“Madonna santa!” Catalanotti whispered, realizing all too well from experience that his friend and superior had died on the spot, snuffed out like a candle.
“I didn’t mean to do it,” Decu whined in a faint voice. “I didn’t want to kill him. I couldn’t help it.”
Catalanotti stared at him. A creature, blondish, disgusting, with little hair, a sort of worm in the form of a man. And he was peeing his underpants, which began to drip.
“You couldn’t help it?”
“No. I swear.”
“I can’t help it either,” said Catalanotti, and he shot him in the face. Then he crouched next to Puglisi, took his head in his hands, kissed him on the forehead, and started to cry.
The sky was beginning to lighten over by Serradifalco. They were crossing a deep valley fragrant with an overwhelming scent of oranges. Laurentano the bumpkin stopped.
“I need to pee,” he said.
“Yeah, I gotta go too,” concurred Traquandi. It had been six hours since they’d exchanged any words. They dismounted. The Roman went up to a tree, unbuttoned his fly, and started relieving himself. Right in front of him was an orange, hanging from a low branch. It was a thing of beauty, and he couldn’t resist.
Holding his dick in his left hand, Traquandi raised his right hand to pick the fruit. And at that exact moment Laurentano shot him at the base of the skull. The Roman lurched forward, hitting his head against the tree trunk before falling facedown. Following the orders given him, Laurentano pulled out Traquandi’s wallet, put the money that was inside (and there was a lot) into his own pocket, then made a little pile with the wallet, the outsider’s suitcase, and everything that had been inside it. He set fire to the lot and waited with saintly patience for it all to burn, until only ashes remained. Then he attached the reins of the horse the Roman had ridden to his own saddle and headed back to Montelusa, or, more precisely, to the commissariat of Montelusa, where he served, each day, at the command of Dr. Meli.
That morning Don Memè, having plucked up his courage, appeared in the anteroom to the prefect’s office.
“Please tell His Excellency I’m here,” he said to Orlando.
The bailiff eyed him for a moment, then looked down and answered in a soft voice that was almost inaudible.
“His Excellency is very busy.”
“Even for me?”
“For everyone, Don Memè. He told me expressly: I am busy for everyone, even the Eternal Father.”
“And when can I come back?”
“I couldn’t say.”
Don Memè decided that it was undignified on his part to keep haggling with Orlando, who seemed to be taking pleasure in denying him. He turned around and made as if to leave, showing his usual smiling face to all present, but he was stopped by the bailiff’s voice.
“Ah, Don Memè, I almost forgot. Dr. Vasconcellos would like to have a word with you. Please come with me.”
They headed down a long corridor, Orlando in front and Don Memè behind. Vasconcellos was the chief of the prefect’s cabinet, a sort of midget known as u sacchiteddru, “the little sack,” either because of his diminutive stature or his habit of wearing clothes that made him lose all semblance of human form. Some who knew him well called him u sacchiteddru di vipere.
Arriving in front of a door, Orlando signaled to Don Memè to wait, then knocked and went in. A moment later he came back out.
“He’s waiting for you.”
The chief of the cabinet, who, until two days earlier would have doubled over bowing in reverence to Don Memè, not only did not answer his greeting, but did not even rise from his chair, which sat on a raised platform to receive him. If there were any need for it, thought Don Memè, this was the proof that a new wind was changing the course of every boat on the water.
“His Excellency,” said Vasconcellos, “left this parcel for you. It contains books. He said you should return them to their legitimate owner and thank him for the loan.”
Surely it was The Archaelogical History of Sicily, the one he had forced the notary Scimè to give him so that he could make a gift of it in turn to the prefect. As he was picking up the parcel, Vasconcellos stared at him with beady eyes that looked truly snakelike and hissed:
“Have a pleasant Lent, Signor Ferraguto.”
Don Memè, distracted, fell into the trap like a stewed pear.
“Lent? In December?”
“December or January, the Carnival is over.”
The sourpuss had done it. Vasconcellos had succeeded in shooting his squid ink, his viperlike venom.
