laurels were hot and dusty. She must put on her public face, and step forward for the courtiers’ applause. But she was shaken. She knew that this must never be.

  And so, seeing her face like a glimpse of the moon through branches, suddenly did he. And that was why his dancing grieved so much. It was his body again. It had told him a truth it were better not to know.

  IV

  More than the Cardinal planned, his plot was in advance.

  She made pretexts. After all, he was her household steward. It was natural she should see him every day. She thought that if she reminded herself of his inferior role, she would forget him. But though his role might be inferior, he was not. She could not forget him. If she sent for him, and he was away on some errand at Ravello or Salerno, her whole day was suddenly dulled. Yet she flattered herself that she showed nothing. There was nothing to show.

  Then she began to feel that he was deliberately avoiding her. She was lonely. That thought made her lonelier. She had only Cariola to talk to, and these days she did not like the way Cariola looked at her. Cariola was fond of her, but she was a walking microscope to the smallest intrigue. She was so well trained to sniff it out, that she
could scent it even when it was not there. She trusted Cariola completely. But she did not trust her with this.

  Yet it was Cariola, after all, who offered a harmless solution.

  The world of Amalfi was a small world, and a narrow one in the physical sense. High on the left cliff stood the monastery of the Cappuccini; but apart from that the town huddled along the shore. Everyone knew everyone else by sight. There was no privacy there, and the Duchess was in need of diversion.

  But above the yellow cliffs lay the mountain uplands, almost uninhabited, and little explored. There were vestigial forests there, small pools and brooks, and open fields which seemed to rock, in that intense light, high above the waveless sea. There was small game among those trees, and the privacy of the open countryside.

  “Why not”, said Cariola, “go hawking.”

  “I know nothing of hawking.”

  “You know how to ride. Leave the hawking to the hawk.”

  The Duchess would never have thought of it. Her heart sprang up. If she went hawking, it would be natural that she should take Antonio in her company. Now she might meaninglessly see him every day, for though there were other men at court who knew something of falconry, they were too old to wish to ride; and besides, intrigue kept them on a short leash. They could not bear to be away from their little plots for long. And such as would come would soon be left panting plumply behind. She thought all that and did not think of it at all. But she smiled. The idea appealed to her.

  “I could not do that,” she told Cariola. “What would people say?”

  “You are pale indoors,” said Cariola. “The air would do you good.”

  The Duchess shrank from the idea. She knew she was watched. She must do nothing unusual, or there would be trouble in it. She shook her head and said no.

  The art of falconry had fallen into disfavour. It was no longer either the fashionable nor the customary thing to do. But this was the country for it. There was even a falconry attached to the palace. A week later she went down there.

  It was a low, dank room attached to the stables, dusty, with a straw floor, and one narrow window high up, through which the light slid down the air. She went there on impulse, leaving the door open behind her. Most of the perches were empty, but there were three or four birds there, moving restively on their perches, their hoods giving them the heads of enlarged blue-bottles. The alley between the benches on which the perches stood was narrow. There was scarcely room for her dress. The hooded heads looked testicular. The beaks protruded beneath ravenously, like those old Germanic pictures of hell, in which the devils have rending beaks instead of pudenda. One of the hoods had only to come loose, and they would attack her. They were furious with confinement, that taut, motionless fury that is the sure promise of violence. Her skirt caught on a leather jess, and its bells tinkled. The birds jumped up and down, and she moved away.

  A shadow darkened the doorway. As soon as she saw the silhouette she knew instantly who it was. She drew a little back.

  “I’ve done my best for them, but they need exercise,” said Antonio. He was laughing. It was the first time he had ever spoken to her informally. His voice had a velvet burr, and his words flooded out over his emotions, like water over stones, tossing them about. She found his voice beautiful.

  “I’ve never been here,” she said.

  “These were excellent birds once. But too old. You can get better at Salerno.”

  “So you know about hawking, too.”

  “Not very much,” he said. But his voice was full of affection and pleasure. He seemed awkward for a moment, and then put one of the birds on his wrist, stroking it. She watched the movement of his hand. In the dim light it was a white blur. She was glad they could not see each other very well, and sorry there was but one way out of the shed. She wanted to flee. Instead she said:

  “Order them. From Salerno. We will go hawking.”

  She felt rather than saw him smile, and realized that she had pleased him quite by accident. It was a long time since she had pleased anyone that way. It was even longer since she had met anyone who could be pleased that way. She felt oddly touched. But when they left the shed, she looked around to see if anyone was watching, and for some reason did not look at him. For some reason she did not want to see his face just then.

