The Viceroys (85 page)

After the funeral, celebrated with extraordinary pomp, he began to receive visitors. From two till six in the afternoon, from eight till eleven at night, the drawing-rooms were crowded. Assessors, Town Councillors, municipal officials, the Prefect, the General, the Questor, relatives, friends, acquaintances, admirers and partisans of every kind, representatives of all parties and of all dependants filed continually by. All talked ceaselessly with an air proper to the circumstances about the incredible double tragedy. He would discourse a little on his father's illness and his cousin's ‘accident', then to save people embarrassment change the subject, ask the Assessors and the Prefect for news of affairs, comment with others on the results of the general elections and on his uncle the duke's renewed success. A fortnight after the two deaths he was back in the Town Hall; now he could not live away from it, feared things might get into a
mess without him, being in the hands of Giulente, who, as senior Assessor, had taken over control.

Engulfed anew in the sea of public affairs, when he returned to the palace, when he dined, when he went to bed, he thought of nothing else. Anyway there was no one to disturb him. The sick women were slowly recovering, tended by the widowed princess, by Lucrezia (delighted at the chance of acting as mistress of the house once again), by the other relations, and by the usual monsignori. The dowager was the first up; she was little over fifty and looked like a decrepit crone. It was Teresa who worried the doctors most; her illness clung on stubbornly, as if fed by some mysterious poison sapping all her strength. Gradually she too grew better, but on the first day she tried to rise she fell back, senseless. Then she came to again. One morning when Consalvo, before going out, visited his sister to ask if she needed anything, he found her with her stepmother, her mother-in-law and Michele. As soon as he entered they all turned towards him, silent and grave. Teresa, her head raised on a heap of pillows whose whiteness made her emaciated face look waxen, said in a slow faint voice, as if tired:

‘Listen, Consalvo; sit down a moment … We have to talk to you.'

He sat down and waited.

‘Listen; we have been discussing a matter that concerns you. Our father … our father, as you know, in a moment of anger … tried … tried to put me before you … I do not believe that could have been his real wish. Had God not taken him, he would certainly have changed it. I have told Michele and our mother that in all conscience I cannot accept … what was given me in such conditions …' she was silent a moment then added, ‘You say it … I can't.'

A moment of silence. The old duchess's eyes were full of tears, and she shook her head bitterly. Consalvo said:

‘Why talk of these things now?'

His sister's words, this renunciation of her inheritance, left him quite indifferent. He had now become used to the idea of getting nothing from his father but his legal portion. But he was rather surprised for a time at Teresa's magnanimous disinterest, approved by his brother-in-law and aunt.

‘One day or another,' said Michele, ‘we must talk it over. My mother and I are in full agreement with Teresa. We do not wish to profit by that Will to take from you what is yours. We are rich enough … too rich … and will give …'

He turned his head to hide eyes red with tears. His mother was sobbing.

‘But why now?' replied Consalvo. ‘There would have been time. Aunt, do calm yourself! All right, all right; I thank you … You know that I don't have certain prejudices … I mean that for me all children, male and female, eldest sons or …' then noticing the old woman's humble almost supplicating attitude, he did not finish the phrase. Instead he said, ‘Anyway, if Teresa renounces the Will, we'll divide everything equally. Will that be all right?'

‘Yes, as you like …'

Teresa, who had remained motionless with eyes shut, now seemed to wake up.

‘Another thing,' she went on, ‘our late father in the same moment of crisis … decided to leave our mother this house … It is not right that you … the heir of the name … the only one of our name, should have to move …'

He felt an indefinable emotion; it was pleasure at triumphing over his father's wishes, pride at being able to stay in the home of his ancestors, fear of owing something to his stepmother in exchange. But Teresa was continuing:

‘Our mother renounces the house … she'll take another property instead … or compensation in money …'

‘For myself,' exclaimed princess Graziella, ‘it's all the same! I want all to be done by agreement, so that the family is always united …'

‘But,' went on Teresa, ‘she should not have to leave her husband's home herself … You will grant her an apartment for as long as she lives … Its ownership will be yours.'

She was silent a second time. She might have been on the point of death, with a soul already detached from the world, dictating, last dispositions to ensure the peace, well-being, and happiness of those remaining behind.

Donna Graziella, under the influence of the generosity and disinterest shown by all, in order not to do less than others, in
case it were said that she alone was putting obstacles to the general accord, had agreed to the exchange, but nothing would have induced her to move out of the palace.

‘That's only right … Fine …' said Consalvo. ‘Thank you. We'll settle it all.'

From that day Teresa got rapidly better. On every side rose a chorus of praise for what she had done, for the noble renunciation in which she had taken the initiative and that she induced all the others to accept. The Bishop in person came to visit her as soon as she was in a fit state to receive him. While she kissed his ring with tears in her eyes he said to her, ‘My daughter, I have heard. May you be blessed now and for ever for the good you do.' She shook her head, murmuring, ‘It's so little …' Then in her mother-in-law's and husband's name as well as her own she begged him to distribute ten thousand lire in alms. Already other prelates had been given stipends for Masses to be said for the repose of the prince's and the baron's souls.

The Radalì family had arranged to leave the Francalanza palace and move to Tardarìa as soon as Teresa was in a fit state to travel. Since that ghastly day only Michele had set foot in the house marked by his brother's blood, but in connection with preparations for departure one or other of the women would have to go there. As this would have been a harsher trial for the mother, Teresa went with her husband. She climbed the stairs leaning on his arm, but on entering the antechamber she was forced to sit down and sniff her smelling-salts. When she recovered strength she did what had to be done with her old firmness. The dead man's rooms were all locked up.

Next day they left for the country and stayed there the whole summer and autumn.

