Beautiful Antonio (26 page)

His whole frame suddenly slumped. He sat down again.

“Hmm,” he said, clicking his tongue and leaving long pauses between one exclamation and the next. “Hmmm… yes… unfortunate…” And after a deep sigh: “Well, what's to be done? These are things that can't be helped… On the other hand there
are
worse things in life: I'd almost forgotten my own ailments… It's quite true that when your mind's taken off them… My head's been spinning for an hour now, and I haven't given it a hoot… How I'd like to make a present to Notary Puglisi of the hound that's clamped its jaws on me – right here!” And he rapped his stomach. “Lord, it's half-past
seven already! Your parents'll be back any minute. What's to be done? What shall I tell them? The truth? Not on your life, I haven't the nerve… A lie then? Don't trust it… short-legged things, lies are, and wouldn't carry us very far… There always comes a moment when we have to open up and spit out the mouthful we're hiding in our cheek. Then again I don't feel up to telling your father… or your mother either… even less than him in fact… I know my sister too well: she seems as solid as a rock, but actually she's the fall-to-dust-if-you-touch-me type. Then again, have I got the brass to hide it from Alfio? Or try and act so that he doesn't… or leave him to understand that… or better, put a damper on the whole conversation… or better still, lead it onto another tack?…”

And with these
then agains, howevers, what's to be dones, or elses
and
or better stills
he carried on for half an hour, without noticing that at every word Antonio grew more wasted and wan, until it appeared that he must surely flicker out, like a candle which, as we talk and drink and wave our arms about, we inadvertently douse with water.

Signor Alfio and Signora Rosaria, preceded by the maid, reached home shortly before eight.

They found Ermenegildo in the dining-room, sitting lonesome at the table on which he had flung his stick and his panama hat.

Signor Alfio, quite done up by the effort of climbing the stairs after that long, anxious peregrination, apologized with a wave of the hand for not expressing himself in words and with another wave of the hand ordered the maid to leave the room, close the door and shut herself in the kitchen.

This time without her husband requiring it of her, Signora Rosaria retired, with the excuse of taking off her hat in front of her dressing-table mirror.

In the dining-room silence fell.

Seeing that man across the table, his cheeks sunken, bereft even of speech, Ermenegildo so raged against the iniquities of
destiny that he quite lost all tact and prudence, even towards the victim of that destiny.

“Alfio, my friend,” said he, “you'd do well to pull yourself together, turn over a new leaf, and not give another thought to that… what the devil's her name?… that Barbara.”

Signor Alfio made a long, intense effort to unglue his lips, with the sole result of further deepening the hollows in his cheeks; then he turned his hands, at rest on the table, palms uppermost, as if to say, “I never have thought about Barbara, I think only of my son.”

There was a conspicuous silence between the two men.

At a certain point a wheezy groan took root in Signor Alfio's belly, a distant, barely perceptible groan like a tummy-rumble. It rose into his chest and then, infinitely slowly and with prodigious difficulty, clambered in among his vocal chords, and at long, long last, breaking through the glutinous pastes of tongue and palate: “The truth!” he glugged.

“Well, the truth is that Antonio hasn't been too well recently.”

Signor Alfio sank his chin onto his chest, lowering his head to mask his contorted lips.

“I must know,” he murmured in a faint, hoarse voice, “whether Antonio did it on purpose or not.”

“He didn't do it on purpose, Alfio. D'you imagine he'd do anything so wishy-washy on purpose, and for three long years on end?”

“So what's the answer?”

“He was unable to do otherwise. He finds Barbara attractive, but with her… in the old you-know-what… he never manages to make the grade.”

The bitter droop of Signor Alfio's mouth increased, as he turned one corner of it down so very far that his nose had no option but to follow suit.

“Craziest thing I ever heard! A young man, when it comes to you-know-what, doesn't manage to make the grade, as you put it? And a young man like him, what's more, who's spent
more time on top of women than he has on his own mattress. Stuff and nonsense! So you're implying that even if he took it into his head – not from choice, mind you, but as a sort of slight, as a bet, or because he was required to do so by me or his mother – if he took it into his head, I repeat, to show that bitch there… what's her name? Barbara… to show her what a Magnano is capable of when he wants… you're saying that he, debilitated as he is, wouldn't have the spunk to do a thing?”

