The Miramare Hotel sleeps, or at any rate pretends to. Two hours ago the band shut up and went to bed; the dancers have wandered home along moonlit alleys or upstairs to the Miramare bedrooms. The barman downstairs has been allowed to go to bed. Even the night porter sleeps.
A ferocious bang on the locked front door rouses him. Behold outside the maresciallo and two carabinieri! At half-past two in the morning! Mamma mia! Giuseppe trembles, though for the moment his conscience is clear. Still, one never knows …
‘A Signor X. Is he staying here?’
Giuseppe gasps with relief.
‘Yes, Signor X has been here a month. He occupies Number 426.’
‘Take us up to his room immediately.’
Giuseppe cannot but hesitate an instant. Disturb a guest at this hour! Whatever his offence, it seems hardly decent.
‘At once. Every moment is of value. It is a matter of life and death.’
To this there is no reply but to throw open the doors of the lift and usher in the three representatives of the law. Excitement communicates itself to Giuseppe as the lift rushes up to the fourth floor. Even the maresciallo seems to bristle with anticipation. He glances at his watch.
‘It is already the half-hour,’ he mutters.
At the end of the corridor is Number 426. The maresciallo hastens towards it and bangs on the door. No answer.
‘Too late!’
He bangs again.
After several violent bangs they hear sounds within; the thud of a heavy body getting out of bed followed by footsteps approaching the door. The maresciallo stands expectant, his eyes fixed on the spot where the face of the inmate of the room will probably appear. The door is opened cautiously, but the maresciallo’s eyes are fixed upon a large expanse of purple silk pyjama. The face is at least a foot above. The maresciallo’s gaze travels up and discovers an enormous visage with gargantuan nose looking down upon him, crimson with annoyance.
‘What do you want?’
The door remains half open.
‘Are you Signor X?’
‘Of course I am. What is this joke of yours?’
‘It is not a joke, signore. Kindly let me into your room. By now, if this message is correct, you should have committed suicide. But I find you in bed.’
He hands the message to the purple-clad gentleman. It is from the wireless station:
Message from Budapest. Prevent Kolya X staying at Miramare Hotel from threatened suicide at two-thirty am on June 14 urgent.
‘This message was brought down to me from the Marconi station only fifteen minutes ago. I collect my carabinieri and by a miracle of haste we arrive at two-thirty, only to find you in bed. Please have the goodness to explain, signore.’
‘This is from my father. It is true that in a letter I told him I should commit suicide this morning at two-thirty. But as you see, I have not done so. I have changed my mind.’
‘Ha ha! That is very good indeed. That we should be called from our beds to save a suicide who has changed his mind. Pray understand, signore, that you will hear more of this!’
‘I am very sorry that I have not been able to oblige you, but you understand that I am quite ready to do anything you may suggest, within reason, to compensate you for your disappointment.’
The maresciallo smiled graciously as though to say, ‘Ah, now you’re talking!’
‘As for disappointment, that is not quite the word. We are delighted to see the signore standing before us in florid health. Delighted indeed! Our haste was to prevent so sad a calamity as the death of so brave a signore. Fortunately this was not necessary.’
‘How will it do if we meet and talk this over later on?’ asks the purple gentleman, who is beginning to yawn. ‘I have only been in bed an hour and am confoundedly sleepy. I apologise for my father’s impetuosity, and wish you all a very good-night.’
He holds the door open in so compelling a fashion that the three men, with the hovering Giuseppe, retire with an obsequious ‘Good-night’. The purple gentleman locks his door and gets back into bed. He sleeps till mid-day.
☙
The news of this nocturnal adventure thrilled Spiaggia. The tall, lonely young man who for a month had sat silent in a corner of the ballroom after dinner, watching with melancholy preoccupation the antics of his fellow-guests, became a public figure. A large number of unusual people dined at the Miramare to look at the hero of the day. They could have seen him more cheaply if they had gone to the café after dinner; for it was there he was to be seen, not in his accustomed place at the hotel. Eager inquirers at the Miramare were informed that he had interviewed the maresciallo in the afternoon, and that the maresciallo was completely satisfied with his explanation. He had behaved in a manner molto signorile.
Kolya X was laboriously writing a letter to his father. The café ink and the café pen, combined with the café paper, made this task even more distasteful than usual. His huge well-clad form sprawled over the narrow table. An enormous crossed leg protruded on the side opposite him. Every now and then he would lift his eyes in gloomy meditation, and invariably met the lively gaze of some interested observer. He seemed unconscious of the attention he was attracting:
Dear Father,
I had to tip the police heavily on account of your wireless message. The consequence is that I am harder up than ever. If you would telegraph me some money it would serve a better purpose than rousing everybody in Spiaggia at two-thirty in the morning. Excuse me! I know you meant well. I am in a desperate state, and unless you send me something I shall kill myself, but I shall not tell you when, next time. You cannot prevent me.
