She was a respected young woman, a shadow whose life’s purpose was to wait upon her mother and her family. Now she’s the kept woman of one of the city’s wealthiest traders. Not of a nobleman, for whom it’s socially acceptable to have a mistress. Just of a storekeeper.
In many people’s eyes, she is little more than a courtesan and Vincenzo a nouveau riche. Even though people fear him—and the power of his money—nothing can ever shield them from their contempt.
But all this is nothing in comparison to what awaits her.
* * *
It is on a spring morning in 1835 that, once again, Giulia’s life is divided into before and after.
The young woman is alone. She is looking at herself in the mirror, in her home as a kept woman, Don Florio’s mistress.
Her face is drawn, marked by black rings under her eyes as a result of the umpteenth sleepless night. She takes off her nightdress and stands naked. She trembles, and not from the cold.
The shape of her body has changed.
* * *
That morning, at number 53 Via dei Materassai, the maids open the windows. The crisp air and daylight fill the dining room.
Vincenzo, in trousers and shirtsleeves, is eating a frugal breakfast, looking through some documents from the board of the Chamber of Commerce, of which he is a member. His usually frowning forehead is relaxed.
He still has Giulia’s scent on him.
Giuseppina walks into the room as soon as he gets up from the table. “We must talk.”
He grabs a tricotto cookie and munches it as he heads to the door. “I haven’t got time.”
“Yes, you do. You know I have a meeting with the nuns of Santa Caterina? They wish to introduce another girl, the sister of one of their novices. They say she’s a lovely little thing. What am I supposed to do—tell them my son keeps a woman?”
“Find out what her relatives want, then let me know.”
His mother steps right in front of him. “You spent the night with that woman again.”
Vincenzo runs his fingers through his hair. He appeals to the saints for patience to face yet another argument with his mother. “It’s none of your business.”
“Yes, it is. For as long as you’re living under this roof, it’s also my business. I told you to forget her. And what if, God forbid, she gives you a bastard? Then you can kiss any marriage goodbye, let alone to aristocrats and princesses.”
“Mamma.” He takes a deep breath. Calm down, he says to himself, once again. “I’m a man, not a monk. And this is, first and foremost, my house.”
“You dare throw it back at me? Remember what you did!” No God can save him from the row Giuseppina wants to unleash.
“Are you still going on about Bagnara? When will you stop?”
“Never! You shouldn’t have done it. It was my house, and you sold it without saying a word to me.” Her voice full of rancor, Giuseppina follows him down the hallway and into the bedroom. “You and your father have snatched everything away from me. And I even have to put up with your going to sleep at that Milanese whore’s place.”
At this, Vincenzo freezes. “Now stop it,” he says. His eyes are two slits. He grabs some clothes and hurls them on the bed.
“I will not be quiet. Do you know how unpleasant it is to go to Mass at San Giacomo and see the other women’s looks?”
He removes his clothes until he’s naked. “What other people think is not my problem.”
“What are you doing, stripping like that? Did you learn it from that shameless woman?” Giuseppina turns away, blushing.
“You made me; you know what I look like.”
She hears the sound of water in the basin, the same one Ignazio used. “If your uncle was still alive you wouldn’t do it—keep a woman right before everybody’s eyes . . . You’re both living in mortal sin.”
The lapping ceases. Vincenzo gets dressed, fastens the mother-of-pearl buttons, and speaks without looking at his mother. “This is the least of the sins I shall bring before God. Besides, if it bothers you that much, find me a wife and I’ll sleep at home with her.” He picks up his jacket and puts it on with sharp movements. “But I’m telling you, married or not, I will not give Giulia up. Never.”
* * *
It’s almost nighttime by the time Vincenzo walks into the courtyard in Via della Zecca Regia. He looks up at the windows of the Portalupi apartment, then heads to the mezzanine. The one he and Giulia share, “living in mortal sin,” as his mother puts it.
Women’s and priests’ nonsense.
