The Brewer of Preston_A Novel Page 11

  The wind rose from the west

  The wind rose from the west, from Montelusa way—an angry wind upset that it would never manage to sweep away the heavy clouds stagnating over Vigàta. A gust more furious than the rest slightly lifted the heavy plank that the now-dead stranger had used as a bridge between the mountain of salt and the roof of Concetta Lo Russo’s building, then dropped it back down on the tiles with a thud. Standing at the French door, Lieutenant Puglisi looked away from the plank and back into the bedroom, and what he saw there disturbed him. The wind had detached the soot from the walls, floor, and every other surface of the bedroom, and a nasty cloud of gray dust floated in the air, giving the impression that the two corpses on the bed had come back to life and were starting to make love again, rocking slowly back and forth. Leaving the shutters open so he could see better, Puglisi closed the great window, and at that moment the wind died down, giving way to a dense, heavy rain that drummed hard on the roof as it bounced off. Puglisi felt cold, and one shudder after another ran down his spine, making him shiver.

  A voice began calling him from the staircase. It was Agatina.

  “Lieutenant! Lieutenant!”

  He raced out of the bedroom, crossed the anteroom in two strides, and stopped on the landing.

  “I’m here, Signora Agatina. Come on up, and be very careful on the staircase.”

  When the young woman got to the top, short of breath, he took her by the hand and brought her into the vestibule. The first thing Agatina did was open her eyes wide and ask:

  “Why did she paint the place all black?”

  “It hasn’t been painted. That’s soot from the smoke. And it’s toxic.”

  He wanted to tell her tactfully and cautiously what had happened, but Agatina was sharp and quickly drew the conclusion.

  “And where was my sister—in her room?”

  “Yes.”

  “Sleeping?”

  “Yes.”

  It would not have been humanly possible for her to open her eyes wider, yet she did and then opened her mouth to scream. This, however, was exactly what Puglisi by nature couldn’t stand: a woman’s cries and tears. Violent and sudden, the policeman’s slap twisted Agatina’s face entirely to one side and sent her crashing against a wall. Puglisi was on top of her at once, his whole body crushing her.

  “Be quiet. Don’t move, don’t shout. Keep still, or I’ll give you another whack that’ll take your head off. Do you hear me? Keep still or I’ll smash your face. Look at me. Do you understand?”

  Stunned, she looked at him for a moment, then nodded her head several times to say she understood and wouldn’t move.

  “Now pay attention. I’m going to take you into the other room to show you what happened, but you mustn’t say or do anything.”

  He turned her around like a lifeless puppet, put her face to the wall, grabbed her from behind by the hips, lifted her into the air, and carried her into the other room. Agatina barely had time to see the two statues on the bed before an unstoppable stream of vomit shot out of her mouth, soiling the constable’s shoes. She started muttering meaningless words. Still holding her in midair, Puglisi carried her into the kitchen, sat her down on the only chair at the small table, grabbed a clay pot, dipped it into the water jug, let it fill, then started meticulously washing Agatina’s face and mouth.

  “Feel better now?”

  “Yessir.”

  “Then listen to me: your sister died happily, in her sleep, after making love. Do you hear me?”

  “Yessir.”

  “She didn’t realize she was dying; believe me, she felt no pain or fear. I’m sure of this, because I have experience with these sorts of things.”

  She seemed to calm down, to the point that she got up from the chair and began washing her face again. But she was trembling all over.

  “Who is he? Do you know him?” asked Puglisi.

  “He’s the Inclimas’ boy. The one with only one eye.”

  “If his eyes had been open, I would have recognized him,” said the lieutenant. “His name was Gaspàno Inclima. How long had it been going on?”

  “How long had what been going on?”

  “How long had they been lovers?”

  “They weren’t lovers.”

  “Oh, no? Then how do you explain that your sister and Gaspàno Inclima were in bed together naked and fucking?”

