The Leopard (18 page)

Once she had hidden behind an enormous picture propped on the floor, and for a short time
Arturo Corbera at the Siege of
Antioch
formed a protection for the girl's hopeful anxiety; but when she was found, with her smile veined in cobwebs and her hands veiled in dust, she was clasped tight, and though she kept on saying again and again, "No, Tancredi, no," her denial was in fact an invitation, for all he was doing was staring with his blue eyes into her green ones. One luminous cold morning she was trembling in a dress that was still summery; he squeezed her to him, to warm her, on a sofa covered in tattered silki her odorous breath moved the hair on his forehead; they were moments ecstatic and painful, during which desire became torment, restraints upon it a delight.

The rooms in the abandoned apartments had neither a definite layout nor a name, and like the explorers of the New World, they would baptize the rooms they crossed with the names of their joint discoveries. A vast bedroom in whose alcove stood the ghost of a bed adorned with a canopy hung with skeleton ostrich feathers was remembered afterward as "the feather room"; a staircase with steps of smooth crumbling slate was called by Tancredi "the staircase of the lucky slip." A number of times they really did not know where they were; all this twisting and turning, backing and following, and pauses full of murmuring contact, made them lose their way so that they had to lean out of some paneless window to gather from an angle of the courtyard or a view of the garden which wing of the palace they were in. But sometimes they could not find their way even so, as the window did not give on to one of the great courts but on to some inner yard, anonymous itself and never entered, marked only by the corpse of some cat or the usual little heap of spaghetti and tomato sauce either vomited or flung there; and from another window they would find themselves looking into the eyes of some pensioned-off old maidservant. One afternoon inside a cupboard they found four chimes, that music which delighted the affected simplicity of the eighteenth century. Three of these, buried in dust and cobwebs, remained mute; but the last, which was more recent and shut tighter into its dark wooden box, started up its cylinder of bristling copper and the little tongues of raised steel suddenly produced a delicate tune, all in clear, silvery tones: the famous Carnival of Venice; they rhymed their kisses with those notes of disillusioned gaiety; and when their embrace loosened they were surprised to notice that the notes had ceased for some time and that their action had left no other trace than a memory of ghostly music. Once the surprise was of a different kind. In one of the rooms in the old guest wing they noticed a door hidden by a cupboard; the centuries-old lock soon gave way to fingers pleasantly entwined in forcing it: behind it a long narrow staircase wound up in gentle curves of pink marble steps. At the top was another door, open, and covered with thick but tattered padding; then came a charming but odd little apartment, of six small rooms gathered around a mediumsized drawing room, all, including the drawing room, with floors of whitest marble, sloping away slightly toward a small lateral gutter. On the low ceilings were some very unusual reliefs in colored stucco, fortunately made almost indecipherable by damp; on the walls were big surprisedlooking mirrors, hung too low, one shattered by a blow almost in the middle, and each fitted with contorted rococo candle brackets. The windows gave on to a segregated court, a kind of blind and deaf well, which let in a gray light and had no other openings. In every room and even in the drawing room were wide, too wide sofas, showing nails with traces of silk that had been torn away; spotty armrests; on the fireplaces were delicate intricate little marble intaglios, naked figures in paroxysms but mutilated by so' me furious hammer. The damp had marked the walls high up and also low down at a man's height, where it had assumed strange shapes, an odd thickness, dark tints. Tancredi, disturbed, would not let Angelica touch a cupboard on the wall of the drawing room, which he shut up himself. It was deep but empty, except for a roll of dirty stuff standing upright in a corner; inside was a bundle of small whips, switches of bull's muscle, some with silver handles, others wrapped halfway up in a charming old silk, white with little blue stripes, on which could be seen three rows of blackish marksi and metal instruments for inexplicable purposes. Tancredi was afraid of himself too. "Let's go, my dear, there's nothing interesting here." They shut the door carefully, went down the stairs again in silence, and put the cupboard back where it was before; and all the rest of that day Tancredi's kisses were very light, as if given in a dream and in expiation.

