The Silent Duchess (24 page)

Since Felice as a nun can neither dance nor dally she has given herself over to cooking. She disappears for hours down among the kitchen ranges and comes back with dishes of rice cooked with chicken livers, which are rapidly devoured by her sisters and friends. She has taken to sharing her room with Fila at night. She has had a wooden bed put at the far end of the room; she says that there are ghosts in the tower and she is unable to sleep by herself. But the twinkle in her eyes makes it clear that this is an excuse to gossip with Fila far into the night.

Sometimes in the morning Marianna finds them in the same bed with their arms round each other, the head

of one on the shoulder of the other, Felice's fair hair intertwined with Fila's dark hair, their full night-dresses tied at their perspiring necks. Such a chaste embrace belongs to childhood and Marianna has never ventured to reprove her.

XXX

When Marianna comes down into the gun room she finds her three daughters all ready: light dresses and long aprons, ankle boots to protect against thorns, with sunshades, bundles, baskets and tablecloths. Today is the day of the wine harvest on the estate of Bosco Grande and the girls have decided to go to the vineyard, taking their lunch with them.

The litters carry them beyond the hills of Scannatura, to the foot of Rocca Cavaleri. Each one has brought with her a silk sunshade and a cambric handkerchief; they have been getting ready since early morning, running from the kitchen to their bedrooms, and have decided to take with them a gateau of egg-plants, an almond cake, and dates stuffed with nuts.

Marianna leads the way, sitting opposite Felice in the first litter; next come Manina and Giuseppa, and behind them Fila and Saro with the provisions. At the vineyard they will be joined by their cousin Olivo and his friend Sebastiano. The air is still fresh, the grass has not had time to dry out, the birds are flying low.

The silence around her body is dense and transparent, Marianna tells herself; yet her eyes see the magpies perching on the cactuses, the crows hopping on the bare dry earth, the coats of the mules twitching as their big tails swish away the whirling mass of gadflies. The silence is both mother and sister: Holy Mother of all silence, have pity on me. ... The words come from her throat without a sound; they would like to become palpable, to make themselves heard, but her mouth stays dumb and her tongue is a small corpse shut within the coffin of her teeth.

This time the journey does not last long and they are there within an hour. The mules stop in a clearing. Carlo Santangelo, U Zoppu the lame one, and Ciccio Panella, who have come with them, their rifles on their shoulders, get off their horses and come over to the litters to help the

ladies dismount. Don Ciccio has a strange watchful expression, Marianna notices, with his head lowered as if he were about to charge like a bull. And Saro is on the alert, already hating and despising him from the heights of his new standing. But Ciccio does not look at him at all; he does not consider him as a man but as a servant and, as is well known, servants do not count for anything. Ciccio is a gabelloto and a guard, something quite else. He does not carry a stack of gold hanging from his waist, he does not adorn himself with powdered wigs, he does not flaunt a tricorn on his head, his jacket of brown worsted was bought from a travelling salesman and even has patches on the sleeves; but his prestige as seen by the peasants is equal to that of a landowner. He is accumulating money so that even if he himself doesn't manage it, there's no doubt that his sons and grandsons will end up being able to buy some of the land he now leases. Already he is building himself a house that looks more like the tower of the Ucr@ias, with all its outbuildings, than the broken-down hovels of his fellow peasants.

"He grabs any woman he wants", Don

Nunzio had written to her in the account book. "Last year he got a girl of thirteen into trouble. Her brother wanted to cut his throat but he was scared off because Panella threatened him with two armed guards." So here he is, the handsome Ciccio, standing there with a brooding smile, his eyes deep black, ready to plunder the whole world.

Saro cannot put up with the effrontery of this scoundrel. He finds it unbearable. But at the same time he is afraid of it. He has to admit that he cannot make up his mind whether to confront or flatter it. In this state of indecision he limits himself to protecting the woman he loves in the style of a true gentleman.

