Chapter 20

 

October 1916

 

A letter arrived bearing a notaire’s stamp from Yauco. I recognised this as the place Vincentello had settled in Puerto Rico. My God! What had he done now? No more demands for payment of his debts, surely? I had made that quite clear. I took Papa’s stylet and slit open the envelope, pulling out a single sheet of paper.

 

Madame,

I write to inform you of the demise of your husband, Vincentello Pascal Antonio Orsini, on the seventh day of September, 1916, at Yauco, Puerto Rico. Under the terms of his will he has left sundry movable goods to Mademoiselle Flora Novici, resident of Yauco. My investigations indicate that he left no property in Corsica, the same having been disposed of a number of years previously and the capital thereof having been consumed prior to his demise. Under the terms of your marriage contract, the sole use of your possessions, landed or otherwise, reverts to you in perpetuity, there being no other prior claim.

I remain at your disposal, Madame, for any additional information you might require.

 

So there it was. A notaire’s letter drew a line under my marriage to Vincentello in a few strokes of the pen. He didn’t even say how he had died, although I assumed he had never left Puerto Rico. As for this Mademoiselle Novici, I supposed she was the lady of easy virtue on whose earnings he had been living.

I went up the hill to the watchtower and sat on the flat stone in the mellow early October sun. It was on a day just like this that Raphaël had declared his feelings for me. That was seventeen years before, but it seemed like a lifetime. How much had happened in those years. At that time, I could think only of romance and of having a handsome lover. Did I truly love Raphaël? It seemed like it then. Did he love me? He said he did, but, if so, how could he abandon me as he did? I had gone over it afterwards a thousand times in my mind but couldn’t find the answer. After a while, I had given up trying. But Vincentello’s death reopened the old wounds and reawakened my curiosity.

I didn’t want to rejoice at the news about Vincentello. After all, it was a terrible waste. He was only forty-one – in his prime. But he never managed to make anything of himself, despite all the opportunities put in his way. Other Corsicans had managed to thrive in Puerto Rico, but his lack of judgement and downright dishonesty prevented him from taking advantage of his chances. From his point of view, it would have been better if he had stayed in Corsica instead of going off halfway around the world to a land he knew nothing about. From mine, of course, it would have been a disaster if he had stayed.

So I looked back on two wasted lives with regret. But, more than anything else, this news told me that I was free. Free.

Standing up, I shook my skirt and brushed myself down. I had to tell Sophia. And I supposed that for form’s sake I must put on my mourning again, although I had little cause to grieve.

As usual, Sophia was in her kitchen humming as she scrubbed the oak table. She had always been such a good housewife. What a pity that she never married. She would have liked children, and her father would have wanted grandchildren. It didn’t look as if Orso would ever marry either. It seemed that our two families were destined to die out with our generation.

I tapped on the open door and she turned round, giving me her fleeting smile. Kissing her on both cheeks I handed her the notaire’s letter and sat down. She read it, looked at the back of the sheet in case it went on overleaf and then read it again. She placed the letter on the table and looked into the distance, not at me.

A few moments passed, the only sound a pan bubbling gently on the stove. Sophia looked at me.

“So, now you’re free.”

“Yes. But I don’t get any pleasure from Vincentello’s death.” I told her my thoughts about his wasted life.

She nodded, but I couldn’t read the look in her eyes.

“And there’s nothing to stop you marrying again.”

“I think that’s unlikely. I would have to meet someone who wanted to marry me – and I would want to feel affection for them. I can’t see the chances of that, especially with this war going on.”

“What about Orso?”

I sighed. “Sophia, I have great respect for Orso and I know he’s been through terrible suffering, like so many others. But I don’t love him and never will. I would simply be exchanging one loveless marriage for another.”

“But what about children? You aren’t too old at thirty-seven. Do you want your family to die out altogether? Papa would be so pleased if you and Orso were to marry.”

“The name will die out anyway if I marry. And I can’t marry to please other people. I did that once before, and look at the result – two unhappy people who ended up living apart. In any case, Orso is so bitter and resentful that I don’t feel our life together would be very satisfying for either of us. No, Sophia, I don’t think I shall ever marry again.”

Sophia bit her lip. “I think you’re making a mistake.”

“I remember when you said that to me before, all those years ago. I made a bigger mistake allowing myself to be forced into marrying Vincentello. He didn’t love me and I didn’t love him, either. If I had been allowed to marry where I loved, things would have turned out differently.”

“If that plan to elope with Raphaël had worked out, you mean.”

“You knew about that?”

Sophia blushed and bit her lip even harder.

“How did you find out? I didn’t tell you, so Raphaël must have done. But he and I agreed that no one should know about it: it was safer that way. And then he abandoned me that night, so I had to comply with what Papa wanted.”

“Raphaël didn’t abandon you, Maria.”

My head snapped up. “What do you mean? What do you know about it?”

Sophia twisted her hands in her lap. She opened her mouth and breathed in as if she was about to speak but then closed her lips again.

“Is there something you know about it that you haven’t told me? Please, Sophia, I need to know the truth after all these years.”

She looked down at her hands and then up at me again. Tears were welling in her eyes and she blinked them back.

“I don’t know how to start,” she whispered.

I placed my hand over hers. “Tell me.”

She withdrew her hands from mine and laid them on the table. She fixed the far wall with her gaze.

