Nectar, page 15
The scent in the rose garden had such intensity that it carried for miles upon the breeze, but all had to admit it was a pale shadow of the aroma Ramona Drottoveo herself once had. The air was alive with the buzzing of bees, and brightly colored butterflies fluttered, forming a constantly changing kaleidoscope.
The box hedges and dolphin topiaries were clipped to perfection. Fountains played. Stone lions roared, scaring chubby putti. The lily beds were just as magnificent as Ramona remembered them. The flawless flutes of creamy white set amid furling curls of deep green leaves. She would have a great many picked and sent to her rooms.
In the walled vegetable gardens, Ramona wandered between the neat rows where everything from asparagus to zucchini was sprouting in the rich soil. Beyond, in the pig yard, Stiliano Mamiliano was preparing a foul-smelling swill. He doffed his cap and actually bowed as she approached. She had to laugh: as if she would have agreed to marry the pig keeper! Why, she was half inclined to have him whipped for his impudence. Instead, she decided to order a great deal of pork at luncheon; she knew what slaughtering his pigs cost poor Stiliano.
Curiosity then drove her to take a look at the beekeeper’s cottage: the humble cottage where she had twice been taken as a bride. To think she once lived in a place that size! Now her closets were bigger by far than this cottage. If only the Signora had died sooner, Ramona would have been saved so much suffering. Still, she wasn’t bitter, and she smiled sweetly as Ovidio Gondulfo introduced her to the new beekeeper, Nuccio Pandolfo.
Earnestly he showed her his innovations: the increased number of hives to which the busy buzzing bees were returning from the rose garden, laden with pollen and self-importance. He showed her a new queen, of a disease-resistant strain he was hoping to introduce. Ramona indulged him by feigning interest. What did she care about bees? She was the queen bee herself.
Although he was a fine, upright young man, with blond hair and sturdy thighs, she wasn’t even tempted. She was far too fine a lady now to be interested in a rough working man. And she would on no account be unfaithful to the Signor. Never would she give her enemies the opportunity of saying the child she was determined to conceive wasn’t her husband’s.
Having conducted her tour, she had Ovidio Gondulfo lead her back to the conservatory, where she ordered a jug of lemonade and drained it noisily. She was highly satisfied with everything, but thought it fitting to order alterations. She was the Signora now after all, and it was right the servants should do her bidding. So she set about explaining to the head gardener what changes she expected him to make in the life of the garden. Yes, the gardens that had remained unchanged for hundreds of years were to be replanted according to Ramona’s taste. Ovidio Gondulfo blanched like an almond, and tried to protest, but Ramona would not listen. When he was finally dismissed, the head gardener took himself to the compost heap where he threw himself down and wept.
Next, Ramona summoned Immacolata Metrofano to discuss the changes she wished to see in the running of the household. During the months of the honeymoon the head cook had recovered from her depression, and something of the old fire flared in her eyes as she listened to Ramona’s instructions. When she returned to the kitchens, the cheeks of Dalinda Scandone were quick to feel a shower of slaps, which they had grown unused to of late.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
The Performance
One morning, not long after the newlyweds’ return, La Casa awoke to the sound of hammering and sawing. Ramona was having an opera house built on the grounds, on the far side of the grotto of the nymphs, and three hundred laborers had been brought in to hurry the construction to a quick completion. There, Ramona would give her own performances.
She had formed her own operatic company, of which she, naturally, was the star. She engaged a singing teacher and worked tirelessly at her lessons, although the Signor was the only one able to detect an improvement in her limited ability. While Ramona struggled over her scales, Blandina could be heard around La Casa singing pure, clear notes, and the music master wept at being denied access to such a rare talent.
The Signor continued to thrive, in body but not in mind. His obsession with the scent took some bizarre turns. Ramona had grown accustomed to him following her around like a dog, sniffing at her. And when he couldn’t sit with his head buried in her lap, he insisted on carrying an item of her clothing around with him, like a child with a comfort blanket. He had started talking to the aroma, having identified it with a particularly soft female voice inside his head. He wrote poetry to the scent and recited it. He had taken up painting and started painting pictures of it.
