*
Scarpia was now made welcome at the regular receptions in both the Palazzo Marcisano and the Palazzo Comastri which he attended whenever his duties at the Castel Sant’Angelo allowed. These conversazioni were held on particular days – the Marcisanos received on a Thursday, the Comastris on a Monday. At first Scarpia appeared at the earlier part of the evening, soon after the bells of the churches had rung the Ave Maria, but was later given to understand that he could remain for the later and more exclusive conversazioni della seconda sera, which continued late into the night. Biscuits, ices and cool drinks were served by liveried footmen, and guests could choose to listen to a string quartet or the singing of a fashionable castrato in one room, demonstrate his wit and learning to a group in another, catch up on the latest gossip in a third or play faro in a fourth.
At the Palazzo Comastri he watched, but as yet did not join in, the games of cards on which the Romans laid wagers with no coins placed on the table or even ivory counters, but all the bets noted by the players themselves on a card, together with gains and losses – the reckoning to be made at a later date. Letizia di Comastri always spent the last hour or so of her soirées at the tables and, having taken Scarpia ‘under her wing’, liked him to stand behind her, saying he brought her luck.
Scarpia himself did not gamble; he had already been obliged to borrow more money to pay for new sets of clothes and have a purse full of baiocchi ready for the mancia – the tip he had to slip into the hands of the footmen as he came and went. His new life was expensive, far beyond the salary of a captain in the army, but he thought of the costs as an investment: advancement in Rome largely depended on influence, and at both the Comastris and the Marcisanos Scarpia met powerful men – the Papal Secretary of State Cardinal Zelada; the Pope’s nephew Duke Luigi Braschi Onesti; the French ambassador Cardinal de Bernis; and the Spanish ambassador José Nicholas de Azara.
Few of them noticed the young Sicilian: both by nature and experience, Scarpia was a poor courtier. When some grandee made a clever remark, Scarpia could only come up with a witty repartee several hours later as he lay sleepless in his bed. He ground his teeth in frustration at his lack of what the French called esprit. At times he felt that his inarticulacy was an embarrassment to the Contessa di Comastri, who had introduced him to her distinguished guests. He began to doubt his ability to compete for preferment with the suave abati in their elegant black habits, silk stockings and silver-buckled shoes.
Only the Spanish ambassador, Don José de Azara, paid him some attention, and this because he had known Vitellio’s father, Luigi Scarpia, when he served with Tanucci. At one of the conversazioni in the Palazzo Comastri, he took Scarpia aside and asked after his father. Scarpia replied that as far as he knew he was well, but that he had not seen him since leaving to serve the King of Spain.
‘Ah yes, of course,’ said Azara. ‘Now I remember. It was you . . . yes. But you have found service in Rome? That is excellent, though you will not find glory as an officer in the pontifical army. You have to be a cleric to rise in Rome – not a priest, necessarily, Ruffo is not a priest. But then clerics have one disadvantage. They are limited in what they can do for our contessas and principessas, and these ladies often have the ear – and on occasions, more than the ear – of influential gentlemen. And quite clearly you are appreciated by our Contessa di Comastri. Make the most of that. She is one of the most beautiful women in Rome, and there is a vacancy, as it were, in her entourage. You are aware, I am sure, that here in Italy every married woman has her cicisbeo, her cavaliere servente? It is a custom that came, as it happens, from Spain. The husbands don’t mind or, if they do, they are too proud to show it. And someone of the quality of our Contessa di Comastri has three – il buono, il brutto and il bello – il buono, the man who pays her bills, il brutto, the one who runs her errands, and il bello, the one who . . . how can one put it? The one for the exchange of tender emotions. She has il buono, the amiable Prince Paducci, who is too old to ask for more than the privilege of paying for her losses at cards; and she has il brutto, the idiotic Chevalier Spinelli, whose tastes are not really for the opposite sex, but he likes to be seen with the contessa for that very reason; but there is a vacancy for the post of il bello, and, indisputably, my dear Scarpia, you are a handsome young man – also with a reputation for courage and daring which may not be fashionable among the faint-hearted Romans, but always appeals, though they may not admit it, to women. Bello. Coraggioso. Intrepido.’ The ambassador patted Scarpia on the shoulder. ‘Yes, you are made for the role.’
