They joined the women on the railed and paved garden old Itale had built out over the lake under the south windows of the house. It was a warm evening, the last of July. The water reflected the pale blue sky evenly except where, in the large shadows of the mountains, it lay translucent brown. Far off east where the lake was hidden by slopes descending sheer into it a little haze veiled the water. In the west sunset still colored the sky behind San Larenz Mountain and lighted the air so that the white flagstones of the terrace, the white nicotiana flowering in pots, the white dress Laura wore, the blue surface of the lake all were faintly flushed with rose, fading now as the sky paled and Vega overhead sent its first broken radiance down through the quiet air. The cypress at the outer corner of the terrace stood black against luminous water and sky, and the air bore a scent of dusk, dampness, flowers, and the murmur of women’s voices.
“Oh, Lord, Lord, what a wonder of an evening!” sighed Count Orlant, in a strong provincial accent, submissively, as if asking what he had ever done to merit so fine an evening. He stood looking out over the lake, his long face serene. Eleonora and her sister-in-law were going through the week’s gossip, which they exchanged weekly, Eleonora reporting on Val Malafrena and Perneta covering events in Portacheyka; the two girls, Piera Valtorskar and Laura, were talking together, and lowered their voices when the men came out. “He can’t dance at all,” Laura was saying.
“The hair on the back of his neck looks like moss on a stump,” said Piera, dreamily, with complete lack of feeling. She was sixteen years old. Her face, like her father’s, was long and naturally serene. She was small, and her figure and hands were still childishly plump.
“If only there was somebody new…For a real ball…”
Piera asked with sudden interest, “Do you think they’ll have vanilla ices?”
Perneta meantime had interrupted a complex narration to ask her husband, “Emanuel, isn’t Alitsia Verachoy Alexander Sorentay’s second cousin?”
“No doubt. She’s related to everybody in the Montayna.”
“Then it was his mother who married a man from Val Altesma named Berchoy in 1816, wasn’t it?”
“Whose mother?”
“Alitsia’s husband’s.”
“But Perneta dear,” said Eleonora, “Givan Verachoy died in 1820, so how could his wife have remarried in 1816?”
“Su, su, su,” Emanuel went, and escaped, while Perneta said, “But Rosa Berchoy is Alitsia’s mother-in-law, don’t you see,” and Eleonora cried, “Oh, it’s Edmund Sorentay you mean, not Alexander, and it was her father that died in 1820!”
Guide’s brother, though six years younger than he, was greyer; his face was more mobile, less strongly marked. Unambitious and sociable, he had chosen to live in town and practice the law, in which he had taken his degree at Solariy. He had twice refused a judgeship, never explaining his refusal, which most people ascribed to indolence. He was in fact indolent and inclined to irony, describing himself both as a superfluous man and a supremely fortunate one. He deferred to his brother; he would counsel him, but unwillingly. A lawyer’s experience of humanity had rubbed him down, worn the corners off him, while Guide, like a flint never dislodged from its cliff above the torrent, had kept every angle and salience of his character intact. Emanuel and Perneta had had one child, stillborn. She, an active woman of a temperament dryer and more sardonic than his own, made no comment when he described himself as supremely fortunate; nor did she ever meddle in the upbringing of her niece and nephew; but they were her sunlight, her pride, her fortune.
Itale joined his uncle at the balustrade under the cypress. The young man’s face was still flushed, his hair and cravat were rather wild. “You saw in the Courier-Mercury that the Provincial Diet of the Polana is meeting? That’s the man I was talking about, Stefan Oragon.”
“I remember. So he’ll be a deputy, if the Assembly meets.”
“Yes; he’s what we need; a Danton, a man who can speak for the people.”
“Do the people want to be spoken for?”
This was not the kind of question the members of Amiktiya had asked one another.