Ramona indulged his funny little ways, but his obsession did cause her the occasional flicker of anxiety. Once she had a nightmare in which he recovered the ability to smell. He realized that she no longer exuded the fleshy-bodied aroma that formed the touchstone of his life. She awoke in a sweat, and although it was yet the middle of the night, she rang for Belinda Filippucci, her personal maid, to change her nightgown and bed linen.
Yet Ramona was not often plagued by nightmares. Usually she slept the sleep of the dead, and snored, some said, loud enough to raise them too. She had to admit the notion of the Signor recovering his sense of smell was unlikely, yet the Signor’s senses were a law unto themselves. Each day there was some change. Some days he would be profoundly deaf. Some days too he would lose his sense of balance, and keep toppling over. Then he would recover his hearing and lose all sensation of taste. At such times he could not distinguish between the taste of a pear and a partridge, a boar sausage and a butterscotch pudding, and no efforts of Immacolata Metrofano could please him. The one constant was his belief in that wonderful aroma in his nose, and it gave him comfort in a scary world.
There was still no sign of the baby they both longed for, but they never gave up hope, and their attempts to spawn one, given the Signor’s infirmities, took up much time. Ramona was resentful of Blandina, her firstborn, who was growing bigger and more bothersome by the day. How unfair it was that the unwanted child thrived while the desired one had not been given life. If only she could send Blandina back and replace her with the Signor’s child. So much depended upon a new baby.
Ramona started to think Blandina had put the evil eye upon her, and this was the reason the new baby didn’t come. Right from the start she had not liked the looks the child had given her. The girl clearly hated her. In the early days Ramona had pretended a certain fondness for the child in front of the Signor, but she had long since given that up.
Although her mother shunned her, the Signor was enormously fond of Blandina. She was the daughter he had never had, and she reminded him of how Ramona would have been as a girl. They shared interests in music and horses. She sang for him his favorite arias. When he was able, they rode out together around the estate. He spoiled her and petted her. She had everything and more a girl could dream of, and this further annoyed Ramona, for she felt the difference from her own childhood in the convent under the harsh regime of the nuns. She was jealous in retrospect. Her resentment of the child increased, and the child hated her mother even more.
Yet it would be wrong to think Ramona wasted too many of her thoughts on her daughter. No. The opening night at the opera house was fast approaching, and she had so much to do to get everything ready. As well as bullying the upholsterers who were slow to finish, Ramona had endless costume fittings, and she had to instruct Stiliano Mamiliano in his part. On account of his beautiful baritone he was selected to accompany Ramona in duets, and although he was most reluctant to appear, he knew he had no choice. Ramona was aware that his presence reduced the class of the act, yet she needed his voice. But as he wasn’t to be illuminated, for all the spotlights were to be trained on Ramona, she hoped he would be heard but not seen.
Magnificent invitations on thick card with gold writing were sent out to all the Signor’s former friends, but not a single one accepted, for they had closed ranks against the vulgar Signora. Ramona cried bitter tears at this, the first she had shed since her marriage, and the Signor was furious. Determined not to disappoint his wife, he issued an edict that all the servants and workers on the estate were to attend. Although many would have liked to boycott the event, they were not too proud to accept free entertainment, and curiosity about the opera house got the better of them.
The interior was magnificent. Trofimo Barile, the only member of the audience who had been inside a proper opera house, declared himself satisfied that every detail was correct. The rich red carpets, the endless mirrors, the gilt, the chandeliers, the velvet drapes, and seats. He examined them all closely and could only praise their quality, although the opera house of his brother-in-law’s neighbor’s cousin’s employer was somewhat more opulent. The less sophisticated folk were awestruck. It truly was a palace.
Ramona was taking no chances, and the audience was issued with clear instructions about when to clap loudly, when to give a standing ovation, and when to throw the flowers they had been supplied with for the purpose. She would have preferred persons of her own rank and standing to witness her glittering debut, but a part of her gloried in the fact that her former colleagues would be there.