At least half the men he knows have a mistress, if not an actual second family as well as their official one. Ben Ingham is one of them, and treats Duchess Spadafora’s children like his own. Less frequent are relationships begun through interest that turn into bonds of love.
But he doesn’t dwell on this thought. He doesn’t wish to.
He rings. Nobody answers. He unlocks the door with his keys, takes off his jacket, and goes into the parlor.
She’s not in. Perhaps she’s at her parents’.
After the row that followed her decision to live in the eyes of the world as his kept woman, Giulia spent days racked with guilt. Only recently has she resumed visiting her family. Her father, a pragmatic man, quickly forgave her. But not her mother, who keeps blaming her and making her disappointment weigh heavily upon Giulia.
Vincenzo pours himself some lemonade from a carafe. He’ll do some work while he waits for her.
He doesn’t realize that hours have gone by until the flame in the lamp starts to quiver, stirred by the evening wind.
He gets up and peers at the Portalupi home through the window and sees a shadow, then another: it looks like Giovanni and Giulia; they are arguing.
A few seconds later, the young woman descends and walks across the courtyard, head down. He opens the door, more worried than he wishes to admit.
Giulia is here, before him. She’s so pale, as though made of alabaster. She puts a hand on his face without a word. She looks ill.
She kisses him.
“What?” he mutters.
She puts her fingers over his lips to stop him from asking.
“Come with me.”
She takes him by the hand and he follows her to the bedroom, entranced by her directive.
* * *
He’s awakened by the dawn.
Around them, the white ceiling, the curtains shielding the room from prying eyes, and the mahogany closet.
Outside, the sounds of the city remaking itself. He feels Giulia’s breath tickling his temple. It’s a rare moment of peace, and so precious. The warm softness of her body is a refuge of peace for him. He doesn’t have to prove he’s better than others.
She’s Giulia, he’s Vincenzo. That’s all.
But when he turns over, she’s awake, watching him with those large, dark eyes, serious but calm. She has a hand under the pillow. “I’m expecting your child.”
For a moment, Vincenzo doesn’t understand.
A child.
It means that, deep in her flesh, something is growing.
Child. My child.
He snatches the sheet off her and studies her aggressively. Her breasts are swollen, her hips fuller. Her belly is rounder.
Jesus wept! He didn’t realize!
Now Giulia is afraid. He can tell by her teeth pressing into her lower lip, and the hand clutching the pillow.
The words fly out of his mouth before he can stop them. “Is it really mine?”
Giulia rolls onto her back. She is almost smiling, perhaps having expected that question. “You were the first and are the only one.”
It’s true and he knows it.
Vincenzo suddenly realizes he’s naked. He grabs the sheet and covers his hips, while Giulia remains as she is, her skin shivering in the cold, a twinge in her heart.
“Since when?”
“I haven’t bled for three months.” She puts a hand on her belly. “Soon, everybody will notice.”
&n
bsp; Vincenzo runs his fingers through his hair. When did they conceive it? He has tried to be careful but hasn’t always managed. They have been together and making love for a year now.
In the end, a bastard has come along, as his mother had foreseen.
“I won’t marry you. I can’t. You know that, don’t you?” He speaks instinctively, quickly, and, as he talks, he feels overwhelmed, angry, confused. “You’re not the one . . . My mother is still looking for a wife for me,” he adds. He doesn’t want her to get any ideas, he thinks. She must understand that she can’t trap him just with a belly and a kid. “Tell your brother and father right now. If this is a way to try to—”
“I know.” Giulia sits up in the middle of the bed. Naked. Proud. She’s almost glowing in the light. “Before you say it, because I expect you’ll do this to me, too, I will not get rid of it. This is my child and I want it.”
Vincenzo retreats practically to the edge of the bed.
She grabs him by the wrist, revealing unusual strength. “Listen to me. The day will come when you’ll find yourself this woman you and your mother are wearing yourselves out looking for, and marry her. Or else you won’t come back simply because you’ll get tired of me. At least then I will have something of yours, to remind me of you and of us.”
