Life with a Capital L Read online

  For he wasn’t at all just the common person he looked. He was queer and sensitive as a woman with D—, and patient and fastidious. And yet he was common, his very accent was common, and D— despised him.

  And M— rather despised me because I did not spend money. I paid for a third of the wine we drank at dinner, and bought the third bottle of whisky we had during M—’s stay. After all, he only stayed three days. But I would not spend for myself. I had no money to spend, since I knew I must live and my wife must live.

  ‘Oh,’ said M—. ‘Why, that’s the very time to spend money, when you’ve got none. If you’ve got none, why try to save it? That’s been my philosophy all my life; when you’ve got no money, you may just as well spend it. If you’ve got a good deal, that’s the time to look after it.’ Then he laughed his queer little laugh, rather squeaky. These were his exact words.

  ‘Precisely,’ said D—. ‘Spend when you’ve nothing to spend, my boy. Spent hard then.’

  ‘No,’ said I. ‘If I can help it, I will never let myself be penniless while I live. I mistrust the world too much.’

  ‘But if you’re going to live in fear of the world,’ said M—, ‘what’s the good of living at all? Might as well die.’

  I think I give his words almost verbatim. He had a certain impatience of me and of my presence. Yet we had some jolly times – mostly in one or other of their bedrooms, drinking a whisky and talking. We drank a bottle a day – I had very little, preferring the wine at lunch and dinner, which seemed delicious after the war famine. D— would bring up the remains of the second litre in the evening, to go on with before the coffee came.

  I arrived in Florence on the Wednesday or Thursday evening; I think Thursday. M— was due to leave for Rome on the Saturday. I asked D— who M— was. ‘Oh, you never know what he’s at. He was manager for Isadora Duncan for a long time – knows all the capitals of Europe: St Petersburg, Moscow, Tiflis, Constantinople, Berlin, Paris – knows them as you and I know Florence. He’s been mostly in that line – theatrical. Then a journalist. He edited the Roman Review till the war killed it. Oh, a many-sided sort of fellow.’

  ‘But how do you know him?’ said I.

  ‘I met him in Capri years and years ago – oh, sixteen years ago – and clean forgot all about him till somebody came to me one day in Rome and said: You’re N— D—. I didn’t know who he was. But he’d never forgotten me. Seems to be smitten by me, somehow or other. All the better for me, ha-ha! – if he likes to run round for me. My dear fellow, I wouldn’t prevent him, if it amuses him. Not for worlds.’

  And that was how it was. M— ran D—’s errands, forced the other man to go to the tailor, to the dentist, and was almost a guardian angel to him.

  ‘Look here!’ cried D—. ‘I can’t go to that damned tailor. Let the thing wait, I can’t go.’

  ‘Oh yes. Now look here N—, if you don’t get it done now while I’m here you’ll never get it done. I made the appointment for three o’clock –’

  ‘To hell with you! Details! Details! I can’t stand it, I tell you.’

  D— chafed and kicked, but went.

  ‘A little fussy fellow,’ he said. ‘Oh yes, fussing about like a woman. Fussy, you know, fussy. I can’t stand these fussy –’ And D— went off into improprieties.

  Well, M— ran round and arranged D—’s affairs and settled his little bills, and was so benevolent, and so impatient and nettled at the ungrateful way in which the benevolence was accepted. And D— despised him all the time as a little busybody and an inferior. And I there between them just wondered. It seemed to me M— would get very irritable and nervous at midday and before dinner, yellow round the eyes and played out. He wanted his whisky. He was tired after running round on a thousand errands and quests which I never understood. He always took his morning coffee at dawn, and was out to early Mass and pushing his affairs before eight o’clock in the morning. But what his affairs were I still do not know. Mass is all I am certain of.

  However, it was his birthday on the Sunday, and D— would not let him go. He had once said he would give a dinner for his birthday, and this he was not allowed to forget. It seemed to me M— rather wanted to get out of it. But D— was determined to have that dinner.

  ‘You aren’t going before you’ve given us that hare, don’t you imagine it, my boy. I’ve got the smell of that hare in my imagination, and I’ve damned well got to set my teeth in it. Don’t you imagine you’re going without having produced that hare.’

