That Summer in Sicily

by Marlena de Blasi

  “He reclines again. Closes his eyes, and in the lamplight he is white as marble. Finally, ‘You’re right, I am speaking in circles. I don’t want things to remain as they are and yet I can’t see a way to begin again. Who knows what might befall us or Simona or . . . I don’t know.’

  “Abruptly he sits upright and says, ‘I have considered suicide. It would be the gallant way to save you. From them and from me. You would be forced into a life of your own. The idea of suicide can even begin to take root for an hour or so until I remember one more thing I’d like to tell you or show you, or until the sun rises and I imagine you waking, your plaits all undone, your eyes the color of a shallow green sea. I know the eight long strides you take to the door of your bath and the song you sing as the water gushes into the tub and I know the shorter, quicker strides you take—your body still wet, the ends of your hair dripping—back into bed to dry yourself against me. I know too much of you to be able to leave you forever, Tosca. But apart from you, thoughts of Yolande and Charlotte keep me from the self-indulgence of killing myself. Though I feel little paternal love, I feel great paternal responsibility and so I will not bequeath any of this macabre business to them. Nor will I bequeath it to you.’

  “Neither of us speaks then. For a long time, we sit like that, silent, distant from one another, until I say, ‘Isotta was right. About being uncertain whether to wish you love or to wish that love never finds you. The pain is, indeed, severe in either case. Were you not in pain before this love of ours, and are you not in pain now because of it?’

  “ ‘Yes.’

  “ ‘So does it all divine down to choosing which pain we prefer? Like which poison? Is that a fair distillation of life’s propositions?’

  “ ‘Perhaps it is.’

  “ ‘And so you will you always be unhappy in your happiness? This is what I am beginning to believe about you, Leo. And that frightens me far more than they do. You see, I’ve taken on your habit of excluding even their name. Well, let me say it aloud. You and your obsessions frighten me more than the clan frightens me. The worst they could do is to kill me. Kill you. But the menace of you may be far greater. You insist that we sit—prettily, I admit—like prey in a hole to wait for the wolves. This listening for them as we walk across the meadows, this looking for them even among the lemon trees—you’ve reduced our existence to some sort of vagrancy.’

  “ ‘Cosimo is right. You are remorselessly lucid.’

  “ ‘I think that I am more lucid, as you say, than you are at this moment. Let’s return to the question of beauty. How much beauty do you think is enough for a life? And how is it that one measures beauty? And how must it be wrapped, and how shall it be doled out? The truth is that we’ve likely lived more than our share of beauty. More than most get to live, I mean. But our portion may not be used up. Let’s risk it, Leo. Let’s ride tomorrow morning. Let’s ride to the locanda and I’ll play Le Cygne for you and we’ll drink our tepid tea by the fire and sleep on the dark red rug with the yellow roses.’

  “ ‘I’ll go to fetch the damn rug from the locanda and we can sleep on it right here.’

  “ ‘You know that’s not the same thing. It’s time to stop being afraid of them, Leo. If they want you or they want me, if they want us, they’ll have us. Stop practicing for death. The only way out of the maze is to take back our life.’ ”

  CHAPTER XV

  “BUT WE DO NOT TAKE BACK OUR LIFE. AS THOUGH IT WERE A stone tied upon his back, I try to take the fear from Leo. Let me help you, I can handle this, I can help you to put this down, I tell him. But the fear sullies me, too. So diabolic has it become that now it is nameless. It is not the clan. It is not vendetta. I cannot even call it death. Like phantoms, Leo and I move in ever-narrowing arabesques, one so close by the other who can know which of us leads, which of us follows.

  “ ‘Anything would be better than this,’ I tell him.

  “It is a late afternoon in the month of August 1954, and Leo has come to my rooms. Though he has not left the palace for nearly two months, he announces, feigning nonchalance, that he will go with Cosimo to Enna. Some final business about the deeds. The sham diffidence thrown down, he holds me then. Tight against his chest I stay while he strokes my hair and whispers over my head. Whispers so softly that I understand only his tone. His old tenderness. His heart is a frightened bird. He speaks in the slurred, sweet words of dialect.

