Michael Dibdin - A Rich Full Death

I have accordingly urged Beatrice to give up her post and go south with me-we could take a cottage on Capri or Ischia and live there as happily as Adam and Eve until the summer comes. But she, like a true Florentine, is loth to leave her native city. It is odd that I should care so-why do not I simply go myself, and leave her? That is what I ask myself, and find no answer. All I know is that I have not gone, and will not go without her. For myself, indeed, I scarcely care any longer, but if anything were to happen to this Italian girl I should never forgive myself. Is it not odd?

Yours ever most affectionately,

Booth

My dear, dear friend,

You cannot guess what pains it costs me to write. My muscles have all turned traitor, and my body become an Iron Maiden for the poor scrap of spirit which still unwillingly inhabits it-yet still worse is the mental effort, to remember what I have told you and what not, what you know and what you do not know-to say nothing of what you may have guessed. I am terribly afraid I may lose my grip on the story before I finish, at moments everything quivers and shimmers so. Was there not some philosopher-you will know who I mean-who held that the material world is only sustained by God’s attention, and that if that failed for a split second the whole universe would start to curl at the edges, smouldering and shrivelling up like a sketch tossed on the fire?

But I shall finish-I must! This at least I shall achieve, though nothing else.

The week following Grant’s death was like one of those great calms which sailors fear worse than the fiercest storm, when nothing stirs and the very air seems all to have been sucked away, leaving a breathless vacuum beneath which the ocean lies so flat and bland you fancy you could dance quadrilles on it. So it was that week. There was an oppressive absence of event: the police investigation once again came lo nothing; Mr Browning made no attempt to make good his threats.

I had by now convinced Beatrice to leave Florence with me, but she would not quit her post without giving due notice; and while she worked out her time I lay abed, or on the sofa, or at the balcony door, dreaming of those azure depths, the rocky coves, wind-battered centenarian olives, the sky a flawless sheet of polished lapis-lazuli …

Every evening, when she returned, [ordered up supper from the trattoria: first some rounds of fire-charred bread rubbed raw with garlic, salt-sprinkled and drenched in olive oil as green and cloudy as glass on a beach; then a mess of hand-rolled noodles soaking up some rich dark sauce of hare and wild mushrooms; and then a chicken roast on a wood fire, and some fruit, and a flagon of wine.

And so time passed, until it was Friday the 3rd of March, and the last day of her service.

That evening I sat in the room at Via Dante Aligheri awaiting my mistress’s return as usual. A bottle of champagne stood on the table beside a huge bouquet of flowers. I waited, and I waited. The wine grew warm, the flowers began to wilt, and still Beatrice did not come. At length, when ten o’clock sounded without any sign of her, I grew so anxious I could sit there no longer. It was unheard of for her to be so late.

My mind ran riot with unpleasant speculations, which I could do nothing to allay-it was of course out of the question for me to enquire of the family for whom she had been working. I nevertheless left the house and walked to where they lived, to see if I could catch any sight of her, half-hoping to meet her on the way. I knew not what I hoped, or feared-but in the event I saw nothing and nobody.

My next impulse was to return home, in case there might be some message for me there. As I hastened through the dark and empty streets my heart was full of evil forebodings, and I seemed to see the final look Browning had given me, and to hear him say, ‘You’ll be sorry for this-both of you!’ That ‘both’ had puzzled me at the time-had he intended Talenti, who had been present, or Beatrice?

When I opened my front door I looked at once at the silver salver where Piero puts any letters which have been delivered in my absence. There was a long envelope there, bearing my name in a hand I recognised. I tore it open and scanned the contents in a flash. This, word for poisonous word, is what it said:

Dear Mr Booth,

I took the liberty of calling on you this evening, at an hour when I knew you would be from home, to discuss this brave New Life of yours. Your manservant was about to leave, but before doing so was good enough to let me in to await your return, which I gave him to understand was imminent.

I fear I misled him, though, for of course you were wandering ‘pensive as a pilgrim’, as the bard has it: dreaming about everything save that which was under your nose (I quote from memory: consult the original for further details).

R.B.

I walked through to my living-room with this extraordinary composition in my hand-and stopped dead. Books, papers, clothes, and household articles of every description lay strewn about the floor in the most complete disorder. My first thought was that I had been the object of a burglar’s attentions, until I caught sight of several valuable objects which should in that case have been taken. What then? A wanton explosion of destructive energy appeared to have reduced my home to a diabolic shambles, as completely and impartially as a bomb.

Then I remembered the letter. Browning claimed that my servant had left him alone in the suite-was this his revenge? That he sought revenge was no longer in doubt-that much, at least, I could understand from his cryptic letter. But was it credible that this childish tantrum was all a mind as cunning as his could dream up to torment me?

I picked up the letter once again. That it was crammed full of secret significance I did not for a moment doubt. That my future happiness, and quite possibly my survival, depended upon my understanding it was no less evident. What did it all mean?

I strode restlessly back and forth, picking my way between the volumes which lay singly, in piles, precarious heaps and fallen rows all over the floor, alternately picking up the malicious text and then throwing it down again in despair-a process I repeated half a hundred times as the night wore on.

The Dominicans’ chimes had sounded two o’clock before I got my first glimpse of its hidden meanings. I had initially assumed that the phrase ‘this brave New Life of yours’ was a mocking echo of Miranda’s naive exclamation in Shakespeare’s Tempest: ‘O brave new world, that has such people in it!’ The irony of that was evident, if Browning knew-as he presumably did-about my relations with his former mistress. But why ‘Life’ for ‘world’? Why were only the two words capitalised? Why capitals at all, for that matter?

The truth came to me, as it will, in a flash. The ‘New Life’ of course referred to the collection of verses which Dante published in celebration of Beatrice-the Vita Nuova . Having understood that, it took me very little longer to recognise ‘wandering pensive as a pilgrim’ and the rest of it as the paraphrase of the opening of the famous sonnet on the death of Beatrice: Deh peregrini che pensosi andate .

On the death of Beatrice! . A chill ran down my spine. ‘Consult the original for further details.’ I ran to the case where I keep my Italian classics-and gave out a howl of fury when I realised that it too had been wrenched off the wall and the books hurled to all four corners of the room. Like a beast, I scrabbled desperately on all fours among the volumes which lay strewn about the floor, seizing each in turn and flinging it away like the rubbish they all were now-all except that one I sought, and could not find.