TO LET
The fourth of January, 188--, very early in the morning, the porter's
wife at Rossi Palazzo, formerly called Cavalcanti, put a step-ladder
against the architrave of the entrance door, to the right, and stuck
three bits of paper on the pipernina stone, with 'To Let' printed on
each piece. The three notices said that three large suites of rooms,
so many in each suite, were available, and could be seen at such an
hour. Coming down the ladder, the woman sighed dolefully. For years
none of the Rossi Palazzo suites had been to let; everyone was very
comfortable and stayed on. She had got to know them all well. In
the four months houses are looked for in Naples, from the fourth of
January to the fourth of May, she had peacocked about at her ease
always. She had not to go up and down stairs with house-hunters, as
the Rosa Mansion woman next door or the Latilla woman had to do; she
did not risk changing tenants that liked her for new ones that might
be unpleasant. Instead of which, this very year three large flats
were empty at the same time: one on the first floor--the Fragalàs';
two suites on the second floor--Dr. Amati's and the Marquis di
Formosa's. It was a real catastrophe for the porter's wife, who never
would get any rest for four months, and get no pay for her trouble.
Altogether, three large suites to be empty was really a misfortune.
'Just like my luck,' said the porter's wife to those who condoled
with her and asked the reason of these changes. She told the reason
the tenants were going at once, so that people should not believe
Rossi Palazzo was damp, that it threatened to fall, or that the
owner had got an idea of raising the rents. Nothing of the sort. It
was misfortunes. All are liable to them. It was natural Don Cesare
Fragalà and that good soul Donna Luisa should leave the house where
they had been married. It was splendid, really--a gorgeous apartment,
but they could not pay the high rent any longer. The husband had
gambled everything away at the lottery; he was loaded with debts
and ruined. Also, his confectioner's shop in Santo Spirito Square
had gone out of his possession, for his wife, fearing bankruptcy
was at hand, had decided to sell everything: jewels, plate, and
furniture were all to be sold, everything luxurious got rid of, and
a composition be made with their creditors. They were to go into a
small house, and look out for a clerk's place for her husband, to
keep the family agoing. The porter's wife and her gossiping friend
remembered the two gorgeous parties for Cesare's marriage with
Luisella and at little Agnesina's birth--all the great style of these
receptions, the sweets, wine, and ices. It was an overthrow.
'Good gracious!' muttered the inquirer, man or woman. 'Did he lose
all that at the lottery?'
'He lost all. They are left without a farthing, if they pay their
debts; and Donna Luisa insists on paying. She may die from it, but
she will pay.'
'What a scoundrel of a husband she has got!'
'We are not masters of ourselves,' the porter's wife prosed solemnly;
'we are all flesh.'
She was sorry, very, that the Fragalàs were going off to who knew
where. She would never see them again. Most of all, she was sorry for
little Agnesina; she was so good, placid, and obedient. She already
went to the infants' school, tiny little body! Her mother went with
her and brought her back carefully every day. They were a good sort,
and it had to be seen who would come in their place.
The Cavalcantis' going away was a thing that had been foreseen for
some time. The Marquis had paid no rent for several months, and
Signor Rossi had stood it. He had allowed something to be paid on
account now and then, partly because the Marquis di Formosa had been
the old owner of the house and sold it to him, and he did not want to
turn him out forcibly. How patient he had been! Now he could stand
it no longer. In the Cavalcanti household they were often short of
five francs for food. The Marquis had carried off the most necessary
furniture piece by piece, selling it to a dealer in Baracchi Square.
Donna Bianca Maria, poor soul! often dined off a hot dish that her
aunt, Sister Maria degli Angioli, sent her from the Sacramentiste
convent. The two old servants, Giovanni and Margherita, tried for
outside work. The woman darned stockings and silk-knitted goods;
the man copied papers for a magistrate's clerk. They were in such
wretchedness that but for feeling shame the door-keeper would often
carry up a dish of her macaroni or hot vegetable soup; but she dared
not. They were gentlefolk, and bore their wretchedness silently.
Besides, for want of a dower, Donna Bianca Maria Cavalcanti had been
rejected as a sister of charity. By the new laws it was not allowable
to go into other monasteries or orders; the new Government would not
even let one be a nun.
'Then are they going away in May?' asked the inquirer rather
pityingly. 'Where are they going?'
'Who can say? But I can tell you that her ladyship will not see that
day. She is so ill; she wastes away like a taper; she says nothing,
but when she has the strength to show at the window, she looks like
a shadow. She does not go out now; indeed, she has no clothes to go
out with, and if she had them she would not have the strength to go a
step. Poor lady! to think her father could have got her married if he
had chosen.'
'To whom? Why would he not allow it?'