2
Scarpia, after his conversation with Azara, realised that what the ambassador had recommended had already come to pass. He now went everywhere with the contessa, often in the company of the doddery Paducci and the prancing Spinelli, and no one seemed to mind – least of all Letizia’s husband, the count, who treated Scarpia as a favoured amico della casa. A tall, thin man with an aloof manner, and twelve years older than his wife, he spent less time in her company than in that of Adelina di Prato. He laughed when shown a pasquinade, one of the anonymous pamphlets left by the mutilated classical torso situated near the Palazzo Braschi named Pasquino, informing the Romans of the contessa’s newly acquired taste for Marsala.
It was now clear to Scarpia that in the eyes of the Romans there was nothing shameful in paying court to someone else’s wife. It even seemed proper that he should fall in love with a married woman, because to the Romans love had nothing to do with marriage. Marriage was a contract made in the interests of the two families involved. It was the duty of a wife to provide her husband with children, but no one thought that the vow to forsake all others should be taken seriously, or bothered whether or not children born of the marriage looked like their fathers.
Scarpia, then, decided that he was in love with Letizia di Comastri and, from all outward appearances, Letizia di Comastri was especially fond of him. She was five or so years older than he was, and had two children whom she saw at most for half an hour a day. Having borne these children when young and supple, her figure remained taut and graceful. She was aware of its effect on men of all ages and walked with gently undulating hips. Much of the time spared from attending to her children was spent on the meticulous preparation of her hair, her face and her clothes: Scarpia, who was admitted to her boudoir if his duties permitted him to call on her in the morning, would sit on a stool behind her, catching glimpses through the weaving bodies of the hairdresser, seamstress or chambermaid of Letizia’s face reflected in the mirror on her dressing table, catching her eye and in it the expression: ‘All this is for you.’ And in company those same lovely eyes, flitting around the many handsome and distinguished men who always surrounded her, would seek him out and settle for a moment – widening, brightening and triggering on her lips a sweet, complicit smile.
What was not clear to Scarpia – what remained ambiguous in the moeurs of the Romans – was whether or when or how the love would or should come to fruition. Sometimes in an alcove, or behind a pillar, Letizia would draw him towards her, whisper some term of endearment, hold and press his hand, even permit a kiss on her cheek, but then break away and return to the party. They were never alone. In her boudoir, there were not just the maid, the seamstress and the hairdresser, but also the hosier showing his selection of silk stockings and the chemist with a tray of powders, creams and unctions which, Letizia assured her lover with a look of mock misery, were most important ‘for a woman of my advanced age’. Once the contessa was free of their ministrations, the two had the run of the Palazzo Comastri with its forty-five rooms, but here again they were never out of the sight of footmen and maidservants; and there was no place where they might not be disturbed by the major-domo, resident abate, the house guests – cousins, nephews, scroungers, and the petitioners who wished to enlist the count’s influence to secure a preferment, or plaintiffs from some dispute on one of the Comastris’ country estates.
And both in the palazzo and out and about, the conte
ssa was invariably accompanied by her other cavalieri serventi – il buono, Prince Paducci, and il brutto, the Chevalier Spinelli. At their first encounter of the day with Scarpia, both men acknowledged his presence with a cursory nod of the head and then ignored him. Scarpia felt insulted; his hand went to the handle of his sword, but then he noticed that they also ignored one another and indeed anyone else when in the presence of the contessa: clearly, fashionable devotion required that while in attendance it should be as if she were the only other person in the world. All this Letizia acknowledged almost with cruelty. When the prince presented her with some expensive bibelot, she took it with the same cursory word of thanks she addressed to the chemist who gave her a pot of face cream; and while she was a little more effusive with the unctuous chevalier, she sent him on the most preposterous errands both to test his devotion and, she whispered to Scarpia, ‘to get him out of the way’.
