The Leopard (12 page)

It was a wild rabbit; its dun-colored coat had not been able to save it. Horrible wounds lacerated snout and chest. Don Fabrizio found himself stared at by big black eyes soon overlaid by a glaucous veil; they were looking at him with no reproof, but full of tortured amazement at the whole order of things; the velvety ears were already cold, the vigorous paws contracting in rhythm, still-living symbol of useless flight; the animal had died tortured by anxious hopes of salvation, imagining it could still escape when it was already caught, just like so many human beings. While sympathetic fingers were still stroking that poor snout, the animal gave a last quiver and died; Don Fabrizio and Don Ciccio had had their bit of fun) the former not only the pleasure of killing but also the solace of compassion.

When the hunters reached the top of the hill, there among the tamarisks and scattered cork trees appeared the real Sicily again, the one compared to which baroque towns and orange groves are mere trifles: aridly undulating to the horizon in hillock after hillock, comfortless and irrational, with no lines that the mind could grasp, conceived apparently in a delirious moment of creation; a sea suddenly petrified at the instant when a change of wind had flung waves into frenzy. Donnafugata lay huddled and hidden in an anonymous fold of the ground, and not a living soul was to be seen; the only signs of the passage of man were scraggy rows of vines. Beyond the hills on one side was the indigo smudge of the sea, more mineral and barren, even, than the land. The slight breeze moved over all, universalizing the smell of dung, carrion, and sage, cancelling, suppressing, reordering each thing in its careless passage; it dried up the little drops of blood which were the only residue of the rabbit, far away it ruffled the locks of Garibaldi, and farther still flung dust in the eyes of Neapolitan soldiers hurriedly reinforcing the battlements of Gaeta, deluded by a hope as vain as the rabbit's frenzied flight. The Prince and the organist rested under the circumscribed shadow of cork trees: they drank tepid wine from wooden bottles with a roast chicken from Don Fabrizio's haversack, ate little cakes called mufoletti dusted with raw flour which Don Ciccio had brought with him and the local grapes so ugly to look at and so good to eat; with great hunks of bread they satisfied the hungry dogs standing there in front of them, impassive as bailiffs bent on getting debts paid. Under that monarchic sun Don Fabrizio and Don Ciccio were near to dozing,

But though a shot had killed the rabbit, though the bored rifles of General Cialdini were now dismaying the Bourbon troops at Gaeta, though the midday heat was making men doze off, nothing could stop the ants. Attracted by a few chewed grape-skins spat out by Don Ciccio, along they rushed in close order, morale high at the chance of annexing that bit of garbage soaked with an organist's saliva. Up they came full of confidence, disordered but resolute; groups of three or four would stop now and again for a chat, exalting, perhaps, the ancient glories and future prosperity of ant hill Number Two under cork tree Number Four on the top of Mount Morco ; then once again they would take up their march with the others toward a buoyant future; the gleaming backs of those imperialists seemed to quiver with enthusiasm, while from their ranks no doubt rose the notes of an anthem. By some association of ideas which it would be inopportune to pursue, the activity of these insects prevented the Prince from sleeping and reminded him of the days of the Plebiscite for the Unification through which he had lived shortly before at Donnafugata itself. Apart from a sense of amazement, those days had left him many an enigma to solve; now, in sight of nature, which, except for ants, obviously did not have such bothers, he might perhaps find a solution for one of them. The dogs were sleeping stretched and crouched like figures in relief; the little rabbit, hanging from a branch with its head down, was swinging out diao, onally under the constant surge of wind, but Tumeo, with the help of his pipe, still managed to keep his eyes open.

"And you, Don Ciccio, how did you vote on the twentyfirst? “

The poor man started; taken by surprise at a moment when outside the stockade of precautions in which, like each of his fellow townsmen, he usually moved, he hesitated, not knowing what to reply.

The Prince mistook for alarm what was really only surprise, and felt irritated. "Well, what are you afraid of? There's no one here but us, the wind, and the dogs."

The list of reassuring witnesses was not really happily choseni wind is a gossip by definition, the Prince was half Sicilian. Only the dogs were absolutely trustworthy and that only because they lacked articulate speech. But Don Ciccio had now recovered; his peasant astuteness had suggested the right reply-nothing at all. "Excuse me, Excellency, but there's no point in your question. You know that everyone in Donnafugata voted 'yes."'

