6

In the silence of the narrow corridor in Villa dei Quattro Pizzi, Ignazio walks with a bowed head. From an open window the

light lapping of the waves reaches him, together with the smell of seaweed. A smell that takes him back to the summers of

his childhood, to Favignana, when the whole family moved to the building his father built.

Christmas 1928 has just passed, and the New Year has tiptoed in, joylessly. Even though she's in Milan right now, Franca is

living in Rome with Giulia: having been evicted from the little villa on Via Sicilia, she's now in a house on Via Piemonte.

Ignazio swallows air. Reaching the door of the square tower, he throws it open, but doesn't go in. He merely looks at the

January light and the dust dancing above the majolica floor. Then he looks out at the gulf spread out in front of him. The

sea is a cold, shiny sheet of metal, punctuated with a few small fishing vessels returning to the little harbor. Beyond the

water, he glimpses the garden of Villa Igiea.

A blow to his heart. One more.

Even Villa Igiea no longer belongs to him. A few months ago, he and Vincenzo transferred it to a finance company that now, through Linch, manages almost all of what they own: from the Florio–Società Italiana di Navigazione, which is smothered in debt, to the tonnaras in the Canaries—another failure—and from their shares in Ducrot's company to Vincenzo's house on Via Catania... and even

Villa dei Quattro Pizzi, in which he himself is now living. To remain in Villa Igiea, Ignazio would have had to pay rent;

being unable to afford it, he was asked by the new manager—kindly—to leave. Then, after the kindness, came the eviction notice.

Semu nuddu 'mmiscatu cu 'nenti , he tells himself. He knows that's how people think, that's how he is considered by everyone. We are nothing mixed with nothing.

He studies his hands and asks himself who is to blame. He's asked himself the same question dozens, perhaps hundreds, of times:

he's off-loaded the blame onto his partners—obtuse, incompetent, shortsighted—but then told himself that in reality it was

his opponents who clipped his wings. He has fancied himself the predestined victim of bad luck, then convinced himself that

his ideas were too bold, too far in advance of their time to be successful.

Today, though, he no longer has the strength to lie to himself.

He blinks to stop the tears and, as if in a dream, sees his father watching the mattanza in Favignana, stopping to talk to the workers at the Oretea, calculating how best to exploit the sulfur mines, tasting the marsala with eyes closed, watching the train come into the farm at Alcamo, arguing with Crispi in a hotel in Rome... Bad luck, the ineptitude of others, or the fact that the world was not ready for his enterprises: these are ideas that would never have even occurred to him. He always acted with a sense of respon sibility, of duty, and that was enough for him. He had a single god, Casa Florio, and a single religion, work. Like that grandfather who died just as Ignazio was being born and who was alive for him in the stories his father told: a simple but implacable man, a Calabrian spice merchant who, starting from dire poverty, won the respect of an entire city. He was the one who had decided to build this villa in the Arenella, and to make it so extraordinary as to arouse the admiration of kings and queens.

Ignazio wonders if it isn't actually the blood of the Florios that has betrayed him, because he was always convinced that

that alone was enough to make him good at business. That expertise and entrepreneurial skills were there in his blood, kneaded

into his bones and muscles. Instead of which, there was something more, something he's never had. A desire for redemption?

The will to succeed? A sense of duty? An ability to read other men's minds and sense what they want?

He doesn't know. He will never know.

All he knows is that now is no longer the time to lie to himself. At the age of sixty, it's pointless to look for justifications,

to convince himself that in the smithy of fate someone—God or someone working for God—made him a suit of armor so heavy it

ended up crushing him.

The fault is his and his alone.

***

"It's only a matter of days," the doctor said last night. "Keep the windows open, but make sure he's in the sun and talk to

him about nice things. Let him have a few treats."

Ignazio nodded and walked him to the door. Then he burst out crying like a child.

He didn't cry like that even when Giuseppe Lanza di Trabia died as the result of a tropical fever two years ago, in 1927, leaving his beloved sister and brother-in-law in the same situation as him: with no male child to continue the name. This must really be the curse of the Florios, Ignazio had thought, touching the family ring.

And now Romualdo. Tuberculosis is carrying him away. When Ignazio found out he was gravely ill, he had him brought back from

the sanatorium in the Alps, where he was wasting away his last days, so that he could die in his own city. And then he decided

to house him here, in the Arenella. He owed it to him.

