The Old Palazzo

The Old Palazzo

 A ghost story

Buying a palazzo in Valletta had been her husband’s idea.  Susan had never fully fathomed why a Yorkshireman born and bred should want to spend his retirement years and their hard-earned pension on a tiny Mediterranean island.  Perhaps Jim yearned for a whiff of the exotic after a generally dull and uneventful life.  Perhaps he wanted to recapture the magic of those months he had spent in Malta during his brief, youthful stint in the navy...or the memory of a first love, she thought, not without a dull throb of jealousy.

Call her old-fashioned, but Susan had never been one to contradict her husband, even when, as in this case, she had her own misgivings. She convinced herself that, as long as he took care of all the practicalities, his choice would be fine by her. Anyway, she knew only too well that, if she voiced any doubts, Jim’s reaction would be a curt “Don’t worry yourself silly, Sue!” underlined with a chiding, conclusive grin, as if he were addressing a wayward child. Better let him be. She was happy enough seeing him browse real estate websites, comparing the merits of this and that building with a new-found enthusiasm which took her somewhat by surprise. And when Jim bought their flight tickets to “embark on a property expedition”, as he put it, Susan did not disappoint him, feigning a keenness which, frankly, she did not share.

The palazzo they had travelled so far to view teetered over a cobbled alley in a quiet part of the city.  A young and pimply estate agent led them into the roofless central courtyard and enthusiastically pointed out the building’s traditional features – the winding stairs with poky rooms sprouting off unexpected landings (“plenty of character, eh!”), the high ceilings of the second floor (“how spacious! how imposing!”), the underground cellar with its well hewn by hand centuries before (“back-breaking job, wouldn’t volunteer for it myself!”).  In the few years he had spent living there, the previous occupier had spent a small fortune renovating the place, with mixed results.    In the lower levels the plaster was flaking off in patches, fighting a losing battle against the rising damp.  In the cellar, the walls were covered with unwanted junk accumulated over the decades.   But the rooms at the top floor were comfortable enough and tastefully decked out with some judiciously chosen antique furniture.  It was quickly decided. This would be their retirement nest and Sue should not “worry herself silly”.

Well, she consoled herself, it was not as if they would be leaving any close relatives behind them. In the early years of their marriage, her husband had been adamant that they should not have any children as “they were enough company for each other”. That was exactly how it had been so far, and that was how it would be in this final chapter of their life.

Tragedy struck just a few months after they moved to Malta.   One dark winter morning, Jim got out of bed uncharacteristically early. It was Susan who found him a couple of hours later, sprawled lifeless in the courtyard. “Massive heart attack,” the doctor decreed. 

Massive heart attack – a death sentence in which Susan stood as co-accused, condemned to become the lonely mistress of her husband’s final folly.  

Truth be told, there were times when she believed she would be able to adapt to the life thrust upon her. In summer, for instance, she spent whole days in the upper balconies, from where she could get a glimpse of white sails lazily crossing the harbour, whilst a salty breeze caressed her face.   Summer brought with it the festa season, when the streets of Valletta would be thronged with revellers and marching bands celebrating the feast of the city’s patron saints, and even this sleepy side of town erupted into hundreds of coloured fairy lights. 

***

Tonight, summer seems so distant. It is a dark and wintry evening, and Susan longs to be back in England.  She listens to the gusts of wind, whining as they wind their way around the jagged rooftops, the rain pattering dully against her bedroom window.  No doubt about it.  Better the harsh yet familiar winters of home than this clammy sort of cold which seeps through the thick walls and seems to drain your soul.  Rest does not come easy to her lately and Susan feels that this evening will be no exception.  She tosses and turns in a four-poster bed which has become too big for her until, finally, her body succumbs to yet another fitful night. 

A cry nudges her out of her sleep. 

At first, drifting in the no-man’s land between dreams and wakefulness, Susan isn’t even sure she has heard anything at all.  But here it is again, that plaintive sound, somewhere between a wail and a whimper.  She shudders and buries her head under the blankets.  Funny how a couple of layers of bedding manage to instil in her a childish sense of security. 

