This was what the Prince was thinking as the bays trotted down the slope; thoughts in contrast to his real self, caused by anxiety about Tancredi and by the sensual urge which turned him against the restrictions embodied by religious houses.
Now the road was crossing orange groves in flower, and the nuptial scent of the blossoms absorbed the rest as a full moon does a landscape; the smell of sweating horses, the smell of leather from the carriage upholstery, the smell of Prince and the smell of Jesuit, were all cancelled out by that Islamic perfume evoking houris and fleshly joys beyond the grave.
It even touched Father Pirrone. “How lovely this would be, Excellency, if . . .”
“If there weren’t so many Jesuits,” thought the Prince, his delicious anticipations interrupted by the priest’s voice. At once he regretted this rudeness of thought, and his big hand tapped his old friend’s tricorne.
Where the suburbs began, at Villa Airoldi, the carriage was stopped by a patrol. Voices from Apulia, voices from Naples, called a halt, bayonets glittered under a wavering lantern; but a sergeant soon recognised the Prince sitting there with his top hat on his knees. “Excuse us, Excellency, pass on.” And a soldier was even told to get up on to the box so that the carriage would have no more trouble at other block posts. The loaded carriage moved on more slowly, round Villa Ranchibile, through Torrerosse and the orchards of Villafranca, and entered the city by Porta Maqueda. Outside the Caffè Romeres at the Quattro Canti di Campagna officers from units on guard were sitting laughing and eating huge ices. But that was the only sign of life in the entire city; the deserted streets echoed only to the rhythmic march of pickets on their rounds, passing with white bandoleers crossed over their chests. On each side were continuous monastery walls, the Monastery of the Mountain, of the Stigmata, of the Cross-Bearers, of the Theatines, massive, black as pitch, immersed in a sleep that seemed like the end of all things.
“I’ll fetch you in a couple of hours, Father. Pray well.”
And poor Pirrone knocked confusedly at the door of the Jesuit Mother-house, Casa Professa, as the brougham wheeled off down a side street.
Leaving the carriage at his palace, the Prince set off for his destination on foot. It was a short walk, but through a quarter of ill repute. Soldiers in full equipment, who had obviously just slipped away from the patrols bivouacked in the squares, were issuing with shining eyes from little houses on whose balconies pots of basil explained their ease of entry. Sinister-looking youths in wide trousers were quarrelling in the guttural grunts Sicilians use in anger. In the distance echoed shots from nervous sentries. Once past this district his route skirted the Cala; in the old fishing port decaying boats bobbed up and down, desolate as mangy dogs.
“I’m a sinner, I know, doubly a sinner, by Divine Law and by Stella’s human love. There’s no doubt of that, and to-morrow I’ll go and confess to Father Pirrone.” He smiled to himself at the thought that it might be superfluous, so certain must the Jesuit be of his sins of to-day. And then a spirit of quibble came over him again. “I’m sinning, it’s true, but I’m sinning so as not to sin worse, to stop this sensual nagging, to tear this thorn out of my flesh and avoid worse trouble. That the Lord knows.” Suddenly he was swept by a gust of tenderness towards himself. “I’m just a poor, weak creature,” he thought as his heavy steps crunched the dirty gravel. “I’m weak and without support. Stella! oh, well, the Lord knows how much I’ve loved her; but I was married at twenty. And now she’s too bossy, as well as too old.” His moment of weakness passed. “But I’ve still got my vigour; and how can I find satisfaction with a woman who makes the sign of the Cross in bed before every embrace and then at the critical moment just cries, ‘Gesummaria!’ When we married and she was sixteen I found that rather exalting; but now . . . seven children I’ve had with her, seven; and never once have I seen her navel. Is that right?” Now he was almost shouting, whipped by this odd anguish, “Is it right? I ask you all!” And he turned to the portico of the Catena. “Why, she’s the real sinner!”
Comforted by this reassuring discovery he gave a firm knock at Mariannina’s door.
