IN 1933 THE PUGLISI FAMILY were threatened by a legal manoeuvre which would have trimmed their riches by three quarters. A mayor who was no respecter of persons had taken it into his head to commandeer the waters of the River Pomiciaro (which belonged to the baron), for the use of the municipality.
On learning this scandalous news the notary packed his wife and daughter off to the theatre, sent the maids to do the shopping, shut the windows tight and gave vent to the following outburst: “Thieves! Blackguards! They’re stealing my stuff!”
He then set off helter-skelter for Rome, and in this city destitute of persons to treat him with due respect he languished whole days in anterooms, until it dawned on him that only one particular minister, Count K., could possibly rescue him, using the technique of bawling down the telephone – as he was wont to do in moments of wrath – a torrent of oaths directed at this mayor. Thus it came about that he reached the conclusion, the moment he returned to Catania, that Antonio, a close friend of that minister, was a handsome young chap indeed, and an excellent match for his daughter.
As for Barbara, scarcely had she been informed that she was to marry Antonio, and that to think about him was consequently now quite proper, than she began to dream about him, as if in the flesh, although she had set eyes on him only once or twice, and that very fleetingly; and to suffer strange emotions when her girl-friends came to call… For on such occasions her mother exhorted her to flaunt in the sunlight of the balcony the very sheets in which she would henceforth be enveloped by night with the Adonis of the city.
The betrothal was celebrated strictly “Family Only”, so Antonio’s pal d’Agata had to rest content with making his presence felt over the telephone:
“Is your fiancée with you there?”
“No, ’cos the telephone’s in a room miles away from the drawing-room, and Mr Notary is dead-set against Barbara and me going off on our own.”
“Have you kissed her yet?”
“Good Lord no!”
“God preserve us! And when are you going to do it?”
A smile crept over Antonio’s face: “Goodbye my friend, goodbye now,” and with that he returned to the drawing-room.
There he was embraced and kissed by three distinct monsignori who’d tucked their dangling crucifixes into the black satin sashes with which their waists were swathed; and he was hugged paternally by Father Rosario. Everyone present was shouting and drumming their coffee-spoons on their saucers. A myriad of sounds met and clashed between room and room: the radiogram, the piano and (since it was nearing Christmas) the shepherds with their bag-pipes, who must have made their way up the back stairs, and perhaps even ensconced themselves in the kitchen. Rain had already arrived to lash at the windows, and low clouds scudded over the roof of the lawcourts, masking Mount Etna.
When the clock on the lawcourts announced the hour of seven, Barbara cried, “We simply have to go up and visit grandpapa! It would give him so much pleasure, poor old dear.”
A small platoon, composed of the notary himself, Signora Agatina, Father Rosario and the betrothed couple, clambered the dark stairway and all but tiptoed into the tiny chamber.
Backed up against the wall, they stood in total silence round the old man, while he, propped up on his excuse for a bed, kept head bowed and eye fixed on his own two hands, crouched like two dry crabshells on the turn-down of the sheets.
Antonio waited for someone to say something or do something, to give him a cue. But no one either spoke or moved: they might have been looking at a funerary marble.
All of a sudden in swept Signor Alfio yelling “But what the…” (he lowered his voice abruptly) “what the devil are you up to here?”
The nonagenarian baron raised his eye towards the newcomer, painfully forced his lips apart, and croaked, “The trees!… Alderman, you!…” Whereat he keeled over as if at a puff of wind. In the person of Signor Alfio he had recognized one of the aldermen at the time the Town Hall had presumed to plant plane-trees in front of his house.
“Off with you, off with the lot of you! Back downstairs!” urged the notary. “I’s a mere nothing. I’ll deal with it. Agatina and I will deal with it. The rest of you, and especially you young people, be off downstairs and have fun.”
They left, shoved along by the notary muttering, “It’s nothing!” over and over again. And the word “nothing” pursued them the whole length of the corridor, right to the threshold of the reception rooms, where it was swallowed up in the whirl of the dance.
The plain fact was, the old fellow was dead. But the sad tidings were not disclosed until the following day.
Antonio, on his father’s advice, immediately donned a black tie, the which bestowed upon the pallor of his face an old-fashioned gravity. To the extent that a bunch of anti-Fascists, seeing him pass their café table, grumbled to one another in undertones, “He’s got the looks of a Brutus, but he doesn’t mind emptying the potties of ministers and Party Sees. If I were in his place I’d wangle an audience with Mussolini and plant half a dozen slugs in his belly!”
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.”
Antonio waited for his father’s friends to take their leave, then shot him a fiery glance.
“What’s up with you then?” demanded Alfio. “Why are you glaring at me like that?”
“I overheard what you said just now.”
“So what? What did I say wrong? Anything to be ashamed of if you’re a good stallion? Why, you’d be ashamed if you weren’t!”
Antonio stamped his foot with vexation and burst out, “But don’t you understand that…”
“Oh ho, my friend,” broke in his father, “I understand very well indeed. What matters is that you should understand that I am entitled to talk about my own son when and how I please!”
