Beati Paoli

by Luigi Natoli

part three, chapter 19

Italiano

English

The very night that Mrs. Francesca and Emanuele put their foot back in their house, the whole neighborhood was a party: The neighbors went up into the crowd; he who kissed the lady's hand, he who asked her how they were and all assured her that they had felt a great penalty for her arrest and even more for that undeserved sentence. Oh! If they had asked them for information, the good lady would not have suffered so much. And what had happened since she was arrested!... The birri had invaded the neighborhood: a real battle, indeed! even for the stairs of the house!

Mrs. Francesca looked around. In fact, you could see the traces of that invasion in the disorder that reigned in the house. She begged a neighbor to go up to the painter Bongiovanni to participate in his arrival. Pellegra rushed down, with a shout of joy, and in her impetus embraced Emanuele, believing to embrace Mrs. Francesca: of this misunderstanding the young man took advantage, kissing in the mouth the girl, who dissolved himself with a cry, if not with joy certainly not of displeasure.

The painter slowly descended, repeating on his own a speech that had been prepared, and went in, saying:

"Welcome! Welcome!... But you know this is serious... serious! The Vicaria, you know; it's not a joke! The Vicaria; she told me, if I get involved in certain things... So, Mrs. Francesca, I rejoice... but far away. You'll understand, Vicaria doesn't like it, I don't like it!..."

He smiled looking at everyone as if to get their approval. His dementia was growing and making him ridiculous. Pellegra let him say it, redempting it sometimes and preventing him, when he could, from saying and doing some nonsense. But now no one was watching him. Mrs. Francesca and Pellegra had gone around, by good housewives, to clean up the house dusting, sweeping, and Emanuele helped them a little, a little bit totish Don Vincenzo, who grabbed his complaint:

"Ah! the Vicaria, it's a big deal! You come over there, my son, and you can say it... Do you think I can suffer a similar penalty? I'd die, I'd die... What about Pellegra? The poor daughter! My wretched daughter, my wretched daughter!

He started crying like he was actually there to be arrested and sent to jail. Then Emanuele, who enjoyed it, gathered it.

"But no, there is no fear, everything is over, you know; let alone that the duke himself came to take me in the carriage..."

"The Duke? That's him? In the carriage?..." repeated Don Vincenzo with his mouth open. "Are we all friends then? Why didn't you tell me before?

You have to drink, you have to party! Pellegra, my daughter, go get two bottles... two of the old one!... The one that Father Messana sent me to Partinico... You'll hear that wine! Long live the joy!... Oh, oh! But that Vicaria thing, that thing! No prison."

In the meantime Fr Girolamo and Andrea arrived and then it was a party for the whole house. The painter began to dance and shout:

"Wine, Pellegra, go get the wine. I want to get drunk, for Michelangelo's beard!..."

"Of course we must celebrate our arrival!" said Fr Girolamo in a good mood.

They improvised a dinner with hot fries bought by the fryer of the piazza del Capo and stayed until late at night, laughing at the painter's nonsense. Pellegra and Emanuele sat next to each other. The young man had left the castle very mutated: He had taken a manly act that knew the world, and underneath the table he shook the hand of the maiden with the clutches that made her blush.

To take advantage of the painter's play, Don Girolamo proposed to play tressette, he, Andrea and Don Vincenzo, who accepted the proposal by beating his hands. They gathered on one side of the table, while Mrs. Francesca was clearing, and on the other side of the table Pellegra and Emanuele remained as isolated in a half light that confused their contours. No one paid attention to them, the players looked after the cards, Mrs. Francesca re-ruling and tidying up. So they could be considered alone. Emanuele looked at Pellegra by dilating his nostrils, as a foal started at the pasture among the juxtapositions; new desires pulsed in his blood and pushed him to boldness that dismayed or caused to mount calamities on the face of the maiden.

"You know," she said, "I love you, but not like before; I love you better and more... If we could talk alone, I'd give you so many kisses, so many, so many on your mouth..."

Pellegra blushed and paled; the idea of those kisses, which she almost felt on her lips, upset her.

"Shut up," she stuttered confused, "Shut up, don't say these things..."

But he insisted:

"Oh, I can tell you don't love me!"

"Me?... Don't I love you?... Know how many tears I have shed for you, and what I have done..."

