The Silent Duchess (5 page)

But she had been adamant: she insisted on staying and all she asked was for Innocenza to remain with her, the others could all go off to the hills of Scannatura.

Uncle husband was upset but had not insisted. After four years of marriage he was resigned to his wife's obstinacy. He respected her wishes provided that they did not involve him personally and did not interfere with his ideas on the education of his children or affect his rights as a husband. Unlike Agata's husband he did not claim the right to keep interfering in everyday decisions. Silent and solitary, his head sunk between his shoulders like an elderly tortoise, his

expression severe and discontented, her uncle husband was in reality more tolerant than many other husbands she knew.

She had never seen him smile except once when she had taken off a shoe to dip her foot into the water of the fountain. Never again. Since the first night of their marriage this cold, shy man had slept on the edge of the bed, his back turned towards her. Then one morning when she was buried in sleep, he had leapt on top of her and violated her.

The body of the thirteen-year-old wife had reacted with kicks and scratches, and very early the next day Marianna fled to her parents in Palermo. Her mother the Duchess wrote that she had acted "like an inky squid" in leaving her place as a wife, and had made an exhibition of herself and brought discredit on all the family. "Whoever marries and never repents, can buy Palermo for a hundred pence" and "Marry for love and end up in pain" and "Women and hens will go astray, if they ever lose their way" and "A good wife makes a good husband". They had attacked her with reproofs and proverbs. Her mother was supported by her aunt Teresa the Prioress, who wrote that by leaving the conjugal roof she had committed a mortal sin.

To say nothing of old Aunt Agata, who had taken her by the hand, ripped off her wedding ring and stuffed it forcibly between her teeth. Even her father the Duke had rebuked her and had taken her back to Bagheria in his own gig, handing her over to uncle husband with the request that he should not be too severe with her, having regard to her youth and her disability.

"Shut your eyes and think of something else", Aunt Teresa had written, slipping the little piece of paper into Marianna's pocket, where she found it later. "Pray to the Lord and He will reward you."

In the mornings uncle husband would get up early, at five o'clock. While she continued sleeping, he dressed hastily and went the rounds of his estate with Raffaele Cuffa. He returned at around half-past one to eat with her. Then he slept for an hour and afterwards went out again or else shut himself in the library with his books on heraldry.

With her he was courteous but cold. For whole days he seemed to forget that he had a wife. At times he went off to Palermo and stayed for a week.

Then all of a sudden he would return and Marianna would catch him looking at her breasts with a dark insistent intensity. Instinctively she would cover her neckline.

When his young wife was sitting by the window combing her hair, Duke Pietro would sometimes spy on her from a distance. But as soon as he realised he was being watched he would slip away. However, they were not often alone together during the day because there was always a servant going round the rooms, lighting a lamp, making a bed, putting clean linen away in the cupboards, polishing the door handles, arranging freshly ironed handtowels in the linen chest next to the wash-stand.

A mosquito as large as a bluebottle settles itself on Marianna's bare arm. For an instant she looks at it with curiosity before shooing it away. Where could such a gigantic creature have come from? She had the pool next to the stable drained six months ago; the ditch that takes water to the lemon trees was cleaned out last year; the two swamps along the path going down to the olive grove were filled up with earth only a few weeks ago. There must still be some stagnant water somewhere or other, but where?

Meanwhile the shadows have lengthened. The sun is slipping behind the cowman Ciccio Cal@o's house, leaving the courtyard half in shadow. Another mosquito alights on Marianna's perspiring neck. She flicks at it impatiently. Fresh lime must be put down in the stables. Or perhaps it is really the water in the watering trough, where the cows from Messina drink, that is a breeding ground for these bloodsuckers. There are some days in the year when there is no net, no veil, no perfumed oil that can keep the mosquitoes at bay. Once it was Agata who was their favourite. Now that she has married and gone to live in Palermo it seems that the insects have transferred their affection to the white naked arms and the slender neck of Marianna. Tonight she will have to burn verbena leaves in the bedroom.

