The Viceroys

by Federico De Roberto

  On recovering from his chill he had nothing else wrong with him, but before he was yet quite set up he wanted to go out.

  ‘Please, for our sakes!’ implored Matilde, clasping her hands, ‘for our daughter! Do not expose yourself to another germ …’

  She had not said anything to him about her suspicions so as not to irritate him while he was ill, but now she threw her arms around his neck and said to him, looking him in the eyes and passing a hand over his hair:

  ‘Where do you want to go? Why leave me? Stay with me!’

  ‘I want to take a little walk; I feel quite well …’ he replied, touched by those caresses, by that submission like a faithful dog’s.

  ‘We’ll take one together in the vineyard … there’s no need to go outside … if it’s true that you love me, me alone … and don’t think of others …’

  ‘Who should I be thinking of?…’ exclaimed Raimondo, with a fatuous smile.

  ‘Of no other woman, none at all … not even of her?’

  ‘Who d’you mean?’

  ‘The Galano girl?…’ the name burnt her lips.

  ‘Me?’ replied he in a tone of protest. ‘I wouldn’t dream of it!… Whoever put such ideas into your head, I wonder!’

  ‘No one. I fear them, because I love you, because I’m jealous …’

  He laughed heartily, and reassured her.

  ‘But no, what ideas you get hold of!… and then, little Agatina … A girl who goes with anyone who wants her!…’

  ‘Is that true? Is that true?… then why d’you visit her?’

  ‘I visit her because it amuses me, it’s like going to the café or the club …’

  ‘What about that night you caught your chill?’

  ‘I got soaked because the rain caught me at La Ravanusa. You can ask anyone, if you don’t believe me!’

  Yes, she would have believed him had the gentleness with which he treated her not been a new undeniable proof that he had done something to be forgiven … Well, what did it matter if that was the reason? Whatever the feeling which dictated those words to him they were good words, they took away her anguish, at least for a time. And with a mind reopening to hope, she heard him suggest:

  ‘Anyway, now the cholera’s nearly over, we’ll all be leaving. When I’ve arranged this division with Giacomo we’ll return to Florence. But for now, if you like, we can make a trip to Milazzo. Your child can be born at your own home. How’d you like that?’

  ‘Abbas! Abbas!…’ said the lay-brother porter with a bow.

  ‘What does that mean?’ Consalvo asked his uncle the Prior, who was leading him along by the hand.

  ‘It means that the Abbot is in the monastery,’ explained His Paternity.

  Up the great staircase, all marble, the boy looked at walls hung with huge bas-reliefs of white stucco on a pale-blue ground; Saint Nicholas of Bari, the martyrdom of San Placido, the Baptism of the Redeemer, surrounded by swarms of angels, crowns, swags and palm branches, all over the ceiling. The stairs led on to the east corridor, before great windows opening on to the terrace of the first cloister.

  ‘There he is,’ said the Prior, bowing towards a black shadow passing behind the glass.

  From outside the Abbot brought his face close up to the window, and on recognising the visitors exclaimed with a wave:

  ‘Open, open up, Ludovì …’

  The Prior turned the sash-bolt, then took his superior’s hand and gave it a respectful kiss; the prince and his son followed this example.

  ‘Blessings on you, my children, blessings on you!… So here’s our little monk then, is it? Ah yes, a fine little monk we hope to make of him!… Consalvo, eh?’ he turned to the prince, then back to the boy. ‘Consalvo, are you pleased to be with us, eh?…’

  ‘Answer … answer His Paternity.’

  Looking him in the face, the boy said:

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘That’s right!… what a handsome lad … what eyes … you’ll stay here with your uncle and grow up good and holy like him, what, eh?…’ and he put an affable hand on the Prior’s shoulders, who murmured with a blush:

  ‘Abbot!’

