The Viceroys (13 page)

The princess had at first refused to speak to her, then cursed her like a servant, then locked her up in a dark little room with no clothes and little food; then she had begun to hit her with hard knobbly hands, hurting her, swearing she would let her starve to death if she did not give in. To the marchese, who, overcome by scruples, came to take back his word, she said, ‘No, sir. Marry you she must, because I wish it so. If she is an Uzeda, I am a Risà! You'll see she'll change …' She knew what they were like, all those Uzeda; when they got an idea into their heads it could not be moved, even if their heads were broken in two: they came from Viceroys, so their will should be law! But from one day to the next, when it was least expected, for no reason, they would suddenly change. Where first they had said white they then affirmed black. If, say, they wanted to kill a man, the latter would suddenly become their best friend … Till the very last moment Chiara had not changed.
Before the altar, with two rangers each side of her, brigand faces sought out by her mother on purpose to instil terror in her, she had fainted, and the priest only heard a ‘yes' of his own good will; but the day after the marriage, when the family went to visit the bride and groom, what did they find but them embracing and holding hands?… ‘It really takes one aback!' cried Don Blasco.

Servants, retainers and friends jested for a time among themselves about the means used by the marchese to domesticate his wife, but the fact remained that from that day Chiara was all one with her husband, to the point that he could not be a quarter of an hour late home without her sending all the servants after him, to the point of being jealous of his very thoughts. And she no longer had an opinion differing from her husband's, in any circumstances big or small. If she was asked something, before giving a reply she would interrogate him with her eyes as if fearful of not saying what he was thinking himself. Her only great sorrow was not having had a child by him after three years of marriage, and being in such haste she had announced her own pregnancy four or five times; but even this showed her love for her Federico.

The princess had given her to him for many reasons. First of all because she had borne a third daughter after the four boys, and so had reasoned—or ‘unreasoned' as Don Blasco put it—like this: of the three girls the first a nun, the second a wife, the last at home. Now the marchese on falling in love with the girl not only promised to take her without a dowry but even to lend himself to a little play-acting. Though her firm intention as a mother was for the family fortune to be untouched by the females, her pride as Princess of Francalanza could not allow people to praise her son-in-law's generosity for taking Chiara without a cent, as if from a foundlings' home. So in the marriage contract she had granted her daughter an income of two hundred
onze
a year; so said the contract registered by Rubino the notary, and so everyone was told; but then the marchese handed over to her a receipt for the entire capital of four thousand
onze
, not a cent of which had he ever seen!

Now Don Blasco, who had already set himself against the marchese for his marriage to Chiara and against Chiara for her
sudden conversion from hatred to love of her husband, had blamed both of them for the fiction to which they had lent themselves in order to obey that mad sister-in-law of his who ought to be in an asylum. What he blamed them for even more, and found even more unforgivable, was their not insisting on their rights to the paternal inheritance.

In fact, according to the Benedictine, the Uzeda fortunes were not entirely destroyed when Donna Teresa entered the family; and in any case, as the income from the properties had been paid even in the very worst times, the princess should have taken them into account, as she could scarcely pretend they all went in daily expenses. They had helped, on the other hand, to pay off the debts and save the estates, then had all been fused with the newly reconstructed family fortune and were put down in the general assets of Prince Consalvo VII. The latter, like the idiot he had always been, had gone and crowned his short and stupid life with that clownish Will, imposed and dictated by his wife; by this, in declaring the whole of his family fortune as destroyed from ‘family disasters' he had left his children ‘enough to make a dog retch …', their mother's affection; but now the children—if they weren't even more idiotic than their father—ought to demand accounts down to the very last cent.

