Beautiful Antonio (31 page)

These letters, which would have sent any other man into ecstasies, rather than calming Antonio exasperated him to the Nth degree, as clumsy caresses can be unintentionally offensive and painful. In his state of irritation, which increased from day to day, he fancied that he provoked in women an abnormal voluptuousness, something unnatural and slightly monstrous: the so-called entirely spiritual love in which, in his opinion,
devotion and naïveté masked a ferocious male aggressive streak. Women behaved towards him as men behave towards women: they thought they had a right to address him, to write to him, to sugar the pill for him, to conceal the truth from him with crafty euphemisms, to act so as to allay his fears and finally to persuade him to place himself confidently in their hands. Were these not the very means employed by the most consummate Don Juanism? He had become the quarry of pure hearts, of noble spirits, of creatures superficially weak and feeble, but in reality hair-raising. He sensed their voracity, which had nothing in common with spirituality except that it was infinite, irrepressible, uncontrollable and insatiable, he sensed it hungering for him from windows high and low, from tiny chinks hardly above ground level, from eyes with half their attention on books of prayer or still moist with starry skies long dwelt upon; he felt an intolerable molestation all over his skin, assaulted as it was at every turn by the thoughts of unknown women, thoughts that made his cheeks burn for shame.

Gradually, as the existence of a devoted heart was revealed in this street or that, he altered the route of his perambulations, and on reaching home immediately cast a glance full of revulsion at the desk where a strewing of letters unfailingly loomed white against the dark surface. Thus it was that so many transports, so many deep and delicate stirrings of ardour and benevolence and devotion, were rewarded with anger and aversion. Never were girls so modest and enamoured so heartily detested.

In the meantime Antonio's calamity came to a climax.

The legal proceedings, referred by the diocesan court to the
Sacra Rota
in the Vatican, and at which the Magnanos (terrified at the idea of having to discuss such a subject) raised no objection and did not even have a representative, had been concluded in June 1939 with the annulment of the marriage.

Antonio had learnt that in society Barbara was publicly and persistently addressed as
signorina
. One day, as he was crossing
Viale Regina Margherita from the south side to the north, in order to give a wide berth to Miss Semi-Basement, he saw about a hundred men at work on the façade and roof of Palazzo Di Bronte; and as he was staring in alarm at the doyen of these workmen, tied head downwards to a pole with his feet in the air, and labouring away to cover the happiness of Barbara and her future husband with a loftier roof, Antonio suffered a violent attack of dizziness, accompanied by a roaring in the ears. He had to go home in a hackney cab. Next day he learnt that the wedding of the duke was to be celebrated in a fortnight's time.

“Good Lord, so soon?”

“Yes, a fortnight!”

Thanks to powerful relatives in the Party and the government, the Di Bronte princes and dukes obtained anything they wanted in the briefest possible space of time, with a prod here and a prod there, in places high and low, administering a shock to every rung on the ladder of bureaucracy, since the billows of their power, deafening in Rome, were with the last of their infinite ripples able to winkle out and waken the sleepiest and most benumbed of bureaucrats at the end of the darkest corridor in the most dilapidated and worm-eaten office in any one-horse town. Documents which, for others, crept at a snail's pace from one desk to another, for them simply darted from archbishop's palace to law court, from law court to ministry, from ministry back to parish office.

The Duca Di Bronte (of whom we have not reported that his name was Nené), overcome by what had happened as by heart flutter – a flutter very grave in his case, since the gay and beautiful things of life were not balanced out by exertions or worries – put on so much weight that his neck disappeared: and what was seen passing down the street, bearing his name and being the recipient of deep bows and a host of smiles, was a remarkable contraption of human flesh composed of two bundles alternately distorted, now the upper one towards the right and the lower one towards the left, then the upper one
towards the left and the lower one towards the right. But who dared to judge that man solely by his physical appearance? Behind him, in everyone's eyes, there lay always the majestic background of his vast properties which a horse at full gallop could not traverse between sunset and sunrise; and if he himself was ridiculous, solemn and severe were the mountains within the perimeter of his estates, so exclusively his property as to be untouchable even by the birds, at whom wrathful field-watchers loosed off guns and the dogs chased at breakneck speed up the crags, giving tongue the while: and if he himself was no beauty, most beauteous were his orchards of shining dark-leaved lemons and his wheatfields ruddy with poppies.

