Daughter of Silence

by Morris West

  ‘Carlo would be encouraged to hear you say that.’

  The old man frowned and answered unhappily: ‘I doubt it. The climate between us is less favourable than ever. Valeria is now flaunting this Lazzaro fellow under Carlo’s nose. He cannot fail to believe that I approve it.’

  ‘She’s destroying herself,’ said Ninette with sudden anger. ‘Can’t she see that?’

  ‘More clearly than you, I think,’ said the old man sombrely. ‘But there are matters that have no aptitude for contentment. I am one, she is another. Our sole satisfaction is to wrest from each moment whatever it holds of sweet or bitter. It is, if you want, an impulse of conquest and not of enjoyment. We seek to dominate and, if we cannot, we are happier to destroy. Carlo has withdrawn himself from us. All his interest is centred in this case – and, I’m afraid, in his client.’

  ‘I’m afraid of that too,’ said Landon with sharp interest. ‘I’ve watched it happening these last weeks. I’ve tried to show him where it leads. I’ve pointed out the dangers to him and his client, but I’m afraid he’s in no condition to measure them. I’m worried about him. In this profession, as in any other, a man needs a line of retreat from the demands which are made on him. If he doesn’t find it at home, then he may attempt either an impossible dedication or a dangerous identification with his client.’

  Ascolini nodded agreement, and asked with grave interest: ‘Which way is Carlo leaning?’

  ‘He thinks it is to dedication. I’m afraid it’s the other way. He makes no secret of his compassion for Anna Albertini. He spends himself to ensure her comfort and to offer her reassurance. For her part, she is coming to lean on him for everything. Which makes a double danger.’

  ‘I know,’ said Ascolini. ‘Valeria makes sordid jokes about it, and this is bad for any man working on the edge of his nerves. But he fights back now. He will not let us play games with him as we once did. The boy has become a man, and there is a fund of anger in him.’

  He broke off, as if weary of so much unhappiness, and signalled a waiter to attend them. While they ate, they talked of more amiable matters, but by the time the coffee was brought they were back to the trial again, and the old man was expounding in sober, legal fashion his views on the problems of the defence.

  ‘… In a case of this kind, where the facts and circumstances of a crime are beyond doubt, there is no hope of acquittal. No society can condone a murder. Between you and Carlo you have framed a plea of mitigation on the grounds of provocation and partial mental infirmity. Your problem is, of course, that you are brought immediately into areas of dubious definition where success depends as much on the skill of the advocate as on the legality of his plea. This is where experience comes in – and Carlo is deficient in experience.’

  ‘I think you still underrate him, dottore,’ said Ninette gently.

  ‘Perhaps.’ Ascolini smiled wryly. ‘Even so, child, I’m afraid this court will be more stringent than you think, since too liberal a decision may lead to public disorders.’

  ‘The vendetta?’

  ‘The vendetta, the crime of passion – any circumstance where the law has failed to prevent or punish injustice, and the individual takes redress into his own hands. No society can permit this, however great the original wrong, because society dares not take liberties with its own survival.’ His fine hands dismissed the subject as a riddle beyond solution. ‘This is why justice is represented by a woman. She is fickle, paradoxical, relentless, but she has always an eye to the main chance.’

  They laughed at his cynicism and he was pleased. Yet Landon felt in the same moment a pang of pity for him: a man with a touch of greatness, a cool analyst, a doughty fighter, a stoic humourist, yet robbed of the repose of age by the passions he had indulged in himself and others. It was not their place to judge him, but Landon understood all too clearly the dilemma in which he found himself. He had derided too long the man he now needed as a son. He had loved too selfishly the daughter who now used love as a weapon against him. Ambition was satisfied and passion spent. All that was left to him was the fierce peasant pride – weak buttress against the siege of years and solitude.

  Landon was glad when Ninette said to him in her quiet, percipient fashion: ‘Carlo’s having dinner with us tonight. Why don’t you come, too, dottore? It would give you both a chance to relax together.’

  He smiled and shook his head. ‘You have a gentle heart, young woman, but don’t let it run away with you. It is Carlo who needs your company. And I’m a crooked old devil who will say the wrong thing from sheer perversity.’ He pushed back his chair and stood up. ‘Let’s get a little fresh air before the next session.’