Antonio bit his lip and said nothing, though the following morning, perhaps in search of comfort, he rang up his cousin Edoardo.
“I’m very anxious to speak to you too,” replied his friend. “Wait for me there at home, and I’ll be with you in a brace of shakes.”
He came, huffing and puffing. His eyes were red about the rims and he had every appearance of suffering from the pangs of unrequited love. They went out together onto the terrace.
“I’m disgusted with myself!” said Edoardo, leaning on the railing that overhung the sun-drenched Corso. “We’ve really hit rock-bottom!”
“Who’s we?” asked Antonio.
“All of us… you, me… but specially me.”
“But why?”
“I tell you I haven’t slept a wink for six nights or swallowed a morsel. Yesterday in the street I had to prop myself on a beggar’s shoulder because the ground was reeling beneath my feet. And what’s more, I’ve got an itch I can’t get rid of… I’m always shunting off to the “Pensione Eros”… Today I laid hands on the charwoman – who’s all of fifty – and rammed her against the wall…”
“Why on earth?”
“Listen here, Antonio! I’ve got to be made mayor of Catania. Me, and no one else! It’s a debt of honour I’ve taken on with myself and the entire bunch of my relatives, who regard me as pretty small beer. You’ve got to write to the minister! If necessary we’ll go up to Rome together. I’ll pay the fares and everything. But I’ve simply got to be made mayor of Catania! In any case,” he added, raising his face, with half-closed eyes, and filling his lungs with moist February air, “this dud show can’t last, if it’s true they’re gearing up to invade Abyssinia. You need to be as dimwitted as a schoolmarm if you plan to do today what the English already did three centuries ago! Listen to what Croce has to say, for godsake.”
“Come again?” queried Antonio.
“Benedetto Croce. Never heard of him! He’s the only reason we can claim that Italy’s a country fit for human habitation, and not just a sheep-pen…”
And drawing forth Croce’s History of Europe from where he held it, secreted under his arm, he read aloud a number of pages peppered with such comments as “No!… The man’s mad!… No, No and No again!” in case the book should fall into the hands of a Fascist fanatic or a policeman in mufti.
Edoardo read aloud with great fervour. The little terrace, abud with leaves dappling the rosy sunlight with violet shadows, heard the word “freedom” pronounced in the most devout and desperate manner possible, by a man of thirty-two who knew only too well that he lacked the fortitude and courage not to let the whole thing slide.
Antonio was on the point of feeling genuinely moved when a venomous thought darted into his mind. “And how often have you been to the ‘Eros’ lately?” he blurted out.
“Yesterday, three times!” replied Edoardo, breaking off his reading. “The day before – you’re not going to believe me – four!”
“And whatever happened with the old char?”
“Oh nothing… I squashed her against the wall as if I was about to strangle her, said boo in her face and passed the whole thing off as a joke. So I beg you, Antonio, dear boy, to write a letter to the minister here and now!”
Yet another letter Antonio wrote to the minister, but this time his missive met with no success. In his courteous reply, Count K declared himself regretful that he was unable to comply with the request of his friend Antonio, because the appointment of Edoardo Lentini as mayor of Catania did not meet with the approval of the local Party Secretary, Calderara. The Town Hall would be administered provisionally by a commissioner, in the person of the Deputy Prefect Solarino, fifty years old and a decent fellow, though for thirty years deprived of the joys of life; the author, what’s more, of a number of sonnets inimical to France and to Russia.
The moment Edoardo learnt that the chief obstacle to the chief aim and purpose of his life was Lorenzo Calderara, he set to work to butter him up, and began to pay daily visits to the headquarters of the Fascist League (a charming palazzo designed by Vaccarini, at the portal of which two sentries stood at ease with a blend of apathy and insolence, clasping across their stomachs enormous rifles weighing more than they did themselves, while in gruff, drawling voices they would bark out a “Take yer ’at off comrade!” at the backs of all who crossed the threshold). And Edoardo put so much vim into sucking up to Calderara that eventually he came to regard his own actions as being intelligent only if they were of the sort that appeals to a positive cretin…
Antonio, for his part, wrapped himself up entirely in his private life, and spent five happy months in the company of a girl who only on Sundays, on returning from Mass, allowed him to run up the stairs with her, leaving her parents puffing behind; and, near the frosted-glass window on one of the landings, to kiss her on the mouth.
He had also tried to snatch a kiss late one evening in the drawing-room, when the notary’s hand fell from the arm of his chair along with the newspaper it was grasping; but Barbara put all her strength and craft into freeing herself from the embrace without making any noise about it, sprang from her chair, ran from the room, and instantly leant her back against the closed door… so weak did she feel at the knees.
When she re-entered the room those lovely green eyes of hers, which so overawed the Lenten homilists, had grown the more severe as the countenance surrounding them had darkened. Antonio’s mind reeled: he found that heady mixture of sensual ferment and moral inflexibility so irresistible that he was compelled to take his leave half an hour earlier than usual. This due to a rapture that made him tingle from head to foot.
