The Silent Duchess (35 page)

In Rome they stayed at the same inn in the Via del Grillo, a small steep street which carriages refused to go up so that they had to make their way on foot from the Piazza del

Grillo. One evening Marianna and Fila were invited to the Valle theatre, the only one where the group could play outside the carnival season. They saw an operetta half-sung and half-spoken, in which the comedienne Gilberta Amadio changed her clothes ten times, running into the wings and reappearing as a shepherdess, a countess, Aphrodite or Juno, while one of the castrati sang in a soft sweet voice and the other, dressed as a shepherd boy, danced. After the play Marianna and Fila were invited to the

Fig Tree inn in the Vicolo del

Paniere, where they gobbled down huge plates of tripe and put back glass after glass of red wine to celebrate the company's success. Then they all started to dance under the paper lanterns while one of the servants played the mandolin and the other struggled with the flute.

Marianna was tasting her freedom. The past was a tail that she curled up under her skirt, and only made itself felt at rare moments. The future was a nebulous cloud in which could be glimpsed the bright lights of a merry-go-round. And there she stayed, half-fox and half-siren, for once without a ponderous weight inside her head, in the company of people who did not worry about her deafness and talked happily with her, twisting and turning with uninhibited mimicry.

Fila has fallen in love with one of the castrati. This happened at the party after the play, during the dance. Marianna had surprised them kissing behind a pillar and had passed them with a friendly smile. He was a handsome lad, slightly plump, his hair blond and curly. Fila had to stand on tiptoe to embrace him, arching her back in a way that reminded Marianna of Saro.

A jerk, a jump, and the tail uncoils. One does not truly escape by always escaping. Like that character in The Thousand and One Nights, who lived in Samarkand. She cannot remember whether it was Nur el Din or Mustaf@a. He was told, "Soon you will die in Samarkand", so he galloped full speed to another city. But right in that unknown city, while he was walking peacefully along, he was assassinated, and as he died he saw that the square in which he was attacked was called Samarkand.

Next day the company left for Florence. Fila remained so grief-stricken that she refused all food for a week.

Ciccio Massa, the proprietor of the

Grillo inn, himself carries up to Fila's room chicken broth that sends its savoury aroma throughout the house. Since they have been lodging with him he has done nothing but chase after the girl, who, however, really dislikes him. He is a corpulent man with short legs, a boar's eyes, a handsome mouth and an infectious laugh. Quick to use his fists with the scullery boys, he then apologises and treats those he has victimised with generosity. Towards the guests he is affable and

nervous, anxious to cut a good figure but at the same time to fleece them of as much money as he can.

Only with Fila is he defenceless. Ever since he first saw her he has stood dazed with admiration every time he meets her. Towards Marianna he often puts on an air of roguish self-conceit and, as far as he can, squeezes a bit more money out of her. Fila has just had her thirty-fifth birthday and has recaptured the beauty she had at eighteen, with an additional sensuality she never possessed before, in spite of her bald head, her scars and her broken teeth. Her skin has become so clear and bright that passers-by turn round in the street to look at her. Her fine grey eyes rest softly on things and people as if she wanted to caress them.

And suppose she were to get married? She would give her a good dowry, Marianna decides, but the prospect of being separated from her is daunting. Then there is the castrato she's in love with. He left for Florence in tears, but he didn't invite her to accompany him. And this caused her so much pain that, either out of spite or to console herself, she has begun to accept the courtship of the boar-like innkeeper.

XLIII

Dear Marianna,

Every human being and every epoch is constantly being threatened by "an imminent hidden barbarity", as our friend Gian Battista Vico puts it. Your absence has induced a certain negligence in my thoughts, between which weeds have flourished. I am threatened, seriously threatened, by the most perverse indolence, an abandonment of myself, by boredom.

