The Viceroys (22 page)

‘When shall we see any races here, for example?'

Just at that moment Don Giacinto entered the room. He was looking so flustered and was so obviously the bearer of bad news that everyone was silenced.

‘D'you know what?'

‘What? Tell us …'

‘Cholera's broken out in Syracuse …'

All surrounded him.

‘What? Who told you?'

‘Half an hour ago, at Dimenza the chemist's … Sure news, it comes from the Intendant's … Real cholera this time; like lightning!'

All at once, as if the announcer had the disease himself, the gathering broke up amid terrified comments and laments; Raimondo accompanied Donna Isabella down to her carriage, giving her his arm; half-way down the stairs, under the nose of the duke going to verify the story, Don Blasco boomed:

‘It's a present from the
brethren
!… Ah, Radetsky, where art thou!… Ah, for another '49 …'

B
EFORE
the universal disquiet about public health all other interests faded as if by magic; for the news brought by Don Giacinto, denied at first, then confirmed, could no longer be doubted when, a few days later, it was not just a matter of suspected cases in Syracuse, but of the disease breaking out in Noto.

The duke, who was considering a return to Palermo before things got worse and the roads were closed, obstinately resisted the invitations of the prince, who was preparing to leave for the Belvedere at the first case announced in the city. The year before, as in '37, the Uzeda had escaped to their villa on the slopes of Etna where cholera never reached. Suddenly the prince put aside his scowl and talked of accord and union, wanted the whole family safe with him, all aunts and uncles, brothers and sisters. Although it was no time for business, yet to show his nephew that he had taken his interest to heart, the duke before leaving repeated to Raimondo the conversation about the I.O.U.'s and exhorted him to come to an agreement with his brother. Raimondo listened distractedly and replied almost irritably, ‘All right, all right; we'll see about it later …'

He too had changed, but, contrary to Giacomo, for the worse; he had become nervous, irascible and verbose, and was good-humoured only when Donna Isabella came to the palace. The two Fersa did not know yet where to flee the cholera. The prince advised them to take a house at the Belvedere, and be near them. This idea much attracted Donna Isabella, though her mother-in-law preferred to take refuge at Leonforte like the year before.

‘And you, where are you going?' she asked Raimondo. And the young man, who was always by her side, said:

‘Wherever you go yourself!'

She lowered her eyes with a severe look of censure, as if offended.

‘And what about your wife and daughter?'

‘Let's change the subject!'

In spite of alarm at the epidemic, relations between the two families became even closer in those days. Fersa, who had always been proud and glad to come to the Francalanza palace, now enjoyed being received there with signs of particular approval; not only Raimondo, but also and perhaps more Giacomo, seemed much to enjoy his company and that of Donna Isabella. When the princess went out for the first time after their mourning, he told her to pay them a visit; the countess, by her husband's wish, accompanied her sister-in-law.

By herself Matilde might never have gone to that woman's house. She did not want to call it jealousy, the feeling with which the other inspired her. If Raimondo, gallant with all the ladies, was for ever hanging around this one who was surrounded by every man in sight, that was no surprise; did she herself not receive continual protestations of warm friendship? And yet every time that Donna Isabella embraced and kissed her she had to make an effort not to shrink from those demonstrations of affection. She did not know how to account for the almost instinctive revulsion which she felt more strongly every day. When she tried to explain it to herself she attributed it mainly to a radical difference in character, to the lightness, affectation, lack of simplicity which she seemed to notice in the other. Had she not even heard her complain, in veiled hints, about her husband's relatives and her husband himself? Yet Matilde could observe, and almost envied, Fersa's devotion for her, and heard people say that her mother-in-law treated her better than a daughter! When she went to pay her a visit with the princess, had she not noticed this with her own eyes?