The rage he felt was so great that, as he rode home in his little carriage, Don Memè’s head was abuzz as if full of flies, wasps, bees, and bumblebees. And since rage in the end always gives bad counsel, Don Memè decided to turn the horse around and go to a small, secluded house of his near Sanleone. Upon arriving, he halfheartedly ate a little tumazzo cheese and some hard bread soaked in wine. Then he noticed that the twenty-odd orange trees he had in his garden were so laden with fruit that the branches were bending. So he took a wicker basket and set to work on the first tree in the grove. He didn’t want to think. He would decide what needed to be done after a good night’s sleep. But one thing was as certain as the sun: the prefect was showing himself to be a bigger jackass than he had realized, if he thought he could get rid of Don Memè so easily. He would make him pay, and pay dearly, for the affront he had made him suffer at the prefecture before the eyes of everyone.
When the basket was full, he emptied it into a big chest made of reeds and then went to work on the second tree. He toiled for three hours without even realizing it. He was almost done when he heard the sound of a horse approaching. Glancing towards the gate, he saw that it was Gaetanino Sparma, the so-called field watcher of the Honorable Deputy Fiannaca. Don Memè went out to meet him, as was only proper.
“What a sight for sore eyes! A magnificent surprise! How did you know I’d come out here?”
“When I get it into my head to find someone, I find him, even if he’s turned himself into a flea on a dog’s rump.”
They laughed. Sparma dismounted, came into the house, and accepted a glass of wine. After waiting the proper amount of time so that the question wouldn’t seem instrusive or fearful, Don Memè asked: “To what do I owe the honor?”
“The Honorable Deputy sent me. He’d like to talk to you.”
“Today?”
“No, no, at your leisure. It’s nothing important.”
“And how is the Honorable Deputy? Well?”
“With thanks to the Lord, he’s in good health. But this morning he got very angry.”
“With whom, if I may ask?”
“Somebody from Favara. The Honorable Fiannaca said this man from Favara didn’t understand the difference between a common bully and a man of honor.”
“Oh, yes? And what did the Honorable Deputy say the difference was?”
“I’ll tell you in a minute,” said Sparma, “but I don’t want to bother you with idle chatter. Just keep doing what you were doing. Actually, if you like, I can give you a hand picking the oranges, which are truly spectacular.”
“Thanks,” said Don Memè, on his guard. The other man’s speech seemed suspicious to him; he wanted to find out what he was driving at.
They went out of the house, and Gaetanino grabbed a basket and started picking oranges from the same tree as Don Memè.
“The difference,” said the field watcher, “lies not only in appearance, but also in substance. For whatever reason, this gentleman from Favara had teamed up with the chief of police. They became hand in glove with each other. And so he started doing himself, on the police chief’s behalf, things that the police—that is, the law—can’t do on its own. Abuses of power, iniquities, shameful things. Pummeling a man in public, sending an innocent to jail . . . These sorts of things, says the Hon
orable Deputy, concern appearance. But in order not to lose face, and especially not to let the friends who place their trust in you lose face, you need substance. If it comes out, however, that you’ve got no substance, that you’re empty inside, then you’re just a branch in the wind. You become an overbearing servant and, what’s worse, an overbearing servant of the law, which is a crooked thing by nature. Do you agree, sir?”
“Of course I agree.”
“Now a bully who takes himself for a man of honor can do damage, a lot of damage.” He paused and wiped his sweaty forehead with his sleeve. “My lord, how much I’ve been talking! And perhaps I haven’t even made myself clear!”
“You’ve made yourself very clear. Couldn’t be any clearer,” Don Memè said darkly.
This, then, was the jist of the argument: he should submit himself to judgment, explain his relationship with the prefect, and justify himself. He burned with resentment at the insult of having been called a bully. He no longer wanted Sparma in his hair.
“The baskets are full,” he said. “Let’s go unload them.”
