Stanley Elkin - Boswell

“Well, the best people,” I said.

“He’s cute,” Rudy Lip said unpleasantly. “Wherever did you find him?”

“Oh, he’s not mine, Rudy, but I found him in Washington, at the Vice-President’s party. He’s a kind of gate crasher, but it’s all absolutely high art with him. Boswell is devoted, aren’t you, Boswell?”

“I’m very pure,” I said.

“He’s an absolute pauper,” Wylia went on, “but he knows more people than I do. Tell them the people you know, Boswell.”

“Alphabetically by country?” I said.

“Whatever’s convenient,” Rudy Lip said, giving me some.

“The Archbishops of Aden, Australia and Austria. A big shot in the Bahamas. A bananaman from Brazil. A—”

“That’s marvelous,” Marvin Rilroyl said. “Rouse the Principessa.”

“Principessa, Principessa,” Buster Bird said, shaking a woman at the other end of the table who had laid her head on her arms and gone to sleep. “Principessa, you must hear this.”

“Please stop that screaming,” the Principessa said. “I need my rest. Too much depends upon my longevity. Shut the windows. I feel a draft. Throw someone on the fire.”

“It is too sad,” Bizarrio said to me. “Such a lovely young woman and she goes on like that.” He shook his head.

“I heard what Bizarrio told you,” she said. “What would a clown and fop know about it? I am thirteen hundred years old, the last of my race.”

“Cheery beery be, Principessa, old pat,” I said. “Every cloud has a silver lining.”

“Who, I wonder,” she said, “is your jeweler, young man?”

She came to my pensione and we made love.

“What are you a Principessa of?” I asked afterwards, looking down at her.

“Mmrrhhghh,” she said comfortably.

“What are you a Principessa of?” I asked again.

“Of all the Italies,” she said. “I am Principessa of all the Italies.”

I rolled over on my side. “You’re very beautiful.”

“Molte sano,” she said, “like a classy whore.”

“What’s wrong?”

She sat up swiftly. “Hasn’t it registered with you yet just who you’ve got in your bed? I’m Margaret dei Medici. A Medici. The Last of the Medicis.”

I put my arms around her. “Medici,” I said, “Medici. Poisoners and conspirators, weren’t they?”

“You’re thinking of the Borgias,” she said. “The Borgias were a bad lot. ‘The Bad Borgias,’ we used to call them. What are you, Guelph or Ghibelline?”

“I beg you pardon?”

“Guelph or Ghibelline? Who do you root for?”

“Which is the home team?”

“Oh, Guelph,” she said.

I put my hand lightly against her face. “Are you really a Principessa?” I said.

“What is more to the point, are you really a commoner?”

“Common as clay.”

“You’re quite sure that gypsies didn’t steal you at birth?”

“No,” I said seriously, “as a matter of fact, I’m not.”

She smiled.

“I might yet turn out to be a Princippe or something,” I said. “I may just be in reduced circumstances.”

“Who isn’t?” she said.

“Principessa?”

“Who isn’t?” she said again.

“Principessa?”

“Oh, shut up,” she said. “Stop calling me that, will you! It sounds as if I’m supposed to precede you out of bed or something.”

“Will I see you again?” I asked.

“It’s not much as personal tragedies go, is it? Selfish, isn’t it, to be concerned about being bored? Why, it’s trite. A bored princess! But you see, that’s all made up. I’m the only bored princess I know. The others keep saying they are, but it’s just talk with them. Well, I’m sorry. I’m not poor or crippled or anything like that, but unhappiness is unhappiness, isn’t it? It’s fatuous to quibble about degrees of unhappiness.”

“Will I see you again?”

“Do you know the Pitti Palace in Florence? The Uffizi Gallery? My people gave them.”

“Will I see you again, Margaret?”

“Principessa.”

“Will I see you again?”

“No. You can’t come to the castle.” She giggled.

“Please.”

“No playing in the palace.”

“Margaret, I think I love you.”

“Heavy, heavy lies the head that wears the crown, did you know that?” She moved away from me and sat up on the edge of the bed. “Well,” she said, “is it all over?”

“What do you mean?”

“The lovemaking. It is all over? Was that all there was to it? I’ll be damned. And I thought you commoners were supposed to have such extraordinary sexual powers.”

Angus Sinclair called to say that he and Buster Bird and Rudy Lip were on their way over to the Hassler to have dinner and catch Mussolini’s son, who plays piano there.

“A lot of the boys will be there. You come too.”

It occurred to me that being alive was beginning to seem like being off on a convention somewhere. “I don’t think so, Angus,” I said. “I’ve been trying to get in touch with someone all day.”

“Principessa Poison? The Royal Welcome Wagon?”

“Hey, listen,” I said.

“Not so edgy. She’s the ignoblest Roman of them all. Common knowledge. Public domain. Come hear Mussolini’s son. I’ll introduce you as one of the Allies. No kidding, wait till you hear him. Great jazz style. Does a riff on ‘Deutschland, Deutschland Über Alles’ makes strong men weep.”

I decided to go. Angus might be able to tell me something about the Principessa. Only after I began to walk to the hotel did my indifference about meeting another celebrity strike me as peculiar. Was this a stiffening of character on my part? Probably I had simply made a choice. Between the son of a dead, discredited Duce and the daughter of a once great family, I had chosen the daughter. Boswell, you old fraud, I thought, you family man.

I asked Astarte Morgan about the Principessa.

“Oh, Boswell,” she said, “you aren’t falling in love with her, are you?”

“Oh, love,” I said. (This is my new style in conversation. People say something to me and I choose one of their words and repeat it back to them. It’s very sophisticated and Henry Jamesish and sounds as if it might mean something.)

“Because it seems such a touristy thing to do,” Astarte Morgan said, “like seeing the Colosseum by moonlight or attending Mass in St. Peter’s.”

“I’d hardly say that wanting to be with the Principessa is anything like attending Mass in St. Peter’s,” Buster Bird said.

“Well, is there anything wrong with her?” I asked.

“She’s a character,” Buster Bird said.

“She’s middle class,” Astarte said firmly.

“That’s ridiculous, Astarte,” I said.

“She is — she’s middle class. You’d think all those centuries would have bred something into her. Not Margaret. I tell you she’s as surprised to find herself a Principessa as my char would be.”

“That’s just her enthusiasm,” I said.

“Enthusiasm, indeed. It’s all she talks about. She’s always going around giving the secret handshake,” Astarte said.

“She carries herself like a queen,” I said.

“That’s difficult to bring off with your head on the table.”

“Well, that’s just a remark, Astarte,” I said.

“Is it? You were there. You saw her that night. No, Boswell, forgive me, but she drinks.”

“Oh, drinks,” I said.

“And she screws,” Buster Bird said.

“Oh, screws.”

I borrowed Mussolini’s kid’s car. It’s something called a Rameses X-900. I couldn’t find first gear.