Ermenegildo bent his head and began stroking his chin and his cheek, each time leaving a furrow which was slow to return to its natural shape.

“But there's one thing he's got to do!” blurted out Signor Alfio. “This he must do, by God, or I'll cut him off with a shilling! He must take a mistress, two, three, four mistresses, and without delay! I'll sell the orange-grove, I'll sell this house, I'll sell the clothes off my back and give him all the money he needs, but he must take four mistresses!”

Ermenegildo continued to stroke his face, but with such force that the flesh of his right cheek moved round under his chin onto the left, and one eye seemed to slip half-way with it.

“Eh? Well? Don't you agree?” demanded Signor Alfio. “Isn't that the right answer? In that case what
do
we do? Fold our arms and do nothing? Stand there like so many Christs with mock sceptres for all and sundry to spit at? Become the sewers of the city? Let them shit in our mouths?”

“That's not what I'm saying,” murmured Ermenegildo.

“Then what
are
you saying? Come on, spit it out!”

“I'm saying it's better not to add fuel to the fire.”

“Why? What d'you mean? Add fuel to what fire, if my son takes four mistresses? After the dirty trick they've played on him, hasn't he the right to parade in an open carriage with an entire brothel on board? Who's he got to account to? Tell me that!”

“Alfio, do as you please,” replied Ermenegildo. “Give him
four mistresses, give him a hundred for all I care. But for my part I do not advise it.”

“Why not?”

“If I were in Antonio's shoes I'd leave Catania and go travelling somewhere… what the devil's it called?… ah yes, abroad.”

“Why?”

“For a year I should like not so much as to hear the name of Barbara, or Luisa, or of any other woman on the face of the globe!”

“Why not?”

“Alfio, I've got to say it…” For a long moment Ermene-gildo looked his brother-in-law straight in the eye, then: “And if what happened with Barbara should happen to him with some other woman, what would be our next move? We'd be tying a whatsit… hell and dammit, I can't find the right words either… a millstone, that's it! We'd be tying a millstone round our necks and then – join hands, all of us here in this house, and straight off with us to the far end of the jetty!”

Signor Alfio thereupon began brandishing a hand at his brother-in-law and stammering frantically. The word which refused to rise to his lips, and for which he felt an impelling need, was Ermenegildo's name.

“What the devil's your name?” he burst out.

“What, mine?” quavered Ermenegildo.

“Yes, yours. What is it?”

A brick whammed into Ermenegildo's brain: what with his haste to give the answer, the fear of having forgotten his own name, and the rage that all this was stirring up in him, he began babbling disconnected syllables, repeatedly coming close to the word Ermenegildo and fluffing it every time.

“Come on, what's your name?” bawled Signor Alfio.

“…” replied the other.

“What is it? Spit it out! You're even worse than I am!”

“…” replied the other again.

“You don't even know your own name!” Signor Alfio taunted him.

“Ermenegildo!” exploded the other at last, leaping from his chair quite beside himself and thrashing the table with his stick. “By God, this is getting a bit thick! Ermenegildo, Ermenegildo, Ermenegildo!”

“Ermenegildo,” demanded Signor Alfio, “what did you mean by what you said just now, that my son… that it might… what's the word?”

Ermenegildo made not the slightest effort to help him out, he simply remained mum.

“What's the word? What's the word?”

Ermenegildo kept his sulky lips hermetically sealed.

“…happen!” exploded Signor Alfio. “That what had happened to my son with his wife might happen with some other woman. What did you mean by that?”

“I meant that it's better not to tug too hard on the old rope,” replied Ermenegildo, picking his words and keeping an eye on where every phrase he hazarded was going to land him, for fear of falling into another lapse of memory, “especially when the rope isn't as hefty as it might be.”

“Not as hefty as it might be…” repeated Signor Alfio. “And what d'you mean by that now? Not as… as it might be…”

“I mean that Antonio ought to rest up for a year or two.”

