Ursula K. Le Guin

by Ursula K. Le Guin

  “Oh yes,” Mr Koste said. “Wonderfully fashionable,” with the mild, deadly judgment of the provincial on his own ground. He looked at Piera, not smiling, but with unquestioning acceptance of her, a simple confidence in her, that went far to restore her self-respect. He brought up some indifferent subject, and they talked; as they talked, Piera saw that somehow her ill-matched conversation with the baroness had been a battle, and that she had lost it. But why a battle? Over what? And why could not one just talk easily and trustfully, as she and Mr Koste were talking now?

  “Are there any patriots in Aisnar, Mr Koste?” she asked him. He looked a little surprised; paused; and answered with seriousness: “Patriots? You mean, I imagine, in the sense of nationalists? Yes, certainly. The liberal tradition here is very old, you know. It goes back to the struggle of the western provinces against the authority of the Krasnoy monarchy, I suppose. A habit of independence remained.”

  “But the patriots, the nationalists—they want to have the monarchy restored, don’t they?”

  “Yes. Duke Matiyas’ accession would signify the end of Austrian domination.”

  “Then they don’t like the Grand Duchess Mariya because she’s an Austrian—is that all?”

  “That’s the essence of it.”

  “I thought perhaps they didn’t want any more kings at all,” Piera said, looking disappointed. “That hardly seems enough of a change to bother about.”

  “Oh, quite enough. If Duke Matiyas became king he would take his crown from the people, swearing obedience to a constitution drawn up by the Assembly of the Estates General. He would not be the source, but merely the vehicle or channel, of authority.” He explained this without the least shade of condescension. “Are you interested in the nationalist movement, contesina?”

  “I don’t know. I never understood it before.”

  “It is a very complex matter. I doubt that anyone truly understands what ‘nationalism’ is—why those whose word is liberty seek the national, the particular destiny, while those who deny the old barriers of language and custom and kind often would sacrifice all liberty in the name of peace.”

  “Are you a radical, Mr Koste?”

  “I? No, contesina.”

  “Shouldn’t the country be independent again, though? I mean, why should the Austrians rule us? They can’t even speak our language. Why can’t they let us rule ourselves?”

  “Well, because none of us is alone. This peace, since Napoleon, is a fragile one. Even a minor ally of the Empire, like us, or the North Italian duchies, might shatter it, if we were free to change allegiance.”

  “But is it worth while if it’s so very fragile?”

  “Perhaps not,” Koste said, slowly, with an intense, inward look. “But is any war worth while?”

  “Surely not,” Piera said, as intense as he was. “But actually the radicals don’t want a war, do they? They just want not to have the Austrians here, and free elections, and the king—don’t they?”

  Koste nodded. “Independence; free elections; representation; the reform of corrupt institutions—great matters. But even if they can be achieved without either revolution or war, they are like revolution and war in this, they’re matters too great for any individual; they override the individual man and all that may be good in his life as it is. Where men are very poor, a movement of reform that might carry them upward with it is their only hope. So in Rákava, or in Foranoy, the radical movement grows every year in strength. But here in the west we have little real poverty; people here are mostly free to make of their lives what they choose to make of them. We have attained something, here in Aisnar; nothing very large; but it took many centuries in the making. It will be lost in half a decade if it’s jumbled in with the needs and wants of other classes and kinds of people. I prize this life, and these people; they are dear to me. So I cannot give my sympathy to those who in reforming the face of the earth will destroy my little, harmless corner of it.”

  Piera listened carefully as he spoke, and understood him. To know what attainments he wanted preserved she had only to look at him, his child, his house, and his city, the quiet city full of the sound of fountains. To them, to him, all change was loss. And because she was talking with him and liked him very much, she agreed with him. Reform was all right elsewhere, where they needed it.