Trofimo Barile had scarcely embarked on a story he heard as a young barman working at la Fenice in the beautiful city of Venezia, when the hundred-piece orchestra struck up the overture from the great pit beneath the stage, and the wise man was silenced. The acoustics were perfect, everybody had to agree.
There was a delicious feeling of expectation as they waited for Ramona Drottoveo to appear. Indeed Dalinda Scandone, who had not known such excitement since the fete when Ramona went away, fainted and had to be carried outside. She saw nothing of the performance.
The crowd, sitting in silence, held their breath and waited. Backstage, Ramona felt the agreeable sensation of butterflies in her stomach. It was exactly as the precious dream she had in Napoli while waiting for Signor Po to call her to the San Carlo. All this time she had nurtured that dream. Now she had re-created it, and made it real. If only Signor Po could see her now.
Finally, it was time, more than time, and the Signor, sitting on a stool in the wings and clutching one of her stockings to his nose, blew her a kiss just as the curtains opened. There was a gasp from the staff that rose above the sound of the orchestra then giving it their all. Ramona Drottoveo was scarcely recognizable. No expense had been spared in the creation of the wig and the costume that glittered brighter than the chandeliers from all the diamanté embroidery on it.
She stepped forward, and gave a low, deep curtsey. The vision may not have resembled the old Ramona Drottoveo, but the sound that emerged from between her painted lips certainly did. It was Ramona Drottoveo all right, and many wished they had brought along tufts of wool to stuff into their ears. Ugo Rossi was in agony.
Ramona’s rendition of “O mio babbino caro” would doubtless have caused irreparable hearing damage to many, had not Semprebene Metrofano, ever vigilant, noticed that the auditorium had become filled with a choking black smoke, whereupon the performance was cruelly interrupted by the members of the audience abandoning their seats and running for their lives.
Fortunately, no lives were lost, although Stiliano Mamiliano suffered terrible burns to his legs, and all his hair fell out in shock. The sumptuous opera house was destroyed completely in four minutes, some two hours before the estate’s antiquated fire wagon could be marshaled and rolled to the spot.
As Ramona sobbed at the curtailment of her debut and the devastation of her opera house, Blandina was seen escaping from the burning building with a box of matches and a can of paraffin in her hands. As she ran away, singing like an angel, there was a smell in the air that was quite distinct from the acrid fumes of burning. It was a smell that struck a chord with many of the fleeing villagers, but they did not have occasion to remark upon it until much later.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
A Crop of Boys
As Ramona surveyed the glowing embers of her dream, she accepted the sign, and vowed never to sing again. Eardrums all over the estate were saved.
Her fury burned brighter than the blaze when she discovered that Blandina was responsible for starting the inferno that had made her a laughingstock. She chased the girl round and round La Casa brandishing the Signor’s riding crop, but Blandina was too fast for her. As she ran, Blandina sang tauntingly an off-key and altogether diabolical rendition of “O mio babbino caro” in a voice uncannily like her mother’s. Ramona was incandescent with rage.
Defeated, Ramona stamped off to find her husband and voiced her intention of sending Blandina to a convent to be raised, but the Signor wouldn’t agree. He adored his stepdaughter, and wouldn’t hear of sending her away. How Ramona boiled when she found the Signor was not as compliant about the child as he was with all her other whims. As a result, she withheld the smell from him for two days as a punishment, and although it was torture for him, he still wouldn’t give in to her demands. It was their first disagreement about the child, but it wasn’t the last.
That same day luncheon was late, which increased Ramona’s ire, and it was exacerbated further when the reason for the delay was uncovered: Immacolata Metrofano had given birth to a son. It was surprising, not just because Immacolata Metrofano was not in the first flush of youth, but also because, paying heed to superstition and local folklore, she had told no one she was pregnant.
Blandina was not slow to parade little Sebaldo before her stepfather.
“Look at the pretty baby, Papa,” she said. “I wish I could have such a sweet baby brother. But Mama doesn’t make one.”
The poor Signor, who was having a confused day, initially thought the baby he had been shown was his own, and with joy coursing through his arrhythmic heart he hurried to find his sulking wife to congratulate her. Ramona had to disillusion the Signor, and was herself deeply wounded. She hadn’t expected such treachery from Immacolata Metrofano. She let it be known that she didn’t wish there to be any further births among the servants in advance of her own.
