The Silent Duchess (The Long Life of Marianna Ucra) Chapter One Here they are, a father and

a daughter: he blonde, handsome and smiling, she awkward, freckled and scared. He is elegant and casual, with his stockings hung low and wig askew; she closed within an amaranth corset that highlights her wax-like pallor. The child follows her father to the mirror who, bent, fixes the stockings upon his calves. His mouth is moving, but the sound of his words dont reach her, lost before it arrives upon her ears, almost as if the visible distance that separates them were no more than an obstruction of the eyes. They seem close, but they are a thousand miles apart. The girl spies her fathers lips that are now moving in more of a hurry. She knows what he is saying to her even though she doesnt hear him: that she hurry to bid farewell to her mother, descend into the courtyard with him, and in course, mount the carriage, because as usual, they are late. In the meantime, Raffaele Cuffa who tends to the casena, treads like a fox in nimble and cautious strides, caught up with the Duke Signoretto and gave him a large interwoven wicker basket, upon which wings a white cross. The Duke opens the lid with a nimble movement of the wrist that the daughter recognizes as one of his customary gestures: it is the irascible motion with which he casts aside the things that annoy him. That indolent and sensual hand hunts amid the well-ironed cloth, shivers at the touch of the icy silver crucifix, gives a squeeze to the sack filled with coins and then peels out rapidly. At a gesture, Raffaele Cuffa hastens to re-close the basket. Now, one is drawn only to make the horses run as far as Palermo. Meanwhile, Marianna has precipitated into her parents bedroom where she finds her mother on her back, in her bed linens, the shirt, puffed up with lace, slides down one shoulder and the fingers of her hand closed around a glazed snuffbox. The girl stops a moment, overwhelmed by the scent of the honey shag (straight-cut tobacco) that mixes with the other effluvium (outflow) that accompany her mothers awakening: rose oil, coagulated sweat, dried urine, orris (iris) perfume lozenges. The mother presses the daughter to herself with a gesture of idle tenderness. Marianna sees her lips moving, but does not want to take the effort of guessing at the words. She knows what she is saying: to not cross the road

alone, because being deaf as she is, she could find herself crushed beneath a carriage that she had not heard coming. And then the dogs, that are large or small, can be as the largest of dogs. Their tails, she knows well, elongate and wrap themselves around the waist of people like the chimeras do, and then zap, they sting you with that bifurcated point so that you die, and not even you are aware of it. For a moment the child fixes her glance upon the plump chin of her mother, upon her beautiful mouth of pure, clean lines, upon her smooth, rosy cheeks, upon her ingenuous eyes, arrested and far: I will never become like her, she says to herself, never, not even when I am dead. The mother is still talking about the chimera dogs that elongate themselves like serpents, that titillate with their whiskers, that enchant you with cunning eyes, but she scampers off after having given her a hastened kiss. The father is already in the carriage. But rather than shout, he sings. She sees him from as inflate his cheeks, how he raises his eyebrows. As soon as she lays a foot on the running board, she feels like jumping inside and wheeling upon the seat. The door comes closed from the inside with a sharp slam. And the horses take off at the gallop frustrated by Peppino Cannarota. The child indulges herself on the padded seat and closes her eyes. At times, the two senses upon which she counts most often are so alert that they fight, pitifully, amongst themselves. Her eyes have the ambition of possessing the shapes in their full integrity, and her nose in turn balks her, requiring the entire world to pass through those two miniscule orifices of flesh that lie at the bottom of the nose. Now, she has lowered her eyelids to rest her pupils a moment, and her nostrils have engaged in sipping the air, recognizing and cataloguing the smells with pedantry (meticulousness): how overpowering is the lettuce water that impregnates her fathers waistcoat! Beneath, she imagines the fragrance of rice powder that jumbles with that of seat grease, acid of mashed lice, itching of the street dust that enters through the joints of the doors, not to mention a faint rumor of mantuccia that rises from the meadows of House Palagonia. But a stronger shaking than the others forces her to open her eyes. She sees her father sleeping on the seat in front of her, cocked hat toppled on one shoulder, wig askew on his fine, sweaty brow, blonde eyelashes composed with grace on his barely-shaven cheeks.

Marianna pushes aside the must-colored curtain, save the eagle gilded in relief. She sees a bit of dusty street and some geese that jet in front of the wheels flapping their wings. In the silence of her head, images of Bagherias countryside slip in: the twisted corks from the tawny, nude trunk, the olive trees with their branches burdened with tiny, green eggs, the tumbleweeds that tend to invade the road, the cultivated fields, the prickly pears, the wisps of cane and back at the rear, the windy hills of Aspra. The carriage now passes the two columns of the gate of Villa Butera and sets out toward Ogliastro and Villabate. The little hand clung to the curtain remains stuck to the fabric, regardless of the heat that exudes from the coarse wool cloth. In her rigid and firm stare, there was also the volition of not waking her father with some unintentional noise. But how stupid! And the sounds of the carriage that trundles on the road filled with holes, and the shouting of Peppino Cannarota that incites the horses? And the cracks of the whip? And the barking of the dogs? Even though for her, they are just imagined sounds; for him, they are real. And yet she is disturbed by them, and he is not. What tricks the mind plays on mutilated senses! From the canes that spring up stiff, hardly touched by the African wind, Marianna understands that they have arrived in the outskirts of Ficarazzi. Here, at the bottom, on the left side, the yellow casermone named made of sugar. Through the crevices of the closed door, a heavy, acidulous scent insinuates itself. It is the smell of the cut cane, macerated, exhausted and transformed into molasses. Today, the horses fly. The father continues to sleep, in spite of the jerks. He likes that which is there, abandoned in his hands. Now and then, he moves forward and tugs on his cocked hat, sending away an overly insistent fly. The silence is a dead water in the mutilated body of the girl that is barely seven years old. In that still, clear water float the carriage, the terraces of stretched cloth, the hens that run, the sea that one glimpses from far away and the sleeping father. The entirety of the weight shortly and easily changes position, but each thing is bound to the other in that liquid that blends colors and melts figures. When Marianna goes back to looking out from the glass, she finds herself smack dab in front of the ocean. The water is limpid and throws itself thoughtlessly upon the

large, gray cobblestones. Atop the line of the horizon, a large ship with limp sails makes for the right by left. A branch of mulberry crushes itself against the glass. From the purple mulberries get crushed with force against the window. Marianna moves aside, but too late: the collision has caused her to bang her head against the jamb. Her mother was right: her ears are not good at being the sentry, and dogs can grab hold of her from one moment to the next for her life. Therefore, her nose has become so fine, and her eyes are very swift in forewarning her of each object in motion. The father has opened his eyes for an instant and then has returned to subside into slumber. And if she gave him a kiss? That fresh cheek with marks of an impatient razor makes her want to hug him. But she holds herself back, because she knows he does not love fuss (mawkishness). And then why wake him while he sleeps out of fancy, so as to report to him another day of nuisances as he says, he also wrote it to her on a slip of paper with his beautiful handwriting, all rounded and polished. From the regular shocks that toss the carriage, the child gauges that they have arrived in Palermo. The wheels have taken to turning on the balate, and to hear of it, they resemble the cadenced tumult. Within a bit, they will turn towards Porta Felice, then they will take the Cassaro Morto and then? Her father has not made her privy as to where he is taking her, but from the basket that Raffaele Cuffa has given to him, she can guess it. To the Vicarage? Chapter Two It is in and of itself the faade of the Vicarage in front of which the girl stands when she dismounts from the carriage, aided by the arm of her father. A mimicry that has made her smile: the precipitant re-awakening, a trampling on the ears of the powdered wig, a slap on the hat and a hop from the running board with a move that wanted to be casual, but resulted in being clumsy; not so much from the long outstretch as much as from his legs being asleep. The windows of the Vicarage are all the same, shaggy with the curly grates that end with threatening points. Rusted bolts stud the main entrance, a handle in the form of an open-mouthed wolfs head. It is the prison with all its ugliness that when people walk pass in front of it, they turn their heads to the other side so as to not see it.