With this aim the monk had gone assiduously round his nieces and nephews, except for Raimondo, to whom he had not said a word for years and years just because he had been his mother's favourite, and incited them to stand up for their rights; but no one, in the princess's lifetime, had dared breathe a word; and he had reluctantly excused them in view of the pressure to which she had subjected them. But this marchese who was only a son-in-law and so should not be afraid of her, and who had already been tricked once in that matter of the capital, was considered by Don Blasco the worst of cowards for deciding not to speak out. Why? Please why? Because of his declaring he had married Chiara for the love he bore her and not for the money that she could bring him …! Such was the monk's fury that it brought on an attack of bile, but in time he had shut his mouth and waited for his sister-in-law's death before sallying into battle again. Now she had finally died and that bestial Will of hers had been read out, the furious monk forgot Federico
and Chiara's stupidity and attacked them once again to get them to take action. The dead woman, instead of declaring ‘honestly' how much was her husband's part and dividing it ‘equally' among all her children, was now disposing of the entire family fortune as if it was her own! Not content with that, she was defrauding the legitimate heirs by pretending to assign them a quota higher than the law, but in reality giving them ‘nothing at all'. Chiara in particular had been ‘stripped like a wood', as the Will never mentioned Canon Risà's legacy. This was another of Donna Teresa's little arrangements some time before.

Among other arguments used to conquer Chiara's resistance and induce her to marry the marchesc, the princess had used money too, but in order not to open her own purse strings she had recourse to an uncle of hers, Canon Risà of Caltagirone, who promised a legacy of five thousand
onze
to his grandniecc if the girl would marry the Marchese of Villardita. Donna Teresa had countersigned the document to guarantee this payment on condition that this sum really existed in the property left by the Canon, who promised to leave everything to her. Instead of which when the Canon died two years before leaving his property half to his old housekeeper and half to the princess, she had refused to recognise the pact made; nor did the marchese, from respect and disinterest, think of asking for it to be carried out.

Don Blasco now, as his sister-in-law had not even remembered that obligation in her Will and even arranged ‘with her infernal art' that other little matter of the four thousand
onze
which Chiara had never received, and which she was to contribute as if she had already received them, visited the marchese every day to turn him against the dead woman and the co-heirs, inciting him to demand: firstly the legal division; secondly the money of the marriage contract with all its back interest; thirdly the part due to Chiara from her father; fourthly the Canon's legacy: and he would show in a flash that not only ten thousand
onze
assigned her in the Will was due to her, but three times as much at least. The marchese, though he listened and nodded to all that the monk said, for discussion was impossible with this blessed Benedictine, told his wife that he had no wish to
cause any family quarrel and would wait and see what the others did. And Chiara fell in with that as with all her husband's other opinions. In her heart though she agreed with her uncle, and wanted to be given what was due to her, for in her vying devotion she was sorry that Federico should have to sustain the whole weight of their household expenses alone; but the marchese, on his side, protested, ‘I took you for yourself and not for your money! Even if you had nothing it wouldn't matter to me … And anyway it doesn't mean we'll renounce our rights. Let's leave it to Lucrezia and Ferdinanda to act first. I don't want to be the one to start a law case in your family …'

This disinterest and respect which he showed for the Uzeda family increased Chiara's devotion and admiration and she agreed with him the more eagerly, as in those very days, after making a vow, by the Abbess of San Placido's advice, to the miraculous San Francesco di Paola, she had new hope of being pregnant. And so in order to defend her husband from that horse-fly of a Don Blasco she faced her uncle herself and said to him:

‘Yes, indeed; your Excellency's right, and only talking from love of us; but our respect for the wishes of our mother …”

‘Your mother was an animal,' shouted the monk. ‘Even more than you are!… What was it your mother wanted? To ruin you all for love of Raimondo and hatred of Giacomo! You're as mad as she was! A bunch of madmen, the lot of you …' And more and more enraged by the endless love-play between husband and wife, particularly during mealtimes when they would serve each other as if in mid-honeymoon and coo away like two doves, the monk burst out, ‘I don't really know which of you two is more of an animal …'

At this Chiara once took him aside and protested:

‘Your Excellency can say what you like to me, but don't touch on Federico. I won't allow you to speak badly of him …'

‘What the hell do I care what you allow!' burst out the monk in reply. ‘Or d'you think people have forgotten that first you didn't even want him as pigs' food and threatened to let yourself die rather than marry that water melon …?'

