The Viceroys (7 page)

‘Every whit?…' said Baron Carcaretta, who found himself beside Don Cono. ‘Why “whit”?'

‘ “Wholly” or “entirely”. “Every whit worthy of the race …” How d'you like the concept?…'

‘Oh, it's all right; I don't understand why people go out of their way to find difficult words!'

‘You see …' Don Cono then explained, insinuatingly, ‘epigraphic style must rise to the highest flights of sustained nobility … I could not use …'

‘Oh you wrote it, did you?'

‘Yes, sir … but not alone, actually. In collaboration with the Cavaliere Don Eugenio … My particular care was the form … I should like to sec the others, as I fear some slip in copying …'

But the church was so crammed that they could scarcely advance two paces in a quarter of an hour, and all round people who could not move back or forward or see anything but the top of the pyramid were whiling away their impatience by chatting and saying whatever came into their heads about the princess. ‘Now her children can breathe at last! She held them in an iron fist …' ‘Her children? Which?…' ‘She forced Don Lodovico, the second son, to become a monk when his due was the title of duke. The eldest daughter she shut into a convent!… If she'd still lived, she'd have put the other in too … She married Chiara off because the girl didn't want to … And all for love of just one of them, young Count Raimondo …'
‘What about the father?…' ‘The father, in his day, never counted a fig. The princess held him and her brother-in-law in her grip!'

But all recognised that had it not been for her there would have been nothing left by that time. ‘An ignorant woman, yes, but a shrewd, calculating one!'

‘Is it true she couldn't read or write?'

‘She could only read her prayer-book and her account-book!'

Meanwhile Don Cono was nearing, at snail's pace, the second inscription.

Even before making out the letters, Don Cono, who knew it by memory, was reciting the epigraph to the baron, pausing a little at each word, and longer at each line, waving a hand as if scattering holy water in order to underline the salient passages:

‘I wonder if you approve of the concept, “deprived … proxy thou stood …” '

But new waves of the crowd divided him from his companion once again. From terrace and steps now came a great hiss as strokes of the death-bell at last announced the procession's departure from the palace.

Round the Francalanza home it was still like a fairground, with all the waiting carriages and people quivering with impatience. Through the half-shut gates could be seen another crowd gathered in both courtyards, a swarm of domestics in black liveries coming and going, the major-domo, hatless, panting around giving orders, the state carriage with four horses to be used as funeral car. When finally the heavy doors turned on their hinges, every head turned, every person rose on tiptoe. Ahead came a row of Capuchin friars bearing a cross, then the funeral
car, with the coffin covered in red velvet, flanked by all the servants bearing torches; then the inmates of the Uzeda old folks' home, all bare-headed; then the girls of the Orphanage with blue veils hanging to the ground; then the family carriages; two more four-horsed carriages, five two-horsed carriages, then on foot another group of forty men or so, most of them bearded, with black velvet jerkins, and also bearing wax candles.

‘Who are they?… where've they sprung from?…'

They were the Oleastro sulphur workers, called on purpose from Caltanissetta to accompany their mistress, and this last accessory really did astound all. Never had such a thing been seen before!… But the carriages advancing from all sides to get into line were pressing back the crowd, four-horsed ones coming to take first places, two-horsed ones backing amid a pawing, and a crack of whips, the curious, at risk of being crushed under the animals' feet, recognised their owners by the coats-of-arms on doors and also by the coachmen.

‘The Duke Radalì … the Prince of Roccasciano … the Baron Grazzeri … the Cùrcuma … the Constante … every one is here …'

Suddenly all turned at distant shouting.

‘What is it?… what's up?… The Trigona carriage!… The coachman won't go at the end, the others don't give way … He's right … It's an abuse …'

The Marchese Trigona's coachman, in fact, though driving a rickety equipage drawn by two old nags, had refused to go at the end of the queue where there were finer carriages belonging to people who were not noble. Baldassarre, all asweat from his efforts at ordering the procession and getting precedence respected, advanced to back up the coachman, scarcely managing to cleave a way through the crowd, cuffing urchins getting in his way and begging, ‘Make way … make way …' while a good half of the procession had already started.

From every church in the city rang a death-knell, calling people from all sides as the procession passed; the great bell of the Cathedral brought out particularly big crowds. It rang death-knells only for the noble and the learned, and its grave and solemn
nton, nton
, cost four
onze
^*
each, so that people on
hearing the great bronze boom would say ‘Some big-wig has died!…'

Quite a number of carriages, after the Trigona's, were still waiting to get started when the head of the procession had already stopped at the Capuchins.

It was impossible to bring the coffin into the church by the main steps. Not that it weighed much, for in fact it was empty, but the press on the stairs was growing, no one could go back or forward, and only a cannon-ball could have made room. They would have to take a different route, open a way among the throngs in the alleys of Santo Carcere and San Domenico and take the coffin through the monastery and sacristy. Nearly an hour went by before it was finally put on the catafalque.

The musicians had already taken their places in the gallery and unwrapped their instruments; friars with long poles were lighting the candles on the High Altar. The curious crammed in the church went on talking about the dead woman, asking each other one insistent question again and again: ‘Who'll be heir?…' Nobles and plebs, rich and poor, all wanted to know what would be in the Will, as if the dead woman could have left something to every one of her fellow-citizens. At the palace they were awaiting the arrival of the young count from Florence and of the duke from Palermo before reading the princess's last wishes, and opinions amid the public were diametrically opposite. Some maintained that all would go to the young count, but although the dead woman had loathed her eldest son, could she really disinherit him? ‘No, sir; it'll all go to the eldest son. It's true she could not endure him, but he's the head of the family, the heir to the princedom!…'

A new pushing and shoving suddenly cut off talk, and thickened the crowd at the end of the church. In came the orphan girls of the Sacred Heart with green dresses and white shawls. Baldassarre, all dressed in black, directed them towards the High Altar, calling out:

‘Make way, make way, ladies and gentlemen …'

A child, half suffocated by the press, began to scream. A beggar who had managed to enter, stumbled against an altar step and fell to the ground.

