The Viceroys (45 page)

‘A fine affair you suggested! The other creditors are opposed to ceding the mortgage!'

Benedetto was so astounded that he could find no reply, but Lucrezia turned to him, saying:

‘Is there no way of getting them to agree?'

‘The creditors?… of course … They can be got to agree …' and just restraining a smile he exclaimed, ‘Your Excellency must not worry, Your Excellency's credit was privileged. We'll make 'em do the proper thing, don't doubt that!'

Next day Donna Ferdinanda came back with her defending lawyer so that Benedetto could explain things to him. And she returned again next day and the one after, until to content her he went down into town with his wife to disentangle the web himself. They were supposed to spend a month or so at the Belvedere, but this meant they stayed there scarcely a week. He did not complain, pleased at having made peace with the aunt who, after seeking him out every day in the country, now came morning and evening to visit him in town.

She would arrive at a time when the Giulente father and mother had not yet been to see their daughter-in-law, who always stayed in bed late. Benedetto, up with the sun, would give the servants orders for meals and see that his wife when she rose found the house all in order. And Donna Ferdinanda, after discussing the matter of her loan, would begin commenting on her niece's and nephew's affairs; they were dining late in order to follow that
Italian
mode brought over by that pig of a duke; if it was Friday she said they bought fish that was too expensive when they could have had stock-fish, as she did, and why give the maid full keep instead of just soup, as she herself did at home? Gradually she put her nose into all the most minute and intimate details; she went over their accounts, examined the washerwomen's bills, criticised a purchase of dusters, laid down rules of domestic economy, blamed Benedetto's open-handedness after having opposed the marriage because of the Giulente's ‘meanness'.

Benedetto never seemed annoyed by this curious minute vigilance, for he thought it a sign of benevolence; in fact to ingratiate himself better, he invited his aunt to dine once a week and another to take luncheon. But the old spinster needed no begging
to come and made use of her niece and nephew in any way she could, while exercising her criticism with ever-increasing authority, expecting to be listened to in all things and every way. Unable to get a rise out of Benedetto, who would stand before her like a servant, she criticised her niece for getting up late and staying in a dressing-gown till midday with hair over shoulders and feet in slippers. Eventually the latter said to her husband:

‘She's beginning to annoy me, you know!'

Then to please her, and taking no notice of Donna Ferdinanda's pouts, he began spacing out their invitations; but just when he thought he was going to eat alone again with his wife he would see the spinster suddenly appear, called by Lucrezia.

Lucrezia indeed changed her mind from one moment to the next, and everyone agreed with her, not only her husband, but also his father and mother. They fussed over her as if she were a precious object, satisfied her slightest whim, gave her everything she wanted. So she would get up a little later every day and do nothing for a couple of hours, not even wash. When she was finally dressed she would go off sometimes to visit her sister Chiara, who had miscounted the months and not yet been delivered; but more often to the palace where she had sworn never to set foot again, but now stayed so long that her husband often had to pass by and fetch her at meal-times. She would also return there every evening to take part in the usual conversazione. So that, all in all, and apart from her hours of sleep, she was spending more time under her parental than under her marital roof. But the Giulente family considered it quite natural for her to want to see her relatives, nor did Benedetto see fit to remind her of her former intentions. Then one fine day when he offered to accompany her to the palace as usual, she said:

‘I'll have both hands cut off before I go to that house again!'

‘What's happened? What have they done to you?…'

‘What have they done to me? Just read this!'

For weeks the prince had been putting off payment of the last three thousand
onze
; now finally he had sent in a new bill through Signor Marco in a sealed envelope addressed to Benedetto.
Lucrezia had opened it. There was a debit column, giving expenses for the wedding; a total of a hundred and twenty-five
onze.
Drinks, cakes, packets of candles, oil for the Carcel lamps were all noted down; to every servant a tip of an
onze
; ten
onze
for flowers, twelve
tarì
for carriages hired by Baldassarre and even fifteen
tarì
for broken plates. When Giulente read this bill he burst out laughing, so absurd did he find meanness pushed to such a point. But Lucrezia was furious against her brother.

‘What d'you find to laugh about? It's disgusting behaviour! That's why his orders were so big … But thirty
onze
worth of cakes, whoever could have eaten that amount? A hundred
rotoli's
weight! And those few roses he had sent down from the Belvedere? And the broken plates?…'

Although her husband tried to calm her by pointing out that after all the prince was not obliged to spend his own money, she refused to listen to reason and began pouring out other matters which she had previously denied even to herself.

‘Not obliged? And what about the income from my dowry which he appropriated for six years, measuring out my food while not letting me buy myself a pin?… And that transaction he forced me into, taking me by the throat, before consenting to our marriage? And stripping Ferdinando with me? I swear I'll never look him in the face again …'

And she did in fact give up going to the palace. The prince on his side did not come to her either; his wife, who wanted to pay her sister-in-law a visit, was rigorously forbidden. Cousin Graziella, after visiting the newly-married pair once, followed the head of the family's example, so that Lucrezia began inveighing against that other gossip too.

‘She doesn't want to come to my house? The honour would be hers. Stuck-up little thing, whom my mother never even bothered about, to give herself such airs! Do they think they're hurting me by not coming to my house? Don't they know there's nothing I'd like better? That I don't want to see one of them any more?'

Don Blasco, for his part, had never once set foot in the newly married couple's house, and Lucrezia, declaring herself content, also spoke out against the monk's crazy behaviour and dirty
habits. She had it against her sister Chiara too, without the latter having done anything to her, and derided her for her eternal pregnancy which was now reaching its tenth month. She attacked them all in fact, and to the Countess Matilde, who came to visit her as before:

‘D'you see,' she said, ‘what a dreadful lot they are! They've made you suffer, haven't they? And that rascal of a husband of yours? With all the rest of them helping him to run after that woman?…'

Pale then flushing at this speech, Matilde tried to put in a good word even so; but the other warmed to her theme.

