The Silent Duchess (10 page)

Uncle husband is the only one not to trouble himself over these disputes. He is not involved in the inheritance of his brother-in-law and it does not matter to him where it all goes. He has enough of his own, and he already knows that the Villa Ucr@ia at Bagheria, which his wife cares about so much, will be entirely theirs, so he pours out the wine and thinks of other things, while his eyes rest with some irony on the heated, angry faces of his nephews and nieces.

Sitting opposite Marianna,

Signoretto is perhaps the only one who feels a duty to demonstrate some formal grief for the death of his father. When someone speaks to him, he puts on a pious expression that has something comic about it because of its studied effect. Titles are raining down on him: Duke of Ucr@ia, Count of Fontanasalsa, Baron of Bosco Grande, of Pesceddi, of Lemmola, Marquis of

Cuticchio and of Dogana Vecchia. He still has not found a wife. His mother the Duchess chose one for him but he did not like her. Then his mother died almost overnight from heart failure and no one else was interested in the complicated arrangements that marriage into the Uzzo di Agliano family involves. When his son, still a bachelor, had reached the age of twenty-five, his father the Duke had hastened, on an impulse of parental concern, to find him another wife, the Princess

Trigona of Sant 'Elia. But even she was not to his liking and his father was too weak to enforce his obedience.

Though it probably had less to do with weakness than with doubt. His father the Duke did not entirely believe in his own authority, even though he was domineering by nature. All his decisions were undermined by a lack of confidence, by an internal weariness that brought a smile rather than a frown and led to compromise rather than firmness.

Thus Signoretto, at the age when all the youth of Palermo's noble families are already married and have sons of their own, is still a bachelor. For some time he has been deeply involved in politics. He now says he wants to become a senator, not just as a formality like other people: his ambition is to increase the export of grain from the island, so reducing the price; to open roads into the interior to facilitate transport; and to get the Senate to buy ships for the use of the farmers. Broadly speaking, this is what he has been proposing, and many young people are in agreement with his plans.

"Senators only go to the Senate once in a blue moon", Carlo wrote to her behind Signoretto's back. "And when they do it's only to argue about questions of precedence, while they eat pistachio ices and exchange the latest town gossip. They have bartered once and for all their right to say no, for the guarantee of being left in peace on their own estates." But Signoretto is ambitious; he says he intends to go to the courts

of Savoy and Turin, where other young men from Palermo have made a name for themselves with their good manners, their intelligence and their ability to split hairs. Recently he was in Paris, where he learned to speak French fluently and studied the classics with great zeal.

The person who loves him most and protects him is Agata, sister of their grandfather Mariano, and a canoness of the Carmelite order. Wrapped in shawls with long gold tassels, thrown carelessly over her habit, she has assembled a library of biographies of marshals, heads of state, kings, princes, bishops, popes. Because of the interests they have in common you'd have thought she and Duke Pietro would get on well, but this is not so. The fact of the matter is that the Duke asserts that the Ucr@ia family originated in 600 BC, whereas she swears that it first appeared in historical records in 188 BC with

Quinto Ucr@ia Tuberone, who became a consul at only sixteen. Because of this disagreement they have not spoken to each other for years.

Meanwhile Fiammetta, since she has become a nun, has lost the stunted, resigned look she had as a child; she has full breasts, bright eyes and a rosy complexion. Her hands have become strong with all the kneading, chopping, peeling and beating she has to do. She has found out that "eating dry bread with spittle", as ordained by the rules of the order, is not for her, so she spends her time surrounded by copper pans, cooking all sorts of delicious dishes.

Next to her is Carlo, who looks more and more like his mother: lazy, slow, enigmatic, his arms plump, his chin already on the verge of being double or even triple, his gentle myopic eyes, his cassock stretched to bursting across his massive chest. He excels at deciphering ancient religious manuscripts. Recently he has been summoned to the monastery of San Calogero di Messina to decipher the secrets of a few books from the thirteenth century that no one understands any more. And he has made a copy of them word for word, making a few additions of his own, and as a result has been lauded with gratitude and gifts.