  “It must have been the first time, Lieutenant. The first and last.”

  The first time. The first after five years of strict abstinence as a widow. A bit of happiness, which she paid for with her life.

  What kind of bleeding justice is there in the world of God and men? Puglisi asked himself, without opening his mouth.

  As if she had read his mind, Agatina echoed his thought.

  “What kind of justice is this? First she pays with her life, and now with her honor!”

  And this time she started weeping long and disconsolately, which was all the more pitiable as she did it almost silently, without words, without wailing, only a sniffle every now and then.

  “What kind of justice is it?” she kept muttering. “And her honor, too?”

  Puglisi raised a hand and let it rest on her hair. He kept it there, without hinting at a caress, just to let her know he was there, by her side. Then she straightened up, took his hand into her own, looked at it, saw that it was grimy and black with soot, brought it to her lips, kissed it, looked at it again, brought it again to her lips, and began licking it at length, with care, like a dog. When she had fully cleaned it, she placed it against her cheek and held it there, pressing it with her hand. They remained for a moment in silence, then Puglisi made up his mind.

  “You wait here,” he said, “and don’t move. Even if you hear noises, don’t give in to your curiosity. I’ll call you when everything’s been taken care of.”

  He went back into the bedroom, approached the two corpses, reached out with one hand, and felt both bodies. They were still soft to the touch; apparently the heat of the soot had retarded rigor mortis. He took off his jacket, trousers, and shirt, and stood there in his woolen undershorts and jersey. He heaved a long sigh and got down to work.

  Less than half an hour later, he returned to the little kitchen and stopped beside Agatina, buttoning his shirt. Then he put his hand under her chin and forced her to look up.

  “I’ve set everything right,” he said. “Now be brave and come with me. You must tell everyone what you’re about to see; you must say that everything was this way when you first came in.”

  The woman stood up but then immediately sat back down. Her legs failed her; she couldn’t stand up on her own. Grabbing her by the armpits, which felt wet with sweat, Pu- glisi set her on her feet, turned her around, and pushed her towards the bedroom, forcing Agatina to walk despite the fact that her legs, no longer flaccid, had turned wooden.

  “Now look,” he said simply, keeping a hand over her mouth, just to be safe.

  The scene in the bedroom had completely changed. On the bed lay Concetta, no longer nude but in her slip, looking as if she were sleeping peacefully. The young man, on the other hand, lay stretched out on the floor facedown, fully dressed, feet pointed backward towards the French door, one arm on the bed.

  “See him? Try to remember what you see here,” Puglisi said with his lips in Agatina’s ear. “The lad happened to be passing by when he realized a fire had broken out, and since he couldn’t come in through the front door, which was engulfed in flames, he had the presence of mind to enter from behind. He laid down a plank between the mound of salt and the roof, clambered up, leapt onto the balcony, opened the shutters that your sister had left ajar, and entered the bedroom, only to run straight into a thick cloud of smoke. He lost his breath and fell, unfortunately, due to the wind; the window closed behind him, the room was sealed off, and the young man died of suffocation. Did you
get all that? Let me put it more clearly. Gaspàno was not fucking your sister; he only happened to be in the room because he wanted to carry her to safety. Is everything clear to you? Can I stop worrying?”

  She did not answer. Puglisi grew concerned, thinking she wasn’t really all there.

  “Listen to me. If you haven’t understood what I just said, and you say something different when asked, my career is over. I’m staging this whole scene only because it didn’t seem right to me, and also because you asked me to.”

  Agatina suddenly jerked her head around and bit his lips till they bled. Taken by surprise, Puglisi instinctively let her go. And this time it was she who grabbed him by the arms and pushed him backwards towards the kitchen.

  “Come ’ere! Come ’ere!” she cried.

  She was trembling, but only internally, the way cats do sometimes. In the kitchen she lay down on the small table and pulled Puglisi towards her by the lapels of his jacket.

