That Summer in Sicily (12 page)

“ ‘Why?’

“ ‘Are you asking for a reason, a motive? It could be the ease with which Filiberto was convinced to carry out this act, it could be that these men thought him weak. That he could be bought for rice and cigarettes, yes, they might have thought him weak. And so used him and discarded him. Not the right material.’

“ ‘But if these men are killers, why didn’t they kill the man with the green shirt themselves? Why did they have to find someone like Filiberto to do it for them?’

“ ‘Theirs was an expression of their
Sicilianness.
They place themselves outside of and hence are indifferent to any form of reason or law but their own. There is no State in Sicily. The feckless governing that is meted out of Rome has never breeched the narrow chasm of sea that separates Sicily from the peninsula. Rural Sicilians have been living a brigand’s life for as long as they’ve been hungry. There is no State to protect Sicilians. Men have made their own State. Perhaps it is the Scylla herself who holds the heads of State underwater while she sings her siren song. Thrashes them against the rocks for her pleasure. Yes, perhaps it’s the Scylla who has kept the State from its arrival in Sicily. The men who killed
Filiberto
—and it may very well not have been the same ones with whom he made his pact—determined that he was in some way troublesome. No cunning. No courage. It’s possible that the person who ordered Filiberto’s death thought he wasn’t
good.
You see these clans, these bandits, believe in their own goodness, their righteousness.’ He walks to my chair, places his hands on my face. ‘I and my pitiful little revolution are too late. I’m too late, aren’t I, Tosca?’

“ ‘No. Not even a prince could have changed Filiberto’s destiny. And I don’t think you can change mine, either. If you think that because of this, this
happening,
that I will no longer want to live down there, think again. It makes me want to go all the more.’

“ ‘Yes.
Sempre di più.
Always more. Even now, the effects of the
festa
are still at work on your sense of romance. Oddly enough, even after all that’s happened, they are at work in me, as well. But, as the story of Filiberto has screamingly brought home to us, the
festa
was not a view on the everyday life of the
borghetto.
Not since my father was alive has there been any such event.

“ ‘Rather than leaving them to piece together the means for some austere form of celebration that would be highlighted by my sending down some token sweet or whatever else I might convince the cooks to furnish, this time I sent a driver to take fresh sardines from Trapani. Cosimo and I went to the markets in Enna and brought back every beautiful vegetable and fruit we could find. I cracked barrels from the palace cellar, had firewood brought in. I did what I should have been doing for all these fifteen or twenty years since my father’s been gone. But I did not take his example. His generous, affectionate example. I opted to follow the culture of the haves and the have-nots. Accepted it as a societal truth, telling the hungry people who worked for me to eat from that proverbial cake. I sat indulging my passions in my saddle or my reading chair or at table and, once in a while, I wandered down to the
borghetto
to feign commiseration or to pay fleeting respects to the sacrament of a baptism or a wedding. To lay a flower on a coffin. And yes, sometimes I’d wander down to drink wine with the father of a freshly blossomed girl, to view her as I would a horse I’d like to buy, and, often as not, I’d ride away with an appointment for another
jus primae noctis,
right to the first night. I’m not telling you that I am evil or even that I am without sympathy. I am telling you that I have been ignoble, and to admit ignobility may be the greatest form of a man’s own damnation of himself. I have been smug and full of pretense and triviality. I have been corrupt in my passivity. It wanted a war, Tosca, to wake me. There are things I saw in the
borghetto
during these past years, things Cosimo and I witnessed, that I can never forget. Though I may not have been the direct cause of that suffering, I am not without blame for it. Of what happened to Filiberto, I
am
the cause. And I shall have to live with that in the best way I can.’

“ ‘Filiberto made his choice.’ ”

“ ‘Filiberto made a
desperate
choice.’ ”

“ ‘Perhaps. But mine is not a desperate choice. It’s not the
festa
that brought me to my desire to live in the
borghetto.
It’s the people, sir. The peasants themselves. I’m one of them and I want to be among my own people.’

“He is quiet for what seems a long time. As though the green and black pen absorbs him entirely. ‘That’s an interesting conclusion. What you’re saying is that you want to go home. That’s it, isn’t it?’

“ ‘I didn’t think of it precisely that way, but, yes. Now that you say it, it’s my way back home. The
borghetto
is home.’ I say this slowly, testing the words. wondering if they’re true.

“ ‘Don’t you think that, given the chance, any one of the young women your age or younger or older, almost anyone from the
borghetto,
wouldn’t trade places with you?’

