Read Online The Silent Duchess by Dacia Maraini - Free Book Online Page B

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