The Volcano Lover by Susan Sontag Read Free Book Online Page B

effect.)
    Then the King, holding his bride’s hand, stepped out on the balcony. Another roar went up, not so different from the one that greeted the procession of animals. As the King acknowledged the cheers and vivas of the crowd, the other balconies and the upper windows of the palace quickly filled with the leading members of the court, some of the more important nobles, members of the diplomatic corps most in favor—
    (I have heard no one is more in favor with the King than you, interrupts the auditor. Yes, says the Cavaliere, I was there.)
    Then the cannon sounded from the top of the fortress of Sant’Elmo, signaling that the assault could begin. The famished crowd gave an answering howl and broke through the ring of soldiers, who rode their rearing horses to the safety of the palace wall. Elbowing, kneeing, punching, shoving one another, the most able-bodied boys and young men pulled ahead and started to scale the mountain, which was soon aswarm with people, some clambering higher, some descending with their booty, others perched at mid-point carving up the fowl and eating it raw or throwing pieces to the outstretched arms of their womenfolk and children below. Meanwhile, others drove their knives into the animals tethered at the base of the mountain. It would be hard to say which of one’s sensory organs were being more forcefully assaulted: one’s nose, by the smell of blood and the excrement of the terrified animals; one’s ears, by the cries of the animals being slaughtered and the screams of people falling or being pushed from some part of the mountain; or one’s eyes, by the sight of the poor beasts thrashing about in their agony or of some wretch who, brought to frenzy by all these sensations, to which must be added the applause and shouts of encouragement from the windows and balconies, instead of plunging his knife into the belly of a pig or a goat, had plunged it into his neighbor’s neck.
    (I trust I am not making you think too ill of the lower orders here, interjects the Cavaliere. They are in most circumstances quite amiable. Indeed, exclaims his auditor—and, musing on human savagery rather than injustice, said no more.)
    You would be surprised, the Cavaliere continues, how little time it took to pillage the mountain. It goes even more quickly now. For that was the last year in which the animals were dismembered live. Our young Austrian queen was revolted by the spectacle and entreated the King to put some limits on the barbarity of this custom. The King decreed that the oxen and calves and pigs would be killed first by the butchers and hung already quartered on the fence. And so it is done to this day. As you see, he would conclude, there is progress even here, in this city.
    *   *   *
    How can the Cavaliere communicate to an auditor how disgusting the King is. Impossible to describe. He cannot bottle the fetid odors the King emits and waft them under his auditors’ noses, or post them to his friends in England whom he regales with his stories, as he does the sulphurs and salts from the volcano he sent back regularly to the Royal Society. He cannot call the servants to bring a bucket of blood and demonstrate, by dipping his own arms in it to the elbows, the spectacle of the King carving up hundreds of animals himself after a day’s slaughter he calls hunting. He will not mime the King standing in the harbor marketplace at sunset selling his day’s catch of swordfish. (He sells his catch? Yes, and haggles over the price. But it must be added, said the Cavaliere, that he throws his earnings to the suite of layabouts who always follow him.) Though a courtier, the Cavaliere is not an actor. He cannot become the King, even for a moment, to demonstrate or to show. That is not a virile activity. He only relates, and in the relating, the sheer odiousness of it dwindles into a tale, nothing to get wrought up over. In this kingdom of the immoderate,