Malafrena

by Ursula K. Le Guin

  She dreamed that night that she was wandering in the streets of a town she had never seen, a town amongst the mountains, and the streets were packed snow; she could not find the place where she was to go, where the packhorse was stabled.

  The next day late in the afternoon a caller was announced as she came in from a long ride: Mr Sorde. She stared for a moment in pure bewilderment, almost panic, collecting her wits only when she saw the man waiting for her in the drawing room, a middle-aged provincial gentleman in black.

  She came forward, on guard. “I am Luisa Paludeskar.”

  The man bowed. “Emanuel Sorde, baroness.”

  “Itale’s father?”

  “His uncle. His father’s health doesn’t permit him to travel at present. I am sorry to intrude myself on you, baroness. May I see Itale?”

  She had not written Itale’s family, nor had she notified any of his friends in Krasnoy of anything beyond the fact of his release from prison. They had written to the family in the Montayna, and this man had travelled across the country simply on the chance that Itale was here. If he had not been here he would have found him wherever he was. He did not ask why she had not written, he did not care; he was simply resolute, he was going to see Itale. She took him upstairs at once.

  She left him in the sickroom and went to her room to change, in a dry, bitter mood. How long would it go on? Instead of love and secrecy, she had got sickness and loneliness. Instead of triumph, shame. Instead of Itale, his uncle for company…It was a bad joke. Had she been wrong to look forward to Itale’s release as happiness, for her as well as for him? If she had not been seeking that happiness, how could she have carried on for two years and done all she had done to win his freedom? Where did the fault, the error lie?

  The uncle’s presence at dinner relieved her at least from the endless brooding over such questions. He was tired, and hungry, and preoccupied entirely with his nephew. His manner was stiff and wary, but essentially indifferent: she was not what interested him. She began to feel at ease with him. When they spoke of Itale’s illness she asked Emanuel Sorde a question she had never brought herself to ask the doctor. “Even when his fever is down, he…he doesn’t seem to notice things…” She did not explain what it was she feared, but Sorde appeared to understand her, replying, “It’s the disease, I believe, baroness. It’s what the word typhus means. A stupor. It passes. What does your physician say?”

  She shook her head. “He won’t tell me even whether Itale is worse or better.”

  “The woman says his fever has been down the last two days.”

  She had not known that. She sat silent over her scarcely touched plate, while Sorde ate.

  “Baroness,” he said rather abruptly, “I saw Mr Brelavay as I came through Krasnoy. He told me what your modesty prevented your writing us. We are so deeply in your debt that it is presumption in me to speak of it.”

  She was taken aback; she answered without forethought. “I am not modest, Mr Sorde. I act in my own interest. Itale was my friend. That friend was taken from me; I acted to get him back. That’s all.”

  Surprising her again, the provincial lawyer simply smiled and raised his glass with a slight, formal bow of the head. He was, she realised, like Itale, formidable.

  “All I ask,” she said, “is to see Itale as he was.”

  “That we will not see, baroness.”

  “But he is recovering—?”

  “I hope so—I dare think so, having seen him, changed as he is. But I do not hope ever to see him as he was.”

  He finished eating, laid down his fork quietly, across the plate, country style. He was hateful in his provincial, middle-aged self-assurance. He did not care for her. He did not care what she lost. He was old, and like all the old did not care for the future, did not believe in it.

  But if he was right, if Itale was changed, would not be the same again, what future was she looking for?—Again the figure of the warders’ room, pitiful and repulsive, stood between her and the handsome, kindly boy who had been her lover: as if the fever had burnt up all that image like paper, like a bit of paper money in a fire. What was left? The old man, the uncle, was right. They were always right. There was nothing left of Itale but that man upstairs, whom she did not know, whom she did not want to look at, or be near.

  II

  A bar of morning sunlight slanted across the bed. The cool gold bathed his hands. Outside the window swallows dipped and swooped, building their nests in the eaves above. He could not watch them long, his eyes blurred, dazzled by the light.

  Emanuel was in the armchair, with a book open on his knees, but presently engaged in trimming his fingernails, with a pleasurable concentration on the act.

  “How’s Perneta?”

  Emanuel looked up keenly, then returned to his trimming-job as he answered, “Very well indeed. A grandnephew of hers came up from Solariy last year, that’s her brother Karel’s daughter’s son, Karel Kidre he’s called, nice young fellow. Gives her a good deal of pleasure to have a relation to spoil. He’s in our office, in fact he’s supposed to be looking after some of my more onerous recurrent duties while I’m here, those damned property lines in Val Modrone. Nothing like a three-generation-long boundary dispute to keep a lawyer cheerful. But I imagine young Karel’s mostly out at Valtorsa, if the weather there’s like this.”

  “Count Orlant?”

  “He’s fine. Piera is the attraction.”

  “Piera?”

  “You haven’t forgotten Piera.”

  “She’s married. Aisnar.”

