That Summer in Sicily (22 page)

CHAPTER XVI

“I
T WAS PERHAPS FOR TWO WEEKS OR MORE AFTER THE FUNERAL
that Simona kept to her rooms. She was not, I think, so much in mourning as she was in a state of flux. She had given leave to Mademoiselle Clothilde, the only teacher who’d still remained part of the household. Though Cosimo visited nearly each day, he’d gone to live in the parish house that had always been provided for him at San Rocco. He once again took up the observances, the submissions of a rural priest. Without the shield of Leo’s influence with the Curia, there had already been talk of his transference to what was termed ‘a more challenging post.’ With no one else in residence, there was only Simona, Yolande, Charlotte, and I.

“The princesses dosed themselves with valerian and fell onto their beds or assembled themselves in some remote
salottino
to scratch petulant homages to Bach across their violoncellos. When Simona did appear, she was cheerful enough, more indulgent with her daughters than usual, though they, too, seemed past any suffering. She would speak of her plans with me. Plans for herself and the princesses. The apartment in Geneva might be opened. The girls should spend a year or so in Paris. The loss of Leo had released her from the once-in-a-while tributes she’d had to pay to the strictures of their marriage. Though she was sorry for his death, in her brilliant oblique language, she would refer to it as
another of his choices.
Now that she no longer had to act out her minimalist role in the palace theater, she was quite prepared to take on the part of the merry widow.

“ ‘And you, Tosca? Has Cosimo brought out all the documents that concern your inheritance? It’s quite substantial, I would imagine. Substantial enough.’

“ ‘Yes,’ is all I say.

“ ‘It’s not that I wouldn’t want you to stay on with us. In fact, not so many years ago I recall imploring you to stay. To not be so foolish as to run off. But Tosca, I fear for you now. I fear that you will believe as we all believe that we can keep breaking into our store of time without counting. Our lives seem infinite until we reach in one day to find how little of them is left. That’s how I feel, Tosca. That so little remains. I’ll soon be fifty. You are not quite half my age. Apart from the wealth that Leo has bequeathed to you, you are still rich in time. Don’t use up these next years by living here with only the spectre of your prince. He would have been the last one to have wanted that for you.’

“ ‘He’d told me. He’d told me more than once that if anything ever happened to him, I should go. Cosimo is telling me to go. I think he says this on Leo’s behalf but also on his own. I will go. I want to go. I just don’t know how to begin. Where to begin.’

“ ‘That’s the part that hardly matters. Leo has left you the lodge, hasn’t he?’

“ ‘Yes. But I don’t want to live alone.’

“ ‘Of course you don’t want to be alone. Yet here you shall be very much alone. Should you go to the lodge you would still be alone. Even if you go somewhere altogether new, the solitariness will go with you. For a while. It’s only that, in another environment, more will be expected of you than is expected of you here. Here life proceeds according to the bells. The lodge is so immense that a similar troupe of help would be necessary to keep it going, and so, life
there
would also proceed according to the bells. But in another place, you could begin to invent a life. I think that’s the right word, Tosca. Or is it reinvent that I want to say? Yes, to
reinvent
yourself. To study, to work, to make friends with people your own age, to
choose
how to spend your time rather than to be passive against what you shall come to notice is its ever-quickening pace. I do not suggest that you go to live in the lodge now. But it could serve as your security. Your own place, should you need it. Should you, someday, oh I don’t know, should you someday have a family. Put your things there now, take what you might need from here, from your rooms, from Leo’s rooms. Set up some sort of household for yourself there and then go. Far or near. The palace has been left in trust to me for my lifetime and reverts to Yolande and then to Charlotte. Though I can’t say if any of us will be here or, if we are, for how long or how much of a staff I shall keep in the meanwhile, the palace will always be here if you want to come back.’

“ ‘I’m thinking to go to live in the
borghetto.
I’ve always wanted to, you know. I mean, I’d wanted to years ago, and now it seems . . .’

