Beati Paoli
by Luigi Natoli
part four, chapter 18
| Italiano | English |
Matteo Lo Vecchio, furious in his heart for the shooting played - as he believed - as a woman Gabriella, but expert concealer, had endured with apparent apex the furious of Emanuele, who had also believed himself deceived by the birro and had almost rolled him down the stairs.
Repeating: "Your Excellency is right; but I was taken by that female devil" Matteo Lo Vecchio went down quickly, avoiding the kicks of Emanuele, but in his heart swearing to avenge himself harshly of him and Gabriella woman.
The Duchess had not made herself meet on the appointed day, nor on the following day; He dared not leave the house, therefore Matthew could not see her in a carriage, nor in a sedan, no matter how much the mail held her. This disappearance confirmed in the birro the idea that Gabriella had acted in that way by the suggestion of Blasco and Coriolano and that some of them had built that fascicolet of cabalistic stupidity. He did not even discuss the possibility that the Duchess might in turn have acted in good faith.
He concluded in his heart: "Here you have to make a general blow. Let's see. Three days ago the prince of Belsito's tax was killed: Two rifles at night, and it is the custom of the Beati Paoli; last night the knight of Sant'Alessio was beaten, because he tried to force the house of the piper Carusello, who has a beautiful seventeen-year-old daughter and one could not know who the basters were, and this is also the custom of those devils. The pipe was Mr. Knight this time, but he's not sick... The sect has therefore regained its strength. And it was to be expected, now that the Spaniards have returned... The knight of Floresta and his buddy of the bastard, suddenly disappeared in the square of the SS. Forty. Where did they get in? In the tower? In the church? Ah! I heard when I was a boy that there was a basement, where the Holy Office once held his prisons... Listen! Listen... If that's true, there's no doubt that those devils are going to nest there. I'll know now."
Moved by curiosity and interest, the birro went to the Sant'Offizio to look for some of his friends, and truly his memory of childhood was not unfounded.
About two centuries before, even before the Court of the Inquisition had established its seat in the Castle at sea and then in the palace of the Steri, it had lived for a few years in the Palazzo Marchese, whose tower had not yet been reduced to a bell tower; and it was famous that in the caves or catacombs that lay under the church of Casa Professa and under the square had held the prisons.
It was therefore evident to him that the Beati Paoli had transferred their headquarters to that basement, and that with one blow, more wise and better prepared than the first, without much preparation, without putting too many people in the middle, one could catch them all. What filled him with joy was the discovery that Blasco had returned to that sect; this allowed him to take a revenge in the eyes of the Viceroy.
Matteo Lo Vecchio continued: "This is for those pals; but for Mrs. Duchess you have to find one that is worth a hundred. Let's see. She's not coming, and if I draw her into... But the hell Andrea makes me look so suspicious!
I bet he's back among the comrades, too. Don Emanuele must be warned."
Two days later Andrea was fired.
He dared to ask why he took his leave of the house where he had grown up, but the master of the house said:
"Order of His Excellency, who does not need your services..."
Andrew bowed his head with an expression of sorrow that turned into anger and hatred.
"All right," he said; "but he will seek me one day... and then!..."
He suspended those words in a threatening sound and immediately went to see Don Girolamo, who had taken up his office of rational at the hospital, and told him his misadventure.
"It was necessary to expect it, my dear; that bad boy is not the son of Don Emanuele, but of ingratitude itself."
"And all the work of the birro, I tell you; but for Our Lady..."
"Sss!... Baccaglio!"
They spied on everything that the birro did, at whose heel they unleashed a whole suit of hounds from the scented until, unrecognizable and unsuspectable under the remains of confreres of the Souls of Purgatory or Ecce Homo, or camouflaged by street vendors.
They were able to ascertain that Matteo Lo Vecchio had frequent relations with Emanuele, not already in the palace of Motta, but in the suburban districts and always in different places. One of these bites, the longest, had taken place at the Zisa, in a lonely little house that they studied. This news doubled the vigilance: Coriolano sensed some machinations, and through Don Girolamo he gave the appropriate orders.
So a few days passed. Matteo Lo Vecchio had become more guarded and Emanuele led a life regime that did not arouse any suspicion. Probably the birro realized he was being stalked and watched.