  “Please! Please!” she implored him, breathing hard.

  “No,” said Puglisi, trying to force her hands open. He succeeded, but it only made matters worse, because Agatina, once she let go, locked her arms behind his neck, panting.

  “Let me go,” said Puglisi, who felt his legs begin to shake, and not only because of the position he was in.

  She started kissing his face and neck, her motion like that of a bird when eating: a peck here, then back with the head, another peck there, then back again with the head.

  “Please,” said Puglisi.

  “No,” she replied. “No.”

  “I’m going to call Catalanotti now and have him take you home,” said Puglisi. “And you, meanwhile, straighten yourself out.”

  Agatina, after what had happened between them—biting and scratching and falling off the table and onto the floor as they kept on fucking—appeared a little calmer.

  “All right,” she said.

  Puglisi went out on the landing and called the man he had posted as guard. Catalanotti arrived in a flash, consumed by curiosity as to what might have happened since his superior, and later the woman, had gone upstairs. As soon as he saw the two corpses, he turned pale. The color of their faces and hands upset him; they looked fake, like puppets.

  “Oh, shit!”

  Then he looked in the kitchen and saw Agatina leaning on the table, with her head in her folded arms.

  “I don’t know yet who the young man is,” Puglisi explained calmly. “He tried to save the widow but died of smoke inhalation.”

  “Poor things! Poor things, both of them!” Catalanotti cried out in sympathy for the dead, while not failing, in the meantime, to examine the scene with his eyes, like the good cop that he was. There was something about it that didn’t convince him, but he couldn’t put his finger on it.

  “Yes,” said Puglisi. “He was a brave lad, but unlucky. He laid a board down between the mound of salt out back and the house, climbed up, and broke the window to come inside—”

  “Stop right there,” Catalanotti enjoined him in a soft voice.

  “Why?” the constable asked, surprised.

  “Because all the window panes are intact, and if they’re intact, he couldn’t have entered the room unless the woman opened the window from the inside.”

  Puglisi felt like a child caught telling a lie. If not for what he had just done with Agatina, he would never have let himself be hoisted with his own petard like a novice.

  “Yeah, you’re right,” he said, embarrassed. “So how do you explain it?”

  “No doubt about it,” said Catalanotti. “Here’s how I explain it.”

  He took four paces, sidestepping the dead man, went up to the French door, opened both sides, and went out onto the balcony under a driving rain, a real deluge. He took a red-and-white-checked handkerchief out of his pocket, wrapped this around his right hand, punched his fist through the pane closest to the handle, making sure that all the shards landed inside, then went back into the room.

  “You can continue now, sir,” he said sarcastically. “Now your argument makes perfect sense.”

  Puglisi didn’t have time to resume speaking before Catalanotti, already thinking about something else and frowning darkly, went back outside onto the balcony and stared fixedly at a point in the mound of salt.

  “What is it?” asked Puglisi, himself going outside into the heavy downpour.

  “Over there,” said Catalanotti, pointing towards a spot halfway up the mound. “There. I first saw it out of the corner of my eye and didn’t pay any attention. Then it came back to me. Look.”

  Puglisi looked towards the spot the other was indicating to him with his outstretched arm. Sticking out in the middle of the blinding white salt pile was a sort of ball, colored pink and black.

  “That wasn’t there before,” said Puglisi.

  “Before when?”

  “The first time I looked out this window, it wasn’t there. Apparently the rain is bringing it to the surface, so we can see it. What do you think it is?” he asked, but since he already knew the answer, he said, “In my opinion—”

  “It’s a head, sir. It’s the head of a corpse,” said Catalanotti. “The head of a pickled corpse.”

  While escorting Signora Agatina—who seemed to him strangely calm, given her misfortunes—Catalanotti dropped in at police headquarters to tell his colleague Burruano to hurry and inform the judge of the discovery. Meanwhile, Puglisi, who hadn’t expected the additional exertion, began climbing the little mountain of salt in the pouring rain.

