Sicilian Tragedee (21 page)

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Authors: Ottavio Cappellani

BOOK: Sicilian Tragedee
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Tafuri sees Cagnotto and Lambertini crossing the piazza. His fellow citizens are looking at them with awe. This morning there had been a page in
La Voce della Sicilia
, a full page of photos of the Catania social world at Cagnotto’s house. There were
nobili
, there was the upper crust, there were actors, it was enough to make you gaga.
Tafuri, “informal” in gray flannel trousers and a blue blazer with gold buttons, a notebook in hand, a camera around his neck, races toward the director and the actress.
“Excuse me, excuse me, Commissioner Paino tells me you want to make a statement about”—Tafuri looks at his notebook—“allegory.”
Cagnotto’s about to open his mouth.
Lambertini sends him a frosty look.
“No, I think any statements on that must come from Signora Lambertini.”
“Rosanna,” specifies Lambertini.
“Okay,” says Tafuri, “so do you mind if I ask you a couple of questions, Rosanna?”
Lambertini looks at Cagnotto. “And who told this guy he could address me as
tu
?”
“But you yourself said … you said ‘Rosanna,’” stammers a mortified Tafuri.
Lambertini smiles. “I said Rosanna because they often write Rossana or even Rosa Anna or Rossella, and you need to write Rosanna, all one word and with one s. Got it?”
Tafuri nods and takes notes.
“Fine, and then write that I am the only normal one and everyone else is insane.”
Tafuri looks at Lambertini, then at Cagnotto.
“Pardon me, I’ll leave you folks to it,” says Cagnotto, walking away.
 
 
“Can you see her? Huh?” Turrisi, seated very uncomfortably on the amphitheater’s concrete risers, is looking around trying to catch sight of Betty.
Pietro signals
no
with his Ray·Bans.
Turrisi sets his jaw and pounds his knee.
“Take it easy, Mister Turrisi, take it easy.”
 
 
The Contessa sits tall in the second tier of seats, the first tier having been reserved for the
notabili
of San Giovanni la Punta. There are
cards with the names of the commissioners, the professors, the
dottori
, the
avvocati
, the
cavalieri
.
The musicians are tuning their instruments.
To the right and the left of the Contessa, a huddle of minor aristocrats is patiently awaiting the start of the show, fanning themselves with colorful fans.
The Contessa looks at the diamond she wears on her index finger, bends over, and takes a fan out of her handbag too.
She pauses for effect, looking around.
Then she shows off her prize like a peacock’s tail: a fan that’s twenty inches long, in bone and seventeenth century lace, the real thing because the lace is a tiny bit yellow, the way precious old things turn yellow.
The fans near the Contessa stop fanning, like they’re shy and ashamed of themselves compared with this majestic piece of history.
The Contessa leans over toward Baronessa Ferla on her right and murmurs, “When it comes to fans they can kiss my ass.”
 
 
Cagnotto feels something damp and pleasant stamped on his cheek. It’s a smell he recognizes. Bobo, wearing a white suit and pointed black patent leather shoes, has kissed his cheek in public, even though half of Catania is here in San Giovanni la Punta tonight.
Cagnotto turns with his eyes shining. “That’s the first time you’ve kissed me in public.”
Bobo looks down. “You deserve it.”
Faced with such a romantic gesture, Cagnotto doesn’t know what to say. He had kissed him on the cheek in front of … Cagnotto looks around. The crowd is thronging in from the piazza to occupy the steps of the amphitheater, they only have to wait until the sun goes down and the lights can be turned on.
And there, in front of everyone, Bobo had gone and done this, rendering their relationship practically public. Cagnotto is touched
and astonished. He hadn’t expected it. He really doesn’t know what to say: a kiss in public, among gays, is a really old-fashioned gesture.
 
 
Turi Pirrotta is like a man on Valium.
His wife Wanda is watching him, puzzled. Pirrotta seems to be serenity itself. He is able to sit there all relaxed on those reinforced concrete risers as if they were velvet theater seats. He’s fooling around happily with his cell phone. Wanda, perched on the sharp edge of reinforced concrete, doesn’t know what to think. It’s not easy for a wife not to have one fuck of an idea what’s going through her husband’s mind. For sure he’s not sending text messages to his mistress Rosina, because when he’s sending text messages to Rosina, Turi is all preoccupied not to let Wanda know, as if in this day and age a wife doesn’t know when her husband has a mistress. So when your husband has that whole conspiratorial look like he’s sending text messages to his mistress you don’t worry about it, particularly if you know that dickhead of your husband, it would never even cross his mind to give up the ease of family life and set up house with his mistress. But instead, if you can’t figure out what the fuck is going through your husband’s mind, if one minute he looks like he wants to start a bloodbath, and the next minute he looks cool, then he turns twitchy again, and then relaxes, you worry, because it means there is something that has touched his soul, and not just his prick.
The only thing that keeps Wanda from really worrying is that Turi, if he’s acting like this, it must be because he’s thinking about something to do with his daughter Betty. Yes, that’s an encouraging thought. Still, there’s this thing that bothers you, that you’ve been married for a lifetime and you don’t understand fuck-all what’s going on in Turi’s head at this moment.
There’s this thing that bothers you, and let’s be honest, this curiosity, because you didn’t think he was capable of it, Turi (who’s turning into the spit and image of Ernest Borgnine). You didn’t think
that he could put things in question and surround them with a, how did they say in the movies? … ah yes,
an aura of mystery.
Wanda has not yet figured out whether she likes all this or whether it’s a sovereign ball-buster.
Turi Pirrotta looks at his wife Wanda and smiles.
Wanda turns toward the tubular scaffolding and, without letting Turi see, bites her lip.
What the fuck is going on?
 
