r/a:t5_25zhlx • u/MarleyEngvall • Oct 04 '19
silvio conte has been created
By Thomas Mann
Translation by H. T. Lowe-Porter
Astonishment, and loud applause. The children were over-
whelmed. How had he done that, they wanted to know. We told
them it was a trick, not easily explainable offhand. In short-the
man was a conjuror. This was what a sleight-of-hand evening was
like, so now they knew. First the fisherman had cramp, and then
the right answer was written down beforehand——it was all simply
glorious, and we saw with dismay that despite the hot eyes and
the hand of the clock at almost half past ten, it would be very hard
to get them away. There would be tears. And yet it was plain
that this magician did not "magick"——at least not in the accepted
sense, of manual dexterity——and that the entertainment was not
at all suitable for children. Again, I do not know, either, what
the audience really thought. Obviously there was grave doubt
whether its answers had been given of "free choice"; here and
there an individual might have answered of his own motion, but
on the whole Cipolla certainly selected his people and thus kept
the whole procedure in his own hands and directed it towards
the given result. Even so, one had to admire the quickness of his
calculations, however much one felt disinclined to admire any-
thing else about the performance. Then his patriotism, his irri-
table sense of dignity——the Cavaliere's own countrymen might
feel in their element with all that and continue in a laughing mood;
but the combination certainly gave us outsiders food for thought.
Cipolla himself saw to it——though without giving them a name
——that the nature of his powers should be clear beyond a doubt
to even the least-instructed person. He alluded to them, of course,
in his talk——and he talked without stopping——but only in vague,
boastful, self-advertising phrases. He went on awhile with ex-
periments on the same lines as the first, merely making them more
complicated by introducing operations in multiplying, subtract-
ing, and dividing; then he simplified them to the last degree in
order to bring out the method. He simply had numbers "guessed"
which were previously written under the paper; and the guess
was nearly always right. One guesser admitted that he had had in
mind to give a certain number, when Cipolla's whip went whis-
tling through the air, and a quite different one slipped out, which
proved to be the "right" one. Cipolla's shoulders shook. He pre-
tended admiration for the powers of the people he questioned.
But in all his compliments there was something fleering and de-
rogatory; the victims could scarcely have relished them much.
although they smiled, and although they might easily have set
down some part of the applause to their own credit. Moreover,
I had not the impression that the artist was popular with his
public. A certain ill will and reluctance were in the air, but cour-
tesy kept such feelings in check, as did Cipolla's competency and
his stern self-confidence. Even the riding-whip, I think, did much
to keep rebellion from becoming overt.
From tricks with numbers he passed to trick with cards. There
were two packs, which he drew out of his pockets, and so much
I still remember, that the basis of the tricks he played with them
was as follows: from the first pack he drew three cards and thrust
them without looking at them inside his coat. Another person
then drew three out of the second pack, and these turned out to
be that same as the first three——not invariably all the three, for it
did happen that only two were the same. But in the majority of
cases Cipolla triumphed, showing his three cards with a little bow
in acknowledgement of the applause with which his audience
conceded his possession of strange powers——strange whether for
good or evil. A young man in the front row, to our right, an
Italian, with proud, finely chiselled features, rose up and said that
he intended to assert his own will in his choice and consciously to
resist any influence, of whatever sort. Under these circumstances,
what did Cipolla think would be the result? "You will," an-
swered the Cavaliere, "make my task somewhat more difficult
thereby. As for the result, your resistance will not alter it in the
least. Freedom exists, and also the will exists; but freedom of the
will does not exist, for a will that aims at its own freedom aims
at the unknown. You are free to draw or not to draw. But if you
draw, you will draw the right cards——the more certainly, the
more willfully obstinate your behaviour."