  He got covered with salt from head to toe, the crystals working their way under his clothing, making Agatina’s bites and scratches burn like fire. Several times he slipped back down to the bottom of the mound and had to start his climb all over again, each time with greater difficulty, eyes watering from the salt. In the end he managed to get within reach of the head, and recognized Dr. Gammacurta.

  “Doctor! Doctor!” he cried hopelessly.

  But a sort of miracle occurred. Gammacurta opened his eyes and looked straight at him, recognizing him.

  “Oh, it’s you?” he managed to articulate with difficulty, but clearly. “Good morning.”

  Then he dropped his head to one side, closed his eyes, and died.

  Puglisi looked him over carefully. There were no visible signs of injury. Then he started to dig away the salt around the doctor’s head and chest, and at last he saw a pink sort of paste made of water, salt, and blood.

  In endeavoring to describe

  In endeavoring to describe the truly painful events that have occasioned such damage and unrest in the town of Vigàta, an integral part of the province of Montelusa for which I humbly embody the function of prefectorial representative of the state, it behooves me to remind Your Most Illustrious Lordship what my sentiments concerning the problems afflicting Sicily have always been. Of the prefects of this island consulted last August, and especially of the four who met in Palermo, I certainly was not in the majority who declared themselves favorable to the continued use of conventional means to achieve the fruitlessly much-desired and much-sought pacification of the island. This was because, rich with the experience handed down to me by my predecessor in this high office, the enlightened Commendator Saverio Foà, who long presided over the destinies of this province, I had looked on in despair as I encountered a province in every way the same as that described to me, one that had already frustrated the efforts and eroded the reputations of so many able and zealous functionaries sent to govern it. In consequence, Your Excellency, who surely know my thoughts on these matters and who saw fit, in your capacity as minister of the interior, to place so high a function on my shoulders, will not be surprised to learn that I—being well familiar, by direct and indirect experience, with the moral perversity of this population, for whom all sense of justice, honesty, and honor remain a dead letter, and who as a result are rapac
ious, bloody, and superstitious—am of the opinion, and increasingly so, that I should not rule out recourse to any of the exceptional, restrictive legal measures that the government makes available, in the proper circumstances, yet never implements with the necessary firmness required.

  The events that occurred yesterday evening in Vigàta painfully confirm what I have been thinking for some time, since, all other considerations aside, what happened on the occasion of the new theatre of Vigàta’s opening to the public has the very hallmarks of a genuine popular uprising, incited by a few agitators, against my person as representative of the state. While others may think differently and support their positions with nothing more than empty rumors, it is clear that this was a seditious rebellion aimed at overthrowing and defeating the authority of the state in this Sicilian province. I present this pure and simple fact, that it may prove valid by the power of its truth.

  When I assumed my high office, the theatre of Vigàta had already been almost entirely built, lacking only a few embellishments of little importance. As it was my responsibility to appoint the members of the Adminstrative Council, I proposed to nominate two prominent figures from Vigàta and four from Montelusa, as the proximity of the provincial capital seemed certain to contribute to the prosperity of the theatre itself to a greater degree than the people of Vigàta could ever do, being scarcely interested in matters of art. When apprised of the composition of the council, the two Vigatese members immediately resigned, citing miserably parochial reasons for their action. In order to avoid harmful delays and useless polemics, I replaced the two appointed members from Vigàta with two exemplary citizens of Montelusa. The president of the Administrative Council, the Marchese Antonino Pio di Condò, a man of lofty sentiment and exquisite sensibility, one day happened to ask me cordially if I had any suggestions as to the opera that should be performed for the inaugural soirée, an event that must certainly be solemn in character. Entirely by chance, a title came to mind, that of The Brewer of Preston, an opera I had occasion to enjoy in my greener years—to wit, at its triumphal première in Florence in 1847.