THE SILENT DUCHESS

            by Dacia Maraini

       Translated from the Italian  by Dick Kitto and
         Elspeth Spottiswood

     Afterword by Anna Camaiti Hostert

             Published by:
         The Feminist Press at  The City University of New York
     Wingate Hall/city College  Convent Avenue at 138th Street
       New York, NY 10031. 

            Copyright 1990  by RCS Rizzoli Libri S.p.a.
     English translation copyright 1992  by Dick Kitto and
         Elspeth Spottiswood  Afterword copyright 1998 by
        Anna Camaiti Hostert
 
       BOOK JACKET INFORMATION

      THE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER WINNER OF THE
         PREMIO CAMPIELLO

  "Maraini brilliantly conveys the mixture of luxury and squalor in which the Sicilian aristocracy lived. ... The Silent Duchess manages totally to overpower the reader with its narrative urgency. ... Since she won the Prix Formentor in 1963, Dacia Maraini has produced nothing finer than this."
    --Evening Standard, London

  "The Silent Duchess has a subtlety of perception, a delicacy in probing emotions and above all, an elusive feel for history itself. ... The narrative has the richness of a saga. ... This history of a woman's quest for dignity is an astonishing achievement."
    --The Independent, London

  "This is a novel of the greatest vividness. It arouses intense feeling. It provokes thought. It invites the reader into a world which is very different from that in which we live, and yet immediately recognizable as true and valid. ... It is illuminating, moving, and entrancing."
    --The Scotsman, Edinburgh

  "Dacia Maraini has produced a fiction of elegance and charm."
    --The Mail on Sunday, London

  "A thoughtful and beautifully written book." --Sunday Express, London

  Winner of the Premio Campiello (italy's equivalent of the National Book Award), short-listed for the Independent Foreign Fiction Award upon its first English-language publication in the U.k., and published to critical acclaim in fourteen languages, this mesmerizing historical novel by Italy's premier woman writer is available in the United States for the first time.
  Set in Sicily in the early eighteenth century, THE SILENT DUCHESS is the story of Marianna Ucr@ia, the daughter of an
 
aristocratic family and the victim of a mysterious childhood trauma that has left her deaf and mute, trapped in a world of silence. Set apart from the world by her disability, Marianna searches for knowledge and fulfillment in a society where women face either forced marriages and endless childbearing or a life of renunciation within the walls of a convent.
  When she is just thirteen years old, Marianna is forced to marry her own aging uncle. Her status and wealth as a duchess cannot protect her from many of the horrors of that time: she witnesses her mother's decline due to her addiction to opium and snuff and her father's cruelly misguided religious piety as he participates in the hanging of a young boy. She watches helplessly as her four-year-old son dies of smallpox and her youngest daughter is married off at the age of twelve. It is not until the death of her "uncle-husband" that Marianna at last gains freedom from her life of subservience: she learns to manage her estates and to love a man as she had never loved her husband, and she also learns of the unspeakable events that led to her lifelong silence.
  In luminous language that conveys both the keen visual sight and deep human insight posessed by her remarkable main character, Dacia Maraini captures the splendor and the corruption of Marianna's world and the strength of her spirit. THE SILENT DUCHESS is the timeless story of one woman's struggle to find her own voice after years of silence.

  DACIA MARAINI is the author of more than fifty books, including novels, plays, collections of poetry, and critical essays. Her second novel, The Age of
Discontent, won the international Prix Formentor, and The Silent Duchess received one of Italy's highest literary honors, the Premio Campiello. Among her other novels available in English are Women at War and the recent Voices. Several of Maraini's works have been adapted for the stage or screen, and she herself has directed both plays and films. Early in her career, Maraini founded the literary review Tempo di
Letteratura; she later established an all-women's theater group, Teatro della
 
Maddalena, and became known as a theorist and activist in the Italian feminist movement of the 1970's. Born in Florence, Dacia Maraini currently resides in Rome.

  ANNA CAMAITI HOSTERT received a Ph.d. in philosophy from the University of Pisa and a second in Italian language and literature from the University of Chicago. She currently teaches at the University of Illinois, Chicago, and is author of books and articles on feminism, politics, and film.

  Jacket design: Claire Ultimo, Ultimo Incorporated
  Front jacket art: Angelica Kauffman (swiss, 1741-1807).
  A Bust of a Girl with an Earring, 1770. Etching, 5 by 3-3/4 in. (12.7 by 9.5 cm.) The National Museum of Women in the Arts. Gift of Wallace and Wilhelmina Holladay.

  Originally published in 1990 in Italian as La lunga vita di Marianna Ucr@ia by RCS Rizzoli Libri S.p.a., Via Mercenate 91, 20138 Milan, Italy. Published by arrangement with RCS Rizzoli Libri. English translation originally published in 1992 in Great Britain by Peter Owen Publishers, 73 Kenway Road, London SW5 0OR, England. Published by arrangement with Peter Owen Publishers.

  The Feminist Press would like to thank Helene D. Goldfarb, Florence Howe, Joanne Markell, Caroline Urvater, Genevieve Vaughan, Patricia Wentworth and Mark Sagan, and Marilyn Williamson for their generosity in supporting this publication.

  Special thanks to Rose Trillo Clough and Sara Clough for encouraging The Feminist Press to give voice to The Silent Duchess.
 
        TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES

  In the print edition single quotes were used for outer quotation marks and double quotes for inner quotation marks, except in the Afterword. In this braille edition, dots 2-3-6 and 3-5-6 are used for outer quotes and dots 6, 2-3-6 and 3-5-6, 3 for inner quotes.
 
         THE SILENT DUCHESS

             The Ucr@ias
            a family tree

(great-grandfather) Signoretto Ucr@ia of Fontanasalsa
  Aunt Manina (unmarried)
  Aunt Agata (canoness) (grandfather) Mariano more. (grandmother) Giuseppa
      Gerbi of Mansueto
    Aunt Teresa (prioress)
    Duke Signoretto Ucr@ia of Fontanasalsa more. Maria
      Signoretto more. Domitilla Olivo
      Carlo (abbot)
      MARIANNA more. her uncle, Duke Pietro
        Felice (nun)
        Giuseppa more. Giulio Carbonelli
        Manina more. Francesco Chiarad@a Mariano more. Caterina Mol`e di
            Flores
        Signoretto
      Fiammetta (canoness) Geraldo
      Agata more. Prince Diego of Torre Mosca
Eduardo Gerbi of Mansueto (grandmother) Giuseppa Gerbi of Mansueto
      more. (grandfather) Mariano Carlo Ucr@ia of Campo Spagnolo more.
      Giulia Scebarr@as
    Maria more. Duke Signoretto Ucr@ia of Fontanasalsa
    Duke Pietro Ucr@ia of Campo Spagnolo more. his niece MARIANNA

                  I

  Here they are, a father and a daughter. The father fair, handsome, smiling; the daughter awkward, freckled, fearful. He stylish and casual, his stockings ruffled, his wig askew; she imprisoned inside a crimson bodice that highlights the wax-like pallor of her complexion.
  The little girl watches her father in the mirror as he bends down to adjust his white stockings over his
 
calves. His mouth moves but the sound of his words is lost as it reaches her ears, as if the visible distance between them were only a stumbling block: they seem to be close but they are a thousand miles apart.
  The child watches her father's lips as they move more and more rapidly. Although she cannot hear him, she knows what he is saying: that she must hasten to bid goodbye to her lady mother, that she must come down into the courtyard with him, that he is in a hurry to get into his carriage because as usual they are late.
  Meanwhile Raffaele Cuffa, who when he is in the hunting lodge walks with silent watchful footsteps like a fox, approaches Duke Signoretto and hands him a large wicker basket on which a white cross stands out prominently. The Duke opens the lid with a flick of his wrist, which his daughter recognises as one of his most habitual gestures, a peevish movement with which he casts to one side anything that bores him. His indolent, sensual hand plunges into the well-ironed cloth inside the basket, shivers at the icy touch of a silver crucifix, squeezes the small bag full of coins, and then slips quickly away. At a sign from him, Raffaele Cuffa hastens forward to close the basket. Now it is only a question of getting the horses to gallop full speed to Palermo.
  Meanwhile Marianna has rushed to her parents' bedroom, where she finds her mother the Duchess lying supine between the sheets, her dress fluffed up with lace slipping off her shoulder, the fingers of her hand closed round the enamel snuff-box. The child stops for a moment, overcome by the honey-sweet scent of the snuff mingled with all the other odours that accompany her mother's awakening: attar of roses, coagulated sweat, stale urine and lozenges flavoured with orris root.
  Her mother presses her daughter to her with lazy tenderness. Marianna sees her lips moving, but she can't be bothered to guess at her words. She knows she is telling her not to cross the road on her own; because of her deafness she could easily be crushed under the wheels of a carriage she has not been able to hear. And then dogs: no matter whether they are large dogs or small dogs she must give them a wide berth. She knows perfectly well how their tails grow so long that they wrap themselves round people's waists like chimeras do and then, hey presto, they pierce you with their forked points and
 
then you are dead without ever realising what has happened to you.
  For a moment the child fixes her gaze on her mother the Duchess's plump chin, on her beautiful mouth with its pure outline, on her soft pink cheeks, on her eyes with their look of innocence, yielding and far away. I shall never be like her, she says to herself. Never. Not even when I am dead.
  Her mother the Duchess continues to talk about dogs like chimeras that can become as long as serpents, that press against you with their whiskers, that bewitch you with their cunning eyes. But the child gives her a hasty kiss and runs off.
  Her father the Duke is already in the carriage, but instead of summoning her he is singing. She can see him puffing out his cheeks and arching his eyebrows. As soon as she puts a foot on the running-board she is seized from inside and pulled on to the seat. The carriage door is closed with a sharp bang. Peppino Cannarota whips the horses and off they go at a gallop.
  The child relaxes, sinks back into the padded seat and shuts her eyes. Sometimes the two senses on which she relies are so alert that they come to blows, her eyes intent on possessing every image in its entirety, and her sense of smell obstinately insisting that it can make the whole world pass through these two minute tunnels of flesh at the lower end of her nose.
  But now she has lowered her eyelids so as to rest her eyes for a while, and her nostrils have begun to draw in the air, recognising the smells and meticulously noting them in her mind: the overpowering scent of lettuce water that impregnates her father's waistcoat, below that the scent of rice powder mingled with the grease on the seats, the sourness of crushed lice, the smarting from the dust on the road that blows through the joints of the doors, as well as the faint aroma of mint that floats in from the fields of the Villa Palagonia.
  But an extra hard jolt makes her open her eyes. Opposite her on the front seat her father is asleep, his tricorn hat capsized over his shoulder, his wig askew on his handsome perspiring forehead, his blond eyelashes resting gracefully on his carelessly shaven cheeks. Marianna pushes aside the small wine-coloured curtain, embroidered with golden eagles. She catches a glimpse of the dusty
 
road and of geese streaking away with outspread wings in front of the carriage wheels. Images of the countryside round Bagheria glide into the silence within her head: the contorted cork trees with their naked reddish trunks, the olive trees with branches weighed down by their little green eggs, the brambles that are struggling to invade the road, the cultivated fields, the giant cactuses with their spiny fruit, the tufts of reed, and far away in the distance the windswept hills of Aspra.
  Now the carriage passes the two pillars of the gate to the Villa Butera and sets off towards Ogliastro and Villabate. Her small hand remains gripping the cloth, heedless of the heat that seeps through the coarse woollen weave. She sits straight upright and motionless to avoid accidentally making a noise that will wake her father. But how stupid! What about the noise of the wheels as they clatter over the potholes in the road; what about Peppino Cannarota shouting encouragement to the horses; and the cracking of the whip and the barking of dogs? Even if she can only imagine all these sounds, for him they are real. And yet it is she who is disturbed and not him. What tricks intelligence can play on crippled senses!
  From the gentle shimmering of the reeds, hardly affected by the wind from Africa, Marianna is aware that they have arrived at the outskirts of Ficarazzi. In the distance is the big yellow barracks known as "the sugar mill". A pungent acidulous smell creeps through the cracks in the closed door. It is the smell of sugar cane as it is cut, soaked, stripped and transformed into molasses.
  Today the horses are flying along. Her father the Duke continues sleeping in spite of the jolts. She is pleased to have him there safe in her hands. Every so often she leans forward to straighten his hat or to brush away a too insistent fly.
  The child is just seven years old. In her disabled body the silence is like dead water. In this clear still water float the carriage, the balconies hung with washing, the hens scratching about, the sea glimpsed from afar, her sleeping father. The images are almost weightless and easily change their positions, but they coalesce into a liquid that blends their colours and dissolves their shapes.
  Marianna turns to look out of the window and to her surprise they are right alongside the sea. The
 
smooth calm water splashes gently on to the big grey pebbles. On the horizon a large boat with limp sails goes from right to left.
  The branch of a mulberry tree snaps against the window. Purple mulberries are squashed on the glass by the impact. Marianna turns aside, but too late, the jolt has made her bang her head against the window frame. Her lady mother is right: her ears are no use as sentinels. The dogs can catch hold of her by the waist from one minute to the next. That is why her nose has become so keen and her eyes so quick to warn her of any moving object.
  Her father the Duke opens his eyes for a moment and then sinks back into sleep. Suppose she were to give him a kiss? How happily she would embrace him. How happy she would be to caress that cool cheek nicked by a careless razor. But she refrains because she knows he dislikes any mawkishness. And, anyway, why wake him up when he is happily asleep, why bring him back to another day of "turmoil", as he puts it, writing it for her on a small sheet of paper in his beautifully rounded and shapely handwriting.
  From the regular jolting of the carriage the child guesses that they have arrived in Palermo. The wheels have begun to bounce over the cobblestones and it seems to her that she can almost hear their rhythmic clanking.
  Soon they will be turning towards Porta Felice, then they will go into the Cassaro Morto, and then? Her father the Duke has not told her where he is taking her but from the basket Raffaele Cuffa has given him she can guess. To the Vicaria?

                 II

  It is indeed the fa@cade of the Vicaria that greets her as she gets down from the carriage, helped by her father. The expression on his face makes her laugh: he has woken with a start, feeling the pressure of his powdered wig rammed down on to his ears, slapping on his tricorn hat and jumping from the footplate, a movement he intends to appear confident and carefree but which turns out to be clumsy. He almost has a heavy fall because of the pins and needles in his legs.
  The windows of the Vicaria are all similar,
 
bristling with spiral gratings that end in menacing spikes; the great entrance gate is studded with rusty bolts; there is a door handle in the form of a wolf's head with an open mouth. With all its brutishness it looks so like a prison that people passing in front of it turn their heads away to avoid seeing it.
  The Duke is about to knock on the door when it opens wide and he enters as if it were his own house. Marianna follows behind him and the guards and servants bow as they pass. One gives her a surprised smile, another frowns at her, another even tries to stop her by grabbing hold of her arm. But she breaks free and runs after her father. The child gets tired following him as he advances with giant strides towards the gangway. She skips along in her little satin shoes but she cannot manage to keep up. For a moment she thinks she has lost him, but there he is round a corner waiting for her.
  Father and daughter find themselves together in a triangular room dimly lit by a single window immediately below the ceiling. A manservant helps her father the Duke remove his redingote and his tricorn hat. He relieves him of his wig and hangs it on a knob that juts out from the wall. He helps him to put on the long habit of white cloth lying in the basket together with a rosary, a cross and the purse of coins.
  Now the titular head of the Chapel of the Noble Family of the White Brothers is ready. In the meantime, without the child noticing, other members of the Noble Family have arrived, also dressed in white habits. Four ghosts with cowls flopping round their necks.
  Marianna stands on her own watching the attendants bustle round the White Brothers as if they were actors getting ready to come on stage: the folds of their spotless habits must be straight so that they fall modestly over their sandalled feet; the cowls must come down over the neck and the white points must be straightened so that they face upwards.
  Now the five are indistinguishable: white on white, piety on piety. Only their hands peeping through the folds of their habits and that little area of blackness blinking in the two holes in the hood reveal the person underneath. The smallest of the ghosts leans towards the child, flutters his hands and turns to her father the Duke. She can see that he
 
is angry from the way he stamps his feet on the floor. Another brother takes a step forward as if to intervene. It looks as if they are going to seize each other by the scruff of their necks but her father the Duke orders them to be quiet with a gesture of authority.
  Marianna feels the cold soft cloth of her father's habit against her bare wrist. The right hand of the father clutches the fingers of the daughter. Her nose tells her that something terrible is going to happen, but what can it be? Her father the Duke leads her towards another corridor and she walks without looking where to put her feet, seized by an excited and burning curiosity.
  At the end of the passage they encounter steep slippery stone steps. The noble gentlemen grab their habits with their thumbs and fingers just like ladies picking up their full skirts and raising the hems so as not to stumble. The steps exude dampness and it is difficult to see, even though a guard goes ahead with a lighted flare. There are no windows, neither high nor low. Suddenly it is night, smelling of burnt oil, rat droppings, pork fat. The head of the prison guards gives the keys of the dungeon to Duke Ucr@ia, who advances till he reaches a small wooden door with reinforced bosses. There, with the help of a boy with bare feet, he unlocks the padlock and slides back a big iron bar.
  The door opens. The smoky flare casts light on part of the floor, where cockroaches are running in all directions. The guard raises the flare to throw a shaft of light on several half-naked bodies lying against the wall, their ankles shackled in heavy chains.
  An ironsmith appears from nowhere and bends down to release the chain from one of the prisoners, a boy with bleary eyes. He gets impatient because it takes so long and kicks out with his foot almost as if he was trying to tickle the ironsmith's nose. He laughs, showing a large toothless mouth.
  The child hides behind her father. Every so often he bends down and gives her a quick caress, but more to make certain that she stays there watching than to comfort her.
  When the boy is finally free he stands up. Marianna recognises that he is still almost a child, more or less the same age as Cannarota's son, who died of malarial fever a few months
 
ago at the age of thirteen. The other prisoners look on without speaking. As soon as the boy, his ankles freed, starts to walk about, they resume their unfinished game, glad to be able to make use of so much light. The game consists of louse-killing: whoever can squash between their two thumbs the greatest number in the shortest time wins. The dead lice are delicately placed on a small copper coin and the winner takes the money.
  The child is absorbed in watching the three players, their mouths wide open and laughing as they shout words that she cannot hear. Fear has left her; now she thinks calmly of how her father the Duke will want to take her with him to hell; there must be a secret reason, some high-flown reason which she will only understand later on. He will take her to look at the damned wallowing in mud: some who walk burdened with heavy rocks on their shoulders, some who have been changed into trees, some who have swallowed burning coals and breathe out fiery smoke, some who crawl like snakes, some who are changed into dogs whose tails grow longer and longer until they become harpoons with which they hook passers-by and carry them to their mouths, just as her lady mother keeps telling her.
  But her father the Duke is there to rescue her from these horrors. And, anyway, for living visitors like Dante hell can even be beautiful to look at. Those who are there, dead and suffering, and we who are here watching them: is this not what these white-hooded brethren, who pass the rosary from hand to hand, are offering us?

                III

  Rolling his eyes, the boy watches her, and Marianna returns his look, determined not to let herself be intimidated. But his eyelids are swollen and discharging pus; it is quite likely he cannot see properly, the little girl thinks to herself. Who can tell how he perceives her? Perhaps as gross and fleshy, like when she looks at her reflection in Aunt Manina's distorting mirror, or maybe undersized and all skin and bone? At that moment, in response to her grimace, the boy dissolves into a dark, crooked smile.
  Her father the Duke, assisted by a hooded White Brother, takes the boy by the arm and leads him towards the door. The players return to the
 
half-darkness of their days. Two dry, slender hands lift up the child and place her gently on the bottom step of the staircase.
  The procession starts up: the guard with the burning torch, Duke Ucr@ia leading the prisoner on his arm, the other White Brothers, the ironsmith and two attendants dressed in dark tunics behind. Again they find themselves in the triangular room, astir with the coming and going of guards and footmen, who carry torches, arrange chairs, and bring basins of tepid water, linen towels, a basket of fresh bread and a dish of candied fruit.
  Her father the Duke leans over the boy with an affectionate gesture. Marianna tells herself that she has never seen him so tender and solicitous. He takes water from the earthenware basin in his cupped hand and splashes it on the pus on the boy's cheeks; then he cleans his face with the freshly laundered towel handed to him by a footman. Next he takes a piece of soft white bread between his fingers and offers it to the prisoner as if he were his favourite son.
  The boy allows himself to be looked after, cleaned and fed, without uttering a word. Every so often he smiles, at other times he weeps. Somebody places a rosary of large mother-of-pearl beads in his hands. He fingers it and then lets it fall to the ground. Her father the Duke gestures impatiently. Marianna bends down, picks up the rosary and replaces it in the boy's hands. For a moment she experiences the contact of two cold, calloused fingers.
  The prisoner stretches his lips over his toothless mouth. His bloodshot eyes are bathed with a small piece of cloth steeped in lettuce water. Under the indulgent gaze of the White Brothers the prisoner reaches out towards the dish, looks round him apprehensively and then thrusts into his mouth a honey-coloured plum encrusted with sugar. The five gentlemen have knelt down and are telling the rosary. The boy, his cheeks bulging with the candied fruit, is pushed gently on to his knees, for even he is required to pray.
  Thus the oppressive heat of the afternoon passes in somnolent prayer. Every so often a footman approaches bearing glasses of water flavoured with aniseed. The White Brothers drink and return to their prayers. One of them mops his perspiring face, others doze off and then wake
 
up with a start and return to telling the rosary. After swallowing three crystallised apricots the boy falls asleep too, and no one has the heart to wake him up.
  Marianna watches her father praying. Is that cowled figure Duke Signoretto or can it be someone else whose head is swaying from side to side? It seems as if she can hear his voice slowly reciting Hail Mary. In the shell of her ear, long since silent, she retains a faint memory of familiar voices: the hoarse gurgling of her mother, the shrill voice of the cook Innocenza, the sonorous kindly voice of her father the Duke, which every so often used to falter and become disagreeably sharp and splintered.
  Perhaps she too had learned to talk. But how old was she then? Four or five? She was a backward child, quiet and absorbed, lurking in some corner where everyone tended to forget about her before suddenly remembering her and coming to scold her for having hidden herself. One day, for no reason, she fell silent: silence took possession of her like some illness, or perhaps like a vocation. Not to hear the merry voice of her father the Duke was the most distressing part of it. But in due course she became accustomed to it. Now she experienced a sense of happiness, almost a sly satisfaction, in watching him talk without being able to grasp the words.
  "You were born like this, deaf and dumb", he had once written in an exercise book, and she had tried to convince herself that she had only dreamed up those distant voices, unable to admit that her sweet gentle father, who loved her so much, could lie to her. So she had to believe it was all a delusion. She lacked neither the imagination nor the desire for speech.

every p@i every p@i every p@i seven women for one tar@i every p@i every p@i every p@i one tar@i is not a lot seven women for an apricot. ...

But her thoughts are interrupted by the movement of a White Brother, who goes out and returns with a big book, on the cover of which is written: ATONEMENT OF CONSCIENCE. Her father the Duke wakes up the boy with a gentle tap and they withdraw together to a corner of the room, where the wall makes
 
a niche and a slab of stone fits into it like a seat. There the Duke Ucr@ia of Fontanasalsa bends down towards the prisoner's ear and invites him to make his confession. The boy mutters a few words through his young toothless mouth. Her father is affectionately insistent. At last the boy smiles. They seem almost like a father and son talking casually about family matters.
  Marianna watches them filled with dismay. What does he think he is doing? This parrot roosting next to her father, as if he has always known him, as if he has always held his impatient hands between his fingers, as if since the day he was born he has known his smell in his nostrils, as if he has been clasped round the waist a thousand times by two strong arms that have helped him to jump down from a carriage or a sedan-chair, from a cradle, from steps, with the impetuosity that only a real father of flesh and blood can feel for his own daughter. What does he think he is doing?
  A compelling urge to commit murder rises up from her throat, invades the top of her mouth and burns her tongue. She could throw a big dish at his head, plunge a knife into his chest, tear the hair off his scalp. Her father does not belong to that boy, he belongs to her, to the pitiable dumb girl who has only one love in the world-- her father.
  These murderous thoughts are dispelled by a sudden rush of air. The door opens wide and a man with a belly shaped like a melon appears in the entrance. He is dressed like a clown, half in red, half in yellow. He is young and corpulent, with short legs, square shoulders, the arms of a wrestler and small shifty eyes. He is chewing pumpkin seeds and spitting out the husks with a cheerful leer.
  When the boy sees him he blanches. The smiles that her father the Duke has wrung from him die on his face, his lips begin to tremble, his mouth starts to quiver and his eyes to run. The clown, spitting out husks of pumpkin seeds, draws closer to him. The boy slides downwards like a wet rag and the clown gestures to two servants, who raise him up beneath the armpits and drag him towards the door.
  The atmosphere resonates with sombre reverberations like the beating of the gigantic wings of an unseen bird. Marianna looks around her.
 
The White Brothers proceed towards the entrance with ceremonious footsteps. The great door opens wide at a single blow and the beating of the wings becomes close enough and loud enough to deafen her. It is the viceregal drums, together with the shouts from the crowd, everyone rejoicing and waving their arms.
  The Piazza Marina, which earlier had been empty, is now seething with people: a sea of undulating heads, raised standards, stamping horses, a pandemonium of thronging bodies, struggling forward to invade the rectangular piazza.

                 IV

  The windows are overflowing with heads. The balconies are tightly crammed with gesticulating bodies leaning out so that they can get a better view. The Ministers of Justice with their yellow robes, the Royal Guard with their gold and purple ensign, the Grenadiers armed with bayonets, are all there, restraining the impatience of the mob with some difficulty.
  What is going to happen? The child guesses but does not dare to answer that question. All these bawling heads seem to be knocking at the door of her silence, asking to be allowed in.
  Marianna shifts her gaze from the crowd and focuses it on the toothless boy. She sees him standing motionless, steady and upright. He is no longer trembling or keeling over. He has a glimmer of pride in his eyes: all this uproar for him! All these people dressed up in their Sunday best, these horses, these carriages, are only there for him. These banners, these uniforms with shining buttons, these plumed hats, all this gold and purple, all on his account. It is a miracle!
  Two guards brutally interrupt this ecstatic contemplation of his own triumph. They fasten the rope with which they have tied his hands to another longer and stronger rope, which they secure to the tail of a mule. Bound thus, he is dragged towards the centre of the piazza.
  At the far end, on the Steri Palace, a splendid blood-red flag flaunts itself; from there, from the Palazza Chiaramonte, the Noble Fathers of the Inquisition are emerging, two by two, preceded and followed by a swarm of altar boys.
 
In the centre of the piazza is a raised platform several feet high, similar to those on which are enacted the puppet stories of Nofriu and Travaglino, of Nardo and Tiberio. But instead of black canvas there is an ominous scaffolding of wood, shaped like an inverted L, to which a rope with a noose is attached.
  Marianna gets pushed behind her father, who is following the prisoner, who in his turn follows the mule. Now the procession has got under way and no one can stop it, whatever the reason. The horses of the Royal Guard in front, followed by the Noble Brothers in their hooded habits, the Ministers of Justice, the archdeacons, the priests, the barefoot friars, the drummers, the trumpeters: a long cortege that laboriously makes it way along the street between the excited crowds. The gallows are only a few yards away, yet it takes the procession, winding its way in arbitrary circles round the piazza, a long time to get there.
  At length Marianna's foot bumps into a small wooden step and the procession comes to a halt. Her father the Duke ascends the steps with the condemned prisoner, preceded by the executioner and followed by the other Brothers of the Good Death.
  Once more the boy has that far-away smile on his white face. And it is her father the Duke who holds him spellbound and eases him towards paradise, bewitching him with descriptions of the delights of that place of repose, leisure, unlimited food and sleep. Like a baby made drowsy by words from his mother rather than his father, the boy seems to have no other wish than to rush from this world to the next, where there are no prisoners, no sickness, no lice, no suffering but only juleps and rest.
  The little girl opens her aching eyes. Now a great desire leaps down upon her: to be him, if only for an hour, to be that toothless boy with the suppurating eyes, so as to hear her father's voice, to drink in the honey of that transient sound, even if only once, even at the cost of dying, hanging from that rope dangling in the sun.
  The executioner continues to chew pumpkin seeds andwitha defiant look spits the husks high into the air. Everything is so like the puppet theatre: now Nardo will lift up his head and the hangman will deliver a hail of blows. Nardo will wave his arms and fall under the stage and then return more lively than ever to receive more blows and more insults.
 
  Just as in the theatre, the crowd laughs, chatters and munches while waiting for the blows to begin. Street-vendors appear from under the scaffold to offer mugs of water and aniseed, pushing and jostling past sellers of bread and offal, of boiled squid and cactus fruit. Everyone is elbowing and shoving, trying to sell their wares. A toffee seller arrives beneath the child's nose and, almost as if he has an intuition that she is deaf, approaches her with exaggerated gestures to offer her the tray held round his neck with a greasy piece of string. She gives a sideways glance at the miniature toffee-tins. She could so easily stretch out her hand, select one, press down the catch with her finger to open the circular lid and let the little round sweets with their vanilla flavour slip out. But she doesn't want to be distracted, her attention is fixed elsewhere, above those steps of blackened wood, where her father the Duke is still talking to the condemned prisoner in a soft low voice as if he were flesh of his flesh.
  The last steps are reached. The Duke bows towards the dignitaries seated in front of the scaffold, the senators, the princes, the magistrates. Then he kneels down reverently with the rosary between his fingers. For a moment the crowd falls quiet. Even the itinerant street-vendors cease bustling about and stand still with their mobile stalls, their straps, their samples of merchandise, their mouths wide open and their heads in the air.
  When the prayer is ended, her father the Duke passes the crucifix to the prisoner for him to kiss. It is as if in place of Christ on the Cross, it could be he himself, naked, martyred, with his beautiful skin and a crown of thorns on his head, offering himself to the uncouth lips of a frightened boy to reassure him, to soothe him, to send him to the next world calm and tranquil. With her he has never been so tender, never so sensual, never so close. Never, never has he offered her his body to be kissed, never taken her under his wing, never cherished her with tender words of comfort.
  The child's gaze shifts to the prisoner, and she watches him sink down on his knees. The seductive words of Duke Ucr@ia are swept away by the feel of the cold, slippery rope that the hangman places round his neck. But the boy still manages somehow to lift himself upright, while his nose starts to run. He tries to free his hand
 
to wipe the snot that dribbles over his lips. But his hands are firmly tied behind his back. Two or three times he lifts his shoulders and tries to twist his arm. At this moment it seems as if wiping his nose is the only thing that matters to him.
  The air reverberates to the beat of a big drum. At a sign from the judge the hangman kicks away the box on which the boy has been forced to stand. The body jerks, stretches itself, falls downwards and starts to rotate.
  But something has gone wrong. Instead of dangling inertly like a sack, the boy continues to writhe, suspended in the air, his neck swollen, his eyes starting out of their sockets.
  The hangman, realising that his task has failed, heaves himself up with all the force of his arms against the gallows and jumps alongside the hanged boy; for a few seconds they are both dangling from the rope like two mating frogs, while the crowd holds its breath.
  This time he is truly dead. The body has taken on all the attributes of a puppet. The hangman slides nonchalantly along the scaffold and jumps nimbly down on to the platform. People start to throw their caps in the air. A young brigand who has murdered a dozen people has met his fate. Justice has been done. But the little girl will not learn about this till later. For the moment she is asking herself what a boy not much older than herself and looking so scared and stupid could have done.
  The father bends over his daughter, exhausted. He touches her mouth as if he were waiting for a miracle. He catches hold of her chin, looks into her eyes, imploring, threatening. "You must speak," say his lips. "You must open that accursed fish's mouth."
  The child tries to unstick her lips but she cannot do it. Her body is seized with a violent trembling, her hands, still grasping the folds of her father's habit, are turned to stone.
  The boy she wanted to kill is dead and she cannot help wondering whether it might have been her who killed him, for she had desired his death as one can desire a forbidden fruit.
 
                 Very

  The brothers and sisters sit in a colourful group posing for her and shuffling their feet: Signoretto looking so like his father the Duke, with the same soft hair, shapely legs and bright trusting expression; Fiammetta in her little nun's dress, her hair gathered inside a lace-edged coif; Carlo with his black sparkling eyes and the short breeches that squeeze his plump thighs; Geraldo, who has recently lost his milk teeth, smiling like an old man; Agata with clear translucent skin speckled with mosquito bites.
  The five watch their dumb sister bending over the palette, and it seems almost as if they are portraying her rather than she portraying them. They eye her as she looks down at her paints, mixes them with the tip of her brush, and then turns back to the canvas. All at once its whiteness becomes suffused with a soft yellow; then over the yellow she lays a cerulean blue with clear, delicate brush-strokes.
  Carlo says something that makes the group burst into laughter. Marianna signs to them to stay quiet for a little longer. The charcoal drawing of their heads, necks, arms, faces, feet, is already there on the canvas, but she is finding it difficult to bring the colour to life: the paint becomes diluted and runs down towards the bottom of the canvas. Patiently they remain still for several minutes. But then it is Geraldo who creates a disturbance by giving Fiammetta a pinch. Fiammetta retaliates with a kick and suddenly they are both pushing, slapping and elbowing each other. Signoretto does not intervene to put Geraldo in his place, although as the eldest he has the right to do so.
  Marianna again dips her brush first in the white paint and then in the pink, while her eyes shift from the canvas to the group. There is something disembodied about this picture she is painting, something too polished, not quite real. It seems almost like one of those official miniatures which her lady mother's friends have had painted of themselves, all stiff and formal, in which the original vision remains only a distant memory.
  She says to herself she must concentrate on their personalities if she does not want them to slip through her fingers: Signoretto, who sees
 
himself as a rival to his father, with his commanding ways and resonant laughter, and as protector of his mother who, whenever she sees father and son in conflict, watches them slyly, even with amusement. But her indulgent glances linger on her son with such intensity that it must be obvious to everybody. His father the Duke, however, is irritated: this boy not only looks astonishingly like him, but acts out his movements with more grace and assurance than he does himself. It is as if he had a mirror in front of him, a mirror that flatters him and at the same time reminds him that soon he will be painlessly replaced. Amongst other things it is Signoretto who is the eldest, and it is he who will carry on the family name. Towards his dumb sister Signoretto is usually protective, somewhat jealous of the attention their father gives her, sometimes looking down on her disabilities, sometimes using her as a pretext for demonstrating to the others his generous spirit, never quite sure where truth ends and play-acting begins.
  Next to him is Fiammetta in her nun's habit, her eyebrows like a pencilled line, her eyes too close together, her teeth irregular. She is not beautiful like Agata and for this reason she is destined for the convent. Even if she found a husband there could be no certainty of a marriage contract as there would be with a real beauty. In the highly coloured, twisted little face of the child there is already a look of rebellion against this fettered future, which she accepts defiantly while wearing the long narrow habit that smothers her womanhood.
  Carlo and Geraldo, fifteen and eleven, look as alike as twins. But one will end up in a monastery and the other will go into the dragoons. They are often dressed up as monk and soldier, Carlo in a miniature habit and Geraldo in a boy's uniform. Whenever they are in the garden, they amuse themselves by exchanging clothes and then rolling on the ground clasped together, ruining both the cream-coloured habit and the handsome uniform with its gold toggles. Carlo is greedy for spicy foods and sweets and has begun to grow plump. But he is also the most affectionate of the brothers towards Marianna, and often comes to look for her and hold her hand.
  Agata is the youngest and also the prettiest. A marriage contract has already been arranged for her
 
which, without costing the family anything except a dowry of thirty thousand escudos, will enable them to extend their influence, to make useful connections and establish a wealthy lineage.
  When Marianna looks up to focus on her brothers and sisters she finds they have all vanished. They have taken advantage of her absorbed concentration on the canvas to slip away, counting on the fact that she will not be able to hear their giggling. She is just in time to catch a glimpse of Agata's skirt disappearing behind the lodge among the spikes of aloes.
  How can she get on with the painting now? She will have to dip into her memory, since she well knows that they will never come back to pose for her as a group; even today they have only done so after much cajoling and patience.
  The gap left by their bodies is now filled by jasmine, dwarf palm trees and olive trees that slope down towards the sea. Why not paint this calm, immutable landscape instead of the brothers who never stay still for a moment? It has more depth and mystery and it has obligingly posed for centuries and is always there ready to be played with.
  Marianna's youthful hand reaches out towards another canvas and puts it on the easel in place of the first. She dips her brush into a soft oily green. Where should she begin? With the fresh brilliant emerald green of the dwarf palm trees or the shimmering turquoise of the grove of olive trees or the green streaked with yellow of the slopes of Monte Catalfano?
  Or she could paint the lodge, which was built by her grandfather Mariano Ucr@ia, with its square squat shape, its windows more suited to a tower than a hunting lodge in the country. She feels certain that one day it will be transformed into a villa and she will live there even through the winter because her roots are sunk into that soil, which she loves more than the cobblestones of Palermo.
  While she remains poised irresolutely with the brush dripping paint on to her canvas, she feels herself pulled by the sleeve. She turns. It is Agata, who presents her with a piece of paper.
  "Come--the puppeteer has arrived." From the handwriting she recognises that the invitation comes from Signoretto, though as a matter of fact it sounds more like a command than an invitation.
  She gets up, wipes her paintbrush, still
 
dripping with green paint, on a small damp rag, cleans her hands by rubbing them against her striped apron and walks with her sister towards the entrance to the courtyard.
  Carlo, Geraldo, Fiammetta and
Signoretto are already crowding round Tutui, the puppet master. He has left his donkey by the fig tree and is about to put up his theatre. Four vertical poles intersect with three horizontal planks and between them they support about four yards of black cloth. Meanwhile, leaning from the windows are the servants, Innocenza the cook, Don Raffaele Cuffa and even her ladyship the Duchess, towards whom the puppet master directs a low bow. The Duchess throws him a ten tar@i coin which he picks up quickly. He pockets it under his shirt, makes another theatrical bow and goes off to get his puppets from a saddle bag hanging down over the haunches of his donkey.
  Marianna has already witnessed those blows, those heads that slump beneath the platform only to reappear soon after, bold and unredeemed; for every year at this time Tutui appears at the lodge in Bagheria to amuse the children. Every year the Duchess throws him a ten tar@i piece and the puppet master wears himself out with bows and greetings so exaggerated that it seems almost as if he is pulling her leg. Meanwhile, no one knows how, the word has spread and dozens of children are crowding in from the surrounding countryside. The servants come down into the courtyard, drying their hands and tidying their hair. Among them is the cowman Don Ciccio Cal@o with his twin daughters Lina and Lena, the gardener Peppi Geraci with his wife Maria and their four sons, and of course the footman Don Peppino Cannarota.
  Soon on comes Nardo, who starts to beat Tiberio boom boom boom. The show has begun, while the children are still playing around. But a moment later they are all seated on the ground, heads in the air, eyes fixed on the stage.
  Marianna remains standing a little apart. The children unnerve her: she has too often been a target for their teasing. They jump on to her without letting her see them and make fun of her reaction, they bet with each other who can let off a fire cracker without her catching them.
  Meanwhile from the background of black cloth a new object is unexpectedly appearing. It
 
is a gibbet, something that has never before been seen in Tutui's theatre. At its appearance the children hold their breath expectantly, for this is an exciting novelty.
  A guard with his sword on his hip pursues the irrepressible Nardo up and down the black curtain, seizes him by the scruff of the neck and slips his head through the noose. A drummer appears on the left and Nardo is made to jump on a stool. That's it! The guard kicks the stool away and Nardo falls under his own weight while the rope starts to rotate.
  Marianna is shaken. She shudders. Something stirs in her memory like a fish caught on a hook, something that refuses to surface and disturb the calm still waters of her consciousness. She raises her hand to take hold of her father's rough habit but only finds the bristly hair of the donkey's tail.
  Nardo hangs in space with all the suppleness of his boyish body, watery-eyed and toothless, his gaze fixed in a state of inescapable trance, still attempting spasmodically to raise his shoulder to free a hand with which to wipe his running nose.
  Marianna falls backwards like a dead weight, hitting her head on the hard bare ground of the courtyard. Everyone turns. Agata runs towards her followed by Carlo, who leans over his sister and bursts into tears. Cannarota's wife fans her with her apron while a servant rushes off to call the Duchess. The puppet master emerges from beneath the black curtain, with the puppet in his hand, head downwards, while Nardo remains hanging aloft on the gallows.

                 VI

  An hour later, Marianna wakes up in her parents' bed with a wet handkerchief pressing heavily on her forehead. Vinegar runs down through her eyelashes and stings her eyes. Her mother the Duchess bends over her. Even before she opens her eyes she recognises her from the strong smell of honey-scented snuff.
  The daughter gazes up at her mother: the outline of her full lips slightly veiled by blonde down, her nostrils shadowed by the constant taking of snuff, her large dark eyes. Marianna finds it impossible to make up her mind whether she is beautiful or not, because there is something about her that is
 
off-putting. But what is it? Perhaps it is her unshakable calm, the way she always gives in to the slightest push, the way she abandons herself to the cloying fumes of snuff, indifferent to everything else.
  Marianna has always suspected that her lady mother, in the far-off past, when she was very young and full of imagination, deliberately chose to become lifeless so that she would never have to die. From there must come her remarkable ability to accept every irritation with complete resignation and a minimum of effort.
  Before her death, Marianna's grandmother Giuseppa wrote to her several times about her mother in an exercise book with a fleur-de-lys on the cover.
  "Your mother was a beauty. Everybody loved her. But she didn't love anyone. She was obstinate as a goat, like her mother Giulia, who came from around Granada. She did not want to marry her cousin, your father Signoretto. Everyone said, "But he's a lovely young man, he really is." Not just because he was my son, the very sight of him would dazzle your eyes. Your mother married him grudgingly, she looked as if she were going to a funeral. Then after a month of marriage she fell in love with him and she loved him so much she started taking snuff, then at night she could no longer sleep so she took laudanum as well."
  When the Duchess sees that her daughter is coming round, she goes to the writing-desk, takes a sheet of paper and writes on it. She dries the ink with ashes and hands the sheet to the young girl.
  "How are you, my little one?"
  As she sits up, Marianna spits out the vinegar that is still sticking to her teeth. Her lady mother laughs and removes the soaking rag from her face. Then she goes to the writing-desk again, scribbles something more and comes back to the bedside with the piece of paper.
  "Now you are thurteen it's time I told you you have to get married. We have found a bridgroom for you. So there's no need for you to be a nun like Fiammetta."
  The girl reads and rereads her mother's hurried note, written regardless of spelling, mixing Sicilian dialect with Italian, her handwriting hesitant and shaky. A husband? Why on earth? She had imagined that because of her disability, marriage would be unthinkable. And, anyway, she is barely thirteen.
 
  Her mother is waiting for a reply. She gives her an affectionate smile--but there is something a little forced about it. For her, having a deaf and dumb daughter weighs her down with unbearable pain and embarrassment that make her freeze. She's at a loss how to behave towards her or how to make herself understood. She has never much liked writing, and to have to read other people's handwriting is a real torture. But with motherly self-sacrifice she goes to the writing-desk, snatches another sheet of paper, picks up the goose quill and the little bottle of ink and takes it all to her daughter as she lies stretched out on the bed.
  "A husband for a dumb girl?" Marianna writes, leaning on her elbow and, in her confusion, dripping blobs of ink on the sheet.
  "Your father did everything to make you talk. He even took you with him to the Vicaria where the frite might have helped you. You never uttered a word because your head is a sieve, you don't have the will. Your sister Fiammetta is betrothed to Christ, Agata is promised to the son of Prince Torre Mosca, and you--your duty is to axcept the bridgroom we have found for you because we love you. We don't want you wedded outside the family so we are giving you to your unkle Pietro Ucr@ia di Campo Spagnolo, Lord of Scannatura, of Bosco Grande and of Fiume Mendola, Count of Sala di Paruta,
Marquis of Sollazzi and of Taya. On top of all that he is my brother and your father's cousin. And he loves you. Only with him will your soul find sanktury."
  Marianna reads the note with a frown, disregarding her mother's spelling mistakes and the words in dialect thrown in by the handful. Most of all she rereads the last lines; then her betrothed is to be her uncle Pietro? That sad, grumpy man, always dressed in red and known in the family as "the prawn".
  "I will not get married", she writes angrily on the back of the sheet of paper still wet from her mother's words.
  The Duchess Maria returns patiently to the writing-desk, her forehead mottled with little globules of sweat. What a lot of effort she has to make for this dumb girl who refuses to accept that she is nothing but an encumbrance, and there's no more to be said.
 
  "No one will even look at you, my own little Marianna. And the convent will want a dowry, you know that. We already have to pay for Fiammetta. That costs a lot. Unkle Pietro will take you for nothing because he loves you. Then all his property will be yours. Now do you understand?"
  She puts the pen down and starts talking to Marianna ever so softly, just as if she could hear her, absent-mindedly caressing her hair, which is still soaked with vinegar.
  Eventually she snatches the pen from her daughter's hand, just as she is on the point of writing something, and traces rapidly and proudly these words: "In ready money that is a saving of fifteen thousand escudos."

                VII

  A loose pile of tufa stones in the courtyard, buckets full of plaster, great mountains of sand. Marianna walks up and down in the sunshine with her skirt tucked up round her waist so as not to get the hem dirty.
  Bootees with their buttons left undone, hair gathered on her neck with little silver pins, a gift from her husband. All round her a disorderly confusion of bits of wood, boxes, stakes, posts, wheelbarrows, mallets and axes. Her back-ache has become almost unbearable and she looks round for somewhere she can rest for a few moments in the shade. A big stone beside the pig-sty, that will do, even if to get to it she has to slither through the mud. Holding her back with her hand she slides over to the stone. She looks down at her belly: the swelling hardly shows in spite of her being already five months pregnant. It is her third pregnancy.
  In front of her stands the most elegant villa. There is no longer any trace of the former lodge. In its place is a building on three floors, with a staircase winding its way gracefully upwards in a snake-like spiral. From the central bay of the building extend two colonnaded wings that widen out and then narrow until they create an almost complete circle. The windows alternate in a regular rhythm, one, two, three, one; one, two, three, one: almost a dance, a tarascone. Some of the windows are real, others are painted so as to maintain the regular rhythm of a fugue. In one of these
 
windows a curtain will be painted with perhaps a woman's head looking out, maybe she herself watching from behind the window pane.
  Uncle husband wanted to leave the lodge as it was, since it had been built by her grandfather Mariano, and the cousins had shared it amicably for so long. But she would not take no for an answer and was so obstinate that in the end she persuaded him to build her a villa where she could spend the winter as well as the summer, with rooms for the children and the servants, and for friends and guests. Meanwhile her father the Duke has got himself another hunting lodge near Santa Flavia.
  Uncle husband was seldom to be seen on the building site. He could not bear bricks, dust, lime. He preferred to stay in the house in the Via Alloro in Palermo while she busied herself at Bagheria with the builders and the painters. Even the architect did not often appear there but left everything in the hands of the foreman builder and the young Duchess.
  Already the villa has swallowed up vast sums of money. The architect alone cost sixteen hundred onze. The sandstone bricks were continually breaking and every week new ones had to be brought in; the foreman had fallen from the scaffolding and broken his arm, and the work was held up for two months. Then, when it was all finished except for the tiled floors, an epidemic of smallpox broke out in Bagheria: three masons were laid up and again the work had to be interrupted for months.
  Uncle husband took refuge at Torre Scannatura with their daughters Giuseppa and Felice. She remained, in spite of notes from the Duke ordering her to "come quick or you will get it. Your first duty is to the child you are carrying."
  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.
  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.
  She kept up a correspondence with her uncle the Sun King and listened discerningly to his advice, but when she had to say no she said it--and how forthrightly too! The elder statesmen were nonplussed in the face of her political intelligence; the people adored her.
  When the defeat of the Spanish army became known, the young Maria Louisa set an example by selling all her jewels and going from the richest to the poorest to collect money to put the army back on its feet. At that time she had had her first son, the Prince of Asturia, and she announced that if she were needed she would go to the front on horseback with her small son in her arms. And everyone knew she was capable of doing just that.
  When the news came of the victories of Brihuega and Villaviciosa her joy was so great that she went out into the street, mingling with the crowds, dancing and skipping with the people.
  She had a second son, who, however, died after only a week. Then she was struck by an infection of the glands in her neck. She never
 
complained about it and tried to cover the swellings with a lace collar. She gave birth to another son, Ferdinando Pietro Gabriele, who had the good fortune to survive. However, her illness worsened. The doctors said it was a case of phthisis. Meanwhile the Dauphin, father of Philip Very, died, and immediately afterwards her sister Maria Adelaide died of smallpox, together with her husband and their eldest son.
  Two years later she realised that the time had come for her to die too. She confessed, took the Holy Sacrament, bade goodbye to her sons and to her husband with a serenity that filled everyone with admiration, and drew her last breath at the age of twenty-four, without having uttered a single word of complaint.

Then one day one of Peppino Geraci's sons became ill with smallpox and the whole tribe of relations took to their heels. Once more--smallpox in Bagheria! It was the second time since Marianna had begun to transform the lodge into a villa. In the first epidemic there were many deaths, among them Ciccio Cal@o's mother and the small son of the Cuffa family, who was their only child; since then his wife Severina has suffered from headaches that are so devastating she always has to have her temples bound with bandages soaked in herbal vinegar dei sette ladre, and everywhere she goes she is preceded by a pungent smell of acid.
  During this second epidemic two of
Peppino Geraci's four remaining sons died.
A girl betrothed to Peppe Cannarota's son also died; she was a beautiful girl from Bagheria, who was a servant in the Palagonia household. Two cooks from the Butera household also died, as did the old Princess Spedalotto, who only a short time ago had moved into a new villa not far from them.
  Even Aunt Manina, who had arrived all wrapped in woollen shawls and supported by two footmen and had held the little Mariano in her skeletal arms, has died. But no one knows if this was because of smallpox. The fact is, she died there in the Villa Ucr@ia all on her own and nobody knew a thing about it. They only found her two days later, lying on her bed like a small bird with ruffled feathers, her head so light that Marianna's father the Duke had written that "she
 
weighed as much as a worm-eaten nut".
  When she was young Aunt Manina had been "much sought-after". She was small-featured and had the body of a siren. Her eyes were so vivacious and her hair so glossy that Great-grandfather Signoretto was forced to change his mind about making her a nun so as not to disappoint her suitors. The Prince of Cut@o wanted to marry her and also the Duke of Altavilla, Baron of San
Giacomo, and even the Count of Patan`e,
Baron of San Martino.
  "But she preferred to stay single at home with her father. To remain unmarried she had to feign illness for years." So said Marianna's father the Duke. "So much so that she became really ill, but no one knew the cause. She used to bend double, coughing; all her hair fell out and she grew thinner and thinner and more and more fragile."
  In spite of her illness Aunt Manina lived to be nearly eighty, and everybody wanted her at their festivities because she was such an acute observer and an accomplished mimic of both old and young, men and women, much to the delight of her friends and relations. Marianna used to join in the laughter, though she could not hear what Aunt Manina was saying. It was enough to watch her, small and nimble, manipulating her conjuror's hands, assuming the contrite expression of one person, the foolish expression of another, the foppish look of a third, to be completely overcome.
  She was known for her waspish tongue and everyone tried to be on good terms with her for fear of what she might say behind their backs. But just as she did not let herself be hypnotised by adulation, she would not hesitate to make fun of people when she saw them behaving foolishly. It was not gossip itself that attracted her but the excesses indulged in by various characters such as the miserly, the vain, the weak, the thoughtless. Sometimes her thrusts hit it off so well that they became proverbial, as for instance when she said of the Prince of Rau that "he despised money, but treasured coins like sisters", or when she had said of the Prince Des Puches, who was waiting for his wife to give birth (the Prince was known for his small stature), "he will be in a state of agitation, walking up and down nervously under the bed", or when she described the little Marquis of Palagonia as a "stake without a stake in life". And so on and so on, to everyone's amusement.
 
  About Mariano she mumbled that he was a "small mouse disguised as a lion disguised as a small mouse" and she looked round her with her eyes sparkling, anticipating the laughter. By then she was like an actress on stage: she would not have given up her audience for anything in the world.
  "When I die I shall go to hell," she once said. And then she added, "But what's hell? Palermo without any cake shops. And, anyway, I don't like cakes all that much." And then a moment later: "Come to that, it will be better than that ballroom where the saints spend all their time doing tapestry--that's paradise for you!"
  She died without troubling a soul, all alone. And no one wept for her. But her witticisms continued to circulate, as salty and piquant as anchovies in brine.