Don Fabrizio did know this i and that was why this reply merely changed a small enigma into an enigma of history. Before the voting many had come to him for advice; all of them had been exhorted, sincerely, to vote "yes." Don Fabrizio, in fact, could not see what else there was to do: whether treating it as a
fait accompli
or as an act merely theatrical and banal, whether taking it as historical necessity or considering the trouble these humble folk might get into if their negative attitude were known. He had noticed, though, that not all had been convinced by his words; into play had come the abstract Machiavellianism of Sicilians, which so often induced these people, with all their generosity, to erect complex barricades on the most fragile of foundations. Like clinicians adept at treatment based on fundamentally false analyses of blood and urine which they are too lazy to rectify, the Sicilians of that time ended by killing off the patient, that is themselves, by a niggling and hair-splitting rarely grounded on any real understanding of the problems involved and even less of their interlocutors. Some who had spent their lives under the aegis of the Leopard felt it impossible for a Prince of Salina to vote in favor of the Revolution (as the recent changes were still called in those remote parts), and they interpreted his advice as ironical, intended to effect a result in practice opposite to his words. These pilgrims (and they were the best) had come out of his study winking at each other-as far as their respect for him would allowproud at having penetrated the meaning of the princely words, and rubbing their hands in self-congratulation at their own perspicacity just when this was most completely in eclipse. Others, on the other hand, after having listened to him, went off looking sad, convinced that he was a turncoat or opportunist, and more than ever determined to take no notice of what he said but to follow instead the age-old proverb about preferring a known evil to an untried good. These were reluctant to ratify the new national reality for personal reasons too: either from religious faith, or from having received favors from the former regime and not been sharp enough to insert themselves into the new one, or finally because during the upsets of the liberation period they had lost some capons and sacks of beans, and been cuckolded either by Garibaldi volunteers or Bourbon levies. He had, in fact, the disagreeable but distinct impression that about fifteen of them would vote "no, )y a tiny minority certainly, but noticeable in the small electorate of Donnafugata. Taking into consideration that the people who came to him represented the flower of the inhabitants, and that there must also be some unconvinced among the hundreds of electors who had not dreamed of setting foot inside the palace, the Prince had calculated that Donnafugata's compact affirmative would be varied by about forty negative votes. The day of the Plebiscite was windy and gray, and tired groups of youths had been seen going through the streets of the town with placards carrying "Yes" and the same on pieces of paper stuck in the ribbons of their hats. Among the papers and refuse swirled about by the wind were a few verses of La Bella Gigugin transformed into a kind of Arab wail, a fate to which any gay tune sung in Sicily is bound to succumb. They had also seen two or three "foreign faces" (that is, from Girgenti) installed in Zzu Menico's tavern, where they were declaiming about the "magnificent and progressive future" of the new Sicily united to resurgent Italy. A few peasants were standing listening, mutely, stunned by overwork or starved by unemployment. These cleared their throats and spat continuously, but kept silent; so silent that it must have been then (as Don Fabrizio said afterward) that the "foreign faces" decided to put, among the four major arts, Mathematics above Rhetoric.

The Prince went to vote about four in the afternoon) flanked on the right by Father Pirrone, on the left by Don Onofrio Rotoloi frowning and fair-skinned, he proceeded slowly toward the Town Hall, frequently putting up a hand to protect his eyes lest the breeze, loaded with all the filth collected on its way, should bring on the conjunctivitis to which he was subject; and he remarked to Father Pirrone that though the air would have been like a putrid pool without the wind, yet health-giving gusts did seem to drag up a lot of dirt with them. He was wearing the same black frock coat in which two years before he had gone to pay his respects at Caserta to poor King Ferdinand, who had been lucky enough to die in time to avoid this day of dirty wind, when the seal would be set on his incapacity. But had it really been incapacity? One might as well say that a person succumbing to typhus dies from incapacity. He remembered the King busy putting up dikes against the floods of useless documents; and suddenly he realized how much unconscious appeal to pity there was in those unattractive features. Such thoughts were disagreeable, as are all those that make us understand things too late, and the Prince's face went solemn and dark as if he were following an invisible funeral carriage. Only the violent impact of his feet on loose stones in the street showed his internal conflict; it is superfluous to mention that the ribbon on his top hat was innocent of any piece of paper, but for the eyes of those who knew him a "yes" and a "no" alternated under the glistening of the felt.

