Chapter Ten

 

Seated at the counter of his cavernous little shop, Bruno Rontini was engaged in pricing a newly purchased batch of books.  Fifteen lire, twelve, twenty-five, forty ... His pencil moved from flyleaf to flyleaf.  The light that fell almost vertically downwards from the hanging lamp above his head brought out black shadows within the deeply sunken sockets of the eyes and under the cheekbones and the prominent nose.  It was a beaked skull that bent over the books; but when he looked up, the eyes were blue and bright, the whole face wore an expression almost of gaiety.

      Carlo had gone home, and he was alone - all alone with that which made his solitude so pregnant with an inexpressible happiness.  The noises of the street were loud beyond the window; but inside the little shop there was a core, as it were, of quintessential silence, to which every noise was an irrelevance, and which persisted through any interruption.  Seated at the heart of that silence, Bruno was thinking that the crossed L which he was tracing out before the numerals on every flyleaf stood not only for Lire, but also for Love, also for Liberation.

      The doorbell rang, and a customer entered the shop.  Bruno raised his head and saw a young, almost childish face.  But how oddly skimped!  As though Nature, suddenly parsimonious, had refused to provide a sufficiency of material for full-sized and significant features.  Only the uneven and projecting teeth were large - those and the concave spectacles, through which, with a shy, sharp furtiveness, there beamed an intelligence that was obviously being used as an instrument, not for the discovery of truth, but for self-defence and, above all, for self-assurance in humiliation.

      The stranger coughed nervously and said that he wanted a good book on comparative religion.  Bruno produced what he had in stock - a standard Italian textbook, a popular work in French, a translation, in two volumes, from the German.

      'I recommend the Frenchman,' he said in his soft voice.  'Only two hundred and seventy pages.  You'll hardly waste more than a couple of hours on him.'

      He received a contemptuous smile.

      'I'm looking for something a little more solid.'

      There was a little silence while the stranger turned over the pages of the other two books.

      'You're going into teaching, I take it?' said Bruno.

      The other glanced at him suspiciously; then, finding no trace of irony or impertinence in the bookseller's expression, he nodded.

      Yes, he was going into teaching.  And meanwhile he'd take the translation from the German.

      'Peccato,' said Bruno, as he picked up the two thick volumes.  'And when you finally get to be a university professor,' he added, 'what then?'

      The young man held up the Italian textbook.

      'I shall write,' he answered.

      Yes, he'd write, Bruno said to himself, rather sadly.  And either in despair, or out of an ingenuous respect for professors as such, some woman would have married him.  And, of course, it is better to marry than to burn; but this one, it was all too obvious, would go on burning even after he was married - furtively, but with the inextinguishable violence characteristic of such frail and nervous temperaments.  And under the crust of respectability and even eminence, the life of God-eclipsing phantasy, the secret addiction of self-inflicted pleasure, would persist almost into old age.  But of course, he quickly reminded himself, nothing could ever be certainly prognosticated of any human being.  There was always free will, there was always a sufficiency of grace if one wished to co-operate with it.

      'I shall write with authority,' the young man went on almost aggressively.

      'And not as the scribes and Pharisees,' Bruno murmured with a little smile.  'But what then?'

      '"What then?"' the other repeated.  'What do you mean by "what then?"  I shall go on writing.'

      No, there was no chink yet in that protective carapace.  Bruno turned away and began to tie up the books in brown paper.  Shrinking from the vulgar transference of coin from hand to hand, the young man laid out the money along the edge of the counter.  For him, no physical contacts with other human beings except the sexual.  And even those, thought Bruno, even those would always prove disappointing, even a bit repulsive.  He tied the final knot and handed over the parcel.

      'Many thanks,' he said.  'And if ever you should get tired of this kind of ...' He hesitated; in their deep sockets the blue eyes twinkled with an almost mischievous light. '... This kind of learned frivolity,' he went on, laying his finger on the parcel, 'remember, I've got quite a considerable stock of really serious books on the subject.'  He pointed to a section of the shelves on the opposite wall.  'Scupoli, the Bhagavata, the Tao Teh King, the Theologia Germanica, the Graces of Interior Prayer ...'

      For a few seconds the young man listened - listened with the uneasy expression of one who finds himself closeted with a potentially dangerous lunatic; then, looking at his wristwatch, he muttered something about its being very late, and hurried out of the shop.

      Bruno Rontini sighed, and went back to the pricing of his books.  L for Lire, L for Liberation.  Out of ten thousand only one would ever break out of his carapace completely.  Not a high proportion.  But out of all those galaxies of eggs, how many herrings ever came to be full-sized fish?  And herrings, it was to be remembered, suffered only from external interruptions to their hatching and growth.  Whereas, in this process of spiritual maturation, every human being was always his own worst enemy.  The attacks came from both sides, and from within even more violently and persistently and purposefully than from without.  So that, after all, the record of one growing-up in ten thousand trials was really pretty creditable.  Something to be admired rather than deplored.  Something in regard to which one should not, as one was so often tempted, rail against God for his injustice, but rather give thanks for that divine generosity which granted to so many a reward so incommensurably vast.

