The Viceroys (27 page)

Immediately after Mass the novices went to the refectory, sometimes to the big one together with the Fathers, sometimes by themselves in a smaller one as the Rule prescribed; recreation began later, after their meal, when they scattered in the gardens, where they would play at hide-and-seek, skittles, or castles, or garden and each tend his own tree, or send up kites and balloons. Beyond the surrounding wall stretched uncultivated land, all lava and scrub, as far as the Flora, the big garden set aside for the monks' recreation. The boys would sometimes go
there to run up and down the great alleys, and the young prince, who had quickly got into the monastery ways and was the liveliest of the lot, would often clamber on to the wall, try to climb over it and get into the wilds. But then he would be warned by the monk in charge and by Fra' Carmelo.

‘Don't pass there … don't risk the other side, or the spirits will lay hands on you; if they get you they'll take you away with them …'

‘Have you seen these spirits?' Consalvo once asked Giovannino Radalì.

‘No, I haven't; they come at night, they say.'

At night they could not look there because after their evening walk down in the town, they went in after supper for evening studies and prayers.

Fra' Carmelo kept them company, saw they had all they wanted, and when there was nothing to do amused them by telling stories of former novices who were now either choir-monks or back home; or by repeating old tales such as the famous theft of wax during the Night of the Holy Nail; or of the 1848 Revolution when San Nicola had served as headquarters for Mieroslawski; or the coming of King Ferdinand and his Queen in 1834. But he was at his most expansive on things to do with the monastery.

It was not quite certain who had founded it at the very beginning, but in 1136 some devout Benedictine monks had withdrawn to meditate and do penance in the Etna woods, and there with the help of Count Errico they had built the first monastery of San Leo. San Leo was one of the many extinct craters of the Mongibello, covered with woods and mantled with snow for six months of the year; a true solitude adapted to their holy purposes.

In winter the north wind whistled round their poor hut, cut into their faces, chapped their hands, froze everything; so severe was it that many of the monks caught serious illnesses, being unable to stand up to such rigours. And so permission had been got to send the sick ones lower down, to a hospice built in the wood of San Nicola; and there, as it was less uncomfortable, some of the healthy monks also began to go. At San Leo, on top of the cold came another trial when the mountain erupted,
vomiting fire and burning cinders; earthquakes shook the building, lava destroyed trees and dried up wells, red-hot cinders burnt up every bit of green. ‘How could the poor Fathers endure so many disasters?' Meditation was all very well, but when the ground itself began dancing a tarantella, how could they concentrate and pray? Penance was even better, but with such mortifications penitents might go straight to the next world before getting a chance to purge their sins. In consequence they decided to ask permission to settle definitely at San Nicola, around which soon grew a village called Nicolosi, after the saint. There a monastery was built with more space, bigger than the old one, and there for many years the monks stayed.

Nicolosi was no joke either though. The snow may not have lain for six months, but it fell thick in winter, and the cold was still piercing, so much so that sick monks had to be sent to another infirmary built lower down, at the gates of Catania. The countryside was also infested by robbers. Of course the monks, with their vow of poverty, should not have feared them, for ‘not a hundred thieves', says the proverb, ‘can despoil a naked man'. But kings, queens, viceroys and barons had begun to make gifts to the monastery, and soon there were so many legacies that the monks found themselves possessed of a large fortune. Now were all those riches to be left to the mice to enjoy? And so in 1550 the Benedictines decided to establish themselves in the city, and laid the foundation stone of a superb building in the presence of the Viceroy Medinaceli.

Some suggested that St Benedict must be suffering agonies at his sons leaving the woods and coming to settle like gentry in the city, but this was surely belied by the fact that when the monastery was finished it was preserved by the glorious founder of the Order from the volcano's fire; the lava from Monti Rossi, which had got as far as Catania and was moving straight towards the monastery, on reaching the façade turned west and plunged straight into the sea without doing it any harm. It is true that an earthquake in 1693 razed the building to the ground, but this punishment was inflicted not only on the monks but on half Sicily as well, which collapsed like a house of cards. So finally the buildings to be admired now were begun, on plans too grandiose to be carried out completely; by 1735 only
half was done. The wealth of the monks was then at its height: seventy thousand
onze
a year, and some of their estates were so vast that none had ever got round them!

