The Florios of Sicily

by Stefania Auci

  He dozes off without even noticing.

  A rustling of fabric wakes him up. “Mamma!” he shouts, leaping to his feet and rushing to her, ignoring the dizziness caused by this abrupt movement.

  Giuseppina is groping amid the blankets. He lifts her and sits her up so she can breathe more easily. “How are you? Would you like a little broth?”

  Her mouth half-open in a grimace, she motions no. Her body gives off a smell of talcum powder, cologne, urine, and sweat. A smell of old age so pungent that it cancels out that sweet, milky scent he remembers: his mother’s true scent.

  He must call a maid to change her, he thinks. But not immediately, not now. He wants to stay alone with her a little longer. He smooths her forehead and brushes away the hairs escaped from her plait. “How are you?”

  “Everything hurts, as though rabid dogs were biting at me.” Tears are smearing her eyelashes.

  He dries them. “If you think you can swallow, I’ll give you some medicine,” he says, indicating a row of little bottles and powders crowding the night table.

  But Giuseppina shakes her head. She looks past her son, searching for the sunlight but not finding it.

  “Is it nighttime?”

  “Yes.”

  “And Ignazio? Where’s my darling Ignazio?”

  “Out. He’s gone out.”

  There’s no point in telling her that Ignazio, her favorite grandson, is now busy with Casa Florio and managing the marsala cellars, where he spends a lot of time. And that at this moment he’s in a meeting with a few Sicilian members of parliament, among whom is their new lawyer, Francesco Crispi.

  His mother indicates the bottle of water. He pours some into a glass and helps her drink it. Just a sip to moisten her lips. “Aah, thank you.” Giuseppina shuts her eyes, more exhausted than satisfied.

  Vincenzo thinks of how little it takes at this point in life to be happy. Clean sheets, a squeeze of her hand, cool water.

  “Sit down here,” she says, and the son obeys. Right at this moment, he’s a child scared of being left alone and who can already sense the anguish of his mother’s definitive absence. It’s a sorrow he’s been carrying around ever since he realized that his father, Paolo, was about to die.

  Ben, too, is dead, and that’s a loss hard to accept.

  And now the hardest loss of all is awaiting me.

  Of course, Giulia and Ignazio have been and always will be with him, but his mother is the only family member Vincenzo has had for such a long time. For a second, he wishes he could go back. He would give everything he owns just so he could feel small again, rocked in her arms.

  Giuseppina seems to have read his mind. “Don’t leave me alone,” she says, with fear in her voice, which is now as thin as a thread. He kisses her forehead and hugs her. It’s he who rocks her and speaks in her ear all that he has never been able to, and forgives her for the errors that, he now realizes, every mother inevitably commits.

  Giuseppina touches his face, now gropingly. “I wonder how things would have been if your father had lived,” she says. “If the other child had been born.”

  But he shrugs. He doesn’t know, he whispers. He can barely remember Paolo.

  But she isn’t listening to him. She looks past the footboard. “I know the Lord will come for me and He knows what’s in my heart, and all the wicked thoughts I’ve harbored. May He forgive me.”

  “Of course the Lord knows what’s in your heart,” he says, trying to reassure her. “Don’t think about it.”

  His mother tilts her head. Her skin relaxes and resumes its color. “My flesh and blood,” she murmurs. Torpor closes over her like a wave and submerges her. Her body is hot, perhaps feverish. Her breathing slows down even more, and becomes little more than a light breeze.

  He lies next to her and closes his eyes.

  When he is roused again, a few seconds later, Giuseppina Saffiotti Florio—his mother—isn’t there anymore.

  * * *

  Shortly after Christmas 1865, Ignazio walks through the rooms of Via dei Materassai. There’s dust and mud on his shoes. The floor reflects the safe flames from the gas lamps he had installed some time ago.

  He mentioned to his father the possibility of buying a new house since this one has small, dark rooms, and doesn’t become all their family represents. Vincenzo looked at him from below, frowning, his hand suspended over a sheet of paper. “Look for one and let me know what you find.”

