The Brewer of Preston_A Novel Read online

  Micio Cigna was asking nothing more than this of the people of Vigàta: a judgment that was “just, though it be harsh,” as the Vigatese had had ample opportunity to demonstrate on other, “much weightier” matters.

  The open letter concluded as follows:

  “Prejudice has always done far greater harm, and led to much harsher misfortune, than wise and well-informed judgment, however negative, would have done in such instances.”

  After reading the piece, His Excellency’s face brightened a little. Don Memè’s smile grew even broader.

  “Well, thank goodness for that,” said the prefect. “For once this Guinea Hen, which has brohen my balls so many times in the past, has done the right thing. And you know something, Ferraguto? I wasn’t expecting it. Was it you who made them see reason?”

  “It didn’t take much, Your Excellency. Don Micio Cigna is a man who knows how to use his brains.”

  “This article will be a big help. Thank you, Ferraguto.”

  It was a well-known fact that, with Micio Cigna, there was never any point in trying to reason face-to-face. When he got an idea in his thick Calabrian head, he dug in his heels, and there was no way in heaven or on earth to make him change his mind. Wise to his intentions—namely, that The Guinea Hen was going to publish an article inviting the Vigatese to piss on the opera, the singers, and the prefect along with them—Don Memè had made the first move, not wasting any time or words. Micio Cigna happened to be engaged to the daughter of Don Gerlando Curtò, and they were to marry within the year. Six days before the planned publication of the article against The Brewer of Preston, a thousand head of sheep belonging to Don Gerlando were poached during the night by masked individuals who had clubbed the guardians silly. And although Don Gerlando did his best to open the gates of hell, nary a hair of any of his sheep had turned up. Two days before the article was to appear, Don Gerlando was paid a visit by a ceremonious, unctuous, smiling Don Memè.

  “Don Gerlando, I want you to know that I’ve taken the liberty of recovering your sheep myself.”

  Curtò showed no joy at this news; on the contrary, he grew worried. What would Don Memè request in return? For it was clear to him that the person claiming to have found his sheep was the very man who had shanghaied them in the first place. He said nothing, and Don Memè continued.

  “I couldn’t allow for a man as upright and esteemed as yourself to be wronged that way.”

  “Do you know who did it?”

  “Outsiders, people who don’t know our way of doing things.”

  “Thank you,” Don Gerlando was forced to say, through clenched teeth.

  “Just doing what’s right. Your sheep are in the Inficherna district. Two friends of mine are looking after them now. Just send someone for them when you want them back. And rest assured that you won’t have to suffer this sort of affront ever again.”

  “Tell me what I can do to return the favor.”

  Don Memè suddenly put his hand over his heart, as if he had been shot there, and twisted his face up in pain.

  “Do you really want to offend me?”

  “No offense intended, Don Memè. But I, too, want to do what’s right.”

  “Well, okay. But it’s just a silly little thing. I want you to say two words to your future son-in-law, who seems to me a rather reckless person, someone who could do a lot of harm.”

  “I’m at your service.”

  “It’s the humblest of requests.”

  And Don Memè explained to Curtò what he should say to Micio Cigna.

  The shouts exchanged between the future father-in-law and son-in-law kept the neighbors up all night.

  “If you don’t do what I say, the most you’ll ever see of my daughter is through a telescope!”

  “Who do you think you are to give me orders? I write what I want to write and what I feel like writing.”

  The commotion subsided at the first light of dawn. The upshot was an article that His Excellency read with obvious satisfaction.

  The early morning sun hung milky and wan

  The early morning sun hung milky and wan behind layers of cloud, as if it didn’t feel much like rising over Vigàta that day. Hanging in the air was a stale, dark-brown smell tending to black. This penchant for giving odor a color was a quirk of Lieutenant Puglisi. Once, when he told the police commissioner during a stakeout that he was struck by a yellow smell of mown wheat, his superior very nearly had him shipped off to a madhouse.