Blandina quickly abandoned the baby, with which she had grown bored, and ran to join her companions in the apple orchard. The girls on the estate avoided her, but the boys were drawn to her, and although she looked down upon them, being the Signorina, she enjoyed teasing them. She made them do mischief to win her favor, and she liked nothing more than to get them into trouble.
Once she had Maurilio Bergonzoni, son of the cowman, steal the honeycombs from Nuccio Pandolfo’s hives, and Maurilio suffered such an allergic reaction to the beestings he sustained that for a while his life hung in the balance, and those who remembered the first beekeeper’s death thought history was repeating itself. Blandina laughed at Maurilio’s injuries, and everybody had to admit she was her mother’s daughter.
Andromeda Doria’s wooden leg soon suffered a mishap at Blandina’s instigation. So too did Bibiana Mamiliano’s teeth; Stiliano Mamiliano’s piglets; Ernesto Conticello’s roses; Immacolata Metrofano’s roast woodcocks; Ramona’s closets; and even the Signor’s ear trumpet and other medical equipment. Nobody was safe from her japes.
Yet the local boys could only supply so much amusement. They were, after all, far too ignorant and boorish to make satisfying companions for such a sophisticated girl.
Following the fire, the Signor installed a governess at La Casa, despite the protests of his wife, and his stepdaughter was a gifted student. Blessed with a natural intelligence, Blandina was soon fluent in four languages. She excelled at algebra and geometry. She knew the laws of astronomy, biology, chemistry, and physics. She was well versed in world history, geography, and religion. She could argue politics. She loved literature. She wrote poetry. She could dance classical as well as folk dances. She could play the flute, the harp, and the piano. But her greatest gift of all was her voice.
Blandina’s voice was the sorest spot on the veritable rash of Ramona’s resentments against her daughter. Her beautiful voice echoed around La Casa, filling it perpetually with song, and filling her mother’s heart with rancor. Ramona no longer felt she had the upper hand and she didn’t like it. She cursed herself when she remembered how she had returned for the child after abandoning her on the way back to the estate. If she had known then what a viper she had nourished in her womb she would never have retraced her steps.
Blandina, for her part, clearly remembered being left in the ditch by her mother, abandoned to passing wolves and vagabonds, and she was determined to get revenge in every way possible.
Ramona began to dwell on her own misfortune in producing such a child. What an unlucky woman she was. She fantasized about getting rid of Blandina. Why had she not given her to gypsies when she had the chance? Sold her into slavery? Left her as a foundling in the care of the Church, as she herself had been? What had been good enough for her was good enough for the child. She could only blame herself for not acting at the time, but how could she have predicted the way things would turn out?
Following the birth of Sebaldo Metrofano, Milvia Lucentini died of an embolism that had caused her body to swell up like a whale. It was Milvia who had schooled Blandina in the use of the potty, trained her lisping speech, and pulled out her loosened milk teeth. It was Milvia who tended Blandina through every childhood illness: the measles, chicken pox, mumps, and meningitis. She had dressed her grazed knees, eased her earache with castor oil, and brushed the knots out of her hair. Milvia watched her with pride as she blossomed into an accomplished young woman. Yet at her death Blandina did not shed a single tear, and was unable to attend the funeral because she had an urgent engagement with her pony. Dressed in the magnificent riding habit that had just arrived from Weatherill of London, the mourners saw her in the distance, jumping hedges and ditches with squeals of delight.
When the grass had grown over the grave of Milvia Lucentini, the marriage of Dalinda Scandone and Roberto Pedretti took place at the Chiesa di San Stefano, and despite Ramona’s strictures, there followed many births, necessitating a great many baptisms. Trofimo and Isolda Barile were surprised in their fifth decade by an heir to their thriving business empire. Immacolata Metrofano, encouraged by one success, subsequently brought forth twins, Casto and Polo. After that, Camilla Conticello, Margherita Rossi, Virna Fuga, Beata Viola, Andromeda Doria, Selma Venerosa, and even Bibiana Mamiliano all produced sons. So many baby boys were born on the estate that people began to suspect there was something in the water.
