The Viceroys (11 page)

The prince still seemed not to be hearing, with his arms crossed and his look blank.

A few minutes before the judge lowered the document, Don Blasco, by moving from the chair-back, had already given signs that the reading was about to end. At the final passages, the gestures of admiration and approval, the nods of gratitude had been general, but as soon as the voice of the reader stopped, the silence was, for an instant, so deep that a fly could have been heard on the wing. Suddenly the prince pushed back his chair.

‘Thanks to you all, gentlemen, friends; thank you from the bottom of my heart …' he began, but did not end, for the witnesses, getting up too, surrounded him, shaking his hand, shaking Raimondo's hand, congratulating all and sundry.

‘There was really no need to read it!… We all knew that the dear departed would never … A model of a Will!… What wisdom!… What a brain!…'

The Bishop was particularly approving ‘She has forgotten no one! All should be content …'

And Ferdinando, Chiara, Lucrezia, each and all received their share of congratulations, while the notary and the judge were going through the formalities. But Don Blasco, who as soon as the reading ended had gone back to chewing his nails again more hungrily than ever and meandering around like a bumble-bee, seized Ferdinando as the President was shaking his hand and drew him into the vane of a window.

‘Stripped! Stripped! You've been stripped! Stripped like a wood!… Reject the Will. Ask for what's your due!'

‘Why?' said the young man, astounded.

‘Why?' burst out Don Blasco, looking him in the whites of the eyes as if wanting to eat him alive, as if finding it difficult to believe anyone could be so silly, so outrageously ingenuous as his nephew.

‘This is why!' and out came a swear word fit to make his painted ancestors blush; then he turned his back on that wretch of a booby and rushed after the marchese.

‘Ruined, stripped! Tied in a sack!' he spluttered, nearly thrusting a finger into the other's eyes. ‘Legitimate division? How does she make that out?… If you accept this Will, you're the last …' and out came another swear word. ‘I'll make out the accounts in a second! There's money due to you you won't have! And not a word about the Caltagirone legacy! Declare you refuse it, now, on the spot!'

The marchese, astounded by all this fury, stuttered out:

‘Excellency, really …'

‘What's really or unreally to do with it?… Or d'you think I get anything out of it myself?… I say it in your own interests, you prize idiot!'

‘I'll talk to my wife,' replied the marchese, but the monk stared hard at him for a moment, then sent him packing like that other booby and made for the marchesa.

The latter was with all the other ladies, who were standing around Donna Ferdinanda. The old spinster was not expressing her own opinion, not answering the remarks of those around her:

‘How just!… All treated well!… A model of a Will …' And Cousin Graziella was saying to the princess, ‘And to think evil tongues were hinting that my aunt would disinherit your husband! As if her love for Raimondo could prevent her recognising Giacomo as head of the family, heir to the title!' The Duchess Radalì, on the other hand, part in amazement and part in consternation, was confessing to Don Mariano, ‘I'd never have believed it! Co-heirs? What about the primogeniture then? Are families to come to an end then?' But the princess looked acutely embarrassed and did not dare reply, did not take her eyes off the prince. The latter, among the group of men who were repeating ceaselessly, ‘What wisdom! what foresight!' was declaring in grave tones, ‘Whatever our mother did is well
done …' While the Prior kept on repeating to the Bishop, ‘The dear departed's Will must be a law unto us all …' and only Raimondo seemed bored with congratulations and sick of congratulatory handshakes. But now Baldassarre, flinging wide the doors at the end of the room, entered ahead of two footmen carrying two great trays of iced drinks and cakes and biscuits. The prince began serving the witnesses; the major-domo moved towards the ladies.

‘Robbed of what is yours! Stripped! Reduced to your shirt-tails!' Don Blasco was saying meanwhile to his niece Chiara, whom he had managed to corner. ‘To favour that good-for-nothing who never even bothered to come and see her before she died! And that bumpkin of a wife of his too, who's come and put her nose in here!' The monk launched furious glances towards the Countess Matilde. ‘Will you let yourself be robbed like this? Here you must act at once, let people know clear and frankly that you refuse the Will, that you ask for your due …'

‘I don't know, uncle …'

‘How d'you mean “you don't know”?…'

‘I'll talk to Federico …'

Then the monk quite lost control of himself:

‘Oh, go and … yourselves, you, Federico, the lot of you, and me too, silliest of all for worrying about it!… Here you!' he ordered Baldassarre, who was on his way to serve Matilde, took an iced drink and drank it at one draught to temper the bile rising in his throat.

His brother Don Eugenio, very quietly, was slipping cakes and biscuits into his pockets, over-eating himself, drinking up glasses of Marsala, like someone uncertain of his luncheon. In spite of this he was giving deep nods of approval at Monsignor the Bishop, who, seeing the Prior Don Lodovico refusing to take refreshments because it was the vigil of a fast, was declaring to the President, ‘An angel! No worldly interest has ever touched him! A living example of evangelical virtue …' And the President, with his mouth full, confirmed, ‘An exemplary family!… the old kind … Where's that excellent prince gone off to?' For the prince had finally got into a window recess with his uncle the duke:

‘Did Your Excellency hear?…' he said, with a bitter laugh.
‘What seemed impossible is true!… My family is ruined …'

‘I couldn't believe it either!…' exclaimed the duke. ‘His having a privileged position among the heirs, that I can see; but co-heir?'