“ ‘Perhaps any one of them would. At least for a while. Until the pull of kinship takes over. The need to be among one’s own tribe. What you can’t live without is very different from what we can’t live without. My little sister understood that before I did.’

“ ‘But you understand it now? I see. Once again, you are being romantic. But let’s go forward. You know that the peasants don’t dance and sing every day. Good. And you must know that they work far longer than they rest. You know that, don’t you? But did you know that often there is not enough food on their tables? My own farmers are hungry, Tosca, while we sit up here already sated, waiting to be served some quivering, towering pastry that we nibble as though it was made of poisoned jelly.’

“ ‘But I know that the cooks send down baskets and boxes full of food to the
borghetto.
’

“ ‘Yes, the leavings on our table are given to the peasants. Feeding the animals. Parting with what one doesn’t want is not giving. I can do better than that. I shall do better than that, Tosca. I shall never again keep anything worth giving away. I am not so romantic to think I can compensate these people for their own suffering or for the historical poverty that is their legacy.
Was.
Was their legacy. But I can help them now. The misuse can end with me. Will you help me?’

“ ‘Does helping you mean I won’t be able to live down there? Is my helping you meant to keep me from that desire? Please don’t treat me as a child. I’m not a child, sir. I don’t think I ever was. Besides, what could I do to help you?’

“ ‘I will tell you what you can do. In time, I will tell you, but first please try to understand that my not wanting you to live in the
borghetto
is for your sake. More than for mine. If you were to go, all you’ve gained by studying and reading would become part of your past. The free reign of your curiosity would end. No time to read, Tosca. Can you imagine a life with no time to read? If the
borghetto
is where you want to be, you can be there, but without closing up your life here. You can have both.’

“ ‘Sir, I don’t want both. I want to go home. And since that’s not possible, I think I can
find
a home down there.’

“ ‘Perhaps you could. Sanguine as you are, you might do it, Tosca, but I refuse to be part of it.’

“ ‘Are you saying that you won’t allow me to live in the
borghetto
?’

“He looks at me and, just above a whisper, says, ‘No. Of course I’m not saying that.’ He laughs then. ‘You are not my prisoner.’

“ ‘Then who am I? Who am I
to you
?’

“Leo remains quiet. Picks up the green and black pen, caresses it with the flat of his thumb. I want to be caressed.

“ ‘I think you are an extraordinary young woman of whom I’ve grown very fond. I would like very much to always have you near.’

“He says the last words slowly.

“Why doesn’t he ask me who he is to me? Because he knows? He stays quiet, absorbed in the green and black pen. He continues, ‘Even if I weren’t so selfish in wanting to keep you with me, I would still warn you against going to live down there. Though you imagine yourself to be of the peasants’ tribe—as you put it—they do not recognize you as one of them. You are perceived as another daughter of mine by most of them. By some others you are marked in another way.
Una bella puttanina.
A beautiful little whore. I know you’ve heard the whisperers in the drawing room. They’ve wanted you to hear them. And me as well. They would like nothing more than for me to deny or, better, to confess, but I speak only of harvesting machines and the price of coal, titillating them with reserve. But there are whisperers everywhere. In the
borghetto,
there would be whisperers. As my daughter, as my lover, either way, the peasants will shun even the suggestion of intimacy with you. And yet, if you were to be placed—if I were to place you—that is,
if it would please you to be placed
in some authoritative position, the peasants would welcome you. You would be sufficiently set apart for their comfort. They would be free to interact with you within the boundaries of your position.’

“ ‘But what
position
?’

“ ‘As the teacher of their children. Their
maestra.
Everyone knows that you have been rigorously educated. Everyone knows that you are a superior student. Where you would not be accepted as an equal, you would be very much embraced as someone of a higher rank who’d come to teach their children.’

“ ‘And what would happen to my status as
la bella puttanina
? Are you saying that if I become
la maestra,
the whisperers will stay quiet?’

“ ‘No. The truth is that you shall remain sport for the whisperers no matter what you do. And, I think, no matter where you go. My long-ago taking of you as my ward secured that. Despite my intentions and my subsequent actions,
I
secured that.’

“ ‘So I’m marked. Stained. In the palace as well as in the
borghetto.
’

“ ‘Marked, yes. Stained, no. But this is much too much for you to hear all at once. What has taken me months to decide, I’ve set down before you in an afternoon. Let’s stop now. We’ll speak a little each day. About the ideas. About all of it.’