On leaving the Puglisi household he began wandering through endless streets, and avenues, and courtyards, aware all the time that in the most austere palazzo in Catania, in whose wardrobes hung the clerical attire of her monkish uncle, herself defended by crucifixes steely as swordblades, slept a girl pure as spring water, destined for him alone.
Accompanied by these thoughts he walked the length of Via Etnea, which loomed the larger in the stillness of the night, passed the ebony-dark Bellini Gardens, and turned into Viale Regina Margherita, a long straight incline flanked with suburban villas serried with terraces, palm-trees and godwottery, until it petered out, lofty and free, up there near the stars.
Reaching Piazza Santa Maria di Gesù, he took the road for Cibali, and after a loud tramp of boots, some bouncing back as echoes, others squelchy with mud, he gained the tiny piazza of that little town, swathed to its roof-tops with sea-breezes. From this vantage-point, on moonlit nights, the sea lay calm and still, except for that glittering quicksilver path on which the city printed the ink of its chimney-pots, or now and again the dome of a church.
Eventually he made his way back down a deserted road, all but a country lane, skirting a public wash-trough redolent of soap-suds, and sundry kitchen-gardens with their lettuces and cabbages, re-entered Catania through a maze of winding alleys still hot from the swarming bodies of urchins that jam-packed them the livelong day. And throughout this ramble he held his chin high and his eyes fixed upon the heavens – upon that warm, live, multitudinous sky of the south which, at the very point where rooftop, terrace, tree-tip end, there she bursts forth! No vague, ambiguous, half-hearted sky is this, as in the cities of the north, but immediate, utterly dense and teeming; majestic and silent as perhaps she is at one thousand light-years from this earth.
A shudder of chill brought him home again both weary and happy, and plunged him at once into a long sleep from which (or so it seemed to him) certain dreams that before his engagement to Barbara had distressed him night after night were now banished for ever.
One afternoon in March Barbara took it into her head to arrange a visit, along with Antonio and his parents, to the Magnano property in La Piana, the great alluvial plain to the south of the city. A decrepit carriage, swaying this way and that and crushing the life out of poppies and daisies, bore them at a snail’s pace into the heart of this delectable plain, flanked, in the chrome-yellow light of the sirocco and the sandy soil, by the skittering wavelets of the Ionian Sea.
This fertile expanse is bounded to the east by the finest of golden sands; to the south by the heights above Syracuse and Lentini; to the north by the outskirts of Catania, the very last houses of which straggle up the lower slopes of Mount Etna, from here looming in all its vastitude: startling, solitary, unequivocal, as is the retaining rampart of an ancient temple when the rest of the masonry has all but crumbled away. A twelve-hour cloudburst suffices to submerge this plain completely, mingling the waters of the River Simeto with those of the Lake of Lentini; but conversely a single day of sunshine will bring it to the surface again, dripping and verdant, its lanes muddily odorous and its birds all skin-and-bone from their long, strenuous flights over grasses viewed through a window-pane of water.
On March afternoons this landscape shimmers with the most limpid light imaginable. Depending on the wind, a wind which seems to hammer at the heavens themselves, and to draw swift veils of cloud, red, yellow, brown or blue, across the sun. This wind whirls furiously about all points of the compass: now we see it, passing in the puff of dust that veils the lush lower slopes of Etna, now to the east in the mantle which suddenly darkens the surface of the sea, now in the plain itself, all around us, close around us, in the wheat-fields that sway low their heads, to rise again dispensing from their bosoms glints of gold and silver.
As soon as the party came within sight of the gate of the Magnano property, and beyond, the long drive leading to a knoll topped with a cluster of buildings, Signor Alfio doused his pipe with a stab of his thumb, wiped his mouth and burst out, “That’s him! There’s the fellow who sucks my blood! Now we’re in for a mammoth dose of his belly-achings!”
The person thus referred to was the share-cropper, a lean old figure in fustian trousers and a pleated shirt, white though grimy with dust, the rolled-up sleeves of which revealed two leathery arms as dark as a negro’s. His face rough-hewn and wrinkled, with two little light-coloured eyes so weighed upon by the pouches above it seemed impossible that they should move. A red handkerchief was knotted about his neck in such a way as to leave two ass’s-ear ends dangling onto his collarless shirtfront.
He straightened up from his work and rested his hands on the handle of his mattock; then, with his right, hampered in his movement by its very massiveness, he grasped the peak of his cap, made a clumsy effort to raise it, pushing it this way and that across a forehead to which it appeared to be glued, until finally, with a furious twist that might have been sheer anger, he wrenched it off and held it in hoverance above his head; onto which, after a brief moment, he curtly returned it.
“Hey there, Nunzio!” shouted Signor Alfio, poking his own head out of the window of the carriage, come to a halt in the middle of the driveway. “You call that the way to work?”
The labourer lowered his eyes and shook his head, biting back a grumble.
“When did you start that piece of digging?”
