The Viceroys (80 page)

‘Go to your brother, to your sister … they have an obligation to help you … why come to me?'

Then, alarmed by the old man's expression, he turned his back.

When he heard him go, he called the porter and ordered him never to let the old man in again.

This order had the unanimous approval of the servants; that cavaliere was really no honour to the family, not so much for what was said about him as for the state into which he had fallen. The new major-domo confessed, ‘I'm ashamed every time I have to announce him to the master …'

All the old man's attempts to get into the palace were vain. He could go on declaring, ‘My nephew is waiting for me, he told me he'd be at home,' or, ‘I saw him coming in,' or, ‘There he is behind that window …'; the porter, the ostlers, the retainers all said in his face, ‘Your Excellency had better go, it's just a waste of time.' They called him ‘Excellency' as in carnival time they did the street-sweepers dressed up as barons. He tried to force his way in, but then they seized him and pushed him out. ‘Excellency; so roughly?… Those are not ways for Excellencies like you!…'

One day, he sat down in the porter's lodge and declared he would not move until his nephew passed. At first the porter joked
about it; then he tried friendly persuasion and touching his pride. ‘This isn't the place for Your Excellency … a gentleman like Your Excellency sitting with a porter! Aren't you ashamed?' But the old man did not move, did not reply, sat there grim and hungry as a wolf. Then the porter began losing patience and suddenly stopped the ‘Excellency'. ‘Are you going, yes or no?…' and as Don Eugenio sat nailed into his chair the other finally lost his temper, even stopped calling him
Lei
, and seizing him by the shoulders, pulled him to his feet and kicked and pushed him outside, yelling:

‘Out with you, I say, the devil take you!'

Donna Ferdinanda thrust him out as if he were a mangy cur; the duke gave him a small sum, making him realise that he could rely on no more alms from him. The best thing to do was find him work, which he himself wanted; so Benedetto Giulente, who had also given him money, mentioned this to Consalvo.

‘What job d'you suggest?' answered the young prince. ‘He's an old fool, can't do a thing. D'you want the Mayor's uncle to act as usher or dog-catcher?'

It was clear that there was nothing doing in the Town Hall because of the young prince's understandable pride. Giulente went to the duke and suggested he should be put in some office at the Provincial or Prefect's headquarters; then the duke, to avoid other demands for financial help, arranged a post for him as copyist at the Provincial Archives, the best that could be found. But when the old man was told this he went red as a poppy.

‘Me a scribbler's job? Who d'you take me for?'

‘But you see …' Benedetto suggested respectfully, ‘Your Excellency has no academic degrees … and is not so young … Public administration is demanding, work …'

‘And you suggest making me a copyist?' cried the cavaliere, ‘me, Eugenio Uzeda of Francalanza, Gentleman of the Bedchamber to Ferdinand II, author of the
Sicilian Herald?
… Why don't you take on the job yourself, you little donkey?'

So the old man began asking for money again. But the duke, to punish him for refusing that post, shut the door in his face, and Lucrezia, after judging him worthy of the highest offices
simply to put her husband to shame, refused to have him sniffing round her house either. One day the cavaliere, in ever more wretched and bedraggled condition, went to his niece Teresa. The porter did not recognise him and would not let him pass. When he eventually reached the young duchess, who wrung her hands at seeing him in such a state, he began complaining:

‘You see how your father's reduced me? He stole my book, the rascal? He's a thief who …'

‘Uncle, please!' exclaimed Teresa. And she emptied her purse into the hand of the old man, trembling with greed at sight of the money. He appeared again and again at the Radalì palace, but the dowager duchess, to avoid the servants' comments, declared that Teresa could help him if she wished, but was not to let him into the house again.

And so that door was shut on him too.

What he expected was a post as professor or accountant paid enough to live a gentlemanly life and do no work, but as this was not forthcoming he took to stopping people he knew in the street and giving them an account of his circumstances.