He was certainly no genius, and perhaps not even remotely intelligent, but how can you tell a man he hasn't got a brain in his head when he can come back at you with the lowing and the barking and the bleating and the neighing of the thousands of head of livestock he owns: beasts feeding on the grass in his meadows or dying in the slaughterhouse for his sake; or at the mere sight of him cringing beside their dog-kennels, though a moment ago they tried to snap their chains to assault some dust-covered trudger-by?

At the same time he was a sweet-natured man, devoted to St Antony of Padua: a man who on New Year's Eve would kneel among the elegant throng in the midst of the collegiate church and, after a long spell with his brow resting on his hands, would raise towards the altar two cheeks streaked with tears. He gave handsomely to charity, both in secret and in public, he supported orphanages, hospitals, football teams, fencing-schools, parish churches, the local Party and the beggars' almshouses; during the summer months he provided accommodation for officers' wives in one of his country houses, he built mountain refuges, gave gold to the motherland, railings to make guns out of, sheets to the Red Cross hospitals, gift parcels to the municipal police, flags to submarines and scholarships to grammar-schools. He was prepared to help anything just so long as it was favourably viewed
by the government, it being inconceivable to him that any single person, with a single head to think with, could disapprove of things sanctioned by the Ministers, the Prefects, the Chiefs of Staff of the Armed Forces, the Presiding Judges, the Top Brass of the Carabinieri, the King, the Cardinals, the Bishops, and all those who have no need to run into debt to keep themselves and their families. In addition to this he was a modest, courteous man, whose wide-eyed look expressed constant wonderment, so that anyone who conversed with him received the pleasing impression of interesting him exceedingly much. “Ah, is that so?” said the duke every other moment. “Ah, is that really so?” In a word, one had to take one's own poverty and hardship altogether too seriously, to set about hating so mild-mannered a man.

The duke's wedding to Barbara was attended by the flower of the nobility of Catania, Palermo and Messina; also by a number of Roman princes, a Florentine marquis, and a Spanish baron on a visit to Taormina. The Di Bronte palazzo – to which those hundred workmen had added a turret – looked like a ship against which beat unceasing waves of Fascist uniforms (both the black and the white), of military full-dress tunics of every hue, silken dresses and flowers in bouquets in
pot-pourris
in bundles in bunches in sheaves… The balconies and verandas were crammed with people, glass in hand; the piazza below and all the side-streets resounded with motor-horns and klaxons, the clatter of hoofs, the shouts and insults of coachmen and chauffeurs, some of whom were thumping on their doors to drive away the inquisitive. The humble crowd thronged round the gates, their penurious, envious faces reflecting back the light of all that gaiety and opulence, and mirroring on embittered lips those myriad smiles. At sunset the crowd grew denser, it having been announced that the duke and his bride would shortly make an appearance before departing on their honeymoon.

Taking advantage of the rout and the semi-darkness, his shoulders planted against the trunk of an oleander, pressed
upon in front and on both sides by women young and old who constantly turned towards him as if seeking approval for their smiles, approval which they naturally did not obtain, or managed to elicit in a form very weak and soured, Antonio Magnano watched with wild eyes which that day seemed created rather to express terror than to see with.

At twilight, when the street-lights are still unlit, and wings which have carried swallows to their nests attach themselves to mouse-like forms and raise the squalid bat from its cavern (bats fly, but their fate denies them song, and abashed by their squeaky voices they flutter to and fro in ignoble silence, climbing irefully into those levels of the heavens where the swallow has left off its twitter and the lark its trill), at twilight, I say, the great doorway of the palazzo lit up, the garden flanking it blossomed with tiny lights of every hue, and the bride and bridegroom appeared at the top of the steps.