For the rest, the island is in the grip of a new barbarism; while Victor Amadeus of

Savoy maintained a certain level of administrative rigour and severity, half-heartedly continued by the Hapsburgs, we now have Charles III re-creating the atmosphere of sloppiness and laxity that so delights our connoisseurs of ice-cream and sweetmeats.

Here reigns the most judicious injustice. So judicious and so deep-seated as to be regarded as perfectly "natural". And nature is not to be dictated to, as you well know. Who would

think of changing the colour of their hair or skin? Can a state of divine authority be transformed into a state of diabolical will? According to Montesquieu a king has the power to make his subjects believe that one escudo is equal to two escudos: "Give a pension to him who evades two laws, and the government to him who evades four."

We are perhaps at the end of a cycle: initially, man's nature is raw, next it becomes austere, and then benign, then refined, and finally dissolute. The ultimate stage, if it is not contained, degenerates into vice, and "the new barbarity leads men to destroy everything". Since your ancestors built the tower at Scannatura and the lodge at Bagheria much water has passed under the bridge. Your grandfather tended his vines and olive trees himself, your father did it through an intermediary. Your husband from time to time poked his nose into his wine vats. Your son belongs to a generation that considers the cultivation of the land to be vulgar and unbecoming. Consequently he has dedicated his energies solely to himself--and you should see with what elegant rapacity he does it! Since when, I hear, your lands at

Scannatura are being ruined from lack of attention, ransacked by the gabelloti and deserted by the peasants, the majority of whom emigrate elsewhere. We are descending with dancing footsteps towards a happy-go-lucky ebullience that is much enjoyed by the Palermitans of our time, or rather the time of our sons: an ebullience that has all the appearance of action since it contains within it what I dare to call perpetual motion. These young people rush around from morning till night, busying themselves with visits, balls, dinners, love affairs and gossip to such an extent that they are left without a moment's boredom.

Your son Mariano, who has inherited your beautiful forehead and your melting, sparkling eyes, has become famous for his prodigality, which is worthy of our king Charles III, and for his suppers to which friends, relations, all are invited. You say he likes to dream and there is no doubt that when he does it is on a grandiose scale. And while he dreams he is setting the table for a banquet. Probably he stuns his guests with food and wine to make sure they don't wake him up. It seems that he had a carriage made for

himself equal to that of the Viceroy

Fogliani, Marquis of Pellegrino, with wheels of gilded wood and thirty statuettes of silver on the roof, not to speak of coats of arms, and golden tassels hanging from every corner. The Viceroy Fogliani Aragone got to know of it and sent for him to tell him not to be such a show-off, but your sublime son and heir has refused to take any notice.

Other news of your dear ones you will have already had, I imagine. Your daughter Felice has become famous in Palermo for her cures of erysipelas and scabies and all the different varieties of eczema. She charges the rich huge sums and the poor nothing. For this she is much loved, even if many people criticise her for the way she goes about all on her own, a nun like she is, taking the reins of a large Arab horse, sitting on the box of a small gig and always going like the wind. Her project to help the derelicts of the Leprosi swallows up so much money that she has had to seek a loan from a moneylender in the Badia Nuova. To pay off these debts it seems that she has been involved in clandestine abortions. But this is inside information, professional integrity ought to prevent my giving it to you; but you know how my love overcomes all my scruples, all my responsibility.

Your second daughter Giuseppa allowed herself to be found in her husband's bed with her cousin Olivo. The two men challenged each other to a duel. They fought, but neither of them was killed: two cowards who abandoned their weapons at the first drop of blood. Now the beautiful Giuseppa is expecting a child and no one knows whether it is her husband's or her cousin's. But it will be accepted by her husband as his, because otherwise he would have to kill her and he certainly has no wish to do that. Olivo has been sent to France by his father Signoretto, who, it seems, threatened to disinherit him even though he is the eldest son.

