Then, one evening, something happens.
There is the sound of confusion at the front door but no one pays it any attention. Everyone has taken a seat: one here, one there. It is an empty shell of an evening, just like the others, but Donna Clara has insisted and so they arrange themselves as directed. Only Donna Julie is missing, rightly excused from all obligations and formalities. Bianca looks towards the doorway. She thinks she is the only one who sees Ruggiero peek in, but no. Innes jumps to his feet and approaches the butler, who delivers a message to him in a whisper.
‘We have visitors,’ Innes announces. He looks at Don Titta, who raises his head sluggishly, as if it is unbearably heavy, and then lowers it again in silence. ‘We need to get ready.’
Tommaso rises, walks towards the closed window, and gently moves the curtain back. Donna Clara, hostile, watches him, as if it is his fault.
‘Visitors? We were very clear when we stated—’
‘I’m afraid these men won’t listen to your requests,’ Tommaso says, glancing back at the others. He is strangely vigilant, almost excited. He stands tall, with his hands in his pockets. The door to the sitting room opens.
‘Lieutenant Colonel Steiner, of the Royal Imperial Army,’ Ruggiero announces, stepping aside to present a blond, fairly young official with blue eyes and a neat appearance.
The master of the house rises slowly. Instead of walking towards the visitor, he turns to Tommaso, who stands looking out the window still, his back to the scene.
‘May I help you?’ Donna Clara spits from her place on the sofa, looking the official up and down.
‘Good evening,’ he says. His accent is heavy. He articulates every word. It takes a long time to put together a full sentence. ‘In the name of his Majesty . . . information . . . search . . . documents . . .’
Bianca hears the man’s speech emerge fragmented, with little meaning. She cannot tell if she is distracted or if the Colonel’s Italian is truly pitiful. She looks at Innes and then at Tommaso: they both appear calm. Don Titta keeps his back turned, as if none of this concerns him. The moment feels long and drawn out, suspended in the air. Nothing happens. And then two soldiers appear behind the official, awaiting their instructions. From the clinking noise in the foyer, it is clear that there are others, too. They will spread out through the house, open drawers, throw books and flip over tables. It happened at the Maffei home, at the Confalonieris’, the Galleranis’, and even at Bernocchi’s country house. It is a vicious game of dominos: search, discover, and condemn. It is both expected and unavoidable. Bianca feels herself grow cold. The slow chill wraps around her, starting at her legs and fixing her to the sofa.
And then, just before the soldiers start to move in, a figure dressed all in white and ignited by pure willpower appears among the soldiers. It is Donna Julie. She ignores the strangers and walks straight past them, a tiny creature amid robust, meaty men.
‘Titta,’ she says. ‘The children need you.’
It is as if he doesn’t hear her.
‘Titta,’ she repeats, slightly louder this time. He finally turns and slowly walks towards his wife, puts an arm around her shoulder, and leads her away. The official stares at the couple, speechless. Who do they think they are, ignoring him like that?
‘Perhaps I wasn’t clear enough,’ he says, then repeats his message. This time any hint of kindness has vanished from his voice. It is an error. It is Donna Clara’s turn now to speak.
‘This family,’ says the old woman as she struggles to get up from her seat, clutching the armrest with both hands, ‘has recently been struck with a loss. Look at us.’ And with her hand she makes a wide gesture across the living room: dark clothing and despair. The official has a brief doubt: if this is a farce, it is well played. But what if it isn’t? ‘How could you have the gall to come here at a time like this?’ Donna Clara continues. ‘I will be sure to let the governor know. The Milanese nobility still counts for something in this tortured, upside-down world that doesn’t even honour death. Leave us in peace. Leave, now. Immediately. Go.’
