The prince had made only two exceptions: one in favour of Baldassarre and another of Signor Marco. Baldassarre, son of a former maidservant, brought up in the palace and put into the job of major-domo very young, knew from childhood the family weaknesses, rivalries, aversions and manias, and so concentrated entirely on his own duties, praising every master and mistress whatever they did or said, checking his dependants who dared to murmur against either. Both mother and son had liked him, and the princess’s legacy did not procure him the prince’s dismissal. As for Signor Marco, the dead woman’s broken lance, they were astounded that the son, head of the family now for two months, had not cast him off yet. Actually, since the princess had fallen ill, the administrator had changed tactics and treated the prince most respectfully, foreseeing that he would soon have to serve him; if he had not actually let the prince steal the petty cash on his mother’s death, as Don Blasco said, he certainly bowed to him in every way. Anyway an agent like him, who had been with the family for fifteen years and knew the condition of the property and the state of pending law cases, could not be supplanted from one moment to the other.
‘Don’t we eat any more?… What are you doing?… I want to see!… Why not serve up?… For me!’
In the kitchen the young prince snatched from Luciano the butler a knife that the man was sharpening, and went on with the operation himself.
‘What’s Your Excellency up to?’ said the new cook, Monsù Martino, not knowing how to take this. ‘Please go upstairs and let us work.’
‘Stand back! I want to do it!’
He had to be allowed his own way. If they denied him at all he became a fury, ground his teeth, shouted like one obsessed, upset whatever he could lay hands on. Actually, the prince was bringing up his son severely and did not let him get away with much; but on the other hand he rebuked servants who, with backs to the wall, lost patience and answered their young master rudely. And now after the princess’s death the post of cook in the Francalanza household had become more important than before.
Giacomo was even more distrustful and watchful than his mother; he had all provisions put under lock and key, kept check on petty items such as left-overs and crusts of bread. But even so, the daily expenses, not counting any increase for guests, were considerable, and food more lavish. They now ate four dishes; in the mother’s time three were made for her and for Don Raimondo, while others had to put up on ordinary days with a minestra and a little fish or meat. Even when Giacomo became rich from his wife’s dowry and the princess made her son pay his part of the expenses, she went on ordering food in her own way, while the prince, in his determination to show himself obedient, had remained silent. So too he had been unable to carry out long-planned alterations in the palace; on Donna Teresa’s death he had at last got the reins of the household in hand and was now turning everything upside-down.
The picks of workmen and the squeaks of pulleys drawing up materials from the courtyard to the floor above could be heard even in the kitchen; and scullions, busy peeling potatoes and beating eggs, exchanged observations on these works.
‘They’re taking out the stairs to the offices to gain space!…’
‘I’d not have shut in a part of the terrace.’
‘The master has to account to his brother too, as they’re both heirs.’
‘But the palace belongs to the prince. The count only has an apartment …’
The young prince did not lose a word of what was said.
‘The count will soon make off … He’s not one to stay here …’
Work on sauces quietened them every now and again. After a time Luciano, with a wink, said to his companion:
‘Starting again, is he?’
‘Let him! He’s a real lord, he is!’ And Luciano bowed his head in sign of admiring approval. In the kitchen they were all for the count, as they were in the antechambers and stables, for the young man was quite unlike his older brother; he was so gentle with his orders and so generous too.
‘A real lord indeed, in his ways and thoughts … not like the friend …’
‘The friend’s an old fox … so was she …’
‘What’s that?’ asked the young prince.
‘Nothing, Excellency!’ replied the cook; and he turned to his dependants. ‘Now get to work!’ he ordered. ‘And not so much chatter …’
‘You don’t want to tell me, do you?’
‘What, Excellency? We were just talking in the air.’
‘So you don’t want to tell me?’
Suddenly there was the sound of a carriage entering the courtyard, and Consalvo ran to look.
