Had I a Hundred Mouths Read online

  Oh. The Naples Prince, Renzi da Filippo, did not bring much money to the marriage because the old line of da Filippos had used up most of it or lost it; or had it taken from them in one way or another—which was O.K. because they had taken it from somebody else earlier on: sometimes there is a little justice. That ever happen to you? Renzi was the end of the line. Someone who was the end of a line would look it, wouldn’t you think so? You could not tell it in Renzi da Filippo, he looked spunky enough to start something; he was real fresh and handsome in that burnt blond coloring that they have, sort of toasted—toast-colored hair and bluewater eyes and skin of a wheaty color. He was a beauty everyone said and was sought after in Rome and London and New York. Those Italianos! About all he had in worldly goods was the beautiful Palazzo da Filippo in Venice, a seventeenth-century hunk of marble and gold that finally came into his hands. Had Hortense Solomon not given her vows to Renzi in wedlock, Palazzo da Filippo might have gone down the drain. It needed repair in the worst kind of way—all those centuries on it—and those repairs needed a small fortune—which Horty had a lot of. As soon as the marriage was decided upon, there was a big party. The Prince was brought to Texas and an announcement party was thrown, and I mean thrown, on the cold ranch river that flowed through the acres and acres of hot cattle-land owned by the Solomons. The gala stirred up socialites as far as Porto Ercole and Cannes, from which many of the rich, famous and titled flew in on family planes. Horty Solomon—which was very hard for Italians to say so they called her La Principessa di Texas—started right in with her plans for fixing up the Palazzo. The plans were presented in the form of a little replica of the Palazzo used as a centerpiece for the sumptuous table. Two interior decorators called The Boys, favorites of Horty’s from Dallas, exhibited their color schemes—a lot of Fuchsia for Horty loved this favorite color of hers. “You’re certainly not going to redecorate that Palazzo” (they said Palazzo the way she did, so that it sounded like “Plotso”), “you’re certainly not going to furnish it out of Solomon’s Everybody’s Store!” The Boys declared to Horty as soon as they heard of her plans to redo the Plotso da Filippo. “Nor,” said they, “are you going to make it look like a West Texas ranch house. We’re using Florentine silk and Venetian gold, with rosy Fuchsia appointments!”

  When Palazzo da Filippo was in shape, the Texas relatives poured in. The Palazzo was crawling with them, young and old. The Palazzo could have been a big Texas house. Black cooks and maids from East Texas mingled with Italian servants. The Venetians loved it. “Viva la Principessa di Texas!” they cried. Those Italianos!

  Here I must inform you something of which you were asking about, that on his very wedding night in a villa in Monaco (the beautiful Prince gambled on his wedding night) the beautiful Prince Renzi burst a blood vessel in his inner ear and succumbed (the newspapers’ word for it). He just plain died in his wedding bed is what it was. You were asking about how he died. Vicious talk had it that the only stain on the nuptial (newspapers’ word)—only stain on the nuptial sheets came from the Prince’s ear. Crude. The poor bride, who had been married before—a big textile man from Birmingham, Alabama—was stunned. Poor Horty. Tragedy dogged her, as you well can see. I myself have never experienced the death of a husband but I have experienced two divorces and let me tell you they are simular, they are like a death. They are no fun. My last divorce was particularly nasty. Thank God there was no issue, as the Wills said. Both my husbands were without issue. Issue indeed. That’s a joke for the last one, who issued it to Old Granddad instead of me—mind as well say it; and excuse the profanity—that one had little issue except through his mouth… when he threw up his Bourbon. Crude, I know. But that’s mainly the kind of issue he had. That ever happen to you? Let’s see where was I. Oh. Anyway, this left me in London, quite penniless; tell you why I was in London some other time. Don’t have time for that garden path now—it’s a memory lane I choose at the moment to take a detour from. But the thing of it is, this is how Horty Solomon got the Palazzo da Filippo, which is what you were asking me about: under the auspices of a sad circumstance—a broken blood vessel leading to death; but a tragedy leading to a new life for her. And for me, as you will soon hear the story (that you were asking about). Anyway, Horty went on with her plans for the Palazzo, now all hers.

