Niccolo Tucci

 From The Sun and the Moon

Leonardo sneered at the man (he was beginning to learn the ways of the big city), and slowly entered the dark stairway, so typical of Rome, so contemptuous of the lowly, and yet so ungenerous even with itself: here was all this huge space, offering to the hurried foot of rich and poor alike only one third of the normal elevation per step any human stairway would offer, so that the waste of time and shoe sole would be greater, and for what logical purpose other than that of keeping social distance? Way up there in the dark archway, there was a lantern so huge it could have illuminated a basilica, yet within that intricate cage of iron and glass, there was one tiny electric bulb, so small it would hardly have lit a book in a library, a thread in a tailor shop, a nail under a shoe sole, a pot on a kitchen stove. So why all that pretense? Another clerical trick to keep you humble, he concluded. The Church is everywhere and of course these rich foreigners don’t notice it. They may even find it charming. God knows what their houses are like, up in the Protestant North.

And

One does not pull on a Cardinal’s sleeve, young man, even a three-year-old child knows that, but you are a mature man who must have spent years at a good clerical college, and I assume that you are now what all Italians of your type are, if they don’t become priests: an active anticlerical. But no matter, young man. I shall answer your question, because I like your innocence, and I realize your plight. You are a three-year-old beggar for the favors of a young goddess- you Italians have this ridiculous image of yourselves as charming creatures who combine Christian morality with pagan common sense, and then you cry like babies all over the map of the world, because other nations don’t take you seriously, but the fact is that you are no serious nation, you are a bunch of provincial bad boys, whose only interest is in your mirror, not even in your love affairs. Leave those to the French, who alone know how to deal with women because they know how to deal with everything else in this vale of tears. You ask me who that man is next to the woman you love. Once you’ve learned his name, what are you going to do to him? You should do to her what HE is doing to her because YOU didn’t: charm her with your politeness; don’t cut it off like a supply of bricks and cement once the building is finished. A love affair is not a thing, my friend, no human relationships can be treated like things: they are creatures, they need food and drink and a great deal of care, especially while they are being born. Plus many new kinds of care as they grow up. The pagans knew this very well, the Christian heathens don’t. It’s still the same old misunderstanding. Misunderstandings are always intentional: you don’t understand manners Because you don't want to understand yourself. Know thy self said the Delphic Oracle and then nothing in excess not even the kind of soul searching that will destroy the protestants in the end leave that to your confessor my dear friend he alone knows where you should stop because he learned it all straight from the pythian princess after God was reborn in a different province of history

I’ve eaten too much anyway. But you haven’t eaten anything at all, you’re like a schoolboy in love, and what have you gained by your silly games? Nothing. Worse than nothing, you’ve lost your independence which is so essential in love affairs if you are to find out what you want from your own feelings, not only what the lady of your heart wants from you, and so now you have a reputation to defend, instead of having a new province of life to discover. Have you ever read Stendhal?" 

“Who?” 

“Never mind, I should have known: Italians don’t read anything but Dante, and then only in school. They treat their love affairs as a religion, and their religion as a love affair; in fact, they refuse to discuss it by saying: I have my own private religion and I respect other people’s private religion. Which is all wrong, because religion, my friend, is the public activity by definition, more so than politics. While love is nothing if it isn’t private. You Italians make love in public, so to speak. Your love affairs are the talk of the town, and that’s why you have to be jealous: your reputation is what counts, not your feelings towards a woman and hers towards you. Thoseare all pure pretense,  or pure ritual, which is the same thing.

And

ulh Lllv ovulyv IIIII \ 1151 IL, allu uull uv u AALUL VVVl-uu uuu uuus slum". 

in that kind of stupor caused by an excess of happiness, but When her whole sentence slowly began to take shape through the thick rosy fog that had hidden the world from his mind he was so quickly precipitated into hell again that he left his smile behind, as you leave your eyes Open when you die. And sure enough, the bell rang in the hall, and, before Bernhard could Open the door, deep Russian voices were heard through the thick walls, out on the landing, awakening; corresponding chorus of Russian voices inside the crowded living room, thus establishing a clear-cut division between cultures. The Italians were all very loud in the range of tenor and baritone, and their women all very faint soprano; the GermanS-all extremely soft. Spoken, the English all very noisy, but in their typical English way making English noises, something between speech and song, aimed at destroying both, so that neither emotions nor thoughts could disturb the physiological privacy of the true English Subject. In contrast to all these, the Russians were so outspoken: they outsang and outfelt to such an extent that everyone withdrew towards the walls to make room for these extraordinary actors. A natural stage thus came into being. To his surprise, even Leonardo withdrewto the wall in awe, becoming more aware of the show than of his own emotions. But not for long.

amoreusly to the soft heartbeat of the piano. His eyes were full of tears, and his sighs were obscene. 