On reaching a little room in the Town Hall used as the voting booth he was surprised to see all the members of the committee get up as his great height filled the doorway; a few peasants who had arrived before were motioned aside, and so without having to wait Don Fabrizio handed his "yes" into the patriotic hands of Don Calogero Sedara. Father Pirrone, though, did not vote at all, as he had been careful not to get himself listed as resident in the town. Don Onofrio, obeying the express desires of the Prince, gave his own monosyllabic opinion about the complicated Italian question: a masterpiece of concision carried through with the good grace of a child drinking castor oil. After which all were invited for "a sip" upstairs in the Mayor's study; but Father Pirrone and Don Onofrio put forward good reasons, one of abstinence, the other of stomach-ache, and remained below. Don Fabrizio had to face the refreshments alone.

Behind the Mayor's writing desk gleamed a brand-new portrait of Garibaldi and (already) one of the new King from Piedmont, Victor Emmanuel, luckily hung to the right; the first handsome, the second ugly; both, however, made brethren by prodigious growths of hair which nearly hid their faces altogether. On a small table was a plate with some ancient biscuits covered with fly droppings and a dozen little squat glasses brimming with rosolio: four red, four green, four white, the last in the center: an ingenuous symbol of the new national flag which tempered the Prince's remorse with a smile. He chose the white liquor for himself, presumably because the least indigestible and not, as some thought, a tardy homage to the Bourbon standard. Anyway, all three varieties of rosolio were equally sugary, sticky, and revolting. They had the good taste not to give toasts. But, as Don Calogero said, great joys are silent. Don Fabrizio was shown a letter from the authorities of Girgend announcing to the industrious citizens of Donnafugata the concession of a contribution of two thousand lire for sewerage, a work which would be completed before the end of 1861, so the Mayor assured them, stumbling into one of those lapsus whose mechanism Freud was to explain many decades later; and the meeting broke up.

Before dusk the three or four whores of Donnafugata (there were some there, too, not organized but each hard at work on her own) appeared in the square with tricolor ribbons in their manes in protest against the exclusion of women from the vote; the poor creatures were jeered at even by the most advanced liberals and forced back to their lairs. This did not prevent the newspaper Giornale di Trinacria from telling the people of Palermo four days later that at Donnafugata "some gentle representatives of the fair sex wished to show their faith in the new and brilliant destinies of their beloved Country, and demonstrated in the main square amid general acclamation from the patriotic population."

After this the electoral booths were closed and the scrutators got to work; late that night the central balcony of the Town Hall was flung open and Don Calogero appeared with a tricolor sash over his middle, flanked by two ushers with lighted candelabra which the wind blew out at once.

To the invisible crowd in the shadows below he announced that the Plebiscite at Donnafugata had had the following results: Voters listed, 515; Voted, 512;Yes, 512; No, zero.

Applause and hurrahs rose from the dark background of the square i on her little balcony Angelica, with her funereal maid, clapped lovely rapacious hands; speeches were made; adjectives loaded with superlatives and double consonants reverberated and echoed in the dark from one wall to another; amid the thunder of fireworks messages were sent off to the King (the new one) and to the General; a tricolor rocket or two climbed up from the village into the blackness toward the starless sky. By eight o'clock all was over, and nothing remained except the darkness as on any other night, as always. On the top of Monte Morco all was clear now, in bright light; but deep in Don Fabrizio's heart the gloom of that night still lay stagnant. His discomfort had become more irksome, vaguer; it had no connection at all with the great matters of which the Plebiscite marked the start of a solution: the major interests of the Kingdom (of the Two Sicilies), and of his own class, his personal advantages came through all these events battered but still lively. In the circumstance he could not well expect more. No, his discomfort was not of a political nature and must have had deeper roots, down in one of those reasons which we call irrational because they are buried under layers of selfignorance. Italy was born in that sullen night at Donnafugata, born right there in that forgotten little town, just as much as in the sloth of Palermo or the clamor of Naples; but an evil fairy, of unknown name, must have been present i anyway Italy was born and one had to hope that she would live on in that form; any other would be worse. Agreed. And yet this persistent disquiet of his must mean something; during that too brief announcement of figures, Just as during those too emphatic speeches, he had a feeling that something, someone, had died, God only knew in what corner of the country, in what corner of the popular conscience.