Others, on the other hand, after having listened to him, went off looking sad and convinced that he was a turncoat or half-wit, more than ever determined to take no notice of what he said but to follow instead the age-old proverb about preferring a known evil to an untried good. These were reluctant to ratify the new national reality for personal reasons too; either from religious faith, or from having received favours from the former régime and not being sharp enough to insert themselves into the new one, or finally because during the upsets of the liberation period they had lost a few capons and sacks of beans, and been cuckolded either freely like Garibaldini volunteers or forcibly like Bourbon levies. He had, in fact, the disagreeable but distinct impression that about fifteen of them would vote “no”, a tiny minority certainly, but noticeable in the small electorate of Donnafugata. Taking into consideration that the people who came to him represented the flower of the inhabitants, and that there must also be some unconvinced among the hundreds of electors who had not dreamt of setting foot inside the palace, the Prince had calculated that Donnafugata’s compact affirmative would be varied by about forty negative votes.
The day of the Plebiscite was windy and grey, and tired groups of youths had been seen going through the streets of the town with bits of paper covered with “yes” stuck in the ribbons of their hats. Amid waste paper and refuse swirled by the wind they sang a few verses of La Bella Gigugin transformed into a kind of Arab wail, a fate to which any gay tune sung in Sicily is bound to succumb. There had also been seen two or three “foreigners” (that is from Girgenti) installed in Zzu Menico’s tavern, where they were declaiming Leopardi’s lines on the “magnificent and progressive destiny” of a renovated Sicily united to resurgent Italy. A few peasants were standing listening, mutely, stunned by overwork or starved by unemployment. These cleared their throats and spat continuously, but kept silent; so silent that it must have been then (as Don Fabrizio said afterwards) that the “foreigners” decided to give Arithmetic precedence over Rhetoric in the Quadrivium arts.
The Prince went to vote about four in the afternoon, flanked on the right by Father Pirrone, on the left by Don Onofrio Rotolo; frowning and fair-skinned, he proceeded slowly towards the Town Hall, frequently putting up a hand to protect his eyes lest the breeze loaded with all the filth collected on its way should bring on the conjunctivitis to which he was subject; and he remarked to Father Pirrone that though the air would have been like a putrid pool without the wind, yet health-giving gusts did seem to drag up a lot of dirt with them. He was wearing the same black frock-coat in which two years before he had gone to pay his respects at Caserta to poor King Ferdinand, who had been lucky enough to die in time to avoid this day of dirty wind when the seal would be set on his own incapacity. But had it really been incapacity? One might as well say that a person succumbing to typhus dies of incapacity. He remembered the King busy putting up dykes against the floods of useless documents: and suddenly he realised how much unconscious appeal to pity there was in those unattractive features. Such thoughts were disagreeable, as are all those that make us understand things too late, and the Prince’s face went solemn and dark as if he were following an invisible funeral car. Only the violent impact of his feet on loose stones in the street showed his internal conflict. It is superfluous to mention that the ribbon on his top hat was innocent of any piece of paper; but in the eyes of those who knew him a “yes” and a “no” alternated on the glistening felt.
On reaching a little room in the Town Hall used as the voting booth he was surprised to see all the members of the committee get up as his great height filled the doorway; a few peasants who had arrived before were put aside, and so without having to wait Don Fabrizio handed his “yes” into the patriotic hands of Don Calogero Sedàra. Father Pirrone, though, did not vote at all, as he had been careful not to get himself listed as resident in the town. Don ’Nofrio, obeying the express desires of the Prince, gave his own monosyllabic opinion about the complicated Italian question; a masterpiece of concision carried through with the good grace of a child drinking castor oil. After which all were invited for “a little glass” upstairs in the Mayor’s study; but Father Pirrone and Don ’Nofrio put forward good reasons, one of abstinence, the other of stomach-ache, and remained below. Don Fabrizio had to face the party alone.