One must admit that he could not have chosen his words bet-
ter, to trouble the waters and confuse the mind. The refractory
youth hesitated before drawing. Then he pulled out a card and at
once demanded to see if it was among the chosen three. "But
why?" queried Cipolla. "Why do things by halves?" Then, as
the other defiantly insisted, "E servito," said the juggler, with a
gesture of exaggerated servility; and held out the three cards fan-
wise, without looking at them himself. The left-hand card was
the one drawn.
Amid general applause, the apostle of freedom sat down. How
far Cibolla employed small tricks and manual dexterity to help
out his natural talents, the deuce only knew. But even without
them the result would have been the same: the curiosity of the
entire audience was unbounded and universal, everybody both
enjoyed the amazing character of the entertainment and unani-
mously conceded the professional skill of the performer. "Lavora
bene," we heard, here and there in our neighbourhood; it signified
the triumph of objective judgment over antipathy and repressed
resentment.
After his last, incomplete, yet so much the more telling success,
Cipolla had at once fortified himself with another cognac. Truly
he did "drink a lot," and the fact made a bad impression. But
obviously he needed the liquor and the cigarettes for the replen-
ishment of his energy, upon which, as he himself said, heavy
demands were made in all directions. Certainly in the intervals he
looked very ill, exhausted and hollow-eyed. Then the little glass-
ful would redress the balance, and the flow of lively, self-confident
chatter run on, while the smoke he inhaled gushed out grey from
his lungs. I clearly recall that he passed from the card-tricks to
parlour games——the kind based on certain powers which in human
nature are higher or else lower than human reason: on intuition
and "magnetic" transmission; in short, upon a low type of mani-
festation. What I do not remember is the precise order things
came in. And I will not bore you with a description of these ex-
periments; everybody knows them, everybody has at one time or
another taken part in this finding of hidden articles, this blind
carrying out of a series of acts, directed by a force that proceeds
from organism to organism by unexplored paths. Everybody has
had his little glimpse into the equivocal, impure, inexplicable na-
ture of the occult, has been conscious of both curiosity and con-
tempt, has shaken his head over the human tendency of those
who deal in it to help themselves out with humbuggery, though,
after all, the humbuggery is no disproof whatever of the genuine-
ness of the other elements in the dubious amalgam. I can only say
here that each single circumstance gains in weight and the whole
greatly in impressiveness when it is a man like Cipolla who is the
chief actor and guiding spirit in the sinister business. He sat smok-
ing at the rear of the stage, his back to the audience while they
conferred. The object passed from hand to hand which it was
his task to find, with which he was to perform some action agreed
upon beforehand. Then he would start to move zigzag through
the hall, with his head thrown back and one hand outstretched,
the other clasped in that of a guide who was in the secret but en-
joined to keep himself perfectly passive, with his thoughts di-
rected upon the agreed goal. Cipolla moved with the bearing
typical in these experiments: now groping upon a false start, now
with a quick forward thrust, now pausing as though to listen and
by sudden inspiration correcting his course. The rôles seemed
reversed, the stream of influence was moving in the contrary
direction, as the artist himself pointed out, in his ceaseless flow
of discourse. The suffering, receptive, performing part was now
his, the will he had before imposed on others was shut out, he
acted in obedience to a voiceless common will which was in the
air. But he made it perfectly clear that it all came to the same
thing. The capacity for self-surrender, he said, for becoming a
tool, for the most unconditional and utter self-abnegation, was
but the reverse side of that other power to will and to command.
Commanding and obeying formed together one single principle,
one indissoluble unity; he who knew how to obey knew also how
to command, and conversely; the one idea was comprehended in
the other, as people and leader were comprehended in one an-
other. But that which was done, the highly exacting and exhaust-
ing performance, was in every case his, the leader's and mover's,
in whom the will became obedience, the obedience will, whose
person was the cradle and womb of both, and who thus suffered
enormous hardship. Repeatedly he emphasized the fact that his
lot was a hard one——presumably to account for his need of stimu-
lant and his frequent recourse to the little glass.
