The Viceroys (26 page)

Brusquely torn from her peace, she began to torture herself once more, to struggle with herself against the suspicions which re-assailed her as soon as they were brushed off, to spend the long autumn nights trembling as she awaited his return, weeping at his rough answers to her questions.

‘Why d'you stay out so late? I'm afraid for your health …'

‘Aren't I free any longer to stay out as long as I like?'

‘Indeed you're free … but not to go to that house, among people whom your brother is ashamed to receive.'

‘Where do I go? Among what people? It's to the Casino I go. D'you want to spy over me too?'

No, she believed him; she wanted and had to believe him. But why was she so conscious of part-ironical and part-pitying looks from all the family and servants? Why did the conversation die in people's mouths when she drew near them?

One night, after four months of drought, a terrible storm broke out; the dark sky was seared by flashes like swords, the roads suddenly changed into muddy torrents, the hail crashed
on panes and roofs. She had hoped to see Raimondo return at the first signs of the storm, and awaited him trembling with fear. Not a sound, not a footstep. The storm stopped after an hour, and Raimondo was not yet back … It was not the malice of others, it was he himself who was lying and incestuous; could she doubt it any longer? Had not she too, that shameless creature, stared her challengingly in the face as if saying to her, ‘I'm prettier than you, that's why he prefers me!…' And it was true. Her jealousy was all the more humiliating as she realised that she no longer attracted her husband, particularly now she was also deformed by pregnancy. But was he really trying to kill off the creature she bore in her womb by inflicting torture after torture on her, by leaving her thus on a dark tempestuous night, with horror at his new sin, at his new betrayal, with her soul all pain and shame and terror?… He returned at midnight, soaked, his clothes as muddy as if he'd been rolling in the ditch.

‘Holy Mary!…' she exclaimed, wringing her hands. ‘How did you get in that state?'

‘It was raining. Are you deaf? Didn't you hear water?'

‘But the rain's been over some time …'

‘I got soaked before …' he almost yelled. ‘Must I listen to you now too?'

Suddenly she felt her own suspicions confirmed; he replied like that and reacted violently to reason when caught in the wrong; then he cut off discussion with shouts … Leaning her forehead against a pane of glass on which a fine drizzle was now drawing damp lines, she began silently to weep. Then the love she had for him, the obedience she showed him, the submissive devotion she gave proof of every day, were not enough. All was useless! He escaped from her, betrayed her, for whom? And he had made her leave her own child, exposed her to her father's rebukes for this!… for this! One sorrow after the other, always, always, even now when she should have been sacred to him because such agonies could kill the creature about to be born!

Raimondo's voice, hoarsely calling for his valet, suddenly aroused her the following dawn. He had gone to bed; his teeth were chattering with fever. Then she dried her tears and rushed
to his help. For three days she never left his bedside a moment, acted as nurse and maid, forgetting her own anguished state from terror lest that illness should turn into pestilence, remaining alone with him when the family, suspicious, refused, any of them, to enter the room again. Trembling at the idea of contagion, they were all afraid of catching it, Raimondo more than any, in spite of the doctor's comforting laughs, in spite of her assurances.

On recovering from his chill he had nothing else wrong with him, but before he was yet quite set up he wanted to go out.

‘Please, for our sakes!' implored Matilde, clasping her hands, ‘for our daughter! Do not expose yourself to another germ …'

She had not said anything to him about her suspicions so as not to irritate him while he was ill, but now she threw her arms around his neck and said to him, looking him in the eyes and passing a hand over his hair:

‘Where do you want to go? Why leave me? Stay with me!'

‘I want to take a little walk; I feel quite well …' he replied, touched by those caresses, by that submission like a faithful dog's.

‘We'll take one together in the vineyard … there's no need to go outside … if it's true that you love me, me alone … and don't think of others …'

‘Who should I be thinking of?…' exclaimed Raimondo, with a fatuous smile.

