The Silent Duchess (6 page)

As for the baby's sex, she had known it was a girl from the first month of pregnancy. Her belly swelled smooth and round, and not pointed as happens when it is going to be a boy, or at least so her grandmother Giuseppa had taught her; and indeed on each occasion her belly had taken on the gentle curve of a melon, and each time she had given birth to a daughter. Besides, she had dreamed of a girl: a little blonde head leaning against her breast and watching her with a look of bored detachment. The strange thing was that on her back the child in the dream had a little goat's head with tousled curly hair. What would she have done with such a monster?

Instead the baby was born perfect in spite of being a month early, rather smaller than usual but clear-skinned and beautiful, without Felice's purple pear-shaped head or the down that had covered Giuseppa when she came into the world. She immediately showed herself to be a tranquil, quiet baby who never asked for her milk but took it when she was given it. She did not cry and she slept for eight hours at a stretch in exactly the same position as when she was laid down in her cradle. If it had not been for Innocenza, who, clock in hand, would come and wake the young Duchess for the feed, mother and daughter would have gone on sleeping regardless of what all the midwives, wet-nurses and mothers say: that new-born babies must be fed every three hours or they will die of hunger and bring shame on the family.

She had borne two daughters with ease. This was the third time and once again she had given birth to a daughter. Uncle husband was not too happy even if he had been generous enough not to criticise her. Marianna knew that until she had managed to produce a son she must go on trying. She was afraid of having flung at her one of those strongly worded notes of which she already had quite a collection and which would read something like: "A boy-- when will you make up your mind?" She knew of other

husbands who had refused to speak to their wives after the birth of a second girl. But Uncle Pietro was too vague for such decisive action. And then he was not in the habit of writing much to her anyway.

So here was Manina, child of her seventeenth year, born during the final phase of the building. She took the name of her old aunt Manina, the unmarried sister of Grandfather Mariano. The family tree that hangs in the rose room is full of Maninas: one born in 1420, who died of the plague in 1440; another born in 1615, who became a barefoot Carmelite and died in 1680; another born in 1650, who died two years later; and the last, born in 1651, the most elderly of the present Ucr@ia family.

From her grandmother Scebarr@as the child has inherited her slender wrists and her long neck. From her father Duke Pietro she has inherited a certain look of melancholy and severity, even though she has the vivacious colouring and delicate beauty of the Ucr@ia di Fontanasalsa branch of the family.

Felice and Giuseppa play happily with their baby sister, putting little sugar puppets in her hand and pretending she has eaten them, which makes the cradle and the curtains all sticky. Sometimes Marianna is worried that their affection has become so aggressive and noisy that it might be dangerous for the baby, so she always has to keep an eye on them when they are near the cradle.

Since Manina was born they have even left off playing with Lina and Lena, the twin daughters of the cowman Ciccio Cal@o, who lives next door to the stables. The two girls remain unmarried. After the death of their mother they devoted themselves entirely to their father, the cows and the house. They have grown tall and sturdy, and it is hard to distinguish between them. They dress alike in faded pink skirts, lilac-coloured velvet bodices and little blue aprons always smeared with blood. Now that Innocenza has made up her mind to refuse to kill any more chickens, the duty of strangling them and chopping them in pieces has fallen to the girls and they do it with great determination and speed.

The gossips have it that Lina and Lena lie with their own father in the same bed where they used to sleep with their mother, that already they have both become pregnant

and have aborted themselves with parsley. But these are slanders that Raffaele Cuffa once wrote on the back of a sheet of household accounts and it didn't do to pay any attention to such gossip.

When they hang out the washing the Cal@o twins sing, which is wonderful. This has become known in a roundabout way from one of the servants, who comes to the house to do the washing. Marianna discovered it herself one morning as she leaned against the painted balustrade of the long terrace above the stables, watching the girls hanging out the washing on the line. They bent together over the big laundry basket, standing gracefully on tiptoe, taking a sheet and twisting it with one at one end and one at the other as if they were having a tug of war. She saw they were opening their mouths but she could not be sure whether they were singing. She was overcome with a desire to hear the sound of their voices, which people said were so beautiful, and this left her with a feeling of frustration.

