“Like buying a new jacket, or a new bicycle?”
“You’re not being serious,” she said crossly.
“Why are you so angry with me?”
“Because you irritate me,” she said in annoyance.
He got up, took his leave very politely, and said:
“Then I’d rather go and cycle a bit.”
And he slowly walked off.
“Idiotic fellow!” she thought petulantly.
But she was upset at having squabbled with him, because of his mother and his sisters.
VII
IN THE HOTEL, however, he talked politely to Cornélie as if there had been no edgy exchanges or petty tiff between them, and he even asked her quite naturally — since Mama and his sisters had a call to make that afternoon — if they could go to the Palatine together.
“I was there recently,” she said nonchalantly.
“And aren’t you going to visit the ruins?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“They don’t interest me. I just can’t see anything of the past in them. All I see are ruins.”
“But then why did you come to Rome?” he asked in annoyance.
She looked at him, and could have burst out sobbing.
“I don’t know,” she said humbly. “I could have gone elsewhere … But I had expected so much of Rome, and Rome is a disappointment.”
“How’s that?”
“I find Rome hard and relentless, and without feeling. I don’t know why, but that’s the impression I get. And at present I’m in the sort of mood where on the contrary I need something sensitive and soft.”
He smiled.
“Come on,” he said. “Come with me to the Palatine. I must show you Rome. Rome is so beautiful.”
She felt too sad to be alone, and she quickly dressed and left the hotel with him. Outside the coachmen cracked their whips. “Vuole, vuole?” they cried.
He chose one.
“This is Gaetano,” he said. “I always take him, he knows me, don’t you, Gaetano?”
“Si, signorino. Cavallo di sangue, signorina!” said Gaetano, pointing to his horse.
They set off.
“I’m always afraid of those coachmen,” said Cornélie.
“You don’t know them,” he replied, smiling. “I like them. I like ordinary people. They’re nice people.”
“You like everything about Rome.”
“And you are giving in unreservedly to a false impression.”
“Why false?”
“Because that initial impression of Rome, of hardness and insensitivity, is always the same and always wrong.”
“I find Rome difficult.”
“Oh yes. Look, we’re passing the Forum.”
“When I see it, I think of Miss Hope and her orange lining.”
He said nothing, angry.
“And here is the Palatine.”
They got out of the carriage and went through the entrance.
“This wooden staircase takes us to the palace of Tiberius. Above this palace, above these arches, is a garden, from where we have a view of the Forum.”
“Tell me about Tiberius. I know there were good and bad emperors. We learned that at school. Tiberius was a bad emperor, wasn’t he?”
“He was a morose monster. But why must I tell you about him?”
“Because otherwise I have no interest in those arches and chambers.”
“Then let’s go and sit upstairs, in the garden.”
And that was what they did.
“Can’t you feel Rome here?” he asked.
“Everywhere I feel myself,” she replied.
But he did not seem to hear her.
“It’s the atmosphere,” he went on. “You should forget our hotel for a change, Belloni and all our fellow-guests, and yourself. When someone first arrives, they have all the fuss of a hotel, rooms, restaurants, vaguely sympathetic or uncongenial people. That’s what you had. Forget it. And try to just feel the atmosphere of Rome. It’s as though the atmosphere has stayed the same here, despite the fact that the centuries are piled one on top of the other. Once the Middle Ages covered the antiquity of the Forum, and now it is hidden everywhere by our nineteenth-century mania for tourism. That is Miss Hope’s orange lining. But the atmosphere has remained the same throughout. Or am I imagining it? …”
She said nothing.
“Perhaps,” he continued. “But what do I care? Our life is imagination, and imagination is beautiful. The beauty of our imagination belongs to us, who are not people of substance, our life’s consolation. How marvellous to dream all one’s life, dream about what happened in the past. The past is what is beautiful. The present is not real, does not exist. And the future doesn’t interest me.”
“Don’t you think about modern issues then?” she asked.
“Feminism?” he asked. “Socialism? Peace?”
“For example.”
“No,” he smiled. “I think of them sometimes, but not about them.”
“What do you mean?”
“I can’t get on with them. That’s the way I am. My nature is to dream, and the Past is my great dream.”
“Don’t you dream about yourself?”
“No. About my soul? My innermost core? No. It doesn’t interest me much.”
“Have you ever suffered?”
“Suffered? Yes, no. I don’t know. I suffer about my complete uselessness as a human being, as a son, as a man, but when I dream, I’m happy.”
“How do you come to be speaking so frankly to me?”
He looked at her in astonishment.
“Why should I hide?” he asked. “I either don’t talk, or I talk as I am talking now. Perhaps it’s a bit peculiar.”
“So do you speak so confidentially to everyone?”
“No, to almost no one. I used to have a friend, but he’s dead. Tell me, I expect you find me a pathological case?”
“No, I don’t think so.”
“It wouldn’t matter to me if you did. Oh, how beautiful it is here. Are you breathing in the spirit of Rome?”
“What Rome?”
“The Rome of antiquity. Below us is the palace of Tiberius. I can see him walking along with his prying eyes — he was very strong, very morose, and he was a monster. He had no ideals. Further that way is the palace of Caligula, a brilliant madman. He built a bridge over the Forum to be able to speak to Jupiter on the Capitol.
You couldn’t do that today. He was brilliant and crazy. If you’re like that, you have much that is wonderful.”
“How can you find an age of emperors who were monsters and mad, wonderful?”
“Because I can see their age before me, in the past, as a dream.”
“How can you possibly not see the present before you, and the issues of this age, especially that of eternal poverty?”
He looked at her.
“Yes,” he said. “I know, that is the rottenness in me, the sin. The notion of eternal poverty doesn’t affect me.”
She looked at him, almost with contempt.
“You are not of your age,” she said coolly.
“No …”
“Have you ever been hungry?”
He laughed and shrugged his shoulders.
“Have you ever put yourself in the place of a worker, or factory girl, working till they’re exhausted, old, half dead for scarcely a crust of bread?”
“Oh, those things are so gruesome and so ugly: don’t talk about them!” he begged.
Her eyes were cool, her lips pursed with disgust and she got up.
“Are you angry?” he asked meekly.
“No,” she said softly. “I’m not angry …”
“But do you despise me for being a useless creature full of aestheticism and daydreams?”
“No. Who am I to blame you for your uselessness?”
“Oh, if only we could find something!” he exclaimed, almost in rapture.
“What?”
“A goal. But mine would always remain beauty. And the past.”