The Leopard (10 page)

"Had you been there, Signorina, we'd have had no need to wait for novices." Angelica had heard a lot of coarse talk at homei but this was the first time (and not the last) when she found herself the object of a sexual innuendo; the novelty of it pleased her, her laughter went up a tone, became strident. At that moment everyone rose from table; Tancredi bent to gather up the feather fan dropped by Angelica; as he rose to his feet he saw Concetta with face aflame and two little tears in the corners of her lids. "Tancredil one tells nasty tales like that to a confessor, not to young ladies at inn table; or at least not when I'm there." And she turned her back on him. Before going to bed Don Fabrizio paused a moment on the little balcony of his dressing room. The shadowed garden lay sunk in sleep, below; in the inert air the trees seemed like fused lead; from the overhanging bell tower came an elfin hoot of owls. The sky was clear of clouds; those which had greeted the dusk had moved away, maybe toward places less sinful, condemned by divine wrath to lesser penalties. The stars looked turbid and their rays scarcely penetrated the pall of sultry air. The soul of the Prince reached out toward them, toward the intangible, the unattainable, which gave joy without laying claim to anything in return; as many other times, he tried to imagine himself in those icy tracts, a pure intellect armed with a notebook for calculations: difficult calculations, but ones which would always work out. "They're the only really genuine, the only really decent beings," thought he, in his worldly formulae. "Who worries about dowries for the Pleiades, a political career for Sirius, matrimonial joy for Vega?" It had been a bad day; he realized it now, not only from a pressure at the pit of his stomach but from the stars too; instead of seeing them disposed in their usual groupings, every time he raised his eyes he noticed a single diagram up there: two stars above, the eyes; one beneath, the tip of a chin; a mocking symbol of a triangular face which his mind projected into the constellations when it was disturbed. Don Calogero's tail coat, Concetta's love, Tancredi's blatant infatuation, his own cowardice; even the threatening beauty of that girl Angelica: bad things; rubble preceding an avalanche. And Tancredi! The lad was right, agreed, and he would help him too i but Don Fabrizio could not deny that he found it all slightly ignoble. And he himself was like Tancredi. "Enough of that now, let's sleep on it."

Bendico in the shadow rubbed a big head against his knee. "You see, you, Bendico are a bit like them, like the stars; happily incomprehensible, incapable of producing anxiety." He raised the dog's head, which was almost invisible in the darkness. "And then with those eyes of yours at the same level as your nose, with your lack of chin, that head of yours can't possibly evoke malignant specters in the sky."

Centuries-old tradition required that the day following their arrival the Salina family should visit the Convent of the Holy Spirit to pray at the tomb of Blessed Corbe'ra, forebear of the Prince and foundress of the convent, who had endowed it, there lived a holy life, and there died a holy death.

The Convent of the Holy Spirit had a rigid rule of enclosure, and entry was severely forbidden to men. That was why the Prince particularly enjoyed visiting it, for he, as direct descendant of the foundress, was not excluded; and of this privilege, shared only with the King of Naples, he was both jealous and childishly proud. This faculty of canonical arrogance was the chief but not the only reason for his liking the Convent of the Holy Spirit. Everything about the place pleased him, beginning with the humble simplicity of the parlor, with its raftered ceiling centered on the Leopard, its double gratings for interviews, a little wooden wheel for passing messages in and out, and a heavy door whose threshold he and the King were the only men in the whole world allowed to cross. He liked the look of the nuns with their wide wimples of purest white linen in tiny pleats, gleaming against the rough black robes; he was edified at hearing for the hundredth time the Mother Abbess describe Blessed Corbera's ingenuous miracles, at her showing the corner of the dank garden where the saintly nun had suspended in the air a huge stone which the Devil, irritated by her austerity, had flung at her; he was astounded at the sight of the two famous and indecipherable letters framed on the wall of a cell, one to the Devil from Blessed Corbera to convert him to virtue, and the other the Devil's reply, expressing, it seems, his regret at not being able to comply with her request; the Prince liked the almond cakes the nuns made from an ancient recipe, he liked listening to the Office chanted in choir, and he was even quite happy to pay over to the community a not inconsiderable portion of his own income, in accordance with the act of foundation. So that morning there were only happy people in the two carriages moving toward the convent just outside the town. In the first were the Prince, the Princess, and their daughters Carolina and Concetta; in the second, his daughter Caterina, with Tancredi and Father Pirrone; the two men, of course, would stay extra muros and wait in the parlor during the visit, consoled by macaroons from the wooden wheel. Concetta looked serene, though a little absentminded, and the Prince did his best to hope that yesterday's nonsense had all blown over.

