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Maria Pia Oelker
A woman
in the shadows
A WOMAN IN THE SHADOW
Translated by: Martyn Fogg
Publication date: June 2017
Publisher: Tektime
Contents
Posthumous notes by the author
Chapter 1
He now seemed to be sleeping peacefully, after a night and a morning with a high temperature that had come on suddenly. In the half-dark large room, I was left alone with him, except for the presence of a nurse, and I had sat near the window to do my embroidery. My thoughts were like the clouds, almost completely covering the winter sun on the roofs of Vienna, melancholy and cold.
I watched him while his face, still red from the fever, was almost hidden among the puffed-up cushions on the bed: his hair had lost almost all the blond of his youth, his eyes for some time were permanently encircled by thick dark rings, left by the innumerable worries that every day, every hour, beset him incessantly.
I remembered again the first time I saw that face, still very young, depicted in a medallion decorated with pearls and precious stones. I had looked at it for several minutes with curiosity and a few goose pimples, studying the elongated oval face, the serious and deep-set eyes, the slim nose and the high and thoughtful forehead and I gave a sigh of relief: he was rather nice and I wondered if one day I would manage to even love him or at least feel a certain affection for him.
I knew no-one was expecting us to love each other, it was not a thought that at all disturbed the sleep of our august parents, the sovereign rulers of two powerful states; the main issue was the alliance between two one-time enemies, the sharing of power and dominance over Europe, sanctified by that marriage, as well as by international treaties.
Almost twenty-seven years had passed since our wedding and that time seemed to me to have flown by in a flash, in an intense life, lived to the maximum, day after day.
While my hands worked quickly and distractedly, that day I inexplicably felt my life was in the balance and I did not know if I was ahead or losing.
I smiled thinking of how many times over the years I had heard that word which was certainly not usual, neither at my father’s Court nor in most of the other European courts and which was instead a source of continual and heated discussion at Pitti or Poggio Imperiale palaces. I felt shivers of cold running down my spine and I pulled around my shoulders the wool and silk shawl that my husband liked so much for its aquamarine colour, which was his favourite
I heard him move slightly. I turned towards the bed and saw his face contract in a slight grimace of pain. He was still asleep, but I do not know why he did not seem to me to be as calm as he was a few minutes earlier. I got up and approached him. I put my hand on his forehead and felt it burning. In that precise moment, he opened his eyes, looking almost bewildered, he called me and tried to get up, shaken by dry heaving. . I put my arms around him, I said: “Calm down, it will be all right”, while the nurse ran to help me and hold him up. He gave a last glance at me, a gasp and then nothing.
I looked at him incredulous, appalled, incapable of truly realising what had happened.
He no longer responded, his heart had stopped beating. There was nothing more man could do for him.
“Now”, I thought, “only God can take care of his generous spirit.”
Everything had happened so suddenly, that I could not manage to even think. I left the others to deal with him, watching them, as if they were acting in a dream, sure that I would then wake up suddenly and find him and our children again, like every day, filling my life.
But I did not wake up and, a little bit at a time, I began to finally understand what had happened. My husband was dead, I had become the widow Empress, my son was the new Sovereign.
I understood, but I could not manage to accept it.
I suddenly had the impression that a part of me, perhaps the best and most alive part, had gone away for ever.
There was now not a moment during those terrible days, when I did not ask myself, with exasperating monotony, what I had really been for him. I mean to say that I, as a woman for him as a man.
He had been an energetic, untiring and intelligent sovereign; I had been his wife, the mother of his children, but what else? What had our marriage really been? A rhetorical question, perhaps, but essential for me: it was no longer enough for me to know that we had simply played the roles chosen for us by others, when we were still adolescents, ignorant of the world, which moved disturbingly, and often dramatically, around our palaces, parks and gardens, the sparkling salons, the parties, the villas, our easy and rich lives, I wanted the truth, even if nobody could have ever been able to easily give it to me. Me less than others.
I was 14 years old, when my father, Carlo, left Naples, where I was born and had spent my infancy and early adolescence, to go to Spain and take over the throne. My brother, some years younger than me, stayed in Italy: he would become King of Naples, even though he then thought only of toys, like a real baby, spoilt and very free. They told me, almost immediately, that I would marry an Austrian archduke, the son of Maria Teresa of Hapsburg. I had been educated to accept my father’s decisions, without discussion or objections: that choice, anyway, left me astonished, at the very least: but were the Hapsburgs our enemies? We had been fighting them for a long time, I had been taught, my father had taken over from the Austrians in the reign over Naples and we had lost a lot of territories, even the Italian ones had gone to the Imperial dynasty; anyway, I also knew that political reasoning did not follow any apparent logic, nor even less so, the reasoning of the heart; for the rest, if it was normal for every woman to accept the husband chosen by her family, it was so much more so for whoever, like me or my sisters or cousins, was not mistress of her own life, which belonged entirely to the State. An instrument for perpetuating a dynasty, useful to make and unmake alliances.
We talked about it between ourselves, in our secret rooms, sometimes with melancholy, other times with bitterness and impatience, according to the characters, consoling ourselves with the hope of, anyway, experiencing one great love to fill us with its exciting exhilaration. Keep up appearances, this was essential, carrying out our official function was indispensable,