“Stamatina” (first thing this morning) replied the other, lowing his eyes again.
“And how’s it going?”
“Malamenti.”
“Badly? Why?”
“Pirchí va malamenti.” (’cos it does)
“And just you tell me, brother, what’d you do if you couldn’t be forever bemoaning your lot?” Then, in a quite different voice and dropping the dialect, “I have come to show my daughter-in-law my orange-grove.”
“E unni su’, st’aranci?” (where’s these oranges, then?)
Signor Alfio thrust open the door and descended grumbling from the carriage, needing for his arms, which felt a furious desire to wave about, the requisite space to do so.
“Listen here, in God’s name don’t make me lose my temper! I’ve brought my daughter-in-law here today, and it’s got to be a happy occasion for all present, so I don’t want to get hot under the collar. Signora Agatina, Barbara, Antonio,” he proceeded, poking his head back into the carriage: “Get down, do!” The two women and Antonio climbed down from opposite sides of the carriage, blinking in the dazzle of light from the sea which, beyond the green fields and the sands, rose brave and bristling with wind in a half-moon of horizon.
“How lovely it all is!” exclaimed Signora Agatina. “Good for you, friend Alfio, really and truly! I never imagined it was so lovely here.”
The corn was high already, pastelled with an inkling of wheat-ears and gorgeously emblazoned with poppies great and small, their cups spilling scarlet light into the air, in among the cornstalks and into the very furrow. Olive trees, their windswept leaves a-sheen with silver, stood at regular intervals, like human figures halting their steps at a holler from someone left behind. The drive led up the knoll on which stood a small yellow house with green-painted shutters, flanked by farm buildings – dirty-white walls riddled with the black rectangles of doors and windows. Verdant and shining on the right of the drive, brightening the air with the breath of cool springs, the lemon groves swept to the top of the knoll; and beyond again, as far as a second knoll atop which, constructed dry-stone fashion out of blocks of lava, stood an imposing well-head.
It was towards this well that Signor Alfio immediately, and with pride, raised the ferrule of his stick.
“Look there, friend Agata! That is my well! All these local numbskulls,” and he swept an accusing arm which embraced not only the share-cropper but also a number of peasants dotted about the landscape, “day and night repeated we would strike salt water. But I stuck to my guns and said No, the sea belongs in the sea and not under the earth! Dig, and we shall find fresh water!… If I hadn’t been so stubborn about it these splendid orchards before your eyes would still have been in the mind of the Almighty… But everything here, dear lady, every single scrap of it, is the fruit of my obstinacy. Every single tree is a death sentence hanging over my head, for I had to use a hundred fearful oaths before getting it heled in. Now come this way: look there!”
Rejuvenated by the very sight of his farm, Signor Alfio set off up the drive at a brisk pace. The share-cropper, preserving his disgruntled look, kept pace with him on one side, Signora Agatina on the other, with a firm grip on her hat, the feathers of which were ferociously tugged at by the wind. In the rear came Barbara, one hand clasped between Antonio’s two, her eyes fixed shining and joyous on the farm that would one day be hers.
“Here we are, here’s the orange-grove. Just look what beauties!” exclaimed Signor Alfio, pointing his stick towards a patch of land where the lemon-trees ceased abruptly and densely massed, warmly glowing, began the oranges.
“Hey, my fine sir! Hey, you dolt!” he yelled at the peasant. “I suppose you’re going to tell me these aren’t oranges!”
The man pulled a face and stared at the ground.
“You can’t answer that one, eh.” insisted Signor Alfio. “Have you lost your tongue?”
“Ma unni ’i vidi, st’aranci?” grunted the peasant.
“What d’you mean, where do I see them? Here, look, and here, and here, and here. Come with me! Open your eyes man! What do’you think I’m touching with my stick?”
The peasant pursed his lips and continued to look at the ground.
“Speak up, for pity’s sake: give it a name!”
The man repeated his performance.
“What is it? A potato?… a tomato?… or a shrivelled up old cucumber like you?”
“Chistu è ’n’aranciu. E chi vordiri?” (OK, it’s an orange. So what?)
“Eh? So what? So there are oranges growing here!”
“Unittu!” (Call that a crop?) sneered the peasant, wagging a forefinger. “E pi’ unu!…” he added after a pause, as if to say, “And you’re making all this fuss about one measly orange?”
“But there, there, there again, can’t you see others?”
“Picca ci n’è… nenti!’
“Nothing worth mentioning eh?… You must be blind!”
“Nun sugnu orbu. A tia, ti fanu I’occhi stasira, Alfiu!”
“You’re not blind? So it’s Alfio who’s not seeing straight this afternoon, is it? Let me tell you brother, the only time I didn’t see straight was when I gave you the right to share-crop this cursed piece of land. Oh, if only an angel had tapped me on the shoulder and told me how bitterly I was going to regret it! What we need is Communism, by God, and I’ll die laughing when I see how you come out of that!”
“An, macari ’u communìsimu avi a véniri ora? Sintemu st’autra.” (Ah, now it’s Communism is it? That’s a good ’un).