After the Leopard, in fact, the whip seemed the most frequent object at Donnafugata. The day after their discovery of the enigmatic little apartment the two lovers found another kind of whip. This was not, it is true, in the secret apartment but in the venerated one called the Apartment of the Saint-Duke, where in the middle of the seventeenth century a Salina had withdrawn as if into a private monastery, there to do penance and prepare his own journey toward Heaven. They were small low rooms, with floors of humble brick, whitewashed walls, like those of the poorest peasants. The last of these opened on to a balcony which overlooked the yellow expanse of estate after estate, all immersed in sad light. On one wall was a huge crucifix, more than lifesized; the head of the martyred God touched the ceiling, the bleeding feet grazed the floor; the wound in the ribs seemed like a mouth prevented by brutality from pronouncing the words of ultimate salvation. Next to the Divine Body there hung from a nail a lash with a short handle, from which dangled six strips of now hardened leather ending in six lumps of lead as big as walnuts. This was the "discipline" of the Saint-Duke. In that room Giuseppe Corbera, Duke of Salina, had scourged himself alone, in sight of his God and his estates, and it must have seemed to him that the drops of his own blood were about to rain down on the land and redeem it; in his holy exaltation it must have seemed that only through this expiatory baptism could these estates really become his, blood of his blood, flesh of his flesh, as the saying is. But now many of them had left for ever and a large number of those which could be seen from up there belonged to others -to Don Calogero, even; to Don Calogero, thus to Angelica, thus to his future son-in-law. This proof of blackmail through beauty, parallel to that other blackmail through blood, made Tancredi's head whirl. Angelica was kneeling and kissing the pierced feet of Christ. "There," said Tancredi, "you're like that whip there, you're used for the same ends." And he showed her the whip; and because Angelica did not understand and raised her smiling head, lovely but vacuous, he bent down and as she genuflected gave her a rough kiss which made her moan, for it bruised her lip and rasped her palate.

So the pair of them spent those days in dreamy wanderings, in the discovery of hells redeemed by love, of forgotten paradises profaned by love itself. The urge to put a stop to the game and draw the prize became more and more pressing for them both ; in the end they stopped searching, but went off absorbed into the remotest rooms, those from which no cry could reach anyone from the outside world. But there never would be a cry; only invocations and low moans. There they would both lie, close but innocent, pitying each other. The most dangerous places for them were the rooms of the old guest wing: private, in good order, each with its neat rolled-up mattress which would spread out again at a mere touch of the hand. One day not Tancredi's mind, which had no say in the matter, but all his blood had decided to put an end to it; that morning Angelica, like the beautiful bitch that she was, had said, "I'm your novice," recalling to him, with the clarity of an invitation, their first mutual onrush of desire; and already the woman had surrendered and offered, already the male was about to overwhelm the man when the clang of the church bell almost straight above their heads added its own throb to the others; their interlaced mouths disentangled for a smile. They came to themselves; and next day Tancredi had to leave.

Those were the best days in the life of Tancredi and Angelica, lives later to be so variegated, so erring, against the inevitable background of sorrow. But that they did not know then; and they were pursuing a future which they deemed more concrete than it turned out to be, made of nothing but smoke and wind. When they were old and uselessly wise their thoughts would go back to those days with insistent regret; they had been days when desire was always present because it was always overcome, when many beds had been offered and refused, when the sensual urge, because restrained, had for one second been sublimated in renunciation, that is into real love. Those days were the preparation for a marriage which, even erotically, was no success; a preparation which, however, was in a way sufficient to itself, exquisite and brief, like those melodies which outlive the forgotten works thev belong to and hint in their delicate and veiled gaiety at themes which later in the finished work were to be developed without skill, and fail.

When Angelica and Tancredii returned to the world of the living from their exile in the universe of extinct vices, forgotten virtues, and, above all, perennial desire, they were greeted with amiable irony. "How silly of you, children, to get so dusty. What a state you're in, Tancredi! " Don Fabrizio would smile; and his nephew would go off to get himself dusted. Cavriaghi sat astride a chair, conscientiously smoking a "Virginia," and looked at his friend washing his face and collar and snorting at seeing the water turn black as coal. "I don't deny it, Falconeri; the Signorina Angelica is the loveliest thing I've ever seen; but that's not a justification. Heavens, do restrain yourself a bit; today you've been alone together three whole hours; if you're so much in love then get married at once and don't let people laugh at you. You should have seen the face the Father made today when he came out of his office and found you were still sailing about in that ocean of rooms! Brakes, my dear fellow, brakes, that's what you need! You Sicilians have so few of them!"

