A Favourite of the Gods and a Compass Error

by Sybille Bedford

  She had done—for the time being—with her mother’s favourite authors before she was twelve. After that she devoured Gibbon, Voltaire, Swift, Shelley, Racine, Tourgenieff, Tocqueville and George Eliot. At fifteen it was poetry: Catullus, Baudelaire, Byron, Pope. These and La Chartreuse de Parme she constantly re-read; Pope and Byron she loved equally.

  If the prince by saying that education did not seem to be doing the child much harm had meant that it did not take up all her interests and time, he was quite right; Constanza always had a good many things up her sleeve. When she was little she played, and she played very hard. Seldom with toys; there was a fountain with a dolphin in the courtyard, she rode in the Campagna, and in the long summers in Umbria on the estate she had the run of orchards and an olive grove, but her personal belongings were scant and such toys as came her way were more likely than not bought off a booth at some fair. In Rome, her daily play-mates were the Luigino children and the children of the other artisans who rented holes and cellars in the palazzi of the quarter, and there was also the resource of transient diplomatic children which usually provided a supply of spirited boys and girls. Constanza formed them into gangs, organized escapes from their attendants in the Borghese Gardens, and generally taught them how to evade and terrorize their governesses. Constanza herself did not have one. Her parents, though they liked having her about, made little formal demands on her time, they were much too busy themselves. She ran in and out of rooms for a quick affectionate interchange, reciprocal reassurance; her mother trusted her as she had been trusted herself; her father was confident to leave it to his wife; the rest—with complete mutual understanding—was between Constanza and the servants.

  Invitations to the houses of their relatives and connections were rare; Italian parents of their own world who were glad to accept Anna were bewildered by what Anna had produced, and their children sniffled when pushed to play with it; Constanza was considered “rough.”

  •

  Indeed her summer life was wild, and very much her own. The house, low, long-shuttered, ochre-coloured, was frescoed inside and not very comfortable; next to it stood the farm with the vaults and presses, the stables and the houses of the contadini; the hills were their land, producing oil, some wine, vegetables, figs, a little maize. Lyre-horned oxen moved the hand-ploughs along small patched fields; on the slopes goats pegged to stumpy trees tore at harsh shrubs, there were lizards on the walls and the days were strident with cicadas and the nights loud with frogs. It was not a large place, worked by some fifteen men and their families, but it had its life. The old principessa went there every year from June till October, the prince came often; Anna hardly ever. Constanza knew every sight, every smell, every touch of it.

  It was there that she knew solitude and the lucid wakefulness of the deep meridional noon, and the heady taste of a strenuous life. For days she was hardly seen; then she strolled on and turned her hand to the work of the farm, fell in with the cycle of broad bean, melon and quince. She knew the weight of the ripe gourds, the jar of the hoe against baked earth, the light tear made by the bark of stripped cork-oak, the sting of pulped fruit, the cutting harshness of sheaves and the wet ooze of grapes.

  The people were kind to her and shared with her what they knew, and while she worked with them she gave herself to the work.

  She liked milking a goat; she was fond of those creatures and did not pass one without stopping for some exchange. The farm children were as their parents: their days were their tasks. When Constanza sought companionship of a different nature, there was her grandmother, the indoor servants, often the prince; in yet another mood she turned to the tutor of the moment, some Englishman probably of a mellow turn of mind staying a few months to begin a book on Benvenuto di Gentile.

  One thing Anna insisted on. Childhood summers to her had meant the sea, and so every year for a few weeks Constanza was sent down to an Adriatic beach. Constanza, though she never liked leaving Castelfonte, loved this well enough. The tutor came with her, and a maid, and they all stayed at a small inn. The coast south of Ravenna is lonely and flat, the beaches endless and wide. All day Constanza swam, floated, dreamt in the soft waters; at sunset she and her tutor rode. Sometimes the fishermen took her out in their boats. It was an existence of curiously isolated quality; to her those weeks were detached, a stretch of time passed as it were on a parallel, they were part of the seamless years of her youth.

  Winter for her was Rome. The cherished slanting sun leaving the tall houses too soon after mid-day; the animation at nightfall. She loved to go out into the evening streets, go with the cook on some errand, at the hour when the charcoal fires were being lit on the pavements in the quarter, and sniff the scents of wood-smoke, hot iron, decay and spilt young wine. The small braziers flickered with twigs and kindling, fanned and watched over by women: they would shout at her as she passed, raucous words in the dialect, half taunt, half caress, and hold out their pots, and Constanza would stop and shout back in kind and dip her hand in their pasta.

  2

  THE FIRST tremor came when the principessa got to know that her husband had been unfaithful to her. Anna behaved as if the heavens had fallen. The prince was more than ready to show himself contrite.

  They had been married for about six years. How Anna learnt was not quite clear to anyone at first. The old principessa took her daughter-in-law’s side; behind her back she scolded her son handsomely. “How could you—?” she said. “To Anna. So careless.”

  “Già,” said the prince and hung his head.

  “It isn’t . . . it isn’t as if, as if——”

  “she were one of us,” said his sister Maria. The prince’s sisters had themselves been off and married for some time by then. They had rallied at the signs of trouble.