One morning, in the church of S. Domenico, an old curve that dragged along leaning on a stick, while reciting the rosary, she approached Gabriella who was sitting in a chair with arms in front of the chapel of the Crucifix, to ask her for alms. The two lackeys who were behind her at a respectful distance approached to drive away the import, but the disdained old woman said:
"Oh go! we are in the house of God, and we are all his children... and then - and he lowered his voice so that only Gabriella woman could hear it: Your Excellency may know from me something that matters to you. I come from the monastery of St. Catherine..."
"Ah!"
Donna Gabriella said to one of the lackeys: "Give her some money, and leave her alone."
The old woman marked herself with the coin, knelt down, kissed on the ground, murmuring:
"May the holy patriarch St. Dominic and Our Lady of the Rosary give her the health of the body and soul, and may God pay her, now and at the hour of death and so be it. Holy Mary, mother of God..." But the Duchess got tired.
"What can you tell me?"
"Here, Your Excellency: I always go to the monastery of St. Catherine, where they give me charity... and he has taken me to love, his goodness, the nephew of the Prince of Butera, who is his relative. Yesterday, at the closing of the church, he called me from one of the communicators of the hat. It says: "Anna, this is my name to serve your Excellency; - Anna, will you do me a favor?" "Your Excellency commands me" - I say. It says: "You must go see the Duchess of Motta, who will give you alms, and you will tell her that I send her to greet her..." And here I am, Excellency."
Donna Gabriella felt a sense of spite; for that greeting it was not worth listening to the old one. He sent her away with a gesture, and the old woman left, wandering around and biwitching the rosary.
The next morning the old woman went to the monastery of St. Catherine, and called Mrs. Violante Albamonte, told her the same story, but bringing the greetings of woman Gabriella; and so for several days from St. Dominic to St. Catherine and from St. Catherine to St. Dominic; but after four days she did not find Violante: The maiden, fallen into her affliction, had come out of the monastery and, as the season was not yet too hot, the prince of Butera had led her to his villa in Bagheria, to redo himself.
The old woman seemed desolate, but coming out of the monastery she grabbed her hands saying, with visible joy:
"Better! Better than that can't go! If I knew the doctor, I'd go and give him a pinch kiss!..."
That evening Matteo Lo Vecchio, after waiting for Emanuele to come out of the argument, at the "firriate" of Villafranca, quickly said to him:
"We need to change everything. Your Excellency will judge."
And in a few words he explained to him what he had planned.
Emanuele's face was brightened with lively joy.
"Benone! For God's sake! You are a genius!"
The suspicious eye of woman Gabriella noticed that day an unusual and feverish in Blasco's gaze and in all the appearance, but she repressed inside herself the painful curiosity, fearing to provoke the resentment of the lover and strived to be quiet and playful, also because she hoped to be able to surprise some clues that put her on the right path.
She, now, lived in a continuous apprehension, tormenting herself for every nothingness, giving body to every shadow, widening the dangers, seeing also, in the most innocent words or in the simplest acts, revelations of infidelity and betrayal and always interpreting a hidden meaning under every word. Blasco was Ilare? She wondered: "Why is it ilare? Has it got any advantage?" Was Blasco sad? And she wondered, "Why is she sad? Maybe she didn't see her." He went sooner, or chose one way rather than another? and she tortured herself with other questions. His festivity, his spirit playing, his graces that kept something childish, faded, died out; he spent hours in a misanthropic gloom, looking at the sky with a deep and invincible pain, seeking in vain a ray of consolation.
June, meanwhile, flowed sweet and smelly in an extension of spring. All the countryside were green and on the floors were still swarming the tall and blond fruits waiting for the sickle. The Feast of Corpus Christi celebrated with greater competition for the return of priests and friars from exile and for the benevolences that were renewed between the Court and the Curia, had spread also in the small village built around the noble villas a glamour.
Violant felt great relief in that countryside, among the wild hills, the rusty plain, the blue and serene sea. From the groves that surrounded the building (which still had something of the castle) in the morning and in the evening arrived in his room the now lively and petulant greetings of the sparrows, now tender and melancholy of the romans. Sometimes, however, the high silence was interrupted by the crawling away of the crows, and in the gentle quiet of the spirit that crawling seemed to Violante a sad voice more sad omens.
The prince of Butera, after spending a week in the villa in the company of his nephew, had returned to Palermo, leaving Violante in the company of two old ladies, cousins of the prince, who, remained zitellone and kept from the house, used to live for a few months in the country. All had then been entrusted to the custody of the castaldo or governor of those goods and vassals of the prince.
