Lucia - Andrea Di Robilant [93]
When Lucia finally went out to Margarethen with Alvisetto, she found things to be in even worse shape than she had imagined. The new German caretaker, a disabled war veteran who drank too much, had let the property deteriorate to the point that “rats have taken over the house, mattresses are full of holes and everything is in disorder.”15 The garden around the house had gone to seed. In the fields, the construction of drainage canals had stopped. The accounts were a mess. Corn and wheat production was so low that she could not even begin to pay the debt on the purchase of the estate. In fact, Count Harsch, who had not seen a single one of the 105,000 florins he was owed, took Alvise to court. “From a business point of view, things are not at all in good order,” Lucia concluded at the end of her detailed report to her husband. But she didn’t complain, and if she secretly damned Alvise for investing in such a poor property and then forcing her to look after it, this never came through in her correspondence.
Lucia hoped that, in the general disaster, her safflower experiment might provide some consolation. But the field she had planted not far from the house did not look at all as she expected: the plants had struggled to grow and only very few had the reddish puffs that yielded the desired powder. “Evidently the farmers in charge had better things to do than to keep an eye on such a silly experiment,” she noted with sarcasm. “They simply passed on the task to hired hands who were less than diligent. The cows from the adjoining pasture did the rest.” She was left with plenty of seeds, which she sent off to Paolina in the hope that she, at least, could make some money off them. “I would be so happy if your investment in the flower business were to be crowned with success.”16
Lucia’s dispiriting report convinced Alvise that it was time to sell the property and move his assets back to Italy. If he could get 200,000 florins for it, he reasoned, he would pay back his debt and still make a profit of 70,000 florins on a property he had owned for only three years. Lucia thought the price much too high as “the improvements made on the property are not so considerable.”17 As she secretly feared, there were no buyers. Alvise fell back on his second option, which was to keep the property and lease it. But even that solution proved elusive. After several false starts, Lucia concluded there was nothing to do but get down to work and give their swampy, rat-infested property another chance.
Lucia dismissed the manager and the accountant. A new team was sent up from Alvisopoli to reorganise the farm and get the accounts in order. The excavation of canals resumed. Alvise invested in a new cotton gin. Lucia cleaned up the house, had it repainted and got the garden ready for planting in early spring. She enlisted the cheerful Maria Contarini to help her improve the interior decoration, and brought furniture from Vienna. She also set up several treadle looms and embroidery frames, and put the women of the house to work, including Maria and herself. They made cotton shirts and camisoles, silk gilets, scarves and handkerchiefs. Lucia often sat up late making embroidery designs, and when she was particularly pleased with one, she carefully traced it on a slip of vellum paper and sent it to Paolina so that she might use it too.
The kitchen, too, was busier, as Lucia tried out new recipes with the help of the cook. She developed the habit of going in to make simple dishes such as veal gelées and quiches that she and Maria ate as snacks or light lunches. She tried her hand at desserts, with mixed results, and in the end stuck