Hunting Season: A Novel (3 page)

“He’s thought everything out very carefully,” said Fede the surveyor. “On the ground floor there’s the pharmacy, behind which there’s a great big room full of counters with glass gizmos on them. There are also two big jugs full of water and a little oven for drying plants. There’s also a door in this back room which gives onto the street, so that if the pharmacist wants to come and go when the shop is closed, he doesn’t have to open the front door; and there’s a broad wooden staircase that leads to the apartment upstairs, where there’s a living and dining room, a bedroom, a kitchen, and a commode.”

“What is the bed like?”

“Small.”

“A sign he doesn’t want to settle down,” said Signor Colajanni, who had two marriageable daughters.

“You’re telling us things that anyone can see with his own eyes,” Barone Uccello cut in, “but you still can’t tell us who Santo Alfonso de’ Liguori is or why he got it in his head to set up a pharmacy in Vigàta.”

“That is the question,” the surveyor said pensively.

“Tomorrow afternoon they’re going to open a pharmacy in town,” Mimì said as he was carrying his master, chair and all, from the palazzo to the Circolo. He often told him of the goings-on about town, such as: “Pippineddu the mason fell from a ladder and broke his leg,” or “Signora Balistreri gave birth to a baby daughter,” and he would say these things just to amuse him and help the time pass, knowing he would never reply. But as he was covering him with the blanket, since it was late February and frosty, the old man made as if to speak.

“No,” he said with such effort that he began to sweat, despite the cold. “No, Mimì. Tomorrow hunting season opens.”

“What are you saying, sir? It’s a pharmacy that’s opening, and the pharmacist is that gentleman stranger who greets you every time he passes by.”

“No, Mimì, tomorrow hunting season opens. And I don’t want to get shot.”

“But what are you afraid of, sir? What, are you a quail or something?”

Mimì was dumbfounded. The marchese had not spoken so much in years.

The old man bobbed his head forward, as if to say yes.

“But I
am
a quail, Mimì; it is just as you say.”

He took a long, deep breath, exhausted from all the words he was saying.

“And remember one thing, Mimì. I don’t want to get shot. I would sooner kill myself.”

Mimì paid no mind. His master had not been quite right in the head for some time.

“Shall I go get a basin, warm up some water, and wash your hands in it?”

By way of reply, the old man’s terrified scream shook the windowpanes on the door of the Circolo.

The bomb went off half an hour after the pharmacy was inaugurated.

“Something’s not right,” said Fede the surveyor, coming in out of breath.

“Not a bloody thing’s right for me,” said Barone Uccello, who was losing game after game.

“The pharmacist hired Fillicò, the carriage painter, to make his sign. Fillicò made it picture-perfect and just now hung it over the door. You know what it says?”

“‘Pharmacy,’” said Lieutenant Baldovino.

“Right, but just below, instead of the proprietor’s name, Santo Alfonso de’ Liguori, there’s a different name: Alfonso La Matina.”

“Pharmacy, Alfonso La Matina,” the lieutenant summarized.

“But if his name is Alfonso La Matina, why did he say it was Santo Alfonso de’ Liguori?” asked Barone Uccello, asking the question that was in everybody’s mind.

“
Madonna biniditta!
” the Marchese Peluso exclaimed, lost in thought. “
Madonna biniditta!
” he repeated, unaware he was using the same expression his father had used upon seeing the stranger. He shot to his feet, grabbed his coat and hat, and ran out of the club.

He returned half an hour later, appearing at once pleased and unconvinced.

“I talked to him,” he said. “You know who he is? He’s Fofò, Santo La Matina’s son. Do you remember Santo?”

“Of course I remember him,” said Barone Uccello after a moment’s pause. “He was that farmhand of your father’s, who had a magic garden in a secret place.”

“That’s the one,” said the marchese.

“A magic garden?” said Lieutenant Baldovino, skeptical.

“Oh yes, lieutenant, and it was magic indeed,” the marchese explained. “I saw it myself. A little patch of earth with all of God’s bounty in it. And, as a matter of fact, those vegetables, herbs, and fruits could cure anything.”

“Are you pulling my leg?”

“No. And if you don’t believe me, you can ask anyone who still remembers it, like Barone Uccello, here present. Then, one day some twenty years ago, Santo and his son Fofò disappeared. Or rather, Fofò alone disappeared; he was about ten years old at the time. Santo was found a foot underground with his throat slashed. His killers had burned down his garden and scattered salt over it.”

“Were the culprits ever found?”

“Never. And that is precisely why Fofò La Matina, when he came here to open his pharmacy, used a different name. He was afraid that some of his father’s killers might still be in town.”

“And how does he know now they’re not still around?”

