As with the Prior, so too in Don Blasco the dissolution of the religious Orders had aroused other desires, other ambitions. Having converted into good income from government shares his money from the monastery, the monk had at last seen the dream of his youth come true: to own his own property, to be a capitalist. He had almost forgotten his hatred for his rival and nephew and bothered no more about him or anyone else.
But appetite comes with eating, says the proverb, and Don Blasco was not content with a few thousand onze; he wanted to get really rich and find out how to make money. For one thing he wanted to try to acquire some of the property of the chaplaincies and benefices. On finding that Giacomo was tricking him and starting the law-case on his own in spite of his promises, he became the leading spirit of the family league against him on the system already used against his brothers. Tit for tat, says another proverb, and the prince, who had made Raimondo and Lucrezia pay him for his support, now had to shut his uncle’s mouth, for the latter, who never hesitated to use his tongue, had begun saying around that the princess’s death was not as above board as it might be, and that Giacomo having made ‘poor Margherita rush on to Cassone while she was so ill and actually showing first symptoms of cholera had been due to his desire to rid himself of her, after forcing her to make a Will which left all to him and nothing to her children, that Consalvo’s coldness had its reasons, and that … and that …
The prince then recognised his relative’s rights to share the benefices and claim was restored. A calm only in appearance though, as rumours were bubbling beneath the surface. Giacomo did not want to quarrel with the monk and fall out with him now that he had money; nor with his aunt Ferdinanda for the same reason; least of all with the duke, whose authority as Deputy was useful against rapacious tax-gatherers. But he would inveigh furiously against everyone else. The agent of taxes, a man called Stravuso, was his particular bane. This man had a reputation not only for rapacity but for a terrible Evil Eye, and the prince, on joining battle, was even afraid to name him; he just called him ‘God save us!’, gripping an amulet in his closed fist, a bit of iron twisted into the shape of fingers making the sign against the Evil Eye.
‘Me talk to “God save us!”?…’ said he to his uncle on the eve of the wedding. ‘I’d be mad to!… Get him sent away!… Get him moved, he’s a thief lying in wait to strip us bare!… Not content with making me pay 20 per cent on the freeing of the benefices, he’s after doubling the death-duties for outsiders! If we were outsiders we wouldn’t inherit at all! The property comes to us just because the founders were our ancestors!’
The duke, who was praising the new laws to the skies, advised him not to complain; even with that 20 per cent deducted, the rest was all gain. The important thing, in the legislator’s view, was that all property and income be taken from the monks and used for the enrichment of private citizens, and therefore for the increase of public prosperity. And so, while waiting to take his share of the released benefices, the duke had contracted for two properties of the Abbey of San Giuliano, Carrubo and Fontana Rossa, of which he would be taking possession within a few days; and he incited his nephew to do likewise, choose himself some good tract of land to be paid for by the year from its own produce and improved so as to multiply its value. But the prince said:
‘Excellency, I can’t. My confessor won’t let me. He’s given me scruples, and on this solemn occasion of my marriage I intend to respect them. That doesn’t mean Your Excellency has done wrong; our two cases are different …’
The duke stared him straight in the eyes to see if he was serious or joking. Then he brought out the same objection made by the prince to Don Blasco:
‘Then why are you putting in for the property of the benefices? Don’t those belong to the Church too?’
‘No, Excellency,’ replied the prince. ‘The Church was merely administrator according to the founders’ intentions. The incomes only must be put to sacred use, and for that we are all responsible.’
While they were having this discussion the young prince’s absence was keeping other relatives gossiping behind the back of the new princess, who was making a great show of being worried and of fearing, like her husband, that the youth might have had an accident. She talked of sending messengers up to La Piana to find what had happened. In spite of her disquiet, however, she saw to the service of refreshments, whispered orders to Baldassarre, pressed guests to more cakes and ices, and carried out for the first time the duties of mistress of the house.
