The Volcano Lover by Susan Sontag Read Free Book Online

acre’s worth of trousseau having been assembled, and the tearful bride and her vast retinue having been readied for the departure—and in Naples, the ultra-pomp of a royal wedding having reached an advanced state of planning (the dressing of public spaces, the designing of allegorical fireworks and pastries, the composing of music for processions and balls), and the nobles and the diplomatic colony having girded themselves for the extra expenses of banquets and new finery … no one was prepared for the black-garbed emissary from the Hapsburg court who arrived with the deflating message that on the very eve of her departure the fifteen-year-old archduchess had succumbed to the smallpox then raging in Vienna, which had nearly carried off the empress as well.
    Learning the news that same morning, the Cavaliere put on his court regalia and set out in his best carriage to perform the offering of condolences. Upon entering the palace, he asked to be escorted to the King and was brought not to the royal apartments but to an alcove inside the high archway opening onto a great gallery, some three hundred feet long and lined with pictures of the hunt, where the Prince of San ***, the King’s tutor, stood musing. No, not musing. Fuming. Far down the gallery a noisy, aromatic, gilded procession, illuminated by torches and tapers, was advancing toward them.
    I have come to express my sincere—
    The prince’s scornful eye.
    As you see, His Majesty’s grief knows no bounds, said the prince.
    Advancing toward them, six young men carried a coffin draped in crimson velvet on their shoulders. A priest was keeping step, waving a censer. Two pretty servants bore gold vases filled with flowers. The sixteen-year-old King followed, swathed in black, with a black handkerchief to his face.
    (You know what people here make of funerals, the Cavaliere would interject, ever eager to share information. No show of grief is too excessive.)
    The procession neared the Cavaliere. Put her down, said the King.
    He bounded over to the Cavaliere and seized his hand. Come, you can be one of the mourners.
    Majesty!
    Come! bellowed the King. I am not allowed to hunt, they won’t let me take my boat out to fish—
    For one day only, interrupted the old prince, furious.
    All day—the King stamped his foot—I have to stay indoors. We were playing leapfrog for a while and then wrestling, but this is better. Much better.
    He pulled the Cavaliere over to the coffin, in which lay a young man in a lace-trimmed white gown, eyes with velvety lashes shut firmly, his rosy cheeks and his hands, folded over his chest, dotted with tiny lumps of creamy brown.
    (The youngest of the chamberlains, often teased by the others because of his girlish good looks, who had been conscripted to play the dead archduchess, annotates the Cavaliere. Pause. And the drops of chocolate … you can divine what they signify. Actually not, says his auditor. These, explains the Cavaliere, were the pustules of smallpox.)
    The boy’s chest gently rose and fell.
    Look, look, just like life!
    The King seized a torch from one of the attendants and struck an operatic pose. Oh, my love. My bride is dead!
    The pallbearers snickered.
    No, you mustn’t laugh. The light of my life! The joy of my heart! So young. Still a virgin, at least I hope so. And dead! With beautiful white hands I would have kissed, beautiful white hands she would have put here—he showed, on his anatomy, where.
    (The Cavaliere does not add that he had already had more than one viewing of the royal groin—of the King’s own very white skin, spotted with herpes, which his doctor considered a sign of good health.)
    Don’t you feel sorry for me, the King shouted to the Cavaliere.
    (Neither does the Cavaliere relate how he finally extricated himself, but he does mention that throughout this farce a dwarflike priest continued to recite the Mass for the Dead. Not a real