Beautiful Antonio (14 page)

“Holy Mother of God, what are you saying?”

“I'm telling you – let him leave them be! He knew my son was a man with some spunk to him!”

“Hush! That's the doorbell… Mother in heaven, help us!”

“Don't drive me round the bend, Sara. What are you scared of?”

“I don't know, but it's better if things like this don't happen.”

That very moment rang out a voice in the passage: “Kindly announce the notary!”

“Show him in, show him in at once,” Rosaria hastened to call. “What are you thinking of, leaving him in the corridor? Come in, come in. No standing on ceremony, dear Signor Puglisi. Consider yourself at home.”

Signor Alfio heaved himself out of his chair. “Have you brought the cigars?” he asked.

As if such a futile question was unworthy of an answer, the notary entered the study with set lips: black jacket, pinstriped trousers, black felt hat in hand. His face was the epitome of gravity, the hair of both head and chin were arranged as neatly as the numbers on a balance sheet, and firmly fixed in his two little eyes was the look with which he drove dying men to unseal their lips and speak for the very last time of the things of this world.

Signora Rosaria's smile melted away on the spot, and Signor Alfio himself hadn't the heart to repeat his question on the subject of cigars.

“Sara,” he growled. “Leave us alone for a while. Send us in a couple of decent coffees, put that picture of Sant' Agata back where you found it, and look sharp about it!”

Signora Rosaria lifted the dusty picture, dropped a jittery little curtsey, and scuttled off down the passage, bending her
head every two steps to kiss the glass protecting the sacred image.

“Now then,” said Signor Alfio, “what's the problem?”

The notary seated himself in an armchair, waited until his host had plonked himself down on the settee with the little pots, statuettes and dangly knick-knacks at its back; waited until these trinkets, shaken by the thud of Signor Alfio's body, had ceased to tinkle, and then, lowering his eyes and twisting his hat in his hands, said almost in a whisper. “The problem is that things are not going well between our two children.”

“My friend,” was Signor Alfio's instant reply, “to tell you the truth, I was intending to telephone you today on this very subject.”

“Indeed?” returned the notary, raising his eyes and planting, full in Signor Alfio's face, a look as stiff as a poker.

“Yes, because I too… recently, I mean… have got wind of… Well, you know how here in Catania nobody gives a damn if he's a cuckold, but he has an itch for where the grass grows greener… So I got wind that Barbara was upset…”

“That's not possible!” snapped the notary.

“What's not possible?”

“That my daughter has uttered a word on a matter of such delicacy. You know her upbringing, her character, her manner of comporting herself!”

“Come, come, sir! Nobody said they'd heard a single word about this from Barbara's lips. But this is the way we Catanians are… we read things in people's eyes. One gesture, one sigh, and people imagine they've cottoned on.”

“I would hate to think that your son has been talking!”

“Ah, now
you
are making a mistake, my dear sir. You don't understand Antonio, truly you don't. You don't realize what a treasure you have for a son-in-law.”

“I am the first to admire the good heart, the refinement and the intelligence of your son. But unfortunately, in married life, as you know better than I do, there are other things of major importance.”

“Oh come, important yes, but not as important as all that! We mustn't push 'em too hard otherwise we'll see 'em carried out feet first!… But the main thing, if you want my opinion, is that where their offspring are concerned parents have as much to do with such matters as Pontius Pilate with the Apostles' Creed!”

“What precisely are you trying to imply?”

“That parents have nothing to do with it and shouldn't meddle.”

“Only up to a certain point.”

“Only up to a certain point, of course. If matters were to become really serious, if they really overstepped the limits, then, I agree, a word from me, a word from you, and we'd be able to make Antonio realize that… in short…”

“My dear Signor Alfio, in cases such as this words are of very little use.”

“Now now, my dear Mr Notary. We are not brute beasts, we are Christians, baptized, confirmed Christians! If Barbara is suffering, Antonio will be the first to worry.”

“Barbara is suffering only morally speaking.”