He pontificated away, enjoying inflicting his wisdom on his older comrade, on "deaf" Concetta's cousin. But Tancredi, as he dried his hair, was furious; to be accused of having no brakes, he who had enough to stop a train! On the other hand the good Bersagliere was not entirely in the wrong: appearances had to be thought of too; though he had gone moralist like this from envy now it was obvious that his courtship of Concetta was getting nowhere. And then Angelica! That delicious taste of blood today, when he'd bitten the inside of her lip! That soft bending of hers under his embrace! But it was true, there was no sense in it all really. "Tomorrow we'll go and visit the church with a full escort, Father Pirrone and Mademoiselle Dombreuil!

Angelica meanwhile was changing her dress in the girls' room.
'Mais Angelica, est-il Dieu possible de se mettre dans un tel etat?"
Mademoiselle Dombreull was wailing, indignantly, as the lovely creature, in undershirt and petticoats, was washing her arms and neck. The cold water subdued her excitement and she had to admit to herself that the governess was right: was it worth getting so tired and so dusty and making people smile? For what? just to be gazed in the eyes, to be stroked by those slender fingers, little more . . . and her lip was still smarting. "That's enough now. Tomorrow we'll stay in the drawing room with the others." But next day those same eyes, those same fingers would cast their spell again, and the two would go back once more to their mad game of hide-and-seek.

The paradoxical result of all these separate but convergent resolutions was that at dinner in the evening the pair most in love were the calmest, reposing on their illusory good intentions for next day; and they would muse ironically on the love-relationships of the others, however minor. Concetta had disappointed Tancredi; when at Naples he had felt a certain remorse about her, and that was why he had brought Cavriaghi along with him in the hope of the Milanese replacing him with his cousin; pity also played a part in his foresight. In a subtle but easygoing way, astute as he was, he had seemed when he arrived almost to be commiserating with her at his own abandonment, and pushed forward his friend. Nothing doing: Concetta unravelled her little spool of schoolgirl gossip and looked at the sentimental little Count with icy eyes behind which there almost seemed a certain contempt. A silly girl, that i no good making any more efforts. What more did she want, anyway? Cavriaghi was a handsome lad, well set up, with a good name and flourishing dairy farms in Brianza; in fact he was one of whom that rather chilling term, "a good match," could be used. Ah: so Concetta wanted him, Tancredi, did she? He had wanted her too once; she was less beautiful, much less rich than Angelica, but she had something in her which the girl from Donnafugata would never possess. Life is a serious matter, though. Concetta must have realized that. Why had she begun treating him so badly, then? Turning on him at the Holy Spirit Convent, so many times after? The Leopard, yes, the Leopard, of course; but there must be limits even for that proud beast. "Brakes is what you want, my dear cousin, brakes! You Sicilian girls have so few of them!"

But in her heart Angelica agreed with Concetta: Cavriaghi lacked dash; after loving Tancredi, to marry Cavriaghi would be like a drink of water after a taste of this Marsala in front of her. Concetta, of course, understood that from her own experience. But those other two sillies, Carolina and Caterina, were making fishes' eyes at Cavriaghi and swooning away every time he went near them. Well, then! With her own lack of family scruples, she just could not understand why one of the two didn't try to nab the little Count from Concetta. for herself. "Boys at that age are like little dogs; one only has to whistle and they come straight away. Silly girls! With all those scruples, and taboos and pride, they won't get anyone in the end." In the smoking room, conversations between Tancredi and Cavriaghi, the only two smokers in the house and so the only exiles, also assumed a certain tone. The little Count ended by confessing to his friend the failure of his own amorous hopes. "She's too beautiful, too pure for mei she doesn't love me; it was rash for me to hope; but I'll leave here with regret like a dagger in my heart. I've not even dared make a definite proposal. I feel that to her I'm just a worm, and she's right. I must find a she-worm to put up with me." And his nineteen years made him laugh at his own discomfiture.