Innocence

by Penelope Fitzgerald

  ‘You mean my wife’s aunt is mad. Is that what you wanted to tell me?’

  ‘Don’t excite yourself. You’re the doctor, it’s for you to tell us. Of course we’re not discussing her personally. It’s a matter of trying to protect her, as I shall hope to show you.’

  ‘Very well,’ said Salvatore with unexpected calm. ‘Most of the Contessa’s actions are very shrewd, and, I imagine, well-directed towards their objects. She is not a patient of mine, of course, and I’m not an alienist. What are you talking about?’

  ‘About her asilo for old women and babies in via Sansepolcro. May I ask whether you know anything about it?’

  ‘Not much.’

  ‘Would you say that it’s well run?’

  ‘I’m sure it isn’t, but I don’t see what concern that is of yours or even of mine.’

  Nieve explained that he’d been approached by the Prefettura and the Inspectorate of Health, as well as the O.N.M.I. to see how the affair could be handled in the most tactful way.

  ‘She’s sane,’ Salvatore said, ‘and what’s more, if there’s any criticism of her, she has a lawyer.’

  ‘Guardone, via Strozzi,’ said Gattai, who looked relieved at having made some contribution. Salvatore was a little taken aback. He had been thinking of the Ridolfi family lawyers. He hadn’t known that Aunt Mad retained someone on her own account.

  ‘Yes, Guardone,’ said Nieve. ‘Naturally we have to collaborate with him, but I’m speaking to you first because this may be considered a family matter and you are now one of the family.’

  ‘Then why haven’t you spoken to my father-in-law? He’s in Rome at the moment.’

  ‘Precisely, we thought it best to make the first moves while the Count was away, so as to cause less distress.’

  ‘I don’t think he feels the least distress about these old women and orphans.’

  ‘But he prefers to be spared trouble.’

  ‘We all do.’

  ‘You’re with me, then, in thinking that the best thing to do is to arrange affairs a little so that when your wife and the Count return to the city everything will go forward without disturbance?’

  ‘What’s been happening, out with it.’

  The troubles, Nieve explained, were long standing. The orphans (in so far as the asilo had any legal recognition at all) were only allowed to stay until they were two years old, but Mad had always believed that the ancient women wouldn’t mind this since, at their time of life, one baby would be as acceptable as another. One would go, another come. But quite recently, a kind of turbulence, a hankering for the good life, seemed to have overtaken the senile inhabitants. Determined not to part with their present lot of infants, they had hidden them and kept them hidden.

  In Florence, anyone who doesn’t like the look of things can get a denunciation form from the tobacconist’s, fill it up and send it to the Questura. Recently these forms, asking what was happening to the little angels at the asilo, had been arriving in great quantities. ‘But we don’t, above all, want it to become a matter for the police.’

  Why doesn’t he? — thought Salvatore. — However, what Nieve expected in return for his discreet negotiations would certainly be made clear in good time. What effect would it have on Chiara? He knew that she was fond of her aunt, but then she was fond of everyone and everything, although he had demonstrated to her that this attitude was wasteful and illogical. Best, surely, to find out what was what and then, the next time he rang up, or perhaps the time after that, to break it to her as something that had happened but was not to be worried about. He would begin in a level, reassuring tone: Oh, by the way, about your aunt —

  ‘What had happened to the children?’ he asked.

  ‘They were quite well, but the inspectorate found them stowed away in cupboards and washbaskets. That is why they’re investigating the legal position.’

  ‘What do you want me to do?’

  ‘I want you, as a connection of the family, to come down with me now to via Sansepolcro and to meet Guardone there, with the object of seeing what preliminary steps we can take.’

  Nieve put on a pair of dark glasses and hung his light summer jacket over his shoulders. As they went out Gattai, who had been hovering about, came close to Salvatore and said with a release of repressed excitement, like a jet of steam: ‘Dottore, I have been told that you knew Antonio Gramsci.’

  ‘Gramsci died in 1937,’ said Salvatore. ‘My God, how old do you think I am?’

