‘For the love of the Virgin Mary, don’t take her there. Don’t let that disreputable woman’s breath defile the honesty and modesty of that simple-hearted, eighteen-year-old girl, that innocent young lamb!’
‘That’s all very well, Father, but I’m dependent on everybody. I was born in this valley, I’ve no intention of dying here. To earn my living, every day I have to do three or four hours’ walking along mountain paths, at the risk of falling down a precipice, freezing to death in the snow in winter, or dying young of heart failure. I save on a mule or a donkey, forcing myself – and being a bit of tyrant with my wife on this issue – to put aside some money that will allow me to move to a city, where I’ll be able to practise as a real doctor. Letting blood, pulling out teeth, setting bones for these peasants is no decent profession for someone who has studied in the capital and has developed noble aspirations.’
‘Nobility of aspiration, Doctor, lies in the will to do good. And it is all the more difficult to do good, but all the more worthy, the lowlier the object – and, I would add, the more unattractive – to which it is directed.’
‘You’re talking about perfection, Father. I admire sublime virtue, but not even according to the Gospel is everyone bound to be a saint. In the city, too, people may lead the lives of good men, and help their neighbour, and I feel I was born to lead a civilized life. Now, you see, Don Giuseppe, this lady – whether we call her a baroness, or whatever – pays me four florins a visit, and she summons me nearly every day. My piggy-bank thrives on it.’
‘Signora Carlina would not approve of these sentiments, Doctor.’
‘And wrongly so. Can I refuse the benefit of my knowledge to anyone who calls upon my services? There are no other doctors in the valley. It would take seven or eight hours to get one, and meanwhile, the patient is likely to die like a dog. Anyway, is it right to distinguish between a peasant and a lady, between an honest woman and a whore, or should not all be helped equally? Tell me, Don Giuseppe, if a sinner, man or woman, even without feeling at death’s door, were to beseech a word of a minister of God, a word that might comfort, or improve, or illuminate an erring soul, would you have the right to deny it? To reach out to brethren who have sinned or strayed, to help them return to the straight and narrow – is that not the good pastor’s primary and most sacred duty?’
These last words were spoken most emphatically by the doctor, who kept his shrewd eyes fixed on the priest’s candid gaze. A silence followed, in which the villagers gathered in the square with the fountain could be heard singing and laughing. The priest was pensive. With a movement of decisiveness, he went and fetched his clerical collar from the wardrobe, fastened it on without looking in the mirror that hung from a nail in the windowframe, and which he used to shave his beard, and put on his black jacket, the only one he possessed. Then he said, ‘Let’s go.’
At that moment a great din of trumpets, horns, cornets and other brass instruments that screeched and squealed abominably joined the peasants’ ever-mounting hubbub; and in response came the sound of firecrackers let off outside the village, on the mountain-ridge. It was a special holiday: the orchestra from the neighbouring town, no less, had been brought in; and the ceremony was presided over by the Mayor. What was actually taking place was a real triumphal march. The heroes were two twelve-year-old boys, one dark-haired, the other fair; they were crowned with wild flowers, and were riding in one of those vehicles used in the mountains to transport manure – with their curved fronts, these look somewhat like ancient Roman chariots. The cart, all festooned and garlanded, was drawn by two stately white oxen, but instead of a conqueror’s boldness, the two boys displayed a great fear of being hurled to the ground as the wheels either climbed over the enormous rocks with which the steep, narrow, winding paths of the village were strewn, or sank into swampy holes from which mud splattered out. The two young lads gazed round, bewildered by so much noise and anxious for only one thing: to jump down from the triumphal wagon in order to join their companions and be free to run around, shouting, ‘Hurrah! Hurrah!’