Their father the cowman calls them with a whistle just as he calls his cows. And they run to him with firm, resolute steps that come from doing heavy work and having strong muscles. As soon as their father has gone off, Lina and Lena whistle in their turn to the horse Miguelito. They mount him and ride round the olive grove, one of them clutching the back of the other, without worrying about the branches snapping against the flanks of the horse, or the overhanging brambles that get entangled in their long hair.

Felice and Giuseppa go to find them in the dark sunless hovel next door to the stables, between the pictures of saints and the jugs full of milk set aside for ricotta. They get them to tell stories of murdered corpses and werewolves, which they then repeat to their father, who always gets cross and forbids them to mix with the twins. But as soon as he has gone off to Palermo the two children rush over to the cowman's house, where they eat bread and ricotta surrounded by hordes of horseflies.

And their father is so absent-minded that he does not even recognise the smell they bring with them when they steal back to the house after having stayed for hours crouched on the straw, listening to terrifying stories that make their flesh creep.

At night the two little girls often slip into their mother's bed because of the fear these stories have aroused. Sometimes they wake up crying and sweating. "Your daughters are so stupid: why do they keep going over there if they get frightened?" That is her

husband's logic and one cannot disagree with it--except that logic is not sufficient to explain the fascination of associating with the dead in spite of the fear and the horror. Or even perhaps because of this.

Thinking of her two eldest children forever running off, Marianna lifts the baby out of the cradle. She sinks her nose into the lacy dress that covers the tiny feet and smells the unique odour of borax, urine, curdled milk and lettuce water, which all new-born babies carry on them--and no one has any idea why that smell is the most delicious in the world. She presses the little tranquil body against her cheek and asks herself how soon she will start talking. Even with Felice and Giuseppa she was afraid that they would never speak. How anxiously she had watched their breath, touching their little throats with her finger so as to feel the sound of their first words! And in each case she was reassured, seeing their lips opening and shutting, and following the rhythms of their speech.

Yesterday uncle husband had come into the room and seated himself on the bed. He had watched her feeding the child with a bored and thoughtful expression. Then he had written a shy note: "How is the little one?" and "Is your breast better?" and at the end he had added kindly: "The boy will come. Leave it to time. Do not lose heart--he will come."

IX

The son and heir arrived in due course exactly as uncle husband had desired, and is called Mariano. He was born just two years after the birth of Manina. He is fair like his sister, though better looking, but his character is quite different--he cries easily and if he is not receiving continuous attention he flies into a tantrum. As it is, everyone holds him in the palms of their hands like a precious jewel, and at a few months old he has already learned that no matter how, his every wish will be satisfied.

This time, uncle husband has smiled openly. He has brought his wife a present of a necklace of pink pearls as large as chickpeas. He has also made her a gift of a thousand escudos because "kings do this when queens give birth to a boy".

The house has been invaded by numerous relations

never before seen, loaded with flowers and cakes. Aunt Teresa the Prioress has brought with her a swarm of little girls from the nobility, all nuns-to-be, each one with a gift for the mother: one presented her with a silver teaspoon, another with a pincushion in the form of a heart, another with an embroidered pillow, another with a pair of slippers encrusted with stars.

Her brother Signoretto stayed for an hour, sitting by the window drinking hot chocolate with a happy smile imprinted on his lips. With him came Agata and her husband Don Diego and their children, all dressed up for a feast day. Carlo also came from the Monastery of San Martino delle Scale, bringing her a present of a Bible transcribed by hand by a monk during the previous century, embellished with miniature paintings in delicate pastel colours.