Don Blasco did not need much asking; now chains were up at San Nicola he could be as late as he liked. And as he munched away, he was making good use of his time to gather information on solvent signatures, for he too was now lending out money. Every now and again he also went up to a group amid whom the duke, having finished his talk with his nephew, was discoursing on public affairs.
The matter worrying the Deputy at the moment was the Town Hall. Things were going badly there, and the great man’s friends were begging him to take over and give this further proof of devotion to his home town. But he declared that he lacked not will but strength. He was already Deputy, Provincial Councillor, member of the Chamber of Commerce and of the Agrarian Council, President of the Administrative Board of the Credit Bank, Councillor of the National Bank and the Bank of Sicily, and if that were not enough, he was always being put on all Watch Committees, all Commissions of Enquiry. At each new nomination he protested that it was too much, that he had not even time to scratch his head, that room must be made for others; but after long polite discussion he eventually had to yield to his friends’ insistence. His adversaries, Republicans, malcontents, complained of this concentration of so many offices in one person, and the duke used this as a reason to refuse the office of Mayor. Benedetto, who after agonising private sufferings was just beginning to take an interest in public affairs again, pressed his uncle-in-law, and repeated the invitation in the name of the Town Council, adducing lack of capable persons.
‘You’re not suggesting, are you,’ replied the Deputy, ‘that I’m the only one who can act as Mayor? Why don’t you take it on yourself?’
‘Because I haven’t Your Excellency’s qualifications!’
‘Just say you accept and you’ll be nominated within a fortnight.’
Benedetto continued to ward him off, smilingly pretending that he did not think this a serious offer, but longing for it in his heart. There was one great difficulty, though, his wife’s opposition. She became more and more irritable whenever she heard talk of public posts, elective offices, Liberal policy; and threatened to have kicked downstairs anyone who came to see him in his position as Town Councillor or President of the National Club, and tear up any such papers addressed to her husband before he read them. If she made so much fuss about so little what would she do if he was Mayor? So from fear of her, Benedetto parried the renewed offers of his uncle, who, as an irresistible last argument, now said, ‘The day I retire you’ll find the ground well prepared …’
While the Deputy was insisting, and Lucrezia speaking ill of her husband to Chiara, and Donna Ferdinanda ill of the prince to the marchese, and the parasites paying court to the new princess, and Don Blasco flitting from group to group, came the rattle of a carriage driving in at full tilt, and all exclaimed:
‘Consalvo!… the young prince!…’
Baldassarre rushed downstairs to meet him. The youth looked in excellent trim, with boots as clean as if he were about to go out, but to the major-domo, who asked him anxiously what had happened, he replied:
‘I’m only alive by a miracle.’
As he entered the drawing-room all crowded round him. He began to describe a most complicated incident, losing his way on the Biviere and starving for twelve hours and a sinking boat. ‘Jesus!… Jesus!… Holy God of Love!…’ people exclaimed all round. The princess particularly was repeating again and again, ‘Oh this passion for shooting … Oh, dear boy!… How alarming!…’ As the prince himself made show of believing this story, e
veryone was careful to pretend delight at his son’s escape. Only Donna Ferdinanda curled her thin lips in an ironic smile, knowing well that her protégé had run no danger at-all … Meanwhile Benedetto was whispering to his wife about the offer of the Mayoralty made by her uncle and of his refusal. Lucrezia turned, looked him in the face and spat out, ‘Must you always be an idiot?’
