The Leopard (19 page)

From the height of his own assured happiness Tancredi tried to console him: "You see, I've known Concetta, all her life; she's the sweetest creature in the world: a mirror of all the virtues; but she's a little too reserved, too withdrawn. I'm afraid she has too high an opinion of herself; and then she's Sicilian to the very marrow: she's never left here i she might never feel at home in a place where one has to arrange a week ahead for a plate of macaroni!"

Tancredi's little joke, one of the earliest expressions of national unity, managed to make Cavriaghi smile again; pains and sorrows did not stay with him long. "But I'd have laid in cases of macaroni for her, of course! Anyway what's done is done; I only hope your uncle and aunt, who've been so sweet to me, won't hold it against me that I've come and thrust myself among you pointlessly." He was reassured quite sincerely, for Cavriaghi had made himself liked by everyone except Concetta (and perhaps by Concetta too, in a way) for the boisterous good humor which he combined with the most plaintive sentimentality; then they talked of something else-that is, they talked of Angelica.

"You know, Falconeri, you are a lucky dog! To go and find a jewel like Signorina Angelica in this pigsty (excuse my calling it that, my dear fellow). What a beauty, good God, what a beauty! Lucky rascal, leading her round for hours in the remotest corners of this house as huge as our own cathedral! And not only lovely, but clever and cultured too; and good as well; one can see that in her eyes, in that sweet innocence of hers."

Cavriaghi went on ecstatically about Angelica's goodness, under Tancredi's amused glance. "The really good person in all this is you yourself, Cavriaghi." The phrase slipped unnoticed over that Milanese optimism. Then, "Listen," said the young Count,

"you'll be leaving in a few days; don't you think it's time I was introduced to the mother of the young Baroness?" This was the first time-and from a Lombard voicethat Tancredi heard his future wife called by a title. For a second he did not realize whom the other was talking of. Then the prince in him rebelled. "Baroness? What d'you mean, Cavriaghi? She's a dear, sweet creature whom I love, and that's quite enough."

That it really was "quite enough" was not actually true, but Tancredi was perfectly sincere; atavistically used to great possessions, it seemed to him that the estates of Gibildolce and Settesoli, all those bags of gold, had been his since the time of Charles of Anjou, always.

"I'm sorry, but I don't think you'll be able to meet Angelica's mother; she's leaving tomorrow for a mud cure at Sciacca; she's very ill, poor thing."

He stubbed the end of his "Virginia" in the ash tray. "Let's go into the drawing room, shall we? We've been bears here for long enough."

One day about that time Don Fabrizio received a letter from the Prefect of Girgenti, written in a style of extreme courtesy, announcing the arrival at Donnafugata of the Cavaliere Aimone Chevalley di Monterzuolo, Secretary to the Prefecture, who wanted to talk to him, the Prince, about a subject very close to the Government's heart. Surprised, Don Fabrizio sent off his son, Francesco Paolo, to the post station next day to receive the missus dominicas and invite him to stay at the palace, an act both of hospitality and of true compassion, consisting in not abandoning the body of the Piedmontese to the thousands of little creatures which would have tortured him in the cavelike hostelry of Zzu Menico.

The post coach arrived at dusk with an armed guard on the box and a few glum faces inside. From it also alighted Chevalley di Monterzuolo, recognizable at once by his exhausted appearance and suspicious smile. He had been in Sicily for a month, in the most strictly native part of the island what was more, bounced there straight from his little property near Montferrat. Timid and congenitally bureaucratic, he found himself much out of his element. His head had been stuffed with the tales of brigands by which Sicilians love to test the nervous resistance of new arrivals, and for a month he saw every usher in his office as a murderer, and every wooden paper cutter on his desk as a dagger; also the oil in the cooking had upset his insides. There he stood now, in the twilight, with his valise of beige cloth, peering at the very unpromising aspect of the street in the midst of which he had been dumped. The inscription "Corso Vittorio Emanuele," whose blue letters on a white ground adorned the halfruined house opposite him, was not enough to convince him that he was in a place which was, after all, part of his own nation; and he did not dare to ask the way from any of the peasants propped against the near-by walls like caryatids, in his certainty of not being understood and his fear of an easy knife thrust in the guts, still dear to him however upset. When Francesco Paolo came up and introduced himself he screwed up his eyes at first, as he thought he was done for; but the fair-haired youth's calm honest air reassured him a little, and when he realized that he was being invited to stay at the Salina palace he was both surprised and relieved. The journey in the dark to the palace was marked by a constant exchange of Piedmontese and Sicilian courtesies (the two most punctilious in ltaly) in connection with the valise, which in the end was carried by both gentlemanly contenders, although it was very light.

