Lucia - Andrea Di Robilant [143]
Lucia was moved by Alvise’s unexpected words of contrition, and even more so by the unconditional embrace of Alvisetto as his own son. In a way, his love for the boy had led him back to the love he had once felt for the young girl he had married so many years ago. Before dying, he did what Paolina had asked him to do: he forgot “the displeasures” of their life together, and asked Lucia to do the same. More surprisingly, he asked her to take up his life-work. Lucia had seen how Alvise had struggled over the years. Now it was suddenly her turn to take charge and the task ahead must have seemed daunting.
“I have already been to see Mama’s portrait, and those of all the aunts and uncles and cousins, and ancestors,”12 Lucia wrote to her sister shortly after arriving at Castel Gomberto. In the spring following Alvise’s death she took Alvisetto and Vérand to the big house near Vicenza that belonged to her mother’s family, the Piovene. She had to get away from Alvisopoli—from the vociferous crowd of creditors, petitioners, agents and labourers that besieged her all day long. “I want things to be run as if my husband were still here,” she had repeated over and over after taking charge of Alvise’s affairs.13 But it would not do: every day dozens of decisions needed to be made that would affect the future of the estate and the people who worked and lived on it. Crushed by her new responsibilities, Lucia had escaped to Castel Gomberto, a place filled with memories, good feelings and domestic comforts. “It has warmed my heart to find the house as it always was…There are plenty of good beds, many guests, no shortage of linen and silverware.”14
Every morning she drove out to Valdagno to take the waters. The skies were often stormy, with lightning and thunder, but the atmosphere in the house was always merry. In the large drawing room, there were games of billiards, draughts, cards and bingos of every possible kind. Vérand usually played the piano, Lucia caught up with her numerous relatives and Alvisetto received the undivided attention of his Piovene cousins. Lucia was relieved to see that he was in much better spirits than he had been after his father’s death.
Not long after Alvise’s funeral, Alvisetto had returned to Padua with Vérand to resume his studies. It had not been easy for him. He had struggled with his grief and had started to act out of character. “I went to visit him in Padua,” Lucia later told Paolina. “At first he seemed anxious to be with me; but then he became distant, as if to underline his independence from me…He was bossy and uncaring. Everything had to be done his way and for his pleasure…I was hurt but I noticed he, too, often cried.”15 After a few days at Castel Gomberto, Lucia was happy to report, Alvisetto was again his old self, “respectful of his mother and her authority over him.”
Lucia continued to be haunted by some of the words in Alvise’s will, especially by his plea to forget all those “displeasures” he had caused her. He was not asking her for Christian forgiveness—it would not have been like him. Indeed, his words had nothing to do with religion. This was a matter between Alvise and Lucia alone, between husband and wife. Going through his papers, Lucia found many packets of letters written to him by different lovers over the course of several decades—there were hundreds of letters, notes, small pieces of paper, and in many handwritings. She knew some of the women who had written them, especially those from the early years of their marriage; but many were complete strangers. At certain times—when she had been away, in Vienna, in Milan, even in Paris—he clearly had had more than one relationship going on. How did he manage all those parallel lives? How did he distribute his feelings? There was a genuine wonder mixed in with the pain caused by all that correspondence. So much of his life had been unknown to her.
Lucia did not return the letters, but neither did she throw them away. Instead, she put them in