She did not know. Several times she had had the impulse to say quite naturally: look what I was given by the prince, because I sold one bracelet … But she could not say it. Why, she did not know. Was it because of Duco’s jealousy? She did not know, she did not know. She thought it would create less trouble to say nothing about the bracelet and not to wear it. In fact, she would have preferred to return it to the prince. But she thought that that would be impolite after all his kindness, after all his readiness to help her.
And Duco… thought that she had sold the bracelets for a good price, and he knew that she had received money from her publisher, for her pamphlet. He asked no further questions, and thought no more about money. They lived very simply … Still, it troubled her that he did not know, even though it had been good for his work not to know.
They were small things. Small clouds in the golden skies of their great and noble life: their life of which they were proud. And only she saw them. And when she saw his eyes from which confidence in life shone, when she heard his voice sounding so sure of his new energy and pride, and when she felt his embrace, in which she felt all his happiness in her trembling … she no longer saw the little clouds, she felt all her happiness with him trembling inside her, and she loved him so much that she could have died in his arms.
XXXII
URANIA’S LETTER was very sweet. She wrote that they were leading a very quiet life at San Stefano with the old prince, that they had no guests because the castle was too gloomy, too run down, too isolated, but that they would be delighted if Cornélie could spend some time with them. And, she added, she would also send Mr Van der Staal an invitation. The letter was addressed to Via dei Serpenti and was forwarded to Cornélie from her previous residence. So she realised that Gilio had not mentioned her living in Duco’s studio, and also realised that Urania accepted their liaison, without criticism …
The Banner watercolour had been sent to London and in the studio, still cool while the city was sweltering, there was a slight air of idleness and boredom, now that Duco was no longer working. And Cornélie replied to Urania that that she would be delighted to accept and promised to come in a week. She was glad that she would not find any other guests at the castle, since she had no outfits for a vie-de-château. But with her usual flair she rejigged her wardrobe without spending much money. It took up all her time for days and she sewed while Duco lay on the sofa smoking cigarettes. He had accepted the invitation too, for Cornélie’s sake, and because the area around the lake of San Stefano appealed to him. Smiling, he promised Cornélie not to be so stiff. He would do his best to be friendly. He rather looked down on the prince. He thought him a rogue, if no longer a blackguard. He thought him a child, if not ignoble and base.
Cornélie left; he took her to the station. In the carriage she kissed him fervently and told him how much she would miss him for those few days … Would he come soon? In a week? She would be longing for him: she could not do without him. She looked deep into his eyes, which she loved. He too said how bored he would be without her. Couldn’t he come any sooner, she asked. No, Urania had fixed the date …
As he helped her into the second-class carriage, she was sad to be going without him. The compartment was full, and she got the last seat. She sat between a fat farmer and an old farmer’s wife: the farmer kindly helped her put her valise in the net, and asked her if she would mind if he smoked his pipe. She told him in a friendly tone that she would not. Opposite them sat two priests in worn cassocks and between their feet they had an unobtrusive brown wooden box: it was the Last Sacrament that they were taking to a dying soul.
The farmer made conversation with Cornélie and asked if she were a foreigner, English probably? The old farmer’s wife offered her a mandarine.
The rest of the compartment was occupied by a bourgeois family of father, mother, a little boy and two little sisters. The slow train shook, rattled and swayed, and kept stopping. The sisters hummed. At one station a lady got off with a little girl of five, in a white dress and white ostrich feathers on her hat.
“Oh, che belleza!” cried the little boy. “Mama, mama, look! Isn’t she beautiful? Isn’t she wonderful? Divinamente! Oh, mama …!”
He closed his black eyes, in love, dazzled by the five-year-old-girl in white. The parents laughed, the priests laughed, everyone smiled. But the little boy was not embarrassed.
“Era una belleza!” he repeated with conviction and looked around.
It was very hot on the train. Outside the mountains glowed white on the horizon and shimmered like a fire-reflecting opal. Close to the railway rose a line of eucalyptus trees, their leaves sickle-shaped, exuding a pungent smell. On the plain, dry and scorched, wild buffalo were grazing, lifting their black curly heads indifferently towards the train. The slow train shook, rattled and swayed and kept stopping. In the stifling heat people’s heads nodded up and down, while an odour of sweat, tobacco smoke and orange peel mixed with the scent of the eucalyptus outside. The train rounded a corner, rattling like a toy train with tin carriages almost tumbling over each other. And a smooth strip of azure without a ripple: a mirror of metal, crystal, sapphire became visible and spread into an oval dish among the rolling mountain country, like a vase placed very low in which a sacred liquid was preserved, very blue and pure and still, and protected by a wall of rocky hills, which climbed higher until as the train rattled and careered around the clear dish a castle rose up high on a peak, rock-coloured, broad, massive and monastery-like, with arcades running down the slope. It rose nobly and with a gloomy melancholy and from the train it was hard to make out what was rock and what masonry, as if it were a single bleakness, as if the castle had grown naturally from the rock and in its growth had assumed something of the form of human habitation in distant times. And as if the oval dish with its sacred blue water was a divine sacrificial bowl, the mountain closed off the lake of San Stefano and the castle arose like its gloomy guardian.
