The Silent Duchess (34 page)

So here she is on a heaving floor, the smell of the sea mixed with the sharp tang of tar and varnish, in the sole company of Fila.

XLI

It is evening. At the Captain's table, in the little saloon with a barrel roof, are seated an assortment of travellers who do not know each other from Adam: a deaf-mute duchess from Palermo, dressed in an elegant light coat with blue and white stripes, reminiscent of a Watteau painting; an English traveller with an unpronounceable name, who comes from Messina and wears a curious wig of pink curls; a nobleman from Ragusa, dressed all in black, who never allows himself to be separated from his small silver sword.

The sea is rough. From the two windows that open along the side of the boat can be seen a yellowish sky streaked with lilac. The moon is full but obscured by shawls of stormy clouds that alternately conceal and reveal it. Fila has stayed in the dark cabin, lying down with a handkerchief soaked in vinegar over her mouth to guard against sea-sickness. She has been vomiting all day and Marianna has been holding her head as long as possible, but then she had to go out or she too would have started retching.

Now the Captain hands her a helping of boiled meat. The Englishman with the pink curls deposits a spoonful of fruit pickle on to his plate. The three men talk amongst themselves but every now and then turn towards Marianna and give

her a polite smile. Then they continue chattering, perhaps in English, perhaps in Italian, Marianna cannot be sure which from the movements of their lips, and anyway it does not matter to her very much. After a first tentative effort to involve her in the conversation with the help of gestures, they have left her to her own thoughts. And she is relieved that they are occupied elsewhere; she feels clumsy and awkward. Astonishment at her new situation hampers her movements: it seems impossible for her to hold her fork steady between her fingers, and the lace edges of her sleeves keep falling on to her plate.

Remnants of thoughts float through her weary head. An impatient hand has buffeted those calm limpid waters that were there to drift in, and caused waves of memories, half-dissolved and scattered, to be thrown to the surface. The tender body of her son Signoretto, clinging to her breast like a breathless little monkey; the pain she had endured without being able to satisfy him. The pinched face of uncle husband when she had plucked up courage to look at him closely for the first time, and realised that his eyelashes had become white. The defiant eyes of her daughter Felice, a nun without a vocation, who has nevertheless found through herbal medicine her own kind of self-respect and now has no need of money because people pay her so well.

The little group of brothers and sisters as she painted them on that day in May when she had fainted in front of Tutui in the courtyard of the lodge; Agata's arms devoured by midges; Geraldo's pointed shoes, the same shoes that were later put on his feet inside his coffin, to be a testimonial for paradise, with the hope that he would go for long walks among the hills peopled with angels. The malicious laugh of her sister Fiammetta, who has become a little dotty with age: on the one hand she flagellates herself and wears a hair shirt, and on the other she never stops meddling in the love affairs of the entire family. The puzzled eyes of Carlo, who to preserve himself from desperation has assumed an ill-natured, irritable look. And

Giuseppa, still anxious and unsatisfied, the only one who reads books and is able to laugh, the only one who has not disapproved of her eccentric behaviour and who came to see her off, in spite of her husband having forbidden her to do so. The

walls of the villa at Bagheria with its soft sandstone bricks that, seen close to, look like sponges pierced by many tunnels, with holes inhabited by sea snails and minute translucent shells. In the whole world there is no softer colour than that of the sandstone of Bagheria, which receives light and holds it within like so many Chinese lanterns.

Her mother's face sagging from sleep, her nostrils darkened by snuff, her big blonde plaits flaking off her round shoulders. On the bedside table there were always three or four little bottles of laudanum. When she was grown-up Marianna discovered that this was composed of opium, saffron, cinnamon, cloves and alcohol. But in the recipes of the pharmacy in the Piazza San Domenico, the amount of opium had been increased at the expense of the cinnamon and saffron. Because of this she would sometimes find her unfortunate mother in the morning lying on the blankets, her eyes half-shut, an expression of rapture on her face, her skin with the pallor of a waxen statue.

