The Silent Duchess (30 page)

Saro, who has learned how to write reasonably well, tells Marianna everything about his young wife. It seems as if he especially enjoys telling her about these little dishonesties of his "woman" Peppinedda, implying that if these things are going on the fault is entirely Marianna's because it was she who forced her on to him. But Marianna is entertained by Peppinedda's extravagances. She feels happy about this girl who is somewhat round-shouldered, strong as a bull-calf, wild as a buffalo, silent as a fish. Saro is rather ashamed of her but has learned to keep quiet about it. He has committed to memory the precepts of the nobility and learned them well: never to show his real feelings, never to be serious, to make good use of his eyes and tongue but without calling attention to himself.

"Peppinedda has stolen once more. What should I do?"

"Thrash her!" writes Marianna and hands him the sheet of paper with a look of amusement.

"She is expecting a baby. And then she bites me."

"Then let her alone."

"Suppose she steals again?"

"Thrash her twice."

"Why don't you thrash her?"

"She is your wife. It's your business."

But she knows full well that Saro will never beat her. Because at bottom he is afraid of her, he fears her in the same way as one fears a stray dog which if disturbed can sink its teeth into one's leg without a moment's hesitation.

But now Fila has fainted in the middle of the library. Innocenza, rather than taking care of her, is using her apron to clean up the pitch where it has run on to the carpet.

Marianna bends over the girl. She holds her open palm against her chest and feels her heart beating slowly, sluggishly. She presses her finger on the vein that runs down her neck; it is pulsating regularly. Yet she is icy cold as if she were dead. She must be lifted up; she makes a sign to Innocenza, who takes hold of her feet. Marianna herself lifts her shoulders and together they lay her on the couch. Innocenza unties her apron and spreads it over the cushions so that they will not get dirty. From the expression on her face it is evident that she very much disapproves of a little servant like Fila lying down on the couch lined with the white and gold of the house of Ucr@ia, even if she has fainted, even if it is with the permission of the Duchess.

She is altogether too odd, this duchess, she lacks a sense of proportion. ... Everyone has their place and if they didn't the world would become like a circus. ... Today Fila, tomorrow Saro and even that little thief Peppinedda. Between her and a bitch the only difference is the paws. ... How the Duchess manages to put up with her she can't imagine. But that fat Abbot Carlo found the girl for her and she took her on. ... In the time it takes to turn round every drop of oil has disappeared, once a week she clings behind the Duchess's little carriage or the gig drawn by the little black horse that belongs to her daughter Felice the nun, with her bodice stuffed with all her pickings. ... That blockhead of a husband knows all about it but what does he do? ... Nothing ... God knows where his head is ... he seems to be smitten with love ... and the Duchess protects him ... she has lost all authority ... all restraint. If Duke Pietro were here he would lash everyone really hard ... that poor Duke hanging from a nail in the catacombs of the Capuchins, and his skin has got like a leather

armchair, it hangs from his bones like a used glove pulled over his teeth, it's as if he were laughing, but it's not a laugh it's a sneer. ... He must have known of her passion for gold because when he died he left four hundred Roman grani with a papal eagle and ut commonius engraved on the back, and three gold coins with the face of Charles II, King of Spain.

Marianna bends over Fila, buries her face in the full cotton sleeves smelling of basil, and tries to forget Innocenza; but she is still there flooding her with words. There are some people who make a present of their thoughts with a bitter, defiant malignity, even if they are entirely unconscious of doing so. One of these is Innocenza, who, along with her affection, unloads a stream of senseless chatter on her.

She must find a husband for Fila, she says to herself. She will give her a good dowry. Yet she is not aware of her ever having fallen in love; not with one of the footmen, nor with an innkeeper, nor a shoemaker, nor a cowman, as happens continually with the living-out servants. She always follows her brother around and when she cannot be with him she stays by herself with her head slightly to one side, her eyes lost in space, her mouth shut tight in a pained expression.