By now the work at the villa is almost at an end. Only the finishing touches to the interior are still to be done. For the wall-paintings she has called in the fresco painter Intermassimi, who presented himself with a roll of paper under his arm, a dirty tricorn hat on his head, and outsize boots in which were engulfed two short skinny legs. He dismounted from his horse, made a bow,

and gave her a smile that was both daring and seductive. He unrolled the sheets of paper in front of her, smoothing them out with his two hands, which were so small and plump that they made her feel uneasy.

The drawings are bold and fantastic, disciplined in form, respectful of tradition, but as if driven by nocturnal flights of fancy, brilliant and mischievous. Marianna admired the chimeras, whose heads were not shaped like lions as the myth has it, but instead had the faces and necks of women. When she saw them for the second time, she was aware that in some strange way they resembled her, and she found this quite disquieting. How had he come to draw her in those weird mythical beasts when he had only seen her once, on the day of her wedding, when she was barely thirteen years old?

Beneath those blonde heads with large blue eyes stretches the body of a lion. It is covered with bizarre curls, its back waving with crests, feathers, mane. Its paws are spiky, with claws shaped like a parrot's beak; its long tail makes rings that spiral backwards and forwards with forked tips, like the dogs that so terrified her mother. Some carry half-way down their backs the small head of a goat that juts out, sharp-eyed and cheeky. Others do not, but they all look through their long eyelashes with an expression of foolish astonishment.

The painter cast admiring glances at her, not at all embarrassed by her dumbness. Indeed he had immediately begun to talk to her with his eyes, without reaching out to the small sheets of paper she kept sewn to her waist together with a wallet for pens and ink. The bright eyes of this small hirsute painter from Reggio Calabria were telling her that he was all ready to knead with his dark chubby hands the milk-white body of the young Duchess as if she were dough placed there to rise for him.

She had regarded him with contempt. His bold, arrogant way of presenting himself displeased her--for Heaven's sake, what was he? A simple painter, an obscure nobody come up from some Calabrian hovel, brought into the world by parents who were probably cowmen or goatherds.

But later she laughed at herself in the darkness of her bedroom, for she recognised that her social disdain was a lie, that there had risen in her an agitation she had never before experienced, an unexpected fear that almost throttled her. Up

till now no one had revealed in her presence such a visible and unrestrained desire for her body, and this seemed to her quite unheard of, but at the same time it filled her with curiosity.

The next day she had the painter informed that she did not want him, and the day after she wrote him a note to begin work. She put two boys at his disposal to mix the colours for him and clean his brushes. She would remain shut away in the library, reading.

And so it was. But twice she went out on to the landing to watch him while, perched on the scaffolding, he busied himself drawing with charcoal on the white walls. It excited her to watch the movements of his small hairy hands. His draughtsmanship was confident and graceful, demonstrating a skill so profound and delicate that it could not fail to arouse admiration.

His hands daubed with colour, he rubbed his nose, smearing it with yellow and green, grabbed a slice of bread and tripe, and lifted it to his mouth, scattering crumbs of bread and fragments of offal.

VIII

No one expected that the third child, or rather the third daughter, would be born so quickly, almost a month early, with feet foremost like a calf in a hurry. The midwife had sweated so much that her hair stuck to her head as if she'd had a bucket of water emptied over her.

Marianna had followed the movements of the midwife's hands as if she had never seen them before: put to soak in a basin of hot water, softened in lard, making the sign of the cross on her chest and then once again being immersed in water. Meanwhile Innocenza kept putting handkerchiefs soaked in essence of bergamot over her mouth and on her belly, stretched taut with pregnancy.

Come out, come out, you little sod

With help from our Almighty God.

Marianna knew the lines and read them on the lips of the midwife. She knew that the midwife's thoughts were on the point of reaching out to her and that she had done nothing to fend them off. Perhaps they would alleviate the pain, she said

to herself, and concentrated on them with her eyes shut.