"So why don't you want to?"

"What?"

"That I kiss you..."

"Why... why isn't he okay..."

"So what is this love? When you love you want to be together with the loved one, hold her in the chest, kiss her... I have all these desires and I die!..."

"Oh, Emanuele!..."

"No, no; don't call me... I'm convinced you don't love me..."

Mrs. Francesca approached and the two young men remained silent, but as soon as the lady left, they resumed speaking.

"My father," said Pellegra, "wants to lead me to Rome with relatives; he says that I am great now and he wants me not to be alone anymore..."

"Will you leave?"

"What do you mean? Can I fight it?"

"Do you see that you don't love me?"

"My God! So what do you want me to do to make you believe that I love you?"

Again Mrs. Francesca approached, and they remained silent. Emanuele didn't care. When his adoptive mother went away, he said:

"Do you see him? You can't even say a word!..."

"What's my fault?"

"Nobody, I know, but in the meantime we can't talk and I need to talk to you... to tell you so much..."

"My God, what to do?"

"It doesn't take long. When your father sleeps..."

"Oh, what are you talking about?..."

"So don't think about me anymore!"

Emanuele got up and approached the players, leaving Pellegra pale and almost crying. The girl loved Emanuele with all the dedications and submissions of a first love; that act gave her a strange blow to the heart and struck down the resistances that the instinct of modesty raised against the claims of the young man. Now he looked at him, hoping that he would turn his eyes to her, to pray to him that he would come back beside her; but he would stubbornly look at the players, which would upset the pain of the maiden.

At last he looked at her distractedly; she prayed to him, begged him with wet eyes and a nod of her head. With an air of dignification, Emanuele approached again, and sat down.

"Well?" he asked.

"I'll do whatever you want," Pellegra replied.

"So tonight..."

"No, not tonight. How can I if the door is locked and my father keeps the key?..."

Emanuele also saw this great obstacle rise against him. Don Girolamo or Mrs. Francesca used to lock up: It was therefore not appropriate to insist.

"Right," said Pellegra, "in the morning, soon, I will go up to the belvedere... You can come to your terrace."

"Let me do it. Oh how I love you!"

The next morning they saw themselves alone, under the still cloudy sky, while the houses still slumbered. The viewpoint of the Bongiovanni house stood above the roofs of just two arms and on one side dominated a terrace, lower than the level of the roofs of at least three arms, and therefore remained embedded between the walls of three houses and that of the viewpoint. To climb the viewpoint you had to have a ladder, that is to have the art of climbing, taking advantage of the holes and the protrusions of the rough wall and without plaster. Pellegra did not actually mean that Emanuele climbed: They could well speak each one from his place, but the young man had other ideas on his mind.

In his stay in the Castle he had learned many things, including the art of climbing. He studied the wall and smiled; in a minute Pellegra saw him climb up and leap into the belvedere, and before he had the time to recover from the surprise, he felt to tighten and suffocate, almost, in the powerful arms of Emanuele and heard his mouth on his.

He felt a loss, a confusion, an unspeakable fear.

"Oh no, Emanuele, no! Leave me! So no!"

He wept and wept, and the young man dismayed:

"Why? Why are you crying? What did I do to you? Dear God, is this how you love me?..."

He tried to rabble her, caressing her, telling her some sweet words, which contrasted with the violence of her ways and persuaded her to sit on the ground, clinging to her to speak. They said the most insignificant and futile things, sometimes even silly: They talked about getting married and not breaking up.

Gradually Pellegra, fascinated by that dream to come and by the words of Emanuele, and perhaps also by the contact, by the warmth, by the feeling of Vellicating her face from his hair, felt dragged to abandon his mouth and kissed long, intensely, in that first blossom of sexuality, which seemed to them deep passion.

The voice of the painter who called Pellegra raised them from that sweet bewilderment: They promised to see each other the next day at the same time. And they saw each other again. Emanuel returned to the house as a drunkard; at noon, at the table, he said to Don Girolamo another time:

"I love Pellegra, and I don't want another wife other than her."

"You still have a mouth that smells like milk," answered Don Girolamo.

"Me? But I am a man in the end; I am no longer a boy!"

