The Viceroys

by Federico De Roberto

  Most of those baronial families had a nickname, often derogatory, by which they were better known in the city than by their own names. The Fiammona were called the Kegs, because they were gross as half-barrels; the San Bernardo the Beaneaters, an allusion to the poverty to which they were reduced; the Currera were called the Scabby because all had heads as bald as billiard-balls; the Salvo were called the Saliva-eaters, and others worse. The young prince, when short of insults, would yell to his companions, ‘Oh, you Bran-bellies!… Oh, you Pork-skins!…’ and they, being unable to give as good as they got, since the nickname of the Uzeda, ‘the Viceroys’, showed that family’s former power, would jump on him when they could lay hold of him and give him a good hiding. Fra’ Carmelo then rushed up with hands on high to free his protégé and preach peace, mutual love and attention to study.

  During lessons, when he took the trouble to be attentive, Consalvo understood all and got praise and prizes, but there were no punishments anyway, for the masters, who were all priests of low-class origin, did not even dare call their pupils ‘donkey’. The Prior, to show his satisfaction at the novice master’s good reports, came to visit his nephew at the Novitiate sometimes, bringing presents of sweets and holy books; Don Blasco, in the refectory, gave him an occasional slap in sign of caress; and the first time Fra’ Carmelo brought him to the palace on half-a-day’s holiday, the whole family, all united for the occasion, made a great fuss of him.

  ‘What a fine little monk!… what a fine little monk!’

  The princess, sad at having him no longer with her but resigned as always to her husband’s wishes, devoured him with kisses, embracing him the more tightly because of her repulsion for others; Donna Ferdinanda, who had come on purpose to the palace, was also full of caresses for him; Lucrezia, placated now that there was no danger of finding him in her room, gave him sweets and biscuits; the prince praised obedient children, though without laying aside his habitual severity. Don Eugenio made a speech about the benefits of education, and even his Uncle Ferdinando came down from the country to be present at this visit. Only his Aunt Chiara and the marchese were not there; sure they were about to have the son long-awaited and desired, one sad day they had found the pregnancy gone, and from that day were mourning for their lost hope. But there was a six-year-old girl who looked at the little monk with big, curious eyes, and a nurse holding a baby-in-arms.

  ‘There are your cousins, Uncle Raimondo’s daughters,’ explained the princess.

  ‘Where’s Aunt Matilde?’

  ‘She isn’t very well …’

  But Donna Ferdinanda cut short this empty talk and began questioning her young nephew about his companions, life in the monastery and how he spent his day, while Fra’ Carmelo praised the boy to his mother.

  ‘Would you like to be a monk?’ asked the prince as a joke. ‘And be in the monastery for always?’

  ‘Yes,’ replied he, so as to hold his end up. ‘It’s fine at San Nicola …’

  The monks, in fact, had a high old time: eating, drinking, and amusing themselves. On getting up in the morning they each went to say their Mass down in the church, often behind closed doors so as not to be disturbed by the faithful. Then they withdrew to their apartments, to eat something while awaiting luncheon, at which, in kitchens as spacious as barracks, worked no fewer than eight cooks, apart from kitchen-hands. Every day the cooks got four loads of oak charcoal from Nicolosi to keep the ovens always hot, and for frying alone the kitchen Cellarer would consign to them every day four bladders of lard of two rotoli each, and two cafissi of oil; enough for six months at the prince’s. The pots and pans were big enough to boil a whole calf’s haunch and roast a swordfish complete; two kitchen-hands would each grasp half a great cheese and spend an hour grating it; the chopping-block was an oak trunk which no two men could get their arms round; and every week a carpenter, paid four tarì and half a barrel of wine for this service, had to saw off a couple of inches or it became unserviceable from so much chopping.

  The Benedictines’ kitchen had become a proverb in town. The macaroni pie with its crust of short pastry, the rice-balls each big as a melon, the stuffed olives and honey-cakes, were dishes which no other cook could make; and for their ices and fruit-drinks and frozen cassette, the Fathers had called specially from Naples, Don Tino, from the Benvenuto café. All this was made in such quantities that it was sent round as presents to monks’ and novices’ families, and the servitors would sell the remains and get four, and some six, tarì each for them daily.

