The Silent Duchess (13 page)

With the lemon in her hand Marianna goes over to the dresser. She levers the door open with her finger nail and takes out a jar of borax. Then, shaking out a handful of the white powder, she goes up to the line of ants and sprinkles little rivulets over the moving serpent. Immediately the ants start getting agitated, breaking line, jumping on top of each other and seeking refuge in the cracks in the wall.

Her fingers dusty with borax, Marianna goes to the closed shutters and pushes them lightly aside, letting a glimmer of moonlight into the room. The whitewashed courtyard glitters. The oleanders form dark shapes that make her think of the backs of giant tortoises asleep with their heads against the wind to protect themselves from the cold. Her eyes are watering with sleepiness, her

footsteps take her automatically back to her bed. It is almost morning. A faint smell of smoke filters through the closed windows. Somebody in the hovel next to the stables has lit the first fire.

The unmade bed is no longer a prison from which to escape but a refuge to take shelter in. Her feet are frozen and her fingers numbed. Clouds of vapour come out of her mouth. Marianna plunges between the blankets and as soon as she lays her head down on the pillow she sinks into a dark and troubled sleep.

But before she has time to have her fill of sleep she is woken by a cold hand lifting up her night-gown. She jumps upright into a sitting position. Uncle husband's face is within a finger's breadth of hers. She has never looked at him so close; she feels as if she were committing a sacrilege. Before, whenever she submitted to his embraces she always shut her eyes. Now instead she observes him and sees him lose his usual look of bad temper. His eyelashes are white, but when did they become faded like this, and how has she never noticed it before? Since when? He lifts a long bony hand as if to strike her but it is only to close her eyes. His belly, armed with its sword, squeezes against her legs.

How many times has she yielded to this wolfish embrace, shutting her eyelids and gritting her teeth! A flight with no escape, the paws of the predator on her neck, the breath that grows panting and heavy, the grasping of her thighs, and then the surrender, the empty void. He has certainly never asked her whether this assault is welcome to her or not. His is the body that takes, that mounts. He does not know any other way of coming close to a woman's belly. And she has shut him outside her lowered eyelids, like an intruder. That it is possible to experience pleasure in something so mechanical and cruel has never occurred to her. Yet there were times when, smelling her mother's somnolent body with its odour of snuff, she divined the smell of a secret sensual bliss completely beyond her understanding.

Now for the first time, looking uncle husband in the face, she manages to shake her head in denial. And he is paralysed, with his member erect and stiff and his mouth open, so astounded by her refusal that he lies there stock still, at a loss what to do.

Marianna gets off the bed, puts on her cloak and, shivering with cold, completely unaware of what she is doing, goes off to her husband's bedroom. There she sits on the edge of the bed and looks round her as if she were seeing for the first time this room so near to hers and yet so distant. How wretched and unwelcoming it is: the walls white, the bed also white, covered with a torn quilt, a dirty sheepskin on the floor, a little table of olive wood on which lie a small sword, a pair of rings and a wig with flattened curls. Looking further she can make out behind the half-open door of the commode a white chamber-pot bordered with gold, half-full of clear liquid, in the middle of which float two dark turds.

It seems as if this room is trying to tell her something she has never wanted to hear: the privation of a solitary man who, through lack of self-knowledge, has become tormented by a compulsive obsession with pride. Only in the moment when she had the strength to refuse him did she experience a feeling of infinite tenderness for him, for this life of an old man made brusque and oppressive by shyness.

Returning towards her room she looks for him between the cactus plants, the chimeras that extend along the walls and ceilings, the vases of flowers with frosted petals. But he is not there, and the door leading to the corridor is shut. Then she goes to the big window that opens out on to the balcony and there she finds him crouched on the ground, his head sunk between his shoulders, his gaze turned towards the opalescent countryside.

Marianna slips down on to the floor beside him. In front of them the valley of the olive trees is growing ever more luminous. In the distance between Capo S@olanto and Porticello, the pale-blue sea, calm and still, becomes one with the sky.

