Daughter of Silence

by Morris West

  The narrative was bold and vivid, touched sometimes with sardonic humour, sometimes with poignant regret for the simplicities of a lost time. He talked, without rancour, of the failure of his marriage, of his desire for a son, and of his hopes for the daughter who had arrived instead.

  By the time they reached the fruit and the cheese, Landon had the picture of a man who had attained greatly but who had lost, somewhere along the road, the key to happiness. Of himself, Ascolini said whimsically: ‘I have eaten the apples of Sodom, my friend, but I cannot regret them too much because I can still remember the taste of good fruit and of some noble wines.’ Of Valeria he said bleakly: ‘I tried to arm her with knowledge against the day when love might fail her. I have understood too late that it was my love which failed her first. I wanted to possess in her what her mother had failed to give me. What I found, finally, was a replica of myself. But …’ He shrugged and swept away regret with the crumbs on the tablecloth. ‘This is life. One must wear it with good grace or walk out of it with dignity. I have elected to wear it.’

  To which Landon had nothing to say. He could neither comfort the man nor judge him. So he asked a question: ‘Do you think Carlo can ever re-establish himself with Valeria? Will she ever content herself with him?’

  ‘I don’t know. As it lies now, Carlo would seem to be the lover, she the one who accepts love but sets no value on it. It may be that, if the love were withdrawn, she might be afraid and reach out to hold it. If not – chi sa? There are women who play games with their hearts and seem to live satisfied.’

  ‘Do you care which way it goes?’

  He fixed Landon with a cold, lawyer’s eye and said, emphatically: ‘I care greatly, though not, perhaps, for the reason you think. I want this marriage to last – and last as happily as possible, not for Carlo’s sake, not for Valeria’s, but because I want a grandchild – some promise, at least, of continuity.’ Before Landon had time to comment, he hurried on. ‘That is why I have asked you here today. I want Carlo to know that he has my support in this case and in his relations with Valeria.’

  Landon stared at him in blank disbelief. Everything that had happened in the last forty-eight hours gave the lie to what the old man was saying. As if aware of Landon’s thought, Ascolini brought out from his pocket a buff-coloured envelope and pushed it across the table. ‘I’d like you to see that Carlo gets this. It contains a cheque for a million lire and some notes which I have made on the case. I’d like you to explain to Carlo my attitude and urge him to accept the money and the advice to further his client’s cause. Will you do it?’

  ‘No!’

  ‘You don’t believe me? Is that it?’

  ‘I think you’re making a mistake.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘First, I don’t believe Carlo will accept. Second, even if he did accept, you would put him in your debt again. His triumph – if any – would still belong partially to you.’

  ‘You think that’s what I want?’

  ‘No. But on your own confession you would use it. The old bulls – remember?’

  For a long while Ascolini sat silent, staring down at the table, drawing meaningless patterns with a fork on the white cloth. Then he picked up the envelope, put it back in his pocket and said quietly: ‘Perhaps you’re right, Landon. You have no good reason to trust me, and I have no right to salve my vanity by making you a messenger. Will you do me at least one favour?’

  ‘If I can, certainly.’

  ‘Tell Carlo what I have said, what I have offered.’

  ‘You see him every day. Why not tell him yourself?’

  ‘I hope that you may explain me better than I can explain myself.’

  ‘I’ll try, but I can’t guarantee how he will judge.’

  ‘Of course not. Who can guarantee that even the judgment he makes on himself is not a lie to make life bearable?’ He gave Landon a cool, ironic smile. ‘You, for example, Landon, you can take a man’s mind to pieces and put it together again like a watch. Have you explained to yourself why you are so deeply committed to our affairs?’

  It was so neatly done that Landon had to laugh at the sheer virtuosity of the man. Besides, it was a fair question and it was time he gave it a fair answer. He thought about it for a moment and then said, soberly: ‘Sympathy is part of it. I like Carlo and I think he deserves better. Ambition is part of it, too. You know that I’ve been looking for a theme of original research to herald my return to London. This case might provide me one. More than that,’ – he spread his hands palms downward on the tablecloth and studied them intently for a few moments – ‘in a sense, I too am in crisis – a crisis which I think you will understand. I have been too long solitary and self-sufficient. My involvement is, I believe, part of a sub-conscious drive to community and competition.’

