That Summer in Sicily Read online

  “ ‘He’d told me. He’d told me more than once that if anything ever happened to him, I should go. Cosimo is telling me to go. I think he says this on Leo’s behalf but also on his own. I will go. I want to go. I just don’t know how to begin. Where to begin.’

  “ ‘That’s the part that hardly matters. Leo has left you the lodge, hasn’t he?’

  “ ‘Yes. But I don’t want to live alone.’

  “ ‘Of course you don’t want to be alone. Yet here you shall be very much alone. Should you go to the lodge you would still be alone. Even if you go somewhere altogether new, the solitariness will go with you. For a while. It’s only that, in another environment, more will be expected of you than is expected of you here. Here life proceeds according to the bells. The lodge is so immense that a similar troupe of help would be necessary to keep it going, and so, life there would also proceed according to the bells. But in another place, you could begin to invent a life. I think that’s the right word, Tosca. Or is it reinvent that I want to say? Yes, to reinvent yourself. To study, to work, to make friends with people your own age, to choose how to spend your time rather than to be passive against what you shall come to notice is its ever-quickening pace. I do not suggest that you go to live in the lodge now. But it could serve as your security. Your own place, should you need it. Should you, someday, oh I don’t know, should you someday have a family. Put your things there now, take what you might need from here, from your rooms, from Leo’s rooms. Set up some sort of household for yourself there and then go. Far or near. The palace has been left in trust to me for my lifetime and reverts to Yolande and then to Charlotte. Though I can’t say if any of us will be here or, if we are, for how long or how much of a staff I shall keep in the meanwhile, the palace will always be here if you want to come back.’

  “ ‘I’m thinking to go to live in the borghetto. I’ve always wanted to, you know. I mean, I’d wanted to years ago, and now it seems . . .’

  “ ‘I know very well of your earlier desire to live there. Leo had discussed it with me. Asked me to try and convince you to stay here. As it turned out, he was successful himself in turning you away from that plan. Valid as his reasons were then, they are more valid now. You cannot negate the years you’ve spent here, the privileges, the relationships of your life. Though they love you—though they loved you loving their prince and him loving you—you are not one of them, Tosca. They would be too kind to deny you a place among them, but you would cause their discomfort. Leo himself would have caused their discomfort. Besides, I think that many of the families will eventually build homesteads on their own land. Over time, the borghetto itself will become obsolete.’

  “She had noted my startled glance when she’d said that Leo had discussed my wishes with her. Surely there must have been a substance to their relationship that neither of them openly displayed. Or was it that it was not displayed to me? Or was it that I chose not to notice it? She is speaking now of my spending winter holidays with her and the princesses in Geneva, yet I still don’t trust my legs to carry me up the stairs to my rooms. Simona knows I do not take in her words. She holds me in her arms, tells me, “ ‘Leo has died but it’s you who is in limbo, Tosca. Find your own way home.’ ”

  “It is sometime in late September when I begin to feel stronger—healed, I think, by spite. Should the clan still be inclined toward killing me, I will do all I can to help them. I begin to ride again. Leo’s jodhpurs belted about my waist, his suede jacket buttoned over my bare breasts, my hair left loose, I ride the prince’s stallion. In a swoon of sweet revenge, I ride him bareback. If you want me, here I am, dear ‘friends,’ I would shout into the wind. Sono qui, Signor Mattia. Sono qui tutti, voi bastardi. Venite a prendermi. I’m here, Signor Mattia. I’m here, all you bastards. Come and take me. Sometimes I would shout to Leo, too, dare him to watch me, tell him that this is what we should have been doing rather than cringing behind the walls. I make a target of myself riding hard over open spaces, through the woods, along the precipices of the rocky outcrops, even into the villages. How easy it is to call up the little savage in me, the horse thief’s daughter. How well she serves me. We are all endlessly ourselves.

  “Often I would stay out most of the day, exhausting myself in the hope of a peaceful night. No hat against the blazing sun, I let my skin grow dark as a Turk’s. I would eat only broth and bread, sometimes an egg. The suppers of my childhood. The right food for a Fury. I begin to smoke in earnest. Thirty or forty cigarettes a day. What flesh there’d been on my slender body falls away.