Lieutenant Colonel Steiner doesn’t know how to respond. His informers are trusted sources; the spying took place weeks ago and in the meantime they have undergone all the necessary checks in order to avoid diplomatic incidents, in case the accusations turn out to be unfounded. Although they clearly aren’t unfounded. And so Steiner has decided to act. Perhaps, if Donna Clara cried and wrung her hands, he wouldn’t have pity on them. But their stone-like faces, the heavy dignity of grief that has brought the household to a standstill, their eyes – including those of the domestic help, who stare straight back at him instead of looking down in fear – cracks his self-confidence and zeal.
‘I didn’t know,’ he says finally. ‘I apologize.’
Much later, troubled by the thought of having made a mistake and thereby wasting an opportunity, he wonders whether it has all been staged. These Italians, he thinks, with their tendency to dramatize everything, you can never fully trust them. But he only needs to leaf through the newspapers to learn it has all been true and that he has behaved as a wretched slave of duty. But justice will take its course. How much time will he allow them to grieve? Not long. He needs to pound down his iron fist on these discontented traitors. They have everything and they have risked it all. It is too bad for them. They don’t know what they are about to lose. If only they stayed in their living rooms and protected their young, there would be less trouble for everyone.
Meanwhile, at the house, the message has been received, loud and clear. The inevitable has arrived. Things will have to change, and not in the definitive and brilliant manner that they have worked towards in the darkness. Governments aren’t toppling and declarations won’t be made. No, this is not the time for a compromise. This is the time to perfect the art of the getaway. Only in this manner can order be restored, at least temporarily, at least for those who can get away. How much time do they have? No more than a week.
Many things happen in that week.
‘Young Tommaso left like a thief in the night.’
‘He must have got scared.’
‘He must have gone home to his mamma.’
‘But they don’t even talk to each other! He told me as much when he brought me his shirts. Rich people are strange, I tell you. I think that boy cared more for this family than for his own mother.’
‘Well, why did he go back to his family in the end, then?’
‘You know how it is: families unite in times of difficulty.’
‘Oh, don’t be a know-it-all. Tommaso was just a coward. In this house, rebels sip tea in the living room. In Tommaso Reda’s house, they kiss the Austrian flag, so soldiers don’t go there at night to knock things about and make a mess.’
‘You’re right. And guess who would have to clean up the mess?’
Voices bounce off one another, intersecting, insinuating, supposing, sentencing. The farmer speaks elegantly, the cook always knows the details, and the others, the extras, become animated only when no one else is looking at them. There is an indistinct hubbub of gestures and sounds. Bianca tries to soothe her headache by staying in bed, but in order not to hear them all she would have to close the window, and the fresh morning air feels good.
So, he has left. At night, like a thief. In this, the help’s verdict is painfully correct. He has taken what he wanted. Thief. Bianca buries her head in her pillow and cries tears that the fabric quickly absorbs. Thoughts run through her like clouds rushing past, high in the sky. I should have known. I could have held back. I should have trusted myself. What a monster. I hate him, I liked him, I wanted him, I didn’t want him . . . well, not like that, or maybe . . . yes, it was my fault, his fault, mine, his, mine, mine, his. Mine. She is certain of only one thing: no one can ever find out.
There hasn’t been a day in my life when I haven’t expected this kind of grief.
On one of those days, which pass like all the others, when he neither eats nor sleeps, Don Titta writes t
hree short pages. It is Innes, Bianca later discovers, who takes the ink-stained papers out of his master’s hand. He is the first to read them. He is the one who waves them gently in the air and says, ‘Titta, we must publish this.’
Don Titta doesn’t want to, but he is too spent to resist, and in any case, he no longer cares about anything.
‘I know you wrote this for yourself, Titta, to flush out your soul, but this is precisely what the people need. Clean words, clear words, words that show the world who you really are.’
‘I am nothing,’ Don Titta replies, resting his forehead against the windowpane. ‘I am nothing, and I care about nothing.’
‘You are a grieving father who is not afraid to show his suffering. That’s all.’
‘They will think that I’m taking advantage of the situation.’