  Ascolini nodded approval. ‘I appreciate your frankness, Landon. Let me ask you a little more. How do you regard me?’

  ‘With singular respect,’ said Landon.

  ‘Thank you. I believe you mean it.’ He waited for a fraction of a second and then probed more shrewdly. ‘How do you regard Valeria?’

  Again Landon felt the swift rise of anger but he fought it down and said in a flat voice: ‘She’s an attractive woman and she has her own problems.’

  ‘Do you think you can solve them?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Do you think she may create problems for you?’

  ‘Any woman can create problems for any man.’

  Landon grinned crookedly into his wine-glass. Ascolini frowned and resumed his tracing on the tablecloth. After a few moments he looked up. ‘Strangely enough, Landon, at another time I should not have disapproved of an association between you and Valeria. I think you are the kind of man she needs. But now, for all the reasons that I have explained to you, I would set my face against it.’

  ‘I, too,’ said Landon lightly. ‘I have hopes elsewhere.’

  The old man brightened immediately. ‘Ninette Lachaise?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’m glad to hear it,’ said Ascolini with grave satisfaction. ‘I have a great affection for Ninette. I should give much to see her happy. For this reason only I say to you, be very sure of yourself – and don’t try to have it all on your own terms. Thank you for your patience, Mr Landon, and your company.’

  For all Ascolini’s urbanity, Landon left the restaurant still angry and bitterly resentful. If it had not been for Ninette Lachaise he would have damned them all to hell and taken the first train back to Rome. He was sick of their intrigues. He hated them heartily for seducing him into friendship and then laying at his door the guilts they blamed in one another.

  It was the kind of situation he had avoided sedulously all his life, believing that a man had enough bother compassing his own salvation without acting as judge, jury and wet-nurse to the rest of mankind. But to be trapped like a green boy with his first widow – this was too much! He decided then and there to close his accounts with them and began to walk off his ill-temper by a tramp through the narrow alleys to Ninette’s studio.

  The moment she was in his arms again, he knew for certain that he loved her. Everything that he had ever dreamed of in a woman seemed to have flowered in this one: simplicity, passion, courage. She had none of the tricks that other women used to evoke tenderness while refusing to return it. What she had she would spend freely and make no usurer’s demand for payment. She looked out on the world with an artist’s eyes, serene, grateful, compassionate. For the first time in his life, the bachelor’s caution deserted him and he told her the truth.

  ‘I had to come. I had to tell you. I love you, Ninette.’

  ‘I love you, too, Peter.’ She clung to him for a moment and then withdrew herself gently and walked over to the window to stand, face averted, looking out over the red-tiled roofs of the ancient town. ‘Now that it’s said, Peter, let’s live with it a while. Let’s make no contracts, just wait and enjoy what we have. If it grows, it will be good for us both. If it dies, i
t will not hurt us too much.’

  ‘I want it to grow, Ninette.’

  ‘I, too. But we have both said before what we say now – and it didn’t last.’

  ‘I know it will last, for me.’

  ‘Then just keep saying it, chéri, all the time, until you believe down to the bottom of your heart that it’s true.’

  ‘And you?’

  ‘I’ll do the same.’

  They stood together at the window, arms laced, bodies close, savouring the first sweets of confession, watching the light pour down, golden and tender, from the Tuscan sky. Then she made him sit down, stripped off her smock and bustled about like a housewife to prepare him coffee. He told her of his lunch with Ascolini and of his anger with Rienzi; told her too of his decision to withdraw, as soon as possible, from the whole shabby business. She listened in silence while the coffee-pot bubbled a comic counterpart to the story. Then she sat down, took his hands between her own, and said, in her frank fashion: ‘I know how you feel, Peter. I don’t blame you. These are not your people or mine. The pattern of their lives is twisted and distorted in a fashion that neither you nor I could endure. They bear, as we could never do, the burden of old and bitter histories. And yet, in a curious way, they need us – you much more than me.’