He enters the room. Romualdo's skin is tight over his cheekbones, and he has deep rings around his eyes.

Ignazio sits down by the bed, just as the uncle whose name he bears once did with his brother Paolo.

"How are you?"

"Blooming," Romualdo says, and laughs. He has always laughed, and continues to do so even in the face of death. "Get the cards

out, go on, we'll have a game."

With a heavy heart, Ignazio obeys. But Romualdo has difficulty in following the game and often stops to chat. All at once,

though, he breaks off, puts the cards on his chest, and looks toward the wall. "You know, every now and again I think about

her."

"Who, curò ?" Ignazio shuffles the cards, preparing the next hand.

"My wife, Giulia." He sighs. "I think how they gave Paternò a life sentence and I never believed it was enough. But now I

can't even remember the animal's face. Giulia, on the other hand... mischina . Now that I'm dying, too, I feel sorry for her."

"Stop that," Ignazio cuts in. "You're not dying," he adds with a casualness that sounds forced.

Romualdo turns, looks at him, and raises his eyebrows. "Don't talk rubbish, Igna'."

Ignazio lowers his eyes to the cards. The images blur. "With all the women we've had, here we are, alone like two poor wretches."

"What are you talking about? You have Vera, don't you?"

"Vera doesn't want to see me anymore. She says it's not the right time... and I don't know what to do. I miss her."

"What about Franca?"

Ignazio puts the cards down and gives a bitter smile. "Ever since I offered her jewels as collateral for loans from the Banco

di Sicilia, she's practically stopped speaking to me. It's been two years now... It had already hurt her when she found

out that Boldini sold the painting to the Rothschilds. You know what she told me when she handed over the gold mesh bag with

the jewels?"

"What?"

"‘You promised you would give me everything. And instead, you've taken everything away from me.'"

Memory dilates the images, slowly, painfully. Franca wrapped the jewels, one by one, in a velvet cloth, almost as if it were

a shroud, then put them back in the bag. She was crying. She left the pearls for last, running them through her fingers, one

string after another. "I've been told that pearls are tears," she murmured, clutching them in her fist. She lifted them to

her face, for a last caress, then shut them up in a case and handed them over.

That image still torments him. "Poor Franca. She was right," he says softly. "I made her suffer a lot."

Romualdo shrugs. "We've told each other enough nonsense, Igna'. Both of us." He takes the cards from his hands. "Now it's

all over."

"And what do we have left?" Ignazio asks, perhaps more of himself than of Romualdo.

"Why is there always supposed to be something left? We've lived well, Igna'. We didn't stand watching; we took life by the horns, and we enjoyed it without thinking too much. I've reached death without regrets. I've been the mayor of Palermo. I've been rich and powerful, like you. We've had wonderful women in our beds. We've had money, travel, champagne... We've had a life, Igna'. We've dreamed big dreams, we've been free, and we've always defended what really mattered to us. Not money, not power, and not even our names. Dignity."

***

Ignazio remembers Romualdo's words the day they are forced to leave even the house on Via Piemonte. He came back to his wife

after being abandoned once and for all by Vera, who had a deep spiritual crisis in 1930, following the death of her son Leonardo

during an aerial drill over the Adriatic. Ignazio and she were now united only by the ferocity of the divine punishment for

what they had done: first the deaths of Ignazio's children, then Leonardo's death, were the punishment they deserved for having

been unfaithful. That's what Vera told him, and Ignazio couldn't find anything to say in reply. He merely embraced this woman

who had given him such peace. Who had always carried a smile for him and who now, through her tears, implored him to redeem

himself, to repent for the harm he had done his wife and family. Then, after giving her a last kiss on the forehead, he walked

away.

But those words entered his soul, planted roots in that sense of guilt he had denied for so long. They drove him to return

to Franca, to share with her what little now remained.

He didn't give up, not immediately: going from one city to another, he kept trying to do business deals, even small ones, even at the cost of humiliating himself. But his name now aroused pity, contempt, and sometimes even derision. Ignazio Florio had let an empire collapse. Ignazio Florio had been unable to administer his own heritage. Ignazio Florio was a fool, a failure.

