Мэтью Перл - The Dante Chamber

The story he told was about a friend of Tennyson’s who found a poem by the previous poet laureate, Wordsworth, which had never before been published. The poem recorded all the details of a revolting crime. Tennyson’s friend, thinking a man of genius such as Wordsworth should never be associated with such an unworthy subject, condemned the papers to the flames before they could see daylight. “It was the kindest thing he could have done,” Tennyson exclaimed, concluding the anecdote.

“Mr. Tennyson, you know Mr. Browning has been in a great battle for many years. He is far lonelier than he admits. He needs his friends.”

“Dante’s great innovation,” Tennyson said, hearing her but giving no indication of listening, “was to dare envision poets and literati — Virgil and Homer, Statius and Sordello — to take part together in affairs of life and death, danger and destiny. After all, what else is poetry?”

She knew at the moment she would not be able to build a bridge between Tennysonites and Browningites.

He picked up some leaves of sage from a dish and rubbed them into his teeth. “That is the best thing in the world to take away the stain of tobacco.”

Rising to his feet, he walked slowly to the hearth. He dropped Simon Camp’s pages on the fire before Christina could think whether she ought to protest, or whether that was exactly where she wanted them to end up.

“I believe that everything which happens to us we remember no matter what we do. It is all stored up somewhere,” he continued dreamily, “to come forth again upon occasion, though it may seem to be forgotten — we shall even remember these ashes forming from these pages.”

Christina, without thinking why, recited from one of her poems:

“Say, that’s lovely,” said Tennyson. “Are those my verses?”

Back in London, Browning remained set on finding every answer to every question. He tried much harder than Christina to interview Gabriel about what happened at the so-called sanatorium, though he was not successful drawing out information. The more you asked Gabriel, the less you received.

Police estimated that eleven of Sibbie’s followers, including Ethel and the two followers who were “purged” as Avaricious and Prodigal, perished in the fire. The remains of most of them, including those of Sibbie herself, were never recovered from the smoldering pile of ruins.

Browning and Christina visited Scotland Yard to give their final accounts of the incidents in question for the official police records.

Dolly Williamson greeted them as if old friends. His arm remained in a sling, and he walked tenderly on his left leg. Browning asked after Constable Branagan.

“Home Office transferred him before I returned, I’m afraid,” said Dolly. “The lad served me gallantly, and do not doubt I shall watch his career with interest.”

“Is it true, Inspector, what the newspapers said of you?” asked Christina. “That you had a vision of the solution to the Dante case before you were injured.”

“Something of the kind, Miss Rossetti,” Dolly said. “As I stood at Clerkenwell, investigating the report of loiterers, I was thinking of these Fenian warriors before me. Second by second, my mind began to drink in the truth. They weren’t frightened of being captured. In fact, punishment was part of their duty, their desire. Then a sickening feeling came over me. Could it be? Could the same have happened in our Dante deaths, that those punished were parties to their fates from the beginning? Before I could say a word to anyone about it, I was thrown clear across the street and laid out cold as a December in Moravia. Saved, as it turns out, only by Dante.”

Christina and Browning exchanged confused glances.

Dolly went on: “In my consternation over the obstacles we had encountered, earlier that day I had decided to continue my reading of Dante where I left off, in Paradise . A shard of stone pierced me, you see.” Dolly brought over the third volume of Longfellow’s translation, split almost in half by a gray stone fragment in the center of it. “If I had not been carrying this book in my coat, that would have come to rest right in my heart. At least the prison explosion led us to break up the ring of revolutionaries who plotted it, and thwart their future plans. McCord, their mastermind, fled to Dublin, where we have men on his trail. Tell me, are we more afraid of what comes from outside of us, like the Fenians and whatever other foreign danger lurks next, or do we fear most what comes from inside? We relish punishing others, while we are terrified to punish ourselves — terrified, perhaps, because our creativity in tormenting ourselves knows no bounds. But listen to me, I sound like the literary fellow among the three of us. Let us turn back to the subject of your accounts. Mind if I take notes for my reports?”

“Inspector, when you are finished with our interviews, would it be possible for us to have a turn to speak directly with that beastly Reverend Fallow?” Browning asked.

The request caught Christina as much off guard as it did Dolly. She and Browning had not discussed the idea of speaking with Fallow. She was not certain she ever again wanted to see the preacher.

Browning continued. “You see, Inspector, the first suicides wore the clothes of civilians, I suppose as a kind of bridge between everyday life and the new purgatory they believed they were creating. I’ve been puzzled why in their final ‘terraces’ they wore the robes of the sanatorium — perhaps it was a gesture to the moral mountaintop narrowing and the witnesses and observers becoming one.”

Dolly’s reply took them both by surprise.

“Certainly you may ask Fallow about that or anything else you wish. But you would have to find him first, Mr. Browning,” he said.

“Simply escort us to his cell,” said Browning.

Dolly shook his head, and chewed on a sprig of grass. He explained there were no charges sufficient to indefinitely hold Fallow, and he had been allowed to leave.

Browning worked himself into a frenzy over the idea and listed all the things Fallow had done in the creation of the sanatorium’s morbid and deadly mission. Christina tried to placate him.

Dolly waited until they were both quiet before explaining.

“As you know, indeed, as you revealed to Constable Branagan, Mr. Browning, the deaths were not murders after all, but suicides. Of course, the fire killed others, but there is evidence that was the result of arson by culprits outside their strange settlement of believers. Then there is the murder by stabbing of that American pest, Mr. Camp, which we are continuing to investigate, however bereft of clues.”

Browning was far from satisfied. “There was someone talked about in the pages written by Camp. Someone they called the Dante Master in Italy. Couldn’t you find him, and see what he knew? There must be some way to see to it that Fallow doesn’t get away with this.”

“We could conjure up charges, Mr. Browning, but nothing that would pass muster at Old Bailey. The most we can prove is that Fallow stoked the darkest imaginations of other people — in that, he was no more guilty than Dante of doing the same and, as it seems we have discovered together, Dante cannot be stopped.”

Christina wondered what plagued Browning most, the fading possibility of answering all his questions about the mysterious Dante movement that had changed so many lives — including their own — or the impossibility of finding justice, of ever making amends, for loss and death, for the heart he buried in Florence.