Free The Volcano Lover by Susan Sontag Page B

genitals.
    The Knave of Cups, she said solemnly, is a poetic youth much given to … reflection and study … with a great appreciation of beauty but perhaps not enough … application to become an artist … another young relative … I cannot see, but I think he is a friend of your wife … who will—
    The Cavaliere waved his hand impatiently. Show me something else, some other skill, he said. I am interested in all your tricks.
    One more card, my lord.
    One more. Sighing pointedly, he reached out and took another, a last.
    Ah, this is for me, Efrosina exclaimed. But also for you. What luck!
    Not another member of the Vase family, I trust.
    She shook her head, smiling, and held up the card.
    His Excellency does not recognize the fair-haired youth carrying a satchel of indigo leather slung over his shoulder and a butterfly net?
    The Cavaliere did not reply.
    His Excellency does not see that the youth is stepping off a precipice?
    Precipice?
    But there is no danger, she went on, since he is immortal.
    I don’t see any of that! Who is it?
    The Fool.
    And who is the Fool? cried the Cavaliere, flushing. The one-eyed boy stepped from the shadows in the corner.
    My son.
    *   *   *
    At Efrosina’s another time.
    She told him she could put him into a trance, though she was not sure he would like that. His Excellency wants to see what he already sees.
    It took some urging to persuade her. All but the votive candle was extinguished. A drink was brought by young Pumo. The Cavaliere leaned back in his chair.
    I see nothing, he said.
    Close your eyes, my lord.
    He drifted. He let the lethargy that was under the energy rise up and sweep over him. He let his temperament, like a retractile bridge, slide open to let the big ship of a vision pass through.
    Open your eyes …
    The room had disappeared. There must have been some opiate in the drink, which made him imagine himself inside a giant dungeon, a grotto, a cavern. It was shimmering with pictures. The walls were milky white like the glass box she had showed him on his first visit, like the King’s fat hands. On one wall he saw a crowd of dancing figures.
    Do you see your mother? Efrosina’s voice asked. People always see their mothers.
    Of course I don’t see my mother, said the Cavaliere, rubbing his eyes.
    But do you see the volcano?
    He was starting to hear a low diffused hissing, rattling. An almost silent noise, like the nearly immobile movement of the dancers.
    The noise and the movement of melancholy.
    I see fire, said the Cavaliere.
    He wanted to see fire. What he saw was the blackened, leveled summit she had spoken of. The mountain entombed, lying in its rubbish. He saw it for a moment, although he would forget it afterward: the terrible future. The bay without fish, without the swimming children; the mountain’s plumeless top a desolate cinder heap. What has happened to the beautiful world, cried the Cavaliere, and flung his hand toward the candle on the table as if to will it lit again.

5
    The Marquis de Sade described Italy—he was there in 1776, and met the Cavaliere, who was about to take another leave—as “the most beautiful country in the world, inhabited by the world’s most backward people.” Happy the much-traveled foreigner, who comes and leaves, sated with impressions, which are turned into judgments and, eventually, into nostalgia. But every country is lovable, and every people. Every variant, every piece of being has something lovable about it!
    *   *   *
    Four years after the Cavaliere’s first leave he and Catherine had returned to England and again stayed nearly a year. While the insignificance of his post had become more obvious, with the secretaries of state preoccupied with the revolt in the American colonies and the rivalry with France, his contributions to learning and to the improvement of taste were more acclaimed than ever.