  The theatre was still burning, making more smoke than fire, but only inside its perimeter. The outer walls had withstood the blaze even though the roof had collapsed and was slowly smoldering inside that giant sort of furnace. Engineer Hoffer and his exhausted men continued to spray water with their machine, their reprovisioning now coming from ten or so large barrels transported by five wagons made available to them by Commendator Restuccia. The commendatore had, of course, been one of the plotters against the opera, but he had felt indignant about the fire—a case of arson, in his opinion. And so he’d decided to help the engineer out. The loading and unloading of the barrels was being handled by the militiamen, who had nothing left to do, since most of the population had gone home to bed a good while earlier. Puglisi couldn’t resist the temptation to follow their example, but out of a sense of duty he decided upon a middle course. His flesh felt heavy, his bones ached, his head was in a fog, but what made him feel worst of all was the sensation of dirt and scum on his skin, caused by the smoke and the mud. He thought he could at least allow himself a bath and then come back to keep an eye on operations. The most he would lose was half an hour.

  “You wait here,” he said to a uniformed policeman he had posted as guard in front of the half-burnt building in which Gnà Nunzia and the Pizzutos lived, to prevent the usual bastards from going inside and looting. “I’ll be back in a bit. As long as it takes me to go home and bathe.”

  He turned to go to the place he called home: two rooms with a latrine and the use of a kitchen, which he rented from Signora Gesualda Contino, a septuagenarian who treated him like a son.

  Ruin and desolation reigned in the piazza in front of the theatre, which the mayor had chosen to embellish with a small garden and a single file of oil lamps arrayed in a circle. All the damage had been done before the fire broke out, by the mounted soldiers’ horses and the fleeing crowd of frightened people. The garden hardly existed anymore, and three of the six lampposts lay on the ground, uprooted. At the far end of the square was a smashed-up carriage with its wheels in the air, while another lay next to it on its side, with the dead horse still attached. Puglisi looked towards the façade of the theatre, now blackened by smoke. Hoffer’s men were entering through the main doorway to go and fight the remaining fire deep in its bowels.

  Some discrepancy, some difference, some thing that didn’t tally, slowly worked its way into Puglisi’s head. With aching legs, he turned back towards the rear of the theatre, and as he drew near, keeping close to the wall, the signs of the devastation became more and more evident. At last he arrived in the alley behind the building, between the theatre and Gnà Nunzia’s house. The guard he had posted saw him reappear.

  “Didn’t you go home?”

  “Not yet. Something occurred to me.”

  “What is it, sir?”

  “It occurred to me I need a breath of air, all right?” was his brusque reply. Puglisi liked to ask questions, not to answer them.

  He carefully studied the rear façade of the theatre. At street level there were six transom windows, the kind that are hinged at the bottom and serve to allow air and a bit of light into the rooms below, in the basement.

  Stumps of frames without panes, eaten up by the fire, were all that was left of them. In the middle of the row of transom windows was a wooden door, or the charred remains of one. Behind it were six stone stairs leading down to the understage. On either side and above
the door were the signs of a furious, all-devouring fire much fiercer than in other parts of the theatre. Puglisi stopped in front of the door, bewildered. Then he noticed that the first transom window on the right had by some miracle been almost spared. He went up to it and crouched down to have a better look. The pane had been shattered, but the shards had fallen inwards. Puglisi stood up again and backpedaled slowly until he was up against Gnà Nunzia’s building. The overall view confirmed the opinion he was forming: that the fire had not been started when some spectator dropped a still-burning cigar too close to a curtain in the entrance lobby, where the box office and the grand staircase leading up to the boxes, the orchestra, and the gallery were. Its point of origin was on the opposite side of the building.

  And the culprit may have been a stagehand who had perhaps gone down to the understage for a smoke. But then why break the panes of the transom windows and leave the door open? There was no doubt, in fact, that the back door had been open at the moment the fire first caught, as one could tell by the remains of the door still attached to its hinges. So why was the door left wide open, creating a strong draft to fuel the fire? Like a Sicilian greyhound, Puglisi came to attention, pricked his ears, and sniffed the air, but his fatigue was so great that he decided to go and get cleaned up first, after which he could study the matter with a lighter, freer head.