The box hedges and dolphin topiaries were clipped to perfection. Fountains played. Stone lions roared, scaring chubby putti. The lily beds were just as magnificent as Ramona remembered them. The flawless flutes of creamy white set amid furling curls of deep green leaves. She would have a great many picked and sent to her rooms.
In the walled vegetable gardens, Ramona wandered between the neat rows where everything from asparagus to zucchini was sprouting in the rich soil. Beyond, in the pig yard, Stiliano Mamiliano was preparing a foul-smelling swill. He doffed his cap and actually bowed as she approached. She had to laugh: as if she would have agreed to marry the pig keeper! Why, she was half inclined to have him whipped for his impudence. Instead, she decided to order a great deal of pork at luncheon; she knew what slaughtering his pigs cost poor Stiliano.
Curiosity then drove her to take a look at the beekeeper’s cottage: the humble cottage where she had twice been taken as a bride. To think she once lived in a place that size! Now her closets were bigger by far than this cottage. If only the Signora had died sooner, Ramona would have been saved so much suffering. Still, she wasn’t bitter, and she smiled sweetly as Ovidio Gondulfo introduced her to the new beekeeper, Nuccio Pandolfo.
Earnestly he showed her his innovations: the increased number of hives to which the busy buzzing bees were returning from the rose garden, laden with pollen and self-importance. He showed her a new queen, of a disease-resistant strain he was hoping to introduce. Ramona indulged him by feigning interest. What did she care about bees? She was the queen bee herself.
Although he was a fine, upright young man, with blond hair and sturdy thighs, she wasn’t even tempted. She was far too fine a lady now to be interested in a rough working man. And she would on no account be unfaithful to the Signor. Never would she give her enemies the opportunity of saying the child she was determined to conceive wasn’t her husband’s.
Having conducted her tour, she had Ovidio Gondulfo lead her back to the conservatory, where she ordered a jug of lemonade and drained it noisily. She was highly satisfied with everything, but thought it fitting to order alterations. She was the Signora now after all, and it was right the servants should do her bidding. So she set about explaining to the head gardener what changes she expected him to make in the life of the garden. Yes, the gardens that had remained unchanged for hundreds of years were to be replanted according to Ramona’s taste. Ovidio Gondulfo blanched like an almond, and tried to protest, but Ramona would not listen. When he was finally dismissed, the head gardener took himself to the compost heap where he threw himself down and wept.
Next, Ramona summoned Immacolata Metrofano to discuss the changes she wished to see in the running of the household. During the months of the honeymoon the head cook had recovered from her depression, and something of the old fire flared in her eyes as she listened to Ramona’s instructions. When she returned to the kitchens, the cheeks of Dalinda Scandone were quick to feel a shower of slaps, which they had grown unused to of late.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
The Performance
One morning, not long after the newlyweds’ return, La Casa awoke to the sound of hammering and sawing. Ramona was having an opera house built on the grounds, on the far side of the grotto of the nymphs, and three hundred laborers had been brought in to hurry the construction to a quick completion. There, Ramona would give her own performances.
She had formed her own operatic company, of which she, naturally, was the star. She engaged a singing teacher and worked tirelessly at her lessons, although the Signor was the only one able to detect an improvement in her limited ability. While Ramona struggled over her scales, Blandina could be heard around La Casa singing pure, clear notes, and the music master wept at being denied access to such a rare talent.
The Signor continued to thrive, in body but not in mind. His obsession with the scent took some bizarre turns. Ramona had grown accustomed to him following her around like a dog, sniffing at her. And when he couldn’t sit with his head buried in her lap, he insisted on carrying an item of her clothing around with him, like a child with a comfort blanket. He had started talking to the aroma, having identified it with a particularly soft female voice inside his head. He wrote poetry to the scent and recited it. He had taken up painting and started painting pictures of it.