The train wound along the water in a sinuous swirl for a moment, described an arc and came to a halt: San Stefano. It was a small, silent town, sleepy in the sun, without any life or traffic, and only visited every day in winter by tourists who came from Rome to see the cathedral and the castle, and taste the local wine in the osteria. When Cornélie got out she saw the prince at once.
“How sweet of you to visit us in our eyrie!” he said excitedly, squeezing her hands.
He led her through the station to his carriage, a kind of gig with two little horses and a small groom. A porter would bring her case to the castle.
“It’s wonderful that you’ve come!” he repeated again. “Have you never been to San Stefano? You know that the cathedral is famous. I’ll drive right through the town, the road to the castle is round behind it …”
He was beaming with pleasure. He geed up the horse by clicking his tongue, with a repeated shaking of the reins, like a child. They flew down the road, among the low, sleepy houses, across the square where the splendid cathedral rose in the sun’s glow, Lombard Romanesque in style, begun in the eleventh century and added to century after century since, with the campanile on the left, the baptistery on the right: architectural wonders in marble, red, black and white, a single structure of angels, saints and prophets covered as it were in a thick dust of antiquity that had long ago tempered the colours of the marble into pink, grey and yellow and which hung mistily among the group as if it were the only thing that had remained of all those centuries as if they had crumbled to dust and vanished into every joint. The prince rode across a long bridge, whose arches were the remains of an ancient aqueduct, and now stood in the riverbed, which was completely dried up and had children playing in it. Then he let the horses climb at a walking pace; the road climbed steeply upwards, winding up dry and stony from the sunken valleys of olives to the castle, and looking out wider and wider over the ever expanding panorama of bluish white mountains dissolved in the glow of the sun and opal horizons, with a sudden glimpse of the lake: the oval dish, set deeper an
d deeper, now as if in a circle of channelled hills, gleaming blue, deeper and more fathomless, and absorbing in its mystical blue all the blue of the sky, until the air shimmered, as if in long spirals of light that swirled before one’s eyes. Until suddenly an overpowering scent of orange blossom wafted towards one, a breath heavy and sensual as that of a panting lover, as if thousands of mouths were exhaling scented breath that hung stiflingly in the becalmed atmosphere between sky and lake.
The prince, happy and hectic, talked a lot, pointed here, pointed there with his whip, smacked his lips at the horses, asked Cornélie things, whether she liked the area … The horses, flexing their muscular hind legs, slowly made headway. The castle, massive and monumental, extended in front of them. The lake dropped from sight. The horizons became wider, like a world; the hint of a breeze blew away something of the scent of orange blossom. The road became wide, easily negotiable, level. The castle extended like a fort, like a town, behind its turreted walls with gate after gate. They drove in, across a courtyard, under an arch into a second courtyard, and through a second arch into a third. Cornélie was enveloped by a sense of awe, a vision of columns, arches, statues, arcades and fountains. They alighted.
Urania came to meet her, embraced her, welcomed her warmly and led her up the stairs and down the corridor to her room. The windows were open; she looked out at the lake, the town and the cathedral. Again Urania kissed her and sat her down. And it struck Cornélie that Urania had become thin and no longer had her former dazzling young American girlish beauty, with that unconscious element of coquettishness in her eyes, her smile, her clothing. She had changed. She had lost a little weight, and was not as striking as before, as if her beauty had been a short-lived manifestation, more to do with freshness than with line. But if she had lost her sheen she had gained a certain distinction, a certain style: something that surprised Cornélie. Her gestures were calmer, her voice softer, her mouth seemed smaller and was not constantly opening to reveal white teeth; her outfit was the essence of simplicity: a blue skirt and a white blouse. Cornélie found it difficult to comprehend that the young Princess di Forte-Braccio, Duchess of San Stefano, was Miss Urania Hope from Chicago. A melancholy had descended on her that was very flattering, even though she was less beautiful. And Cornélie felt that there was some unhappiness that tempered her and gave her more depth, but that she also fitted tactfully into her new surroundings. She asked Urania if she was happy. Urania said yes, with her melancholy smile that was so new and surprising. And she talked about herself. They had had a pleasant winter in Nice. But with a cosmopolitan group of friends, because although her new family was very kind, they were very condescending and Virgilio’s friends—especially the women—excluded her almost insultingly. She had realised even at her wedding that the aristocracy would tolerate her, but that people would never forget that she was the daughter of Hope, the stocking-manufacturer from Chicago. She had seen that she was not the only one who even though she was now a princess was tolerated and tolerated only for her millions: there were others like her. She had not made friends. People had come to her at homes and balls: everyone was the best of friends and thick as thieves with Gilio; the ladies called him by his first name, laughed with him, flirted with him and seemed to think it a very good idea that he had married several millions … With Urania they were barely, brusquely polite. The women particularly, the gentlemen were easier-going. But it hurt her, particularly when those high-ranking aristocratic women—all the famous names in Italy—treated her with condescension, and always managed to exclude her from all intimacy, every intimate gathering, every intimate collaboration on parties for charity. Once everything had been discussed, they would ask the Princess di Forte-Braccio to join in, and offered her the place she deserved, with scrupulous exactness indeed. They treated her clearly as a princess and equal in the eyes of the world, the public. But in their own coterie she remained Urania Hope. And the few other bourgeois millionaire elements came to call, of course, but she kept them at bay and Gilio approved. And what had Gilio said when she had complained of her plight to him? That with tact she would certainly win a position for herself, but with great patience and after many, many years. Now she cried, with her head on Cornélie’s shoulder: oh, she thought, she would never win, with all those proud women! And anyway what was she, a Hope, compared to all those famous families who together created Italy’s ancient glory and who, like the Massimos, claimed a pedigree that went back to the Romans?
