“And how did you ever find them?”
“I noticed that Scimè, the notary, owned a copy, so I politely asked him for them, and he gave them to me free of charge, as a gift to you.”
“Really? I must send him a note of thanks.”
“Better not, Your Excellency.”
“And why not?”
“That might be rubbing salt into the wound. It took some doing to persuade him, you know. The notary was rather fond of these books. I had to, well, to force him a little, to show him what was in his best interests.”
“Ah,” said His Excellency, running a loving hand over the parcel. “You know, Ferraguto, I’m going to tell you something. Books with dense writing bore me. They honfuse me. I understand images much better. And fortunately, Serradifalco’s books are full of images.”
Don Memè put an end to their cultural interlude.
“You must excuse me, Your Excellency, sir,” he said as he started to unbutton his suspenders. In a single bound the prefect stood up, ran to the door, turned the lock twice, and put the key in his pocket. Ferraguto, meanwhile, extracted a long roll from his right trouser leg and set it down on the table, before buttoning himself back up in haste.
“That’s what was making me walk all lopsided,” he said. “I was worried the paper might wrinkle. It’s a problem you don’t have if you’ve got a lupara hidden in your trousers.”
He laughed long and hard, alone, as His Excellency was opening the roll. It was the printer’s proof of a placard announcing the forthcoming performance of the opera The Brewer of Preston to inaugurate Vigàta’s new theatre. After reading it carefully and finding no mistakes, the prefect handed the roll back to Ferraguto, who slipped it back into his trouser leg.
“We’re at the gates with stones in our hands, my friend.”
“I don’t understand, Your Excellency.”
“It’s a saying from my parts. It means there’s not much time left. The opera will be staged the day after tomorrow—actually, in three days’ time. And I’m very worried.”
They allowed themselves a pause, looking one another in the eye.
“When I was a little kid,” Emanuele Ferraguto said slowly, breaking the silence, “I liked to play with black comerdioni.”
“Oh, really?” said the prefect, slightly disgusted, imagining some sort of black and hairy spider with which the child Ferraguto amused himself by pulling off its legs one by one.
“Yes,” Ferraguto continued. “What do you call, in your parts, those toys that little kids make—”
“Ah, so it’s a game?” the prefect interrupted him, visibly relieved.
“Yessir. You take a big sheet of colored paper, cut it into the right shapes, glue two reeds to it with starch paste . . . then you attach it all to a string and send it up in the air.”
“Ah! You mean a hite!” His Excellency exclaimed.
“Yes, exactly, sir, a kite. I used to fly them around Punta Raisi, near Palermo. Do you know the place?”
“What a silly huestion, Ferraguto! You know very well that I don’t like to set foot out of the house. I know Sicily from picture hards. It’s better than going there in person.”
“Well, Punta Raisi’s not a very good place for kites. Sometimes there was no wind and neither man nor God could make them rise. Other times there was wind all right, but as soon as the kite got up in the air it ran head-on into a current that would flip it over and send it crashing into the trees. I would dig in my heels and keep trying, but I was wrong. Do you get what I mean?”
“No, I don’t.”
Forever the Florentine dickhead, thought Ferraguto. He replied with a question.
“Would Your Excellency mind if I spoke Latin?”
The prefect felt a bead of sweat trickle down his back. From the very first time he had come up against rosa-rosae he had realized that Latin was his bête noire.
“Just between you and me, Ferraguto, I wasn’t exactly the head of the class at school.”
Don Memè beamed his legendary smile.
“What did you think I meant, Your Excellency? Here in Sicily, ‘to speak Latin’ means to speak clearly.”
“And when you want to speak unclearly?”
“We speak Sicilian, Your Excellency.”
“Go ahead, then, speak Latin.”
“Your Excellency, why do you insist on trying to fly the kite of The Brewer of Preston here in Vigàta, where the winds are unfavorable? Take it from a friend, which I’m honored to be—it won’t fly.”
At last the prefect grasped the metaphor.
“Whether it’ll fly or not, people, in Vigàta, have to do what I tell them to do, what I order them to do. The Brewer of Preston will be staged, and it will have the success it deserves.”
“Your Excellency, may I speak Spartan to you?”
“Oh my, what does that mean?”
“Speaking Spartan means using dirty words. Would you please explain to me why the hell you got it in your fucking head to force the Vigatese to watch an opera they don’t want any part of? Does Your Excellency want to provoke another forty-eight, perhaps? A revolution?”
“Those are big words, Ferraguto!”
“No, sir, Your Excellency, those are not big words. I know these people. They are good, honest people, but if they’re crossed they’re liable to wage war.”
“But, good God, why would the Vigatese wage war just to avoid listening to an opera?”
“It depends on the opera, Your Excellency.”
“What are you trying to tell me, Ferraguto? That Vigàta has the best music critics in the world?”
“No, it’s not that, sir. Except for two or three people, the Vigatese don’t know a thing about music.”
“So?”