  The latter moved off, leaning on his stick, the Prior on his right, the prince on his left. Consalvo went to the grille and stared down into the cloister. This was surrounded by an arcade supporting a terrace full of statues, and had basins of tinkling water, seats set amid symmetrical flower-beds, and a pavilion in the middle of Gothic style, with four arches, its roof of gleaming tiles mirroring the sun. The boy was still staring curiously round when his father called him. The group moved towards the Abbot’s apartment, next door to the Royal one in the southern corridor, where the doors were surmounted by great pictures representing lives of saints. On reaching his door the Abbot gave some orders to his servant, then all moved towards the Novitiate, through the Clock corridor more than two hundred yards long, so that the great window at the end looked small as a bull’s-eye. First they passed through the second cloister, which had an arcade up to the first floor with a terrace above like the other. That too was cultivated; on it grew a grove of oranges and dark-leaved cedars against which the golden fruit stood out. Then they passed the Night Choir with another staircase rising from it, then the clock; and still the corridor went on. Between the prince and the Prior the Abbot was chatting away volubly, scattering his sentences with ‘what, eh?…’—syllables which apparently required no reply. The monks they met stopped three paces before the group, bowing heads and folding hands across their breasts as their superiors passed. At the door to the Novitiate stood Fra’ Carmelo, who on seeing the boy opened both arms with a joyous air and exclaimed:

  ‘You’ve come … you’ve come!’

  Father Raffaele Cùrcuma, novice master, approached the Abbot then led them to the classroom where the boys were all gathered, among them Giovannino Radalì, who had been in San Nicola for six months.

  ‘Here’s our new little monk,’ explained His Paternity, ’embrace your cousin now!… Your room is ready, we’ll be going there in a minute. Now you put aside your old name, and we call you Serafino. Your little cousin is Angelico, isn’t he? And this is Placido, and this Luigi …’

  Meanwhile arrived two lackeys bearing trays full of cakes, greeted with cries of delight by the novices.

  ‘You’ll see how nice it is here,’ said the novice master to the new arrival, stroking him. ‘You’ll have all these companions to play with …’

  Consalvo bowed his head and let them have their say. Now the curiosity of the first moments had passed he felt a longing to cry, but in spite of this he looked everyone in the face almost challengingly, so as not to appear defeated before his father, who had been determined to thrust him in there. Fra’ Carmelo was amazed by his mien; all other boys on their first day there had red eyes, said they did not want to stay and were sure to sob when the barber cut off their hair and when they laid aside lay clothes for black habits. Instead of this the young prince, when his father left after a final admonition, let them do whatever they liked, watched his hair fall under the scissors without a word, put on a habit as if he had worn it from birth.

  ‘That’s the way!… Always content like this!… You’ll just see what games and fun …’

  The boy answered harshly:

  ‘I am Prince of Francalanza, I won’t be here for ever.’

  ‘For ever? Who said such a thing?… You’ll be here a year or two until you’re learned. It’s your uncles are here for ever … now, now, we will go to visit Father Don Blasco …’

  And taking him by the hand he led him back the way they had come as far as the Deacon’s room in the southern corridor, with a picture of St John of the Golden Mouth over the door.

  ‘Deo gratias?…’

  ‘Who’s there?’ replied the monk’s loud voice.

  The door opened a little and he appeared in trousers and shirt-sleeves, with a pipe in his mouth, standing in a room as messy as a worked field.

  ‘Here is Your Paternity’s
young nephew, come to kiss Your Paternity’s hand.’

  ‘Ah, so you’re here, are you?…’ exclaimed the monk, wiping his lips with the back of a hand. ‘Good, very glad!’ he added without touching him. Then he turned to the lay-brother and said, ‘Take him out into the monks’ garden, will you?’

  After bewailing his grand-nephew’s ignorance and uncouthness the monk had been furious when the prince decided to put him in San Nicola. So they were putting him there to educate him, were they? That meant that they weren’t capable of educating him at home! Wasn’t he right, then, in saying they gave the boy a fine example? But Giacomo also wanted to put his son in San Nicola to study. As if the Uzeda had ever known more than to sign their names! Was it so difficult to find a tutor if they were so determined to turn him into a literary man? Schoolmasters, though, have to be paid something, big or small, and the only real reason for the decision was to save money, for not only did they pay nothing at the Benedictines’, but the families of students even made something from it!

