So all the monks came in the evenings to pay court to the prince and discuss the affairs of the monastery with him. Among all these he acted the grandee, was treated like a pope and listened to like a god. He would forget the rest of the society, the ladies and gentlemen gambling at tombola or playing at charades or arranging excursions on the mountainside and spending their time so gaily that, had it not been for the news of the cholera and for the armed peasants keeping fugitives away later, no one could have thought those were times of pestilence.
The only one who failed to hide her own sorrow amid these general distractions was the Countess Matilde. She had come away from town almost in a frenzy, so strong had been the trials to which she had been put. Terror-struck, she had realised when just on the point of leaving for the country that the pain she could bear least was not separation from her child but Raimondo’s betrayal. How could she doubt that any more? Had the truth of that not been suddenly made clear at his announcement that he was going to the Belvedere, where Donna Isabella Fersa was going? Why ever had he, who so hated living in Sicily, refused to leave for the mainland unless it was because he wanted to keep near that other woman? He had pretended that he couldn’t decide, so as to wait and see what she decided! And he had thought up pretexts and accused his father-in-law and temporised so well that when the pestilence broke out he had done just what he wanted!
In those pretences and lies of his she no longer saw confirmation of the bad sides of his character; the fact that he was capable of them did not hurt her. Her one torture was the thought that he had used them for love of that other woman. That he had no love for his daughter, that he was unjust to his father-in-law, and bullying, capricious and rude, did not bother her at all; she did not want him to belong to any other! In Florence her jealousy had had no definite object, or had continually changed its object, for he paid court to all the women he met. She herself had also felt reassured up to a point, as, though he was gallant in speech with ladies, his changeableness and impatience made him prefer those others—paid women … How shameful it had been to find herself reduced to the point of rejoicing at that! Yet now she envied her past sufferings, finding it intolerable that he should be so full of another woman as to keep away from his own daughter in such terrible days in order to be near her!
Her anguish grew as she realised how fast he was advancing along the road of betrayal. In Florence, Raimondo’s intrigues had a certain shame about them; he even tried then to gain her forgiveness by being nice to her at times. Now he was doing it all so openly she was forced to be spectator of his infamy! This wounded her most; that they should be so shameless as to make such a rendezvous, under her very eyes, while hearts all round were trembling at the thought of death!
What a day was that of their flight to the Belvedere, through streets roasting in the sun, amidst clouds of hot, suffocating dust! She shared a carriage with Chiara, Lucrezia and the marchese, and the sight of the latter being so attentive to his wife made her suffering the more acute. Raimondo had refused to travel with her, left her alone in that rush through villages where armed men stopped every person and vehicle, barring the way: but she understood nothing of all that! She saw nothing on the road! All she saw, in her mind’s eye, was Raimondo smiling and happy beside that woman, as she had seen him so often in reality without her innate trust suspecting anything! Now, however, all the things that she had been unable to explain acquired an obvious meaning; Raimondo’s long absences, his impatient waiting, the pleasure which could be read in his eyes as soon as that woman entered, even the mysterious instinct of revulsion which that woman had aroused in her from the first moment.
What a false and evil creature she must be, to call her by the tender name of friend and embrace her and kiss her while taking away her husband! Was he himself not just as false? How many lies! He had even used her pregnancy as a reason for not leaving Sicily, quite disregarding the fact that he was thereby risking the life of the creature she bore in her womb!
What a terrible day! In the furnace-hot carriage, its windows peered through by suspicious faces of brutish peasants, its air full of the nauseating smell of camphor which Chiara and Lucrezia were holding to their nostrils against infection, she felt her breath fail. She did not know where she was or where she was going; she yearned to shout out to coachman and travelling companions, ‘Turn back … I don’t want to come!’ She longed to confront her husband, fling his betrayal in his face, adjure him not to take her near that woman, not to kill her, to save the creature moving in her womb, restore peace to her heart, air to her breast … Long before arriving at the Belvedere she had quite lost her senses, and could not even remember how and when she entered the villa.
