Daughter of Silence

by Morris West

  Awkward as a schoolboy, Rienzi displayed the packages: a box of chocolates, a hair ribbon, a religious medallion on a small gold chain, a sewing kit. The old nun passed them all with a smile, but insisted on taking the scissors out of the sewing box. ‘Not because of Anna, Mr Rienzi, but because of the danger of their falling into other hands.’

  Rienzi blushed and apologized. ‘It was thoughtless of me. I’m sorry.’

  ‘On the contrary, Mr Rienzi, you’re a very thoughtful man. Anna is lucky to have your support.’

  At the same moment, Anna Albertini walked hesitantly into the room and Rienzi held out an eager hand in greeting. ‘Anna, my dear! How good to see you!’

  ‘And you, Mr Rienzi.’

  The formal address and the tentative handshake belied the pleasure in her eyes. Rienzi presented her to Landon. ‘You remember Mr Landon, Anna? He was a great help to you before the trial and during it.’

  ‘Of course.’ She gave him a cautious smile. ‘Mr Landon was very kind to me. I won’t forget that.’

  ‘You look well, Anna. I know you’re going to be very happy here.’

  The girl said nothing and the Mother Superior cut in briskly: ‘I must be off. I have work to do. Take the gentlemen into the garden, Anna. Walk them down to the place where you saw the Sisters saying their prayers.’ She explained herself with a smile to Landon: ‘It’s the Sisters’ garden. You’ll be more comfortable there. You won’t be bothered by the inmates wandering around the grounds. Before you go, Anna will bring you back here for coffee.’

  When she was gone, Carlo displayed his gifts, and while they were admiring them together Landon took a long look at Anna Albertini. She was dressed, like all the inmates, in a frock of grey cotton with long buttoned sleeves and a cloth belt sewn to the frock itself. She wore black stockings and black shoes. Her hair was shorter now, drawn back from her face and tied with a wisp of blue ribbon. Her hands were uneasy, but her face still wore the look of calm and classic repose which he had noticed on the day of their first meeting. There was more colour in it now, more animation in the eyes and in the voice. Her gestures were restrained, her movements studiously modest, so that she looked more like a fledgling nun than a prisoner serving sentence for murder.

  For all his past judgments of Rienzi, Landon had to admit that he could see nothing but innocence in this first moment of meeting. There was no trace of sensuality, not so much as a hand’s touch or a glance to hint at intimacy or collusion. Anna was now calling Rienzi by his first name, but the most suspicious eavesdropper would have found nothing to blame in the tone or the inflection.

  When her first excitement was over, Anna piled her gifts one one of the chairs and then took the two men out into the garden. She walked between them, reserved as a novice, rehearsing with simple pleasure the details of her first day after the trial.

  ‘Everyone was so kind to me. At San Gimignano they made me a special supper and the nurses were allowed to come in and talk to me. One of them did my hair, another brought me a prayer-book. In the morning I was allowed to walk by myself in the garden and the warden’s wife gave me coffee. Everyone said how lucky I was and what a wonderful thing you had done for me. I felt very proud. They’ve given me a nice room here. There are bars on the windows, but there are curtains, too, with flowers on them, and everything is white and clean. Sister Eulalia took me for a walk and showed me some new kittens in the gardener’s shed. She told me funny stories about the people we saw, and tonight there is to be a concert with some very famous singers from Rome.’

  Landon’s first impression was of her extreme simplicity, her preoccupation with trivial things, her contentment with the narrow ambit of enclosed existence. But when Carlo began to question her about what she had read, about how she liked to spend her time, about the programmes she had watched on television, Landon caught a glimpse of a lively, if limited, intelligence and a very adequate judgment.

  For the first time, she expressed an interest in what she might do after her release. She had once seen a fashion show and she wondered whether she might later qualify as a mannequin. If this failed, she thought she might like to train as a stenographer. She wanted to know whether there was any training available in the hospital. She asked questions about Carlo’s work and Landon’s, and her queries, if elementary, were still eminently sensible.