                 It

  Duke Pietro Ucr@ia has never discussed one iota of what his wife has been gradually planning for the villa. He only digs his toes in when a small "coffee house", as he calls it, springs up in the garden, built of wrought iron, with a domed ceiling, white and blue tiles on the floor, and a view over the sea.
  Nevertheless, it was built, or rather it will be built, because although the wrought iron is all ready, the skilled workmen who will erect it are missing. At this time in Bagheria dozens of villas are being built, and craftsmen and bricklayers are hard to come by. Uncle husband often says that the lodge was more convenient, particularly for hunting. But it's a mystery why he keeps saying this, considering that he never hunts. He hates game and he hates guns, although he has a collection of them. What he really likes most are books on heraldry, and playing whist, when he isn't walking in the countryside among the lemon trees, whose grafting he attends to himself.
  He knows everything about his ancestors and the origins of the Ucr@ia family of
Fontanasalsa and Campo Spagnolo, their orders of precedence, their rank, their decorations. In his study he has a big copper engraving of the martyrdom of Saint Signoretto. Beneath, incised in copper plate: "Blessed
Signoretto Ucr@ia of Fontanasalsa and
Campo Spagnolo, born in Pisa in
 
1269." In smaller writing is the life of the blessed saint, telling how he arrived in Palermo and dedicated himself to pious works, "frequenting hospitals and succouring the many poor people who infested the city". At the age of thirty he retreated to a "most barren desert by the edge of the sea". But where was this "most barren desert"? Did he end up on the North African coast? In the "desert bordering on the sea" Signoretto was "martyred by the Saracens" but it is not known why he was martyred, the engraving does not give us any clue. Why was he beatified? But no, how foolish, of course he was beatified much later, after he was dead. It is said that one of the Blessed Signoretto's arms is in the possession of the Dominican friars, who venerate it as a relic. Uncle husband has done all he can to recover this family relic but up to now he hasn't had any success. The Dominicans say they have ceded it to a convent of Carmelite nuns, and the Carmelites say they have passed it on as a gift to the Poor Clares, who maintain that they have never seen it.
  In the picture the sea is dark--a brown boat is moored by the shore; it is empty, its sails furled. In the foreground a ray of light is slanting down from the left as if someone were holding a flaming torch just outside the picture frame. An old man--but wasn't he only thirty?--is being manhandled by two robust youths with naked torsos. At the top to the right, three flying angels are lifting up a crown of thorns.
  For Duke Pietro the history of the family, however full of myth and fantasy, is more real than the tales told by the priests. For him God is "far away and couldn't care a dried fig". Christ, "if he were truly the son of God, was, to put it mildly, quite stupid", and as for the Madonna "if she had been a woman of noble birth she would never have conducted herself so thoughtlessly, carrying that poor little fellow among the wolves, leaving him to roam around the whole blessed day long, and giving him to believe he was invincible when everyone knows the end he came to".
  According to uncle husband the first of the Ucr@ias was no less than a king of the sixth century BC, namely King of Lidia. From that inaccessible land, still according to him, the Ucr@ias migrated to Rome, where they became senators of the Republic. Finally
 
they became Christians under Constantine. When Marianna writes to him jokingly that some of these Ucr@ias were nothing but turncoats who went along with whoever was top dog, he scowls and refuses to look at her for several days. It is not proper to joke about the family patriarchs. On the other hand, if she asks him to tell her about some of the large pictures stacked in the yellow drawing-room, waiting to be hung when the house is eventually finished, he rushes for the pen to write to her about the Bishop Ucr@ia, who fought against the Turks, and that other Senator Ucr@ia, who made a famous speech to defend the right of primogeniture.
  What she replies is unimportant. He seldom reads what his wife writes to him, even though he admires her quick, neat handwriting. The fact that she haunts the library disconcerts him, but he dare not oppose it. He knows that for Marianna reading is a necessity. He himself avoids books because they are "all lies" and the imagination is itself unaccountable. For Duke Pietro reality consists of a series of immutable and eternal rules, which no sensible person can fail to conform to.
  Only when a visit has to be made to a mother after the birth of her child, as is the custom in Palermo, or to attend some official function, does he expect his wife to get dressed up and to fix the diamond brooch that belonged to Grandmother Ucr@ia di Scannatura on her chest and accompany him into town.
  If ever he decides to remain in Bagheria he always arranges to have company at the table of the Villa Ucr@ia. Sometimes he might invite Raffaele Cuffa, who acts as his bailiff, caretaker and secretary, but never his wife. Or he may ask his lawyer Mangiapesce over from Palermo, or else he sends the sedan-chair for Aunt Teresa, Prioress with the Clarissa nuns, or he may send a rider on horseback with an invitation to one of his cousins, Alliata di Valguarnera.
  He likes the lawyer best of all because with him he can stay silent. There is no need to stand on ceremony, for the "young pundit", as Duke Pietro calls him, does all the talking.
He is someone who revels in holding forth on subtle points of law; he is very well up on the latest affairs in city politics and he
 
doesn't miss a jot of gossip about the important families of Palermo. When
Aunt Teresa is there it is more difficult for the lawyer to hold his own, because she takes the words out of his mouth, and as far as town gossip is concerned she is far better informed than he is.
  Of all his relations, Marianna's aunt Teresa, sister of her father the Duke, is the one Duke Pietro likes best. With her he sometimes even talks with enthusiasm. They exchange news of the family. They exchange presents: reliquaries, rosaries that have been blessed, and family heirlooms. From the convent she brings little pastries filled with ricotta mixed with sugar and fennel seeds, which are a great delicacy. Duke Pietro guzzles them ten at a time, twitching his nose like a greedy mole.
  Marianna watches him chewing and thinks to herself that uncle husband's brain is in many ways not unlike the contents of his mouth: mixed up, chewed up, minced up, ground up, gobbled up. But he retains almost nothing of the food he gulps down, which may account for why he is so skinny. He puts so much concentration into chewing up his thoughts that nothing remains in his body but hot air. As soon as he swallows them he is consumed with haste to eliminate the dross which it seems to him is too worthless to remain in the body of a nobleman.
  For many of the noblemen of his age, who grew up and lived in the previous century, logical thought has something ignoble, even vulgar about it. To confront other minds, other ideas, is considered in principle an act of perfidy. The common people, with their crowd mentality, behave like flocks of sheep; only the nobleman stands alone, and out of this aloofness come his glory and his daring.
  Marianna knows he does not think of her as an equal, although he respects her as a wife. For him, his wife is the child of a new century, incomprehensible, with something trivial in her passion for change, for action, for building. All action is an aberration--dangerous, futile, false: so declare his melancholy eyes as they watch her going busily about the courtyard, still littered with bricks and bags of lime. Action is choice and choice arises out of necessity. To give shape to the unknown, to render it familiar, known, means leaving less to the freedom of chance, to the divine principle of idleness that only a
 
true nobleman can allow himself, in imitation of the Heavenly Father.
  Even though she has never heard his voice Marianna knows exactly what is fermenting inside that sullen throat: a proud, attentive passion for the infinite possibilities of day-dreaming, of aimless aspirations and unattainable desires. A persistent voice, piercing the tedium and yet fully controlled, belonging to someone who never lets himself go. There's no doubt that is what he's thinking; she can tell from the breath that reaches her, hot and sour, whenever she is close to him.
  Among other things Duke Pietro considers this mania of his wife for staying at Bagheria even in the cold winter months quite idiotic when they have a large comfortable house in Palermo. And it also annoys him to have to give up his evenings at the Casino dei Nobile, where he can play whist for hours, drinking glasses of aniseed-flavoured water and listening in a bored way to the desultory conversations of his contemporaries.
  For her, on the other hand, the house in the Via Alloro is too dark, too cluttered with ancestral portraits and too frequented by unwelcome visitors. As for the journey from Bagheria to Palermo, she just cannot bear all the dust and the roads so full of potholes. And too often as she passes through the village of Acqua dei Corsari she has found herself face to face with the heads of bandits impaled on pikestaffs as a warning to the populace. Heads dried by the sun, infested by flies, often with chunks of arms and legs with blackened blood sticking to the skin.
  Useless to turn her head away or shut her eyes. A small whirlwind sweeps through her mind. She knows that shortly she will be passing through the two colonnades of the Porta Felice, that they will go down the Cassaro Morto and immediately come into the wide rectangle of the Piazza Marina between the Piazza della Zecca and the church of Santa Maria Caterina. Then on the right will appear the Vicaria, and the wind in her head will become a hurricane, her fingers will contract as they clutch her father's hooded habit and end up tearing the little velvet cloak she is wearing round her shoulders.
  Consequently she hates going to Palermo and prefers to stay on her own at Bagheria. So she has come to the decision that apart from exceptional occasions such as funerals or births or
 
christenings, which unfortunately occur with great frequency among her prolific relatives, she will set up her winter quarters at the Villa Ucr@ia even if the cold confines her to only a few rooms surrounded by braziers of lighted charcoal.
  By now this is common knowledge and people come to seek her out when the roads are not rendered impassable by the flooding of the river Eleuterio, which often inundates the countryside between Ficarazzi and Bagheria.
  Recently her father the Duke came and stayed with her for a whole week. They were alone together as she had always wanted, without the presence of sons, brothers, cousins and other relations. Since her mother's death, which occurred suddenly without any warning, he often comes to look her up on her own. He sits in the yellow room beneath the portrait of Grandmother Giuseppa and he smokes or sleeps. He has always slept a great deal, but it has got worse as he has grown older: if he does not sleep for ten hours every night he feels ill. And as he finds it difficult to get so many hours of unbroken sleep he ends up by dozing off in the daytime, lolling on the armchairs or on the couches.
  When he wakes he invites his daughter to play a game of piquet. Happy and smiling in spite of the rheumatism that deforms his hands and makes his back bent, he never gets worked up over trifles and is always ready to amuse himself and to entertain others. He does not have the quick tongue of Aunt Manina, he is more ponderous than her, but he has the same sense of comedy and if he were to take the trouble he too could be an excellent mimic.
  Every so often he grabs the notebook that Marianna keeps tied to her waist and writes on it impulsively.
  "You are a little fool, my daughter, but now I am growing older, I realise that I prefer little fools to anyone else."
  "Your husband, my brother-in-law, is a simpleton, but he loves you."
  "Dying displeases me because I shall be leaving you, but it does not worry me having to go to see if knowing Our Lord is worth the penance."
  What never ceases to surprise her is the difference between uncle husband Pietro and his sister Duchess Maria and cousin Duke
 
Signoretto. Just as her mother the
Duchess was plump and lazy, he is wizened and athletic, always needing to be active even if it is only to pace up and down through his vineyards. Not to mention her father, Duke Pietro's cousin, who is so calm and well-disposed towards others, while Pietro is hostile and suspicious towards everyone. In short, uncle husband seems to have been born of a rogue seed that fell askew into the family soil and grew up twisted, bristly and resentful.
  The last time they were together, Marianna and her father the Duke played piquet, eating candied fruit and drinking perfumed wine from M`alaga, while Duke Pietro went to Torre Scannatura to see to the grape harvest. In between the game and having a drink, her father the Duke wrote down all the latest gossip from Palermo, about the Viceroy's mistress, who they say sleeps between black sheets to show off the whiteness of her skin; about the last galleon arriving from Barcelona with a cargo of transparent chamber-pots which everyone gave as presents to their friends; about the fashion of the "Adrienne" skirt, first launched at the French court in Paris, which flowed through Palermo like an unstoppable avalanche and had set the dressmakers all of a twitter. He had even confessed to her his love for a lace-maker called Esther, who worked in a house on his estate at Papireto. "I gave her a room that overlooked the street--you should see how delighted she is."
  Yet this man, who is her father and who loves her tenderly, caused her to experience the greatest horror of her life. But he does not know that. He did it for her benefit: a renowned doctor of the school of Salerno had advised that his daughter's deafness had arisen from some experience of great fear and that to cure it an even greater fear was needed. Timor fecit vitium timor recuperabit salutam. It was not his fault that the experiment failed.
  The last time he came to stay with her, he had brought her a present: a child of twelve, the daughter of a man sentenced to death, whom he had accompanied to the gallows. "Her mother died of the smallpox, her father was hanged, and he entrusted her to me when he was on the point of death. The White Brothers wanted to shut her away in a convent for orphans but I thought it would be better for
 
her to be with you, so I give her to you as a present. But love her well, she's all alone in the world. They say she has a brother but no one knows where he has hidden himself. For all I know he's dead. Her father told me he had not seen the baby since he had given him to a country woman. Promise me that you'll look after her."
  So Filomena, usually known as Fila, has come to live in the villa. She has been clothed, provided for, and cherished, but she is still very distru/l. She talks very little or not at all; most of the time she hides behind doors, and she's unable to hold a plate in her hands without letting it drop. Whenever she can she escapes to the stables and sits down on the straw beside the cows so that when she comes back she brings with her a stench of manure that can be smelled at least ten feet away.
  It is a waste of time to scold her. In her terrified gaze, always on the alert, Marianna recognises something of her own childhood moods, so she lets her alone, much to the anger of Innocenza and Raffaele Cuffa, and even of her uncle husband, who endures the newcomer with great difficulty and only out of respect for his cousin and brother-in-law and his dumb wife.

                 XI

  Marianna wakes with a start and a sensation of freezing cold. She peers into the darkness to see if her husband's back is in its customary place beneath the sheets, but however much she tries she cannot make out the usual bulge. The pillows seem untouched and the sheets flat. She is on the point of lighting a candle when she notices that the room is flooded with a pale-blue light: the moon hangs low on the horizon and scatters drops of milky white on to the black waters of the sea.
  Evidently, uncle husband has stayed in Palermo for the night, which he has been doing lately more and more often. This does not worry her-- indeed she looks on it with relief. Tomorrow she will at last pluck up courage to ask him to have his bed made up in another room, perhaps in the study beneath the picture of the Blessed Signoretto, between the books on heraldry and history. Recently he has taken to thrashing about in bed like a tarantula and these unexpected earthquakes keep waking her
 
up.
  When this happens she would like to get up and go out but she does not do it for fear of waking him. If she were to sleep alone she would not have to keep asking herself whether she dare light a candle; she would be able to read a book or go downstairs into the kitchen to get a glass of water.
  Since her mother's death, followed a few weeks later by the sudden deaths of Lina and Lena, both of them victims of quartan fever,
Marianna often wakes up with sad, disturbing thoughts, and is troubled by nightmares. Half-sleeping and half-awake, she is haunted by memories of her mother, to which she has never before paid much attention, as if she were seeing her for the first time: how she used to dangle her white swollen feet from the side of the bed, her big toes like two puff-balls, twitching as if she were playing an imaginary spinet with her feet. Her mouth with its full red lips that parted listlessly to imbibe a spoonful of broth; the finger she would dip into the little basin of hot water and then bring to her mouth to test the temperature with her tongue, as if she were about to drink it rather than wash her face; and how she would all of a sudden struggle to her feet, her face flushed with the effort of trying to lace up a silk sash behind her back. At table, after eating an orange, she used to take a pip, split it in two with her front teeth and then spit it out on to her plate; then she would take another and spit it out in the same way, until her plate was a small cemetery of pips, once white but now, gutted of their husks, green.
  She departed this life unobtrusively, without bothering anyone, as she had done everything in her brief existence, fearful of attracting notice or putting herself into the limelight. Too idle to make decisions herself, she willingly left everything to others without bad feeling. What she really liked was to sit by the window with a bowl of candied fruit beside her, an occasional cup of hot chocolate, a glass of laudanum to lull her into a state of peace and a pinch of snuff to tickle the end of her nose. She was quite happy watching the world go by like a beautiful pageant so long as she was not asked to participate in it. She was generous and would clap her hands at other people's achievements, but it was as if everything had already taken place a long time ago and was now merely the inevitable repetition
 
of a familiar tale.
  Marianna could not imagine her as the slim and lively girl described by Grandmother Giuseppa. She had always thought of her mother as she saw her: her broad face with its delicate skin, her eyes ever so slightly bulging, her heavy dark eyebrows, her fair curly hair, her round shoulders, her wide hips, her legs short in relation to her body, her arms weighed down with rolls of fat. She had a delightful way of laughing, between nervousness and familiarity, almost as if she was unsure whether to let herself go and enjoy the fun, or to draw back in order to conserve her energy. Whenever she shook her head her fair curls danced on her forehead and over her ears.
  It is strange how often the memory of her returns now she is dead. In fact they are not memories, they are sudden visions almost as if she were there in the flesh, sagging from so many births and miscarriages: all prepared to carry out those small daily exertions that when she was still alive were performed by a woman who seemed on the point of death, and now that she is no more, display the raw, bitter flavour of real life.
  Now Marianna is fully awake. Not a hope of getting back to sleep. She sits up in bed and starts to poke her feet into her slippers, but stops midway and waves her toes as if she were playing an imaginary spinet just like her mother--oh, to the devil with her, why doesn't she leave her in peace?
  Tonight her feet guide her to the back stairs that lead up to the roof. She enjoys the chill of the cold steps beneath her straw slippers. Then up ten stairs, pause, ten stairs, another pause. She continues to climb with light footsteps. The hem of her wide satin dressing-gown rubs against her heels.
  On one side are the doors to the attics, on the other the servants' quarters. She has not brought a candle with her; she will rely upon her nose to lead her along corridors, through narrow passages, tunnels, store rooms, hiding-places, cubby-holes, unexpected slopes and treacherous stairs. She is guided by the various smells: dust, mouse droppings, old wax, grapes hung up to dry, rotting wood, chamber-pots, rose-water and cinders.
  The low door that opens on to the roof is shut.
 
Marianna tries to turn the doorknob but it seems to be stuck; she can't move it an inch. She leans her shoulder against it in an attempt to push it open, holding the doorknob between her fingers, and at this it suddenly yields. She loses her balance and stumbles forward into the opening, scared at having made such a clatter.
  After a few minutes she decides to pick her way along the tiles. A gentle wind rumples her hair, and the moonlight hits her in the face like a great silver bucket. The surrounding country is flooded with light. The plain with its olive trees is mantled with thousands of metallic scales and beyond it Capo Zafferano sparkles in the distance like another world. The jasmine and the orange blossom send their perfume upwards like diaphanous wisps of smoke that evaporate between the roof tiles.
  Far away in the distance, on the horizon, the black, motionless sea is traversed by a wide ribbon of tremulous light. Nearer, at the bottom of the sloping valley, the outlines of the olive trees, the carobs, the almonds and the lemons give the impression they are all asleep.

Out of the wood the young knight comes,
A stalwart man and proud of mien,
His very garments white as snow,
His helmet graced by plover's plume.

These lines from Ariosto came sweetly into her memory. But why on earth did they come just now?
  It seems as if she can make out the beloved figure of her father the Duke. The only "knight errant white as snow" who ever offered himself for her love. Since she was six years old the "knight" has fascinated her, with his white plume of plover's feathers; then as soon as she began to respond to him he went off to conquer other hearts, other restless eyes.
  Perhaps he grew tired of waiting for his daughter to speak, perhaps unconsciously she had disappointed him with her stubborn dumbness. The fact is that by the time she was thirteen he was already bored with her and had given her, on a generous knightly impulse, to his unfortunate brother-in-law Pietro, who was in danger of dying without a wife or children. Perhaps her father's thinking had been, They'll reach an understanding through sharing each other's misfortunes.
 
And he had shrugged his shoulders with cheerful indifference, as only he can do.
  But now--what can this smell of burning tallow be? Marianna looks around her but there are no lights to be seen. Who can be awake at this hour? Balancing on the leads, she takes a few steps forward and leans against the balustrade that encircles the roof and on which stand mythological statues: a Janus, a Neptune, a Venus and four enormous cupids armed with bows and arrows.
  The light comes from a window beneath the eaves. She leans right forward so that she can see part of the room. It is Innocenza who has lighted the candle beside her bed. Strange that she should still be dressed as if she has only just come into the room.
  Marianna watches her while she unlaces her high ankle boots. From her angry gestures Marianna can guess exactly what she is thinking: How I hate these laces that are always having to be threaded and unthreaded through the eyelets; but Duchess Marianna has them made for her and then passes them on to us, and how can I spit on a pair of Viennese chamois-leather boots that cost thirty tar@i?
  Now Innocenza goes to the window and looks out. Marianna is suddenly afraid: what if she sees her here spying on her from the roof-top? But Innocenza looks downwards, also spellbound by the extraordinary brilliance of the moonlight that bathes the garden with phosphorescence and lights up the distant sea.
  She watches her bending her head a little as if listening to some unexpected noise. It is probably the bay horse Miguelito stamping his hoofs on the stable floor. Yes, once again Innocenza's thoughts come through to Marianna and almost attack her: He's hungry, Miguelito is, that poor horse is starving. Don Cal@o has been stealing the hay again. Everyone knows about it but who is going to tell the Duke? I'm not one to tell tales, let them sort it out!
  Her feet bare, wearing a pink bodice with channels of sweat beneath her armpits, the top of her dress unlaced and an ample brownish-red skirt billowing over her hips, Innocenza goes to the centre of the room and, kneeling down, gently raises one of the floorboards. Her hands rummage impatiently in the hole and she brings out a little leather bag tied with a thick black cord. She takes it to her bed and unties the
 
knot with agile fingers, plunges her hand into the bag and shuts her eyes while she explores something she obviously holds dear. Then very slowly she extracts from the purse a number of large silver coins and places them one by one on the sheet, like a gardener handling with great delicacy flowers that have only just come into bud.
  Up at five tomorrow morning, up to her arms in coal as usual, whiffs of smoke billowing in her face while she struggles to light the cursed fire beneath the cooking pots, and then there are the fish to be gutted and those wretched rabbits, and when she feels their poor drooping heads with her fingers she thinks of all the trouble they've had to go through to feed themselves and to grow and then wham, one blow on the head and their eyes go dull and they never cease to look as if they were asking, "But why? Why?" Then tomorrow morning she will have to cope with the chickens--what a misfortune that Cal@o's two daughters are dead, they were so good at killing fowls. ... There's no doubt they were virgins even if Severina claimed she'd watched them one morning in the stable and while one was milking the cow the other was milking their father. Well, that's what she said, but Lord knows whether it's true. Since her son died Severina's been not quite right in the head, she sees odd things all over the place. Still, it's true that they both missed their periods for a few months, first one and then the other. They told Maria, and she's someone you can trust ... she's in charge of the towels hung out each month to dry and she keeps a tally. ... But suppose it was someone else who tumbled them? Why does it have to be their own father? Yet that's what people say, and come to that Don Peppino Geraci saw all three of them in bed together one morning when he came to fetch the milk very early. ... And then they miscarried ... poor idiots, they must for certain sure have gone to see La Pupara. They call her that because it is she who makes and unmakes the babies.
No one is quite sure how she does it, but she knows all the herbs and all the roots. ... For three days you're shitting and writhing and throwing up and on the third day you let go of the little mite ... dead. ... Yes, they all go to La Pupara, even the baronesses. They leave her up to three onze for a successful abortion ... but it always works. ... Oh, she's a clever one she is, that Pupara. ...
  Marianna draws back, satiated with another
 
person's thoughts on that deserted roof, peopled by the ghosts that have settled there. But it is not so easy to free herself from Innocenza's voice, that silent voice that continues to pursue her, together with the sickly sweet smell of burning tallow.
  And then she has to decipher the notes drawn by that crack-brained duchess, who changes her mind every five minutes about what she wants to eat, and expects her to understand those queer drawings of hers--a mouse on a spit for roast chicken, a frog in a frying-pan for saut@ed duck, a potato in water for baked egg-plant
... and then that impudent hussy Giuseppa comes down and she has to watch her putting her nose and fingers into the stews and sauces. She'll carry off to the library bits of tart that are still only half-cooked, and the way she looks like a barn-owl is enough to turn the milk sour. She'd like to give her a good slap but no one does that, not even her own mother ... just imagine! But what's got into her head? There's still so much to be done ... the Duke hasn't ordered anything for tomorrow and it's Manina's birthday. ... Baked sturgeon? ... It will have to stand the whole night marinading in wine. Then there's the tart with puff pastry, with every sheet of pastry having to be pounded like fury and left to rest, and when at last she gets to bed it's one o'clock in the morning and at five o'clock she has to be up and at work in the kitchen ... and all for four of those miserable bits and pieces of silver each month, and even then they make it difficult for her, having to keep on asking for it because they get out of step with what's due to her. ... These dukes have estates and palaces but they never have any money, to hell with whoever invented them!
  Sometimes the Duchess palms off five crowns or even two carli but what use is small change to her? She needs something a bit more substantial to put into her purse that's always hungry and opens its mouth like a fish gasping for air. ... She can't even put them back under the floor, those silly little carli. ... What we need is a few of those golden escudos with the head of Charles III, brand new from the mint, or a good golden doubloon with an effigy of Philip Very, God rest his soul. ... Before he gives out that cursed money Don Raffaele keeps counting it again and again ... once he tried to palm off a coin that had been filed. What an ass!
As if she can't see with her eyes shut better
 
than a wife knows her husband's cock!
  Marianna shakes her head in despair. She can't get Innocenza's thoughts off her back, thoughts which seem at that moment to come out of her own mind, drunk from the moonlight. She moves away from the balustrade, possessed by impatience and anger at the voice of the cook inside her head, still continuing to mutter ... and what can you do with all this money? You can get yourself a husband, you can even buy a husband ... but who wants a husband? Not me! ... That was what my sisters wanted and one got kicked out the first time she opened her mouth and the other was abandoned like a stupid donkey when he went off with some girl twenty years younger, leaving her without a house and without a copper coin to her name and six kids to support. The joys of the bedroom? They talk about that in songs and in those books like the Duchess reads ... but perhaps she, in spite of all those brocade and silk dresses, those carriages, those jewels
... has she ever known the joys of the bed? The poor dumb creature always stuck in books and papers ... it makes me feel sad for her.
  It seems unbelievable, but that's how it is: the cook Innocenza Bordon, daughter of a mercenary soldier from the far-away Venetian countryside, unable to read or write, with her hands scarred with cuts, with no one but herself to care for in the whole world, feels pity for the great Duchess who is descended directly from Adam through the paternal line. ...
  Again Marianna leans against the balustrade, incapable of withdrawing from Innocenza's chattering thoughts and having to accept the grievances of her cook as the only real thing in this unreal balmy night. She cannot help watching her as with fingers made supple from her work in the kitchen she lifts up the heavy silver coins one by one and arranges them in pairs in the bag as if she were pairing them off to sleep together. Her fingers can judge a coin's weight so precisely that even with her eyes shut she can tell whether there is the slightest shaving off it.
  With a sigh Innocenza ties the cord round the neck of the bag. She puts it back in the hole in the centre of the room. She replaces the floorboard first with her hands and then by stamping it down with her feet. Then she goes towards the bed and rapidly gets out of her skirt, her blouse and her bodice, while her head shakes as if
 
she's just been bitten by a tarantula and her hairpins fly through the air together with the tortoiseshell comb that once upon a time belonged to her mistress.
  Marianna closes her eyes and draws back. She does not want to have to gaze on the naked body of her cook. Now it is her turn to shake her head to free herself from intrusive thoughts, cloying like carob juice. Could it be getting worse? On previous occasions she has been aware of the ruminations of whoever was next to her, but never for so long: only small garnerings of sentences, scattered morsels of thoughts, which were always encountered casually, by chance. For instance, when she really wanted to understand what her father the Duke was thinking she did not succeed at all.
  Lately she has taken to dropping inside people, attracted by a lively fluttering of their thoughts that promises all sorts of unknown surprises. But then she becomes lost in them, swallowed up, without knowing how to extricate herself. How she wishes she had never gone up on to that roof, never looked into Innocenza's room, never breathed in all that clear, poisonous air.

                XII

  "Papa's will is creating a real scandal." "Cutting out his eldest son in favour of his daughters."
  "Such a thing has never happened."
  "Poor Signoretto!"
  "There'll be a rumpus with Geraldo." "That aunt who is a canoness disagrees."
  "He's left you his half of the Villa Ucr@ia in Bagheria, so why cry, stupid?"
  "Mangiapesce the lawyer says that the law prohibits a legacy like this."
  "It'll all be annulled, that's the law of primogeniture."
  Marianna shuffles the notes that her sisters and aunts have thrown on to her plate in quick succession. Her hands are wet with tears, and the words are blurred. How can they discuss estates and houses when the pale face of her dead father still haunts their eyes?
  Watching them gesticulate she can see they are exchanging insults. And Innocenza's delicious dishes are not sufficient to keep their heads stuck into their plates. The realisation that while she was on
 
the roof gazing down at the landscape stretched out in the moonlight her father was dying in his bed at the house in the Via Alloro in
Palermo, makes the very thought of food abhorrent. How is it possible she did not hear the breathless breathing of his dying, she who can so easily hear other people's chattering thoughts? Yet she did have an inkling, it was as if she had seen his lovable body amongst the dwarf palm trees, and she had thought of her "knight errant white as snow". But she had not interpreted it as a presentiment of death. It was seduction that had been in her thoughts, without realising that she was close to the last, most profound seduction of all.
  And now the birthday party for which Duke Pietro ordered Innocenza to serve baked sturgeon and a tart of puff pastry has become transformed into a funeral feast. But of mourning there is very little sign; more important is the scandal of her father the Duke's unusual will. And no one can understand how the will came to be already opened, even before his dead body had been interred.
  They are all upset, but especially
Geraldo, who has taken his father's generosity towards his sisters as a personal affront, even if it is after all only a matter of small bequests. In any case the largest amount goes to Signoretto, and from the unexpected inheritance the younger sons also have a life interest. But this disregard of normal custom has taken them all by surprise and, though at the end of the day they are not displeased at getting something for themselves, they feel duty bound to make a protest.
  Signoretto, like the gentleman he is, does not interfere even though he is the one most affected. It is Aunt Agata the nun, sister of Grandfather Mariano, who is most determined to defend his rights, and it is she who sticks her neck out in paroxysms of indignation.
  Uncle husband is the only one not to trouble himself over these disputes. He is not involved in the inheritance of his brother-in-law and it does not matter to him where it all goes. He has enough of his own, and he already knows that the Villa Ucr@ia at Bagheria, which his wife cares about so much, will be entirely theirs, so he pours out the wine and thinks of other things, while his eyes rest with some irony on the heated, angry faces of his nephews and nieces.
  Sitting opposite Marianna,
 
Signoretto is perhaps the only one who feels a duty to demonstrate some formal grief for the death of his father. When someone speaks to him, he puts on a pious expression that has something comic about it because of its studied effect. Titles are raining down on him: Duke of Ucr@ia, Count of Fontanasalsa, Baron of Bosco Grande, of Pesceddi, of Lemmola, Marquis of
Cuticchio and of Dogana Vecchia. He still has not found a wife. His mother the Duchess chose one for him but he did not like her. Then his mother died almost overnight from heart failure and no one else was interested in the complicated arrangements that marriage into the Uzzo di Agliano family involves. When his son, still a bachelor, had reached the age of twenty-five, his father the Duke had hastened, on an impulse of parental concern, to find him another wife, the Princess
Trigona of Sant 'Elia. But even she was not to his liking and his father was too weak to enforce his obedience.
  Though it probably had less to do with weakness than with doubt. His father the Duke did not entirely believe in his own authority, even though he was domineering by nature. All his decisions were undermined by a lack of confidence, by an internal weariness that brought a smile rather than a frown and led to compromise rather than firmness.
  Thus Signoretto, at the age when all the youth of Palermo's noble families are already married and have sons of their own, is still a bachelor. For some time he has been deeply involved in politics. He now says he wants to become a senator, not just as a formality like other people: his ambition is to increase the export of grain from the island, so reducing the price; to open roads into the interior to facilitate transport; and to get the Senate to buy ships for the use of the farmers. Broadly speaking, this is what he has been proposing, and many young people are in agreement with his plans.
  "Senators only go to the Senate once in a blue moon", Carlo wrote to her behind Signoretto's back. "And when they do it's only to argue about questions of precedence, while they eat pistachio ices and exchange the latest town gossip. They have bartered once and for all their right to say no, for the guarantee of being left in peace on their own estates." But Signoretto is ambitious; he says he intends to go to the courts
 
of Savoy and Turin, where other young men from Palermo have made a name for themselves with their good manners, their intelligence and their ability to split hairs. Recently he was in Paris, where he learned to speak French fluently and studied the classics with great zeal.
  The person who loves him most and protects him is Agata, sister of their grandfather Mariano, and a canoness of the Carmelite order. Wrapped in shawls with long gold tassels, thrown carelessly over her habit, she has assembled a library of biographies of marshals, heads of state, kings, princes, bishops, popes. Because of the interests they have in common you'd have thought she and Duke Pietro would get on well, but this is not so. The fact of the matter is that the Duke asserts that the Ucr@ia family originated in 600 BC, whereas she swears that it first appeared in historical records in 188 BC with
Quinto Ucr@ia Tuberone, who became a consul at only sixteen. Because of this disagreement they have not spoken to each other for years.
  Meanwhile Fiammetta, since she has become a nun, has lost the stunted, resigned look she had as a child; she has full breasts, bright eyes and a rosy complexion. Her hands have become strong with all the kneading, chopping, peeling and beating she has to do. She has found out that "eating dry bread with spittle", as ordained by the rules of the order, is not for her, so she spends her time surrounded by copper pans, cooking all sorts of delicious dishes.
  Next to her is Carlo, who looks more and more like his mother: lazy, slow, enigmatic, his arms plump, his chin already on the verge of being double or even triple, his gentle myopic eyes, his cassock stretched to bursting across his massive chest. He excels at deciphering ancient religious manuscripts. Recently he has been summoned to the monastery of San Calogero di Messina to decipher the secrets of a few books from the thirteenth century that no one understands any more. And he has made a copy of them word for word, making a few additions of his own, and as a result has been lauded with gratitude and gifts.
  And then Geraldo, who is "studying to become a general", as Aunt Manina used to say. Polished, ceremonious, frigid, wearing uniforms that appear still hot from the ironing board,
 
he pays court to women, by whom he is much sought after; but he refuses to get married because he does not possess either large estates or titles. However, there is the possibility of a match that has Aunt Agata's blessing, a certain Domenica Rispoli, the wealthy daughter of a farming family who have made their money through the ignorance of a lazy landowner. But Geraldo is not interested. He says he will not mingle his blood with that of a farm girl, even if she is as beautiful as Helen of Troy. But now he has learned that his father has left him some land of his own at Cuticchio. So long as he is able to turn it to good account, he should reap sufficient profit to keep a carriage and have a house in town. But he aspires to something more showy. Even shopkeepers in the Piazza San Domenico have carriages!
  Perched on the edge of a chair like a little girl, her arms covered in midge bites, is Agata, the beautiful Agata, given in marriage at the age of twelve to Prince Diego di Torre
Mosca. Once upon a time the two sisters understood each other simply by exchanging a look, Marianna recollects. Now they have become almost like strangers. Every so often Marianna goes to the Torre Mosca Palazzo in the Via Maqueda. She admires their tapestries, their Venetian furniture, their enormous gilt-framed mirrors, but each time she has found her sister gloomy, overwhelmed by distant, dismal thoughts. Since the birth of her first-born son, Agata has begun to get smaller. That white skin, so beloved by the mosquitoes for its fragrance, has grown withered and wrinkled before her time; her features have become slack and disfigured; and her eyes have grown sunken as if the very act of seeing consumes her with pain.
  Fiammetta, who was considered to be the ugly one of the family, has become something of a beauty, hoeing the kitchen garden and kneading bread in the convent; but Agata, who at fifteen "made all the angels fall in love with her", as her father wrote, at twenty-three has taken on the look of a wizened Madonna, one of those Madonnas whose picture, painted by an unknown hand, hangs over people's beds and who are so worn out that they seem about to crumble away.
  She has had six children but two of them have died. After her third son was born, she suffered from a
 
blood infection which almost carried her away. She has recovered, but only partially. Now she suffers from sores on her breasts. Every time she feeds the baby she writhes in agony, and ends up giving her own son more blood than milk. Her husband has engaged wet-nurses for her but she persists in wanting to feed him herself. Obstinately determined to sacrifice herself until she is reduced to a shadow, continuously racked by puerperal fevers, her eyes sunk into the cavity of their sockets beneath her soft fair eyebrows, she is unwilling to accept advice or help from anyone.
  An almost heroic will can be divined in this tight-lipped young mother, her forehead divided by a furrow, her chin rigid, her smile forced and her teeth yellow, decayed and prematurely chipped. Every so often her husband grasps her hand, gives her a kiss and gazes at her. Who knows what the secret of their marriage can be, Marianna says to herself. Every marriage has its secrets that are never revealed, even to a sister. Her own is distinguished by silence and coldness, interrupted by moments of nocturnal brutality, which are luckily becoming less and less frequent.
  And Agata's? Her husband Don Diego seems to be in love with her in spite of the disfigurements and devastations that have resulted from too frequent confinements, which she endures like a martyrdom. And she herself? From the way she accepts his caresses and kisses it seems that she is forcing herself to restrain an impatience that borders on disgust. Don Diego's blue eyes are large and clear, but beneath an apparent love and solicitude there is something else that does not readily come to the surface: perhaps jealousy, or the anxiety of possessing something he does not feel sure of. Occasionally his innocent eyes reveal flashes of self-satisfaction at the premature fading of his wife's beauty, and his hand reaches out to her with a hint almost of joy, mingled with compassion and complacency.
  But now Marianna's preoccupation is interrupted by a violent push that nearly sends her sprawling. Geraldo has suddenly jumped to his feet, slamming his own chair against the wall and sweeping the tablecloth against his deaf sister. Uncle husband hurries towards her to make
 
sure she hasn't been hurt.
Marianna smiles to reassure him, and she is astonished to find herself taking his side against her brothers: for once they are friends and accomplices.
  For her the villa at Bagheria is sufficient. She has had it built exactly as she wants it and she expects to grow old there. Of course she'd have no objection to inheriting one of her father's family estates so as to have some ready money of her own and not be indebted to anyone. Even though the estate of Scannatura, owned by her husband, produces a satisfactory income, she has to account to Duke Pietro for every coin she spends and sometimes she doesn't even have the money to buy writing-paper.
  Even the hazelnut orchard at Pesceddi or the olive groves at Bagheria would have come in handy. Then she could have managed them according to her own ideas and have an income that would not be controlled by anyone, and of which she would not have to render an account to others. She too, almost without realising it, is being drawn into thinking about the division of the inheritance, even she is calculating, grasping, claiming rights. Fortunately she does not have a voice that makes itself heard in this stupid argument between the brothers, otherwise she doesn't know what she might not say. Anyway, no one has consulted her. They are so taken up with the sound of their own words, which acquire, as the family row gains momentum, the vibrant tones of trumpets: a sound she has never heard, but which she imagines as a metallic clanging that sets her feet dancing.
  Often they behave as if they had nothing to do with her. Silence takes possession of her like one of her mother's dogs that would have seized her round the waist and dragged her far away. And there among the relations, she is like a ghost that sees but is not seen.
  She is aware that the squabble about the villa at Bagheria is still grinding away under its own steam, but no one turns round to her. Her father the Duke owned a part of what used to be his grandfather's hunting lodge, and half of the olive and lemon trees surrounding the villa. With an offhandedness that seems to the others disgraceful he has left it all to his dumb daughter. But there is already one person who thinks it would be iniquitous to contest the will: uncle husband has distanced himself from it all, and has left a note in her lap talking of
 
"Heaven knows what legal tangles they'll get up to, seeing that lawyers in Palermo grow like mushrooms".
  The thought that her father is lying dead on his bed in the Via Alloro while she is here eating, surrounded by her brothers, who are now on the point of coming to blows, suddenly strikes her as a very comical state of affairs. She dissolves into solitary soundless laughter that transforms itself into a silent flood of tears, a senseless deluge that shakes her like a storm.
  Carlo is the only one who notices her distress, but he is too involved in the row to get up. He confines himself to looking at her compassionately, yet also quite bewildered, because her soundless sobs are like shafts of lightning without thunder, something flawed and incomplete.

                XIII

  Part of the yellow room has been cleared to make way for a gigantic Nativity crib. The estate carpenters have worked for two days erecting a mountain that compares with Monte Catalfano. In the distance a volcano can be seen with its outline painted in white. In the centre of the volcano is a plume of smoke made out of feathers sewn together; below it is a valley of terracotta trees with leaves of green cloth, and below that the sea made from layers of silk.
  Felice and Giuseppa are sitting on the carpet, intent on using some paper plumes splattered with green paint to edge a small lake made out of mirrors. Manina stands against the wall, watching them. Mariano is busy eating a biscuit, smearing it all over his mouth and cheeks. Fila is next to him; she should be setting out the little figures of shepherds on the meadow of bottle-green wool, but she is so enraptured by this splendid Nativity crib that she has forgotten. Innocenza is standing near the stable, giving some last additional touches to the manger, out of which stick tufts of real straw. Signoretto, the baby, sleeps in
Marianna's arms. She has wrapped him in her Spanish shawl and rocks him quietly to and fro against her breast.
  At last the lake is finished but instead of reflecting the blue of the paper pasted behind the stable,
 
it mirrors the cautious eyes of a chimera, peeping out from between the foliage on the ceiling. Innocenza gently places the baby Jesus with his heavy wax halo on the straw. Next to him the kneeling Virgin Mary has been draped with a turquoise mantle, covering her head and shoulders. Saint Joseph wears breeches of sheepskin and a wide-brimmed brown hat. The ox is as large as an elephant and as gnarled as a toad, and the ass with its long pink ears looks more like a rabbit.
  Mariano, who has just had his seventh birthday, sets off in the direction of the flower-decked basket, in which some small figures are still lying. With his hand all sticky with sugar he pulls out one of the three kings, whose turban is studded with real precious stones. Suddenly Giuseppa jumps on top of him and snatches the figure out of his hands. He loses his balance and falls down, but he does not give up. He turns to plunge his hands into the basket again and pulls out another king, whose cloak glitters with gold. This time it is Felice who rushes towards her brother to take the precious little statue from him, but he won't let go. The two of them fall on to the carpet, he kicking and she biting. Giuseppa runs to help her sister and they both jump on top of him, pounding him with blows.
  Marianna leaps up, holding the baby, and dashes across to the three of them, but Innocenza gets there first and seizes hold of them by their arms and hair. The figure of the king lies shattered on the floor.
  Manina watches them. She is upset and she goes to her brother and hugs him and kisses his cheek, which is wet with tears. Then she quickly seizes her sisters by the hands and pulls them close to her to kiss them as well.
  That child is a really talented peace-maker, Marianna says to herself. Even more than playing and eating, she loves creating harmony. Then, to distract her two sisters from the quarrel, she fills her cheeks and blows on to the crib so as to flutter the Madonna's cloak, lift up the Infant Christ's dress and blow Saint Joseph's beard to one side. Felice and Giuseppa burst out laughing. And Mariano, his hand still clutching half of the little statue, laughs too. Even Innocenza laughs at the breeze that ruffles the cloth palm trees and sends the
 
shepherds' hair flying up in the air.
  Giuseppa has an idea--why not dress Manina up as an angel? She already has the head of golden curls, the round gentle face, the large eyes reverently lowered, that make her fit for paradise. All she needs is a pair of wings and a long skirt the colour of the sky. Filled with enthusiasm she enlists Felice to unroll a sheet of gold paper. She cuts it up while Mariano, desperate to join them even though what they are doing is beyond him, pushes his way in.
  Once she realises that becoming an angel will prevent her brother and sisters from squabbling for a while, Manina joins in. They'll dress her up in a mantle of her mother's, they'll sew wings on her bodice, they'll paint her face pink and white. Everything will be all right so long as she succeeds in making them laugh by playing the fool.
  Marianna sniffs the smell of the paints, the pungent smell of turpentine, the fatty smell of linseed oil. An unexpected nostalgia clutches at her throat: a white canvas, a stick of charcoal and the dexterity of her hands could capture a part of the crib, the corner of the window, the sunlight on the stone floor, the two bent heads of Giuseppa and Felice, the patient form of Manina with one wing already stuck on her back, the other spread out on the floor, the substantial bulk of Innocenza leaning mysteriously over the little terracotta trees, Fila's eyes reflecting the lights of a gigantic silver star.
  Meanwhile Signoretto has woken up and his tiny bald head pops out from his mother's shawl while he looks up at her lovingly. Bald and toothless, he looks like a "playful spirit" with a skipping heart. "He has no peace, this playful little person", wrote Grandmother Giuseppa in the exercise book with the fleur-de-lys on the cover. "How he laughs at having laughed."
  A mother with her children. She knew she could fit them all into the painting, including herself, if she used a sufficiently wide canvas. She would start with the chimeras, move on to Fila's raven black hair, and then to Innocenza's calloused hands, to Manina's canary yellow curls, to Mariano's eyes the colour of night, to Giuseppa and Felice's pink and violet
 
skirts. She would portray the mother, sitting on a cushion, as she herself is now, and the folds of her shawl would merge with those of her dress, leaving her arms and shoulders bare to reveal the naked head of her baby son.
  But why does the mother of these children have such a dolorous expression in a picture that portrays a cameo of family happiness? Why this strange disquiet on her face? The imaginary painting freezes Marianna's hand as if she were guilty of trying to set herself against God's will. If it is not Him, who is it that pushes them so anxiously forward, makes them curl up, makes them grow up and then grow old, and then die in the time it takes to say "Amen"?
  A painter's hand has a thirst for thieving, it steals from heaven and makes a gift to the memories of men, it feigns eternity and it delights in this pretence almost as if it had created rules of its own, more durable and more profoundly true. But is it not a sacrilege, is it not an unforgivable affront to divine trust? Yet other hands have arrested time with sublime arrogance, have rendered the past familiar. On the canvas nothing dies but it perpetuates itself like a cuckoo with its cry of poignant melancholy. Time, Marianna tells herself, is a secret that God hides from men. And because of this secret we must always live in sorrow, from hand to mouth.
  A shadow comes between her imaginary painting and the sun which spreads its radiance over the floor. Marianna raises her eyes to the window and sees uncle husband watching them from outside the glass. His small penetrating eyes seem filled with gratification at the spectacle in front of him: there, assembled on the carpet of the most luminous room in the villa, is his whole family, his progeny. Now that there are two boys, his expression has become proud and protective.
  The steady gaze of uncle husband meets that of his young spouse, his niece. There is gratitude in his barely discernible smile and in response she is touched by a feeling of primeval pleasure. Will uncle husband open the door of the french windows and join them beside the crib, or won't he? Knowing him, she expects that, having reassured himself, he will not be tempted by the warmth of the heated room but will go off on his own. And in fact she sees him turn his back, dig his hands into his
 
pockets and walk with long strides towards the coffee house. There, in the shelter of the windows, with the plants climbing up the wall, he has brought to him a cup of well-sweetened coffee, and contemplates the landscape that he knows by heart: on the right the spreading peak of the Pizzo della Tigna; opposite, thickets of acacia trees on Monte Solunto; the dark bare ridge of Monte Catalfano; and, close by, the ruffled sea that today is as green as a field in spring.

                XIV

  The room is in shadow. There is a brazier on the floor with a pan of boiling water on top of it. Marianna is sunk in a low chair, her legs stretched out on the floor, her head lolling on the cushion. She is asleep.
  Beside her is the big wooden cot with blue ribbons that has already cradled Manina and Mariano. The ribbons are stirred by a breath of air that blows through the half-open window.
  Innocenza comes in, pushing the door open with her foot. In her hands she carries a jug of boiling punch and a couple of biscuits spread with honey. She places the jug on a chair close to the Duchess and seems on the point of leaving, but thinks better of it and goes over to take a blanket from the bed to protect the sleeping mother from the cold. She has never seen her in such a bad way, so thin and pale, with dark rings under her eyes. There is something dishevelled about her appearance that is quite unlike her. She whom everyone normally thinks of as a young woman of twenty now looks years older. If only she wouldn't tire herself out reading so much! An open book lies upside down on the floor.
  Innocenza lays the blanket over her legs, then goes to the big cradle to look at Signoretto, the last-born child, who sucks in his breath with a wheezing sound. This poor child won't last the night, she says to herself, and this desperate thought wakes Marianna, who comes to with a start.
  She has been dreaming of flying, her eyes and nose streaming in the wind. A horse's hoofs are galloping through the clouds and she realises she is astride the bay Miguelito, sitting in front of her father, who is holding the reins and urging the animal to gallop through huge boulders of cotton
 
wool. Beneath, there in the centre of the valley, the Villa Ucr@ia can be seen in all its beauty, its elegant fa@cade the colour of amber, the arches of its two wings fretted with windows, the statues poised like ballerinas on the cornice of the roof.
  She opens her eyes to find Innocenza's plump kindly face only a finger's breadth away from her. She pulls back abruptly.
Her first instinct is to push Innocenza back-- what does she think she's doing, spying on her like this? But Innocenza smiles at her with such affectionate anxiety that Marianna does not have the courage to drive her away. She sits up, fastens the collar of her dress and smooths her hair with her fingers.
  Once again the cook moves over to the child, restless in his cradle; she unties the ribbons and scrutinises the small shrunken face with its open mouth desperately struggling for air.
  Marianna asks herself by what ominous alchemy Innocenza's thoughts should reach her so clear and lucid, as if she could hear them. She finds this unnerving, a burden that is hard to bear. At the same time she enjoys breathing in the odour of the grey skirt that smells of fried onion, tincture of rosemary, vinegar, lard, basil. It is the smell of life that incongruously intermingles with the smells of vomit, perspiration and oil of camphor that exude from the beribboned cradle.
  She signs to her to sit beside her. Innocenza responds quietly and, pulling down her wide pleated skirt, settles on the floor and stretches her legs out in front of her. Marianna extends her hand towards the little glass of punch. She would really have preferred a long drink of cold water, but Innocenza had thought the hot liquid would help her withstand the icy cold of the night, and she does not want to disappoint her by asking for something different. So she gulps down the hot sickly liquid in one breath, scalding her palate in the process. But instead of feeling warmer she starts to shiver with cold.
  Innocenza grasps her hand with a sympathetic gesture and rubs it in hers to warm it. Marianna stiffens: she cannot avoid thinking of the bag of money and the sensual gesture as Innocenza put the coins to rest two at a time. So as not to wound her feelings with a rejection, Marianna gets up and
 
goes over to the bed. There, behind the screen embroidered with swans, she crouches down over the clean chamber-pot and passes a few drops of urine into it. Then she takes the chamber-pot over to the cook and hands it to her as if she were giving her a present. Innocenza takes it by the handle, covers it with a corner of her apron, and goes to the stairs to pour it down into the black cesspit. She walks cautiously, holding herself upright as if she were carrying something precious.
  Now the child seems to be no longer breathing at all. Marianna watches the violet lips and, bending over him, anxiously places a finger under his nostrils. Little puffs of air are exhaled at rapid irregular intervals. The mother puts her head on her son's chest to feel the beating of his heart, which is so faint as to be barely perceptible. A powerful smell of regurgitated milk and camphorated oil rises to her nostrils. The physician has forbidden washing him and the poor little body lies wrapped in layers of cloth that are increasingly impregnated with the odours of death.
  Perhaps he will make it; the others have been ill too. Manina has had two attacks of mumps and had a high fever for days. Mariano nearly died of erysipelas. But none of them has ever exuded the odour of decaying flesh that comes from Signoretto's body.
  He is only just four but she sees him as he was when he was only a few months old, clinging to her breast with hands that were like small spiders. Both he and Manina were born prematurely, but while she came into the world a month before she was due, he tried to jump out two months early.
He grew slowly but according to the physician Cannamela he appeared to be healthy and in a few months would catch up with his brothers and sisters. At the breast he did not seem to know how to suck; he would tug violently, gulp down the milk and then sick it up. And yet he was the first to recognise her, the first to turn to her with happy lively smiles.
  No one in the world could hold him in their arms except for her. And none of the wet-nurses, nannies and French maids were able to quieten him: until he was back in his mother's arms he would not stop screaming. He was a happy and intelligent child, who seemed to have intuited his mother's deafness and there and then invented a language which she alone could
 
understand. He communicated with her by kicking, mimicking, laughing and battering her with sticky kisses. He would press his big toothless mouth against her cheek, he would shut his eyes and lick her with his tongue, he would squeeze the lobes of her ears between his gums very gently, like a puppy that knows its strength but curbs it in play.
  He grew more rapidly than the others. He became longer and longer, with two enormous feet that Innocenza would take in her hands with admiration. "With these we'll make him into a paladin," she said one day, and Duke Pietro hastened to write it down on a piece of paper because he knew it would make Marianna laugh.
  He was not at all fat, by any stretch of the imagination. Hugging him she could feel his slender ribs like crescent moons beneath her fingers. When will this child decide to put on a little more flesh? she asked herself, and she kissed his protruding navel, which was always a little red and inflamed as if it had only just been cut off half an hour ago.
  A smell of curdled milk hung around him. Even baths in the washtub brimful with soap and water could not entirely get rid of it. Even with her eyes tight shut she was able to recognise this last son of her thirtieth year. She openly preferred him; in response to his unlimited love for her, her love for him was boundless. Sometimes in the early morning she would wake up with a sensation of warmth on her naked shoulder and discover that he had crept furtively into her bed, attaching his toothless mouth to her flesh and pulling at it as if it were a nipple. She would clasp him round his neck and hug him against her in the dark beneath the warmth of the blankets, and he would burst out laughing and cling to her, sniffing her night smells and kissing and clasping her as he snuggled towards her breast.
  At mealtimes she would have him sitting beside her in spite of peremptory notes from uncle husband: "Children should stay with the other children in the nursery. That's why it's there."
  "Without me he wouldn't eat, my uncle." "And do not call me uncle."
  "The child is too thin."
  "I shall make him thinner if you don't send him to his room."
  "If you send him away I shall go too."
  An exchange of angry notes, which made
 
Fila and the scullery maids laugh behind her back.
  In the end Marianna had permission for the child to sit next to her only at lunch, so that she could feed him little pizzas filled with minced chicken, pasta made with egg-yolk and cheese, and egg-flip with orange juice: everything that, as Innocenza said, "makes good red blood".
  Signoretto got no fatter, but he grew taller and taller, acquiring the neck of a stork and two small thin arms like a monkey's, which were openly ridiculed by his brother. At two he was taller than Agata's three-year-old. Although he did not gain any weight he shot up like a plant in search of the sun. Neither his hair nor his teeth came through. His head was like a wooden ball and she covered it with embroidered bonnets turned up and puffed out at the edges.
  At the age when other children had begun to talk he only laughed. He sang, he screamed, he spat, but he did not speak. And uncle husband had begun to write threatening notes: "I don't want my son to be dumb like you", and again, "It is essential he separates from you, that's what the apothecary says and so does the physician Cannamela."
  Marianna was seized by such fear that he would be taken away that she had an attack of fever and while she was delirious Duke Pietro went round and round the house in a state of vacillation, overwhelmed by a frantic dilemma: should he take advantage of his wife's delirium to remove the child and put him in Aunt Teresa's convent, where he would be taught to speak, or should he be compassionate and leave him with his mother, to whom he was so uncontrollably bound? While he was fraught with indecision her fever subsided and she made him promise to leave the child with her for at least another year. In exchange he brought a tutor into the house and forced the boy to learn the alphabet. By now he was four and his refusal to speak worried her too.
  So that was the situation. Uncle husband put his worries to rest--the child was healthy, he was happy, he ate well, he grew. How could he tear him from his mother's arms? But of talking he gave not a sign.
  Then, one day, as the end of the year agreed on by his father drew near, he fell ill. He vomited until his body became ashen.
 
  Doctor Cannamela diagnosed a delirium caused by inflammation of the brain. He has had a small basin of blood drawn out by the surgeon Pozzolungo, who, in addition, has put him on a fast in an isolated room which only his mother and Innocenza are allowed to enter. Moreover the surgeon has declared that it is not inflammation of the brain at all, but an abnormal type of smallpox.
  Innocenza has had smallpox, from which she emerged half-dead, but she survived. Marianna has not had it but she is not afraid of it. Did she not stay all on her own in the villa when the whole of Bagheria was seized by fever and vomiting, without getting infected? On that occasion she had washed her hands continuously in vinegar, had eaten lemons with salt, and kept her mouth covered with a handkerchief tied behind her neck like a brigand.
  But since Signoretto has been ill she has not taken any of her usual precautions. She sleeps in the upholstered chair next to the wooden cradle in which her son lies panting, watching for every breath. During the night she wakes with a start and puts her hand on to his mouth to make sure he is still breathing.
  When she sees him drawing in air in this tormented way, his lips livid, his little hands clinging to the edge of the cradle, she can't help wondering if the best way of helping him would be to let him die. The surgeon says he should have passed away already. But with her help, with the warmth of her closeness to him, kissing him, giving him every now and then a draught of her own breath, he holds on to life.