  Twenty paces from the court-room, in the narrow, whitewashed remand cell, Advocate Carlo Rienzi was serving luncheon to his client. He had ordered the meal from a neighbouring restaurant, complete with wine, silvery cutlery and fresh linen napery. Now he was busy as a housewife, spreading the cloth, laying the places and serving the food while the girl stood looking out of the single barred window towards a patch of blue sky.

  The cell was austere as a monk’s hole – with a truckle-bed, a crucifix on one wall, a pair of stools and a rough wooden table – but to Carlo Rienzi it wore for the moment an air of comfort and intimacy.

  For the past weeks he had visited Anna Albertini almost daily, but had never once been private with her. There was always a guard within ear-shot whose menacing presence imposed a formality on their exchanges. Here, for the first time, they were truly alone. The heavy door was bolted, the Judas shutter was closed, and the languid guard was eating his lunch and washing it down with the wine Rienzi had brought for him.

  Anna Albertini, however, showed no sign of pleasure or surprise at the new situation. She had thanked him gravely when the meal was brought in, and then had left him to serve it. When he was finished, he called her: ‘Come and eat something, Anna.’

  ‘I don’t want anything, thank you.’ She did not turn to answer him but spoke to the sky in a flat, toneless voice.

  ‘It’s a good meal,’ said Rienzi with forced brightness. ‘I ordered it myself.’

  She turned then, and there was a hint of warmth in her reply: ‘You shouldn’t have taken all this trouble.’

  Rienzi smiled, poured two glasses of wine and handed one to her. ‘If you’re not hungry, I am. Won’t you join me?’

  ‘If you want me to.’

  Remote and placid, she moved to the table and sat down facing him. Rienzi began eating immediately, questioning her between mouthfuls.

  ‘How do you feel, Anna?’

  ‘Quite well, thank you.’

  ‘It was rough this morning. I’m afraid it’s going to be worse this afternoon.’

  ‘I’m not afraid.’

  ‘You should be,’ said Rienzi roughly. ‘Now stop being silly and eat your lunch.’

  Obedient as a child, the girl began picking at her food while Rienzi sipped his wine and watched her, wondering as he always did at her uncanny air of innocence and detachment. After a while, she asked him: ‘Why should I be afraid?’

  For all his experience with her, Rienzi was staggered. ‘Don’t you understand, Anna? Even now? You saw the court, you heard the evidence. If the Prosecutor has his way you’ll be in prison for twenty years. Doesn’t that scare you?’

  Her small, waxen hand pointed round the room. ‘Isn’t this prison?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘This doesn’t scare me.’ She was wide-eyed at his obtuseness. ‘People are kind and considerate. I’m happy here. I’m happy at San Gimignano, happier than I’ve ever been in my life.’

  ‘Because you killed a man?’ Rienzi’s tone was sharp with irritation.’

  ‘No, not really. Because I sleep quietly, don’t you see? I don’t have nightmares. I wake in the morning and I feel new, a new person in a new world. There’s nothing to hate, nothing to fear. For the first time I feel that I am myself.’

  Rienzi stared at her, caught between pity and wonder and a little
wordless fear. ‘What were you before, Anna?’

  Her face clouded, and her eyes became suddenly vague. ‘I never knew. That was the trouble: I never knew.’

  Then, as always, he was shaken with pity for her. He bent over his plate and ate a while in silence. Then, more genially, he told her: ‘We do have a chance, you know, Anna. It’s a slim one. But we may be able to get you off with a very light sentence.’

  ‘I hope so,’ said Anna Albertini placidly, ‘for your sake.’

  Rienzi gaped at her, startled. ‘For my sake?’

  ‘Yes. I know this case means a great deal to you. If you win it, it will make your reputation. You’ll be the great advocate you’ve always wanted to be.’

  ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘I’m not a child, you know,’ said Anna Albertini.

  Rienzi digested the wry morsel for a few moments and then tried another line of questioning: ‘Tell me, Anna, if we do succeed and you get a light sentence, what will you do when you come out of prison?’

  ‘What I’ve always wanted to do – go back to my husband, be a good wife, bear him children.’

  ‘Are you sure you could?’

  ‘Why not? I told you, I’m a new person. The nightmares are over.’

