Beautiful Antonio (10 page)

Two days later a long procession followed the baron to the cemetery. Antonio and his bride-to-be were for the first time seen together, at the head of a funeral procession and followed
by a host of relatives buttoned tightly into suits and overcoats, with hats, stockings and shoes all as black as ink; in their wake, two straggling rows of orphans from the “Sacred Heart” with mouths agape in the execution of the
Miserere
and eyes darting curious glances at the shop-windows, at the balconies; then by a retinue of carriages laden with wreaths which the wind fluttered with a sound much resembling a patter of rain; and bringing up the rear a crowd of friends and acquaintances chatting about their own affairs, who now and again in twos or in threes sidled off into a side-street or found refuge in a café.

All this because the dead man, by the simple fact of being a nonagenarian, exempted even the most dyed-in-the-wool hypocrites from wearing long faces or coming over all sentimental, leaving them free to beam at Antonio and his bride-to-be, and the young girls to focus their binoculars on the head of the bridegroom, on his right arm with Barbara's ring-laden hand slipped through it, and on a corner of the pall-covered coffin which willing hands were hefting along shoulder-high.

Antonio was conscious of the touch at his back of his mother and father's hands pretending to straighten his coat-collar as an excuse to give him a bit of a fondle. His mother, clasping the left hand hanging loosely at his side, pressed it firmly upon the hand of Barbara. But then, discovering that she had thereby concealed his fianceée's battery of rings, she hurriedly plucked it away, and blushed as if she had committed a gaffe. From time to time he heard voices speaking into his ear from over his shoulder, uttering tender whispers, such as “Put on your hat!… Don't catch cold now!… Silly of you not to bring your topcoat!… Now don't go staring around at the balconies, remember you're ENGAGED!… I think the Prefect gave you a smile just then: smile back for goodness' sake!… And, why ever is the mayor not among us today?”

Brusquely the notary thrust his way forward between Antonio's parents and stationed himself at the young man's side.

“I want you to write to Count K!” he hissed in an undertone.
“The mayor must have a really guilty conscience where I'm concerned, since he didn't have the face to show up!”

“I'll write tomorrow, papa. But please don't run away with the idea that I'm…”

Signor Alfio, eavesdropping behind the backs of the pair, here gave Antonio a pinch on the bum that shut him up at once.

“This son of yours,” he proceeded in a mutter to his wife, “is his own worst enemy. If I hadn't been right on his heels he'd have gone and told the notary that he scarcely knows the minister.”

“He's just modest,” murmured the good lady.

“He's a cretin!” declared the father, waving his arms so wrathfully that he dropped his hat.

“Do behave yourself. Every eye is upon us,” said the signora, halting beside him as he bent to pick it up. Fatal hesitation! A phalanx of Puglisi females overtook them and, stiff and wooden as a rank of Madonnas in procession, formed a palisade between parents and son.

“Maybe you had better write to him this very day,” continued the notary, clinging to Antonio's side. “We'll send an express registered letter, and I shall post it with my own hands at the railway station. You know his home address, of course?”

“I know where he lives because he's asked me to lunch a couple of times.”

“What!” exclaimed the notary, taken aback. “Did you not dine with him practically every evening?”

“Well, no…”

“Ah, then I imagine he came to your place?…”

“We met in various places,” said Antonio, to put an end to this discussion. And he took a deep breath.

The cortège had halted in a small piazza near Porta Garibaldi, where an orator was already to be seen erect upon the church steps in the act of hauling a hanky from his pocket to dab his lips with. The costermongers flogging prickly-pears trundled away their barrows heaped with empty husks, hefting them in
close against the walls to make room for the mourners irrupting among them. A tram came to a halt, crammed with passengers thronging the railings of the platforms and bulging with parcels, shopping-baskets and suckling infants.

“Who is the speaker?” enquired Antonio of his father-in-law.

“Avvocato Bonaccorsi, a friend of my father's.”

“Why 'ave the old baron seen off by an anti-Fascist?” came an unknown voice.

