Fantasy: A Novel

by Matilde Serao

He was wandering. Presently he felt under the pillow, and drew out a letter and a small packet.

“... listen, she sent me this, with the letter. They are the wedding rings. Here is the one I gave her, here is the one you gave Andrea. Do you think she will ever return?”

“No,” said Caterina, rising to her feet, “they will never return.” She took her own ring and went away, leaving Alberto still wandering.

“If she had but lied a little longer; she might have waited for my death! She would not have had long to wait, miserable....”

IV.

In the night, in her dark room, seated beside her bed, Caterina pondered. She had returned home without speaking to any one; no one had said anything to her, for they all knew what had happened. The house was in order, composed, cold, and silent; on the table was the note she had written to her husband, to apologise for having gone out alone. She tore it up, and threw the pieces into the waste-paper basket. Giulietta, who had crept in after her, to try and proffer a word of consolation, was dismissed as usual with a gentle good-night. The maid told the coachman that the Signora had not shed a tear, but that the expression of her face was “dreadful.” They all pitied her, but they had long foreseen what would happen; they knew of it at Centurano: you’d have to be blind not to have seen it.

Then the conventicle dispersed, and the house was wrapped in profound silence. Caterina had extinguished the light in her own room, but had not undressed. Instinctively she craved for darkness, wherein to hang her head and think. She could distinguish the whiteness of the bed in the gloom, and it frightened her. She sat with one hand over the other, pressing the point of her nails against the third finger of the hand that bore the two marriage rings. Now and again, when she became aware of the contact of that second ring, she started and moaned. Her life, quiet and uniform as it had been, came before her with such distinctness of detail that it seemed as if she lived it over again. She had had a mother until she was seven; a father, until she was nine; and lived with her aunt until she was eleven. A peaceful childhood, except for the formless, shadowy sorrow of those two deaths, a sorrow bereft of cries or tears. She had always been ashamed to cry in the presence of other people; she had wept for her dead at night, in her little bed, with the sheet drawn over her face. Later, at her aunt’s, she had been seriously ill, a very dangerous illness—a combination of every disease that is incidental to childhood. She remembered that the Sacrament had been administered to her in great haste, in the fear that she would die. She had not understood its meaning, and had not been very strongly impressed; since then she had retained a calm religious piety, devoid of mystic enthusiasm, but characterised by the rigorous strictness of observance with which she fulfilled all her duties.

When she recovered, her aunt had put her to school, the best school in Naples, and had undertaken the management of her fortune. She was a cold, trustworthy, childless aunt, who did not incline to demonstrations of affection, but who visited her punctually on Thursdays in the parlour, and drove her out on Sundays, and took her to the theatre. Caterina recalled the first year at school, where she had been happier than at home, where she had given herself to the simple pleasure of being with other children; not playing, but watching them play; not speaking, but hearing them speak. Study she found rather hard; she had been obliged to apply herself to succeed in learning anything; the teachers had always given her the maximum marks for good conduct, but not so many for study. She had never been punished nor reproached that first year, and at the final examination she came out fifteen, among twenty-eight: she had gained a silver medal for good conduct.

The duality of her school-life began with the appearance of Lucia, whom she had met with in the second class. A wonderful pupil, who surpassed all her fellows; a slight, thin girl, whose long black plaits hung down her back, who spent three days in school and three in the infirmary, who was an object of charity to the teachers, the assistants, and her companions. She was a sickly, pensive child, whose great eyes swallowed up her whole face, and who could master anything without opening a book. Many girls desired her friendship, but one day she said to Caterina, in her weak voice:

“They tell me that you have neither mother nor father; my mother is dead too, and that is why I wear a black band round my arm, for mourning. Will you be my friend?” All at once, Caterina remembered that she had begun to love the lithe, melancholy creature with her whole heart, the girl who was as slender as a reed, who never played, and who talked like a maiden of fifteen when she was but a child of eleven. She remembered how this childish love was strengthened by their living together under one roof. In the hours of recreation they had walked up and down the corridors like the others, they had held each other by the hand, but without speaking. During school-hours they sat on the same bench, lending each other a pen, a scrap of paper, or a pencil: at table they sat opposite, looking at each other, and Caterina passed her share of pudding to Lucia, who could eat nothing else. In chapel they prayed together, and in the dormitory they were not far apart. In talent, in beauty, and in stature Lucia had always surpassed Caterina, a fact that Caterina had tacitly acknowledged, and the whole College recognised. In the College the two friends were always designated as, “the one who loved, and the one who submitted to be loved.” The one who permitted herself to be loved was the beauty, the bellezza; the one who loved was the capezza, the ass’s bridle, a patient, humble, devoted, servile thing. The bellezza was entitled to everything, the capezza had no rights, but all the duties. She was permitted to love, that was all. In the Altimare and Spaccapietra bond, Lucia was the bellezza, and Caterina the capezza.