Stanley Elkin - Boswell

“Of course it means something to me,” I told the Principessa.

She laughed. “They told me you came by this afternoon in that foolish car. Wherever did you get it?”

“It’s not mine.”

“Well, thank God for that,” she said. “What do you want, anyway?”

“Just to be with you,” I said.

“Well, you’re with me,” she said. She put the gun down beside her and laughed.

Then she grinned. Then she smiled. And then she looked at me.

I shall try to describe my love’s person.

So lucky am I, I think. For example, I am thirty-two years old (My God, am I thirty-two years old already?) and Margaret is thirty. A man should be older than a woman. He should be taller, heavier, stronger, coarser. (I don’t approve of these mixed marriages.) He should be knowing and she innocent. It is all right if he breaks wind, but she must not even hiccup modestly. He can be plagued by beard, but her hair must be of a fixed and permanent length on her head. What, follicles in my love? Glands? My love has no follicles, no glands. That moisture on her body after exercise isn’t sweat. Perhaps it’s dew. Yes, dew. Her body is mysterious, its ways fixed— unlike my own — like some planet in its orbit, performing its rounds unconsciously, with no surprises, like a law in physics. To think of her as subject to the queer nether turmoil of the flesh is monstrous, disloyal, a lover’s sedition. She could not have had childhood’s disfiguring diseases, your poxes, your measles, your mumps; she could never have made its disfiguring sounds, your whooping coughs, your diarrhetic groans and sighs. Indeed, it is difficult to think of her as a child at all, as one subject to anything as vulgar as growth. Yet of course she has a body, and that is what is so mysterious: she ought not to have one at all. But she is so clever about it that she has somehow marvelously arranged it. It is as if she pulls it out of the wall only when it’s needed, like a Murphy bed. And indeed there is something of fake bookcasery about her, of hollow woodwork, unseen passageways, secret staircases, hidden crypts — something plotted, designed, carefully contrived for contingency. She is absolutely Tudor, Renaissance, manorial.

She is of medium height. Admittedly I was piqued by that at first. What, medium height? Average? Do you say “average”? But then I saw the artful subtlety of it — to work only with the given. How clever of Margaret, really! (She has the air of being responsible for her entire being, the curve of her ears, the shape of her hands— everything.) To avoid an ungainly tallness (women do not know how to handle height; it is above them) and yet to finesse a coy compression. Women do not know how to handle depth either.

Her hair, the color of ancient coins, is a lushness beneath lushness, as though spilled from a cornucopia of hair, from the very source of hair, her sweet hirsute hair source. It is a Niagara of hair which tumbles from hidden bluffs of scalp. (I have seen this scalp. It is so pale. I have touched — the wondrous whiteness, thin, I’m sure, as paper — my tongue to it, its very center, the point where it begins its slow careful spiral, more complex than a thumbprint.) It frames her face and lends to it the aspect of a tan gift on some golden platter. Max Factor, you are no factor here.

Her nose is a propriety. An attribute. Her mouth… How I love to gaze into the marvelous machinery of her mouth, to watch the tongue as it scales the walls of teeth, to spy on it as it makes its mysterious, wondrous noises. I do not even listen to the words. I don’t even hear them. One listens as one listens to a song, ignoring the words. It is strange to think that they are formed by a brain, that they demonstrate a will. (Away from her I can sometimes think of her as a human being, but when I am with her, never. Even her name, Margaret dei Medici, with its alliterative melody, seems something improbable and anthropomorphic gotten up for children, so that I ’ find I must patronize her, pretend that she is as real as I am, talk of her to herself as one talks of Donald Duck or Mickey Mouse to a child.) How bright of her, I think, to make speech, show anger. It must be just some clever parlor trick performed for company. I should like to see her dance, hear her sing, recite. It is comical that she should wear a dress, jewelry, stockings, complicated underwear, that she should take food and need sleep.

She has eyes. I presume they see. They are green. How remarkable!

How much does she weigh, I wonder. I shall have to lift her.

I have seen the pulse in her neck. It starts my own.

I have seen her legs. Don’t speak of them; they will break your heart.

I have seen her breasts. Enough. You will go mad.

Rudy Lip said that Margaret is the whore of the world. I knocked him down.

Rudy stared up at me from the floor. “This won’t get around, you know. I’ll never say you hit me defending Margaret’s honor. I’ll say you hit me as a professional warning from one international gigolo to another. Well, it’s too late. You should have hit me years ago.”

I was with Margaret at the cocktail party at the Embassy. She had seen Rudy Lip and he’d told her I had hit him.

“Why did you do such a stupid thing?” she asked me.

“He’s a son of a bitch.”

“We don’t slam people around for that, do we?”

“He said some things,” I said.

“Ah,” she said. “About me.”

“No, of course not. Why should he say anything about you?”

“Why not? He told you he made love to me.”

“I’d never believe anything like that,” I said.

“Why not? It’s true. Rudy is an attractive man.”

“Oh, Margaret.”

“Don’t look so tragic. You know all about me. You won’t reform my character.”

I told her that character had nothing to do with it, that I was worried about her.

“Why?”

“Damn it, Margaret, what if you had a child?”

“I won’t.”

“Why not?” I said gloomily. “You didn’t let me use anything.”

She laughed and said who did I think I was dealing with, anyway? She was a Principessa, a Medici. She had status. She was one of five unmarried women in Roman Catholic Italy fitted for her own diaphragm.

The Principessa had gone to a concert at the Teatro d’Opera.

I bought a ticket. “Near the Principessa dei Medici’s box, please,” I told the girl.

“Oh, sir,” she said, “the Principessa has a season box. I am not sure where it is. Perhaps the flunky would be able to show it to you.” She indicated a big, distinguished-looking old man in elegant livery. So, I thought, they’re really called flunkies. “He does not speak English, however.”

“I’ll make out,” I said.

I went up to the fellow. “Dove Principessa Medici?” I said.

He looked at my clothes. ‘Non lo so,” he said.

“Come, come,” I said. “Venire, venire. Sono Principe Boswell il Eccentrico. Dove Principessa Medici?”

“No lo so.”

“Sono Mister Boswell, il ricce Americano, molti dollars, molti macchinas, lotsa lire. Dove Principessa Medici?”

“No lo so.”

“Sono Boswell the lovesick. Dove Principessa?”

“No lo so.”

“Flunky!” I said to the flunky and walked off.

I rented a pair of opera glasses and scanned the boxes. It was half an hour before I located Margaret. I waved to her but she did not respond. During the intermission I went to her box. She didn’t seem very surprised to see me. “Look,” she said, “there are sixty-three princesses in Europe — sixty-four if you count Anastasia. Twenty-six of those girls are the real thing. Perhaps eight of them will one day succeed to a throne. Why don’t you bother one of them?”