Beautiful Antonio (5 page)

“And,” replied Antonio, climbing into the carriage with his dog and then reappearing at the window, “what was the lady's answer?”

Calling up from the platform d'Agata continued: “She went as red as a beetroot, and God knows who she was thinking of in her heart of hearts, but so as not to make a scandal and let the cat out of the bag and – with that mouth of hers that anyone would have nibbled right down to the teeth with kisses – she said, as demurely as could be, ‘Why, the General himself!' Well she could tell that to the Marines… Go to bed with the General, forsooth! But then they got round to me: ‘And how about you? Which of the ladies present would you like to take to bed?'”

“So what did you say?” enquired Antonio, lifting up his poodle so that it could make its adieux to the doggy friend stationed beneath the train window as if it had forgotten exactly what reason had brought it there and couldn't think of another for going away again.

“I…” began d'Agata, though as the train had begun to
move he was now trotting beside it, with the dog galumphing awkwardly at his side. “I said, ‘With Signora Bertini and Signora Gallarati.'”

“What, both at once?” screamed Antonio.

“Yes, both!” yelled d'Agata, puffing to a halt and waving his hanky, laughing fit to bust and winking now one eye and now the other in quick succession, so that the one wink or the other must surely come to the notice of the friend steaming off this instant for the South, where nothing exciting ever happened.

A
NTONIO'S FAMILY HOME
hovered on the third and top floor of an old building in the centre of Catania. A number of its windows overlooked the courtyard all a criss-cross of cords which, issuing from the caretaker's cubby-hole, were used to wield the clappers of a dozen bells attached to the railings on the various storeys, in readiness to summon a maid, or the lady of the house.

There was a slip of a terrace jammed between their dining-room and the wall of the house opposite, a loftier building at one time totally blank and windowless at this level, but now pierced by French windows at which it was the custom of a certain Stately Elder to appear; to wit, Avvocato Ardizzone. Avvocato Ardizzone who, in spite of his flowery eloquence and the billowing folds of his
peignoir
, and his tendency to flaunt his gown in court, and his forefinger levelled point-blank at his adversary, and – the decisive stroke, thought he – his portrait in oils occupying half a wall in the Great Hall of the Bar Association, in which he was depicted with that celebrated forefinger (though here, from
noblesse oblige
, directed at the ceiling), his other hand resting on a highly-coloured Fascist symbol, the so-called Lictoral Fasces… despite these merits and high deserts, and the despatch of hundreds of boxes of oranges to influential people in Rome, and a plaintive, ranting, suppliant, peppery correspondence with ministers' secretaries… had never secured a place in the Senate. And talking in his sleep at night, “Great God!” he would cry, “there's so many coppers have hung up their handcuffs because thanks to my connections they got appointed Chiefs of Police, now
toasting their arses in the Senate House, leaving me here behind them like a fart in the dark… Three cheers for Giolitti!” he added – risking arrest had his neighbour happened to be a dyed-in-the-wool Fascist. “At least this sort of thing didn't happen in
his
day!”

This terrace, on the one side, looked onto the two-mile-long Via Etnea (“the Corso”), rackety with old trams, the lash of whips on the rumps of skinny horses; flurries of talk and of laughter, cries of newsboys; a place awhirl with hat-doffings, back-slappings, gesticulations, collisions, bowings and scrapings… On the other it gave onto a short side-street running straight as a die to the façade of a church in the topmost niche of which shone the Madonna, clad in her blue mantle, her fingers ten rays of light, her head haloed at night by electric bulbs which lost their dazzle in the haze of the sirocco.

On this terrace, on August nights at the dawn of the century, Antonio would fall asleep, face buried in his mother's lap, hearing the comfort-sweet murmur of her fan above his head, while his father, seated nearby, smoked cigar-butts in his pipe and spat continuously; or else gulped noisily from the rim of a jug and then, smacking his lips with pleasure, was wont to exclaim, “Ah, there's nothing on earth to beat cold water!”