  His father trusts him.

  Ignazio, however, still fears him. No, he corrects himself as he opens the door to his mother’s drawing room. It’s not fear, it’s mistrust. An old split that neither the business nor the trust built over many years of proximity have been able to heal.

  Yes, trust. Not when it comes to feelings and words thrown to break silences and say a great deal with very little. Those are reserved for his mother.

  And he finds her sitting in a wooden armchair with a lion carved on the back. She’s working on a piece of lace, on a pillow, but often has to stop. Her eyesight is not as sharp as it was, and her eyes get easily tired. She’s wearing a pair of half-moon glasses with horn frames, and often takes them off to massage the bridge of her nose.

  Ignazio approaches and she holds out her hand. “Sit down,” she says, indicating a pouf in front of the large table covered in threads and bobbins. He watches in silence as his mother works, as her fingers interweave ecru threads. That’s how his mother has always been: reserved, silent, strong.

  “I must speak to you, Maman.”

  Giulia nods, closes the stitch, and looks up. White strands cloud over her once-dark hair. “Tell me.”

  Now that he’s here with her, he hesitates. He knows that what he says cannot be unsaid, and he doesn’t want to say it, but wishes he could delay this moment, and push it as far away as possible.

  But he’s no coward. If something needs to be done, then better to do it immediately.

  “There’s a person I met at the Ladies’ Casino, Mamma. A young woman half-related to the Trigonas, aristocrats three generations back. Her name is Giovanna.” He pauses and studies the border of the valuable Qazvin rug his father bought in France a while ago. The final words are the hardest to utter. “She could be a wife for me.” He keeps his head down for a handful of seconds. When he lifts it again, he meets his mother’s shiny, tense eyes.

  “Are you sure, my boy?”

  Of course I’m not sure, he wants to say, but instead nods. “She’s a graceful, respectable girl. She comes from a very religious family, not very rich but . . . she has a title and knows how to conduct herself in society. Her mother, poor thing, is very fat but if you could see her daughter, she’s a real blossom.”

  Giulia puts her work down. “I know who it is. Giovanna d’Ondes, right?”

  “Yes.”

  Giulia takes his hands and holds them tight. “In that case I’ll tell you again, my Ignazio, because I want you really to think about this carefully. Listen to me, I chose dishonor for years just so I could be with your father, and I’ve never regretted it, never.” There are tears pearling her eyelashes, and her face almost looks younger. She speaks as though she knows about her and me, Ignazio thinks with a shudder of embarrassment. “If someone is a reason for living for you, then there’s nothing you can’t tackle. But if you’re with someone out of obligation or, even worse, a duty you feel you have to fulfill, then no, you mustn’t do it. Because there will be days when you won’t be able to speak to each other and will argue, and hate each other to death, and if there’s nothing that connects you here”—she touches his chest—“and here,” she adds, touching his forehead, “if you can’t find anything that truly binds you, you’ll never be happy. And I don’t mean mutual respect or passionate kisses, but affection, the certainty that there’s a hand you can hold every night on the other side of the bed.”

  Ignazio has said nothing but he’s out of breath, as though he’s just been running. His body feels heavy, and he’s very aware of the scent of
rose and lavender emanating from his mother’s clothes. He could never have imagined that she could speak so frankly to him.

  Giulia puts a hand on his cheek. “Are you sure she’s the right woman for you? And I’m not referring to the fact that she would become the mistress of all this,” she explains, indicating the surrounding rooms, “but that she’ll be your wife.”

  Ignazio pulls away from his mother’s touch. “She’s the most suitable woman on many fronts, and considering the importance of a match with a member of the aristocracy.”

  “For heaven’s sake, stop treating marriage as if it were a business matter!” Giulia bursts out. “You sound like your father!” She stands up and walks around the room with her hands on her hips. “By the way, did you tell your father first? You didn’t, did you?”

  “No.”