  “I ride to the lodge, walk the vast space of it, go to lie on the daybed on the loggia in the mansarda where we’d first made love on that late afternoon of my birthday. I fondle the opalescent curtain with the wide satin flounce. If it’s cool enough, I close my eyes, sleep sometimes, either there on the daybed or sprawled in the cleaved trunk of the magnolia. Yes, Chou, this magnolia. I begin to wonder what it would be like to live here. To set about revitalizing this fallow land as Leo had done his. To make a working farm of it. And how much there could be done in the gardens and in the house itself. It would be so beautiful. But who would live with me? If only my mother and Mafalda were here. My father, too. I would ask Agata to come and maybe Mimmo, and surely Lullo and Valentino would stay. Could Cosimo be convinced? Simona spoke to me of reinvention. Is that what I’m dreaming of? To reinvent the borghetto here? I think it’s not that. Not really that. Nor is it to gather all the waifs of the world ’round me because it’s a waif whom I think to be, myself. No, the dream is simply to live together and work together with good people. I want to give the way Leo gave. I suppose, in some ways, I want to be Leo. His pants, his jacket. His horse. His goodness. I suppose I do want to be Leo. To keep him alive.

  · · ·

  “The virago wasted, a mincing coward takes over. I like her less. It is nearly December and, as Simona had predicted I would be, I am too much alone in the palace now that she and the princesses have gone, embarked upon the next phases of their lives. I will go, too. I know that I will go, but the constant thinking about to what place, about what it will be like, what I will see, whom I shall meet, the fainter grows my heart.

  “One morning, from the back of an armoire where I’d placed it, I take an old black valise that looks like a doctor’s bag. Inside it there are no medicines, though. It is filled with little plush envelopes and sacks. Inside these are Isotta’s jewels. There is a long letter that Leo had written years ago. It is dated August 1948. He speaks of the jewels as my birthday gifts, as my coming-of-age gifts. There is another, shorter, note that speaks of certain of the envelopes and sacks as my wedding gifts. There are documents that insure and validate the worth of the jewels. These I crumple and push into a too-small compartment at the bottom of the case. The letter I place in my handbag. Propped against my pillows, I settle myself in bed and, one by one, I open the envelopes and the sacks. Among the bedclothes, I let the jewels fall ’round me. There are ropes and ropes of pearls in all sizes. There is a necklace of oval diamonds. A sack of rubies both polished and unpolished and a note in what must be Isotta’s handwriting that says tutti sangue di piccione, all pigeon blood. There is another sack of rubies without further identification. Apart from the one that she always wore, Isotta must have been particularly partial to emeralds since there are two emerald rings, several pairs of emerald earrings. There is a sack filled with rings set mostly with diamonds. There is much more. When I’ve put all of it back in its place, I begin to pack. Fingering these treasures, I feel crazed with yet another kind of fear. It is a terror caused by something far more horrifying than the clan. I imagine myself propped against these same pillows, settled in this same bed, these same glittering stones heaped ’round me among the bedclothes. Only in my imaginings, I am far, far older than I am today.”

  “Simona had left me a small wheeled trunk and two medium-sized suitcases. I decide that whatever I can fit into these three will comprise my worldly goods for the next part of my life.
Whereas I had been languishing for the past month or so, now I am ruthlessly inspired to change things. I pack clothes, books. When I am finished, I have hardly filled the trunk, while the suitcases remain empty. In one of them, I place the medicine bag. The other I stow under my yellow and white bed. I bathe and dress, wait for Cosimo’s late-afternoon visit. Before I finish telling him all that I’ve decided, he says, ‘You’ll have to wait a day or so. The appointment with the attorneys that you’ve been avoiding is necessary. They will explain to you the procedures and the regulations for the distribution of your income. There will be documents to sign. After that, you’ll be free to go.’

  “ ‘I see. Do you know where I mean to go? At least for a while?’

  “ ‘I suspect it’s Palermo.’

  “ ‘Is the choice so obvious?’

