The Silent Duchess (20 page)

Marianna stretches out her hand towards her daughter's. She is lying with her palms turned upwards on the blanket, and cautiously Marianna strokes the damp palm with her fingers. How many times did her daughter's hand clutch hold of her skirt just as she, in her time, had clutched at her father's habit, demanding attention, a series of demands that could be coalesced into a single plea: can I trust you? But perhaps she has also discovered it is not possible to trust anyone, even someone you love blindly. In the end they will remain distant, incomprehensible.

Manina's hands, the whiteness of which is often blemished by the red bites of mosquitoes, are just

like those of Agata. The aunt and niece are alike in many ways, each very beautiful, and each with a nature that tends to be cruelly self-sacrificing. Alienated from all philandering, all care, all feeling for themselves, both are entirely dedicated to maternal love, obsessed by an adoration of their children that is close to idolatry.

The only difference lies in Manina's sense of humour, with which she tries to keep the peace by making people laugh while staying deadly serious herself. Agata sacrifices herself to motherhood without ever asking for anything in return, and regards women who have not made the same choice with some contempt. She already has eight children and her pregnancies continue in spite of the fact that she is thirty-nine. She is never tired, always wrestling with wet-nurses, nannies, surgeons, leeches and midwives.

Manina likes a quiet life too much to disparage anybody. Her dream is to weave together with one thread husband, children, parents and relatives and to hold them firmly to her. At twenty-five she has had six children and, since she was married at twelve, her sons seem more like brothers while they are growing up.

Marianna remembers her stumbling on her plump legs, dressed in a full-skirted dress patterned with red flowers she had copied from a painting by Vel@azquez, of which she had a reproduction in water-colours. A rosy child, calm, with eyes of aquamarine. She had not yet emerged from that painting when she stepped into another on the arm of her husband, her enormous belly borne before her like a trophy offered without shame to the admiration of passers-by.

Two miscarriages and one baby stillborn. But she has survived it all without too much damage. "My body is a waiting-room, there is always an infant coming in or going out", she wrote about herself to her mother, and these entrances and exits do not in any way disconcert her, indeed she has thrived on them: the confusion of children, forever running, eating, shitting, sleeping, screaming, fills her with happiness.

But now the latest birth may kill her. The baby was well positioned, at least according to the midwife. Her breasts had begun to secrete milk and Manina amused herself by letting the smallest ones taste it. They climbed on to her

lap and attached themselves to the nipple, squeezing and pulling at the hard-worked flesh.

The baby was born dead and she went on losing blood till she became grey. The midwife, by continuing to plug her with bandages, managed to staunch the bleeding, but by nightfall the mother had become delirious. Now she hangs on by a thread, her face as white as chalk, her eyes dimmed.

Marianna takes a piece of cloth, dips it in water and lemon juice and puts it close to her daughter's lips. For a moment she sees her eyes open, but they are blind; she does not recognise her. A smile of satisfaction passes across her bloodless face, a glimmer of sublime indifference to herself, a radiance of self-sacrifice. Who can have implanted this mania for maternal abnegation, this fervour for deliberate self-immolation? Aunt Teresa the Prioress? Or the white-haired nurse with the hair shirt underneath her bodice, who compelled her to pray for hours, kneeling beside the bed? Or perhaps Don Ligustro, who is also Aunt Fiammetta's confessor and who has been close to her for years, teaching her the catechism and the doctrines of the Church? And yet Don Ligustro is not at all fanatical, indeed at one time he seemed to be much taken with the great Cornelius Jansen, known as Giansenio. Somewhere there is a note from Father Ligustro that begins with a quote from Aristotle: "God is too perfect to think of other than Himself."

Neither Agata nor Manina expects anything from her husband: neither love nor friendship. And perhaps it is because of this that they are loved. Don Diego di Torre Mosca never leaves his wife's side for a moment and is obsessed with jealousy because of her.