“So the problem is that it was you, who are the prefect of Montelusa, who wanted this opera. And the Vigatese never like anything the Montelusans ever say or do.”
“Is this some kind of joke?”
“No. They don’t give a damn about the opera. But they don’t want it to be the person in charge of Montelusa and its province to lay down the law for Vigàta. You know what the canon Bonmartino—who’s a priest everyone respects—said about this?
“No.”
“He said that if the Vigatese accept the opera, next the prefect will feel entitled to tell them what they should eat and when they should shit.”
“But that’s absolute rubbish! It’s a beautiful opera and they don’t know what the hell they’re talhing about!”
“Your Excellency, even if the opera had been written by God Almighty Himself with His band of angels—”
“Jesus Christ! We need to do more, Ferraguto! The opera must triumph! It has to behome an historic success! My hareer depends on it!”
“If you’d spoken to me sooner, Excellency, if you’d let me know your plans when there was still time, I could have taken action and given you my humble opinion on a few matters. Now I’m doing everything I possibly can.”
“You must do more, Ferraguto. More. Even if it means . . .” He interrupted himself.
“Even if it means?” Ferraguto asked keenly.
The prefect sidestepped, realizing he was heading down a dangerous path.
“I’m counting entirely on you, on your sense of tact,” he concluded, rising.
On the morning of the day
On the morning of the day he was killed, Dr. Gammacurta was, as usual, at his medical office. He even spent the afternoon there, after a break for lunch and a brief half-hour nap. But he wasn’t in his usual mood. Indeed, he was decidedly agitated, showing no patience with red-eyed children, losing his temper over tertian and quartan fevers alike, and flying off the handle when, for good measure, a man with a boil on the back of his neck was so afraid of the scalpel that he would not sit still for the doctor to lance it.
“God bloody dammit! You call this half drowned?! Can’t you see he’s been dead for at least a week and that the fish have been eating him up? Call whoever the hell you want to call—the priest, the police, anybody—but leave me out of this!”
The reason for his bad mood—a strange thing in a man known far and wide as polite and well bred—lay in the fact that, come hell or high water, he had to go to the theatre that evening. At the club, he had made a solemn pledge, along with the other members, to make sure that the opera imposed on Vigàta by the prefect would end in boos and raspberries. Being, moreover, little inclined by nature to appear in public, he had contemplated deserting the cause with the excuse that he needed to make a house call on someone gravely ill. But he had forgotten about his wife, with whom he had had a heated argument the previous day.
“But I had a dress made in Palermo for the occasion!” she had said.
The doctor had already seen the dress, and it looked to him like a carnival costume. Actually, even at Carnival, any self-respecting woman would have disdained to put it on. But it was clear that his missus had got it into her head to wear it.
“But the music is completely worthless.”
“Oh, really? And how would you know? Have you suddenly become a music connoisseur? Anyway, I couldn’t care less about the music.”
“So why do you want to go?”
“Because Signora Cozzo is going.”
The argument admitted no reply. Signora Cozzo, the headmaster’s wife, was Signora Gammacurta’s bête noire.
Naturally, nothing went right for him during the laborious process of getting dressed, owing in part to the deafening shouts in the next room, where his wife was getting made up with the help, apparently inept, of Rosina, the maid. The button to his collar refused to fit, falling on the floor three times; he could find only one of his gold cufflinks and spent an hour on the floor with his backside in the air before he managed to unearth the other under the chest of drawers; and his patent leather shoes were too tight.
Now he was finally at the theatre, in the third row of the orchestra, beside his wife, who looked like a cassata—a rustic ice cream speckled with colorful candied fruit—and was smiling beatifically because the dress of Signora Cozzo, sitting two rows behind them with her husband, was not as striking as her own. The doctor looked around. His associates from the club, with whom he exchanged greetings, smiles, and nods of understanding, had all positioned themselves strategically between the boxes and the pit.
The stage décor represented the courtyard of a brewery in the town of Preston, England, according to a small flyer that had been distributed to everyone upon entering the theatre. On the left-hand side was the façade of a two-story house with a staircase on the outside; on the right was a great cast-iron gate; and in the background, a brick wall with a door in the middle. There were wheelbarrows, sacks full of who-knows-what, and shovels and baskets scattered about helter-skelter.
The music struck up, and a man in a gray apron appeared—Bob the foreman, according to the flyer. Looking all cheerful, he started ringing a bell. At once six people wearing the same aprons entered from behind the gate, but instead of getting down to work, they lined up at the edge of the stage in front of the audience. From their faces and gestures they looked even happier than their foreman, who turned to them, opened his arms, and intoned:
“Friends! To the brewery
we merrily run!”
The workers looked like they were in seventh heaven.
“We merrily run!”
they all sang together, raising their hands.
“With barley and hops
we make our beer!”
The six people in aprons then started jumping for joy.
“We make our beer!”
Bob the foreman then ran in a great circle around the courtyard, showing off the equipment.
“Of all the trades
ours has no peer.”
The six people embraced and patted one another noisily on the back.
