The Leopard (24 page)

They were going to a ball.

Palermo at the moment was passing through one of its intermittent periods of worldlinessi there were balls everywhere. After the coming of the Piedmontese, after that incident at Aspromonte, now that the specters of violence and sequestration had fled, the few hundred people who made up "the world" never tired of meeting each other, always the same ones, to exchange mutual congratulations on still existing.

So frequent were the various and yet identical parties that the Prince and Princess of Salina had moved to their town palace for three weeks so as not to have to make the long drive from San Lorenzo almost every night. The ladies' dresses would arrive from Naples in long black cases like coffins, and there would be a hysterical coming and going of milliners, hairdressers, and shoemakers, of exasperated servants carrying excited notes to dressmakers. The Ponteleone ball was to be one of the most important of the short season: important for all concerned because of the grandeur of the family, the splendor of the palace, and the number of guests; particularly important for the Salinas, who would be presenting Angelica, their nephew's lovely bride-to-be, to "society." It was still only half past ten, rather early to appear at a ball if one is Prince of Salina, whose arrival should be timed for when a fete is at its height. But this time they had to be early if they wanted to be there for the entry of the Sediras, who were the sort of people ("they don't know yet, poor things?') to take literally the hours on the gleaming invitation card. It had taken a good deal of trouble to get one of those cards sent to them; no one knew them, and the Princess Maria Stella had had to make a visit to Margherita Ponteleone ten days before; all had gone smoothly, of course, but even so it had been one of those little thorns that Tancredi's engagement had inserted into the Leopard's delicate paws.

The short drive to Palazzo Ponteleone was through a tangle of dark alleys, and they went at a walk: Via Salina, Via Valverde, down the slope of the Bambinai, so gay in daytime with its little shops of waxen figures, so dreary by night. The horseshoes sounded muffled amid the dark houses, asleep or pretending to sleep.

The girls, incomprehensible beings for whom a ball was fun and not a tedious worldly duty, were chatting away gaily in low voices; the Princess Maria Stella felt her bag to assure herself she'd brought her little bottle of smelling salts i Don Fabrizio was enjoying in anticipation the effect of Angelica's beauty on all those who did not know her and of Tancredi's luck on all those who knew him too well. But a shadow lay across his content: what would Don Calogero's tail coat be like? Certainly not like the one worn at Donnafugatai he had been put into the hands of Tancredi, who had dragged him off to the best tailor and even been present at fittings. Officially the result had seemed to satisfy him the other day; but in confidence he'd said, "The coat is the best we can do; Angelica's father lacks chic." That was undeniable; but Tancredi had guaranteed a perfect shave and decently polished shoes. That was something.

Where the Bambinai slope comes out by the apse of San Domenico the carriage stopped; there was a faint tinkle, and around the corner appeared a priest bearing a ciborium with the Blessed Sacrament; behind, a young acolyte held over him a white canopy embroidered in gold; in front, another bore a big lighted candle in his left hand and in his right a little silver bell which he was shaking with obvious enjoyment. These were the Last Sacraments; in one of those barred houses someone was in a death agony. Don Fabrizio got out and knelt on the pavement, the ladies made the sign of the Cross, the tinkling faded into the alleys tumbling down toward San Giacomo, and the barouche, with its occupants given a salutary warning, set off again toward its destination, now close by.

They arrived, they alighted in the portico; the coach vanished into the immensity of the courtyard, whence came the sound of pawing horses and the gleams of equipages arrived before.

The great stairs were of rough material but superb proportionsi rustic flowers spread simple scents at the sides of every step; on the landing between flights the amaranthine liveries of two footmen, motionless under their powder, set a note of bright color in the pearly gray surroundings. From two high little grated windows came a gurgle of laughter and childish murmurs; the small Ponteleone grandchildren, excluded from the party, were looking on, making fun of the guests. The ladies smoothed down silken folds; Don Fabrizio, gibus under an arm, was head and shoulders above them all, although a step behind. At the door of the first drawing room they met their host and hostess: he, Don Diego, white-haired and paunchy, saved from looking plebeian only by his caustic eyes; she, Donna Margherita, with the hooked features of an old priest between coruscating tiara and a triple strand of emeralds.