Entry into an enclosed community is never a quick matter, even for one possessing the most sacred of rights. Nuns like to show a certain reluctance, formal maybe but prolonged, which gives a greater flavor to however certain an admission and, although the visit had been announced beforehand, there was a considerable wait in the parlor. Toward the end of this Tancredi unexpectedly asked the Prince, "Uncle, can't you get me in too? After all, I'm half a Salina, and I've never been here before." Though pleased at heart by the request, the Prince shook his head decisively. "But, my boy, you know only I can enter here, and no other man." It was not easy, however, to put Tancredi off. "Excuse me, Uncle; the rule says,
The Prince of Salina may enter
together with two gentlemen of his suite if the Abbess so permits.
I read it again yesterday. I'll be the gentleman in your suite, I'll be your squire, I'll be whatever you like. Do ask the Abbess, please." He was speaking with unusual warmth; perhaps he wanted a certain person there to forget his ill-considered chatter of the night before. The Prince was flattered. "If you're so keen on it, dear boy, I'll see . . ." But Concetta turned to her cousin with her sweetest smile: "Tancredi, as we passed we saw a wooden beam on the ground in front of Ginestra's house. Go and fetch it, it'll get you in all the quicker." Tancredi's blue eyes clouded over and his face went red as a poppy, either from shame or from anger. He tried to say something to the surprised Prince, but Concetta interrupted again, acidly now, and without a smile: "Let him be, Father, he's only joking; he's been in one convent already, that ought to be enough for him; it's not right for him to enter one of ours." With a grinding of drawn bolts, the door opened. Into the stuffy parlor entered the freshness of the cloister together with the murmur of assembled nuns. It was too late to ask questions, and Tancredi was left behind to walk up and down in front of the convent, under the blazing sky. The visit to the Holy Spirit was a great success. Don Fabrizio, from love of quiet, had refrained from asking Concetta the meaning of her words; doubtless just one of the usual tiffs between cousins; anyway the coolness between the two young people kept off bother, confabulations, and decisions, so it had been welcome. On these premises the tomb of Blessed Corbera was venerated with due respect by all, the nuns' watery coffee drunk with tolerance, the pink and greenish almond cakes crunched with satisfaction; the Princess inspected the wardrobe, Concetta talked to the nuns with her usual withdrawn kindliness, and he, the Prince, left on the refectory table the ten ounces of gold that he offered every time he came. It was true that on leaving Father Pirrone was found alone; but as he said that Tancredi had suddenly remembered an urgent letter and gone off on foot, no one took much notice.

On returning to the palace the Prince went up to the library, right in the middle of the facade under the clock and lightning conductor. From the great balcony, closed against the heat, could be seen the square of Donnafugata, vast, shaded by dusty plane trees. Opposite were some house fronts of exuberant design by a local architect, rustic monstrosities in soapstone, weathered by the years, upholding amid twists and curves balconies that were too small; other houses, among which was that of Don Calogero Sedira, hid behind prim Empire fronts.