“For the first time since he began talking, he smiles. It’s nearly dark in the library and he rises to switch on two of the abat-jours, but even the quiet luster they make seems rude. An unexpected ending. He must feel it, too, as he quickly turns off the lamps, lights a candle and a cigarette with a single match. Apologizes for not offering a cigarette to me.

“ ‘You know I don’t smoke,’ I tell him, liking that we’re speaking of something as adult as a cigarette.

“ ‘You might want to begin when I tell you what we’re going to do.’

“He says this as he sits back down in his chair, stretches his arms out straight on the library table, the cigarette held between his lips. More than his pipe, I like seeing him smoke cigarettes. He was smoking a cigarette that evening. He’d held it between his lips then, too. I saw it when I threw open his door. He took it from between his lips and tossed it into the fire. Walked quickly, nearly ran toward me.
Tosca, what is it?
I saw his naked torso above his riding pants. His voice breaks through my thoughts now. He’s talking about the ride he took with Cosimo a while back. He’d like us all to take the same trail someday. Perhaps on Sunday. A long ride, he’s saying. To the hunting lodge. A fine old place, he’s telling me. Cousins are staying there now. Wild birds. Wild hare.
Potremo pranzare là con loro.
We can lunch there with them. Let’s see what Sunday brings, he’s saying. The chapel bells ring. Fifteen minutes until vespers.

“ ‘It’s true, you know, Tosca.’

“I’ve said
a dopo,
later. I’ve curtsied, turned to leave. I look back at him to learn
what
it is that’s true.

“ ‘My wanting very much to always have you near.’ ”

CHAPTER VII

“A
FEW DAYS LATER
, L
EO AND
C
OSIMO AND
I
DRIVE TOGETHER
to the
borghetto.
I have never ridden in an automobile since that first day when these two came to fetch me at my father’s place, to bring me to the palace. Gangly, sweaty little-girl thighs showing beneath an outgrown dress, sticking to the leather seat. My young woman’s legs so long now, I fit myself, half supine, into the child-sized back seat, among the folds of my pale pink dress. Cosimo was driving on that long-ago day as he does now, Leo in the passenger seat.
Is this the same automobile?
I trust him to understand the question. He does. Tells me it
is
the same. He shakes his head in some kind of wonder, smiles. We’ve already arrived.

“In the almost seven years that I’d lived in the palace, I’d seen little beyond the courtyard of the
borghetto.
Beyond where the goats, chickens, geese wander about, where the shoemaker sets up shop sometimes, where the rabbit hutch stands in the shade of a small stand of poplars. Nothing much beyond that but now, in company with a group of men who Leo introduces as contractors, we three walk through or look into every building in the little community. Single-story structures built of stones and some
pasticcio
of bricks and wood; there is no sign of comfort. There is dignity. The intention of harmony. The
mensa,
dining hall, smells of sunlight and of tomatoes cooked in a pot where tomatoes have been cooking since forever. And at the long tables dressed in every color of oilcloth and on the bare benches beside them is where I think I’d like to sit. There is a dormitory where some of the unmarried men sleep. A bakehouse, a cheese-making hut, a smokehouse, and a chapel. A schoolroom. The remaining structures are divided into small, low-ceilinged, dirt-floored sleeping quarters where families and often the animals sleep together. There is a long, wide trough from which the animals drink, the same source of water where the clothes are washed, scrubbed on flat stones. There are neither bathing nor sanitary facilities. I think of my own childhood home and its relative splendor. I think of Leo’s telling me that I am romantic.

“There are few people about—only those too young or too old to be in the fields or those otherwise occupied in the bakehouse or the kitchen. I stay a while to watch these women at work. With none of the haughty joy they spilt at the
festa,
they move about their tasks nearly in silence. Not the press of daily business, theirs is the work of survival. I go to sit near an old man—it’s the same old man who played the mouth harp at the
festa,
or at least I think it is. Upon his skinny knees, he holds a black-eyed baby who screams, half in delight, half in want of swifter delivery of the pap the old man spoons into its tiny maw. I want to stay with the old man and the baby. I would give them both a good washing, put them down to sleep while I cooked for them. Leo calls me closer to the group.

“They speak of cutting windows in the exterior walls, of finishing interior walls, of roof tiles and chimneys and separate barns for the animals; a bath house, a
lavanderia,
a latrine. There would be real beds built into the sleeping quarters. There would be a coal-fed stove with ten burners in the kitchen. I try to follow the discussion but, more, I follow Cosimo with my eyes as he walks about the place, opening and closing doors he’d already opened and closed before, as though trying to comprehend the misery. I leave the other men and join him.

