The Viceroys (12 page)

She let him have his say. No cries from the monk could prevent her doing whatever she wanted whenever she liked. And Don Blasco went on tormenting himself as he saw her excesses and follies. Was the eldest son in every family in the world not the favourite? Here, though, he was hated! Who was the favourite? The third son! For centuries the title of Count of Lumera had gone together with all the others to the head of the house. Now from pure caprice, from mad folly, it had been given to that boy Raimondo, who had been brought up like a ‘pig'! And the second son, whom even the King could not deprive of his title for life of Duke of Oragua, had been shut up in San Nicola …

Don Lodovico's story was very like Don Blasco's but with this difference: while Don Blasco was a third son, Lodovico had only the prince before him, and as Duke of Oragua he could have hoped, if not from his mother at least from some uncle, for the money necessary to bear that title with decorum. It was understood that another Uzeda in that generation was to enter San Nicola, and reason and tradition pointed to the third son, Raimondo. But Donna Teresa, in order to make her own will prevail over all human and divine laws, inverted the natural order and took to protecting Raimondo above all the other brothers, left him a layman with the title of count and began working on the young Duke Lodovico to sense a vocation. Thus no one in her presence could call the boy by the title which was his due.

He had been dressed in the black Benedictine habit since childhood. As toys he had nothing but little altars, pyxes, holy water sprinklers and every other kind of sacred object. When his mother asked him, ‘What do you want to become?' the boy was trained to answer, ‘A monk of San Nicola.' At this reply he would get caresses and promises of pocket-money, amusements, carriage-drives. And if at times he dared reply, ‘I don't know …' Donna Teresa would pinch his arm hard enough to make him cry until she had torn the desired answer from him. Her confessor meanwhile, Father Camillo, a Dominican, was also working towards this result by educating the boy to blind obedience to the clergy, mortifying his senses and imagination in every
way, rousing in him the fear of hell, making him sense the joys of Paradise. In order to succeed in her intention better, the princess did not place the boy in the novitiate early. She kept him at home until he was fifteen.

Those were the times of rigid economies, of creditors crowding in the administrative offices, of debts paid off bit by bit, so that while Don Blasco had heard constant talk of the treasures which had in part melted under his very eyes, Lodovico heard nothing but complaints, threats from people demanding money, and his mother's eternal refrain exaggerating their condition on purpose, ‘We're ruined! What are we to do? There'll be nothing left!' In the Francalanza palace the princess introduced strict thrift and made open show of the poverty to which they were reduced, collecting match-ends to relight them, selling off old clothes before getting a new dress; and she would describe to Lodovico the Benedictine monastery as a place of eternal delights where life passed without cares of today or fears of tomorrow, amid delicious meals, sumptuous ceremonies, sprightly conversation and jolly outings. And when eventually Lodovico entered San Nicola as a novice he realised that his mother had told the truth, for the cornucopia of abundance seemed to spill continually over the monastery and life flowed easy and pleasant there.

The youth, coming from the iron tutelage of the princess and her confessor, appreciated particularly the liberty, almost the licence, which he saw reigning in the monastery. So he was persuaded of the suitability, instilled in him since childhood, of entering that Order. Even so, before pronouncing his vows he hesitated for a time, realising, at the moment of carrying it out, the gravity of the sacrifice being imposed on him, while Don Blasco tried to open his eyes to his mother's intrigues. But apart from paying little heed to the monk's opinion, whose implacable criticism he knew, it was actually that very severity of his mother's which he was so anxious to escape and which made him renounce, in terror, any attempt at open rebellion.

Too late, Father Don Lodovico had realised the trick of which he had been a victim, when he saw that the poverty so lamented by his mother was a lie, and that the place which he had been made to renounce had passed to his brother Raimondo. But it
was now too late to turn back; hood and scapular were to weigh on his shoulders until death.

