Daughter of Silence

by Morris West

  ‘You mean Anna Albertini?’

  ‘Yes. In three years she’ll be free. During that time she has to be prepared for an entry into the common world. When she does enter it she will need some kind of framework of interests and affection to step into.

  ‘And you think you can provide it?’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘At what price?’

  ‘Less than I’ve paid for the little I have now.’

  ‘Do you want to know what I think?’ Landon’s voice was chilly.

  ‘That’s why I’m talking to you, Peter. More than ever now I need your friendship.’

  ‘Then for God’s sake listen in friendship to what I’m going to tell you!’ He broke off and gathered himself for a moment, then began to talk, warmly and persuasively, knowing that now or never the last debt must be paid. ‘First, let me explain to you, Carlo, that I don’t agree with many of my colleagues who claim that every human aberration is a symptom of mental illness. I believe, as I think you do, that man is a responsible being, endowed with free-will. But this is no reason to confuse the issue. There is a moral infirmity as well as a mental one. There is evil in the world. There are calculated depravity and indulgence. And there is also a special sickness that follows from these things: a state of fugue, a flight from the knowledge of guilt, man pulling the blankets over his head to escape the beaks of the Furies.

  ‘This is why modern psychiatry splits itself into two schools. The determinists say that man is not responsible for his actions. Therefore, when we’ve revealed to him the source of his disorder, he will cure himself by forgiving himself. You’re a lawyer. You see where this ends – in the destructive absurdity that evil is its own absolution. The other school says, more reasonably, that when the source of the disorder is revealed, man must be given a hope of forgiveness, but he must also be led to the motions of self-reform….’ He broke off and laughed a little self-consciously. ‘You wonder why I’m reading you this little lecture, Carlo? I’m no plaster saint, God knows. I know when I’m doing wrong and so do you. You’re doing it now because you refuse any sort of forgiveness to Valeria and demand all of it for yourself. You know that you’re preparing the way for a greater wrong. So you’re creating a fiction that you can absolve yourself by the very act which will damn you – a cultivation of Anna Albertini.’

  ‘You’re lying to me, Peter,’ said Rienzi coldly.

  ‘Not this time, believe me.’ He was pleading now and the knowledge of his own guilt lent him an urgent humility. ‘Listen to me, Carlo, and think for a moment about Anna. You won your case on the plea you and I set up for her – that at the time of the murder she was mentally infirm, robbed of moral sense and legal responsibility by the shock of her mother’s death. Now this could be true. On the other hand, it could be equally true that she was a responsible person, that she was conscious of guilt, and that, after the act – after it, remember – she projected herself into the state of fugue in which she has remained virtually ever since. Think about that for a moment. And if there’s half a chance of its being true, see where it leads. She clings to you because you are the only one who continues to absolve her as you did in the legal sense in court. This could be why she has no regret for her husband, because he rejected and did not forgive her!’

  ‘That’s a monstrous thought!’

  ‘Monstrous indeed,’ said Landon quietly, ‘and the consequences are more monstrous still. You could be the one who robs her totally and completely of any hope of cure.’

  ‘I don’t understand that.’

  ‘Then let me explain it to you, Carlo.’ He laid a tentative, friendly hand on Rienzi’s shoulder, but Rienzi withdrew resentfully from the contact. ‘Believe me, man, I’m being as honest as I know how. I’m not raising bogies to frighten you. This is my profession, as the law is yours. All successful psychiatry depends upon the patient’s willingness to seek a cure because of his knowledge that he is sick. He will resist treatment, of course, but if the distress is acute enough he will come to co-operate – except for instance in cases of paranoia where the mind closes itself utterly against reason. In Anna Albertini’s case there is no distress, no sense of need. So long as she has you she is not sick, but cured, so her mind closes itself to further inquisition. You have forgiven her. Therefore she is totally forgiven. So the long flight continues and you, Carlo – you, my friend! – are her partner in the flight.’

  ‘But only,’ said Rienzi in the ironic fashion of the law, ‘only if your guess is true, and in court you proved to the satisfaction of the judges that it was not. Where do you stand now, Peter?’