  “I’m glad, because I already know how he would have reacted. I imagine he would have gone to speak to her father on the spot and by now we would already have been celebrating your engagement.” She huffs and glances at her son, who responds with an unfathomable look. “Please be honest with yourself even before you are with me. Will you be, if not happy, then at least content with this girl? Because you can’t go through marriage while your heart and your memory are elsewhere. You’ll end up doing an injustice to yourself as well as two other people. To the one you truly want and to the one who is forced to be with you.”

  Ignazio freezes.

  His mother knows. She knows about her, in Marseille. How did she find out? Not from the letters he’s always received in Marsala, no, that’s impossible.

  The answer hits him hard.

  Giuseppina. His sister also knew.

  He’s forced to drop his head because his distress is too intense. Ignazio cannot, is unable to hide his feelings from his mother. “There’s no hope, Maman. As for me, I have responsibilities toward you, my parents, and to Casa Florio, and—”

  “To hell with the money and us parents. Do you know what your grandmother called me when I became your father’s mistress?” Giulia’s face is flushed; she is agitated and that’s not good for her. “I have swallowed much bitterness. And yet I would do it all over again a thousand times. That’s why I’m asking you, one last time, and if the answer is yes, then I’ll go to the d’Ondes house myself to speak with Giovanna’s mother. Are you sure about your decision?”

  Nailed to the armchair, Ignazio doesn’t know what to say. It’s like having heaven within reach, being able to stretch your fingers and pick the apple from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. His mother is on his side, and she would help him. But his father . . . his father would be too upset. His father could never accept that everything he’d worked for was lost because of a whim. He’s done so much for Ignazio, who is aware of how much he owes his father. The time has come for him to reciprocate.

  To be accepted by the Palermo that counts. To have access to the drawing rooms of the aristocracy. To become the most powerful among the powerful. Or else yield to the thought that has been gnawing at his heart for years: that of waking up every day of his life next to the woman he loves. The way it has already happened.

  But it happened in the past, and that’s where it must stay.

  He closes his eyes tight. Ambition gags the memory with smoky fingers. And yet one image still manages to escape. A kiss tasting of tears and honey, stolen in the garden of a house outside Marseille.

  * * *

  So that’s the way it is, Giulia thinks. You start alone, and you end up alone.

  She walks through the house in Via dei Materassai. She crosses the salon and reaches her mother-in-law’s apartment, which has now been refurbished so that she and Vincenzo can live in it. She goes farther up, to the roof, where, a few years ago, Vincenzo had a terrace built.

  Palermo spreads before her, enclosed between the mountains and the sea.

  She and Vincenzo are alone now.

  Just over a week ago, Ignazio married a girl with velvet eyes and an almond-white face. Baroness Giovanna d’Ondes is accomplished as befits a noblewoman, albeit a recent one, with the customary dowry of debts in her retinue.

  In the end, her husband has the title he wanted, the aristocratic wife, the blue blood. For his son, for Casa Florio.

  As for the young woman, Giulia immediately liked her. Everybody calls her Giovannina because she is delicate, petite, and graceful, if a little too thin. She’ll need to use her claws if she wants to earn her son’s respect, just as Giulia had to do with Vincenzo, and she will. Behind that saintly expression, Giovannina conceals a mettle of steel, of that she is certain.

  I hope she’ll be a good daughter-in-law, Giulia thinks, and in her heart prays that her son has made the right choice. That how he felt about that other woman now truly belongs to the past. She couldn’t bear to think he’s unhappy.

  She looks into the distance, at the sea: the couple have gone on a brief honeymoon on the mainland. Giovanna will have a chance to get to know Ignazio better. They’ll begin to grow together.

  She hears footsteps on the stairs and turns.

  Her husband is there, behind her.

  “The maid told me you’re here.” He drops heavily on a chair and Giulia feels a pang of worry. Vincenzo is very tired. Very tired.

  He notices the worry crease on her forehead and calls her to him with a nod. “I can’t remember what it’s like to be just the two of us.”

  Giulia makes a sound that’s halfway between a laugh and a bitter sigh. “I do. We were always inside a carriage or hiding somewhere until my brother discovered us.”