  Carlo’s method with her was sound. He probed for her interest, stimulated it with questions and then set about filling in the blank spaces in her information. His talk ranged widely, but he avoided any subject which might arouse her to discontent or revive old memories of childhood or married life. He made jokes for her and laughed at her mild comedies. And all the time he walked separate from her, hands clasped behind his back like a genial parent at finishing-school.

  But for Landon there was something missing from the picture. It was too placid, too sober. Its pathos was too muted, its motif too mild. There was nothing in it to justify Carlo’s desperate hope, or his own fears, or its importance to Anna herself. Landon could not believe that the performance was being staged for his benefit. Rienzi was too poor an actor to bring it off and Anna had had no warning to prepare for a deception.

  Then understanding began to dawn on Landon. This was not the whole performance, but a prelude, a ritual entry into another stage of communion. He saw, or thought he saw, how they would both need something like this. They were poles apart in nature, education and experience. They would meet too rarely and for too short a time to leap at once into a high ground of understanding. The girl would be subdued by the daily disciplines of the institution. Carlo would have to discipline himself lest the exacerbations of his life drive him into indiscretion. So each of their meetings would begin like this: slow talk to skim the surface of the sleeping thoughts, a slow pavane along the garden paths – to what?

  Their walk brought them finally to a low stone wall, broken by a wicket gate which led into the private domain of the Sisters: a croquet lawn screened on all sides by close-grown shrubs and, beyond it, more private still, a sunken garden with a fish-pond and a shrine of Our Lady of Fatima.

  This was where the nuns came for their recreation and to say the Rosary in the cool of the evening. This was their retreat from the thankless labours of the hospice and from the intrusion of the sick ones shambling about the grounds.

  ‘Here –’ said Anna suddenly, ‘here I feel for the first time that I’m free. Not free as I used to be, but as I will be one day.’

  She was not looking at her companions, but around the garden and over the tips of the cypresses to the pale sky where a solitary hawk wheeled and hovered in the slack air. Her eyes shone, her face was transfigured by a swift glow of vitality.

  ‘You see that fellow up there? When I was a little girl in San Stefano, they used to call him the chicken-stealer. You know what I call him now? I call him Carlo. He hangs about up there for hours and hours and you think he’s never going to come down. Then, all of a sudden, he drops – plop I – like a stone.’ She turned to Landon, flushed and laughing. ‘Just like Carlo I All the time I was in prison, all the time during the trial, he seemed to be so far away – miles and miles away among the great ones. Now – look! – he’s here with me, in this garden.’

  Landon stole a quick glance at Rienzi, but he was bending over a rose bloom, studious as any botanist. The girl laughed again in childish mockery.

  ‘Carlo doesn’t think he’s a hawk. He likes to make out he’s a wise old stork with long legs and a long advocate’s nose with a pair of spectacles on it. You should have heard the lectures he read me when he came to see me! He sounded just like Mother Superior today. “Anna must be a good girl. Anna must do as she is told. She must learn her lessons and be tidy and patient and co-operative.”’

  ‘Anna’s a lucky girl,’ said Carlo coldly, ‘but she laughs at the wrong things.’

  ‘You told me once I needed to laugh!’

  ‘I know, child, but …’

  ‘I’m not a child! I’m a wo
man. That’s what you want me to be, isn’t it? That’s what you were saying all the time, during the trial. Now you call me a child.’

  She said it petulantly, as if it were an old complaint, and then stood, downcast, biting her thumbnail, waiting for Carlo to reprove her again. This time he was more gentle with her. He smiled benignly and said: ‘Anna, the things I tell you are the things that will make you free. You’re much better off than we ever expected you to be. Three years isn’t such a long time and they’ll go much quicker if you live each day for itself. This is a good place to be. The Sisters are kind people. If you’re obedient and easy for them to handle we may have a chance to get you out of this place sooner. That’s not a joking matter.’

  ‘But I’ve been cooped up so long. Now I want to fly free like the chicken-stealer. I want to wear nice clothes again and look in shop windows and …’

  ‘I know, I know.’ His voice took on a softer, crooning note. ‘But I’ll come to see you as often as I can. I’ll bring you presents. You’ll find the days will go faster and faster. Besides, it takes a whole winter to make the spring flowers – but in the end they come.’