The Duke makes to knock, but the door comes open wide and he enters as though it were his own house. Marianna goes behind him amid the bows of the guards and servants. One smiles at her, surprised, another makes a swarthy face at her, still, another tries to restrain her by means of a reach. But she frees herself and runs after her father. A long, narrow corridor: the daughter has difficulty in keeping behind her father who proceeds in great strides towards the balcony. She skips in her satin bootees, but does not succeed in catching up with him. At a certain point she believes to have lost him, but here he is, around a corner that awaits her. Father and daughter find themselves together inside a triangular room, poorly illuminated by a lone window ascending below the vaulted ceiling. There, a retainer helps the father to shed himself from the gamberga and the cocked hat. He takes the wig from him, hangs it on the pommel that protrudes from the wall. It helps to wear the long tunic of white linen that was packed away in the basket together with the rosary, a cross and a sack of coins. Now the head of the Chapel of the Noble Family of Whites is ready. In the meantime, without the child noticing, other gentlemen have arrived, also in a white tunic. Four ghosts with their cowls limp on their collars. Marianna watches upwardly whilst the retainers, with expert hands, bustle about the White Brothers as though they were actors that were preparing themselves to go on stage: the pleats of the tunics that are well straight, that fall, innocently (snow/white/pure) and modestly, upon their sandaled feet, the hoods that are lowered as far as the neck, straightening the white points towards the top. Now the five men are the same, one cannot distinguish one from the other: white on white, mercy on mercy; only their hands when they take a peek from between the folds and that bit of black that flickers from the two holes of the cowl allow one to speculate the person. The shortest of the specters bends over the child, flaps their hands facing the father. He is indignant, and he knows it from how a foot strikes on the floor. Another White Brother intervenes, taking a step in front. It appears that they must seize the hood. But the father puts them all in silence with an authoritative gesture. Marianna feels the cold, soft cloth of her fathers tunic that tumbles onto his naked wrist. The fathers right hand tightens itself around the daughters fingers. Her nose tells her that something terrible is about to happen,

but what? Her father drags her toward another corridor and she walks without watching where she puts her feet, seized by a lurid and overwrought curiosity. At the bottom of the corridor, they encounter some steep stairs of slippery stone. The hands of the noblemen cling to their tunics, like the ladies do with their wide skirts lifted up to not trip. The stone steps weep humidity, and they see poorly, as far as a guard precedes them, holding high a lit torch. There are no windows, neither high nor low. Abruptly, a night that knows of burnt oil, of rat feces and of pig fat has slipped down. The Captain executioner consigns the keys of the dammuso to the Duke Ucra, that he elbows his way forward until reaching a smaller, wooden door of reinforced palings. There, helped by a young man with bare feet opens a latched bolt; unthreads a large iron bar. The door opens. The smoky blaze illuminates a piece of flooring upon which some cockroaches take to running madly. The warden lifts the torch and casts some tongue of light on two seminude bodies that lie along the wall, their ankles imprisoned by large chains. The blacksmith, come out of who knows where, is now bent to unnail the shackles of one of the prisoners. A young man with gummy eyes gets impatient from the slowness of the operation, draws up a foot until almost tickling the nose of the smith. And he smiles, showing a large, toothless grin. The child hides herself behind her father that every so often, he bends over her, caresses her, but more brusquely, to make sure that she is truly watching rather than cheer her up. When free at last, the youngster brings himself to his feet; Marianna discovers that he is almost a child, he would be yes and no the age of the son of Cannarota, killed by malarial fever a few months ago at the age of thirteen. The other prisoners remain silently watching. As soon as the young man sets to walking up and down with his ankles free retake the game lost to half contented of having, for once, so much light at ones disposal. The game consists of the killing of lice: whoever squashes the most of them and most rapidly between the two inches wins. The dead lice come delicately placed on top of a small, copper coin. He who wins takes the coin from a grain. The child is absorbed in watching the three that play, open their mouths with laughter; that yell for her mute. She has left the fear behind, now she thinks with

tranquility that her father wants to bring her with him into hell: there will be a secret reason, a because trallalallera that she will understand after. He leads her to see the damned immersed in the mud, those that walk with the boulders on their backs, those that transform themselves into trees, those that smoke from the mouth having eaten ardent coal, those that creep like snakes, those that come mutated into dogs that elongate the tail until they make one of those harpoons with which they hook passer-by and draw them into the mouth, like her mother says. But her father is there also for that, to save her from the traps. And then hell, if visited alive like Mr. Dante did, can be beautiful to see too: they of here that suffer and we from here that we watch. It is not this invitation of those hooded innocents that pass the rosary from hand to hand? Chapter Three The young man observes her, staring, and Marianna reciprocates his looks, deciding not to make herself be intimidated. But his eyelids are swollen and they bleed; he probably doesnt see well, the girl says to herself. Who knows how he sees her; whether large and roly-poly how she meets herself again in the deformed mirror of Aunt Manina, otherwise tiny and without flesh. In that moment, at a grimace from her, the young man melts into a dark, crooked grin. With the help of a hooded White Brother, the father takes him by the arms; throws him at the door. The players return to the semi obscurity of the everyday. Two dry hands lift the weight of the child, and pose her, with delicacy, on the first step of the staircase. The procession resumes: the guard with the lit torch, the Duke Ucra with the prisoner by his arm, the other White Brothers, the blacksmith and two servants in black blouse behind. Once again they find themselves in the triangular room among a via vai of guards and valets that bear torches, they approach chairs; they carry basins of lukewarm water, linen towels, dishes with above fresh bread and candied fruit. The father bends over the boy with endearments. Never have I seen him so tender and caring, Marianna says to herself. With a hand at the bowl it gathers up the water from the bcara, lets it overflow onto his cheeks dirtied by the boys mucus; then cleans him with the washing towel

that the valet gives to him. Soon after, he employs amongst his fingers a piece of bread, white and spongy, and, smiling, gives it to the prisoner as though he were the most beloved of his children. The boy lets himself attend to, cleanly, feed without saying a word. At moments he smiles; at moments he cries. Someone puts in his hand a rosary in lumping kernels of mother of pearl. He feels it with his fingertips, and, then, he forsakes it to fall to the earth. The father has an act of impatience. Marianna bends over to pick up the rosary, and, then, she puts it away in the hands of the young man. Alert from the contact of two callous fingers, diacce. The prisoner presses the lips of his half-toothless mouth. His foxy eyes have been bathed with a cloth soaked in lettuce water. Under the indulgent eye of the White Brothers, the convict reaches toward the tray, minds himself a surrounding, frightening moment, then gets himself backed into a corner, a honey-colored plum in mouth, encrusted with sugar. The five gentlemen kneel and shell the rosary. The young man, his cheeks bloated with candied fruit, comes gently forward on bended knee, because even he prays. The hotter hours of the afternoon lapse, thus, into somnolent prayers. Once in a while, a valet holding a tray loaded with goblets of water and anise approaches them. The Whites drink and get back to praying. Someone dries their sweat; others doze off and awaken with a jump, returning to shell the rosary. The youth falls asleep after also having devoured the crystalline apricots. And no one has the heart to wake him. Marianna witnesses her father praying. But will it be that hooded one there, the Duke Signoretto, or that other one with his head dangling? to her, she seems to hear his voice that slowly recites the Hail Mary. In the conch of her ear, now silent, preserves any shred of a familiar voice: that raucous bubbling of her mother, that high note of the cook, Innocenza, that singing, good nature of her father, that, even and anon, also became obstinate and chipped nastily. Perhaps she had also learned to talk. But how old was she? four or five? A retarded child, silent and preoccupied, that everybody had the tendency to forget in some corner in order to then remember about it all of a sudden, and to arrive at her to reprimand being herself hidden.