And then Geraldo, who is "studying to become a general", as Aunt Manina used to say. Polished, ceremonious, frigid, wearing uniforms that appear still hot from the ironing board,

he pays court to women, by whom he is much sought after; but he refuses to get married because he does not possess either large estates or titles. However, there is the possibility of a match that has Aunt Agata's blessing, a certain Domenica Rispoli, the wealthy daughter of a farming family who have made their money through the ignorance of a lazy landowner. But Geraldo is not interested. He says he will not mingle his blood with that of a farm girl, even if she is as beautiful as Helen of Troy. But now he has learned that his father has left him some land of his own at Cuticchio. So long as he is able to turn it to good account, he should reap sufficient profit to keep a carriage and have a house in town. But he aspires to something more showy. Even shopkeepers in the Piazza San Domenico have carriages!

Perched on the edge of a chair like a little girl, her arms covered in midge bites, is Agata, the beautiful Agata, given in marriage at the age of twelve to Prince Diego di Torre

Mosca. Once upon a time the two sisters understood each other simply by exchanging a look, Marianna recollects. Now they have become almost like strangers. Every so often Marianna goes to the Torre Mosca Palazzo in the Via Maqueda. She admires their tapestries, their Venetian furniture, their enormous gilt-framed mirrors, but each time she has found her sister gloomy, overwhelmed by distant, dismal thoughts. Since the birth of her first-born son, Agata has begun to get smaller. That white skin, so beloved by the mosquitoes for its fragrance, has grown withered and wrinkled before her time; her features have become slack and disfigured; and her eyes have grown sunken as if the very act of seeing consumes her with pain.

Fiammetta, who was considered to be the ugly one of the family, has become something of a beauty, hoeing the kitchen garden and kneading bread in the convent; but Agata, who at fifteen "made all the angels fall in love with her", as her father wrote, at twenty-three has taken on the look of a wizened Madonna, one of those Madonnas whose picture, painted by an unknown hand, hangs over people's beds and who are so worn out that they seem about to crumble away.

She has had six children but two of them have died. After her third son was born, she suffered from a

blood infection which almost carried her away. She has recovered, but only partially. Now she suffers from sores on her breasts. Every time she feeds the baby she writhes in agony, and ends up giving her own son more blood than milk. Her husband has engaged wet-nurses for her but she persists in wanting to feed him herself. Obstinately determined to sacrifice herself until she is reduced to a shadow, continuously racked by puerperal fevers, her eyes sunk into the cavity of their sockets beneath her soft fair eyebrows, she is unwilling to accept advice or help from anyone.

An almost heroic will can be divined in this tight-lipped young mother, her forehead divided by a furrow, her chin rigid, her smile forced and her teeth yellow, decayed and prematurely chipped. Every so often her husband grasps her hand, gives her a kiss and gazes at her. Who knows what the secret of their marriage can be, Marianna says to herself. Every marriage has its secrets that are never revealed, even to a sister. Her own is distinguished by silence and coldness, interrupted by moments of nocturnal brutality, which are luckily becoming less and less frequent.

And Agata's? Her husband Don Diego seems to be in love with her in spite of the disfigurements and devastations that have resulted from too frequent confinements, which she endures like a martyrdom. And she herself? From the way she accepts his caresses and kisses it seems that she is forcing herself to restrain an impatience that borders on disgust. Don Diego's blue eyes are large and clear, but beneath an apparent love and solicitude there is something else that does not readily come to the surface: perhaps jealousy, or the anxiety of possessing something he does not feel sure of. Occasionally his innocent eyes reveal flashes of self-satisfaction at the premature fading of his wife's beauty, and his hand reaches out to her with a hint almost of joy, mingled with compassion and complacency.

But now Marianna's preoccupation is interrupted by a violent push that nearly sends her sprawling. Geraldo has suddenly jumped to his feet, slamming his own chair against the wall and sweeping the tablecloth against his deaf sister. Uncle husband hurries towards her to make

sure she hasn't been hurt.

Marianna smiles to reassure him, and she is astonished to find herself taking his side against her brothers: for once they are friends and accomplices.

