Tuscan Rose (5 page)

‘Italy needs a man like Il Duce,’ the Marchesa said, crossing her arms and shivering although the room wasn’t cold. ‘He has the touch of an artist but also the mind of a warrior. He is a leader who loves his people but is prepared to bend them if required.’

The Marchese seemed about to disagree but the conversation ended when Signor Bonizzoni directed three servants into the room. The servants carried trays with such an abundance of food stacked on them that Rosa was sure other guests must be joining the party. It was more food than she had seen in her life. But no-one else appeared and the servants set out the dishes on the table.

The appetiser was a platter of
crostini
smeared with chicken liver pâté and some slices of salami. Rosa was ravenous and bit into the warm bread slice. Suddenly the platter of
crostini
began to shake and wobble before her eyes. Three chickens emerged from it and walked across the table, poking around the dishes and clucking to each other. One of them jumped onto the soup urn and looked at her inquisitively. The salami slices swelled and took on the form of a sow lying on her side with piglets sucking at her teats and wiggling their curly tails. Something began to tickle and scratch Rosa’s throat. She gagged and turned away, spitting the mouthful of food she had been chewing into her table napkin. She gasped when she looked at it and saw a fluffy yellow chick cheeping at her before gradually fading away.

Rosa turned back to the table. The chickens and the pig were gone and the others were discussing the latest work of the poet D’Annunzio as if nothing had happened.

The next dish was a plate of fish soup accompanied by a calamari salad. Signor Bonizzoni served the soup and passed a bowl to one of the servants who placed it before Rosa. It smelled salty like the liver. Rosa steeled herself and ventured a few mouthfuls. She placed her spoon in the bowl and saw a school of anchovies swimming around it, flashing their silver bellies at her. The anchovies disappeared and a squid emerged from the bottom of the soup. As Rosa watched it propel itself around the bowl a feeling of sadness washed over her. A shadow seemed to fall over the room. She heard the moan of a cow and looked up to see that the first-course dishes had been cleared and one of the servants had placed before her a slice of steak on a bed of white beans and roasted potatoes.

She glanced up at the others. The Marchese, Vittorio and Clementina were eating their steaks with an accompaniment of steamed vegetables. The Marchesa, however, ate the meat on its own. Her plate was bloody and it seemed to Rosa that she was cutting her steak into smaller and smaller pieces until eventually she was putting only the slightest shreds of raw flesh into her mouth.

A feeling of dread fingered its way up Rosa’s spine. The apple and the almonds she had eaten that morning had been living foods, but everything on the table before her now had died in pain and fear. Waves of heat burned her neck and cheeks. She reached for her glass of water, her hand trembling. Suddenly her stomach wrenched and she vomited onto her plate a bloody mess of sinews and muscles. The horror of it made her cry out. She looked at the others but no-one noticed. She threw up again, this time whole anchovies, squids and chicks. She struggled to stand up and rushed from the room.

Somehow, despite the pounding in her head and the weakness in her legs, she managed to climb to the fourth floor and run to her room. She headed towards the bed, intending to lie down, but her bowels rumbled. She managed to reach the bathroom and lift her skirt before foul-smelling faeces exploded from her. She tried to stand up but cramps seized her again and she expelled more diarrhoea. It was as if her body was trying to purge itself of some evil she had ingested. Chills and heat ran alternately over her skin. Rosa clasped her hands around her knees, weeping from the pain and humiliation. A moment later she passed out.

‘Have a sip of this,’ a woman’s voice said.

Rosa struggled to open her eyes. She glimpsed two blurry figures bending over her. One was pressing a cup of warm liquid to her lips.

‘She’s still weak,’ the other woman said.

Rosa recognised the voices: Ada and Paolina. She blinked and her vision cleared. She was lying in her bed and the windows were open. She managed to take a sip of the chamomile tea Ada was offering her. Reaching down her leg, Rosa realised she was in her chemise. A scent of pine tickled her nostrils. There was no trace of the intestinal carnage she had experienced before she passed out.

‘What happened?’ she asked.

‘You fainted at the table,’ Ada told her. ‘I’m not surprised. The food was too rich for you. I know nuns prefer to eat simply.’

Rosa thought of her meals at the convent: bread with olive oil and salt, a little wine mixed with water, bean soups and vegetables freshly picked from the garden. Very rarely any meat.