In the cold of the morning in that sheltered corner Marianna is about to stretch out her hand towards uncle husband's knee, but it seems to be an act of tenderness that does not belong to their marriage, something inappropriate, something unheard of. She is conscious of the body of a man turned to stone beside her, inhabited by ragged thoughts that steal away like draughts of air from that white-haired head that is so lacking in wisdom.

XVI

In the mirror Fila's hands move quickly and jerkily, smoothing out the tangle of Marianna's hair. The Duchess watches the young servant's fingers gripping the ivory comb as if it were a plough: each tangle a wrench, each knot a jerk. There is something cruel and angry about these thumbs plunging into her hair as if Fila were ripping apart birds' nests, or cutting down thistles.

Suddenly the Duchess tears the comb out of the girl's hands, breaks it in half and flings it out of the window. The maid stands watching her with amazement. She has never seen her ladyship so furious. It is true that since the death of the little boy she often loses her temper but now she is going too far--isn't it her own fault if her hair is a thicket of thorns?

The Duchess looks at her own reflection frowning from the mirror, and alongside her the stupefied face of the servant. A gurgle rises from the bottom of her palate, and a word seems almost about to emerge from the vacuum of her atrophied memory. Her mouth opens but her tongue stays locked between her teeth; it does not vibrate, it does not utter a sound. At last from her benumbed throat comes a sharp scream that is fearful to hear. Fila shivers visibly and Marianna makes a sign telling her to go away.

Now she is alone and she raises her eyes to the mirror. Her face is bare, dry, with despairing eyes staring at her from the silvery glass. Is it possible that it is her, this woman clouded by grief, a vertical furrow like a sabre cut dividing her broad forehead? Where is the charm that so fascinated Intermassimi? Where are the soft contours of her cheeks, where is the gentle colour of her eyes, the infectious smile? Her eyes have become lighter, a faded colourless blue; they have lost that vivacious twinkle, a mingling of innocence and wonder; they have become hard and glassy. A lock of white hair slips over her forehead. Sometimes Fila used to tint it for her with extract of camomile, but now she has become fond of this brush of whitewash on her mass of fair hair, a touch of frivolity above a face slackened by impotence.

Her gaze rests on the portraits of her children: small watercolours executed in rapid delicate brush-strokes, sketches snatched while they were playing games or while they were asleep. Mariano with his perpetually swollen nose, his beautiful sensual mouth, his dreamy eyes. Manina half-buried in her fluffy hair, all fair and curly. Felice with that look of a mouse greedy for cheese, and Giuseppa, who purses her lips in a bad-tempered pout.

"A fright made her deaf and a fright will make her well again", she had found one day in a letter from her father the Duke to her mother the Duchess. But what fright were they referring to? Was it some sudden shock, an involuntary arrest of her brain when she was a child? And, anyway, what had caused it?

The gentle ghost of her father the Duke restricts itself to smiling at her from beyond the mirror with his usual cheerful look. On his finger he wears a silver ring with two dolphins, which Manina had wanted for herself when he died.

The past is a harvest of cast-off and broken objects, the future is in the faces of the children who laugh indifferently, pretending not to care, inside those gilt frames. But those pictures, too, are in the process of moving into the past, together with the aunts who have embraced the religious life, the wet-nurses, the peasants. They all are running helter-skelter towards paradise and it is impossible for them to stop even for a moment.

Only Signoretto has stopped. He is the only one of her children who is no longer running, who does not change from day to day. And he has his own corner in her thoughts, the same as he has always had, repeating his loving smiles for evermore.

She was always determined not to be eaten up by her children like her sister Agata, who at thirty looks like an old woman. She has aimed to keep them at a certain distance in preparation for losing them. However, with the last one she was incapable of this, arousing the ill-will of the others by her excessive and unforgivable affection. She had been unable to resist the siren call; she played with his love until she had tasted it down to its bitter dregs.

But a light has come stealthily into the milky greyness of the mirror. She is not aware that dusk has fallen and Fila is standing in the doorway, uncertain whether or not to come in. Marianna

beckons her with a movement of her hand. Fila walks forward with small faltering footsteps, puts the candlestick on the table, and is about to leave. Marianna stops her with her arm, raises the hem of her skirt between her fingers and sees that she is not wearing shoes. The girl, aware that she has been found out, looks at her with the eyes of a mouse caught in a trap.