For her the villa at Bagheria is sufficient. She has had it built exactly as she wants it and she expects to grow old there. Of course she'd have no objection to inheriting one of her father's family estates so as to have some ready money of her own and not be indebted to anyone. Even though the estate of Scannatura, owned by her husband, produces a satisfactory income, she has to account to Duke Pietro for every coin she spends and sometimes she doesn't even have the money to buy writing-paper.

Even the hazelnut orchard at Pesceddi or the olive groves at Bagheria would have come in handy. Then she could have managed them according to her own ideas and have an income that would not be controlled by anyone, and of which she would not have to render an account to others. She too, almost without realising it, is being drawn into thinking about the division of the inheritance, even she is calculating, grasping, claiming rights. Fortunately she does not have a voice that makes itself heard in this stupid argument between the brothers, otherwise she doesn't know what she might not say. Anyway, no one has consulted her. They are so taken up with the sound of their own words, which acquire, as the family row gains momentum, the vibrant tones of trumpets: a sound she has never heard, but which she imagines as a metallic clanging that sets her feet dancing.

Often they behave as if they had nothing to do with her. Silence takes possession of her like one of her mother's dogs that would have seized her round the waist and dragged her far away. And there among the relations, she is like a ghost that sees but is not seen.

She is aware that the squabble about the villa at Bagheria is still grinding away under its own steam, but no one turns round to her. Her father the Duke owned a part of what used to be his grandfather's hunting lodge, and half of the olive and lemon trees surrounding the villa. With an offhandedness that seems to the others disgraceful he has left it all to his dumb daughter. But there is already one person who thinks it would be iniquitous to contest the will: uncle husband has distanced himself from it all, and has left a note in her lap talking of

"Heaven knows what legal tangles they'll get up to, seeing that lawyers in Palermo grow like mushrooms".

The thought that her father is lying dead on his bed in the Via Alloro while she is here eating, surrounded by her brothers, who are now on the point of coming to blows, suddenly strikes her as a very comical state of affairs. She dissolves into solitary soundless laughter that transforms itself into a silent flood of tears, a senseless deluge that shakes her like a storm.

Carlo is the only one who notices her distress, but he is too involved in the row to get up. He confines himself to looking at her compassionately, yet also quite bewildered, because her soundless sobs are like shafts of lightning without thunder, something flawed and incomplete.

XIII

Part of the yellow room has been cleared to make way for a gigantic Nativity crib. The estate carpenters have worked for two days erecting a mountain that compares with Monte Catalfano. In the distance a volcano can be seen with its outline painted in white. In the centre of the volcano is a plume of smoke made out of feathers sewn together; below it is a valley of terracotta trees with leaves of green cloth, and below that the sea made from layers of silk.

Felice and Giuseppa are sitting on the carpet, intent on using some paper plumes splattered with green paint to edge a small lake made out of mirrors. Manina stands against the wall, watching them. Mariano is busy eating a biscuit, smearing it all over his mouth and cheeks. Fila is next to him; she should be setting out the little figures of shepherds on the meadow of bottle-green wool, but she is so enraptured by this splendid Nativity crib that she has forgotten. Innocenza is standing near the stable, giving some last additional touches to the manger, out of which stick tufts of real straw. Signoretto, the baby, sleeps in

Marianna's arms. She has wrapped him in her Spanish shawl and rocks him quietly to and fro against her breast.

At last the lake is finished but instead of reflecting the blue of the paper pasted behind the stable,

it mirrors the cautious eyes of a chimera, peeping out from between the foliage on the ceiling. Innocenza gently places the baby Jesus with his heavy wax halo on the straw. Next to him the kneeling Virgin Mary has been draped with a turquoise mantle, covering her head and shoulders. Saint Joseph wears breeches of sheepskin and a wide-brimmed brown hat. The ox is as large as an elephant and as gnarled as a toad, and the ass with its long pink ears looks more like a rabbit.

Mariano, who has just had his seventh birthday, sets off in the direction of the flower-decked basket, in which some small figures are still lying. With his hand all sticky with sugar he pulls out one of the three kings, whose turban is studded with real precious stones. Suddenly Giuseppa jumps on top of him and snatches the figure out of his hands. He loses his balance and falls down, but he does not give up. He turns to plunge his hands into the basket again and pulls out another king, whose cloak glitters with gold. This time it is Felice who rushes towards her brother to take the precious little statue from him, but he won't let go. The two of them fall on to the carpet, he kicking and she biting. Giuseppa runs to help her sister and they both jump on top of him, pounding him with blows.

