The Corsican Woman

by Madge Swindells

  With a low moan of pain, Maria put down the tray, rushed forward and tried to grab Xavier’s arm, but her efforts were as futile as a blackbird fluttering at a windowpane. Sybilia was rooted in shock for a few seconds. She had never seen such fury. Xavier’s face was contorted into an unrecognizable mask of rage.

  ‘Stop,’ Sybilia cried. ‘Stop!’ She bounded out of bed, pushing Maria aside as she found a chair and brought it down with a crack on Xavier’s head.

  The chair shattered, and Xavier yelled with pain. He grabbed his head and sagged onto the couch, stunned with surprise more than the blow. Feeling bemused, he watched Sybilia lead Michel to the bed. His lips curled into a grimace of chagrin and amusement as she grabbed a leg of the broken chair and sat guard over the frightened boy.

  ‘Look what you’ve done!’ she cried out. ‘He’s bleeding. You’ve broken his nose most likely, and you’ve split his lip. Look at that,’ she said, pointing at the deep red stain spreading over the sheet. ‘My God, what sort of a man are you? What sort of a family is this? He needs stitches.’ Brave words, but her heart was pounding and her breath was coming in short, sharp gasps. Don't let him see how scared I am, she prayed.

  ‘Stitches!' Xavier snorted contemptuously. ‘He needs a splint to prop up his cock. That’s what he needs.’ He stood up, rubbed his head once more, and staggered toward the bed.

  Sybilia brandished the chair leg in front of his nose. ‘I’m warning you, don’t come any closer. I’m not afraid of you,’ she said.

  He glanced briefly at his son and then averted his eyes. It was too painful a sight. ‘His mother’s son,’ he muttered. ‘Bad blood. Now you, Sybilia. You should have been my son. You’ve got spirit.’ He stared down at her, his eyes once more examining her body.

  Sybilia flushed and grabbed the sheet, hauling it up around her neck.

  Xavier reached out and took hold of the chair leg, and although Sybilia pushed with all her strength, Xavier’s grip was like a vice. She could not move it one way or another. He smiled. ‘I won’t touch him again, I promise,’ he said. Gently he pulled the chair leg away from her. ‘Feel here,' he insisted. ‘Feel my arm.’

  He sat down on the bed, took hold of her hand and placed it on his upper arm. ‘D’you feel that?’ he asked. ‘Solid muscle.’

  His flesh was like rock. It was like touching a granite statue. Sybilia could not resist poking at his back, which was like a steel board.

  ‘I’m the strongest man you’re ever likely to see,’ he said. ‘Don’t try to fight me again.’

  ‘Even the strongest men have to sleep, Monsieur Rocca,’ she said quietly, ‘and if you ever touch Michel again, I will get back at you.’

  His eyes narrowed. He looked like a wolf, she noticed, but a handsome one. If only Michel were more like him. Suddenly he smiled and stood up.

  ‘Papa! Call me Papa,’ he said, and ruffled her hair with his hand. ‘Now listen to me well. Your children will be my grandchildren, so get pregnant, Sybilia, and make it soon, or by God, I swear I’ll show your queer husband how to do it.’

  He grabbed his wife by one arm and pushed her out of the door. Sybilia heard Maria arguing tearfully outside the door, and then they went away.

  Later that morning, when the family had given up trying to persuade Sybilia to leave her bedroom and at last she was in peace, she lay on her bed and heard through the window the voices of women gathered in the square around the communal washing tub. Snickers and laughs and oohs of admiration floated up as they gazed at the sheets bloody from Michel’s nose. The fools! She could hear every word they said quite clearly and she marvelled at her mother-in-law’s easy deceit. ‘Ah, yes, what passion,’ she heard Maria say. ‘He is, after all, his father’s son.’

  Chapter 13

  It was Saturday night and the church was quiet. The candles flickered low in the candelabra, and the air was heavy with incense and the sadness of the old women’s prayers. Only a few people were there, those who wanted to be among the last into confession. From time to time the heavy curtains parted, and a figure slipped out and hurried away in a whisper of footsteps on the flagged stone.

