The Brewer of Preston Read online

  At first Dr. Gammacurta congratulated the cavaliere in his mind, thinking that the whole thing was an act Mistretta was putting on to disrupt the musical performance, in accordance with their agreement. But then he realized he was acting in earnest.

  On the stage, meanwhile, Effy, the fetching bride-to-be, popped out, a great big woman at six foot six with hands that looked like shovels and a nose you could grab on to in high winds. Under this nose was the dark shadow of a mustache that a generous application of makeup was unable to hide. She moved about, moreover, in long strides, heels clattering noisily behind her.

  Giosuè Zito’s wife, Signora Filippa, sat in serene bliss. Having been born deaf, she heard none of what was being said either in the pit or onstage. For her, everything was unfolding in angelic harmony. At the sight of the giant soprano, however, her curiosity was aroused.

  “Giosuè, who’s that?”

  Upon Effy’s entry onto the stage, Giosuè Zito, for his part, had felt alarmed.

  They’re not playing straight, he thought. There’s something fishy going on here. That’s not a woman. That’s a man.

  “That’s George, the twin brother!” he replied with conviction, and, naturally, he had to shout it for his wife to hear him.

  Laughter broke out again, even though Giosuè Zito’s contribution to the opera’s downfall had been completely unintended.

  Apparently panic-stricken by everything that was happening in the audience and by what she had managed to hear while getting ready to enter the stage, the soprano playing the part of Effy displayed, in her face, eyes, and convulsive hand-wringing, and in the jerky movements of her considerable bulk, the exact opposite of what she was supposed to express: joy over her imminent marriage. At the maestro’s imperious gesture, she began singing in a voice that was like an oil lamp with no wick:

  “I too know a bit of the art

  of sweet words and coy smiles,

  and can win a man’s heart

  with glances and other wiles:

  thousands of lovers and suitors

  I’ve seen swoon over me . . .”

  At this point the voice of Lollò Sciacchitano was again heard from the gallery.

  “Hey, Sciavè, would you ever swoon over a cow like that?”

  Sciaverio’s reply boomed stentorian:

  “Not even after thirty years of hard labor, Lollò!”

  Dr. Gammacurta felt sorry for the woman onstage, who bravely kept on singing. He felt that it wasn’t right. The poor woman was trying to earn her living and had nothing to do with the Vigatese, the Montelusans, and that shit of a prefect.

  “I’m going to go see how Cavaliere Mistretta is doing,” he said to his wife. And he got up from his seat, made the four people blocking his path to the aisle stand up, then headed towards the lobby.

  Ladies and, so to speak, gentlemen

  “Ladies and, so to speak, gentlemen. It was suggested to my wife, Concetta, that I should give a lecture on Luigi Ricci, the composer of the opera The Brewer of Preston, which will be performed several days hence in Vigàta’s new theatre, the pride and glory of that delightful town. And I have to give this lecture, like it or not, because I can never deny my wife anything. Anything at all, believe me. Why, you may ask?”

  He heaved a sort of sob, extracted a red-checked handkerchief, bobbed his head back and forth several times as if to ask for the compassion of those present, blew his nose with a powerful blast, put the handkerchief back into the pocket of his coat and tails, and, with a bitter smile on his face, resumed speaking.

  “My mother used to ask me, over and over: ‘Could you please explain to me how you got it into your head to marry that girl? Concetta is thirty years younger than you. Ten years after your marriage, you’ll already be sixty, while she’ll still be only thirty. To keep her from running away and to keep the family in peace, you’ll have to become worse than a servant, ready to bend over backwards for her every slightest whim.’ How right the good woman was, God rest her soul! Her words were the Gospel truth. To give you an example: I knew nothing about this Luigi Ricci, and I truly didn’t give a damn about him or his music, if you’ll excuse my saying so. At any rate, there aren’t many things that appeal to me anymore. But it was hopeless. You have to give this lecture, the wife commanded, or else . . . And don’t I know what ‘or else’ means! But, enough, let’s forget about that. And where did my wife get this idea? You all know that Concetta is a close friend of the wife of His Excellency, the prefect Bortuzzi. Do you see the problem now? Is it clear? This is why I am now standing in front of you like a jackass.”