  The servitors looked after the monks’ apartments, bore messages for them in town, accompanied them to Choir holding their cowls, served them in their rooms if their Paternities were unwell or did not feel like coming down to the refectory. There lay-brothers served. At midday, when all were gathered in the vast hall with its frescoed ceiling, lit by twenty-four windows big as front doors, the Reader for the week would get up on the rostrum and begin mumbling at the first forkful of macaroni, after the Benedicite. The rota for reading went from the youngest novices to the oldest monks by order of age, but once it reached the newly-ordained it went back and began again in order to avoid the bother for the older Fathers, who sat comfortably at tables arranged along the walls above a kind of wide pavement. In the centre of the big horseshoe the Abbot had a table to himself. The lay-brothers took round the dishes, eight at a time, on a tray called a ‘porter’ which they bore on their shoulders. There was a distinction between dinners and suppers, the latter composed of five courses, the former of seven on feast-days. And as a confused clatter of crockery and gurgling of drink and tinkling of silver rose from the tables, the Reader mumbled, from high on his rostrum, the Rule of St Benedict. ‘… 34th Commandment, be not proud; 35th, give not yourself to wine; 36th, eat not too much; 37th Commandment, sleep not too much; 38th Commandment, be not lazy …’

  The Rule was actually read in Latin, but while the young prince and other novices were learning to understand it in that language, once a month this was explained in Italian translation. St Benedict, in the chapter on Moderation in feeding, had ordered that the daily meal should consist of no more than two cooked dishes and one pound of bread; ‘If there is need of supper, the Cellarer is to reserve a third part of the said pound to give at supper.’ But this was one of the many ‘antiquities’—as Fra’ Carmelo called them—of the Rule. Were Their Paternities to eat hard bread then? And at night the bread was a second baking’s, smoking hot like that of the morning.

  The Rule also said, ‘All except the weak and infirm are to abstain from eating the flesh of four-footed animals’, but every day half a calf was bought as well as chickens, sausages, salami, and the rest. On abstinence days the head cook earmarked the best fish as soon as the catch was disembarked and before it reached the fish-market. In truth there were many other ‘antiquities’ in the Rule. St Benedict, for instance, made no distinction between noble Fathers and plebeian lay-brothers; he wanted all of them to do some manual work or other, he threatened monks and novices who did not carry out their duty with penance, excommunication and even beating. In fact he said a great deal of ‘nonsense’, as Don Blasco defined it.

  As to wine, the founder of the Order prescribed that a modicum every day was enough; ‘but let it be said that those to whom God gives the grace of abstaining will receive particular recompense’. The cellars of San Nicola however were well provided and highly reputed, and if the monks drank deep they had good reason, for the wine from the vineyards of Cavaliere, Bordonaro, from the San Basile estate, would have roused the dead. Father Currera, known as one of the most valiant trenchermen, used to rise from table every day half-tipsy, and on returning to his apartment, give a shake at his heavy paunch, eyes gleaming behind gold-rimmed spectacles on his rubicund nose, and get down to a flask which he kept day and night under his bed in place of a chamber-pot.

  The other monks would leave the monastery immediately after dinner and scatter around the neighbourhood among families, each of which had its Father
protector. Father Gerbini, whose room was full of fans and sunshades given him by ladies to mend, began his round of visits. Father Galvagno went to the Baronessa Lisi, Father Broggi to the Signora Caldara, other monks to various other ladies and friends. They would return at Angelus time, and go into church. But those who came a little late or had a headache went straight up to their rooms; not to sleep however, for in the evening and until midnight, when the gates were locked, visits were made by relatives and friends, receptions were held, and many Fathers had games of cards. At one time, due to Father Agatino Renda, a great gambler, there had been very high play; in one evening alone Raimondo Uzeda lost 500 onze and more than one head of a family had been ruined; so much so that the superiors of the Order, after shutting an eye to many peccadilloes, had finally had to step in.