      L for Liberation, L for Love.... In spite of the impatient hooting, in spite of the clang and rumble of the traffic, the silence, for Bruno Rontini, was like a living crystal.  Then the doorbell rang again and, looking up, he saw, under its tilted Homburg, the broad sagging face, with its pouchy eyes and its loosely smiling, unweaned lips, of Eustace Barnack.  And through the medium of that living crystal he perceived the man as entombed, as coffined away from the light, as immured in an impenetrable privation of beatitude.  And the walls of the sepulchre were built of the same sloths and sensualities as he had known within himself, and still knew, still had to beg God to forgive him.  Filled with an enormous compassion, Bruno rose and went to greet him.

      'Found at last!' Eustace cried.  He spoke in Italian, because it was easier, when one was thus consummately acting the part of a jovial Florentine bourgeois, to preserve oneself from the danger of having to talk too seriously - and with Bruno it was particularly important that one should never be serious.  'I've been looking for you all day.'

      'Yes, I heard you'd been in this morning,' Bruno answered in English.

      'And was received,' said Eustace, still playing his Tuscan comedy, 'by the most ardent young disciple of yours!  He even managed to sell me some edifying literature - qualche trattatino sull'amor del Gaseous Vertebrate,' he concluded airily.

      And now the volume had taken its place between one of Pittigrilli's novels and a dog-eared Dream Book on Mimi's bed-table.

      'Eustace, are you well?' Bruno asked with an earnestness that was entirely out of key with the other's jocularity.

      Eustace was startled into his native language.

      'Never felt better,' he answered.  And then, as Bruno continued to look at him with the same intent, distressed expression, a note of irritation and suspicion came into his voice.  'What is it?' he questioned sharply.

      Could the fellow see something that permitted him to guess about Mimi?  Not that Mimi was anything one had to be ashamed of.  No, the intolerable thing was the intrusion on one's privacy.  And Bruno, he remembered, had always had this odd, exasperating gift of knowing things without being told about them.  And of course, if it wasn't clairvoyance, it might easily be smears of lipstick.

      'Why do you stare at me?'

      Bruno smiled apologetically.

      'I'm sorry,' he said.  'I just thought you looked ... well, I don't know.  Like people look when they're going to have a touch of flu.'

      It was the face of a man entombed, and now all of a sudden menaced in his tomb.  Menaced by what?

      Relieved that it wasn't Mimi who had been detected, Eustace relaxed into a smile.

      'Well, if I get the flu,' he said, 'I shall know who wished it on me.  And now don't imagine,' he went on genially, 'that I've come here just to feast my eyes on that seraphic mug of yours.  I want you to get permission for me to take my young nephew to see the maze in the Galigai gardens.  He's arriving this evening.'

      'What nephew?' Bruno asked.  'One of Alice's sons?'

      'Those louts?' said Eustace.  'God forbid!  No, no; this is John's boy.  Quite a remarkable little creature.  Seventeen, and childish at that; but writes the most surprising verses - full of talent.'

      'John must be a pretty difficult father,' said Bruno after a little pause.

      'Difficult?  He's nothing but a bullying fool.  And of course the boy dislikes him and loathes everything he stands for.'

      Eustace smiled.  It gave him real pleasure to think of his brother's shortcomings.

      'Yes, if only people would realize that moral principles are like measles ...'

      The soft voice trailed away into silence and a sigh.

      'Like measles?'

      'They have to be caught.  And only the people who've got them can pass on the contagion.

      'Fortunately,' said Eustace, 'they don't always succeed in passing it on.'

      He was thinking of that little Thwale woman.  And amount of contagion from the Canon and his wife; but no sign of any moral or pietistic rash on the daughter's white, voluptuous skin.

      'You're right,' Bruno agreed.  'One doesn't have to catch the infection of goodness if one doesn't want to.  The will is always free.'

      Always free.  People had been able to say no even to Filippo Neri and François de Sales, even to the Christ and the Buddha.  As he named them to himself, the little flame in his heart seemed to expand, as it were, and aspire, until it touched that other light beyond it and within; and for a moment it was still in the timeless intensity of a yearning that was also consummation.  The sound of his cousin's voice brought his attention back again to what was happening in the shop.

      'There's nothing I enjoy more,' Eustace was remarking with relish, 'than the spectacle of the Good trying to propagate their notions and producing results exactly contrary to what they intended.  It's the highest form of comedy.'

      He chuckled wheezily.

      Listening to that laughter coming up from the depths and darkness of a sepulchre, Bruno was moved almost to despair.

