The Silent Duchess (17 page)

"Your mother may be dumb but she's more cultivated than you. You're nothing but a bunch of wild chives, you don't seem to have an ounce of common sense. Also your mother was a sight more attractive than you, she was a beauty, a queen."

It is the first time Marianna has read a compliment from uncle husband and she is so dumbfounded that she is at a loss for words to defend her daughter.

Unexpectedly Signoretto comes to the rescue of the two women. Since he married the Venetian he has become more easy-going. He has taken to using ironic expressions that recall those of his father.

Marianna watches him opening and closing his arms, arguing with his uncle, who will certainly not fail to point out that Giuseppa is now twenty-three and it is inconceivable that at this age she should still be unmarried. Marianna seems to recognise the word "spinster" coming several times from the lips of the Duke. And has Signoretto brought up the argument about freedom which he has lately held in such high esteem? Will he remember that their great-grandfather Edoardo Gerbi di Mansueto went to prison "in defence of his liberty and indeed of ours"?

Signoretto is very proud of this ancestral glory, but it only irritates his brother-in-law all the more. To be consistent with his idea of "independence" her brother has adopted a supportive attitude towards the women of his family. He allows the girls to study together with their brothers, something that would have been simply unthinkable twenty years ago.

Uncle husband argues scornfully that Signoretto "with his foolishness has wasted all his own money and will have nothing to leave his sons except learning and tears. ..."

Giuseppa seems happy to be caught between her uncle and her father, who are quarrelling with each other. Perhaps in the end she won't have to marry her uncle Gerbi after all. At this point her mother intercedes for her and for Giulio Carbonelli, a childhood friend of the same age as Giuseppa and secretly betrothed to her for years.

A moment later the three of them disappear into the yellow drawing-room. As usual they have forgotten about Marianna. Though maybe the idea of continuing their discussion in front of a dumb woman who

might read their lips makes them feel uncomfortable. In fact they shut the door, leaving her on her own as if the affair was no concern of hers.

Later Giuseppa comes back and embraces her: "I've done it, Mamma, I'm marrying Giulio."

"And your father?"

"It's Signoretto who convinced him. He accepts Giulio rather than have me left a spinster."

"Even though he has no money, and a reputation for idleness?"

"Yes, he said yes."

"So now we start preparing for the wedding." "No preparations. We shall get married in Naples, without any festivities. They don't have such antiquated rubbish there any more. ... Just think, a wedding feast with all those bigwigs who are friends of my father. ... We'll get married in Naples, then we'll set off at once for London."

The next moment Giuseppa has flown away through the door, leaving behind her a delicate smell of sweat mingled with lavender.

Marianna remembers that in her pocket there is a short note from her daughter Manina that she has not yet read. It only says, "Expecting you this evening for the Ave Maria." But the idea of going to Palermo does not attract her. ... Manina has called her last child Signoretto after her grandfather. He looks very like the little Signoretto who died of smallpox at the age of four. Every so often Marianna goes to the Casa Chiarand@a in Palermo to hold this small, fragile and voracious-looking grandchild in her arms. The sensation of holding little Signoretto close to her is so strong that sometimes she puts him down and rushes away with her heart overflowing.

If only Felice would go with her. But Felice, after having been a novice for so many years, has taken her final vows with ceremonies that lasted for ten days: ten days of festivities, alms-giving, masses, dinners and sumptuous suppers.

For the admission of his daughter into the convent uncle husband has spent over ten thousand escudos, what with dowry, food, wine and candles. A celebration that everyone in the city will remember for its magnificence, especially as the

Viceroy Count Giuseppe

Griman, President of the Kingdom, took offence and promulgated a notice to warn the nobility that they were spending too much and getting into debt, and forbidding monastic festivals that lasted more than two days. A notice that everyone in Palermo completely disregarded.

