The Wager
Page 19
“I’m just dirty.”
“Call it whatever you want. Just hurry.”
Up ahead the mouths of caves opened wide, as though calling. And were they calling? Don Giovanni could have sworn he heard voices.
He did. Happy voices.
He followed the girl into the first cave. Naked men leaned over fissures in the rock, where steam came through. They talked to one another about how strong they were getting, how well the vapors from the hot springs underground were healing their insides, how soon they’d be back home and running things again.
Somewhere in Don Giovanni’s distant memories was a whisper about this place. Monte Cronio. Yes, it was well known for its therapeutic power. Had those old memories been in charge all along? Had they brought him here?
“Take off your trousers.”
“No.”
The girl made a tsk. “I’ve got the towels in here.” She dropped the sack onto the ground in front of her feet. “If you want me to soak them in the healing waters and rub you down, I have to start now. You’re a bigger job than most.”
“No. Two days from now.”
“I already told you. I can’t wait two days.”
“Then go away.”
“You won’t get your money back.”
“I don’t want my money back.”
“I have bread in here, too. With fried onions and mushrooms on top.”
“It’s not mushroom season.”
“My mother dries them in the fall. We have them whenever we want. They’re the big yellow kind.”
His favorites. Zizu often gathered them for him.
The girl opened the sack. She took out a cloth bundle and untied the knot. Onion and mushroom scents joined the hot vapors.
No. Don Giovanni smiled. His favorite mushrooms. Ha! “What a pathetic thing is evil.” He walked out of the cave and climbed up into the mountain. Behind him came the smallest, highest note. A keening voice. As he and Cani climbed, the voice grew into a wail, a shriek. The wind joined it. Hail fell through the sunny sky, smacking him hard, knocking him senseless.
It was early dawn when he woke. A freak snowstorm had come to Monte Cronio. Who said the devil was hot?
Don Giovanni clutched Cani and waited. “Mimi,” he said. “Mimi, Mimi, Mimi. Mimi awaits if I can make it just one more day, one more night.” He closed his eyes and spoke to the yellow haze of hope inside his heart. “I will be everything good I can be for this Mimi. I’ll never make her sorry she married me. I will cherish her. For the rest of my life. I promise. If I only get the chance.”
Yellow
ON THE MORNING OF 4 FEBRUARY 1173, DON GIOVANNI WOKE more frozen than not. He and Cani slip-slid down the mountain to the cave. He leaned over fissures in the rock and let the hot steam warm him.
It was over.
He could barely understand yet what it might mean. Over. Done. Won.
He took off his trousers and rolled the purse up small in his fist. He whispered to it, then held up a gold coin. “Who will shave my hair off?” he called out.
Sciacca turned out to be a good town for a full recovery. By the end of February, Don Giovanni had healed everywhere. His scalp was free of pus. His skin was thick and olive again. His hair had grown back to a short curl. He looked young—not boyish, there was a definite solemnity to his eye—but young again. Healthy.
He wore the best clothes Sciacca could offer, which weren’t bad at all.
He rode the best horse Sciacca could offer, almost directly north, through the hills and mountains, all the way to Palermo. Cani ran along beside. For that reason he had to go more slowly than if he’d been alone. By the evening of 2 March, he and Cani arrived at the villa.
Ribi answered the door. He looked from Cani to Don Giovanni, back and forth, back and forth.
“It’s you!” shouted Zizu from an upstairs window. He waved wildly. “It’s Don Giovanni!”
“Sire?” said Ribi.
Don Giovanni grinned.
The men hugged.
Zizu came running out and jumped into Don Giovanni’s arms, closing his legs and arms around the man’s chest.
Every servant in the villa lined up to shake the master’s hand. But Don Giovanni hugged them all.
Ribi had been true to his word. Marzapane in the shape of tiny brides and grooms hung all around the courtyard.
They spent the day of 3 March burning the cushions from the throne in the Wave Room and putting in a matrimonial bed.
On 4 March, Don Giovanni went to wed the younger princess, Mimi, in Palermo’s cathedral. The old cathedral, as it was now called, ever since Mimi’s brother, King William II, had made known the plans for the new one that would be built at Monreale.
Mimi looked glorious in her long gown. Yellow. How on earth could she have known the color of all his hopes?
She fluttered down the aisle like a butterfly. When the veil was lifted and her lips appeared, her tongue ran along the bottom lip in a familiar way. Don Giovanni was amazed and then, on second thought, not amazed at all to find his bride was the artist who had drawn his hands as birds, who had seen the humanity in his eyes.
Tender and dear, indeed.
He raised an eyebrow.
“I played the boy artist outside my brother’s castle,” she said clearly, though others might hear. “And the retiring princess inside.”
Of course. The former could persist only so long as the world of the latter was unaware. Art was not for a woman’s hand, despite the occasional German nun, and they were considered daft, after all. But when her sister had asked for a drawing of Don Giovanni, Mimi stepped forth and offered to go in disguise—what they thought was a new disguise—as a boy artist. Don Giovanni could imagine the scene. It all fit.
“No need for disguise anymore,” murmured Don Giovanni.
“For either of us,” said Mimi.
Is a wager with the devil worth it? Who can ever know what might have been otherwise? But today was his wedding day. Don Giovanni set aside the unanswerable question in favor of what he did know, in favor of the only holiness he could count on—a yellow butterfly, a breath of hope, the love of his life.
A Note to the Reader
“DON GIOVANNI DE LA FORTUNA” IS AN OLD SICILIAN FAIRYTALE. All versions of it that I’ve found are not set in any particular time period and are quite short—two or three pages. Some are available on the Internet, including these sites:
www.surlalunefairytales.com/bearskin/stories/dongiovanni.html
www.pitt.edu/~dash/type0361.html#sicily
I chose to start this story in the late twelfth century because that was a time of important transition, political and cultural, trickling down from the Sicilian nobility to the ordinary people. The foundation for later reforms can be traced to these years.
I chose the specific year of 1169 because I wanted a jump start for Don Giovanni’s loss of wealth, and I found it in the massive eruption of Mount Etna that year, with the ensuing earthquake that leveled Catania and the tsunami that washed over the walls of Messina. I wrote the first few chapters of the first draft of this story in December 2004. Then I took a couple of days off from writing to enjoy Christmas with my family. The day after Christmas, a major tsunami caused devastation and tragedy in the countries on the Indian Ocean. The coincidence stunned me. I couldn’t work on this story for a long while afterward.
When I picked the story up again, I promised myself there would be no more natural disasters in it. (Working on fairy tales can induce a strange sense of connectedness between events that one’s intellect knows are disparate.)
Because of the time frame I’ve imposed on this fairy tale, the princesses had to be the sisters of the king rather than the daughters as in the traditional tale. King William II at that time was just a young man himself.
I also chose to end the tale at the wedding, while the traditional tale goes on to tell of the anger of the queen and the older sister at the younger princess’s good fortune in marrying such a handsome m
an after all. Both women met terrible ends, from going blind with envy and drowning in the sea to losing their souls to the devil. To me, this was Don Giovanni’s tale, and, while I very much hold dear the frame of any fairy tale, it would have been a worse injustice to sully it with their demise.
Acknowledgments
Thanks to Robert and Barry Furrow, and Libby Crissey, Robbie Hart, Angela Repice, Bill Reynolds, Richard Tchen for comments on earlier versions. Thanks to Bryan Miltenberg for his meticulous checking and to my strong-stomached, kindhearted, and persevering editor, Reka Simonsen, for everything else.