  “ ‘I must go,’ he says, rather than I will go. In Sicilian there is no future tense. ‘I must go,’ he says again. The chapel bells ring. Fifteen minutes until vespers.

  “ ‘I’ll wait for you,’ I say, but he’s already at the door. He’s already gone. Why are the bells still ringing? Strange. Something amiss with the clocks. I feel free. Yes, that’s it. The bells are freedom bells. I am free. Leo will be gone for a few hours and I am free. I’ll go and ask cook if I can prepare a supper to take up here to my rooms. No, better to set up on the veranda. Agata and I will set the table out there. I’ll wear the silvery-brown dress. Weave magnolias among my braids the way he likes them. This is wonderful. Even after such a brief time away, Leo will return refreshed. And refreshed I shall be to await him. We must begin to think only of us for a while. It will seem pretense at first, but if we sustain it, the pretense will become natural. Yes, only of us.

  “Agata and I are arranging the table, and it’s been so long since we did anything at all apart from the strictest routines that even she and I must resort to pretense. She is cautious against my prattle, takes away the magnolia that I tuck behind her ear, places it near Leo’s plate. With Leo’s dialect still in my ear, I speak in Sicilian with her, a reach toward intimacy.

  “ ‘Ma io non ricordo più. In dialetto, quale é la parola ‘piacere’? I no longer remember. In dialect, what is the word for ‘pleasure’?’

  “ ‘Non esiste. It doesn’t exist.’ ”

  “I’ve brought out a small bottle of moscato and the two glasses that Leo keeps on the table beside his bed. A welcome-home drink. It had been chilled, but now the icy beads on the thin amber bottle have dried. I pull my shawl tight against the breeze. Where can they be? Mimmo has already taken in the table settings, the little pots of jellied broth. He appears every once in a while to urge me inside. This time, he’s brought a tisana of chamomile.

  “ ‘I’ll stay just a little longer, Mimmo,’ I say as I see Cosimo mounting the stone steps.

  “ ‘You see? Here they are. I’ll be fine, Mimmo. You get some rest.’

  “Mimmo seems old to me this evening. I don’t recall ever noticing how old he’s become. Cosimo is beside me now and, for some reason, he carries Leo’s suede jacket. At least that’s what it looks like all crumpled there in the clutch of his left hand. What foolish thing has Leo got to, I wonder.

  “I get up, take the jacket from Cosimo. My relief at their return I conceal in giddiness.

  “ ‘When did you take on the duties of the prince’s valet, Don Cosimo?’

  “I shake out the jacket, smooth the wrinkles as best I can. Shake it out again. I notice the tremor in my hands. I find that I can’t look at Cosimo. I find that I can’t speak.

  “ ‘He’s gone, Tosca.’

  “I look at him then. Hold the jacket against me. Against what I know the priest is telling me.

  “ ‘We were stopped on the Enna road. Two autos converged in our path. Without lights, we didn’t see them until they were upon us. Two men got out from the autos, the motors still running. I don’t know if there were other men who stayed inside the autos. I think there were. The two took Leo from the passenger seat. Blindfolded him. Took off his jacket and threw it down. Manacled his hands. Pushed him into one of the autos. They were gone. No one had spoken. I sat in our auto for a long time.’

  “ ‘He’ll be back. He’ll be back anytime now. Another threat. They would have taken you, too. I mean, if they were going to hurt him, why would they have left you a witness?’

  “ ‘I was witness to nothing except two dark autos, tw
o swift-moving, dark-clad figures. I never saw a face or heard a word. I was witness only to the disappearance of the prince. I know that he is not coming back, Tosca.’

  “ ‘How do you know that?’

  “ ‘I know it.’

