The Silent Duchess (16 page)

The taste of colours on her tongue ... Marianna moves the painting over to the window and starts once more to brush the canvas with her sleeve to remove the opaque patina that makes it hard to see. What a pity she has lost the skill of using colours; it left her for no obvious reason when her first child was born. A reproving look from uncle husband, an ironical word from her mother, the crying of the baby. ... She had put the brushes and the small tubes of paint back in the enamelled box that had been a present from her father, and did not take them out again for many years, by which time her hand had lost its skill.

Gentian blue, what taste does gentian blue have? Beneath the smell of turpentine, of linseed oil and oily rags, another absolutely unique smell filters through; closing her eyes she can feel it float into her mouth and linger on her tongue, depositing a curious flavour of ground almonds, of April

rain, of salt-sea wind.

And the white, sometimes clear, sometimes more or less stippled; the whiteness of the eyes inside the dark picture; maybe the shameless insolent eyes of Geraldo; the white of Agata's delicate hands; the forgotten whites that have become encrusted on that dirty canvas and now, after being rubbed with her sleeve, peer out shyly with the unconscious daring of witnesses from the past.

When she painted that picture the villa was not yet here. In its place was the hunting lodge built by her grandfather almost a century ago. Then it was possible to go all the way from the garden to the grove of olive trees by following a goat track, and Bagheria did not yet exist as a village, but consisted of the servants' quarters attached to the Villa Butera, of stables, of store rooms, of little churches which the Prince had built. Every year were added new stables, new store rooms, new churches and new villas belonging to friends and relations from Palermo.

"Bagheria was born out of betrayal", her grandmother Giuseppa had written when she got it into her head to teach her small deaf-mute grandchild the history of Sicily. "During the time of Philip IV--INDEED, at the time of his death--there was a quarrel in Spain over the succession; Philip did not have any sons and no one knew which, amongst all the little nephews, would inherit the throne."

Her handwriting was minute, contracted, distorted. Like so many women amongst the nobility of that time, she was somewhat illiterate. It could be said that she had learned to write to "get inside her grandchild's pumpkin head".

"Bread became dearer and dearer, my little one, you don't know what that hunger was like, when people ate earth to fill their bellies, they ate chaff and acorns like pigs, they ate their nails just like you do, you thoughtless little monkey. We aren't suffering from famine now, so leave your nails alone."

Sometimes she would open Marianna's mouth with her fingers, look at her teeth and then write, "Little one, my little girlie, why don't you talk? Why? You've got a beautiful pink palate, you've got beautiful strong teeth, two lovely lips, so why do you never utter a word?"

However, Marianna enjoyed her grandmother's stories. So old Giuseppa, if only to make sure she did not run away, got ready

to write in her granddaughter's notebook, struggling with pen and ink.

"At that time when you walked on the pavements in Palermo you would stumble so that you didn't know whether you were sleeping or dreaming or dying from the effort. There were public penances ordered by the Archbishop. People were kneeling on broken glass and whipping themselves in the piazza. And some princesses as a penance took registered prostitutes into their houses and fed them with what little bread they had.

"My father and mother fled to the estate at Fiumefreddo, where they caught a stomach fever. To prevent me from catching it they sent me back with the nurse. In any case they said I was a "little girl, and what harm could I come to?"' So I found myself alone in Palermo in the empty palace when the bread riots broke out. A certain La Pilosa went round shouting that it was a war of the poor against the rich, and they set about burning all the palaces.

"They burned and they burned so that everybody's faces were blackened by smoke, and La Pilosa, whose face was blackest of all, as black as a Spanish bull, charged head down against the barons and the princes. The nurse told me she was very afraid they would come to the Palazzo Gerbi Mansueto, and so they did. Ciccio Rasone the porter told them there was no one there. "So much the better," they said. "There's no need for us to raise our hats to Their Excellencies!" and with their hats on their heads they invaded the upper floors and took away carpets, silver, enamelled clocks, paintings, clothes, books, and they made a bonfire and burned the lot, every single thing."