‘And you're defending him too? Let him be! All tarred with the same brush, they are! And there's no telling what trouble's still in store for you, you poor thing! As for me I thank the Lord that I was able to get away from them! Do they think I'm going to bow down to them again? A lot I care for them and their visits!…'

One day on coming home, Benedetto, who had bowed his head to these outbursts to please his wife and not from his own inclination, found her sitting beside Don Blasco, whom she was serving with biscuits and Rosalìo wine. The monk, no longer seeing Lucrezia at the palace, having heard of the break between brother and sister, had appeared like an evil genius before his niece. And Lucrezia, who had been abusing him so roundly, had at once risen to kiss his hand. ‘How is Your Excellency? My husband has gone out … If Your Excellency would care to wait a moment, he cannot be long …' And while they waited for him the monk got out of her the whole story. At her outburst against Giacomo and Cousin Graziella he seemed to swell up in his chair; but he expressed no opinion of his own, lined up with neither side: he just nodded, encouraging the story-teller to go further. On the arrival of Benedetto, who could not believe his own eyes, the monk allowed his new nephew to kiss his hand, chattered away for a time about all manner of subjects, ate another biscuit, drank another glass of wine, and went off, accompanied by husband and wife as far as the landing.

From that day Benedetto could not get rid of him. He came constantly, at different times, when least expected. Preceding him would be a loud, masterful ring at the door bell, and once he was
inside he would begin spinning around like a top, talking of a thousand things, peering into all the corners, groping about in all the furniture, reading all the papers, having his say on all his niece's and nephew-in-law's affairs even more than Donna Ferdinanda, but going off as soon as the latter appeared. Benedetto was no longer master in his own house, as nothing escaped the double criticism of the spinster and the monk. But he put up cheerfully with everything, pleased to find himself acknowledged by all the Uzeda, sorry only at the prince's coldness because of matters that did not concern him. For him whatever his wife did was right and she, who had taken on Vanna and so always heard what was going on at the palace, burst out to Don Blasco against her brother, accusing him of having robbed her, of having robbed Chiara, of now trying to rob Raimondo.

‘He urges his brother on against the wife! He's said to have told him, “What are you staying here for?” Just to throw fuel on the fire! He must be up to something! He's not one to do anything for nothing! And Raimondo is leaving with Matilde for Milazzo, they say. She's so silly, my sister-in-law is! I tried to open her eyes, as I feel sorry for her. This will end badly for her! Why, they've even asked Benedetto's advice about dissolving the marriage! I told him not to get mixed up in it all!…'

She did not say that Benedetto, sent for by Donna Ferdinanda, in whose house Raimondo was awaiting him, had been flattered at the confidence on such an intimate matter, and after struggling against his own conscience had gradually let himself be won over by the honour the spinster had done him of letting him in on a family secret, of asking his advice as a
relative
rather than consult anyone else. This idea had overcome his scruples. A stranger, some intriguing lawyer capable of doing anything for money, would have been far more to be feared and might have advised them to start on the case at once! Instead of which he was confident of succeeding in making peace between husband and wife; there would be time till the very last moment. Then the huge obstacles to be overcome ended by reassuring him. The dissolving of a marriage was a most difficult enterprise; but Donna Ferdinanda wanted to dissolve two, both Raimondo's
and the Fersas', and reasons, even pretexts, were lacking on either side.

What harm, then, did he do by listing the necessary reasons asked for by his brother-in-law before, and in discussing with the old spinster what to do if any one of those reasons really existed? Was not the whole thing purely academic, a kind of lesson in canon law, like that of his ancestor praised by the Cavaliere Don Eugenio, Gentleman of the Bedchamber?… In spite of that, secretly he was uncomfortable when meeting Matilde, feeling himself already an accomplice in the web being woven against the poor creature. The countess, however, seemed more serene and confident than at the time of her arrival in the Uzeda household. Gradually she had allowed herself to be won over by hope, seeing that Raimondo no longer mentioned return to Tuscany and promised to take her, immediately after Chiara's delivery, to Milazzo to join the children and then to Turin, where her father, placated, was awaiting them. Just as her father had forgotten his severe resolutions against Raimondo, so also Raimondo could have forgotten the love of that other one, might he not?… Did not everything come to an end, in time?…

And Chiara did not deliver. The ninth month—for the second time!—was about to end and her belly did not deflate. Pains and spasms were continuous now, but with the courage of a maniac she said nothing to anyone, determined to have her child without the help of doctors or midwives. Then the tenth month was nearly over and still she did not give birth. Surely, surely she had calculated wrongly; but, to her husband, to her relatives who exhorted her to call someone she would reply stubbornly:

‘I don't want anyone!' determined to have her child by herself.

‘This is new!' cried Don Blasco, who wanted to put his nose even into his niece's womb. ‘Whoever heard of a ten months' pregnancy? Why, it might go on for twelve with such a donkey.'

In fact, the eleventh month, according to the first calculation, had begun. And one night when she could bear no more, feeling at death's door, and no longer hid her own agonies, her husband
lost his temper for the first time in eight years of marriage and yelled:

‘If we don't get in a doctor I'm taking my hat and leaving.'

Doctor Lizio came, and shut himself in with the woman in labour, while the marchese waited anxiously in the drawing-room with relatives. Hearing the doctor opening the door and calling, he ran to ask in trepidation:

‘Doctor!… Has she had it?'

‘Had it? What d'you expect her to have?!' exclaimed Lizio. ‘Your wife has a cyst in the ovary as big as a house. A bit longer, and she was done for!'