  ‘On the same ground,’ said Landon flatly, ‘but for a different reason. You have made yourself a necessary prop to her infirmity. She will continue to cling to you. She will accept any condition, any relationship you impose on her, but you’ll never be able to get rid of her. And if you fail her …’

  He broke off and let the thought hang, a discordant note between them. Rienzi prompted him caustically: ‘And if I fail her, Peter?’

  ‘Death is familiar to her now,’ said Landon sombrely. ‘It holds no terrors and solves all problems. She will either kill herself or try to kill you.’ It was out now, the untimely thought: death in the Tarot cards, death written on the palm of a man’s hand, and he too blind to see it. Landon let him sweat over it for a few moments and then asked: ‘Do you believe me, Carlo?’

  ‘No,’ said Carlo Rienzi, ‘I’m afraid I don’t.’

  He started the engine, turned the car back on to the highway, and headed once more into the uplands towards the Hospice of the Good Shepherd.

  In the late afternoon, Alberto Ascolini made his final capitulation to his daughter and to Ninette Lachaise. He sat with them on a low stone bench facing a small fountain where a dancing faun played his pipes and disported himself among the water jets. For once in his life, he gave no thought to stage management nor to the rhetoric of his trade. He did not attempt to persuade or to dominate the occasion, but sat, leaning on a stick, with a peasant hat perched on his white head, making the first and last apologia for his mountebank’s career.

  ‘This is the way it ends, my children. This is the way I think it is meant to end – an old fool sitting in the garden with the women. I used to be afraid of it, you know. Today, for the first time, I can see there might be a pleasure in it. When I was young, and that was a long time ago, the signori who owned this villa used to drive through San Stefano in their carriages on the way to Siena. They had coachmen and outriders, and the women – they looked like princesses to me – used to sit holding their handkerchiefs to their noses as they drove through the village. I remember myself, a snot-nosed urchin with the backside out of his breeches, shouting for coppers while the coachman flicked at me with his whip. A long time ago, but I remembered it every month, every year, as I was climbing up out of the dung-heap. One day I would have a coach and the woman with the lace handkerchief would be my woman, and I would sit in grand array at the opera and ride on the Corso in Rome and kiss hands in the salons. I did it all, as you know. I’ve dined with kings and presidents and walked into a reception with a princess of the blood on my arm…eh! What is it now? Not dust and ashes. I can’t say that. A rich time? Yes. But every so often I would dream of the snot-nosed boy and reach out my hand to lift him into the coach – yet I could never touch him. Neither could I escape him. He would always come back and I could never be sure whether he mocked me or blamed me. So, for him, I think, I took my revenges on the world into which I had climbed, even on you, Valeria, my child. It has taken me a long time to understand that they were revenges on myself as well. When I married your mother I was poor and ambitious and I loved her. When I was famous and courted I regretted her. In you I tried to make her over again in the image of what I had desired. A strange thing, you know. She was wiser than I. She told me many times the price was too high and that when I had paid it I would regret it. You, child, I regret most of all. You were right, you know, when you said I made you p
ay for everything I gave. Nothing for nothing! It was the bitterest lesson my snot-nosed urchin had to learn. He could never believe in gratuity – the kiss that cost nothing or the hand to help a neighbour out of a ditch. He’s learnt it now, from you, Ninette, even from that pig-headed Landon of yours. But you, my Valeria, have had to pay for the lesson….’ His voice faltered and he blew his nose violently. ‘Forgive me, child, if you can. If you can’t, believe at least that I love you.’

  ‘It’s enough, dottore,’ said Ninette Lachaise softly. ‘The loving is enough – and that Valeria should know that the loving is there.’

  She lifted the old straw hat and kissed him on the forehead and laid one cool hand for a moment on his cheek. Then she left them, Valeria with her tears and the old advocate with his regrets, to the healing of the last summer sun.

  ‘Now!’ said the old man in his brisk, pragmatic style, ‘now we dry our eyes and see if we have grown any wiser. You will know now, child, that I am telling you the truth?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then let’s see what we can do about this marriage of yours. Tell me honestly now: what’s the trouble between you?’

  Valeria Rienzi lifted a ravaged face and stared at him blankly. ‘It’s plain enough, isn’t it, Father? I’ve been a fool and Carlo needs something that I can’t give him.’