Donna Mara Fersa was of the old school, quite uneducated and even rather coarse mannered; but very shrewd and direct, and easy-going as any good housewife. She had hoped to marry
her son off in her own way, but he had once gone to Palermo, seen Isabella Pinto, an orphan, fallen violently in love and immediately asked her hand of her maternal uncle who had brought her up. She was of very noble stock but without a dowry, though she had received an excellent education in her rich uncle's house. The Fersa, on the other hand, though admitted among gentry, were of mediocre birth; Donna Ferdinanda, an admirer and friend of Donna Isabella, nicknamed them ‘Farce'—
laughable farce
—but they had a mass of money.

Donna Mara had at first tried to oppose that marriage; but as her son was head over heels in love with Isabella, who seemed even more so with him, the mother had finally agreed. And so the daughter-in-law from Palermo, elegant, educated, and noble, came to set the household upside-down; this Donna Mara took in very good part for love of her son, realising that one cannot oppose the tastes or whims of the young. Donna Isabella, though calling her ‘Mama' and showing her the respect which was her due, seemed discontented with her, ashamed of her ignorance and simplicity. This attitude was so subtle that Matilde almost blamed herself for ill-will in noticing a kind of condescending pity for the mother-in-law's opinions, as if they were those of a child or an inferior, an imperceptible exaggeration of obedience, a vague air of sacrifice which seemed intended to arouse pity in others but was particularly distasteful to Matilde.

Anyway it seemed certain that she would not have to endure her company for long. The only thing keeping Raimondo in Sicily could be the need to settle his interests; but he might hasten his departure to escape the cholera. Already at the first rumours of an epidemic, worried at being so far from her father and child, she had asked what he wanted to do; but her husband had not yet decided. The year before, in Tuscany, on hearing the news of the carnage in Sicily, of the terror reigning in the island, of the collapse of all civil organisation, he had expressed his satisfaction at being far away from his ‘savage' native land, where, said he, he would take good care not to find himself in times of epidemic; so she was almost sure that they would cross over to the mainland, picking up the baby on the way.

Raimondo, on the other hand, seemed hesitant. He did complain of the evil star which had got him caught by the plague in an island trap, but said they could not travel because of her pregnancy now that the disease had broken out. Meanwhile Matilde's father was writing for them to join him at Milazzo, as the cholera was coming from the south, and leave Catania soon, not wait till panic-stricken locals barricaded all roads. And so, as the news got worse, as her father's letters became more pressing, as the danger of being cut off from her child grew graver, her heart was assailed with terror and anxiety as if she were about to lose her dear ones for ever; she exhorted Raimondo more warmly to come to some decision and leave at once.

‘Let's get away!… let's go to my home for a time! I don't want to leave Teresina alone … We'll also be farther from the plague's hot-bed.'

‘Why should I shut myself up in a seaside village in time of cholera? And die like a dog? You must be mad! No, write to your father and sister to bring the child here.'

But the baron replied at once that he would on no account do anything so silly, as the cholera was at the gates of Catania, and he adjured his daughter not to lose time and even to leave Raimondo alone if he refused to come with her … Then she no longer knew what to do or whom to heed, frenzied at the idea of staying apart from her daughter and father, and unable to face the idea of leaving Raimondo, feeling she could live away from neither at such a time. The day that the duke packed his bags and left for Palermo she felt lost …

Till the last moment the prince had pressed his uncle to come with him to the Belvedere. The duke continued to refuse, adducing his affairs calling him to the capital and the greater safety there.

‘Don't give me a thought,' he said to his nieces and nephews, ‘I'll run no risk; but get to safety yourselves.'

‘Your Excellency need not worry about me; I have all ready to leave at the first alarm,' replied Giacomo. Turning to his brother, whom he had already invited once, he repeated in Matilde's presence:

‘If you care to come too, I'd be pleased.'

Raimondo did not reply. Did he really want to stay apart from his daughter? Could he live so calmly far away from her in the terrible days coming? Matilde sobbed, begging him not to do such a thing. He replied testily:

‘I don't know yet what I'll do. One thing's sure, I'm not going to Milazzo.'