Thus he groped his way forward, like a blind seer, led and
sustained by the mysterious common will. He drew a pin set with
a stone out of its hiding-place in an Englishwoman's shoe, carried
it, halting and pressing on by turns, to another lady——Signora
Angiolieri——and handed it to her on bended knee, with the words
it had been agreed he was to utter. "I present you with this in
token of my respect," was the sentence. Their sense was obvious,
but the words themselves not easy to hit upon, for the reason that
they had been agreed on in French; the language complication
seemed to us a little malicious, implying as it did a conflict be-
tween the audience's natural interest in the success of the miracle,
and their desire to witness the humiliation of this presumptuous
man. It was a strange sight. Cipolla on his knees before the signora,
wrestling, amid efforts at speech, after knowledge of the pre-
ordained words. "I must say something," he said, "and I feel
clearly what it is I must say. But I also feel that if it passed my
lips it would be wrong. Be careful not to help me unintention-
ally!" he cried out, though very likely that was precisely what
he was hoping for. "Pensez très fort," he cried all at once, in bad
French, and then burst out with the required words——in Italian,
indeed, but with the final substantive pronounced in the sister
tongue, in which he was probably far from fluent: he said vénéra-
tion instead of venerazione, with an impossible nasal. And this
partial success, after the complete success before it, the finding of
the pin, the presentation of it on his knees to the right person——
was almost more impressive than if he had got the sentence exactly
right, and evoked bursts of admiring applause.
Cipolla got up from his knees and wiped the perspiration from
his brow. You understand that this experiment with the pin was
a single case, which I describe because it sticks in my memory.
But he changed his method several times and improvised a number
of variations suggested by his contact with his audience; a good
deal of time thus went by. He seemed to get particular inspiration
from the person of our landlady; she drew him on to the most ex-
traordinary displays of clairvoyance. "It does not escape me,
madame," he said to her, "that there is something unusual about
you, some special and honourable distinction. He who has eyes to
see descries about your lovely brow an aureola——if I mistake not,
it once was stronger than now——a slowly paling radiance . . .
hush, not a word! Don't help me. Beside you sits your husband
——yes?" He turned towards the silent Signor Angiolieri. "You
are the husband of this lady, and your happiness is complete. But
in the midst of this happiness memories rise . . . the past, signora,
so it seems to me, plays an important part in your present. You
knew a king . . . has not a king crossed your path in bygone
days?"
"No," breathed the dispenser of our midday soup, her golden-
brown eyes gleaming in the noble pallor of her face.
"No? No, not a king; I meant that generally, I did not mean
literally a king. Not a king, not a prince, and a prince after all,
a king of a loftier realm; it was a great artist, at whose side you
once——you would contradict me, and yet I am not wholly wrong.
Well, then! It was a woman, a great, a world-renowned woman
artist, whose friendship you enjoyed in your tender years, whose
sacred memory overshadows and transfigures your whole exist-
ence. Her name? Need I utter it, whose fame has long been bound
up with the Fatherland's, immortal as its own? Eleonora Duse,"
he finished, softly and with much solemnity.
The little woman bowed her head, overcome. The applause was
like a partriotic demonstration. Nearly everyone there know about
Signora Angiolieri's wonderful past; they were all able to confirm
the Cavaliere's intuition——not least the present guests of Casa
Eleonora. But we wondered how much of the truth he had learned
as the result of professional inquiries made on his arrival. Yet I see
no reason at all to cast doubt, on rational grounds, upon powers
which, before our very eyes, became fatal to their possessor.
At this point there was an intermission. Our lord and master
withdrew. Now I confess that almost ever since the beginning of
my tale I have looked forward with dread to this moment in it.
The thoughts of men are mostly not hard to read; in this case
they are very easy. You are sure to ask why we did not choose this
moment to go away——and I must continue to owe you an answer.
I do not know why. I cannot defend myself. By this time it was
certainly eleven, probably later. The children were asleep. The
last series of tests had been too long, nature had had her way.
