taking up with her I had asked for trouble. Why? Maybe the purpose of such trouble was to turn me deeper into realms of peculiar but necessary thought. One of these peculiar thoughts occurred now. It was that the beauty of a woman like Renata was not entirely appropriate. It was out of season. Her physical perfection was of the Classical Greek or High Renaissance type. And why was this sort of beauty historically inappropriate? Well, it went back to a time when the human spirit was just beginning to disengage itself from nature. Until that moment it hadn’t occurred to man to think of himself separately. He hadn’t distinguished his own being from natural being but was a part of it. But as soon as intellect awoke he became separated from nature. As an individual, he looked and saw the beauty of the external world, including human beauty. This was a moment sacred in history—the golden age. Many centuries later, the Renaissance tried to recover this first sense of beauty. But even then it was too late. Intellect and spirit had moved on. A different sort of beauty, more internal, had begun its development. This internal beauty, manifested in romantic art and poetry, was the result of a free union of the human spirit with the spirit of nature. So Renata really was a peculiar phantom. My passion for her was an antiquarian passion. She seemed to be aware of this herself. Look at the way she swaggered and clowned. Attic or Botticellian loveliness doesn’t smoke cigars. It doesn’t stand up and do vulgar things in the bathtub. It doesn’t stop in a picture gallery and say, “There’s a painter with balls.” It doesn’t talk like that. But what a pity! How I missed herl What a darling woman she was, that crook! But she was a holdover from another time. I couldn’t say that I had the new sort of internal beauty. I was a dumb old silly. But I had heard of this beauty, I got advance notice of it. What did I propose to do about this new beauty? I didn’t know yet. At the moment I was waiting for Roger. He was eager to play dominoes. I was eager to get a glimpse of his mother in his face as I sat opposite with the dotted bones.
thirty-five
The haggard Danish lady, Rebecca Volsted, came and walked with me in the Retiro. I walked slowly and she limped alongside. Her cloche hat was pulled low on her face. Her face with its bitter flashes was lightning-pale. She questioned me very closely. She asked why I spent so much time in my room. She felt snubbed by me. Not socially. Socially I was very friendly. I only snubbed her—well, essentially. She seemed to be saying that if I wrestled passionately with her in bed she could, bad hip or no bad hip, cure me of what ailed me. On the contrary, experience had finally taught me that if I followed her suggestion I would only acquire one more (and possibly demented) dependent.
“What do you do all day long in your room?”
“I have to catch up on my correspondence.”
“I suppose you have to notify people of your wife’s death. How did she die, anyway?”
“She died of tetanus.”
“You know, Mr. Citrine, I’ve taken the trouble of looking you up in Who’s Who in the United States.”
“Why ever did you do that?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” she said. “A hunch. For one thing, though you have an American passport, you don’t behave like a real American. I felt there must be something to you.”
“So you found out that I was born in Appleton, Wisconsin. Just like Harry Houdini, the great Jewish escape artist—I wonder why he and I chose Appleton to be born in.”
“Is there an element of choice?” said Rebecca. In her cloche hat, fire-pale, and limping beside me in the Spanish park she spoke up for rationality. I slowed my pace for her as we talked.
I said, “Of course, science is on your side. Still, it’s rather strange, you know. People who have been on earth for only ten years or so are suddenly beginning to compose fugues and prove subtle theorems in mathematics. It may be that we may bring a great many powers here with us, Miss Volsted. The chronicles say that before Napoleon was born his mother enjoyed visiting battlefields.