The Viceroys (82 page)

‘But the free-thinkers who see you going to church,' added his cousin, while Teresa nodded approvingly. ‘What do they say?'

‘They say as I do: “One has to pay for popular favour”.'

No, no, she wished her brother were not like that. And she had lively discussions with him, during which he called her a sentimental devotee and a clerical, ending with ‘Now don't you go and put your Monsignori against me!'

But even the prelates who came to visit the young duchess were full of praises for her brother. They shook their heads a bit, it's true, at his scepticism, but recognised his good qualities; and ‘when the basis is good, there's no need to despair'. Her frequenting of these ecclesiastics, her listening to them, did not bring Teresa to any renunciation of her ideas on religious politics. A devout believer but no bigot, she could not for example condemn the suppression of the religious Orders when she heard stories—now that she was married—of some of the Benedictines' scandalous lives. And why ever was the Pope so stubborn in upholding the Temporal Power if Jesus had said, ‘My Kingdom is not of this world …'?

Such opinions, which would have brought excommunication down on any other, were tolerated in her by the spiritual advisers who surrounded her and took advantage of her piety and her influence over her brother the Mayor. If they wished to get boys into the orphanage or old people into the almshouses or sick into hospital; if the Sisters of Charity needed help to prevent their ejection by atheists; or land was to be acquired cheaply for Catholic Homes; if disputes arose between Town Hall and Curia, Teresa served as intermediary, often obtaining what she asked from Consalvo. But she was deeply hurt by the jokes, witticisms, sceptical declarations made by her brother, who told her he was granting these favours in order to get a return in time. Once when she reproved him for his lack of character, he replied smiling, ‘My dear, d'you remember the story of the man
who saw a mote in others' eyes and not the beam in his own? Just think a bit of what you've done yourself!'

They were alone. She bowed her head.

‘You wished to marry Giovannino and you took Michelc, whom you didn't want; is that true or not? And it was a serious action, the most serious of a lifetime, one of those which decides a whole existence. I could say, just to follow your example, that you did that from lack of character. But instead I'll say you did it because it suited you! Character, get well into your head, is doing what suits us.'

She was still silent. It was the first time her brother had ever spoken to her of these intimate things. Then, as if trying to correct any wounding effect of his words, Consalvo went on:

‘Anyway, I'm not blaming you. Maybe it was better for you. Poor Giovannino since his illness isn't quite right in the head.'

‘Why?' she asked. ‘How can you say that? It doesn't seem so to me …'

‘It doesn't seem so to you … it seems so to all who talk to him. Don't you see he's always in the clouds? Look how he walks alone in the streets, he bumps into passers-by, doesn't see carriages; just the very same as his father.'

‘Are you sure?'

‘The other day if it hadn't been for the town guards he'd have ended under a cart. Sometimes he doesn't reason and makes me repeat things two or three times before he can grasp them. Talk about it to your husband, get him looked after, take care before there's some disaster.'

She was deeply perturbed. Her brother-in-law had seemed to her entirely recovered; nothing had made her suspect that his unbalanced state of mind was lasting. Now, waiting for him to come home, she almost felt afraid, as if a madman really was about to appear before her. But on seeing him enter, serene, smiling, with a parcel of cakes for the babies and a quantity of little news items for her, she was sure Consalvo was mistaken or at least exaggerating.

‘You know,' she said to her brother the first time she found herself alone with him, ‘your fears are quite unjustified. Giovannino has nothing wrong with him …'

Consalvo shook his head. But as Teresa insisted and told
him how the young man aroused no suspicion at home, how he talked to her perfectly reasonably, he let out, with an air of gallantry:

‘I can well believe he's all right … with you.'

Suddenly, at these words, before she had even realised their meaning, a flush rose to her face. She wanted to reply, to tell him that was an improper and unworthy jest, that his words hinted at a foul and injurious suspicion, to ask him to explain them, force him to deny them … but all these ideas passed like flashes through her mind and she remained mute, stifled, blushing furiously, hearing no more of what her brother was saying.

