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

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,