For who was there to listen to him? The greatness of the nobility lies in scorning accounts and bills, whatever they may be. A nobleman never calculates, cannot add or subtract and does not know arithmetic. For this there are administrators, major-domos, secretaries, servants. A nobleman does not sell and he does not buy. If ever he offers something, it is the best that can be found on the market, to be given to whomever he considers worthy of his generosity. It might be a son or a nephew, but it is equally likely to be a beggar, a swindler, an adversary at cards, a singer, a washerwoman, according to the vagaries of the moment. Seeing that everything that grows and multiplies in the beautiful Sicilian earth belongs to them by birth, by blood, by divine grace, what sense is there in calculating profit and loss? That is a matter for tradespeople and the rising bourgeoisie: those same tradespeople and bourgeoisie who, in the words of Duke Pietro, "will one day swallow up everything", as is already happening. They are gnawing like rats at one morsel after another, olive trees, cork trees, mulberry trees, corn, carobs, lemons, and so on and so on. "In future the world will belong to speculators, thieves, profiteers, sharks, assassins", according to the apocalyptic vision of uncle husband, and everything will go to ruin because "with the nobility something incalculable will be lost: the spontaneous sense of the absolute, the glorious impossibility of hoarding or putting on one side, the self-exposure, the laying of oneself open with divine courage to the nothingness that devours everything without leaving a trace. The art of saving will be invented and mankind will succumb to vulgarity of the spirit."

What will remain after we have gone? ask the restless eyes of Duke Pietro. Only a few crumbling vestiges, a few sticks and stones of a villa inhabited by chimeras with a long dreamy gaze, some patch of a garden where a few stone musicians are playing stone music among

the skeletons of lemon and olive trees.

The feast at which Felice took the veil could not have been more splendid, with the entire aristocratic throng dressed with great elegance: the women swinging their trains, their hooped skirts, their dresses from Paris, their muslins light as a butterfly's wings, their heads arrayed in gold and silver nets, wearing ribbons of velveteen, and lace and silk that floated down from painted girdles. Amidst feathers, dress swords, gloves, muffs, bonnets, artificial flowers, slippers with pearl-studded buckles, tricorns covered with plush, tricorns gleaming in the light, suppers of thirty courses were served. And between one course and the next, crystal goblets were filled with lemon sorbets perfumed with bergamot. Snow was brought down from the mountains wrapped in straw on the backs of donkeys, having been kept underground for months: Palermo had never lacked its prodigious ices.

When, in the centre of the oratory, flanked by two rows of guests, Sister Maria Felice Immaculata had prostrated herself on the floor with her arms spread out like a corpse, and the Sisters had covered her with a black pall and had lighted two candles at her feet and two at her head, uncle husband had started to sob, leaning on the arm of his dumb wife--something that filled her with astonishment. Not once during their marriage had she seen him weep, not even when little Signoretto died. And now this daughter who was to become a bride of Christ was breaking his heart.

When the festival was over Duke Pietro sent his cloistered daughter a maid to help her dress and keep her things in order. He also lent her his sedan-chair upholstered in velvet with gold cherubs on the roof. And today he still makes sure she does not lack money to favour her confessor, whom it is the custom to indulge with choice fruits, silks and embroidery.

Each month fifty tar@i is needed for the candle wax, another fifty for the altar offerings, seventy for new tablecloths and thirty for sugar and almond paste. A thousand escudos has gone in reconstructing the convent garden, which is now most certainly a wonderful sight, embellished by artificial lakes, stone fountains, paths, porticos, groves of trees and fake grottos where the Sisters can rest and eat sweets

and tell their rosaries.

The fact is that Duke Pietro is not at all resigned to having his daughter so far away, and whenever he can he sends a carriage for her so that she can come to the house for a day or two. For Aunt Fiammetta the convent is a kitchen garden where hoeing should be part of prayer. Her niece has made her cell into a luxurious oasis where she can retire from the ugliness of the world, where her gaze can rest only on pleasant and beautiful things. For Fiammetta the garden is a place of meditation, of inward concentration, for Felice it is a centre of conversation, where she can be comfortably seated in the shade of a fig tree, exchanging news and gossip. Fiammetta accuses

Felice of "corruption", her young niece accuses her aunt of "bigotry". One of them reads only the Gospels, which she takes with her to the kitchen as often as she does to the orchard, so that they are reduced to a mass of greasy pages, while the other reads romanticised lives of the saints in small white books bound in leather. Between the pages are images of saints, their bodies covered with sores, reclining in sensual poses and wrapped in robes heavy with scrolls and flourishes.