There began for her a life of constant trepidation. Every instant she expected to find the Fersa woman there before her. Every time Raimondo went out she thought, ‘Now he’s with her …’ and not seeing her, and not hearing her spoken of, increased her panic, darkened it, gave her all kinds of horrible suspicions of conspiracy against her by everyone around. Incredibly, she managed to find the strength to hide her feelings lest she arouse her husband’s suspicions, lest she play into her enemies’ hands, but the silence she imposed on herself made her torment more acute by depriving her of means to learn what was going on. Why did no one ever name that woman? Why did she never come to the villa, with all the prince’s other visitors? Where was she living?
And intent on mulling over the thousand terrifying ideas suggested by her restless fancy, she forgot the cholera, scarcely thought of her far-away daughter or noticed her father’s silence. He must be thinking that she had forgotten her child amid all the pleasures of the Belvedere! Why did she always find that whatever she did unwillingly and in obedience to others was blamed on her by all as culpable caprice? Was she not one of those unfortunate people who never succeed in doing anything well and are destined to be disliked by all?
But she did not weep; she did not even weep when not her father but her sister Carlotta wrote to tell her that Teresina was well and that they were all safe. She did not weep, but she felt overcome by a gloom she could not hide. Raimondo himself noticed it and asked her:
‘What does your sister write?’
‘Nothing … that they’re all well, that they’re in no danger.’
‘D’you see? What did I tell you?…’ and he turned his back on her.
Two weeks had gone by since their arrival and she had still heard no one speak of the Fersa. On the evening of that day, as guests began arriving, she shut herself into her room. She felt ill, not only in spirit but physically; the long period of agitation was finally affecting her body too. She had flung herself on the bed and been lying there some time, her eyes and mind fixed on sad visions of the past and alarming previsions of the future, when there was a knock at the door.
‘Sister-in-law?…’ It was the prince’s voice. ‘What are you doing? Why not come down? There are numbers of people here tonight … They’re gambling …’
She got up, arranged her tumbled hair with a trembling hand and went downstairs. She was sure that other woman had come at last! She was quite certain that Raimondo was beside her! They were calling her down so that she could watch that sight and enjoy her agony! She glanced quickly round the crowded drawing-room; the woman was not there. But scarcely had she taken a seat next to her sisters-in-law, when she heard her name. Someone was saying:
‘… the little villa rented to Donna Isabella …’
‘A box of a place,’ replied another. ‘The Mongiolino are squashed in there like anchovies in a barrel.’
She did not understand.
‘Where have the Fersa gone then?’
Was that really Raimondo asking this question? Did he really not know where that woman was?
‘To their country place at Leonforte; Donna Mara preferred that.’
Suddenly she understood; her throat constricted. She slipped away without saying anything, crossed the house with swelling eyes and heart in tumult. When
she reached her room she fell at the feet of the Virgin’s statue and broke into floods of tears; tears of joy, of gratitude, and also of remorse; for she had suspected the innocent.
She seemed to have returned from death to life. With her suspicions ceased her pains, both of mind and of body, she took part in family life, and finally enjoyed the sweet taste of repose. Nor did the news of the cholera arouse her fear for her distant dear ones. After the slaughter of the year before, the pestilence seemed to have exhausted itself and meandered vaguely around without strength.
Life was as gay as ever at Villa Francalanza, with nightly receptions and card parties. No-one frequented the green tables more than Raimondo. When he took up the cards, stakes rose, risks grew. Many would get up and go, as they had come there for amusement and not to leave with empty purses.
