Severn heard none of this.
Severn heard Dr Clark's words with buzzing ears, squinting at him with aching eyes in the cool sunlit afternoon at the foot of the Spanish Steps. It was almost Christmas and Abruzzese bagpipes droned and wailed on the light wind.
"You look near dead, man." Clark spoke English with a Scotch tune. "You cannot put up much longer with this waking and watching. You'll be screaming soon, screaming at a screamer. I must bring a nurse in."
"We have not the money."
"Never mind about the money. You can, I'm sure, get more money from the men who brought out his poems. Did not those poems just lately go into another edition?"
"That was John's joke, God help him. He said for me to write to Taylor there would be a second printing. In cold sheets were his words. It is his grave humour you must call it. I see no prospect of money. Dying is as expensive as living."
The physician Clark had summoned for a second opinion was further up the Steps, talking to Don Benedetto of the church up there. He was a Roman believed by some to have the evil eye and named only by his initials, M.P.
"What are they talking of?" Severn said fretfully. "I don't like this hand-waving and shrugging and pointing back at the house. John raves and screams, true, but he cannot help it. I suppose they will have it there's a devil in him." He muttered: "So there is, God forgive me for saying it."
"Passing the time of day, no more," Clark soothed. "You must take small notice of these Roman gestures." And then: "He's a good doctor, so good that they think there's witchcraft in him, some. He confirmed my diagnosis and prognosis. And the treatment too. So you're not to worry any more about that."
"The starvation is to go on? And the blood letting?"
"It's only the way, laddie. It's the coughing up of the blood that kills him with the weakness. He must take no more blood in. The diet of steamed fish is the right one. And not too much of that either."
"He's ceased giving out blood, you know that."
"There you are, then."
"He casts up some thick grey substance. Keats's porridge he terms it. More of his murky humour."
"He's a noble animal, God help him."
"Is there no more you can do than bleeding and starving?"
"Ask the man up there if there's more. He's seen consumption enough in his time. Half the town has it."
"So we bring our English consumptives to a town where half have it. I see."
"Come now, Rome's climate often has a fine effect on northern sufferers. John Keats's life will go on longer than it would have in Hampstead. I wager we'll prolong it to the spring."
"For what purpose? For what purpose do you prolong it?"
"Come now, Severn, you must not ask that question. That's the atheistical question that our poor friend asks. Don't let him infect you."
"I'm close to him all day and all night too," Severn said in a high strained voice. "It's hard to avoid that risk."
"Pull yourself together, man. I'll get that nurse tomorrow."
"Oh, I've help enough. Ewing comes and the Spaniard Llanos. The English chaplain too, but John will not have him. He persists in cursing the Christian faith." Severn began to snivel.
"Aye, well, you must keep yourself strong for that duty. You must not let him go out an atheist with his blather about the creative imagination and the rest of the poetic godlessness. God forgive me for saying that. He's a better man than most of the Christians I know. But our view of him isn't necessarily the Almighty's."
Severn went back in to a quieted emaciated John with eyes like lamps. The voice was not the voice Severn had known even a month back. It was higher and sharper, like an old man's, the Cockney vowels more pronounced, the tones too often those of malignity. "So, Severn, they've confirmed that I'm dying in my stomach, yes? The lungs are pink and spongy and bursting with healthful air. And I'm to go on being starved, yes? Listen, Severn, I ask you no more to buy me laudanum, but I do ask that you bring me in a beefsteak, cold maybe but well-cooked. See, my mouth oozes for a beefsteak."
"You know I cannot, you know it will only bring the blood. I must obey the -"
"Always obey, Severn, and you will get on in the world. Obey the dictates of Society and Medicine and the Edinburgh Arbiters of Art and you will be a baronet some day. Very well, read me something."
"Jeremy Taylor? Holy Living and Holy Dying?"
"I like it for the wrong reasons, you know that, Severn."
"How do you know it is for the wrong reasons? I think perhaps you like to convince yourself that the spirit is not at last working on you. But I see differently."
"Bugger the spirit, Severn. Read."
Severn read: "There is no state, no accident, no circumstance of our life, but it hath been soured by some sad instance of a dying friend: a friendly meeting often ends in some sad mischance, and makes an eternal parting: and when the poet Aeschylus was sitting under the walls of his house, an eagle hovering over his bald head mistook it for a stone, and let fall his oyster, hoping there to break the shell, but pierced the poor man's skull.' "
John laughed. "I had always thought it was a tortoise the eagle dropped, but still – You see what I mean, Severn, about the wrong reasons. Taylor is lively, there is no gloom of death in him. Read on."
" 'Death meets us everywhere, and is procured by every instrument and in all chances, and enters in at many doors; by violence and secret influence, by the aspect of a star and the stink of a mist, by the emissions of a cloud and the meeting of a vapour, by the fall of a chariot and the stumbling at a stone, by a full meal or an empty stomach -' "
"That bites hard, Severn, very hard."
" '- By watching at the wine or by watching at prayers, by the sun or the moon, by a heat or a cold, by sleepless nights or sleeping days, by water frozen into the hardness and sharpness of a dagger, or water thawed in the floods of a river, by a hair or a raisin, by violent motion or sitting still, by severity or dissolution, by God's mercy or God's anger; by everything in providence and everything in manners, by everything in nature and everything in chance -' "
"He takes such pleasure in his doublets. Hair or raisin, indeed. There's no death in it at all."
" '- Eripitur persona, manet res; we take pains to heap up things useful to our life, and get our death in the purchase; and the person is snatched away, and the goods remain. And all this is the law and constitution of nature; it is a punishment of our sins, the unalterable event of providence, and the decree of heaven: the chains that confine us to this condition are strong as destiny, and immutable as the eternal laws of God.' " Severn looked up. "May I stop there? I can hardly keep my eyes open."
"Sleep then. I shall not leap out of bed to buy beefsteaks or laudanum." And then: "Poor Severn. Poor Joseph. Did they call you Joe at home?" Severn nodded and the nod turned to a nodding off which he jerked himself out of abruptly when John said: "Sometimes in the night's deep watches I anagrammatise my name, give its constituent letters to such things of the world to survive as will take them. Keats takes steak. Alas, he does not. Stake takes Keats. A different stake, for martyr's burning. John Keats thanks Joe. And so the name is pulled apart and there is an end to it. Have you made arrangements for my Protestant burial yet?"
"I would – I have -"
"Sleep, sleep, Joe. Ah, alas, you cannot yet." For there was a knocking at the door of the apartment. Severn tottered from John's bedroom to open up to Signora Angeletti, very voluble with much hand work, and two stolider persons, men in stained blue uniform. Severn could not well understand what was being said. These were officials of some sort, sent by whom? Signora Angeletti babbled on about la legge, la legge. "Bring them in to me," called John.