La Tarantella: the Innocent American, from Tourist to Spy
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LA TARANTELLA: THE INNOCENT AMERICAN, FROM TOURIST TO SPY Matthew Frassica Department of English McGill University, Montréal August 2005 A thesis submitted to McGill University in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of Master of Arts © Matthew Frassica, 2005 Library and Bibliothèque et 1+1 Archives Canada Archives Canada Published Heritage Direction du Branch Patrimoine de l'édition 395 Wellington Street 395, rue Wellington Ottawa ON K1A ON4 Ottawa ON K1A ON4 Canada Canada Your file Votre référence ISBN: 978-0-494-24860-7 Our file Notre référence ISBN: 978-0-494-24860-7 NOTICE: AVIS: The author has granted a non L'auteur a accordé une licence non exclusive exclusive license allowing Library permettant à la Bibliothèque et Archives and Archives Canada to reproduce, Canada de reproduire, publier, archiver, publish, archive, preserve, conserve, sauvegarder, conserver, transmettre au public communicate to the public by par télécommunication ou par l'Internet, prêter, telecommunication or on the Internet, distribuer et vendre des thèses partout dans loan, distribute and sell th es es le monde, à des fins commerciales ou autres, worldwide, for commercial or non sur support microforme, papier, électronique commercial purposes, in microform, et/ou autres formats. paper, electronic and/or any other formats. The author retains copyright L'auteur conserve la propriété du droit d'auteur ownership and moral rights in et des droits moraux qui protège cette thèse. this thesis. Neither the thesis Ni la thèse ni des extraits substantiels de nor substantial extracts from it celle-ci ne doivent être imprimés ou autrement may be printed or otherwise reproduits sans son autorisation. reproduced without the author's permission. ln compliance with the Canadian Conformément à la loi canadienne Privacy Act some supporting sur la protection de la vie privée, forms may have been removed quelques formulaires secondaires from this thesis. ont été enlevés de cette thèse. While these forms may be included Bien que ces formulaires in the document page count, aient inclus dans la pagination, their removal does not represent il n'y aura aucun contenu manquant. any loss of content from the thesis. ••• Canada 2 MATTIiEW FRAsSICA TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract ............................................................................................................... 3 Introduction ...................... :................................................................................. 3 La Tarantella ....................................................................................................... 5 The Innocent American, from Tourist to Spy ............................................... 115 Conclusion...................................................................................................... 134 End Notes ....................................................................................................... 135 Works Cited .................................................................................................... 137 Acknowledgements ........................................................................................ 139 LA TARANTEIl.A: THE INNOCENT AMERICAN, FROM TOURIST TO Spy 3 ABSTRACT This thesis comprises a creative work and a brief analytical essay treating the themes of espionage and innocence. Cette thèse comprend un ouvrage de fiction et une dissertation courte sur les thèmes de l'espionnage et l'innocence. INTRODUCTION This thesis's objective is to demonstrate and discuss a literary character type. The thesis has been prepared, in the case of the creative work, after a course of reading that has inc1uded works of fiction and non-fiction, and a period of reflection. AB regards the analytical essay, the research methods were much the same, but in place of the period of reflection a process of intuitive argumentative leaps was substituted. 4 MA1TIIEW FRAsSlCA LA TARANTELLA: THE INNOCENT AMERICAN, FROM TOURIST TO Spy 5 LA TARANTELLA Well said, good woman:S- tailor! well said, courageous Peeble! th ou wilt be as valiant as the wrathful dove or most magnanimous mouse. -2 HENRY IV, Acr 3 SCENE 2 There was still time, of course, to change my mind and leave. How much time have l spent since then ca1culating just when this option closed to me, at what point l could no longer safely walk away? Even now, l'm not sure-how much choice, reaUy, did l have in any of what happened that week? But this may merely be evasion. l am certain that, at the time, l believed myself the author of aU my decisions, including the one to come and, later, to act. This may be the only way to view the whole episode, as a series of mistakes and miscalculations aU my own. 6 MATIHEW FRASSlCA Turning around and leaving, though, did not occur to me that morning. l had just arrived, after a crossing fllied with a kind of distracted anxiety and dread that seemed like an inappropriate mixture of emotions. So