She tried to lift her head but it felt too heavy. ‘I sense the origin of things,’ she said. ‘I’ve always done it.’ She recalled the vision of the wheat field she had experienced that morning and the veal calf she had seen crying in its stall. ‘But I’m feeling the images much more strongly than before,’ she said. ‘It’s as though being here—’

‘Hush now,’ said Ada, pressing the cup of tea to Rosa’s lips again. ‘Rest now and you will feel better in the morning.’

Rosa’s eyelids grew heavy and she sank into a sleep of feverish dreams. She saw Ada slip into the room and place a clove of garlic on her chest. ‘Something is in the wind,’ she heard Paolina whisper. ‘The witches are returning to the Villa Scarfiotti. I feel them everywhere. It was impossible to get the fire started this morning.’

‘They are playing at mischief to gain our attention,’ Ada replied. ‘Or maybe to gain
her
attention.’

Early the following morning, Ada arrived with a tray of warm cornmeal porridge for Rosa. ‘This will settle your stomach,’ she said, placing the tray on the bedside table and propping the pillows so that Rosa could sit up. ‘In the future I’ll make sure that you are given simple meals when you eat with the family.’

Rosa’s hand fell to her chest. There was no clove of garlic. She had been dreaming. The conversation she’d thought she’d heard between Ada and Paolina had not taken place.

‘I’m so embarrassed I fainted at lunch,’ she said. ‘The Marchese wanted to formally introduce me to his wife. I must apologise. Do you think they will dismiss me?’

Ada shook her head and grinned. ‘I don’t think they even noticed. Signor Bonizzoni saw you weren’t eating and realised what had happened. He carried you up here with the assistance of one of the servants.’

Rosa remembered the way the family had spoken about her as if she wasn’t present, and realised that the idea that they may not have seen her faint wasn’t so incredible at all.

The porridge restored her strength. Warmth flooded through her with each spoonful. She felt the sensation of sunlight on her skin and imagined herself playing her flute in a corn field, each note of
Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring
floating away on the breeze.

After Ada left, Rosa climbed out of bed. The sight of herself in the bathroom mirror surprised her and she instinctively looked away. She filled the sink with water and lathered the castile soap in her hands. Only then did she turn back to her reflection. Like an artist studying her subject, she viewed her features. So this is what I look like, she thought, observing the slight upward slant of her eyes framed by dark eyebrows, her long narrow nose pinched slightly at the tip, her bow-like lips. She massaged the soap over her cheeks and forehead before plunging her hands into the water and rinsing the residue away. She threw back her head. Streams of water ran down her long neck and onto her chemise. She reached for the washcloth hanging by the bath, soaked it in the sudsy water and pressed it under her arms before brushing it over her shoulders and then through the armholes of her chemise to wash her chest and back. The water droplets made the material of the chemise transparent.

Rosa stared at herself then reached up, her hands hovering over her chest. She slowly slid the chemise straps down over her shoulders. Her breasts bounced up like two moons. The large nipples startled her. She had never observed her body this way before; the way someone else would see it. As long as she could remember she had always bathed in her chemise and had never looked down. It was a sin to admire one’s body. ‘Modesty is a woman’s most precious quality,’ Don Marzoli preached. ‘A woman who loses it, loses everything.’

A feeling of shame bit at Rosa’s stomach but her curiosity was stirred. She had understood that faces were all different but bodies too? It was liberating to feel the air on her skin, and her fingers and toes tingled with the pleasure. Despite the guilt gnawing at her, she was buoyant. She drew a breath and walked back from the mirror so that she could see herself at full length. Slowly, she slid the
chemise down over her torso to her hips. The flesh over her ribs was firm under her fingertips. She caressed her stomach and touched the beauty spot near her navel. The chemise slipped. She tugged it down her pear-shaped thighs, tattooed with fine lines where her skin had stretched during puberty.

When she saw the mound of black hair that grew between her legs, a memory returned to her. The morning when she was thirteen and had found flecks of blood on her underwear. She had been reassured when Suor Maddalena explained to her that she was not hurt, she had simply become a woman. Rosa had been so thrilled by the transformation that she had told everyone she met that day, including Don Marzoli, about her new status. But when the Badessa was informed, she took Rosa aside and whispered to her, ‘You must never speak of this to anyone. It is each woman’s shame to bear; a reminder that we led Adam into sin.’