Behind the Mayor’s writing desk gleamed a brand new portrait of Garibaldi and (already) one of King Victor Emmanuel hung, luckily, to the right; the first handsome, the second ugly; both, however, made brethren by prodigious growths of hair which nearly hid their faces altogether. On a small low table was a plate with some ancient biscuits blackened by fly droppings and a dozen little squat glasses brimming with rosolio wine: four red, four green, four white, the last in the centre: an ingenious symbol of the new national flag which tempered the Prince’s remorse with a smile. He chose the white liquor for himself, presumably because the least indigestible and not, as some thought, in tardy homage to the Bourbon standard. Anyway, all three varieties of rosolio were equally sugary, sticky and revolting. His host had the good taste not to give toasts. But, as Don Calogero said, great joys are silent. Don Fabrizio was shown a letter from the authorities of Girgenti announcing to the industrious citizens of Donnafugata the concession of 2,000 lire towards sewage, a work which would be completed before the end of 1961 so the Mayor assured them, stumbling into one of those lapsus whose mechanism Freud was to explain many decades later; and the meeting broke up.
Before dusk the three or four easy girls of Donnafugata (there were some there too, not grouped but each hard at work on her own) appeared in the square with tricolour ribbons in their manes as protest against the exclusion of women from the vote; the poor creatures were jeered at even by the most advanced liberals and forced back to their lairs. This did not prevent the Giornale di Trinacria telling the people of Palermo four days later that at Donnafugata “some gentle representatives of the fair sex wished to show their faith in the new and brilliant destinies of their beloved Country, and demonstrated in the main square amid great acclamation from the patriotic population.”
After this the electoral booths were closed and the scrutators got to work; late that night the shutters on the balcony of the Town Hall were flung open and Don Calogero appeared with a tricolour sash over his middle, flanked by two ushers with lighted candelabra which the wind snuffed at once. To the invisible crowd in the shadows below he announced that the Plebiscite at Donnafugata had had the following results:
Voters, 515; Voting, 512; Yes, 512; No, zero.
From the dark end of the square rose applause and hurrahs; on her little balcony Angelica, with her funereal maid, clapped lovely rapacious hands; speeches were made; adjectives loaded with superlatives and double consonants reverberated and echoed in the dark from one wall to another; amid thundering of fireworks messages were sent off to the King (the new one) and to the General; a tricolour rocket or two climbed up from the village into the blackness towards the starless sky. By eight o’clock all was over, and nothing remained except darkness as on any other night, always.
*
On the top of Monte Morco all was clear now, in bright light; but the gloom of that night still lay stagnant deep in Don Fabrizio’s heart. His discomfort had become more irksome, if vaguer; it had no connection at all with the great matters of which the Plebiscite marked the start of a solution: the major interests of the Kingdom (of the Two Sicilies) and of his own class, his personal privileges had come through all these events battered but still lively. In the circumstances he could not well expect more. No, his discomfort was not of a political nature and must have deeper roots somewhere in one of those reasons which we call irrational because they are buried under layers of self-ignorance. Italy was born on that sullen night at Donnafugata, born right there, in that forgotten little town, just as much as in the sloth of Palermo or the clamour of Naples; but an evil fairy, of unknown name, must have been present; anyway Italy was born and one could only hope that she would live o
n in this form; any other would be worse. Agreed. And yet this persistent disquiet of his must mean something; during that too brief announcement of figures, just as during those too emphatic speeches, he had a feeling that something, someone, had died, God only knew in what back-alley, in what corner of the popular conscience.
The cool air had dispersed Don Ciccio’s somnolence, the massive grandeur of the Prince dispelled his fears; all that remained afloat now on the surface of his conscience was resentment, useless of course but not ignoble. He stood up, spoke in dialect and gesticulated, a pathetic puppet who in some absurd way was right.
“I, Excellency, voted ‘no’. ‘No’, a hundred times ‘no.’ I know what you told me: necessity, unity, expediency. You may be right; I know nothing of politics. Such things I leave to others. But Ciccio Tumeo is honest, poor though he may be, with his trousers in holes” (and he slapped the carefully mended patches on the buttocks of his shooting breeches) “and I don’t forget favours done me! Those swine in the Town Hall just swallowed up my opinion, chewed it and then spat it out transformed as they wanted. I said black and they made me say white! The one time when I could say what I thought that bloodsucker Sedàra went and annulled it, behaved as if I’d never existed, as if I never meant a thing, me, Francesco Tumeo La Manna son of the late Leonardo, organist of the Mother Church at Donnafugata, a better man than he is! To think I’d even dedicated to him a Mazurka composed by me at the birth of that . . .” (he bit a finger to rein himself in) “that mincing daughter of his!”