That cry again. 

Susan switches on the lamp and the shadows leap back to the farthest corners of the room.  The sight of familiar objects comforts her: the hands of the clock pointing to just after two, the solid bulk of the wardrobe, a glass of water standing on the bedside table beside a half-unread novel.  She crawls out of bed, pulls a dressing gown around her shoulders and goes to the window.  The storm has abated.  The alley is deserted.

There is no mistaking it this time.  Susan can distinctly hear a moan, and much as she hates to admit it, whoever … whatever… is making this anguished sound is inside the house.  She shudders, a sense of unease creeping upon her.  She considers calling for help, phoning the police. But what will she say?  That she is spooked by odd noises in an old house?  No.  She has to brave the night alone.   Despite her mounting fear, she also knows that she has to face this intruder.  That cry, terrible as it was, feels like a siren song, taking hold of her will, drawing her towards its source. 

Slowly she makes her way out of the bedroom and stumbles down the stairs, steeling her body at every turn, scarcely able to breathe.  The beckoning voice iss growing louder, seemingly more desperate.  With each step, her feelings of dread grow, as does her conviction that what is calling her is no living thing.   She hears confused whispers tumbling around her, their meaning ungraspable.   She closes her eyes and steadies herself against the wall.  Come on Sue, what on earth is happening to you? Scaring yourself silly, aren’t you?

When she reaches the internal courtyard, a rush of cold air brings her to her senses. Shivering in her nightgown, she struggles to make sense of what has come over her.  She is still in time to leave the building, to run out and bang on a neighbour’s door and ask for help. In the light of day, they will probably have a good laugh together over her nocturnal escapade. 

But then another sound catches her ears.   In the cellar, a child is sobbing.  Her head spins.  How can a child have ended up in her house? Some inquisitive boy perhaps? Or a prank in bad taste?  She leans against the massive cellar door, putting all her weight behind her.  If this is a sick joke, well, she’ll show them.  Oh, yes she will... A dank, musty smell overpowers Susan as she sets foot inside the entrance.  She gropes around for the light switch, only to realise that the basement is already bathed in a bluish light, as if a full moon has made its way into the bowels of the building.  Falteringly, she descends the uneven steps. 

An unearthly sight stops her in her tracks.  Before her, as on a badly-lit stage, a scene is being played out.  A figure in a long black dress is hitting a toddler cowered beneath it.  The boy, not more than a couple of years old, is hunched on the ground, uselessly covering his face with his arms, unable to ward off the violent beating.  

Anger and pity well up inside her.   The boy looks like the son she never had.  She longs to reach for him, hold him in her arms, nurse him to health.  Her body has grown leaden and, in her heart, she feels… she knows… that tragedy is inevitable.  Saving him is beyond her, or any mortal’s, powers.  The blows persist mercilessly until the boy falls, immobile and lifeless, on the cold flagstones. 

Only then does she regain her strength and rush towards the murderer.  The figure turns. What horror is this?  The apparition standing before her has no human countenance.  Facing her is an eyeless skull, clad in pale skin drawn like taut parchment, from which dangle a few locks of straggling, sooty hair.  Dried, black lips pull back to reveal yellowish teeth, locked in an eternal evil grin. In a flash she realises that what she had mistaken for a dress is a coarse, earth-stained shroud, rotting with age, hanging from skeletal shoulders.

The cry echoes around the house.  It is a scream at once of terror, of guilt, of utter despair.  And, this time, the cry is hers.

***

Susan’s body was found a few days later, after an inquisitive neighbour noticed her absence and reported the matter to the Police.  Mrs Benson, miskina, had suffered a heart attack, just like her poor husband.    Who said one couldn’t die of a broken heart?

At least, that is the official version doing the rounds of the city.  The locals, however, know a couple of tales which they dare not repeat.  They have all heard the half-forgotten tale of the tragedy which had cursed the old building.  A young woman had been seduced by a respectable and well-connected family man. When she gave birth to his child, the mother, barely grown up herself, had killed her son in a fit of insanity and had then taken her own life by hanging herself in that very cellar.   Her lover, in a late show of contrition, or more likely, to protect his reputation, had contrived to hush the scandal. 