Other villas were coming up in the surroundings: on the hill already ruled that of the Valguarnera, erected since 1709; further down the prince of Palagonia built his, which a grandson had later to make famous with the strangeness of his decoration; that of St. Flavia, that of Prince Furnari, older, still kept some towers and some crenellated wall: the whole district was scattered with cottages and villas, populated with people devoted to the masters and brave. The Prince of Butera, therefore, could rest assured that his women were very sure in that villa, better than in his urban palace.
One beautiful day Violante, sitting in his room, heard more or less far away for the thick of the woods a spesseggiare di schioppettate. He asked what it was: He knew that they were gentlemen who came from Palermo to hunt: the hill, in fact, abounded with wild rabbits and in the nearby river, the ancient Eleuterio, not yet dried up by the incontrasi of the season, there were wild ducks.
The hunt was to be rich and full of attractions; in fact, after an interruption (perhaps to desinate) the hunters resumed and the shots were now felt much closer.
Violante looked out at the window; he saw the two ladies who, leaning on each of them to an armor, set out on a boulevard towards the woods. They probably went to watch the hunt: At first she also had an impulse of youthful curiosity and was going to say:
"Wait, I'm coming too!"
But she didn't say anything, as if something unknowingly closed her mouth. After all, he was so well in solitude!... and at that time it seemed that the sound of hunting, drawing curiosity to himself, had created silence around the building. Violent saw no one. When the ladies fled into the thick of the plants, the place seemed deserted.
She sat down, abandoning herself, as she always did, to that innerte and vague state of mind, which seems to think and in truth can neither say what you think; it is like a wandering in a succession of fleeting ideas, of which none can be reached and stopped.
The blows seemed farther away, but more frequent and Violante would no longer lend you an ear.
Gradually it seemed that the two ideas joined together, took shape and body, identified themselves in one. It was his dominant thought, which in vain rejected; in vain he tried to cancel it under the accumulation of other thoughts and images: It always rose, stronger, more tormenting, superimposing itself victoriously over everything, taking over its brain, penetrating it into the blood, occupying its heart, lording it all, prostrating it. And then, powerless to react, Violante abandoned himself and his brain had only that one, unique, terrible thought: Blasco.
So she thought of Blasco not tormenting herself with useless questions, not bitten by the tooth of jealousy, but with the same soul with which one returns to a good desperately lost, and lost forever! Pain closed, without bursts, without groans, without treches; deep, desperate!...
It brought back the memory of a life spent as in a dream, faded away from the appearance of a sunrise saddened by the fog, without sun and without heat.
The room where he lived was, like the others, little elevated from the ground: A man mounted on a chair or on a rock could easily put his hands on the windowsill. The window was open: Violante had approached a table and had taken a book of prayers, only comfort in his solitude.
Suddenly it seemed to her that the light was intercepted by something; she turned quickly and sent a cry of fear, but even before she had the time to recover, a man had leaped into the room and had rushed to close and squeeze the door.
It was Emanuele.
Violante saw himself as a prisoner, but he had only one entrance: The window. He ran to jump, but under the window there was an armed man, a sad convict face. She saw herself lost.
"What do you want?" he asked, trembling, barely holding back her fear of bloody legs; "What do you want?"
Emanuele was also upset, but the disturbance had given him a wild, ferocious, beastly appearance. He said:
"What do I want? Oh, almost nothing, ma'am, except to settle an account with you, if you don't mind..."
"I have no accounts... What passes between you and me is now in the hands of Monsignor Judge of the Monarchy... Get out of here... I'll call people!..."
"Oh! oh... I see, my dear, Violent woman, that the form of entering that I have chosen is not the most correct, but it is certainly faster and saves many annoyances... On the other hand, I warn you that it is perfectly useless to trouble you to call, no one would hear you. The villa is deserted; your villas are watching the magnificent hunt that I have organized since this morning... in honor of you... Therefore you are entirely in my power and I have, to myself, the indispensable obligation of a revenge of the ridicule of which you have covered me..."
Violent did not hear well; in the state of emotion in which she was, those words sounded in her ear confusedly and she did not get a great impression of threat. He looked at Emanuele to surprise his intentions before they even translated into action, almost to prevent it, and looked at that window that could have been his salvation and that instead was another snare.