Your unhappy son, Kolya.
Kolya was the son of a rich Jewish merchant. He had early shown a disinclination for work of any kind, a disinclination that had been indulged and even encouraged by his doting parents, who, after giving him an expensive education, had supplied funds for luxurious vagrancy. He had wandered round the world seeking happiness, he said, but could not find it. His lather suggested that he might be happier if he had some occupation, something that would anchor him somewhere.
‘Very well,’ said Kolya. ‘Find me something to do, but not in Budapest.’
He was sent to England with introductions to one of the leading Jewish merchants in that country. He was at once engaged as a clerk, as a first step to learning the business. He turned up on the first day of his employment and sat, at a table much too small for him, through a long morning of extreme boredom. The afternoon was worse, and went on until six o’clock. At the end of the day he visited the head of his department and asked how much salary he was going to get.
‘Three pounds a week.’
‘Three pounds a week to sit at that small table and be bored to tears? No thank you, it is not interesting enough! That is the end of my engagement. Good afternoon.’
His father was so indignant at what he considered his bad manners that he cut down by half the liberal allowance he was still making him. Kolya continued his travels in search of Nirvana, but with straitened means it was even more difficult to find. By the time he drifted to Spiaggia he had sunk into a state of melancholy which he wore, however, with such a comic spirit that no one believed in it.
For he made a good many friends after the episode of the wireless message, and was known by the natives as Il Signorin’ Suicidio, or simply as Lungo-lungo. He used to go picnicking up on the mountain, and would amuse the company by his ridiculous talk about suicide and his threats to throw himself there and then from a rocky peak. One day after lunch he stretched his whole huge length on a rosemary-scented cliff-side and cried:
‘Why can I find nothing worth while? My life is a wilderness; I wander and wander about in it and arrive nowhere. Should I have stayed in that office? Should I have been happier because I was working? No, NO, dear madame, I should have died of ugliness. I, the most hideous person you have ever seen, adore beauty, and the sight of those clerks sitting round me, doing ugly work they must hate, would have killed me. Not that way would I wish to die. I would like to die of beauty — smothered, intoxicated, asphyxiated by it. I would like to die loving some glorious woman or enchanting boy. This can never happen, because glorious women and enchanting boys will not allow me to love them. I am too ugly and I am no longer rich enough. NOW IS THE TIME!’ he shouted, suddenly leaping to his feet, waving his great arms and rushing to the edge of the precipice.
Everyone ran laughing to pull him back.
‘You can’t commit suicide till you’ve digested your lunch,’ said someone, pushing him back on the grass.
‘That’s true. Such a good lunch too! Besides, it would be rude to end such a charming picnic thus. I must postpone my happiness!’ He lit a cigarette.
Little Anyuta threw herself upon him and began stroking his face.
‘Ugly man! Great big ugly man!’
‘There, you see! Even Anyuta at seven years old finds me hideous. Oh, Anyuta, have pity on me! Will you marry me, please, and save me from suicide?’
‘Yes, yes. I love you, great ugly Lungo-lungo. You are so — queer. May I marry him, mama?’
The pretty Russian woman laughed. Kolya looked at her reproachfully.
‘She laughs! The idea is too ridiculous. Three times in this week have I asked your mother to marry me, Anyuta, and now when you say “yes” — she laughs. She has laughed three times before this.’
Since Anyuta had met Kolya she had delighted to climb about him as though he were some exciting rock. She flung her arms about him now.
‘I am not laughing.’
He held her tiny head in his great hands.
‘Someone who does not laugh!’ he said, and, because she kissed him spontaneously, he blushed.
The Russian widow was regarding him darkly.
‘You know, it is all bosh about wanting to marry. You do not want to marry me — or anyone else.’
He sat up.
‘How brutally you understand, you dark woman with witch’s eyes! I do not want to marry, it is perfectly true. But I passionately want to want to marry. I have a deep longing to love a woman like yourself and to have a family, and to live for ever in a house with my family and enjoy it. After all, I am a Jew, and sometimes I feel I should make a great patriarch — but the rest of the time I know I should not. I know too well that, if you of your graciousness were to accept my proposal of marriage, I should be frightened and run away. But I know that you will go on refusing me because, first, I am a Jew, and you are pure Slav and hate Jews, and second, because I am ugly and foolish and because God, besides making me ugly and foolish, has pleased to make me tall like a tower so that all men should see this great hideous Kolya. Nowhere can I hide my stupid, unnecessary body. How could a woman like you look at me, even if I were rich, as I am no longer? So I go on safely asking you to marry me, because it gives me a wonderful feeling of normality to pretend that I want you in that way. I do not. I adore you, and I should like to spend my whole life with you.’
The Russian woman, who had wisdom as well as beauty, was not offended.
‘Alas, Kolya, that will not be possible,’ she said with a smile. ‘After next week we shall not meet again — at least for a very long time. I am going back to Russia.’