  ‘You may find worse ones waiting for you,’ said Rienzi harshly. He pushed back his chair and walked away from the table, to stand as Anna had stood, looking through iron bars at a pocket-handkerchief sky. The girl watched him with childish puzzlement. She said, unhappily: I don’t understand you at all.’

  Rienzi swung round, stared at her for a moment, and then launched into a simple, passionate appeal: ‘Anna, I’m trying to make you understand something. At this moment, and until the end of your trial, you are in my hands. I act for you, think for you, plead for you. But afterwards, whichever way it goes, you will have to do all these things for yourself. You will have to build a new life – inside the four walls of the prison or outside in the world of men and women. You have to begin preparing yourself now for whatever may happen. You will be alone, do you understand?’

  ‘How can I be alone? I’m married to Luigi. Besides, you’ll help me, won’t you?’

  Rienzi hedged his answer: ‘A wise advocate interests himself only in the case, Anna, not in the private life of his client.’

  ‘But you’re interested in me, aren’t you-privately, I mean?’

  ‘What makes you say that?’

  ‘I feel it, that’s all. When I’m standing there in the court, I tell myself that as long as I think of you everything will be all right.’

  ‘That’s not true, Anna. I’m just an ordinary lawyer with a bad brief. I can’t work miracles. You mustn’t expect them.’

  It was almost as if she had not heard him, could not even see him. She went on with the pathetic earnestness of a child trying to explain herself: ‘So far as I’m concerned, you are the only one in the court. I hardly see the others. I hardly hear them or know what they say. It’s as if …as if …’

  Rienzi prompted her sharply. ‘As if what?’

  ‘As if you were holding my hand, as my mother used to do.’

  ‘God Almighty, no!’

  The girl stared at him in distress. ‘Did I say something wrong?’

  ‘Eat your dinner, Anna,’ said Rienzi dully. ‘It’s getting cold.’

  He turned away from her and began pacing thoughtfully up and down the narrow room while the girl picked listlessly at the meal. After a few moments, a new thought seemed to strike her, and she asked: ‘Where’s Luigi? Why hasn’t he come to see me?’

  ‘I don’t know, Anna.’

  In her odd, absent fashion she seemed to accept the answer. Rienzi hesitated a moment and then asked her: ‘Tell me, Anna, why did you marry Luigi?’

  ‘My aunt said it was time for me to settle down. I wanted it, too. Luigi was a nice boy, gentle and kind. It seemed we could be happy together.’

  ‘But you weren’t?’

  ‘When we were courting, yes. I was proud of him and he seemed to be proud of me. We would walk and talk and hold hands and kiss. We would make plans about what we were going to do – about names for our children, the sort of apartment we’d like….’

  ‘But afterwards?’

  Anna Albertini looked at him strangely, and for the first time he saw the hint of a break in her composure. ‘Afterwards was my fault. I just couldn’t help myself. Every time he took me in his arms I …’ She broke off and threw out her hands in a gesture of appeal. ‘Please! I don’t want to talk about it. It’s all over now. I’m changed. I know I’ll make him a good wife.’

  ‘Does he still mean so much to you?’

  ‘He’s the only one I have.’

  ‘What did he say to you when they brought him to see you in the prison?’

  ‘Nothing. He just looked at me. I tried to explain to him, but they wouldn’t let me talk. And then he went away. I don’t blame him. I’m sure he’ll understand in the end. Don’t you agree?’

  ‘I hope so,’ said Rienzi deliberately, ‘but I wouldn’t count on it.’

  For the first time, the real point of his interrogation made itself clear to her. Her hand went to her mouth and her face crumpled into a mask of horror. ‘He doesn’t love me any more?’

  ‘No, Anna. And I’m going to put him in the witness box again this afternoon. You may not like what you hear.’

  She did not weep or cry out, but got up slowly from the table and walked to the window, where she stood, tight and trembling, the palms of her hands pressed against the white stone wall. Rienzi asked her: ‘Were you really in love with him, Anna?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Her voice was dull and toneless. ‘That’s the point. Until now I’ve really never known about anything even myself. So long as Belloni was alive things seemed to make sense, there was just a long, straight road, with me at one end of it and Belloni at the other. So long as I kept walking, I knew I must meet him sooner or later. Now he’s dead, and there’s nothing…no road, nothing!’