Ramona indulged his funny little ways, but his obsession did cause her the occasional flicker of anxiety. Once she had a nightmare in which he recovered the ability to smell. He realized that she no longer exuded the fleshy-bodied aroma that formed the touchstone of his life. She awoke in a sweat, and although it was yet the middle of the night, she rang for Belinda Filippucci, her personal maid, to change her nightgown and bed linen.
Yet Ramona was not often plagued by nightmares. Usually she slept the sleep of the dead, and snored, some said, loud enough to raise them too. She had to admit the notion of the Signor recovering his sense of smell was unlikely, yet the Signor’s senses were a law unto themselves. Each day there was some change. Some days he would be profoundly deaf. Some days too he would lose his sense of balance, and keep toppling over. Then he would recover his hearing and lose all sensation of taste. At such times he could not distinguish between the taste of a pear and a partridge, a boar sausage and a butterscotch pudding, and no efforts of Immacolata Metrofano could please him. The one constant was his belief in that wonderful aroma in his nose, and it gave him comfort in a scary world.
There was still no sign of the baby they both longed for, but they never gave up hope, and their attempts to spawn one, given the Signor’s infirmities, took up much time. Ramona was resentful of Blandina, her firstborn, who was growing bigger and more bothersome by the day. How unfair it was that the unwanted child thrived while the desired one had not been given life. If only she could send Blandina back and replace her with the Signor’s child. So much depended upon a new baby.
Ramona started to think Blandina had put the evil eye upon her, and this was the reason the new baby didn’t come. Right from the start she had not liked the looks the child had given her. The girl clearly hated her. In the early days Ramona had pretended a certain fondness for the child in front of the Signor, but she had long since given that up.
Although her mother shunned her, the Signor was enormously fond of Blandina. She was the daughter he had never had, and she reminded him of how Ramona would have been as a girl. They shared interests in music and horses. She sang for him his favorite arias. When he was able, they rode out together around the estate. He spoiled her and petted her. She had everything and more a girl could dream of, and this further annoyed Ramona, for she felt the difference from her own childhood in the convent under the harsh regime of the nuns. She was jealous in retrospect. Her resentment of the child increased, and the child hated her mother even more.
Yet it would be wrong to think Ramona wasted too many of her thoughts on her daughter. No. The opening night at the opera house was fast approaching, and she had so much to do to get everything ready. As well as bullying the upholsterers who were slow to finish, Ramona had endless costume fittings, and she had to instruct Stiliano Mamiliano in his part. On account of his beautiful baritone he was selected to accompany Ramona in duets, and although he was most reluctant to appear, he knew he had no choice. Ramona was aware that his presence reduced the class of the act, yet she needed his voice. But as he wasn’t to be illuminated, for all the spotlights were to be trained on Ramona, she hoped he would be heard but not seen.
Magnificent invitations on thick card with gold writing were sent out to all the Signor’s former friends, but not a single one accepted, for they had closed ranks against the vulgar Signora. Ramona cried bitter tears at this, the first she had shed since her marriage, and the Signor was furious. Determined not to disappoint his wife, he issued an edict that all the servants and workers on the estate were to attend. Although many would have liked to boycott the event, they were not too proud to accept free entertainment, and curiosity about the opera house got the better of them.
The interior was magnificent. Trofimo Barile, the only member of the audience who had been inside a proper opera house, declared himself satisfied that every detail was correct. The rich red carpets, the endless mirrors, the gilt, the chandeliers, the velvet drapes, and seats. He examined them all closely and could only praise their quality, although the opera house of his brother-in-law’s neighbor’s cousin’s employer was somewhat more opulent. The less sophisticated folk were awestruck. It truly was a palace.
Ramona was taking no chances, and the audience was issued with clear instructions about when to clap loudly, when to give a standing ovation, and when to throw the flowers they had been supplied with for the purpose. She would have preferred persons of her own rank and standing to witness her glittering debut, but a part of her gloried in the fact that her former colleagues would be there.
Trofimo Barile had scarcely embarked on a story he heard as a young barman working at la Fenice in the beautiful city of Venezia, when the hundred-piece orchestra struck up the overture from the great pit beneath the stage, and the wise man was silenced. The acoustics were perfect, everybody had to agree.