Two hours later he was in his brougham on the way home with Father Pirrone beside him. The latter was worried; his colleagues had been telling him about the political situation which was, it seemed, much tenser than it looked from the detached calm of Villa Salina. There was fear of a landing by the Piedmontese in the south of the island, near Sciacca; the authorities had noticed a silent ferment among the people; at the first sign of weakening control the city rabble would take to looting and rape. The Jesuit Fathers were thoroughly alarmed and three of them, the oldest, had left for Naples by the afternoon packet-boat, taking their archives with them. “May the Lord protect us and spare this holy Kingdom!”
The Prince scarcely listened. He was immersed in sated ease tinged with disgust. Mariannina had looked at him with her big opaque peasant’s eyes, had refused him nothing, and been humble and compliant in every way. A kind of Bendicò in a silk petticoat. In a moment of particularly intense pleasure he had heard her exclaim “My Prince!” He smiled again with satisfaction at the thought. Much better than “mon chat” or “mon singe blond” produced in equivalent moments by Sarah, the Parisian slut he had frequented three years ago when the Astronomical Congress gave him a gold medal at the Sorbonne. Better than “mon chat”, no doubt of that; much better than “Gesummaria!”; no sacrilege at least. A good girl, Mariannina; next time he visited he’d bring her three lengths of crimson silk.
But how sad too: that manhandled, youthful flesh, that resigned lubricity; and what about him, what was he? A pig, just a pig! Suddenly there occurred to him a verse read by chance in a Paris bookshop while glancing at a volume by someone whose name he had forgotten, one of those poets the French incubate and forget next week. He could see once more the lemon-yellow pile of unsold copies, the page, an uneven page, and heard again the verses ending a jumble of a poem:
. . . donnez-moi la force et le courage
de contempler mon coeur et mon corps sans dégoût.
And as Father Pirrone went worrying on about a person called La Farina and another called Crispi, the Prince dozed off into a kind of tense euphoria, lulled by the trotting of the bays on whose plump flanks quivered the light from the carriage lamps. He woke up at the turning by Villa Falconeri. “Oh, he’s a fine one too, tending bonfires that’ll destroy him!”
In the matrimonial bedroom, glancing at poor Stella with her hair well tucked into her nightcap, sighing as she slept in the great brass bed, he felt touched. “Seven children she’s given me and she’s been mine alone.” A faint whiff of valerian drifted through the room, last vestige of her crisis of hysterics. “Poor little Stella,” he murmured pityingly as he climbed into bed. The hours passed and he could not sleep; a powerful hand was stoking three fires in his mind; Mariannina’s caresses, those French verses, the threatening pyres on the hills.
Towards dawn, however, the Princess had occasion to make the sign of the Cross.
Next morning the sun lit on a refreshed Prince. He had taken his coffee and was shaving in front of the mirror in a red and black flowered dressing-gown. Bendicò was leaning a heavy head on one of his slippers. As he shaved his right cheek he noticed in the mirror a face behind his own, the face of a young man, thin and elegant with a shy, quizzical look. He did not turn round and went on shaving. “Well, Tancredi, where were you last night?”
“Good morning, Nuncle. Where was I? Oh, just out with friends. An innocent night. Not like a certain person I know who went down to Palermo for some fun!”
The Prince concentrated on shaving the difficult bit between lips and chin. His nephew’s slightly nasal voice had such a youthful zest that it was impossible to be angry; but he might allow himself a touch of surprise. He turned and with his towel under his chin looked his nephew up and down. The young man was in shooting kit, a long tight jacket, high leggings. “And who was this person, may I ask?”
“Yours
elf, Nuncle, yourself. I saw you with my own eyes, at the Villa Airoldi block post, as you were talking to the sergeant. A fine thing at your age! With a priest too! Old rips!”
Really this was a little too insolent. Tancredi thought he could allow himself anything. Dark blue eyes, the eyes of his mother, his own eyes, gazed laughingly at him through half-closed lids. The Prince was offended; the boy didn’t know where to stop; but he could not bring himself to reprove him and anyway he was quite right. “Why are you dressed up like that, though? What’s on? A fancy-dress ball in the morning?”
