Don Anselmo, for his part, was unable to attend Mass at the church of Saints Cosma and Damiano, whose parish priest was Don Ernesto Pintacuda, because he’d had to go home to change his singed trousers.
And so, since there was still a while to go before lunchtime, he decided to pay a call on Baron Lo Mascolo, first of all to find out whether he’d recovered from the touch of flu that he said he’d come down with two days before, and secondly to ask him to explain why he’d supported Teresi’s request.
Don Anselmo, being a good friend of the baron’s even though don Fofò was a good twenty years his junior, knew him inside and out, and, truth be told, didn’t believe for a minute this business about him having the flu. It was well known that the baron was the picture of good health and had never spent a day in his life in bed, had never had a toothache, never a bellyache, even though he was capable of eating two roast suckling goats with a few kilos of potatoes all by himself.
And so? What’s two plus two? Clearly don Fofò, after first supporting lawyer Teresi’s request for membership, came to regret it and changed his mind, just as his friend, Marquis Cammarata, had done, and instead of going to the club and voting with a black marble, he decided to pretend he was sick.
Don Anselmo had just raised his hand to lift the heavy door knocker when a small door cut out of one wing of the great door of Palazzo Lo Mascolo opened and out came Doctor Bellanca, medical bag in hand.
“I’ve been here all morning, which is why I couldn’t come to the club,” he said, shaking don Anselmo’s hand. “How’d it turn out?”
“The request was deemed invalid.”
“So much the better,” said the doctor, and he started to close the small door behind him.
“Please leave it open,” said don Anselmo.
“Do you want to go in?”
He’d asked the question without budging a single millimeter from the doorway, so that don Anselmo couldn’t get by him.
“Yes.”
“Did you want to see the baron?”
What was with all the questions?
“Yes.”
The doctor closed the small door decisively.
“He’s in no condition to receive you, believe me.”
Don Anselmo balked. So the baron really was sick after all!
“Is it anything serious?”
“Well, yes and no.”
“Does he have the flu? . . . ”
“No, it’s not the flu.”
“Then what’s wrong with him?”
Bellanca seemed a little uneasy.
“It’s . . . how shall I say? An unusual case.”
“Oh, well. I’ll just go and say hello to the baroness and—”
“She can’t receive you, either.”
“She’s caught it too?”
“Well . . . yes, in a manner of speaking.”
“What about Baronessina Antonietta?”
Dr. Bellanca made a strange face.
“Well, let’s just say she . . . is the origin of the illness.”
How could that be? The baronessina was an eighteen-year-old girl as beautiful as the sun and more bursting with health than even her father!
“Listen, doctor. If this illness spreads so easily . . . ”
“Please don’t be alarmed, and, most importantly, don’t go spreading the word. You mustn’t needlessly stoke people’s fears. The baron and his family are in a kind of quarantine in there. They need only avoid direct contact with others. In a few days it’ll all be over.”
Don Anselmo remembered he’d shaken Bellanca’s hand. He shuddered. He was deathly afraid of illness.
“Er, doctor, did you by any chance wash your hands?”
Without answering, Bellanca walked away cursing. As he began to head home, don Anselmo turned around to look at Palazzo Lo Mascolo. All the shutters over the windows and balconies were closed. As if the family were in mourning. There was no visible sign of life inside. At one o’clock on a Sunday afternoon? With a sun hot enough to split rocks? What, were they all dead or something?
To go home, don Anselmo had no choice but to walk past Palazzo Cammarata, which stood all by itself on a street that was also called Cammarata. Nobility dictated that the palazzo mustn’t have any other constructions around it. The great house took up the whole street and had only its private garden, the firriato, in front.
Reaching the end of the street, which led into Piazza Unità d’Italia, don Anselmo stopped and looked around in bewilderment. Something had unnerved him at Palazzo Cammarata, but he couldn’t figure out what it was.
The silence! That’s what it was!
