Sicilian Tragedee (11 page)

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Authors: Ottavio Cappellani

BOOK: Sicilian Tragedee
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Contessa Salieri Likes It When They Kill People
Contessa Salieri likes it when they kill people. She said so to Dr. Cosenza, her psychoanalyst. She told him she particularly likes it when they kill people she knows. She specified that she was telling him this not because she felt guilty about it, but because she knew you were supposed to tell your psychoanalyst everything.
Dr. Cosenza told this to his colleague Dr. Farina, and Dr. Farina said that probably Contessa Salieri had repressed something, like that she had done something nasty in the past and now she likes it when there’s evil in the world because it makes her feel better about herself, and he advised Dr. Cosenza to continue with the analysis until what she had repressed came out.
Dr. Farina, wanting to show off, told all this to his mistress Baronessa Ferla, and Baronessa Ferla told Farina that the only thing Contessa Salieri had repressed was the memory of the male organ, which she hadn’t laid eyes on since the days of the national referendum to abolish the monarchy.
She also told him that the Contessa was constantly spreading
bullshit because she didn’t have anything else going on in her life, she was bored out of her mind, and she had decided to go to a psychoanalyst because she had read in
Vanity Fair
that wrinkles could be psychosomatic, and since there was no longer anything to stretch with all the face-lifts she’d had, otherwise she’d rip, she had decided to go to Dr. Cosenza.
She had gone to Cosenza and not to Farina because she knew that Farina was going to bed with Baronessa Ferla and she didn’t want her business to be known all over town. Baronessa Ferla tumbled out of bed thinking that in any case she now knew all about the Contessa’s business.
 
 
Cagnotto knows nothing about any of this, and has asked to see the Contessa to obtain a
raccomandazione
, to get her to put in a good word. Cagnotto feels rotten.
He has made a promise to the actors that the play will go on. And if you make a promise to actors, and maybe they decline another job, and then you don’t go ahead with the play, you can forget about those actors.
He had made a promise to Caporeale and Cosentino, those assholes, and they had gone and had a fight with Rattalina.
But above all, he had made a promise to Lambertini! Who, with all her connections to the commissioners, if you made her a promise and then the show didn’t go on, you could consider yourself a dead man.
There’s something perverse about events sponsored by the departments of culture. To present your proposal you need to have your proposal in hand. But how can you have the proposal if you don’t already have the funds? To put together a theater company you need funds, but to get funds you need the company. This is how things work in Sicily, in any case, and Cagnotto is beginning to feel faint.
Before talking to the Contessa, Cagnotto had tried asking Lambertini,
with a distracted air, “But, um, among the important people you know, what do you think, might there be someone, obviously taking into account other obligations, someone who might want to buy my … our Shakespeare?”
And Lambertini had replied, “Are you trying to tell me you don’t have the sponsor or the money and that the play isn’t going to happen?”
That’s how Lambertini is, she prefers to keep her connections to herself and save them for her recitals.
Lambertini’s “recitals” are select pieces in which she presents herself onstage with the player of a musical instrument (usually a piano or a cello), and as the notes begin to swell, she plucks out her hair like chicken feathers, rips her clothes, yells out voices in her head, slaps herself all over until she drops to the floor, kicks her feet, whacks the stage, gives a couple of head-butts to the musical instrument, and, depending on the piece she’s performing, either swoons, dies, or kills herself. This description comes courtesy of Caporeale.
According to Caporeale the version she does best is the one in which she kills herself. And in fact, every time he sees one of Lambertini’s recitals in which at the end the actress swoons or dies a natural death, without fail Caporeale will comment, “But how come she didn’t kill herself?”
 
 
Without the backing of Falsaperla, Cagnotto would not only fail to get a piazza, he wouldn’t even have a dark corner in which to mount his Shakespeare. You had to have a permit, you had to have traffic cops to direct traffic, you had to have crowd control.
Why couldn’t he have come up with the usual experimental bullshit that they always gave him the funding for?
His only hope is the Contessa.
When the Contessa gives her backing to something, there is always a little article about it in the paper. And a little article in the
paper is something a commissioner would do anything to obtain. Even making an enemy of Falsaperla, if necessary.
Of course, it is usually a little article in the society pages, not on the theater pages, but what does a reader of
La Voce della Sicilia
care if an article is in Society or in Theater? The Contessa is his only chance to persuade a commissioner to give him a piazza, a street, a dark corner.
Before getting out of the car, Cagnotto looks at himself in the mirror. The self-tanning lotion he has smeared on his face has fortunately given him a nice orange tennis-court color. He steps out and promptly loses himself among the pathways of the Contessa’s garden.
 