Here began the woman's third sorrowful recital, the departure of the
third tenant, Dr. Amati, that she earned such a lot of money by, from
his sudden summonses to sick people. Alas! he was going away; indeed,
he had gone, putting her on the street, poor woman, for she would
never earn another farthing. Just fancy that Dr. Amati, who was so
rich now, and earned as much as he liked, just out of charity, he was
such a good man, had wanted to marry the Marchesina, she was so sweet
and lovely; and she had been in love with the doctor, too, from her
soul, because he had helped her in her illness--because she had known
no other man--in short, because he only could get her out of that
beggary. Well, it was not to be believed, but the Marquis di Formosa
had said 'No,' and had persisted in saying 'No,' always making his
daughter lose that bit of good luck she would never have again.
'What do you say?' her questioner cried out. 'It seems impossible.'
'Indeed, yes, it looks like a lie, but the Marquis di Formosa said
"No." He felt quite honoured and pleased that Dr. Amati had asked
for his daughter's hand, but some forbears of his long ago had left
a written paper, in which it was said the last woman child of the
family was not to marry--she must die a maid; and if this command was
not carried out, a great punishment from God would come on her. No
one knew what tears the Marchesina had shed, but her father had been
firm. So that Dr. Amati--one evening they had had a great dispute--to
avoid further occasions for anger, and to get the idea out of his
head, had taken a month's leave from the hospital, left all his
patients, and gone off to his native village to see his mother.
Then he came back to Naples, but he would not even put his foot in
Rossi Palazzo; he had gone to live in a furnished house in Chiaia
Road. At Rossi Palazzo his flat was closed with all his furniture
and books which the doctor no longer read; sometimes the housekeeper
came to dust, and went away again. In a short time now the furniture
and books would be carried away, too, and in May the flat would be
empty. Poor Donna Bianca Maria, how often she had seen her come to
the window of the inner court and gaze on Dr. Amati's closely-shut
balcony! She made one's heart sore, that poor child of the Virgin,
wasting away with sickness, melancholy, and wretchedness. Really
it looked as if there was no more oil in the lamp. Margherita, her
maid, when she spoke about her, cast down her eyes not to show she
was weeping. But the Marquis was not wrong to obey his grandsire's
wishes; there is no trifling with God's vengeance.'
'Ah! it was written,' remarked the gossip approvingly, quite
thoughtful. 'It was written, my dear. When it is God's will, what is
to be done?'
House-hunters began to flock in to inspect the flats to let in Rossi
Palazzo, and the door-keeper's hard times began--it was never-ending,
from ten in the morning to four in the afternoon, up and down the
stairs. Every time a family arrived in front of the office and made
the usual inquiries, she shook her head and got up, sighing, to go
with them to the first or second floor. She went in front, going up
very slowly, turning round to chat with the usual familiarity of
small people in Naples, making her keys rattle, as they hung from her
waist; asking if they wanted to see the doctor's rooms, for he had
given her charge of them. Monotonously wandering through the huge
rooms, rather severely furnished, where the stern moral impression of
a great science--a great will--was still present, and all the human
misery that had come there to ask help, she praised up the house
and Dr. Amati, the famous doctor that all Naples admired, or, as she
said, the whole world.
'Ah,' said the visitors, much impressed; 'and why did he leave this
house, then?'
Very hastily she replied that the doctor was going to marry and
needed a larger house, or that his business had gone in another
direction, or that he was going to a smaller apartment, having taken
a consulting-room at the hospital; in short, any lie that came
into her head--such hurried, unlikely lies that the house-hunters,
endowed with natural suspiciousness, would not take it in at all,
and interrupted her with: 'All right; we will come back.' But they
did not come back at all; indeed, the solemn, solitary look of the
flat, with too many books, too many surgical appliances, and even
the chair-bed of black leather that the sick lay on to be examined,
that looked like the first step towards the tomb, left rather a sad
impression, so they went away hurriedly, speaking low, still more
alarmed by the doctor being away, the feared and respected god of
medicine. They fled, never to return, a cloud over their spirits,
not at all anxious to come back to be dispirited by these solemn,
thought-inspiring surroundings.
The door-keeper, standing in the doorway, saw them go off quickly
towards Toledo Street, where there was movement, light, and gaiety,
and in spite of their vague promises, hesitatingly made, she knew
they would never come back. 'Nothing is arranged, dear,' she often
said, with a wearied air, to the neighbouring door-keeper at the Rosa
Mansion. Nothing was settled, even for the flats that the Fragalà and
Cavalcanti families were leaving. It looked as if the house-hunters
noticed the bad luck that came from these two flats, where so many
tears had been shed, where so many were still being shed. In the
Fragalàs' house, brave, melancholy Luisella had got rid of a great
part of the furniture; the fine red drawing-room was now bare of
its old brocade couches, and the child slept in its parents' room.