  Sybilia sat in the back row of the pews half-hidden in shadow, her body hunched with misery, her beautiful face swollen and red. She tried to stifle her tears in her handkerchief, but she felt sure everyone could hear her. She must stop crying, but how? So she too had waited, hoping to be the very last. She had to be quite alone, apart from the priest since he did not count as a real person.

  This was the first time Sybilia had been to church since her wedding over a week ago. It had taken her hours to pluck up courage and pummel her face with cold water into some semblance of normality. But when she had crept into the church, the familiar sounds and smells had brought a vivid recall of her childhood church and of the family’s Sunday mornings together. The smell of incense, the polished wood slightly dusty and slippery under her fingers, the prayer book yellow with age, the painted, gilded statues in flickering candlelight, were all so sickeningly dear, a part of her happy childhood.

  She had crumpled into the pew and begun to pray, but in spite of her best intentions her prayers turned to vengeance, i hope Papa lives to regret his selfishness. I hope Mama is lonely without me. I hope they never forgive each other. I will never forgive them. Never.’

  For the past nine days Sybilia had cowered in her attic rooms, pretending to be sick. And she was, too, she told herself, with shame and homesickness, in spite of all her family had done to her.

  Each day Maria brought her meals up, knocked, and eventually left the tray on the chest of drawers outside the door. At first Sybilia had ignored the food, but eventually hunger won out.

  She could not neglect her need to wash and visit the toilet, so she had listened to the sounds of the household and crept down when everyone was out. Finally, that morning, when she could no longer bear her own company a moment longer, she had decided to attend confession on Saturday night.

  Footsteps disturbed her gloomy thoughts, and she looked up with a start. The last person hurrying out of confession was the dovelike Vannina. Now it was her turn, and her stomach lurched. For a moment she thought of fleeing back to the attic, but that lonely place had become unbearable, so she crept up the aisle into the box, sweaty palms clutching her handkerchief.

  She knelt by the curtain, clung to the polished wooden bar, and gazed desperately at the profile of the priest. Although he could not see her, she sensed that he knew who she was.

  ‘Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.’

  She waited while the priest blessed her.

  ‘I missed mass and confession last Sunday,’ she said. ‘I was sick.’ A surge of guilt overwhelmed her. Lying in the confessional was unthinkable. ‘That is, sick with shame and grief,’ she added more truthfully. ‘These are my sins,’ she said glibly. She had spent the last hour in church trying to clear her mind, but she felt confused and angry. She must have been very wicked in her past to be so wretched now. What was she to say? ‘Oh, dear, I have sinned so much since the last time I went to mass,’ she went on haltingly. ‘Of course that was in Chiornia and only two weeks ago, but it seems more like two years.’

  ‘It is a mortal sin to miss mass, my child,’ the soft voice with the curious accent murmured. ‘But under the circumstances, I am sure your lapse is forgiven.’

  ‘I really don’t think I should have come at all. I can’t find it in me to repent for hating them. I feel as if…’ How could she explain to this cold profile outlined against the whitewashed wall? ‘As if I am not myself. I mean, I was so happy being Sybilia Silvani. I would have been head girl next year, the nuns told me so. I was top in languages — English, German, and Italian. I was going to be a teacher. Papa promised. Dominique and I… he’s my youngest brother and closest to me,’ she confided in a rush. ‘Well, we were planning to climb Mount Cinto during the summer holidays. I was given no warning, you see. Just dumped here. Just like that. I remember how I used to feel when I woke up in
the morning. Like I couldn’t wait for the day to begin. Now it’s as if I’m in someone else’s shell. I don’t know who I am any more, or what I should do.’

  She waited hopefully, wondering if this strange priest would help her sort out her confusion.

  Father Andrews felt equally confused. She was such a child. What a tragedy! How cruel to treat this lovely girl in such a crude manner. He yearned to be able to help her. Instead he tried to wipe the emotion out of his voice as he said:

  ‘You are a young wife in a strange situation, and it is only natural that you should have certain… conflicts.’ Would she understand him? he wondered. ‘Now you must try to build up strong bonds with members of your new family.’

  ‘With them?’ She knew she was being proud and scornful, and this was not the way to talk in the confessional, but she did not care. Suddenly she found it hard to speak coherently as her feelings tumbled out: the sorrow of dreams lost, the rejection, the impossibility of bearing her present circumstances. Eventually she burst into tears.