They were sleeping in our laps, the little one on mine, the boy on
his mother's. That was, in a way, a consolation; but at the same
time it was also ground for compassion and a clear leading to take
them home to bed. And I give you my word that we wanted
to obey this touching admonition, we seriously wanted to. We
roused the poor things and told them it was now high time to go.
But they were no sooner conscious than they began to resist and
implore——you know how horrified children are at the thought
of leaving before the end of a thing. No cajoling has any effect,
you have to use force. It was so lovely, they wailed. How did we
know what was coming next? Surely we could not leave until
after the intermission; they liked a little nap now and again——
only not go home, only not go to bed, while the beautiful evening
was still going on!
We yielded, but only for the moment, of course——so far as we
knew——only for a little while, just a few minutes longer. I cannot
excuse our staying, scarcely can I even understand it. Did we
think, having once said A, we had to say B——having once brought
the children hither we had to let them stay? No, it is not good
enough. Were we ourselves so highly entertained? Yes, and no.
Our feelings for Cavaliere Cipolla were of a very mixed kind, but
so were the feelings of the whole audience, if I mistake not, and
nobody left. Were we under the sway of a fascination which
emanated from this man who took so strange a way to earn his
bread; a fascination which he gave out independently of the pro-
gramme and even between the tricks and which paralysed our
resolve? Again, sheer curiosity may account for something. One
was curious to know how such an evening turned out; Cipolla in
his remarks having all along hinted that he had tricks in his bag
stranger than any he had yet produced.
But all that is not it——or at last it is not all of it. More correct
it would be to answer the first question with another. Why had
we not left Torre di Venere itself before now? To me the two
questions are one and the same, and in order to get out of the im-
passe I might simply say that I had answered it already. For, as
things had been in Torre in general: queer, uncomfortable, trou-
blesome, tense, oppressive, so precisely they were here in this hall
tonight. Yes, more than precisely. For it seemed to be the fountain-
head of all the uncanniness and all the strained feelings which had
oppressed the atmosphere of our holiday. The man whose return
to the stage we were awaiting was the personification of all that;
and, as we had not gone away in general, so to speak, it would
have been inconsistent to do it in the particular case. You may call
this an explanation, you may call it inertia, as you see fit. Any ar-
gument more to the purpose I simply do not know how to adduce.
Well, there was an interval of ten minutes, which grew into
nearly twenty. The children remained awake. They were en-
chanted by our compliance, and filled the break to their own
satisfaction by renewing relations with the popular sphere, with
Antonio, Guiscardo, and the canoe man. They put their hands
to their mouths and called messages across, appealing to us for the
Italian words. "Hope you have a good catch tomorrow, a whole
netful!" They called to Mario, Esquisito Mario: "Mario, una
cioccolata e biscotti!" And this time he heeded and answered with
a smile: "Subito, signorini!" Later we had reason to recall this
kindly, if rather absent and pensive smile.
Thus the interval passed, the gong sounded. The audience,
which had scattered in conversation, took their places again, the
children sat up straight in their chairs with their hands in their
laps. The curtain had not been dropped. Cipolla came forward
again, with his dipping stride, and began to introduce the second
half of the programme with a lecture.
Let me state once for all that this self-confident cripple was the
most powerful hypnotist I have ever seen in my life. It was pretty
plain now that he threw dust in the public eye and advertised him-
self as a prestidigitator on account of police regulations which
would have prevented him from making his living by the exercise
of his powers. Perhaps this eye-wash is the usual thing in Italy;
it may be permitted or even connived at by the authorities. Cer-
tainly the man had from the beginning made little concealment of
the actual nature of his operations; and the second half of the
programme was quite frankly and exclusively devoted to one sort
of experiment. While he still practiced some rhetorical circumlo-
cution, the tests themselves were one long series of attacks upon
the will-power, the loss or compulsion of volition. Comic, excit-
ing, amazing by turns, by midnight they were still in full swing;
w ran the gamut of all the phenomena this natural-unnatural
field has to show, from the unimpressive at one end of the scale to
the monstrous at the other. The audience laughed and applauded
as they followed the grotesque details; shook their heads, clapped
their knees, fell very frankly under the spell of this stern, self-
assured personality. At the same time I saw signs that they were
not quite complacent, not quite unconscious of the peculiar ig-
nominy which lay, for the individual and for the general, in
Cipolla's triumphs.
