Daughter of Silence

by Morris West

  The Mother Superior gave him a cool, appraising look and then, apparently satisfied, turned to Rienzi. ‘Mr Rienzi, do you agree with Mr Landon’s account of what happened?’

  Shaken as he was, Rienzi was still a good lawyer. He knew that half a lie is worse than no lie at all. His answer came back pat and convincing: ‘That’s exactly how it happened.’

  The Mother Superior nodded and then said in a crisp, decisive fashion: ‘I’m afraid it doesn’t end here. You both know that people committed to our care from the courts are wards of the State. Everything that happens to them becomes the matter of an official report. I shall need affidavits from both of you – four copies, each copy notarized.’

  She must have been convinced, Landon thought sourly, otherwise she would know that she was committing them to perjury, and the consciences of the worthy Sisters were too tender for such wilful irony.

  Carlo Rienzi murmured some words of regret, but the Mother Superior waved them aside with an old, imperious hand. She had no time for lamentations. Her vocation was the care of sick minds and Anna Albertini was sick beyond recovery. She led Landon down a bare, echoing corridor into her office and then telephoned Professor Galuzzi.

  Her own report was made first, in the clear decisive tones of a staff officer. Then she handed the receiver to Landon. It was a relief to him to hear Galuzzi’s dry, academic voice from the other end of the line: ‘So, my friend, it happened sooner than we expected, eh? Well, perhaps it’s better this way – for everybody. Mother Superior tells me you were there and saw it all?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘I presume it’s your version I’ve just heard?’ There was an edge of irony in Galuzzi’s question.

  ‘Mother Superior reported exactly what I told her. I’ll be attesting it in an official report.’

  Surprisingly, Galuzzi chuckled. ‘Our young advocate is fortunate in his friends. Your eyewitness report will, of course, close the matter, since it carries such a weight of professional reputation. If you have time, however, in the next few days, I’d like to drink a glass of wine with you – and perhaps consult you about our patient.’

  ‘I’m very grateful,’ said Landon, ‘more grateful than I can tell you. But I’ll be leaving Siena in a couple of days. I’m getting married.’

  ‘My felicitations!’ said Galuzzi warmly. Then he added drily: ‘I think you’re wise. Miss Lachaise is a charming woman – and it’s time you had some diversion. Good luck, my friend. Go with God.’

  ‘Good luck to you,’ said Landon softly. ‘And thank you.’

  The old nun looked at him with a canny, cultivated eye. ‘So your case is closed, Mr Landon. Mine is just beginning. Thank you and good day.’

  Landon drove Rienzi’s car out of the iron gates and heard them close with a clang. As they climbed out of the valley towards the high road, Carlo sat huddled and silent beside him, fingering his scarred face and staring with blank eyes at the road ahead. After a while, he roused himself slightly and said, in a toneless voice: ‘Thank you for what you did, Peter.’

  ‘Forget it.’

  ‘I can’t say how sorry I am.’

  ‘Forget that, too.’

  Landon could hardly have said less, but he had no heart to say more. He knew that if Rienzi uttered one word of self-pity he would stop the car and punch him on the nose and make him walk every step of the way back to Siena. He understood what the man must be suffering, he was prepared to perjure himself to save Rienzi’s neck, but the memory of Anna Albertini, lost to all hope, buckled in a canvas bag and carted off to oblivion, would haunt him for a long time.

  Dusk was coming down when they reached the Villa Ascolini. Mercifully, everyone was dressing for dinner, so Landon settled Carlo in the library with a whisky decanter and a siphon of soda and then hurried upstairs to talk to Ninette. She heard him out in silence and then chided him firmly: ‘I know you’re angry, chéri, but you can’t give way to it now. I know how badly you feel about having to perjure yourself. I agree that all your debts are paid. But we can’t just work on debit and credit. This is a crisis for Carlo and we must help him to survive it.’

  ‘Don’t you think it’s time he helped himself?’

  ‘Do you think he can at this moment?’ Her hands reached out to caress his angry face. ‘Peter, Peter, can’t you see? What he’s done today must seem like murder to him.’

  ‘Wasn’t it just that?’

  ‘Who knows, chéri? Who knows how much or how little was needed to tip the balance for Anna? Who knows whether without Carlo it might not have happened much sooner? Don’t judge him, Peter. Not today. Not yet awhile.’

  He could not resist her then. He took her in his arms and kissed her and surrendered with a weary grin. ‘All right, sweetheart, what do you want me to do?’

  ‘Leave Carlo to me for a while. You go up and talk to Ascolini and Valeria.’

  ‘Do you think it’s wise to tell them?’

  ‘I’m sure of it.’

  Landon was far from sure, but at bottom he was too indifferent to care. A few moments later, Ninette went down to the library to see Carlo while Landon walked along the corridor to talk with Doctor Ascolini.

  The old man took the news calmly enough. He made a quick canvass of the legal possibilities and then, satisfied that both Rienzi and Landon were beyond impeachment, he shrugged and said calmly: ‘For the girl, of course, it’s a terrible thing. For us – all of us – it may be the mercy we have been waiting for. Carlo is alone now. Perhaps he will turn back to Valeria.’