What is the little stinker up to? Why don't you get born, eh? He's taken a bad turn, the turnip. What on earth is he up to? Is he turning somersaults or something? The legs are coming out first and the arms are all squashed to one side. It's almost as if he's dancing ... and dancing ... and dancing, my little one ... but why don't you get born, you naughty little snail? If you carry on like this I'll give you a good thrashing ... but then how could I ask the Duchess for the forty tar@i I've been promised? Ahhh, but it's a little girl, ahi ahi ... oh oh, oh my, oh my, nothing but girls come out of this ill-starred belly, what a misfortune. She doesn't have any luck, the poor dumb creature. ... Get born, get born, you stinking little girl. ... Suppose I promised you a little sugar lamb--no, you're determined not to come out. ... If this one don't get born I'll be in trouble ... everyone will know that Titina the midwife can't manage to bring a baby into this world and lets both mother and baby die. Holy Madonna, help me ... even though you never gave birth. ... What do you know of birth and work? ... Help me to get this baby girl out and I'll light a candle as big as a pillar for you, I swear to you in God's name. I'll spend all the money the Duchess has promised me, the good soul. ...

Seeing that the midwife was about to give her up for lost she wondered whether the time hadn't come for her to prepare herself for death with the baby locked inside her. I must recite a few prayers straightaway and ask the Lord's forgiveness for my sins, Marianna thought to herself.

But just at the very moment when she was preparing for death the baby came out, the colour of ink, not yet breathing. The midwife seized her by the feet and shook her as if she was a rabbit ready for the pot, until the little baby screwed up her face like an old monkey and, stretching her toothless mouth open, began to cry.

Meanwhile Innocenza brought the scissors to the midwife, who cut off the umbilical cord and then burned it with a small candle. The smell of burning flesh rose to Marianna's nostrils as she gasped for breath. She was not going to die; the acrid smoke brought her back to life and all

at once she felt very tired and contented.

Innocenza continued to busy herself: she tidied the bed, tied a clean bandage round the mother's hips, put salt on the navel of the new-born baby, sugar on her little belly still soiled with blood, and oil on her mouth. Then, after sprinkling her with rose-water, she wrapped the new-born infant in bandages, squeezing her from head to foot like a mummy.

And now who is going to break the news to the Duke that it is another girl? Someone must have bewitched this poor Duchess. ... If it was a peasant woman the child would be given a little spoonful of poisoned water. One on the first day, two on the second and three on the third, and the unwanted baby takes off for the next world ... but these are grand folk and girls are kept even when there are already too many.

Marianna was unable to take her eyes off the midwife as she dried her sweat and gave her a consu: a potion consisting of a small piece of linen that had been burned and then steeped in a mixture of oil, white of egg and sugar. All this she was familiar with already: each time she'd given birth she had seen the same things, only this time she saw them with the smarting eyes and the longing of a woman who knows that after all she is not going to die. It proved an entirely new pleasure to follow the confident routine of the two women who were taking care of her body with so much solicitude.

Now the midwife used her long sharp nail to cut a small membrane that still held the new infant's tongue, so as to ensure that she wouldn't stammer when she grew up; then, in accordance with tradition, a finger dipped in honey was thrust into the crying baby's mouth to comfort her.

The last things that Marianna saw before sinking into sleep were the calloused hands of the midwife holding the afterbirth towards the window to demonstrate that it was whole and that she had not torn it or left any fragments inside the mother's belly.

When she opened her eyes after twelve hours of unconsciousness Marianna found her other two daughters, Giuseppa and Felice, standing in front of her, all dressed up, festooned in bows, lace and coral: Felice already walking, Giuseppa in her nurse's arms. All three looked at her with astonishment, almost as if she had risen from her coffin in the middle of her own

funeral. Behind them stood the baby's father, her uncle husband, in his best red suit, just managing to force out something close to a smile.

Marianna's hands stretched out, searching for the new-born baby lying beside her; not finding her she was seized with panic. Had the baby died while she was asleep? But her husband's half-smile and the festive appearance of the nurse in her best clothes reassured her.