There was a delicious feeling of expectation as they waited for Ramona Drottoveo to appear. Indeed Dalinda Scandone, who had not known such excitement since the fete when Ramona went away, fainted and had to be carried outside. She saw nothing of the performance.
The crowd, sitting in silence, held their breath and waited. Backstage, Ramona felt the agreeable sensation of butterflies in her stomach. It was exactly as the precious dream she had in Napoli while waiting for Signor Po to call her to the San Carlo. All this time she had nurtured that dream. Now she had re-created it, and made it real. If only Signor Po could see her now.
Finally, it was time, more than time, and the Signor, sitting on a stool in the wings and clutching one of her stockings to his nose, blew her a kiss just as the curtains opened. There was a gasp from the staff that rose above the sound of the orchestra then giving it their all. Ramona Drottoveo was scarcely recognizable. No expense had been spared in the creation of the wig and the costume that glittered brighter than the chandeliers from all the diamanté embroidery on it.
She stepped forward, and gave a low, deep curtsey. The vision may not have resembled the old Ramona Drottoveo, but the sound that emerged from between her painted lips certainly did. It was Ramona Drottoveo all right, and many wished they had brought along tufts of wool to stuff into their ears. Ugo Rossi was in agony.
Ramona’s rendition of “O mio babbino caro” would doubtless have caused irreparable hearing damage to many, had not Semprebene Metrofano, ever vigilant, noticed that the auditorium had become filled with a choking black smoke, whereupon the performance was cruelly interrupted by the members of the audience abandoning their seats and running for their lives.
Fortunately, no lives were lost, although Stiliano Mamiliano suffered terrible burns to his legs, and all his hair fell out in shock. The sumptuous opera house was destroyed completely in four minutes, some two hours before the estate’s antiquated fire wagon could be marshaled and rolled to the spot.
As Ramona sobbed at the curtailment of her debut and the devastation of her opera house, Blandina was seen escaping from the burning building with a box of matches and a can of paraffin in her hands. As she ran away, singing like an angel, there was a smell in the air that was quite distinct from the acrid fumes of burning. It was a smell that struck a chord with many of the fleeing villagers, but they did not have occasion to remark upon it until much later.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
A Crop of Boys
As Ramona surveyed the glowing embers of her dream, she accepted the sign, and vowed never to sing again. Eardrums all over the estate were saved.
Her fury burned brighter than the blaze when she discovered that Blandina was responsible for starting the inferno that had made her a laughingstock. She chased the girl round and round La Casa brandishing the Signor’s riding crop, but Blandina was too fast for her. As she ran, Blandina sang tauntingly an off-key and altogether diabolical rendition of “O mio babbino caro” in a voice uncannily like her mother’s. Ramona was incandescent with rage.
Defeated, Ramona stamped off to find her husband and voiced her intention of sending Blandina to a convent to be raised, but the Signor wouldn’t agree. He adored his stepdaughter, and wouldn’t hear of sending her away. How Ramona boiled when she found the Signor was not as compliant about the child as he was with all her other whims. As a result, she withheld the smell from him for two days as a punishment, and although it was torture for him, he still wouldn’t give in to her demands. It was their first disagreement about the child, but it wasn’t the last.
That same day luncheon was late, which increased Ramona’s ire, and it was exacerbated further when the reason for the delay was uncovered: Immacolata Metrofano had given birth to a son. It was surprising, not just because Immacolata Metrofano was not in the first flush of youth, but also because, paying heed to superstition and local folklore, she had told no one she was pregnant.
Blandina was not slow to parade little Sebaldo before her stepfather.
“Look at the pretty baby, Papa,” she said. “I wish I could have such a sweet baby brother. But Mama doesn’t make one.”
The poor Signor, who was having a confused day, initially thought the baby he had been shown was his own, and with joy coursing through his arrhythmic heart he hurried to find his sulking wife to congratulate her. Ramona had to disillusion the Signor, and was herself deeply wounded. She hadn’t expected such treachery from Immacolata Metrofano. She let it be known that she didn’t wish there to be any further births among the servants in advance of her own.