  So poor M—, rather a victim, had to consent. We discussed what we should eat. It was decided the hare should have truffles, and a dish of champignons, and cauliflower, and zabaioni – and I forget what else. It was to be on Saturday evening. And M— would leave on Sunday for Rome.

  Early on the Saturday morning he went out, with the first daylight, to the old market, to get the hare and the mushrooms. He went himself because he was a connoisseur.

  On the Saturday afternoon D— took me wandering round to buy a birthday present.

  ‘I shall have to buy him something – have to – have to –’ he said fretfully. He only wanted to spend about five francs. We trailed over the Ponte Vecchio, looking at the jewellers’ booths there. It was before the foreigners had come back, and things were still rather dusty and almost at pre-war prices. But we could see nothing for five francs except the little saint-medals. D— wanted to buy one of those. It seemed to me infra dig. So at last coming down to the Mercato Nuovo we saw little bowls of Volterra marble, a natural amber colour, for four francs.

  ‘Look, buy one of those,’ I said to D—, ‘and he can put his pins or studs or any trifle in, as he needs.’

  So we went in and bought one of the little bowls of Volterra marble.

  M— seemed so touched and pleased with the gift.

  ‘Thank you a thousand times, N—,’ he said. ‘That’s charming! That’s exactly what I want.’

  The dinner was quite a success, and, poorly fed as we were at the pension, we stuffed ourselves tight on the mushrooms and the hare and the zabaioni, and drank ourselves tight with the good red wine which swung in its straw flask in the silver swing on the table. A flask has two and a quarter litres. We were four persons, and we drank almost two flasks. D— made the waiter measure the remaining half-litre and take it off the bill. But good, good food, and cost about twelve francs a head the whole dinner.

  Well, next day was nothing but bags and suit-cases in M—’s room, and the misery of departure with luggage. He went on the midnight train to Rome: first-class.

  ‘I always travel first-class,’ he said, ‘and I always shall, while I can buy the ticket. Why should I go second? It’s beastly enough to travel at all.’

  ‘My dear fellow, I came up third the last time I came from Rome,’ said D—. ‘Oh, not bad, not bad. Damned fatiguing journey anyhow.’

  So the little outsider was gone, and I was rather glad. I don’t think he liked me. Yet one day he said to me at table:

  ‘How lovely your hair is – such a lovely colour! What do you dye it with?’

  I laughed, thinking he was laughing too. But no, he meant it.

  ‘It’s got no particular colour at all,’ I said, ‘so I couldn’t dye it that!’

  ‘It’s a lovely colour,’ he said. And I think he didn’t believe me, that I didn’t dye it. It puzzled me, and it puzzles me still.

  But he was gone. D— moved into M—’s room, and asked me to come down to the room he himself was vacating. But I preferred to stay upstairs.

  M— was a fervent Catholic, taking the religion, alas, rather unctuously. He had entered the Church only a few years before. But he had a bishop for a god-father, and seemed to be very intimate with the upper clergy. He was very pleased and proud because he was a constant guest at the famous old monastery south of Rome. He talked of becoming a monk; a monk in that aristocratic and well-bred order. But he had not even begun his theological studies: or any studies of any sort. And D— said he only chose the Benedicti
nes because they lived better than any of the others.

  But I had said to M— that when my wife came and we moved south, I would like to visit the monastery some time, if I might. ‘Certainly,’ he said. ‘Come when I am there. I shall be there in about a month’s time. Do come! Do be sure and come. It’s a wonderful place – oh, wonderful. It will make a great impression on you. Do come. Do come. And I will tell Don Bernardo, who is my greatest friend, and who is guest-master, about you. So that if you wish to go when I am not there, write to Don Bernardo. But do come when I am there.’

  My wife and I were due to go into the mountains south of Rome, and stay there some months. Then I was to visit the big, noble monastery that stands on a bluff hill like a fortress crowning a great precipice, above the little town and the plain between the mountains. But it was so icy cold and snowy among the mountains, it was unbearable. We fled south again, to Naples, and to Capri. Passing, I saw the monastery crouching there above, world-famous, but it was impossible to call then.

