Free The Silent Duchess by Dacia Maraini Page A

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