                 XV

  Her father the Duke has his own special way of mounting the bay horse, catching hold of its raven black mane and talking to it persuasively. What he says Marianna has never known but it is very similar to the affectionate chatter he poured into the ear of the prisoner condemned to death on the scaffold in the Piazza Marina.
  Once he is in the saddle he makes a sign to her to come close, bends down over the horse's neck and pulls her up to sit in front of him astride the horse's mane. There is no need to use a whip or spurs on the bay horse Miguelito because he starts off as soon
 
as her father has taken up his proper position with his legs pressed tightly against the horse's flanks and his chest well forward. So they descend the slope from the entrance of the villa to the open space at the spring of San Nicola, there where the shepherds lay out the sheepskins to dry and there is always a strong smell of rotting flesh and flayed skin.
  So here they are, father and daughter, riding beyond the gates of the Villa Trabia, crossing the narrow lane that passes along the edge of the garden of the Villa Palagonia, leaving the two pink stone one-eyed monsters to the left. They proceed along the dusty road bordered by a prodigious number of mulberry bushes and prickly pears, in the direction of Aspra and Mongerbino.
  Father leans forward, the bay Miguelito starts to gallop and they speed on beyond the contorted carob trees, beyond a scattering of peasant huts, beyond the olive and mulberry trees, beyond the vines and the river. As soon as the damp mist from the sea rises fresh and salty into his nostrils the bay lifts his front legs, and a few seconds later, with a powerful push of his hindquarters, lifts himself off the ground. The air is thinner and clearer, the gulls sweep down in surprise. Father urges on the horse, the little girl clings to the mane, balancing herself on Miguelito's neck, which seems more like the neck of a giraffe. The wind blows through her hair and cuts the breath in her throat. A cloud advances sluggishly towards them and at one bound the bay leaps into it and begins to swim in the floating foam, kicking and whinnying. For a moment Marianna can see nothing, only a clinging white cloud that fills her eyes. Then they are out of it, in the clear blue of the welcoming sky.
  There's no doubt that this time Father is taking her with him to paradise, Marianna tells herself, and she looks down with joy at the trees beneath them as they become ever smaller and darker. The fields in the distance separate into blue geometric patterns, squares and triangles that overlap each other confusedly.
  But now the bay horse is no longer pointing towards the sky but to the summit of a mountain. Marianna recognises the flat bare point, a grey shape that resembles a castle: it is Monte Pellegrino. In a flash they are there. Now they descend on to those burnt rocks to rest
 
a little before setting out for unknown happy skies.
  But below them a large crowd has assembled and in the middle of the crowd she can see a black object. It is a platform, a man, a rope hanging downwards. The bay Miguelito is going round and round in circles. The air becomes warmer, the birds are left behind. Now she can see everything clearly. Her father the Duke is about to find a place for himself with his horse and his daughter in front of the gallows where a boy with discharging eyes is about to be executed.
  At the very instant that Miguelito's hoofs touch the ground Marianna wakes up, her night-dress soaked with sweat, her mouth burning. Since little Signoretto died, she has been unable to sleep at night. Every two hours she wakes up gasping for air in spite of the valerian and laudanum that she swallows along with tisanes of hawthorn, orange flower and camomile.
  With a restless movement she throws back the bedclothes and pushes out her bare legs. The small goatskin rug lightly tickles the soles of her feet. She reaches out for the tapers. She lights a candle on the little chest of drawers, puts on a violet-coloured chenille cloak and goes out into the passage.
  Under the door of uncle husband's room she can see a fillet of light. Is he too unable to sleep? Or has he gone to sleep with a book in his hand and the candle burning, as happens to him more and more often?
  Further along the passage the door of Mariano's room is half-open. Marianna pushes it with her fingers and takes a few steps towards the bed. She finds her son asleep with his mouth agape. She wonders whether they should consult the physician Cannamela once more. The boy has always had a weak throat, every time he has a cold his nose swells and gets blocked and he is shaken with violent fits of coughing. He has already been to see two well-known physicians. One has prescribed the usual blood-letting, which only made him weaker still. The other recommended opening up his nose to remove a polyp that was in the way, and then closing it again. But uncle husband refused to think of it: "In this house the only things that are opened and closed are the doors, you son of a bitch."
 
  Fortunately Mariano's behaviour is improving as he grows older: he is less naughty, he no longer throws himself on the floor when he can't have his own way. He is growing rather more like her mother the Duchess, his grandmother: lazy, good-natured, prone to over-excitement but just as often to depression. From time to time he comes to kiss Marianna's hand and tell her something that has happened, and he fills sheets of paper with large confused handwriting.
  Sometimes Marianna is aware of her son looking with pity at her hands, which have become prematurely old. She knows that in some way he is pleased by this, as if it were a punishment she has deserved for the indecent and uncontrolled way in which she concentrated all her care on the repellent and ugly little body of his small brother, who died at the age of four.
  Duke Pietro and Aunt Teresa do everything in their power to prevail upon him to behave like a duke. His father is so much older than his mother, and on his death Mariano will inherit all the titles, if not the wealth, of the dead branch of the Scebarr@as family bequeathed as a legacy to Duke Pietro. And he plays along with it: he's become big-headed and arrogant but he gets easily bored and reverts to playing hide-and-seek with his sisters under the scandalised eyes of his father. But then after all he is only thirteen.
  Marianna stops in front of Giuseppa's room. She is the most worrying of her three daughters. She refuses to have music lessons, to learn embroidery or Spanish; she is greedy only for cakes and horse-riding. Before quartan fever carried off Lina and Lena, when they all used to call the bay horse with a whistle and run arm in arm through the olive groves, it was they who taught her to ride. Uncle husband did not approve. "There are sedan-chairs for ladies, there are litters, there are carriages. I don't want Amazons here."
  But as soon as her father has gone off to Palermo, Giuseppa fetches Miguelito and rides him all the way to the sea. Marianna knows about it but has never betrayed her. She too would have liked to get on a horse and gallop along the dusty paths but it has never been allowed. Her lady mother had convinced her that because she was dumb she could do almost nothing she wanted to do
 
without being seized "by the dogs with long forked tails". Only her father the Duke, after much persuasion, had secretly taken her two or three times on Miguelito's back when he was still a young, happy horse.
  Duke Pietro is particularly severe with Giuseppa. If she refuses to get up early in the morning, he shuts her in her room and keeps her there all day. Innocenza secretly brings specially cooked titbits for her without the Duke suspecting anything.
  "Your daughter Giuseppa is eighteen and behaves like a child of seven", he writes on a sheet of paper, putting it down with a look of irritation. Marianna recognises that her daughter is unhappy but she is unable to say why. It seems as if her only pleasure is to roll herself up in her bedclothes soaked with tears, in a landslide of breadcrumbs, her hair all over the place, determined to say no to everyone and everything.
  "Growing pains", Marianna's father the Duke had written. "Let her be." But uncle husband does not let her be at all. "Nonsense!" Every morning he stands in front of her at the head of her bed and addresses lengthy sermons to her that inevitably have an effect exactly opposite to that intended. Above all he scolds her for refusing to get married.
  "Eighteen and still unmarried. It's a disgrace. At eighteen your mother had already given birth to three children. And you--you're like an old maid. What am I to do with an old maid, I ask you? What can I do?"
  Marianna advances on tiptoe. It is a long passage and the children's rooms follow one another like the Stations of the Cross. Here Manina used to sleep before she got married when she was only twelve, as her father decreed. She was always her father's favourite, the most obedient, the most beautiful. And he had considered he was making a great sacrifice, giving her up "for her to make a good marriage to an upright and well-to-do man".
  The fringed four-poster bed, the yellow velvet curtains, the set of combs and brushes in tortoiseshell and gold, a present from Grandfather Signoretto on her tenth birthday--everything in its place as if the girl were still living there. Marianna thinks again of the indignant letters she
 
wrote to uncle husband to dissuade him from such an early marriage. But she was defeated by relations, friends and custom. Today she asks herself whether she did enough for her youngest daughter. She did not have sufficient courage. There's no doubt she would have fought with more energy if it had been about Signoretto. With Manina, after the first battle, she had let it go, through exhaustion, boredom, through cowardice. ...
  Hurriedly she leaves her daughter's room, partially illuminated by a little light that burns beneath a picture of the Madonna. Next door, in the room adjacent to the staircase, is where
Felice, the most cheerful of her daughters, used to sleep until a few years ago. She entered the convent when she was eleven, and she created a little kingdom for herself among the Franciscan nuns, which she rules over at her own sweet will. She comes and goes as she pleases, she gives lunches and dinners for all occasions. Her father often sends a sedan-chair for her; she comes over to Bagheria for a day or two, and no one says a word.
  She too has left an empty void. She has lost her daughters too early, Marianna tells herself. Except for Giuseppa, who gulps down venom and curls up in bed without even knowing why. There is something idiotic about fussing over her children as if they were eggs, with the anxious brooding of a sitting hen. As her children's bodies changed and developed, so she identified her own body with theirs, giving it up as if she had lost it when she got married. She slips in and out of her clothes like a ghost, at the mercy of a sense of duty which she did not choose but which arose from a dark, ancient, female pride. She has put into motherhood both her flesh and her feelings, adapting them, restricting them, renouncing them. But with little Signoretto she let her feelings run away with her, she knows that now; theirs was a love that went beyond the relationship of mother and son to blossom into that of lovers. And so it could not last. He was the one to realise this before she did, with the miraculous understanding of a child, and he had chosen to leave her. But how can one live without a body, as she has done for the past thirty years, without ending up mummified?
  Now her feet are taking her on, down the stone staircase covered by a flowered stair carpet, past the corner of the entrance hall, the plants that twine along the wall, the white passage, the
 
big window overlooking the sleeping courtyard, the yellow room with a glimpse of the spinet lacquered with clear varnish, the two Roman statues guarding the tall french windows, the sharp-eyed chimera peering from between the fronds on the ceiling, the rose room with its upholstered chaise-longue, the prie-dieu in reddish wood, the dining-table on which is the white basket full to the brim with porcelain pears and grapes. The air is freezing. For days an unusual and unexpected spell of cold weather has descended on Bagheria. No one remembers such cold as this in years.
  The kitchen with its smell of frying oil and dried tomatoes has a welcoming feel, though it is only a shade warmer. Through the open door she can see a sliver of pale-blue light coming in. Marianna goes to the kitchen dresser and opens the doors without thinking. She breathes in the powerful smell of bread. She remembers something she has read about Democritus in Plutarch: so that his death should not cause suffering to his sister, who was just about to get married, the philosopher prolonged his death agony by smelling newly baked bread.
  Out of the corner of her eye, Marianna glimpses something black wriggling on the floor. She bends down to have a look. For the past few years she has no longer seen well over a distance. Uncle husband had a pair of strong lenses sent all the way from Florence for her, but she cannot get used to them. And then she feels stupid with all this equipment on her face. It seems that in Madrid young people wear these glasses quite needlessly, simply to display the large tortoiseshell frames. And this in itself would be a good enough reason for her not to wear them.
  Looking closely she sees that it consists of ants: a monstrous file composed of thousands of tiny creatures that scurry to and from the kitchen dresser, crossing the entire kitchen and climbing up the walls, to reach the lard that fills the majolica soup tureen shaped like a duck. But where is the sugar? Marianna looks around her, searching for the enamel jars in which the precious granules have been stored ever since she was a child. She finds them at last beside the shutters, standing on top of a wooden board. What ingenuity Innocenza has brought to bear to keep the ants away! The board is balanced between two chairs,
 
the legs of the chairs immersed in saucepans filled with water, and on top of each jar is a soup plate filled with vinegar.
  Marianna takes a rough-skinned lemon from a basket on the floor and smells its fresh bitter smell. She cuts it in half with a small knife that has a handle of horn. From one of the halves she cuts a fleshy slice with a soft, spongy white rind. She sprinkles a pinch of salt on it and puts it on her tongue. It is a habit acquired from Grandmother Giuseppa, who every morning, even before washing her face, ate a lemon cut in pieces. It was her recipe for ensuring healthy teeth and a fresh mouth.
  Marianna feels her teeth by putting a finger between her gums and her tongue. Certainly they are sound and healthy, even though two were extracted by the surgeon last year and as a result she now chews less well on one side. One of them was broken, the other was discoloured. Being pregnant has an effect on the teeth: when children are in the womb they are avid for bone, no one knows why. Perhaps the molar could have been saved, but it was hurting and it is an established fact that the surgeon's job is to cut, not to repair. It cost him so much effort to pull those two teeth out that he was sweating and shaking as if he had a fever. He pulled and pulled with his forceps but the tooth would not budge. Eventually he broke it with a little hammer, and then he only just succeeded in extracting the broken pieces, bracing his knee against her chest and puffing and blowing like a buffalo.
  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.
  Sister Palmira Malaga: she remembers reading about her somewhere, perhaps in a book on the history of heresy, or in some publication on quietism, or in one of those lists put out by the Holy Inquisition, giving the names of people suspected of heresy. Sister Palmira, yes, she remembers it now, she has read a short book about her; published in Rome, it turned up somehow in the library at the villa. There was even a caricature of her with two horns on her head and a long ass's tail coming out from under her habit and ending in a forked point, which reminded her of the dogs so feared by her mother the Duchess.
  She sees her going up the wooden steps of the scaffold one at a time. Barefoot, hands tied behind her back, her face twisted in a bizarre grimace, almost as if this horror were the last seal to affirm her commitment to peace. Behind her Brother Reginaldo, whom Marianna imagines as bearded, with a stringy neck and hollow chest, and large dirty feet in tight Franciscan sandals.
  Now the executioner ties them to the posts above a pile of chopped logs. Two assistants with lighted torches approach the pile of wood. The flame does not immediately ignite the branches of elder and the broken sugar canes that someone has cut and tied with willows so as to make it easier to light the fire. White smoke puffs out into the faces of the nearby spectators.
 
  Sister Palmira smells the acrid smoke of the faggots; fear contracts the muscles of her belly and a stream of urine runs down her thighs. And yet her martyrdom has hardly begun--how will she endure it to the end?
  The secret is breathed into her ear by a most gentle voice. The secret, Palmira, is your consent, not to stiffen and resist, but to gather up into your womb these tongues of flame as if they were flowers flying through the air, to gulp down the smoke as if it were incense, and turn towards Him whose eye is suffused with pity. It is they who suffer, not you.
  Then violent hands stretch up to her head to plaster her hair with pitch, and Sister Palmira turns towards her torturers with a look of love. Now they are crowding round in solemn exultation, bringing a burning torch to her smeared hair. The woman's head lights up and bursts into flames like a resplendent crown, and everyone applauds. They want her death to be a spectacle; and since Our Lord permits it He must want it too, in the mysterious and profound way in which Our Lord wills the things of this world.
  Brother Reginaldo opens his mouth as if to speak, but perhaps it is only a scream of pain. In front of him Sister Palmira's head is burning like the sun, while her mouth tries to smile as it twists and curls in the heat of the blaze.
  Marianna sees uncle husband sitting on a handsome golden chair upholstered in purple velvet, next to the Holy Fathers of the Inquisition, elegant in their habits embroidered with designs of bunches of grapes. The crowd around them is packed together so tightly that it is almost impossible to distinguish one face from another; it is one single body with a single eye, held in suspense, looking upwards, throbbing with exultation.
  At the moment when the flames set alight Sister Palmira's hair the crowd explodes into a great roar. Marianna feels it vibrating in her belly. Uncle husband is now leaning forward, his wrinkled neck stretched tight, his face rigid with a cramp that he does not understand-- is it of horror or of satisfaction?
  Marianna raises her hand to the bell-rope. She pulls it several times, insistently. Soon she sees the door open and Fila's head peep
 
round. She makes a sign for her to come in. The girl does not dare, she is afraid of the Duchess's bad temper. Marianna looks at her feet. They are bare. She smiles so as to reassure her and bends her finger to beckon her, as if she were a child.
  Fila comes closer on tiptoe. Marianna makes her understand that she needs help with unbuttoning her dress at the back. With their rich embroidery of pearls, the sleeves come off by themselves, like tubes of wood. The skirt rests rigidly on the floor. It is as if the Duchess were divided in two, one half the body of a woman, moving freely in her white cotton petticoat, the other Her Excellency the Duchess of Ucr@ia, confined in stiff brocade, who bows, smiles, nods, approves, with all the dignity proper to her station. It is the point at which these two bodies meet that is hard to discern: where one acknowledges the other, where one is shielded by the other, where one displays itself and the other hides itself so as to become completely lost.
  Meanwhile Fila has knelt down to help her take off her shoes, but Marianna is in a hurry and to make her understand that she will take them off herself she pushes her away with a small affectionate kick. Fila lifts her head.
She is put out and in her look there broods an unforgivable hurt. Marianna will think what to do about it later, she decides, now she is in too much of a hurry. She takes off her shoes, picks up her bedjacket the colour of egg-yolk, and snuggles down inside the bed that has only been made a moment ago.
  Just in time! The door opens before she has even had the chance to undo her hair. The trouble with being deaf is that no one ever bothers to knock before coming in, knowing they will not be heard. So she is always finding herself unprepared for the arrival of the unexpected visitor who throws open the door and appears before her with a triumphant smile, as if to say, Here I am. You didn't hear me, but now you can see me.
  This time it is Felice, her daughter and now a nun, elegant in her milk-white habit, her chestnut curls popping provocatively out of her white coif. Felice goes straight to her mother's writing-desk, picks up pen and paper and takes ink from the small silver phial. Within a
 
few seconds she hands over the written  sheet of paper: "Auto-da-f`e today. Great  festival in Palermo. What's the matter--are  you feeling ill?"
  Marianna reads and rereads the note. Since  Felice has been in the convent her writing has  improved and she has taken on a carefree,  confident look that neither of her other daughters  has. Marianna watches her while she talks  to Fila, moving her lips with sensual grace.  There's no doubt her voice must be very  melodious, Marianna tells herself. How she  would like to hear it! Sometimes in the internal cavity  deep inside her ear she has a sensation of  rhythm, which seems to form a clot of blood that  shifts, disentangles itself, dissolves, flows ...  and she begins to tap her feet on the ground in time  with this far-off subterranean harmony.
  She has read of Corelli, Stradella and  Handel as marvels of musical architecture.  She has tried to imagine a taut arch of  enchanting colours, but all that issues from the  vaults of her childhood memory is a few  sonorous gurgles, ruins of buried music.  Only her eyes have the capacity to grasp  pleasure, but is it possible for music to be  transformed into something corporeal that can be embraced  with a look?
  "Do you know how to sing?" she writes to her  daughter, handing her a beautiful clean sheet of  paper. Felice turns round in surprise.
Why singing, for Heaven's sake? Everybody is  getting ready for this trip to Palermo to attend the  grand spectacle of the auto-da-f`e, and here is  her mother asking silly questions that are quite  irrelevant. Sometimes she thinks her mother is a  bit weak in the head and simple-minded. But then,  because she cannot talk, each thought has to be written  down and, as everyone knows, as soon as you write  anything down it acquires a stiffness, a gloss,  a heaviness, it is like something that has been  embalmed.
  Marianna guesses her daughter's thoughts,  she anticipates them and pursues each new  revelation with painful relish.
  Our grandmother died before she was fifty, maybe  our lady mother will die soon too. ... She knows  she is only thirty-seven but she could have a  stroke at any time ... after all she is already  disabled. ... If she were to die she might leave  her a large life interest on her  inheritance from her father--let's say three thousand  onze or maybe even five thousand. ... The  expenses at the convent are always getting heavier  ... and then there is the new sedan-chair with golden  cupids and damask hangings ... she can't be for  ever waiting for her father to send her his ... and sugar  has gone up by five grani a sack, lard  by twenty, then wax has got impossible, seven  grani a small candle, and where is she to get the  money? ... Not that she wishes for her mother's death  ... but sometimes she is so stupid, more like a child than  any of her children ... she thinks she understands everything  just because she reads so many books but she understands  absolutely nothing. ... Come to that, why did  Manina get a bigger dowry than she did?
Only to marry that parrot Francesco Chiarand@a  of the estates of Magazzinasso. ... Isn't it  more important to be married to Christ? That  everything, but everything, should go to Mariano is ...  it's an insult. ... They say that in the  Netherlands it's no longer like that. There, if they  want to cut their children off without a penny and leave  them quite naked--why, they can do it. ... Wouldn't it  be better to leave them in paradise among trees  of manna and fountains of sweet wine? That idiot  Aunt Fiammetta wants her to hoe the convent  orchard like all the others. ... "Little one, aren't  you the same as everyone else, my little girlie?"  But surely an Ucr@ia of Campo
Spagnolo di Scannatura and di Bosco
Grande can never be put to hoeing the kitchen garden like  some peasant or other? Some of these abbesses have  turnips instead of brains, they're filled with  jealousy and envy. "I do it, and I'm a  noblewoman just as much as you," says Aunt  Fiammetta, and you should see how she rolls up  her sleeves and bends over the hoe, pushing down  on the metal edge with her delicate little foot  ... a madwoman! Heaven knows where she unearthed  this passion for menial work ... the beauty of it is  that she doesn't do it as a penance, no, she  actually loves her hoe, she loves the earth,  she loves bending down under the sun and getting as  brown as a peasant. ... It's impossible  to make head or tail of that silly woman.
  "What pleasure is there in seeing two  heretics burned?" writes Marianna to her  daughter, in an attempt to shrug off all these  trifling and oppressive thoughts. Even though she  knows there is more ingenuousness than  wickedness in Felice's broodings, she feels  she is being attacked.
  "The whole convent of Santa Chiara will be there,  the Abbess, the Prioress, the Canonesses.  Afterwards there'll be prayers and refreshments."
  "So it's the cakes, confess."
  "The Sisters give me all the cakes I  want, anyway. I only have to ask", answers  Felice huffily, scrawling the s's  sideways as if she wanted to blow them away.
  Marianna goes to kiss her, forcing herself  to forget those petulant thoughts. But she finds her  daughter sullen and ready to reject her: she is  none too pleased at being treated like a  thirteen-year-old when she is all of  twenty-two; and she stands there rigid, staring  frostily at her mother.
  That long dress ... and socks up to her  knees, she looks so old-fashioned she's  positively dowdy. She's thirty-seven and  she's got grown-up daughters, what does she  think she's up to? Inside that deaf, cloistered  head she's older than my father, and he's  seventy! With his body as long and thin as a rake,  he's got one foot in the grave, but still has a  look of vitality, while she's all trussed  up like a Spanish infanta, with collars that look  like bibs. There's something faded about her that makes    her seem dated ... those antiquated laced  boots in the Hapsburg style, her stockings the  colour of milk. ... The mothers of her friends wear  coloured stockings woven with gold thread, with shiny  ribbons round their waists, floppy skirts  quilted with beads, low-heeled slippers with  pointed toes and Eastern designs. ...
  As so often happens, once she has grasped  the thread of a thought, Marianna cannot let it go, she  turns it over between her fingers, pulling it and  knotting it to suit her own purposes.
  An angry compulsion to wound her daughter on  account of this internal chattering, so brutally  confident, makes her hand shake. But at the same  time the desire to ask her once more to sing impels  her towards the writing-desk. She is sure that  somehow she would be able to hear her, and already she is  conscious of the mercurial fluidity of that voice  on her walled-up ears.
  The understanding, when it acts alone, and according to its  most general principles, entirely subverts  itself, and leaves not the lowest degree of evidence in  any proposition, either in philosophy or common  life. We save ourselves from this total  scepticism only by means of that singular and  seemingly trivial property of the fancy, by which  we enter with difficulty into remote views of  things. ...

  Marianna reads with her chin resting on her hand.    Her feet warm each other, sheltering beneath a  blanket from the icy draughts that whistle through the  closed windows. Goodness knows who left this  notebook with its marbled cover in the library. Was  it brought from London by her brother  Signoretto? He returned a few months  ago and has visited them twice at Bagheria with  presents from England. But she has never before seen  this notebook. It could have been left behind  by Mariano's friend, that small dark-haired youth,  born in Venice of English parents, who has  footed it half-way round the world. He spent a  few days at Bagheria, sleeping in Manina's  room. An unusual person: he used to get  up at midday, having spent the whole night  reading. In the morning the bed sheets would be smeared  with candle wax. He borrowed books from the  library and then forgot to return them. He  accumulated a pile as high as his arm. He ate  like a horse and had a weakness for Sicilian  food: pickled egg-plants, spaghetti with  sardines, little pizzas with onion and oregano,  ices flavoured with jasmine, and muscatel  raisins.
  Although his hair was very black he had a pale  skin and it only needed a little sun for his nose  to peel. But what was his name? Dick or Gilbert  or Jerome? She cannot remember. However,  Mariano addressed him by his surname, Grass,  pronouncing it with three s's. Without doubt the little  notebook belonged to this young Grass, who came from  London and was on his way to Messina on a  journey of "self-discovery". Innocenza could not  stand him because of his habit of reading at night with a  candle balanced on the sheets. Uncle husband just
  
about tolerated him, though he regarded him  with considerable suspicion. Duke Pietro had  learned English as a boy but had always refused  to speak it, so by now he had forgotten it.
  Grass communicated with her on rare occasions  in well-formed handwriting on clean sheets of  paper. Only during the last few days of his  visit had they discovered that they liked the same  books, and their correspondence became  unexpectedly close and concentrated.
  Marianna turns over the pages of the  notebook and stops in amazement; at the bottom  of the first page is a dedication written in ink in very  small handwriting: "To her who does not speak--  may she accept with her generous mind a few thoughts  that are close to me."
  But why had he hidden it among the books in the  library? Grass knew she was the only person  who ever actually handled the books, yet he must  also have known that her husband checked them from time to time.  Then it was a secret present, hidden in such a  way that she would find it when she was alone after his  departure.

  To have the sense of virtue, is nothing but  to feel a satisfaction of a particular kind from the  contemplation of a character. The very feeling constitutes  our praise or admiration. We go no farther;  nor do we enquire into the cause of the  satisfaction. We do not infer a character to be  virtuous, because it pleases: But in feeling that it  pleases after such a particular manner, we in  effect feel that it is virtuous. The case is  the same as in our judgements concerning all kinds  of beauty, and tastes, and sensations. Our  approbation is imply'd in the immediate pleasure they  convey to us.

Underneath it the name David Hume, written in  green ink in minute handwriting. This reasoning  cuts through the muddled pathways in Marianna's  mind, unused as she is to thinking in an ordered,  precise and radical way. She has to read the  paragraph twice to grasp the rhythms of this  explosive intelligence, so different from the other  minds that have influenced her.

  We speak not strictly and philosophically  when we talk of the combat of passion and of reason.  Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the
  
passions, and can never pretend to any other  office than to serve and obey them.

The exact opposite to what she has been  taught. Is passion not an awkward burden from  whose edges spring slivers of greed that are best  kept hidden? And is reason not the sword that  everyone keeps at his side to cut the heads off the  spectres of desire, so as to enforce the  determination to be virtuous? Uncle husband would  be horrified to read any one of the sentences in this  little book. Already at the time of the War of  Secession he had declared, "The world is ending up  on a garbage heap." And it is all the fault  of people like Galileo, Newton and Descartes,  who "wanted to distort nature in the name of  science, but in reality wanted to put her in their  pockets to use in their own way. Presumptuous  lunatics! Traitors!"
  Marianna closes the notebook suddenly.  Instinctively she hides it in the folds of her  dress. Then she remembers that Duke Pietro  went to Palermo yesterday, and she brings the book  out again. She holds it up to her nose; it has a  wholesome smell of fresh paper and good-quality  ink. She opens it and among the pages discovers a  coloured picture: a man of about thirty with a  striped velvet turban that comes down over his  forehead. A broad complacent face, his eyes  looking downwards as if to assert that all knowledge comes  from the earth on which we rest our feet. His lips  are slightly open, his eyebrows thick and dark,  suggesting a capacity for concentration that is almost  painful. His double chin gives the impression of a  gentleman who never goes short of a good meal.  His neck, delicately encircled by a soft  collar of white silk, emerges from a flowered  waistcoat beneath a long jacket strewn with big  bone buttons.
  Here Grass's very small handwriting has  attributed a name: "David Hume, a friend and a  philosopher, too disturbing to inspire love  except from his friends, among whom I take the  liberty of including the friend who cannot speak."
  Really strange, this young man Grass. Why  had he not given it to her personally, instead of  leaving her to find it hidden between travel books a  month after his departure?

  Such is our disappointment when we learn that the
  
connections between our ideas, the links, the  efficacy are merely in ourselves and none other than  a disposition of the mind.

  Devil take that Mr Hume! How can he  say that God is a "disposition of the mind"?  Marianna is overcome by apprehension and again  hides the notebook in her skirt. Even thinking  such a thought, let alone saying it out loud, she could  end up being burned at the stake on a word of command  from the Holy Fathers of the Inquisition, who occupy  the great Steri Palace in the Piazza Marina.  "A disposition of the mind acquired through habit.  ..." She has read something similar in her father's  handwriting; he was for the most part a man bound  by tradition, but he sometimes allowed himself to play  havoc with those traditions, merely for amusement,  curling his lips in a charming and incredulous  smile.
  ""Every ant loves its own hole" and one  puts one's worldly goods and one's morality in that  same hole and they suddenly become one,  morality and daily bread, fatherland and sons.  ..."
  Her mother the Duchess had glanced over the words  written by her husband in her daughter's exercise  book, had taken a pinch of snuff, cleared her  throat, and poured half a bottle of  orange-flower water over herself to take away the  cloying smell of the snuff. Who knew what went  on in her sweet mother's head, always languidly  bent down over her shoulder. Is it possible that  she slipped in by one door and slipped out  by another, without a pause? Was she also prey to  "a disposition of the mind acquired by habit", with that  tendency to slump lazily into an unmade bed,  into an easy chair, or into a dress, her soft  flesh pressing against the whalebones, the hooks,  even against the button-holes? A laziness  deeper than a well in the tufa stone, a  torpor that enfolded her as a carob pod enfolds  its seed, hard and yet so soft, the colour of  night. Below the dark surface her lady mother was  soft just like a carob seed, forever surrendering to the  small world of her family. She loved her  husband to the point of forgetting herself. She stood  poised on the edge of the void and so as to avoid  feeling she would sit and gaze fascinated at the  desert in front of her.
  Her mother's voice, what was it like? In her
  
imagination it comes over as having a  deep, dark, husky resonance. It is  difficult to love someone whose voice one does not  know. Yet she loved her father without ever having  heard him speak. A slightly bitter taste  tinges her tongue and spreads over her palate;  could it be the pangs of regret?

  Now as we call everything custom, which proceeds  from a past repetition, without any new reasoning  or conclusion, we may establish it as a certain  truth, that all the belief, which follows upon any  present impression, is deriv'd solely from that  origin.

As if to say that certainty, every certainty gets  flung to the winds, and that habit holds us in  submission while pretending to educate us. The  pleasures of habit, the bliss of repetition--  are these the glories we are talking about?
  She would like to get to know this Mr Hume, with his  light-green turban, his thick black  eyebrows, his smiling expression, his double chin and  his flowered waistcoat.

  Thus it appears, that the belief or assent,  which always attends the memory and senses is nothing  but the vivacity of those perceptions they present; and  that this alone distinguishes them from the imagination.  To believe is in this case to feel an immediate  impression of the senses, or a repetition of that  impression in the memory.

What logic! What an obstinate and petulant  rascal he is! She can't help smiling in  admiration. To be lashed by a thought like this that has  floated carelessly among stories of  adventures, books on love, history  books, poetry, almanacs, fables! A thought  abandoned to the emptiness of ancient beliefs;  yes, beliefs that have the flavour of egg-plants  in a sour-sweet sauce. Or has it been the  continuous self-questioning of her wounded destiny which has  diverted her from other deeper and more fruitful  ideas?

  But as 'tis certain there is a great difference  betwixt the simple conception of the existence of an  object, and the belief of it, and as this difference  lies not in the parts or composition of the idea, which
  
we conceive; it follows, that it must lie in  the manner, in which we conceive it.

To think thoughts--here is something daring that tempts her  as an exercise she can secretly indulge in.  Mr Grass, with an impertinence worthy of a young  student, has started to trample on the meadows  inside her head. If that were not enough he has brought  a friend with him: Mr David Hume with his  ridiculous turban. And now they want to leave  her in confusion. But they will not succeed.
  But--what is this skirt brushing against the door?  Someone has come into the library without her being aware  of it. She thinks she had better hide the  notebook with the marbled cover, but she realises it  is too late.
  Fila comes forward with a glass and a jug  balanced on a tray. She makes a small  curtsy, puts the tray on top of a table  covered with papers, andwitha teasing gesture lifts the  heavy folds of her dress to show she is wearing  shoes. Then she leans against the doorpost waiting  for an order.
  Marianna contemplates her full round  face, her slender body. Fila is nearly  thirty yet she always seems like a child. "I give    her to you as a gift. She is yours", her father the  Duke had written. But where does it say that people  can be given, taken, thrown away like dogs or little  birds? "What nonsense!" uncle husband would  have written. "Are you suggesting that God has not  created noblemen and peasants, horses and sheep?"  Does this not pinpoint for her the question of equality?  Is it one of those indigestible seeds wafted from the  pages of Grass's little notebook to confuse the  opaque brain of a dumb woman? Can she then  retain something of her own that does not originate in  other minds, other constellations of thoughts, other  wills, other interests? A repetition in her  memory of images that appear real because they dart  like lizards, squirming beneath the sun of everyday  experience?
  Marianna returns to her notebook, or rather  to the hand that holds it, so prematurely withered, with  broken nails, roughened knuckles, protruding  veins. Yet it is a hand unused to scrubbing with  soapy water, a hand used to giving orders. But  also to obedience, with a chain of obligations and duties  which she has always seen as necessary. What would Mr  Hume in his seraphic oriental turban say
  
about a hand so eager to be daring and so  resigned to playing safe?

                XIX

  Rummaging through ancient trunks and  demijohns of olive oil Marianna came upon  an old canvas, dark and covered with dust, that  appeared from nowhere. She pulled it out, dusted it  with the sleeve of her dress, and found it was none  other than the portrait of her brothers and sisters  that she had painted when she was thirteen. She had  been painting it the morning she was interrupted by being  called to see Tutui the puppet master, in the  courtyard of the lodge, the same day her mother the  Duchess told her she would have to marry her uncle  Pietro.
  The black shadow that covers the canvas  dissolves, revealing the bright faces, now a little  faded: Signoretto, Geraldo, Carlo,  Fiammetta, Agata, the beautiful Agata,  who seemed then to be destined for a future as a  queen.
  Twenty-five years have passed since then.  Geraldo died in an accident: a carriage  crashed into a wall, his body was flung through the  air on to the ground, and a wheel ran over his chest  --and all to do with a question of precedence. "Let me  pass, I have right of way." "What right? I am  a grandee of Spain, remember that!" They brought  him back to the house without a drop of blood on  his clothes, but with a broken neck.
  Signoretto has become a senator, just as  he had planned. After years of being a bachelor  he has married a marchioness, already widowed, who  is ten years older than him. The scandal threw  the family into turmoil. But he is heir to the  Ucr@ias of Fontanasalsa and he can do as he  pleases.
  Marianna likes this open-minded  sister-in-law, who could not care less about  scandal, and who quotes Voltaire and Madame  de S@evign`e, gets her dresses from
Paris, and keeps a music master in her  household who is also, so everyone whispers, her  gallant. He is a young man who speaks  Greek fluently as well as French and  English, and has a quick wit. She has sometimes  seen the two of them together at balls in Palermo  on those rare occasions when she has been dragged
  
there by uncle husband: the Marchioness in a  hooped skirt of damask edged with frills, he  tightly buttoned up in a blue redingote with  silver buckles, which he has cunningly  tarnished.
  Signoretto is not at all upset by this  relationship. He even boasts that his wife has a  private escort, and lets it be understood that he  is no more than a protector installed by him at  her side, so much does he resemble a "singer in  the style of the seventeenth century", that is to say  a castrato. This may be so, but many have their  doubts.
  Fiammetta has become Canoness of the  Carmelite Convent of Santa Teresa. She  wears her thick chestnut hair imprisoned  inside a wimple that she sometimes tears off,  especially when she is doing the cooking. Her hands  have become big and strong, used as they are  to transforming liquids into solids, raw  into cooked, cold into hot. Her buck teeth  give an air of cheerful disorder to a mouth that is  always on the brink of laughter.
  Agata has continued to wither. She does not even  know how many children she has had, what with the ones that are  alive and those that have died, having given birth to her  first when she was twelve, and still going strong. Each  year she becomes pregnant and if it were not for the  fact that many of them die before they see the light of  day, she would have had an army by now.
  The taste of colours on her tongue ...  Marianna moves the painting over to the window and  starts once more to brush the canvas with her sleeve  to remove the opaque patina that makes it hard  to see. What a pity she has lost the skill of  using colours; it left her for no obvious  reason when her first child was born. A reproving  look from uncle husband, an ironical word from  her mother, the crying of the baby. ... She had put  the brushes and the small tubes of paint back in  the enamelled box that had been a present from her  father, and did not take them out again for many years, by which  time her hand had lost its skill.
  Gentian blue, what taste does gentian  blue have? Beneath the smell of turpentine, of  linseed oil and oily rags, another  absolutely unique smell filters through;  closing her eyes she can feel it float into her  mouth and linger on her tongue, depositing a  curious flavour of ground almonds, of April
  
rain, of salt-sea wind.
  And the white, sometimes clear, sometimes more or  less stippled; the whiteness of the eyes inside the  dark picture; maybe the shameless insolent  eyes of Geraldo; the white of Agata's  delicate hands; the forgotten whites that have become  encrusted on that dirty canvas and now, after being  rubbed with her sleeve, peer out shyly with the  unconscious daring of witnesses from the past.
  When she painted that picture the villa was not  yet here. In its place was the hunting lodge  built by her grandfather almost a century ago. Then    it was possible to go all the way from the garden to the  grove of olive trees by following a goat  track, and Bagheria did not yet exist as a  village, but consisted of the servants' quarters  attached to the Villa Butera, of stables, of  store rooms, of little churches which the Prince had  built. Every year were added new stables, new store  rooms, new churches and new villas belonging  to friends and relations from Palermo.
  "Bagheria was born out of betrayal", her  grandmother Giuseppa had written when she got it  into her head to teach her small deaf-mute  grandchild the history of Sicily. "During the  time of Philip IV--INDEED, at the time of his  death--there was a quarrel in Spain over the  succession; Philip did not have any sons and no  one knew which, amongst all the little nephews, would  inherit the throne."
  Her handwriting was minute, contracted,  distorted. Like so many women amongst the nobility of  that time, she was somewhat illiterate. It could be said  that she had learned to write to "get inside her  grandchild's pumpkin head".
  "Bread became dearer and dearer, my little one,  you don't know what that hunger was like, when people ate  earth to fill their bellies, they ate chaff and  acorns like pigs, they ate their nails just like you  do, you thoughtless little monkey. We aren't suffering from  famine now, so leave your nails alone."
  Sometimes she would open Marianna's mouth with her  fingers, look at her teeth and then write, "Little  one, my little girlie, why don't you talk?  Why? You've got a beautiful pink palate,  you've got beautiful strong teeth, two lovely  lips, so why do you never utter a word?"
  However, Marianna enjoyed her grandmother's  stories. So old Giuseppa, if only  to make sure she did not run away, got ready
  
to write in her granddaughter's  notebook, struggling with pen and ink.
  "At that time when you walked on the pavements in  Palermo you would stumble so that you didn't know whether  you were sleeping or dreaming or dying from the effort.  There were public penances ordered by the Archbishop.  People were kneeling on broken glass and whipping  themselves in the piazza. And some princesses as a  penance took registered prostitutes into their  houses and fed them with what little bread they had.
  "My father and mother fled to the estate at  Fiumefreddo, where they caught a stomach fever.  To prevent me from catching it they sent me back  with the nurse. In any case they said I was a  "little girl, and what harm could I come to?"' So  I found myself alone in Palermo in the empty  palace when the bread riots broke out. A  certain La Pilosa went round shouting that it was a  war of the poor against the rich, and they set about  burning all the palaces.
  "They burned and they burned so that everybody's  faces were blackened by smoke, and La Pilosa,  whose face was blackest of all, as black as a  Spanish bull, charged head down against the barons  and the princes. The nurse told me she was very  afraid they would come to the Palazzo Gerbi  Mansueto, and so they did. Ciccio Rasone  the porter told them there was no one there. "So much  the better," they said. "There's no need for us  to raise our hats to Their Excellencies!" and with  their hats on their heads they invaded the upper  floors and took away carpets, silver,  enamelled clocks, paintings, clothes, books,  and they made a bonfire and burned the lot, every  single thing."
  Marianna saw the flames rising from the house  and imagined that her grandmother must have been swept  away by them, but she did not dare to ask in writing.  Suppose it turned out that she had died and that the  person who was talking to her was none other than one  of the ghosts who peopled the placid nights of her  mother the Duchess?
  But Grandmother Giuseppa, as if guessing the  thoughts of her granddaughter, exploded into one of her  joyful laughs and began to write impetuously:  "At one time my nurse fled in panic.
However, I wasn't aware of this, I was sleeping  peacefully when they threw open the door and marched  over to my bed. "And who are you?"' they asked.  "I am Princess Giuseppa Gerbi di
  
Mansueto," I told them. I was a  little monkey then, even worse than you. I had  been taught this and I flaunted it proudly like a  silver dress that everyone had to admire. Some of  them looked at me and said, "Ah ha, we cut  off the heads of princesses, and carry them aloft  in triumph." Even more of a little fool, I said,  "If you don't go away, you rabble, I shall  call my father's dragoons." As luck would have  it, they began to laugh. "Here is a little nothing  who thinks she's a paladin," they said and laughed  and spat everywhere. Even now you can still see the marks  of their spit on the tapestries in the Palazzo  Gerbi in the Cassaro."
  At this point she threw back her head and  began to laugh too. Then she returned to worrying  about her granddaughter's deafness and wrote, "There  are earholes in your pretty little ears.  Suppose I try blowing into them, do you hear  anything?"
  The little granddaughter shook her head and laughed,  infected by her grandmother's cheerfulness. "You laugh,  but it doesn't make a squeak. You should try  blowing. Open your mouth ... force a sound out of your  throat ... like this--ah ah ah ah. ... Oh,  my little one, you're a disaster, you'll never learn!"
  Her grandmother wrote everything with infinite  patience, although by nature she was far from being  patient. She enjoyed running and dancing, she  slept little and she used to spend hours in the  kitchen, watching the cooks at work, sometimes lending  them a hand. She amused herself gossiping with the  maidservants, getting them to tell her about their  love affairs. She could play the violin and even  the flute a little. Yes, she was a marvel was  Grandmother Giuseppa. ...
  But she had her "b" times, as everyone in the  family well knew. There were dark days when she  would shut herself in her room and refuse to see  anyone. She would stay incommunicado with a  handkerchief over her head, refusing to eat or  drink. When she eventually emerged, leaning on  Grandfather's arm, she would behave as if she were  drunk.
  Marianna tried hard to put these two people together:  for her they were quite different women, one a friend and the  other an enemy. When she went through her "b" times  Grandmother Giuseppa was withdrawn and hostile.  Mostly she would refuse to write or talk, and  if she became aware of the child pulling at her
  
sleeve she would grab the pen with an  angry gesture and write, jumbling up the words:  "Dumb and stupid, better dead than
Marianna", or "You'll end up like La
Pilosa, a menace, you tiresome dumb-wit",  or "Wherever you came from, you've stirred my pity,  except that I don't have any", and she would throw  the sheet of paper in her face with a scowl.
  Now Marianna regrets that she never kept  these ill-tempered notes. Only after her death  did she really comprehend how these two very different  women were one and the same, because she missed them both,  with a similar sense of loss.
  She knew how it ended with La Pilosa because  her grandmother had written an account of it several  times with a certain sense of mischief: "Torn  to pieces with red-hot tongs." She continued,  "Papa and Mamma returned with pockmarks all  over them and I became a heroine", and she threw  her head back and laughed exultantly just like a  woman of the people.
  "And out of that betrayal Bagheria was born,  Grandmother Giuseppa?"
  "Considering you've no ears and no tongue,  you're still very inquisitive. ... What do you want  to know, little cuckoo? The betrayal of Bagheria?  That's a long story, I'll tell it you tomorrow."
  Tomorrow was always tomorrow. And in the meantime her "b"  times arrived and Grandmother shut herself away in a  darkened room for days and days on end without showing  even the tip of her nose. Finally one morning when  the sun had only just risen, all new like the yolk  of an egg emerging out of broken shells of  clouds, brightening the palace on the Via  Alloro, her grandmother seated herself at her  writing-bureau and wrote in her quick, minute  handwriting the story of the famous betrayal.
  She was breathing with difficulty as if her chest  was desperate for more air and she was trying to free  herself of the bodice that gripped underneath her  armpits. Though her skin was blotchy, her "b"  times had gone away together with the dust-blown wind that  came across from Africa, and she was once again  ready to laugh and tell stories.
  "Excise duty, do you know what that is? No  matter. And the toll? Not even that, you're only a  silly little girlie. Well, the Viceroy
Los Veles was beside himself with fear because in May  there'd been La Pilosa and in August a  watchmaker who had the gift of the gab was in charge
  
of all the beggars and did all the  talking, and they were demanding bread and staging a  revolution for it. But the watchmaker was loyal to the  King of Spain and also to the Inquisition. Alesi  --that was the watchmaker's name--knew how to control  the populace, who were looting, eating, burning;  he did not have a black face, that rascal, and the  princesses were leaning over backwards to give him  presents: silver glove-boxes lined with silk,  diamond rings. Until it all went to his head  and he believed himself as handsome and important as the  King of all Austria: he got himself made  Mayor for life, Captain-General, most  illustrious Praetor. He demanded complete  subservience and he had himself borne through Palermo  on a horse, carrying a gun in each hand and  wearing a crown of roses on his head.
  "The Viceroy returned from Spain and said,  "What does this fool want?"'
  ""Bring down the price of grain, Your  Excellency."
  ""We will do just that," he replied, "but this  buffoon must be got rid of."
  "So they took the watchmaker and cut his throat  and then threw his body into the sea, except for his  head, which they paraded on a pikestaff right through the  city.
  "Two years later another revolt broke  out, on the second of December in the year  1649, and that time the nobility got involved.  They wanted the island to be independent so that they  could be masters of the Royal Kingdom. There was also  a lawyer by the name of Antonio Del
Giudice, who wanted independence. Several  priests and very respectable nobles with a score of  carriages took part in this rebellion. Even  my father, your great-grandfather, became inflamed by the  prospect of a new, free Sicily. They met    in secret at the house of the lawyer Antonio and  made brave speeches about liberty. But almost  immediately they split into two factions, those who  wanted Prince Don Giuseppe Branciforti    as Viceroy and those who backed Don Luigi  Moncada Aragona di Montalto.
  "Prince Branciforti, who was a very touchy  person, thought he had been betrayed by certain people  who were always around the place, so in his turn he  betrayed them, denouncing the plot to the Jesuit  Father Giuseppe Des Puches. Without a  moment's delay the Father blurted it all out to the
  
Holy Office, who passed it on to the  Chief Justice in Palermo, and he told the  Viceroy.
  "In the twinkling of an eye they took them  all prisoner and tortured them with red-hot  irons. They beheaded the lawyer Lo Giudice  and hung his head up in the Quattro Canti in  the centre of town. They also beheaded Count  Recalmuto and the Abbot Giovanni  Caetani, who was only twenty-two years  old. My father spent two days in prison and he  had to pay out a large sum of money to keep his  head on his shoulders.
  "As for Don Giuseppe Branciforti  Mazzarino, well, they pardoned him for having  denounced Moncada. But he was disillusioned  by politics and he retired to Bagheria, where he  had his estates. He built himself a sumptuous  villa and all along the cornice was written:

Ya la speranza es perdida
You un sol bien me consuela
Que el tiempo que pasa you buela  Llever@a presto la vida. *
      * Here all hope is gone ar Only the  sun consoles me ar Time passes and flies
    ar My life will soon be done.

  "Thus, my dear little Marianna, my dumb  baby, was Bagheria born through the betrayal of an  ambitious plot. However, it was a princely  betrayal, the Lord did not punish it with  destruction like He punished Sodom and  Gomorrah. Instead He made it so beautiful  and sought after that all the world wanted this land set like a  jewel between the ancient mountains of Catalfano,  Giancaldo and Consuono, the coast of Aspra  and the wonderful headland of Capo Zafferano."

                 XX

  "I don't want my uncle, Mother, I'm  telling you." The note is crumpled between  Marianna's fingers.
  "But your mother married her uncle", Duke  Pietro replies to his daughter.
  "But she was dumb and who else would have her?"  While writing this, Giuseppa looks at her  mother as if to say, Forgive me but for the moment I have  to use what weapons I can to get my own way.
  
  "Your mother may be dumb but she's more  cultivated than you. You're nothing but a bunch of  wild chives, you don't seem to have an ounce of  common sense. Also your mother was a sight more  attractive than you, she was a beauty, a  queen."
  It is the first time Marianna has read a  compliment from uncle husband and she is so  dumbfounded that she is at a loss for words  to defend her daughter.
  Unexpectedly Signoretto comes to the  rescue of the two women. Since he married the  Venetian he has become more easy-going. He  has taken to using ironic expressions that  recall those of his father.
  Marianna watches him opening and closing his  arms, arguing with his uncle, who will certainly not  fail to point out that Giuseppa is now  twenty-three and it is inconceivable that at this  age she should still be unmarried. Marianna seems  to recognise the word "spinster" coming several times from  the lips of the Duke. And has Signoretto  brought up the argument about freedom which he has  lately held in such high esteem? Will he  remember that their great-grandfather Edoardo Gerbi di  Mansueto went to prison "in defence of his  liberty and indeed of ours"?
  Signoretto is very proud of this ancestral  glory, but it only irritates his  brother-in-law all the more. To be consistent with his  idea of "independence" her brother has adopted  a supportive attitude towards the women of his  family. He allows the girls to study together with  their brothers, something that would have been simply  unthinkable twenty years ago.
  Uncle husband argues scornfully that  Signoretto "with his foolishness has wasted all  his own money and will have nothing to leave his sons  except learning and tears. ..."
  Giuseppa seems happy to be caught between  her uncle and her father, who are quarrelling with each  other. Perhaps in the end she won't have to marry her  uncle Gerbi after all. At this point her mother  intercedes for her and for Giulio Carbonelli, a  childhood friend of the same age as Giuseppa and  secretly betrothed to her for years.
  A moment later the three of them disappear into the  yellow drawing-room. As usual they have forgotten  about Marianna. Though maybe the idea of continuing  their discussion in front of a dumb woman who
  
might read their lips makes them feel  uncomfortable. In fact they shut the door, leaving  her on her own as if the affair was no concern of  hers.
  Later Giuseppa comes back and embraces  her: "I've done it, Mamma, I'm marrying  Giulio."
  "And your father?"
  "It's Signoretto who convinced him. He  accepts Giulio rather than have me left a  spinster."
  "Even though he has no money, and a reputation  for idleness?"
  "Yes, he said yes."
  "So now we start preparing for the wedding."  "No preparations. We shall get married in  Naples, without any festivities. They don't  have such antiquated rubbish there any more. ... Just  think, a wedding feast with all those bigwigs who are  friends of my father. ... We'll get married in  Naples, then we'll set off at once for  London."
  The next moment Giuseppa has flown away  through the door, leaving behind her a delicate smell  of sweat mingled with lavender.
  Marianna remembers that in her pocket there  is a short note from her daughter Manina that she  has not yet read. It only says, "Expecting  you this evening for the Ave Maria." But the idea of  going to Palermo does not attract her. ...  Manina has called her last child Signoretto  after her grandfather. He looks very like the little  Signoretto who died of smallpox at the age  of four. Every so often Marianna goes to the Casa  Chiarand@a in Palermo to hold this small,  fragile and voracious-looking grandchild in her  arms. The sensation of holding little Signoretto  close to her is so strong that sometimes she puts him  down and rushes away with her heart overflowing.
  If only Felice would go with her. But  Felice, after having been a novice for so many  years, has taken her final vows with ceremonies  that lasted for ten days: ten days of festivities,  alms-giving, masses, dinners and sumptuous  suppers.
  For the admission of his daughter into the convent  uncle husband has spent over ten thousand  escudos, what with dowry, food, wine and  candles. A celebration that everyone in the city will  remember for its magnificence, especially as the
  
Viceroy Count Giuseppe
Griman, President of the Kingdom, took  offence and promulgated a notice to warn the  nobility that they were spending too much and getting  into debt, and forbidding monastic festivals that  lasted more than two days. A notice that everyone  in Palermo completely disregarded.
  For who was there to listen to him? The greatness of the  nobility lies in scorning accounts and bills,  whatever they may be. A nobleman never  calculates, cannot add or subtract and does  not know arithmetic. For this there are  administrators, major-domos, secretaries,  servants. A nobleman does not sell and he  does not buy. If ever he offers something, it is  the best that can be found on the market, to be given  to whomever he considers worthy of his generosity. It  might be a son or a nephew, but it is equally  likely to be a beggar, a swindler, an  adversary at cards, a singer, a washerwoman,  according to the vagaries of the moment. Seeing that everything that  grows and multiplies in the beautiful  Sicilian earth belongs to them by birth, by blood,  by divine grace, what sense is there in  calculating profit and loss? That is a matter  for tradespeople and the rising bourgeoisie: those  same tradespeople and bourgeoisie who, in the  words of Duke Pietro, "will one day swallow  up everything", as is already happening. They are  gnawing like rats at one morsel after another,  olive trees, cork trees, mulberry  trees, corn, carobs, lemons, and so on and so  on. "In future the world will belong  to speculators, thieves, profiteers, sharks,  assassins", according to the apocalyptic vision of  uncle husband, and everything will go to ruin because "with the  nobility something incalculable will be lost: the  spontaneous sense of the absolute, the glorious  impossibility of hoarding or putting on one  side, the self-exposure, the laying of oneself  open with divine courage to the nothingness that devours  everything without leaving a trace. The art of saving will  be invented and mankind will succumb to vulgarity of the  spirit."
  What will remain after we have gone? ask the  restless eyes of Duke Pietro. Only a  few crumbling vestiges, a few sticks and  stones of a villa inhabited by chimeras with a long  dreamy gaze, some patch of a garden where a few  stone musicians are playing stone music among
  
the skeletons of lemon and olive  trees.
  The feast at which Felice took the veil could not  have been more splendid, with the entire aristocratic  throng dressed with great elegance: the women swinging  their trains, their hooped skirts, their dresses  from Paris, their muslins light as a butterfly's  wings, their heads arrayed in gold and silver  nets, wearing ribbons of velveteen, and lace and  silk that floated down from painted girdles.  Amidst feathers, dress swords, gloves,  muffs, bonnets, artificial flowers,  slippers with pearl-studded buckles, tricorns  covered with plush, tricorns gleaming in the light,  suppers of thirty courses were served. And between one  course and the next, crystal goblets were filled with  lemon sorbets perfumed with bergamot. Snow was  brought down from the mountains wrapped in straw on the  backs of donkeys, having been kept underground  for months: Palermo had never lacked its  prodigious ices.
  When, in the centre of the oratory, flanked  by two rows of guests, Sister Maria Felice  Immaculata had prostrated herself on the floor  with her arms spread out like a corpse, and the Sisters  had covered her with a black pall and had lighted  two candles at her feet and two at her head,  uncle husband had started to sob, leaning on the arm  of his dumb wife--something that filled her with  astonishment. Not once during their marriage had  she seen him weep, not even when little  Signoretto died. And now this daughter who was  to become a bride of Christ was breaking his heart.
  When the festival was over Duke Pietro  sent his cloistered daughter a maid to help her  dress and keep her things in order. He also lent  her his sedan-chair upholstered in velvet with  gold cherubs on the roof. And today he still makes  sure she does not lack money to favour her  confessor, whom it is the custom to indulge with  choice fruits, silks and embroidery.
  Each month fifty tar@i is needed for the  candle wax, another fifty for the altar offerings,  seventy for new tablecloths and thirty for sugar and  almond paste. A thousand escudos has gone in  reconstructing the convent garden, which is now most  certainly a wonderful sight, embellished  by artificial lakes, stone fountains, paths,  porticos, groves of trees and fake  grottos where the Sisters can rest and eat sweets
  
and tell their rosaries.
  The fact is that Duke Pietro is not at  all resigned to having his daughter so far away,  and whenever he can he sends a carriage for her so that  she can come to the house for a day or two. For Aunt  Fiammetta the convent is a kitchen garden where  hoeing should be part of prayer. Her niece has  made her cell into a luxurious oasis where she  can retire from the ugliness of the world, where her gaze  can rest only on pleasant and beautiful things.  For Fiammetta the garden is a place of  meditation, of inward concentration, for Felice it is  a centre of conversation, where she can be comfortably  seated in the shade of a fig tree, exchanging  news and gossip. Fiammetta accuses
Felice of "corruption", her young niece  accuses her aunt of "bigotry". One of them  reads only the Gospels, which she takes with her  to the kitchen as often as she does to the orchard, so that  they are reduced to a mass of greasy pages,  while the other reads romanticised lives of the  saints in small white books bound in leather.  Between the pages are images of saints, their  bodies covered with sores, reclining in sensual  poses and wrapped in robes heavy with scrolls  and flourishes.
  When Aunt Teresa the Prioress was alive  there were two of them to criticise Felice. Now  that Aunt Teresa has passed away, an event  which occurred on almost the same day as Aunt  Agata the Canoness died, only Fiammetta  remains to offer recriminations. There are times when  it seems that she is no longer quite rational and as a  result has become much harsher and harder. But  Felice is not worried: she knows she is in a  strong position because she has her father on her  side. As for her deaf and dumb mother she has never  given her much thought; she reads too many books and  this makes her seem cut off and "a little bit  mad", as she says to her friends to excuse her.
  Mariano in his turn regards his sister as  "pretentious" and doesn't share her taste for  exhibitionism and novelty. He is preparing  to inherit all his father's wealth and every day he grows  more handsome and more arrogant. He is patient with his  mother even though his patience is somewhat affected.  Whenever he sees her he bows and kisses her  hand, and then takes possession of her pen and paper  and writes a few well-turned phrases in  large looped handwriting.
  
