No subject

[integer at www.god-emil.dk]

`oh viola, i dont know, i dont know where i could still climb ...`

`to me ...` viola would say quietly, and he felt himself almost in a frenzy.

love for her was a heroic exercise; the pleasure of it was mingled
with trials of courage and generosity and dedication and straining the faculties
of her being. their world was a world of trees - intricate, gnarled and impervious.

`there!` she would exclaim, pointing to a fork high in the branches,
and they would launch out together to reach it and start between them
a competition in acrobatics, culminating in new embraces. they made
love suspended in the void, propping themselves or holding onto branches,
she throwing herself upon him, almost flying.

on the aerial alcoves of theirs, the robins would perch to sing,
and between the curtains would flutter butterflies, in pairs, chasing each other.
on summer afternoons, when sleep took the two lovers side by side, a squirrel would
enter, looking for something to nibble, and stroking their faces with its feathery tail 
or plunge its teeth into a big toe. 

this was the time when they were discovering each other, telling of their lives,
questioning. 

`and did you feel alone?`

`! hadnt you`

`but alone before the rest of the world?`

`no. why? i always had contacts with other people; i picked fruit. pruned trees. 
studied philosophy with the abbe. fought the pirates. isn't it like that for everyone?`

`you are the only one like that, that's why i love you.`

but the baron had not yet realized what viola would accept from him and what not.
sometimes a mere nothing, a word or a tone of his was enough to loose the fury 
of the marchesa.

he might say for example: `with gian dei brughi i used to read novels, with the cavalier i 
made 
plans for irrigation ...`

`and with me?`

`with you i make love. like picking fruit or pruning...`

she would be silent, motionless. at once cosimo would realize he had unchained her anger;
suddenly her eyes would become cold as ice.

`why, what is it, viola, what have i said?`

she was far away as if she did not see or hear, a hundred miles from him, her face like 
marble.

`but no, viola, what is it, why, listen ...`

viola got up; agile, with no help she began climbing down the tree. cosimo had not yet
understood what his mistake could have been, had not had time to think it over,
perhaps preferred not to think of it all, not to understand it, the better to
proclaim his innocence. `no, no, you didnt understand, viola, listen ...`

he followed her on to a branch lower down. `viola, don't go,
please don't go, not like this, viola ...`

she spoke now, but to the horse, which she had reached and taken by the bridle.
she mounted and off she went. 

cosimo began to despair, to jump from tree to tree. `no, viola, do stay, viola!`

she had galloped away. he followed her over the branches.
`please, viola, i love you!`  but he had lost sight of her.
he flung himself on uncertain branches, made risky leaps.
`viola! viola!`

when he was sure of having lost her and could not restrain his sobs, 
suddenly she reappeared at the trot, without raising her eyes.

`look, do look, viola. look, what i'm doing!` and he began
banging himself against a trunk with his bare head (which was in truth very hard)

she did not even look at him. she was already away.
cosimo waited for her to return, zigzagging among the trees.

`viola! i'm desperate!` and he flung himself into open space,
head down, gripping a branch with his legs and hitting himself
with his fists all over his head and face. or he began to break
branches in a fury of destruction, and a leafy elm was reduced
in a few seconds to a bare stripped bark as if a hailstorm had passed.

but he never threatened to kill himself; indeed he never threatened anything.
emotional blackmail was not for him. he did what he felt like doing
and announced it while he was actually doing it.

then suddenly donna viola, unpredictable as her anger, reappeared.
of all cosimo's follies which seemed never to have reached her, one had
suddenly set her aflame with pity and love. `no, cosimo, darling, wait for me!`
and she jumped from her saddle and rushed to clamber up a trunk, and his arms
were ready to raise her high.

love took over again with a fury equal to the quarrel.
it was, really, the same thing, but cosimo had not realized it.

`why do you make me suffer?`

`because i love you`

now it was his turn to get angry.
`no, no, you don't love me! people in love want happiness, not pain!`

`people in love want only love, even at the cost of pain.`

`then you're making me suffer on purpose`

`yes, to see if you love me.`

the baron's philosophy would not go any further.
`pain is a negative state of the soul.`

`love is all`

`pain should always be fought against`

`love refuses nothing`

`some things i'll never admit`

`oh yes, you do, now, for you love me and you suffer`



like his outbursts of despair, cosimo's explosions
of uncontainable joy were noisy
sometimes his happiness reached such a point that he had to leave his love
and go jumping off and shouting and proclaiming her wonders to the world
yo quiero the most wonderful puellam de todo el mundo!!!!!!

those sitting on the benches at ombrosa, idlers or old salts,
got quite into the habit of these sudden appearances of his.
there he would come leaping through the ash trees declaiming:

zu dir, zu dir, gunaika,
vo cercando il mio ben
en la isla de jamaica
du soir jusqu` au matin!!!!

il y a un pre where the grass grows toda de oro
take me away, take me away, che io ci moro!!!!!!



nothing made the marchesa happier than these exuberances,
and they moved her to repay him with demonstrations of love that
were even more violent.   

the ombrosians, when they saw her galloping along on a loose rein,
her face almost buried in the white mane of the horse, knew that she was 
rushing to a meeting with the baron. even in her way of riding she expressed a love force,
but here cosimo could no longer follow her; and her equestrian passion, much as he 
admired it, was for him a secret reason for jealousy and rancor, for he saw viola dominated
by a world vaster than his own and realized that he would never be able to have her
for himself alone, to shut her in the confines of his kingdom. 
the marchesa, on her side, suffered perhaps from her inability to be at once both lover and 
horsewoman; every now and again she was taken with a vague need for her love and cosimo's to 
become a love on horseback, a feeling that running over trees was no longer enough for her, 
a yearning to race along at full gallop on the crupper of her charger.