  Father Andrews wanted nothing so much as to comfort her. ‘Patience, my child,’ he said. ‘God’s mission for us all is sometimes hard to understand, but He has one for you, you may rest assured of that.’

  ‘I’m beginning to hate God,’ she said. ‘I’ve been left to rot in this horrible place and I shall never escape. No, never. How can I, since my name is Rocca and I am one of them?’

  ‘Hush, child, you are a married woman, and you must behave as one.’

  ‘I am married, yet not married. Married in name only.’

  ‘In God’s good time, in God’s good time. Love grows ‘Love! Don’t talk to me of love. I disgust Michel, I swear I do, Father. He doesn’t like women. He told me so.’

  As her miserable story poured out between the sobs, Father Andrews found himself clenching his fists and trying to stem his anger.

  ‘I hate my father-in-law,’ she went on passionately. ‘Yes, I hate him. One of these days I am going to break his head open, if he ever looks at me like that again.’

  ‘My child, you must calm yourself. That is no way to talk about your father-in-law.’

  ‘He saw me next to naked, Father. He couldn’t look away, and I was so ashamed. But there’s worse to come, Father. I dreamed about Xavier Rocca. I dreamed that I had married him. It was… it was lovely,' she stammered. Oh, God. What was she saying? But the relief at speaking those words was indescribable. Last night she had relived her wedding in her dreams, floated across the square in a diaphanous flimsy wedding gown, saw, as if in slow motion, her bridegroom reach out and take her hands and pull her toward him. But when she looked up to see his face for the first time, it was Xavier Rocca who gazed at her with his strange, slanted ice-blue eyes, his handsome features, his dark curly hair. ‘You see, I am damned. There is no help for me.’

  ‘But he is an old man,’ the priest burst out with all the wisdom of his twenty-six years.

  ‘He is a man,’ she said simply.

  ‘And Michel?’

  ‘He is a coward.’

  ‘A coward!’ In his brief stay in Corsica, the priest had learned that there was no more damning label here than that. Searching desperately for inspiration, he said: ‘You are his wife. It is God’s will.’

  ‘No!’ she exploded, and gasped at her own foolhardiness. Lowering her voice to a stage whisper, she said: ‘It was Xavier’s wili. He wanted me because he hoped I would turn his son into a man and give him grandchildren. He despises him. I can’t help feeling sorry for Michel,’ she went on more gently. ‘He’s too sensitive for a man. He is even too scared to come to our rooms. He sleeps on the couch downstairs. I have not seen him since the morning after our wedding night. His father has been away on business. I don’t know what will happen when Monsieur Rocca returns. Papa!’ She laughed harshly, and the sound of her voice upset Father Andrews. ‘He said I should call him Papa. He told me…’ In low whispers she recounted Xavier’s threats.

  The young priest felt stunned. He had never before felt such a warring between the man and the priest inside him. He longed with all his heart to be able to protect her. Instead he took refuge in rhetoric. ‘The Roccas’ sins are their own affair, my child,’ he said eventually. ‘It is not for you to judge them. You must be concerned only with your own behaviour. Be brave, God is with you,’ and — he paused and went on recklessly — I promise you I will speak to your father-in-law. No doubt he was trying to annoy Michel.’ His voice trailed off.

  ‘Is that what you believe?’ she asked scornfully.

  Father Andrews bowed his head in prayer, but his mind was in turmoil as he searched for words of comfort. ‘My daughter, think of yourself as a child at a Christmas party. You have been given a box covered in fancy paper. You don’t like the look of the paper, so you want to throw away your gift. You haven’t even opened it to see what’s inside. Open the box, Sybilia, before you throw the contents on the rubbish heap. Take a good hard look at what it is you are discarding. Remember that your husband is a creation of God and much loved by his Creator, so who are you to deem him worthless?’

  He ignored Sybilia’s sobs and tried to introduce a sterner tone into his troubled intonation, reminding himself that his main responsibility as parish priest was to the flock as a unit, while giving sympathetic attention to the mavericks.