‘So it isn’t true that you don’t care. And anyway, they will think the same thing that they think about your poetry: that it is good for the heart because it says what no one can put into words. This is why you are here, you poets and writers. To find the right words, the words that everyone would like to be voiced and that no one else can. I am going to see Marchionni. I’m sure he will agree.’
And Marchionni, who is a publisher as well as a loving father of three small children and an experienced businessman, understands very well. Soon the city newspaper stands and bookshops are inundated with the inexpensive light blue pamphlet. Actually, it cannot even be described as a pamphlet, more of a broadside. No one will get rich from it, but it certainly helps Don Titta’s fame. The title, On the Death of My Child, My Daughter, repulses and attracts at the same time. People stand in queues to get it; there are discussions in the cafes; they print a second run. It is so popular that it arouses the suspicion of the imperial authorities. They are convinced that it is actually a coded message, a subversive leaflet cunningly edited by one of the most dangerous and deceitful conspirators, known for his connection to the inglorious cause for independence; and who has, up until now, escaped from the claws of investigation. It is said that the police even use decoders to read between the lines for something that is not there. Instead, that miniature diary of enormous loss leaves them teary-eyed and with a lump in their throats.
Perhaps Innes is right: everything in this family has ended. Only art still counts for something. And if the vocation of a writer is to extract art from life, then Don Titta does what he can with what he has. Maybe there will never be a novel published now. Maybe the poet’s lucky star has burned out just as he is preparing to become a great writer. But these pages exist. These pages are memorable because they are courageous and alive, because they pulsate with a suffering that everyone can recognize – those who have known it and those who fear it. Sorrow makes people feel. This unnameable beast is always lying in wait, far away and yet nearby, too. It never leaves anyone in peace. Don Titta’s writing also captures something else, something that Donna Julie supports and that an anonymous critic of Rivista delle lettere notices: a new way of being a parent, a way that erases the mechanical indifference of continuity of the species in favour of choice. Everything that we choose, the anonymous critic writes in conclusion, is moral responsibility first and social responsibility second.
What about the things that we don’t choose? What about the things that are imposed on us through force? Bianca broods over this as if it is an illness, as if she has caught some kind of repulsive infection by chance or by mistake, because she hasn’t known how to defend herself, or because she is weak. What would Tommaso say about these things? Nothing. His silence is heavy. And he passes on to Bianca the nauseating feeling of an unasked-for presence. The idea of him taking responsibility would make her laugh if she had the desire and strength to do so. She would gladly choke that critic. He thinks he knows everything, but he will never have to carry a child in his womb, whether he wants one or not. He is only good for creating one and then leaving, paying off his lover with a satchel of coins and ignoring the child’s existence. He might be asked to pay for its education in some squalid, provincial boarding school. He might legitimatize the child or disown it. He might even love it, if he so desires, if he is inspired to, if the fashion of the times dictate it. He will do what the nobles and the rich always do: whatever he pleases. But some people cannot do as they please and must only do what they can.
Nothing can go back to the way it was. This new, unknown and unwanted person makes its way forward, leaving only signs. Bianca has a sour flavour in her mouth; deathly exhaustion catches her by surprise; gone is her desire to do anything; she sleeps at all hours of the day; and her breasts swell painfully. These are the symptoms of the thing she fears. Bianca is sharp enough to recognize them. She will have to do everything on her own. But what can she do?
I didn’t know any better, the ghost, Pia’s mother, had said. That crazy woman had been humiliated by life itself. It all comes back to Bianca now. For the first time, instead of anger, she feels pity for the woman, which in turn becomes pity for herself. It was easy to think I knew everything. I felt like I was on top of the world. And then the bubble burst. It wasn’t the world; it was merely a soapy illusion full of beautiful, false colours. She has fallen. Bianca is a fallen woman. Suddenly the phrase takes on an entirely new meaning, so literal she can see it. It is easy to stay fallen, to cake yourself with mud and hope that no one will recognize you, especially if nobody holds out their hand to help you get back up on your feet. Bianca remembers herself on the night of the party, descending the staircase and being greeted by Zeno and Paolo. It is all too vivid, almost false in its gaiety. A couple of weeks earlier, which now feels like a century ago, she didn’t need their hands, she knew how to walk on her own. Bianca doesn’t want anyone to know about what has happened, but now everyone will.