“And which people?” Emanuel pursued his advantage. “Our class is scarcely ‘the people’—The merchants? The peasants here? The city rabble? Don’t the different classes have rather different demands?—”
“Not ultimately,” Itale said, thinking as he spoke. “The ignorance of the uneducated limits the usefulness of education in those who receive it; you can’t limit the light. You can’t build equity on any foundation but equality—for four thousand years that has been proved over and over again—”
“Proved?” Emanuel demanded, and they were off, full gallop. Their discussions always started thus with Emanuel in control, pressing Itale to defend his opinions, and always ended with Itale out of control, prevailing through sheer goodnatured eloquent conviction. Then Emanuel would reorganise, provoke another defense, all the while persuaded that he did so to keep his nephew from second-hand thinking, and not because he, too, craved to hear and speak the words, our country, our rights, our freedom.
Itale’s mother called to him to fetch Perneta’s shawl which she had left in the gig. When he returned sunset was over, the breeze smelled of night. Sky, mountains, lake lay drowned in a deep obscurity of blue, shot through with luminous mists. Laura’s white gown showed against the shrubbery with the same misty gleam. “You look like Lot’s wife,” her brother said.
“The stickpin’s coming out of your tie,” she retorted.
“You can’t see it in the dark.”
“I don’t need to. Your tie has never been the same since you read Byron.”
Laura was tall like her brother, thin, with strong, delicate wrists and hands. She loved her brother passionately, but was ruled by an imperative honesty of heart. When I tale’s mother brought him down out of the clouds she scarcely knew it and never intended it; his sister, admiring and intolerant, always did. She wanted him to be himself, considering him, in himself, superior to all fashions, opinions, authorities. A very gentle, unassuming girl of nineteen, she was in this as intransigent as her father. Itale valued her opinion of him above any other, but at this point he was merely mortified, because Piera Valtorskar was listening; having rapidly adjusted his necktie, he said with pedantry, “I have no idea why you think I should want to imitate Lord Byron in any way, except perhaps his death. He died a hero, no doubt of that. But the poetry is trivial.”
“But last summer you made me read that whole book about Manfred! And you were quoting today—Thy something or other wings are something—”
“‘Thy wings of storm are held at rest,’ that’s not Byron, that’s Estenskar! You mean you haven’t read the Odes?”
“No,” said Laura, meekly.
“I have,” said Piera.
“Then you know the difference, at least!”
“But I haven’t read the translation of Lord Byron. I think papa hid it.” Piera spoke very softly.
“That’s all right, at least you’ve read Estenskar. You liked it, didn’t you? That was ‘The Eagle’—and it ends,
But, caged, thou seest the centuries
Open before thee, like the open sky.—
Ah, really, that’s magnificent!”
“But who is it about?” Laura inquired in honest confusion. “Napoleon!” her brother thundered, outraged. “Oh, dear, Napoleon again,” said their mother. “Itale, dear, will you fetch my shawl, too? It’s in the hall, or call Kass, but I expect he’s having his dinner now.”
Itale brought her shawl and then hesitated, standing by her chair, as to where to go next. He ought to return to his uncle at the balustrade and have a sensible, manly conversation, thus proving to Piera and himself that it was only because she was so childish that he appeared to be childish when he was with her. But he wanted to stay and talk with the two girls.
His mother looked up at him. “When ever did you grow so tall?” she asked in a puzzled, musing tone. Light from the house
windows shone on her upturned face. When she smiled her under lip hid beneath the top one, and this gave her a demure, sly look that was perfectly charming. Itale laughed for no reason, looking down at her, and she laughed at him because he looked so tall and because he was laughing.
Count Orlant had wandered over and asked, touching his daughter’s hair, “You’re not cold, contesina?”
“No, Papa. It’s lovely out here.”
“I suppose we should be going in,” Eleonora said comfortably, not moving.
“What’s become of the picnic in the pine forest?” asked Perneta. “We’ve been promised it all summer.”
“Oh, I forgot to say, if we want we can go tomorrow, the weather will hold, won’t it, dear?”