  He has fallen in love with a  beautiful girl, Caterina Mol`e di
Flores e Pozzogrande, who will bring him a  dowry of twenty estates. The wedding will be in  September and already Marianna is thinking of the work  involved in preparing for the celebrations, which will last  for no fewer than eight days, ending with a night of  fireworks.

                XXI

  Outside it is dark. Silence envelops  Marianna: absolute, barren. In her hands a  love story. Words, writes the author, are  harvested by the eyes like bunches of grapes hanging  from a vine, ground out of thought like the turning of a  millstone and then spreading like liquid and coursing  freely through the veins. Is this the divine grape  harvest of literature?
  To suffer with the characters who run through the pages,  to drink the essence of other people's thoughts, to taste the  repeated excitement of other people's emotions,  to feel one's own sensations heightened by the  never-ending spectacle of the drama of love, is  this not itself love? How much does it matter that this  love has never been actually lived face  to face? To participate in embracing the bodies  of strangers who have become close and intimate  through the printed page, is this not as good as  experiencing that embrace, with one additional  advantage: that of being able to remain in control of  oneself?
  But a suspicion crosses her mind: that this  could merely be spying on the life-breath of others.  Is to pursue in the pages of a book the making and  unmaking of other people's love affairs similar  to watching the person beside her and trying to interpret the  rhythm of the words on their lips? Is this not a  painful caricature? She has spent so many  hours in the library learning to extract gold from  stones, sifting and cleaning for days and days, her  eyes moist in the misty currents of  literature. What has she been able to get out of  it? Some convoluted grain of knowledge? From one book  to another, from one page to another. Hundreds of  stories of love, of happiness, despair,  death, joy, murders, encounters, farewells. And  she always there, seated in her armchair with the worn  embroidered antimacassar behind her head.
  The lowest bookshelves, which are within a child's
  
reach, contain mostly lives of saints:  Events in the Life of Saint Eulalia,
The Life of Saint Leodegario, a few  books in French, the Jeu de Saint
Nicolas, the Cymbalum Mundi, a few  books in Spanish like the Rimado de  Palacio, or the Lazarillo de
Tormes. A mountain of almanacs: of the
New Moon, of Love under Mars, of the  Harvest, of the Winds; even stories about the  French paladins and a few romances for young  ladies that speak of love with hypocritical  licence. Further up on the shelves, at the  height of a man, are the classics, from the  Vita Nuova to Orlando Furioso, from
De Rerum Natura to Plato's
Dialogues, even a few fashionable romances  like The Faithful Colloandro and The  Legends of the Virgins.
  All these were in the library of the Villa  Ucr@ia when Marianna inherited it. But since  then she has frequented it so industriously that the  number of books has doubled. To start with she  made the study of French and English the  pretext, and procured dictionaries, grammars  and books of exercises. Then a few books of  travel to far-distant countries, and last of all  with growing enthusiasm some modern romances and  books on history and philosophy.
  Since her children have left home she has had more  time, and there are never enough books for her. She  orders them by the dozen but they often take months  to arrive. For example, the parcel that contained  Paradise Lost was held up for five months  at the port of Palermo without anyone knowing where it  had got to. Or like the Histoire Comique  de Francion, which was lost at sea between  Naples and Sicily when the boat sank off  Capri. Other books she has loaned to someone  but she cannot remember whom, like the Lays of  Mary, Queen of Scots, which was never  returned. Or The Romance of Brut, which  must still be in the possession of her brother Carlo in  the monastery of San Martino delle Scale.
  This reading continues far into the night. It  exhausts her but also fills her with delight.  Marianna never seems to be able to bring herself  to accept that it is time to go to bed and if it were not for the  thirst that almost tears her away from her reading she  would probably go on till daybreak. To leave a
  
book is like leaving the better part of  oneself. To pass from the soft and airy arcades of the  mind to the demands of a graceless body always  grasping for one thing or another is in any case  a surrender: a renunciation of characters one has  studied and cared for in favour of a self one does  not love, confined within a stupid succession of days,  each day indistinguishable from the last.
  A thirst has put its fist into this sensuous  quietness, taking away the scent of flowers,  darkening the shadows. The silence of the night is  suffocating. Back in the library, with its  guttering candles, Marianna asks herself why the  nights are closing in on her, why everything is  rushing into her head as if it were a well of dark  water in which from time to time there is a heavy resounding  splash; something has fallen--but what?
  Her footsteps slip lightly and silently  over the carpet in the corridor; they reach the  dining-room, they cross the yellow room and the  rose room and stop at the entrance to the kitchen.  The black curtain that hides the big jar in which the  drinking water is kept is drawn back--someone  has already been down for a drink. For a moment she  is seized by panic at the prospect of a  nocturnal encounter with uncle husband. He has  not come to find her since the night she refused him.  She has an intuition that he is involved with  Cuffa's wife. Not the elderly Severina, who  died a while ago, but his new wife Rosalia,  who has thick black plaits that swing down her  back. She is about thirty, with a forceful  temperament and a lot of energy. But with her master  she knows how to be gentle and to satisfy his need for  someone who welcomes his assaults without turning    to ice. Marianna recalls their own hurried  couplings in the dark, he armed and relentless, she  distant, turned to stone. They must have looked  comical, as foolish as those people who repeat without the  least glimmer of understanding a duty which has no  meaning for them and for which they are not cut out.
  Yet they have had five children, and three who died  before birth, making eight in all: eight times they  have encountered each other beneath the sheets without a kiss  or a caress. An assault, a bearing down of  cold knees against her legs, and then a fast and  furious explosion. Sometimes she would close her  eyes while doing her duty and distance herself, thinking  of the couplings of Zeus and Io, and Zeus and  Leda, as described by Pausanias and
  
Plutarch. The divine body selects  the terrestrial image, a fox, a swan, an  eagle or a bull. And then, after prolonged  ambushes among the cork trees and the oaks, a  sudden apparition. No time to say a word. The  creature curves its claws, nails the  woman's neck with its bill and steals her for itself  and its own pleasure. A beating of wings, a  panting breath on her neck, teeth biting into her  shoulder, and it is over. The lover departs, leaving  her suffering and humiliated.
  She would like to ask Rosalia whether uncle  husband is transformed into a wolf who tears her  to pieces and then runs off. But she knows she will  never bring herself to do so, through timidity, but also perhaps  because of a fear of those long black plaits. When  Rosalia is in a bad mood they seem to rise  up and spit like dancing serpents.
  There are no lights in the downstairs rooms and  Marianna knows for certain that her husband never  walks around in the dark like she does; as a  result of her deafness her sight has become  particularly acute, as if she had the eyes of a  cat.
  The pitcher seeps moisture. It feels  cold and porous to the touch, and exudes a good  smell of earthenware. Marianna dips a small  metal scoop attached to a stick into the pitcher and  drinks avidly, letting the water run down her  embroidered bodice.
  Out of the corner of her eye she sees a faint  light filtering through one of the doors to the servants'  quarters. It is Fila's room and her door  is half-open. Marianna has no idea what  time it is, but it is certainly past midnight or  even one o'clock, perhaps nearer to three. She seems  to sense a slight rippling of the night air, set  in motion by the bell of the chapel of the Casa  Butera striking two.
  Almost without realising it her feet take her in  the direction of the light, and she peers through the gap  in the door, trying to distinguish something by the flickering  of a small smoky candle. She sees a naked  arm dangling over the edge of the bed, a foot with a  shoe on it going up and down. She draws back  feeling ashamed. Spying is unworthy of her. But  then she smiles at herself: shame can be left  to noble souls, curiosity lies at the root of a  thirst for knowledge, as Mr David Hume of London  would say, and it is similar to that other curiosity
  
which drives her to burrow her way  into books with great passion. So why be so  hypocritical? With a daring that surprises her,  she returns to spy through the open crack, holding  her breath as if her future depends on what  she is going to see, as if her glance was already being  attacked before she had even looked.
  Fila is not alone. Beside her is a  good-looking youth who is crying pitifully. His  dark, curly hair is tied behind his neck in a  small tight plait. Marianna fancies that  she has already seen this young lad, but where? His  limbs are delicate and smooth, his skin is the  colour of well-baked bread. She sees Fila  take out a handkerchief and with it wipe the nose of the  crying boy.
  Now Fila seems to be pressing the boy with  questions which he is unwilling to answer. Swinging  backwards and forwards moodily, alternately  laughing and weeping, he sits on the edge of the bed  and looks down with amazement at the buckskin  leather shoes lying on the floor, their laces all  untied.
  Fila goes on talking. She seems  irritated but she has put the wet handkerchief  back in her pocket and is bending over him,  insistent and maternal. He stops crying, grabs  one of her shoes and holds it up to his nose.  Then Fila throws herself on top of him and hits  him vigorously, slapping him with the palm of her  hand, on the nape of his neck and then on his cheek,  finally battering his head with a storm of blows. He  lets himself be hit without moving. Then, with all the  commotion, the candle goes out and the room is plunged  into darkness. Marianna moves a few steps  backwards, but Fila must have relit the candle because  the light returns flickering in the doorway.
  It is time to go back, Marianna tells  herself, but a new uncontrollable curiosity, which  her inner self judges to be almost indecent,  pulls her once more towards the forbidden vision.  Now Fila is sitting on the bed with the boy and he  is nestling close to her and leaning his head on her  breast. Gently she kisses his bruised forehead  and brushes her tongue over the scratch she has  made under his left eye.
  This time Marianna forces herself to go back to the  pitcher of fresh water. The idea of witnessing a  scene of seduction between Fila and the boy sickens  her; she is sufficiently surprised and upset
  
by what she has seen already. Once again  she plunges the cane with its little metal scoop  into the water, brings it up to her mouth and drinks in  big gulps with her eyes closed.
  She does not notice that the door has opened  and Fila is standing on the threshold looking at  her. She stands there, her bodice unlaced, her  plaits undone, frozen with astonishment, unable  to do anything except gaze open-mouthed.  Meanwhile the boy too has come forward and stops  beside her, his little pigtail hanging down beneath his  reddened ear.
  Marianna stares at them but without looking  cross; perhaps there is even laughter in her eyes  because eventually Fila frees herself from her  paralysis and starts to lace up her bodice with  hurried fingers. The boy does not seem  afraid. He comes nearer, naked to the waist,  focusing his bold eyes on the Duchess like one  who has seen her only at a distance through  half-closed doors, perhaps spying on her just as a  few moments ago she was spying on him, standing  by himself, hidden and motionless beyond half-drawn  curtains, in ambush. As if he had heard much  talk about her, and now wants to see what this great  lady with the throat of stone is made of.
  But Fila has something to say. She comes  close to Marianna, takes her by the wrist and  speaks into her deaf ears, making signs with her  fingers immediately in front of her eyes. Marianna  watches her getting all worked up while her  hair slips out of the plaits and slides down on  to her cheeks in black rivulets.
  For once Marianna is protected by her  deafness without feeling disabled. The thought of punishing  them makes her cheeks flush. She knows very well  that to do so would make no sense--and that, anyway,  she is the guilty one for going round the house in the  dead of night. But at that moment what she needs  to do is to establish the proper distance between them, which  has been dangerously undermined. She goes over  to Fila with her arm raised, like a mistress who  has discovered her servant with a stranger beneath her  own roof. Uncle husband would approve of this;  indeed he would provide her with a whip.
  But Fila quickly takes her hand and drags her  to the middle of the room, towards the mirror lit  by the gleam of the lighted candle. With her other hand she  takes the boy by his hair and pulls him beside her  cheek to cheek. Marianna stares at these two
  
heads in the mirror, the glass darkened  by smoke, and in a flash she understands what Fila  is trying to tell her: two mouths shaped by the  same hand, two prominent noses out of the same  mould, narrow at the top and bottom, grey  eyes slightly too far apart, wide  cheekbones: they are brother and sister.
  Fila realises that the force of her images  has got her message across. She nods and  sucks in her lips with joy. But how has she  managed to hide the boy all this time so that even her  father the Duke did not know of his existence? Now  Fila, with all the authority of an elder sister,  tells the boy to kneel down in front of the  Duchess and to kiss the hem of her precious  amber-coloured dress. And he dutifully  looks up and down with a contrite yet theatrical  expression and brushes the hem of her skirt with his  lips. A flash of childlike cunning, a  seductive guile which only someone who feels  excluded from this glittering world is able to display.
  Marianna gazes tenderly at the crescent  moons that make a pair on his bent back.  Quickly she gives a sign for him to rise.  Fila laughs and claps her hands. The boy stands  up straight in front of her. There is something  shameless about him that displeases her but at the same  time excites her. Their eyes meet in a brief  moment of attraction.

                XXII

  Saro and Raffaele Cuffa are at the oars.  The boat slips over the dark water with a regular  rhythmic motion. Beneath a garland of paper  lanterns there are gilded seats. Duchess  Marianna, looking like a sphinx, is wrapped in  a bottle-green cloak, her face turned  towards the port.
  On the seats, sitting across the boat, are  Giuseppa with her husband Giulio  Carbonelli and their two-year-old son, and  Manina with her young daughter Giacinta. In the  bows, on two coils of rope, sit Fila and  Innocenza.
  A boat comes close, a few lengths  distant. Another festoon, another gilded seat,  on which Duke Pietro is seated. Next to him  is his daughter Felice the nun; here too is his  son Mariano with his wife Caterina Mol`e di
  
Flores, and Cuffa's young wife
Rosalia, who has wrapped her black  plaits on top of her head like a turban.
  All over the water in the Bay of Palermo  are hundreds of boats: gozzi, caiques,  feluccas, each festooned with its array of  lights, each with its seating for the nobility and  places for the oarsmen. The sea is calm, the  moon hidden behind small ragged clouds edged with  violet, the boundaries between sky and water invisible  in the dense blackness of a calm, still August  night.
  Soon the firework scaffold that rises  imposingly on the shore will explode with Catherine  wheels, rockets and fountains of light that will rain  down over the sea. In the background Porta  Felice seems like a Christmas crib all  strewn with oil lights. To the right the Cassaro  Morto, the dark outline of the Vicaria, the low  houses of the Kalsa, the massive fa@cade of the  Steri Palace, the grey domes of Santa  Maria della Catena, the square wall of the  Castello by the sea, the long stark building of  San Giovanni de' Leprosi. Suddenly from  a maze of dark crooked lanes thousands of people are  pouring out towards the sea.
  Marianna reads a small crumpled note which  she holds in her lap. In a graceful  copperplate is written, "Scaffold  constructed by grace of the Master Weavers, the  Master Grooms, and the Master Cheese  Vendors. Amen."
  Now the men have stopped rowing. The boat  oscillates gently on the waves with its cargo  of lights, bodies dressed up for a festival,  slices of water-melon, bottles of aniseed  water. Marianna turns her head towards this  throng of boats which, in the stillness of the night,  rock to and fro like feathers floating suspended in the  void.
  "Long live Ferdinand, the new-born son of  Charles III, King of Sicily. Amen"  says another note that has fallen on to her  shoe. The first rocket streaks upwards. It  explodes far up in the sky, almost hidden by the  clouds. A rain of silver threads plummets  down on to the roofs of Palermo, on to the  fa@cades of the princely palaces, the streets  with their grey cobblestones, the sea walls around the  port, the boats laden with spectators, and is
  
extinguished sizzling in the black water.
  The day before yesterday a festival for the coronation  of Victor Amadeus of Savoy, yesterday  illuminations for the ascent to the throne of Charles  VI of Hapsburg, today the birth of a son to the  Bourbon Charles III ... the same  merry-making, the same pot-pourri: on the first  day a solemn mass in the cathedral, on the  second a fight between a lion and a horse, on the  third musicians in the Marble Theatre, then a  ball at the palace of the Senate, horse  races, processions and fireworks at the Marina  ... what endless boredom. ...
  For Marianna a look from uncle husband is  sufficient for her to know what he is brooding  over. Of late he has become transparent  to her: neither his faded eyes nor his balding forehead  can any longer hide the thoughts that until now have  been closely guarded. It is as if he has  lost the patience to dissimulate. For years he  has prided himself on it. No one could penetrate  beyond those eyebrows, beyond that bare, stern forehead.  Now it seems that this skill has become too  easy and consequently is no longer of interest.
  It's we who are always bowing and scraping ... that  Victor Amadeus, let him be, he wanted  to turn Palermo into another Turin. God help  us! The waste of time, the duties, the garrisons  ... Does Your Majesty want to put a tax  on illness, on hunger? Our jasmine-scented  sores, my Emperor, it is only we who  understand them, thanks be to God. The Treaty of  Utrecht, another wretched business: the  morsels have all been divided up, one to me,  one to you ... and that harlot Elizabetta  Farnese displays herself all over the island, she  wants a throne for that son of hers ... and  Cardinal Alberoni is her accomplice, and  Philip Very, he lends a hand as well. ...
At Capo Passero the English forced that big  fool Philip to drink vinegar but Elizabetta  doesn't give a cuss, she's a mother who's  prepared to be patient .... Then the Austrians  are defeated in Poland and they turn their backs  on Naples and Sicily, so her son got the  best deal in the end. ... They're on our backs  and God knows when they'll leave. ...
  That silent voice refuses to stop. The Lord  has given her this gift, to be able to enter into other  people's heads. But once the door is shut she
  
starts breathing in stale air, where words  take on a musty smell.
  Two hands come down on the Duchess's  shoulders, lifting the shawl on her neck,  arranging her hair. Marianna turns to thank  Fila and finds herself face to face with the free and  easy countenance of Saro.
  Later, while she is admiring the rise and  fall of the green and yellow lights flowering against the  sky, she is again aware of the presence of the boy at  her shoulders. Gentle fingers have moved the shawl  aside and brush against the line of her hair.  Marianna is about to push them away but an  exhaustion, a dumb weariness, keeps her glued  to her seat. Now the youth goes with feline grace  to the prow and raises his arm to the sky. It is  clear he has gone there to be admired. He stands  upright on the convex triangle, precariously  balanced to show off his tall slim body, his handsome  face suddenly lighted up by flying sparks.
  Everyone is looking upwards, following the  explosions of the fireworks. He is the only one  looking elsewhere, in the direction of the ducal seat  placed in the centre of the boat. In the flashes of  light that flood the sky with colour Marianna  sees the young man's eyes fixed on her. His  eyes are happy, amorous, tinged with arrogance, but  there is no slyness in them. Marianna regards  them for a second time and then abruptly withdraws  her glance. Yet a moment later she can only  return to admiring him: that neck, those legs, that  mouth seem to exist only to attract and disquiet  her.

               XXIII

  Whether she is in the garden reading a book, in  the yellow room doing the accounts with Raffaele  Cuffa, or in the library studying English, she  is always coming across Saro, springing up from nowhere and a  moment later disappearing back to nowhere--always there  to stare at her with soft bright eyes that beg for a  response. Marianna is amazed at his  persistence; he becomes more ardent and pressing with every  passing day.
  Uncle husband has taken him under his wing and  has had a livery made to measure for him in the  ducal colours, blue and gold. The pigtail  no longer dances about behind his ears, shrivelled up  like a rat's tail. A lock of dark gleaming
  
hair clings to his forehead and he  smooths it back with a seductive, carefree  sweep of his hand.
  There is only one place he may not enter and  that is the principal bedchamber; it is there she  takes refuge more and more often with her books, beneath  the enigmatic eyes of the chimeras asking themselves  whether he will dare to continue pursuing her. But every so  often she finds herself looking down into the courtyard,  waiting for his appearance. It is enough for her to see  him pass with his relaxed walk to put her in a good  humour.
  So as to avoid encountering him she has even  decided to go and stay for a while in Palermo in the  house in the Via Alloro. But one morning she  sees him arrive on her husband's carriage,  standing on the small running-board at the back, his  face beaming. He is smartly dressed with a  tricorn hat on top of his black curls and a  pair of brilliantly polished shoes ornamented  with brass buckles. Fila says he has  begun to study. She has told Innocenza, who  has blurted it out to Sister Felice, who has  written a note to her mother: "He is learning  to write so he can talk to your ladyship." It is  not clear whether this was said out of spite or in  admiration.
  Today it is raining and the landscape is veiled.  Each bush, each tree is drenched with water. The  silence imprisons her: it seems harder to bear  than her isolation. A profound longing for sounds that  match this view of sparkling branches, this  countryside teeming with life, catches her  throat. How does the song of the nightingale  sound? She has read of it so often in books, how  it is so unimaginably sweet, how it  resonates in the heart. But how?
  The door opens just as it does in certain  nightmares, as if pushed by an unknown hand.  Marianna watches it slowly moving, ignorant  of what is going to emerge: will it be joy or pain,  the face of a friend or the face of a foe?
  It is Fila. She comes in holding a lighted  candelabra. As usual she is barefoot and  Marianna realises that this reflects her wilful  rebelliousness, a sign of revolt against the  demands of her master and mistress. But at the  same time she relies on Marianna's  forbearance, which she thinks is due not so much  to tolerance as to some uneasy secret that binds them
  
together beyond the difference in their ages,  fortunes and social position.
  What does she want of her? Why does she  plant her naked dirty feet on the precious  rugs with such relish? Why does she walk in such  an offhand manner, not caring that her skirt lifts  up to reveal her blotched calloused heels?  Marianna knows that the only way to re-establish  a proper distance between them would be to raise her hand in  a slap. Just a light one. That is what she is  accustomed to. But it is enough for Marianna to look  at her face with its gentle features, so like that  other, masculine face with features a little more  sharply delineated, for any desire to hit her  to vanish.
  Marianna lifts her hand to the collar of her  dress, where it chafes at her throat. Her  fleecy bodice is rough against her sweating  back; it feels as if it were made of thorns.  Making a sign with her finger she dismisses  Fila. The girl goes out swinging her full  skirt of red cloth. Near the door she bows  stiffly and distorts her face in a simpering  expression.
  Left alone Marianna kneels in front  of a small ivory crucifix that Felice gave  her. She tries to pray: "Oh Lord, grant that  I do not betray myself in my own eyes, grant that  I know how to be loyal to the integrity of my  heart." Her eyes rest on the crucifix: it  seems to her that Christ too has a derisive  expression. Like Fila He seems to be laughing  at her. Marianna rises. She goes and lies  down on the bed, putting an arm over her eyes.
  She turns on her side. She reaches out for the  Bible her brother the Abbot Carlo gave her when  Mariano was born. She opens it and reads:

My spirit is consumed, my days are extinct,  surely there are mockers with me,  and mine eyes abideth in their provocation.  Give me now a pledge, a surety for me with
  thyself.

It is as if the words of Job are there to remind  her of some crime. But what crime? Thinking the  sort of thoughts provoked by Mr Hume? Or  allowing herself to be tempted by dangerous hidden  desires? Without doubt her days too are  failing. Little by little the lights of her body are
  
going out, but who will save her from the  mockers?
  The door starts to move again, swinging open,  throwing a square shadow on to the floor. What will  follow? What body, what expression? Perhaps that  of a youth who looks about twelve but is actually  nineteen.
  This time it is Giuseppa with her little boy who  has come to see her. How fat she has become!  Her clothes strain to throttle her flesh, her  face is pale, her expression lifeless. She  enters with a resolute step and sits on the edge  of the bed; she takes off her shoes, which are  cramping her feet, and, stretching her legs out on  the floor, looks at her mother and bursts  into tears.
  Marianna moves over to her affectionately and  holds her close, but her daughter, far from  calming down, abandons herself to sobbing while the little  boy crawls on all fours underneath the bed.
  "For Heaven's sake, what on earth is the  matter?" writes Marianna on her notepad.  She thrusts it under her daughter's nose.
  Giuseppa wipes her tears with the back of her  hand, unable to restrain her sobs. She turns  to embrace her mother and then seizes the edge of her  cloak and blows her nose noisily. Only after  much cajoling does Marianna succeed in putting  the pen in her hand and getting her to write.
  "Giulio is maltreating me. I want  to leave him."
  "What has he been doing, my little one?"  "He's brought a bonnet-maker into our bed with the  excuse that she is ill. Then, as she had no  clothes, he gave her mine as well as all the  French fans I had put away."
  "I will tell your father."
  "No, Mamma, I beg you, leave him out of  it."
  "But what can I do about it?"
  "I want you to have him beaten up."  "What on earth good would that do? We aren't still  living in the time of your great-grandfather."
  "I want revenge, a vendetta."
  "What do you want with a vendetta?"  "It's what I'd like. I've been hurt and  I want to feel better."
  "But why has he put this girl in your bed? I  don't understand", Marianna writes quickly.  Giuseppa's replies are taking longer and the
  
writing is all over the place.
  "To dishonour me."
  "But why should your husband want to dishonour you?"  "He knows why."
  A strange, incredible story. If her husband  Giulio Carbonelli wants to have a bit of  fun, surely he does not have to shove the  bonnet-maker into his wife's bed? What can be  behind this nonsensical action?
  And now, little by little, with halting words and dialect  phrases, more revelations emerge. Giuseppa  has made friends with her aunt Domitilla,  Signoretto's wife, who has introduced her  to forbidden books of French philosophy, full  of sacrilegious ideas and demands for freedom.  Don Giulio Carbonelli hates these new  ideas that are circulating among young people even more  than Duke Pietro does, and has tried  to prevent her taking a direction "absolutely  unsuitable for a Carbonelli of the baronial  estates of Scarapull`e". But his wife  completely ignored him and so he found a devious  and brutal way of showing her without wasting words that  he was master of the house.
  Now it is a question of convincing her daughter that  vendettas only lead to more vendettas and that such a  quarrel between husband and wife is unthinkable.  Nor can she think of separating from him: she has a  small son and cannot leave him without a father.  What's more, a woman without a husband can only  take refuge in a convent if she is not to be  branded as a prostitute. She must find a way of  making him respect her without either vendettas or  reprisals. What can be done?
  While she is reflecting Marianna  writes, "But what are these French fans?"
  "They have bedroom scenes painted between the  spokes", her daughter writes impatiently.  Marianna nods, embarrassed.
  "You must win his respect", she insists, but she  is finding it difficult to keep her handwriting  composed and firm.
  "We fight like cat and dog."
  "It was you who were so determined to have him. If you  had married your uncle Antonio as your father  proposed. ..."
  "I'd rather be dead. Uncle Antonio is an  old stick-in-the-mud with the eyes of a hen. I'd  rather have Giulio with his bonnet-maker. It was only  because of your wretched dumbness that you had to marry your
  
uncle, my boorish father. ... If I  told Mariano, do you think he'd know how  to avenge me?"
  "Get that idea right out of your head,  Giuseppa."
  "They could wait for him outside the door and  beat him up. ... That's what I want,  Mamma."
  Marianna turns towards her daughter with a  dark look. The girl makes an angry face  and bites her lip. But her mother still has some power  over her, and confronted with the severe expression in  her eyes, Giuseppa withdraws and gives up the  idea of a vendetta.

                XXIV

  The curtains are drawn. The velvet hangs  in wide folds. The vaulted ceiling gathers up  the shadows. A few gleams of light penetrate  the curtains and dissolve on to the floor, forming  bright pools of dust.
  There is a smell of camphor in the stale  air. Water is boiling in a saucepan placed  on top of the stove. The bed is so big that it  takes up one whole wall of the room. At the  corners above it rest four columns of carved  wood and between them hang embroidered curtains with  silken cords.
  Beneath the crumpled sheet is Manina's sweating  body. For days and days she has lain still with her  eyes closed. No one can tell whether she is  going to survive. The same smells as when  Signoretto was dying, the same gelatinous  consistency, the same fevered heat with its cloying  sickly taste.
  Marianna stretches out her hand towards her  daughter's. She is lying with her palms turned  upwards on the blanket, and cautiously  Marianna strokes the damp palm with her fingers.  How many times did her daughter's hand clutch  hold of her skirt just as she, in her time, had  clutched at her father's habit, demanding attention,    a series of demands that could be coalesced into a  single plea: can I trust you? But perhaps she has  also discovered it is not possible to trust anyone,  even someone you love blindly. In the end they will  remain distant, incomprehensible.
  Manina's hands, the whiteness of which is often  blemished by the red bites of mosquitoes, are just
  
like those of Agata. The aunt and niece  are alike in many ways, each very beautiful, and  each with a nature that tends to be cruelly  self-sacrificing. Alienated from all  philandering, all care, all feeling for themselves,  both are entirely dedicated to maternal love,  obsessed by an adoration of their children that is close  to idolatry.
  The only difference lies in Manina's sense  of humour, with which she tries to keep the peace  by making people laugh while staying deadly serious  herself. Agata sacrifices herself to motherhood without  ever asking for anything in return, and regards  women who have not made the same choice with some  contempt. She already has eight children and her  pregnancies continue in spite of the fact that she  is thirty-nine. She is never tired, always  wrestling with wet-nurses, nannies,  surgeons, leeches and midwives.
  Manina likes a quiet life too much  to disparage anybody. Her dream is to weave together  with one thread husband, children, parents and relatives  and to hold them firmly to her. At twenty-five  she has had six children and, since she was married at  twelve, her sons seem more like brothers while  they are growing up.
  Marianna remembers her stumbling on her  plump legs, dressed in a full-skirted  dress patterned with red flowers she had copied from  a painting by Vel@azquez, of which she had a  reproduction in water-colours. A rosy child,  calm, with eyes of aquamarine. She had not yet  emerged from that painting when she stepped into another on  the arm of her husband, her enormous belly  borne before her like a trophy offered without shame  to the admiration of passers-by.
  Two miscarriages and one baby stillborn.  But she has survived it all without too much  damage. "My body is a waiting-room, there  is always an infant coming in or going out", she  wrote about herself to her mother, and these entrances and    exits do not in any way disconcert her, indeed  she has thrived on them: the confusion of children, forever  running, eating, shitting, sleeping, screaming,  fills her with happiness.
  But now the latest birth may kill her. The  baby was well positioned, at least according to the  midwife. Her breasts had begun to secrete  milk and Manina amused herself by letting the  smallest ones taste it. They climbed on to her
  
lap and attached themselves to the nipple,  squeezing and pulling at the hard-worked flesh.
  The baby was born dead and she went on losing  blood till she became grey. The midwife,  by continuing to plug her with bandages, managed  to staunch the bleeding, but by nightfall the mother had  become delirious. Now she hangs on by a  thread, her face as white as chalk, her eyes  dimmed.
  Marianna takes a piece of cloth, dips  it in water and lemon juice and puts it close  to her daughter's lips. For a moment she sees her  eyes open, but they are blind; she does not  recognise her. A smile of satisfaction  passes across her bloodless face, a glimmer of  sublime indifference to herself, a radiance of  self-sacrifice. Who can have implanted this  mania for maternal abnegation, this fervour for  deliberate self-immolation? Aunt Teresa the  Prioress? Or the white-haired nurse with the  hair shirt underneath her bodice, who compelled  her to pray for hours, kneeling beside the bed? Or  perhaps Don Ligustro, who is also Aunt  Fiammetta's confessor and who has been  close to her for years, teaching her the catechism  and the doctrines of the Church? And yet Don  Ligustro is not at all fanatical, indeed  at one time he seemed to be much taken with the great  Cornelius Jansen, known as Giansenio.  Somewhere there is a note from Father Ligustro that  begins with a quote from Aristotle: "God is too  perfect to think of other than Himself."
  Neither Agata nor Manina expects anything  from her husband: neither love nor friendship. And perhaps  it is because of this that they are loved. Don Diego  di Torre Mosca never leaves his wife's  side for a moment and is obsessed with jealousy because  of her.
  Manina's husband, Don Francesco  Chiarand@a di Magazzinasso, is also very  attached to his wife although this does not prevent  him from pursuing housekeepers and servants about the  place, especially when they are from the "Continent"  of Italy. As happened with a girl called  Rosina, who came from Benevento: a  fine-looking haughty girl who waited at table.  She got herself pregnant by his lordship and  everybody was very upset. Manina's mother-in-law,  the Baroness Chiarand@a di Magazzinasso,  removed her from her son's house and sent her off
  
to Messina to the house of some friends who were  in need of an elegant-looking servant.  Fiammetta came from the convent to reprimand her  nephew. Aunts, in-laws and cousins  scurried to the big drawing-room of the Palazzo  Chiarand@a in the Via Toledo to sympathise with the  poor wife.
  But the one person who took no thought for herself in  the whole business was Manina, who volunteered  to bring up the illegitimate child, keeping both him  and his mother in the house. And she said wittily of the  resemblance between father and son that they both sported  the same little prick of a nose. But her  mother-in-law remained obdurate and Manina  gave in with her usual submissiveness, inclining  her beautiful head, which she has taken  to decorating with a string of pink pearls.
  Now the pearls are there on the chest of drawers  and they gleam with mauve light in the shadows of the  room. Next to them are four rings: the ruby ring  of Grandmother Maria, which is still stained with dirt and from  which still emanate whiffs of snuff from Trieste; a  cameo ring with the head of Venus that belonged  to Great-grandmother Giuseppa and before her  to Great-great-grandmother Agata Ucr@ia; a heavy  gold wedding ring and a silver ring with dolphins, which  Grandfather Signoretto used to wear. Beside them is  a tortoiseshell comb studded with diamonds that  has been passed down from the raven-black hair  of the mother-in-law to the fair hair of the  daughter-in-law.
  The ring with the dolphins had once been lost  by Marianna's father, which created a great to-do  throughout the whole family. Finally it was found  by Innocenza near the water-lily pond. As a  result, from then on she rested on her laurels,  as they say, and became for everyone "honest  Innocenza". Later the dolphin ring got lost  once again: this time her father the Duke had left it  at the house of an opera singer of whom he was  enamoured.
  "Out of respect I took off the ring and put  it on the bedside table", he wrote confidentially  to his daughter.
  "Respect for whom, Father?"
  "For your mother, for the family." But as he wrote  it a smile flitted across his face, something  plausible and at the same time implausible. He  took pleasure in familiar situations, family  evenings, but also in recitals, spectacles or
  
parades, and the daring of an occasional  night's jaunt in the town. He did not want  to upset convention or hurt anyone's feelings, but  at the same time he was interested in new ideas, in  every unexpected emotion, tolerant of the  contradictions within himself and intolerant of other  people's.
  "But did you find the ring?"
  "I was in the wrong. I thought Clementina had  stolen it. Instead she had me find it a couple of  days later on the pillow. She was a good little  girl."
  She has a box full of notes from her father and  she keeps it locked in the chest of drawers by the  bed. She has thrown her own notes away but those  of her father, a few of her mother's, and a few of the  children's she has kept. Every so often she takes them  out and reads them. The free and easy handwriting of  her father, the laboured, cramped hand of her mother, the  narrow, sloping o's of her son Mariano, the  flying s's and l's of her daughter Felice,  the distorted signature, all blotted with ink, of  her daughter Giuseppa. She has not even one  note of Manina's. Perhaps because she has not  written much or perhaps because whenever she does write  on her mother's notepad the message has been  too insignificant to be worth keeping. She  has never enjoyed writing, this daughter with her  lush, casual beauty. She loves music more  than she loves the written word. Her  witticisms, which are always aimed at diverting people  from their dark thoughts, quarrels and bad temper,  only reach Marianna when they are written down;  and it is never Manina who writes them.
  During the early years of their marriage  Manina and Francesco were in the habit of inviting  friends to their big house in the Via Toledo every  evening. They had a French cook with a pockmarked  face who used to prepare exquisite foie  gras and delicious coquilles aux  herbes. After the customary sorbet of  pomegranate and lemon they would go into the  drawing-room with its frescos by Intermassimi.  Marianna remembers that there were also chimeras with the  body of a lioness and the face of a woman. Manina    used to sit at the harpsichord and let her fingers  glide over the keys, at first timidly,  cautiously, and then with more confidence until her  mouth took on a bitter, almost ferocious  expression.
  
  After the death of their second child and the  two miscarriages that followed it, the Chiarand@as  had ceased entertaining. Only on Sundays did  they sometimes ask relations to dinner and then Manina  would play the harpsichord with great energy. But her  face no longer became distorted, it remained as  smooth and calm as she looks in the portrait  by Intermassimi that hangs in the dining-room  amidst a cloud of angels, birds of paradise  and serpents with fishes' heads. Later she gave  up music altogether. Now her seven-year-old  daughter Giacinta sits at the harpsichord beside  a music teacher from Switzerland, who beats time  on the lid with a baton made from olive wood.
  Marianna has become drowsy as she holds  her daughter's feverish hand. The emptiness  inside her head resounds with the drumming of the bay  horse Miguelito's hoofs. Heaven knows where  he is galloping now, that old horse originally  given to her father the Duke by a distant cousin,  Pipino Ondes, who in his turn had bought him from  a gipsy.
  For years Miguelito lived in the stables behind  the Villa Ucr@ia, next to the sunless house  of the Cal@o family, together with the other Arab  horses. Then her father had taken a liking to him  because of his gentle and courageous nature, and rode  him when going to the Villa Butera or the Villa  Palagonia, and sometimes even as far as  Palermo. In old age he ended up with the  Cal@os, being urged up and down precipitous  slopes by the twins Lina and Lena. Eventually  he became blind in one eye and then he used to carry  old Cal@o behind the cows, on the plain of  Bagheria. When the twins died he could still be seen  wandering round the olive grove, very thin but ready  to take off at a gallop, hardly touching the  dusty slope that led down from the villa.
  In a little while I will jump on his back,  Marianna tells herself, and we'll go to find my  father. But where is the old horse now? Worn and  blind, his teeth yellow and broken with age, he has  not lost his look of daring or the thick  coffee-coloured mane for which he was famous. But his  tail has something strange about it. It has got  longer, twisted, swollen. And now it stretches,  wriggles and pushes out a sharp point. It seems  as if it wants to grab her round the waist and throw  her against a rock. Is he being transformed into one  of those dogs that used to people her mother's dreams?
  
  Marianna opens her eyes just in time  to glimpse through the half-open door a quivering  lock of hair and two soft dark eyes watching  her.

                XXV

  From far off they look like three large  tortoises moving slowly along the narrow path  among tall grass and stones. Three  tortoises: three litters, each preceded and  followed by two mules. In Indian file, one  behind the other, between the woods and the steep  precipices, following an inaccessible path that  goes from Bagheria towards the Serre mountains,  passing through Misilmeri, Villafrati, until  it reaches the heights of the Portella del  Coniglio. Four armed men follow behind the  procession, four others precede it with muskets  on their shoulders.
  Marianna sits suspended, enclosed in a  narrow swinging seat, her heavy skirt raised a  little over her sweating ankles, her hair drawn  back and coiled up on her neck for coolness.  Every now and then she lifts her hand to chase away a  fly. In front of her, on a seat lined with  brocade, in a white dress of Indian  voile, with a blue scarf across her knees,  Giuseppa lies asleep, oblivious to the  jolting and lurching of the litter.
  Now the path becomes narrower and steeper, on  one side hovering on the edge of a precipice  strewn with pinkish-grey rocks, on the other  overhung by a steep wall of black earth and a  tangle of bushes. Now and again the hoofs of the  mules skid on the rocks, making the litter  lurch to one side, but then they recover and climb  on, struggling to avoid the potholes in the path.
  The muleteer guides them by going a few yards  ahead, carrying a staff to test the muddy ground.  At times the legs of the mules sink into the clay  and, weighed down by clods of mud, can only be  got out with a great struggle and much use of the whip.  At other times the tall needle-like grasses  become tangled round their fetlocks, hindering their  movement.
  Marianna holds on to the wooden handle, her  stomach churning, wondering if she will end up being  sick. Leaning her head out of the door, she can see  the litter suspended over a precipice. Why
  
don't they stop, why does this  infuriating swaying that turns her stomach upside  down never end? The fact is that to stop would be even  more dangerous than to go on, and the mules, as if they  understood this, are pushing forward with lowered heads,  puffing and blowing, keeping the shafts balanced  by instinctively controlling their muscles.
  The flies come and go from the faces of the animals  to the inside of the little carriage: the movement  excites them. They fly over the Duchess's  tied-up hair and over Giuseppa's open  lips. Marianna realises that it is better  to look into the distance and try to forget that she is a  prisoner suspended between two wooden poles  balanced over the void. Looking out she can see,  beyond the stony precipices, beyond a wood of cork  trees, in the middle of a gradual slope of  fields scorched by the sun, the valley of  Sciara, its wide stretch of land cultivated with  wheat: an expanse covered by a yellow down of  feathers barely shaken by the wind. Between the fields  of grain, as alive and sinuous as a snake with  shiny scales, the river San Leonardo flows  down into the gulf of Termini Imerese.
To Marianna's wide-open eyes, the great  metallic river, the groves of cork trees with  their reddish streaks, the stretches of sugar cane,  are enclosed within a solid block of glassy  heat scarcely shaken by an internal shimmering that  is only just perceptible.
  The magnificent landscape has made her  forget the flies and the travel-sickness. She is  about to stretch her hand out towards her daughter, who  is sleeping with her head bent over her shoulder, but  then she stops with her hand in mid-air. She is  undecided whether to wake her and show her the view,  or to let her sleep, remembering that they were up  at four in the morning and that the swaying motion does  not make it easy to stay awake.
  Trying not to endanger the balance of this fragile  domed shell, Marianna leans forward to see if  the other litters are following them. In one is  Manina, thin and beautiful after her recovery, and  Felice, who fans herself with a big fan of  yellow silk. In the other litter travel  Innocenza and Fila.
  Among the armed men are Raffaele Cuffa, his  cousin Calogero Usura, Peppino Geraci the  gardener at the Villa Ucr@ia, old Ciccio  Cal@o, his nephew Tot@o, and Saro. Since
  
uncle husband died and left him a  hundred escudos and all his clothes, Saro has  assumed a posture of studied nonchalance, which  makes him look a little ridiculous but also  gives him a new resplendence. The moon  crescents of his ribs have gone from his chest. His  black lock of hair no longer waves  audaciously over his forehead but is now firmly  contained within a small white-curled wig that  Duke Pietro had when he was a young man. It  is a little too large for him and has a tendency  to slide down over his ears.
  He is still very handsome even though he looks  different, less juvenile, more knowledgeable and  composed. But above all he has changed his ways,  which are now almost those of a gentleman born between linen  sheets in a large palace in Palermo. He  has learned to move gracefully but without  affectation. He rides a horse like a prince,  putting the point of his boot into the stirrup and  lifting himself up on it with a light,  self-possessed spring. He has learned how  to bow in front of ladies, advancing one leg and  making a broad sweep with his arm, not forgetting  to reverse his wrist and toss the feathers of his  tricorn hat at the last moment.
  He has scaled one by one the steps that lead  to glory, this determined orphan, discovered  half-naked one night in Fila's room, with his  mouse's tail and his penitent smirk. But he is  still not satisfied: it is his ambition to learn  to write and to do sums. So great is the diligence  with which he applies himself, so great his patience, that  even uncle husband realised his worth and helped  by giving him lessons in heraldry, good manners  and chivalry.
  Now there remain only a few crowning steps  to climb, and among these is the conquest of his lady,  the beautiful dumb woman who rejects his  advances with such arrogance. Is this what makes him  so bold or is there something else? It is hard  to say--the young man has also learned the art of  dissimulation. At her uncle husband's funeral  he was the most grief-stricken, as if it were his own  father who had died. And when he was told that the  Duke had left him a small bequest in gold,  money, clothes, shoes and wigs, he went white  with astonishment and has continued to proclaim that he  is "not worthy of it".
  The funeral reduced Marianna to a state of
  
total exhaustion: nine days of  ceremonies, masses, suppers with relations, the  preparation of mourning clothes for the entire family,  the floral decorations, the hundreds of wax  candles for the church, the wailing women who wept for  two days and two nights beside the corpse. At  last the body was taken to the catacombs of the  Capuchins to be embalmed. She would have preferred  him to lie in peace beneath the earth, but Mariano and  her brother Signoretto had been adamant.
Duke Pietro Ucr@ia of Campo
Spagnolo, Lord of Scannatura, Count of
Sala di Paruta, Marquis of Sollazzi,  must be embalmed and preserved in the crypts of the  Capuchins like his ancestors.
  They had crowded down into the catacombs,  stumbling over their trains, their torches in danger  of setting fire to the bier, in a m`el@ee of  hands, shoes, cushions, flowers, swords,  liveries and candlesticks. Then they had all  vanished, and she was left alone with the naked body  of her dead husband, while the monks prepared the  embalming table and the bath of saltpetre.
  At the beginning she had refused to look at  him; to do so seemed indecent. Her eyes were gazing  further up to three old men with tarred leathery skin  that stuck to their bones and fastened them to the walls,  to which they were also hooked by the neck, their skeletal  hands fixed across their chests with a thong. On top of  polished wooden shelves lay other corpses:  elegant ladies dressed in their best clothes,  their arms crossed on their breasts, their bonnets  yellowing at the edges, their lips stretched over  their teeth. Some had been lying there for only a  few weeks and emitted a strong acid smell.  Others had been there for fifty or a hundred  years and had become quite odourless.
  A barbarous custom, Marianna told herself,  and tried to remember what Mr Hume had said about  death, but her mind was blank. It would be better  to be burned and thrown into the Ganges like the  Indians rather than remain immured in these underground  passages, gathered together with all one's relations  and friends with exalted names and skin crumbling like  paper.
  Her gaze settled on a body under a glass  cover that had been perfectly preserved: a little  girl with long eyelashes, fair hair, eyes like  minute shells lying on an embroidered pillow,  a bare exposed forehead on which glistened two
  
drops of sweat. And suddenly she saw  who it was: the sister of Grandmother Giuseppa,  who died from the plague when she was six years  old. A great-aunt who never grew up and  seemed to be engaged in proclaiming the  miraculous eternity of the flesh. Of all the  bodies piled there only that of the little girl had  remained in a state everyone could hope for after  death: without blemish, tender, rapt in a  tranquil tedium. Instead, the embalming carried  out by the monks so famous for their use of natural  saltpetre had become after some time flaked and  hardened, accentuating the outlines of the skeletons  that remained scarcely veiled by a film of dark  flesh.
  Marianna brought her eyes back to the naked  body of uncle husband stretched out before her. But  why had they left her there on her own? Perhaps so that  she could give him a last farewell, or  possibly to reflect on the frailty of the  mortal body? Oddly enough the sight of his forsaken  limbs reassured her: he was so different from the  other bodies surrounding her, so fresh and  tranquil, distinguished by the veins, eyelashes,  hair and full lips that characterise the living. Those  waves of grey hair preserved intact the  memory of sunlit countryside; the cheeks still  retained a few gleams of pink candlelight.
  Just above him a small slab incised in copper  said "Memento mori"; but the corpse of uncle  husband seemed to be saying "Memento vivere", so  great was the force of his numbed flesh in comparison  with the make-believe papier m`ach`e of all the  other embalmed bodies. She had never seen him  like this, so naked and yet still composed and dignified,  with his flaccid muscles and the severe folds of his  stony countenance. A body that had never inspired  her with love because of the austere, cold and violent  behaviour that went with it. Of late something had  altered in his way of approaching her: always  furtive as if he intended to steal something from her,  but accompanied by a new uncertainty, a doubt that  came from her sudden inexplicable refusal of him  so many years ago. This hesitancy, a little  studied and clumsy, was born of a silent, confused  respect and had made him less of a stranger  to her. If she was ever aware of herself wanting  to hold his hand she knew that even the thought of a  caress was foreign to him. From his ancestors he had  inherited the idea that love is predatory:
  
to take aim, to assault, to lacerate,  to devour--then to go away satisfied, leaving behind a  carcass, a skin, empty of life.
  This naked body lying abandoned on the stone  flags, all ready to be cut, emptied and  filled up with saltpetre, inspired her now with a  sudden feeling of sympathy; or perhaps something more, with  compassion. She stretched out her hand and with her fingers  she stroked his temple, while unexpected tears  started to trickle without warning down her cheeks.  Scrutinising this drawn, pallid face,  following the fleeting curve of the lips, the jutting  cheekbones, the minute, dark wings of the nose, she  tried to fathom the secret of his body.
  She had never imagined uncle husband as a child.  It was impossible. He had always been old ever  since she had known him, attired in those red  garments that reminded her of seventeenth-century  finery rather than the elegance of the new century, his  head eternally encased in fantastic wigs, his  movements cautious and stiff. Yet once she  had seen a portrait of him as a child, which had  later become lost. In front of a garland of  flowers and fruit the heads of the two Ucr@ia children  stood out: the fair, dreamy Maria already getting  a little plump, Pietro with even fairer hair,  tow-coloured, tall and stringy, with a look of proud  melancholy in his eyes. Behind, as in a showcase,  the heads of his parents were visible, Carlo  Ucr@ia of Campo Spagnolo and Giulia
Scebarr@as of Avila: she robust and  dark-haired, with a look of zealous authority, he  delicate and elusive, shrouded in a long  tunic composed of pale lifeless colours. It was  from that side of the Ucr@ia family that the softness of  Maria's features came, while Pietro had  taken after the old Scebarr@as, a race of  warriors and rapacious despots.
  Grandmother Giulia recounted that Pietro as a  little boy was choosy and touchy: he picked  quarrels about nothing and amused himself having fights  with all and sundry. He was always the victor, it  seemed, because in spite of looking poorly he had  muscles of iron. In the family he was  considered odd. He spoke little, and he was  morbidly attached to his clothes, which he  pretended were of silk and damask, edged with gold.  Yet he had generous impulses that surprised  those close to him. One day he gathered together the children  of the cowherds in Bagheria and made them presents
  
of all his toys. Another time he took  some jewels from his mother and gave them to a poor  woman who was begging for alms.
  He liked betting games but knew how  to control himself. He wouldn't spend whole nights  at the gaming tables playing cards, as many of his  friends did. He didn't keep seamstresses or  ironing women, he drank only small  quantities of wine from his father's vineyards.  Only fighting attracted him, even with people of lower  rank, and for this Grandmother Giulia punished him with the  whip. However, he never rebelled against his  parents, he even venerated them, and each time he was  punished he accepted it with cold contrition.  Throughout his adolescence and youth he loved no one  except his sister Maria, with whom he played  interminable games of cards.
  When his little sister got married he shut himself in  the house and didn't go out for almost a year. His  only companion was a kid goat that used to lie  on his bed and at mealtimes creep under the table with the  dogs. In the family this was tolerated as long as  the animal remained a kid with a delicate head  and light hoofs. But as it grew older it  developed twisted horns and was transformed into a  full-sized nanny-goat that butted against the  furniture. Grandmother Giulia ordered it to be  taken into the fields and left there.
  Pietro obeyed but at night he used to go out  in secret to sleep in the stables with the goat.  Grandmother Giulia got to know of it and ordered the  beast to be killed; then in front of the whole  family she whipped her son on his bare  buttocks just as old Great-grandfather Scebarr@as  had done to her and her brothers when they were children.
  From that day on Pietro became strange and    unpredictable. He would disappear for weeks and  no one would know where he had got to. Or he would  shut himself in his room without letting anyone in, not  even the servant who came to bring him food. He  never spoke to his mother, although if he saw her he  would bow, as was his duty.
  By the age of forty he was still unmarried and, apart  from the brothel he would sometimes resort to, he  did not seem to know what love was. The only  person he felt at ease with was his sister  Maria. He often went to visit her in her  husband's house and speak a few words with her. His    father had died shortly after the death of the goat, but  no one mourned for him; he was a man so lifeless
  
as to seem dead even while he was still  alive. When his niece Marianna was born  Pietro became even more assiduous in his  visits to the Via Alloro although he did not have  much feeling for his cousin and brother-in-law  Signoretto. He grew very affectionate  towards the little girl, whom he used to take in his  arms and cuddle as he had cuddled the goat years  before.
  No one thought of trying to find a wife for him  until the death of a bachelor uncle of the  Scebarr@as branch of the family, who had  accumulated a fortune in land and money and left it  all to his only nephew. Then Grandmother  Giulia decided to give him in marriage to an  influential lady of Palermo, who had  recently become a widow: the Marchioness Milo  delle Saline di Trapani, a woman of  great determination, who could have restrained the strange  eccentricities of her son. But Pietro was  opposed to it and declared he would never sleep in the  same bed as a woman unless she were one of the  daughters of his sister Maria. And since one of  these three daughters had been promised as a  nun, there remained only two, Agata and  Marianna. Agata was too young; Marianna was  a deaf-mute, but had reached the age of thirteen,  when it was acceptable for girls to get married.
  Moreover, as her mother Maria and her father  pointed out, it would have been a waste to give  Agata to her uncle, when with all her beauty she  had a chance of making a splendid marriage.  Therefore it was right that it should be Marianna who should  marry the eccentric Pietro. He had already shown  himself to be very affectionate towards her. Besides, there  was an urgent need for money to pay off old and  new debts, to renovate the palace in the Via  Alloro, which was falling into ruin, to buy new  carriages and horses and to renew the livery of the  house. Marianna would lose nothing; if she did  not get married, she would be incarcerated in a  convent. Instead this would open up a new dynasty:  the Ucr@ias of Campo Spagnolo, Lords of  Scannatura, Counts of Sala di Paruta,  Marquises of Sollazzi and of Taya, not  to mention Lords of Scebarr@as and of Avila.
  Before her death Grandmother Giulia had called for  her son and asked him to forgive her for having  whipped him in front of the servants over the  business of the goat. Her son Pietro looked
  
at her without uttering a word and then, just before  she expired, said in a loud voice: "I hope  you will have the good fortune to meet your Scebarr@as  relations in hell." And this while the priest was  blurting out "Glory be to the Father" and the hired  mourning women were preparing to weep for three days and  three nights.
  So Pietro had his niece. But once they  got married he became incapable of recapturing  the endearments he had bestowed on her while she was a  child. It was as if marriage, in consecrating her,  had frozen his fatherly tenderness.