      'If only you could forgive the Good!'  The quiet voice was raised almost to vehemence.  'Then you might allow yourself to be forgiven.'

      'For what?' Eustace enquired.

      'For being what you are.  For being a human being.  Yes, God can forgive you even that, if you really want it.  Can forgive your separateness so completely that you can be made one with him.'

      'The solid vertebrate united with the Gaseous.'

      Bruno looked at him for a moment in silence.  In their setting of tired soft flesh the eyes were gaily twinkling; the babyish lips were curved into a smile of irony.

      'What about the comedy of the Clever?' he said at last.  'Achieving self-destruction in the name of self-interest, and delusion in the name of realism.  I sometimes think it's even higher than the comedy of the Good.'

      He went behind the counter, and came back with a very old Gladstone bag.

      'If you're going to meet that young nephew of yours,' he said, 'I'll go with you to the station.'

      He was taking the seven-thirty train to Arezzo, he explained.  There was an old retired professor there, who wanted to sell his library.  And Monday was the opening day of a very important auction at Perugia.  Dealers would be attending from all over the country.  He hoped to pick up some of the unconsidered trifles.

      Bruno turned out the lights, and they went out into a twilight that was fast deepening into night.  Eustace's car was waiting in a side street.  The two men got in, and were driven slowly towards the station.

      'Do you remember the last time we drove to the station together?' Bruno suddenly asked after a period of silence.

      'The last time we drove together to the station,' Eustace repeated doubtfully.

      And then, all at once, it came back to him.  He and Bruno in the old Panhard.  And it was just after Amy's funeral, and he was going back to the Riviera - back to Laurina.  No, it hadn't been too creditable, that episode in his life.  Definitely on the squalid side.  He made a little grimace, as though he had caught a whiff of rotten cabbage.  Then, imperceptibly, he shrugged his shoulders.  After all, what did it matter?  It would all be the same a hundred years hence; it would all be the same.

      'Yes,' I remember,' he said.  'You talked to me about the Gaseous Vertebrate.'

      Bruno smiled.  'Oh no, I wouldn't have dared to break the taboo,' he said.  'You began it.'

      'Perhaps I did,' Eustace admitted.

      Death and that insane passion and his own discreditable behaviour had conspired to make him do a lot of funny things at that time.  He felt, all at once, extremely depressed.

      'Poor Amy!' he said aloud, speaking under a kind of obscure compulsion that was stranger than all his resolutions to refrain, in Bruno's presence, from being serious.  'Poor Amy!'

      'I don't think she was to be pitied,' said Bruno.  'Amy had reconciled herself to what was happening to her.  You don't have to feel sorry for people who are prepared for death.'

      'Prepared?  But what difference does that make?'  Eustace's tone was almost truculent.  'Dying is always dying,' he concluded, happy to be able thus to escape from seriousness into controversy.

      'Psychologically, perhaps,' Bruno agreed.  'But psychologically, spiritually ...'

      The car came to a halt before a policeman's outstretched arm.

      'Now, now,' Eustace broke in.  'No nonsense about immortality!  None of your wishful thinking!'

      'And yet,' said Bruno softly, 'annihilation would be pretty convenient, wouldn't it?  What about the wish to believe in that?'

      From the sepulchre of his privation Eustace made confident answer.

      'One doesn't wish to believe in annihilation,' he said.  'One just accepts the facts.'

      'You mean, one accepts the inferences drawn from one particular set of facts, and ignores the other facts from which different inferences might be drawn.  Ignores them because one really wants life to be a tale told by an idiot.  Just one damned thing after another, until at last there's a final damned thing, after which there isn't anything.'

      There was a blast of the policeman's whistle; and as the car moved on again, the light from a shop window passed slowly across Eustace's face, showing up every pouch and line and blotch in the loose skin.  Then the darkness closed down once more, like the lid of a sarcophagus.  Closed down irrevocably, it seemed to Bruno, closed down for ever.  Impulsively, he laid his hand on the other's arm.

      'Eustace,' he said, 'I implore you ...'

      Eustace started.  Something strange was happening.  It was as though the slats of a Venetian blind had suddenly been turned so as to admit the sunlight and the expanse of the summer sky.  Unobstructed, an enormous and blissful brightness streamed into him.  But with the brightness came the memory of what Bruno had said in the shop: 'To be forgiven ... forgiven for being what you are.'  With a mixture of anger and fear, he jerked his arm away.

      'What are you doing?' he asked sharply.  'Trying to hypnotize me?'

      Bruno did not answer.  He had made his final desperate effort to raise the lid; but from within the sarcophagus it had been pulled down again.  And of course, he reflected, resurrection is optional.  We are under no compulsion except to persist - to persist as we are, growing always a little worse and a little worse; indefinitely, until we wish to rise again as something other than ourselves; inexorably, unless we permit ourselves to be raised.