Was Gilio good to her? Certainly, but he had immediately treated her as “his wife”. All his charm, all his jollity was for others: he never talked much to her. And the young princess wept: she felt lonely, and was sometimes homesick for America. She had invited her brother to stay with her, a nice lad of seventeen, who had come over for her wedding and had travelled through Europe, before leaving for his farm out West. He was her favourite, and he consoled her, but he would be going in a few weeks’ time. What would she have left then? Oh, how glad she was that Cornélie had come! And how well she looked, more beautiful than she had ever seen her! Van der Staal had accepted: he would be coming in a week. She asked in a whisper whether they were considering getting married. Cornélie was adamant that they would not; she would not marry, she would never marry again. And suddenly, with complete honesty, not being able to dissemble with Urania, she announced that she was no longer living at Via dei Serpenti, but in Duco’s studio. Urania was shocked by that break with convention, but she regarded her friend as a woman who could do things that others could not. So just their happiness and love, she whispered as if afraid, without social sanction? Urania remembered Cornélie’s imprecations against marriage and before that, against the prince. But surely she liked Gilio a little now? Oh, she, Urania, would no longer be jealous. She thought it was marvellous that Cornélie had come, and Gilio too, who was bored, had also greatly looked forward to seeing her. Oh no, Urania was no longer jealous …
And with her head on Cornélie’s shoulder, and her eyes still full of tears, she seemed to be asking only for a little friendship, a little kindness, a few words of affection and cherishing, the rich American child, who now bore the name of an ancient Italian dynasty. And Cornélie felt for her, because she was suffering, because she was only a small human being whose lifeline happened to cross hers. She wrapped her arms round her, she comforted her—the weeping princess—as if with a new friendship: she took her into her life as a friend, no longer as a little person. And when Urania, with a wide stare, recalled Cornélie’s warning, Cornélie interrupted her, and said that she, Urania, must have more courage. She had tact, innate tact. But she must be brave, must face up to life …
They got up, and at the open window, arms round each other, they looked out. The bells of the cathedral pealed through the air; the cathedral rose noble and proud above the low writhing mass of roofs, a gigantic cathedral for such a little town: an immense symbol of the power of spiritual authorities over the reverently kneeling town of roofs. And the awe that had filled Cornélie in the courtyard, among the arcades, statues and fountains, filled her again, because a fame and grandeur, dying, yet not dead, in decay but not yet consumed, seemed to rise in dusky shadows from the blue of the lake, from the centuries-old structure of the cathedral, along the orange-covered hills to the castle, where a foreign young woman stood and felt disheartened, but whose millions were required by this shadow of greatness in order to survive for a few more generations …
It is beautiful and exalted, so much past, thought Cornélie. It is great … But it is something more. It is a ghost. Because it has gone, it has all gone, it is all just a memory of proud nobles, of narrow-minded souls, who do not look to the future … And the future, with a tangle of social conundrums, with the waving of new banners and streamers, then swirled in the long spirals of light, which, like blue question marks, shimmered before her eyes between the lake and the sky.
XXXIII
CORNÉLIE HAD CHANGED and left her room. She walked down the corridor and
saw no one. She did not know the way, but kept on walking; suddenly, in front of her, a wide staircase led downwards, between two rows of giant marble candelabras, and Cornélie found herself in an atrium that opened onto the lake: the wall panels with frescos by Mantegna—depicting the deeds of the San Stefanos—arched up to a cupola painted with sky and clouds so that it appeared to be open, and where cherubs and nymphs gathered around a balustrade to look down.
She went outside and saw Gilio. He was sitting on the balustrade of the terrace, smoking a cigarette and looking out at the lake. Now he came towards her.
“I was almost certain you would come this way. Aren’t you tired? Can I show you around? Have you seen our Mantegnas? They have suffered greatly. They were restored at the beginning of this century. Yes, they’re in a sorry state, aren’t they? Do you see the little mythological scene above, by Giulio Romano? Come here, through this gate. But it’s locked. Wait …”
Inevitable Page 14