General Berthier did not want to antagonise the Romans by holding republican ceremonies inside any of the city’s great Catholic basilicas; however, while the clergy remained in possession of their churches, anything of value in the sacristies was seized by the French – reliquaries, monstrances, even cruets and chalices used in the Mass. The city was plundered. Gold and silver bars to the value of 15 million scudi had been taken from the vaults of the Castel Sant’Angelo, and anything of value from the Vatican, the Quirinale and the palaces of the cardinals and patricians. Pearls and precious stones from the papal tiaras and regalia were removed from their settings and sent to Paris. So too Rome’s finest works of art – the Laocoön Group, the Apollo Belvedere, the Dying Gaul, Cupid and Psyche, Ariadne on Naxos, the Medici Venus, Raphael’s Madonna di Foligno, Madonna della Sedia and the Transfiguration, and Titian’s Sacra Conversazione – all were loaded on to carts and sent to Paris. Treasures and artworks not deemed of sufficient quality for the new Musée du Louvre were sold off at auction and went for knock-down prices to the merchants and bankers who had ready cash. So, too, the properties of the papal loyalists such as Scarpia’s estate at Rubaso. Cesare Angelotti bought for a pittance the palace of the Grand Master of the Knights of Malta on the Aventine Hill.
The republican government was a fiction: in reality, Rome was ruled by the French commander-in-chief, first General Berthier and later General Massena, who pillaged the city as effectively as any Goth or Vandal. French troops were billeted in monasteries, convents and even private homes; their generals in requisitioned palaces, their wives bickering over the allocation of quarters. They gave lavish parties to celebrate their triumph that frequently degenerated into drunken orgies which earned them the contempt of their unpaid troops. A group of two hundred junior officers protested at the greed and depravity of their superiors – at one point Massena, fearing mutiny, fled the city.
With no munificent princes or cardinals to distribute their largesse, the economy of the city collapsed. The paper currency issued by the French became worthless. The people went hungry. The only group that seemed to have profited from the occupation were Rome’s Jews, liberated from the ghetto and now full citizens of the republic. A group of Jews was attacked by a mob in Trastevere. French troops were called in to restore order. There was a riot. Some soldiers were killed. Twenty-two protesters were arrested and later shot on the Piazza del Popolo. More demonstrations and isolated assassinations let to further reprisals. The cells of the Castel Sant’Angelo, which had once held republicans like Count Palmieri, were now filled with papal loyalists, or those thought to have hidden their property from the French. Two priests who had replaced a Tree of Liberty with a crucifix were shot.
Some Romans, it was reported, were collaborating with the French. The Vicar General of Rome, Cardinal Somaglia, had let it be known that he no longer wished to be addressed as ‘Your Eminence’ but ‘Citizen Somaglia’. Young men from noble families were to be seen on the Corso with their hair cut short and wearing tricolour scarves. One news sheet published a list of princely families who had declared themselves in favour of the republic: the Sforzas, the Santa Croces and the Marcisanos. The name of Ludovico di Marcisano cropped up in the columns, and at one republican ceremony ‘the prince’s sister, the Princess Paola, was dressed becomingly as the nymph Larunda’. ‘Young married women,’ the correspondent went on, ‘and some not so young, are now to be seen wearing light, clinging Grecian tunics, and some have dropped their Roman cicisbei in favour of handsome French officers.’
Was Paola among these women with French lovers? Scarpia remembered how his first rival in her imagination had been Bonaparte; and, while he did not imagine Paola in the arms of the Corsican, whose name was now mysteriously absent from the gazettes, he could envisage her taking up with some proxy; and sure enough there came a report in one of the Neapolitan news sheets that the Princess Paola di Marcisano had been seen riding in an open carriage on the Corso with the French Major General Gaston de Jouve. Scarpia might have missed the item, had Spoletta not pointed it out.