It will be best for her to get married as soon as possible and to have a child immediately, Marianna repeats to herself, and smiles to find that she is coming out with the very same proposals her mother would have made, or her grandmother, or even her great-grandmother, who lived through the plague in Palermo in 1624. "Santa

Ninfa could not help them, nor Santa Agata, who was the protector of the city. Another very beautiful saint of noble birth from the ancient family of the Sinibaldi della Quisquina, little Santa Rosalia, was the only one who knew how to say to the plague "Enough, be off!"" Grandmother Giuseppa had written in one of her exercise books; Marianna has kept the sheet of paper among the notes from her father.

To marry, to have children, to marry off the daughters, for them to have children, so that their daughters marry and have children, who in their turn marry and have children. ... Voices of the family tradition, low sugary voices that have rolled down the centuries, feathering the nest in which to keep the precious egg that is the Ucr@ia dynasty related through the female line to the greatest families of Palermo. They are the confident

voices that sustain with their noble life-blood the sap of the family tree weighed down with its branches and leaves. Every leaf with a name and a date. Signoretto, Prince of Fontanasalsa, 1179, next to several very small dead leaves: Agata, Marianna, Giuseppa, Maria, Teresa. Carlo

Ucr@ia, 1315, another leaf; and alongside Fiammetta, Manina, Marianna. Some became nuns, others married, all have sacrificed themselves and all their possessions, together with their younger brothers, to preserve the integrity of the family lineage.

The family name is an orc, a monster from the sea, a jealous Hercules, which devours everything with the voracity of a swine: fields of grain, vineyards, hens, sheep, rounds of cheese, houses, furniture, rings, pictures, statues, carriages, silver candlesticks, all put into circulation under this name that repeats itself on the tongue like an incantation.

Marianna's leaf is still alive only because Uncle Pietro unexpectedly inherited an estate and someone had to be found to marry such an eccentric character. "Marianna" is inscribed in letters of gold in the centre of a small offshoot between the two branches of the Ucr@ia family; one of these was on the point of extinction through the eccentricity of the only son Pietro, while the other was more prolific but also more dangerously unbalanced and on the edge of bankruptcy.

Marianna has found herself drawn into an age-old family stratagem: up to her neck in a scheme to unite the two branches of the family. But also completely unconnected with it because of her impairment, which has resulted in her being an observer, free from the malign spell of her own kind. "Corrupted by books," as Aunt Teresa the Prioress used to say; everyone knows that books are harmful and that what the Lord wants is a virgin soul who perpetuates over the centuries the customs of the dead with a blind passion of love, without reservations, without questioning, without doubts.

It is because of this that she is overwhelmed, kneeling on the carpet beside the servant with the wounded head, who writhes like a worm. Bewildered by the ancestral voices that ask for her respect and loyalty, she finds other petulant voices like that of Mr David Hume with his green turban

asking her to be daring and to send to the devil that mountain of inherited superstition.

XXXVI

Hurried breathing, the smell of camphor and cabbage-leaf poultices: every time she comes into the room it seems to her as if she were reliving her son Signoretto's illness, the distress of laboured breathing, the foetid smell of sweat sticking to the skin, restless sleep, bitter tastes and mouths dry with fever.

Events have happened so quickly that she has not had time to think about them. Peppinedda was delivered of a little boy, round as a ball and covered with black hair. Fila helped the midwife to cut the cord, to clean the new-born baby with soap and water, and dry him with warm towels. She seemed pleased with this nephew fortune had presented to her. Then one night while the mother slept with the baby in her arms, Fila dressed herself up as if she were going to mass, went down into the kitchen, armed herself with the knife used for gutting fish and in the half-light approached the bed and began to stab the two bodies lying there, that of the mother and that of the baby. She did not realise that Saro was with them, his head on Peppinedda's shoulder. He suffered the fiercest blows, one on his thigh, one on his chest and one on his ear.

The baby died. No one knows if he was crushed beneath his father or his mother; what is certain is that he died of suffocation, without any marks from the knife. Peppinedda came out of it with one cut on her arm and a few surface scratches on her neck.