And there, in the bedroom where Marianna had brought into the light of day all her five children, under the bored gaze of the chimeras, had come Saro with his slender legs and his gentle smile. On that bed of births and miscarriages they had come together, while Peppinedda wandered anxiously through the house, holding in her belly a son of ten months who could not make up his mind to be born: until the midwife had to force him out, by jumping on her as if she were a mattress full of straw. And just when it seemed she might die from loss of blood, an enormous baby came out, with the same colouring as Sarino, black and white and pink, the umbilical cord wound three times round his neck.

It was also on Peppinedda's account that she had made the decision to leave: because of those looks of feminine complicity and acceptance she gave her, almost saying that she was willing to share her husband in exchange for a house, clothes, abundant food, and turning a blind eye to her thefts for her sisters. It had become a family understanding, an "arrangement" between three people, in which Saro took refuge, torn between apprehension and happiness: happiness that would soon have turned into satiety. But perhaps not, perhaps she was mistaken: caught between a mother lover and a child wife he might have carried on

devotedly and tenderly for ever. He could have transformed himself, as he was already doing, into an image of himself: a satisfied young man about to lose his innocence and his happiness in exchange for an equal combination of fatherly indulgence and responsibility for the future of his family. She had heaped gold on them before she went away. Probably not from generosity, but to make them forgive her for abandoning them and to feel herself loved for a little while, even at a distance.

The English traveller with fine brown eyes has disappeared, leaving the food on his plate half-eaten. The Baron from Ragusa leans out of the tall window, gasping, while the Captain rushes two at a time up the narrow stairs that lead to the deck. What is going on?

Through the door there comes a strong smell of salt and wind. The waves seem to have turned into great horses. Enclosed in her egg of silence Marianna does not hear the cries from the bridge, the orders of the Captain to haul in the sails, the voices of the passengers sheltering under cover. She continues to put food into her mouth as if nothing were happening. No sign of the sea-sickness that has turned over the stomachs of her travelling companions. However, all at once the oil lamp slides dangerously across the table. Finally the Duchess realises that it is perhaps more than a slightly choppy sea. Drops of burning oil have fallen on to the tablecloth and have set fire to a napkin. If she does not take some immediate action about the linen the flames will spread to the table and from the table to the floor, which are both of dry seasoned wood.

Suddenly Marianna's chair begins to slide and crashes against the deckhead, its back cracking the glass of a picture frame. To die like this, sitting in her striped travelling cloak with the lapis-lazuli brooch her father the Duke gave her pinned to the collar, a taffeta rose in her hair: that would indeed be a theatrical exit. Perhaps one of her mother's dogs is about to seize her round the waist and drag her into the black water. She seems to see eyelashes blinking sweetly: are they the eyes of the chimeras in the Villa Ucr@ia laughing at her?

A moment later Marianna gathers the strength to get to her feet. She pours a jug of water over the burning tablecloth. With the wet napkin she covers the lamp, which goes out sizzling. Now the

saloon is in darkness. Marianna tries to remember where the door is. The silence suggests flight, but nothing more. Which way? The sound of the sea is growing louder; she can only imagine the noise of its howling by the lurching of the floor that twists, rises and suddenly sinks down under her shoes. Only the thought of Fila in danger stirs her into finding the door. She opens it with difficulty and an avalanche of salt water pours on top of her. How will she climb down the rungs of the ladder in this commotion? Yet she must try, hanging on with both hands to the wooden hand-rail and feeling for each rung with her feet.

As she goes down into the hold of the ship a stench of salted sardines clutches at her throat.

Some casks must have shattered, spilling their load of fish. In the darkness, trying to grope her way to the cabin, Marianna feels herself fall against something heavy. It is Fila, her body wet through and trembling. She puts her arms round her and kisses her freezing cheeks. The shapeless thoughts of her companion filter through nostrils soaked with the bitter smell of vomit.

May cancer strike you down, you head of a half-bitch, curse you, why did you make me leave? ... That duchess, she dragged me with her, she'll be the death of me, donkey head, boiled head, let cancer strike her, curse her, curse her. ...