  As I said somewhere—I can’t tell a story straight to save my life, my mind races off onto a hundred things that I remember and want to tell right then, don’t want to wait. That ever happen to you? Anyway, as I said somewhere, Texans flooded into the canals of Venice because of the Principessa: Venezia was half Texas some days—and loved it. And if you’ve ever heard a Texan speaking Italian, you won’t believe the sound of it. Big oilmen came to the Palazzo and Texas college football players—Horty had given them a stadium in Lampasas (they called her Cousin Horty)—Junior League ladies, student concert pianists (Horty was a patron of the Arts, as you will see more about), and once a Rock group—they had that Grand Canal jumping, and some seventeenth-century tiles fell, I can tell you. And maybe something from even earlier, a Fresco or two from the Middle Ages. And talented young people who wanted to paint or write came over to the Palazzo. See what Horty did? Some of them were offered rooms in the Palazzo, to write in or paint in, or practice a musical instrument in; and they accepted. See what she did? Palazzo da Filippo jived, that was the word then; it was in the nineteen fifties. That joint jumped, as they said.

  I said back there that I was going to tell you why I was in London. Or did I? Can’t remember. Just try to remember something with all this noise around here. Italians are noisy, sweet as they are—singing and calling on the Canals. Now where was I? Oh. London. Well, forget London for the time being—if I haven’t already told it to you. Just keep London in the back of your mind. Now where was I? Oh. Well, you have asked me to tell you what you are hearing—the story of the Texas Principessa, my old schoolmate and life-long pal, that you asked about. After the Prince’s death, Horty pulled herself together and got the Palazzo together—a reproduction of Palazzo da Filippo was engraved on Renzi’s tombstone with Horty’s changes incorporated (which, of course, I thought was rather nifty, wouldn’t you?)—and Horty pleaded with me in April by phone and cable to come stay. “Come and stay as long as you want to, stay forever if you’re happy in the Palazzo; just come on,” Horty said, long distance, to me in London. Horty loved to have people in the house. This doesn’t mean that she always loved being with them. Sometimes I’ve seen it happen that a motorboat would arrive and disburse a dozen guests and a week later depart with the same guests and not one of them had ever seen the Principessa. Horty would’ve confined herself off in her own apartment in the far right top wing and there remain in privacy. Simply did not want to have anything to do with them, with her guests. “That’s Horty,” everyone said. They’d had a grand time, gone in the Principessa’s private motorboats to Torcello, to lunch at the Cipriano, to cocktails at other palazzos, been served divine dinners with famous Italians at the da Filippo. But no Horty. She usually—she was so generous—gave expensive presents to her guests to get them to forgive her. Once she gave everybody an egg—a sixth-century—B.C.!—egg of Chinese jade. Amounted to about a dozen eggs. Somebody said the retail value on those eggs was about $150 apiece. Where was I? Oh.

  Well this was in April and in May I came. Horty at once announced to me that there was no room for me at the Palazzo! She was getting crazy over painters. She’d become more and more interested in painting, Horty did, but that’s no surprise because she always seemed to possess a natural eye and feeling for painting, not so curious for an heiress to generations of garment salesmen, even though you might so comment. For Hortense Solomon inherited good taste and a tendency for her eye to catch fine things when she saw them. Though there were Brahma bulls leering through the windows of the Solomon ranch in West Texas, what those bulls saw inside was fine china and Chippendale, silver and crystal and satin and silk. Those bulls saw the handiwork of a chic decorator and an elega
nt collector; not every bull sees that. So a seventeenth-century palazzo in Venice was not so far a cry for Horty to fix up.

  Well here was I living over at the Cipriano where Horty, who couldn’t do without me till I got there and then banished me—to a terrific suite, I must say, and footed by her—and here was I coming across the Canal every day to observe the goings on at the Palazzo. Frankly I was glad to have me a little distance from the commotion. Well-known artists came to live in the Palazzo da Filippo and to set up studios there and in the environs. Horty patronized them. Gave them scholarships as she called them. A few were very attractive, I must say, and some very young—Horty’s eye again. The Venetians adored La Principessa di Texas. They appreciated her for unscrewing the horse’s outfit from the horse sculpture in her garden on the Grand Canal when the Archbishop passed in his barge on days of Holy Procession. The Principessa had commissioned the sculpture of a beautiful horse possessed of some wild spirit, with a head uplifted and long mouth open in an outcry. On it sat a naked man, again possessed of some wild spirit, seemed like, and his mad-looking head was also raised up in some crying out. You did not see the rider’s outfit but the horse’s was very apparent, and the Principessa commissioned the sculptor—a then unknown but handsome sculptor—to sculpt one that was removable. Which seems to apply to a lot of men that I have known—where was it? A lot of them seem to have removed it. Put it in a drawer someplace. Or mind as well have. Where was I? Oh yes. The horse’s outfit. On high holy procession days the Texas Principessa could be seen on her knees under the belly of the horse with grasping hands, making wrenching movements. The Italians coined a phrase for it. When they saw her going at the horse as if she were twisting a light globe, they said to each other that La Principessa di Texas was “honoring the Archbishop.” The community generally appreciated her decency for doing this; some felt that the Archbishop should give her a citation. And a few called her a castrator—in Italian of course—castratazionera, oh I can’t say it right but you know what I mean; and of course a few from home in Texas said she was a dicktwister—had to put their nasty mouths into it. Crude. Where was I. Oh. An American painter came to visit Horty one afternoon. He was showing in the Biennale, which is what they call the show of paintings that they have every year. Horty and the painter drank and talked about his painting. When the Principessa turned around from making another double martini for the American painter—she hardly gave it to him when she had to whirl around and make another one—pirouette is what you had to do when you made drinks for that man. Unless you just made a whole jug and gave it to him. Anyway, she whirled to find him urinating in the fireplace. The Principessa was so impressed with the American painter—imagine the audacity!—that famous summer afternoon that she asked him to stay. He stayed—over a year, it turned out—and you can see some of his paintings in the palazzo gallery, they have become very sought after and the painter very famous—though dead from alcoholism not so many years after that. More proof of the ability of discovery that the Principessa had, which is what an article about her recently said. And of the tragic cloud that kept lurking over her life. Even with all her money and the good that she did people, that cloud lurked. And of course it got her, as you well know.