  ‘Don’t misunderstand me, but as a child you might have met him, or you might have been taken to his funeral.’

  ‘Nobody went to Gramsci’s funeral.’

  ‘Dottore, what line do you think he would have taken in the present political and economic situation?’

  Nieve turned sharply and told him to find a taxi. Gattai went off, frowning pitiably.

  ‘I’m sorry, he’s an idealist. There’ll be no need for him to come to the asilo.’

  ‘No.’

  28

  The asilo wasn’t directly on via Sansepolcro, but in a turning off it, one of Florence’s darkly greyish blind turnings. After Nieve had paid off the taxi he went into a bar to get some telephone discs, as though without them he might be cut off, like a castaway, from his base in via Lamarmora.

  The building was awkwardly crowded into an unwelcoming three-cornered site, so that the entrance gate was at an angle. Oddly enough, it was open. In the courtyard the caretaker’s dingy lodge was empty. The place was in silence. All the old and all the young must be alseep or have gone out together.

  ‘Ah, Guardone.’

  A man in gold-rimmed spectacles, with an air of being beyond surprise, came out of the main building, such as it was, at the back of the courtyard. He was introduced, and shook hands. ‘Forgive me, Nieve, dottore, but I’m afraid you’re wasting your time.’

  ‘We’re only here to ask you to show us round. I know your position is delicate. We haven’t any specific authorization to act, none at all, and I imagine you haven’t either.’

  ‘I follow my client’s instructions,’ said Guardone.

  ‘You’re on the committee of management here?’

  ‘There is no committee of management.’

  The balance of power was doubtful. Nieve was a very much more important person than Guardone, but Guardone appeared to be in possession and what was more to know what he was talking about. He turned now to Salvatore.

  ‘Your wife will have told you that this building is mortgaged to the Order of S. Vincente di Paoli, the interest being kept low as a form of charity. The only property which the Contessa is free to dispose of is, as again you must know, the wash-house.’

  The caretaker had at last appeared through the street entrance, carrying a loaf of bread and a tin of paraffin. ‘The asilo is shown only by special permission,’ he said immediately. ‘The wash-house is never shown.’

  It was explained to him that this was Dr Rossi, the husband of the Contessa’s niece. Nieve also offered him an English cigarette. He repeated: ‘The wash-house is never shown.’

  Guardone indicated a point where the wall was interrupted by an outbuilding. The windows were boarded up, but the door was open. The three of them stood looking in. Salvatore got the impression of a stable. There were solid stone troughs, and the floor was hollowed and ribbed with drains. But beyond that there was nothing. Where the taps should have been, the tap-seatings, the drain-pipes, the plugs and their chains, nothing.

  Nieve rounded on the caretaker. ‘How could the residents ever have done their washing here? There’s no equipment.’

  ‘No, it has disappeared.’

  ‘When did that happen?’

  ‘It disappeared little by little.’

  ‘Did you make a report?’

  ‘The taps were made of brass.’

  As time went by the old women had sold off the wash-house fittings in order to buy one thing or another, cigarettes sometimes, but much more often presents for the infants.

  �
��What did the Contessa say about this?’

  ‘She wasn’t surprised,’ said the caretaker. ‘Of course, the price of brass varies from time to time.’

  ‘Guardone,’ said Salvatore, in the voice he used for consultations, ‘I know something about the Contessa’s troubles, but not what she had in mind. What is she intending to do next?’

  ‘Nothing. She sold the wash-house yesterday. My instructions were to go ahead as quickly as possible, even if it meant accepting a lower price.’

  Struggling not to show astonishment, Nieve asked: ‘Who were your clients, if it’s not confidential?’

  ‘Bimbi Autowash,’ replied Guardone in a gloomy tone. ‘There’s no secret about that.’

  Nieve tried to recall his position of authority. ‘We’ll see the main block next.’

  ‘It’s empty.’

  ‘Where are the women and children?’

  ‘They have been taken away.’ The caretaker supported this. ‘Yes, they went early this morning.’ He put down the tin of paraffin and pointed towards the street.