The reason for their great glory was explained by Menico to an old pedlar selling those enormous red and blue umbrellas that, when it rains, add a touch of brightness to the gloomy landscape. What had happened was this: at the beginning of the previous spring, the two boys went up Mount Malga – the one that casts the longest shadow in the Castra Valley – to collect the roots of a certain medicinal plant. This is one of the ways that mountain-folk make a little money: at the risk of falling down chasms and breaking their necks, they earn a few pence for a considerable weight of arnica, gentian, monkshood, lichen, or goodness knows what else, gathered from the rocks on the craggy peaks. The snow was melting at the bottom of the mountain, but, scraping it away as they went, the two boys singlemindedly climbed higher and higher to a place that had not seen a living soul for eight months. Suddenly, they heard a rustling from under a pine tree that the wind had blown down – with its trunk and dry branches lying on that blanket of whiteness, it looked like a skeleton. They listened. There was more rustling. They went nearer, and out came a brown animal, like a small dog. The animal fled and took refuge in a thicket; the boys went after it. They had two sticks and began to beat at the thicket – which, although leafless, was dense – one on either side, with all the strength they could muster. They wanted to catch the dog. And indeed, the animal, frightened and provoked, came out, but instead of running away, it rushed at the arms of one of the boys, bit him, and drew blood, which made the snow turn red. But, nothing daunted, the more the boy felt himself being bitten, the more he stood his ground. And along came the other with his stick and landed a timely, heavy blow on the animal’s head, then a second blow, which killed it. More cheerful than ever, the injured boy held his arms in the snow for a while, then he and his companion went leaping down the mountainside, carrying their prey.
They were not sure whether it was a dog or a wolf. But before they reached the village, they met a tall, wiry old man of eighty, whose body was still as straight as a ramrod, and as agile as a roebuck; he was out walking with his rifle slung across his shoulders. The fame of this old man has travelled beyond the Castra Valley: even in Trento they know of him. He has killed twenty bears in his time. The last, after his gun misfired, he killed by grappling with it: the man plunged his knife into the bear’s belly, and they rolled some way down the mountainside, still locked together, until the bear died. Then this octogenarian calmly got straight to his feet.
Now this old man called out to the boys as they went past, and said, ‘Where did you get hold of that creature, boys?’
The boys replied, ‘We killed it ourselves. But is it a wolf or a dog?’
‘It’s a bear-cub, you lucky young fellows – lucky that you didn’t find its mother, and lucky that you’ve earned yourselves a handsome thirty-seven silver florins. Go and claim them from the Captain.’
With that, he continued on his way, looking up at the glaciers on the mountaintops.
Menico pointed with his umbrella to one of the highlanders in the crowd who towered almost a whole head over everyone else, and who was gazing seriously at the two little heroes: it was the old bear-hunter.
To cut a long story short, a few months later the boys had been able to collect the thirty-seven florins that the Governor gives as a reward for any bear killed; and the festivities were to commemorate and celebrate the event. In the interests of truth, it has to be said that some devious minds had seen it as another excuse to spend the whole night dancing with the band at the inn, squandering the money on debauchery and excess. And because the priest well knew this, he had not wanted to involve his church, or himself, in such riotous goings-on. And besides, his own bear-hunting caused the priest no little remorse. He, too, had come upon an unweaned bear-cub one winter in the snow. He had caught the cub and hit it a bit, making it yelp, so that the she-bear, which could not be far away, would hear it. And sure enough, she came rushing up in fury, while the priest took careful aim and found his mark.
Mortally wounded, the she-bear dragged herself over to her young, which continued to yelp, and licked it in a gesture of infinite love. The priest went home wrapt in thought, leaving the dead mother-bear in the wood and letting the cub go free. That evening he searched through the books in his small library to find out whether there was any harm in deceiving when used against wild beasts, but he failed to find anything relevant to his case. The only thing he found, in the second volume of Gury’s Compendium theologiae moralis, was that a priest is permitted to hunt in a seemly manner, cum sclopeto et uno cane. That was all. But he could never forget the selfless and deep passion of that dying mother-bear, and whenever he thought of it he felt a pang in his heart.
He said again to the doctor, ‘Let’s go.’ And they went out, leaving behind the noise of the village festivities.