“Yes, what we need is Communism!”
Signora Agatina turned in bewilderment to the two young people, hoping for an explanation, but Antonio merely winked at her.
“E iu chi ci perdu?” asked the peasant. (What’ve I got to lose?)
“Being able to do as you please, and to steal – that’s what! Because they’ll put a chain around your neck like a dog, and make you work until you drop dead!”
Meanwhile they had climbed the hillock and the dogs were giving tongue on all sides, shaking the palings and kennels they were tied to; the hens, wings outspread, fled in the wake of the shrilling cockerels, trampling a tumble of yellow chicks.
“Ma ’a terra ci ’a perdi tu!” put in the peasant.
“All right, all right, it’ll be me who loses the land! Yes, I’ll lose it, and with pleasure, because this cursed property does nothing but fill your belly!”
“Pirchí ’a chiami sempri svinturata, sta terra ca ti desi ’u Signuri? nun è di giustu!”
“Yes, cursed, this land God gave me, because it’s had the bad luck to end up in your hands! What do I ever see out of this cursed soil? Not so much as a bite of greenstuff for my salad! I suppose you think that when Communism comes you’ll get your hands on my land? You’re mad. With that lot in power no one’ll have any land. Only place to find it’ll be the cemetery! And you’ll have to toe the line and sweat blood, because if you don’t sweat blood they hang you from a carob tree for the ants to eat. D’you imagine these Communists are anything like Alfio Magnano? My brother, I tell you, that lot bury you alive with your head sticking out and then jump up and down on your eyes!”
“Iu nun sacciu nenti, Alfiu. Stai parrannu ammàtula. Iu nun vogghiu né comunisimu né autri nòliti: vogghiu sulu travaghiari.” (I don’t imagine anything, Alfio. I don’t want Communism or any other of your innovations. I only want to work).
“Little work and a lot of thieving: that’s your motto!”
“lu non arrobbu, Alfiu.” (I’m no thief, Alfio).
“You’d gobble up even me.”
“Iu nun mi mangia a nuddu!” (I’m no cannibal).
“Hold your tongue man, d’you hear? I won’t have you speaking to me like that!”
“Ma ch’avìti, ch’avìti? Sempri ca facìti battarìa, vuatri dui!” shrieked an old hag from the farmhouse doorway, gesturing with a huge, gnarled hand at the end of an arm totally withered by the years. “Stop that now! Always quarrelling! Dui fratuzzi di latti, signuri mei, can nun avìssirua vidiri di I’occhi unu pi’ I’autru, e taliàti cornu s’accapiddìunu!” (Two foster brothers, and they only have to get together and they tear each other’s eyes out).
“Mamma Tanina,” said Signor Alfio, drawing closer to those ancient orbs which saw everything as shadows, and in which white and iris were mixed like the white and yoke of a shattered egg. “Mamma Tanina, after sucking at the nipple allotted to him, my foster-brother here had the rotten habit of taking over mine. Is that true or isn’t it?”
The old girl’s face seemed gashed by the blood-red of her gums and the rims of her eyes: she had smiled.
“Come on, Mamma Tanina, don’t deny it! That’s what he did, the louse!”
“Veru è, veru è, quite true, quite true,” conceded the nonagenarian, still smirking that smirk and shaking her fist in the direction of her aging son Nunzio and her aging foster-son Signor Alfio.
“There now! He robbed me then and he robs me now!”
The old girl, tucking her chin on her shoulder like bashful sixteen attempting to conceal a laugh, “Oh, Alfiu, Alfiu!” she exclaimed, “you’re always the same, you are, when you’ve a mind to have a joke.”
“On the contrary, Mamma Tanina, what you ought to say is ‘Oh, Nunziu, Nunziu!’”…
Since things were now taking a more cheerful turn, and everyone was all smiles, Barbara laid a hand on Antonio’s chest and: “Come on, take me as far as the well!” she said.
“To the well?” returned Antonio quaveringly, peering in the direction of that part of the landscape totally immersed in the sparkle of the wind.
“What an idea, Barbara! Did you say to the well?” put in Signor Alfio. “That chap doesn’t know how to get there!”
“Doesn’t know how to get there?” repeated Barbara with an incredulous smile.
“It’s the truth. He hasn’t a notion how to get there. I, with the sweat of my brow, have set up this heaven on earth for him, and he hasn’t the faintest idea how to get about, or what path leads where.”
“Not true dad, not true at all,” said Antonio; and having by then worked out the quickest way up to the well he gave Barbara’s hand a tug: “Come on, let’s go.”
“I’m coming with you!” cried Signor Alfio.
But the two young people were off and away, running up a path along the edge of a terrace wall with a tiny stream trickling beneath it; and they were on the other knoll in no time at all.
Up there the wind was fearsome, buffeting against the lava slabs of the well, which gave back hollow groans.