The niece turned her back on her uncle; the latter sent his niece to stew in her own juice, vowing never to set foot in her
home again, and loudly calling himself a triple-dyed idiot for the stupid interest he had taken in that pair of animals. But those were mere sailors' vows; he could not resign himself to being silent and was set on preventing the dead woman's Will being carried out. And so, while awaiting a chance to return to the charge, he began to work on Ferdinando.

Whatever hour he went to see him, up at Pietra dell'Ovo, he found him always alone, with plane or saw or hoe in hand, intent on working as carpenter or gardener, in his shirtsleeves, like a workman or peasant. He had been like that since childhood, had Ferdinando; taciturn, timid, half-wild because of the little care his mother had taken of him, forced to amuse himself as best he could, for he never got a present even of the poorest toy. He had more or less brought himself up, used his own ingenuity to get what he needed and to look after himself. When others went out for amusement he stayed in the house, tearing up wooden or cardboard boxes to make little theatres or altars or huts which he would then give to whoever asked for them, particularly to Lucrezia, of whom he felt very fond as his companion in destiny; and if at times they came to look for him because he had visitors, or some relation wanted to see him, he would run off and hide in holes where no one could manage to find him, or take refuge in the shop of a watchmaker, a close friend who was teaching him his craft.

One day, on St Ferdinand's Day, Don Cono Canalà gave him a copy of
Robinson Crusoe
. He devoured it from cover to cover and was overwhelmed as if by a revelation. From that moment his taste for the savage life grew; his one and constant desire was to be shipwrecked on a desert island and sustain himself. Then he began to try out experiments in the garden and terrace of the villa, and acquired a taste for country life which the princess encouraged. She had given him the nickname of ‘The Booby', because of his crazy manias, but, realising that these favoured her own plans, she let him run wild at the Pietra dell'Ovo, first amid the shrubbery and cacti, then in time, maturing her plan for general spoilage in favour of her eldest son and of Raimondo, over the whole estate, insisting, however, on a contract in full legal order, by which her son had to pay her
five hundred
onze
a year on the takings with the residue to him.

The contract was a bargain to Donna Teresa, for it saved her thirty-six
onze
a year for the agent, as Ferdinando went straight off to settle there so as to cultivate on his own the
island
which he had acquired; and then it ensured her an income which the estate did not yield. The Booby relied on improvements to pay the five hundred
onze
for his mother, leaving the rest for himself, and as soon as he entered into possession he began digging, scooping out wells, tearing down almond trees to plant lemons, stripping vineyards to replant almond trees, going his own sweet way, in a word, as he had dreamt. His pleasure, actually, would have been far greater had he been able to do all by himself; but, forced to call in labourers and gardeners, he himself worked with them, tearing out weeds, carrying off basketfuls of stones, lopping trees, and acting as carpenter, builder and decorator too, for one of his first occupations had been to enlarge and embellish the agent's old house. He was happy leading the life of the hero who had excited his imagination as if he really were on a desert island a thousand miles from the world. He slept on a kind of sailor's bunk, made tables and chairs by himself, and the house was like a workshop, littered with saws, planes, drills, pulleys, spades and picks; there was also an assortment of stakes and beams, and sacks of flour to make bread, and supplies of gunpowder, a shelf of books, all the things which a wrecked man would save from a ship before it broke up.

From the very first year, though, he had been unable to pay the whole of the rent promised to his mother; there still remained a good half to give her which the princess noted regularly as a debt from him. Then by changing plantations, putting into action novelties he heard talk of or read about in treatises on agriculture or thought up for himself, he succeeded in diminishing the yield from the estate each year. It was the fault of hired labourers who did not carry his orders out properly, he would say, or of the confused weather, but his mother would jeer at him on purpose to encourage him in his mania, and succeeded wonderfully well. And the yield got less and less, and did not even reach a hundred
onze
, in spite of the fact that apart from his tools and a book or two he never spent
a thing on himself and subsisted frugally on the products of his garden and shooting; and the few times when he did appear at the palace he scandalised even the servants, he was so ragged and dirty and down at heel in very old clothes.