Maybe the story is true.  And then again, maybe not.  But if you look carefully among the cast-off junk in the cellar of the old palazzo, you might well find an old, decaying cot and, behind it, a coiled length of rope.

Yorkshire Tales : "Elmet" by Fiona Mozley

Yorkshire Tales

A Review of Elmet by Fiona Mozley

I Love Chopin

“La signora in rosso” Giovanni Boldini (1842-1931)

"I love Chopin,” she says.

Like a stolen kiss,

her fingertips caress

the string of pearl-white keys,

drawing forth a stream of honeyed melody.

“This is no mortal work of art,”

she murmurs, eyes half-closed,

“this is a piece a demigod composed,

as though

its notes were

dancing specks of light

in song-bejewelled air,

summoned down from heaven by his quill.”

“Oh, how I love Chopin,” she sighs.

And suddenly I hate this man

who walked a different land so long ago

yet whispers in her ear still,

quickening her heart.

***

I’m posting this on the anniversary of Chopin’s death on October 17, 1849.  And how best to mark this, if not with some of his music.  Here’s a young Martha Argerich, setting fire to the score.

And now Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli, elegant even in the mopping of his brow.

Finally, Alice Sara Ott and Olafur Arnalds give the old master and contemporary electronic twist.

Feat Gothique : a review of "the first Gothic novel", The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole

The First Gothic Novel 

The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole

As Halloween draws nigh, my ghoulish posts continue with a review of Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto, widely considered as the “first Gothic novel”.  But in the matter-of-fact 21st century, should we read it for scares or for laughs?

***

Considered in isolation, this slight novel is, frankly, underwhelming, especially to modern readers. A faux-medieval tale of chivalric derring-do and supernatural goings-on in a dark Italian castle, its convoluted plot is at best unconvincing and at worst bordering on the unintelligible. The characters are disappointingly two-dimensional, the dialogue overly melodramatic. The otherworldly elements are so unsubtle as to come across as grotesque (the novel starts with Conrad, the heir of a noble family, crushed under a giant plumed helmet which has appeared out of thin air) and the novel’s intentionally humorous streak dashes any chance of us feeling any spine-tingling fear just as surely as the “fearful casque” mangles Conrad’s body.

Yet, this 1764 novel deserves respect as (probably) the first Gothic novel, the unlikely instigator of a genre which would give rise to such undoubted masterpieces as, amongst countless others, Frankenstein and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. The Gothic is a genre that still lives on modern horror and weird fiction and its influences spread well beyond the confines of literature.

Seen in this light, The Castle of Otranto starts to reveal merits which might not be immediately obvious. The obsession with the supernatural, the OTT dramatic language, the neo-medievalisms were striking and innovative at the time when the novel was written. What might now seem “facile cliches” (crumbling castles, subterranean passages, chivalric ideals) would only become “Gothic tropes” after other authors jumped on the Walpole bandwagon. The uncomfortable mix of horror and humour was a peculiarly English trait with roots in Chaucer and Shakespeare. And, underneath the novel’s self-indulgent trappings, there was also an element of radical social critique – the heads of the family come across as abusive, scheming and manipulative; the female characters are not as submissive as (18th century) society might have wanted them to be (Isabella is promised in marriage to the weak Conrad but openly admires other more beautiful knights; Princess Matilda, also pressed into marriage, resists these suggestions and first entertains thoughts of taking the veil then falls in love with a travelling peasant). 

Walpole's novel might, in our day and age, be entertaining for all the wrong reasons, but one cannot deny its incredibly far-reaching cultural impact.

***

For further reading, I suggest this review by writer and critic Ted Gioa.  This was originally posted as part of his Year of Horrible Reading, which saw Gioa reading through an impressive list of Gothic and horror titles.  I also refer to The Castle of Otranto in a blog post of my own about the Gothic in classical music.   I had built a playlist of classical music to accompany the article.  I wish you hours of (un)easy listening.

