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the aspern papers-第8章

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who was simply hearsay to her; quite as he was to me。  Only she had

lived for years with Juliana; she had seen and handled the papers and

(even though she was stupid) some esoteric knowledge had rubbed off on her。

That was what the old woman representedesoteric knowledge;

and this was the idea with which my editorial heart used to thrill。

It literally beat faster often; of an evening; when I had been out;

as I stopped with my candle in the re…echoing hall on my way up to bed。

It was as if at such a moment as that; in the stillness; after the long

contradiction of the day; Miss Bordereau's secrets were in the air;

the wonder of her survival more palpable。  These were the acute impressions。

I had them in another form; with more of a certain sort of reciprocity;

during the hours that I sat in the garden looking up over the top

of my book at the closed windows of my hostess。  In these windows

no sign of life ever appeared; it was as if; for fear of my catching

a glimpse of them; the two ladies passed their days in the dark。

But this only proved to me that they had something to conceal;

which was what I had wished to demonstrate。  Their motionless shutters

became as expressive as eyes consciously closed; and I took comfort

in thinking that at all events through invisible themselves they saw me

between the lashes。



I made a point of spending as much time as possible in the garden;

to justify the picture I had originally given of my horticultural passion。

And I not only spent time; but (hang it! as I said) I spent money。

As soon as I had got my rooms arranged and could give the proper

thought to the matter I surveyed the place with a clever expert

and made terms for having it put in order。  I was sorry to do this;

for personally I liked it better as it was; with its weeds and its wild;

rough tangle; its sweet; characteristic Venetian shabbiness。

I had to be consistent; to keep my promise that I would smother

the house in flowers。  Moreover I formed this graceful project that

by flowers I would make my wayI would succeed by big nosegays。

I would batter the old women with liliesI would bombard their

citadel with roses。  Their door would have to yield to the pressure

when a mountain of carnations should be piled up against it。

The place in truth had been brutally neglected。  The Venetian capacity

for dawdling is of the largest; and for a good many days unlimited

litter was all my gardener had to show for his ministrations。

There was a great digging of holes and carting about of earth;

and after a while I grew so impatient that I had thoughts of

sending for my bouquets to the nearest stand。  But I reflected

that the ladies would see through the chinks of their shutters

that they must have been bought and might make up their minds

from this that I was a humbug。  So I composed myself and finally;

though the delay was long; perceived some appearances of bloom。

This encouraged me; and I waited serenely enough till they multiplied。

Meanwhile the real summer days arrived and began to pass; and as I

look back upon them they seem to me almost the happiest of my life。

I took more and more care to be in the garden whenever it was not too hot。

I had an arbor arranged and a low table and an armchair put into it;

and I carried out books and portfolios (I had always some business

of writing in hand); and worked and waited and mused and hoped;

while the golden hours elapsed and the plants drank in the light

and the inscrutable old palace turned pale and then; as the day waned;

began to flush in it and my papers rustled in the wandering breeze

of the Adriatic。



Considering how little satisfaction I got from it at first it

is remarkable that I should not have grown more tired of wondering

what mystic rites of ennui the Misses Bordereau celebrated in their

darkened rooms; whether this had always been the tenor of their life

and how in previous years they had escaped elbowing their neighbors。

It was clear that they must have had other habits and other circumstances;

that they must once have been young or at least middle…aged。

There was no end to the questions it was possible to ask about

them and no end to the answers it was not possible to frame。

I had known many of my country…people in Europe and was familiar

with the strange ways they were liable to take up there; but the Misses

Bordereau formed altogether a new type of the American absentee。

Indeed it was plain that the American name had ceased to have

any application to themI had seen this in the ten minutes I

spent in the old woman's room。  You could never have said whence

they came; from the appearance of either of them; wherever it

was they had long ago dropped the local accent and fashion。

There was nothing in them that one recognized; and putting the question

of speech aside they might have been Norwegians or Spaniards。

Miss Bordereau; after all; had been in Europe nearly three…quarters

of a century; it appeared by some verses addressed to her by

Aspern on the occasion of his own second absence from America

verses of which Cumnor and I had after infinite conjecture

established solidly enough the datethat she was even then;

as a girl of twenty; on the foreign side of the sea。

There was an implication in the poem (I hope not just for the phrase)

that he had come back for her sake。  We had no real light upon her

circumstances at that moment; any more than we had upon her origin;

which we believed to be of the sort usually spoken of as modest。

Cumnor had a theory that she had been a governess in some family

in which the poet visited and that; in consequence of her position;

there was from the first something unavowed; or rather something

positively clandestine; in their relations。  I on the other hand

had hatched a little romance according to which she was the daughter

of an artist; a painter or a sculptor; who had left the western

world when the century was fresh; to study in the ancient schools。

It was essential to my hypothesis that this amiable man should have

lost his wife; should have been poor and unsuccessful and should

have had a second daughter; of a disposition quite different

from Juliana's。 It was also indispensable that he should have been

accompanied to Europe by these young ladies and should have established

himself there for the remainder of a struggling; saddened life。

There was a further implication that Miss Bordereau had had in her youth

a perverse and adventurous; albeit a generous and fascinating character;

and that she had passed through some singular vicissitudes。

By what passions had she been ravaged; by what sufferings had

she been blanched; what store of memories had she laid away for

the monotonous future?



I asked myself these things as I sat spinning theories

about her in my arbor and the bees droned in the flowers。

It was incontestable that; whether for right or for wrong;

most readers of certain of Aspern's poems (poems not as

ambiguous as the sonnetsscarcely more divine; I think

of Shakespeare) had taken for granted that Juliana had

not always adhered to the steep footway of renunciation。

There hovered about her name a perfume of reckless passion;

an intimation that she had not been exactly as the respectable

young person in general。  Was this a sign that her singer had

betrayed her; had given her away; as we say nowadays; to posterity?

Certain it is that it would have been difficult to put one's finger

on the passage in which her fair fame suffered an imputation。

Moreover was not any fame fair enough that was so sure of duration

and was associated with works immortal through their beauty?

It was a part of my idea that the young lady had had

a foreign lover (and an unedifying tragical rupture)

before her meeting with Jeffrey Aspern。  She had lived with

her father and sister in a queer old…fashioned; expatriated;

artistic Bohemia; in the days when the aesthetic was only

the academic and the painters who knew the best models for a

contadina and pifferaro wore peaked hats and long hair。

It was a society less furnished than the coteries of today

(in its ignorance of the wonderful chances; the opportunities

of the early bird; with which its path was strewn);

with tatters of old stuff and fragments of old crockery;

so that Miss Bordereau appeared not to have picked up or have

inherited many objects of importance。  There was no enviable

bric…a…brac; with its provoking legend of cheapness; in the room

in which I had seen her。  Such a fact as that suggested bareness;

but nonetheless it worked happily into the sentimental

interest I had always taken in the early movements of my

countrymen as visitors to Europe。  When Americans went abroad

in 1820 there was something romantic; almost heroic in it;

as compared with the perpetual ferryings of the present hour;

when photography and other conveniences have annihilated surprise。

Miss Bordereau sailed with her family on a tos
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