  Her mind flits to her parents, dead for some years now. To her mother, Antonia, who never completely relinquished her mask of reproach and disappointment, and her father, Tommaso Portalupi, who, on the other hand, forgave her. “It hasn’t been easy staying with you, you know?”

  She almost doesn’t realize she’s said it until her husband responds. Just a few understated words, almost a confession. “But you did stay.”

  Giulia looks at their joined hands. Uncle Ignazio’s ring is missing from Vincenzo’s finger. He gave it to his son on his wedding day after having it strengthened. “Because this ring belongs to another Ignazio, the one who was a father to me,” he said as he gave it to him. “It was he who founded Casa Florio. It’s right that you should have it now, and that you should hand it on to your sons.”

  Vincenzo restrained his overwhelming emotion when, without a smile, his son took it from the palm of his hand and put it on his finger, over his wedding band.

  Now Vincenzo looks at his wife, his life’s companion, for better, for worse.

  “Yes,” she replies, simply. She leans over and kisses his gray hair and he squeezes her arm and relaxes against her body. Giulia thinks about all their quarrels: about their illegitimate children, about the impulse to run away after she discovered she was pregnant for the first time, about his refusal to marry her, about his mother’s contempt, about the animosity she had to bear for years, and society’s scorn. “Yes, I stayed.”

  And she would not have had it any other way.

  Epilogue

  September 1868

  Di cca c’e ’a morti, di dda c’e ’a sorti.

  On one hand there’s death, on the other destiny.

  —SICILIAN PROVERB

  THERE’S AN INTENSE FRAGRANCE in the air. A sweet scent of honey, flowers, and fruit, of ripe olives and grapes left to macerate in the sun.

  It feels like spring.

  And yet it’s a very mild September.

  The building is immersed in the greenery of a vast estate: the Villa dell’Olivuzza, which will become the Reggia dei Florio. Long Gothic lines rise from the floor, enclosing an arched portal, and part in mullioned windows screened with white curtains. There are bees buzzing beyond the snowy fabric. The sun has lost the harsh light of the summer but is pleasant.

  The room—on the second story of the right-hand wing, in the quietest part of the house—is lavishly furnished. The two window
s overlook the garden. From below, from the servants’ quarters, you can hear the washerwomen rustling as they beat the laundry.

  One of them is singing.

  Velvet armchairs, Persian rugs, a mahogany dressing table, and a large bed with a carved headboard.

  Vincenzo is slumped on the pillows. Although the weather is warm, he’s wearing a smoking jacket and has a blanket over his legs. A half-open eye is staring into space, one hand resting on the surface of the sheet while the other is obsessively searching for the edge, pulling it and scratching at it.

  Giulia looks at him and her heart sinks.

  Her eyes are dry as she sits in the armchair next to him. She cannot cry anymore but she knows the tears will come. She certainly knows that.

  Don’t go, she thinks. At one stage, she even says it in a whisper he can’t hear.

  No, she mustn’t think about it. He’s still here with me, she screams inside. Until death snatches him from my hands, I will defend him. In her deeply lined face there’s a determination generated by despair.

  She looks for her work basket and takes a needle and thread, and goes back to embroidering the christening gown she promised her son and daughter-in-law. Their son will be born soon—or will it be a girl? No matter, as long as he or she is healthy—following little Vincenzo, who is just over a year old.

  She smiles despite herself. Her son has been a good boy: he produced an heir for the business straightaway and gave him his father’s name. So that Casa Florio may always have a Vincenzo and an Ignazio.

  And he, her Vincenzo, the love of a lifetime, has seen him. He’s held him in his arms. He was able to do it at the end of May, immediately after they moved to this villa that used to belong to the princess of Butera, when his body played that cruel trick on him.

  It happened four months ago. They were already in bed, in this very room. She heard him tossing and turning under the blankets. “Giulia, I’m not feeling well,” he suddenly said, sounding drowsy. She jumped out of bed and reached out for the electric light switch, that novelty Ignazio had had installed as soon as he’d bought the villa.