  “She’s not used to it!” cried the old lady.

  “Quite,” said the prince, “quite.”

  “You should have thought of that before, my boy.”

  “Before when?”

  “Mammina, he couldn’t throw over Giulia,” said Maria patiently, “just because he had met Anna, could he?”

  “No, no, one doesn’t want to upset the Monfalconi,” said her mother.

  “Before being found out,” said the prince’s sister Carla, who was now given to voicing her opinions.

  The prince groaned.

  “Does Anna read your letters?”

  “Letters?” said the prince.

  “Biglietti,” said his sister, “notes.”

  “Carla,” he said, “you talk too much.”

  “I saw three white peacocks this morning,” said Maria.

  “Dio,” said the prince and touched something in his pocket.

  “Three?” said Carla.

  “Which way did the tail-feathers point?” asked the old principessa.

  Her daughter told her.

  “That’s not nearly so bad,” said the prince.

  “It means misfortune postponed,” said his mother; “but misfortune.”

  “I know who told her,” said Maria, “Fabrizio—Fabrizio’s been after Giulia for years.”

  The prince flashed at her, “Giulia isn’t in the least interested in Fabrizio.”

  “Maybe.”

  “If you ask me, Fabrizio is after Anna.”

  “Who is not?” said her sister.

  “Anna is not like that,” said the prince stiffly.

  “She is too good for you!” said the old principessa.

  “So she is.”

  His mother turned on him. “She’s a jewel—why can’t you treat her properly?”

  “But I do——”

  “You don’t realize who she is.”

  “Oh, come now, mammina, Anna isn’t the only one, she isn’t the first—Sciocco’s wife is English, so is Boldo’s mother, Uncle Teocrito married an Englishwoman, so did your own great-grandpapa—Anna isn’t the first foreigner.”

  “Anna is American.”

  “There’s not much difference,” said the prince
.

  “Lady Cressida. I always thought so!”

  “Oh shut up, Carla,” said her brother.

  “American husbands are different,” said the old principessa in a reasonable tone.

  The prince laughed for the first time. “Oh, no, no, mammina, you mustn’t believe all they tell you.” He added, “Cleverer perhaps—who can say?”

  “And American wives? Are they cleverer, too?”

  “No, Maria, not Anna,” the prince shook his head; he was profoundly depressed. “Oh you know how it is. . . . No, you can’t.”

  The old principessa had been thinking. “It’s because she did not expect it,” she said, “poor Anna.”

  “Really,” said the prince, “first you tell me I was careless. Should I have warned her? She reads so many books—novels—don’t they tell her what people do?”

  “That’s why we weren’t allowed to read them,” said Carla.

  “Oh, what shall I do?” said the prince.

  “Go to her,” the women said. “Go to her and make a fuss of her.”

  •

  But Anna admitted nobody. For twenty-four hours their only link with her was her maid who reported on the silence, the pacing, the untouched trays. Then, once more, youth and native vitality prevailed and Anna began to express her need for action. Notes poured from her apartments: She must leave the house at once; she was going to leave Rome; Rico must leave the house at once; she was going abroad; she was returning to America.

  The prince and his family, unused to this form of traffic, sat puzzling. The women felt for Anna but they did not understand her.

  “To America?” the old principessa wailed.

  “Don’t worry, mammina,” said the prince, “she won’t go.” He alone may have had intimations of what lay at the root of the trouble. If so, he chose not to pursue it, give it no shape—in exasperation, in self-protection, fastidiousness: it was far too alien to his nature. Better not attempt to understand a woman well; better not attempt to understand at all: avoid complications, leading to nothing. If the prince chose to live on the surface it was not because he lacked all equipment for the other course, it was because his oldest, his most rooted instinct told him to remain where one was placed, to look no further, never to lift the lid—to skate.

  The next note was brought in. Anna would leave the house as she was, taking nothing with her.

  Nothing? A fear gripped them. Constanza? She is not thinking now, flashed through their minds. When she will. . . .

  “She would not—she could not—she must not——”

  “The three pavoni,” breathed Carla.

  “Great God,” the prince cried in a frenzy.

  •

  They simply marched in on her. There was something in the dramatic quality of their entrance that appeased the part of Anna that longed to be appeased. One can be both deeply wounded and not wish to die.

  They were shocked by what they saw. Anna’s colour was waxen, her face fixed and drawn. Carla said later on, “I had no idea that Anna had a grand passion for my brother.” The women threw themselves upon her. “Anna, dearest, do not leave us—what would we do without you—you must never leave us. . . .” Anna allowed, even returned, their embraces. “Rico is here to tell you how much he loves you.” Anna shrank. “The poor boy’s been wretched.” The prince hovered; Anna turned her eyes from him. But slowly vehemence was begetting a response. “How could he?” she cried suddenly. “It is all so low!”

  The prince stepped forward. “Anna,” he said tenderly. “Carissima—forgive me.”

  “Don’t touch me,” she cried. He had made no move to do so. She tried to look at him, found that she could, tried to read his face.