                XXVI

  "And Don Mariano?"
  "Is your son not coming, Your Excellency?"  "What is he doing, is he afraid?"
  "We are waiting for him, our new master."  "With the death of Don Pietro we were expecting  him."
  Marianna crumples the notes she holds in  her lap with restless fingers. How to account for the  non-appearance of Mariano, who has suddenly  become head of the family, inheritor and owner of the  estates of Campo Spagnolo, of
Scannatura, of Taya, of Sala di
Paruta, of Sollazzi and Fiumefreddo. How  to say to these peasant guards and rent collectors  --known as gabelloti--who have come to see him, that  the young Ucr@ia has remained in Palermo with his  wife because, quite simply, he does not wish to stir  himself.
  "You go, Mamma, I have things to do", he had  written, suddenly appearing in front of her in a  new redingote of English brocade studded with  incrustations of gold.
  It is true that twelve hours in a litter  along mountain paths is a punishing experience, and  indeed few of the barons from Palermo submit  themselves to such an ordeal to visit their estates in the  interior. But today is one of those rare occasions  regarded as imperative, as much by relations and friends  as by his tenants. The new landlord must go the rounds  of his estates, he must make himself known, he must  talk, he must see to the renovation of old houses,  he must get to know what has been going on during  his long absences in the city, he must endeavour  to inspire some respect, some liking, or at the very  least some curiosity.
  
  Perhaps she was wrong not to have insisted,  Marianna tells herself, but he did not give her  a chance. He had kissed her hand, and off he had  gone as swiftly as he had arrived, leaving in the  air a strong perfume of roses. The same  scent as her father the Duke had used, except that  he only moistened the lace of his shirt while her  son uses it indiscriminately, pouring a whole  bottle all over himself.
  Towards Marianna, the dumb woman, the  guards and the gabelloti react with an  uneasiness that is close to fear. They see her as  a kind of saint, someone who does not belong to the  exclusive breed of nobles, but to that poor and in  some way sacred group of the crippled, the sick  and the mutilated. They feel pity but are also  disconcerted by her inquisitive and penetrating  gaze. And then they are mostly illiterate, and  she with her notes, her pens, her hands stained with  ink, puts them in a state of unbearable  apprehension.
  As is usual they entrust the priest, Don  Pericle, with the task of writing on their behalf,  but not even his intercession satisfies them. And then  she is a woman and, even if she owns the land,  what can a woman understand about property, grain, the  sowing of fields, about debts, toll dues, et  cetera? And so, to begin with, they regard her with  disappointment, and go on and on about Don Mariano  even though they have never seen him. Duke Pietro  came to them a year before he died. He arrived as  usual on horseback, refusing the satin-lined  seat of the litter, with his gun, his watchman, his  rolls of paper and his saddle bags.
  Now they are confronted by the Duchess  Marianna and they don't know where to begin. Don  Pericle sits in the middle of them on a large  seat of smooth leather, and slides a rosary through  his chubby fingers. He's waiting for them to start  talking. As the men turn their heads towards the  veranda Marianna realises that her daughters are  passing by and laughing beneath the porticos, perhaps  brushing their hair in the shade of the stone arches.  She longs to shut herself in her room and go  to sleep. Her back is hurting, her eyes are  burning, her legs are stiff from having to remain still  and bent in the litter for hours on end. But she  knows that however she confronts these people she must make  amends for the absence of her son and try to convince  them that he was indeed unable to come. Consequently she
  
pulls herself together andwitha gesture invites  them to speak. Don Pericle transcribes in his  incisive language.
  "Thirteen onze to refurbish the well.  Result--well is dry. Will need another 10  onze."
  "At Sollazzi shortage of labour.  Smallpox takes ten men."
  "A prisoner because of bankruptcy. A  peasant from Campo Spagnolo estate. In  chains for last twenty days."
  "Big sale: 120 carcasses. Supplement  bills of sale. No liquid money. Cash  sale 0.27 onze, 110 tar@i."
  "Cheese from your sheep, 900 equal to 30  rottoli and 10 of ricotta."
  "Wool. Four rottoli."
  Marianna reads meticulously all the  notes that Don Pericle passes to her one by one  as the men talk. She nods her head, she  watches the faces of her gabelloti and her  guards: Carlo Santangelo, known as U  Zoppu, "the lame one", even though he does not  limp at all; she met him when she came with  uncle husband soon after their marriage. Strong  features, sparse hair on a sunburnt  cranium, a mouth with parched lips cracked by the  sun. He holds in his hand a grey hat with a  wide soft brim that he knocks impatiently  against his thigh.
  There is Ciccio Panella, who has insisted  that Don Pericle should write his name for the  "Duchessa" in large letters on a clean sheet of  paper. He is a new peasant guard, about  twenty-two years old. Thin and sharp as a  rake, with bright eyes and a large mouth with two  teeth missing on the right-hand side, he seems  to be the most curious about her, the least concerned at  the prospect of a woman as landlord instead of a  man. He gazes intently at the neckline of  her dress, obviously fascinated by the whiteness  of her skin.
  Then there is Nino Settani, a veteran of the  estate: an old man, standing firmly upright with  eyes that seem as black as if they were painted,  edged with black and hidden beneath the arch of thick  black eyebrows. In contrast his hair is white  and falls in untidy locks on to his shoulders.
  Don Pericle continues handing her sheets of  paper filled with his large looped handwriting and she
  
collects them on the upturned palm of  her hand, intending to read them at her leisure. In  fact she does not really understand what to make of  these notes or what to reply to these men who have come  to account for the entries and debits, and still less how  to respond to the many questions on matters that are part  of the life of the peasant.
  But is it true about the prisoner held in the  house? Has she understood it properly? And where  have they put him?
  "Where is the prisoner?"
  "He is underneath us, in the cellar, Your  Excellency."
  "Tell the gabelloti and the guards to come  back tomorrow."
  Don Pericle never gets upset for any  reason; he makes a gesture with his head and the  gabelloti and the guards go towards the door after  having bowed to kiss the hand of the dumb Duchess.  At the door they meet Fila, who comes in  carrying a tray laden with glasses with long thin  stems. Marianna makes a sign to her to go    back, but it is too late. She gestures  to invite the men to retrace their steps and accept the  refreshment which has appeared at the wrong moment.
  Hands reach out uncertainly towards the silver  tray and close gently round the stems, as if a  single touch of their rough fingers might make the  glass explode; cautiously they bring the  chalices to their mouths. Then they form another  queue to kiss her hand but she sends them away  to spare them this tedious obligation, and they go past  her, holding their hats, bowing with eyes lowered.
  "Take me down to the condemned prisoner,  Don Pericle", writes Marianna  impatiently, and Don Pericle, imperturbable  as ever, gives her an arm draped in black  perfumed cloth.
  A long passage, a dark cupboard, a  store room, the kitchen, a drying room, another  passage, the gun room with shotguns stacked in  their racks, large baskets scattered round the  floor, two wooden ducks leaning against a  chair. A strong smell of badly cured leather,  of dust from gun-shot, of mutton fat ... then a  small room where the flags and banners are  kept: the standard of the House of Savoy rolled  up clumsily in a corner, the white flag of the  Inquisition, the sky-blue one of Philip  Very, the red, white and silver one of
  
Elizabetta Farnese, the one with the  Hapsburg eagle and the blue one with the gold  fleur-de-lys of the Bourbons.
  Marianna stops for a moment in the middle of the  room, calling Don Pericle's attention to the  rolled-up flags. She wants to tell him that  all these bits of cloth, so carefully stitched,  are useless and should be thrown away. All they  reveal is the indifference to politics of her  husband the Duke, who, doubting the stability of the  reigning houses, kept them there, all at the  ready. In 1713, like everyone else, he hoisted  the flag of Savoy on the tower of  Scannatura; in 1720 he put up the
Austrian flag of Charles VII of the  Hapsburgs; in 1735, quite dispassionately, he  hoisted that of Charles III, King of the Two  Sicilies, without ever putting away the preceding  ones, ready to bring them out as new in the event of a  change of loyalty, as happened in the case of the  Spaniards, who were thrown out of the island and came  back thirty-five years later after a terrible  war that caused more deaths than an epidemic of  smallpox.
  It was not just opportunism on the part of Duke  Pietro, it was contempt for "those dogs who come and  lord it over us". It would never have occurred to him  to join with other malcontents in laying down  conditions or resisting the high-handedness of  foreigners. His wolf's footsteps led him to go  where there was nothing to assault but a few solitary  sheep. Politics were incomprehensible to him.  Problems should be resolved on their own, face  to face with one's own God, in that desolate and  heroic place which was for him the conscience of a  Sicilian nobleman.
  Don Pericle, after having stood waiting for  her to decide whether to continue the walk, becomes  as restless as a mouse and gives an almost  imperceptible tug at her sleeve. And she  moves on ahead, proceeding down to the cellar  faster than he does. It is probable that he is  hungry: she suspects this from a slightly too  insistent pressure of the hand that is guiding her.

               XXVII

  The steps disappear into the darkness. The damp  makes her dress cling to her. Where does it come  from, this heat that smells of rats and straw, and where
  
do they lead to, these steep steps of  discoloured stone?
  Marianna's feet refuse to budge, her  face becomes distorted. She turns to Don  Pericle, who looks at her  uncomprehendingly. A sudden memory has come  down like a storm-cloud: her father wearing a  cassock with the hood raised, a boy with discharging  eyes, the hangman who spits out pumpkin  seeds. It is all there, dense and solid, and it  only needs a finger to set in motion the  mill-wheel that draws up the dirty water of the  past.
  Don Pericle is worried. He looks for  something to hold on to in case the Duchess  swoons into his arms; he weighs her up with his  eyes and holds out his hands ready in front of  him, planting his feet firmly on the ground. The  priest's worried face makes Marianna  smile, and now that the vision has disappeared she can  balance herself again. She thanks Don Pericle  with a nod and starts to go down the stairs. In the  meantime someone else has come, also carrying a  lighted torch. He holds it with his arm stretched  upwards so as to light the steps.
  From the shadow outlined on the wall, Marianna  guesses that it is Saro. Her breathing becomes  faster. Now she can see in front of them a heavy  door of light oak tortured with great nails and  bolts. Saro inserts the torch into an iron ring  that juts out from the wall, puts out his hand for the key  and moves gracefully towards the heavy  padlock. With a few quick movements he opens the  door, takes back the torch and makes way for the  Duchess and the priest to enter the cell.
  Sitting on a small heap of straw is a  man with white hair, so dirty that it seems  yellow, a worn doublet of wool on his naked  chest, a pair of patched breeches, his bare  feet scarred and swollen. Saro lifts the torch  above the prisoner, who looks at them with  astonishment, blinking his eyes. He smiles and  nods respectfully at the sight of the  Duchess's sumptuous clothes.
  "Ask him why he is shut up in here",  writes Marianna, resting the sheet of paper on  her knee. In her haste she has forgotten to bring  the little table.
  "The guard has already said, for insolvency."  "I want to hear it from him."
  
  Don Pericle patiently goes  over to the man and talks to him. The man thinks it  over for a little while and then answers. Don  Pericle writes down the man's words, leaning the  paper against the wall, holding himself well away from  it so as not to spill ink on himself, and bending down every  few seconds or so to dip the pen in the little  bottle placed on the floor.
  "Debts with the gabelloto not paid for a year.  They took away the three mules he had.  Waited till the next year for their 25 per  cent. The following year debt had risen to 30  onze and he defaulted, so they put him in  prison."
  "But why was he in debt to the gabelloto?"  "Harvest insufficient for him to pay."
  "If the gabelloto knew he was unable  to pay why ask again?"
  "There wasn't enough to eat."
  "Idiot, how on earth could the gabelloto have  enough when this man didn't?"
  There is no reply. The man looks  thoughtfully at the great lady who traces  mysterious black signs so rapidly on small  sheets of white paper, using a pen that looks just  as if it had been plucked from a hen's  backside.
  Marianna insists, tapping her fingers on the  paper and thrusting it under the priest's nose. He  starts to question the peasant once more. Finally he  answers and Don Pericle writes, this time  resting the page against Saro's back. He is  considerate enough to bend forward, turning himself into a  writing-table.
  "Gabelloto leases Your Excellency's  land from you. Then rents it out under an  agricultural tenancy to the peasant who  cultivates it and takes a quarter of crop.  Out of this he has to pay the gabelloto a  quantity of seed better than the gabelloto  provided. He must also pay protection money,  and if harvest poor and there are implements to be  repaired he has to go back to gabelloto for  help. At this point guard arrives on  horseback with gun and takes him to prison for  insolvency. Does Your Excellency understand?"
  "And how much longer does he have to stay down  here?"
  "Another year."
  "Let him out", writes Marianna and puts
  
her signature beneath it almost like a state  judge. And in effect, so far as this house and this  estate are concerned, the landowner does have  sovereign powers. This man, like Fila in her  turn, has been "given" to Mariano by uncle  husband, who had in his turn been made a  present of him by his uncle Antonio  Scebarr@as, who in his turn. ...
  It is not anywhere written down that this old man  with yellowing hair "belongs" to the Ucr@ia  family, but in fact they can do whatever they want  with him, keep him in a cellar until he rots  or send him home and just have him whipped. No one  would find it anything to make a fuss about. He is  a debtor who cannot pay and therefore he must to all  intents and purposes answer for his debt with his  body.
  "From the time of Philip II the Sicilian  barons obtained sovereign rights over their lands in  exchange for their acquiescence and inaction in the  Senate. Thus they themselves became the sole  administrators of justice." Where had she read  this? Her father the Duke had called it "justified  injustice" and his own magnanimity always prevented  him from profiting by it.
  The peasant guards have simply done whatever the  Ucr@ias with their own white unsullied hands  needed doing but would not dare to do themselves: lining up those  devilish peasants, inflicting blows, threatening  them with thrashings and incarcerating them in dungeons.  It is not hard to understand: it is all written down  in these sheets of paper in Don Pericle's  sprawling handwriting. From honesty or from laziness  he has reported the old man's words as he would  have reported those of a monsignor or a father of the  Holy Office. Now he is here watching, his  hands folded over his prominent belly, which  protrudes from under his cassock, trying to understand  what this crazy duchess is all about. She has  arrived here out of the blue and wants to know things that people  of her sort generally pretend not to know and which it is  certainly not appropriate for a well-brought-up  lady to know.
  A load of foolish fantasies and silly  whims ... a wavering of the spirit. ... Marianna  is aware of the priest's thoughts going round and round  as he stands next to her. Whims of a great lady  who today uses her intelligence to be compassionate,    but tomorrow the very same intelligence will be theorising about  the use of whips or hatpins.
  
  Marianna turns towards Don
Pericle with her eyes blazing, but he sits there  in a respectful attitude, quiet and discreet  --for what reason could he be reprimanded?
  This poor dumb woman, forty years old, with  such soft white flesh ... Heaven knows what  state of confusion there is inside her head ...  forever reading books ... always skulking behind the  written word. There's something quite ridiculous in this  obsession with having to understand everything, always asking  questions about the point of a fork, the tip of a nose, the  meaning of a chair. ... These present-day  aristocrats don't know how to enjoy life ...  they meddle in everything ... they have no conception of  humility, they'd rather have libraries than  litanies. ... A dumb duchess, just imagine  it! Yet there is something that shines in her face  ... poor soul ... she needs sympathy ...  she's in a sad state ... all head and no  body. ... If only she read books that were  edifying. But I've seen what she carries about with  her ... books in English, in French, filthy  rubbish ... all modern stuff. If only  she'd make up her mind to go back upstairs  ... the heat down here is suffocating, and then the  pangs of hunger are beginning to gnaw. ... At  least today there'll be something good to eat ... when their  lordships arrive titbits arrive with them. As for the  old man, all this sentimentality is right out of  place ... the law is the law and everyone is  entitled to his own. ...
  "Curb your thoughts!" writes Marianna  to Don Pericle. He reads it with amazement,  at a loss how to make sense of the reproof. He  raises conciliatory eyes to the Duchess, who  nods to him with a little mischievous smile and goes  up the stairs in front of him. Saro rushes  forward to light the way. She hastens along the  dusty carpets and reaches the dining-room, laughing  at the priest and at herself. Her daughters are  already seated at the table, Felice wearing an  elegant habit and a shining sapphire cross,  Manina in black and yellow, Giuseppa in  white with a blue silk scarf thrown over her  shoulders. They are waiting for her and Don  Pericle before they begin to eat.
  Marianna kisses her daughters but does not  sit down at the table. The idea of being at the  mercy of Don Pericle's thoughts daunts her.  Better to eat alone in her room. At least she
  
can read in peace there. Meanwhile she  writes a note to ensure that the old prisoner will  be set free immediately and that his debt will be paid out of  her own money.
  On the stairs she is joined by Saro, who  gallantly offers her his arm. But she refuses  and hurries in front of him, leaping up the  stairs two at a time. When she reaches her  room she shuts the door in his face. She has  hardly turned the key in the lock when she  regrets not having leaned on his arm, not having at  least signalled her thanks. She goes to the  window to watch him cross the courtyard with his  buoyant stride. Indeed, here he is, coming out  of the door at the foot of the stairs. She sees  him stop by the stables, raise his head and look for  her window.
  Marianna is about to try to conceal herself behind the  curtain, but realises that if she did this she would  be seen to be playing a game, so she stays in  front of the window, her eyes staring at him,  severe and thoughtful. Saro's face dissolves into a  smile of such seductive sweetness that for a moment  she is caught by it and finds herself smiling without  meaning to.

               XXVIII

  The hair-brush, dampened with a little  orange-flower water, slides into her smooth  hair, lightly scenting it with the fragrance of  orange peel and brushing out the dust. Marianna  tucks her hair behind her aching neck. The  orange-flower water is finished; she must have  another jug of it prepared for her. Her pot of  rice powder is almost empty too, she must order  some from her usual Venetian perfumer. Only in  Venice do they prepare face powders that are almost  transparent, light and scented like flowers. The  essence of bergamot, however, comes from Mazara and  she has it sent to her from the perfumer Mastro  Turrisi in boxes with Chinese motifs that she  will later use to hold the notes she receives from her  family.
  In the mirror something odd happens: a shadow  comes into the right-hand top corner and then dissolves.  In the wink of an eye a hand spreads out against the  closed window. Marianna stops, her arms  raised, the brush between her fingers, her eyebrows  wrinkled in a frown. That hand is pressed against the
  
window as if the intensity of its desire  could miraculously fling it wide open.  Marianna is on the point of getting up from her  seat; her body is already there at the window, her  hands sliding towards the shutters. But an inert will  keeps her nailed to the chair. Now you will get  up, says a silent voice within her, you will go to the  window and draw the curtains. Then you will put out the  candle and go to sleep.
  Her legs obey this wise tyrannical  voice, her feet move heavily, dragging her  bedroom slippers across the floor. Once she  reaches the curtains her arm lifts mechanically  andwitha brusque movement of her wrist she pulls  them so as completely to obscure the window, which  looks out on to the terrace of the tower. She has not  dared to raise her eyes but she has felt with her  skin, with her nails, with her hair, the anger of the  boy she has repulsed.
  Now like a somnambulist she returns to bed,  puts out the candles one by one with a weak puff of  breath that leaves her hollow, and slips between the  sheets, making the sign of the cross with freezing  fingers.
  "May Christ have mercy on me." But instead  of the blood-streaked face of Our Lord on the  Cross, the compassionate and ironic face of  Mr David Hume dances in front of her with his  turban of light-coloured velvet, his serene  eyes, his mouth half-open and mocking.
  "Reason can never of itself be the motive of any  action of the will," she repeats to herself thoughtfully, and  her lips stretch in a sad smile. No doubt  Mr David Hume is an inspired soul but  what does he know of Sicily? "Reason is,  and ought only to be, the slave of the passions, and can  never pretend to any other office than to serve and  obey them." And that's that! What a clown Mr  Hume is inside his Indian turban, with his  insolent far-away eyes, with the double chin of  somebody who knows how to eat and sleep well.  What does he know of a crippled woman  tortured by pride and doubt?

If only my soul could embrace thee  for one blink of an eye,  then could I die.

The words of Paolo Maura, the poet from  Catania, copied into her little damask-covered
  
notebook, come gently into her memory  and distract her momentarily from the pain that she is  creating for herself.
  Her head refuses to lie on the pillow, knowing  that he is still there behind the window pane, waiting for  her to change her mind. Even though she cannot see  him she has no doubt that he is there; it would  take so little to have him beside her, so little that she asks  herself how long her cruel self-denial can hold  out.
  To stifle temptation she decides to get up and  light a candle, put on her slippers and go out  through the door. The corridor is dark and it has  a smell of old carpets and worm-eaten  furniture. Marianna leans against the walls,  feeling her legs giving way beneath her. The smell  reminds her of another long-past visit  to Torre Scannatura. She was then about eight  and the passage was covered in the same worn  carpet. Only her mother was with her. It must have been  August then, as it is now. In the tower it was hot  and from the surrounding countryside rose the smell of  carcasses left out to rot in the sun.
  Her mother was unhappy. Her husband had  disappeared with one of his mistresses and after waiting  for him to return, drinking laudanum and taking  snuff, she had suddenly decided to leave with her  deaf-mute daughter for the estate of the Scebarr@as  uncles. They had a dreary time, she playing  alone beneath the portico, and her mother asleep,  drugged, in the small bedroom in the tower which is  now hers. The only consolations were the smell of  new wine inside the wooden barrels and the smell  of newly picked tomatoes, which was so strong that it  made her nostrils smart.
  Marianna puts her hand on her chest to calm  the spinning of her heart in the void. At that moment  she sees Fila coming towards her wearing a brown  cloak over her long white night-dress. The  girl stands there looking at her as if she wants  to say something important. Her soft grey eyes  are hardened with resentment. Marianna lifts her  arm and her hand goes of its own volition to slap that  distraught face. She does not know why she does  it, but she knows that the girl is expecting it and that  it is her duty at that moment to comply with the  compulsive pressures of a stupid  servant-mistress relationship.
  Fila does not react: she lets herself  slide slowly to the ground. Marianna helps her
  
to get up, tenderly wipes the tears from  her cheeks, and hugs her with such vehemence that  Fila is scared. Now it is clear why she  came and why that slap has already expunged the  crime of a sister who was furtively spying on  her brother's movements. Now Fila can go back  to bed.
  Marianna climbs a staircase and stops in  front of Giuseppa's room, from which emerges a  streak of light. She knocks. She enters.  Giuseppa, still dressed, is sitting at the  writing-table, her pen in her hand, the little bottle  of ink uncovered. As soon as she sees her mother  she makes as if to hide the sheet of paper, but  then thinks better of it, looks at her with an  expression of defiance, seizes another piece  of paper and writes: "I refuse to have him as my  husband any more. I want him off my back.  We must separate."
  The mother recognises in the eyes of her  daughter her own dangerously impulsive  pride. "Father is dead, the seventeenth century  is long since past, Mamma. People's  attitudes have changed. In Paris, who bothers  about marriage any more? Oh yes, they're  married, but without being slaves to duty, it's  everyone for themselves. Instead of which he insists that I  have to do whatever he wants."
  Marianna sits down beside her daughter. She  takes the pen from her hands.
  "And how did it end with the bonnet-maker?"  "It ended with her going off on her own. She's  much more sensible than Giulio, for sure. I got  to sympathise with her. Sleeping together a friendship  sprang up between us and I really felt sorry for  her, Mamma."
  "Then you no longer want to beat him up?"  writes Marianna, recognising that her fingers  are gripping the pen unsteadily, as if she'd  intended to write something quite different. The bone nib  creaks on the paper.
  "For me he's a complete stranger. Dead."  "Then who are you writing to now?"
  "A friend, Mamma, Cousin Olivo, who  understands me and talks to me affectionately, while  Giulio just avoids me."
  "You must break it off, Giuseppa. Cousin  Olivo is married and you shouldn't be writing  to him."
  Marianna catches a glimpse of her head
  
reflected next to that of her daughter in  the mirror behind the writing-bureau, and realises that  they are so alike that it is almost as if they were  sisters.
  "But I love him."
  Marianna is about to write another  prohibition but she restrains herself. How  arrogant her refusal sounds: to break off, chop  off, cut off. ... With a shiver she thinks of the  hands of the Capuchin friars cutting into uncle  husband to rip out his guts, to clean, to strip off the  flesh, to scrape, to preserve. Those who want  to preserve always use sharp knives. How  apprehensive a mother she is, all out  to amputate the feelings of her daughter.  Giuseppa is only twenty-seven. From her young  body arise tender odours of hair damp with  sweat, of skin reddened by the sun. Why not give in  to her desires, even if they are forbidden?
  "Write your letter by all means, I shall not be  watching you." Her hands write the note by themselves,  and she sees her daughter smile with relief.
  Marianna pulls the young woman's head on  to her breast and holds her in her arms, once again  too impetuously, seized by an overwhelming  impulse that throws her off balance and leaves her  feeling empty and exhausted.

                XXIX

  A morning in August. Beneath the shadows of the  portico four women are seated round a table of    woven cane. Hands move daintily from the  crystal sugar bowl to the earthenware cups filled  to the brim with milk, from peach jam to buttered  rolls, from foaming coffee to sweet fritters    filled with ricotta and candied pumpkin.
  Marianna chases a wasp from the edge of her  cup and watches it alight a moment later,  undeterred, on the slice of bread that Manina  is lifting to her mouth. She is about to shoo it  away from there too but her daughter stops her hand,  looks at her with a gentle smile and continues  to bite at her bread with the wasp still on it. At this  point Giuseppa, her mouth full of fritters,  waves a hand to chase off the intrusive wasp;  she stops in mid-air when Manina all of a  sudden starts to buzz like the insect, much to the  sisters' amusement. Felice, dressed in her  white habit, the sapphire crucifix on her
  
breast, laughs, upsetting her milk as  she follows the flight of another wasp that seems  undecided whether to alight on Manina's hair  or on the open sugar bowl. Others are arriving,  attracted by such an abundance of sweet things.
  They have been at Torre Scannatura for  three weeks. Marianna has learned to distinguish  fields of wheat from fields of oats, fields of  clover from those left to pasture. She knows the  market price of a cheese and how much goes to the  shepherd and how much to the Ucr@ia family. The  structure of rents and share-cropping is clear  to her. She has learned who are the peasant  guards and what their function is: to act as  intermediaries between negligent proprietors and  quarrelsome peasants, stealing surreptitiously  from both sides, armed custodians of a  miraculously maintained peace. The  gabelloti, who in their turn are  lease-holders of the land, twist the neck of anyone  who works it, and in two generations, if they are  shrewd, put enough money on one side to buy it.
  She has spent hours with the accountant Don  Nunzio, who patiently explains what needs  to be done. On the account books Don Nunzio  traces spiky signs that are hard to decipher,  but he takes care to make concessions to the dumb  Duchess's intellect since he regards it as  being somewhat childlike.
  Don Pericle is busy in the parish, he  only comes in the evening for supper, and afterwards he  stops to play piquet or faro with the girls.  Marianna does not like him and whenever she can leaves  him with her daughters. But she likes Don  Nunzio; his thoughts are well boxed-in; there is  no risk of them gushing out from that calm head, always  kept closed and padlocked. Don Nunzio's  hands run over the Duchess's sheets of paper;  as well as explaining in detail the system of  prices and taxes he also quotes Dante and  Ariosto. Even though it is hard deciphering the  old man's handwriting, Marianna prefers it  to the florid, backward-sloping script of Don  Pericle, which seems to weave words with spittle like  a greedy spider.
  Her daughters have reverted to being children. When she  watches them strolling in the garden with their white  lace-trimmed sunshades, when she observes them  sitting on the wicker seats, as they are now,  stuffing their mouths with bread and butter, it seems as
  
if she has gone back twenty years  to when, at the Villa Ucr@ia, from her bedroom  window, she used to watch them running wild, and she  almost seems to hear their voices and laughter in the  days before they went off to get married.
  Far away from husbands and children they pass their time  sleeping, going for walks, playing. They gobble  up stuffed macaroni and little tartlets filled with  egg-plant; and they are very greedy for the sweet  made from chopped citrons cooked with honey,  called petrafennula, which Innocenza cooks  to perfection. It hardly seems possible, looking  at them now, that a few months ago Manina  nearly died from puerperal fever; that Giuseppa  was weeping desperately over her husband's  infidelity; or that Felice was clinging to her father's  corpse as if she wanted to be incarcerated with him  in the cave of saltpetre.
  Yesterday evening they danced. Felice played  the spinet; looking blissful, Don Pericle  turned the pages on the music stand. They had  invited Cousin Olivo, the son of
Signoretto, and his friend Sebastiano, who were  staying for a few weeks in the old Villa di  Dogana Vecchia a mile or so away, and they  had danced far into the night. At one point they had  even invited Saro, who had been standing on one  leg like a stork, watching. Fila, also asked,  did not want to join in the dancing; perhaps because she  had never learned to dance the minuet and also because she was  wearing shoes and her feet moved awkwardly.
To persuade her they improvised a tarascone  but she did not let herself be tempted.
  Saro, however, has taken lessons from  Manina's dancing master and now dances like an  expert. Each day he leaves more and more of his past  behind him: his dialect, his callouses, his tousled  curls, his shrill voice, his clumsy,  diffident way of walking; at the same time he  is leaving behind him his sister Fila, who does not  want to learn like he does, perhaps out of scorn or  perhaps out of a deeper feeling for her own integrity.
  One morning when Marianna mounted the mule to go  and look at the grape harvest in the domain of the  Mendola river, she found the handsome Saro standing in  front of her, holding a sheet of paper.  Stealthily he handed it to her, with an expression of  pride that set his eyes alight.
  I LOVE YOU he had written in  ostentatious, laboured, but also decisive letters.
  
She pushed it angrily into her bodice.
She did not have a chance to throw the note away as  she'd hoped to do while she was riding the mule in the  direction of the wine press, so she hid it in the  tin box with Chinese designs underneath a heap of  notes from her father.
  While Don Nunzio was showing her the vats of  blood-red must, it seemed as if she could feel the    tremor of horse's hoofs beneath her feet; she  hoped it might be Saro even though she knew she  should not be waiting for him.
  Don Nunzio took hold of her sleeve  shyly. A moment later they were enveloped in a  cloud of acidic, intoxicating fumes, in  front of a platform of earth raised almost two  feet from the ground. In the vat, men dressed  only in short breeches were treading and retreading  the grapes, their bare feet sinking into the must,  spurting the light-red liquid all round them.  Through a hole in the sloping floor the unfermented  wine ran down into wide tubs, foaming and  gurgling, leaving behind it bits of grape stalks and  blades of grass. Marianna peered into this  bubbling liquid and was overtaken by a strong  desire to throw herself in and be swallowed up in the  sludge. She was continually testing her will-power and  finding it strong, barricaded within itself like a soldier  in armour.
  To compensate for her severity in the face of her  own desires, Marianna has begun to be more  indulgent towards her daughters. Giuseppa  dallies with Olivo, who has left his young  wife in Palermo to pursue his cousin in the  country. Manina is openly courted  by Sebastiano, the shy elegant young man from  Naples.
  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
  
feathers, glasses of crystal with  silvery reflections, tiny knives and forks that  sparkle in the sun.
  The ladies sit on the big stones beneath the elm  tree that Ciccio Panella has arranged for them  in the shape of a bench. But their pretty skirts of  muslin and cambric are already covered with dust and  are bristling with grape stalks and prickles  caught up in the hems.
  The men, seated on the far side under the shelter  of the two olive trees that give very little shade,  eat and drink in silence, not daring to take it as  easy as usual, letting the flies crawl all  over their faces as if they were the muzzles of the  mules; and the fact that no one ventures to chase  them off as the animals do, makes a lump come in  Marianna's throat. To eat this choice food in  front of their envious yet discreetly lowered  eyes suddenly strikes her as intolerable  arrogance. She gets up followed by the anxious  gaze of Saro and goes over to U Zoppu, the  oldest of her guards, to ask him for information about the  grape harvest. She leaves her portion of  gateau uneaten on her plate.
  U Zoppu hastily swallows an enormous  mouthful of bread and omelette that he has only  just thrust into his mouth, wipes his lips on the  back of a hand streaked with black earth, and bows  bashfully over the sheet of paper that the Duchess  hands him. But not knowing how to read, he gives her  an absent look and then, pretending to have understood,  starts to talk to her as if she were able to hear his  words. Through embarrassment each has overlooked the  defect of the other.
  Saro, who has followed their gestures, comes  to the help of the guard, pulls the sheet of paper out  of his hands, reads it in a loud voice and is on  the point of transcribing U Zoppu's reply  on the complicated contraption that his mistress  carries with her--the little folding table, the ink-pot  with the screw top hanging by a silver chain, the  goose-quill pen and the ashes.
  But Ciccio Panella is infuriated by such  presumption: how can a servant be allowed to come  face to face with his mistress? How can he be  allowed to show off his learning in front of a peasant  who knows much more than he ever will, but who does not  choose to reveal it by means of such a ridiculous  and obscure activity as handwriting?
  All at once Marianna sees Saro
  
change position; the muscles in his  legs stiffen, his arms stretch out in front of him  with his fists closed, his eyes narrow until they  become two slits. Panella must have said something  insulting to him and Saro has suddenly put his  aristocratic pretensions to one side to get ready  for a fight. Marianna looks towards Ciccio  Panella just in time to see him draw a knife  with a short sharp blade. Saro goes pale but  does not flinch and, seizing a block of wood from  the ground, is about to attack him.
  Marianna runs forward but the two are already  laying into each other. A blow from the wooden  cudgel has sent the knife flying out of  Ciccio's hand and now the two are going for each  other with fists, kicks and bites. U Zoppu  gives an order and five men rush to separate  them, which they succeed in doing after a struggle. Saro  has a wound in his hand, which is bleeding, and Ciccio  has a black eye.
  Marianna makes a sign to her daughters  to get back into the litters. Then she pours some  wine over Saro's bleeding hand while U
Zoppu makes a bandage out of vine leaves and  grass stalks. Meanwhile Ciccio Panella,  on the orders of the older men, has gone down on  his knees to offer his apology to the Duchess and  has kissed her hand.
  In the litter Marianna finds herself seated  facing Saro; the young man has taken advantage  of the confusion to slip into the seat opposite her and  now there he is, sitting with his eyes shut, his head  smeared with earth, his shirt ripped open, all    calculated to excite her admiration.
  He seems like an angel, Marianna says,  smiling to herself. It is as if while trying  to reveal his angelic grace he has lost his  balance and fallen from the sky and now lies battered  and breathless, waiting to be taken care of. It is  all a bit theatrical ... yet only a short  time ago the "angel" was fighting a man armed with a  knife with a courage and generous spirit she had not  recognised in him.
  Marianna turns her eyes away from that  angelic face that offers itself to her with such docile  effrontery. She looks out at the sunlit  landscape, a land of ploughed-up furrows, a  tangle of brash yellow broom, a pool of  lead-coloured water that reflects the violet of the  sky; but something brings her gaze back to the inside
  
of the litter. Saro is watching her with  gentle searching eyes: eyes that speak shamelessly  of an aching will to become a son, without sacrificing  any of his pride and independence, with all the  passion of an ambitious and intelligent youth.
  What does she want, Marianna asks  herself? Is she not just as impatient to become a mother  and to clasp this boy to her and take him into her arms?  A look can sometimes become flesh, uniting two  people more closely than an embrace. Thus  Marianna and Saro, inside this narrow carriage  suspended between two mules, swaying over an  empty void, let themselves be rocked by the motion,  glued to their seats, while their gaze, tender and  fervent, shifts from one to the other. Neither the flies  nor the heat nor the swaying of the litter can divert  them from the intense pleasure of this bitter-sweet  exchange.

                XXXI

  Coming into that strange house she is nailed to the  threshold by the clammy darkness, heavy with odours.  The damp air brushes against her face like a wet  cloth; she can only see black shadows  submerged in the dark of the room.
  Then little by little her eyes become accustomed to the  blackness: at the far end of the room she makes out  a kneading trough with broken legs, a dented iron  bowl, a high bed surrounded by a closely woven  mosquito net, and a stove from which burning wood  emits an acrid smoke. The heels of the  Duchess's shoes sink into the floor of beaten  earth scored with the marks of a besom. Next to the  door a donkey is eating a small pile of  hay. Squatting hens are sleeping with their heads  under their wings.
  A tiny woman dressed in red and white pops  out from nowhere with a baby in her arms, and gives the  visitor a wry smile, wrinkling her  pockmarked face. Marianna cannot avoid  screwing up her mouth at the impact of these  brazen smells: excrement, dried urine,  curdled milk, charcoal ash, dried figs,  chickpea soup. She has a fit of coughing as the  smoke penetrates her eyes and mouth.
  The woman with the child looks at her and her smile  becomes more open, almost mocking. It is the first time  that Marianna has entered the house of a peasant  woman on her estates, the wife of one of her
  
tenants. For all that she has read about  them in books, she has never imagined such  poverty.
  She is accompanied by Don Pericle, who  fans his face with a calendar to keep himself from  sweating. Marianna gives him a questioning look:  does he know these houses, does he visit them?  But fortunately today Don Pericle is  impenetrable, he keeps his eyes fixed on the  distance, leaning over his protuberant stomach like  pregnant women who do not know whether they are there  to support their bellies or if it is their  bellies that support them.
  Marianna gestures to Fila, who has  remained outside in the road with a large basket  full of provisions. The girl comes in, makes  the sign of the cross and curls up her nose in  disgust. Very probably she was born in a house just  like this one but has done all she can to wipe it out of  her memory. Now she has become accustomed to the  sweet-scented fragrance of lavender in large  sun-drenched rooms, and to be here fills her with  resentment.
  The woman with the baby gives a kick to drive  away the hens that are starting to flutter and flap their  wings inside the room, shifts the few poor  bits of crockery on the table and waits for her  share of the bounty.
  Marianna takes some sausage from the  basket, some bags of rice and some sugar, and  puts them all down on the table with brusque  gestures. With every gift she offers she feels more  ridiculous, more indecent: the indecency of a  benefactor who claims immediate gratitude from the  other; the indecency of a conscience that is satisfied  with its own generosity and can ask the Lord for a place  in paradise.
  Meanwhile the baby has started to cry.  Marianna watches its mouth grow bigger and  bigger, its eyes squeezing shut, its hands with  raised clenched fists. And this crying seems  to communicate itself little by little to everything in the  vicinity, making them cry too: from the hens to the  donkey, from the bed to the kneading trough, from the  tattered skirt of the woman to the irretrievably  burnt and dented cooking pans.
  As she goes outside, Marianna puts her  hands to her sweating neck and opens her mouth to breathe  in great gulps of fresh air. But the smells  stagnating in the narrow lane are not much better
  
than those inside the house: excrement,  rotting vegetables, frying oil, dust. Now many  more women are crowding in their doorways for their share  of alms. Some sit in front of their houses  delousing their children and chattering cheerfully to each  other.
  Is not this act of charity the root of corruption  that seduces the receiver? The landowner encourages the  avidity of his dependants, flattering and  satiating them not only to make himself look good with the  guardians of heaven but also because he well knows that  the recipients will be lowered in their own eyes  by accepting these gifts that enjoin gratitude and  loyalty.
  "I am suffocating here. I am going back  to the tower", Marianna writes on her little table  and passes the note to Don Pericle. "You  carry on."
  Fila gives an ill-tempered frown at the  basket supported against her hips and still piled with  food. Now she'll have to carry on by herself because she  cannot count on Felice, who has stopped on the  paved road so as not to get her shoes dirty. As  for the other two girls, Heaven knows when they'll  turn up. They were playing cards till late  into the night and this morning they did not appear for  breakfast under the portico.
  Meanwhile Marianna strides off in the  direction of Torre Scannatura, which she  thinks she can catch a glimpse of beyond this  desolation of roofs on which anything and everything  grows, from chives to fennel, from capers  to nettles. Turning down a narrow alleyway  she stumbles over a chamber-pot that someone has  left upside down in the middle of the road.  Even in Bagheria the same sort of thing happens  and, for that matter, in the poorer quarters of  Palermo. In the morning the housewives empty  the contents of their chamber-pots in the middle of the  street, then come out with a bucket of water and  sluice everything further down the road, at which  point they lose all interest in what happens  to it. But since there is always someone upstream in the  process of carrying out exactly the same  operation, the narrow street is permanently  overrun by an evil-smelling open drain, humming  with flies. The same flies settle in clouds  on the faces of the small boys who sit playing  along the sides of the alleys, and cling to their  eyelids as if they were an exquisite dish for
  
them to suck. The children, with these clusters of  flies hanging from their eyelids, end up looking  as if they were wearing monstrous masks.
  Marianna walks quickly, trying to avoid the  filth, followed by a swarm of hopping creatures;  she can only guess at how many by the fluttering of  wings that surrounds her. She walks as fast as she  can, swallowing mouthfuls of pungent air, and aims  towards the end of the village with her head down. But  each time she thinks she has reached the road to the  tower she finds herself blocked by a low wall  topped with fragments of broken crockery, or a  sharp turning, or a chicken-run. The tower  seems within reach but the village for all its  smallness has a labyrinthine layout that is  difficult to disentangle.
  Walking this way and that, turning round to retrace  her footsteps, Marianna suddenly finds herself  in a small square piazza dominated by a  gigantic statue of the Madonna. She stops  for a moment to recover her breath, and leans against the  base of grey stone. In whichever direction she  looks it is the same: low houses jammed on  top of each other, often with a single entrance that  serves as both window and door. Inside she can  glimpse dark rooms inhabited by both people and  animals in easy promiscuity; outside are  rivulets of dirty water, a few shops with  grain exhibited in large baskets, a  blacksmith who works in his doorway spitting out  sparks, a tailor who cuts, sews and irons  by the light of his open stable door, a fruit  seller who displays his wares in wooden boxes  with a label on each different product--  FIGS: 2 GRANI A BAG;
ONIONS: 4 GRANI A BAG; LAMP
OIL: 5 GRANI A C; EGGS:
HALF A GRANO EACH. Her eyes  alight on the labels with their prices like buoys  in a sea at high tide; the numbers reassure  her and make sense of the mysterious layout of this  dusty and hostile village.
  But here now, under her feet, she becomes aware  of the familiar thud of hoofs, a rhythmic beat that  makes her look up: and there, appearing from nowhere,  she sees Saro coming towards her, riding on the  back of a young Arab horse that uncle husband  gave him before his death and which he has  ostentatiously called Malagigi.
  At last she will be able to get out of this maze, and
  
she is about to go forward to meet him when  both horse and rider disappear, swallowed up behind  a low wall carpeted with caper plants.  Marianna goes towards this wall but turning round  finds herself confronted by a crowd of women and children  who look at her in amazement as if she were a  supernatural being. Two cripples drag  themselves along the paving stones, leaning on their  crutches, and start to limp behind her in the hope of  getting some money out of her. They surmise that a  smartly dressed woman like her must be carrying a  purse full of real gold. So they come right up  to her, touch her hair, pull at her sleeves,  snatch at the ribbons knotted round her waist that  hold her writing-board with the ink and pens.
  Once more Marianna thinks she can see  Malagigi caracoling at the end of a lane and  Sarino raising his hat very high and saluting her from  a distance. She gestures so that he can see her  signalling him to come and rescue her. In the  meantime someone has grabbed her bag with the pens,  thinking it must have money inside it, and is pulling  hard, unable to detach it from her belt.
To extricate herself, Marianna pulls at the  buckle, rips it off with a tug and, leaving everything  for the cripples and the children, starts running. Her  feet take wings and leap over drain holes,  rush up steep steps, run through potholes  filled with sludge, sink into the heaps of refuse  and excrement with which the road is littered.
  Suddenly, when she least expects it, she  finds herself outside at last, alone in the middle  of a little path through tall grass. Ahead of her,  silhouetted against a sky of glazed china, is the  figure of Saro playing at circus tricks.  Malagigi rears up on his hind legs,  thrashes his front legs in the air, then lowers  them on to the ground only to rise up once again,  bucking and kicking as if he had been bitten by a  tarantula.
  Marianna watches with amusement and alarm: that  boy will fall off and break his collar-bone. She  signals him from a distance but he does not come  to her. Indeed he draws her on towards the    hills like a snake-charmer. Hitching up her  mud-stained skirt, her hair escaping from its  pins, damp with sweat and short of breath, she  follows, happier than she ever remembers.  He'll lose his balance, he'll hurt himself,  how on earth can she stop him? she asks herself.
  
Nevertheless, the thought is a happy one because  she knows it is a game, and in games risk is  part of the pleasure.
  Horse and rider, still caracoling, have reached a  coppice of hazel trees but they show no sign  of stopping. They are dancing and cantering around in  front of her but always keeping their distance. It is  as if the entire life of Saro has been given  over to horse-riding, like a gipsy. Now he is  through the nut trees, and ahead there are only  fields of clover, tall hedges of castor-oil  plants and expanses of stony ground.
  All at once Marianna sees the youth  flying through the air like a rag doll and falling head  down into the tall grass. She starts running again,  jumping, tripping over the tangled brambles,  holding her skirt up with both hands. When did  she last run like this? Her heart is in her throat  and feels as if it and her tongue want to jump out  together.
  Now at last she reaches him. He is lying  on his back half-buried in the grass, his eyes  shut, his face drained of blood. Gently she  bends over him and tries to ease his neck and  move first his arm and then his leg. But his body  does not respond. It lies abandoned and  deprived of all sensation. With shaking hands  Marianna unbuttons his shirt at the neck.
He has only fainted, she tells herself, he will  soon come to. Meanwhile she cannot take her  eyes off him: he seems at that moment to have been  born for her in all the beauty of his young body.  If she gave him a kiss he would never know it.  Why not once and once only give rein to her  desires, held in check by her inimical will?
  With a gentle movement she bends over the boy  lying on his back, and her mouth lightly brushes  against his cheek. For an instant she seems to feel  his long eyelashes flutter. She draws back  and looks at him again. He is a body stranded and  lost in unconsciousness. Again she bends gingerly  over him with the lightness of a butterfly, and places  her lips against his. She seems to feel him  tremble. Suppose it were a sign of delirium,  the first intimation of death? She rises on to her    knees and starts to stroke his cheek with her fingers  until she sees him open his grey eyes, such  beautiful grey eyes. They are laughing at her.  They are telling her that it was all an act, a  trap to steal a kiss from her. It has worked
  
perfectly. Only the tapping of her  fingers on his cheek had not been foreseen, and perhaps  forced him to give away the game sooner than he  had intended.
  What a fool I am, what a fool!
Marianna thinks while she tries to do up her  hair. She knows that he will not move a finger without  her consent, she knows that he is waiting, and for a  moment she is tempted to disclose what was at first  only a secret thought: to press him against her in  an embrace that overflows with years of waiting and  renunciation.
  What an idiot, what an idiot! ... This  trap will be her joy of joys. Why does she not  let herself be caught in its noose? But there is a  faint whiff of sugared almonds that does not  please her, a suspicion that she is being taken  for granted. Her knees press into the grass,  her back straightens, her feet are already moving.  Before Saro can guess her intention, she is off,  running in the direction of the tower.

               XXXII

  The two lighted candlesticks are burning with  green flames. Marianna watches those little  tongues of fire with some apprehension: since when  has a small candle of virgin wax burned with  such a green light, rising in slender columns  towards the ceiling and falling back as a frothy  liquid? Even the bodies next to her are  different from usual, swelling with menace: the  belly of Don Pericle is contorting itself  into sudden protuberances as if it were inhabited by a  frightened child. On the table Manina's plump  dimpled fingers are opening and closing quickly,  shuffling the cards as if they were acting on their own,  detached from her arms, grasping and turning the court  cards while her wrists remain buried inside  her sleeves.
  Don Nunzio's white hair falls in  ringlets on to the table. Snow in the middle of  August? Immediately afterwards she sees him taking an  enormous handkerchief out of his waistcoat  pocket, rolling it into a ball and burying his  nose in it. It is evident that as well as blowing  his nose he is expelling his bad temper. If
  
he carries on like this Don Nunzio will  blow his whole life into his handkerchief and  expire on the card table. Marianna takes  hold of his wrist and presses it.
  The daughters burst out laughing at their mother's  gesture of dismay. Don Pericle laughs too;  Felice laughs and her sapphire cross dances  on her breast. Sarino laughs, putting his hand in  front of his mouth; even Fila laughs. She is  standing next to Giuseppa holding a saucepan  full of macaroni in tomato sauce.
  Felice stretches out her hand to touch her mother's  forehead. On the lips of her daughter Marianna  reads the word "fever". All their faces look  serious and she sees other hands stretching out to feel  her forehead.
  She'll never know how she managed to get  upstairs: perhaps they carried her. She does not  know how she got undressed, how she was able  to hide beneath the sheets. The aching of her feverish  head keeps her awake, but at last she is  alone and thinking once more with disgust about her  gullibility that morning, first her performance as a  good Samaritan and then that childish rush over  heaps of stones and through nut bushes, the  submissiveness of a body possessed by ghosts, the  ingenuousness of a kiss that she was going to steal and that  has indeed been stolen. And now this malignant  fever that brings echoes of an internal babble she  cannot make sense of.
  Can a woman of forty, a mother and a grandmother,  wake up like a late-flowering rose from a torpor  that has lasted for decades, and lay claim to a  share of the honey? What is to stop her? Is it no  more than her own will-power? Or perhaps the memory of a  violation repeated so many times as to render deaf and  mute the whole of her body?
  At some time during the night somebody must have come  in to see her. Was it Felice? Or Fila?  Somebody who raised her head and forced her  to swallow a sweet drink. Leave me in peace,  she wanted to scream, but her mouth stayed shut with  an expression of bitterness and pain.

He brought me to the banqueting house. ...  and his fruit was sweet to my taste.
Comfort me with apples for I am sick of love.  ...

What blasphemy: to mix in her confused memory
  
fragments of past happiness with the  brilliant words of the Song of Songs. How can  she be on the verge of forgetting her own disability?

My beloved is like a roe or a young hart.

These are words that should not be spoken, they sound  ridiculous on tight-lipped mouths, they cannot  belong to them. Yet they are there, these words of  love, and they have become fused with the anguish of her  fever.

Take us the foxes,  the little foxes that spoil our vineyards.

Now the room is flooded with daylight. Someone  must have opened the shutters while she slept. Her  eyes are stinging as if she had grains of salt beneath  her eyelids. She lifts a hand to her forehead and  sees an owl on the arm of the chair. It seems  to be looking at her tenderly. She tries  to move her hand on the sheet but discovers that there is  a large coiled-up serpent calmly sleeping on  the embroidered border. Perhaps the owl will eat up  the serpent. Perhaps not. If only Fila would come  with some water. ... From the way her hands are  crossed on her chest she concludes that she must  already be dead. But her eyes are open and they see  the door swinging back by itself, slowly, just as in  life. Who is it?
  Uncle husband, quite naked, with a great scar  running down his chest and belly. The hair on his  head is sparse like that of people infected with ringworm,  and he exudes a strange smell of cinnamon and  rancid butter. She sees him bend over her,  armed as if to crucify her. A sort of dead  egg-plant pulsates out of his belly,  obscenely stiff with desire. I will make love  out of pity for him, she tells herself. Love is  above all merciful.
  "I am dying," she says to him behind closed  lips. And he smiles mysteriously like an  accomplice. "I am going to die," she insists.  He nods. He yawns and nods. Strange because  the dead cannot feel the need for sleep. A sensation  of freezing cold makes her raise her eyes  towards the unshuttered window. A crescent moon  hangs in the topmost window pane. Each gust of  wind sets it swinging gently. It is like a piece  of candied pumpkin with the sugar grains crystallised
  
and stuck to the rind. "I will make love  out of pity," her dumb mouth repeats, but uncle  husband does not want her consent, pity is not  what he wants. Now his white body is on  top of her, pressing down on her freezing  belly. The dead flesh smells of dried flowers  and saltpetre. The fleshy egg-plant insists  on forcing its way into her womb.
  At dawn the house resounds with a terrible  drawn-out scream. Felice leaps from her bed.  Surely it cannot be her dumb mother? Yet the  scream comes from the direction of her room. She  runs to wake her sister Giuseppa, who in  turn pulls Manina out of bed. The three young  sisters still in their night-dresses rush to their mother's  bed, where she appears to be gasping for a few last  desperate gulps of air.
  Since there are no doctors at Torre  Scannatura the local "leech" is hurriedly  summoned. He is called Mino Pappalardo  and he arrives attired in egg-yolk yellow.  He takes the sick woman's pulse,  examines her tongue, lifts her eyelids and  buries his nose in the chamber-pot.
  "Fever with congestion of the lungs," is his  verdict. There is an urgent need to draw  blood from the inflamed veins. For this he will  require a high stool, a basin of luke-warm  water, a big cup, a clean sheet and an  assistant.
  Felice offers to help while Giuseppa and  Manina huddle in a corner of the room. The  leech takes a pouch made of rolled-up  canvas out of a small suitcase of  light-coloured wood. Inside it, tied together  by thin laces, are small sharp scalpels,  small saws, pincers and a minute pair of  scissors.
  Moving confidently, Pappalardo bares the  invalid's arm, feels the vein at the elbow,  ties a tourniquet round the upper part of the arm,  and then with a precise cut makes an incision,  reaches the vein with the knife blade and starts  to bleed her. Felice, kneeling beside the bed,  collects the blood in a cup as it drops,  without any sign of squeamishness.
  Marianna opens her eyes. She sees the  unshaven face of a man with two dark furrows on  his cheeks. The man gives her a bruised  distracted smile. But the snake which was curled up
  
on the sheet must have woken because she can  feel it plunging its sharp fangs into her arm.  She wants to warn Felice but she is unable  to move even her eyes.
  But who is this man on top of her who has a  strange disagreeable smell? Somebody in  disguise? Uncle husband? Her father the Duke?  He would be quite capable of putting on a disguise,  just for fun. At that moment a revelation  transfixes her from head to foot, like an arrow:  for the first time in her life she comprehends with a  diamond clarity that it was him, her father, who was the  one responsible for her disablement. From love or from  carelessness she can't say. But it is he who cut  her tongue and it is he who has filled up her  ears with molten lead so that she can hear no sound and  circles perpetually in the kingdoms of silence and  fear.