"Oh, look! But do you know that you really took airs? Shut up, it's not talk at your age. Besides, you're not free to marry anyone you want. There are so many things to consider... And put yourself in the head, once and for all, that Pellegra will never be, can never be your wife..."

"Why?" asked Emanuele in amazement and Immersed.

"Why will you know when it's time..."

"Why not now?"

Don Girolamo looked fixedly, with amazement that little cockerel that suddenly raised the crest and puffed up the feathers.

"But you know," he said, "that you came out of the castle a little impertinent like you've never been? What is this news? It annoys me!..."

"But..."

"Shut up, now: You have no right to speak..."

Emanuele blushed and his eyes flashed with anger. He looked at Don Girolamo and threw him a sentence that hurt him in the depths of his heart:

"Finally," he said, "you are not my father, you are my uncle; but I never knew how and why you are my uncle, nor who gave you authority over me."

Don Girolamo paled; Mrs. Francesca, with her face altered by a painful wonder, sent a cry, and her hands came. Was it Emanuele who spoke in such a haughty and unrecognizable way? Him, the little boy he picked up and raised with his milk? That he loved like a son? He was grumpy and grumpy, perhaps dismayed at his own audacity and repented of letting himself be carried too far, but determined not to give in one step and not to cancel.

"It's true!" murmured Don Girolamo with a swollen heart; "you're right; I'm not your father and I've never explained to you how this kinship goes... You're right. kinship? But who can say how close we are to each other? Maybe we're not stung... Authority? I have not legally, because the great civil court has not entrusted you to my protection; but one night, a cold night in winter I picked you up from the middle of the road, and you were born a few days... I gathered you and your dying mother, and I took you to my house; and that woman there, Francesca, was my wife for a few years and we had a creature. Your mother died, she couldn't give you a drop of her milk, and my wife divided her breast between you and my creature; and after six months you were strong and vigorous, and my creature died; perhaps she died because you were stronger and more overbearing and took everything for yourself: And then you became the only son... I don't have any legal authority, of course, and you're right, but I have some other right over you that you may not yet understand... Go! Your words tell you... I know what I'm saying. Anyway, watch what I tell you: I will stop you from marrying a painter's daughter, as I would stop you from marrying any girl in our class. I'll stop you... And that's it, and shut up. Until you're 21, and you're here, in this house I'm in charge..."

Emanuele had listened to this speech at first grunted, then with an astonishment that had changed into confusion, finally with a deaf spite against himself and against everyone, who at the last words turned into a sense of rebellion. But he didn't talk. That unexpected, unimaginable revelation had shut his mouth. So he was a missing child, a finder, an orphan of whom I don't know" something like an anonymous! That's why they put him in the Turchini boarding school!... What about that last name they gave him and that mother-dead birth thing? Why did they lie? And why all the reluctance that he saw in the words of Don Girolamo? So was there a mystery about his birth? What mystery? And what Don Girolamo now said was the truth, or was it another lie? One thing was certain, that there was no relation between him and the rational Admired. Well, then he could do his own thing.

She went to bed at night with her brain full of all these ideas, giving her life a new address. Mrs. Francesca certainly had to know whose son she was; she could, indeed she had to tell her: He loved him so much, he wouldn't deny him that confidence. The dilemma was clear: or to know who he was and how he was in the house of the admirer, or to leave forever. His adoptive mom had to choose.

All this did not stop Emanuele from seeing in the morning, on the viewpoint, Pellegra. But she kept silent what she had learned and the obstacles that stood in her way and continued to drunken her with her kisses and with her caresses.

But Don Girolamo went to visit the painter and told him clearly and roundly that their friendship would last only as long as his daughter was well guarded. And he said these things so harsh and almost threatening, that Don Vincenzo was afraid of them.

"Do not doubt, do not doubt!... I'll do as you like. Sure, I'll do it. We are good friends, for bacco!... And we must remain good friends!... You'll see what I'm gonna do... Pellegra? Oh, yeah? But I'll take her... I will send it to Rome, to Rome, to Rome."

Fear made Don Vincenzo beastly; he shouted, threatened the daughter and also wanted to beat her.

"You must have made it big!... you must have made it big!... And you want to get me into this mess? Me? With Don Girolamo?... That guy takes a shot in my back, you know? In my back, and he's gonna kill me! You're gonna get me killed! But I'm gonna kill you first!..."

