Daughter of Silence Page 4

  ‘We’re all cowards, aren’t we, Peter? We’re all brutal when someone probes at the little fester of fear inside us. I’m brutal to Carlo, I know that. He in his own fashion is cruel to me. Even my father, who is as brave as an old lion, makes a purgatory for those he loves. And yet we are necessary to each other. With no one to hurt, we can only hurt ourselves and that is the last terror of all. But how long can we live like this without destroying one another?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Peter Landon sombrely, and asked himself at the same moment how long a man could endure the goads of ambition, how high he could climb alone before he toppled into disillusionment and despair.

  CHAPTER TWO

  THE POLICE-STATION in San Stefano was fusty with cigarette smoke and the smell of stale wine and country cheese. Sergeant Fiorello sat ostentatiously detached, copying out a deposition. Fra Bonifacio stood fumbling at his cincture while Carlo Rienzi explained himself to Anna Albertini: ‘Fra Bonifacio has told me a little of your history, Anna. I’m anxious to help. But there are things you must understand first.’ His voice took on the patient expository tone of a dominie instructing a dullard pupil. ‘You must realize, for instance, that a lawyer is not a magician. He can’t prove black is white. He can’t wave a wand and wipe out things that have happened. He can’t bring dead people back to life. All he can do is lend you his knowledge of the law and his voice to plead your case in court. Then a lawyer must be acceptable to his client. You must agree to engage his services. Do I make myself clear?’

  It might have been an illusion but it seemed for a moment as if a ghost of a smile twitched at the pale lips of the girl. She said gravely: ‘I haven’t had much education, but I do understand about lawyers. You mustn’t treat me like a child.’

  Rienzi blushed and bit his lip. He felt very young and very gauche. But he recovered himself and went on, more firmly: ‘Then you must understand what you’ve done – and what the consequences are.’

  Anna Albertini nodded in her placid, detached fashion. ‘Oh yes. I’ve always known what would happen. It doesn’t worry me.’

  ‘Not now, perhaps, but later, when you stand in court and hear the sentence. When they take you away and dress you in prison clothes and lock you behind bars.’

  ‘No matter where they put me, it doesn’t matter. I’m free now, you see – and happy.’

  For the first time the old friar entered the discussion. He said gently: ‘Anna, child, today is a strange and terrible day. You cannot say at all how you may feel tomorrow. In any case, whether you want it or not, the court will see that you have a lawyer. I think it’s better that you have someone who may care a little, like Mr Rienzi here.’

  ‘I haven’t any money to pay him.’

  ‘The money will be provided.’

  ‘Then I suppose it’s all right.’

  Rienzi was shocked by her indifference and he said testily: ‘We’ll need something more formal than that. Will you tell Sergeant Fiorello that you accept me as your legal representative?’

  ‘If that’s what you want.’

  ‘I heard.’ Fiorello looked up with a grin. ‘I’ll put it in the record, for what it’s worth. But I think you’re wasting your time.’

  ‘That’s what I don’t understand,’ said Anna Albertini with odd simplicity. ‘I know there’s nothing you can do for me. So why do you and Fra Bonifacio take the trouble?’

  ‘I’m trying to pay a debt, Anna,’ said the friar softly.

  Carlo Rienzi gathered up his notes, stuffed them into his pocket and stood up. He said briskly: ‘You’ll be taken into Siena and charged there, Anna. After that they’ll either put you in the remand cells in the city prison, or more probably send you out to the women’s house of correction at San Gimignano. Wherever you are, I’ll come to see you tomorrow. Try not to be too frightened.’

  ‘I’m not frightened,’ said Anna Albertini. ‘Tonight I think I shall sleep without nightmares.’

  ‘God keep you, child.’ Fra Bonifacio made the sign of blessing over the girl’s dark head and turned away.

  Rienzi was already at the door talking with Fiorello.

  ‘When we start preparing the defence, I’d like to come and talk to you, Sergeant.’

  ‘Out of order, I’m afraid.’ Fiorello’s face was a blank, official mask. ‘I’ll be called for the prosecution.’

  ‘Then we’ll talk in court,’ said Rienzi curtly and walked out into the buzzing, sunlit square, with the little Franciscan at his heels.