 
“Ridi, ridi—”
“Huh?” Pietro turns toward Turrisi, who’s been talking to himself for half an hour.
“I said,
Ridi, ridi.
”
“But I’m not laughing, Mister Turrisi.”
“And what do you have to do with it?”
“Huh?”
“Ree-dee … Pagliac-cio,”
Turrisi begins to sing in a low voice with the look of a madman on his face.
“Mister Turrisi, in my opinion you’re too involved.”
“E ognun … applau … dirà!”
Turrisi goes on singing, staring at Pirrotta.
 
 
“My respects, Contessa!” Falsaperla bows as he prepares to sit down in front of the Contessa. “Have you met my wife?”
“Good evening,” says the Contessa, continuing to whip her fan back and forth undaunted, without bothering too much about Falsaperla’s wife.
Falsaperla’s wife, who on social occasions likes to play the wife, as do most wives present tonight at San Giovanni la Punta, says to the Contessa, “Pleased to meet you, Contessa! I read so much about you in the paper. Warm tonight, isn’t it?”
The Contessa replies with her fan, which stops for an instant, very tense and still, and then starts up again, whipping back and forth at a speed that’s just a tiny bit faster than before. Translation from fan language:
Oh, how about this one, certainly it’s hot, otherwise why am I fanning, so you’re Falsaperla’s wife, if you really want to have a conversation come up with something better or otherwise just sit next to your commissioner husband, play the commissioner’s wife, and don’t bust my balls.
The lady aristocrats sitting next to the Contessa don’t fail to appreciate the exquisite finesse of that reply delivered with just a tiny hesitation of the fan.
The fans of the lady aristocrats applaud the performance with a little flurry of activity themselves, as if to say,
Whoa, did you see what the Contessa’s fan said to Falsaperla’s wife?
We certainly did!
 
 
Gnazia … is … practically … naked.
Not that she isn’t wearing clothes, no, it actually looks like she took a lot of trouble. She’s wearing a little blouse like the lady aristocrats wear, but apparently she spent the whole afternoon forgetting to put on a bra, so that every which way you look her tits are visible, tits that “in Civita, not to boast, but the dressmakers used to call me in to do the bustier fittings.”
Oh, and where is the skirt? That’s a skirt? More like a belt, that is.
He’d better sit down and shut up and not wag his tail, thinks Falsaperla, because when Gnazia gets like that, she’s capable of going and telling his wife that he’s going to bed with Lambertini.
Because, say what you will, anything the fuck you like, but Falsaperla has got an equilibrium at home like you could only dream of, with his wife who doesn’t bust Gnazia’s balls and Gnazia who doesn’t bust his wife’s.
It’s true, both of them bust Falsaperla’s balls, but between them, the cohabitation, all things considered, is pacific.
All he needs is for Lambertini to come in and destroy his familial harmony, when he doesn’t even understand how, at fifty-five years old, he got to be culture commissioner for the province of Catania, with both a wife and a mistress, so that when he goes down to the bar, his friends just about have their tongues falling in their coffee.
Let’s hope Pirrotta does something to make Paino look bad tonight.
Falsaperla looks around for Pirrotta.
He’s sitting down, all beatific, sending text messages with his cell phone. His wife has a horrible expression and she’s right, because at least when you’re in public, you have to let everyone see you show respect for your wife.
Hey, Falsaperla is certain Pirrotta must have a plan, because it’s not possible he could be so calm otherwise.
And at the party he had been categorical. “I don’t believe you have
changed your mind
, have you?”
God only knows what Pirrotta has organized for this evening.
“Everything okay, dear?”
“What the fuck do you want?” replies his wife, who’s still pissed off at the Contessa for giving her the cold shoulder. These fucking countesses. They come here and play the aristocrat with the commissioner’s wife. Hey, gorgeous, I’m sitting in the first tier, and you, asshole with a fan, are sitting in the second. Falsaperla’s wife settles herself on the concrete step, she makes a wiggling motion with her rear end like she’s hatching an egg.
My seat is in tier one, and you, with your fucking fan, are in tier two, you parvenu,
she says with a wiggle of her behind.
 
 
“Testing … testing … one two three, testing. Can you hear me?” says Paino into the microphone.
The amphitheater quiets down.
“Testing … can you hear me?”
The amphitheater signals yes.
Paino looks for something in his inside jacket pocket. He finds it. The folded pages of his speech. He smiles. He taps the microphone with his index finger once more to be sure everything is working. “My fellow citizens!”
His fellow citizens, but nobody else, break out in a thunderous applause.
“There are people here who have come all the way up on the mountain from Catania.”
Silence.
“From Catania.”
Silence.
“From Catania! My fellow citizens, do you understand?”
Thunderous applause from his fellow citizens. (And in any case why would Paino give a shit about applause from Catania, his electorate is right here in San Giovanni la Punta.)
“Welcome to this splendid stage”—Paino looks around to make sure Tafuri is there taking notes—“of our amphitheater … that today … is being used to host no less than … Shakespeare!”
Thunderous applause from the upper tiers of the amphitheater. The lower tiers are more culturally elevated, therefore snobbish, and don’t applaud.
“It’s pointless for me to thank the director, the actors, and the author of the immortal comedy that we are about to present, and about which”—Paino smiles, flashing a wink—“you will have read in today’s paper!”

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