“Because he's the number-one lawyer in Catania, and a gentleman who has never given the least bother to any living soul!” was the notary's spirited reply.

“'e wos a Socialist!” was the voice's comeback.

“He was… he was… We were all… Dammit, you have to look at what a man
is
, not what he
was
!”

“Twenty years it is, since the baron of Paternò decided to take leave of his friends…” began the orator meanwhile.

“I'm surprised,” went on the other voice, “to 'ear a Socialist pronouncing the word ‘baron' with such respect!”

“You're never satisfied with anything!” retorted the notary sharply, suddenly aware that the person he was talking to was a skinny eighteen-year-old, the son of a tenant of his, a tenant who some day or other would find his belongings out in the street, for non-payment of rent.

“Just see what's come of it!” continued the petulant voice. “Down there, look, near the tram.”

At the spot indicated by the young man, they observed the Prefect cramming his otter-skin hat violently onto his head, turning his back and stalking away, followed by five or six other persons.

“This is very vexing!” exclaimed the notary, “very vexing indeed… Antonio, what do you advise me to do?”

“Nothing,” said Antonio.

“Do you not think we may suffer some unpleasant consequences?”

“We have sunk very low,” said Antonio, “but not to the
point of having anything to fear from a paltry pen-pusher in Catania, when we have friends in Rome.”

This because at that particular moment he was undergoing one of those sudden bouts of euphoria to which he had been subject since becoming engaged to Barbara.

“Oh, heavens!” he thought. “If I'd wanted… How silly to be afraid of…”

Then and there all his recollections of Rome, in his memory as frigid and stiff as geometrical figures on a blackboard, were flooded with light, with colour, even with pungent odours, ranging from that of the dried fruits which in December pervades the alleyways around the Trevi fountain, to the sharp stench of the foxes in the zoo.

“Why,” he asked himself, “does Barbara's hand resting on my arm affect me so much every time it draws free of the grip of my left hand? It makes my blood hammer in my temples… And when she blushes, if I am not mistaken, the odour of her skin is enhanced…”

Attended by this happiness he reviewed his years in Rome. Now, he could aim defiant looks straight in the faces of those before whom he had previously lowered his eyes; and he was mentally in the act of perpetrating a highly brutal act upon the person of the Countess K, when he realized that the orator, his voice hoarse, his beard streaming with tears, was bidding the last adieux to the coffin already mounted on the hearse. The cortège dispersed. Barbara was packed off home as were the in-laws, while the notary and Antonio climbed into an open carriage to accompany the baron all the way to the cemetery.

Need we say that in the course of this journey, while the walls of the cemetery of Acquicella came looming above the black plumes of the pair of horses, Antonio was the happiest of all Sicilians under thirty years of age. From time to time he cast a glance at the austere notary seated beside him, and thinking that that austerity, translated into shyness, chastity and innocence, bestowed upon the beauty of Barbara the warmth
of an August sun, stimulating as it was to all the wonderful happy-go-luckiness and derring-do which drift through the dreameries of an afternoon nap, he gave thanks to God for creating not only blackguards but men of honour, and not only your wives of Count Ks and your Luisa Drehers, but the daughters of notaries. Had his father-in-law not been a man most respectful of legality, and above politics, Antonio would instantly, out of gratitude, have embraced the notary's political party, so greatly did opinions, solemn oaths, and the motives for which one either went to gaol or was licensed to rob and steal with impunity, seem unimportant compared to a certain feeling firmly implanted in his heart.

The old baron descended into the family vault beneath the eyes, sparkling with happiness, of this handsomest of “grandchildren” who never once, as the coffin vanished into the dark chamber, gave a thought to the fact that there was a man in that box.

The notary gave the custodian a ticking-off about the messy state of the cemetery: “The paths are awash with tangerine-peel and wrapping paper. I'll have you know, friend, that every month we pay a king's ransom, and have a right to insist that our dead are properly cared for!”