  ‘Then you must find a new road, Anna.’

  There was an infinite pathos in her reply: ‘But a road always goes somewhere. I don’t know where I want to go. I don’t even know if there’s a me. There’s just my name, Anna Albertini, but no me. Can you see one?’

  ‘I can, Anna.’ He went to her and took her cold hands in his own. ‘I can see one, touch one. She is made to have children of her own and hold them in her arms. She is very beautiful. She can love and be loved.’

  ‘The only one who ever loved me was my mother.’

  ‘She is dead, Anna.’

  ‘I know.’

  He pleaded with her passionately: ‘But you’re alive, Anna. You will go on living. You have to have something to live for.’

  ‘I used to have Belloni. Now he’s dead, too.’

  ‘That was hate, Anna. You can’t go on hating a dead man!’

  ‘I wanted to love Luigi, but he doesn’t love me. Where do I start? Where do I go?’

  Sombrely, he told her again: ‘If we lose our case, you’ll go to prison for twenty years.’

  ‘You know I’m not afraid of that. In a way it’s been quite good. They tell me what to do, how to do it, where to go.’

  ‘But this is not living.’ He was angry now, and vehement. ‘This is death! This is like the princess in the enchanted wood. You will have no nightmares, but you will have no life either! You will be led this way and that, like a clockwork figure, until beauty dies and love dies and there is no hope for you any more!’

  ‘Please don’t be angry with me.’

  He caught her shoulders in a savage grip and shook her. ‘Why not? You’re a woman, not a rag-doll. You can’t go on any longer shifting the responsibility for your life to someone else. It was you who broke Luigi. He wanted love and you couldn’t give it to him. I want something from you now – help, co-operation! You’re giving me nothing!’ He released her and she stood rubbing her bruised shoulders, her eyes filled with the first tears he had eve
r seen in her. Instantly his anger was gone and he was overwhelmed by tenderness. He put his arm about her and drew her dark head against his breast. ‘I’m not blaming you, Anna. I’m not God. I’m trying to get you to blame yourself.’

  Then, for the first time, she began to weep, clinging to him desperately while her body shook with sobbing. ‘Don’t leave me. Don’t leave me, please. I feel safe with you!’

  Brutally, he thrust her away and blazed at her again: ‘You can’t feel safe! You’ve got to feel naked and alone and scared! You’ve got to want something so badly that it breaks your heart. You’re a woman, Anna, not a child!’

  Pitifully, she pleaded with him: ‘I want to be a woman. Can’t you see I want to be, but I don’t know how? Help me! For God’s sake help me!’

  She clung to him again, her dark head on his shoulder, her hair brushing his lips. Rienzi tried awkwardly to comfort her while he stared, unseeingly, beyond her towards all the bleak implications of her dependence on him. Then he disengaged himself gently.

  ‘I’ll have to go now, Anna. We’re due in court in a few minutes.’

  ‘Don’t go. Don’t leave me!’

  ‘I must, Anna,’ said Rienzi with sober pity, ‘I must.’

  He turned away, walked to the door and called the guard to let him out. When it slammed behind him Anna Albertini stared blank-faced at the Judas window, then, seized with sudden terror, she flung herself on the bed, weeping like a lost child.

  CHAPTER SIX

  THE AFTERNOON SESSION opened tamely, on a note of academic calm. Professor Galuzzi took the stand and Carlo Rienzi led him through a short resume of the testimony he had given in the morning. Then Rienzi began to ask for definitions.

  ‘Professor, I wonder if you will be good enough to explain to the court the meaning of the words “trauma” and “traumatic psychosis”.’

  Galuzzi smiled, coughed, adjusted his pince-nez, and explained: ‘Literally, the word “trauma” means a wound. In the medical sense, it signifies a morbid condition of the body caused by some external disorder. In the psychiatric sense, it means much the same thing – a scar caused by emotional or mental shock. The words “traumatic psychosis” describe a disordered state of mind induced by the trauma. If I may explain more clearly, a scar on the finger is a trauma – not a very serious one. The scars left by major surgery are also traumas. There are similar degrees of scarring to the human psyche.’