‘The little runt is not such a fool as he looks … yes, yes …’ he would say approvingly, praising Consalvo’s espionage. ‘He listens to what they say and then comes and tells me.’
Politics caused quarrels and enmity among lay-brothers too. The wiliest did not bother about Cavour or Del Carretto and thought only of fattening their families with gleanings from the monastery, but a number also took sides either for government or revolution.
One in particular, Fra’ Cola, a revolutionary leader, was always talking of beginning where they left off in ’48. The Liberal novices would get him to tell the story of that time, and as he served them at table, as he took round water or wine in a great crystal decanter in his right hand, with the fore and middle finger of his left hand he would secretly make the sign of cutting scissors. One day the young prince asked Giovannino what it meant. His cousin replied:
‘It means we must cut off the “rats” tails!’
Consalvo reported this to his uncle, and Fra’ Cola, as punishment, was sent to the malarial Licodìa house. Fra’ Carmelo, though, never bothered about politics, and when asked if he was a Liberal or pro-Bourbon made the sign of the Cross.
‘Stop, please, for the Lord’s sake! What do I know about these things! They’re the Devil’s works!’
For him there was no world outside San Nicola, no other power outside that of Abbot, Prior and Deacons. He would list all the Abbot’s eighteen titles, naming the Kings, Queens, royal princes, viceroys and barons who had endowed the monastery. Every Sunday, in Chapter, the Abbot would read out a litany of those royal and princely donors for whose souls so many daily Masses were said. But often one only was said for the lot; it helped the dead just as much and did not take up so much time of the living.
In general the Fathers were in a hurry to get such things over and on with their own affairs. In order not to go down into church for matins when it was chilly, they had built, many years before, another choir, called the Night Choir, in the middle of the monastery. It was all in carved walnut and cost a number of thousands of onze, but now the Fathers did not get up even to go there, a few steps away; they stayed between their sheets till broad daylight and had their matins said for them by the Capuchins, for payment. But on great religious feast-days, Christmas, Easter, or the Feast of the Holy Nail, all took part in ceremonies whose magnificence dazzled the city.
The first ceremonies at which the young prince was present were those of Holy Week. For a month the church was upside-down for the construction of the Sepulchre at the end of the left-hand nave. Enclosed in great scaffolding, with windows blocked out, decorated with crystal candelabra glittering like diamonds and vases of wheat grown in the dark so that it was colourless, populated with statues representing the Holy Family and the Apostles, it was quite unrecognisable. On Thursday at Terce, the whole monastery went down into the church for Pontifical High Mass, led by the Abbot, his staff, mitre and ring borne by novices and his train by pages. The colour-scheme was like the White Queen’s, all red brocade embroidered in gold, and to Donato del Piano’s majestic organ tenors, basses and baritones specially hired for the occasion sang the Passion, which the massed crowd followed as if in a theatre.
Opposite the Abbot’s dais, in the best places, were all the Uzeda; the prince and count with their wives, Donna Ferdinanda, Lucrezia, Chiara with her husband. They, noticing Consalvo, made him signs with their heads, particularly his mother and the old spinster, admiring his white cotta starched in a thousand tiny folds, special work of the nuns of San Giuliano. Through the whole church, when the powerful organ stopped, could be heard a buzz like a beehive, a scraping of chairs, a stamping of feet. There was a glitter from rifles and sabres of soldiers lined in front of the three doors and along the naves to clear the way for the procession later on. Meanwhile, twelve paupers, representing the twelve Apostles, had entered the choir. The Abbot on his knees washed their feet. It was a second washing, the first having already taken place in the sacristy lest His Paternity dirty his hands.