  She was penitent now, like a calculating child who asks for cake only to win a caress. She said humbly: ‘I’m sorry, Carlo. I’ll try to be better. I want so much to please you.’

  ‘I know you do, Anna. Now forget it like a good girl and let’s talk about something else.’

  For Landon, it was an embarrassing experience, like stumbling on a drunken courtship half-way down the stairs. Anna was seducing Carlo with pity while he struggled with the clumsy fiction of paternal solicitude. How long they could keep it up Landon did not know. By all the signs, they had been practising for some time, and perhaps they had developed a stronger tolerance than most for this courtship by mutual deception. But sooner or later one would crack. The fairy tale would come apart at the seams, and then – caps over the windmill and hell to pay!

  Landon had had more than enough for one afternoon, but he endured it for another half hour, pacing with them up and down the croquet lawn, listening to their talk, adding an occasional banality of his own, and watching how easily and unconsciously they lapsed into the conventions of their unconventional attachment. Finally, he gave up and suggested to Carlo that it was time to leave.

  Carlo looked at his watch and said, resentfully: ‘Well, if you feel you must…but it will be some time before I can see Anna again.’

  Anna was even more reluctant. She laid an urgent hand on Rienzi’s arm and demanded: ‘Please, Carlo! Before you go, could we have a few words in private?’

  ‘Would you mind, Peter?’

  No, he would not mind. He would be glad to be rid of them for a while. He would smoke a cigarette and stroll for ten minutes more while they exchanged whatever secrets they had with the Madonna in the sunken garden. Carlo led Anna to the stone steps that separated the two enclosures and when she disappeared down the other side he came back for a hurried word with Landon.

  ‘I’m sorry, Peter. All this must be very boring to you. But you see how it is. This is her first day here. She’s restless. And I’d feel guilty if I left her unsettled. I shan’t be very long.’

  Guilty or innocent, Landon had to tell him. Once outside the gates of the hospice, chameleon love would change colour again and crawl back into the pigeon-hole marked ‘grand illusions’, a high, secret place beyond all reach of reason. He clamped a firm hand on Carlo’s wrist and gave him the warning: ‘Carlo, you’re my friend and I’ve got to say it. You’re walking on eggs in this affair. Whatever she says, however she says it, this girl is hot for you. And you’re at least warm for her. Pull out now like a sensible man! Say goodbye to her and call it a day. Please, Carlo!’

  Carlo tried to wrench away, but Landon held him as the other blazed in low, bitter invective: ‘If today hasn’t shown you the truth, Peter, nothing will. You’ve got a dirty mind! You’ve said all this before. Now it’s once too much. Let me go, please!’

  ‘One thing more, Carlo!’ It was on the tip of Landon’s tongue to tell him of his talk with Galuzzi and of the suspicion under which he lay already. Then he thought better of it. Why the hell play hangman to a man plaiting his own rope? Landon shrugged and let him go. Carlo stalked angrily out of sight into the sunken garden while Landon settled himself under an autumn tree and smoked a tasteless cigarette.

  He smoked another, and a third. He paced the lawn for ten minutes, fifteen, twenty. Then, utterly exasperated, he went in search of Rienzi and Anna. He had hardly set foot on the first stone step when he heard their voices, and for the first time in his life he played the keyhole spy.

  Rienzi and Anna were sitting on a stone bench in an alcove opposite the shrine. They were facing each other with half the length of the bench between them, but Anna was holding Carlo’s hand and pleading with him: ‘You’ve told me many times, Carlo, that no one can live without love – some kind of love. I know you’re married, so I mustn’t ask that kind. But I’m not a child, so you mustn’t offer me that kind either. What have we got, Carlo? What can you give me to keep me alive in this place?’

  Landon could not see Rienzi’s face, but he could sense the uneasiness in him and his effort to hedge his answer in that bland dominie’s voice: ‘You’re very precious to me, Anna, my dear – for many reasons. All those weeks I held your fate in my hands. You were and still are my prize. Of course I care for you deeply.’

  ‘Is that all?’

  It was the voice Landon had heard first on Professor Galuzzi’s tape – dead, flat and colourless. Rienzi protested feebly: ‘No, Anna. You know it isn’t all. But, for the rest, I’m not even sure myself. I doubt I could put it into words.’