At this point calm descended on Don Fabrizio, who had finally solved the enigma; now he knew who had been killed at Donnafugata, at a hundred other places, in the course of that night of dirty wind: a new-born babe: good faith; just the very child who should have been cared for most, whose strengthening would have justified all the silly vandalisms. Don Ciccio’s negative vote, fifty similar votes at Donnafugata, a hundred thousand “no’s” in the whole Kingdom, would have had no effect on the result, have made it, in fact, if anything more significant; and this maiming of souls would have been avoided. Six months before they used to hear a rough despotic voice saying: “Do what I say or you’re for it!” Now there was already an impression of such a threat being replaced by a moneylender’s soapy tones: “But you signed it yourself, didn’t you? Can’t you see? It’s quite clear. You must do as we say, for here are the I.O.U.’s; your will is identical with mine.”
Don Ciccio was still thundering on: “For you nobles it’s different. You might be ungrateful about an extra estate, but we must be grateful for a bit of bread. It’s different again for profiteers like Sedàra with whom cheating is a law of nature. Small folk like us have to take things as they come. You know, Excellency, that my father, God rest his soul, was gamekeeper at the royal shoot of Sant’ Onofrio back in Ferdinand IV’s time, when the English were here? It was a hard life, but the green royal livery and the silver plaque conferred authority. Queen Isabella, the Spaniard, was Duchess of Calabria then, and it was she who had me study, made me what I am now, organist of the Mother Church, honoured by your Excellency’s kindness; when my mother sent off a petition to Court in our years of greatest need, back came five gold ounces, sure as death, for they were fond of us there in Naples, they knew we were decent folk and faithful subjects; when the King came he used to clap my father on the shoulder. ‘Don Lionà,’ he said, ‘I wish we’d more like you, devoted to the throne and to my Person.’ Then the officer in attendance used to hand out gold coin. Alms, they call it now, that truly royal generosity; and they call it that so as not to give any themselves; but it was just a reward for loyalty. And if those holy Kings and lovely Queens are looking down at us from heaven to-day, what’ld they say? ‘The son of Don Leonardo Tumeo betrayed us!’ Luckily the truth is known in Paradise! Yes, Excellency, I know, people like you have told me, such things from royalty mean nothing, they’re just part of the job. That may be true, in fact is true. But we got those five gold ounces, that’s a fact, and they helped us through the winter. And now I could repay the debt my ‘no’ becomes a ‘yes’! I used to be a ‘faithful subject’, I’ve become a ‘filthy Bourbonite’. Everyone’s Savoyard nowadays! But I take ‘Savoyards’ with coffee!” And he dipped an invisible biscuit between finger and thumb into an imaginary cup.
Don Fabrizio had always liked Don Ciccio, partly because of the compassion inspired in him by all who from youth had thought of themselves as dedicated to the Arts, and in old age, realising they had no talent, still carried on the same activity at lower levels, pocketing withered dreams; and he was also touched by the dignity of his poverty. But now he also felt a kind of admiration for him, and deep down at the very bottom of his proud conscience a voice was asking if Don Ciccio had not perhaps behaved more nobly than the Prince of Salina. And the Sedàra, all the various Sedàra, from the petty one who violated arithmetic at Donnafugata to the major ones at Palermo and Turin, had they not committed a crime by choking such consciences? Don Fabrizio could not know it then, but a great deal of the slackness and acquiescence for which the people of the South were to be criticised during the next decade, was due to the stupid annulment of the first expression of liberty ever offered them.