“Ours has no peer.”
Then Bob, running from a wheelbarrow to a sack and from the sack to a pile of baskets, sang:
“We make a drink
that brings good cheer.”
“Yeah, cheer for you!” a voice yelled from the seats just under the ceiling. “To me it tastes like piss! I’ll take wine anyday!”
The voice drowned out even the music. But the chorus didn’t let it bother them and continued singing.
“That brings good cheer.”
At this point somebody got angry in earnest. It was Don Gregorio Smecca, a trader in whole and slivered almonds, but above all a pig-headed man.
“Why are these six assholes always repeating the last lines? What do they think, that we’re a bunch of savages? We can understand whatever there is to understand at the first go, without any repetition!”
Lollò Sciacchitano, who was sitting in the gallery but far from his friend Sciaverio, the one who had declared his dislike of beer, seized the moment.
“Hey, Sciavè, why are they all so cheerful?” he asked in a voice that would have been audible at sea during a squall.
“Because they’re going to work,” was Sciaverio’s reply.
“What bullshit!”
“Go ahead, ask them yourself.”
Sciacchitano stood up and addressed himself to the seven people on stage.
“I beg your pardon, gentlemen, but would you please give me a straight answer? Why are you so happy to be going to work?”
This time there was a certain confusion on stage. Two of the chorus shaded their eyes with their hands to shield them from the stage lights and looked towards the gallery, but the conductor’s baton immediately called them back to order.
In the royal box, Bortuzzi, the prefect, noticing that things were taking a bad turn, felt his blood rising. Gesturing angrily to Police Lieutenant Puglisi behind him, he said:
“Arrest those hooligans! At once!”
Puglisi didn’t feel like obeying the order. He knew that the slightest incident might trigger an uprising.
“Look, Your Excellency, I’m sorry, but there’s absolutely no ill will or intention in what they’re doing. They’re not troublemakers. I know every last one of them. They’re good, law-abiding people, believe me. It’s just that they’ve never been in a theatre before and don’t know how to behave.”
It worked. The prefect, who was drenched in sweat, did not insist.
Meanwhile, from the left-hand staircase appeared Daniel Robinson, the owner of the brewery. He was even jollier than the others and in the end declared that day a holiday, because he was about to marry a girl named Effy. This news made the others practically faint with joy. Bob intoned:
“What better choice to make than she?
Who more virtuous and pretty?”
The six clad in aprons once again did not fail to repeat:
“Who more virtuous and pretty?”
Don Gregorio Smecca could no longer contain himself.
“Bah! What a bore! I’m leaving, good night!”
He stood up and left, leaving his wife in the lurch.
Meanwhile the people on stage were describing Effy as a “most precious gem” and as the “emblem of love.” And so Daniel Robinson started handing out money to everyone, ordering them to have a big celebration.
“Look for instruments, look all around,
let flutes, timbals, and horns resound.”
“No need to look anywhere for horns. They grow all by themselves,” said a voice again from the gallery. A few people laughed.
“But isn’
t a timbal that thing you make for me with rice, meat, and peas?” Dr. Gammacurta asked his wife in all seriousness.
“Yes.”
“So what the hell has it got to do with flutes and horns?”
At last the theatre fell briefly silent. The workers had all gone off in search of instruments and people to invite to the celebration. Daniel Robinson, though there was nobody beside him, started gesturing mysteriously towards Bob as if wanting to tell him a secret. Bob drew near, and the boss revealed to him that before the day was over, his own twin brother, George, who hadn’t been seen in those parts for two years, would arrive. George was a military man and not a very peaceable sort. Bob looked doubtful.
“And he’s coming here?”
Daniel turned pensive then replied:
“I hope so, with his unpleasant vocation
of living by the balls . . .”
Hearing of the twin brother George’s rather peculiar job, the male contingent of the audience held its collective breath. Some thought they hadn’t understood correctly and sought clarification from the person beside them. Daniel, as the music required, repeated the declaration of his brother’s occupation in a higher register:
“With his unpleasant vocation
of living by the balls . . .”
This time the laughter burst out immediately, spanning the entire hall from rows A to U and featuring throat-rasping chortles, sneezing guffaws, gurgling giggles, smothered hiccups, starting motors, piglike squeals, and other similar manners of laughing. And, as a result, the sung explanation of George’s odd vocation was completely lost.
“. . . of living by the balls of the cannon.”
The laugh that Cavaliere Mistretta tried to suppress turned out to be the most clamorous of all. As the cavaliere was asthmatic, he found himself gasping for air, and in his attempt to recover his breath, he inhaled so deeply that it came out sounding exactly like a foghorn. And yet in spite of the blast, he did not recover his breath but began to flail about, wildly grasping and slapping at the people around him. His wife got scared and started shouting, others came running, and one of them, a little more alert than the rest, hoisted the cavaliere onto his shoulders and carried him into the lobby with Signora Mistretta trailing behind him and wailing like one of the three Marys.
The Brewer of Preston Page 4