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Authors: Ottavio Cappellani

BOOK: Sicilian Tragedee
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In Pajamas and Dressing Gown in the Sitting Room of Villa Wanda
In pajamas and dressing gown in the sitting room of Villa Wanda, Turi Pirrotta is staring curiously at a bell. For years now Pirrotta has been staring curiously at his house; since his wife Wanda learned that redecorating was an excellent way to launder money, she has done nothing but shift the furniture out from under him, switch this room with that, bang in nails, adjust walls, and hire consultants.
Here’s how it works: You get hold of a bell, let’s say the bell costs you five euros, you take it and you put it in a shop owned by your family under a fake name (usually under the name of the previous proprietor of the shop, who has fallen on hard times because of the protection money he had to pay you or because of the interest on the loans you advanced). You take the bell and on the bottom you put a sticker with a price on it: five hundred euros. Into the shop walks Wanda, she buys the bell, and you have just laundered four hundred ninety-five euros in one go.
And even if the tax police do come along, what can they say?
Pirrotta pictures the tax police, all serious, asking his wife, “And you say you paid five hundred euros for this bell?” You just have to look at Wanda to see she’s the type who would do something as dumb-assed as that. Shit, you just have to look at the woman when she comes back from the hairdresser’s.
Pirrotta raises his eyes to the heavens recalling the time his tax accountant’s wife explained these financial matters to Wanda. Couldn’t they just exchange gossip about their lovers like all other married women instead of busting their better halves’ balls?
Where the fuck is Betty? How much fucking time does she need to get home? How long is this frigging lunch going to last?
The thought brings a happy half-smile to Pirrotta’s lips. Shit, getting her married to Turrisi!
His daughter Betty not only out of his house but into Alfio Turrisi’s.
Mrs. Betty Turrisi. Mother of God, how nice that sounds to Turi Pirrotta. Mrs. Betty Turrisi.
The oil business at Ispica: check!
The Mafia-war business: check!
The ball-busting-daughter-who-needs-a-husband business: check!
What more could he want from life? Only that Wanda should go to the hairdresser’s a little more often.
Is Betty going to hurry up and bring him some news?
Pirrotta sighs and squirms in his chair.
The bell rings in his hand.
Pirrotta, deep in thought, jumps.
He takes that bitch of a bell and puts it down carefully between a stylized pineapple in crystal and a cigarette box in the shape of the Altar of the Nation, that mammoth monument to national unity in Rome.
The Filipina maid appears. “Mister ring?”
“Who, me? No!” Pirotta says without thinking, somewhat freaked. The maid bows and withdraws.
Pirrotta looks at the bell again.
He understands.
He picks up the bell and rings it hard.
The maid does not appear.
Pirrotta rings harder.
Still nobody.
Pirrotta takes the bell in two hands and shakes it with his whole body, as if he were strangling someone.
The maid runs in.
“Mister ring?”
“No, I was just celebrating the election of the new mayor.”
The maid doesn’t get it.
“Yes, I rang. Didn’t you hear?”
“I hear. But I think you fooling.”
Pirrotta lowers his eyes to contain the rage that is rising in him.
“Bring me a
wodka.
” (Strangely, he pronounces it as if he were a true Russian.)
“Right away, sir.”
“A double, make it a double.”
“Double, sir, double.”
Pirrotta hears the door slam and the tick-tick-tick of Betty’s heels.
He gets up, doesn’t know what to do with himself, sits down, gets up; he doesn’t want Betty to see that he’s worried.
But hey, as if Betty hadn’t already figured it out.
Pirrotta gives up and sits down carefully in the chair, his nervous hands stuck between his legs, his face hopeful.
Betty comes into the room, followed by Carmine. She stares at her father distractedly.
Her father has a dumb smile stamped on his face; shit if her mother isn’t right, thinks Betty.
She tosses her bag on the sofa and just as casually throws herself down beside it.
She looks at Carmine.
Carmine raises his eyes.
Betty takes the bell.
Carmine sits down in a chair and crosses his legs.