  ‘But I have words, Carlo …I love you!’

  Rienzi was badly shaken, but he still tried to humour her like a child. ‘Love is a big word, Anna. It means different things at different times. The way you love me today may be a lot different from the way you love me tomorrow.’

  ‘Do you love me, Carlo?’

  Landon saw him hesitate a moment and then heard him surrender: ‘I – I love you, Anna.’

  But she was not satisfied yet. She pressed him urgently, raising his reluctant hands and holding them to her breast. ‘How do you love me, Carlo? How?’

  It was Rienzi’s last ditch and he knew it. Landon could feel him gathering himself, fumbling for the words that were his final defences against her. ‘I – I don’t know that yet, Anna. That’s why you must be patient with me. I need time, we both need time to get to know each other, not in the crisis of a court-room, not here in this place, but outside, in a world of normal people. This thing between us, Anna, needs to grow naturally, like a plant. If the flower looks different from what we expected, it will still be beautiful, still good for us both. Can you understand that?’

  To Landon’s surprise and Carlo’s evident relief, she accepted it. She hesitated for a moment and then said, in her childish voice: ‘Yes. I do understand. I can be happy now, I think…. Will you please kiss me goodbye?’

  Rienzi looked at her for a long moment, then, with touching tenderness, but with no vestige of passion, he cupped his hands under her chin and kissed her lightly on the lips. Then he released her and stood up. Puzzled and disappointed, she faced him, picking a scrap of lint from his lapel with nervous fingers.

  ‘You did that as if I were a little girl.’

  Rienzi smiled gravely and shook his head. ‘No, Anna! You’re a woman. A very beautiful woman.’

  ‘Then kiss me like one! Make me feel like a woman. Just once…just once!’

  Landon wanted to shout to him: ‘No, don’t do it!’ but shame held him back. The next moment the girl was in Rienzi’s arms and they were kissing passionately like lovers, while the marble Madonna looked on dumbly and any wandering nun might shout their ruin over the roof-tops.

  Then, without any warning, it happened. With a single, convulsive gesture, Anna thrust Carlo away from her. Her face was a contorted mask of terror
and hate. As Carlo stared at her, unbelieving, she opened her mouth in a high, hysterical scream: ‘They’re killing her! They’re killing her!’ The next moment she was tearing at his eyes and face, tiger-wild and shouting in insane accusation: ‘You’re the one! You’re the one who killed her I You…you!’

  It took all their efforts to wrestle her back to the hospice, where four muscular nurses buckled her into a strait-jacket and carried her away. The Mother Superior looked at them with shrewd, dubious eyes and then called a Sister to dress Carlo’s torn face.

  CHAPTER NINE

  TEN MINUTES LATER, in the bleak reception-room where Carlo’s gifts to Anna still lay piled on the chair, the little grey nun faced them with the cold question: ‘Well, gentlemen, how did it happen?’

  Carlo Rienzi was a very great advocate, but now he was in the dock and in need of another’s counsel. Before he could open his mouth, Peter Landon hurried into an explanation: ‘I think, Reverend Mother, I probably saw more of what happened than Mr Rienzi. All three of us were in the garden together. Mr Rienzi was just saying goodbye to Anna and I was standing about three paces away, watching them. Anna seemed perfectly normal, but when Mr Rienzi held out his hand she put her arms around his neck and tried to kiss him. He pushed her away gently and told her not to be silly. Then she started to scream that he was the one who had killed her mother. Immediately after that she attacked him.’

  Landon hoped desperately that the narrative sounded as shocked and ingenuous as he tried to make it. This grey, competent lady held, at this moment, power of life and death over Advocate Rienzi, and Landon had no doubt she would damn him without mercy if she suspected the truth. So, for good measure, he added a professional opinion. ‘This is a tragic business, Reverend Mother, but, speaking professionally, I am not too surprised. Both Professor Galuzzi and I were gravely concerned about certain unstable elements in this girl’s case. I know Professor Galuzzi hoped to explore them more fully by deep analysis. If I could use your phone I think I should call Galuzzi from here.’