A Favourite of the Gods and a Compass Error

by Sybille Bedford

  “I know,” said Giorgio; “to a very rich man.”

  “Has she accepted your invitation?” said Anna.

  “How not.”

  “Meno male,” said Constanza, and later on slipped him a fiver of her own.

  “I’m not going to spend it all on her,” Giorgio told her. “Nothing in it, no return. Girls in that world are the same everywhere. But it does no harm being seen. I may get to know some of her married friends.”

  Giorgio, when he put himself out, did have something. Only his sister could not see it. “The chic,” she muttered when he presented himself to them in his new clothes.

  “You mean he looks . . . common?” the principessa asked after her son had left.

  “Yes.”

  “Oh, dear. Perhaps it’s because you have become so very English?”

  “Perhaps. I don’t think it’s got much to do with being English or Italian, it’s a new look, it’s the age.”

  •

  Giorgio carried off his evening well. As he had said, there was nothing in it. During the first part of it, the girl, who was quite a prize and much admired, talked only of her engagement and the difficulties her people were putting up; later she talked about Constanza. Constanza seemed to fascinate her.

  “All the boys at our dancing-class had her photograph, and we used to cut her out of The Taller.”

  “She’s not bad,” said Giorgio loyally.

  “When I was little I used to hear my parents’ friends say that she came second only to——” she named the English beauty of the age. “Of course they are entirely different types.”

  Giorgio sipped his crême de menthe and looked detached.

  “Later on half the men one met were madly in love with her. There’s something queer about her, though. You know what people said during the war? All Constanza’s young men were all right. They all came back, not one of them was killed.”

  Artemis looked up and was surprised to see her escort sign himself.

  Giorgio did not consider the evening a dead loss, he had cut a fine figure and was left with some cash in hand.

  •

  Mussolini marched on Rome; the new régime took power and was consolidated less than two years later by the Matteotti murder. Constanza reacted to these events as she had reacted in the war: by instinct and by reason she became an anti-fascist from the start and never abandoned that position. This did not bring her any closer to her Roman family. There were of course a good many exceptions, but as it happened the prevalent attitude in the prince’s circle was opportunism disinfected by a dash of cynicism. There was a lot of shrugging and washing of hands, they laughed at the new Caesar and his henchmen, but there were also fat sighs of relief: were the strikes not being put a stop to? were the brutal clowns not saving the country from the Reds? For the rest, Italy was a kingdom still, the clown and his mob were regarded as occultly held in check by the mystique of the House of Savoy.

  “The Piemontesi have come up in the world,” said Constanza. But it was no longer a joke.

  She became mildly active. She carried messages and scraps of information across the border and brought back other messages and banned foreign newspapers. The underground she worked for was a rather professorial group—“liberals and doomed to fail,” as Simon would have put it—and Constanza had little illusion about the amateurishness of the organization and the immediate hopelessness of its task. All the same she looked on resistance as morally and historically essential; if it ceased the Italian people would be lost.

  The principessa, too, became a staunch anti-fascist; she simply saw the movement as an insult to the human race. Always at her best when events allowed her to forget the personal cage, she cracked jokes against the fascisti that were almost Roman in irreverence. If the blackshirts tramping over Italy filled Constanza with anguish and deep sadness, it animated Anna’s fighting spirit and revived her. She was provided with the impetus and formula to return to Italy. Her place now, she said, was there. And indeed the principessa—with her name, her air, her imagined, but effective, American impregnability—protesting hard and loud against the régime on Italian soil was to a few at least a refreshing minor mercy.

  She went to Lake Como, she wintered on the Ligurian Riviera, revisited Pisa, took a villa at Fiesole. The exiled-from, the unreachable, now became Rome, the seat of the arch-enemies, the fount of all iniquity. And when she spoke of it no-one was certain if she meant the prince or Musso. At any rate before Constanza had taken it quite in, her mother had almost completely transferred herself again to Italy. Flavia, if she wished, was given the freedom of an olive grove. Constanza looked on sardonically—the paths of fate were devious.