The Princess of Roccasciano on the other hand asked for nothing better and often stayed on alone with the young count playing bezique at twelve tarì a hand. She had to hide from her husband, who, like all misers, disliked all forms of gambling. Complaisant friends would be on the look-out to tip them off as soon as he approached; then she and her accomplice would spirit away the counters, interrupt the game, and let themselves be surprised intent on an innocent game of scopa. Raimondo enjoyed this, incited the princess to high play, drew her off to an out-of-the-way room where they gambled for long hours, deceiving the suspicious prince with the help of all the other guests. Matilde would also smile at these comedy scenes, though considering that her husband did wrong to encourage the princess’s vice; but she had not the heart to reprove him, so indulgent did her reborn faith in him make her. As long as he did not betray her, what did anything else matter? Raimondo seemed to have no eye for any of the ladies who came to the villa. He spent little time in their company and dedicated himself entirely to gambling, in daytime at the Casino, in the evening at home. Not only did she not blame him, but felt almost like urging him farther along a road which drew him away from that other which was infinitely more painful to her. In her heart she would have liked him without vices, loving only her, her family and her home, but she took him as he was, or rather as he had become, for she attributed whatever was least good in him to his mother’s over-indulgence and blind love.
When away from cards, Raimondo was bored. If he could not arrange a good game he inveighed against the tedium of country life, the conversation of the country folk, the silly amusements of tombola, the donkey excursions. She could have said, ‘Why complain? Didn’t you yourself want to come?’ But she was silent lest he should take such words as a reproof. Instead when seeing him in a bad humour she would ask him gently what was wrong.
‘I’m bored, don’t you know that?’ was his reply.
‘What can we do?… As soon as the cholera stops we’ll go back to Florence … Why not go to the Casino?’
Off he went before she had time to repeat the suggestion. Gradually his gambling became wilder and wilder; in the course of a few hours, hundreds of gold onze would change hands. No one at home said a thing to Raimondo; the prince, friendlier with all, seemed carefully to avoid being a spoil-sport with his brother. One day the latter asked him for a few hundred onze as advance of the income he had inherited, since money was late in coming from Milazzo because of the cholera, and the prince put his purse at his brother’s disposal; an offer taken up on several occasions. Of course, until the cholera ended, nothing could be done to order the inheritance. Even so the prince now spoke of it directly to his co-heir and told him his own plans.
The legatees, said he, had been given to understand that they had been treated badly by their mother, but it would be easy to show the contrary. Anyway neither Ferdinando nor Chiara had listened to these whispers, and Lucrezia would soon be convinced she was wrong. And so, for love of peace, to make it all clear, although there was still plenty of time for paying their sisters, would it not be better to get that weight off their shoulders as soon as possible? They would need to save a little to put together the sixteen thousand onze needed, for if ten thousand was due to Lucrezia, Chiara was to have only six after the subtraction of the four ‘paid’ when she married. First, however, creditors must be paid and all put in the clear. And meanwhile they could both gain time and make their own arrangements about the division. Raimondo found nothing to object to in any of these arguments of his brother. ‘Fine, fine,’ was his reply.
Amid this peace suddenly one day appeared Don Blasco from Nicolosi, astride a huge Pantellerìa donkey. Since his escape with the other monks he had not put a nose outside in the first weeks for fear of catching cholera from the air he breathed. But seeing men and animals flourishing in the countryside he felt reassured about the danger of contagion, and when he finally heard of all the fun going on at the Belvedere, he longed to get on the move. He arrived between luncheon and dinner, announced by loud yells as no-one opened the gates. On seeing the young prince coming towards him carrying a riding-crop that terrified his mount, he yelled at the boy as if wanting to eat him alive, ‘Stand still now, devil take you!’ And he finally entered the villa exclaiming, ‘Isn’t there anyone here?… Where are you all?…’ To the prince, who tried to kiss his hand, he spat out, ‘Drop all that nonsense now …’ and without greeting anyone took him by a button on his coat, drew him aside and asked point-blank:
‘Is it true that your brother is gambling away the shirt on his back? How can you allow such a thing?’
