The Silent Duchess

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'When I die I shall go to hell,' she once said. And then she added, 'But what's hell? Palermo without any cake shops. And, anyway, I don't like cakes all that much.' And then a moment later: 'Come to that, it will be better than that ballroom where the saints spend all their time doing tapestry - that's paradise for you!' She died without troubling a soul, all alone. And no one wept for her. But her witticisms continued to circulate, as salty and piquant as anchovies in brine. x Duke Pietro VCrla has never discussed one iota of what his wife has been gradually planning for the villa. He only digs his toes in when a small 'coffee house', as he calls it, springs up in the garden, built of wrought iron, with a domed ceiling, white and blue tiles on the floor, and a view over the sea. Nevertheless, it was built, or rather it will be built, because although the wrought iron is all ready, the skilled workmen who will erect it are missing. At this time in Bagheria dozens of villas are being built, and craftsmen and bricklayers are hard to come by. Vncle husband often says that the lodge was more convenient, particularly for hunting. But it's a mystery why he keeps saying this, considering that he never hunts. He hates game and he hates guns, although he has a collection of them. What he really likes most are books on heraldry, and playing whist, when he isn't walking in the countryside among the lemon trees, whose grafting he attends to himself. He knows everything about his ancestors and the origins of the VCrla family of Fontanasalsa and Campo Spagnolo, their orders of precedence, their rank, their decorations. In his study he has a big copper engraving of the martyrdom of Saint Signoretto. Beneath, incised in copper plate: 'Blessed Signoretto VCrla of Fontanasalsa and Campo Spagnolo, born in Pisa in 1269.' In smaller writing is the life of the blessed saint, telling how he arrived in Palermo and dedicated himself to pious works, 'frequenting hospitals and succouring the many poor people who infested the city'. At the 46 age of thirty he retreated to a 'most barren desert by the edge of the sea'. But where was this 'most barren desert'? Did he end up on the North African coast? In the 'desert bordering on the sea' Signoretto was 'martyred by the Saracens' but it is not known why he was martyred, the engraving does not give us any clue. Why was he 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 Ucdas was no less than a king of the sixth century Be, namely King of Lidia. From that inaccessible...