Louis Couperus - Inevitable

“Lots of gold stood for riches and the power of love. The riches have gone now …”

“But the gold has softened now, become so grey …”

“The power of love has remained: the San Stefanos have always been great lovers.”

He went on joking and pointed to the lewdness of the scenes and ventured an allusion.

She pretended not to hear, and looked at the arazzi. In the side panels golden peacocks drank from golden fountains and cupids played with doves.

“I love you so much!” he whispered in her ear and put his arms round her waist. “Angel, angel!”

She warded him off.

“Prince …”

“Call me Gilio …!”

“Why can’t we be just good friends …”

“Because I want more than friendship.”

She now freed herself completely.

“I don’t,” she replied coolly.

“So you have only one love?”

“Yes …”

“That’s impossible.”

“Why …”

“Because in that case you would marry him. If you loved no one but him, Van der Staal, you would marry him.”

“I am against marriage.”

“Hot air. You’re not marrying him, in order to be free. And if you want to be free, I also have a right to ask, for my moment of love.”

She looked at him strangely and he could feel her contempt.

“You don’t … understand me at all,” she said slowly and pityingly.

“You understand me though.”

“Oh yes. You are so very simple.”

“Why don’t you want to?”

“Because I don’t want to.”

“Why not?”

“Because I have no feelings for you.”

“Why not!?” he persisted, and his hands clenched.

“Why not?” she repeated. “Because I find you jolly and charming to play around with, but apart from that your temperament and mine are not compatible.”

“What do you know about my temperament?”

“I see you.”

“You’re not a doctor.”

“I’m a woman.”

“And I am a man.”

“But not for me.”

Furiously and with a curse he embraced her with trembling arms. Before she could stop him he had kissed her wildly. She struggled free and struck him straight in the face. He cursed again, grabbed wildly at her, but she drew herself up higher.

“Prince!” she said, bursting out laughing. “Surely you don’t think you can force me?”

“Of course I do.”

She laughed mockingly.

“You can’t,” she said loudly. “Because I don’t want to and I won’t be forced.”

This was a red rag to a bull: he was furious. He had never been defied and resisted like this, he had always been triumphant. She saw him charging toward her, but calmly threw open the door of the room.

The long galleries and rooms stretched into the distance, apparently endlessly. There was something about that perspective of ancestral space that restrained him. He was more beside himself than a calculating violator. She walked on very slowly looking intently left and right.

He joined her and walked beside her.

“You struck me,” he panted, furious. “I shall never forgive you for that. Never!”

“I ask your forgiveness,” she said with her sweetest voice and smile. “But I had to defend myself, didn’t I?”

“Why?”

“Prince,” she said persuasively. “Why all that anger and passion and violence. You can be so sweet; a little while ago in Rome you were so charming. We were such good friends. I loved your conversation and your wit and kind heart. Now everything’s spoiled.”

“No,” he begged her.

“Oh yes. You refuse to understand me. Your temperament and mine are not compatible. Can’t you understand that? You force me to put things crudely by being crude yourself.”

“I …?”

“Yes; you do not believe in the integrity of my independence.”

“No!”

“Is that a courteous way to behave to a woman?”

“I am only courteous up to a certain point.”

“We’ve passed that point. So please be courteous again as you were.”

“You’re playing with me. I shan’t forget. I’ll have my revenge.”

“So, a life and death battle?”

“No, a victory, for me.”

They had almost reached the atrium.

“Thank you for the guided tour,” she said, a little mockingly. “The camera degli sposi in particular was magnificent. Don’t let us be so angry any more.”

She proffered her hand.

“No,” he said. “You struck me in the face, here. My cheek is still glowing. I won’t take your hand.”

“Poor cheek,” she teased. “Poor prince! Did I hit you hard?”

“Yes …”

“How can I cool your glowing cheek?”

He looked at her, still panting, angry and red, with his eyes like sparkling carbuncles.

“You are more of a flirt than any Italian woman I know.”

She laughed.

“With a kiss?” she asked.

“Demon!” he hissed through his teeth.

“With a kiss?” she repeated.

“Yes,” he said. “There, in our camera degli sposi. ”

“No, here.”

“Demon!” he said, more softly and with more of a hiss.

She give him a fleeting kiss. Then she offered him her hand.

“And now this is over. The incident is closed.”

“Angel, devil,” he hissed after her.

She looked over the balustrade at the lake. Night had fallen and the lake was shrouded in mist. She was no longer thinking of him, although he was still standing behind her. She thought of him as a young boy, who sometimes amused her and now had misbehaved. She thought no more of him; she thought of Duco.

“How beautiful he will find it here,” she thought. “Oh, I miss him so! …”

From behind them came the rustle of women’s clothes. It was Urania and the Marchesa Belloni.

URANIA ASKED CORNÉLIE to come in, as it was not healthy outside, with the mist rising from the lake after sunset. The marchesa ’s greeting was cool, stiff and she narrowed her eyes as if she could not quite remember Cornélie.

“I can quite imagine that,” said Cornélie, with an acerbic smile. “You see lodgers in your pensione every day, and I stayed for a much shorter time than you’d counted on. I hope that my rooms were quickly relet and that you did not suffer any loss as a result of my departure, marchesa ?”

The marchesa looked at her dumbfounded. Here, at San Stefano, she was in her element as a marchioness; she, the sister-in-law of the old prince, never spoke about her pensione for foreigners here; she never met guests from Rome, who only visited the castle occasionally as tourists at certain times, while she, the marchioness spent several weeks here for her summer vacation. Here she had left behind her dexterity in extolling chilly rooms, her business acumen in charging as much for them as she dared. Here she carried her coiffeured mane with great dignity and though she still wore her glass jewellery in her ears, a shiny new spencer covered her ample bosom. She could not help it if she, born a countess, she the Marchesa Belloni — the marquess had been a brother of the late princess — lacked distinction, in spite of all the quarters on her coat-of-arms, she still felt what she was, an aristocrat. Her acquaintances, the monsignori , whom she sometimes met at San Stefano, glossed over the Pensione Belloni, and called it Palazzo Belloni.

“Oh yes,” she said finally, with a distinguished blinking of the eyes, very coolly. “Now I remember you … although I have forgotten your name … A friend of Princess Urania’s, are you not? Pleased to meet you again … very pleased.”

“And what do you say to your friend’s marriage?” she asked as she walked up the stairs side by side with Cornélie for a moment, between the marble candelabras of Mino de Fiesole. Gilio, still angry and flushed, and not calmed by the kiss, had withdrawn and Urania had quickly gone on ahead.