*
The knowledge that his wife had a French lover made plain to Scarpia that he had lost her forever. Her loyalties had changed. She was not just the mistress of an enemy, but, to judge from the reports of her participation at republican ceremonies, had become a Jacobin herself. It pained Scarpia to think of Paola making love with a Frenchman, but it pained him more to imagine the Frenchman playing with Pietro and Francesca and infecting them with Jacobin ideas. These thoughts became so painful that Scarpia tried to put them out of his mind, and form a crust of indifference over his depression. He told himself that he was still only thirty-six years old, and should not spend the rest of his life brooding over his misfortunes. He descended from Bagheria into Palermo – first visiting a tailor, and then, with new clothes to match his new mood, paying calls on the Sicilian salonnières such as the Princess Calamatina, going to the theatre and the opera, not so much to listen to the wailing of the minor divas as to pay court to some of the dark Sicilian beauties whose smiles and lingering glances encouraged him to whisper insincere endearments in their ears.
5
The spring was warm; the heat of the summer approached, and the end of the season in Palermo was at hand; but before the leading families left their town houses for their country estates, two pieces of news reached the city that excited the dozy guests at the conversazioni of the Princess Calamatina.
The first came from Messina, where a boat had arrived from the island of Malta to say that the island, only sixty miles off the south coast of Sicily, had been taken by the French. At first the news was disregarded as an absurd rumour: Malta had been garrisoned by the Knights of Malta since the sixteenth century and the fortress at Valetta was impregnable. But further dispatches confirmed the rumours. Bonaparte had decided to conquer Egypt. A French fleet of seventeen warships and four hundred transports, secretly assembled at Toulon, had set sail for Alexandria. Permission had been sought for ships to put into Valetta for fresh food and water. The Grand Master of the Knights of Malta, Ferdinand von Hompesch, had said he would allow only two ships to enter the harbour at a time. This restriction would have delayed the expeditionary force for several weeks, during which time it might have been discovered and engaged by the British fleet. Bonaparte ordered soldiers and cannon to be landed on the western part of the island and, after a twenty-four-hour bombardment of Valetta, von Hompesch surrendered.
It was disturbing to think that Malta, so close to Sicily, was in the hands of the murderous Jacobins, and there was relief when the French armada sailed on to Egypt. Bonaparte’s absence from Europe promised a period of peace, and the Bourbon loyalists could hope that the expedition might turn out badly. Only Scarpia was disappointed: his recall to arms would be indefinitely postponed. However, he was distracted by the other piece of news that excited the citizens of Palermo: Prince Luigi Alturo had persuaded the diva Tosca to come to Sicily and sing in Giuseppe Curcio’s new opera, La disfatta dei Macedoni.
It was well known that the prince was besotted with Tosca, a diva now so celebrated that she had sung before the King of Prussia in Potsdam and the Tsarina Catherine in St Petersburg. She could command any fee she chose, and Prince Alturo had mortified his wife and enraged his children by mortgaging some of his estates and selling works of art to English collectors to pay for gifts for Tosca, and now to guarantee a princely fee and all the costs of bringing her to Sicily.
The season was over; the opera house was closed; but the prince’s project did not require an auditorium. The opera would be staged in the open air in the ancient Greek theatre at Taormina. Scarpia decided to attend the performance. He arranged to stay with his cousins, the Petofrescinis, in their villa near Messina, and, when the day came, it was simply as one member of their large party that he took his place on the stone benches of the theatre sculpted into the side of a hill. In the light of the setting sun, there was a view of the sea and the volcano, Mount Etna, wisps
of smoke arising from its craters. The dry air was scented by pine. His cousins were dull; their friends more so; and though he was seated next to a sallow young woman who was pretty enough, she was too fresh from the convent to be of interest, and blushed at everything he said.