  ‘How can you say that, Ninette?’

  ‘Because I need you almost as they do, Peter. You’re dissatisfied with yourself, I know; but to us you are the new man from the New World, proof that it is possible to live without history, to start with a clean canvas in a land with new light. It’s a symbol, you see, which represents the only solution for these folk and for many others. Someone has to say, “I’m sorry”, and begin again. Otherwise the old history corrupts the new and there is, in the end, no hope at all….’ She faltered then and broke off as if searching for words to define a troublesome thought. ‘It’s like ourselves, you see, we’ve both known other people, loved some and hated the rest. But if we go on living in the past there is no hope for either of us. We have to accept that the present is important and tomorrow is always a question mark. I love you because you are able to do that. Rienzi and Ascolini need you for the same thing. You can afford to be generous with them.’

  Landon shook his head. He was troubled by a vague guilt that even then he could not expose to her. ‘Don’t overrate me, my dear. There are times when I feel very empty.’

  ‘You give more than you know, chéri. That’s why you’re dear to me.’

  Then, to his own surprise, a thought which he had concealed from himself found utterance. ‘I’m afraid of these people, Ninette. I can’t tell you why, but they terrify me with their capacity for malice. They know what they’re doing, they confess it, and some of the shame rubs off. It’s like listening to a man tell dirty stories about his wife.’ He gave a small, harsh laugh. ‘I should be used to it – I get it every day from my patients – but here I’m not so well armed.’

  ‘I know,’ said Ninette softly. ‘I’ve been here longer than you. They torment themselves because they don’t know how to love. But we do. So they can’t hurt us – and we may be able to help them.’

  ‘Is that what you really want, Ninette?’

  ‘I’m so rich, Peter, so very rich at this moment, I’d like to spend a little on the rest of the world.’

  He took her in his arms and kissed her. The coffee-pot boiled over and they laughed and laughed with the simple, foolish joy of being alive.

  In the fall of the afternoon they drove out in Ninette’s battered Citroen to San Gimignano – ‘San Gimignano of the Wondrous Towers’, that miniature town where the Middle Ages are preserved, unenlarged, almost unchanged, in the context of the twentieth century.

  The land lay placid under the long shadows of cypress and olive, brown where the ploughshare had turned it, grey under the overhang of the vines, green where hidden springs still watered the young grass. The light was soft, the air calm but warm with the breath of a land still living, still fertile after a lapse of hungry centuries. The peasants, fresh from siesta, were working the terraces and the vegetable plots – men, women and children humped over the mattock or the weeding-fork. The peace of it slid into Landon’s soul and he lapsed into that pleasant dichotomy where the body concentrates on the mechanical exercise of progress and the mind ranges free over the timeless panorama of men.

  Ninette, too, was silent, absorbed in an artist’s contemplation of colour, contour and mass. They were separate but united, private but harmonious, like notes in the same chord, colours in happy complement. They had no needs that were not fulfilled by the simple presence of one to the other, no fears that could not be allayed by a hand’s touch or a smile of reassurance. If this were not love, then Landon was ignorant indeed. And if love were a folly, then he was well content to be a fool.

  When they came in sight of the grim old monastery which was now the women’s house of correction, Ninette shivered as if a goose had walked over her grave. She drew close to Landon and said in a low voice: ‘Sometimes, Peter…sometimes I, too, am afraid.’

  ‘Of what, dearest?’

  ‘Of all this.’ Her gesture took in the sunlit campagna and the distant dreaming towers of San Gimignano. ‘It is so peaceful, as you see. The peasants are simple folk – narrow like their kind everywhere, but kind and very gentle with their children. Yet every little while something explodes – pam! – and there are violence, hate, and a very animal cruelty.’

  ‘Like the affair at San Stefano?’