  The crowd parted before them. Everyone stared, pointing and whispering as if they were side-show monsters, until they disappeared into the cool confessional shadows of the church of San Stefano.

  Lunch at the Villa Ascolini was a three-cornered match, dominated by the flamboyant wit of the old advocate. Carlo’s absence was accepted with a shrug and, Landon guessed, a measure of relief. The trouble in the village was dismissed with a gesture of deprecation. Neither Ascolini nor Valeria asked what it was, but when Landon pressed them Ascolini read him an ironic homily on the vestigial practice of the feudal system.

  ‘… We live most of the year in Rome, but our ownership of the villa makes us by definition the padronal family. When we return here, we pay a kind of tribute to our dependency. Sometimes it is a demand for new endowments to the church or the convent. Sometimes we become patrons to a more or less brilliant student. Occasionally we are asked to arbitrate in a local dispute – which is probably what has happened today. But whatever the circumstance, the principle is the same: the lords pay a tax to the lowly for the privilege of survival; the lowly use the lords to protect them from a democracy they distrust and bureaucracy they despise. It’s a reasonable bargain.’ He sipped delicately at his wine and added the afterthought, ‘I am happy that Carlo begins to assume his share of the tribute.’

  Valeria smiled tolerantly and patted the man’s sleeve. ‘Take no notice of him, Peter. He’s a malicious old man.’

  Landon grinned and began dissecting a peach. Ascolini’s pink face wore an expression of patent innocence. He said, blandly: ‘It’s the privilege of age to test the metal of youth. Besides, I have great hopes for my son-in-law. He’s a young man of singular talent and cultivation.’ His shrewd, youthful eyes quizzed Landon over the rim of his glass. ‘I hope he has been entertaining you properly.’

  ‘Better than I deserve.’ Landon was grateful for the change of subject. ‘He drove me out to Arezzo yesterday.’

  Ascolini nodded approval. ‘A noble city, my friend. Too much neglected by the tourists. Petrarch’s town and Aretino’s.’ He gave a small, amused chuckle. ‘You’re a student of the soul, Landon. There’s a parable for you: the great lover and the great lecher spring from the same soil; the scholarly poet and the satirist scribbling dirty words on public buildings; the Sonnets to Laura and the Sonetti Lussuriosi. You’ve read them, of course?’

  ‘I’ve read Petrarch,’ Landon told him with a grin. ‘But they don’t reprint Aretino these days.’

  ‘I will lend you a copy.’ Ascolini waved an eloquent hand. ‘It’s a scatological classic which cannot fail to interest a psychiatrist. While you are here, please make yourself free of the library. It’s not a large collection, but you may find it interesting and curious.’

  ‘That’s kind of you. I didn’t know you were a collector.’

  ‘Father is a dozen men rolled up in one,’ said Valeria drily.

  Again Ascolini gave his spry, old man’s chuckle. ‘I collect experience, Mr Landon, as I once collected women, who are the key to experience. But I’m too old for that now. So I have books, an occasional picture and the vicarious drama of the law.’

  ‘You’re a fortunate man, dottore.’

  Ascolini fixed him with a bright, ironic eye. ‘Youth is the fortunate time, my dear Landon. The best fortune of age is a wisdom to value what is left: the last of the wine, the richness of memory, the ripeness of the season. It is a thing I have tried to explain to Carlo – and to my daughter here – that it
is better to be a tree growing quietly in the sun than the monkey scrambling wildly after the fruit.’

  ‘I wonder,’ asked Landon with affected innocence, ‘whether you were always content to be the tree, dottore.’

  ‘I knew I was right about you, my friend. You’ve dealt with the law too long to be taken in by an old advocate’s tricks. Of course I wasn’t content; the higher the fruit, the faster I wanted to climb. But the fact is still the same. It is better to be the tree than the monkey. But how do you put an old truth into a young head?’

  ‘You don’t try,’ said Landon with some tartness. ‘Young heads are made to be beaten on walls. Most of them survive it.’

  Surprisingly, Ascolini nodded agreement and said, with an air of regret: ‘You’re right, of course. I’m afraid I’ve intruded too much into the lives of these young people. They don’t always understand the affection I have for them.’

