‘Oh, enough! I can’t take it anymore, staying here helpless while our comrades are rotting in prisons or fighting to the bitter end. Gramsci’s death seems to me to be a symbol of our destiny: to rot away! to waste away, impotent!.. He was crushed in that photograph. Rather than having fallen in battle, he’d rotted away.’
‘That I can understand. As I said to you back then: if you regain your strength one day, you can go. Now you’re so strong that I would no longer tremble to see you go. But why repudiate all these years that have allowed you to recover your health and your strength?’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘I’ll explain it to you. Why didn’t you tell me right away that it was time for you to go, instead of accusing me, disowning our years together, blaming yourself? That’s ingratitude!’
‘In what sense?’
‘Yes, ingratitude towards life … I have the suspicion — I’m beginning to see you clearly, Joyce — that you’re trying to tell yourself that those were lost, shameful years so you can acquire the strength you don’t have. You remind me of Franco.’
‘And who is he?’
‘That friend of Prando who enlisted to go off to the war in Spain. Almost overnight he fabricated a Fascist loyalty so as not to admit that he wanted to get away from home and his mother. And I’ve seen many others go off like that. Often they enlist to escape poverty, but that’s too dishonourable for a man, so they convince themselves it’s for an ideal. That’s just how it is, soldier Jò! But tell me, who rekindled this sense of duty in you, that brother of yours? What did you say his name was?’
‘His name is Timur.’
‘Is it this Timur, then, who’s changed you so?’
‘No, it’s Jose.’
‘Jose?’
‘Yes. Timur brought me an old letter from Jose.’
‘Well? Is he calling you back to him?’
‘No! He informs me that he left for Spain with the International Brigades88 and advises me not to move … As if I couldn’t act without his protection!’
‘And you’re leaving with Timur?’
‘Not at all! I don’t need any male protection!’
‘Not like fragile little Modesta, who calls Mattia back to get her some money, right?’
‘Exactly! Especially since there was no need to. You knew you could count on the money I still have in Switzerland.’
‘Why should I spend your money, Joyce, when someday you might need it? Why shouldn’t I try to sell my paintings?’
‘But to lower yourself to the point of seeking help from an apolitical individual, a mafioso…’
‘Mattia is not a mafioso! I accept help from any hand I find to be loyal and strong, be it male or female. If I had wanted to be protected, “like a woman”, to use your terms, I would have married him years ago.’
‘But you’re already married!’
‘I told you! He would have done away with my dear Ippolito, may he live to be a hundred! Yours is a false pride that stems directly from a sense of inferiority … how can you not see that?’
‘Spare me your cut-rate analysis.’
‘I learned how to analyse from you. But I realize for the first time that we will never see eye to eye on this. I also realize that the appearance of your brother’s ghost has erected a wall between us.’
‘He’s not a ghost. He’s alive and very dangerous. I sent him away, but he’ll be back, I know. We’re a horrible family, Modesta. I should never have been born. I should never have come here to upset your life!’
Silent tears slide down Joyce’s composed face. How had Beatrice managed to go from tears to laughter in the short distance between the chair and the sofa? She’d be huddled up, crying, and suddenly, at some invisible signal, she’d go flying across the carpet to Modesta, smiling. And how could Joyce’s indifferent face dissolve into those tears, all the while remaining motionless? The loving feeling returned, always the same and always unpredictable. Except that, when it soared in the joy of the past, it was life itself, but if it brought with it that emptiness, then the time had come. Hadn’t Joyce said, ‘It’s time to turn on the light’? All I could do was take a step back and study her, study that stranger who, consciously or not, had decided to leave, to go alone. I went to meet that little death she had chosen for us, and took her hands. I wouldn’t say anything more. A good lawyer knows when it’s a lost cause.
‘If Timur comes back, Modesta, you mustn’t see him. He’s dangerous. He’s in Taormina with an archaeological expedition led by Himmler.’
‘Himmler?’
‘He’s not my father’s son, I told you. He’s the son of a man who appeared after my father died — a cousin, my mother said. He came to lunch every day and then stayed to talk with her in the parlour. It was he who supported us. He was very wealthy, one of the biggest bankers in Vienna. He lived in Istanbul because he had weak lungs. When he died, he left everything to Timur, who was six years old at the time. A year later my mother sent Timur to study at an Austrian boarding school. Later, much later, I found out that this “cousin” had wanted to marry her, but my mother refused in order to remain faithful to the memory of my father. Some faithfulness! She did everything she could to pass Timur off to me as my father’s son. But one fine day I managed to uncover the truth on my own … Our family is horrible! For one thing, Timur, brought up in that boarding school in Austria, is … I can’t tell you, he’s awful!
‘Has he become a Nazi?’
‘How could Timur do that?’
‘Could he have done otherwise? I shudder for Prando, even though he has us as an example and has our help. Can a boy, a young man, endure always being different from everyone else? And for how long? A few days ago he asked me if he could go to Palermo for the Littoriali,89 to see what they are. When they took place in Naples he was still too young to be interested in them.’
‘And what did you say?’
‘I told him to go! God forbid I should stop him from doing something, but I shudder … Tell me, so Timur is one of them?’
‘He’s been summoned by Himmler for a dig, perhaps a pointless one. Himmler insists that at the time of the Siculans … but what do I care about Himmler and his excavations! It’s Timur I fear. If he comes back, you mustn’t see him!’
71
Timur comes toward me in his impeccable suit, studying me calmly. Barely taller than Joyce, he moves in that civilian attire as if he were in uniform.
‘I can’t thank you enough, Princess, for having accepted my invitation.’
‘But you speak Italian…’
‘My father was Italian, Princess, and I am very fond of our country.’
It’s up to him to speak, and I have no intention of losing the advantage. Not a trace of uncertainty or expectancy disturbs the composed elegance of those hands and face during the long silence I impose. The same consistent curve, from the strong chin to the high forehead, separates the unnaturally pale face from the closely cropped black hair. I hadn’t been mistaken: even bald, Joyce would have been quite beautiful. The cheeks are marked by scars: rather than random wounds, they seem like precise engravings, carved by the hand of a surgeon-sculptor. Though I am familiar with the ritual known as the Mensur,90 it’s the first time I’ve seen those marks up close and I start counting them: one, two, three … As I count I meet Joyce’s gaze, the same dark intensity.
‘The manager of this hotel was brilliant and daring to break through the sacred walls of the convent and put in these large windows. And his daring was rewarded. This view is unparalleled! I’ve noticed that even the most boisterous guests fall silent upon entering this room. The hallowed past of the centuries-old walls captures them and they are absorbed in this silence; hypnotized, I would say, by the rugged, enchanting backdrop that plunges steeply to infinity — look down there — and then rises again to Etna’s slopes. If you didn’t have the feeling of secure walls behind you, this view would be a chasm. Is that the word? Please, come and sit down. Would you like something?’