The Silent Duchess by Dacia Maraini Page A

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