  Because Horty’s dead. As you well know. Which is what I started out to tell you the details about when you asked me. Well, it was when we were lunching on the terrazzo of the Palazzo. One of those gold June days that Venice has. I’ll go right into it and not dwell on it: Horty was bitten by something, some kind of terrible spider, and blood poisoning killed her before we knew it. Guess where the spider was? In a peach. Living at the core of a great big beautiful Italian peach from the sea orchards of the Mediterranean. Horty cried out and fainted. We’d all had a lot of champagne. By the time we got her to the hospital she was dead. Doctor said it was rank poison and that Horty was wildly allergic to it. When she broke the peach open out sprung the horrible black spider. I saw it in a flash. And before she knew it, it had stung her into the bloodstream of her thigh, right through pure silk Italian brocade. I’ll never eat a peach again, I’ll tell you. All Venice was upset. The Archbishop conducted the funeral himself. Horty’d left quite a few lire to the Church. We forgot to unscrew the horse’s outfit, but when the funeral procession passed by, all the gondoliers took off their hats. Those Italianos!

  And I am the new Principessa—except of course I am not a Principessa. But the Italians insist on calling me the new Principessa. The Palazzo is mine. Who ever dreamed that I would get the Palazzo? When the will was opened back in Texas they read where Horty had given the place to me! I almost had a heart attack. The will said “to my best friend.” But what in the world will I do with a Palazzo, I said. I have not the vast fortune that Horty had. But you have all the paintings of the famous dead American, they said. Sure the family have all fought me for the paintings of the dead American painter. Just let somebody find something good and everybody else tries to get it. Like a bunch of ants. That ever happen to you? They couldn’t care less about the Palazzo. But the paintings are something else. The Museum has offered half a million dollars for one. I will not sell yet. And that man that peed in the fire died drunk and broke. Ever hear of such a thing? But they say the pollution is just eating up the paintings. And the Palazzo. So far I’m safe, but I wonder for how long? And the very town is sinking. Venice is a little lopsided. I don’t know where to go. I hardly know how I got here. Sometimes I think who am I where am I? That ever happen to you? But the Texas Principessa is a saint in Venezia. Better not say anything in this town against Horty, I’m telling you. Those Italianos speak her name with reverence and the Archbishop says her name a lot in church. I have offered the horse to the Church, without outfit, but the Archbishop suggested—he’s so cute, with a twinkle in his eyes, those Italianos!—the Archbishop suggested that il cavallo stay where it is. Because it is an affectionate monument for the townspeople, particularly the gondoliers. They point it out to tourists. I hear they’re selling little replicas near the Vatican. The sculptor is very upset. He’s made many more sculptures (not of horses) but nobody ever paid much attention to any of his other work. Isn’t everything crazy? Aren’t our lives all crazy? Some days I can’t believe any of it. Sometimes I want to go home but I hear Texas is just as crazy. Anyway, that’s the story of Horty Solomon da Filippo, the Texas Principessa. Which is what you asked me about, isn’t it?

  But one more thing. Next morning after the funeral I saw below the terrazzo something sparkling in the dew, something pure silver with diamonds and rubies and emeralds—like something Horty would’ve worn—and I saw that it was a gorgeous web. And there in the center, all alone, was the horrible black insect that I am sure was the one that had lived at the heart of the peach that killed the Texas Principessa and brought the Palazzo to me. How could something so ugly and of death make something like that… so beautiful? I had the oddest feeling, can’t describe it. That ever happen to you?

  Well, that’s the story, what you asked me. What happened.