By the time Marianna came down to the ground floor, propelled along on Innocenza's arm, it was already morning and four men from the Vicaria were taking Fila away bound like a sausage. After a trial lasting three days she was sentenced to be hanged. And Marianna, not knowing who else to turn to, went to Giacomo Camal@eo, the city Praetor and first among the senators, in the hope of interceding for her. The child was dead, but not from his aunt's stabs. Saro had survived and so had Peppinedda.

"A wrong that goes unpunished only breeds further crime", Camal@eo wrote on the small piece of paper she held out for him.

"She will be punished anyway if she is sent

to prison", she replied, trying to control the trembling of her fingers. She was longing to run home to Saro. She had left him in the hands of the leech Pozzolungo, in whom she had little trust. At the same time she was desperate to save Fila from the gallows. But Don Camal@eo was in no hurry, he watched her with glistening eyes that occasionally lit up with a flash of interest.

And she had written again, steadying her wrist, recalling Hippocrates, quoting Saint Augustine. After half an hour he softened a little and offered her a glass of Cyprus wine, which he kept on a chest of drawers. And she, hiding her anxiety, made an effort to drink it, smiling graciously, humbly.

In his turn Don Camal@eo quoted at length from Saint-Simon and Pascal, filling sheets of paper with a queer handwriting full of dots and flourishes, stopping every three words to blow on his goose quill dripping with ink.

"Each life is a microcosm, my dear Duchess, a living thought that is struggling to emerge from its own shadowy regions."

Playing the same game, she answered him demurely, perfectly in control. The

Praetor assumed a pompous look, entertained and amused by this exchange of erudition. A woman who has read Saint Augustine and Socrates, Saint-Simon and Pascal is not an everyday occurrence, his eyes were saying, and he must make the most of it. With her he could marry gallantry with scholarship, he could display all his learning without arousing boredom and uneasiness as was usually the case with the women he paid court to.

Marianna was obliged to swallow her haste, to forget it. She remained there discussing philosophy and drinking Cyprus wine in the hope that in the end she would extract a promise from him. The Praetor did not seem in the least worried by the disablement of his lady interlocutor. He even seemed pleased that she was unable to talk, since it allowed him to show off his knowledge in writing, omitting the usual intervals of chit-chat that obviously bored him. By the end he had made her a promise to intercede with the Court of Justice to rescue Fila from the gallows, suggesting that she should be detained as a madwoman in San Giovanni de' Leprosi.

"From what you tell me the girl acted out of

love, and the madness of love is the bread of so much literature: was not Orlando mad? And did not Don Quixote bow down before a laundry maid and address her as "Princess"? Madness then, what is it if not an excess of wisdom, a wisdom without those contradictions that make it imperfect and therefore human? Reason, taken in its crystal integrity, in its dogma of caution, comes very nigh to perdition. If we apply to the letter the rules of rational knowledge, without either speculating or doubting, we fall into the hell of madness."

The next morning a small carriage arrived in the Via Alloro, laden with flowers, two huge bunches of pink gladioli and one of yellow lilies, as well as a box of sweets. A little black boy had delivered it all to the kitchen and had gone away without waiting even to be thanked.

When Marianna went back to find out what had been decided by the Court of Justice, Don Camal@eo seemed so delighted to see her that she felt quite alarmed. What if he expected something in return? The enthusiasm he demonstrated was excessive, and vaguely menacing. He gave her the best chair in the room, offered her the usual wine from Cyprus, and almost snatched out of her hand the sheet of paper that she passed to him to write down two lines from Boiardo:

Whoever greets her, speaks with her, whoever touches her,

Whoever sits with her, for him all past time will be forgot.

Eventually after two hours of literary bravura he had written that Fila was already at the Leprosi in her own interest, and that she could remain there in peace because they were not going to hang her.

Marianna had raised her blue eyes uncertainly to the Praetor, but she was immediately reassured. His face expressed a pleasure that went beyond that of a normal exchange of favours. But with his studies at the University of Salerno, his apprenticeship at the bar of Reggio Calabria, his long sojourn spent studying in T@ubingen, the senator regarded blackmail as too crude a weapon for a true man of power.