At that moment a murmur came from the end of the church. Consalvo turned round from the High Altar and saw that his uncle Raimondo had left his place and was making his way through the crowd towards a lady. It was Donna Isabella Fersa. Like all the other ladies she was dressed in black mourning for the Passion, but her dress was so rich, so covered with frills and lace, that it looked like a ball dress. Having arrived late, she could not find a good place. Raimondo, on reaching her, gave her his arm and led her amid a double row of curious spectators to his own chair next to his wife’s. Countess Matilde, out for the first time that day since her illness, was very white-faced, and her black wool dress made her look even paler. Then, at that point, Jesus died; the church suddenly went dark, the lay-brothers turned the candelabra over on the altars, took off the white altar cloths and substituted violet, veiled the Cross; and the monks also set aside their festive vestments and put on those of mourning. In the darkness the candles shone with a brighter flame, and the Holy Sepulchre was like a monstrance with all its torches, lamps, reflections of crystal and gold. Donna Isabella looked at the spectacle through her lorgnette, while the count, bowing over her, named monks and novices one by one.
‘Is that one there not your young nephew?… what a fine little cleric, countess …’
Matilde made an ambiguous gesture of the head. The organ was intoning the Miserere, and the sad music was full of sighs and laments which echoed in every corner of the dark church, of wails which made the air tremble, of groans like winter wind. It seemed that the world was about to end, that there was no more hope for anyone; Jesus was dead, the Saviour of the world was dead; and the monks, two by two, the Abbot at their head, went down into the apse and moved round the vast church between two rows of soldiers holding back the crowds and presenting reversed arms. Then the Abbot deposited the Sacred Host in the Sepulchre. Kneeling with her head bowed over her chair and her face hidden in her handkerchief, the Countess Matilde was quietly sobbing. Donna Isabella exclaimed:
‘How touching this ceremony is!…’
She too had slightly red eyes, but when the count gave her his arm again to lead her into the sacristy she leant against him languidly.
‘By rights I shouldn’t come,’ she protested. ‘Only relations are allowed in …’
‘Oh nonsense!… you’re with us! We’ll say we’re cousins.’
In the sacristy splendid refreshments were being offered to relatives of the monks and novices; trays full of cups of smoking chocolate were circulating, with iced drinks and sweets and sponge-cakes. Consalvo, between his mother and Donna Isabella, was receiving caresses and compliments for the exemplary way in which he had taken part in the ceremony; Father Gerbini, without having yet taken off his mourning vestments, was greeting the ladies and inviting them to the ceremony next day.
On Friday the Uzeda arrived with the Fersa; the count gave his arm to Donna Isabella, who wore another black dress, even more elegant than the first. The sacristans had reserved them the same places, guarding them amid the milling throng. But the soldiers were holding it back, and as the organ accompanied the dirge of Three Hours of Agony there was deep silence; only Raimondo, sitting next to Donna Isabella, was saying things in her ear that made her smile. Meanwhile the Abbot was carrying out the ceremony of the Deposition from the Cross. Taking the veiled Crucifix, he put it on the floor on one of the altar steps, where a velvet cushion embroidered all over in gold had been set. The monks went off, the Sepulchre remained empty for a moment. Suddenly, while the organ started its lamentations again more sadly than ever, all of them reappeared from the sacristy in procession, two by two, with their Superior at their head. They were shoeless, with feet in black silk socks, for the Adoration of the Cross.
Kneeling at every step, between the hedges of soldiers, they came down to the main door, went back as far as the altar, and there one by one threw themselves on the ground before the cushion with the dead Christ, and kissed it. The crowd got up on chairs to
see better; Donna Isabella and Raimondo passed each other opera glasses, while Matilde, on her knees, sobbed and prayed. At the end of the ceremony there were more refreshments in the sacristy. The young prince, now caressed by all, saw that his relatives were served first; his uncle Don Eugenio was drinking chocolate as if it were water, stuffing into his pockets cakes he could not eat, but his Aunt Matilde took nothing.
On Holy Saturday, Consalvo did not see her in church for the ceremony of the Resurrection, but his Uncle Raimondo was still giving an arm to the Signora Fersa.