‘Of no other woman, none at all … not even of her?'

‘Who d'you mean?'

‘The Galano girl?…' the name burnt her lips.

‘Me?' replied he in a tone of protest. ‘I wouldn't dream of it!… Whoever put such ideas into your head, I wonder!'

‘No one. I fear them, because I love you, because I'm jealous …'

He laughed heartily, and reassured her.

‘But no, what ideas you get hold of!… and then, little Agatina … A girl who goes with anyone who wants her!…'

‘Is that true? Is that true?… then why d'you visit her?'

‘I visit her because it amuses me, it's like going to the café or the club …'

‘What about that night you caught your chill?'

‘I got soaked because the rain caught me at La Ravanusa. You can ask anyone, if you don't believe me!'

Yes, she would have believed him had the gentleness with which he treated her not been a new undeniable proof that he had done something to be forgiven … Well, what did it matter if that was the reason? Whatever the feeling which dictated those words to him they were good words, they took away her anguish, at least for a time. And with a mind reopening to hope, she heard him suggest:

‘Anyway, now the cholera's nearly over, we'll all be leaving. When I've arranged this division with Giacomo we'll return to Florence. But for now, if you like, we can make a trip to Milazzo. Your child can be born at your own home. How'd you like that?'

‘Abbas! Abbas!
…' said the lay-brother porter with a bow.

‘What does that mean?' Consalvo asked his uncle the Prior, who was leading him along by the hand.

‘It means that the Abbot is in the monastery,' explained His Paternity.

Up the great staircase, all marble, the boy looked at walls hung with huge bas-reliefs of white stucco on a pale-blue ground; Saint Nicholas of Bari, the martyrdom of San Placido, the Baptism of the Redeemer, surrounded by swarms of angels, crowns, swags and palm branches, all over the ceiling. The stairs led on to the east corridor, before great windows opening on to the terrace of the first cloister.

‘There he is,' said the Prior, bowing towards a black shadow passing behind the glass.

From outside the Abbot brought his face close up to the window, and on recognising the visitors exclaimed with a wave:

‘Open, open up, Ludovì …'

The Prior turned the sash-bolt, then took his superior's hand and gave it a respectful kiss; the prince and his son followed this example.

‘Blessings on you, my children, blessings on you!… So here's our little monk then, is it? Ah yes, a fine little monk we hope to make of him!… Consalvo, eh?' he turned to the prince, then back to the boy. ‘Consalvo, are you pleased to be with us, eh?…'

‘Answer … answer His Paternity.'

Looking him in the face, the boy said:

‘Yes.'

‘That's right!… what a handsome lad … what eyes … you'll stay here with your uncle and grow up good and holy like him, what, eh?…' and he put an affable hand on the Prior's shoulders, who murmured with a blush:

‘Abbot!'

The latter moved off, leaning on his stick, the Prior on his right, the prince on his left. Consalvo went to the grille and stared down into the cloister. This was surrounded by an arcade supporting a terrace full of statues, and had basins of tinkling water, seats set amid symmetrical flower-beds, and a pavilion in the middle of Gothic style, with four arches, its roof of gleaming tiles mirroring the sun. The boy was still staring curiously round when his father called him. The group moved towards the Abbot's apartment, next door to the Royal one in the southern corridor, where the doors were surmounted by great pictures representing lives of saints. On reaching his door the Abbot gave some orders to his servant, then all moved towards the Novitiate, through the Clock corridor more than two hundred yards long, so that the great window at the end looked small as a bull's-eye. First they passed through the second cloister, which had an arcade up to the first floor with a terrace above like the other. That too was cultivated; on it grew a grove of oranges and dark-leaved cedars against which the golden fruit stood out. Then they passed the Night Choir with another staircase rising from it, then the clock; and still the corridor went on. Between the prince and the Prior the Abbot was chatting away volubly, scattering his sentences with ‘what, eh?…'—syllables which apparently required no reply. The monks they met stopped three paces before the group, bowing heads and folding hands across their breasts as their superiors passed. At the door to the Novitiate stood Fra' Carmelo, who on seeing the boy opened both arms with a joyous air and exclaimed:

‘You've come … you've come!'

