The Leopard

by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa

  “And I can tell you too, Don Pietrino, that if, as has often happened before, this class were to vanish, an equivalent one would be formed straight away with the same qualities and the same defects; it might not be based on blood any more, but possibly on . . . on, say, length of time in a place, or pretended knowledge of some text presumed sacred.”

  At this point his mother’s steps were heard on the wooden stairs; she laughed as she came in. “Who d’you think you’re talking to, son? Can’t you see your friend’s fast asleep?”

  Father Pirrone looked a little abashed; he did not reply but just said, “I’ll go outside with him now. Poor man, he’s got to spend all night out in the cold.” He took the wick from the lantern and lit it from one of the ceiling lamps, getting up on tiptoe and splashing his cassock with oil; then he put it back and shut its little gate. Don Pietrino was sailing in dreams; saliva was dribbling from a lip and spreading over his collar. It took some time to wake him up. “Excuse me, Father, but you were saying such confusing things.” They smiled, went downstairs, and out. Night submerged the little house, the village, the valley; the nearby mountains could just be seen, surly as always; the wind had calmed but it was very cold; the stars were glittering away, producing thousands of degrees of heat which were not enough to warm one poor old man. “Poor Don Pietrino! Would you like me to go and get you another cloak?”

  “Thank you, I’m used to it. We’ll meet to-morrow, then you’ll tell me what the Prince of Salina feels about the Revolution.”

  “I can tell you that at once and in a few words; he says there’s been no revolution and that all will go on as it did before.”

  “More fool he! Doesn’t it seem a revolution to you when the Mayor wants me to pay for the grass God created and which I gather myself? Or have you gone off your head too?”

  The light of the lantern went jerking off and eventually vanished into shadows thick as felt.

  Father Pirrone thought what a mess the world must seem to one who knew neither mathematics nor theology. “Oh, Lord, only Thy Omniscience could have devised so many complications.”

  Another sample of these complications faced him next morning. When he went down, ready to say Mass in the parish church, he found his sister Sarina chopping onions in the kitchen. The tears in her eyes seemed bigger than her activity warranted.

  “What is it, Sarina? Any trouble? Don’t let it depress you; the Lord afflicts and consoles.”

  His affectionate tone dissipated the remains of the poor woman’s reserve; she began sobbing loudly, with her face on the greasy table-top. Among the sobs could always be heard the same words, “Angelina, Angelina . . . If Vincenzino knew he’d kill them both . . . Angelina . . . He’d kill them both!”

  His hands thrust into his wide black sash, with only his thumbs showing, Father Pirrone stood looking at her. It wasn’t difficult to understand; Angelina was Sarina’s adolescent daughter; Vincenzino, whose fury was so feared, was her father and his brother-in-law; the only unknown part of the equation was the name of the other person involved, Angelina’s presumed lover.

  The Jesuit had seen her for the first time the day before as a full-grown girl, after having left her a snivelling child seven years before. She seemed about eighteen and was very plain indeed, with the jutting mouth of so many peasant girls around these parts, and frightened dog’s eyes. He had noticed her on his arrival and in his heart in fact made rather uncharitable comparisons between her, plebeian as the diminutive of her own name, and Angelica, sumptuous as that name from Ariosto, who had recently disturbed the peace of the Salina household.

  The trouble must be serious and here he was right in the middle of it; he remembered what Don Fabrizio had once said: every time one sees a relative one finds a thorn; then he was sorry for having remembered that. He extracted his right hand from his sash, took off his hat and clapped his sister’s quivering shoulder. “Come on now, Sarina, don’t do that! Luckily, I’m here. Crying’s no use. Where is Vincenzino?” Vincenzino had gone off to Rimato to see the Schiròs’ ranger. All the better; they could talk things over without fear of surprise. Between sobs, sucked tears and nose snuffling, out the whole squalid story came; Angelina (or rather ’Ncilina) had let herself be seduced; the disaster had happened during St. Martin’s Summer; she used to go to meet her lover in Donna Nunziata’s hayloft; now she’d been with child three months; in a panic she had confessed all to her mother; soon her belly would begin showing and Vincenzino would raise hell. “He’ll kill me too, he will, because I didn’t tell him; he’s what they call ‘a man of honour!’”

  In fact with his low forehead, ornamental quiffs of hair on the temples, lurching walk and perpetual swelling of the right trouser pocket where he kept a knife, it was obvious at once that Vincenzino was “a man of honour”, one of those violent cretins capable of any havoc.

  Now Sarina was overcome by a new fit of sobbing, stronger than the first because she’d been seized by renewed remorse for having been unworthy of her husband, that mirror of chivalry.

  “Sarina, Sarina, stop it now! Don’t do that! The young man must marry her, he will marry her. I’ll go to his home, talk to him and his family, everything will be all right. Then Vincenzino will know only about the engagement and his precious honour will remain intact. But I must know who the man is. If you know, tell me.”

  His sister raised her head; her eyes now showed another fear, no longer the animal one of the knife thrusts, but a more restricted, keener one which the brother could not for the moment place.

  “It was Santino Pirrone! Turi’s son! And he did it out of spite, spite against me, against our mother, against our father’s memory! I’ve never spoken to him, they all said he was a good boy—but he’s a swine, a true son of that double-dishonoured father of his. I remembered afterwards; I always used to see him passing here in November with two friends and a red geranium behind his ear. Red of hell, that was, red of hell!”

  The Jesuit took a chair and sat down next to the poor woman. Obviously he would have to be late for Mass. This was serious. Turi, the father of the seducer Santino, was an uncle of his; the brother, in fact the elder brother, of his dead father. Twenty years ago he had worked together with the dead man in his job as overseer, just at the moment of the latter’s greatest and most meritorious activity. Later the brothers had quarrelled, one of those family quarrels we all know with deeply entangled roots, impossible to cure because neither side speaks out clearly, each having much to hide. The fact was that when the dead man acquired the little almond grove, his brother Turi had said that half of it really belonged to him because half the money for it, or half the work, he had put in himself; but the deeds bore only the name of the dead Gaetano. Turi stormed up and down the roads of San Cono foaming at the mouth. The dead man’s prestige was in danger, friends came between and the worst was avoided; the almond grove remained Gaetano’s property, but the gulf between the two branches of the Pirrone family became unbridgeable; Turi did not even go to his brother’s funeral and was referred to simply as the “swine”, in his sister’s house. The Jesuit had been told of all this by letters dictated to the parish priest and had formed some ideas of his own about it which he did not express from filial reverence. The little almond grove now belonged to Sarina.

  It was all quite obvious; no love or passion played any part; just a dirty trick to revenge another dirty trick. But it could be set right; the Jesuit thanked Providence for having brought him to San Cono at that very time. “Listen, Sarina, I’ll settle all this in a couple of hours, but you’ve got to help me; half of Chibbaro” (that was the almond grove) “must go as ’Ncilina’s dowry. There’s no other way out of it; the silly girl has been the ruin of you.” And he thought how the Lord to bring about His justice can even use bitches in heat.

  Sarina lost her temper. “Half of Chibbaro! To that swine, never! Better dead!”

  “All right. Then after Mass I’ll go and talk to Vincenzino. Don’t be afraid, I’ll try and calm him down.
” He put his hat back on his head and his hands into his belt; and waited patiently, sure of himself.

  Any version of Vincenzino’s furies, even though revised and expurgated by a Jesuit priest, was always beyond poor Sarina, who began weeping for the third time; gradually her sobs lessened and then stopped. She got up: “May God’s will be done; you fix it, it’s beyond me. But our lovely Chibbaro! All that sweat of our father’s!”

  Her tears were just about to start again, but the priest had already gone.

  After celebrating the Divine Sacrifice and accepting coffee from the parish priest, the Jesuit went straight to his Uncle Turi’s home. He had never been there but knew it was a shack at the very top of the village near Mastro Ciccu the blacksmith’s. He soon found it, and as there were no windows and the door was open to let in a little sun, he stopped on the threshold. In the darkness inside he could see heaps of mules’ harness, saddlebags, sacks; Don Turi earned his living as a mule driver, now helped by his son.

  “Dorâzio!” called Father Pirrone. This was an abbreviation of the form of Deo Gratias (agamus) used by clerics asking permission to enter. An old man’s voice shouted, “Who is it?” and someone got up at the back of the room and came towards the door. “It’s your nephew, Father Saverio Pirrone. I wanted to talk to you if I may.”

  It was not much of a surprise for Turi; a visit by Father Pirrone or some representative must have been expected for at least two months. Uncle Turi was a vigorous, straight-backed old man baked through and through by sun and hail, with the sinister furrows on his face which troubles trace on people who are not good.

  “Come in,” he said without a smile. He stood aside and even went grudgingly through the action of kissing the priest’s hand. Father Pirrone sat down 0n one of the big wooden saddles. The place looked very wretched indeed: two chickens were grubbing away in a corner and everything smelt of manure, wet washing and evil poverty.

  “Uncle, we’ve not met for years, but that’s not all my fault; I’m seldom at home, as you know, but you never come near my mother, your sister-in-law; I’m sorry to hear that.”

  “I’ll never set foot in that house again. Just passing it turns my stomach! Turi Pirrone never forgets an injury, even after twenty years!”

  “Oh, yes, of course, yes indeed. But here I am to-day like the dove from Noah’s Ark, to assure you that the flood is over. I’m very glad to be here and I was very happy yesterday when they told me at home that your son Santino is engaged to my niece Angelina; they are two fine young people, I’m told, and their union will put an end to the quarrel between our families which, if I may say so, has always grieved me.”

  Turi’s face expressed a surprise too obvious not to be false. “If it weren’t for your habit, Father, I’d say you were lying. You must have been listening to tales from those females of yours. Santino has never spoken to Angelina in his life: he’s far too good a son to go against his father’s wish.”

  The Jesuit admired the old man’s astuteness and the smoothness of his lying.

  “Apparently, Uncle, I’ve been misinformed; why, they told me that you’d agreed on the dowry and would both be coming to our place today to make it official. But the nonsense these idle females talk! Even if it’s not true, though, it does show what’s in those good hearts of theirs. Well, uncle, there’s no point in my staying here; I’m going straight home to reprove my sister. Very pleased to find you so well.”

  The old man’s face was beginning to show a certain greedy interest. “Wait, Father. Give us another laugh with this gossip of yours; what dowry were the females talking of?”

  “Oh, I don’t know! I think I heard something about half of Chibbaro! ’Ncilina, they said, was very dear to them and no sacrifice was too much to ensure peace in the family!”

  Don Turi stopped laughing. He got up, “Santino!” he began bawling as loudly as if calling a recalcitrant mule. And as no one came he shouted louder still, “Santino, blood of the Madonna, where are you?” Then, when he saw Father Pirrone quiver, he put a hand over his mouth with a gesture unexpectedly servile.

  Santino was seeing to the animals in the adjacent yard. He entered shyly, with a curry-comb in his hand. He was a fine-looking lad of twenty-two, tall and slim like his father, with eyes not yet embittered. He had seen the Jesuit pass through the village the day before as had everyone else and he recognised him at once. “This is Santino. And this is your cousin Father Saverio Pirrone. You can thank God the Reverend Father is here, or I’d have cut your ears off. What’s all this love-making without your own father knowing? Children are born for their parents and not to run after skirts.”

  The young man looked ashamed, perhaps not from disobedience but because of his father’s past consent, and did not know what to say; he got out of the difficulty by putting the curry-comb on the floor and going to kiss the priest’s hand. The latter showed his teeth in a smile and sketched a benediction. “God bless you, my son, though I don’t think you deserve it.”

  The old man continued, “As your cousin here has gone on begging me I’ve given my consent in the end. Why didn’t you tell me before, though? Now clean yourself up and we’ll go down to Angelina’s now.”

  “A moment, Uncle, just a moment.” It occured to Father Pirrone that he ought to say a word to the “man of honour” who knew nothing as yet. “Back home they’ll be sure to want to get things ready; anyway they told me they’d be expecting you at seven this evening. Come then, and it’ll be a pleasure to see you.” And off he went, embraced by father and son.

  When Father Pirrone got back to the little square house he found his brother-in-law Vincenzino already home, so all he could do to reassure his sister was wink at her from behind her proud husband’s back; but as they were both Sicilians that was quite enough. Then he told his brother-in-law that he wanted to talk to him, and the two went off to the scraggy little pergola at the back. The swaying edge of the Jesuit’s cassock traced a kind of uncrossable mobile frontier around him; the fat buttocks of the “man of honour” waggled, perennial symbol of threatening pride. Their conversation was actually quite different from what the priest had foreseen. Once assured of the imminence of ’Ncilina’s marriage, the “man of honour” showed complete indifference about what her behaviour had been. But at the first mention of the proposed dowry his eyes rolled, the veins in his temples swelled and the lurch in his walk became more marked; from his mouth came a gurgle of low obscene oaths and announcements of murderous intentions; his hand, which had not made a single gesture in defence of his daughter’s honour, began clutching the right pocket of his trousers to show that in defence of his almond trees he was ready to spill the very last drop of other people’s blood.

  Father Pirrone let the stream of abuse run out, merely making quick signs of the Cross at the frequent curses; of the gesture announcing a massacre he took no notice at all. During a pause he put in: “Of course I want to contribute to a general settlement too. You know the private agreement ensuring me the ownership of whatever was due to me from our father’s estate? I’ll send that back to you from Palermo, torn up.”

  This balsam had an immediate effect. Vincenzino, intent on computing the value of the anticipated inheritance, was silent; and through the cold sunny air came the cracked notes of a song which had suddenly burst from ’Ncilina as she swept out her uncle’s room.

  In the afternoon Uncle Turi and Santino came to pay their visit, quite spruced up and wearing very white shirts. The engaged couple sat on chairs side by side and broke out now and again into loud wordless giggles in each other’s faces. They were really pleased, she at “settling” herself and having this big handsome male at her disposal, he at following his father’s advice and now owning not only half an almond grove but a slave too. And no one now found the red geranium he had put in his buttonhole to have any connection with hell.

  *

  Two days later Father Pirrone left for Palermo. As he jogged along he went over impressions that were not entirely pleasan
t; that brutish love-affair come to fruition in St. Martin’s Summer, that wretched half almond grove reacquired by means of calculated courtship, seemed to him the rustic poverty-struck equivalent of other events recently witnessed. Nobles were reserved and incomprehensible, peasants explicit and clear; but the Devil twisted them both round his little finger all the same.

  At the Villa Salina he found the Prince in excellent spirits. Don Fabrizio asked if he had enjoyed his four days away and if he had remembered to give his mother his, the Prince’s, greetings. He knew her, in fact; she had stayed at the villa six years before and pleased both the Prince and Princess by her serene widowhood. The Jesuit had entirely forgotten about the greetings and was silent; then he said that his mother and sister had charged him with bearing His Excellency their respects, which was a fib rather than a lie. “Excellency,” he added then, “I wanted to ask you if you could give orders for me to have a carriage to-morrow; I must go to the Archbishopric to ask for a dispensation; a niece of mine has got engaged to her cousin.”

  “Of course, Father Pirrone, of course, if you wish; but I have to go down to Palermo myself the day after to-morrow, you could come with me—or are you really in such a rush?”

  VI

  A BALL

  * * *

  NOVEMBER, 1862

  THE PRINCESS MARIA Stella climbed into the carriage, sat down on the blue satin cushions and gathered around her as many rustling folds of her dress as she could. Meanwhile Concetta and Carolina were also getting in; they sat down in front of her, their identical pink dresses exhaling a faint scent of violets. Then a heavy foot on the running board made the barouche heel over on its high springs; Don Fabrizio was getting in too. The carriage was crammed, waves of silk, hoops of three crinolines, billowed, clashed, mingled almost to the height of their heads; beneath was a tight press of foot-gear, the girls’ silken slippers, the Princess’s russet ones, the Prince’s patent leather pumps: each suffered from the other’s feet and could find nowhere to put his own.