“ ‘It will want a year or maybe two, Tosca, but Leo will transform this place. Make it a model, an example other landowners will follow. Either that or they’ll make an example of
him.
Shoot him dead for interrupting the way of things.’

“I know the priest is joking when he says
shoot him dead.
Yet the phrase seems crass said here, where Filiberto had lain only days earlier. The priest disturbs me. Perhaps this was his intent. I will not let him know of his success.

“ ‘You mean other
latifondisti.
’

“He looks at me, holds my gaze, then smiles. ‘Yes, other
latifondisti.
’

“ ‘What will you do to help in all this?’ I ask Cosimo, wondering if Leo has spoken with him about the idea of my becoming the schoolmistress.

“ ‘Mostly I’ll rescue Leo when he falters. He will falter. What’s to be done here is the smaller part of the plan. It’s the work to prepare the fallow land for planting, the work to encourage the peasants to use new equipment and accept new methods of farming that will daunt him. But even those are not the major parts of the plan. You see, Leo swears that, in his lifetime, he will parcel off the land to the peasants and to their children, make them independent farmers who will work to feed themselves, sell their surplus, begin to know the grim joys of handling cash. That will be his magnum opus. His great imprudence, perhaps. I am not convinced that the peasants who rise above their station find happiness. Rather, they find another kind of poverty. Discard their humanity or trade it for more bread. People should be what they were born to be, Tosca. Born to work the land. Born to own the land.’

“Shocked by his own gaffe, the priest cuts off his soliloquy, puts a hand to my shoulder, and says, ‘You are so much a part of the prince’s family that I find myself forgetting that—I mean to say, it’s as though you’ve always been here, Tosca.’

“ ‘
Va bene, Don Cosimo. Capisco.
It’s okay. I understand,’ I tell him.

“Once again, he looks at me as though I’m new or different somehow. I
am
different. Not just that my usual heavy taffeta skirt and starched blouse have been surrendered to this silky dress that stops above my ankles, nor that my braids are coiled above my forehead rather than in two fat buns about my ears; not just these make me different, and Cosimo is improbably quiet now, as though trying to connect this Tosca who is almost sixteen to that other one who had been nine. The budding
maestra
to the horse-stealing savage. Surely Leo has not spoken with him about me. Cosimo has begun talking again.

“ ‘As I was saying, some are born to work the land. Some to own the land. Tightening up the vast and historical distances between their tables, their beds, their birthing and dying—the reforms Leo has in mind to establish are just. But I wish he’d leave it at that. There is no need to parcel off the land. His is a wild scheme, my dear. Wild in the perilous sense. If only he could understand that the peasants would be happy enough just to sleep apart from their pigs.’

“Why does he talk to me of these things?
Wild in the perilous sense.
Does he think I have some sway over Leo? Of course he doesn’t think that. But why then . . . He has taken up his story.

“ ‘The prince is a complicated man, Tosca. So complicated that his ideas can seem simple. Especially to himself. He says there are no villains, no heroes. He says all of us are base and all of us are kind, if not in equal proportions. He’s Christ-like. Sometimes. When he’s not being Tolstoy. But he is always
Candide.
He persists that what he’s doing here does not make him a liberal, a progressive. Calls himself a patrician with a patrician’s detachment to things not his own, says he’s not trying to change things anywhere else but right here. In other words, Leo’s world is small. His land. His peasants. Men and women whom he does not idealize, by the way. But for whom he feels responsible. He wants them to ennoble themselves, work with all their might, have the security of a laden table and a decent bed. He wants to take care of the whole lot of them as though they were his children.’

“Cosimo can hardly expect me to understand this business of reforms and sleeping apart from pigs and patrician detachment any more than Leo could have expected me to take in all he’d said that day in the library. And yet, I did understand Leo. And I think I do understand the priest. Mostly I understand that Leo is good.

“I walk, look about the
borghetto
with Cosimo, but all I hear is Leo’s voice.
It’s true, Tosca. My wanting very much to always have you near.
Words of love. Were they not words of love? Paternal love? Romantic love? I speak with Cosimo hardly knowing what I say. Less what he says. To my
graceful biding of time
with the palace regimes, I will now add Leo’s revelations. Those which I understood and those which he left in the half-light of that candle on the library table. What I know for certain is that it will be me who rescues Leo when he falters.