This same terrace saw his mother and father greeting Antonio on his return from Rome: here he was hugged and kissed, and here brought coffee and biscuits, raw egg and milk; here, with tears in his eyes, he told them how his lovely white dog had dashed out at the open carriage door never to return… And here his mother gave him his first tidings of the city:

“… Dipaola's son is dead of pneumonia; poor Aunt Santina's pulse-rate is down to thirty beats a minute but the doctor maintains that she could live to a hundred just the same; and don't even
think
of using the word ‘whore' while you're talking to Avvocato Palermo! – I know you swear too much, just like your father…”

“Why's this?”

“His wife ran off last Sunday with a young man on his staff… Give the cold shoulder to young Baron Benedettini: he was gambling at the Coronets Club and they spotted a card up his sleeve… Zuccarello's son died, just like that, in a couple of days. No time even to cross himself. Professor Callara hasn't eaten for a week, because (heaven preserve us!) he finds that every morsel he puts into his mouth tastes like a turd. If he goes on like this he'll be a goner…”

“Ye gods and little fishes!” exploded Antonio's father. “Can't you think of anything jollier to talk about? Come along inside, Antonio, and we'll have a bit of man's talk.”

Signor Alfio led Antonio to his study, plumped down on the sofa, the high, shelf-laden back of which was set a-jangle with dozens of knick-knacks in peril of falling.

Then, with a sigh, he said: “I think I've got
angina pectoris
.”

“God in heaven!” observed Antonio with some bitterness. “You call that jolly?”

“No, it's not a jolly subject, but it's one I can't avoid bringing up.”

“But Dad, how many times have you been convinced you had angina and then the doctor declared you as sound as a bell?”

“Well, maybe it's not angina, but it's certainly something!… In any case, I have diabetes – there's no two ways about it! That was discovered by your – what-d'ye-call-it? – your uncle, the evening I went to dinner with him and drank water endlessly. ‘Friend,' said he to me, ‘d'you realize that's your sixth glass of water? Get a blood-test done, at once, tomorrow, and no shilly-shallying!' Next day I had the test and they found more sugar in me than in a candied orange. Come on, don't pull that long face at me! I'm still full of beans, and if it weren't for the fact that your mother takes it so much to heart… Good Lord, in a word, I'm still a
man
in the matters that count… I say this so you realize there's no reason to feel ashamed of your father…”

Antonio blushed to the roots of his hair.

“Why've you gone all red?” continued Signor Alfio. “I've never minced my words with you. I'm perfectly certain you wouldn't like your father to be a damp squib, just as I didn't like it the day I was told your grandfather was in the habit of paying a pittance to gape at some woman in the nude, mop his face with a hanky, and go off again without so much as a lick or a promise… But then he
was
almost eighty…”

He paused a moment.

“Good Lord, I'm rambling… rambling… It's the one affliction I simply can't bear! Always escapes me, what I started to say… Ah, yes!” (picking up his thread). “I've been going on about all this because it's time you got married.”

“But Dad…”

“None of this but-dad stuff! If you don't marry this… what's her name? Hell! Oh yes, this Barbara Puglisi, it'll mean you're your own worst enemy!”

“But I've never set eyes on her!”

“And why? I ask you that! Because when you like the look of a girl you turn your back on her, as if she'd called you a son-of-a-… well, let that go. You're a nitwit. I can read your thoughts like the back of my hand. You're ashamed of yourself because you fancy well-built girls with sturdy ankles. But why be ashamed of that, you nincompoop. If you want to know, your grandfather fancied them too, not to mention me, and they're still favourites with… umm… umm… who was I thinking of?… Ah yes, me! Yes, I still fancy them. Come off it, this… what's her name?… this Barbara Puglisi is a girl with every button where it ought to be. What's more, she's rich, she's taken with you, she's respectable… Lumme! what more d'you want?”

“It's just that I'd like to put it off for a year or two.”

“Listen here my friend, you're nearly thirty. You soon won't be able to make it any more… I speak loosely, of course, because we come of good stock, and we unfailingly make it. But it's one thing to marry at thirty and quite another
to marry at forty. Add to all this that I can no longer afford to keep you in Rome…”

“But where's all the money gone?”