  She was aware that in adopting this attitude she was turning against Itale’s beliefs; and the consciousness of it gave her pleasure. Very well! Let him be a radical, and let everybody in Krasnoy talk about him, and let Baroness Paludeskar talk about him all she liked. She did not care what they did in Krasnoy. She lived in Aisnar, and was her own woman. Her decorum and schoolgirl self-consciousness dropped away, and gayety flashed out in her like the flash of a garnet. Other people joined them; she was at the center of the group. The orchestra of three was tuning up. It was customary in Aisnar to dance the New Year in. Piera danced. She had a new gown, grey silk, the skirt caught up on one side with a rose of cloth of gold. She was slender and held her head back proudly; her dark, rosy face looked ready to break out into a laugh at what her partner, himself smiling as he handed her up the row, was saying to her. Givan Koste watched her. She and Baroness Paludeskar advanced to meet, curtsied in a mingling shimmer of violet and grey, retreated to the facing rows. Koste watched the prompt and yielding grace with which she let her partner sweep her off for their figure. He watched her eat a vanilla ice, after the dance; she ate every drop of it. He crossed the room to where she sat and asked her for the dance about to begin. She looked up in surprise. A widower of barely two years, he did not dance. She met his eyes. “Yes,” she said, rising to take his hands as she spoke, and the piano and fiddle and bass began the sweet insistent rhythm of a polonaise.

  The music stopped before the dance was done, drying off in mid-chord: the little French clock was pinging out midnight. “It’s the new year,” Koste said. “We ended the old one together, shall we begin the new one?” He gave the musicians the signal, the music began, Piera took her position for the dance without replying.

  “A charming girl, your little Montayna countess,” said Luisa to Koste’s sister.

  “Yes, she’s a sweet child,” said Miss Koste. “Do you see her about? I wanted to say a word to her, but I haven’t seen her the last few minutes. Since last year, I should say.” She laughed softly at her little joke.

  “She’s spent the year so far dancing with your brother.”

  “With my brother,” Miss Koste repeated without expression, and looked at the dancers for a long minute. “It is pleasant to see my brother dance again,” she said. “After so long.”

  “He has been unwell?” Luisa asked, struggling with a yawn.

  “He lost his dear wife two years ago next month. I am so glad to see him forget himself a moment in his kindness to the child.”

  Kindness indeed, child indeed! Luisa stared at Miss Koste. Her mouth was set, her fingers laced tight together. She might well spend the morning of the new year in tears, in her neat bedroom upstairs where no man but her father and her brother had ever been; but nothing would escape her downstairs, in company. She was too shy, too proud. There was nothing to be got from these Aisnar people, shut in their little world, inexorably and intolerably polite. Luisa gave up struggling, and yawned. “Yes, indeed,” she said. She looked at Givan Koste’s face, dark and bright as a live coal, and at the silken whirl of Piera Valtorskar’s skirts, and yawned again, openly, vindictively.

  She spoke to Piera again as the evening ended. “It was a pleasure to talk with you of our mutual friend, contesina. Perhaps we can all have a good chat together when he comes.”

  “When he comes?”

  “Hasn’t he mentioned it to you? He may come here with my brother, in March, for a week or two.”

  “Oh, I hope so,” said Piera. “Good night, baroness, I’m so happy to know you!” Off she went, happy, yes, seventeen years old and drunk with dancing; Luisa, leaving, heard her long, sweet laugh.

  Piera r
eturned to her convent school, put on her uniform, walked sedate behind a nun on Thursday afternoons, knelt an hour every morning in the cold chapel; but the piety she had striven for and enjoyed for three months had evaporated overnight, leaving scarcely an odor of sanctity behind, a faint perfume. She waited for weekends now not because of Sunday high Mass but because of Saturday night, which from four to eleven, she was permitted to spend with the Belleynins. She knew all that would happen there: tea in the parlor, quiet talk, dress for dinner, dine with a guest or two from among old friends or kinfolk, then coffee, perhaps a little music, then Mr Belleynin would walk her back to the convent. That was all. But these tranquil evenings centered upon her, were for her; they were lessons, the happiest kind of lessons in the subtlest of subjects. She was an apt pupil. After a few weeks any stranger would have taken her for an Aisnar girl born and bred, a bright and gentle daughter of that aristocracy. The reward of her docility was the appreciation of all around her, their kindness to her, their acceptance of her as one of themselves. The reward might not have been quite enough but for two added elements; one was that they asked only outward conformity of her, leaving her feelings her own, untouched. Reserve was the keystone of the delicate arch. They taught Piera a coherent system of behavior, but did not meddle with the spirit in her. And the other inducement to the Belleynins’ Saturday evenings was Givan Koste, the man of sorrows, the widower twice her age, the faithful visitor.