  “How did you know that story? That’s right, you knew about it before we did—saw her in Aisnar, didn’t you? No, she broke the engagement. They were to be married at Christmas and it was put off till spring and then all at once it was off altogether. That must have been a little while after you were arrested. Never did understand the whys and wherefores. At any rate she’s still not married. Count Orlant lets her do exactly as she pleases, of course, always has. Lets her manage the property, in fact; I’ve handled several matters for her the last couple of years. She is a much better manager than her father, I have to admit. But I don’t know what’s got into these young women. Here’s Laura wanting to do the same thing, as if Guide would let her, and she hasn’t the head for it at all. What do they want to be stewards for? what’s wrong with marriage and a family these days? Handsome women they are, too, both of ’em. Wasteful…”

  Emanuel’s voice was deliberate, serene, long pauses between sentences. Itale listened, watching the sunlight on the red cover of the eiderdown on the bed: a dark red, somewhat faded; the fine threads caught the light in infinitesimal streaks of silver. The worn satin was very soft under his fingers. Warmth; softness; sunlight; color; these absorbed him; he must relearn them, little by little. Emanuel’s presence, his voice, his hands, that was the buoy, the raft. It was Emanuel’s touch that had first brought him back from the endless, limitless wanderings of fever: a hand held out, literally drawing him back, holding him in life. And his voice, now, talking easily, meandering among all the names of home.

  A week or so later Luisa came up in the evening to sit with them. Itale was propped up a little so that he could watch the fire in the hearth. The lymphatic swellings that had followed the typhus fever were much reduced, and he was comfortable, able to enjoy warmth and rest. Emanuel and Luisa talked a little; he did not pay attention to what they said. She turned to him. “Itale, do you remember the trip from Rakava?”

  He thought a while. “No.”

  “We had to come round by Foranoy because of the floods. None of the ferries could cross.”

  “No…But when…the day I came out. It was bright.”

  “Yes, it was sunny, between storms. Windy.”

  “I saw the sun.”

  “Did you never see the sun in prison?” Emanuel asked, without emphasis, but Itale did not answer.

  He never spoke of the twenty-six months in St Lazar, and Emanuel did not press him, saying to Luisa, “It’s be
st he puts it behind him, no doubt.”

  As he grew stronger he did not talk much more. He asked very few questions even of Emanuel, none of Luisa. She left a copy of Novesma Verba on his table, but did not know whether he read it. When he was able to get up, his desire was simply to get outside, to be outside, sitting at first, later able to walk a little in the wild, half-ruined gardens. People of the estate stared at him, tall and unearthly thin still, with his stubble-covered head, a strange figure.

  The night before Enrike was to arrive—for he had faithfully answered her plea with a promise to spend part of his leave with her, coming straight, or as straight as possible, from Vienna—she said to Emanuel, “Mr Sorde, I need your advice.”

  “Not on anything very important,” Emanuel said drily, and she took the compliment and smiled. They did not like each other, and had come to respect each other’s wit and willpower, and indeed take considerable pleasure in it.

  “It is very important.”

  “Itale or estate law?”

  “Itale.”

  “Good.”

  “Is he strong enough to hear bad news?”

  “I don’t know, baroness. What is the matter?”

  “You know that he was a friend of Estenskar, the poet. They were close friends. Estenskar is dead. He killed himself a month or two after Itale was arrested. He probably never knew about the arrest; he was under surveillance too, we now know, his mail was stopped, they were trying to make a charge against him. After his death his brother was arrested and held for a couple of months, and finally released without any charges. Itale stayed with them just before he went to Rakava. So far as I know, he was never told, he doesn’t know that Estenskar is dead. Have you ever mentioned it? has he said anything?”

  “No,” Emanuel said with a shake of the head. He clasped his hands and looked down at them, grim. “I’ll tell him, if you like,” he said. “I doubt he’s entirely unprepared.”

  “No; thank you for offering to take the burden, but you should not darken your last days with him. I knew Estenskar. I’ll tell him after you’re gone. If you think he is…”

  “Oh, he’s hard, baroness,” Emanuel said, still speaking grimly. “He can take it. I think he can take almost anything, now. What he cannot do is give. If you can spare him that, if you can shield him from having to make choices and decisions for a bit longer, let him be here away from people, you’ll have done more for him than the horse-faced doctor did.”

  Taking his own advice, Emanuel left that week without ever asking Itale what he intended to do when he left the Sovena. Itale tried to raise the subject himself, the night before Emanuel was to go. “You’re sure that father is all right?”

  “You read your mother’s letter.”

  “You’ve both been sparing me.”

  “No, not really. I believe I told you almost exactly what Dr Charkar told us. His heart is not strong, neither is it actually unsound. He is as active as he ever was, within sensible limits. After all, he is over sixty.”

  “That is the problem,” Itale said; and Emanuel frowned.

  “Listen, Itale, there is no need for you to decide anything yet, just because I’m off home. Stay here as long as you can, find out where your course lies, don’t let yourself be forced into anything.”

  Itale looked at him and then looked away. “Would I be welcome,” he said, so indistinctly and speaking so much aside that Emanuel did not at first understand him, and when he did answered without thinking, shocked, “Of course, don’t be foolish,” brushing aside the question, which only much later, when he was hours gone and well started on his way back home, returned suddenly into his mind, so clearly now and so painfully that he all but cried out aloud, “My God, Itale, how can you ask that? What have they done to you that you can ask that?”