Vincenzo wriggles free. “Aren’t this apartment and the money I give you enough? Why do you want a bastard? Do you think I’ll give you more? I’ve already told you, I’ll take care of you even if I ever leave you.”
He wishes he could run away, erase everything: having woken up, the confusion that’s making him breathless, that little thing growing inside his woman, robbing him of her.
He can’t even imagine what it means to have a child. He’s never thought of being a father.
Now Giulia is crying in earnest. She takes the sheet and covers herself. She curls up in the middle of the bed.
All Vincenzo can do is get dressed and leave. Giulia’s sobs follow him to the door.
* * *
“You wretch! Now this?” Antonia shouts between coughing fits. She rocks in the armchair, her eyes wide open, finding no relief in tears. “And now a bastard. What are we going to do? Haven’t we been through enough already?”
Her dark dress buttoned up to her neck, Giulia tortures a handkerchief until she frays its hem. She’s alone, or at least that’s how she feels. She has come to her mother for a word of comfort, a hug. Now that she needs help, she can’t find it anywhere.
A mother is meant to protect you even from yourself. But not her mother, who’s a frail woman focused on her own illness.
Antonia is crying, and her tears never seem to end.
* * *
Still, she’s not crying anymore by the evening. Sitting next to Giulia on the couch, she looks at Tommaso and Giovanni, who have just returned home, and knows it’s her duty as a mother to say out loud what they both thought as soon as they heard the news. She therefore waits for her husband to stop pacing up and down the parlor rug, his hands behind his back and his head down, and for her son to stop cursing Vincenzo.
When silence finally falls, she coughs and mutters that there could be a solution . . . With a small sum, a discreet midwife, an afternoon of pain, all trace of the shame could be erased.
She looks at Giulia. “Are you certain that you don’t want to—”
“No.” Firmly, eyes downcast.
“In this case you must leave.” Antonia stands up, coughs, and falls back on the couch. “You’ll return to Milan. You’ll go to Aunt Lorena, my mother’s sister, who lives outside the city. You’ll give birth there, and then we’ll see.”
Giulia shakes her head. “I don’t want to go away.”
How can she make them understand that she doesn’t care if people insult her, if everybody calls her a whore? She knows very well what she’s going against. She wants to stay with Vincenzo; too bad if she’s forced to accept his life’s leftover crumbs. She’ll make do with them. It’s what she has always done: to hold on tight to what little others are willing to grant her. But how can she possibly explain this to her mother and Giovanni?
She wants to remain in Palermo, no matter how painful this will be.
“You will leave,” her mother says. Determined.
“No!”
She bursts into tears. Ever since she’s been pregnant, she’s been crying frequently, almost as a habit.
Antonia and Giovanni exchange a look.
Giovanni kneels in front of her and takes her hands. “Giulia . . . listen. What do you think will become of you if Florio gets married? Not even the faintest memory. His wife will demand that you vanish from his life. There will be no more room for . . .”
Giulia recalls Vincenzo’s words. She knows his mother is still looking for a wife for him. “I don’t want to,” she repeats obsessively. “No.”
She goes on repeating it over the following days, when her mother forces her to pack her bags in secret. Antonia mutters that Vincenzo will not want her anyway now that she’s pregnant, that her body is going to lose its shape, and that all he’s after is a beautiful woman to enjoy. “I told you he was a scoundrel. And you’re a naïve fool who trusted him, that’s what you are.”
She repeats this when Giovanni outlines his plan. Giulia is in the room but it’s as though she’s not there. He’s going to look for passage on a ship bound for Genoa. He’ll escort her and make sure everything goes well until she arrives in Milan. Then he’ll return to Palermo.
As for Vincenzo, he has disappeared. No note, no visit, whereas before he would spend his nights holding her tight.
It is this void Giulia cannot stand, and which breaks her.