Father Raffaele Cùrcuma, novice master, approached the Abbot then led them to the classroom where the boys were all gathered, among them Giovannino Radalì, who had been in San Nicola for six months.

‘Here's our new little monk,' explained His Paternity, 'embrace your cousin now!… Your room is ready, we'll be going
there in a minute. Now you put aside your old name, and we call you Serafino. Your little cousin is Angelico, isn't he? And this is Placido, and this Luigi …'

Meanwhile arrived two lackeys bearing trays full of cakes, greeted with cries of delight by the novices.

‘You'll see how nice it is here,' said the novice master to the new arrival, stroking him. ‘You'll have all these companions to play with …'

Consalvo bowed his head and let them have their say. Now the curiosity of the first moments had passed he felt a longing to cry, but in spite of this he looked everyone in the face almost challengingly, so as not to appear defeated before his father, who had been determined to thrust him in there. Fra' Carmelo was amazed by his mien; all other boys on their first day there had red eyes, said they did not want to stay and were sure to sob when the barber cut off their hair and when they laid aside lay clothes for black habits. Instead of this the young prince, when his father left after a final admonition, let them do whatever they liked, watched his hair fall under the scissors without a word, put on a habit as if he had worn it from birth.

‘That's the way!… Always content like this!… You'll just see what games and fun …'

The boy answered harshly:

‘I am Prince of Francalanza, I won't be here for ever.'

‘For ever? Who said such a thing?… You'll be here a year or two until you're learned. It's your uncles are here for ever … now, now, we will go to visit Father Don Blasco …'

And taking him by the hand he led him back the way they had come as far as the Deacon's room in the southern corridor, with a picture of St John of the Golden Mouth over the door.

‘
Deo gratias?
…'

‘Who's there?' replied the monk's loud voice.

The door opened a little and he appeared in trousers and shirt-sleeves, with a pipe in his mouth, standing in a room as messy as a worked field.

‘Here is Your Paternity's young nephew, come to kiss Your Paternity's hand.'

‘Ah, so you're here, are you?…' exclaimed the monk, wiping his lips with the back of a hand. ‘Good, very glad!'
he added without touching him. Then he turned to the lay-brother and said, ‘Take him out into the monks' garden, will you?'

After bewailing his grand-nephew's ignorance and uncouthness the monk had been furious when the prince decided to put him in San Nicola. So they were putting him there to educate him, were they? That meant that they weren't capable of educating him at home! Wasn't he right, then, in saying they gave the boy a fine example? But Giacomo also wanted to put his son in San Nicola to study. As if the Uzeda had ever known more than to sign their names! Was it so difficult to find a tutor if they were so determined to turn him into a literary man? Schoolmasters, though, have to be paid something, big or small, and the only real reason for the decision was to save money, for not only did they pay nothing at the Benedictines', but the families of students even made something from it!

The rooms of the Novitiate opened on to a garden set aside for the boys' amusement. It was full of flowers and fruit-trees, orange, lemon, mandarin, apricot, Japanese medlars, and in the morning novices were awakened by a great fluttering of sparrows, even before Fra' Carmelo came to call them for their devotions in the chapel. After prayers they all returned to their rooms, had a frugal breakfast because luncheon was at midday, and went through their lessons so as to be ready for the arrival of masters who taught them Italian, Latin, and arithmetic, and on Sundays calligraphy and plain chant. At the third hour, after lessons, came Mass, which they attended in the church. This was the biggest in Sicily, all marble and stucco, white and light with its dome piercing the sky, and Donato del Piano's organ which had taken thirteen years to make and cost ten thousand
onze.