It was his Aunts Lucrezia and Matilde back at last from the Convent of San Placido. The boy, forgetting kitchen and cook, ran to join them upstairs in his mother’s apartments, to see if they had brought him anything.
Donna Matilde did, in fact, give him a parcel of cakes, but his Aunt Lucrezia took no notice of him, she was talking with such animation to the princess.
‘She was crying, you know?… We talked to the Abbess, who confirmed everything. That’s true, isn’t it, Matilde?… What a thing to do!… Our mother’s Masses!…’
‘Sssh!…’
The princess signed to her sister-in-law to be silent because of the boy.
‘Mama, don’t we eat today?’ he asked her.
‘But your father hasn’t come in yet!… Go, go and see if he’s arrived.’
The young prince realised he was being sent away. At the age of six he was even more curious than Don Blasco. The machinations of his uncle the monk, the constant intriguing in that house, had aroused his attention very early. After his grandmother’s death he had noticed, from his relations’ behaviour and the servants’ talk, that they were opposed to his father for one reason or another, but no one dared attack him directly. He realised a lot of other things too; that his Aunt Ferdinanda could not endure his Aunt Matilde; that there was discord between the latter and her husband; he realised all this and kept silent, pretending to notice nothing lest he arouse someone’s anger. In fact his uncle Don Blasco gave him a resounding slap or two and his Aunt Lucrezia would pinch his arm, particularly after he’d gone rummaging in her room, but his father was always gruff, and when he hit made him smart. Anyway, the boy had little talk with his father, though he could not keep away from his mother.
Donna Ferdinanda, indeed, showed much preference for him, but no-one would excuse the boy’s defects like the princess. Quivering and apt to go into convulsions if anyone came too near her, she overcame her mania for isolation only out of love of her children, and hugged Consalvo to her breast and kissed him even when he was not too clean, the more fervently as she thus defended herself from all other contact. For some time, since his little sister Teresa was born, her caresses had not gone only to him; even so the princess was the only person who could get anything out of Consalvo by treating him well, by affection.
‘Go, off with you now and see if Papa’s back …’
Prince Giacomo re-entered at that moment. He was frowning even more than usual, and never said a word of greeting on entering; at sight of him Lucrezia fell silent. He asked if the duke had come home and, on hearing that he had not, gave orders for the meal to be served as soon as the duke appeared. Then he went off and shut himself in his study with Signor Marco. Consalvo sat there for a time without knowing what to do, hesitating between returning to the kitchen and watching the workmen. Instead of which, seeing his Aunt Lucrezia deep in conversation with his mother again, he went up to her room. He had been forbidden to enter it because she was now studying water-colour painting and wanted none of her things touched, particularly in case anyone found Benedetto Giulente’s letters; but the pans of colour, the boards to be primed, the brushes and rubbers, fascinated the boy.
No warning or threat from Lucrezia could keep him away; if she complained, she was more abused than ever by her brother, who had become intractable since the reading of the Will, so that the boy, when he got a chance, did what he
liked in his aunt’s room. Going up at that hour when he was sure not to be surprised, the young prince began to rummage on the table, among sketches, papers, drawers. Where were those painting materials hidden? Perhaps in the highest drawer of that tallboy, where he could not reach. Meanwhile from the courtyard came a bell announcing the duke’s arrival. The boy continued to look round, to search feverishly under the bed, under the chest of drawers, in the mirror-table. This was a little table covered with embroidered cloth; he raised a corner and uncovered a small drawer. In there, amid old combs and empty tins of marzipan, was a bundle of papers tied with a red ribbon. Consalvo undid the knot and spread out the letters. Suddenly Lucrezia appeared at the door.
‘Aha!…’ she screamed, flinging herself on her nephew and giving him a great slap.
The boy let out as sharp a shriek as if he were being murdered.
‘I’ve told you a thousand times not to touch my things! I can’t keep a single thing to myself any more! I might as well be in the street …’
At those desperate shrieks, in rushed Vanna the maid, but she had scarcely begun, ‘Signorina … let him go …’ when the prince appeared.