‘Are we to leave that poor child alone then? Suppose they close the ferry, suppose we can't see her any more?'

‘First of all your daughter is not abandoned in the middle of a road but is with her grandfather and aunt. Then if that stiffneck of a father of yours had listened to me by now he'd have brought her here and we'd be ready to go off all together to the Belvedere, where there isn't a shadow of danger … Anyway, I'm not going to Milazzo; there's already talk of suspected cases in Messina. Go alone, if you wish.'

And all the Uzeda, as if enjoying her anguish, as if not wanting to let her out of their clutches, approved and said that now everyone must stay where they were. Her father reproved her harshly for stubbornness and selfishness, while she thought she was going mad; dreaming every night ghastly dreams about slow death agonies, final separations, grisly tortures; weeping as if her child were dead and the new creature moving in her womb too; seeing her father and Raimondo hurl themselves at each other … And one terrible nightmarish day the prince came to say that the first case had appeared in the city, that the roads were being blocked, that they must leave for the Belvedere at once—where the two Fersa would be coming also …

Villa Francalanza at the Belvedere was still in the same state as three months before at the moment of the princess's death. There, with their suites of servants, met the families of the prince and his guests, Chiara and the marchese, Donna Ferdinanda, the Cavaliere Don Eugenio, Raimondo and his wife. Ferdinando had refused to hear of leaving his own place; he had stayed there for the cholera of the year before; he would stay for this year's too, declaring that no place offered better guarantees of immunity. Don Blasco and the Prior Don Lodovico had already made off, with all the San Nicola monks, for Nicolosi.

The Uzeda country mansion was big enough to house a regiment
of soldiers as well as the prince's guests but, like the palace in town, it had been through so many modifications and successive remodellings that it seemed made up of various layers of building stuck together haphazardly; there were not two windows of the same design or two façades of the same colour. The internal lay-out looked like the work of a lunatic, so often had it been altered. The same had happened with the surrounding land. Once upon a time, under Prince Giacomo XIII, this had been nearly all noble gardens. The prince, a lover of flowers, had spent on these some of the sums which had brought about his ruin; he had caused a well to be dug for water through the centuries-old lava of Mongibello, to a depth of 100
canne.
The whole work was done by hand, with picks, and took about three years. When the water was finally found and drawn up by a chain-pump, he considered that viticulture could advantageously be exchanged for orchards, so he tore up all the vines in the land not yet transformed into a garden, to plant oranges and lemons. Thus the money laid out by his grandfather to build vats and cellar was lost.

But on Donna Teresa's advent, all was thrown upside-down once more. Flowers being things ‘which one can't eat', roses and carnations were uprooted, pillars reduced to bricks, hothouses transformed into stalls for mules, and as wine fetched a higher price than fruit, the fine orange and lemon trees which had been tended so carefully were sacrificed for vines. There were now only a few acres of garden left between the gates and the house, and just enough fruit-trees for lemonade in summer-time. So all the money was truly flung down the well.

Now as soon as he arrived the prince began renovating too, as he had at the palace. The land he did not touch, judging, like his mother, that the bedraggled roses clambering over the iron gates and walls of the villa were enough for the pleasure of sight and smell, and that cabbages, lettuces and onions were much better in the old flower-beds; but he called in workmen and told them to pull down walls and divide up rooms and block in doors and pierce new windows. He was in excellent mood and treated his guests well; he paid devoted court to his Aunt Ferdinanda, was all courtesy to his brother and sisters, his brother-in-law the marchese, and his sister-in-law Matilde. Of course,
considering the time of year, no one spoke of business. Lucrezia was even more content than he, for the Giulente, who had no house of their own in town, owned one of the pleasantest villas at the Belvedere, and Benedetto, having come up there with his family at the first rumour of cholera, passed to and fro at any hour by the Francalanza gates.