In a word, she is swearing at her and at the same time clinging to her with all her strength. It seems certain that they are about to go down with the ship; all they'd like to know is how long it will be before they are swallowed up. Marianna starts reciting a prayer, but she does not manage to reach the end, there is something grotesque in this stupid preparation for death. Yet she does not have any idea what can be done to survive in a sea of this force: she does not even know how to swim. Shutting her eyes she can only hope it will not last long.

But the brigantine miraculously holds its own. Battered as it is by the waves, it withstands the storm, bending and twisting, through the elasticity of its timbers of cedar and chestnut. Mistress and servant remain on their feet with their arms twined round each other, expecting death at any moment. They are so tired that they are overtaken by sleep without realising it, while the salt water pounds their backs with pieces of wood, shoes, sardines, uncoiled ropes and bits of cork.

When the two women wake up it is already morning and they are still in each other's arms, stretched out on the deck right beneath the ladder. An inquisitive seagull watches them from the opening that leads on to the bridge.

XLII

A pilgrim? Perhaps, but pilgrims travel towards a destination. Her feet travel only for the joy of travelling; they do not ever want to stop. Escaping from the silence of her own house to other houses, other silences. A nomad wrestling with fleas, heat, dust. But never really tired, never satiated with seeing new places, new people.

Fila at her side, her small bald head always covered by a bonnet of immaculately clean cotton that is washed every evening and put to dry at the window. Sometimes they do not find a window, and between Naples and Benevento they slept on straw next to a cow who sniffed them with curiosity.

They stopped by the recent excavations at Stabia and Herculaneum. They have eaten water-melon cut in slices by a little boy, on a portable table like the one Marianna uses to write on. They have drunk honey and water sitting in wonder before a large Roman wall-painting in which red and pink mix deliciously together. They have rested in the shade of a gigantic maritime pine after having walked for five hours in the heat. They have ridden mules along the slopes of Vesuvius, their noses peeling in the sun in spite of wearing the straw hats they had bought from a haberdasher in Naples. They have slept in stinking rooms with rotting windows, with a candle end on the floor beside the mattress, on which fleas hopped as if they were on a merry-go-round.

Every now and then, a peasant, a shopkeeper or a squire would follow them, full of curiosity that they were travelling all by themselves. But Marianna's silence and Fila's angry looks soon put them to flight. Once they were robbed on the road to Caserta. They had to abandon to the brigands two heavy bags with brass locks, a silver-mesh chain purse of money, and fifty escudos. But they were not too distressed; the bags had been an encumbrance, and contained dresses they would never wear. The escudos were only part of their

money. Fila had hidden the rest of it so well, sewn underneath her petticoat, that the bandits had not found it; and then they had taken pity on the dumb woman and had not even searched her, although she also had money in a pocket of her mantle.

At Capua they made friends with a company of actors travelling to Rome. A comedienne, a young actor, a stage manager, two castrati singers, four servants with a mountain of luggage, and two mongrel dogs. Easy-going and friendly, they spent a great deal of their time eating and playing cards. They were not in the least disconcerted by the Duchess's deafness, and immediately began to talk to her with their hands and their bodies, easily making her understand them and raising peals of laughter from Fila. Naturally it fell to Marianna to pay for supper for everybody, but the actors knew how to return the favour, making everyone laugh by miming their thoughts, whether at the supper table or the card table, in the stage-coaches, or the inns where they stopped the night.

At Gaeta there was a rumour that the road was infested with brigands; a mischievous note warned them that "for every one hanged a hundred would spring out to replace him, that they had a hide-out in the Ciociaria mountains and were particularly looking for duchesses". So they decided to embark on a felucca, which took them for only a few escudos. On the boat they played the card games faraone and biribissi all day long. The manager of the company, Giuseppe Gallo, was the dealer and always lost. To balance this, the two castrati always won. And the comedienne Gilberta Amadio never wanted to go to bed.