The youth went serious; his triangular face took on an unexpectedly manly look. “I’m leaving, Uncle, leaving in an hour. I came to say goodbye.”
Poor Salina felt his heart tighten. “A duel?” “A big duel, uncle. A duel with Francis-by-the-Grace-of-God. . . . I’m off into the hills at Ficuzza; don’t tell a soul, specially Paolo. Great things are in the offing and I don’t want to stay at home. Anyway I’d be arrested at once if I did.”
The Prince had one of his visions: a savage guerrilla skirmish, shots in the woods, and Tancredi, his Tancredi, lying on the ground with his guts hanging out like that poor soldier. “You’re mad, my boy, to go with those people! They’re all mafia men, all crooks. A Falconeri should be with us, for the king.”
The eyes began smiling again. “For the King, yes, of course. But which King?” The lad had one of those sudden serious moods which made him so mysterious and so endearing. “Unless we ourselves take a hand now, they’ll foist a republic on us. If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change. D’you understand?” Rather moved, he embraced his uncle. “Well, good-bye, for now. I’ll be back with the tricolour.” The rhetoric of those friends of his had touched Tancredi a little too; and yet, no, there was a tone in that nasal voice which undercut the emphasis.
What a boy! Talking rubbish and contradicting it at the same time. And all that Paolo of his had on his mind probably at that moment was Guiscard’s digestion! This was his real son! The Prince jumped up, pulled the towel from his neck and rummaged in a drawer. “Tancredi, Tancredi, wait!” He ran after his nephew, slipped a roll of gold pieces into his pocket, and squeezed his shoulder.
The other laughed. “You’re subsidising the Revolution now! Thank you, Nuncle, see you soon; and my respects to my aunt.” And off he rushed down the stairs.
Bendicò was called from following his friend with joyous barks through the Villa, the Prince’s shave was over, his face washed. The valet came to help him into shoes and clothes. “The tricolour! Tricolour indeed! They fill their mouths with these words, the scamps. What’s it got, that geometric emblem, that aping of the French, compared to our white banner with its golden lily in the centre? What hope can those clashing colours bring ’em?” It was now the moment for the monumental black satin cravat to be wound round his neck: a difficult operation during which political worries were best suspended. One turn, two turns, three turns. The big delicate hands smoothed out the folds, settled the overlaps, pinned into the silk the little head of Medusa with ruby eyes. “A clean waistcoat. Can’t you see this one’s dirty?” The valet stood up on tiptoe to help him into a frock-coat of brown cloth; he proffered a handkerchief with three drops of bergamot. Keys, watch and chain, money, the Prince put in a pocket himself. Then he glanced in a mirror; no doubt about it, he was still a fine-looking man. “Old play-boy indeed! A bad joke, that one of Tancredi’s! I’d like to see him at my age, all skin and bone as he is!”
His vigorous steps made the windows tinkle in the rooms he crossed. The house was calm, luminous, ornate; above all it was his own. On his way downstairs he suddenly understood that remark of Tancredi “if we want things to stay as they are . . .” Tancredi would go a long way: he’d always thought so.
*
The estate office was still empty, lit silently by the sun through closed shutters. Although the scene of more frivolity than anywhere else in the villa, its appearance was of calm austerity. On white-washed walls, reflected in wax-polished tiles, hung enormous pictures representing the various Salina estates; there, in bright colours contrasting with the gold and black frame, was Salina, the island of the twin mountains, surrounded by a sea of white-flecked waves on which pranced beflagged galleons; Querceta, its low houses grouped round the rustic church on which were converging groups of bluish-coloured pilgrims; Ragattisi tucked under mountain gorges: Argivocale, tiny in contrast to the vast plains of corn dotted with hard-working peasants; Donnafugata with its baroque palace, goal of coaches in scarlet and green and gilt, loaded with women, wine and violins; and many others, all protected by a taut reassuring sky and by the Leopard grinning between long whiskers. Each picture was jocund—each illustrating the enlightened rule, direct or delegated, of the House of Salina. Ingenuous masterpieces of rustic art from the previous century; useless though at showing boundaries, or detailing tenures or tenancies; such matters remained obscure. The wealth of centuries had been transmuted into ornament, luxury, pleasure; no more; the abolition of feudal rights had swept away duties with privileges; wealth, like old wine, had let the dregs of greed, even of care and prudence, fall to the bottom of the barrel, preserving only verve and colour. And thus eventually it cancelled itself out; this wealth which had achieved its own object was now composed only of essential oils—and like essential oils soon evaporated. Already some of the estates which looked so gay in those pictures had taken wing, leaving behind only bright-coloured paintings and names. Others seemed like those September swallows which though still present are already grouped stridently on trees, ready for departure. But there were so many; endless, they seemed.