Blandina quickly abandoned the baby, with which she had grown bored, and ran to join her companions in the apple orchard. The girls on the estate avoided her, but the boys were drawn to her, and although she looked down upon them, being the Signorina, she enjoyed teasing them. She made them do mischief to win her favor, and she liked nothing more than to get them into trouble.
Once she had Maurilio Bergonzoni, son of the cowman, steal the honeycombs from Nuccio Pandolfo’s hives, and Maurilio suffered such an allergic reaction to the beestings he sustained that for a while his life hung in the balance, and those who remembered the first beekeeper’s death thought history was repeating itself. Blandina laughed at Maurilio’s injuries, and everybody had to admit she was her mother’s daughter.
Andromeda Doria’s wooden leg soon suffered a mishap at Blandina’s instigation. So too did Bibiana Mamiliano’s teeth; Stiliano Mamiliano’s piglets; Ernesto Conticello’s roses; Immacolata Metrofano’s roast woodcocks; Ramona’s closets; and even the Signor’s ear trumpet and other medical equipment. Nobody was safe from her japes.
Yet the local boys could only supply so much amusement. They were, after all, far too ignorant and boorish to make satisfying companions for such a sophisticated girl.
Following the fire, the Signor installed a governess at La Casa, despite the protests of his wife, and his stepdaughter was a gifted student. Blessed with a natural intelligence, Blandina was soon fluent in four languages. She excelled at algebra and geometry. She knew the laws of astronomy, biology, chemistry, and physics. She was well versed in world history, geography, and religion. She could argue politics. She loved literature. She wrote poetry. She could dance classical as well as folk dances. She could play the flute, the harp, and the piano. But her greatest gift of all was her voice.
Blandina’s voice was the sorest spot on the veritable rash of Ramona’s resentments against her daughter. Her beautiful voice echoed around La Casa, filling it perpetually with song, and filling her mother’s heart with rancor. Ramona no longer felt she had the upper hand and she didn’t like it. She cursed herself when she remembered how she had returned for the child after abandoning her on the way back to the estate. If she had known then what a viper she had nourished in her womb she would never have retraced her steps.
Blandina, for her part, clearly remembered being left in the ditch by her mother, abandoned to passing wolves and vagabonds, and she was determined to get revenge in every way possible.
Ramona began to dwell on her own misfortune in producing such a child. What an unlucky woman she was. She fantasized about getting rid of Blandina. Why had she not given her to gypsies when she had the chance? Sold her into slavery? Left her as a foundling in the care of the Church, as she herself had been? What had been good enough for her was good enough for the child. She could only blame herself for not acting at the time, but how could she have predicted the way things would turn out?
Following the birth of Sebaldo Metrofano, Milvia Lucentini died of an embolism that had caused her body to swell up like a whale. It was Milvia who had schooled Blandina in the use of the potty, trained her lisping speech, and pulled out her loosened milk teeth. It was Milvia who tended Blandina through every childhood illness: the measles, chicken pox, mumps, and meningitis. She had dressed her grazed knees, eased her earache with castor oil, and brushed the knots out of her hair. Milvia watched her with pride as she blossomed into an accomplished young woman. Yet at her death Blandina did not shed a single tear, and was unable to attend the funeral because she had an urgent engagement with her pony. Dressed in the magnificent riding habit that had just arrived from Weatherill of London, the mourners saw her in the distance, jumping hedges and ditches with squeals of delight.
When the grass had grown over the grave of Milvia Lucentini, the marriage of Dalinda Scandone and Roberto Pedretti took place at the Chiesa di San Stefano, and despite Ramona’s strictures, there followed many births, necessitating a great many baptisms. Trofimo and Isolda Barile were surprised in their fifth decade by an heir to their thriving business empire. Immacolata Metrofano, encouraged by one success, subsequently brought forth twins, Casto and Polo. After that, Camilla Conticello, Margherita Rossi, Virna Fuga, Beata Viola, Andromeda Doria, Selma Venerosa, and even Bibiana Mamiliano all produced sons. So many baby boys were born on the estate that people began to suspect there was something in the water.