She seemed to see in the trees some other murky and threatening figure; she assumed that others were around the villa, and that it was blocked. This assumption discouraged her. If he had had a hope of prompt help or the possibility of bringing his cry to the far-off peasants... he would have rekindled; but in the abandonment, in the solitude in which he was, he felt he was failing and his conscience of this weakness increased his confusion.
A cold sweat wet her forehead; her heart was missing.
He tried a defense.
"I didn't do anything to you... I'm a poor orphan!... What you say is an evil, monstrous thing!... Let me go, I beg you!..."
Emanuele took a chair, sat there on a ride, leaning his arms on the back, with an air of challenge and canzoning.
"Ah! ah! ah!... Are you begging me? Bellina actually!... But I'm good, I'm generous... Come here, pull over... Sit next to me, indeed, look a bit, I'll come with me better and offer you my knees as the most beautiful seat you can find... Come on! I am not a monster, I am; and you are reasonable... No? Don't you move? Don't you want to come? Then I will come to you, as Muhammad said to the mountain. Time passes and I... wait for another lovely visit... here!..."
He stood up and approached Violante. She felt her legs bent and leaned on the door of the window, letting herself fall on the floor with her hands joined together, with an expression of terror and prayer:
"For pity's sake!... do it for the memory of your mother!..."
A shadow passed over the face of Emanuel; his appearance will be raised, his voice became dark and vindictive.
"Why do you remember my mother right now?... You remind me, unwittingly, that even to my mother I owe a rematch... You know, Violant woman, who killed my mother and wanted to suppress me? You don't know? Well, I'll tell you: He was the man who used my name and my heritage; he was Don Raimondo... he was your father!"
Violent became red with indignation: Her pupils lit up with a beautiful flame that seemed to instill a sudden vigor in her blood.
He jumped up, shouting:
"That's not true! Lie!..."
But Emanuele raised his shoulders with a bike of contempt.
"It takes nothing but your out-of-place outrage, Violant woman, to destroy the truth. I revenge in you and my mother... Oh, don't worry, I won't kill you. It would be a shame... In fact..."
He approached her and with agility of lion he grabbed her by the Violent wrists, drawing her to himself and murmuring:
"You are so beautiful and so desirous, that the only weapon you can turn against you are kisses..."
The girl tried to defend herself, tried to free her wrists, but in vain: her weakness resumed her; the effort of her will was not enough to infuse her strength. She felt the breath of Emanuele touching her face and the cupid lightning of her gaze passing through her eyes and darkening her sight. Then he cried desperately: "Help!"
The sound of a chariot rushing back into the boulevard; a whip burst three times. Emanuele counted those blows and said fiercely:
"Here's the other one!... But too soon!"
Violent did not understand the words, because his heart, revived by a suffered hope, beat them so furiously in the chest that it took away the exact perception. Who'd come? Was that a rescue? He looked at: On the face of Emanuel was a cruel joy: He was not displeased and did not fear; therefore the person who arrived was certainly a friend, perhaps a companion of unholyness.
"Come on!" cried Emanuele; "Let's not waste time unnecessarily!..."
And with a violent tug he drew the maiden to himself, pushed her, overwhelmed her on the bed. In the imminence of the danger Violante collected all his energies; stretching his legs, he tried to oppose and free himself, but Emanuel was strong and held it solidly.
"Don't be picky," she said, "it wouldn't do any good..."
One shot was beaten violently at the door.
Violante thought in a moment that if that was really a rescue for Emanuele, she was lost irreparably and that, if he could still resist, perhaps he would give time to the people of the villa to return and that would be his deliverance. By arguing and preventing Emanuele from subjugating her, he said to him in broken words:
"Let go of me! You are vile!... vile!"
Two more shots resonated at the door, then it seemed as if they were trying to knock it down. Meanwhile, Emanuele had come to take possession of a towel and to pass it on his arms and around the life of Violante; he had tightened it and tied it so solidly, that she could not make use of her hands. Then it was easier for him to lift her from the ground and throw her on the bed, to prevent Violante, who had already laid his feet on the ground, from escaping him.
The door opened violently and a woman rushed into the room like a fury; but she stopped in front of Violante and Emanuele shouting: "Where is he?"
Violent recognized her; a slight hope brightened her face and cried out in supplication:
"Ma'am!... Save me!..."