Barbara, hair breaking free from its pins, bent a regal brow upon the olive-groves, the lemons, the wheat-fields stretching out on every side, all stamped with the name of her Antonio; and in its midst, tiny in the distance and worn out from plodding the damp terrain, they saw the person who had purchased and nurtured them with so much sacrifice.
“It’s gorgeous!” Barbara burst out, turning to Antonio. “It’s an absolute gem!”
And since the rest of the party were still far off, she threw her arms round his neck, and for the first time it was she who put her mouth up to his and gave him a long, long kiss.
“Darling,” she murmured. “Darling, darling…”
The dazzle in Antonio’s eyes as Barbara kissed him with a vigour now cool, now fiery, now as if she had ceased to breathe, now gasping as if in unbearable ecstasy, became one in his memory with happiness itself; a happiness that held him in thrall throughout the time that elapsed before the wedding, happiness that yet vouchsafed him, in its rich and generous dominion, room for some spells of anguish and unrest; short-lived albeit, and always bound up with her, as precious stones are to the gold wherein they are set.
This happiness suffered a serious setback during the wedding ceremony. There he was kneeling on the velveteen hassock, hearing at his back the bizz-buzz of the most influential men and the loveliest belles in Catania. It suddenly appeared to him that the church walls soared out of eyeshot, that quilted curtains, black and heavy, had unfurled before the doors, pinning themselves to the floor with every appearance of permanence, and that the very notes of the organ, cascading from the oak-panelled organ-loft together with the crash of anthems, had cut him off for ever from the streets, the piazzas, the trains, the sea, like the thunder of a waterfall in spate that rends and pulverizes any vessel that may happen beneath it.
Then it was that, over his shoulder, he cast the look of a hunted beast at bay, and the faces there, rather than reassuring him, threw him into a still greater funk. Especially those of the lovely belles, which seemed to harbour a malicious inquisitiveness, a derisive challenge, almost an air of smugness. Towering above them all, black-clad, bent forward in his agitation, stood out the figure of his father, Signor Alfio, a tear in his eye…
It was but a passing moment. At the rustle of Barbara’s dress as with the aid of a hand on her right knee she rose to her feet the familiar thrill mastered him again, and his throat tightened with joy.
It was July the 5th of 1935. That day, the sheer beauty of Antonio touched even the priests (even the one who had denied absolution to the Archbishop’s niece because she had too often committed the sin of attempting to draw the outlines of Antonio’s body on a baluster). One poor lame half-wit, who had managed to worm his way in amongst the elegant throng cramming the nave, cleared himself a path ahead of Antonio, dancing in jubilation and uttering inarticulate cries, so greatly did the bridegroom remind him of processions and banners, fireworks and the town band – all that for him smacked of festival and splendour.
Many were the young women who kissed Barbara, all the while casting languid glances athwart her nose at Antonio and keeping up a stream of resounding smackers on her cheeks and mouth, those places where her husband’s kisses would shortly rain.
Meanwhile, our spinster Elena Ardizzone stood aloof beside a pillar, a revolver in her crocodile handbag, savouring the bitter gall of witnessing the minute-by-minute survival, at the side of a rival, of that beauteous youth whom she could have felled with a touch on the trigger. Big tears rolled down her porous cheeks and she let herself dwell on how good she was, how generous, and noble, and superior, not to use the weapon she had in her bag – which in any case had never been loaded.
The men, to distract themselves from the jealousy that brought bile to the mouth whenever they looked at their women and found them flushed and flustered as if every one of them had wedded Antonio and was entering with trepidation upon a day that would lead to its evening, and thence to the mysteries of the night, well, the men talked politics, not without having glanced furtively around to see if they might mention the Head of Government – not abusively, of course, but with somewhat tempered respect and without the cant phrases. The stand-in mayor maintained that in the autumn there was to be a large-scale military expedition against Abyssinia, as stated in a sonnet he had composed the previous day. This sonnet, which he recited without further ado, sent Notary Puglisi into a fit of rage.
“No mention of war, for goodness’ sake!” he burst out. “Today of all days, no mention of war! No point in asking for trouble! We’d do better to leave church… follow our newly-weds out.”
This exhortation was promptly acted on.
Outside the church a platinum sky dazzled a street crowded with people shading their eyes and pointing out the bride and bridegroom, come to a halt on the bottom step.
Antonio, blinded by the glare, screwed up his eyes, causing the delicately blue-tinged skin of his chin to pucker, and producing, perhaps involuntarily, an expression as of someone caressing a beloved face.
The girls on the balconies across the way were all of a flutter. The one who succeeded most thoroughly in not seeing the bride, the crowd, the steps and façade of the church with the sun hanging plumb above it, the one who best managed to conjure up a picture of herself and Antonio framed in that intimacy and us-two-togetherness which perfectly matched his expression at that moment, more in a flutter even than the others, shrank back against the wall as if afraid of toppling over the rail.