Marquis Filadelfo head eight daughters, the youngest being five years old and the oldest eighteen, a wife—Marquise Ernestina—who was vociferous by nature, and two maids. The only man amidst eleven women who were always quarreling one minute, laughing the next, crying one minute, chattering the next, cursing each other one moment, raising hell the next, the marquis would sometimes lose his head, and the nervous agitation from which he suffered even while asleep would become so great that he would go outside dressed just as he was and, to let off steam, pick a fight with the first person he passed on the street. Everything that went on inside the palazzo always became instantly known to whoever happened to be walking along Via Cammarata. The chatter of the eleven women, who habitually spoke loudly, would waft out of the windows, which were perpetually open, rain or shine, bounce off the stones outside and back into the windows through which it had just exited.
So, why was the palazzo now as silent as the grave? Looking up, don Anselmo noticed that all the shutters over the windows were closed, something he’d never seen before. What could have happened?
“No, no, no . . . ” he said to himself. “They’re not playing straight with me here, neither the baron nor the marquis!”
And he turned and went back, determined to knock on the door and demand an explanation. But after he’d taken barely three steps, he froze.
Breathlessly approaching from the other end of the street was Dr. Bellanca, with his medical bag in hand.
“Were you going to the marquis’s?”
“Yes.”
“Did he send for you?”
“No, but as I was passing by I noticed—”
“Please, don Anselmo, just go home.”
“But why?”
“Because I don’t think the marquis is in any condition to see you,” said the doctor, knocking at the door.
“Is he sick?”
“Yes.”
“But I saw him at the club this morning!”
“That doesn’t mean anything. The . . . er . . . In short, it came on all of a sudden.”
The explanation dawned on don Anselmo, as sudden and swift as a punch in the stomach.
“Accompanied by diarrhea?” he asked in terror.
“Among other things.”
“O matre santissima! So it’s an epidemic!”
The great door came open and the doctor went inside. The door then closed again.
For the second time, don Anselmo asked himself what was two plus two.
And he answered his own question. And “four,” this time, could equal only one terrible thing: cholera. There’d been a wave of cholera a few years back that had ushered half of the town into the cemetery. He stood there staring at the closed windows for a moment; then, leaning even more on his cane, since his legs were trembling more than usual, he walked quickly home, opened the door, went in, sat down in a chair in the vestibule, and was unable to go any further.
His wife, Signura Agata, who’d heard the door open, came out into the vestibule and saw her husband there, looking as pale as a corpse and fanning his face with his hat. She got worried.
“’Nzelmù, what happened? Are you unwell? Why do you look like that, eh?”
“Just be quiet for a minute and let me catch my breath, dammit!”
But the signura couldn’t restrain herself.
“Talk to me, ’Nzelmù, you’re frightening me! Matre santa, what’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong! And stop buzzing around me like some kind of mosquito! Where’s Girolamu?”
“The coachman? I don’t know.”
“Tell the maid to go and find him. I want him to hitch up the big carriage.”
“Why? Are you going somewhere? May I ask where?”
“Agatì, you’re coming with me, and we’re leaving straight away.”’
“What! And where are we going?”
“To the country!”
“Back to San Giusippuzzo? We were there less than a week ago!”
“And now I feel like going back, devil take it all!”
“All right, all right, there’s no need to curse. But how long will we stay?”
“I figure about a month.”
“What! So long? Why?”
“Agatì, there’s something going on in town I don’t like the look of. Baron Lo Mascolo’s whole family is sick, all of ’em, and everyone in Palazzo Cammarata’s sick too.”
“The flu’s been going around.”
“What flu? The main thing that’s going around is Doctor Bellanca! And the bastard won’t tell me anything! But I figured it out all by myself. There’s an epidemic, Agatì! Maybe cholera!”
“Matre tutta santa e biniditta! I’ll go and start packing the trunks!”
They left two hours later, and it took the usual hour to reach San Giusippuzzo. The road was in such bad shape that several times the carriage very nearly fell into a ditch. Finally, by the grace of God, Girolamu halted the two horses inside the enclosure that contained the Buttafavas’ villa, the wine vat, the stables, the carriage house, and the cottage of ’Ngilino the overseer, who lived there with his wife Catarina and daughter of seventeen, Totina. From the window of his coach, don Anselmo noticed that there didn’t seem to be anyone in the house, since the door as well as all the shutters were closed.