The rebellion, fury and hatred that burst into his mind were even more violent than his uncle's, as he was incapable, from long habit of pretence and self-mortification, of exploding into words recklessly like Don Blasco. Nothing appeared of the feelings that were aboil in his heart. Before his mother he remained as reverent and submissive as before, and as prodigal of demonstrations of fraternal affection to that Raimondo who was enjoying the place usurped from him. He confirmed, by exemplary life, his vocation for the monastic state. While Don Blasco, gross, ignorant, greedy for material pleasures, revelled with the worst of the monks, playing the lottery to enrich himself and carrying a knife under his habit, Don Lodovico, subtler, better educated and above all shrewder and more self-controlled, was pointed out as a rare example of ascetic virtue, a pillar of theological doctrine. While the uncle, to revenge himself for his lost worldly power, tried to dominate the monastery, grumbling against abbot, prior, deacons and cellarers, cursing Saint Nicholas and Saint Benedict and all their celestial companions, the nephew seemed to take every care to keep apart, to nourish no other ambition but study …

In his heart he was longing for revenge. Finding himself for ever shut in there he wanted to reach the highest ranks quickly and before anyone else. Among the Benedictines, indeed, there was a kingdom to be conquered; the Abbot was a power in the land, with any number of feudal titles and a fabulous fortune to control; the ancient Constitution of Sicily gave him the right to a seat among the peers of the realm.

Don Lodovico wanted to reach that position in as short a time as possible. Once he realised the line to take he never deviated from it a hairsbreadth; nobody could ever reprove him for the slightest trespass, no-one ever draw him into any of the many factions in which the monks were divided. Living apart, usually shut into the library, he gained sympathy by the humility of his bearing, the obedience he lent to his elders and his equals too, his strict observance of the Rule, and a reputation for learning which he had soon acquired. So he had been elected Deacon at the age of twenty-seven. But, praised to the skies by the Abbot
and most of the monks, he drew on himself his uncle's ever harsher and more violent hatred.

Thirsty for power, Don Blasco also wanted to be Prior and Abbot, but his scandalous life, his violent character, his supine ignorance made the achievement of this ambition if not impossible at least very difficult. Consequently he had not been made Deacon before the age of forty. Thus the sight of his nephew ‘scarcely out of swaddling-clothes' in that position made him quite beside himself. And on the death of the Prior Raimo, early in 1855 a tremendous battle broke out. That one of the Uzeda, whose ancestors had been such benefactors of the monastery, should occupy the vacant chair, was beyond discussion, but Don Blasco expected the dignity for himself, nor did he think that ‘Jesuit' of a nephew of his could dream of barring his way. When he heard that that ‘pig' was competing with him and daring to put himself on a par with his uncle, he very nearly had a stroke. The things he said against Lodovico were enough to draw lightning on the dome of San Nicola and burn the monastery with all its inhabitants to ashes; the least he called him was ‘pimp of the Chapter, Abbot's pot-emptier, son of I don't know who …'

Don Lodovico let him have his say, and edified the whole monastery by the humility with which he treated his uncle's violence. He was quite sure of himself; the election of the ignorant and overbearing Don Blasco, who had sown the whole quarter with his children and kept three or four mistresses, among them the famous Cigar-woman, was judged impossible by all. Age was the one advantage he had over his nephew, but that was not enough to compensate for his vast number of defects. Don Lodovico was elected by an overwhelming majority, and from that day Don Blasco became an implacable enemy of the ‘filthy Jesuit' and of that ‘……' of a princess, on whom he naturally blamed this latest and most unforgivable kick from her ‘mule' of a son.

Nor had the other nieces and nephews, whom the monk defended out of hatred of the dead woman, and incited to reject the Will, ever been in his good graces. It was enough that they should be children of the woman whom he considered as a personal enemy; but then in his eyes each and all of them had
particular faults, beginning with Chiara and her husband.

The latter's great fault consisted in having been chosen by the princess as a son-in-law and of having loved Chiara in spite of the aversion shown by the girl herself. That was just why Don Blasco had given him a good spattering, being able all in one go to have at him for trying ‘to force his way' into the Uzeda family, at the princess for trying ‘to violate' her daughter's Will, and at his niece for being ‘silly and mad' enough to refuse a match ‘like that'. By resisting her mother Chiara should really have gained her uncle the monk's praise and encouragement, but Don Blasco was made in such a way that when someone agreed with him he changed his opinions so as to put them in the wrong. And so the engagement had meant one long violent quarrel between brother-in-law and sister-in-law, between uncle and niece and also between mother and daughter, since the princess had played one of her tricks there too.

