The Brewer of Preston (20 page)

“In Rome, you say?” Puglisi interrupted, suddenly very attentive.

“Yes, in Naples and in Rome.”

“Sorry, but I would like your opinion on something. Why do you think they set fire to the theatre?”

“Bah, I wouldn't know. Maybe because there are some people in Vigàta who want to screw the prefect more than the prefect has managed to screw himself.”

“Sorry again, but are you really convinced that the fire broke out a few hours after everything was over and people had already gone home? Let me rephrase that: after more than the reasonably plausible amount of time needed for an accidental fire to catch and grow?”

“There's no doubt about it: the fire was started from scratch, a few hours after calm had returned to Vigàta.”

“I'm not convinced.”

“Of what?”

“That some Vigatese, after everything had calmed down, would have second thoughts like a cornuto and set fire to the theatre. That's not the way people do things here. This was done by an outsider.”

Back in the center of town, Filastò took leave of Puglisi.

“I'm going back to the theatre to look for more evidence. So you agree, in principle, that it was a case of arson?'

“I do.”

They exchanged a look of sympathy and said good-bye. Puglisi then turned his back and practically started running towards police headquarters.

“Saddle my horse, quick,” he said upon entering.

Halfway to Montelusa, with the rain coming down hard again, he fell off his horse from fatigue, got his clothes even dirtier, hurt his shoulder, climbed back into the saddle, and resumed galloping as fast as the sodden ground would allow the beast to go. At the commissariat everyone looked at him in curiosity and bewilderment because of the state he was in, and even Dr. Meli, “
u tabbutu
”—or, “the tomb”—said aloud what the others had been thinking but hadn't expressed.

“You'd better not let the commissioner see you in that condition.”

“Well, then you can talk to the commissioner on my behalf.”

“I should warn you that the commissioner is quite irritated at you for the note you sent him. You asked for three days to conduct the investigation, which is fine, but you added that the investigation might end up implicating some ‘highly placed individuals.' Does this seem like the sort of thing you should set down so carelessly in black and white?”

Puglisi's anger flared.

“All right, since you bring it up, I want you to tell the commissioner that when I wrote ‘highly placed individuals,' I used the plural to give myself a wide berth, but in fact I was thinking only of the prefect. Now I'm convinced that I was right to use the plural.”

“So you think other individuals are implicated?”

“Yessir.”

“Such as?”

“Such as the person you're going to talk to in a few moments.”

Dr. Meli leapt straight into the air—actually leapt, so that when he came back down, one of the windowpanes rattled. He turned pale, violently seized Puglisi's arm, brought his face close, and hissed:

“Do you realize what you're saying?”

“Perfectly. Why didn't you order me to arrest the Mazzinian from Rome at once?”

“Silence!” Meli commanded. “Come into my office!”

They left the antechamber, where the caravan of people who had been coming and going were suddenly all ears. Once inside the office, Puglisi, without waiting to be asked, collapsed into a chair, exhausted.

“Explain yourself. But try to remain calm and don't raise your voice.”

“Why didn't you give me a warrant to arrest the Mazzinian from Rome at once?” Puglisi asked again, having calmed down a little.

“I explained the matter to the commissioner.”

“And?”

“He told me to wait a few days, at least until after the inauguration of the theatre.”

“Why?”

“I don't know what to tell you.”

“What a brilliant idea on the commissioner's part! If they had let me arrest him in time, it's possible he would never have managed to burn down the theatre!”

“Are you convinced it was him?”

“I'm not yet certain. But as soon as I get my hands on him, I'm going to make him tell me everything, and you'll see that I'm right. Give me the warrant, in writing and dated.”

Meli rose very slowly, as if his bottom were stuck to the chair, went and knocked on the commissioner's door, and entered.

“Cavaliere, Puglisi's in my office.”

“What's he want?”

“He wants an immediate warrant for the arrest of that Mazzinian hiding out in Vigàta, Traquandi.”

“Let him have it.”

“All right, sir, but the problem is that the lieutenant thinks that Traquandi is the person who set fire to the theatre.”

“So?”

“Cavaliere, if it was the Roman who did it, and Puglisi is seldom wrong, we'll be blamed by Puglisi himself for not having arrested him sooner.”

“Oh, shit!” said the commissioner, having finally understood.

“And there are even two deaths in the mix.”

“Weren't there three?”

