5

Silence.

Franca looks up and squints. The light is aggressive and the sheets too coarse.

For a moment, she wonders where she is, and why her chest feels compressed. Because she's alone—but only for an instant. It

all comes back to her, and her breath catches in her throat.

The faint lapping of the waves in the harbor drifts in through the half-open window. The room—plain, almost monastic in comparison

with the one at the Olivuzza or Villa Igiea—is in the Favignana house. Diodata, Maruzza, and a young housekeeper are moving

about the quarters, careful not to disturb her, but always vigilant, as Ignazio ordered. "Stay close to her," he told Maruzza

before leaving, having brought them to the island aboard the Virginia . "My wife is—is upset. Make sure she doesn't do anything foolish."

They spoke very softly, but she heard everything.

It's not so far-fetched , Franca thought with detachment. On the contrary. It would bring her relief. Peace.

She grabs her robe, slips it on, and shakes her head, causing her hair to cascade down her shoulders in large waves. On her

dressing table, amid brushes and jewels, stands a bottle of laudanum-based anxiolytic. Its golden shadow stretches across

the marble tabletop, colliding with that of a glass half filled with water. Not far from here is the ivory bottle containing

the cocaine prescribed for weakness and depression.

Franca laughs bitterly.

As if a little powder and a few drops could subdue what's inside her.

Three children dead in just over a year.

She rummages through her things for a cigarette and the holder. She smokes slowly, her green eyes reflecting Favignana's turquoise

sea. It's an unusually clear day for February.

Clear and cold. Only, she doesn't feel the external cold. Instead, the chill inside her seems to absorb everything. Her strength.

The light. Hunger. Thirst.

Perhaps she's dead but doesn't know it yet. She can't cry anymore; she doesn't know how to. Her tears stop at the lashes,

refusing to fall, as though turning to stone. No, that's not it , she tells herself, stubbing the cigarette out in an ashtray littered with butts. If she were dead, she wouldn't feel so

much pain.

Or perhaps she is, and this is her hell.

She calls Diodata, drinks some coffee, but doesn't touch the cookies. She has lost a lot of weight in the past few weeks.

There's almost no need to tighten her corset anymore. Ignazio writes her, sends her telegrams inquiring how she is... but

can't stay close to her anymore. And perhaps she doesn't want him here either. With Baby Boy, her Ignazino, they have lost

their joy and future. And even if you can live without joy, there's nothing you can do without a future. Hope died with Giacobina.

Something snapped.

She picks up her hat and shawl, both black. On her chest, she wears a medallion with portraits of her children.

Outside, the island is stirred by a gentle but cold breeze. Some of the islanders glance at her and a couple of women give

her little curtsies. Franca doesn't look at anyone. She plods down the narrow street flanking the villa, going almost as far

as the town hall, then turns to the sea. The same route every day, the same slow footsteps.

She walks on, and the hem of her dress gets dusty, taking on the golden white of the tuff. Near the tonnara , some men remove their hats and greet her. She acknowledges them and nods.

She can feel their looks of commiseration, their pity, but she doesn't care. She no longer feels anything, neither annoyance

nor resentment. In her soul there's an expanse of lavalike blackness where there no longer exists any trace of life, nor a

possibility of its being reborn.

Sounds and smells of labor drift from the tonnara as she walks around it: the thudding of hammers, the rustle of nets being mended, the pungent smoke from the burners with

pitch for the keels that need caulking. There are still months to go before the tonnara are immersed, but men and tools are already getting ready for those May days, after the Feast of the Holy Crucifix. Since

their marriage, she and Ignazio have almost never missed this strange celebration of death and life, where the fragrance of

the sea mingles with the reek of tuna blood.

She turns the corner and finds herself at a small basin with a slip of rock rolling down to the harbor. There, the water is

clean and soon runs deep. To the right is the dock for the ships, still locked up in the warehouses.

The water.

It's so blue, so clear.

It must be very cold , she thinks, trying to walk down among the rocks to touch it. But it's calm and the lapping against the rocks seems to soothe

her a little.

How good it would be to stop feeling this grief. This pressure in her chest that never leaves her. If she could distance herself

from life, be immune to anger, envy, jealousy, and anxiety. It would mean no longer feeling any joy, but who cares?

What is life without love? Without the joy of children? Without the warmth of a man?

Besides, how would she benefit from feeling? Life gives nothing for free: fate granted her beauty, wealth, and good luck, but that very luck turned against her. She experienced a great love and, in return, received only betrayals. She had wealth, but her most beautiful jewels, her children, were snatched from her. She inspired admiration and envy, but now only pity and regret.

Happiness is a will-o'-the-wisp, a phantom, something with only the appearance of reality. And life is a trickster—that's

the truth. It promises, lets you savor delights, then wrenches them away in the most painful way possible.

She no longer believes in life.

She studies her bare hands, stripped of jewels except for her wedding band and engagement ring. At times, when she wants to

torture herself, she remembers those white headstones, the silk lilies of the valley hanging from the sides of the tombs.