One day, without a reason, she was speechless. The silence was itself possessed of her like a sickness or perchance as a vocation. To no longer hear the jolly voice of her father to her has appeared very sad. But she had made it customary after all. Now, she experiences a sense of happiness in watching him speak without catching any of the words, an almost mischievous satisfaction. You were born like this, deaf mute, her father had written one time on the exercise book, and she felt compelled to convince herself that those distant voices be themselves imaginary. Not being able to admit that the very sweat father that she loves so much declares falsehoods, he should give herself up to the visionary. The imagination doesnt leave her alone and neither the desire of words, therefore: and p and p and p seven females for one tar and p and p and p a tar is too little seven females pun varcuocu But the thoughts of the child get interrupted by the activity of a White that leaves and returns with a thick book, upon which there is written in letters of gold OUTPOURINGS OF CONSCIOUSNESS. The father, with a gentle nudge, wakes the young man, and, together, they segregate themselves in a corner of the room where the wall makes a niche and a slab of stone is framed as an excuse for a bench. There, the Duke Ucra of Fontanasalsa lowers himself upon the ear of the convict, inviting him to confess himself. The young man slurs some word with the youthful, toothless mouth. The father insists, affectionately urging him. The other finally smiles. At present, they give the impression of a father and a son that talk casually of family matters. Marianna beholds them smitten by the dismay: what she makes believe that parrot perched next to her father, as though he knew it all along, as if he had kept among the fingers of his impatient hands, as though he knew the contours of him from memory, like he had always owned from the just-born odors of him in the nostrils, as if he had been taken his life thousand times in the strong arms that made him to jump into the carriage, upon the sedan chair, upon the cradle, upon the stairs with that impetus that

only a carnal father is able to experience his own daughter. What supposes to do? A yearning desire of assassination the rooms beneath the uvula, they invade the palate; they set fire to the tongue. In her mind, it will toss them a dish; it will hunt a knife in breast, it will tear off all the hair on her head. Her father does not appertain to him, but to her, to that unfortunate mute, that, in the entire world has but one asset, and that is her father. The homicidal thoughts disappear at the abrupt movement of air. The door has opened itself wide and upon the threshold, a melon-bellied man has emerged into view. He has dressed as a buffoon, in half red and half yellow: young and corpulent, he has short legs, robust shoulders, the arms of a wrestler, and small, wry eyes. He chews on the sugar seeds, and spits the shells through the air with mirth. The young man, when she sees him, she turns white. The smiles that her father extracts expire upon the face; his lips have taken to trembling, and his eyes to bleeding. The fool approaches him, all the while spitting sugar seeds in the air. When she sees him slip to the ground like a sopping rag, he makes a motion to the two servants that raise him by the armpits and drag him towards the exit. The air is shaken by angry vibrations, like the beating of the gigantic wings of an unseen fowl. Marianna looks around. The White Brothers are heading for the entrydoor with a ceremonious gait. The entrance swings open from a blow and that beating of wings makes itself so close and strong as to daze her. They are the drums of the Viceroy, and with them, the crowd screams, waves its arms, rejoices. The Marina square that had previously been empty is now overcrowded: a sea of undulating heads, necks that reach out, mouths that gape, banners that rise, horses that ramp, a bedlam of bodies that flock together, they elbow their way through, invading the rectangular square. Chapter Four The windows teem with heads, the balconies are a jam-packed with bodies that wave their arms; they lean over to see better. The Ministers of Justice with their detectives canes, the Royal Guard with the purple and gold standard, the Grenadiers outfitted with bayonets, they are there, undaunted; hold back the limestones impatience.

What is about to happen? The girl imagines it, but she dare not answer herself. All those loud heads give the impression of knocking at the silence asking to come in. Marianna detracts her gaze from the throng, directing it toward the toothless young man. She sees him stiff, motionless: he quivers no more; doesnt fall all over himself. He had a glint of pride in his eyes: all that todo over him! All those dressed up people, those horses, and those carriages, waiting just for him. All those standards, those shiny-buttoned uniforms, those plumed hats, that gold, that crimson, all for him alone, its a wonder! Two guards viciously distract from the ecstatic contemplation of their own triumph. They fasten the rope with which have bound his hands; another longer, stronger cord that they secure to the tail of a mule. And so tied, they lead him along towards the center of the square. At heart, on it, Steri shows himself off, a splendid flag red blood. It is from there, from the Chiaramonte Palace, that the Great Priests of the Inquisition now come, two-by-two, preceded and followed by a horde of altar boys. At the center of the square, a stage two, or three, arms high, quite like those on which depict the stories of Nofriu and Travaglino, of Nardo and of Tiberio. Only that at the spot of the black canvas there is a gloomy contrivance of wood; an upside-down specie of L to which is hung a rope with a noose. Marianna steps, driven by her father that follows the prisoner that follows in turn the mule. The procession has taken off, and no one can stop it for any reason: the horses of the Royal Guard, the hooded White Lords, the Ministers of Justice, the Archdeacons, the priests, the barefooted monks, the drummers, the trumpeters, a lengthy cortege that strenuously opens the way between the excited mass. The gallows are there in some tread of distance, and yet, it seems very far from the time that they take to arrive, making captious around the square. Finally, Mariannas foot bumps against a wooden step. Now they are really shored. Her father is ascending the stairs along with the condemned, preceded by the executioner and followed by the other Brothers of the Good Death. The young man once again has that bewildered smile upon his white face. It is her father that charms him, he captivates him with his words of solace, he impels him towards heaven, describing to him the delights of an afternoon made of relaxation, of idleness, of colossal