  Sitting in the front row beside the prefect’s gilded chair, which was luckily absent the latter’s august form owing to some unexpected and unavoidable tasks of governance, Don Memè Ferraguto had been feeling lost for the past several minutes, ever since, in fact, the speaker had begun talking. Indeed he felt more lost than he ever had in his life, though he had never lacked occasions for feeling that way. For it was he who had had the brilliant idea to tell the prefect that his own wife, Luigia, known to intimates as Giagia, should speak to Signora Concetta, wife of dottor Carnazza, headmaster of the grammar school of Fela. Friends he had asked for advice on the matter had recommended Carnazza as the most refined of musical connoisseurs, without, however, mentioning—the bastards—that the headmaster was also, indeed perhaps to a greater degree, the most refined of wine connoisseurs. And to think that His Excellency himself had warned him of this.

  “Are you sure we han hount on this Harnazza?”

  “Of course, Your Excellency. Why do you ask?”

  “Because my spouse told me that Signora Harnazza honfided to her that the headmaster goes at it rather often.”

  “Goes at what, Your Excellency?”

  “What the hell do you think he goes at, Ferraguto? He goes at the bottle, and when he does, he talks rubbish.”

  “Don’t you worry, Excellency. I’ll keep after him like his own shadow. I won’t even let him drink water.”

  And there he was now, in front of everyone, drunk as a skunk. Never mind talking too much—he was speaking in tongues like the Sybil of Cumae. No doubt he had knocked back one of the bottles he kept hidden in the large pockets of the overcoat he put on before leaving home, and had done it when he’d asked for permission to go to the restroom a few minutes before beginning his lecture. Chock-full of wine as he always had to be, a mere whiff of the cork had been enough to set him off.

  “And then and then and then . . . this Luigi Ricci was born one fine day in Naples, one hot day, actually, since he was born in the month of July, in 1805. And as if the misfortunes the Neapolitans are customarily subjected to weren’t enough, four years later his brother Federico was also born, soon to become a composer as well.

  “But there’s something important that needs to be said, so please pay attention—Jesus Christ! Why are you laughing? If you carry on I’ll throw you straight out of the classroom, understand? So. The father of the two boys was one Pietro Ricci, who was not, however, Neapolitan but Florentine by birth, if you know what I mean—just like a certain person we all know—and he played the piano the way everyone plays piano these days, like my wife, for instance. A dime a dozen, know what I mean? But since my dear wife is pretty, everyone always tells her she plays like an angel, whereas, as far as I know, angels play winds and brass, never the piano. Speaking of which, is there anyone present who could sell me a used but good piano? The one my wife made me buy got smashed up when we moved house from Bìcari, where I taught Latin, to Fela. Not a particularly fancy piano, mind you, just so long as it plays, or can play what she’s going to play on it . . . Now, where was I? Where the hell was I? Ah, yes, I was talking about Luigi Ricci. Well, he studied music and started composing. The first crap he wrote—oh, I’m sorry, that just slipped out—anyway, his first compositions, for whatever reason, were very successful. Theatres all over Italy
wanted him, from Rome to Naples to Parma to Turin to Milan. And, since he couldn’t manage to keep up with all the music they were asking him to write, he started copying stuff wherever he could find it, the way some of my pupils do. There’s one, in fact, who seems to take his lessons from the devil himself. You know what he does, when I give them Latin dictation? He goes . . . Where does he go? But what’s this got to do with anything? Ah, yes, Luigi Ricci. Anyway, the applause kept coming for Ricci, and he wasted no time; he wrote and copied and slept with all the sopranos who came within his grasp. In Trieste he made the acquaintance of three Bohemian women—no, actually, that makes them sound like they were made of glass, or crystal; in fact it would be better to say from Bohemia—so, these three women from Bohemia were sisters, their family name was Stolz, and individually they were Ludmilla, Francesca, and Teresa. The last one, Teresa, was the same angelic soprano—in this case truly angelic—known for interpreting the operas of Verdi, the swan of Busseto. And apparently this Teresa would fairly often turn into Leda for the swan. Ha ha ha! Get it? Why aren’t you laughing? Don’t you know the story of Leda and the swan? No? Well, I’m not going to tell it to you, if you’re that ignorant. Anyway, to go on—actually, to go backwards—Luigi Ricci started dipping his biscuit with Ludmilla and Francesca. And apparently he was dipping with Teresa, too, but only when the other two cups weren’t within reach. Heh, heh. Between Ludmilla and Francesca, little Luigi didn’t know which one to choose. He would lie awake at night, between the two women, eaten alive by doubt, and so, in order not to offend either of them, he would be fair and lend his services to both. In the end he married Ludmilla and had a son with Francesca. These sorts of things happen. You don’t believe it? I swear to you that the exact same thing happened once, the exact same way, to a friend of mine, whom I see seated here, in the audience, next to his worthy wife. He had two women, he told me once in confidence; and with the one, he talked, and with the other, he did you-know-what. Then he had a daughter with the one he talked to. So, my question is: With what did my friend do his talking?”