  I wrote and told M— of my move. In Capri I had an answer from him. It had a wistful tone – and I don’t know what made me think that he was in trouble, in monetary difficulty. But I felt it acutely – a kind of appeal. Yet he said nothing direct. And he wrote from an expensive hotel in Anzio, on the sea near Rome.

  At the moment I had just received twenty pounds unexpected and joyful from America – a gift too. I hesitated for some time, because I felt unsure. Yet the curious appeal came out of the letter, though nothing was said. And I felt also I owed M— that dinner, and I didn’t want to owe him anything, since he despised me a little for being careful. So partly out of revenge, perhaps, and partly because I felt the strange wistfulness of him appealing to me, I sent him five pounds, saying perhaps I was mistaken in imagining him very hard up, but if so, he wasn’t to be offended.

  It is strange to me even now, how I knew he was appealing to me. Because it was all as vague as I say. Yet I felt it so strongly. He replied: ‘Your cheque has saved my life. Since I last saw you I have fallen down an abyss. But I will tell you when I see you. I shall be at the monastery in three days. Do come – and come alone.’ I have forgotten to say that he was a rabid woman-hater.

  This was just after Christmas. I thought his ‘saved my life’ and ‘fallen down an abyss’ was just the American touch of ‘very, very –.’ I wondered what on earth the abyss could be, and I decided it must be that he had lost his money or his hopes. It seemed to me that some of his old buoyant assurance came out again in this letter. But he was now very friendly, urging me to come to the monastery, and treating me with a curious little tenderness and protectiveness. He had a queer delicacy of his own, varying with a bounce and a commonness. He was a common little bounder. And then he had this curious delicacy and tenderness and wistfulness.

  I put off going north. I had another letter urging me – and it seemed to me that, rather assuredly, he was expecting more money. Rather cockily, as if he had a right to it. And that made me not want to give him any. Besides, as my wife said, what right had I to give away the little money we had, and we there stranded in the south of Italy with no resources if once we were spent up. And I have always been determined never to come to my last shilling – if I have to reduce my spending almost to nothingness. I have always been determined to keep a few pounds between me and the world.

  I did not send any money. But I wanted to go to the monastery, so wrote and said I would come for two days. I always remember getting up in the black dark of the January morning, and making a little coffee on the spirit-lamp, and watching the clock, the big-faced, blue old clock on the campanile in the piazza in Capri, to see I wasn’t late. The electric light in the piazza lit up the face of the campanile. And we were then a stone’s throw away, high in the Palazzo Ferraro, opposite the bubbly roof of the little duomo. Strange dark winter morning, with the open sea beyond the roofs, seen through the side window, and the thin line of the lights of Naples twinkling far, far off.

  At ten minutes to six I went down the smelly dark stone stairs of the old palazzo, out into the street. A few people were already hastening up the street to the terrace that looks over the sea to the bay of Naples. It was dark and cold. We slid down in the funicular to the shore, then in little boats were rowed out over the dark sea to the steamer that lay there showing her lights and hooting.

  It was three long hours across the sea to Naples, with dawn coming slowly in the east, beyond Ischia, and flushing into lovely colour as our steamer pottered along the peninsula, calling at Massa and Sorrento and Piano. I always loved hanging over the side and watching the people come out in boats from the little places of the shore, that rose steep and beautiful. I love the movement of these watery Neapolitan people, and the naïve trustful way they clamber in and out the boats, and their softness, and their dark eyes. But when the steamer leaves the peninsula and begins to make away round Vesuvius to Naples, one is already tired, and cold, cold, cold in the wind that comes piercing from the snowcrests away there along Italy. Cold, and reduced to a kind of stony apathy by the time we come to the mole in Naples, at ten o’clock – or twenty past ten.

  We were rather late, and I missed the train. I had to wait till two o’clock. And Naples is a hopeless town to spend three hours in. However, time passes. I remember I was calculating in my mind whether they had given me the right change at the ticket-window. They hadn’t – and I hadn’t counted in time. Thinking of this, I got in the Rome train. I had been there ten minutes when I heard a trumpet blow.

  ‘Is this the Rome train?’ I asked my fellow-traveller.

  ‘Si.’