“What a whore,” whisPered the Cardinal into Leonardo’s ear. 

“Who?” snapped Leonardo, making everyone turn in his direc‘ tion, except for the musicians, of course. 

“Beethoven,” answered the Cardinal, and Leonardo, in extreme anguish, cried: “I don’t understand French.” 

“You should say German. French he was not, but a great genius anyway, even when he became a whore. Iust listen to this . . .” And he looked at him with all the mimicry of a woman at the height of passion. Leonardo’s eyes turned right and left to avoid him, but everybody else seemed to be having an orgasm too: elderly ladies staring at the leg of a chair, or at the highest point on the ceiling, elderly gentlemen staring at the hat of some lady in front of them, young men and women closing their eyes and slowly rocking like ships in a storm. Only the two consPirators were still counting and looking at each other with the utmost attention, to lead the whole audience deeper and deeper into the pits of sin. Then that devil of a Cardinal whiSpered into his ear again: “No wonder Tolst0y saw this as the symbol of woman’s perdition!” 

Thank God it st0pped then, and everybody was applauding. Not 

“er a lesson 1n loglc, reSpondlng 1n pertect 1* rencn. 

The Cardinal rose to the occasion once more and courageously translated, for Leonardo’s sake: “This young man who Speaks French so well, says-rightly, I think-that the word INDIVIDUAL is not an insult, eSpecially when it comes from a Protestant, be. cause all Protestants are individualists. They believe in personal initiative and not in God’s Grace. To quote him verbatim, he said that our kind hostess believes in certain select individuals, Such as bankers and industrialists, and not in others, such as poets and prOphets of the New Religion of Speed. And he claims to be the one and only such prephet blessing the sacred soil of Italy at this moment. Which of course-” 

“Just a moment, Your Eminence,” said the young man coming forward and taking OE his hat. “May I hrst of all apologize to this kind lady for not taking ofI my hat earlier, but my Italian pride had been so wounded by her that I forgot my manners. And now that] have discharged my social duties, may I take you to task again. . . .” 

“Young man,” said the Cardinal, “this is no language to use with a prince of the Church, and, besides, you have not introduced yourself.” 

“My name is Marinetti.” 

“No one invited you, so, please, spare us further noises, onomastiC or otherwise.” Then, turning to SOPhie and offering her his arm: “Madame?” 

And

Discretion is not an Italian virtue, I must say: when it comes to women, the Italian follows only the dictates of his vanity. Angelo is that way, too: he boasted to Mary about his conquests. No wonder Mary grew to detest him. . . . So, as I was saying, I swore to his mother that I knew Mary would not el0pe with you. I know you feel like the proverbial cook who broke the eggs in the basket and tried to use it as a frying pan, but this is the best thing that could have happened to you.” 

“To me?” cried Leonardo. “My life is hnished.” 

“Nonsense, it’s only beginning. It was finished before, when you thought a woman could save you. This is the typical Dante syndrome of all romantic Italians: they dream of Beatrice, to escape from their wife and children. True: Dante had all those children and a good wife he never mentioned, not even in passing, but at least his Beatrice was dead, and he did write a great poem, in which the only ugly verses are those describing his encounter with her . . . my God, what an orgy of masturbatory self-pity that is. . . . Still, the deihcation of woman was a very serious matter in those days. Modern romantic love instead is a travesty of love, a Protestant transaction to cover moral bankruptcy, a form of self-love deposited in someone else’s banking account: Love me, because I hate myself. Which is why it all ends in suicide. If you ask me, it all begins with suicide, and people rot away in happy second marriages, filling the world with the stench of their dead souls.” 

A very high-minded prelate, a prince of the Church, of course . . ." 

"Do you think he can be trusted?” 

“He is too much, that is, too much of a moralist, a very strict disciple of His Holiness in matters concerning the recent encyclical Rerum Novarum. What a disaster for the Church and for all Catholics . . . Why should His Holiness rage against all things new? What’s so sinful about the telephone or the bicycle? Or the Singer sewing machine? My wife went straight to the Pope to ask him if it was dangerous for her salvation to use it, and of course the P0pe was furious. But it’s his own fault. De Minimis non curat Praetor, says the Justinian law . . . But your Cardinal is even worse than the P0pe when it comes to scientihc progress. He thinks it’s all immoral.”