“ ‘I know very well of your earlier desire to live there. Leo had discussed it with me. Asked me to try and convince you to stay here. As it turned out, he was successful himself in turning you away from that plan. Valid as his reasons were then, they are more valid now. You cannot negate the years you’ve spent here, the privileges, the relationships of your life. Though they love you—though they loved you loving their prince and him loving you—you are not one of them, Tosca. They would be too kind to deny you a place among them, but you would cause their discomfort. Leo himself would have caused their discomfort. Besides, I think that many of the families will eventually build homesteads on their own land. Over time, the
borghetto
itself will become obsolete.’

“She had noted my startled glance when she’d said that Leo had discussed my wishes with her. Surely there must have been a substance to their relationship that neither of them openly displayed. Or was it that it was not displayed to me? Or was it that I chose not to notice it? She is speaking now of my spending winter holidays with her and the princesses in Geneva, yet I still don’t trust my legs to carry me up the stairs to my rooms. Simona knows I do not take in her words. She holds me in her arms, tells me, “ ‘Leo has died but it’s you who is in limbo, Tosca. Find your own way home.’ ”

“It is sometime in late September when I begin to feel stronger—healed, I think, by spite. Should the clan still be inclined toward killing me, I will do all I can to help them. I begin to ride again. Leo’s jodhpurs belted about my waist, his suede jacket buttoned over my bare breasts, my hair left loose, I ride the prince’s stallion. In a swoon of sweet revenge, I ride him bareback.
If you want me, here I am, dear ‘friends,’
I would shout into the wind.
Sono qui, Signor Mattia. Sono qui tutti, voi bastardi. Venite a prendermi.
I’m here, Signor Mattia. I’m here, all you bastards. Come and take me. Sometimes I would shout to Leo, too, dare him to watch me, tell him that this is what we should have been doing rather than cringing behind the walls. I make a target of myself riding hard over open spaces, through the woods, along the precipices of the rocky outcrops, even into the villages. How easy it is to call up the little savage in me, the horse thief’s daughter. How well she serves me.
We are all endlessly ourselves.

“Often I would stay out most of the day, exhausting myself in the hope of a peaceful night. No hat against the blazing sun, I let my skin grow dark as a Turk’s. I would eat only broth and bread, sometimes an egg. The suppers of my childhood. The right food for a Fury. I begin to smoke in earnest. Thirty or forty cigarettes a day. What flesh there’d been on my slender body falls away.

“I ride to the lodge, walk the vast space of it, go to lie on the daybed on the loggia in the
mansarda
where we’d first made love on that late afternoon of my birthday. I fondle the opalescent curtain with the wide satin flounce. If it’s cool enough, I close my eyes, sleep sometimes, either there on the daybed or sprawled in the cleaved trunk of the magnolia. Yes, Chou, this magnolia. I begin to wonder what it would be like to live here. To set about revitalizing this fallow land as Leo had done his. To make a working farm of it. And how much there could be done in the gardens and in the house itself. It would be so beautiful. But who would live with me? If only my mother and Mafalda were here. My father, too. I would ask Agata to come and maybe Mimmo, and surely Lullo and Valentino would stay. Could Cosimo be convinced? Simona spoke to me of reinvention. Is that what I’m dreaming of? To reinvent the
borghetto
here? I think it’s not that. Not really that. Nor is it to gather all the waifs of the world ’round me because it’s a waif whom I think to be, myself. No, the dream is simply to live together and work together with good people. I want to give the way Leo gave. I suppose, in some ways, I want
to be
Leo. His pants, his jacket. His horse. His goodness. I suppose I do want to be Leo. To keep him alive.

·                           ·                           ·

“The virago wasted, a mincing coward takes over. I like her less. It is nearly December and, as Simona had predicted I would be, I am too much alone in the palace now that she and the princesses have gone, embarked upon the next phases of their lives. I will go, too. I know that I will go, but the constant thinking about to what place, about what it will be like, what I will see, whom I shall meet, the fainter grows my heart.

