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XXXI
- The Feminist Press
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XXXI Coming into that strange house she is nailed to the threshold by the clammy darkness, heavy with odours. The damp air brushes against her face like a wet cloth; she can only see black shadows submerged in the dark of the room. Then little by little her eyes become accustomed to the blackness: at the far end of the room she makes out a kneading trough with broken legs, a dented iron bowl, a high bed surrounded by a closely woven mosquito net, and a stove from which burning wood emits an acrid smoke. The heels of the Duchess's shoes sink into the floor of beaten earth scored with the marks of a besom. Next to the door a donkey is eating a small pile of hay. Squatting hens are sleeping with their heads under their wings. A tiny woman dressed in red and white pops out from nowhere with a baby in her arms, and gives the visitor a wry smile, wrinkling her pockmarked face. Marianna cannot avoid screwing up her mouth at the impact of these brazen smells: excrement, dried urine, curdled milk, charcoal ash, dried figs, chickpea soup. She has a fit of coughing as the smoke penetrates her eyes and mouth. The woman with the child looks at her and her smile becomes more open, almost mocking. It is the first time that Marianna has entered the house of a peasant woman on her estates, the wife of one of her tenants. For all that she has read about them in books, she has never imagined such poverty. She is accompanied by Don Pericle, who fans his face with a calendar to keep himself from sweating. Marianna gives him a questioning look: does he know these houses, does he visit them? But fortunately today Don Pericle is impenetrable, he keeps his eyes fixed on the distance, leaning over his protuberant stomach like pregnant women who do not know whether they are there to support their bellies or if it is their bellies that support them. Marianna gestures to Fila, who has remained outside in the road with a large basket full of provisions. The girl comes in, makes the sign of the cross and curls up her nose in disgust. Very probably she was born in a house just like this one but has done all she can to wipe it out of her memory. Now she has become accustomed to the sweet-scented fragrance of lavender in large sun-drenched rooms, and to be here fills her with resentment. 163 The woman with the baby gives a kick to drive away the hens that are starting to flutter and flap their wings inside the room, shifts the few poor bits of crockery on the table and waits for her share of the bounty. Marianna takes some sausage from the basket, some bags of rice and some sugar, and puts them all down on the table with brusque gestures. With every gift she offers she feels more ridiculous, more indecent: the indecency of a benefactor who claims immediate gratitude from the other; the indecency of a conscience that is satisfied with its own generosity and can ask the Lord for a place in paradise. Meanwhile the baby has started to cry. Marianna watches its mouth grow bigger and bigger, its eyes squeezing shut, its hands with raised clenched fists. And this crying seems to communicate itself little by little to everything in the vicinity, making them cry too: from the hens to the donkey, from the bed to the kneading trough, from the tattered skirt of the woman to the irretrievably burnt and dented cooking pans. As she goes outside, Marianna puts her hands to her sweating neck and opens her mouth to breathe in great gulps of fresh air. But the smells stagnating in the narrow lane are not much better than those inside the house: excrement, rotting vegetables , frying oil, dust. Now many more women are crowding in their doorways for their share of alms. Some sit in front of their houses delousing their children and chattering cheerfully to each other. Is not this act of charity the root of corruption that seduces the receiver? The landowner encourages the avidity of his dependants, flattering and satiating them not only to make himself look good with the guardians of heaven but also because he well knows that the recipients will be lowered in their own eyes by accepting these gifts that enjoin gratitude...