“Likely,” said Guide, who sat near her, sunk in his own thoughts. He did not like the discussions his son and his brother carried on at his table. He treated all political discussions with contempt. Some of his fellow landowners, who had no interest in events outside the province but were engrossed in local politics, returned the contempt: “Sorde never looks up from his plough.” Others said with envy, “Sorde’s one of the old breed, the independent gentry,” comparing him to their fathers and grandfathers for whom, as usual, life had been so much simpler. But Guide knew well enough that his father had not been one of the “old breed.” He remembered the letters that had used to come from Paris, Prague, Vienna, the guests from Krasnoy and Aisnar, the discussions at table and in the library. Yet old Itale had taken no part in local politics and had never explained his own ideas except in direct answer to a question. There had been more to his silence and self-exile on the estate than natural tolerance and reserve; it had been a choice, scrupulously kept, made perhaps in self-knowledge, perhaps in the bitterness of defeat: Guide did not know. The child of that choice, he had never questioned it. Now for the first time he was forced to, and to consider that what he had considered his destiny was also, perhaps, an unacknowledged, unexamined choice. So he sat somber in the mild summer dusk. His son’s voice, the girl’s voices flowed past him like water. Perneta sat silent; Count Orlant and Eleonora had joined Emanuel at the terrace edge; the three young people were talking softly.
“It’s going to sound very silly, but you know, I have an idea about that,” Laura was saying. “I don’t believe you have to die, if you don’t want to. I mean, I know you do, and still…I can’t believe people would die if they really, absolutely wanted not to.” She smiled; her smile was like her mother’s. “I told you it was silly.”
“No, I’ve thought the same thing,” said Itale. He found it extraordinary, mysterious, that he and his sister had had the same thought. He admired Laura: she had had the courage to speak it, he had not. “I can’t find the reason for dying, the need. People simply get tired, give in, isn’t that it?”
“Yes. Death comes from outside, a disease, or a whack on the head, something from outside, not oneself.”
“Exactly. And if one were really oneself, one would say, ‘No, sorry, I’m busy, come back later when I’ve done everything I have to do!’” All three of them laughed, and Laura said, “And that would be never. How could you ever get everything done?”
“You certainly can’t in seventy years. It’s ridiculous. If I had seven hundred, I’d spend the first century thinking—finishing thoughts I never have time to finish. After that I could do things properly, instead of rushing in and making a mess every time.”
“What would you do?” Piera asked.
“Well, one century for travelling. Europe—the Americas—China—”
“I’d go somewhere where no one knew me at all,” said Laura. “It wouldn’t have to be that far, Val Altesma would do. I’d like to live where no one knew me, and I didn’t know anyone. And I think I’d like to travel too; I should like to see Paris; and the volcanoes in Iceland.”
“I’d stay here,” said Piera. “I’d buy up all the land around the lake, except yours, and make the disagreeable people move away. I shall have an enormous family. Fifteen at least. On July thirty-first every year they’ll all come home from wherever they were and we’ll have a great, enormous party on the lake, with boats.”
“I’ll bring fireworks from China for it.”
“I’ll bring volcanoes from Iceland,” said Laura, and again they all laughed.
“What would you do with three wishes?” Piera asked.
“Three hundred more,” Laura said.
“Not allowed. It’s always three.”
“Well, I don’t know, what would you wish, Itale?”
“A decent-sized nose,” he said gravely, after consideration. “One that people didn’t take notice of. And I’d like to be at King Matiyas’s coronation.”
“That’s two. What else?”
“Oh, nothing else, that’s enough,” Itale said with his quick, broad smile. “I’ll give the third one to Piera, I expect she has a use for it.”
“No, three’s plenty,” Piera said, but she would not tell what her three wishes were.
“All right,” Laura said, “I’ll use up Itale’s spare wish. I’d wish we find out we were right, and all live seven hundred years.”
“And come back summers for Piera’s party on the lake,” Itale added.
“Can you make any sense of it, Perneta?” Eleonora inquired.
“I never listen to them, Lele,” Perneta answered in her dry contralto. “It’s no use.”
“It’s just as sensible as all that about whose mother-in-law is somebody else’s stepsister’s uncle!” Laura retorted.
“And far more profound,” said her brother.