Don Ciccio had said his say. And now his genuine but rarely shown side of “austere man of principle” was taken over by one much more frequent and no less genuine, that of snob. For Tumeo belonged to the zoological species of “passive snob”, a species unjustly reviled nowadays. Of course the word “snob” was unknown in the Sicily of 1860; but just as tuberculosis existed before Koch, so in that remote era there were people for whom to obey, imitate and above all avoid distressing those whom they considered of higher social rank than themselves was the supreme law of life; snobbery, in fact, is the opposite of envy. At that time a man of this type went under various names; he was called “devoted”, “attached”, “faithful;” and life was happy for him since a nobleman’s most fugitive smile was enough to flood an entire day with sun; and accompanied by such affectionate appellatives, the restorative graces were more frequent than they are to-day. Now Don Ciccio’s frankly snobbish nature made him fear causing Don Fabrizio distress, and he searched diligently round for ways to disperse any frowns he might be causing on the Prince’s Olympian brow; the best means to hand was suggesting they should start shooting again; and so they did. Surprised in their afternoon naps some wretched woodcock and another rabbit fell under the marksmen’s fire, particularly accurate and pitiless that day as both Salina and Tumeo were identifying those innocent creatures with Don Calogero Sedàra. But the shots, the flying feathers, the shreds of skin glittering for an instant in the sun, were not enough to soothe the Prince that day; as the hours passed and return to Donnafugata drew near he felt more and more oppressed, bothered, humiliated at the thought of the imminent conversation with the plebeian Mayor, and his having called in his heart those woodcock and the rabbit “Don Calogero” had been no use after all; though he had already decided to swallow the horrid toad he still felt a need for more information about his adversary, or rather, for a sounding out of public opinion about the step he was about to take. So for the second time that day Don Ciccio was surprised by a sudden point-blank question.
“Listen, Don Ciccio; you see so many people, what do they really think of Don Calogero at Donnafugata?”
Tumeo, in truth, felt he had already shown his opinion of the Mayor quite clearly; and he was just about to say so when into his mind came rumours he had heard about Tancredi making up to Angelica: and he was suddenly overwhelmed with regret at having let himself be drawn into expressing downright judgments which must certainly be anathema to the Prince if what he assumed was true; in another part of his mind, meanwhile, he was congratulating himself at not having said anything positive against Angelica; and the faint ache which he still felt in his right forefinger had the effect of a soothing balsam.
“After all, Excellency, Don Calogero Sedàra is no worse than lots of others who have come up in the last fe
w months.” The homage was moderate but enough to allow Don Fabrizio to insist, “You see, Don Ciccio, I’m most interested to know the truth about Don Calogero and his family.”
“The truth, Excellency, is that Don Calogero is very rich, and very influential too; that he’s a miser (when his daughter was at college he and his wife used to eat a fried egg between them), but knows how to spend when he has to; and as every coin spent in the world must end in someone’s pocket he now finds many people dependent on him; when he’s a friend he really is a friend, one must say that for him: he lets his land on very harsh terms and the peasants kill themselves to pay, but a month ago he lent fifty gold ounces to Pasquale Tripi who had helped him at the time of the landings: without interest, too, which is the greatest miracle ever known since Santa Rosalia stopped the plague at Palermo. He’s clever as the devil, too; Your Excellency should have seen him last April or May; up and down the whole district he went like a bat; by trap, horse, mule, foot, in rain or sun; and wherever he passed secret groups were formed, to prepare the way for those that were to come. He’s a scourge of God, Excellency, a scourge of God. And we’re only seeing the start of Don Calogero’s career. In a few months he’ll be Deputy in the Turin Parliament; in a few years, when church property is put up for sale, he’ll pay next to nothing for the estates of Marca and Fondachello and become the biggest landowner in the province; that’s Don Calogero, Excellency, the new man to be: a pity he has to be like that, though.”
Don Fabrizio remembered a conversation with Father Pirrone some months before in the sunlit observatory. What the Jesuit had predicted had come to pass. But wasn’t it perhaps good tactics to insert himself into the new movement, make at least part use of it for a few members of his own class? The worry of his imminent interview with Don Calogero lessened.
“But the rest of his family, Don Ciccio, what are they really like?”
The Leopard Page 12