Betty rings the bell.
Turi Pirrotta doesn’t move a muscle; he watches the performance with a dumb look. Oh, how sweet it is when the children come home. He flashes a dumb half-smile at Carmine too while he’s at it.
The maid comes in with the double vodka and asks, “Miss ring?”
“A cup of tea.”
A cup of tea?
“What do you want?”
“Okay, I’ll have a cup of tea also, darling, with a shot of brandy in it,” says Carmine, dusting off the collar of his orange jacket.
“Yes, miss,” says the maid, putting the double vodka down on the table in front of Pirrotta.
Pirrotta looks at the double vodka as if he has no idea what it is.
“Mama says you shouldn’t drink, it aggravates your diabetes.”
Oh, Mother of God, how beautiful it would be if she went to bust the balls of Turrisi every morning. Mother of God, how beautiful.
“Well, you won’t tell her.”
Betty smiles. “That depends.”
Pirrotta gives her a look like someone who’s in total agreement. “So?” he says.
“So what?” says Betty taking a cigarette from the Altar of the Nation and lighting it with a silver skyscraper.
“Your mother says you shouldn’t smo—”
Betty looks up.
Pirrotta smiles. “And so? What’s he like?”
“Mature,” says Betty, exhaling a little cloud of smoke.
“Oh, good, good. So he’s well behaved; that’s interesting, no?” Pirrotta looks to Carmine for help.
Carmine’s wearing an indecipherable expression.
Pirrotta hangs all his hopes on that indecipherable expression. “Okay, good. Um … so … will you be seeing each other again?”
Silence.
Carmine looks at Betty.
Betty is trying to figure out what is that thing in her hand shaped like a lit cigarette. She tosses it in an ashtray. She stretches like a cat, mewing, takes off her shoes, tucks her feet under her thighs, and says nothing.
Pirrotta looks at Carmine.
Carmine doesn’t know what to say. “Uh … yeah, I guess so?” With a question mark.
Carmine and Pirrotta stare at Betty.
Betty is bobbing her head back and forth, trying to get the crick out of her neck.
Pirrotta and Carmine wait impatiently.
Betty interrupts the neck business. “What’s to look at?”
The maid comes in with a tray.
On the tray there’s no tea, only a cordless phone. “Mister Turrisi for the miss,” says the maid.
Pirrotta’s mouth falls open.
Carmine exhales.
“Give it to me,” says Betty with a bored gesture of her hand.
The maid steps up to Betty and with a bow hands her the cordless.
Betty takes the phone slowly, removes an earring from one ear, throws it into a seashell made of porcelain, looks at her father, and says, “Hello?”
Pirrotta sits very still.
Carmine discreetly studies Betty out of the corner of his eye. He’s the kind of guy who knows women well, but Betty never ceases to surprise him.
Betty picks up a glass slab with a piranha trapped inside. “No, I can’t come with you to the theater.”
Pirrotta, terrorized, stares at Carmine. He turns toward Betty and goes,
Yes, yes, yes
, with his head.
“No … no … no,” says Betty to the cordless.
Pirrotta smooths out his pajama bottoms. Then he comes to a decision. He falls to his knees, puts his hands together in supplication, and gazes at his daughter screaming,
Yes, yes, yes
, with his head.
Betty looks at Carmine.
Carmine is embarrassed.
She looks at her father, sighs, and says, “No, tonight is out of the question. Let’s talk tomorrow. And now I’m compelled to say goodbye.”
Betty taps the off button and tosses the cordless on the sofa.
Pirrotta struggles to his feet, stares at the vodka, downs it in a gulp, straightens his dressing gown, and walks off without saying a word.
Compelled?
An Immense Ham Hock Lies on Cagnotto’s Plate
An immense ham hock lies on Cagnotto’s plate. (Apparently his stomach is in order again.) Their two hands, joined at the table, are lit up in the flickering candlelight. Bobo has ordered a salad of fennel and arugula.
“I have nothing to give you but myself, Bobo.”