meals and sleeps. The young man, really like a boy dazed by the words of mother than of a father, seems to not covet more than to run in the world of the after life where there are neither prisons, nor lice, nor diseases, nor suffering, but only julep and rest. The girl widens her aching pupils; now a desire jumps on her back: to be him, also alone for an hour, to be that toothless young man with eyes that bleed in order to listen to the voice of her father, to take in the honey of that sound lost too quickly, just once, even at the cost of then dying, packed in that rope that dangles to the sun. The executioner continues to eat sugar seeds that he then spits high with an air of defiance. Everything exactly like the puppet theater of Casotto: now Nardo will toss his head and the executioner will give him a beating of lashings. Nardo will flap his arms; fall upon the stage, then return to life more than before to take other lashings, other insults. And exactly like a theater the crowd smiles, chats and eats, awaiting the beatings. The vendors of water and zamm come since below the stage to sell their gotti taking to pushes with the vendors of vasteddi e meusa, of boiled octopus and of prickly pear. Each boasts his merchandise to blows of elbows. A sweetness reaches the girls nose and almost divining that she is deaf, he offers to her with eloquent gestures the portable cart tied to his neck with an oily strap. She throws an oblique glance upon those tiny, metal cylinders. To stretch out a hand would suffice, throw about her one, presses with her finger to open the circlet and peel out the small, vanilla-flavored cylinder. But she doesnt want to distract herself; her attention is turned elsewhere, to the earlier place of those smudged, wooden steps where her father continues to speak lowly and sweetly to the condemned as though he were flesh of his flesh. The last stairs have been reached. Now, the Duke Ucra infers a bow to the government officials seated facing the stage: to the senators, to the princes, to the magistrates. And then he gets down on his knees, pensive, with the rosary in his hands. For a moment, the crowd Becomes quiet. Even the ambulant sellers stop bustling and they are there with their mobile banquets, their straps, their exposed goods, open-mouthed and nose in the air. Finished, her father hands the prisoner the crucifix to kiss to the condemned. And it seems that in the place of Christ on the cross, there he is himself, naked, tortured, with his beautiful, ivory flesh and the crown of thorns on

his head to offer himself to those stolid lips of the impure young man to reassure him, to curb him, and to send him to the other world pleased and placated. He has never been so tender with her, never so carnal, so close, Marianna tells herself; has never given her his body to kiss, has never been so pinned on to her as if he wanted to brood over her, covering her with sweet, reassuring words. The girls eye shifts on the condemned and she sees him collapse painfully to his knees. The seductive words of the Duke Ucra become destroyed from the cold, clammy touch of the rope that the executioner is wrapping around his neck. But he also succeeds in some manner to remain standing while his nose takes to dripping. And he attempts to free a hand to clean the snot that drips onto his lips, onto his chin. But his hand stays tied behind his back. Two, three times he raises his shoulder, twists his arm, it appears that in that moment to clean his nose is the only thing that counts. The air throbs from the beats of a large drum. The executioner, at a signal of the Magistrates, gives a kick to the box upon which they had forced the youth to get. The body has a start, stretches, falls upon itself; sets to turning. But something hasnt worked. The parcel instead to dangle like a sack continues to twist, suspended in the air, his neck swollen, his eyes popping out of their sockets. The executioner, seeing that his deed had not succeeded, he hoists him up with the force of his arms on the gallows, climbs on the package, and, for a few seconds, the two swing, hung from the rope like two frogs in love while the crowd curbs its breath. But now he is truly dead; one understands from the puppet-consistency that the hung corpse has taken. The executioner slides casually along the pole, falls on the stage with a nimble jump. The people take to hurling their caps in the air. A very young brigand that has murdered half a score of people has been put to death. The child will know it after. Now she is there to ponder what a child little older than her can have done and the face so frightened and mindless. The father bends himself over the daughter, overdriven. She touches her mouth as though she were expecting a miracle. She grabs her chin; she looks into the threatening and supplicant eyes. You should speak! say her lips, You should open that cursed fish mouth!

The girl tries to unglue her lips, but she doesnt do it. Her body is seized by an uncontrollable tremor. Her hands, still gripping the folds of her fathers tunic, are rigid, of stone. The young man that wanted to kill is dead. And she wonders if it can have been her to kill him, having desired her death like she desired a forbidden asset. Chapter Five The brothers posed in front of her. A red-hot, colored group: Signoretto so like her father with that fine hair, well-rounded legs, face merry and trustful; Fiammetta in her nun attire, her hair gathered in the lace coif, Carlo in short trousers that hug his large thighs, his scintillating, black eyes; Geraldo that has shortly lost his milky teeth and smiles like and old man, Agata of the clear skin and obviously strewn with mosquito bites. The five observe the mute sister bent over the palette and seems that they are to paint her and not her they. They spy her while she blends upon the colors, she makes a mess with the point of the paintbrush in the oil and then returns to the canvas and in her tracks the white covers itself from a very warm yellow, and on the yellow, she applies blue in limpid, happy brushstrokes. Carlo says something that makes them burst into laughter. Marianna asks them to stay still a little longer. The charcoal sketch is there upon the canvas with the heads, necks, arms, faces and feet. The color has difficulty drawing figures, it tends to dilute itself, to filter downward. And they freeze, patient yet for a few minutes. But then it is Geraldo that breaks the equilibrium, giving a pinch to Fiammetta who reacts with a kick. And soon they are nudges, shoves, and slaps. As long as Signoretto did not put them in their place with some slaps: he is the best and can do it. Marianna retakes to impregnating the paintbrush in the white, in the pink, while her eyes shift from the canvas to the group. There is something incorporeal in this her portrait, something smooth, unreal. It seems almost one of those official portretti that her mothers friends have made, everybody stiff and rigid in which the original image does not remain than a far-off memory. She will have to rethink some more about their characters, she says to herself, if she doesnt want to leave them to escape. Signoretto who is put in competition with the father, his authoritative manners, his sounds of

laughter. And her mother that protects him: when she sees them collide, father and son, she watches them craftily, almost entertained. But the looks of indulgence stop at the head of the son with such an intensity from emerging obvious to everyone. The father, instead, is irritated by it: that boy not only surprisingly resembles them, but redoes the movements better than him, with more nicety and tension. Like having before a mirror that flatters him and at the same time he remembers that soon he will be replaced without sorrow. Among the other, he is the first and carries his same name. With the mute sister, Signoretto is usually protective, a bit jealous of the attentions that her father aims at her; contemptuous at moments of her mutilation, at other moments she takes the occasion to show the others how generous it is; but she doesnt know where the truth begins and where the recital. Next to him Fiammetta in the nuns dress, her eyebrows at bow, her eyes too close, and her teeth overlapping. She is not beautiful like Agata, and, because of this, they have appointed her to the convent. Even if she found a husband, she certainly wouldnt be able to bargain like an authentic beauty. In the childs twisted, little, lit-up face there is already the challenge of a prisoners future that on the other hand she has jauntily accepted, wearing that tunic that erases form from her feminine body. Carlo and Geraldo, one fifteen years old and the other eleven, are so similar that they appear twins. But one will finish in the convent and the other will make a dragoon. Often dressed like an abbot, Carlo in tunic and Geraldo in uniform, as soon as they find themselves in the garden, they have fun, and exchange habits, rolling themselves then in the clung dirt so as to ruin his cream-colored tunic than the beautiful uniform from the frogs of gold Carlo intends to put on weight. He is greedy for sweets and seasoned foods. But he is also the most affectionate of the brothers with her, and often comes to find her alone to hold to her a hand. Agata is the smallest and most beautiful. For her they are already negotiating a marriage that, not taking anything from the Casata, save a dowry of thirty-thousand shields, she will give the family the possibility to extend their influence, to acquire useful relatives, to establish wealthy offspring. When Marianna returns to raise her eyes on her brothers, she becomes aware that they have disappeared. They have taken advantage of her being intent upon the