‘How dare you raise a hand to my son!’
‘He just won’t obey!… I can’t keep even a pin to myself …’
He raised Consalvo from the floor, took him by the hand and said slowly, staring hard at her:
‘Another time, if you dare touch my son I’ll hit you; d’you understand?’
She stood there for a moment, stunned. When her brother left, she rushed to the door, shut it by banging it violently, and did not answer any of the servants who came to call her for dinner. The duke had to come up and beg her to open the door.
At the duke’s remonstrances and warnings, she finally burst out:
‘Patience? Why, he’s been treating me like this for two months!… What has he against me? Something to do with our mother’s Will? Is this part of playing his cards? Was Don Blasco right then?… Have you heard, has Your Excellency heard what he’s just done?’
‘What’s he just done?’
‘He’s refused to recognise the legacy to the Convent of San Placido!… We found Angiolina sobbing and the Abbess breathing fire and flame … he wants to deal all cards himself, and treats us in this high and mighty way, to degrade us all …’
‘Quiet!… Enough for the moment …’ The duke begged her once more for the love of peace, ‘Enough!… come and dine now … I promise you I’ll talk to him later …’
Raimondo had not yet returned when the whole family, with Don Mariano, sat down to table. Lucrezia’s eyes were still red, her head was bowed, she did not say a word. But the prince now looked quite serene and chatted courteously with the duke. Every day it was like this; after long hours of sulks, silence, turning his back on his brothers and sisters and even more on his sister-in-law Matilde, at table he put off his frowning mien to be polite to his uncle. It was not the first time that the dinner started without Raimondo, and Lucrezia’s ill-humour was reflected that day by a shadow on Matilde’s brow.
They were not very nice to her in that house. The prince, Donna Ferdinanda, Don Blasco, and to some extent even Cousin Graziella must have found unpardonable faults in her, because they were so constantly criticising her or being very off-hand in their treatment of her. But she forgave all their rudeness to her; what she could not endure was rudeness to her husband. Perhaps that was her great fault, the love she had for Raimondo!… She had loved him ever since she had seen him, even before; since when, affianced by letter to that Count of Lumera whom her father, proud of becoming connected to the Viceroys, praised endlessly, she had let her imagination represent him as handsome, noble, generous, and knightly, as a hero of Tasso or Ariosto. And the reality had been superior to anything she had imagined. How fine he was, her husband, how graceful and comely and splendid, and she who had never known other men closely, who had fed only on dreams, poetry, on fantasy high and pure, had given him her whole self for ever; she had loved him even in those dear to him, and idolised him in the daughter born from him. She had no other idea of life than that expressed in her own simple and even existence, spent with her sister Carlotta, with their mother, that sweet sad memory, and her father, a man of violent passions, friend or enemy till death of other men, but blind and crazy in his love for his daughters …
Now, as she turned again and again to look at the door, anxiously waiting for Raimondo’s arrival, the scene before her reminded her of another, in lively contrast, indelibly etched on her mind. Memory conjured up for her the family board in the big dining-room of her father’s house in Milazzo; her mother, her sister, she herself, intent on her father’s stories, smiling with him, sad or sorrowing with him; her father, his every thought and action concentrated wholly on them; a constant almost superstitious respect for ancient habits, patriarchal peace, reciprocal love, absolute confidence. If she looked round now, what did she see? The princess, timid and fearful before her husband; the boy trembling at a glance from his father, but proud of the humiliation inflicted on his aunt; Lucrezia and her brother still cold and suspicious with each other; the prince making an ostentatious play of good humour with the duke after a day of frowning silence.