At long last the vehicles stationed in the side-streets of Via Etnea drew up at the foot of the church steps, and the newly-weds, relatives and guests disappeared within, to become visible a moment later through the car windows. The procession got under way, and having proceeded a few yards, stopped: for it had already arrived at the Puglisi residence in Piazza Stesicoro. A number of girls took the short stretch of Via Etnea between church and residence at a run, and succeeded in catching a second glimpse of Antonio and bride in the act of climbing back out of the car hampered by an enormous bunch of carnations.
It was just then that the Marchese San Lorenzo, halted in the middle of the piazza, fist on hip, straight-backed, wasp-waisted as a riding master, had a notion to denounce all those relatives of his whom he found to be wearing morning coats despite the Secretary-General’s orders to the contrary. And it was at just that moment that one of the girls exclaimed, “I’m sure we’ll never again see Antonio promenading in Via Etnea until two in the afternoon. It’s really true – our youth is over!”
Nor was the girl mistaken. After the wedding Antonio and Barbara lived a retired life; and seldom indeed were they seen in the streets of Catania. The whole town knew they spent their days either at the house on La Piana or in the one at Paternò, immersed up to the eyebrows in happiness. Principe Di Bronte, who lived in an old, dilapidated country house two kilometres from the Magnano farm, declared that he had been investigating the curtains of the newly–weds with his powerful spy–glass, and caught them in each other’s arms every time. This information led to a lot of daydreaming, and when the March wind rattled the shutters, not a few women’s thoughts flew to the lovely rustle of the corn on La Piana, and the pleasure of watching through the window the swaying ears of wheat while in the arms of such a man as Antonio.
In this way passed two years, during which, at the end of every month, Edoardo Lentini sent his friend some books. Freud, Einstein, Croce, Bergson, Mann, Ortega, Gide: they all took the road to La Piana or to Paternò, though it was never known whether Antonio read them.
“What are you sending him? Books?” exclaimed Signor Alfio one day, when he met Edoardo in Via Etnea. “I rather fancy that chap spends day and night with his pestle in the mortar!”
“And children? Any in the offing?” enquired Edoardo.
“Not a one,” snorted the old man.
“It’s a bit of an enigma,” pondered Edoardo, “but when one overdoes it, children are not forthcoming. It has occurred to me that only methodical husbands, the ones who lose a night’s sleep once a week, succeed in producing children one after the other.”
“Come to think of it I only had Antonio after four years of marriage. I waited for him like the Messiah, that ugly little imp!”
“Come off it, I really can’t believe he was ugly!”
“Hairy as a monkey!… Though I have to admit, he turned out all right in the end.”
“Too darned much so, if you ask me!”
The old fellow put his chin in the air, as was his wont when he wished to conceal his gratification, grasped his stick in both hands behind his back, and went off without further ado. Of a sudden he turned, shaking his stick in Edoardo’s direction.
“You there!” he shouted at the top of his voice. “Are you never going to get yourself made our mayor?”
Edoardo blushed to the roots of his hair and hurried home thoroughly put out.
“That old nitwit will throw a spanner in the works,” he stumped about the house muttering to himself. “If a statement like that comes to Calderara’s ears, which isn’t at all unlikely with all the spies hanging around in Via Etnea, not even Christ himself returned to earth could get me the job of mayor!”
But he was not destined to suffer any such disappointment. A week later Calderara was appointed Deputy Secretary–General of the Party and moved to Rome, relinquishing his place in Catania to one Pietro Capàno, a coarse-grained twenty-five-year-old with eyes like marbles that bulged from a close–cropped head. One who dreamt of nothing else but striding – as a feared and respected figure – into the classroom at the liceo where his father, his uncle and his brother had all studied before him, and where over and over again he had heard, “Ah, so you’re all cretins in your family are you!”
No sooner in Rome than Calderara went to pay his respects to Count K. who, to show how well up he was in Catanian affairs, mentioned Edoardo Lentini, a name fresh in his memory because he had rediscovered it in Antonio’s letter of 1935, which his son had been using to conceal a diamond he had stolen from his mother. Calderara got the impression that Count K really was a friend of Lentini’s, and before taking leave he casually suggested that the latter should be appointed mayor of Catania. The count raised no objection, and five days later Edoardo, returning home, found two workmen up on the balcony with hammers and wire in their hands.
“The Town Hall is installing a telephone for us at its own expense,” explained his wife.
Edoardo dared not believe his ears, and in a fit of feverish shivers wrapped himself in a shawl to await the completion of the installation.
No sooner had the workmen said “Well, that’s that job done!” than the instrument started to shrill and a hundred voices came in a steady stream over the line, from humble office and noble mansion, showering congratulations on the be-shawled young man for his appointment as mayor of Catania.
It was the 2nd of January, 1938.
Three months later Antonio and Barbara returned to Catania and set up house in a wing of Palazzo Puglisi. That same evening Edoardo invited the couple to the mayoral box to see a performance of Norma. Not a pair of opera glasses but was trained in their direction.
During the intervals, in the corridors, Antonio was greeted by his friends. “How do you do it?” they demanded of him. “You get younger and younger and slimmer and slimmer, while we were no sooner married than we got pot–bellies like bran–sacks!”