  ‘We’ll admit the foolishness,’ said Ascolini with his old sardonic grin. ‘We’ll lock it away and bring it out occasionally to remind us not to be fools again. But what about Carlo? What does he want?’

  She shrugged unhappily. ‘I wish I knew. A mother perhaps, or a child bride fresh from convent school!’

  ‘He has the child bride,’ said Ascolini cynically. ‘But she’s no good to him because she’ll be locked away for three years. As for the mother, he can’t do much about that unless he finds a clucking widow with a forty-five-inch bust.’

  ‘Don’t make jokes about it, Father. It’s serious.’

  ‘I know it’s serious, child!’ The old man was testy again. ‘But we don’t throw up our hands and go wailing through the town. We do something about it.’

  ‘What, for instance?’

  ‘This girl, Anna Albertini. Ignore her. If Carlo wants to go hanging round the convent garden with the girl on one arm and a nun for a watchdog on the other, let him. He’ll get sick of it in time. Pity’s a thin diet for a man of thirty-five. If he wants to try the widow or a chicken from a pavement cafe, ignore that, too. Swallow your pride and take him for what he is, and while you’ve got him see if you can’t make him into something better. It’s been done, you know. And you do have something to work on. You saw him in court. He was another man. You’re a woman. You may be able to bring the same man out in bed. Look, child.’ He turned to her and imprisoned her wrists in his old strong hands. ‘There’s always one who kisses and one who turns the cheek. Sometimes the one who turns the cheek learns to like the taste of kissing. It’s worth a trial, isn’t it? You’ve had your playtime. There’s autumn after summer. If it doesn’t work, what have you lost?’

  ‘Nothing, I suppose. But don’t you see, Father, I’m lonely now. I’m scared.’

  ‘Wait till you get to my age,’ said Alberto Ascolini with a grin ‘–the last winter, when you know for certain there’ll never be another spring. Courage, girl! Go and put on a new face and let’s see what carrots we can find for this noble ass you’ve married!’

  The Hospice of the Good Shepherd Sisters reared its grey bulk over a spread of garden and farmland and dark cypresses. Its nearer aspect was forbidding: a big wall of tufa stone topped with spikes and broken glass, wrought-iron gates backed with a close mesh of chain wire, and, beyond them, the hospice itself, an old monastery building, four storeys high, solid as a fortress, with barren windows and a television antenna rising incongruously above its ancient tiles. An elderly porter opened the gates and raised his hand in a half-hearted salute as they passed. A pair of inmates shuffling across the lawn turned and stared at them with glazed, indifferent eyes. A young nun, with the sleeves of her habit rolled up, was clipping flowers, trailed by a group of women, aimless as hens in a barn-yard. A vague oppression crept over Landon as he thought of all the misery penned in this place, last refuge of those who, by act of God and self-delusion, had failed to come to terms with life.

  Yet not all the deluded were behind bars. There were all too many who, like Carlo Rienzi, created for themselves situations charged with explosive and destructive possibilities. Carlo had become, overnight, a public figure, thrust into limelit eminence, and yet the shrewd eye could see already how the pillars and buttresses of his personality were slowly withering away. The cracks were plainly visible, the dangerous cant towards indulgence and self-deception. How, or which way, he would fall was anyone’s guess, but Landon was prepared to give long odds that he would decline inevitably in the direction of Anna Albertini.

  Even for a middling sensual man, the association with an attractive young woman of twenty-four was fraught with danger. Add to that the character of the girl herself – her enforced dependence, her immaturity, her capacity for tragic decision – and there were all the elements of a classic melodrama.

  How many times could the world blow up? The answer was plain to Landon now, plainer than it had ever been: as often as a man chose to reject the simple pragmatic rules of human experience and arbitrate his private destiny without respect to duty, obligation and his nature as a dependent animal.

  The Greeks had a word for that, too: Nemesis – the ultimate and inevitable catastrophe, when a man pulled down the roof-trees of the world on his own hapless head. The trouble was that other heads were broken as well and he generally did not survive to mend them.