  “ ‘No. Not obvious but superior. I would think it to be the best place to begin. There are far more advantages and disadvantages in Palermo than there are almost anywhere else right now. I know of a pensione. In the historic center. I can arrange a stay there for you while you look about. Until you can find something more permanent. That is, should you wish to remain in the city. You’ll find many of the Palermitani to be genteel. Particularly this family. Beyond this introduction, I won’t be of much help.’

  “ ‘I am not asking you for help.’ My bravado is lofty. Almost rude.

  “ ‘Let’s get this meeting with the attorneys scheduled. If I can arrange it for a morning, you can depart for Palermo on the same day. I can drive you to Enna. To the train,’ he says.

  “As if from far off, I have listened to our terse exchange. To our voices, mine peeved, his woeful. Neither of us reaches for the line that drifts between us. I look at the priest, who is looking away as though mesmerized by the blood-red walls of the salotto where we sit. Cosimo is weary. Most of all, he is weary of me. Longing to quit the duty, I think, with which Leo bound him.

  “ ‘Thank you,’ I say but he is already walking away.”

  “And so at the age of twenty-five, I trade my status as la puttanina for one of heiress. Jewels stuffed in plush pouches. A numbered Swiss account. Safety deposit boxes. I know that if I begin to speak with Agata or Mimmo or anyone here of my will to leave the palace with this sort of immediacy, their affectionate counsel could confound my new resolve. The cut must be quick and clean. Find your own way home.

  “Less than a week later Cosimo comes to fetch me in the old gray Chrysler, its shuddering, as it idles in the drive, as violent as my own. I take a last look about. I touch the emerald at my throat. I wear my mourning dress. A beaver coat that touches the tops of the high thick heels of my lace-up shoes. A black velvet toque I’ve tilted over the crown of my braids. Cosimo carries my trunk, I, the suitcase that holds the medicine bag. I am settled in the passenger seat where Leo always sat. I take a deep breath, and in it there is the still-lingering perfume of neroli oil. As Cosimo shifts the car and we begin to move, I turn to see Agata and Mimmo standing in the portico, chins high, hands at their sides. I place my splayed, gloved hand against the window.”

  CHAPTER I

  THE NEXT AFTERNOON AT FIVE WHEN I GO TO MEET with Tosca under the magnolia, I find her somehow changed, as though her great, powerful presence has waned, given way to a winsomeness, a fragility, even. She is older, and yet more a girl. Tosca continues her story.

  “A just-foaled, unlicked beast staggering against a sharp wind, I hold my hat in place with one hand, the suitcase packed with the medicine bag in the other, and hobble along the oil-slicked, burnt-smelling trackway. I cannot keep pace with the young porter who drags my trunk from the train. He turns every few meters to see that I follow. Still I lose sight of the small, thick figure of him snaking in and out of the billowing steam and among the crushing throngs. Each time a whistle is pulled, I am startled, panicked, close to tears. Once out onto the street, I stand there beside my bags and look about as though I’ve not been transported one hundred kilometers distant from the palace but catapulted into another universe by some hell-born fiend. I nearly laugh at the essential truth of this. Curse Mattia. I hear dialect spoken and, though its city form is different enough from the mountain one, I stay still to listen to it, take comfort in it. My heart beats more slowly. I am still in Sicily.

  “I wave my hand in the general direction of the bank of taxis across the way. This has little effect save from one of the drivers, who waves back and blows me a kiss. I watch what other people do. I do what they do. Step right up to the driver’s window, lean in to tell him my destination. It works. My driver wears a red fez and some sort of military jacket, unfastened to reveal the stupendous girth of him. He rolls out of the car, stows my trunk in the boot, nods at me to get going. Get in. I slide into the seat, he slams shut the door and lurches into the frantic dusk of Arabia.