  A week later they rode out of a clump of cedars, from which they could look down over a sloping meadow, to Amalfi tucked away in the shadow of its cliffs, and some kind of oppression lifted from her breast. Perhaps it was the thinner air. Perhaps it was freedom. As spring survives the later, the higher we climb, so perhaps does youth.

  From a bush far off she heard the solo of a bird. She looked at Antonio with quite honest pleasure, the first time she had ever directly looked at him openly, and they both smiled, and somehow, together, their horses cantered over the parched and yellow grass. It was impossible not to bring with them a little company, but the little company was easily left behind.

  She was happy.

  Of the next few weeks she remembered only certain things, but those so clearly that they filled up every empty chasm of her memory. She had had nothing worth remembering so far, and now she had so much. She saw everything for the first time, the way a child, a mystic, or a blind man suddenly cured, would see. A hawk does not dive directly through the air. That plummet seems to pause briefly at every floor of space, on the way to the basement and its prey. When a man rides easily in the saddle, with his feet in the tapadas, the creases of his breeches fall away from the kneecap like a gesticulating hand. When you lie on the grass, and look upward, the long slim green blades are like a forest of scythes, and through them the clumps of wildflowers stand up like pine-trees along a ridge. It is possible to play a fascinating game with small pebbles. You fling them into the waters of some shallow stream, and try to guess what precious stones they will resemble as soon as they become wet.

  Rabbits really do scream when talons sink into their flanks. And somehow the patterns they make as they shuttle back and forth in terror across a field remain in the mind when they are gone. The patterns are like cradles made of string.

  And why is it that the gesture of the nape of a man’s neck, when he leans forward, is one of the most poignant and touching things in the world?

  She did not know. But now when she laughed, she did it unconsciously, and did not hear herself do so, as usually she did. For she had discovered an intoxicating freedom. At first she did not believe it, and yet it was true. It was simply that Antonio did not know. She had never known a naïve man before. For that matter she had never known a naïve woman, either. She found out suddenly that he had not one grain of self-interest. She had been taught that that was a form of folly. Now on the uplands she discovered that it could also be the source of a sense of well-being and of ease attainable in no other way. She relaxed. So long as she never met his eye, she might say and do anything she pleased. So long as she did not touch him, life could be innocent. For though he was older than she, he was still a boy. He was not yet awake.

  Or so she thought, but she was quite wrong. He was boyish, but no boy. It was true he had no guile and very little wit, and that he laughed all the time, with that rapturous giggle that sits properly only upon Latin men. But he was a gentleman, and so he knew that the difference in their rank made it impossible for him to have her. And so he was very merry. He knew she saw nothing in him but a pleasant companion, and so it was safe for him to have at least this much, and to rejoice in having even that.

  Yet sometimes, when we are holding an amiable conversation, suddenly that screen of words parts, and we know we are only talking against what we really want to do together. Then we become conscious of what we are saying, and hurry on, and cover the moment up, but the effort is useless. In that one little pause between words something has become evident, and we can neither take advantage of it nor even have the same ease with each other back again. That was the moment he inwardly dreaded, and he avoided it in every way he could. The trouble
is that moment occurs at random and unexpectedly. We cannot prepare against it. So under the merriment he was very sad. He knew that they could not be innocent for long.

  One day, coming over a rise, they came unexpectedly upon one of those saplings to which the farmers attach dead birds and voles, to frighten away the living from the fields, and perhaps as a warning to the curious. The bodies had mummified, and swayed in a stiff breeze, like frost-bitten pomegranates on a leafless tree. The Duchess pulled her reins and turned away. For some reason she was shocked. They came to a small stream, and dismounted while the horses drank.

  Little by little, as the weeks had gone by, it had become established that the company with them should make camp under the cedars and wait for them. At first a page had been brought along for the sake of seemliness. But today he was ill. For the first time they were completely alone. It made them both uneasy, and the vole tree had upset them both, not so much because it was horrible, as because it had been unexpected. They had each been under greater pressure than they knew. They had said everything to each other already, without ever having uttered a word. And now, with the page absent, they found themselves where they had not meant to be. Each had guarded against making any beginning. But now, alone, they found it had already been made.

  Nothing happened. The horses’ heads were at the stream, and the hair of their manes parted smoothly and silkily. Antonio looked up, and saw the Duchess staring at him. A cloud scurried across the sun, it was true, but that had little to do with it. Antonio took an involuntary step forward, the Duchess’s eyes widened, and then he pretended to be fussing with the saddle. That was all. But it frightened them both badly, and the trouble was now that each knew the other was scared. It had happened in the wrong place. They were within sight of the cedar trees. Both looked automatically that way.