When she was alone she tried to think it out. What had Consalvo meant? Could he be suspecting her? And even if he did entertain a suspicion of that kind, would he tell it to her face?… No, it was a joke, a thoughtless but innocent allusion to what had once been … Why had she not replied at once, though, and declared those words out of place? Why was she still so perturbed, why was her disquiet lasting even now that she had taken her head in her hands and asked herself all those questions? Had she been silent because she had been caught in the wrong? So her brother-in-law was restless away from her and did not reason because of her? Then by what virtue was he serene and smiling before her? And she, what had she done to make that possible? She had tended him, she had shown her sisterly love for him, she had used her ascendancy over him to heal him … What then? Nothing else … nothing else!… The Lord was her witness … Nothing; he was just like a brother. Why then those words of her own brother?… Because there had been something between them, once upon a time, long, long ago? Because Giovannino was not her brother by blood? And a ghastly doubt passed through her mind: ‘Is what Consalvo said being repeated by others?…'

That storm of doubts and fears and protests going through her head was now stilled by surprise. How, if she was innocent in act and thought, had Consalvo been able to think evil or bring up a past which she thought dead and buried? How?… Why?… Then seeing Giovannino come home, hearing him chatter as he sat beside her at the same table, she understood; because they were now living under the same roof, because they
were together all day, because they drove out in a carriage together, because she would meet him at her father's, her aunt's or uncle's, wherever she went. No, she had not realised that their intimacy had reached such a point, or rather she had not understood how that intimacy could arouse a dreadful suspicion. But now her mind was beginning to clear; yes, he was not her brother, he was a stranger, a man whom she had loved before … He must leave then, go far away from her, as in the first years of her marriage, as before his illness. Yes, he must leave. And suddenly she realised the most terrible thing of all: that this was impossible, because she loved him. At the idea of not seeing him again, at the thought of breaking that sweet and dear communion of souls, she felt her heart torn asunder. And now that no longer intermittent flashes, but a crude harsh beam was lighting up her thoughts, she realised that she did not love only his spiritual company but the whole of him, body and soul, as before, as always.

Her husband was becoming ever grosser and clumsier, losing his last few hairs; that shiny cranium of his disgusted her. At the idea of passing her hand over Giovannino's thick, scented locks she trembled … Why were they so harmonious in their judgments, their tastes, their opinions? Because they loved each other. Why had she alone been able to quieten his restless spirit at the time of his suffering? Because they loved each other!… They loved each other; that meant they were infamous. The more worthy of eternal damnation the more sacred the bonds which they should have respected … She, the saintly!… the saintly!

And it seemed to her terrified mind that sin had been committed, that there was no way out. Every time Giovannino neared her she trembled as before the witness and accomplice of her own sin. She avoided him, she never looked him in the face, she fretted when he held his little nephews in his arms, and kissed them long and avidly, as if kissing her, part of her flesh. ‘What's the matter with you, Teresa?' he would ask her. And her embarrassment, her coldness grew, as he no longer called her ‘sister-in-law' but by her own name, and she herself called him by his name, so close had become their intimacy. Michele, her mother-in-law, also began noticing her changed
humour and could not think to what it could be attributed, or put it down to some indefinable illness of which she complained. If they knew!… If they found out!

When her terror reached a climax it dissolved like fever. What could they find out? What acts? What words, what glances of understanding? Had anything ever happened between them, for a day, an hour, a minute, which could make either of them blush? Where was the sin except in thought? And was she quite sure that he was nurturing sinful thoughts like her? What direct proof had she? On the contrary, her alarm now, the repulsion she was showing him, might they not be the only indications to give her away? And gradually, forcing herself to reason, she grew calmer. He would leave, time would once more quench the embers suddenly flaming in her heart like volcanic fires.