Bobo withdraws his hand and scratches his neck.
“Myself. The heart of me, know what I mean?”
Bobo doesn’t understand.
“Precisely!” says Cagnotto as if Bobo had replied. “I want to tell you the truth, Bobo. I don’t have a penny. I was there trying to work up an idea for a new theater season and
you
came along. And I realized that I was prostituting myself.”
Cagnotto smiles proudly. “I was once again prostituting myself and my art, and for what? For the hypocritical acclaim of the public whose adoration lasts only as long as the next round of applause.”
“Don’t talk like that.”
“I will,” says Cagnotto with determination, seeking Bobo’s hand with his own.
“No, don’t.”
“Yes, I will! You made me understand. You … I’m, uh … grateful.”
Bobo puts his hands in his lap.
“Don’t be shy.”
“No, it’s just that …” Bobo looks around.
They’re in the restaurant attached to the Stage Space, a performance complex tucked into an old brick factory that has been rehabbed thanks to European Union funds for cooperatives. Exposed volcanic stone, plain cement floors. The air-conditioning is turned down to minus zero and the room is freezing. That’s why nobody goes to the restaurant attached to the Stage Space. But Cagnotto had wanted a quiet place to talk and in the summer the outdoor restaurants are wild. And they say we’re in the middle of an economic crisis?
The woman manager of the Stage Space restaurant is German, the ham hocks are a German specialty, and she says that if she doesn’t keep the air-conditioning up to the max her clients won’t want to eat ham hocks in the summer.
“I’m going to give back to Shakespeare that which is Shakespeare’s, Bobo.”
“How’s that?”
“You know Pasolini, De Sica, neorealism?”
Bobo is silent.
“They used street actors, like Shakespeare. Simplicity is their essence; the lack of professionalism renders the artist’s message cleanly. Without actorial mediation, which is motivated, let’s be frank, by the vanity of the protagonists.”
“Huh?”
Cagnotto smiles, spearing his ham hock. “But Pasolini and De Sica were film artists, get it, Bobo? Films. In the movies, if a nonprofessional
actor flubs his lines, gets an expression wrong, or is unable to convey an emotion, what do you do?”
Bobo doesn’t know.
“Reshoot the take!” Cagnotto chews with gusto. “You follow me?”
Bobo looks at Cagnotto. He looks at his salad. He nods with his head bowed.
“But me, what do I do? I don’t do
films.
” Cagnotto pronounces the word
films
with a certain distaste. “So I said to myself, who are the street actors of the theater?”
Bobo looks at Cagnotto.
“Who are they?”
Bobo looks at Cagnotto as he slices off another piece of ham hock. “Don’t know. Jugglers?”
“Huh?”
“Those guys on crutches?”
Cagnotto looks up, interested. Jugglers? Crutches?
“I don’t know. The real tall ones.”
“Ah, stilts!”
“You want to do something with stilts?”
Cagnotto smiles. “No, no, the street actors of the theater are dialect theater actors. They are the ones who can speak to the public’s heart without any”—Cagnotto takes an abundant gulp of wine—“superstructure.”
Bobo looks at Cagnotto.
Cagnotto nods. “Bringing Shakespearean theater back to its origins.”
Cagnotto looks Bobo in the eyes. “Bringing Shakespearean theater back to its origins, just as you have restored me to mine. We must resist being determined by our respective social statuses, Bobo. What you said to me at Capomulini struck me … struck me deeply. You, salesclerk, and me, director: Are we going to be limited by these definitions?”
Cagnotto smiles to himself, continues. “Are we once again going to allow social position to negate our desire? Again? Then what was the use of Shakespeare? Nothing. Bobo, I’m going to stage the play in which the Bard taught us to overcome social convention, in which he showed us that the power of love cannot be thwarted by society’s rules. Bobo, I’m going to do
Romeo and Juliet.
Me, Capulet, you, Montague; the theater is there to teach us. We must not fall into the trap of conformism.”
Bobo looks at his salad. He shivers.
Cagnotto nods at his ham hock.

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