“Yessir, but the third death, that of Dr. Gammacurta, is not on our account. He was shot by Villaroel's men. He goes onto the prefect's account.”

The commissioner looked at Meli, then batted his eyelashes and made an inquisitive face.

“Listen, Meli, are you really so sure that it was I who gave the order to delay the arrest? Might it not be possible that you misunderstood what I said to you?”

It was an old story, but this time Meli would have none of it. The risk was too great.

“I'm sorry, Cavaliere, but this time I remember the circumstances very clearly, because the scrivener had already drafted the arrest warrant and I told him to tear it up, after you had decided otherwise.”

The cavaliere had tried. He changed tactic.

“What can we do?”

“Think it over a moment before receiving Puglisi.”

The moment of reflection turned into two hours of whispered words and long, thoughtful silences, to the point that when Dr. Meli finally went to call Puglisi for his meeting with the commissioner, he found him asleep, his head on the table, arms dangling beside his legs.

I
f on a winter's night already fraught with wind and rain and thunder and lightning a traveler had passed through the piazza in which Vigàta's new theatre stood and seen the damage around him—the upended street lamps, ruined flower beds, broken glass, mounted soldiers patrolling the streets, carriages racing back and forth with the injured and ladies who had fainted—and heard the distant gunshots, the voices shouting in pain or anger, crying for help or cursing, he would have spurred his horse and headed quickly away from what he would have rightly believed to be a new '48. Never would he have imagined that all that havoc, all that devastation, had been caused by a soprano who had hit a false note. A ghastly, horrendous note, to be sure, one that had sounded to all as if a steamship had entered the theatre and blasted its foghorn, to say nothing of the fact that someone else had fired a carbine at the same moment. But what had really triggered the general stampede was the skill of the man who had built the theatre. A theatre—reasoned the architect—should be constructed so that the people in the audience can hear everything that is sung or played or said onstage. Thus, added to the steamship horn and gunshot was a rumble at once earthquake-like and yet harmonious, arising from some unknown part of the theatre. If one had thought about it with a cool head—which certainly wasn't possible at that moment of pandemonium—the explanation for that sound could have been found in the fact that among everything and everyone else in the theatre there were also the orchestra musicians, who, after hearing the gunshot and the siren blast (not necessarily in that order), and being understandably on edge from the way the evening was going, decided all at once to free themselves of their instruments, the better to run away. Now, there were so many of these instruments—from double basses, bassoons, and trombones to violins and piccolos to kettledrums and snares—that, when tossed into the air and then striking the ground, they made a tremendous noise, having been dropped in that part of the theatre called the “pit,” the purpose of which is to amplify the orchestra's sound—which it certainly did, having no way of knowing that the sound, on that occasion, was not music, and the result of which was that it suddenly sounded to everyone, for no reason whatsoever, as if the theatre had decided to sink into the earth.

Don Memè Ferraguto hadn't budged either when the soprano hit her false note or when the carbine went off; but when he heard that magical, disturbing sound rise up from beneath the stage, he felt his blood curdle.

“It's a bomb!” he cried.

Grabbing the prefect's wife, who was sitting there dumbfounded, he lifted her bodily and carried her to the rear of the box, where he propped her up against the wall, during which time Captain Villaroel, at a loss as to what was happening, violently unsheathed his sword. The mayor, whose reflexes were a tad slow, had the misfortune of rising from his seat and straight into the path of the captain's sword. He fell backwards, forehead cleft by the tip of the blade, but no one took any notice of him. The prefect, for his part, was more quickly on his feet and at his wife's side, thus benefiting in part from Don Memè's protection.

Such was the situation when people began to try to leave the orchestra and boxes and encountered the resistance of the militiamen, who repelled them with kicks and blows with the flat of their swords. Their orders were to allow nobody to leave, and they were following those orders. It was during this confusion of pushing and pulling that Don Artemisio Laganà, well known until that moment as a man of serene disposition always ready for reasonable negotiation, suddenly lost his head and prudent sense of judgment and pulled out his sword stick, the blade hidden inside his cane, and skewered the shoulder of one militiaman by the name of Arfio Tarantino while at the same time shouting, for reasons unknown:

“Charge!”

Never in his life had Signor Artemisio Laganà so much as worn a soldier's uniform, and yet on that occasion the tone of voice that emerged from his chest was that of a man-at-arms accustomed to combat. Thus the soldierly command, uttered with such force that it could be heard all the way up in the gallery, had the effect of spurring the mob to battle, and in a certain methodical order, against the militiamen blocking the exit.