  “The city looks freshly sacked. Buildings black and hollow, as though great fires have only just been spent in the bellies of them, sit cheek by jowl with sublime palaces that glitter, unembarrassed, I think, by the cruel obstinacy of their survival. Palermo is in conflict with itself. It’s good that the traffic moves slowly. Good that the driver bounces in time to the merciless screech of his radio, the tassel on his fez swinging up to brush the roof of the taxi on every third beat. These past twenty or so minutes mark by far the longest stretch of time during which I have not thought of Leo. This, too, must be good. Before I would have wished him to, the driver stops abruptly in front of a narrow red-stuccoed palazzo with arched and colonnaded windows. He places my trunk on the narrow sidewalk while I gather together the fare. So rarely have I handled money that I thrust what are far too many coins into his roughened paw. Patiently, still bouncing to his music, he counts out the correct amount, pockets it, takes my hand, turns it palm up, and slaps down the remaining coins. Wishes me a good evening. I stand there watching the taxi until it’s out of sight. I wave too late for the driver to see me, even had he been looking in his mirror. Maneuvering first the trunk and then the suitcase up the few steps to the entrance, I press the button under the small brass plaque. Pensione d’Aiello.”

  Even though she and I have been sitting together for hours each day for the past week or so while she tells me another and then another part of this story, Tosca looks at me then almost in surprise. How did I come to be here with her in the darkening under the magnolia?

  “What was it like? Your arrival in the pensione?” Banality meant to lead her back into the story. Rather she smiles, sits quietly.

  “I hardly recall anything of that first evening. Those first days. I do recall what didn’t happen. You see, I’d thought that the new place would make me new as well. That the journey would strip me clean. Eclipse the noises. I’d thought to outrun the ghosts, outwit them. I’d counted on Palermo, the refuge of the new place, the refuge of a train ride, the sympathy of a malodorous man in a red fez, to do for me what I hadn’t been able to do for myself. But the man in the red fez and the train and the city were powerless against the ghosts. Leo, Cosimo, Mattia. All of them had gathered, awaiting me in the third-floor room in pensione d’Aiello. Over and over again, I heard Simona saying find your own way home.”

  I’d grown used to the stylish tripping of Tosca’s storytelling. Ebullient or wistful, the plummy tones of her voice never faltered. She’d trace back and forth, picking up threads she’d dropped, but always, she’d had the next thing and the next thing after that to say. Now she is cautious.

  “I don’t think I can tell you about those years in Palermo without telling other people’s stories along with my own. Stories that are not mine to tell. Life until I left the palace was largely about Leo and me. In Palermo it included, it grew to include, many others.”

  “Did you fall in love again? Is that what you mean?”

  “Perhaps that, too. Not only that. During that time Palermo was a city even more explosive than it had been during the war. An ancient, exhausted city in the throes of yet another rising-up from the ashes. Only then it wasn’t the G
reeks or the Saracens or the Normans who’d invaded. It was the boys from the mountains. Hungry, desperate boys from these mountains. And a few boys from across the sea.”

  “What sea?”

  “American soldiers. I’m talking about American soldiers—some of whom were island born, who had emigrated to and been naturalized in America—who landed back here in 1943. The American invasion of Sicily re-formed the clans from their historical careers as rural brigands—the boys who’d slit throats for a sack of flour—into another class of criminal. There were drugs to traffic, State funds to embezzle, protection fees to collect, a black market to exploit.”

  “What did all that have to do with you?”

  “Think about the frescoes in the dining hall. About the fragments within the allegories that are empty. Those blank spaces. They are empty because there wasn’t enough of the original design left for the restorer to re-create those portions with authenticity. The restoring artist would have had to paint his own figures and, hence, dishonor the intrinsic virtue of the work. It’s quite the same with a life. There are blank spaces that I cannot fill.”

  “Io capisco. Io capisco. I understand,” I tell her even as she picks up her brush.

  “I was a Pirandello figure, Chou. A character in search of an author. In search of a story. So used to the prescribed life in the palace, so used to the bells and the rituals, even used to Simona selecting my clothes, to Agata taking care of them, of me. In fifteen years, I’d never chosen my own food, never thought about what something cost. I’d never drawn my own bath. I don’t even know if, from the time I was fifteen and understood that I loved the prince, I don’t know if I ever had a whole thought that didn’t include him. As a six-year-old motherless child, I’d been far more skilful at the business of living than I was at twenty-five. I’d once believed that Leo had made a woman out of the girl in me and yet the greater truth might have been that he’d kept me, I think unwittingly, a child. He refined and inspired and educated and protected me so that without him to breathe the very life into me, I died, too. A character in search of an author.