The city was in darkness – only that garden was aglow. Antonio had a clear view of Barbara's face in a glitter from a tree teeming with lights, he saw her hand pass over her ear to smooth the surge of black hair at temple and nape of neck, he saw the impression of her knees beneath the silken dress, and finally, when she stepped down the topmost step, he saw her foot, as white as if bare, encased in a dainty black evening shoe. His excited eye aroused the other senses, and he again inhaled the odour of her powdered skin and that freshness he always noticed on his cheek the instant before it brushed hers, he heard her voice slowly enunciate the name
Antonio!
, while from his outstretched hand he felt hers disentwine, the knuckles snagging one by one, the catching of the rings, the fingernails… Barbara was on his breast, his mouth, his eyes, but at the base of his body, at the point which by this time he thought of as “down there”, this many a year the kingdom of ice and death – there ice and death reigned ever undisturbed.

In the meantime Barbara and the corpulent Nené climbed into the motor-car. A gaga aunt appeared at a window clutching a hand-warmer long gone cold, and at a tiny window high
up appeared the mad uncle, who stuck out his tongue and was immediately jerked back out of sight by a striped-jacketed manservant. In attendance at the car door were the bridegroom's elder brother, Prince Sarino, and the wife who had failed to give him an heir, and yet invariably wore the expression peculiar to pregnant women suffering from morning sickness. Down in the crowd index fingers poked between other people's heads to point out the firstborn of that ancient family. But it was when the municipal police in full-dress drew up on either side of the gateway, and down the steps paraded the new mayor of Catania, the Prefect, the Police Chief, Party Secretary Capáno, Deputy Secretary-General Lorenzo Calderara, and lastly the Archbishop (who turned back in a fluster waving his hands about because he had lost his skull-cap on the way downstairs), that an old man's voice was heard to bellow:

“Body-snatchers, blood-burglars, thievish infidels, you've bought up justice and religion with your cheesy stinking money! Yes, because you found another mob of delinquents tarred with the same brush, that ravening gilded-eagle lot, out to gobble up this stricken country to the last crumb, if the Lord God doesn't get a move on and exterminate them like vermin! You've all ganged up and rigged this situation to suit yourselves, you soulless bunch of cynics, you pisspots you! But we'll have the last laugh yet! We're going to hawk up and spit freedom in your faces, by God! The time will come, for honest folks! So what I say now is
Down with the king!
I say,
Down with the…!”

At this juncture a hand clapped over Signor Alfio's mouth, impeding further speech.

“Don Alfio,” whispered his captor into his ear, “do you realize that if I didn't still remember your kindness to my father, remember you paid good money for him to go to Salsomaggiore for his health, I'd have to take you in double quick, and you'd be lucky to get away with banishment?”

“I don't care,” spluttered Signor Alfio through the rozzer's
hand, which smelt of tangerines into the bargain. “I'm ready and willing to go into banishment.
Down with the
…”

But the rozzer tightened his grip and stifled the Name on Signor Alfio's lips.

“You'd better come quietly,” he said. “Get moving…”

“Let's get moving by all means. Let's waste no time. That way I'll be able to give your Chief a piece of my mind!”

“Come along quietly now,
if
you please.”

The Force pushed Magnano senior ahead of him out of the thick of it, hoisted him into a cab and clambered up after him.

Antonio recognized his father only when he saw the crowd make way for the cab as it turned into the avenue. He started to give chase, but after a stride or two he lost sight of it among the palm-trees, refreshment kiosks, and black-clad pedestrians of Via Etnea.

The rozzer luckily did no more than take the old man home. There, having kissed Magnano's hands, much moved because in the circumstances he felt that “the sainted spirit of his father” must be showering its blessing on him, he advised the old man both calm and caution, then sped off down the stairs without accepting so much as a glass of wine.

“Swear to me on the heads of your ancestors,” he begged from the doorway, “and by the love you bear your wife and son, that you'll never allow That Name to escape your lips!”

But the wrath of old Magnano had by now taken a political turn.

“They'll start a war and they'll lose it! Sure as God is my witness they'll lose it!” he announced sententiously in the living-room to Signora Rosaria who, seated in her usual chair with her mending in her lap, looked at him and shook her head as if to say, “So that's what we're reduced to is it? – it's subversion now!”