The title of Mayor, it occurred to her, might ennoble her husband in some way and confer on him the authority, lustre, and importance which he lacked. But after the duke obtained Benedetto’s nomination she realised that he remained more a Giulente than ever, a kind of clerk, a wretched paper passer, a public servant. And when they called her Mayoress she flushed like a poppy, as if they were insulting her, as if the complimentary tones concealed hidden irony. Now she gave Benedetto no quarter. After urging him to accept the office she flung its pointlessness, boredom, and perils in his face. When he had so much work that he returned home later than usual, tired out and famished, she would greet him with a long face and half the table laid with a dinner gone cold. When people came and asked for the Mayor, she shouted to the maid, ‘He’s not in! There’s no one in! Send away those bores …’ so that the bores heard and felt no wish ever to return. When Giulente in spite of this received such people from prudence or necessity, she threw a shawl over her head and went round to relations or friends with outbursts of:
‘I can bear no more of it! I’m going mad! What a hellish life! If only I’d known!…’
When others tried to show she was wrong and pointed out Benedetto’s affection and respect, her resentment got worse; she began to imagine herself ill-treated and to attribute every kind of evil to her husband. As the Giulente had never had a grant of estates she considered him poverty-stricken, but being unable to hint at this with any show of reason she accused him of meanness. He left her free to spend what she liked, but once she had got it into her head that he was mean the notion took on more reality for her than any fact, and with the air of a victim resigned to her destiny, on the verge of tears, she would refuse to buy any new clothes, hats or jewels, and would go around dressed like a servant. Her husband could get no explanation from her for this slovenliness, but she had her say against him at the palace. If the prince or Donna Ferdinanda reminded her of her frenzied determination to marry him she counter-attacked with:
‘Why didn’t you open my eyes then? What could I know! It was for you to warn me!’
‘Oh! Oh! Surely you haven’t forgotten all you did?’
‘How could I know? You should have been firmer about preventing me from doing such a silly thing!’
This new idea became so nailed into her head that she would burst out to anyone she was with, complaining of her own unhappiness to people she had scarcely spoken to before, and adding to excuse herself:
‘My family betrayed me. That man wasn’t the right husband for me. They forced him on me. I’ve been sacrificed!…’
She also ran Giulente down in another way, ridiculing his patriotism, attributing it to ambition or saying it did not really exist.
‘The fool has played the Liberal in order to become somebody. But he’s become nothing and done less than nothing. Wounded on the Volturno indeed! Look at his leg, it’s healthier than mine!’
Often she said even worse things quite shamelessly, partly because she could not realise their unseemliness, partly because she thought she could say whatever occurred to her. She never rose before midday, and remained without dressing for two hours or more, with a skirt thrown over her night-gown, neck and arms bare, and feet in slippers. She would show herself in this state to valet and cook, and even receive visitors. If Benedetto was present and exclaimed, wringing his hands, ‘But, Lucrezia! Please …’ she looked at him in amazement, with staring eyes. ‘What’s the matter? They’re intimates, aren’t they? Should I put on a ball gown for them? One of those you had me sent from Paris?…’ If he then told her to order clothes and spend whatever she liked, she shrugged her shoulders. ‘Me? What for? To celebrate what? I don’t go anywhere nowadays, or see anyone of my own class! Save your money, do!’
At times he would get desperate and lose patience; then she threatened to leave.
‘Ah, so you’re taking that tone, are you? Be careful or I’ll leave you flat … Don’t you give me ideas about going or wild horses won’t hold me back … you know what we Uzeda are like when we get something in our heads! Raimondo turned things upside-down to leave one wife and get another! Giacomo swore to marry Graziella, so killed off that other poor wretch before her time …’
‘Quiet now. What are you saying!’
Yet he put up with her frenzies, whims, contradictions, reproofs, ironic jeers. But his wife’s fierce enmity did him no less harm than the duke’s protection. The latter had not yet left for the capital and was now spending all his time on his own affairs, seeing to his estates, improving the properties that he had bought from mortmain, speculating on contracts, using his credit with public offices to recoup what he had spent during the revolution. And with the air of advising Giulente, he persuaded him to do whatever he wanted. Officially his nephew was Mayor; in fact he himself was. Not a chair was moved in the Town Hall without his approval, but it was especially in the nomination of employees, the concession of public works, the distribution of honorary, but indirectly or morally profitable jobs, that he made his will prevail. He protected faithful followers however inept, advanced men from whom he hoped for something in exchange, and gave no quarter to those of opposing parties, whatever their qualifications or whoever recommended them. All this with a convincing show of utter disinterest, urging his nephew to do what he himself wanted as if it had nothing to do with him at all.
Thus by dint of open injustices and flagrant violations of the law, the Town Hall became an electoral agency, a factory for clients. Benedetto, from respect and timidity, above all from hope of gathering his uncle’s political inheritance, did not dare contradict him. When he hesitated a moment about some more than ordinarily grave wrong the duke conquered his scruples by adducing needs of political strife, or promising to make it up later, or simply by hinting that after all he had put Giulente in the job, so the latter should do what his uncle wanted. In exchange he guaranteed him support by Government and Prefecture, sustained him in the Council, even praised him in the family and contradicted Lucrezia, who abused him in front of all. To please her uncle she replied that the little good her husband ever did was when he followed his advice. But when alone with Benedetto, she flung at him his blind obedience to the duke.
‘Swine! Idiot! Fool! Don’t you see he’s squeezing you like a lemon? He wants you to take the chestnuts out of the fire without getting burnt himself!… At least if you got a share …’
And she advised him to participate in the Deputy’s dubious affairs, sell his own authority, get himself paid for actions which it was his duty to do. She would say this with no scruples, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, something the Viceroys had done at the time of their power.
So, partly for his wife’s sake and partly for the uncle’s, Giulente committed all sorts of injustices, though refusing to be paid for them, risking his fine reputation as a disinterested Liberal and ‘wounded hero of the Volturno’. But ambition blinded him. He wanted to play a part in politics, and the goal for which he endured the Town Hall was Parliament. When the duke retired sooner or later he wanted to take his place. While other relatives all had eyes on the money being made by the Deputy, he aspired to the political inheritance; a seat in the Chamber of Deputies would be confirmation, recognition of his patriotism, of his capacities.
Even so his wife’s contempt grew. She did not understand that public office could be exercised for the pleasure of exercising it, without speculation and with a loss of time, a putting aside of all other occupations for it and a disregard of private affairs. For he never went to the country and let agents and factors do what they liked! As if he was in a position to allow himself such a luxury! As
if he were the young Prince of Mirabella!
Consalvo could do and did do whatever he liked. He never bothered about domestic matters—for his father thought of those—and only came home to sleep, when he did sleep there. He gave up the room he had occupied on returning from the monastery, and arranged a small apartment on the first floor, overlooking the inner courtyard, in the process breaking down walls, blocking up windows, opening new stairs, disorganising the plan of the palace a bit more. The prince let him be. Not content with being entirely segregated from the rest of the family with servants exclusively for his own use, he was now eating alone, declaring that his father’s hours did not suit him. The prince accepted this too, to the great amazement of those who knew his overbearing character and need of absolute command.
The young man led a fine life: horses, carriages, hunting, fencing, gambling, and the rest. The Nobles’ Club having ended after a fire in ’62, he, together with a dozen or so companions, founded another club, a smarter, richer resurrection of the old. Though only authentic nobles were admitted, Consalvo had got in two or three young men who were not of the same class but useful to him as pimps. His protection and friendship he granted only to those who were of use to him and who admired and courted him. As at the Novitiate, now too he derided those less noble and rich than himself; one of his complaints against his father was that the latter’s grasping avarice led him to hold out a hand to the newly enriched.
The outward luxury of the Uzeda, which seemed unique before 1860, was now beginning to be equalled if not surpassed by new people. While the palace furniture of fifty years before was falling to pieces and liveries of the previous century being eaten by moths, there were now families spending fortunes to set up houses and carriages in the modern taste. But shabby furniture and liveries were a kind of additional title of nobility in the prince’s eyes; all might now have porters at their gates while twenty years before the only one in town was at the Uzeda palace, but who else had a pike-rack in their hall?
The Viceroys Page 45