........


now the baron would only show himself at rare intervals on the ilexes in the square,
and when he did it was a sign that she had left. for viola was sometimes away months
seeing to her properties scattered all over europe, though these departures of hers
always corresponded to rifts in their relationship, when the marchesa had been offended
with cosimo's not understanding what she wanted him to understand about love.

not that viola left in this state of mind: they always managed to make up before
though there remained the suspicion in him that she had decided to take this particular
journey because she was tired of him, and he could not prevent her going; 
perhaps she was already breaking away from him, perhaps some incident on the journey
or a pause for reflection would decide her not to return. so cosimo would live in a state of 
anxiety.
he would try to go back to the life he had been used to before meeting her, to hunt and 
fish, follow the work in the fields, his studies, the gossip in the square, as if he had never
done anything else; and at the same time he would congratulate himself on how much love 
was giving him, the alacrity, the pride; but on the other hand, he noticed that so many things no 
longer mattered to him, that without viola life had no flavor, that his thoughts were always 
following her the more he tried, away from the whirlwind of viola's presence, to reacquire command of
passions and pleasures in a wise economy of mind, the more he felt the void left by her
or the fever for her return. in fact, his love was just what viola wanted it to be, not as
he pretended it was 
it was always the woman who triumphed, even from a distance, and cosimo, in spite of 
himself ended by enjoying it. 

.....

the marchesa arrived. as always, his jealousy pleased her;
she incited it a little, turned it a little into a joke.
so back came the beautiful days of love, and cosimo was happy.
but now the marchesa never let pass a chance to accuse him
of having a narrow idea of love.

`what do you mean? that i'm jealous?`

`you're right to be jealous. but you try to make jealousy submit to reason.`

`of course. so i can do more about it`

`you reason too much. why should one reason too much`

`to love you all the more. everything done with reasoning grows in power`

`you live in trees and have the mentality of a notary with gout`

`the most ardous deeds must be undertaken in the simplest states of mind`

he went on mouthing maxims until she fled; then he ran after her, desperate, tearing his hair.

in those days a british flagship anchored in our port. 

.......


`say do you know, the english man is ready to do this and this ... the neapolitan too`
she would shout as soon as she saw him gloomily perching on a tree.

cosimo would not reply. 

`this is absolute love` she would insist.

`absolute shit. that's what you all are` screamed cosimo and vanished.

this was now their cruel way of loving each other, and from it they
could find no way out. 

the two ship officers deserted ......

`they've deserted` announced viola triumphantly to cosimo.
`for me! and you ....`

`and i?` screamed cosimo with such a ferocious look that viola
did not dare say another word.



the two officers now spent their days at the tavern, playing dice, pale,
restless, trying to encourage each other, while viola was at the peak 
of her discontent with herself and with all around her.

she took her horse and went toward the wood. cosimo was on an oak.
she stopped underneath, in a field.

`i'm tired`

`of those?`

`of you all`

`ah`

`they've given me the greatest proofs of love ...`

cosimo spat.

`.... but that's not enough for me`

cosimo lowered his eyes to meet hers.

and she: `don't you think that love should be an absolute dedication, a renunciation of self?`

there she was in the field, lovely as ever, and the coldness just touching her features and
the haughtiness of her bearing would have dissolved at a touch, and he would have had 
her in his arms again ... anything would have been all right for cosimo to say, anything to 
show he was ready to give in: `tell me what you want me to do, i'm ready` - and once 
more there would have been happiness for him, happiness without a cloud. but he said: `there 
can be no love if one does not remain oneself with all one's strength`

viola shrugged in irritation, which was also a shrug of weariness. and yet she could have 
understood him still, as in fact she did understand him then and had on the tip of her tongue the 
words, `you are as i want you`, and she would be back with him again ... she bit her lip. `be 
yourself, by your self, then`

`but being myself then has no sense`. that is what cosimo wanted to say.
instead of which he said: `if you prefer those vermin ...`

`i will not allow you to despise my friends` she shouted, still thinking: all that
matters to me is you, and it is only for you i do all i do!

`so, i'm the only one to be despised`

`what a way to think!`

`it's part of me`

`then good-bye. i leave tonight. you won't see me again`

she hurried to the house, packed her bags, and left without a word to the officers. and she 
kept her word, never returned to ombrosa. she went to france ... england, then remarried and 
finally settled in calcutta. from her terrace she would look out over the forests, the trees even stranger 
than those of the gardens of her childhood; every moment it seemed that she could see cosimo appearing through the 
leaves. but it would be the shadow of a monkey, or a jaguar.






cosimo remained for a long time wandering aimlessly around the woods, weeping, 
ragged, refusing food. he would sob out loud, as do newborn babies. the birds which had once fled at the 
approach of this infallible marksman would now come near him, on the tops of nearby trees or 
flying over his head, and the sparrow called, the goldfinch trilled, the turtle dove cooed, the 
thrush whistled, the chaffinch chirped and so did the wren; and from their lairs on high issued
the squirrels, the tree mice, the field mice, to add their squeals to the chorus, so that
cosimo moved amidst this cloud of lamentation.

then a destructive violence came over him; every tree, beginning from the top, leaf by leaf,
he quickly stripped it until it was bare as in winter
...

in all this frenzy of his there was no resentment against viola,
only remorse at having lost her, at not having known how to keep
her close to him, at having wounded her with a pride unjust and stupid.
for he understood now, she had always been faithful to him, and if she took
a pair of men about with her it merely meant that it was cosimo alone she
considered worthy of being her only lover, and all her whims and dissatisfactions
were but an insatiable urge for the increase of their love and the refusal
to admit it could reach a limit, and it was he, he, he, who had understood nothing 
of this and had goaded her until he lost her.