Meanwhile they have arrived at the vineyard known as "the vineyard of the black grapes". The men, who were bent down picking the bunches, stand up and look with open mouths at the small group of ladies in their coloured diaphanous dresses. Never before have they seen a gathering so gay with muslins, straw hats, sunshades, bonnets, little bootees, handkerchiefs, bows and fichus.

The gentlemen and, even more so, the ladies look with astonishment at these beings, who seem to have come out of the mountains like so many Vulcans blackened

by smoke, bent with exhaustion, blinded by the dark, ready to fling themselves on these daughters of Demeter and carry them off into the bowels of the earth.

The day labourers know everything about the Ucr@ia Scebarr@as family, the owners of these estates, vines, olives, woods and of all the game as well as all the sheep, the cattle, and the mules of Heaven knows how many generations. They know the Duchess is deaf and dumb and they have prayed for her with Don Pericle in church on Sundays.

They know that Pietro Ucr@ia died a short while ago and that he was opened up and had his guts removed to be filled with salt and acid, which will preserve him whole and sweet-smelling for centuries, like a saint. They also know that there are three beautiful daughters, who lounge on the veranda laughing and combing their hair, one a nun and two married with children. And it is whispered that the husbands are cuckolded because that is the way in families of the nobility and God shuts His eyes.

But they have never seen them so close. Yes, years ago, when they were children and all assembled in a chapel of the parish church, the labourers had peeped at them, counting the rings on their fingers, commenting on their grand clothes. But they never expected to see them descend upon their place of work, where there are no balustrades or chapels set apart or seats specially reserved for them, but only air and sun and swarms of flies that settle indiscriminately on the black sticky hands of the peasants who are running with sweat, and on the ladies' hands as white and transparent as plucked chickens.

And then in church the men are to some extent protected by their best clothes: patched but clean, inherited from their fathers, lengths of cotton wound round their hairy legs and corn-stricken feet. Here, however, they are exposed, almost naked, with scars, goitres, missing teeth, dirty legs, greasy rags that fall over their hips, their heads covered by ancient hats hardened by sun and rain.

Marianna is upset. She turns round and lets her eyes sink into the valleys that are an unreal yellow, almost white. The sun climbs high in the sky and with it there waft strong smells of mint, wild fennel and crushed grapes. Manina and Giuseppa are like two silly girls, staring at these half-naked bodies and not knowing what to do. In these parts it is not the custom for women to work in

the fields far from home and these ladies who have rained down from heaven create the impression that they are transgressing a custom of thousands of years with the ignorance of fools, as if they had entered a monastery and started to pry into the cells of the monks at prayer. It is something that is just not done.

It is Manina who puts an end to the awkwardness both groups are feeling with one of her witty remarks that sets the men laughing. Then she picks up a flask and starts to pour wine into the glasses and to distribute them among the labourers; they stretch out their hands hesitantly, keeping one eye on the gabelloto, one on the peasant guard, one on the Duchess and one on heaven.

But the laughter provoked by Manina is enough to break the silence between the two groups. The peasants decide to accept the ladies as an eccentric and welcome novelty which has come as a break in the exhaustion of a hot, hard day. They decide to approve the whims of the Duchess as something characteristic of great ladies who do not understand anything but who at least brighten the eyes with their delicate movements, their fluttering dresses and their beringed fingers.

Now Ciccio Panella urges them back to work in a rough but easy-going manner, as if he were a bluff father concerned with the well-being of his sons. Playing his part in a mocking, exaggerated way he approaches the Princess Manina and eggs her on to throw a bunch of grapes into the basket, treating her like a rather stupid child and applauding the way she does it as if she were an unheard-of prodigy.

Among the men bent down over the vines dozens of small barefooted boys run carrying baskets, taking them back to the shade of the elm trees, cutting with small pairs of shears the mass of spreading brambles that hinder the work of the men, pouring out fresh water from the pitcher for whoever asks for it, recklessly chasing after the flies and shooing them away from the eyes of their fathers, uncles and brothers.