               XXXIII

  A carriage with a drawn hood, the horse  caparisoned with gold trappings. It must be that  eccentric character Agonia, Prince of  Palagonia. But no, there alights a lady  attired in a veil thrown in the Spanish manner  over her high tower of hair. Why, it is the  Princess of Santa Riverdita, who has had  two husbands both of whom died of poisoning.  Behind her comes an elegant small gig drawn  by a young spirited horse; this must be the Baron  Pallavicine, who a short time ago won a  lawsuit against his brother, a case concerning a  disputed inheritance that lasted for over fifteen  years. The brother has been left in sackcloth  and ashes, and can now only become a monk or  marry a rich woman. But in Palermo a rich  woman doesn't marry a pauper, even if he  does have a grand title, unless she is forced to,  in which case the price is very high. Moreover, the  "betrothed" has to be exceedingly beautiful and at  the very least she must know how to play the spinet with  grace.
  A parade of carriages like this is something that  has not been seen for years. The courtyard of the  Villa Ucr@ia is completely obstructed:  calashes, palanquins, fiacres, litters,  sedan-chairs pass beneath the lights of the great  archway of flowers that links the access road to the  courtyard.
  
  It is the first time since uncle  husband's death that there has been a big party at  the villa. Marianna has decided on it  to celebrate her recovery from pleurisy. Her  hair has begun to grow again and the colour has  regained its natural fairness.
  The curtain in the blue room on the first  floor has been drawn aside and she is standing  behind it, watching the comings and goings of footmen,  grooms, lackeys, porters and waiters in  plush breeches. During the evening a new theatre  will be inaugurated, built by her for the performance of  music she cannot hear, for the enjoyment of plays she  will be unable to enjoy. To compensate for her deafness  she has made the stage large and high, with  splendid decorations by Intermassimi. She has  had the boxes lined with yellow damask with borders  of blue velvet, she has planned a wide  vaulted ceiling painted with designs showing birds  of paradise, unicorns and chimeras with  enigmatic expressions.
  Intermassimi arrived from Naples all  spruced up, accompanied by a young wife called  Elena, with tiny ears, and fingers weighed down with  rings. They stayed in the house for three months,  eating dainty little titbits and fondling each other  everywhere: in the garden, in the corridors, on the  scaffolding, among the bowls of paint. He is  forty-five and she is fifteen.
  Whenever Marianna came across the two of them  by chance in some part of the villa, clasped in each  other's arms, short of breath, their clothes  unfastened, he used to smile at her  mischievously as if to say, Now you see what  you've missed. Marianna would turn her back  on him in annoyance. Latterly she avoided  going through the villa when she suspected she might  meet them. But in spite of her precautions she  would often come across them, almost as if they had put  themselves in her path on purpose.
  So she went to Palermo to the palazzo in the  Via Alloro, wandering ill-humouredly through the  dark rooms crammed with pictures, tapestries  and rugs. She took Fila with her, leaving  Innocenza at Bagheria. She left Saro at  the villa too. For some time he has been in  charge of the cellars and the wine, swooshing it from one  cheek to the other with his eyes shut, and then spitting  it out a long way with a sharp smack of his tongue.  By now he can also make a guess at the wine's
  
vintage.
  By the time she returned in May the work was  finished and she found the frescos so beautiful that  she forgave the painter his exhibitionism and his  boasting. He and his child wife had left on the very  day that Ciccio Cal@o died; towards the end  Cal@o had become quite senile, going round the  courtyard half-naked, looking for his daughters,  with his eyes starting out of his head.
  Today is a day of celebration. In the  drawing-room lit by chandeliers of Murano  glass are all the great ladies of Palermo.  Their enormous dresses have skirts stretched out  on hoops of wood and whalebone, and  tight-fitting, low-necked bodices in  delicately coloured silks; beside them are the  courtly gentlemen, dressed up for the occasion in  long redingotes, red, violet and green,  embroidered in silver and gold thread, with shirts  puffed out with ruffles and lace, and wearing powdered and  perfumed wigs.
  Marianna looks around her with satisfaction.  For days and days she has been preparing these  festivities and she is confident she has  arranged it all so that the evening will run on  well-oiled wheels. The hors-do'"...oeuvres are  to be served on the terrace decorated with  geraniums and succulent African plants.  Some of the glasses have had to be borrowed from the  house at Torre Mosca because after the death of  uncle husband she no longer replaced those that  gradually got broken. Into these glasses, lent  by Agata, is being poured a light spiced drink,  lemonade, or a sparkling wine.
  Supper, however, will be served in the gardens, between  the dwarf palm trees and the jasmine bushes, on  linen tablecloths, using the dinner service known as  "the regal" in white and blue with the black  eagle. The meal will consist of macaroni di  zitu, red mullet, hare in a sour sauce,  boar with chocolate, turkey stuffed with ricotta,  fish cooked in wine, roast suckling pig,  sweet rice, conserve of scorzonera,  ice-cream, sweetmeats, almond biscuits,  water ices and wines from Casa Ucr@ia with the  strong pungent flavour of the grapes from Torre  Scannatura.
  After supper there will be a theatrical  entertainment: Olivo, Sebastiano, Manina and  Mariano will sing the Artaserse of Metastasio
  
with music by Vincenzo Ciampi, played  by an orchestra of the nobility, consisting of the Duke  of Carrera Lo Bianco, the Prince  Crescimanno, Lord of Gabelle del
Biscotto, the Baroness Spitaleri, the Count  della Cattolica, the Prince Des Puches  di Caccamo and the Princess Mirabella.
  Luckily the sky is clear, strewn with  small luminous buds of light. The moon is not  yet visible but, to compensate, the fountain of the  Triton, lit from the inside by candles placed in  niches hollowed out of the rock, creates a  dazzling spectacle. Everything moves according to a  predetermined rhythm, following a choreography  orchestrated in advance, so that the guests, with their  precious attire, their shoes studded with jewels,  are unknowingly taking part in an intricate game  of charades.
  Marianna has decided not to wear a  ceremonial dress so that she can move more easily  among the guests, go quickly to the kitchen, run to the  theatre, go and see the players in the orchestra,  who are tuning up their instruments in the yellow  room, attend to the lighted tapers, keep an  eye on her daughters and her nieces, and    signal with her head to the cook and to Saro to get  him to fetch more wine from the cellars.
  A few of the women are unable to sit down because  their skirts are so elaborate and wide,  supported by a rigid framework that resembles a  dome with a little clock-tower at the summit. This  year the hooped skirt is in fashion at the  French court, forming a canopy so wide that it could  shelter a crouching couple. It is made out of  plaited osiers covered by a long full skirt and  surmounted by a shiny pleated bodice ornamented with  bows and frills, and stiffened up the back with two  quills that stretch from the nape of the neck to the  waist.
  At eleven o'clock there will be a ball and at  midnight there are to be fireworks. A frame  has been specially constructed and placed in the  lemon grove next to the theatre in such a way that  the bangs will only occur above the heads of the  guests and the flashes will be extinguished in the carp  pond or among the roses and pansies in the  flower beds.
  A warm soft night, pungent with scents. A  light salt breeze comes in gusts from the sea,  cooling the air. Marianna, in all the confusion,
  
has not had time to eat even a  vol-au-vent. The cooks have been hired for the  evening; the head chef is French, or at least so  he claims, and insists on being called  Monsieur Trebbian@o, but she suspects that  he has only been in France for a brief  visit. He cooks well @a la  fran@caise, but his best dishes are the  Sicilian ones. Under the most recondite names  it is possible to recognise the familiar  flavours that everyone likes. For years the great  families of Palermo have competed for him for  supper and dinner parties with throngs of guests. And  "Monsu" Trebbian@o is happy to earn his  living going from one house to another, accompanied  by his troop of helpers, assistants and  faithful petites mains, to say nothing of an  avalanche of saucepans, knives and moulds of  his own.
  For a moment Marianna sits down and under her  long gown slips off her small pointed shoes.  It is years since she has seen all the  family together at the villa. There is  Signoretto, whose affairs are not going well;  he has had to mortgage the feudal estate of  Fontanasalsa to pay his debts. However, he  doesn't look any the worse for it. The slow  descent of the family towards ruin he regards as  part of the common destiny: a destiny which it is useless  to oppose because, anyway, it will overtake them.
  Carlo has become famous for his learning and now  he is called in from all parts of Europe  to decipher ancient manuscripts. He is just  back from Salamanca, where he was invited by the  Universidad Real, who, at the end of his  stay, offered him a teaching post; but he preferred  to return to his gardens at San Martino  delle Scale, surrounded by his books, his  students, his woods, his food. "I invent  dreams and fables", he has written on a little  sheet of paper which she thrust into her pocket as if  it were wiser to keep it hidden. ""All is  lies, in delirium I live", as the poet  Metastasio puts it."
  Marianna rereads the crumpled note, which  has remained in her pocket. Her eyes search  for her brother: he has sunk into a deep chair,  his hair thinning, his eyes pig-like. It requires  the most careful observation to perceive a vestige of  spirituality in this body, which is now getting right out of
  
control and overflowing on all sides.
I must see him more often, Marianna tells  herself, noting the unhealthy pallor of her  brother's face, which seems to recall her mother's;  even at a distance she thinks she catches the  smell of laudanum and snuff.
  Agata too is much changed. Signs of her  beauty remain: her large limpid eyes in which the  white and the blue are clearly separated. Everything  else about her looks as if it has been immersed  in the laundry water, soaked and washed for too  long, and then spread with ashes and beaten on stones,  like sheets in the river.
  Beside her, Agata's daughter Maria looks  like a portrait of Agata as a girl, with the sharp  shoulders of a sixteen-year-old that slip like fresh  almonds out of her lace-covered dress  festooned with lilac bows. Fortunately Agata  has succeeded in saving her from being forced to marry at  twelve as her husband wanted. She keeps her  close to her and dresses her like a little girl so that  she will seem younger, which vexes her daughter, who  would like to appear grown-up. Giuseppa and  Giulio sit close together, continually looking at  each other and laughing at every trifle. Her cousin  Olivo watches them sullenly from another table.  His wife, sitting next to him, looks less  disagreeable than she has been described  to Marianna: small, stiff, but capable of  bursting out in sensuous rippling laughter. She  does not seem upset by the expression on her young  husband's face, possibly because she has no  suspicion of the love affair between the two  cousins. Or perhaps she does and that is why when she  is serious she looks as if she had swallowed a  broomstick. Her laughter could certainly be a  way of enabling herself to face the situation with  courage.
  Mariano grows ever more handsome and majestic.  Sometimes he looks arrogant and frowning, bringing  to mind his father, but his colouring is that of his grandfather  Signoretto, the colour of bread just taken out  of the oven. His wife Caterina Mol`e di
Flores has had several miscarriages but no  children; this has created feelings of resentment between the  two of them which are obvious to the naked eye. He  always talks to her crossly and reprovingly, and  she answers him back in a dull tone of voice  as if she was always having to expiate her guilt  at being childless. She talks to him about the new
  
freedom, spellbound by the ideas of her  aunt Domitilla, but never with quite her conviction.  He does not even pretend to listen to her any more.  His eyes are constantly on guard lest anyone  invades the charmed circle in which he shuts himself  to dream. From being passionately interested in having  a good time, always going from one house to another for  balls and card games, over the past few years  he has grown lazy and self-absorbed. His  wife drags him through the salons and he lets  himself be led but does not join in the conversations,  refuses to play cards, eats little, hardly  drinks at all. He enjoys looking at other people  without being looked at, sunk in his own misty  clouds of thought.
  What does Mariano dream about? It is hard  to say. Sometimes when she has been standing close  to him Marianna has been able to guess: dreams  of great military adventures among foreign people,  of swords held at the ready, of sweating  horses, of the smells of battle and gunpowder.  Like his father, he possesses a collection of  arms, and every time he invites her for a family meal  he shows it to her in the minutest detail: the  sword of Philip II, an arquebus that  belonged to the Duke of Anjou, a musket from the  guards of Louis XIV, an enamelled box  used by the Infanta of Spain for black  gunpowder, and other marvels of a similar kind.  Some he has inherited from his father, others he has  bought himself. Yet he would not move from his palace  in the Via Alloro even if he had the  guarantee of a striking victory on the  battlefield. He has abandoned himself to dreams  of military strategy, which in some way have taken  on a second life more real and tangible than    reality.
  Marianna watches her son as he gets up  from the table where he dined with Francesco Gravina,  son of that other Gravina of Palagonia  nicknamed Agonia. The young man has been  refurbishing the villa built by his grandfather,  filling it with weird statues: men with the heads of  goats, women who are half monkeys,  elephants playing the violin, serpents that twist  round flutes, dragons dressed as gnomes and  gnomes with the tails of dragons, not to mention a  collection of hunchbacks, Punchinellos,  Moors, beggars, Spanish soldiers and  travelling musicians. The people of Bagheria
  
regard him as crazy; his relations have  tried to have him put under an interdict. But his friends  love him for a certain open and bashful way he  has of laughing at himself. It also seems that he  has transformed the Villa Palagonia into a  place of enchantment: rooms lined with mirrors that  break up and multiply the reflected images so  as to render them unrecognisable; busts of marble that  project from the walls with arms held out towards the  dancers; glass eyes rotating in their  eye-sockets; the bedrooms populated with  embalmed animals--donkeys, sparrow-hawks,  foxes, together with snakes, scorpions,  lizards, worms, creatures that no one has ever  before thought of preserving.
  Evil-minded gossips say that his grandfather  Ignazio Sebastiano collected up to his  death--that is to say, to the end of last year--a  local tax on coitus in exchange for giving  up his claims to the feudal jus primae  noctis. The young Palagonia is as ugly as  sin: a receding chin, eyes too close together and a  nose like a beak, but those who know him well say  he is kind, merry, incapable of hurting a fly,  courteous to those beneath him, tolerant, thoughtful and  dedicated to reading romances of adventure and  travel. Strange how they are friends, he and  Mariano; they are so different, but perhaps it is just  this that brings them together. Mariano would not read a  book even if he were forced to do so. His  fantasies are nourished by the spoken rather than the  written word and he certainly prefers a ballad  singer from the streets to a book from his mother's  library.
  Now she suddenly realises she has lost him  in the crowd; where has Mariano, the dreamer,  gone? She finds him a little later walking by himself  in the direction of the bright lights of the coffee  house. She watches him sip a coffee, burn  his tongue and angrily stamp his foot just like he  did when he was little. She watches him sit down  on a straight-backed chair with the cup in his hand  while his gaze rests greedily on the exposed  bodies of the women guests. The pupils of his  eyes grow dark, his lips tighten, his penetrating  look reminds her of uncle husband. She  recognises in it the sudden secret lust for  rape.
  Marianna shuts her eyes. She opens them  again. Mariano is no longer in the coffee house,
  
and Caterina is looking for him. Now the  gazebo is full of guests, everyone with a small  cup of coffee in their hands. She has known them  all her life, even if she does not see much of  them. Usually she meets them at weddings, when  someone enters a religious order, at visits  following childbirth, and at confirmations.
  They are always the same, these women whose minds have  been left to grow lazy in the cloisters inside  their heads, so delicately coiffured in the  Parisian style. From mother to daughter, from daughter  to niece they are forever circling round and round the  problems of their sons, husbands, lovers,  servants, friends, and inventing new wiles so as not  to be crushed. Their men are busy with other  problems, other enjoyments, different yet  parallel: the administration of their distant  estates, the future of their big houses,  hunting, gaming, carriages, courtship and questions of  prestige and precedence. There are a very few who  once in a while are able to leap on to the  roof-tops and look around them to see where the city  is burning, or where the waters are flooding the  land, where the earth still nurtures the ripening of the  corn and the vines, and how their island will be ravished  by fecklessness and plunder.
  The weakness of these families is also hers.  She knows the secret infamies which women talk  about behind their fans, such as the initiation of young boys  with servant girls who, when they become  pregnant, are passed on to open-minded friends or  sent into religious houses as being in "moral  danger" or to hospices for "fallen women".  Then there are the astronomical debts, the  usury, the secret illnesses, the suspect  births, the evenings spent at the club playing for  castles and estates, the escapades in brothels,  the singers competed for to the chink of money, the furious  quarrels between brothers, the secret love  affairs, the terrible vendettas.
  But she knows the dreams too: the enchanting  rhythms of the battles between Orlando, Art@u,  Ricciardetto, Malagigi, Ruggero,
Angelica, Gano di Maganza and
Rodomonte that articulate everyone's  fantasies; their willingness to live on bread and  turnips so as to maintain a carriage  emblazoned with gold. She knows their monstrous  pride, their capricious intelligence that prides  itself on remaining idle as a duty to their rank, the
  
secret biting wit that is often united  with a sensual desire for decay and effacement.
  Is she not like this too? Flesh of their flesh,  idle, watchful, secretive and suffocated  by foolish dreams of grandeur? The only difference  is the disability that has given her more insight  into herself and others, to the extent of sometimes being able  to enter into the thoughts of someone beside her. But she has  not known how to elevate this talent into an art as  Mr David Hume has suggested; she has  let it flower at random, suffering it rather than being  guided by it, without drawing any profit from it.
  In her silence, inhabited only by written  words, she has elaborated theories and left them  half-developed, she has pursued fragments of  thought without methodically cultivating them, allowing  herself to fall into the laziness typical of her kind,  of those secure in their immunity, even before God,  since "to him that hath shall be given and from him that hath  not shall be taken even that he hath". And by "having"  it is not estates, land, houses, gardens, that is  meant, but refinement, reflection, intellectual  complexity, all those things that need abundant  leisure and that favour their lordships, who then  amuse themselves throwing out crumbs to those who are  poor both in money and in spirit.
  The water ice has melted in the long-stemmed  crystal glass. The spoon has slid to the  floor. A puff of air, a breath of dried  figs tickles her ear. Saro is bending over  her, and his lips brush against her neck.  Marianna gives a start, gets up, staggering  comically with her shoes slipped off underneath her  skirt, and stares angrily at the youth. How  dare he come so stealthily to tempt her while she  is lost in her own thoughts!
  With a firm hand she takes hold of the  notebook and pen, and without looking at him  writes, "I have decided you must get married."  Then she hands the sheet of paper to the boy, who  holds it under the flares to read it better.
  Marianna watches him with fascination. None  of the other young men who have been invited have the grace  of his body, over which flicker the undulating light  and shade of the festivities. He is full of  trepidation and uncertainty that lighten the way he  moves, giving him a fragility as if he were  suspended in air. How she would like to take him by the  waist and pull him down to the floor!
  But as soon as she sees his bewildered gaze  settling on her, Marianna goes  hastily to mingle with the throng of guests. Now it is  time for the music, and she has to lead the guests  along the garden paths between the hedges of elderflower  and jasmine towards the newly varnished doors of the  theatre.
  Her brother Abbot Carlo offers her a cup  of chocolate and smiles at her with a questioning look.  Marianna fixes her gaze beyond the tall  lilies and the trunks of pomegranate trees,  to the city of Palermo stretched out like a pink and  green Chinese rug, in a dust-cloud of  dove-grey houses. The chocolate has a  bitter-scented taste on her tongue. Now her  brother taps his foot on the wooden floor of the  veranda. Is he impatient to get rid of her?  Yet she has only just arrived, after two hours  in a litter along the rocky paths that lead up  to San Martino delle Scale.
  "I want to find a wife for a member of my  household. I would like your advice about a good  honest girl", writes Marianna, using her  complicated writing implements, the little folding  table that hangs from her belt, the goose-quill  pen with a detachable nib just arrived from London, the  ink bottle fixed to a little chain and a small  exercise book with detachable pages.
  The sister watches the brother's face as he  reads her words. It is not haste that makes him  wrinkle his forehead, she realises, it is  embarrassment. This sister, locked as she is in  her enforced silence, has always seemed remote,  strange, except perhaps when Grandmother Giuseppa  was still alive and both of them used to get into her bed.  Then he would hug and kiss her so fervently that it  took her breath away. Since then, he does not  know why, they have drifted apart. Now, it seems,  he is wondering what lies behind this request for  advice from his deaf-mute sister: a pretext for  an alliance against their elder brother, who has  been plunging himself into debt? Or curiosity about  his solitary abbot's life? Or a request for  money?
  Clusters of discordant thoughts slip  unintentionally out of his eyes, out of his nostrils.  Marianna watches him tormenting the pointed leaf  of a lily between his plump fingers and knows she cannot  escape from the wave of his reflections, which are  reaching her from the depths of his indolent, caustic  mind.
  His sister the Duchess is anxious. Is she  afraid of getting old? It's strange how
  
well she's worn ... not a shred of  fat, no disfigurement, slim as when she was  twenty, a fresh, clear complexion ... her  hair still fair and curly ... only one white  lock over her left temple ... does she  rinse it in camomile? ... Though, come to think of  it, our father the Duke stayed as fair as an  angel until he was quite old. But all he himself  has left are a few sparse threads. A waste  of time looking at himself in the mirror, he's never  managed to grow any hair, he remains covered  with down like a baby, and that only grows because of the  tincture of herb Gerard mixed with nettles that his  niece Felice told him about. ... This dumb  sister still has the face of a young girl ... while  his has swollen up with lumps and bumps all  over the place. ... What if it were her dumbness  that has preserved her from the ruins of growing old?  ... There is something virginal in her wide-open  eyes ... when she looks at him like that she  makes him feel uneasy. ... Heaven knows  what sort of a beanpole his uncle was ... he  used to see Duke Pietro walking like an old  crock, all jerks and twists, as if he were  made of wood ... and she has kept the purity  of a young wife ... behind that lace, those cloaks,  those bows the colour of night, there is a body that  has never tasted what pleasure is. ... It must  be like that ... pleasure devours, broadens,  crumbles ... yes, pleasure ... he has been  in it up to his neck, first of all women with thin  backs and flat breasts, entwined body to body,  leaving them both exhausted ... then changing over the  years into a father's sensual taste for the deformed and  emaciated bodies of sullen-faced little boys,  whom he now loves only with his eyes and in his  imagination. ... He would never give up the joy  of having around him those small beings with legs  crippled from undernourishment, those small black  glittering eyes, those fingers that are unable to reach for  anything in spite of wanting to reach for the world. ...  He would never give up one of these prot@eg`es  not even to regain that same body he had as a  youth, with thick hair and a slender neck. ... It  is she who by losing her voice has lost everything  ... she is afraid ... you can read it in her  eyes ... it's there underneath ... it is fear that  stops her from living and throws her into the grave  intact and still a virgin, but already suffocated,  pulled to pieces, dead like a badly chiselled
  
block of wood. Why is she so  obstinate? Where did it come from? Certainly not from  her father, who was always generous and heedless, even  less from her mother, who camouflaged herself under the  blankets to the point where she couldn't recognise  her own legs ... snuff and laudanum kept  her in a limbo from which it became more and more nauseating  for her to escape.
  Marianna cannot take her eyes off his mind.  Her brother's thoughts slip effortlessly from his head  into hers, as if the expert hand of a gardener were trying  out some dangerous grafting operation. She would like  to stop him, to tear out this alien branch, from which flows  such an icy bitter sap, but how to do it when one  is at the receiving end of other people's thoughts and is  unable to stifle them? She is taken over by a harsh  desire to touch the bottom of this horror, giving  substance to the most secret and fugitive words, the  most despicable, the most nihilistic.
  Her brother seems to be aware of her  apprehension, and soothes it with a twinkle in his  eyes and a kind smile. Then he gets hold of the  pen and writes, filling the page with minute  sloping letters, beautiful to look at.
  "How old is the bridegroom?"  "Twenty-four."
  "What is his occupation?"
  "Cellarman."
  "Does he have any money?"
  "None of his own. I will give him a thousand  escudos. He has served me loyally. His  sister is a servant in my house. Our father the  Duke gave her to me as a present years  ago."
  "And how much do you pay him a month?"  "Twenty-five tar@i."
  Abbot Carlo Ucr@ia makes a face as  if to say that it's not a bad wage, and that any  peasant girl would be glad of him for a husband.
  I could arrange something with the sister of Totuccio  the stone-breaker. They are so poor in that family  that if they could sell her in the market. ...  They'd be free of the burden ... and there's the  others too. Five sisters and a brother, a real  misfortune for a fisherman without a boat who  fishes from other people's old tubs and feeds off the  remains which the bosses leave him in exchange for  his work. He goes barefoot even on Sundays  and all he's got for a house is a cave black  with smoke. ... The first time he went there to please
  
that little snail Totuccio, the mother was  squashing lice on the youngest of the daughters while  the others stood round in a circle and laughed  shamelessly, with those hungry mouths, their eyes  popping out, their necks as stringy as a chicken's  ... small, crooked. No one ever thinks of them  as wives, they aren't even good for work, they've  suffered too much hunger, who would take them on?  The oldest has got a hump, the second  goitre, the third is a mouse, the fourth a  spider and the fifth a scorpion fish. ...
  And yet the father is crazy about these deformed  creatures, that big stupid man, you should see how  he pets them. And their mother too, with her hands all  scratched and filthy: she tickles them, cleans  them, smooths their plaits with fish-oil ... and  what laughs they all have together! Totuccio started  to do odd jobs when he was nine to bring some money  into the family ... but what could he earn? A  tar@i once a fortnight, not even enough to get them  a bread roll. You should have seen him the day he  arrived at the monastery, half-naked, carrying a  basket of stones on his head, all filthy with  mortar dust and mud. And how seriously he lined  up the stones next to the bed with the lilies. They were  so heavy he could hardly manage to shove them into the  ground. He had to thank Father Domenico, who  has a mania for walls. Without him that boy would  never have known how to start. Now all eight of them  live off what he earns ... not much, only a  few carlini, but it's just enough ... they make  soup out of fish bones, bread out of chaff ... but  they are a cheerful lot and they've got a bit  fatter and cleaner. ... He didn't do it for their  good, he hasn't got the soul of a Samaritan
... all the same, good has come out of it ... is  this a vice?
  This eternal carping of the moralists ... these  Fathers make one laugh with the stink they create under  their own noses ... my sister too with her pained  frowns. Who does she think she is, Santa  Genoveffa? Why doesn't she open her arms,  put a foot wrong, take the bandages off her  eyes? ... Everything we do is done out of our  need for pleasure. Whether it is a refined  pleasure like ministering to the poor, or a coarse  pleasure like enjoying the sight of a little boy with a  slender waist and a bottom like a little round loaf  ... one doesn't become a saint through will-power but  through pleasure. There are some who make love with the
  
devil, some who make it with the wounded  body of our Lord Jesus, some who make it with  themselves, some who make it with little boys--but without  abusing them, without seizing them or tearing them or  violating them in any way ... pleasure is an  art that knows its own limits ... the greatest  pleasure lies in respecting these limits and  making out of them a framework for one's own  harmony. Excesses are not a part of how he is  ... excesses would cast him straight into a  cauldron of strains and swindles, scandals and  lies, and he loves books too much to believe  in the searing temptations of the flesh. The eye knows  how to caress better than the hand, and his eyes have  had their fill, but with such gentleness, such unspoken  tenderness. ...
  That's enough, says Marianna to herself, now I  must write to him to stop showing me his thoughts. But her  hand stays resting quietly on her lap, her  eyes half-shut in the shadow of the pomegranate  leaves that send out a delicate bitter perfume.
  "I have a girl for you, she is called  Peppinedda. She is a good girl, she is  sixteen and she is very poor but so long as you  encourage her ..."
  Marianna nods. It seems pointless to begin  another sheet of paper. Her mind is exhausted  by the thoughts that have travelled up and down her head like  a gang of mice having a party. Now she only  wants to rest. She already knows all about Peppina  and it does not worry her that her brother has  chosen her for his own eccentric reasons; one  reason is as good as another. If she had asked  her daughters they would have been all at sixes and  sevens, and no help at all. Carlo, with his  epicurean philosophy, his intelligent piggy  eyes, is capable of resolving other people's  difficulties delicately, combining their interests  with what lies close to his heart. His motive  is not to do good, and that is the very reason why he  sometimes does it. His truffle-hound nose can find  the treasure and flush it out for her as he has done  now, with generosity. It only remains for her  to thank him and leave. But something holds her  back, a question that prods her hand; she takes up  the pen, nibbles the point and then writes as quickly  as usual: "Carlo, do you remember whether I have  ever talked?"
  "No, Marianna." No hesitation. A  "no" that closes the discussion. An exclamation
  
mark, a flourish.
  "Yet I can remember hearing sounds that I've  since lost."
  "I know nothing of it, sister." And with that the  conversation is ended. He prepares to get up and  say goodbye, but his sister shows no sign of  moving. Her fingers still twist round the pen, becoming  stained with ink. "Is there anything else?" he  writes, bending over his sister's notebook.
  "Our lady mother once told me that I had not  always been deaf and dumb."
  Now what's got into her head? Isn't it enough for  her to come and disturb him about one of her household,  someone she is perhaps in love with ... of course,  why did he not think of that before ... are they not both  of the same flesh? Lecherous and indulgent towards  their own desires, ready to snatch, to withhold,  to pay, because everything is allowed them by right of birth.  ... Lord forgive me! ... Perhaps it is only  an evil thought ... the Ucr@ias have been good  hunters, insatiable profiteers ... even if they  then stopped half-way, because they did not have the  stamina for excesses like the Scebarr@as. ...  Look at her ladyship his sister, with that milky  pallor, that soft mouth ... something tells him that  everything is yet to be revealed in her ... a fine  game, sister, at your age ... madness! And no  one has taught her the rudiments of love ...  it's easy to see she will lose all her feathers  ... he could teach her something but they are not  experiences that can be exchanged between brothers and  sisters. ... What a leveret she was when she was  little ... both happy and fearful ... but it's  true, she talked when she was four years old,  maybe five ... he remembers that very well and  he recollects all the whisperings in the  family, the closing up of terrified lips ...  but why? What was the awful thing that took place in  the labyrinths of the Via Alloro? One evening  they heard screams to make the flesh creep and  Marianna with her legs all bloodstained being  dragged away between their father and Raffaele Cuffa.  Strange the absence of the women ... the fact is  that, yes, now he remembers, Uncle
Pietro, that damned old billy-goat, had  assaulted her and left her half-dead ...  yes, Uncle Pietro, now it comes back  to him, how could he have forgotten? "Out of love,"  Uncle Pietro had said, "out of a most sacred  love." He just adored that little girl and "if
  
only he hadn't gone crazy. ..."
How could he have lost the memory of that tragedy?  And then, afterwards, yes afterwards, when Marianna was  healed it was realised that she could no longer speak as  if zap, he had cut out her tongue. ... Our  father the Duke, with his superstitious ideas, his  obsessive love for his daughter ... seeking  to make her better, made her worse ... a little  girl at an execution, how could a half-witted  action like that have come into his head? Then when she was  thirteen to give her to the same uncle who had  violated her when she was five. ... What a  fool their father Duke Signoretto was ...  seeing that the wrong done was his brother-in-law's,  he thought he might just as well give her to him in  marriage. ... Her little head has erased  everything ... no one knows ... perhaps it's better  like that, let's leave her in ignorance, poor  dumb thing ... she would be better taking a glass  of laudanum and putting herself to sleep ... he  has no patience with deaf people nor with those who tie  themselves in knots with their own hands, nor with those who  give themselves to God with so much gullibility. ...  But it will not be him who awakens her crippled  memory ... after all, it is a family  secret ... a secret that not even our mother knew  ... an affair between men, a crime perhaps but by now  expiated, buried ... what is served by getting  in a rage about it?
  The Abbot Carlo, still pursuing his secret  thoughts, has forgotten his sister, who by now has  left and has almost reached the garden gate. From behind  it looks as if she is weeping. But why should she  be weeping? Has he perhaps written something?  Suppose she had heard his thoughts, the little darling?  Who knows if behind that deafness there might not be some more  subtle hearing, a diabolical ear capable of  unveiling the secrets of the mind? Quick, I'll  catch her up, he says to himself. I'll take  her by the shoulders, I'll clasp her to my breast,  I'll kiss her cheek ... I'll do it, even  if the heavens should fall.
  "Marianna," he shouts, on the point of  following her.
  But she cannot hear him. And while he is getting  out of the chair into which he has sunk she has already  opened the gate, jumped into the hired litter and  started to descend the slope that leads down  to Palermo.
  
                XXXV

  "Oh Lord, I long for what I cannot will. ..."  The books emit a good smell of tanned leather,  pressed paper, dried ink. This little book of  poetry is as heavy in her hand as a small  block of crystal. The words of Michelangelo  compose themselves in her mind with the precision, the  purity of a drawing in Chinese ink. A perfect  little geometry of words:

Sweet is my sleep, but sweeter to be stone;  So long as pain and ill-repute endure  Neither to see nor feel is my cure.
Then do not wake me; speak in an undertone.

Marianna looks up at the window. Darkness  has already fallen and it is scarcely half-past  four. It is cold in the library in spite of the  coal burning in the brazier. She lifts her hand  to pull the bell-rope but at that very moment she  sees the door slide open by itself, preceded by a  halo of light. In the doorway a candlestick  appears followed by Fila holding the candlestick  in her hands. Her face is almost entirely  obscured by a bonnet of coarse cloth that covers  up her ears, comes down all askew over her  cheeks and fastens beneath her chin with a little cord that  inhibits her breathing. She is white as a sheet  and her eyes are red as if she has been crying.
  Marianna signals her to come close, but  Fila pretends not to understand, makes a quick  curtsy, puts the candlestick on the table and  goes towards the door. Marianna gets up out  of the chair into which she has sunk, and goes after her,  takes her by the arm and feels it tremble. Her    skin is ice-cold, covered with a veil of sweat.  "What's the matter?" she asks with her eyes.  She feels her forehead, and sniffs her. From beneath  her bonnet emerges an acid smell, greasy  and nauseating. Then she notices a black  liquid running down from her ears to her neck.  What is it? Marianna shakes her and questions her  with gestures, but the girl bends her head  obstinately and does not reply.
  Marianna pulls the bell to summon  Innocenza and meanwhile continues to sniff at the  girl. Innocenza cannot write but when she wants  she knows how to make herself understood better than  Fila. As soon as the cook comes into the room
  
Marianna shows her Fila's head, the  cloth bonnet spotted with dark stains, the black  liquid that runs stinking and glistening down her  neck. Innocenza bursts out laughing and slowly  forms the syllables of the word "ringworm" so that the  Duchess can read it on her lips.
  Marianna remembers having read in a  pamphlet by the skin specialists of the School of  Salerno that ringworm is sometimes cured amongst the  common people by a folk remedy that uses burning  pitch. But it is a dangerous and drastic method  of cure; it involves burning the scalp and  stripping it bare. If the unfortunate victim  manages to hold out they will be cured, if they do not  die ravaged by the burns. Marianna pulls the  bonnet from Fila's head, but she sees that the  damage has already been done. Her poor head,  completely without hair, is torn open by large  patches of burnt and bleeding skin.
  Apparently this all took place at the home  of some relations at Ficarazzi when she last  visited them. She had stayed for ten days in one of  those dark caves surrounded by donkeys, fowls and  black beetles; and now, without saying a word  to her, she is trying to get rid of the parasites  by burning her head to death.
  Fila had started to behave strangely after  Saro's marriage to Peppinedda. She had taken  to sleepwalking, wandering about in the middle of the night  in her night-gown. One morning she was discovered  half-drowned, having fainted and fallen into the  lily pond. And now this business of the ringworm.  A month ago she had asked permission to go and  visit distant cousins at Ficarazzi. An  enormous man with goatskin leggings had come  to fetch her in a cart painted with the most beautiful  pictures of paladins, trees and horses.
Fila got in between a dog and a sack of grain.  She went off swinging her legs and looking happy.  Marianna remembers waving to her from the window,  following with her eyes the minute figure on the  cart with its gaudy colours, going off towards  Bagheria.
  For Saro's wedding Marianna had given a  big party with wine from her cellars and many different  kinds of fish: from mackerel and amberjack roasted  over the embers to small boiled squid, from stuffed  sardines to baked sole. Peppina had eaten so  much that she felt quite ill. Saro seemed  satisfied: the wife the Duchess had chosen for
  
him was to his liking--small as a child,  olive-skinned, her arms covered with hair, a  fresh mouth with strong white teeth, large dark  eyes melting like two coffee ices.
  She has soon shown herself to be an  intelligent and strong-willed girl, even though  she is as wild as a goat. Used to suffering  hunger and to working like a slave at home, mending  other people's nets beneath the sun, making do with a piece  of bread spread with garlic, she demonstrates  her contentment by eating anything and everything, running  everywhere and singing at the top of her voice. She  laughs a lot and is as stubborn as a mule, but  she obeys her husband because she knows it is her  duty. However, she has a way of obeying him that  has nothing servile about it: as if each time it is  she who has made the decision about what has to be  done, according to her own wishes, like a powerful queen.  Saro treats her like a pet animal that belongs  to him. Sometimes he plays with her on the carpet in  the yellow room, throwing her to the ground, tickling  her, laughing until they cry. At other times he  forgets about her for days on end.
  If uncle husband were alive he would chase  both of them out, Marianna tells herself, but instead  she tolerates them, even taking pleasure in  watching them as they play. Since Saro has been  married she feels much calmer. She does not  walk on tiptoe any more to avoid the snares  set for her throughout the day. She is no longer in  terror of being left alone with him, she does not  wait to see him pass beneath her window in the  morning, with his freshly laundered shirt open at  his delicate throat, a lock of hair sliding  over his temple. She has given Peppinedda the  task of helping Innocenza in the kitchen and the  girl has shown herself to be very good at gutting  fish, at scraping off the scales without  splattering them around, and at preparing a sauce of  garlic and oil, marjoram and rosemary for  grilling them.
  Like Fila, Peppinedda refused to wear shoes  at first. Although she has been given two pairs,  one of leather and one of embroidered silk, she  has always gone around barefoot, leaving small  damp footprints on the polished floors of the  rooms. Now she is five months pregnant,  she has stopped playing with Sarino and carries her  belly around like a trophy. She ties her  black hair lightly behind her neck with a
  
brilliant red bow. She walks with her  legs apart as if she might ladle the child out then and  there in the middle of the kitchen or the yellow room,  but she has not lost any of her skills. She  wields the kitchen knife like a hefty soldier,  she talks little or not at all, and having at first  stuffed herself with food, she now pecks at it like a  young sparrow.
  On the other hand, she steals. Not money or  precious objects, but sugar and biscuits and  coffee and lard. She hides the food under the roof  and then, as soon as she can, makes her way  to Palermo and gives everything to her sisters.  Another of her obsessions is buttons. At the  beginning she only used to take ones that had fallen  off. But then she started to pull them off by twisting  them in her fingers with a dreamy look. Recently  she has got into the habit of cutting them with her  teeth and if someone surprises her doing this she  keeps the buttons in her mouth until she can  put them in a safe place in her room, where she  piles them up in an old box.
  Saro, who has learned how to write  reasonably well, tells Marianna everything  about his young wife. It seems as if he  especially enjoys telling her about these little  dishonesties of his "woman" Peppinedda, implying  that if these things are going on the fault is  entirely Marianna's because it was she who forced her  on to him. But Marianna is entertained  by Peppinedda's extravagances. She feels  happy about this girl who is somewhat  round-shouldered, strong as a bull-calf, wild as  a buffalo, silent as a fish. Saro is rather  ashamed of her but has learned to keep quiet about  it. He has committed to memory the precepts  of the nobility and learned them well: never to show his  real feelings, never to be serious, to make good  use of his eyes and tongue but without calling  attention to himself.
  "Peppinedda has stolen once more. What should  I do?"
  "Thrash her!" writes Marianna and hands him  the sheet of paper with a look of amusement.
  "She is expecting a baby. And then she  bites me."
  "Then let her alone."
  "Suppose she steals again?"
  "Thrash her twice."
  "Why don't you thrash her?"
  
  "She is your wife. It's your  business."
  But she knows full well that Saro will never beat  her. Because at bottom he is afraid of her,  he fears her in the same way as one fears a  stray dog which if disturbed can sink its teeth  into one's leg without a moment's hesitation.
  But now Fila has fainted in the middle of the  library. Innocenza, rather than taking care of her,  is using her apron to clean up the pitch where it  has run on to the carpet.
  Marianna bends over the girl. She holds  her open palm against her chest and feels her heart  beating slowly, sluggishly. She presses her  finger on the vein that runs down her neck; it is  pulsating regularly. Yet she is icy cold  as if she were dead. She must be lifted up; she  makes a sign to Innocenza, who takes hold  of her feet. Marianna herself lifts her  shoulders and together they lay her on the couch.  Innocenza unties her apron and spreads it  over the cushions so that they will not get dirty. From  the expression on her face it is evident that she  very much disapproves of a little servant like Fila  lying down on the couch lined with the white and gold of the  house of Ucr@ia, even if she has fainted,  even if it is with the permission of the Duchess.
  She is altogether too odd, this duchess, she  lacks a sense of proportion. ... Everyone  has their place and if they didn't the world would  become like a circus. ... Today Fila, tomorrow  Saro and even that little thief Peppinedda. Between her  and a bitch the only difference is the paws. ...  How the Duchess manages to put up with her she  can't imagine. But that fat Abbot Carlo found the  girl for her and she took her on. ... In the time  it takes to turn round every drop of oil has  disappeared, once a week she clings behind the  Duchess's little carriage or the gig drawn by the  little black horse that belongs to her daughter  Felice the nun, with her bodice stuffed with all  her pickings. ... That blockhead of a husband  knows all about it but what does he do? ...  Nothing ... God knows where his head is ... he  seems to be smitten with love ... and the Duchess  protects him ... she has lost all authority  ... all restraint. If Duke Pietro were  here he would lash everyone really hard ... that poor  Duke hanging from a nail in the catacombs of the  Capuchins, and his skin has got like a leather
  
armchair, it hangs from his bones like a  used glove pulled over his teeth, it's as if  he were laughing, but it's not a laugh it's a sneer.  ... He must have known of her passion for gold because  when he died he left four hundred Roman  grani with a papal eagle and ut commonius  engraved on the back, and three gold coins with the  face of Charles II, King of Spain.
  Marianna bends over Fila, buries her  face in the full cotton sleeves smelling of  basil, and tries to forget Innocenza; but she is  still there flooding her with words. There are some people who  make a present of their thoughts with a bitter,  defiant malignity, even if they are entirely  unconscious of doing so. One of these is  Innocenza, who, along with her affection,  unloads a stream of senseless chatter on her.
  She must find a husband for Fila, she says  to herself. She will give her a good dowry. Yet she  is not aware of her ever having fallen in love; not  with one of the footmen, nor with an innkeeper, nor  a shoemaker, nor a cowman, as happens  continually with the living-out servants. She always  follows her brother around and when she cannot be with him  she stays by herself with her head slightly to one  side, her eyes lost in space, her mouth shut  tight in a pained expression.
  It will be best for her to get married as soon as  possible and to have a child immediately, Marianna repeats  to herself, and smiles to find that she is coming out with the very  same proposals her mother would have made, or her  grandmother, or even her great-grandmother, who lived through  the plague in Palermo in 1624. "Santa
Ninfa could not help them, nor Santa Agata,  who was the protector of the city. Another very  beautiful saint of noble birth from the ancient  family of the Sinibaldi della Quisquina,  little Santa Rosalia, was the only one who  knew how to say to the plague "Enough, be  off!"" Grandmother Giuseppa had written in one  of her exercise books; Marianna has kept  the sheet of paper among the notes from her father.
  To marry, to have children, to marry off the daughters, for  them to have children, so that their daughters marry and have children,  who in their turn marry and have children. ... Voices  of the family tradition, low sugary voices that have  rolled down the centuries, feathering the nest in which  to keep the precious egg that is the Ucr@ia  dynasty related through the female line to the greatest  families of Palermo. They are the confident
  
voices that sustain with their noble  life-blood the sap of the family tree weighed  down with its branches and leaves. Every leaf with a name  and a date. Signoretto, Prince of  Fontanasalsa, 1179, next to several very  small dead leaves: Agata, Marianna,  Giuseppa, Maria, Teresa. Carlo
Ucr@ia, 1315, another leaf; and alongside  Fiammetta, Manina, Marianna. Some  became nuns, others married, all have  sacrificed themselves and all their possessions, together  with their younger brothers, to preserve the integrity of the  family lineage.
  The family name is an orc, a monster from the  sea, a jealous Hercules, which devours everything  with the voracity of a swine: fields of grain,  vineyards, hens, sheep, rounds of cheese,  houses, furniture, rings, pictures,  statues, carriages, silver candlesticks, all  put into circulation under this name that repeats itself on  the tongue like an incantation.
  Marianna's leaf is still alive only because  Uncle Pietro unexpectedly inherited an  estate and someone had to be found to marry such an  eccentric character. "Marianna" is inscribed in  letters of gold in the centre of a small offshoot  between the two branches of the Ucr@ia family; one  of these was on the point of extinction through the  eccentricity of the only son Pietro, while the  other was more prolific but also more dangerously  unbalanced and on the edge of bankruptcy.
  Marianna has found herself drawn into an  age-old family stratagem: up to her neck in  a scheme to unite the two branches of the  family. But also completely unconnected with it  because of her impairment, which has resulted in her  being an observer, free from the malign spell of  her own kind. "Corrupted by books," as Aunt  Teresa the Prioress used to say; everyone knows  that books are harmful and that what the Lord wants  is a virgin soul who perpetuates over the  centuries the customs of the dead with a blind passion of  love, without reservations, without questioning, without  doubts.
  It is because of this that she is overwhelmed,  kneeling on the carpet beside the servant with the wounded  head, who writhes like a worm. Bewildered by the  ancestral voices that ask for her respect and  loyalty, she finds other petulant voices like  that of Mr David Hume with his green turban
  
asking her to be daring and to send to the devil  that mountain of inherited superstition.

               XXXVI

  Hurried breathing, the smell of camphor and  cabbage-leaf poultices: every time she comes into the  room it seems to her as if she were reliving her  son Signoretto's illness, the distress of  laboured breathing, the foetid smell of sweat  sticking to the skin, restless sleep, bitter tastes  and mouths dry with fever.
  Events have happened so quickly that she has not had  time to think about them. Peppinedda was delivered of a  little boy, round as a ball and covered with black  hair. Fila helped the midwife to cut the  cord, to clean the new-born baby with soap and  water, and dry him with warm towels. She seemed  pleased with this nephew fortune had presented to her.  Then one night while the mother slept with the baby in  her arms, Fila dressed herself up as if she were  going to mass, went down into the kitchen, armed herself  with the knife used for gutting fish and in the  half-light approached the bed and began to stab the  two bodies lying there, that of the mother and that of the  baby. She did not realise that Saro was with them,  his head on Peppinedda's shoulder. He suffered  the fiercest blows, one on his thigh, one on his  chest and one on his ear.
  The baby died. No one knows if he was  crushed beneath his father or his mother; what is certain is  that he died of suffocation, without any marks from the  knife. Peppinedda came out of it with one cut  on her arm and a few surface scratches on her  neck.
  By the time Marianna came down to the ground  floor, propelled along on Innocenza's arm,  it was already morning and four men from the Vicaria were  taking Fila away bound like a sausage. After a  trial lasting three days she was sentenced to be  hanged. And Marianna, not knowing who else  to turn to, went to Giacomo Camal@eo, the  city Praetor and first among the senators, in the  hope of interceding for her. The child was dead, but not from  his aunt's stabs. Saro had survived and so had  Peppinedda.
  "A wrong that goes unpunished only breeds  further crime", Camal@eo wrote on the  small piece of paper she held out for him.
  "She will be punished anyway if she is sent
  
to prison", she replied, trying  to control the trembling of her fingers. She was longing  to run home to Saro. She had left him in the  hands of the leech Pozzolungo, in whom she had  little trust. At the same time she was desperate  to save Fila from the gallows. But Don  Camal@eo was in no hurry, he watched her with  glistening eyes that occasionally lit up with a flash of  interest.
  And she had written again, steadying her wrist,  recalling Hippocrates, quoting Saint  Augustine. After half an hour he softened a  little and offered her a glass of Cyprus wine, which  he kept on a chest of drawers. And she, hiding  her anxiety, made an effort to drink it,  smiling graciously, humbly.
  In his turn Don Camal@eo quoted at  length from Saint-Simon and Pascal, filling  sheets of paper with a queer handwriting full of  dots and flourishes, stopping every three words to blow  on his goose quill dripping with ink.
  "Each life is a microcosm, my dear  Duchess, a living thought that is struggling to emerge  from its own shadowy regions."
  Playing the same game, she answered him  demurely, perfectly in control. The
Praetor assumed a pompous look, entertained  and amused by this exchange of erudition. A woman  who has read Saint Augustine and Socrates,  Saint-Simon and Pascal is not an everyday  occurrence, his eyes were saying, and he must make the  most of it. With her he could marry gallantry with  scholarship, he could display all his learning without  arousing boredom and uneasiness as was usually the  case with the women he paid court to.
  Marianna was obliged to swallow her haste,  to forget it. She remained there discussing  philosophy and drinking Cyprus wine in the  hope that in the end she would extract a promise  from him. The Praetor did not seem in the least  worried by the disablement of his lady interlocutor.  He even seemed pleased that she was unable to talk,  since it allowed him to show off his knowledge in writing,  omitting the usual intervals of chit-chat that  obviously bored him. By the end he had made her  a promise to intercede with the Court of Justice  to rescue Fila from the gallows, suggesting that she  should be detained as a madwoman in San  Giovanni de' Leprosi.
  "From what you tell me the girl acted out of
  
love, and the madness of love is the bread  of so much literature: was not Orlando mad? And  did not Don Quixote bow down before a  laundry maid and address her as  "Princess"? Madness then, what is it if not  an excess of wisdom, a wisdom without those  contradictions that make it imperfect and therefore  human? Reason, taken in its crystal  integrity, in its dogma of caution, comes very nigh  to perdition. If we apply to the letter the rules of  rational knowledge, without either speculating or doubting, we  fall into the hell of madness."
  The next morning a small carriage arrived  in the Via Alloro, laden with flowers, two  huge bunches of pink gladioli and one of  yellow lilies, as well as a box of sweets.  A little black boy had delivered it all to the  kitchen and had gone away without waiting even to be  thanked.
  When Marianna went back to find out what had  been decided by the Court of Justice, Don  Camal@eo seemed so delighted to see her that she  felt quite alarmed. What if he expected something  in return? The enthusiasm he demonstrated was  excessive, and vaguely menacing. He gave  her the best chair in the room, offered her the  usual wine from Cyprus, and almost snatched out of  her hand the sheet of paper that she passed to him  to write down two lines from Boiardo:

Whoever greets her, speaks with her, whoever  touches her,
Whoever sits with her, for him all past time will be  forgot.

Eventually after two hours of literary bravura  he had written that Fila was already at the  Leprosi in her own interest, and that she could  remain there in peace because they were not going to hang  her.
  Marianna had raised her blue eyes  uncertainly to the Praetor, but she was immediately  reassured. His face expressed a pleasure that  went beyond that of a normal exchange of favours.  But with his studies at the University of  Salerno, his apprenticeship at the bar of  Reggio Calabria, his long sojourn spent  studying in T@ubingen, the senator regarded  blackmail as too crude a weapon for a true  man of power.
  
  He gave her permission to send every day  to the Leprosi a footman with fresh bread,  cheese and fruit, without however warning her that there was  no guarantee the provisions would reach her  prot@eg@ee. In the mornings Marianna would from  time to time see the Praetor arrive in a little  carriage drawn by a dappled horse. She would  rush to tidy her hair which had fallen on to her  shoulders, and receive him severely dressed with all  her writing paraphernalia to hand.
  He awaited her in the yellow room, standing in  front of one of Intermassimi's chimeras, which  seemed to be always pining for the love of whoever was  looking at them. But it was sufficient for the observer  to turn his back for the same look to transform itself  into a mocking grimace. When she entered, the  Praetor bowed down almost to the ground, diffusing a  subtle scent of gardenias. He fixed her with  metallic eyes made soft by honey of a flavour  that pleased him above all else. He came  to talk to her about the "poor madwoman", as he  called Fila, shut away in the Leprosi under  his "gracious" protection. Always kind and  polite, always preceded by armfuls of flowers and  sweets, he was perfectly happy to come all the  way to Bagheria to visit her. He would seat himself  on the edge of the chair and hold the pen with great  elegance as he wrote.
  Marianna served him with hot chocolate  flavoured with cinnamon, or raisin wine from  M`alaga with its sweet scent of dried figs.  The first notes were of courteous formality: "How  is Her Grace the Duchess this morning?"
"Has her sleep been propitious?" Having  swallowed two cups of hot, well-sugared  chocolate and stuffed his mouth with little cakes filled  with fresh ricotta, Camal@eo began to send his  pen darting over the sheet of white paper like a  small lizard. His eyes lit up, his mouth  took on a firm fold of satisfaction and he  would go on for hours, talking or rather writing about  Thucydides and Seneca, but also about  Voltaire, Machiavelli, Locke and
Boileau. Marianna began to think that at  bottom she was merely an innocent pretext for a  firework display of learning, and he fell in with this,  always bringing new pens, little bottles of Indian  ink just arrived from Venice, paper edged with a blue  border, ashes to dry the words as soon as they were  written.
  