  ‘Sybilia, just step down from your high-and-mighty stance and listen to my words, not as a priest, but as a friend. You’ve been the victim — yes, I will say victim — of an arranged marriage. I don’t agree with this custom, but it’s the habit here. In God’s good time it will be abolished, I’m sure. Your parents felt they were doing the best for you. They’ve married you into a good family — Rccca is the most powerful name around here. They are also a proud family, and they will not tolerate your antagonism. You will destroy yourself with your hatred and your contempt.

  ‘There’s nothing else waiting for you at the end of the rainbow, Sybilia,’ he went on with a rush. ‘Whatever your dreams were — let go of them. Michel is all you’re going to get. It would be wiser to make the most of your life.

  ‘Think of me as your friend, Sybilia. If things get tougher, you can always come and talk to me. It doesn’t have to be here in confessional. We can talk in the sacristy.

  ‘As a priest, I say to you: my. child, for your penance you will attend the early service every morning. You will spend your days working diligently, like a good daughter-in-law, in the household, but besides your work you will be looking for good words to say about each member of your family. By next Saturday I want to hear ten good points about each one of the Roccas. That is your penance, my child.’

  ‘I would rather kill myself,’ she blurted out.

  ‘And condemn your soul to everlasting hell?’ he roared. ‘No, Sybilia. Do as I say and put your faith in God.’

  Was that really what God wanted? Was God so unfeeling? Sybilia closed her eyes and tried to swallow a lump in her throat. ‘I will try,’ she whispered, meaning it. Automatically her lips voiced the traditional plea: ‘Oh, Lord, be merciful to me and restore me to Your friendship… ’

  ‘Ten good points about each one of them?’ she murmured incredulously as she hurried across the square. In all her life she had never been given such an impossible task.

  Chapter 14

  After Sybilia had left the confessional, the young priest listened to her soft footsteps fade across the square. She was gone, and the warmth and light seemed to have gone with her. The church had never seemed so empty before.

  Confused and unhappy, he knelt in prayer. ‘Oh, Holy Father, this is a strange, harsh world you’ve sent me to, where women are treated like possessions and disposed of just as their fathers feel inclined. Her tragedy has touched me, and I long to help her. This is wrong, and I know that.’

  Since the day he was ordained, Father Andrews had always prayed to forget the secrets of his parishioners the moment they left the confessional box, and he nearly always succeeded. But now? Guilt
ily he acknowledged that he would never forget Sybilia’s anguished whispers.

  He was feeling shaken as he locked the church and walked across the square to his cottage beyond the graveyard. How beautiful the night was. The balmy, voluptuous air caressed his face as softly as a woman’s touch. There was a strong scent of lilies, tobacco flowers, and the fragrant wild fig trees in the maquis. Cicadas throbbed, frogs croaked, night owls called in the forests. The world was alive with all that was natural and thriving and fertile — while he? His treacherous thoughts hit him like a blow, and he stopped short in his tracks, amazed that he could have entertained such an idea, even if only momentarily.

  Twice in one night. He must give himself a vigorous penance. Man or priest? Priest or man? He felt tormented by his doubt.

  He retraced his footsteps and sat on the old stone bench in the square under the statue of St Augustine. Symbol of sinners, he reminded himself, and this brought him some small comfort.

  A few candles flickered behind the windows of the homes around the square; most were dark, but not necessarily sleeping. Murmurs in the night! Good, wholesome sounds: a bed squeaking violently in the attic of the Castellis — Carlo Castelli was wasting away with tuberculosis, but his children kept emerging at regular yearly intervals. A small light flickering in the attic room of Louis Padovani, the cabinetmaker. Since his young son had contracted scarlet fever, Louis’s nervous twitch and his stutter had intensified. There was a baby whimpering in Jean Pinelli’s bedroom, he heard the father yell at the mother to feed it and shut it up. The Lecas’ windows were all shuttered, for Madame Leca had just died in childbirth. Strains of an accordion and the pounding of feet came drifting up from the Roccas’ cafe below the square. It was run by Xavier’s brother-in-law, Pierre Bonnelli, but Xavier kept a shrewd eye on the takings most nights. They were open late tonight. No doubt they were plotting political manoeuvres or another hunting expedition. There was very little else of consequence to the village headmen.