When Fra' Carmelo talked of these things he would go on and on, for he had spent more than fifty years amid those walls, and loved the monks, the novices, the pictures in the church and the trees in the park as if they were all part of his own family. He knew their estates, lands, and farms better than all the country Procurators to each of whom was assigned only one property to look after, and if something had to be remembered such as the date of a distant event or the extent of an old crop, everyone would have recourse to him.

The young prince was now his great joy; he kept him by as much as he could, gave him sweets and toys, praised him to the Abbot, to the master of the novices, to his uncles and to all. The boy was in truth rather too lively, apt to bully his companions and quarrel with them. Fra' Carmelo, ever patient and indulgent, would excuse him with the novice master if he committed some little fault, and recommend forbearance to other lay-brothers if they had to pay the penalty for these escapades.

‘One must let them be, these lads. Remember they're gentry, and it's for us to obey them.'

The lay-brothers, in fact, were there to do the heavy work. They served the Fathers in the refectory and ate at a second sitting, and when the monks said office in Choir they only recited the Rosary in a corner. Those who entered into the novitiate and became monks had to be noble, and Fra' Carmelo, as enthusiastic about such matters as Donna Ferdinanda, would exult over all the nobility at San Nicola. There in fact were members of the leading families, not only in the Val di Noto but the whole of Sicily, because in the rest of Sicily there was only one other monastery of Cassinese monks, at Palermo, and that was so inferior in size, wealth and importance that recalcitrant monks were sent there from Catania as a punishment. The Abbot was a Neapolitan grandee, second son of the Duke of Cosenzano; Father Borgia, a Roman, of the family which had given a Pope to Christendom, had come from Monte Cassino; and then among islanders there were the Gerbini, descended from King Manfred in the female line; the Salvo, who had come
to Sicily with the Swabians; the Toledo, the Requense, the Melina, the Currera, of Spanish origin like the Uzeda; the Cùrcuma and the Sangonti, of Lombard nobility; the Grazzeri, who had come from Germany; the Corvitini, who were Flemish; the Carvano, the Costante, who were French; and the Emanuele, who belonged to a branch of the Paleologhi, Emperors of the East.

‘Just being with the Benedictines, as monk or novice, means a man's noble,' explained Don Carmelo to the young prince. ‘Here only enter those from top families like Your Paternity.'

The boys were called ‘Your Paternity', and ‘Don' like the monks, and every time that a Father or a novice passed in front of lay-brothers the latter were supposed to bow very low with arms crossed on their chest; if they were sitting, to get to their feet in greeting. One of these lay-brothers, Fra' Liberato, who was very old, almost a centenarian and quite incapable by then, used to come out of his room to tremble in the sun on an armchair. One day the young prince passed by him and the old man did not get up. The boy reported this to the novice master, who gave the old lay-brother a great wigging.

‘He's ga-ga, poor old boy,' said Fra' Carmelo in excuse. ‘When we get old we're worse than when we were children!'

So Consalvo received the same lessons as those given him by Donna Ferdinanda, and absorbed far more easily than others those in Latin and arithmetic. They gave him an extraordinary idea of his own worth but also got him into trouble with his companions, particularly those older than himself, because of the contempt with which he treated them. Michele Rocca also gloried in having a Viceroy among his ancestors, but Consalvo corrected him, ‘A Viceroy? Just a President of the Kingdom!…' and when the other said, ‘No, Viceroy …' Consalvo said, ‘No, President …' until Michelino rushed at him in fury. Then, rather than come to blows, he shouted for help and Fra' Carmelo had to make up the quarrel. But he would start again with others, causing squabble after squabble.

Most of those baronial families had a nickname, often derogatory, by which they were better known in the city than by their own names. The Fiammona were called the
Kegs
, because they were gross as half-barrels; the San Bernardo the
Beaneaters
, an
allusion to the poverty to which they were reduced; the Currera were called the
Scabby
because all had heads as bald as billiard-balls; the Salvo were called the
Saliva-eaters
, and others worse. The young prince, when short of insults, would yell to his companions, ‘Oh, you
Bran-bellies
!… Oh, you
Pork-skins
!…' and they, being unable to give as good as they got, since the nickname of the Uzeda, ‘the Viceroys', showed that family's former power, would jump on him when they could lay hold of him and give him a good hiding. Fra' Carmelo then rushed up with hands on high to free his protégé and preach peace, mutual love and attention to study.