He bent down to pick up his basket. And it was the last act of his life, because Gaetanino, convinced he had given him enough reasons to fulfill his obligation, opened his straight razor, grabbed Don Memè by the hair, yanked his head back, and slit his throat, at the same time taking a leap backwards to avoid getting spattered with blood. The field watcher was a master at handling the razor, even though he had never been a barber in his life. Then, with the tip of his boot, he turned the dead man belly-up and stuck a sheet of blank letterhead paper between his teeth. The letterhead read: ROYAL PREFECTURE OF MONTELUSA. That way, whoever wanted to understand would understand.
Chapter I
Others might have written a book of fantasy, a novel, about the events that occurred in Vigàta on the evening of December 10, 1874, when the Teatro Re d’Italia, just inaugurated, was destroyed by flames a few hours after the gala opening performance. Certainly a novelist would have found more than a few opportunities to stoke his lively imagination, since many points of the story appeared obscure from the start and, precisely because they were never clarified, left the field wide open to the wildest, most delirious sorts of speculation.
I, however, feel practically duty bound not to yield to the lures of the imagination, precisely because I myself, not quite ten years old at the time, was the first to sound the alarm in Montelusa, alerting my late father, a mining engineer who died some years ago, to the great fire. With an indomitable sense of altruism and generosity of intent, my good father gathered together some of his collaborators and raced to Vigàta with a device of his own conception and construction, designed to extinguish fires or at least to contain them. And I must declare, with filial pride, that his clever use of this machine spared the already stricken town of Vigàta even further destruction.
It is therefore my intention, some forty and more years after the event, to keep within the bounds of a straightforward testimony, and to organize the story in accordance with a reconstruction based solidly on the facts as they emerge from the documents of the investigation, letters, and testimonies.
I should begin by saying that at the time, Vigàta, at once a fishing and farming town, had a population of some seven thousand souls and was territorially part of the province of Montelusa, even though it was geographically much closer to another provincial capital, Girgenti. A chronicler of the time, Professor Baldassare Corallo, wrote:
With the gradual improvement of economic conditions, our town began to move towards the sort of civilized prosperity that characterized Italian life in general. Even the middle class aimed at raising the cultural level and began to welcome the premises of civilization enthusiastically.
One of these premises, apparently, was the construction of a theatre that would be not only a place of amusement, however lofty, but also an ideal meeting place, a sort of assembly hall where the community could gather from time to time either to hear the sublime creations of visiting artists or to debate matters specific to the town itself.
The proposal for the projected theatre, unanimously approved in a vote of the Muncipal Council on March 27, 1870, led, after private negotiations, to the signing of a contract with the firm Tempore Novo of Misilmesi. Almost immediately, insinuating and malicious rumors began to spread among the local population, saying that the head of this contracting firm, while never officially avowed, was none other than the Honorable Fiannaca, deputy of the Chamber, to whose same political party the mayor of Vigàta, the ragioniere Casimir Pulitanò, also belonged.
Nothing more slanderous and mendacious could have been imagined about Deputy Fiannaca, whose political career was a mirror of his unimpeachably upstanding comportment in all walks of life. He was elected with overwhelming public consensus to no less than two terms of legislative office and even filled, in the most dignified fashion, the position of Undersecretary to the Ministry of the Interior, which is saying a great deal.
An anarchist, one Federico Passerino, saw fit to publish a scurrilous, ignoble broadside against the Honorable Fiannaca, in which he asserted, among other things, a hypothetical alliance between the deputy and Mayor Pulitanò concerning the abovementioned contract. It should be immediately pointed out that Passerino, a man who serves no God, Country, or Family, who has no place or role in society and lacks the qualities that allow a man to participate in civilized humankind, was once personally and publicly saved by the Honorable Fiannaca when he was understandably assailed by a number of the politician’s supporters indignant at the multiple insinuations this despicable individual spewed at the hardworking deputy at every available opportunity. More to pacify the people’s spirits than for any desire for personal satisfaction, the deputy decided to take the high road of Justice, drafting a formal complaint against Passerino, supported by an abundance of evidence. And indeed the latter was found guilty of defamation by the Court of Montelusa. It should also be added, for the sake of historical thoroughness, that Passerino, his wife Margherita, and their young son Andrea, known as Nirìa, all met horrible deaths when a bomb the anarchist was assembling at his home exploded. On this occasion as well, a few malicious rumors claimed that in reality the bomb had been thrown through an open window into Passerino’s home. But I mention these rumors only out of concern for impartiality. In that family’s tragedy, most people recognized the hand of God.
