“How is Donna Aldoina?”
Both the brothers hung their heads and did not answer.
They were like each other; in fact, they were twins. Both were tall and
thin, and a little bent. They had the same light-coloured eyes, the
same small silky beards, the same pale, restless, nervous hands, the
hands of hysterical subjects. But in Antonello these marks of weakness
and disorder were deeper and more irreparable. He was doomed.
During the pause that followed, I vainly sought for words to express
myself. I was in bondage to a kind of melancholy stupor; it seemed as
if the whole weight of my weary body had fallen on my soul. The road
skirted a line of cliffs, and the horses’ trot as it resounded on the
hard ground awoke echoes in the lonely hollows. At a turn of the road
the river came in sight in the valley, its innumerable windings shining
in the sun. A mass of white ruins was visible, enclosed like an island
within one of these curves.
“Is not that Linturno over there?” I asked, as I recognised the dead
city.
“Yes, that is Linturno,” replied Oddo. “Do you remember? We once went
there together....”
“I remember.”
“What a long time ago it is!”
“What a long time!”
“Now there is not much difference between Linturno and Trigento,” said
Antonello, stroking his beard hesitatingly with slender fingers, while
his eyes seemed to have lost consciousness of outward things. “You will
see to-morrow.”
“You are disheartening him!” interrupted Oddo with some irritation. “He
won’t come to-morrow.”
“Yes, yes, I will come,” I assured them, but I had to force myself to
smile and shake off my own overpowering melancholy. “I will come, and
shall find some way of cheering you up. You seem to me a little ill
from loneliness, a little depressed.”
Antonello, who was sitting opposite me, laid his hand on my knee and
leant forward to look into my eyes with an indefinable expression of
fear and anxiety written in his face, as though he had perceived some
terrible meaning in my words, and wished to question me about it. And
once more his white face close to my own seemed even in the daylight
to belong to a different world, where it existed alone; and brought
to my mind those emaciated, spiritual faces that stand out from the
mysterious backgrounds of sacred pictures darkened by time and the
smoke of candles.
It was only for a moment. He drew back again without speaking.
“I have brought my horses with me,” I added, controlling my agitation;
“we shall go for long rides every day. You must take exercise and shake
off the idleness and ennui. How do you pass the hours?”
“In counting them,” said Oddo.
“And your sisters?”
“Oh, poor things!” murmured Oddo with tremulous tenderness in his
voice. “Massimilla prays; Violante stifles herself with the perfumes
sent her by the Queen; Anatolia--Anatolia is the one who keeps us
alive, she is our soul, she lives entirely for us.”
“And the prince?”
“He has aged very much; he is quite white now.”
“And Don Ottavio?”
“He hardly ever leaves his rooms. We have almost forgotten the sound of
his voice.”
“And Donna Aldoina?” I was just going to ask again, but I restrained
myself and was silent.
We were now in the undulating valley of the Saurgo, in a warm hollow.
“How early the spring is here!” I exclaimed, with a desire to console
these wretched beings and myself as well. “In February the first
flowers come out. Is not that in itself a privilege? You do not know
how to enjoy the things life offers you. You convert a garden into a
prison and torture yourselves within it.”
“Where are the flowers?” asked Antonello with his painful smile.
We all three began to look out for flowers. The ground was tawny
and rugged as a lion’s skin; it seemed made to nourish this dry and
harassed but in reality fruitful vegetation. “There they are!” I cried
with a keen feeling of pleasure, as I pointed out a row of almond trees
on a long billowy-looking mound.
“They are on your property,” said Oddo.
We had indeed reached the neighbourhood of Rebursa. The rocky chain
of hills with its broken outlines and sharp peaks, and the winding
Saurgo lapping at its foot, stretched out on the right, and rose step
by step up to the highest summit, Mount Corace, which glittered in the
sun like a helmet. To the left of the road the ground sloped away in
undulations, like a wide stretch of sandy shore, and further away it
rose into brown lumpy hills like the humps of camels in the desert.
“Look! look! There are some more up there!” I cried as I noticed
another pale silvery cloud of blossom. “Don’t you see, Antonello?”
He looked less at the almond blossom than at me, a timorous smile of
amazement hovering on his lips, wondering perhaps at the childish
joy which the sight of the early flowers had awaked in me. “But what
fairer welcome could the land beloved of my father have given me? What
brighter festal decorations could this hardy country with its backbone
of rock have worn?”
“If Anatolia, Violante, and Massimilla were only here!” exclaimed Oddo,
who began to share my unexpected enthusiasm. “Ah, if they were only
here!” and regret was expressed in his voice.
“We must bring them here among the flowers,” said Antonello softly.
“See what a quantity!” I continued, giving myself up to the novel
pleasure with the more confidence that I felt able to transfer some
share of it to these poor pent-up souls. “I am glad they belong to me,
Oddo.”
“We must bring them here among the flowers,” repeated Antonello softly,
as if in a dream.
It seemed to me that his feverish eyes were refreshed by the sight of
these pure blossoms, and that in his gentle words they were fused with
the vague outlines of his three sisters: “Massimilla prays; Violante
stifles herself with perfumes; Anatolia is our life and soul.”
“Stop!” I rose and said to the coachman, for a sudden idea had struck
me, and filled me with singular delight. “Let us get out; let us go
into the fields. I want you to carry home some branches. It will be a
treat for them down there.”
Oddo and Antonello looked at each other with rather a puzzled air, half
smiling, half shy, as if the idea were something unforeseen and strange
which at once scared them and gave them a delicious sensation. They had
shown me their malady, they had revealed to me their sorrow, they had
spoken to me of the gloomy prison from which they had come, and were
now about to enter again; and here was I, on the high road, asking them
to acknowledge and celebrate the feast of spring: of that spring which
they had forgotten, and which they appeared to be seeing for the first
time after long years, gazing on it with mingled fear and joy as if it
were a miracle.
“Let us get out!”
I was tired no longer, for I felt within me the abundance of life,
and that exaltation which spontaneous acts of generosity give to the
spirit. I was liberal of myself to these two needy souls; I warmed
them at my fire, I slaked their thirst with my wine. I read in their
eyes (and they were continually looking at me) a kind of submission
and faithful surrender. Already they both belonged to me; so I could
exert my benevolence and my power over them without fear of failure.
“What are you waiting for? Won’t you get out?” I asked Antonello, who
was standing with his foot on the step, hesitating as if some danger
threatened him.
The contracted smile was still on his face. He was making a visible
effort as he put his foot to the ground; he staggered as though he had
miscalculated the height, and his first steps were jerky and uncertain.
I helped him up the path. As he felt the soft earth sink under his
footsteps he paused; and with face turned towards the blossoming trees,
he breathed hard, drank in the beautiful sight with his pale eyes, and
appeared to be almost dazzled.