  Patanè the broker, sitting in the fourth row, recognized himself at once in the words of Headmaster Carnazza and had such a fright that he felt like he had been punched in the stomach. He doubled over.

  “What’s wrong? Do you feel sick?” asked his wife, worried.

  “It’s nothing, nothing. A little acid, that’s all. The suckling goat didn’t agree with me,” the broker replied, wishing that an earthquake, waterspout, or some other sort of natural disaster would stop Carnazza from continuing his talk. But the wine in the headmaster’s veins and head kept following an unpredictable course. In the end, Carnazza did not name his friend.

  “Begging your pardon, I shall pick up Ariadne’s thread again—or, actually, the thread of the subject, if you will, which is the same thing. Yes indeed. Ariadne’s thread, which leads one back to the subject, is made up of conjunctions. Have you ever noticed? If you can grab a hold of one and then follow the others that come after, you’ll find your way out of the labyrinth. So, Ricci. Luigi Ricci, after all this, died a few years ago, and in Prague, no less. He made trouble everywhere he went. With a little help from his brother, perhaps. Which brings us to The Brewer of Preston. It was first performed in Florence, in 1847. So here we are again. In Florence. Get my point? You can see how it all makes sense. Luigi’s father is Florentine, the first performance is Florentine, and you-know-who—who happens to govern us—is Florentine. I believe that the man who wrote the libretto, a certain Francesco Guidi, copied it from a French author, one Adolf Adam, who in 1838 had staged a comic opera at—where else?—the Opéra Comique . . . Wait a minute, I’ve lost my train of thought. So, Guidi copies an opera by Adam in French but with the same title. Enough said. And at this point it seems to me we’re talking about copying like there’s no tomorrow, copying lyrics, copying music . . . I’d like to develop a concept here. I need to go to the bathroom; my belly feels like it’s been turned upside down.”

  He went out staggering as if he was on rough seas, rolling one minute, pitching the next. Don Memè then made a desperate decision: I’m going to go after him, he thought, follow him into the lavatory, and the moment he sits down on the pot, I’ll bash him in the head with the butt of my pistol and leave him there for dead. As he was getting up to do this, he suddenly found the Marchese Coniglio della Favara planted in front of him.

  “Thanks, Don Memè,” the marchese said with a grin. “I didn’t know you were on our side, in spite of everything.”

  The old scarecrow’s right, Don Memè suddenly thought with a shudder.

  Seeing how things were going, the prefect might think it was he, Memè, who had pulled the wool over his eyes, proposing a lecture that was starting to look like a dirty trick, since it was entirely in agreement with those opposed to The Brewer of Preston.

  After eyeing Don Memè a good while, always maintaining his grin, the marchese withdrew to go and talk to other guests. The lecture, in fact, was being held in the music room of his own palazzo in Montelusa, just as Ferraguto had explicitly asked him. And the marchese had not let him down. The only time he did deny a favor to Don Memè, some two hundred Saracen olive trees on his property had, by curious coincidence, gone up in flames.