in addition to anxiety and dread l felt the guilt associated with feeling the wrong thing. A rowdy group of passengers on board saw me in my gloominess as either an object of derision or a potential convert to their revelry, or both, but only added to my troubles the effort of avoiding them. Arrival had, predictably, evaporated this heaviness with more present distractions-that is to say, evaporated aU but the guilt, which Calso predictably) retumed in the form of self-reproach for having lost the anxiety and dread, which at least were a sort of penitence, if not the right sort. Prussian troops scrutinised our credentials as we crossed their lines into the city. They were old soldiers, out of shape and unkempt, whose suspicion of the train's passengers never exceeded the degree to which such suspicion looked to be profitable. The carousers from the ship were obliged to bribe these men with all of the exotic liquors they had won or stolen from the ship's crew, to make up for inadequate documentation. A young man seated next to me, with whom l had been observing an amicable silence, drew their attention. As one of them looked at his papers, the other asked, "And you, monsieur, why do you wish to go to Paris?" "1 am a joumalist. With the New York Tribune. l've been assigned to go to Paris." "Oh yes? A joumalist. l think l may have seen another joumalist from the New York Tribune come through-when was it?" LA TARANTELLA: THE INNOCENT AMERICAN, FROM TOURIST TO Spy 7 "Just yesterday, l think," said the other soldier, whose breath filled the cabin with the smell of ripe cheese. "Oh yes, it was yesterday, l remember now. Are you sure you aren't a Red, posing as a journalist? Perhaps we are mistaken?" There was no menace in the way the soldiers stood over us, just a kind of boredom with their routine. They posed the threat only of continuing the interview, a threat whose force they cultivated through determined inattention to hygiene. The one holding my neighbour's papers had fingers shredded at the nails like corn husks and a striking face marred with what looked like deliberate scarification. His eyes, cruelly lazy, never fully looked at us or the papers, but stared out of the compartment's window towards the platform. Both he and his colleague were grimed with soot and intentional filth, as if they had lathered themselves in mud before boarding the train. My neighbour paid his bribe and had his identity papers returned to him. My diplomatic laissez-passer suited them well enough to leave me alone. l delayed appearing at my hotel so that l could linger for as long as possible in that sense of unrestrained opportunity, of not being bound even to sleeping in one particular place, that one feels only on arrivaI and, in sorne cases, departure. So though leaving was in a sense the last thing on my mind, in another sense l was deeply invested in the uncommitted threshold feeling, of not officially being there at aIl. Down through its showcase boulevards the city seemed to be holding its breath: its apartment buildings empty, shops shuttered, cafés deserted except for lone elderly waiters. It was like sleepwalking through the city at dawn, a city in a dream of homelessness and isolation. As l approached the river, a detachment of 8 MATIHEW FRASSlCA the Garde Nationale slumped past, their faces exhausted and premonitory. (How much of what l remember is tainted by the desire to wam my former self of what is to come?) A laughing woman dashed across the street in front of me, in pursuit of or flight before a partner who never appeared. Her laughter and footfalls against the paving stones echoed along the deserted street. l peered to the north up the alley out of which she had come; it gave onto a courtyard of shuttered windows around a fountain whose nymph still poured water from an amphora. Lilacs hung overhead. l stood in this garden looking up at the still trees in the buildings' shade, the distant explosions of ordnance sounding around the walls, when the shutters of a window opened above. A woman with a narrow, sharp face looked down towards me. Her mouth tightened into the rumour of a smile. She asked if l was looking for someone. No, l said, l was just admiring her courtyard. "Ah, you are just smelling the flowers, looking for love and listening to gunfire-a true revolutionary!" She laughed tiredly as she tumed from the window to the dark interior. Back in the boulevard l could see groups ahead, closer to the river. Working-class families, once alien to this quarter, walked in the sun as their children played along the barricades. In the Place de la Concorde, a crowd were gathered around a puppet Guignol, jeering its Pu1cinelle. Lovers who had avoided conscription walked arm in arm with their ladies. On a kiosk, an official notice from the Commune read: N" 315. LA TARANTELLA: THE INNOCENT AMERICAN, FROM TOURIST TO Spy 9 Les ouvrières travaillant le papier, telles que brocheuses, plieuses, etc., qui seraient sans emploi, s'inscriront à la Délégation scientifique, 78, rue de Varennes, de 8 heures à 11 heures de matin. Paris, le 13 mai 1871.