  ‘The express?’

  ‘No, it is the slow train.’

  ‘It leaves?’

  ‘At ten past two.’

  I almost jumped through the window. I flew down the platform.

  ‘The diretto!’ I cried to a porter.

  ‘Parte! Eccolo là!’ he said, pointing to a big train moving inevitably away.

  I flew with wild feet across the various railway lines and seized the end of the train as it travelled. I had caught it. Perhaps if I had missed it fate would have been different. So I sat still for about three hours. Then I had arrived.

  There is a long drive up the hill from the station to the monastery. The driver talked to me. It was evident he bore the monks no good will.

  ‘Formerly,’ he said, ‘if you went up to the monastery you got a glass of wine and a plate of macaroni. But now they kick you out of the door.’

  ‘Do they?’ I said. ‘It is hard to believe.’

  ‘They kick you out of the gate,’ he vociferated.

  We twisted up and up the wild hillside, past the old castle of the town, past the last villa, between trees and rocks. We saw no one. The whole hill belongs to the monastery. At last at twilight we turned the corner of the oak wood and saw the monastery like a huge square fortress-palace of the sixteenth century crowning the near distance. Yes, and there was M— just stepping through the huge old gateway and hastening down the slope to where the carriage must stop. He was bare-headed, and walking with his perky, busy little stride, seemed very much at home in the place. He looked up to me with a tender, intimate look as I got down from the carriage. Then he took my hand.

  ‘So very glad to see you,’ he said. ‘I’m so pleased you’ve come.’

  And he looked into my eyes with that wistful, watchful tenderness rather like a woman who isn’t quite sure of her lover. He had a certain charm in his manner; and an odd pompous touch with it at this moment, welcoming his guest at the gate of the vast monastery which reared above us from its buttresses in the rock, was rather becoming. His face was still pink, his eyes pale blue and sharp, but he looked greyer at the temples.

  ‘Give me your bag,’ he said. ‘Yes do – and come along. Don Bernardo is just at Evensong, but he’ll be here in a little while. Well now, tell me all the news.’

  ‘Wait,’ I said. ‘Lend me five francs to finish paying the driver – he has no ch
ange.’

  ‘Certainly, certainly,’ he said, giving the five francs.

  I had no news – so asked him his.

  ‘Oh, I have none either,’ he said. ‘Very short of money, that of course is no news.’ And he laughed his little laugh. ‘I’m so glad to be here,’ he continued. ‘The peace, and the rhythm of the life is so beautiful! I’m sure you’ll love it.’

  We went up the slope under the big, tunnel-like entrance and were in the grassy courtyard, with the arched walk on the far sides, and one or two trees. It was like a grassy cloister, but still busy. Black monks were standing chatting, an old peasant was just driving two sheep from the cloister grass, and an old monk was darting into the little post-office which one recognized by the shield with the national arms over the doorway. From under the far arches came an old peasant carrying a two-handed saw.

  And there was Don Bernardo, a tall monk in a black, well-shaped gown, young, good-looking, gentle, hastening forward with a quick smile. He was about my age, and his manner seemed fresh and subdued, as if he were still a student. One felt one was at college with one’s college mates.

  We went up the narrow stair and into the long, old, naked white corridor, high and arched. Don Bernardo had got the key of my room: two keys, one for the dark antechamber, one for the bedroom. A charming and elegant bedroom, with an engraving of English landscape, and outside the net curtain a balcony looking down on the garden, a narrow strip beneath the walls, and beyond, the clustered buildings of the farm, and the oak woods and arable fields of the hill summit: and beyond again, the gulf where the world’s valley was, and all the mountains that stand in Italy on the plains as if God had just put them down ready made. The sun had already sunk, the snow on the mountains was full of a rosy glow, the valleys were full of shadow. One heard, far below, the trains shunting, the world clinking in the cold air.

  ‘Isn’t it wonderful! Ah, the most wonderful place on earth!’ said M—. ‘What now could you wish better than to end your days here? The peace, the beauty, the eternity of it.’ He paused and sighed. Then he put his hand on Don Bernardo’s arm and smiled at him with that odd, rather wistful smirking tenderness that made him such a quaint creature in my eyes.