Curcio’s opera was poor, but the audience had not gathered from the four corners of the island to be engaged by a drama or even listen to fine music. It was the voice of Tosca that they had come to hear, and a roar greeted her appearance, dressed simply in a Grecian tunic, her hair raised in plaited strands. She was no more lovely to look at than any other woman, but when she opened her mouth and her voice rose to the highest rows of the amphitheatre, all fell silent and were overwhelmed. Her acting, too, enchanted the audience – her elastic features, her shifting expressions – all the feelings of love and grief indicated by the libretto conveyed by the movement of her limbs and the look in her eyes. The fluttering fans were closed and lay limp on the laps of the ladies, their hands now gripping scented handkerchiefs to wipe away their tears. There were even men to be seen weeping as Tosca sang.
Scarpia did not weep, but he was affected. Here was a woman whose art was sublime and embodied all that was beautiful in a living person. The dumpiness was lost not in a skilfully tailored costume but by the way in which the sound transformed the form of Tosca into the quintessence of feminine beauty. To the women, she became everything they would like to be; to the men, everything they would like to possess.
The opera ended. A great roar rose into the night air and echoed off the mountains as the audience stood and applauded. They would not let Tosca go; there were twelve calls for her to reappear; she was bombarded with bravas and the ground before her strewn with roses. Tosca curtsied. She smiled. She pointed to the other singers, the orchestra, the conductor, the artistic director, and finally to Prince Alturo himself, who came forward to acknowledge the gratitude of his fellow Sicilians.
A select few, among them the Petofrescinis, had been invited by the prince to a reception given in the ruins of the city. Hundreds of torches lit the ancient forum. Silver dishes piled with sumptuous food were laid out on the white tablecloths covering trestle tables, while liveried footmen attended to the guests. Scarpia followed in the wake of his hosts. He ate. He drank. He shared with friends and acquaintances the same enthusiastic judgements of Tosca’s performance, and saw, over the shoulders of the guests, the huddle that had formed around the prince and his diva like bees around their queen. Should he push through this wall of admirers to pay his respects? Would she remember him from Venice? It seemed unlikely. How many male admirers had she entertained since then? Dozens. Perhaps hundreds. Certainly, too many for her to recall a single encounter with a Sicilian soldier.
Scarpia watched her receive the extravagant obeisance of her admirers, and felt a mix of emotions – admiration that she treated them all so gracefully, and astonishment that this daughter of peasants from the Veneto should now manifest the gentle imperiousness of a princess, handing her empty glass to Prince Alturo as if he were a flunkey. He felt a quiet contentment, even pride, that she had once sat in his gondola, had admitted him to her chamber while she changed her clothes and then had supped with him alone in a Venetian cantina.
Then, just as these thoughts were going through his head, Tosca’s gaze, sweeping over her admirers with a gracious indifference, suddenly alighted on Scarpia. Their eyes met. Scarpia smiled and gently inclined his head. For a moment her brow contracted as if she could not place him. Then it relaxed and her eyes moved on.
*
Scarpia, too, moved on. The night remained warm. The guests, already intoxicated by the opera, were kept at a pitch of delight by the savoury delicacies, sorbets and sweetmeats, and glass after glass of ice-cold white or warm red wine. The women gathered in clutches, sitting on gilded chairs, while groups of men leaned against the warm stones of toppled temples, the smoke of their cigars rising into the pine-scented air. There was a moon which lit the ruins beyond the line of flaming torches, and Scarpia, unable to think of anything more to say to his cousins and their friends, left the forum and walked away, intending to find a better view of the moonlit sea.
He stopped and sat on the base of a fallen pillar. He was looking at the light of a boat sailing close to the shore when he heard a movement behind him and then a hand on his shoulder. He turned and looked up into the face of Tosca.
‘So, Baron,’ she said archly, ‘you could not be bothered to pay your respects?’
Scarpia stood. ‘I never imagined –’
‘That I would remember you?’
‘You have so many admirers.’
‘I have many admirers, but not many friends.’
‘Am I your friend?’