  Then Father Francesco Cosenzano from Monte Cassino came as Abbot; and for a short time, with the authority of his new nomination and the help of the good monks—for there were some—the fine old man had managed to control the worst; then, as time went by, quietly and gradually the latter had returned to their former habits: gambling, tippling, populating the local district with their mistresses, getting their bastards into the monastery as lay-brothers (of the Fathers—a new kind of relationship). The Abbot’s timid attempts at resistance now loosed a violent opposition against him. Don Blasco was one of the worst. He kept three women in the San Nicola district: Donna Concetta, Donna Rosa and Donna Lucia the Cigar-woman, with half a dozen children. And the Abbot let him be, in spite of the scandal of all his women and bastards coming to attend the same monk’s Holy Mass. Every morning he would go down to the kitchen and order the best cuts to be sent off to his mistresses, and on abstinence days he stood at the gates waiting for the cook to arrive with the fish, of which he made his choice, ordering: ‘Cut a piece off this cernia and take it to Donna Lucia!’ And the Abbot let things be.

  Then finally one day because of this woman things came to a head. The monastery owned a good half of the district immediately surrounding it; the three buildings in the semicircular space in front of the church and a number of one-storey houses all around the walls. These buildings only yielded a meagre income, partly because they were let at special rents to old tradesmen or retired sacristans, and partly because some were granted free to the unfortunate, such as noble families fallen on evil days. Now Don Blasco with his very particular affection for Donna Lucia Garino, the Cigar-woman, had arranged for her to be granted a fine apartment in the southern-most building, with a shop beneath where her husband sold tobacco.

  The Abbot, hearing that this Donna Lucia was neither indigent nor a noblewoman in decay, and that her only title for having the house while so many other wretches had nowhere to lay their heads was her scandalous friendship with Don Blasco, decided to order her either to pay a regular rent for the apartment and shop, or quit it.

  Don Blasco, already so irritated by the moralistic behaviour of the new Abbot that he was only waiting for a chance to open fire, when told by his sobbing mistress, became like an animal but for holy baptism, and went shouting outrageously up and down the corridors of the monastery under the Deacons’ noses and behind the Abbot’s door, that whoever dared turn out the Cigar-woman or ask her for a cent would have him to deal with. Having cowed the still uncertain and hesitant opposition and gathered round him the scum of the monastery, the other recalcitrant monks, who bore ill their superior’s austere warnings and the end of all their fun and games, he became not only the terror of the Chapter but its scourge. From love of peace the poor Abbot had to rescind his order, but the elder Uzeda was not placated by this, and wherever he could find a reason to stir up strife and complaints he gave his ‘enemy’ no rest. This was when the Abbot, in admiration for the austere habits and wisdom of Don Lodovico, had begun to protect him, even to sustain him for the office of Prior; so now Don Blasco, who had also had an eye on that post, coupled his nephew and his superior together in savage and inextinguishable hatred.

  There had always been many differing groups at San Nicola; for, as there was a huge patrimony to administer, and great amounts of money to be dealt with, and large sums to be distributed in alms, and work to be given to many, and free houses as well as free places in the Novitiate to be granted, and in fact a notable influence to be exercised throughout the city and estates, each did his best to bring grist to his own mill; but at the time of the young prince’s admission quarrels were daily and violent.

  First of all the Abbot had his partisans, but not all the good monks were on his side for they did not like supreme power being in the hands of a foreigner. Don Blasco tried to draw these monks into his group, yelling that they must send home that ‘macaroni-eating Neapolitan’; but although the opposition was agreed on that, it was divided again on the matter of a successor. And there was of course a party of those who declared they had no party. And Don Lodovico, a model of this kind, by keeping apart and doing some under-water navigation, had managed to obtain the office of Prior. Many maintained that after all he was the only one worthy of aspiring to the dignity of abbot, but his uncle, to avoid that ‘slimy pig’ placing the mitre on his head, almost came to support Abbot Cosenzano. Lodovico himself did not allow anyone to mention promotion; if anyone did, he would protest:

  ‘At the moment His Paternity is Abbot, and I must obey him before all others.’