To get him out of the way for what? Scarpia was hot-blooded. He thrashed around on his bed at night, imagining the soft body of the voluptuous contessa in his arms, but then was obliged to recognise, as the months passed, that perhaps the smiles, conspiratorial glances, squeezed hands and occasional kisses, were all that a cicisbeo – even il bello – should expect. She seemed to treat him as a child – giving him little gifts – a silver snuffbox, a flacon of expensive pomade, a fashionable shirt, and once taking him to Prince Paducci’s tailor and ordering a beautifully embroidered frock coat with matching waistcoat and breeches. Perhaps the contessa’s love was no more than a silken leash for a pretty lapdog.
When it came to July, the Comastris moved with their whole household to their estate in the Sabine hills to escape the heat of Rome. The Torre San Domenico had been built by a Cardinal Comastri in the seventeenth century on the ruins of a castle, destroyed during the wars between the Guelfs and the Ghibellines. A long avenue of cypress trees led up to the stuccoed villa with its slatted shutters. The count and contessa took up residence with their two children, the children’s governess and a complement of servants from the palazzo in Rome. To the usual crowd surrounding the contessa there was now added gardeners, grooms, tenants, more abati and guests from neighbouring villas. Prince Paducci, il buono, was elsewhere but the Chevalier Spinelli was staying, pattering after the contessa, or cocking his head to assess the social weight of some new visitor and, if a lady of sufficient distinction, sliding across the room to whisper gossip into her ear.
Scarpia was greeted with the usual sweet smile and squeeze of the hand by the contessa, and presented to those he did not know as ‘the courageous captain’. No doubt anyone who noticed the hard look in his eye thought it was an expression you should expect from a soldier who was ready either to take or lose a life. In a sense they were right, because the source of that hard look was Scarpia’s resolve to risk all on a frontal assault on the virtue of Letizia di Comastri. He realised that she might not want to be seduced, and that the count was complaisant only in so far as his wife’s dalliance was limited to those smiles, squeezed hands and whispered endearments. He was aware, too, that if he went too far, he might lose his position as il bello and with it all the influence that the Comastris could exercise on his behalf: he was aware of all this, and that as a Sicilian he was ignorant of the nuances of local custom, but nevertheless determined that the contessa would be his mistress by the time he returned to Rome.
*
The Torre San Domenico had large gardens laid out in terraces with gravel pathways. Umbrella pines gave shade, hedges of laurel and ilex formed a wall with mossy stone and weathered brick, and peacocks scratched the gravel paths between hedges of box and yew. One of the carefully contrived vistas led to a gazebo, the others to statues on plinths and fountains fed by springs from the hills – water spouting from the mouths of the acolytes of a Neptune holding his trident, and from those of Laocoön and his sons struggling with serpents – the features of these pagan gods and heroes roughened by exposure over the centuries, and the patches of burned lichen a reminder that in winter it could be both wet and cold.
Between ten in the morning and five in the afternoon the garden was empty and silent: it was too hot to leave the shade of the house and even the crickets lay low; but early in the day when the air was damp with dew and in the evening when it became cooler without than within, the Comastris and their guests would stroll in these gardens, either in groups or alone.
On the fourth evening, at around six, Scarpia joined a small group sitting on the edge of a fountain at the back of the garden – the contessa, her two children and the children’s governess, a Swiss, Fräulein Bisenschmidt. The children – a boy of ten, a girl of twelve – were trailing their fingers in the water and, as Scarpia approached, the son was being rebuked by Fräulein Bisenschmidt for flicking water in the face of his sister. Letizia had on her face the serene expression that Scarpia had noted before during those brief moments that she spent with her children – a serene and benign approval of something that had little to do with her, rather as if she were being shown hounds by the huntsman or horses by the groom; and she now seemed as indifferent to the bickering of her children as she would have been to the hounds yelping or the horses nodding their heads. The picture she presented, sitting with her children, was unquestionably charming, bringing to mind a painting by Watteau or Fragonard; and the contessa was undoubtedly aware of how charming it was, having the ability to step out of the frame and see herself as others might see her and, like those others, admire what she saw.
