Olga Rudge & Ezra Pound: "What Thou Lovest Well..."

100 The Breaking Point
English from a story book. Mary’s first language was German, she had not
yet mastered Italian, and English she did not understand. Her mother
would summarize the stories in Italian, and the child could only try to
piece them together from the pictures. Olga stopped often to ask Mary to
repeat after her, to improve Mary’s fluency in the language, but it was a
di≈cult time for both. ‘‘I never felt safe,’’ Mary admitted later. In the late
afternoon, Olga would practice again for an hour or so, and the child was
left alone on the top floor, sad with the coming dusk, listening to the
mournful tolling of the Venetian church bells.
Some afternoons Mary went to the Lido to swim with her father. Late in
the season, the beach was almost deserted, and Ezra would rent a pattino
and row out some distance to swim from the boat. No loafing on the
beach: ‘‘We were there to swim and to row, and it was done with zest and
speed,’’ according to Mary. On one of these outings, Mary confessed that
she had Heimweh, that she wanted to go ‘‘home’’ to Gais. She was uncomfortable
under ‘‘Mamile’s [Olga’s] resentful, disappointed eyes. . . . I was
absolutely hopeless in learning English and Italian . . . a clumsy pigheaded
peasant, instead of a graceful sprig.’’ When they returned to the
calle Querini, there was a whispered conversation in English between her
parents, and her mother started to cry. ‘‘It was pitiful to see a great goddess
cry in anger and hurt pride. Or was she a mortal woman hankering after
her child’s love?’’ Mary questioned in later years. In Olga’s view, she was
trying to teach the simple child from the Tyrol the manners of civilized
society. ‘‘The di√erences between Mary and me grew out of the di√erence
of race [that is, nationality, the Germanic temperament] she absorbed with
Frau Marcher’s milk.’’
In October, after Frau Marcher and Mary returned to Bruneck, Olga
joined Ezra in Sant’Ambrogio. She began to record the details of their
daily lives together in a school-exercise notebook, punctuated by frequent
XXX’s when they engaged in sexual intercourse.
October 2: ‘‘According to E., G[eorge] Washington in his diary used to
put the names of one or the other of his female slaves—without further
comment. Tho’ E. objects . . . my ‘X’ will . . . appear again for my own
private satisfaction.’’