When Aunt Teresa the Prioress was alive there were two of them to criticise Felice. Now that Aunt Teresa has passed away, an event which occurred on almost the same day as Aunt Agata the Canoness died, only Fiammetta remains to offer recriminations. There are times when it seems that she is no longer quite rational and as a result has become much harsher and harder. But Felice is not worried: she knows she is in a strong position because she has her father on her side. As for her deaf and dumb mother she has never given her much thought; she reads too many books and this makes her seem cut off and "a little bit mad", as she says to her friends to excuse her.

Mariano in his turn regards his sister as "pretentious" and doesn't share her taste for exhibitionism and novelty. He is preparing to inherit all his father's wealth and every day he grows more handsome and more arrogant. He is patient with his mother even though his patience is somewhat affected. Whenever he sees her he bows and kisses her hand, and then takes possession of her pen and paper and writes a few well-turned phrases in large looped handwriting.

He has fallen in love with a beautiful girl, Caterina Mol`e di

Flores e Pozzogrande, who will bring him a dowry of twenty estates. The wedding will be in September and already Marianna is thinking of the work involved in preparing for the celebrations, which will last for no fewer than eight days, ending with a night of fireworks.

XXI

Outside it is dark. Silence envelops Marianna: absolute, barren. In her hands a love story. Words, writes the author, are harvested by the eyes like bunches of grapes hanging from a vine, ground out of thought like the turning of a millstone and then spreading like liquid and coursing freely through the veins. Is this the divine grape harvest of literature?

To suffer with the characters who run through the pages, to drink the essence of other people's thoughts, to taste the repeated excitement of other people's emotions, to feel one's own sensations heightened by the never-ending spectacle of the drama of love, is this not itself love? How much does it matter that this love has never been actually lived face to face? To participate in embracing the bodies of strangers who have become close and intimate through the printed page, is this not as good as experiencing that embrace, with one additional advantage: that of being able to remain in control of oneself?

But a suspicion crosses her mind: that this could merely be spying on the life-breath of others. Is to pursue in the pages of a book the making and unmaking of other people's love affairs similar to watching the person beside her and trying to interpret the rhythm of the words on their lips? Is this not a painful caricature? She has spent so many hours in the library learning to extract gold from stones, sifting and cleaning for days and days, her eyes moist in the misty currents of literature. What has she been able to get out of it? Some convoluted grain of knowledge? From one book to another, from one page to another. Hundreds of stories of love, of happiness, despair, death, joy, murders, encounters, farewells. And she always there, seated in her armchair with the worn embroidered antimacassar behind her head.

The lowest bookshelves, which are within a child's

reach, contain mostly lives of saints: Events in the Life of Saint Eulalia,

The Life of Saint Leodegario, a few books in French, the Jeu de Saint

Nicolas, the Cymbalum Mundi, a few books in Spanish like the Rimado de Palacio, or the Lazarillo de

Tormes. A mountain of almanacs: of the

New Moon, of Love under Mars, of the Harvest, of the Winds; even stories about the French paladins and a few romances for young ladies that speak of love with hypocritical licence. Further up on the shelves, at the height of a man, are the classics, from the Vita Nuova to Orlando Furioso, from

De Rerum Natura to Plato's

Dialogues, even a few fashionable romances like The Faithful Colloandro and The Legends of the Virgins.

All these were in the library of the Villa Ucr@ia when Marianna inherited it. But since then she has frequented it so industriously that the number of books has doubled. To start with she made the study of French and English the pretext, and procured dictionaries, grammars and books of exercises. Then a few books of travel to far-distant countries, and last of all with growing enthusiasm some modern romances and books on history and philosophy.