Antal Szerb - Love in a Bottle

But in fact Lytto had understood nothing, retaining only the sense of horror that had filled him and the tortured thoughts that continued to trouble his mind. However, it was some consolation that the Duke had taken him so deeply into his confidence that evening. He was certainly pleased that it was he, the simple pageboy, little more than a child, who had been chosen to be trusted with such secrets, and presumably not without reason.

One evening Lytto, kept awake by a combination of his unanswered questions and the general restlessness of young blood, went roaming through the castle. By chance he made his way up to the observatory, where the court astrologer tirelessly practised his strange mumbo-jumbo. When he saw Lytto, his face filled with concern.

“You must pray, young page — pray most diligently for our good lord and master. His star has entered a malign phase and his life is in danger. They tell me you are very attached to him. Is that true?”

“It is,” the boy answered, almost shamefacedly.

The astrologer looked at him with real curiosity, as at a miraculous sign or portent.

That night the two of them became quite friendly, although the friendship was rather one-sided. The enthusiasm with which the astrologer sought to initiate him into his not very interesting little technical mysteries left the boy rather cold.

Long after he had become thoroughly bored with the incomprehensible chatter about houses, planets in the ascension, phases of the moon, transitions and periods, he suddenly asked the astrologer:

“What makes the stars move in the sky?”

The man’s face filled with reverence.

“What moves the stars is Love, my child. They are attracted to one another as a man is to a woman. They roar across the endless plain of heaven in pursuit of each other.”

“Then what can they have to do with the fate of humanity? Surely their own love lives keep them quite busy enough?”

“My boy, my boy, what you haven’t grasped is that the same Love also directs humanity. Even as we walk the road of Lesser Love down below, we follow in the steps of the Greater.”

“But what about a person who loves no one?”

“There is no such person. Such a person isn’t human. He is the Antichrist,” the astrologer replied, and made the sign of the cross.

Lytto took his leave and made his way rapidly down from the tower. He was aquiver with excitement. The astrologer’s words, filled as they were with superstition, had struck a very deep chord. No one could live without love. So Galeazzo, in his tower of solitude, on his truly horrible throne of ‘freedom’… how could he ever stand and look the God of Love in the eye?

Like a fugitive he ran down the dark corridors, between their long lines of columns, his head buzzing with the ancient Italian superstition of the One with the False Face who will appear at the end of the world. Perhaps he had heard of it as a child, or simply knew of it through some ancient folk memory. He sought refuge in ardent prayer, begging for the mercy of enlightenment amidst his terrible doubts, and eventually fell asleep.

That night he had a truly beautiful dream. He and Galeazzo were riding across a wide, sunlit plain. Huge white birds came and sat on their shoulders, and ate scented berries from their hands. Then Galeazzo dismounted, adjusted Lytto’s saddle, and looked into his face with anxious concern. “Aren’t you tired, Lytto? Are you really not tired, my boy?”

And when he woke next morning, and lay stretching out pleasantly in his bed, he felt that he had solved the riddle. The portrait had simply presented what the mad Milanese painter had dreamt up in his uncomprehending phantasmagoria. And the things Galeazzo had said that evening about power and solitude, those blood-chilling and godless words, were nothing more than the result of a sick and ageing man’s momentary bitterness, not to be taken seriously. There was undoubtedly love in Galeazzo’s heart, as there was in every man’s. His hand was capable of caressing, his eyes of smiling, kindly and gently, like everyone else’s. And above all, Galeazzo loved him, the quiet little pageboy. That was the wonderful, the miraculous thing, that such a great man should love such an insignificant child. If the people of Milan ever knew about that, they would instantly throw away their weapons of hatred.

And when he entered the bedchamber next door to rouse the Duke and draw back the curtain around the enormous bed, he smiled at him, intimately, confidently. And, just as he had every other morning since his fever had left him, Galeazzo beckoned Lytto to him, made him sit on the side of the bed, and, in the simple, almost child-like tones of a man only half awake, jested with him about why he had not let him sleep on, when the day had only just broken.

“So what did you dream about, young Lytto?” he asked that morning.

“I’m not telling,” the boy replied, blushing.

Mornings like this fully compensated Lytto for his nights of solitary pensiveness.

By now Galeazzo had made a full recovery. The same penetrating, steely look was back in his eye, and he was working as tirelessly as ever. Thinking back over the course of his illness with his usual cool objectivity, he was forced to admit that he had too often let himself go, had on too many occasions been soft-hearted, even sentimental. But at the same time he could not reflect on that illness without seeing, time and again, the boy’s faithful figure, leaning solicitously over him or strumming his lyre to drive away his gloomy convalescent thoughts, with the promise of recovery shining in his kindly eye. In truth, whichever way he looked at it, he was now deeply bound to this lad, once his nurse and now his confidant. So when Lytto drew back his bed curtain in the morning, he felt it would now be almost his duty to address him in more intimate terms, and treat him with every kindness. It was now his due.

That idea tormented him endlessly, because for the first time in his life he was in someone’s debt and thus in a dependent relationship. So he decided he would reward him with princely generosity and thereby annul the debt to him once and for all.

One day he summoned Lytto before him. He was seated in the Council Chamber in session with his secretaries and his mercenary captains. Lytto bowed low, and Galeazzo made a sign to his Chancellor, who read out the following proclamation:

“We Galeazzo, lawful Duke of Milan, being mindful of the many services rendered to us by our noble page during our recent illness, and further mindful that the highest pleasure of princes is the rewarding of true desert, do hereby acknowledge our noble page as rightful heir to the name and fortune of his late mother the Contessa di Franghipani, now with God, and herewithal entrust the management of his estate to our noble Chancellor, Father Morone, until he be of age; and further, as a mark of our satisfaction with Count Ippolyto di Franghipani, we appoint him henceforth to attend on us in person.”

At first Lytto found this great — and quite unexpected — honour overwhelming. He saw it as powerful evidence of the Duke’s love, and confirmation that, in his dream, he had indeed solved the mystery that had so vexed him. The tower of solitude and the throne of ‘freedom’ were no more than a lie — a lie that had now been dispelled, like a fog.

Henceforth he had a new subject for his reveries. Now that he knew himself as Count Franghipani he was determined to be worthy of the ancestral name. His previously formless yearning for romantic, heroic action took on a new intensity. When no one was watching he would pace out the empty, stone-slabbed rooms, with a heavy, solemn stride. He pored over his books with even greater diligence, seeking a suitable model from among the ancient heroes. He gazed lovingly at his little dagger, still his only weapon, and tested its sharpness, trembling in the anticipation of mighty deeds.