Manina's husband, Don Francesco Chiarand@a di Magazzinasso, is also very attached to his wife although this does not prevent him from pursuing housekeepers and servants about the place, especially when they are from the "Continent" of Italy. As happened with a girl called Rosina, who came from Benevento: a fine-looking haughty girl who waited at table. She got herself pregnant by his lordship and everybody was very upset. Manina's mother-in-law, the Baroness Chiarand@a di Magazzinasso, removed her from her son's house and sent her off

to Messina to the house of some friends who were in need of an elegant-looking servant. Fiammetta came from the convent to reprimand her nephew. Aunts, in-laws and cousins scurried to the big drawing-room of the Palazzo Chiarand@a in the Via Toledo to sympathise with the poor wife.

But the one person who took no thought for herself in the whole business was Manina, who volunteered to bring up the illegitimate child, keeping both him and his mother in the house. And she said wittily of the resemblance between father and son that they both sported the same little prick of a nose. But her mother-in-law remained obdurate and Manina gave in with her usual submissiveness, inclining her beautiful head, which she has taken to decorating with a string of pink pearls.

Now the pearls are there on the chest of drawers and they gleam with mauve light in the shadows of the room. Next to them are four rings: the ruby ring of Grandmother Maria, which is still stained with dirt and from which still emanate whiffs of snuff from Trieste; a cameo ring with the head of Venus that belonged to Great-grandmother Giuseppa and before her to Great-great-grandmother Agata Ucr@ia; a heavy gold wedding ring and a silver ring with dolphins, which Grandfather Signoretto used to wear. Beside them is a tortoiseshell comb studded with diamonds that has been passed down from the raven-black hair of the mother-in-law to the fair hair of the daughter-in-law.

The ring with the dolphins had once been lost by Marianna's father, which created a great to-do throughout the whole family. Finally it was found by Innocenza near the water-lily pond. As a result, from then on she rested on her laurels, as they say, and became for everyone "honest Innocenza". Later the dolphin ring got lost once again: this time her father the Duke had left it at the house of an opera singer of whom he was enamoured.

"Out of respect I took off the ring and put it on the bedside table", he wrote confidentially to his daughter.

"Respect for whom, Father?"

"For your mother, for the family." But as he wrote it a smile flitted across his face, something plausible and at the same time implausible. He took pleasure in familiar situations, family evenings, but also in recitals, spectacles or

parades, and the daring of an occasional night's jaunt in the town. He did not want to upset convention or hurt anyone's feelings, but at the same time he was interested in new ideas, in every unexpected emotion, tolerant of the contradictions within himself and intolerant of other people's.

"But did you find the ring?"

"I was in the wrong. I thought Clementina had stolen it. Instead she had me find it a couple of days later on the pillow. She was a good little girl."

She has a box full of notes from her father and she keeps it locked in the chest of drawers by the bed. She has thrown her own notes away but those of her father, a few of her mother's, and a few of the children's she has kept. Every so often she takes them out and reads them. The free and easy handwriting of her father, the laboured, cramped hand of her mother, the narrow, sloping o's of her son Mariano, the flying s's and l's of her daughter Felice, the distorted signature, all blotted with ink, of her daughter Giuseppa. She has not even one note of Manina's. Perhaps because she has not written much or perhaps because whenever she does write on her mother's notepad the message has been too insignificant to be worth keeping. She has never enjoyed writing, this daughter with her lush, casual beauty. She loves music more than she loves the written word. Her witticisms, which are always aimed at diverting people from their dark thoughts, quarrels and bad temper, only reach Marianna when they are written down; and it is never Manina who writes them.

During the early years of their marriage Manina and Francesco were in the habit of inviting friends to their big house in the Via Toledo every evening. They had a French cook with a pockmarked face who used to prepare exquisite foie gras and delicious coquilles aux herbes. After the customary sorbet of pomegranate and lemon they would go into the drawing-room with its frescos by Intermassimi. Marianna remembers that there were also chimeras with the body of a lioness and the face of a woman. Manina used to sit at the harpsichord and let her fingers glide over the keys, at first timidly, cautiously, and then with more confidence until her mouth took on a bitter, almost ferocious expression.