The joy Rosa had been experiencing in discovering her body in the mirror disappeared and a sickening fear gripped her. She hurriedly covered herself with the chemise again. Her skin prickled with shame. ‘Forgive me, Father,’ she prayed. She hung a towel over the mirror and hurried to her dressing room, where she hastily pulled on her dress and stockings.

Despite Ada’s assurance that the Marchese and his wife had not noticed her faint during lunch the previous day, Rosa thought that she should apologise to her employers as soon as possible. She wondered where she would find them. But when she walked out of her room she noticed Clementina waiting in the schoolroom opposite. It was just after seven o’clock.

‘Good morning, Signorina Bellocchi,’ the girl said. ‘I hope you are feeling better today.’

‘I am, thank you,’ Rosa replied. ‘But aren’t you early for lessons? Have you had breakfast yet?’

Clementina beamed at her. ‘I’m too excited to eat. I’ve never had a governess before. Only a silly nursemaid who didn’t know much, and Babbo.’

Rosa smiled at her young student. There was a pile of books and papers on the desk and Rosa examined some of them: a mathematics textbook; a comprehension exercise written out in a masculine hand; and a book on the theory of teaching. She opened the theory book and found that some of the text had been underlined:
It is the teacher’s responsibility to encourage the student to work. Discipline should arise out of interest, not obedience or fear.

‘Your father is very interested in your education,’ Rosa said, pulling up a chair and sitting beside Clementina. ‘Shall we begin with some fractions and decimals?’

Rosa had been good at mathematics but had not particularly liked the subject. She had preferred music, languages and biology. Clementina, on the other hand, attacked her sums with gusto. She was advanced for her years and Rosa was amazed at how quickly she worked out problems. As they progressed, Rosa began to feel less apprehensive about her new life. If Clementina approached all her lessons with such enthusiasm, it would be a pleasure to teach her. Clementina’s rhythmic recital of the times tables lulled Rosa into a sense of calm, and she glanced out of the window at the green hills in the distance and wondered what the future would hold. Would she always be a governess? Or would she marry one day and have children of her own? She realised that she had not considered such possibilities while she had been living at the convent.

Clementina finished her tables. Rosa took out the comprehension exercise but before they could begin she looked up to see the Marchese standing in the doorway with a frown on his face.

‘You’ve started very early,’ he said. ‘I didn’t anticipate any lessons until nine. You should have consulted me before taking things into your own hands.’

Rosa was stung by the rebuff. The ease she had been feeling dissolved. She stood up and stammered an apology, both for starting the lessons early and for fainting at lunch the previous day. Before she could finish, Clementina ran to her father.

‘It was my idea, Babbo,’ she said, pressing herself against his arm. ‘I wanted to start early. I want to learn everything that Signorina Bellocchi has to teach me.’

‘I see,’ the Marchese said, stroking his daughter’s cheek. He glanced in Rosa’s direction. ‘I had planned that Clementina would study with you from nine until four,’ he said. ‘You can then have some time to yourself before joining us for dinner, unless the Marchesa and I have guests. At those times, you and Clementina will have supper together. And you will need to supervise her going to bed until I choose a suitable nursemaid for that.’

‘Yes,’ Rosa said.

The apologetic tone of his voice soothed her, although, after what had happened the previous day, she was not thrilled at the idea of dining with the family. She was also surprised at his request that she put Clementina to bed. Why wasn’t the Marchesa going to perform that task? When Rosa was Clementina’s age, she had fantasised that she had a mother who tucked her into bed and listened to her prayers every night.

‘Clementina will study from Monday to Saturday and on Wednesday afternoons you must take her to Piccole Italiane,’ the Marchese continued. ‘While Clementina is there you will run some errands for me in Florence.’

Rosa nodded. She had the vague idea that Piccole Italiane was a fascist organisation for children. From the look of disdain on the Marchese’s face when he said the name, she gathered it was his wife’s idea. Perhaps it was his compromise for not sending Clementina to a fascist private school. The Marchese’s eyes swept over Rosa’s faded cotton dress. She blushed. It was the better of the two dresses she owned but its worn appearance stood out more at the villa than it had at the convent.