“Can't see why she should be suffering morally speaking. It's no shame for a wife if her husband… well, in short… is a very ardent lover.”

There was a pause. The notary knitted his brow unhappily, without shifting his gaze from his host's eyes.

“What did you say?” he murmured at length.

“I said,” repeated Signor Alfio, rather irritably, “that there is no shame involved for a wife if her husband shows that he desires her more than is usual.”

“But that's not the problem at all!”

There followed another pause.

“What's that?” stammered Signor Alfio. “What's that you said?”

“I said, ‘That is not the problem at all.'”

“Then… what
is
the problem?”

“Ah, I was persuaded that you had some suspicion, but on
the contrary I now see that you are very far from divining how things stand between our children. I assure you that this will make it very difficult for me to explain myself, and very distressing.”

“Come, come, sir! Don't keep me on tenterhooks. What's the matter? Is my son ill or something?”

“I do not know whether one could say that he is ill, but… his condition…”

“Then what's wrong with him? What's wrong?” demanded Magnano senior, masking a shudder of fear with gruffness of manner. “What's wrong with him? The suspense is killing me! What's wrong?”

“Calm yourself, I beg of you! His health is in no way endangered.”

“Rosaria,” bellowed Signor Alfio. “Send me in a glass of water!”

“Calm yourself,” repeated the notary. “I assure you that Antonio is perfectly well. It's just that…”

Whereupon in came Signora Rosaria, delivering the glass of water with her own hands in the hope of reading, on the faces of her husband and his guest, a serenity that might allay her apprehensions. But what she saw was the notary's face clamped tight like a mechanism given an extra wrench with the spanner, and her husband's a blotchy yellow and red, with one wandering eye that seemed almost to dangle down like a loose button.

“Mother of God, what's the matter!” she burst out as soon as she saw him.

“Stop jabbering!” retorted her husband. “Stop jabbering, put the glass down on the table and get back to wherever you were.”

She hurried away, though not without turning on the two men, before closing the door, a face stricken with terror.

“Mr Notary, sir,” said Signor Alfio, when he had gulped some water and several times smacked a tongue clogged with
bile, “let us speak plainly, let us not beat about the bush. What has happened?”

“What has happened is that my daughter, after three years of marriage, is in exactly the same state as she was when she left my house.”

“What's that? Who?” burbled Signor Alfio; mildly enough, for he was completely baffled. For some little time he fixed upon the notary a pair of eyes that appeared as calm as they were drowsy, so entirely were his wits befuddled and adrift.

The notary sighed, realizing that his words, which he had taken great pains to render unequivocal, had not lured Signor Alfio one step nearer to the truth; and the two men sat there looking at each other, the one in distress, the other in perfect tranquillity.

Until suddenly came a flash in Signor Alfio's face, as if something had exploded in his brain and left its drastic reverberations in his eyes.

“No!” he cried, “what the devil are you saying? No! No!”

“I am very sorry, my dear friend, for my own sake and for yours, but matters stand exactly as I state them.”

“No, no, I'm not going to take
that
!” cried Signor Alfio with a bitter laugh. “Not for love nor money! Not for anything in the world! Not even if I saw it with my own eyes! No, no, I'm
not
going to take it!” He got to his feet to laugh the louder, but with the agonized expression of one staggering up to gasp for air. “Ha, ha, ha, how could you be so simple-minded as to be taken in by such poppycock? Who told it you?”

“Not my daughter, you may be sure! Left up to her things might have gone on this way until the two of them were both in the grave. Barbara went into marriage as innocent as a toddler in kindergarten. For three years she believed that her husband was behaving like every other husband in the world. You will excuse my saying so, but your son has taken advantage of the artlessness of his wife. Indeed, if you wish to know what I really think, Antonio has shown himself to be utterly irresponsible.”

“Hey now, sir, let's watch our words!”