Don Girolamo had ordered him to watch Pellegra, and he did not let her move a step, without running after her; and at night he locked her in his room, so the next morning he could not go up to the viewpoint. But not even Emanuele had the ease to go there, because Don Girolamo forced him to follow him to the civic hospital.

The young man recalcitrated.

"But what do you want me to do to you at the hospital?..."

"Nothing; you'll stay with me."

Don Girolamo was adamant and Emanuele had to obey. When he returned home, the young man was taken by such a violent anger, that he tore his clothes, and Mrs. Francesca was so frightened, that she knelt at his feet and, hugging him, begged him crying:

"Emanuele! Emanuele!... for God's sake!..."

Hemanuel seemed convulsive and did not listen to her; with his face on fire and his eyes full of tears, he struck his temples, grinding his teeth. When he could speak, he told his adoptive mom:

"Why? Why?..."

Of course, he alluded to those prohibitions that seemed to him to be violent arbitrations.

"Tell me, why? If you don't tell me, I'll jump off the balcony!..."

Mrs. Francesca tried to catch him up, but Emanuele didn't mean to give in; several times she did the act of throwing herself at the balcony; finally the poor woman, who felt torn her bowels, said to him:

"I will tell you; be quiet and obey, and I will tell you."

"Well?"

Mrs. Francesca seemed perplexed, but Emanuele threatened.

"Well, your uncle is right... You can't marry a civilian girl, because... because she's not of your rank!..."

"What am I? Am I a prince?"

"Almost... So far he's had to hide himself, but it's not far off the day you'll be recognized... and you'll have your titles, a great palace, servants, fiefdoms... Then you'll marry a lady... That's it!"

Emanuele looked at her with amazement: He the son and heir of a great lord rich in feuds? Then why was it picked up on the road? How did your mother die in that modest employee's house? What mystery weighed upon his birth? But maybe that was a story!...

"That's not true," he said, "fandonies tell them to others not to me..."

"Isn't that right?" begs Mrs. Francesca; "maybe!... Oh, why do you think Uncle was haunted and I was thrown into jail? Precisely because Don Girolamo has sought and tries to return you to your rank and to make you return the wealth that belongs to you, and that you were usurped!...

Be good, then, and obedient... We do it for your own good. When you are no longer poor Emanuele, pupil of Don Girolamo Admirata, and you will be count, Marquis, Duke, whatever it may be, you will marry a lady of your rank!... You can't marry another woman, because it would be a scandal and the Viceroy wouldn't let you... He'd link you to a royal castle in Trapani or Termini, and she'd lock you in a monastery. You know. Everyone in his class... This is the sacred truth before God who sees and listens to us!"

Emanuele was amazed at that revelation, whose truth he no longer doubted; he opposed a last resistance, more so as not to give in immediately and out of curiosity, than otherwise:

"I will believe you when you tell me the name I bear..."

"Ah no! I said too much... and if Don Girolamo knew... God, what pains for me! You want to expose me to these pains? For now, you can't and you don't have to know... for now, you must be nothing but the admired grandson... Woe to you if you knew!... You don't know... and I can't tell you any more; all I'm saying is that you miraculously escaped death... Don't push it for now... Then, maybe soon, you'll know everything..."

Emanuele remained cogitabondo. His thought took a different direction, and new aspirations of greatness and power swarmed from the bottom of his consciousness. Noble, rich, he could have done what he liked and seemed to do; no one could have opposed a ban on him.

Pellegra? He liked her, he loved her, he would always love her. As for marrying her, she would have even secretly married her. What did he care? The Viceroy, the castle, the monastery... Stories! He would be noble and rich!... He felt like an empire crazy. In fact, since he was a lord, he was the only one to have full right to command and impose a will. Appreciation? Oh, yeah. He would lodge his benefactors in his palace, give them a sum, and thus pay off his debt. These and other similar thoughts began to tingle in his brain. He promised Mrs. Francesca to be quiet and not to talk about marriage anymore; but he made this promise with a certain act as a small master, who knows not to obey, but to grant.

"But meanwhile, - he thought - why can't I continue to see Pellegra?".

The blood of the race was revealed and the lust flashed on the face of that young man still imberbe, who had come out of the Vicaria expert in the mysteries of life and corrupted.