  “What a joy it is to see Givan himself again,” said Mrs Belleynin over coffee, only the three of them present; and her husband assented with his slight stutter, “Well, th-there is balm in Gilead.” They both smiled, and the smile somehow referred itself to Piera so that she too smiled, feeling herself important, valued, loved. How nice they all were to her! It was delightful, and it must go on and on, exactly the same, nothing must change.

  On the first Saturday of March she walked through the rain to her cousins’ house at four o’clock, and entering found Givan Koste there. He often came in the evening, but no one came Saturday afternoons. Mrs Belleynin was distrait. She talked more than usual, Koste less. She poured tea, then rose, saying, “I believe I must go look for Albrekt myself, he must be in his study,” and left Piera and Koste together alone.

  Instinct, training, two months’ preparation, mere guess, any of them could tell Piera what was coming, and did so; but she turned away and shut her mind, she opened her mouth and said to Givan Koste, “Have you seen Baroness Paludeskar lately?”

  “Not lately.”

  “I haven’t seen her since New Year’s Eve, at your party, except on the street, just to nod to. She is so beautiful, she’s so completely elegant. Sometimes I feel like the animals in Noah’s ark when I have to go by her with all the girls two by two. . . .”

  He mustered up a smile, but no words.

  “She and I both know, we have a mutual friend, isn’t that strange, since we come from so far apart. He lives in Krasnoy now, of course. The baroness said he might visit Aisnar this spring. It’s so odd to meet a person you don’t know that knows a person you do know, isn’t it?” It would not do, it would not do at all. Her teeth were chattering. She looked at him imploring him to speak and make her stop talking, to let the ax fall.

  He proposed marriage to her. She accepted him.

  She looked down at their clasped hands. He had taken off the gold wedding-ring. When, she wondered, today or earlier? She had never thought to look. His hand was dark, strong, well-kept; she liked the look of it, the warmth of it. She bent her head and kissed his hand. “Piera, O my God,” he whispered, and she felt, between alarm and pleasure, the tremor that ran through his whole body. He drew away from her, and walked up and down the room a couple of times.

  “I shall write your father,” he said, as if threatening.

  “Of course. So shall I.”

  “There is the child.”

  “I know the child!”

  “I am nearly forty,” he said, rounding on her.

  “Thirty-eight,” she said.

  That threw him off. “It may not please Count Valtorskar,” he said less fiercely. “You are only seventeen.”

  “My mother was seventeen when they married. He was thirty-three. Anyway, papa is usually pleased by what I do.”

  “He cannot be pleased to lose you, Piera.”

  “But—we’ll go home sometimes, won’t we? To Malafrena?” This time she was disconcerted.

  “Certainly.”

  “Then that’s all right,” she said, her distress vanishing. The word “lose” had gone through her like a knife, for an instant: to lose her father, to lose the lake, the house, the fat Cupid newel-post— But they would go home often, she need not live down here forever. She thought no more about it.

  Givan Koste had stopped his pacing and was working himself up to say something, to suggest, no doubt, a new obstacle to his heart’s desire. She smiled at him. She felt so sorry for him, and he was such a handsome man, with his poised body and grave, dark face. He turned, saw her smiling at him, and swallowed without speaking, hit amidships.

  “I thought—perhaps next Christmas time—” he brought out.

