Stanley Elkin - Boswell

“All right,” I said, “but don’t pick me up. Park your car on a side street and I’ll meet you in front of the place.”

“Aren’t you afraid I’ll be raped?”

“Are you kidding? The whore of the world?” This was our little joke.

I met Margaret at the main entrance to the Colosseum.

“It’s locked,” she said.

“Why? What could anyone take?”

“It’s locked,” she said. “Try it yourself.”

I went up to the big iron gate that had been set across the main arch. It was sealed only by a small Yale lock. I’ll break it, I decided, queerly pleased that I was still something of an outsider, that some violations were still a matter of strength.

For some reason I did not want Margaret to watch me. “I think I might be able to pick the lock,” I said. “You stand over there and warn me if anyone comes.”

I turned back to the lock. I spat on my hands. Tugging at the lock experimentally, I saw that I wouldn’t be able to twist the metal. It was sturdier than I had thought. If I were to break it I would have to pull the bolt loose in exactly the same way that I would if I’d had a key. Gripping the torso of the lock in my palm I pulled heavily against the bolt. It didn’t move. What’s this? I thought testily. What’s this? I put both hands around the lock, working my finger through the steel arch. I set my feet carefully into position, like an athlete seeking leverage, and strained against the lock mightily. I heard the gate itself creak as it bulged petuantly on its hinges, but the lock remained intact. I could almost see the thick, brutish overbite of the jagged metal inside the lock.

“Hurry,” Margaret said, thirty feet away.

Shut up, I thought. Leave me alone.

“In a minute, Margaret,” I said. “This is delicate work.”

All right, I thought. Now! I folded both hands about the lock, lacing my fingers. I invoked Sandusky. It was an intrusion. I thought of myself alone in the gymnasium, in the jockstrap, under the weights, the tons of metal on my back. I heaved against the lock. “Because,” I murmured, “because my heart is pure.” It didn’t budge. “Because, because,” I insisted, “because my fucking heart is pure!” I broke my heart against that lock. It wouldn’t give. My strength is gone, I thought. And in an Olympic year. It was important. Panic filled me like something sour. I was out of condition and the condition was singleness, and my strength — any I’d ever had — had been in that. You were not in it for the money, I thought. You were not. I had been shorn. Had I touched my head I would have felt scalp. Hairless as Samson, like some gross fairy, I sweated outside the Colosseum in the moonlight, in the soft air. In rain I might have broken it, I thought. In rougher weather. The condition was singleness, and I was out of it. Aloneness. My strength was in solitude. In being a stranger in town, in lies, in indifference. In the heart’s decision to go it alone, in its conviction that it could hold out against the world’s ponderous siege. For months, for years, guaranteed for life like an expensive watch. Oh Christ, I thought, it isn’t fair, to be burdened like that, to have to be a hero. Who needs it? To have always to reject and refuse and negate like some saint in reverse. Not to give quarter, that was simply good generalship, but not to accept it, that was insanity.

“All right,” I confessed. “I’m in it for the money. Margaret is nothing to me!”

I fell to the ground, but the lock — the lock was in my hand.

“What happened?” Margaret asked, rushing up.

“Just fell for you, Principessa,” I said.

“Oh, get up,” she said.

“The Rape of the Lock,” I said, showing Margaret the lock.

We went inside. “Oh,” Margaret said. “Oh! Oh! Let’s go up.”

With only the light of the moon to guide us we went through the dark passages and up the ancient, dangerous steps. At the second landing Margaret paused for breath. I kissed her.

“Come on,” I said. “I’ve just begun to climb.”

We went to the very top. Here the Emperors had sat. I looked out over the broken stones below; they resembled some harrowed cemetery in the moonlight.

“I could have been a gladiator,” I said. “If I’d lived in those days I could have been a gladiator.”

“Not a Christian?”

“The gladiator had a better chance than the Christian.”

“I could have been a Roman,” Margaret said.

“It’s funny,” I said, “I never thought of being a Roman.”

“Poor Boswell.”

“Well, maybe a freed slave,” I said.

I clapped my hands imperially. I turned my thumb down. I lifted it high. “Which is the real me, Principessa?” I asked.

“Oh, the thumb up,” she said.

“Up it is,” I said. “All the way.”

I put my hand in my pocket.

“What’s wrong?” Margaret asked after a moment. “Isn’t it working out? Isn’t this what you had in mind?”

“Oh, it is,” I said. “Exactly.”

“What shall we do now?” Margaret said.

“The Spanish Steps,” I said quickly.

“By moonlight,” she said.

“Moonlight it is,” I said.

I let her drive me in the car. “Come on,” I said once we were there, “let’s go up.”

“But it’s so high. Must we?”

“Of course,” I said, starting up. Margaret came along behind me. “Come on. Two, four at a time. Rome, Margaret,” I said, calling over my shoulder in the manner of one explaining an important principle on the run, “is a test of strength.”

We were in the Piazza di Spagna yesterday afternoon by the Bernini the Elder fountain and it was two o’clock and the shops were all closed and there wasn’t much traffic in the street and a horse carriage went by. “Say,” I said to the Principessa, “that looks romantic. Is it expensive?”

“What’s expensive?” the Principessa of All the Italies said.

“Listen,” I said, “I think we ought to try it. You translate for me and say everything I tell you.”

“But we were going to lunch.”

“We will,” I said. “We will. I’ll just call the next one over.”

I raised my hand as an old man in a long brown smock was guiding his carriage past the fountain. “Horseman,” I called, “I say, horseman!”

“Sair?” he said, drawing up the reins.

“He must be made to think he’s dealing with Italians.” I whispered to Margaret. “Tell him that I mean to engage him, but that first certain arrangements must be made.”

“Oh, Boswell, he has a meter.”

“Never mind that. Tell him ’certain arrangements must be made.’ Can you say that in Italian—‘certain arrangements’?”

The Principessa said something to the horseman and he said something back.

“What’s he say?” I asked.

“He wants to know what you mean, ’certain arrangements’?”

“Tell him that when I say ’certain arrangements’ I am speaking in reference to the fact that he has nothing to pull that cab but a single horse, that this is an age of mechanization — of horsepower, that is true, but of horsepower in concert, as it were. Tell him that this is the horsepower age and that it would hardly be fair for him to expect people to pay a man with only one horse the same rate they would pay a man with thirty-five or forty horses. Tell him also that a motor-driven taxi can cover a given distance in a fraction of the time a single-horse- drawn carriage can cover it.”

“Oh, Boswell,” Margaret said.

“You are a Principessa,” I said. “I am a lousy commoner. I have to think about these things. Tell him.”

She told him. He looked from Margaret to me, staring at me curiously, but not without a certain admiration. He hesitated for a moment and then said something to Margaret.