Marianna saw the flames rising from the house and imagined that her grandmother must have been swept away by them, but she did not dare to ask in writing. Suppose it turned out that she had died and that the person who was talking to her was none other than one of the ghosts who peopled the placid nights of her mother the Duchess?

But Grandmother Giuseppa, as if guessing the thoughts of her granddaughter, exploded into one of her joyful laughs and began to write impetuously: "At one time my nurse fled in panic.

However, I wasn't aware of this, I was sleeping peacefully when they threw open the door and marched over to my bed. "And who are you?"' they asked. "I am Princess Giuseppa Gerbi di

Mansueto," I told them. I was a little monkey then, even worse than you. I had been taught this and I flaunted it proudly like a silver dress that everyone had to admire. Some of them looked at me and said, "Ah ha, we cut off the heads of princesses, and carry them aloft in triumph." Even more of a little fool, I said, "If you don't go away, you rabble, I shall call my father's dragoons." As luck would have it, they began to laugh. "Here is a little nothing who thinks she's a paladin," they said and laughed and spat everywhere. Even now you can still see the marks of their spit on the tapestries in the Palazzo Gerbi in the Cassaro."

At this point she threw back her head and began to laugh too. Then she returned to worrying about her granddaughter's deafness and wrote, "There are earholes in your pretty little ears. Suppose I try blowing into them, do you hear anything?"

The little granddaughter shook her head and laughed, infected by her grandmother's cheerfulness. "You laugh, but it doesn't make a squeak. You should try blowing. Open your mouth ... force a sound out of your throat ... like this--ah ah ah ah. ... Oh, my little one, you're a disaster, you'll never learn!"

Her grandmother wrote everything with infinite patience, although by nature she was far from being patient. She enjoyed running and dancing, she slept little and she used to spend hours in the kitchen, watching the cooks at work, sometimes lending them a hand. She amused herself gossiping with the maidservants, getting them to tell her about their love affairs. She could play the violin and even the flute a little. Yes, she was a marvel was Grandmother Giuseppa. ...

But she had her "b" times, as everyone in the family well knew. There were dark days when she would shut herself in her room and refuse to see anyone. She would stay incommunicado with a handkerchief over her head, refusing to eat or drink. When she eventually emerged, leaning on Grandfather's arm, she would behave as if she were drunk.

Marianna tried hard to put these two people together: for her they were quite different women, one a friend and the other an enemy. When she went through her "b" times Grandmother Giuseppa was withdrawn and hostile. Mostly she would refuse to write or talk, and if she became aware of the child pulling at her

sleeve she would grab the pen with an angry gesture and write, jumbling up the words: "Dumb and stupid, better dead than

Marianna", or "You'll end up like La

Pilosa, a menace, you tiresome dumb-wit", or "Wherever you came from, you've stirred my pity, except that I don't have any", and she would throw the sheet of paper in her face with a scowl.

Now Marianna regrets that she never kept these ill-tempered notes. Only after her death did she really comprehend how these two very different women were one and the same, because she missed them both, with a similar sense of loss.

She knew how it ended with La Pilosa because her grandmother had written an account of it several times with a certain sense of mischief: "Torn to pieces with red-hot tongs." She continued, "Papa and Mamma returned with pockmarks all over them and I became a heroine", and she threw her head back and laughed exultantly just like a woman of the people.

"And out of that betrayal Bagheria was born, Grandmother Giuseppa?"

"Considering you've no ears and no tongue, you're still very inquisitive. ... What do you want to know, little cuckoo? The betrayal of Bagheria? That's a long story, I'll tell it you tomorrow."

Tomorrow was always tomorrow. And in the meantime her "b" times arrived and Grandmother shut herself away in a darkened room for days and days on end without showing even the tip of her nose. Finally one morning when the sun had only just risen, all new like the yolk of an egg emerging out of broken shells of clouds, brightening the palace on the Via Alloro, her grandmother seated herself at her writing-bureau and wrote in her quick, minute handwriting the story of the famous betrayal.