  “Next Christmas time?”

  “Your father will want you to complete your year at St Ursula’s. And a year is . . . customary . . . something less than a year in fact—”

  “Ten months,” she said dreamily, looking down at her hands.

  “Is it too soon?”

  “Oh, no. Must we announce it directly?”

  “Not until you choose to,” he said with a gratitude she did not understand.

  “I do want to tell the Belleynins, and papa of course. And Laura. Oh, you’ll like Laura, Mr Koste!”

  “My name is Givan,” he said, politely; they both heard the politeness, and they both laughed. Their eyes met. He looked like a boy, embarrassed. It was a wonderful relief to laugh. “Who is Laura?” he asked.

  “My friend, Laura Sorde.” Saying the name she grew shy again suddenly. “She’s very nice.” She looked down, inept, a schoolgirl.

  Koste was most at ease with her when she was shy, not offering him unconstrained the fulfilment he could not yet believe in. He came to her and took her hand lightly; his face and voice were warm with feeling. “I want you to talk with your cousins, Piera. I want you to have time, to be certain, I feel that I— Loving you is privilege enough— I should go now. I’ll come back when you say I should.”

  “Tonight?”

  “Tonight,” he said, with that smile that lit his face and left it unchanged; and he went out. She sat still. Four silver-mounted glasses full of cold tea reposed on the table beside her. She jumped up and went to find Mrs Belleynin. She did not want to be alone. They met on the stairs. “Has he gone?” the older woman asked anxiously. “Yes,” Piera said, and burst into tears.

  “Oh my dear, my dear,” Mrs Belleynin murmured, hugging her there on the stair landing. “There, there, it’s all past. I’m so sorry!”

  “I didn’t know I was going to cry,” Piera sobbed, burying her face in the soft, sweet-smelling shoulder.

  “Poor child, it’s all our fault. How stupid I am! What a misery, what a misery!”

  “But it isn’t— I mean, we are to be married— Next Christmas. I didn’t know I was going to cry!”

  “Next Christmas? You are betrothed?” said Mrs Belleynin, who was in tears herself. “Oh dear me! I didn’t understand—I thought we’d made a dreadful mistake— But you aren’t happy, Piera? is something wrong?” She looked down at the broad, stubborn, childish brow which was all she could see of Piera’s face, and repeated the question still more tenderly. For her conscience was alert and sensitive; and neither of her own daughters, tranquil and self-possessed women by the age of seventeen, had ever clung to her thus in confused and passionate need.

  “No, I’m very happy,” Piera sobbed, weeping so that Mrs Belleynin gave up all questions and led her upstairs to her room to comfort her. “There, there,” she murmured, “there, Piera, d
on’t cry any more, it’s past. . . .”

  II

  Itale stood at a window of a house on Fontarmana Street, watching the moon rise over old gardens dim with evening and hearing the lilt of the fountain below the window as the west wind sprang up and moved in the leaves in the dusk. He was dressed in a plum-colored coat, his mother’s Christmas gift; his linen was fine and well starched, his hair was orderly, his cravat and stickpin were controlled, his face was quiet and a little forlorn. He was wondering if looking south from here on a clear day you could see the mountains.

  “Never saw a chap look out windows as much as you do,” said Enrike Paludeskar, entering the room after a feeble rap. “What do you see out of ’em, Sorde? —Roofs, trees, moon, nothing going on. Same view I’ve got. Are you ready?”

  “Yes,” said Itale, turning his forlorn look to Enrike’s heavy, well-shaven, goodnatured face.

  “How d’ye like my rig? English fashion. Everything has to be English. I don’t know why. Come on, Luisa’s waiting. What’s the time? These damn trousers are so tight I can’t get my watch out without performing a sort of dance. We mustn’t be late, the old lady’s a dragon.”

  Itale looked at his watch, which said two-thirty. It had stopped running several weeks ago, and he kept meaning to have it fixed. “Must be near six.”