After the death of their second child and the two miscarriages that followed it, the Chiarand@as had ceased entertaining. Only on Sundays did they sometimes ask relations to dinner and then Manina would play the harpsichord with great energy. But her face no longer became distorted, it remained as smooth and calm as she looks in the portrait by Intermassimi that hangs in the dining-room amidst a cloud of angels, birds of paradise and serpents with fishes' heads. Later she gave up music altogether. Now her seven-year-old daughter Giacinta sits at the harpsichord beside a music teacher from Switzerland, who beats time on the lid with a baton made from olive wood.

Marianna has become drowsy as she holds her daughter's feverish hand. The emptiness inside her head resounds with the drumming of the bay horse Miguelito's hoofs. Heaven knows where he is galloping now, that old horse originally given to her father the Duke by a distant cousin, Pipino Ondes, who in his turn had bought him from a gipsy.

For years Miguelito lived in the stables behind the Villa Ucr@ia, next to the sunless house of the Cal@o family, together with the other Arab horses. Then her father had taken a liking to him because of his gentle and courageous nature, and rode him when going to the Villa Butera or the Villa Palagonia, and sometimes even as far as Palermo. In old age he ended up with the Cal@os, being urged up and down precipitous slopes by the twins Lina and Lena. Eventually he became blind in one eye and then he used to carry old Cal@o behind the cows, on the plain of Bagheria. When the twins died he could still be seen wandering round the olive grove, very thin but ready to take off at a gallop, hardly touching the dusty slope that led down from the villa.

In a little while I will jump on his back, Marianna tells herself, and we'll go to find my father. But where is the old horse now? Worn and blind, his teeth yellow and broken with age, he has not lost his look of daring or the thick coffee-coloured mane for which he was famous. But his tail has something strange about it. It has got longer, twisted, swollen. And now it stretches, wriggles and pushes out a sharp point. It seems as if it wants to grab her round the waist and throw her against a rock. Is he being transformed into one of those dogs that used to people her mother's dreams?

Marianna opens her eyes just in time to glimpse through the half-open door a quivering lock of hair and two soft dark eyes watching her.

XXV

From far off they look like three large tortoises moving slowly along the narrow path among tall grass and stones. Three tortoises: three litters, each preceded and followed by two mules. In Indian file, one behind the other, between the woods and the steep precipices, following an inaccessible path that goes from Bagheria towards the Serre mountains, passing through Misilmeri, Villafrati, until it reaches the heights of the Portella del Coniglio. Four armed men follow behind the procession, four others precede it with muskets on their shoulders.

Marianna sits suspended, enclosed in a narrow swinging seat, her heavy skirt raised a little over her sweating ankles, her hair drawn back and coiled up on her neck for coolness. Every now and then she lifts her hand to chase away a fly. In front of her, on a seat lined with brocade, in a white dress of Indian voile, with a blue scarf across her knees, Giuseppa lies asleep, oblivious to the jolting and lurching of the litter.

Now the path becomes narrower and steeper, on one side hovering on the edge of a precipice strewn with pinkish-grey rocks, on the other overhung by a steep wall of black earth and a tangle of bushes. Now and again the hoofs of the mules skid on the rocks, making the litter lurch to one side, but then they recover and climb on, struggling to avoid the potholes in the path.

The muleteer guides them by going a few yards ahead, carrying a staff to test the muddy ground. At times the legs of the mules sink into the clay and, weighed down by clods of mud, can only be got out with a great struggle and much use of the whip. At other times the tall needle-like grasses become tangled round their fetlocks, hindering their movement.