Marianna leaps up, holding the baby, and dashes across to the three of them, but Innocenza gets there first and seizes hold of them by their arms and hair. The figure of the king lies shattered on the floor.

Manina watches them. She is upset and she goes to her brother and hugs him and kisses his cheek, which is wet with tears. Then she quickly seizes her sisters by the hands and pulls them close to her to kiss them as well.

That child is a really talented peace-maker, Marianna says to herself. Even more than playing and eating, she loves creating harmony. Then, to distract her two sisters from the quarrel, she fills her cheeks and blows on to the crib so as to flutter the Madonna's cloak, lift up the Infant Christ's dress and blow Saint Joseph's beard to one side. Felice and Giuseppa burst out laughing. And Mariano, his hand still clutching half of the little statue, laughs too. Even Innocenza laughs at the breeze that ruffles the cloth palm trees and sends the

shepherds' hair flying up in the air.

Giuseppa has an idea--why not dress Manina up as an angel? She already has the head of golden curls, the round gentle face, the large eyes reverently lowered, that make her fit for paradise. All she needs is a pair of wings and a long skirt the colour of the sky. Filled with enthusiasm she enlists Felice to unroll a sheet of gold paper. She cuts it up while Mariano, desperate to join them even though what they are doing is beyond him, pushes his way in.

Once she realises that becoming an angel will prevent her brother and sisters from squabbling for a while, Manina joins in. They'll dress her up in a mantle of her mother's, they'll sew wings on her bodice, they'll paint her face pink and white. Everything will be all right so long as she succeeds in making them laugh by playing the fool.

Marianna sniffs the smell of the paints, the pungent smell of turpentine, the fatty smell of linseed oil. An unexpected nostalgia clutches at her throat: a white canvas, a stick of charcoal and the dexterity of her hands could capture a part of the crib, the corner of the window, the sunlight on the stone floor, the two bent heads of Giuseppa and Felice, the patient form of Manina with one wing already stuck on her back, the other spread out on the floor, the substantial bulk of Innocenza leaning mysteriously over the little terracotta trees, Fila's eyes reflecting the lights of a gigantic silver star.

Meanwhile Signoretto has woken up and his tiny bald head pops out from his mother's shawl while he looks up at her lovingly. Bald and toothless, he looks like a "playful spirit" with a skipping heart. "He has no peace, this playful little person", wrote Grandmother Giuseppa in the exercise book with the fleur-de-lys on the cover. "How he laughs at having laughed."

A mother with her children. She knew she could fit them all into the painting, including herself, if she used a sufficiently wide canvas. She would start with the chimeras, move on to Fila's raven black hair, and then to Innocenza's calloused hands, to Manina's canary yellow curls, to Mariano's eyes the colour of night, to Giuseppa and Felice's pink and violet

skirts. She would portray the mother, sitting on a cushion, as she herself is now, and the folds of her shawl would merge with those of her dress, leaving her arms and shoulders bare to reveal the naked head of her baby son.

But why does the mother of these children have such a dolorous expression in a picture that portrays a cameo of family happiness? Why this strange disquiet on her face? The imaginary painting freezes Marianna's hand as if she were guilty of trying to set herself against God's will. If it is not Him, who is it that pushes them so anxiously forward, makes them curl up, makes them grow up and then grow old, and then die in the time it takes to say "Amen"?

A painter's hand has a thirst for thieving, it steals from heaven and makes a gift to the memories of men, it feigns eternity and it delights in this pretence almost as if it had created rules of its own, more durable and more profoundly true. But is it not a sacrilege, is it not an unforgivable affront to divine trust? Yet other hands have arrested time with sublime arrogance, have rendered the past familiar. On the canvas nothing dies but it perpetuates itself like a cuckoo with its cry of poignant melancholy. Time, Marianna tells herself, is a secret that God hides from men. And because of this secret we must always live in sorrow, from hand to mouth.