I Give It to You by Valerie Martin

Author:Valerie Martin [Martin, Valerie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2020-08-11T00:00:00+00:00

The Interrupted Life

of Sandro Salviati

1905 FIRENZE

Sandro Salviati was the oldest son of Giacomo Salviati, a man of property who had married Flavia Belli, the daughter of a Florentine banker, thereby enlarging the family coffers so vastly that the Villa Chiara was relegated to the status of a summer refuge from the heat in Firenze. The marriage produced five children: Sandro, the oldest, followed by two daughters, Celestia and Valeria, another son, Marco, and one more daughter, Maria. Marco, his mother’s favorite, was spoiled and adored by his parents and destined to play a part in the undoing of his older brother, the rightful heir to the family estate.

Sandro, a dreamy child, immersed himself in tales of the Knights Templar and later in the works of Victor Hugo—he read French with ease—as well as those of Sir Walter Scott, translated into Italian. He was the darling of nuns and indulged by priests for his gentle disposition and exaggerated notions of valor. He exhibited musical ability at an early age, had a clear, mellow tenor voice, and could play both piano and violin creditably. He took a great interest in his sisters’ education, which his parents did not, and it was thanks to his intervention that Celestia and Valeria were allowed to study with his tutor and became so independent in their thinking that they fostered hopes of pursuing studies at the University of Bologna, hopes that were summarily squashed by their father, who was more invested in their marriages than in their minds.

Sandro was at ease in the bustling, acquisitive, venal world of his large family. Art and music engaged his imagination. He had no interest in business, and so, as he came of age, he constituted a disappointment to his father and a mystery to his mother. This lady consoled her husband by recourse to conciliatory adjectives, such as sensitive and artistic, to excuse her gentle son. Sandro treated her with a courteous reserve, thereby keeping her at a manageable distance.

His brother, Marco, was his opposite in spirit and flesh, a thriving, hungry, obstreperous boy, quick to laughter as well as to anger and indifferent to his siblings and his adoring mother; his considerable energies were focused on surpassing—in wealth, power, and acumen—his vigorous father.

When Sandro turned twenty-five, his parents naturally looked about for an alliance that would bring profit and prestige to the family. Sandro had other ideas. No one knew how or where Silvia Rienzi, the lovely, simple daughter of a grocer who purveyed vegetables in the market near Santa Croce, captured his heart. A new century had dawned, business was good, change was in the air, but no one, including Silvia’s father, seriously imagined that a grocer might marry his daughter into a family as rich and powerful as the Salviatis. Yet this was what Sandro proposed one morning after Mass as he walked with his father, his mother, his sisters, and Marco ranged behind, in the Sunday doldrums of Via Porta Rossa. Silvia, Sandro admitted

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