EVERY evening the countess watched till late by her child’s cot, holding a little hand white and cold as wax, making no movement with her own stiffened arm lest she wake the sleeping child. Late at night the gates were locked, and no sound was heard in the sleeping house except the faint snoring of the nurse sleeping by Teresina’s cot in the room next door. Raimondo did not return. Laid out on the night table in rows were bottles of medicine, pots of ointment, the whole chemist’s shop prescribed by the doctor for the sick little girl. She was suffering from shingles, they said; bad blood came out in skin eruptions and glandular obstructions, all reassuring symptoms, as they meant that the poison was being expelled by the organism.
She had made a vow to Our Lady of Graces, promised to wear Her habit until Lauretta recovered. Deep in her heart she had asked Our Lady for another grace; to illuminate Raimondo, reawaken his affection as husband and father.
Since they had been to Milazzo, according to the promise made at the Belvedere after the cholera, he had begun to fret again, to show himself bored and restless, declare that he could not stay long so far from home because of the property-division. And she had scarcely given birth and was still between life and death after a very difficult delivery, when he alleged a call from his brother and left. He stayed away only a few days, but it was the first time that he had left her, at the very moment when his company and help were most necessary to her. This new sorrow certainly did not help her towards recovery; but a greater one awaited her, and her premonitions all came true, for the creature she had borne in her womb while in such mental agony had come into the world so weak and wan that it seemed about to die at any moment.
And so many long months had passed, almost a whole year, without her being able to leave her father’s roof or the baby’s bedside. During that year Raimondo had come and gone, left and returned a number of times, and she had gradually become accustomed to those absences, being unable either to follow him or to oppose the business reasons which he adduced. When the doctors ordered a change of air for the convalescent baby, he wanted to take them all off to Catania. The baron too was leaving Milazzo and going to Palermo with his other daughter, Carlotta, so Teresina, who could not be left alone, went with her father.
Matilde was delighted to find Raimondo taking so much interest in his daughters, and almost blessed her own sufferings, if indeed they had brought this respite. But as soon as she arrived at the Uzeda home she found her daughter in relapse and Raimondo neglecting her, leaving her alone amid those ‘relations’ who were again looking at her askance, and, crueller still to a mother’s heart, hurting her through her children. They derided the sufferings and predicted the death of her youngest, but their greatest hostility was to Teresina. She was a vivacious, curious, restless child, who was often naughty, spoilt things at her games and shouted gaily as she ran through the rooms. Then she would be reproved and sent off; the prince would say he had put Consalvo with the Benedictines so as to have a quiet house and instead of that it was now resounding with shrieks, even more than before.
With his own daughter, the other Teresina, he was more indulgent, and the whole family and even the servants treated the two little cousins differently, giving first place to the young princess. Even Princess Margherita, the only one to be good and sweet to the other, could not hide her preference for her own daughter, and Matilde, though realising they were right, suffered at this disparity of treatment.
Her Teresina, at the age of six, was vain as a maiden; she would gaze at herself for long in the glass, watch and stare as her mother’s hair was dressed; and she loved ribbons, brooches, bits of jewellery. The old spinster would often criticise her for coquetry, shake her head and predict ill for the future, making Matilde sob at this kind of evil spell put on the innocent child. Now they had another reason for getting at her, for the purpose of the baron’s journey to Palermo was to arrange the marriage of his other daughter, Carlotta. The latter, they contended, should not marry, and they urged Matilde to oppose her father’s plans and her sister’s happiness so that all their father’s fortune should go to herself. And because such calculations never occurred to her they looked at her askance and punished her through her children, as if she had stolen something from them.