When he reached the palace, the bearded faces of the armed keepers standing about in the first courtyard once more disturbed the soul of Chevalley di Monterzuolo; while the distant cordiality of the Prince's greeting, together with the evident luxury of the rooms he glimpsed, flung him into contrary worries. Member of one of those families of the petty Piedmontese squirearchy which live in dignified restraint on their own land, this was the first time he found himself a guest at a great house, and this redoubled his shyness; meanwhile the bloodthirsty anecdotes he had been told at Girgenti, the staggeringly primitive aspect of the town, the

"bravos" (as he called them to himself) encamped in the courtyard, filled him with terror; so that he went down to dinner in the grip of contrasting fears, at finding himself in an ambiance above his normal habits and at feeling an innocent traveller in a bandits' lair.

At dinner he ate well for the first time since setting foot on the shores of Sicily, and the charm of the girls, the austerity of Father Pirrone, and the grand manner of Don Fabrizio convinced him that the palace of Donnafugata was not the antechamber of Capraro the bandit, and that he would probably leave there alive. His greatest consolation was the presence of Cavriaghi, who, he was told, had been staying there for ten days and looked in excellent health and also on excellent terms with that young Falconeri, a friendship between a Sicilian and a Lombard which seemed almost miraculous to him. At the end of dinner he went up to Don Fabrizio and requested a private interview, as he wished to leave again next morning; but the Prince clapped him on the shoulder and with a most Leopardlike smile exclaimed, "Not at all, my dear Cavaliere, you're in my home now and I'll hold you as hostage for as long as I like; you won't leave tomorrow morning, and to be quite sure of it I shall deprive myself of the pleasure of a private talk with you until the afternoon." This phrase, which would have terrified the excellent Secretary three hours before, now rather cheered him. That evening Angelica was not there, and so they played a hand of whist i at a table with Don Fabrizio, Tancredi, and Father Pirrone, he won two rubbers and gained three lire and thirty-five centimes; after which he withdrew to his own room, enjoyed the cleanliness of the linen, and fell into the trustful sleep of the just. Next morning Tancredi and Cavriaghi led him around the garden, and showed him the picture gallery and tapestry collection. They also trotted him a little around the town; under the honey-colored sun of that November day it seemed less sinister than it had the night before; he even saw a smile here and there, and Chevalley di Monterzuolo began to reassure himself even about rustic Sicily. Tancredi noticed this and was at once assailed by the singular island itch to tell foreigners tales that were revolting but unfortunately quite true. They were passing in front of a pleasant little palace whose facade was decorated with crude stuccowork.

"That, my dear Chevalley, is the home of Baron Mu'_ tolo; now it's closed and empty, as the family live in Girgenti since the Baron's son was captured ten years ago by brigands."

The Piedmontese began to tremble. "Poor things, I wonder how much they paid to free him."

"No, no, they didn't pay a thing; they were in financial straits already and had no ready money, like everybody else here. But they got the boy back all the same; by installments, though."

"What d'you mean, Prince?"

"By installments, I said, by installments: bit by bit. First arrived the index finger of his right hand. A week later his left foot; and finally in a great big basket, under a layer of figs (it was August), the head; its eyes were staring and there was congealed blood on the comer of the lips. I didn't see it, I was a child then; but I'm told it wasn't a pretty sight. The basket was left on that very step there, the second one up to the door, by an old woman with a black shawl on her head; no one recognized her." Chevalley's eyes went rigid with horror; he had already heard the story before this, but seeing now in the sunshine the very step on which the bizarre gift had been put was a different matter. His bureaucratic mind came to his help. "What an inept police those Bourbons had. Very soon, when our Carabinieri come, they'll put an end to all this."

"No doubt, Chevalley, no doubt."