Marianna holds on to the wooden handle, her stomach churning, wondering if she will end up being sick. Leaning her head out of the door, she can see the litter suspended over a precipice. Why

don't they stop, why does this infuriating swaying that turns her stomach upside down never end? The fact is that to stop would be even more dangerous than to go on, and the mules, as if they understood this, are pushing forward with lowered heads, puffing and blowing, keeping the shafts balanced by instinctively controlling their muscles.

The flies come and go from the faces of the animals to the inside of the little carriage: the movement excites them. They fly over the Duchess's tied-up hair and over Giuseppa's open lips. Marianna realises that it is better to look into the distance and try to forget that she is a prisoner suspended between two wooden poles balanced over the void. Looking out she can see, beyond the stony precipices, beyond a wood of cork trees, in the middle of a gradual slope of fields scorched by the sun, the valley of Sciara, its wide stretch of land cultivated with wheat: an expanse covered by a yellow down of feathers barely shaken by the wind. Between the fields of grain, as alive and sinuous as a snake with shiny scales, the river San Leonardo flows down into the gulf of Termini Imerese.

To Marianna's wide-open eyes, the great metallic river, the groves of cork trees with their reddish streaks, the stretches of sugar cane, are enclosed within a solid block of glassy heat scarcely shaken by an internal shimmering that is only just perceptible.

The magnificent landscape has made her forget the flies and the travel-sickness. She is about to stretch her hand out towards her daughter, who is sleeping with her head bent over her shoulder, but then she stops with her hand in mid-air. She is undecided whether to wake her and show her the view, or to let her sleep, remembering that they were up at four in the morning and that the swaying motion does not make it easy to stay awake.

Trying not to endanger the balance of this fragile domed shell, Marianna leans forward to see if the other litters are following them. In one is Manina, thin and beautiful after her recovery, and Felice, who fans herself with a big fan of yellow silk. In the other litter travel Innocenza and Fila.

Among the armed men are Raffaele Cuffa, his cousin Calogero Usura, Peppino Geraci the gardener at the Villa Ucr@ia, old Ciccio Cal@o, his nephew Tot@o, and Saro. Since

uncle husband died and left him a hundred escudos and all his clothes, Saro has assumed a posture of studied nonchalance, which makes him look a little ridiculous but also gives him a new resplendence. The moon crescents of his ribs have gone from his chest. His black lock of hair no longer waves audaciously over his forehead but is now firmly contained within a small white-curled wig that Duke Pietro had when he was a young man. It is a little too large for him and has a tendency to slide down over his ears.

He is still very handsome even though he looks different, less juvenile, more knowledgeable and composed. But above all he has changed his ways, which are now almost those of a gentleman born between linen sheets in a large palace in Palermo. He has learned to move gracefully but without affectation. He rides a horse like a prince, putting the point of his boot into the stirrup and lifting himself up on it with a light, self-possessed spring. He has learned how to bow in front of ladies, advancing one leg and making a broad sweep with his arm, not forgetting to reverse his wrist and toss the feathers of his tricorn hat at the last moment.

He has scaled one by one the steps that lead to glory, this determined orphan, discovered half-naked one night in Fila's room, with his mouse's tail and his penitent smirk. But he is still not satisfied: it is his ambition to learn to write and to do sums. So great is the diligence with which he applies himself, so great his patience, that even uncle husband realised his worth and helped by giving him lessons in heraldry, good manners and chivalry.

Now there remain only a few crowning steps to climb, and among these is the conquest of his lady, the beautiful dumb woman who rejects his advances with such arrogance. Is this what makes him so bold or is there something else? It is hard to say--the young man has also learned the art of dissimulation. At her uncle husband's funeral he was the most grief-stricken, as if it were his own father who had died. And when he was told that the Duke had left him a small bequest in gold, money, clothes, shoes and wigs, he went white with astonishment and has continued to proclaim that he is "not worthy of it".