  Landon was still chewing on that tasteless cud when the Sister Portress, a horse-faced woman with gentle eyes and an uncertain smile, opened the door to them. She showed them into the visitors’ room, a large, bare chamber, furnished with high-backed chairs, twin statues of the Sacred Heart and Our Lady of Lourdes, and smelling vaguely of lamp-oil and floor-wax; then she trotted off to find the Mother Superior.

  Landon wilted at the thought of spending a couple of hours in this ascetic atmosphere, but Carlo reassured him with an unexpected smile: ‘Don’t worry, Peter. This is just to condition us to piety. They keep it for chaplains and doctors and visiting bishops. When Anna comes I imagine they’ll give us the freedom of the garden.’

  Thank God for that!’ said Landon drily.

  Rienzi gave him a rueful, boyish smile. ‘Don’t be too angry with me, Peter. After all, this is my decision and I have to carry the consequences – good or bad.’

  ‘Do you, Carlo?’ Landon was still smouldering. ‘If that’s what you believe, then you’ll do what you damned well please. I’m leaving tomorrow anyway, so why should I care?’

  ‘I want us to be friends,’ said Carlo Rienzi. ‘I have a great affection for you, Peter. But that doesn’t mean I have to agree with you all the time, does it?’

  ‘A man who pleads his own cause has a fool for a lawyer, Carlo. A man who wants to be his own doctor is a bigger fool still. You’ve had my advice. I can’t force you to act on it. Now please drop the discussion, like a good fellow.’

  At that moment the Mother Superior came in: a small, grey woman with a fine-boned face, who reminded Landon of Ascolini’s marchesa. She had the air of a great lady born to wield authority, and Landon thought she could be a very formidable superior indeed.

  When Carlo presented himself she gave him a warm greeting: ‘I followed your case with great interest, Mr Rienzi. The men of my family have been associated with the law for many years, so I had a special interest. You made a magnificent plea.’ To Landon she extended a graver courtesy: ‘We’re very happy to see you here, Mr Landon. Professor Galuzzi speaks of you with great respect. If you would care to visit us at any time to see our methods or talk to our staff you will be most welcome.’

  Landon bowed his acknowledgment and the Mother Superior went on with what
was obviously a well-prepared exordium: ‘We are all very interested in Anna’s case, gentlemen. She was admitted early this afternoon, as you know, and we had none of the difficulty usual with new patients. Professor Galuzzi has given instructions that she is to be allowed as much freedom and responsibility as she can take. She will have all the privileges accorded to our advanced patients: a room of her own, time to read and sew, an hour of television each day, and a few cosmetics. These are special privileges, but so long as our people are orderly in their habits, obedient in their demeanour, there is no reason for them to be reduced. With regard to visits, there is a normal visiting day once a month. However, Professor Galuzzi suggests that for the present it would be best for Anna if we arranged a visiting day every six weeks. If she makes good progress, then we shall go back to the usual schedule.’

  ‘Neatly done,’ Landon thought. Galuzzi had a clear head and a shrewd eye, and in this little grey woman he would have a strong lieutenant.

  She went on in her crisp, businesslike fashion: ‘We have another rule, too, which we have found most useful. When visitors come they are generally accompanied – unobtrusively of course – by one of our Sisters. However, as Mr Landon is here with you today, I think we can dispense ourselves from the practice.’

  For the first time, Rienzi was able to get a foothold in the conversation. Anxious as a Dutch uncle, he said: ‘I have a great personal interest in Anna, as you know. If there is anything I can do to make her happy you have only to call me.’

  The Mother Superior smiled indulgently. ‘I assure you, Mr Rienzi, she will have the best of care. Our medical staff is well trained and devoted. Professor Galuzzi is a constant visitor. Our Sisters are especially trained to maintain a reasonable discipline while spending as much kindness as possible on our patients. Today you may find Anna a little restless. This is natural. It is her first day and she is new and strange; but she will settle down quickly. Also, she is a healthy young woman and it is natural that from time to time she will be irked by confinement and by the lack of the company of the opposite sex. But we are trained to watch for these things and to offset them.’ She stood up and smoothed down the skirt of her habit. ‘If you’ve brought any gifts for her I’d like to see them now.’