‘More than a friend, surely? You saved me in your gondola. Don’t you remember? Were it not for you, I might have been torn to pieces by the angry crowd.’
Scarpia laughed. ‘If only that were the case, I would have something to be proud of.’
Tosca sat down on the slab of marble and, by a glance over her shoulder, invited him to join her. Scarpia sat down beside her, feeling her warmth as well as that of the sun retained in the stone. She had changed from her Grecian tunic into a longer dress, tied by ribbons at her shoulders and drawn in by a belt beneath her breasts. She took hold of his hand. ‘I thought of you, after our adventure. Do you remember? We talked about love.’
‘Yes.’
‘And you told me that you had a wife who loved you and whom you loved.’
‘Yes.’
‘And I said it was a miracle.’
‘Yes.’
The low tone with which Scarpia answered her led Tosca to turn and look into his face. ‘Is she here, your wife? I would like to meet her.’
‘No. She is in Rome.’
‘And the miracle?’
‘It turned out to be false. She now loves someone else.’
‘Ah!’ There was a touch of satisfaction in Tosca’s exclamation.
‘And our views differ,’ Scarpia went on. ‘She is now a patriot, a friend of the Jacobins, while I . . .’
‘You are loyal to your king.’
‘Yes.’
‘And if you had stayed in Rome, you would have been imprisoned?’
‘Almost certainly.’
‘So you fled. Bravo.’
Scarpia blushed. ‘A tactical retreat. In due course I shall return.’
‘Of course.’
‘I have estates here in Sicily,’ said Scarpia.
‘So you pick olives and make wine . . .’
‘Our people do that, yes.’
‘While you amuse yourself.’
‘As best I can.’
‘But without a wife.’
‘Without a wife.’
‘But an inamorata?’ She looked quizzically into his eyes.
‘No. No inamorata.’
‘No wonder. Sicilian women are all Africans.’
Scarpia smiled. ‘And the women of the Veneto?’
Tosca looked down at her bosom as if to make an appraisal. ‘Well, what do you think? Could you love a woman from the Veneto?’
‘Only too easily.’
Tosca looked steadily into his eyes, then said: ‘Let’s walk further away. Sooner or later the prince will come looking for me.’ She rose and put her arm through Scarpia’s. ‘He thinks I am obeying a call of nature.’ She glanced at him – an impudent look in her eyes.
‘No doubt he hoped that he would be the one walking with you in the moonlight.’
‘I am sure. But he paid me to sing, for nothing else. He doesn’t own me. No one owns me. I am Tosca.’
‘And doesn’t Tosca have a lover?’
She did not reply, but tightened her hold of his arm. They walked on for a while in silence. Then she said: ‘You cannot imagine how one feels after singing here, under the moon and the stars. I felt the gods were watching, the pagan gods, coming out of their temples, and Venus was there filling me with a longing; and then I sa
w you, over the heads of Prince Alturo and all those absurd old men. I saw you looking at me with such a sad and serious look on your face, and I remembered you and Venice and how chivalrous you had been and how you had asked for nothing . . .’
They reached a cluster of pine trees. Tosca stopped, then drew him into the shade from the light of the moon. ‘And I felt that terrible longing and thought – now he shall have his reward.’ She placed her arms on his shoulders and looked up into his eyes. Then she closed her eyes and tilted her head. Scarpia kissed her. She drew him further into the darkness. Scarpia took off his tunic, spread it on the yellowed grass strewn with pine needles, and laid her down on the hard ground. ‘Dio, dio, Santa Maria,’ she said as he caressed her. Then, deftly, she freed one hand to reach under her skirts to remove the garment beneath. Scarpia untied the ribbons on her shoulders. ‘Dio, dio . . .’ He kissed her neck, her eyes, her ears, her breasts. Her embrace became stronger; her kiss enduring; and, as they made love, she first whispered and then cried again ‘Dio, dio . . .’ and further words in a dialect that Scarpia did not understand.
Scarpia Page 24