  ‘Perhaps. It seems he has no other place to go.’

  The old man cocked a quizzical eye at Landon. ‘You’ve had enough, haven’t you, my friend?’

  ‘More than enough. We’ll say goodbye tonight, Doctor.’

  Ascolini nodded a grave agreement. ‘You’re right, of course. If I say I am grateful it will mean too little. Let me tell you simply that all your debts are paid to Carlo and that we are now in debt to you. I have never perjured myself for any man, though I’ve often sworn false oaths to women. But that’s a different matter. I thank you, Landon, and wish you well. I think you will be good for Ninette and I know she’ll be good for you. Leave me, like a good fellow. I’ll come down and see Carlo in a few minutes. What will you tell Valeria?’

  ‘The truth,’ said Landon flatly. ‘What else? This is the end of the road.’

  When he had told her the news, Valeria Rienzi echoed the tag of his own thought, ‘It is the end of the road, as you say, Peter. If we can’t come together after this there’s no hope at all. We part and go separate ways. There are limits to all endurance.’

  There was a question that had to be asked and he gave it to her baldly: ‘How do you see this coming together?’

  ‘Only with love, Peter.’ She was very emphatic about it. ‘No more of this cold salad of convention. I don’t expect too much, I don’t even count on an equal bargain, but there must be some love on both sides, a touch of passion sometimes. What else can we build on?’

  ‘Nothing else. Do you love Carlo?’

  ‘I can begin to, I think.’

  ‘Does he love you?’

  ‘I don’t know, Peter. But he must tell me tonight.’

  ‘Do you think he will know tonight?’

  ‘If not tonight, then never!’ She turned back to her mirror and began brushing her hair. ‘I’ll see you downstairs, Peter…and when you go don’t kiss me goodbye.’

  He walked back to his own room, flung himself on the bed and closed his eyes. He was bone-weary, but there was no rest for him yet. By his own reckoning, all debts were paid and he was free to go. But there was still the last exaction and he had no heart to face it just yet. He lay, spent and empty, trying to set his own tangled thoughts in order.

  It was not only Carlo Rienzi who had come to the end of the road. Peter Landon, too, had reached a moment of conclusion and a point of new departure. For a long time now he had been involved, knowing and unknowing, in the diverse and delicate a
natomies of love and justice: in the loyalties of the one and the legalities of the other. He had found that, while both were attainable, neither was perfect.

  One arrived at each by conflict and contradiction. Love was affirmed by the contract of marriage, but the contract was not enough to preserve it. Justice was deemed to be preserved by the manifold provisions of the codex. But plead for both with a thousand voices, give a thousand advocates a thousand briefs, and you would not attain to love or justice without the slow search, the meticulous balance of right and duty, the probe for truth, the ruthless weeding out of error and egotism.

  A lifetime’s efforts and you were not yet at the end of it. Love was a flower of slow nurture, justice was a fruit of vigilant cultivation. The flower would wither and the fruit would drop under the hands of a shiftless gardener. And – God save their miserable souls! – men were all too careless of the charge committed to them: the love by which they might live happy and the justice by which they might live safe, two steps and a spit from chaos.

  On which disturbing thought he heaved himself off the bed, splashed water in his face, ran a comb through his hair and went downstairs.

  He found Ascolini and Valeria talking with Ninette outside the closed door of the library. Ninette looked strained and anxious and her eyes were swollen with weeping. When Landon asked her about Carlo she shook her head. ‘I can’t tell you, chéri, because I don’t know myself. For a while it was quite terrifying. I’ve never seen a man so distraught. He told me everything – the most secret things of his life. Then he just sat on the floor with his head on my knees and didn’t say a word. He’s calm now, but what’s he’s feeling or thinking I don’t know. He wants to see us all now.’

  ‘Did he say why?’

  ‘No, just that he wanted to see us all together.’

  For a few moments they stood, irresolute, searching one another’s faces. Finally, Valeria shrugged and pushed open the door of the library.

  The first sight of Carlo Rienzi stopped them all in their tracks. He seemed to have aged ten years in a couple of hours. His face was sallow and shrunken, his eyes burning like those of a man in high fever. His hair hung damp and lank over his forehead. He stood propped against the marble mantel as if the slightest move would topple him.

  ‘Hello, Carlo,’ said Valeria softly.

  ‘Hello, Valeria.’

  After that, there was a pause. Carlo looked at them vaguely and then blinked and shook his head as if to chase away the trailing mists of a nightmare. Then he said, in a dead level voice: ‘I’m glad you’re here, Valeria. I’m glad our friends are here. I want to tell you something.’