  ‘You mean they were removed by the Inspectorate?’

  ‘No, by the Contessa,’ Guardone said. ‘There were only eight of them left, and six infants. All this is like the taking of the Bastille, Nieve, so much exaggeration, so much effort for so little result.’

  ‘Where have they been taken to?’

  ‘I’m not empowered to say that.’

  Guardone took off his gold-rimmed spectacles and wiped them.

  ‘They must of course be traced,’ said Nieve.

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘And enquiries must continue in respect of the use of the premises.’

  ‘There you will have to deal with the Order of S. Vincent, also with the Bimbi Autowash.’

  He seemed to be quietly dissociating himself from whatever might happen next.

  Salvatore had been right in thinking that Nieve had hoped, in return for his tactful interference, to make a reasonably good thing out of the shut-down of the orphanage. The truth was that he had thought in future he might handle part at least of the Ridolfi legal business. After this afternoon, however, he no longer had any ambitions of the kind.

  ‘Does it ever seem to you,’ he asked Salvatore as they left the via Sansepolcro, ‘that everything conspires to frustrate you? So often I have that impression.’

  Salvatore stopped dead in the middle of the blank white pavement.

  ‘You have that impression too?’

  ‘I suppose most people do at some time or another.’

  ‘You’d call it commonplace?’

  ‘A commonplace, yes,’ said Nieve soothingly. Salvatore looked as though he had been struck a blow in the face.

  You can’t tell what will upset him next, Nieve thought. Certainly it must be a doubtful advantage to be connected with the Ridolfi.

  29

  At Valsassina the first crop of hay had been cut and they were harrowing the fields to let the sun dry out the weeds. Cesare bought another sheet of paper and another envelope and, this time without hesitation, wrote a letter which he posted to his aunt. In it he told her that he was sorry to seem disobliging, and certainly hadn’t forgotten her many kindnesses towards him. Still, the case was as follows: when he had come in from the fields he had found eight old women and ten infants in the upstairs bedrooms and a further three old women in the kitchen, asking what they were to prepare for themselves to eat. These people could not remain at Valsassina. They had brought with them large quantities of dirty washing. Bernadino had locked himself up in the pigeon house. The dog, to prevent its going crazy, had had to be locked up in the office. The business of the estate was the production of wine. He had thought it best to put all this clearly in writing.

  Maddalena drove herself out to see him. In her elegant old linen dress she looked as pale as wax. She seemed unmoved by the cackling and wailing from the back quarters of the house and what sounded like the clashing of metal against metal.

  ‘Lately I’ve been distressed at the thought of your loneliness out here,’ she said. ‘I don’t like to think of your being all by yourself at Valsassina. I don’t believe in Providence, but I do believe that there’s such a thing as a moment of inspiration when one can judge what’s best for others. Under this arrangement you’ll have both the very young and the very old about you, as in the natural order of things.’

  ‘Not after tomorrow.’

  ‘What are you going to do with them?’

  ‘The Welfare are fetching them.’

  ‘You’d have become used to them, Cesare. Your life would have expanded. You’re very hard to help.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Now I shall have to think what I can do for Chiara and Salvatore.’

  ‘Don’t do anything.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Do nothing.’

  30

  Giancarlo had never taken his sister quite seriously, even now, when she had embarked on the process of dying. In fact, she didn’t take herself quite seriously either, in the sense that she did not believe she had the capacity to do harm. Perhaps this in itself might be considered a little crazy, but sometimes those who are considered crazy or even malicious are only those who choose the wrong moment.

  Maddalena wrote an aunt’s letter to Chiara at Riomaggiore, hoping that her periods had established themselves again satisfactorily, and sending her a list of the autumn concerts which had just been published. She sent her respects to the Ricasoli, and said nothing about Sannazzaro. Then she sent for Guardone and gave him twenty-four hours to check that Mazzata existed, that the Rossi land existed and was purchasable under the regulations of the Cassa del Mezzogiorno, and that Sannazzaro existed and was in good standing in the neighbourhood. ‘On the first two points I have confirmation,’ he told her. ‘As to the third, Pericle Sannazzaro is considered simple, but entirely honest.’