  •

  Constanza’s organization did not find her unuseful. One day she was summoned to Milan and asked to do a job that was fairly consequential and quite risky. If they catch you——she was told. “Are you afraid?”

  “Only fools are not,” Constanza said, but of course she’d do it.

  She was sent away to think it over. She did and had to come to the conclusion that they had not taken her British passport into enough account: the worst that could befall her, and the most likely, was her not being allowed back into Italy. She was quite clear then where her duty lay: she had no right to do something that might cut her off from her father for a second time. She went back to the committee and told them that the job was out. Family reasons. Certo, certo, they said, but she could read their thoughts: These people have no guts.

  Inconsistently she went on taking smaller but quite definite risks, and she never refused to carry a personal message. She was never caught.

  •

  Financially Constanza was independent from her mother by her mother’s wish. After her divorce, the trust fund continued to pay her the allowance she was first given when she and Simon married. It was very much less than what Anna had or spent, but it was enough for her. Railway tickets, books, a couple of rooms to herself, the minor freedoms, an orderly existence of paid bills. Constanza had no acquisitive instincts, or at least not for the things that were within her reach; she could have dreamt of land, a family house. Simon had disliked her hunting side, but it had run itself out; she did not take up serious hunting again after the war. She did not care much for motor cars except as casual conveniences, and she never learnt to drive one. About things that did not interest her she cultivated a vagueness that saved her boredom and much trouble, and one of these was clothes. Not unwisely, she let Anna get them for her and they were often more expensive than Constanza knew or would have liked. She had a tendency to adorn herself with things that glittered, but had no real sense of jewels. After Angelina (reasonably contented) was married in her sweet-shop, Constanza for more than a single reason gave up having her own maid.

  Anna’s unselfconscious extravagance continued. From time to time came rumblings from her hard-tried trustees, but they had cried caution so long and always paid her overdraft that she gave little heed. She would write back rubbing it in to them how well-advised they’d been by Constanza’s hunch to get out of Russian Railways, and draw their attention to a fact which even they could not deny: Wall Street was booming.

  The Italian villas Flavia now grew up in were rambling and enchanted and full of the incomparable vistas and glaring drawbacks that are common to Italian villas and mean not much to children and can in any case be partly overcome if there is a sufficiency of servants. There were enough servants; all of them Italian, and many of them talked. Anna also talked to, or rather before her grandchild. It was a habit she had formed during Flavia’s infancy. Already at Regent’s Park she used to have the child brought in to her in the morning and, while she let it taste a duck’s egg or some honey, soliloquized before her. The theme was always simple if above Flavia’s head: The villainy of men, the villainy that lurked in Italy. Beware of Rome, of treachery, beware of men. When Flavia herself was able to talk coherently, and presumably to listen, the flow of these tirades did not entirely cease duri
ng half-guarded moments. Flavia learnt that her grandmother used two distinct ways of communication. She either addressed a person or the air. When Flavia made her presence felt or asked a question, Anna would incline her head, bestow attention, say My darling, and answer everything with smiling deliberation. But when Flavia was in a book or concentrating on some food, Anna might lapse into a sotto-voce stream of warnings and abuse. Look out for lies . . . Never trust a man . . . Men are deceitful . . . Men are vile. Flavia half shut it out, half took it in.

  After they had moved to Italy, Rome cast a spell also upon the child. The Forbidden City had a presence that loomed larger than prosaic Florence. Flavia supplemented what she heard with reading. She knew about the Borgias, she got hold of The Cenci. She loved the sound of all of it, she felt she had looked inside these palazzi, and her head was filled with dark dreams.

  One day she asked Mena, “Is the prince in Rome a hunch-back?” Mena had strict orders not to touch certain subjects and had kept to them for years. This was too much.

  “What next!” she cried. The love that she bore Anna had never diminished her immense pride in the prince.

  “E bell’uomo!”