A sudden worsening of her father's condition helped her to forget. The tumour, which for a time had vanished from where the surgeon's knife had passed, reappeared again farther over, in his right armpit. As soon as the sick man noticed the new malignant growth he had such a fit of impotent rage that terror froze all those around him. She hurried to him, spent entire days at the poor wretch's bedside, endured patiently all the outbursts of his bile, soothed her stepmother's agonies. At the opportune moment the doctors got ready to cut and cauterise. This time too the sick man screamed that he would not have it. ‘They're trying to kill me! They're not doctors, but butchers! You're paying them to kill me to rid yourself of me …' In his delirium he suddenly flung off the mask of zealous God-fearing Catholic and from his mouth came foul and horrible curses. The princess stopped up her ears, Teresa raised her eyes to heaven; but the Monsignori affirmed, ‘It's not him talking, it's the poison in him. He doesn't know what he is saying.' At the sight of black cassocks, though, the sick man yelled, ‘Hey, you black crows, what d'you want? Sniffing human flesh, are you?… Get out of here!… get out!…'

The crisis ended in an outburst of tears. He promised Masses for the souls in purgatory, candles and votive lamps to every Madonna and Crucifix, asked his family to forgive him, begged
them never to leave him. Teresa, kneeling by his bedside, persuaded him to let himself be operated on once again.

‘Do it … do what you like … But don't leave me!… Please, by your mother's soul … Don't leave me …'

She was present at the butchering … At first, the sight of her father under the chloroform and the felt mask, throwing himself about, laughing and mouthing incomprehensible words, then growing quiet and pale, seeming dead, froze the blood in her veins. She tried hard not to be a nuisance to the doctors, and by extraordinary concentration of will-power she conquered her own fears. But at sight of the knives, at the whiffs of carbolic acid mingling with the smell of anaesthetic, a chill came over her heart, a nausea rose in her throat, and suddenly everything seemed to be going round.

‘Go away! Go away!' the surgeon said to her when she came to. But she shook her head; she had promised and she stayed.

She did not see the wound but saw the circular gesture of the operating surgeon's arm, the blood squirting on to his aprons and his assistants', marking bed and floor, making the smell even more revolting than ever. How much blood! How much blood! Basins filled with it, were emptied and filled again … She was on the other side of the bed, holding one of her father's hands, cold as a corpse's. She could neither pray nor think, overcome by horror. Only one idea occupied her mind: ‘When will they end?… Will they never end?…'

They would never end, it seemed. Like a craftsman struggling to reduce an inert material to a prescribed form, the surgeon went on cutting, snipping, scraping. He put aside one instrument, took up another, then went back to the first, calm, cool, very watchful. An incident prolonged the wait, retarded the operation. A drop of putrid blood fell on a scratched hand of the assistant. To prevent the man being poisoned the cauteriser was lit, and red-hot platinum passed over the hand; there was a sizzle of burning flesh, the air became pestilential.

An hour later all was over. Marks were washed off, the wound bound up, instruments put back into their cases, the prince was awakened. Her father's first look, still blind, still dead, increased Teresa's horror. Despite this she waited for his return to life. She said to him, smiling and squeezing his hand:

‘It's all over … it went splendidly … didn't it, doctor?…'

But suddenly all her strength left her. Her husband, who had just come in with the princess and other relatives, took her off to a far room. The doctor came and said authoritatively:

‘Will you or won't you go home now?… You must rest; there's nothing more to be done here.'

She had not the strength to re-enter the sick man's room even for an instant, but she asked Michele to stay so as to bring her the news later. She swayed as she went down the stairs, leaning on the doctor's arm, then let herself drop on the carriage seat. And as the horses galloped off and a swirl of air refreshed her breast, her spirit was finally liberated from its long oppression. She thought, ‘What agonies! What misery!' Of what use to her father were the riches, the power that he had clung to so grimly? Would he not exchange them all for health? And he was condemned! That operation had been almost useless; the growth would reappear elsewhere … And it was against that poor corroded life that she had, one day, rebelled one moment, in her heart—not in words, Lord, only in thought; but such a thought was equally blameworthy—it was against that poor life she had rebelled. Why? How could she have? If he had done wrongs now he was paying for them by ghastly torture. And if he had done wrongs, was it for her to judge him? He had made no effort to see her happy; could she judge him for that?… And where was happiness? Would she have been any happier otherwise? Who knows what other agonies there might have been! What other miseries … Always before her eyes was that gesture of the surgeon cutting living flesh.