“Oh, but the Sorentays’ ball, we haven’t even decided on Piera’s dress, and when is it to be, the twentieth?”
“The twenty-second,” both girls replied. The conversation turned with vigor to the subject of taffeta, organdie, swiss; empire, tuckered, à la grecque; “White swiss with tiny green dots, with a dropped tucker, I can show you the very thing in Perneta’s book.”
“But mama, that’s ancient, that book’s from 1820!”
“My dear, if we did dress in fashion up here, who would know it?” Eleonora inquired without asperity. She had been a beautiful and admired girl in Solariy, but had left all that behind her, “down there,” without a backward glance, when she married Guide Sorde. “I think the dropped tucker is an uncommonly pretty style. Do you like the idea, Piera?”
Piera’s mother had died, fourteen years ago, in an epidemic of the cholera that had also taken the Sordes’ last-born, a baby girl. There were nurses and servants aplenty in Count Orlant’s house, an ancient great-aunt, cousins, relatives of the mother; but Eleonora had taken charge of the two-year-old Piera at once, firmly, as if by right. Count Orlant, grieving, anxious, grateful, soon dared not decide anything concerning his daughter without consulting Eleonora: who in turn had never presumed on the privilege of affection. She and Piera loved each other more easily, more cheerfully, than any mother and daughter could do however good their disposition.
Piera, often slow to speak, was considering Eleonora’s question. “Yes,” she said, and thought a little longer. “I’d like a grey silk gown with panels,” she said, “like that plate for the Court Bal dress. And a gold scarf. And silk shoes with gold roses.”
“Oh dear,” said Eleonora.
Count Orlant was listening. He had never got over a deep wonder at the fact that Piera, this young person who was so candid yet so secret, and in whom he glimpsed when he least expected it a whole, strange world of ideas, knowledge, and emotions which could not possibly have had time in sixteen years to grow so deep and strong, that this extraordinary child on the point of becoming a woman was, when you came right down to it, his daughter. Though he relied upon her love he was often afraid of her. Just now the wonder returned: he saw her vision, a royal maiden in silk and cloth of gold. “That sounds very charming,” he said, timidly proffering his opinion to the wise ladies. They sighed, hedged. “Perhaps a gold scarf with a white organdie?” Eleonora we
nt on trying to soften the veto. The Valtorskars, father and daughter, accepted the judgment without question, listened to further suggestions, and, listening, continued to entertain their tacit and contented vision of magnificence.
Guide and Emanuel were talking about hunting; it was Itale that now sat unheeding, tense with his thoughts. Down in Solariy he had planned to tell his family his decision on the night he came home: he must not deceive them by letting them think him home to stay. He had been home three weeks now and had said nothing. Coming in at the Golden Lion in Portacheyka, as he swung down off the coach, he had seen his father turn to look for him. On Guide’s face had been the rare smile that made him look a different man, awkward, vulnerable. At the memory of it Itale clenched his hands in unavailing protest. It was unjust of his father to be so happy, to show his happiness, at his return! How could a man act like a man, say what he had to say and do what he had to do, when all these unspoken feelings clung and clustered round him holding him back, tying him down? And not only other people’s feelings—he would admit—but his own; all the happiness of his boyhood around him once again, unchanged, all his own love and loyalty, all his old expectations of life. The earth itself held him here more strongly than any other bond, the red dirt of the vineyards, the long great lines of the mountains against the sky. How could he leave all that? The scythe he was honing or the boat tiller or the book in his hand would be forgotten for a moment and he would look unseeing out over Malafrena, with a heaviness in him. It was as if a spell was laid upon him here, which he could not break, though he might escape from it; a charm that grew strongest in certain hours, certain conversations—he did not want to think about it. That was the rankest injustice, the least tolerable. He could not fall in love here, with a mere child; there was no question of it, of childish flirtations and unspoken understandings: he had outgrown all that. It was love he wanted, adult love, and he would find it in Krasnoy; for he had to go to Krasnoy. Beneath all his hesitations the same voice said to him, resolutely and mournfully, “It’s necessary, it must be.”
Malafrena Page 3