As for Manina, she has just given birth to yet another son, whom she has called Mariano after her great-grandfather. At the baptism all the family were there, including Abbot Carlo, who has recently adopted the severe mien of a great scholar. Actually people come from universities all over Europe to ask him to decipher ancient manuscripts. He is considered a celebrity in Palermo and the Senate has proposed to give

him an award of merit. In that case it will be I who deliver it to him in a velvet case.

Your prot@eg`e Saro: it seems that he was so upset by your departure that he refused all food for weeks. But then he got over it. And now it appears that he and his wife are having the time of their lives in your villa at Bagheria, where he receives visitors as if he were a baron. He gives orders and spends money like water, at your expense.

For the rest, the person who should be setting a good example could not care less. Charles III, our king, and his delicious consort Donna Amalia force the courtiers to kneel for hours while they are dining. The Queen, they say, amuses herself by dipping biscuits into a goblet full of Canary wine, which her ladies-in-waiting have to hold up to her while they remain on their knees. Good theatre, don't you think? But maybe this is all gossip, I personally have never been present at such scenes. On the other hand the great Princess of Savoy has lost all her prestige since the baby she gave birth to, with the help of a surgeon, turned out to be a girl.

I have to admit that I have become transformed into a third-rate moralist. I can already see your face darken, your lips press together, as only you know how to do, with all the subtle ferocity of your dumbness. But you must know that it is the impairment of half your senses that has brought me into the orbit of your thoughts: they have become luxuriant and flourishing precisely because of the withdrawal from the world which has driven you into the recesses of your library with your books and notebooks. Your intelligence has taken such a strange and unusual course that it has induced in me a delicious longing for love. Something I felt to be impossible at my age and that I value as a miracle of the imagination.

I am writing to you to ask you once more with all the solemnity of the written word: will you marry me? I am not asking you for anything, not even to share my bed, if you prefer not to do so. I would like to take you as you are now, without villas and estates, without possessions, children, houses, carriages or servants. My feeling is born out of a need for companionship that consumes me like butter melting in the sun. The companionship of a woman devoted

to the use of her intelligence, something so very rare in our women, who are kept in a state of gallinaceous ignorance.

The more I become involved in my work, the more people I see, the more noblemen I visit, the more deeply I sink into the solitude of a hermit. Is it only the dazzling light of the esprit de finesse of Pascal that brings me to you, or is it something else? A movement of currents strong enough to warm the ocean? It is your disability that makes you unique, deprived of the privileges that you are nevertheless entitled to through your birthright, outside the stereotypes of your social position, in spite of it being part of your very flesh.

I come from a family of honest notaries and honest lawyers, or perhaps dishonest, who knows? The rapid achievement of social advancement and financial success cannot be entirely honest. My grandfather (but I confess it to you alone) bought the title of baron for his modest and vain bourgeois family, who wanted to improve their status. All this counts for very little, I know. My eyes have learned to see beyond the robes and redingotes, let alone the full-skirted dresses and pastel-coloured hoop petticoats.

You know too how to see beyond the damasks and the pearls, your impairment has brought you to writing, and writing has brought you to me. Both of us use our eyes to survive and we nourish ourselves like moths greedy for rice paper, lime-flower paper, sugar paper, so long as it is written on in ink.

"The heart has its reasons that reason does not know", as my friend Pascal liked to say, and they are dark reasons that sink their roots into the buried parts of ourselves, where old age is not transformed into loss but into a fullness of purpose. I know my defects, which are many. To start with, a certain perversity acquired as a result of so many years of stupid censure directed against the ideas which I value. Not to speak of the hypocrisy that has devoured me alive. However, I owe it a great deal at times, I think it is my greatest virtue, since it has rewarded me with the patience of a hermit. And it is not entirely separate from a wholly mundane ability to "understand the other"; yes, hypocrisy is the mother of tolerance ... or is it the daughter? In any case they are close relations.

I often let myself be overwhelmed by gossip in

spite of the horror I have of it. But if one looks into it deeply one discovers that it is gossip that really lies at the roots of literature. Is not Monsieur