  The rooms of the Novitiate opened on to a garden set aside for the boys’ amusement. It was full of flowers and fruit-trees, orange, lemon, mandarin, apricot, Japanese medlars, and in the morning novices were awakened by a great fluttering of sparrows, even before Fra’ Carmelo came to call them for their devotions in the chapel. After prayers they all returned to their rooms, had a frugal breakfast because luncheon was at midday, and went through their lessons so as to be ready for the arrival of masters who taught them Italian, Latin, and arithmetic, and on Sundays calligraphy and plain chant. At the third hour, after lessons, came Mass, which they attended in the church. This was the biggest in Sicily, all marble and stucco, white and light with its dome piercing the sky, and Donato del Piano’s organ which had taken thirteen years to make and cost ten thousand onze.

  Immediately after Mass the novices went to the refectory, sometimes to the big one together with the Fathers, sometimes by themselves in a smaller one as the Rule prescribed; recreation began later, after their meal, when they scattered in the gardens, where they would play at hide-and-seek, skittles, or castles, or garden and each tend his own tree, or send up kites and balloons. Beyond the surrounding wall stretched uncultivated land, all lava and scrub, as far as the Flora, the big garden set aside for the monks’ recreation. The boys would sometimes go there to run up and down the great alleys, and the young prince, who had quickly got into the monastery ways and was the liveliest of the lot, would often clamber on to the wall, try to climb over it and get into the wilds. But then he would be warned by the monk in charge and by Fra’ Carmelo.

  ‘Don’t pass there … don’t risk the other side, or the spirits will lay hands on you; if they get you they’ll take you away with them …’

  ‘Have you seen these spirits?’ Consalvo once asked Giovannino Radalì.

  ‘No, I haven’t; they come at night, they say.’

  At night they could not look there because after their evening walk down in the town, they went in after supper for evening studies and prayers.

  Fra’ Carmelo kept them company, saw they had all they wanted, and when there was nothing to do amused them by telling stories of former novices who were now either choir-monks or back home; or by repeating old tales such as the famous theft of wax during the Night of the Holy Nail; or of the 1848 Revolution when San Nicola had served as headquarters for Mieroslawski; or the coming of King Ferdinand and his Queen in 1834. But he was at his most expansive on things to do with the monastery.

  It was not quite certain who had founded it at the very beginning, but in 1136 some devout Benedictine monks had withdrawn to meditate and do penance in the Etna woods, and there with the help of Count Errico they had built the first monastery of San Leo. San Leo was one of the many extinct craters of the Mongibello, covered with woods and mantled with snow for six months of the year; a true solitude adapted to their holy purposes.

  In winter the north wind whistled round their poor hut, cut into their faces, chapped their hands, froze everything; so severe was it that many of the monks caught serious illnesses, being unable to stand up to such rigours. And so permission had been got to send the sick ones lower down, to a hospice built in the wood of San Nicola; and there, as it was less uncomfortable, some of the healthy monks also began to go. At San Leo, on top of the cold came another trial when the mountain erupted, vomiting fire and burning cinders; earthquakes shook the building, lava destroyed trees and dried up wells, red-hot cinders burnt up every bit of green. ‘How could the poor Fathers endure so many disasters?’ Meditation was all very well, but when the ground itself began dancing a tarantella, how could they concentrate and pray? Penance was even better, but with such mortifications penitents might go straight to the next world before getting a chance to purge their sins. In consequence they decided to ask permission to settle definitely at San Nicola, around which soon grew a village called Nicolosi, after the saint. There a monastery was built with more space, bigger than the old one, and there for many years the monks stayed.

  Nicolosi was no joke either though. The snow may not have lain for six months, but it fell thick in winter, and the cold was still piercing, so much so that sick monks had to be sent to another infirmary built lower down, at the gates of Catania. The countryside was also infested by robbers. Of course the monks, with their vow of poverty, should not have feared them, for ‘not a hundred thieves’, says the proverb, ‘can despoil a naked man’. But kings, queens, viceroys and barons had begun to make gifts to the monastery, and soon there were so many legacies that the monks found themselves possessed of a large fortune. Now were all those riches to be left to the mice to enjoy? And so in 1550 the Benedictines decided to establish themselves in the city, and laid the foundation stone of a superb building in the presence of the Viceroy Medinaceli.