‘They've despoiled me, reduced me to poverty, they have! My brother the Benedictine left me five hundred
onze
, and they tore up his Will and made a false one! My nephew the prince stole my great work the
Sicilian Herald
!… And they shut their gates in my face! On me, Eugenio of Francalanza! Gentleman of the Bedchamber! President of the Academy of the Four Poets!… Do they know who I am? If you come to my house I'll show you my medals and diplomas—a whole shelf full …'

His megalomania grew from day to day, with his wretchedness, his difficulties and humiliation. He would announce:

‘The Government has invited me to Rome for a Chair in Dante Studies. But I'm not going! I'd be mad to! I'd far rather go to Germany where they know all my famous books and where learning is respected!… The Prefect told me that the King wants me to be his son's tutor. Me, a pedagogue? What do they take me for? If he's called Savoy, I'm called Uzeda. Ah, Don Umber to, don't you know …?' Then, in a whisper, ‘Could you lend me five lire? I've left my purse at home …'

He would be given two or one, even a half-lira; and he accepted anything. His relations, warned of this scandal,
shrugged their shoulders or said, ‘We must see to it' without doing anything. Giulente and Teresa did, secretly, help him as best they could, but he had now got into the habit of seeking alms; it was pleasant and easy and the passage of money from others' pockets to his own seemed quite natural to him. Also a deep instinct of revenge against his relatives urged him to go on putting them to shame.

And one day the news went through the city:

‘Have you heard? The Cavaliere Don Eugenio is begging in the streets!'

He was now literally begging. Even if he had a few lire in his pocket he would go up to unknown passers-by, hold out a hand and say:

‘Please will you give me a little money? Just a cent to buy myself a cigar?'

He snatched at the money as if it were prey, thrust it into his pocket and then went up to another:

‘Please, a coin?'

Teresa, accompanied by her husband, went to visit him in the garret to which he had been reduced, and threw herself at his feet.

‘Uncle, we'll give you whatever you want, as long as you don't do this any more! A person like you to lower yourself so!'

‘Yes, yes …'

And he took the money they offered him. And next day began again. Now it was an obsession; the habit had become a disease and ended by bemusing his weak Uzeda brain. Ragged as a real beggar, his dirty white beard straggling over his haggard face, his feet in floppy cloth slippers, he went around leaning on a stick and asking:

‘A coin, please!… just this once!…'

And to earn his money he would make a show of madness. Some asked who he was, wasn't he the Cavaliere Uzeda? Then he would cry:

‘Eugenio Consalvo Filippo Blasco Ferrante Francesco Maria Uzeda of Francalanza, Mirabella, Oragua, Lumera, etc., etc.… Gentleman of the Bedchamber (with functions) to His Majesty, a real King!…' and he doffed his hat. ‘Ferdinand II; decorated by His Highness the Bey of Tunis Nisciam-Ifitkar; President of
the Academy of the Four Poets, Corresponding Member of numerous scientific-literary-volcanological societies, of Naples, London, Paris, Caropepe, Petersburg, Paulsburg, New York and Forlimpopoli, author of the celebrated, historico-heraldic-blasonic-noble-chronological work entitled the
Sicilian Herald
with supplement … Please … a coin to buy myself a cigar …'

T
ERESA'S
second child, another boy, was born a year after the first, and everyone said to husband and wife ‘So you're losing no time!' She had suffered little at the first birth, and this one she scarcely noticed; worthy reward for her purity. The baptismal ceremony was a modest one this time partly because it was for a younger son, a little baron, and partly for another more distressing reason. The prince, scratching the nape of his neck one day between the shoulder blades because of a strong itch, had broken the skin and drawn a little blood. At first he took no notice of it, but after a time just where he had scratched there formed a kind of tumour which grew until it irked his movements and prevented him from lying on his back in bed. Everyone attributed this to excessive scratching. Even so, as the uncomfortable growth did not go, a surgeon had to be called.