 
Waiting for Cagnotto, the Contessa and the Baronessa, sitting at the white wrought-iron table at the side of the pool, hurl at each other, from behind sunglasses speckled with rhinestones, glances of mutual loathing. The Contessa has put on a straw hat big enough to be a sombrero and a giant pin to close the décolleté of her bathing suit. The Baronessa knows the Contessa is wearing that hat because otherwise her makeup would melt under the sun, and the pin is there to cover up the wrinkles in her cleavage.
The Baronessa is wearing a scarf on her head and huge sunglasses. The Contessa knows that the scarf is there to conceal the fact that the Baronessa didn’t make it to the hairdresser, and the big sunglasses are necessary because at poolside, with the sun in her face, you can see the flesh-colored makeup covering the black rings under her eyes.
Cagnotto, finally back on the right path, sees them sitting there all tarted up like that and feels freaked.
The Contessa alone already scares him, and in the company of the Baronessa, sitting by the pool in the sun, she’s a walking horror. He has come to plead for a
raccomandazione
, he has to humiliate himself, prostrate himself at the (disgusting) feet of these two who
know nothing of Art and who in an hour’s time will be telling everyone in town how he’s fallen. Forced to plead for a
raccomandazione
after a lifetime of successes.
“Contessa! Baronessa! What a pleasure to see you both.” Cagnotto manages an acrobatic bow to kiss their hands and narrowly misses falling into the pool. He looks around and sees there’s no chair.
The old witch did that on purpose, Cagnotto feels certain. Cagnotto is there to beg a
raccomandazione
and of course the Contessa couldn’t pass up the fun of seeing him casting around for a chair. Cagnotto is also sure the Contessa had the table put right up by the edge of the pool on purpose.
“Sit down, Cagnotto. Always so elegant.”
Cagnotto grabs a chaise longue and drags it toward the table. He sits down carefully and feels the button on his jacket about to explode. He unbuttons it, then feels the buttons on his shirt exploding. This operation complete, Cagnotto looks at the Contessa and the Baronessa and doesn’t know what to say. “Gorgeous place,” he says. The Contessa’s pool, lemon-shaped (so she says; the Baronessa calls it “mussel-shaped”), is protected from the view of her neighbors (her cousins) by a row of olive trees.
The Contessa nods and takes a sip of her almond milk.
“Would you like something to drink?”
“Oh, yes, thanks, almond milk?” says Cagnotto, adding a question mark because it sounds more chic.
“Certainly!” the Contessa practically shrieks with joy, but doesn’t call the maid or anyone. “You said on the phone that you had a problem.”
“I admire you so much. I’ve seen all your plays. Tell me, what are you working on now?” The Baronessa had bided her time so she could interrupt the Contessa’s remarks in midstream. Otherwise, where was the fun in it?
Cagnotto doesn’t know which of the questions to answer. So he
says, “No, yes,” then collects his thoughts and replies to both at once. “I want to do an experimental version of Shakespeare, and that’s the problem. There was a misunderstanding with the culture commissioner for the province. He got the idea I want to do dialect theater.”
“And you don’t want to?”
Cagnotto smiles, shaking his head
no
. “No, no. I just want to use dialect actors, but there won’t be any dialect on the stage. Dialect actors are the
street actors
of the theater. Like Pasolini, De Sica, neorealism …”
“Did you hear that? The commissioner for the province didn’t get it,” says the Baronessa to the Contessa.
Cagnotto sees his mistake. “No!” he shouts. Then, smiling affectionately, almost tenderly, he goes on, “The commissioner was magnificent. I see his point. He has to consider what all the theater companies in the province want. No! He did everything he could, really.”
“Ah, I see,” says the Baronessa.
“Dear Falsaperla. He needs to find a proper tailor, however,” says the Contessa, speaking from the high vantage of being a countess with respect to the Baronessa.
Holy Mother of God, how Cagnotto would love to dish a little dirt about Commissioner Falsaperla, his air conditioner, his probable thing with Gnazia (which his intuition had picked up on and which no one else in town yet knew about). Hey, the Contessa herself had given the green light. But the Baronessa seems to him a little bit unreliable, and anyway it’s always better not to gossip about a commissioner in the presence of a baroness.
Cagnotto stares at the olive trees, pretending not to have heard. Why, oh, why hadn’t the Baronessa just stayed home?
“But I’ve already spoken to Paino! He’s delighted to host your play at San Giovanni la Punta!” says the Contessa happily.
The Baronessa is annoyed. Why isn’t the Contessa joining forces
with her against Cagnotto? “Wonderful! Paino is doing wonderful things at San Giovanni la Punta!”
The Contessa and Cagnotto give the Baronessa a
there you go again with your bullshit
look.
“But … how did he know?” says Cagnotto, ruffled, to the Contessa.
“These things are known,” says the Baronessa with a laugh, with reference to Cagnotto’s problems.
“Paino learned that the commissioner for the province wanted to recommend your new production to the commissioner for Pedara. But he’s been following your work for some time. He absolutely must have you put on the show at San Giovanni la Punta. In the amphitheater.”
Amphitheater? Pedara? San Giovanni la Punta? He had gone there to ask if she was willing to be a “godmother” to Shakespeare and she had already gotten him a political patron. He is bowled over. This Contessa is a real lady! Maybe, given her age, she is a little vague, like she forgets to put out chairs for her guests, but that’s normal, these
nobili
, the real ones, are not used to thinking about the practical details. That’s what servants are for. This is what the real aristocracy is about. Not like the Baronessa, new aristocracy, ruder than the bourgeoisie. Another school altogether, the Contessa. Certainly they didn’t make countesses much older than this!
“Obviously, Paino too has a problem, Cagnotto. The money has dried up,” adds the Contessa.
“Hey. No problem. At all!” exclaims Cagnotto, getting up happily.
“No, wait, Cagnotto, wouldn’t you like to have a swim?”
Cagnotto exchanges a look of gratitude and complicity with the Contessa.
“Rehearsals, Contessa, rehearsals!” Cagnotto bends to kiss her hand, and then in a burst of affection tries to grab her and kiss her on the cheeks, despite the sombrero.
He bids a chilly farewell to the Baronessa and goes off deep in thought, teetering dangerously on the edge of the pool.
“Now, where did you get that? Did you also hear the rumor that he’s crossed swords not only with Falsaperla but also with Rattalina?”
The Contessa takes a sip of almond milk. “Crossed swords? No, no. Arturo begged me to put in a good word with Cagnotto. He really wants to host his play at San Giovanni la Punta.” The Contessa puts the glass down carefully on the table. “Luckily I’m old now and such things don’t interest me anymore. Otherwise I’d be concerned that Arturo is going over to the other side. Which reminds me, yesterday I spoke with Dr. Farina’s wife. She told me he no longer has, how can I say, the
enthusiasm
he once had.”
“I’d better go,” says the Baronessa.

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