‘Does Your Excellency not know Raimondo?’ replied the prince with a shrug. ‘Who can say a word to him? Why does Your Excellency not try and persuade him?…’
‘Me? Me, eh?—I don’t care a cabbage for him or any of the others! This is the result of the upbringing he was given! And what about that other good-for-nothing, his wife? Scratching at her stomach all day, what? And your sister? And those madmen? And your son?…’
He spared no-one. Chiara’s and the marchese’s chatter about baby clothes for the new birth put him in a huff, the news about the Giulente infuriated him; but what really sent him into a frenzy was reading the Catania newspaper brought up by the Prince of Roccasciano in the afternoon, when the first visitors began arriving. Immediately after the cholera bulletin, came:
‘It was to be foreseen that our chief patricians would be generous in such calamitous times and come to the help of the unfortunate. The most illustrious Don Gaspare Uzeda, Duke of Oragua, though far away from his fellow-citizens, has sent our senate the sum of 100 ducats to be distributed in help of the most needy …’
‘A hundred ducats thrown away to help the needy?’ shrieked Don Blasco. ‘To buy himself popularity rather! A hundred ducats thrown into the sea! It’s not as if the swine had money to squander! With all this generosity one fine day he’ll find himself on the rocks, as he deserves for his stupidity! Pig, swine, three times swine!’ So beside himself was the monk that when Roccasciano asked for news of his nephew Don Lodovico, he turned on him like a fury:
‘What’s all this nephew stuff? I deny all knowledge of him! I deny the lot of you!’ And taking the other one also by a coat button, he shouted in his ear, ‘D’you see what they’re up to?… Not three months since they lost their mother and now they’re gadding about without a thought in the world …’
Some days later came a visit from the Prior. He arrived in a carriage, rested and serene. He greeted and embraced all, asked to visit the room where the princess had died, talked of the pestilence and attributed it to the Lord’s concern at the wickedness of the times. All complained of the stubborn drought, for in three months of torrid summer not a drop of water had fallen. He said that he had arranged for a triduum and procession at Nicolosi to beg for rain, and advised them to do the same at the Belvedere.
‘One must never tire of begging the Almighty. Only prayer and penance can induce the Divine Clemency to forgive sinners.’
Then he announced that their cousin Radalì had written to tell him that as soon as the cholera was over she wanted to put her second son Giovannino in the nov
itiate; a praiseworthy arrangement, as with her husband in that state the poor duchess could not see to the education of both her sons. The prince said that he might do the same with Consalvo. The princess lowered her eyes to the ground, not daring to reply but unable to endure the thought of separation from her child.
So uncle and nephew resumed their visits, each on his own and on different days, like cat and dog incapable of being together. But all realised that the fault was Don Blasco’s; Don Lodovico, with his angelic nature, would ask for nothing better than to make peace, but the other could not forgive him yet for his assumption of the office of prior. Anyway the schism was unpleasant; family friends, familiars of the monastery, spoke of it with sorrow. Fra’ Carmelo did not mention it at all when he also came up to visit the princess and bring her the first walnuts and chestnuts. He did not want to talk of the ill-feeling between uncle and nephew from love of the monastery’s good name and respect for the monks who, in his judgement, were all equally good and fine men; but particularly from his veneration for the two Uzeda. These feelings of his included their whole family. When the princess, in exchange for the fruit he brought her, had a little meal set before him, the monk as he cleared the board would praise the nobility of the family, grandees second to none. And the princess liked him for his affectionate ways with little Consalvo, the caresses he gave him, the special little presents he brought him, and particularly because, when he described the novitiate of his uncles Don Lodovico and Don Blasco, he would say to the boy:
‘Ah, there have been so many Uzeda at San Nicola! But we won’t have Your Excellency! Your Excellency is an only son, and certainly won’t be put into the monastery …’
All the relations, on the other hand, except for Chiara, who if she had a son would have sewn him to her skirts, agreed with the prince that it was good for the boy’s education and instruction to send him away from home. Don Blasco, at his grand-nephew’s little sallies and the princess’s indulgence, would cry out, ‘Now he’s growing, the jackanapes!… He’s not getting much education here!…’ Donna Ferdinanda, though she considered all instruction to be unnecessary, yet recognised too that to put the boy in a noble institution would accord with family tradition; both the Cutelli college and the Benedictine novitiate had seen many of those ancestors she read about, whose stories she told her nephew. When Consalvo was tired of bothering the servants and animals, he would come to see his aunt and say:
The Viceroys Page 18