  ‘Just like that. That girl, Peter. Before you came, I sketched her face from the photographs in the newspapers. I tried to dissect it as an artist does, and I could find nothing but childhood, yet look what happened.’

  ‘I’ve had the same thought ever since I read the papers this morning. It’s hard to believe in the malice of children, but it exists.’

  ‘They inherit it sometimes, like spirochetes in the blood. Sometimes they accept it as a substitute for love. Nobody can live with an empty heart.’

  ‘Yet this one was married. She must have known something of love.’

  ‘It doesn’t follow, Peter. Sometimes the capacity for love is destroyed. A swamp weed will die in sweet soil. An animal bred in the dark is blind in the sunlight. Look at Ascolini’s daughter. Has she ever lacked love?’

  ‘What made you think of her?’

  Her answer took him by surprise: ‘I dreamed of her last night, Peter – and of you, too. You were holding hands like lovers in a garden. I called out to you, but you would not listen. I tried to go to you but I was held back. I awoke calling your name and crying.’

  ‘Darling, you’re jealous.’

  ‘I know. Silly, isn’t it?’

  ‘Very silly. Valeria means nothing to me.’

  ‘I keep asking myself whether you may mean something to her.’

  ‘What should I mean?’ He felt a pang of shame and embarrassment.

  ‘Kiss and come hither! What do they always mean?’ She broke off and gave a little rueful chuckle. ‘Bear with me, chéri. Every woman has her whims and it’s mine to be jealous of the man I love. Let’s forget them all and talk about ourselves.’

  And talk they did, in the happy, extravagant manner of lovers, while the roof-tops and belfries of San Gimignano hardened themselves against the sky. Finally Landon told her that he would stay in Siena until after the trial and that then he would ask her to marry him.

  Oddly, the talk of marriage seemed to trouble her, as if it were asking too much too soon and tempting the old gods of Etruria to a prankish humour. Landon tried to tease her out of it, but the mood persisted. Like many courageous people who accept life on the best terms available, she had a deep, unreasoned fear of demanding too much promise from the future, of counting the crop before the fruit had come to ripeness.

  When they came to the city they stopped to drink wine in the old square which was called ‘The Place of the Cistern’. Landon made a silly ceremony of pouring a libation to placate the deities. Ninette frowned, a
nd said with a touch of irritation: ‘Don’t do things like that, Peter!’

  ‘It’s a joke, sweetheart. It means nothing.’

  ‘I know, Peter, but I don’t like making pacts with tomorrow. I want today just as it is, good and bad. I feel safe that way. I don’t want to face the great perhaps.’

  ‘Perhaps what?’

  ‘Perhaps I shall die. Perhaps you will grow tired of me and go away. Perhaps I shall go blind and not be able to go on painting.’

  ‘That’s nonsense.’

  ‘I know, chéri. Everything that hasn’t happened is nonsense. But when it does happen, it is better to be prepared. I like to discount the future until I see the sun rise on a new day.’

  ‘But someone has to plan for tomorrow. Life’s not just an accident – or a chess game played by an overruling destiny.’

  ‘Then you must plan for both of us, Peter. I’ll just try to keep us both happy from one hour to the next.’ She stood up and pulled him to his feet. ‘Come on, now! There’s so much to show you before sunset!’

  For the next two hours they explored the tiny city – each step a regression into the violent history of the province. In the twelfth century the citizens had cast out the tyrant, Volterra. In the fourteenth it had surrendered to Florence, bled dry by the Medici bankers and by the bloody factions within its own gates. Benozzo Gozzoli painted here and Folgore, its poet son, was damned from here to Dante’s hell with the eleven great spendthrifts of Siena. When one tower tumbled down, another was built ‘furnished with arrows and mangonels and every warlike need’. Niccolo Machiavelli put the trainbands through their paces just outside the walls, and Dante himself led an embassy to the Grand Council from the Guelph League. To the outward aspect, the place was little changed by the centuries, and as the shadows lengthened one almost expected to hear the tramp of men-at-arms and the clatter of horsemen as merchant and knight and wandering friar squeezed themselves in at the gate before sunset.