"Crack?" Llanos said.
"A bottle. You too, Don Valentino. If you are still to be here."
"Oh yes, I shall be here. The times are not yet auspicious for my return to Spain. There is a certain – It is repressive in Spain just now. It is not very liberal. I will come to see you," he said to John, "on, ha, appropriate, the Spanish Steps, if I may. There is much interest in Spain," he added, "in the poets of England."
"In England we all love Don Quixote."
So, very amicable together, separating, they separated. John walked home, thinking. Tomorrow he must make a start, must. Heroic couplets perhaps, after all. And personal, a personal beginning. Here I am in Rome and a boy called Mario came, and I thought, the eternal Roman. And my mind went back to, and I do in my own way what Shakespeare did, the murder of Julius Caesar, and Marius saw it and ran home, afraid. And. It was not really what he had in mind, though. Something carved, not flowing. He would write anyway, he would make a beginning.
Beneath an ilex on a hill of Rome
At sunset I gazed down upon the dome
Of Buonarroti crowning Peter's fane -
This will never do, back to your gallipots. Thinking, frowning, arms behind him, hands tight clasped, hat pushed back from brow, he came to with a great start crossing the Corso. His heart leaped, fell, thudded. Eight hooves stumbled and clattered recovering, two bay horses' heads were reined back, there was a double whinneying, the horses' bull-eyes looked down in horror surely exaggerated. The Roman coachman was very loud with dirty words, his whip raised as if to lash John. The flames in the coachlamps danced, the coach rocked, the liveried tiger at the rear booed and made tearing gestures. "Mi displace," John said. A lady put her head out.
"Che succede?"
John realised that he was, thank Bacchus, not untipsy. He swept off his hat and bowed courtlily low, saying:
"Alma Venus."
Pauline Bonaparte, the Princess Borghese, pallidly beautiful under the faint moon that Horace and Vergil had known, only a little engulesed by the capering lampflame, rested one delicate hand on the crest of the coat of arms that was gilded on the coach door. She was in a ballgown of turquoise, her hair flashed with gems, her kashmir wrap had fallen some way back off her glowing shoulders. Her perfume was heavy and somewhat spicy, as if she were to be eaten. She recognised John. She said something in rapid Corsican Italian which, for all John knew, could be about his being a wretched wight alone and palely loitering. But she smiled, her eyes smiled. "Votre ami," she said more slowly. "Votre bel ami."
"Parti, madame. Je le regrette. Hélas, hélas, parti."
"Qui êtes-vous, monsieur?"
"Un poète anglais, madame. Le nom n'importe rien. Le nom ne vivra guère. Scritto," he added, "in acqua."
"Voulez-vous profiter de mon carrosse, monsieur?"
What was that word? Did it mean caress? Did he wish to profit from her caress? What was she saying?
"Merci bien, madame, vous êtes gentille. Mais -" And, for lack of the right words, he gestured that he lived near and was well able to walk thither. He bowed, she inclined her beautiful smiling gemmed head, she nodded to the coachman to proceed. John stood, watching. Carrosse meant coach. The coach proceeded.
He awoke that night much disturbed. Healthy, even strong, the strength of grilled veal in his arteries. He awoke to physical desire from a dream in which he was on the point of fulfilling it. His dear girl, F.B., leered at him naked in some tent of blue satin reeking of hyacinths, her breasts bigger naked than he had known them clothed, her rounded arms seeking him as though blindly, though her eyes were open, dilated, full of lust. His main aim in the dream, it appeared, was to shut those eyes, which he did, with kiss after kiss, so that his head went into the clickclock of the Haydn slow movement Severn had once played. The eyelids accepted the kisses but were quick to open again after each, and his kisses engaged fluttering lashes before lids. He closed his own eyes then and put his lips to hers and seemed to start to tumble towards a dark hyacinth-reeking membranous pit. John Florio read aloud from his World of Words as from a bible. He cackled "Fica" in the imagined voice of Robert Burton. "A figge. Also used for a woman's quaint." So that explained the Marvell line about her quaint honour turning to dust. Shakespeare was there, picking it seemed fig-seeds from bad teeth with a new-cut swan-quill. He nodded. It was a signal to spend seed, and John cried no no, hurtling himself back to waking. The church clock chimed a quarter.
He lay nursing a rod gone flaccid, listening to the song of the fountain in the piazza. He thought he knew now why Belli was angry and ashamed to have written that sonnet. The danger of play. One offended the gods at one's peril. The caress was a carrosse to the dark world.
Stabat mater dolorosa
Apud lignum lachrymosa
Dum pendebat filius.
He had touched nothing of poetry, nothing, save in odd single lines he did not well understand. Pretty tales, gods and nymphs stolen from the marbles Elgin stole. Meanwhile a body hung on a cross and a mother wept. Play. Sonnet competitions over the teacups in Leigh Hunt's untidy house. Crowning each other with laurels: play. Apollo was not amused, was not mocked. John sweated in fear and prayed: "Whoever presides over poetry, spare me to dare the darkness. Everything is an allegory of the unknown. Teach me the way of the reading of the signs. Give me time to grow. I promise faithful service. No more play." Then he fell into heavy sleep.
SIX
Severn came early the next morning to John's room. He had been out in the cool sunlight to post a letter to Will Haslam. It had been on Haslam's recommendation that John had come here, Haslam was a true friend who would be happy to learn that the advice had proved sound, that John was stronger in body and as active as ever in mind. A hopeful letter, then, and hope was confirmed in Severn as he found John awake, sitting up in bed and scribbling. He had made a knee desk of a big old book whose faded title Severn could roughly make out – A Word of Worlds or something. John had paper and a newly cut quill. On the chair beside his bed were the penknife, the inkwell, the drained milk cup of the previous day. John's eyes were bright, his cheeks healthily, so it seemed, flushed. His redgold hair was uncombed.
"Sabrina fair, how is the Roman morning?"
"I saw a very pretty little crib outside a church whose name I forget, with a little chubby Jesus child choked in tinsel. The Romans are already thinking of Christmas. It is but two weeks to go now. You stayed out yesterday. You should have said you would not be home for dinner. As we have to pay for two I ate two. I was dyspeptic. Signora Angeletti gave me some bubbling fountain water. It helped."
"Bubbling Severn. I am bubbling too, words are bubbling. I had this mad notion yesterday of a long poem on Rome, the history of Rome and the unchangingness of the Roman. Then I woke in the night and it was, lo, revealed unto me that such a tale must be in prose. It is not for me, then."
"So what are you writing?"
"For the moment I am succumbing to madness and revelling in it. I am back to the notion of a river, though it is not necessarily the Severn. It might well be the Jordan. I am letting the river carry everything on his back, or hers. I see the river, though, as very male. See what I have done, and if you laugh I shall be pleased."
Severn took the sheet and read:
A bearded corpse, a corpse with lesser beard,