The only flaw in the tableau presented at that moment, and indeed at any moment when she received Scarpia in the company of her children, was that her daughter, Giulia, now aged twelve, was already developing from a scraggy child into a woman. Clearly, it was not unusual for women who married young to have mature daughters while they themselves were still in their prime; but it was aggravating all the same when a man’s eye, upon entering her drawing room, was drawn to the daughter rather than the mother.
As yet, there was no question of Scarpia noticing the two children except as details in the pretty tableau. He was, in any case, not looking upon the scene with the eye of an art connoisseur but rather as the huntsman alert for his prey; and the prey, Letizia, to get rid of the evidence of her age, took the bickering and flicking of water as an excuse to suggest to Fräulein Bisenschmidt that it was time for the children to go in. The Swiss woman and her two charges did as they were told. Giulia and Antonio kissed their mother, Fräulein Bisenschmidt curtsied, and all at once Scarpia and the contessa were alone.
Letizia perhaps had not meant this; she looked around, almost flustered, as if there were someone she could call upon to prevent what she sensed might happen; but there was no one, and her sense was correct. Scarpia went up to her, took her hand, raised her from the edge of the basin and drew her into a shaded alcove where the yew hedge hid them from view. He said nothing. He knew what he was up to. So did she. He kissed her, gripped her and fumbled beneath her skirts. Feebly, she tried to stop him. ‘No, no, Scarpia . . .’ but even as she spoke the arms that had feebly pushed him away now drew him towards her. He kissed her lips, then her neck, then her shoulders which, despite the cooler air, were moist with salty sweat. Her words became murmurs as his hands prowled under her skirts and found her flesh. Scarpia was triumphant. He had crossed the Rubicon. There could be no going back.
They straightened their clothes, came out of the alcove and sauntered side by side along the gravel paths. The garden was on a terrace cut into the side of a hill: the elegant basin where the contessa had been sitting with her children was beneath the bank to the north, while to the south, which they now reached, over a low parapet, was a fine view towards Rome and the Tyrrhenian Sea. The parapet had been built on the foundations of the ramparts of the castello, and in the corner, marking the boundary of the garden, was a former turret that now served as a gazebo. They stood together looking at the beautiful view – the distant tower of a church, a line of cypresses on the horizon. Then they strolled to
the extremity of the garden – in other words, to the gazebo. Here they stopped and it became clear to Scarpia that the contessa had gently led him there for a purpose. She opened one half of the double doors and, though she did not go in, pointed to an old sofa that had been placed at the back of the gazebo against the wall. ‘My father-in-law used to come here for his siesta.’ Then she added, not in a whisper but in a low, quiet voice, ‘Be here at midnight. I shall come if I can.’
*
Letizia, when she appeared in the moonlight, was a different woman. Her hair was undressed, and fell over her shoulders: her complicated, corseted dress had been replaced by a loose silk wrap which, though it revealed less of her bosom than the décolleté gowns she wore during the day, clung to the body that was naked beneath. She was there like a fawn, as much a part of nature as the scent of the eucalyptus or the chirp of the crickets. The sofa they lay on had lost some of its stuffing, perhaps as a result of gallant encounters over many years, but was nevertheless soft enough for the two to make love and, after a short spell in one another’s arms, make love again. ‘Dear Scarpia,’ she said, stroking his flat stomach or, when he was over her, running her hands from his shoulders down his back. ‘Dear Scarpia . . .’ And her Sicilian lover, so imperious in the chase, felt humbled to find himself the lover of such an exquisite woman and was exultant that her rapture appeared to equal his own.
Scarpia Page 9