  “ ‘I don’t know it at all. Tonight was just the second part of the torture. Don’t you see that? They are nothing if not skillful, these men. Whispers and silences. With only these, they’ve done the work of knives and axes. But Leo is not gone. I assure you, Cosimo, Leo is not gone.’ My voice is thin and pitched close to hysteria. I, too, know that Leo is gone.

  “I know that I am sitting here on the veranda, I know that Cosimo continues to speak to me, that he tells me he’s already been to see Simona. That, when he’d returned, he’d entered the palace through the back way, gone straight to Simona. It was the proper thing to do, he keeps repeating. Yes, Simona is the wife. The widow. It was the proper thing to do. He says that Simona is with the princesses now, that I should go to join them. That we will keep the vigil all together. Candles. Incense. The household will keep the vigil together. He tells me that he is going to the borghetto. I must go inside now, he says. I must not be alone. Doesn’t he know that by going inside I will not be less alone? I have entered into some vaporous province, into a heavy, confused mist where there are no borders. I’ll fall away if I try to walk. I must stay here. I think of Mafalda, who wanted to stay at home so she might be there to welcome us when we returned. I must stay right here where Leo can see me. I take the magnolias from my hair. My heart thuds in a quickened grace note. One two. One two. One two. I hear his voice in my heartbeats. He’s calling me. I open my mouth to answer him but there comes no sound. I try again and again and then from far off I hear a woman’s soft wailing. The wail is mine. A jackal howls then from that same far-off place. The howl, too, is mine.”

  “It is morning, and strands of opal light fall from the high windows of the palace chapel. Birdsong and someone’s hoarse whispering over the beads make the only sounds. Charlotte holds my hand, as she has through the night. Yolande sits apart from us with Mademoiselle Clothilde. Alone, Simona sits in the center of the front pew. Though, with the dawn, the vigil has ended, Simona has made no move to leave. We must await the widow’s departure and follow her from the chapel. Mimmo enters now. He walks to Simona, hands her the thick vanilla-colored paper sealed with red wax. Her back is to me yet I know that she has opened the letter. I know from whom it came. The first note of condolence is from the man named Mattia. Leo is not coming back.”

  “Every place in my mind is empty. I do not weep or speak or feel pain. I feel nothing at all. I listen. I observe. I sit in the salone with my book. People begin to arrive and I begrudge even their quietest moving through the rooms. I begrudge the dancing light that stabs through the drawn curtains. I go to walk in the garden but find I have no strength for it. I sit on a stone and let the sun pour fire on my face. Sometimes a breeze whirls the dry leaves of the poplars and I think of the rustling our dresses made as we three girls used to walk down the long hall to supper. Rooks chatter above me and in their noise I hear the long-ago voices of the princesses. Perhaps I hear even my own. I go back into the palace, sit in my same place in the salone. I see the long boxes of mourning clothes that are delivered by men in white gloves. Simona and Agata open them. A slim black dress, a large-brimmed hat with layers and layers of black tulle to hide the widow. For the princesses, black faille skirts and jackets and lace mantillas that fall to their ankles. Simona comes to where I sit and places a dress on the cushion next to me. And a silk cap with a short thick veil. She bends to kiss my cheek.”

  “Newly rebuilt after the Ascension Day fire, Leo’s funeral Mass is said in the borghetto chapel. Simona has arranged everything. And not according to her own sensibilities but to Leo’s. She will lay to rest the prince she wed with great benevolence. Truckloads of formal flowers fill the courtyard. Goats and chickens and a few geese wander among the sprays of yellow chrysanthemums, the beribboned pillows of red roses. The animals gently peck, nibble at the flowers, but no one shoos them away. The chapel is small; the crowds are endless. People stand on the stones of the old white road, in the meadow that leads to the palace, along the edges of the wheat fields. Under the bestial sun, they stand motionless.