  ‘What we don’t understand, Father …’ Valeria’s voice was high and tight as a fiddle-string, ‘what you don’t understand either, is the price you exact for it.’

  As she stood up, her trailing sleeve caught the rim of her glass so that the crystal shattered on the pavement and the wine splashed red on the grey stones. Landon addressed himself with studious care to the last remnants of his peach until the old man challenged him with sardonic humour: ‘Don’t let yourself be embarrassed, my friend. Don’t try to play the urbane Anglo-Saxon with people like us. This is what we are. This is how we have lived for a thousand years. We make great pictures from our lecheries and grand opera of our most murderous tragedies. You’re a student of the human drama. You have a box seat. If we’re happy to parade our follies, you have a perfect right to applaud the comedy. Come, my dear fellow, let me pour you a brandy. And if you find it hard to forgive me, remember I’m a peasant who used the law to make himself a gentleman.’

  There was no resisting so much urbanity and in spite of himself Landon was charmed back into laughter. But later, as he stretched out on the big Florentine bed to take the ritual siesta, he found himself trying to write his own version of the Rienzi chronicle.

  The old advocate was too complex a character to be defined by the somewhat naïve snobberies of a still feudal society. A peasant he might be, with a peasant’s shrewdness and harsh ambition, but he was no beggar on horseback. He might have been hewn from rough material, but he was granite-hard and polished by the disciplines of a crowded world. His career was founded on the follies of other men, and passions too ignoble would have destroyed him long since. Landon felt that he owned more stature than either Carlo or Valeria would admit in him. He could see the old man strong in love, hate or a perversion of either, but he could not judge him petty.

  Valeria? Here too there was a different reading from the one Carlo had given. He saw her as a kind of intransigent princess, half-awakened to love, yet still enchained by the tyrant magic of childhood. For Carlo there was still an innocence, even in her affairs. But Landon was reminded of the girls Lippo Lippi used for his virgins and angels, with smooth cheeks and limpid eyes and the memory of a thousand nights on their lips. It was a distasteful thought, but he could not rid himself of it. When one sat by the confessional couch one looked at women with calculation and one learnt, sometimes painfully, that innocence was rare and had many counterfeits. Valeria might not be loose, but she was certainly inclined to other satisfactions than those offered by a young and uncertain husband. Landon saw her maternal yet childless, cool but not passionless; not dominated by her father but sustained, like him, by some inner reserves, so that she needed less than other women but could give much more if the mood and the moment were right.

  He lapsed into languid contemplation of what such a mood and such a moment might be – and found himself looking into the well of his own emptiness.

  All that he saw in these people he had avoided in his own life: cuckoldry, cruelty, the itch in the flesh, the fear of losing what one could only pretend to possess, the vampire tyranny of age, the perverted surrender of youth. He had set himself a limited goal and stood now within measurable reach of it. He had enjoyed women but had never submitted to them. He had preserved the ethics of a healing art while using the art for his own advancement. He had money, position, leisure. He was amenable neither to wife nor mistress. He was free, disciplined – and empty of the wine of life which these others spent with such passionate indiscretion.

  Suddenly, it was they who were rich and he the mendicant at their gates; and he wondered, as beggars must, whether he had not lost the stomach for feasting, even were the feasting offered to him.

  When the afternoon heat poured like lava over the land, when peasant and burgher burrowed like moles in flight from the sun, Ninette Lachaise packed paints and canvases into her battered car and headed for the open country.

  It was an artist’s pilgrimage, hardly less painful than that made long ago by the brotherhood of shell and staff. The land was as hot as a chafing-dish; the roads were a dusty misery; the hills, burnt umber, gathered the heat and diffused it in parching waves over the lowland, where the vines drooped and the runnels dried and the olive branches hung listless in the slack air. The cattle gave up their grazing and huddled under the sparse shade, eyes glazed, thirsty tongues lolling. The rare human, caught unaware on cart-track or tillage, seemed shrunken and desiccated as a gnome trudging some lunar landscape.