She gives up her resistance, abandons herself, and endures whatever is happening to her, letting others decide for her.
It will be as though she has never existed; perhaps that’s how it’s really going to be. And yet . . .
Finding a passage on a ship appears strangely complicated.
Among the captains and ship owners known by the Portalupis, nobody has room on his ship. Some even deny ever having carried passengers. Others claim they sold everything the day before. They say it in a low voice, however, looking away or with a sneer.
One is chance, two bad luck . . . but three refusals are too many to be a coincidence.
Tommaso understands.
Then, one evening, there’s a knock on the door.
The Portalupis exchange puzzled glances. They’re not expecting anybody.
Sitting at the table, Giulia is pale, remote, the victim of a torpor that came over her a few days ago, making her detached from everything.
Her mother says it’s the pregnancy but she knows that’s not the case. The maid opens the door.
It’s that voice, his, to snatch her out of the void into which she has fallen. “Good evening.”
Vincenzo Florio looks at them one by one. He deliberately avoids Giulia.
Giovanni is the first to confront him. “What are you doing here? You’re not welcome. Leave!”
“Just a few words and I’ll go.” He grabs a chair and sits between Antonia and Giulia, cross-legged. “A couple of days ago, my good friend Ingham said that you, Signor Portalupi, were looking for passage to Genoa. I wasn’t particularly surprised: I thought you needed to travel on business.” He looks into Tommaso’s face. “Until I discovered it was two places you were looking for.”
Portalupi removes his napkin from his collar and pushes his plate away. “I don’t have to give you an account of my actions, signore.”
“Actually, you do. I promised I would keep Giulia under my protection, and that means she has to stay in Palermo. With me.”
She looks up. The color seems to return to her face.
“We must protect our daughter,” Antonia says. “Giulia doesn’t understand what’s best for her, especially in her present condition. She can’t live here, unmarried, with a fatherless child.”
“That’s where you’re wrong, madam. Your daughter i
s a perfectly lucid, highly intelligent woman. And it isn’t a ring or a priest that will alter our relationship.” Vincenzo doesn’t smile. There’s no triumph, no satisfaction. “Rather, you have been foolish. You should have known I wouldn’t allow you to take her away from me. That’s unless . . .”
Only now does he address the young woman.
“Unless she wishes to leave, because if that’s the case, I’ll respect her decision. But not yours—Giulia’s.” He proffers his hand to her, palm up.
Stay. He wants to say it but doesn’t know how.
But Giulia can read it in his face. She feels anger and resentment for what she has been through: the loneliness, these days of abandonment, the isolation, the nights in the cold bed. For all that he is unaware of and she cannot tell him. Finally, she speaks.
* * *
Midnight has chimed.
Giulia is asleep, with Vincenzo next to her.
Once again. At last.
Her body has become buttery, round. Even her smell has changed: it’s now wild, determined, suggesting milk and lemon.
Vincenzo is awake. He’s listening to the thoughts of a Palermo that feeds on its own entrails, destroyed and rebuilt by its residents. He thinks about his business, about the grape harvest, about the goings-on at the Chamber of Commerce. About the problems he’s having with the Vergine Maria tonnara, which he doesn’t yet own and for which he has a wish that’s slowly shaping into a plan. Because he loves that place and would like to turn it into his realm.
He remembers his mother shouting, threatening to throw him out of the house if he went back to Giulia, especially now that everybody, absolutely everybody, knows she’s pregnant by him.
And being here. The tranquility.
He listens to his woman breathing. He hears, or imagines he hears, another breath intertwining with hers.
The baby.
He moves his hand from her breast down to her belly. Now he can feel the child. She made him feel it.
As well as affection—he, a father!—he has other emotions. Above all, a mistrust he struggles to shake off. This thing, this unborn child, will steal Giulia from him. She will no longer belong to him alone.
It’s an unfamiliar kind of jealousy that exasperates him.
The Florios of Sicily Page 24