Signor Alfio drew a large handkerchief from his trousers pocket, half unfolded it and held it in front of his mouth, in the manner of one about to spit out something disgusting.

“Oh, the disgrace of it!” he murmured.

He then carefully refolded the handkerchief, first into four and then into eight, and pocketed it again.

“For a year or two, you say. But don't you realize I'm so old they'll soon be able to scoop me up with a spoon. Have I really got to spend the last years of my life knowing that neither I nor my son have what it takes to go to bed with a woman? Or rather, that he doesn't, my son doesn't, by God,
when at his age he ought to be able to lift rocks without using his hands!… Lift rocks, I say!”

“And so he will,” said Ermenegildo in conciliatory tones. “When he's rested for a year or two he'll lift rocks without… what did you say?”

“I said what I said,” muttered Signor Alfio in frenzy. “Anyway, what are you on about?” he resumed out loud. “After a year or two, eh? What's he going to do after a year or two? The older you get the more uphill it is. Do at forty what you can't do at thirty-six? Ermenegildo, what are you trying to kid me into? Get along with you, we must resign ourselves and say no more about it. It just means I no longer have a man for a son. He died, my son did. I had a son, but he died.”

Not a sob had escaped Signor Alfio, nor apparently had his eyes shed tears, and yet his old cheeks were streaming and shining with them, and some ran down onto his collar like drops of sweat.

“He died, my son, he died. I had one, but he died.”

The old man slapped a hand down on the table. Then, leaning on it, he made to rise. But he realized that his legs had turned to jelly inside his trousers. So he sat down again.

“A year or two, you say… But come off it, for goodness' sake, we're not here to tell each other fairy stories. It's no use crying over spilt milk. Until just now I had a man for a son, a son in Rome who was the apple of my eye, and I kept him on a pedestal, and everyone envied me, and that woman whatsit… what
was
her name? Ermenegildo, help me!”

“Who?” queried his brother-in-law, raising his brow from the palm of his hand.

“The wife of that feller who felt he'd been made a fool of.”

“Yes, yes, I know who you mean,” replied Ermenegildo, reassailed by the cold sweat of amnesia: “ca… ca… Oh holy mackerel!”

“Relative of Mussolini's.”

“That feller, yes I know… hell and dammit!”

“All right, let it go. You know who I mean. That feller's wife…”

“Countess K!” burst out Ermenegildo with profound relief.

“That's her – Countess K! She tore her fingernails out on his door, and he didn't open up because…”

Ermenegildo gave Signor Alfio a look.

The latter stopped, jerked his head back, stared his brother-in-law straight in the eye. A black cloud plummeted into his brain.

“Because…” he attempted to continue, but “Oh my God!” he murmured, without having formed a thought or made any supposition whatever, but already half-dead of fright as if the suspicion of the truth had filtered unobserved through his consciousness and seeped into his bones.

“Ermenegildo,” he said, as faintness swept over him, “call my wife at once! Hurry, hurry!”

Ermenegildo shot out of his chair and rushed to the door to shout his sister's name, but having gasped like a fish once or twice and realized that his memory had snapped shut on him again, and that the more he tried to clear it the more fiercely it clung to the word he wanted to wrest from it, he closed the door behind him, scurried down the corridor into the bedroom, seized Signora Rosaria by the hand and said, “Quick, he needs you!”

“Who?” she asked, thoroughly scared.

He was about to answer “Alfio”, but fearing that the name would get lost in the brief journey from his brain to his lips he prudently confined himself to saying, “Your husband.”

T
HE NOISE OF THIS SCANDAL
was heard all over Catania like an eruption of Mount Etna.

Antonio Magnano, son of Alfio, nephew of Ermenegildo, the beauteous youth who made even the devoutest of girls raise her eyes from her missal, Antonio with that perpetually sleepy look in his eyes (ah, who did not know him? They would raise a hand above their heads to indicate how tall he was, or pass their fingers caressingly over their cheeks to imply that his face was perfection itself), yes, that very Antonio, exactly that Antonio and no other, well – between him and his wife… nothing happened! Absolutely
nothing!
Barbara Puglisi, after three years of marriage, had still not tasted the greatest gift of God.