  “Anna,” he said again.

  “How could he?” She turned to his mother: “Why?”

  The old principessa tried her best. “Dearest, it’s nothing, believe me. His father was très courreurr,” she sounded every r. “They all are, don’t you see?”

  Anna moaned. “But that low woman.”

  If they bristled, they did not show it.

  “That low, common woman,” said Anna, “how can he even speak to such a creature——?”

  Carla, stung, muttered, “The best blood in Italy——” but a look from her sister quelled her.

  The principessa said gently, “You see he has known her for such a very long time, they grew up together practically——”

  Anna, reeling with the sense that reality was slipping from her grasp, said uncertainly, “Surely, she only turned up here when she opened that shop——”

  “Shop!” said the prince. “You must be out of your mind, Anna! Of all the inconceivable things she would ever——” but here his sister Carla gave him a savage nudge and he stopped short. In time.

  “The flower-shop, Rico,” Anna said, now looking him full in the face. “You paid for it. Mrs. Waddington told me.”

  They did not look at each other. The prince gulped; then his face cleared and he looked like a man transformed. He sprang forward: “My darling! You are right! You are right! Fanette is a dreadful creature, it was nothing,” relief was making him eloquent, “less than nothing, I can’t think how it started, a thing of the moment, it’s all over, I can promise you, I promise you solemnly, I shall never see her again.”

  And Anna, who had not expected anything else, was affected nevertheless by his sweeping sincerity.

  •

  Their lives did not settle down again at once, nor easily. It was Anna who lagged behind and appeared to find it difficult to effect a full return. At times it was she who outdid them all in her desire to pull down the lid and have things smoothed over and forgotten; at others she seemed to invite protestations, displays of feeling, scenes. It was as if she were in need of some gesture or event of weight to act as a full stop. The old principessa asked if it was not simply that Anna was enceinte again; Rico told them she was not. Then he hit upon the happy thought of suggesting that she should go round the world. It was not his own nor an entirely new idea, various English friends had been going in other years and Anna had debated whether she too should go; but it was an idea that tremendously appealed to her—she loved travelling, she wanted to see India—and now she took to it at once, treating it as something out of the blue and an offering from her husband, which in a sense it was. The prince was wondering very much what going round the world might cost. He did not know but feared that it must be a good deal (he was quite right in the event); the roof at Castelfonte leaked again but he decided not to mention it. Lord and Lady Chalmers and her bachelor brother and another couple were setting out in February; they had pressed Anna before and now it was decided that she should join their party. The prospect revived her.

  In Rome, when the story came out, which of course it did, Anna was on the whole much criticized. She was ridiculous, she exaggerated, she was giving herself airs and Rico was a saint to put up with it. The men said to each other that they were not surprised. As to Mrs. Waddington—a very transient lady who had dwelt in the relative obscurity of a suite at the Grand Hotel (Anna had a tendency to befriend such apparitions)—wrath was tempered by gratefulness. Mrs. Waddington had not penetrated as far as Giulia Monfalconi. Giulia, they all said, had had a narrow escape. Or not? Anna was not born yesterday, could Anna know so little of the ways of the world? Some people said that of course Anna knew all about Giulia Monfalconi, Anna was a deep one, and look what she got out of it.

  “Would you want to go to China, cara?”

  “Well of course not. But she could have asked for pearls.”

  •

  They did not exactly keep it from Constanza, the whole business simply by-passed her. Her mother was still far too young then to be interested in making emotional demands on children; Constanza was five. She realized that something was wrong, some grown-up disturbance. In the street in which she lived the carpenter beat his wife on Sundays, the fruttivendola across the road howled at her family for hours at a time, in the drawing-room
they talked freely of poor Princess Ghirladaia who was shut up in a dungeon in Toscana by her aged husband, while Anna’s maid had been left by hers after only a year—it was the way things went, it was life, it washed over her.

  •

  When the time came for Anna to leave, the old principessa was desolate. “Eight months,” she said, “eight months. Shall I ever see my darling again?” “It can be done in Eighty Days, nonna,” said Constanza. They all went down with her on the train to Naples: Rico, the old principessa, Carla and Maria and their husbands and Constanza. Anna was taking a French maid, engaged at the last minute; her own Italian maid, devoted though she was, had been so very distressed at the prospect of going among the snakes that Anna had not had the heart to persuade her. The Frenchwoman did not like it much better, but was stoical about it and had asked for double wages. “Certainly, my dear,” Anna had said, “but you know, you will find it a marvellous experience.”

  At the dock, Lord and Lady Chalmers and their party leaning against the rails saw Anna arrive, parasol in hand, looking very ravishing, followed by a line of trunks and surrounded by a family of weeping Italians and a rather grubby child, very foreign-looking. (Constanza had indeed managed to escape for some moments with a boy met on the quay and been taken to see some rats.) The old principessa was sobbing bitterly, the prince’s face was bathed in tears. They kissed, kissed again. . . .

  At last Anna was able to step on board. Their handkerchiefs fluttered. “Mama,” Constanza shouted, “bring us back a tiger!”