The women, whom the men at first had chivalrously let go ahead of them towards the exit, were quickly pulled back, so to speak, to the rear lines, while the strongest lads and the men most ready to give it their all went on the attack. Here it should also be added that Corporal Vito Caruana, when ordered not to let a living soul out of the theatre, had got it in his head to lock both rows of boxes, since the key to each box was hanging on the door outside. And thus the occupants of the boxes had no choice, for a while, but to try to break down the doors, which, however, put up a solid resistance. The situation of all those in the orchestra and gallery, was, of course, entirely different, since they naturally didn't have to knock down any doors; on the other hand, they found themselves pitted alone against the armed militiamen. The people in the first row of boxes, meanwhile, having discovered after a few attempts that the doors would not open, realized that they needed only to climb over the railings and leap a short distance to reach the open space of the orchestra below them. And so they jumped, helping one another and lowering women and old folks into each other's arms. Once the evacuation was completed, the youngest among them rushed to lend a hand to the people in the orchestra trying to get out.

In the gallery, on the other hand, things were taking a different turn. At the blast of the carbine, the blare of the foghorn, and the terrifying, mysterious rumble that followed, Lollò Sciacchitano and his friend Sciaverio automatically found themselves shoulder to shoulder, as was always their custom in tavern brawls. Heads turned one towards the other, they looked each other in the eye and settled on a plan of action without saying a word. Slowly advancing towards a soldier who watched them without moving, they broke into a run when about two paces away from him and charged forward screaming very loudly. In terror, the soldier raised his carbine and took aim. At this point the two turned their backs to him and, still screaming like madmen, started running in the opposite direction. Instinctively, the soldier gave chase, and that was what did him in: Sciacchitano suddenly stopped, but Sciaverio kept on running and the militiaman ran after him. It was too late when he realized he'd been tricked, as Sciacchitano, right behind him, dealt him a fierce chop to the nape of the neck with the side of his hand, and the soldier dropped to the ground like an empty sack. A second soldier who found himself face-to-face with the two met a similar fate but by different means. Sciacchitano and Sciaverio jumped on him and started shoving, and the soldier started pushing back in turn. When the trio found themselves in a stalemate, the two friends suddenly pulled one step back, and the militiaman, carried by the force of his own thrust, fell face forward to the floor. Sciaverio kicked him in the head, dispatching him to dreamland, removed his carbine, and even took six bullets from his ammunition belt. The four remaining soldiers gave in to the pressure of the gallery gods, with one falling backwards and rolling down the stairs, and the other three stepping aside as the mob hurtled down to the entrance lobby.

In the second row of boxes, the situation seemed to have stabilized, to the point where Captain Villaroel carefully opened the door to the royal box and looked in: there were no people in the corridor. Corporal Caruana, the only soul around, came up to him.

“Everything's in order here, Captain, sir. They're unable to leave the boxes because I locked them in and the doors are strong. What should I do?”

“Go downstairs with your men and give a hand to the troops in the orchestra. I'll stay here and guard His Excellency.”

Caruana obeyed, while Villaroel, with sabre still unsheathed, took up position in front of the royal box, eyes on the lookout.

Neither of the two had taken into account the gymnastic skills of one Serafino Uccellatore, a house burglar in his youth and now a respected cordage dealer. When he realized that the people in the second row of boxes were imprisoned, Serafino, then in the orchestra, clambered up to the balustrade of the first row of boxes, straightened himself, regained his balance, grabbed the feet of a wooden statue of a naked woman with wings, dangled in the void for a moment, reached up and clutched the railing of the box overhead, pulled himself up by the strength of his arms, and, flying briefly through the air, landed inside the box, where he was greeted by the applause of those who had been watching his maneuver. Once inside the box, he cocked the revolver he always carried with him, aimed at the lock, and fired. The blast was followed by generalized shouting and an increased surge of the crowd. The door came open. Before his own terrified eyes, Captain Villaroel saw a sort of athlete sprint down the corridor and open all the boxes, door after door, after which the occupants came pouring out, yelling, as in a massive prison break. The soldiers who were defending the two landings that led downstairs had no choice but to step back against the wall and let the escapees pass. At this point, all the townsfolk who had gone to the theatre jammed into the great entrance lobby. Leaving, however, was impossible. One Lieutenant Sileci, who was outside with his soldiers, had had his men place beams of wood through the handles of the large glass-and-wood inner door, so that it could no longer be opened from the inside. And, for good measure, a line of militiamen waited with their carbines pointed menacingly at the lobby. Smothered by the press of bodies, three or four ladies fainted and had to be laid down on the floor. And just as Don Artemisio Laganà had, in a sense, taken military command of the situation, Headmaster Cozzo likewise informally declared himself civilian chief.