  Flavia pricked up her ears. Quick to take advantage of the first breach in Mena’s reticence, she pressed on, “What has he done? Does he stab his adversaries?”

  But Mena had become like a clam again.

  “Has he deprived his heirs of their Rights and Titles?”

  “Off with you.”

  “Does he put poison in his guests’ wine? Does he entertain a Guilty Love?”

  “Sciocchezze,” Mena said, unperturbed.

  •

  Flavia saw herself complete with cloak and charger knock one day at the Sebastian Gate—she liked the name—demanding her patrimony and the truth about her ancestor. Meanwhile, other ways were open to research.

  “What would be your idea of a bell’uomo?” she nonchalantly asked her governess. At ten, Flavia was a lanky child, very thin, with the fine light hair and colouring of her grandmother’s; her features were like Anna’s, too, but without Anna’s porcelain prettiness, and instead there was an indefinable look of Simon, and she also had Simon’s voice and Simon’s laugh. Like most children, Flavia kept many things to herself and blurted out others. She was solitary rather than gregarious, but could hold her own in company, and when she showed reserve it was reserve, not shyness.

  The governess, a rather stupid Englishwoman, said, “Oh, I suppose someone with a lot of teeth and smarmy hair, a kind of Don Juan.”

  “And who is he?” said Flavia.

  Miss March hedged ineptly.

  Soon Constanza was paying a visit at Fiesole.

  “Mummy, I want to know all about Don Juan.”

  “All?” said Constanza. “Mille e tre. You monster of curiosity. He was loved by a thousand and three women.”

  “Oh, was he,” said Flavia. “At the same time?”

  “The timing was at fault occasionally.”

  “May I have the whole story please, mummy?”

  “Certainly. There are many versions. Some day you may enjoy Byron’s; meanwhile you could go to the Opera, they’re putting it on this spring. Well then . . .” and she told the story.

  “He went to hell?” said Flavia, “what a disaster. He oughtn’t to have murdered the Commendatore.” Then she said, “Mummy, people are sent to hell for one woman; if they’re not married to her. It doesn’t have to be a thousand and three.”

  The gulf of déjà-vu opened before Constanza. She said humbly, “You needn’t believe all of that, my sweet.”

  Her daughter gave her a quick look. “I don’t,” she said lightly.

  •

  Flavia could be disconcertingly persistent. Before her mother was off again, she reminded her. “You will tell nonna that I may see Don Juan?”

  “You just tell her you want to go to the opera, that’ll be enough.”

  Flavia said doubtfully, “She only goes to Brahms.”

  “I know. Mendelssohn, Brahms and Beethoven. But Mozart will do. You can take my word for it.”

  “Certo,” said her daughter.

  Flavia went and was tremendously impressed by the whole thing. Afterwards she renewed her assault on Mena. “I believe he is a hunch-back after all,” she said. It did not fail and Mena at last was goaded into her Leporello piece.

  “Tutte le belle di Roma, tutte le donne——” All the ladies of Rome, and not only the ladies had been unable to resist the prince. “Tutte!” Mena cried, carried away, enraptured by the past.

  For Flavia two and two had come together, and she also felt enraptured. There was one more test. From the floor, a finger in her book, she flung into Anna’s musing a light, clear-voiced question:

  “Like Don Giovanni?”

  Anna was so startled by this sudden intuition, and so gratified—out of the mouth of babes!—that she held out her arms: “Oh, my perceptive child.” Flavia was just as glad to hide in them.

  But when her mother had returned, there was no concealment. “Mummy, mummy—you know what I am going to be when I’m grown up? I’m going to be like the prince, I am going to seduce all the beautiful ladies in Rome, and other women, too, and I shall love them all.”

  “Dio darling,” Constanza exclaimed, “you have got it all wrong! That wouldn’t do at all. Oh, shall we never escape the muddling consequences of our family history?”

  •

  Giorgio had not been pleased at all by his mother’s move to Italy, he considered that it cut down his manoeuvering room. He had much preferred circulating between Rome and England, and besides one cut some figure running over to London in June, while running up to Florence one did not. Moreover Italy was finished.