Since the overseer hadn’t been expecting his masters’ arrival, he must surely be out in the fields somewhere. And Catarina and Totina must have gone into town, since it was Sunday.
Don Anselmo climbed down from the carriage and went and opened the front door of the villa. As his wife was going inside, he said to his coachman:
“Try calling ’Ngilino. If he’s somewhere nearby, he can help you bring the trunks inside.”
The master bedroom was upstairs. Don Anselmo lay down with all his clothes on; the journey had worn him out and, on top of that, he hadn’t been able to have his usual afternoon nap.
“I’m going to have a little rest,” he said to his wife, who was bustling from room to room.
He fell asleep at once and slept for two straight hours.
*
He was awakened by Signura Agata, his wife.
“Time to wake up. Girolamu and ’Ngilino are bringing up the trunk with the clothes.”
He went into the privy.
When he reemerged, his wife was taking the clothes out of the trunk, and he could tell she was angry because she was whining with her mouth closed. Agata was a good-hearted woman, but she liked to be served. She normally wouldn’t even bend down to pick up a pin that had fallen to the floor.
“What need is there for you to do that work yourself? You could have asked Catarina and Totina to do it when they got back from town.”
“’Ngilino told me they didn’t go into town.”
“Then where did they go?”
“They didn’t go anywhere. They’re right here, at home.”
“At home? Then why didn’t they come out when we arrived?”
“Because they’re sick.”
“Both of ’em?”
“Both of ’em.”
“But were they in church this morning?”
At don Anselmo’s personal request, Don Ernesto Pintacuda, priest of the church of Saints Cosma and Damiano, had accepted Catarina and Totina as members of his parish, when they should by rights have gone to the church of the Most Holy Crucifix, the peasants’ church. The fact of the matter was that don Ansemlo was terribly fond of Totina. The girl was a sight to behold, and her cheerful disposition was contagious. Don Anselmo would sometimes spend hours out on the balcony, watching the girl performing her chores in the farmyard. And, unbeknownst to Signura Agata, he’d even given her money to buy herself some nice clothes so she would look good at Sunday Mass.
“No, they weren’t.”
A thought flashed into don Anselmo’s mind.
“Shit!”
“What’s with you?”
“Shit shit shit!”
“Don’t use obscenities! What’s wrong?”
“The clo . . . the locked doors! The closed windows! Just like Palazzo Lo Mascolo! And . . . and Palazzo Cammarata! Put all the clothes back in the trunk!”
“Have you lost your mind?”
“Agatì! The epi . . . the epidemic has spread here too!”
He went out of the room, raced down the stairs and into the courtyard, headed for the stables, went upstairs, and promptly kicked open the door to the room where the coachman slept.
Girolamu, who was in his underpants, very nearly had a heart attack.
“Wha—what is it, sir?”
“Hitch the carriage back up! We’re leaving!”
“Where to, sir?”
“To La Forcaiola!”
Girolamu looked bewildered.
“But, sir, that’ll take a two and a half hours at the very least! And it’ll be dark soon.”
“I don’t give a damn. Hitch ’em up! Then come and get the trunks!”
“Could I ask ’Ngilino to give me a hand, sir?”
“No! You mustn’t so much as look at his shadow!”
“Sir, can I tell you something, since your missus isn’t present?”
“Tell me.”
“You should know that people are saying Salamone the brigand’s been hanging around Forcaiola way.”
That was all they needed! Salamone the brigand not only stripped any nobleman or bourgeois he encountered of everything he had, leaving him as naked as Adam, but he never passed on any woman he crossed paths with either. He did them all, from age fifteen to fifty, right before the eyes of their husbands, fathers, and brothers, whom his henchmen would restrain. Anselmo’s wife was already past sixty, and so wasn’t in any danger.
The problem was that Salamone was liable to make off with the carriage itself, leaving both of them—actually, all three of them, since the brigand certainly wouldn’t spare even Girolamu—naked on a godforsaken country road in the middle of the night.
But, between cholera and the brigand, the choice was clear.