“In ten years' time we'll have an orange-grove worth the best part of a million. But as things stand today we're down to your mother having to cadge a spot of cash off the caretaker. I've sold all I had to buy this orange-grove, I've raised a loan from the bank, and – I've planted ten thousand young orange-trees… It'll be worth a fortune, tomorrow! But as things stand today what it costs me is this” – and he stretched his arms wide – “and what I get out of it's this” – and he narrowed the span to a slit. “But there! The darling could steal the very bread from my mouth…”

“What darling?” enquired Antonio, with a touch of rancour.

“My darling orange-grove… O Antonio, if only you could see her – she's such a beauty! Even more beautiful than you are… eh, what? That's to say… The fact is that it's bleeding us white! What fiend was it that made me tie this millstone round my neck?… No, no… what on earth am I saying?… Blessed be the day I thought of buying it, and blessed be the notary who signed the Deed! But I'm rambling, I'm rambling again…” He clutched his temples with his right hand, raised his eyes, and all in one breath and like someone forced to walk a tightrope and taking a sprint at it rather than fall, cried, “In the five years you've been in Rome you haven't managed to get your arse moving at all! You've already frittered away a hundred thousand lire, and my heart bleeds to think of it!”

“It's not my fault,” mumbled Antonio. “Lots of young chaps have got into the Diplomatic without exams or anything. But me, I've been promised the sun, moon and stars, then whenever I check in to see how my application is going along they seem to wake up with a start, as if they'd never set eyes on me before!”

“But Whatsit… feller there… the minister, calls himself a Count (my foot!), didn't he put himself out for you at all?”

“Let us not speak of the minister! He has behaved the worst of the lot.”

“You bet!” cried his father, knocking the pipe in his hand against his leg and smothering his trousers with an avalanche of ash and glowing embers. “If you go and poke his wife!”

“That's simply not true,” said Antonio mildly.

“I don't need
you
to tell me if it's true or not!” retorted his father. “But what I do say is – Great God, what is his name? – that Count feller – he has more horns on his head than a trugful of snails. They all do it right under his nose and he's never noticed a damn thing. It took my fool of a son to go all the way from Catania to make
him
jealous!”

“But it's not true he's jealous!” roared Antonio, puce in the face this time from sheer vexation. “It's not true I'm his wife's lover! What more do I have to say? It's just not true!”

His father tilted his chin and looked down his nose.

“Be that as it may,” he said. “I have no wish to pry into your affairs. That notwithstanding, how do you explain the fact that a man like Blockhead, a damp squib if ever I saw one, who, if I were his father, would have me kneeling in the dirt for shame, has become Party Secretary of Catania, while you've been incapable of getting one of your little tarts to procure you a chair at the Foreign Ministry let alone the desk to go with it?”

At this point a masterful voice was heard intoning from the direction of the terrace.

“Signor Alfio, my dear Signor Alfio, I am informed that your son has arrived from the capital…”

Avvocato Ardizzone. And the Lord alone knows how grandiose were his gesticulations from the balcony, since a flock of birds fled in panic past the study window.

“Let's get back to the terrace,” said Signor Alfio, and hastily added: “Bear in mind that the Avvocato thinks you're the lover of the whatsit… ummm… ah yes, the Countess… If he asks you if it's true, don't say either yes or no. In any case
don't say no as definitely as you did to me: he'd end up believing you!”

Out on the terrace they found Antonio's mother whipping up another egg for her son. The Avvocato was leaning over the balcony, draped in his
peignoir
. At his side, his daughter Elena, a thirty-six-year-old spinster who, following her trip to Switzerland (or so the story went in Catania), was eager at all costs to make it known that her “misadventure” had been “put to rights.”

“What account have you to render to us concerning the Eternal City?” apostrophized the Avvocato. “What is afoot in that fetid sewer which the
Duce
would be well advised to raze to the ground? We Sicilians ill thought-of as ever, I presume? It's all because we have brains, brains and to spare. We could hand 'em out to that lot,
and
enough over for the other Party that acts so high-falutin!”