Cousin Olivo sits next to Giuseppa beneath the elm tree and whispers into her ear. Marianna looks at them and gives a start: they have all the appearance of knowing each other intimately. But her look of alarm is quickly transformed into admiration, observing how much they resemble each other and how handsome they are. He is so fair, like

all the Ucr@ias, tall and slim, his forehead balding slightly at the temples, his blue eyes wide open. He does not possess the regular features of his father but he has something of the charm of his grandfather. She can understand why Giuseppa has fallen in love with him.

She has become plumper since the birth of her latest child, her arms and her breasts are squeezed into the flimsy material of her dress. Her mouth with its well-formed lips has taken on a hard look that Marianna has never seen before. But her eyes are merry, lit up, and her hair falls over her shoulders like a wave of honey.

She should separate them, she knows that, but her feet refuse to obey her. Why disturb their happiness, why interfere with their loving chatter?

Meanwhile Manina has gone out into the middle of the vineyard, hemmed in by the low stems of the vines, pursued by Sebastiano. That boy is odd: very polite, very shy, but altogether lacking in discretion. Manina does not take to him very much, she finds him intrusive, inexcusably attentive and somewhat artificial, but he persists in courting her with a mixture of boldness and timidity.

Manina writes long letters to her husband every day. She has taken advantage of her convalescence to suspend for a while her need to sacrifice herself as a mother. But not for much longer. As soon as she feels fitter she will return to the dark house in the Via Toledo, shrouded in purple curtains, and will resume looking after her children with the same obsessive dedication as before, and may even start another child at once.

Yet during this holiday, which is not a holiday but a taking possession of the feudal domains of their father on Mariano's behalf, something has shaken her. The return to the ways of adolescence, games with her sisters that would never be acceptable in Palermo, the proximity of Marianna, from whom she has been separated since she was twelve, have all brought into her mind the fact that as well as being a mother she is also a daughter, a daughter who is wounded most of all by herself.

Looking at her now it seems as if she is sinking her teeth into the flesh of a ripe peach. In fact, it is only that she is absorbed in the fun of playing with her sisters. There is no sensuality in her as there is in Giuseppa, who has already devoured her peach and is getting ready

to bite into another, and yet another. There is possibly more sensuality in Felice, shut inside her white habit, than there is in Manina, even though Manina displays her bare arms and her dresses open to her breasts. Her transcendent beauty, restored after her illness with all the recuperative powers of her twenty-five years, contrasts with the deep-seated natural cha/y that possesses her.

Felice dishes out from the serving-table complicated main courses pungent with spices. She spends hours and hours at the kitchen ranges, preparing baskets of strained ricotta, nucatelli, almond cakes, little ice-creams, morello cherries, lemonade flavoured with tarragon.

A sacrilegious idea flashes through Marianna's mind: why not direct Saro's infatuation towards the beautiful Manina? They are almost the same age and they would be well matched. She looks round for him and sees him asleep, his head leaning on his elbow, his legs stretched out among the dry twigs: how he is enjoying the shade of the elm tree alongside the baskets full of grapes! Does she really want this? A sharp pain in the roots of her eyes tells her no, she doesn't. However much she rejects his love because it seems so unrealistic, she knows she broods over him and eyes him with a bitter-sweet fascination. So why the wish to act the procuress on behalf of her youngest daughter? What makes her so certain that a love affair with Saro would bring her happiness? Would it not originate in incest: the idea that this male body could be a knot to join the heart of a mother to the heart of a daughter?

At midday the overseer gives the order to stop work. Since dawn men have been bent over the low-growing vines, pulling at the bunches of grapes that swarm with wasps, and throwing them into the baskets among a tangle of curling tendrils. Now they will have an hour to eat a slice of bread, a few olives, an onion, and to drink a glass of wine.

Saro and Fila are busy laying the tablecloth under the leafy branches of the elm tree. The eyes of the peasants are focused on the food baskets, hinged with brass, from which emerge, like one of Santa Ninfa's miracles, marvels never before seen: porcelain plates as light as