Meanwhile Consalvo established himself in his ancestral home. He left to the princess the apartments looking south and reserved for himself the main reception-rooms, but only for seeing guests, as his own living-rooms he fixed on the second floor. With his stepmother he had very little in common. They ate separately because they had different meal-times. Each had separate servants
and carriages. They would meet from time to time about matters of administration. Consalvo knew nothing of the state of the house while the princess was well informed, and so if the administrator wanted orders or explanations he left word for his stepmother. Not only did he feel more drawn by public affairs than by his own, but he considered that the latter were not worth bothering about as long as the family property remained undivided.

This division began on the Radalìs' return. The two women had entirely recovered their health. The mother-in-law seemed even older, and the daughter-in-law was pregnant. All articles of the contract were settled by mutual consent, with the same disinterest of which everyone had given proof at the start. Teresa wished all the historic estates to remain with her brother, contenting herself with recently acquired property and odd bits of income, capital and credits. In exchange, Consalvo asked for this wholly moral difference to be taken into account in the valuation of the lands. The princess renounced the palace in exchange for the estate of Gibilfemi and the farm of Oleastro, which were worth twice as much.

During these negotiations, Consalvo had been to see his sister nearly every day. Having got into this habit he continued it. After all he ought to show gratitude for her renunciation, which had doubled his part of the inheritance from a quarter to a half. But in spite of this duty of his, in spite of the sorrow of mourning, he found it difficult to avoid needling his sister for her fervent, growing piety.

Now the Vicar-General, her confessor, Sisters of Charity, seemed to have taken up residence in her home. With these the new churches of Our Lady of La Salette and Mercè, the miracles of Lourdes and of Valle di Pompei, and missionary work were the usual topics of conversation. The disbanded Capuchin friars had reunited in spite of the law and bought a house with the offerings of the faithful.

Consalvo learnt that his sister had contributed to this purchase. Had she not formerly considered the law dispersing the same community to be quite a proper one? How could she go every Friday to pray in the Blessed Ximena's chapel, where burnt the lamp lit for the health of Giovannino, of whose madness and
suicide she had been partly the cause? Did she know that the young man had killed himself and not died by accident?… This stubborn faith of hers, so resistant to disillusion, was it sincere or was it maybe a form of the family's hereditary mania? Consalvo inclined to this last hypothesis, partly because he had no faith at all himself. But never an act or a word revealed what was in his sister's heart. When he began making ironic allusions she said:

‘Listen, Consalvo; each of us is responsible to God for our own actions. Your scepticism may make me suffer, but I don't reprove you for it. So I should like you to respect my beliefs, or if you like to call them so, my superstitions. Am I asking too much?'

He bowed his head, first because the argument was valid, but also because Teresa's connections in the clerical world could be useful.

In fact the time so long awaited was rapidly nearing. Electoral reform was the order of the day; after voting on it the Chamber would dissolve. And he now realised that his own election was not as certain as it had seemed that first day in Rome during his conversation with the Honourable Deputy Mazzarini, and later at the start of his term as Mayor. Because of the broadening of the franchise and the scrutinising of the lists, it was no longer his uncle's few hundred votes which could send him to the Chamber; now it needed thousands. And though he felt sure of the city, he did not know how much he could rely on the rural wards.

Already the old duke had sniffed the wind and told his intimates that he would accept a seat in the Senate. Sure of being swept away like a dry leaf he was finally retiring in good order, pretending to renounce spontaneously so as to avoid the shame of a defeat. And while Consalvo was thinking of his own situation, worried by this change and by the ‘moral revolution' invoked by himself but come rather too soon, Giulente saw nothing, noticed nothing. He still hung round the old duke's feet as if the latter were the oracle of twenty years before, waiting to gather his inheritance, still swearing by the Right and by Cavour, sure that the new electors would throw out the Government
of Reparation and restore the principle of moderation. And, thinking over such matters day and night, he left control of his household more and more to his wife, who had got into such a muddle that she too was now waiting for his election—without saying a thing to him, in fact still deriding him about it—to avoid giving him the accounts, until he made money like her uncle Gaspare …

Consalvo did not bother about him; he despised him to such an extent that at times he almost pitied him. Realising the need of getting to work soon, he put forward the actuation of a resolve already in his mind for some time: to resign from his office as Mayor. He needed to be free, and he wanted to avoid the danger of a prolongation in office losing him the advantage obtained and changing it into irreparable harm. The whole edifice was beginning to creak, in fact. His wild expenditure had exhausted the exchequer, and the last budget had closed with a considerable deficit which he had only been able to hide by a series of artifices. But the situation was no longer tenable. Either taxes had to be imposed or debts contracted, and he did not want to have to face the unpopularity of such provisions. So he seized the first excuse to beat a retreat.

One day the Council accountants were discussing again how to get dues paid, as the contract system had not produced good results. In private conversation, he declared that he considered a return to direct payment a mistake and that it was a matter of correcting the current system's defects and of not abandoning the system itself. He did not breathe a word of this at meetings and let the majority give their opinion. The majority voted to change the system. That same night on going home he wrote two letters, one to the Prefect resigning his office, the other collectively to all the Assessors announcing that ‘for reasons of delicacy' he had already sent in his resignation to the Prefect.

It was a thunderbolt from a clear sky. ‘Delicacy?…' exclaimed Giulente, whom all the others asked for an explanation. ‘What delicacy? I don't understand!…' And the Town Council in a body went to call on him, while the news rapidly spread throughout the civic offices.

‘Can you explain?' said Benedetto to him on behalf of his colleagues. ‘What does this letter mean?'

‘It means,' replied the prince, looking in the air, ‘that I did not wish to exercise pressure, and as your way of seeing things is contrary to mine I am resigning in order to leave your hands free.'

‘But about what?… The dues?…'