Don Fabrizio walked up and down the immense room; every now and again he paused and glanced out at the square: on one of the benches donated by himself to the commune three old men were roasting themselves in the sun; four mules stood tethered to a tree; a dozen or so urchins were chasing each other, shouting and brandishing wooden swords. Under the blazing midsummer sun the view could not have been more typical. On one of his crossings by the window, however, his eye was drawn to a figure that was obviously from the city-slim, well dressed. He screwed up his eyes: it was Tancredi; he recognized him, although already some way off, by the sloping shoulders and slim-fitting waist of his frock coat. He had changed his clothes; he was no longer in brown, as at the convent, but in Prussian blue-"my seduction color," as he himself called it. In one hand he held a cane with an enamel handle (doubtless the one bearing the Unicorn of the Falconeri and their motto,
Semper purus
), and he was walking with catlike tread, as if taking care not to get his shoes dusty. Ten paces behind him followed a lackey carrying a tasselled box containing a dozen yellow peaches with pink cheeks. He sidestepped a sword-waving urchin, carefully avoided a urinating mule, and reached the Sedaras' door.

3

The Troubles of Don Fabrizio

Leaving for a shoot - Troubles of Don Fabrizio - A letter from Tancredi - Game and the Plebiscite - Don Ciccio Tumeo lets
himself go - On eating a toad - Small epilogue

OCTOBER, 1860

The rains had come, the rains had gone, and the sun was back on its throne like an absolute monarch kept off it for a week by his subjects' barricades, and now reigning once again, choleric but under constitutional restraint. The heat braced without burning, the light domineered but let colors live; from the soil cautiously sprouted clover and mint, and on faces appeared diffident hopes. Don Fabrizio, with the dogs Teresina and Arguto and his retainer Don Ciccio Tumeo, would spend long hours out shooting, from dawn till afternoon. The effort was out of all proportion to the results, for the most expert shot finds difficulty in hitting a target which is scarcely ever there, and it was rarely that the Prince was able to take even a brace of pheasants home to the larder, or Don Ciccio to slap onto the kitchen table a wild rabbit, promoted-as is done in Sicily--
ipso facto
to the rank of hare. A big bag would, anyway, have been a secondary pleasure for the Prince; the joy of those days out shooting lay elsewhere, subdivided in many tiny episodes. It began with shaving in a room still dark, by candlelight that projected every gesture emphatically over the painted architecture on the ceiling; it was whetted by crossing dormant drawing rooms, by glimpses in the flickering light of tables with playing cards lying in disorder amid chips and empty glasses, and catching sight among them of a Jack of Spades waving a manly greeting; by passing through the motionless garden under a gray light in which the earliest birds were twisting and turning to shake the dew off their feathers; by slipping through the ivy-hung wicket gate; by escaping, in fact. And then in the street, blamelessly innocent still in the early light, he would find Don Ciccio smiling into his yellowed mustache and swearing affectionately at the dogs; these, as they waited, were flexing their muscles under velvety fur. Venus still glimmered, a peeled grape, damp and transparent, but one could already bear the rumble of the solar chariot climbing the last slope below the horizon; soon they would meet the first flocks moving toward them, torpid as tides, guided by stones from shepherds in leather breeches; the wool looked soft and rosy in the early rays of the sun; then there would be obscure quarrels of precedence to be settled between sheep dogs and punctilious pointers, after which deafening interval they turned up a slope and found themselves in the immemorial silence of pastoral Sicily. All at once they were far from everything in space and still more so in time. Donnafugata with its palace and its newly rich was only a mile or two away, but it seemed a dim memory like those landscapes sometimes glimpsed at the distant end of a railway tunnel; its troubles and splendors appeared even more insignificant than if they belonged to the past, for compared to this remote unchangeable landscape they seemed part of the future, made not of stone and flesh but of the substance of some dream of things to come, extracts from a utopia thought up by a rustic Plato and apt to change at a whim into quite different forms or even found not to exist at all; deprived thus of that charge of energy which everything in the past continues to possess, they were a bother no longer.