But the Duchess smiles; she has no wish to scold her, she knows that Fila has a passion for going barefoot inside the house. She has given her three pairs of shoes, but Fila will not wear them, confident her long skirts that reach down to the dusty floor will hide her chapped and calloused heels.

Marianna moves suddenly and sees Fila's shoulders recoil as if to avoid a slap. Considering that she has never hit her, what has she to be afraid of? When she raises her hand to touch her hair, the girl bends down further as if to make it clear she is not trying to avoid a blow, only to protect herself from the pain. Marianna slides her fingers through Fila's hair and Fila gazes at her with frightened eyes. The caress seems to disturb her more than a slap would have done. Perhaps she is afraid that she will snatch hold of her hair, roll it around her wrist and pull it like Innocenza does sometimes when she gets impatient.

Marianna tries to smile but Fila is so convinced she is going to be punished that she can only watch out for where the blow will come. Discouraged, Marianna lets Fila run away hopping on the tips of her bare toes. She decides she will teach her to read, she will suggest she puts her hair up, twisting it so as to make a large knotted chignon.

But the door opens and Innocenza comes in leading a reluctant and sullen Fila by the hand. Obviously the cook has spotted the bare feet that so irritate Duke Pietro, or perhaps she has just been suspicious of the girl's precipitate flight.

Marianna gives a little mute laugh that puts Innocenza in her place and heartens the girl. It is the only way she has to show she is not angry, that she has no intention of punishing anyone; she always has to play the part of the judge, the censor, the person who is annoyed. However, she has no wish to provoke Innocenza, who in

her anxiety to be understood starts gesticulating and making strange disconnected signs. To reassure them she takes two coins from a drawer in the writing-table and puts one each into their nervous hands.

Fila makes a stiff clumsy bow and slips away. Innocenza turns the coin around between her fingers with an expert look. Watching her, Marianna is aware of an avalanche of thoughts that gravitate dangerously in her direction. She does not know why it is that only Innocenza's thoughts, among all the people close to her, should have the power to articulate themselves.

Luckily today Innocenza is in a hurry to get back to the kitchen. She quickly hands her a sheet of paper on which Marianna recognises the large shaky handwriting of Raffaele Cuffa: "What does Your Honour want to have for dinner?" On the other side of the paper she absent-mindedly writes "Chickpeas and cuttlefish", without remembering that uncle husband hates chickpeas and can't stand cuttlefish. She folds the sheet of paper and slips it into the pocket of Innocenza's apron. Innocenza will get Raffaele Cuffa or Geraci to read it to her. Then Marianna eases her towards the door.

XVII

"Today auto-da-f`e in Piazza Marina.

My presence is requested, as is that of Her Grace the Duchess. Advise purple dress with Maltese Cross on chest. And for once, no uncouth country behaviour, please."

Marianna reads uncle husband's peremptory note placed beneath her jar of face powder. An auto-da-f`e means a burning at the stake in the Piazza Marina and the massive crowds that attend such important occasions: the authorities, the guards, the street-vendors selling aniseed water, boiled squid, caramel sweets and prickly pears; the smell of sweat, of bad breath, of dirty feet, not to speak of the excitement that gets more and more physical until it becomes almost visible; everyone eating and chattering as they await that razor blow in the belly, which brings both agony and delight. She will not go.

At that moment she sees uncle husband enter, wearing a perfumed shirt adorned with lace and a pair of leather shoes so shiny that they look as if

they are lacquered.

"Don't be angry but I cannot come with you to the auto-da-f`e", Marianna writes quickly and hands him the note still wet with ink.

"And why not?"

"It sets my teeth on edge. It's like sour wine."

"They are taking two well-known heretics to the stake, Sister Palmira Malaga and Brother Reginaldo Venezia. The whole of Palermo will be there. I have to be present. So do you, signora."

The Duchess is about to write a reply but Duke Pietro has already gone out of the door. How can she bear to submit to this order? When uncle husband assumes this hurried and self-important air it is impossible to contradict him; he becomes as obstinate as a mule. She will have to invent an illness which will give him an excuse to be there on his own.