“Because, aside from buying a house, he talked to Bastiano Taormina. And Bastiano told him everything he needed to know. But the pharmacist didn’t tell me what Bastiano said. He only told me how that night, four masked men came for them and wanted to kill him, too. But Fofò hid behind a big shrub with the sack of money his father had managed to hand him right before the killers entered the house. When the masked men left, Fofò escaped, taking eight days to get to Palermo, where he went to a cousin of his father’s who was a priest and recognized him. You can imagine the rest. But I can tell you one thing: if Fofò has a quarter of his father’s talent, that pharmacy is going to make him rich.”

The latest bit of news concerning the pharmacist was a strictly private matter, which, nevertheless, as always happened in Vigàta, immediately became public. To wit: Signora Clelia had not been able to stomach something that happened on her way home from Palermo on the
Franceschiello
. At a certain moment during the journey, as everyone was eating, Captain Cumella had come out and said that thirty years earlier, at the exact point in which they found themselves, an Austrian three-master had sunk into the sea for no apparent reason with all its passengers and the entire crew. Upon hearing this, Signora Clelia decided to have an attack. She stiffened and began shaking her head to the left and right, moaning and rolling her eyes backwards. It was a maneuver she always pulled off rather well, having practiced it since the age of eight whenever something didn’t go her way. The three men with her, Captain Cumella, Signor Colajanni, and Lieutenant Baldovino, rushed to her aid without a moment’s hesitation, with Captain Cumella opening her mouth and making her drink some water, Signor Colajanni fanning her with his napkin, and Lieutenant Baldovino unlacing her bodice with his dextrous hands. The only one who did not budge was the person for whom the entire drama was being performed: the stranger, now identified as Fofò La Matina the pharmacist, who stood the whole time to one side, twirling his moustache. And now Signora Clelia wished to avenge herself for his indifference.

One day, when she learned from her maid, Cicca, that Dr. Smecca was ill, she decided she urgently needed to see a doctor.

“But where are you going to go, if Smecca is unavailable? Would you like me to accompany you to Girgenti?” asked her husband, unaware that
the horns on his head were so tall that they could have been used as lighthouses.

“There’s no need. I’ll go and see the new pharmacist. I have the impression he’s very good.”

She washed herself from head to toe, using an entire jug of water, doused herself in Coty perfume, bedizened herself in black Brussels-lace panties and bra—an already tested tool able to turn a bent blade of grass into rock-hard pitch pine—powdered her nose, dolled herself up, and went to the pharmacy.

“What do you need?” the pharmacist asked.

You
, Signora Clelia wanted to reply, but instead she said:

“I want you to examine me.”

“I am not a doctor, signora.”

“I know. But I am told you are talented. And I need to be examined so badly that you cannot even imagine it.”

“I take no responsibility,” said the pharmacist. Then he turned towards a boy he had hired as his assistant. “If anyone comes,” he said, “tell them I’ll be back in five minutes.”

“Do you think five minutes will be enough?” asked Signora Clelia, batting her eyelashes.

The pharmacist invited her to follow him up the wooden staircase to the living and dining room, sat her down, and inquired as to what was ailing her. As she was speaking, and without Fofò’s having asked, Signora Clelia quickly stripped down to her black Brussels lace, looking from time to time towards the bedroom. The pharmacist listened to her, dead serious.

“Please get dressed, signora, and go back downstairs,” he said. “In the meantime I’ll prepare something for you.”

Signora Clelia later recounted the whole episode, blow by blow, to her bosom friend and confidante, Signora Colajanni, a churchgoing woman who spent her life talking and gossiping about others. That same evening, Postmaster Colajanni told the Circolo about it. The opinions and comments varied greatly.

“The pharmacist doesn’t have a cock,” was the most categorical.

“The pharmacist doesn’t like Signora Clelia,” was the most plausible.

“The pharmacist is a true gentleman who will not go with other men’s wives,” was the most amicable.

“The pharmacist is a blockhead,” was the most drastic.

On the morning of the last day in February, Mimì opened his master’s bedroom door, intending to dress him, carry him out on his chair, and set him down outside the Circolo. The bed was unmade but the marchese was not in it. The old man was capable, in moments of need, of taking two or three steps by himself. But there was no sign of him in the commode, either. Mimì figured that his master had perhaps needed something during the night and summoned his family for help, and so he went and quietly opened the doors to the bedrooms of Don Filippo and his wife, and of the
Marchesina ’Ntontò and the Marchesino Rico. They were all fast asleep. Worried, he ran down to the kitchen, where Peppinella, the maidservant, was already at work. But she, too, knew nothing. Alarmed, Peppinella also began looking for the old marchese. They searched and searched from attic to cellar to storehouse and stables, but there wasn’t a trace of Don Federico anywhere.