“It means that for him,” said Luigi d’Agata slyly, “marriage is no rest-cure!”
“Poor cousin Barbara,” murmured Edoardo Lentini between his teeth. “She never sees the light of day, with that immovable object always on top of her.”
The following day invitations to lunch poured in, as did also the relatives.
Signor Alfio, walking along Via Etnea between his son and daughter-in-law, would stop every few steps before the café windows, ostensibly to study the sugar lambs transfixed by their little red flags, but actually to observe the reflections of Antonio, himself, and Barbara all lined up as if for a family portrait.
“They’re in love,” he would say of an evening to the relatives who had come to call. “They’re in love, and that’s all there is to it!”
“It doesn’t take much to fall in love with Antonio,” commented one black–clad aunt.
“Well it doesn’t, but it does,” retorted Magnano senior, fishing for further compliments. “You have to rub my son up the right way, or else he scratches like a cat.”
“Now listen to me,” said his wife one evening, after their visitors had left. “All this upheaval in the house makes my cheeks burn as if I had the fever on me. We’ll be the target of all tongues if we go on in this way about our Antonio. A little bird tells me that people are laughing at us behind our backs.”
“Are you dreaming?” burst out Signor Alfio. “The man who can make a fool of me has yet to be born! In any case, all these people swarming about the house, scratching the floors with their hobnailed boots like the clodhoppers they are, I tell you I don’t like it either!”
For some time thereafter the two old people received nobody. But around the beginning of May they were obliged to offer a cup of coffee to Cousin Giuseppina, a person in her fifties and practically deaf, who talked for a couple of hours without pausing to draw breath, the feathers of her headgear nodding like a trotting horse’s, and who as she was finally taking leave enquired of Signor Alfio: “Is it true that Barbara Puglisi is marrying the Duca Di Bronte?”
“Now what are you cooking up?” yelled Signor Alfio, his nose not an inch from her hair. “Barbara Puglisi is my daughter-in-law!…”
The elderly cousin’s answer was to rock her head from side to side, wooden–faced, mouth sagging, saying nothing.
“Antonio’s wife!… My son’s wife!” he added, bawling louder than ever.
“Exactly,” was the reply.
“What d’you mean, exactly? Did you grasp what I said?”
“I perfectly grasped what you said, and my answer was: ‘Exactly’.”
“So it is true that you’ve lost your wits?”
“Believe me, Cousin Alfio, I’m the only one in the family with a decent head on their shoulders.
“Sara,” said old Magnano to his wife in an undertone, struggling to overcome his wrath, “kindly see her out, because if I escort her to the door, I swear to God I’ll throw her down the stairs like the dirty-minded old bag she is! And tell her to get to work on herself with a curry-comb before visiting human beings again!”
Signora Rosaria saw their relative to the door, gave her a perfunctory kiss and went back to her husband.
“Well, what d’you think of this, ladies and gentlemen?” the old fellow was grumbling on. “I explain how things stand, and tell her that Barbara can’t go off and marry anyone at all, because she’s already married, because she’s my daughter-in-law, because she’s Antonio’s wife, and what does she say? ‘Exactly’, she says. And she then goes on to make me out the old dotard!”
“But Alfio,” said the wife, “you really are going a bit soft in the head.”
“And why, pray, am I going a bit soft in the head?”
“What on earth were you thinking of, sitting there arguing with a half-wit who’d just told you something with neither rhyme nor reason?”
“Maybe she meant to insult me.”
“What sort of an insult is it, to say something that makes not a scrap of sense this way or that.”
“I don’t know, but she may have meant to insult me.”
“Keep your hair on, Alfio. Let’s swallow the bitter pill and get to bed.”
The pair of them sat opposite each other in the dining-room, and chewed their boiled greens in silence.
“D’you know what she was implying?” burst out Signor Alfio when he had lit his pipe. “That… when it comes to… well, er… that kind of thing… Barbara and Antonio don’t get on.”
“Well, just look what you’re fabricating now! Those two are inseparable all day long… They can’t bear to leave each other’s side. Why on earth shouldn’t they get on?”
“How do I know? But here in Catania nobody keeps their trap shut – their tongues are itching to wag. D’you know what they’re saying? That your son is overtaxing his wife!”
“What do you mean, overtaxing her?”
“God in heaven, do I have to spell everything out? Your son is randier than a ram, and if he has a woman to hand he never gives her a moment’s peace.”
“Antonio is a husband like any other husband!”
“You know very well that’s not true. Antonio has a face like an icing-sugar angel, but when it really comes down to it he’s a randy ram! In Rome he had three or four mistresses at the same time, and if now he’s putting all his eggs in the one basket, may the Lord have mercy on his wife!… She has a right to be fed up… In any case, tomorrow I want to have a word with Notary Puglisi.”
“Very good, tomorrow have a word with whoever you please, but now let’s get to bed. You never think straight when you’re sleepy. And don’t waste time peering under the beds! Thieves don’t pay visits on paupers like us… They know well enough where the money is.”