Their way of living was of a sudden meaner, smaller, being restricted
to the bedroom and dining-room. Sometimes the visitors found the
family at dinner at two o'clock. Cesare Fragalà kept his eyes on
his plate, eating stolidly. Luisella said nothing, but kept rolling
bread-pellets in her fingers. Little Agnesina, well-behaved and good
as usual, looked at her father and mother alternately, taking care
to make no noise with her spoon and fork, not to disturb them. When
the visitors came in, the father of the family got paler and the
mother cast down her eyes. Both of them at each visit felt having to
leave the house: their wounds smarted and bled afresh. The little one
looked at them, and said over in a whisper:
'Mamma, mamma!'
The visitors, led in by the door-keeper, felt they were in the
way, and excused themselves, going on into other rooms while the
woman spoke volubly to take off their attention. When they saw the
drawing-room, parlour, and lobby empty, they gave queer glances at
each other, so that the door-keeper shivered with impatience, cursing
in her heart all who go away from houses and those who go looking for
them, also those who go round to show them--that is to say, herself,
who had this hard fate. The visitors asked the stock questions rather
suspiciously:
'Why are they going away?'
Then she made up her mind and whispered:
'They have failed in business.'
'Ah, is that it?' exclaimed the visitors, much interested.
On the stair she gave particulars--told the reason of the failure,
spoke of their former riches and the want of any comforts now;
told about Signora Luisella's courage and her husband's rage for
gambling on the lottery, and poor little Agnesina's good behaviour.
She seemed to understand having come into the world and grown up
at a bad season. The house-hunters listened full of interest, with
that skin-deep emotion peculiar to Southerners; but from what they
had seen, as well as from what they had heard from the door-keeper,
they got a singular impression of evil fate--a doom weighing down an
innocent, good family; a hard destiny, destroying all the sources of
happiness and energy.
The house-hunters turned their backs on the Fragalà household
and Rossi Palazzo slowly; but they still felt sad, and spoke to
each other about there being implacable, unforeseen, overpowering
disasters, sometimes coming on humanity. Some attributed it to
perfidious fate, some to the evil eye; others were philosophical over
the passions of humanity, especially for gambling, still repeating
the phrase that includes all the indulgence and forgiveness of
Naples' folk: 'We are not our own masters.'
It was difficult to get into the Marquis di Formosa's flat. Often
Margherita objected to anyone seeing the house, in spite of its being
the right hours for visits. The door-keeper talked her over, feeling
rather annoyed. She raised her voice and asked, 'How ever would
a house be let, if no one could get in to see it?' Sometimes she
managed to get in by slipping through the half-open door. All stopped
speaking at once, for from the freezing bare lobby to the bare frozen
drawing-room there was such cold, such a smell of old dust displaced,
that it gave one a shudder. Big dull stains on the walls marked
the outline of large pieces of furniture that had once been there,
which the Marquis had sold to use what they fetched for staking on
the lottery. One saw the big hooks and nails that the pictures had
been hung from, and a heap of old yellow paper lay on the ground in
a corner of one empty room. Where curtains had been fastened to the
doors and balcony windows, there were holes in the plaster, for they
seemed to have been violently torn away.
The chapel, too, had not a saint left. Our Lady of Sorrows and the
Ecce Homo had been sold, also the vases and ornaments--even the fine
napkins with old lace, so that the despoiled altar had a doleful,
desecrated look. Sometimes the visitors, on going through the house,
met a slight girlish figure in black, her shoulders wrapped in a
shabby shawl, the lady's heavy black tresses seeming to make her face
still more bloodless. She gazed at the visitors with her sorrowful
eyes as if she did not know what was going on; a shade of grief
reanimated them for a moment when she remembered it meant they had
to leave that roof, their only refuge. The woman said in a whisper,
'It is the Marchesina!' nothing else, and that apparition was like
the outline of an irreparable disaster. Sometimes the house-hunters,
followed by Margherita and the door-keeper, came to a closed
door. The waiting-woman rather hesitated, but on a hint from the
door-keeper she made up her mind to knock.
'My lady, may we come in?'
'Yes, yes; come in,' a feeble voice answered.
Then all saw a wretched maidenly room, freezing with cold, where a
pale creature in black, wrapped in a worn shawl, was seated by the
bedside, or getting up quickly from her kneeling-desk. Then, abashed,
they just gave a quick look round, muttered vaguely some excuse, and
went off, the maiden following them with her thoughtful, sorrowing
eyes. On the stair they dared to speak. They asked the woman, as if
speaking of dead people or things:
'_What was their name?_'
'The Cavalcantis; he is a Marquis,' said the door-keeper.
Then the visitors would go off, taking with them a deep impression of
people and things that are extinct.