She had not even suspected the passions dividing this family, on the day she had entered it as another family of her own; with what amazement and sorrow had she noticed the grim resentment with which they repaid her! They considered, of course, that she was unworthy of Raimondo because inferior to him. No one put him higher than herself, but she had not been helped by feeling and being humble before him and them; their rancour had not been placated. Then she had begun to realise the separate passions which, apart from pride, animated each of these hard, violent Uzeda … Raimondo’s mother, idolising her son to the point of being jealous of his wife; so after getting him married and ensuring his dowry she humiliated her daughter-in-law, using an iron hand from the very first day to enforce true subjection to her favourite. But the wife’s idolising submission and blind devotion took away any pretext for cruelty, threw new fuel on the flames of maternal jealousy, and made Donna Teresa implacable. The elder brother, unable to forgive Raimondo’s privileges or to resign himself at having Raimondo’s family competing with his own, turned his rancour against his sister-in-law. All the others had been pitiless against the intruder, either from hatred at the princess, who had brought her into the family, or from hatred of Raimondo, whom the mother protected.
Thus she found herself the target of these relations to whom she had come with confident soul and warm heart, and the discovery that their hatred was as bitter against her as against Raimondo instead of lessening her suffering had sharpened it; for being deeply in love with her husband she suffered and enjoyed through him and for him … Whenever the prince seemed not to see his sister-in-law or, turning in her direction he suddenly put off his jovial air and showed her a face grimmer than if she were a stranger, it was not so much that ostentatious coldness which made her suffer as the indifference shown by all towards her husband.
Dinner progressed as if he would no longer be coming; no-one asked after him, Lucrezia still kept her head bent over her place, the princess tended her son, the prince talked about the condition of the estates, the price of produce, and the dangers of cholera, the duke discoursed on the war in the East, and it was only the stranger, Don Mariano, who said now and again:
‘Where’s Raimondo?… Isn’t he coming?… What can have happened to him?’
Then that question resounded in her thoughts, as if by an echo, ‘Isn’t he coming?… What can have happened to him?…’ Why was he so late? Why did he leave her alone among all those hostile or indifferent strangers?
‘The Russians are still holding out … a hard nut to crack … Napoleon knew a thing or two about that …’
Absorbed again in graver and more disturbing thoughts, she heard snatches of phrases, words whose sense she could not catch. How long he had left her alone, Raimondo! How long, how
long!… She remembered only too well the first pain he had inflicted on her, long ago. Good to her just after their marriage, during the honeymoon and their stay at Catania; as soon as they reached Milazzo, where they had gone on business to see her father and sister, he declared that he had not married to live in that hovel, to fall under his father-in-law’s tutelage after having got away from his mother’s … Of course she saw that life in her little native town could be no fun for him. Of course she would follow him wherever he cared to take her. Yet that brusque judgement about things and people dear to her heart had given her a pang of unforgettable anguish. He wanted to leave Sicily for ever, to go and live in Florence; his mother’s disapproval had been no obstacle. To his wife, who, to avoid being moved too far from her own family, exhorted him to obey, he answered brusquely, ‘Let me do things in my own way!’ And yes, she had realised his reasons. Sicily, Tuscany, any part of the world where they would be happy together, was it not all one to her? Could her mother-in-law’s despotic veto weigh more with her than her husband’s wishes? And were those wishes of his not legitimate maybe? Was her Raimondo not one made to figure in the exclusive society of a great city? Young and rich, would they not be the envy of all no matter where they went?… And she had not persevered in her efforts at resistance for another, more serious, reason too.
Raimondo, whose rather brusque ways she forgave or rather tried to ignore, his dislike of contradiction, all the little defects of a spoilt son, showed his real self to his father-in-law. The latter’s character being, very strong, a quarrel might break out from one moment to the other. At first the baron had gone out of his way to treat his son-in-law well, as if he were the princess herself, charmed too by the young man’s exquisite grace and proud of his good fortune in being connected with the Francalanza, but Raimondo had replied to all this zeal and affectionate care by a show of discontent with everything in that house by repeating every quarter of an hour:
‘How on earth can people live here?…’
The Viceroys Page 14