“Hitch ’em up! Hitch ’em up!”
*
La Forcaiola was an estate belonging to a first cousin of don Anselmo, don Lovicino Scattola, who at present was in prison in Palermo, serving a seven-year term for having killed don Michelangelo Fichera during a hunting party, after the latter had claimed, just minutes before, that don Lovicino had never in all his life managed to shoot a rabbit or hare because he was incapable of hitting even an elephant from two feet away. And so don Lovicino shot him from thirty feet away, just to show, in the presence of witnesses, that the man was wrong.
Upon hearing news of his boss’s sentence, Benuzzo Cogliastro, don Lovicino’s farm overseer, had felt his heart fill with joy. For seven years he would be the real owner of the estate. But then one day don Anselmo had shown up with full power of attorney granted by his cousin, and Benuzzo had sworn to get even with him. For this reason don Anselmo didn’t show his face much around there, if at all, and only went when he absolutely had to. As in the present instance.
*
They arrived late at night, luckily without having crossed paths with Salamone the brigand. The situation at the estate was almost exactly the same as at San Giusippuzzo. The shutters of Benuzzo’s house seemed to be open, but there wasn’t a hint of any light inside. Surely the whole family was asleep. Girolamu took the cart lamp out out from under the carriage and lit the way for don Anselmo, who was holding the keys, to unlock the main door of the villa. Signura Agata hadn’t wanted to get out of the carriage before the all the oil lamps in the entrance hall were lit.
Hands trembling from fatigue, don Anselmo had to try three times before successfully putting the key into the door. And at that exact moment, a rifle shot rang out, splitting his eardrums. The large boarshot of the lupara blasted several holes in the great door, just a few inches from his head. And the two horses, frightened by the blast, started running towards the farmyard exit, with Signura Agata screaming wildly. But when the animals took a turn a little too sharply, the left wheel crashed against the wall and the carriage flipped.
“I’m dying!” cried Signura Agata, before fainting.
“Get out of here or I’ll kill you all!” a man shouted angrily.
Don Anselmo, dropping to the ground and shaking in terror, recognized the voice of Benuzzo, the farm manager.
“Benuzzo! It’s me, don Anselmo! Don’t shoot!”
By way of reply a flash went off in one of the windows of Benuzzo’s house, and don Anselmo closed his eyes.
“I’m a dead man!” he thought.
The shot hit the great door again.
“You’re not don Anselmo, you’re Salamone the brigand and you take me for a fool!” said Benuzzo.
“Get me out of here! Help! Somebody get me out of here!” Signura Agata shouted in the meantime, having regained consciousness.
Since Girolamu had dropped the cart lamp in terror and was now spread out belly-down on the ground, praying to the Madonna aloud, don Anselmo got a crazy idea.
He reached out, grabbed the lamp, and held it next to his face.
“Take a good look at me, you stupid shit! I’m don Anselmo!”
“Oh! So it’s you? I din’t rec’nize you, sorry. You coulda told me you was comin’! I’ll be right down.”
At that moment don Anselmo realized, from Benuzzo’s tone of voice, that the overseer had known perfectly well from the moment the carriage had entered the courtyard that it was him and not Salamone the brigand.
And he’d shot at him on purpose, the bastard!
But when he tried to stand up, don Anselmo was unable. His body ached all over.
“Go and help the signora!” he yelled at Girolamu.
By this point the voices of the farmer’s wife Ciccina, son Paolino, and daughter Michilina could be heard inside the house, as they hurriedly got dressed to go and help the masters who had just arrived.
Benuzzo came down out of breath and, with a lamp in his hand, bent down to look at don Anselmo. He still had his rifle in his other hand.
“Wha’d I do, hit you?”
“No.”
“Well, I’m glad for that! Here, lemme help you up.”
And he held out his hand. Don Anselmo didn’t take it at once, but instead asked Benuzzo a strange question:
“Everyone in the family all right?”
“Everyone’s fine, thanks be to God.”
Only then did don Anselmo grasp the farm manager’s hand. If they were all fine, it meant that the cholera, luckily, hadn’t spread to that area yet.