For her, as for all heads of great families, the only really desirable and lovable children were male; females did nothing but eat their heads off and bear away family property if they took a husband. This Salic idea, deep-rooted in her, did actually admit of some exceptions—her own self for example—but not with her own progeny. Even among the males, though, she had not treated two alike. In her lifetime she had almost hated her eldest son and idolised Raimondo. But the one she hated was heir to the title, future head of the house, and her favourite, in spite of sacrificing Lodovico, was simply a younger son. So she had compromised between respect for feudal tradition and satisfaction of her personal wishes by deciding, without telling anyone, to divide her riches between the two brothers, that is by defrauding the eldest son, who should have had everything and favouring the other, who should have had nothing. Of the other two, Lodovico had been more or less suppressed so as to give a place to Raimondo, whilst Ferdinando had been able to live his own free life up to a point. Towards the women on the other hand she had nursed a deeper, uniform repulsion and almost contempt, and done all she could to prevent them ‘robbing' their brothers. Angiolina, the eldest, had been condemned to the life of the cloister from birth, for the unpardonable fault she had committed of coming

A year after marriage Donna Teresa, when about to give birth, had expected a son, an eldest one, a little Prince of Mirabella, a future Prince of Francalanza. She not only expected him but she was determined he would appear. Instead of which a daughter was born; and the mother never forgave her. From the moment she took off her swaddling-clothes she dressed her up as a little nun; before the child could even talk she was taken to the Convent of San Placido every day. At the age of six she was shut in there ‘for education' and at sixteen the gentle and simple creature, ignorant of the world, subdued by her mother's will and also by the impenetrable walls of the convent, felt herself truly called by God; and so Angiolina Uzeda died, and Sister Maria of the Cross remained.

Chiara, who had come immediately afterwards and stayed at home, felt the maternal rigour even more. The princess had not left her in the lay state for fear of any criticism of what people might consider the sacrifice of two daughters, but so that she herself could exercise over the girl a vigilance and authority firmer and more severe than that which the Abbess exercised in a convent. ‘But from a crazy woman like my sister-in-law,' Don Blasco would say, ‘and a swine like my brother, what would you expect to come out? A super-crazy swine, of course!'

And what happened? What happened was that as long as the mother held her in a grip of iron, this daughter had always bowed her head, respectful and obedient. Then on the day when the princess, having found that ass of a Marchese of Villardita offering to marry the girl for nothing, decided to marry her off, she had said no, no, and no! Unbelievable!… The marchese, having seen the girl every now and then under veils in church, had fallen in love with her, and the princess, determined to give him her daughter, had admitted him to the house. But, discouraged by Chiara's cold greeting and stubborn repulses, persuaded by relatives and friends that he was mad to marry against her will a girl who did not want him, he would have retired in good order, had Donna Teresa, who when she made a decision would not be deviated even by the Devil, not ordered him to stay at his post. So when he saw the girl again, sitting in a corner, her head bowed, handkerchief in hand, he felt like weeping too. ‘Silly calf!' said Don Blasco, ‘so soft as to fall in
love with that long-faced niece of mine!' Chiara, in fact, was no beauty, and her mother, first to dissuade her from marriage and then to induce her to accept this match, would repeat every day, ‘Take a look at yourself in the mirror! Don't you see how ugly you are? Who d'you expect to take you?…' but Chiara replied, ‘No one, all the better! Your Excellency didn't want me to marry, did you? Let me stay at home!…'

Reacting at first sight, like all the Uzeda, Chiara had refused to consider this proposed fiancé for the one and only reason that he was rather fat, but once she had taken that line the stubbornness which was much more of an Uzeda hereditary trait than sensibility had been the most powerful cause of the resistance she put up to her mother. Till the very last moment, tenacious, stubborn, inflexible, she said that never, never, never would she marry that barrel of a man; and in vain her brothers and uncles, her Father Confessor explained that though the marchese was not thin he had a heart of gold and was marrying her without a dowry for the love he bore her, and that she could queen it over his home as he was all alone and very rich, and that if she let this match slip her mother might go back to her first idea of not marrying her off at all, of letting her grow into an old maid. Her back to the wall, she had still replied no, no and no again.