During lessons, when he took the trouble to be attentive, Consalvo understood all and got praise and prizes, but there were no punishments anyway, for the masters, who were all priests of low-class origin, did not even dare call their pupils ‘donkey'. The Prior, to show his satisfaction at the novice master's good reports, came to visit his nephew at the Novitiate sometimes, bringing presents of sweets and holy books; Don Blasco, in the refectory, gave him an occasional slap in sign of caress; and the first time Fra' Carmelo brought him to the palace on half-a-day's holiday, the whole family, all united for the occasion, made a great fuss of him.

‘What a fine little monk!… what a fine little monk!'

The princess, sad at having him no longer with her but resigned as always to her husband's wishes, devoured him with kisses, embracing him the more tightly because of her repulsion for others; Donna Ferdinanda, who had come on purpose to the palace, was also full of caresses for him; Lucrezia, placated now that there was no danger of finding him in her room, gave him sweets and biscuits; the prince praised obedient children, though without laying aside his habitual severity. Don Eugenio made a speech about the benefits of education, and even his Uncle Ferdinando came down from the country to be present at this visit. Only his Aunt Chiara and the marchese were not there; sure they were about to have the son long-awaited and desired, one sad day they had found the pregnancy gone, and from that day were mourning for their lost hope. But there was a six-year-old girl who looked at the little monk with big, curious eyes, and a nurse holding a baby-in-arms.

‘There are your cousins, Uncle Raimondo's daughters,' explained the princess.

‘Where's Aunt Matilde?'

‘She isn't very well …'

But Donna Ferdinanda cut short this empty talk and began questioning her young nephew about his companions, life in the monastery and how he spent his day, while Fra' Carmelo praised the boy to his mother.

‘Would you like to be a monk?' asked the prince as a joke. ‘And be in the monastery for always?'

‘Yes,' replied he, so as to hold his end up. ‘It's fine at San Nicola …'

The monks, in fact, had a high old time: eating, drinking, and amusing themselves. On getting up in the morning they each went to say their Mass down in the church, often behind closed doors so as not to be disturbed by the faithful. Then they withdrew to their apartments, to eat something while awaiting luncheon, at which, in kitchens as spacious as barracks, worked no fewer than eight cooks, apart from kitchen-hands. Every day the cooks got four loads of oak charcoal from Nicolosi to keep the ovens always hot, and for frying alone the kitchen Cellarer would consign to them every day four bladders of lard of two
rotoli
each, and two
cafissi
of oil; enough for six months at the prince's. The pots and pans were big enough to boil a whole calf's haunch and roast a swordfish complete; two kitchen-hands would each grasp half a great cheese and spend an hour grating it; the chopping-block was an oak trunk which no two men could get their arms round; and every week a carpenter, paid four
tarì
and half a barrel of wine for this service, had to saw off a couple of inches or it became unserviceable from so much chopping.

The Benedictines' kitchen had become a proverb in town. The macaroni pie with its crust of short pastry, the rice-balls each big as a melon, the stuffed olives and honey-cakes, were dishes which no other cook could make; and for their ices and fruit-drinks and frozen
cassette
, the Fathers had called specially from Naples, Don Tino, from the Benvenuto café. All this was made in such quantities that it was sent round as presents to monks' and novices' families, and the servitors would sell the
remains and get four, and some six,
tarì
each for them daily.

The servitors looked after the monks' apartments, bore messages for them in town, accompanied them to Choir holding their cowls, served them in their rooms if their Paternities were unwell or did not feel like coming down to the refectory. There lay-brothers served. At midday, when all were gathered in the vast hall with its frescoed ceiling, lit by twenty-four windows big as front doors, the Reader for the week would get up on the rostrum and begin mumbling at the first forkful of macaroni, after the
Benedicite.
The rota for reading went from the youngest novices to the oldest monks by order of age, but once it reached the newly-ordained it went back and began again in order to avoid the bother for the older Fathers, who sat comfortably at tables arranged along the walls above a kind of wide pavement. In the centre of the big horseshoe the Abbot had a table to himself. The lay-brothers took round the dishes, eight at a time, on a tray called a ‘porter' which they bore on their shoulders. There was a distinction between dinners and suppers, the latter composed of five courses, the former of seven on feast-days. And as a confused clatter of crockery and gurgling of drink and tinkling of silver rose from the tables, the Reader mumbled, from high on his rostrum, the Rule of St Benedict. ‘… 34th Commandment, be not proud; 35th, give not yourself to wine; 36th, eat not too much; 37th Commandment, sleep not too much; 38th Commandment, be not lazy …'