canvas to escape, counting on the fact that she would not have heard them giggle and run. Turning her head just in time to see a piece of Agatas skirt that disappears behind the casena among the spunzoni of the agaves. Now how will she make to continue the painting? She will have to fish in her memory, she knows as much already that they will never return to regroup in front of her like they have done today after so much insisting and waiting. The void left by their bodies has been at once refilled by the palm dwarf, the jasmine bushes and the olives that fall to the sea. Why not paint that landscape, quiet and always identical to itself, instead of her brothers that are never still? It has more depth and mystery; it places itself gently in position for centuries and seems ready at each play. The adolescent hand of Marianna stretches out toward another canvas that rests at the first spot on the easel; sop the brush in the soft, oily green. But where to begin? with the verdure, all brilliant and new, of the dwarf palm, with the green tingling with blue from the level of the olives or with the green streaked with yellow from the slopes of Mount Catalfano? She could also paint the casena like how Mariano Ucra built it, with its squared-off and stocky forms, its windows better suited to a tower than to a country house. One day, the casena will be transformed into a villa, she is certain of it and she will live there also in winter, because her roots sink in that ground that she loves more than the balati of Palermo. While she is doubtful of it with the paintbrush dripping on the canvas she feels pulling on a sleeve. She turns her head. It is Agata that gives her a small paper. Lu puparu arrived, come! from the handwriting she sees that it has to do with Signoretto. In fact, it sounds more like an order than an invitation. She gets up on her feet, dries the paintbrush wet with green on the damp straccetto, she cleans her hands, creasing them against the striped, cotton apron, and sets out for the entrance courtyard, following her sister. Carlo, Geraldo, Fiammetta and Signoretto are already nearby the Tuitui. The puppeteer has tied the donkey to the fig tree, and is finishing putting together his puppet theater. Four vertical asses that cross three horizontal poles. All around four arms of black cloth. In the meantime, at the windows, the servants come into view, the cook Innocenza, don Raffaele Cuffa, and even

her mother, to whom the puppeteer applies himself straightaway with a grand bow. The Duchess throws him a ten-tar coin and he quickly collects it, hides it inside his shirt, does another theatrical reverence and then goes to take his puppets in a saddlebag hung on the sides of the ass. Marianna has already seen those beatings; those heads that collapse under the stage to immediately reappear then, confident and mocking. Each year, in this season, the Tuitui appear at the casena of Bagheria to entertain the children. Each year, the duchess throws a ten-tar coin and the puppeteer consumes himself in obeisance and taking-offs of his hat so exaggerated so as to appear made fun of. In the meanwhile, no one has knowledge of warnings or from whom, a half score of picciriddi from the nearby estates. The servants come down into the courtyard, drying their hands, arranging their hair, Spuntano the cowboy too, Don Ciccio Cal with his twin daughters Lina and Lena, the gardener Peppe Geraci with his wife Maria and his five children, as well as the footman Don Peppino Cannarota. Here is Nardo who takes to hitting Tiberio, and bam and bam. The show has begun, and still, the children have not stopped playing. But a moment later, they are all there, seated on the ground with their nose in the air and their eyes fixed on the scene. Marianna stays standing a bit in the cold. The children are afraid of her: too often, she is the butt of their jokes. They pitch into without making themselves to see in order to take delight in her reactions, betting amongst themselves on who will manage to set off a petard without her being aware of it. In the meantime, a new object has appeared from the bottom of that black cloth, unanticipated: a gallows. There had never been seen a gallows in the toy theater of the Tuitui, and upon its appearance, the picciriddi hold their breath from the excitement, that really is an exciting novelty! A gendarme (policeman) with his sword at his side, after having chased the usual Nardo up and down along the black cloth, he apprehends him by the neck and puts his hat on his head. A drummer appears to the left and Nardo comes to be made to get on a stool. So then, with a kick, the gendarme flung away the stool, and Nardo falls on himself again while the rope takes to turning. Marianna is shaken by a tremor. Something stirs in her memory like a fish caught by a hook, something that doesnt want to come up and upset the quiet waters of her

conscience. She raises her hand to find the coarse tunic of her father, but comes across that of the bristly hairs of the donkeys tail. Nardo hangs in the emptiness, dangles with all the lightness of his youthful, gummy and toothless body, his gaze set in a stupor escape and appears that he still heaves his fitful shoulder to free a hand to clean his nose that drips. Marianna falls to the back, stiff and heavy, beating her head on the hard, bare ground of the courtyard. Everyone swings. Agata rushes to her, followed by Carlo who bursts into crying, bent over his sister. Cannarotas wife gives her air with her apron while a servant throws herself to calling the duchess. The puppeteer appears from underneath the black curtain with puppet in hand; head down, while Nardo continues to dangles in high on the gallows. Chapter Six An hour later, Marianna awakens in her parents bedroom with a sopping cloth that weighs on her forehead. They drip vinegar between her brows, burning her eyes. Her mother is bent over her: she has recognized her even before opening her eyelids from the strong perfume of honey shag. Her daughter watches her mother upwardly from under: her round lips hardly hidden by a blonde fuzz, her nostrils blackened from the many hits of tobacco, her large eyes, gentle and gloomy; surely there is a something in her that vexes her, but what? Perhaps that her surrender to each motivation, that adamant stillness, that her fall into the sweetish tobacco smoke, indifferent to everything. She has always suspected her mother in a far off past in which she was very young and imaginative, she has decided to kill herself in order to not have to die. From there, she must come that her special capacity of accepting each nuisance with the most condescendence (accord) and the least effort. Grandma Giuseppa, before dying, wrote to her sometimes about her mother in the notebook with French lilies: She was like this, beautiful that everyone desired your mother, but she wanted no one. Goats Head (stubborn, thick skull) as that obstinacy of your mothers, Giulia came from the Granadian parts. She didnt want to marry her cousin; she didnt love your father, Signoretto. And everybody told us: but it is a beddu pupu, and truly beddu it is, not because he is my son, but there he rinses his eyes to watch

it. With the funcia, he married your mother who seemed as though going to a funeral and then after a month of marriage, she fell in love with her husband and loved him so much that she began to smokeshe didnt sleep at night any more, and hence she took laudanum (opium solution). When the Duchess Maria sees that her daughter recovers herself, she goes toward the desk, grasps a piece of paper and writes to each other about something. She dries the ink with ash and hands the sheet to the girl. How are you, my daughter? Marianna coughs, spitting the vinegar in the pick me up that has dripped between her teeth. Her mother, laughing, removes the soaked cleaning cloth from her face. Then she conducts herself to the desk, she also scratches something and returns with the paper to the bed. Now that youre thirteen years old, I take advantage of telling you to marry that we have found an uncle for you, because we dont make you a nun like your sister Fiametta is destined. The girl rereads the hasty words of her mother that she writes, ignoring the doubles, mixing her dialect with the Italian, using a handwriting limping and full of undulations. A husband? But why? She thought that, handicapped as she is, marriage was off-limits to her. And secondly, she is only thirteen. Her mother now expects a response. She smiles at her, warmhearted, but in a bit of a rehearsed endearment. To her, this deaf-mute, she pins on an intolerable suffering, a quandary that freezes her. She doesnt know hoe to take it, to make herself understand from her. She already likes her writing little: to then read the handwriting of others is a true torture. But, with maternal self-abnegation, docile, heads for the desk, grabs another sheet, takes her quill (goose feather) and the small bottle of ink and brings each thing to her daughter sprawled on the bed. A husband for the mute? writes Marianna, resting on an elbow, and in the confusion, staining the sheet with ink. Your father did everything to make you speak, taking you with him to the Vicarage that was useful in scaring you, but you didnt speak because you are a balata head, you dont have a choiceyour sister Fiammetta marries Christ, Agata is promised to the prince of Torre Moscas son, you have the charge of accepting the uncle we suggest to you because we love you, and we leave you to grow from the family, this is why we give you to your uncle Pietro Ucra of Campo Spagnolo, Baron of the Scannatura, Bosco Grande and Fiume Mendola, Count of the Sala of Paruta,