  Enrike Paludeskar had arrived a few days earlier, in a wild rainstorm on the first of May, very much out of sorts. He had loyally come to his sister’s call, but that did not prevent him from resenting her expectation that he would coop himself up in the dreary house in the Godforsaken provinces with her and a convicted seditionist fresh from jail. She had no sense, she refused to realise that she was imperilling his position, his career, by making him come here, and indeed by insisting upon keeping Sorde here even while he, Enrike, was in Vienna or Krasnoy. He impressed this upon her pretty forcibly and at length, but when Itale came into the room he turned, stared, and then put out his hand. His heavy face had gone pale. He tried to say something but could not; he shook Itale’s hand, and put his left hand timidly on his shoulder, then awkwardly pulled away. “I hear, I hear you’ve been ill,” he said stammering.

  He never succeeded after that in looking Itale in the face or talking naturally with him. Fortunately Itale spoke very little, and Enrike did not have to try to explain his guilt and revulsion to Luisa. He could not make it out. It was the government, the commonplace, decent men he worked with, whom Sorde had been trying to subvert; it was the same government, the same decent men, who had taken Sorde and done this to him. It was incredible, unreasonable. He could not solve the problem, and Itale, by embodying it, made him miserable.

  “How do you like your work in Vienna?” Itale asked him once, conventionally enough, and Enrike gasped and groped—“It’s—interesting, and all that—I don’t do anything significant, really—open letters, you know, and all that—”

  “Harry,” Luisa put in, drawling, “you mean you censor the mail?”

  “No, no, no, nothing of that sort, for God’s sake, Luisa! What do you think I am? No, official letters, letters to the ambassador—dispatches and that sort of thing!”

  He said nothing more to Luisa about sending Sorde away. He planned to leave himself, however, as soon as he could. Luisa did not need him, anyhow; she had begun collecting acquaintances as she always did, a crazy mixed lot, but she always mixed her lots.

  These were neighbors, some of them neighbors at a distance of thirty miles, but they thought nothing of riding clear across the province if a full table and a hot political discussion awaited them at ride’s end. Duke Matiyas Sovenskar, heir to the Orsinian throne, lived on his enormous estate twenty miles to the north, and no one forgot his presence though he had not left that estate for years. The province was thick with retired officers of the defunct national army, old now but still bitter. Their club, the Friends of the Constitution, had lately been revived in emulation of the young liberals in the capital. They sounded out Luisa cautiously, until they found who the man staying with her was. In Krasnoy she was considered a woman who had liberal friends but whose influence lay in conservative circles; in the Sovena, because Sorde was with her, they took her for a radical patriot. Enrike protested, accused her of hypocrisy and of meddling with things she didn’t understand, was reminded that she had despite her lack of understanding meddled him into his diplomatic post, and left, defeated as always.

  Luisa had begun to enjoy herself again. Grey-headed ex-colonels fought Leipzig over in the echoing salon, while their sons, landowners of the rich Sovena estates, toasted first Duke Matiyas—“Sovenskar, the Constitution, the Nation!” and then their hostess. Baron Agrikol Laravey-Gotheskar, six foot two and black-mustached, broad-chested, magnificent, drank to her and smashed his glass into the fireplace. She missed the weight of such men as Raskayneskar or Johann Cornelius, whose benign manners concealed real political power, yet she liked these noisy, quarrelsome Northerners. Their power was only personal, but it was immediate. She wanted to laugh whenever Laravey-Gotheskar smashed another wine glass, and yet she was stirred, her eyes met his fiery gaze. “Baron, your flattery has cost me three pieces of my grandmother’s crystal,” she told him, and he, furious as she expected, “Flattery! You misjudge me, baroness!”—and stalked off frowning tremendously to sulk, until the nearby discussions turned the course of his passions and he threw himself into the fray shouting, “But Vienna will hear no voice, gentlemen, but the voice of blood and iron!”

  They were all, even Laravey-Gothes
kar, very gentle with Itale. He took no part in their discussions, and generally excused himself early from the company. There was no need to explain or excuse his silence and withdrawal; the reason was all too visible, though he had been gaining a little weight and color as spring turned to the clear, bright northern summer. He still spent all day outdoors if he could. He could walk and ride a little; he talked with people on the estate; there was no reason, Luisa thought, why he could not talk with these men, his equals in education and like him in background and opinions. What kept him silent, then?

  “There is a chance Laravey-Gotheskar might get the vacant seat for the Sovena. You could tell him so much he needs to know about the Assembly, Itale. He is extraordinarily naive.”

  “I’m not the one to tell him.”

  “Why not? Who knows more about it than you? The mistakes you could save him from making—”

  “But I don’t know about it. I’m out of date. I didn’t even know till recently that Amiktiya had been suppressed. I can’t seem to take things in.” He looked at her for a moment, diffident. “And Estenskar,” he said, very low, as if apologetic.

  It was three weeks since she had told him of Estenskar’s death. He had taken the news quietly and spoken of it quietly, asked questions, and then let it drop. She was disturbed by his mentioning Estenskar now, inappropriately.