II
The banker-Baron’s villa was an improvised creation. At a short distance from the village stood a house made of stone and cement – an extraordinary phenomenon in that entirely wood-constructed village. It had been built ten years earlier by an honest soul who, having spent half a century working down in Italy as a boiler-maker and accumulated many thousands of lire, wanted to enjoy them with his family, in blessed peace, amid the clean air and deep snows of his beloved birthplace. If only the idea had never occurred to him! The day the first stone was laid, his daughter suddenly died; the upper floor had no sooner been laid than his son killed himself falling down a cliff; hardly was the roof finished when his wife passed on to a better life. The poor fellow – alone, inconsolable, and full of aches and fears – spent a year pacing the empty rooms, recalling with unutterable longing his days of poverty, when his wife and children, all healthy and strong, ate nothing but polenta and he spent fifteen hours a day hammering at boilers and frying-pans. He died at the age of seventy, leaving his house to the Commune, which used it for storing hay, since no one would pay any money to go and live there – partly because everyone was accustomed to living in rickety wooden shacks, partly because of the idea that the building was jinxed and brought misfortune.
There was no glass in the windows any more, the shutters were beginning to fall off, but the big house – so white and tall and well proportioned, with its fine terrace and overhanging balconies – was a joy to behold amid the dark huts and hovels in the surrounding landscape. Furthermore, it stood in the loveliest spot: on the spur of the mountain, from which all the villages in the entire valley could be seen dotted here and there; ‘with the eye travelling to the green plain beyond, and the castle at Sanna. And behind, it was shaded by a dense copse of age-old larches, whilst in front lay a bright meadow, on almost level ground, full of big elder shrubs with their red berries that looked like blazing coral, and densely carpeted with pink flowers swaying on very tall stems, and yellow, purple and white flowers that would make the prettiest and most colourful coronet for a bride.
The boiler-maker’s already attractive house had become enchanting. At the front, on the ground floor, was a new loggia, with drapes that seemed to be made of wonderful Persian cloth, drawn during the hours of sunshine; extending on either side were two new pavilion-shaped wings, with four steps descending to the meadow that had been transformed into a garden, complete with symmetrical flowerbeds, a large round pond of clear water with goldfish, and swings scattered in the most secret and shady places. Behind the building was a new portico where horses could shelter while waiting for their riders; the kitchen, stables, servants’ quarters and other places that served a menial purpose were located in a kind of rustic cabin linked to the big house by a covered walkway, which was all hidden by climbing vegetation and transplanted shrubs.
These additions to the building were made of wood, hastily erected, and intended to last three months: it did not matter that the next snowfall and frost would destroy them all.
The person who had supervised all this work was the actual discoverer – or, to be more accurate, inventor – of the mines, a notorious scoundrel compared with whom the president of the mining company, the banker-Baron, could claim to be a saint. He was called Gregorio Viorz, and it was rumoured that he had twice been to prison for fraud. He was also said to be guilty of a poisoning, carried out for personal gain, but the evidence was lacking and the authorities had never stepped in. Be that as it may, after all the things he had done in his native town of Innsbruck, he could never set foot there again.
Unluckily for mankind, God had endowed him with the most fertile ingenuity and matchless energy, so much so that with half the effort and thought he expended going about his dark and devious ways he could have made himself rich and respected and certain of his own success. But the inevitable corollary of a wicked nature are certain fatal weaknesses that spoil everything, and Viorz had two such weaknesses. Firstly: he was too sharp, so that having worked out all the dangers of any undertaking, and doing his best to anticipate them all, he often created difficulties in the very process of trying to avoid them. Secondly: as the time to reap the fruit of his misdeeds gradually approached, the joy and arrogance of his success went to his head, robbing him of his composure, and in tackling the final obstacles his initial wily caution turned to brutal violence.