  Then the Abbot in person, tired of the situation, confided to him that he wanted to retire and hand over office to him; even if he himself had not thought of retirement, said he, surely sooner or later death would think of it for him? At which the Prior exclaimed:

  ‘Your Paternity must not talk of such things now!… They sadden the heart of a devoted son, Reverend Father.’

  The old man then took him into his confidence and complained of the little respect the monks bore him, and the scandal that many still gave by their libertine lives. The Prior shook his head sorrowfully.

  ‘Our glorious founder, the father of monks, teaches us the remedy against errors of those that stray: the prayer of the good, so that Our Lord, who can do all things, may give health back to our infirm brethren …’

  And meanwhile he reproved no one, did nothing about the complaints which were often brought him, let each stew in his own juice. Among those thirty or so inmates there was never a moment of peace or agreement. If the question of personalities divided the monastery in one way, this grouping was thrown into confusion by politics, which brought monks together in quite different order. There were Liberals, those who had been for the provisional Government in ’48, and given hospitality to the Revolution in the person of its soldiers; and there were the pro-Bourbons, whom the Liberals called ‘rats’. Don Blasco captained the latter, among whom were many friends of the Prior; the Liberals, who on the questions of internal order were nearly all on the side of the actual Abbot (himself very pro-Bourbon), in politics obeyed the honorary Abbot Ramira, of 1848. So if the raised voices of monks were often heard cursing lay-brothers and sending waiters to hell, yells rose as soon as any discussion began on political events in the shade of the arcades or by the front gate.

  Liberals and pro-Bourbons almost came to blows about the end of the Crimean War, the Congress of Paris, and the part played in these by Piedmont. Don Blasco was violent against that ‘polenta-eating Piedmontese’ Cavour, and covered him with insults, recalling the tale of the frog and the ox, and prophesying that he would burst from puffing himself up. He was even worse against the constitutional system which the Liberals so longed for, exclaiming that Ferdinand II’s best action had been on the 15th of May, when he ordered a bayonet-attack on the ‘buffoons and pimps’ of Palazzo Gravina. When the Liberals said that they would get rid of the King again, he yelled:

  ‘Send him away then if you can; I’d like to see you try, with those bellies of yours!’

  When he heard praises of the young King of Sardinia he would raise his arms to his head and shake his hands like bats’ wings in a gesture of desperate horror, �
�Savoy passes!… Savoy passes!…’ In 1713, when Victor Amedeo of Savoy, having assumed the crown of Sicily, came to the island in pomp and crossed it from end to end, the new sovereign’s passage had been followed by one of the worst years for crops in living memory, and that saying: ‘Savoy passes! Savoy passes!’ had stuck in the minds of the terrified and poverty-stricken population as a proverb, a symptom of disaster, a scourge of God.

  ‘And then, as if the first wasn’t enough they wanted another of those in ’48! To get us into a worse state than they are in Piedmont, where they’re so down-and-out they despoil monasteries!’

  There were political parties among the novices: Liberals, revolutionaries, Piedmontese; and pro-Bourbons, Neapolitans, ‘rats’; but though the two camps were almost equally divided there the Liberals were in a majority.

  ‘They’re all down-and-outs,’ explained Don Blasco to the young prince, ‘who haven’t enough to eat at home, and despise the good things God sends and all these lovely lasagne dropping all ready-cooked into their mouths!’

  This was not at all true, for the Liberal novices were captained by Giovannino Radalì-Uzeda, who belonged to a family that in nobility and wealth came immediately after the Uzeda of the direct line; although a second son, had he remained a layman he would have the life title of baron. But the young prince followed the opinions of his uncle Don Blasco and his aunt Donna Ferdinanda; though a friend and gambling companion of his cousin he was an adversary in politics, and when the revolutionaries spoke among themselves, when they plotted to raise the convent and issue forth with a tricolour paper flag, he would watch out and question the most ingenuous and then repeat what he learnt to his uncle to be passed on to the Abbot. Consequently Don Blasco soon acquired a new consideration for his grand-nephew.