“All the fainted ladies over here,” he ordered.

The people obeyed, and the ladies, some dragged by the ankles, others held by the head and feet and lifted, were piled up in a corner of the lobby.

“Everybody charge! Charge!” Laganà hollered in the meanwhile.

“But there are horses outside!” someone told him.

“And the soldiers are aiming their rifles at us!” another seconded him.

As indecision seemed to take hold in the lobby, Captain Villaroel, unaware of what was happening downstairs, decided he could attempt an exit.

“Everybody out!” he shouted to the occupants of the box.

As the prefect, his wife, Don Memè, and the mayor, who was holding a bloodied handkerchief to his forehead, filed out, they felt deceptively reassured, since there was no sign of anyone around them.

They began descending the staircase, the captain leading the way, sabre drawn, with Don Memè bringing up the rear. When, still on the stairs, they came within sight of the lobby, they found themselves up against a shifting, tempestuous wall of bodies emitting cries and laments. With as strong a voice as he could muster, Villaroel shouted:

“Make way for His Excellency!”

And, just to be sure, he started blindly dealing blows with the flat of his sword to the left and right. Thus the group was able to go down into the lobby, but, once there, they couldn't take another step either backward or forward. Then, to make matters worse, Villaroel, as he continued to yell and use the flat of his sabre, felt the cold barrel of a carbine pointed directly against the back of his skull. It was the weapon seized by Sciaverio.

“Throw down the sword, asshole!”

Villaroel obeyed, and immediately Laganà took possession of his weapon.

“Charge! Charge!” he repeated, brandishing the sword and passing his sword stick to a gentleman beside him.

Seeing that pandemonium was breaking out, Don Memè wisely brought the prefect and his wife into a corner and shielded them with his body. Meanwhile Sciaverio, just to do something new, fired a shot of his carbine into the theatre's inner door, shattering the glass and eliciting more loud screams from the crowd.

Amidst all the confusion, Don Tanino Licalzi, known as “Lightfingers” for his bad habit of groping with near-superhuman skill the bottoms of all the women who came within reach, was able, in the darkness, confusion, and press, to amass such a hoard of gropes that his right hand began to ache. And yet at a certain point he became obsessed with the fact that his collection was still missing the bottom of
la signora prefettessa
. So he did and said what he needed to do, maneuvering his way through the tumultuous throng, and at last found himself right beside the prefect's wife. Closing his eyes in a foretaste of pleasure, he reached out, encountered a silk-covered buttock, and squeezed.

“Someone is touching my bottom!” the prefectess screamed in dismay and indignation, and with a hint of glee.

Having achieved his goal, Don Tanino fell to his knees and pretended to faint. But the lady's cry had touched the heart and honor of Don Memè, who, wild with rage over the sacrilegious act, snatched his revolver from his jacket pocket and fired three shots into the air.

“Stand back! Stand back!” he cried in a sputtering voice.

At the sound of the shots, the nearest people stepped away and a small space cleared around Don Memè, the prefect, and his wife, who continued to mutter:

“Somebody touched my bottom!”

Hearing the three pistol shots, Headmaster Cozzo decided to take action. This time he drew his revolver in earnest, after years of practice. Finger on the trigger, he thought about it for a moment, tasting a hint of lemon in his mouth, and then fired. The bullet—happy to be free after decades of confinement—treated itself to a flight itinerary that would have driven a ballistics expert mad. After striking the ceiling of the lobby, it shot off towards a wall and hit the side of the bronze bas-relief representing the face of Maestro Agenore Zummo (1800–1870), eminent head of the Vigàta Music Circle. Upon nicking Maestro Zummo's right eye, the bullet headed towards the vast central chandelier, grazed a copper pinnacle, and, following a parabolic trajectory, ended up stuck just under the skin of the occiput of the mayor, who was still unable to stanch the flow of blood from his forehead. Newly injured, the mayor let out a squeal like a slaughtered pig and fell straight to the floor, breaking his nose.