A person of this sort could not lend his name to any industrial or banking enterprise, so he had to remain shrouded, at least initially, in prudent mystery. Therefore, he needed someone to act as a front man: not a gentleman, for none would have had anything to do with such crookedness; nor a notorious scoundrel, for instead of attracting people he would have scared them off. What was needed was, for instance, a fellow who had consumed his inheritance; a degenerate in urgent need of funds; sufficiently intelligent to understand the ins and outs of the business and to go along with it, but not very inspired, so that he did not one day take it into his head to act on his own initiative. A fellow with nice well-bred manners, a good family name and an impressive-sounding title. And in addition to all these qualities, he needed one other: that of being totally unknown to men of the banking class, or better still, of being someone of whom they had a favourable knowledge. This requirement, along with the all the others, was met by Baron von Steinach.
He was an irresponsible man of no convictions rather than a truly wicked person. Moving in elevated circles in Vienna and Paris had inured him to every vice, without resulting in the loss of his charming aristocratic manners and a certain sensitivity of nature. He had been involved on three or four occasions in some big and much talked-about crashes, but he had unconcernedly and unfailingly met his losses, repaying every last penny. After he met Gregorio Viorz – who never subsequently lost track of him, and who called the Baron in great haste a few years later, as soon as the idea of the Mining Company first occurred to him – Steinach went to Monaco, borrowing the money to gamble, and won. And with these winnings he settled in Paris, and began living the life of a captain of industry. One way or another, he survived, always dressed in the latest fashion, although with a touch of Teutonic gaucheness, living in small but splendid apartments, full of artistic baubles, reigned over by one or other of the women – blonde, brunette, tawny or red-haired – that he picked up here or there, and replaced every six months at the outside. And so he reached the age of sixty, still robust and full of life, which seemed a miracle, considering his dissoluteness and debauchery. Nor did his age reveal itself except in two things: the roundness of his paunch, which in his customary white waistcoat looked even more imposing, and in his continuing to live, for more than a year now, with the latest Baroness, a red-head, without feeling any desire whatsoever to replace her with another.
The priest had not said a word during the walk from his house to the villa, despite all the doctor’s goading. His mind seemed elsewhere; he watched the freakish clouds covering part of the sky with their whiteness.
A servant in turquoise livery with crimson braiding and big gold buttons showed the two visitors into the room where the Baron and the rest of the house-party were relaxing after a meal, and asked them to wait there u
ntil the Baroness might receive them. The Baron, who was sunk deep in an armchair, smoking a cigar, rose, went over to the priest and, shaking him by the hand, said lots of agreeable things to him. He had been anxious to meet him. He knew of all his virtues, and he wished to help the poor of the parish. He knew that the Baroness had been to deliver alms to the presbytery when she first came to stay in the villa; however, he himself wanted to do something longer-lasting. He had in mind a hundred charitable schemes, but to put them into effect he was awaiting the advice of a wise and saintly man to guide him, and teach him to do good usefully.
This courteous behaviour, this open smile, above all these generous offers placed the poor priest in a terrible quandary, confronting him again with the same old dilemma: can I reject the devil’s money? Can I deprive the poor of the help they so badly need? Should I not rather solicit this largesse, whatever its provenance might be, leaving God to enter the hearts of sinners?
The Baron continued to stand there talking, in front of a window overlooking the entire valley, at the far end of which could be seen the bright, winding river, like a ribbon of pure silver fluttering in the sun. Meanwhile, in the opposite corner of the room, the Baron’s guests chatted round a circular table covered with books and magazines. All of a sudden, the Baroness’s piano instructor, a short young man with a pair of spectacles perched on his nose, who had been a not very successful student at the Dresden Conservatory, removed the wrapper from one of the illustrated magazines, and read the first page, exclaiming, ‘Oh wonderful, magnificent, truly marvellous.’
Then having shown the engraving to the rest of the group, who echoed each other’s admiring oohs and aahs, he bounded up to the Baron to show him a view of his villa, no less. There was the verandah with its draperies; there were the pavilions with the four steps, but with the addition of two domes, each with a Fortune on top, as envisaged by the architect who had done the restoration. And there were the fountains, with new water jets – in short, a palace. Beneath was the caption: ‘Home of the President of the Castra Valley Mining Company.’
Senso (And Other Stories) Page 12