She recalls the muslin in which they are wrapped. She remembers the details of their clothes, their stiff, cold little hands.

They died and took everything with them.

She resumes looking at the sea. It's not fair , she thinks. If fate had to rage against her, why didn't it strike directly, instead of attacking her children? They were

three innocents.

It's like feeling the weight of a curse, an ancient magarìa , an injustice that hasn't been put right and only now finds satisfaction. Only, Franca doesn't want to give it satisfaction.

If life wants to rage against her, she will put an end to it. She will withdraw from the game.

She walks almost as far as the sea.

She can imagine very well what could happen. The very thought of it comforts and warms her bosom, bringing relief.

At first, the water would be so cold it would take her breath away. The salt would blind her and irritate her throat. She would try to surface, but by then her clothes, swollen with water, would drag her down. Her chest would hurt, of course, and she would be frightened, but then the chill would envelop her and take her to the bottom in an embrace like a mother carrying her child to bed, to sleep.

Yes, death can be a mother.

She has heard that, near the end, those about to drown feel a kind of strange well-being, a profound peace. Maybe her father

felt it eight years ago, when he drowned in the waters outside Livorno. Not Giovannuzza, lulled to death by the fever. Not

Ignazino, his little heart suddenly giving out. Not Giacobina, who didn't even have the chance to open her eyes. When she

thinks of those three children, the first memory that comes to her is of pressing a little body tight against her, a body

growing increasingly cold despite her attempts to share her warmth.

The cold. She has so much of it. It never goes away.

Perhaps this truly is the only hope I have left , she considers, while pushing farther on. She removes her hat and throws the shawl aside. She won't need them, she thinks.

She even dismisses the notion that what she's about to do is a mortal sin, or that it will be a scandal.

Nothing matters to her anymore.

Even breathing is a chore. All she wants is to stop feeling so awful. To disappear.

" Me figghiu murìu quannu avia tririci anni —my son was thirteen when he died. He died with his father. They went fishing and never came back."

The voice reaches her after the sea has already lapped her boots.

She turns. Up above stands a woman dressed in black, huddled in a woolen shawl. She speaks without looking at her. She is small, like a little girl, and yet her voice sounds loud and clear.

"Your son?"

"He was my life, my only son. My husband left me with two daughters, and I thought of them. It's only them that stopped me."

The woman walks with difficulty across the rocks. "The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away."

A sob escapes Franca. She shakes her head, annoyed. How dare this stranger speak to her like this? Hers weren't a fisherman's

children! She wants to snap that this woman can't possibly understand, that her entire life and her family are falling to

pieces, but a lump in her throat prevents her from speaking.

The old woman now looks at her attentively. "This is our curse," she continues, her voice hoarse with age. " E di ccà 'un putemu scappari —and we can't escape it."

Franca feels naked. Feeling tears escape her eyes, she looks away. It's as if this stranger knows her intention and is confronting

her with the reality: that you can't run away when you still have responsibilities.

"My little girl," Franca mutters. Igiea stayed back in Palermo with the governess and her mother-in-law. She pictures her

in those now abundantly empty rooms. She covers her mouth with her hands but is unable to stifle her sobs and starts crying.

She cries for a long time, until the collar of her dress is soaked, she cries all the grief inside her that hasn't yet found

a way out. She cries for herself, for her children's lost love, for the burning grief of what was not and now can never be,

for the marriage she once believed in, that grew empty from the inside. She cries because she feels like a name, an object,

not a person.

She walks away from the sea, but never will she stop hearing its call.

***

When Franca returns to the Olivuzza, a few weeks later, Palermo watches her with a mixture of pity and suspicion. It scrutinizes

her, trying to detect traces of grief in her face. The city wants to know and see.

And Franca lets the city feed on her. She shows herself, looking splendid, on the occasion of a new visit by the kaiser and

his wife: wearing her legendary pearls, she shows them around her brother-in-law's new villino —now completed—and lets herself be photographed at the foot of the stairs of this masterpiece designed by Ernesto Basile.

At Villa Igiea, she receives Prince Philipp of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha and throws him an unforgettable party, as she does for

the Vanderbilts, who have come to Palermo on board the yacht. She attends the unveiling of Benedetto Civiletti's statue of

Ignazio Florio, standing next to Giovanna, who doesn't hold back her tears, and surrounded by workers who have come especially

from Marsala. She is there for the launch of the Caprera , the first steamer from the shipyard. She celebrates with the whole city the homecoming of Raffaele Palizzolo, acquitted

at the Court of Appeal, due to insufficient evidence, on the charge of being the architect behind Emanuele Notarbartolo's

murder. And on the occasion of the Feast of Saint Rosalia, she repurposes one of NGI's steamers as a true floating garden

from which the guests can enjoy the fireworks.

Never a concession, never a word out of place, never a trace of the grief that has scorched her inside. But the smile has

left her eyes, leaving in its stead a detached look.

As though nothing could ever touch her again. As though, truly, she were dead.