  Yet over it all lay the pervasive miracle of light: the high dazzle of the southward sky, the white flare of stucco and tufa outcrop, bronze shadows in the clefts of the mountains, sheen of pond-water, ochre of roof-top, jewel-fire from bird-wing or locust flight. And this was the justification for the pilgrimage – the harsh newness of aspect, the sudden extension of space, the separation of mass and contour, so that one saw through to the bones of creation and glimpsed the massive articulation of its parts.

  For Ninette Lachaise there were other justifications, too. Every pilgrimage was, by definition, a discipline for the spirit, a tempting of the unknown and a stretch towards the unattainable.

  Four years before, she had come, in flight, to this city whose devotees called it ‘The Home of Souls’. She had fled a Parisian household dominated by an ailing mother and an elderly father whose recreation was a regret for the vanished glories of the military life. She had fled the sterilities of the post-war ateliers and a youth which was a foretaste of old age. Two things had happened swiftly: her painting had exploded into a startling maturity, and a week after her first exhibition she had tumbled headlong into a love-affair with Basilio Lazzaro.

  He was a professional amorist, indifferent as a bull, and the affair had lasted six stormy months. They had parted without regret; and she was left, bruised but awakened, aware of her capacity for passion but dubious of another total surrender. She had learnt another wisdom too. This was a man’s country and there was no salvation for a woman in promiscuous or ill-considered loving. So she had made the disciplines of art a discipline for the flesh as well, while she waited, too cautiously for the most part, on the moment of fortunate meeting.

  But it was not enough to wait, unknowing, on the fairytale promise of love, Prince Charming and happiness-ever-after. There were elements in her nature and her situation which, as yet, she did not fully understand. How far might her talent drive her? How soon might she challenge the legend of woman’s incapacity for greatness in creation? How much equality did she need to survive after the first flush of courtship and bedding? Why was she drawn to men like Ascolini – the cynical and the wise-and why did she so mistrust the young ones, all ardour and so little endowed with understanding? What was the profit in recording visions for others to enjoy while the green years waned into the loneliness of autumn?

  Since Ascolini’s visit, all these questions and a dozen others had moved into sharp focus like the crags and crenellations of the Tuscan hills. It was a measure of her uneasiness that she had accepted his invitation to dine at the villa – with Valeria, who was now playing lover to Basilio Lazzaro,
and with an unknown outlander who was being presented like bloodstock for her inspection.

  Then, abruptly, the humour of the situation took hold of her and she began to laugh – a clear, free sound that rang across the valley, startled the cropping goats and flushed a ground lark into the shimmering summer air.

  In the library of the villa, Alberto Ascolini, advocate and actor, staged a reconciliation with his daughter. It was a scene he had played many times and his role had the patina of long practice. He stood, leaning against the mantel, trim, dapper and impressive, with a glass of brandy in his hand, a small conspiratorial smile twitching the corners of his mouth. Valeria sat, curled in his armchair, chin on hand, her feet tucked under her like a small girl. He shrugged eloquently and said: ‘Child, you mustn’t resent me too much. I’m a perverse old goat who laughs at his own jokes. But I love you tenderly. It’s not easy for a man to be father and mother to a girl-child. I know my failures better than you. But that I should seem to sell my love – this is new to me. Painful, too. I think you should explain yourself a little.’

  Valeria Rienzi shook her head. ‘You’re not in court now, Father. I’m not going into the witness box.’

  ‘Perhaps not, child.’ His tone was unruffled, touched only with a hint of sadness. ‘But you put me in the dock. Surely I have the right to hear the indictment? How do I make you pay for love?’

  ‘You take a share of everything I do.’

  ‘Take? Take?’ The noble brow wrinkled in puzzlement and he ran a hand through his white mane. ‘You make me sound like a tax-gatherer. I have a care for you – true! I have an interest in your happiness – is this an exaction? Have I denied you anything, even the right to be young and foolish?’

  For the first time she tilted up her head to face him, half hostile, half appealing. ‘But don’t you see, half of it has always been for yourself. Carlo? He was your creation first. You groomed him and handed him to me like a pet pony, but you always had one hand on the bridle. The others? They were yours, too – diversions for the unhappy bride, cavalieri serventi provided by the indulgent father. They were romances to recall your own youth.’