London Incognita : The Eden Book Society presents D.A. Northwood's "Judderman"

D.A Northwood's Judderman

The Eden Book Society lives again

Judderman is the second book in the "Eden Book Society" series published by Dead Ink Press.   I was toying with the idea of playing along with the meta-fictional premise of the series and providing a biography of its author D.A Northwood, the obscure writer who “disappeared from his Tottenham flat in 1981, at the age of 38”. Frankly, however, I think it does greater justice to the project to actually explain the 'conceit' which underpins it. Here it is, in brief.

 
The (fictional) "Eden Book Society" was set up in 1919, publishing horror novellas for a private list of subscribers. Eden books were elusive things - written under a pseudonym, available only to a select few, occasionally turning up in jumble sales or unexpected locations. Dead Ink Press, the publishing house behind this literary experiment, purportedly acquired the back catalogue of the Society, and will reprint the novellas sequentially, starting from 1972. In actual fact, the books are penned by a group of specially commissioned writers. The list sounds like a roll-call of leading contemporary British horror writers: Andrew Michael Hurley, Alison Moore, Aliya Whiteley, Jenn Ashworth and Richard V Hirst, Sam Mills, Gary Budden. 

The brilliance of this project lies in the fact that the very concept behind it creates an aura of mystery and suspense. And then there's that meta-literary playfulness which is typical of classic Gothic. With the novels purportedly originally issued in 1972, the authors have to succeed in an ambitious double-act :  evoking the style of 70s horror whilst taking us back to the atmosphere of that decade. It's a sort of historical scary fiction. 

Where Holt House, the first instalment in the series, combined folk and existential horror,  Judderman falls squarely within the "urban weird" genre and, more specifically, the sub-category of London Gothic. The story revolves around brothers Gary and Daniel Eider, who are trying to catalogue a 'peripheral' city, one rich in urban myth and esoterism, a shadowy place they refer to as "London Incognita".  Amongst the dying embers of a decadent society, a new ghoul-like figure is sighted. It's the Judderman, a malevolent figure which seems to be made out of the evil which is gripping the city. Daniel follows this monster into oblivion. He goes missing, leaving Gary to roam in London’s occult underworld in a bid to solve the mystery of his brother's disappearance.

 
My first impression upon reading the novella (most appropriately, on a flight to London), was that this could have been a joint effort of Peter Ackroyd and Iain Sinclair, after a night smoking marijuana and listening to early Pink Floyd. "Judderman" is, like the work of these authors, strongly rooted in 'psychogeography', the quasi-mystical idea that urban spaces hold and summon a collective historical memory. Indeed, Daniel and Gary's feverish visions often involve images of old, ancient and even prehistoric London. Interestingly, the novella manages to combine the very real horrors which gripped the 70s (unemployment, drugs, racial and sectarian violence, IRA bombings) with imagined ones stemming from urban myth (such as monsters living in unused Underground stations) - a hellish marriage of London Cognita and Incognita. And to add more flavour to the meta-mix, there are extracts from lost diaries, stories within stories, quotes from fictional authors.

Who's behind this unsettling literary concoction? Perhaps the choice of Gary as one of the protagonist's names is a clue. But one can never be too sure. This is the Eden Book Society after all...

***

If I had to choose an album to accompany the novella, it would be Portishead’s self-titled album.  Yes, yes, I know that the band’s brand of trip-hop is primarily associated with Bristol, not London.  Yet, there’s so much about Portishead which reminds me of this novel.  When issued in 1997, critics noted its “Gothic” and “deadly” atmosphere and the very clear influence of 60s and 70s soundtracks.   And then there are the meta-fictional games : the album’s liner notes refer to samples taken from songs by other bands – in actual fact, most of the samples on the album were created by Portishead and credited to imaginary/invented artists.  For a feel of this “urban Gothic” sound, check out the video of “Only You” with the dark visuals of Chris Cunningham.