“Utterly irresponsible, I say; because a young man does not get married when he knows his problem…”

“Problem, Mr Notary? What's the problem with my son? What's Antonio's problem, eh? Something that puts ants in your… Lord alive, help me to hold my tongue!”

“By all means do so. It is I who must speak: and I say that if Antonio has been irresponsible, then you have been doubly so, because a father ought not to encourage his son to marry when he is aware of the state of affairs.”

“What state of affairs, sir? My son's state of affairs is that he's pestered the life out of all the women in Catania, Rome and the rest of the universe! That's my son's state of affairs!”

There was a pause, during which the notary tugged his beard skywards and twisted it about a good deal.

“Listen to me, dear friend,” he said at length, in a voice as level as his face was pale, “we must not go on in this fashion. Otherwise all we shall achieve is to confuse the issue and never find a way out of the quandary. We are two unfortunate fathers struck by the same calamity. Do you imagine that it is not extremely distressing to me to place the most intimate affairs of my daughter, of my Barbara, on the lips of all and sundry? No, my dear Signor Alfio, this catastrophe has dug a grave beneath my feet, and though you may see me dry-eyed at this moment, when I am on my own I cry like a child.”

“But sir, my dear sir,” began Signor Alfio, and all of a sudden himself burst into tears, with a squeaky kind of a sob so faint and far away that the notary thought he was coughing.

“How
can
it be true, what you're telling me?” he continued brokenly, once the sobbing in his poor lungs had died down. “I know Antonio. He's played fast and loose with women. Why
now…
with his wife… with a girl like Barbara who would make the blind to see… Why? Answer me that!”

“I do not know why. But I assure you that the situation our children are in has become humiliating for both of them, and can continue no longer.”

“What do you advise me to do?”

The notary raised his palms in a disconsolate gesture, then lowered them again onto his knees.

“The most important thing,” Signor Alfio put in hastily, “is for us to act in such a way that this matter remains between the two of us, and that no one, I repeat no one, not even my wife or yours – not even Jesus Christ who hears us this minute! – knows anything about it whatsoever. You understand me, Mr Notary? Nothing whatever!”

The notary shook his head, raised his palms once more in a gesture wider and slower even than before, and held them poised. “How can it be done?” he sighed.

“What do you mean, sir, by ‘How can it be done?' This is scarcely like you! We can do it by sealing our lips and not blabbing to a soul!”

“And then?”

“Then… we'll see how things stand. I'll have a talk with Antonio, – it's only right I should talk to my own son… I know you for an upright man, but who can tell? You might have got the wrong end of the stick…”

The notary smiled an acidulous smile.

“Well anyway,” pursued Signor Alfio, “do you allow that I must first talk to Antonio?”

“By all means. Indeed, it is your duty to do so. You are honour-bound to defend the interests of your son, as I am those of my daughter.”

“But Mr Notary! The interests of my son and your daughter are identical!”

“They would be identical, I agree, if Antonio and Barbara really were man and wife; but as it is…”

“What d'you mean: ‘as it is'? Are you trying to tell me they weren't properly married?”

“You are well aware, dear Signor Alfio, that in circumstances such as these a marriage is as if it had never been. It is null and void.”

“And who says it's null and void? Why've you taken it into your head to say so just today?”

“It is not I who say it, but the Church.”

“Church? What Church? And when, may I ask, did it say so?”

“It has not yet said so. But it will.”

“Mr Puglisi, you are being about as clear as mud. Speak plainly, sir. What are you cooking up in that head of yours and keeping us all in the dark about?”

“Listen, Signor Alfio, if you're going to start taking on like that again I shall bid you farewell and be off.”

“Be off with you then, be off!” shrieked Signor Alfio, beside himself once more. “Go away and stay away!”

The notary had risen to his feet and was buttoning his over-coat, stiffening and drawing himself up to his full height, more austere, more curt, more beetle-browed than ever; but Signor Alfio was not impressed.

“And I'll have you know, Mr Notary, I don't believe a word of what you've told me! I shall speak to Antonio instanter, and learn the truth!”