He once again found himself envying Vincenzo, because he had a brave, pragmatic woman beside him, a woman who really loved

him and had done everything she could to salvage something, starting with the jewels and furniture his brother had given her

over the years. They didn't see each other often: together with Lucie and Renée, Vincenzo traveled between Palermo and France,

between Via Catania and her family home, at épernay in Champagne. The last time he met him, Ignazio had the sensation that

the fifteen years' difference between them had been suddenly bridged: he found himself looking at a man who looked much older

than his fifty years, tired and full of burdens. Basically, he told himself that his brother, like him, had always done what

he had wanted, regardless of the consequences. And perhaps it was because of his excesses that he hadn't had children. Has he resigned himself to the fact? Ignazio asked himself at the time. But once again, he said nothing.

A slight cough. Behind him, the butler and a maid. Both of them are wearing their coats.

"Signore, we're going. If you'd like to pay us our last month's wages..." the man says, politely but firmly.

"As for the other months, we hope you can at least give us an advance..." the maid adds.

Suddenly, Ignazio feels acute embarrassment. Don't these two know that the bones have already been stripped bare by lots of

other predators?

He puts his hands in his pockets and takes out a wad of banknotes. The last ones.

"Here. I'll let you divide it up," he says to the butler, then turns his back on them and goes to Giulia, who has witnessed the scene, standing motionless in the doorway.

He strokes her arm and smiles at her.

She smiles back at him, then goes to the bed, on which two small suitcases lie open.

"Do you need any help?"

" Papà , you already asked me," she replies, a flash of irony in her eyes. "You've never packed a suitcase in your life, and you

would put in a mountain of things, higgledy-piggledy. Sit down. I won't be long."

Ignazio sighs and obeys. It's toward Giulia that he feels the greatest sense of guilt. Two years ago, she had a serious nervous

breakdown. Luckily, Igiea and Averardo took care of her, putting her up at Migliarino Pisano. They helped her to recover,

to eat normally, to sleep peacefully.

They made her feel loved.

He was still with Vera at the time. As for Franca, after paying her daughter a visit, she saw fit to leave for Paris, having

lost God knows how much at the casinos on the C?te d'Azur. She couldn't bear any more suffering, let alone that of her daughters,

she said on her return, by way of justification.

In the end, Giulia recovered, but since then, she's become more detached, as if the world to which she once belonged no longer

interests her.

"I'm sorry," Ignazio murmurs, almost to himself.

Giulia seems not to have heard. But after a few moments she asks, "For what?"

"For... what I'm forcing you to do."

"Fortunately, I'm going to see Igiea," she replies in a curt tone, shutting the suitcases. She puts on first her gloves, then her fur -lined coat. The Roman winter is particularly damp this year. "And above all I'm going to see Arabella, Laura Floriana, Flavia Domitilla, and Forese. They'll certainly be pleased to spend some time with their aunt."

"Your mother and I will come and see you. We'll come and see you and Igiea, my darling."

She nods and kisses him on the cheek. "Take care of Mother," she says, smoothing the lapel of his jacket, which by now is

showing its age. "She isn't as strong as you."

You don't know how she used to be, Ignazio thinks. I was the one who made her weak. I was the one who broke her .

After a last caress, Giulia walks away along the corridor, opens the door, and goes out. The Salviatis' car is waiting for

her outside. All Ignazio can do now is stare at the dimly lit room, the empty walls, and the elegant furnishings that are

about to be auctioned. A fate similar to that of the furniture that has remained in Palermo, confiscated by the municipal

tax office because of a series of unpaid taxes. Not much, in truth: a lot of it was already sold in 1921, during an auction

that lasted more than a month.

But in his eyes there is no longer either sadness or regret. There is only a gleam of dignity, that dignity that his friend

Romualdo defended to his last breath and that, for Ignazio, now has the same color as resignation.

***

Franca is sitting on the bed, her hands folded on her lap, staring down at the floor. Ignazio comes in but doesn't look at her. She, too, looks much older than her sixty-one years. Ignazio knows why; he knows it's not only because of her bad habits and excesses. And because he knows that, he avoids as much as possible looking at that hardened face, those lifeless eyes, those hands covered in stains.

He goes to the armchair where his coat is, takes it, and drapes it over his shoulders. He smells an echo of her perfume, the

same as always: La Marescialla. "Shall we go?" he says.

Franca nods.

Ignazio picks up the two small suitcases and they leave the house. The rest is already at the Hotel Eliseo, a modest but clean

and quiet hotel near Porta Pinciana. Averardo and Igiea kept insisting, but Franca was adamant: moving to the Salviatis' house

would be too big a blow to their dignity.