  The altar is piled high with sheaves of wheat tied ’round with hempweed. On the table where Cosimo prepares Holy Communion, there are white candles set among branches of olive—the fruit still in small, tight buds—and lengths of the oldest vines heavy with sun-broken grapes. There is no body. There is no casket. There are no ashes. The man called Mattia stands among the mourners on the left side wall of the chapel, perhaps three meters from the place where I sit at the edge of my pew. I know it is he from the way Cosimo keeps looking at him from the altar. And from the way he stares at me. I would have known him anyway. How did you do it, Signor Mattia? Did you shoot him? Did you choke the life from him with your bare hands and then go on with your plans for the evening? Or didn’t you soil your hands at all? Did you order his death with a gesture, a half-lidded glance? The least you might have done, Signor Mattia, is to have let us bury him.

  “Is it true, Prince Leo, that you kiss the hands of your peasants?”

  “Now why would that be of interest to you?”

  “It’s just that if someday we hear you’ve suffered some misfortune, we’ll understand the source of it. The loss of respect, I mean. Yes, we’ll understand that you invited your misfortune with a kiss.”

  “The father and son from Enna who played the pipes each year for the ceremonial harvest wait outside the chapel. As Simona rises from her pew, followed by the princesses and me and all those who’d been inside, the pipers begin to play. The drummer boys from the borghetto are there, too, and it is they who lead the procession along the white road to the mausoleum that sits beyond the palace lemon groves. The drummer boys, the mourners, the pipers. Simona and the princesses each place something onto the threshold of the long, dark space where Leo’s casket would have been. Flowers, letters, books. Simona makes way for me to approach the space but, not knowing of this ritual, if it is indeed a ritual, I have nothing to leave. I take off the silk cap with the short thick veil and lay it inside. A mason and his apprentice step up, and set the sealing stone in place. The apprentice backs away, bows his head. I know that Cosimo prays but I hear only the mason’s small hammer ringing.”

  CHAPTER XVI

  “IT WAS PERHAPS FOR TWO WEEKS OR MORE AFTER THE FUNERAL that Simona kept to her rooms. She was not, I think, so much in mourning as she was in a state of flux. She had given leave to Mademoiselle Clothilde, the only teacher who’d still remained part of the household. Though Cosimo visited nearly each day, he’d gone to live in the parish house that had always been provided for him at San Rocco. He once again took up the observances, the submissions of a rural priest. Without the shield of Leo’s influence with the Curia, there had already been talk of his transference to what was termed ‘a more challenging post.’ With no one else in residence, there was only Simona, Yolande, Charlotte, and I.

  “The princesses dosed themselves with valerian and fell onto their beds or assembled themselves in some remote salottino to scratch petulant homages to Bach across their violoncellos. When Simona did appear, she was cheerful enough, more indulgent with her daughters than usual, though they, too, seemed past any suffering. She would speak of her plans with me. Plans for herself and the princesses. The apartment in Geneva might be opened. The girls should spend a year or so in Paris. The loss of Leo had released her from the once-in-a-while tributes she’d had to pay to the strictures of their marriage. Though she was sorry for his death, in her brilliant oblique language, she would refer to it as another of his choices. Now that she no longer had to act out her minimalist role in the palace theater, she was quite prepared to take on the part of the merry widow.

  “ ‘And you, Tosca? Has Cosimo brought out all the documents that concern your inheritance? It’s quite sub
stantial, I would imagine. Substantial enough.’

  “ ‘Yes,’ is all I say.

  “ ‘It’s not that I wouldn’t want you to stay on with us. In fact, not so many years ago I recall imploring you to stay. To not be so foolish as to run off. But Tosca, I fear for you now. I fear that you will believe as we all believe that we can keep breaking into our store of time without counting. Our lives seem infinite until we reach in one day to find how little of them is left. That’s how I feel, Tosca. That so little remains. I’ll soon be fifty. You are not quite half my age. Apart from the wealth that Leo has bequeathed to you, you are still rich in time. Don’t use up these next years by living here with only the spectre of your prince. He would have been the last one to have wanted that for you.’