The contractors, in any case, abided by the agreement, with, however, a few cost increases owing to the fall in the value of the lira, and the theatre was ready for inauguration a mere ten months after the completion date envisaged in the contract awarded.
Many and varied, and quite fantastical, were instead the rumors that swirled in the province over the opera chosen for the inauguration. At that time the province of Montelusa was governed by two outstanding representatives of the state. The first was His Excellency the Prefect, Cavalier Eugenio Bortuzzi, a Florentine; the second was the commissioner of police, Cavalier Everardo Colombo, a Milanese.
Upon first arriving on our island, Mr. Bortuzzi immediately took great care, as was his duty, to acquaint himself personally with the people and affairs of our province, which he would be called upon to govern righteously, as indeed he did. By the direct testimony of Carmelo Ferraguto, at that time the fifteen-year-old son of the late Emanuele Ferraguto—known familarly to all as u zu Memè, “Uncle Memè,” for the promptness with which he was always ready, whatever the circumstance, to meet the needs of his fellow locals, whatever they might be—I learned how His Excellency the Prefect was able to use Mr. Ferraguto’s father, whom he knew well, to acquire a most thorough knowledge of local matters, that he might have the most exhaustive possible picture of the conditions in which the province was living.
Unfortunately, Emanuele Ferraguto’s commendable work was cut short when he was barbarously murdered by unknown assassins for equally unknown reasons, as he was unsuspectingly setting about harvesting the
oranges in a small grove of his.
A man of deep culture and highly refined intellect (nor could he be otherwise, having been born in Florence, the supreme birthplace of Art), Prefect Bortuzzi felt an obligation to educate the people of Vigàta in matters of Art, indeed to accompany them, like a father, in their first steps towards the Sublime.
As a private citizen—and not as representative of the authority invested in him—Mr. Bortuzzi, during the course of a luncheon at the home of a friend, expressed to the Marchese Antonino Pio di Condò, president of the Administrative Council of the theatre, the humble opinion that an opera such as The Brewer of Preston, by Maestro Luigi Ricci, might well serve as the first of an ideal gradus ad Parnassum for the people of Vigàta. This idea—presented, I repeat, with the sole intent of avoiding a sense of dismay in a population certainly not yet ready to appreciate in full the beauty and depth of operas subtler in theme and more complex in composition—gave rise to a dangerous misunderstanding. A few members of the council saw—indeed chose to see—His Excellency’s gracious suggestion as an imposition of authority, something in fact quite foreign to the prefect’s moral character. As a result of the heated diatribes that ensued, the Marchese Antonino Pio di Condò found himself forced to turn in his resignation. And after troubled discussions and enflamed polemics, Commendator Massimo Però was elected in his place. However, upon the justified advice of one member of the council, Professor Amilcare Ragona (who had actually gone to Naples for the express purpose of seeing a performance of the opera in question), Commendator Però resubmitted The Brewer of Preston as the opera for the inauguration.
What to say, other than that at this point the resistence of one part of the council increased, the insinuations multiplied, and the most malicious of rumors began to circulate without any restraint whatsoever? So great indeed was the spate of slander that His Excellency Bortuzzi was forced, however reluctantly, to dissolve the Administrative Council and appoint an extraordinary commissar in the person of Sisinio Trincanato, a high functionary of the prefecture whose gift for impartiality was indisputable. And yet on this occasion, too, another wicked rumor spread, namely that Mr. Trincanato, being the brother-in-law of Mr. Emanuele Ferraguto, would never be able to avoid the combined pressures of the prefect and Ferraguto himself. Whereas, as could have been expected, Mr. Trincanato yet again gave proof of his absolute independence of judgment. Indeed, he did even more: before making his decision, he listened to the opinions of several members of the dissolved council and consulted eminent citizens of Vigàta, and only after having done so did he democratically draw his conclusions. And in this manner the definitive choice of The Brewer of Preston was made.
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