On the street, some stop to greet them, while others turn away. Everyone in the area knows who they are. They walk side by

side in silence. With the years, the difference between them has grown. She has always been taller than him, but now Ignazio

really seems shrunken, while Franca has retained her nimble, harmonious gait. It takes an effort, but she can't do otherwise.

Because the world is looking at her, and whatever happens, she is always Donna Franca Florio.

***

The Roman spring is cold, but the people in the head office of the Banca Commerciale don't seem to notice. Perhaps because

the room has been filling up since early morning, perhaps because the wait has gotten them all excited, perhaps because it's

in the nature of secrets to give off a heat that burns anyone who gets too close to it.

The auction catalog doesn't declare the provenance of the lots that are being put under the hammer, but the people taking their places in the room have no need for a name on the paper. Because the brooches and the diamond bracelets, the ruby rings, the emerald bracelets, the long strings of pearls, can only have belonged to one person.

To her.

The Roman nobility is in the know and has sent its representatives, with specific instructions. There are those who have preserved

the memory of a particular brooch by Cartier—or Fecarotta or the Brothers Merli—ever since they saw her wearing it at a dinner,

a first night, or during a chance encounter. Envy has turned into a yearning for possession. It's as if the splendor of a

jewel can preserve a trace of the charm and grace of the person who wore it, and now these men want to take possession of

it in order to shine by reflection.

The many jewelers present, on the other hand, seem more detached. They recognize one another, greet one another formally,

their eyes filled with a touch of defiance. Then they skim the pages of the catalog and reflect on the starting price of this

or that item, imagining how to take the jewels apart and mount the stones differently, in a more modern, less recognizable

style.

Then a murmur runs through the room. Giulia Florio has appeared in the doorway: she is wearing a hat with a half veil and

a black coat. The youngest of the Florios stops, her hands tight around the strap of her velvet handbag, her eyes haughtily

studying the faces of those present, one by one, as if wanting to imprint them on her mind.

I know who you are, those eyes seem to say. You are here because you would never have been able to afford what my family owned. You are just crows stripping bare the

bones. You can remove the stones from their mounts, separate the strings of pearls, melt the metal, but I will know what you

did and I will know which of you did it.

You will never have my mother's elegance, or my father's class, or my family's greatness. Never.

And I am here to remind you of that.

She advances confidently, with her head held high, and takes a seat. The auctioneer has seen her and recognized her: he hesitates

for a few moments, but then begins to call the lots. In front of her pass the jewels that have accompanied her mother's life.

In some cases, Giulia even remembers the last time she saw them. Like that gold brooch with the diamond monogram, which five

years ago, in 1930, Franca asked to have back just for a few days, so that she could wear it during the wedding of Umberto

II and Marie-José of Belgium. She was still a lady-in-waiting and so was expected to participate in such an important ceremony

wearing the royal brooch. Giulia hasn't forgotten the humiliation in her mother's eyes when the bank informed her that it

couldn't entrust to the Florios either that brooch or the pearl necklace for fear they would not be handed back. In the end,

the bank gave in, but it had taken many petitions and reassurances from high places.

The auctioneer describes the jewels, and the bids succeed one another without a stop. The strings of pearls unleash a genuine

frenzy. After the string of three hundred fifty-nine pearls has been awarded, at a figure that is probably equivalent to half

its value, and after the audible exclamation of triumph from the jeweler who has purchased it, Giulia clasps her bag to herself

and leaves the room with her head held high.

She will never tell her mother that she witnessed the sale of her beloved jewels. It was her father who showed her the letter

from the Banca Commerciale informing him of the day and hour of the auction, and he looked at her, in silence, as if to say:

Help me. Giulia returned his gaze, then shook her head, just once, and walked away.

Her mother and her father had to write the last chapter of this story together, without anyone's help. Just as they had written the other chapters, both the bright ones and the terrible ones.

She was merely a witness to the fate of Casa Florio. And as such, she had wanted to watch as their hand wrote the words The End .

***

Franca is sitting at the dressing table. The small room in the Hotel Eliseo is bathed in a bright light, which speaks of new

life and spring. It troubles her, almost offends her. Ignazio has gone out for a walk. At least that's what he told her. In

reality—as she well knows—her husband couldn't stand the idea of having to talk about what was happening at that moment. He

simply whispered to her, "Forgive me," in the doorway of the room before he left.