The funeral reduced Marianna to a state of

total exhaustion: nine days of ceremonies, masses, suppers with relations, the preparation of mourning clothes for the entire family, the floral decorations, the hundreds of wax candles for the church, the wailing women who wept for two days and two nights beside the corpse. At last the body was taken to the catacombs of the Capuchins to be embalmed. She would have preferred him to lie in peace beneath the earth, but Mariano and her brother Signoretto had been adamant.

Duke Pietro Ucr@ia of Campo

Spagnolo, Lord of Scannatura, Count of

Sala di Paruta, Marquis of Sollazzi, must be embalmed and preserved in the crypts of the Capuchins like his ancestors.

They had crowded down into the catacombs, stumbling over their trains, their torches in danger of setting fire to the bier, in a m`el@ee of hands, shoes, cushions, flowers, swords, liveries and candlesticks. Then they had all vanished, and she was left alone with the naked body of her dead husband, while the monks prepared the embalming table and the bath of saltpetre.

At the beginning she had refused to look at him; to do so seemed indecent. Her eyes were gazing further up to three old men with tarred leathery skin that stuck to their bones and fastened them to the walls, to which they were also hooked by the neck, their skeletal hands fixed across their chests with a thong. On top of polished wooden shelves lay other corpses: elegant ladies dressed in their best clothes, their arms crossed on their breasts, their bonnets yellowing at the edges, their lips stretched over their teeth. Some had been lying there for only a few weeks and emitted a strong acid smell. Others had been there for fifty or a hundred years and had become quite odourless.

A barbarous custom, Marianna told herself, and tried to remember what Mr Hume had said about death, but her mind was blank. It would be better to be burned and thrown into the Ganges like the Indians rather than remain immured in these underground passages, gathered together with all one's relations and friends with exalted names and skin crumbling like paper.

Her gaze settled on a body under a glass cover that had been perfectly preserved: a little girl with long eyelashes, fair hair, eyes like minute shells lying on an embroidered pillow, a bare exposed forehead on which glistened two

drops of sweat. And suddenly she saw who it was: the sister of Grandmother Giuseppa, who died from the plague when she was six years old. A great-aunt who never grew up and seemed to be engaged in proclaiming the miraculous eternity of the flesh. Of all the bodies piled there only that of the little girl had remained in a state everyone could hope for after death: without blemish, tender, rapt in a tranquil tedium. Instead, the embalming carried out by the monks so famous for their use of natural saltpetre had become after some time flaked and hardened, accentuating the outlines of the skeletons that remained scarcely veiled by a film of dark flesh.

Marianna brought her eyes back to the naked body of uncle husband stretched out before her. But why had they left her there on her own? Perhaps so that she could give him a last farewell, or possibly to reflect on the frailty of the mortal body? Oddly enough the sight of his forsaken limbs reassured her: he was so different from the other bodies surrounding her, so fresh and tranquil, distinguished by the veins, eyelashes, hair and full lips that characterise the living. Those waves of grey hair preserved intact the memory of sunlit countryside; the cheeks still retained a few gleams of pink candlelight.

Just above him a small slab incised in copper said "Memento mori"; but the corpse of uncle husband seemed to be saying "Memento vivere", so great was the force of his numbed flesh in comparison with the make-believe papier m`ach`e of all the other embalmed bodies. She had never seen him like this, so naked and yet still composed and dignified, with his flaccid muscles and the severe folds of his stony countenance. A body that had never inspired her with love because of the austere, cold and violent behaviour that went with it. Of late something had altered in his way of approaching her: always furtive as if he intended to steal something from her, but accompanied by a new uncertainty, a doubt that came from her sudden inexplicable refusal of him so many years ago. This hesitancy, a little studied and clumsy, was born of a silent, confused respect and had made him less of a stranger to her. If she was ever aware of herself wanting to hold his hand she knew that even the thought of a caress was foreign to him. From his ancestors he had inherited the idea that love is predatory: