My Brother's Keeper

by Marcia Davenport

  I had left my car, that first day, in a corner of the piazza and walked away from it, looking up at the house in whose shadow I had parked: a tall bleak building five stories high, quite large, and obviously very old. It had small, crooked windows and I could tell from the lower ones that they were set in immensely thick walls and that the casements were a late addition—originally such windows had no glass. I had not been able from inside the car to see the whole façade of the building, but now I stood in the middle of the piazza and looked up to the roof. Off at the farthest corner, in a tiny top-storey window, I saw a woman. I could see her head and neck and the curve of her shoulders, that was all. She held herself so still that one could tell even at a glance that this must be her habit. She had not come to the window for any passing reason, it was strangely clear that her time was spent sitting motionless there. She was very old.

  I stood there in the sun staring up at the woman, and she sat in her window staring, but not at me. Her eyes when I first saw her seemed to be fixed on some distant object and as long as I watched her, I never saw them shift their focus. It was that fixedness of her eyes which made me sense, as if through some special nerve, that there was something peculiar about her. She sat turned slightly so that I saw her head a little more than in profile, a remarkable head, the white hair in flat wings framing a low forehead, the nose high and carved, slightly beaked; the mouth tightly closed and not fallen in, which would mark the typical absence of teeth in most such faces; the chin perhaps the most surprising feature, for though everything about the head showed distinct old age, the chin was a firm sculptured line, flowing without blurs or wattles into the high black collar which encased the throat. The face was the nutshell brown of the elderly Italian, but from the distance where I stood I could not discern further details except the sharp contrast between that deep-toned skin and the pure white hair above it. I must have stood for well over five minutes, frankly staring at the old woman, and she remained fixed in her remote, dignified position, oblivious of me.

  From the size of San Bernardo I knew it could not be difficult to find Renata Tosi if she were alive. And I was not surprised when the padrone of the dusty little trattoria answered my question with a flap of his hand towards the woman at the window, saying, “Eccola lì.” He shrugged when I asked if he knew her.

  “Nobody knows her, Signore,” he said. “She never speaks.”

  “Not at all?”

  “Never. She never leaves that room. She speaks to nobody. She is—” he tapped his forehead.

  And with this I turned and crossed the piazza to the house where she was sitting at her window.

  The stairs were dark and steep and it was a long climb to the top floor. Though the air was so warm and clear out of doors it was dank and foul here and one knew one was breathing the tomblike effluvia of centuries. The rough stone steps were worn to deep hollows at the middle. And the place had a strange smell—not so much that of primitive habits untouched by sanitation, which rather surprised me, but a sour stench of sheer age, overlaid by the smells of noonday cooking seeping from each household. From my scrutiny of her window outside I thought I could place Renata Tosi’s door correctly, and I did; it was the last one along the low, cramped attic passage. I knocked. I had the disturbing sensation of anticipating what was to come, for there was no answer and I knew I had expected none. I knocked again—two or three times. Each time I waited, listening carefully. I knocked once more, a sharper rap with a rat-tat-tat urgency that I had not ventured before. That time I heard, with the greatest difficulty, a muffled sound, a whisper probably, but it sounded like a sigh.

  “Avanti—”

  The door was not locked and I opened it and walked in.

  The woman’s back was turned, she had not changed her position at the window, and in spite of what I had heard about her I was surprised that she had not the curiosity to turn and look at the intruder. I stood with my hat in my hand, not feeling so rebuffed as I might, for her attitude gave me time to examine the room. It was a cell, nothing more or less, furnished with a pallet in one corner, a stand with a basin and ewer for washing, a table on which stood a candle in a tin holder, a tattered prayer-book, a cup and plate, and a photograph frame so placed that I saw only the back of it from where I stood. The only chair was the hard straight one upon which Renata Tosi was sitting. And finally, to my amazement and again, my discomfiture, because it was all part of anticipating the incredible, there lay across a corner of the bare floor a series of copies of the Corriere, all folded back to the third page on which the story about Seymour Holt and his shocking house and his vanished brother had been running every day. My mouth felt dry and I swallowed and wondered how on earth to begin doing what I had to do. At that point, while I was looking first at the woman’s back and then at the newspapers and then at her again, she said in the same sighing whisper, “Chi è? Who is it?”

  “Someone who has to speak to you, Signora,” I answered, “I have been sent from Milano—from New York. I apologize for intruding.”

  There was a slow reluctant movement of her shoulders, and she did not turn her head. When she spoke she never raised her voice above that strange breathy sound which was almost a sigh.

  “What must you say?” she asked.

  There was no way of creeping up on a subject like this. I said, “Mi dispiace, but the death of a Mr. Seymour Holt in New York has raised a certain question which his will, in fact, the law, makes it necessary for you to answer.”

  There was not a sound from her for a long time. Finally she said, “Who are you?”

  “My name is Richard Wycherly,” I said. “I work for a bank—the Seaboard Trust Company of New York. They are the executors of Mr. Holt’s will. They have instructed me to come here.”

  “Well?” she breathed, again after letting me wait.

  Cautiously I began to explain. I might have been speaking to an effigy. So I said sharply, “Seymour Holt has left you a fortune on condition that you state truthfully who was the father of your son, known as Sebastiano Gandolfi.”

  Then she looked at me. She turned her head and stared at me with a pair of extraordinary brown eyes. They seemed penetrating and yet she made me feel as if they ignored my presence. She said, “I have no son.”

  I looked at the framed photograph, standing at such an angle that by bending forward I could see just enough to discern that it was a picture of a man. She watched me. I said, “Signora, do you really mean that?”

  “I have no son,” she repeated.

  So I said again, “There is a great deal of money involved in this. And your son would inherit it after your death.”

  “Money! Per che cosa?” This was the first I had seen of her hands, as she lifted the right one from its hiding-place in her loose sleeves, and made a scornful gesture at the room. “I need no money. You should go now.”

  “It is not so simple to drop this matter and walk out of here,” I said. “It was as part of this same duty that I learned something about Professor Sebastiano Gandolfi before I came to see you. I am afraid, Signora, it will be very difficult to accept your word that you are not his mother. There is much proof to the contrary.”

  She sat like stone.

  “And perhaps, if it becomes necessary to prove that you are his mother, he might feel you had no right to deprive—”

  She moved quickly, she turned upon me with the speed of a lizard.

  “If I had a son as distinguished as Professor Gandolfi, would I have the right to shame him before the world by such a scandalo as you want me to confess now? Go, I tell you. Go!” Her voice was a hoarse rasp, the sigh extinguished.

  Once again I stood in Renata Tosi’s room in San Bernardo. It was wretchedly cold, clammy, the piercing chill borne by days without sun, which can be more penetrating than a real winter temperature. The old woman sat as if she had not moved a muscle in the seven weeks since I had seen her. The ochre tint of her skin had a lifeless look, her colorless lips were firmly closed, her eyelids l
owered. She wore the same shapeless high-collared black garment, with a knitted shawl about her shoulders. There was a rough grey blanket over her knees. A small charcoal brazier smouldered near her. It gave scarcely any warmth. She sat in precisely the same position as before, staring out the window, her hands hidden in her black sleeves, and she gave no evidence of hearing the few words I had just said. I had hoped, pessimistically to be sure, that because I had been there before she would in some way be less forbidding. But that was not so. She contrived to make me feel as if she had immured herself in a new coating of ice. There was now nothing in sight so betraying as the newspapers that had lain across the floor. The framed photograph was gone from the table. This was a way of informing me that against her will she had expected me to return; that she knew of Randall Holt’s terrible death in the same way that she had learned about his brother’s. But when I said, “Signora, will you allow me to speak? I have been sent back from New York to see you again,” she only shrugged in that faint way which bespoke total indifference.

  I stood there, wondering whether it would offend her if I should sit down on the edge of the pallet in the corner, since she occupied the only chair in the room. I took a step towards the cot, and saw by an icy twitch of her eyebrows that this would be presuming. So I stood still, certain that my cold feet would soon be benumbed, not only by the damp draughts across the floor but by the discomfort deliberately imposed by her.

  “Signora,” I said. “Like the first time when I came, you make me feel that it is useless to look for a tactful approach to what I have to say.”

  By her stony silence she plainly agreed.

  “And this time,” I said, “I have here the whole record of your relations with—” I remember I had to stop and take a breath before I managed to say, “—the Holt brothers. Both brothers, Seymour Holt and Randall.” I held forward the attaché case in such a way that she could not avoid seeing it. She saw it. Not even she could control the emotion which distended, then flattened, her slanting, narrow nostrils. If she had made it difficult for me to speak the first time I saw her, she was making it virtually impossible now. I had done what I could to tell her that I knew her story, and now again I groped for the device with which I had hoped to disarm her before. I said, “Believe me, this is not a matter of passing judgment upon anybody. I told you before, Signora, that men like myself, bankers, lawyers—our only concern is the rightful and legal disposition of people’s property. We feel now, more than ever, that the Holt property is rightfully yours. And—Professor Gandolfi’s. It remains only for you to make the statement necessary to claim it.”

  “I have nothing to state,” she said in a steely voice.

  “But your—please! Won’t you consider him? Your son?”

  “I have no son.”

  “Oh, Signora!” I looked once round the room, I suppose as if expecting a chair to materialize from space; and since there was no other way to manage, I put the attaché case on the floor at her feet and dropped on my knees beside it. She sat staring straight over my head at the empty place on the table where the photograph had been. Not even my involuntarily dramatic motion had moved her. Slowly I opened the leather case.

  “I have here,” I said, picking up the thick, blue-bound folder of the transcript, “a copy of the notes, something like entries in a diary, which Randall Holt was in the habit of writing throughout his entire life. Did you know he did that?”

  She made no answer.