  ARTHUR BOND

  Remember man named Arthur Bond had a worm in his thigh. Had it for years, got it in the swampland of Louisiana when he was a young man working in the swampland. Carried that worm for all his life in his right thigh. Sometimes for quite a spell Arthur Bond said it stayed peaceful, other times twas angry in him and raised hell in him, twas mean then and on some kind of a rampage Arthur Bond said, stung him and bit him and burnt him, Arthur Bond said, and itched and tickled and tormented him. Arthur Bond himself told us that he was a crazy man then.

  He was sick a lot from the worm. Nest was in the sweetest part of the thigh, if you will look there on yourself and feel of it, there where the leg gets the softest and holds the warmth of the loin, halfway between the knee and the crouch, where it’s mellow and full and so soft, like a woman’s breast if you catch hold of it. (I have noticed that the parts of a man and a woman are a lot alike and feel the same, and why not? One God made them both, settled that in the Ga
rden, Man and Woman created He them, though God knows it still don’t seem to be settled in some, but don’t want to get into that.)

  One time worm begun to try to come out his knee, Arthur Bond said, said saw its head in a hole that had opened up in his knee. Doctors tried to pull the worm out but it broke off and drew itself back into Arthur Bond’s thigh and lived on—without a head, Arthur Bond said. Jesus Christ a headless worm. Doctors saved the head, put it in a bottle of fluid and the face was pretty, face of the worm when you looked in and saw it looking at you lolling in its fluid was like a little doll’s. Nobody, no doctor anywhere could kill out that infernal worm from the swampland of Louisiana living without a head in Arthur Bond’s pale thigh, he died with the worm, old and vile and aflourishin, in his thigh. Poor Arthur Bond, how that worm of the swampland tormented him all his life since he was eighteen and went into the ground with Arthur Bond when he was sixty-six. But the head of the worm with its pretty doll’s face still bobbles in a bottle where Arthur Bond left it when he died, to Science, at the University. Yet Arthur Bond hisself never even got to high school, idn’t that funny? Went to work in the swampland when he was fourteen. If he hadn’t gone to work in the swampland, wonder what his life would have been? Without the curse of the worm, I mean.

  Anyway, what I’m thinking is that we can’t all see in a bottle the face of our buried torment. Arthur Bond was lucky? Worm made him drink until he was sodden on the ground or a lunatic in a brothel. Was Arthur Bond lucky? Worm made him vicious, wild amok in bars, beat up women. Worm took over his life, commanded his life, he had a devil in him, a rank, vile headless devil in him, directing his life. Arthur Bond, older he grew, was at the mercy of the worm, slave of the slightest wish of the worm. Let me tell you two examples. Worm seemed to take it out on women worst of all. Heat of a woman sent that thing into a crazed-out fit. Got to where women wouldn’t get close to poor Arthur Bond, they certainly didn’t want to be mashed and rolled on like a steamroller, not to mention choked to death, or twisted like an insane chiropractor was ahandlin ’em, worm’d get aholt of that leg of Arthur Bond and jerk it like a crazy dancer. Course somebody that ud awanted that kind of a thing, that kind of a fightin thing, ud a called the leg of Arthur Bond a leg of gold and sought it out; but wasn’t nobody like that come to him and guess Arthur Bond ought to have thanked God for it, he’d a died a horrible death of convulsions and probly a broken neck; people stayed away from Arthur Bond. This made Arthur Bond even more lonely and naturally led him to drink more whiskey. Whiskey was puredee wildfire to the worm. Then Arthur Bond would knock down people and break up chairs and bash a man’s head in with a bottle. When he killed a man in an alley, where he said the man accosted him to rob him and in self-defense cut half his face off with the butt of a beer bottle, he begged the doctor again to do anything, to even cut off his leg, for when he sobered up he was horrified at what the worm had done, killed a man, and he didn’t know what the thing would do next. But the doctor wouldn’t amputate. He said he wasn’t sure where the worm had his hind part, his vile tail, whether maybe twas in the very groin of Arthur Bond, maybe even in his sack and curled around his balls. Naturally the next thought was was it in his member, my God was his member now a part of the worm, it was too much to suffer and seeing that the worm could possibly take over his body, his whole flesh and body and Lord God with Arthur Bond’s head, Arthur Bond’s own head of yellow hair and green eyes, that he could finally be just the walkin worm itself with head of yellow hair and green eyes, Arthur Bond went crazy and tried to kill hisself and the worm by drinking a glass of rat poison. He was not successful and lay choking in his own bile, though it was hoped for a while that the worm was poisoned dead until it began to rustle and twinge and tingle in his thigh again, as if to say hello Arthur Bond you fool; so both lived on.