  Some suggested that St Benedict must be suffering agonies at his sons leaving the woods and coming to settle like gentry in the city, but this was surely belied by the fact that when the monastery was finished it was preserved by the glorious founder of the Order from the volcano’s fire; the lava from Monti Rossi, which had got as far as Catania and was moving straight towards the monastery, on reaching the façade turned west and plunged straight into the sea without doing it any harm. It is true that an earthquake in 1693 razed the building to the ground, but this punishment was inflicted not only on the monks but on half Sicily as well, which collapsed like a house of cards. So finally the buildings to be admired now were begun, on plans too grandiose to be carried out completely; by 1735 only half was done. The wealth of the monks was then at its height: seventy thousand onze a year, and some of their estates were so vast that none had ever got round them!

  When Fra’ Carmelo talked of these things he would go on and on, for he had spent more than fifty years amid those walls, and loved the monks, the novices, the pictures in the church and the trees in the park as if they were all part of his own family. He knew their estates, lands, and farms better than all the country Procurators to each of whom was assigned only one property to look after, and if something had to be remembered such as the date of a distant event or the extent of an old crop, everyone would have recourse to him.

  The young prince was now his great joy; he kept him by as much as he could, gave him sweets and toys, praised him to the Abbot, to the master of the novices, to his uncles and to all. The boy was in truth rather too lively, apt to bully his companions and quarrel with them. Fra’ Carmelo, ever patient and indulgent, would excuse him with the novice master if he committed some little fault, and recommend forbearance to other lay-brothers if they had to pay the penalty for these escapades.

  ‘One must let them be, these lads. Remember they’re gentry, and it’s for us to obey them.’

  The lay-brothers, in fact, were there to do the heavy work. They served the Fathers in the refectory and ate at a second sitting, and when the monks said office in Choir they only recited the Rosary in a corner. Those who entered into the novitiate and became monks
had to be noble, and Fra’ Carmelo, as enthusiastic about such matters as Donna Ferdinanda, would exult over all the nobility at San Nicola. There in fact were members of the leading families, not only in the Val di Noto but the whole of Sicily, because in the rest of Sicily there was only one other monastery of Cassinese monks, at Palermo, and that was so inferior in size, wealth and importance that recalcitrant monks were sent there from Catania as a punishment. The Abbot was a Neapolitan grandee, second son of the Duke of Cosenzano; Father Borgia, a Roman, of the family which had given a Pope to Christendom, had come from Monte Cassino; and then among islanders there were the Gerbini, descended from King Manfred in the female line; the Salvo, who had come to Sicily with the Swabians; the Toledo, the Requense, the Melina, the Currera, of Spanish origin like the Uzeda; the Cùrcuma and the Sangonti, of Lombard nobility; the Grazzeri, who had come from Germany; the Corvitini, who were Flemish; the Carvano, the Costante, who were French; and the Emanuele, who belonged to a branch of the Paleologhi, Emperors of the East.

  ‘Just being with the Benedictines, as monk or novice, means a man’s noble,’ explained Don Carmelo to the young prince. ‘Here only enter those from top families like Your Paternity.’

  The boys were called ‘Your Paternity’, and ‘Don’ like the monks, and every time that a Father or a novice passed in front of lay-brothers the latter were supposed to bow very low with arms crossed on their chest; if they were sitting, to get to their feet in greeting. One of these lay-brothers, Fra’ Liberato, who was very old, almost a centenarian and quite incapable by then, used to come out of his room to tremble in the sun on an armchair. One day the young prince passed by him and the old man did not get up. The boy reported this to the novice master, who gave the old lay-brother a great wigging.

  ‘He’s ga-ga, poor old boy,’ said Fra’ Carmelo in excuse. ‘When we get old we’re worse than when we were children!’

  So Consalvo received the same lessons as those given him by Donna Ferdinanda, and absorbed far more easily than others those in Latin and arithmetic. They gave him an extraordinary idea of his own worth but also got him into trouble with his companions, particularly those older than himself, because of the contempt with which he treated them. Michele Rocca also gloried in having a Viceroy among his ancestors, but Consalvo corrected him, ‘A Viceroy? Just a President of the Kingdom!…’ and when the other said, ‘No, Viceroy …’ Consalvo said, ‘No, President …’ until Michelino rushed at him in fury. Then, rather than come to blows, he shouted for help and Fra’ Carmelo had to make up the quarrel. But he would start again with others, causing squabble after squabble.