  He did run up quite often all the same (he now had a Fiat and coveted a Lancia) with some demand or other, but he generally sulked. In compensation one January Anna took him to St-Moritz. It was not her kind of place—Anna always went to quiet hotels—but Giorgio lapped it up, Flavia liked the snow, a pleasant Irish Colonel attached himself to Anna, and for a week or two all went well. Anna sat with her Colonel where they did not have to hear the jazz band, was almost persuaded to try a turn on skates again, watched Flavia button-holing unguarded hotel guests—“Have you tried freezing milk on your window-sill?” “Do you know the difference between Centigrade and Réaumur?”—and told herself that after all she owed something to the boy.

  Then Giorgio announced that he was engaged.

  It cost Anna an effort and some courage to pull herself back into reality. She managed to say to Mena, “Will you tell him that he must speak to his father. He is not eighteen!”

  “I shall do as you wish, Eccellenza.” Mena who wept so easily was also an adept at clearing her face of any expression whatsoever.

  Anna might have spared herself. Giorgio strolled in and dropped a few words airily. Mama, carissima, matters had not reached that stage at all, not at all—what was required at present was she, his mother, to smooth the way.

  She telegraphed for Constanza. Constanza was going through one of what Anna called her restless times and again could only be reached by a poste restante. As a matter of fact she had gone to Naples for her underground. The telegram found her, she had finished her job and she took a train to Switzerland at once. It came natural to her to rally in a family emergency. But no sooner had she arrived and stepped into that plushy hall than she learnt it was all off. The facts, when pieced together, were simple. Giorgio had become acquainted with a family from Milan exhibiting the exterior signs of wealth. Obvious to all they were war rich. Giorgio made up to the girl, the girl fell for him, they came to an understanding. Giorgio’s assets and lack of them were equally obvious; the parents were doubtful, alarmed, not unattracted, ready to negotiate. Then there came an hotel dance. Giorgio sat with his Milanesi and drank their champagne, but he danced once, and again and a third time with a woman from another table, an Hungarian countess. He sat out another dance with her; towards the e
nd he disappeared. Consternation; covering-up. The girl swollen-eyed next morning, the father furious.

  “And what did you think you were doing, guttersnipe?” Constanza asked her brother.

  “They expect me to wait for a couple of years, can you see it—il fidanzato? Who can keep it up that long? What do we know about them? perhaps they aren’t as rich as they look.”

  “You might have thought of all of that before.”

  “Già. It was practice. I have to learn to handle these things.”

  “Well, I congratulate you. You’ve made three people wretched. If you had to break it off, there were other ways.”

  Giorgio grinned at her. “I didn’t know if I wanted to break it off when I sat down with them, I hadn’t danced with the contessa then—have you seen her?”

  “You are not going to make yourself very popular, caro.”

  “There are other fish in the ocean.”

  To her mother Constanza said, “The silver lining: we can now move out of this gilded cage.”

  They did. Giorgio dared not squeak. It was Flavia who protested. “Nonna, mummy, we can’t leave, please let me stay, couldn’t I stay on? I’ve just met such an interesting man, he is a . . . positive, a logical——He’s written it down for me, look: a Logical Positivist.”

  •

  Anna found a new adjective for her son. Not responsible. He was, she said, neither responsible nor clever.

  •

  Mr. James, during those years, sometimes came to stay. In his mid-sixties, perhaps a little fragile, he had remained the same to them.

  Flavia liked him to tell her tales about her mother when she was a child.

  “Well, she was a very pious little girl,” Mr. James would say. “Never without her rosary or whatever you are supposed to carry,” and Flavia would crow with laughter.

  “She was very foolish and slow at her lessons, and you know the most foolish thing of all? She liked to think that I was a philosopher.”

  “She asked your advice?” said Flavia.

  “I can’t recall her doing that,” said Mr. James.

  “And what are you?”