  Don Memè looked around. Not a single Montelusan aristocrat had shown up. The cornuti. And perhaps, given Carnazza’s drunkenness, it was better that way. There was a surplus of bourgeois, of course, and many public employees, but most were already leaving, especially the churchgoing ladies, scandalized by the headmaster’s language and dragging their husbands behind them. Who, it must be said, acquiesced rather reluctantly, as they would rather have stayed to see how the farce would end. Some thirty people remained.

  Not knowing what to decide, whether to go and kill Carnazza or let himself sink blissfully into the shit pile he had helped to create, Don Memè started staring at the frescoes on the ceiling. At a certain point he gave a start and shook himself from his torpor, worried. How long had it been since Carnazza left the room, anyway? He hadn’t had time to answer his own question when the marchese reappeared before him.

  “I beg your pardon, carissimo Ferraguto, but don’t you think Professor Carnazza is taking advantage of my guests’ patience and mine?”

  Fucking marchese, thought Don Memè. He wants to savor my ruin to the very end!

  There was no sign of Carnazza in the little toilet chamber. Indeed, a servant who was planted in front of the bathroom door declared that Headmaster Carnazza had not availed himself of its services. Don Memè asked another servant standing at the end of a long corridor if he had seen Carnazza pass that way, but the domestic said no. He opened a door or two and found nothing. Cursing, he returned to the music room and approached the marchese, who was now laughing in his face disrespectfully and with no restraint.

  “I can’t find him,” said Don Memè.

  The marchese promptly assembled all servants, family members, and guests who wished to take part in a sort of game. For the headmaster must certainly have got lost somewhere inside the palazzo, since the doorman swore by all that was holy that he had seen no one leave the building. They searched for hours and hours, equipped with lamps, candles, and lanterns. They descended into the cellars, went up into the attics, and spent the entire night searching, in part because around midnight, the marchese had the good idea to call for a recess and send for a round of spaghetti with pork followed by four roast suckling goats. They fell to with gusto, but never did manage to unearth Carnazza. He had vanished the instant he walked out the door of the music room.

  “When he gets over his bender, he’ll resurface,” the marchese said at the first light of dawn.

  He turned out to be a bad prophet. Headmaster Antonio Carnazza never resurfaced. Someone ran into him, or thought he saw him, years later in a seedy tavern in Palermo, reciting verse by Horace to a crowd even more wine-soaked than he. The Baroness Jacopa della Mànnara sw
ore she had seen him among the ruins of the Greek theatre at Taormina, wearing a crown of vine leaves on his head and noisily declaiming verses of Catullus. The only sure thing was that a few years later, his wife had a declaration of presumed death drawn up and was thus accorded the status of widow. After duly waiting out the period of mourning, she remarried a nephew of Prefect Bortuzzi who happened to be in Sicily for a hare-hunting party.

  (A slight digression is in order here, not because the narrator so wishes, but because the story itself imperiously demands it. In 1942, during the war, Montelusa, unlike Vigàta, which was repeatedly bombed by the Americans, suffered only one bombing, but it was a devastating one. In the course of this act of war, Palazzo Coniglio was half destroyed. Once the all-clear sounded, the rescue squads—not to mention a handful of people with serious intentions of getting their hands on some of the treasures that according to local lore were in that palazzo—scattered in every direction to look for possible dead and wounded. In the attic of the west wing, which was miraculously left standing, a skeleton of a man in formal dress was found inside a trunk, surely dead of natural causes, since there was no visible trace of violence.

  It was a special sort of trunk that opened on the outside but which, once closed, released a spring that made it impossible to reopen from the inside. Anyone who might climb into it, even as a joke, could never come back out again without outside help. Beside the remains were found some sheets of paper with some barely visible, incomprehensible writing on them. With great effort one could make out a name that looked like Luigi Picci or Ricci.)

  Turiddru Macca, son