In spite of this the sensation felt by the Prince on entering his own office was, as always, an unpleasant one. In the centre of the room towered a huge desk, with dozens of drawers, niches, sockets, hollows and folding shelves; its mass of yellow wood and black inlay was carved and decorated like a stage set, full of unexpected, uneven surfaces, of secret drawers which no one knew now how to work except thieves. It was covered with papers and, although the Prince had taken care that most of these referred to the starry regions of astronomy, there were quite enough of others to fill his princely heart with dismay. Suddenly he was reminded of King Ferdinand’s desk at Caserta, also covered with papers needing decisions by which the King illuded himself to be influencing the course of fate, actually flowing on its own in another valley.
Salina thought of a medicine recently discovered in the United States of America which could prevent suffering even during the most serious operations and produce serenity amid disaster. Morphia was the name given to this crude substitute for the stoicism of the ancients and for Christian fortitude. With the late King, poor man, phantom administration had taken the place of morphia; he, Salina, had a more refined recipe: astronomy. And thrusting away the memory of lost Ragattisi and precarious Argivocale, he plunged into reading the latest number of the Journal des Savants. “Les dernières observations de l’Observatoire de Greenwich présentent un intérêt tout particulier . . .”
But he was soon exiled from these stellar realms. In came Don Ciccio Ferrara, the accountant. He was a scraggy little man who hid the deluded and rapacious mind of a Liberal behind reassuring spectacles and immaculate cravats. That morning he looked brisker than usual; obviously the same news which had depressed Father Pirrone had acted as a tonic on him. “Sad times, Excellency,” he said after the usual ritual greetings. “Big troubles ahead, but after a bit of bother and a shot or two things will turn out for the best: then glorious new days will dawn for this Sicily of ours; if it weren’t that so many fine lads are sure to get killed, we should be really pleased.”
The Prince grunted and expressed no opinion. “Don Ciccio,” he said then, “the Querceta rents need looking into: we haven’t had a thing from them for two years.”
“The books are ready, Your Excellency.” It was the magic phrase. “I only have to write to Don Angela Maza to send out collectors: I will prepare
the letter for your signature this very day.”
He went to turn over the huge registers. In them, with two years’ delay, were inscribed in minute writing all the Salina accounts, except for the really important ones. When he was alone again the Prince waited a little before soaring back through the clouds. He felt irritated not so much by the events themselves as by the stupidity of Don Ciccio, whom he sensed at once to represent the class which would now be gaining power. “What the fellow says is the very contrary of the truth. Regretting the fine lads who’re sure to die! there’ll be very few of those, if I’m any judge of the two adversaries; not a single casualty more than is strictly necessary for a victory bulletin, whether compiled at Naples or Turin. But he does believe in ‘glorious new days for this Sicily of ours’ as he puts it; these have been promised us on every single one of the thousand invasions we’ve had, by Nicias onwards, and they’ve never come. And why should they come, anyway? What will happen next? Oh, well. Just negotiations punctuated by a little harmless shooting, then all will be the same though all will be changed.” Into his mind had come Tancredi’s ambiguous words, which he now found himself really understanding. Reassured, he ceased turning over the pages of the scientific review and looked up at the scorched slopes of Monte Pellegrino, scarred like the face of misery by eternal ravines.
The Leopard Page 5