The doctor confirmed that it was of no importance, but added that it would not heal without a small incision. At this announcement the prince went pale and refused to submit to the operation, But, ever since Teresa bore her first child, the tumour had grown more and given so much trouble that he had consented to its being cut. The operation lasted longer than was expected, and the prince was confined to house for many days. Meanwhile, the baptism of the little Baron of Filici took place without pomp. Mayor Consalvo was godfather and Giovannino came from Augusta for the ceremony. During the year he had made two or three visits to his godson, according to his promise; brief visits, of one or two days. It was said that at Augusta on his estate of Costantina he had a farmer's daughter, a well-set-up
pink and white peasant girl, for whose sake he never stayed very long in Catania. The duchess his mother was very pleased about this, as the surest guarantee against his marrying. The duke Michele was pleased to hear of his brother enjoying himself. And Teresa, in spite of being prevented in honesty from approving that relationship, yet showed her brother-in-law sisterly affection and always made a great fuss of him. When he sent commissions from Augusta for his mother to do she would often carry them out herself. Usually he asked for linen and objects of domestic use, but every now and again also for lengths of cloth for women's dresses, corsets and silken kerchiefs … Were they for the farmer's daughter?

Every time he returned to his maternal home his face was browner, his beard shaggier, the skin on his hands harder. But in that face like a desert Arab's the white of his eye was very gentle. Teresa would thank the Lord for the wisdom inspired in him, for the health accorded him, but in her heart she asked herself how a young man who had been so elegant, so avid of pleasures, of fine rich things, could resign himself to leading a tough country life, to living with a peasant girl amid peasants?… Was she herself not the cause of that transformation? And at once, as if to exculpate herself in her own eyes, she thought, ‘I'm quite changed too!…' Where, in fact, were those poetic inspirations, those winged fantasies of hers now?

She had been married for two years and was already starting her third pregnancy. When she had dreamt of Giuliano Biancavilla, of Giovannino, did the thought ever occur to her of becoming a mere machine for producing children?… And she struggled hard against thoughts which must surely have been suggested to her by the spirit of temptation. Biancavilla, back from his travels, had also forgotten and taken a wife. One day she met him face to face; for a moment she quivered, but an hour after the meeting had forgotten it. Giovannino was her brother-in-law; no, nothing more remained of those old dreams. Was she sorry? No! she thought. ‘What do I lack for happiness? I'm young, pretty and rich, everyone loves me, everyone praises me, I have two angelic little sons. What have I to complain of?' Had she not done the right thing in the measure of her own ability. Would her mother up there not bless her?
Would the Blessed Ximena not be pleased with her distant descendant?

The spirit of temptation used subtle means to disturb her in this serenity. Perhaps it was books, poetry, novels which, at certain times when she felt most calm and sure and was smiling with greatest content, suddenly produced a sort of cloud in the clear sky of her mind and gave her an obscure sense of discomfort, a faint rancour at happiness lost before she had been able to reach it. Was it a sin to read those books, to allow those visions? Her confessor, the priests who surrounded her, said it was, that they were dangerous; but maybe they recognised at the same time that such a danger was more distant for her, with her upright soul and healthy mind and pure conscience? And then … she had renounced so much: if she ever renounced living in her imagination what would she have left?

Giovannino read a lot too. Every time he came from Augusta he would ask her, ‘Sister-in-law, have you any books to lend me?' and take cases of them away among the household things he had come to fetch. Was that how he killed time when there was no work to be overseen on the land, no vintage, sowing, or harvest?… Whenever he came to town he also laid in a stock of sulphate of quinine. Malaria reigned at Costantina, and on his land at Balata and Favarotta. During the dangerous season, it was true, he would go off to Melilli on the Hyblean hills, where the air was healthy; but it was a good thing never to lack that sovereign remedy either for himself or for his workers.