“I have wanted to tell you. Believe me, Maria. So many times I have been on the point of it and then I was too cowardly when it came to it. While you were still married to Vincentello there seemed little point, but now I can’t keep this secret any longer.”

She looked at me, her eyes pleading. I nodded to reassure her and tried to stay calm, although my heart was almost bursting out of my chest.

She swallowed.

“My life changed the day Raphaël came to Zaronza. He was so kind and understanding. And he knew so much and taught me so many things. He loaned me books and talked to me about them as if I were his equal. He taught me Italian, he talked to me about history, about the world, about so many things. He was so generous with his time. He was a true friend.” She paused. “But then, to me he began to mean more than just a friend. I fell in love with him, Maria, and to this day I still love him.”

Sophia buried her face in her hands and the tears flowed unchecked. Flashes of memory came back to me: the time I saw them shoulder to shoulder at the kitchen table; Sophia’s insistence that I was making a terrible mistake loving Raphaël; our fierce argument; the time I came upon her sobbing because he was leaving Zaronza. Now it all started to fall into place. How stupid I was not to have seen it. How blinded I was by my own feelings and my own problems.

“Go on.”

Sophia dried her eyes.

“When you confided in me about your relations with Raphaël, I thought my life had come to an end. I had expected that he would start to feel the same about me – that proximity would turn his liking into love. Your secret dashed all my hopes. That’s why I said you were making a terrible mistake by seeing him. I did genuinely think that you weren’t well-suited, but the main reason was that I wanted him for myself.”

“We can’t choose where we love, Sophia. And if you loved him too, I can’t blame you for that.”

“Yes, but I did more than try to dissuade you from seeing him. I did something terrible in a moment of weakness and I have never ceased to regret it.”

My heart lurched. I couldn’t believe that Sophia could do anything awful. She was too honest, too morally upright, too sensible for that.

“What did you do, Sophia?” I asked in a small voice.

“Raphaël came to see me the day before your engagement party. He was very agitated. He had already told me about your relationship, that time when you were so ill one Christmas and he was so distressed. He said that he needed to get a message to you urgently, but that he dared not go directly to your house for fear of compromising you with your parents.

“He had received a message himself that day telling him that his mother was seriously ill and had asked for him to come to her. She was not expected to live for more than a few days. He needed to leave immediately.”

“And what happened to this message for me?” My pulse was thudding.

“He gave me a note and asked me to deliver it directly into your hands. He said that, as your best friend, it wouldn’t arouse any suspicions if I came to see you the day before your engagement. The note explained why he had to leave and told you to postpone the engagement party by feigning illness. If that proved impossible, you were to make your way to the safe house he had prepared with provisions in Casaccia and wait for him there. Maria, I…” her voice faltered.

My gaze met hers but she looked away.

“I burnt the note, Maria, in the fireplace there.” She gestured towards the hearth. “I waited until it was no more than black ashes and then I crushed them to powder with the poker.”

The blood drained from my face and a cold, clammy hand gripped my gut.

“Why, Sophia? Why?”

“Because I didn’t want you to have him. I thought that if you were irrevocably married he would realise he was mistaken in loving you and would turn to me. I loved him so much that I was prepared to do anything to make him love me. But, of course, he never did. He loved you, Maria. Only you.” Her voice shook and she looked down.

“My God, Sophia. Do you realise what you did?”

I looked down, my mouth dry, trying to take it in. Not wanting to believe it. My fingers twisted together.

“But when Raphaël came back to Zaronza, surely he must have known that I had never received his note.”

Sophia hesitated, her hands clasped together in front of her, her knuckles white. She shook her head.

“I swore to him that I gave it into your own hands. He had no reason not to believe me. Instead, he came to believe that you had had second thoughts about becoming the wife of a poor schoolmaster. He was terribly bitter. That’s why he left Zaronza and went back to the Bozio.”

I covered my face with my hands. Oh God, I thought, tell me this isn’t true. But I had to face up to it. In the end he had doubted me, just as I had doubted him because I thought he was afraid of risking his career. What a terrible mess. The anger started to bubble up in my throat.

“And where is he now? What’s he doing? I suppose you’ve kept that from me, as well.”

“I have no idea,” Sophia replied. “Really. When he left he wanted to forget everyone and everything connected with Zaronza. He said he was disillusioned, and that keeping in contact with me would just remind him of you.”

“Do you know what you’ve done?” I spat out the words. “You have ruined my life and very likely Raphaël’s too. What you did made me think he didn’t love me and persuaded him that I didn’t love him either. How could you do it, Sophia? How could you?”

The hot tears spurted and I couldn’t breathe.

“Don’t you think I have blighted my own life as well? Not a day goes past without my regretting what I did. I thought that you would be reconciled to Vincentello and that I could win Raphaël’s love. But it didn’t work out like that. And every day you hated Vincentello a little more. Then I realised what I had done. Oh, Maria, why couldn’t you have married Orso? Perhaps I could have married Raphaël and we would all have been happy.”

I couldn’t speak. I had no words, only a tumult of confused thoughts and memories.

“Maria, I hardly dare ask you to forgive me, since I can’t forgive myself.”

She pressed her hands to her chest and the tears streamed down her cheeks.

I stood and went to the door, my legs shaking like leaves. On the threshold, I paused and turned to look back at her.

“No, Sophia. Don’t ask me. I don’t know if I can ever forgive you for this.”