Generally, Emerence regarded our relationship as a complete mystery. She didn't understand why I had involved myself in it, but since that was how things were, she accepted it, just as I had accepted that she would never open her door. If that's how the master was, what was one to do? There was no such thing as a sane man.
Among the gifts there was only one intended for him, which I had failed to notice at first among all the junk. It was a truly beautiful leather-bound edition of
Torquato Tasso.
I hid it among the rest of the books. I couldn't at first think what to do with the other things: the gnome, for example, who carried a lamp and sported a tattered green apron and a tassel on the peak of his cap. I had arranged our kitchen rather idiosyncratically, with bits and pieces inherited from my great-grandmother. It had everything: a flour tin, a tool for shaping pasta into snails, a sausage-making machine, a hanging scale with some old weights, and a Peugeot coffee grinder, by then a listed industrial relic. The dwarf fitted snugly into a space under the sink. I fished out the ducal water heater (its little bucket would be just the thing for my scouring powder) and into the actress's make-up box I stuffed my own cosmetics.
But there remained the unresolved problems of the painting, the riding boot and the falcon. The falcon I entrusted to Viola, with excellent results. Within minutes of my letting him out of my mother's room the dog had gnawed it to pieces, leaving only fragments. I hoped the embalming chemicals wouldn't harm him, but the bird looked so very old that the poison can have been doing little for it. It had shed half its feathers, and some rodent had taken a bite out of it, so its wooden perch instantly broke off. I tapped the painting out of its frame. On its stretcher a ravaged-looking young woman stood beside a seething black ocean, staring at the foam with morbid intent. Behind her stood a mansion, and a row of cypresses plunging down a steep slope. I hung the painting on the inside of the translucent window in the kitchen door and stood the boot in the entrance hall. We had no umbrella stand, and I thought it would do as one, since Emerence had polished it so beautifully. The madwoman on the kitchen door, the antique coffee-grinder, the garden gnome by the sink next to the tub of lard, inscribed, in huge letters,
She who loves her husband cooks with lard,
which had bedecked my aunt's kitchen — so extreme was the overall impression created by the apartment that our visitors reacted in one of two ways. Either they were paralysed with amazement, or they were overcome with laughter. Even the walls of our kitchen were something else. Instead of wallpaper or paint, we had oilcloth covered in squirrels, geese and other poultry. Most of our visitors were artists. For them, the place was a familiar world of gentle lunacy. My ultra-correct relatives, with no fantasy life of their own, I had written off long ago. The only real opposition I might have encountered would have been from Emerence. It would have been quite reasonable for her to resist my having turned the kitchen and entrance hall into a madhouse. But from the first she took pleasure in being able to move around among the decor and props of this eccentric private theatre. She had a real feeling for the strange world of E.T.A. Hoffman. Emerence loved anything out of the ordinary. She considered it among the great events of her life when she asked for, and was given, an old-fashioned dressmaker's dummy left me by my mother. She carried it home in triumph, like a sacred relic. I tried in vain to understand why she filled her house with such fantastically useless objects, and then never opened her door to anyone. In any case I was stunned by the honour she had done me by asking for something. As I said, Emerence as a rule never accepted anything. Later, only very much later, in one of the most surreal moments I have ever experienced, I wandered amidst the
Among the gifts there was only one intended for him, which I had failed to notice at first among all the junk. It was a truly beautiful leather-bound edition of
Torquato Tasso.
I hid it among the rest of the books. I couldn't at first think what to do with the other things: the gnome, for example, who carried a lamp and sported a tattered green apron and a tassel on the peak of his cap. I had arranged our kitchen rather idiosyncratically, with bits and pieces inherited from my great-grandmother. It had everything: a flour tin, a tool for shaping pasta into snails, a sausage-making machine, a hanging scale with some old weights, and a Peugeot coffee grinder, by then a listed industrial relic. The dwarf fitted snugly into a space under the sink. I fished out the ducal water heater (its little bucket would be just the thing for my scouring powder) and into the actress's make-up box I stuffed my own cosmetics.
But there remained the unresolved problems of the painting, the riding boot and the falcon. The falcon I entrusted to Viola, with excellent results. Within minutes of my letting him out of my mother's room the dog had gnawed it to pieces, leaving only fragments. I hoped the embalming chemicals wouldn't harm him, but the bird looked so very old that the poison can have been doing little for it. It had shed half its feathers, and some rodent had taken a bite out of it, so its wooden perch instantly broke off. I tapped the painting out of its frame. On its stretcher a ravaged-looking young woman stood beside a seething black ocean, staring at the foam with morbid intent. Behind her stood a mansion, and a row of cypresses plunging down a steep slope. I hung the painting on the inside of the translucent window in the kitchen door and stood the boot in the entrance hall. We had no umbrella stand, and I thought it would do as one, since Emerence had polished it so beautifully. The madwoman on the kitchen door, the antique coffee-grinder, the garden gnome by the sink next to the tub of lard, inscribed, in huge letters,
She who loves her husband cooks with lard,
which had bedecked my aunt's kitchen — so extreme was the overall impression created by the apartment that our visitors reacted in one of two ways. Either they were paralysed with amazement, or they were overcome with laughter. Even the walls of our kitchen were something else. Instead of wallpaper or paint, we had oilcloth covered in squirrels, geese and other poultry. Most of our visitors were artists. For them, the place was a familiar world of gentle lunacy. My ultra-correct relatives, with no fantasy life of their own, I had written off long ago. The only real opposition I might have encountered would have been from Emerence. It would have been quite reasonable for her to resist my having turned the kitchen and entrance hall into a madhouse. But from the first she took pleasure in being able to move around among the decor and props of this eccentric private theatre. She had a real feeling for the strange world of E.T.A. Hoffman. Emerence loved anything out of the ordinary. She considered it among the great events of her life when she asked for, and was given, an old-fashioned dressmaker's dummy left me by my mother. She carried it home in triumph, like a sacred relic. I tried in vain to understand why she filled her house with such fantastically useless objects, and then never opened her door to anyone. In any case I was stunned by the honour she had done me by asking for something. As I said, Emerence as a rule never accepted anything. Later, only very much later, in one of the most surreal moments I have ever experienced, I wandered amidst the
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