  “He did,” I said, and went on to explain as best as I could what I had found in the depths of the appalling mess of the Holt brothers’ house. Now that I knew so much about her, all of which had been a sealed book before, I felt stirred and pushed by my own recollections of Randall Holt’s notes: here was the lovely, careless, curiously wise, infinitely tender creature who had held his life in the palm of her hand, and shared enough of it with him to have moved me, the utter stranger, time and again, to intense feeling. This very morning, on the road skirting the eastern branch of the lake, I had stopped the car on the little height above the cove where stood the pink house, dreaming and unchanged in its soft frame of green, and the sight of it had filled my heart with vivid pity for the gentle souls who had lived in it, and for the awful sacrifices that had torn them from it, which they believed to be retribution.

  I tried to suggest that to her, but she seemed to have the power to parry my appeals with ever-increasing imperturbability. I had talked much longer than I believed her strength could stand, and in one last, despairing effort I lifted the sealed, padded envelopes from the case and, though she shrank at the approach of my hand, I laid them gently in her lap.

  “Those envelopes, Signora, contain the things which Randall Holt treasured above everything in this world. They are not copies. They are originals—and all of them concern you. Some are written by you. I consider them your property.”

  “I do not want them,” she said.

  I went on as if I had not heard her. “The letter is there,” I said, “which you wrote to Randall Holt in 1928, telling him it was unnecessary any longer to send money for the education of Sebastiano Gandolfi.”

  She was silent, her dry lips pressed tight, her eyes averted. I marvelled at her control. I let her wait; she would outwait me. I said softly, “Your son. John. The boy whom Randall Holt worshipped. You used to call him Giu’an.”

  I saw the muscles strain against her black collar. She would not give a sign. I bent closer to her, pointing to the envelopes in her lap. “The note is there,” I whispered. “The note that was in the basket.”

  “Taci!” she cried, a sudden raucous shriek.

  The bare room seemed to echo her agony.

  “I am so sorry,” I said as gently as I could. “I do wish you could believe how I want to help you. Signora, don’t you understand? It does not matter by the terms of the will whom you state the father to have been. Only that you state it.” By every effort of suggestion and willpower I was trying to advise her to name Randall Holt. She only sat there with her head bent, as it had been since her despairing cry. “There are many reasons,” I said very quietly, “why it does not matter which one you name.” I let the silence stay for a long time between us. “Will you not say?”

  Her head was bent, I could not see anything but the flat cap of white hair, the angle of the wrinkled cheek and the long-lobed ear. I leaned closer to her, sensing for the first time that her cloak of stone was about to crack. “Will you not say?” I asked again, almost whispering. Barely at all, her bowed head moved in refusal. “You cannot say?” The head moved again. “You never knew,” I whispered. She cringed; her emaciated shoulders rode up as if to engulf her head in shame. In spite of the piercing chill of the room my own face was hot; I felt almost suffocating with the import of what I had forced myself to say, and her to hear. I rose from my knees and walked over to the other side of the room and stood with my hands in the pockets of my overcoat, determined to get the thing back on its original footing and make my last, obligatory, coldly rational appeal.

  “I understand everything implicit in your refusal,” I said. “But we do not feel that you have the right to deprive Sebastiano Gandolfi of a fortune. You do not realize, perhaps, that the situation is changed by the death of Randall Holt. He died before his brother Seymour, and without making a will. This means that the estate of Seymour Holt has inherited Randall’s money. All this, upon your meeting Seymour Holt’s condition, will eventually go to your son.”

  “I have no son.”

  This time I could have screamed. Instead I managed to say, “It is possible you have lived so long in retirement, Signora, that you do not quite realize the extreme changes in the present-day world. Neither individuals nor public opinion are shocked by what used to be considered very shocking. Even if some matter does appear to be scandalous, the pace of life is such that people almost immediately forget what we may call yesterday’s sensation. This question before you could be arranged in such a way that your declaration about the pater
nity would scarcely be remarked.”

  For the first and only time that day she raised her head and looked straight at me. Her face was graven with scorn, her eyes black and enormous.

  “Siete ignoranti tutti!” she said. “All of you. You understand nothing. Not alone would I not disgrace Sebastiano Gandolfi by a scandalous declaration of paternity. I have no son. Have you heard me?” The gnarled claws of hands shot out from the black sleeves and beat furiously upon the shrunken breast. “I have no son!” The voice was a strident screech, torn from the lungs. I stood there dumbstruck.

  After a time the shaking claw held towards me the envelopes that I had laid upon her knees.

  “Take these,” she said. She pointed to the leather case at her feet. “Take all of it. And go.”

  I returned to Milano and telegraphed to the Council Minister for an appointment. His reply came immediately, and I flew to Rome by the next morning’s plane. The flight was a troubled interlude for me. I believed I could present the matter in such a way as to convince any rational man—let alone a brilliant one—of his own interest in persuading the old woman to meet the terms of the will. But it would confound me personally and embarrass me professionally if I should fail. I had had too much of horrors and eccentricities and I did not want their consequences to remain as a mark of failure on my record at the bank.