She closes her eyes. Today is the day.

In her mind, she hears the blows of the little hammer punctuating the sale of her jewels.

The sapphire bracelet that Ignazio gave her when Baby Boy was born. The platinum one, a gift on the birth of Giulia. The diamond

and platinum brooch in the shape of an orchid, received on the occasion of their first wedding anniversary. And then her pearls.

The string of forty-five large pearls. The one of one hundred eighty. The one of four hundred thirty-five small pearls...

and above all the string of three hundred fifty-nine pearls, in all their charm, the one she wore when Boldini painted her

portrait...

Every blow echoes in her bones, the echo of a pain that reaches her soul.

All her life, those jewels were her shield. They protected her; they demonstrated to the world her strength and her beauty.

And now where are they? Who will take care of them?

Where are elegance, style, self-control? Did they ever really exist, did they really belong to her? Or were they false certainties destined to vanish with the years?

She has the answer right there in front of her. It's in that face marked with bitter lines, in those sad eyes, in that pleated

dress that hides a body grown heavy. In that soul that has fallen to pieces so many times it is no longer able to recompose

itself.

Don't be afraid to be what you are , Giulia told her one rainy day, a whole lifetime ago. And she tried, in the only way that seemed possible to her. With love,

in all its forms. For Ignazio, for her children, for the family, for the name she bore. She loved a lot and was loved a lot,

but in the end it was love that created inside her an abyss of darkness and silence. They say that love gives of itself unreservedly; but if you give everything of yourself you have nothing left to live on.

That's what happened to her.

At first, her love for Ignazio was filled with desire, devotion, loyalty. She gave herself entirely to him, to what he was

and what he represented. She was swept away by wealth, the frenzy of living, luxury. With the arrival of her children, her

joy was unconfined. For a very brief and infinitely distant time, she felt alive. Even the malign gossip, the glances of envy,

the poison of an entire city that so tormented her, now seem to her the signs of that complete, resplendent perfection.

But then the circle was broken. The betrayals began, the pain, the bereavements. She deluded herself that she could protect

that love by continuing to love Ignazio in spite of everything, continuing to be what he wanted. Continuing to be Donna Franca

Florio.

That was the start of the decline, not only of Casa Florio. Her own decline.

Now the star that lit up the sky of Palermo, brighter than any other, has gone out, becoming darkness within darkness.

Even her jewels, even those that were signs of a deceptive, desperate, misplaced love, have vanished. The illusion of having

been happy is evaporated by the sun; it is dust on this golden spring morning.

She has nothing left.

All that remains is a mild tenderness toward Ignazio, born out of the years they have spent together. And there remains her

love for her daughters, for Igiea and for Giulia. For them she harbors the hope that they don't make her mistakes. That they

remain faithful to themselves and that they understand that love cannot live only because one of the two wants it.

And above all, that they learn to love themselves.

Would I have loved less if I had known all this?

No.

I would have loved differently.

She stares at a point in the mirror—one of the mirrors saved from the sack of the Olivuzza—but her eyes are engrossed, distant.

Then a slight smile curls her lips and softens her face.

There in front of her is a little boy sitting on a carpet. He has thick blond curls and mischievous eyes and he's laughing

as he pulls the short white skirt of a little girl with diaphanous skin and green eyes, who holds a baby girl in her arms.

And there in a corner are her mother and father, her brother Franz, her mother-in-law Giovanna. Giulia Tasca di Cutò is there,

too, young and beautiful as she was at the time of their friendship.

She looks at the children again. They look back and smile.

Giovannuzza. Baby Boy. Giacobina.

"We're waiting for you, Mamma ," Giovannuzza says, although her lips don't move.

She knows. She knows they're waiting for her. And she even knows that her love for them was different. With them she was never

afraid to be Franca and nothing else. She wasn't afraid to be fragile, to show her soul. And she realizes only now that all

the rest has vanished.

So, only for them, there in the mirror, Franca is young and beautiful again. She's in her room, the one with the floor covered

in rose petals and cherubs on the ceiling. Her green eyes are clear; her mouth is open in a serene smile. She's wearing a

light white dress and her pearls.

And at that moment, as perfect as it's impossible, she's really happy.

As she never really was.