  Landon could see Valeria struggling against a swift impulse of pity, but she stood her ground and waited for Carlo to go on. Then he began to speak: ‘I’m an empty man tonight. I am nothing and I have nothing. I’ve done a terrible thing today and I can’t even feel guilty about it any more. I can’t even feel what I’m saying to you now. All I know is that I want to feel it and I want you to believe it because I will never be able to say it again. I’m not sorry for myself, but I’m sorry for what I’ve done and for what I’ve been-to you, Valeria, to your father, to Peter and Ninette here. This will sound strange from a man who cannot feel anything, but this too must be said. I love you all. I hope you’ll forgive me and let me go in peace.’

  ‘My God!’ thought Landon, ‘it can’t be true!’

  But it was true, and so patent that Landon wondered why they did not all burst out laughing. Advocate Rienzi was fighting his own cause with the greatest piece of mount-bankery he would ever pull in any court. He was pleading for the very thing he denied – the right to go on pitying himself, the right to have life always on his own terms and yet always have a breast to cry on. As a final stroke of genius, he was making himself the whipping-boy, knowing that, in the end, the stripes would fall on other backs than his own. He would never make a shrewder plea, never a less worthy one.

  Landon thought he was winning it, too, when he saw Valeria move a pace towards him with hands outstretched. Then, abruptly, she checked herself and asked him, in a clear, cool voice: ‘Where will you go, Carlo?’

  He turned vaguely towards her and said, almost apologetically: ‘You mustn’t ask me to talk about that. I’ve caused you enough grief already. But there’ll be no more trouble, I promise.’ He laughed, unsteadily. ‘I told Peter today I didn’t know the words. Funny! It turns out I knew them all the time. It’s just that I’m saying them too late. That’s always been my trouble. Too little a man growing up too late. I’m sorry.’

  Landon almost expected to hear him say, ‘The defence rests. But he was too shrewd a craftsman for that – and besides he was exhausted, like every actor after a great performance. He heaved himself away from the mantel and began to walk with slow, dragging steps, towards the door. Then, clear as a trumpet, old Ascolini’s rich voice challenged him: ‘Nonsense, boy! Every damned word of it! So you’ve made a fool of yourself. That’s every man’s right. But you have no right in the world to inflict a maudlin confession on the rest of us! Pull yourself together, man I Cry in a tavern if you must, or in a bawdy-house, but in this place you stand up like a man and keep your mouth shut!’

  For a moment, Rienzi stood blank-faced and rocking under the impact. Then, in a curious moment of transformation, his face seemed to harden and what might have been a smile twitched at his bloodless lips. He raised one hand in a mocking salute: ‘You’re a better advocate than I am, Doctor. You always will be!’

  Then his knees buckled under him. Landon caught him as he lurched forward, and carried him over his shoulder to the guest-room. He tossed him on the bed and left him to Valeria. She said nothing, but gave him a small, bitter smile and began unlacing Rienzi’s shoes.

  Landon was grateful for her discretion. He had never liked curtain speeches and he had no patience with drunken actors. But Carlo Rienzi was a great actor – which in an advocate was a talent, and, for some women, a passable substitute for manhood. At least Valeria was accepting it without illusions. Or perhaps she was creating a new one, since love was a blind goddess, sister to her who sat with naked sword and scales in balance, peeping from under her handkerchief at the comedies enacted in her name.

  ‘Time to go, Peter,’ said Ninette Lachaise. ‘Time to spend ourselves on ourselves. We’ve been too long in this town.’

  They were standing together on the terrace of the villa, watching the rise of the moon and hearing the first solitary song of the nightingales. The valley stretched itself placid in the moon-glow and, above the crenellations of the mountains, they saw the pricking of the first faint stars. The land had surrendered itself to the night, and for Landon, too, it was the time of surrender. He drew Ninette to him and said, more gently than he had ever spoken before: ‘I love you, girl. I never thought I could love anyone so much. But are you sure you want to risk me?’

  ‘It’s always a risk,’ said Ascolini from behind them, ‘but only the wise ones know it. Go home, both of you. Get yourselves churched if you must, but do it quickly. Time’s the most precious thing you have, and who should know it better than I?’

  He handed them the keys of the car and then fished out of his pocket two old and beautiful volumes, one of which he handed to Ninette with the sardonic dedication: ‘For you, my dear. All the things your man feels for you but won’t be able to say because he’s a dull fellow who knows only the jargon of the clinic. They’re Petrarch’s Sonnets to his Laura, and the book was made by Elzevir. It’s a wedding present. My heart goes with it – and all my love.’

  Ninette threw her arms round the old man and kissed him. He held her for a long moment and then pushed her gently away.

  ‘Take her, Landon, before I change my mind and rush her to the altar. Here’s something for you, my friend!’ He handed Landon the companion volume, and said, whimsically: ‘It’s an Aretino – “The Luxurious Sonnets”! You’re old enough to enjoy them and young enough not to need them!’ He took their arms and ur
ged them swiftly off the terrace towards the car. ‘No more words! No long farewells. They remind me of death and I have enough reminders already!’

  As they drove down the winding path to the gates, they could see him solitary and gallant on the terrace, the moonlight silver on his lion’s mane, listening to the lament of the nightingales.