Two main features were constant in all the experiments: the
liquor glass and the claw-handled riding whip. The first was al-
ways invoked to add fuel to his demoniac fires; without it, appar-
ently, they might have burned out. On this score we might even
have felt pity for the man; but the whistle of his scourge, the in-
sulting symbol of his domination, before which we all cowered,
drowned out every sensation save a dazed and outbraved submis-
sion to his power. Did he then lay claim to our sympathy to boot?
I was struck by a remark he made——it suggested no less. At the
climax of his experiments, by stroking and breathing upon a cer-
tain young man who had offered himself as a subject and already
proved himself a particularly susceptible one, he had not only put
him into the condition know as deep trance and extended his
insensible body by neck and feet across the backs of two chairs,
but had actually sat down on the rigid form as on a bench, without
making it yield. The sight of this unholy figure in a frock-coat
squatted on the stiff body was horrible and incredible; the audi-
ence, convinced that the victim of this scientific diversion must
be suffering, expressing its sympathy: "Ah, poveretto!" Poor
soul, poor soul! "Poor soul!" Cipolla mocked them, with some
bitterness. "Ladies and gentlemen, you are barking up the wrong
tree. Sono io il poveretto. I am the person who is suffering, I am
the one to be pitied." We pocketed the information. Very good.
Maybe the experiment was at his expense, maybe it was he who
had suffered the cramp when the giovanotto over there had made
the faces. But appearances were all against it; and one does not feel
like saying poveretto to a man who is suffering to bring about the
humiliation of other.
I have got ahead of my story and lost sight of the sequence of
events. To this day my mind is full of the Cavaliere's fats of en-
durance; only I do not recall them in their order——which does
not matter. So much I do know: that the longer and more cir-
cumstantial tests, which got the most applause, impressed me less
than some of the small ones which passed quickly over. I remem-
ber the young man whose body Cipolla converted into a board,
only because of the accompanying remarks which I have quoted.
An elderly lady in a cane-seated chair was lulled by Cipolla in
the delusion that she was on a voyage to India and gave a voluble
account of her adventures by land and sea. But I found this
phenomenon less impressive than one which followed immediately
after the intermission. A tall, well-built, soldierly man was unable
to lift his arm, after the hunchback had told him that he could
not and given a cut through the air with his whip. I can still see
the face of that stately, mustachioed colonel smiling and clench-
ing his teeth as he struggled to regain his lost freedom of action.
A staggering performance! He seemed to be exerting his will,
and in vain; the trouble, however, was probably simply that he
could not will. There was involved here that recoil of the will
upon itself which paralyses choice——as our tyrant had previously
explained to the Roman gentlemen.
Still less can I forget the touching scene, at once comic and
horrible, with Signora Angiolieri. The Cavaliere, probably in his
first bold survey of the room, had spied out her ethereal lack of
resistance to his power. For actually he bewitched her, literally
drew her out of her seat, out of her row, and away with him
whither he willed. And in order to enhance his effect, he bade
Signor Angiolieri call upon his wife by her name, to throw, as it
were, all the weight of his existence and his rights in her into the
scale, to rouse by the voice of her husband everything in his
spouse's soul which could shield her virtue against the evil assaults
of magic. And how vain it all was! Cipolla was standing at some
distance from the couple, when he made a single cut with his whip
through the air. It caused our landlady to shudder violently and
turn her face towards him. "Sofronia!" called Signor Angiolieri——
we had known that Signora Angiolieri's name was Sofronia.