She was breathing with difficulty as if her chest was desperate for more air and she was trying to free herself of the bodice that gripped underneath her armpits. Though her skin was blotchy, her "b" times had gone away together with the dust-blown wind that came across from Africa, and she was once again ready to laugh and tell stories.

"Excise duty, do you know what that is? No matter. And the toll? Not even that, you're only a silly little girlie. Well, the Viceroy

Los Veles was beside himself with fear because in May there'd been La Pilosa and in August a watchmaker who had the gift of the gab was in charge

of all the beggars and did all the talking, and they were demanding bread and staging a revolution for it. But the watchmaker was loyal to the King of Spain and also to the Inquisition. Alesi --that was the watchmaker's name--knew how to control the populace, who were looting, eating, burning; he did not have a black face, that rascal, and the princesses were leaning over backwards to give him presents: silver glove-boxes lined with silk, diamond rings. Until it all went to his head and he believed himself as handsome and important as the King of all Austria: he got himself made Mayor for life, Captain-General, most illustrious Praetor. He demanded complete subservience and he had himself borne through Palermo on a horse, carrying a gun in each hand and wearing a crown of roses on his head.

"The Viceroy returned from Spain and said, "What does this fool want?"'

""Bring down the price of grain, Your Excellency."

""We will do just that," he replied, "but this buffoon must be got rid of."

"So they took the watchmaker and cut his throat and then threw his body into the sea, except for his head, which they paraded on a pikestaff right through the city.

"Two years later another revolt broke out, on the second of December in the year 1649, and that time the nobility got involved. They wanted the island to be independent so that they could be masters of the Royal Kingdom. There was also a lawyer by the name of Antonio Del

Giudice, who wanted independence. Several priests and very respectable nobles with a score of carriages took part in this rebellion. Even my father, your great-grandfather, became inflamed by the prospect of a new, free Sicily. They met in secret at the house of the lawyer Antonio and made brave speeches about liberty. But almost immediately they split into two factions, those who wanted Prince Don Giuseppe Branciforti as Viceroy and those who backed Don Luigi Moncada Aragona di Montalto.

"Prince Branciforti, who was a very touchy person, thought he had been betrayed by certain people who were always around the place, so in his turn he betrayed them, denouncing the plot to the Jesuit Father Giuseppe Des Puches. Without a moment's delay the Father blurted it all out to the

Holy Office, who passed it on to the Chief Justice in Palermo, and he told the Viceroy.

"In the twinkling of an eye they took them all prisoner and tortured them with red-hot irons. They beheaded the lawyer Lo Giudice and hung his head up in the Quattro Canti in the centre of town. They also beheaded Count Recalmuto and the Abbot Giovanni Caetani, who was only twenty-two years old. My father spent two days in prison and he had to pay out a large sum of money to keep his head on his shoulders.

"As for Don Giuseppe Branciforti Mazzarino, well, they pardoned him for having denounced Moncada. But he was disillusioned by politics and he retired to Bagheria, where he had his estates. He built himself a sumptuous villa and all along the cornice was written:

Ya la speranza es perdida

You un sol bien me consuela

Que el tiempo que pasa you buela Llever@a presto la vida. *

* Here all hope is gone ar Only the sun consoles me ar Time passes and flies

ar My life will soon be done.

"Thus, my dear little Marianna, my dumb baby, was Bagheria born through the betrayal of an ambitious plot. However, it was a princely betrayal, the Lord did not punish it with destruction like He punished Sodom and Gomorrah. Instead He made it so beautiful and sought after that all the world wanted this land set like a jewel between the ancient mountains of Catalfano, Giancaldo and Consuono, the coast of Aspra and the wonderful headland of Capo Zafferano."

XX

"I don't want my uncle, Mother, I'm telling you." The note is crumpled between Marianna's fingers.

"But your mother married her uncle", Duke Pietro replies to his daughter.

"But she was dumb and who else would have her?" While writing this, Giuseppa looks at her mother as if to say, Forgive me but for the moment I have to use what weapons I can to get my own way.