"You've come early! All the better! But don't worry, your guests haven't appeared yet." A new thorn pierced the sensitive fingertips of the Leopard. "Tancredi's here already too." There in the opposite corner of the drawing room was standing their nephew, black and slim as an adder, surrounded by three or four young men whom he was making roar with laughter at little tales that were quite certainly indecent; but his eyes, restless as ever, were fixed on the entrance door. Dancing had already begun, and through three, four, five antechambers came the notes of the orchestra from the ballroom.

"We're also expecting Colonel Pallavicino, who did so well at Aspromonte." This phrase from the Prince of Ponteleone was not so simple as it sounded. On the surface it was a remark without political meaning, mere praise for the tact, the delicacy, the respect, the tenderness almost with which the Colonel had had a bullet fired into General Garibaldi's foot; and for the accompaniment too, the bowing, kneeling, and handkissing of the wounded Hero lying under a chestnut tree on a Calabrian hillside, smiling from emotion and not from irony as he might well have done (for Garibaldi, alas, lacked a sense of humor).

In an intermediate stage of the princely psyche the phrase had a technical meaning and was intended to praise the Colonel for having made the proper dispositions and carrying out successfully against the same adversary what Landi had so unaccountably failed to do at Calatafimi. At heart, though, Ponteleone thought that the Colonel had "done well" in managing to stop, defeat, wound, and capture Garibaldi and, in so doing, saving the compromise so laboriously achieved between the old and the new. Evoked, created almost by the approving words and still more approving thoughts, the Colonel now appeared at the top of the stairs. He was moving amid a tinkle of epaulettes, chains, and spurs in his well-padded doublebreasted uniform, a plumed hat under his arm and a curved saber propped on his left wrist. He was a man of the world and of graceful manners, well versed, as all Europe knew by now, in hand-kissings dense with meaning; every lady whose fingers were brushed that night by his perfumed mustache was able to re-evoke from first-hand knowledge the historical incident already so highly praised in the popular press. After sustaining the shower of praise poured over him by the Ponteleones, after squeezing the two fingers held out to him by Don Fabrizio, Pallavicino merged into the scented froth of a group of ladies. His consciously virile features showed above their snowy white shoulders, and an occasional phrase came over: "I was sobbing, Countess, sobbing like a child"; or, "He was handsome and calm as an archangel." His male sentimentality enchanted ladies reassured already by the musketry of his Bersaglieri. Angelica and Don Calogero were late, and the Salina family were thinking of plunging into the other rooms when Tancredi was seen to detach himself from his little group and move like a'Zart toward the entrance: the expected pair had arrived. Above the measured swirl of her pink crinoline Angelica's white shoulders merged into her strong soft armsj her head looked small and proud on its smooth youthful neck adorned with intentionally modest pearls. And when from the opening of her long kid glove she drew a hand which though not small was perfectly shaped, on it was seen glittering the Neapolitan sapphire. In her wake came Don Calogero, a rat escorting a flaming rose; though his clothes had no elegance, this time they were at least decent. His only mistake was wearing in his buttonhole the cross of the Order of the Crown of Italy recently conferred on him; but this soon vanished into one of the secret pockets in Tancredi's tail coat.

Her fiance had already taught Angelica to be impassive, that fundamental of distinction ("You can be expansive and noisy only with me, my dear; with all others you must be the future Princess of Falconeri, superior to many, equal to all"). And so she greeted her hostess with a totally unspontaneous but highly successful mixture of virginal modesty, neo-aristocratic hauteur, and youthful grace.