Giuseppa and Felice, mortified at being ignored, pretended not to be interested in the baby. They have gone back to visiting Lina and Lena, where they have caught lice. Innocenza has had to comb their hair first with paraffin and then with vinegar, but even though the adult lice are annihilated, those within the eggs remain alive and emerge to infest the girls' hair, once again multiplying at a terrifying rate. It is decided to shave their heads and now they go around looking like two condemned souls, with naked skulls and a shamefaced look that makes Innocenza laugh.

Marianna's father the Duke has encamped at the villa so that he can "watch out for the colour of the little one's eyes". He says that the pupils of new-born babies don't tell the truth, that no one knows whether they are "turnips or beans", and every time he takes the baby in his arms he cradles him as if he were his own son.

Her mother the Duchess has come all by herself, and the upheaval cost her so much effort that she had to go to bed for three days. The journey from Palermo to Bagheria seemed to her an "eternity", the ruts in the roads "abysses", the sun "uncouth" and the dust "stupid".

She has found Mariano "too beautiful for a boy; what are we to do with such beauty?" she has written on light-blue paper scented with violets. Then she uncovered the baby's feet and bit them gently. "With feet like this he'll make a dancer", she wrote. Unlike her usual self, she has really enjoyed writing.

She has been laughing, she's been eating, she's even abstained from taking snuff for a few hours, and at the end of the day she withdraws to the guest room together with the Duke and they sleep till after eleven next morning.

All the dependants of the villa have wanted to hold this long-awaited baby in their arms: the cowman Ciccio Cal@o held him gently in his hands furrowed with cuts and black with dirt. Lina and Lena kissed the baby on his mouth and his feet with surprising tenderness. And there was Raffaele Cuffa, who put on a new redingote of damask decorated with arabesques in the Ucr@ia colours, and his wife Severina, who never leaves the house because she gets headaches that almost blind her; Don Peppino Geraci the gardener, accompanied by his wife Maria and their five children, all with red hair and eyebrows, all unable to utter a word through shyness; and Peppino Cannarota the footman, with his big son who works as a gardener in the Palagonia household.

They pass the new-born baby from hand to hand as if he were the Infant Jesus, smiling like proud fathers, hindered by the long trailing folds of the lace dress, sniffing blissfully the scents that emanate from the small princely body.

Meanwhile Manina crawls round the room on all fours with only Innocenza to take care of her. She pushes herself forward on hands and knees underneath the tables, while the guests come and go, trampling over the precious rugs from Erice, spitting in the vases from Caltagirone, and fishing with both hands in the dish piled with nougat from Catania that Marianna keeps by her bed.

One morning her father the Duke came in with a surprise--an entire writing outfit for his dumb daughter: a reticule made of silver mesh, and inside it a small bottle with a screw stopper for the ink, a glass case for the pens, a little leather bag for the ash, as well as a notebook held on by a ribbon fastened with a little chain to the silver reticule. But the biggest surprise of all was a small portable table, in the lightest of wood, made so that it could hang from her belt by two gold chains.

"In honour of Maria Louisa di Savoia Orl@eans, the youngest and most intelligent queen of Spain ever. Let her be an example to you. Amen." With these words her father the Duke had inaugurated the new writing outfit.

At the insistence of his daughter he was inspired to write a brief history of this unforgettable queen, who died in 1714:

A young girl of no great beauty, but full of life. Daughter of King Victor Amadeus, our king from 1713, and Princess Anna of Orl@eans, niece of Louis XIV. She became the wife of Philip Very of Spain at the age of sixteen. Soon afterwards her husband was sent to Italy to fight and she, at the suggestion of King Louis of France, was made Regent. There was much grumbling that a girl of sixteen should be made head of state. However, it was subsequently acknowledged that it had been a choice that was fully justified. The young Maria Louisa had a talent for politics. She used to spend many hours in the Council of State, listening to everything and everyone, intervening with brief and well-aimed observations. When an orator went on speechifying for too long, the Queen would pull out her embroidery from beneath the table and concentrate on it. The message was understood! As soon as a speaker saw her reaching for her embroidery he made haste to cut short his speech. In this way the sittings of the Council were much shorter and more to the point.