Something in her tone told him that she was going to meet some man — perhaps going to be married.
‘To Russia! You leave me?’ He leapt up again.
‘You will come too, Lungo-lungo!’ cried Anyuta, clinging to him.
‘No, no. She does not want me. I can see it! It is just my luck. Let us go down the mountain quickly and have large drinks at the café.’
For the rest of that week Kolya devoted himself entirely to his Russian friends. He disappeared the day before they were to leave.
‘Ask me no questions,’ he said. ‘But you will not see me. Perhaps I am going to throw myself over the cliff. Perhaps not.’
‘He talks of nothing but suicide,’ said someone. ‘That kind never does it.’
Kolya could have been found on the Marina, where he spent the whole day decorating a large boat with flowers. When he had finished, the boat was like a flower itself. He had cleared the two horticulturists’ shops, and had made garlands of myrtle and orange, Florentine fashion, to hang from stern to mast and from mast to prow.
‘Carin’ assai! Com’ ha fatto bene il Signorin’ Suicidio!’ An admiring crowd had been watching him all day.
The same crowd, augmented, was also there the next day when the Naples steamer hooted its warning. It saw Il Signorin’ Suicidio leading the Russian widow and her child down the quay to the flower boat; it heard the cry of wonder from Anyuta as she jumped into it and seized the huge doll that looked out from the roses in the prow like a figure-head. It heard the mandolinata of the three barbers sitting in the stern, and it gave a slightly derisive cheer as the boat swung away from the quay towards the steamer.
‘Kolya, you are mad!’ exclaimed the widow, laughing a little self-consciously. ‘How could you do such a thing!’
‘You do not like it? It was to honour you. Another failure!’
‘It is delicious. I love it, of course. But so much time you must have spent on it!’
‘What is time?’ said Kolya.
She felt that it was not the moment to begin an argument on this subject, so she cried:
‘Anyuta will never forget this adventure, will you, Anyuta?’
Anyuta, laughing, clasped her doll.
In five minutes they were on the steamer, and hung over the side listening to the mandolinata of the smiling barbers in the boat below. Another curious crowd gathered round and listened. When the time came to go, everyone watched Kolya climb into the flower boat and wave a large yellow silk handkerchief.
How bleak it was, going back in that gay boat, alone with the mandolines which had become barbers again and looked at him with kindly amusement. He felt a little foolish as he came ashore into the large crowd that stared at him.
‘Perhaps I have made a fool of myself again,’ he thought. ‘But at any rate it pleased Anyuta.’’
He left the quay hurriedly, feeling very lonely. The decorated boat was soon full of screaming children tearing the flowers and oranges from it.
He spent the next three days lying in the sun on the beach. Then he wrote to his Russian friend:
Darling, daring Friend!
No news for you, because nothing happens since you left. It’s just my luck. So shortly after meeting you I am left broken-hearted. How I wish to be near you. Don’t laugh, please! But suicide is near. I have been burnt from the sun. Such terrible pains! My nerves are in a fearful state. I must find courage to make an end, because so the life is rotten. How I envy you to travel! How long I had such a life. But now I must stay here and wait for my father to send money to pay my bills. Fortunately Spiaggia is a wonderful place full of thoughts of you, so I do not suffer so much as I would. A kiss to my dear, dear Anyuta and much love to your beautiful self.
Your faithful friend, Kolya.
I think this is the last letter you will get from me.
He never saw the answer to that letter, telling him not to talk such nonsense about suicide, because in a week he was dead.
Peasants going to work on a crystal August morning found him lying outside the cemetery, shot through the heart. He had sat in the café talking to acquaintances all the evening before, had drunk four double whiskies, and for a change had not talked of suicide. He left when the café closed to go for a walk in the moonlight. Two people met him on his way down to the cemetery, and he said ‘Good-night’ cheerfully. No one heard the shots.
He had prepared everything carefully. Evidently funds had come from his father, for his table was neatly arranged with envelopes containing money for the tradesmen. A letter to the manager of the hotel contained this:
I hope I shall not inconvenience you very much. I am going down to the cemetery to shoot myself, at the gate, so that my body will not have to be carried far, and you will not have the displeasure of receiving it. Please let my father know at the enclosed address. I ask, please, that when I am buried a mandolinata shall be played at my grave. Thank you for your kindness to me.
In spite of the heat, everyone went to Lungo-lungo’s funeral in the Protestant cemetery, some from curiosity, but many because the strange creature, with all his oddness and the modo signorile in which he had finally carried out his threat, had pleasantly impressed the inhabitants of Spiaggia. They did not laugh when the three barbers came forward, and standing over the open grave played Se chiagnere me siente and Torna a Surriento.
The thin notes of the mandolines tinkled through the radiant air. The solemn resting-place of willing exiles seemed to stir as the unwonted sound floated among the cypress-trees — a futile, pathetic tinkle.