Marquis of Sollazzi and Taya. That then, other than being my brother and also your fathers cousin, he desires you and in him alone, you can find there a fence to the soul. Marianna reads, puckered, no longer making instance to the errors in her mothers orthography, or to the words in dialect, thrown there in handfuls. She especially rereads the last lines: therefore, the fianc, the zitu, would be her uncle Pietro? that sad, sullen man always dressed in red that in the family they call him the shrimp. Not my husband, she writes, enraged, on the back of the paper still wet from the words of her mother. The Duchess Maria becomes patient again at the desk, her forehead strewn with drops of sweat: what a pain this deaf daughter causes her: she doesnt want to understand that she is a nuisance and nothing more. No one takes you as suitable, my Marianna. For the convent, it takes a dowry; you know it. We are already preparing the money for Fiammetta; it costs dearly. Your uncle Pietro accepts you without anything because he loves you, and all his lands would be yours, understand? Now her mother has put down the quill and speaks to her up close, as if she could hear her, caressing her hair, bathed in vinegar, with a distracted gesture. Finally, she removes the quill from the hands of her daughter that she is about to write something and sketches rapidly, with pride, these words: Money down and up front, fifteen thousand scudi. Chapter Seven A pile of tuff bricks strewn about the courtyard. Buckets of gypsum, mounds of sand. Marianna walks up and down beneath the sun with her skirt tied in waistline so as to not wet the edges. Her boots with their buttons unfastened, her hair gathered on her nape with the silver rapiers, offerings from her husband. Nearby, there is a great muddle of pieces of wood, trowels, shovels, spades, wheelbarrows, hammers and axes. Her backache has become almost unbearable; her eyes seek a place to rest for a few moments in the shade. A large rock next to the stable, why not, even if she slides around on the mud. Marianna lets herself slip on stone, keeping herself on her back with her hands. She looks at her belly; the swelling barely realizes itself, and yet, it is already five months and her third pregnancy.

Here she is, there the very beautiful villa in front of her. Of the casena, there is no longer a trace. In its place, a central body three stories high, an elegant staircase that twists with a serpentine movement. From the central trunk, two colonnaded wings take off that widen and then narrow until almost achieving a full circle. The windows alternate according to a steady rhythm: one, two, three, one - one, two, three, one, nearly a dance, a tarascone. Some are real; others painted in order to maintain the tempo of the fugue. In one of those windows, there she will paint a curtain and maybe a womans head looks out, possibly herself that she watches from behind the glass. Her husband-uncle wanted to leave the casena as her grandfather Mariano had constructed it; besides, if her cousins were torn of good accord for so long. But she had insisted, so much that in the end she had convinced him to make a villa of it where one could also spend the winter, equipped with rooms for the children, the servants, the guest friends. Meanwhile, her father had bought a hunting casena in the parts of Santa Flavia. On the construction site, her husband-uncle had made himself consider a bit. He possessed in weariness the bricks, the dust, the lime. He preferred to remain at Palermo, in the Alloro avenue house, while she in Bagheria dealt with the workers and painters. Even the architect came there with little pleasure and left everything in the hands of the master builder and the young duchess. As for money, that villa had already devoured a lot of it. The sandstone bricks broke in continuation and it was necessary to make new ones of them come each week, the master builder had fallen from a scaffold, breaking an arm and the work had had to stop for two months. When only the flooring was missing, then, variola (smallpox) had broken out in Bagheria. Three masons (bricklayers) had gotten sick, and once again, the work had had to be interrupted for months. Her husband-uncle had gone to refuge himself at Torre Scannatura with his daughters Giuseppa and Felice. She had stayed despite the enjoined notes of the duke: Come away or you will catch the sicknessyou have the duty of thinking about the son that you keep in you bosom. But she had resisted: she wanted to stick around and had asked for herself only the company of Innocenza. All the others could leave to the hills of Scannatura. Her husband-uncle was a bit offended, but he had not insisted much. After four years of matrimony, he had

renounced the obedience of his wife; he respected her wishes as long as they didnt concern him too much in person, as long as they didnt contradict his idea of education for their children and didnt obstruct his rights as husband. He didnt pretend, like Agatas husband, to intervene in each decision of her day. Silent, solitary, his head encased between his shoulders like an old turtle, his countenance always displeased and severe, her husband-uncle was at heart more tolerant than so many other husbands that she knew. She had never seen him smile save one time that she had removed a shoe so as to insert her bare foot into the water of the fountain. Then, never more. Since the first night that timid, cold man had taken to sleeping on the edge of the bed, turning his back on her. Then one morning, while she was still immersed in slumber, he had thrown himself one her and had raped her. The body of the thirteen-year-old wife had responded to kicks and scratches. Very quickly the morning after, Marianna had escaped to her parents place in Palermo. And there her mother had told her that she had done very badly to leave her post of mugghieri, behaving like an inked purpu that casts disrepute on the whole family. Whoever gets married and doesnt repent, buys Palermo at only a centonze and Those that marry for love always live in pain and Female and chicken get lost if they walk too much and The good wife makes a good husband they had assailed her with scoldings and proverbs. With her mother there had also stood her professed Aunt Teresa writing to her that, departing from the conjugal home, she had committed a mortal sin. To not speak of her old Aunt Agata who had taken her by the hand, she had shredded her faith and she had made her to place it between her teeth with force. And in the end, even her father had reprimanded her and then she had taken back to Bagheria with her personal cabriolet (coach) delivering her to her husband, with her prayer that he not rage upon her with given her young age and her mutilation. Close your eyes and think about something else, her Aunt Professa had written hiding it in her pocket, where she had found it returning home later: Pray to the Lord, he will reward you. Her husband would get up early in the morning, near five oclock. He would dress himself in a hurry while she slept, and leave for his campaigns with Raffaele Cuffa. He would return by 1:30. He would eat with her. Then he would

sleep an hour and would go back outside thereafter, or else he would shut himself in the library with his books of heraldry. With her he was courteous but cold. He seemed to forget about having a wife for entire days. At times he would go to Palermo and stay there for a week. He would then abruptly return and surprise Marianna with a gloomy, insistent look on his chest. She would instinctively cover her neck. When the young wife would comb herself, seated next to the window, the Duke Pietro at times would spy her from afar. But as soon as he would notice being seen, he would run off. Even yet it was difficult for them to be alone, because there was always a servant that would travel through the rooms, turning on a lamp, remaking the bed, putting the cleaned linen back in the closets, polishing the door handles, organizing the just-ironed towels on the cantaranu by the basin of water. A large mosquito like a bluebottle (blowfly) poses itself on Mariannas naked arm; she watches it for an instant, intrigued before shooing it away. Where could a mosquito so gigantic come from? the pool near the stables has already been made to dry up for six months, the canals that carry the water to the lemon trees has been cleaned out last year; the two bogs on the path that goes down to the olive orchard have been filled with dirt for some weeks. There must be some other stagnant water in some part, but where? The shadows, meanwhile, have gotten longer. The sun has sunk behind the cowboy Ciccio Cals house, leaving the courtyard half-obscure. Another mosquito has come to pose itself on the sweaty neck of Marianna that she makes a gesture of impatience: she will have to pitch some live lime in the stables; maybe it is really the trough water that serves the cows too messinesi to give life to those bloodsuckers. There are days of the year in which there is no net, no veil, and no essence that can keep the mosquitoes at bay. One time the preferred that drew everyone to her it was Agata. Now that the she has also wed and has gone to live in Palermo; it appears that the insects love above all else the white, naked arms, the slender neck of Marianna. Tonight, in the bedroom she will have to do burning of verbena leaves. By this time, the work on the villa is almost at the end. All that is needed are the finishing touches of the interior. For the frescos, she has consulted the