‘Even apartments in the house here … just to annoy me! The home of our ancestors to house a Palmi …'

‘How pleased she must be!' Cousin Graziella was just saying to the duchess. ‘Her husband co-heir!… Poor Giacomo having to halve with his brother!… I'm sorry about that intruder, who'll get even more above herself!…'

On the Countess Matilde were weighing the angry or severe looks of Don Blasco, of Cousin Graziella, of the prince. Every time that Baldassarre went towards her to serve her, someone made signs to the major-domo to serve some other male or female guest. Now she was the last unserved; but Donna Ferdinanda beckoned to the young prince Consalvo, sat him on her knee and called out:

‘Here, Baldassarre …'

F
ROM
that day Don Blasco could find no peace. Whether the inheritance was divided one way rather than another did not affect him personally in the very slightest, but since entering, the monastery he had constantly occupied himself, having no affairs of his own, by putting his nose into those of others.

As a boy he had seen the hey-day of the House of Uzeda, when his father, Prince Giacomo XIII, spent and scattered money everywhere, with twenty horses in the stables, a swarm of servants and a whole court of hangers-on taking seats at tables set day and night. Then the future monk had heard constant talk of his father's extraordinary riches, his vast estates, the revenues he drew from half Sicily; and he had naturally acquired a mania for enjoyment, a greed for pleasures, which he himself was still unable to define precisely. Then one fine day he was put into the novitiate of San Nicola, and later made to pronounce the Vows. All those riches were to go to the eldest brother; to him would come nothing but the grant of thirty-six
onze
a year which was indispensable to enter the rich and noble abbey!…

Life, actually, was very comfortable at San Nicola, maybe even more than at the Francalanza palace. The monastery, vast and sumptuous, ranked with royal palaces, in token of which chains were hung in front of the gates; and its income, of about 70,000
onze
a year, was barely enough for fifty inmates, monks, lay-brothers and novices. The excellent food, good living and almost complete liberty to do what he liked, did not dissipate the monk's soreness at the forcing of his will; particularly as the other younger brothers, the second son, Gaspare, Duke of Oragua
and even Eugenio, had stayed in the world, with, it was true, very little money, but at least the chance of acquiring it; at all events they were entirely free and able to dress according to the fashion, and not forced to wear the habit which weighed more on Don Blasco than livery on a servant.

The monk's acrimony, regret for riches lost, envy of his brothers, rancour against his father, found an outlet in the daily exercise of bitter unrelenting criticism of all his relations. He found a wider field for this when the day of reckoning came, his father's fortune was destroyed in a very short time, and the young prince, Consalvo VII, was married off to that Teresa Risà, who now entered the Uzeda household as its mistress. According to family traditions, in order to ensure the continuation of the line through the eldest son and also, in those special circumstances, to restore the shattered family finances by a large dowry, Consalvo was married off at the age of nineteen, when Don Blasco had not yet pronounced his vows. But since that moment the novice had conceived for his sister-in-law a particular aversion which began showing itself later, at every moment, and in everything that she did and did not do.

The Baron of Risà, father of the bride, had come to Catania from Niscèmi in the interior of the island in order to find a husband for his only children, two daughters, between whom he had at first intended to divide his great riches equally. But when the elder, Teresa, was suggested for the young Prince of Mirabella, future Prince of Francalanza, the Uzeda family let it be understood that, although ruined, they would not give Consalvo VII to the daughter of a simple rustic baron if the latter did not fill with money the gap separating her from a descendant of Viceroys. Both the baron and the girl recognised this to be just, but when the father gave 400,000
onze
, that is, nearly all, to Teresa, and despoiled his younger daughter Filomena, who just managed to find herself a husband in the Cavaliere Vita and was for ever after on cold terms with her sister, he insisted, by agreement with his daughter, that the marriage contract should stipulate a community of property with the wife in control.

The bride was nearly thirty; ten years older than Consalvo VII. She was born in 1795 and had been unable to find a suitable
match for a long time. Her character, already strong, had been toughened by the long wait for matrimony, and the great riches and almost feudal power exercised by her father in his native parts had given her a need of command, of authority, of supremacy which she wanted to use in her new home. Prince Giacomo XIII had to bow to these hard conditions in order to avoid ruin and bankruptcy, and so both he and his son were forced to leave the reins in the hands of wife and daughter-in-law. Donna Teresa did in fact save the family fortunes, but she wielded a tyrannical power to which all bowed, from first to last, except Don Blasco. Fearing neither God nor Devil, the monk made her the constant target of his most violent opposition. If she drew in on certain expenses he accused her of dishonouring the family by meanness; if she went on spending as before he accused her of trying to bring them all to final ruin; if she listened to others' advice she was an idiot, incapable of using her own brain; if she acted on her own she was more of an idiot than ever, coupling presumption to idiocy.

That money she'd brought as dowry? A mere pittance! But when that pittance propped and fortified the tottering family it became the price for which she bought the title of princess. Her nobility was fifth-class, not only incapable of any comparison to the sublime nobility of the Uzeda, but not even worthy of one of their hangers-on, of those starving petty nobles who lived by acting as quasi-servants to great nobles. She could not order a dress at the dressmakers or buy a hat or pair of gloves without the monk criticising expense, quality, and choice of shop. But Don Blasco did not spare other relations either; not his father, who having swallowed up a fortune was now reduced to living on his daughter-in-law's bounty, not his brother, who allowed his wife to wear the trousers while he just wore … ‘Holy Prudence! Holy Prudence, help me …' he would then exclaim, thrusting a hand over his mouth and saying more by this reticence than by a long speech, thus confirming the scattered gossip about his sister-in-law; and when both princes, father and son, died in the same year and the princess was left alone and much freer than before (which had always been free enough) the monk positively spat out the name he considered suitable for her.