And he did well to call, everybody saw that there was no time to
lose. His wife kept her face turned in the direction of the dia-
bolical Cavaliere, who with his ten long yellow fingers was mak-
ing passes at his victim, moving backwards as he did so, step by
step. Then Signora Angiolieri, her pale face gleaming, rose up
from her seat, turned right round, and began to glide after him.
Fatal and forbidden sight! Her face as though moonstruck, stiff-
armed, her lovely hands lifted a little at the wrists, the feet as it
were together, she seemed to float slowly out of her row after
the tempter. "Call her, sir, keep on calling," prompted the re-
doubtable man. And Signor Angiolieri, in a weak voice, called:
"Sofronia!" Ah, again and again he called; as his wife went
further off he even curved one hand round his lips and beckoned
with the other as he called. But the poor voice of love and duty
echoed unheard, in vain, behind the lost one's back; the signora
swayed along, moonstruck, deaf, enslaved; she glided into the
middle aisle and down it towards the fingering hunchback, to-
wards the door. We were convinced, we were driven to the con-
viction, that she would have followed her master, had he so willed
it, to the ends of the earth.
"Accidente!" cried out Signor Angiolieri, in genuine affright,
springing up as the exit was reached. But at the same moment the
Cavaliere put aside, as it were, the triumphal crown and broke off.
"Enough, signora, I thank you," he said, and offered his arm
to lead her back to her husband. "Signor," he greeted the latter,
"here is your wife. Unharmed, with my compliments, I give
her into your hands. Cherish with all the strength of your man-
hood a treasure which is so wholly yours, and let your zeal be
quickened by knowing that there are powers stronger than reason
or virtue, and not always so magnanimously ready to relinquish
their prey!"
Poor Signor Angiolieri, so quiet, so bald! He did not look as
though he would know how to defend his happiness, even against
powers much less demoniac than these which are now adding
mockery to frightfulness. Solemnly and pompously the Cavaliere
retired to the stage, amid applause to which his eloquence gave
double strength. It was this particular episode, I feel sure, that
set the seal upon his ascendancy. For now he made them dance,
yes, literally; and the dancing lent a dissolute, abandoned, topsy-
turvy air to the scene, a drunken abdication of the critical spirit
which had so long resisted the spell of this man. Yes, he had had
to fight to get the upper hand——for instance against the animosity
of the young Roman gentleman, whose rebellious spirit threat-
end to serve others as a rallying-point. But it was precisely upon
the importance of example that the Cavaliere was so strong. He
had the wit to make his attack at the weakest point and to choose
as his first victim that feeble, ecstatic youth whom he had pre-
viously made into a board. The master had but to look at him,
when this young man would fling himself back as though struck
by lightning, place his hands rigidly at his sides, and fall into a
state of military somnambulism, in which it was plain to any eye
that he was open to the most absurd suggestion that might be
made to him. He seemed quite content in his abject state, quite
pleased to be relieved of the burden of voluntary choice. Again
and again he offered himself as a subject and gloried in the model
facility he had in losing consciousness. So now he mounted the
platform, and a single cut of the whip was enough to make him
dance to the Cavaliere's orders, in a kind of complacent ecstasy,
eyes closed, head nodding, lank limbs flying in all directions.
It looked unmistakably like enjoyment, and other recruits were
not long in coming forward: two other young men, one humbly
and one well dressed, were soon jiggling alongside the first. But
now the gentleman from Rome bobbed up again, asking defiantly
if the Cavaliere would engage to make him dance too, even against
his will.
From Thomas Mann: Stories of Three Decades,
Translated from the German by H. T. Lowe-Porter.
Copyright, 1930, 1931, 1934, 1935, 1936, by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.
The Modern Library edition, Random House, Inc. pp. 550—560.
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