  By this time she no longer experienced  fear but only curiosity about this kaleidoscopic  intelligence and also--why not?--a certain liking,  especially when he wrote with his head down,  holding the paper in his open hand. His hands were the  most beautiful things in a disproportionate body,  its long elegant torso in striking contrast to its  two short stumpy legs.
  It is strange how the awkward body of the  Praetor should insinuate itself into her anxieties  about Saro's wounds. Now I am here next to him,  Marianna says to herself, and I do not want to,  must not, think of anything except that his life is in  danger. Saro spends his time sleeping, but it  seems that it is something more deep-seated and more  dangerous than sleep that numbs him and keeps  him a prisoner. His wounds have not healed. Fila  struck him with such violence that even though the  surgeon Ciullo came at once from Palermo  and sewed him up with great skill, his blood is  no longer circulating with the joy it used to have, and his  wounds are tending to suppurate.
  Peppinedda, after the knife attack, has  gone back to her father. So it falls to Marianna  to take care of his wounds, alternating with  Innocenza, who, however, does it with great  reluctance, especially at night. For the first few  days the unfortunate Saro tossed about as if he  were battling against enemies trying to tie him up or  gag him or imprison him inside a sack.
Now, exhausted, he seems to have given up the  attempt to escape from his sack and passes his time  sleeping, though now and again he is overcome by a  painful restlessness and convulsed by tearless sobbing.  Marianna keeps him company, sitting in an  armchair by his bedside. She cleans his wounds,  renews the bandages and moistens his lips with a little  lemon and water.
  Several physicians have been to see him. Not  Cannamela, who is now old and half-blind, but  other younger ones: among them one by the name of Pace,  who has a great reputation for his skill. He  arrived one morning on horseback, wrapped in  the kind of large hooded cloak that in Palermo  is called a giucche. He felt the  invalid's pulse, smelled his urine and made a  face. It was hard to be sure whether he was  expressing uncertainty or simply wished to put  on an air of enquiry and speculation befitting a  scientist faced with a sick body that is anyway
  
destined to decay. Finally he decreed that  it was necessary to apply leeches.
  "He has already lost a lot of blood,
Doctor Pace", Marianna had written in  haste, resting her sheet of paper on the bedside  table. But the physician was not prepared to discuss  the matter. He regarded her note as an insult  and was deeply offended. He pulled down the  collar of his cloak and went off, not however without  having first collected his fee, including the  additional expense of the journey, with hay and new  horseshoes for his horse.
  In the end Marianna sent for help from her  daughter Felice, who arrived with her herbs, her  decoctions, her poultices of nettles and  mallow. She cured his wounds with cabbage leaves  and herbal vinegar dei sette ladre.
  In less than a week Saro has begun  to improve very slightly, although he is still  enveloped in the sweetish smell of his dressings.  He remains motionless between the sheets, white on    white, his chest bandaged, his ear packed round with  cotton, his leg bound up like a mummy. Every so  often he opens his grey eyes, unable to decide  whether to withdraw to the re/l shadows of the beyond or  to return to a life consisting of knives and bowls  of soup that have somehow to be swallowed.
  Marianna presses his hand: as she pressed  Manina's hand when she was nearly dying of a blood  infection after childbirth; as she pressed the hand of  her father the Duke, except that when she took it  he was already dead and there was an icy smell of  mortal flesh about him. A litany of illnesses  and deaths which have taken the splendour from the scaffolding  of her thoughts; each death a rubbing in of grains of  salt; her head marred by bruises and scars from which  there is no recovery.
  Now here she is, like a patient dove brooding  over its egg, hoping to see the emergence of a  beautiful young dove with a will to live. She could send  for Peppinedda. Indeed, she knows that this is what  she ought to do, but she has no wish to do it: she  puts it off from day to day. Peppinedda will come  back when she feels the need to stuff herself with  food, to steal buttons and to roll around on the  carpets.
  
               XXXVII

  Will it be compromising for her to go to San  Giovanni de' Leprosi with Senator
Giacomo Camal@eo, Praetor of
Palermo? Could it be seen as an act of folly  that will put her brothers and her children against her?
  These questions course through Marianna's head at the  very moment she puts her foot on the footboard  of the two-horse carriage that awaits her in the  courtyard of the Villa Ucr@ia. A gloved hand  helps her to pull herself up. As she enters the  carriage she is met by a strong scent of  gardenia. Don Camal@eo is dressed in dark  clothes, with breeches and redingote in chestnut  brown threaded with gold, a black and chestnut  tricorn slipping over his powdered curls, his  pointed shoes illumined by silver rosettes  studded with diamonds.
  Marianna sits down facing him and immediately  takes out of her bag of silver mesh the wooden  holder with pen and ink and the little table very like the one  given her by her father the Duke and later stolen from  her at Torre Scannatura.
  The senator smiles in tribute to the  Duchess's skill: he will be obliged to lead off  with a stream of letters stuffed with quotations from Hobbes  and Plato, and thus intimacy will be avoided. But  he hazards a guess that one of the letters he intends  to write will be preserved in the box with Chinese  designs: the letter in which he reveals himself most,  telling her about his studies at T@ubingen when he  was thirty years younger.
  "I used to live in a tower with three floors  that looked out over the river Neckar. I would  spend the afternoons there with my books beside one of those  big blue and white majolica stoves. If I  looked up I could see the poplars along the  river, the swans always waiting for someone to throw them  bread out of a window. They made deep throaty  sounds and they used to have terrible fights with each other  during the mating season. I hated that river, I  hated those houses with their steep roofs, I hated  those swans with the voices of pigs, I hated the  snow that threw a blanket of silence over the  entire city, I even hated the beautiful girls  with fringed shawls as they went to and fro along the  island. The garden in front of the tower was actually  part of a long gloomy island where the students used  to walk between one class and the next. But now I would
  
give ten years of my life to return  to that yellow tower on the banks of the Neckar and  hear the guttural cries of the swans. I would  even be happy to eat their greasy sausages, I  would even admire those fair girls whose shoulders  were draped with coloured shawls. Is it not an  aberration of the memory to love only what it has  lost? Just why do we lose these things, only  to languish with nostalgia for the same places and the  same people that earlier bored us to extinction? Is not  all this predictable, vulgar folly?"
  Only once during the journey from Bagheria  to Palermo does Don Giacomo Camal@eo  grasp Marianna's hand and press it for a moment  in his, as if to reaffirm his thoughts, letting go of  it immediately with a regretful and respectful  expression.
  Marianna, who is not very used to being courted,  does not know how to react. She holds herself a  little stiffly and looks out of the window at the  countryside she knows so well. Bending slightly  over the little writing-table she slowly writes out  sentences, careful not to spill the ink, and drying the  words with ashes while they are still damp.
  Fortunately, Don Camal@eo's courtship  consists principally of writing sophisticated  sentences and learned discourses that aim to excite  admiration more than attraction, in spite of the  fact that he is certainly not a man to despise  the pleasures of the flesh. But so far, his eyes  seem to be saying, the bonds between them have yielded  unripe fruit, extracting a juice that sets  the teeth on edge as they force out the pulp. Haste  is for the young, who do not know the delights of waiting,  the desire to protract a surrender so as to enhance  it with more intense and delicate flavours.
  Thoughtfully Marianna watches the prudent  gestures of his fine hands, so used to seizing the world  by the scruff of the neck, but careful not to cause it  any harm so that he can enjoy it in a state of  quiet contemplation. So different from the men,  possessed by haste and greed, she has known up  to now: compared with Camal@eo, uncle husband was a  rhinoceros. On the other hand he was as  transparent as the waters of Fondachello. Her  father too was of another mould: erudite and witty  but without ambition. It had never occurred to him  to plan a strategy for his life; he had never  seen the future as an opportunity to sum up and  preserve his victories and defeats; it would never
  
have entered his mind to defer a pleasure so  as to make it in the end more enjoyable.
  When they arrive at San Giovanni de'  Leprosi Don Camal@eo jumps down from the  carriage, displaying the agility of his  fifty-five years without an ounce of excess  fat, and delicately offers her his hand. But  Marianna does not take it. She too jumps  down andwitha merry silent laugh meets him  boldly in the eye. He is left a little off  balance; he knows that women, when they are being  courted, like to make themselves appear weaker and more  fragile than they are. But then he laughs with her  and takes her by the arm as if she were a fellow  student.
  A minute later they are both facing a  massive iron door. Keys turn in the  lock; a heavy hand stretches out and makes  incomprehensible signs with its fingers. There are  bows, a running of guards, a glitter of  swords. ...
  Now a warder with broad shoulders precedes the  Duchess down a bare passage while the  Praetor shuts himself inside a room with two  tall gentlemen, who from the style of their hats are  Spaniards. Along the passage there are  alternate doors, one of iron, one of wood,  one of wood, one of iron, one polished, one  unpolished, one unpolished, one polished. On  each door a rectangular grill, and behind the  grill curious faces, suspicious eyes,  tousled heads, mouths that open over broken and  blackened teeth.
  A bolt slides, a door is pushed.  Marianna finds herself inside a cold room with a  floor of broken and dusty bricks. The windows  are too high to be reached. The light drifts  down from the ceiling like rain, the walls are bare and  dirty, stained with black marks and sinister red    blotches. On the ground are heaps of straw and  iron buckets. A fearsome stench of caged  humanity catches her by the throat. The warder  makes a sign to her to sit down on a  straw-bottomed chair that is so worn, with the ends  of the straw curling up in the air, that it seems to have  been eaten by rats.
  Behind a grating the courtyard can be seen, with its  bare stone paving softened by a single fig tree.  Against the end wall a half-naked woman is  asleep, curled up on the ground. Nearer, tied
  
to a bench, another woman, with white  hair that slips out beneath a patched bonnet,  endlessly repeats the same gesture of spitting  into the distance. Her bare arms show weals from a  cane. Beneath the fig tree a little girl of about  eleven years old knits with a slow precise  action.
  Meanwhile a finger brushes against Marianna's  cheek; she draws back with a start. It is  Fila, her head wrapped in a turban of  dirty bandages that makes her features seem  smaller and her eyes larger. She smiles  happily. Her hands hardly tremble. She has  got so much thinner that from behind Marianna would never have  recognised her. A long dress of sackcloth  comes down in tatters to her ankles. It has no  belt round the waist and no collar, and her arms  are bare and covered with bruises.
  Marianna gets up and embraces her. The  animal smell that fills the room penetrates  right inside her nostrils: it is horrifying. In  a few months Fila has become an old  woman, her face wizened; she has lost a  front tooth, her hands shake, her legs are so  withered that they can hardly support her weight, her  eyes are glazed even when they are stretched into a  smile of recognition.
  When Marianna caresses her cheek, Fila  dissolves into a timid weeping that creases up her  mouth. Marianna, to overcome her embarrassment,  brings a little purse of money from her pocket and  encloses it between the girl's fingers. She tries  to hide it and, feeling in vain for pockets in the  asylum uniform, ends up clutching the little purse  in her hand, looking round her in terror.  Marianna then takes the scarf of green silk from  her neck and puts it round Fila's shoulders.  Fila strokes it with fingers trembling like those of a  drunkard. She has stopped crying and is smiling  seraphically. Then she suddenly lowers her head as  if to avoid a blow, and her face darkens.
  A guard with powerful arms catches her round the  waist and lifts her up as if she were a child.  Marianna is about to intervene but recognises the  tenderness in the man's action. While he holds  up the girl he talks to her gently, cradling  her in his arms. Marianna tries to catch the  sense of what he is saying by reading his lips, but  she does not succeed. It is a language only  they understand, that they have refined over months of enforced
  
cohabitation. And she watches Fila,  who contentedly stretches up her shaking hands and  encircles the neck of the giant as if she were  drunk, resting her head affectionately against his  chest.
  The two vanish behind the door before Marianna can  say goodbye to Fila. It is better like this; the  guard has achieved, if not affection, at least  an intimacy with the poor girl, Marianna  tells herself. Even though the way the man looked  at the little purse of money makes her wonder  whether this intimacy is entirely disinterested.

              XXXVIII

  It is two days now since Saro started to eat  again. His eyes seem to have grown larger inside the  hollow sockets. His white cheeks become  flushed with red whenever Marianna approaches his  bed. He is still bandaged like a mummy, but the  bandages tend to slip and unwind. His body  tosses about, his muscles are returning to life  and he cannot rest his head quietly on the pillow.  His black quiff of hair has been washed and  slides like the wing of a crow over his thin boy's  face.
  This morning Marianna has paid another visit  to Fila and is bathing herself in bergamot water  to take away the nauseous smells of the asylum.  Inside the copper bath-tub that comes from France and  that, seen from outside, looks like an ankle  boot, she is as comfortable as if she were in bed, with the  water coming right up to her shoulders and staying hot for  longer than it would in an open bath-tub. It is  quite the fashion for well-to-do ladies to hold  conversations, receive their women friends or give orders  to the servants, seated in the new French baths that  are sometimes shielded by a transparent screen out of  modesty. Even though Marianna enjoys wallowing  in the heat while Innocenza pours saucepans of  steaming water over her, she does not stay long in  it because she cannot write or read there without getting the  pages wet.
  Winter has arrived suddenly, almost without being  preceded by autumn. Yesterday she was going round with  bare arms, now the stove has to be lit, and she  has to wrap herself in shawls and cloaks. There is  an icy wind whipping up the waves on the sea and  tearing the leaves off the trees.
  Manina has just given birth to another baby,
  
and has called her Marianna.
Giuseppa came to see her only yesterday.  She is the only one who confides in her.  Talking about her husband she says that sometimes he  loves her and at others hates her, and that her  cousin Olivo is continually pressing her to run  away with him to France.
  On Sundays Felice comes to lunch. She  is struck by the down-to-earth account her mother  gives her of Fila and the asylum at the  Leprosi. She too has sought permission to go and  see her and has returned determined to found a  network of "helpers" for derelict women. The  fact is, she has changed a great deal  lately, having discovered that she has a gift for  healing, and has dedicated herself to exploring ways  of combining herbs, roots and minerals. After some  early cures people have begun to ask for her in  difficult cases of illness, especially for skin  diseases. And she, faced with responsibility  towards the wounded bodies that are entrusted to her,  has taken to studying and experimenting. On her  forehead has grown a furrow as straight and deep  as a sabre cut. She is no longer so  preoccupied with the immaculate state of her  habit, and she leaves gossip to the younger nuns.  She has acquired the busy and preoccupied  look of a professional healer.
  Her son Mariano, however, never comes. Lost  as he is in day-dreams, he never finds time to go  visiting his mother. But he has sent his uncle  Signoretto to find out discreetly about the  frequent visitor to the Villa Ucr@ia, whom  the relatives are talking about with such shocked  outrage.
  "It is not right that at your age you should put yourself  in a position where everyone is talking about you",  Signoretto has written with a wary hand on a  page pulled out from a book of prayers. "You are  a widow and I hope you are not planning to make  yourself look ridiculous by getting married at the  age of forty-five to a libertine bachelor of  fifty-five."
  "Don't worry, I have no intention of getting  married."
  "Then you should not allow the senator Camal@eo  to come and visit you. It is not right to make people  talk."
  "There is no physical relationship between us.  It is purely a friendship."
  
  "At your age, my lady sister, you  should think of preparing your soul for the beyond rather than  looking for new friendships."
  "You are older than I, my lord brother, but it  doesn't seem to me you are thinking of the beyond."
  "You are a woman, Marianna. Nature  has destined you for a serene cha/y. You have four children  to think of. Mariano, who will inherit from you, is  worried that you could convey your property elsewhere  by a rash act that would be truly regrettable."
  "Even if I did remarry, I would not take  away a crumb."
  "Perhaps you are ignorant of the fact that  Camal@eo, before becoming Praetor of  Palermo, was for a long time paid by the French to spy  on the Spaniards, and they say that he then went  over to the Spaniards, having had a more  advantageous offer from them. In short, you are  dealing with an adventurer whose trustworthiness no  one would dare to guarantee. An unknown  traveller who has enriched himself through secret  dealings, he is not a man an Ucr@ia should  associate with. It is the family's decision that  you should not see him any more."
  "So the family decides. By what right?"  "Do not start talking nonsense to me like my  wife Domitilla. I am sick to death of  Voltaire."
  "Once upon a time even you used to quote from  Voltaire."
  "The stupidity of youth."
  "I am a widow and I believe that I am  perfectly capable of looking after my own affairs  according to my own beliefs."
  "What nonsense, sister. Still the same old  worthless rigmarole! You know very well that you are not  alone but are part of a family, and that you cannot, not  even with permission from Monsieur Voltaire and the  support of all the saints in paradise, allow  yourself to take any liberties. You must get rid  of that man."
  "Camal@eo is a kindly person. He has  helped me to save a servant from the gallows."
  "Do not allow questions that have to do with servants  to dictate your life. Certainly Camal@eo  is aiming to marry you. To become related to the  Ucr@ias would be part of a secret strategy.  Believe me, this individual has no real  interest in you. Do not trust him, I beg you."
  "I shall not trust him."
  
  Somewhat, even if not entirely,  reassured, Signoretto left her after  graciously kissing her hand. Everyone knows that her  brother has had more lovers since he got married  than he ever had before. Lately he has spent  ridiculous sums of money on a singer who  performs at the Santa Lucia theatre, who they  say has also been the Viceroy's mistress.
In spite of his authoritarian manner, she was  pleased to see him, with that fair head of his, in which  tenderness becomes clotted beneath the skin in the form of  large inflamed wens. His way of looking  slightly askance, questioning, reminds her of her father  the Duke when he was young. But he lacks their  father's ability to laugh at himself. He has  developed a subtle insidious brutality that  weighs on his swollen eyelids. And the more his  habit of taking command grows, the more evident his own  self-indulgence becomes, to such an extent that he  can no longer distinguish a chair from a chamber-pot.
  Heaven knows when he began to get these new  bones that have hollowed out his eyes, broadened his  pelvis and flattened the soles of his feet.  Perhaps sitting in the Senate or going out to attend  executions with the other White Brothers and  accompanying the condemned prisoners to the gallows.  Or perhaps night after night, lying in the big  four-poster beside his wife, who, though she is still  beautiful, has become so boring to him that he cannot  bear to look at her.
  In recent years the memory of uncle husband  has suddenly jumped to the fore when she finds herself  face to face with other men of the family. That  anxious, lugubrious individual, always  brooding resentfully on the shortcomings of  others, was at bottom more truthful and direct,  certainly more faithful to himself, than any of them.  With their smiles and their politeness they have holed  themselves up in their homes, scared of every novelty,  of being reduced to accepting ideas and beliefs which they  have laughed at for years. It could be a question of  perspective: as Camal@eo says, time has  mellowed the fading memories. Her husband  Pietro's belongings that are still around the house  retain something of his morose, lonely  melancholy. And yet that man had violated her  when she was not yet six, and she asks whether she will  ever be able to forgive him for that.
  Nowadays it is Abbot Carlo who is  closest to her, immersed like her in books. He
  
alone is capable of making a judgement  that is not vitiated by his own immediate interests.  Carlo is true to his own self: a libertine  in love with books. He does not pretend, he  does not flatter, he does not pride himself on  meddling in the intrigues of others.
  As for her son Mariano, after the euphoria of  growing up, the great hunt for love, the journeys  round the world, now at thirty he has settled  down and has become intolerant of any behaviour  that he regards as a threat to his own peace of  mind. Towards his sisters he adopts a dry,  ill-natured tone; towards his mother he is  respectful on the surface, but she realises that  he is impatient of the liberties she takes in  spite of her disablement. The fact that he has sent  his uncle Signoretto to see her instead of coming  himself highlights the character of his fears: suppose a  freak of nature like his mother brought another son  into the world while he has failed to have even one, and  suppose this child attracted the interest of a widowed  aunt of the Scebarr@as line, whose inheritance he  hopes for? And suppose the nonsense of a  marriage outside the accepted rules recoiled  on him who more than anyone else carries the  weighty name of the Ucr@ias of Campo  Spagnolo and Scannatura?
  Mariano is fond of luxuries: he buys  his shirts from Paris, as if there were not perfectly  good shirt-makers here in Palermo. He has his  hair arranged by Monsieur Cr@eme, who  presents himself at the palace accompanied by four  assistants who carry le n@ecessaire  pour le travail: large and small boxes of  soap, scissors, razors, combs, cream  scented with lily of the valley and powders perfumed  with carnations. For the care of the feet and hands there is  Signor Enrico Aragujo Calisto
Barr`es, who comes from Barcelona and has a  shop in the Via Cala Vecchia. For ten  carlini he also visits ladies in their  homes and pares the corns of both young and old,  who all have problems with the little Parisian shoes with  points like a hen's neck and heels like the beak of a  swan.
  Marianna rouses herself from her thoughts when Saro  grasps her hand with a new vigour. He seems  to be getting better, he really seems to be  getting better. He opens his eyes. A fresh  look, naked, emerging from the embrace of a pod like
  
a bean, still soft from sleep. Marianna  draws close to him and lays a finger on his  cracked lips. His light breath, moist and  regular, caresses her hollow palm. A  feeling of happiness holds her immobile in that  gesture of tenderness as she inhales his acid  breath.
  Now Saro's mouth presses on her fingers and  he kisses her hand anxiously on the inside of  her palm. For the first time Marianna does not  repulse him. Instead she shuts her eyes as if  better to savour his touch. They are kisses that come  from a long way back, from that first evening when they  saw each other by the wavering light of the candle in the  stained mirror in Fila's room.
  But the effort seems to have exhausted him. He  continues to hold Marianna's fingers against his mouth  but he does not kiss them any more. His breath has  become irregular, hurried, spasmodic.
Gently Marianna takes her hand away. From  sitting in the armchair, she kneels down on the  floor beside the bed and leans forward on top of the  blankets. She rests her forehead on his chest,  something she has often imagined but has never brought  herself to do. Beneath her ear she can feel the thickness  of the bandages impregnated with camphor, and below  them the half-moon of his ribs, and below that the  tempestuous throbbing of his blood.
  Saro lies quite still, anxious lest any movement  on his part might interrupt Marianna's timid  advances towards him, afraid that she might at  any moment retreat, as she has always done before.  So he waits for her to decide, holding his breath  and keeping his eyes closed, hoping, desperately  hoping that she will hold him close to her.
  Marianna's fingers glide across his forehead, his  ears, his neck as if she can no longer put her  trust in her eyes. Passing over his hair,  sticky with sweat, she pauses on the bulge of the  bandage that conceals his left ear, then continues  along the outline of his lips, moving down towards  the chin, bristly with a convalescent's beard,  returning to the nose as if the knowledge of this body could  only pass through the tips of her fingers, as  curious and exploratory as her gaze is  faint-hearted and uncertain. Her forefinger  pursues the long road that leads from one temple  to the other, descends along the wings of the nostril,  climbs up the hills of the cheeks, brushing the  thickets of the eyebrows, finds itself almost by chance
  
at the point where the lips come close  together, forces a way between the teeth and reaches the  tip of the tongue.
  Only now does Saro risk an  imperceptible movement: he closes his teeth, but  with the lightest of pressure, across the finger that  remains imprisoned between palate and tongue,  enveloped in the feverish warmth of his saliva.  Marianna smiles. And with the thumb and first finger of  her other hand she pinches his nostrils until he  lets her go and opens his mouth to breathe. Then she  withdraws her wet finger and begins to explore all  over again. He looks at her blissfully, his  eyes tell her that his blood is quickening.
  Now the hands of the Duchess grasp the quilt and  slide it off the bed. The same with the sheet: it is  thrown to one side and falls to the floor in  disordered folds. And here in front of her eyes,  startled by their own daring, is the naked body of the young  man, with only the bandages around his hips, on his  chest and head. His ribs are there, protruding  crescent moons like a map of the planets in their  phases of progression, one following the other,  one above the other.
  Marianna's hands rest ever so gently on his  barely healed wounds, still red and painful. The wound  on the thigh reminds her of Ulysses attacked  by the wild boar as he must have appeared to the  stupefied nurse who was the first to recognise her  lord and master returning after so many years of war,  when everyone else still took him for a beggar.  Marianna strokes him lightly with her fingers  while Saro's breathing becomes quicker. From between his  closed lips minute drops of saliva emerge  that suggest pain but also an unimaginable savage  joy, a blissful surrender.
  How she came to find herself undressed beside  Saro's naked body Marianna was unable to say.  She knows it was very simple and that she felt no  shame. She knows they were in each other's arms like  two friendly bodies in harmony and that welcoming  him inside her was like finding once more a part of her  own body she had believed lost for ever. She knows  she had never thought of enfolding in her own belly a  man's flesh that was not either a child or an invading  enemy.
  Children find themselves in the body of a woman without  her having summoned them, just as the flesh of uncle  husband stayed warm inside her without her having ever  invited or desired him. But she has desired and
  
willed this body as she desired and  willed her own joy. It would not pain and lacerate  her as her children did every time she gave birth, but would  slip away with the joyful promise of return  once the spasm of love had been shared. For so  many years of marriage she had thought the body of a  man existed only to torment her. And she had  yielded to this torment as one yields to the curse of  God, a duty that no woman of refinement could  accept without having to swallow gall. Had not Our  Lord also swallowed gall in the garden of  Gethsemane? Did He not die on the Cross  without one word of recrimination? What was her  trifling pain suffered in her own bed, compared to the  sufferings of Christ?
  And instead here is a body that is not alien  to her, that does not assault her, does not steal from  her, does not ask for sacrifice and  renunciation, but goes to her confidently and  gently. Here is a body that knows how to wait, that  takes and knows how to be taken without any kind of  force. How will she ever again do without it?

               XXXIX

  Peppina Malaga has come back to the house,  two small black pigtails tied behind her ears  with a piece of string, her feet bare as usual,  her legs heavy and swollen, her protruding  belly raising her skirt over her shin-bones.  Marianna watches her through the window while she  gets down from the cart and runs towards Saro.  He looks up at the window as if to ask, What  am I to do?
  "Use not your scythe in the grain of others",  says the austere Gaspara Stampa. It is her  duty to leave husband and wife together for their own  happiness. She will let them have a larger room where  they can bring up the new baby.
  And then:

In my repose an inward doubt assails me  That ever holds my heart 'twixt life and death.

Is it jealousy, that little fool, the "green-eyed  monster", as Shakespeare called it, "that doth  mock the meat it feeds on"? The Duchess  Marianna Ucr@ia di Campo Spagnolo,
  
Countess of Paruta, Baroness of
Bosco Grande, of Fiame Mendola and of  Sollazzi, how can she ever be jealous of a  scullery maid, of a fledgling fallen from the nest?
  But that's exactly how it is: this dark ugly  little girl seems to gather up in herself all the  joys of paradise. She has the innocence of a  pumpkin flower, the freshness of a grape stalk.  Marianna tells herself that she would willingly  give away all her estates and all her houses  just to enter into that young determined little body that jumps  down from the cart with the tiny baby curled up in her  womb, to go and meet Saro.
  Her hand releases its hold on the curtain,  which falls back to cover the window. The courtyard  vanishes and with it the cart pulled by a donkey  adorned with plumes, and Peppinedda, who  propels her belly towards her husband as if it  were a box of jewels. Saro too disappears  while clasping his wife close to him and raising his  eyes towards Marianna with a look of theatrical  resignation. But one can see that he is gratified  by this double love. From this moment will begin a life of  subterfuges, deceptions, escapes, clandestine  meetings. There will be a need to corrupt, to keep  others quiet, to erase all traces of every  embrace. A sudden resentment clouds
Marianna's eyes. She has no intention of  falling into such traps, she tells herself. She  has provided him with a wife so as to keep him at  a distance and not to serve as a cover-up. So then?  So then she has to break it off.
  There is something arrogant about her thoughts, she  knows that. She is not taking into account the pleasures  of her body, which has woken for the first time to its own  fulfilment, nor has she given a thought  to Saro's wishes, she does not even consider  consulting him. She will decide for or against him, but  above all against herself. The long practice of  renunciation has made her a vigilant  custodian of herself. So many years spent keeping  her own needs at arm's length have strengthened her  will. Marianna looks at her wrinkled hands, which  are wet from having been pressed against her cheeks.  She raises them to her mouth. She tastes some of the  salt that contains the bitterness of her renunciation.
  She could marry Giacomo Camal@eo: although  she is not in love with him, she finds him  attractive. And it is the second time he has  asked her. But if she doesn't have the courage
  
to seize hold of a love made of  precious stones, will she ever be satisfied with one  of glass? What is she to do with herself? At her  age many of her acquaintances are already dead and  buried, or have become hunchbacked and shrivelled  and go about in closed carriages with a thousand  precautions, surrounded by cushions and  embroidered covers, reduced to a state of  half-blindness by a veil that hangs down over their  eyes, driven mad by too much suffering, made  cruel and frustrated from waiting too long. She  sees them shaking their plump fingers festooned with  rings that can no longer be removed from their enlarged  knuckles, but which, once they are dead, will be  surreptitiously cut off by heirs and  heiresses impatient to grab possession of those  magnificent Chinese pearls, Egyptian  rubies, and turquoises from the Dead Sea.
Hands that have never held a book for longer than  two minutes, hands that have had to learn the art of  embroidery or how to play the spinet, but even  then have never been permitted to dedicate themselves with  any real seriousness: the hands of noblewomen, fated  to be idle. They are hands that, although they have held  gold and silver, have never known how it came to them.  Hands that have never experienced the weight of a  saucepan, or of a jug, or of a bowl, or even  a duster. Possibly familiar with the beads of a  rosary, mother-of-pearl or silver filigree, but  entirely ignorant about the shape of their own  bodies buried beneath a vast array of kerchiefs and  camisoles and bodices and undervests and  petticoats, considered by priests and pedagogues  as sinful by nature. They have caressed, those hands,  the heads of new-born babies, but they have never  been immersed in their own ordure. They may have  some time lingered over the wounds of Christ on the  Cross, but they have never explored the naked body  of a man, knowing that it would be considered as indecent  by him as it would be by themselves. They have rested inert in  their own laps, not knowing where to hide or what to do,  because any movement, any action was considered risky  and undesirable for a girl of noble family.
  With them, Marianna has eaten the same food  and drunk the same soothing herbal teas. Since  her hands have touched a lover's body, have explored  its length and its breadth, she accepts them as friends  and accomplices. But now she must cut them off and  throw them on to the rubbish tip, Marianna tells  herself, as she stands stiffly by the shuttered window. But
  
a draught of air warns her that someone  is approaching behind her.
  It is Innocenza, carrying a candlestick with  two branches. Looking up, Marianna sees  the face of the cook very close to hers. She draws  back in irritation but Innocenza continues  to scrutinise her thoughtfully. She is aware that the  Duchess is not well, and is trying to guess  what is the matter. She places her plump  hand, with its wholesome smell of rosemary mixed with  soap, on her ladyship's shoulders and shakes  her gently as if to liberate her from her prickly  thoughts. Fortunately Innocenza does not know how  to read so there is no necessity to write lies  to her: a gesture is sufficient to reassure  her.
  The smell of fish that rises from Innocenza's  apron helps Marianna to come out of her state of  frozen torpor. The cook shakes her mistress  with a rough impulse that is also full of good sense.  They have known each other for years and believe they  know everything about one another. Marianna believes  she knows Innocenza through the intuitive sorcery that  enables her to read other people's thoughts as if she could  see them written on paper. In her turn  Innocenza, having served her for so many years and  listened to what others say about her, believes that  Marianna does not have any secrets from her.
  Now they look at each other, both curious  about the other's curiosity. Again and again Innocenza  wipes her oily hands on her cloth apron with  red and white stripes. Marianna plays  mechanically with her writing implements: the little  folding table, the little silver ink bottle, the  goose quill with its nib stained black.  Innocenza takes her by the hand and leads her as if  she were a small child who has been shut away as a  punishment for too long and is now being taken back  to be comforted and to join the others at the table.  Marianna lets herself be led down the stone  staircase, through the big yellow room, brushing  past the spinet with its open keyboard, passing by the  Roman dioscuri of streaked marble, beneath the  secretive winking eyes of the chimeras.
  In the kitchen Innocenza pushes her down into a  chair in front of the lighted stove; she puts a  glass in her hand, takes a bottle of sweet  wine down from the shelf and pours out two measures.  Then, taking advantage of the deafness and distracted  state of mind of her mistress, she lifts the
  
bottle to her mouth. Marianna  pretends not to notice so that she does not have  to rebuke her. But then she thinks again: why should she  rebuke her anyway? With the impulsiveness of a  little girl she takes the bottle from the cook's  hands and presses it to her mouth. Servant and  mistress smile at each other. They pass the  bottle between them, one seated, her fair hair  arranged over a broad perspiring forehead, her  light-blue eyes growing wider and wider, the other  standing up, her large belly hidden under her stained  apron, her strong arms, her handsome round face  rippling into a beatific smile.
  Now it is easier for Marianna to come to a  decision, even if it is a cruel one.  Innocenza will help her, without knowing it, by keeping  her a prisoner in the safe, everyday world. She can  already feel on her neck Innocenza's two  hands, stained by smoke, scarred with cuts, burns  and deep wrinkles.
  She must get away on tiptoe and she needs  a push that only a hand used to counting money can  give her. Meanwhile the kitchen door has  opened in the mysterious way in which doors do open in  Marianna's eyes, without warning, with a slow  movement, heavy with surprises. It is  Felice who stands on the threshold, the little  sapphire cross on her chest. Beside her is  Cousin Olivo, in his redingote the colour of a  turtle-dove, his long face looking greatly  upset.
  "Your sister-in-law Donna Domitilla  has broken her foot. I spent the morning with  her", reads Marianna on a curled piece of  paper her daughter hands her.
  "Don Vincenzino Alagna has shot himself  to escape his debts but his wife is not putting on  mourning. No one could stand that blockhead, that  prickly pear. Their little daughter had  erysipelas last year and I cured her myself."
  "I've brought Olivo. He is begging me  for a remedy that will cure him of being in love. What  do you say, Mamma, should I give it to him?"
  "At the Leprosi they won't let me in  any more. They say I bring disruption there. All  because I cured a woman with sores when the doctor  had given her up for dead. But Mamma, what's  wrong with you?" ...
  
                 XL

  The brigantine moves along, scarcely  swaying on the green water. In front, like a  fan, is the city of Palermo, a line of grey-  and ochre-coloured palaces, grey and white  churches, hovels painted pink, shops with green  striped awnings, streets of cobblestones cut in  half by rivulets of dirty water. Behind the  city, beneath the continuous gusting of dense cloud, lie  the craggy rocks of Monte Cuccio, the green  woods of Mezzo Monreale and of San Martino  delle Scale, the gradual descent of steep  cliffs shifting from dark to less dark, between which  nestles the violet light of the sunset.
  Marianna's eyes focus on the high windows  of the Vicaria. To the left of the prison, behind a  small terrace of houses, the irregular  rectangle of the Piazza Marina widens out. In  the middle of the empty piazza is the dark  platform of the gallows. A sign that someone will be  strung up tomorrow. Like that gallows to which her father the  Duke dragged her out of love in an attempt  to cure her dumbness. She would never have imagined that  her father the Duke and uncle husband shared the same  secret concerning her; and that they were in alliance  to keep quiet about the wound inflicted on her child's  body.
  Now the brigantine is shaken by slow nervous  jolts. The sails have been hoisted; the prow  steers directly for the open sea. Marianna  leans with both hands against the painted railings while  Palermo fades into the distance with its afternoon lights,  its palm trees, its refuse blown about by the  wind, its gallows, its carriages. A part of  her will remain there in those streets splashed with  mud, in that warmth smelling of sugar-sweet  jasmine and horse dung.
  Her thoughts veer to Saro and the times she held him  close, even though she has made the decision not  to see him any more. A hand grasped beneath the table,  an arm held out behind a door, a kiss snatched  in the kitchen during the hours of sleep. They were  delights to which she abandoned herself with her heart  turning somersaults. And it did not matter to her  that Innocenza had guessed and looked at her with  displeasure, and that the children gossiped about her, her  brothers threatened to kill that "boorish upstart",  and Peppinedda spied on her with hostile eyes.
  Meanwhile Camal@eo was assiduous. He
  
came to visit her almost every day in his gig  drawn by the dappled grey, and talked to her of  love and books. He told her she was becoming  luminous like the lights on a fishing boat. And the  mirror told her it was true: her skin had  become clear and firm, her eyes shone, her  hair fluffed up round her neck as if it had  been leavened with yeast. No bonnet or ribbon  could contain it, it exploded and fell back,  scintillating and unruly about her happy face.
  When she told Mariano she was leaving, he  wrinkled his forehead with a comical grimace that was  intended to show his disapproval, but which enabled her  to guess his relief and satisfaction. He was not  as good at dissimulating as his uncle  Signoretto.
  "But where are you going?"
  "To Naples first of all; after that I don't  know."
  "You will be alone?"
  "I shall be taking Fila with me."  "Fila is mad. You can't trust her."
  "I shall take her with me. She is well now."  "A mad murderess and a disabled woman  travelling together, really! What an idea! Do you  want to make a laughing-stock of yourself?"
  "No one will care."
  "I presume that Don Camal@eo will be  joining you. Is it your intention to bring discredit on  the family?"
  "Don Camal@eo will not be following me. I  am going alone."
  "And when do you return?"
  "I do not know."
  "And who will take care of your daughters?"  "They are perfectly capable of looking after  themselves. They are grown-up."
  "It will cost you a fortune."
  Marianna had rested her eyes on her son's  head, still so handsome in spite of incipient  baldness, while he bent over the paper, tightening  his grip on the pen. His white knuckles spoke  of an unbearable rancour; he could not stand being  torn away from his world of fantasy to face questions  he did not understand and which did not interest him. His  only anxieties were: What will people in his  circle say about such an irresponsible mother? Will  she end up spending too much? Will she get  into debt? Will she have to ask for help over money,  maybe from Naples, forcing him to withdraw God
  
knows what sum?
  "I shall not spend anything of yours", Marianna  had written light-heartedly on the white paper.  "I shall only spend my own money. Rest  assured I will not bring dishonour to the family."
  "You already have brought dishonour with your  eccentricities. Since our father died you have  continually brought nothing but scandal."
  "What scandals are you referring to, may I  ask?"
  "You only wore mourning for a year instead offor  ever, as is decreed by custom. Do you not  remember? Three years for the death of a father, ten  years for the death of a son and thirty for the death of a  husband, that is to say for ever. And then you do not go  to church when there is a solemn mass. And you go  around with low-class people, that servant, that upstart, you  have made him master here. You have brought into the house  not only his wife, but his sister and his son."
  "Actually, it was his sister who brought him. As  for his wife, I myself gave her to him."
  "Precisely. You put too much trust in people  who are not of your rank. I do not recognise you,  lady mother. Once you were gentle and acquiescent.  Do you know that you risk an interdict?"
  Marianna shakes her head. Why think about these  disagreeable things? Yet there is something in what her  son has written that she does not understand: a  rancour that goes far beyond the alleged scandals, the  preoccupation with money. He has always been  generous, why should he now be in such a state about his  mother spending anything? Could it still be his childhood  jealousy, from which he does not want and doesn't  know how to detach himself? Has he still not forgiven her  for having so blatantly preferred her younger son  Signoretto?
  Marianna looks at Fila's bald head,  which is right beside her on the bridge of the ship, and  stares at the city as it recedes towards the  horizon. Now they are surrounded by waves of  curling water while the figure-head thrusts its  naked breast through the sea.
  It was Saro's look that made her decide  to leave. An involuntary early-morning look  when, the light already broadening on the bedroom  floor, she had prised her mouth from his shoulder and  pushed him to get up. A look of love,  satiated and apprehensive. The fear that this joy  could be suddenly snatched from him for some unforeseeable  reason which he was unable to control. Not just her
  
body, but the elegant clothes, the  whiteness of the linen, the essences of rose and  myrrh, the pheasants cooked in wine, the lemon  sorbets, the gremolate of strawberry  grapes, the orange-flower water, the kindnesses,  the silent tenderness, everything that was hers she found in  Sarino's grey eyes, reflected splendours like  those cities that can be seen in the noonday hours,  turned upside down in the sea through the effect of a  mirage, wet and shimmering with gauzy lights.  Such mirages promised abundance, unending  delights, only to vanish in the pale colourless  glow of a summer sunset from across the sea. And she  wanted to sweep away from the eyes of her lover the  image of that happy city before it dissolved by itself in  a shattering of broken mirrors.
  So here she is on a heaving floor, the smell  of the sea mixed with the sharp tang of tar and varnish,  in the sole company of Fila.

                XLI

  It is evening. At the Captain's table, in the  little saloon with a barrel roof, are seated an  assortment of travellers who do not know each other  from Adam: a deaf-mute duchess from Palermo,  dressed in an elegant light coat with blue and  white stripes, reminiscent of a Watteau  painting; an English traveller with an  unpronounceable name, who comes from Messina and  wears a curious wig of pink curls; a  nobleman from Ragusa, dressed all in black,  who never allows himself to be separated from his small  silver sword.
  The sea is rough. From the two windows that open  along the side of the boat can be seen a yellowish  sky streaked with lilac. The moon is full but  obscured by shawls of stormy clouds that  alternately conceal and reveal it. Fila has    stayed in the dark cabin, lying down with a handkerchief  soaked in vinegar over her mouth to guard against  sea-sickness. She has been vomiting all day  and Marianna has been holding her head as long  as possible, but then she had to go out or she too would  have started retching.
  Now the Captain hands her a helping of boiled  meat. The Englishman with the pink curls  deposits a spoonful of fruit pickle on  to his plate. The three men talk amongst themselves  but every now and then turn towards Marianna and give
  
her a polite smile. Then they continue  chattering, perhaps in English, perhaps in Italian,  Marianna cannot be sure which from the movements of their  lips, and anyway it does not matter to her very  much. After a first tentative effort to involve her  in the conversation with the help of gestures, they have  left her to her own thoughts. And she is relieved  that they are occupied elsewhere; she feels clumsy  and awkward. Astonishment at her new situation  hampers her movements: it seems impossible for  her to hold her fork steady between her fingers, and the  lace edges of her sleeves keep falling on  to her plate.
  Remnants of thoughts float through her weary  head. An impatient hand has buffeted those  calm limpid waters that were there to drift in, and  caused waves of memories, half-dissolved and  scattered, to be thrown to the surface. The tender  body of her son Signoretto, clinging to her  breast like a breathless little monkey; the pain she had  endured without being able to satisfy him. The pinched  face of uncle husband when she had plucked up  courage to look at him closely for the first time, and  realised that his eyelashes had become white. The  defiant eyes of her daughter Felice, a  nun without a vocation, who has nevertheless found through  herbal medicine her own kind of self-respect  and now has no need of money because people pay her so  well.
  The little group of brothers and sisters as she  painted them on that day in May when she had fainted  in front of Tutui in the courtyard of the lodge;  Agata's arms devoured by midges; Geraldo's  pointed shoes, the same shoes that were later put  on his feet inside his coffin, to be a  testimonial for paradise, with the hope that he would  go for long walks among the hills peopled with  angels. The malicious laugh of her sister  Fiammetta, who has become a little dotty with  age: on the one hand she flagellates herself and  wears a hair shirt, and on the other she never  stops meddling in the love affairs of the entire  family. The puzzled eyes of Carlo, who  to preserve himself from desperation has assumed an  ill-natured, irritable look. And
Giuseppa, still anxious and unsatisfied, the  only one who reads books and is able to laugh, the  only one who has not disapproved of her eccentric  behaviour and who came to see her off, in spite  of her husband having forbidden her to do so. The
  
walls of the villa at Bagheria with its  soft sandstone bricks that, seen close to, look  like sponges pierced by many tunnels, with holes  inhabited by sea snails and minute translucent  shells. In the whole world there is no softer  colour than that of the sandstone of Bagheria, which receives  light and holds it within like so many Chinese  lanterns.
  Her mother's face sagging from sleep, her  nostrils darkened by snuff, her big blonde  plaits flaking off her round shoulders. On the  bedside table there were always three or four little  bottles of laudanum. When she was grown-up  Marianna discovered that this was composed of opium,  saffron, cinnamon, cloves and alcohol. But  in the recipes of the pharmacy in the Piazza  San Domenico, the amount of opium had been  increased at the expense of the cinnamon and  saffron. Because of this she would sometimes find her  unfortunate mother in the morning lying on the  blankets, her eyes half-shut, an  expression of rapture on her face, her skin  with the pallor of a waxen statue.
  And there, in the bedroom where Marianna had  brought into the light of day all her five children, under  the bored gaze of the chimeras, had come Saro with his  slender legs and his gentle smile. On that bed of  births and miscarriages they had come together, while  Peppinedda wandered anxiously through the house,  holding in her belly a son of ten months who  could not make up his mind to be born: until the  midwife had to force him out, by jumping on her as  if she were a mattress full of straw. And just  when it seemed she might die from loss of blood,  an enormous baby came out, with the same colouring  as Sarino, black and white and pink, the  umbilical cord wound three times round his  neck.
  It was also on Peppinedda's account that she had  made the decision to leave: because of those looks of  feminine complicity and acceptance she gave her,  almost saying that she was willing to share her husband in  exchange for a house, clothes, abundant food,  and turning a blind eye to her thefts for her sisters.  It had become a family understanding, an  "arrangement" between three people, in which Saro took  refuge, torn between apprehension and happiness:  happiness that would soon have turned into satiety.  But perhaps not, perhaps she was mistaken: caught between a  mother lover and a child wife he might have carried on
  
devotedly and tenderly for ever. He could  have transformed himself, as he was already doing, into an  image of himself: a satisfied young man about  to lose his innocence and his happiness in exchange for  an equal combination of fatherly indulgence and  responsibility for the future of his family.  She had heaped gold on them before she went away.  Probably not from generosity, but to make them  forgive her for abandoning them and to feel herself loved  for a little while, even at a distance.
  The English traveller with fine brown eyes  has disappeared, leaving the food on his plate  half-eaten. The Baron from Ragusa leans out  of the tall window, gasping, while the Captain  rushes two at a time up the narrow stairs that  lead to the deck. What is going on?
  Through the door there comes a strong smell of  salt and wind. The waves seem to have turned  into great horses. Enclosed in her egg of silence  Marianna does not hear the cries from the  bridge, the orders of the Captain to haul in the  sails, the voices of the passengers sheltering under  cover. She continues to put food into her mouth as  if nothing were happening. No sign of the  sea-sickness that has turned over the stomachs of  her travelling companions. However, all at  once the oil lamp slides dangerously across the  table. Finally the Duchess realises that it is  perhaps more than a slightly choppy sea. Drops  of burning oil have fallen on to the tablecloth and have  set fire to a napkin. If she does not take  some immediate action about the linen the flames will spread  to the table and from the table to the floor, which are both of  dry seasoned wood.
  Suddenly Marianna's chair begins to slide  and crashes against the deckhead, its back cracking  the glass of a picture frame. To die like this,  sitting in her striped travelling cloak with the  lapis-lazuli brooch her father the Duke gave  her pinned to the collar, a taffeta rose in her  hair: that would indeed be a theatrical exit.  Perhaps one of her mother's dogs is about to seize her  round the waist and drag her into the black water.  She seems to see eyelashes blinking sweetly:  are they the eyes of the chimeras in the Villa  Ucr@ia laughing at her?
  A moment later Marianna gathers the strength  to get to her feet. She pours a jug of water  over the burning tablecloth. With the wet napkin she  covers the lamp, which goes out sizzling. Now the
  
saloon is in darkness. Marianna  tries to remember where the door is. The silence  suggests flight, but nothing more. Which way? The sound  of the sea is growing louder; she can only imagine  the noise of its howling by the lurching of the floor that  twists, rises and suddenly sinks down under her  shoes. Only the thought of Fila in danger stirs  her into finding the door. She opens it with  difficulty and an avalanche of salt water  pours on top of her. How will she climb down the  rungs of the ladder in this commotion? Yet she must  try, hanging on with both hands to the wooden  hand-rail and feeling for each rung with her feet.
  As she goes down into the hold of the ship a stench  of salted sardines clutches at her throat.
Some casks must have shattered, spilling their load  of fish. In the darkness, trying to grope her way  to the cabin, Marianna feels herself fall against  something heavy. It is Fila, her body wet through  and trembling. She puts her arms round her and  kisses her freezing cheeks. The shapeless thoughts  of her companion filter through nostrils soaked with the  bitter smell of vomit.
  May cancer strike you down, you head of a  half-bitch, curse you, why did you make me  leave? ... That duchess, she dragged me with her,  she'll be the death of me, donkey head, boiled  head, let cancer strike her, curse her,  curse her. ...
  In a word, she is swearing at her and at the  same time clinging to her with all her strength. It  seems certain that they are about to go down with the ship;  all they'd like to know is how long it will be before they  are swallowed up. Marianna starts reciting a  prayer, but she does not manage to reach the end,  there is something grotesque in this stupid preparation  for death. Yet she does not have any idea what can  be done to survive in a sea of this force: she  does not even know how to swim. Shutting her eyes  she can only hope it will not last long.
  But the brigantine miraculously holds its  own. Battered as it is by the waves, it withstands the  storm, bending and twisting, through the elasticity of its  timbers of cedar and chestnut. Mistress and  servant remain on their feet with their arms twined  round each other, expecting death at any moment.  They are so tired that they are overtaken by sleep  without realising it, while the salt water pounds their  backs with pieces of wood, shoes, sardines,  uncoiled ropes and bits of cork.
  
  When the two women wake up it is  already morning and they are still in each other's arms,  stretched out on the deck right beneath the ladder. An  inquisitive seagull watches them from the opening that  leads on to the bridge.

                XLII

  A pilgrim? Perhaps, but pilgrims travel  towards a destination. Her feet travel only  for the joy of travelling; they do not ever want  to stop. Escaping from the silence of her own house  to other houses, other silences. A nomad  wrestling with fleas, heat, dust. But never really  tired, never satiated with seeing new places,  new people.
  Fila at her side, her small bald head  always covered by a bonnet of immaculately  clean cotton that is washed every evening and put  to dry at the window. Sometimes they do not find a  window, and between Naples and Benevento they slept  on straw next to a cow who sniffed them with  curiosity.
  They stopped by the recent excavations at  Stabia and Herculaneum. They have eaten  water-melon cut in slices by a little boy, on  a portable table like the one Marianna uses  to write on. They have drunk honey and water  sitting in wonder before a large Roman  wall-painting in which red and pink mix deliciously  together. They have rested in the shade of a gigantic  maritime pine after having walked for five hours in  the heat. They have ridden mules along the slopes  of Vesuvius, their noses peeling in the sun in  spite of wearing the straw hats they had bought from a  haberdasher in Naples. They have slept in stinking  rooms with rotting windows, with a candle end on the  floor beside the mattress, on which fleas hopped as  if they were on a merry-go-round.
  Every now and then, a peasant, a shopkeeper or  a squire would follow them, full of curiosity  that they were travelling all by themselves. But  Marianna's silence and Fila's angry looks  soon put them to flight. Once they were robbed on  the road to Caserta. They had to abandon to the  brigands two heavy bags with brass locks, a  silver-mesh chain purse of money, and fifty  escudos. But they were not too distressed; the bags  had been an encumbrance, and contained dresses they  would never wear. The escudos were only part of their
  
money. Fila had hidden the rest of it so  well, sewn underneath her petticoat, that the  bandits had not found it; and then they had taken pity  on the dumb woman and had not even searched her,  although she also had money in a pocket of her  mantle.
  At Capua they made friends with a company of  actors travelling to Rome. A comedienne, a  young actor, a stage manager, two castrati  singers, four servants with a mountain of luggage, and  two mongrel dogs. Easy-going and friendly, they  spent a great deal of their time eating and playing  cards. They were not in the least disconcerted by the  Duchess's deafness, and immediately began to talk  to her with their hands and their bodies, easily making  her understand them and raising peals of laughter from  Fila. Naturally it fell to Marianna to pay  for supper for everybody, but the actors knew how  to return the favour, making everyone laugh by miming  their thoughts, whether at the supper table or the card  table, in the stage-coaches, or the inns where they  stopped the night.
  At Gaeta there was a rumour that the road was  infested with brigands; a mischievous note warned  them that "for every one hanged a hundred would spring out  to replace him, that they had a hide-out in the  Ciociaria mountains and were particularly looking for  duchesses". So they decided to embark on a  felucca, which took them for only a few  escudos. On the boat they played the card  games faraone and biribissi all day  long. The manager of the company, Giuseppe  Gallo, was the dealer and always lost. To balance this,  the two castrati always won. And the comedienne  Gilberta Amadio never wanted to go to bed.
  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
Montesquieu with his Persian letters a gossip?  And what about those missives that drip with humour and  malice? Is not our own Signor Dante
Alighieri a gossip? Who more than he amuses  himself relating all the secret vices and  weaknesses of friends and acquaintances? ...  Humour, on which writers slake their thirst with such  grace, somehow emerges second-hand from the  capacity of writers to throw light on the  defects of others and make them seem gross and  unredeemable, while they themselves nonchalantly  overlook the beam that sails in their own dreamy  eyes. Do you not agree, even you?
  Here I am as usual trying to justify myself.  Is it that I am trying to stir you by using my own  self-deprecation as a bait to pull you from the still  waters of your silence? I am even more perverse  than you think. Of a selfishness that is at times  repellent. But the fact that I exhibit my  selfishness may mean that it is not the whole truth.  I am a deliberate liar. But, as you know,  Solon said that at Agira they were all liars--and  he himself was from Agira! So was what he said the  truth or was it a lie? Or was it a trick  to keep you in suspense? Turn over the page,  my dear dumb one, and you will find something else  to chew on. Perhaps another request for love, perhaps  some precious information, or perhaps only another  exhibition of vanity. My sensibilities are  too crippled, suffocated by the commonplaceness  of the world. And yet the world is the only place I  would agree to be in. I do not believe I would  willingly go to paradise even if the streets were  clean, with no intolerable stinks, no stabbings,  hangings, extortions, rapes, thieving,  adultery or prostitution. What on earth would  one do all day? Only go for walks and play  faraone and biribissi.
  Know that I await you with a calm mind, trusting  your head with its long-sighted vision. I do not say  trusting your body because it is as obstinate as a  mule, but I turn towards those open spaces in  your head where the sea air glides, where you are the  most communicative, the most inclined  to curiosity, to love; or so I flatter myself  to believe. ... You know, it is often the love of
  
others that causes us to fall in love with  them: we see a person only when they invite us  to see them.
  With all my most tender devotion and the wish that you  may return soon. I am lost without you.
    Giacomo Camal@eo

  Marianna gazes down at the sheets of paper  that lie untidily on her striped skirt. The  letter aroused in her a feeling of weariness, but now  makes her smile. Her gaze dims as her  nostalgia for Palermo overcomes her. Those  smells of seaweed dried by the sun, of capers, of  ripe figs, she will never find them anywhere else;  those burnt and scented shores, those waves slowly  breaking, jasmine petals flaking in the sun. So  many rides with Saro towards the Aspra  promontory, where intoxicating smells and  tastes would overcome them with delight. Dismounting,  they would sit down on domes of seaweed out of which  swarmed crowds of sea-lice, and would let themselves  be brushed by a gentle breeze from Africa. Their  hands, groping backwards like crabs, would search  blindly, holding each other until their wrists  hurt. There would be a long interweaving of arms, of  fingers ... and then, then, where to put her tongue in  a kiss that knocks her in the face with the thrill and  daring of its novelty? What to do with her teeth that  crave to bite? Eyes dissolving into eyes, heart  turning somersaults, hours stopping in mid-air  ... and the intense smell of salt seaweed. The  hard round pebbles against her back became feather  cushions while they held each other in the shelter    of an acacia tree, its branches swaying over  the water. How has she been able to survive  since the moment those embraces were forbidden by her  cruel and indomitable will? But she cannot prevent them  rising up again like restless corpses that refuse  to sink out of sight.
  Since Fila has got married to Ciccio
Massa, she is finding it difficult to remain  at the inn. In spite of Fila saying how she  wants to continue serving her, in spite of the way  both of them fill her up with food and look after  her as if she were a child, she wakes up every morning  with the idea of leaving. To return to her children, to the  villa, to Saro, to the chimeras? Or to stay?  To escape from all those so familiar habits that  make up the routine of her life or to take heed  of those wings that have sprouted from both sides of her
  
ankles?
  Marianna crumples the ten small pages  into her skirt pocket and looks round her,  seeking some reply to her mute question. There is the  sun. There is the river Tiber flowing at her  feet, viscous, streaked with yellow. A tuft of  reeds of the clearest pale green is bent by the  current towards the shore, flattened by the water  until it is submerged. Then it lifts itself up  again in all its brightness. A myriad of tiny  silver fish dart upstream to where the water is almost  still, forming a lake between tufts of nettles and  spikes of thistles. A succulent smell  rises from the water, wet earth, mint, elder. A  little further up, the prow of a flat-bottomed  boat slips along a taut rope that holds it  moored to the bank. Still further away, washerwomen  kneel on the stones and rinse their washing in the  water. Another boat, or rather a raft, with two  oarsmen standing up, moves slowly from one side of the    river to the other, transporting cinnamon-coloured  sacks and cartwheels.
  Higher up, the port of Ripetta opens like a  fan with its stone steps, its iron bollards, its  low walls of unplastered brick, its seats of  white marble, its bustle of longshoremen. In that  tranquil noonday Marianna asks herself if  she could ever possess this landscape, make a  home for herself, a refuge. Now everything is  strange to her and therefore valued. But for how long can  she expect things around her to remain foreign,  perfectly intelligible, yet far away and  impossible to decipher?
  This withdrawal from the future that is sealing her  fate, will it be too great a challenge for her  strength? This wish to wander, to meet different kinds  of people, is there something arrogant about it, something a  little frivolous and perverse? Where will she go to make  a home for herself when every home seems too sunk  in its roots, too predictable? She would like  to be able to carry her home on her back like a  snail and go off into the unknown. To suppress the  remembrance of those ardent embraces that she so  longs for will not be easy. The sluice-gate is  there to intercept every drop of memory, every crumb of  happiness. But there must also be something else, something  that belongs to the world of wisdom and contemplation,  something that deflects the mind from its foolish  preoccupation with the senses.
  It is disgraceful for a well-born woman
  
to drift restlessly, aimlessly from one inn  to another, from one city to another, her son  Mariano would say, and perhaps he would be right. This  rushing from here to there, setting off, stopping, waiting,  wandering, is it not a premonition of her end?  To walk straight into the waters of the river, first the  tips of her shoes, then up to her ankles, then  gradually up to her knees, her chest, her  throat. The water is not cold. It would not be  difficult to let herself be swallowed by those eddying  currents with their smell of decaying leaves.
  But the will to resume her journey is stronger.  Marianna fixes her gaze on the gurgling  yellow water. She questions her silences. But the  only answer she receives is another question. And it  is mute.