Then they passed in front of the Civilians' Club, which had its daily show of iron chairs and men in mourning out in the shade of the plane trees in the square. Bows, smiles. "Take a good look, Chevalley, impress the scene on your memory: twice a year or so one of these gentlemen here is left stone dead on his own little armchair; a rifle shot in the uncertain light of dusk, and nobody ever knows who it was that shot him." Chevalley felt the need to lean on Cavriaghi's arm so as to sense a little Northern blood near him.

Shortly afterward, at the top of a steep alley, through multicolored festoons of drawers out to dry, they saw the simple baroque front of a little church. "That is Santa Ninfa. The parish priest was killed in there five years ago as he was saying Mass."

"Horrors! Shooting in church!"

"Oh, no shooting, Chevalley. We are too good Catholics for misbehavior of that kind. They just put poison in the Communion wine; more discreet, more liturgical, I might say. No one ever knew who did it; the priest was a most excellent person; he had no enemies."

Like a man who wakes up in the night to see a skeleton sitting at the foot of the bed on his own trousers, and saves himself from panic by forcing himself to believe it's just a joke by drunken friends, so Chevalley took refuge in the idea that he was having his leg pulled. "Very amusing, Prince, really entertaining! You should write novels, you know; you tell these stories very well." But his voice was trembling; Tancredi took pity on him, and although on their way home they passed three or four places which were almost more evocative, he abstained from telling their tales, and talked about Bellini and Verdi, perennial curative unctions for national wounds.

At four in the afternoon the Prince sent to tell Chevalley that he was waiting for him in his study. This was a little room with walls lined by glass cases containing gray pheasants with pink claws, thought rare, and found in past shoots. One wall was ennobled by a high, narrow bookcase, crammed full of back numbers of mathematical reviews. Above the great armchair meant for visitors hung a constellation of family miniatures: Don Fabrizio's father, Prince Paolo, heavy in face and sensual in lip as a Moor, with the ribbon of St. Januarius diagonally across his black Court uniform; Princess Carolina as a widow, her fair hair heaped into a towering coiffure, and with severe blue eyes; the Prince's sister, Giulia, Princess of Falconeri, sitting on a bench in a garden, with the crimson splotch of a small parasol laid on the ground to her right and to her left the yellow splotch of Tancredi at three years old offering her wild flowers (Don Fabrizio bad thrust this miniature into his pocket secretly while the bailiffs were making their inventory for the sale at Villa Falconeri). Beneath that was his eldest son, Paolo, in tight white leather breeches, just about to mount an arrogant horse with a curving neck and flashing eyes; various unidentifiable uncles and aunts, covered with jewels or pointing sorrowfully at the bust of some extinct dear one. But in the center of the constellation, acting as a kind of polestar, shone a bigger miniaturei this was of Don Fabrizio himself at the age of about twenty, with his very young wife leaning her head on his shoulder in an act of complete loving abandon. She was dark-haired, he rosy in the blue and silver uniform of the Royal Guards, smiling with pleasure, his face framed in his first and very fair long whiskers.

Chevalley, as soon as he sat down, began explaining the mission with which he had been charged. "After the happy annexation, I mean after the glorious union of Sicily and the Kingdom of Sardinia, the Turin Government intends to nominate a number of illustrious Sicilians as Senators of the Kingdom. The provincial authorities have been charged with drawing up a list of personalities to be proposed for the Central Government's examination, and eventually for Royal nomination, and, of course, at Girgenti your name was mentioned at once, Prince: a name illustrious for its antiquity, for the personal prestige of its bearer, for scientific merit; and also for the dignified and liberal attitude assumed during recent events." The little speech had been prepared for some time; it had even been the object of a number of pencil notes in the little book which was now in the hip pocket of Chevalley's trousers. But Don Fabrizio gave no sign of life; his eyes only just showed through his heavy lids. Motionless, the great paw with its blondish hairs completely covered a dome of St. Peter's in alabaster on the table. Accustomed by now to the deafness of the loquacious Sicilians whenever a proposal was made to them, Chevalley did not let himself be discouraged. "Before sending the list to Turin my superiors thought it proper to inform you in person and see if this proposal met with your approval. To ask for your assent, for which the Government hopes greatly, has been the object of my mission here: a mission which has also given me the honor and the pleasure of getting to know you and your family, this magnificent palace, and picturesque Donnafugata."