Free Love in a Bottle by Antal Szerb Page B

can measure up to that? But what a fineevening this is! Would you play something? We’ve talked for so long…
    “But don’t think, Lytto, that I am afraid. I might take myself off to some faraway country for a holiday, where no one would bother me—I tell you, at times I have become very weary of it all and have given thought to such things. But I am a citizen of Milan. Anywhere else I would be a stranger, a guest; not my own master, and no longer free. And if they do succeed in killing me, I’d rather it happened here, at home, where my father and my ancestors met their fate.”
    “But why, why?”
    “Because no one can bear the thought of someone else achieving what he wants for himself from the very bottom of his heart. The free man is a permanent rebuke to others. He reminds them that they are slaves. So keep a tight rein on your passions, Lytto. You are a good, honest lad, with a pleasant face. Perhaps you will never come to understand what you have heard tonight. But if you do, learn from it. Now, isn’t it wonderful how I have rattled on this evening? But it’s been very agreeable. Now it’s time we went to bed. How does the poet put it?
    … et iam nox umida coelo
    Praecipitat, suadentque cadentia sidera somnos
.
     
    … from the sky damp night
    Sinks to a close, and the setting stars urge sleep.
    “Thank you, Lytto, for staying up with me.”
    And he stroked the boy’s hair.
    Lytto had not understood very much of what Galeazzo had told him, but as he sat there listening he had been filled with a sense of unspeakable horror. Partly it was a horror of things he could not understand; partly, and more importantly, it was Galeazzo’s manner of speaking —his calm, perfectly level tones—that so appalled him. What he could not follow in the words he understood perfectly from the tone of voice—that the man was capable of speaking about other human beings as if he had no personal connection with them—as if he were not himself human.
    Nothing more was said until they reached the Duke’s bedchamber. There Galeazzo took the candelabra from Lytto and gazed searchingly into his face.
    “I’ve something else to show you, Lytto. I’m sure you have never seen my portrait. I don’t normally show it to anyone. But this evening I’m in a good mood, so take a look.”
    He drew back a curtain and lifted up the candelabra to illuminate the picture.
    The painting hung beneath a triple arch. Against a gold background it presented a figure sitting on a tall throne, the body completely enveloped in a dark-green cloak that was so voluminous it covered the steps below and made the face above appear intensely white. The face was horrifying. Lytto instinctively stepped back. It was unquestionably the face of Galeazzo, and yet it was not. With its monstrous calmness, gazing stiffly out at the observer, it seemed no longer thecountenance of a human being. The lines were recognisably those of a man, but the expression was of something beyond humanity: certainly not a face to entertain foolish banalities, or indeed one in which anything could be read… and yet it did not seem to conceal any secret. It presented a horrific reality, in which there was nothing to be understood—a face that rejected understanding.
    The human forms painted beneath the throne were, in the hierarchical manner of the time, tiny in comparison with the central figure—a vast multitude, all with more or less identical faces, all in some way distorted and seeming to swarm in a kind of restless gloom. Above the throne, the gold background between the two lateral marble arches was interrupted by the unfinished—and truly terrifying—silhouette of two black human figures. The Duke drew the curtains closed.
    “Sit down, Lytto. You’ve gone pale. Pull yourself together,” he said. “There’s a long story behind this painting. One day, after I had escaped from danger that threatened my actual life, I decided to have my portrait done so that, if I