If only she could make a switch and exchange the life of this child, whom no one has asked for, with the life of Franceschina, who was called forth from the honest love of matrimony, who had a place, who knew how to be loved. But these kinds of bargains don’t exist. They aren’t conceivable. There’s no logic in the drawing of one’s destiny, just scribbles in the margins, ink spilling from a quill, clumsily, incompetently, by mistake or by chance. Then the mark left on the paper is clear, while the quill returns to a lake of blackness.
As if Bianca’s own story – the story of her flesh, the narrative that weighs under her skin and in her heart like a stone – isn’t enough, there is that other story, the one that has already been played out. It only adds to her grief. Of all the places she could go, the church seems to be the most suitable refuge: no one is ever there. It will be silent. It is there that Bianca learns that she needs silence to speak to the departed, and that they need it too, to be able to speak to the void inside her. All her beloved and departed come to her now. No one is missing: her mother, with her heavy gaze of reproach; her father, his hand pressed against his heart as if to stifle the sorrow; Franceschina, her little feet running, in an echo of her brief race through the world. She hears Don Dionisio arriving, his breath raspy. He doesn’t know. But he can keep a secret. What difference will another mistaken child make? In this world children are almost all the results of mistakes. Bianca is startled when the old man places a hand on her shoulder. He slips onto his knees beside her and starts to pray. She does the same, but without believing for a moment that somewhere, someone is listening.
What if the baby is Franceschina’s ghost and she has returned to avenge herself or just to get a second chance at life? What if the baby is Bianca’s punishment or a ransom? Maybe she needs to accept this second-hand being, raise her and let her destroy her life in order to reclaim her own. In so doing, might she settle the score? Bianca’s grim fantasies allow for every possible hypothesis, with the cruellest one being the simplest. She needs to die and, in so doing, kill it. She needs to finish them both off at once, without making a show of it. Parsley concoctions, rusty irons, a pool of blood and it will all be over. Who will care? She no longer has a father who, li
ke Don Titta, will cry at the absurdity of his own survival. Her brothers have their lives to live; she is merely a childhood memory to them, a gracious figurine frozen on that distant moor. And no one ever cries for long about the death of hired help. Bianca feels alone in the world and therefore is. She sees herself float away in a boat made for one, with a trunk full of colours, drifting away over pewter waters towards a steely sky. She watches herself from above; she feels pity; she cries. She is cold. Nothing can ever warm her now, now that shame moves inside her. Shame, and life too.
She and Innes sit in a stagecoach, alone. They are taking a quick trip to the city to retrieve forgotten and indispensable things for Don Titta and Donna Julie; it is a way of getting away from the house’s heavy, oppressive grief. Bianca feels these parents need to open the doors of their emotions and let them out, allow them to evaporate, but the voices of the children on the gravel are almost unbearable.
The carriage moves beyond the confines of the estate and the odd statue of seven nymphs dancing in a semicircle that has always made the guests and Bianca smile. But not now. The orderly fields of modulated greens speak of the sober beauty of hard work and good land. But there is no one there to listen to their words.
‘I’m leaving,’ Innes says suddenly.
‘But . . .’ Bianca mumbles. What about those things you said? How will I manage without you? These unspoken thoughts press at Bianca’s lips but don’t surface, held back by the remains of dignity.
‘I’m going back to London. I have some friends there. A small family of exiles is building up around them. Apparently, they have this incredible tendency to love failures.’ Innes smiles weakly. ‘For me, the land here is starting to burn.’ He speaks distantly. It is as though he can see himself from the outside and finds himself to be hopelessly lacking.
The Watercolourist Page 28