  ‘In what way is he simple?’ Mad asked, and was told that he was thought to have only one idea in his head, not just one idea at a time, but the same idea for many years. Maddalena then instructed him not to pass the Bimbi Wash money through the bank (this he had taken for granted) and to undertake the purchase as soon as possible in his own name. Guardone had no intention of doing this, but began negotiations through a property agent, Domiciliolux, in which he had a small interest. He didn’t know whether the Contessa expected him to go down and make a personal inspection, but he had no intention of doing that either. Soon she would be going away for the summer, indeed from the look of her she ought to have gone already.

  ‘The purchase won’t be the work of a moment, Signora Contessa,’ he said.

  ‘You probably don’t want it to be,’ she said, undisturbed.

  ‘Certainly I advise against it. It didn’t take me long to ascertain that no enterprise in Mazzata has ever shown a profit.’

  ‘I’m not buying for myself. The title will be assigned at once to Dr Rossi.’

  ‘I can’t think that the dottore is indifferent to profit either. In any case we shall need his signature at an early stage as proof of acceptance, that is if you really think it wise not to consult him in advance.’

  ‘Guardone, haven’t you ever given anyone a present? Not something that they expect, but a present del cuore, like grace itself, unasked for, to put matters right with one stroke?’

  ‘I have arranged for such things occasionally on behalf of clients,’ said Guardone. ‘They can put a considerable strain on a relationship.’

  ‘But, my God, it’s better than quarrelling.’

  ‘Not in my experience, Contessa.’

  ‘You’re as dry as a toad, Guardone.’

  ‘May I repeat that all I’m likely to be able to show you in the near future, if all goes well, that is, is a draft for a preliminary contract. You want an extra copy of this for Dr Rossi?’

  ‘Well, you understand me.’

  The copy was ready before Maddalena — having refused absolutely to try the water cure at San Pellegrino Spa
with Mimi Limentani — set out for the Dolomites. He had time, but only just, to notify her, at five o’clock in the afternoon, that it was on his desk.

  ‘Send the copy round, then, to Dr Rossi at the S. Agostino.’

  ‘Tomorrow.’

  ‘At once.’

  Guardone had no clerk to spare for the job, but hanging around his office was the caretaker from the asilo, now unemployed and unable, it seemed, to claim his social security payments. To begin with, his wife and children were with his wife’s parents and family allowances were not paid to those living in the country. Guardone cut all this short, as he did practically every afternoon.

  ‘Today I’ve got something for you to do. Take this envelope to Dr Salvatore Rossi at the S. Agostino hospital. If he’s gone to his private clinic you must find out the address and take it to him there. Get a receipt for it and come back here tomorrow and when you hand it to me I’ll give you two thousand lire.’

  Salvatore was still at the hospital. He had put back his private appointments, and was waiting in the hope of another few words with the Director of Administration. He had heard that there was a possibility not of building, or even of rebuilding, but of repairing a house in Bellosguardo village, with nothing like the same view, of course, as the Villa Hodgkiss, indeed with not much of a view at all, still, at Bellosguardo, not in the via Emilio Münz. He had at least the illusion of making progress.

  ‘From the office of Avoccato Guardone.’

  More rubbish about the wash-house, thought Salvatore.

  ‘You will sign the receipt for it, signor dottore.’

  He recognized the caretaker from the asilo and gave him a reassuring smile. ‘You’ve found another job, I hope. If not, come and see me.’ He signed the piece of paper which was put in front of him, and, having missed the Director of Administration, left for the clinic. It was eight o’clock before he reached via Emilio Münz. The lift wasn’t working, hot weather affected it badly, and he walked sweating up the stairs. The two rooms were now as tidy as his office at the S. Agostino, and had lost entirely the air of just-controlled wildness which Chiara had created there. Her clothes were hung up, her few things were put away in the wretched little cupboard with its frail plastic handle. The flat, in fact, was ready to show to whoever wanted to rent it next.