Intermassimi that has presented himself with a coil underneath his arm, a filthy cocked hat on his head, his large boots in which his two shallow, short legs swim. He has gotten down from his horse, taken a bow, smiled at her falsely contrived between seductive and bold. He has unrolled the sheet beneath her eyes, smoothing with two small, plump hands that disturb her. The designs are daring and imaginative, precise in the forms, deferential to tradition but like inhabitances in a nocturnal, malicious and blazing thought. Marianna had admired the heads of the chimeras that havent the form of lion, like the myth expects, but bear on their necks a womans head. She examines them a second time, she was clever that they curiously resembled her and she received this a bit amazed: how had he been able to do a portrait of her in those strange, mythical beasts having seen her only once and on the day of her wedding, that is when she was only thirteen? On those blonde heads with large, blue eyes a lions body extends covered in bizarre curls, the back touched by spines, feathers, manes. The paws are bristly with claws like a parrots beak, the long tail fashions of rings, of spirals that shoot along and return backwards with the bifurcated point just like the dogs that terrorize her mother. One of them carries on its spine, mid-back, a goats head that protrudes oxeyed and petulant. Others, no. But all they all see between long eyelashes with an air of astonished surprise. The painter cast his eyes on her, delighted, not at all embarrassed by her muteness. Rather, he had quickly begun to speak with his eyes, without extending his hand to the slips of paper that she kept sewn to her waist combined with the case of pens and ink. Her shining pupils said that the little and hairy painter of Reggio Calabria was soon kneading with his swarthy and swollen little hands the milky body of the young duchess like she were a dough placed there to leaven for him. She had viewed him with disdain. She didnt like that cocky and arrogant way of intending himself. And then what was he? a simple painter, and obscure individual come up from some Calabrian hovel, beget of parents perhaps cattle ranchers or shepherds. Save then to laugh at herself, in the dark of her bedroom. She knew that social scorn was insincere, that she hid an anxiety never felt before, an unexpected dread that restricts her throat. No one until now had shown in her

presence an ambition so visible and ostentatious about her body that seemed to her unprecedented, but likewise made her curious. The day after she had told the painter that she wasnt there and the adjacent day she had written him a note instructing him that he also begin his works, she put at his disposal two young men to mix the colors and clean the brushes. She would be left shut in the library to read. And so it had been. But two times she had come out onto the landing to watch him while, squatting on the scaffolds, he messed around with the charcoal on the blank walls. She liked to observe how those plump, hairy little hands moved. The outlines were clear and elegant; they revealed a craft so profound and delicate that they werent able to not elicit admiration. With those hands soiled with paint, he rubbed his nose, staining it with yellow and green, he caught the vasteddu ca meusa and if he wore it on his lips losing threads of fried spleen and breadcrumbs. Chapter Eight No one looked forward to the third child. On the contrary, the third child was born too soon, almost a month in advance and with its feet forward like a hasty calf. The midwife had perspired so much that her hair was glued her skull as though she had taken a bucketful of water to the head. Marianna had followed the movements of her hands as if she had never seen them. Bathed in the bowl of boiling water, and then in the fat of lard, a sign of the cross on her chest and collapsed back into the water of the cantara. Meanwhile, Innocenza passed the rags bathed in essence of bergamot on the mouth and on the tightened stomach of the puerpera. Born born something fitenti that lu cumanna Diu nniputenti. Marianna knew the phrases, and read them on the midwifes lips. She knew that she was about to be caught up with her thoughts, but she had not done anything to avoid them. They will probably alleviate the pain, she had said to herself, and had closed her eyes to center herself. What is this bastard doing?why dont you be born? that turnip head is placed wrong that he did, rebelled? his legs come out from in front of her, and his arms are

quartered away, it seems that he dancesand dances and dances little idiotbut why dont you be born babaluceddu? if you dont come out take you out I seize you beatingto the duchess then how there I ask her the forty tar promised?ahhhh but this is a picciridda! Ow, ow, all the females have come out of this wretched womb, what misfortune! Mute as she is, she has no luckCome, come contemptuous femaleand if I promise you a sugar lamb, will you come? No, you dont want to be dueand if I promise you a cantara of kisses, will you come?if this one is not born she I play myself the professioneveryone will know that Titina the midwife miscalculated contractions of childbirth, did not make it born and made the mother and daughter to die, Virgin Mary help meeven if you have bred, my Virgin Mary, help mebut that you know about its parts and laboursmake me derive this girl that then I light for you a candle as thick as a pillar, on God I swear it you, I ought to spend all the money that the late duchess will give me Even if the midwife administers her toward death perhaps it was time to prepare herself to be off with her baby enclosed within her tummy. She immediately had to mentally recite some prayer, to ask forgiveness of the Lord for her transgressions, Marianna told herself. But conveniently in the moment in which she makes herself ready to die, the baby had gotten out, the color of ink, without breath. And the mammana had seized her by the feet jolting her like she was a rabbit ready for the pot. Until the picciridda had made an old, monkey face and had proceeded to cry opening wide his toothless mouth. Innocenza meanwhile had brought the scissors to the midwife that had cut off the umbilical cord with a whack, and then, she had burnt it with a little candle. The stench of flesh had flooded the breathless nostrils of Marianna: she shouldnt die anymore, that acrid fume brought her back to life and suddenly she felt very tired and content. Innocenza continued to give herself to doing: she cleaned the bed, bound a clean cincinedda around the sides of the puerpera, put the umbilical cord of the newborn girl in salt, some sugar on her tiny belly dirtied by blood and some oil on her mouth. Lastly, after having rinsed her with rose water, she had wrapped the newborn in bandages covering her from head to foot like a mummy. And now who tells the duke that its another female? there should be someone that does the manufacturing for that poor duchessif she were a vitta, she would give us a spoonful of cane ovule: one on the first day, two on the

second and three on the third and the unwanted child goes to the other worldbut these are males and the females if she has any left still when they are so many Marianna did not succeed in detaching her eyes from the mammana that drying the sweat medicated her with the conzu that is a burnt, cloth rag drenched in oil, egg white and sugar. She already knew all of this; every time she had given birth she had seen the same things, only that this time, with her eyes burning and nostalgic of one that knows how to not have to die any more. And she experienced a whole new pleasure in watching the cautious and secure actions of the two women that occupied themselves with her body with a great deal of zeal. Now the mammana cut with her long, sharp fingernail that pellicle that she keeps the tongue of the baby anchored, otherwise she will become a stutterer when shes older; like the tradition demands and so as to console the child that cried, they had shoved a honey fingerprint in her mouth. The last thing that Marianna had seen before collapsing into sleep had been the two hands of the midwife lifting the placenta towards the window, to show that it had come out whole, that it had not torn, that none of it had left any shreds in the birthmothers womb When she had opened her eyes after twelve hours of unconsciousness, Marianna had found herself in front of her other two daughters, Giuseppa and Felice, dressed up, covered in bows, lace and coral. Felice already standing, Giuseppa in arms with the nanny. All three of them looked at her, stunned and awkward, almost that she had risen from her coffin in the middle of the funeral. Behind them there was also the father, her husband-uncle, in his best red robe and hinted at the like of a smile. Mariannas hands had immediately reached to search for the newborn next to her, and not finding it, she had been seized with doubt: that it had died while she slept? But the semi-smile of her husband and the ceremonious air of the dressed-up nanny had reassured her. That it dealt with a baby girl she had known from the first month of pregnancy: her tummy swelled round and not to a point like what happens when you are expecting a male. So her grandmother Giuseppa had taught her, and each time, in consequence, her belly had taken the form of a sweet melon and each time she had relieved a daughter. Moreover, she had dreamt: a blonde head that leaned on her chest and watched her with an annoyed air. The strange thing was that on her back, the baby carried a goats head with upset