This said, he looked around as if hoping for a nod of approval from those faded faces gazing forth from the head-stones on every side, pictured on porcelain, set in marble.

“Let's get on home,” he added, addressing himself to Antonio. “Barbara will be on the lookout at the window for you!”

And they climbed back into the carriage.

Reaching Piazza Stesicoro, Antonio immediately raised his eyes to the windows of the Puglisi residence, but saw no face there; indeed, all was shuttered tight.

“What a scatterbrain I am!” said the notary. “I clean forgot that we're in mourning.”

The street door was ajar, heavy with black ribbons and notices bordered with dense black, still damp, with black
crosses in the middle and inscriptions such as: TO MY FATHER, TO MY FATHER-IN-LAW, TO MY BELOVED GRANDFATHER.

Black-clad was the porter, and even the visitors hovering in the dim carriage-entrance were deep in mourning.

“Looks like I'm going to have to wear black along with the rest,” Antonio ruminated as he climbed the stairs.

“I regret,” said the notary, climbing at his side, “that your joy has been impaired by this misfortune. But they say it brings good luck. I can scarcely wait to throw open the windows again and let in some fresh air… This afternoon we must write that letter to the minister.”

Antonio got down to it and wrote the much solicited letter. The notary had it typed out in duplicate and read it over a hundred times, each time disgruntled by the fact that Antonio did not address the minister familiarly as
tu
. The letter, express registered, was duly posted at the station.

“Will I get an answer?” muttered the notary again and again until Barbara got huffy and came out with a simple, yet stern, “Daddy!”

A week later the minister replied, announcing that the mayor, “for this and for other far more serious reasons”, would be sacked and replaced.

Our good notary was beside himself with joy and, conquering his natural caution, took his good tidings off to the Law-courts.

“Very strange,” scowled the Prefect, “I have not been informed of this. Am I to believe that the minister communicates his decisions to private citizens?… In saying this I do not wish to cast aspersions on your son-in-law, whom I know to have excellent connections in the Capital. But after all
I
am the person who represents His Excellency and enjoys the honour of carrying out his orders… No, my dear sir, I doubt very much that the decree to dismiss the mayor has as yet been signed… It may, perhaps, be something the minister has in mind, that might be put into effect in the more or less
foreseeable future… but as things stand today… To put it mildly, I have my doubts.”

Our notary blushed.

“What if this were the case?” he thought to himself. “How utterly imprudent of me to count my chickens before they're hatched. I've never done anything so silly before in my life! If he's right, I'll shut up shop and move to another town. It's my own fault for getting into cahoots with young people. Go to bed with a babe and you wake up in wet sheets!”

However, it came about that three days later the Prefect received a telephone call from the minister, and after the following aside (“What's up in Catania? What are the police
doing
at night? I have been informed that in a urinal in Via Pacini someone has written a rhymed couplet about me that's now going the rounds of the whole of Italy, and those nitwitted egg-heads in the Caffè Aragno are already bandying it back and forth!”), he received the news that the mayor of Catania could start packing his bags.

This information spread like wildfire the length and breadth of the city, and procured for Antonio respectful salutations from people he didn't know from Adam. As he walked along the street the word whispered behind his back was “potent…”

“He's a potent youngster,” everyone repeated. “Count K would give his right arm to be in his shoes!”

The one time this chit-chat came distinctly to Antonio's ears, he flew into a rage, drew himself up before the old gentleman who had uttered it, and stared him squarely in the face. The old man blanched and shook like an aspen.

“I only said that you were a potent youngster!” he stammered. “D'you call that an insult? I'm a friend of your father's. In fact it was Signor Alfio who told me…”

Antonio turned on his heel and left him standing. But from that day onward he began to check up on his father and was rewarded, through a half-open doorway, with the following peroration: “He's inherited it from me and his grandfather! Old boy, I tell you with us Magnanos women go weak at the
knees if we touch them with a fingertip… I know nothing about my son's relations with the
contessa
: but I do know that when a woman has been with him, she goes licking her lips for the rest of her life.”