In a low voice Don Cono was proclaiming the other inscription to Canon Sortini, whom he had bumped into amid the crowd:

‘To conciliate imagery and beauty of form that is the great problem of the epigraphic style … “the mite … a hundredfold” … if I'm not mistaken …'

Now the High Altar was all aflame with candles, the movement of friars and sacristans was growing, instruments were being tuned in the musicians' gallery, a clarinet sighed, violins squeaked, a double-bass boomed, and Baldassarre, helped by lackeys of all the relations, also dressed in black, was arranging rows of chairs for the old folk and the orphans. The chairs they held high above the crowd seemed to navigate on a sea of heads, and as new people kept on pushing in, the press was awful. People's breath, the smell of candle grease, the midday heat, made the little church into an inferno. Some women had already fainted, in two or three places quarrels had broken out between those who wanted to push on and those who refused to pull back. But no one decided to leave, and in corners, along walls, before altars, gossips and idlers milled over the story of the dead woman and her family, and commented on all the extravagance.

‘A coffin with three keys!… All the more difficult to return to this world!… A habit and a rosary … Enough penance for a queen's funeral!…'

In a low voice evil tongues added:

‘After her gay life …'

Beside the holy water stoup, amid a little group of envious and penniless petty nobles, Don Casimiro Scaglisi was announcing:

‘D'you know about the prince? About what the prince did?
As soon as he got the news of his mother's death, off he rushed to the Belvedere without even having his gates shut, to gain time and be in the villa alone, and never warning Ferdinando at the Pietra dell'Ovo …'

Some protested; Don Casimiro confirmed:

‘But it's true, I tell you!… So he could have time to arrange things, and lay hands on papers and money.'

All around shook their heads. Don Casimiro was talking thus from pique, for he had been a hanger-on of the Francalanza till three days before, but since the princess had gone to the country the prince had refused to see him, thinking he had the Evil Eye.

‘Anyway, excuse me,' they observed. ‘Why ever did the prince need to keep Ferdinando away?'

‘Yes, sir, he lives a Robinson Crusoe's life at the Pietra dell'Ovo, doesn't bother about business and in the family they call him the Booby, the nickname given him by his mother. But that doesn't matter! Booby or not, the prince didn't want any of his family interfering!… I tell you I know it for sure!'

Another observed:

‘Don't talk ill of Ferdinando. With all his manias he never does any harm; he's the best of the whole family.'

‘So much so he mightn't be of the same stock …' replied Don Casimiro.

‘Sssh, sssh! we're in church,' they adjured him.

‘Don Cono's passing.'

Don Cono was now crossing the church to read the inscription set above the holy water stoup. When he neared the group they stopped him.

‘Don Cono!… Don Cono!… you have long sight. What does it say up there?'

And Don Cono read out:

‘Fine! Excellent!… I like that “intercessory” ', they exclaimed in chorus, but a prolonged ‘sssh!' suddenly passed from mouth to mouth. The Maestro Mascione, perched at the top of the orchestra gallery, had given three taps on his lectern, and conversation died, all heads turned towards the players. Amid the general attention Don Casimiro suddenly nudged his neighbours and exclaimed in a low voice:

‘Look! look!'

Just then, protected against the crowd by a servant, entered old Don Alessandro Tagliavia. In spite of his age he still held his tall figure erect, and his fine white and pink head, with its clear aquamarine eyes and moustaches yellowed with tobacco, dominated the crowd. Being unable to advance, he gazed from afar at the catafalque, the musicians' gallery, the placards of inscriptions, and meanwhile, in the silence which had fallen as if by magic, the orchestra intoned the prelude. A long groan, broken sounds of short sobs in cadenza spread throughout the church, and the professional mourners started to cry again, while the friars before the altar began their genuflections. Many heads bent, and the buzz of chat was followed by deep concentration.

‘Look!…' repeated Don Casimiro, in the group next to the holy water stoup, ‘he's come to say his last farewell!'

All their eyes were fixed on the old man. The dismissed courtier went on, interrupting himself when the orchestra quietened:

‘And I remember him crying like a child … like one in despair … when the dead woman left him for Felice Cùrcuma … after all there'd been between them!… Now it's she who's rotting away … And he'll live another twenty years; an iron constitution …' and in a lower voice, as trumpets suddenly blared and voices sang
Requiem aeternam dona eis
, he added, ‘and he keeps a girl of his own too in a little place in the suburbs … Every evening he spends with her!'

The old man made another attempt at getting near one of the inscriptions, but as Mass had begun, no one moved, and he turned back. On reaching the church door, when the fresh air hit his forehead, he thrust his hat on his head before he was even outside.

‘Sic transit gloria mundi!'

But when the first effect of the music was past, conversations
again started up here and there. Raciti, the first violin of the Municipal Orchestra, muttered away among unknowns:

‘A fine show, no doubt of that, a fine ceremony!… The point is, who'll pay up!'

He was furious, as Signor Marco had preferred Mascione's Mass to his son's, and was consoling himself by talking against the family: there was no one as sticky in paying, and Titta Caruso, the box-office manager at the theatre, knew something of that, forced as he was every year to go up and down the palace stairs a hundred times before getting them to pay for their box. One day the prince wasn't in, another the princess, another time Signor Marco was out, or they were all in the country …