curlicues. What would she have made of it than such a monster? Instead, she was born perfect, notwithstanding the premature month, only a little smaller, but beautiful and fair, without so much hair with which Giuseppa was covered when she had came into the world and without the purple pear head of Felice. She was shown a tranquil, quiet baby that accepted milk when they gave it to her, without ever demanding anything. She would never cry and sleep in the position in which they put her in the crib for eight hours on end. If it were not for Innocenza who, with watch in hand, going to wake the duchess for the feeding, mother and daughter would have continued to sleep without heeding that which the midwives, nurses, nannies and mothers all said: that newborns need to be breastfed every three hours; if not, they are capable of dying of hunger, throwing the family in infamy. She had given birth to two daughters with ease. This was the third time, and she had made a daughter again. Even though her husband-uncle was not happy, he had kindly spared her of his criticisms. Marianna knew that until she had given birth to the male, she would have to keep trying. She feared seeing herself thrown on one of those lapidary cards, of which she already had a collection, of the type And the boy, when do you decide? She knew of other husbands that had taken away the promise from the wife after the second female. But Uncle Pietro was so reckless for a similar determination. And then, he already wrote to her so little. Here she is, Manina, born just during the last work of the villa, the daughter of her seventeen years. She has taken the name from her old Aunt Manina, the unmarried sister of her grandfather, Mariano. The family tree, pendent in the pink room, is full of Maninas: one born in 1420 and deceased in 1440 from plague; another born in 1615 and deceased in 1680, barefoot Carmelite; yet another born in 1650 and deceased two years after, and the last, born in 1651, the oldest of the Ucra family. From her grandmother Scebarrs, she has taken her slender wrists, her long neck. From her father, Duke Pietro, she has taken a certain melancholy and severe air, even though then she has festive colors and the morbid beauty of the Ucra of Fontanasalsa branch. With pleasure, Felice and Giuseppa play with their little sister, putting little sugar puppets in her hands, and pretending that she eats them, with the result of

making her dirty the cradle and bandages. At times, Marianna has the impression that their affection is so obstreperous and aggressive, it winds up being dangerous for the newborn. And therefore, she continually keeps an eye on her when they are in the surroundings of the crib. From when Manina is born, they have even stopped going to play at Lina and Lenas, the daughters of the cowboy Ciccio Cal, who live by the stables. The two girls have not married. After the death of their mother, they have completely dedicated themselves to their father, to the cows and to the house. They have become tall and robust, they hardly distinguish themselves one from the other, they work dressed alike with some faded red skirts, lilac velvet petticoats and blue aprons always stained with blood. From when Innocenza has decided that she doesnt kill the hens any more, the task if strangling and making them into pieces is passed to them that they do it with much determination and rapidity. The bad tongues say that Lina and Lena lay down with their own father in the same bed where he once slept with their mother, that they have already been left pregnant two times and that they have had an abortion with parsley. But they are gossip Raffaele Cuffa wrote to her one day on the back of the accounts of the house and to whom she did not want to pay heed. When the Cal girls lay out the clothes, they sing that its a marvel. She has also known this by cross paths, from one of the servants that comes to the house to wash the clothes. And Marianna has discovered some mornings recumbent at the balustrade painted in a long terrace above the stables, to watch the girls that hung the linen on the line. How they bend together over the large basket, how they lift themselves on the points of their feet with an elegant movement, how they take a sheet, twist it one standing at one end and one at the other that they seem to play at tug-of-war. She saw that they opened their mouths, but she could not know if they sang. And the yearning desire to listen to their voices, that they said were very beautiful, left her unsatisfied. Their father the cowboy calls them with a whistle like he does with his messinesi cows. And they rush, leaping with rough and decisive strides like someone who is used to hard work and has strong, flashing muscles. When their father is gone, Lina and Lena call in their turn with a whistle the bay Miguelito, they mount him and take a ride in olive orchard, clinging one to the back of the other, without worrying about the branches that break on the sides

of the horse, about the loose bramble that entangles itself with their long hair. Felice and Giuseppa go to find them in the scurusa house next to the stables, among images of saints and ogres filled with milk set apart for the ricotta. They make themselves recount stories of slain corpses, of werewolves that they later repeat to their father-uncle who becomes indignant each time and prohibits them from going back there. But as soon as he leaves for Palermo, the two girls precipitate into the house of the twins, where they eat bread and ricotta half-covered in a cloud of horse flies. And her husband-uncle is so distracted that he does not even become aware of the smell that they bring on when they secretly reenter the house, after being left squatting for hours on the straw to listen to bloodcurdling stories. The night the two girls come often to infiltrate themselves in the bed of their mother for fear that those stories that had put them on. They are cretins, your daughters, if they are afraid because they come back? It is the logic of her husband-uncle and she cannot give it fault. Only that his logic does not suffice to explain the pleasure of practicing with the dead notwithstanding the fear and the horror. Or perhaps exactly for that. Thinking about those two prime daughters always in flight, Marianna throws out from the cradle her last born. She dips her nose in the little laced dress that she comes down to her beyond the feet and sniffs that unmistakable odor of borax, of urine, of sour milk, of lettuce water that they put on all newborns and no one knows for what reason is the most exquisite scent in the world. She presses the quiet, little body of her last born against her cheek and asks herself if she will speak. Also of Felice and Giuseppa had been afraid that they wouldnt speak. With trepidation, she spies their breaths feeling with her fingers the tiny throats to feel the sound elapse from the first words. And each time she was reassured seeing the little lips that opened and closed following the rhythm of the phrases. Yesterday evening, her husband-uncle came into the chamber and sat on the bed. He had suckled with a pensive and tired air. Then he wrote her a timid note: How is the little one? and Does your chest feel better? Lastly, he good-naturedly added: The male will come, leave time to time. Dont worry, it will come. Chapter Nine

The male arrived like her husband-uncle wanted; he is called Mariano. He was born two years right after the birth of Manina. He is blonde like his sister, more handsome than she, but of a different nature: he cries easily and if we dont worry about him in continuation, he gives into outbursts. The fact is that everyone has him in the palm of their hand like a precious jewel and after a few months he has already realized that his wants will be satisfied in any case. This time her husband-uncle smiled openly, brought a gift to his lady wife a necklace of large, pink grain pearls, like garbanzo beans. He also made her a donation of a thousand scudi, because as the kings with the queens when they give birth to a male. The house la casena 7, il casermone 9, le balate 10, la gamberga 11, il dammuso 13, il via vai 15, con sopra 15, la bcara 15, diacce 16,