  It was not his fate, however, to bathe that morning. As he was putting the key in his front door, a question paralyzed him: What made him so sure that the widow Lo Russo, who lived on the floor above Gnà Nunzia, had gone to sleep at the home of her sister Agatina? For the entire duration of the fire and the ensuing pandemonium, she had given no sign of being at home, it was true, but perhaps she hadn’t been well and was still there, unconscious or injured, and in need of help. He put the key back in his pocket and stood on the landing a little while longer, trying to decide what he should do: break down the door of the widow’s apartment, or go to her sister’s place and ask if Signora Concetta had spent the night there.

  He opted for the latter course of action, perhaps because he had always, since the first time they met, felt attracted to Agatina Riguccio, wife of Totò Pennìca, a fisherman by trade. And to think that, on that occasion, he had even seen her in unflattering circumstances, after her husband had broken her cheekbone with a punch during a jealous spat—the jealousy being Totò’s, of course.

  Summoned by the neighbors, Lieutenant Puglisi had found this Agatina with a swollen face but a pair of dark, lively eyes that looked like they were always asking for something, quivering red-violet lips (which smelled of saffron and cinnamon, Puglisi thought), and light, dancing tits under her unlaced bodice.

  “Who called you here?” she had said. “There’s no quarrel. I slipped and fell and hit my face against the armoire.”

  “So why were you screaming?”

  “Don’t you scream, sir, when you hurt yourself?”

  Not only beautiful, but shrewd. Six months later, another call. This time she had a nasty purple mark around her neck.

  “This? This mark here? But what kinds of ideas are you getting in your head, Lieutenant! I did that myself, when my scarf got caught in a door handle.”

  But she looked him straight in the eye as she said those words, and there was, in that look, an entirely different question, one that sent shivers down his spine.

  “So I can leave without having to worry about you?”

  “Of course, Lieutenant. And thanks,” and she grabbed his hand to say good-bye.

  The way she squeezed it took him by surprise. It was as if she had enveloped his fingers not only with her hand but with her whole body—as if the man’s hand, having become something else, had entered her innermost part, all the way to her womanly core.

  He had to knock three times before a sleepy Agatina answered.

  “Who’s there?”

  “It’s me, Lieutenant Puglisi.”

  The door opened in a flash. Agatina stood before him in a nightgown, her skin fragrant with the warm scent of the bed, and the color that immediately suggested itself to Puglisi’s senses was the quivering pink of a sea urchin just opened.

  “What is it? What’s happened? Has something happened to my husband?”

  “No, don’t worry. Nothing’s happened to your husband.”

  Agatina seemed relieved, as her tits rose and then fell in a long sigh.

  “Please come inside.”

  Puglisi went in, letting himself be lulled by the color of cracked-open sea urchin, which had intensified.

  “So what is it?”

  “Did your sister Concetta sleep here tonight?”

  “No, sir. Why?”

  Puglisi shuddered. If she was at home, why hadn’t she called for help?

  “Have you got a key to her apartment?”

  “Yessir.”

  She went over to a chest of drawers, opened a drawer carefully so as not to wake her three-year-old son, who was sleeping in the double bed, took out a key, and handed it to him. Then she began to tremble.

  “What happened, Lieutenant?”

  “Didn’t you hear anything tonight?”

  “No, nothing. We’re practically out in the country here. Yesterday evening we went to bed around seven, right after the Angelus bell. Then this morning my husband got up before daybreak to go out on his paranza. But what happened? Don’t try to scare me!”

  She staggered and, to avoid falling, leaned hard on him. Instinctively, Puglisi put his arm around her waist. Upon contact, she strengthened her grip on him. The constable felt slightly dizzy. This woman was very dangerous; he had to get out of there at once.