The people of Palermo are Italians after all, and so particularly responsive to the appeal of beauty and the prestige of money; apart from which Tancredi, however attractive, being also notoriously penniless, was considered an undesirable match (mistakenly, as was seen afterward when too late); and so he was appreciated more by married women than by marriageable girls. This merging of merits and demerits now had the effect of Angelica's being received with unexpected warmth. One or two young men might well have regretted not having dug up for themselves so lovely an amphora brimming with coin; but Donnafugata was a fief of Don Fabrizio's, and if he had found that treasure there and then passed it to his beloved Tancredi, one could no more be envious of that than of his finding a sulphur mine on his land; it was his property, there was nothing to be said. But even this transient resentment melted before the rays of those eyes. At one moment there was a press of young men wanting to be introduced and to ask for a dance; to each one of them Angelica, dispensed a smile from her strawberry lips, to each she showed her card in which every polka, mazurka, and waltz was followed by the possessive signature: Falconeri. There was also a general attempt by young ladies to get on familiar terms; and after an hour Angelica found herself quite at her ease among people who had not the slightest idea of her mother's crudity or her father's rascality.

Her bearing did not contradict itself for an instant: never was she seen wandering about alone with head in the clouds, never did her arms move from her body, never was her voice raised above the murmur (quite high, anyway) of the other ladies. For Tancredi had told her the day before, "You see darling, we (and so you now) are more attached to our houses and furniture than we are to anything else, and nothing offends us more than indifference about those; so look at everything and praise everything anyway, Palazzo Ponteleone is worth it; but as you're not just a girl from the provinces whom everything surprises, always put a little reserve into your praise; admire, but always compare with some archetype seen before and known to be outstanding." The long visits to the palace at Donnafugata had taught Angelica a great deal, so that evening she admired every tapestry, but said that the ones in Palazzo Pitti had finer borders; she praised a Madonna by Dolci but remembered that the Grand Duke's had a more expressive melancholyi even of the slice of tart brought her by an attentive young gentleman she said that it was excellent, almost as good as that of "Monsui Gaston," the Salina chef. And as Monsu Gaston was positively the Raphael of cooks, and the tapestries of Palazzo Pitti the Monso Gaston of hangings, no one could complain, in fact everyone was flattered by the comparison; and so from that very evening she began to acquire the reputation of a polite but inflexible art expert which was to accompany her quite unwarrantably throughout her life.

While Angelica was reaping laurels, Maria Stella sat gossiping on a sofa with two old friends, and Concetta and Carolina were freezing with their shyness the politest partners, Don Fabrizio was wandering around the rooms; he kissed the hands of ladies he met, clapped on the shoulder men he wanted to greet, but he could feel ill-humor creeping slowly over him. First of all, he didn't like the house; the Ponteleones hadn't done it up for seventy years and it was still the same as in the time of Queen Maria Carolina, and he, who considered himself to have modern tastes, was indignant. "Good God, with Diego's income it wouldn't take long to sweep away all these consoles, all these overdecorated mirrors! Then order some decent rosewood and plush furniture, and so live in comfort himself and not make his guests wander around catacombs like these. I'll end up by telling him so." But he never told Diego, for these opinions only stemmed from his mood and his tendency to contradiction; they were soon forgotten, and he himself never changed a thing either at San Lorenzo or at Donnafugata. Meanwhile, however, they served to increase his disquiet.

The women at the ball did not please him either. Two or three among the older ones had been his mistresses, and, seeing them now grown heavy with years and childbearing, it was an effort to imagine them as they were twenty years before, and he was annoyed at the thought of having thrown away his best years in chasing (and catching) such slatterns. The younger women weren't up to much either, except for one or two: the youthful Duchess of Palma, whose gray eyes and gentle reserve he admired, Tutd Uscari also, with whom, had he been younger, he might well have found himself in unique and exquisite harmony. But the others

. . . it was a good thing that Angelica had emerged from the shades of Donnafugata to show these Palermitans what a really lovely woman was like.

Thm was a good deal to be said for his strictures; in recent years the consequences of the frequent marriages between cousins due to sexual lethargy and territorial calculations, of the dearth of proteins and overabundance of starch in the food, of the total lack of fresh air and movement, had filled the drawing room's with a mob of girls incredibly short, unsuitably dark, unbearably giggly. They were sitting around in huddles, letting out an occasional hoot at an alarmed young man, and destined, apparently, to act only as background to three or four lovely creatures such as fair-haired Maria Palma, the exquisite Eleonora. Giardinelli, who glided by like swans over a frog-filled pool.