“One morning, from the back of an armoire where I’d placed it, I take an old black valise that looks like a doctor’s bag. Inside it there are no medicines, though. It is filled with little plush envelopes and sacks. Inside these are Isotta’s jewels. There is a long letter that Leo had written years ago. It is dated August 1948. He speaks of the jewels as my birthday gifts, as my coming-of-age gifts. There is another, shorter, note that speaks of certain of the envelopes and sacks as my wedding gifts. There are documents that insure and validate the worth of the jewels. These I crumple and push into a too-small compartment at the bottom of the case. The letter I place in my handbag. Propped against my pillows, I settle myself in bed and, one by one, I open the envelopes and the sacks. Among the bedclothes, I let the jewels fall ’round me. There are ropes and ropes of pearls in all sizes. There is a necklace of oval diamonds. A sack of rubies both polished and unpolished and a note in what must be Isotta’s handwriting that says
tutti sangue di piccione,
all pigeon blood. There is another sack of rubies without further identification. Apart from the one that she always wore, Isotta must have been particularly partial to emeralds since there are two emerald rings, several pairs of emerald earrings. There is a sack filled with rings set mostly with diamonds. There is much more. When I’ve put all of it back in its place, I begin to pack. Fingering these treasures, I feel crazed with yet another kind of fear. It is a terror caused by something far more horrifying than the clan. I imagine myself propped against these same pillows, settled in this same bed, these same glittering stones heaped ’round me among the bedclothes. Only in my imaginings, I am far, far older than I am today.”

“Simona had left me a small wheeled trunk and two medium-sized suitcases. I decide that whatever I can fit into these three will comprise my worldly goods for the next part of my life. Whereas I had been languishing for the past month or so, now I am ruthlessly inspired to change things. I pack clothes, books. When I am finished, I have hardly filled the trunk, while the suitcases remain empty. In one of them, I place the medicine bag. The other I stow under my yellow and white bed. I bathe and dress, wait for Cosimo’s late-afternoon visit. Before I finish telling him all that I’ve decided, he says, ‘You’ll have to wait a day or so. The appointment with the attorneys that you’ve been avoiding is necessary. They will explain to you the procedures and the regulations for the distribution of your income. There will be documents to sign. After that, you’ll be free to go.’

“ ‘I see. Do you know where I mean to go? At least for a while?’

“ ‘I suspect it’s Palermo.’

“ ‘Is the choice so obvious?’

“ ‘No. Not obvious but superior. I would think it to be the best place to begin. There are far more advantages and disadvantages in Palermo than there are almost anywhere else right now. I know of a
pensione
. In the historic center. I can arrange a stay there for you while you look about. Until you can find something more permanent. That is, should you wish to remain in the city. You’ll find many of the
Palermitani
to be genteel. Particularly this family. Beyond this introduction, I won’t be of much help.’

“ ‘I am not asking you for help.’ My bravado is lofty. Almost rude.

“ ‘Let’s get this meeting with the attorneys scheduled. If I can arrange it for a morning, you can depart for Palermo on the same day. I can drive you to Enna. To the train,’ he says.

“As if from far off, I have listened to our terse exchange. To our voices, mine peeved, his woeful. Neither of us reaches for the line that drifts between us. I look at the priest, who is looking away as though mesmerized by the blood-red walls of the
salotto
where we sit. Cosimo is weary. Most of all, he is weary of me. Longing to quit the duty, I think, with which Leo bound him.

“ ‘Thank you,’ I say but he is already walking away.”

“And so at the age of twenty-five, I trade my status as
la puttanina
for one of heiress. Jewels stuffed in plush pouches. A numbered Swiss account. Safety deposit boxes. I know that if I begin to speak with Agata or Mimmo or anyone here of my will to leave the palace with this sort of immediacy, their affectionate counsel could confound my new resolve. The cut must be quick and clean.
Find your own way home.