Raimondo, in truth, did not himself seem at all put out by the marriage plans, but he was beginning to neglect her again, to hurry out immediately after luncheon, to return as dinner was ending and go out again till late at night. When she saw her two daughters ill-treated, tears came to Matilde’s eyes and she shut herself in her room with Teresina, told her to behave herself and tried to keep her there as long as possible. When Raimondo came home she did not accuse his relations to him, lest she annoy him and make them all say she was sowing discord in the family; she merely begged him not to leave her always alone …
The Uzedas’ hostility towards her, the rebukes and sneers at her children, were as nothing to the jealousy gnawing at her once more. He had begun courting the Fersa woman again, went to visit her at home, every Sunday in church they met at the same Mass. And Matilde could no longer pray when she saw that woman in front of her and realised that he had not got her out of his mind, was again being drawn by her elegance, her languorous attitudes, the studiously graceful gestures with which she raised her scented handkerchief to her lips or waved her feather-fan, as she looked around or bent her head over a prayer-book without ever turning a page … In church! In the house of God!… That she could not understand, to her it seemed a continual and appalling sacrilege. Why, to San Nicola, for the ceremonies of the Passion, she had come dressed up as if for the theatre, making people turn round by her unsuitable appearance! Why must Raimondo put her so near him and make obvious an assiduity that was already giving rise to comment! On Easter Sunday, weeping with sorrow and tenderness, Matilde broke down at the baby’s bedside and begged her husband:
‘By this solemn day, by your love for this innocent baby, swear you will not make me suffer any more.’ He had asked her, ‘What harm am I doing you? What are you accusing me of?’
‘You leave me alone, you neglect your children, you don’t think of us, you don’t love us any more.’
Shaking his head, Don Raimondo exclaimed:
‘Your usual fixations, your usual fantasies!… I neglect you? How do I neglect you? When, why, for whom do I neglect you?…’
For whom? For whom?… And he had gone on with gathering warmth, ‘Yes, for whom? You’re not starting again with that silly jealousy of yours are you? Have you got some other whim into your head?… About Donna Isabella, eh?…’ He had named her! ‘I see! Just because I gave up my chair for her, because I invited her to join us?… but that was just good manners, my dear. It’s only in this wretched hole one would get blamed for such a thing!’
In that summer of ’57 he was seen around assiduously with both the Fersa; at the theatre, where he went every night to a stage-box, he would often go up to their box when it was their subscription night; he would also meet them at his Aunt Ferdinanda’s, which Donna Isabella very often visited; at the Nobles’ Club he was always gambling with her husband, whom he let win every day. Although he had the use of his brother’s carriage he had bought a magnificent pair of thoroughbreds and a brand-new phaeton with which he followed the Fersa’s carriage. When there was music on the marine parade he would get down, leave the reins to a coachman, and go and stand at their carriage door, chatting with Donna Isabella, her mother-in-law and husband.
He was dressing with greater care than usual and was never at home except, by lucky coincidence, when they came to visit the princess. His conversation was always about Florence, life in big cities, the elegance and wealth of other places. He would settle down next to Donna Isabella, exclaiming, ‘You’re the only one who understands me!’ and bewail the fate which had got him born in that hole and was holding him there, when he never wanted to set foot in it again, never again. ‘Must I really leave my bones here? I don’t think so! It’s not possible!’
And hearing him speak in that way, Matilde asked herself why he did not leave and keep the other part of the promise he had made a year and a half before of returning to their house in Florence? Because of business? But although Raimondo never talked of such matters to her, she knew that the division had not yet been discussed and would not be for some time.
First the cholera, then its residue of worries, then his brother’s departure had been the prince’s reasons for not discussing the division yet. Raimondo’s new luxuries were costing a lot; he was constantly asking his brother for advances, and the latter never let him ask twice, while hinting that it was time they settled their heritage definitely. But Raimondo found it convenient to take money without ever having to add up bills, cite bad payers, or involve himself in all the bothers, big and small, of administration. When his brother mentioned some doubt or asked for his opinion about prolonging a lease or concluding a sale, he would reply, ‘You do whatever you think fit …’ The important thing for him was to have money. Sometimes, when he asked too frequently, the prince would say:
The Viceroys Page 22