                Afterword

  There is a silence where there hath been no sound;  there is a silence where no sound may be in the cold  grave under the deep sea.
    --The Piano *1

  In the landscape of contemporary Italian  literature, Dacia Maraini's novel The  Silent Duchess, published in Italy in
1990, constitutes a masterpiece. *2 The  Italian literary community was unanimously  enthusiastic and considered the novel one of  Maraini's greatest and most mature works.  Positive reviews appeared everywhere, from  popular newspapers and magazines to literary  journals, and everyone welcomed Maraini's new  book, even those critics who in the past had been  hostile toward her feminist positions. Already  famous, she became the most popular writer in  Italy. In the year it was published, the novel  received the Premio Campiello--comparable to the  National Book Award in the United States  or the Booker Prize in Great Britain--and was  nominated for book of the year. Subsequently, it
  
was translated into more than a dozen  languages, adapted into a play, and in 1996,  made into a film. *3
  The main character of Maraini's book is a  Sicilian woman from an aristocratic family  who lived in the early eighteenth century. *bled  Deaf and mute, Marianna Ucr@ia is unable  to communicate with the rest of the world, literally and  literarily--unable to make her voice heard.  Many critics greeted the novel as the culmination  of a long journey which began for Maraini in 1962  with her first published work, and this assessment is  true in terms of her thematic development as  well as her literary development. Throughout the  years of her long and productive career,  Maraini's attention has always been concentrated  on women's enforced silence in society as well  as in literature, and on the alternative ways  in which a female voice can manifest itself.  Maraini's protagonist, Marianna,  represents--in flesh and blood, as well as  figuratively--the often insurmountable obstacles  women face in seeking to express themselves.  Marianna, however, overcomes her handicap  by finding an autonomous space in which to make her  own words heard: the space of writing. In fact,  Marianna must write in order to communicate with the  rest of the world. But writing, for her, serves more than  a purely pragmatic purpose. During the  course of the novel her body, forgotten and  mortified by a terrible violence, comes back  to life, opening the door of self-expression to a  woman who bears the scars of her own story but who  also discovers with joy her own gendered voice--and  reveals it through writing. Marianna's journey  becomes a metaphor for the act of writing  by women, who are denied any place in the  male-dominated discourse but finally find ways  to express themselves. It describes a transition  from a patriarchal world where women are silenced and  silent to a female symbolic order in which women  are finally able to speak with their own language. It  marks a passage for women, as Maraini  describes, from a "prehistoric" to a  "historic" state--from a place where women did  not treasure their own memory to a place where they  start to reflect upon their past and finally find the  words to describe it. *5 This is a passage  experienced, historically, by women writers in  general, and, on a personal level, by many
  
individual writers, including Dacia  Maraini herself.

  Dacia Maraini is one of the most distinguished  writers in Italy today, male or female.  She has written more than fifty books,  including novels, plays, collections of  poetry, and critical essays. She has  directed movies and plays and has contributed  articles on social injustice and the condition of  women to several Italian newspapers and  magazines.
  Born in Florence in 1936, the daughter of the  distinguished anthropologist Fosco Maraini and the  Sicilian princess Topazia Alliata,
Maraini left Italy with her parents when she was  a year old. Her parents decided to leave  Italy for two reasons: the first was her father's  anthropological interest in a certain population  in northern Japan, and the second was the  dictatorship of Benito Mussolini, under which  her family, committed antifascists, found it  increasingly difficult to live. They moved  to Japan, where Dacia's two sisters, Yuki  and Toni, were born. In 1943, because of the World  War II alliance between Japan, Italy, and  Germany, her parents were asked to sign a petition  in favor of the Republic of Salo, the  Italian fascist government in its most cruel  and extreme phase. They refused, and the entire  Maraini family was deported to a concentration  camp in Nagoya and then to one in Kobe, where they  remained until the end of the war in 1945.  Dacia, who was seven to nine years old during that  time, experienced cruelty and deprivation. "I have  dreadful memories of that country," she said in an  interview nearly forty years later. "I  remember the bombs, the hunger, and the sadistic  pleasure of our jailers. Occasionally, in my  dreams, those images still hunt me down. At that  time, I remember, we ate everything: lizards,  ants, acorns, and roots--a frightening torture  to which daily earthquakes added even more fear."  *6
  This traumatic experience shaped Maraini's  personality, her reluctance to communicate through the  spoken language, and her preference for  expressing herself through writing. In a 1993  interview she states: "For many years after the  immense pain of the concentration camp I was almost
  
without words. I found myself in a deep  state of silent solitude. I was so shy that  communicating with another speaking face was almost  impossible. Talking to other people was a torture for  me. Writing became an alternative. I  felt safe only in front of a white sheet of  paper. Since that time, for me, writing has always  been more important than speaking." *7
  After the war Maraini and her family moved  back to Italy. They lived in Bagheria,  Sicily, where they stayed with her mother's  relatives. The family was quite poor, despite  its aristocratic origins. But Maraini  remembers those years as a period of freedom.  Her parents were young, and she perceived them more as friends  than as adult authority figures: "They were very  active physically and mentally: they practiced  numerous sports; they read, painted, and played  music. In my eyes they represented the joy of  living. With them I had fun." *8 This sensation  of freedom was interrupted only by the limitations  of Sicilian society, which soon made
Maraini particularly aware of the sexual and  psychological repression of women. *9 In  addition, the structured and coercive regimen of the  school system conflicted with her desire to learn:

  I did not do very well in school because I was  always intolerant of any kind of imposition, and  school, at that time, with its rigidly structured  programs, which required that time be shared among  different subjects, made me feel very  uncomfortable and incapable of respecting the form of  discipline it demanded. I liked learning, but at  my own pace. I was a voracious reader to the  point that I could even read when I went sailing with  my father, careless of sunburns. I read everything  I could possibly find, and I was lucky enough to have  in my own home the right books. When I was very young  I was fond of Stevenson, Melville,
Jules Verne, and especially of Conrad, who  remains one of my favorites of all time. But  the author I particularly enjoyed was Samuel  Beckett, who influenced my writing at a very  early stage. The first story I published, "La  mia storia tornava sotto l'albero  carrubo" (my story came back under the carob  tree), was completely Beckettian." *10

  When her parents separated in 1954, Maraini
  
moved with her father to Rome, where she still  resides. She soon became part of the Italian  intelligentsia, counting among her friends prominent  writers, directors, and literary critics such  as Alberto Moravia, Giorgio
Manganelli, Nanni Balestrini, Pier
Paolo Pasolini, Bernardo Bertolucci,
Edoardo Sanguineti, Enzo Siciliano, and  Renato Barilli.
  From the beginning, Maraini's works--whether they be  novels, collections of poetry, or plays--  have always been received with great interest by the media. But  too often the media coverage of her work became a    pretext for discussions of the lifestyle of the famous  Italian artists with whom she was so closely  associated. In addition, Maraini's activism  and identity as a feminist, especially during the  1970's, alienated part of the still-paternalistic  literary Italian community, so that her feminist  positions rather than her literary work became the  primary subject of commentary. Her  provocative and nonconformist stories shook the  moralistic Italian mentality and divided the  critics. At the same time, her refusal to be  aligned with any particular feminist group or  leftist political party roused some suspicious  reactions, even among the more progressive  elements in Italy.
  With the passing of years, however, critics began  to appreciate Maraini's qualities more  consistently and to write more deeply about her work.  The Silent Duchess definitely  represented a turning point, winning unanimous  praise in the cultural, political, and  feminist worlds. Nevertheless, there remain far too  few critical works and serious studies  thoroughly examining Maraini's writing, of the kind  that could secure her much-deserved place in the  canon of the Italian literary tradition.

  Maraini's first two novels were published within  one year of each other: La vacanza (the  holiday) in 1962, and, in 1963, L'et@a  del malessere (the age of discontent), which  won the international Prix Formentor and has been  translated into twelve languages. At that time  Maraini was closely associated with the eminent  Italian fiction writer Alberto Moravia.  Maraini and Moravia were also close friends with the  internationally renowned writer, poet, and film
  
director Pier Paolo Pasolini;  the three regularly spent time together and traveled  frequently to Africa.
  From 1966 until 1969, Maraini published  book after book. Her novels included A  memoria (by heart) and Memorie di una  ladra (published in English as Memoirs  of a Female Thief), which was later made into a  film, Teresa la ladra, directed  by Carlo di Palma and starring the famous  Italian actor Monica Vitti. She also  published the collection of poetry Crudelta  all'aria aperta (cruelty in the open air)  and such plays as La famiglia normale  (the ordinary family), Ricatto a  teatro (blackmail at the theater) and  Manifesto dal carcere (manifesto from  prison). She also founded new theatrical    companies as a means of dramatizing social  injustice--poverty, homelessness, and the plight of  prisoners.
  During this period, Maraini began writing  articles on the condition of women for the Italian  newspaper Paese Sera. In 1967 she  became involved with the feminist group Rivolta  femminile, but she soon she left the group because,  she says, she found it too "mystical": "For  me feminism came out of my interest in combating  social injustice. Only later did it become  more political and ideological, when, along with  other women, I started discussing our history: a  history of repression and silence." In 1973  Maraini founded a feminist group that was "based on  the experience of theater by women, with women, and for  women." The group called itself Teatro della  Maddalena, after the neighborhood where it held  its meetings. "We did everything together," Maraini  recalls. "We discussed our projects  collectively, without fixed roles or areas of  expertise. We were trying to eliminate  hierarchies, to be all equal, but artistically it  did not work, because the talents of every person are  different." *11 Nevertheless, the group became a  national cultural center for women. In addition  to its theatrical activities, it published a  magazine, Effe, maintained a  bookstorestlibrary of feminist works, and  sponsored frequent conferences, seminars,  roundtables, art shows, film series, writing and  music workshops, and other cultural
  
activities organized by women and for  women.
  During the 1970's, Maraini's literary  production was enormous. The first women's  theatrical production at La Maddalena was the  play Mara, Maria Marianna, written  by Maraini in 1973. It was followed by many other  plays, including Se io muoio, ti  dispiace? (do you mind if I die?) in  1976, which addressed health care conditions in  Italy, and Dialogo di una prostituta  con un suo cliente (dialogue of a  prostitute with her client), which was translated  into French and played in Brussels for three  years. *12 She also wrote two collections  of poetry, Donne mie (my women) in
1974 and Mangiami pure (devour me  too) in 1979, as well as the powerful feminist  novel Donna in guerra (published in  English as Woman at War) in 1975.
  During the 1980's Maraini published more than  twenty books. *13 One of the best known,  Storia di Piera (piera's story),  published in 1980, is a dialogue between the  writer and the actor Piera degli Esposti, whose  memories of family life reveal a very intense  relationship with her mother. Storia di Piera was  made into a film in 1983 by the director  Marco Ferreri, with an international cast including  Hanna Schygulla, Isabelle Huppert, and  Marcello Mastroianni. Maraini's novels  of the 1980's include Lettere a Marina  (published in English as Letters to Marina) in  1981 and Il treno per Helsinki (train  to Helsinki) in 1984, both featuring female  protagonists struggling with the patriarchal world.  While the former continues to explore the legacy  of the mother figure, as begun in Storia di  Piera, the latter deals with feminism and  politics, as represented in Donna in  guerra. As Maraini illustrates in these  novels, women have had to contend with stereotypes and  sexist behaviors even among those young Italian  men with whom they fought side by side for  progressive political and social change.  Maraini's keen attention to this imbalance reveals  the deeply ingrained male habit of seeing women  as inferior human beings. In 1985 Maraini  published Isolina, a novel inspired by real  events that took place in the northern Italian
  
region of Veneto at the beginning of the  century, when a young pregnant woman was  accidentally murdered. Maraini inquired into the  life of the woman's lover, who involuntarily  killed her and then tried to cover up the crime.  In order to save the reputation of the Italian  Army in which he served, the man was never condemned--  another example of the power of the patriarchy.  *14
  From 1990 to the present, Dacia Maraini  has published a total of nine books in five  different genres. The atypical historical  novel La lunga vita di Marianna
Ucr@ia (the long life of Marianna
Ucr@ia, published in English as The
Silent Duchess) appeared in 1990,
Voci (published in English as Voices) in  1994, Un clandestino a bordo (a  secret on board) in 1996, and Dolce per  s`e (sweet itself) in 1997. She also  published the collection of poetry Viaggiando  con passo di volpe (walking with the tread of a  fox) in 1991, the dramatic text,
Veronica, meretrice e scrittora  (veronica, whore and writer) in 1992, the  autobiography Bagheria (also published in  English) in 1993, and a lengthy essay on  Madame Bovary entitled Cercando Emma  (published in English as Searching for Emma)  as well as the play Camille in 1995. Many  of these books address a common theme: the problem  of women's relationship with writing. It is this  relationship between women and literature that  captures Maraini's attention in most of her  recent works. Taken together, these works reveal a  contradictory and intricate association between  writing and the gendered body. The identities of  writer, protagonist, and reader often intersect  and overlap for the sole purpose of demonstrating  the "foreignness" of women in their encounter with  language and communication. At the same time, these  works are dominated by women's desire to express  themselves and their joy in doing so--a desire that led  Maraini herself to pursue the arduous task of  writing.
  Maraini concentrates on the female point of  view in her approach to writing. She begins  by condemning a determining factor in the history of  literature: the lack of authority in the female  literary legacy. This has led to the exclusion of
  
women from literary tradition, or,  worse yet, indifference toward them on the part of the  historiography that determines literary canons  and criteria. Maraini's most urgent goal,  therefore, is to reinsert women into the literary  spaces from which they have long been forcibly barred and  to restore authority to the female word. In order  to carry out this theoretical, historical, and  literary endeavor, Maraini writes during this  period in a variety of literary genres that offer  her the chance to experiment with different kinds of  language.
  In the theatrical text Veronica,  meretrice e scrittora (veronica, whore  and writer), for example, Maraini emphasizes  the inescapable contrast between writing and the senses through  the figure of a prostitute who practices the  art of writing. The sixteenth-century Venetian  courtesan and poet, the inspiration for the recent  film Dangerous Beauty, is a very  subversive character because, as Maraini states, "She  violated the two traditional places  prohibited to the female body: the street and the  writing desk. The former was prohibited because she  had to defend her and her own family's  honourableness; the latter because she had to defend the  female credibility related to her matrimony  and maternity. Only a nun was allowed to sit  down alone at the writing desk." *15 In  Cercando Emma (Searching for Emma),
Maraini abandons the realm of self-representation  in order to tackle male representations of one  of the most famous female characters in French  literature: Gustave Flaubert's  lovedsthated heroine, Madame Bovary.
  Maraini's interest in the difficulties of  female communication, particularly in a medium that  has excluded women, and her attempt  to reconstruct the processes of creation involved  in male representation of female characters are  natural developments of a journey that began a  long time ago. Early in her development as a  writer, Maraini realized that in order to change the  condition of women politically, socially, and  culturally, one should start questioning the structure of the  private realm of family and the role of women  within it. Her extremely focused attention to the  realities of women's everyday life,  historically and materially, is present in all  her work, and represents her most original
  
contribution to the life of Italian  feminism.

  The contemporary Italian feminist movement  began at the end of the 1960's, but its roots  lead back to women's labor struggles in the  nineteenth century. Distinct from American  feminism, which was more concerned with the primacy of  individual rights, the Italian movement was always  involved with political parties or labor  unions, of which women were frequently a part, and  has always seen women's individual rights as  inseparable from collective political struggle.  From the period between the two world wars, through the  struggle waged by the Partisans (the antifascist  underground), through the postwar reconstruction of the  country, and up until the end of the 1960's,    women's movements in Italy carried on mainly  within political parties of the Left. Women's  political emancipation from a segregated role  in the labor force and the achievement of political  equality with men were the main issues for these  movements, which never questioned the structure of family  and private life.
  By 1968, in Italy, as in many countries in  Europe and beyond, the younger generation had begun to question  the authority of the ruling class as well as the  patent economic and social injustice that  surrounded them, demanding a more just and peaceful world.  Women constituted a large number of the  participants at the rallies. Students were  allied with the working class and manifested their  discontent in the universities, in the  factories, and in the streets, with the intent of  changing the status quo and fighting for a more balanced  social order. The utopian slogan,
"Let's be realistic, let's ask for the  impossible," which appeared in the streets of Paris  in 1968, was emblematic of the political and  social battles that appealed not only to the young and  to poor and working-class people but also to women--all  communities which had never before had access to the power  needed to criticize or reform economic and  social structures. For women, in particular,  it had been unthinkable--and therefore impossible--before  this time to even question the basis of male authority.  This was true even among those activist women who,  for example, had struggled for greater equality with  men in the workplace through labor unions, or had  worked side by side with men (or, too often, beneath
  
them) in the political parties of the
Left.
  Now, however, women began to develop a new  perspective, from which they also began to question the  schizophrenic ideology and behavior of their  male companions. In their public lives, these  men were fighting against the old rules of the  political order, while in their private  relationships with women, they maintained and  perpetuated the same patriarchal rules that had  shaped society for centuries and determined male  hegemony in Western culture and civilization.  How was it possible, women wondered, to question the  political realm without questioning personal  behavior? How was it possible to change society  without questioning chauvinistic habits and the established  supremacy of one gender over another in the  family as well as in the workplace? How was it  possible to construct a just world without removing  secular prejudices that led women to be considered  second-class human beings?
  As women began to raise these questions, they soon  recognized the need to construct their own groups and  their own political praxis. Women discovered that  personal experience could not be separated from the  political--moreover, that the former generated and  constituted the latter. The sedute di  autocoscienza (consciousness-raising sessions)  of the 1970's, in which women confronted each other in  analytical and critical discussions, were the  product of this awareness. One of the main slogans  of Italian feminism, "Il personale  every' politico" (the personal is  political), challenged men's revolutionary  political agenda and redefined the character of  Italian feminism.
  Although many of these same processes and  slogans also characterized the feminist movement of the  1970's in the United States and elsewhere, they  took on special significance in Italy.  Supported by more than two decades of fascism  and more than a dozen centuries of Catholicism,  the patriarchy in Italy was particularly well  entrenched. And in a nation where politics  saturates life down to the level of personal  discourse and personal relationships, women's  insistence that the formula be reversed--that the personal  relations between men and women be viewed as  political acts--was an event that shook  society, and particularly the society of the
  
Left, to its core.

  Some of Maraini's novels, like Donna in  guerra (1975), Lettere a Marina
(1981), and Il treno per Helsinki
(1984), specifically deal with the uneasiness of  women in the masculine world of politics, even in  the radical universe of men who portrayed  themselves as liberated from prejudices against women.  These books point out the importance of  relationships among women as autonomous and  independent subjects.
  In these and other works, Maraini suggests that there  is a difference between men and women. Because of the  subordinate role women occupied throughout  centuries of patriarchal domination in private  and public life, they feel and behave  differently than men. This difference lies in  women's distinct experience as a gender, as well  as in their bodies as sites of sexual difference.  The ideology of equality, which wants to make  women equal to men, can be problematic because it  tends to view women as essentially identical  to men, erasing their specificity as subjects.
  This theoretical position within feminism--  particularly important and uniquely  developed within Italian feminism--is called  difference theory. In Italy, difference theory was  initially elaborated by Carla Lonzi, and more  recently developed by the group of Italian  feminist philosophers called Diotima. The  Diotima group, which met and worked in Verona,  has elaborated the principle of sexual  difference as a way of advocating the recovery of a  symbolic space that was taken away from women.  In such theoretical formulations, sexual difference  is linked to the difference in male and female  roles transmitted by society through stereotypes  --but it is a difference that also empowers women  to acknowledge and recreate their own identities,  their own culture, their own forms of communication,  distinct from those created by men. The principle of  equality is rejected in favor of that of  difference, which does not theorize a participation in  male power but rather calls into question its deepest  structures. The Diotima group invented the  concept of "female mediations," capable of  building woman-centered theory, consciousness, and  practice on political, literary, and  linguistic levels. *16 Maraini, at an
  
early point in the development of these  ideas, made extremely creative use of them  in her work, further evidence of her originality as  a writer and a feminist thinker.
  In Maraini's work, two elements stand out in  relationship to difference theory: first, the function of  silence not as the absence of speech but rather as an  alternative to male language, and second, the  significance of the symbolic order of the mother in the  formation of the female voice. These themes wield  particular weight in The Silent Duchess.  They are also present in an essay that marks a  division between Maraini's rougher, more ideological  writing of the seventies and eighties and her more  mature, refined work of the nineties, particularly  The Silent Duchess. In this provocative  essay, "Riflessioni sui corpi logici e  illogici delle mie compaesane di sesso"  (reflections on the logical and illogical  bodies of my compatriots in gender), the  intentions and objectives that can be traced in  Maraini's later work are clearly laid out.  *17
  Maraini's begins with the assumption that there is no  innate gender difference in the approach to writing.  Yet there is, generally, a sense of foreignness on  the part of women with respect to a language from which  they have been historically barred and exiled--their  space reduced, instead, to that sentimental,  private world that has never had a voice in  literary tradition.
  Women who do choose to write must bear the  burden of the socially constructed assumptions that  surround their literary production. According to such  assumptions, which correspond to rigid gender  separations, any writing that is not concerned with  domestic or trivial matters is unsuitable  for the female sex. Thus women's writing has  been excluded from the literary canon--from the realm  of "great," "worldly," and "enduring" works--  by virtue of the very fact that they are written  by women. The female voice has never carried  weight within this realm.
  Maraini recognizes that women's exclusion  begins in the realm of the imagination--or rather, in the  realm of the misogynist, male-centered  representations that underlie the production of writing  in our culture. Maraini writes:

  Writing, its roots lazily entrenched in the
  
deep terrain of the collective  imagination, nourishes itself on old habits of  thought, on secret aspirations, on fears made  greater by unconscious desires. But in their  transformation into a common theme, these desires, these  aspirations, these habits have nearly always characterized  the interests of man without woman, and are  frequently even geared against woman. Suffice  it to look at the commonest symbols of the fairy  tale, the myth, of both ancient and modern  cosmology. *18

  Writing, which is descended from language,  reflects the products that arise from a  male-centered imagination (which naturally takes  root in the imaginations of women as well). So  women find themselves the schizophrenic victims,  torn between the male representation of the female  point of view, which reflects the authority of the  public, patriarchal world, and that faint and  subtle voice that arises from the enclosed,  private, female realm, which is devoid of  all authority. The plight of the woman writer  illustrates the lack of credence given to any  female-centered imagination--in the language of  Diotima, a female symbolic order--which  has so fundamental a role in the constitution of a  gendered point of view.
  For Maraini, an essential initial element  in the development of a distinct women's writing is  the rediscovery of the gendered body--the body not  merely as a physical or biological entity  but rather as a cultural concept, shaped over  centuries in a climate of separation and  oppression. The result, Maraini tells us,  "is that one writes with the body, and the body has a  sex, and sex has a history of separations,  exclusions, segregation, abuse, violence,  fear, aphasia--segregation of which we retain an  atavistic memory." *19
  The rediscovery of the female body as a  source for the female voice is thus linked to the  rediscovery of the body of the mother, the original  source of all language. For Maraini, writing  is itself born female, for it is through the mediation  of the body of the mother that language arises, only  to be later transformed into a masculine tongue  by the language of the fathers. Theorizing the existence of  an original maternal language links
Maraini to the Diotima group, which traces a
  
symbolic female order in this  retrogressive genealogical path, claiming  that both sexes not only draw life from the  female body but gain language from it as well.  This process has always been clouded  by patriarchal power, which denies the existence of any  power other than itself. For Maraini, as for  Diotima, the obfuscation of maternal  genealogy lies at the origins of women's  difficulty in finding their voice:

  Writing, after all--with its wanderings amidst the  details of daily life, its insistence on the  forever new absurdities of love, with its feeling  for language as nourishment, and with its everyday  heroes--is profoundly female and maternal.  This is especially true for the novel, linked as it  is to a sense of becoming. Roland Barthes did not  speak idly when he said, "To write means  to play with the body of the mother." We can take the  body of the mother to mean the flesh and the milk of every  spoken language. However--and this is the  surprising part--language, born a daughter,  becomes a son as it matures. It develops  muscles and hair and expects its own spiritual  interests to take absolute priority. *20

  Just as women's language, essential as it  may be, has been marginalized, so has  women's experience, women's memory, women's  testimony--women's history. The making of  history requires witnesses, and if the only  witnesses have been denied a voice, it is the  same as if they had never existed. Maraini  writes:

  What, exactly, is this difficulty in  historicizing that is typical of women, forced  to inhabit the margins of history? Or is this  difficulty actually a refusal to link the past  with the present? To give a meaning to things?  To believe in what we have accomplished together? So  adept at amputating, forgetting, destroying,  crushing are women, that we end up more active and  efficient than that black-clad old friend with her  scythe. Women's memory is not preserved, not  valued. It is careless with itself to the point of  dispersion. It grinds up, gathers, and then throws it  all to the wind. In order to remember we must  love our past, and therefore, in some sense, ourselves.
  
But women would sooner die than  demonstrate tenderness and indulgence toward themselves.  They know what the most closed kind of narcissism  is, the kind that leads to the annihilation of love;  but they do not know how to value their own thought, with its  reasoning and its needs. Female memory is  wounded, deformed. It prefers not to look back to the  past; like Lot, it fears being transformed into a  pillar of salt. *21

  As Maraini suggests, women have in some sense  aided in their own exclusion from history by failing  to value, to record, and to disseminate their own  testimony. Yet Maraini does not hesitate  to acknowledge the external obstacles that prevent  women writers from procuring a place in the  literary canon, and thus in human history. As  Virginia Woolf noted in A Room of
One's Own, there are no laws that preclude  women from being writers. But there were and still are  attitudes, rules, and structures within the  literary world that prevent women from being heard. In  addition to the difficulty women encounter in  expressing themselves with a language that has been  rendered foreign to them, they face a host of  practices and prejudices that marginalize or  trivialize their literary output. It is for this  reason that some women writers have, through the use of  pseudonyms, "disguised" themselves as male  writers and even adopted misogynist  attitudes, thus merely reinforcing female  exclusion from the public spaces in which the  authority of literary and historical tradition  is constructed. And it is for this reason that many  women writers, in the attempt to lay claim  to spaces that have never belonged to them, have been careful  to define themselves simply as "writers," rather than  "woman writers."
  Adding to such obstacles is a continuing lack of  access to the channels of book publication and  distribution. The fact that the business of publishing  in Italy--and to a somewhat lesser extent in the  United States--is still largely directed by men  contributes to the silencing of many women's  voices. When women remain unpublished, they  also remain unread and therefore unheard. (the  mission of a publishing house such as the Feminist  Press, which provides access to women's  voices--including that of Dacia Maraini, who  despite her international stature has had few
  
books published in the United States  --certainly contributes to the creation of that  "permanent memory" which Maraini claims is  essential if women are to outlive their bodies  and become part of literary history. Such  projects are what enable women's voices  to emerge from silence.)
  In short, what has impeded women from bearing  witness, making their voices heard, writing their  stories, and becoming part of history is a complex  of obstacles that begins with their inability  to express themselves within a system that fails  to reflect or value female experience or  to take into account female difference. Women have  been largely written out of the male-authored  narrative, and, in order to write themselves in, they  must change not only the narrative's content but also  its underlying assumptions. It has been the task  of women writers to create a new kind of  narrative, reflecting female subjectivity  and drawing upon a female symbolic order. Within  this alternative symbolic order, things are not  always what they might seem: silence, for  example, can be incomparably eloquent.
  One of Maraini's brilliant conceits in
The Silent Duchess is her depiction of  silence as a definite and unique form of  expression. It is a form of expression that  reflects women's inability to give voice  to themselves with the communicative tools made  available to them. It constitutes an alternative  means for women to situate themselves in that  "nonplace" where women's history begins. In  Maraini's hands, silence, far from being a passive  state, is a radical way of interacting with the  language of the patriarchy. Silence expresses  women's unanswered longing to exist in their own right,  to participate in history with a voice that refuses  to be molded or compromised by the male-centered  imagination. Silence is connected, moreover, to the  possibility of self-expression through the  language of the body, traditionally relegated  to the background in the male-dominated realm of  oral and written language. The ironic  nature of silence, according to Maraini, is at the  heart of The Silent Duchess, which centers  around a protagonist who is both deaf and mute.  We can, Maraini says, read the silence of  Marianna as a "metaphor for the female  condition" in relation to self-expression, and
  
especially to writing.

  Maraini's choice of eighteenth-century  Sicily as the setting for her novel has perhaps  to do not only with her own origins but also with the fact  that it was home to an extraordinarily arrogant and  hypocritical aristocracy, remarkable, even for  that time, in the cruelty of its oppression of both  the poor and women--a society so corrupt and  unjust that someone like Marianna might be rendered  silent in response.
  The Sicilian aristocracy of the time showed little  concern for improving the economic and social  conditions on the island, worried instead about  maintaining its own privileges during a  particularly tumultuous period in history. More  than a century before unification, Italy was still  divided into numerous city-states, vied over  by various foreign empires. The removal of  Sicily from the hands of Franco-Spanish  Bourbons and its passage under the  Savoy-Piedmontese and subsequently the  Austrian Hapsburg empires made an already  quarrelsome and powerful Sicilian aristocracy very  suspicious of new foreign rulers and kings.  Finally, the return to power in 1713 of the  Bourbons, who declared Naples the new  capital of the kingdom and governed the island for the  rest of the century from that city on the mainland,  encouraged the inefficiency and the absenteeism of  Sicilian nobility.
  In a very outdated form of feudalism, the  aristocratic families maintained their ownership  of latifondi--large expanses of land not  cultivated to their full potential--and continued  at their very costly standard of living, obsessed with  excessive formality and pompous etiquette.  Sicilian society, due to the immobility of  its aristocracy, showed traces of archaic  habits and costumes that even in the city-states  of the mainland were slowly beginning to fade. Since the  majority of nobles had no idea how to improve  or manage their family fortunes and commerce and  industry offered no attraction to them,  impoverishment soon became a problem, for money  was spent more on prestige than on productive  investment. Nevertheless, those who had dominated the  island prior to the return of the Bourbons, and who  had tried to change the renowned affectation and  inefficient habits of Sicilian aristocracy,
  
were fiercely opposed by the barons who  owned most of the land. In A History of  Sicily, Denis Mack Smith describes  how this entrenched feudal system affected family  dynamics and the condition of women:

  Since family pride was one of the most  impelling motives in this society, the great  estates continued to be kept intact wherever  possible by deeds of strict settlement.  Daughters and younger sons were commonly put  inffconvents and monasteries about the age of ten  (nunneries would accept girls even at four or  five) so as to keep the family possessions in  one hand; the ecclesiastical life at least had  its own privileges and would not mean loss of  caste. ... The head of the family and the eldest  male child alone were of much importance. ...  Woman's only alternative to the nunnery,  however, was to get married and for the father to provide a  dowry, since without a dowry no girl in any  class was likely to find a husband: dowries were  themselves so expensive that they were called a prime  explanation of the low birth rate, and not without  reason did reformers suggest that they were as much an  impediment as primogeniture to the development of a  more mobile and liberal society. *22

  The lives of women, even noble ones, were  particularly unhappy. In this very conservative  world, in fact, they had no opportunity  to manifest their voices and even less to make  choices about their lives. The privileges of the  aristocracy would have allowed Marianna Ucr@ia  a standard of living that no female commoner could  afford, but she would have had no more autonomy--and if  anything, less personal mobility--than any  peasant woman. In this context, Marianna's  personal behavior and actions, and even her way  of thinking, were very radical and courageous for her  times.
  Marianna's shy but curious personality, her  hunger for knowledge, and her love for books--one form of  communication available to her in her silent world--  lead her to the reading of English and French  philosophers of the eighteenth century. These  writers make her aware of the narrow-mindedness of the  Sicilian aristocracy's way of thinking, which for the  most part fiercely opposed any idea of  tolerance and reform typical of the Enlightenment (which
  
would soon give birth to the great social  upheaval of the French Revolution). Her reading  and consequently her thinking free her from the  prejudices with which she was educated. Marianna's  journey toward freedom and self-awareness is  one with which Maraini herself identified.

  Maraini describes her experience with the  figure of Marianna Ucr@ia in her  autobiographical work Bagheria. Although  Bagheria was published in 1993, after The  Silent Duchess, it was inspired by a trip that  took Maraini to Bagheria, Sicily, after many  years of absence from her maternal homeland--the  same trip that led to the composition of the novel that  recounts the life of this Sicilian noblewoman.
  For Maraini, Sicily represented her  childhood's happy years, when her father and mother were  united and young and when she lived freely in close  contact with uncontaminated nature. Yet then,  as today, there was also the plague of the Mafia with which  to contend. "No one ever spoke about the Mafia at  that time," Maraini writes. "Everyone knew about  its evil presence, which was able to impose its power  with knives and guns. But no one knew who they  were. It was better for the ones who knew to pretend  they never knew anything." *23
  Maraini also recalls the "jasmine island" as  a very conservative society. The proverbial  arrogance of the aristocracy, of which her relatives  were a part, had served, during the previous  centuries, to restrain any social or  economic improvements, reforms, or a more open  mentality on the island. "I hated their  atavistic incapacity of changing, of seeing the  truth, of understanding others, of stepping aside, of  acting with humility," Maraini wrote. *24  This retrograde social structure had a very  strong impact on women's subordinate  position throughout the centuries. It also contributed  to the writer's first experience of sexual abuse--  an incident of molestation by a family friend--and  to her difficulty, during her years of  adolescence, with being fully integrated  into Sicilian society.
  But years later, upon her return to her  family's mansion outside Palermo, Maraini  became fascinated with a portrait of a distant  ancestor, Princess Topazia Alliata, and  learned what she could of her story. "I felt I
  
was living a novel by Pirandello,"
Maraini later said. "She seemed to stare at me,  asking for her story to be told. It was a most  extraordinary encounter." *25 Maraini's    fictional version of her ancestor, Marianna  Ucria, whose life was lived amid the  repressive Sicilian aristocracy and who was  a victim of the most terrible type of violence,  brought the author back to a place she had sought  to forget. Maraini describes her stubborn  reluctance to confront her own past in Sicily,  and the rediscovery of her roots:

  I had written eight novels before The  Silent Duchess, but I had always avoided that  island of jasmine flowers and rotten fish, of  sublime hearts and razorsharp knives, like the  plague. ... To talk about Sicily meant  to open a door that had been bolted shut--a door  that I had camouflaged so completely with crawling  vines and tangles of leaves that I had forgotten  it had ever existed; a wall, an impenetrable,  closed thickness. Then a hand, a hand which I did  not recognize as my own, and which extended from a  ragged and forgotten sleeve, daring and full of  curiosity, began to push against that door, tearing  away the spiderwebs and the clinging roots. Once  it had been opened, I confronted a world of  memories with suspicion and a slight sensation of  nausea. The ghosts that I saw before me certainly  did nothing to encourage me. But I was here, and I  couldn't turn back. *26

  The past that Maraini had intentionally left behind  demanded its due within the writer's memory, and  pushed her toward a self-awareness that led her again  to take up writing. Maraini's return  to Sicily, in fact, not only coincided with a  rediscovery of family origins, but also brought  the issue of women's writing--and female  subjectivity in general--into full focus.  Maraini's dual link with this Sicilian  ancestor--which derives first from the familial  relationship and second from the fact that Marianna,  like Maraini, is a woman writer--makes this character  a symbol for maternal origins, and  consequently, for women's relationship to writing.
  Yet if Marianna is, symbolically,  Maraini's mother, she is also, in another sense,  Maraini's daughter. Born of the writer's
  
imagination, she becomes, on paper, a  symbol of the forces which impel women's creative  process. Marianna represents the  contradictory relationship between living through the  senses and writing--exalted by Maraini, in other  works as well, as the privileged condition of  women's expression. Marianna's silence is  accompanied by a heightening and interchange of her  other senses, representing an attempt  to reappropriate the expression of her body.  The entire novel renders a life seen,  smelled, tasted, and touched. The reader  experiences, with Marianna, the color and  fragrance of fields of spring flowers and of the  Sicilian sea, the enticing smells of both  elaborate meals and the daily fare served at her  table, and the sharp or sensual smells of the bed  chambers. The reader takes part in Marianna's  passion as she discovers that the male body not only  bestows the "torment" that she has always experienced but  also "goes to her confidently and gently. Here is  a body that knows how to wait, that takes and knows  how to be taken without any kind of force" (429).  But before she can fully rediscover the joys of the  body, Marianna must come to know her own body's  history of violence and abuse.
  At the very beginning of the novel, seven-year-old  Marianna is brought to the public hanging of a young  boy. Members of the Sicilian nobility  traditionally assisted people who were condemned to death in  order to comfort them before execution; they belonged to the  confraternity of White Brothers, of which  Marianna's father was part. The father's decision  to bring the child along with him and to force her to witness such  horrible spectacle is intended to shock her  into regaining the power of speech. After the hanging is  over, "he touches her mouth as if he were waiting  for a miracle. He catches hold of her chin,  looks into her eyes, imploring, threatening. "You  must speak," say his lips. "You must open that  accursed fish's mouth." The child tries to unstick  her lips but she cannot do it. Her body is seized  with a violent trembling, her hands, still grasping the  folds of her father's habit, are turned to stone"  (30). According to Marianna's father, witnessing this  violent and terrifying act should erase another  violent and terrifying act she experienced when she  was five, with his complicity: she was raped by the same  man who later became her husband.
  Unaware that she was not born deaf and mute,
  
Marianna believes her father: ""You were  born like this, deaf and dumb," he had once  written in an exercise book, and she had tried  to convince herself she had only dreamed up those  distant voices, unable to admit that her sweet  gentle father, who loved her so much, could lie to her"  (20). From the beginning of the novel, she is  haunted by a shadow of violence, which appears at  various moments and in almost every chapter. But it is  only at the end of the novel, after she has  regained power over a violated and abused body  and learned to communicate her sexual desire and  passionate love, that Marianna becomes aware  of her betrayal by the person she most trusted: her  beloved father. Leaving the island in a boat and seeing  again the prison, in front of which a gallows is  being constructed, she remembers that day: it is "like  that gallows to which her father the Duke dragged her out of  love in an attempt to cure her dumbness. She  would never have imagined that her father the Duke and  uncle husband shared the same secret concerning  her; and that they were in alliance to keep quiet about the  wound inflicted on her child's body"
(439-440).
  Just as Marianna's father, representative of the  patriarchy, has stolen her past and imprisoned  her body, he has also stolen her voice, her  language, and imprisoned her in a world of  silence. When she is finally liberated by the truth  about her past and understands that she is able to express  herself through her body, she realizes that the written    word, the body of literature, can be rescued from the  father's betrayal through a love for knowledge and through a  journey that constitutes the process of writing.
  As a deaf-mute, Marianna has, in fact,  always had to express herself through reading and writing,  an alternative means to the spoken language of  communicating with the world. Marianna's love of  reading, so voracious that she reads even during the  night, is set against the reality that has  subjected her to innumerable abuses. This thirst for  knowledge, and thus for freedom, is for Maraini the  basis for the construction of a different reality at  both the individual and collective levels.  Marianna reflects:

  To leave a book is like leaving the better part of  oneself. To pass from the soft and airy arcades of the  mind to the demands of a graceless body always  grasping for one thing or another is in any case
  
a surrender: a renunciation of characters one  has studied and cared for in favour of a self one  does not love, confined within a stupid succession of  days, each day indistinguishable from the last.  (222-223)

  In addition to reading books, Marianna  eventually develops the ability to "read" the  thoughts of others. This is another, even more  extreme example of the heightening of her other  senses in the absence of sound and speech. Reading and  writing become for Marianna a sixth sense, an  alternative--and particularly female--path to the  language of which she has been deprived. Although  Marianna's silence has been brought on by male  violence, oppression, and betrayal, she finds  within her silent world other forms of understanding and  expression. Her silence coincides both with the  expression of her body and with the affirmation of the  written word. Maraini confirms the power of  Marianna's silence, and, by implication, of  women's literary endeavors:

  Marianna's silence is not one of renunciation  and passivity. I wanted to recount the victory  of the written word over imposed silence.  Marianna is not a writer, and writing for her is  her primary means of survival. The novel is  an act of trust in regard to the written word and  to reading, for if Marianna wins her liberty after  the public and private violence to which she has  been subjected, she owes it to these two  indispensable acts of knowledge. *27

  For women, such acts of knowledge have the power to rejoin  us with ourselves, to clear a path toward the creation of  something of our own, which opposes itself to a reality that  excludes us. Certainly, solitude is often  the price we pay, Maraini seems to say. It  is a solitude which may make us feel like  strangers even to ourselves, for it involves the act of  "telling ourselves" through a medium--writing--which is  fundamentally foreign to us.
  For this reason, perhaps, Maraini has Marianna  leave at the end of the novel for a trip that distances  her definitively both from her lover and from the  lovesick old man who has asked her  to re-enter the established order by marrying him.  Traveling, Marianna also gains distance from herself,  from her own familiar world, from the images of her
  
literary world, to recover a sort of  nomadism and foreignness which frighten her but at the  same time attract her. Comforting memory,  accompanied by nostalgia, is ready and waiting  to frustrate every anxiety of knowledge and to make desire  waver. Maraini describes Marianna's thoughts  at the end of the novel:

  Now everything is strange to her and therefore  valued. But for how long can she expect things around  her to remain foreign, perfectly intelligible,  yet far away and impossible to decipher? This  withdrawal from the future that is sealing her fate,  will it be too great a challenge for her strength? This  wish to wander, to meet different kinds of people, is there  something arrogant about it, something a little frivolous  and perverse? Where will she go to make a home for  herself when every home seems too sunk in its  roots, too predictable? She would like to be able  to carry her home on her back like a snail and go  off into the unknown. To suppress the remembrance of  those ardent embraces that she so longs for will not be  easy. The sluice-gate is there to intercept every  drop of memory, every crumb of happiness. But  there must also be something else, something that belongs to the  world of wisdom and contemplation, something that  deflects the mind from its foolish preoccupation  with the senses. ... This rushing from here to there, setting  off, stopping, waiting, wandering, is it not a  premonition of her end? To walk straight into the  waters of the river, first to the tips of her shoes,  then up to her ankles, then gradually up to her  knees, her chest, her throat. The water is not  cold. It would not be difficult to let herself be  swallowed up by those eddying currents with their smell  of decaying leaves. (476-477)

  Marianna cannot go back, for the experience of knowledge and  desire has made her different, incompatible  with the social order and discourse she has left  behind. Nothing can be as it was before. The return to herself  must come about on another level of signification and  representation, to which the instruments of "telling her  self" are intimately linked. Women must  traverse the unknown to claim a writing that finally  belongs to us. We risk, in fact, being engulfed  by the "waters" of writing, which tell our stories in  a patriarchal language that is foreign to us and that  has in many cases succeeded in colonizing us.
To break this chain requires the desire and the
  
courage of the adventurer. *28
  Women must lose themselves in order to rediscover  themselves, redefine themselves--retell, from a new  vantage point, the stories that have always been  told for us. Maraini herself seems animated by this  contradictory awareness, this pattern of departure  and return. She seems torn between the desire  to travel--to leave behind that self which gives both  comfort and unease--and the desire to return, which is  linked to the possibility of telling the self. It  is a constant alternation, both sweet and bitter,  which never lets up, a perpetual torment capable  of overcoming and destroying us but also of empowering us.  In the eloquent introduction to the poems  collected in Viaggiando con passo di  volpe (walking with the tread of a fox), Maraini  describes the anxiety linked to this intricate  process:

  I know for certain that, traveling, I am  distanced from myself, enough to lose sight of myself. And this  gives me peace. But at the same time it  disturbs me. Enough that I immediately need to grab myself  by the hair, slap myself a few times, nail my  hands to the typewriter, so that I will stay this time,  stay, confront things, as I must, with dedication and  determination. But as soon as I say the rosary of  my days, they suddenly all seem the same,  interchangeable. Time slips through my fingers and  skins me alive. I know that, staying, I will wind  up with no skin at all, vulnerable to the blasts of  air which will chill me. *29

  Like Marianna, Maraini chooses a  nomadism devoid of certainties as a condition  linked to the process of awareness and the search for  self. And just as the journey becomes a  metaphor for literature, literature can itself  become a journey: "Since the journey is a  metaphor--the most ambiguous and seductive of  metaphors, we tell ourselves--it can also be born  of immobility. There is no need to drag our  bodies around so much, all dressed up. It's  hot, there are flies, diseases. It is enough  to close our eyes, seated on a chair in the  shade, to float on the waves of imagination.  Isn't that what books are there for?" *30
  The task of writing involves a perpetual  roaming between desire and its translation in the  written word: a constant interplay of journey and
  
homecoming. The definition of identity  requires a distancing from the self, in order to come  back to a self which is something other than what it  was. This process is an essential element in  finding one's voice. And for women, in particular,  it is a necessary element in breaking through male  representations of women and in discovering the ability  to give voice to ourselves, to write our own lives,  with tools of our own creation.
  The path that reconnects women to the body of the  mother, to a symbolic world which belongs to us and in which we  are at ease, to a literature of our own, is  uncertain and without guarantees. Marianna never  regains her speech, as we might be tempted  to hope, but she decides to go beyond speech,  retaining her difference. The conclusion of the novel  underscores the irreducible difference of this character, who  does not wish to be led back to the world which has  excluded her and in which she feels a stranger:  "But the will to resume her journey is stronger.  Marianna fixes her gaze on the gurgling  yellow water. She questions her silences. But the  only answer she receives is still another question. And it  is mute" (477).
    Anna Camaiti Hostert
    Chicago
    April 1998

                Notes

1. The Piano (film), written and  directed by Jane Campion, a Jan
  Chapman production, 1992.
2. The Silent Duchess was published in the  original Italian under the title La
  lunga vita di Marianna Ucr@ia (the  long life of Marianna Ucr@ia)
  (milan: Rizzoli, 1990). The first  English-language edition was published in
  Great Britain (london: Peter Owen,  1993). This Feminist Press edition, which
  is the first U.s. edition, reproduces the  translation made for the British edition,
  by Dick Kitto and Elspeth
  Spottiswood. Although few of Dacia  Maraini's books have been published in
  English relative to her enormous output and  her prestige in Italy, the number of
  translations seems to have increased in the late  1980's and the 1990's. Books by Maraini
  
  available in English include
  Bagheria, translated by Dick Kitto and  Elspeth Spottiswood (london: Peter
  Owen, 1994); Isolina, translated  by Sian Williams (london: Peter
  Owen, 1993); Letters to Marina,  translated by Dick Kitto and Elspeth
  Spottiswood (freedom, Calif.: The  Crossing Press, 1988); Memoirs
  of a Female Thief, translated by Nina  Rootes (london: Abelard-Schuman,
  1973); Only Prostitutes Marry in  May: Four Plays, edited by Rhoda
  Helfman Kaufman (toronto:  Guernica, 1994); Searching for Emma,
  translated by Vincent J. Bertolini  (chicago: University of Chicago
  Press, 1998); Voices, translated  by Dick Kitto and Elspeth Spottiswood
  (new York: Serpent's Tail, 1997);  and Woman at War, translated by Mara
  Benetti and Elspeth Spottiswood (new  York: Italica Press, 1988).
3. The film, entitled Marianna  Ucr@ia, was directed by Roberto
  Faenza.
4. Because it deals with the fortunes of an  aristocratic Sicilian family, The
  Silent Duchess has been compared by some  critics to Giuseppe Tomasi
  Lampedusa's Il Gattopardo (1958;  tr. The Leopard, 1960). Although The
  Silent Duchess offers a similarly  vivid portrait of a family and an age,
  her concerns are, not surprisingly, quite different  from Lampedusa's. While The Leopard
  portrays the sunset of a society based on  aristocratic privilege almost with a kind of
  regret, The Silent Duchess strongly  condemns that social order as a means for the
  oppression of subaltern classes but also as the  main instrument for imposing violence and
  discrimination against women.
5. M. Grazia Sumeli Weinberg,  Invito alla lettura di Dacia
  Maraini (pretoria: University of South  Africa, 1993), 101.
6. Dacia Maraini, interview with Giosue  Calaciura, Giornale di
  Sicilia, 11 November 1986.
7. Dacia Maraini, personal  interview with Anna Camaiti Hostert,
  Campagno, Italy, 10 and 11  December, 1994.
8. Ibid.
9. Maraini, interview with Calaciura.  10. Maraini, interview with Hostert.  11. Ibid.
12. Other notable plays from the 1970's  include Reparto speciale
  antiterrorismo (special  antiterrorism squad), which won the
  Riccione award in 1975, Don Juan  in 1976, and I sogni di
  Clitennestra (clytemnestra's dreams)  in 1978.
13. In addition to those discussed in the text,  Maraini's notable publications during the
  1980's include the play Maria Stuarda  (mary Stuart) in 1983, winner of the
  international Spanish Sitges award and her  most produced play abroad, as well as a
  collection of poetry, Dimenticato di  dimenticare (forgotten to forget) in 1982.  14. This novel closely parallels portions
  of Il bambino Alberto, a long  interview conducted by Maraini in 1986 with her
  former companion of eighteen years, Alberto  Moravia, about his childhood.
15. Dacia Maraini, Veronica  meretrice a scrittora (milan:
  Bompiani, 1992), 5.
16. Starting with the exploration of subjectivity and  female identity, Carla Lonzi first
  affirmed the principle of sexual difference  over the one of equality in her feisty little
  pamphlet Sputiamo su Hegel  (let's spit on Hegel) (milan:
  Rivolta Femminile, 1974). More  recently, three volumes of essays
  published by La Tartaruga, Milan, have  resulted from the Diotima group's
  reflections: Diotima: il pensiero  della differenza sessuale (diotima:
  The thought of sexual difference) (1987);  Diotima: mettere al mondo il
  mondo. Oggetto e soggettivita' alla  luce della differenza sessuale
  (diotima: Giving birth to the world. Object  and subjectivity in the light of sexual
  difference) (1990); and Diotima: il  cielo stellato dentro di noi
  (diotima: The starry sky within ourselves)  (1992).
17. "Riflessioni sui corpi logici e  illogici delle mie compaesane di
  sesso" appeared in a collection of  newspaper articles written by Maraini between
  1974 and 1986, entitled La bionda,  la bruna e l'asino. Con gli occhi di
  o)i sugli anni settanta e ottanta  (the Blonde, the brunette, and the ass. The
  eyes of today on the seventies and eighties)  (milan: Rizzoli, 1987). The title
  of the volume immediately suggests a  retrospective vision which is also turned to the
  future. The themes of sexual difference, the  authority of women's writing, and the gendered
  body form a bridge between the historical  periods that Maraini considers.  18. Maraini, La bionda, xii.
19. Ibid.
20. Ibid., 17.
21. Ibid., xxvii.
22. Denis Mack Smith, A History of  Sicily: Modern Sicily After 1713
  (new York: Viking, 1968), 288.  23. Dacia Maraini, Bagheria (milan:
  Rizzoli, 1993), 72.
24. Ibid., 80.
25. Quoted in Natalia Ravida, review  of The Silent Duchess (u.k.
  edition), The European, 4 June  1992.
26. Maraini, Bagheria, 129.
27. Dacia Maraini, interview with Monica  Lanfranco, in Parole per giovani
  donne. 18 femministe parlano alle  ragazze di o)i (chieti: Solfanelli
  editore, 1993), 37.
28. Asked whether "a woman needs more courage  than a man" to write, Maraini responds,
  "In a historical sense a woman needs more  courage for the simple reason that writing has
  always been considered an educated, noble, powerful  and prestigious activity from which women were
  excluded from the very beginning. ... A woman is  always conscious of belonging to a world which has been
  confined to the margins of culture, knowledge and education,  and therefore she always has the impression of lacking
  the appropriate tools to confront an  undertaking as culturally involving as a
  novel." Dacia Maraini, Interview with  Anna Camaiti Hostert, Forum
  Italicum 1 (spring 1994), 114.  29. Dacia Maraini, Viaggiando con
  passo di volpe (walking with the tread of a  fox) (milan: Rizzoli, 1991), 19.  30. Ibid., 16.