  “Let’s do this. Do you have a neighbor here whom you could ask to watch over the kid?”

  “Yessir.”

  “All right, then, after you’ve arranged that, come and meet me at your sister’s place. But listen carefully: you mustn’t make any noise or cry out in any way about what you happen to see.”

  “But what is there to see?”

  “There was a fire last night.”

  “All right,” said Agatina, as though resigned.

  Less than ten minutes later, having run all the way back, Pu- glisi was standing again in front of the man he had posted outside the burnt building. The guard gave him a puzzled look.

  “Why, you look rather dirtier and greasier than before, sir.”

  “Don’t give me any shit and don’t be a wise guy. Have you heard any voices inside the building?”

  “No. Who would be talking in there? Gnà Nunzia went to her son’s place and the Pizzutos are in the hospital.”

  “Listen, I’m going up there, to the top floor.”

  “Why? The top floor didn’t burn. If there was anybody there, they’d already be out by now.”

  “I didn’t ask you your opinion.”

  The guard fell silent. It was unlike Puglisi to be so rude; it must mean there was something serious afoot.

  “In a short while a woman is supposed to come here. Let her inside, but tell her to keep close to the wall when she climbs the stairs. It’s less dangerous that way.”

  As he was going up, he suddenly started taking three steps at a time, but had to move carefully because the staircase didn’t inspire much confidence.

  The door to the widow’s apartment, once green, was now brown from the smoke. He opened it and entered a small black anteroom, black because everything inside the flat had turned black. Taking a few more steps, he found himself in the bedroom. He couldn’t see a thing; the smell had turned the color of pitch. A shaft of dim light entered the room through the shutters of the French door, which had been left ajar. He went up to it and flung it open. The light burst in, and the first thing he saw were two ebony statues, life-size, on the bed. They represented the naked bodies of a man and a woman, closely entwined.

  Late as usual


  “Late as usual, always late,” Angelica Gammacurta hissed at her husband as he sat down beside her after inconveniencing, upon his return from the lobby, the four people between the aisle and his seat.

  The second act had already begun.

  “Act Two started some time ago,” Signora Gammacurta declared angrily. “Do you think that’s a civilized way to behave, the way you do?”

  “I really don’t give a damn. Anyway, what’s the prefect going to do, call me in for a talk tomorrow, like at school? It’s already a lot for me to have come to this tremendous bore of a theatre. Do the other people in the audience look like they’re paying closer attention than I am?”

  Indeed, the moment he had reentered the auditorium, Dr. Gammacurta thought he was at the fish market the day after the paranzas’ return, laden with catch. In the orchestra as in the gallery, people were talking aloud about their personal matters, blithely indifferent to what was happening on the stage, where the singers were losing their voices trying to make themselves heard above the great buzz of the audience.

  “What was that? I couldn’t hear! Would you tell me what he said?” a lady in the second row of boxes asked a man down in the orchestra. “What did Don Simone say? Are you talking about Simone Alfano?”

  And the man in the orchestra, half standing, shouted:

  “Yes, indeed, Don Simone Alfano. And he said,” the man repeated, referring to what an old man sitting five rows up had said, and serving as his spokesman, “that his grandson Tanino cut his finger at the sawmill.”

  It was all one big commiseration over bereavements and misfortunes, and a cascade of congratulations over marriages, births, and betrothals. Unusually united for once, the townsfolk, uninterested in the opera, had taken advantage of the occasion to trade gossip and news. Gammacurta thus learned, for example, that the price of almonds, like that of fava beans, was going up, whereas that of wheat was on its way down; that sulfur was stable; that the ship carrying salt that was supposed to arrive from France was running late due to bad weather encountered around Corsica; that Signora Tabbìsi had finally given birth to a much-desired baby boy; that the wife of Salomone the agronomist had been cuckolding him for the past month; that the Vincis’ eldest daughter was unequivocally a slut; that Captain Cumella had been called to God’s side and that everyone agreed that God had hesitated a bit too long before calling him.