Lucia - Andrea Di Robilant [75]
After the initial shock of her husband’s reappearance, Lucia withdrew back into her shell. She had not seen him for so long that he seemed like a stranger to her; and of course there was so much in her own life that she kept hidden from him. How did one resume a marriage after such a long interval and after all that had passed? It was a not a question for which she had a ready answer. Lucia lived in a state of aloofness, waiting passively for her life to lurch forward in a new direction. Several times she told her sister she felt like an “automaton.” And so she did not put up any resistance when Alvise, flush with cash from the sale of Villabona, one of the oldest Mocenigo estates, announced they were moving to Vienna. Lucia’s heart filled with dread at the idea of leaving her child behind, but still she went about preparing her travelling trunks, and organising the shipping of her winter clothes and of those treasured objects that she hoped would make her stay in Vienna a little easier.
They left Molinato for Vienna on 1 September 1801. The one thing Lucia was not able to face was the separation from her sister. Final arrangements were made in secret as Paolina was staying with them. On the eve of departure, Lucia bid her goodnight standing coldly on the staircase that led to the bedrooms upstairs, forcing herself not to hug her for fear of breaking down. She did not know when she was coming back to Italy—it would certainly be many months before she returned, maybe years. Paolina was her link to Massimiliano; she was the one person with whom she could talk about her son openly and without fear of betraying herself. But she knew that in order to protect her secret she would have to remain silent and never mention him in her letters to her sister—not even to ask what games he liked to play or whether he was eating properly or whether his health was holding up.
Chapter Six
VIENNESE CAROUSEL
The watering season had already passed its peak when Alvise and Lucia arrived in the Austrian town of Baden on 5 September 1801, dusty and exhausted after their long journey from Molinato. They had stopped briefly in Vienna to leave the bulk of their luggage in temporary lodgings before embarking on the final leg to the fashionable resort on the edge of the Wienerwald, two hours south-east of the capital by post. Having travelled from the war-ravaged countryside in northern Italy, they were all the more dazzled by the elegant crowd strolling in the narrow streets. Every year at the end of the summer the emperor and the empress moved to Baden with their large family to take a restorative cure. Viennese society followed, and the Liechtensteins, the Schwartzenbergs, the Furstembergs, the Stahrembergs, the Pallfys, the Lobkowitzes, the Clarys and other grandees of the Habsburg Empire filled the alleys of the thermal station.
As soon as they had settled in their pleasant apartment off the main square, Alvise hurried to purchase tickets for that evening’s opera, only to find they had all been sold. After milling about with other disappointed late-comers in front of the theatre, hoping for a last-minute purchase, he glumly made his way back home. Lucia had noticed how even small nuisances of this kind had a way of exacerbating Alvise’s persistent feeling of exclusion. Four years had gone by since Venice had become a Habsburg dominion, but his reputation as a mauvais sujet, a bad subject of the Empire, still dogged him.1 He was, however, determined to gain acceptance in Vienna, and he continually reminded Lucia how important it was to establish good relations with the Imperial Court if they were to hold on to their land in Italy and make Molinato prosper. Moving from Venice to Vienna, making the hurried