“In other words, nobody!” the harsh commanding voice declared at the foot of the stairs, down in the depths. The answer must have been silent: he could imagine the obliging landlord, his hand crossed over his heart, his upper body bowed, and his eyes cast heavenward to indicate that everything would be as the guest demanded. But something about the voice stopped him as he was about to enter his room. It was a familiar voice, an intimately and frighteningly familiar voice, the kind a man recognizes because there has already been unavoidable and close contact between it and him. This instinctive recognition was an important force in his life: he had set his compass by it. He raised his head, listening intently, like an animal on the scent. The voice was unmistakable! He stood at the door with a serious, almost respectful look on his face, his fingers on the handle, his whole body tense, some instinct telling him that he was on the verge of a fateful encounter. He knew by now that the footsteps slowly, laboriously ascending the stairs with such even tread were a vital component of his own life, that the anonymous voice rising from the depths was bringing him a personal message. The “difficult” guest was looking for him. The astrological chart of his life was, in a few moments, once again, and not for the last time, about to undergo a dramatic readjustment. He took a deep breath and straightened up. A nervous shudder ran through him, and as always in such situations, his instinct momentarily overcame his reason, and he felt the urge to run into his room, climb through the window, shimmy down the storm drain of The Stag, and disappear in the accustomed manner, into the evening and the blizzard. It was, after all, the only voice he was afraid of, this “resonant” voice already drawing closer in the half-light on the stairs. He recognized the same unavoidable “resonance” when it radiated from women or from men who belonged to women. He had been happy enough to fight a duel in Tuscany, bare-chested in the moonlight, with only a narrow sword in his hand, against an old man maddened by jealousy who was skillful and dangerous with swords; he had been quite prepared to leap from rooftops and to tangle with vagrant scoundrels on the floor of a dive in a pub brawl; he was, in short, afraid of nothing but this “resonance,” which he associated with a specific feeling, for he sensed that every feeling, but this one above all, was woven to bind him. It was this that really frightened him. That was why he thought he should shut the door now, seize his dagger, and leave by the window. At the same time he knew that, in the end, there was no escape from this particular kind of resonance, that it was a trap from which one could not escape unscathed. So he waited at the threshold, his hair standing on end, with fear and anticipation, gripping the handle of the door, staring over his shoulder, scanning the dim space with sharp, suspicious eyes, seeking the man who would shortly address him in that familiar voice. It was past eight o’clock. The steps hesitated, apparently tired, resting at a turn of the stair. There was no more clattering of cutlery in the bar and the silence was such that you could hear the snow fall; it was as if the mountains, the snow-covered street, the river, and the stars, the whole of Bolzano, were holding its breath. “There is always this moment of silence at a vital turn in a man’s life,” he found himself reflecting, and smiled with satisfaction at the phrase, because he was, after all, a writer.
Then they came into view, the landlord first, stooping and turning as he ascended, muttering, explaining, assuring, a smoking taper in his hand and a soft satchel-shaped hat of red material on his head, the kind of hat that used to be worn by Phrygian shepherds and more recently by publicans and freethinkers in the cellars of Paris and out in the provinces. The innkeeper’s ballooning stomach was covered with a leather apron that he must have been wearing in the cellar where he was probably tampering with the sugar content and temperature of the wine, a foul habit he could not bring himself to abandon, and over the apron, a blue jerkin whose splendor exceeded that of the ceremonial vestments of guilds and connoisseurs and suggested a long-standing religious ritual such as might be conducted by a lower grade priest of an ancient, pagan cult whose devotees were crowned with rings of onions. It was he who came first. He looked over his shoulder, muttering and assuring with a great show of humility and concern, like any hotelier with an important client, for it is the duty of the hotelier to be solicitous in his attentions, to see his guest rise and set off in the morning, leaving behind a messy room, the bed his noble body had vacated, the basin with its dirty water, the vessel containing human effluent, and things even the most exquisitely refined of human beings leaves as evidence of his presence in the room of a hotel. And so the innkeeper bowed and scraped with remarkable zeal, his every gesture speaking of five decades of experience as landlord and jack-of-all-trades to all and sundry. He kept three steps ahead of his guest, much as a postilion does at night when the king, the prince de Condé, or, as it may be, the duke of Parma, happens to be passing through. And in his wake there followed the procession of four men ranged about a fifth, two in front, two behind, each member of the escort equipped with a five-branched silver candelabrum raised high above his head, each clad in his lackey’s uniform of black silk jerkin, knee breeches, and white wig, with silver chains about his neck and a flat-cocked hat on his head; the heavy calfskin pelisses around their shoulders billowed like enormous wings as they walked stiffly on, looking neither behind nor ahead, their pace as mechanical and jerky as those of marionettes at an open-air performance in the marketplace. The guest proceeded slowly in the cage of light they made for him. He gauged each step of the stair with caution before moving on, his body shrouded in a plain, violet-colored traveling cloak that flapped about his ankles, a cloak brightened only at the neck and narrow shoulders by a wide, beaver-skin collar; and so, leaning on a silver-handled stick, he made his way gradually upstairs, carefully fixing the point of the stick on the edge of the next step, as if each tread required careful consideration, not just as an intellectual proposition but as a physical problem occasioned by the condition of his heart, for his heart was finding the burden of stairs ever more difficult. The procession therefore wound on extremely slowly with the ornate and rigorous ritual of a man who has all but lost his freedom of movement but remains enslaved by his own rank, the trappings and obligations imposed on him by his station in life. “It’s not hard to see,” thought Giacomo, wide-mouthed, his contempt tempered by a grudging respect as he stood at the half-open door of his room, “that he is related to Louis Le Gros!” And so thinking, he took a step back into the shadows of the room, on the far side of the threshold, and waited there with both hands on the door frame, carefully flattening himself against the wall in the darkness while the duke of Parma made his way upstairs.